index,title,genre,summary
0,Drowned Wednesday,fantasy," Drowned Wednesday is the first Trustee among the Morrow Days who is on Arthur's side and wishes the Will to be fulfilled. She appears as a leviathan/whale and suffers from Gluttony. The book begins when Leaf is visiting Arthur and they are discussing the invitation that Drowned Wednesday sent him. Arthur had been admitted to hospital because of the damage done to his leg when he attempted to enter Tuesday's Treasure Tower. Suddenly, the hospital room becomes flooded with water as the two are transported to the Border Sea of the House. Leaf is snatched away by a large ship with green sails, known as the Flying Mantis, while Arthur remains in his bed. When the Medallion given him by the immortal called the Mariner apparently fails to summon help, Arthur is without hope. Eventually, a buoy marking the pirate Elishar Feverfew's treasure floats toward him. As soon as Arthur opens it, his hand is marked with a bloody red colour. Arthur now has the Red Hand, by which Feverfew marks whoever has found his treasure, so that he can identify them later. Not long after, a scavenging ship called the Moth rescues Arthur. On board, Arthur (going by the name of Arth) is introduced to Sunscorch, the First Mate, and to Captain Catapillow. Their journey brings them through the Line of Storms and into the Border Sea, where they are later pursued by Feverfew's ghostly ship, the Shiver. The damage inflicted on the Moth is serious; therefore Sunscorch commands an Upper House Sorcerer, Dr. Scamandros, to open a transfer portal to elsewhere in the Secondary Realms. Scamandros claims that Arthur is carrying something that interfered with his magic, and tells Sunscorch to throw him overboard. As a last resort, Arthur shows them the Mariner's Medallion, which stops Scamandros saying that they must get rid of Arthur. After going through the transfer portal (with Arthur's help), the ship is grounded on a beach. When Arthur wished to learn what happened to Leaf, Dr. Scamandros applies his sorcery to make it possible. She is revealed to be aboard the ship Flying Mantis. Arthur joins Catapillow for supper, later to reveal his identity. At first, Propaganda issued by Dame Primus (Arthur's Steward) makes them skeptical of this, but they eventually become convinced. A few days later, Wednesday's Dawn takes Arthur to meet Wednesday for her 'luncheon of seventeen removes'. As they approach, Wednesday shrinks into her human form to meet Arthur. During their lunch, Wednesday tells Arthur that after Part 3 of the Will has been released, she will surrender the Third Key to Arthur. Arthur is then taken by Wednesday's Dawn to a place called the triangle in search of his friend Leaf. He learns that Leaf has been forced to work on the Mantis, but is otherwise intact. Arthur later makes a deal with the Raised Rats, a group of anthropomorphic rats brought to the House by the Piper, to take him to Feverfew's hideout, which they believe is inside a miniature world located within Drowned Wednesday's stomach. On the Raised Rats' ship, Arthur opens a gift from Dr. Scamandros, which proves to be a golden transfer watch. With this, he communicates with and rescues Dr. Scamandros. He then uses a scrying mirror Dr. Scamandros gave him to watch Leaf. A rat watches him during the scry, and later saves him from a battle with Feverfew. Later, the Rats bring Arthur onto their submarine, where he meets with Suzy Turquiose Blue. In contrast to Suzy's former cockney attitude, she has assumed a more ""ladylike and proper"" demeanor on the orders of Dame Primus. Only when they are no longer on the Border Sea, but under it, does she resume her customary ways of speech and dress. They are, with navigational difficulty, able to enter the stomach of Lady Wednesday and the worldlet therein. There, Arthur and Suzy, disguised as rats, find escaped slaves, professed followers of the Carp. These exiles take them to the Carp, who is the third part of the Will. They are halted in their attempt to escape by Feverfew, who proposes that each of them will try to kill the other by means of one strike only. Arthur fails his first try, then dodges Feverfew and severs his head. Leaf, who is Feverfew's prisoner, then kicks it into a mud puddle containing Nothing, which consumes it. Upon his death, the worldlet begins to collapse. Via the Moth, Arthur and all his friends (with the exception of the reluctant Catapillow) are able to escape. Lady Wednesday recovers from her gluttony, then dies as a result of being poisoned by the worldlet, which had opened a void to Nothing. Arthur, now Duke of the Border Sea, appoints Sunscorch as his Noon and Scamandros as his Dusk. fr:Mercredi sous les flots th:พุธเพชฌฆาต"
1,The Lost Hero,fantasy," As the book opens, Jason awakens on a school bus, unable to remember who or where he is, or anything about his past. He is sitting next to Piper McLean and Leo Valdez, who call him by name and say they are his girlfriend and best friend respectively. All three are part of a class field trip to the Grand Canyon, and after they arrive, a classmate Dylan turns into a Venti (Storm Spirit) and attacks the trio and their trip leader, Coach Gleeson Hedge. In the ensuing fight, Jason surprises everyone, including himself, when one of his coins turns into a sword which he uses to battle the storm spirits. Coach Hedge, who reveals himself to be a satyr during the fight, is taken captive by a fleeing spirit. After the battle, a flying chariot arrives to rescue the trio, but one of the people in it, Annabeth, is upset when she discovers that her missing boyfriend, Percy Jackson, is not there as she expected. Annabeth, seeking Percy, was told in a vision from the goddess Hera to look there for the ""guy with one shoe"", but this turns out to be Jason, who had a shoe destroyed during the fight. Jason, Piper,and Leo are told that they are demigods and are taken back to Camp Half-Blood where they meet other greek demigod children like themselves. There, Leo is revealed as a son of Hephaestus, Piper as a daughter of Aphrodite and Jason as a son of Zeus, though Hera tells him he is her champion. Jason later discovers that he is the full brother of Zeus's demigod daughter Thalia Grace, who is a Hunter of Artemis. Shortly after they arrive, the three are given a quest to rescue Hera, who has been captured, and they set off. They soon discover that their enemies are working under orders from Gaea to overthrow the gods. During their quest, they encounter Thalia and the Hunters, who have been looking for Percy. Thalia and Jason reunite for the first since Jason was captured at the age of two. On the way to Aeolus's castle, Jason, Leo and Piper become separated from Thalia, who promises to meet them at the Wolf House, the last place Thalia had seen Jason before this meeting. After being nearly apprehended by Aeolus, who is under Gaea's orders, the trio manage to escape thanks to Mellie, Aeolus`s former assistant, and end up in San Francisco, thanks to the result of a dream Piper had with Aphrodite. After landing in San Francisco, the trio rush to Mt.Diablo to fight the giant Enceladus, who has kidnapped Piper's father. They manage to kill the giant and save Piper's father, after which they rush to the Wolf House to free Hera. Although the heroes and the Hunters save Hera, the king of the giants, Porphyrion, rises fully and disappears into a hole in the Earth. Jason's memory then starts returning, and he remembers that he is a hero from a Roman counterpart to Camp Half-Blood somewhere near San Francisco, and is the son of Jupiter, Zeus's Roman aspect. He realizes that Hera, also known as Juno, has switched him with Percy Jackson, who will be at the Roman camp with no memory of his life, in the hopes that the two camps would ultimately work together to fight the giants and defeat the goddess Gaea."
2,The Eyes of the Overworld,fantasy," Cugel is easily persuaded by the merchant Fianosther to attempt the burglary of the manse of Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Trapped and caught, he agrees that in exchange for his freedom he will undertake the recovery of a small hemisphere of violet glass, an Eye of the Overworld, to match one already in the wizard's possession. A small sentient alien entity of barbs and hooks, named Firx, is attached to his liver to encourage his ""unremitting loyalty, zeal and singleness of purpose,"" and Iucounu uses a spell to transport Cugel via flying demon to the remote Land of Cutz. There, Cugel finds two villages, one occupied by wearers of the violet lenses, the other by peasants who work on behalf of the lens-wearers, in hopes of being promoted to their ranks. The lenses cause their wearers to see, not their squalid surroundings, but the Overworld, a vastly superior version of reality where a hut is a palace, gruel is a magnificent feast, etc. — ""seeing the world through rose-colored glasses"" on a grand scale. Cugel gains an Eye by trickery, and escapes from Cutz. He then undertakes an arduous trek back to Iucounu, cursing the magician the entire way; this forms the principal part of the book. After many pitfalls, setbacks, and harrowing escapes, including the eviction of Firx from his system, Cugel returns to Iucounu's manse, where he finds the wizard's volition has been captured by a twin to Firx. Cugel manages to extirpate the alien, subdue the magician, and enjoy the easy life in the manse, until he tries to banish Iucounu and Fianosther (who himself has come to pilfer from Cugel) with the same spell that the magician had used on him. But Cugel's tongue slips in uttering the incantation, and the flying demon seizes him instead, delivering him to the same spot as before. Author Michael Shea wrote an authorized sequel, A Quest for Simbilis (DAW Books, NY, 1974). Vance's own Cugel sequel was published as Cugel's Saga in 1983."
3,Magic's Promise,fantasy," The book opens with Herald-Mage Vanyel returning to his country Valdemar from an extensive campaign along the border with Karse, the neighboring enemy country. He checks in with Valdemar's King Randale and his lifebonded mate, Shavri, and their daughter Jisa. Only a select few know that Jisa is Vanyel's daughter. Because King Randale is sterile, he had asked Vanyel to father an heir. Now, Shavri confides in Vanyel her fear that Randale is mortally ill. Vanyel and his mentor Savil return to Vanyel's family home at Forst Reach, where they find little rest or peace. His parents both try to change his mind about being shay'a'chern, or homosexual. Vanyel becomes somewhat confused about his own sexuality. He wonders if he is truly in love with Shavri. Yfandes, Vanyel's Companion, doesn't buy it and finds the situation amusing. Vanyel also meets his illegitimate nephew, Medren. Medren is small for his age as Vanyel was, and like him it appears that he is often bullied by the armsmaster Jervis. The boy has a powerful Bardic gift, and Vanyel sponsors him for the Bardic Collegium. Vanyel confronts Jervis and learns that the armsmaster is not being intentionally rough. He also apologizes for beating Vanyel long ago, and explains his difficult position with Vanyel's father. He also mentions that he knew Vanyel was shay'a'chern from the beginning, but also knew from his army service that being gay does not keep men from being courageous warriors. Vanyel accepts this and they form an uneasy friendship. The main plot focuses on how Vanyel assists young Prince Tashir Remoerdis. Vanyel and Yandes receive a psychic summons into the neighboring country of Lineas. Upon arrival, they find Tashir, who has just become a Herald, with his Companion, Leshya (nicknamed Ghost by Yfandes). Another Herald, Lores, is beating the child and attacks Ghost when he tries to interfere. He believes that Tashir is actually an evil sorcerer who has murdered his own family. Vanyel immediately stops Lores and commands him to return to Valdemar. Vanyel takes Tashir back to his own home, Forst Reach, and begins to try and discover what truly happened to Tashir's family. He then returns to Lineas, disguised as a minstrel to gather information. In Lineas magic is taboo; no one is supposed to perform it for any reason. It shares a border with Baires, a country ruled by the Mavelan, a family of mages. A treaty was signed to end the warring between the two countries, sealed by the marriage of Tashir's parents. In the treaty there exists a clause that if the royal family of Lineas dies out, the Mavelan can take over the Lineas throne, and vice versa. Vanyel meets an old servant of the Remoerdis family who tells him of Tashir's sad childhood. Tashir was physically and emotionally abused by his father and sexually abused by his mother. His mother was mentally unstable and made seductive overtures to Tashir even as a young child. Tashir looks very much like his mother's uncle Vedric, and rumor has it that he is the product of an incestuous affair between them. Returning to Forst Reach, Vanyel recruits Savil and Jervis to help. Together with Tashir, they return to Lineas, breaking through the palace's magic shields to search the place. They find a secret room which contains a ""heart-stone"", an ordinary rock connected with a magical ""node"" which is keeping a deep, dangerous fault sealed. As the stone was unstable and any magic done in the area could disturb it, a guardian family without magic was appointed. If the stone were to be removed, a giant earthquake would occur destroying Lineas, parts of the outlands, and the border of Valdemar. That was why magic was anathema in Lineas, and also why everyone in the palace was blood related member of the Remoerdis family, sworn to protect the node. In the palace Vanyel and Savil discover a ""trap-spell"", which targets one person and also kills the target's entire family. Tashir's family were the victims of the trap-spell, which was placed by Tashir's uncle Vedric, whose intention is to control both Lineas and Baires. (He is not, however, Tashir's father.) Vedric tries the same trick on Vanyel, who has already caught on and sent Savil away, along with Tashir, while keeping Jervis with him. In defending himself, Vanyel ends up killing most of the Baires family as well as Vedric. Now king of both Baires and Lineas, Tashir considers himself too young and inexperienced. He allows King Randale to annex the two smaller countries into Valdemar. Vanyel finally sorts out that he actually is gay, and that Shavri is just a good friend."
4,Taran Wanderer,fantasy," Taran and Gurgi have returned to Caer Dallben following the events of the third chronicle, The Castle of Llyr. It is now full springtime, at least three years after The Book of Three. Taran knows that he loves Princess Eilonwy, who now resides at Dinas Rhydnant for royal education. In full springtime some weeks after return from escorting her there, he is restless and determines to know his parentage, noble or common, partly in hopes that noble birth will support a marriage proposal. Dallben the enchanter tells him nothing but gives his approval for Taran and Gurgi to travel on their own. They travel first to the Marshes of Morva to ask the witches Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch. Taran has nothing of great value to give in exchange, so Orddu merely tells him of an alternative, the Mirror of Llunet in the far east Llawgadarn Mountains will show him who he is. Taran goes next to Cantrev Cadiffor to be outfit by King Smoit for a longer journey. After a border patrol of Smoit's vassal Lord Goryon steals his horse Melynlas and Gurgi's pony, they spend the night with the farm couple Aeddan and Alarca who have lost their son and livestock. Taran would be welcome to remain and he leaves with new respect for common farmers. They recover their steeds because Melynlas will have no other rider and Goryon is relieved to escape the honorary burden of mastering him.At the neighboring stronghold of Lord Gast they meet old friend Fflewddur Fflam, who seems to return to wandering as a bard every spring. Together they go on to Caer Cadarn where Smoit does welcome them. Goryon and Gast have been feuding for years (every spring?), especially over the prize cow Cornillo. When their dispute breaks out again next day, Taran questions King Smoit's habitual resort to imprisonment and persuades Smoit to try Taran's judgment. Namely, the rival cantrev lords shall resow the fields of Aeddan, which have been ruined by battles. The prize cow shall be further compensation, although the lords shall have her calves. The remainder of their commingled herds shall be divided in half by Goryon, and Gast will choose which half to take for himself. The childless widower Smoit later offers to adopt Taran as his son, who will succeed as King of Cadiffor. Taran declines but says he will gladly accept if he discovers noble birth. Continuing eastward, they cross Ystrad. Taran's pet crow Kaw and Fflewddur's mount Llyan, a giant lion, find treasures which they bring to their masters. Kaw a polished bone the size of a toothpick, which has been stashed high in a tree. Llyan a green and yellow frog that has nearly dried to death: their old friend Doli the dwarf, whom they revive. Doli has been transformed during investigation of a deadly threat to the Fair Folk. He knows that he is not the first to disappear in animal form, for a human wizard Morda has attained power to enchant them, and to raid their underground realms. Taran and Gurgi investigate Morda's abode, followed by Fflewddur, but all are captured by his snares. After explaining himself (history, boasts, plans), Morda turns Fflewddur and Gurgi into a hare and a mouse, but fails to transform Taran. Something protects him, and he guesses from the stump of Morda's little finger that it is the polished bone. Although elderly, Morda is stronger than Taran, but his strength finally snaps the bone in desperate fury to regain it. (Morda has worn a silver crescent moon with pendant jewel on a necklace. Eilonwy has one without the jewel, and Morda prompted by Taran's recognition of the symbol of the House of Llyr has revealed the primary source of his magic. After Eilonwy was kidnapped as a child, the long search by her mother Angharad ended here, where she weakly sought shelter. Morda inherited both the amulet she wore and the empty book among her possessions. He mastered the amulet and developed its power, gave the book to a pest Glew. (The Castle of Llyr.) Morda's death restores Doli and others to their natural forms. Before parting, Taran gives the jewel from Angharad's amulet to him (returning a gift by the Fair Folk to the House of Llyr) and Doli identifies the ceremonial horn Taran wears in token of Eilonwy's pledge. It will summon the Fair Folk to his assistance, and one summons remains. Taran, Gurgi, and Fflewddur camp next with the ruffian Dorath and his band. Their hosts suspect a quest for treasure and offer guidance to Llunet, in exchange for a share. The guests try to slip away early next morning but Dorath prevents that and extracts a wager on hand-to-hand combat with Taran. He cheats and takes Taran's sword (the stake), then departs. An old shepherd Craddoc, with decrepit holdings, welcomes the companions next. From Taran's account of the mission, he welcomes Taran as his son. Fflewddur departs but Taran and Gurgi remain and labor beside him. Taran and Craddoc develop some bond, but Taran also resents the end of his dream of noble birth. During the next winter, however, Craddoc suffers a bad fall down a mountain gorge, and Taran is unable to rescue him. Near death he reveals that he knew enough of Dallben's history to pose as father and gain Taran as a son. The gorge and the weather threaten Taran too, and he finally summons the Fair Folk who are able to save only himself and Gurgi. Afterward Taran and Gurgi continue eastward, across Little Avren to the Free Commots. They stay first with lucky Llonio and his family on the banks of the river, where Taran learns that life is a net to gather what comes. Next Taran assists and learns the trades of three great craftmasters: Hevydd the smith, Dwyvach the weaver, and Annlaw the potter. They teach him that life is a forge, a loom, and a potter's wheel. He learns enough that he would be welcome to remain as assistance, but pottery alone seems to call him and he realizes to his dismay that he will never master it. He does have a new sword, new cloak, and new bowl. Driving the wares of Annlaw to Commot Ivar, he leads the poor farming village in resistance to a raid by Dorath, killing half the band at no loss of life. Annlaw tells Taran the way to the Mirror of Llunet; he knows it, but has never visited, for he knows who he is. After a short journey, Taran and Gurgi find the Mirror, a pool of water at the mouth of a cave beyond the Lake of Llunet. Taran gazes into it, and he is astonished, but Dorath interrupts, now alone. Evidently there is no treasure, so Taran and the ruffian are soon at swordpoint. His old sword shatters on his new one and Dorath flees. Taran does not pursue but returns to Annlaw Clay-Shaper. He relates that the Mirror showed his own reflection and nothing more. Cheated by Orddu? No, for he saw what he had become and all he had learned on the way."
5,Thendara House,fantasy," The novel concerns the dwelling of the Darkovan Order of the Renunciates. It also concerns Magda, a Terran, who goes to Thendara House in exchange for the Free Amazon Jaelle who has become the wife of an Earthman."
6,The Thief,fantasy," Gen is released from prison by the magus, the king's scholar. The magus finds Gen filthy, uncouth, and insolent, but he needs Gen’s skills as a thief. Without telling Gen where they are going, he takes him out of the city. They are joined by the magus’s two apprentices, Sophos and Ambiades, and by Pol, a soldier. The journey is dangerous, and the travelers grate on each other's nerves. The magus reveals that the object he wants Gen to steal is a precious stone called Hamaithes's Gift far far away. Gen risks death in a daring attempt to steal the stone from an almost inaccessible temple, while the entire party is pursued by the Guard of Attolia. None of the main characters is exactly what he seems to be. Gen actually works for the queen of a neighboring nation, Sophos is the heir to the throne and Ambiades is a traitor. By the end of the book, secrets are revealed, relationships adjusted, and respect among the travelers is lost and won."
7,The Sweet Far Thing,fantasy," The prologue begins with two men who are searching a river in London (three years before the events of the book) for dead bodies to fence any jewelry or money left upon them. They come across the body of a girl wearing the same crescent moon amulet as Gemma’s. At Spence academy Gemma struggles to open the realms. Pressure builds on her as her friends plot to use her magic to alter the courses of their lives, such as Ann trying to counteract her plainess with the magic in hopes of seducing Tom or joining the theatre. But after much struggling Gemma finds a backdoor-like entry into the realms. By touching a mysterious stone unearthed during the reconstruction of the east wing of Spence Gemma can enter the realms. There Gemma, Felicity, and Ann find Pippa among a group of girls she claims to have saved from entering the Winterlands. Pippa leads the group of girls and attempts to teach them manners in a similar fashion that she was taught at Spence, even though Pippa obviously didn't pick many of these up herself. Pippa asks Gemma to help her cross the river in the realms into the afterlife, but finds that she cannot because she has become a creature of the realms. Pippa asks Gemma to give her some magic and feeling guilty, she does. After a three month absence, Kartik finds Gemma at Spence Academy to tell her that their destinies should not cross again. Gemma angrily stomps off, trying to appear aloof. A later meeting at a boat dock in London crushes Gemma's hope that they could be together. Kartik enlists as a sailor for the HMS Orlando to escape from Gemma and the Rakshana. He refuses to reveal to Gemma the details of his business with the Rakshana or what he will do beyond being a sailor. Despite his coldness, Gemma continues to long for his touch. While waiting for his boat to come in, Kartik lives with the gypsies and helps Gemma arrange a meeting with the Rakshana. The topic of the meeting was her brother Tom, whom the Rakshana was trying to enlist in the club. The meeting was cut short by Mr. Fowlson, a loyal Rakshana member, who unsuccessfully tried to capture Kartik and Gemma. The cost for their safe escape was Mr. Fowlson's discovery that Gemma did indeed have the magic, unlike what she had said to him previously. This incidents ends with Kartik and Gemma leaving the docks after a kiss. At the peak of her tolerance, Gemma finally gave in to her visions and tried to follow the clues left by a mysterious girl in a lavender dress. This leads her to an illusionist who informs Gemma that this girl lived at Spence during her mother's time there. On a whim, Gemma and her troupe of girls venture into the Winterlands to find The Tree of All Souls. When they find it, they all place their hands upon its bark and see different 'visions'- their dreams coming true before their eyes. Gemma alone had a talk with Eugenia Spence who informed her more of the girl in the lavender dress. She also learns that the girl had in possession a dagger which posed a threat to the Winterland creatures. With their affection for each other growing, Kartik finally asks Gemma if she can take him into the realms to see his brother. Once there, they go to into the Cave of Sighs where they make love in each other's dreams. Gemma then offers Kartik a bit of her magic and he uses it simply to kiss her. Afterwards, Kartik finds his brother and is upset by what has become of him, he leaves the realms without the peace he'd hoped to find. Felicity and Ann grow angry with Gemma when she refuses to bring them into the Realms, but since Gemma has broken the seal between the two worlds they soon discover they no longer need her and they cross over by themselves. Gemma panics for her friends are unaware of the war that is breaking out amongst the creatures and, fearing for their safety, follows them into the Realms. She finds them visiting Pippa, whose power has grown but whose sanity is very quickly waning. Pippa attempts to kill Gemma when she refuses to believe that she is 'the chosen one'. Felicity attempts to stop her but Pippa pushes her away in her rage, Felicity is taken aback. When Pippa sees what she's done to her friend she apologizes and asks Felicity to stay with her forever, offering her berries that would doom Felicity into a half-life in the realms. The true relationship between the two is revealed when they share a kiss, but Felicity ultimately refuses the berries and leaves in tears. Time begins to run out for Gemma as creatures of the Realms' patience wears thin. With the seal broken between the two worlds, the creatures run loose, crossing back and forth between the Realms and reality. They attempt to capture Gemma while she is at Spence in order to sacrifice her to the Tree of All Souls. Gemma and her troupe (Kartik, Fowlson, Ms. McCleethy, Ann, and Felicity) quickly cross over into the Realms while the war is raging between the creatures. They are waylaid by Pippa, who sacrifices Ms. McCleethy in Pippa's castle in the Borderlands. Soon after, the castle collapses with Pippa inside. The group of girls following Pippa join Gemma's group to fight the Winterlands. They make their way to the tree where Gemma is stabbed by Amar. Kartik quickly offers himself to the Tree of All Souls in order to save Gemma and they share one last kiss before he is absorbed into the Tree. Gemma then gives her magic back to the land, recreating the barrier between the two worlds, and returns home, heartbroken. After her debut, Gemma moves to America to live independently and attend University. In her dreams, she still sees Kartik where he waits for her in the realms on the other side of the river."
8,Mistborn: The Final Empire,fantasy," In Luthadel, the capital city of the Final Empire, Vin, a scrawny street urchin, is recruited by a thieving group led by Kelsier, the Survivor of the pits of Hathsin, a place where atium, the most valuable metal in the world, is mined. He has a plan to steal the rumored atium stash from the Lord Ruler’s treasury and to free the oppressed Skaa in the process. When Vin learns that she is a Mistborn – a powerful Allomancer who can burn metals to gain special abilities (just like Kelsier) she becomes part of this scheme. Kelsier's thieving crew has other members: there are Misting – Ham, a Thug who can burn pewter, Breeze, a Soother who can burn brass, Clubs, a Smoker who burns Copper and Spook, a Tineye burning tin – and Dockson who has no special abilities but is a great administrator. Together they start working on a plan to overthrow the regime established by the evil Lord Ruler a thousand years ago. Marsh, Kelsier’s brother, infiltrates the Steel Ministry and Vin acts as Valette, cousin of Lord Renoux, to spy out what the nobility is doing. Vin falls in love with Elend Venture, the son of Lord Venture, an heir to House Venture. Kelsier manages to start a House War by assassinating powerful nobles, and Dockson, Ham and Breeze manage to recruit some seven thousand soldiers with which to attack the Luthadel garrison. However, Yeden, the man who originally hired the crew for the job, makes a foolish move leaving the army exposed and majority of it gets slaughtered. The rest covertly moves to Luthadel. House Renoux, the front for getting weapons, is compromised and Lord Renoux with his servants is to be executed. Kelsier and some of the remaining soldiers fight to save them, managing to free most of them. Kelsier is killed in the process, taking a Steel Inquisitor with him. Lord Renoux, who turns out to be a Kandra, a creature capable of changing its body-shape, consumes Kelsier’s body and is able to appear as an apparition to the Skaa. The whole population of Luthadel rises and defeats the garrison and the remaining noble houses. Meanwhile, Vin, armed with the eleventh metal, malatium, goes to the imperial palace, Kredik Shaw, to kill the Lord Ruler. She is captured by Kar, a brutal Steel Inquisitor and left in a cell to be tortured. Sazed, her faithful Terrisman servant, comes to her rescue. Being a Feruchemist, he manages to break his chains by strength stored in a piece of metal in his stomach, and then helps Vin to recover her possessions and a vial of metals. Vin attacks the Lord Ruler and Marsh, thought to be dead by the crew, rushes to aid her as a Steel Inquisitor. In a fierce fight Vin manages to separate the Lord Ruler from his bracelets that keep him from aging, thus making him age rapidly. Vin then rams a spear through the Lord Ruler’s heart. The Final Empire collapses."
9,The Sorcerer's Ship,fantasy," A man named Gene finds himself cast into a new world by a powerful godlike being. Gene has been changed in such a way that he has every talent needed to survive this new world, including the ability to understand the language of its inhabitants. Gene is rescued from the seemingly endless oceans of this new world by a passing ship that is similar to the looks of a Viking galley. Aboard the ship he makes himself useful as best he can while meeting new friends and enemies. Eventually they come to an island where a mysterious creature who some see as a friend, and some see as an enemy, joins them aboard their ship to help deal with the threat of war from their neighboring kingdom known as Koph. The creature, utilizing his sorcerer-like abilities is employed by the other country known as Nanich to help aid them in the war, but will the sorcerer, and his magic be enough to save the land of Nanich from being overrun by Koph?"
10,Amber and Iron,fantasy," Rhys Mason, former monk of Majere, begins the novel trying to escape death knight Auseric Krell. Rhys, having retrieved the soul of the Dark Knight Ariakan imprisoned by Chemosh in a khas piece, hands the piece over to Zeboim. She sends Rhys and Nightshade back to Solace. Once there, the sheriff, Gerard, seeks others for counsel about the mounting Beloved situation. Rhys agrees with Gerard to stay in Solace and help in any way possible. After an encounter with a Beloved, Rhys, Nightshade, and Atta (Rhys' dog) head after the creature, eventually ending up in New Port. Here, Rhys finally finds his brother Lleu, a Beloved introduced in the first Dark Disciple novel, who he has been tracking ever since. Elsewhere, Mina has been imprisoned in a new tower of magic in Istar, at the bottom of the Blood Sea. It has been newly erected by the dark god of magic, Nuitari. At a Conclave of Wizards meeting, Nuitari reveals to his cousins about his tower. The three agree to erect three Towers of High Sorcery again, one for each of them. Back in the Tower, Mina begins her task set before her by Chemosh of searching for the Solia Febalas (Hall of Sacrilege). Once she has found it, she is unable to take anything for Chemosh because she becomes so overwhelmed by the god-presence in the Hall. Finally, Nuitari returns and gives Mina over to Zeboim who had begun an assault upon the Tower. Zeboim takes Mina first to New Port where Rhys and his brother are at to have them meet. While there, Mina has a vision of Rhys and insists he knows the truth about her. Rhys' brother also pleads with Mina to take his life as a Beloved because he wishes it no longer. Before Mina can answer, Zeboim gives her back to Chemosh, who is irate with Mina for not getting any artifacts for him. He has been growing increasingly agitated that the Beloved will only follow her command and resist any by him or Krell. Rhys again tails his brother and finally confronts him again along with New Port authority when his brother tries to kill a woman. The woman's child attacks the Beloved on behalf of his mother and the Beloved is instantly destroyed, leaving the child in a coma-like state. Krell decides it would be in Chemosh's best interest if Krell would kill Mina, who is now being imprisoned by Chemosh. As he tries to follow through with his plan, Mina does something extraordinary; she makes him a human again. Then, because she believes Chemosh would want it, she pulls the Tower of Istar from the sea bottom and places it on top on an island in the middle of the ocean. Passing out from such exertion, the novel ends with all of the major and minor gods showing up and pondering over the nature of the unconscious Mina. Majere finally reveals that Mina is in fact a god like them, one of light, who was swayed and corrupted somehow by the Dark Queen Takhisis."
11,Queen of Demons,fantasy," In the introduction, the current King of the Isles, Valence III, and his wizard, Silyon, make a deal with the Beast to regain control of his kingdom from his wife, the Queen. Meanwhile, the main characters are in Erdin where they discover the dead remains of a Scaled Man on their ship, which Tenoctris sees as a bad omen. With the exception of Ilna, they book passage on the ship Lady of Mercy, bound for the Isle of Valles, where Garric intends to declare himself King of the Isles. Before they leave, Ilna gives Liane a sash that she has woven which will notify her if Liane is ever in trouble. Before the ship reaches Valles, a lens appears in the sky and swallows the ship, causing it to wreck. Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris awake, following the shipwreck, in the land of the Ersa. They eventually make it back to their own world. There they are picked up by a hunting party, led by the noble, Lord Royhas. Rather than dispose of Garric, as he was ordered to, Royhas takes Garric back into the city and holds a council with several other powerful nobles. They express their loyalty to the King but ask Garric’s help in overthrowing the Queen. Tenoctris uses a mirror to spy on the Queen and discovers that she is a demon. Garric plans an attack on the mansion. When they’ve passed all the Queen’s safeguards, Garric uses iron to destroy the Queen’s gate to another world, but the she has already escaped. Following this, Garric appoints himself Prince Regent under King Valence III and demands the allegiance of the Lords who backed him in the revolt. Meanwhile Admiral Nitker, of the Royal Navy, has declared himself the new Lord of the Isles. Garric promises to destroy Admiral Nitkers and the rebellious navy if they don’t return to the King’s service. Garric goes before King Valence III and receives his blessing as Prince Regent. Tenoctris discovers that the Queen’s mansion was a nexus of portals to many different worlds, one of which led to the Beast. Cashel uses his quarterstaff to escape the lens that swallowed the ship and saves Sharina as well. They are rescued by Folquin, King of the nearest Isle, and his two wizards, Halphemos and Cerix. Folquin then seeks to marry Sharina. When Halphemos' talking ape, Zahag, throws a fit during a chess game with Liane, Cashel attempts to settle him down. Halphemos, casts a spell to immobilize the ape but the wizardess Silya secretly interferes and sends them to another world. Folquin immediately has Halphemos arrested. Cashel awakes after the transportation on a parallel island of Pandah. He and Zahag meet the lady Sosia who asks Cashel to save her daughter, Aria, who is imprisoned by a wizard Ilmed and the Scaled Men who serve him. Cashel and Zahag succeed in rescuing the princess Aria, but she is less than thrilled. They flee through several magical portals, eventually ending up back on the Isle of Pandah. After they defeat the wizardess Silya, Princess Aria (who has decided to marry Folquin) arranges a boat to help Cashel find Sharina. They arrive in Valles where they run into Ilna, Cerix, and Halphemos and then make their way to the palace where they find Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris. Sharina and Cerix break Halphemos out of prison and then they go in search of Ilna for help in recovering Cashel. But a wizard with the appearance and voice of Nonnus, Sharina’s one-time protector, shows up and tricks her into leaving with him on another ship. Cerix and Halphemos to continue on their way to find Ilna. Sharina eventually discovers the treachery and jumps ship. She is rescued by a large man, named Hanno, who takes her to his home on the Isle of Bight. A phantasm and a group of Hairy Men sent by the Queen attack Hanno and Sharina, but they defeat them. They later discover that the Hairy Men have destroyed Hanno’s boat. While searching for a way off the island, the false Nonnus and his crew discover Sharina. The spirit of the true Nonnus comes to her, possesses her body temporarily, and destroys her pursuers. She and Hanno make their way to the volcano at the center of the island and climb to the top. From there they can see that the Hairy Men, led by phantasms, are building boats so they can attack Ornifal. One of the phantasms captures Sharina and conveys her to the Queen. The Queen shows Sharina images of her friends (and an image of the Hairy Men on their way to Valles) and implies that she controls their fates through a chess board. The Queen tells Sharina that she intends to use her to find the Throne of Malkar. Sharina watches as the fleet of Hairy Men reaches the Royal Navy and destroys it, but Admiral Nitkers escapes. When the Queen threatens to send a giant ammonite against Cashel, Sharina agrees to help her. Ilna begins setting up shop in Erdin, but this time with the intent to good rather than evil. Using her craft she begins improving the conditions of the city. But Cerix and Halphemos eventually find her and seek her help in recovering her brother Cashel. Cerix realizes that many of Ilna’s patterns contain writings in the Old Script—even though she can’t read or write. She agrees to go with them. Before they can leave Erdin, though, they are captured by a band of Scaled Men. They load Ilna onto a ship and travel through a portal. Cerix and Halphemos find her sash, which she dropped during her tussle with the Scaled Men. It reveals a spell that takes them into a desert world. When Ilna’s captors are attacked by Flyers, Ilna leaps through a portal opened by Cerix and Halphemos. Just as they seem to be succumbing to the desert, The People of Beauty arrive and rescue them. Ilna convinces the People of Beauty transport them to the city of Divers on Third Atara. They seek out the Baron Robilard. In his palace, Halphemos gets into trouble and Baron Robilard has him arrested. Ilna goes to Robilard to seek Halphemos’ release. Robilard makes demands, which Ilna fulfills, though to unfavorable results. A humbled Robilard frees Halphemos and offers to personally escort them to Valles. When they get there, Ilna is relieved when she finally finds Cashel. They make their way to the castle where they find Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris. When all except Sharina have been reunited, they set out to find the lair of the Beast. Admiral Nitkers arrives in Valles to warn them of the oncoming invasion of Hairy Men. Garric immediately orders preparations for battle. The Queen forces Sharina to participate in a spell which is meant to reveal the Throne of Malkar. Instead they learn that it is Garric, not Sharina, that the Queen needs. In the castle, the wizard Silyon and Admiral Nitker kidnap Liane and turn her over to the Beast, fifty meters down a well. At this point Ilna tears her sash and it reveals how to rescue Liane, by giving the key words (in the Old Script) needed to enter its lair. Garric enters the well and Ilna, Cerix, and Halphemos follow him down. The Beast attacks them, revealing that the Yellow King had imprisoned it there long ago and that it had lured them there to release it from its prison. It devours Halphemos and a grieving Cerix finishes the incantation so that the Beast can’t escape. Instead it dissolves into fiery lava, unable to die because of its immortality, endlessly burning. Meanwhile, Tenoctris opens up the Queen’s escape portal and Cashel and Zahag travel through it to where she is holding Sharina captive. He uses his staff to destroy the Queen and rescue Sharina. They meet back up with Tenoctris. A little later, Ilna, Cerix, Garric, and Liane arrive, escaping from the Beast’s lair. Tenoctris and Cashel confiscate the Queen’s chessboard. Tenoctris notes that the Queen herself was a pawn on the board, just like those she tried to manipulate. She and Cashel also notice the appearance of a new piece on the board—representing an island-sized black ammonite that an unknown wizard has just called up from the depths of the ocean."
12,Master Alvin,fantasy," This book has yet to be published. At this time, the expected release date is unknown."
13,The Woman Who Rides Like a Man,fantasy," The third book sees Alanna through her journey through the Bazhir desert, where she and her manservant Coram are adopted by the Bloody Hawk tribe. During their stay, Alanna duels with the Bloody Hawk shaman, a crazed wizard who is convinced Alanna is evil, and kills him. According to Bazhir law she must be the tribe's shaman until she trains a new one to replace her or someone kills her and takes her place. Alanna selects three Gifted children of the tribe, Ishak, Kara, and Kourrem, and begins to train them in magic. She also inherits the former shaman's sword, with a crystal on the hilt, symbols that remind her of the dead sorcerer Duke Roger, and a terrifying amount of dark power. She keeps it because her old sword, Lightning, broke during a battle. She also teaches the traditional Bazhir to slowly lose some of their prejudice against women. During their training, Alanna sees glimpses of the shamans the girls will become, but the boy, Ishak, constantly attempts stronger, darker sorcery. In a sudden encounter, Ishak steals the crystal sword from Alanna and tries to master its power, but it consumes him and kills him. Alanna continues to train Kara and Kourrem. Prince Jonathan and Sir Myles of Olau make a visit to the Bloody Hawk tribe, where Jonathan and Alanna renew their love affair and spend a passionate night together. When Jonathan asks her to marry him, Alanna is shocked and asks for time to think it over. During their stay, Jonathan is adopted by the tribe and takes up training under the Voice of the Tribes, an old friend of Alanna's and Jonathan's. When the Voice dies, Jonathan is made the new Voice, thus acting as a sacred link between all the Bazhir tribes. This status will help unite northerners and southerners when he eventually becomes King of Tortall. Also, Myles adopts Alanna as his daughter and heir to his lands. Jonathan, tired from the Rite of the Voice, wants to go home soon and assumes that Alanna will marry him though she has asked for time to think about it, and when he begins to make arrangements for her to return to Corus with him, they argue. She refuses to marry him, and he wounds her deeply by saying he'd rather marry a woman who knows how to act like a woman. Jonathan and Myles leave, and Alanna continues her training of Kourrem and Kara, who eventually pass the required tests and are made shamans for the tribe, Kourrem being the head shaman. Alanna and Coram travel to Port Caynn to visit George Cooper, who is putting down a Rogue rebellion there. While Coram woos George's cousin Rispah, Alanna begins a love affair with George, who has loved her for years, but when he wants her to return to Corus with him, she refuses to go with him. The two split, and Coram accompanies Alanna back to the desert, where the Bloody Hawk chief asks her to check on a sorceress, a friend of his, whom he has been having bad dreams about. When Alanna and Coram arrive at the sorceress' drought-stricken village, they see the starved, crazed villagers burning the sorceress, thinking the sacrifice will please the gods and provide them food. Alanna and Coram rescue her, but not in time, and the sorceress dies after leaving Alanna with a scroll to give to the Bloody Hawk chief. The chief tells them it is a map to the Dominion Jewel, a legendary stone that provides untold powers in the hands of Gifted or unGifted rulers. Alanna and Coram decide to go after it."
14,The Black Prism,fantasy," The book is set in a world where colour is the foundation for all magic. Sixteen years after a war that rocked the world, the Prism receives a note from a lady named Lina, first telling him of the existence of and then telling him to come and get his now 15 year old son, a bastard child that had been conceived while he was betrothed to Karris White Oak, a member of the most elite bodyguard force, the Blackguard. The White sends Karris to Garriston, Tyrea's capital, to spy on its Satrap's army. She gives Karris a note informing her of Gavin's unfaithfulness, instructing her to not read it until after leaving the Chromeria (the center of magical learning). She sends Gavin to kill a color wight somewhere else, attempting to keep the two separated until well after Karris learned the news. However, Gavin chooses to bring Karris to Garriston himself before she can read the note, using a mode of transportation no one else even believes possible: magically-aided flight across the ocean. This allows them to enter Tyrea in hours, rather than the month or so expected otherwise. As they draw closer, Karris sees smoke, and directs them to the former town of Rekton, which has been burned to the ground. They are just in time to save a teenager from being executed, killing several of the Satrap's personal bodyguard in the process, at which point the Prism is confronted by the irate Satrap himself, self-styled King Garadul. He ordered the town to be wiped out as an example, due to their refusal to put up and pay levies. King Garadul plans to continue the march of his armies to Garriston. Due to Tyrea's role during the war, Tyreans are treated less respectfully, have no color representative on the council and have had their capital under a rotating occupation from the other Satrapies. Thus, Garadul considers himself king, not Satrap, and Garriston part of his land he intends to reclaim. The child is revealed to be none other than Gavin's bastard child, Kip. There follows some debate, which results in Kip and the Prism being allowed to leave together, though not without the exchange of several death threats. Before this occurs, however, the king takes a box from Kip which he claims was stolen from him. The box contains a white dagger given to Kip by his dying mother, who—through curses and abuse—made him promise to kill the man responsible. Away from all this, Karris reads the note given to her by the White, and is angered by Gavin's betrayal, his lies about it when breaking their engagement, and the White's attempts to manipulate her into forgiving him. Because of this, she ultimately refuses Gavin's offer of assistance the rest of the way to Garriston, opting to explore Rekton while Gavin brings Kip back to the Chromeria. She meets Corvan Danavis, Kip's tutor and a former general of Dazen Guile's army. She is eventually captured by king Garadul, while Corvan continues to Garriston. While Kip is entered into the Chromeria, shadowed by the Blackguard commander Ironfist, the Prism kills the color wight the White referred to. Before dying, the wight tells the Prism that Dazen should have won the war. Paranoid, Gavin returns quickly to the Chromeria to check on his brother, whom he has secretly imprisoned in a cell in which nothing but blue luxin can be drafted. It is then revealed that the Prism is in fact Dazen, having stolen his older brother Gavin's identity after the final battle of the war. When Dazen became Gavin after the war, he chose to break off Gavin's previous betrothal to Karis despite his own feelings, truthfully denying any affairs. Pressured by the White to teach a class of superviolets, the prism meets Aliviana Liv Danavis, Corvan's daughter and the only other person in the Chromeria from Rekton. Her tuition is paid by a sponsor from the Ruthgari Satrap, the sister of the current governor of Garriston. Her sponsor repeatedly blackmails her into spying on the Prism for Ruthgar, though her words and the lengths of cruelty she is willing to pursue to keep her hold suggest it is more a personal vendetta than any specific order. Knowing none of this, the Prism gives Liv official recognition of her bichrome nature (her second color was deemed too expensive to invest in by her contract-holder), in exchange for her teaching Kip the basics of drafting. While Kip and Liv catch up, the Prism meets with his father, Andross Guile, to speak about Tyrea. When he mentions the box Garadul took from Kip, Andross immediately asks if it is ""the white luxin,"" a supposedly mythical substance. His brother Gavin was aware of it as well, and Andross—not knowing Dazen isn't Gavin—assumes he knows what it is. Gavin can't ask, lest his disguise be discovered. Andross Guile orders his son to defeat Garadul's armies, but at all costs retrieve the dagger. Kip, Liv, the Prism and Ironfist leave for Tyrea to defend Garriston from Garadul's armies. Corvan reaches Garriston at about this time, and agrees to be Dazen's general again. Despite their friendship in reality, they must both pretend to hate and distrust each other deeply. Liv questions her father about it, but he refuses to tell her the truth. She assumes the Prism is blackmailing him with her life, and silently vows to make him pay. Liv and Kip run away to free Karris from Garadul's captivity. Ironfist leaves a few hours later, to see to their survival. Liv infiltrates successfully, while Kip is recognized and captured, though not before drafting sub-red for the first time. Karris, meanwhile, is taken to meet Lord Omnichrome, a color wight who heads Garadul's drafters. She recognizes him as her brother Koios, thought killed by Dazen in overzealous self-defense before the war. Ironfist helps Karris and Kip escape, and they both go after Garadul directly. Kip sees Lord Omnichrome give Zymun (a red drafter Kip knows from Rekton's burning) his mother's rosewood case, but Kip decides to help Karris. Playing on her disgust with the Prism and Chromeria, Omnichrome persuades Liv to join his cause in return for aiding Kip and Karris. Omnichrome intends for Garadul to die, so Corvan and Dazen try to save him. They are unsuccessful; Kip kills him in a rage before he can be stopped. Kip, Karris and Corvan retreat to the docks, along with the Prism. Kip saves Ironfist's life before chasing the ship that's already left the dock. As Kip runs across the water, he sees Zymun attempting to stab the Prism from behind with the white luxin dagger, and tackles him off the ship. He retrieves the box and leaves Zymun for the sharks before escaping with the Prism's ship. The Prism gives Kip the case, thinking the dagger lost. In it, Kip finds a note from his mother, telling him to kill the man who raped her, and that she loves him. Kip discovers that one of the clear diamond-like stones on the dagger's handle is now a sapphire-colored stone. At about this time, Gavin escapes from his blue luxin prison after nearly killing himself, only to find himself in an identical green luxin prison. The book ends as Dazen discovers that he can no longer draft blue."
15,Always Coming Home,fantasy," The book weaves around the story of a Kesh woman called Stone Telling, who lived for years with her father's people—the Dayao or Condor people, whose society is rigid, patriarchal, hierarchical and militarily expansionist. The story fills less than a third of the book, with the rest being a mixture of Kesh cultural lore (including poetry, prose of various kinds, mythos, rituals, and recipes), essays on Kesh culture, and the musings of the narrator, ""Pandora"". Some editions of the book were accompanied by a tape of Kesh music and poetry. Pandora describes the book as a protest against contemporary civilization, which the Kesh call ""the Sickness of Man"". Pandora muses that one key difference is that the Kesh have solved the problem of overpopulation—there are many fewer of them than there are of us. They use such inventions of civilization as writing, steel, guns, electricity, trains, and a computer network (see below). However, unlike most neighboring societies, they reject government, a non-laboring caste, expansion of population or territory, disbelief in what we consider supernatural, and human domination of the natural environment. They blend millennia of human economic culture by combining aspects of hunter-gatherer, agriculture, and industry, but reject cities; indeed, what they call towns would count as villages now."
16,Dragon Rider,fantasy," As the novel begins, a dragon clan receives word from a rat named Rosa that humans are going to flood their valley. In frightened disbelief, most of the dragons refuse to accept this news and decide to either hide, fight, or take flight to find safe refuge somewhere else. Slatebeard, the oldest and wisest dragon in the valley, tells the dragons of a great valley he once inhabited as a child, the Rim of Heaven. He believes this to be one of the last places on Earth for the dragons to hide from humans, and urges them to seek it. Firedrake alone heeds Slatebeard's message and sets off with Sorrel, his brownie companion, to find it, but not before Slatebeard warns him to ""beware the Golden One"". Rosa Graytail suggests before their departure that they should see her cousin, Gilbert Graytail, to pick up a map. They do so, but since Gilbert resides in a large city, Firedrake is forced to hide in an abandoned building. There they meet Ben, an orphaned human boy. Ben is astonished but not terrified by the dragon and quickly learns of his plan. He offers to aid Sorrel in her trek to the mapmaker's home. Though reluctant to be helped by one of her perceived enemies, Sorrel agrees and accepts the company of the boy. Sorrel reaches Gilbert's abode only to discover that he has been unable to, despite constant efforts, to locate the Rim of Heaven. He does mention that the pair's queries are similar to those of some mysterious ravens who visited him recently. Returning to the warehouse with a general world-map, Sorrel and Ben, who they decided must stay, gather up Firedrake and set out from the city. Becoming lost, they encounter a group of dwarves. One of them, named Gravelbeard, conveys news of the party's presence to Nettlebrand, a golden-scaled, draconoid occupying a nearby castle. Nettlebrand, whose only passion is hunting and killing weaker silver dragons, excitedly sets his armor-cleaner, a tiny ""homunculus"", called Twigleg to spy on Firedrake and his party in the hope that they will lead him to other dragons. Firedrake, Sorrel, and Ben fly onward, but are soon swept off course, arriving on the shore of Egypt. Encountering a basilisk and a band of zealous archaeologists, the party eventually befriends a kindly scientist named Professor Greenbloom. Sorrel is initially suspicious but soon warms up to him. Professor Greenbloom gives Ben one of two freezing-cold metallic scales, which unknown to the humans, once belonged to Nettlebrand. Twigleg relays the news to Nettlebrand, who immediately makes his way to the dig site to find Professor Greenbloom and recover the scales. Meanwhile, the three searchers set out on the advice of the professor to seek the advice of a Djinn, whose thousand eyes can see everything. Ben succeeds in fulfilling the Djinn's arcane requirements with the question: ""Where does the Rim of Heaven lie?"" The answer to the question appears in two of the Djinn's thousand eyes; it is a path, marked by the Indus River, by a mountain range, and by a monastery. Beyond this monastery is the Rim of Heaven. In the monastery, Ben must break the moonlight on the stone dragon's head. The Djinn also gives them a prophecy: ""When that day comes, twenty fingers will point the way to the Rim of Heaven, and silver will be worth more than gold."" Meanwhile, Nettlebrand tracks down Greenbloom, who manages to escape him. Twigleg is discovered but is allowed to stay due to his almost-perfect ability to understand and translate any language. He has been grown very attached to Ben, and he begins relaying false information to his master. While flying over the ocean, a lunar eclipse occurs and Firedrake (who lives off of moonlight), cannot fly. He falls and lands on the back of an initially frightening but amiable sea serpent. She agrees to take the friends to Pakistan, where they will rendezvous with a Dracologist, Zubeida Ghalib. She alone knows a way to help Firedrake fly without moonlight. Along the way, the Serpent tells them (among other things) about Nettlebrand and his army of red-eyed Ravens. As the peaceful voyage atop Serpent-back continues, they are spotted by one of Nettlebrand's raven spies. Annoyed, Sorrel throws a stone which she has smeared her adhesive saliva. The stone sticks to the Raven's wing and sends him panicking to shore. In Pakistan, the friends enter a village where Zubeida the Dracologist is living and also find Professor Greenbloom. His wife and daughter, Guinevere, have joined him on account of the incident with Nettlebrand. Deeply worried, the two parties compare their findings, which all point to a single grim fact—Nettlebrand is hunting the Dragons who live in the Rim of Heaven, and expects Firedrake to find them for him. Dr. Ghalib reveals a legend of a Dragon Rider who once lived in the village. Ben is his reincarnation, and his destiny is to save the silver dragons from a terrible enemy. No sooner have they heard the legend than two more of Nettlebrand's ravens descend on them. Sorrel attempts the saliva trick again, with one variation: a few sparks of Dragon-fire are added to the mix. The stones do not adhere, but the Ravens are indeed changed before the eyes of all, into a few crabs. This new strangeness on the part of Nettlebrand disturbs the searchers, ultimately inducing Twigleg to reveal his original intentions as Nettlebrand's spy. He also reveals Nettlebrand's origin—an alchemist created Nettlebrand as a dragon killing machine to obtain the Dragons' horns which he used in his experiments. Twigleg, and eleven other miniature men, were made as Nettlebrand's caretakers. When the Silver Dragons went into hiding, Nettlebrand killed the alchemist and eventually ate all of Twigleg's brothers, then went hunting on his own. Zubeida shows Firedrake and company not only the tomb of the original Dragon Rider, but also a species of flower which collects moonlight in the form of dewdrops on its leaves. Having drunk this ""moon-dew"", Firedrake is able to fly in the daytime. The two parties split up to lose Nettlebrand's pursuit in the mountains. After a hazardous encounter with a Roc, they are forced off course and must take refuge in a valley. Nettlebrand continues tailing a boat wherein are Professor Greenbloom and his family, knowing they will lead him to Firedrake, but is seen by Guinevere. In the valley, help comes to Firedrake and company in the form of Lola Graytail, Gilbert's niece. Lola had been cartographing the country for her uncle and she guides them to the monastery. There, they are welcomed by the monks, who look on Firedrake as a bringer of good fortune. Also it is here that Ben ""breaks the moonlight""--- actually a moonstone kept by the monks for this purpose. Ben shatters the moonstone and summons the aid of a four-armed brownie, named Burr-Burr-Chan. He agrees to guide Firedrake, Sorrel, Twigleg, and Ben to the Rim of Heaven. He warns, however, that Firedrake's kin have degenerated into earthbound cowards as a result of hiding from Nettlebrand. Whilst waiting for the moment of departure, the company discover Gravelbeard (who was threatened by Nettlebrand into becoming another spy) but fail to catch him. They fly on their way swiftly, with Nettlebrand in pursuit. To Twigleg's dismay, in the center of the Rim of Heaven is a great lake, a perfect gateway for Nettlebrand, who can travel by water. To make sure that he is right, Lola takes Twigleg in her miniature airplane to investigate and distract Nettlebrand, while above the others seek the Dragons' cave. There, they meet with a she-Dragon, Maia. She is the only living dragon there, as the other twenty-two have since turned into stone through lack of moonlight. Outside, Lola and Twigleg find Gravelbeard. In the struggle that follows, the Dwarf's hat (which functions as an altitude compensator), is taken by Twigleg. Promptly Gravelbeard is struck with mountain sickness, allowing himself to be taken a prisoner. Nettlebrand, who now knows their location, is coming. No one knows how they could ever stop him since he is twenty times as strong as one dragon as well as immune to other dragons' firepower. In disgust, Sorrel spits on the golden scale which the Professor gave to Ben. Inspired by his success with the Ravens, Firedrake breathes fire on it and reduces it to gold paint. Twigleg comes up with a plan. He frees Gravelbeard and sends him back to Nettlebrand. The Golden One, elated by upcoming success, orders the Dwarf to polish his armor. Unfortunately for Nettlebrand, the armor polish has been replaced with Brownie spit. Nettlebrand enters the cave, and is at once dive-bombed by Firedrake, Maia, and Lola in her plane. At last, the Dragons come together and set Nettlebrand afire. The Brownie spit reacts at once, dissolving Nettlebrand's armor and weakening him. He melts to reveal nothing but a toad underneath. As the company stare in wonder at this transformation, Gravelbeard enters. He has seen the marvelous gemstones and rock formations in the cave, and wishes to enhance them with his own skill, revealing that doing so will bring the petrified dragons back to life. Within a few days, all the silver dragons are awakened again. Firedrake and Maia fly with Sorrel and Burr-Burr-Chan to bring the other members of their species back home. Ben and Twigleg go to live with Professor Greenbloom and his family. Two months later, news reaches the humans that Firedrake has convinced the silver dragons to come with him to the Rim of Heaven. Eager to see their friends again, Ben and Guinevere occupy their time with other investigations of ""imaginary"" creatures until they can visit the silver dragons again."
17,Darkwalker on Moonshae,fantasy," The novel and its trilogy use the Moonshae Isles as its setting. Kazgoroth, the Beast, has come into the world to destroy the power of the Earthmother. Changing its shape as needs be, the Beast goes across the island of Gwynneth, corrupting everything in its way. Its destination is a large gathering of Northmen raiders at Oman's Isle, in the middle of the Moonshaes, where they are preparing an assault on the kingdom of Corwell. The Northmen don't realize yet that this is going to be more than just a plundering raid. They don't know that their leader isn't King Thelgaar Ironhand, but the Beast, who has killed the king and assumed his shape. Meanwhile, the Earthmother, aware of the danger and hurting from the corruption brought to the land, her body, by the vile presence of the Beast, awakes her children - the Leviathan, the Pack, and Kamerynn, the Unicorn. They will try to stop Kazgoroth in different ways, but that won't be enough. At Caer Corwell, the seat of the king of Corwell, rumour brings word of war coming to the kingdom. Preparation is under way, but the Ffolk don't know where the enemy will strike. It is up to Tristan to organize the Ffolk against this both human and demonic threat. In his fight against the odds, helped by Robyn, he will grow into the responsible leader that should inherit his father's kingdom."
18,Valiant : A Modern Tale of Faerie,fantasy," The book follows the life of runaway Valerie Russell in New York. Valerie is the child of a single mother and is quite tomboyish. At the start of the novel, Val attends high school, is a lacrosse player, and is best friends with the eccentric lesbian-identified Ruth. Val discovers her boyfriend, Tom, and her mother are having an affair. Betrayed and not sure where to go, Val runs away to New York City. She meets up with a group of teen-squatters, including Lolli (as in lollipop), Dave, and Luis. Val earns the nickname ""Prince Valiant"" after she helps a drag queen locate her shoe. This may be a homage to Hal Foster's comic strip, Prince Valiant or Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur. Though she earns the trust of the rest of the group, Luis remains wary of Val. She soon learns about the group's contact with a troll, Ravus. He lives beneath a bridge, a reference to the traditional fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Ravus also makes 'Never' that faeries in exile use so their bodies can be resistant towards iron. These exiles are dispersed throughout the city, and Dave and Luis must deliver the glamour to them. 'Never', according to the novel, can be used as a drug by humans. When used, humans are given magic for a short period of time. It's highly addictive; a comparison can be drawn between it and heroin. Lolli and Dave introduce Val to taking ""Nevermore,"" as they refer to it. Val, like the other squatters, is soon hooked. Ravus, despite Val's first impressions, is much kinder than he appears. He begins to teach her swordplay and the bond between them strengthens. Val's mounting problems and addiction take a nasty turn, and the trust Ravus has in her is threatened. Many of the Seelie court exiles are being poisoned. Ravus is blamed for the crime. When Ruth arrives, attempting to convince Val to come home, she refuses and Ruth insists she won't leave without Val. Val agrees to go home, but says she must say goodbye to Ravus before she leaves. She attempts to find him in his alcove, but he is not home, so she finds Ruth, Lolli and Luis by Belvedere Castle. Luis, all the while making sexual thenceforwards with Lolli very unexpectedly, informs her Dave has angrily stormed off, and they all fall asleep in a terrible state. In the middle of the night, Val awakes to see a tree-spirit faerie, who leads her to a festival by the water, where faeries and humans called ""sweet tooths"" run around freely. Ravus arrives, and delirious and half-starved, Val kisses him. He is pleased, until Mabry arrives as well, and when Val realized Mabry is the one who killed all the Fey. She tries to tell Ravus but Mabry cuts in, telling Ravus Val has been stealing his potions, and she flees as he becomes enraged. Ruth and Val go to find evidence of Mabry's murders, and they find a harp in which Mabry has strung the hair of those she's killed, including that of Tamson, Ravus' best friend and Mabry's ex-lover. When the hairs are plucked, they sing of their deaths, revealing that Mabry is responsible for Tamson's death and Ravus' exile. The girls also find Luis. The three of them come back to the other Luis and Lolli, and they realize that Dave is impersonating Luis, uncontrollably high off Never he got from Mabry after putting poison in Ravus' potions for her. Dave takes off his glamour, laughing, and falls unconscious. Ruth rushes him to the hospital as Lolli runs off, and Luis and Val rush to find Ravus so he can cure Dave. They find that Mabry has cut out Ravus' heart, and she runs off to the Unseelie Court with it. When she leaves, Val pulls back the curtains and turn Ravus to stone, and Val and Luis pursue Mabry into the Unseelie Court. She challenges Mabry to a first-blood duel for Ravus' heart with the glass sword belonging to Ravus, and after a moment's decision to never use Never again, she fights Mabry on talent alone, stabbing Mabry in the throat. She and Luis rush back to Ravus, and after placing his heart back into his chest, he instantly heals. Ravus gives Luis the tools to go heal his brother, and he and Val finally admit their love for one another. Eventually, Val decides to leave the streets and return home with Ruth. She and Ravus continually see one another, and Val says she plans to go to NY for college so she can see him. The two kiss, and Val is happy her life is back to normal, with the exception of having a faerie for a boyfriend and never being able to introduce him to her mother. Some fans have pointed out that Lolli, Dave and Luis are similar to Lutie-loo, Gristle and Spike from Tithe, respectively. Note: In the book Roiben and Kaye make appearances. Silarial and Nicnevin are referred to by Mabry."
19,Yendi,fantasy," Six months after he took control of his own territory in the criminal Organization, Vlad engages in his first turf war with a rival boss. Each chapter's epigraph is a quote from its chapter. Vlad narrates this story from a point in his life before the events of Phoenix. He quickly summarizes the series of turf wars and assassinations that led him to rise in the ranks of the Organization from low-rung assassin to the boss of his own neighborhood. As the story begins, Vlad has held his territory for six uneventful months, but then he receives word that a neighboring boss, Laris, has started to move in on his territory. A turf war between Vlad and Laris erupts. Vlad receives indirect help from several of his powerful friends in the House of the Dragon, but remains one step behind the better-prepared and better-informed Laris. Vlad survives several attempts on his life, but eventually two of his bodyguards betray him and allow him to be attacked by two female assassins, a Dragaeran and an Easterner. Vlad's lieutenant had received timely warning of the attack and sent word to Vlad's friends, Morrolan and Aliera, who teleport to the scene. They kill the assassins but are unable to rescue Vlad, who is killed by the Easterner assassin. Aliera revivifies Vlad as well as the two assassins. Vlad meets the Easterner assassin, Cawti, and the two quickly fall in love. Aliera discovers that Cawti's partner, Norathar, is the former heir of House Dragon, having fallen into disgrace as a bastard some time ago. The current heir, Aliera, is looking for a way out of the position, and does a genetic test to determine the legitimacy of Norathar's claim. Vlad turns his attention back to his ongoing turf war, now with the help of Cawti. After yet another failed assassination attempt, Vlad begins to suspect that his war with Laris is only a ruse for some larger plot. After Norathar is confirmed as the legitimate heir, Vlad reasons out that the genetic test that incorrectly dubbed her a bastard was part of a plot to keep her from the throne. Further investigation suggests that Vlad's whole war with Laris has been orchestrated to get Norathar killed and to discredit Morrolan and Aliera. Vlad quickly reasons out that the Sorceress in Green, a prominent Yendi, has been working in consort with Sethra the Younger, an ambitious Dragonlord, to put a Dragon heir on the throne who will appoint Sethra as Warlord. Sethra wants to invade the Eastern Kingdoms and needs to install a sympathetic Emperor to achieve her ambitions. Sethra's namesake, Sethra Lavode, learns of her former apprentice's plans and teleports her away to deal with her personally. Morrolan, Aliera, Vlad, Cawti, and Norathar all pursue the Sorceress in Green, who leads them into a trap. Morrolan, Aliera, and Norathar fight through the Sorceress's thirty guards and magical defenses while Vlad and Cawti watch. Once most of the guards are slain, Vlad sneaks behind the Sorceress, destroys her magical wards with Spellbreaker, and threatens to kill her with a Morganti dagger if she does not give him Laris's location. She complies without hesitation. Vlad backs away and allows the battle to reach its conclusion, with Norathar killing the Sorceress. Vlad summons his enforcers and storms Laris's office, killing him without difficulty. Later, he learns that Aliera revived the Sorceress, believing that her humiliation was sufficient punishment (and also, they have used a mind probe on her and wrote down all the schemes in which she is involved). Sethra Lavode tells him how she teleported Sethra the Younger to an alternate dimension to do penance. Vlad and Cawti get engaged to be married and visit Vlad's grandfather."
20,Fengshen Yanyi,fantasy," The novel is a romanticised retelling of the overthrow of King Zhou, the last ruler of the Shang Dynasty, by King Wu, who would establish the Zhou Dynasty in place of Shang. The story integrates oral and written tales of many Chinese mythological figures who are involved in the struggle as well. These figures include human heroes, immortals and various spirits (usually represented in avatar form like vixens, and pheasants, and sometimes inanimate objects such as a pipa). Bewitched by his concubine Daji, who is actually a vixen spirit in disguise as a beautiful woman, King Zhou of Shang oppresses his people and persecutes those who oppose him, including his own subjects who dare to speak up to him. King Wu of Zhou, assisted by his strategist Jiang Ziya, rallies an army to overthrow the tyrant and restore peace and order. Throughout the story, battles are waged between the kingdoms of Shang and Zhou, with both sides calling upon various supernatural beings -- deities, immortals, demons, spirits, and humans with magical abilities -- to aid them in the war. Yuanshi Tianzun bestows upon Jiang Ziya the Fengshen Bang, a list that empowers Jiang Ziya to invest the gods of Heaven. The heroes of Zhou and some of their fallen enemies from Shang are eventually endowed with heavenly ranking and essentially elevated to their roles as gods, hence the title of the novel."
21,Magic Lessons,fantasy," When a golem pulls Reason into New York, she calls Danny Galeano, Jay-Tee's eighteen year old brother, for help. Danny allows Reason to say with him while she tries to trace the golem, although her feelings for him grow until she eventually sleeps with him, despite Danny continually says that it is not right. Meanwhile, Jay-Tee nearly dies while running, and Tom is forced to give her some of his magic. Reason, who is 15 finds out that she's pregnant with Danny's baby and the whole concept is greatly welcomed. Reason's mother was pregnant with Reason at 15."
22,Jarka Ruus,fantasy," In the 20 years since the events chronicled in The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, Grianne Ohmsford has become High Druid, or Ard Rhys, of the new Druid Council, but not without misgivings by many over her former life as the evil Ilse Witch. In a bid for power, a group of Druids led by Shadea a'Ru use unorthodox magic called ""liquid night"" to send Grianne out of the Four Lands and into the Demon-infested world of the Forbidding. Tagwen, Grianne's loyal Dwarf aid, sets out to restore her, seeking the aid of her brother Bek Ohmsford. Finding Bek and his wife Rue Meridian otherwise disposed, Tagwen joins forces with their son Pen, who has a supernatural ability to commune with nature. Advised by the King of the Silver River, they set out in search of the legendary Tanequil tree, which they are told can provide a means to reach Grianne in the Forbidding. They are joined by the elf Ahren Elessedil, now a Druid, and his niece Khyber (heir to the magic Elfstones), as well as the mysteriously empathic Rover girl Cinnaminson, for whom Pen develops strong feelings. Along the way, they are stalked by traitorous Druid minions and their spider-like assassin accomplice, Aphasia Wye. They manage to defeat one of the pursuing Druid airships, but at the cost of Ahren's life and Cinamminson's capture. Meanwhile, Grianne finds the Forbidding to be a dark mirror of the Four Lands. Exploring this horrific land known locally as Jarka Ruus, she encounters an enigmatic and somewhat annoying creature called Weka Dart. After defeating a dragon like creature and knocking Weka Dart out of a tree, she has a frightening encounter with the shade of Brona, the most legendary evil from the Four Lands, and Grianne is captured by a party of Demons."
23,Zahrah the Windseeker,fantasy," In the northern Ooni Kingdom, fear of the unknown runs deep, and children born dada are rumored to have special powers. Thirteen-year-old Zahrah Tsami feels like a normal girl, she grows her own flora computer, has mirrors sewn onto her clothes, and stays clear of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. But unlike other children in the village of Kirki, Zahrah was born with the telling dadalocks. Only her best friend, Dari, isn’t afraid of her, even when something unusual begins happening—something that definitely makes Zahrah different. The two friends determine to investigate, edging closer and closer to danger. When Dari's life is threatened, Zahrah must face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different. In this novel, things are not always what they seem: monkeys tell fortunes, plants offer wisdom, and a teenage girl is the only one who stands a chance at saving her best friend's life."
24,Daggerspell,fantasy," Events are listed here not in chronological order, but in the order they were originally presented in the novel. ; Year 1045 The sorcerer Nevyn sees an omen indicating that a person whose Wyrd, or destiny, is intertwined with his own has been reborn, and sees the infant Jill in a vision. ; Year 1052 Jill, a seven-year-old girl who sometime has precognitive dreams, loses her mother Seryan to a fever. Because her father, Cullyn, is a mercenary soldier — known as a “silver dagger” for the weapon he carries — and visits irregularly, Jill is taken in by a local tavern owner. Cullyn arrives in Jill’s village a month later. Finding Seryan dead, he decides to take Jill with him on his wanderings, which he calls “the long road.” For seven years, Nevyn has been searching for Jill, with nothing more than luck and intuition to guide him. He finds a clue when he meets the ten-year-old lord Rhodry Maelwaedd, and sees that the boy’s destiny is linked with his and Jill’s. ; Year 643 Galrion, a prince of Deverry, has secretly begun studying dweomer. He begins to fall in love with dweomer power, and out of love with Brangwen of the Falcon clan, his betrothed. Galrion considers breaking his betrothal so that he will have more time to devote to his dweomer studies. Galrion’s father, King Adyroc, is infuriated when he discovers that his son has been studying dweomer, and puts Galrion under house arrest, though the prince escapes by a ruse. Adyroc soon finds his son and sends him into exile, taking from him all his rank, titles, and property. He even takes Galrion’s name from him, and gives him a new name, Nevyn, meaning “no one.” Adyroc also breaks Nevyn’s betrothal to Brangwen, who then falls into an incestuous relationship with her brother Gerraent, and the two promise to end their lives together when autumn comes. When Gerraent’s sworn friend, Blaen of the Boar clan, discovers the incestuous relationship, Gerraent kills him. Gerraent is in turn killed by Blaen's brother. Nevyn takes Brangwen away from the Falcon lands, but the distraught girl drowns herself. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Nevyn rashly swears an oath that he will not rest until he sets things right. Thunder booms from a clear sky — the Great Ones have accepted Nevyn’s oath. ; Year 1058 When Jill turns thirteen, Cullyn, who has been teaching his daughter swordcraft, buys Jill a silver dagger like his own for a birthday present. Otho, the smith who made the dagger, notices that Jill can see spirits called Wildfolk, and tells her a riddle. “If you ever find no one (nev yn), ask him what craft to take.” Some time later, Otho tells Nevyn about Jill. Unable to find her, Nevyn returns to his home province of Eldidd, where he saves the life of Rhodry Maelwaedd, earning the gratitude of his mother Lovyan, the local tieryn (an intermediate rank of nobility). Nevyn receives a prophecy about the boy — Rhodry’s destiny is somehow bound to that of the entire province. ; Year 696 Nevyn comes to Deverry province to banish an unnatural drought. Here he finds the bard Gweran (Blaen reborn), his wife Lyssa (Brangwen reborn), and a rider called Tanyc (Gerraent reborn). When Tanyc angers Gweran by his behavior towards Lyssa, Gweran takes his revenge by subterfuge. He provokes Tanyc into attacking him — but as a bard, Gweran’s life is sacrosanct. Tanyc is hanged for his crime. While this is happening, Nevyn meets Lyssa’s elder son, Aderyn. He teaches the boy a little herbcraft, and eventually takes him as his dweomer apprentice. ;Year 1062 Lovyan discovers that Rhodry has fathered a bastard child on a common-born girl, and decides to put the child into fosterage with one of her noble servitors when it is born. In the meantime, Lovyan, is having trouble with some of her vassals. A number of minor lords are sitting on the edge of rebellion over matters of succession and taxes. Lovyan’s own overlord, Rhys, the Gwerbret of Aberwyn (who is also her eldest son), makes it very clear that he won’t intervene unless she disinherits Rhodry. Cullyn, meanwhile has taken a hire guarding a caravan heading toward the kingdom’s western border to trade with the mysterious Westfolk. On the way, Jill sees the errie Loddlaen, a councilor to Lord Corbyn of Bruddlyn. At the trading camp, Jill meets Aderyn, an old Deverrian man who lives with the Westfolk. She also learns that Loddlaen is both half-human/half-Westfolk and a fugitive murderer. At the conclusion of the trading, Aderyn and several of the Westfolk accompany the caravan back to the city of Cannobaen, to begin legal proceedings against Loddlaen in Lovyan’s malover, or court. On the way to Cannobaen, the caravan is attacked by bandits, and flees to an abandoned dun fort to make their stand. Aderyn transforms himself into an owl to spy on the bandits. He discovers that they aren’t bandits at all, but warriors from several different lords, including Corbyn. Cullyn sends Jill to beg the tieryn for aid. By a stroke of luck, Jill comes across Rhodry and his entire warband on the road, in the midst of a day-long training exercise. Meanwhile, the attacking army has reached the dun. The defense is thin: two swordsmen, two archers, and six stavemen. Albaral, a man of the Westfolk, is slain, but the attackers are defeated when Rhodry and his warband arrive."
25,Cats of the Clans,fantasy," In the introductory chapter, ""Three Lost Travelers"", the kits Mosskit, Adderkit and Blossomkit have somehow walked from StarClan to Rock's home under the earth. Rock tells the three that they did not live long enough to learn about their Clanmates. He says he will answer their questions ""about the cats you left behind."" Rock describes himself as ""the keeper of the world beneath the one your former Clanmates walk."" The remainder of the book consists of Rock's stories about each Clan, and various cats (or a group of cats) within the Clan. Rock describes major events in the cat's life, and often comments on why the cat is special or acted as he/she did. There are also stories about a few cats from the Tribe of Rushing Water, SkyClan, and BloodClan in addition to some loners and kittypets. Although Rock, as the narrator, claims neutrality, the book does not treat each Clan equally, devoting more space to ThunderClan cats and being highly critical of one of the other Clans. This is to be expected since readers get to know more of the ThunderClan cats from series than those from the other Clans."
26,The Unwilling Warlord,fantasy," ~Plot outline description~ --> The Kingdom of Semma is on the verge of war but the VIII Hereditary Warlord has died. The King sent out a search party to the Hegemony of Ethshar where with the aid of magic they track down the heir to the title, the Unwilling IX Warlord Sterren. The story evolves as Sterren, along with assorted others hired to help in the war, is hauled off from his career as a low stakes gambler to Semma. One of his companions is Vond, a master Warlock who is feeling the Calling and who is seeking to get as far away from Aldagmor as he can because once a Warlock gives in to the Calling they are drawn to Aldagmor and are never seen again. Vond takes a liking to Sterren who was actually apprenticed as a Warlock for three days before being dismissed as unable to perform. Of course it is against the Guild law for any magician to practice in more than one field so Sterren was disqualified to take up any of the other studies. Not long after arriving in Semma, Vond discovers a second source of power for Warlockry and quickly becomes the most powerful magician in the Small Kingdoms."
27,Keeper,fantasy," After unintentionally ruining a blue moon day by messing up her guardian's crab gumbo and breaking her favorite wooden bowl, causing a friend's ukelele to break, as well as wrecking the plants of her elderly neighbor, Keeper decides to make everything right. Taking with her seven wooden figurines of different mermaids, her dog BD, and a charm she had since she was a girl, Keeper sets out to find her mother, Meggie Marie, who has not been seen in seven years."
28,Ptolemy's Gate,fantasy," The British Empire is falling apart. Many commoners are unhappy with the current government, though none of the commoners claim responsibility for the status quo. The magician's demons are being assaulted by the children's natural abilities to see and resist the demons. (All of the magicians in the government were originally commoners whose parents sold them to the government at a young age, so it is not hard to understand why they are such a heartless group of people, concerned only with power and wealth.) Some commoners advocate slow reform, while others advocate open revolt, while still others say the commoners should learn how to summon spirits of their own to combat those spirits belonging to the magicians. Ptolemy's Gate concludes with a council of surviving magicians and important commoners trying to work out a government that is beneficial to everyone. Kitty Jones eventually unearths the reason why humans and spirits are locked into the endless cycle, that humans do not understand the nature of djinni and summon them only as powerful, but dangerous, slaves, not equals. This theory is confirmed by Bartimaeus who states that his greatest master, Ptolemy, was the only human who treated his servants as equals and tried to build a bridge between djinni and humans. However, Ptolemy misguidedly believed many others would follow in his footsteps; the only other person to ever successfully cross into the Other Place was Kitty. England's domestic turmoil has taken its toll on John Mandrake. Mandrake is friendless and constantly watched by his numerous enemies. In the three years since The Golem's Eye there have been several attempts on Mandrake's life. His years as a high ranking government official have made Mandrake merciless, and he treats all of his servants cruelly, especially Bartimaeus. However, events in Ptolemy's Gate shatter Mandrake's confidence in what he has become. The transformation from Mandrake to Nathaniel is much more rapid than the one from Nathaniel to Mandrake. Nathaniel drops the name John Mandrake all together, as well as the fear of others knowing his true name, humbly telling it to Kitty, with whom he seems to have struck up a newfound friendship, and boldly proclaiming it to the spirit Nouda. With the end of Mandrake, Nathaniel becomes all that Ptolemy hoped to be. Nathaniel willingly allows Bartimaeus to share his body to combat Nouda and his army of hybrids, using Gladstone's staff, a fusion that forever bridges the gap between humans and djinn. However, at the last moment, he dismisses Bartimaeus and then sacrifices himself to destroy the spirit Nouda. This incident was similar to what Ptolemy did in the moments before he died."
29,The Roots of the Mountains,fantasy," The story is set in the Burgdales, a group of small Germanic settlements in the valleys at the foot of a mountain range, and the neighboring woodlands and pastures. The area is inhabited by the interdependent Dalemen, weavers, smiths, and traders, Woodlanders hunters and carpenters, and Shepherds, respectively. Their society is challenged by disruptions from the outside world in the form of the Sons of the Wolf, the descendants of the Wolfings from the previous novel, and the invading Huns or ""Dusky Men."" The Sons of the Wolf, driven from their original country to the Burgdales by the Huns, continue to resist the invaders as a frontier force guarding their new home. The somewhat troubled integration of the Sons of the Wolf into the society they are protecting is told in the story of five lovers representing both peoples, four of whom eventually marry. Morris projected a sequel to The Roots of the Mountains to be called The Story of Desiderius, which was never completed."
30,Dragon War,fantasy," The Boneless King captures Shimmer, Monkey, and Indigo. They manage to escape and attempt to retrieve Baldy's cauldron, in which Thorn's soul is now sealed. However the Boneless King turns the tables on them and traps them in an underground cavern beneath Egg Mountain where he was formerly imprisoned with the river poisoned and cavern sealed up. Indigo figures out that water is the exclusion to the barrier spell as the river can flow in, so transformed into ice versions of themselves, they are able to escape. Returning to the Boneless King's tomb disguised as soldiers, they find that he has finished his excavation and left. The three catch up to where the pack train is camped for the night, but are unable to bluff their way past the pickets and are forced to transform into horses. They discover that some of the guardsmen and horses have been poisoned from drinking the river water and that the pack train is transporting the stone soldiers that were found in the Boneless King's tomb. Still disguised, they accompany the pack train on its journey. On the way, mysterious gases emitted by the statues follow the pack train, arousing such resentment and fear from the population such that ""the countryside was almost ready to rise in rebellion"" by the time they reach the capital, Ramsgate. The pack train is nearly attacked by villagers at the capital's gates, but is saved by reinforcements. The statues are buried in a pit on the palace grounds. The three manage to follow the Boneless King disguised as guardsmen to the harbor and onto the flagship of his war fleet, necessitating a change in disguise to being sailors. Determining that Thorn is in the captain's cabin, they manage to convince the Boneless King's puppet wizard Horn to let them in, but rouse his suspicions and that of his massive white dog Snowgoose, who he had rescued from his island. Unable to retrieve Thorn in time, they transform into fleas and hide on Snowgoose's collar. Able to smell them but unable to determine where they are, Snowgoose gets so upset that the Boneless King loses patience with her and has her locked in a storeroom. They leave and return to the deck just as the fleet sets sail. Pomfret arrives after the fleet is underway to relay intelligence of the dragon army gathered at the Hundred Children, an archipelago formed from an undersea mountain chain. He also recognizes that the strange, deep sea creatures that suddenly attack the fleet are illusions cast by dragon mages, resulting in the Boneless King dispelling them. The fleet is confronted with a wall of fire as it nears the Hundred Children. As the Boneless King attempts to disperse it, Shimmer makes her move to rescue Thorn, but she and Monkey are captured. At that moment the dragon army advances towards the fleet despite counterattacks on the vanguard with a flammable liquid that can burn in water. As the Boneless King prepares to use the cauldron to boil the ocean, Shimmer and Monkey escape and leap into the sea. Along with Indigo in dragon form, they are chased by Pomfret and marines transformed into alligators. They are nearly captured while attempting to lose their pursuers within the caves of the Hundred Children which Shimmer played in when she was younger, but by using the buoyancy properties of the needleweed juice that Indigo has been carrying all this time, Pomfret and the marines are rendered helpless as they are carried to the surface. As they make their way towards the dragon army which has been forced to retreat and given 24 hours to surrender, Shimmer tries to convince Indigo to seek safety on the mainland. However Indigo adamantly refuses to go and vows to continue on with Shimmer, as Shimmer is “the only thing” she has ever loved given her rough existence, aided by Monkey’s suggestion that she may have a role in carrying out Civet’s prophecy. Catching up with the dragon army, on the way to Sambar’s palace they are met by badly injured members of Shimmer’s clan, who insist on escorting her. At the palace, Shimmer confronts her uncle, offering the dream pearl as temporary collateral for Baldy’s cauldron and better treatment of the Inland Sea dragons, and asking for help in rescuing Thorn. News is then received that the krakens have begun a large scale invasion, capturing the other forts and forges and forcing the Inland Sea dragons to flee. Sambar has a change of heart and vows to fight alongside Shimmer, who will direct the effort against the Boneless King while he handles the krakens. Indigo devises a plan to use the exotic creatures found in Sambar's larder to terrify the humans, enabling to her to exact some payback on the kitchen staff who formerly mistreated her and earning the respect of the Inland Sea dragons who help her out. After Shimmer's band of dragons is assembled, they receive intelligence on the Boneless King's dispositions from a mage named Bombax who spied on the humans in the form of a gull. It reveals that the Boneless King has erected a series of prefabricated forts on the Hundred Children, and that he is at one of the forts with Thorn and Pomfret. After Indigo observes that the defenses are oriented towards the east, Shimmer decides to use the dream pearl to cast an illusion augmented by the Grand Mage Storax's fog bank, while the other dragons hit the fleet from the west and Monkey rescues Thorn. When they are in position, Shimmer casts a great illusion of a dragon army approaching from the east, but the dream pearl physically drains her and nearly claims her life. Monkey is forced to destroy it to save her as Storax and his fellow mages create a fog illusion to mask that of the fake army. Monkey then infiltrates the fort where the Boneless King is and impersonates Pomfret, succeeding in getting the real Pomfret attacked by a second flame bird that the Boneless King had deployed. During its pursuit of Pomfret, this flame bird sails among the warships gathered in the channel, setting them ablaze and crippling the fleet. Monkey rescues Thorn just as the dragons begin their attack. They infiltrate the forts disguised as humans and disposing of the living fire bombs and sinking the remaining ships. He returns to the battle after leaving Thorn with Shimmer and Indigo, during which the unleashing of the exotic creatures of Sambar's larder on the forts proves the last straw for their garrisons, resulting in their surrenders. After it is over however, it turns out that Pomfret was able to steal Thorn back disguised as Monkey. Shimmer, still exhausted from using the dream pearl, along with Indigo and Monkey set off in pursuit. They catch up to Pomfret, who is transporting the Boneless King, Horn, and Snowgoose. He flies into Ramsgate, which has erupted in revolt, and is chased all the way to the palace. There, faced with a revolt of his own ministers, the Boneless King openly declares himself for who he is, offering greater rewards to Pomfret who throws his lot in with him. The Boneless King then unleashes the stone statues from his tomb that were buried in the palace grounds, which suddenly brought to life, begin to attack his enemies. Monkey uses clones of himself to distract them and get them to attack each other, just as the Smith and Snail Woman arrive and lend their assistance. Leaving them to deal with the statues, Monkey, Indigo and Shimmer to chase after the Boness King. Inside the palace, they realize that Thorn bears a striking resemblance to the last king before the Butcher, Emerald III, making him the crown prince. They confront the Boneless King in the throne room where they fall into an ambush, with Shimmer and Monkey getting bound with magical iron collars while Indigo is turned into a bronze statue. The Boneless King decides to send them all back to ""before there was time...back to when nothing had form or shape"", from which not even he himself could escape. While he casts the spell, Pomfret tries to convince Shimmer that he was right, based on the vision of him as the king of all the dragons that he as seen in the World Mirror, which was found in the Nameless One's tomb and reflects the possibilities that could have been and could be, but does not make predictions. With Monkey's help, Shimmer gets Pomfret to see that if the Boneless King rules the world, all possibilities are revealed to be a wasteland with no signs of life. As Pomfret has a change of heart, the Boneless King finishes summoning the portal to before time then turns on him and binds him. As he begins to have Shimmer dragged into the portal, Pomfret, realizing the magnitude of what he has done, with a final effort throws himself at the Boneless King, carrying them both into the portal chased by Snowgoose. The Boneless King's spells are dissipated, freeing Monkey and Shimmer and restoring Indigo. The news is broken to Lord Tower, the chancellor, that Thorn the crown prince is trapped in the cauldron. The Smith and the Snail Woman agree to help restore Thorn, taking a sample of one of the Boneless King's stone statues to study. The war between the dragons and humans over, Shimmer and her companions are later accompanied by the Inland Sea dragons and many humans from Ramsgate to River Glen, where the Inland Sea waters are boiled away with the cauldron. They then travel to the site of the Inland Sea, where its waters are poured out from the cauldron and restored. The Lord of the Flowers arrives and restores Ebony's tears, after which Indigo decides to join Shimmer's clan as she has lived among dragons for most of her life, being transformed into one by Storax. The Smith and the Snail Woman reappear with the news that they cannot fully restore Thorn to his human form, but can attempt to turn him into some form which will keep him as both part-cauldron and immortal, to which Thorn agrees, felt as a tingling when the cauldron is held. The Lord of the Flowers then reappears with Monkey's master, the wizard known as the Old Boy, who reveals that he left Thorn in the village of Amity as an infant. After he helps the Smith and the Snail Woman, Thorn is brought back in human form, but makes creaking sounds when he bends his joints. He is convinced to and agrees to assume the throne. Sambar later arrives following his victory over the krakens and bringing material aid and labor to help restore the Inland Sea. Disappointed that Thorn as the cauldron has been changed back, he accepts Thorn's pledge of friendship between the dragons and the humans. Monkey then departs the Inland Sea just before the arrival of the dragon King of the Golden Sea, from whom he had stolen his magical rod."
31,Emperor Mage,fantasy," Daine is sent with a delegation that includes both Sir Gareths of Naxen, Alanna the Lioness, and Numair Salmalin, to the Emperor Mage of Carthak, in hopes that she can smooth the international relations by helping with his prized birds. All seems well in the elaborate court of the charming emperor, who continues to proclaim his innocence in stirring up troubles in Tortall and seems to truly care for his prized aviary. This soothes the nervous delegation, though the situation is complicated by Numair, who had to flee Carthak and Ozorne's ire several years before. Daine makes several friends in Carthak, including Numair's former teacher and close friend Lindhall Reed, Ozorne's heir and nephew Kaddar, and a marmoset named Zekoi. She also is reunited with the Stormwing Rikash Moonsword, who seems to bear her no significant ill will and in fact warns her several times about the trouble brewing in the empire. Despite her best efforts, she gets caught up in not only the political situation, but a religious one as well. Emperor Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe has been neglecting the worship of the gods, primarily the chief Goddess of Carthak, the Graveyard Hag. To Daine's surprise and later chagrin, she realizes that the Graveyard Hag has given her the ability to revive dead bodies, which leads to a series of mixed episodes which includes the revival of an only partly assembled Archaeopteryx skeleton and culminates in the revival of a whole nest of dinosaur eggs and nestlings. The reanimation of the nest results in Daine killing herself and having to get forcibly revived by the Badger god. During the time she is ""dead,"" she gets a brief image of her mother with a mysterious horned stranger. Daine fights her newly given ""gift,"" which cannot be taken away except by the Graveyard Hag, who has supreme power in Carthak as the primary goddess. It is noted that the only one more powerful in Carthak is the Black God, god of death, but she is his daughter and he listens to her in matters involving Carthak. The Graveyard Hag urges Daine, as her vessel, to act by causing chaos with the revival of the human dead to get Emperor Ozorne to remember the gods once more. Daine is understandably disinclined to do so. During her time healing the birds, Daine realizes that the birds illness is caused by metal paint that they are eating saying that it tastes good (it contains salt as well iron) When she tells this to Ozorne, he congratulates her and gives her a drug to make her sleep in her food. Meanwhile, the Tortallan party is planning to leave Carthak, but Numair will not leave his ""magelet"" behind. Daine is resccued from the dungeon by Zek, who is very fascinated by keys. She then meets up with Prince Kaddar. He tells her that Ozorne had Numair killed. Daine is overcome with fury. Using her power to revive dead beings to create an army out of the hall of bones. While looking for Ozorne, she meets with Numair's ex-lover. Daine tells her that Numair is dead. Daine finds the Hyenas and transforms into one. Using their excellent sense of smell, they hunt down Ozorne. They are about to attack him when he stabs himself with the Stormwing feather given to him by Rikash. Ozorne turns into a stormwing and flies away with the rest of them. Daine turns around to see Kaddar, Lindhall, and Numair. Losing her grip on her Hyena self, Daine transforms into her human, naked self. Nuamir gives her his robe and tells her that a Simulacrum of himself was caught and ""killed"" by Ozorne, not the real Numair. Then, the graveyard hag comes and takes the power of reviving the dead from Daine. Four days later, Daine wakes up to find Alanna at her side. She then goes to talk to His Imperial Highness, Kaddar. He tells Daine that she can have whatever she wants for saving his life (his uncle was planning to have him accused of treason of plotting against him). Daine asks that the people who have wild magic and the emperors mutes must be released from slavery. <!--"
32,Conan the Liberator,fantasy," Following the events of the story ""The Treasure of Tranicos"", Conan joins a conspiracy of former comrades-in-arms to overthrow Numedides, the mad and tyrannical king of Aquilonia. As commander of the rebel forces, he has the prospect of becoming king himself if they succeed, but he has not only Numedides' loyal troops, led by General Procas, to overcome, but the spells of the evil sorcerer Thulandra Thuu. Chronologically, Conan the Liberator overlaps the events of the story ""Wolves Beyond the Border"", and is followed by the story ""The Phoenix on the Sword""."
33,Curse of the Mistwraith,fantasy," Born on a splinter world, Lysaer and Arithon are half-brothers raised apart in enmity. Cast through a Worldsend Gate, they arrive in Athera, the ancient world of their ancestors cloaked in the fog of the malicious Mistwraith. Found by the Fellowship of Seven and urged to fulfill a prophecy which will free Athera from the Mistwraith and allow the clans of the Old Bloodlines to rule again. Putting aside their differences in the new world, the brothers find common cause and through paired gifts of light and shadow, succeed in binding the Mistwraith with help from the Fellowship. Unbeknownst to the brothers and their Sorcerer guides, one wraith escaped containment and seeks retribution against the two. During Arithon's crowning as Athera's first High King in more than five hundred years, the wraith binds Lysaer into irrational hatred of his half-brother, a curse he transfers to Arithon after the botched ceremony. Rather than succumb to the curse, Arithon flees into a winter storm, finding solace in the outlawed clans dwelling in the forest. Lysaer gathers an army to follow Arithon, led by the vicious bounty hunters who capture, kill and sell members of the clans. Though initially resistant to the idea of leading a guerilla war against the army, Arithon reluctantly assumes command upon realizing it is the only alternative to the extinction of the clans. The battles that ensue exact horrific slaughter on both sides, eventually resulting in a stalemate that forces Lysaer to withdraw without killing his brother. Arithon in turn has his mage-gift crippled through guilt. While Lysaer returns to the cities to muster a greater army and more support for his fratricidal war, Arithon becomes apprenticed to Athera's Masterbard, departing the clans in disguise."
34,Archangel,fantasy," Angels and mortals, who need one another but have a love-hate relation, inhabit the land of Samaria. The angels have wings and fly, and are taller and stronger than humans. Legends state that angels were made by Jovah to oversee Samaria under the guidance of the Archangel. The angels are supposed to protect humans, answer their petitions, solve their problems, and intercede to god for them by petitioning the god Jovah through song, especially for rain when the crops need it and the sun when it is stormy. In addition, the angels must sing to Jovah at the annual Gloria held on the Plain of Sharon, otherwise god would destroy the world. The Archangel and his consort, the Angelica, lead this mass in praise of Jovah. Archangels do not serve for life, but every twenty years Jovah selects a new Archangel. Samaria is divided into three regions, Gaza, Bethel and Jordana, separated by rivers. Each region has an angel hold or fortress that acts as the governing center for the region. However, god destroyed that of Jordana, at Windy Point. The citizens of Gaza, the Manadavvi, are highly cultured and wealthy. The Jansai, who are calculating and greedy merchants, and run the Edori slave trade inhabit Jordana. The Edori are the wanderers and frequently become enslaved by the Jansai. The Oracle has declared that the angel Gabriel is to be the next Archangel. However, Raphael, the current Archangel, who is corrupt and uses his position for himself, does not want to step down. Gabriel has an additional problem in that he procrastinated getting married. He tracks down the mortal that god has selected be his wife, but she has her own thoughts about the marriage and the expectations of her as the archangel’s consort, the Angelica. Rachel, an Edori slave, dislikes angels because of what they had done to her family when she was younger. Gabriel is faced with many trials having to contend with Raphael on the one hand, and his reluctant wife, who is a constant thorn-in-the-side. But the trials and tribulations confronting Gabriel and Rachel brings them close together and they finally realize that they love each other. The story ends with Gabriel and Rachael singing together at the Gloria, thus satisfying the wishes of god. * Archangel (Samaria book 1) (Ace Books, 1997) * Jovah's Angel (Samaria book 2) (Ace Books, 1998) * The Alleluia Files (Samaria book 3) (Ace Books, 1999) * Angelica (Samaria book 4) (Ace Books, 2003) Set before the first book Archangel. * Angel-Seeker (Samaria book 5) (Ace Books, 2004)"
35,The Manticore's Secret,fantasy," The book begins initially by showing the return of the ravians to the world, which they now call Obiyalis. The vamans loyal to the ravians (called the rebel union of marginal labour) and Manticore open the ravian portal to this world. Three champions of the ravians, Myrdak, Peori and Behrim, promptly kill the vamans so as to make sure there are no traitors to inform the world of the return of the ravians. Meanwhile in the newly constructed dark tower of Izakar, Kirin is facing trouble. Most of his council of rakshases are issuing mad orders in his name, while all he wanted was to stop the war. Aciram warns Kirin of the return of the ravians and their plan to take over the earth. It seems that they are more dangerous to the humans now than to the dark lord. Nasud, a cousin of Kirin, grows tired of Kirin's peace efforts and declares a kin strife. Kirin kills him with a lightning bolt. Meanwhile in Kol, a secret society of the shapeshifters, called the Rainbow Council, prepare to battle against the mind-controlling foes who threaten history. Many Hero and villain guilds are formed in Kol in the wake of Kirin's acsension as dark lord. Arathognan (or Thog the barbarian) was one of these. In one of these encounters, Thog kills four jaykinis who were trying to eat children. However he notices that he is being followed by a mysterious girl, later revealed to be Peori. Asvin and Maya have fallen in love. Maya is now having doubts about Kirin, who was her former best friend. Asvin, however is eager to battle the hordes of the dark lord and still believes the ravians to be noble heroes who would save humanity. Red, the shapeshifter, is part of the rainbow council.She had named two voices in her head and was never able to make up her mind about anything. It is also revealed here that the heart of Kol and the seven Hero mirrors where actually created by the shapeshifters although earlier they had been credited to lord Simoqin. The ravians Myrdak and Peori attack the palace of Kol one night with the intention of kidnapping Maya and using her to get rid of Kirin. They encounter the Silver Dagger and battle with the shapeshifters but finally manage to escape with Maya. Asvin and Red (in the guise of Rukmini) follow her to the great forest of Vrihataranya. Red falls in love with Asvin on the way (although this may be because of the alter ego Rukmini she had named in her mind). In the meanwhile Behrim, whose task had been to assassinate the dark lord is shocked to learn that the dark lord is in fact Kirin. In an attempt to talk to Kirin, he is detected by the rakshases but barely managed to escape.However he is then caught by the werewolves who nearly kill him. He is healed within the dark tower, where he tells Kirin that it is his destiny to become a great leader of the ravians. Peori visits Ararthogorn and reveals to him that he is a descendant of the kings of Kol. She points out that he had the amulet that proved it so.She told him of the existence of a third Simoqin prophecy, that when the dark lord rose, the true king of Kol would return and with his hands strike down the evil powers which ruled Kol. She convinces him to assassinate Lady Temat. Thog tries to infiltrate the labyrinth but is easily caught. Meanwhile, Maya has managed to escape from Myrdak and is lost in the forest. She comes across some little fat men,whom she initially suspected to be dangerous but turned out to be harmless. They arrive at the temple of the black Star, where Myrdak recaptures her. Myrdak challenges dark lord Kirin to a duel, knowing he would come to rescue the girl he loved. Kirin seeks the advice of Behrim, who states flatly that he could not be defeated in an open duel as he was the greatest ravian warrior alive.Behrim rather suggests that they go to Asroye and seek help from the ravian council. Kirin agrees to this and leaves on a dragon along with Behrim, ignoring pleas by Aciram .As soon as Kirin leaves, Aciram, who probably aspired for the throne of Danh-Gem himself, takes on Kirin's face. Rakshases in the forest attack Myrdak and Maya manages to escape from the manticore. She takes shelter in Vanarpuri but Myrdak finds her. She escapes again with the help of Djongli and arrives at a peculiar place guarded by knights of Ventelot, called the Desolate Gard. Myrdak finally catches up with Maya and tells her that it was a ravian portal, and the nundu would give its blood to activate it. Maya then meets the unwaba, who tells her about the gods playing with this world. Myrdak leaves for his duel with Kirin. Kirin and Behrim arrive at the ravian outpost of Epsai, only to find it deserted. Behrim realizes that Myrdak and Peori are traitors to the council and the ravians had not yet returned in their numbers. Both of them feel very tired and want to play with some apparently harmless little fat men. However these creatures turn out to be monsters, who eat only ravian. Behrim is devoured by them but Kirin is saved by Qianzai,mother of dragons. It is revealed that these creatures are these world's response to the arrival of the ravians. He then goes along to the duel. Meanwhile in Kol, Peori has successfully infiltrated the labyrinth but runs into some minotaurs. She underestimates them and one of them gashes her. The Dagger appears and tells her they have some scores to settle. Peori raises the splintered glass to kill the dagger but Steel-bunz, who was small enough not to figure as dangerous nipped her from behind. This momentary distraction enabled the Dagger to throw his dagger and kill her. Asvin is guided by a firebird to the temple of the black star.Red keeps a watch on him. when he is attacked by the manticore, she changes it into a frog. Kirin's duel with Myrdak, which lasted for many hours resulted in Myrdak getting the upper hand, even though Kirin was armed with his shadowknife and his rakshas powers. After some time Asvin appears. He initially decides to fight against Kirin as he was the son of Danh Gem, however he realized that Myrdak was only interested in getting his armor and turned upon him. Myrdak whirled his sword in a blur and cut off his head. The duel continued. Myrdak then pushes Kirin into a state of trance duel, in which Kirin had no experience at all. He wins the trance duel, but as he emerges back into the real world intending to strike Kirin down, the shapeshifter Red kills him with his own sword."
36,Tarzan Triumphant,fantasy," Backed by Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors, Tarzan faces Soviet agents seeking revenge and a lost tribe descended from early Christians practicing a bizarre and debased religious cult."
37,Rushing to Paradise,fantasy," Dr. Barbara is a disgraced doctor who forms a small band of environmentalists to attempt to save the albatross from nuclear testing by the French government on the remote Pacific island of St.Esprit. Neil, a naïve 16 year old, joins the group and the story is told from his perspective. During an illegal landing on the island, Neil is caught on film being shot in the foot by a French soldier. The subsequent news coverage makes Neil, and their environmental campaign, media celebrities. This allows a return visit to the island with a larger and more eccentric group of campaigners. Whilst attempting to land, a French navy frigate collides with their boat. This event is broadcast live to the world by the cameraman who dies in the collision. The subsequent adverse news coverage causes the French to leave the campaigners unmolested on the island. The coverage also leads to a deluge of gifts from well wishers all over the world, a steady stream of visitors and a growing collection of endangered animals which are meant to use the island as sanctuary. Visitors include a representative from Club Med who investigates whether the island can be turned into a resort. These excesses cause Dr. Barbara to manipulate Neil and other residents to commit ever greater acts of sabotage to cut themselves off from the outside world. Gradually, the male residents of the island (except Neil) become ill and slowly die under the 'care' of Dr. Barbara. As fewer able bodied residents are left, the endangered animals they are supposed to be saving are killed and eaten. Slowly, Neil realises that his role is to father as many children as possible from the female residents. As more visitors arrive on the island, the female members stay and the male members disappear. When another young man arrives on the island, Neils role as stud is in jeopardy and he too becomes ill whilst the new arrival is kept healthy. Slowly, over the course of the story, the environmentalists change from being the sane ones in an insane world into total insanity as Dr. Barbara's all female 'paradise' is constructed. Neil and the remaining residents are rescued in the nick of time by the French navy after a couple who only just manages to escape alerts the authorities to what is really happening on the island."
38,Heir Apparent,fantasy," Giannine receives a gift certificate for a Rasmussem Gaming Center as a birthday present from her father. Unfortunately, when she arrives at the local center, a crowd from ""CPOC,"" the ""Citizens to Protect Our Children,"" has come for a demonstration against such games. Dodging the protesters, she enters the arcade and gets hooked up to Heir Apparent, a single-player RPG in which there are practically endless ways to win or lose. Giannine's character, Janine de St. Jehan, is the illegitimate child of the recently deceased King Cynric, who pronounced her heir to the throne, passing over three legitimate sons. Her task is to survive the three days (which will only last thirty minutes in the real world) before her coronation. Anytime her character dies, she will automatically be sent back to the beginning of the game. Janine finds herself on a sheep farm, where she meets her foster mother and Sir Deming, who delivers the news of her ascendancy to the throne. Ignoring her foster mother's advice to say goodbye to her foster father, Janine heads off to the castle. There she meets Queen Andreanna and her three sons Abas, Wulfgar, and Kenric. Andreanna orders Abas to kill her right there. Abas takes out his sword but is stopped by Kenric, who points out that other people have seen Janine enter the castle. Her life is spared, but her reputation is damaged when she perceives a thunderstorm that none of the other characters can see. Outside the throne room, the guards bring before Janine a boy caught poaching deer. They expect her to order the boy's execution, but instead she lets the boy go. Nigel Rasmussem briefly enters the game to inform her that CPOC broke into the arcade and damaged the equipment, hence the crazy thunderstorm. She cannot exit the game prematurely without risking brain damage, but she cannot stay in the game for too long without risking death in the real world. She therefore must win the game as quickly as she can. He tells her, ""And next time, don't forget the ring."" Shortly after he vanishes, the guards assassinate Janine, upset by her lenient ruling. As she goes through the game again, she is on a constant lookout for the ring. Deming and Andreanna are wearing rings but will not relinquish them to her. She varies her decisions but keeps getting quickly killed—once by Abas, once by a strange animal in a topiary maze, and once by the poacher boy's father. Back on the farm, she finally rushes at Sir Deming in frustration and tries to bite his ring off his finger, but he takes out a knife and stabs her. The last thing she hears is her foster mother explaining that the ring she seeks was left with her foster father. In her next life, Janine realizes she must no longer skip the step of saying goodbye to her foster father. She ends up before the statue of Saint Bruce the Warrior Poet, where the ring now resides. At the castle, barbarian invaders led by King Grimbold kidnap Janine, hoping to ransom back a crown they claim Cynric stole from them. Her own kingdom doesn't value her enough to provide the ransom, and even the ring fails to save her. In her next life, she thwarts the raid, and in the ensuing battle Abas beheads King Grimbold. She learns that Cynric gave the stolen crown (which grants the wearer a temporary Midas Touch) to a dragon that terrorized the land many years earlier. The next day, a meeting with magicians is interrupted by an attack by Grimbold's people, who send a message that they won't stop until Janine is dead. Kenric and Orielle poison Janine, once again sending her to the beginning of the game (deeply frustrating her, for she had made it halfway through). She uses her past mistakes to plan her decisions better and gain more allies, no longer experimenting with the ring as she previously had. The next time she deals with the boy poacher, she gets Kenric to accompany her. Unlike the previous times, she listens to the evidence with an open mind, makes Kenric feel like he's taking part in the decision, and sentences the boy to a month of hard labor rather than killing him or freeing him. She once again thwarts the raid on the castle, but because the warlike Abas isn't present, King Grimbold isn't killed. She invites Grimbold to the castle, where they all discuss their grievances in a civilized manner. He agrees to cease the attack for two days, while she retrieves the crown from the dragon. When the magicians arrive the next day, they determine through a scrying glass that the dragon is a week's journey away, but they give her several magical artifacts that help her reach the dragon quickly and survive the confrontation. She retrieves the crown and returns to the castle, but the dragon follows her. As it clutches her in its talons and is about to devour her, she quickly dons the crown and turns the dragon to gold. She gives the crown to Grimbold, making peace between the two kingdoms and gaining the respect of her compatriots. At a celebration, she thinks Kenric has poisoned her again, but he insists he has not. (What's really happening is that her time in the game has run out, and she is on the verge of dying for real.) At his suggestion, she uses the ring to make Andreanna treat her fairly and not incite the princes against her. Giannine awakens in the arms of Nigel Rasmussem, who turns out to be just sixteen. At first she thinks she is still in the game, being held by Kenric. It turns out that Nigel based Kenric's appearance on himself, and Nigel's appearance in the game on Nigel's uncle. He personally explains to Giannine exactly what has happened, and there is implied romantic attraction between the two. The book ends with Giannine's father coming to take her home."
39,Durandal,fantasy," A Crusader, betrayed by a scheming emperor and pursued by Muslim swordsmen, discovers the sword of Roland."
40,The Crystal Palace,fantasy," Sorcerer Cray Ormoru and his friend, the seer Feldar Sepwin, craft an enchanted mirror that allows whoever gazes upon it to see their heart's desire. For Cray himself, the mirror remains blank for many years, until one day he sees in it the image of a young girl. With no idea of who she is, he watches the girl transform into a lovely woman over the years, and Cray realizes that he is destined to find her. When he does, he learns that this is Aliza, a sorceress who lives in a crystal palace which is partly within the demon realm and who is dedicated solely to the study of her craft. Cray finds Aliza to be a skilled young sorceress, but also cold, aloof, and entirely focused on sorcery. Cray encourages her to take an interest in the outside world and forms a budding friendship. However, this friendship is strongly discouraged by Aliza's sorcerer grandfather, Everand. Despite Everand's disapproval, Aliza and Cray travel to the demon realm and also to the home of Cray's sorceress mother, Delivev. During this latter journey, Aliza looks into the mirror of heart's desire and causes it to shatter. This causes some initial confusion, but it is quickly revealed this is because Aliza's soul has been stolen from her. Ultimately, her grandfather Everand is shown to be a villain of the worst degree. He uses Aliza's soul and his capture of Feldar as leverage to demand Aliza and Cray's obedience. However, Cray rallies his allies from the demon realm in order to confront and defeat Everand and free Aliza's soul. With her soul freed, Cray and Aliza realize their love for each other."
41,Small Gods,fantasy," The Great God Om tries to manifest himself once more in the world, as the time of his eighth prophet is nigh. He is surprised, however, when he finds himself in the body of a tortoise, stripped of his divine powers. In the gardens of Omnia's capital he addresses the novice Brutha, the only one able to hear his voice. Om has a hard time convincing the boy of his godliness, as Brutha is convinced that Om can do anything he wants, and would not want to appear as a tortoise. Brutha is gifted with an eidetic memory and is therefore chosen by Vorbis, the head of the Quisition, to come along on a diplomatic mission to Ephebe. However, Brutha is also considered unintelligent, since he never learned to read, and rarely thinks for himself. With the help of Ephebe's Great Library, and the philosophers Didactylos, his nephew, Urn, and Abraxas, Om learns that Brutha is the only one left who believes in him. All others either just fear the Quisition's wrath or go along with the church out of habit. While in Ephebe, Brutha's memory aids an Omnian raid through the Labyrinth guarding the Tyrant's palace. While in the library of Ephebe, Brutha also memorizes many scrolls in order to protect Ephebeian knowledge as Omnian soldiers set fire to the building. Fleeing the ensuing struggle by boat, Brutha, Om and a severely injured Vorbis end up lost in the desert. Trekking home to Omnia, they encounter ruined temples as well as the small gods who are faint ghost-like beings yearning to be believed in to become powerful. Realizing his 'mortality' and how important his believers are to him, Om begins to care about them for the first time. While Brutha, Vorbis, and Om are in the desert, the Tyrant of Ephebe manages to regain control of the city and contacts other nations who have been troubled by Omnia's imperialistic interactions with the other countries around it. On the desert's edge, a recovered Vorbis attempts to finish off Om's tortoise form, abducts Brutha, and proceeds to become ordained as the Eighth Prophet. Brutha is to be publicly burned for heresy while strapped on a heatable bronze turtle when Om comes to the rescue, dropping from an eagle's claws onto Vorbis' head. As a great crowd witnesses this miracle they come to believe in Om and he becomes powerful again. Om manifests himself within the citadel and attempts to grant Brutha the honour of establishing the Church's new doctrines. However, Brutha does not agree with Om's new rule and explains that the Church should care for people while having a tolerance for other religious practices. Meanwhile, Ephebe has gained the support of several other nations and has sent an army against Omnia, establishing a beachhead near the citadel. Brutha attempts to establish diplomatic contact with the generals of the opposing army. Despite trusting Brutha, the leaders state they do not trust Omnia and that bloodshed is necessary. At the same time, Simony leads the Omnian military to the beachhead and uses Urn's machine of war in order to fight the Ephebians. While the fighting occurs on the beachhead, Om attempts to physically intervene, but Brutha demands he does not interfere with the actions of humans. Om becomes infuriated but obeys Brutha, but he travels to an area of the Discworld where gods gamble on the lives of humans in order to gain or lose belief. While there, Om manages to unleash his fury, even striking the other gods. This causes the soldiers to cease fighting on the battlefield, thinking it a sign from the heavens. In the book's conclusion Brutha becomes the Eighth Prophet, ending the Quisition and reforming the church to be more open-minded and humanist. Om also agrees to forsake the smiting of Omnian citizens for at least a hundred years. The last moments of the book see Brutha's death a hundred years to the day after Om's return to power and his journey across the ethereal desert towards judgement, accompanied by the spirit of Vorbis, whom Brutha found still in the desert and took pity on. It is also revealed that this century of peace was originally meant to be a century of war and bloodshed which the History Monk Lu-Tze changed to something he liked better."
42,Hawk of May,fantasy," Hawk of May is a bildungsroman centered around Gwalchmai ap Lot (Gawain in other literature). Gwalchmai is the middle child of Morgawse and Lot. He lives with his family in the northern Orcade isles located north of modern day Scotland. Gwalchmai struggles to learn the arts of war his brother, Agravain, so easily masters. During his training, a great war is going on to the south in Britain. The Saxons are encroaching upon British soil and the other kings are disorganized by blood feuds and the recent death of Uther Pendragon. In the midst of war there is one man, Arthur, who seems to be winning against both the unruly British kings and the Saxons. While his father, Lot, and Agravain go to war, Gwalchmai is frustrated by his failures and turns to his mother, Morgawse, to teach him to read and write as well as the secrets of dark magic. Where Gwalchmai struggled with war skills, he learned swiftly in the arts his mother taught him and quickly became enthralled by the darkness. He maintains his relationship with the dark until the eve of Samhain where he discovers his youngest brother, Medraut (Mordred ), has also committed to the darkness. Horrified by this revelation, Gwalchmai interrupts Morgawse’s ritual and flees the promised wrath of Morgawse and Medraut. After his escape, Gwalchmai begs the help of an ancient kin and deity called Lugh of the Long Hand. He is then transported to the Isle of the Blessed, a mystical land of unknown origin that keeps it’s inhabitants forever young. Here, Gwalchmai converts to the Light, obtains his sword Caledvwlch, and is then transported to an unknown area in the greater isle of Britain. During his stay in the Isle of the Blessed, Gwalchmai has aged three years. He is initially captured by the Saxons who believe him to be a British thrall, or servant. Under this cover, Gwalchmai is eventually able to escape the Saxons on the back of a powerful horse from the Isle of the Blessed named Ceincaled. He and Ceincaled flee towards Arthur’s domain where they split up and Gwalchmai earns a ride to Camlann with a farmer after helping fix his cart. On their way, however, Gwalchmai is met by some knights - namely Cei, Bedwyr and Agravain. The latter doesn’t initially recognize his younger brother until Gwalchmai addresses him by name. After the brothers reunite they go together to Camlann where Gwalchmai finally meets Arthur. Arthur, however, does not accept him. Instead, Gwalchmai is forced to try and try to gain Arthur’s trust. He goes with the ‘Family’ on many battles, helping even to win in some grievous affairs, but Arthur refuses to acknowledge him. It’s not until the final chapter where Gwalchmai finally proves himself at par with Arthur’s standards and is finally accepted into the Family."
43,Tunnels,fantasy," The main influence in fourteen-year-old Will Burrows' life is his father, Dr. Burrows, and together they share an interest in archaeology and a fascination for the buried past. When Dr. Burrows begins to notice unusual people where they live in Highfield and then promptly goes missing, Will and his friend, Chester, go in search of him. They discover a blocked passageway behind bookshelves in the cellar of the Burrows home and re-excavate it. The passage leads to a door set into the rock, and beyond the door is an old lift that takes them to a cobblestone street underground. Lit by a row of orb-like lamps, they come across houses that appear to be carved out of the walls themselves. They are soon captured by the police of the underground community known as the Colony. In prison, Will is visited by Mr. Jerome and his son Cal. They reveal Will was actually born in the Colony, and they are his real family. Will is eventually released from the prison and taken to the Jerome home. There Uncle Tam is delighted to see him, and informs Will that his stepfather was recently there, and had willingly traveled down into the Deeps&nbsp;— a place even deeper in the Earth than The Colony. Will learns that the Styx, the religious rulers of the Colony, are either going to enslave Chester or banish him to the Deeps to fend for himself. Will refuses to abandon his friend, and Uncle Tam formulates a plan for him to rescue Chester, and to take him back to the surface. Will and his brother Cal try to rescue Chester, but the Styx arrive and they are forced to leave Chester behind. They avoid the Styx soldiers who patrol the city with their vicious stalker attack dogs, and eventually emerge on the bank of the Thames. Will makes for his home in Highfield, but there Will's health deteriorates, so Cal helps him to his Auntie Jean's flat where he recovers. Soon they return underground to find his father and attempt a second rescue of Chester. They encounter another Styx patrol, and Uncle Tam kills the leader of the Styx, whom he calls Crawfly, but is mortally wounded in the fight, then the strong willed Uncle Tam choses to stay behind. With the help of Imago Freebone, a member of Uncle Tam's gang, Will and Cal escape and go on to find Chester. They find Chester in the train going to the Deeps and travel there with him. In the book's final scene, Will's sister Rebecca, who is a Styx implanted in his family to monitor him, kills Imago by poison."
44,The Mists of Avalon,fantasy," Mists of Avalon is a generations-spanning retelling of the Arthurian legend, but bringing it back to its Brythonic roots (see Matter of Britain). Its protagonist is Morgaine, who witnesses the rise of Uther Pendragon to the throne of Camelot. As a child, she is taken to Avalon by High Priestess Viviane, her maternal aunt, to become a priestess of the Mother Goddess and witnesses the rising tension between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions. At one point, she is given in a fertility ritual to a young man she will later learn is Arthur, her half-brother. Unbeknownst to Arthur, Morgaine conceives a child, Gwydion, later called Mordred, as a result of the ritual. After Uther dies, his son Arthur claims the throne. Morgaine and Viviane give him the magic sword Excalibur, and with the combined force of Avalon and Camelot, Arthur drives the invasion of the Saxons away. But when his wife Gwenhwyfar fails to produce a child, she is convinced that it is a punishment of God: firstly for the presence of pagan elements (a stance which Morgaine deeply resents), and secondly, for her forbidden love for Arthur's finest knight Lancelet. She increasingly becomes a religious fanatic, and relationships between Avalon and Camelot (i.e. Morgaine and herself) become hostile. When the knights of the Round Table of Camelot leave to search for the Holy Grail, Mordred seeks to usurp the throne. In a climactic battle, Arthur's and Mordred's armies square off, and in the end Avalon and Arthur are magically removed from the circles of the world. It is Morgaine alone who lives to tell the tale of Camelot."
45,The Simoqin Prophecies,fantasy," The story begins in the expected year of the rakshas Danh-Gem's return. Asvin, prince of Avranti is sent on an Aswamedh, a journey supposed to bring him fame and glory. But as soon as he reaches the forest, his guards turn on him and tell him that he would be executed at sunset. This is in accordance with the laws of the secret brotherhood, which ensured that all younger princes of Avranti who were too eager for glory would be dealt with this way. However he is rescued by the Silver Dagger and his men, on the orders of the Chief Civilian of Kol, who wanted him to be the prophecised hero. In Kol, the Chief Civilian is very worried about the sudden emergence of the danavs of Imokoi along with their city asur cousins. Also the skuans under their lord Bjorkun are planning something. Manticores have been seen in the forest. It is later revealed that this is a plot to bring back Danh Gem, instigated by Bjorkun and Bali, later on joined by the asur king Leer, and Omar of Artaxerxeia. This group is called the secret Brotherhood of Renewal, dedicated to bring Danh-Gem back. The spellbinders notice that magical levels all over the world are rising. Maya, a powerful spellbinder discovers that her best friend Kirin is in fact a ravian. Kirin himself had discovered this fact only a short while back and remembers that he is actually over two hundred years old. He recalls his memories back from his earlier days when he lived in the forest with a roving band of ravian warriors. The he remembers the day the ravians had departed from the world. Somehow he was turned into stone at that time and didn't remember anything until Spikes, a pashan unlike any other, caused him to wake up. This is a great mystery which Maya is determined to solve. Bali is convinced that the pashans are the key to Danh-Gem's return after learning about the secret of pashan birth from the storks. He tries to steal books called Untranslatables from the library of Enki, as they were written by Danh-Gem and are sure to have information on how to bring the rakshas back. He succeeds, and nearly kidnaps Maya as well, but Maya escapes by setting fire to his tail. Snow trolls under the orders of Bjorkun try to abduct the pashan Yarni, but they fail. Many including the vanar lord Bali, are looking for Spikes. The Chief Civilian sends Asvin to study with Mantric, best of the Koli spellbinders, who was now on a vacation on the island of Bolvudis. He is accompanied by Maya, Kirin, Spikes, the Dagger(under the name of Amloki), a centauress Red Pearl, and a vaman Gaam. During this journey they are attacked by a nundu. They also meet Sir Cyr who seemed to be a harmless knight of Ventelot. Kirin discovers a book in the library of Kol which is full of magic and purported to be written by Narak. This book speaks to him and reveals that his task was to slay Danh Gem when he rises again, but until then, he would have to work with the followers of Danh-Gem. The book convinces him to leave the others as he will bring danger to them. Kirin leaves with Spikes. Red pearl follows him. Bali catches up with Kirin while on the trail of Spikes. During the confrontation, Bali kills Red Pearl from behind. Kirin is furious but remembers what the book said remains silent. He thus joins the Brotherhood of Renewal feigning to be a Karisman. Kirin translates the Untranslatables that Bali had stolen earlier. It mentions five objects to be brought together for Danh-Gem's return. Kirin steals the Tear of heaven from Avranti and the Gauntlet of Tatsu. Asvin goes on a series of quests, earning renown as well as many magical objects. The two most remarkable were his visit to the rakshasi Akarat, which earned him the ring of Akarat and the sword of Raka, and his journey through the pyramid of Elaken to get the armour of the scorpion man. On the day of Danh Gem's arising, the brotherhood meets in the circle of Imokoi and lays down the five things needed. All but Kirin are turned to stone. Danh Gem materializes as a ghost like form Kirin tries to kill him but cannot as he is not in material form. Danh Gem reveals to him, in style reminiscent of star wars, that he is actually Kirin's father. Kirin understands he is being offered a choice, between becoming a dark lord and trying to put things right in this world, or to let the brotherhood create havoc by starting the war. Kirin chooses the former as he decides the latter is too heroic. He ascends to the throne as Dark Lord."
46,A Feast for Crows,fantasy," The War of the Five Kings is slowly coming to an end. Robb Stark, Joffrey Baratheon, Renly Baratheon, and Balon Greyjoy are all dead, and King Stannis Baratheon has gone to the aid of the Wall, where Jon Snow has become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. King Tommen Baratheon, Joffrey's eight-year-old brother, now rules in King's Landing under the watchful eye of his mother, the Queen Regent Cersei Lannister. Cersei's father Tywin is dead, murdered by his son Tyrion, who has fled the city. With these two men gone, as well as no longer having to deal with Joffrey, there are no more checks on Cersei and she is essentially Ruling Queen of the Seven Kingdoms in all but name. Now that Cersei finally stands at the height of power and her enemies are scattered to the winds, in a grim irony it quickly becomes clear that she is incapable of wielding the power she has killed and manipulated so many to acquire, and she spirals into self-destruction. Meanwhile, Sansa Stark is still in hiding in the Vale, protected by Petyr Baelish, who has secretly murdered his wife Lysa Arryn and named himself Protector of the Vale and guardian of eight-year-old Lord Robert Arryn. It soon becomes apparent that while Cersei is skilled in the methods of intrigue needed to seize power, she is not very skilled in the actual day-to-day running of the kingdom. Cersei's reign is marked by rampant cronyism as she tries to solidify her rule by staffing her councils with incompetent loyalists. Making matters worse is Cersei's increasing distrust of the Tyrells, particularly Margaery, who wed the new boy king Tommen after his brother Joffrey died at their wedding. Increasingly paranoid over a prophecy she believes foretells the deaths of her children and herself by the hands of her missing brother Tyrion, Cersei develops a dependency on alcohol, despite her disgust of alcoholism within the late king Robert. Her reign runs into problems from massive debt from before and during the war, compounded by her incompetent administrators' inability to resolve the situation. Most of the debt is owed to the Iron Bank of Braavos and the Faith of the Seven. Cersei flippantly brushes off representatives of the Iron Bank, announcing that she is deferring their payment for the (indefinite) duration of the continuing rebellions. In response, the Iron Bank freezes all of the realm's assets, refusing to grant new loans while calling in all outstanding debts, which leads to a banking crisis that nearly cripples the economy of Westeros. To settle the crown's debts to the Faith of the Seven, Cersei agrees to the restoration of that religion's military order, the Faith Militant, despite the large number of zealots that are gathering both in the city and in Westeros, many of whom believe the accurate charges of adultery leveled against her. Cersei does not have the foresight to realize that this is only trading one problem for another, as now that the Faith has armed soldiers at its command it feels less compelled to accept her authority. Hoping to weaken the Tyrell influence over the court, the masses, and King Tommen, Cersei dispatches Ser Loras Tyrell to lead an army and force a quick (and she hopes foolhardy) end to the siege of Stannis Baratheon's forces on Dragonstone. Ser Loras is gravely injured by boiling oil during his storming of the island fortress, and left clinging to life. Cersei tactlessly gloats about Loras' horrific injury to his sister Margaery. Rather than lessening the threat from the Tyrells, this action drives Margaery Tyrell to actively pursue destroying Cersei, causing the Tyrell-Lannister alliance to crumble. A scheme to have the Faith put Margaery on trial for largely invented accusations of adultery backfires when the newly-powerful religious leadership arrests and imprisons Cersei herself on similar (and accurate) charges. Cersei's brother and ex-lover Jaime travels the Riverlands to re-establish order and royal control in the war-torn region. He has become somewhat estranged from his sister and newly concerned with his own honor, which he believes is tarnished by past misdeeds. He is also deeply disturbed about the state of the Kingsguard, with Cersei raising unworthy knights to the elite group. After ending the siege of Riverrun bloodlessly, one of the last holdouts against his family's authority, he receives word that Cersei wants him to return and defend her in a trial by battle; however, Jaime learns from Lancel Lannister, who killed the late King Robert at Cersei's behest, that Cersei was indeed having an affair with him as Tyrion had told Jaime when he escaped King's Landing. Jaime also receives news of Cersei's involvement in the siege on Dragonstone. This waste of loyal soldiers and betrayal of much-needed allies is the last straw for Jaime, who burns and ignores Cersei's letter. Brienne of Tarth's quest for Sansa leads her all over the Riverlands, where she observes the devastation and villainy that the war has wrought among the smallfolk. She notices a boy following her, only to discover Podrick Payne, former squire to Tyrion Lannister. Since he has had no real training, she agrees to teach him, promising to send him to bed with blisters and bruises every night. She also meets up with Ser Hyle, a knight from her past who was with her and King Renly before he was murdered. He believes that she did not kill Renly and he joins her on her quest, witnessing her battle prowess when she confronts three outlaws. She also meets up with Lord Tarly, who despises her and insults her despite Ser Hyle's praise of her battle prowess. Eventually she is captured by the Brotherhood Without Banners and sentenced to death by Stoneheart, a reanimated Catelyn Stark, who wrongly believes Brienne has betrayed her. Brienne is told she will be allowed to live if she agrees to find and kill Jaime Lannister. Refusing, she and some of her companions are hanged, and as the nooses strangle them she screams out one as-yet unrevealed word. In the Eyrie, Sansa poses as Petyr's bastard daughter Alayne, befriending young Robert Arryn, managing the household for her ""father,"" and receiving informal training in royal politics from him. During this time, Petyr appears to be carefully manipulating his murdered wife's former bannermen, and his once precarious hold on the Protectorship of the Vale is beginning to seem less tenuous. He eventually reveals that he has betrothed Sansa to Harrold Hardyng, Robert's heir; when the sickly Robert dies, Sansa will reveal her true identity, and reclaim her family stronghold of Winterfell, aligning it with the Vale in the process. On the Iron Islands, Aeron Damphair calls a Kingsmoot in order to decide who would succeed Balon Greyjoy as king of the Iron Islands. Hotly contested by Balon's brother Victarion Greyjoy and daughter Asha Greyjoy, eventually his brother, Euron Greyjoy, the exiled ""Crow's Eye"", is chosen as king due to his promise that he can control dragons with a recently acquired horn, which will help the islanders conquer all of Westeros. Asha wanted to make peace with the mainland while they were still ahead, and Victarion wanted to continue raiding, but Euron intends to conquer the entire continent outright. Asha and Victarion realize this is absurd, as the Ironborn do not have the numbers for this, nor are their forces skilled at land warfare, once they advance beyond the coasts. The fleet of the Iron Men attacks and captures the Shield Islands at the mouth of the River Mander, threatening House Tyrell's seat at Highgarden. Victarion considers this mere show however, estimating that once the Redwyne fleet returns (from the siege at Dragonstone) they will once more lose the islands. Euron then sends his brother Victarion east to woo Daenerys Targaryen on his behalf, but a bitter Victarion, whose wife was raped by Euron (then killed by Victarion), instead plans to marry her himself. In Dorne, Doran Martell is confronted by three of his brother Oberyn's eight bastard daughters—known collectively as the Sand Snakes—who all want justice for their father's death. They are not appeased by the prospect of receiving the head of Gregor Clegane, since it was Oberyn himself who killed him. They all want war, but in a different manner. They are inciting the commonfolk, so Doran has seven of the eight Sand Snakes confined to cells in the palace, even the very young ones, so that no one can use them against him. A bold attempt by Doran's daughter Arianne Martell and her lover, Ser Arys Oakheart of the Kingsguard, to crown Doran's ward Myrcella Baratheon as queen of Westeros under Dornish law is thwarted by Doran. The attempt leaves Myrcella's face scarred, and results in the death of Ser Arys, straining the new alliance with House Lannister and the Iron Throne, even as another member of the Kingsguard is on his way to Dorne with the head of Gregor Clegane, the knight who raped and murdered Doran's sister Elia years before. Though angry with his daughter, Doran reveals to her that he has long had his own subtler plan for vengeance. Her brother Quentyn has gone east to bring back ""Fire and Blood."" In the prologue, Pate, a young apprentice at the Citadel in Oldtown, is studying to become a maester. He has stolen an important key to a depository of books and records at the request of a stranger in exchange for a reward. After delivering the key, the stranger double-crosses and kills Pate by surreptitiously poisoning him. At the end of the novel, Samwell Tarly arrives at the Citadel to begin his training where he meets a fellow apprentice who introduces himself as ""Pate."" Jon Snow orders Samwell Tarly to the Citadel in Oldtown via Braavos, where he can research the Others and study to become a Maester. Sam is accompanied by aging Maester Aemon, the wildling mother Gilly, her newborn babe, and sworn brother Dareon. The voyage across the Narrow Sea is underway before Sam realizes Jon swapped the sons of Gilly and Mance Rayder. The ruse was meant to protect the Wildling ""prince"" from Melisandre's fiery sacrifice but also put Gilly's son at risk, causing her much grief. Aemon gets very sick and they need to wait in Braavos for his health to improve, costing them their ride. Seeming to give up on his vows and companions, Dareon indulges in many harborside sins. After a Summer Islander tells Aemon about seeing the dragons firsthand, Aemon decides that Daenerys has come to fullfill a prophecy. Driven to help his niece fullfill her destiny, Aemon dies shortly after they leave Braavos. Brought together by their own grief, Sam and Gilly become intimate. Arriving in Braavos, Arya Stark finds her way to the House of Black and White, a temple associated with the assassins known as the Faceless Men. As a novice there, Arya attempts to master their belief that Faceless Men have no true identity by both throwing all her treasures into the water (except her sword, Needle, which she cannot throw away due to Needle's symbolization of all she lost and left behind) and posing as a girl called ""Cat of the Canals"". Once a month (on the night of the black moon) she must tell her mentor, the Kindly Man, three new words and three new things. However, her former identity continues to assert itself in the form of wolf dreams, and also when she kills Dareon for abandoning the Night's Watch and his sworn brother, Samwell Tarly. Sam and ""Cat"" meet briefly without knowing one another. The morning after Dareon's murder, she admits to the Kindly Man that it was ""Arya"" who committed it, and is given a glass of warm milk as punishment. After drinking, she wakes up blind the following morning."
47,Kindred Spirits,fantasy," The book narrates the first meeting between dwarven metalsmith, Flint Fireforge and a young Tanis Half-Elven. While working and living in his hometown of Solace creating jewelry, Flint receives a wondrous summons from the Speaker of the Sun, Solostran who admires Flint's work. Flint journeys to the fabled elven city of Qualinost, where he spends every Spring working on jewelry and projects for the Speaker of the Sun. Foreigners are not allowed in Qualenesti, therefore Flint finds himself an outcast. There he meets Tanis, a thoughtful youth born of a tragic union between elf and man. Flint and Tanis, each being a misfit in their own ways, Flint for being a dwarf and Tanis for being of mixed race, find themselves unlikely friends."
48,House of Chains,fantasy," House of Chains takes place immediately after the events of Deadhouse Gates on the subcontinent of Seven Cities. The Chain of Dogs - the evacuation of 50,000 Malazan civilians across 1,500 miles of hostile territory - has ended in the tragic loss of the entire 7th army and its heroic commander, Coltaine. However, with their sacrifice was bought the lives of nearly 30,000 refugees. Meanwhile, the Chain of Dogs has become a legend spreading across Seven Cities, cowing even those responsible for its destruction. Now Adjunct Tavore Paran has arrived at the head of the 14th Army, largely consisting of untried recruits. Their mission is to advance into the heart of the Holy Desert Raraku, the very heart of the rebellion known as the Whirlwind, and destroy Sha'ik and her forces once and for all. The rebels outnumber the Malazans vastly. However, all is not well in Sha'ik's camp and internal conflicts threatens to destroy her army before the Malazans can. Meanwhile, a mighty warrior named Karsa Orlong descends from his mountain fastness on Genabackis, beginning a journey that will live in legend, and the thief Crokus and assassin Apsalar find themselves drawn into a desperate struggle for control of the Throne of Shadow. Finally, a warrior named Trull Sengar is rescued from certain death with news of a terrible new foe arising to trouble all the world..."
49,The Magical Mimics in Oz,fantasy," At the start of Snow's story, Princess Ozma and Glinda the Good are planning to leave Oz, to attend the Grand Council of the fairy queen Lurline, held in the Forest of Burzee every 200 years. Dorothy Gale is surprised when Ozma appoints her to rule Oz during their absence; but Ozma reminds Dorothy that she is a princess of Oz. (Ozma's choice is not well-motivated; but it is in keeping with Snow's ""Baum-centric"" approach, in that it places Baum's primary heroine Dorothy at the center of the coming action.) Chapter 3 shifts attention to the evil Mimics in their lair in Mount Illuso. The Mimics habitually shift ""from one loathsome shape to another"" &mdash; an ape body with a head of an alligator, and a serpent with black butterfly wings, and a toad with a hyena's head are a few of their choices. Their rulers, King Umb and Queen Ra (a play on ""umbra""), reveal their plan to counter Lurline's controlling magic and attack Oz. The shape-shifting royals and their minions fly to Oz as big black birds, and waylay Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. By stepping into their shadows, Ra and Umb take the shapes of Dorothy and the Wizard; the originals are paralyzed by the magic, and are carried off to Mount Illuso by Mimics. Ra and Umb, in their stolen forms, search Ozma's library for the antidote to Lurline's magic spell. Umb and Ra are not capable of imitating the Wizard and Dorothy convincingly; people become suspicious, and Toto exposes them &mdash; but not before the Mimic royals find what they are looking for. Back in Mount Illuso, they conjure a gigantic red spider that spins a magic web; this negates the influence of Lurline's spell, and allows the Mimics to launch a mass attack against Oz. Dorothy and the Wizard are imprisoned in a cave deep within Mount Illuso. There, however, they see a blaze of brilliant fairy light that restores their power of motion. The light stems from a button on the cave wall. They press the button, and a hidden door opens to expose an elevator and its attendant. Hi-Lo, a living wooden puppet, takes them to the top of the mountain. There, the two Ozites discover Pineville and are led to the fairy Ozana, who had been delegated by Lurline to watch over the malicious Mimics. Ozana has spent her lonely days and years creating her Story Blossom Garden and her wooden puppet people (one of whom has escaped to the outer world, to become Charlie McCarthy). Ozana is shocked to discover that the Mimics have evaded her guardianship; she leads Dorothy and the Wizard back to Oz, flying on giant swans. The attacking Mimics arrive in Oz disguised as beautiful birds, with gorgeous plumage of ""Red, blue, green and gold...."" The residents are seduced by their beauty, and the Mimics quickly duplicate and paralyze them. The trick works only on humans; fierce beasts like the Cowardly Lion and Hungry Tiger are magically sedated, while the Scarecrow, the Patchwork Girl and other non-human creatures are simply tied up. The Mimics have largely accomplished their ends when they confront the simultaneous arrivals of Ozma and Glinda, and Ozana, Dorothy, and the Wizard. Ozana's magic is powerful enough to subdue Ra and Umb and reverse their spells. The Mimics, back in their grotesque forms, are herded into the mirrored grand ballroom of Ozma's palace; good magic imprisons them in the ballroom's many mirrors, from where they are sent back to the interior of Mount Illuso. Order is restored to Oz, and celebrated with the usual concluding banquet. Ozana is rewarded with an invitation to live in Oz; her Pineville people and her Story Blossom Garden are magically transported to Oz so that she will not miss them."
50,Wisdom's Daughter,fantasy," As Holly points out, the story is told from She’s perspective, and since She claims to have lived for over two thousand years, since Ancient Egypt, there is no way to compare her story with any other sources, or witnesses. She Who Must Be Obeyed says that she was Arabian, by birth; and, given the name Ayesha. Although, in the introduction, Sir H. Rider Haggard, links the name Ayesha to Mohammed's wives, and Arabic or Arabic names, (Arabic: عائشة‎, Āʾisha), stating that it should be pronounced ""Ash/ -ha""; A·ye·sha/ äˈ(y)ēSHə/, is perhaps more common. She claims that her natural beauty and wisdom was so great, it caused wars between the princes, who wanted to marry her. She says that while this was at first a great source of pride among her Father’s people, they soon began to resent her, and spread vicious rumours that she was cursed. Ayesha leads her Father’s people into victory, and revels in the battle; but, the women envy her, and the men lust after her. So, she decides to go into hiding, with her tutor, an Egyptian priest; rather than be turned over to the approaching armies of Pharaoh. She tells about travelling through the ancient world, encountering all the major artists, who want her to model for them; as well as philosophers, and religions of the time, from Ancient Greece and fledgling Ancient Rome to Palestine and Jerusalem. Finally, they return to Egypt, where once again, her beauty and wisdom become a source of contention. She swears an oath of celibacy, to serve Isis the Goddess of the Spirit of Nature, and turn away from Aphrodite the Goddess of Love. But, soon a Greek soldier of fortune, Kallikrates, formerly employed by the Pharaoh comes to her, for sanctuary. He takes an oath to serve Isis; but, the Pharaoh’s daughter pursues him; and, seeing the way Ayesha looks at him, she determines to destroy her, as a rival. The Princess mocks Ayesha’s prophecies as mere parlor tricks. She goads her Father into giving Ayesha away, as a sex slave, to one of his allies. Repeatedly, Ayesha is in danger; but, even in the midst of fire and battle, Isis and her followers save her from ruin and rape. Ayesha’s fame grows so great, that she is called “Isis Come To Earth” and “Wisdom’s Daughter”. Finally, the King of Kings, of the Persian Empire, comes to see her. He laughs that anyone would be afraid of what must be an old hag, as Isis’s Priestess. He spits on Isis’s statues, and burns the old gods. However, again her beauty, which the King glimpses beneath her veil; betrays her; and, he determines to rape her, with the rest of the country. Isis saves her; and, they escape, to reunite with her old Captain, Kallikrates, and the Princess. Ayesha is inspired that Isis wants to rebuild her cult and usher in a new Golden Age, in the world, through herself. She is led to the hidden kingdom of Kor, in Africa, to begin. Once there, Ayesha meets her former tutor, who has been guarding The Flame of Eternal Life, which will make a person young and powerful, for as long as the world endures. He passes this one last mystery onto Ayesha, warning her of its temptation to her vanity. The Princess mocks Ayesha’s fading youth; and feeling ashamed, in front of Kallikrates, Ayesha determines to break her oaths, and make herself and him both immortal, to rule the world, like Gods, by stepping into The Flame. This way she feels she will be as ""Isis Come To Earth"", indeed. But, ""Wisdom's Daughter"" is Fortune's Fool, and falls by Love's Folly. Kallikrates is afraid when he sees Ayesha, in her preternatural beauty, after she has bathed in The Flame; and, dies. The others either flee in terror or are killed, overwhelmed by her beauty. Aphrodite laughs at her, and Isis. Now, Ayesha cannot die, or her will be opposed. She is as terrible, beautiful, and deadly as lightning. After Kallikrates' death, the Princess flees, urging Leo’s ancestors to revenge themselves on She, through the artifacts, she passes down, which Holly and Leo find, in the first book, She: A History of Adventure. Ayesha is doomed to wait, in Kor, for his return, through the centuries, becoming weary of the world. She has learned everything the world and Nature has to offer; but, still she must wait, for love and redemption."
51,The Little White Horse,fantasy," Maria Merryweather becomes an orphan at age 13, upon her father's death in 1842. She is sent to the Moonacre Manor somewhere in the west of England, accompanied by her governess Miss Heliotrope and dog Wiggins. There she finds herself in a world out of time. Her cousin and guardian Sir Benjamin Merryweather is one of the ""sun"" Merryweathers, and she loves him right away, as sun and moon Merryweathers do. Maria discovers that there is an ancient mystery about the founding of the estate. She is aided by wonderful people and magical beasts, but it is only by self-sacrifice and perseverance, too, that Maria is able to save Moonacre, right the wrongs, reunite lost loves and finally bring peace to the valley."
52,Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils,fantasy," After barely escaping an archaeological dig in Tikal, Guatemala with his life, Dr. Henry Jones Jr. makes his way back to New York. Upon his return, he learns of the recent discovery of the mysterious writings of a missing British explorer, Colonel Percy Fawcett. Though Colonel Fawcett himself still remains missing, his rediscovered work tells a story that could drastically change history and challenge several firmly held scientific beliefs. Within those pages, an incredible picture begins to take shape of a long lost city in the jungles of Brazil and the apparently true legend of a red-headed race, possibly descended from ancient Celtic Druids. Fascinated by such a prospect, and with the lovely Deidre Campbell at his side, Indiana Jones sets out for the Amazon. However, as usual, getting there will prove to be the true adventure. And if he does manage to survive the journey, who can tell what dangers await within the mythical city itself."
53,Slan,fantasy," Slans are evolved humans, named after their alleged creator, Samuel Lann. They have the psychic abilities to read minds and are super-intelligent. They possess near limitless stamina, ""nerves of steel"", and superior strength and speed. When Slans are ill or seriously injured, they go into a healing trance automatically. There are two kinds of Slans. One has tendrils and can read the minds of ordinary humans and telepathically communicate with other Slans. The tendrils are golden in colour, making it easy to spot a slan. These Slans are hunted to near extinction. The other type of Slan is tendrilless. They are still super intelligent but do not have psychic capabilities, only the ability to hide their thoughts from the first type of Slan. Kier Gray is the leader of the human society and promises to exterminate the Slans. As the novel begins, Jommy Cross (a telepathic Slan of the first type) is brought with his mother to the capital, Centropolis. They are both discovered, and Jommy's mother is killed. Jommy is only nine years old and manages to escape. Jommy Cross is not only the heir to the brilliant inventions of his father, but he represents the last hope of his race to save it from genocide. Because of the importance of his mission, he is opposed by various enemies. Jommy seeks to destroy Kier and in confronting him discovers an astonishing secret: Kier Gray is also a Slan."
54,Alice in Verse: The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland,fantasy," What distinguishes this variation on Lewis Carroll's classic from others is that the story is told entirely in rhyming verse. It begins the same as Carroll's original, with a languid Alice perking up ""When first she spies the clock of clocks/Within the rabbit's paw"". After following the time-obsessed creature Down the Rabbit-Hole Again, she discovers The Bottle & the Biscuit Box in the ""hall of many doors,"" and after drinking and shrinking and eating and growing (and shrinking again), she is ""swept away upon a pool of tears."" The first real departure from the original text comes in the 3rd verse, where, after being instructed by the Caterpillar in proper Wonderland speech (The Caterpillar's Lesson on Rhetoric & Rhyme), she is given the chance to impress the imperious insect with her oratory skills in The Mariner's Tale, a dark poem more akin to How Doth the Little Crocodile than the You Are Old, Father William poem she quoted for the Caterpillar in Carroll's original book. The Caterpillar gives his earnest (if somewhat slanted) critique of her recital in the 5th verse (The Subjective Review) before taking flight on mechanical wings (as depicted in the accompanying illustration). The 5th verse finds Alice in familiar company once again with The Cook, the Pig, the Cat & His Duchess, as the Cheshire Cat tells her the tale of the conflict between the Duchess and the Cook, offering more insight than previously available. The most pivotal departure from Carroll's original text comes in the 7th verse, The Tea Party Resumes, where it is first hinted at (by a sleep-talking Dormouse) that the Knave of Hearts may not in fact be responsible for the theft of the Queen's tarts. Through rapid wordplay and cunning juxtaposition, both the Mad Hatter and March Hare attempt to muddy the facts and confuse Alice — though, the astute reader will glean much from the Dormouse's revelation on the matter of the Queen's missing tarts. The 8th verse, offers a brief respite from the main action with A Slight Detour Through the Looking-Glass, which serves not only as a catchall recap of Carroll's follow up book but also as an introduction to the subsequent three verses: Dee & Dum (the 9th verse) and The Battle (the 11th verse) which function as a wraparound for the 10th verse, The Walrus & the Carpenter Head Back (the epic sequel to Carroll's masterpiece The Walrus and the Carpenter), in which the tables are turned on titular characters ""who once dined on the shore."" The 12th verse, In the Garden of Hearts, returns Alice to Wonderland, ""where the trial (of the Knave of Hearts) is about to begin!"" In the 13th verse (The Trial Begins) the King of Hearts presides over the court just as he did in Chapters 11 & 12 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with the Queen at his side, and the White Rabbit in the role of the court reporter, reading the now famous single stanza verse the Queen of Hearts (a second stanza has been added that only further accentuates the absurdity of the charge against the accused). The major departure from Carroll's original here is that instead of appearing as jittery witnesses, the Mad Hatter and March Hare are cast as Counsel for the Defense and Prosecutor, respectively. After the charge is read, the Hare addresses the court with an opening statement that more or less vindicates the accused, before turning his accusing eye upon the court itself for failing to serve tea with the evidence (the tarts). The King concurs and calls for a brief recess, during which the bulk of the evidence is consumed by all present. The trial resumes in the 14th verse with The Hatter's Defence, in which the Hatter presents an alternately flattering and damning portrait of the accused. In the 15th verse (The Hare's Rebuttal & the Hatter's Rebuke) the jury is making ready to deliberate when the Hare suddenly chimes in again with a counter argument that is more damning to himself and opposing counsel than it is to the accused, and only after a decisive rebuke from the Hatter does the Hare retract his ""erroneous rebuttal"", at which point the King allows there is ""time for yet one final pleading."" In the 16th verse The Knave of Hearts Repents with a haunting poetic plea directed specifically at the Queen of Hearts, who offers her own poetic response in the 17th verse The Queen's Sentence. The 18th Verse, The Royal Flush, pandemonium breaks out, much the same as it did in Carroll's original, with Alice challenging the court, while the Hatter and Hare try to trap the Dormouse who has run amok, and the jury takes flight. As the Queen demands ""Off with his whiskers! Off with his head!"", a voice calls to Alice from just outside of her dream. Alice wakes suddenly in the 19th and final verse (Waking), with the events of the previous 18 verses recurring to her in reverse order, like memory folding back over itself, until the final line of the final stanza affirms the sentiment that the rhyming poem is both valid and ""well worth defending."""
55,The Lady Decides,fantasy, The novel concerns a man with a dream and an allegorical quest through Spain.
56,Sword Quest,fantasy," There is war in the kingdom of birds, which was started by the prehistoric birds known as the archaeopteryxes. In the only place where birds are still safe, a magical island called Kauria, the King, Pepheroh the Phoenix, orders his birds to make a sword as a result of what the Great Spirit tells him. Once the sword had been forged, a tear gem from the Great Spirit, a godly entity watching over birds, lands in the hilt of the sword, and seven other gems, each a color of the rainbow, are scattered around the world. These gems are the Leasorn Gems, and hold clues to where the magical kingdom of Kauria and the sword are found. A bird destined to be a hero will take hold of the sword at the fifth full moon three years from then and rescue the warring world. However, should the sword fall into evil hands, the world of birdkind shall be in peril. Hungrias the Second, Ancient Wing (or king) of the archaeopteryxes, sends Sir Maldeor, his top knights, and his son, Prince Phaethon, to a tribe of doves, who have the orange Leasorn Gem. The mission fails, as a monstrous four-winged bird/reptile creature attacks and eats Phaethon, who was in possession of the orange gem. The creature bursts into blue flames and Maldeor sends his troops to kill all the remaining doves. However, a dove named Irene manages to escape and lays an egg. When the egg hatches to reveal a fully feathered hatchling, she names him Wind-Voice. Meanwhile, the four-winged creature, named Yin Soul, is stuck between the world of the living and that of the dead, and can only escape if he can find the body of a likely hero that can get the Hero Sword, or else he will die a painful death. Yin Soul attempts to take control of Wind-Voice, but Wind-Voice sees through Yin Soul's illusion and refuses. Before meeting Yin Soul, it was revealed that Wind-Voice's mother had been killed, and he was made a slave. Wind-Voice later meets a wood-pecker scribe named Ewingerale, nicknamed Winger. Winger had been imprisoned after his tribe was destroyed. The archaeptyx were planning on fattening Winger up and eating him for supper. Wind-Voice breaks Winger out, is attacked by an archaepteryx guard, and is brought to Hungrias, where he is put over a spit to cook for supper. On the spit, after he faints from the heat and is brought to Yin Soul's realm, Wind-Voice escapes and meets Fisher, a battle scarred crane, in a tribe in the surrounding swamp, as well as Winger. Fisher begins to teach Wind-Voice how to fight with a sword and later tells him of the Leasorn Gems. Wind-Voice is determined to find the gems and finding the hero, who will bring peace to the world. Before leaving to find the gems, Fisher gives them a map to finding Fleydur, who will help them on their journey. Also coming along is Stormac; a myna who can't resist his temptation for riches. Wind-Voice, Winger, and Stormac meet a golden eagle, who is revealed to be Fleydur. The group head out into the desert and battle a group of an archaeopteryx, who are in possession of the red Leasorn. Winger and Fleydur manage to escape with the gem, but Stormac is mortally wounded and is later found by a group of parrots, who heal him with the use of there green leasorn. Wind-Voice has been captured and taken to the castle of the archaeopteryx, where Maldeor is the new emperor. Maldeor is revealed to be Yin Soul's apprentice and had wing chopped off and then exiled by Hungrias for losing Prince Phaethon. After nearly dying in a blizzard, Yin Soul summons Maldeor and gives him a new, bat like wing. But the wing needs a potion every new moon to keep it going. Maldeor goes to Hungrias, takes the throne and then kills him. Maldeor throws Wind-Voice in the dungeon and later attempts to have him executed by tying him to a log and throwing him off a waterfall. Wind-Voice survives and meets up with Stormac, who now has the green Learson gem. The two go to Sword Mountain and gain the purple gem. Meanwhile Winger and Fleydur are heading over the ocean the land of the penguins in search of the teal Learson. Along the way Fleydur reveals that he is actually a prince exiled from his home of Sword Mountain because of his belief that music can bring joy and healing to the world. Wind-Voice and Stormac are also heading over the ocean and end up in the Island of the Pirates, were they find the blue Learson gem and on Byrdsfish Island; the seagull tribe. Stormac is attacked and killed by a group of pirates lead by Captain Rag-Foot and Wind-Voice heads alone to Kauria. Yin Soul attempts to take control of Maldeor but is rebuffed and left to die. Later Maldeor launches an attack for Kauria, but ends up in the land of the penguins and most of the forces are defeated or killed. Maldeor and his remaining army head to Kauria, where he sees a recently reunited Wind-Voice, Winger, and Fleydur. An army of free birds arrive to battle against the archaeptyx forces. Wind-Voice and Maldeor both head to the island and the two begin to battle. Wind-Voice escapes from the fight and manages to find the Hero's Sword, but doesn't take it. Maldeor however has taken a false Hero's Sword and attacks Wind-Voice. The real Hero's Sword appearance in Wind-Voices claws and Maldeor is killed when the temple that they are in begins to fall apart. The archaeopteryx army leave and begin to form their own tribes and Fleydur is taken back into his family. Wind-Voice is renamed Swordbird by King Pepheroh and it is revealed that Wind-Voice's father is the Great Spirit. The clues on the Leasorn Gems disappear and the day that Wind-Voice became Swordbird is made a holiday called the Bright Moon Festival. Swordbird reveals to Winger in a dream that he too was killed by the rubble and that he is now a spirit and a guardian of peace, and will help any that summon him."
57,The Summoner,fantasy," Martris ""Tris"" Drayke, second son of the royal family of Margolan, has always been tormented by his older half-brother, Jared Drayke. When Jared murders their father and seizes the throne with the help of his vampire (vayash moru) mage, Foor Arontala, Martris flees the city with his two friends: the bard Carroway and the soldier Soterius. Also, a gruff captain of the guard joins them. As the friends journey on the road to a nearby country to the north, Tris begins to experience powers he didn't know he had, magic left to him by his extremely powerful grandmother, Bava K'aa. As the story progresses, Tris learns that he is the mage heir of Bava K'aa, inheriting all of her former powers of summoning spirits, and perhaps more. As his brother's soldiers close in, Tris hires on the ex-soldier Vahanian, who now lives on the wrong side of the law. Vahanian is haunted by a horrific past, and has sworn not to involve himself in the conflicts of government again. However, through the course of the novel, Vahanian begins to see the urgency of mission's success, after witnessing the horrors King Jared and Arontala inflict upon their own country. He, reluctantly, at first, agrees to train Tris and his friends in the art of streetfighting, breaking them of their rehearsed, almost ceremonial ways of swashbuckling. He teaches them how to kill, not put on a show. Princess Kiara, leader of the small country of Isencroft, for all intents and purposes, finds herself in a bind as she struggles to worm her way out of an arranged marriage with Jared, and worries about her father's failing health, which is almost certainly waning because of evil magic. In a last bid for her country's freedom, she rides upon a Journey given to her by the Eight-Faced Goddess. She ends up joining Tris's band, and rides with him to an almost-forgotten library to discover how she might save her father, and her nigh-doomed country. While there, Kiara is attacked by Arantola, and Tris continues his training under Roysten the Librarian and other Sisters, eventually gaining MageSlayer, a powerful sword guarded by the dead. It is the only blade capable of killing the dead. During this time, Kiara and Tris begin to fall for each other, and Kiara is bidden by the Goddess to assist in their quest. Vahanian and Carina also show signs of romantic feelings, though Carina is desperate to deny them because of something in her past. They then set off for Principality, but they are detained by King Staden of Principality's soldiers, and it is revealed the general of the troops is the brother of the man Carina fell in love with and failed to save when she and her brother were forced out their home for being twins, and mages to boot. Once at the royal court though, the King reveals he escorted them for safety as they saved his daughter Berwyn (Berry), and Vahanian is made Lord of Dark Haven, the vayash moru stronghold as a reward. The king pledges his full support, and Kiara and Tris admit their feelings before Tris goes to continues his training."
58,Xone of Contention,fantasy," Dug, the Mundane who had had an adventure in Xanth through the Companions of Xanth computer game, is now happily married to Kim. His friend Edsel on the other hand is on the rock with his marriage to Pia, Dug's old girlfriend, who wants a divorce. Edsel, not wanting to lose her strikes a deal with her, they take a two week vacation in Xanth, switching with Nimby and Chlorine who want to learn about Mundania, and if she doesn't change her mind, he won't fight it."
59,Wolfskin,fantasy," Eyvind is a young Viking man who wishes to be a Wolfskin (a berserker warrior of Thor) like his brother. Somerled, a quiet boy of the same age, befriends Eyvind and binds him to loyalty with a blood oath. After becoming a Wolfskin, Eyvind voyages to the Isles of Light with Somerled, his brother Eirek, Somerled's brother Ulf (the leader of the expedition) and many others. The Vikings quickly establish a peace treaty with the native island folk and build a settlement. Then Ulf is murdered sadistically, suspended by ropes from a cliff's edge to die of exposure, leaving his position to Somerled- who immediately breaks the treaty. He sends out the Wolfskins to destroy the small army mustered by the natives in retaliation. Eyvind, seeing that the army is composed of the very young and the very old, suffers a breakdown brought on by the moral crisis. The native princess and priestess, Nessa, finds him and cares for him, healing his wounds and coldness of spirit. Alone in a hidden cave, with only an old priestess for company, the two young people fall in love. But Eyvind is soon faced with another crisis: he must face Somerled with newfound proof that the current ruler killed his own brother. In the Viking hall, Eyvind's accusations are smothered with violence and he is imprisoned, despite the efforts of his few remaining friends to help him. Finally, Nessa creates and brings to the hall a harp made out of Ulf's bones, with Ulf's voice (magically restored) as the final voice of truth that cannot be ignored. Somerled is banished from the Isles, bound by an oath to Eyvind to live as long as possible, and Eyvind stays in the Isles."
60,The Waterless Sea,fantasy," By the time this book opens, characters Calwyn, Trout, Tonno, Halassa and Mica are making and enacting plans to rescue chanters from their various underprivileged situations and form a school of chantment; thus integrating the Nine Songs by which nature is commanded, as well as their singers, into society. While Calwyn and her friends are freeing windworkers from pirates' ships, they meet Heben, a former (exiled) princeling from the continent of Merithuros, who was a prisoner of the pirates'. On the island where the rescued windworkers live, Heben tells them that the ironcraft chanter children of Merithuros are being kidnapped, among them his (legal) brother and sister. Calwyn and her friends embark for the desert of Merithuros to rescue the captured children. Trout, the inventor, decides to remain behind. Darrow is alone on his boat Heron, where he reminiscences about his childhood. It is revealed that he was the son of a sea-captain and was nicknamed ""Mouse"" by the family-like crew. During his pre-adolescent years, Mouse discovered that a crew member named Arram was an ironcrafter, and that he himself could use the same gift. At his request, Arram secretly taught Mouse to use ironcraft, enabling him to manipulate matter by his songs. While docking at a Merithuran town, Mouse sang ironcraft to save his father from falling cargo. A Merithuran sorcerer saw this and took the terrified child away. Calwyn, Tonno, Mica, Halasaa, and Heben travel to Merithuros on the boat Fledgewing. There the outsiders of the group learn of the discontent lives of the common folk, who try to protest the cruelty of the Merithuran Empire. Tonno stays on the ship whilst the others ride on the goatlike ""hegesi"" to the Palace of Cobwebs where the royalty live. There, the group hope to learn where the kidnapped children are. Along the way, Calwyn and Mica earn the chauvinistic Heben's respect through their use of chantment. After many days of riding, they finally reach the Palace of Cobwebs. Darrow returns to the island of Ravamey, his current refuge, and learns that Calwyn and others have left. He is given cause to think that they have gone to the Black Palace, where the chanter children are actually held. Darrow is revealed to have lived in the Black Palace during his childhood. It is there that he acquired his name, which was derived from the title of his father's ship, Gold Arrow; there that he was given extensive training in the use of ironcraft by the harsh, partisan, cruel Merithuran sorcerers; and there that he first met the power-mad Samis. Calwyn and friends are inside the Palace of Cobwebs. Calwyn, disguised as a noblewoman and the others as her servants, have no success in learning anything useful, though they note the presence of chantment, implying the children to be nearby. Also present is a sorcerer of the Black Palace, Amagis by name, who recognizes their powers but does not confront them. Instead, he persuades Third Princess Keela to ingratiate herself with Calwyn, in hope of learning more about the latter. This is only a partially successful venture. After a parade and during a feast, the aged Emperor suddenly falls ill and dies. In the resulting clamor, the seekers sneak away and split up to search for the children. Darrow is sailing to Merithuros, while recalling to attention that Samis had singled him out as an ally, naming him ""Heron"". When the old lord of the Black Palace was dying, Samis seized his office and the Ring that signified it. He later attempted to persuade Darrow to join him in the quest to become Singer of All Songs and conquer the world; Darrow refused, cast away the name ""Heron"", and fled, later to meet Calwyn. Calwyn finds Shada, Heben's legal sister, trapped on a tower. To keep her there, Shada's kidnapper has broken the bones of her feet. Shada explains that five of the kidnapped children, including herself, are hidden in the Palace of Cobwebs, where they sing chantments to keep the palace intact. Halasaa heals Shada and they escape from the pursuing Amagis. The group reunites and search for the four other children. Calwyn and one of the children, Ched, try to warn the inhabitants of the steadily collapsing Palace while the others steal supplies and escape. No one pays attention to Calwyn, except Keela, who tries to take Ched from her. Calwyn and Ched escape, leaving the palace just as the palace collapses. Calwyn uses Ironcraft for the first time to assist in their escape. Falling debris kills Ched. Calwyn overhears some soldiers conspiring to crown the Fifth Prince so that they can control the dimwitted man and rule the Empire through him. Darrow meets Tonno at a Merithuran harbor. At a bar, Darrow meets the leader of the commoners who want to rebel against the empire. Darrow earns a partnership by promising to take the leader, Fenn, to the fabled Black Palace. Calwyn and friends travel towards the Black Palace. Halasaa becomes ill along the way, because of the barrenness of the land. In his telepathic conversations with Calwyn and other characters, Halasaa reveals that Merithuros was once a fertile, generous land, but was reduced to wasteland by humans. When confronted by wasunti (wild dogs), Calwyn uses the Power of Beasts to turn them away. Oron, one of the children, is bitten by one of the wasunti. Halasaa teaches Calwyn the Power of Becoming, with which Calwyn heals Oron. Possibly as a result, Calwyn almost faints from exhaustion. When she awakes, they have been saved by Darrow, Tonno, and the rebels. They head to the Lip of Hathara, which is a stone wall surrounding the Black Palace. Darrow and the children rescued from the Palace of Cobwebs (except for Ched who died) use ironcraft to open a doorway, but do not close it. This leaves an entryway for the army and nobles led by Keela, who are all heading to the Palace. When the protagonists enter, they are attacked by the sorcerers. Oron goes missing, later to be discovered, threatened and suborned by Keela. Darrow reveals the Ring of Lyonssar, making himself the Lord of the Black Palace. This confuses Calwyn, who associates such a manouvere with the desire for control. Later, Darrow explains his methods, whereas Calwyn disclaims any division that he has suspected her of having in her affections. Darrow also reveals that the Black Palace can, if its mechanisms are released, become a wind-powered war machine, similar to a terrestrial warship. Calwyn compares the sorcerers' tradition of living in the Black Palace to the tradition in which she was raised, wherein priestesses hide behind walls of ice, and wishes that the chanters would ""come out of hiding"". On the roof of the palace, Calwyn and Darrow share a passionate kiss (during which Darrow's ring becomes caught in Calwyn's hair), finally acting on their feelings for each other. In the next morning, the remaining imperial soldiers are advancing toward the Black Palace. Darrow rallies sorcerers, rebels, and his friends, invoking them to build a Republic on the ruins of the Empire, wherein a more generous way of life is followed. When the various factions begin to quarrel, Darrow reveals the soldiers to them as a common enemy, whereupon all unite in their opposition to this. Heben, impromptu, questions the wisdom of war and suggests that all factions co-operate rather than compete. Darrow supports this idea. Tonno discuses with Calwyn their means of getting back to Ravamey. He assumes that Darrow will stay here and assume the role of Lord of the Black Palace. This saddens Calwyn, because despite the fact that Darrow has finally acted on his love for her, she must leave him in Merithurous to fulfill his duty. In addition, Halassa is sick and needs her aid more at the moment than does Darrow. The imperial army attacks; moments later, Oron unwillingly obeys Keela's order to activate the mechanisms of the Black Palace, which are a series of metal pipes. When air is run over the pipes correctly, the pipes create a chant of Ironcraft powerful enough to move the Black Palace itself. As it advances menacingly, Calwyn responds to the needs of the injured land and uses all of her chantment to heal it. In the process, she sacrifices all of her own power to sing. Using chantment, Darrow halts the Black Palace in its path saving Calwyn. As a result of Calwyn's chantment, the region called Hathara becomes the site of a lake, into which all the fighters throw their weapons. Because his sickness and weakness corresponded with that of the land, Halasaa is restored to health even as the land is revived. Keela is captured; although she attempts to talk her way out of trouble, she is imprisoned at Darrow's command. It is revealed that Keela believes Samis to be alive; because Darrow doubts the clarity of his own perception of Samis as dead, he is frightened by this information. Calwyn, upon regaining her strength, is distraught to find that she has lost all of her chantment. She watches aimlessly as Heben, Darrow, Tonno, and the leaders of the various Merithuran factions build the foundations of their new Republic. Eventually, she is approached by Darrow. He attempts to console her without much success. He then reveals that he intends to seek Samis, to discover whether he is in fact alive, and if he is so to kill him. Darrow discusses the future with Calwyn, suggesting that she might go back to Antaris to heal, and eventually asks her to promise him that if she returns to Antaris in search of healing, she will not go alone, but in the company of friends, and to promise him that she will return upon success or failure. When she does not promise to return, arguing that she cannot ensure it, he leaves her, disappointed."
61,Lankar of Callisto,fantasy," Throughout the series, author Lin Carter has portrayed himself as the recipient and editor of the manuscripts of protagonist Jonathan Dark (Jandar), teleported from the Jovian moon Callisto (moon) (or Thanator, as its inhabitants call it) to the ruined Cambodian city of Arangkhôr. In this volume he finally travels to Cambodia, hoping to learn what became of Jandar after the conclusion of the last volume of his memoirs, Mind Wizards of Callisto. Once in Arangkhôr Carter accidentally falls into the well-like teleportation device himself, and is duly transported to the jungle moon as Jandar had been. A literal babe in the woods, he is hardly cut out to become an interplanetary hero; indeed, he spends much of his sojourn on Thanator mooning over its extraordinary sights like a tourist, likening them to wonders of which he has read or seen portrayed in various works of fantastic literature and art. Fortunately, Carter is soon taken in hand by an Othode, a forest creature with the personality of a faithful dog, which becomes his companion and protector against the local perils. It defends him against a Vastodon and later saves him from an immense spiderweb. Carter acquires another companion in the native boy Tarin, who had also been trapped in the web, and an abbreviated native-style name, ""Lankar,"" which Tarin finds easier to pronounce. They subsequently encounter warriors from Shondakar, the kingdom of Jandar's love interest Princess Darloona, and join the expedition against the hidden city of Kuur, lair of the evil Mind Wizards who hold the hero captive. Carter's Othode even manages to uncover the secret entry to the city, but Carter himself is caught and imprisoned with Jandar. All comes out well, as they are rescued by Tarin and in a climatic battle the Mind Wizards are almost all killed. (One is later revealed to have escaped, to permit sequel possibilities.) At the end of the story Carter manages to catch the return beam to Earth, content to resume his role as redactor, rather than participant, in Jandar's adventures."
62,The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend,fantasy," The story begins in Druss's village in the Drenai Empire. He is a misfit and socially awkward. While he is away from the village chopping wood, a party of slavers, led by Harib Ka and the master swordsman Collan, comes to the village and kills or enslaves everyone they find. With his dying breath, Druss' father tells him to fetch the family battle-axe (Snaga), which was stolen by his grandfather Bardan. Druss meets the hunter Shadak, who is hunting the slavers to avenge the death of his son, and they join forces to pursue them. Shadak succeeds in interrogating Harib Ka before Druss kills him, and learns that Rowena (who Harib Ka has realised has mystic powers) has been taken to the port of Mashrapur. Druss travels to Mashrapur and meets Shadak's friend Sieben. Together they find out that Rowena will be transported to the distant land of Ventria. Druss attempts to break onto the ship to rescue her, but is ambushed by Collan's men on the dock. Druss is badly wounded but survives, and Shadak reappears to kill Collan. However, they fail to stop the ship from setting sail without them. When Druss recovers, he and Sieben (who is fleeing a jealous lover's husband) join a group of mercenaries recruited by the Ventrian soldier Bodasen, who is going to support the emperor Gorben in a war in Ventria against the neighbouring Naashanites and rebels. En route, they are attacked by pirates; and during this fight Sieben sees a demon materialise to defend Druss and comes to the conclusion that Druss is possessed. The soldiers arrive in Ventria and succeed in rescuing Gorben from a siege. Gorben is impressed with Druss and promotes him to serve in his elite bodyguard- ""The Immortals"". Sieben learns from a priest that Snaga is harbouring an evil spirit, but fails to persuade Druss to abandon the weapon. Meanwhile, Rowena has married Michanek, the leading general of the Naashanites. He is an honourable man and becomes concerned when she falls ill. He is told that she is suffering as a result of her mystical powers, and has these removed, along with her memory, in order to save her life. During a break in the war, Druss goes travelling and loses Snaga in a river. Initially thinking he is free of it, he learns from the a wandering Source priest that it has been found by a brutal warlord, Cajivak. He and the mercenary Varsava set out to recover the axe and kill Cajivak, but Druss is captured and imprisoned in Cajivak's dungeon. At first he wastes away, but with the help of a former prisoner succeeds in regaining his strength and escaping, only to find that Sieben, Varsava and the archer Eskodas have mounted a rescue attempt. Druss kills Cajivak and recovers Snaga, then returns to the army. By this point in the war the Naashanites are desperate and attempt to use a demon to assassinate Gorben, but he is saved by Druss thanks to Snaga- the only weapon that seems to hurt the demon. Druss also learns that Rowena has married Michanek and that her memory has been erased. He vows to kill Michanek and reclaim Rowena as his own as the army moves to besiege the last Naashanite stronghold, where Michanek has his home. Michanek has learned of Rowena's past and attempts to reconcile her to the idea of going back to Druss, but she will not have it. During the siege, Michanek is killed and Rowena takes poison since she cannot face life alone. Druss is forced to venture into the netherworld to bring her back. Druss eventually succeeds in finding Rowena, and despite a trick of Snaga's, rescues her. In the process he banishes the demon from the axe. Then he and his companions return to Drenai. The epilogue deals with the events of Skeln Pass, a famous battle late in Druss's career (by this time he is presumed to be in his mid-forties). Gorben has gone mad and invades Drenai, and Druss and Sieben go to Skeln Pass to meet the troops and raise morale. The Ventrians launch a surprise attack, catching the Drenai unprepared, and Druss and Sieben are caught up in the fighting. Under the leadership of Earl Delnar, and with Druss's inspirational presence, the Drenai manage to hold up the Ventrian advance. In a night raid, Druss accidentally kills his old friend Bodasen. The next day, a furious Gorben, commits the Immortals, who have never been defeated, to battle. In the fierce fighting the ensues, Sieben is mortally wounded, but Druss and the Drenai manage to hold the Immortals long enough for reinforcements to arrive and win the war. In the rout, Gorben is killed by his own officers. During the battle, Rowena, who has stayed at home with Sieben's wife Niobe, dies. She tells Niobe that she knew she was dying but sent Druss to Skeln Pass so that he would not have to witness it, as it would break his heart."
63,Assassin's Quest,fantasy," FitzChivalry Farseer is raised from the dead using his despised Wit magic, but he is now more wolf than human. Only Burrich and Chade know he survived his tortures in Regal's dungeons; all others, even the Fool and the Queen, believe Fitz dead. After regaining his humanity, he departs on a personal quest to kill Regal- but not before being attacked by Forged people. One of whom, unknown to him, steals his shirt with King Shrewd's pin, a fact which Fitz only realizes after moving a long distance away. Burrich, having found the rotted remains of the Forged one who stole Fitz's shirt believes it is actually Fitz's body, and that Fitz is now really dead. He therefore determines to guard the one Fitz holds most dear, his lover and almost wife, Molly. Fitz fails spectacularly at his assassination attempt and is almost killed. Verity aids his escape and, in the process, imprints the command ""Come To Me"" into Fitz's mind. Unable to disobey, Fitz immediately begins to make his way to the Mountain Kingdom, following the path Verity took on his quest. During this journey, his bond with Nighteyes, his Wit companion, continues to deepen and change as each finds themselves becoming more like one another. The wolf begins to have the ability to think abstractly and plan events while Fitz starts to gain the more noble wolf qualities of living in the present and a fierce loyalty to friends 'in his pack'. Along the way Fitz and Nighteyes meet a minstrel named Starling. Starling recognizes Fitz and insists upon traveling with them, claiming a desire to witness and record great events. They meet an old woman named Kettle, who is travelling to the Mountain Kingdom to see the White Prophet, and Fitz is later attacked during his journey by warriors under the command of King Regal. He reaches the Mountain Kingdom barely alive, but is tended back to health by the Fool &mdash; the White Prophet whom Kettle had been seeking. The Fool rejoices that Fitz is alive beyond all hope and thinks they may yet be able to avoid the dark future he has foreseen. Fitz, Kettricken, the Fool and Starling set off to follow Verity, followed by Kettle. On their journey they encounter a garden full of stone dragons which Fitz can sense with his Wit, leading him to believe they are alive, despite appearing to be mere statues. Eventually the truth is revealed: the dragons were carved out of black memory stone and given the memories and emotions of those who carved them. Verity has spent a long time carving his dragon, only to find that even if he gives the dragon everything he has, including the bare minimum he needs to keep his heart beating, it will not be enough to bring it to life to fight the Red Ship Raiders. Kettle reveals that she is the last remaining member of a former royal coterie. She makes peace with her past and decides to help Verity complete his dragon. They give the dragon all their emotions and finally their lives, bringing it to life in turn. The Fool carves another dragon to life, and Fitz discovers how to wake the other sleeping dragons, which are led against the Raiders by Verity-as-Dragon. The Raiders are successfully driven away. Kettricken is left pregnant with Prince Dutiful and Fitz finally retires as royal assassin. Through a series of Skill visions during the span of the book Fitz discovers that Burrich thinks him dead and has found Molly and is taking care of her. She is pregnant with Fitz's daughter and eventually gives birth, naming the girl Nettle. Fitz wants to go to them but is not able to overcome the Skill Command that Verity placed in his mind to come to him. Burrich and Molly get married and are happy together, so by the end of the book Fitz can not bring himself to intrude on their lives and lets them continue to believe he is dead. After the battle to save Buckkeep castle, his beloved friend the Fool - the White Prophet for that era - flies far away on the back of a stone dragon. So in the end FitzChivalry Farseer loses everyone and everything but Nighteyes, his wolf. The narrative of FitzChivalry Farseer continues in Fool's Errand (novel). The adventures of the Fool continue, in a different guise, in Hobb's books in the Liveship Traders Trilogy. That trilogy is set in the time period between the ending of the Farseer trilogy and the beginning of the Tawny Man trilogy. (The tawny man referred to is the Fool, who comes more and more to be seen as a central figure of the entire series.)"
64,Requiem for the Conqueror,fantasy," Humanity is trapped in a ""gravity well"", the so-called Forbidden Borders and there is increasing conflict because of ever-decreasing space resources. Staffa Kar Therma a.k.a. the Lord Commander is a mercenary who leads an elite group of soldiers (the Companions) and aligns himself to the group that pays him the most. He is separated from his soldiers and falls in to the hands of a slave trader but escapes, and comes into contact with a quasi-religious group led by the magister (who in turn is advised by the MagComm). The magister (under the guidance of the MagComm) believes that the Lord Commander is the root of all evil and attempts to assassinate him. Meanwhile Staffa discovers that his son is alive and is the leader of a battalion of the emperor's forces. Staffa finally escapes from the magister and the MagComm, killing the former and partially destroying the latter. The partially destroyed MagComm's automated repair mechanisms kick in and the computer becomes self-aware."
65,Across the Nightingale Floor,fantasy," Across the Nightingale Floor is set in a fictional feudal Japan, and follows the story of a sixteen-year-old boy named Tomasu and fifteen year old girl named Kaede. Tomasu, a member of The Hidden by birth, returns from exploring the mountains to find members of his family slaughtered. Trying to escape he unhorses Iida Sadamu, leader of the Tohan, who led the slaughter of The Hidden. Chased by Iida's men, Tomasu is rescued by Lord Shigeru of the Otori. Shigeru takes Tomasu with him to protect, and later adopt him. However he deems his name unsuitable because of its Hidden roots and renames him Takeo. On the road Takeo loses his voice temporarily and his hearing becomes superhuman. On the journey to Shigeru's home, the two stop at an inn where they meet Maruyama Naomi, a powerful female ruler from the Seishuu. Lady Maruyama is found that she was against the persecution of the Hidden and urged Takeo to tell her about the slaughter. At night, when Takeo was in his room, he overhears Lady Maruyama and Shigeru expressing their love for one another. Eventually, the pair reach Lord Shigeru's home in Hagi, where Takeo is received with astonishment by an old maid named Chiyo and Shigeru's ex-instructor, Ichiro. Takeo is slowly accepted by the household and is later is adopted Shigeru's son, under the condition that Shigeru gets married to Shirakawa Kaede, the most beautiful maiden in the Three Countries. However, Takeo was under the threat of Shigeru's uncles' sons, who tried to murder him during practice everyday. Later, Takeo meets Muto Kenji (also known as the Fox), the master of the Muto clan, who reveals to him that Takeo's father was the most skilled assassin of the Kikuta, the greatest family of the Tribe. Kenji, after informing Takeo, starts to train him in the arts of the Tribe. Around autumn of that year, Takeo sneaks out of the house one day and explores Hagi, where he meets a merchant who he'd saved when he was one of the Hidden. The merchant, recognising him, called out to him by his real name. Takeo denied that that was his name and fled. When the time came, Shigeru and Takeo and others started preparing their trip to Tsuwano where they would meet Shigeru's future wife, Shirakawa Kaede. At Tsuwano they meet Kaede (who had been held hostage by the Noguchi since she was seven and forced to sleep in the maid's rooms. She was constantly harassed by the guards who wanted to have her. Not long before she reaches Tsuwano, a guard tried to rape her, only to be stabbed with a knife). She is under the protection of her kinswoman Lady Maruyama (with whom Shigeru has had a secret relationship for almost 10 years), and is accompanied by Kenji's niece, Shizuka, who is half Muto and half Kikuta. But it is Takeo and Kaede who immediately find a connection between them. They stop at the shrine at Terayama, at the time of the Festival of the Dead, to visit Shigeru's brother's grave, and for Shigeru to discuss war plans with the Abbott. As an army headed by Lord Arai musters from the west, they arrive at Inuyama in the 9th month. Shigeru plans for Takeo to assassinate Iida that night, but the Tribe, not wanting to risk Takeo (and appreciating the stability that Iida brings), abducts him so that his training can be finished. Thus the treachery plays itself out: Shigeru is crucified on the castle wall, and Lady Maruyama and her daughter drown whilst attempting to escape. Takeo makes a deal with the Tribe that allows him to bring Shigeru's body down in return for joining them. Takeo, together with Kenji and Yuki sneak into the castle at night and bring Shigeru down from the wall. Shigeru, dying from his wounds, asks Takeo to bury him at Terayama. During the invasion of the castle at Inuyama, Takeo discovers Kaede with the corpse of Iida Sadamu, whom she killed when he attempted to rape her. After carrying out Shigeru's wishes, Takeo honours his promise to the Tribe and departs with them, leaving Kaede unconscious from his Kikuta Stare and in the care of Muto Shizuka."
66,Academ's Fury,fantasy," Approximately two years after the events in Furies of Calderon, Tavi is attending the finest school in Alera, The Academy. His patron, the ruler of Alera, has generously paid for his schooling and employed him as a page in the capitol. He still has no furies and remains the only Aleran to have no furycrafting ability. He struggles to deal with his perceived disability while training to be a Cursor of the crown, the First Lord's messengers and covert agents through the realm. Tavi must confront his peers and enemies alike as Alera is quietly being invaded by the Vord, his Aunt Isana in danger, the First Lord's failing health, and all with the threat of civil war looming over their heads."
67,Desecration,fantasy," Nicolae Carpathia stages a gruesome and evil desecration of the temple. Hattie publicly confronts him and is burned to death by Leon, the False Prophet. As millions take the Mark of the Beast, the first Bowl Judgment rains down as foul and loathsome sores appear on the bodies of all who have taken the mark, including Nicolae's inner circle. When the temple is defiled, millions of Jews and Gentiles rebel against Nicolae and many of them become believers. The Tribulation Force launches ""Operation Eagle"", a mass exodus of the believers to the refuge city of Petra. Leading them is none other than Dr. Chaim Rozensweig turned into a modern-day Moses, who, calling himself Micah, and along with Buck Williams, confronts Nicolae and leads the faithful to refuge. Meanwhile, David Hassid, the first to arrive at Petra, is murdered by two renegade GC soldiers left over from a confrontation between the Trib. Force and the GC. The second Bowl Judgment hits as all the oceans and seas turn into blood. In Chicago, Chloe wanders off into the night and finds a group of believers (whom she eventually aids) hiding in a basement near the safe house. In Greece, the rescue of the two teenagers that Buck helped escape is attempted by the Trib Force's newest man: George Sebastian. One of the teens is replaced with a look-alike who kills the other teen, along with Lukas ""Laslos"" Miklos. George is captured and taken away. Tsion Ben-Judah arrives at Petra to address the throng as the Antichrist launches an all-out attack against them. The book ends with Nicolae hysterical as he believes he is about to wipe out one million believers, Rayford Steele and Tsion Ben-Judah among them."
68,Ascendance,fantasy," The novel Ascendance begins the tale of Aydrian Wyndon, a tortured and lonely young man raised by the Touel'alfar to be a ranger even greater than his father and to, hopefully, be the salvation of the elves. The plans of the Touel'alfar go awry due to Aydrian's own arrogance, cultivated by a dark force. When he leaves the home of the elves, events occur which bring about great sorrow for himself, his mother and the kingdom."
69,Neverwinter,fantasy," The story begins shortly after the events occurring in Gauntlgrym. Drizzt and Dahlia are in the wilderness of the north planning on returning to Neverwinter. Dahlia explains to Drizzt that although the Dread Ring has been broken Sylora Salm will make it her priority to reestablish it by any means necessary. Deciding that their best course of action is to head to Luskan in order to regroup and learn what they may the two head towards the town aided by Drizzt's magical unicorn Andahar. It is revealed that the unicorn although magical in nature can be killed. It can also stay in the Realms for as long as needed with no time limit restraints. However, because it has more vulnerabilities than his other magical familiar, Guenhwyvar, Drizzt is much more cautious in his use of the Andahar. The pair soon encounter a caravan being chased by bandits. Drizzt immediately rushes to help. Dahlia however questions his motives. Drizzt assumes that the caravan is goodly in nature and Dahlia perhaps more world wise though much younger than Drizzt does not jump to the same conclusion. Drizzt speaks with the merchants who tell him that they are representatives of the High Captains of Luskan. Nearly 100 years ago the High Captains played a major role in the death of Drizzt's long time friend Captain Deudermont. Drizzt rushes off to engage the bandits while Dahlia needles him about how the world is not always black and white/ right or wrong (this is a major theme of the book as Dahlia continually questions Drizzt's morals). After defeating the first few bandits it is learned that they are starving farmers driven off of their lands by the High Capatins policies. They intened to rob the caravan in order to feed themselves and their families. Drizzt and Dahlia share a meal with the bandits and Drizzt begins to question his ethics in this dark time throughout the North. Sylora Salm stands with her new lieutenant and Ashmadai zealot Jestry Rallevin in front of the greatly weakened Dread Ring. Sulkir Szass Tam appears in the Ring and lets Sylora know that he is displeased with her efforts and is prepared to destroy her for her failure. Before he can act the insane lich Valindra Shadowmantle arrives. Although insane she has moments of clarity and cunning which she uses to convince Szass Tam to spare their lives. As a result Szass gives Sylora a wand that lets her channel the powers of the Dread Ring and commands her to conquer Neverwinter and complete the Dread Ring once again. Sylora sends Jestry to attend Valindra and to keep an eye on her, tempting him with the promise of making him her lover. Meanwhile Herzgo Alegni commands for Barrabus the Grey to be brought before him and explain why his orders to kill Sylora were not carried out. Barrabus explains that she was too well guarded and suggests that if he were given his dagger back (a gem encrusted life stealing dagger) that he might be able to accomplish the job. Drizzt and Dahlia reach the outskirts of Luskan. They take a detour to the farmlands so that Drizzt may learn of their condition. He finds a farmhouse occupied by a woman and her five children after her husband has left. He tries to give them money which Dhalia stops him from doing. They leave the farm with more of Drizzt's moral values being questioned. Sylora uses the power of the wand she acquired to raise a fortress in which to direct her campaign. Valindra reveals that she still possesses the soul of the vampire Korvin Dor'crae. She also seeks out a woman named Arunika who promises to help her with her insanity. Barrabus arrives in Neverwinter on behalf of the Shadovar and offers to help the town defend itself. At first skeptical Barrabus reminds them that the Shadovar use to protect the town before the primordial cataclysm and that he himself lived through it by hiding under the town bridge. Drizzt and Dahlia enter Luskan and shortly after Dahlia uses a magic item to alter her appearance. She did so after entering the town because she did not mind (wanted) some of the High Captains to know she was there. The two make their way to Jarlaxle's apartment to see if they can find word of him or Athrogate. They are presumed dead but Drizzt believes in Jarlaxle's ability to survive any situation. They are soon attacked by Ship Renthor seeking revenge against Dahlia for killing their High Captain. Things go badly for the two until they are rescued by Beniago of Ship Kurth. Drizzt notices Beniago has a jewel encrusted dagger that he swears he has seen before, but shakes it off and concludes that his mind is playing tricks on him. Sylora continues to gather her forces when Hadencourt a malebranche devil in the service of Szass arrives. Sylora assigns him the task of heading north and destroying Dahlia. Valindra gathers her forces in preparation of attacking Neverwinter. Before the attack Jestry and Sylora go to visit Valindra's friend Arunika who promises them her help. It is also revealed that she is a succubus. The attck on Neverwinter occurs and Barrabus takes to the field and begins to turn the battle. At the predetermined time Herzgo leads the Shadovar forces in and defeats the Ashmadai forces. But instead of Herzgo being held as the hero the townfolk cheer for Barrabus, who suggest the name of the bridge be renamed for him ""The Walk of Barrabus"". The Shadovar begin to reestablish their power in Neverwinter. Drizzt and Dahlia are offered alliance with Ship Kurth which they conditionally accept. Returning to Jaraxle's apartment Dahlia continues to questions Drizzt's morals. The conversation ends with the two of them becoming lovers and going to bed. Dahlia sneaks off and goes to rob Ship Kurth of some of their jewels. This is a setup and Dahlia soon finds herself in a fight against Beniago against his magic dagger (of life stealing) and in a room full of traps she doesn't know. She is injured and poisoned by one of these traps and is saved by Drizzt. She claims she had everything in hand but did not. They make their escape out of Luskan but Dahlia soon succumbs to the poison. Drizzt takes her to the farmhouse the two vistied earlier and begs the woman for help. She says she will call the local herb man but that they need a dose of the poison in order to make an antidote. Drizzt returns to Luskan and trades the antidote from Beniago for the promise to support him in future once he has taken the title of High Captain of Ship Kurth. Drizzt returns in time and is able to save Dahlia. The pair continue south where they are met by Hadencourt who poses as a friend. He soon attacks them and summons devils to help him. Drizzt and Dahlia begin a desperate battle in the woods. They are able to kill a few of the war devils minions but are forced to run. They think they have escaped but the spirit of Dor'crae is able to track them and tell the devil where they are. The battle finally ends when Drizzt summons Andahar and impales Hadencourt. As the demon is dying it promises to get revenge and Drizzt tells him to get in line behind Errtu. In Neverwinter Herzgo is vistied by Draygo Quick a powerful warlock of the Netherese and his master. Draygo wishes for Herzgo to finish his conquest of the region and leaves his disciple a teifling Effron the Twisted behind. Effron has one deformed arm and Herzgo and Effron openly despise each other. Valindra arrives in the cave of Arunika's master for their help. It is revealed that they are the Aboleth Sovereignty. The aboleth helps with Valindra's mental state and an alliance of convenience is formed between the Thayans and the Soveriegnty. Jestry is brought to the Aboleth and is transformed using umber hulk skin. The process is fatal and will eventually kill him within the year, but he is transformed into a mindless slave with the sole purpose of being Sylora's champion against Dahlia. Herzgo learns of Arunika who is also called the Forset Sentinel by the locals. He visits her and is able to discern her true nature, he then forms an alliance with her. Herzgo returns to Neverwinter and begins to punish Barrabus for his renaming of the bridge after himself. The Claw is a sword carried by Herzgo and attuned to the soul of Barrabus. It is revealed that Barrabus cannot die even if he tries to kill himself. The sword will either stop him or bring him back to life. He is a slave to the sword with no hope of freedom except to kill Herzgo and take the sword which he cannot do as long as Herzgo wields the sword. The Thayans attack and use their new allies' umber hulks to attack from below. Barrabus' attacks are largely ineffectual and Herzgo carries the day and earns the peoples admiration. Dahlia and Drizzt continue on towards Neverwinter. Drizzt begins to share his past and recount stories of the Companions Of The Hall. Soon they are attacked by Shadovar and Dahlia exhibits a brutality Drizzt has never seen in her before and does not understand. He is reminded that there is much he does not know about her. Barrabus and Effron are assigned to work together and to hunt down Ashmadai. They come across a group led by Jestry. Effron does little and lets Barrabus do most of the work and take most of the risk. Barrabus is mostly successful except against Jestry whose new armor proves to be more formidable than even his own weapons. After the battle Herzgo learns that Dahlia returns in the company of Drizzt. Effron also reveals that he knows Dahlia Sin'felle's real name- Dahlia Syn'dalay of the Snakebrook clan. This fills Herzgo with terrible anger as he knows who she is now. Barrabus offer to go kill Dahlia and Drizzt alone. Barrabus knows of Drizzt's prowess and believes if he can get him to fight Herzgo he can kill him. He devises a plan to capture Dahlia alive and force Drizzt to fight Herzgo. He ambushes Dahlia but is then immediately ambushed by Drizzt. Drizzt looks at him and recognizes the face of Artemis Entreri. He doesn't believe it but is soon convinced when Artemis reveals intimate knowledge of him that only he would know. Artemis proposes a truce between the three and suggests they go kill Sylora. Drizzt and Dahlia do not trust him. He explains to Drizzt he grew bored of him long ago and has no vendetta against him. To Dahlia he explains it is nothing personal and that killing Sylora will meet both of their goals. As a final act of trust Artemis attacks Drizzt and holds his poisoned knife under his throat and pulls it back without harming him, proving that he has no intention of hurting him. Both Drizzt and Entreri are both surprised at how happy they are to see each other alive, for different reasons though. The three head towards Sylora's camp. There they are engaged by many undead, Ashmadai, Valindra, Sylora, and Jestry. Eventually Dahlia and Entreri are able to defeat Jestry. Valindra still suffers from some mental unstability and spends the majority of the battle watching from afar. Sylora is eventually cornered in the Dread Ring. However, she has used the wand's power too much and drawn off too much of the Dread Ring's power and succumbs to combined attacks of Drizzt, Guenhwyvar, and Dahlia. In the aftermath of the battle Entreri tells them that he must return to Neverwinter as compelled to serve Herzgo. Dahlia upon hearing this name learns that her most hated foe is the leader of the Shadovar and declares she would have stayed by Sylora's side had she known. Entreri finds this useful but can't think of a way to exploit it. With Sylora dead Dahlia considered her business in the region finished until she learns of Herzgo whom she vows to kill. Sylora's life is preserved by the power of the Dread Ring but before she can do anything, Jestry returns as an undead under the control of Valindra and kills her. Effron and Herzgo contemplate Dahlia and share a mutual hatred of her, even greater than their hatred of each other."
70,Magic's Price,fantasy," The story begins with the last four Herald-Mages, Vanyel among them, creating a magic barrier around their nation of Valdemar. This barrier prevents hostile mages from using magic. Vanyel intends to add other defenses when he has the time. Valdemar's King Randale is dying of a mysterious ailment. Vanyel has taken over nearly all the responsibilities of the throne, while young Prince Treven is trained. A young bard named Stefen is discovered in the Bardic Collegium. He has the unusual ability to block pain with his music. Vanyel arranges for Stefen to play for Randale during an official audience, proving his ability. Stefen is openly shaych (homosexual) and falls in love with Vanyel. Vanyel hesitates to love anyone because he fears his enemies will attack those he cares about, but finds that he and Stefen have become lifebonded—that is, they are complementary soulmates. It is unheard-of to have more than one lifebond in one lifetime, and Vanyel had already had such a link with (now dead) Herald-Mage apprentice Tylendel when very young. While visiting his family with Stefen and his aunt and mentor Savil, Vanyel wanders alone to think things over and is ambushed by a rogue mage, whom he overcomes and delivers to the family priest. The mage escapes and attacks a group of women who are listening to Stefen's music. Yfandes tries to help but is injured; Vanyel shows up just in time to step in front of a thrown dagger meant for his mother. Savil recognizes the dagger as a leech-blade, which sucks life energy from its victim. Savil Gates away to the land of the Tayledras Hawkbrothers, to ask for help; she returns with Vanyel's former mentors, Moondance and Starwind. They discover that Vanyel's lifebond with Stefen may have saved his life and speculate that Stefen is the reincarnation of Tylendel. Vanyel is not told, as the Hawkbrothers think it would complicate his relationship with Stefen. Vanyel, Stefen and Savil return to Haven, bringing Vanyel's parents along for their protection. King Randale has deteriorated further. Shavri, his lover and King's Own, has decided to provide him with strength through a psychic link. When Randale dies, so will Shavri. To make matters worse, Karse, the traditional enemy of Valdemar, is about to declare a holy war. Vanyel departs to negotiate a treaty with the land of Rethwellan. Upon his return he finds that Herald-Mages are dying in what look like accidents. Savil doesn't believe it and asks Vanyel to strengthen the protective wards around her home. Vanyel is tired and puts it off; the same night a mage-made creature murders Savil. Vanyel is now the last Herald-Mage. Vanyel sets out to find the mage behind the deaths, followed by Stefen. They are ambushed by bandits who work for the mage, whom they call Master Dark. As instructed, Stefen runs away to hide and returns later. He finds Yfandes injured and Vanyel kidnapped. A blocking spell has been put on Vanyel to prevent him from using his powers. The bandits rape and beat Vanyel savagely and he nearly dies; they send for a healer to revive him. This man sees the magical block on Vanyel's mind and removes it. Vanyel revives, and temporarily loses his sanity, killing everyone in sight. Stefen and Yfandes arrive and so do a pack of Kyree, who take the humans in and help them. Vanyel is healed, but is determined to find ""Master Dark"", whom he now suspects of having been behind a number of mysterious deaths in Valdemar. Vanyel finds a mountain pass, where the mage intends to take his troops down into the heart of Valdemar. Vanyel sends Yfandes and Stefen to the guard post for help; knowing he may never see them again. The dark mage's army shows up. Vanyel defeats them and finally faces Leareth, ""Master Dark"" himself. Yfandes returns and together they invoke the ultimate spell, Final Strike, which kills not only one's enemy but oneself. Vanyel and Yfandes die together. Stefen, who has felt Vanyel die, finds only a cracked and burned amber focus-stone—a present he had given Vanyel—and a few strands of blood-soaked horse hair. Some months later, King Randale and Shavri have died. Lost in grief and despair, Stefen returns to the site of Vanyel's death, intending to commit suicide, but Vanyel's spirit appears before him. Vanyel tells Stefen that in order for Stefen to be free to join him, he must convince all of Valdemar that Herald-Mages are no longer necessary, and that Heralds are enough; a nearly impossible task. Stefen agrees and spends the rest of his life working for this change, until his death when he is able to join Vanyel on the other side."
71,Outcast,fantasy," We find out at the start of the novel that in the previous book the Soul Eaters marked Torak with the Soul Eater symbol. This is discovered and Torak is set to be cast out from the clans, unless his own clan, the Wolf Clan, decides he is innocent. When the Wolf Clan arrives, the Leader says that his mother announced him 'Clanless'. This has never happened before, but as Torak has no clan to decide his innocence, he becomes an outcast. He leaves the clans with Wolf. Renn repeatedly tries to help him, but Torak won't let her as if anyone sees Torak they are supposed to kill him. Torak attempts to cut out the Soul Eater mark from his chest and, thinking it has worked, he goes back to the Raven Camp and watches them. Saeunn, the Raven Clan's mage, says that there is a Soul Eater among them, so Torak flees, knowing that he is the Soul Eater of which she speaks. While in hiding, he suffers from a kind of madness called soul sickness, and attackes Wolf with fire. Meanwhile, Renn and Bale meet up and decide to find Torak and prove his innocence, even though in doing so they are breaking clan law. Renn sends help to Torak in the form of two ravens (named Rip and Rek by Torak). While Torak is recovering his reason, Seshru the Viper Mage, a Soul Eater, uses her powers to draw him to her so as to control him (he is a Spirit Walker and therefore controlling him would supply her with even greater power). Seshru is revealed to be Renn's mother. Meanwhile, Renn realizes that a giant flood is coming and encourages Torak to spread the word and therefore prove his innocence. Torak therefore tells Fin-Kedinn, and the clans flee. Torak gets into a fight with a boy from the Boar Clan, but then climbs up a tree to escape the coming flood. The Boar Clan boy hears the water coming and tries to climb the tree too, but he cannot reach the first branch so Torak jumps down to help him. Torak then finds he cannot climb back up the tree, and he and Wolf are swept away by the water. When he wakes up, all the clans are there, and when Seshru appears Torak shows the clans that destroying him will not help them in their struggle against the Soul Eaters, and they accept him back. Bale uses Renn's bow to kill Seshru, and she dies with the fire opal in hand and thus both die as one. fr:Le Banni (Chroniques des temps obscurs)"
72,Ratha and Thistle-chaser,fantasy," Thistle-chaser, the daughter of the Named clan leader, Ratha, has no recollection of her past or true name. Due to this, she lives alone on a coastline, befriending the seamares that reside there, and goes by 'Newt'. In her dreams, a creature she knows as the Dreambiter, which bites her foreleg, often makes her go into seizures and fits of panic. A clan cat, Thakur comes across Thistle-chaser while searching for water. He befriends her and starts having her swim in a lagoon which acts as therapy for her shriveled leg. When he reports of the water and seamares that live there, Ratha decides to move the clan and their livestock to the coast, going as far as to capture the seamares. Thistle-chaser is upset by this and frees them, making Ratha, who refuses to believe that Thistle-chaser is her daughter, order the clan to attack Thistle-chaser if she tries anything like it again. Thistle-chaser eventually learns that Ratha is her mother and realizes that the Dreambiter would be destroyed if Ratha was killed. Ratha bit Thistle-chaser when she was young, which was the cause of the Dreambiter. Thistle-chaser decides to attack Ratha and the two get into a fight. When Ratha gets her foot stuck between two rocks, Mishanti, an Un-named cub which Ratha was going to abandon, gets caught in the fray and tries to defend Ratha. In her fury, Thistle-chaser goes after him, only to be stopped by Ratha, who calls her names and brings her back to reality. Thakur and Fessran, another clan cat, arrive soon and together with Thistle-chaser bring Ratha and Mishanti to safety. Through these events, Ratha is able to admit that Thistle-chaser is her daughter and Thistle-chaser is able to forgive her mother. Mishanti, being an orphan and lacking any proof that he is sentient, is taken in by Thistle-chaser who will raise him and bring out his hidden sentience. The Named are a group of prehistoric sentient large cats; they call themselves a clan and are led by the female Ratha. The clan is herds creatures and uses them as livestock, and also has fire, which they call Red Tongue, which they use for heat and protection. They are recognizable by their cleanliness and their eyes, which have a distinct look of knowingness and brightness. They can love and feel for other members of the clan and have morals and their own language. The group has Herders, who keep herd the livestock and protect them, and Firekeepers, who tend to the Red Tongue. The Un-named are the opposite; non-sentient large cats who live in no distinct group, but band together sometimes for attacks. They are dirty and their eyes are distinct and unaware of what happens. They rely on instinct and have no language. A cat can be born Unnamed, but it is due to related linage with members of the Named. Unlike the Named, they do not herd animals, but hunt instead.The Unnamed are Sabre Tooth Cats. Red Tongue is fire used by The Named. Seamare is the term used for water creatures with protruding teeth, a horse-like head and neck, and a blubbery body. They have webbed feet, and live in a herd.The Seamare are Paleoparadoxia."
73,Peter Pan,fantasy," Although the character appeared previously in Barrie's book The Little White Bird, the play and the novel based on it contain the portion of the Peter Pan mythos that is best known. The two versions differ in some details of the story, but have much in common. In both versions Peter makes night-time calls on Kensington, London, listening in on Mrs. Mary Darling's bedtime stories by the open window. One night Peter is spotted and, while trying to escape, he loses his shadow. On returning to claim it, Peter wakes Mary's daughter, Wendy Darling. Wendy succeeds in re-attaching his shadow to him, and Peter learns that she knows lots of bedtime stories. He invites her to Neverland to be a mother to his gang, the Lost Boys, children who were lost in Kensington Gardens. Wendy agrees, and her brothers John and Michael go along. Their magical flight to Neverland is followed by many adventures. The children are blown out of the air by a cannon and Wendy is nearly killed by the Lost Boy Tootles. Peter and the Lost Boys build a little house for Wendy to live in while she recuperates (a structure that, to this day, is called a Wendy House.) Soon John and Michael adopt the ways of the Lost Boys. Peter welcomes Wendy to his underground home, and she immediately assumes the role of mother figure. Peter takes the Darlings on several adventures, the first truly dangerous one occurring at Mermaids' Lagoon. At Mermaids' Lagoon, Peter and the Lost Boys save the princess Tiger Lily and become involved in a battle with the pirates, including the evil Captain Hook. Peter is wounded when Hook claws him. He believes he will die, stranded on a rock when the tide is rising, but he views death as ""an awfully big adventure"". Luckily, a bird allows him to use her nest as a boat, and Peter sails home. Because he has saved Tiger Lily, the Indians are devoted to him, guarding his home from the next imminent pirate attack. Meanwhile, Wendy begins to fall in love with Peter, at least as a child, and asks Peter what kind of feelings he has for her. Peter says that he is like her faithful son. One day while telling stories to the Lost Boys and her brothers, John and Michael, Wendy recalls about her parents and then decides to take them back and return to England. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to Peter, Wendy and the boys are captured by Captain Hook, who also tries to poison Peter's medicine while the boy is asleep. When Peter awakes, he learns from the fairy Tinker Bell that Wendy has been kidnapped – in an effort to please Wendy, he goes to drink his medicine. Tink does not have time to warn him of the poison, and instead drinks it herself, causing her near death. Tink tells him she could be saved if children believed in fairies. In one of the play's most famous moments, Peter turns to the audience watching the play and begs those who believe in fairies to clap their hands. At this there is usually an explosion of handclapping from the audience, and Tinker Bell is saved. Peter heads to the ship. On the way, he encounters the ticking crocodile; Peter decides to copy the tick, so any animals will recognise it and leave him unharmed. He does not realise that he is still ticking as he boards the ship, where Hook cowers, mistaking him for the crocodile. While the pirates are searching for the croc, Peter sneaks into the cabin to steal the keys and frees the Lost Boys. When the pirates investigate a noise in the cabin, Peter defeats them. When he finally reveals himself, he and Hook fall to the climactic battle, which Peter easily wins. He kicks Hook into the jaws of the waiting crocodile, and Hook dies with the satisfaction that Peter had kicked him off the ship, which Hook considers ""bad form"". Then Peter takes control of the ship, and sails the seas back to London. In the end, Wendy decides that her place is at home, much to the joy of her heartsick mother. Wendy then brings all the boys but Peter back to London. Before Wendy and her brothers arrive at their house, Peter flies ahead, to try and bar the window so Wendy will think her mother has forgotten her. But when he learns of Mrs Darling's distress, he bitterly leaves the window open and flies away. Peter returns briefly, and he meets Mrs. Darling, who has agreed to adopt the Lost Boys. She offers to adopt Peter as well, but Peter refuses, afraid they will ""catch him and make him a man"". It is hinted that Mary Darling knew Peter when she was a girl, because she is left slightly changed when Peter leaves. Peter promises to return for Wendy every spring. The end of the play finds Wendy looking out through the window and saying into space, ""You won't forget to come for me, Peter? Please, please don't forget""."
74,Swords in the Mist,fantasy," The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords in the Mist the duo confronts the mystically concentrated hate of the citizens of Lankhmar (""The Cloud of Hate""), go their separate ways during a period of hard times, the Mouser becoming an enforcement thug and Fafhrd an acolyte of a newly introduced religion (""Lean Times in Lankhmar""), recuperate after their reconciliation with a sea voyage (""Their Mistress, the Sea""), invade the boudoir of an absent sea deity (""While the Sea-King's Away""), traverse a passage to another world (""The Wrong Branch""), and there undertake a bizarre quest to the Castle Mist (""Adept's Gambit"")."
75,Pennterra,fantasy," Quaker colonists founded a colony on a planet they dubbed Pennterra. They soon discovered the planet was already inhabited, by a species they dub the ""hrossa"". They put forward a number of conditions to the colonists, saying that they must not leave the valley they landed in, must not use machinery, and should keep their population about the same as the time they landed, approximately 600. The Quakers agree with these restrictions, and set up a camp called Swarthmore, in the valley they call the Delaware. The hrossa, being capable of transferring their emotions onto others, often tapped into the Quakers as they held meeting for worship. This leaves a number of them much more tolerant of the hrossa conditions. Several, including George Quinlan and his son Danny, become more closely acquainted with the hrossa. At times they visit a nearby village called Lake-Between-Falls and develop a friendship with one of its elders, KliUrrh. However, as the story begins a second colony ship arrives from Earth. These colonists, called the Sixers, are more skeptical of the hrossa request, and enter talks with the Quakers. For the most part, the Sixers are adamant about colonizing the planet with machinery, putting their own survival above the hrossa. However, two members of the crew, Maggie and Byron, along with Quakers Katy and George visit Lake-Between-Falls hoping for permission for a coastal town of their own. However, KliUrrh denies the request, saying that they must follow the same conditions given to the Quaker colonists. He explains that their god TuwukhKawan will never allow this, and they would be destroyed if they violate the request. Many of the Quakers take this as representing a legitimate threat, but the Sixers do not see it as serious and believe the Quakers have simply been compromised by their contact with the hrossa. With permission from the hrossa, a team of Quakers come to Lake-Between-Falls to learn more about the hrossa and the planet in general, in order to get an idea of the threat to the Sixers. The team consists of George, Swarthmore's de facto leader; his son, Danny, who is capable with the hross language; Katy, a psychologist; Alice, an exobiologist; and Bob, an amateur anthropologist. Initially, they make little progress, as the sexuality of the hross is transmitted to the team, making it difficult to do any work. This is especially problematic for Danny, who at age 12 has begun puberty. In separate encounters, Alice has sex with George, and Katy with Bob. It soon becomes apparent that free-for-all sex might be necessary to keep them at work, but George initially resists due to his son's presence. Another day, Katy allows Danny to dry hump her, to George's unease. However, he gives in and soon the five have regular intercourse with one another, including, after some time, Danny with his father. This makes it easier for the team to work. Among their discoveries, they find out that the hermaphroditic hrossa typically give birth to only one child in a lifetime, and few die early. The occasional second birth makes up for those that do, and the population thus tends to remain stable. Going on a hunt with the hrossa, they learn that they hunt by transmitting a message of ""hunger"", which brings animals sacrificially to them. The hrossa have sexual intercourse with the animals, and then beat them with a club. The Quakers also tell many stories to the hrossa, hoping to trigger a response and learn more about the planet's natives. Finally, at Thanksgiving, the team leaves back to Swarthmore, and explain their findings to the town. The team goes back for another month, but have little more success. Returning to camp, Danny has difficulty readjusting. Missing the hrossa form of sexuality, he finds himself having sex with sheep, and on a couple of occasions, the sympathetic Katy. Danny, being the only person his age in the town besides a kid named Jack, finds life back home insufferable. When Jack is offered to stay for some time in the new Sixer village, Danny is adamant about going there as well. There Danny stays with Maggie, and goes to school in a town that allows him many more peers. He has trouble adjusting at first. He finds himself enjoying the skills behind basketball, but put off by the competition. Initially, his best friend in the colony is Maggie, who finds he acts much more mature than his age. Eventually, however, he meets a kid named Joel, who is highly interested in the hross. The two grow close, to the point he is comfortable discussing his sexual quirks. Joel describes him as a ""human hross"", which puts off Danny at first. However, he soon realizes the term fits his sexuality, but relabels himself a ""Quaker hross"". One morning Danny leaves for a walk and notices footprints. Following them, he eventually comes to find Caddie, a classmate of his, alone and naked. She seems scared, which Danny does not understand, and when he turns to let her change, she knocks him out with a rock. Danny later learns that her father was abusing her, and reports him to a psychiatrist. Soon afterwards, she is adopted by another family in the settlement, and appears to show improvement. Meanwhile, problems start to impact Sixertown. Many of the pregnant women who arrived on the planet had miscarriages or sudden abortions. A hross came to visit Danny, and told him he must leave the town soon, as the ""destruction"" was coming soon to Sixertown. The captain of the town allowed anyone who felt the threat was credible could relocate to Swarthmore. However, only Danny, Joel, Jack, Caddie and Byron took the threat seriously, and were joined by Maggie in the trip to the Quaker town. However, the lander crashed and the five became stranded. They soon found water near the crash site, but their food reserves were limited, and it soon became clear that hoping for help to come to the lander might not be their best option. Maggie stayed with the lander to take care of Joel, as the others head out hoping to make it back on foot, or be found otherwise by someone. After some point, food reserves became scarce, and Caddie grew weak. Danny found that some animals would approach him, which he could have sex with and kill as the hrossa did. Byron decided that he should remain to take care of Caddie, and that Jack and Danny should continue on as before. Exhausted, they became famished at times only to have more animals offering themselves for sacrifice. After some time, they found their way back to the Delaware River, some 50 miles from camp, and were discovered. While Caddie died, the other five survived back to camp. In the meantime, the problem at the Sixer camp became more serious, with none of their food sources able to reproduce. Eventually they gave in to the original hross conditions, and moved into the southern portion of the Delaware River. However, the population there was left permanently infertile due to their exposure to the compound that caused all their problems. It is also realized that those going through physical development on the planet could more easily integrate the planet's ecosystem than those who did not. This leaves the future situation of the human settlement unclear, as it suggests that those born on Pennterra could survive outside a human colony."
76,Divine Hammer,fantasy," The book begins with Nusendaran (Andras's master), and Andras going into a village to sacrifice a black sheep. However, the Divine Hammer ambush them, and they manage to kill Nusendaran, and are aiming for him next. Suddenly, Andras is teleported away by Fistandantilus. They watch Nusendaran burnt at the stake, so Andras desires revenge against the Kingpriest and his forces. Just then, Fistandantilus offers Andras a choice to become his student. He agrees. Meanwhile, Cathan and the Divine Hammer are eradicating a temple to Chemosh hidden in an abandoned lighthouse. They get onto little longboats, and quickly arrive at the lighthouse. They manage to kill the guards, and work their way down to the main worship hall. The Deathmaster, head priest, aims for Cathan with foul magic, however, Damid, a friend of Cathan's, pushes Cathan away and dies instead. Tithian manages to kill the Deathmaster by throwing his sword at him. After the battle, they receive orders to return to Istar. Cathan also promises to knight Tithian. After returning to Istar, Cathan learns he is to be the escort for the new envoy from the Order of High Sorcery, Leciane, since the previous one died. On the way to the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar to bring her to the palace, the magical olive trees guarding the entrance manage to ""persuade"" Cathan off the path, causing him to lose his memories of that day. Fortunately, Leciane rescues him, and then he takes her to her quarters in the palace. Later, they head for a tournament held by Cathan's sister. On the way, Leciane is told by the head mage, Vincil, to charm Cathan, however she refuses and lies. Andras is taken to a ruined building a distance away from Istar, which is where he spends his life until one day, when he knows he's ready to attack the Kingpriest. He manages to summon many quasits (abyssal imps), and sends them to attack the Divine Hammer during the tournament. The Divine Hammer are very weak from the tournament, so many die very quickly, including the Grand Marshal. The Kingpriest attempts to banish the quasito, however a spell of Andras's prevents the godly magic from working. Leciane manages to persuade the Kingpriest to let her try, and she succeeds. They go after Andras, and manage to find many quasito around a ruined building. They deduce that their attacker must live there, so they storm the building. Andras is captured, and to be burnt at the stake. However, just before he is burnt, the Conclave rescues him so that they can levy their punishment on him first. Ironically, Fistandantilus steals Andras away from the Conclave. Andras becomes a fetch with the aid of Fistandantilus, and he takes on the form of the Patriarch of Seldjuk. Leciane manages to persuade the Kingpriest and the head of the Conclave to have a moot, however, Andras, as the Patriarch of Seldjuk, stabs the Kingpriest. The Kingpriest's guards think the Patriarch was mind controlled by the wizards, and so they begin to fight. The wizards quickly realize they can't hold out, so begin to attempt to teleport away. They arrive back in the tower, and find out that Vincil has an axe embedded in his back, and is dying. Since Vincil was Leciane's lover, she kisses him, then he dies. The Kingpriest makes Cathan the new Grand Marshal. Faced with the prospect of war with the Kingpriest, the wizards knew that they would lose. Therefore they begin to move all magical artifacts and books, to Wayreth, since the populace isn't ready for artifacts of mass destruction. They also disenchanted those that couldn't be moved. Since Fistandantilus is a renegade, he decides to aid the Kingpriest, sending him some magical seeds that can clear a path through the groves that protect the towers. The Kingpriest distributes the seeds to all of his allies attacking the towers. In Daltigoth, the general decides to attack early. Since the tower wasn't emptied, the Order of High Sorcery decides to destroy the tower, which levels the city. The Kingpriest receives word of this, however doesn't tell any of his other allies attacking the towers, believing it is an attempt by ""forces of evil"" to sway his holy crusade. Leciane comes to warn Cathan, who is going to attack the tower in Losarcum with the rest of the Divine Hammer. Unfortunately, she is interrupted before she manages to tell Cathan everything. When Cathan and the Divine Hammer attack the tower, Cathan notices that there seems to be a surge of magic in the apex, and quickly realizes the tower will explode. He and Tithian attempt to escape, but are confused by the twisting passages. Leciane finds them and teleports them away, but she takes a fatal wound in the process. Cathan becomes unconscious during the spell, and wakes up days later. By then, Leciane is already dead. Cathan parts with Tithian when they reach Istar, and Cathan decides that what the Kingpriest is doing is evil. He embarrasses the Kingpriest in front of all the courtiers, then leaves Istar. He is never seen again. Andras begins to feel guilty about what he has done, and wishes to undo it. However, Fistandantilus decides that payment is due then, so takes over Andras's mind. Andras, under Fistandantilus's spell, curses the tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas, so that no one will be allowed into the tower until the master of the past and present claims the tower. Fistandantilus threatens the Kingpriest's, by becoming his enemy if he doesn't let Fistandantilus join the Kingpriest's court. The Kingpriest is forced to agree."
77,The Black Cauldron,fantasy," The story opens at Caer Dallben where Dallben the enchanter has raised the orphan Taran from infancy. It is early autumn more than a year after the defeat of Arawn's army and death of his warlord the Horned King (The Book of Three).The Black Cauldron, pp. 5, 15. Prince Gwydion has called allies to a council hosted by Dallben. Evidently the Black Cauldron is active, generating more of the undead ""Cauldron-Born"" army from men who are disappearing. Gwydion proposes to capture it. King Morgant will lead an attack Annuvin after a small party led by Gwydion has parted company to enter by a mountain pass known only to Coll.Decades earlier, an owl and a stag had taken the farmer Coll by that route to recover his pig, the oracular Hen Wen. See the picture book Coll and His White Pig, also published in 1965. At that point three will remain behind with pack animals: Adaon, the adult son of chief bard Taliesin; Taran; and Ellidyr ""Prince of Pen-Llarcau"", who is arrogant, wiry, strong, and threadbare. Ellidyr disdains Taran for his place on the farm and his unknown parentage. Taran envies Ellidyr for his noble birth, despite Dallben's counsel that that youngest son of a minor king has only ""his name and his sword"".The Black Cauldron, p. 22. Both are dismayed to share a role with no chance for glory. Beside the feud between young men, all goes smoothly until Gwydion's company finds that the cauldron has disappeared! That company rejoins the rearguard in haste because the Hunstmen of Annuvin have been deployed. Meanwhile, the uninvited Princess Eilonwy and man/beast Gurgi have caught up with the quest from behind. Gwydion and Coll are scattered but, thanks to Doli of the Fair Folk, all others find refuge underground in a Fair Folk waypost maintained by Gwystyl. From Gwystyl and his pet crow Kaw, they learn that the cauldron has been stolen by the three witches Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch, who reside in the bleak Marshes of Morva.According to maps by Evaline Ness, the witches live on the opposite fringe of the Marshes, near the south coast of the southwestern tip of Prydain, far from people and Fair Folk. • Ness prepared one map of Prydain for each of the five novels. The last, best-informed, and largest scale map illustrates book five, The High King (1968), and the expanded edition of The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain (1999). When they depart the waypost, Ellidyr rides southward, determined to retrieve the Cauldron heroically. For his safety with the Huntsmen abroad, Adaon leads the others in pursuit: Taran, Eilonwy, Gurgi, Doli, and the wandering bard Fflewddur Fflam. When they are attacked and scattered, Adaon is mortally wounded and Taran inherits his brooch, whose gift and burden is prophetic dreams and visions. With its guidance, he gathers and leads all but Doli toward the Marshes. From the fringe he both leads his small party through and leads a pursuing band of Huntsmen to their deaths. Orddu and her sisters explain that Arawn once paid them a great price to borrow the cauldron; they retrieved it only when overdue. In their way, they welcome friends of ""Little Dallben""""The Foundling"" tells of Dallben, raised from infancy to manhood by the witches. The Foundling and Other Tales from Prydain. but they decline even to reveal it. Eventually and reluctantly, Taran barters the brooch of Adaon. Now the companions try to destroy ""their"" cauldron but learn from the witches that can be achieved only by a living person who knowingly and willingly climbs in to die. Instead they resolve to take it home to Dallben. They lose the heavy and cumbersome cauldron at the ford of river Tevyn. Ellidyr discovers the impasse and offers to help if they will credit him for the whole enterprise. Taran agrees, yet Ellidyr rides off with the cauldron alone when they have freed it. Soon the companions meet the army of Morgant, who welcomes them into his camp. Unfortunately, he is a traitor. He shows Ellidyr beaten and bound, and the cauldron waiting to generate his own undead legion. He will spare them if Taran will enter personal service. Later, Doli arrives invisibly and cuts everyone's bonds. Ellidyr determines to rush the cauldron and make the sacrifice himself. Although wounded, he is able to force himself into the opening and it shatters. Gwydion, King Smoit, and his army defeat Morgant in battle. The story closes as Taran, Eilonwy, and Gurgi take leave of Gwydion at the verge of Caer Dallben."
78,A Crown of Swords,fantasy," A Crown of Swords has three primary plotlines: * Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, prepares to attack the Forsaken Sammael in Illian while enjoying life with his friend, Min Farshaw, and attempting to quell the rebellion by nobles in Cairhien, during which Padan Fain severely injures him with the Shadar Logoth dagger. After recovering, Rand, accompanied by Asha'man, attacks Illian and defeats Sammael in a duel of the One Power in Shadar Logoth, where Sammael is destroyed by Mashadar. Rand then takes the crown of Illian, formerly the Laurel Crown, but now called the Crown of Swords. * Egwene al'Vere and Siuan Sanche attempt to manipulate the Aes Sedai rebels in Salidar to move against Elaida's Aes Sedai in the White Tower in Tar Valon. After Egwene and Siuan investigate Siuan's suspicions about Myrelle, Egwene exploits the transfer of Lan's Warder bond from Moiraine to Myrelle in order to force Myrelle and Nisao to swear fealty to her. * In the city of Ebou Dar in Altara, Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al'Meara, Aviendha, and Mat Cauthon search for a ter'angreal, the Bowl of the Winds, to break the unnatural heat brought on by the Dark One's manipulation of climate. They find it and enlist the help of the Kin and the Atha'an Miere, or Sea Folk. They also confront a Gholam. Mat is left behind after searching for Olver, and is caught in the fighting as the Seanchan invade Ebou Dar."
79,Confessor,fantasy," Richard Rahl, leader of the D'Haran Empire, has been captured by an Imperial Order commander, who lets Richard (under the guise of Ruben Rybnik) live if he will be the point man for the commander's Ja'La dh Jin team. During Richard’s imprisonment, he is warned by a cloaked specter that he is now a player of the Boxes of Orden. Sister Ulicia is also visited by this figure, and is told that the time to open the Boxes has been reset to one year from the first day of winter-the day that Nicci put the Boxes into play under Richard's name. The witch woman Six steals the third box of Orden from Nicci and Zedd. Zedd discovers that The Wizard's Keep is being affected by the contamination of the chimes, and places a spell to protect it from future damage. Jagang's excavations in the Azrith Plains reveal catacombs under the People's Palace, which provide a secret entryway. Three Sisters of the Dark enter, killing Ann and capturing Nicci, while soldiers are sent into the catacombs to prepare an attack. The Sisters of the Dark discover what they believe to be the original Book of Counted Shadows. Upon a surprise visit from Jagang, who is sizing up the members of rival Ja'La teams, Richard disguises himself by covering the faces and bodies of his teammates and himself with intimidating symbols and parts of spell-forms. His team defeats Jagang's team in the tournament final; but Jagang, refusing to accept his team's loss, announces the win is invalid. This unfair decision causes a riot in the camp, during which Richard and Nicci escape and Kahlan is 'rescued' by Samuel. Richard and Nicci (helped by Adie) enter to the Palace through the catacombs, where Nathan and Cara help them wipe out the Order forces hiding there. Rachel is lured into Tamarang by Violet, who has drawn a spell around her that sets 'ghostie gobblies' to destroy her. On her way, she is given a piece of chalk by Shota in disguise as Rachel's mother, and with this transfers the spell to Violet. Rachel then restores Richard's gift. She is again visited by the disguised Shota, who sends her to deliver a message with Gratch. Zedd is captured by Six, and discovers that the witch woman is in league with Jagang and has helped attack D'Haran forces in the Old World. Richard is warned by Nicci that he must not reveal his love for Kahlan to her, lest Kahlan's lost memories alone fail to be restored, much like Richard, in the first book of the series, could not be told before finding himself the way to love a Confessor untouched by her power. Richard then helps priestess Jillian give the Order's army terrible nightmares. Jagang is given particularly nasty dreams, mostly involving Nicci. Richard is taught many spells and spell-forms by Nicci, and then sends himself to the Underworld, using Denna as a spirit guide, and retrieves everyone's memories of Kahlan, but is attacked by the pursuing beast earlier sent against him, and attempts to escape by releasing Additive Magic into the Underworld, whence he is projected into a gathering of the Mud People. He is greeted by Rachel, who, with Gratch's help, had told the Mud People to hold a gathering to summon him. At the Palace, Nathan assumes Richard is dead and accepts Jagang's terms of surrender, which include surrendering Nicci to Jagang and giving the Order's magicians access to the Garden of Life in order to open the boxes. Samuel attempts to rape Kahlan; and during the struggle, she touches the Sword of Truth, which restores her memory of being a Confessor (though none of her other memories), and releases her power to take control of him. Samuel reveals he is an agent for Six, and that Richard and Kahlan were once married; then dies when she refuses to forgive his attempt against her. Richard meets Kahlan on the way to Tamarang; but refuses to answer her questions of their marriage, for fear of contaminating the spell upon her, and gives her Spirit in compensation. Six has imprisoned Zedd, Tom, and Rikka, and appears as Richard and Kahlan arrive in Tamarang to rescue them. Shota arrives as Six is about to recapture them, in disguise as Six's mother. Shota kills Six and then Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd fly back to the People's Palace on the red dragon Six had enslaved; now revealed to be Scarlet's son Gregory, whom Richard saved as an egg. At the Palace, Richard allows Jagang and his Sisters of the Dark to open the boxes of Orden. During the ritual, Jagang goes unguarded to Nicci, who locks a Rada'Han around his neck, rendering him powerless, and eventually kills him unceremoniously to prevent his martyrdom. In the Garden of Life, the Sisters of the Dark discover the correct box and open it; but find a flaw in their success. Richard explains that all of the Books of Counted Shadows were false keys to the boxes; whereas if they had the true key, they would still fail by reason of malicious intent. Immediately, the Sisters are drawn into the Underworld. Richard explains that the true key to the Magic of Orden is the Sword of Truth. Kahlan tells Richard she loves him, revealing that her emotions have contaminated her chances of regaining memory. Richard uses the Sword to reveal the correct box and then to capture its magic. Now in command of life and death, he uses the magic to send the followers of the Order to a new world, devoid of magic; then sends his half-sister Jennsen, her compatriots the Bandakar, and her suitor Tom after them. Richard also uses Orden to repair the damage caused by the chimes, and to send Chainfire to the new world he has created, ensuring the complete removal of magic from that world, and removing all its inhabitants' memories of their previous world. As Richard goes to close the opening between worlds, he fears Kahlan is lost to him; but she replies that she was protected from this loss because she had fallen in love with him on her own, much as he had with her at the beginning of the series. An epilogue shows Tom and Jennsen expecting a child, who will carry the Rahl name, and shows the emigrants gradually forgetting Richard and everything from their previous world. The book ends with the marriage of Cara and General Meiffert. It is revealed that the Sisters of the Light have moved into the Wizard's Keep, where along with Zedd, they can continue to teach young wizards. Chase (now a Warden of the Keep) and his family have also moved into the Keep, as have Adie and Friedrich, who are now a mated pair. Under Zedd's questions, Richard admits taking Panis Rahl's spell from red fruit, so that it is no longer poison, and to bringing back the Temple of the Winds to the world of the living. After Cara and Benjamin's wedding, the devotion bells begin to ring; but Richard prevents the people kneeling, arguing that they are no longer his subjects."
80,The Woods Out Back,fantasy," Gary Leger works at a plastic manufacturing factory. Every day he has the same boring routine. Gary constantly refers to The Hobbit as his favorite book and reads it all the time. In the blueberry patch that is near his house through a steadily receding woodline, he sees a pixie holding a small bow before he passes out on the ground. He then awakes in the mystical forest of Tir'na'nog in the presence of the leprechaun Mickey McMickey. After being seduced by a nymph (Leshiye), he is rescued by the elf Kelsenellenelvial Gil-Ravardy (Kelsey for short), who takes Gary on a quest to re-forge the spear of the legendary hero Cedric Donigarten. There are however two problems. The first is that to re-forge the spear, they require the services of the finest blacksmith alive, the dwarf Geno Hammerthrower. To solve this problem they capture him in his home. The second problem is that it must be forged in the flames of a dragon. On their way to visit the dragon Robert they are captured by the witch Ceridwen. Gary and company, through a plan developed by Gary, escape Ynis Gwydrin with the help of a giant named Tommy and make it to the lair of Robert. Kelsey (or rather an image of Kelsey conjured by Mickey) defeats Robert in single combat and convinces him to reforge the spear. Upon returning home, Gary is assured of the reality of all the events in the book when he sees that his book is still in the script of Mickey McMickey."
81,Abner & Me,fantasy," The book opens up to Joe ""Stosh"" Stoshack's Social Studies teacher informing him about his D in that class. Later that day, Joe has a baseball game, and is about to be the winning run when the 3rd baseman, Joe's enemy Bobby Fuller, holds him back by grabbing his belt, causing him to be out in a play at the plate."
82,Destined,fantasy," The book is told from no less than 11 points of view, respectively Zoey, Stevie Rae, Rephaim, Kalona, Stark, Aurox, Neferet, Shaunee, Lenobia, Dragon, and Erik. In the prologue, Zoey is seen with Stark. She notices Darkness on him and commands Spirit to send the Darkness away. Zoey is unsure about the death of her mother. Meanwhile, Aurox kills a human person. The white bull comes and tells Aurox and Neferet that he can create chaos. Neferet plans to use Aurox to kill and the white bull and rule the world as the Goddess of Vampyres. Zoey and her friends return to school where she blindsides Neferet by initiating a Skype meeting with Duantia, the leader of the High Council. She gives her version of the events in Awakened and puts Neferet in the uncomfortable position of having to accept Rephaim at the House of Night. Next, she asks for a second House of Night under the Tulsa depot, but although Stevie Rae is accepted as the High Priestess of all the red fledglings by the Council, Duantia doesn't give a full answer regarding the request. In the garden, Rephaim is visited by three of his Raven Mocker brothers, sent to him by Kalona to use his supposed misery and consequent bitterness to spy for him and even turn to Darkness. They are stunned to see him in his human form. Their meeting is interrupted by Aurox who kills one of them and proceeds to attack Rephaim. He is stopped by Stevie Rae, but not before she, Rephaim and Zoey see him half-shift into a bull. Neferet appears and diffuses the conflict, calling Aurox her gift from the Goddess. Erik hears the commotion, but he falls under the Tracker compulsion before he can actually intervene. He finds Shaylin, a blind girl, and she makes him stumble over the traditional lines, so that when he finally marks her and she reveals a red Mark he blames himself. Shaylin recovers her eyesight and gains her first gift, the very rare True Sight, which allows a person to 'see' others in colors. Confused, Erik decides to take her to Stevie Rae. At the school, Zoey receives a visit from her grandmother, who confirms Linda's death and leaves for a seven-day period of mourning. Zoey runs off to mourn and Aurox finds her. He offers her a Kleenex, just like Heath used to. At the bus, Erik presents them with the girl. Neferet appears and Shaylin pretends to faint, later telling them she had the general color of dead fish eyes. The next day at school, Rephaim feels the call of his father and calls Zoey to stand witness to the meeting. Kalona appears on the wall and offers them a truce against Neferet, which Zoey reluctantly accepts. As the discussion takes place during her first class, with Neferet, she skips it altogether. When she returns to the school building for her second period she finds out that the Council has sent Thanatos, a vampyre Priestess with an affinity for Death, to report on the situation at the House of Night, much to Neferet's displeasure. As Thanatos too can see the threads of Darkness, Zoey finds her sympathetic and eventually reveals her concerns about Neferet and her mother's death. Thanatos offers to perform a reveal ritual at the place of Linda's death on the fifth day of mourning. Back at the depot, Zoey and her friends sit down to discuss the events. Rephaim finds unexpected support in Shaunee, who empathizes with him because of her father, but this leads to a break between the Twins, as Erin doesn't understand why Shaunee feels so strongly about this. Two more prophecies, one from Kramisha and one from Aphrodite, warn of Rephaim's death at the reveal ritual, probably at the hand of Dragon, so Thanatos asks him to remain at the House of Night, which he doesn't obey. While wondering in the tunnels, Shaunee spots Kalona, waiting for his son. Shaunee gives him her iPhone so that he can contact him until she can get him another phone. Neferet finds out about the reveal ritual and sends Aurox to intervene. During the ritual, he charges out in his bull form but is stopped by Dragon, who sacrifices himself to save Rephaim. The ritual continues anyway; Zoey and her grandmother discover the real circumstances of Linda's murder. Dragon's death is what closes up the ritual, but Rephaim is seriously injured as well. Kalona arrives on the scene - having been called by Stevie Rae - and he expresses regret, asking Nyx not to kill Rephaim for his own mistakes. The request is granted, Rephaim regains consciousness. Thanatos then proceeds to Dragon and guides him to the Otherworld. A gateway is opened and everybody can see him happily reunited with Anastasia. Thanatos decides to become the new High Priestess of the Tulsa House of Night. Much to everybody's surprise, Kalona pledges himself as Thanatos's Warrior. As they leave the scene, Zoey and her friends see a vision of Nyx, who reminds them that the fight will continue."
83,Wild Energy,fantasy," The heroine, Lana, lives in a synthetic city and works as a pixel. Every evening millions of people, working as pixels, perform a 20-minute light show for the other citizens. They wear colourful robes and during each sunset they receive commands in the form of music through headphones. Each command means a certain type of movement, so that by moving/dancing, different parts of their clothes are exposed to the sun rays, thus reflecting the sunlight in different colours. All this can be seen on a huge screen in the synthetic city, where all citizens watch it. After every light show all pixels receive a packet of energy which allows them to survive until their next dose. If a pixel makes a mistake during a show, so that the picture appears distorted, they are punished by not receiving an energy packet. If they haven't stored anything from their previous doses, they will not survive the next day. Lana's best friend, Eve, makes such a mistake and is not given a packet. Lana does her best to save her but doesn't succeed. In the synthetic city there is a rumour spread that some people don't need these packets of synthetic energy and can live on their own, by the energy their hearts and spirits produce. These people are chased by the energy police: they are slaughtered in the factory (a mystic place about which little is known) and their energy is used for maintaining the lives of the synthetics by turning it into energy packets. Lana is determined to find the Wild people and try to live by her own energy (the phrase ""I'll find it or die"" becomes the motto of the book and Ruslana's project). She finds them in a place called Overground. Overground is located on the roofs of abandoned or ruined skyscrapers, high, where no one can reach the Wild. They have created their own world and culture, possess wings as means of travelling, and have their own language, similar to that of birds. Lana stays with them for a while and finds friends. Lana turns out to be a powerful generator of wild energy, for which she is chased by the energy police. Being in Overground she exposes also her friends to danger. One day, while she is away, the energy police, in search for her, attack the Wild from Overground. When Lana returns, her home is devastated. She sets off to find and destroy the factory where her friends have most probably been taken. On her way she meets the people-wolves, living in the woods, where she stays and learns how to summon the forces of nature, which will help her destroy the factory. During those rituals she is helped by a small drum, given her as a present by an old man from the synthetic city. She gathers a group of devoted young wild ""wolves"" and they go to fight with the factory and its devastating energy. The first attempt is not successful, the young wolves die, but she manages to enter the factory and is caught by the factory's host, who calls himself ""The Heart of The Factory"". Lana becomes his hostage and while she is there, it is implied that the factory's host might be Lana's father. Lana manages to escape and saves her Overground friends. They go back to the people-wolves, where they gather a team for a second time. Another fight with the factory follows. The characters' weapons are different musical or noise producing instruments, including drums and trembitas. The factory's power is deafening silence. All sounds, all rhythm is lost when approaching the factory. Its anti-rhythm is usually stronger than any other life energy or rhythm. Lana's task is to defeat this anti-rhythm and, by summoning lightning, which must simultaneously strike all the weakest parts of the factory to destroy it. The friends manage to do this and enter the factory, but once inside, the factory's anti-rhythm almost kills them. They survive because ""The Heart of The Factory"" helps them by taking their place in the dangerous anti-rhythm zone. He dies and Lana and her friends remain safe and sound. The Wild go back to their homes and Lana becomes the new ""Heart of the Factory""."
84,The Drawing of the Dark,fantasy," The year is 1529, and Brian Duffy, a world-weary Irish mercenary soldier is hired in Venice by the mysterious Aurelianus to go to Vienna and work as a bouncer at the Zimmerman Inn, former monastery and current brewery of the famous Herzwesten beer. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turkish army under Sultan Suleiman I has achieved its most advanced position yet in their march into Europe, and is poised to capture Vienna. With the Turkish army travels Ibrahim, a magician who intends to use horrific spells as part of the siege. Duffy spent some time in Vienna years ago, and as he returns, he is haunted by memories of past events, and now he also finds himself having visions of mythical creatures and being ambushed by shadowy people and demonic monsters. Upon arriving in Vienna, Duffy meets Epiphany, a former girlfriend from his previous time in Vienna, and her father, Gustav Vogel, who is working on a painting he calls ""The Death of St. Michael the Archangel"". It seems the painting is never quite complete, and the elder Vogel is continuously adding additional detail to the work, causing it to gradually become more and more obscure. Then Duffy finds himself not only drafted into the city's defensive army, but also led by Aurelianus down mystical paths from the surprisingly old Herzwesten brewery to even more ancient caves beneath the city, in search of defenses against the approaching army and clues to Duffy's very nature. As it turns out, Aurelianus knows more about Duffy and his past than Duffy himself knows, and his real purpose in hiring him is to protect the hidden Fisher King, secret spiritual leader of the western world, and to defend him and the West against the Turkish advance in the siege of Vienna. And the real reason that it's critical that Vienna not be captured by the Turks is because it's the site of the Herzwesten brewery. The Herzwesten light and bock beers are famous throughout Europe, but the dark beer, produced only every eight hundredth year, has supernatural properties and must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Meanwhile, others are drawn to Vienna in anticipation of significant events. The so-called ""dark birds"", magically sensitive individuals from far flung corners of the world, arrive in the city hoping for a sip of the Herzwesten dark, and a small group of middle-aged Vikings have improbably sailed their ship up the Danube River to Vienna, having sensed the possibility that the prophesied final battle of Ragnarok will take place here."
85,Honoured Enemy,fantasy," Hartraft's Marauders, a band of kingdom raiders have come across a Tsurani patrol at a garrison overrun by moredhel (dark elves). This forces them to band together to survive."
86,The Sea Devil's Eye,fantasy," Iakhovas has caused more destruction than any force since the Time of Troubles, but his true objective has been a mystery until now."
87,Amber and Blood,fantasy," Mina, who had last appeared to Rhys as an adult woman, seems to retain no knowledge of her prior actions or that she is a god. She tells the monk that she has run away from home and needs his help to go back. When asked where she lived, the young Mina replies that she came from Godshome, the holy valley of the gods first introduced in Dragons of Spring Dawning. After Mina fully recovers from near drowning, she insists that she needs a gift for her mother Goldmoon who will be waiting at Godshome and whose forgiveness Mina seeks. A small sailboat appears on the beach, although Mina seems unaware she willed it into existence. Rhys, Nightshade, Atta and Mina sail to the newly raised Tower of High Sorcery, which sits on its own island in the sea. As the group sail closer, they realize the island is swarming with undead creatures known as the Beloved. They all swarm around Mina and her escorts, eager for her touch and her blessings. However, the six-year-old Mina is terrified of the Beloved. The group makes its way inside the tower where the Beloved cannot follow. Also in the tower are two black robed wizards who are trapped by the Beloved. Mina is still intent on finding a gift for her mother and travels to the chamber where holy artifacts of the gods were stored before the Cataclysm, the so-called Hall of Sacrilege. She chooses two items from within: a necklace from the altar of Takhisis and a crystal pyramid from the altar of Paladine. When Mina and her friends try to leave the tower, she is beset by the Beloved again. Faced with the evil she has created, Mina transforms into a vengeful, fire-breathing giant and destroys the Beloved in a rage, only to transform into a child again with seemingly no memory of what happened. Meanwhile, the evil gods Nuitari and Chemosh try to claim the artifacts in the Hall of Sacrilege for themselves, but the High God, creator of all the gods of Krynn, intervenes and sweeps away the Hall so none of the artifacts can be used in the fight between the lower gods. Rhys and his companions sail to the port city of Flotsam, from where they will continue to try to find Godshome on foot. On the road, both the god of death Chemosh and goddess of the sea Zeboim try to sway Mina to their cause, but she does not remember or trust either of them. Frustrated, they depart. Mina asks to see the map Nightshade has made for their journey and is upset by how far they still have to go before reaching Solace, where Rhys hopes to speak with monks of Majere. Using her godly powers, she speeds up the pace of their walking and the group reaches the city of Solace, far across the continent, in under a day. In Solace, Rhys and the others stay at the Inn of the Last Home where the owner Laura dotes on the young Mina, bathing her and brushing her hair just as Goldmoon used to do. Rhys finds the temple to his god Majere among the other temples in town and seeks out the Abbott of Majere. Temple Row, where the holy places are all located, is in an uproar as rival followers fought in the streets and attempted to set fire to one another's temples. Rhys speaks to the Abbott about finding Godshome. The Abbott counsels him that legend has it that Godshome is located near Neraka, formerly the seat of Takhisis's armies. However, it isn't clear whether mortals can find Godshome without the guidance of a god. Rhys thinks Valthonis, the mortal form of the former god Paladine, could help locate Godshome but the Abbott reminds him that after the War of Souls, Mina had vowed to kill Valthonis. Rhys leaves unsure about whether to seek out the fallen god. The next day, Rhys meets Mina, Nightshade and Atta at the temple of Majere, from where they will journey to Neraka. However, another riot breaks out among the religious temples, carefully orchestrated by the followers of Chemosh. Ausric Krell, the former death knight who has been restored to human form, uses the confusion to try to kill Rhys and Nightshade and to abduct Mina for his god. He almost succeeds but Rhys, along with the help of the red-robed archmage Jenna, manages to kill him. Mina, meanwhile, has fled, with Nightshade and Atta in pursuit. Nightshade and Atta catch up with Mina and head north, continuing toward Neraka. Rhys helps deal with the wounded and explains to the sheriff Gerard what has happened with Mina. Gerard's leg is wounded and as he is treated in the Inn of the Last Home, Rhys waits for word about Mina. Soon enough, he hears they travelled north and follows. Nightshade and Mina travel until it gets dark, at which point the dark forest seems frightening to them both. However, a light in the distance leads them to a lone house in the woods. A kind woman welcomes them inside and feeds them gingerbread, after which they both fall asleep. Rhys comes upon the same house and finds the woman gently rocking Mina, looking very sad. She invites Rhys in as well and he recognizes her as the goddess of healing Mishakal, Mina's godly mother. She again counsels Rhys to seek out Valthonis, for Paladine was Mina's father, and that he alone can reveal Godshome to her. Mishakal tells Rhys that Mina will have to choose whether to side with the gods of Good or the gods of Evil. The next day, Rhys, Nightshade, Atta and Mina awake to find themselves in Neraka, surrounded by remnants of the destroyed temple of Takhisis. Meanwhile Galdar, Mina's former minotaur lieutenant, escorts Valthonis into the valley of Neraka. When Mina sees Galdar, she changes into the 17-year-old woman who had led armies during the War of Souls and embraces her minotaur friend. However, she seems to believe the two of them are still fighting in that war. She then remembers the death of Takhisis and tries to kill Valthonis with Galdar's sword. He and Rhys explain that if she commits this murder, she will tip the balance in favour of the Evil gods and destroy Krynn. She is enraged and shifts her form again, this time to the person who had led Chemosh's followers. She beats Galdar and Rhys with godly force and kills Nightshade. At the kender's death, she becomes the little girl with pigtails again and feels remorse for his death. Finally, she accepts who she is and agrees to travel with Valthonis to Godshome. Mina and Valthonis find Godshome after following a steep trail through the mountains. Mina's feet hurt and she doesn't understand why she feels pain despite being a god. She accepts that though the gods ""play at being mortal"" none truly know what mortality is like except for her. The two finally enter enter the bowl-shaped valley that houses pillars to all the gods of Good, Evil and Balance. She holds the two artifacts she retrieved from the Hall of Sacrilege in each hand as the gods wait for her to decide. She drops both items and proclaims that she is ""equal parts of darkness and of light"" and refuses to join any side, that she will side with any one side as she sees fit. Her decision maintains the balance of power and she leaves the world to join the gods as the Goddess of Tears, coming to the aid of the hopeless and the grieving."
88,The Will of the Empress,fantasy," The primary plot of the novel is the struggle of Sandrilene fa Toren, a half-Namornese noblewoman, against her cousin, Empress Berenene of Namorn; Sandry had inherited the vast Namornese estate of Landreg from her mother, who had accustomed her to receiving a yearly income from the estate while rarely visiting it. Empress Berenene, who wants to keep the revenue from the estate within Namorn, repeatedly invites Sandry to visit her court in Dancruan while levying increasing taxes from her estate. When Sandry realizes that the Empress has been threatening Namorn's amicable trade with Emelan, she decides to accept the Empress's invitation and use the visit to visit her estate and Namornese family. Sandry's uncle, Duke Vedris of Emelan, asks her childhood companions Daja Kisubo, Trisana Chandler and Briar Moss who have just come back from their travels to accompany her in lieu of a company of guards, a gesture both discourteous and ineffectual. Though their friendship with Sandry and with each other has become strained since their return to Summersea after years of world-traveling, Daja, Tris and Briar agree, and the four travel to Namorn together. While there, they learn of the Western Namornese custom of bride kidnapping, which entails a man kidnapping a prospective bride and holding her captive until she agrees to sign a wedding contract. While the so-called ""horse's rump"" wedding is usually only used to bypass reluctant families or out of a sense of adventure, some marriages are forced, and the custom remains legal. Empress Berenene has never attempted to illegalize it despite having twice been kidnapped, because she believes her ability to escape both times means that only weak women would allow themselves to be forced into a marriage they don't want. When he hears of this, Briar comments that the Empress's captors are unlikely to have used the same level of violence as a common woman might encounter. Because of their power and renown, Empress Berenene decides that Namorn stands to benefit if she persuades all four mages to remain in her court, in addition to Sandry and the funds from her Namornese estate. She offers Tris a position as a court mage with a large salary and benefits including access to the Imperial library, attempting to appeal to her merchant upbringing and her known bibliophily. She appeals to Briar by inviting him to her fantastic private greenhouses, offering him unlimited access as her personal gardener and showing him public favor, including an earldom. To entice Sandry to remain in court, she sends an entourage of four young nobles to escort her to Clehamat Landreg, including Finlach fer Hurich and Jakuben fer Pennun, who openly compete in their courtship of Sandry. Daja develops a relationship with Berenene's beautiful seamstress, Rizuka fa Dalach, which is encouraged by the Empress in order to keep Daja in Namorn. When Fin, frustrated by Sandry's reluctance, kidnaps her with the aid of his uncle, locking her in a magic-proof box in the Julih Tunnel, a secret part of the castle, Sandry reconnects her magical bond with Briar while he is at a dance with Caidy, calling out to him for help. Briar and Tris succeed in extracting Sandry, and they decide to leave Namorn despite Empress Berenene's efforts to dissuade them and the incarceration of Fin and his uncle, until then the head of the Dancruan Mages' Society. The Empress then orders Ishabal Ladyhammer, her most powerful war-mage, to prevent the four from leaving to save face, and Ishabal casts a curse on Tris, causing her to fall down the stairs and fracture most of her bones. The injured Tris insists that Sandry, Daja and Briar travel ahead of her, and she catch up to them when she recovers. Halfway to the border with Anderran Sandry is again kidnapped, this time by Pershan fer Roth, whose proposal of marriage she had refused shortly before leaving Dancruan, and Quenaill Shieldsman, a powerful court mage and Shan's rival for the Empress's attentions. Quen lays a powerful sleeping spell on Briar and Daja and magic-dampening spells on Sandry. Briar uses smelling salts he calls ""Wake the Dead"" to wake up Daja and they start to go after Sandry when they are confronted by Quenaill. Briar and Daja engage Quenaill, draining him until the spells on Sandry wear off. When Sandry wakes up, she is covered in charms to prevent her from using her magic. These charms are tied to her with ribbons and she is thus able to free herself. Sandry then uses thread magic to unravel her captors' clothing and cocoon them in the resulting threads. After meeting up with Daja and Briar again, the party continue to the border. Aware that the empress may attempt to stop them, they send ahead their traveling companions and send their guards home. At the border, they are confronted by Ishabal Ladyhammer. She raises a barrier against them, but Sandry uses the circle of thread that binds them together to combine their powers. Tris, who had been travelling behind, magically accesses the ring from a distance, allowing the four mages to use their amplified power to shatter the border barrier. The thread circle disappears and all four now have a circular lump in their hand. Having invested much of her power in the barrier, Ishabal is magically drained when she leaves without attempting to stop Tris from crossing. The original title of the novel, The Circle Reforged, refers to the reforging of the four protagonists' friendship. In the year of the Circle of Magic quartet, Sandry, Tris, Daja and Briar live together and develop a strong friendship that manifests itself magically as a bond that allows them to communicate telepathically and causes their magical abilities to cross over from one to another. In The Circle Opens the four are separated, although their bond is clarified when they refer to each other as siblings or foster-siblings. Sandry remains in Summersea, living with her uncle in the Ducal Citadel, while Briar, Daja and Tris travel the world with their respective teachers. When they return, Daja after two years and Tris and Briar after four, the experiences they had while apart lead them to close their mental connection to each other, a representation of the distancing of their relationship. Sandry, feeling betrayed first by having been left behind, then by the telepathic wall, reciprocates in the same manner. Throughout the first few chapters of the book the four mages fight frequently. Briar and Tris are invited by Daja to live in her new house, with Tris taking over housekeeping duties to assuage what she perceives as charity from her wealthier friends. Daja withholds the extent of her hurt at not being able to return to Winding Circle as well as her experiences with the arsonist Ben Ladradun during Cold Fire. Tris lies about her newly learned ability to scry on the wind because of the ill treatment she experienced from other mages who found out. Briar refuses to discuss his experiences of war in Gyongxe and his resulting post-traumatic stress disorder with anyone but Rosethorn, his teacher and traveling companion. Sandry and Daja are the first to reopen their mental connection, ending their estrangement. Later in the book, Briar and Tris open their connection with each other. Some time later, Sandry telepathically calls out to Tris and Briar when she's trapped in a box, nearly paralyzed by spells that bind her magic and her own fear of the dark. Eventually, their telepathic bond is completely restored, though they maintain their ability to screen their minds when they choose to. The bond, and the circle of thread that represents it, serve them in a joint magical working to breach the barrier on the Namorn-Anderran border during the book's climactic battle; once complete, Sandry finds the thread gone, and each of them is left with a scar on their right palm resembling the four lumps in the thread that had represented their magical identities. In the post-climactic scene, each of the four reveals the secret that they had been keeping, and Briar introduces his sisters to a mental recreation of Discipline Cottage, their former home, which he had created and used when he wanted to feel safe. The Will of the Empress is the first book set in Emelan to involve the protagonists in a romantic sub-plot. While previous books alluded to romantic relationships between the adult characters, none of the four main characters were shown to have romantic interests. Sandry's visit to Namorn is punctuated by Empress Berenene's desire to see her marry a Namornese nobleman. She is courted by Jak and Fin, whose advances she rebuffs while maintaining a friendly acquaintance with them. She develops feeling for Shan and responds to his less public courtship, but when she learns that he's sexually involved with Empress Berenene, she doesn't pursue the relationship and rejects his offer of marriage. After Fin's incarceration Jak learns that Sandry is leaving Namorn and visits her before she leaves, when she tells him that she enjoys his company much more as a friend than as a suitor. Daja meets Rizu, the Empress's Mistress of Wardrobe, developing an infatuation with her and commenting on her beauty and flirtatiousness. Her feelings remain unacknowledged until Rizu makes the first move and kisses her, resulting in awkwardness on the part of Sandry, who telepathically senses the kiss and is flustered by the rush of Daja's emotions while dancing with Fin. Daja and Rizu's relationship quickly becomes sexual, and is discovered by Briar when he finds Rizu in Daja's bedroom one morning naked. During their short relationship, Daja develops intense feelings for Rizu and shows a desire for her to be accepted as part of her siblings' inner circle, while they are reluctant. When Daja prepares to leave Namorn she asks Rizu to return to Emelan with her and is heartbroken by her refusal; during the ride to the border she's shown to carry a small portrait of Rizu in her pouch. After Daja leaves, Berenene comments on Rizu's low spirits since her lover's departure. Briar, coping with an unspecified war in the country of Yanjing, tends to romance as many women as he can, mainly Caidy. He reassures the others that he takes droughtwort, a plant that renders the eater temporarily sterile. He has vivid nightmares of the war in Gyongxe when he sleeps alone."
89,The Warlord of Mars,fantasy," John Carter discovers that a First Born knows the secret of the Temple of the Sun and he and the Holy Hekkador Matai Shang want to rescue the Holy Thern's daughter, who is imprisoned with Dejah Thoris and another Barsoomian princess, Thuvia of Ptarth. John Carter follows them in the hope of liberating his beloved wife. His antagonists flee to the north, taking the three women along. Thereafter John Carter follows them untiring into the north polar regions where he discovers more fantastic creatures and ancient, mysterious Martian races. These he overcomes in battle, and is later proclaimed ""Warlord of Barsoom"" by his allies. This book is the last to feature Tars Tarkas, John Carter's ally, in any major role; indeed, the green Barsoomians of whom Tars Tarkas is an oligarch disappear altogether from most of the later novels."
90,Fire on the Water,fantasy," Having informed the King of Sommerlund about the fate of the Kai Order, Lone Wolf is instructed to make a journey to their ally, the neighbouring country of Durenor, to retrieve the legendary Sommerswerd, which is Sommerlund’s only hope at repelling Darklord Zagarna’s massive invasion. Lone Wolf is given the Seal of Hammerdal and sets off on a ship bound for Durenor, but when a traitor on board sabotages the ship, he is forced to make his way on foot to Durenor despite the enemies that await him around every corner."
91,Legacy,fantasy," Legacy is the immediate sequel to Beguilement in the Sharing Knife series. It follows the pairing of farmer Fawn and lakewalker maverick Dag, after their marriage at Fawn's home in the previous volume. Where they, unencumbered by minor opposition, were married in accord with the customs of both groups. They travel to Dag's clan's home camp at Hickory Lake, where they find the expected prejudices against miscegenation between Farmers and Lakewalkers. Dag is called on to lead a group of Lakewalker patrollers against an advanced malice. Dag decides that confronting the malice is more important than trying to free several Lakewalkers who have been entranced in the mud-man-making process by which the malice produces its slaves. After Dag's group has killed the malice, Dag, himself, also becomes entranced. Fawn carries her heroine role through by thinking out a way to revive him, and the rest of the Lakewalkers. Neither achievement carries enough weight with Dag's brother and mother to make them relent in their efforts to break this pairing. These two carry the role of villains, but they are drawn so that the reasons for their awkward quirks are clear. Although their marriage, and Fawn's potential value to the camp are accepted by some of the Lakewalkers, The Dag-and-Fawn combination raises enough awkward precedents that they are about to be voted into exile when Dag subverts the process, stating that he intends to leave his home community in any case. Dag and Fawn then take as many portable assets as they can, and set out in chosen exile towards the southeast. There, Dag guesses he may be able to confirm his ideas about the near kinship of Farmers to Lakewalkers, and to find ways to combine their efforts toward the eradication of malices. These themes unfold in the next pair of books."
92,Conan the Swordsman,fantasy," The seven short stories collected as Conan the Swordsman are set at various points of Conan's career, from his youth as a raider in the north to his maturity as a general of the kingdom of Aquilonia. The two associated non-fiction pieces by de Camp are on the Conan saga in general and the derivation of the names used by Howard in constructing the fictional ""Hyborian Age"" setting of the Conan stories. Chronologically, the seven stories supplement the tales in the twelve volume Lancer/Ace Conan series, falling into the period covered by Conan through Conan the Warrior."
93,The Goblin Mirror,fantasy," An ill-wind disturbs the peaceful land of Maggiar and the wizard, Karloy requests leave to consult with his sister, Ysabel over the mountain. Lord Stani instructs his two eldest sons, Bogdan and Tamas, and his master huntsman, Nikolai to accompany Karloy. After a difficult trip over the mountain, they approach a tower, Krukczy Straz where they hope to find shelter, but are ambushed by goblins. The goblins have overrun the tower, killing all inside. Tamas is separated from the others but is rescued by Ela, a witchling who takes him to her mistress, Ysabel in a neighboring tower, Tajny Straz. But this tower has also been raided by goblins and all are killed, including Ysabel. Ela goes into the tower and retrieves Ysabel's shard from the goblin mirror. Then Azdra'ik, the goblin lord appears, but does not threaten them. He tells Tamas he must take the mirror fragment from Ela because it is too powerful for her to use. Ela takes Tamas to the next tower at the ruins of what was Hasel. Here Ela looks into the mirror but is overwhelmed by the goblin queen staring back at her. Tamas is startled when the queen looks at him and calls him a wizard, which, he assures Ela he is not. Ela is drawn to the goblin queen at the lake and Tamas tries to follow her, but gets lost. Azdra'ik finds him and together they search for Ela. Back in Maggiar, Yuri, Tamas's younger brother has been left behind to look after Tamas's dog, Zadny. But Zadny, pining for his master, escapes his pen and tracks Tamas's scent over the mountain with Yuri in pursuit. Near Krukczy Straz, Yuri finds an injured Nikolai, and together they follow Zadny, still on Tamas's trail, to Tajny Straz. But by the time they get there, Tamas has already left. Then Karloy arrives and reveals to Nikolai the story of the succession of witches, their bargains with the goblin queen, and the mirror fragment. Karloy realizes that Ela must have the shard and says he must take it from her before she misuses it. The three then head for Hasel to find Ela. At Hasel, Zadny continues his pursuit of Tamas, and realising that Ela and Tamas must be together, they all follow Zadny. Azdra'ik and Tamas find Ela near the goblin lake. Much of the surrounding landscape has been devastated by marauding goblin armies and a darkness spreads from the lake. The goblin queen is expanding her sphere of influence. Ela is tempted to try the mirror again, but Tamas, slowly becoming aware of the wizard in him, convinces her otherwise. Yuri, running ahead in pursuit of Zadny, stumbles into the goblin queen's hall. There he finds the goblin mirror and sees Bogdan in it. Bogdan, under the queen's spell, pulls Yuri into the mirror. Tamas arrives and tries to persuade Bogdan to free Yuri, but Bogdan challenges Tamas and in his rage is accidentally killed. Tamas and Ela confront the goblin queen. The shard returns to the mirror but with their combined magic they seize control of it and banish the goblin queen and her armies. Karloy and Nikolai arrive but the darkness is already receding. Karloy reveals that Azdra'ik used goblin magic to ""father"" Ytresse with Ylena and that Ela is Azdra'ik's great grand-daughter and Karoly's niece. Tamas, now in control of Azdra'ik, elects to let the goblin lords remain on earth."
94,Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley,fantasy," A coming of age story set in the mythical ""golden age"" of Spain. The titular character is excluded from the inheritance of the family castle on the grounds that given his expertise with sword and mandolin he should be able to win his own estate and bride. Setting out to achieve his place in the world, Rodriguez quickly acquires a Sancho Panza-like servant, Morano, and goes on to experience a series of adventures en route to his goal."
95,The Lake of Tears,fantasy," In The Forests of Silence, the topaz had been retrieved by Lief, Barda, and Jasmine. They continue on their way to the Lake of Tears, to retrieve the ruby. They learn that the land surrounding the Lake of Tears is controlled by the evil sorceress Thaegan, who has 13 monster children. As the companions travel through the countryside they rescue a man named Manus from the Shadow Lord's servants, Grey Guards. Manus is from the city of Raladin. 100 years ago, Thaegan put a spell on Raladin that caused them and all of their offspring to never be able to speak. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine also learn that Thaegan put a spell on the city of D'Or and turned it into the Lake of Tears. The companions, with Manus, escape from the Grey Guards only to be captured by Jin and Jod, two of Thaegan's children. They eventually defeat Jin and Jod and journey to the city of Raladin, where Manus hopes to find his people. Upon arrival, they find the city empty. Only when the Ralad people hear the companions, they come out of hiding. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine tell the Ralads that they must journey to the Lake of Tears, despite the Ralads pleas, but they do not tell them they are going in quest of one of the gems of the Belt of Deltora. Manus agrees to be their guide. When they get to the Lake of Tears, the monster Soldeen attacks them. Soldeen is a giant fish-like creature who is very deadly and has the ability to speak. Using the power of the topaz, Lief persuades Soldeen to give them the ruby. As Soldeen agrees, Thaegan appears and threatens to kill them all. The ruby flies out of Lief's hand and into the depths of the Lake as Thaegan uses her magic to harm them. Just as Thaegan is about to kill them all, Jasmine's bird Kree comes and kills Thaegan by drawing blood. All of Thaegan's spells are broken: the Ralads can now speak and the Lake of Tears turns back into the city of D'Or. Soldeen is a man named Nanion and gives the three companions the gem and wishes them well on their quest. The Belt now holds the topaz and ruby and now they journey towards the City of the Rats."
96,Alchemy,fantasy," Roland, a 7th former who has been caught shoplifting, is given an unusual assignment: to spy on a mysterious girl in his class who is studying alchemy. However, an enemy from the boy's past wants the girl's power and is using him for information. Roland eventually finds out that he is not unlike Jess Ferret and her abilities, but gets them both into a situation which endangers their lives. Alchemy has similar themes to two other books by Mahy, The Changeover and The Haunting. The book won the senior fiction section of the 2003 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards."
97,Conan the Great,fantasy," After a victorious war against the invading armies of Nemedia and Ophir, King Conan of Aquilonia rescues from the battlefield the dwarf Delvyn, jester to the enemy kings. Delvyn, however, is not the fool he appears, but the secret driving force behind the invasion. The ambitious devotee of an evil demon, he seeks a king powerful enough to spread its worship throughout the world. In the wake of his former patrons' failure to conquer Aquilonia, he believes his new employer both strong enough to unite the Hyborian nations and pliant enough to establish his universal cult. Skillfully insinuating himself into the king's confidence, the scheming jester plays on Conan's concerns over the resurgent strength of the kingdom of Koth under its new ruler, the mysterious, amoral and ruthless Prince Armiro. In a contest for empry, Aquilonia extends its conquests to the east while Koth drives west, crushing the realms between them as they approach their inevitable clash. The king is estranged from former friends and supporters and dependant on his new hanger-on as Delvyn feeds Conan's vainglory. Only the revelation that Armiro is his own son by his former lover, Queen Yasmala of Khoraja, stops Conan at the brink and spurs him to shake the jester's baleful influence."
98,Gate of Ivrel,fantasy," The backward land of Andur-Kursh is split into many cantons, each with ambitious clans vying for power. The loyalty of a warrior of the nobility is given to one's clan. Vanye is one of them, if only the barely tolerated bastard son of the ruler of one of these cantons, the result of a mere night's amusement by a Nhi lord with a captive from an enemy clan, the Chya. One day, he is brought before his father, after killing one legitimate half-brother and maiming the other with his sword, in a baiting that had gone awry. After turning down honorable suicide, he is made ilin, an exiled, clanless warrior akin to the Japanese ronin. Hunted by his half-brothers' vengeful maternal clan, Vanye is forced to enter Morgaine's vale, a place anyone less desperate would have shunned. By chance, he releases Morgaine, a beautiful woman of distinctive appearance, from the Gate there. Vanye recognizes her as a legend from the past. It is winter and Vanye is weary, cold and hungry. So when Morgaine provides food and shelter, he accepts them. Only then does he remember that she, alone of all women, has been given lord-right; she can and does claim a year of service from him in return for accepting her hospitality. Morgaine is determined to complete the mission she and four companions had set out on a century before: to close the master Gate at Ivrel. She explains to Vanye that the Gates that dot the land are passageways through both space and time. One hundred men and women had been sent by the Union Science Bureau on a one-way mission to close all the Gates, lest humanity suffer the fate of another species. The qujal had found the Gates and tapped their powers to rule an interstellar empire of lesser beings, including humans. But one reckless fool had succumbed to temptation and gone back in time, triggering a cataclysm that had wrecked qujal civilization. After many years, the last five Union survivors had reached this world and recruited allies to attack Thiye Thiye's-son, the master of the Gate of Ivrel. But they were betrayed and nearly their entire army was swallowed up by the Gate; only Morgaine and a few soldiers, bringing up the rear, survived. Fleeing before the enemy, she had been forced to seek refuge in a lesser Gate, there to wait in stasis until freed. She seeks aid from Clan Leth, a former staunch ally, but finds it greatly changed and its lord, Kasedre, half mad. His chief counselor, Chya Liell, comes to them late at night and warns them to leave before harm befalls them, killing a guard to give them no choice in the matter. Privately, Liell tries to persuade Vanye to desert Morgaine. Morgaine and Vanye travel into neighboring Chya lands and find themselves uneasy guests of Chya Roh, Vanye's cousin. After questioning and some rest, they are let go, only to be attacked by Thiye's men. Morgaine is forced to draw her sword, Changeling, which turns out to be more than it seems; it can tap the power of the Gates to send its victims elsewhere. The two manage to escape, but run into a Nhi band. Rather than chance another fight, the wounded Morgaine orders Vanye to bargain for shelter and protection. She is set free, though without her sword, while he is forced to remain behind by his brother Erij, now the lord of Nhi. Erij wants his brother to help him rule, knowing him to be trustworthy and bound to him by blood. When persuasion and threats alike prove useless, he draws Changeling, not knowing its powers. Vanye takes advantage of the ensuing mayhem to retrieve the dropped sword and escape to rejoin Morgaine. Roh had warned him not to trust Liell, that rumors said his body had been taken over by another. Morgaine confirms that such a thing can be done using a Gate. She knows that Thiye has prolonged his life by this method and suspects her century-old betrayer also still lives. The aged Liell's attempt to suborn Vanye suddenly takes on a more sinister aspect. After another clash with Nhi warriors, Morgaine is personally escorted by Roh out of his domain. Fearing her intentions, he knocks out a too-trusting Vanye when Morgaine is asleep and ties them both up, but his timing could not have been worse. Liell and his men easily capture all three. He takes Vanye to a Gate, intent on switching bodies. The unease of Liell's men in the unnerving presence of the Gate allows Vanye to escape. By chance, the horse he steals is carrying Changeling. But Vanye's luck still runs bad; he is caught again, this time by his brother Erij. Erij, emboldened by his possession of Changeling and for a variety of reasons, allows himself to be persuaded to go to Ivrel. After driving off Liell's men with the deadly sword, they reach Thiye's fortress. They wait for night before Erij uses Changeling to force their way in. Vanye then takes his brother by surprise and retakes Morgaine's sword. In mortal danger, Erij has no choice, but to guard his back. Inside, they come upon the aged Thiye, but before they can react, the old man is killed by Roh. Roh informs them that Morgaine is loose in the fortress and that Liell is dead. He warns them to flee while they still can, then follows his own advice. Vanye finds Morgaine and surrenders the sword to her, much to Erij's dismay. She confirms Vanye's suspicion; Roh's body now houses Liell's mind. Fearing Morgaine, Roh/Liell had sabotaged the Gate controls so that he could escape to another world, leaving his enemies trapped here. But Morgaine believes that he left too much of a safety margin before the Gates on this world close forever and that she can follow him. She departs in all haste. Erij surprisingly bids his brother to go after her and Vanye gratefully complies. Together, Morgaine and Vanye pass through the Gate."
99,The Solitaire Mystery,fantasy," The book follows two seemingly separate stories: A 12-year-old boy, Hans-Thomas, and his father are driving through Europe on a journey to locate and bring home the boy's estranged mother. Whilst on their journey, a strange little bearded man gives Hans-Thomas a magnifying glass, saying mystically: ""You'll need it!"". Not long afterwards, Hans-Thomas and his father stop in a roadside café where Hans-Thomas gets a giant sticky bun from a kind baker to eat on his journey. To Hans-Thomas's great surprise, hidden inside the sticky bun is a tiny book, with writing so small it cannot be read with the naked eye. Hans-Thomas begins to read the tiny book using his new magnifying glass, and the story then alternates between Hans-Thomas' journey and the story in the sticky bun book. The sticky bun book tells the story of an old baker whose grandfather gave him a drink of a wonderful liquid he called Rainbow Fizz (Rainbow Soda in the American edition). It came from an island which the grandfather had been shipwrecked on as a young man. On the island lived an old sailor called Frode, and fifty-three other people; the fifty three other people did not have names though, they referred to themselves as the numbers on playing cards (52 cards plus a Joker). The Ace of Hearts was particularly enchanting, and Frode had quite a crush on her, even though she was forever ""losing herself"". The two stories of Hans Thomas's journey, and the events in the sticky bun book start to overlap: :The cards in the sticky bun book take part in a game, where each says a sentence, and Frode tries to interpret its bizarre meaning. But sentences such as ""the inner box unpacks the outer at the same time as the outer box unpacks the inner"" and ""destiny is a snake so hungry it devours itself"" seem devoid of meaning for Frode. However, the cards' predictions as told in the tiny book begin to reveal details about Hans Thomas's own plight to find his mother. It occurs to Hans Thomas that his mother bears a striking resemblance in her personality to the Ace of Hearts in that she 'loses herself' (disappears) for long periods. Also, throughout Hans Thomas's journey, he has seen the same odd little bearded man following him about (the man who gave him the magnifying glass which proved so useful to read the sticky bun book). But whenever Hans Thomas approaches the little man, he seems to dash away and vanish. The baffling thing for Hans Thomas is that he stopped for the cake merely by chance, and chose to eat a sticky bun by chance - how is it possible that a tiny book from a random bun is telling him things about his own life?"
100,Night Whispers,fantasy," As Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Dovepaw continue to seek answers to the mysterious prophecy that binds them, they learn that another cat may play an essential role in defeating the Dark Forest."
101,Princess Academy,fantasy," Miri is a fourteen-year-old girl from Mount Eskel, an isolated territory of Danland, who has never been allowed to work with the rest of the villagers in the quarry that keeps the community alive. Because of this, she feels like an outcast in the community and cut off from the culture focused around a shared working life in the quarry. As the quarry can barely cut enough linder to feed the villagers, Miri keeps on trying to help. In spite of her feelings of isolation, Miri is very close to her father and her sister, Marda, and she shares a close friendship with a boy named Peder. Unexpectedly, a messenger from the king arrives along with the usual traders from the lowlands. The messenger announces that the nation's priests have informed the nation that, despite the lack of education provided for the villagers and the prejudice that exists between the mountain villagers and the lowlanders, the crown prince's future bride will come from Mount Eskel. A ""princess academy"" is established near the village to train the potential princesses, with compulsory attendance for every girl aged between twelve and seventeen. At the end of the year, the prince will visit the academy and choose the girl to be the next princess. Miri and the other girls attend the academy, and although they struggle to appease the strict teacher, Tutor Olana, Miri excels at learning and commerce. All the girls are eager to please the prince and win a comfortable life for themselves and their families, and Miri's new knowledge of commerce helps the village prosper in trading with the lowlanders. After a disagreement, the girls use their knowledge of diplomacy to negotiate a more bearable living arrangement with Tutor Olana, including weekly visits home. Miri also begins to explore the mechanics of quarry-speech, a form of unspoken communication used only in the quarry, and makes friends with some of the other girls, including Britta, a lowlander who had recently moved to Mount Eskel. Miri's excellence in her studies and her willingness to help her peers despite bitter competition eventually earn her the title of academy princess and the privilege of having the first dance with the prince. At the academy ball, the prince dances with every girl except Britta, who is ill, and generally acts very distant. Later in the evening, he takes a walk with Miri and shows a more human side. However, he leaves without choosing a bride. Once the prince has left, promising to return in the spring to announce his choice, bandits attack the academy hoping to hold the new princess hostage. Miri must use her new knowledge of quarry speech to call for help from the village. At first no one seems to hear her, but eventually she is able to contact Peder. The villagers come to the academy through the blizzard, and the girls escape from the bandits and spend the winter at home with their families. In the spring, the prince returns and chooses to marry Britta - whom he has known since childhood - and names Mount Eskel an official province. The book ends with Peder and Miri admitting their feelings toward each other."
102,Foxmask,fantasy," When Thorvald turns 18, his mother Margaret decides to tell her son the truth about his father's identity. Upon learning that Somerled was his father, Thorvald decided to find the man. With his friend Sam's help, Thorvald begins his journey. Unbeknown to the two boys, Creidhe stows aboard. When the boat becomes damaged, they land on the lost isle that Somerled had landed on 18 years earlier, the Isle of Storms. To the south of the Isle of Storms resided the Unspoken, who, while capable of powerful magic, are in turmoil without their leader or seer - The one whom they call Foxmask. The Ruler of the Isle of Storms had had a daughter and a son. The daughter had been given to Foxmask’s people 7 years previously so she could give birth to a child who would become Foxmask. To save this heir from the maiming the Unspoken deemed necessary, the Ruler's son stole the child and hid it on the Isle of Clouds, an island to the west of the Isle of Storms. The Unspoken levied a curse on the Ruler’s people whereby no new children would be allowed to survive past the second morning of their life. This curse was to stay in effect until Foxmask was returned to his people or a new Seer was born to take his place."
103,High Deryni,fantasy," The novel takes place in June and July 1121, less than a year after the coronation of fourteen-year-old King Kelson Haldane. At the beginning of the book, Kelson is leading an army into the Duchy of Corwyn to put down the rebellion of an anti-Deryni zealot named Warin de Grey. Warin is allied with Archbishop Edmund Loris, the leader of the Holy Church. Together, they have taken the ducal capital of Coroth and are openly revolting against the Crown due to Kelson's support of his Deryni advisors, Duke Alaric Morgan and Monsignor Duncan McLain. Morgan and Duncan decide to go to Dhassa and seek to reconcile with the six bishops who have refused to follow Loris' anti-Deryni crusade. Meanwhile, in the border city of Cardosa, King Wencit Furstán, the powerful Deryni ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Torenth, seeks to convince Earl Bran Coris of Marley to betray Kelson and assist in an invasion of Gwynedd. Morgan and Duncan arrive at Dhassa and surrender to the bishops, who are led by Thomas Cardiel and Denis Arilan. After hearing their explanations for their previous actions, the two bishops agree to forgive them. On the border, Earl Sean Lord Derry, Morgan's aide, is captured by Bran Coris. Coris has decided to betray Kelson and immediately turns Derry over Wencit, who begins to torture Derry both physically and mentally. Morgan senses Derry's pain when he attempts to contact him, but his use of his powers is detected by Bishop Arilan, who reveals that he is also Deryni. Kelson's army then marches to Coroth, where the young king confronts the rebellious archbishop. Unwilling to assault Coroth directly, Morgan sneaks into the castle with Kelson, Duncan, and Bishop Cardiel. Once inside, they confront Warin and force him to re-evaluate his beliefs by comparing his mysterious healing ability to Morgan's. Having acquired Warin's aid, Kelson confronts Loris the following morning and takes the archbishop into custody. With the internal ecclesiastical schism now resolved, Kelson's army prepares to face the invading Torenthi army. Kelson learns of Bran Coris' treason, but is nonetheless determined to win the war. The Gwyneddan army arrives at the border shortly thereafter and is greeted by grisly evidence of Bran Coris' betrayal. During a parley session with the Torenthi invaders, Morgan manages to rescue Derry, but the army is unable to prevent the murder of fifty Gwyneddan soldiers, including Duncan's father. Wencit challenges Kelson to a Duel Arcane, a form of ritualized magical combat in which each king will be accompanied by three companions. Before Kelson can agree, Arilan suddenly requests a brief period to consider the challenge. A short time later, Arilan reveals that he is not only Deryni, but also a member of the Camberian Council, a secretive group of highly-trained Deryni who oversee and regulate such duels. In issuing his challenge, Wencit claims that he has secured the cooperation of the Council, but Arilan has heard nothing of such a request. He establishes a Transfer Portal in Kelson's tent and travels to the Council's chambers, demanding an explanation from his comrades. They soon realize that Wencit has attempted to trick Kelson by bringing four imposters to the duel. Though initially reluctant to arbitrate the duel, the Council finally agrees after Arilan brings Kelson, Morgan, and Duncan to confront them. The following morning, Kelson rides out to face Wencit, accompanied by Morgan, Duncan, and Arilan. Although furious when the real Council arrives, Wencit eventually concedes to their presence. The Duel Arcane begins, but it is suddenly interrupted before the first spell can be summoned. One of Wencit's allies reveals himself to be another member of the Camberian Council, one who has been working to bring down Wencit for years for his own personal reasons. He provided poisoned wine for Wencit and his other allies, and all four are soon dying from its effects. Unwilling to let his enemies suffer needlessly, Kelson uses his powers to kill each of them. With Wencit's death, the Duel Arcane is ended and Kelson emerges victorious."
104,The City of Ravens,fantasy," The story follows a petty thief called Jack Ravenwild, who is hired by the beautiful Elana to find a very special book. In the same tenday (the Realms equivalent of a week), he resorts to spying on another perfect woman, a mage named Zandria, to try to get information. But, the beautiful Illyth invites him to the game of masks, and at the same time he fears for his friend Anders, wanted by the evil Brothers Kuldath for stealing their ruby. Soon Jack finds both good and evil people following him through the streets of Ravens Bluff."
105,Tam Lin,fantasy," The protagonist of Tam Lin is Janet Carter. Written in the indirect third person, from Carter's point of view, the novel is set during her years as a student in the early 1970s at the fictional Blackstock College in Minnesota. The characters include her fellow students, professors at the college, her family, and a childhood friend. The plot combines the story of a young woman's life at college with a retelling of the traditional Scottish fairy ballad ""Tam Lin""."
106,Warlord of the Air,fantasy," The novel is transcribed by 'Michael Moorcock' (the author's fictional grandfather) in 1903. Holidaying at the remote Rowe Island, he befriends Oswald Bastable, an ex-soldier stowaway who seems confused and disoriented beyond what could be explained by his opium addiction, and who is tormented by great guilt from an action he performed in his past. Bastable agrees to tell Moorcock the story, and begins his narrative with his experiences in North East India in 1902, sent as part of a British expedition to deal with Sharan Kang, an Indian high priest at the temple of Teku Benga, a mysterious and seemingly supernaturally powerful region. After a confrontation with Kang and his men, Bastable finds himself lost and alone in the caves around the 'Temple of the Future Buddha', where he is assaulted by a mysterious force and knocked into unconsciousness. When he awakes, and escapes the caves, the Temple is in ruins, as if a great amount of time has passed. He is soon found and picked up by a massive airship, where he learns that it is in fact the year 1973, but not the one that the reader would recognise. In this alternate future, the First World War never happened, and the colonial powers continue to assert dominance over their empires—for example, India remains a British territory, though Winston Churchill had been viceroy in this alternate future as well as in Bastable's own. At first, Bastable marvels at the wonders that await him in his 'future' — London is a clean and peaceful city, and the world seems to be a utopia, held in balance by the great empires. Gaining employment amongst the great airship armadas, however, he soon comes into contact with a troop of anarchists — among them a mysterious woman named Una Persson, and an ancient Russian revolutionary named Ulianov. He initially maintains a patriotic resistance to their activities, but gradually discovers the truth: life is peaceful for the dominant empires but the seeming utopia of the empires' home countries is based on decades of unimpeded and unopposed colonial oppression, brutality and domination of their territories. As the First World War never happened to bankrupt the colonial empires and begin the gradual liberalisation and freedom of the colonies, imperialism remains unchecked and the world is greatly unfair and unjust. Great Britain, France, the Tsarist Russian Empire, the German Empire, Japan, the Italian Empire and the United States ruthlessly dominate this world and suppress anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist dissent. Bastable, a fair and honorable man, is outraged by the cruelty, injustice and horror revealed to him, and begins to fight for the oppressed peoples of the world (opposing, amongst others, his former friend in the airship service, Major Enoch Powell). Tragically, his actions result in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the hands of the anarchists. The atomic blast knocks him loose from the alternate 1973, sending him to a new 1903. Wracked with guilt over his part in the destruction of countless millions of innocent lives, and dreading the 'future' of science and imperialism gone mad, Bastable makes his way to the caves of Teku Benga and returns to 1903, but alas, not his own original time. His experiences have altered him too much to settle into life in this new alternate universe; both his experiences and this sense of dislocation have driven him to opium. The novel ends with Bastable disappearing mysteriously, much to the 1903 Moorcock's amazement; and a postscript from the modern author Moorcock, establishing his grandfather's death on the Western Front in 1916."
107,The Time Machine,fantasy," The book's protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator. In the new narrative, the Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to 802,701 A.D., where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a frugivorous diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he speculates that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival. Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller is shocked to find his time machine missing, and eventually works out that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside, which resembles a Sphinx. Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Within their dwellings he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutish light-fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock and ranchers. The Time Traveller theorizes that intelligence is the result of and response to danger; with no real challenges facing either species, they have both lost the spirit, intelligence, and physical fitness of Man at its peak. Meanwhile, he saves an Eloi named Weena from drowning as none of the other Eloi take any notice of her plight, and they develop an innocently affectionate relationship over the course of several days. He takes Weena with him on an expedition to a distant structure that turns out to be the remains of a museum, where he finds a fresh supply of matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he fears he must fight to get back his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time. Because the long and tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they stop in the forest, and they are then overcome by Morlocks in the night, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes only when a small fire he had left behind them to distract the Morlocks catches up to them as a forest fire; Weena is presumably lost in the fire, as are the Morlocks. The Morlocks use the time machine as bait to ensnare the Traveller, not understanding that he will use it to escape. He travels further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth, menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wandering the blood-red beaches chasing butterflies in a world covered in simple lichenous vegetation. He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing Earth's rotation gradually cease and the sun grow larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last degenerate living things die out. Overwhelmed, he returns to his laboratory, arriving just three hours after he originally left. Interrupting dinner, he relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two strange flowers Weena had put in his pocket. The original narrator takes over and relates that he returned to the Time Traveller's house the next day, finding him in final preparations for another journey. The Traveller promises to return in half an hour, but three years later, the narrator despairs of ever learning what became of him."
108,The Candle in the Wind,fantasy," The story begins with Mordred and Agravaine, both discontent. Mordred hates his father, King Arthur, and Agravaine hates Sir Lancelot. Their views are not shared by Gawaine, Gareth, or Gaheris. The relationship of Lancelot and Guinevere has gone on for some time and everyone in the court knows of it. No one, however, publicly speaks of it as law would require Lancelot to be killed and Guinevere to be burned at the stake. In order to wreak their revenge, Mordred and Agravaine decide to go to the king and officially charge the Queen with adultery. Troubled by this, King Arthur agrees to leave on a hunting trip to give the knights a chance to catch the Queen with Lancelot, although he does say that if they are caught, he hopes that Lancelot will be able to kill all witnesses and adds that if the two fail in backing their claims, he will see to it that they are pursued by the law themselves. At the same time, he confesses to Guinevere and Lancelot a terrible secret: When Mordred was born, Arthur had been told by many people that the child would be evil, as a result of the incest. Pressured, the king commanded all babies born in the approximate month Mordred would be born to be placed on a boat which was then sunk. Mordred managed to survive this, however, and Arthur lived with the guilt of causing the death of the other babies. When the king leaves for his hunting party, Lancelot prepares to sneak over to Guinevere's room. Before he can leave, Gareth visits him and warns him of Mordred and Agravaine's plot. Lancelot receives him warmly, but does not take the threat seriously as he does not believe that Arthur would entertain such an idea. He leaves for the Queen's room without weapons or armor, assuring Gareth that they would all laugh together about this when the king returned. In Guinevere's room, Lancelot laughingly tells her of Gareth's warning. Unlike him, however, the queen takes the threat seriously and tries to convince the knight to leave before they are caught. Too late, however - they find a group of knights attempting to break into Guinevere's room. Lancelot manages to kill one of them (later revealed to be Agravaine) and takes his weapon and armor to defeat the rest. Mordred, however, escapes to tell Arthur of the Queen's faithlessness. Lancelot is forced to flee Camelot, however promises to return to rescue Guinevere. Though unwilling to kill his wife, Arthur is obliged to obey his own laws and prepares for her execution. Mordred faces scorn and anger from his brothers, who are furious with him for turning in the queen and accuse him of being a coward for running away from his fight with Lancelot. Arthur later explains to them that Mordred survived because Lancelot was unwilling to kill Arthur's son. When Mordred learns that Lancelot will return to prevent Guinevere's execution, he demands that Arthur put more guards in the town. While Gawaine refuses to take part in the events, Gareth and Gaheris are stationed as additional guards. Just as Guinevere is about to be burned, Lancelot rides in and rescues her. Much to Gawaine's horror however, it is discovered that in his haste to reach the queen, Lancelot killed Gareth and Gaheris before he could recognize them. Guinevere and Lancelot flee to France, and request forgiveness from the Pope. It is granted and Guinevere is permitted to return to Camelot. Lancelot remains in France, where Arthur is forced to fight him for honor. During the siege, Gawaine receives a blow to the head that gravely injures him. In Camelot, Mordred is left to rule in Arthur's stead. He corners Guinevere and tells her that he intends to overthrow Arthur's rule and take her as his wife (as revenge for Arthur sleeping with Mordred's mother). Guinevere manages to send a message to Arthur and upon hearing the news, Gawaine dies. Arthur then returns to England to stop Mordred. On the eve of battle, in a state of semi-consciousness, he remembers Merlin's lessons. To make sure that his legacy lives on even if he dies in the battle, he explains his ideas to a young serving boy, Tom of Warwick (implied to be Thomas Malory of Warwickshire). He tells the boy how his idea of peace was like a candle in the wind, which he had kept alight with an effort. The book ends with Arthur sending Tom away to safety, and then he is ready to face the coming battle ""with a peaceful heart."" Arthur acknowledges that he shall perhaps come again to try to create another perfect Round Table. He remembers before death, the times he spent with Merlyn doing missions. At the thought, Merlyn 'might' have appeared, but he dismissed it for though he is locked up, though in The Book of Merlyn this moment is when Merlyn appears to him and takes Arthur away for a debate on war, humanity etc... We are meant to know already how the battle goes, (see Battle of Camlann). We end on a note of hope as Arthur accepts his fate with a clear mind, as if he is refreshed. Although the details of the battle are not recounted, according to legend all of the knights are killed, and Arthur kills Mordred, and Mordred mortally wounds Arthur. White puts forth both that Arthur died, or the other story where he is set adrift to Avalon where his wounds may be healed that he might rule again."
109,Wolf Brother,fantasy," In pre-agricultural Europe,the hunter-gatherers of the Forest live in clans, each represented by a particular animal or life form. Torak and his father, of Wolf Clan, live together in the forest. During Torak's twelfth year, his father (""Fa"") is killed by a bear which has been possessed by a demon. Before Torak's father dies, he tells Torak to swear an oath to head north and find the Mountain of the World Spirit, and ask the World Spirit to help destroy the bear before it kills all life in the forest. His guide will find him and help him on his quest. Torak reluctantly leaves his father as the bear comes back to kill him. Torak heads north and soon encounters an orphaned wolf cub. Torak initially tries to kill the cub in order to eat it, but he doesn't have the heart. He discovers that he can communicate with the cub. The Cub smells Torak is of the Wolf Clan, who was fed by a wolf as a baby, and accepts Torak as his pack-brother. He realizes the cub is the guide, and Torak names the cub ""Wolf"". Over time they become good friends. A few days later Torak and Wolf are captured by the Raven Clan, who accuse Torak of stealing one of their roe deer. They are taken to the Raven camp so Torak's fate can be decided by Fin-Kedinn, the Raven Clan leader. Torak's captors are a teenage boy named Hord, a girl named Renn, and a man named Oslak. In the Raven camp, Torak is taken to Fin-Kedinn. Unlike the other Ravens, Fin-Kedinn treats him with kindness and respect, until Fin-Kedinn realizes who Torak's father was. To regain his freedom, Torak fights Hord, who is much bigger and stronger, to prove his innocence. He wins by temporarily blinding Hord with steam from some broth which is cooking nearby. This, together with the dog whistle which Torak has made to summon Wolf, makes Fin-Kedinn and Saeunn, the Raven mage (shaman), see Torak as the possible fulfillment of a prophecy about a ""Listener"". The prophecy states that the Listener, who ""talks with silence and fights with air"", will offer his heart's blood to the World Spirit and thereby kill the demon-bear. One interpretation of this prophecy is that Torak must be sacrificed, and his blood taken to the Mountain of the World Spirit. Fin-Keddin reveals to Torak that his Fa was the Wolf Clan's mage, and the Demon Bear was created for the sole purpose of killing his Fa. They then lock Torak away while they debate his fate. Torak escapes, helped by Renn, who believes that Torak must go to the Mountain of the World Spirit himself. Renn tells Torak the rest of the prophecy, which says he must find three parts of the ""Nanuak"", the brightest soul, to please the World Spirit and ensure its aid. On their journey together, guided by Wolf, Torak finds the first part of the Nanuak when he falls into a river, the second part in a cave, and the third part while crossing the treacherous glacial flow close to the High Mountains. Nearly at their destination, Renn and Torak are recaptured by the Ravens and taken to the Raven Clan's new temporary camp. Fin-Kedinn releases Torak, believing him to be the one who should go to the Mountain. Fin-Kedinn also reveals that Torak's Fa was killed because he dedicated himself to thwarting a group of rogue mages, the Soul Eaters, who have turned to evil in their determination to rule the Forest. Torak and Wolf climb the mountain, followed by the bear. Torak is unexpectedly attacked by Hord, who believes himself to be the one who must take the Nanuak to the mountain. Torak realizes that the prophecy's ""heart's blood"" means Wolf, and as Wolf carries off the Nanuak, Hord and the bear are engulfed by an ensuing avalanche, and fall down the mountain. Torak escapes from under his hiding place and looks for Wolf, but he only hears his howl in the distance, along with the howls of other wolves. Torak howls to Wolf, promising that he will one day return for him, before turning to head back into the forest."
110,Drome,fantasy," Two explorers travel miles beneath Mount Rainier and discover a cavernous realm, filled with glowing mist, called Drome, which is home to a lost civilization and fantastic animals, including bat-apes, snake-cats, and tree-octopi."
111,Fairest,fantasy," Aza, the adopted daughter of innkeepers in Ayortha, has always hated her appearance. Her prodigious size and her odd coloring – milk-white skin, blood-red lips, and hair that seems to be sooty black – often make her the target of stares and rude comments. However, Aza's voice garners as much attention as her looks, for Ayortha is a land of song, and Aza is an amazing singer. Besides being skilled at singing, Aza can also flawlessly mimic people and throw her voice without moving her mouth, a form of ventriloquism she calls ""illusing"". Still, Aza is flattered when a frequent visitor to the inn, a gnome named zhamM, tells Aza that her hair is the most beautiful hair he's ever seen. While her hair looks black to humans, it is the lovely color htun, a dark purplish color, to gnomes. When Aza's sister, Areida, goes to finishing school, the Duchess of Olixo, an irritable guest at the Featherbed Inn, requests that Aza accompany her to the royal wedding because her companion has fallen ill. The new queen, Ivi, discovers Aza's gift and manipulates her. As Ivi cannot sing well, she offers to reward Aza with land and riches for her family as well as elevation to the rank of lady-in-waiting in exchange for Aza illusing a voice for her when she needs to sing; when Aza tries to refuse, Ivi threatens to imprison her and close her family's inn. Soon after Aza reluctantly accepts Ivi's offer, the castle is thrown into turmoil when King Oscaro is terribly wounded during a sporting event with centaurs. Aza is caught in the midst of Ivi's power-hungry plotting, the affection of the king's nephew Crown Prince Ijori, the suspicions of the choirmaster Sir Uellu, and her own increasing desperation to become beautiful, a desire which grows so strong that she ultimately drinks a beauty potion created by Skulni, the mysterious, evil creature living in Ivi's magic mirror. With the country on the verge of revolt, the inevitable discovery of Aza and Ivi's singing deception leaves Aza fleeing for her life when a jealous Ivi leads to Aza being branded as a dangerous ogre. Exiled, Aza is welcomed by the gnomes; zhamM provides her with food, shelter, and a sense of heritage. He assures her that while she is certainly not part ogre, he believes one of her ancestors was a gnome, explaining her strange appearance and htun hair. After she has spent some time with the gnomes, a sinister scheme forces Aza to fight for her life, discover her true source of strength, and ultimately, learns to accept herself. She marries the prince, King Oscaro recovers, Ivi turns from her evil ways, and Aza becomes queen of Ayortha, alongside her husband, King Ijori. She bears three children, all of whom resemble their father but have htun hair just like their mother."
112,The Way of Shadows,fantasy," Azoth is an orphan who lives in the Warrens of Cenaria City. He and his two friends, Jarl and Doll Girl, are members of the Black Dragon guild. They make their living stealing money to buy food and pay their guild dues to Rat, the Guild Fist, an enforcer who beats anyone who doesn't pay. One night while Azoth is underneath a local tavern scrounging for coins he overhears a confrontation between Durzo Blint, the best wetboy in the city, and several unknown assailants. After Durzo slaughters the assassins, he catches the escaping Azoth and tells him to not lose a word about that to anyone. One day Rat asks Azoth to be one of his ""pretty boys"". Azoth's rejection humiliates and angers Rat. Later that day Jarl shows Azoth a secret stash of coins that he has been saving for four years, which he gives Azoth so that he can apprentice to Durzo Blint. Blint is ambushed by the Black Dragon after fulfilling one of his contracts, but makes his way out by incapacitating Ja'laliel, the guild head, and scaring everyone else away. After that he is followed by Azoth as he leaves to make his report at the Sa'kagé headquarters. Although Azoth stays outside, Blint discovers his presence and declines Azoth's bid of being allowed to become Blint's apprentice. Azoth fails in following him when the wetboy leaves. The next day Azoth wakes up to find out that Rat has raped Jarl and made him ""one of his girls"". Rat wants to punish Azoth for pursuing Durzo but Ja'laliel forbids it. However, Ja'laliel is terminally ill, and Azoth is afraid that Rat will soon be the guild head. Azoth plans his revenge on Rat for Jarl's rape, trying to turn the guild against him, but Rat lets him play the hero. Elsewhere in Cenaria, eleven-year-old Logan Gyre watches his father, Duke Regnus Gyre, as he prepares to travel to a garrison, called Screaming Winds. Logan asks to go with his father, but Duke Gyre refuses and leaves his son as the Lord of House Gyre. Three months pass, during which time Azoth starts to get followers who also hate Rat. One of his followers steals a metal shiv and gives it to Azoth. One night in an alley Azoth encounters Durzo. Azoth insists on apprenticing with him, even going so far as to threaten Durzo's life. Durzo finally makes Azoth an offer; if he kills Rat in one week without any help and brings proof, Durzo will apprentice him. A travelling mage, Solon Tofusin, arrives at the Gyre estate. He is on a mission from the prophet Dorian to help Lord Gyre. When he finds out Duke Gyre has gone to Screaming Winds, he plans to head there immediately, but his plans are disrupted when he finds out that Logan has also been named Lord Gyre. Logan forces him to spar, and Solon humiliates him. He tells him that Logan's soldiers have been losing to him on purpose, which infuriates Logan. He tells his men to treat him as no more than an equal; he is soon going to join his father at Screaming Winds, and if they truly love him, they should be preparing him for the battles there. He apologizes to Solon, who is impressed with Logan and decides to stay with him, at least for now. Rat, meanwhile, has a secret meeting, where it is revealed that he is actually one of the sons of the Godking, who rules Khalidor, a vicious empire to the north, and that Rat was brought to the city in order to prepare it for invasion. A Vurdmeister, a powerful mage assigned to protect him called Neph Dada, shares with him a plan on how to truly destroy Azoth. Four days pass after Durzo gives Azoth his challenge and Rat is still not dead. Worried that Rat will begin to purge his followers, Azoth stays awake all night, but leaves briefly to urinate. While away, Rat and his men kill one of Azoth's followers and kidnap Doll Girl. In the morning, Azoth runs into Durzo, who grabs him and tells him that he will show Azoth the price of his hesitation. Solon is having dinner with the Gyres. They make small talk and not much else, until Solon offends Logan's mother. She tries to send Solon away, despite Logan's efforts, but Logan reminds her he is now Lord Gyre, and sends her away. Solon is even more impressed with Logan, and becomes less certain that Duke Gyre is the one he must serve. In his indecision, he heads out to a tavern. Rat has beaten Doll Girl almost to death, and given her terrible scars on her face. Durzo plans to leave Azoth, but he insists that he will kill Rat within the week, and pleads with Durzo to save Doll Girl. Despite his protests that life is empty and meaningless, Durzo finally concedes. He finds Solon drinking, poisons him, and takes him to Doll Girl. He tells Solon that he can have the antidote if he heals Doll Girl, which he does. Upstairs in a brothel, Durzo is meeting with Momma K. He tells her that Azoth has him worried; he doesn't think that Azoth has it in him to be a killer. At that very moment, however, Azoth is confronting Rat. Rat takes his shiv and tries to rape Azoth, who kills him and cuts off his ear to take to Durzo. He walks in right after Momma K tells Durzo why he needs Azoth. Durzo initially doesn't accept the ear as proof, so Azoth takes him to the river and shows him the body. Durzo offers him one more chance to get out, to apprentice in a clean trade, but Azoth refuses and goes with Durzo. Azoth begins his training with Durzo, which carries on for several years. Eventually, Azoth is sent to Count Rimbold Drake, an old friend of Durzo, who will give him a new name and life. On his way out with his new identity, a poor noble named Kylar Stern, Durzo see Solon Tofusin standing with the mountainous Logan Gyre. Durzo has Kylar run into Logan then start a fight so Durzo can get away. After being beaten senseless by Logan in front of Count Drake's daughter Serah, his crush, Logan insists upon forgiving Kylar. Durzo sends Kylar into Logan's house and they soon become great friends. A few years later, Durzo enters Kylar into a swordsman tournament sponsored by the local Blademasters. The winner will become the king's new bodyguard. Durzo tells Kylar that the Sa'kagé wants to stretch its arm and remind everyone who is in charge. The catch is no Talented, or magical, contestants. Kylar is confronted by a sister of the Chantry who tells him that his conduit for magic is broken while his glore vyrden, his magical store, is huge. There is nothing to be done. Upon facing the opponents, almost all of them should have given him a much harder challenge, he learns that the Sa'kagé has stacked the racks so Kylar could win. Kylar then faces Logan who Kylar beats easily, while wearing a mask so Logan cannot discover his identity. After the tournament Durzo seeks a way for Kylar to be able to use his talent. A kakari would be the perfect thing. With the rumored silver kakari supposedly close, Kylar is supposed to get into the party to get it. Dorian breaks into his herbalist shop and tells Kylar to ""ask Momma K"" and that ""a square vase will give you hope."" Momma K had told him that she had someone who may be able to get him in. When he goes to visit this person, it turns out to be Elene, A.K.A. Doll Girl. She denies him an invitation due to her obligation to her family. Kylar leaves and finds his own way into the party. Once there, he starts a fight with Logan as a distraction and then walks off to sneak up the stairs into the chambers to find the kakari. He gets into the room where it is supposed to be. Even after opening the secret area with the square vase, he finds nothing. The kakari isn't there. Soon after, a ruthless wetboy named Hu kills the entire Gyre family except for Logan and his father. Kylar then realizes that Elene must have the kakari. He went down to her room to find her wielding a weapon, but she inadvertently shows him where the silver kakari is hidden with her eyes. Kylar knocks Elene out, and Durzo arrives. The silver kakari ends up being a fake, however Kylar still ends up with a kakari, the black kakari, which he unknowingly steals from Durzo. The heir to the throne is killed that night. Durzo demands they leave. After they leave the death is blamed on a wetboy. While Kylar is in his room at Count Drakes house, Vi, dressed as a maid, attempts to first seduce him, and then kill him. She hesitates, and Count Drake bursts in. After that Royal guards show up and charge Logan with murder of the heir and take him to prison. The King arranges a marriage between Jenine, his daughter, and Logan to secure the line of succession and an heir in case of his own death. Kylar heads to the castle to kill the king. During the ceremony Durzo, who is working for Roth in order to preserve his daughter, poisons everyone in the King's court. During this time Roth and Neph attack the castle. Khalidorans arrive by sea with vurdmeisters but Kylar slows down the process by burning quite a few. Amidst attack, one of the king's advisors beheads him so that the remaining knights will focus on saving the new king, Logan, who is in his bed chambers preparing to consummate his marriage to Jenine. These knights are trapped and Roth shoots each one down through a spy hole while six Khalidoran archers hide behind the door to the chamber. After they all die Roth and Neph come into the room as the couple kills the Khalidorans. Roth apparently kills Jenine, but Neph secretly preserves her for the godking, who is on his way. Neph then orders Logan be castrated and fed to the howlers. Kylar, as the Night Angel, helps release some prisoners and tells them to rebel. After hearing of Logan's location he heads to the bedchamber. He finds the trapped dead people, and the six dead archers. In the bed chamber, there is nothing but blood and a torn up night gown. He is apparently too late. Kylar then battles with Durzo and finally kills him. As Logan is marched toward the hole, one of the guards kills the other and castrates him, leaving the organs as if they were Logan's and tossing the body into the hole. The guard reveals that he was hired by Jarl and tells Logan he can leave. By the time Logan is free from his magical bonds and able to move, it is too late. Several magicians are about to arrive. As a last resort, Logan takes a knife and jumps into the hole. Kylar encounters Roth, but he is surrounded by Vurdmeisters, who end up capturing Kylar. Roth reveals himself as Rat, who had survived the earlier attempt on his life. Solon arrives outside with Curoch and uses the powerful magical sword to slay a large group of vurdmeisters. Kylar breaks free of his captors' hold and kills everyone, including Roth, but is killed himself. Kylar meets the Wolf in death. He is given the choice of life or full death. He chooses Elene and life, then revives to find himself with Uly and Elene. They had dragged him out of the castle and back to Momma K and Jarl."
113,The Fairy Godmother,fantasy," It is about a young woman named Elena, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman. After the death of her mother, her father married a devious social climber with two daughters of her own. Not long after the marriage, Elena's father dies and her stepmother relegates her into the position of a house servant. She seems to be the perfect Cinderella candidate, except the prince of the land is many years younger than she - he is eleven. Also, she is 21, when most fairy-tale endings for girls normally happen at 16 or 18. One day, Elena's stepmother and stepsisters plan a temporary excursion out of town, for the purpose of ensnaring a new rich husband so they can pay the numerous debts they owe. Left alone in the house, Elena goes to the hiring fair in hopes of finding work as a servant. At the end of the day, a fairy godmother appears and offers to take Elena on as her apprentice. Elena accepts and moves to the godmother's cottage, where she meets the four brownies that help with household duties. The latter half of the book deals with Elena's time as a full-fledged godmother and her problems with turning an arrogant prince named Alexander into a decent person."
114,The Battle of the Labyrinth,fantasy," After being attacked by empousai cheerleaders at his new school, Percy returns to Camp Half-Blood and learns about the Labyrinth; part of the palace of King Minos in Crete that was designed by Daedalus. He also meets the camp's new sword master, Quintus. During a battle drill with Giant Scorpions at the camp, Annabeth and Percy accidentally find an entrance into the Labyrinth. Percy soon learns that Luke had used this entrance before and will try and lead his army through the Labyrinth straight into the heart of Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth reads the prophecy and comes back out of the Big House with a feeling of dread. When Percy and Annabeth privately meet afterwards in Athena's cabin, and Percy asks her if she is okay, she is moved to tears and holds out her arms. Percy hugs her, telling her that she shouldn't worry about whatever she was worrying about. What Percy doesn't know is that Annabeth thinks that Percy is going to die. Using the Labyrinth, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson, must find Daedalus to prevent Luke from obtaining Ariadne's String; the tool that would allow Luke to navigate the Labyrinth. Percy and his friends encounter Kampê (Campe), a half woman, half-dragon monster, and free her prisoner, Briares the Hekatonkheires (Hundred-Handed One), Tyson's idol. After an encounter with the goddess Hera and a battle at the farm of Geryon, the group is reunited with Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, who blames Percy for the death of his sister Bianca. Percy helps summon the spirit of Bianca, and Nico is convinced to put his grudge behind him by the ghost of his sister. The next day, however, Percy and his friends (without Nico) depart to find Hephaestus, hoping he would know the location of Daedulus. While travelling, the group gets separated, with Percy and Annabeth searching for Hephaestus and Tyson and Grover searching for Pan. After a meeting with Hephaestus, Annabeth and Percy go to Mt. St. Helens. There he finds telekhines, also known as ""sea demons"". He is discovered by the telkhines, who attack him. Percy finds Annabeth and they have a short argument during which Percy tells Annabeth to flee. Thinking that Percy is the one to die in the prophecy, Annabeth kisses Percy, tells him to be careful, and disappears. In an attempt to escape the telekhines, Percy causes Mt. St. Helens to erupt, pushing him out of the volcano, draining his energy in the process. When he awakens after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, he finds himself in the mythical island inhabited by Calypso. After being treated for burns by Calypso and returning to the mortal world, Percy gets the help he needs from a mortal girl named Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who is able to see through the Mist; the magical veil that makes mortals see things differently than demigods. Grover finally finds Pan, but the god of the wild is dying and wants Grover to tell the other satyrs that they must save the natural world themselves. His spirit passes into all present, the satyr in particular, when he dies. They finally discover that Quintus, the mysterious new sword instructor at Camp Half-Blood, is actually Daedalus, who has attained extended life by putting his life-force, his animus, into a robot body and that Kronos has gained enough strength by Luke. He also possess Luke, using his body as a starter form. Kronos finds out that Nico di Angelo is a son of Hades and that he could be the child of the great prophecy, which states that a child of ""Big Three"" (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) would decide the fate of the gods. Luke has already reached Daedalus and attained Ariadne's string; using the magical instrument, he sends out Kronos's army to take Camp Half-Blood via the Labyrinth. While fighting a losing battle, the entire camp is either injured or killed, and Daedalus and Briares come out of the Labyrinth to help fight the battle and destroy Kampe. Grover rescues Camp Half-Blood by causing a Panic, which Pan had used once before, to scare away the enemy. After the battle, Daedalus sacrifices himself to close the Labyrinth, which is tied to his life. The camp say good bye to the dead, Nico leaves the camp, Grover travels trying to spread the message of Pan, Percy leaves for his 15th birthday and Nico comes by to offer him a proposal on how to defeat Kronos."
115,The Crack in Space,fantasy," On a future Earth (c.2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation, a portal is discovered that leads to a parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first Negro president of the United States, believes that the new ""alter-Earth"" could be colonized and become a home for the seventy million people that are being kept in cryopreservation. Known as bibs, these are people - mostly non-caucasians - who decided to be ""put to sleep"" until a time when the overpopulation problem is solved. Briskin is a social conservative, who does not support the Golden Doors of Bliss orbital brothel, and opposes widespread abortion access. There are two dominant US political parties, the ""Republican Liberals"" and the ""States Rights Conservative Democrats"" who run CLEAN, a racist frontgroup that opposes Briskin's candidacy, although higher-income white American voters support him. Terraforming becomes a pivotal election issue, until a warp drive malfunction in a ""'scuttler"" tube results in the discovery of an apparently uninhabited alternate world, an 'alter-Earth' where homo sapiens either never evolved or lost in competition with other early hominids. In this case, the point of divergence appears to have occurred between one to two million years ago, as homo erectus, also known as sinanthropus/pithecanthropus or Peking Man, is the dominant species. In reference to the latter designation, the explorers refer to the indigenous hominids of this world as ""Pekes."" There is a hasty initial colonization attempt. The minimum time period necessary for all of the tens of millions of ""bibs"" to emigrate is estimated to be twenty years. In order to cut this down to 5 years the rift is temporarily closed so a new power supply can be installed which will theoretically quadruple the width of the rift. When this action is completed, however, it is discovered that one hundred years has elapsed in the parallel world. During this time the conjoined twin businessman George Walt, who had run the Golden Doors of Bliss satellite brothel, had emigrated into the parallel world during initial colonization and set himself up as a ""wind god"". He spent those hundred years teaching and filling in technological gaps in the Peke's world as well as learning many new ideas from them. He also apparently assisted in sabotaging the colonization effort, as it would not exactly be in his own best interest were word to leak out that he was merely a mutated homo sapiens. After all the decades-consuming preparations have been completed, however, George Walt eventually sets a trap so that whenever the rift eventually re-opens, the ""Pekes"" can power it from their side and keep it from closing. This procedure allows the Pekes to begin an invasion of Earth, but they abruptly depart en masse when it is finally revealed, as George Walt originally feared, that their wind god is actually just a wind bag; that is to say, he's just another lying, deceiving, untrustworthy member of the species homo sapiens. The colonization attempt from Earth is thereby aborted, and Briskin, being newly elected, is left at the story's end to deal with the consequences during his next two presidential terms."
116,A Casa,fantasy," Some people who have harmed others in the past, receive an invitation to visit The house. There, they have a chance to make the things right with one condition: do not bring out those who have already gone."
117,Above the Veil,fantasy," While Shadowmaster Sushin maintains control over higher ranked chosen, Tal and Milla travel through the Castle's depths where they encounter the Freefolk, a group of the servant class Underfolk who possess a great hatred for all the Chosen. They also meet Lector Jarnil, a famous teacher. Tal and Milla learn more about the intricacies of Castle politics, including that Sushin, a Shadowmaster of the Orange, is the Dark Vizier of the Empress. He deals in unsavory matters and commands others under the authority of the Empress. They also learn that the Veil is maintained by the seven Keystones which lie at the top of each of the seven towers. Most of the Chosen leave the Castle due to the Day of Ascension. To prevent the Veil from failing, Tal, accompanied by the Freefolk leader Crow, climb the Red Tower and defeat the deadly Keeper. They also solve a puzzle of tiles to prevent any alarms from ringing out. Eventually they reach the Red Keystone and discover Lector Jarnil's cousing Lokar trapped inside. As Tal and Crow prepare to depart, they are assaulted by numerous unbound Spiritshadows. Tal is able to construct a miniature Veil in time to hide them, but accidentally binds Adras, his Spiritshadow, into it. As they near the Freefolk base, Crow injures Tal and flees with the Keystone. Tal recovers the keystone and Lokar convinces Tal to go to Aenir and consult the Empress to free Lokar. While Tal and Crow climb the tower, Milla returns to Odris by the labryinth of underground tunnels below the Castle. On her way, she discovers the skeleton where her Primary Sunstone partially originated. Scrutinizing it closer, she notices a long Violet fingernail, which she puts on. Knowing that she will give herself to the Ice, she breathes the Tenth Pattern to assure the completion of her task of getting a Primary Sunstone. On her way, she is attacked by Arla and a band of Shield Maidens for bringing Odris. Milla accidentally kills Arla with her talon. She is then judged by the Crones, who will decide her fate. After reviewing Milla's thoughts and dreams, the Crones debate and decide to attack the Castle to stop the Spiritshadow trade and save the Veil. The Crones choose Milla to lead the attack."
118,The Hunter's Moon,fantasy," Gwen, a Canadian, is visiting her cousin, Findabhair (finn-ah-veer), in Ireland. The two, who keep regular correspondence, share a deep love of Irish mythology. Since their youth, they have tried to find a doorway to another world called Faerieland. Now sixteen, they travel to Tara, without telling their parents, the ancient seat of the High Kings in Ireland in search of adventure. While they are there, the cousins challenge an ancient law by sleeping in a fairy mound. That night the King of Faeries, Finvara, comes to take them away. Since he is King of Dreams, he comes to them in their sleep and asks them to come with him. Findabhair says yes, but Gwen refuses. Therefore, since he is bound by an ancient law, the King only takes Findabhair, leaving Gwen to wake up wondering about her cousin's safety. Gwen decides to rescue her cousin from her fate, only to find she is happy. Gwen does not want her to stay with the faeries because they are immortal, partying teenagers. As Gwen tries to continuously find the Faeries, which is hard for the King is hindering her, she meets many good friends, including a middle-aged businessman, a farm girl, a king (who becomes her boyfriend) of an island, called Island Island, and even befriends the second in command of the Faeries, Midir. When she finally catches up with the faeries fast pace, she learns that either her cousin or her must be the sacrifice to an evil ancient creature known as Crom Cruac, the Great Worm, supposedly the serpent from Eden. Her cousin voluntarily chooses to be the sacrifice, upsetting Gwen and the King of Faeries, who has fallen in love with her. In the end, with the help of many friends, Findabhair decides not to be sacrificed, but to be the first person ever to fight the serpent. With their friends by their sides, Findabhair and Gwen attack the serpent after being equipped for battle by the Land of Light, but after a while Findabhair gets blasted with poison from the serpent and falls unconscious with her life on the edge. The King of Faeries, in a desperate act of love, gives himself up as the sacrifice. He is greatly mourned, and Midir becomes king. The friends decide to meet in a year. After a year, they meet again at Island Island and reminisce. Then they suddenly hear music. As they search for the source of the music, they find the king, alive. The worm had only taken his immortality instead of killing him, and now the faerie was mortal and without memory. They understand that it´s going to be hard for the king, because of his loss. But overjoyed as they are, they promise to explain everything to him."
119,The Princes of the Golden Cage,fantasy," Prince Amir lives in a lavish and beautiful cage. He lives in a palace with hundreds of his brothers, all barred by law from ever leaving the palace until he, or one of his brothers, becomes the next Sultan. Living under constant threat of death at the hands of his scheming brothers, Amir has chosen a life of solitude and study. His scholarly and alchemical pursuits bring him under suspicion when his brothers begin to die from seemingly supernatural means. Amir finds himself thrown together with his brother Erik, the son of a barbarian princess. Together they must discover the dark secret that is stalking the halls of their golden cage."
120,Genius Squad,fantasy," The book begins roughly 5 months after the events of Evil Genius. Cadel is now living with foster parents,in a state of legal limbo. Not knowing where he was born, his true father or where he was born. His life is made even worse due to his foster brother ""Mace"" (real name: Thomas) constantly bullying him. With no school to go to due to his questionable legal status, Cadel spends his time either on the computer, idling or visiting Sonja. The police,and FBI also occasionally turn up to question him on what he knows about Dr Darkkon, Prosper English and the Axis Institute. During these questionings Cadel meets Saul Greniaus, a detective who is now in charge of his case. His style puts him in conflict with Cadels social worker Fiona Currey. On his second visit to Sonja he is confronted by Trader and Judith.Trader and Judith attempt to convince Sonja and Cadel to join Genius Squad. An organisation formed to take down GENOME [a corporation founded by Darkkon] and which is funded by Rex Austin, an American millionaire who suspects the company murdered his son. Despite Cadels initial suspicions they may be working for Prosper, Cadel and Sonja agree to join Genius Squad. They learn that Genius squad is disguised as a youth home and they have other kids also working for the squad. While Saul and Fiona initially object, but they relent after a particularly heated confrontation with ""Mace"". Cadel arrives at the youth home, Saul and Fiona help him move his belongings. Cadel is introduced to Devin and Lexi[the Twins],Hamish Primose, Dot[the sister of Com from Evil Genius] and the rest of the adult staff. While genius squad works away, trying to avoid notice by Cadel's various body guards,they uncover a web of deceit, crimes and cerebral implants. During this time, ""Mace"" finds the address of the Genius Squad foster house and attempts to frame Cadel for theft by planting a stolen watch on him (a plan which ultimately fails and leads to Mace's arrest). Cadel also finds that Gazo Kovacs has made contact with GENOME, unaware of their sinister intentions. Unfortunately, GenoME manages to spring Prosper from jail and he immediately moves to kidnap Cadel. Cadel is taken to the house of Judith, one of the other members of Genius squad. From here, Prosper flees to a private air strip to leave the country after Cadel attempts to contact Saul for help. Saul gets a group of police officers down to the airport in time to save Cadel, but Prosper manages to get away. At this point, paternity tests show that Prosper English isn't really Cadel's father, even though he thought he was. Cadel's real father is Chester Cramp who runs Fountain Pharmeceuticals, another Darkkon corporation. However, with Chester sitting in an American Jail. Cadel agrees to being adopted by Saul and Fiona, who happened to be getting married. Saul finally finds out about Genius Squad, and though he is very upset that Cadel lied to him for so long, he agrees to let Genius Squad live on. His reasoning for this, is that he believes that Genius Squad might just be their best chance of finding Prosper and bringing him down once and for all."
121,Neverwhere,fantasy," Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, with a normal life. All this changes, however, when he stops to help a mysterious young girl who appears before him, bleeding and weakened, as he walks with his fiancée to dinner to meet her influential boss. The morning after Richard rescued the girl, Door, from the streets, she is greatly recovered, and sends him to find the Marquis de Carabas, a man who will be able to help Door escape two infamous and seemingly inhuman assassins, the Messrs; Croup and Vandemar. Richard brings the Marquis back to his apartment to meet Door, only to see both of them vanish immediately. Soon after, Richard begins to realize the consequences of his actions. He appears to have become invisible; he loses his job, where no one seems to recognize him, and his apartment is rented out to other people. Determined to set things right, Richard sets out for the world of London Below in search of Door. Richard’s journey takes him to the realm of the Rat-Speakers, who worship and perform tasks for rats, across the mysterious Night's Bridge, whose darkness kills one of Richard’s Rat-Speaker friends, Anesthesia, and eventually to the Floating Market, where he meets again with Door, who is holding an audition for bodyguards. Going to the floating market, a giant bazaar where people barter for all manner of junk and magical items, Richard realizes that London Below is not such a bad place. The legendary bodyguard and fighter ""Hunter"" joins their party, and the group, consisting of Door, the Marquis and Hunter, with Richard tagging along, sets out for the Earl's Court. Door and the Marquis have traveled to Door's home, and discovered a diary entry made by Door's father, which advises her to seek aid from the angel Islington. When the four reach the Earl's Court, on a mysterious underground train which follows its own bizarre schedule, the Marquis is forced to leave. This is due to an old grudge between himself and the Earl. The rest discover that they need to travel through the Angelus in order to reach Islington, and that the Angelus resides in the British Museum. Door and Richard travel to the Museum, while Hunter, due to a curse which prevents her from entering London Above, remains in the abandoned British Museum underground station. After some searching they find the Angelus, which Door ""opens"" using her family's Talent, and travel through it to the underground home of the angel. Islington explains that his position as protector of London Below is a punishment for the submersion of Atlantis, which was also under his care, and tells Door that he will help her learn the identity of those who killed her family, for a price. She and her company must retrieve a unique key from the Black Friars and bring it to the angel. The two return to the Museum and go below to reunite with Hunter. In the meantime, the Marquis seeks out Croup and Vandemar, exchanging a priceless Tang dynasty figurine for information regarding who ordered the murder of Door's family. The true price for this information, however, is his life; Croup and Vandemar capture, torture, and kill him, breaking the one-hour ""head start"" agreement that was part of their deal with the Marquis. Door, Richard, and Hunter proceed onward to the dwelling of the Black Friars. There, they are faced with a series of three ordeals; Hunter wins a test of strength, Door wins a test of intellect, and Richard, alone in history, wins a test of character. He was falsely convinced his adventures Below had all been a hallucination, but a trinket from his now-dead friend Anesthesia re-orients him. As a result, the three succeed in gaining the key. Richard’s ordeal greatly changes him, causing him to lose most of his self-doubts; he is now confident enough to interact with other beings of London Below. The three then travel to the Floating Market, where they are unable to find the Marquis, but where Hammersmith, a blacksmith friend of Door's is able to secretly forge a copy of the key won by Richard. Richard enlists the mysterious Lamia, one of the vampire-like Velvets as a guide. They travel on London Below’s Down Street, toward Islington. Door, Richard, Lamia, and Hunter make their way down the long path of Down Street. Old Bailey revives the Marquis. Weakened, the Marquis sets out himself, following Door and company. On Down Street, it is discovered that Lamia was a dangerous choice for a guide, because the price she demands of Richard for her services is higher than he can pay and yet live, but he is rescued by the Marquis. It is also discovered that Hunter long ago turned traitor to Door’s cause. She gives Door to Croup and Vandemar, in exchange for the magical spear she needs to hunt and slay the great Beast of London. Croup and Vandemar, with Door captive, travel downward, while Richard, the Marquis, and Hunter travel at a slower pace, all toward the great labyrinth through which they need to pass to reach Islington. In this labyrinth the Beast of London dwells. Hunter and Richard battle it, with Richard being the only survivor. Richard and the Marquis rush ahead, to the final confrontation between the parties, in which Islington’s true nature is revealed. Islington wishes to use Door and the key to force open the door to Heaven, where he seeks dominion over all the other angels as revenge for his banishment. After Richard is tortured by Croup and Vandemar, Door agrees to open the door, but she uses the copy of the key Richard won. The key does not open the door to Heaven, but instead to somewhere else, as far away as she could imagine. Islington, Croup and Vandemar are all sucked through the gateway before Door closes it. Door then uses the Black Friars' real key to allow Richard to travel back to London Above, where he finds himself restored to his normal life as it was before he first met Door. After returning home, Richard is happy for a time, but he realizes that his experiences have changed him, and that his old life and friends mean little or nothing to him now. He realizes that he is not satisfied with the regular world, and wants to return to London Below but does not know how to do it. He despairs of returning, feeling that he has ruined his life about as completely as possible, but in the end the Marquis provides a way back."
122,Castle Roogna,fantasy," Dor, son of Bink, is a 12 year old magician and next in line to inherit the throne of Xanth. To teach him the skills he will need to rule the kingdom, King Trent sends him through the tapestry on a mission 800 years into Xanth's past to find the ancient and mysterious Zombie Master. Dor travels to the past via the magic tapestry of Castle Roogna and inhabits the body of an invading mundane barbarian. While in the past Dor is accompanied by a (not normally) giant spider named Jumper, who had been drawn into the tapestry with him, and meets his current governess Millie the ghost, a short time before her unfortunate demise. Dor must use his magic and every other resource he possesses to help beat back an invading wave of mundanes and find a way to restore Millie's zombie lover to life back in the present.Turns out the Zombie Master is Millies zombie lover and ends up providing the cure for his own curse."
123,Jingo,fantasy," With the opening of the novel, the island of Leshp, which had been submerged under the Circle Sea for centuries, rises to the surface. Its position, exactly halfway between Ankh-Morpork and Al Khali (the capital of Klatch), makes the island a powerful strategical point for whoever lays claim to it, which both cities do. In Ankh-Morpork, a Klatchian Prince named Khufurah is parading through Ankh-Morpork, where he will be presented with a Degree in Sweet Fanny Adams (Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci), but an assassination attempt occurs, and the Prince is wounded. Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, begins investigating the crime, originally suspecting both a Klatchian named 71-Hour Ahmed and a senior Morporkian peer, Lord Rust, of being involved. The attempted assassination breaks off relations between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch as Prince Khufurah's brother effectively declares war on the city of Ankh-Morpork. At this point, Havelock Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, resigns—apparently of his own free will—and Lord Rust takes command of the city. Vetinari has refused to become involved in the war with Klatch, due to the fact Ankh-Morpork does not have an army to stand against any opposing forces (the reason given being that killing enemy soldiers makes it difficult to sell them things afterwards), but Rust declares Martial law and orders the city's noble families to revive their old private regiments. Vimes, refusing to follow Rust (whom he considers to be a pillock) stands down as Commander of the Watch. Captain Carrot resigns as well, as do Sergeant Colon, Sergeant Detritus and Corporal Angua. The idea of putting the watch under the command of Corporal Nobbs is rejected by the ruling Council of Guild leaders and the Watch is disbanded. Vimes then recruits the Watch into his own private army regiment, reasoning that, as an official noble, he is entitled to do so by law and by Lord Rust's command, with the group remaining independent as knights legally fall under command of the king or his duly-appointed representatives, neither of which exist in Ankh-Morpork. Angua, following 71-Hour Ahmed, is captured by the Klatchians and taken to Klatch. Carrot, rather than rush off to save her, reports back to Vimes, who gets his private army to head for Klatch. Meanwhile, Nobby and Sergeant Colon have been recruited by Vetinari and his pet inventor, Leonard of Quirm, on a secret mission of their own, unknown to Vimes. Vetinari, Leonard of Quirm, Colon, and Nobby end up in Leonard's ""Going-Under-the-Water-Safely Device"" and discover that Leshp is actually floating on top of a huge bubble of gas (suggested to be methane or some other poisonous gas), and that the gas is escaping from said bubble, meaning that Leshp will, ultimately, sink back under the sea again. Vimes catches up with 71-hour Ahmed and has, by this time, figured out that Ahmed is a fellow policeman. Ahmed and his band of Klatchian D'regs and Vimes army head towards Gebra, in Klatch, where the war is due to start. To help blend in, Vetinari, Nobby and Fred Colon get hold of some Klatchian clothing, though Nobby ends up wearing the costume of a dancing girl and gets in touch with his feminine side. The three also head to Gebra. Arriving at Gebra they discover that Carrot has convinced the two armies to get together and play a game of football (he has an inflatable football in his backpack for just such an emergency), Vimes is preparing to arrest the Klatchian Prince and Lord Rust for various breaches of the peace (such as being prepared for war) and 71-hour Ahmed is supporting him. Vetinari prevents an international incident by ostensibly declaring the surrender of Ankh-Morpork and offering war reparations. Vetinari is returned to Ankh-Morpork, under arrest and in disgrace, but as Leshp has vanished back under the sea again, the treaty was to be signed in a non-existent territory and thus the charge of treason is invalid. Sam Vimes is informed that Vetinari has been ""reminded"" that the old rank of Commander was the same as the old rank of Duke. He objects, claiming that only a King can make a Duke, but then realises that Carrot was speaking to Vetinari. Since Carrot is, of course, very much not the King of Ankh-Morpork his reminding of Vetinari is all that is required for Vimes to get his new position and rank. Vimes ""accidentally"" loses his ""dis-organiser"" (given to him by his wife) which kept giving him incorrect information. It is explained that, had Vimes reacted slightly differently in the beginning- staying in Ankh-Morpork rather than attempting to follow Ahmed and rescue Angua-, the whole history of the Ankh-Morpork VS Klatch war would have gone very differently. The dis-organiser meets Death at the end, but Death rejects it. Instead, he drops it into the sea, and it is swallowed by a shark where it may not have the most interesting calendar of events to deal with, but at least it finds things easy to organise."
124,The Master Key,fantasy," The protagonist is a boy named Rob Joslyn. His age is not specified. Baum dedicated the book ""To My Son, Robert Stanton Baum,"" who was born in 1886 and would thus have been about fifteen at the time it was published. Rob, we are told, is in truth, a typical American boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. The mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. Moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. Life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. We are introduced to Rob as an electrical experimenter whose father encourages him and sees that he &#34;never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort.&#34; A &#34;net-work[sic] of wires soon ran throughout the house,&#34; and the house is full of &#34;bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. And there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which Rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed.&#34; Rob loses track of the elaborately interconnected wires, and trying to get a cardboard house to light up, he &#34;experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination.&#34; There is a bright flash, and a being who calls himself the Demon of Electricity appears. He tells Rob that he has accidentally &#34;touched the Master Key of Electricity&#34; and is entitled to &#34;to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks.&#34; Rob protests that he does not know what to ask for, and the Demon agrees to select the gifts himself. During the first week, the Demon gives Rob three gifts: *A silver box of food tablets, each one of which provides sufficient nourishment for a whole day. *A &#34;small tube&#34; which can direct &#34;an electric current&#34; at a foe, rendering him unconscious for the period of one hour. As the story unfolds, it appears that this tube has no limit to the number of times it can be fired, and has other capabilities (such as breaking locks when fired at them). *A wristwatch-sized transportation device, which allows the wearer to fly at any height and travel at high speeds in any direction, when it is working properly. It is, however, somewhat fragile and becomes damaged and unreliable during Rob&#39;s adventures, creating predicaments for him. During the second week, the Demon gives Rob three additional gifts: *A &#34;garment of protection,&#34; which renders him invulnerable to bullets, swords, or other physical attack. *A &#34;record of events,&#34; which provides remote views of important events taking place at any part of the world at any time within the last twenty-four hours; *A &#34;character marker,&#34; a set of spectacles: &#34;while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will bear the letter &#39;G,&#39; the evil the letter &#39;E.&#39; The wise will be marked with a &#39;W&#39; and the foolish with an &#39;F.&#39; The kind will show a &#39;K&#39; upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter &#39;C.&#39;&#34; Over the next two weeks, Rob experiences adventures exploring the use of the Demon&#39;s gifts, but eventually concludes that neither he nor the world is ready for them. On the third week, Rob rejects the Demon&#39;s gifts and tells him to bide his time until humankind knows how to use them. The Demon leaves. With a light heart, Rob concludes that he made the right decision, and that &#34;It&#39;s no fun being a century ahead of the times!&#34;"
125,Air,fantasy," Air is the story of a town's fashion expert Chung Mae, a smart but illiterate peasant woman in a small village in the fictional country of Karzistan (loosely based on the country of Kazakhstan), and her suddenly leading role in reaction to dramatic, worldwide experiments with a new information technology called Air. Air is information exchange, not unlike the Internet, that occurs in everyone's brain and is intended to connect the world. After a test of Air is imposed on Mae's unprepared mountain town, everyone and everything changes, especially Mae who was deeper into Air than any other person. Afterwords, Mae struggles to prepare her people for what is to come while learning all about the world outside her home."
126,Ashling,fantasy," The powerful Misfit Elspeth is sent to Sutrium, the seat of the ruling totalitarian Council, to seal and alliance between the secret community at Obernewtyn and the rebel forces. Yet her journey takes her far beyond the borders of the Land, across the sea into the heart of the mysterious desert region, Sador. There she seeks help to destroy the weaponmachines but before her dark quest can begin, she must learn the truth of her dream: why the Beforetimers destroyed their world..."
127,Conan the Rebel,fantasy," Conan the Rebel details the involvement of Conan and his lover, the pirate Belit, in a rebellion of an eastern province of the kingdom of Stygia. Chronologically, it occurs between chapters 1 and 2 of the Robert E. Howard Conan story ""Queen of the Black Coast""."
128,The Day After Judgment,fantasy," In the first book, a wealthy arms manufacturer comes to a black magician, Theron Ware, with a strange request: he wishes to release all the demons from hell for one night to see what might happen. The book includes a lengthy description of the summoning ritual, and a detailed description of the grotesque demons as they appear. Tension between Ware and Catholic white magicians arises over the terms and conditions of a covenant that provides for observers and limitations on interference with demonic workings. Black Easter ends with Baphomet announcing to the participants that the demons can not be compelled to return to hell: the War is over, and God is dead. The Day After Judgment develops and extends the characters from the first book. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth. In a lengthy Miltonian speech at the end of the novel, Satan Mekratrig explains that, compared to humans, demons are good, and that if perhaps God has withdrawn Himself, then Satan beyond all others was qualified to take His place and, if anything, would be a more just god. It has been suggested that Blish got the name for his black magician from the titular character in Harold Frederic's 1896 novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware."
129,Lirael,fantasy," Lirael sees herself as an outcast within the world of the Clayr. With raven-black hair, a pale complexion, pointy face, muddy-brown eyes and unknown paternal parentage, she differs physically from the generally deep-tanned, fair-haired, round-faced and blue- or green-eyed seers around her. Most hurtful, though, is her lack of the Clayr's birthright, the Sight (the ability to see into the future or possible futures). The fact that this bloodline trait has not shown itself at the usual age of around eleven, as well as the absence of any truly understanding or sympathetic other in her life, leaves Lirael emotionally distressed and very unhappy until her appointment to the Clayr's Library on her fourteenth birthday. Through her solitary work in forgotten corners of the mystical library in the Clayr's Glacier, Lirael begins to unlock the keys to embarking upon an apparently predestined adventure of utmost importance. She also summons the Disreputable Dog, whom she befriends and who helps her in her explorations. Five years later, across the Wall in Ancelestierre, Prince Sameth has an encounter with the necromancer Hedge and his summoned Dead Hands, which leaves him injured both spiritually and physically. His father Touchstone arrives to take him back to the Old Kingdom and the safety of the palace in Belisaere. Here he is expected to continue his studies to follow his mother as the Abhorsen, a future he is mortally afraid of, especially since his encounter with Hedge. Their paths cross as Nicholas Sayre, an Ancelestierran friend of Sameth, crosses the border into the Old Kingdom and then to the Red Lake in search of the Lightning Trap, a region in the south west of the Kingdom where the royal rule does not extend and the Clayr cannot See. Sameth flees the palace and his sister to go and look for Nick. He gets into trouble on the way and Mogget turns up, to his surprise and suspicion. Meanwhile, Lirael finds, on her nineteenth birthday, a non-Clayr magical inheritance of the artifacts of a Remembrancer (one who looks into the past) and is quite swiftly dispatched to fulfill a very recent vision the Clayr had of her in a boat on the Red Lake with Nick. She sails down the River Ratterlin and, by coincidence, meets up with Sam, who had to use a bathtub to escape the Dead who had been following him. They continue on to the Red Lake, but are nearly intercepted by Chlorr of the Mask and the Dead Hands assigned to her. They decide to proceed to Abhorsen's House to rest and generally regroup. Once there, a strange set of revelations take place: Sameth is given a surcoat with the Royal Blood's tower and the Wallmaker's trowel, and Lirael is given a surcoat with the Clayr star and the Abhorsen key. Lirael realizes, with the help of memories she has Remembered, that she must be half-Abhorsen — a fact confirmed by Mogget, as only a child of both Clayr and Abhorsen may become a Remembrancer. The novel ends with Lirael and Sameth deciding to go on to find Nick and Hedge at the Red Lake."
130,Swords and Deviltry,fantasy," The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. The pieces in Swords and Deviltry introduce the duo and their relationship (""Induction""), present incidents from their early lives in which they meet their first lady-loves (Fafhrd in ""The Snow Women"", the Gray Mouser in ""The Unholy Grail""), and relate how afterwards in the city of Lankhmar the two met and allied themselves with each other, and lost their first loves through their defiance of the local Thieves' Guild (""Ill Met in Lankhmar"")."
131,The Clan Corporate,fantasy," In this installment, Miriam Beckstein spends most of her time in the first parallel world, a virtual prisoner. She has ruffled enough feathers and stirred up enough trouble that her uncle, the clan's head of security, keeps her well isolated, and unable to travel unchaperoned. At one point in the story, she manages to escape surveillance for a short time, but she quickly gets herself back in trouble, and her activities are strongly circumscribed thereafter. There's a subplot involving Mike Fleming, a cop who dated Miriam a couple of times. Mike has been pulled into a government task force that is investigating the clan's activities and plans with the help of a member of the clan's security apparatus who turned his back on the clan at the end of book two. There are occasional references to the moral and security implications of holding him prisoner outside the criminal justice system, but they are not explored in any depth."
132,The Gorgon's Gaze,fantasy," The Gorgon's Gaze takes place after the events in Secret of the Sirens, and follows the story of Connie and Col. Mallins Wood is under danger, and it is home to the only gorgon left in the world. Connie might be able to help, but the problem is... she's been taken away by her great-aunt Godiva! Connie's parents have asked Godiva and her brother Hugh to stop their world travels to take Connie away from Evelyn and ""wean her off of the Society."" Thus, Connie is now living in the town of Chartmouth with Godiva and Hugh, where she's denied contact with any mythical creatures. Meanwhile, Col is introduced to the Gorgon, his mother's companion species. On his second visit, Col is taken over by a mysterious creature - one who appears to be a Pegasus, but doesn't feel like one. Col finds himself to be the property of Kullervo, the evil shapeshifter! Connie must go to save her friend, while remaining safe herself and not letting her great-aunt know she's gone."
133,Watership Down,fantasy," In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate, they set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home, barely eluding the Owsla, the warren's military caste. The travelling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel, previously an unimportant member of the warren. They travel through dangerous territory, with Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla, as the strongest rabbits among them. Fiver's visions promise a safe place in which to settle, and the group eventually finds Watership Down, an ideal location to set up their new warren. They are soon reunited with Holly and Bluebell, also from the Sandleford Warren, who reveal that Fiver's vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans. Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat, Hazel realises there are no does (female rabbits), thus making the future of their new home uncertain. With the help of a seagull named Kehaar, they locate a nearby warren, Efrafa, which is overcrowded and has many does. Hazel sends a small emissary to Efrafa to present their request for does. While waiting for the group to return, Hazel and Pipkin successfully raid the nearby Nuthanger Farm to rescue a group of hutch rabbits there, returning with two does and a buck. When the emissary returns, Hazel and his rabbits learn Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort; Hazel's rabbits barely return alive. However, the group does manage to identify an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay who wants to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join. Hazel and Bigwig devise a plan to rescue the group of rabbits from Efrafa to join them on Watership Down. The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down, but soon Woundwort's army arrives to attack the Watership Down warren. Through Bigwig's bravery and loyalty and Hazel's ingenuity, the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort. The story's epilogue tells the reader of how Hazel, dozing in his burrow one ""chilly, blustery morning in March"" many years later, is visited by the rabbit folk hero El-ahrairah, who invites Hazel to join his Owsla. Leaving his friends and no-longer-needed body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down with El-ahrairah, ""running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."""
134,Quest for the Well of Souls,fantasy," In Exiles at the Well of Souls, Mavra Chang was captured by the Olborn, who use magical stones to convert beings into beasts of burden. The Olborn were interrupted partway through transforming Chang, leaving her partially transformed. Eleven years later, Chang remains an involuntary guest in the native hex of the human equivalents on the Well, Glathriel. After multiple attempts to escape, she has been reconditioned to accept her existence, and a maimed Glathrielite, Joshi, has undergone a similar partial transformation in Olborn to serve as a companion for Mavra. Inspired by the Diviner and the Rel, the Northern being that crossed from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere in Midnight at the Well of Souls, several competing factions have discovered that the Northern beings inhabiting the hex of Yugash can ""possess"" a Southerner and allow him to pass into Yugash. In Exiles at the Well of Souls, two ships were crash-landed on the Well World. The first landed in the South, and was destroyed at the end of the war in Exiles. The second landed in the north, and now the factions that fought the war in Exiles are girding for a race to the second ship. Several other players who participated in the drama in Exiles are also introduced. Antor Trelig was a politician as well as the head of the sponge syndicate, in control of a significant fraction of the council governing human space. He was transformed at the Well World into a Makiem, a giant frog-like creature. Renard was the librarian on Trelig's resort planetoid of New Pompeii, which was subsequently transformed into the home of Obie, the supercomputer capable of using Markovian physics to manipulate the universe. Renard was transformed into an Agitar, a blue-colored satyr who rides winged horses. Ben Yulin was the assistant to Dr. Gilgram Zinder, Obie's designer, as well as an agent for Trellig. Yulin was transformed into a Dasheen, a minotaur. After a showdown between Mavra's party and Yulin's party, the remnants agree to a truce with Yulin and return in the ship to Obie. In addition to Mavra and Yulin, the other members of the party are Renard, a Yugash, a Bozog (another northern species, they moved the ship from the non-tech hex it landed in to their own high-tech hex), a Lata (a southern species resembling a pixie) named Vistaru (previously Vardia Diplo), and a Yaxa (a southern species resembling a giant butterfly) named Wooley (previously Wu Julee and Kally Tonge). Once they arrive, Ben Yulin attempts to take over Obie, but the computer assists Mavra and the others in destroying the circuit that forces Obie to obey Yulin. Obie returns to human space, and when a Council fleet arrives to destroy him, he fakes his own destruction and departs with Mavra to explore the rest of the universe as partners."
135,Avilion,fantasy," Avilion takes place after the events in Mythago Wood. Steven Huxley and the mythago Guiwenneth have been living in Ryhope wood where they are raising their two children, each half-human, half-mythago. The older boy, Jack, wishes to know about the outside world while the younger girl, Yssobel, dreams about her uncle Christian, who vanished into Lavondyss at the end of Mythago Wood. Despite being comfortably settled and living an idyllic agrarian lifestyle, events at hand will change the family's future."
136,The Forest King,fantasy," After the trial of Vedvedsica, General Balif is sent on a mission to ascertain the true danger of a new race of small humanoids infiltrating the eastern boarders of Silvenesti. He travels east with an unlikely group. His two loyal servants, Lofotan and Artyrith, both formidable warriors, and Mathi, and Treskan unsure where their loyalties lie."
137,Everlost,fantasy," Allie and Nick both die in a car crash. They're supposed to go towards that light at the end of the tunnel, but they bump into each other and get knocked into a mysterious world between life and death called Everlost. The world is filled with terror, and unexpected twists for the souls that reside there. Both Nick and Allie want their lives back, so they start exploring this new world, hoping to find a way back to their normal lives. There is a catch, however: If they stand still in the living world for too long, they will sink into Earth. The longer they stay in Everlost, the more they forget about themselves in the real world. In the beginning of the book, they are saved by a boy named Lief, who tells them that they are called ""Afterlights"", who cannot walk where the living walk. They are somewhat like ghosts. He warns them of a dreaded and evil monster, McGill, before they make their way to New York City. There, they meet a Mary Hightower, the ""mother"" of Afterlights who keeps many Afterlights safe, and author of hundreds of books on living in Everlost. She lives with the children under her care in the destroyed World Trade Center. This is because things that are much beloved in the world can cross into Everlost if they are destroyed. They settle down, but Allie is not content with the way things are, so she sets out to see if she has special powers. Allie notices other Afterlights at the Twin Towers keep repeating and doing the same exact thing everyday. Lief gets stuck playing the Pac-Man arcade game non-stop and she has to pry him from the game to drag him along with her. They meet The Haunter in a factory that crossed over to Everlost. Allie gets Lief and Nick captured by The Haunter and it is shown that Allie can pick up living things and also possess or 'skinjack' as it is called in the book. In her adventures, she learns how to use her own powers. These adventures tell Nick his purpose while revealing the secret plan of Mary Hightower and the real identity of the McGill, Mikey McGill, Mary(really Megan) Hightower's younger brother. Mary, also known by others as the Sky Witch, has been lying to the children, stealing the coins they invariably have in their possession, which will allow them to leave Everlost, a metaphor for the coins given to pay Charon. Nick has also received the nickname ""Chocolate Ogre"" because of how he has a chocolate stain on his face, and Mary spreads rumors about how he sends Afterlights away by luring them in with the smell of chocolate. Allie outsmarts the McGill, who is unmasked by his sister. Allie, traveling home, is later saved by Mikey, who takes her the rest of the way home."
138,The Gates of Thorbardin,fantasy," The major plotline of The Gates of Thorbardin is that there once existed a hidden entrance to the Dwarven realm of Thorbardin. During the War of the Lance, this gate could be used as an entrance by the forces of Takhisis to destroy the Dwarven kingdom. The major character in this novel is a Dwarf by the name of Chane Feldstone. Chane comes to the knowledge of the secret entrance to Thorbardin through a dream. Chane doesn't know of his heritage, but he learns that he is a direct decedent of Grallen of Thorbardin who died fighting the mage Fistandantilus years before. Chane learns that his ancestor Grallen was attempting to seal the hidden entrance to Thorbardin using a powerful artifact known as Spellbinder which was once used in conjunction with another Gemstone named by the Dwarves Pathfinder to contain the magic of the Graygem of Gargath. The main character picks up a number of other characters such as Wingover, Chestal Thicketsway, Bobbin, and Jillian Firestoke in his travels. Among other notable events, Chane comes across the original location of the Graygem in Waykeep Valley and encounters the Irda. He also encounters the remains of the Hill Dwarves and Mountain Dwarves encased ice since the Dwarfgate Wars. Chane also finds the Helm of Grallen in the remains of rubble which were blown away from the tower of Zhaman. A Secondary plotline revolve around the renegade mage Caliban who was hunted down and killed years before by members of the three orders of magic. Caliban pulled his own heart out during the encounter and his shriveled heart remained as a power artifact used by the major antagonist in the story Kolanda Darkmoor. Caliban through Kolanda seeks the death of the three mages that hunted him down and killed him years before. Glenshadow the Wanderer, who wears the Red robes of Neutrality was the one one of the three mages to survive the encounter with Caliban. Caliban and Glenshadow encounter each other near the end of the novel. At the end of the novel Chane with the help of his traveling companions is able to discover the location of the hidden entrance, which is near Sky's End Peak near Northgate, by using the gem Pathfinder and the Helm of Grallen. Chane places Spellbinder inside the hidden entrance and the entrance is sealed from the outside as the result of a terrible magic storm. All the major benefactors in the story survive, the hidden entrance is sealed against magic (through Spellbinder which is now buried) and the Helm of Grallen passes into the realm of Thorbardin."
139,A Clan in Need,fantasy," The story starts out with Ravenpaw waking up in the Moonstone Cave. Barley is asleep, dreaming. When he wakes up with a shriek, Ravenpaw wonders what is wrong. Barley tells his friend that he was dreaming of how, when he lived in BloodClan, he had three littermates. After leaving their mother to fend for themselves, Barley and his sister, Violet, continued living together. It is against BloodClan rules for families to stay together, so when they were caught, they were brought before Scourge. As a punishment, Violet was attacked and nearly killed by her and Barley's brothers, Jumper and Hoot, who had renamed themselves Ice and Snake. After Barley is finished, Ravenpaw tells him that ThunderClan will help them. And with that they set off. But, as they are crossing WindClan territory, they encounter a patrol of warriors. At first, the patrol thinks that Barley and Ravenpaw have kidnapped Crowkit, a young gray tom that can't seem to keep out of trouble. When the patrol's leader, Mudclaw, sees that it's Ravenpaw and Barley, he tells the patrol that these cats are friends. Ravenpaw promises to help look for Crowkit and the patrol leaves. Ravenpaw suggests that they travel to ThunderClan through Fourtrees, that way Barley can see what it's like when there isn't a fight going on there. As they pass by the Great Rock, they find Crowkit struggling to climb to the top. Suddenly, there is a screech from nearby. Mudclaw's patrol has crossed the ThunderClan border to accuse Dustpelt's patrol of stealing Crowkit. A fight is narrowly avoided when Ravenpaw and Barley appear with the kit. Their mission accomplished, the WindClan patrol leaves with Crowkit. Reluctantly, Dustpelt agrees to take Barley and Ravenpaw to Firestar. When they reach the ThunderClan Camp, they are greeted by several cats including Brightheart. As they pass by the Nursery, they meet Sandstorm and her daughters, Squirrelkit and Leafkit. As Ravenpaw congratulates Sandstorm about the kits, Firestar appears. He is curious to know what's bought Barley and Ravenpaw to the Clan. They tell him everything, and Firestar tells them he will help. But first they must rest. As they are resting, somebody calls for Cinderpelt. Ravenpaw goes to Firestar to find out what's wrong. He learns that BloodClan cats have been attacking patrols. Firestar must help ThunderClan before he can send anyone to save the farm. The next morning, Ravenpaw and Barley go on a hunting patrol with Graystripe and Cloudtail. As they return, they are attacked by BloodClan cats. There is a short fight, during which one of the BloodClan cats, Snipe, seems to recognise Barley. When another ThunderClan patrol arrives, the BloodClan cats flee. The prey was ruined in the fight. When they return to camp, Barley hints to Ravenpaw that he might have known Snipe before. Shortly afterwards, Firestar and Graystripe ask Barley for help in finding BloodClan's home in the Twolegplace. He might remember. Barley takes offense and runs off into the forest. Ravenpaw goes to him and tells him that he must tell Firestar anything he knows. ThunderClan is starving. The next morning, Rainpaw and Sorrelpaw leave to go hunting. As Ravenpaw tries to think of ways to coax information out of Barley, Rainpaw runs back into camp. He says that they were attacked by BloodClan and that Sorrelpaw is hurt. They find her and they bring her back to camp. Barley sees that what happened to him and Violet is happening to other cats. With that thought in mind, he goes to Firestar to tell everything he knows. Barley tells Firestar about Snipe and that he really doesn't know much more. Ravenpaw suggests that Violet might know more. After all, she still lives in Twolegplace. The next day, Ravenpaw and Barley leave to find her. When they do, she tells them that BloodClan may be getting organized again. Violet leads them to a friend of hers, Mitzi. Mitzi's son, Fritz, was kidnapped by BloodClan one moon before. She followed the cats when they took him and learned where their home was. She gladly takes them there. Violet, Barley, and Ravenpaw return to ThunderClan to tell Firestar where the BloodClan cats live. He gathers a battle patrol and tells them to show no mercy during the fight to come. The patrol slips out of camp and heads to the place that Mitzi showed them. When they arrive, they find all of BloodClan assembled before Ice and Snake. Violet and Barley's brothers are the new leaders of BloodClan and suddenly, surprisingly, Violet walks forward to them. She calls to them, telling them that their names are Jumper and Hoot and that she is their sister. Seeming to have forgotten about their kin, Ice and Snake are ready to let BloodClan slaughter her when Barley leaps up too. Upon sight of their brother, they are reminded of that day, seasons ago, when they tried to kill their sister. Now, they want to try again. That's when Firestar gives the order to attack. BloodClan and ThunderClan become a single, fighting mass. And then, suddenly, the battle is over. Ice and Snake start walking over to them when suddenly Barley and Violet pounce, catching their brothers by surprise. Seeing that they are about to be beaten, they plead for mercy. Barley says that they've been attacking cats and stealing prey, so now they must pay. Ice and Snake try to wriggle out of punishment by claiming that they never did anything. It was the rest of BloodClan. With that, BloodClan turns on them and they drive their leaders away. Only one cat stays behind. It is Fritz, Mitzi's son. He, Barley and Violet leave to go back to Violet's housefolk and Fritz's housefolk. Firestar promises Ravenpaw that when his clan has rested, he will lead a patrol to drive Willie and his group of rogues from the farm."
140,Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz,fantasy," The story opens with a dinner party, attended by seven of the characters from Baum's inaugural book. Present are the famous foursome, Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, along with the Wizard, Jellia, and the Soldier with the Green Whiskers. (Baum named the latter personage Omby Amby, but Thompson re-christened him Wantowin Battles.) The dinner is hosted by the Wizard, preparatory to his introduction of his newest invention. After a long session of reminiscence that fills the first chapter, the Wizard takes his guests to a glass-domed building that contains two gleaming silver aircraft, the newly-created ozoplanes. The Wizard has named them the ""Ozpril"" and the ""Oztober."" The guests enthusiastically pile into the craft to inspect them. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers ate twenty-nine pickles at dinner, and is suddenly overcome by a violent cramp. He slams into the control panel of the Oztober, depressing the up, south, fast, spin, spiral, zig, zag, slow, and circle buttons simultaneously. The Oztober zooms off into the sky, headed for parts unknown, with the Soldier, the Tin Man, and Jellia on board. The Wizard, startled and appalled, takes the Ozpril in pursuit and in search of the Oztober, accompanied by Dorothy, Lion, and Scarecrow. Enduring a chaotic flight, the resourceful Tin Man eventually gets the ozoplane under control; he decides to teach himself to fly the craft, and then return to the Emerald City. In the dawn of the new day, he sights an unknown country in the sky, and lands the plane there. He enthusiastically but undiplomatically claims the place for Ozma as a colony of the Land of Oz. The country, however, has a name, and inhabitants, and a touchy, egotistical, and aggressive ruler: Stratovania is the domain of King Strutoovious the Seventh. (He calls himself ""Strut of the Strat"" for short.) This king quickly decides to turn the tables and conquer Ozma and Oz. He holds the new arrivals prisoner &mdash; though his hostility is somewhat mollified by his affection for Jellia; he likes her smooth brown hair, so different from the upstanding ""electric hair"" of the Stratovanians. Strat impulsively names Jellia his ""starina"" &mdash; a pun on ""czarina."" (Similar puns flow thick and fast: the new starina is addressed as ""your Skyness"" and ""your Stratjesty."") Despite his affection for Jellia, Stratoovious assembles his army of Blowmen and forces the Tin Man to pilot the ozoplane back to the Emerald City. The other Ozites, left behind, try to find a way to counter this threatened invasion of Oz. Jellia tries to use her influence as starina &mdash; but faces the opposition of Strut's existing queen, Kabebe. Jellia and Wantowin are in danger on being thrown off the edge of Stratovania, when the Wizard and company arrive in the second ozoplane. But the plane is blown up by the Blowmen, and the Ozites have to leap off the edge of the skyland to save themselves. The Wizard uses the magic in his ""kit-bag"" (it has green eyes and emits feline yowls) to cushion their fall. The Ozites land at Red Top Mountain in the Quadling Country. The place's rightful ruler, Princess Azarine, has escaped the clutches of the usurper Bustado (an even worse villain than Strut) who captures the Ozites. This villain sends the Wizard in search of Azarine, and holds the rest of the party hostage. Yet the hostages escape, and meet up with the Wizard, Azarine, and her protectors, the great stag Shagomar and his wife Dear Deer. The group reaches the palace of Glinda, though the sorceress is absent with Ozma; the Wizard is able to use Glinda's magic to combat the Stratovanian invasion. Strut and his forces reach the Emerald City; the residents flee or hide. Strut tries to obtain Ozma's Magic Belt from her safe, but is frustrated; the Wizard has united with Ozma and Glinda to rescue the Belt, the most powerful magical talisman of Oz. Once in possession of the Belt, Ozma sends Strut's army home and ends his bid for conquest. She turns the usurper Bustado into a red squirrel, so that Azarine can resume her rightful place after enjoying an Emerald City vacation. Thompson gives her protagonists some odd adversaries, including sky creatures called spikers that are something like iridescent octopuses, and a large fierce bugbear that is half insect and half bear in form. And she indulges in extravagant nonsensical tech talk, as with the Wizard's ""elutherated altitude pills"" and Glinda's ""triple-edged, zentomatic transporter."" She also misuses the word ""entomophagous"" to mean insect-like; it actually means something that eats insects."
141,The Infernal City,fantasy," The Infernal City takes places in 4E 41 (40 years after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles.) Tamriel is a continent inhabited by many races, and is ruled by an imperial authority. A floating city known as Umbriel is devastating Tamriel. Any person caught beneath Umbriel dies, and is resurrected as undead. Annaïg Hoïnart, a seventeen-year-old Breton girl, and her Argonian friend Mere-Glim, escape from Black Marsh just ahead of Umbriel. They witnessed Umbriel moving toward the city, and after Glim is overcome by an urge to run back to the city, Annaïg During their journey, Sul and Attrebus met a group of Khajiit who joined them. Sul explained to Attrebus that he intended to short-cut through Oblivion to beat Umbriel to Vvardenfell. He explains that Umbriel was undoubtedly a product of Vuhon, the man who had engineered the ingenium, the device that had kept the Ministry of Truth in place in Vivec's absence. He killed Sul's love, Ilzheven, and caused the Ministry of Truth to crash into Vvardenfell, in turn causing Red Mountain to erupt and destroy the entire island. Sul and Vuhon both were thrown into Oblivion, and a being named Umbra took that opportunity of the barrier between worlds opening to throw a sword, also called Umbra, into Tamriel, preventing Clavicus Vile from imprisoning him in it again. Sul is looking for the sword to destroy Umbriel. After nearly being recaptured, Sul opens a portal to Oblivion and he, Treb, and the Khajiit entered the planes of Oblivion, traveling through different planes, noticing the differences through the pain of the transitions. The path was interrupted in Hircine's plane, and Sul guided the party through Oblivion as Hircine and his drivers hunted them. One of the Khajiit was killed during the chase, and those remaining stayed behind at the end of the course to delay Hircine from reaching Attrebus and Sul. Attrebus and Sul exited Oblivion directly into the ruined Vivec City. There, Sul explained that Azura told him he'd find Umbra here, and that it must be what Vuhon was after. He found that the place where Umbra should have been was gone, and spoke with the spirit of Ilzheven. He questioned her about Umbra, and she told him that Dunmer found it and took it north, toward the Sea of Ghosts. As Sul wandered the ruined city, Attrebus kept an eye out for Umbriel and opened Coo, finding Annaïg looking back at him. She told him that she couldn't wait for him, that she and Glim would use her flying potions and leave Umbriel. When she closed her locket, a few moments later Attrebus saw the bottom of Umbriel poking out from the bottom of the clouds, heading toward them and very close. Annaïg, working in Toel's kitchen on Umbriel, received a bucket of ingredients from a skraw that contained her locket, and inside it a message from Glim. She responded to Glim’s note and they met the following midnight, at the dock. They consumed flying potions Annaïg had made, and begin to fly away from Umbriel, only to find that they had become like the other residents of the city; if they traveled too far from Umbriel, they began to lose their substance. Though Colin had been pulled from the Attrebus investigation, he continued investigating. The last person Gulan had spoken to, Letine Arese, an assistant to the Prime Minister, made her way deep into the Market District and entered a building, and Colin climbed a nearby building in order to reach a third-story window. He entered a small empty bedroom and made his way downstairs until he heard the voices of Arese and a male. She seemed concerned that the ""job"" was not accomplished as it should have been. Colin learned that a courier brought news to the Emperor that the Prince lived. As their conversation escalated, among the screams of men it seemed that Arese changed form into a sort of beast. It moved past him, up the stairs, then a few moments later came back down and exited through the door. The building was burning, and Colin escaped through the window. Unable to search the house, he wondered why Arese wanted the Prince dead, and why she didn't accomplish the task herself. Sul was drawn back to Attrebus by his screams, to find Umbriel nearly upon them. They attempted to move back to their entry position, but were transported to Umbriel, suspended in a type of spiderweb-like net in front of Vuhon. As they spoke, Sul accused Vuhon of murdering his love, Ilzheven, and destroying Vvardenfell; Vuhon contested that it was actually Sul that did that. It was revealed that Ilzheven had a very special type of soul, and Vuhon was using her to power the ingenium, to hold the Ministry of Truth aloft over Vivec City. When Sul freed her, it sent the Ministry of Truth crashing into Vivec City, killing Ilzheven and throwing Sul and Vuhon into Oblivion. Vuhon also revealed that he had an ally inside the Imperial Palace, the person that was trying to have Attrebus killed. He said he'd need the Imperial City, specifically the White Gold Tower, and offered Attrebus the chance to convince his father to back down. Through his close relationship with Oblivion, Sul shattered Vuhon's glass world by summoning a monstrous daedra. While Vuhon was distracted, Attrebus tried to attack from behind, but was discovered by Vuhon and trapped once more. At the last moment, Sul sprang to the prince's side and said ""Not now,"" before laying a hand on his shoulder and pulling them both into another part of Oblivion. The book ends with Glim and Annaïg back on Umbriel, defeated. They spent a few hours together before saying their goodbyes, and Annaïg headed back to the kitchen. She promised Glim that, while all they could do was continue to move forward, eventually they would be free. She then resolved to become stronger and more ambitious in order to survive."
142,Tarzan the Invincible,fantasy," Tarzan, his monkey friend Nkima, and Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors prevent Soviet communists from looting the lost city of Opar. The story also prominently features Tarzan's lion ally Jad-bal-ja. This book marks the last appearance of Opar and La in the Tarzan series, aside from the juvenile piece Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion (1936), which was published later but is chronologically earlier."
143,Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,fantasy," Harry Potter is spending another summer with his dreadful Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. when a pair of Dementors stage an unexpected attack on Harry and his cousin Dudley. After he uses magic to defend himself and Dudley, he is temporarily expelled from Hogwarts for using magic outside of the school, despite being legally allowed to do in self-defence, before it is rescinded. A few days afterwards, Harry is visited by a group of wizards and Mad-Eye Moody and is whisked off to Number 12, Grimmauld Place, London, the home of Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, and the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. As Harry learns from his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger The Order is a group of witches and wizards, led by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, dedicated to fighting the evil Lord Voldemort and his followers. The Order is forced to operate in secrecy, outside of the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Magic, which is headed by the dense and corrupt Cornelius Fudge, who refuses to believe that Lord Voldemort has returned. In addition, Harry learns that he and Dumbledore have been made victims of a ministry smear campaign aimed at discrediting them and their beliefs about Voldemort. Because of his use of magic, Harry's fate is to be determined at a discipliniary hearing at the Ministry of Magic, which turns out to be an apparent show trial. With Dumbledore's help, Harry is cleared by the Wizengamot and permitted to return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Reunited with his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry returns to Hogwarts and learns that Dolores Umbridge, an employee of Fudge, will be his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. The Sorting Hat, which traditionally sorts all new students into one of four houses, cautions the students against becoming too internally divided. Meanwhile, due to the smear campaign against him, Harry is the subject of unwanted gossip from the student body at large, and a number of people turn against him. Professor Umbridge and Harry soon clash, as she, like Fudge, refuses to believe that Voldemort has returned and punishes Harry when he points out Voldemort's return by forcing him to write lines with a special quill that carves ""I must not tell lies"" into the back of his hand. Umbridge refuses to teach her students how to perform defensive spells, and before long, Fudge appoints her High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, giving her the authority to inspect all faculty members and evaluate their skills. In desperation, Harry, Hermione, and Ron form their own Defense Against the Dark Arts group, also known as the D.A., or Dumbledore's Army. Twenty-five other students sign up, including several of Harry's friends as well as the eccentric Luna Lovegood, and they meet as often as possible to learn and practice Defense spells, and learn well from Harry. One night, Harry has a vision where he inhabits the body of a large snake, and attacks Ron's father. Harry wakes up horrified, and Professor McGonagall takes him to Dumbledore immediately. Dumbledore uses the portraits on the walls of his office to raise an alert, and Mr. Weasley is promptly rescued by two members of the Order. The Weasley family, accompanied by Harry and the Order, visit Arthur Weasley in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Afterwards, Dumbledore demands that Harry take Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape, for the purpose of protecting his mind against further invasions by Lord Voldemort. During the lessons, Harry learns that a corridor he has been repeatedly visiting in his dreams is part of the Department of Mysteries. Harry is unsuccessful at Occlumency because he has such difficulty clearing his mind of all thoughts, making it difficult for him to focus on closing his mind off to all outside influence, in addition to wanting to find out what they mean. Meanwhile, his scar (from the attack in which Voldemort killed Harry's parents) burns horribly every time Voldemort experiences a powerful emotion. The D.A. continues to meet regularly, and Harry's peers show great improvement until they are caught by Umbridge. Dumbledore takes full responsibility for the group and resigns as Headmaster, and Umbridge takes over his position. Shortly afterwards, Harry ends up viewing a memory of Snape's, showing him being bullied by Harry's father James and Sirius, back in their schooldays. Harry wishes desperately to contact his godfather to talk about his father, but Umbridge has been inspecting all owl posts and patrolling the fires of Hogwarts, preventing communication via the Floo Network. Ron's brothers, Fred and George Weasley agree to distract Umbridge so that Harry can use her fireplace to talk to Sirius, who clears up Harry's doubts about his father. Immediately afterwards, they leave Hogwarts, moving to London where they plan to open a joke shop in the wizarding town of Diagon Alley using the money Harry won the previous year in the Triwizard Tournament. The students begin taking their O.W.L. exams, and Harry has another vision, this time about Sirius being held captive and tortured by Voldemort. Horrified, Harry becomes determined to save him. Hermione warns Harry that Voldemort may be deliberately trying to lure Harry to the Department of Mysteries, but Harry is too concerned about Sirius to pay heed. Harry sneaks into Umbridge's office, and, using her fireplace, transports himself to 12, Grimmauld Place to look for Sirius. Kreacher, the House of Black's house elf, tells Harry that Sirius is at the Ministry of Magic. Harry returns to Hogwarts when he is pulled back through the fire by Umbridge to find that he and his friends have been caught in Umbridge's office. Ron, Luna, Ginny, and Neville, who tried to distract Umbridge so that Harry could use her fireplace, have all been seized by Slytherins and gagged. Hermione and Harry convince Umbridge to follow them into the forest, where they claim to be hiding a weapon for Dumbledore which they had just finished and wanted to tell him about. Once in the forest, Umbridge provokes the resident herd of centaurs, and is taken into the forest by them. Harry and his friends use the school's thestrals, winged skeletal horses to fly to the Ministry. Once they arrive, Harry cannot find Sirius and realises that Hermione was right. Harry also sees that one of the glass spheres has his name on it, as well as Voldemort's. Harry grabs the sphere, and Death Eaters led by Lucius Malfoy surround to attack, demanding that Harry hand over the prophecy. Employing all of their Defence skills, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville have moderate success fighting the Death Eaters, but they are ultimately helped enormously by the arrival of several members of the Order, including Dumbledore. In the midst of the fight, Harry drops the glass sphere and it shatters. Sirius is killed by his own cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, when she blasts him through the veil. Harry tries to avenge his godfather and follows Bellatrix, but is met by Voldemort at the fountain. Dumbledore appears shortly after Voldemort and the two engage in an intense duel. Voldemort fights Dumbledore to stalemate, then possesses Harry in an attempt to get Dumbledore to sacrifice Harry in the hope of killing him. Voldemort and Lestrange escape, just as Fudge appears at the Ministry, finally faced with incontrovertible evidence that the Dark Lord has returned. Dumbledore sends Harry back to school, where, after Harry has a breakdown, screaming that ""he's had enough"" of all the pain and anguish and death and destruction, he explains that the sphere was a prophecy which stated that Harry has a power that Voldemort will never know: the power of love, given to him by his mother's sacrifice fifteen years earlier. The prophecy goes on to claim that neither Harry nor Voldemort can live while the other survives. Dumbledore takes this opportunity to tell Harry why he must spend his summers with the Dursleys in Little Whinging: because Harry's mother died to save him, he is blessed with her love, a blessing that can be sealed only by blood. Harry's Aunt Petunia, his mother's sister, makes that bond complete by taking Harry into her home. As long as he still calls Little Whinging home, Harry is safe. At the end of the year, the Order warn the Dursleys they will have to answer to them should they mistreat Harry, who returns to them for the summer."
144,Deryni Checkmate,fantasy," Deryni Checkmate takes places in March 1121, four months after the coronation of fourteen-year old King Kelson Haldane. The novel opens with the rabidly anti-Deryni leader of the Holy Church, Archbishop Edmund Loris, signing a letter that demands that the Deryni Duke of Corwyn, Alaric Morgan, recant his magical powers and submit to a life of penance. If he fails to do so, Loris threatens to excommunicate Morgan and place his entire duchy under interdict. Additionally, Morgan's cousin, Monsignor Duncan McLain, is suspended and summoned to an ecclesiastical trial to answer for his part in the events surrounding Kelson's coronation. After being warned of the threat, Kelson sends Duncan to warn Morgan of the upcoming trouble, fearing that Duncan's hidden Deryni heritage may be revealed by a trial. Duncan travels to Morgan's capital city of Coroth, where he informs his cousin of Loris' threat. In addition to the ecclesiastical threat, Morgan's duchy is being ravaged by an anti-Deryni fanatic named Warin de Grey, and the neighboring kingdom of Torenth is preparing to launch an invasion of Gwynedd. Fearing that an internal Gwyneddan conflict will weaken the kingdom prior to fighting an external enemy, Morgan and Duncan eventually decide to travel to the city of Dhassa and personally appeal to the Curia of Bishops. However, en route to Dhassa, Morgan is drugged and captured by Warin, who intends to burn the Deryni duke as a heretic. Duncan manages to rescue his cousin, but is forced to reveal his Deryni powers to ensure their escape. When the Curia learns of the cousins' actions, the two are soon excommunicated. Morgan and Duncan realize that appealing to the Curia is no longer an option, so they set out to meet with Kelson. Loris attempts to place Corwyn under Interdict, but a group of bishops refuses to participate in an action that would punish an entire duchy for the actions of its duke. Loris rages against the rebels, but he and his supporters are thrown out of Dhassa, effectively splitting the Curia. Kelson has traveled to the city of Culdi to attend the wedding of Morgan's sister, Bronwyn, and Duncan's half-brother, Kevin. Unknown to anyone, a jealous architect named Rimmell has fallen in love with Bronwyn and seeks to win her affections through the use of a love charm he acquires from an old witch woman. However, Rimmell's plan backfires horribly, and the charm kills both Bronwyn and Kevin. By the time Morgan and Duncan arrive in Culdi, Rimmell has been executed for his crime. Though Morgan is crushed with grief over the death of his sister, Kelson reminds him that he must still see to his duties. Facing an internal ecclesiastical schism, rebel fanatics ravaging his lands, and an imminent invasion from Torenth, Kelson cannot allow Morgan to wallow in his grief. Morgan agrees, and returns to his duties in service to the throne of Gwynedd."
145,The Tenth City,fantasy," Alexa goes back to Bridewell to rescue her friend Yipes with Warvold, Armon,Odessa, Murphy, and many others. After the death of Thomas Warvold, Alexa learns that Catherine and Thomas were her parents and her foster parents are Catherine's sister Laura and her husband James Daley. Along this sad, adventurous but still amusing book,Alexa learns to trust in herself and in Elyon."
146,Blart II: The Boy Who was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both,fantasy," Blart, after the imprisonment of Zoltab, is living the good life on his own pig farm. But a wily merchant named Uther has conned him out of everything he owns and his freedom by a game of cards called ""Muggins"". To play Muggins, the dealer simply picks two cards from the deck, hands one to the non-dealer and keeps one himself. Each player turns over their cards. If the cards were the same, say, a king and a king, then the dealer wins. If the cards are different, say, a three and a five, then the non-dealer wins. Even Blart has grasped it that the chances of the non-dealer winning is drastically in his favour and resolves to play the game with Uther to make money. However, no sooner than Blart bets stakes in the game of Muggins than Uther begins to win every round. But then quite out of the blue, Capablanca arrives to tell him that Blart and the other questors are wanted, dead or alive - or both. They are wanted because it is believed that they are minions of Zoltab, even though it was them that imprisoned him. So Blart, Capablanca and Uther (who must help them as he is wanted for associating with Blart) must find and warn the other questors. After gathering the original company (with the exception of the deceased dwarf Tungsten) they must travel to where Capablanca has imprisoned Zoltab, so as to prove their innocence. However, Capablanca has difficulty remembering where he has imprisoned the last lord. As soon ddakjfdioasdjfoasdfjs it:Blart 2"
147,Conan the Outcast,fantasy," The King of Sark calls in his High Priest Khumanos to talk about the drought situation. After the ritual sacrifice of many high priests, Anaximander decides that a larger offering to the god Voltantha is needed. He directs Khumanos to sacrifice Qjara, a more prosperous city to the north. To do this correctly, Khumanos seeks out Solon in the desert, to which he expresses doubts about the mission. Solon sees Khumanos' compassion as a weakness and shows him the Sword of Onothimanos, which is just a rusted hilt. Khumanos becomes emotionless and devoted to the mission. So much so that he kills Solon because he outlived his usefulness. Conan is on the outskirts of Qjara awaiting a caravan to Shadizar. He is invited into the carvan sector of the city by some local children. He settles down in a bar and meets Afriandra in disguise. She proves her precognitive ability by correctly predicting the death of a nearby patron. When Zaius comes to the bar looking for her, Conan provides a distraction by taunting him. Zaius says he is not worth the effort. Conan begins a romance with Afrianda, which offends Zaius. The two men have a quick fistfight which Conan is winning, which Afrianda implores him to stop. Conan demands a formal duel which Zaius rejects on the basis of Conan not being a citizen. After Conan defends Qjara's gates from a nomad attack, he becomes an honorary citizen and uses the opportunity to challenge Zaius to ritual combat. Zaius accepts. Meanwhile, King Anaximander begins a diplomatic mission to Qjara. He witnesses proof of what he thinks of as Qjara's debauchery and asks the king and queen for permission to set up a temple to Voltantha in the city. Qjara's royalty goes one better, proposing a ""marriage"" between the goddess Saditha and Voltantha. The deal is done, and Khumanos begins his work. Khumanos bids slaves to mine three veins of glowing green rock from a Sarkian mountain. Extended exposure to this rock causes sores and cancer and even death. Keeping the rocks of the three veins separate, the slaves refine it into three separate statues. These three statues are hoisted onto carts and sent by three different routes to Qjara, avoiding populated areas and going through the wastelands. Despite the heat and hard labor, Khumanos insists the carts be driven by human labor with limited breaks. In Qjara, Conan prepares for his duel. Zaius preens and postures for the crowd, angering Conan. When the duel begins, Zaius' first stroke cuts off his own head. Not recognizing this as a ritual suicide, Conan begins ridiculing Zaius for backing away from the fight. This angers the royalty and forces them to cast him out of the city."
148,Strata,fantasy," Kin Arad is a human planetary engineer working for the Company, a human organisation that ""builds"" habitable planets with techniques and equipment salvaged from the Spindle Kings, an extinct alien race, excelling in terraforming. The expressed aim of the Company's planet building is to create branches of humanity diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity, since the Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal Mindquakes, epidemic mass deaths caused by too much homogeneity among the populace. All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing false fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees will attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata, like running shoes or other out-of-place-artefacts as practical jokes, hoping to cause confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. The Company does not allow this however, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect this, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artefacts are eventually unearthed. Kin and two aliens, the four-armed frog-like, paranoid and muscular Kung Marco and Silver, a bear-like Shand, historian and linguist by profession, are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo for an expedition. Jalo, a human who more than a thousand years ago embarked on a relativistic journey has made a stunning discovery - a flat Earth. However, when the team rendezvous on the Kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has an heart-attack and dies. Shocked by the large amounts of weapons on-board Jalo's spaceship, Kin has misgivings about the expedition, but Silver and Marco see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel. When the expedition finally arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the mediaeval Eastern hemisphere of Earth, clearly artificial. It rotates around its hub inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny ""stars"" affixed to the interior, complete with a small sun, moon and fake planets revolving around it. After their ship is hit by one of the orbiting ""planets"", Kin, Marco and Silver are forced to abandon ship and land on the flat Earth with the help of their lift-belt equipped suits. A return from the flat Earth now seems impossible, unless they are able to find its mysterious builders, so they embark on a journey to a structure they have spotted at the hub of the Disc, the only thing which does not match geographically with the Earth they know. En route, they encounter the superstitious Medieval inhabitants of the Disc, who believe the end of the world is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the Disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. They also discover a number of other differences. What Kin Arad knows as Reme is called Rome on the Disc, and there is a strange Christos cult that is completely unfamiliar to Kin Arad. Also, Venus is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar-sized) moon Adonis, which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin knows, and led humanity to a heliocentric world view early on. Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of America is completely missing; the travellers rescue a party of Vikings in the process of searching for Vinland, when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world. In addition, there are real ""magical"" creatures and objects on the Disc, demons and magic purses and flying carpets - all of them, the travellers realise, highly advanced and sophisticated technological constructs like the Disc itself. Indeed, the world itself is an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. At the very end of the story, Kin comes to suspect that the builders of the flat world in fact constructed the universe as a whole, with the evidence of previous races being hoaxes and the flat world being an inside joke, analogous to the false strata Kin and the Company themselves manufacture, and the occasional hoaxes put in these strata by rebellious employees. Kin and the others eventually reach the hub and Kin makes contact with the Disc's controlling systems. She is told that, despite advanced robotic maintenance, sheer entropy build-up threatens the Disc's further existence. The machines offer their advanced technology, in exchange for Kin's construction of a real replacement Earth for the flat planet's inhabitants. Kin agrees; the implication being that the world she will build is in fact our own Earth. Kin is excited about the massive task at hand; just like Ringworld's Louis Wu, whom she parallels, she is over two hundred years old, and thus constantly under the threat of growing tired of life."
149,The Starlight Barking,fantasy," A day of enchantments for the Dalmatians of the first book begins when the Dalmatians wake up and find all the humans and other animals in an unnaturally deep sleep. They hear the barking of Cadpig, carrying all the way from London, where she has become the Prime Minister's pet. She informs them reports from all over the country reveal the same phenomenon, and summons delegate dogs to London. They travel to London by ""swooshing"", described as gliding just off the ground. Pongo and Missus decide to investigate Cruella de Vil to see if she's behind the mysterious events. Joined by Tommy and the white Persian cat, who are ""honorary dogs"", and a few dogs, they arrive at her house, where the doors magically open for them. However, they find her fast asleep like all the other humans on earth. The dogs then travel to Trafalgar Square where they are addressed from the top of Nelson's Column by Sirius, Lord of the Dog Star, an extraterrestrial dog. Every dog perceives him as a dog of his own breed. Sirius invites them all to travel back to his home where they will be safe from the dangers of nuclear war on Earth, not to mention the whims and potential abuse of humans. Some dogs are for this, some against, but in the end all the dogs agree that Pongo, known for his braininess and heroism, should make the decision. Pongo joins in a conference with Cadpig and her ""cabinet"" discussing whether to go with Sirius or not. Then three skinny, mixed-breed strays arrive and ask to be heard. Pongo is sure that they will want to go with Sirius, but they want to stay on earth and someday have owners of their own. Pongo tells Sirius the dogs cannot abandon their humans and the Dog Star sadly accepts the decision. Before he leaves, he grants every dog the power to reach his home before the humans wake up. All the stray dogs take the opportunity to go to the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home."
150,Moominsummer Madness,fantasy," A nearby volcano causes a massive wave to flood Moominvalley. While escaping the flood the Moomin family and their friends find a building floating past, and take up residence there. They believe it is a deserted house until they realise someone else lives there, Emma, who explains that it is not a house but a theatre. The moomins start to understand about the scenery, props, and costumes they have found. The theatre drifts aground and Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden decide to go and sleep in a tree. When they wake next morning the theatre has floated away again and they are alone. Meanwhile Little My accidentally falls overboard, and by some strange coincidence is rescued by Moomintroll's adventurous friend Snufkin who is setting off to seek revenge on a grumpy Park Keeper. He tears down all the 'Do not walk on the grass' notices, fills the lawns with electric Hattifatteners and sets free twenty-four small woodies who immediately adopt him as their father. The coincidences continue as Moonmintroll and the Snork Maiden meet Emma's deceased husbands niece, the Fillyjonk, and all three get arrested burning the signs that Snufkin tore up. Meanwhile in the theatre, Emma helps Moominpappa write a play and the family decide to stage it. The woodies find a playbill for the play and cajole Snufkin into taking them to the theatre. The Hemulen who has arrested Fillyjonk, Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden also finds a playbill and leaves his cousin to guard the prisoners while he heads off to see the play. The cousin is persuaded of their innocence and lets them out to go to the play too, where everyone is reunited and ends up on stage, the play itself collapsing into a big reunion party. When the floods recede everyone gets to go home."
151,Hunting Party,fantasy," The plot and narrative center on one Heris Serrano, a strong competent female protagonist. She has recently left the Regular Space Service that guards the Familias Regnant rather than face a court-martial for saving the lives of her troops by deliberately disobeying the orders of her bloodthirsty superior, Admiral Lepescu, and capturing her objectives in a way other than what he specified. Cashiered to civilian life, she must make a living as a captain. Her employment agency finds her a job as captain of the private yacht Sweet Delight for a rich Family member, Lady Cecelia. The Sweet Delight''s previous captain, the sinister Captain Olin, had incurred Cecelia's wrath by failing to promptly leave the capital (where Cecelia had been to attend the Grand Council of the Familias) so she could arrive on Sirialis, Lord Thornbuckle's private estate-planet, in time for the beginning of the fox hunting season; this delay saddled her with some obstreperous relatives who are in disgrace and are sent aboard her yacht as being a convenient mobile exile. Heris discovers to her dismay that the same agency that had recommended her to Cecelia had also foisted an unrelieved stream of incompetent, regenerate, and outright criminal personnel on her ship, and that her new command was not merely overly luxurious and inefficient, it was an outright deathtrap. This point is driven home when Heris begins tracking down anomalies in the environmental systems and decides to inspect portions herself. The two environmental technicians she orders to accompany her in protective suits rush down to reach the scrubber before Heris. Heris's worse fears are realized when the two technicians blunder and unleash a cloud of deadly hydrogen sulfide; one dies, and the other is badly injured. On subsequent investigation, the life-support systems are in imminent danger of collapse. Heris orders an emergency detour to a deep-space shipyard for repairs. While in the shipyard, contraband data is discovered secreted in the scrubbers. Apparently Captain Olin, the dead Iklind, and presumably some of the others were using Cecelia's yacht to smuggle various goods for unknown parties. Cecelia and Heris agree to a bet: if the repairs were completed on schedule, Heris would tutor Cecelia on the inner workings of her ship. If not, then Cecelia would teach Heris equestrianism using her personal mechanical horse. In part because of the smuggling, Heris loses, but Cecelia does not hold her to it because of the legal interference, and insists that both sides pay up. The two discover a certain fondness for each other's pet subject, and slowly become fast friends. Ron gets cross-wise of Heris when he calls her ""disgusting"" for putting him and his companions in what he considers to be inferior housing during their stay at the shipyard, and compounds the offense when he intrudes on the bridge (intending to apologize) during a tricky series of FTL jumps. The final straw occurs during an emergency drill; Ron and Odious George had as a prank repainted various cylinders used in drills and tampered with equipment to confuse and humiliate the captain. Had the computer-generated drill been a little different, the cylinders would have formed a home-made bomb. Heris, with Cecelia's permission, locks Ron in his quarters, and through dexterous manipulation of the computerized fixtures and equipment tames Ron and slowly leads him to realize the errors of his ways; thereafter she begins to remedy his lax and deficient education. He is released when he has learned sufficient common sense. Ron's newfound sensibility begins wearing off when the Sweet Delight reaches Sirialis and the others (Cecelia, Heris, Brun, Raffaele, and George) all begin enjoying the fox hunting while Ron is positively miserable and unskilled at riding to the hounds. George suggests that they take a secret jaunt to one of the vacation islands to simply get away from it all and annoy their relations by disappearing for a little while. Their escape goes well, until they attempt to set down at the Bandoo complex of lodges and facilities, to refuel their flitter. Their authority is denied by the systems there, and while circling the field, their flitter is shot down. Struggling to the island, they are greeted by former members of Heris's crew, who apparently are the designated prey of a manhunt organized by the same Admiral Lepescu who had ruined Heris's crew. They had thought that the flitter was carrying some hunters, and so used their best weapon. They split the youngsters up into two groups, Raffaele with Brun and George with Ron, reasoning that divided there would be a better chance that at least one of them would survive long enough to be rescued. The first night, Raffaele and Brun do well, acquiring a hunter's gear when that hunter killed the long-time survivor Petris had sent to look after them; the hunter overconfidently fell to the blade of his not-yet-dead victim. The next day, they find a well-hidden cave, and hunker down in it. Ron and George do not do so swell. They improve the hours of the first night constructing a shoddy trap for hunters, and the next day Ron contracts a fever of some sort. George goes to get some water for Ron, but makes the mistake of drinking some before he notices the eerie silence of the creek: it had been poisoned by the hunters, who have begun to fear that the youngsters' absence would be noticed and have ceased to hunt fair. Ron feverishly attempts to drag George's body to safety, but George is captured by the hunters and is taken to Bandon lodge (while Ron manages to escape). At the lodge, George talks his two guards into betraying Lepescu and into letting him send a message to Lord Thornbuckle and his militia. The message reaches Heris and Cecelia who have already organized a militia expedition - they had grown suspicious of their absence and various unauthorized shuttle flights down to the islands. When they storm Bandon, a traitor in the militia kills the two guards and nearly kills George. All the hunters and victims were on the other island. Lepescu has realized that the jig was up, and begins methodically killing all the hunters and prey. His intent is to eliminate any witnesses and escape Sirialis. Ron finds the girls just before one of the surviving hunters does. They get the drop on him and discover that the crown prince Gerel is part of Lepescu's cabal. They all set out to escape the island, and are ambushed by Lepescu, who offers the prince a choice: either kill his friends, allowing Lepescu to blackmail the prince, or he will die with them. His threat is backed up by a gas grenade with a dead man's switch. Heris and Cecelia have been following the prince's tracks; while delayed by killing the traitorous militia member, they come upon Lepescu in time for Heris to shoot him in the head and end his threat. In the aftermath, Lepescu's cabal is dismantled. George recovers, and reunites with Brun and Ron, whose experience on the island have made them mature. Heris's former crew (the survivors, at least), decide not to return to the Fleet that betrayed them, and join the Sweet Delight, largely replacing the feckless former crew. The prince's participation is hushed up and he is confined aboard Cecelia's yacht until he returns to Rockhouse Major, there to answer to his father."
152,The Dragon Knight,fantasy," Jim and Angie are adjusting to their new life within this parallel dimensional version of 14-century medieval England or as well as any 20-century persons might do in a 14-century medieval environment. Jim, the now Sir James, Baron of Malencontri et Riveroak is making an attempt at being a good English Lord, however, fate is conspiring against him and will set him on an adventure to recover the Prince of England who is being held captive in France. Little does Jim know that he'll be going up against the interests of the ""Dark Powers"" who are already at work to thwart Jim's mission. This will cumulate with Jim squaring off against the evil and powerful sorcerer Malvinne."
153,A Midsummer Tempest,fantasy," Prince Rupert is taken by the Roundheads; held captive at a country house, he falls in love with his captor's niece, Jennifer. One of his troopers, Will Fairweather, followed him to the house where he was held captive; with the help of Jennifer, Will brings him to Oberon and Titania, who offer magical aid. Rupert and Jennifer exchange magic rings that will aid them as long as they are true to each other. Rupert sets out with Will to find the books that Prospero sank, in order to aid King Charles. Rupert, fleeing Roundheads, finds refuge in a magical inn, The Old Phoenix, which proves to be a nexus between parallel worlds. Inside the tavern, he meets Valeria Matuchek, who is from an alternate history twentieth-century America. (Originally, the character had been a child in Anderson's Operation Chaos and a teenager in its sequel, Operation Luna, but is now an adult.) Holger Carlsen is another guest, born in a world where the Matter of France is history, and later trapped in ""our own"" twentieth-century America (the hero of Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions). Valeria explains what will happen in the English Civil War in ""our"" timeline, including the king's execution, strengthening Rupert's determination to change events here. He finds a Spanish ship that will transport him; it is carrying an ambassador and his wife. Jennifer's Puritan uncle discovers her on her return, when she resolves to use the ring to find Rupert. She is brought, captive, to a port, where the ring enables her to steal a boat and set sail. The ambassador's wife uses a magic potion to seduce Rupert, and the rings fail. Rupert cannot find his way to the island, and Jennifer is stranded at sea. Despairing, Rupert takes to the library at Milan to try to work out where to find the island and books. Jennifer's plight becomes desperate from thirst, but Ariel (from The Tempest) finds her and brings her to the island. Rupert works out the location, and Jennifer and he are reconciled. They retrieve the books and magically bear them back to England. Charles I has taken up a position near Glastonbury Tor for reasons he does not understand. Rupert attempts the magic; Will Fairweather is possessed by a spirit of England and stirs up the magic of the land. The Roundheads are defeated, and Charles I wins the English Civil War. At the Old Phoenix, Valeria believes that even if ""romantic reactionaries"" like Charles I won the English Civil War here, there is still the prospect of technological advance in North America. However, the fairies believed differently—they supported the Cavalier cause to delay the disenchantment of this world. Rupert and Jennifer return the rings to Oberon and Titania, and retire to a peaceful married life."
154,The Stones Are Hatching,fantasy," Phelim awakes one morning while his sister, Prudence, is away. He soon learns that he is the inheritor of a responsibility to stop the apocalyptic Stoor Worm from waking. In order to do this, he must (overcoming a strong reluctance) rally the three symbolic figures of Maiden, Fool, and Horse, elude the Stoor Worm's monstrous children, and reach the Worm at her resting place. At this he succeeds, encountering various dangers and losing his companions en route. At the climax, Phelim kills the Stoor Worm outright and returns home, thereafter making his sister ride on a horse and making it go to the farthest sea. This hypocrisy (contrasted with his name, which is translated as ""Ever-Good""), strips him of his own symbolic significance. At the end, he seeks counsel of his father."
155,Death's Deputy,fantasy, The novel concerns a man who is unnaturally accident-prone.
156,Iron Fist,fantasy," After Wraith Squadron's first successful mission against Admiral Trigit, the squadron is transferred back to Coruscant. During a visit to one of the many bars on the planet, an anonymous cyborg, similar to Phanan, attacks them and starts a large bar fight. New Republic Military Police officers quickly arrive and break up the fight and arrest the members of Wraith Squadron. While being marched off, Face Loran hints that this may in fact be a trap, and the other members escape, subduing their captors. At the debriefing, it is revealed that the New Republic MPs were in fact covert agents working for Warlord Zsinj. For security reasons, Wraith Squadron is to be confined to the base. They also receive replacements pilots: Castin Donn, Dia Passik, and Shalla Nelprin. While at the base their new mission is to predict what Zsinj may be planning next. Meanwhile, Phanan recognizes that one of the officers who had debriefed them was Atton Repness, the corrupt officer who blackmailed Tyria into keeping quiet about his black market operation. Phanan and Kell devise an elaborate plot to bait Repness and expose him. Phanan and Face recruit Lara Notsil, who is actually Gara Petothel in disguise and offer her a spot in Wraith Squadron if she agrees to help bring down Repness. After submitting their predictions of Zsinj's plans, Wraith Squadron is sent to the Halmad system, an Imperial world with a large amount of resources. Their mission is to pose as a band of pirates and stage raids in an attempt to catch Zsinj's attention. They manage to sneak into an Imperial base and steal six TIE Interceptors. As the ""Hawk-bats"", the Wraiths begin staging pirate raids on freighters and ground targets. Meanwhile, at the pilot academy, Lara Notsil continues trying to bait Repness and succeeds. Using her Imperial Intelligence skills, she manages to hack into Repness' computer and anonymously sends the data to New Republic Intelligence. She then publicly rejects Repenss' offer to join his operation. Repness attempts to keep her quiet, but fails and is arrested. Lara is given Repness' old X-Wing and transferred to Wraith Squadron just in time to assist with a joint mission with Rogue Squadron. During the mission, Lara has the opportunity to shoot Wedge's X-Wing in the back, but can't bring herself to do it. After the mission, Wraith Squadron resumes the guise of the Hawk-bats and prepares for a massive raid on two Imperial airbases. Face begins to realize Phanan's deep depression, and Lara is covertly contacted by Warlord Zsinj, disguised as a job offer from the real Lara's brother. Lara is forced her to decide whether to join the New Republic or the Empire. Myn Donos passes by and provides some comfort, and offers to accompany Lara to see her ""brother"", fearing that it may be a trap set by Zsinj. The Wraiths start their massive raid, but are quickly foiled when Zsinj ambushes them. Phanan's fighter is shot down and Face tries to rescue him. Unfortunately, Phanan is mortally wounded from the crash and dies. Shocked at the death of his best friend, Face returns to the Wraiths, where he finds out that Zsinj has offered the Hawk-bats to join his fleet. Meanwhile, Lara and Donos arrive at the rendezvous. Lara meets her ""brother"", along with an Imperial Intelligence agent. Lara refuses to join them, and before they can do anything, Donos shoots both of them dead with his sniper rifle. Lara then lies to Donos by saying that both men tried to abduct her. Taking up Zsinj's offer, Face, Kell, and Dia go to meet Zsinj and obtain some intelligence on him. Castin smuggles himself on board their shuttle, believing that his tracer program will help destroy Zsinj. Unfortunately, Castin is killed trying to implant the program. Zsinj questions Face about the issue, and Dia is forced to ""kill"" Castin in order to prove their loyalty. (Zsinj staged it so that it looked as if Castin's body was still alive.) Dia suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder for her actions, but Face manages to calm her down. The romantic ties between Face and Dia begin to reveal themselves. After reviewing the data that Zsinj provided, Wedge figures out that Zsinj wants to attack Kuat and steal a new Super Star Destroyer, the Razor's Kiss. Shalla is sent as the Hawk-bat's combat specialist to ""assist"" Zsinj's commando force, while the rest of Wraith Squadron will pose as the Hawk-Bats, and will aid Zsinj's forces in the assault on the Kuat shipyards. Shalla manages to install Castin's tracker program into the Razor's Kiss computers, and sabotages the shield generators. A New Republic task force led by Han Solo ambushes Zsinj's forces at the rendezvous after the successful capture of the Razor's Kiss, destroying Razor's Kiss and severely damaging the Iron Fist. Face, after suffering severe injuries during the battle, returns to the Wraiths. They discover that he had removed his trademark scar. Face admits that Phanan forced him to, since his will stated that if Face did not undergo the operation, Phanan's considerable wealth would be given to Face's rival actor, Tetran Cowall."
157,First Amoung Sequels,fantasy," In order to save the future, undercover SpecOps investigator Thursday Next attempts to convince her son Friday to join the ChronoGuard. To complicate matters, she'll have to deal with renegade apprentices, ruthless corporations, and a sting operation from the Cheese Enforcement Agency. The title First Among Sequels was met with stiff resistance from Fforde's publishers because it had 'sequel' in the title, and it was felt that telegraphing the 'sequelness' of the book might be a bad move. It was decided, however, to capitalise on the fact that this was a series - a sort of 'Have you discovered Thursday Next yet?' approach to marketing. First Among Sequels is the first part of a new four-part Thursday Next series, which is reported to be continued with One of our Thursdays is Missing in 2011. The title is a parody of First Among Equals, which is the title of a best-selling Jeffrey Archer novel, but also comes from the English translation of the Latin phrase primus inter pares. It is traditionally used to describe the position of the British Prime Minister, since in the British Constitution the position of prime minister has no official existence, and the office holder is simply the 'most powerful' of the Queen's advisors in Cabinet."
158,The Wonderful Visit,fantasy," The Wonderful Visit tells how an angel spends a little more than a week in southern England. He is at first mistaken for a bird because of his dazzling polychromatic plumage, for he is ""neither the Angel of religious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief,"" but rather ""the Angel of Italian art."" As a result, he is hunted and shot in the wing by an amateur ornithologist, the Rev. K. Hilyer, the vicar of Siddermoton, and then taken in and cared for at the vicarage. The creature comes from ""the Land of Dreams"" (also the angel's term for our world), and while ""charmingly affable,"" is ""quite ignorant of the most elementary facts of civilisation."" During his brief visit he grows increasingly dismayed by what he learns about the world in general and about life in Victorian England in particular. As he grows increasingly critical of local mores, he is eventually denounced as ""a Socalist."" The vicar, his host, meanwhile comes under attack by fellow clerics, neighbors, and even servants for harboring a disreputable character (no one but the vicar believes he comes from another world, and people take to calling him ""Mr. Angel""). The angel's one talent is his divine violin-playing, but he is discredited at a reception that Lady Hammergallow agrees to host when it is discovered that he cannot read music and confides to a sympathetic listener that he has taken an interest in the vicar's serving girl, Delia. Instead of healing, his wings begin to atrophy. The local physician, Dr. Crump, threatens to have him put in a prison or a madhouse. After the angel destroys some barbed wire on a local baronet's property, Sir John Gotch gives the vicar one week to send him away before he begins proceedings against him. The Rev. Mr. Hilyer is regretfully planning how he will take the angel to London and try to establish him there when two catastrophes abort the plan. First, the angel, who ""had been breathing the poisonous air of this Struggle for Existence of ours for more than a week,"" beats Sir John Gotch with Gotch's own whip in a fury after the local landowner insolently orders him off his land. Distraught to think (mistakenly) that he has killed a man, he returns to the village to find the vicar's house in flames. Delia, the serving girl, has entered the burning building in an attempt to rescue the angel's violin: this extraordinary act comes as a revelation to the angel. ""Then in a flash he saw it all, saw this grim little world of battle and cruelty, transfigured in a splendour that outshone the Angelic Land, suffused suddenly and insupportably glorious with the wonderful light of Love and Self-Sacrifice."" The angel attempts to rescue Delia, someone seems to see ""two figures with wings"" flash up and vanish among the flames, and a strange music that ""began and ended like the opening and shutting of a door"" suggests that the angel has gone back to where he came from, accompanied by Delia. An epilogue reveals that ""there is nothing beneath"" the two white crosses in Siddermorton cemetery that bear the names of Thomas Angel and Delia Hardy, and that the vicar, who never recovered his aplomb after the angel's departure, died within a year of the fire."
159,The Black Swan,fantasy," Odile von Rothbart is a young sorceress in training under her father's tutelage. She adores and respects him, at least in part because he has taught her that women are meant to be loyal to men. Living in the gardens is the ""flock;"" the group of young women Rothbart has ensorceled because they were unfaithful to their husbands or fathers. They are under a curse which compels them to become swans by day and women only during moonlit hours. The most beautiful and noble of these is Princess Odette, the Queen of Swans. Odile is restless because her father seldom praises her, even though (or perhaps because) she is growing to be his equal in magic. She has never seen much of the world outside her father's estate, but she knows she would like the company of other people. She has no interest in the swans because they seem to lack her intelligence, and because Rothbart has taught her to despise them. When Odette openly defies Rothbart, challenging him to give a convincing reason for his punishment of the flock, he offers her a deal; if she can capture and hold the loyalty of a man for an entire month, the curse which keeps the flock captive will be broken. A condition of the deal is that the young man must know exactly what Odette had done (refused the engagement her father had set for her and run away with a member of the court) and still pledge his loyalty to her. Rothbart then leads the flock, plus Odile, on a long journey to Siegfried's kingdom. In the secondary plot, Queen Clothilde is a competent but ruthless woman acting as regent for Siegfried. She does not want to surrender power to her son when he turns 18; an event mere months away. She plans a birthday celebration for him at which six beautiful princesses, all prospective brides, will attend, hoping to distract him from his kingship. Clothilde secretly hopes to kill Siegfried and either take the throne in right or continue as regent for a grandchild. She is aided in her scheme by Uwe, her minstrel and former lover. Siegfried himself is a womanizer and a scoundrel, but a religious experience convinces him to change his ways. Clothilde is dismayed, since the reformed Siegfried is winning the respect of her court. Baron Rothbart pays a visit to Clothilde and requests that his own daughter be allowed to attend the festival as a potential bride. She agrees, tempted by the prospect of having a sorcerer readily at hand. The flock arrives at a small lake. Odile, who has largely been in charge of their care, is getting to know the swan maidens and feels some sympathy for them. She wants Odette to succeed because she thinks she and her father would have more freedom to travel if the swan-maidens were no longer their burden. Siegfried, sent out hunting by his mother in search of swans, encounters Odette, and it is love at first sight. His friend Benno, returning to the lake by daylight to investigate, is quickly dismissed by Odile. When both men return to the lake at night, Odette is able to allay their suspicions that she is some sort of witch. She tells Siegfried why she has been cursed, and he agrees to marry her and thus break the curse. Happily, Odile tells her father that Odette has fulfilled her part of the bargain. The next day is the day of the fête where Siegfried will choose his bride. Odette leaves the flock in the morning to find him. Rothbart and Odile also attend, Odile having little idea what to expect. Her father casts a spell on her which makes her look like Odette and controls her with more magic, keeping her from warning Siegfried. The Prince declares his desire to marry ""the daughter of Baron Rothbart,"" which breaks the vow he made to Odette. Worst of all, Odette arrives just in time to witness this. She flees, Siegfried follows, and Odile runs after them both. Rothbart reveals that his aim the entire time has been to deliver judgment on Clothilde, since he knew she was plotting to kill her own son. He brings part of the Great Hall down on her and Uwe, who lives just long enough to reveal the plot to Benno and the court. At the lake, Rothbart taunts Siegfried and Odette, while Odile watches from concealment. At a crucial moment, she kills him with his own dagger, then rescues Odette and Siegfried, who have jumped into the lake to drown together rather than be separated. When the sun rises, the girls remain girls, indicating that Rothbart's spell has died with him. Odette marries Siegfried and gives Odile a position on her council. Odile and Benno appear to be falling in love."
160,The City of Dreaming Books,fantasy," Optimus Yarnspinner, or Hildegunst von Mythenmetz in the German version, is a Lindworm (dinosaur) who inherits his authorial godfather's possessions, including a perfect story written by an unknown author. An aspiring author himself, he travels to Bookholm, the city of dreaming books, in search of the unknown writer. Upon arrival, Yarnspinner falls in love with the city because of its literary appreciation. But beneath Bookholm stretch vast labyrinthine catacombs in which many valuable books lie hidden – but also dangers of unimaginable sorts: Various kinds of monstrous insects and other inconceivable horrors, the deadly Toxicotomes – books which can injure and kill anyone who touches them, blood-thirsty book hunters, and worst of all, the Shadow King. Yarnspinner is hoping this city of literature can fulfill his hunger for inspiration and help him solve the riddle of the mystery writer and his amazing story. Unfortunately the first real spark of hope gets a shower of questions when he is inexplicably warned for lurking danger and given the advice to flee while he still can. He comes into contact with a publisher in a cafe who directs him to Pfistomel Smyke. Smyke happens to control the entire book trade in Bookholm as well as much of the trade throughout Zamonia. When Yarnspinner travels to his house on 333 Darkman Street, Smyke reveals his plan to completely eradicate all forms of art in Zamonia. Then he is tricked into picking up a poisoned book and falls unconscious. He awakes in the famous catacombs of Bookholm, one of the most dangerous places in Zamonia."
161,Tiassa,fantasy," The book is presented in three parts, with a prelude, interludes, and an epilogue. All three larger sections and some of the smaller ones involve a silver statue of a tiassa, and the character of Khaavren, of the House of the Tiassa, but each tells a distinct story. The first section, ""Tag"", tells the story, in the typical Vlad Taltos as first person narrator style, of certain events early in his career as a high-ranking Jhereg. Vlad is contacted by the Viscount of Adrilhanka, who is a rogue and highwayman, to defeat a scheme by the Empire to track stolen money. The second section, ""Whitecrest"", is set much later, after Vlad is on the run from the Jhereg, and follows multiple characters, mainly the Countess of Whitecrest (Khaavren's wife and the Viscount's mother) and Cawti, Vlad's ex-wife. An impending Jenoine invasion is detected, but it may be a ruse to draw Vlad out. The third section, ""Special Tasks"" is the most recent chronologically, and is written in the voice of Paarfi, the fictional author of the Khaavren Romances. It mainly follows Khaavren himself as he investigates an attempt on Vlad's life."
162,The Indigo King,fantasy," After John (J.R.R. Tolkien), Jack (C.S. Lewis), and Charles (Charles Williams) return from their last adventure in the Archipelago, they spend five years in the Summer Country, our world. The Caretakers form a group at Oxford, including two close friends, Hugo Dyson and Owen Barfield. Hugo has become so close a friend that John and Jack consider making him an apprentice Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica and the Archipelago. Soon after they show Hugo the Geographica, he shows them a book sent to him from Charles, who is in France. The book has a mysterious foreword supposedly written by Hugo in his own blood. They decide to take a walk to take a break from all the confusion. Hugo enters a door in the wood and disappears somewhere in time. Hugo believes that he is being pranked by his companions, but eventually realizes this is not the case. John and Jack meet the Royal Animal Rescue Team, a group of badgers led by Uncas - the son of Tummeler - and his son Fred. They inform the men that fourteen years ago they were ordered to save John, Jack and Charles from an unknown event in the near future. Preparing to leave, Uncas unknowingly shuts the mysterious door, the remainder of the rescue team and the surrounding Oxford area to vanish. Noting the new desiccated land that lies before them called Albion, the group sets out to discover what has become of their world. After they escape from giants contained in a tower, the group is rescued from a Wicker Man by a man called Chaz. Resembling Charles, the two men and badgers realize that ""Chaz"" is not the Charles they know. Chaz is rough, scared and distrustful from his many years of surviving but the party is sure that Chaz is Charles, just from a different timeline in which Mordred, the Winter King, rules and the Archipelago is destroyed. Chaz leads the group to Bert, who gives John a skull of the deceased Jules Verne, a map, and the Serendipity Box which provides the opener with the thing he needs most. Mordred appears, courtesy of the traitorous Chaz and binds the men and badgers using their true names and departs. Uncas releases the men, who with the help of Bert, who uses a scarab brooch given to him by the Serendipity Box, creates an ocean and the Red Dragon that the companions leave on, except for Bert, who stays behind. On an island, the party discovers a time machine created by Jules Verne left for them in order to fix the problem that Hugo created, that led to the creation of Albion. The time machine runs like a projector, and the first slide is of Ancient Greece, where the companions meet two twins, Myrddyn and Madoc. They deduce that one is the Cartographer of Lost Places and the other is Mordred. In the next slide, the companions visit the Library of Alexandria and find Meridian(Myrddyn), the twin who becomes the Cartographer. They discover that the Holy Grail is being held in this library, and that Madoc, the twin who becomes Mordred, has been sleeping with her. Meridian binds Madoc and when they try to escape, Chaz unknowingly uses his fire balls and causes the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria. In the third slide, the companions meet Hugo. They witness the Tournament of Champions, held to determine the next ruler of Meridian's Precinct, modern-day Britain. The three main entrants in this tournament are Merlin, who is the Cartographer, Mordred and Thorn, a young boy who is destined to become the Arthur, or High King. During the fight between Merlin and Mordred, Hugo throws a dagger at Mordred to prevent him from becoming King. Hugo disqualifies both Merlin and Mordred, letting Thorn become Arthur. However, Arthur does not command the loyalty of the people as he would if the fight continued normally. In the fourth slide, the companions fight in a civil war against Arthur, as Merlin has united with the local rulers to gain the crown. Mordred has allied with Arthur. However, Arthur tries reason with Mordred, and so Mordred kills Arthur. The companions learn that Arthur can be resurrected by the Holy Grail. They journey to Avalon, where they encounter the priestess that slept with Mordred, and bring back her daughter. They are forced to leave Chaz, who becomes the first Guardian of Avalon, or the Green Knight. The companions leave Chaz the Lance of Longinus. The daughter of the priestess, named Rose, revives Arthur, who cuts off Mordred's hand when he attempts to kill Merlin. Mordred disappears. Arthur summons the dragons, uniting the fiefdoms and ending the civil war. Merlin departs to become the Cartographer. In the fifth slide, the companions meet Geoffrey of Monmouth, and journey to the Keep of Time, where they talk with the Cartographer. He gives them a key that lets them access the top room of the Keep of Time, the future. The party emerges from the door they first entered, and are summoned to talk with Richard Burton. He tells them that he caused Hugo to travel into the past with the backing of the Imperial Cartological Society. He intended to show the Caretakers that Mordred was merely a victim of fate. He did not know about the creation of Albion when Hugo violated the contest. He also could not see Rose, addressing Hugo, Bert, John, Jack and Charles as though they were the only ones present. In a pre-World War II setting, it is hinted that Mordred has rediscovered the Lance of Longinus, and is ready to begin another assault."
163,Vathek,fantasy," The novel chronicles the fall from power of the Caliph Vathek (a fictionalized version of the historical Al-Wathiq), who renounces Islam and engages with his mother, Carathis, in a series of licentious and deplorable activities designed to gain him supernatural powers. At the end of the novel, instead of attaining these powers, Vathek descends into a hell ruled by the demon Eblis where he is doomed to wander endlessly and speechlessly. Vathek, the ninth Caliph of the Abassides, ascended to the throne at an early age. He is a majestic figure, terrible in anger (one glance of his flashing eye can make “the wretch on whom it was fixed instantly [fall] backwards and sometimes [expire]”), and addicted to the pleasures of the flesh. He is intensely thirsty for knowledge and often invites scholars to converse with him. If he fails to convince the scholar of his points of view, he attempts a bribe; if this does not work, he sends the scholar to prison. In order to better study astronomy, he builds an observation tower with 1,500 steps. A hideous stranger arrives in town, claiming to be a merchant from India selling precious goods. Vathek buys glowing swords with letters on them from the merchant, and invites the merchant to dinner. When the merchant does not respond to Vathek's questions, Vathek looks at him with his ""evil eye,"" but this has no effect, so Vathek imprisons him. The next day, he discovers that the merchant has escaped and his prison guards are dead. The people begin to call Vathek crazy. His mother, Carathis, tells him that the merchant was “the one talked about in the prophecy”, and Vathek admits that he should have treated the stranger kindly. Vathek wants to decipher the messages on his new sabers, offers a reward to anyone who can help him, and punishes those who fail. After several scholars fail, one elderly man succeeds: the swords say ""We were made where everything is well made; we are the least of the wonders of a place where all is wonderful and deserving, the sight of the first potentate on earth."" But the next morning, the message has changed: the sword now says “Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant, and to undertake that which surpasses his power”. The old man flees before Vathek can punish him. However, Vathek realizes that the writing on the swords really did change. Vathek then develops an insatiable thirst and often goes to a place near a high mountain to drink from one of four fountains there, kneeling at the edge of the fountain to drink. One day he hears a voice telling him to “not assimilate thyself to a dog”. It was the voice of the merchant who had sold him the swords, Giaour. Giaour cures his thirst with a potion and the two men return to Samarah. Vathek returns to immersing himself in the pleasures of the flesh, and begins to fear that Giaour, who is now popular at Court, will seduce one of his wives. Some mornings later, Carathis reads a message in the stars foretelling a great evil to befall Vathek and his vizir Morakanabad; she advises him to ask Giaour about the drugs he used in the potion. When Vathek confronts him, Giaour only laughs, so Vathek gets angry and kicks him. Giaour is transformed into a ball and Vathek compels everyone in the palace to kick it, even the resistant Carathis and Morakanabad. Then Vathek has the whole town kick the ball-shaped merchant into a remote valley. Vathek stays in the area and eventually hears Giaour's voice telling him that if he will worship Giaour and the jinns of the earth, and renounce the teachings of Islam, he will bring Vathek to “the palace of the subterrain fire” (22) where Soliman Ben Daoud controls the talismans that rule over the world. Vathek agrees, and proceeds with the ritual that Giaour demands: to sacrifice fifty of the city's children. In return, Vathek will receive a key of great power. Vathek holds a ""competition"" among the children of the nobles of Samarah, declaring that the winners will receive ""endless favors."" As the children approach Vathek for the competition, he throws them inside an ebony portal to be sacrificed. Once this is finished, Giaour makes the portal disappear. The Samaran citizens see Vathek alone and accuse him of having sacrificed their children to Giaour, and form a mob to kill Vathek. Carathis pleads with Morakanabad to help save Vathek's life; the vizier complies, and calms the crowd down. Vathek wonders when his reward will come, and Carathis says that he must fulfill his end of the pact and sacrifice to the Jinn of the earth. Carathis helps him prepare the sacrifice: she and her son climb to the top of the tower and mix oils to create an explosion of light. The people, presuming that the tower is on fire, rush up the stairs to save Vathek from being burnt to death. Instead, Carathis sacrifices them to the Jinn. Carathis performs another ritual and learns that for Vathek to claim his reward, he must go to Istakhar. Vathek goes away with his wives and servants, leaving the city in the care of Morakanabad and Carathis. A week after he leaves, his caravan is attacked by carnivorous animals. The soldiers panic and accidentally set the area on fire; Vathek and his wives must flee. Still, they continue on their way. They reach steep mountains where the Islamic dwarves dwell. They invite Vathek to rest with them, possibly in the hopes of converting him back to Islam. Vathek sees a message his mother left for him: “Beware of old doctors and their puny messengers of but one cubit high: distrust their pious frauds; and, instead of eating their melons, impale on a spit the bearers of them. Should thou be so fool as to visit them, the portal to the subterranean place will shut in thy face” (53). Vathek becomes angry and claims that he has followed Giaour’s instructions long enough. He stays with the dwarves, meets their Emir, named Fakreddin, and Emir's beautiful daughter Nouronihar. Vathek wants to marry her, but she is already promised to her effeminate cousin Gulchenrouz, whom she loves and who loves her back. Vathek thinks she should be with a ""real"" man and arranges for Babalouk to kidnap Gulchenrouz. The Emir, finding of the attempted seduction, asks Vathek to kill him, as he has seen “the prophet’s vice-regent violate the laws of hospitality."" But Nouronihar prevents Vathek from killing her father and Gulchenrouz escapes. The Emir and his servants then meet and they develop a plan to safeguard Nouronihar and Gulchenrouz, by drugging them and place them in a hidden valley by a lake where Vathek cannot find them. The plan succeeds temporarily - the two are drugged, brought to the valley, and convinced on their awakening that they have died and are in purgatory. Nouronihar, however, grows curious about her surroundings and ascends to find out what lies beyond the valley. There she meets Vathek, who is mourning for her supposed death. Both realize that her 'death' has been a sham. Vathek then orders Nouronihar to marry him, she abandons Gulchenrouz, and the Emir abandons hope. Meanwhile, in Samarah, Carathis can discover no news of her son from reading the stars. She conjures the spirits of a graveyard to perform a spell that makes her appear in front of Vathek, who is bathing with Nouronihar. She tells him he is wasting his time with Nouronihar and has broken one of the rules of Giaour's contract. She asks him to drown Nouronihar, but Vathek refuses, because he intends to make her his Queen. Carathis then decides to sacrifice Gulchenrouz, but before she can catch him, Gulchenrouz jumps into the arms of a Genie who protects him. That night, Carathis hears that Motavakel, Vathek's brother, is planning to lead a revolt against Morakanabad. Carathis tells Vathek that he has distinguished himself by breaking the laws of hospitality by ‘seducing’ the Emir’s daughter after sharing his bread, and that if he can commit one more crime along the way he shall enter Soliman’s gates triumphant. Vathek continues on his journey, reaches Rocnabad, and degrades and humiliates its citizens for his own pleasure. A Genie asks Mohammed for permission to try to save Vathek from his eternal damnation. He takes the form of a shepherd who plays the flute to make men realize their sins. The shepherd asks Vathek if he is done sinning, warns Vathek about Eblis, ruler of Hell, and asks Vathek to return home, destroy his tower, disown Carathis, and preach Islam. Vathek's pride wins out, and he tells the shepherd that he will continue on his quest for power, and values his mother more than life itself or God's mercy. Vathek's servants desert him; Nouronihar becomes immensely prideful. Finally, Vathek reaches Istakhar, where he finds more swords with writing on them, which says ""Thou hast violated the conditions of my parchment, and deserve to be sent back, but in favor to thy companion, and as the meed for what thou hast done to obtain it, Eblis permitted that the portal of this place will receive thee” (108). Giaour opens the gates with a golden key, and Vathek and Nouronihar step through into a place of gold where Genies of both sexes dance lasciviously. Giaour leads them to Eblis, who tells them that they may enjoy whatever his empire holds. Vathek asks to be taken to the talismans that govern the world. There, Soliman tells Vathek that he had once been a great king, but was seduced by a Jinn and received the power to make everyone in the world do his bidding. But because of this, he is destined to suffer in hell for a finite tho vast period - until the waterfall he is sitting beside, stops. This eventual end to his punishment is due to his piety in the earlier part of his reign. The other inmates must suffer the fire in their hearts for all eternity. Vathek asks Giaour to release him, saying he will relinquish all he was offered, but Giaour refuses. He tells Vathek to enjoy his omnipotence while it lasts, for in a few days he will be tormented. Vathek and Nouronihar become increasingly discontented with the palace of flames. Vathek orders an Ifreet to fetch Carathis from the castle. When she arrives, he warns her of what happens to those who enter Eblis' domain, but Carathis takes the talismans of earthly power from Soliman regardless. She gathers the Jinns and tries to overthrow one of the Solimans, but Eblis decrees ""It is time."" Carathis, Vathek, Nouronihar, and the other denizens of hell lose ""the most precious gift granted by heaven - HOPE"" (119). They begin to feel eternal remorse for their crimes, their hearts burning with literal eternal fire. “Such was, and should be, the punishment of unrestrained passion and atrocious deeds! Such shall be the chastisement of that blind curiosity, which would transgress those bounds the wisdom the Creator has prescribed to human knowledge; and such the dreadful disappointment of that restless ambition, which, aiming at discoveries reserved for beings of a supernatural order, perceives not, through its infatuated pride, that the condition of man upon earth is to be – humble and ignorant.”"
164,The Elves of Cintra,fantasy," Beginning where Armageddon's Children ended, Knight of the Word Logan Tom races to save the gypsy morph Hawk and his girlfriend Tessa from being thrown to their deaths from atop Safeco Field. He is too late but learns that a brilliant white light enveloped the two as they fell, apparently saved by an unknown magic. Logan doesn't know where they have gone, but sees a demon invasion force preparing to land at Seattle's waterfront. Meanwhile, the Ghosts head toward the agreed upon rendezvous point and Logan Tom goes to find them. While evacuating the city, Panther and Sparrow are separated from the Ghost tribe. The Ghosts encounter a group of mutant children on the freeway, and escape them but not before Squirrel is killed. Logan runs into Panther and Sparrow, helping them fight off Croaks and reunite with the tribe. They leave the city in Logan's all-terrain vehicle as they see the demon hordes besiege Safeco Field. Owl realizes their dog Cheney has gone missing. The Lady of the Word appears to Logan and tells him to head south to the Columbia River where Hawk will meet them with many followers. He is also told that another Knight of the Word will bring the Elves and their magic, upon which humankind's future depends. She tasks him with protecting them all, no matter the cost. As he and the Ghosts travel south, the Weatherman succumbs to plague, and they pick up two new companions, a partially mutated Lizard named Cat (for Catayla) and her pet cat named Rabbit. They also have a run-in with killer robots at Oronyx Experimental Robotics Systems. Later they are ambushed by followers of Krilka Koos, a rogue Knight of the Word that Logan had once heard about (from the Spiders in the mountains when trying to reach Seattle in Armageddon's Children). near Longview. In exchange for the children's safety, Logan agrees to go with them to meet Krilka. Krilka, having fallen from the Word, asks Logan to join his own crusade. Logan refuses and is forced to fight the Knight of the Word surrounded by Krilka's army. Logan Tom narrowly wins, but refuses to kill Krilka, who vows to hunt down and kill Logan and the Ghosts. He then plunges a poison dart into Logan's leg. Delirious, Logan shoots fire from his staff at the crowd, causing them to panic and flee. The ghosts manage to extricate Logan and escape in the ATV. In the Elven city of Arborlon, Kirisin and Erisha are caught in the library by Culph, the King's historian. Culph offers to help them find the seeking Elfstones, revealing that they were buried with the powerful Elven Queen Pancea Rolt Cruer. However, they are unable to find her grave. The Knight of the Word Angel Perezand the tatterdemalion Ailie arrive in the Cintra shortly afterward, escorted by a group of Elven Trackers, including Kirisin's sister Simralin. Angel and Ailie are given an audience with the High Council and the King, while Culph lead Kirisin and Erisha to a vantage point where they can eavesdrop on the meeting. Angel and Ailie tell the Council that they have been sent by the Word to help them take the elves and the Ellcrys to a safe place. Angel has been tasked with helping the Elves to find the Loden Elfstone, and is dismayed to learn that the Elves retain almost no knowledge of the Elfstones. The Council is astounded. The King confirms that Kirisin told him of a warning from the Ellcrys, but didn't inform the Council. The King remains skeptical and orders a more extensive search of the histories and they will reconvene in two days. Kirisin, Erisha, Simralin, Angel, and Ailie meet later that night to share information on the Elfstones and theorize as to why the King seems unwilling to help them. Ailie makes a startling revelation, that she sensed a demon at the Council meeting. At the same time, the demon Delloreen (who has now mutated to have an animal-like, scaly form, with virtually no vestiges of any human-like qualities), who had been tracking Angel, enters the Cintra. To her surprise, she finds a fellow demon disguised as an elf. The two become allies with the disguised demon taking command. The following evening, Kirisin, Erisha, Simralin, Angel, and Ailie follow clues to another part of the graveyard and find the Elf Queen's grave. They encounter the shade of the Queen, who nearly kills the party in anger for allowing Elven magic to fade. Instead she forces Kirisin to promise to persuade the Elves to rediscover their magic and to begin using it again. She says that Kirisin has magic that he is currently unaware of and that what he must do, he must do alone. She gives Kirisin the Elfstones and disappears. Delloreen attacks the party in the graveyard, killing Ailie and Erisha. Simralin stabs the beast in the eye with an Elven blade and Delloreen flees. They find they are pursued by the Elven guard and flee the city to seek the Loden. Once clear of the city, Kirisin uses the Elfstones, which direct them to Syrring Rise (current day Mt. Rainier). They head north, still pursued by the two demons. At the Columbia River they find a blind elven ex-tracker named Larkis Quill, who ferries them across as the bridges are all occupied by militias. The three leave Larkis and travel by a secret elven hot air balloon to Syrring Rise. While ascending the snowy peak, Angel senses Delloreen's presence and stays behind. She confronts the demon and blinds it by clawing out its remaining eye. Delloreen is finally killed, but not before savagely injuring Angel. She later awakens from unconsciousness fearing internal injuries, but resumes her climb up the mountain's face. Within the ice caves on the mountain's peak, Kirisin and Simralin find a frozen, life-size statue of a dragon. Deep within the statue's cavernous throat, Kirisin finds the Loden. As he exits the dragon's mouth, however, he and Simralin are assaulted by Culph, who reveals himself as the demon. Simralin is seriously wounded by Culph, and is lying on the floor nearly unconscious. Culph explains that he had been lying to the king but still aiding in the search for the Loden, because the demons believe they can eliminate the elven threat to them by imprisoning them in the Loden. Needing an elf to wield the Loden, Culph tries to cast a mind-controlling spell on Kirisin. However, he lets slip that seeking Elfstones can also be used as weapons in time of great need. Although greatly weakened, Simralin is able to stab Culph in the leg, distracting him. This frees Kirisin from the spell that Culph was just about to complete. Kirisin is then able to direct the seeking Elfstones towards Culph, disintegrating him in blue fire. After disappearing from Safeco Field, Hawk was transported to a strange garden where he meets a mystical old man called the King of the Silver River, who tells him Tessa is safe and sleeping. As they walk through the garden, the old man tells of Hawk's origins and reveals that it was his magic that saved Hawk at the Safeco Field. Finally, the old man tells Hawk that his purpose is to save the human race and that he will lead several thousand Humans, Elves, and others to a Promised Land. As Hawk falls asleep next to Tessa, the old man reveals that Hawk will awaken in his own world with Tessa and Cheney, and that several weeks will have passed. Hawk, Tessa, and Cheney awake to find themselves near the Columbia River. They head upstream and encounter the survivors of the Anaheim Complex that Angel had previously rescued. The survivors are now led by a woman named Helen Rice, who is skeptical that Hawk was sent to guide them to safety. As the group approaches a bridge controlled by militia, Hawk discovers some of his innate magic. He touches some nearby flora, and within minutes, vines and plant life erupt from the ground and subdue the militia. The survivors cross the bridge when Hawk learns that an army led by Findo Gask is approaching from the south. Unknown to Hawk, Findo has sensed the gypsy morph (Hawk) once again and entreats a monstrous demon called ""the Klee"" to find and destroy it. Despite the approaching danger, Hawk leaves the party with Tessa and Cheney to search for the Ghost tribe, instructing Helen to take in any other refugees she finds. Finally, they find the Ghosts and Logan Tom, who has been in a coma for two days."
165,Oh. My. Gods.,fantasy," Phoebe is a perfectly happy senior at high school and headed for USC with her best friends after graduation. Everything changes when her Mom comes back to California announcing she is getting married to a Greek man and they have plans to move there. They move to a secret island where she is accepted to an exclusive academy for the descendants of Greek gods, which is run by Phoebe's new stepfather. Phoebe doesn't really fit in, partly because she believes she's not of holy descent. Her new step-sister and others easily torment her, but Phoebe ignores them. At the school, she quickly befriends Nicole and Troy. Phoebe makes it onto her cross country team, running is her natural talent. Soon after, she gets swept up in controversies including her, Griffin, Nicole, Troy, Stella, and her dead dad. At the very end of the book, Phoebe finds out the biggest secret of her life: Phoebe is a descendant of Nike, the goddess of Victory. She then proceeds to talk to Griffin, who tells her he was destined to be with a descendant of Nike. They start a relationship together. *Phoebe Castro, the main character in the book. Her mom gets married, and she has to move to Serfopoula, causing her world to be turned upside down. She has trouble adjusting to her new life. She is a descendant from Nike. *Nicole Matios, one of Phoebe's three friends. Nicole is hardcore and isn't afraid of anything. *Troy Travatas, a friend of Phoebe. He is the descendant from Asclepius. *Griffin Blake, a boy from Phoebe's school that she likes. Later on, he is her boyfriend. He is a descendant from Ares and Hercules from his father's side. *Valerie Petrolas, a therapist and Phoebe's mom. Her relationship with Phoebe went downhill after they moved out to Serfopoula. *Stella Petrolas, Phoebe's stepsister, who tries to make Phoebe's life miserable. Stella is part of the mean and popular clique at school. Likewise, she is a descendant from Hera. *Damian Petrolas, Phoebe's stepfather (marries Phoebe's mother near the beginning of the book) and Stella's father. He is also the headmaster of the school that Phoebe and Stella attend."
166,Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams,fantasy," After her village is destroyed, Ayako lives alone in the mountains. Weaving through Ayako's life are her dreams; she explores the mythologies of goddesses from around the world and receives lessons from the river, mountain, and animals, who speak to her while the people from the village below dare only to leave offerings for her. =Allusions= Ayako's dreams touch upon a variety of literary, mythological, and religious subjects, ranging from the Greek Sphinx to Isis' recreation of Osiris' body."
167,Angel-Seeker,fantasy," Samaria is a changed land. Corrupt politicians are gone. The poor are not so destitute. The Edori are no longer slaves. Elizabeth is a young, healthy farm-girl. Tired of her lot in life, she leaves for Cedar Hills with one goal in mind. To birth the child of one of the powerful Angel beings and live in the lap of luxury for the rest of her natural life. The story also focuses on the isolated life of Rebekah, a Jansai woman and the Angel Obadiah, whom she nurses back to health after he is wounded flying over the desert. * Archangel (Ace Books, 1997) * Jovah's Angel (Ace Books, 1998) * The Alleluia Files (Ace Books, 1999) * Angelica (Ace Books, 2003) Although this is the fourth novel in the Samaria series, it is set before the first book Archangel. * Angel-Seeker (Ace Books, 2004)"
168,The Steerswoman,fantasy," The story begins with the Steerswoman Rowan investigating the origins of a number of beautiful blue crystals that have been found in random locations throughout the land, highly polished and cut, but simply sprinkled throughout as if by a giant throwing them toward the east. During her investigation at an inn, she meets Bel, an outspoken Outskirter who can turn a marvelous tale. After leaving the next day, Rowan is later attacked on the road by another former guest at the inn, and Bel comes to her rescue, easily hefting a sword and making quick work of the attacker. The two women agree to travel together for a ways, as Rowan can see the benefit of having Bel around, and the Outskirter wants to explore the area and could use a guide. However, Rowan makes Bel to agree to not use any knowledge she gleans from Rowan’s help to allow her tribe to attack the outlying villages, which Outskirters do on occasion when their goats cannot sustain them. The pair make their way back to Rowan’s Steerswoman Academy to check in, quickly becoming fast friends despite their differences. Bel’s blunt nature and Rowan’s honesty sometimes get them into pinches, but they’re always able to work their way out. As they’re preparing to leave by ship to make it to the Academy, the inn they’re staying at is attacked by dragons. The pair manage to escape the fire breathers and set sail with a particularly obnoxious man and his lad in tow. While on the boat, Rowan and Bel converse with some of the sailors about magic, and one of them shows them a box in the hold that has been magicked for the voyage. When Bel is close to it, she can feel a warning buzz and a touch sparks her hand away from it. Rowan feels nothing, which the sailor tells her is a side effect of her being a Steerswoman. They dare the young lad to touch it, and he is sparked as well. When they’ve nearly arrived, they find the body of the boy next to the chest. He’s tried to open it, and was killed by the protection spell. Rowan makes it to the Academy and fills her fellow Steerswomen in. They agree that she needs to continue to investigate, but in a different manner than before, as her current investigations are drawing notice and attempts on her life (the man from the inn, the dragons) and suggest she goes undercover. This is very much against Rowan’s truthful nature and she resists, but eventually agrees it is the best way. At this point, the story switches perspective to a young runaway named Will, who has a talent for making things explode, much in the way wizards do sometimes. He joins up a caravan headed away from his home and the reader eventually realizes two of his traveling companions are Rowan and Bel, traveling in disguise. Will becomes very attached to Bel and although the pair try to get rid of him as they leave the caravan to continue their investigation, he follows along to help out. Bel and Rowan come to the town they intent to investigate as a rumored source of the stones and find a shopkeeper who claims to design and sell the stones himself. With Will’s help, the pair discover this to be a false trail left for them, and quickly leave town, pretending to believe the story. However, they are stalked by a group of soldiers who have orders to capture them and bring them to a pair of wizards, Dhree and Shammer, a brother and sister who Rowan eventually learns are under the control of a wizard named Slado. She and Bel slip into the stronghold of the wizards disguised as guards until Rowan is captured. Rowan is surprised to discover that Dhree and Shammer are barely teenagers, and probably too young to actually be in control. She is able to converse with them by giving them information freely and not asking them any questions that they would refuse to answer, thereby earning them the ban. The siblings talk amongst themselves in her presence and she gleans valuable information from them for a time before they shut her up in a room to wait for Slado to arrive and take her. But Bel and Will spring her from her prison through the distraction of Will’s exploding magic. Back at the Academy, the Steerswomen put together the clues they have gathered and conclude that the blue stones are pieces of a fallen guidestar, brought down for some unknown reason by the wizards, who may have put them up there in the first place. Rowan plays the same information game she did with Dhree and Shammer with another wizard who isn’t exactly loyal to Slado and learns a lot. She also gets him to take Will on as an apprentice. Will promises to share information about wizard magic with the Steerswomen as long as he finds that there isn’t a good reason for the information to be kept secret."
169,The Illearth War,fantasy," Several weeks after returning to his world from The Land, the leper Thomas Covenant is taking a phone call from his ex-wife Joan when he falls and hits his head, waking to find himself back in the Land, in the chamber of the Council of Lords of Revelstone. Angered by the fact that he has been transported away from ""reality"", Covenant nevertheless believes he is once again experiencing a dream or delusion due to his head injury. His hypothesis is supported by the fact that the Land has seen the passing of forty years compared to the few weeks that have passed in his own world: the High Lord of the Council is Elena, the daughter of Lena and the product of Covenant's rape (though he does not know this when he first returns), and now, Covenant's summoner. Elena shows no ill will towards her biological father, and she and Covenant become close friends. Elena explains that the evil Lord Foul has assembled a massive army, with which he now threatens the people of The Land. For forty years, the Lords have dedicated themselves to the study of Kevin's Lore, training new students at the school at the tree city of Revelwood. Only Mhorham remains from Lords of the council during the quest for the Staff of Law, but seven new Lords have taken their seats, having mastered both the magical and martial arts. The horse-tending Ramen have been enlisted to patrol the frontier near Foul's dominions. The Warward, the army of Revelstone, is full of battle-ready volunteers and is led by Hile Troy, who came to the Land from Covenant's world. An attempt was even made to attack Lord Foul directly, via a commando raid on his lair at the Land's eastern edge; although the raid, led by Lord Mhoram, failed, valuable knowledge was gained about Foul's forces. The commander of Foul's army is one of three brothers of the race of Giants, a people previously thought incorruptible. With the aid of the powerful Illearth Stone, Foul's non-corporeal servants, the Ravers, have possessed the three brothers, now renamed Kinslaughterer, Fleshharrower and Satansfist. In shame and despair, the other Giants offer no resistance as Kinslaughterer murders them all in their home city. Thus, the Lords have lost their strongest and bravest ally in the fight against evil. Nevertheless, the Lords resolve to meet the enemy on the battlefield. Hile Troy is a genius in military tactics who developed a mystical form of sight when hurtloam, a magical mud with miraculous curative properties, was used to try and ""heal"" his lack of eyes. (The hurtloam used to heal Covenant's head injury also has the effect of ""curing"" his leprosy). While Troy leads the army to confront Fleshharrower's attacking force, Elena and Covenant go in search of the Seventh Ward, a repository of ancient magical power which Elena believes will ensure victory. Covenant, Elena and their two Bloodguard protectors journey through the remote mountain region on the western frontier of the Land to the hiding place of the Ward. Elena gains the power, but foolishly uses it to summon the long dead High Lord Kevin from his grave, and send him against Lord Foul. This act breaks the Law of Death, the barrier preventing the souls of the dead from interfering in the world of the living. Kevin's spirit is easily defeated and then enslaved by Foul wielding the Illearth Stone, and commanded to destroy Elena. The two High Lords engage in a battle of magic, in which Elena and her Bloodguard are defeated and killed, and the Staff of Law lost again. Covenant is able to save himself and his Bloodguard by using the power of his white gold ring, again without understanding how. Meanwhile Hile Troy has been forced into a desperate retreat by the superior force of the Raver's army to the edge of a dangerous, forbidding forest known as Garroting Deep. In desperation, he begs the aid of Caerroil Wildwood, an immortal Forestal who is charged with protecting the ancient forests of the Land from the Ravers. Wildwood brings the forest to life, totally destroying Foul's army, and personally ""garrotes"" Fleshharrower. The victory is a Pyrrhic one, however: the Lords' army is nearly obliterated, and Hile Troy has sacrificed himself as the price for the Forestal's aid, becoming Wildwood's immortal apprentice. The war thus ends in a draw, and with the death of High Lord Elena his summoner, Covenant once again returns to his own world. His ex-wife has long since hung up the phone, and he is a leper once more."
170,The Hidden Valley of Oz,fantasy," Jonathan Andrew Manley, nicknamed Jam, is a boy from Ohio, the son of a biologist. At the start of the story, he is building a ""collapsible kite"" from plans he found in a popular magazine. Rather than cutting the pieces of his wooden frame to match the plans, however, he scales up the kite to match the size of his wood, yielding an extra-large result. The size of the thing inspires him to try to fly on it; he attaches a shipping crate, and gathers up three of his father's experimental animals (two guinea pigs and a white lab rat). A strong gust of wind lifts kite, crate, and passengers into the sky; Jam is on his way to Oz. Kite and crate thump down the next day, in the purple landscape of the Gillikin Country. Jam is amazed to find that his animals can now talk; the guinea pigs call themselves Pinny and Gig, while the white rat introduces himself as Percy. Jam meets some of the inhabitants, who inform him of local conditions. This remote valley of Oz is dominated by a wrathful giant, fifty feet tall, called Terp the Terrible, who enslaves the common people to work in his vineyards and his jam-making factory. Terp captures Jam, and is struck by his name; the giant threatens to spread the boy on his breakfast muffins the next day, and eat him. Terp imprisons the boy and his animals in the highest tower of his castle. The courtyard of Terp's castle contains a magic muffin tree, guarded by a fierce monster (it has an elephant's body, alligator's tail, and two heads, a nocturnal owl and a diurnal wolf). In the night, Percy is able to help Jam and friends escape the tower, with the aid of a handy grapevine. Jam and his pets flee, though Percy doubles back to steal one of the magic muffins. On the Gillikin plains, Jam and friends are menaced by the Equinots, hostile centaurs; Percy frightens away the Equinots when he eats some of the magic muffin, and grows to ten times his normal size. A local farmer and his wife provide shelter for the night; Pinny and Gig, who have little taste for adventure, decide to stay at the farm as pets of the farmer's children. Another kite flight takes Jam and Percy to the tin castle of the Emperor of the Winkies, the Tin Woodman. There, the party is soon joined by Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Hungry Tiger. After hearing Jam's tale, the assembled party decide to defeat Terp and free the oppressed Gillikins. Their path from the Winkie Country to the Gillikin lands leads through a wilderness; a commotion in the jungle brings them a new friend, the Leopard with the Changeable Spots. They enter Bookville, where a hostile King and court condemn them to be pressed into books. (The animated books resemble the playing cards in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The idea of changing size by eating a food also links the two works.) Percy gnaws the travelers a way out of their bookshelf prison during the night. Another disagreeable adventure awaits them in Icetown; to escape an igloo prison, the Scarecrow volunteers his stuffing as kindling for a fire. (The Scarecrow made a similar sacrifice to placate the Hip-po-gy-raf in The Tin Woodman of Oz.) The travelers, with a re-stuffed Scarecrow, eventually reach the Gillikin Country and the Hidden Valley. Percy's shrinking-and-growing experiences with the magic muffin have made them realize that Terp needs a steady supply of muffins to maintain his giant stature. Jam and company, with local collaboration, lure Terp away from his castle, and hypnotize the guardian beast into harmlessness; The Tin Man chops down the magic tree, killing it. Terp is trapped in the smokestack of the jam factory until he shrinks to his normal size. The party travel to the Emerald City, where Jam is welcomed as a hero; after a celebratory banquet, Ozma and the Wizard send the boy home to Ohio once more. Percy remains in Oz, and convinces the Wizard to enchant him into his large size permanently. ---- Cosgrove originally intended to have Jam travel to Oz by rocket, but the publishers informed her that that had already been done in The Yellow Knight of Oz. Cosgrove's original opening was published posthumously in an issue of Oz-story Magazine. She later gave an account of how she wrote and revised Hidden Valley and worked with the personnel at Reilly & Lee. Her article appeared in The Baum Bugle, and was later included as an Afterword in the 1991 edition of Hidden Valley. Cogrove began work on a second Oz book soon after finishing the first; but Reilly & Lee declined it, due to low sales for Oz books in the 1950s. The work would finally appear in print forty years later."
171,Transformers: Exodus – The Official History of the War for Cybertron,fantasy," The story is set on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers. It has been several centuries since Cybertron's golden age of space exploration and planetary colonisation, and Cybertron's society has declined into a state of decadence. The planet's many Space Bridges have went offline due to years of neglect, and as a result Cybertron has lost contact with the other planets that the Transformers colonised during the golden age. When a new Transformer is born from the Well of All Sparks (which contains the AllSpark, the device that creates new Transformers), they are assigned to a caste and guild from which they may never deviate throughout their lives. Castes are separated into a hierarchy, with the highest castes relating to science, art and government, while the lower castes are given to manual labourers in factories and underground mines. Those in the lowest castes are not given individual names. In the industrial city of Kaon, gladiatorial combat grows in popularity among the lower castes. One of the gladiators, a labourer who completely opposes the caste system and calls himself ""Megatronus"" after one of the original thirteen Transformers, rises to power and becomes a local celebrity due to his skills in the gladiatorial pits. Megatronus' fans and followers shorten his name to ""Megatron"" in their chants, and the name sticks. In the city of Iacon, a clerk named Orion Pax, who works in Cybertron's Hall of Records and also dislikes the caste system, begins watching Megatron's political speeches and eventually contacts Megatron to discuss their similar political views. Megatron champions a free Cybertron, with each individual determining their own path in life, and Orion finds this highly appealing. Orion turns for guidance to his supervisor and mentor Alpha Trion, who encourages him to meet with Megatron in Kaon, cryptically stating that a great destiny awaits both Orion and Megatron. Taking Alpha Trion's advise, Orion travels to Kaon and meets Megatron in person, along with two of his followers, Shockwave and Soundwave. Orion and Megatron engage in intense but friendly debates over the nature of free will, and they find broad agreement in the need for a new form of Cybertronian government. However, Megatron favours confrontation and revolution, while Orion hopes to inspire the masses to change the system from within. As Megatron's political movement gains power, it also grows more violent. Terrorists professing allegiance to Megatron commit multiple bombings across Cybertron, one of these bombings destroys the ""Six Lasers Over Cybertron"" amusement park. Megatron repeatedly states in public speeches that he does not know the terrorists and did not orchestrate these attacks, and at one point Orion even vocally defends him. The terrorists then attack the Altihex Casino in the city of Altihex, where Sentinel Prime (the main political leader of Cybertron) is attending a show. When the bombings start, Sentinel relies on his three bodyguards, Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker, to escort him to safety. However, the three bodyguards are actually part of the plot as well, and they take Sentinel to Kaon and present him to Megatron. Starscream flirts with joining Megatron's forces, but seeing Sentinel as a potential bargaining chip he doesn't allow Megatron to kill him, and instead orders Skywarp and Thundercracker to take Sentinel to Trypticon Station, a scientific space station that orbits Cybertron. To prevent an all-out war, Alpha Trion helps Orion and Megatron secure an audience before the Cybertron High Council in order to plead their case. The Council members are hostile to any notion of change and view Megatron as nothing but a criminal. Megatron continues to disown the terrorist attacks being committed in his name but continues to appeal for the total removal of the caste system, including the Council itself. His words are supported by the lower castes in the council's audience, who have started calling themselves ""Decepticons"". By contrast, Orion makes a more noble appeal to the Council. He points out that earlier generations of Transformers would never have been able to repel the Quintessons (an alien race that tried to invade Cybertron centuries ago) if they had been constrained by such a caste system. He proclaims their fuller potential as a race if each individual were to be acknowledged as an autonomous robot, using the ancient term ""Autobot"" as an expression of that ideal. After his speech, the Council member Halogen agrees that the two radicals might have a point, and that Cybertronian society might have become too static for its own good. Recognizing the depth of the crisis that Cybertron faces, Halogen asserts that they need new visionary leadership to guide a social rebirth. The Council, impressed by Orion's morals, appoint Orion as the new leader of Cybertron, giving him a new name and title: Optimus Prime. However, Orion's sudden elevation destroys his friendship with Megatron, who is outraged and believes the situation to be a set-up. Megatron kills Halogen at once, but as the crowd marshals for war, Optimus Prime manages to convince Megatron not to commit further violence within the Council halls. The two sides retreat from the halls and the great war between Optimus Prime's Autobots and Megatron's Decepticons begins. The war is brutal and largely one-sided. The Autobots retain control of two cities, Iacon and Kalis, while the Decepticons take over everywhere else on the planet. Out of desperation, the Autobots launch the AllSpark into space to keep Megatron from gaining control of the source of Transformer life. Seeking a new advantage, Megatron orders Starscream to give him access to Trypticon Station's stockpile of Dark Energon, a power-enhancing substance that according to legend is the blood of the mythical being Unicron. The Decepticons consume the Dark Energon and become extremely powerful, gaining a combat edge and overwhelming the struggling Autobots. Megatron then seeks control of the Plasma Energy Chamber at Cybertron's core, planning to flood it with Dark Energon, which would permanently empower his own forces while poisoning Cybertron and starving the Autobots to death. But in order to activate the Chamber, he needs to acquire two code keys. One of these keys is stored within Sentinel Prime's chest, and Megatron acquires it by brutally murdering him. Before Megatron can fully activate the Plasma Energy Chamber though, the Autobots reactivate Omega Supreme, an enormous robot that transforms into both a rocket ship and a city, and once served as Cybertron's guardian. While transforming from a city to a rocket ship, Omega Supreme nearly crushes Megatron and the Decepticons, but they narrowly avoid getting killed by the giant. Omega Supreme takes off with the Plasma Energy Chamber and attempts to fly it to safety, but Starscream leads an aerial assault that manages to shoot him down, and after Megatron empowers himself with Dark Energon, he effortlessly defeats the Autobots and Omega Supreme's robot mode. He then floods the Plasma Energy Chamber with Dark Energon and sends it back into the core of Cybertron. As the Dark Energon flows throughout Cybertron, Optimus Prime ventures into the core to fix the Plasma Energy Chamber, accompanied by the Autobots Bumblebee and Jetfire. Once they find it, Bumblebee manages to extract the Chamber from the core, stopping the flow of Dark Energon, and Optimus receives a mental communication from the core itself, which is sentient. With the flow of Dark Energon stopped, the core will eventually be able to heal itself, but it will take centuries, and during that time the core will not be able to generate enough Energon to sustain the population it currently does. The Transformers will either have to abandon the planet until it heals, or risk starvation. To show him not to lose hope, the core bestows Optimus Prime with the Matrix of Leadership. Seeing that the planet will soon be uninhabitable, Optimus Prime orders a mass exodus of the Autobot army, but most of the ships are shot down by Trypticon Station. One Autobot ship, the Eight Track, is able to link up to Trypticon Station and force it to crash into Cybertron, but as it falls the station transforms into an enormous, reptilian monster and goes on a rampage. Alpha Trion grows ever more despairing for Cybertron, and he sets a radical plan into motion: the construction of the largest spaceship in Cybertronian history, the Ark, on which most of the Autobots may escape. Several Autobots, including Alpha Trion, Ultra Magnus, Jetfire and a newly-repaired Omega Supreme, volunteer to stay on Cybertron and protect what little territory the Autobots still hold. Despite Optimus's strong wishes, Alpha Trion refuses to leave Cybertron and declares the time has come for Optimus to make his own command decisions without his advise. As most of the Autobots flee to the Ark and it takes off into space, Megatron commands Trypticon to transform into an equally large spaceship, the Nemesis, in which Megatron and most of the Decepticons will give pursuit. Before they leave, Megatron appoints Shockwave as the dictator of Cybertron, ordering him to destroy all remaining Autobots by the time Megatron returns. With the Nemesis in hot pursuit, the Autobots fly the Ark to the last intact Space Bridge, but because no one alive knows how to use it, there is no guarantee taht the Space Bridge will work. But as the two giant spaceships get within range of the Space Bridge, it does indeed activate and teleports them to an uncharted part of space. With no Decepticons in sight, The Ark detects the energy signature of the AllSpark. Optimus Prime orders the Ark pilots to follow the signal, and their adventure in space begins."
172,Dark Quetzal,fantasy," Promising final year novice Kyarra is disappointed when she alone in her class is forbidden from going to the beach to try to contact the merlee about the disappearance of Rialle. Although she has moved up a year because of her promising voice, she fears that she will be rejected and turned into an orderly. Her sense of disappointment is only worsened when her best friend Caell hears the merlee, and receives a message from them that Kyarra's parents were not Singers. The merlee claim her mother is living in Windy Corner, waiting to hear from Kyarra, and together, Kyarra and Caell sneak out to find her. They arrive just in time to find Kyarra's mother being kidnapped - Kyarra is also taken, apparently expected to have come, and Caell tries to follow them with the merlee and is nearly drowned. Meanwhile, in the Quetzal Forest, Night Plume, the black-feathered leader of a flock of quetzal, is annoyed to be sent for by the Starmaker - Frazhin, who is using the khiz to brainwash and control groups of half-creatures raised by his priests, including the merlee who sent the message to Caell. Night Plume is asked to listen to Rialle as she is fed a memory drug made from yellow flowers, and store what he hears about the Starmaker's daughter - Kyarra - in the Memoryplace, the quetzal's collective ancestral memory. He does as he is asked, but Rialle's songs begin to break the Starmaker's hold on him, and when he is released he attempts to make contact with wild quetzal, getting himself and his friend Sky Swooper in trouble. Although Frazhin still believes Night Plume is under his control, he holds Sky Swooper captive to ensure loyalty. Summoning Night Plume to the temple, Frazhin orders him and his flock to accompany Kyarra on her journey through Quetzal Forest - although Night Plume is distracted by a message in Wild Speech from Rialle imploring him to fly to the Echorium for help. Kyarra is transported to the edge of Quetzal Forest by Asil, a famous pirate. On the journey she is watched over by Asil's daughter Jilian who, along with the rest of the pirates, wears khiz stars to protect themselves from Kyarra's singing. She also bonds with her mother, who was left helpless by the Yehn she was given and is completely incapable of caring for herself. Nevertheless, Kyarra feels very protective of her, and sings one of the pirates Shi for attempting to harm her. The group just reach the edge of the forest when they are suddenly attacked by wild quetzal. Kyarra's song helps herself, her mother and Jilian escape, but they are unexpectedly captured by Shaiala and some centaurs with herstones. Recognising Yashra, Shaiala takes the group and other captured pirates to the Kaleri. Night Plume's flock arrives just in time to see Kyarra vanish into green light, and Night Plume realises he, unlike the enchanted quetzal, is free to travel past the edge of the Forest. He orders the flock to delay their return, and flies over the sea, but cannot find the island. Instead he lands on a ship, where he meets Caell, Renn and Kherron journeying to the mainland to search for Kyarra. When he reveals his ability to speak human speech, Kherron becomes suspicious, particularly as Night Plume admits to being raised by Frazhin. Night Plume faithfully passes on Rialle's message, including a warning that Frazhin is trying to poison the Echorium, and that he saw Kyarra vanish into green light - a sign Renn recognises as being Shaiala's work. They reach Silvertown and learn it has been poisoned - although for most residents this is not fatal - and the group encounters Lord Azri. Telling him about Frazhin, Azri agrees they must seek him out and attack, but the Singers must first fulfill their obligation to Kyarra and head to the Purple Plains to look for her. In the Horselord's camp, Kyarra is horrified to learn of her mother's crimes, and maintains that her punishment was undeserved. WHile she is glad to hear that Yashra will be cared for by the Harai, she is horrified to learn that Jilian is to be used as bait for her father, putting her in great danger. At a meeting, the Horselords hear a prophecy from Speaks Many Tongues, an inhabitant of Quetzal Forest, warning of doom when the dark quetzal flies. As the prophecy is spoken, Frazhin's quetzal attack the camp and, in the confusion, Kyarra frees Jilian and escapes with Speaks Many Tongues into the forest. Night Plume, scouting ahead for the Singers, learns from his flock that Frazhin has punished Sky Swooper for Night Plume's disappearance. The flock attack Night Plume, and he is badly injured, although the arrival of the Singers protects him from the angry Horselords. Kyarra, Jilian and Speaks Many Tongues journey into the forest, where Speaks Many Tongues insists on them meeting Xiancotl, the forest people's holy man, and travelling with him into the quetzal Memoryplace using yellow flowers. Before their arrival, they meet Shaiala, who has followed them with some centaurs, and she is invited to join them in the memory trance. Each girl asks a question: Shaiala successfully learns that the centaurs are uncorruptible because they do not hatch from eggs, but when Kyarra attempts to discover how to heal her mother, the memory trance is interrupted and instead she receives a summons from Frazhin. The disruption causes Xiancotl and Kyarra to pass out, and in the panic this causes Jilian, Shaiala and Kyarra escape to the centaurs. However, on Kyarra's insistence, they allow Frahin's naga to take her to him, where she hopes she will be able to subdue him with her Songs. The Singers and the Horselords regroup and prepare to head into the Forest and attack Frazhin. Although initially concerned for Kyarra, they are appeased when Speaks Many Tongues informs them that she disappeared with Shaiala. Speaks Many Tongues warns that Frazhin is planning to use the yellow flowers gathered by Night Plume's flock to travel into the quetzal Memoryplace and replace it with one of his own making, in which Singers will no longer exist. Although most of the Singers are horrified by this, Kherron is distracted by the promise of a miracle healing potion which Speaks Many Tongues suggests might heal his voice. The next day, the army travels into the Forest and surrounds the volcano where Frazhin has made his Temple, which is beginning to erupt as he prepares to enter the Memoryplace. With the help of the centaurs, who arrive with Shaiala and Jilian, the army breaches the crater and begins searching for Frazhin. Although Caell and Night Plume are told to wait outside, they grow restless, and make their way into the crater. Night Plume is horrified to see the bodies of the eldest and youngest quetzal, who were useless for the memory trance, along with Sky Swooper, punished for his disappearance by having her wings cut off before she was killed. Using wild speech, Night Plume breaks the memory trance on the other quetzal, and reasserts his leadership of the flock. Kyarra is taken by Frazhin to a ball made of crystal, called the Fane. Frazhin plans to seal the pair of them inside it, and then be rolled into the volcano to protect them from the approaching Singers. Within the Fane, they will use the Memoryplace - its power heightened by the captive quetzal and the yellow flower drug sent to the Isle of the Echoes and Silvertown - to change history so that Yashra is healed and the Singers do not exist. Although reluctant, Kyarra feels she has no choice but to get into the Fane. Just as it is sealed, Caell arrives, making Kyarra believe that the memory trance has brought him back from being drowned by merlee. Although the Singers rescue the Fane from the priests and end the volcano's eruption, they are unable to open the Fane, within which Kyarra is rapidly running out of air. Feeling they have no choice, Renn, Rialle, Caell, Night Plume and a newly-healed Kherron sing Yehn, hoping that it will break Frazhin's power. Although the Fane opens, the Yehn does not affect Frazhin, and he takes Kyarra hostage before being brought down by Night Plume and Jilian. Five years later, Kyarra wakes from the Yehn with the help of the forest people's potions, and is greeted by a reformed Lady Yashra, also healed, along with Night Plume, Caell, Jilian and Rialle. Although she is initially confused, she learns that Frazhin is dead and the Half Creatures are free again. Frazhin has been revealed to be a half-Singer child who was born on the Isle, but rejected from the Echorium because of his resistance to the Songs. Kyarra resolves to learn how to become both a Singer and a Harai princess, and plans to becomes the Echorium's first female Second Singer."
173,The Naama War,fantasy," Warfare on a cataclysmic scale is convulsing the continent of Nyumbani from north to south. Soldiers fall. Cities burn. Blood reddens the sea. Sorcery sears the land. Deities gather in opposite dimensions, poised to unleash unimaginable cosmic power on a land already battered by the Cushites of the North and the Naamans of the South. In the midst of this massive struggle, Imaro, warrior of the Ilyassai, wages a personal war against his nemesis, the sorcerer Bohu of Naama. This individual vendetta mirrors the larger clash between the forces of good and evil – a confrontation that threatens to tear Nyumbani apart. The destiny for which Imaro has been honed like a living weapon now lies directly before him. Imaro vs. Bohu. Cush vs. Naama. War. Magic. Blood. Fire. The losers in this wide ranging battle for the fate of a continent face oblivion. But the winners will not emerge unscathed."
174,Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star,fantasy," At the end of the school year Kendra finds a kobold, that has infiltrated her eighth grade. She can see without a magical milk that can make her see things she cant see without it because the year before the fairies kissed her and gave her power to see mythical creatures. To her he seems ugly but to everyone else he seems like every girl's dream. She knows this has problems written all over it. At the end of the day a man named Errol is just outside their school door saying he can get rid of the problem for them. Seth ( Kendra's brother) must get a magical item from a mortuary that is age protected from 13 and older. Seth is the only one that can enter. When he gets the item, it bites him and teeth marks are left in his skin. Later, Errol asks Kendra and Seth to help them retrieve another object that can help save their grandparent's preserve. Kendra is not so sure and calls her Grandpa Sorenson but doesn't respond. After many failed attempts her grandpa finally calls back and tells them to not go with him and that it is possible a trap. He says that a ride is coming for them and to not get out of the house till then. So Seth and Kendra wait until a red sports car shows up. A lady named Vanessa picks them up but Errol pursues them until they reach the preserve. They get away and get to the preserve safely in a short two hours. The Society of the Evening Star, an ancient organization determined to overthrow magical preserves and use them for their own intents and purposes, it is determined to infiltrate Fablehaven. Worst yet, word is abroad that the Society of the Evening Star is rising and working its mischief faster than ever. Preserves are falling at an alarming rate. Grandpa Sorenson, the caretaker, invites three specialists approved by the mysterious Sphinx to help around the property: ""Tanu"" the Potion Master, Coulter, a magical relics collector and old friend, and Vanessa, a mystical creature trapper. In addition, these three specialists have a more perilous assignment— to find an artifact of great power hidden on the property that is a piece of a key to the great demon prison, Zzyzx. Zzyzx houses hundreds of thousands of the worst demons. Should Zzyzx open, the world as they know would end. Later,The Sphinx meets with Kendra and Seth to discuss the situation. After giving Kendra an uncharged magical object, he determines her fairykind, and not ""very kind."" Being fairykind is a completely unusual thing that hadn't happened for centuries. Then, the Sphinx speaks to Seth and explains that Olloch the Glutton will prove perilous to Seth as long as it exists. Olloch's only goal is to consume Seth. After being fed by him in the beginning of the book. Olloch will continue to consume creatures until he is big enough and strong enough to destroy everything preventing him from Seth. When Olloch the Glutton pervades the gates of Fablehaven, all evidence points towards the fact that someone inside the preserve is a traitor. Which of the three visitors is it? If the artifact falls into the wrong hands, it could mean the downfall of other preserves and possibly the world. With good intent, Kendra and Seth become both a help and hindrance to their grandfather’s cry to protect Fablehaven. Coulter woke Seth and persuaded him to come to an extremely dangerous portion of Fablehaven, where Warren lost his mind. In the morning at the house, Kendra is thoroughly depressed about the supposed death of her brother. Grandpa finally resolves that Coulter was not acting of his own agency because his plan was so clumsy. That night, Dale was caught in the Thief's Net guarding an artificial key. Dale had gone to sleep and woke up there. Suddenly, all the evidence matched up and the traitor seized control of the house. In order to save their family, friends, the preserve, and ultimately the world, Kendra and Seth must take huge risks they would never have dreamed of doing had the situation been less perilous. The fate of the world rested on their shoulders."
175,A Song of Stone,fantasy," Abel and Morgan live in a small castle in an indeterminate place and time of civil war. They decide to abandon their home and join the refugees seeking safety. A group of irregulars led by ""The Lieutenant"" (or ""Loot"") stops them and takes them back to the castle, which they proceed to fortify as a base. The soldiers loot the castle, and Morgan is seduced by Loot. A rival faction attacks the castle with artillery and Abel is taken along with the fighters on a counter-attack. When they return, Abel almost shoots Loot and there is a violent and nihilistic ending. A Song of Stone tells the frightening story of what happens when the normal rules of society break down. Themes of incest, violence and war are intertwined with the lives of the rather pompous but lyrical disgraced aristocrat Abel, the vacuous and submissive Morgan, the ruthless Loot, and her soldiers with names like ""Psycho"", ""Karma"" and ""Deathwish"". The story is told by Abel in the first person. Abel describes Morgan's actions in the second person, mostly when she is in his direct view. As the invaders systematically loot and destroy Abel's family's ancestral home, Abel seems ambivalent to what is happening. Later, when the Lieutenant suggests a memorial for Abel's lifelong family retainer, who has just been killed, Abel and the reader realise that he does not know the servant's surname. The violence of war is described graphically."
176,The Enchanted Castle,fantasy," The enchanted castle of the title is a country estate in the West Country seen through the eyes of three children, Gerald, James and Kathleen, who discover it while exploring during the school holidays. The lake, groves and marble statues, with white towers and turrets in the distance, make a fairy-tale setting, and then in the middle of the maze in the rose garden they find a sleeping fairy-tale princess. The ""princess"" tells them that the castle is full of magic, and they almost believe her. She shows them the treasures of the castle, including a ring she says is a ring of invisibility, but when it actually turns her invisible she panics and admits that she is the housekeeper's niece, Mabel, and was just play-acting. The children soon discover that the ring has other magical powers. The Enchanted Castle was written for both children and adults. It combines descriptions of the imaginative play of children, reminiscent of The Story of the Treasure Seekers, with a magic more muted than in her major fantasies such as The Story of the Amulet."
177,Wind from the Abyss,fantasy," Wind From the Abyss picks up approximately two years after the battle for Well Astria during which two Bipedal Federation ships and crew were destroyed accidentally. Khys, the “dharen” or ruler of Silistra for thousands of years, has captured Estri, Sereth and Chayin, taking them to his exclusive city/keep at the Lake of Horns. Before being captured by Khys, Estri, Sereth, a former Slayer turned renegade, and Chayin, Cahndor of a Parset desert tribe, form a triad of sexuality and power as foretold in an ancient prophecy that threatens Khys’ rule of the planet. Immediately after the Well Astria battle, Estri, Chayin and Sereth are captured by Khys, tyrant ruler of Silistra (“the dharen”) and held hostage for over 2 years. He knows these three are key in maintaining control of the planet. He has Estri’s memories blocked so she will not attempt to wrest control from him; Estri’s journey to understand her “Shaper” heritage is interrupted. Estri regains her memory after Khys’ council fails to get information locked in her mind by her father. Khys and Estri are taken to a planet to meet Estrazi (Estri’s father) and Khystrai (Khys’ father) who tell Khys he must start over with this uninhabited planet because he has failed to govern Silistra well enough for the last 25,000 years. Estri is returned to Silistra alone and materializes in the midst of a battle between the Parset desert tribes and the privileged “Lakeborn” who live in the city of the dharen. She is reunited with Chayin and Sereth and they renew their bond to each other, although Estri fears she will hold them back with the “slave” mentality Khys forced on her. Khys returns by himself, insistent on dueling with Sereth, but is in such a depleted condition that Sereth kills him fairly easily, making Sereth the ruler of Silistra. Sereth leaves Carth, an associate of Khys and Estri’s teacher/brainwasher, to run the city but arrange it so the city cannot be rebuilt and returned to its former glory. They decide to move many of the “Lakeborn” to other parts of the planet to intermix blood lines and strengthen the Silistran gene pool. Estri, Chayin and Sereth finally admit to themselves they are the people spoken of in an ancient prophecy and they must play out the rest of their fate. They take ship to explore a continent Khys had kept off-limits for generations. Estri’s journey of self-awareness and the trio’s fulfillment of the “Seker’oth prophecy” (which means “Golden Sword”) conclude in The Carnelian Throne, the final book in the Silistra series."
178,The Scarecrow of Oz,fantasy," Cap'n Bill, a sailor with a wooden peg-leg, and his friend, a little girl named Trot, set out from California on a calm day for a short ride in their row-boat. The calm day suddenly turns dark and stormy and Cap'n Bill and Trot are washed overboard and are carried by mermaids (referred to but not seen) to a cave where they meet an ostrich-like flying creature called an Ork. Flying on the Ork's back, the Ork, Cap'n Bill and Trot strain to arrive at an island where a grim man calling himself Pessim the Observer points out that the Ork should not have eaten the light lavender berries growing on the island. The light lavender berries cause a person to shrink, and the dark purple berries cause a person to grow. Once the Ork resumes normal size, Cap'n Bill and Trot leave the island to escape the Observer's negative attitude&mdash;which drove the people in his homeland to exile him here in the first place. To reduce the load on the Ork, Cap'n Bill and Trot each eat a light lavender berry so they are small enough to carry in Trot's bonnet. Flying away from the island, Cap'n Bill, Trot, and the Ork alight in the land of Mo, one of Baum's non-Oz creations. They meet the Bumpy Man, who specializes in serving sugar and molasses and has some of their appearance too. After dining on Mo rain (lemonade) and Mo snow (popcorn), they run into Button Bright, the sailor boy from The Road to Oz who has gotten lost again. Cap'n Bill calls down some of the native birds (who, like all birds in fairy countries, can talk back) and offers them the dark purple berries to make them grow large enough to carry himself, Trot, and Button-Bright (for the Ork can fly) to the land of Oz across the Deadly Desert to the north of them. When they make it across the desert, Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, and Trot are set down in a field and the Ork leaves them to find his own country, which he got lost from on a routine flight. The place Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, and Trot have arrived in, Jinxland, has had a turbulent recent history. The rightful king of Jinxland, King Kynd, was killed by his prime minister Phearse, who was in turn killed by his prime minister Krewl. Now King Krewl rules over the land and seeks to marry King Kynd's daughter, Princess Gloria, to legitimize his claim to the throne. However, she wants nothing to do with him or another suitor, Googly-Goo; she is in love with Pon, the current gardener who is the son of the first usurper Phearse. King Krewl and Googly-Goo decide that if neither of them can have Gloria, no one can, and hire a witch named Blinkie to freeze her heart so she can love no one. Cap'n Bill happens on this plot, and to keep him from interfering, Blinkie turns him into a grasshopper. The Scarecrow is at Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country and learns about these events from reading Glinda's Great Book of Records, a magical volume which transcribes every event in the world at the instant it happens. The Scarecrow wants to help Cap'n Bill, Button-Bright, and Trot, and Glinda sends him to Jinxland with some of her magic to aid him. The Scarecrow uses a magic thread to cross the gorge separating Jinxland from the rest of the Quadling Country, and before he meets Cap'n Bill and Trot, he encounters the Ork, who has found his homeland. The Scarecrow attempts to depose Krewl and is captured, with Googly-Goo suggesting the Scarecrow be burned, but then the Ork arrives with fifty others who attack the Jinxlanders and turn the tables on Krewl. The victorious party then arrives at Blinkie’s and makes her undo her magic on Cap'n Bill and Princess Gloria by using a magic powder to shrink her in size. When she has undone her evil spells, the Scarecrow stops Blinkie's shrinking, but she remains at a small size and loses all her magic powers. Gloria takes the throne of Jinxland and elevates Pon to be her royal consort, and the Scarecrow, Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, Trot, and the Orks return to the Emerald City for a celebration."
179,The Screwtape Letters,fantasy," In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, as seen from devils' viewpoints. Screwtape holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy (""Lowerarchy"") of Hell, and acts as a mentor to Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter. In the body of the thirty-one letters which make up the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin in the Patient, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending God's love for man or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it. Versions of the letters were originally published weekly in the Anglican periodical The Guardian between May and November 1941, and the standard edition contains an introduction explaining how the author chose to write his story. Lewis wrote the sequel Screwtape Proposes a Toast in 1959, a critique of certain trends in public education (state schooling). An omnibus edition with a new preface by Lewis was published by Bles in 1961 and MacMillan in 1962. The Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis' most popular works, although he claimed that it was ""not fun"" to write, and ""resolved never to write another 'Letter'."" Both The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast have been released on both audio cassette and CD, with narration by John Cleese and Joss Ackland. A dramatized audio version by Focus on the Family was a 2010 Audie Award finalist."
180,Moving Pictures,fantasy," The alchemists of the Discworld have invented moving pictures. Many hopefuls are drawn by the siren call of Holy Wood, home of the fledgling ""clicks"" industry – among them Victor Tugelbend (""Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little.""), a dropout from Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University and Theda ""Ginger"" Withel, a girl ""from a little town you never ever heard of"", who become stars, and the Discworld's most infamous salesman, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, who introduces commerce to the equation and becomes a successful producer. Meanwhile, it gradually becomes clear that the production of movies is having a deleterious effect on the structure of reality. Ginger is possessed by an unspecified entity and she and Victor find an ancient, hidden cinema, complete with portal to the Dungeon Dimensions. Back in Ankh-Morpork, a creature from the Dungeon Dimensions breaks through, and Victor fights it, having found out that with a camera pointing at him in real life works out the way it does in the movies."
181,Downbelow Station,fantasy," Space is explored not by short-sighted governments, but by the Earth Company, a private corporation which becomes enormously wealthy and powerful as a result. Nine star systems are found to lack planets suitable for colonization, so space stations are built in orbit instead, stepping-stones for further exploration. Then, Pell's World is found to be not only habitable, but already populated by the gentle, sentient (if technologically backward) Hisa. Pell Station is built. The planet is nicknamed ""Downbelow"" by the stationers, who also start to call their home ""Downbelow Station"". When Earth's out-of-touch policies cause it to begin losing control of its more distant stations and worlds, it builds a fleet of fifty military carriers, the Earth Company Fleet, to enforce its will. This leads to the prolonged Company War with the breakaway Union, based at Cyteen, another hospitable world. Caught in between are the stationers and the merchanters who man the freighters that maintain interstellar trade. Set in the final days of the war, Downbelow Station opens with Earth Company Captain Signy Mallory and her warship, Norway, escorting a ragtag fleet fleeing from Russell's and Mariner Stations to Pell. Similar convoys arrive from other stations destroyed or lost to Union, leading to an enormous crisis. The flood of unexpected refugees strains station resources. Angelo Konstantin, Stationmaster of Pell, and his two sons, Damon and Emilio, struggle to cope with the situation. Fearing Union infiltrators and saboteurs, Pell dumps all the refugees in a Quarantine Zone, causing massive dislocations of Pell's own citizens. While conferring with Pell's administrators, Mallory encounters a delegation from the Earth Company, led by Segust Ayres, Second Secretary of Earth's Security Council. Offended by her brusque, arrogant manner, Ayres declines her offer of transportation to the front and charters a freighter instead. Unbeknownst to Mallory, Ayres' mission is to open peace negotiations with Union. Mallory also drops off a Union prisoner of war, Josh Talley, whom she had rescued from a brutal interrogation by panicked security forces at Russell's. However, on the voyage to Pell, her sexual exploitation of him had been only marginally less abusive. Faced with indefinite confinement on Pell, Talley requests Adjustment, the wiping of much of his memory, in return for his freedom. When questioned by Damon Konstantin, he requests Adjustment to escape the indefinite imprisonment, so Konstantin reluctantly gives his permission. Upon later review of his file, Damon learns that Talley had already undergone the treatment once before at Russell's, Still feeling guilty for agreeing, he and his wife Elene Quen befriend the post-Adjustment Talley, an act of kindness that will have monumental, unforeseen consequences. Jon Lukas, Angelo Konstantin's brother-in-law and only rival for power, is worried about the course of the war. The Fleet has received little or no support from an indifferent Earth and is gradually losing a war of attrition. He secretly contacts Union, offering to hand Pell over. Union responds by smuggling in a secret agent named Jessad. Meanwhile, the last ten surviving Fleet ships gather for the most critical operation of the war. All of Mazian's recent strategic maneuvers and raids have been leading up to this point. If they can take out Viking Station in one coordinated strike before their enemy's growing numerical superiority can overwhelm them, there would be a wide, barren region between Earth and Union space, one which would make further conflict vastly more costly for Union. Seb Azov, the Union military commander, has no choice but to gather his forces at Viking to await Mazian's anticipated attack. However, he has an ace up his sleeve. He has pressured Ayres into recording a message ordering Mazian to break off while peace is being negotiated. When Mazian strikes, Ayres' broadcasted order does indeed force him to abort and the Fleet retreats to Pell in confusion. Mazian meets with his captains and gives them the choice of accepting a peace treaty that essentially concedes victory to Union or rebelling against Earth and continuing to fight. They all remain loyal to their leader. One of Mazian's first acts is to place Pell under martial law. The Fleet is now forced to defend Downbelow Station, its only reliable base and supply source. Union forces attack and destroy two ships out on patrol. While Union suffers casualties as well, it can replace its losses, unlike Mazian. Counting one carrier lost earlier in the debacle at Viking, he has just seven ships left. Under cover of the panic on the station caused by the battle in space, Lukas makes his move, killing and supplanting his hated rival, Angelo Konstantin. To escape rioting refugees, Elene Quen is forced to board Finity's End, one of the most respected merchanter ships. The freighters flee the battle zone, but Quen convinces most of them to band together, for safety and to maximize their leverage whatever happens. Damon survives his uncle's assassination attempt and links up with Talley. Together, they manage to hide from Lukas; in fact, Talley discovers he is surprisingly good at it. Eventually, they are contacted by Jessad, and Talley finds out why. He and Jessad are the same kind: azi, artificially bred and, in Jessad and Talley's case, trained especially for espionage and sabotage. They are discovered by Fleet marines; Jessad is killed, while Konstantin and Talley are captured and taken to Mallory. She receives orders from Mazian to quietly dispose of Konstantin. Lukas does the Fleet's bidding with far less scruples, so Konstantin is superfluous, even dangerous. Mazian is preparing to disable and abandon Downbelow Station. He has another goal in mind: to take over Earth itself in a surprise coup d'etat. The wrecking of Pell would create a firebreak with Union, playing the role he had originally intended for Viking. Mallory has different ideas. Mazian has gone too far for her to stomach. She abruptly undocks from Pell and deserts. Mallory finds the Union forces and persuades Azov to unleash them against her former comrades. Talley is instrumental in convincing Azov of Mallory's truthfulness. Mazian can't afford a costly fight, so the Fleet sets off for Earth prematurely. Azov needs to pursue him, but is unwilling to leave Norway intact behind him. The tense standoff is broken by a timely arrival; Quen returns with the united merchanter fleet and claims Pell for the newborn Merchanter's Alliance, with Norway as its militia. Without the authority to deal with this new development and unwilling to fight the merchanters, Azov leaves to deal with Mazian. The end of the Company War is at last in sight, much to the relief of the Konstantins, the merchanters and the residents of Downbelow Station."
182,The Dragon's Apprentice,fantasy," The novel opens in 1943, seven years after the end of the previous book, The Shadow Dragons. It has been seven years since either of the three Caretakers has been in the Archipelago of Dreams and the Summer Country is embroiled in World War II. The Caretakers return and are faced with an issue: the Keep of Time has finally disintegrated and as a result, time has unravelled. Rose has a strange visitor in the night instructing her to find Samaranth's apprentice, ask the dragon a riddle and save the Archipelago from the Echthroi, the primordial shadows. The Caretakers are trapped in the Archipelago because of the final destruction of the Keep of Time, and when John, Jack and Charles return to the Summer Country in 1943, the Nameless Isles are ripped apart from the Archipelago and Tamerlane House, along with all of its inhabitants, are transported to 1945 and are now attached to Oxford. The Caretakers Emeritis meet a distraught John and Jack and learn that Charles died two weeks earlier. John, Jack, Fred, the Tin Man (Roger Bacon), Laura Glue, Richard Burton, Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle and the mysterious End of Time, a friend of Burton's, travel to Avalon and the Archipelago but discover that it is in ruins and that two thousand years have passed in the Archipelago of Dreams. At Paralon, they meet a little boy named Coal, the last of Arthur's descendents, and the group of animals protecting him. From Aven, the daughter of H.G. Wells, they learn of what has happened over the last two thousand years. As the dark star Rao approaches, they go through a door from the Keep of Time; the same one that was given to Madoc. They find themselves in Dickensian London. With no Caretakers in London at the time, the Caretakers and company are alone in London with a cohort of animals and a six-year-old boy from the future. However, they meet a young man named Edmund McGee after he stole the 'Geographica' from them. He leads them to his master, Benjamin Franklin. By persuading Mordred, or Madoc, to continue his apprenticeship to Samaranth and become a dragon himself, and by using Edmund McGee's prodigious skill in cartography and chronology to navigate their way through time, the Caretakers begin the process of fixing Time."
183,Star by Star,fantasy," In this dark and dangerous time for the New Republic, the cruel Yuuzhan Vong continue their mission: galactic conquest. The Yuuzhan Vong have begun cloning voxyn, creatures capable of hunting Jedi through the Force and killing them. Former Chief of State Leia Organa Solo faces a difficult crisis; the Yuuzhan Vong want to know the location of the secret Jedi base, and if the New Republic does not provide this information within one week, they will violently destroy millions of refugee ships. As the Jedi Knights mourn the victims of the voxyn, Anakin Solo prepares a dangerous plan. He will lead a strike force made of his Force-adept friends into the core of an enemy worldship over Myrkr in attempt to kill the original voxyn. There, he will come into contact with evil, sorrow, the destiny of the New Republic ... and himself. The book also saw the creation of the deadly YVH 1 Droids that were built as a response to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion and the Fall of Coruscant. The Jedi find themselves in considerable danger when the Yuuzhan Vong unleash feral creatures called voxyn on them. These voxyn are aggressive, intelligent, and extremely difficult to kill, and worst of all for the Jedi, they can hunt through the Force and have been engineered specifically to hunt down Jedi. Leia Organa Solo captures one such beast but not before she is severely wounded. It is then discovered that all voxyn are clones of an original genetically modified beast native to Myrkr, the location of the Yuuzhan Vong voxyn cloning facility. In order to foil the threat posed by the voxyn, Anakin Solo and the Jedi Council consider sending a specialized all-Jedi strike team to take out the cloning facility. The idea faced some resistance, mainly from Han Solo who rightly believed that the mission was dangerous and was unwilling to send all three of his children right into Yuuzhan Vong territory. Ultimately, the choice was Luke Skywalker's, who is currently leading the Jedi, who thought that it was their only chance and volunteered himself for the mission. Anakin rejected his offer on the grounds that he was too valuable to the New Republic and the Jedi, as well as being too important and strong for the Yuuzhan Vong to consider taking alive. Instead, Anakin volunteers himself and others follow his lead. The final group comprises Anakin, Ulaha Kore, Jacen Solo, Jaina Solo, Tenel Ka Djo, Zekk, Tahiri Veila and Alema Rar among others. While the initial part of the mission went smoothly, things began to get out of hand once the team landed on the worldship orbiting Myrkr. While they were there, they were repeatedly ambushed by voxyn and Yuuzhan Vong warriors commanded by Nom Anor and Vergere. They also ran into Nightsister Lomi Plo and her Shadow Academy apprentice Welk. After some debate, Anakin decided that Lomi Plo and Welk should join them, although Zekk predicted that they would be double-crossed by the Dark Jedi. There were several casualties along the way to the original or 'queen' voxyn, but the biggest blow fell when Anakin was injured. Already weary and injured, the Jedi soon came under attack once again and although they escaped, the damage to Anakin had already been done. They soon learned that Welk and Lomi Plo had made off with the spacecraft Anakin had intended to use for their getaway, taking with them Raynar Thul, an old friend of Jaina and Jacen. This effectively means that the group are stranded aboard the worldship with a worsening Anakin. Anakin soon realized that his condition would result in the entire group's death. He died later fighting off many Yuuzhan Vong, destroying all of the voxyn cloning samples, and buying the time his comrades needed in order to escape the Yuuzhan Vong. His death was felt by his uncle Luke Skywalker and his mother Leia Solo, the former noting that before his death, Anakin had already become one with the Force. Before his death, he left his brother Jacen in charge of their group. After a brief period of mourning during which tensions within the group rose, Jacen and Jaina decided to split up. Jaina wanted to retrieve her brother's body while Jacen decided to finish off their original mission; the killing of the voxyn queen. On his way there, he met the mysterious Vergere who showed him the way to the voxyn queen whom he fought and defeated. After this, she turned on him and delivered him right into the waiting hands of the Yuuzhan Vong. Jaina, meanwhile, had successfully retrieved her brother's body and reluctantly led what was left of their group off of the Myrkr worldship via a stolen Vong frigate, leaving Jacen behind with the Yuuzhan Vong. Before her departure, she had already begun to show signs of dark side tendencies that rose from the loss of Anakin. The Yuuzhan Vong warfleet attacked Coruscant from the OboRin Comet Cluster, having assembled at such staging positions like Borleias. They used refugee ships containing prisoners from earlier battles to shield the Vong fleet. Even with the efforts of legendary leaders such as General Garm Bel Iblis (commanding Fleet Group Two), Admiral Traest Kre'fey (commanding Fleet Group One), General Wedge Antilles (commanding Fleet Group Three), Supreme Commander Sien Sovv, and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, the Yuuzhan Vong were too plentiful to be thwarted. It was said that the Vong fleet numbered ""tens of thousands"", and that half of the New Republic space navy was present. Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya made Admiral Sovv command the battle in front of a full session of the Senate. As a result, the New Republic forces had no effective overall strategy, and discipline broke down. When Sovv ordered that the fleet hold their fire in order to not hit the refugee ships, Iblis flat out ignored him, and his Fleet Group operated solely under his command for the rest of the battle attacking the Yuuzhan Vong head on and suffering enormous casualties. The refugee ships, which were piloted by Yuuzhan Vong, were deliberately smashed into Coruscant's shields to weaken them. This tactic worked, as eventually whole shield-grids failed, and the surface shield-generators exploded. Coruscant did have extensive mine fields, but these didn't have quite as large an impact as desired—the defenders at Coruscant disabled the mines to avoid slaughtering the refugees. The Vong also used the refugee ships to batter the city planet's surface, causing terrible damage below. Even the orbital defense platforms could not stop the advance of the Yuuzhan Vong. Soon Coruscant's skyline was burning with crashing vessels and plasma fire from the battle above. Even Orbital Defense Headquarters was crippled, and fell out of orbit to the surface. During the battle, Luke Skywalker and other Jedi from the Eclipse base targeted the enemy war coordinating yammosks, and managed to destroy four of them. Meanwhile, Han and Leia Solo, aboard the Millennium Falcon, attempted to rescue Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya, but were tasked with rescuing Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade Skywalker. The second assault wave were thousands of yorik-trema dropships, tsik-seru airskimmers, swarms of yorik-vec assault cruisers and coralskippers, rakamat and fire breather walkers, legions of Yuuzhan Vong warriors and Chazrach support troops. In desperation, the New Republic military fired on the hostage refugee ships but to no avail. At the Imperial Palace, Tsavong Lah's aide Romm Zqar tried to force Borsk Fey'lya to surrender. When he refused, he was killed. But before the Chief of State died, he had planted a bomb in the Imperial Palace triggered by his heartbeat. This resulted in the deaths of the Chief of State, 25,000 Yuuzhan Vong warriors, the destruction of a portion of the Imperial Palace, many surrounding buildings, and several Yuuzhan Vong vessels. Prior to his death, Fey'lya had ordered the data towers to be destroyed to prevent valuable information from getting into the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong. The battle lasted for several days with heavy casualties on both sides. Many of its citizens were forced to flee the former capital world of the New Republic while those who did not manage to escape were forced to flee into the city-planet's lower levels. Many Senators, fearing for their lives, commandeered bits of the fleet and escaped to their sectors as the battle progressed. The New Republic navy was somewhat diminished as a result. Some think that if this had not happened, then the New Republic might have won the battle. The third wave was a biotoxin in the form of green algae released by the Yuuzhan Von which devoured many of the buildings, including dead bodies, and the algae also left behind black spots. Coralskipper and yorik-vec squadrons bombed the devastated city world causing damage to the defenders. The Yuuzhan Vong eventually captured Coruscant and had it terraformed and renamed Yuuzhan'tar after their primordial homeworld. Overall, the Yuuzhan Vong won because of their utter ruthlessness."
184,The Magical Monarch of Mo,fantasy," Chapter One has no plot, but rather is a basic description of the Land of Mo, or ""The Beautiful Valley"". It explains that everyone in Mo is happy, and that the people never need to work, because everything they could desire grows on the trees, including items such as clothes. In A New Wonderland, the author mentions planning to move there himself, but this was omitted from subsequent editions. Chapter Two: The Monarch of Mo goes to fight the Purple Dragon, which has just eaten all of the caramels in the land. The Dragon bites off his head, and the King is forced to go home headless. The King tries to make the best of it, but the Queen complains that she cannot kiss him anymore, so he issues an edict saying that whoever can make him a new head will get to marry one of the princesses. After two failures, a durable head is made out of wood by a wood-chopper. The Purple Dragon finds the wood-chopper and bites his head off, replacing it with the King's head. When the wood-chopper appears in court, he switches heads with the King, so that the King has his own head again and the wood-chopper has a wooden head he made. The King then tries to fulfill his promise, but the princesses refuse to marry a wooden-headed man. The wood-chopper then confronts the Purple Dragon, who tries its head-biting technique again, only to get its teeth stuck in the wooden head, thus letting the wood-chopper get his own head back so he can marry a princess. Chapter Three: The Monarch meets a dog, who is a curiosity because there are no dogs in Mo. However, his majesty loses his temper and ends up kicking the dog who literally gets bent out of shape until he resumes his natural form again. Chapter Four: Prince Zingle, the oldest Prince, is upset because the King will not let him milk the Ice-Cream Cow. Urged by the Purple Dragon, Zingle pushes his father down a large hole so he will become the King. The Monarch escapes from the hole and punishes Zingle by abandoning him on the Fruit Cake Island on the Rootbeer River, an island made of fruit cake. After a while, Prince Zingle gets such a furious stomachache from eating nothing but fruit cake that he repents. Chapter Five: The King celebrates his birthday (which he does several times a year) by throwing a huge celebration, during which he entertains everyone with items from a magical casket. Everyone goes ice-skating on a lake of sugar-syrup. The sugar cracks and Princess Truella, Prince Jollikin and Nuphsed sink to the bottom. The King gets them out by fishing for them, baiting the line with a kiss for Truella and a laugh for Jollikin. But when it comes to getting Nuphsed, no one knows what he likes best, so they consult the Wise Donkey. The Wise Donkey suggests that they use an apple, knowing that it won't work. When it doesn't work, the Wise Donkey eats the apple and tells them to use a kind word. They do, and it works. Chapter Six: King Scowleyow, who lives in a nearby country, hates the people of Mo, and has his people build a giant man out of cast-iron, designed to destroy Mo. They wind up the Cast-iron and he walks towards Mo, but trips on the dog. Prince Thinkabit figures out how to get rid of the Cast-iron Man: he tickles the Cast-iron man to get him on his back, then he pushes a pin in the Cast-iron Man to get him to stand up again, but now the Cast-iron Man is facing the other way, so he goes to King Scowleyow's kingdom and destroys it instead. The Cast-iron man eventually gets stuck in the mud at the bottom of the ocean and is never heard from again. Chapter Seven: A boy named Timtom falls in love with Princess Pattycake, the most beautiful princess, who unfortunately has a bad temper and tries to beat anyone who talks to her. He journeys to see the Sorceress Maëtta to get her help, and along the way, he meets three animals, who agree to help him in return for gifts from Maëtta. Timtom gets a pill for getting rid of Pattycake's temper and the gifts for the animals, but they are stolen by a Sly Fox. Timtom manages to recover the gifts, thus pleasing the animals. He then goes to Pattycake and feeds her the pill. She loses her temper and then agrees to marry him. Chapter Eight: A horrible monster called a gigaboo comes to Mo and starts destroying things. Prince Jollikin fights the gigaboo, and has his head, arms and legs cut off. Prince Jollikin manages to put himself back together, although at first he could only find his legs and head. He then saves the day by killing the gigaboo. Chapter Nine: There is an evil wizard in Mo who is a midget and very sensitive about his height, so he tries to make a potion to increase his height. One of the ingredients of the potion is the big toe of a princess, so he steals the toe from Princess Truella. Truella gives chase, overcoming the obstacles the Wizard throws at her, and eventually kills the Wizard and recovers her toe. Chapter Ten: The Duchess Bredenbutta falls asleep on her boat while it floats down the Rootbeer River, and so she gets too close to the waterfall at the end of the river and falls down. She ends up in Turvyland, where everything is opposite of the way it should be. With some help from a local named Upsydoun, she manages to get back to her home. Chapter Eleven: The King's animal crackers, which are real animals, fight amongst each other, putting the King in a bad mood, so when Prince Fiddlecumdoo asks to leave Mo, the King consents, although it is a bad idea. Prince Fiddlecumdoo leaves and meets a friendly giant named Hartilaf. Hartilaf's wife accidentally runs the prince through a clothes-wringer, and Prince Fiddlecumdoo returns home, completely flat. They use an air pump to get him back to normal. Chapter Twelve: Prince Zingle builds a large kite, which flies into the air, taking Zingle with it, eventually landing in the Land of the Civilized Monkeys, where monkeys act like humans. The monkeys do not speak English (but rather, they speak Monkey) and have never seen a human before, so they think Zingle is a dangerous animal and lock him in the zoo, where all of the monkeys come to see him, including two professors who believe that Zingle may be the missing link. Prince Zingle manages to escape and get back home. Chapter Thirteen: The King's plum-pudding has been stolen, so he asks his wise men who did it. The wise men blame the fox, who is captured. The fox explains that he did not do it, as he was busy curing his family's sore throats by taking out the throats and turning them inside-out, then drying them in the sun. The wise men then blame the bullfrog, who is also captured. The bullfrog explains that he did not do it, as he and his wife were busy trying to save their tadpoles, who were eaten by a large fish. The wise men then blame the Yellow Hen, who is also captured. She explains that she did not do it, as her last batch of eggs accidentally produced a Hawk, not a chicken, and the Hawk took her away to a different country, and she spent the last nine days returning to Mo. The King, furious at the wise men for being wrong three times, has them put into a meat-grinder, so that they are mixed into one wise man, who tells the King that the Purple Dragon stole the plum-pudding. Chapter Fourteen: The King holds a council of war to try to figure out how to destroy the Purple Dragon. They decide that the dragon cannot be destroyed, but at least they could rip out its teeth and make it harmless. They build a giant pair of forceps and clamp it to one of the Purple Dragon's teeth. The Purple Dragon winds its tail around a pillar to avoid being pulled by the people. As it turns out, his tooth cannot be removed, even though the men run to the other side of the valley; instead, the Purple Dragon is stretched all the way across the valley, so that it is no thicker than a fiddle-string. Prince Fiddlecumdoo cuts the Purple Dragon into fiddle-strings, and so the Valley of Mo is freed from its worst enemy."
185,A Fortress of Grey Ice,fantasy," A Fortress of Grey Ice represents a greater division of storylines than was present in the first book. The novel opens rather dramatically with new characters and settings, then moves quickly to Ash March's abrupt and covert departure from Raif in order to join the Sull. Left with the Listener, Raif finds himself alone, now abandoned by clan and friend, cut off from everyone and everything that he loves. Embittered and resentful of the lore that claims him as Watcher of the Dead, Raif will wander the edge of the Want until he finds the only group willing to accept an outcast and renegade, the outlaw Maimed Men. Elsewhere Ash, already leagues away from Raif, will become initiated into the mysterious blood lettings of the Sull, all the while riding in haste to reach the safety of the Sull lands, guarded by her two Far Riders and pursued by the maeraith she has been unintentionally released."
186,The Little Grey Men,fantasy," The last four gnomes in Great Britain live beside Folly Brook in Warwickshire; they are named after the flowers Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry. After Cloudberry goes exploring one day and does not return, the others make the tremendous decision to build a boat and set out to find him. This is the story of the gnomes' epic journey, set against the background of the English countryside, beginning in spring, continuing through summer, and concluding in autumn, when the first frosts are starting to arrive."
187,Inkspell,fantasy," A year has passed, and Meggie now lives in Elinor's house along with Darius and her parents, Mo and Resa. Life is peaceful, but not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of Inkheart and the characters that came to life. For the fire-eater Dustfinger, the need to return to his homeworld has become urgent. When he finds a crooked storyteller named Orpheus who has the same ability to bring stories to life as Mo, he asks him to read him back. Orpheus obliges, but doesn't send Dustfinger's apprentice, Farid, back into the book as they arranged; he then steals the book from the boy and hands it over to Basta, who wants revenge for the death of his master Capricorn. Dustfinger, now in the Inkworld, regrets the fact that Farid didn't come back with him but doesn't suspect that Orpheus intended it that way. Distraught, Farid goes in search of Meggie, and before long, both are caught inside the book, too. Soon after the two youths are in the book, Mortola, Basta, Orpheus, and a ""man built like a wardrobe"" barge into Elinor's house, and take Mo, Resa, Elinor, and Darius prisoner. As per Mortola's orders, Orpheus reads Basta, Mortola, and Mo into Inkheart, but Resa comes with them by accident by getting hold of Mo. Mortola has brought along a rifle from our world, and shoots Mortimer. Resa discovers that her voice has come back to her only as she cries for her husband, praying for him to survive the wound. Resa and Mo are hiding in a secret cave with the strolling players (known also as Motley Folk) while he recovers, but they soon discover (or erroneously assume) that the injured Mo is the mysterious gentleman-robber, the ""Bluejay"", a fictitious hero created by Fenoglio's words made into song for the Motley Folk to sing. Fenoglio has been living within his own story since the events of Inkheart, working as a court scribe in Lombrica's capital city of Ombra, and once reunited with Meggie he asks her to read Cosimo the Fair back into the story, since he died a death the author never planned for him. Meggie doesn't feel right to interfere with the story so much but is soon convinced by Fenoglio as it will be 'a double' of Cosimo - not Cosimo himself. Reluctantly Meggie agrees to read the words when Adderheads soldier's barge into the fair and injure and kill many people by riding horses over them, but soon regrets it when she realises that it has gone wrong. Cosimo has none of his doubles memories and doesn't seem to love his wife and child anymore. Instead he 'spends his nights' with Dustfinger and Roxanne's daughter Brianna. Violante begs Fenoglio to convince Roxanne to deal with Brianna and tell her not to upset Violante's marriage. Fenoglio attempts this but fails, a mixture of Roxanne's reluctance to tell her daughter what to do and Roxanne's distracting beauty. Fenoglio thinks that Roxanne is 'too beautiful' for Dustfinger. Cosimo's return upsets the Adderhead, ruler of the neighboring region of Argenta, whom planned to take over Lombrica once the Laughing Prince died. With the rightful heir to the throne of Ombra mysteriously brought back to life, but with no memories of 'his own' life, a war is imminent. Mo and Resa are captured by the Adderhead's men along with many other strolling players in the cave, sold out by one of their own. Meggie, who had also been able to read a few of Fenoglio's words to aid her father in recuperating, joins Dustfinger and Farid in searching for her parents and the strolling players. Along with the Black Prince, de facto leader of the Motley Folk, they launch a successful rescue mission, but Mo is unable to escape because of his wound and Resa stays behind with him. Meggie goes willingly into the Adderhead's Castle of Night and, fulfilling a prophecy she and Fenoglio dreamed up and ""read"" into reality, offers him a bargain: Mo, a great bookbinder rather than the robber they believe him to be, will bind the Adderhead a book of immortality if he lets Meggie, Resa, Mo, and the rest of the strolling players he has captured go free. What they neglect to tell the Prince of Argenta is that if three words are written in the book (""Heart"", ""Spell"", and ""Death"", referencing the titles of the books), the person who signed his name in the book to gain immortality will die instantly. However, his lieutenant Firefox, disbelieving of the entire concept from the beginning, is chosen to test it. Firefox is made immortal, surviving a fatal stabbing without suffering any consequences, but then Taddeo, the Adderhead's librarian, kills him by writing the three words in the book. Satisfied that the book works, the words are all erased and replaced by the Adderhead's name, consequently making the Adderhead invincible. Mo picks up Firefox's sword as they leave and claims it as his own, feeling a strange coldness within him; he believes his anger and sadness at the events thus far are changing him into a different person. The Adderhead decided, as celebration for his wife giving birth to a healthy son to release all of the prisoners from his cells, but the Black Prince suspects that he instead plans to sell the prisoners into slavery. Together the robbers plan to free the prisoners, during the raid in which Basta leads, Mo learns to fight and kill and, Unfortunately Basta kills Farid, with a knife thrown at his back (The death Fenoglio had originally planned for Dustfinger) Basta is then killed himself by Mo. Later while mourning Farids death, Dustfinger asks Meggie if she too would like to have Farid back. When Meggie agrees sends her to Roxanne to tell her ""he will always find his way back to her"". Roxanne realizes what Dustfinger plans to do and runs to him, she is too late however and watches as the White Women, (the Inkworld's Angels of Death) take Dustfinger. Farid is then brought back to life in Dustfinger's place and the story ends with Meggie reading Orpheus to the Inkworld so as to resurrect Dustfinger. Orpheus convinces Farid to become his servant in saying that it will help him bring Dustfinger back to life sooner."
188,The Rapture,fantasy," In the moments leading up to the Rapture, nobody knows it is coming as the clock silently ticks down. Choices are made. The stage is set as Nicolae Carpathia ruthlessly eliminates any obstacles in his rise to power. Time seems to slow as the clock ticks down. Pan-Con Airlines Captain Rayford Steele prepares for a flight to London with beautiful flight attendant Hattie Durham. Because of his wife's newfound faith, Rayford looks forward to time&ndash;and the possibilities&ndash;with Hattie. Journalist Cameron ""Buck"" Williams is in Israel when the Russians attack, and he experiences for himself the power of God when fire rains down from the sky, destroying the attackers. Even more, not a single casualty is reported in all of Israel. Buck cannot deny Chicago bureau chief Lucinda Washington's insistence that the event was prophesied in Ezekiel 38,39 and clearly of the supernatural, though he dares not consider the personal ramifications. Meanwhile, Nicolae Carpathia eliminates any obstacles in his path to power. As the newly appointed president of Romania, Nicolae is invited to speak before the U.N. Without warning, millions disappear and are welcomed into the unspeakable presence of Jesus Christ, and believers from all over space and time reunite in the house of God, as prophesied in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. The Judgment Seat of Christ takes place and the saints of the ages are rewarded for their perseverance with crowns from Christ himself. They are followed into heaven, where they see the glory prepared for them by the Lord. On Earth, some realize what has happened, what they’ve lost, what they’ve missed, as the world plunges into chaos as drivers, pilots, and pedestrians of all occupations go missing. Rayford's first officer, Chris Smith, is among the first to commit suicide in the wake of the disappearances and the ensuing chaos. Pastor Bruce Barnes is among those left behind, and the young pastor knows all too well that the disappearances signal the beginning of the end and the darkest days the planet will ever see."
189,The Neverending Story,fantasy," The book centers on a boy, Bastian Balthazar Bux, who is neglected by his father (who has sunken into despair after his wife's death) and is bullied by his schoolmates. Whilst running from some of them, Bastian bursts into the antique book store of Carl Conrad Coreander. Bastian steals a book from the store called The Neverending Story which Coreander has been reading; he hides in his school's attic, where he proceeds to read the story through the rest of the day and the night, not realizing that he has effectively become a part of it. After a while of reading he is magically transfixed and is brought into the book. The book begins in Fantastica, when a ""will-o'-the-wisp"" goes to ask the Childlike Empress for help against the Nothing, which is spreading over the land. The Empress is ill, which is believed to be the cause of the Nothing (or vice versa); she sends the only person that can stop the Nothing, a boy warrior named Atreyu, to find a cure for her. Atreyu is a brave person, being considered a warrior even though he is a young boy of Bastian's age. While on his quest, Atreyu meets characters such as Morla the Aged One, the incorporeal oracle Uyulala, and the gnomes Urgl and Engywook. Atreyu also meets Falkor, the luckdragon, who helps him along the way. After Atreyu and Falkor get in the way of a fight of the Wind Giants, Atreyu gets thrown off Falkor's back and ends up in Spook City, Atreyu meets Gmork the werewolf, who has been following Atreyu since the early days of his quest, intending to kill him. In the course of his quest, Atreyu learns about the true nature of Fantastica and the Nothing: Fantastica is a representation of the dreams and fantasies of the real world; the Nothing and the sickness of the Childlike Empress are the effects of the lies humans use in their greed for power; it is the denial of dreams and fantasy which is destroying Fantastica. The only thing that can save Fantastica is a human child, who must give the Childlike Empress a new name to start again the cycle of life in Fantastica. Falkor and Atreyu return to the Ivory Tower, where the Childlike Empress lives. But since Bastian, in his lack of confidence, hesitates to take the step into Fantastica, the Childlike Empress confronts him with the fact that whatever he may think, he has already become part of the Neverending Story, and he must carry out his part in it. And Bastian does so by crying out the name he has chosen for the Empress: 'Moonchild'. Bastian comes to Fantastica and meets the Empress; she asks him to help re-build Fantastica with his imagination, and he subsequently has many adventures of his own in his new world. With the help of AURYN, a medallion that links him to the Empress, that gives him power over all the inhabitants of Fantastica and grants all of the boy's wishes, Bastian explores the Desert of Colors, battles the evil witch Xayide, and meets the three Deep Thinkers. Bastian and Atreyu become friends. However, due to Bastian's continuous wishing with the The Gem - which costs a memory each time - he begins to lose his true self, to wit, Atreyu becomes increasingly more worried about him. Xayide exploits the growing tension between the two, driving Bastian to a lust for power and eventually having himself crowned as Childlike Emperor. Atreyu leads a rebellion against Bastian, but narrowly escapes with his life. Upon pursuing Atreyu, Bastian stumbled on a colony of humans who were trapped in Fantastica - having lost all their memories as they had recklessly indulged in the power of Auryn - and realizes what has nearly become of himself. Bastian sets out to find the only thing he can wish for without losing himself: his own true wish. After Bastian loses his remaining memories, he is aided by Atreyu in fulfilling his one true wish, and manages to cure his father at the same time. After returning from Fantastica, he decides to return the book to its rightful owner, Carl Conrad Coreander, but the book has gone missing upon his return to the human world. However, Mr. Coreander reveals he has also been to Fantastica once, and the two readily agree to see each other soon and talk about their respective experiences. But as Coreander surmises, this is not the true end of the story, as Bastian is now likely to lead others onto their way to Fantastica in order to preserve both worlds."
190,Maia,fantasy," Maia, at 15, lives in the Beklan Empire's province of Tonilda with her mother Morca, her three younger sisters, and her stepfather, Tharrin. Their small, poor farm is on the edge of Lake Serrelind, and Maia tends to shirk her chores by swimming in the lake all day. Although Morca is pregnant with Tharrin's child, he secretly seduces Maia. When Morca discovers the affair, she is doubly embittered and sells Maia to agents of the slave-dealer Lalloc. Maia is almost raped by Genshed, one of Lalloc's employees but is saved by Occula, a black slave girl. Maia and Occula become very good friends and even lovers. To avoid debasement by being bundled in with a detachment of more ordinary slaves, Occula enlists Maia in frightening their captors with apparent supernatural powers. The two girls are sent to the city of Bekla. Occula relates her own past: her father, a jewel-merchant, brought her across the desert to Bekla. They were received by Fornis, a noblewoman whom a coup would shortly elevate to the priestess-like status of ""Sacred Queen"". Fornis had Occula's father murdered and his emeralds incorporated into the Sacred Queen's crown. Occula was to be killed as well, but the household steward saw a chance to profit by selling the girl as a slave; since then, she has been employed in prostitution. Adams outlines Bekla's political situation in several chapters that bypass Maia. The ""Leopard"" faction led by the High Baron Durakkon, Fornis, the Lord General Kembri, and the High Counsellor Sencho came to power by ceding Suba, a western province, to the neighboring kingdom of Terekenalt. They legalized slavery, and the capital's finances are now heavily based on taxation of it, including farms for breeding slaves as well as the enslavement of freeborn people such as Maia and Occula. The Beklan army's central authority has largely withdrawn from the provinces unless paid to come enforce the law. Pockets of rebellion have sprung up around the empire. High Counsellor Sencho is the spymaster of the Beklan Empire. He buys both Maia and Occula as ""bed-slaves"". Terebinthia, the woman in charge of Sencho's household, supervises and trains them. At intervals, a peddler named Zirek visits and exchanges cryptic conversations with Occula. Beautiful, young, and fun-loving, Maia shows promise of going far, and finds some professional satisfaction in providing Sencho's decadent pleasures. She is even surprised that she enjoys the spectacle when a fellow bed-slave, the tempestuous Meris, is whipped and sold for dereliction of duty. Terebinthia rents out the girls to other rich and powerful men. Using this means of contact, Lord General Kembri secretly enlists Maia and Occula as agents and charges Maia with gaining the trust of Bayub-Otal, the dispossessed heir to Suba and a potential ally of the rebels. Bayub-Otal is the son of a dancer nicknamed ""Nokomis"" (""dragonfly"") and the baron of a neighboring province, whose jealous wife arranged Nokomis' death when Bayub-Otal was a boy. When Sencho becomes drastically ill, he comes to depend almost solely on Occula's intense caretaking. During a garden party, Occula lures Sencho out of sight of everyone else and signals her rebel confederates (by implication Zirek and Meris) to stab Sencho to death. Maia and Occula are imprisoned in the Great Temple on suspicion of colluding in Sencho's murder. Queen Fornis takes Maia from the temple priests. As Maia fails to satisfy her sexual needs, Fornis gives her to Kembri; Maia seizes on this chance to interest the queen in Occula, hoping to save her friend from execution. Kembri sends Maia to Bayub-Otal with a cover story of having escaped from the temple. Bayub-Otal takes her with him as he secretly makes his way back to Suba. Maia learns that one reason for his extraordinary standoffish respect for her is that she looks (and dances) like his dead mother, Nokomis, who is still revered throughout the province. Bayub-Otal hopes to use the resemblance to rally Suban patriotism on behalf of an alliance with Terekenalt. At the rallying site, Maia falls passionately in love with the handsome young Zen-Kurel, an officer of Terekenalt. Zen-Kurel accepts her invitation to bed, but leaves quickly because of a surprise attack scheduled for that very night. The River Valderra, the boundary between the two countries, is thought to be uncrossably swift and rocky, but the Terekenalters plan to ford it with heavy ropes and strong men, thus surprising the detachment of Tonildan soldiers guarding the other side. In hopes of saving her fellow Tonildans' lives as well as her lover's, Maia swims the river by herself. Despite serious wounds, she warns the Beklan commander and thwarts the Terekenalter and Suban invasion. Maia returns to Bekla, freed and celebrated as the luck of the city, a great heroine whom the soldiers vote a house, money, and property. She gains an informal title as the ""Serrelinda"" after Lake Serrelind. Hoping to reunite with Zen-Kurel, she takes no lovers, despite expectations that she will find a rich husband or become an expensive courtesan. Her popularity and single status bring her under threat from Fornis, who is resisting pressure to retire as Sacred Queen; since the position is filled by popular acclaim, Maia is an obvious rival despite not wanting the crown. Maia sees her stepfather, Tharrin, dragged into Bekla as a rebel informant. He is condemned to be sacrificed by the Queen. Maia does her best to free him, but Fornis foils her plan and causes his death. However, during Tharrin's last conversation with Maia, he reveals to her that Morca had not been her real mother. A pregnant girl had fled to Morca's cottage and died there in childbirth; Maia deduces she is the daughter of Nokomis' younger sister. In grief at Tharrin's death, Maia makes a desperate attempt to kill Fornis, but is thwarted by Occula, who was indeed inducted into the queen's household. Occula intends to take her own revenge on Fornis when the time is right; meanwhile she is performing the sort of sado-masochistic services of which Maia had been incapable and which show how deranged Fornis can be. As civil war breaks out in the city, Maia learns that Anda-Nokomis and Zen-Kurel have been brought to Bekla as prisoners. In flight from Fornis' murderous fury, Maia frees the two men, and with them and Zirek and Meris (who have been hiding since assassinating Sencho), she flees Bekla. The former prisoners are bitterly angry at Maia for betraying them at the Valderra, which she had idealistically considered an attempt to save their lives. Nevertheless, they agree to return with her to Suba or Terekenalt. Maia and her companions recover on a remote farm, then travel for a time with rebel freebooters. Meris, always a troublemaker, gets herself killed by one of them. Maia gradually regains Zen-Kurel's and Anda-Nokomis' trust by her sincere efforts to help them. After an arduous boat escape from the Beklan Empire to Terekenalt, Anda-Nokomis is killed and Maia receives a marriage proposal from the man she loves most. Two years later, Maia (with her little son) visits the capital of her new country and by chance meets Occula. Occula describes at length how she killed Fornis, aided by supernatural forces. She tells Maia that the rebels succeeded in overthrowing the Leopards' regime. The story ends with Maia refusing Occula's plea to go back to Bekla; she would rather help Zen-Kurel and his father manage their farm."
191,The High Lord,fantasy," A year has passed since Sonea had challenged Regin to a public duel and she beat Regin by one bout. Since that victory, she has finally won the respect she deserves, not only as a novice with exceptional power, but also the High Lord's favorite. But even with this new respect, she still has one challenge left to face: Akkarin. Still unable to shake off the memory she has after the duel, she continues to avoid Akkarin. Ceryni, Sonea's old friend, now has a powerful position with the Thieves. He has a task which he must perform which could cost him his life. But that task is not a secret. A strange woman, called Savara, with great skill knows of this task and wishes to help Cery, however he will not accept her aid as he does not trust her. Akkarin surprises Sonea by showing her a book, which is an autobiography of Coren, a famous architect. This book reveals that Coren himself had discovered and no doubt used black magic. Sonea is amazed at this knowledge but is suspicious why he has shown this information to her. Akkarin is pleased that Sonea has read the book and gives her another one which is nearly 500 years old. From reading it, Sonea discovers that many centuries ago black magic was referred to as 'higher magic.' The book tells of a novice who desired power and used the higher magic to obtain more power by killing many magicians and absorbing their power. The Guild, in the end, suffered greatly from confronting the novice. They decided to store the knowledge of higher magic and rename it black magic. They sealed the knowledge, hoping that no one would take advantage of that power, but only use it in the greatest need and the knowledge was hidden in a secret passage of the University. The author also tells of a threat from Sachaka, that the Sachakans will have vengeance for losing an ancient war. Only the Head of Warriors knew of this secret weapon, however the knowledge was later lost. As Sonea starts to absorb this new information, Akkarin takes her into the city in disguise. Sonea realises that the Thieves are in on a secret with Akkarin as they use their 'private road.' Sonea and Akkarin come to a room face to face with a captured Sachakan slave who was sent to see how weak the Guild was. Akkarin starts to search the man, and finds a gold tooth with a red gem inside it; the gem is a blood gem, used by their masters to see and hear what the holder sees, hears and does. Akkarin then tells Sonea that he will teach her to read a mind of an unwilling person. Struggling at first, Sonea discovers the name of the Sachakan. She also discovers that Akkarin was a slave. Amazed and shocked, Sonea starts seeing memories of a group called the Ichani, powerful magicians that have been labeled as outcasts by the Sachakan King. Sonea is then taken outside while Akkarin stays inside and kills the man using black magic. Back at the Guild, Sonea starts to question everything she knows and has been told. She misses a class, instead finding solitude at a stream in the forest, a secret place that Dorrien had shown her. To her surprise, she is met by Akkarin as it was also where Akkarin and Lorlen used to go when they were young. Akkarin begins telling Sonea about his past, about how he entered Sachaka and was captured by an Ichani named Dakova who easily overpowered Akkarin. Whilst in servitude, Akkarin and his fellow slaves, all latent magicians, constantly had their power absorbed by Dakova. For five years, Akkarin was a magical source of energy for Dakova, but everything changed when Dakova was attacked by a fellow Ichani. Though Dakova won, he was left weak. He borrowed slaves from his brother Kariko. After some time Dakova found a previous enemy of his and decides to kill him. Upon arriving at an abandoned mine, the floor gives way and Akkarin falls down, only to be saved by another Ichani. The Ichani made a deal with Akkarin to spare his life if he killed Dakova, Akkarin agrees and is taught black magic by the Ichani. Akkarin headed back with wine laced with a sleeping drug. While Dakova drank the wine, Akkarin then killed the slaves, but when he came to Takan he could not take his dormant power because they had helped each other at times of need. When he came to Dakova, he took his power as quickly as possible, killing him in the process. With the deed done and now free, Akkarin then started his long journey home without food thinking he would die on the journey back to the guild but Takan followed him with a supply of food and drink and became Akkarin's servant. Sonea wondered why he had told her and asks him, his only answer is that someone else needs to know. As the gong strikes Akkarin ends the tale and tells Sonea to get back to her classes. Meanwhile Lord Dannyl has been instructed by Akkarin to infiltrate a group of Elyne nobles, led by a powerful Dem, attempting to illicitly learn magic. Having managed to enter the Dem's circle of trust by having them learn the ""false secret"" of his relation with Tayend, he begins teaching Farand, a young man whose powers have been unleashed but who has not learnt Control. Slowly, Dannyl gains more trust from the Dem. When Dannyl enters Farand's mind, he realises the Elyne King used Farand for eavesdropping. Farand had overheard the King order a political assassination, because of this Farand was prevented from joining the Guild by the King. Back at the Guild, Sonea is unable to sleep. She is continuously replaying what Akkarin had told her, and wondering why he told her. She even starts to believe that black magic isn't necessarily evil, only the wielder of the magic can determine that. She starts to wonder what would happen if Akkarin was to die and no one would be able to carry on the secret struggle with the Sachakan spies. She decides to tell Akkarin that she wants to learn black magic. The next day when Sonea tells Akkarin that she wants to learn, he refuses, he starts to change her mind saying that if she is caught, she will be executed. However her mind is made up, Akkarin refuses but says that he has another use for Sonea. He informs her that, if she was willing, she can be a source of power for him. He says he will only teach her black magic if the Ichani invade Kyralia. Even though she isn't helping in the way she thought she would, she is still pleased to assist Akkarin. Lord Dannyl visits Farand once more to assure everyone that he has learnt Control. When in Farand's mind, Dannyl starts questioning him. Before Dannyl can get any answers, Farand is aware of what Dannyl is doing and breaks the connection. Revealing him as a traitor, Farand tells everyone that more magicians are on their way, but don't know Dannyl's location. However Dannyl informs the group of rebels that that won't be the case. Farand perceives Dannyl's and the other magician's conversation and agrees with him. The other nobles are apprehended, Farand and the Dem surrender. At night, Sonea is worried about Akkarin, since he is not back for hunting the latest spy. (This is the first indication that, where she shortly before hated Akkarin and wanted him dead, now she starts to be positively concerned for him.) Once he returns, Sonea realises that the fight must have been terrible, and that Akkarin lost. She and Takan follow him to his bedroom and Akkarin starts filling in the details about the new spy. Akkarin believes that this new spy is another slave, but Takan tells Akkarin that she must be an Ichani, as she is cunning and strong. Takan once again tells Akkarin to teach Sonea black magic for help in case he dies, Akkarin finally agrees that he will teach Sonea tomorrow night. Cery is surprised that Akkarin lost to the latest spy, and vows to find her again. Savara enters Cery's room saying that if Cery had trusted her, she could have dealt with the new spy, unlike Akkarin. Savara then continues, saying that she knows the spy and wishes revenge for a past act. However she realises that now that Akkarin knows about the new spy, she cannot intervene without revealing herself, something she does not wish to do. Cery promises that she can hunt the next spy. The next day, while Lorlen and Lord Sarrin discuss building plans, Lord Osen informs them that there has been a massacre last night, a magician and his family have been murdered. All the victims had shallow cuts, which weren't fatal wounds. Osen also reports that there was a major battle between some unknown magicians. Lorlen decides that someone should go to the location of the fight and see if it had been magical. At night, Sonea makes her way to the underground passage to start her training in black magic. Akkarin informs Sonea that all living things have a natural barrier. With black magic, the idea is to break the barrier and draw their magical power from them. Sonea, under Akkarin's instructions, starts to learn how to take power, with Takan as her source. Once she is done, she heals him and is given some more books on black magic to read. While heading back to Imardin, Dannyl and Farand start talking about the future, and what consequences he and the other rebels would have to face. Realising that he is tired, Dannyl tells Farand to get some sleep, as he starts to leave Dannyl notices that Farand's lips are blue and comes to the conclusion that he has been poisoned. Dannyl then calls on Lady Vinara using telepathy, she informs him of how to purge the poison. Dannyl barricades the door to prevent anyone stopping him from healing Farand. Akkarin takes Sonea to show her how to defeat the spies, the Thieves inform them of where she is but when they reach her rooms she is not there. They look around, hearing footsteps Sonea hides in an alcove. The spy enters and talks to Akkarin before they start attacking one another. The spy moves closer to the alcove and Sonea tries to stay hidden, the combat is causing damage to be building and Sonea is forced to use her shield. She finds a ring in the alcove, one worn by an elder of a noble house. A heavy blow is struck and the alcove collapses, however Sonea creates a hollow with her shield, she then realises the spy is not a slave but a powerful Ichani. A hole is formed as the hollow begins to collapse, Sonea then sees that the Ichani is moving backwards and will soon detect her. Sonea drops her shield and the Ichani's passes over her undetected, she then slashes the Ichani's neck with a piece of wood and drains her power, killing the woman. Akkarin and Sonea then return to the Guild. The Magicians Guild have learned that Akkarin and Sonea are using black magic and believe they may be responsible for the murders. They are tried and convicted of using forbidden magic, but not of the murders. Akkarin is sentenced to exile in Sachaka, Sonea is allowed to remain but refuses saying that, if alone, Akkarin will be killed. Unsure about Akkarin's explanation of an imminent Ichani invasion they are both exiled. Akkarin and Sonea are forced to hide in the wastes of Sachaka where they are pursued by a pair of Ichani but manage to elude them. Meanwhile the Ichani invade Kyralia, easily overcoming the (reinforced) border defenses and slaughtering over twenty Guild magicians. They then advance on the capital Imardin, but are slowed by an ambush. It seems that only Akkarin and Sonea will be able to hold back the Ichani invasion as the Guild magicians are no match for them. Whilst in Sachaka, Sonea develops feelings for Akkarin, but tries to hide them. However Sonea awakes Akkarin from a nightmare and accidentally senses his feelings for her - seeing herself through his eyes, she sees a far more beautiful and alluring woman than she ever saw when looking in the mirror. Akkarin is hesitant because he argues he is 13 years older than Sonea, but Sonea doesn't seem to care. They kiss, and later sleep together. As eventually comes out, Akkarin's recurring nightmare was about a woman fellow slave, with whom he had been in love during his captivity in Sachaka, and whose death he witnessed and was unable to prevent. Finding a new love with Sonea lays this ghost, and Akkarin ceases to have such nightmares. The two then return to the borders of Kyralia where they encounter Dorrien, who isn't too happy to see them there, he escorts them back to the border but they are ambushed by one of the Ichani (called Parika), who is eventually killed by Sonea using Healing Magic, and Akkarin drains his energy. The Ichani have no knowledge of Healing Magic, and are surprised when Sonea heals a cut in fron of them. The three return to Dorrien's small home and discuss possible plans, they seem to decide one. Whereby Sonea and Akkarin will secretly return to Imardin, their city. Akkarin and Sonea return to Imardin and enlist the aid of the Thieves, including Cery, Sonea's old friend and slum dwellers in fighting the Ichani who now roam the city searching for victims to strengthen them. Sonea and Akkarin search the slum dwells for any magical potential and take it to strengthen their power, however, unlike the Ichani, they do not kill their helpers. The night before, Cery gives Akkarin and Sonea some changes of clothes, including full length, black, magician robes. Sonea and Akkarin are able to pick off many of the Ichani one by one, while another is killed with the help of Regin, Sonea's old Novice enemy. One Ichani is then killed by the Thieves and another by the Guild. Eventually only three Ichani remain. But Lorlen is badly wounded, and tells Akkarin that he understands why he did what he did, he asks if Sonea is ok, and then he dies and Akkarin takes his ring. Unfortunately, the three Ichani left have been absorbing the magic from various magically constructed buildings, and increasing in strength. Before the remaining Ichani can absorb the magic held in the Guild buildings (including the Arena, which has masses of power around it), Akkarin and Sonea force the three into a final battle at the Guild. A climactic battle ensues and the Ichani begin to tire. However, the lead Ichani, Kariko, lays a trap and a knife springs out of the ground and stabs Akkarin through the chest. As Akkarin is unable to fight, he persuades Sonea to make use of and channel his energy to supplement her dwindling reserves and with that combination of force, Sonea manages to destroy the last three Ichani. However, in doing so, all of Akkarin's life force is absorbed by Sonea, and he dies. 'He had given her too much power. He had given her everything.' Sonea deeply grieves for him and becomes extremely depressed, locking herself in her old room at Rothen's lodgings and losing the will to live - totally exhausted, physically and emotionally, and though never having been formally married to him, feels herself very much as Akkarin's widow. Whilst Dannyl and Tayend, his assistant and lover, return to Elyne, the Higher Magicians debate about whom to appoint to various positions in the Guild and appoint Rothen as the Head of Alchemic Studies. Lord Osen will probably replace the late Lord Lorlen. Lord Balkan is expected to replace Akkarin. The Higher Magicians are reconciled to the need to have a recognised Black Magician, since otherwise the Guild and the country would be completely helpless before further invasions - and Sonea is the only possible candidate, since it seems the books left behind by Akkarin do not provide enough information on how to do it. At first they intend to impose on her the condition of not being allowed to leave the Guild premises. However, arguing against that restriction, Rothen explains to them that she joined the guild in order to help the poor, and they reconsider. They rule that if she is to venture out beyond the guild premises, she must be accompanied by an escort, and she must not venture beyond the city slums in which she seeks to aid the poor. In a matter of months the Guild builds a hospital for the slums, a reversal of the long-standing discriminatory policy whereby the Healing magic was only available to the Aristocratic Houses. Though Sonea has done only three years of training out of the five required of a novice, it is obviously out of the question to treat her as anything but a full-fledged magician; instead, Dorrien (who is still in love with her) and Lady Vinara volunteer, and are formally assigned, to complete Sonea's training as a Healer. She is also to wear black robes from then on, and the High Lord is to wear white. In the final scene, Sonea spots her Aunt in the queue at the slum hospital with a baby in her arms and tells Rothen to call her over in the office. Her Aunt tells her what the problem is and Sonea gives her the prescriptions for the baby's fever. Sonea then hesitantly tries to explain to her Aunt that she would like her to come live in the guild with Sonea because she is in need of her help. At first, Sonea's aunt is confused, as is Rothen, but when Sonea taps her belly, Sonea's Aunt understands and they make explanations to Rothen. Sonea is fearful; she is carrying Akkarin's baby and didn't plan for it to happen. Sonea's Aunt smiles and soothingly assures her that she will indeed look after her, at least for a while, to help guide and prepare her for what is to come. As already disclosed by the writer, Sonea would give birth to a son named Lorkin, who is a major character in the sequel ""The Ambassador's Mission""."
192,The Court of the Air,fantasy," When streetwise Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has recently been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to run back to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was the real target of the attack. For Molly is a special little girl, and she carries a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered existence in the backwater home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder, he is forced to flee for his life, accompanied by an agent of the mysterious Court of the Air. Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws, and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life. Soon Molly and Oliver will find themselves battling a grave threat to civilization, an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago. Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but the two orphans are also aided by indomitable friends."
193,Sylvie and Bruno,fantasy," There are two strands: *the conspiracy against the Warden of Outland, instigated by the Sub-Warden and Chancellor, and *the love of a young doctor, Arthur, for Lady Muriel ;Chapter 1: The narrator finds himself in a high room overlooking a public square filled with people. The room is the Warden's breakfast-saloon. The Chancellor has organised a ""spontaneous"" demonstration (by a rent-a-mob which seems to be confused about whether to chant ""More bread, less taxes"" or ""Less bread, more taxes""). Bruno enters briefly, looking for Sylvie. The Chancellor delivers a speech. The narrator follows Bruno into the study, where he climbs on to the Warden's knee, next to Sylvie. The Warden tells them that the Professor has finally returned from his long wanderings in search of health. They set off for the Library, where the Professor tells them about his concerns with the barometer and with ""horizontal weather"". The Professor then leads the children back to the saloon. ;Chapter 2: The narrator finds himself in a train compartment, which a veiled young lady has just entered. He is on his way to see Arthur, a doctor friend, for a consultation; he rereads Arthur's letter, and absent-mindedly repeats out loud its last line, ""Do you believe in Fate?"" The lady laughs, and a conversation ensues. The scene changes abruptly to the breakfast-saloon, in which the Professor is explaining his plunge-bath invention to the Sub-Warden, his wife, her son, the Chancellor, Warden, Sylvie, and Bruno. ;Chapter 3: The Chancellor tries to persuade the Warden to elevate the Sub-Warden to Vice-Warden. The Warden asks the Sub-Warden for a private talk. The Sub-Warden's wife asks the Professor about his Lecture, suggesting a Fancy Dress Ball. He gives Sylvie a birthday present: a pincushion. Uggug throws butter over Sylvie. The Sub-Warden distracts his wife by saying a pig is in the garden; the Chancellor drags Uggug out by his ear. ;Chapter 4: The Warden agrees to the changes. After he has signed the Agreement and left (to become Monarch of Fairyland), the Chancellor, Vice-Warden and his wife laugh about how they have deceived him, the document having been altered at the last minute to give the Vice-Warden dictatorial powers. A beggar appears beneath the window; Uggug and his mother throw water over him. Bruno tries to throw him some food, but he has gone. ;Chapter 5: The narrator wakes up, and he and the lady discuss ghosts. They change trains at Fayfield Junction; he notices her name on her luggage: Lady Muriel Orme. An old tramp is sent on his way. The narrator falls asleep again, and hears the first stanza of the Mad Gardener's Song. The Gardener directs Sylvie and Bruno after the beggar. They give him cake, and he leads them to an underground octagonal room lined with creepers bearing fruit and flowers. His clothes transform, and they find it is their father. ;Chapter 6: He says they are in Elfland. Bruno tries to eat the fruit (Phlizz) but it has no taste. Their father shows Sylvie two lockets, one blue (""All will love Sylvie"") and one red (""Sylvie will love all""). She chooses the red. The narrator finds himself at the railway station of his destination, Elveston. On arriving at Arthur's house, he tells him of Lady Muriel Orme, and it turns out that Arthur knows her and is in love with her. The narrator falls asleep again, and hears the Chancellor warn the Vice-Warden that the Ambassador of Elfland has arrived and that they will need to convince him that Uggug is Bruno, or as able as Bruno. ;Chapter 7: The Ambassador, Baron Doppelgeist, is given demonstrations of Uggug's abilities which always happen when he is looking the other way. Finding his guestroom full of frogs, he leaves in anger. ;Chapter 8: The narrator visits Lady Muriel and her father, the Earl, in the company of Arthur. They discuss weightlessness. Later, Arthur and the narrator visit the beach. Arthur goes home. Sylvie and Bruno go in search of the Beggar, their father. She rubs the red amulet, and a mouse is transformed into a lion, which they ride. Their father listens to their account of the Ambassador's visit; he cannot rectify the situation, but casts a spell. ;Chapter 9: Uggug refuses to learn his lessons. The Vice-Warden and his wife try on disguises: jester and dancing bear. Uggug sees them and runs off to fetch the Professor. When he arrives, they are dressed normally, and they tell him that the people wish to elect an Emperor—the Vice-Warden. ;Chapter 10: The Professor takes Sylvie and Bruno to see the Other Professor. The Professor asks him about the Pig-Tale, which he promised to give after the Professor's Lecture. Bruno asks what ""inconvenient"" means. ;Chapter 11: By way of illustration, the Other Professor recites Peter and Paul, 208 lines of verse. ;Chapter 12: After a discussion, the Other Professor vanishes. Sylvie and Bruno complain to the Professor about their treatment, and ask him to tell the Gardener to open the garden door for them, so they can go to Fairyland to see their father. ;Chapter 13: They walk a long way, stopping briefly to visit the King of Dogland, before entering the gate of Fairyland. Arthur tells the narrator that he has discovered that he has more wealth than he thought, and that marriage with Lady Muriel is at least possible. ;Chapter 14: The narrator spends a month at London; when he returns, he finds that Arthur has still not yet declared his intentions. The narrator sets off to speak to the Earl; on the way he encounters first Sylvie (who is helping a Beetle) and then Bruno (who is spoiling Sylvie's garden). He persuades Bruno to help weed it instead. ;Chapter 15: Bruno weeds the garden with the narrator's help. ;Chapter 16: The Earl invites Arthur to a picnic in ten days' time. On the day, walking to their house, the narrator encounters Sylvie and Bruno again. ;Chapter 17: The party leave the Earl's Hall and travel to a ruined castle, the site of the picnic. Muriel sings, but the narrator falls asleep, and her song becomes that of Bruno. ;Chapter 18: Muriel introduces Captain Eric Lindon, a highly presentable young man. Arthur is in despair, and declines to return with the party in the same carriage. The narrator falls asleep again, and there is a meeting between Lindon, Sylvie, Bruno, and the Professor. ;Chapter 19: A week later, Arthur and the narrator go to church. They discuss religion with Muriel, condemning High Church affectations, and moralising which relies on Pascal's Wager. The narrator helps carry a lame little girl upstairs at the railway station, and buys a posy in the street. The girl turns out to be Sylvie. ;Chapter 20: He brings Sylvie and Bruno to the Earl's Hall. The Earl is astonished by the flowers, none of which are English. Muriel sings a new song. A couple of days later, the flowers have vanished. The narrator, Muriel, and the Earl idly sketch an alternative scheme for the animal kingdom. ;Chapter 21: Sylvie asks the Professor for advice. He unlocks the Ivory Door for the two of them, and they meet Bruno. The Professor boasts of having devised the Emperor's new Money Act, doubling the value of every coin to make everyone twice as rich, and shows the narrator an ""Outlandish"" watch (essentially a kind of time machine). Sylvie finds a dead hare, and is horrified to learn that human beings hunt them. ;Chapter 22: Arthur is even more discouraged. Muriel is surprised to discover that Eric has met Sylvie and Bruno. Eric saves Bruno from being run down by a train. ;Chapter 23: The narrator tries to use the Outlandish watch to prevent an accident, but fails. He then uses it to witness, in reverse, some scenes of family life. Later, the narrator is talking to the Earl when he learns, and Arthur overhears, that Muriel is engaged to Eric. ;Chapter 24: Sylvie and Bruno present a variety show to an audience of frogs, including ""Bits of Shakespeare"", and Bruno tells them a long rambling story. ;Chapter 25: A week after discovering that Muriel is engaged, Arthur and the narrator go for the ""last"" time to the Earl's Hall. They discuss with Muriel how the Sabbath should best be kept, and the nature of free will. Arthur informs the narrator that he is leaving for India. ;Chapter 1: Several weeks pass in London. The narrator sees Eric Lindon at a club, and learns that Eric's engagement to Muriel is over, and that Arthur is still at Elveston. The narrator meets Bruno in a park; Sylvie gives Bruno his lessons. A thunderstorm drives the narrator home, where he finds a telegram from Arthur, asking him to come. ;Chapter 2: As before, the narrator meets Lady Muriel while changing trains at Fayfield Junction. She is giving money to the old tramp (vol. 1, ch. 5). On their way to Elveston she says that Eric broke off their engagement because of her evident discomfort with Eric's lukewarm faith. Arthur does not know this. ;Chapter 3: The next morning, on a walk, Arthur discusses his anti-socialist views, and condemns charity bazaars as ""half charity, half self-pleasing"". Sylvie and Bruno contrive that he should meet Muriel, who is also out walking. ;Chapter 4: The narrator presses on without him to Hunter's farm to order milk. On his way he meets the farmer, who is talking to a woman about her hard-drinking husband, Willie. At the farm, the dog Nero (who is the Dog King from vol. 1, ch. 13) catches a boy who is stealing apples. ;Chapter 5: The three of them meet the farmer's wife, daughter Bessie, and Bessie's doll, Matilda-Jane. On their way back to Elveston they pass the Golden Lion, a new public house. ;Chapter 6: Willie comes walking down the road; Sylvie and Bruno invisibly drag him away from the pub. He delivers his wages to his wife, and swears off drink. The narrator walks back to the house, and learns that Arthur is now engaged to Muriel. ;Chapter 7: At the Hall, the narrator finds Muriel with a man called ""Mein Herr,"" who has a beard and a German accent. He bears a remarkable resemblance to the Professor. He shows them Fortunatus's Purse, and describes a gravity-powered train, a method of storing up extra time so that nobody ever gets bored, a carriage with oval wheels (with the end of one wheel corresponding to the side of the wheel opposite it, so that the carriage rises, falls, rolls, and pitches, and so anybody in the carriage gets vomitingly sick) He also describes a carriage designed to prevent runaway horses from getting anywhere. Oddly enough, nobody seems to remember where they first met ""Mein Herr"", nor what his real name is, nor where he lives, nor where he's from. Lady Muriel admits that she never realized what a mysterious man he is until she met the narrator. A party is planned. ;Chapter 8: Ten days pass. The day before the party, Arthur, Muriel and the narrator have tea at the Hall. Arthur argues that the gravity of a sin must be judged by the temptation preceding it. The Earl returns from the harbour-town with news of the spread of a fever. ;Chapter 9: At the party, conversation ranges over sanity and insanity, cheating at croquet versus cheating at whist, rational honeymoons, teetotalism, and keeping dinner parties interesting. ;Chapter 10: An interlude, with the arrival of Sylvie and Bruno, the discussion of wine (which is transformed into a discussion of jam) and an unsatisfying musical performance. ;Chapter 11: Another interlude, with ""Mein Herr"" telling tall tales about his country. He describes how nobody in his kingdom ever drowns, because they have been eugenically bred for dozens of generations to weigh less and less until everybody is lighter than water. He also hears about how the largest map ever made on Earth was six inches to the mile; as his country is older, it has gone through maps that are six feet to the mile, then six yards to the mile, next a hundred yards to the mile---finally, a mile to the mile (the farmers said that if such a map was to be spread out, it would block out the sun and crops would fail, so the project was abandoned). He goes on to portray some devices similar to modern planetary engineering or terraforming, and paint-balls. Finally, he describes a system of government where there are thousands of kings and one subject, instead of the other way around. ;Chapter 12: Sylvie plays the piano for the assembled company. Mein Herr discusses incomprehensibility by describing how, in the days when he worked at a school in his country, there was an old professor who lectured to pupils, and, although his speeches were incomprehensible, the pupils were so impressed that they memorized the speeches. Many of these pupils got jobs as lecturers in schools, and repeated the speeches made by the first professor, and the pupils were impressed by the speeches and memorized them, getting jobs as lecturers in schools later on, until a day came when everyone realized that nobody understood what the speeches meant. Another craze was that of competitive examinations, when teachers motivated students by giving them money if the answers are correct, until eventually, the bright students in school make more money than the teachers do. The most insane craze was the Scholarship Hunts, when any principal that wanted a student in his college had to hunt them in the streets and the first principal to catch the student wins. One principal, theorizing how bullets have accelerated velocity because they're spherical, becomes perfectly spherical, in an attempt to catch the brightest scholar. Unfortunately, the Principal runs too fast and soon finds himself going at 100 MPH and only stops after he crashes into a haybale. It is implied that if he hadn't deliberately run into a haybale, he would have run off the planet. ;Chapter 13: A continuation of the Scholar Hunters story of chapter 12. Mein Herr explains how the Scholarship Hunts evolves into a more 'civilized' method of catching scholars; the children are offered more and more money for a scholarship in an event that amounts to auctioning them off. One day, a linguist finds an old African Legend (although the nature of the story appears to be stereotypically Ottoman) in which a village that stands in the heart of Africa is inhabited by people for whom a beverage made for eggs is a necessity. A merchant arrives at the town with eggs and auctions them off for large blocks of money, as the natives very badly need their eggs. He returns each week with eggs, pricing them higher, and the natives end up giving him fortunes for the eggs, until one day, when they realize how they are letting the merchant get rich off of their gullibility, and cheat the system by having only one man (who requests 10 piastres for the whole cartload) appear at the next auction. The principals realize how they are having the same problems with their students that the Africans had with the eggs, and this system is abolished. Mein Herr's speech is interrupted for the narrator by stanzas of What Tottles Meant. ;Chapters 14-15: Sylvie tells the story ""Bruno's Picnic"". ;Chapter 16: Sylvie and Bruno have vanished. The guests, after a brief search, go home; Muriel, Arthur and the Earl discuss what pursuits might be followed in the Afterlife. ;Chapter 17: Muriel sings To a Lark (which is replaced, for the dreaming narrator, by a different song). Arthur is called away to the harbour to treat cases of the deadly fever, and he leaves immediately after his wedding the next morning. ;Chapter 18: An item in the Fayfield Chronicle reports the death of Arthur Forester. ;Chapter 19: In December of the same year, the narrator returns to Elveston, and visits Arthur's grave in the company of Muriel. They have tea with the Earl, and discuss whether animals have souls. Lady Muriel walks the narrator part of the way home, and they meet Sylvie and Bruno, who are singing A Song of Love. ;Chapter 20: Back in Outland, the Professor welcomes Sylvie and Bruno back to the palace in time for Uggug's birthday celebrations. They hear the last verse of the Gardener's Song, then hurry to the Saloon. ;Chapter 21: The Professor delivers his Lecture. It includes Axioms, Specimens, and Experiments. Part of the Specimens involve shrinking an elephant to the size of a mouse with the use of a Megaloscope, and reversing the Megaloscope to enlarge a flea to the size of a horse. One experiment involves the subject of Black Light by taking a candle and pouring black ink over the flame and turning the flame's yellow light to black light, which admittedly looks no different than no light at all. ;Chapter 22: (The narrator visits the tramp mentioned in vol. 2, ch. 2.) The Banquet takes place. ;Chapter 23: The Other Professor recites The Pig-Tale. The Emperor is in the process of making a speech when a mysterious ""hurricane"" causes him and his wife to regret all of their previous intrigues against the Warden. (No attempt is made to justify this in the terms of the story.) ;Chapter 24: The Beggar returns to the palace, and is revealed to be the Warden. Uggug, who has turned into a giant porcupine, is put into a cage. Sylvie and Bruno visit the ill Professor in the company of the Empress. ;Chapter 25: In the ""real"" world, the narrator is called urgently to the Hall. Eric Lindon has found Arthur Forester still living—he had been unconscious or delirious for several months, and went unrecognised as the doctor. On returning to his own lodgings, the narrator witnesses his last scene from Outland: Bruno and Sylvie discover that the two Jewels (vol. 1, ch. 6) are in fact one."
194,The Pearls of Lutra,fantasy," When gathering herbs near the quarry in Mossflower Woods, the young Redwallers Tansy and Arven come across a mysterious skeleton among the rocks. They are disoriented in a rainstorm and after failing to return to the abbey before the breaking of the storm are rescued by Martin II. Tansy quickly leads curious Redwallers back to the quarry to examine the mysterious skeleton, and along the way, they meet two travelers: the irrepressible hare Cleckstarr Lepus Montisle and his owl friend Gerul. Meanwhile, far across the western sea on the tropical isle of Sampetra, trouble is brewing. Ublaz Mad-Eyes, a large, sinewy pine marten with a hypnotic stare, gathers an army of barbaric monitor lizards and trident wielding searats. The stoat captain Conva is sent out to retrieve the Tears of All Oceans, six perfectly spherical rose-pink pearls, but after murdering the Holt Lutra who owned the pearls, the Tears are stolen by the weasel Graylunk, who flees into Mossflower Woods. Conva tracks him to Redwall Abbey, where Graylunk takes refuge, before returning to Sampetra. Ublaz is not pleased and murders Conva. He then sends out an elite force of monitor lizards, headed by their general Lask Frildur, to Mossflower to retrieve the pearls. They are escorted by the ferret captain Romsca and her crew. However, the daughter of the Lutra chieftain is not dead. Far away on the western shores, Grath Longfletch, a strong female otter, was at the gates of the Dark Forest before being found by a pair of bankvoles, who nurse her back to health. The otter fashions a powerful bow and a quiver of green-fletched arrows, with which she planned on wreaking her revenge. She eliminates a longboat-crew of searats and then takes their boat southward into Mossflower, where she hopes to find the corsairs that slew her family. Presently, Conva's brother Barranca discovers that Ublaz has killed his brother, and he begins hatching a plan to overthrow the pine marten and take the island for himself. With the fearsome Lask and his lizards gone to Mossflower, Barranca decides to seize his chance. Back at Redwall, the old bankvole recorder Rollo determines that the skeleton in the quarry was Graylunk. He had become gravely injured in a fight with the weasel Flairnose, whom he killed, over the pearls before seeking safety at Redwall. There he befriended an old squirrel called Sister Fermald before he went off to die in the woods. Fermald, a clever, though senile old beast, had expertly hidden the pearls throughout the abbey before passing away several seasons ago. Tansy and Rollo, along with the hedgehog maid's friends Craklyn the squirrel and Piknim the mouse, begin a search for the six exquisite pearls. The Dibbun Arven and his two partners in crime, the moles Diggum and Gurrbowl, occasionally help in the search. When Abbot Durral takes young Viola Bankvole for a stroll in Mossflower Woods, they are captured by Lask and his troops. Lask binds the Abbot and the bankvole and attempts to ransom them for the pearls at Redwall. However, the pearls have not yet been found, and Lask and his lizards take the two Redwallers back to their ship to be captives at Sampetra. Martin, Clecky, Gerul, and the Skipper of Otters pursue the lizards through Mossflower, slaying several but failing to rescue the captives. Gerul and Skipper become wounded and are sent back to the Abbey, but the others chase the lizards to the western shore. There, they meet up with Grath Longfletch, who had caught sight of Romsca's ship, the Waveworm, and attempted to pick off some of the vermin. Durral manages to help Viola get to safety on the shore, but the ship departs before he can escape. Viola is sent back to Redwall with two shrews to guide her, and Grath, Clecky, Martin, and the Log-a-Log's two sons use discarded vermin boats to form the Freebeast, a double-outrigger vessel in which they pursue Lask to Sampetra. Viola, who has sneaked aboard, also ends up coming along. On Sampetra, Barranca has been slain by Rasconza, a clever fox corsair who takes over the rebellion against Ublaz. Initial attempts at negotiation fail, due to the double-dealing of the pair, and when Ublaz tries to have Rasconza assassinated, Sampetra is plunged into all-out war. In the search for the six pearls, the Redwaller friends slowly but surely find them all, though not without paying the price. The young mouse Piknim ends up being slain by the cruel jackdaws at St. Ninian's while searching for a pearl. The church is burnt down to prevent evil-doers from ever using it again (it had been used as a base by Redwall's enemies twice before), and the quest resumes, with all the pearls eventually being found. Martin, Grath and their friends closely follow Romsca and Lask across the ocean, and end up meeting the otters of Holt Ruddaring along the way. Inbar Trueflight, a skilled archer, and the seal Hawm tag along on the quest. On the Waveworm, Durral is underfed and mistreated, but the ferret captain Romsca protects him from the fierce violence and hunger of Lask's cruel monitor lizards. Lask and Romsca, who had been at odds with one another since the beginning, finally battle on deck, with the forces of both being wiped out. Romsca ends up slaying Lask but is fatally injured in the process. Before dying, she gives the abbot instructions on how to set the rudder to fix the ship toward Sampetra. As the last living creature aboard the ship, the old Abbot sails alone toward the evil isle. When Martin, Clecky, Grath, Inbar, the shrews and Viola arrive on Sampetra, a battle ensues. Most of the monitor lizards and wave-vermin are killed, and Martin corners Ublaz alone in his palace. They duel it out, but Ublaz accidentally steps on the poisonous snake that he had hypnotized and kept as a pet. The snake bites him and he dies. Durral is rescued and the warriors all return to Mossflower. They leave the island of Sampetra with no timber for ship building to force the vermin to learn to live in harmony with each other. Grath stays with Inbar at Holt Ruddering, as the pair have fallen in love, but the others meet Tansy and her friends at the shore. The young hedgehog, realizing the pearls lead only to greed and violence and bring nothing but misery and death to all who own them, casts them out into the sea to be forever lost. For her hard work, perseverance and aptitude, Tansy is made Abbess of Redwall to succeed old Durral. She becomes the first non-mouse abbot/abbess."
195,Daja's Book,fantasy," The story opens with the four child-mages and their teachers at the end of a caravan. Rosethorn, Briar's teacher, stops to examine the tree-litter and while she does this, Daja catches a glimpse of a forest fire miles off. Tris, Briar, and Sandry all turn to look at the fire while Rosethorn asks their local guide when the last time was that they had a forest fire. However, their guide only laughs and says their mage, called Firetamer, takes care of all their fires, just like his father did. The caravan moves on, but Daja still has an uneasy feeling about the huge fire, noting how fire could be her friend and enemy. The caravan stops in a small town to study magic and assist the Duke of Emelan with the drought. As Daja is working in the smithy, a woman, a wirok, a scorned Trader who negotiates with lugsha, tradesmen, stops by to talk to the smith. As she notices the blank cap on Daja's Trader staff which signifies her exile status, the Trader refuses to talk to her. Moments later, Daja loses control of her magic because of her anger, putting energy into a clump of melted iron. Soon, it turns into a branch and the Trader is stunned. Throughout the book, Daja and the Trader converse in a bargain for the 'living metal'. All of the student's magic is so strongly combined that Sandry is forced to create a map of their magic, which she can use to separate their twined magic. Their teachers first noticed the mixed magic when Briar and Sandry used lightning by accident. While Daja is on her way to the privy, she releases a stream of hot water from within the earth, which spills out onto the stones before her. She and Briar investigate, finding that one of the hot springs leads to an area of ice/glaciers. Melting the water would refill the drying lake, saving one of the town's problems. They also discover a vein of copper which could be used to replenish the town's supply and stimulate trade. While all the teachers and students are at a watch tower, a huge fire erupts, utilizing all the mast that had built up in the years that Yarrun Firetamer had been suppressing all the fires. After the conceited fire tamer dies in an attempt to stop the fire, the rest of the people try to stop it. Daja is caught in the middle, though, and has to first convince the caravan she is riding with to listen to her, and then stop heading for the fire. She saves the caravan by thrusting all of the fire into a vein in the earth which leads to the glacier. Lastly, Daja creates a living metal leg with the copper which is now a part of her for the wirok, restoring the wirok's ability to work with horses, her original job. Daja is a trangshi, a Trader word which literally means ""doesn't exist"" or ""bad luck."" In the end, however, she becomes a Trader again because she had gained enough zokin, or honor, by saving the Tenth Caravan Idaram from the huge forest fire."
196,Space Cadet,fantasy," In 2075, teenager Matt Dodson applies to join the prestigious Space Patrol. After a number of physical, mental, and ethical tests, he is accepted as a cadet. He makes friends with fellow recruits William 'Tex' Jarman, Venus-born Oscar Jensen, and Pierre Armand from Ganymede. His first roommate is Girard Burke, the arrogant son of a wealthy spaceship builder. They are transported to the orbiting school ship PRS James Randolph for further training. Burke eventually either resigns or is asked to leave, and goes into the merchant service, but the remainder do well enough to be assigned to working Patrol ships. Dodson, Jarman and Jensen ship out on the Aes Triplex. Their first real mission is to help search for a missing research vessel, the Pathfinder, in the Asteroid Belt. They find it, but all aboard are dead, the unlucky victims of a fast-moving meteor that punctured the ship when the armored outer airlock door was open. Before the accident, a researcher on the Pathfinder had found evidence that the planet which blew up to form the asteroids was inhabited by an intelligent species, and that the explosion had been artificial. The captain of the Aes Triplex transfers half the crew to the repaired Pathfinder so that they can take the ship and the news of the startling discovery back to Earth quickly. With the remainder (including all three cadets), he continues his patrol. Then, he receives an urgent message to investigate an incident on Venus. He sends Lieutenant Thurlow and the cadets to the planet's surface. The lander touches down on a sinkhole, barely giving the crew enough time to get out before it disappears in the mud. With Thurlow comatose, injured when the lander fell over, Jensen assumes command. He contacts the sentient usually-friendly Venerians, but the entire party is taken captive. They soon find out why. These particular natives had never seen human beings before, until old classmate Burke showed up in a prospecting ship. He had taken the matriarch of the local clan hostage when she refused to give him permission to exploit a rich deposit of radioactive ores. The locals promptly attacked the ship and killed his crew; Burke managed to send a message for help before being taken prisoner. Jensen skillfully gains the matriarch's trust and convinces her that they are honorable and civilized, unlike Burke, and the Patrolmen are released. Neither the lander nor Burke's ship is flightworthy. To their amazement, she takes the stranded humans to the carefully preserved Astarte, the legendary first ship to set out for Venus over a century before and thought to have been lost en route. According to the log, the crew perished from disease. With the help of the natives, the cadets recommission the ship and fly it back to (human) civilization at Venus's South Pole colony. Dodson is initially disappointed when they are not treated as heroes—but then he realizes that what they accomplished was simply what was expected of Patrolmen."
197,Crown Duel,fantasy," Young Countess Meliara swears to her dying father that she and her brother will defend their people from the growing greed of the king. That promise leads them into a war for which they are ill-prepared, which threatens the very people they are trying to protect. But war is simple compared to what follows, in peacetime. Meliara is summoned to live at the royal palace, where friends and enemies look alike, and intrigue fills the dance halls and the drawing rooms. If she is to survive, Meliara must learn a whole new way of fighting-with wits and words and secret alliances. In war, at least, she knew in whom she could trust. Now she can trust no one"
198,Chocolat,fantasy," The story begins as two strangers, Vianne Rocher, and her small daughter Anouk, move into the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. They are brought by 'the wind' during the last days of carnival, and they settle and open a chocolaterie, La Céleste Praline. The village priest, Francis Reynaud, is initially mystified, because Lent has just begun, but his confusion turns rapidly to anger when he understands that Vianne holds dangerous beliefs, does not obey the church, and ""flouts"" the unspoken rules that he feels should govern his ""flock"". Vianne, we learn from her personal thoughts, is a witch though she does not use the word. Her mother and she were wanderers, going from one city to another. Her mother strove to inspire the same need for freedom in her daughter, who is more social and passive. They were born with gifts, and used a kind of ""domestic magic"" to earn their living. Throughout her life, Vianne has been running from the ""Black Man"", a recurring motif in her mother's folklore. When her mother is killed by a cab, Vianne continues on her own, trying to evade the Black Man and the mysetrious force of the wind and settle down to a normal life. The chocolaterie is an old dream of hers. She has an innate talent for cooking and a charming personality. She tries to fit in and help her customers. She starts to build a group of regular customers, and, to Reynaud's dismay, she doesn't go out of business. Reynaud attempts to have Vianne run out of town, and he talks about her every Sunday at church. Some people initially stay away, but not for long. His conflict with her becomes his personal crusade. Vianne, however, announces a ""Grand Festival of Chocolate"", to be held on Easter Sunday."
199,Lammas Night,fantasy," Lammas Night tells the story of a group of English witches who act to save their country from Nazi attack during World War II. Woven within the story of their efforts are the visions and fragmented memories of one male witch, who gradually comes to realize his role in an ancient cycle of royal death, reincarnation, and sacrifice."
200,"Jack, the Giant Killer",fantasy," The plot concerns a young woman living in Ottawa named Jacky Rowan who, after a late-night encounter with a motorcycle-riding version of the Wild Hunt, picks up a red cap which enables her to see into the Faerie realms. She is soon drawn into a supernatural struggle between the weakened forces of the Seelie Court and their ominous enemies, the Host or Unseelie Court. She is regaled as the Jack of Kinrowan, a trickster figure who represents the Seelie Court's hope for victory against the forces of evil. With the help of her friend Kate Hazel and an array of faerie friends and allies she makes along the way (and a considerable amount of good luck), Jacky manages to rescue the kidnapped daughter of the Laird of Kinrowan and defeat the Unseelie Court, thus bringing peace and safety to the land."
201,Mad Empress of Callisto,fantasy," Jonathan Dark (Jandar) is now well settled in to his new life as husband of Princess Darloona of Shondakar on the Jovian moon of Callisto (or Thanator). While out hunting with some companions they are kidnapped in a balloon by a force from the rival city of Tharkol. Their capture is part of a plot by Zamorra, empress of Tharkol, who under the mental influence of her advisor, the Mind Wizard Ang Chan is making an attempt to conquer all of Thanator. Sprung from her dungeon by the thief Glypto, they turn the tables by kidnapping Zamorra and escaping in the balloon. Unfortunately, their craft is later attacked and brought down by a Ghastosar (a Thantorian flying creature resembling a pterodactyl), and the group falls into the hands of the insect-like Yathoon nomads. Once again Glypto is the key to their escape. Striking out for Shondakar on foot, they encounter a caravan from the Soroba, only to find it a front for a military expedition from that city. They are rescued from the Sorobans by an airship, which they assume to be from Shondakar -- but it is a Tharkolian ship, another unit in Zamorra's new airfleet! The empress having gradually proven to be a decent sort during the party's adventures, Darloona tries to talk her out of her mad scheme. Discovering she has been controlled by Ang Chan, Zamorra is persuaded, and the upshot is a new alliance against the Mind Wizards made up of Tharkol, Shondakar and Soroba (ably represented by Glypto, now revealed to have been a Soroban spy)."
202,Faith of the Fallen,fantasy," Faith of the Fallen begins right where Soul of the Fire leaves off. Richard is taking Cara and an injured Kahlan to the high mountains of his homeland, Westland. At the end of the Soul of the Fire Richard realizes that he cannot win against Emperor Jagang until the people themselves want to fight for freedom. Because of this mindset Richard isolates himself in the woods, to allow Kahlan time to heal, and refuses to give orders to the D'Haran army. He insists that the fight against the Imperial Order is a doomed cause and further resistance can only result in the loss of more lives. After Kahlan has made a significant recovery, the trio is reintroduced to Nicci, an impassive Sister of the Dark who was one of Richard’s instructors at the Palace of the Prophets in Stone of Tears. She provides great insight into the goals of the Order and about the Dreamwalker, Jagang himself. Nicci believes fully in the goal of the Order: to have everyone live in equality with no one person attaining more ""gifts"" than another. Nicci achieves her goal in capturing Richard, something that she accomplishes using the rare and difficult maternity spell linking herself to Kahlan and enabling Nicci to kill Kahlan at any time. Anything that happens to Nicci now happens to Kahlan. Faced with a hopeless situation, Richard chooses the life of Kahlan over his own and is forced to go with Nicci into the Old World. Leaving Kahlan, Cara, and the Sword of Truth to rejoin the D'Haran army. Kahlan and Cara, despite knowing Richard's objections, leave the Upper Ven in search of help from Zedd and Sister Verna. Seeing the plight of her troops fighting against the Order, Kahlan takes command of the combined armies of D'Hara and the Midlands in a desperate attempt to halt the Order's advance into the New World. While Kahlan and Richard's friends do battle in the New World, Richard is put to work in the Old World capital of Altur'Rang, first as a delivery man of steel and timber for construction, and then as a sculptor at the new palace being built. Nicci is stringent on her teachings of the poor and needy in the Old World, and frequently informs Richard that it is his duty to ensure all are provided for. She expects Richard to not only see the pains of the poor, but feel the pains as well. Hoping, in the end, that he will be moved to the side of the Order. Ever so slowly, the opposite effect emerges. Nicci begins to see the Order for what it really is, slavery. She sees that Richard freely helps others and shows that one can take pride in his work, himself, and his surroundings. The people around him begin to take notice of his efforts and soon find their own purposes in life. Purposes, they can build upon and work for themselves. They find that it is only they who can make their life better. Soon, the people around Richard change their lives and their outlook for the better. Richard is commanded to erect a sculpture for the center of the New Palace as a punishment. Brother Narev, a self proclaimed leader of the Order, gives him the statue he is to carve. It is a hideous depiction of human existence showing the full pains of humanity. When Richard sees this he is repulsed to a point where a light fizzles out in his eyes. After sleeping on the idea, he wakes up the next day with a new idea. He will carve a statue, but it will be one of his own choosing. Richard works tirelessly to create his own depiction of Life. He carves in deep white marble the very nature of humanity and finally reveals the statue for all to see in a grand ceremony. Grown men and women fell to their knees in absolute awe-inspired wonder at the two individuals so proud in their humanity that they step forward into the hearts of the masses. ""LIFE"" is inscribed as the title. Shock and amazement draw record crowds as everyone wishes to glimpse on the beauty of true humanity. Brother Narev, when he finally arrives to see the statue, orders Richard to destroy the statue. Richard takes up the hammer and points to the crowd, telling them that the Order only wishes to destroy beauty, only wishes to enslave humanity under the doctrine of faith unsupported by the true value of life. He swings the hammer and shatters the statue in one blast. The people are in outraged shock, looking at a pile of rubble where once stood the most glorious object they have ever seen. Immediately they revolt, proclaiming that the Order will not enslave them any longer. They attack the Imperial Order, and Altur'Rang falls to the hands of the rebels. After fighting many battles against the Imperial Order, overseeing the wedding of Verna to the Wizard Warren, the subsequent death of Warren, and a major blow to the ranks of the Order, Kahlan and Cara leave to find Richard. They enter Altur'Rang in time to see the statue's absolute perfection, and watch as Richard shatters that perfection in one blow. As the rebellion begins Richard enters the palace to find brother Narev. He immediately finds and kills another brother and uses that brother's robes as a disguise. While working his way through the dark corridors he encounters Kahlan, the Sword of Truth over her shoulder. He runs towards her with a sword he claimed off a fallen Order soldier and forces Kahlan into immediate combat, although it's dark enough that she has no idea who she's fighting. Playing on the very moves he taught her earlier in the book, he forces Kahlan into giving him a death blow, and only then does she realize Richard is the one she's stabbed. Richard had realized that this was the only way to force Nicci to choose - to heal him and save him from the wound (which would require severing the link to Kahlan), or to continue to live in slavery. Nicci has seen the absolute glory and beauty of ""Life,"" and long before seeing Richard injured has already pledged herself to her new doctrine: to live her life for herself. She had already vowed to undo the wrong she had done, and pledge loyalty to the man that returned her life to her. Nicci removes the maternity bond to Kahlan and heals Richard just in time. Altur'Rang is free, for a time, from the grasp of the Order, and the people have found a determination not to serve the system as slaves."
203,Revelation Space,fantasy," Revelation Space starts off with three seemingly unrelated narrative strands that eventually meet—and merge—as the novel progresses. This plot device is characteristic of many of Reynolds's works. The book opens in the year 2551 on Resurgam, a planet considered a backwater on the edge of colonized human space. Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist, leader of the colony, and wealthy scion of a prominent scientific family, leads a team excavating the remains of the Amarantin, a long-dead, 900,000-year-old civilization that once existed on Resurgam. As a violent dust storm threatens to temporarily shut down the excavation, Sylveste discovers new evidence that the entire Amarantin race achieved a much higher level of technological sophistication than was previously known, before they were wiped out in a single mysterious cataclysm. Next, the book jumps back to 2540, where most of the crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity are frozen for the journey to Yellowstone (in the Epsilon Eridani system) in order to find Sylveste. Because information is often decades old by the time it reaches other human settlements in a universe without faster-than-light travel, the crew does not realize it has been more than 15 years since Sylveste left Yellowstone to pursue archaeological work on Resurgam. The Nostalgia for Infinity is an ancient ship that once carried hundreds of thousands, but now its crew is only a handful of Ultras—highly modified humans adapted to the rigors of long interstellar spaceflight. And they're desperate to find Sylveste because their captain has been infected with the Melding Plague, a virus that attacks human cells and machine nanotechnology in equal measure, perverting them into grotesque combinations. It's believed that only the technological expertise of the Sylveste family can help cure the captain. Meanwhile, in 2524 in Chasm City, Yellowstone, professional assassin Ana Khouri is hired by a mysterious figure known as The Mademoiselle to infiltrate the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity as it reaches orbit around Yellowstone. Khouri's new employer knows the ship will follow Sylveste to the edge of human space in an attempt to find a cure for its captain, and gives Khouri explicit orders to kill Sylveste once the Nostalgia for Infinitys crew have found him. Using subterfuge, this new employer is able to arrange a meeting twenty years later between Khouri and one of the ship's triumvirs, Ilia Volyova, making it appear as though the meeting happened by chance. In 2566, after Khouri has successfully infiltrated the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity as the ship's new gunnery officer, the ship arrives in orbit around Resurgam. Desperate to secure Sylveste's expertise to help cure their captain, triumvirs Volyova, Sajaki and Hegazi demand the fledgling Resurgam civilisation turn Sylveste over to them. When the government of the small human colony baulks, Volyova reminds them of the power at the disposal of her massive ship by apparently wiping out one of the planet's settlements with a single discharge of the Infinitys weapons. Fearing the consequences of defying the Ultras for a second time, and knowing full well the starship is capable of destroying all human life on the planet, Resurgam's government hands over Sylveste, who travels to orbit accompanied by his wife, Pascale. Once aboard, however, Sylveste turns the tables—he informs the triumvirs that he has antimatter bombs hidden inside the implants in his artificial eyes. A detonation from one of those anti-matter bombs would be enough to destroy the Nostalgia for Infinity. Emboldened, Sylveste makes a deal with the crew—he will attempt to cure their captain in exchange for them using their ship to bring him closer to Cerberus, a planet near Resurgam that carried particular significance for the Amarantin civilisation. As Sylveste and the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity approach Cerberus, Sylveste realizes the massive celestial body isn't a planet at all—but rather, a massive technological beacon, aimed at alerting machine sentience to the appearance of new star-faring cultures. It is this beacon, Sylveste belatedly realises, that alerted a machine intelligence known as the Inhibitors to the presence of the Amarantin, and ultimately caused the demise of that race. The beacon begins to activate and Sylveste detonates the bombs in his eyes to destroy the facility."
204,The Guns of the South,fantasy," It is January 1864, and the Confederacy is losing the war against the United States. Men with strange accents and oddly mottled clothing approach Robert E. Lee at the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia, demonstrating a rifle far superior to all other firearms of the time. The men call their organization ""America Will Break"" (or ""AWB""), and offer to supply the Confederate army with these rifles, which they refer to as AK-47s. The weapons operate on chemical and engineering principles unknown to Confederate military engineers. Soldiers are trained by the AWB men to use their new weapons, and ammunition is issued. Confederate morale improves considerably as the men prepare to meet Union forces in the 1864 campaign. They soon engage General Grant's men at the Battle of the Wilderness, and inflict a devastating defeat on Union forces. The AWB establish a base in the little town of Rivington, making it into a combined fortress and arsenal. They continue to offer inexplicable information and technology to the Confederacy, even providing Lee with nitroglycerin pills, which ease his frequent chest pains. Finally, Lee questions their leader, Andries Rhoodie, who ultimately decides to tell Lee the truth. The men of AWB are time travelers from the year 2014, the 21st-century. The newcomers claim that white supremacy has not endured to the modern era, and that blacks in the future will eclipse whites. Lee is informed that unless a slave-holding South is allowed to endure into the 20th century, blacks will take over the world. A slave-owner himself, Lee is surprised by this revelation—he never thought Negroes capable of participating in government. With the AWB's guns and some direct military aid from the racist South Africans, the Army of Northern Virginia drives Ulysses Grant's forces out of Virginia and in a surprise night attack captures Washington, D.C., thus ending the Civil War. The United Kingdom and France recognize the Confederacy and President Lincoln is forced to accept Southern victory. As Confederate forces begin to end their occupation of Washington, the new country starts to determine its future social and political direction. In negotiations between the two Americas, to which Lee is made a representative for the CSA, the United States agrees to pay millions of dollars in reparations, albeit reluctantly. The Confederacy, in turn, gives up any claim to Maryland and West Virginia. After much debate, both sides agree for Kentucky and Missouri to hold elections and determine whether they will remain in the Union or secede. Supporters, both official and unofficial, pour into both states and try to sway voters their way. Ultimately, despite an assassination attempt on Lee by a former slave and efforts at rigging elections by the Rivington men, Kentucky secedes and Missouri remains in the Union. Confederate slaves freed during the war by Union troops violently resist returning to slavery. Lee, already dubious about slavery and respectful of the courage of the United States Colored Troops during the war, becomes convinced that continuing to enslave Negroes is both wrong and impracticable. The genie is already out of the bottle, and black guerrillas will continue to make trouble in the future. Some parts of the South had already lost many of their slaves during the war anyway. Despite threats by the Rivington men, Lee makes no effort to hide his views as he runs for president in 1867. The Rivington men convince Nathan Bedford Forrest to run against Lee on a pro-slavery ticket, and pour their considerable resources into Forrest's campaign. When Lee manages a narrow victory, Forrest respectfully concedes defeat and promises to help rally the young nation behind its new president. At Lee's inauguration, AWB men attempt to assassinate him using Uzis, resulting in the death of Lee's wife, Mary; his vice president, Albert Gallatin Brown; various dignitaries and generals; and many civilians. The AWB offices in Richmond are seized after a fierce battle, and Lee enters the stronghold to find more technological marvels (such as light bulbs), along with a collection of books that document the increasing marginalization of racism from 1865 into the 21st century. Lee shows these books to Confederate congressmen, hoping that the future's nearly universal condemnation of slavery will convince the congressmen to vote for his plan for gradual abolition. Confederate forces surround Rivington and after a long siege capture the town. Confederate infantry destroy the AWB's time machine during the fighting, prompting the rest to lose hope and surrender. Andries Rhoodie is killed by an enraged slave, who the Confederates, well aware of the Rivington men's cruelty and treason, spare. In Richmond, the Confederate Congress passes President Lee's abolition bill. Contemporaries have reproduced the nitroglycerin pills brought by the AWB, and Lee hopes, with their help, to live to see the effects of his plan for emancipation. Meanwhile, a few of the stranded South Africans agree to help the Confederacy replicate their 21st century technology from 2014, helping Lee to counter the Union's own replica AK-47's and greater industrial strength. Though the Union has started a war with the British Empire by invading Canada and Lee fears the Union may attempt a war of revenge against the CSA in the future, he rests assured that the CSA will remain the most technologically-advanced nation in the world for many decades to come."
205,Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar,fantasy," In the previous novel Tarzan and Jane's son, Jack Clayton, a.k.a. Korak, had come into his own. In this novel Tarzan returns to Opar, the source of the gold where a lost colony of fabled Atlantis is located, in order to make good on some financial reverses he has recently suffered. While Atlantis itself sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago, the workers of Opar continued to mine all of the gold, which means there is a rather huge stockpile but which is now lost to the memory of the Oparians and only Tarzan knows its secret location. A greedy, outlawed Belgian army officer, Albert Werper, in the employ of a criminal Arab, secretly follows Tarzan to Opar. There, John Clayton loses his memory after being struck on the head by a falling rock in the treasure room during an earthquake. On encountering La, the high priestess who is the servant of the Flaming God of Opar, and who is also very beautiful, Tarzan once again rejects her love which enrages her and she tries to have Tarzan killed; she had fallen in love with the apeman during their first encounter and La and her high priests are not going to allow Tarzan to escape their sacrificial knives this time. In the meanwhile, Jane has been kidnapped by the Arab and wonders what is keeping her husband from once again coming to her rescue. A now amnesiac Tarzan and the Werper escape from Opar, bearing away the sacrificial knife of Opar which La and some retainers set out to recover. There is intrigue and counter intrigue the rest of the way."
206,Faces in the Moon,fantasy," The novel begins in present time. Lucie returns to her mothers house when Gracie has fallen ill. While her mother is in the hospital, Lucie stays at Gracies house, and her memories take her back to different parts of her childhood. We are offered a glimpse into a very bleak reality. Lucie is required, at the age of four, to make breakfast for Gracie and her current boyfriend, J.D. One morning while Gracie is sleeping off the drinking from the previous night, J.D. begins to verbally abuse Lucie. He mimics her; he tells her shes trash and so is her mother. All of this is being said while the four year old makes him breakfast. After J.D. sexually molests her, Gracie decides to take Lucie to the farm to stay with Lizzie. Unaware of the abuse, she only sees that J.D. is upset with Lucies lack of respect for two years, and most of the novel takes place during this time. It is here that Lucie hears more stories of her heritage. Arriving a child wise beyond her years to the pain of the world, Lucie's time at the farm allows her to learn how to be a child, to play, to pretend.Voices from the Gaps: Women Artists and Writers of Color, An International Website. ©2004 Regents of the University of Minnesota. http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Critique/review_fiction/faces_in_the_moon_by_betty_louise_bell.html Accessed 20 April 2008. It is Lizzie, a ""full-blooded"" woman, who mediates the young girl's relationship to the traditional past. Lizzie not only represents an alternative to Gracie's dissolute lifestyle, but she also helps preserve the history and meaning of the lives of the women in the family by telling and retelling stories imbued with what she thinks it means to be an Indian woman. Years later, when Gracie is hospitalized, Lucie returns to Oklahoma, and with her return come the memories of childhood.Sanchez, Greg. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 268-269. University of Nebraska Press, 1994."
207,Magic Moon,fantasy," Kim is an average German schoolboy who hates math but loves to read the latest copy of Star Fighter. His daydreaming life spirals into a nightmare when his parents inform him that his little sister Rebecca has fallen into a mysterious coma after her appendicectomy. A visitor from the realm of Magic Moon, the wizard Themistocles, tells him there is only one way to free her from the enchantment of eternal sleep: Kim himself must travel into the land of dreams and save her from the dark wizard Boraas, who has captured her soul. So his next dream pulls Kim into Magic Moon, where he must fly a spaceship, disguise himself as a dark warrior, fight dangerous monsters and fantastical creatures, and journey ever-onward through forests and mountains to the end of the world, only to find out that the answer to saving Rebecca – and Magic Moon – lies within himself."
208,Epic,fantasy," Epic follows the life of a boy named Erik and his involvement in a game called Epic. Epic is a virtual game, but is considered by all the inhabitants of New Earth as much more. A generic fantasy game, Epic echoes World of Warcraft and Everquest, but the entire population of New Earth play the game, as its rewards directly affect their income, social standing and careers. Epic is used to control violence, which, in their society, is illegal and is treated with extreme severity. A growing injustice has emerged in the world, as the game of Epic has progressed to a point where, since the game's currency is used as money in the real world, it is nearly impossible for poor people to actually advance in the game, unless given money by those who inherited wealth and powerful equipment, or finding treasures. Poor citizens of New Earth play their entire life, slowly building up their characters to try to become powerful enough to go to a university to study Epic, or - if they choose - to study fields of real life. If a community wishes to redress a perceived injustice, they may challenge Central Allocations or C. A., which is a powerful, select group of nine individuals that controls all of the world's resources and funds the most powerful characters in the game world. All of the members of C. A. are extremely rich, which results in them having nearly unbeatable characters in the game, especially to the great number of weak players in the game. The challenges are held in a special arena where the various players can attack each other. The challenges are simply a fight to the last man between the two opposing teams. If you win against the Central Allocations team, then you get what you want, be it a new law, a medical procedure, or a material object. If you lose, though, then you lose everything your character owns (including items and money) and you have to begin all over again. Dying in the game outside of the arena where challenges are held also yields the same results, so dying is a disaster, meaning that however many hours you have played are completely wasted, and you have to begin again from scratch. The story opens with Erik determined to obtain revenge for the unjust treatment of his parents. Unknown to Erik, his father, Harald, was exiled because he hit another person (Ragnok, a future member of Central Allocations). Ragnok was trying to assault Harald's wife in a way that is never explained fully in the book, but seems to have some sexual implications. Having escaped from exile, Harald had hidden in a small out-of-the-way community with his wife, during which they have Erik. In order to help his local friends, Harald challenges Central Allocations hoping to remain unknown to them, but his character is identified and he is exiled once more. Before these events, Erik had become fed up with the game, squandering many lives of his avatars in fighting Inry'aat, the Red Dragon, who guards a massive treasure hoard. Most of these attempts are spent trying to figure out a quick way to defeat the dragon. As an expression of his discontent with the world, Erik had gone against convention in making a human female avatar, which he named Cindella and had deliberatly chosen an almost unknown character class, swashbuckler. He put all of his ability points into beauty, which most players consider a waste, as beauty has no benefit in battle. This, incidently, is the cause for the bland, gray characters that predominate in Epic. But curiously, the tale takes a twist and Erik inherits much wealth from his investment in beauty as the game itself begins to respond to his unique avatar. As a result and freed by the plight of his parents from having to play the game in the usual, risk-avoiding grind, Erik dares to dream he can kill the red dragon and with its wealth, challenge the power of C. A. With his friends' help and one of his strategies from studying Inry'aat, the red dragon is indeed slain, and as a result Erik and his friends become some of the richest and most famous characters in all of Epic. Each of the group gains about four million bezants, which amounts to more wealth than they could earn in over a thousand years of normal play. This victory propels the teenagers into a series of unexpected encounters including with an evil vampyre; the Executioner of C. A.; a sinister Dark Elf and the Avatar of the game itself. The Avatar and the vampyre play a central role in the plot, as they are the opposing sides of the persona that the game itself inexplicably developed. The Avatar represents the game's desire to end its existence and save the people of New Earth, while the vampyre reflects its desire to simply continue existing. They balance each other out in the final conflict of the book, leaving Erik to revolutionise his world by ending the game of Epic."
209,Dragon,fantasy," The plot cuts between three timelines. The first timeline follows Vlad's actions at the final battle of a war he has joined. The second follows the events that lead up to the battle. The third marks the events after the battle. Each chapter begins in the first timeline, then switches to the second, while several interludes and the epilogue trace the third. Several weeks after the events of Taltos, the Dragon wizard Baritt is killed. Morrolan then hires Vlad to protect a cache of Morganti weapons in Baritt's home. Vlad sees to the job with the help of a psychic Hawklord named Daymar. When one of the weapons, an unremarkable greatsword, is stolen, Vlad traces the theft to Fornia, an ambitious Dragonlord who neighbors Morrolan's domain. Morrolan is not sure whether the weapon is actually valuable, or if the theft is merely an excuse to start a war, but he resolves to fight Fornia regardless. When Fornia sends a few thugs to intimidate Vlad at his home (a big taboo for Jhereg in the Organization), Vlad recklessly offers his help to Morrolan in the upcoming war. Vlad and Morrolan attend Baritt's funeral service, where they meet Fornia. The two sides square off and Morrolan delivers the necessary insult to start the war. Vlad insults Fornia as well, publicly committing himself to the war. After the conversation, Morrolan deduces that Fornia values the stolen sword for some reason. To learn more, Morrolan takes Vlad to meet a Serioli. The Serioli tells them that the stolen sword might be a Great Weapon, and that Vlad's magical chain, Spellbreaker, is a piece of a Great Weapon as well. Vlad leaves his operation in the hands of his lieutenant, Kragar, and joins Morrolan's army. Morrolan places him in Cropper Company, an elite unit consisting mostly of Dragonlords, which he places in the vanguard so that Vlad will be close to Fornia's base of operations. Vlad mixes with his fellow soldiers and finds that most of them are surprisingly courteous despite their personal distaste for Easterners. Vlad adjusts to military life and has long conversations about soldiering, military philosophy, and the differences between Dragons and Jhereg. During the first battle, Vlad finds that he cannot bring himself to abandon his new comrades as he had planned. Throughout the campaign he fights bravely and takes several wounds, earning the respect of his comrades. He also makes a name for himself by performing a few acts of nighttime sabotage in the enemy camp, which he finds more suited to his skills than pitched combat. The final battle begins, which is the start of the first timeline. Vlad avoids the fighting and infiltrates the enemy base. He openly approaches Fornia and his honor guard, who take him prisoner. Vlad summons Daymar in an effort to mind-read Fornia's plans, but Fornia blocks him. As Morrolan's forces near, one of Vlad's comrades arrives to help him. Fornia becomes distracted and Vlad leads his small band in a charge at Fornia's position. Vlad kills Fornia's main sorcerer while his comrade attacks Fornia and is killed by the Morganti greatsword. Vlad kills Fornia, tosses the greatsword towards Morrolan, and runs. In the third timeline, Vlad has returned home from war. He learns that Sethra the Younger picked up the greatsword and claimed it as spoils of war, but she could not discover any hidden power within it. She has given up and wants to trade the greatsword for the sword of Kieron the Conqueror, which is now owned by Morrolan's cousin Aliera. Vlad reluctantly arranges a meeting at his house, but the meeting quickly turns violent. Vlad summons Morrolan, who crosses Blackwand with Sethra's greatsword. The greatsword shatters, revealing within it the shortsword Pathfinder, a Great Weapon. Sethra is sprawled by the blow, and Aliera uses the opportunity to accept Sethra's original proposal and take Pathfinder for herself."
210,Crossroads of Twilight,fantasy," Perrin Aybara continues trying to rescue his wife Faile Bashere, kidnapped by the Shaido Aiel, even resorting to torturing prisoners for information. In addition, Perrin is approached with the suggestion of alliance with the Seanchan, at least on a temporary basis, to defeat the Shaido. Mat Cauthon continues trying to escape Seanchan-controlled territory while courting Tuon, the Daughter of the Nine Moons, the woman whom he has kidnapped and who, it has been prophesied, will become his wife. Mat discovers that Tuon is a sul'dam and can be taught to channel the One Power. Elayne Trakand continues trying to solidify her hold on the Lion Throne of Andor. Also it is revealed that she is expecting twins, but the identity of the father (Rand) is kept secret from others. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, rests after the ordeal of cleansing the One Power. He sends Davram Bashere, Logain Ablar, and Loial to negotiate a truce with the Seanchan. They return at the end of the book to tell him that the Seanchan have accepted the truce, but demand the presence of the Dragon Reborn to meet with the Daughter of the Nine Moons (who, it is known, is not with the Seanchan, foreshadowing a trap). Egwene leads the rebel Aes Sedai in maintaining the siege of Tar Valon. At the end of the book, she is kidnapped by agents of the White Tower after successfully blocking the River Port at the White Tower."
211,Thorn Ogres of Hagwood,fantasy," The Werlings, small creatures with the ability to transform into animals, suddenly find themselves thrust into a battle to overthrow the High Lady of the Hollow Hill, Rhiannon, whose servants are the monstrous thorn ogres."
212,Geis of the Gargoyle,fantasy," SUMMARY: Seeking a spell that will restore the polluted river Swan Knee to a state of purity, guardian Gary Gargoyle finds himself face-to-face with the Good Magician Humfrey."
213,Tithe : A Modern Faerie Tale,fantasy," Tithe follows the story of sixteen-year-old American Kaye Fierch, a young nomad who tours the country with her mother's rock band. The book begins in Philadelphia, at a gig her mother's band Stepping Razor is playing in a seedy bar in Philadelphia. After her mother's boyfriend and guitarist, Lloyd, attempts to stab her mother under the enchantment of Nephamael (a knight of the Unseelie Court) her mother takes her back to Kaye's grandmother's house in New Jersey to stay. Once at her grandmother's house, Kaye begins to look for her old ""imaginary"" friends she had during her childhood, faeries named Lutie-Loo, Spike, and Gristle. However, she fails to find them and, begins to suspect that they were simply figments of her imagination. Her suspicions dissolve when she finds and saves the life of Roiben, a faerie knight, by pulling an iron-tipped arrow from his chest. In return, he grants her three truthfully answered questions about anything she chooses, which she does not immediately use. Soon after this, Spike and Lutie-Loo contact her and warn her that Roiben is a murderer who has killed Gristle. As revenge, Kaye tricks Roiben into telling her his full name (she later learns that faeries can be controlled by their true names). Later on, her friends tell her that she is a changeling and that she should keep her human appearance, because the Unseelie Court wishes to use her as a ""Tithe"" in order to bind the Solitary Fey to the Court's queen, Nicnevin. Since Kaye is not mortal, the ritual will be forfeit, and the fey whom the Unseelie Court wishes to bind will go free. Kaye attempts to control her newfound abilities by enlisting the help of a Kelpie to teach her how to use magic. She is soon kidnapped by a group of fairies, as planned and is taken to the Unseelie Court to go through the sacrificial ceremony. Before the ceremony Roiben takes her to be prepared, having a dress made for her and allowing her to stay with him the night, where they acknowledge their feelings for one another. At the climax of the ceremony, Kaye uses Roiben's name to order him to free her from her bonds before she is killed, resulting in a bloodbath between Roiben and the court before they flee safely. In the process, he kills the queen of the Unseelie Court and many of her guards. Kaye and Roiben spend the day at Kaye's home, and discover that strange events are affecting the mortal world. Odd reports of mauling and kidnappings are reported on the news and Roiben makes Kaye understand that this is a result of the solitary fey being free for the next seven years. Kaye receives a call from her friend Janet, inviting her to come to a Halloween rave held at the waterfront, she tries to persuade her not to go but fails. After a failed attempt to receive help from her ""imaginary"" faerie friends, Roiben and Kaye attend the rave. They are separated, and Kaye successfully locates her friends, but briefly leaves them to apologize to Janet's boyfriend for bewitching him earlier in the novel. However, she finds that the kelpie who lives near the waterfront has taken Janet into the water to kill her. In the novel, it is suggested that Janet went with him out of loneliness and a desire to get revenge on her boyfriend for going off with Kaye. Kaye follows but is too late and she manages to convince the kelpie to relinquish her body. Roiben finds Kaye mourning for her friend and gets her home. The next morning, she and Roiben travel to the Seelie Court's camp some distance away to see if Corny is there. They reach a dead end, but discover that the knight (Nephamael) has proclaimed himself the king of the Unseelie Court. Roiben is suspicious of the situation and thinks that it is a trap for Kaye and him. Later, Roiben's suspicions are proved correct when they enter the Unseelie Court. Nephamael, who had discovered Roiben's true name from Spike before killing him, uses it to take control over Roiben. He orders him to seize Kaye, but Roiben uses trickery to let her get away. Kaye then devises a plan to poison Nephamael, while Corny and Roiben amuse him. She goes through with it; however, before Nephamael is dead, the Seelie Queen arrives, hoping to take over the court (right after her arrival Corny goes insane and stabs Nephamael multiple times, ultimately killing him). Roiben prevents the Queen's takeover attempt by claiming the throne as his."
214,The Immortals,fantasy," The story is set approximately 500 years after Freeglader. The Edge is much different from previous novels, with the advent of the Third Age of Flight, using stormphrax crystals as a source of power (stormphrax is highly volatile, gaining weight when in darkness and becoming unstable when in light. Twilight is the level of light needed for neutrality.). Three main settlements have arisen in the Deepwoods: Great Glade, Hive, and Riverrise. The protagonist is Nate Quarter, a lowly miner of phraxcrystals. Nate's father was the past mine sergeant before he died in a suspicious accident involving Grint Grayle, the present mine sergeant. Grayle is corrupt and only thinks about lining his own pockets. He doesn't care whether the people in his mine live or die. Late in the day after a hard day's work, Nate and his friend Rudd, a cloddertrog, leave the mine and go to a tavern which is made out of two skewered sky ships. It is a very friendly establishment. Nate and his friends are enjoying the evening drinking when suddenly the owner of the mine bursts in and tries to kill Nate. He has been trying to do this for three years. He does not succeed; instead Nate's friend Rudd is killed with a phraxpistol. Then some of the mining guards chase Nate into the woods and he hides there for a while. After this Nate returns to the mine and wakes his friend Slip, a gray goblin who sweeps the mine. Nate asks him to collect a few things from his dormitory while he goes to sort a few things out. While the goblin goes off, Nate sneaks into the mine building. He discovers a secret passage and uncovers a vast amount of wealth which the mine sergeant has built up over the three years. Nate gets discovered by the mine sergeant, secretly adjusts a light and leaves the building. When he meets up with the goblin they hide in a cart and the mine HQ blows up. Nate had planned this. They get on a steamer and buy passage to Great Glade on a ship called the Deadbolt Vulpoon. About a week later they arrive in Great Glade. Not much happens on the journey except that Nate makes friends with a man called ""The Professor"" because he calls history out to the people in the boxes in the gaming room for money. When they dock in Great Glade (formerly called the Free Glades but now split into 12 districts) they borrow a prowlgrin and set off to find work, finding the owner of the mine they used to work in. They arrive at the house of the mine owner, Galston Prade, and try to speak to him. Instead they speak to his secretary, the dishonest Felftis Brack, because he refuses to see them. The secretary appears to be shocked at what Nate tells him and says that the mine owner will be told as soon as possible. They leave, still feeling a little anxious. They proceed to travel to Cloud Quarter which houses the academies. Nate tries to speak to his dead mother's uncle, the High Professor of Flight, to persuade him to lend money or find him a place to work, but he is obnoxious and hostile, so Nate leaves angrily. They travel to a posting pole (like the ones in old Undertown, but they don't post up places on Sky Ships, they post up work around the 12 districts). They find one in a stilt shop and travel to it. When they are let through the doors a heavily coated figure opens the gate and lets them in. This figure is later revealed to be a banderbear, Weelum. Nate and the grey goblin go up and talk to the secretary of the man who runs the workshop, asking him for work, but because they have no experience working in stilt shops, he turns them away. Disappointed, they turn around, but the owner sees them and asks Nate to fix a lantern on his desk. He obliges, and the owner is pleased and rewards them by offering them both a job, accommodation and 60 gladers each per month, which they both gladly accept. Six months pass. Nate has become close friends with Galston's daughter, Eudoxia Prade. She was originally friends with Branxford Drew, the son of the stilt shop owner, but she came to dislike him because he stole from his father and was obnoxious and spoiled. She and Nate become good, close friends. Earlier when Nate was at the Lake Landing Academy, he came across a picture of Rook and made a connection between Rook and himself. On the evening before the thousand stick match, Nate is called to Friston Drew's office and is given an offer which he finds hard to believe. Friston Drew offers the inheritance of the company to Nate, as well as Nate being his junior partner in the business. On the day of the thousand stick match, Nate is enjoying the game, when suddenly a noise like thunder ripples across the sky, coming from the Copperwood district. Nate is about to win the game, when Drew's son throws him off the pole after confessing that he set up the plot to kill his father, after hearing the father's offer to him. Nate wakes up in the grey goblin's garden shed. They are hiding from the city's watch. They determine what happened and decide to leave Great Glade and travel to Hive, where the ""Professor's"" brother used to attend the Sumpwood Bridge Academy. They travel to the man who is going to take them to Midwood Decks, a settlement where they can charter a ship to Hive. As they leave the Great Glade they are shot down and are forced to continue the journey on foot. On the journey the Banderbear makes a shelter for them every night, but during their journey they are attacked by Wig Wigs. Nate manages to fight them off by using sky crystals to scare the Wig Wigs away. They then reach Midwood Docks where they meet a pilot that drives a sumpwood vehicle called the Varis Lodd. The vehicle is reminiscent of the flight machines in the second age of flight. They witness a pro hiver murder another citizen and escape as quickly as they can. When they reach Hive they go to the Sumpwood Academy and stay there, while trying to find Eudoxia's father. In this period they find out that he has been captured by the Gyle goblins and their Gross Mother. To rescue him they steal some military outfits but during the escape they are seen by a drill sergeant and are drafted into the military, where they are trained for the battle with the Great Glade. When they reach Midwood Docks they fight the Great Glade army, while the Hive army is all but wiped out and Eudoxia had been shot above the ear. After Nate is knocked out at Midwood Decks, he wakes up on a sky ship heading to Riverrise, because it is the only place that can heal Eudoxia's wound as it is slowly killing her. On the journey the ship is described and landmarks are pointed out and Keris, Twig's daughter, is mentioned as they go over the lake where she met the Great Blueshell Clam, as she is the only being other than the Webfoot Goblins to meet with it. They get to the Thorn Gate and the librarian scholar leaves them to tell Eudoxia's father of her fate. Nate and a waif guide travel to the city of Riverrise where they meet two gabtrolls and travel together. When they get to Riverrise it is revealed that the two gabtrolls work for Golderayce, the absolute ruler of Riverrise. A doctor comes and gets the bullet out of Eudoxia's head but needs to give her medicine which, after a couple of weeks, doesn't work. Nate decides to break into the keep to get pure Riverrise water instead of the less powerful stuff that they have to live with. Nate breaks in with the gabtrolls' help but Goldrayce finds out and pursues him. Just as he is about to kill Nate with a dart, a caterbird knocks the dart back which kills Goldrayce. Nate reaches the spring where he sees a gravestone for Maugin the stone pilot, and meets up with Twig Verginix and Rook Barkwater. It is revealed that Twig was flown back to Riverrise by the Caterbird after being mortally wounded during the battle with the Tower of Night. Upon his arrival he saw his former Stone Pilot, Maugin - but jealous of his love for her, Golderayce killed her just before they were reunited. He then goaded Twig with the fact that they would never be together again. Years later Rook traveled to Riverrise to see if Twig was waiting for him, and was ambushed. He managed to shoot Golderayce, hence leaving him the way he looks. Twig and Rook lived there for years, waiting for Nate to reach them. When he did, a great storm came that picked up both Twig and Rook and there, waiting for them, was the young Quintinius Verginix. Nate managed to escape, and released the healing waters of Riverrise. Eudoxia is healed, as well as Galston Prade who was dying of phraxlung, a cough contracted in the phraxmines, where Galston once worked. They return home where they meet their friends, and they travel towards the Edge where Old Undertown used to be. Along the way they meet two Shrykes, which tell them they are heading to a city of shiny spires. It turns out to be Sanctaphrax, which had blown back to where it was after Twig cut the Anchor Chain. It looked exactly as it did before, and the group are eager to explore it. When they reach the landing, they are greeted by Linius Pallitax the former Most High Academe, which worries the Professor, as he knows that Linius Pallitax had died after the fire in his Palace. The Professor visits the library where he meets his brother. They then discover that all the people on the rock are gloamglozers, created by the original which hunted Twig, and while the Professor's brother describes it, he is killed. The original gloamglozer plans to kill Nate when he realizes that Nate is related to Quint, whom he swore to destroy, and releases him. The gloamglozer reveals his illusion; Sanctaphrax is actually in an advanced state of ruin. The Caterbird saves Nate and takes the old painting of Quint. Shortly afterward, three golden objects fall down which the gloamglozers are attracted to, and it is then that Quint, Twig and Rook emerge. Quint, Rook and Twig kill the gloamglozers. Nate then talks to Quint, Twig and Rook. They explain that none of them had a proper death; Quint disappeared into a storm, Twig and Rook lived as immortals. Gloamglozers were attracted to them because of the years of pain they'd had. Shortly afterward they disappear again, after telling Nate that their stories were over, but his is just beginning. It is revealed that the Edge has always been seeded with life, by glisters. The first glister became the Sanctaphrax rock. The second became the great Blueshell clam. The third became the Caterbird. All life began this way, except the gloamglozer, and with its creation came the disease affecting flight rocks, known as stone sickness. Nate and the Professor both decide to go over the Edge. The others stay in the ruins of Sanctaphrax and build the city again as it always should have been. When the city is restored they will bring back its population, and the new Phraxdocks, which are located where Old Undertown used to be. fr:La Guerre du phrax"
215,The Swords of Lankhmar,fantasy," The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In The Swords of Lankhmar the duo is hired by the city of Lankhmar to protect its grain fleets, which have fallen prey to a mysterious threat. A sea serpent ridden by an explorer from another world is encountered, but the true foes prove to be legions of intelligent rats. Returning to Lankhmar, the protagonists find the whole city under siege by the rats. The Mouser, magically shrunken to rat size, spies out their plans, but the rats' victory appears certain until the intervention of the Gods of Lankhmar and the rats' own ancient enemies."
216,Odalisque,fantasy," The story begins with a slave driver attempting to sell his latest finds, including a foreign captive known only as Lazar. Hot tempered and confident, Lazar invokes his right to a fight to the death that, if he wins, will grant him his freedom. Zar Joreb, Percheron's leader decides to attend the fight and is so impressed by the demonstrated fighting skills that he offers Lazar the elite position of Spur."
217,Queen Ann in Oz,fantasy," At home in Oogaboo, a tiny principality in the northwestern corner of Oz, Queen Ann is restless for a new adventure; she decides to search for her lost parents, King Jol Jemkiph Soforth and Queen Dede Soforth. Her attempt to re-muster her army is a total failure; but four enterprising children are eager to join her search party. They are a girl and three boys, Jody Buttons, Jo Musket, Jo Fountainpen, and Jo Dragon (with his pet Moretomore). Ann also writes to the Shaggy Man, inviting him to meet them on their way. After receiving Ann's letter via mailbird, the Shaggy Man investigates the situation, but with limited success. Glinda's Great Book of Records is surprisingly unhelpful on the location of the missing royals. It follows their activities well enough, up to a point &mdash; then breaks off with a cryptic ""forget it."" Princess Ozma tries to find them in the Magic Picture, but it shows only a pink haze with the inscription ""no data available."" Shaggy meets Ann and her party; they travel to Sand City, ruled by King Lysander and Queen Cassandra. (Puns and word play on ""sand"" flow freely.) A patch of quicksand speeds them on their way. They encounter the overly eager practitioners of Barberville, and spend an idyllic interval at the Friendly Forest. Finally they reach a wall with a gate in it. The gate bears a strange warning: :::::::FORGETVILLE ::::::Beware the The wall surrounds a fog-shrouded village. When the members of the party enter, they lose their memories. Moretomore is immune from the spell, because he carries with him a fragment of his natal eggshell, which prevents him from ever forgetting anything. The little dragon is desperate to help his companions, but doesn't know what to do. Ozma, however, has been monitoring the Shaggy Man's progress, as she told him she would; and she sends Tik-Tok to help. The mechanical man brings the search party members out of Forgetville. The searchers learn to counter the memory spell with forget-me-nots, and they draw the inhabitants out too &mdash; including the lost King and Queen of Oogaboo. They also seek to end the spell on the town. They find and read the journal of Amnesia, the witch who cast the spell. They learn that they can bring the wall down with the ""Ancient Traditional Wall Removal Method."" Shaggy suspects that this is a reference to the story of Jericho. The searchers and townspeople re-enact the siege of Jericho; they march around the city seven times, Jo Musket plays his trumpet, and the multitude shouts at dawn. The wall falls and the spell is broken. Forgetville returns to being the town of Goldendale, as it was before. Ozma arrives with breakfast; together, the characters piece out the story of how Goldendale lost its memory, a tale that involves Jo Jemkiph, the witch Amnesia, and the Love Magnet (from The Road to Oz). Ozma uses the Magic Belt to bring the former Amnesia, now Amy, from Butterfield, Kansas, where the Shaggy Man knew her and stole the Love Magnet from her (closing a story loop with Baum's original books). In the process, the Shaggy Man's true name is revealed: he's Shagrick Mann (but Ozma agrees to keep this knowledge secret). Ann's reunion with her parents is a happy one. The people of Goldendale choose Jol Jemkiph and Dede Soforth as their rulers. Ann remains in power in Oogaboo."
218,The Charwoman's Shadow,fantasy," In Spain, during its Golden Age, a lord wishes to marry his daughter to a neighbor, but has no money for her dowry. He sends his son Ramon to a nearby magician who had befriended his father, in hopes that the son would learn to turn lead to gold. An old charwoman without a shadow works for the magician. The magician persuades him to trade his shadow for the knowledge, and gives him a substitute, and the charwoman who works for the magician laments that. He then learns that his substitute shadow does not grow and shrink as it ought to. His sister sends him a letter asking him to get her a love potion instead. He persuades the magician to teach him that instead, and he compounds it and gives it to his sister. When her betrothed husband arrives with a friend of his, a duke, she gives the potion to the duke, who falls deathly ill. Terrified, she nurses him; he recovers his health, enraged with everyone else, especially her betrothed, but in love with her. Their priest dispels Ramon's false shadow but sends him back to retrieve his own. He tricks the magician into telling him some of the magic words needed to open the box where the shadows are kept, and works out the rest. He takes out his own shadow and tries to find the charwoman's. He goes back to her to tell her that he cannot find it. She tells him that it was the one of a beautiful young girl. He brings it to her, and when they reunite, she is transformed back into that beautiful girl, as if the shadow were casting her. They find that her family is long gone, and Ramon brings her home. With the duke in love with his sister, his father intends to make a grand match for him. Ramon tries to appeal to his sister for help; she refuses to hear him without the duke. Angry, he pours out the story—including that their marriage makes his impossible—and the duke says he will appeal to the king. The king decrees that the charwoman is no longer of lowly origin, and both pairs of lovers marry. The magician sets out through Spain, drawing all creatures of magic and legend with him, and leaves for the Country Beyond the Moon's Rising, thus ending the Golden Age."
219,Where The Wild Things Are,fantasy," A young boy named Max, after dressing in his wolf costume, wreaks havoc through his household and is disciplined by being sent to his bedroom. As he feels agitation with his mother, Max's bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment, and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by malicious beasts known as the ""Wild Things."" After successfully intimidating the creatures, Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and enjoys a playful romp with his subjects; however, he decides to return home, to the Wild Things' dismay. After arriving in his bedroom, Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him."
220,One for the Morning Glory,fantasy," There is a saying in the land that someone who drinks the Wine of the Gods before he is ready is only half a man thereafter. Amatus, the prince, manages to swig down a significant amount of the Wine of the Gods, and his entire left half vanishes. His father, the normally gentle King Boniface, orders the executions of the four people responsible for this travesty—the maid, the alchemist, the witch, and the captain of the guard—and then begins the long and arduous process of interviewing to fill these four positions. A year and a day later, four strangers arrive in the kingdom. This is a magical time, and noted by all as being very auspicious. The strangers are hired by the king and become known as the prince's Companions. The rest of the tale deals with Amatus's growth into manhood, kingship, and love. It is filled with adventure, laughter, tragedy, unexpected reunions and royal pomp."
221,The Eye of Night,fantasy," The narrative concerns the adventures of Jereth, a self-doubting priest, and Hwynn, the young woman who protects the Eye of Night, a jewel that is connected with what appears to be an impending apocalypse. The story is woven with themes of Daoist balance and Christian Resurrection."
222,The Devil and Daniel Webster,fantasy," A local farmer, Jabez Stone, is plagued with unending bad luck, causing him to finally swear that ""it's enough to make a man want to sell his soul to the devil!"" Stone is visited the next day by a stranger, who later identifies himself as ""Mr. Scratch"" and makes such an offer (in exchange for seven years of prosperity), to which Stone agrees. After the seven years, Stone manages to bargain for an additional three years from Mr. Scratch. However, after the additional three years passes, Mr. Scratch refuses to grant Stone any further extension of time. Wanting out of the deal, Stone convinces famous lawyer and orator Daniel Webster to accept his case. At midnight of the appointed date, Mr. Scratch arrives and is greeted by Webster, who presents himself as Stone's attorney. Mr. Scratch tells Webster, ""I shall call upon you, as a law-abiding citizen, to assist me in taking possession of my property,"" and so begins the argument. It goes poorly for Webster, since the signature and the contract are clear, and Mr. Scratch will not agree to a compromise. In desperation Webster thunders, ""Mr. Stone is an American citizen, and no American citizen may be forced into the service of a foreign prince. We fought England for that in '12 and we'll fight all hell for it again!"" To this Mr. Scratch insists on his citizenship citing his presence at the worst events of the USA, concluding that ""though I don't like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours."" A trial is then demanded by Daniel as the right of every American. Mr. Scratch agrees after Daniel says that he can select the judge and jury, ""so it is an American judge and an American jury."" A jury of the damned then enters, ""with the fires of hell still upon them."" They had all done evil, and had all played a part in the USA: *Walter Butler, a Loyalist *Simon Girty, a Loyalist *Indian chief Metacomet, referred to as ""King Philip"" *Governor Thomas Dale *Thomas Morton, a rival of the Plymouth Pilgrims *The pirate Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard *Reverend John SmeetAnderson, Charles R. ""Puzzles and Essays"" from ""The Exchange"" - Trick Reference Questions, p.&nbsp;122: ""In 'The Devil and Daniel Webster' by Stephen Vincent Benét, there is a character named the Reverend John Smeet. Was this a real person? :Mrs. Stephen Vincent Benét (1960), in a letter to the New York Times Book Review, claimed that the good reverend was entirely imaginary. Mrs. Benet explained that her husband occasionally used to insert imaginary people into his writings. Benet even quoted from a made-up person named John Cleveland Cotton. He went so far as to write an apocryphal biographical note about Cotton that ended up in Marion King's Books and People (King, 1954). In this Benet anticipated authors Tim Powers and James Blaylock, who created a poet named William Ashbless."" After five other unnamed jurors enter (Benedict Arnold not among them, he being out ""on other business""), the ""Judge"" enters last &ndash; John Hathorne, the infamous and unrepentant executor of the Salem witch trials. The trial is rigged against Webster. Finally he is on his feet ready to rage, without care for himself or Stone, but catches himself before he begins to speak: he sees in the jurors' eyes that they want him to act thus. He calms himself, ""for it was him they'd come for, not only Jabez Stone."" Webster starts to orate on all of simple and good things—""the freshness of a fine morning...the taste of food when you're hungry...the new day that's every day when you're a child""—and how ""without freedom, they sickened."" He speaks passionately of how wonderful it is to be a man, and to be an American. He admits the wrongs done in the USA, but argues that something new and good had grown from it, ""and everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors."" Mankind ""got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey,"" something ""no demon that was ever foaled"" could ever understand. The jury announces its verdict: ""We find for the defendant, Jabez Stone."" They admit that, ""Perhaps 'tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence, but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster."" The judge and jury disappear with the break of dawn. Mr. Scratch congratulates Webster and the contract is torn up. Webster then grabs the stranger and twists his arm behind his back, ""for he knew that once you bested anybody like Mr. Scratch in fair fight, his power on you was gone."" Webster makes him agree ""never to bother Jabez Stone nor his heirs or assigns nor any other New Hampshire man till doomsday!"" Mr. Scratch offers to tell Webster's fortune in his palm. He foretells Webster's failure to ever become President, the death of Webster's sons, and the backlash of his last speech, warning ""Some will call you Ichabod,"" as in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem in reaction to the speech. All the predictions the devil makes are based on actual events of Daniel Webster's life: he did have ambitions to become President, his sons died in war, and as a result of Webster's controversial ""Seventh of March Speech"", in which he supported the Compromise of 1850, many in the North considered him a traitor. Webster takes all the predictions in stride, and asks only if the Union will prevail. Scratch reluctantly admits that, though a war will be fought for it, the United States will remain united. Webster then laughs and kicks him out of the house. It is said that the devil never did come back to New Hampshire afterward."
223,A Wild Sheep Chase,fantasy," This mock-detective tale follows an unnamed Japanese man through Tokyo and Hokkaidō in 1978. The passive, chain-smoking main character gets swept away on an adventure that leads him on a hunt for a sheep that hasn’t been seen for years. The apathetic protagonist meets a woman with magically seductive ears and a strange man who dresses as a sheep and talks in slurs; in this way there are elements of Japanese animism or Shinto. The manipulation of the narrator into the hunt and repeated references to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes raise connections to ""The Red-Headed League."""
224,The Born Queen,fantasy," In this final novel of the series, Anne Dare, finally on the throne of Crotheny, goes to war with both the Church and the powerful northern nation of Hansa. Her eldritch powers continue to grow and threaten to overwhelm her. The monk Stephen Darige, now aligned with the Blood Knight, attempts to fulfill his role in an ancient prophecy, while the Holter Aspar White continues to battle abominations and save his forest, while trying to understand the mysteries surrounding him. Meanwhile the dessrator Cazio is rescued by and reunited with his mentor, the swordmaster z'Accato. Queen Muriele and the now badly injured Sir Neil MeqVren are sent by Anne to Hansa on a mission of peace, while they covertly look for a way to defeat them."
225,The Vor Game,fantasy," Miles graduates from the Academy, and is upset to learn he is being sent to replace the weather officer at the Empire's winter infantry training base on remote Kyril Island, to see if he can handle the discipline and military routine. Miles refuses to obey what he deems a criminal order by the base commander, who has him arrested for mutiny, and as he is Vor, treason. He is quickly returned to the capital and sequestered in the bowels of Imperial Security (ImpSec) by Simon Illyan, who, along with his father, conclude that Miles had behaved correctly, but that they have larger problems than insubordinate Vorlings. Young Emperor Gregor has disappeared while on a diplomatic mission to Komarr. Miles, traveling to the Hegen Hub on an unrelated mission for ImpSec, is framed for murder and arrested. While in custody, he is startled to find Gregor, who tells him that he ran away from the embassy on Komarr, but was then shanghaied as a technician by an unscrupulous ship owner. Miles complicates matters in an attempt to extricate Gregor, and is soon up to his neck in a mysterious plot involving an amoral femme fatale, his murderous former Kyril Island commanding officer, and Hub power politics. Miles encounters his mercenary friends and, after outmaneuvering their leaders, resumes command under his Admiral Naismith persona. He is able to rescue Gregor, and as a bonus, unify the Hegen Hub in repelling a Cetagandan invasion fleet, with a little timely help from a Barrayaran fleet co-commanded by his father and Emperor Gregor. Gregor and ImpSec decide to put the Dendarii on permanent secret retainer for covert missions, with Miles officially installed as liaison. Thus begins the portion of Miles' career that ends with his temporary disgrace in Memory."
226,The Sea Came In At Midnight,fantasy," The novel starts at the end of 1999, when Kristin, a teenage drop-out, answers a sexual ad written by a man who calls himself the Occupant. Behind the poetic language of the ad, it is clear that the Occupant is looking for a sexual slave, yet Kristin accepts the pact and goes to live in his house in Los Angeles. The Occupant's job is unclear: he defines himself as an apocalyptologist, and is busy drawing a calendar on the walls of his bedroom, on which he maps all the irrational events following May 1968, which, according to him, define the end-of-the-century in which the novel is set. Their relationship evolves, until, after a climactic moment, the girl understands that she has replaced the Occupant's partner, who disappeared. After this crisis, the Occupant, whose real name is Carl, begins to tell his story. His story is set mostly in Paris, where he met Angie, who will become his partner. Next we hear the story of Angie, whose real name is Saki, the daughter of a Japanese physicist working for a US defense project. She has gone to New York to work as a lap dancer. Her involvement with pornographic films ultimately leads her to be hired by Mitch, who produces snuff films. Angie is saved by Louise, Mitch's wife, and after this event (which takes place immediately before Angie flies to Paris, where she will meet Carl) the novel tells the story of Louise and Mitch, then back to Carl. The stories ultimately reconnect in the ending of the novel."
227,The Trail of Bohu,fantasy," Imaro, warrior of the Ilyassai, has settled into ife as a husband and father in the fabled kingdom of Cush. Amid his growing restlessness, unspeakable tragedy strikes, sending Imaro on a grim mission of vengeance. His adversary has no face, but he does have a name: Bohu, the Bringer of Sorrow – a sorcerer of immense power and cruelty. As Imaro seeks a confrontation with his most formidable foe yet, the continent of Nyumbani is wracked with turmoil. The balance between the forces of good, represented by Cush, and evil, represented by the pariah land of Naama, has been disrupted. The gods themselves may hve to go to war before that balance is restored. In the midst of the coming cataclysm, Imaro travels the length of Nyumbani in search of Bohu. Along the warrior finally discovers his own identity – but will that knowledge help him as he battles a formidable array of enemies bent not only on his destruction but that of Nyumbani itself?"
228,Acorna's World,fantasy," Having come to understand her Linyaari past, Acorna has become a member of the crew of the Condor, a salvage ship. The crew consists of the mildly eccentric Captain Becker, the ship's feline first mate RK (otherwise known as Roadkill), and Aari, a Linyaari who is still scarred physically and emotionally from his capture and subsequent torture by the Khleevi. While searching space for salvage, they come across the wreck of a ship with information indicating that the Khleevi are on the move in that sector of space, and may come to the Linyaari homeworld of Narhii-Viliinyar before long. Acorna and her friends must now warn their people and find a way to stop the oncoming Khleevi horde."
229,Dark Secret,fantasy," Rafael De La Cruz has spent centuries hunting vampires with his brothers, and with each passing year his capacity to feel emotions has grown weaker and weaker until finally there's barely been a memory left-until only sheer willpower keeps him from turning into the very abomination he hunts. But it'll take more than will to keep him away from the woman who is meant to be his and his alone… For five years, rancher Colby Jansen has been the sole protector of her younger half-siblings, and with fierce determination and work she has kept her family together and the ranch operational. Now, the De La Cruz brothers are threatening that stability. They claim that her siblings belong with their father's family, not with her. Colby vows to fight them-especially the cold and arrogant Rafael De La Cruz. But Rafael is after more than her family-he wants Colby and will not let anything stand between them. After ages of loneliness, the raw desire to possess her overwhelms his very soul, driving him to claim her as his life mate,though she has nothing to do with him. When Colby first meets Nicolas De La Cruz, he frightens her but his brother, Rafael De La Cruz, disturbs her. She feels an unknown connection with him."
230,Wyrms,fantasy," King Oruc, fearing Patience or Peace could be a danger to his reign, keeps them under control by allowing only one of them to leave the castle at a time. However, this delicate hostage situation falls apart when Peace becomes ill. Before he dies, Peace cuts into his shoulder to retrieve a crystal globe hidden under his skin. ""The scepter of the Heptarchs,"" he says. ""Never let a gebling know you have it."" Only moments after Peace dies, King Oruc sends an assassin after Patience. She easily dispatches him and leaves the castle, stopping to visit her father's preserved head in Slaves' Hall, where the heads of the wisest people are kept alive by headworms. Since the heads are coerced to speak only the truth, Patience forces her father to divulge his darkest secrets. Peace reveals that since Patience's birth, he had been fighting a powerful compulsion to bring her to Cranning, home of the geblings. The ""Cranning Call,"" as it was known, drew the world's greatest thinkers and achievers to make a pilgrimage to Cranning, never to be seen or heard from again. Peace says the source of the Call is the Unwyrm, attempting to summon Patience to his lair. Outside the castle, Patience feels the Cranning Call and decides she will go to Cranning to challenge the Unwyrm. Even as the Cranning Call becomes stronger and more urgent, she chooses her own routes towards the city in defiance of the Unwyrm's power. Patience, joined by Angel and a massive river woman named Sken, eventually meets Ruin and Reck, twin brother and sister geblings who are together the king of the geblings. All their lives, Ruin and Reck had been repelled from Cranning by the Unwyrm, but the Cranning Call surrounding Patience cancels the repulsion and allows them to travel with her. Will, the silent but strong human who had lived as Reck's slave, joins their party. They stop by a house advertising simply ANSWERS. The owner, a dwelf named Heffiji, gives them a crash course in the strange genetics of Imakulata, in which every native plant or animal derives from a single originating species: a black segmented insect, or wyrm. Heffiji also explains that the scepter Patience had retrieved from her father's shoulder was the mindstone of the gebling king, stolen 300 generations ago by the Heptarch. Surgically implanted, it transfers the memories of the previous owners to the current host while absorbing new memories. Ruin - a skilled surgeon - agrees to insert the crystal into Patience's brain. Patience spends the next 40 days half-crazy, processing the memories of previous Heptarchs and the alien minds of gebling kings. She relives the moment when the Starship Captain, lured through lust to the surface, mates with the Wyrm in its lair beneath a glacier that would later become Cranwater. The Wyrm gave birth to the geblings, dwelfs and gaunts - and then finally to a giant wyrm-like child called Unwyrm. Finally, Patience understands the Cranning Call is summoning her to mate with the Unwyrm, so that he can impregnate her with Kristos, a superior human race. This improved species would outcompete humans as well as the dwelf, gebling, and gaunt variants produced by the first-generation mating between the Wyrm and the Starship Captain, eventually becoming the dominant form of life on Imakulata. Even as her lust for Unwyrm grows, Patience knows she must kill him or the world will be doomed. She explains it all to the rest of her companions, and they continue their journey to meet and hopefully kill Unwyrm before he is able to bring his dark plans to fruition. When it is all over Patience hopes to take her place as Heptarch and unite all of the planet's species together in peace."
231,The Jewels of Aptor,fantasy," In a post-atomic future, when civilization has regressed to something near the Middle Ages, or even before, a young student and poet, Geo, takes a job as a sailor on a boat with a strange passenger, a priestess of the goddess Argo, who is heading toward a mysterious land of mutants and high radiation, called Aptor, presumably to recapture a young priestess of Argo, her daughter, who has been kidnapped by the forces of the dark god Hama."
232,The Sable Quean,fantasy," This book contains the second instance of a creature other than a badger succumbing to the Blood Wrath, the first instance being in the book Mattimeo when Matthias is rescuing his son, Mattimeo. Buckler Kordyne, a Long Patrol hare, has a discussion with Brang Forgefire, Badger Lord of Salamandastron. Buckler is bored with mountain life, so Brang suggests that he visits Redwall Abbey to deliver some new bellropes to the Abbess (Brang had accidentally broken the ropes last time he was there); while Buckler visits the Abbey, he can also visit his brother on his farm, which is nearby. Buckler agrees, taking along with him his gluttonous friend, Subaltern Diggs. At Redwall, a music contest for Bard of Redwall is being organized, however two Dibbuns disappear in the process. The duo, a molebabe and a squirrelmaid, had wandered outside to the woodlands to picnic, but a waiting band of vermin Ravagers bound, gagged, and carried them off before anyone could notice their absence. One of the Ravagers, Globby, is overcome by the temptation of Redwall food and attempts to break inside the kitchens; however, he is captured by Skipper Ruark, who punishes the miscreant by forcing him to clean up the mess he had made by his burglary. In the hue and cry raised when the two Dibbuns were discovered missing, Globby escapes the kitchens and flees to the attics, using a pilfered kitchen knife as a weapon. In the attempt to recapture and interrogate him, both he and Brother Tollum are slain. In Mossflower Woods, Buckler and Diggs hear two vermin from the Ravager horde trying to capture a shrewmaid. Diggs knocks the vermin unconscious, and the two hares sit down to eat, ignoring the shrew because of her ingratitude. After she finally relents, and shares food with them, Buckler deals with the two vermin, who have been making protests. Not heeding his advice, they return later with some of their Ravager buddies to spy on the group. Flib, Diggs, and Buckler join forces with a musical traveling group of Hedgehogs, voles, and moles, who are also on their way to Redwall. When Flib and two of the younger hedgehogs sleep outside the performing company's raft, on the riverbank, they are captured by the Ravagers. As it turns out, many young ones have been captured by the Ravagers, led by Zwilt the Shade and Vilaya, both evil sables. They are keeping the hostages in the remains of Brockhall, which they have renamed Althier, and are planning to use the captives to force Redwall to surrender to their demands. Several of the captive young ones, led by Flandor the otter, Tura the squirrel, and Flib's sister Midda, try without success to figure out a workable escape plan. Many of the young ones are in despair, and would rather concentrate on where their next meal is coming from than ways to get out. Meeting up with the Guosim, led by Flib's father Jango Bigboat, the two hares and the performing company proceed to Redwall. Abbess Marjoram discusses the position with Buckler and several others, who agree to lead a force into Mossflower to search for the young ones. The first search attempt yields the Redwallers with one Ravager captive, and Buckler's badly wounded and almost delirious sister-in-law Clarinna. She informs Buckler that his brother Clerun was brutally slain by Zwilt the Shade, and that his nephew and niece have been taken by the Ravagers. Before Buckler and his searchers can set out again, the Ravagers, led by Vilaya and Zwilt, show up in force at Redwall, and make their demands for surrender. Diggs attempts to use his vermin captive, Gripchun, as a hostage to turn the tables, but Zwilt merely has the unfortunate shot with arrows. The Ravagers then retreat, saying they will return, and that the Redwallers should prepare to surrender to them. Meanwhile, in Vilaya and Zwilt's absence, Flib has roused the captive Dibbuns and young ones into digging an escape tunnel in secret. She and the two inexperienced moles helping her to dig cause a cave in, which collapses part of the prison chamber and traps the trio in the landslide. Fortunately for Flib, Gurchen, and Guffy, a warrior mole called Axtel happens across the remains of their tunnel and digs them out. After hearing Flib recount the position the other babes are in, Axtel leaves her a spear and instructs her to watch over the two molebabes, while he digs back into Althier to get the rest. Soon after he leaves, Flib encounters two fox Ravagers, but slays one with the spear and runs the other off with a whip. A kind watervole, Mumzy, who has been watching and knows there are other Ravagers about, moves the trio of young ones from Axtel's campsite to her concealed bankside home nearby. By now, Vilaya has returned, and ordered the young ones to be moved to another prison cave on the other side of Althier; this one has rock walls instead of dirt, and cannot be dug out of easily. She tries to torture an infant squirrel into revealing the information about the tunnel, but soon finds herself badly beaten by Flandor, who damages her eye with his rudder. In rage, the Sable Quean stabs the young otter with a poisoned blade she wears in a phial about her neck, slaying him. She then sends Zwilt and some Ravagers out to hunt for the escapees, and the prison guards, who have deserted. Axtel, digging his way into Althier, barges into the new prison cave, taking Tassy and Borti with him. The Ravagers, stopping the other babes from escaping, wound the warrior mole badly by stabbing him through the footpaw, but he manages to limp away with the two babes, blocking his escape route with a boulder so as not to be followed. Tassy tries to help heal his footpaw. Upon emerging into the woodlands, the trio find Buckler and the search party from Redwall, who have set out again. They also meet up with Mumzy, who leads them to her home and the other three escaped young ones. Back in Althier, an infant mouse quite accidentally discovers a hidden rift in the rock, which leads to a natural cave system behind the wall. Seizing the opportunity, the entire pack of young ones, now led by Midda and Tura, flee down the tunnel, blocking the rift with soil and rocks behind them. Vilaya soon discovers the absence of her prisoners; killing the stoat who was supposed to be on guard duty, she orders the Ravagers to unblock the rift and get after the young ones. Zwilt returns to Althier then, and demands to know what is going on. The ensuing argument causes a rift between the two sables, who split forces when they manage to enter the caves; Zwilt takes a group in one direction, while Vilaya takes hers in the other. Vilaya, now knowing she cannot trust Zwilt, sends her old rat confidant to spy on him. Zwilt, however, has other plans; he orders one of his biggest soldiers to strangle the helpless rat before she can report back to Vilaya. This action, once Vilaya hears of it, causes the two sables to become deadly enemies. Buckler, meanwhile, has taken the entire Guosim force and most of the able-bodied creatures from Redwall, planning to storm Althier, as they now know its location thanks to Axtel. Unfortunately, by the time they get there, both the young ones and the Ravagers have gotten far down the tunnels, leaving no sign as to where they have gone. The group searches Althier from end to end with no success; During the search, Diggs becomes separated from the rest and is soon lost in Mossflower. Vilaya and her force catch up with Zwilt's, who have not succeeded in finding the runaways. The two sables battle, and Zwilt stabs Vilaya with his broadsword; she falls unconscious with the pain. Thinking Vilaya is dead, Zwilt prepares to cut off her head as a warning to other vermin, but one of the Ravager stoats urges him not to, saying it would be a bad omen. As the other Ravagers march off to make war on Redwall, Gliv is left behind with instructions to bury Vilaya; however, knowing that the Sable Quean is still alive, she nurses her back to health, and instructs her to follow Zwilt and slay him. Vilaya cruelly repays her rescuer by slaying her with the poisoned dagger, deciding that she can better do the job alone. The escapees by now have reached the surface; but their freedom is short-lived, as the insane hedghog Triggut Frap imprisons them on his pike-surrounded watermeadow island, intending to use them as slaves to build him a proper house. Fortunately for the captives, Diggs arrives, along with a huge badger lady Ambrevina Rockflash that met up with him on the way. Ambrevina was a friend of the young otter Flandor, and is seeking his whereabouts. When Midda informs her of his murder by Vilaya, the badger swears to avenge him. Leaving the young ones in Mumzy's care, Diggs and Ambrevina return to Redwall, as Buckler and the other group did upon hearing that Zwilt and the Ravagers were headed there. They join in the battle against the Ravagers' battering ram at the front gate, not knowing that Zwilt and four of his soldiers are attempting to force a secret entrance from the back. After the battering ram plot is foiled, a prolonged siege ensues. Diggs, relieved of guard duty, heads off to the kitchens to find a bite to eat. What he ends up finding is Zwilt, who has just managed to get in. Badly wounding the young hare, and causing Diggs to lose his ear and his memory in the process, the sable flees into Great Hall, but encounters Abbess Marjoram, Clarinna, and several other Abbey females. Before he and his four soldiers can do any harm, Buckler appears on the scene. In the fantastic sword duel that ensues, Zwilt realizes he has finally met a beast who is more than his match. Taking a nearby Dibbun hostage, he commands the young hare to surrender; offering to give his life for the babe, Buckler does. Having his soldiers pin the young hare to the stairs, Zwilt attempts to behead him. However Clarinna comes up behind him and runs him through with the Sword of Martin, which had been hanging on the wall nearby. Clarinna tells Buckler when he offered to give his life he did something far braver than slaying Zwilt. The four soldiers flee, but do not escape, as a Bloodwrath-possessed Axtel takes care of them once and for all. Meanwhile, outside the Abbey walls, Vilaya has resumed control of the Ravagers; the Redwallers, however, with the aid of Ambrevina and the Guosim, soundly rout the vermin, forcing the remainder into a scattered retreat. Vilaya flees, alone, but Ambrevina follows her, intent on avenging Flandor. Just as she catches up with Vilaya, the sable trips the badger with her cloak, hoping to throw her off. This proves to be her undoing, as Ambrevina falls right on top of the Sable Quean; the force causes the poison phial necklace to break, the shards piercing Vilaya and slaying her. Weeping for Flandor, Ambrevina returns to Redwall. Diggs, who has completely forgotten who he is and now believes himself to be a captain in the Long Patrol, wanders away from the Abbey, but returns in company with Mumzy and the freed captives. After having his memory restored by a friend's hitting him hard on the head, Diggs, in company with Buckler and Ambrevina, returns to Salamandastron. The two young hares then report to Lord Brang the adventurous outcome of their little 'visit' to Redwall."
233,Ship of Destiny,fantasy," Ship of Destiny continues where The Mad Ship left off and reveals some of the secrets that were hinted at in the first book and second books. The dragon, Tintaglia, released from her wizardwood coffin, flies high over the Rain Wild River, whilst below her, Reyn and Selden have been left to drown. Malta, the High Satrap of all Jamaillia and his servant attempt to navigate the acid flow of the dangerous river in a decomposing boat. Althea and Brashen are finally at sea together, sailing the liveship Paragon into pirate waters to rescue the Vestrit family liveship, Vivacia, stolen by the pirate king, Kennit; but there is mutiny brewing in their ragtag crew, and in the mind of the mad ship itself, and all the whilst the waters around the Vivacia are seething with giant serpents, following the liveship as it sails on to its destiny. ru:Корабль судьбы"
234,The Box of Delights,fantasy," The central character is Kay Harker who, on returning from boarding school, finds himself mixed up in a battle to possess a magical box, which allows the owner to go small (shrink) and go swift (fly), experience magical wonders contained within the box and go into the past. The owner of the box is an old Punch and Judy man called Cole Hawlings, whom Kay meets at a railway station. They develop an instant rapport, and this leads Cole to confide that he is being chased by a man called Abner Brown and his gang. For safety, Cole entrusts the box to Kay, who then goes on to have many adventures."
235,Probuditi!,fantasy," After seeing a show by magician Lomax the Magnificent, two friends, Calvin and Rodney, decide to use his hypnosis trick on Calvin's sister Trudy. The trick is achieved with a rotating spiral disc, and the spell is broken by saying ""Probuditi!"". It is Calvin's birthday and his mother asks him to watch his sister while she's away and when she returns she will make Calvin his favorite dinner, spaghetti. Calvin and Rodney are successful and Trudy soon believes she is a dog. Calvin and Rodney enjoy watching Trudy until they realize that Calvin's mom will come home soon, and they have forgotten the word to reverse the spell. They frantically try different methods to turn Trudy back to normal, but in the end it is Trudy who silently helps them to remember."
236,The Phantom Tollbooth,fantasy," Milo is a boy bored by the world around him; every activity seems a waste of time. He arrives home from school one day to find in his bedroom a mysterious package that contains a miniature tollbooth and a map of ""the Lands Beyond"". Attached is a note, ""FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME"". He assembles the tollbooth, takes the map, drives through the tollbooth in his toy car, and instantly finds himself on a road to Expectations. He pays no attention to his route and soon becomes lost in the Doldrums, a colorless place where thinking and laughing are not allowed. However, he is found there and rescued by Tock, a ""watchdog"" with an alarm clock attached to him, who joins him on his journey. Their first stop is Dictionopolis, one of two capital cities of the Kingdom of Wisdom. They visit the word marketplace, where all the world's words and letters are bought and sold. After an altercation between the Spelling Bee and the blustering Humbug, Milo, and Tock are arrested by the very short Officer Shrift. In prison, Milo learns the history of Wisdom. Its two rulers, King Azaz the Unabridged and the Mathemagician, had two adopted younger sisters, Rhyme and Reason, who had settled all disputes in the kingdom. Everyone lived in harmony until the rulers disagreed with the princesses' decision that letters and numbers were equally important. They banished the princesses to the Castle in the Air, and since then, the kingdom has been plagued with discord and disharmony. Milo and Tock leave the dungeon and attend a banquet given by King Azaz, where the guests literally eat their words. King Azaz allows Milo and the Humbug to talk themselves into a quest to rescue the princesses. Azaz appoints the Humbug as a guide, and he, Milo, and Tock set off for the Mathemagician's capital of Digitopolis to obtain his approval for their quest. Along the way they meet such characters as Alec Bings, a little boy who sees through things and grows until he reaches the ground, and have adventures like watching Chroma the Great conduct his orchestra in playing the colors of the sunset. In Digitopolis, their first stop is the mine where numbers are dug out and precious stones are thrown away. They eat subtraction stew, which makes the diner hungrier. The Mathemagician erases the mine with his magic pencil eraser, he and Milo discuss Infinity, and Milo proves to the Mathemagician that he must allow them to rescue the princesses. In the Mountains of Ignorance, the three intrepid journeyers contend with lurking, obstructionist demons like the Terrible Trivium and the Senses Taker. After overcoming various obstacles and their own fears, the questers reach the Castle in the Air. The two princesses welcome Milo and agree to return to Wisdom. When the group leaves, Tock carries them through the sky because, after all, time flies. The demons chase them, but the armies of Wisdom repel them. The armies of Wisdom welcome the princesses home, King Azaz and the Mathemagician are reconciled, and all enjoy a three-day carnival celebration of the return of Rhyme and Reason, the princesses of the land. Milo says goodbye and drives off, feeling he has been away several weeks. Ahead in the road he spots the tollbooth and drives through. Suddenly he is back in his own room, and discovers he has been gone only an hour. He awakens the next day full of plans to return to Wisdom, but when he returns from school the tollbooth has vanished. A new note has arrived, which reads, ""FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY."" Milo is somewhat disappointed but looks around and finds that the world he lives in is beautiful and interesting."
237,Kendermore,fantasy," The novel begins with the character of Tasslehoff Burrfoot at the Inn of the Last Home with his friends. However, soon a bounty hunter arrives and charges him for desertion for violating the laws of prearranged marriage. A journey east turns into a voyage with gully dwarves. Meanwhile in Kendermore, Tas's Uncle Trapspringer and a human ""doctor"" have found a map leading to a treasure. Tas is having his own adventures after a shipwreck strands him, Gisella (the bounty hunter), and Woodrow (Gisella's assistant) near a dwarven settlement. Tas is captured by gnomes, who seek to turn him into an exhibit. Woodrow saves him with help from Winnie, a wooly mammoth. Gisella is killed by Denzil, an assassin. Tas and Woodrow arrive in Kendermore. In the ruins east of the city, ""Dr."" Phineas Curick, Uncle Trapspringer, and Damaris (the one intended to marry Tasslehoff) find themselves being entertained by Vincent, a rare ogre who is good! The kender and human wander into a magical portal which takes them to Gelfigburg, a Candyland like place. They also discover that the treasure (a magical amulet) has been used up. Denzil, not knowing this, forces Tas to take him to the ruins. Tas tries to go into the portal, but Denzil pulls him out before he is all the way through, leaving Tas stuck in the portal. The kender in Gelfigburg attempt to pull Tas through, leading to a tug of war. Vincent pulls Tas, Damaris, Trapspringer, Phineas, and all the Kender out of Gelfigburg. Denzil is trapped inside. The Dark Queen attempts to enter, but Damaris closes the portal. The kender return to Kendermore, saving the city from a storm. Tas is reunified with Woodrow, and Damaris marries Trapspringer."
238,The Deed of Paksenarrion,fantasy," The Deed of Paksenarrion was written as one long story, but published as three separate books. A number of people have pointed out resemblances between the story setting and Dungeons & Dragons, in particular alleged similarities between Moon's town of Brewersbridge and Hommlet (a village in The Temple of Elemental Evil module for AD&D) and between Moon's religion of Gird and the faith of Saint Cuthbert of the Cudgel in Greyhawk. However, such themes may often be similarly found in many brands of high fantasy, and are not unique to any one fictional world. The Deed of Paksenarrion revolves around the adult life of Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, known as Paks, of Three Firs. It takes place in a fictional medieval world of kingdoms of humans, dwarves, gnomes and elves. The story begins by introducing Paks as a headstrong girl of 18, who leaves her home in Three Firs (fleeing a marriage arranged by her father) to join a mercenary company and through her journeys and hardships comes to realize that she has been gifted as a paladin, if in a rather non-traditional way."
239,Fires of Azeroth,fantasy," The Gates are passageways through space and time that can, if misused, destroy entire civilizations. Such cataclysms had happened in the past, most recently to the qhal, a species that at one time had enslaved other races, including humans. The Union Science Bureau had dispatched a hundred men and women on a one-way mission to destroy the Gates, closing them behind them as they traveled from one world to the next. Morgaine is the last survivor of that band. In Vanye's world, they had been opposed by an evil ancient being whose knowledge of the Gates rivals Morgaine's own. The creature had taken over the body of Chya Roh, Vanye's cousin, then fled through the Gate of Ivrel to the land of Shiuan. There, he had amassed an army by promising men and half-breed qhal a way out of their dying world. It had taken all of Morgaine's guile to force a passage for her and Vanye through the Gate of Shiuan into a third world, but they were powerless to stop Roh from following with his forces. Being two against a hundred thousand, they are forced to flee into the forests of Azeroth, finding shelter with friendly villagers. Eventually, the natives call on their qhal lord for guidance. Morgaine meets with Merir, lord of Shathan, and receives grudging permission to travel where she wills. The invading army came through the Master Gate. Morgaine heads to Nehmin, where the Gate's controls are located, but on the way, they are attacked. She is seriously wounded, but manages to flee. Vanye is captured by humans led by Fwar, who has a grudge against him. Before he can be tortured overmuch, Vanye is seized by the khal, who resent Roh's power over them. They want any information of the Gates that the prisoner may have. However, Roh is informed and rescues his cousin. Vanye finds the camp deeply divided: Fwar's barrowlanders resented by the more numerous marsh people, both groups hating and despised by the khal, nominally led by Hetharu, but themselves split into factions. Roh barely maintains control over the rabble because of his knowledge of the Gates, or Fires as they are called in this world. Knowing the situation to be unstable, Roh tries to leave quietly with Vanye and Fwar's band, but the khal are alerted and pursue. It is a close race, but some of them reach the shelter of the forest, where the few barrowlanders not caught and killed by the khal are dispatched by Roh and Vanye. Vanye guides Roh to Merir, but the lord of Shathan has no news of Morgaine. Merir decides that they must go to Nehmin for answers. There, Vanye finds Morgaine, recovered from her near-fatal wounds. The guardians of Nehmin have ignored her counsel, distrusting her motives, and now they are under siege. At last, Morgaine forces them to recognize not just the immediate danger, but the ever-present temptation of the power of the Gates; they agree to close them after she and Vanye depart, even though they are their main defense against the horde. Before she leaves, Morgaine offers her assistance against their common enemy. In the desperate fighting, Hetharu and Shien, his main khal rival, are killed. With Fwar already dead, the enemy is left leaderless; the various factions unexpectedly turn on each other, ending the threat. There remains only Roh to trouble Morgaine. Even though the Gates will be shut down, he has the knowledge to reactivate them. Vanye has discovered first-hand that the Roh he knew and admired had not been killed when his body was taken over. Gradually, that Roh has regained control, or so Vanye believes. Morgaine is not entirely convinced, but allows Roh to remain alive (though under watch) when she and Vanye enter the Fires and leave Azeroth forever."
240,Strands of Sunlight,fantasy," Natil is a gardener at Kingsley College, a private university in Denver. She has found a small group of people who have started transforming into Elves and need guidance, though she has not revealed many details of the early portions of her existence, nor has she revealed the divine vision she once had but now cannot even describe to them. In one narrative thread, Sandy Joy comes to Denver at the invitation of a man named Terry Angel. Exploiting the weak emotional condition of the Dean of Kingsley College, Maxwell Delmari, he has been given free rein to set up a sham program, named Hands of Grace, that purportedly uses music to heal people. Referring to obscure or bogus publications and fake references, Terry has hidden the fact that there is no program and no factual basis for his work. Thoroughly insane and plagued by fleeting partial visions of a hidden higher power, Terry tortures himself with self-mutilation in an effort to finally see this higher power. When Sandy states that she has had a vision of a higher power, he comes to envy and loathe her. After she realizes the falsity of his convictions and tries to distance herself from him, he attacks her, slashing her hands with a knife. Fighting for her life, she sprays him in the face with oven cleaner, blinding him. In another narrative thread, T.K. has just recently returned from Desert Storm missing a leg. A Vietnam veteran and a black man, he has been marginalized his entire life and is now working at the same security firm that once employed George Morrison, who is now the elf Hadden. Living in Denver's projects, he sees a crack house operating every day just down the street from him, and he is powerless to do anything about it. Finding employment at Treestar Surveying, he finds his barriers eroding as he comes to realize that he is becoming an Elf too and is no longer subject to the same hopeless future he once had. After Heather, one of the Elves, is shot by drug dealers for TK's efforts at evicting the crack house from his neighborhood, he steals military ordnance and demolishes the crack house with two pounds of C4 after a desperate gun battle that destroys his artificial leg. Concluding his transformation into an Elf while he sleeps a few nights later, he wakes up the following day whole, his leg intact, having finally discharged his last tie to his old life. When the police come to question him about the pieces of his artificial leg, which he left at the ruins of the crack house when Sandy drove him to safety, the presence of both of his legs deflects their attention away from him. As both narrative threads come together, Sandy is held by the police for assault after Terry lies and says that Sandy attacked him first. Out on bail, Sandy's overwhelming grief at her predicament serves as the final catalyst for helping all of the Elves finally learn how to draw strength from the patterns and use all of the powers at their disposal. Natil, seeing no choice, strikes a deal with Terry and uses her regained powers to heal Terry's eyes so that he will tell the truth of what happened to Sandy. Consumed with shame and grief at the banality of bargaining her healing powers for the truth from Terry and knowing that he will soon commit suicide because of what she has done for him, Natil finally gives up her immortal existence of four and a half billion years and fades from the earth. The others search for her and finally find her grieving in the land of sunlight with the Lady."
241,Blood of Elves,fantasy," The Empire of Nilfgaard attacks and overwhelms the Kingdom of Cintra. Queen Calanthe of Cintra commits suicide and her granddaughter, Cirilla, called Ciri, or ""Lion Cub of Cintra"" somehow flees from the burning capital city. Emhyr var Emreis, Emperor of Nilfgaard, sends his spies to find her. He knows that this young girl has great importance, not only because of her royal blood, but also because of her magical potential and elven blood in her veins. The girl is protected by Geralt of Rivia, a witcher - a magically and genetically mutated monster slayer for hire, and also a man whose destiny is bound with that of Ciri. Aided by several others including the famous bard Dandilion and a powerful sorceress named Yennefer, Geralt quickly learns of a man named Rience who is hunting Ciri relentlessly, aided by some powerful and influential allies. As she learns the ways of both a witcher and a magic user, Ciri and those around her begin to realise that almost everybody wishes to either use her for her mysterious power or kill her so that such a power cannot become wielded by others."
242,White Cat,fantasy," Cassel Sharpe comes from a family of workers who are part of one of the major crime families. He is the youngest son with a mother in prison for making millionaires fall in love with her, a dead father, and two older brothers who work for the nephew and current heir of one the biggest crime families in the area. Cassel's friend Lila was the daughter of the crime lord and other possible heir, but had been killed by Cassel when they were fourteen, though he can't remember why he did it. Cassel is the only one in his family not to have an ability. Now seventeen, Cassel finds himself sleepwalking up on the roof at his prep school, dreaming of a white cat and nearly dies getting back down. This gets him kicked out of school and the dorms until he can get a doctor's note saying it won't happen again, which he plans to get using a con, getting stationary and the doctor's signature from a nearby office. His simple plan to get back into school and turn life back to normal is complicated by his brothers, who keep acting strangely around him. Cassel overhears enough of their conversations to make him suspicious that he's being manipulated, and he goes to a fortune teller to get stone amulets to protect himself from memory alteration, which he cuts into his skin. Further investigation leads Cassel to discover that his brothers have been keeping a white cat just like the one from his dreams, but that it's free now and has been following him around. He rescues it from the pound, certain for some reason that it's Lila, and that he hadn't killed her like he thought, but been manipulated by a memory worker, though he doesn't know who. Shortly after, he discovers that one of the rocks under his skin has broken, and his second oldest brother is the memory worker. He also figures out that he is a worker after all, but his brothers have been keeping it from him to 'protect' him. Cassel is a transformation worker, and has been changing people into everyday objects as murder and body disposal for his brothers as contract killers, then forgetting about it afterward. With this discovery, Cassel changes the white cat back into Lila, and the two plan to reunite her with her father and allow her to take back her place as heir by revealing a plan Anton has of killing her father and running the family himself. It succeeds, and things go mostly back to normal for Cassel despite his new-found ability. Lila still originally hates him for what he did, but when he arrives home from school a week later, she is waiting for him, having forgiven him. They start to make out as Cassel has always dreamed, when they are interrupted by a phone call from his mother, who has gotten out of jail and wants to tell him of her surprise: that she met Lila in New York and used her ability to make her fall madly in love with Cassel. He demands she undo it, but his mother claims she cannot, and Cassel realizes that he was a mark himself, gullible enough to believe that Lila would forgive him and love him so easily."
243,War of the Twins,fantasy," Upon arrival in the Tower of High Sorcery, Raistlin is tested by the undead guardians to prove that he is really the Master of the Tower. It is revealed that he has beaten Fistandantilus and absorbed his soul, thus increasing his power immensely. Raistlin goes to find the Portal to the Abyss, which is necessary to his ascension to godhood. When he goes to it, he discovers that it is not there. Having been bribed with the Globe of Present Time Passing, created by Raistlin, Astinus reveals that it is in the magical fortress of Zhaman, located in dwarven lands. The scene shifts to Tasslehoff Burrfoot, who finds himself in the Abyss. Tasslehoff encounters Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness, who tells him how he has altered time and possibly allowed her to take over the world. Tas meets Gnimsh, a gnome, who claims he is a failure because all of his inventions worked (gnomes in the Dragonlance world constantly invent, and more often than not they fail. The gnomes believe failure is a means of learning). Gnimsh agrees to help Tasslehoff get out of the Abyss and starts to fix the device of Time Journeying. Caramon, Raistlin, and Crysania create the so-called Fistandantilus Army from local populace under pretension of ravaging the dwarven kingdom Thorbadin in the far South, with Caramon being their leader. Many come to join his army, and they number several hundred. The army continues south. The hill dwarves join up with Caramon's army, believing that the mountain dwarves have stolen supplies and wealth from them. Crysania flees when Raistlin rejects her love and makes plans to bring word of the true gods to the people, 200 years before Goldmoon would during the War of the Lance. She encounters place stricken by plague and finds a dying false cleric, who she tries to convert. She discovers that people are still too angry to accept the true gods yet. Raistlin and Caramon begin to joke and share memories. Later, Raistlin and Caramon go to the village where Crysania is. Raistlin uses his immense power to summon a massive fire that razes the town. He is in fact preparing Crysania to come with him into the Abyss with trials comparable to Huma Dragonbane's. Caramon and his army soon capture the fortress of Pax Tharkas, thanks to the help of traitorous dark dwarves. The mountain dwarves retreat to Thorbardin and close the gates, preparing for war. Kharas, the dwarf hero, led a daring assassination attempt on Raistlin. Kharas wounds him drastically, but Raistlin has time before death. Crysania heals Raistlin, perhaps against his will. It is then discovered that Tas and Gnimsh have escaped the Abyss and were captured in Thorbardin. Raistlin appears and rescues Tas, but kills Gnimsh, presumably to correct Fistandantilus's mistake of allowing the gnome to be at the Portal when he tried to enter. Soon after, it is revealed that the dark dwarves betrayed them and had slowly killed off the hill dwarves. They attempt to assassinate Caramon, but are beaten back. Raistlin, after a last talk with his brother, opens the Portal with Crysania's help; at the same time Caramon and Tas activate their device, returning to their proper time period. The result is the explosion that levels Zhaman; however, this time, Crysania and Raistlin enter the Portal whereas Denubis, Crysania's equivalent in the past, had died and Fistandantilus had departed that plane of existence. The book ends with Raistlin entering the Abyss."
244,Dread Mountain,fantasy," The trio is journeying to Dread Mountain when they come across a spring. Although initially distrustful of its contents, they drink the water out of thirst, noting a nearby sign saying: ""Drink, gentle stranger, and welcome. All of evil will beware."" and several oddly shaped rocks encircling the spring. They decided to take a rest there and Lief awakens to find one of the ""rocks"" unfurling. It reveals itself to be a mammalian flying creature called the Kin, which most Deltorans believe to be extinct. It explains to Lief that the water from the spring makes one dream of whomever one is thinking of during ingestion. The three head to Dread Mountain with the help of the Kin, landing there only to find the mountain thickly overgrown, deserted of its inhabitants, the Dread gnomes, and overrun by beasts. However, the companions find the entrance into the Mountain, and after avoiding the numerous traps the gnomes have set up to repel invaders, it was discovered that there is a monstrous toad named Gellick that was controlling the gnomes. The trio makes a bargain with the head of the gnomes to rid Gellick for them in return for freedom and the emerald that was studded onto Gellick's head. The fight ends with Lief tossing water from the Dreaming Spring into Gellick's mouth, as it also has a deadly, paralyzing effect on ""those with evil intent"". The gnomes thank Lief by making peace with their longtime prey, the Kin, and agreeing to hamper the progress of their common enemy, the Shadow Lord in finding the trio. The companions then continue their journey to the Maze of the Beast."
245,David Boring,fantasy," David Boring is a story told in the first person by its eponymous protagonist, concerning his sometimes fantastic and sometimes mundane exploits and misadventures in and out of big city life. Much of the plot of the book concerns David's attempt to obtain a woman whom he considers his feminine ideal, based largely on the characteristics of his first cousin, Pamela, with whom he shared some innocent adolescent kisses at a family summer retreat. Shortly after attending the funeral of a friend, David meets, dates, and is abandoned by Wanda, a woman whom he considers the perfect fulfillment of this ideal. After sinking into an all-consuming depression for weeks, David is shot in the head by an unknown attacker in front of his own home, but survives with only a small dent in his forehead. David, his mother, their extended family, and David's roommate and friend Dot all end up stranded on a small island, Hulligan's Wharf, which the family owns and uses for vacations. David's great-uncle August shows up, proclaims that terrorist gas attacks have contaminated the mainland, and later dies. While on the island, David has a sexual tryst with his mother's cousin, Mrs. Capon, who later disappears that very night. At the same time, Dot has begun a relationship with Iris, Mrs. Capon's daughter, who is married to Manfred. Manfred tries to kill Dot by drugging her and throwing her into the water while she sleeps, but she wakes up in time to grab Iris, beat up Manfred, and escape by boat. When word gets around that David suspects Manfred of killing Mrs. Capon as well, Manfred tries to pummel him, but is stopped by Mr. Hulligan, the island's caretaker. When the food runs out, David and Mr. Hulligan are abandoned by Manfred and David's mother, and barely make it ashore on a makeshift raft. They discover (as Mr. Hulligan believed all along) that the terrorist attack was not the world-ending catastrophe August had believed. David returns home and begins a relationship with a woman named Naomi. He soon discovers that the man who shot him was a professor named Karkes, who was similarly abandoned by Wanda, and assumed that she had left him for David. He and Karkes enter into a strange friendship, discussing their mutual obsession with Wanda and attempting to track her down. In his search, David meets Judy, Wanda's sister, who resembles her strongly. David decides that, contrary to his earlier belief that Wanda was the fulfillment of his ideal, Wanda was in fact merely a flawed version of Judy. His relationship with Naomi falls apart, and she flees to Norway, fearing further terrorist attacks on America. Judy is attracted to David, but is worried about her husband. After they meet and kiss, her husband shows up at David's apartment and knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. Meanwhile, Dot's relationship with Iris has failed, and Iris leaves her for Agent Roy Smith, who is investigating the murders of Mrs. Capon and Whitey. Smith resolves to frame David and Dot for Whitey's murder, in order to eliminate any competition for Iris, whom he marries. David and Karkes track Wanda down to a weird cult commune, finding that Wanda is the only one there, the others having ""gone on."" Neither David nor Karkes asks what that means. Although David and Karkes agree to ""let the best man win,"" David intends to deceive and defeat Karkes by letting him have Wanda, whom he considers a lesser version of Judy. David loudly and publicly declares his love for Judy, but this only earns him another beating at the hands of her husband. David aimlessly wanders his way around the docks, where he is tracked down by Smith and his superior, Lieutenant Anemone. Smith tries to shoot David, but only grazes his head before Smith and Anemone are both shot by Dot. The two escape to Hulligan's Wharf, where David finds his long-lost cousin Pamela and her baby. She fled to the island for her child's safety, and has several months of food supply, planning to start a vegetable garden so that they can survive indefinitely. David and Pamela begin an adult relationship. The group spends more than four months on the island with no sign of the police or poison gas. The occurrence of further terrorist attacks is suggested, but not directly stated. At the book's end, David expresses the conviction that he is happy and thankful, and does not care how long he has to live. The question of whether the pair have days, weeks, months, or years of bliss is never answered."
246,Tamsin,fantasy," Jenny Gluckstein moves with her mother to a 300-year-old farm in Dorset, England, to live with her new stepfather and stepbrothers, Julian and Tony. Initially lonely, Jenny befriends Tamsin Willoughby, the ghost of the original farm's owner's daughter."
247,Blood of the Fold,fantasy," Blood of the Fold resumes from the preceding novel, Stone of Tears, when Richard Rahl has just reunited with his future wife, Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor, in a place between worlds. Upon returning to Aydindril in the real world he realizes that seizing power for himself is the only way to halt the continuous advance of the Imperial Order through the Midlands. Richard ends the Midlands alliance and the rule of the Confessors, taking control of Aydindril and issuing a demand for unconditional surrender of Midlands nations to D'haran rule. Meanwhile, in the Old World, trouble courses through the Palace of the Prophets. Sister Verna, the newly named Prelate, discovers the former Prelate, Annalina, isn't really dead, but has fled with Nathan Rahl. The lands of the Midlands must decide whether to surrender to D'Hara or the Imperial Order. In his neverending search for banelings, what the Blood call those with some form of the gift, Tobias Brogan, the Lord General of the Blood of the Fold, captures Kahlan Amnell and Adie and takes them, following the instructions of the Creator, to the Palace of the Prophets. Richard, who finds out his wife-to-be is in the Old World, uses an ancient means of transportation, the Sliph, to travel to her almost immediately. There, fooled by the ability to become invisible, Richard releases the Mriswith Queen, who then flees to Aydindril back through the Sliph. Brought back to his senses, Richard then destroys the Palace of the Prophets to prevent Jagang from receiving the treasures inside, saves Kahlan, and hurries back to Aydindril in the New World, where He discovers the mriswith queen nesting in the Wizard's keep preparing to hatch a new batch of mriswith in the new world. After smashing her eggs and a difficult battle with her, Richard and Kahlan defeat the Mriswith Queen. They then discover a battle in the City is being lost by Richard's D'haran army but with his arrival he leads his soldiers to a victory over the Blood of the Fold and the mriswith."
248,Voice of the Whirlwind,fantasy," Etienne Steward is a clone, also known as a beta. When he awakes, his memories are fifteen years old, because the original Steward -- the alpha -- never bothered to have his memories updated. In those fifteen years, the entire world has changed. An alien race known as The Powers has established relations with humanity. The Orbital Policorp which held his allegiance has collapsed. He fought and survived the off-world Artifacts War, but dozens of his friends did not. Both his first and second wives have divorced him. More importantly, someone has murdered him, causing the activation of the beta back-up. Now Steward has to figure out who wanted him dead, if he doesn't want to die again."
249,Street Magic,fantasy," While Briar and his teacher Rosethorn are helping the locals in Chammur, Briar realizes that all is not as it should be in Chammur's streets. As a former 'street rat' himself, he tends to have an interest in the affairs of local gangs. He discovers a gang known as the Vipers roaming through territory not their own. After further investigation, Briar discovers that the Vipers are the pet gang of a local Noblewoman. While Briar investigates the Vipers, he discovers Evvy, a local girl with stone magic. At first, she runs away from him, but she gradually learns to trust him. When Evvy singularly refuses to study with local stone mage Jebilu Stoneslicer, Briar takes her training in hand himself. The Vipers attempt to kidnap her many times, so Lady Zenadia doa Atteneh can use Evvy's powers as a stone mage to further increase her riches. When they finally kidnap her, Briar comes to her rescue."
250,She and Allan,fantasy," Wanting to learn if he can communicate with deceased loved ones, adventurer and trader Allan Quartermain seeks a meeting with the feared Zulu witch-doctor Zikali. He tells Allan he must seek out a great white sorceress who rules a hidden kingdom far to the north, and he charges Allan to take a message to her. He also gives Allan a necklace with a strange amulet, carved in Zikali's own likeness. Zikali claims it has great magical powers that will protect Allan on his journey, but he must on no account take it off. Allan is initially scornful of Zikali's claims, and sets off for the coast, but a series of odd events force him to go north in spite of his own wishes. On the journey he encounters Umslopogaas, a fearsome Zulu warrior chieftain. Umslopogaas tells Allan that he has discovered that he is about to be deposed and murdered, so he decides to leave his village and accompany Allan on his quest. Allan is again skeptical, but a few days later Umslopogaas and his band of warriors meet up with Allan's party, and Umslopogaas cements their friendship when he saves Allan from being killed by a lion. Journeying into unknown country, they come to a remote settlement called ""Strathmuir"" run by a Scot, Robertson, a drunkard and former sea captain, who lives there with his beautiful daughter Inez. Her Portuguese mother had died years earlier and her father has now taken native wives and sired several children with them. A few days later, Robertson takes Allan on an expedition to hunt hippopotamus, but as they return they are intercepted by Allan's servant, Hans, who had stayed behind. He reports that, in their absence, Strathmuir has been attacked by a band of cannibal warriors from the north, who have killed and eaten many of the villagers (including Robertson's wives and children) and kidnapped Inez. Allan, Robertson and Umsoplogaas set off in pursuit. At one point they catch up to the cannibals, and Allan and Hans almost succeed in freeing Inez, but her servant panics and alerts their captors, who escape. They track the cannibals through the treacherous swampland that surrounds the lost kingdom of Kôr, and as they approach the great mountain the cannibals turn and attack Allan's group, but they are driven off by the arrival of Bilali, the servant of Ayesha, who tells that that She has been expecting them, and that he is to bring them into her presence. Allan is summoned to meet Ayesha, who is camped among the ruins of the ancient city of Kôr. Ayesha remains veiled, although she briefly reveals herself to him, but in spite of her allure, he manages to resist her power, and throughout the story he remains skeptical of her claims that she is immortal and has supernatural powers. Some days later Robertson disappears from the camp to seek out the rebel Armahagger who are holding Inez captive, hoping to rescue his daughter and, if possible, to kill their chief, the dreaded Rezu, who is also rumoured to be immortal. Allan and Hans learn that this rebel group are the descendants of an ancient sun-worshipping cult who perform human sacrifice, and that Inez will be married to Rezu and installed as Queen of all the Armahagger if they defeat Ayesha. Knowing that Rezu is preparing to attack and try to overthrow her, Ayesha seeks help from Allan and Umslopogaas in the coming battle, asking Allan to lead the army of Kôr. He reluctantly agrees, but when Ayesha brings him before her generals, they at first refuse to accept him, until he displays the ""Great Medicine"", the amulet given to him by Zikali. Though outnumbered three-to-one, Allan draws up plans that he hopes will give Ayesha's army a tactical advantage, but he has little confidence in her Armahagger soldiers. As they advance, Hans scouts ahead; he discovers that Inez's unfortunate servant has already been eaten, and that the rebels have captured Robertson and intend to sacrifice him and eat him before his daughter's eyes. Soon after, a Zulu scout returns to warn that some of Ayehsa's soldiers are spies for Rezu, and that the enemy know their plans have set an ambush just ahead. Allan quickly draws his men into a defensive square just before Rezu's forces attack; they hold their ground against the first two waves, but the square breaks under a third onslaught. Allan fears all is lost, but at that moment a glowing apparition of Ayesha appears in their midst, bearing a wand, and she moves forward towards Rezu's soldiers, who become paralysed as she advances. Heartened, the Kôr soldiers surge forward, slaughtering most of Rezu's army. As they reach the enemy camp, they see Rezu kill the helpless Robertson with an axe. They now confront the fearsome Rezu himself, a huge, bearded giant seven feet tall; Allan fires two heavy-gauge bullets, which hit Rezu, but they have no effect, and they realise he is heavily armoured. Now Umslopogaas steps forward and challenges Rezu to single combat. A desperate struggle ensues, and although Umslopogaas carries an ancient axe rumoured to be the only weapon that can kill Rezu, he makes no impression against Rezu's heavy armour. Finally Umslopogaas employs a ruse - he appears to flee, enabling him to reach higher ground, from which he makes a rapid run-up to Rezu. Leaping into the air, he strikes Rezu down from behind with a mighty blow as he vaults over the giant's head. Ayesha's soldiers then surge forward and, before Allan can examine him, they hack Rezu's body to pieces. Allan and Hans now race to the tent where Inez is being held; she seems drugged or cataonic, and as they enter the handmaidens who guard her all commit suicide, and Inez is freed. The day after the battle, Allan and Hans watch from a distance as Ayesha addresses her surviving troops and punishes the captured traitors. As she speaks, a fierce storm blows up, and lightning flashes around Ayesha and the captives, but it leaves the faithful soldiers unharmed. When the storm clears, Ayesha has vanished, and when they move forward to examine the captives, they find them dead, although their bodies are quite unmarked. The next night Ayesha summons Allan to receive his reward. He balks at fulfilling his wish to see if his loved ones survive beyond the grave, but Ayesha takes control and her power paralyses him; he feels himself dying and his spirit moving into another realm. He sees visions of his family, but their spirits seem unaware of his presence; only the spirits of a faithful dog and an African woman whom he had loved seem aware of him and able to communicate with him. When he revives, Ayesha questions him but, despite his experience, he remains profoundly skeptical and he argues with Ayesha over what has transpired. Later that night Allan meets up with Umslopogaas, who tells him of his own experiences. By now Inez has fully recovered from her ordeal although, as Ayesha had predicted, she remembers nothing of her traumatic experience or her father's death. Allan and Umslopogaas have no desire to remain, so Ayesha arranges for the surviving members of the party to be escorted back to Strathmuir. We learn that Inez never recovers her memory of what had transpired, and she is never told the truth; she eventually she retires to a convent. Umslopogaas returns to his people to face his destiny, and Allan returns to Zululand to deliver Ayesha's message to Zikali."
251,Purple Pirate,fantasy, The novel concerns the further adventures of Tros of Samathrace who battles intrigue in Cleopatra's court while he woos her sister.
252,The Source of Magic,fantasy," On his way to Queen Iris's masquerade ball in honor of Trent's accession to the throne one year before, Bink is attacked by a floating sword, which he deflects using his talent of protection against magical harm. At the ball, he is attacked again by an unseen enemy. Finally, Bink confides in King Trent, who decides to remove Bink from harm's way by sending him out on a mission to find the source of magic of Xanth. To help him, King Trent sends Chester the Centaur and the soldier Crombie. Crombie is turned into a griffin by King Trent, whose magical talent is the ability to transform living things. First, the party heads to the Good Magician Humfrey's castle, to ask his advice about their quest. When they tell him they are attempting to discover Xanth's source of magic, Humfrey decides he wants to come as well. They come across Beauregard the Demon who tells them they should abandon their quest, as it could result in the destruction of all magic in Xanth. At this time they also find Grundy the Golem, whose talent is understanding any language. This is particularly useful because Crombie in griffin form can only speak in squawks, which Grundy is able to translate. On their quest, they meet many obstacles, including a Siren, a Gorgon whose face turns men to stone, madness itself, a dragon, tangle trees, and an ogre. Bink narrowly escapes all enemies through a series of seemingly circumstantial events, due to his talent. Eventually they find the source of magic - a demon named X(A/N)th imprisoned deep below the surface. Bink is faced with a moral dilemma, to let it be free and destroy all magic in Xanth and act against the Brain Coral, or to keep it against its will. He eventually lets the magic go by freeing the demon, but is convinced by Cherie Centaur to go back and look for the demon again, hoping to convince it to stay. After some negotiation, the demon agrees under the condition that the magic shield which separated Xanth from Mundania will protect him from foolish intruders. Upon Bink's return home, he discovers his son Dor possesses a magician calibre talent - he can talk to inanimate objects. pl:Źródła magii"
253,Blood Price,fantasy," Vicki Nelson is a former Homicide detective. When her diagnosis of Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) ruined her night vision and forced her to leave the police force, she became a private investigator. After becoming a witness in a brutal murder of a young man, who was drained to death, his desperate girlfriend Coreen Fennel hires her to investigate his death and Vicki’s intense, strong, and curious nature does not allow her to stop searching for the killer. Vicki tries to get some information from her former partner, Detective - Sergeant Mike Cellucci, who is also investigating the case for the police. The two of them have always been competitors, which leads to their arguments over jurisdiction. Coreen informs her that she thinks that the murderer is a vampire, so she begins what she calls ″hunting″, although she does not believe in the supernatural. The killer is claiming more victims, and when she accidentally walks in on a crime scene, she sees the killer turning into the dark and disappearing. Because of her bad sight, she is sure that it was just an illusion, and when she turns to the body, she sees a man in black next to the body, and tries to scream, but he punches her in the head, rendering her unconscious. She wakes in an unknown apartment, while the same man is searching her purse for some ID. She talks to him, and discovers that he is not a killer, but is also searching for him. He tells her that the killer is a demon, that she actually did see him disappear. He has an ancient book, a grimoire, that should help them. She also finds out that the stranger is Henry Fitzroy: romance writer and 450-year-old vampire. Surprisingly, she believes him. The two make a deal to catch the demon and the man who is calling it up. Her RP makes her useless at night and Henry sleeps during the day, so they agree to hare the investigation. The two uncover that the murders are ritual, that each should call one of the demon’s names, and that he should give material goods to man who is calling him, for the price of blood. Henry tells her that he is the bastard son of Henry VIII, and thus the Duke of Richmond, who fell in love with the vampire Christina, who turned him. When Henry is attacked and the grimoire stolen, Vicki finds him almost dead in his apartment, and realises that he needs to feed to stay alive and heal, so she allows him to drink from her wrist. This makes a bond between them. While the investigation continues, Vicki discovers that the demon was called by a college student, Norman Birdwell, who is a new friend of Coreen's. Vicky tells Mike, but he does not believe her. When Coreen finds out what Norman is doing, she takes Vicki to his residence. He kidnaps the two of them, willing to sacrifice Vicki’s blood to call a new, more powerful demon, Astaroth, who wants to bring about a Hell on Earth. Henry arrives in time to save Vicki and Coreen. Meanwhile, another demon is trying to trick the group, to procure as servants. Together, the three defeat him, and Mike Cellucci, who has been looking for Vicki, arrives in time to see Henry’s vampire powers and the demon he fights with. Vicki, who almost bleeds to death, ends up in the hospital, receiving a blood transfusion. Mike comes to inform her about his police report, which leaves out the demon and Henry. Later, after dark, Henry comes to visit her, and the two agree to a date when she gets out."
254,Song for the Basilisk,fantasy," The sole survivor of a massacre, Caladrius, nicknamed Rook, has been living with the bards of Luly since the day he was rescued from the smoldering remains of his home. Despite falling in love and having a son, Caladrius is unable to make peace with his memories, and so ventures into the world to discover how his family was destroyed - and why. He learns his true name: he is Raven Tourmalyne from the house of Griffin, which was crushed by Arioso Pellior, the patriarch of the house of Basilisk and tyrant of the city of Berylon. In Berylon, Caladrius, who takes the name of Griffin, enters Pellior's house as a music teacher for Pellior's decidedly un-musical daughter. As Griffin tutors Damiet Pellior for an upcoming opera, the city's musicians hatch their own plots. Armed with his picochet, a single-stringed instrument played by peasants, and a small bone pipe, Griffin challenges the Basilisk and exacts his revenge. But his revenge is not complete. Arioso Pellior is stricken, but not dead. Pellior names his other daughter, Luna, a powerful magician who has been his apprentice all her life, as his heir. Unexpectedly, Luna declares that thirty-seven years of torturing Tourmalyne House are enough. Hearing this, her father dies of anger. Luna begins to help Caladrius restore Tourmalyne House."
255,People of the Talisman,fantasy," *Chapter 1 - Eric John Stark, outland mercenary, and his companion Camar the thief, are travelling in the wilderness that surrounds the northern polar cap of Mars, trying to get to Camar's home city of Kushat. Camar has been mortally wounded in a guerrilla campaign and wants to return home before he dies. Unable to make it, he confesses that he has stolen the holy talisman of Ban Cruach from Kushat, which keeps the city safe. It is hidden inside a boss on his belt. Stark promises to take the talisman back to Kushat for Camar. Examining the talisman, he presses it to his forehead and receives visions of a tower, a city in the ice, and a pass - the memories of Ban Cruach. Soon after he puts the talisman back in the belt, he is approached by the riders of Mekh, a barbarian tribe that lives in the hills between him and Kushat. *Chapter 2 - The riders of Mekh arrest and plunder Stark, except for his clothes and Camar's belt. They lead him to their camp in a valley several days northward. There they bring him before the masked and fully armored lord Ciaran. Ciaran interrogates Stark and announces his plan to besiege Kushat. Stark is uncooperative and demands to see Ciaran's face. Ciaran turns him over to Thord, his previous capturer. *Chapter 3 - Stark is tied to a scaffold and scourged by Thord. When Thord comes near him, Stark bits his hand hard enough to break his thumb. When Thord tries to kill Stark for this, Ciaran kills Thord for disobedience. Stark feigns unconsciousness, despite being prodded by spears. When he is cut down, Stark gets a spear, kills several riders, and escapes on a mount. After riding for three days through a snowy wasteland marked by a series of towers, he reaches Kushat, a city standing in front of a pass through a scarp. *Chapter 4 - Stark enters Kushat and meets Thanis. He his challenged by Lugh, whom he warns about the imminent attack by Mekh. Lugh leads Stark to the guard captain, who dismisses Stark's claims, but is persuaded to pass the warning on to the nobility. He gives Stark into the custody of Thanis, who takes him to her home. Stark sleeps, only to be wakened by Thanis' brother Balin, who tells him that soldiers have come, and warns him not to speak of the talisman. A nobleman, Rogain, enters with a group of soldiers and questions Stark about the invasion. Rogain at last agrees to put Kushat in arms. After Rogain and his men leave, Balin and Thanis explain that they found the talisman in Camar's belt, and they agree not to return it to the men of Kushat. Stark goes to sleep again. Just before dawn he wakes and goes up on Kushat's wall. *Chapter 5 - In the morning, the clans of Mekh, led by Ciaran, attack Kushat. Despite resistance, Mekh takes the Wall and breaches its gate. Stark, who had been fighting on the wall, goes down to face Ciaran in single combat. As they fight, Stark tears Ciaran's mask off, revealing her to be a red-haired woman. *Chapter 6 - Despite this revelation, in the moment of victory, Ciaran is able to retain the loyalty of her followers. As the soldiers of Kushat charge and are beaten back, Stark manages to escape the mêlée. Stark hides in Kushat until the looting commences. *Chapter 7 - *Chapter 8 - *Chapter 9 - *Chapter 1 - Eric John Stark, outland mercenary, and his companion Camar the thief, are travelling in the wilderness that surrounds the northern polar cap of Mars, trying to get to Camar's home city of Kushat. Camar has been mortally wounded in a guerrilla campaign and wants to return home before he dies. Unable to make it, he confesses that he has stolen the holy talisman of Ban Cruach from Kushat, which keeps the city safe. It is hidden inside a boss on his belt. Stark promises to take the talisman back to Kushat for Camar. Examining the talisman, he hears tiny, unintelligible voices that alarm him. Soon after he puts the talisman back in the belt, he is approached by the riders of Mekh, a barbarian tribe that lives in the hills between him and Kushat. *Chapter 2 - *Chapter 3 - *Chapter 4 - *Chapter 5 - *Chapter 6 - *Chapter 7 - *Chapter 8 - *Chapter 9 - *Chapter 10 - *Chapter 11 - *Chapter 12 - *Chapter 13 - *Chapter 14 - *Chapter 15 - The Talisman expansion is far more ambitious than the one of The Secret of Sinharat; for one thing, the resulting story is about a third longer than Sinharat. Despite the comprehensiveness of the revision, the treatment of the earlier chapters, where more of the original text is retained, is sometimes clumsy and the motivation of the changes is sometimes unclear. In at least one place there is a significant editorial faux pas -- a passage in which an important character is introduced is omitted, and the character is later referred to by name without the connection between name and person having ever been made explicit. The murderously insane aliens of Talisman are a very unusual invention for Brackett, and it may be that the hand of Hamilton is seen at work here. Ban Cruach also loses much of his mythical glamor in Talisman, which is something of a let-down, though it does work as a ""twist"" conclusion."
256,A Warlock in Whitby,fantasy," Set in the seaside town of Whitby just before Bonfire Night, the novel is set a few months after The Whitby Witches. Having failed to retrieve the moonkelp, Nelda is forced to marry the wicked aged Esau Grendel. A fish Demon from the distant past that was imprisoned beneath the Earth after the imprisonment of the Monstrous serpent Morgawrus, awakes once more and haunts Whitby, eating cats. Rowena Coopers husband, Nathaniel Crozier travels to Whitby to find out what happened to his wife. Tricking Aunt Alice into leaving Whitby for London to see her dying friend Patricia, Nathaniel realizes the staff of Hilda was one of four magical objects created to defend the world against Morgawrus. Nathaniel plans to destroy these guardians and unleash Morgawrus upon the world, planning to use him to take over. Followed by Ben, Nathaniel goes to a church where he finds one guardian and destroys it. He then discovers that the second guardian belongs to the elderly Mr Roper, a friend of Bens whom he kills although not before Roper is able to give the guardian to Ben. Nathaniel threatens Jennet who is bewitched by him, forcing Ben to hand over the guardian which he promptly destroys, loosing Morgwrus. He then goes to try and take over Morgawrus while setting the Fish Demon loose in the Aufwader caves, knowing that the last guardian is somewhere there. In exchange for allowing Esau to make love to her, conceiving their child, Esau gives Nelda the last guardian which she gives to Tarr. Esau is killed by the Fish Demon before it is killed as the caves are destroyed as a result of Morgawrus breaking free. Nathaniel attempts to bewitch Morgwrus but is stopped by Aunt Alice who has returned from London, Patricia having been murdered by a slave of Nathaniels. Nathaniel is killed by Morgawrus who attempts to kill Aunt Alice. However the old woman uses the book of shadows, given to her by Patricia, a book which contains all she knows, to defeat Morgawrus who is imprisoned once more. But this brave act is to much for the old woman and her body gives up. She becomes a feeble helpless old thing, reliant on the work of her friends, family and Doctor to just continue living."
257,Enna Burning,fantasy," The story picks up from the first book, shortly after it ends. It is set mainly in Bayern; a kingdom divided into forests and towns, with a Medieval technology. It is on the other side of the mountains from from Kildenree, where the first book began. Enna and Princess Isi (Ani) became fast friends in The Goose Girl. After the end of the first book, Enna returned to the forest to live with her older brother Leifer. Finding a vellum scroll, while in the forest, Leifer learns the secret of 'Fire Speaking'; but, he is unable to control his fire, or his temper, from 'flaring up'. Enna goes to the city, hoping to talk to Isi about Leifer's new power with fire. But, Isi is unable to manage her own ability to communicate with some animals and wind, since the end of the first book. The neighboring country of Tira invades Bayern. Enna and her friends, Razo and Finn, travel to the front, where they meet Leifer. He is anxious to use his power with fire to fight; but, dies in the battle. When Enna finds Leifer's body, she finds the vellum; and, learns its secrets. She makes a series of rules for herself, which she hopes will allow her to fight in the war, without meeting the same fate as her brother. Enna goes on a series of raids, with her old friends. But, finds she is unable to keep the promises she made to herself. When her friends try to stop her, from more sabotage raids, she runs away; and, is captured. Tiran Captain Sileph uses herbs to drug Enna; so, she can't use her power with fire to escape. He tries to brainwash her into teaching him the secret of fire, and fighting for Tira. Razo and Finn try to rescue her, but are captured. Enna gradually gives in to Sileph's persuasive skill with 'people speaking'. She believes he loves her; and, falls victim to Stockholm Syndrome. While Sileph is away, at a battle, the guards forget to drug her. She fights her way out of the camp and escapes, to fight for Bayern, and try to end the war, even if it means her own death, like her brother. Before she succumbs to her wounds, from using too much fire, her friends find her. The last part of the book follows Enna and Isi trying to find a cure, in a neighboring kingdom, to balance the fire and wind, that is killing them. The trip takes months. Along the way, Enna has to face Sileph, and a band of Tiran soldiers. His charisma has worn thin for her and his troops; and they fight. Enna and Isi finally return home, at peace, to their friends and families."
258,Graceling,fantasy," The novel Graceling by Kristin Cashore follows the life of the 18-year-old Katsa. She is a Graceling, a person with a greatly advanced skill. (People with Graces are noted to have two different colored eyes.) Katsa has one green eye, and one blue eye, which are described to be very beautiful. Because Katsa's Grace is thought to be killing, her cruel uncle, King Randa, uses her as a weapon to punish those who displease him. The king's cruelty causes her to be feared by many in the seven kingdoms; almost everybody believes Katsa to be a savage monster who thirsts for blood. Katsa, disgusted with herself for allowing herself to be controlled by a terrible king, retaliates by making a secret organization called the Council to help all who are being wronged by corrupt kings all over the seven kingdoms. While on a mission with her friends Giddon and Oll for the Council - to rescue the kidnapped father of the king of Lienid - Katsa meets another Graceling. To her surprise, he is able to match her as they fight, but she knocks him out after he says that he trusts her. Not long afterwards, he visits Randa's court and is introduced to Katsa as a Lienid prince, named Greening Grandemalion. He tells her to call him Po, after a tree in Lienid, and they strike up a friendship. Po remains at Randa's court to spar and train with Katsa, while also secretly researching reasons as to why anyone would kidnap the father of the King of Lienid, or Po's grandfather. After a refused marriage proposal from Giddon and some odd words, Katsa realizes that Po's Grace is not fighting, but mind reading. She confronts him, and he tells her that his Grace is sensing things, and he can only hear thoughts if they are about him. Katsa is furious and storms off, scared of how he can get into her head. Po later comes to apologize and she forgives him. During their talk, she realizes that she is in control of herself, and she doesn't have to follow Randa's orders. She stands up to Randa and refuses to do his bidding anymore. Katsa then leaves court. Katsa and Po attempt to find who kidnapped Po's grandfather. She is uncomfortable with him now that she knows he can sense any thoughts she thinks about him. They begin to gather information about the kidnapping, and Po starts to suspect that the King of Monsea, Leck, is the one to blame from kidnapping Po's grandfather. There are very strange stories, but yet nobody suspects him. He has the reputation of a very benevolent king. Po thinks that he might be Graced, although it is impossible to tell because Leck is missing one eye. Along the journey, Katsa realizes she is in love with Po, but she refuses to acknowledge her feelings because she has sworn never to marry. As their feelings grow stronger, they come up with a compromise for Katsa's sake, and become passionate lovers. Katsa and Po continue on their journey to Monsea. While traveling through the forest they see King Leck murder his wife. Despite her promises to believe Po, Katsa still falters when Leck bursts into tears and mourns his wife's accidental death. When she refuses to shoot the supposedly innocent Leck, Po urges them to retreat, knowing that he is the only one who is able to see through his Grace. Katsa and Po search for and find Princess Bitterblue, who escaped from her father, King Leck and earn her trust in order to protect her. Po later tries to assassinate Leck, who is protected by only graced guards, but is chased off after he kills one of the guards. Po is injured by a fall into an icy lake as well as shot with an arrow, making him unable to ride a horse and therefore unable to escape from Leck. After Po's urging, Katsa takes the princess Bitterblue - Leck's daughter, and Po's cousin - to Po's castle in Lienid. While traveling, Katsa realizes that the only way to go is through Grella's pass. Grella's pass is named after Grella, who died while making the journey. The only thing wrong with that is this, no one has ever gotten through the pass alive. Leck arrives at Po's castle before Katsa and Bitterblue, where he has charmed the entire Lienid royal family. Although initially confused, Katsa realizes that Leck is about to tell Po's secret. She then pulls her dagger out of it's hilt and throws it straight through Leck's mouth and drives it through his neck and into his chair. The fog from Leck's Grace still remains, but Katsa eventually goes back for Po, and discovers that the fall has blinded him. However, his Grace allows him to sense the world around him, letting him see where his eyes cannot. The two return to Monsea for Bitterblue's coronation."
259,The Diamond of Darkhold,fantasy," The story begins with the Builders discussing what the Emberites should do when they are released from the city. The chief builder decides they should give them a piece of their own technology, but it is not found by the citizens of Ember because the vault door is covered by trees. Nine months later Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow are curious when a roamer comes into town with a mysterious book. They trade the roamer a match for the book and discover it only contains eight pages. On the front of the book the words ""For the People of Ember"" are printed in gold letters. Since they can't make sense of the book, they decide to go back to Ember. When they return, a family of squatters has taken over the darkened city. The Troggs (Washton, Kanza, Minny, Yorick and an adopted boy called Scawgo, who are named after various American cities) believe they own Ember, and rename it Darkhold. They capture Doon while Lina goes back to Sparks for help. Meanwhile, Lizzie Bisco (from Ember), Torren Crane, and Kenny Parton (both from Sparks) realize that the two are gone, and decide to go and try to find them. They don't succeed and a search party goes to look for them. While Doon is with the family they show him a diamond they found just outside Ember. Doon steals the diamond and escapes from Ember with help from Scawgo. While escaping, he also breaks the pipe connecting the generator to a waterwheel that created power for Ember, therefore shutting down Ember's lights for good. He finds Lina, who is being attacked by a pack of wolves. Doon throws the diamond at the wolves to frighten them away but shatters it in the process. Lina treats his wound and takes Doon up to where the book with eight pages and the original diamond were discovered. They find a switch that uncovers shelves filled with hundreds of diamonds. Lina and Doon figure out that the diamonds are solar-powered sources of electricity. A lot of people decide to help them go back to Ember and look for other things to help in the winter. Doon thinks about going back to his old home and recover his book of bugs, but changes his mind, stating he can create a new one filled with the unique bugs in Sparks. Lina, however, looks for her drawings of her dream city at her old home but it isn't there. She then goes to City Hall and stands on top of the mayor's building and says ""Goodbye Ember, forever."" They bring back thousands of new inventions, which earns the town money and food to last the winter. A weary group of roamers, who are actually the Troggs, come into town one day, and the diamond is returned to them. But soon they learn the truth. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of them and they can power all sorts of electronic devices as well as start fires. They also learned that Doon and many others lived in Ember before them, and that they left and evacuated because Ember was dying. So the Troggs come to live in Sparks as well. In the end, it is revealed that in the future, cities are rebuilt with the power of the diamonds and Lina, Doon, and Poppy all live together in a house in Sparks. It is revealed Lina and Doon are married,and have four kids named Mariana,Johnny, Pedro and Eliza. Lina gets a horse named Fleet and becomes a messenger between towns and Doon goes on to study the diamonds."
260,"Ogre, Ogre",fantasy," The book starts off with Tandy the half-nymph being harassed by the nasty demon Fiant while trying to sleep. She has the talent of throwing tantrums that can stun or destroy, but her talent is ineffective against the demon, so she decides to visit her father Crombie at Castle Roogna to see if he can help. Having no means of travel, however, she decides to catch a night mare to take her there. She succeeds, at the price of being battered, except the mare takes her to the Good Magician's castle instead, where she is admitted without challenges due to the difficulties she went through riding the mare. Cut to a year later, we find Smash the half-ogre traveling to the Good Magician Humfrey seeking to solve a vague dissatisfaction about himself. Using the best of his ogre qualities (strength and naive stupidity), plus his clumsy knowledge of human customs, as well as the occasional bright flash of human intelligence, he navigates his way into the Magician's castle passing various obstacles such as a basilisk and a pond of firewater. Once Smash gains entrance, though, he forgets all about his question. Magician Humphrey gives him an answer anyway, telling him to travel to the Ancestral Ogres and take Tandy with him, and guard her. On their travels, Smash and Tandy blunder into an Eye Queue vine, which embeds itself into Smash's head and provides him with human intelligence so he converses in the human way instead of spouting simple ogre rhymes. He soon discovers that the vine also helps give him good ideas, as not all the problems he and Tandy encounter can be bashed to pieces. After the vine, they encounter an assortment of females of various magical races each needing to fulfill a personal quest...a dryad who needs to protect her tree from woodsmen, wingless fairy John looking for her similarly incorrectly named counterpart to switch back, Centaur Chem, a longtime friend with the talent of magic mapping who wants to chart more of Xanth, Blythe Brassie who wants to leave her hypnogourd homeworld to come to the real Xanth, a mermaid looking for love, and others. Unfortunately also during their travels, Tandy gets trapped in the hypnogourd world and has her soul wrenched from her, though she is later freed by the others. Smash enters back into the gourd and forages a deal with the world spokesperson (in the form of a coffin): Smash will give his soul to the gourd under a 90-day lien in exchange for Tandy's soul. He then has 90 days to find the dread Night Stallion, ruler of the gourd world, and negotiate to void the lien. As the travels continue, each female does find what she is looking for, eventually, although Smash's strength saps out of him a little at a time as his soul is gradually recalled as the days pass. Smash makes periodic forays into the gourd world, with the help of a magical and infinite ball of string to mark his way, in search of the Night Stallion, overcoming various world challenges, most of which require both his ogre strength and human intelligence to solve. Finally, when only Chem and Tandy are left with Smash, they come upon the dread Elements region and face a flood in the water region that washes off the Eye Queue vine from Smash's head, right before they enter the most dangerous Void region. As they enter the void, they come to realize that they are trapped and must find a way to get out, which they can't do without Smash's useful intelligence. Smash, using the Void's properties, manages to get his illusion of intelligence back (though at this point it is no longer illusory), and enter the gourd one last time, where he finally finds the Night Stallion and faces new challenges that require all his newfound human intelligence as well as his ogre strength and stubbornness to overcome. Once Smash conquers the Night Stallion's challenges and wins back his soul, he realizes his human side and falls in love with Tandy, putting his own soul in jeopardy again in order to save her, but through another deal ends up with only half a soul and half his ogre strength. He finally does arrive at the home of the Ancestral Ogres but notes how stupid and ugly they really are and decides he does not want to stay with them, though when they threaten Tandy he commits to fighting to save her. After Tandy sacrifices her own soul mid-battle to save Smash (giving him full ogre strength) so he can defeat the ancestral ogres, Smash finally comes to true terms with his human side, even transforming himself into a human so he can make love to Tandy properly. As Smash and Tandy journey home, they again run into Demon Fiant. As a man, Smash is no match for the demon, but manages to transform back to ogre form and is able to defeat Fiant permanently, though again his human intelligence is needed to win this battle. ru:Огр! Огр! (книга)"
261,The Gift,fantasy," The Gift (also published as The Naming) begins with Maerad, in ""Gilman's Cot"" as a slave, where she has been for many years, with few memories of her former life, her mother having died several years before. She is discovered by Cadvan, one of the great mystics known as 'Bards', who reveals to her that she, like him, possesses ""the Gift"" shared by all of these, by which she is able to command nature to do her will. Cadvan soon discovers that her mother was the leader of the First Circle of the destroyed School of Pellinor, of whom it was previously assumed that there were no survivors. Knowing this, Cadvan decides to help her escape, believing that it might not be by means of random chance that he came upon the only known survivor of Pellinor. When Cadvan finds that Maerad's Gift is unusually powerful for one never formally taught, he begins to suspect of her more significance than he had before. He takes her to the School of Innail, to make the presence of a survivor from Pellinor known and to make Maerad a Minor Bard of Pellinor. During their time there, Maerad obtains knowledge of a long-forgotten prophecy concerning the 'Foretold One' who will defeat the Nameless One. This Nameless One is a corrupt political leader, formerly called Sharma, who discarded his own true name in order to become immortal. Twice has he attempted to conquer the land of Edil-Amarandh, and he has twice been vanquished. His last bid for power is the one in which the Foretold One, Elednor, will defeat him, leaving him dead or helpless forever. Maerad's own history, being coincident with that of the Foretold One, implies that she is Elednor, although Maerad does not immediately embrace the idea. After their brief but enjoyed stay at Innail, Cadvan takes Maerad across the country of Annar to the school] of Norloch, intending to have her instated as a full Bard and given her Name, and also to see his old teacher Nelac. En route, they discover that the Nameless One's corrupt Bards, the Hulls, are roaming freely, so that non-users of magic are terrified and terrorized; that Maerad is descended on her mother Milana's side from Lady Ardina, a faerie creature, in the book called an Elidhu, who still lives in the forest as monarch of a Lothlórien-like settlement; and that Maerad has a younger brother, called Hem or Cai, who like her is an inheritor of the Gift. When Maerad and Cadvan, who has become her tutor, reach Norloch, they discover that corruption has penetrated even here, in that the First Bard Enkir has fallen under Sharma's influence. He is revealed as the one who had Pellinor destroyed and who sold Maerad into slavery. Largely as a result of this, and partly on account of his own misogyny, Enkir refuses to admit that Maerad is the Foretold One, or even to let her be instated as a Bard. Therefore, Cadvan and Nelac invoke an archaic ritual called the Way of the White Flame, by which Maerad is anointed a full Bard. Her Name, at this point, is revealed to be that of the Foretold One; Elednor, which means ""Fire Lily"". Driven out by their enemy's hostility, Cadvan and Maerad flee to the island of Thorold, while Hem is sent southward for safety with Saliman, one of Cadvan's childhood friend who was also taught by Nelac."
262,Deathstalker Destiny,fantasy,- --&#62; &#60;!-
263,The Riven Kingdom,fantasy," For hundreds of years, the small island kingdom of Ethrea sat in the middle of a precariously balanced treaty agreement that ensured peace. With the king on his deathbed, and no male heirs, Princess Rhian must find a way to keep the kingdom out of the hands of the evil Prolate Marlan, and prevent a war."
264,Handy Mandy in Oz,fantasy," The book's heroine is an ""honest and industrious"" goat-girl named Mandy, who grazes her flock on the slopes of Mt. Mern (a location otherwise unidentified). The story opens with a bang and a splash: an underground spring erupts in a geyser that blasts Mandy into the sky. The force propels her across the Deadly Desert to Oz; she lands in the little principality of Keretaria in the Munchkin Country, her impact cushioned by the influence of a magic blue daisy. Mandy finds a silver hammer, and meets a white ox with golden horns; she blunders into the court of King Kerr and his courtiers. They are outraged by the intrusion of such an outlandish figure &mdash; for Mandy has seven arms and hands. As Mandy explains, :""This iron hand...I use for ironing, lifting hot pots from the stove and all horrid sort of hard work; this leather hand I keep for beating rugs, dusting, sweeping, and so on; this wooden hand I use for churning and digging in the garden; these two red rubber hands for dishwashing and scrubbing, and my two fine white hands I keep for holding and braiding by hair."" Mandy, for her part, is amazed to meet so many two-handed people; on Mt. Mern, everyone has seven hands. Mandy is reprieved from the dungeons by Nox the Royal Ox, who takes her as his ""slave."" It is a benign sort of slavery; Mandy and Nox quickly become friends. (It is Nox who gives the girl her nickname, Handy Mandy.) Nox is preoccupied by the political situation of Keretaria: the rightful king, a boy named Kerry, has disappeared, and his throne has been usurped by his uncle Kerr. The Royal Ox is an unusual creature: his right horn grants wishes, and his left horn offers clues. When a clue indicates that King Kerry can be found at a place called the Silver Mountain, the enterprising Mandy leads Nox on a search for the missing monarch. They swim rivers (Mandy can't swim) and survive a flood on their way to the Gillikin Country. A doorway hidden under a waterfall leads them to a subterranean world within Silver Mountain, a fantastic place of silver filigree lit by glowing amethysts. The domain is ruled by an evil and ambitious tyrant called the Wizard of Wutz. His throne sits in a pool of mercury, bordered by lavender sands. Wutz is plotting to steal all the main magical artifacts of Oz, including the Magic Picture and Glinda's Great Book of Records, in order to conquer the land. As part of this plan, he keeps Kerry prisoner, and has obtained the jug that is the confinement vessel of Ruggedo, the Gnome King (he was transformed into a jug at the end of Pirates in Oz). The Wizard of Wutz's machinations have of course attracted the notice of Princess Ozma, the Wizard of Oz, Princess Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and their friends and allies. Yet their efforts to solve their difficulties are inhibited, since they lack the Magic Picture and Book of Records. When Mandy and Nox confront the Wizard of Wutz, he imprisons them in the depths of his realm. Mandy accidentally liberates Ruggedo from the jug, merely by breaking it. The Wizard of Wutz and Ruggedo instantly become allies in evil (though deeply mistrustful ones), and set off for the Emerald City to complete their conquest. Mandy's silver hammer, though, has proven to be magic; striking it calls forth a helpful purple elf. With the hammer and elf, the blue daisy, and Nox's horns, Mandy and the ox escape confinement, find and rescue King Kerry, and reach Ozma's palace in time to frustrate the plans of Wutz and Ruggedo. Himself the elf transforms the two villains into potted cacti. (This is the last appearance of Ruggedo the Gnome King in the ""Famous Forty"" Oz books, though he does re-appear in the works of later Oz authors.) Ozma restores order and repairs damage with her Magic Belt. Wutz's spies and agents are transformed into moles; Kerry is returned to his throne. Mandy is rewarded with an emerald necklace and a luxury she has longed for &mdash; gloves; Ozma gives her seven sets of seven gloves for her seven hands. After a month at home on Mt. Mern, Mandy returns to Oz (with her goats) via wishing pill, for a new life. The plot of this book strongly resembles that of Baum's The Lost Princess of Oz, in which Ugu the shoemaker steals magical artifacts and kidnaps a ruler in a conquest plot, just like the Wizard of Wutz. Indeed, Trot comments on the plot resemblance in Chapter 14 of Handy Mandy."
265,The Gathering,fantasy," The novel is narrated by Nathanial Delaney, a teenage boy with a self-confessed Hamlet complex and social ineptitude, which can be credited to his lack of a stable environment; he and his mother have been moving frequently since the divorce of his parents. Their most recent home is the seaside town of Cheshunt, an apparently quiet community that Nathanial immediately dislikes, citing the town's bitter wind and abattoir stench as the primary reasons. His resentment causes tension between him and his mother, and their relationship becomes more strained as the story goes on. Many themes are portrayed in this novel including good vs evil, inner struggle, human nature, conformity vs individuality, friendship and cooperation. Nathanial soon discovers that there is more to dislike about the town than the smell. The school, Three North High, is victimised by its brutish student patrol, which is under the orders of the principal. Mr Karle ""invites"" Nathanial to join the school's youth group, The Gathering. He believes strongly in cooperation, and hence does not encourage individualism. Nathanial declines to join The Gathering, which becomes an issue with the school patrol. While walking his dog one night, Nathanial accidentally stumbles on a meeting of a group of three students from Three North: Danny Odin, Indian Mahoney and Nissa Jerome. A fourth member is not present, a school prefect, Seth Paul. The group are known as The Chain, and they tell Nathanial they have been brought together by the ""forces of light"" to fight a deep evil in Cheshunt, an evil headed by Mr Karle (whom they refer to as ""The Kraken""). When Nathanial is caught and questioned by The Chain, they are all informed by the group's prophetic guide, Lallie, that Nathanial is the final of the chosen members of their clan and his arrival heralds the beginning of their battle. Throughout the novel Nathanial overcomes his cynicism and begins seeing signs of The Dark everywhere, most centrally in the past; in studying the history of Cheshunt he uncovers many parallels between his situation and past events. Throughout the story he also gradually learns that each of his fellow members have deep personal demons, and his role in The Chain and the Binding of the Dark becomes clear in the final chapters, where the grand showdown between The Dark and The Light takes place."
266,Clay,fantasy," Davie befriends Stephen Rose, who has come to live with his crazy aunt. He's a quiet boy with a passion for making clay models and an unusual, rather sinister, cast of mind. David and his friends Geordie and Frances come to believe that Stephen may be able to help them against the local bully Mouldy and his gang."
267,Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne,fantasy," The novel opens with the country of Ferelden occupied by the neighbouring Orlesian Empire. Queen Moira, who sought to expel the Orlesians has been murdered by traitor nobles, but her son Maric has escaped. While attempting to flee the assassins who killed his mother, Maric encounters Loghain, who is part of a band of Fereldan outlaws. Having no real alternatives, Maric joins up with them. However Maric is not able to stay at the outlaw camp long, as an Orlesian army looking for Maric attacks. Yet, Loghain is able to lead Maric to safety by taking him to the Korcari Wilds, a region avoided by most due to its danger. Here they meet the mysterious Witch of the Wilds, who enables them to pass through the Wilds safely. She provides this help on the condition that Maric makes her a promise. What this promise unknown. She also warns Maric that Loghain will betray him if he keeps him close, and warns Maric a Blight will one day come to Ferelden. After escaping the Wilds, Maric and Loghain are led to the remaining rebel army by Maric's betrothed, Rowan Guerrin, just in time to defeat an Orlesian army about to attack them using Loghain's aptitude for strategy. The next few years see Maric, Loghain and Rowan become close friends as they strengthen the rebel army until it is in a position to take Gwaren, a Fereldan town. Katriel, an elf woman who claims to be a messenger, warns them of an impending attack on Gwaren and they are able to repel it. After this, Katriel and Maric begin a relationship. However, Katriel is a spy for Meghren, the Orlesian King of Ferelden. She provides Maric with false information that convinces him to attack the town of West Hill. This attack results in massive loss of life for the rebel army, and Maric, Loghain and Rowan being separated from the remainder of the army. Regretting her deception and developing real feelings for Maric, Katriel leads Maric, Loghain and Rowan to the Deep Roads, a series of underground tunnels, in order to return to Gwaren. After facing the dangers of the Deep Roads, including giant spiders and darkspawn, and escaping in the company of a dwarven warband, whom Maric convinces to join the rebellion. Once they return to Gwaren, they find the remnants of the rebel army and once again secure the town. By this time, Loghain and Rowan have formed a romantic bond (in part due to Maric abandoning Rowan for Katriel), but Loghain has also discovered Katriel’s betrayal and reveals it to Maric, omitting that Katriel had reneged on her orders out of love for Maric. After discovering her actions, Maric kills Katriel in blind rage, only to discover later that Katriel had been loyal out of love for him; Loghain wished to impress on Maric the importance of a king doing what has to be done, opposed to what he wants to do. Following her death, Loghain encourages Rowan to become Maric’s wife and queen, for Maric and Ferelden’s benefit. She agrees and with increased momentum and growing outrage at the continuing cruelty of the Orlesians, there is now widespread support for Maric and the rebel cause. Victory is all but assured for the rebels. Maric also exacts justice on the traitor nobles who murdered his mother, luring them to a meeting under the pretense of a truce, then killing them for their crimes, before Loghain and Rowan break the back of Meghren's armies at the Battle of River Dane, ensuring Meghren's downfall and the eventual defeat of the occupation. The novel closes with Mother Ailis, who once lived within the outlaw camp, telling Maric and Rowan’s son Cailan stories of his father; after three more years of war, Denerim fell to the rebels after a long siege, Meghren was executed for his crimes and Maric is crowned as king. Ailis tells that Maric has become a popular king, Loghain has become a powerful lord and has married and had a daughter, and that Rowan has died after a long illness. After relating this, Ailis hobbles after Cailan, who has run off into the distance."
268,Starfighters of Adumar,fantasy," The planet of Adumar is an anomaly, settled by anonymous colonists during the early years of the Old Republic and isolated ever since. But now it has been discovered. The Adumari love pilots, so the New Republic's best snubfighter jock, General Wedge Antilles, is dispatched as a diplomat, along with three of Rogue Squadron's finest: taciturn Colonel Tycho Celchu, pessimist Major Derek ""Hobbie"" Klivian and child-at-heart extraordinaire Major Wes Janson. They are also aided by native guide and sword-fighting champion Cheriss ke Hanadi, New Republic diplomat and former Y-wing pilot Tomer Darpen, and New Republic Documentarian Hallis Saper, who wears a second head (the head of a 3PO protocol droid which she uses as a camera). Wedge assumes that he will somehow hammer out a treaty and bring the planet of Adumar into the New Republic, but it becomes quickly apparent that all is not as it seems. Firstly, the Empire's best pilot, General Turr Phennir, and three of his best are here too. Secondly, Adumar is not a united planet, and right now Wedge is only talking to its largest nation, Cartann. Thirdly, the Cartannese seem to like nothing better than killing each other for bragging rights, and Wedge is expected to join in&mdash;especially since they try to kill him for bragging rights too. (Phennir seems to have no problem with it.) Fourthly, a certain woman whom Wedge is acquainted with, Iella Wessiri, is on-planet as a New Republic Intelligence operative and has been so for the past six months&mdash;despite the fact that, supposedly, Adumar was only discovered a few weeks ago. (It also doesn't help that Wedge would like to be a little more than friends with her.) All in all, Wedge has his work cut out for him. Red Squadron spends its time learning to fly the native Blade-32 fighters, absorbing Adumari (or at least Cartannese) culture, and contemplating their largest diplomatic problem: the fact that Adumar is not united under a world government, and cannot enter the New Republic. The Empire, on the other hand, would have absolutely no problem simply conquering it and imposing a government. Thus, Wedge is delighted when Cartann's leader, Perator Pekaelic ke Teldan, announces the formation of a world government. Unfortunately, Pekaelic intends to create it via conquest. He also wants the Empire's and New Republic's diplomats to assist in the war effort. Phennir agrees, but Wedge, unwilling to compromise the New Republic's ideals, refuses. Between this and Tomer Darpen's willingness to sacrifice Wedge to preserve relations with Cartann, Wedge and his wingmen are forced to run ""the gauntlet"", braving mobs of citizens and pilots eager to kill them for honor, in order to escape with their lives. Wedge and his wingmen, as well as Iella, Cheriss and Hallis Saper, flee to the capital of the Yedagon Confederacy, one of the few nations that continues to resist Cartannese domination. There, Wedge is presented with a proposal: to lead the combined might of the ""rebellious"" nations in a military effort to overthrow Cartannese imperialism. Several nations that had previously bowed to Cartann defect to the newly-formed ""Adumari Union"" on the strength of Wedge's reputation, and Wedge ultimately leads an air force only half as strong as Cartann's, but far better led and disciplined. After an indecisive air battle, Red Squadron (with Cheriss's help) are able to reclaim their X-wings and neutralize Phennir and his TIE interceptors; the tide thus turned, Cartann is defeated and joins the Adumari Union. Negotiations with the New Republic begin immediately. The Imperials, bitter over their loss, send a fleet to take Adumar by force, but a combined New Republic and Adumari fleet manages to repel them. With the conflict on Adumar over, Wedge and Iella spend a romantic moment with each other, putting a positive note on their future relationship. The novel is noted for author Aaron Allston's use of humour. Allston often characterizes the four pilots through their joking styles: Tycho with occasional and devastating one-liners, Hobbie with pessimistic backtalk, Janson with constant irreverencies, and Wedge as the smirking straight man."
269,La Peau de chagrin,fantasy," La Peau de chagrin consists of three sections: ""Le Talisman"" (""The Talisman""), ""La Femme sans cœur"" (""The Woman without a Heart""), and ""L'Agonie"" (""The Agony""). The first edition contained a Preface and a ""Moralité"", which were excised from subsequent versions. A two-page Epilogue appears at the end of the final section. ""Le Talisman"" begins with the plot of ""Le Dernier Napoléon"": A young man named Raphaël de Valentin wagers his last coin and loses, then proceeds to the river Seine to drown himself. On the way, however, he decides to enter an unusual shop and finds it filled with curiosities from around the world. The elderly shopkeeper leads him to a piece of shagreen hanging on the wall. It is inscribed with ""Oriental"" writing; the old man calls it ""Sanskrit"", but it is imprecise Arabic. The skin promises to fulfill any wish of its owner, shrinking slightly upon the fulfillment of each desire. The shopkeeper is willing to let Valentin take it without charge, but urges him not to accept the offer. Valentin waves away the shopkeeper's warnings and takes the skin, wishing for a royal banquet, filled with wine, women, and friends. He is immediately met by acquaintances who invite him to such an event; they spend hours eating, drinking, and talking. Part two, ""La Femme sans cœur"", is narrated as a flashback from Valentin's point of view. He complains to his friend Émile about his early days as a scholar, living in poverty with an elderly landlord and her daughter Pauline, while trying fruitlessly to win the heart of a beautiful but aloof woman named Foedora. Along the way he is tutored by an older man named Eugène de Rastignac, who encourages him to immerse himself in the world of high society. Benefiting from the kindness of his landladies, Valentin maneuvers his way into Foedora's circle of friends. Unable to win her affection, however, he becomes the miserable and destitute man found at the start of ""Le Talisman"". ""L'Agonie"" begins several years after the feast of parts one and two. Valentin, having used the talisman to secure a large income, finds both the skin and his health dwindling. The situation causes him to panic, horrified that further desires will hasten the end of his life. He organizes his home to avoid the possibility of wishing for anything: his servant, Jonathan, arranges food, clothing, and visitors with precise regularity. Events beyond his control cause him to wish for various things, however, and the skin continues to recede. Desperate, the sickly Valentin tries to find some way of stretching the skin, and takes a trip to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains in the hope of recovering his vitality. With the skin no larger than a periwinkle leaf, he is visited by Pauline in his room; she expresses her love for him. When she learns the truth about the shagreen and her role in Raphaël's demise, she is horrified. Raphaël cannot control his desire for her and she rushes into an adjoining room to escape him and so save his life. He pounds on the door and declares both his love and his desire to die in her arms. She, meanwhile, is trying to kill herself to free him from his desire. He breaks down the door, they consummate their love in a fiery moment of passion, and he dies."
270,The Wizard in Wonderland,fantasy," The plot details the reunion of junior wizard Ben-Muzzy and his friends Joel and Gemma. They visit Wonderland on Ben-Muzzy’s magic broomstick, however their fun is interrupted when a race known as the Airy Fairies steals the broomstick. Now the three friends must retrieve it before it is missed by the other wizards."
271,The Treasure of Tranicos,fantasy," ""The Treasure of Tranicos."" The title story finds Conan in the Pictish Wilderness fleeing native warriors who are hunting him. Finally he turns at bay before a hill, whereupon he sees them inexplicably abandon the chase and turn back. He realizes the spot must be a taboo place to the Picts. The hill turns out to hold a treasure cave, along with the preserved bodies of the pirate Tranicos and his men. Moreover, the treasure draws others to the forbidden cave in quest for it — one Count Valenso, and both Zingaran and Barachan sea reavers. But the bane of Tranicos is quite ready to take new victims, and Conan must outmaneuver all of them if he is to claim the riches. Howard's original story pointed toward a new piratical career for Conan; one of de Camp's major changes was to make it lead instead into the revolution that would bring the Cimmerian to the throne of Aquilonia. ""The Trail of Tranicos."" The essay following the story relates the circumstances of de Camp's discovery of Howard's manuscript and his revision and publication of it. ""Scald in the Post Oaks."" The remaining essay is about Howard himself."
272,Dragon and Phoenix,fantasy," The book covers the fall of an empire to the south of the Five Kingdoms, the land of the first novel. The empire of Jehanglan is sustained by the Phoenix dynasty, which draws its power from a phoenix trapped a thousand years ago. The phoenix is kept in place by the power of a truedragon, also trapped and exploited. On discovering that one of their cousins is trapped, Linden Rathan and his soultwin, Maurynna Kyrissaean, lead a party to rescue him. Unfortunately, they play into the hands of a Jehangli lord who seeks to trap the Dragonlords and use the additional power to take the throne for himself."
273,A Flame in Hali,fantasy," A Flame in Hali is set in Darkover's ""Hundred Kingdoms"" era. It is an era blurred in with the Ages of Chaos at the tail end. Breeding programs are no more, but wars are still fought with terrible laran weapons. The events in this book start some years after the end of Zandru's Forge. It overlaps with Two to Conquer as it mentions the Kilghard Wolf and Varzil's visit in Asturias."
274,The Bishop's Heir,fantasy," The Bishop's Heir details the events of a period of time lasting roughly a month and a half, beginning in late November 1123 and ending in early January 1124. The novel begins as the Curia of Bishops meets in Culdi to choose the successor to the deceased Bishop of Meara. The selection of the next bishop is a delicate matter, as the Mearans have made several attempts to secede from Gwynedd over the past century. King Kelson Haldane addresses the assembled clerics, then departs to make a survey of the local barons. Shortly thereafter, Kelson is reunited with Lord Dhugal MacArdry, an old friend who he has not seen since before his coronation, and the king decides to visit Dhugal's father, Earl Caulay MacArdry of Transha. While visiting Transha, Kelson learns more about Princess Caitrin Quinnell, the Mearan Pretender. Descended from the ancient line of Mearan rules, Caitrin is determined to establish herself as queen of a free and independent Meara, a land which has been ruled by Gwynedd for over a century. However, Kelson is forced to return to Culdi after Duke Alaric Morgan contacts him and informs him that Duncan McLain has been attacked and wounded. Upon returning to Culdi, Kelson acknowledges the election of Bishop Henry Istelyn, who has been chosen as the new Bishop of Meara. Shortly after Kelson returns to his capital of Rhemuth, Dhugal is captured while attempting to stop the escape of Edmund Loris, the former Archbishop of Valoret who was imprisoned for his past treason. Loris takes Dhugal to the Mearan city of Ratharkin, where he places both Dhugal and Istelyn in confinement. When the news of Loris' escape and Dhugal's capture reaches Kelson, the king decides to make a daring winter raid on Ratharkin. Caitrin arrives in Ratharkin, accompanied by her children and her husband, Dhugal's uncle Sicard MacArdry. Although Istelyn refuses to assist Loris and Caitrin in their treason, Dhugal pretends to agree, hoping to find a way to warn Kelson. He eventually manages to escape Ratharkin, taking his cousin Sidana prisoner as he flees. Dhugal is rescued by Kelson's approaching forces, and Sidana's younger brother, Llewell, is also captured. Kelson gives Sicard until Christmas to surrender Loris, then returns to Rhemuth with Caitrin's two youngest children as hostages. Upon returning to Rhemuth, Kelson eventually bows to the pressure of his advisors and agrees to marry Sidana if her mother refuses to surrender, hoping to avert open rebellion by joining the two royal lines. A short time later, when Duncan is consecrated a bishop, the power of the ceremony nearly overwhelms Dhugal, who possesses mental shields that no human should have. When Christmas finally arrives, Caitrin's messenger brings Istelyn's severed head to court, openly defying the orders of the king. Although reluctant to marry a girl he barely knows and who has been raised to hate him, Kelson nevertheless follows through on his promise and asks Sidana to marry him. Sidana reluctantly agrees, but Llewell is furious at the possibility of his sister marrying his enemy. Two weeks of preparations ensue, during which time both Kelson and Sidana try to adjust to the realities of their approaching nuptials. On the morning of the wedding, Duncan recognizes a cloak clasp that Dhugal is wearing, which is the same clasp that Duncan gave his wife many years ago. Duncan tells the tale of his unusual marriage to Dhugal's mother, and Morgan uses his powers to confirm that Duncan is Dhugal's natural father. Realizing that he is part-Deryni, Dhugal is finally able to lower his shields, and father and son quickly exchange memories of their lives during their time apart. A short time later, Kelson and Sidana ride through Rhemuth to the castle, where the entire court waits to witness the marriage of their king and their new queen. Kelson and Sidana exchange their vows as man and wife, but the ceremony is suddenly interrupted when Llewell slashes his sister's throat, making a final desperate attempt to prevent the wedding. Morgan and Duncan frantically try to save Sidana, but she dies almost instantly. Stunned and horrified, Kelson can do nothing but hold the body of his dead bride and weep."
275,Times of Contempt,fantasy," A coup in the Mages Guild ends with the Guild being weakened, and Geralt being badly wounded. Ciri is teleported to a remote desert in Nilfgaard dominion. The war between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms begins, resulting in a series of quick and stunning victories for Nilfgaard. Within weeks, Aedirn, Rivia and Lyria all fall to Nilfgaard, the Redanian king Visimir is killed, which removes Redania from the battlefield and Temeria and Kaedwen agree to an armistice with Nilfgaard."
276,Sassinak,fantasy," Sassinak and her family live on a newly colonized world and are celebrating the end of the production year when all the colonies goods will be exported to other worlds. But the carrier never comes, and instead the planet and its people are soon under attack by pirates. The colonists put up a futile defense against the pirates' superior firepower, numbers and skill at their task. Sassinak witnesses the death of both her parents and her two siblings before she is taken off planet to become a slave. At the slave depot she is sold, but is counseled by another slave called Abe - who is ex-Fleet. He teaches her Discipline and imbeds a message in her mind that will only be remembered when she is confronted with a Fleet officer. She is sold once again when her skills have improved enough for her to work as a navigator on a ship. The ship that she is on is captured by Fleet and she is rescued, the imbedded message comes out and Fleet is able to attack the slave depot and free all the slaves. Abe adopts Sassinak and she begins her quest to go to the Academy, where all Fleet officers receive their training. After prep-school she enters the Academy and excels but is always conscious that she wants to hunt pirates when she gets her stars and her own ship. On her graduation night Abe takes her out for dinner, but Abe is killed. Sassinak suspects it is an assassination. She goes on her first deployment without any family, adopted or no and is an orphan once more."
277,Reunion,fantasy," Flinx has returned to Earth for only the second time in his life to search out the records of the extensive computer network known as the Shell that is maintained by the Unified Church. To do so he uses his empathic Talent to seduce Elena Carolles, a security guard in the Shell, and convinces her to allow him direct access to the most secure databanks. In the Shell he discovers a new bit of data about his mysterious past, information about the Meliorare Society, but the file containing this data has already been stolen by an operative hiding behind the front company Larnaca Nutrition. The agent has absconded with the file to the bleak desert planet Pyrassis deep in AAnn held territory. Flinx has no recourse but to pursue in his own space ship, Teacher, leaving Elena in an emotional lurch. Once he reaches Pyrassis he finds the agent’s ship, the Crotase, in orbit and apparently abandoned. A search of the ship for the missing file turns up nothing, so Flinx must pursue the ship’s crew to the planet surface. On his trip down to confront the thief, he discovers that his shuttle has been sabotaged by the Crotase's AI. He crash lands far from his target, the camp of the ship’s crew. Now forced to march across the desert with few supplies and only Pip, his minidrag, for company Flinx discovers the strange flora and fauna that exist on the harsh world. The difficulty of his journey results in Flinx losing most of his supplies and being captured by a mated pair of AAnn scientists. They inadvertently reveal to him that the strange terrain over which he had been traveling wasn’t just the broken lands of a desert, but was in fact an ancient alien transmitter. During Flinx's struggle to escape the reptilian scientist before members of the AAnn military take him into custody, they accidentally activate the transmitter revealing a secret on the outermost planet of the Pyrassis system, a brown dwarf star. After escaping on a shuttle thoughtfully provided by Teacher's AI, Flinx follows both the Crotase and the transmitter’s signal to the brown dwarf where an alien construct is found. He pursues the missing file into the construct where he finds the other ship’s crew and his long lost sister Mahnahmi Lynx who is intent on killing him. Flinx manages to use his mental Talent to defend himself when the Qwarm that Mahnahmi has hired attacks him. After binding the Qwarm and holding Mahnahmi at bay with a weapon, the two siblings exchange information confirming to Flinx's satisfaction and surprise, that Mahnahmi is indeed his sister and she was the one who stole the sybfile. Their reunion is broken up by a troop of AAnn soldiers hunting for the humans who had infiltrated their territory. The Qwarm is killed aiding in the siblings' flight while Mahnahmi breaks the tentative truce the pair had struck up, attacking him and stealing the transport Flinx had used to reach the alien construct. His only means of returning to Teacher now gone, Flinx flees from the AAnn back into the depths of the construct which he discovers to be another Krang apparently also made by the Tar-Aiym, a long dead alien race. Using the Krang he fights off the AAnn and takes the shuttle that had belonged to Mahnahmi's ship, Crotase to return to Teacher. It is revealed to the reader that the Krang wasn't communicating directly with Flinx, but with the plants that he had been given from the planet Midworld, plants that have achieved sentience and had been assisting Flinx in his adventure."
278,Neveryóna,fantasy," Neveryóna (a full-length novel), the sixth and longest tale of the Return to Nevèrÿon series, focuses on fifteen-year-old Pryn, who is extraordinary in this culture because she can read and write. Pryn is the great niece of an unsung genius of Nevèrÿon, a woman who invented both the loom and the spindle. Because she did not have the good fortune also to discover that wool made the best and strongest cloth, however, all the credit for her work tends to be given to other people. Pryn’s travels take her (and the reader) not only to explore the revolutionary forces of Gorgik’s campaign—and some of its internal squabbles—but also through the homes of several wealthy conservatives. In the first half of the novel, Pryn finds herself in Neveryóna, an upper class suburb of Port Kolhari, an uneasy guest in the emotionally embattled gardens of a wealthy merchant woman, Madame Keyne, whom we first met in the third story, “The Tale of Potters and Dragons,” and who is now actively financing a crackpot group of counter rebels who want to put an end to Gorgik’s project. In the second half, once Pryn travels into the south, she is taken up by the powerful Jue Gruten family, who represent the far more lethal and aristocratic forces of the nation who want to end this rebellion. Here the webs of power are almost too complex and wide reaching for Pryn to comprehend, even though she now realizes that one can fight them, a single incident at a time, as she manages to free a single slave from their grip, whom the Earl has tried to use as a scapegoat. But Pryn and the reader now have a far clearer picture of what Gorgik is up against. Between the novel’s first part and its second part, Pryn spends some time with a good-hearted but sadly limited peasant family, who live in the little town of Enoch and who represent the working classes that Gorgik will have to enlist somehow if he is to succeed. (A city name that appears several times throughout Delany’s non-Nevèrÿon work, notably in The Mad Man [1966], ""Enoch"" is mentioned in Genesis as the first city built by man, specifically by Cain’s son, Adam and Eve’s grandson, after whom it was named. In Delany's work, “Enoch” is never a big city. Rather it is a very old and small city—often much older than it thinks it is—which has forgotten its own historical origins.) These are the people who have the least sense of their own history. Their perfectly sensible wants conspire, nevertheless, to defeat their own best interests, and the only role they can conceive of in which Pryn can stay among them is that of the town prostitute. It is the most devastating section of the novel. An added irony is that this section is written using all the characters from that central myth of romanticism, “Tristan and Isolde” (with Pryn playing the part of Isolde), employing elements from many of the versions, including the story of “Tristan’s Leap,” and the tales of Malot, King Mark, and Bragenge from Wagner, and even the dwarf Frocsin, from Jean Cocteau’s film version from the forties, “The Eternal Return” (1943). In Delany’s version, apathy and despair have replaced passion and romance. Only the power of Pryn’s own imagination gives her a weapon to fight free from the seductions of these simple people’s basic goodness and her own ensnarement in their fundamental hopelessness."
279,A Storm of Swords,fantasy," A Storm of Swords picks up the story slightly before the end of its predecessor, A Clash of Kings. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are still in the grip of the War of the Five Kings, with the remaining kings Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy, Joffrey Baratheon, and Stannis Baratheon fighting to secure their crowns. Civil war is destroying the common people, the ruling House of Baratheon and the major houses of Westeros: House Arryn of The Vale, House Baratheon of Storm's End, House Greyjoy of the Iron Islands, House Lannister of Casterly Rock, House Martell of Dorne, House Stark of Winterfell, House Tully of Riverrun, and House Tyrell of Highgarden. Stannis Baratheon's attempt to take King's Landing has been defeated by the new alliance between House Lannister (backing Joffrey) and House Tyrell. House Martell has also pledged its support to the Lannisters through the forces of Dorne, while House Arryn of The Vale have yet to take the field or declare their allegiance. Meanwhile, a large host of wildlings are marching toward the Wall under Mance Rayder, with only the tiny force of the Night's Watch in its path; and in the distant east, Daenerys Targaryen is on her way back to Pentos, hoping to raise forces to retake the Iron Throne. The novel begins in the final months of 299 After the Landing and carries on into the year 300 AL. Note the UK paperback edition of Storm of Swords was split into two books, and the French paperback edition in four. The plot summary below contains information on the single-volume editions. At Riverrun, Catelyn Stark strikes an unauthorized deal with her captive Jaime Lannister: his freedom in return for that of Catelyn's daughters. Jaime agrees, and is sent south, escorted by Brienne of Tarth. Jaime and Brienne are waylaid by mercenaries known as The Brave Companions (now in the service of Roose Bolton) and taken to Harrenhal. Their vicious leader, Vargo Hoat, chops off Jaime's sword hand, and Jaime is sent back to King's Landing. Brienne, having little value as a hostage, is left to Hoat's mercies, but Jaime returns to rescue her. Robb's army returns to Riverrun, having smashed Lannister forces in the Westerlands. Robb reveals that he has married Jeyne Westerling of the Crag, invalidating his betrothal to a House Frey daughter, thus risking losing their support. Robb's forces are dwindling as his soldiers are caught between Lord Randyll Tarly and Gregor Clegane. The Greyjoys now hold Robb's home territory of Winterfell. Nevertheless, Robb has a plan to take Moat Cailin from the Greyjoys, but it hinges on winning the support of the Freys, which they are now unlikely to give. When Lord Hoster Tully dies, Catelyn's brother Edmure becomes Lord of Riverrun. Robb gains renewed hope when he hears news that Balon Greyjoy has mysteriously died in a fall from a bridge. Further, the Iron Islands are now in a succession crisis, because both of Balon's brothers as well as his daughter Asha are each vying to succeed him, leaving the ironborn divided and vulnerable to a counter-attack. Arya Stark and her friends encounter a group of men known as the Brotherhood Without Banners, led by Lord Beric Dondarrion and the red priest Thoros of Myr. Beric's group, originally sent by Eddard Stark to put down the Lannister raids, has devolved into defending the smallfolk of the war-torn Riverlands. The group encounters Sandor Clegane, former bodyguard of King Joffrey, known as the Hound, and offers him trial by battle, which he wins by killing Lord Beric. Thoros is able to resurrect Beric using what he calls a gift from his god R'hllor. Soon after, Arya is kidnapped by the Hound. The Hound decides to take her back to her family to collect a ransom, and they head north. Robb Stark's army reaches The Twins. Frey agrees to forgive Robb on the condition that Lord Edmure Tully weds a Frey daughter in Robb's place. At the wedding celebration, warriors disguised as musicians produce crossbows and fire at the Stark supporters, breaking the sacred bond protecting guests from their hosts. The Boltons and Freys kill Robb's entire army in the betrayal. Catelyn is seized, her throat cut, and her body dumped into the river. Robb is personally stabbed through the heart by Roose Bolton, and as a final insult by the Freys, Robb's corpse is desecrated by beheading it and sewing the head of his direwolf into its place. Many of the northern lords are killed, and the few survivors captured. Tywin Lannister rewards Roose by naming House Bolton as the new Wardens of the North in place of House Stark. Arya and the Hound arrive at the outskirts of the castle as the ""Red Wedding"" is taking place. Realizing that something is dreadfully wrong, Arya attempts to enter the castle, but the Hound knocks her unconscious and takes her downriver. Arya dreams, seeing through the eyes of her long-missing direwolf, Nymeria. In the dream, Nymeria finds the corpse of a woman floating in a river. Arya tells the Hound that her mother Catelyn is dead. Arya and the Hound encounter his brother Gregor Clegane's men. They fight free, but the Hound is wounded. His wound becomes infected, but Arya refuses him the mercy of a clean death and leaves him. She finds a ship from the Free City of Braavos, but the captain refuses her passage until she offers him the coin that Jaqen H'ghar gave her and says ""Valar Morghulis"", as instructed. The captain replies ""Valar Dohaeris"", and they set sail for Braavos. In the Epilogue of the book, it is discovered that a re-animated Catelyn Stark is alive with the Brotherhood Without Banners, eager for revenge against those who betrayed and murdered her and her son. Davos Seaworth washes ashore on a rocky island after the Battle of the Blackwater. He is found by King Stannis's men and taken to Dragonstone. Davos blames the red priestess Melisandre for Stannis's defeat, and he is imprisoned for treason (Melisandre having foreseen his intention to assassinate her). Melisandre asks for Davos simply to be true to his king, and Stannis releases Davos and asks him to serve as his Hand, since he is one of the few men Stannis can trust to serve him truthfully (most of the others being ambitious sycophants or fanatics). With Stannis' cooperation, Melisandre has performed blood rituals to awaken ""stone dragons"", which she thinks are the great statues that guard the castle. (Chronologically, this happens shortly before the Red Wedding.) King's Landing welcomes the Tyrells as liberators. King Joffrey agrees to set aside his betrothal to Sansa Stark and marry Lady Margaery Tyrell instead. Sansa is soon compelled to marry Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion treats Sansa gently and refuses to consummate the marriage against her will. Balon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands offers an alliance, but Tywin Lannister, Joffrey's grandfather and Hand, spurns it. Thus Balon's hope that the Lannisters would let him rule as king in the Iron Islands if he betrayed the North comes to nothing, as Theon said it would. Word reaches King's Landing of the sudden death of Balon Greyjoy, followed by news from The Twins regarding the Red Wedding and the murder of Robb Stark. Joffrey gloats that he has ""won"" the war upon hearing of Robb's death, angering Tywin, as the boy Joffrey played no part in the war at all. Margaery and Joffrey's wedding is held as planned; but, in the following festivities, King Joffrey is poisoned to death. Cersei Lannister has her brother Tyrion arrested as the poisoner and put on trial. Meanwhile, Sansa is smuggled out of the castle and taken to Littlefinger, who admits responsibility for Joffrey's death. Littlefinger, with Sansa, departs King's Landing for the Eyrie with a new scheme: to woo Lady Lysa Arryn, Catelyn's sister, into marriage. Davos Seaworth discovers a message from the Night's Watch, begging for aid against Mance Rayder and The Others. Melisandre convinces Stannis to sacrifice Edric Storm, a bastard son of Stannis's late brother, King Robert, to the flames to wake the dragons; but Davos smuggles Edric to safety. Stannis prepares to execute Davos for treason; before he can, Davos shows Stannis the Night's Watch's plea. Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth reach King's Landing to find that Joffrey's younger brother Tommen has inherited the throne but is not yet crowned, Tyrion is on trial for Joffrey's murder, and the Tyrell bannermen blame Brienne for King Renly's death. Jaime becomes Lord Commander of the Kingsguard but refuses his father's offer to make him heir to Casterly Rock. He also refuses to believe Cersei's claims that Tyrion killed Joffrey. After a quarrel, Jaime rejects her advances. Tyrion is seemingly doomed, as Cersei has recruited many people to give evidence against him, including the spymaster Varys and Tyrion's concubine Shae. Tyrion is approached by Lord Oberyn Martell of Dorne, who offers to fight for him in a trial by combat against Cersei's champion, Ser Gregor Clegane, ""the Mountain that Rides"". Oberyn nearly emerges victorious, but a mortally-wounded Gregor kills him. Tyrion is again condemned to death but escapes from his dungeon with the help of Jaime and Varys. Jaime reveals that Tyrion's beloved first wife had been a crofter's daughter, not a prostitute as their father Tywin had told him. Tyrion sees this as an unforgivable betrayal and swears vengeance on his father and siblings. Entering Tywin's chamber, he discovers Shae in his father's bed and kills her. He confronts Tywin as he sits on the privy. When taunted, Tyrion shoots Tywin through the bowels with a crossbow and leaves. Jaime frees Brienne and gives her a sword reforged from Ned Stark's sword of Valyrian steel. He tells her to keep her oath to Lady Catelyn, to find Arya and Sansa and return them home. He also tells her that the real reason he betrayed his oath and murdered King Aerys was that Aerys planned to destroy the city and everyone in it, rather than let Robert Baratheon take it. He carried out his most infamous act to save the innocent. At the Eyrie, Littlefinger and Lysa are now married, and Sansa remains hidden by pretending to be an illegitimate daughter of Littlefinger's named Alayne Stone. Only Littlefinger and Lysa are aware of her true identity. Sansa lives in fear of her increasingly psychotic Aunt Lysa, who threatens to cast her from the Eyrie after seeing Littlefinger kiss her. Littlefinger intervenes, unceremoniously pushing Lysa out of the ""Moon Door"" to her death. Sansa learns that Littlefinger convinced Lysa to poison her husband Jon Arryn and blame the Lannisters, which was the catalyst to the events of A Game of Thrones. A detachment of the Night's Watch awaits word from Qhorin Halfhand and Jon Snow. The Watch comes under attack by wights and the fabled monsters of legend known as the Others, suffering heavy casualties, but they manage to withdraw. Samwell Tarly kills one of the Others with a strange blade of obsidian, or ""dragonglass"". Some of the men of the Watch mutiny and kill Lord Commander Jeor Mormont at Craster's Keep. Sam escapes with the help of one of Craster's daughter-wives, Gilly, and they make their way south towards the Wall. They are helped on the way by a strange figure riding an elk, whom Sam calls Coldhands. Bran Stark, along with Jojen and Meera Reed, fleeing the ruins of Winterfell, are guided north by Bran's strange dreams of a three-eyed crow. They reach the Wall and meet Samwell Tarly and Gilly. Sam guides them to Coldhands, who will take them north, and returns to Castle Black, agreeing to keep the truth of Bran's survival a secret. Jon Snow is taken to Mance Rayder and is able to convince him that he is a deserter from the Night's Watch. He learns that the Others are driving the wildlings south towards the Wall. Jon and Ygritte also begin a sexual relationship due to their ""marriage by capture"". Ygritte takes Jon into a cave where they have sex, and Ygritte tells Jon she is in love with him. Mance seeks the legendary Horn of Winter which will shatter the Wall when sounded, but has been unable to find it. Jon escapes from the wildlings and reaches Castle Black ahead of Mance Rayder's army. The wildling army, over forty thousand strong, reaches Castle Black and assaults the Wall; Jon takes command of the defences and repels several assaults. Ygritte is among those slain in the fighting, dying in a heart-broken Jon's arms. As Jon Snow is leading the defense of the Wall, Janos Slynt and Ser Alliser Thorne return to Castle Black and hold an impromptu trial, accusing Jon of oathbreaking and treachery. He is imprisoned in an ice-cell at the base of the Wall. Janos Slynt's imagined self-importance and Ser Alliser's grudgingly-held anger at Jon Snow cause them to send Jon to kill Mance Rayder. Rayder now has the Horn of Winter, but would rather cross the Wall than destroy it, as the Wall is the only thing that will keep the Others at bay. As Jon is talking with Mance Rayder in the Wildling camp, the surviving army of King Stannis arrives. Rayder is captured and imprisoned. Stannis reveals that Davos Seaworth convinced him that a true king would protect the Seven Kingdoms' northern boundary from invasion. Melisandre believes the wildling invasion to be the forerunner of the return of The Great Other, the sworn foe of her red god R'hllor. Stannis offers Jon Snow Winterfell in exchange for his support, but Jon is chosen by the Night's Watch as its new Lord Commander through the cleverness of Samwell Tarly, and politely refuses Stannis' offer in favor of keeping his oath. Heading for Pentos by sea, Daenerys Targaryen learns that large slave armies can be bought in the cities of Slaver's Bay. Daenerys agrees to give up one of her beloved infant dragons to entice the Slavers to sell her the entire host of the Unsullied, the feared warrior-eunuchs of Astapor. After Daenerys is declared their new mistress, she immediately orders her new army of Unsullied to turn on their former masters and sacks the city. They are aided by Daenerys' maturing dragons, which while not yet big enough to ride, wreak havoc by breathing fire. She then frees all the slaves of Astapor. Daenerys' combined Dothraki/Dragon/Unsullied horde then advances on the slaver city of Yunkai. Many Yunkai mercenaries are killed; the remainder switch sides to Daenerys' growing horde, and Yunkai easily falls. However, the lords of Meereen antagonize Daenerys by killing child slaves and burning the land to deny her resources. Daenerys besieges the city to no avail. Daenerys discovers two false persons in her camp, but the natures of their deceptions are very different. Ser Jorah Mormont was spying for Varys the Spider, informant to the late King Robert Baratheon; Arstan Whitebeard is actually an alias of Ser Barristan Selmy, the humiliated former Lord Commander of Robert Baratheon's Kingsguard, who has come seeking the true Targaryen ruler. Daenerys offers both men the chance to make amends: by sneaking into Meereen to free the slaves and start an uprising. Meereen soon falls. Barristan Selmy submits to Daenery's judgement; she forgives him and makes him Lord Commander of her Queensguard; however, Mormont still insists that he did nothing wrong, and thus she banishes him for his betrayal. Daenerys decides to remain in Meereen and learn to be the queen that Westeros needs."
280,Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz,fantasy," In the story, set after the last book, Dorothy is joining Uncle Henry in California at Hugson's Ranch, on their way home from Australia, Dorothy having visited friends in San Francisco. She strikes up an acquaintance with Hugson's nephew and her second cousin, Zeb. Dorothy, Eureka, who is Dorothy's cat, and Zeb are riding a buggy being pulled by a cab-horse named Jim when an earthquake starts and opens a crevice beneath them that sends them hurtling into the bowels of the earth. Dorothy, Eureka, Jim, Zeb, and the buggy alight in the land of the Mangaboos, a vegetable people who accuse them of causing the Rain of Stones (what the Mangaboos call the earthquake because they are beneath the surface of the earth, and earth instead falls on them). Zeb is surprised by this strange new land, but Dorothy surmises that they are in a fairy country because they are meeting vegetable people and the animals&mdash;Jim and Eureka&mdash;are now speaking. Just as they are about to be sentenced to death by the Mangaboos, a hot air balloon falls out of the sky, and in the basket is the Wizard of Oz, whom Dorothy last met as he floated away from the Emerald City. The Wizard brags about his showmanship and with the others' aid attempts to awe the Mangaboos into sparing their lives. After defeating their wizard Gwig by slicing him in half&mdash;and showing him, as a vegetable, completely solid inside&mdash;he is appointed by the Mangaboo prince as their temporary wizard. The Wizard, Dorothy, and Zeb temporarily escape the fate of all intruders&mdash;to be cut up and planted&mdash;when they release a Princess from the garden who assumes authority. The Prince will now lose his authority and be planted himself. The cold Princess, however, vows to have Jim and Eureka killed nonetheless, so they all plan to escape higher into the earth where the Mangaboos cannot follow them due to the stronger pull of gravity the further they rise. Dorothy, Eureka, Zeb, Jim, and the Wizard enter a beautiful green valley and the Wizard's nine tiny piglets devour an enticing fruit which they find makes them invisible. They enter a seemingly empty cottage and are welcomed by invisible people, for they have entered the Valley of Voe, whose inhabitants use their invisibility to hide from marauding bears. The inhabitants of Voe help them escape the bears and explain what lies ahead, particularly the terrible Gargoyles. (A story the Voe people tell seems to indicate that by now Baum had decided that people in a fairy land do not die; even cut into pieces, an individual is still active and aware. See The Tin Woodman of Oz for another example of this.) The companions reach the base of Pyramid Mountain and meet the Braided Man halfway up. He used to make holes, Flutters (guaranteed to make any flag flutter on a windless day), and Rustles for silk skirts. One day he stacked up many postholes he had made and fell into Pyramid Mountain and since then kept shop there, continuing to make his wares. His facial hair has gotten so long, however, that he has had to braid it to keep from tripping. Dorothy had given him a blue bow, for he had tied each braid with a different color hair bow. The only color he didn't have was blue so Dorothy gave him one. They head into the land of the Gargoyles and at first repel them successfully because the winged wooden creatures are startled by loud noises. However, they do not tire and soon imprison Dorothy and her friends. They manage to escape the Gargoyles' grasp, using their detached wings and Jim's guidance. After a close encounter with the Dragonettes, baby dragons whose mother has tied their tails to a post until she returns from hunting, they find themselves trapped in a cave which they can not exit. Dorothy suggests that she signal Ozma to bring them to Oz by using the magic belt which she'd captured from the Nome King in Ozma of Oz. She does so at a prearranged time of day, and Dorothy, the Wizard, Zeb, Eureka, and Jim arrive within the Emerald City. Soon after renewing his acquaintance with the Emerald City staff and making the acquaintance of Ozma, the Wizard elects to remain in Oz permanently. The others' visit is highlighted by the wooden Saw-Horse beating Jim in a race and the trial of Eureka for eating Ozma's pet piglet given to her by the Wizard; in fact, the kitten is innocent and the piglet alive and well, but the obstinate Eureka will not say so. After the piglet is restored to Ozma and Zeb and Jim decide they've had enough of fairyland, Ozma then uses the magic belt to send Dorothy and Eureka back to Kansas, and Zeb and Jim back to California."
281,The Ship of Ishtar,fantasy," The archaeologist hero, Kenton, receives a mysterious ancient Babylonian artifact, which he discovers contains an incredibly detailed model of a ship. A dizzy spell casts Kenton onto the deck of the ship, which becomes a full-sized vessel sailing an eternal sea. At one end is Sharane the assistant priestess of Ishtar and her female minions, and at the other is Klaneth the assistant priest of Nergal and his male minions, representatives of two opposed deities. None of them can cross an invisible barrier at the midline of the ship, but Kenton can. His arrival destabilizes a situation that had been frozen for 6,000 years, and fantastic adventures ensue. The novel is not only a rousing fantasy adventure story, but a philosophical exploration of the relationship between material reality and the abstract concepts through which humans struggle to understand it. The reason the ship has been frozen in time is that Zarpanit the head priestess of Ishtar and Alusar the head priest of Nergal fell in love, and were in the midst of making love when their deities possessed them. This placed the hostile deities in an untenable position, especially as they represented cosmic forces that must be kept separate. The result was an imbalance between stability and instability in the universe, freezing the ship in time and rendering unstable its connection to the reality inhabited by the reader. In a study of fantasy and science fiction literature, William Sims Bainbridge (1986: 136) explained: ""The author uses evocative language and intense images to convey a sense of the marvelous and mysterious. It is Kenton's fate to intervene in the frozen cosmic struggle between Ishtar and Nergal, to fall in love with Sharane, and to gain Klaneth as his mortal enemy. The book builds tension through the device of letting Kenton's tie to the ship periodically become so weak that he falls back, unwilling, to his New York home. Kenton's tenuous psychic connection to the ship represents the reader's involvement in the fantasy. At any moment the ship may fade from reality, and both Kenton and the reader will be imprisoned in the mundane world of the everyday."""
282,The Whisperer,fantasy," The Whisperer is a fantasy novel. The story is told in third person. It follows the adventures of Griff, a thirteen-year-old boy who works in the circus,and Lute, Crown Prince of Drestonia. Griff can eavesdrop on other people's thoughts. When the circus master discovers Griff's amazing ability, he forces the young boy to appear in his show. Griff knows what he is doing is wrong and escapes from the circus with Tess, a fellow performer, and her magical creatures. Meanwhile Prince Lute's uncle Janko is scheming to overthrow his brother and become the next king. Lute is forced to flee, and seek help from a bitter dwarf and an angry pirate. One day, Griff hears a mysterious voice crying out for help in his mind. He calls the voice the Whisperer. With the help of his friends, magical and human, Griff realises that the Whisperer, whoever he is, is in great peril, and that it is up to him to save the mysterious voice."
283,Dezra's Quest,fantasy," Dark Wood is the home of Ansalon's centaur tribes, where they dwelt in peace, until strife began tearing them apart. A brave young warrior named Trephas sets out for Solace to seek aid from Caramon Majere and his daughter Dezra against a mad chieftain."
284,Eye of the Labyrinth,fantasy," This novel picks up two years after the events of the previous one, with Dirk fleeing Avacas a wanted man and seeking sanctuary in the Baenlands. Obsessed with Dirk's capture Antonov arrests Morna Provin at her husband's funeral and announces that he will have her burned at the stake come Landfall. Despite the best efforts of Tia and Reithan Dirk still finds out and demands that they attempt to save her. The other major plot follows the domestic quarrels of Alenor and Kirsh, who is still besotted with the acrobat Marquel. At Dirk's suggestion, Alenor invites Marquel to Kalarada willingly in the hope that keeping Kirsh distracted will give her some measure of control over her kingdom. Arriving on Elcast too late, Dirk has only time to beg Tia to end his mother's suffering. She refuses at first, but forced to listen to Morna's screams, Tia relents and shoots the former duchess through the eye, ending her pain. The two escape with Master Helgrin and row back to the Wanderer, watching as Reithan Seranov's diversion burns Antonov's flagship to the waterline in retribution. Tired of running, Dirk announces that night that he is going to Omaxin in an attempt to break through the labyrinth and discover the truth that sent Neris Veran into madness. The strain of her husband openly flaunting a mistress takes its toll on Alenor and her relationship with Kirsh grows fractious. She eventually begins an affair with the captain of her guard."
285,The Eye of the World,fantasy," The Eye of the World revolves around the lives of a group of young people from Emond's Field in The Two Rivers district: Rand al'Thor, Matrim (Mat) Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Egwene al'Vere, and Nynaeve al'Meara. Emond's Field is unexpectedly attacked by Dark forces—bestial Trollocs and a Myrddraal who seem to specifically target Rand, Mat and Perrin. Hoping to save their village from further attacks, the young men and Egwene flee the village accompanied by an Aes Sedai named Moiraine Damodred, her WarderAl'Lan Mandragoran and a Gleeman Thom Merrilin. They are later joined by Nynaeve al'Meara, the Wisdom of Emond's Field. Pursued by ever-increasing numbers of Trollocs and Myrddraal, the travellers are forced to take refuge in the abandoned city of Shadar Logoth, a place even the dark forces are reluctant to enter because of the evil Mashadar that resides there. While escaping the city the travelers are separated. Rand, Mat and Thom make their way by boat to Whitebridge where Thom is apparently killed while allowing Rand and Mat to escape a Myrddraal. In Caemlyn Rand befriends an Ogier named Loial. While exploring the city and trying to catch a glimpse of the recently captured False Dragon, Rand falls into the palace gardens. Once there he meets Elayne Trakand, heir apparent to the throne of Andor and her brothers Gawyn and Galad Damodred. Rand is taken before Queen Morgase and her Aes Sedai advisor, Elaida who foretells that Rand is dangerous. Queen Morgase, however, decides to let Rand go free. Meanwhile Egwene and Perrin travel separately to Caemlyn in the company of Elyas Machera, a man who can communicate with wolves and who claims that Perrin can do the same. The three run afoul of a legion of the Children of the Light. Perrin kills two Whitecloaks after witnessing the death of a wolf at their hands and is sentenced to death. Moiraine, Lan and Nynaeve rescue Egwene and Perrin from the Whitecloaks in time to escape their fate. Together they travel to Caemlyn where they are reunited with Rand and Mat. Rand tells Moiraine that Mat has been suspicious and withdrawn, and Moiraine diagnoses Mat's ""sickness"" as the corrupting influence of a ruby dagger Mat took from Shadar Logoth. Moiraine says that Mat must travel to Tar Valon in order to be healed. Loial warns Moiraine of a threat to the Eye of the World, which is confirmed by vivid and disturbing dreams Mat, Rand and Perrin have had. The Eye of the World was created by Aes Sedai who sacrificed themselves to create a pool of Saidin untouched by the Dark One's taint, and is hidden in the Blight. The Eye of the World is protected by Someshta (the Green Man) and contains one of the seven seals on the Dark One's prison, the Dragon banner of Lews Therin Telamon and the Horn of Valere. Loial guides the group through the Ways (passageways built by the male Aes Sedai during the Breaking of the World, which are now tainted by the same evil that tainted Saidin) in order to reach the Eye of the World. The group enters the Blight, in search of the Eye of the World guided by The Green Man. The Eye is revealed to be a pool of Saidin, pure and untainted. The companions are confronted by the Forsaken Aginor and Balthamel. Balthamel dies at the hand of the Green Man and Aginor and Rand battle for control of the Eye of the World. Rand defeats Aginor and guided by blind luck uses the pure Saidin to decimate the Trolloc army and defeat Ba'alzamon. Afterwards Rand realizes to his own horror that he has channeled the One Power and is therefore condemned to a fate of insanity and horrific death. It is revealed that Moiraine believes Rand is the Dragon Reborn."
286,Conan the Adventurer,fantasy," In these stories from Conan's early thirties, the Cimmerian starts as a leader of the Afghuli tribe in Vendhya, sojourns in the black kingdoms south of Stygia, and ends up as a Zingaran buccaneer. Chronologically, the four short stories collected as Conan the Adventurer fall between Conan the Wanderer and Conan the Buccaneer."
287,Beautiful Chaos,fantasy," After returning home, more strange things are starting to occur in the small town of Gatlin. Horrific storms, sweltering heat, and hordes of locusts are tearing Gatlin apart as the couple attempts to make sense of the long term effects Lena's Claiming. Not even Lena's family is immune to the strange occurrences in town, as their powers begin to go haywire. Meanwhile Ethan is beginning to forget many things from his past and daily life and has began to dream again, but not of Lena."
288,She: A History of Adventure,fantasy," A young Cambridge University professor, Horace Holly, is visited by a colleague, Vincey, who reveals that he will soon die and proceeds to tell Holly a fantastical tale of his family heritage. He charges Holly with the task of raising his young son, Leo (whom he has never seen) and gives Holly a locked iron box, with instructions that it is not to be opened until Leo turns 25. Holly agrees, and indeed Vincey is found dead the next day. Holly raises the boy as his own; when the box is opened on Leo's 25th birthday they discover the ancient and mysterious ""Sherd of Amenartas"", which seems to corroborate Leo's father's story. Holly, Leo and their servant, Job, follow instructions on the Sherd and travel to eastern Africa but are shipwrecked. They alone survive, together with their Arab captain, Mahomed; after a perilous journey into an uncharted region of the African interior, they are captured by the savage Amahagger people. The adventurers learn that the natives are ruled by a fearsome white queen, who is worshiped as Hiya or ""She-who-must-be-obeyed"". The Amahagger are curious about the white-skinned interlopers, having been warned of their coming by the mysterious queen. Billali, the chief elder of one of the Amahagger tribes, takes charge of the three men, introducing them to the ways of his people. One of the Amahagger maidens, Ustane, takes a liking to Leo and during a tribal feast sings lovingly to him. Billali tells Holly that he needs to go and report the white men's arrival to She, but in his absence, some of the Amahagger become restless and seize Mahomed, intending to eat him as part of a ritual ""hotpot"". Realising what is about to happen, Holly shoots several of the Armahagger, killing Mahomed in the process; in the ensuing struggle Leo is gravely wounded, but the three Englishmen are saved when Billali returns in the nick of time and declares that they are under the protection of She. As Leo's condition worsens, he approaches death although tended by Ustane. They are taken to the home of the queen, which lies near the ruins of the lost city of Kôr, a once mighty civilization which predated the Egyptians. The queen and her retinue lives under a dormant volcano in a series of catacombs built as tombs for the people of Kôr. There, Holly is presented to the queen, a white sorceress named Ayesha. Her beauty is so great that it enchants any man who beholds it. She, who is veiled and lies behind a partition, warns Holly that the power of her splendour arouses both desire and fear, but he is dubious. When she shows herself, however, Holly is enraptured and prostrates himself before her. Ayesha reveals that she has learned secret of immortality and that she possesses other supernatural powers including the ability to read the minds of others, a form of telegnosis and the ability to heal wounds and cure illness; she is also revealed to have a tremendous knowledge of chemistry, but is notably unable to see into the future. She tells Holly that she has lived in the realm of Kôr for over two millennia, awaiting the reincarnated return of her lover, Kallikrates (whom she had slain in a fit of jealous rage). After she veils herself again, Holly remembers Leo and begs Ayesha to visit his ward. Having agreed, she is stunned upon seeing him, as she believes him to be the reincarnation of Kallikrates. Later, when Holly secretly follows Ayesha to a hidden chamber he learns that she may also have some degree of power to reanimate the dead. She heals Leo, but becomes jealous of the girl, Ustane. The latter is ordered to leave the home of She-who-must-be-obeyed but refuses, and is eventually struck dead by Ayesha's power. Despite the murder of their friend, Holly and Leo cannot free themselves from the power of Ayesha's beauty. They remain amongst the tombs as Leo recovers his strength, and Ayesha lectures Holly on the ancient history of Kôr. Ayesha shows Leo the perfectly preserved body of Kallikrates, which she has kept with her, but she then dissolves the remains with a powerful acid, confident that Leo is indeed the reincarnation of her former lover. In the climax of the novel, Ayesha takes the two men to see the pillar of fire, passing through the ruined city of Kôr and into the heart of the ancient volcano. She is determined that Leo should bathe in the fire to become immortal and remain with her forever, and that together they can become the immortal and all-powerful rulers of the world. After a perilous journey, they come to a great cavern, but at the last Leo doubts the safety of entering the flame. To allay his fears, Ayesha steps into the Spirit of Life, but with this second immersion, the life-preserving power is lost and Ayesha begins to revert to her true age. Holly speculates that it may be that a second exposure undoes the effects of the previous or the Spirit of Life spews death on occasion. Before their eyes, Ayesha withers away in the fire, and her body shrinks. The sight is so shocking that Job dies in fright. Before dying, She tells Leo, ""I die not. I shall come again."" *Horace Holly - protagonist and narrator, Holly is a Cambridge don whose keen intellect and knowledge was developed to compensate for his ape-like appearance. Holly knows a number of ancient languages, including Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew, which allow him to communicate with the Amahagger (who speak a form of Arabic) and She (who knows all three languages). Holly's interest in archaeology and the origins of civilization lead him to explore the ruins of Kor. *Leo Vincey - ward of Horace Holly, Leo is an attractive, physically active young English gentleman with a thick head of blond hair. He is the confidant of Holly and befriends Ustane. According to She, Leo resembles Kallikrates in appearance and is his reincarnation. *Ayesha - the title character of the novel, called Hiya by the native Amahagger, or ""She"". Ayesha was born over 2,000 years ago amongst the Arabs, mastering the lore of the ancients and becoming a great sorceress. Learning of the Pillar of Life in the African interior, she journeyed to the ruined kingdom of Kôr, feigning friendship with a hermit who was the keeper of the Flame that granted immortality. She bathed in the Pillar of Life's fire. *Job - Holly's trusted servant. Job is a working-class man and highly suspicious and judgmental of non-English peoples. He is also a devout Protestant. Of all the travellers, he is especially disgusted by the Amahagger and fearful of She. *Billali - an elder of one of the Amahagger tribes. *Ustane - an Amahagger maiden. She becomes romantically attached to Leo, caring for him when he is injured, acting as his protector, and defying She to stay with him. *Kallikrates - an ancient Greek, the husband of Amenartas, and ancestor of Leo. Two thousand years ago, he and Amenartas fled Egypt, seeking a haven in the African interior where they met Ayesha. There, She fell in love with him, promising to give him the secret of immortality if he would kill Amenartas. He refused, and enraged She struck him down. *Amenartas - an ancient Egyptian priestess and ancestress of the Vincey family. As a priestess of Isis, she was protected from the power of She. When Ayesha slew Kallikrates, she expelled Amenartas from her realm. Amenartas gave birth to Kallikrates' son, beginning the line of the Vinceys (Leo's ancestors)."
289,Beautiful Darkness,fantasy," Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes are recovering from the fact that Lena's uncle, Macon Ravenwood, an Incubus, died during their battle against Lena's evil mother, Sarafine. The two fell in love when Lena came to the small, unchanging town of Gatlin in South Carolina. Lena is a Caster and unlike other caster families, hers shares a curse that was accidentally put on them by their ancestor, Genevieve Duchannes. Each member of Lena's family is claimed his/her sixteenth birthday, for either Light or Dark. Light vs. Dark being the Caster equivalent of good vs. evil. The night that her uncle had died, Lena's sixteenth birthday, one of Lena's eyes had turned Gold (The eye color of Dark Casters) while the other remained Green (The eye color of Light Casters), therefore leaving her in the middle of Dark and Light. Sometime after Macon's death, Ethan starts worrying about Lena, who has been acting strange ever since. Lena has stopped writing in the tattered old journal that she used to carry around with her. She has even almost stopped Kelting with Ethan and rather prefers to block him out. Ethan, on the other hand, is having strange visions that include Macon, Abraham Ravenwood and a girl named Jane, who Macon appears to be madly in love with. On the last day of school, after Lena has told Ethan that she and her family are leaving town, Ethan, Lena and Link (Ethan's best friend) are alone on a lake because of an incident that took place at the high school's parking lot. After kissing Ethan, Lena takes off into the forest and, after chasing her, Ethan witnesses her jump on to the back of a Harley and ride off with a stranger. In hope of finding her, Ethan and Link drive to Dar-ee Keen, Gatlin's greasy version of Dairy King. Instead, they meet up with Ridley, Lena's Dark Caster cousin, who always appeared barely dressed, with the power of persuasion. Ridley is with a guy who introduces himself as John Breed and claims to know Lena. Ethan realizes that John was the one Lena had run off with. At his job in the library, Ethan meets Olivia ""Liv"" Durand, who befriends him quickly. After giving Liv a tour of Gatlin, Ethan and Liv are eating at the Dar-ee Keen when Lena's car races by, obviously stating that she had seen Ethan and Liv together. During the town's annual County Fair, Ethan is shocked to see that Lena is wearing Ridley's type of clothing: black tank that has ridden up on her stomach, black skirt about five inches short, a streak of blue in her hair and black-rimmed eyes. During Ethan and Lena's conversation, Liv shows up. In response to this, Lena takes off, jealous and angry, causing a chain reaction of chaos as she went. Afterwards, during the pie contest sponsored by Southern Crusty, Ridley, John and Lena cause maggots, beetles and grubs to crawl of every pie except one, Amma Treadeau's. Amma is Ethan's housekeeper, a grandmotherly figure to him, taking care of him since his mother died. When Ethan and Link follow the three troublemakers, they see them enter the Tunnel of Love and disappear, not leaving a clue to where they went. Desperate to get some help, Ethan and Link go to the Lunae Libri, the Caster library, in hope of finding Marian, the Mortal librarian and Caster library Keeper. Once inside, Ethan hears a laugh, guiding him to a room in which he finds Liv. Liv explains to him that she is a keeper in training and knows quite a lot about the Caster world. Marian, on the other hand, suspects that Ethan may be a Wayward, a Mortal who helps Casters in finding the way to their fates, or the one who knows the way. It is also revealed to Ethan that his mother was a Keeper. Determined to find Lena, the three friends, Ethan, Link and Liv set out through the Caster tunnels underground. Eventually, they find their way into a Caster bar, where they find Ridley, John and Lena. Ethan is shocked to see Lena dancing with John, his hands on her hips. After Lena admits that she does not want to see Ethan there, Link, Liv and Ethan get out of there. Back in the tunnels, Ethan almost kisses Liv. In Gatlin, when Ethan goes to see Lena at her mansion, she reveals to him that she is going to run away before her family leaves and that she has put a Cast on him, one that will make sure he is unable to tell anyone. After, on All Souls Day Ethan realizes that the Jane from his visions was his mother, Lila Jane Evers and that she loved Macon, after Marian gives him the Arclight, a metaphysical prison for Incubuses. Though he is shattered, Marian confirms that Lila also loved Mitchell, Ethan's father. Some time after, Ethan and Liv have come to the conclusion that Sarafine is trying to pull the Seventeenth Moon out of time in order to get Lena to claim herself. With the help of Ridley (Who loses her powers after an encounter with Sarafine through the journey), Link and Lucille, Ethan's Great Aunt's cat, the one who keeps disappearing, they find The Great Barrier, the place Sarafine is leading Lena to, after sometime in the Caster Tunnels. Halfway between though, Ethan learned that Lena made a deal with the Book of Moons, a powerful Caster book, for Ethan's life after Sarafine killed him. It was Ethan's life for something, which unexpectedly turns out to be Macon's life. Now, Ethan understood why Lena had been acting strange and blaming herself for killing her uncle. Before the team is about to enter the Sea Cave where Sarafine is hiding, Ethan understands the purpose of the Arclight and, with the help of Liv, is able to bring back Macon from it. Once outside, Macon has Green Caster eyes, which confirms that he has switched from an Incubus to a Caster. He also explains how Lila Jane's ghost helped him once The Book of Moons took his life by capturing him inside the Arclight. In order to help the teenagers fight off the Incubuses and Dark Casters inside the Sea Cave, Leah Ravenwood, Macon's sister and a Succubus, goes with them. Inside the cave, John is holding Lena, who has no idea where she is or what she is doing. There are also a lot of Vexes, powerful demons of the underground, who are sent back once Amma, Arelia (Macon's Mother), Gramma (Lena's Grandmother) and Twyla (Macon's Aunt) arrive. Quickly, while the others are fighting, Ethan helps Lena revive. Lena claims herself to be both Dark and Light, killing off both Twyla, a Light Caster and Larkin, a Dark Caster (Also Lena's Cousin), because on her last birthday, Lena had learned that she were to turn Dark, then all the Light Casters in her family will die and if she turned Light, all the Dark Casters in her family will die. One night after, Link sneaks through Ethan's window and wakes him up. While the fighting was going on, Link was bitten by John, who is revealed to be a hybrid, half Caster, half Incubus. So now, after Lena confirms it, Link is turning into an Incubus."
290,Destiny's Road,fantasy," At the start of the novel, the main character, Jemmy (he changes his name several times over the course of the novel) is around age 10. The novel then proceeds to skip through time in the various sections of the book including his teenage and young adult years, ending when he is in his forties. At first, he lives in his birthplace, Spiral Town, at one end of the Road – no one there knows what lies beyond a short distance down the Road. Jemmy's adventures begin as a late adolescent when he kills someone working for the merchants in self-defense and is forced to flee Spiral Town. He winds up a distance down the road in a fishing community where he changes his name and appearance, and becomes a cook. He marries into the population. When a different caravan comes through town from Spiral Town, they arrange with the village elders to hire Jemmy as a chef. He proceeds on the caravan to the Neck, the isthmus which joins the peninsula to the mainland from which the caravans come. No locals, like Jemmy, are permitted on the mainland. At the Neck, Jemmy is told he must return to his town on the next caravan – the same one he fled Spiral Town from. He instead flees by sea. Taking refuge on a boat left over from the time of Landing, he floats around the peninsula to a point beyond the Neck. There, in a storm, he goes ashore and is found by prisoners at the Windfarm – sentenced prisoners who farm speckles. All speckles come from the area and are rendered infertile by irradiation; the monopoly is rigorously maintained. The others use clothing that Jemmy has salvaged to plot an escape, led by the violent Andrew. They break out and evade pursuit. Andrew has planned all along to kill Jemmy, but Jemmy literally gets the drop on him and kills him in self-defense. Jemmy leaves the other prisoners, taking money they have found and a supply of speckles, and flees once again. Twenty-seven years later, Jemmy is a pit chef at a beach resort along the Road. His wife is burned in an accident and he is forced to leave his place – a place, as it turns out, of hiding. He finally reaches his lifetime's goal of seeing the other end of the Road, and Destiny Town. There, he is able to access the Cavorite's computer library and learn the true history of Destiny, a discovery which hardens him. After his wife dies, Jemmy takes his father-in-law's widow Harlow back to the site of the prisoners' hideout, where he had planted fertile speckles. They still survive, and he takes some, sharing the secret with Harlow. They then return to the beach resort, of which Jemmy, by his wife's death, is now part owner. The two contrive to join a caravan, and Jeremy returns as a merchant's chef, unknown to his former townsfolk, to Spiral Town. During the trip, Jemmy makes his attempt to break the speckles monopoly. All along the Road, he distributes gumdrop candy covered with dyed speckle seeds to children. After distributing the candy, he sows speckle seeds in potassium-rich areas such as manure piles and graveyards. The next time the merchants try to withhold speckles, they will be in for a surprise."
291,World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal,fantasy," Two years following the defeat of the Horde and destruction of the Dark Portal from Draenor to Azeroth, a small dimensional rift remains linking the two worlds. The orc shaman Ner'Zhul is approached by orc champions resurrected as undead death-knights, with a plan to re-open the Portal and catch the Alliance unaware. Using the skull of the traitorous Gul'Dan, the remaining Horde forces distract the Alliance while stealing powerful artifacts to return to Draenor and open new rifts to other worlds. The paladin Turalyon joins forces with the elven ranger Alleria, the powerful mage Khadgar, and the dwarven griffon-rider Kurdran to head off the diabolical plans, but their mission is further complicated by the deadly Black Dragonflight's collusion with the Horde."
292,Mistborn: The Well of Ascension,fantasy," The book begins with two armies laying siege to Luthadel - the army of Elend's father, Straff Venture and another one headed by Cett. Elend is now the King of Luthadel, with Vin as his girlfriend and the rest of the team as his close confidants. A short time later, a third army of koloss arrives, led by one of Elend's former friends, who is buying their obedience with counterfeit coins. Vin is starting to become suspicious of the mist, as they no longer make her feel as at home as they used to. At the same time, Sazed on his journeys has come across suspicious deaths which appear to be due to the mist. There is a lot of politicking during the middle part of the book, as Elend becomes a victim of the same laws he wrote as the Assembly has voted to depose him and elect a new king. The Assembly elects Lord Penrod as their new king, rejecting Elend. At the same time, Vin is going through a personal crisis due in large part to Zane, the son of Staff Venture and Elend's half brother, an apparently mentally ill Mistborn who is trying to seduce Vin and get her to go away with him. At the urging of Zane, Vin kills hundreds of Cett's soldiers at the mansion he was staying at in Luthadel, but stops short of killing Cett himself. Cett decides to leave the city and abandon his siege. Sazed and the rest of the crew scheme to get Elend and Vin out of the city, with Sazed creating a fake map to the Well of Ascension, where Vin is convinced she must go. Straff Venture withdraws his army and allows the koloss army to attack Luthadel, planning to rescue the city after the koloss have destroyed most of it and suffered casualties. Vin returns to Luthadel just in time to save Sazed. She also realizes that she is able to control the koloss using her allomancy, which is how the Lord Ruler kept them in check. She stops the slaughtering and pillaging that they were doing, and with the rest of the human army from Luthadel, attacks Straff Venture's army. Vin kills Straff and his generals as Cett decides to ally himself with Luthadel. Vin tells the armies that Elend is their new emperor, and Cett, Penrod and the last general of Straff's army can be kings under him. Vin realizes that the Well of Ascension is in Luthadel, and finds a hitherto unknown doorway in the Lord Ruler's former dwelling, that leads down to a series of caves. She finds the Well of Ascension, but is urged to ""release"" the power for the good of the world. She decides not to try to use the power to heal the dying Elend or fix anything else, but to release it. The moment she releases it, an entity shouts out that it is now free. Elend consumes a small piece of metal which makes him a Mistborn and he heals himself."
293,Alice Adams,fantasy," The novel begins with Virgil Adams confined to bed with an unnamed illness. There is tension between Virgil and his wife over how he should go about recovering, and she pressures him not to return to work for J. A. Lamb once he is well. Alice, their daughter, attempts to keep peace in the family (with mixed results) before walking to her friend Mildred Palmer's house to see what Mildred will wear to a dance that evening. After Alice's return, she spends the day preparing for the dance, going out to pick violets for a bouquet, as she cannot afford to buy flowers for herself. Her brother, Walter, initially refuses to accompany her to the dance, but as Alice cannot go without an escort, Mrs. Adams prevails upon Walter, and he rents a ""tin Lizzie"" to drive Alice to the dance. Walter's attitude towards the upper class is one of obvious disdain—he would rather spend his time gambling with the African-American servants in the cloakroom than be out in the ballroom at the dance. Alice forces him to dance with her at first, as it will be a grave embarrassment for her to stand alone, but Walter eventually abandons her. Alice uses every trick in her book to give the impression that she is not standing by herself, before dancing with Frank Dowling (whose attentions she does not welcome) and Arthur Russell (a rich newcomer to town who is rumored to be engaged to Mildred), who she believes danced with her out of pity and at Mildred's request. She leaves the dance horribly embarrassed after Arthur discovers Walter's gambling with the servants. The next day, Alice goes on an errand for her father into town, passing Frincke's Business College on the way with a shudder (as she sees it as a place that drags promising young ladies down to ""hideous obscurity""). On the walk back home, she encounters Arthur Russell, who shows an obvious interest in her. As she assumes he is all but spoken for, she doesn't know how to handle the conversation—while warning him not to believe the things girls like Mildred will say about her, she tells a number of lies to obscure her family's relatively humble economic status. Arthur returns, several days later, and his courtship of Alice continues. All seems well between them until he mentions a dance being thrown by the young Miss Henrietta Lamb; Arthur wants to escort Alice to the dance, and she lies to cover for the fact that she is not invited to the event. Mrs. Adams uses Alice's distress to finally goad Virgil into setting up a glue factory (which she has long insisted would be the family's ticket to success). It is eventually revealed that the glue recipe was developed by Virgil and another man under the direction and in the employ of J.A. Lamb, who over the years declined to take up its production despite repeated proddings from Virgil. Although initially reluctant to ""steal"" from Mr. Lamb, Virgil finally persuades himself that his improvements to the recipe over the years has made it ""virtually"" his. As Arthur continues his secret courtship of Alice (he never talks about her nor tells anyone where he spends his evenings), Alice continues spinning a web of lies to preserve the image of herself and her family that she has invented. This becomes especially difficult when she and Arthur encounter Walter in a bad part of town, walking with a young woman who gives the appearance of being a prostitute. At home, Walter is confronted by his father, who demands that Walter quit Lamb's to help in setting up the glue factory. Walter refuses to help his father without a $300 cash advance, which Virgil cannot afford. Virgil arranges to resign from Lamb's employ without speaking to him face-to-face, as he fears the old man's reaction, and puts the glue factory into operation. Meanwhile, Alice works frantically to convince Arthur that the things other people will say about her won't be true, and continues to press the point even when Arthur insists that no one has spoken about her behind her back, and that nothing anyone else could say would change his opinion of her. Mrs. Adams decides to arrange a dinner so that Arthur can meet the family, and sets about planning an elaborate meal and hiring servants for the day, so that Arthur will be impressed. Walter again demands cash from his father (the amount has now risen to $350) without explaining why he needs it, and is again rebuffed. While these events occur at the Adams house, Arthur finally overhears things about Alice, which strikes a chord, and her family, including the fact that Virgil Adams has ""stolen"" from J. A. Lamb in setting up a factory with Lamb's secret recipe for glue. The dinner itself is a total disaster: the day is unbearably hot, the food far too heavy, the hired servants surly and difficult to manage, capped by Virgil unwittingly acting like his lower-middle-class self, not the well-to-do businessman his wife and daughter wish him to act. Arthur, still reeling from what he heard about the Adamses earlier in the day, is stiff and uneasy throughout the evening, and Alice feels increasingly uncomfortable. By the end of the night, it's apparent to her that he will not come courting again, and she bids him farewell. That night, word reaches the family that Walter has skipped town, leaving behind him a massive debt to his employer, J. A. Lamb, which will have to be paid to keep Walter out of jail. The following morning, Virgil arrives at work to see that Lamb is opening his own glue factory on such a huge scale that Adams will not be able to compete, and will never make enough money to either pay his son's debts or pay off the family's mortgage. Virgil confronts Lamb about this state of affairs, working himself into such a state that he collapses, and returns to the same sickbed at home where he began the book. Lamb takes pity on the man, and arranges to buy the Adams glue factory for a sufficient price to pay off Walter's debts and the family's mortgage. The Adams family takes in boarders to help keep the family afloat economically, and Alice heads downtown to Frincke's Business College to train herself in employable skills so that she can support the family. She encounters Arthur Russell on the road, and is pleased that their conversation is both polite and brief—there is no possibility of renewed romance between them, which she accepts peacefully."
294,The Named,fantasy," The Named begins with a foreshadowing that portrays the protagonist: Ethan, witnessing his own sister's death by Marduke, an evil minion to the evil Goddess: 'Chaos' who is also the leader of the 'Order of Chaos' (an organization that opposes the Guard). The story continues when Ethan is 16. He goes to school in Angel Falls and is aware of his powers, and is relatively good at controlling them. The story switches point of views and Isabel comes into play. She is a long-time acquaintance with Ethan because of his standing friendship with her brother Matt. Unfortunately, Matt and Ethan's friendship grew apart because of their common interest in Rochelle. However, Rochelle doesn't come truly into play until later in the story. Ethan is training under the power of Arkarian, a coordinator of the Guard. He has the power of agelessness and remains 18. He has blue hair and violet eyes, but only because of this power. Arkarian is also a truthseer (can read the minds of others) and has his wings, which allows him to teleport to anywhere by thinking of it. Isabel becomes aware of her powers one day while getting ready for school. She has the power to heal. Arkarian tells Ethan that he has been given an apprentice: Isabelle, whom he must train in the following three weeks. This is to be ready for the final battle between the Order and the Guard but Ethan now Isabel knows of this in this moment in time. Isabel was in love with Ethan when they were young. She would follow him and her brother around just to be with them. She grew attached to the outdoors and was very strong for being a girl. This feature alone helped Ethan train her. At first, Isabel was weary about Ethan and couldn't trust what he was saying, but she grew to it and soon was a very strong member of the Guard and one of the named. The Named, are the group of nine who are said to fight the evil goddess in the final battle. The nine who may or may not appear in this book, are Arkarian, Ethan, Isabel, Matt, Neriah, Rochelle, Jimmy, Shaun, and Mr. Carter. Ethan and Isabel go on their first mission back in time to make sure King Richard actually became king. The only way to get back in time is to go through the citadel (a palace with many rooms that appeal to the people who show up in them). They can only get to the Citadel through their sleep, and only their souls go, their body remains behind while they sleep. Isabel is close to dying at one point in the book. Only her soul-mate can save her. Her soul-mate had to call her name to get her soul back to her body. Ethan tried but failed. Isabel couldn't hear him. Then Arkarian called her name. Isabel heard him. When she awoke she thought it was Ethan that had saved her. Arkarian said that Isabel can never know that he is her soul-mate."
295,The Boy Who Kicked Pigs,fantasy," The novel begins by announcing that today will be the day that a young boy, Robert Caligari, dies. Robert is an extremely odd boy who cannot stop himself from kicking pigs. This begins as a private act of revenge against his sister, Nerys, who is always putting money in her own tin piggy bank. Robert is angry at Nerys constantly rattling the pig in front of him, and so takes great pleasure in kicking the pig across the room whenever he is alone. Robert's obsession with kicking pigs gets worse, and one day, he kicks his sister's piggy bank out of the window, causing chaos for his neighbours and a local police officer. The last straw for Robert's mother is when he kicks a rather large woman's bagged pork chops, which she had just bought at the local butcher's shop. After a local man finally gets revenge on Robert by throwing him over a church wall, Robert realises that he hates people. While Robert's neighbours soon come to the conclusion that he is a nice young boy, he is plotting revenge. After poisoning his sister's food, he decides to trick an old blind man into crossing a road of busy traffic. Unfortunately for the old man this proves fatal, yet nobody suspects Robert's involvement. Robert engineers another, far worse, road accident in the next step of his evil plan. However, in the process of doing so, he finds himself trapped in his secret hideaway, where he is about to face a truly terrible fate."
296,The Elfstones of Shannara,fantasy," The magical Ellcrys tree was beginning to die, thus weakening the spell that held the Forbidding. The Ellcrys spoke to the Chosen, telling them of a rebirth, a process which enables a new Ellcrys to be born—but this can only be done at the fountain of the Bloodfire. The Chosen then informs their Prince Ander Elessedil and King Eventine Elessedil of the matter. However, there is no one who knows of the location of the Bloodfire. A search in the ancient Elven library reveals one reference to the Bloodfire. It states that it lies in a place named ""Safehold"". At the same time, a powerful Demon, the Dagda Mor, escapes from the waning Forbidding, bringing with it the Reaper and the Changeling. The Dagda Mor then sends the Reaper to kill all the Chosen, and the Changeling to act as a spy for the demons within the Elven city. Eventine finds himself at a loss, for only the Chosen can make the rebirth of the Ellcrys happen. The Druid Allanon appeared, telling Eventine that his coming must remain a secret, and promising to find out the location of Safehold. He went to the ancient Druid keep, Paranor, in an attempt to locate Safehold. After learning its location, Allanon was ambushed by the Dagda Mor and a handful of Furies. He retreated to Storlock for a time, and then went to Havenstead with Wil Ohmsford--who is a Healer, a descendant of Jerle Shannara and bearer of the Elfstones--to find Amberle Elessedil, who is King Eventine's granddaughter and a Chosen, who abandoned her duty to the Ellcrys and fled the Elven capital, Arborlon. She eventually agreed to return to Arborlon with them, only giving in when Demon Wolves were closing in upon them. En route, close to the Silver River, Allanon, Amberle and Wil were ambushed by Demon wolves. Allanon fended off the Demons while Wil and Amberle escaped to safety. The King of the Silver River took them in and sheltered them just before they would have been caught; after talking with him, the duo discover they have been transported miles away from where they started, and have no idea if Allanon survived or where he was. They decided to continue on to Arborlon and hoped to meet him there, but on the way their horse was stolen by Rovers, a gypsy-like group of people who travel in caravans and recognize no laws but their own. Wil insisted that they get the horse back, and ingratiated himself to the Rovers and their leader Cephalo by using his skills as healer to help some of the sick or mildly injured members of the family. He met Eretria, a beautiful Rover girl Cephalo said was his daughter; in reality, she was not his daughter at all and would be sold now that she was of an age to marry. She was immediately attracted to Wil and wanted to help him get the horse back, if he promised to take her with him when he escaped. A giant demon attacked the caravan and Wil was forced to use the Elfstones to defend the Rovers, finally destroying the demon, but damaging himself somehow in a way he did not understand. Cephalo was angry with him, but let he and Amberle leave with their horse. Eretria was left behind but promised to Wil that they would meet again. After being pursued by demons, Wil and Amberle managed to regroup with Allanon and return to Arborlon. Amberle received a seed from the dying Ellcrys and prepared to go to Safehold with Wil, six Elven companions and the Captain of the Home Guard, Crispin. After they journeyed by boat to the Elven outpost at Drey Wood, the group found the entire garrison that had been stationed at the outpost dead—and the Reaper, who had killed all of them. They managed to escape by setting off down the river once more, but two of the Elven guards were run down and killed in the process. Wil realized that there must have been a spy in Arborlon, and that if the spy knew about Drey Wood, then it was likely their mission was known and they would be pursued the entire way. The party then goes to the Matted Brakes, where another two of the group are killed by an unknown massive creature. After escaping from the Brakes, the remaining group of five found themselves at an ancient Elven fortress named Pykon. The group made the decision to rest the night there, but the Reaper found them again and killed the final two Elven hunters. Wil and Amberle ran into the network of tunnels inside of the Pykon to try to find Crispin, who had gone into there to try to find a way out. Wil and Amberle finally lost the Reaper by destroying a bridge over a gorge, but they lost Crispin as well. During the battle, Wil failed to unlock the power of the Elfstones and believed that his human blood was blocking him from using them. He was resigned to not being able to use the stones anymore, and decided that they would just have to get along without them. The duo met the young Wing Rider Perk soon after, who agreed to take them into the Wilderun on his Roc, Genewen. He also agreed to fly over the Hollows every day for a week in case the duo had need of his help. Meanwhile, Allanon and the Elves went to war with the Demons, beginning the War of the Forbidding. The Elven army took up two positions in two mountain passes named Halys Cut and Worl Run. Having no weapons, the Demons used human-wave tactics in the ensuing battles and literally ran over the Elven army, even managing to injure King Eventine. Ander's brother, Arion Elessedil, was killed as well in Worl Run. Defeated, the Elven force retreated first to Baen Draw, successfully defending it until it was discovered that they were being flanked. They then retreated to Arborlon, their last line of defense. In the process, they lost their commander, Kael Pindanon. Shortly after their return to Arborlon, Dwarf and Troll contingents joined them, uniting banners from all four of the Four Lands for the first time in history. Eventine was recovering in his room when the Changeling, disguised for months as Eventine's pet dog Manx, tried to kill the old king in his bed. Eventine killed the Demon, but was badly wounded and near death. Amberle and Wil traveled to Grimpen Ward, a town of thieves and cutthroats in the Widlerun. Wil caused a stir by healing an old inkeeper woman and jokingly claiming he did it with magic. Thieves try to rob he and Amberle, but they were rescued by Cephalo and Eretria. Wil told Cephalo of his need to go to the Hollows, claiming it was for a rare medicine for Eventine's daughter. Cephalo takes them to Hebel, an old hermit who lives in the Wildrun. Hebel recognized the name Safehold and knew where it was; under a lonely mountain in the hollows, the domain of the Witch Sisters. Wil and Amberle went on despite Hebel's warnings, after parting ways with the Rovers. They soon found out that the Elfstones were stolen by Cephelo, and that he had wanted them ever since he had seen Wil use them on the demon that attacked the caravan. Wil left Amberle at the edge of the Hollows and pursued Cephelo. Eretria once again helped Wil to locate Cephelo only to find that he and the rest of his followers were killed by the Reaper. Wil regained the Elfstones and traveled back to the rim of the Hollows with Eretria. He found Amberle missing. Hebel appeared and agreed to track Amberle for Wil. Together with Hebel's dog, Drifter, they tracked Amberle to the witch Mallenroh's tower. Mallenroh captured them and decided to keep the Elfstones for herself, locking up Wil and the rest as prisoners until Wil agreed to give her the stones. Mallenroh's identical twin sister Morag arrived, and the Witch Sisters fought and killed each other. Wil, Eretria, Hebel, and Drifter escaped with Amberle, the Elfstones, and Mallenroh's servant, Wisp; who brought them to the Bloodfire. Amberle absorbed both the Bloodfire and bathed the seed of the Ellcrys in it. The Reaper attacked them and killed Wisp, but Wil destroyed it be realizing that he wasn't unable to use the Elfstones because of his human blood, but because he was afraid of them and had formed a mental block against using them. He broke the block, focusing the power of the Elfstones upon the Reaper's cloaked face and destroying it. Wil had Amberle called Perk, who brought Wil, Amberle and Eretria back to Arborlon while Hebel returned home. By this point, the Demons had begun a full frontal assault upon Arborlon. Despite desperate attempts to blunt the attacks, the seven gates fell one by one to the superior numbers of the Demons. The Demons eventually broke through the last of the Elven capital's major defenses (the seventh gate). At this point, Allanon engaged and defeated the Dagda Mor in a titanic battle while the forces of ""good"", now severely depleted, regrouped at their last line of defense: the Gardens of Life, where the Ellcrys resided. The Demons tried to reach the Ellcrys to destroy her, but they were held back by those forces of ""good"" just long enough so that Wil and Amberle could fly in. Amberle touched the dead Ellcrys and was transformed into the new Ellcrys; and with this action, Amberle restored the Forbidding, banishing the Demons back to their alternate universe. It was revealed by Allanon to Wil that he knew all along that Amberle would become the new Ellcrys. Wil was angry and told Allanon he should have been honest, but Allanon claimed that she would not have believed him. He reminds Wil that Amberle knew what would happen and made the choice herself, and that no one forced her. She did what only she could do, and in so doing saved humanity from the Demons. Wil was still bitter about the deception, because he had loved Amberle and didn't want to lose her the way he had. It is then revealed that Allanon has aged, because he used too much of the magic in the fighting with the Demons. He said he was going to Paranor to sleep, and then left in the middle of the night without seeing or speaking with anyone else. Eventine passed away, and Ander became the new King. With the Demons banished once again, the survivors the War returned to their homes. Wil visited the Ellcrys and came to terms with Amberle's sacrifice. He then left Arborlon to continue his studies as a healer, taking Eretria with him."
297,Jurassic Park,fantasy," The narrative begins in August 1989 by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on Isla Nublar, the main setting for the story. One of the species, a strange small lizard-like creature with three toes, is identified later as a Procompsognathus. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student, Ellie Sattler, are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond—founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen—for a weekend visit to a ""biological preserve"" he has established on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica. Upon arrival, the preserve is revealed to be Jurassic Park, a theme park showcasing cloned dinosaurs. The animals have been recreated using damaged dinosaur DNA found in mosquitoes preserved in prehistoric amber. Gaps in the genetic code have been filled in with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. To control the population, all specimens on the island are lysine-deficient females. Hammond proudly touts InGen's advances in genetic engineering and shows his guests through the island's vast array of automated systems. Recent events in the park have spooked Hammond's investors. To placate them, Hammond means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a well-known mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic about the park's prospects. Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is especially emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system. Countering Malcolm's dire predictions with youthful energy, Hammond groups the consultants with his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis ""Lex"" Murphy. While touring the park with the children, Grant finds a Velociraptor eggshell, which seems to prove Malcolm's earlier assertion that the dinosaurs have been breeding against the geneticists' design. Malcolm suggests a flaw in their method of analyzing dinosaur populations, in that motion detectors were set to search only for the expected number of creatures in the park and not for any higher number. The park's controllers are reluctant to admit that the park has long been operating beyond their constraints. Malcolm also points out the height distribution of the Procompsognathus forms a Gaussian distribution, the curve of a breeding population, rather than the distinctive pattern that a population reared in batches ought to display. In the midst of this, the chief programmer of Jurassic Park's controlling software, Dennis Nedry, attempts corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, a geneticist and agent of InGen's archrival, Biosyn. By activating a backdoor he wrote into the park's computer system, Nedry manages to shut down its security systems and quickly steal fifteen frozen embryos, one for each of the park's fifteen species. He then attempts to smuggle them out to a contact waiting at the auxiliary dock deep in the park; however, during a sudden tropical storm, he exits his stolen vehicle to get his bearings and is killed by a Dilophosaurus. Without Nedry to reactivate the park's security, the electrified fences remain off, and dinosaurs escape. The adult and juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex attack the guests on tour, destroying the vehicles, killing public relations manager Ed Regis, and leaving Grant and the children lost in the park. Malcolm is gravely injured during the incident but is soon found by Gennaro and park game warden Robert Muldoon and spends the remainder of the novel slowly dying as, in between lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants, he tries to help those in the main compound understand their predicament and survive. The park's upper management—engineer and park supervisor John Arnold, chief geneticist Henry Wu, Muldoon, and Hammond—struggle to return power to the park, while the veterinarian, Dr. Harding, takes care of the injured Malcolm. For a time they manage to get the park largely back in order, restoring the computer system by shutting down and restarting the power, resetting the system. Unfortunately, a series of errors on their part soon plunge the park into greater disarray. During their time trying to restore the park to working order, they fail to notice that the system has been running on auxiliary power since the restart; this power soon runs out, shutting the park down a second time. Furthermore, since the auxiliary generators didn't create enough electricity to power the fences, they weren't reactivated when the system was reset, meaning all the fences—including the holding pen containing the park's Velociraptors, quarantined due to their intelligence and aggression—had been offline the whole time. Escaping their enclosure, the raptors kill Wu and Arnold and injure Muldoon, Gennaro, and Harding. Meanwhile, Grant and the children slowly make their way back to the Visitor's Center by rafting down the jungle river, carrying news that several young raptors, bred and raised in the island's wilds, were on board the Anne B, the island's supply ship, when it departed for the mainland. While Ellie distracts the raptors, Grant manages to turn the park's main power back on. After escaping from several raptors, Grant, Gennaro, Tim, and Lex are able to make it to the control room, where Tim is able to contact the Anne B and tell them to return. The survivors are then able to organize themselves and eventually secure their own lives. Word soon reaches them that the crew of the Anne B has discovered and killed the raptor stowaways. Gennaro tries to order the island destroyed as a dangerous asset, but Grant rejects his authority, claiming that even though they cannot control the island, they have a responsibility to understand just what happened and how many dinosaurs have already escaped to the mainland. Grant, Ellie, and Muldoon set out into the park to find the wild raptor nests and compare hatched eggs with the island's revised population tally. Cautious in this pursuit, they emerge unharmed. Meanwhile, Hammond, taking a walk around the park and contemplating making a park improving on his previous mistakes, hears the T-Rex roar and falls down a hill where he is eaten by a pack of Procompsognathus. Concerning the dinosaurs' breeding, it is eventually revealed that using frog DNA to fill gaps in the dinosaurs' genetic code enabled a measure of dichogamy, in which some of the female animals changed into males in response to the all-female environment. In the conclusion, before boarding helicopters the group tell the Costa Rican Air Force that the dinosaurs had been killing people. The Air Force then say that the island is dangerous and releases napalm over the island, destroying the island and the dinosaurs. It is implied that Malcolm has died. Grant asks Muldoon of Malcolm's condition when they depart via helicopter, Muldoon's nonverbal response is merely shaking his head and on the second to last page it says that the Costa Rican government wouldn't permit a burial for Hammond or Malcolm -->. Survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments. Weeks later, Grant is visited by Dr. Martin Guitierrez, an American doctor who lives in Costa Rica and has found a Procompsognathus corpse. Guitierrez informs Grant that an unknown pack of animals has been migrating through the Costa Rican jungle, eating lysine-rich crops and chickens. He also informs Grant that none of them, with the possible exception of Tim and Lex, are going to leave any time soon."
298,Swords and Ice Magic,fantasy," The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords and Ice Magic the duo face a series of challenges from Death of greater or lesser subtlety (""The Sadness of the Executioner,"" ""Beauty and the Beasts,"" ""Trapped in the Shadowland"" and ""The Bait""), the pique of deities they formerly worshiped whose names they now rarely even take in vain (""Under the Thumbs of the Gods""), a voyage to the strange equatorial ocean of Nehwon (""Trapped in the Sea of Stars""), and recruitment to succor Nehwon's Iceland, the legendary Rime Isle, menaced by Sea Mingols and a pair of refugee gods (""The Frost Monstreme,"" ""Rime Isle"")."
299,The Dream Merchant,fantasy," Twelve year old Joshua Cope is contacted by a corporation called Gippart International one day late at night. Joshua and his friend, Bhasvar (Baz) Patel go to Gippart and meet Max Herbert, a talent scout. Josh is sent into a dreamworld to sell products. But dreams also come with nightmares... Umaya, the collective dream of everyone at that point in time, is caught between dreams and reality. Josh, Baz and a fellow associate Teresa cannot get out of the dream-world, where time is running backwards due to a Gippart employee attempting to break into real time rather than dream-time. Along his adventure, Josh meets his dead twin sister Jericho, who has been attempting to get in contact with him for 350 years. But with Jericho comes Lucide, a guardian who makes sure that no one crosses the borders of life and death. The members of this troop find themselves with powers that they cannot explain. Baz, the first to find his powers, can control dream time by listening to the rhythm and matching it, causing it to slow, stop, or even rewind. Teresa changes Umaya with words, influencing people and surroundings to her will, she is the group storyteller. Josh is a thief and can change the very nature of things just by looking at them. However, they are trapped in umaya, the dream-world. The four children must find Tembe at the end of time and fulfill Siparti's last promise to Temberi. They learn about each of Siparti's six kids and put together the clues that each of them hold. After a harrowing ordeal, Josh, Jericho, Baz, Teresa, and Mervin Spratt manage to find their way to the edge of time itself, where the Tembe people live in a crumbling Fortress. The Tembe, descended from Temberi, have been trapped at the edge of time for over 1000 years. Luckily, the Tembe are friendly people, and show the associates how their Fortress is slowly being ripped away into the hurricane whom they have named Satura. Using the powers they gained in the journey, the children manage to find their way through the hurricane back into the real world. Unfortunately, in the end, Jericho decides to return back with Lucide and stay in Umaya."
300,Wizard at Large,fantasy," In an attempt to return Abernathy to his former human self, court wizard Questor Thews inadvertently sends the canine court scribe, along with Ben Holiday's royal medallion, to Earth. Specifically, Abernathy ends up with the medallion in the menagerie of Michel Ard Rhi, a cruel former prince of Landover who was banished from Landover years ago. Ard Rhi is now a Washington state billionaire who keeps a collection of rare and magical items in his personal castle. As part of the botched spell, Abernathy is exchanged for one of Ard Rhi's magical artifacts, and a strange bottle appears in Landover in Abernathy's place. The bottle contains a Darkling, a creature similar to an evil genie that corrupts its master. The bottle is stolen by the G'home Gnomes Filip and Sot, and Ben gives chase along with Questor, Willow, and Bunion. Ben and Willow later decide to use Questor's magic to travel to Earth to find Abernathy. With the help of Miles, Ben's old law partner, and Elizabeth, the daughter of one of Ard Rhi's employees, Abernathy is rescued. However, Ard Rhi uses his influence to have the party detained at a police station. Meanwhile, Questor continues to pursue the Darkling. He finds that through a series of thefts, the bottle has ended up in the hands of the evil witch Nightshade. Knowing that only the High Lord can defeat Nightshade, Questor decides to try to convince the dragon Strabo to fly him through the fairy mists to Earth. Using an itch spell, Questor gets the dragon to agree. They arrive at the last moment to rescue Ben and his friends from the police station and fly them back to Landover, but not before Questor uses his magic to restore Ard Rhi's conscience and convince him to give away his vast estate. Ben and Questor confront Nightshade, and Ben uses his medallion to summon his knight champion, the Paladin. Nightshade, however, uses the Darkling to conjure a perverse version of the Paladin, and the creations give battle. Questor, meanwhile, manages to shrink himself and act as a stopper in the Darkling's bottle, cutting off the source of its power. The Darkling is destroyed, Nightshade flees, and order is restored to Landover."
301,Fablehaven: Keys to the Demon Prison,fantasy," Kendra, Seth, and the Knights of the Dawn continue to take the last possible steps to safeguard the keys and locks placed on Zzyzx. Seth was taken captive to a preserve unknown to the world. However, as a result of a certain attempt, the Society gained all the keys to the demon prison. With this added worry, as Kendra finds out, comes some advantages previously unimaginable. Kendra gains two new allies and finds an old friend during her extremely short visit in the same cell as her brother had been. The three, Kendra, Warren, and Bracken, take the very last, final steps to prevent the demon horde from escaping. After retreating over the preserve's wall, the three race to beat the Society to the final locks that hold Zzyzx shut. Their problem: they would be trapped inside the preserve without outside help. Their troubles include a tempting yet lethal grove of trees, a roc parent, and some furious harpies. On his journey, Bracken finds an ""old friend."" Meanwhile, Seth is coping with a friend's death and a betrayal back at Fablehaven. Patton Burgess, in a gaseous form, suggests some truly desperate ideas to oppose the demon horde. Seth must call upon his loyalty, devotion, and his unique traits to gain a powerful weapon, a remnant from an age of wonders that may save the world. When all of the demon prison's locks were undone, the hour had arrived to unite. They all meet up at the place where the ship Lady Luck will take them to Shoreless Isle. They use the items to summon the Lady Luck. Seth uses force to convince the ghost of the Lady Luck to take them there. They find a Fairy Queen Shrine near Zzyzx. Kendra and Bracken speak once more to the Fairy Queen, who tells them that she has destroyed all of her other shrines, and they have one final secret plan that may just grant success. The astrids' dream comes true. Bracken needed the five artifacts, so Seth, some astrids, and the Sphinx transport into the dome and reclaim the artifacts. After a success on the battlefield, Kendra, Seth, and all creatures of Light must wait to see whether Bracken's plan would work and whether the world would live to see a dawning of a new age of security, when Kendra can finally find peace and joy and reclaim a life even better than the one that was stolen from her."
302,Stalking the Unicorn,fantasy," Mallory, a private investigator from New York, spends New Year’s Eve in his office, with a bottle of whisky, and in a terrible mood. His business partner left for California with Mallory’s wife, having also blackmailed some of their clients. Since the infuriated victims head for the detective’s office, it seems that the night will end up tragically; yet, the plot suddenly takes an unexpected turn as in the room appears a strange creature, an elf called Mürgenstürm. Mürgenstürm, who comes from an alternative world, is in equally serious trouble. He was obliged to guard a valuable animal, the unicorn called Larkspur. He neglected his duty and the unicorn was stolen. Now, the elf’s life is in danger, so he wants to take advantage of Mallory’s service. As he has no other way out of trouble the detective decides to follow Mürgenstürm, and to search for the stolen animal. They enter the alternative New York through the gate in the basement of the very building where Mallory has his office. When the detective examines the scene of the crime, he encounters the eye-witness, a cat-girl Felina, who, despite her cat-like personality, will become Mallory’s loyal partner. She reveals that the culprit is a leprechaun, Gillespie, working for a perilous and powerful demon Grundy that is responsible for spreading evil in both New Yorks. At the same time, the Grundy finds out about Mallory’s investigation and tries to dissuade him from taking further steps. Nevertheless, Mallory does not abandon the investigation and in search of information about the unicorn visits various places in the alternative New York, such as the Museum of Natural History, full of dead yet regularly reviving animals, and Central Park, occupied by wholesalers offering completely useless goods. On his way Mallory meets Eohippus, a six-inch tall horse that helps him find the expert on unicorns, a former huntress still craving for adventure, Colonel Winifred Carruthers. Unlike Mürgenstürm, who gradually turns out to be more an accomplice in the crime than the victim, Carruthers and Eohippus are valuable allies. Due to Colonel, Mallory comes into contact with a magician, The Great Mephisto, and finds out the motives for the crime. In the unicorn’s head there is a ruby that would enable the Grundy to move freely between the two worlds and gain more power than he has ever had. After a long search Mallory reaches Gillespie’s flat on the 13th floor of a cheap hotel only to find out that the leprechaun ran away, the unicorn is already dead, and the gate between the two cities begins to close. In the meantime, Mallory’s partners, Colonel and Eohippus, are caught by Gillespie. Soon after that the detective receives an invitation to the auction at which the precious ruby is to be sold. The Grundy appears there too, and he seems to have all the cards. Yet, it turns out that Mallory, with the help of Felina, has already found and hidden the jewel, which gives him an advantage over the enemy. Grundy sets Mallory’s friends free and agrees to wait until the detective delivers the ruby. Mallory, who has no intention of letting the Grundy wreak havoc in both worlds, has the jewel transported to ""his"" New York just before the passage between the two worlds closes. Then he meets the Grundy only to inform him about it. Since the demon cannot be sure whether Mallory tells the truth he does not dare to kill the detective, but promises to have his revenge in the future. Mallory is content to stay in the alternative New York, where his work makes more sense. He is determined to continue his struggle against evil having the noble Colonel and of the mysterious Felina at his side."
303,Westmark,fantasy," It is a complicated and politically dangerous period in Westmark. The country's ruler, King Augustine IV, has slipped into dementia, depression and illness since the supposed death of his only child, the Princess Augusta, over six years ago. Despite the efforts of the Queen, Caroline, and the court physician, Dr. Torrens, the King is increasingly manipulated by his chief minister Cabbarus, who has designs on the throne. While the ill king is kept distracted by a series of mystics and charlatans who claim to be able to speak to his dead child, Cabbarus increases his control over Westmark, restricting freedoms and abusing the king's powers. Young Theo, an orphan, has been raised by a small town printer named Anton. After the pair accepts a job from a travelling salesman they are investigated by Cabbarus' men, who declare their job illegal and proceed to destroy their press. In the ensuing scuffle and chase, Theo attacks a soldier and Anton is shot and killed. With no one else to turn to, Theo takes to the countryside, eventually meeting up with the men who hired him and Anton for the printing job: Count Las Bombas, a con artist, and his dwarf driver/partner Musket. Theo joins up with them, rather reluctantly, and ends up participating in their money-making schemes. They eventually discover a girl named Mickle, a poor street urchin, who has a talent for throwing her voice and mimicry. The Count builds a charade around Mickle, dressing her up as the Oracle Priestess and putting her on display, claiming that she can speak to the spirits of the dead. Theo, despite his growing affection for the bright but vulnerable Mickle, begins to find his new life too dishonest for his tastes and abandons the group, eventually falling in with Florian, an anti-monarchist and rebel who plans revolution with his band of loyal followers. Meanwhile, Mickle, Las Bombas, and Musket have been arrested for fraud, Cabbarus has attempted to have Dr. Torrens assassinated and a politically minded journalist, Keller, goes into hiding to save himself from Cabbarus' wrath. Events come to a head when Theo plots to break his old companions out of prison, with help from Florian and his allies. Their reunion, however, does not last long; Cabbarus has tracked them down and has them all arrested. He brings the group to the Old Juliana, the palace of King Augustine IV and Queen Caroline, where reveals his plans to the group and of how the ""Oracle Priestess"" will be his pawn to his uprising to the throne. While in Old Juliana, Mickle comes across a trapdoor leading to a water canal, and her memories race in her mind as she remembers her childhood. This leads to her high fever and Theo's worry of her having to act. Cabbarus presents the group to the King and Queen and the courtiers as the Oracle Priestess, and suddenly Mickle's long-repressed childhood memories come to the surface, revealing treason, attempted murder and corruption in the heart of the Westmark government. It is later revealed that Mickle is the long-lost Princess Augusta and that chief minister Cabbarus was responsible for her disappearance. Eventually, on the subject of Cabbarus's punishment, Theo, on behalf of his conscience, sends him into exile, instead of killing him. This decision will have a major effect on the final book of the Westmark trilogy, The Beggar Queen."
304,Castle,fantasy," Tal and Milla make it from the shadowy 'Dark World' to the titular castle, a seeming place of peace. Both are unwanted by the castle's inhabitants, Milla the most. The two must avoid conspiracies and other dangers inside the castle, just to survive."
305,The Deluge Drivers,fantasy," After resigning himself to perhaps being trapped on Tran-Ky-Ky for the rest of his life, Ethan Fortune learns that scientists at the outpost of Brass Monkey have detected a steady warming in the planet’s atmosphere. This has caused something not seen in generations on the planet: open water on the ice oceans of Tran-Ky-Ky. Taking the giant icerigger Slanderscree with a crew of Tran to investigate, Fortune learns that the warming of the oceans isn’t an accidental or natural event."
306,The Courts of Chaos,fantasy," Corwin sulks in Castle Amber's library while Oberon gives the family orders for a massive battle with the forces of Chaos. Random persuades Corwin to leave, but they are held back by an invisible force. They watch as Corwin's sword appears and chops off Benedict's new arm, just as Corwin did in Tir-na Nog'th. The sword and the arm disappear, and Corwin and Random are released. Dara and Martin are with Benedict. Corwin learns from Martin's trumps that the crossbowman who spared him is Merlin. Dara tells how Brand bargained with the Courts of Chaos. They wished to replace him with Merlin. However, Dara feared that neither would keep their word. She relays Oberon's orders to attack the courts immediately to Benedict. Still unconvinced, Corwin contacts Fiona. She confirms Dara's authority, and says that Oberon is about to repair the Pattern. Hoping to save Oberon, Corwin projects himself through, grabs the Jewel, and runs for the Pattern, but he is paralyzed by Oberon's magics before he can reach it. Oberon has a final talk with his son, explaining that while he had set Corwin up to meet him in Lorraine, he had enjoyed being Corwin's friend, and he wants Corwin to succeed him as King of Amber, with Dara as his queen. Corwin explains that he no longer wants to rule. Oberon, disappointed, dismisses Corwin using a trump-like effect. Once Corwin confirms Dara's authority, Benedict uses the trump of the Courts of Chaos to begin his attack. Dara talks to Corwin, and they decide that although they were used as pawns to create Merlin, they still like each other. Dara then leaves to give the rest of the family their orders. Gérard is ordered to stay and guard Amber, while Julian and Random are to stay in Arden. Oberon arrives, and asks Corwin for some of his blood. He breathes life into the blood, and it becomes a red raven. Oberon tells Corwin that the raven will follow him through shadow. Corwin's orders are to hellride towards Chaos as fast as possible. He must bear the Jewel through shadow. Corwin says goodbye to his father, and sets off. Now that he knows that Amber is just the first Shadow, he finds he can shift shadow there more easily. As he rides towards Chaos, he follows the Black Road. After a time, he notices the black road begin to come apart; shortly after, the raven arrives and gives him the Jewel. Corwin is unsure whether this means that Oberon has succeeded or failed. Brand arrives, telling him that he watched Oberon fail, and that Corwin must give him the Jewel so he can create a new Pattern. Corwin refuses, and forces Brand to leave. He notices an unusually large storm following him, and takes refuge in a cave. The cave's other occupant, a nameless stranger who has also sought shelter from the storm, casually mentions some local legends about the Archangel Corwin, who, according to scripture will ride before a storm at the end of the world. The real Corwin dismisses this story as nonsense and commands the Jewel to quell the storm. Eventually he falls asleep. When he wakes, his horse has been kidnapped. He says goodbye to the stranger and tracks his horse to a cave, blocked off by a large boulder, which he shatters. Inside, leprechauns are celebrating a feast. Observing his great strength, they return his horse and invite him to join them. Succumbing to their odd charm, he starts to fall asleep, but rouses himself in time to see them preparing to slaughter him. He awakes and rushes outside. As he leaves, the leader of the wee folk recognizes him as the Archangel Corwin from local legends, mentioned before by the nameless stranger. He starts to move into shadow, but as he moves further from the cave where he slept the universe starts to come apart around him. He realizes that the storm was a wave of Chaos, moving away from Amber as the multiverse is destroyed. He begins to doubt whether Oberon was successful. Using the jewel, he is able to overtake the storm and return to the diminishing multiverse. A strange lady dines with him and attempts to seduce him, but remembering his encounter with the pale lady on the black road (who may or may have not been a copy of Dara), and that he's working to a deadline, he declines. Brand ambushes him with a crossbow, mortally wounding his horse, but the blood raven reappears and plucks out one of Brand's eyes. Corwin puts down his horse and continues striding through shadow. Corwin cuts a branch off a tree as a walking aid. The tree complains, but when it learns that he is Oberon's son it gives him its blessing. It says that it is Ygg, and that Oberon planted it in Amber's distant past to mark the boundary between Order and Chaos. It tells him to plant the staff somewhere it will have the chance to grow. A talking raven named Hugi (of the usual color) arrives, and tries to distract Corwin with fatalistic philosophy. It shows Corwin the head of a mostly-drowned Giant, who will not even allow the possibility of rescue. A mythological jackal offers to lead Corwin on a short-cut to the Courts, but instead leads him to its lair, where Corwin kills it in self-defense. He finally finds a shadow with the Courts' sky, but is aghast to discover that the Courts still lie across a huge wasteland. The raven Hugi returns and pointedly tells him it knew all along, so he kills it for his dinner. As the metaphysical storm approaches Chaos, Corwin decides that Oberon must have failed, so he plants his staff and begins to use the Jewel to inscribe a new Pattern. The process evokes memories of his former life in Paris, France, and we are given the impression that these somehow shape the new Pattern. He finishes, but is exhausted, and he collapses at the new Pattern's center. Brand projects himself to Corwin and steals the Jewel. Corwin loses consciousness. Corwin awakes to find the area surrounding his Pattern transformed. The sky is now white, and the staff has grown into a tree. Corwin realises that he is at the center of a Pattern, and commands it to teleport him to the Courts. He arrives in the courts, only to be challenged to single combat by someone who introduces himself as Borel, Master at Arms of the Courts of Chaos. He removes his armour to make the fight fair, but Corwin, having no time for a fair fight, slays him then and there, although he does feel slightly guilty about it afterward. Corwin finds Brand with Fiona, Random and Deirdre, at the edge of the Abyss. Fiona is keeping him psychically bound, but Brand has Deirdre as a hostage. Suddenly an image of Oberon fills the sky, telling them that Corwin must use the Jewel to save them from the oncoming Chaos storm, and gives them a blessing. Corwin makes use of the distraction and his attunement to the jewel to super-heat Brand, but Brand realizes what's happening and starts to cut Deirdre. She pulls herself free, and Brand is shot in the chest and throat with a bow. He staggers, and grabs Deirdre's hair. They both fall into the Abyss. Corwin tries to follow her, and Random has to knock him out. Corwin wakes up to see Caine there, alive and well. He explains how he faked his own death and spied on the others using the Trumps. It was him who shot Brand, using silver-tipped arrows, just in case. They watch Amber's armies crush the forces of Chaos while the storm continues to advance. A funeral procession, led by Dworkin, emerges from the storm front, accompanied by all sorts of various fantastic beasts. Fiona appears with Dara and Corwin's son, Merlin. Corwin discusses with Fiona the possibility that two Patterns now exist; she can't decide whether that is good or bad. Dara arrives, angry with Corwin for killing Borel, and then leaves. Merlin arrives with her, but stays, eager to learn more about his father. The Unicorn appears from the Abyss, wearing the Jewel of Judgement. It examines each of the Amberites in turn, then kneels in front of Random. The rest of the family kneel in front of him too, and pledge their allegiance to him as the new King. Random takes the Jewel, and Corwin is able to guide him through the attunement process. Corwin is exhausted, and stays with Random while the others go to the Courts, where they think they should be safe. Merlin stays, and asks to hear about his father's adventures. Corwin begins narrating the Chronicles to his son. Random is successful, and the Trumps become active. They contact Gérard, who tells them that the multiverse is fine, although seven years have passed. Corwin reflects on his changed attitudes towards his family, and on the changes in himself."
307,Too Many Magicians,fantasy," The novel takes place in 1966. However, it occurs in a world with an alternative history. The Plantagenet kings survived and rule a large Anglo-French Empire. In addition, around AD 1300 the laws of magic were discovered and magical science developed. The physical sciences were never pursued. The society looks early Victorian, though medical magic is superior to our medicine. The book uses the conventions of a detective story. The protagonist is Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy. This Sherlock Holmes-like figure is assisted by Master Sean O’Lochlainn, a forensic sorcerer. The novel is a locked room mystery, which takes place at a wizards’ convention. Garrett delights in puns. Analogues of Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, James Bond and Gandalf the Grey appear. Lord Darcy also appears in several other novellas and short stories by Garrett, but this is Garrett's only novel-length Lord Darcy story. Michael Kurland has written two further novels set in the Lord Darcy universe."
308,Bone Dance,fantasy," In the opening scene, Sparrow cannot recall what took place in the preceding 36 hours. Awakening yet again in a novel place with new hurts, the urge to fix the problem is intense. On the way to enlightenment comes a cryptic Tarot reading from friend Sherrea, abduction by a dead man animated by what might as well be a Loa, and introduction to a Vodun-based community that is dedicated to replacement, and if necessary to overthrow, of the status quo in the city. The latter has the individual most responsible for the inter-continental war near its power apex, a character who is also the revenge target of another survivor from his kind. Those are the ""Horsemen,"" modified people who can move their consciousness from body to body, much like the central figure in Mind of my Mind by Octavia Butler. The second half of the story shows Sparrow's awkward progress toward a fully human condition and becoming a valued member of a community, and is capped by a closing conceit: that the whole telling has been an autobiography."
309,Born to Exile,fantasy," Born to Exile concerns the adventures of a wandering minstrel called Alaric, who possesses the otherwise unknown ability to teleport. The novel details his journey to uncover the secrets of his own past and the true nature of his mysterious ability. For eight weary months, Alaric the minstrel trudged the lonely road of exile. Born with preternatural powers, the infant Alaric had been found by foster parents abandoned on a hillside, newborn and naked, with a bloody, severed hand clutching his ankles. Older and with those powers on full display, he suddenly found himself rejected by his foster family, branded a witch-child. Alaric now wanders the world as a solitary wayfarer, with a knapsack, a few clothes, and a lute his only possessions. On this journey, he encounters the craggy towers and shining spires of a distant castle, like some gleaming vision in one his songs. Within, Alaric is accepted as court minstrel but becomes embroiled in palace intrigue that involves Medron, the court magician, and the King's daughter, Princess Solinde. Subsequently, he journey's to the sinister Inn of the Black Swan and then to a superstition-ensorcelled village. There, Alaric is restored to his supernatural antecedents, known as the Lords of All Power."
310,Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,fantasy," Before the start of the novel, Voldemort, considered the most evil and powerful dark wizard in history, kills Harry's parents but mysteriously vanishes after trying to kill the infant Harry. While the wizarding world celebrates Voldemort's downfall, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Rubeus Hagrid place the one&nbsp;year-old orphan in the care of his Muggle (non-wizard) uncle and aunt: Vernon and Petunia Dursley. For ten years, they and their son Dudley neglect, torment and abuse Harry. Shortly before Harry's eleventh birthday, a series of letters addressed to Harry arrive, but Vernon destroys them before Harry can read them. To get away from the letters, Vernon takes the family to a small island. As they are settling in, Hagrid bursts through the door to tell Harry what the Dursleys have kept him from finding out: Harry is a wizard and has been accepted at Hogwarts. Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, a magically-concealed shopping precinct in London, where Harry is bewildered to discover how famous he is among wizards as ""the boy who lived"". He also finds that he is quite wealthy, since a bequest from his parents has remained on deposit at Gringotts Wizarding Bank. Guided by Hagrid, he buys the books and equipment he needs for Hogwarts, as well as Hedwig the owl. At the wand shop, he finds that the wand that suits him best is the twin of Voldemort's; both wands contain feathers from the same phoenix. A month later Harry leaves the Dursleys' home to catch the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross railway station. There he meets the Weasley family, who show him how to pass through the magical wall to Platform 9¾, where the train is waiting. While on the train Harry makes friends with Ron Weasley, who tells him that someone tried to rob a vault at Gringotts. During the ride they meet Hermione Granger. Another new pupil, Draco Malfoy, accompanied by his sidekicks Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, offers to advise Harry, but Harry dislikes Draco's arrogance and prejudice. Before the term's first dinner in the school's Great Hall, the new pupils are allocated to houses by the magical Sorting Hat. Before it is Harry's turn, he catches Professor Snape's eye and feels a pain in the scar Voldemort left on his forehead. When it is Harry's turn to be sorted, the Hat wonders whether he should be in Slytherin, but when Harry objects, the Hat sends him to join the Weasleys in Gryffindor. While Harry is eating, he questions Percy Weasley about Snape. After a terrible first Potions lesson with Snape, Harry and Ron visit Hagrid, who lives in a rustic house on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. There they learn that the attempted robbery at Gringotts happened the day Harry withdrew money. Harry remembers that Hagrid had removed a small package from the vault that was broken into and searched. During the new pupils' first broom-flying lesson, Neville Longbottom breaks his wrist, and Draco takes advantage to throw the forgetful Neville's fragile Remembrall high in the air. Harry gives chase on his broomstick, catching the Remembrall inches from the ground. Professor McGonagall dashes out and appoints him as the new Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. When Draco tricks Ron and Harry, accompanied by Neville and Hermione Granger, into a midnight excursion, they accidentally enter a forbidden corridor and find a huge three-headed dog. The group hastily retreats, and Hermione notices that the dog is standing over a trap-door. Harry concludes that the monster is guarding the package Hagrid retrieved from Gringotts. After Ron criticises Hermione's ostentatious proficiency in Charms, she hides in tears in the girls' toilet. At the Halloween Night dinner,Professor Quirrell hastily reports that a troll has entered the dungeons. While everyone else returns to their dormitories, Harry and Ron rush to warn Hermione. The troll corners Hermione in the toilet but when Harry sticks his wand up one of its nostrils, Ron uses the levitation spell to knock out the troll with its own club. Afterwards, several professors arrive and Hermione takes the blame for the battle and becomes a firm friend of the two boys. The evening before Harry's first Quidditch match, he sees Snape receiving medical attention from Filch for a bite on his leg by the three-headed dog. During the game, Harry's broomstick goes out of control, endangering his life, and Hermione notices that Snape is staring at Harry and muttering. She dashes over to the Professors' stand, knocking over Professor Quirrell in her haste, and sets fire to Snape's robe. Harry regains control of his broomstick and catches the Golden Snitch, winning the game for Gryffindor. Hagrid refuses to believe that Snape was responsible for Harry's danger, but lets slip that he bought the three-headed dog, and that the monster is guarding a secret that belongs to Professor Dumbledore and someone called Nicolas Flamel. Harry and the Weasleys stay at Hogwarts for Christmas, and one of Harry's presents, from an anonymous donor, is an Invisibility Cloak owned by his father. Harry uses the Cloak to search the library's Restricted Section for information about the mysterious Flamel, has to evade Snape and Filch after an enchanted book shrieks an alarm, and slips into a room containing the Mirror of Erised, which shows his parents and several of their ancestors. Harry becomes addicted to the Mirror's visions and is rescued by Professor Dumbledore, who explains that it shows what the viewer most desperately longs for. When the rest of the pupils return for the next term, Draco plays a prank on Neville, and Harry consoles Neville with a sweet. The collectible card wrapped with the sweet identifies Flamel as an alchemist. Hermione soon finds that he is a 665-year-old man who possesses the only known Philosopher's Stone, from which can be extracted an elixir of life. A few days later Harry notices Snape sneaking towards the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. There he half-hears a furtive conversation about the Philosopher's Stone, in which Snape asks Professor Quirrell if he has found a way past the three-headed dog and menacingly tells Quirrell to decide whose side he is on. Harry concludes that Snape is trying to steal the Stone and Quirrell has helped prepare a series of defences for it, which was an almost fatal mistake. The three friends discover that Hagrid is raising a baby dragon, which is against wizard law, and arrange to smuggle it out of the country around midnight. Draco arrives, hoping to raise the alarm and get them into trouble, and goes to tell Professor McGonagall. Although Ron is bitten by the dragon and is sent to the infirmary, Harry and Hermione spirit the dragon safely away. However, they are caught, and Harry loses the Invisibility Cloak. As part of their punishment, Harry, Hermione, Draco, and Neville (who, trying to stop Harry and Hermione after hearing what Draco had been saying, had been caught by McGonagall as well) are compelled to help Hagrid to rescue a badly-injured unicorn in the Forbidden Forest. They split into two parties, and Harry and Draco find the unicorn dead, surrounded by its blood. A hooded figure crawls to the corpse and drinks the blood, while Draco screams and flees. The hooded figure moves towards Harry, who is knocked out by an agonising pain spreading from his scar. When Harry regains consciousness, the hooded figure has gone and a centaur, Firenze, offers to give him a ride back to the school. The centaur tells Harry that drinking a unicorn's blood will save the life of a mortally injured person, but at the price of having a cursed life from that moment on. Firenze suggests Voldemort drank the unicorn's blood to gain enough strength to make the elixir of life from the Philosopher's Stone, and regain full health by drinking that. On his return, Harry finds that someone has slipped the Invisibility Cloak under his sheets. A few weeks later, while relaxing after the end-of-session examinations, Harry suddenly wonders how something as illegal as a dragon's egg came into Hagrid's possession. The gamekeeper says he was given it by a hooded stranger who bought him several drinks and asked him how to get past the three-headed dog, which Hagrid admits is easy – music sends it to sleep. Realising that one of the Philosopher's Stone's defences is no longer secure, Harry goes to inform Professor Dumbledore, only to find that the headmaster has just left for an important meeting. Harry concludes that Snape faked the message that called Dumbledore away and will try to steal the Stone that night. Covered by the Invisibility Cloak, Harry and his two friends go to the three-headed dog's chamber, where Harry sends the beast to sleep by playing a flute given to him by Hagrid for Christmas. After lifting the trap-door, they encounter a series of obstacles, each of which requires special skills possessed by one of the three, and one of which requires Ron to sacrifice himself in a game of wizard's chess. In the final room Harry, now alone, finds Quirrell rather than Snape. Quirrell admits that he let in the troll that tried to kill Hermione on Halloween, and that he tried to kill Harry during the first Quidditch match but was knocked over by Hermione. Snape had been trying to protect Harry and suspected Quirrell. Quirrell serves Voldemort and, after failing to steal the Philosopher's Stone from Gringotts, allowed his master to possess him in order to improve their chances of success. However the only other object in the room is the Mirror of Erised, and Quirrell can see no sign of the Stone. At Voldemort's bidding, Quirrell forces Harry to stand in front of the Mirror. Harry feels the Stone drop into his pocket and tries to stall. Quirrell removes his turban, revealing the face of Voldemort on the back of his head. Voldemort/Quirrell tries to grab the Stone from Harry, but simply touching Harry causes Quirrell's flesh to burn. After further struggles Harry passes out. He awakes in the school hospital, where Professor Dumbledore tells him that he survived because his mother sacrificed her life to protect him, and Voldemort could not understand the power of such love. Voldemort left Quirrell to die, and is likely to return by some other means. Dumbledore had foreseen that the Mirror would show Voldemort/Quirrell only themselves making the elixir of life, as they wanted to use the Philosopher's Stone; Harry was able to see the Stone in the Mirror because he wanted to find it but not to use it. The Stone has now been destroyed. Harry returns to the Dursleys for the summer holiday, but does not tell them that under-age wizards are forbidden to use magic outside Hogwarts. After ten years, Harry became an eleven year-old boy. The Dursleys have kept the truth about Harry's parents from him, but it is revealed in the form of Rubeus Hagrid, who tells Harry that he is a wizard and has been accepted at Hogwarts for the autumn term. Harry takes the train to Hogwarts from King's Cross Station. On the train, Harry sits with and quickly befriends Ron Weasley; the two are also briefly visited by Neville Longbottom and Hermione Granger. Later on in the journey, Malfoy comes into Harry and Ron's compartment with his friends Crabbe and Goyle and introduces himself. After Ron laughs at Draco's name, Draco offers to help Harry distinguish the wrong sort of wizards, but Harry declines. Upon arrival, the Sorting Hat places Harry, Hermione, Neville and Ron into Gryffindor House, one of the school's four houses, while Draco and his cronies are placed in Slytherin. After a broom-mounted game to save Neville's Remembrall, Harry joins Gryffindor's Quidditch team as their youngest Seeker in over a century. Shortly after school begins, Harry and his friends hear that someone broke into a previously emptied vault at the wizarding bank, Gringotts. The mystery deepens when they discover a monstrous three-headed dog, Fluffy, who guards a trapdoor in the forbidden third floor passageway. On Halloween, a troll enters the castle and traps Hermione in one of the girls' lavatories. Harry and Ron rescue her, but are caught by Professor McGonagall. Hermione defends the boys and takes the blame, which results in the three becoming close friends. Harry's broom becomes jinxed during his first Quidditch match, nearly resulting in Harry falling from a great height. Hermione believes that Professor Snape has cursed the broom and distracts him by setting his robes on fire, allowing Harry to catch the Golden Snitch and win the game for Gryffindor. At Christmas, Harry receives his father's Invisibility Cloak from an unknown source. Later, he discovers the Mirror of Erised, a strange mirror that shows Harry surrounded by his parents and the extended family he never knew. Later, Harry learns that Nicolas Flamel is the maker of the Sorcerer's Stone, a stone that gives the owner eternal life. Harry sees Professor Snape interrogating Professor Quirrell about getting past Fluffy, seemingly confirming the suspicion that Snape is trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone in order to restore Lord Voldemort to power. The trio discover that Hagrid is hiding a dragon egg, which hatches; since dragon breeding is illegal, they convince Hagrid to send the dragon to live with others of its kind. Harry and Hermione are caught returning to their dormitories after sending Norbert off and are forced to serve detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest. In the forest, Harry sees a hooded figure drink the blood of an injured unicorn. Firenze, a centaur, tells Harry that the hooded figure is Voldemort. Hagrid accidentally tells Harry, Ron, and Hermione how to get past Fluffy; and they rush to tell the headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, what they know, only to find that he has been called away from the school. Convinced that Dumbledore's summons was a red herring to take him away while the Philosopher's Stone is stolen, the trio set out to reach the Stone first. They navigate a series of complex magical challenges set up by the school's faculty, and at the end of these challenges, Harry enters the inner chamber alone, only to find that it is the timid Professor Quirrell, not Snape, who is after the Stone. The final challenge protecting the Stone is the Mirror of Erised. Quirrell forces Harry to look into the mirror to discover where the Stone is hidden; and Harry successfully resists, and the Stone drops into his own pocket. Lord Voldemort reveals himself: he has possessed Quirrell and appears as a ghastly face on the back of Quirrell's head. Quirrell tries to attack Harry, but merely touching Harry proves to be agony for him. Voldemort flees and Quirrell dies as Dumbledore arrives back in time to save Harry. As Harry recovers, Dumbledore confirms that Lily had died while trying to protect Harry as an infant. Her pure, loving sacrifice provides her son with an ancient magical protection against Voldemort's lethal spells. Dumbledore also explains that the Philosopher's Stone has been destroyed to prevent Voldemort from ever using it. He then tells Harry that only those who wanted to find the Stone, but not use it, would be able to retrieve it from the mirror, which is why Harry could acquire it. When Harry asks Dumbledore why Voldemort attempted to kill him when he was an infant, Dumbledore promises to tell Harry when he is older. At the end-of-year feast, where Harry is welcomed as a hero. Dumbledore gives a few last-minute additions, granting enough points to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville Longbottom for Gryffindor to win the House Cup, ending Slytherin's six-year reign as house champions."
311,Wolfcry,fantasy," The book starts off with Oliza relating her troubles in being heir to the throne of a divided nation. Though the avians and serpiente have put down their weapons, prejudice and hatred still run strong between the two kinds. Oliza's choice of mate will define which of the two is ""preferred"" in Wyvern's Court. The three obvious choices for Oliza's mate are a serpent dancer, Urban, a raven named Marus, and the preregrine falcon Nicias. After a fight breaks out in the serpent dancer's nest, Urban is found beaten in the avian part of the city. Oliza is abducted by lion mercenaries. Oliza manages to escape. Half-starved and exhausted, she roams the forest where she is eventually rescued by a female wolf shapeshifter who takes her to the local pack. One of the men in the pack speaks Oliza's language. He refuses to disclose what caused Betia's fleeing from the pack. Oliza meets with the leader and instantly notices the tension between him and his ambitious son and heir, Velyo. It is made clear that Velyo truly runs the pack. When Oliza gets tired he offers to escort her to her room, where he tries to rape her. She manages to run and meets up with Betia. The two of them flee from both the pack and the lion mercenaries. Betia manages to return to human form out of concern for Oliza. The two travel on towards Wyvern's Court when they are stopped by a band of mainly white-haired serpents, a fight erupts but abrubtly ends when the leader of the group noticed Oliza's Ahnleh necklace. The group identifies themselves as the Obsidian Guild, a band of mainly white vipers and serpiente outlaws. They have lived apart from the rest of serpent society and they still honor ancient laws such as Ahneh. In accordance with that law they agree to take in Betia and Oliza. At Oliza's request, the leader of the Obsidian Guild relates the story of the fallout between the two leaders of the Dasi. He tells her that Kiesha was Maeve's lover before Leben, who Maeve seduced in an attempt to keep him from destroying her people. Kiesha was distraught by what she saw as Maeve's betrayal, even though the white viper was forced to do it. She refused to forgive Maeve even after Leben left and Maeve was devastated. In an attempt to lessen some of the pain, she turned to Ahnmik, the dark opposite of Anhamirak, but also the god of sleep and numbness. Kiesha and the other serpents then exiled her for practicing black magic. Maeve was taken in by the Rsh, the lower priests and priestesses of the Dasi cult, she slowly regained the will to live and took a mate. Her descendants survive as the Obsidian Guild, and they are in no hurry to reconcile with the other serpiente. Oliza is stunned to learn of this and intrigued by the idea of Maeve and Kiesha as lovers. Later in the evening, the Guild tries to convince her to perform a melos dance, one of the more sensual ones usually not performed among serpiente dancers unless they have already chosen a mate. Oliza at first tries to decline but Betia convinces her by giving her a melos scarf, a symbol of praise and a request to dance. Incidentally, the threads on the melos are gold, which in serpiente culture indicates the bond between mates, though Oliza brushes that off as Betia's ignorance of her culture. The two are soon strong enough to travel and go to a pack of wolves led by Kalisa, who Oliza is familiar and friendly with. However, before they can join Kalisa's pack, they run into Velyo and Betia runs off in terror when she sees him. Oliza recalls his attempt to rape her and doesn't take long in becoming furious with him, especially because she now has a very good idea of why Betia became feral and wouldn't go near her old pack. In spite of who he is, Velyo takes Oliza to her parents, who explain that while they were worried they believed she had left of her own free will. A note was found in the palace, in Oliza's handwriting, saying that her responsibilities are too much and she doesn't want anyone to come looking for her if she leaves. Oliza now begins to really worry about the loss of her hawk form, and how avians will react once they find out their queen is no longer one of them. Oliza returns to Wyvern's Court to find that the three men who beat Urban have been given an insanely light punishment because her mother feared they would otherwise be turned into martyrs. Before she can deal with that, however, the leader of the Obsidian Guild escorts Betia into Wyvern's Court. Betia looks tired but is happy to see Oliza, speaking her name as the first word she has said since becoming feral. Oliza then postpones everything she has to do and takes Betia into the dancer's nest. There she notices Marus who, to her shock, appears to have moved in. Betia convinces her to dance a melos with the entire nest watching, after which they fall asleep curled up together. The next morning Urban apologizes to Oliza for being forward in courting her, saying he had no idea and then pointing at Betia with his eyes. Oliza is embarrassed and points out that she is in line for the throne, and a royal pair bond has to produce heirs. She then takes Betia to the market, where they have a shocking meeting with several avian merchants who are convinced that the three men convicted of harming Urban are not guilty. Oliza begins to understand why her mother was hesitant to punish them. Next in line for a meeting is Velyo, who takes one look at Oliza holding Betia's hand and hisses at her ""I don't care what your preferences are, you're a royal heir to the throne. You need a king, Wyvern. Send her away."" Oliza gets furious at him, but begins to question the exact nature of her relationship with Betia. She then goes to a meeting with the three convicts and leaves Betia in the library with Nicias and her cousin, Hai. The three men are a blatant example of the differences between serpiente and avians. Poiting out to Oliza that what serpiente see as careless flirting and a meaningless kiss is experienced as sexual assault by their avian alistairs and sisters. Oliza is deeply troubled by this because she finds herself able to understand their motivations for attacking Urban. She tells them she will not change their punishment and will talk with them later. After this she goes to the library to see Hai, who has offered to combine her falcon magic with Oliza's dormant powers of Anhamirak to bring back Oliza's wings. The spell succeeds and Oliza regains her hawk form, but as she reaches out to Hai to try to do the same for her cousin, the combination of their magics accidentally creates a sakkri'a'she. A vision of the future. Oliza can feel Nicias step in with his magic to keep the spell under control before she is lost in visions. In the first she speaks with her future self, who explains that after choosing Urban as a mate, he was killed within a day and Wyvern's Court ravaged by war. The next vision presents her with a furious Obsidian, who curses her and she flees into a new vision. Here she walks the market, and is told by a local that after she chose Marus as mate, the avians decided she preferred them and murdered out the entire dancers' nest. The woman also tells her that in this future Oliza was murdered, presumably by her avian aunt's mate, though officially it was suicide. She then sees her aunt, Sive, sitting on the throne and learning of Danica's death. In blind panic, Oliza asks the visions to find her a future where she finds love and takes a mate without it leading to war between her people. She then finds herself in what looks like Wyvern's Court, but it is riddled through with falcon magic. A young child by the name of Keyi runs around, continually saying that she wants ""to chase the butterflies."" A man approaches her, asking if she's been sent by Hai. Oliza says no and asks him what happened. She recognises him as a Burmese python of the Obsidian Guild, who she danced with one time while she was there. He explains that he became Oliza's mate, and they had a child together. Keyi's magic was too powerful to be controlled. She killed Oliza and the falcons came to put a stop to her. They murdered all the serpiente and avian adults, took their children back to the separate lands to educate them there and get them to start hating each other again, and left Keyi and her father in an illusion which is kept in place by Nicias and Hai as well as anyone else the falcons allowed to live. Keyi sees shadows of the people who once were, and chases imaginary butterflies and rainbows. Oliza is horrified and exits the vision. She finds herself on her knees in the library, the details of her visions already starting to fade. She starts crying and asks Nicias and Hai to leave her alone with Betia. She then tells Betia that she had a child, Betia responds by asking if she was in love. Oliza realizes that the problem in the last vision was that while she found love and took a mate, they weren't the same person. Betia kneels in front of her and tells her that she will never leave unless Oliza asks her to. They kiss, Oliza is hesitant at first, but then becomes sure of her feelings. Oliza goes to the courtyard and confronts the mercenaries, telling them she was the one who hired them to kidnap her, she just didn't remember it. Their leader confirms it. Oliza also remembers several hours that seemed to have been lost between her talking to Hai in the library the night before her kidnap, and her coming to her senses again elsewhere. She realizes that the dance she spun to calm herself down must have triggered the same visions she just experienced, with Hai's magic acting as a catalyst. Then she didn't remember because both her and Hai's powers have precious little control, but this time Nicias was there to keep the vision in check. The actual visions are already gone from her memory now, but the essence is still there, and she remembers what she has to do. She flies to the dancers' nest and pulls Betia aside. She then kneels in front of her and asks Betia to be her mate, Betia tells her wolves mate for life and Oliza answers that wyverns do so too. Betia accepts and Oliza asks Nicias and Urban to gather her people in the marketplace. There, she makes a speech explaining to them that they are not ready to become one again. She would be honored to lead them, but now is not the time for a wyvern to take the throne. She renounces her claim as Arami and heir to the Tuuli Thea and appoints her cousin, Salem, as the new Arami of the serpiente and her aunt Sive as the new heir to the Tuuli Thea of the avians. Her people are shocked, but willing to accept. Oliza's parents are accepting, though her mother tries to tell her that hope can do more than she gives it credit for. Oliza responds by saying that she knows she did the right thing, and that she will go to stay with friends and she'll be with her mate. Her parents are slightly shocked when Betia steps forward, but Zane gives them his blessing and tells Betia to look after his daughter. Oliza and Betia walk into the woods, on their way to the Obsidian Guild. They have a confrontation with Velyo who says Oliza only did everything so she could be with her ""fling."" Betia steps in and tells Oliza that Velyo has no idea what it means to sacrifice for his people. Velyo becomes furious and threatens her, but Oliza punches him and reminds him that as a half-cobra, she has full use of a cobra's deadly poison and could kill him in a few seconds. Velyo turns into wolf form and moves away with his tail between his legs. The book ends with Oliza and Betia falling asleep together in one of the tents of the Obsidian Guild, happy together."
312,Aeneid,fantasy," The Aeneid can be divided into two halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books 1–6 (Aeneas' journey to Latium in Italy) and Books 7–12 (the war in Latium). These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil's ambition to rival Homer by treating both the Odyssey's wandering theme and the Iliads warfare themes. This is, however, a rough correspondence, the limitations of which should be borne in mind. Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme (Arma virumque cano&nbsp;..., ""I sing of arms and of a man&nbsp;..."") and an invocation to the Muse, falling some seven lines after the poem's inception: (Musa, mihi causas memora&nbsp;..., ""O Muse, recount to me the causes&nbsp;...""). He then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story: the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people. This is consistent with her role throughout the Homeric epics. Also in the manner of Homer, the story proper begins in medias res, with the Trojan fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, heading in the direction of Italy. The fleet, led by Aeneas, is on a voyage to find a second home. It has been foretold that in Italy, he will give rise to a race both noble and courageous, a race which will become known to all nations. Juno is wrathful, because she had not been chosen in the judgment of Paris, and because her favorite city, Carthage, will be destroyed by Aeneas' descendants. Also, Ganymede, a Trojan prince, was chosen to be her husband Jupiter's cup bearer—replacing Juno's daughter Hebe. Juno proceeds to Aeolus, King of the Winds, and asks that he release the winds to stir up a storm in exchange for a bribe (Deiopea, the loveliest of all her sea nymphs, as a wife). Despite refusing her bribe, he agrees, and the storm devastates the fleet. Neptune takes notice: although he himself is no friend of the Trojans, he is infuriated by Juno's intrusion into his domain, and stills the winds and calms the waters, after making sure that Aeolus would not try again. The fleet takes shelter on the coast of Africa. There, Aeneas's mother, Venus, in the form of a hunting woman very similar to the goddess Diana, encourages him and tells him the history of the city. Eventually, Aeneas ventures in, and in the temple of Juno, seeks and gains the favor of Dido, Queen of Carthage, the city which has only recently been founded by refugees from Tyre and which will later become one of Rome's greatest imperial rivals and enemies. At a banquet given in the honour of the Trojans, Aeneas recounts sadly the events which occasioned the Trojans' fortuitous arrival. He begins the tale shortly after the events described in the Iliad. Crafty Ulysses devised a way for Greek warriors to gain entry into Troy by hiding in a large wooden horse. The Greeks pretended to sail away, leaving a man, Sinon, to tell the Trojans that the horse was an offering and that if it were taken into the city, the Trojans would be able to conquer Greece. The Trojan priest Laocoön, who had seen through the Greek plot and urged the horse's destruction, hurled his spear at the wooden horse. Just after, in what would be seen by the Trojans as punishment from the gods, Laocoön was suddenly grabbed and eaten, along with his two sons, by two giant sea snakes. So the Trojans brought the horse inside the fortified walls, and after nightfall the armed Greeks emerged and began to slaughter the city's inhabitants. Aeneas woke up and saw with horror what was happening to his beloved city. At first he tried to fight against the enemy, but soon he lost his comrades and was left alone to fend off tens of Greeks. Hector, the fallen Trojan prince, had told him in a dream to flee with his family. Aeneas tells of his escape with his son Ascanius and father Anchises after various omens (his son Ascanius' head catches fire without his being harmed, and then a shooting star), his wife Creusa having been separated from the others and subsequently killed in the general catastrophe. After getting outside Troy, he goes back for his wife. Her ghost appears before him and tells him that his destiny is to found Rome. He tells of how, rallying the other survivors, he built a fleet of ships and made landfall at various locations in the Mediterranean: Thrace, where they find the last remains of a fellow Trojan, Polydorus; The Strophades, where they encounter the Harpy Celaeno; Crete, which they believe to be the land where they are to build their city (but they are set straight by Apollo); and Buthrotum. This last city had been built in an attempt to replicate Troy. In Buthrotum, Aeneas met Andromache, the widow of Hector. She still laments for the loss of her valiant husband and beloved child. There, too, Aeneas saw and met Helenus, one of Priam's sons, who had the gift of prophecy. Through him, Aeneas learned the destiny laid out for him: he was divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as Ausonia or Hesperia), where his descendants would not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world. In addition, Helenus also bade him go to the Sibyl in Cumae. Heading out into the open sea, Aeneas left Buthrotum, rounding Italy's cape and making his way towards Sicily (Trinacria). There, they are caught in the whirlpool of Charybdis and driven out to sea. Soon they come ashore at the land of the Cyclops. There they meet a Greek, Achaemenides, one of Ulysses' men, who had been left behind when his comrades escaped the cave of Polyphemus. They take Achaemenides onboard and narrowly escape Polyphemus. Shortly after these events, Anchises dies peacefully of old age. Meanwhile, Venus has her own plans. She goes to her son, Aeneas' half-brother Cupid, and tells him to imitate Ascanius. Disguised as such, he goes to Dido, and offers the gifts expected from a guest. With her motherly love revived in the presence of the boy, her heart is pierced and she falls in love with the boy and his father. During the banquet, Dido realizes that she has fallen madly in love with Aeneas, although she had previously sworn fidelity to the soul of her late husband, Sychaeus, who had been murdered by her brother Pygmalion. Juno seizes upon this opportunity to make a deal with Venus, Aeneas' mother, with the intention of distracting him from his destiny of founding a city in Italy. Aeneas is inclined to return Dido's love, and during a hunting expedition, a storm drives them into a cave in which Aeneas and Dido presumably have sex, an event that Dido takes to indicate a marriage between them. But when Jupiter sends Mercury to remind Aeneas of his duty, he has no choice but to part. Her heart broken, Dido commits suicide by stabbing herself upon a pyre with Aeneas' sword. Before dying, she predicts eternal strife between Aeneas's people and hers; ""rise up from my bones, avenging spirit"" (4.625, trans. Fitzgerald) is an obvious invocation to Hannibal. Looking back from the deck of his ship, Aeneas sees Dido's funeral pyre's smoke and knows its meaning only too clearly. However, destiny calls and the Trojan fleet sails on to Italy. Book 5 takes place on Sicily and centers on the funeral games that Aeneas organizes for the anniversary of his father's death. Aeneas and his men have left Carthage for Sicily where, one year after the death of his father, Aeneas organizes a nine-day anniversary which includes celebratory games–a boat race, a foot race, a boxing match, and a shooting contest. In all those contests, Aeneas is careful to reward winners and losers, showing his leadership qualities by not allowing for antagonism even after foul play. Afterward, Ascanius leads a military parade and demonstration, prefiguring Rome's future predilection for war. During those events (in which only men participate), Juno incites the womenfolk to burn the fleet and prevent them from ever reaching Italy, but her plan is thwarted when Ascanius and then Aeneas intervene. Aeneas prays to Jupiter to quench the fires, which the god does with a torrential rainstorm. An anxious Aeneas is comforted by a vision of his father, who tells him to go down to the underworld to receive a vision of his and Rome's future, which he will do in Book 6. In return for safe passage to Italy, the gods, by order of Jupiter, will receive one of Aeneas's men as sacrifice: Palinurus, who steers Aeneas's ship by night, falls overboard and is drowned. In Book 6, Aeneas, with the guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl, descends into the underworld through an opening at Cumae; there he speaks with the spirit of his father and is offered a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome. Upon returning to the land of the living, Aeneas leads the Trojans to settle in the land of Latium, where he courts Lavinia, the daughter of king Latinus. Although Aeneas would have wished to avoid it, war eventually breaks out. Juno is heavily involved in causing this war—she convinces the Queen of Latium to demand that Lavinia be married to Turnus, the king of a local people, the Rutuli. Juno continues to stir up trouble, even summoning the Fury Alecto to ensure that a war takes place. Seeing the masses of Italians that Turnus has brought against him, Aeneas seeks help from the Tuscans, enemies of Turnus. He meets King Evander from Arcadia, whose son Pallas agrees to lead troops against the other Italians. Meanwhile, the Trojan camp is being attacked, and a midnight raid leads to the deaths of Nisus and his companion Euryalus, in one of the most emotional passages in the book. The gates, however, are defended until Aeneas returns with his Tuscan and Arcadian reinforcements. In the battling that follows, many heroes are killed—notably Pallas, who is killed by Turnus, and Mezentius, Turnus' close associate. The latter, who has inadvertently allowed his son to be killed while he himself fled, reproaches himself and faces Aeneas in single combat—an honourable but essentially futile pursuit. Another notable hero, Camilla, a sort of Amazon character, fights bravely but is eventually killed. She has been a virgin devoted to Diana and to her nation; the man who kills her is struck dead by Diana's sentinel Opis after doing so, even though he tries to escape. After this, single combat is proposed between Aeneas and Turnus, but Aeneas is so obviously superior that the Italians, urged on by Turnus's divine sister, Juturna, break the truce. Aeneas is injured, but returns to the battle shortly afterwards. Turnus and Aeneas dominate the battle on opposite wings, but when Aeneas makes a daring attack at the city of Latium (causing the queen of Latium to hang herself in despair), he forces Turnus into single combat once more. In a dramatic scene, Turnus's strength deserts him as he tries to hurl a rock, and he is struck by Aeneas's spear in the leg. As Turnus is begging on his knees for his life, the poem ends with Aeneas killing him in rage when he sees that Turnus is wearing the belt of his friend Pallas as a trophy."
313,Titus Alone,fantasy," The story follows Titus' journey in the world outside Gormenghast Castle, having left his home at the end of the second book. He bumbles through a desert for a time, then uses a canoe to row down the river, where the reader gets a surprise: although Gormenghast is a crumbling, medieval castle, Titus finds himself in a modern city. Skyscrapers tower, and the river itself is covered in pipes, canals, and fishermen. As he slips the painter on the canoe, he has his first encounter with two faceless, silent persons, ostensibly police officers. Later, Titus befriends a man named Muzzlehatch, who runs a zoo and drives a shark-shaped car. He meets and has an affair with Muzzlehatch's former lover, Juno. Titus walks down a crumbling highway, where he has an unpleasant encounter with a beggar that eats money. He even spends some time wandering around the Under-river, an underground city filled with outcasts, runaways, and derelicts. There (in yet another contrast to the antiquity of previous novels) someone informs us that 'Molusk' has just circled the moon, probably a kind of metal-plated satellite. Titus eventually is found in a state of fever by a woman named Cheeta, who is the daughter of a scientist who runs a light-bulb equipped factory filled with mysterious bad smells and who talks to his workers through a giant television set. Cheeta is described as a 'modern girl' with 'a new kind of beauty', who drives a helicopter. Titus lusts for her because he has spent all his life in a tight-laced Medieval castle, and Cheeta lives like science incarnate. Although Titus lusts for her body, he also tells her several times that he hates her and tells her to 'go home to your horde of vestal virgins and forget me as I shall forget you.' Cheeta is shocked because other men would give anything for her favor. She contrives an elaborate plan to lure him into the ""Black House"", to see 'a hundred bright inventions', and end their relationship on a high note. There, she attempts to recreate Gormenghast horrendously, but is foiled by Muzzlehatch, who dies in the effort. Muzzlehatch also manages to blow up Cheeta's father's factory as revenge for the murder of his animals. Titus flees and spends months wandering a wasteland alone, until he comes across a large rock that he knew from his childhood. Hearing the guns of Gormenghast saluting the missing Earl, he is confirmed in his knowledge that he is not insane and that the Castle exists. Tempted to return to his duties, he nevertheless confirms his desire for independence and once again strikes off alone, this time in a different direction."
314,Into the Land of the Unicorns,fantasy," Cara Diana Hunter and her grandmother, Ivy Morris, realize they were being followed on their way home from the library. They duck into a church, but their pursuer follows. Cara is terrified, but her grandmother seems to expect this. Ivy gives Cara her special amulet and instructs her to run to the top of the church tower. She tells Cara to find the Old One and tell her ""the Wanderer is weary."" In order to do so, she must wait until the stroke of twelve, and leap off the top of the church while clutching the amulet and say, ""Luster, bring me home."" Cara does, and ends up in a magical forest in a different world. This world is called Luster and it is the home of the unicorns. Cara makes several friends on her way to find the Old One, who is actually the Queen of the unicorns, in order to deliver her grandmother's message."
315,The Kingdom of Shadow,fantasy," After three years, Quov Tsin has calculated and collected the research left behind by Gregus Mazi to open the pathway to the lost city of Ureh. Tsin hires Kentril Dumon and his group of mercenaries to protect him on his journey in exchange for the lost riches left behind. Zayl attempts to scare away the mercenaries, but fails and becomes a captive to Kentril’s group as Ureh is reborn. While looking for treasure, the group is attacked by the ghosts of Ureh and led to the palace of Juris Khan. The mercenaries learn from Ureh’s leader of the city’s trapped existence and the betrayal of Gregus Mazi. Juris Khan requests the aid of Kentril and his group to help restore the city and complete their original goal. After the first task of Ureh’s restoration is accomplished, the nightmare of Ureh begins as one by one the mercenaries learn of Ureh’s dark secrets."
316,An Acceptable Time,fantasy," Happy to be away from her large family for a while, Polly O'Keefe is spending the autumn with her maternal grandparents, Dr. Kate Murry and Dr. Alex Murry, getting a better education from them in science than she would have received at home. Soon, however, surprising things start to happen, including the unexpected arrival of Zachary Gray, a charming but troubled college student whom Polly met in Greece and dated on Cyprus the year before (in A House Like a Lotus). Then, while walking near her grandparents' Connecticut home, Polly meets druids Karralys and Anaral and a warrior named Tav, all of whom lived in the area some three thousand years ago. She soon learns that she is not the first person from her time to meet the Murrys' Pre-Columbian neighbors. Bishop Nason Colubra, the brother of a family friend, Dr. Louise Colubra, has been investigating the hieroglyphs found on rocks in nearby, relics of Karralys' time. In doing so, he has also come into repeated contact with Anaral's tribe, the People of the Wind (a tribe that previously appeared in A Swiftly Tilting Planet). The retired bishop is initially reluctant to discuss this, having been met with his sister's skepticism in previous attempts. However, he feels responsible for exposing Polly to the potential dangers of a tesseract of intersecting periods of time. The Murrys and the Colubras try to protect Polly from being drawn into the past, but although she tries to obey their restrictions on her movements, she continues to encounter Anaral and the others. Karralys and Tav formerly lived in ancient Britain, but have since crossed the ocean and made their home with the People of the Wind. On Samhain, Polly feels a compulsion to visit the Murrys' indoor swimming pool, the modern location of a site considered sacred by Karralys and Anaral. Polly is suddenly transported to the past, where she learns that Tav wants to offer Polly in blood sacrifice in order to avert a drought. Already the People Across the Lake are conducting raids due to the privations of drought, and Tav wants to protect his adopted people. Karralys sends Polly home. Zachary, however, is intrigued when he learns that the odd people he has seen are from the ancient past. His heart, previously seen as damaged by rheumatic fever in the Austin family novel The Moon by Night, is now so weak that he does not expect to live much longer. On the slight possibility that the solution to his problem lies with the ancient druids, Zach rashly leads Polly back to the star-watching rock, a place where Polly found herself in the past once before. Polly and Zach are drawn through a time gate and trapped in ancient Connecticut, with neither the Murrys nor Louise Colubra there to help Polly out of a potentially fatal situation. Tav soon changes his mind about whether his goddess wants Polly to be sacrificed. Her primary danger is not from the People of the Wind, but from their neighbors across the lake, where the drought is more severe. The People Across the Lake conduct another raid, and leave behind two of their injured members as they withdraw. One of them, Klep, is expected to be his tribe's future leader. He develops an attachment to his healer, Anaral, and learns from Polly the concept of love. The other injured man, Brown Earth, persuades Zachary to cross the lake with him during the night. Tynak, the current leader of the People Across the Lake, promises to let the tribe's medicine man heal Zachary's heart if he helps bring Polly to them. Zach agrees. He participates in another raid, with Polly's capture as the goal. Polly tries to convince Zach that the People Across the Lake intend to sacrifice her for her blood, but he refuses to admit this. Polly escapes, but returns for Zachary's sake. Ultimately, Polly's spirit of self-sacrifice and love, accompanied by the timely return of rain on her captors' side of the lake, wins out as a better way to interact with the Divine than an offering of death. The two tribes agree to unite and help each other. Zachary repents his betrayal of Polly, and his heart is physically healed (at least in part) before they return to their own time. When they return Polly tells Zachary they shouldn't see each other any more."
317,Sebastian,fantasy," The incubus Sebastian is the bastard child of a succubus and the wizard Koltak. Being an incubus has not made his life easy. Forced to flee every city or town he settled in, he has never known a home. Until one day, his cousin, 15-year-old Glorianna Belladonna, creates a landscape where demons can live, called the 'Den of Iniquity'. It is a 'carnal carnival' filled with gambling, drinking, prostitution and demons. Shocked by her actions and her ability to create a landscape, the wizards and Landscapers question her. She simply responds, ""Even demons need a home."" The wizards attempt to lock her into her own garden, but fail. She is then declared rogue. Meanwhile, Sebastian, living in the Den of Iniquity and ignorant of the sacrifices his cousin has made for him, begins to tire of the life he lives, finding simply having sex with women no longer interesting. When he first stumbled into the Den when he was a 15 year old boy, he and his first and foremost friend Teaser, another incubus, prowled around the Den, using their abilities to entertain themselves. This life no longer holds any appeal. He yearns for love - and it appears in the form of Lynnea. She is a catalyst whose ""heart wish"" (a strong wish deeply embedded within her) delivered her to the Den. Her arrival brings about 'opportunity and change'."
318,Winds of Fate,fantasy," The first half of the book alternates between two plots; Herald Elspeth in Haven and Darkwind k'Sheyna in Hawkbrother territory near the Dhorisha Plains. Elspeth is now under the tutelage of Herald-Captain Kerowyn, who arrived in Valdemar during the events of By the Sword. Through Kerowyn's training she narrowly escapes an assassination attempt sent by Ancar of Hardorn, the usuper prince of the kingdom to the east. She is convinced Ancar will attack again and asks permission of the Queen and Council to go looking for mages, since Valdemar has no knowledge of true magic. They agree only after being pressured by the Companions, the horse-shaped beings who are the lifelong partners of the Heralds. Herald Skif goes with her as an escort. Meanwhile, the Hawkbrother clan k'Sheyna is in dire straits. While the clan was moving from their current location to a new one, the clan's Heartstone (a special object which acts as a well of power accessible to mages of the clan) went rogue and shattered. The Gate which connected the two locations failed, stranding half the clan in the new location. Several of the mages who were holding the Gate were killed or injured; many were traumatized. One of them, Songwind, changed his name to Darkwind, renounced the use of magic, and began living outside the Vale (the magically-protected area used as a home by Tayledras clans. His father pressures him to return to magic, but he refuses, fearing in part that he caused the Heartstone to fail. His real allies are a pair of gryphons, Treyvan and Hydona, mages themselves and advance scouts from Clan k'Leshya, the so-called Lost Clan. Lurking at the edges of k'Sheyna territory is the sinister mage Mornelithe Falconsbane, a creature who has changed his form to resemble a giant man-cat. Darkwind's father is an unwilling agent of his; Falconsbane caught and tortured him until he broke. Falconsbane has an obsessive hatred of gryphons and wishes to capture Treyvan, Hydona, or their two young children. Falconsbane's daughter Nyara escapes him and finds her way to Darkwind and the gryphons for protection, but she also is under his control. A young woman, Dawnfire, witnesses Falconsbane's attempt to take or subvert the gyphlets. She and her bond-bird try to drive him off, but she is killed and a lingering trace of her spirit is trapped in the bond-bird, which Falconsbane takes prisoner. Elspeth successfully resists her Companion Gwena's attempt to steer her along a predestinated path to greatness and looks for help among the Shin'a'in. Cryptic clues steer her to k'Sheyna territory, where she encounters Darkwind. After a tense meeting, he begins to believe that she could help him fight off Falconsbane. Skif is wary and suspicious, however. Dawnfire, trapped in her bird's body, arrives with the news that Ancar is planning to attack them. The Tayledras rightly deduce that this is simply a ruse to lead them away from the Heartstone and the gryphons. They try to ambush Falconsbane, but he is too strong for them; the Goddess herself intervenes to drive him away. At the story's conclusion, Darkwind's father has been freed from Falconsbane's control, and the outsiders have been accepted warily into the Hawkbrothers' trust. Dawnfire is chosen by the Goddess as her Avatar and becomes a spirit-being."
319,City of Sorcery,fantasy," The novel concerns the quest of Magdalen Lorne, the chief Terran operative on Darkover."
320,Belladonna,fantasy, Book ends with Belladonna making herself even more evil than the Eater of the World inside of the school that she had been kicked out of in the events of Sebastian. She traps the Eater of the World and somehow Michael finds a way to bring her back to the world.
321,Queste,fantasy," Queste takes Septimus, Jenna and Beetle in search of Nicko and Snorri, to bring them back from the past. They go to Marcellus Pye, who has remembered some information from his 500 year old memory and provides them with some notes from Nicko and Snorri. The notes say that they planned to travel to the House Of Foryx where all times meet, and there they expected to come back to their time. Jenna takes the notes back with her to the Palace. In the meantime, Merrin Meredith travels to the Castle in hope of destroying Septimus. He bumps into Jenna who drops all the notes of Nicko and Snorri, they fall into a puddle and get wet. Jenna goes to the The Manuscriptorium and asks Beetle to help her replace the notes. Beetle then takes her to the restoration specialist Ephaniah Grebe. Ephaniah is a half man-half rat being. He Restores the pages and binds them in to a book, but they still miss one piece, the center of the map to the House of Foryx. Merrin, in the meantime, takes the job of a scribe in the Manuscriptorium. There he meets the ghost of Tertius Fume, the first Chief Hermetic Scribe. Tertius makes him transfer the loyalty of the Thing (a creature he aquired from reciting words from a book written by Tertius Fume) to him and assures that he will send Septimus on the perilous Queste. Tertius Fume arrives at the Wizard Tower along with the ghosts of all the previous ExtraOrdinary Wizards and announces that they are about to draw the Questing stone. Septimus feels a Darkenesse inside the urn where the stone is kept and tells that a Thing is there to sabotage the draw. They escape the Wizard tower as Tertius Fume puts it under Siege. But Septimus takes the Questing stone from Hildegarde thinking it to be a SafeCharm as Hildegarde tells him. Marcia tells Septimus not to take SafeCharms or Charms from strangers, but Septimus doesn't regard Hildegarde as a stranger. Marcia disagrees with that just to contradict and blame him for taking the Questing Stone. We find out that Hildegarde was actually InHabited by Tertius Fume's Thing. Septimus, Jenna and Beetle start their journey to the House of Foryx. Ephaniah Grebe promises to get Morwenna Mould, the Witch Mother of the Wendron Witches to show them the Forest Way. Ephaniah promises Morwenna anything in exchange for showing Septimus, Jenna, and Beetle the Forest Way. Septimus and Beetle overhear the witches talking that the Witch Mother will ask for Jenna and Ullr (who tags along with Jenna while Snorri is 500 years in the past). They escape the Coven and go to Camp Heap. Sam Heap shows them the Forest Way. They eventually reach the House and find Ephaniah near it. He had found the last missing piece of the map but was possessed by the Thing. Septimus, Jenna and Beetle enter the House of Foryx, but accidentally all three of them go inside. There Septimus is taken inside a door by a girl named Talmar Ray Bell and Septimus finds himself face to face with Hotep-Ra, first ExtraOrdinary wizard. In the meantime Jenna and Beetle find Nicko and Snorri and all of them try to escape the House of Foryx. Just as they were about to leave, Marcia and Sarah arrive outside the house on Spit Fyre, so all of them are able to return to their own time."
322,Pools of Darkness,fantasy," The city of Phlan has vanished, and its citizens defend themselves from the minions of Bane. Adventurers Ren, Shal, and Tarl band together with the sorceress Evaine to stop them."
323,Ilse Witch,fantasy," It has been 130 years since the events of the Heritage of Shannara series, and the Free-born and the Federation are still at war. The story follows a quest organized by Walker Boh, the last surviving Druid. Thirty years ago, the Elven prince Kael Elessedil led an expedition in search of a legendary magic which was said to be the most ancient and powerful in the world. Thirty years later, Kael is found floating in the sea of the Blue Divide; a map is found with him, covered with mysterious symbols. Walker is the only man who can read them. But there is another: the Ilse Witch, a beautiful but twisted young woman who is as practiced in magic as Walker himself. She will stop at nothing to possess the map and the magic it leads to. To stop her, Walker must find the magic first. Thus begins the voyage of the sleek, swift airship, the Jerle Shannara. The company chosen by Walker must fly into the face of unknown terrors while the Ilse Witch and her dark allies pursue. This book marked a new era in the Shannara saga, for it was the first time that Brooks described the use of futuristic technology, including airships as well as robots and lasers from the Old World."
324,Taronga,fantasy," The book begins two years after the Last Days. Ben lives with a callous man named Greg, who uses Ben's powers, which he calls ""the Call"", to attract game for hunting. Ben feels guilty about leading the animals to their death but faces a beating from Greg if he does not comply. When he finally escapes, he promises not to use the Call again. He breaks this promise less than a day later when he is pursued by a man on horseback. Ben decides to return to Sydney, where he once lived with his parents. He travels first on foot, then by bike, using mountain roads to avoid local gang activity. He is joined by a stray dog. As he draws closer to his destination, he hears the Call of something wild and ferocious. When he reaches the city, he realizes that the Call is coming from Taronga Zoo. He then makes up his mind to travel to Taronga zoo to find out what creature could still be so wild and free. In Sydney, Ben is chased by a gang. The dog sacrifices itself to give Ben the opportunity to escape, but Ben is still captured. The gang takes Ben to Taronga Park Zoo, which houses another gang of survivors and is guarded by tigers and other predators. The gang wishes to break into the zoo and plans to use Ben as bait. Inside, Ben is almost attacked by two tigers, Raja and Ranee. He is saved by Ellie, an Aboriginal girl who is in charge of the big cats. She takes him to their leader, Molly, who allows Ben to stay after he proves that he can also round up and cage the cats. Ben quickly earns the trust of all of the animals except for Raja, the male tiger, who hates Ben for restricting his physical freedom. Although Ben originally sees Taronga as an ideal community, he soon discovers that Molly is a ruthless and selfish leader. When the Sydney gang tries to break into the zoo, Molly divulges her plan to burn Taronga to the ground before she lets another gang occupy it. Ben and Ellie decide to act. Ben convinces the rival gang that he wants to help them break in and they set a date for an ambush. During the next week, Ben and Ellie cut a hole in the outer fence and disguise it with ivy. On the day of the ambush, they set the animals free. The Sydney gang and the Taronga gang fight. Ben and Ellie are the only survivors. Ben once again swears that he will no longer use the Call. When he is cornered by Raja, he keeps that promise. But Raja does not attack him; instead, he gives Ben a playful swat. Raja and Ranee head towards the Blue Mountains and are followed by Ben and Ellie."
325,Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident,fantasy," Artemis Fowl II is the thirteen-year-old son of an Irish crime lord, Artemis Fowl I, and the fairy underworld considers him dangerous. After being falsely accused of supplying contraband to a goblin smuggling ring, Artemis and his bodyguard, Butler, defeat the culprit. In return, the fairies Captain Holly Short and Commander Julius Root of the Lower Elements Police assist the pair in rescuing Artemis' father, whom the Russian Mafia has held hostage. A goblin hit squad ambushes the rescue group, and the group shelters underneath an overhang. Realising that it is a trap, Butler pushes Holly and Artemis out as the overhang collapses. The rubble knocks Butler unconscious and traps him and Commander Root. Holly and Artemis free Root and Butler. Holly questions Artemis about his father and how he came to be so ruthless in the events of the previous book, and, in a rare moment of sincerity, Artemis admits he made a mistake, a sign of his moral development that continues through the series. Meanwhile, Briar Cudgeon ambushes and locks Foaly in the Operations Booth and disables LEP weapons, framing him as the mastermind behind the rebellion against the LEP and leaving the rescue group powerless to stop the goblins as they begin their attack. Foaly sends a text message to the rescue group, revealing that all weapons and communications are controlled by Opal Koboi. Artemis decides to take over Koboi Laboratories and return all weapons to the LEP, interrupting the rescue mission. Holly reveals that Foaly had a hunch that Mulch Diggums, the criminal and kleptomaniac dwarf who had been presumed dead after the Fowl Manor siege, was still alive and in Los Angeles. Knowing that he had broken into Koboi Laboratories before, they go to apprehend him once again. They then break into Koboi Laboratories through a hollow titanium foundation rod. Artemis manages to turn both the goblins and Koboi against Cudgeon. Cudgeon is killed when he is thrown into the open DNA cannon plasma feed which simultaneously blacks out Opal Koboi. The restored power activates DNA cannons in Police Plaza, neutralising all goblins there. However, Foaly is still trapped in the Operations Booth, as the LEP outside, commanded by Captain Trouble Kelp, still thinks he is to blame for the revolt. The rescuers then go to Murmansk and rescue Artemis Fowl I."
326,The Island of the Mighty,fantasy," Gwynedd in north Wales is ruled by Math, son of Mathonwy, whose feet must be held by a virgin at all times except while he is at war. Math's nephew Gilfaethwy is in love with Goewin, the current footholder, and Gilfaethwy's brother Gwydion tricks Math into going to war against Pryderi so Gilfaethwy can have access to her. Gwydion kills Pryderi, Prince of Dyfed, in single combat, and Gilfaethwy rapes Goewin. Math marries Goewin in compensation for her rape, and banishes Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, transforming them into a breeding pair of deer, then pigs, then wolves. After three years they are restored to human form and return. Math needs a new footholder, and Gwydion suggests his sister, Arianrhod, but when Math magically tests her virginity, she gives birth to two sons. One, Dylan, immediately takes to the sea. The other is raised by Gwydion, but Arianrhod swears that he will never have a name or arms unless she gives them to him, and refuses to do so. Gwydion tricks her into naming him Llew Llaw Gyffes (Llew Skilful Hand) and giving him arms. She then swears he will never have a wife of any race living on earth, so Gwydion and Math make him a beautiful wife from flowers, and name her Blodeuwedd (""Flowers""). Blodeuwedd falls in love with a passing hunter called Goronwy, and they plot to kill Llew. Blodewedd tricks Llew into revealing the means by which he can be killed, but when Goronwy attempts to do the deed, Llew escapes, though wounded, transformed into an eagle. Gwydion finds Llew and transforms him back into human form, and turns Blodeuwedd into an owl (Blodeuwedd, literally ""Flower Face,"" means ""Owl""). Goronwy offers to compensate Llew, but Llew insists on returning the blow that was struck against him. He kills Goronwy with his spear, which is thrown so hard it pierces him through the stone he is hiding behind."
327,Once Upon a Time in the North,fantasy," Lee Scoresby, a 24 year old young Texan aeronaut, and his dæmon, the jackrabbit Hester, make a rough landing in Novy Odense, a harbour town on an island in the White Sea, in Muscovy. After paying for the storage of their balloon, Lee and Hester make their way into town, where Lee notes with surprise the presence of bears: some working, some just loitering about. He enters a bar to get something to eat and drink, and falls into conversation with a local journalist, Oskar Siggurdson, who explains that an election for Mayor of Novy Odense will take place later in the week. Siggurdson tells Lee that the overwhelming favourite — not the incumbent mayor, but a man called Ivan Dimitrovich Poliakov — has as a central policy a campaign to deal with the bears which hang around the town. Oskar mentions that the bears, once a proud race, now rank as ""worthless vagrants"". Lee learns with amazement that these bears are intelligent, can speak, and make and wear their own armour, though laws make it illegal for the bears to wear their armour in Novy Odense. At this point Lee intervenes in a conflict elsewhere in the bar, preventing the barkeeper from beating a drunk Dutch captain called van Breda, who has a ship tied up in the harbour but does not have permission to load his cargo and leave. Lee and van Breda get thrown out of the bar. Lee finds lodgings at a boarding-house and meets some of the fellow-guests over the evening meal: a young librarian called Miss Lund, a photographer, and an economist called Mikhail Ivanovich Vassiliev. Lee and Vassilev attend a meeting at the town hall organised by the mayoral candidate Poliakov. Armed men in purple uniforms patrol the meeting: Lee takes them for customs officers. Vassilev corrects him, explaining that they are security men from Larsen Manganese, a large mining company that are in league with Poliakov. Vassilew mentions that they have a large gun they are looking to use in a riot situation, but their conversation is interrupted when Lee runs into Siggurdson. Siggurdson introduces him to Olga Poliakova, Poliakov's daughter. While he is initially attracted to her, Lee is put off by her lack of intelligence. Lee falls asleep and therefore misses Poliakov's speech, but once it is over Siggurdson insists on introducing Lee to the politician. Poliakov offers to employ Lee as a mercenary, to help him take care of a situation at the harbour. Lee is about to agree when he spots another of Poliakov's associates, a man Poliakov introduces as Pierre Morton. Lee recognises the man, whom he met using the name Pierre McConville. Lee met McConville while working for a rancher called Lloyd, who got into a boundary dispute with a neighbour. This neighbour hired McConville to kill Lloyd's men one by one, including Lloyd's nephew, Jimmy Partlett, who was shot dead in front of a number of witnesses. Only one of these witnesses was willing to tell the truth in court, and when McConville was acquitted by a corrupt jury he shot the witness dead in the street and rode out of town. He was rearrested and sent to the capital of the province with an armed escort, but vanished en route. Recognising Morton as this enemy from his past, Lee turns down Poliakov's offer of employment, and leaves. In the middle of the night, back at the boarding-house, Lee hears Miss Lund crying and asks the cause. Miss Lund cryptically asks for his advice on a matter of honour. Lee gives his advice as well as he can understand the situation, to Miss Lund's gratitude. Lee returns to his bed baffled about what has just happened, but Hester berates him, saying that Miss Lund has obviously received a proposal of marriage, and Lee advised her to accept. At breakfast the next morning Vassilev explains that Miss Lund has a sweetheart in the Customs Office. During their conversation, Lee realises that the situation that Poliakov wanted him to deal with is most likely connected to Captain van Breda. Lee heads down to the harbour to investigate. He runs into van Breda again, who has still not been allowed to load his cargo. The two men head to a bar for a drink. Lee learns that van Breda's cargo, mining equipment and rock samples, is being held on a legal technicality, and will be impounded and sold at auction unless he loads it by the next day. Unfortunately, van Breda is being prevented from loading his cargo. The captain insists that Poliakov is waiting for his cargo to be impounded and will then buy it at a low price at auction. Lee, disgusted by Poliakov's behaviour, offers to help break into the warehouse and stand guard while van Breda loads his cargo. van Breda gratefully accepts, and the two head for the harbour. On the pavement outside the bar Lee is waylaid by one of the bears, who introduces himself as Iorek Byrnison. Iorek also offers to help van Breda, in order to get back at Poliakov. Iorek puts on the only piece of armour he currently has - a battered helmet - and the group set off, attracting a large crowd of onlookers as they near the harbour. Talking his way past the Harbour Master, Lee stands off against a group of men guarding the warehouse. Lee shoots one of them in the hip, knocking him into the water. The other men pull him out and then scatter. At that point the Larsen Manganese men deploy the riot gun mentioned by Vassilev earlier, but before they can do anything with it Iorek overturns it and pushes it into the harbour. With Iorek's help, Lee breaks into the warehouse. Van Breda gives him the Winchester rifle kept on-board his boat, and Lee heads up the floors to deal with the two gunmen positioned up there. He shoots the first in the shoulder and gets into a firefight with the second. The wounded man tries to strangle Hester, but Lee shoots him dead. The remaining gunman turns out to be Morton, who manages to shoot Lee in the shoulder and ear. Taunting him with the story of how he killed his armed escorts — by tying one of them to the ground, binding his daemon to a horse and forcing the two apart to an unbearable distance, causing the man to die an agonising death — Morton moves in for the kill, his snake daemon advancing ahead of him. Hester pounces on Morton's daemon and drags it towards Lee, forcing Morton to come stumbling out of his hiding place in pain. Lee shoots him in the chest, declares this revenge for what happened to Jimmy Partlett, and then shoots him dead. Outside, Larsen Manganese security men led by Poliakov have surrounded the warehouse. Before they can do anything, a group of Customs officers led by Lieutenant Haugland arrive, disperse the soldiers and crowd, and arrest Lee. Van Breda leaves with his ship and cargo, insisting that Lee keep the rifle as a token of thanks. It emerges that this is the same rifle Lee has when he is killed in his final gunfight, thirty-five years later. Haugland takes Lee back to the depot where his balloon is stored. On the way he explains that there is little the Customs board will be able to do to punish Poliakov, but they are still grateful to Lee for acting as he did. His balloon has been provisioned and made ready for departure, with all his belongings brought from the boarding house. Iorek arrives, and tends to Lee's wounds using bloodmoss. Lee has lost part of his ear. Oskar Siggurdson also arrives, but Lee pushes him into the harbour rather than giving an interview. Lee prepares to leave, thanking Haugland for his help. Haugland says that he should thank Miss Lund, who has just agreed to become his fiancée. Vassilev comes running into the depot, warning them that Larsen Manganese men are on the way with orders to kill Lee and Iorek. Lee suggests the bear should escape with him on his balloon, and the armoured bear agrees, saying that the aeronaut is obviously a man of the Arctic. When Lee asks what he means, Iorek points to his daemon as an Arctic hare, much to Hester and Lee's surprise. The balloon then leaves and Lee, Hester and Iorek fly away together. The book ends with Lee remarking that he was amazed to learn Hester is a hare, to which she replies, ""I always knew I had more class than a rabbit."""
328,Maximum Ride: The Final Warning,fantasy," The story begins with Jeb, Max, the oldest of the siblings, and the Flock holding a funeral for Ari, Max’s half-brother and Jeb’s son. The next day they go to a private conference with the Danning Administration in Washington who are trying to decide what would be best for the Flock. The meeting does not go smoothly and ends with the Flock flying away to Dr. Martinez’s home where they are currently staying. But soon their short period of bliss is ended when they are forced to leave as an unexpected bomb in the form of a pizza arrives at their doorstep shortly after attending the government meeting. They flee to a safer place and there Max is thrown into a world of longing and confusion as Fang kisses her on a dock when they snuck out of their hotel during the night while everyone was asleep. Since Max runs from him, afraid to display her feelings, the atmosphere between the two grows cold and unfriendly. Then her mom, Dr. Martinez, calls them and tells them she has a surprise for them. The surprise is that they're going to go on a special mission – all the way to Antarctica, the point of the mission is to record data on how the world was changing due to pollution/global warming and how they could help stop it. After agreeing to take part in the mission, the flock meet up with a crew of environmentalists on the polar research vessel, The Wendy K. There, they meet an attractive 21 year old scientist named Brigid Dwyer, who immediately finds a liking in Fang. Max is getting even more jealous as Bridgid talks to Fang more. Certain members of the Flock gain more skills – Iggy can feel colors and see things if surrounded by white, Nudge can attract metal, Gazzy develops the ability to release almost toxic gas at will, Fang gains the ability to blend in with his surroundings and Angel gets yet another skill – she can change her appearance. And much to the group's surprise, Total, the talking dog the Flock rescued in Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment starts to grow wings! While in Antarctica, a member of the research team is attacked by a leopard seal and killed. However she was a mechanical impostor created by an unknown group of enemies attempting to capture the Flock. Meanwhile, Max and Fang’s relationship gets steadily more and more strained. The Flock faces big problems when Angel goes to find a baby penguin in the middle of a blizzard and they are captured by a mutated group of genetically enhanced humans. After being kidnapped, the Flock awakes in an office building located in Miami which has been evacuated due to the threat of a category 4 hurricane. The Flock faces the emotionless Uber-Director (who is described as having many of his internal organs connected via plastic ""boxes"" which his head sits upon). As they make an attempt to escape, they find themselves trapped by the Uber-Director's mutated body guard. When all hope seems lost, the windows to the skyscraper shatter due to the high speed winds, sucking the Flock, the Uber-Director, and his bodyguard into the eye of the hurricane where the Flock were the only ones that didn't free fall to the ground. After the events, the Flock returns to the home of Dr. Martinez where they are offered the opportunity to attend the Lerner School for Gifted Children (a.k.a. Ye Olde Academy for Mutants and Other Kids). As Max declines the offer, she and the Flock take off amidst the circle of reporters, ushering the fact that their existence and other genetic mutations have gone public."
329,Outcast,fantasy," At the beginning of the book, Hollypaw, Lionpaw, and Jaypaw, apprentices in ThunderClan, resume their daily lives after the events of Dark River. Jaypaw becomes obsessed with learning about cats who live by the lake before the Clans, whom he meets in the previous book during a time-travelling experience. Lionpaw continues training with Tigerstar, a dead evil cat, in his dreams. Hollypaw realizes she wants to become leader of her Clan one day. Each finds the idea of traveling to the mountains intriguing, and when cats from a group in the mountains called the Tribe of Rushing Water ask ThunderClan for help, they get their chance. ThunderClan finds out that the Tribe is harassed by a group of rogue cats who steal the Tribe's prey. It is revealed that Stormfur and Brook Where Small Fish Swim return to ThunderClan from the Tribe in Twilight because they are banished: Stormfur leads the Tribe into battle against the rogues, but cats die because the Tribe is not used to battling other cats. Brambleclaw, Squirrelflight, Tawnypelt, Crowfeather, Stormfur, Brook, Breezepaw, Jaypaw, Hollypaw, and Lionpaw journey to the mountains to help deal with the rogues. The Clan cats attempt to reason with the rogues and mark borders. The rogues ignore the borders, forcing the Tribe to take more drastic measures. The Clan cats teach the Tribe cats to fight. The Tribe is reluctant to fight at first, but manages to defeat the invaders. Meanwhile, Jaypaw continues to try to find out about the ancient cats' prophecy that refers to himself and his littermates: ""There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the powers of the stars in their paws"". He learns that the Tribe originally lives by the lake and decides to tell his brother and sister about the prophecy at the end of the book."
330,The Face in the Abyss,fantasy," The novel concerns American mining engineer Nicholas Graydon. While searching for lost Inca treasure in South America, he encounters Suarra, handmaiden to the Snake Mother of Yu-Atlanchi. She leads Graydon to an abyss where Nimir, the Lord of Evil is imprisoned in a face of gold. While Graydon's companions are transformed by the face into globules of gold on account of their greed, he is saved by Suarra and the Snake Mother whom he joins in their struggle against Nimir."
331,The Harrowing of Gwynedd,fantasy," The plot of The Harrowing of Gwynedd spans seven months, from early January to early August 918. The novel begins as Father Joram MacRorie and his sister, Lady Evaine MacRorie Thuryn, discuss the recent death of their father, Camber MacRorie. As time passes and Camber's body shows no signs of decomposing, they are forced to consider the possibility that their father may not be truly dead. Evaine believes he attempted to work a final spell just before his death, but Joram wonders if Camber may truly be a saint. Throughout Gwynedd, the Deryni attempt to flee to safety as the Regents of young King Alroy Haldane continue their violent suppression of Deryni across the kingdom. Desperate for any slim chance to save even a few of their people, the Camberian Council begins making final preparations for a dangerous deception. They plan to develop a new religious cult, led by their ally Revan, which will preach the possibility of washing away a Deryni's powers through ceremonial baptism. By placing a Deryni Healer who is capable of blocking Deryni powers within the cult, the Council hopes to remove the powers of willing Deryni subjects, thereby protecting them from the wrath of the Regents and the Church. Meanwhile, in Valoret, the king's twin brother and heir, Prince Javan Haldane, strives to maintain the secret lines of communication with his Deryni allies. As Javan's own magical powers continue to grow and develop, he is well aware that the very powers he may need to survive may also result in his quick death if the Regents ever discover them. Nonetheless, he continues to funnel information to the Council and even assists Ansel MacRorie and Tavis O'Neill when they sneak in Valoret to block the faint Deryni powers of Ansel's immediate family. Over the following months, Javan's strengthening powers enable him to mentally probe and influence his squire, his brother, and even Archbishop Hubert MacInnis. To further keep the attention of the Regents away from him, Javan convinces Hubert that he has a growing religious vocation, allowing him greater access to the archbishop's mind. The Royal Court moves from Valoret to Rhemuth, and Revan sets out to start his baptizer cult after finishing his final preparations with the Camberian Council. Evaine and Joram reveal the truth about Camber's supposed death to Dom Queron Kinevan, enlisting his aid in their efforts to restore their father from his limbo state. Evaine succeeds in establishing regular contact with Javan in Rhemuth, but most her time is spent researching ancient Deryni lore with Joram and Queron. By early summer, Revan's baptizer cult is growing in size and popularity. To further convince Hubert that he is genuinely considering a religious life, Javan travels to Valoret to study with the archbishop. After Hubert's brother informs him of Revan's cult, the archbishop and the prince travel to the river to observe Revan's actions for themselves. Although two known Deryni are apparently stripped of their powers before their eyes, Hubert remains skeptical, even after both subjects are tested with merasha. Javan volunteers to submit to the ceremony, and proceeds to do so even after Hubert forbids him to do so. Hubert later has the prince flogged for his disobedience, but Javan once again uses his powers to manipulate Hubert's mind. Gambling that Hubert will not kill him as long as the archbishop believes he is serious about becoming a priest, Javan agrees to take temporary vows as a lay brother, hoping that a religious house will provide the protection and education he will need to survive until he comes of age. After several important breakthroughs and discoveries, Evaine finally feels ready to attempt to free her father. She makes final preparations for the ritual, then briefly visits Javan to provide him with the subconscious knowledge of his magical Haldane heritage. Two days later, as Javan formally makes his vows, Evaine, Joram, and Queron attempt to free Camber from his stasis. In a powerful and mystical ritual, Evaine briefly leaves the mortal plane and communes with several higher beings. She discovers that Camber failed to work his last spell properly, forever trapping him in a state between life and death. Realizing that she must sacrifice herself to free her father, Evaine pours her very life energy into her father's spell, shifting Camber's soul into a state in which he may freely cross the boundaries of life and death. When the process is completed, Queron can only watch helplessly as Evaine's soul departs her dying body."
332,Stork Naked,fantasy," Surprise summons the stork with Umlaut, only to discover with dismay that the stork refuses to deliver her baby due to a clerical error. Off on an adventure to find her child, she seeks the aid of Pyra, who wields a tool that can find, and enter, alternate realities. As Surprise and her entourage search for the correct world, the sinister mechanisms behind the whole adventure is revealed."
333,Od Magic,fantasy," The wizard Od, a giantess who travels mysteriously, accompanied by numerous injured animals, which she heals, saved the city of Kelior, founded a school of magic there, then disappeared into the wilderness. Hundreds of years later, she appears at Brenden Vetch's small farm, inviting him to study at her school to perfect the magic he wields over plants, and finds in them. After he makes the long journey to the city, Brenden discovers that Kelior, instead of being a bastion for learning and exploration, is fearful of unfettered magic; the king and his wizard Valoren Greye outlaw any new type of magic, which they see as a threat to Kelior's order and safety. They want magic to be subservient to their rulership. As Brenden acclimates to his strange environment, Princess Sulys attempts to come to terms with her engagement to Valoren, a man she scarcely knows, which engagement was arranged by her father. But Valoren, and her father, take her for granted, and won't listen to her. Among other things, she wants Valoren to know that she has some magical power. Instead of preparing for her upcoming wedding, she prefers to converse with Ceta Thiel, a historian writing about Od. Her discoveries about the wizard puzzle her and her lover, Yar Ayrwood, who works at Od's school. Yar ventures out of the school and into the city to learn more, unintentionally involving his curious student Elver. The wizard Valoren is too preoccupied to help with his wedding arrangements: Not only is Brenden proving to be an enigma, but a new magic-user, Tyramin, and his daughter Mistral have brought a magic show to the Twilight Quarter of the city. Believing these magicians to be dangerous, Valoren commands that Tyramin and Mistral are to be investigated. As the warden for the Twilight Quarter, Arneth Pyt has to obey Valoren's order, even as he falls in love with the mysterious Mistral. When the king and Valoren try to suppress these new magics, an uprising that they could never foresee forces change upon the static kingdom. Mistral asks the king to allow Tyramin to perform for the king in the palace. (Actually, Tyramin has been dead for some time, but Mistral has presented him by illusion at performances. Sulys gets serious about magic, and stands up to her father during the performance, arguing that the king and Valoren have not been paying attention to her, and that Mistral should be allowed to practice her magic within Kelior. Yar and Valoren return from a search for Brenden, combined with an investigation of mysterious rock-like beings in the far north, and the beings, and Brenden, come with them. Elver turns out to be Od, in disguise. Od says that she wants the school to continue, but without the restraints imposed by the king, which she has experienced as Elver. The king agrees, and magic becomes an art again, rather than a trade."
334,Ysabel,fantasy," Ned Marriner is in France with his father, Edward, a celebrated photographer who is working on a book about Provence. While his father shoots outside the deserted Saint-Sauveur Cathedral, Ned wanders in to look around. There he meets Kate Wenger, an American exchange student with a passion for ancient history and an extensive knowledge of the cathedral's past. The pair is startled by the appearance of a then-nameless man, who warns them to leave immediately, stating that they ""have blundered into the corner of a very old story"". Ned finds that he is able to sense the man's presence, a power of which he was previously unaware. Ned and Kate also notice an ancient carving of a woman on one of the church pillars, which the nameless man claims he created. Frightened by the incident, Ned and Kate make plans to meet a few days later. Ned goes on a photo-scouting mission with his father's assistants, Greg, Steve, and Melanie, a young woman who is hyper-organized, witty, and well liked by everyone, including Ned. They head towards Mont Sainte-Victoire, a much-photographed location made famous by Cezanne. But along the way, Ned falls suddenly and inexplicably ill. Arriving at the mountain, he is overcome by images of the slaughter that took place there centuries prior, when a Roman general killed thousands of Celts. He is rushed back to the team's villa, but once he has travelled only a short distance from the mountain, he recovers completely. Ned and Kate meet later that day in a coffee shop to discuss their situation. Ned is unnerved by the discovery of his strange abilities, while both are curious to find out more about the nameless man and his ""story."" Unaware that they are being watched by the nameless man, they make plans to meet again in Entremont, an ancient Celtic site, on the Eve of Beltaine. Kate leaves, but Ned becomes aware of the nameless man's presence and confronts him. The man tells him little, and soon leaves the cafe. Outside, however, he is attacked by unnaturally vicious dogs, and Ned steps in to defend him, saving his life. Ned meets his Aunt Kim, a woman with mysterious powers. She tells him that she sensed he was in trouble, and came at once to offer her help. He discovers that she has the same ability to ""sense"" the presence of those with power, which she claims ""runs in the family."" They are confronted by a second nameless man, a large Celt with antlers, and are again warned to stay out of the ""story."" The Celt plans to kill the nameless man from the cathedral (who he calls a ""Roman""), and threatens Ned for having helped him, but Aunt Kim manages to bluff their way out of the situation. Despite Ned's misgivings, Kate, who is acting strangely, convinces him to follow their original plan of visiting Entremont on Beltaine. They plan to be away from the place before dark, but not long after they enter the site, darkness falls several hours early. They hide from a ghostly procession of druids that arrives soon after and becomes more solid as the light continues to fade. The nameless Roman from the cathedral confronts them, ordering them to flee as soon as they can. Kate begins to struggle, possessed with a strange desire to join the druidic ceremony below. Just before she escapes, however, Melanie arrives, looking for Ned. As she approaches the waiting Celts, she is transformed into Ysabel, possessed by the spirit of an ancient woman who the two nameless men have been fighting over for centuries. Ysabel names the Roman Phelan and the Celt Cadell, and orders them to spend three days searching for her. Whoever finds her first will win her. Ned and Kate discover that this is the ""story"": a battle between two men for one woman's love, which has been repeated in various incarnations throughout the millennia. Ned and Kate leave unnoticed, stricken by the loss of Melanie. He tells his father, Aunt Kim, Greg, and Steve everything that has happened, and also asks his mother, Meghan, to leave Sudan, where she is working with Doctors Without Borders, to be with them as they attempt to get Melanie back. Meghan and Kim, her sister, had a falling out when they were younger, and there are some strained moments once Meghan arrives and they attempt to work together and reconcile their differences. They are aided by Uncle Dave, Kim's husband, who also possesses special abilities and knowledge of the supernatural. Ned and his fellow searchers visit various historical sites in Provence over the following two days, trying to track down Ysabel's hiding place before Phelan or Cadell in the hopes that they will be able to rescue Melanie. Following a hint from one of the wild boars that are common throughout the South of France, Ned realizes that Ysabel is hiding on Mont Sainte-Victoire, the site where he experienced his mysterious illness. He decides to go there alone, as he is a marathon runner and will be able to reach the summit fastest. Despite feeling sick the entire way, Ned makes it to the summit before Phelan or Cadell, discovering Ysabel in a cavern that looks out over Provence. He demands that she release Melanie. Cadell and Phelan arrive shortly thereafter, both claiming the victory. Ysabel points out that it was Ned who arrived first, and reveals that Ned is distantly descended from the original Ysabel (who would have gone by a different name). Both Phelan and Cadell commit suicide by leaping from the mountain, for neither succeeded in reaching Ysabel first. When Ned looks at Ysabel again, he finds that she too has departed, leaving Melanie safe and unharmed in her place."
335,Sons of the Oak,fantasy," The book details the life of Fallion and his rise to power. When the Earth King, Gaborn val Orden dies, the nations mobilize to destroy his children, fearing they'll usurp power over the kingdoms. An army quickly arrives, led by the locus Asgaroth. Fallion, his brother, Jaz, and Rhianna, a girl they rescued from monsters called strengi-saats, flee with their mother and the family of Sir Borenson. Asgaroth eventually catches up with them but his host is slain by Fallion's mother, Iome. The exiles board a smuggler's ship and flee the Courts of Tide. Fallion befriends the captain and most of the crew—including a flameweaver they call Smoker. Smoker recognizes Fallion's power, calling him the torch bearer, and begins teaching him how to use his abilities. Eventually Fallion and Jaz are captured by the evil Runelord Shadoath, who is parasitized by the locus of the One True Master of Evil. She tortures them in order to win their loyalty, but they, along with Shadoath's daughter, are rescued by Myrrima and Smoker. Smoker transforms into a fire elemental, destroying the city where the children were being held captive and seriously wounding Shadaoth. Only her numerous endowments of stamina and brawn save her. During this, Rhianna is mistakenly presumed dead and left behind, where she becomes a Dedicate to the sea ape of Shadoath's son. Five years pass, and Fallion and Jaz grow older in the land of Landesfallen. Shadaoth eventually tracks them down, and finds the hidden lair of the Gwardeen, a group of child graak riders. Fallion realizes she is coming and leaves to look for her Dedicates. As she begins her assault on the Gwardeen base, Fallion locates her Dedicate Keep and wounds the sea ape while entering. Among the Dedicates is Rhianna, who he'd supposed dead. As the sea ape dies, she revives. Unable to slaughter so many innocents, Fallion awakens his powers as a flameweaver and Bright One. This destroys several loci residing in the innocent children Shadaoth has taken, including Asgaroth which had possessed Rhianna. When Shadoath realizes what has happened, she tries to flee back to the remnant of the One True World. Fallion follows her there, destroys Shadoath and injures the One True Master of Evil within her. The One True Master of Evil abandons Shadoath and escapes."
336,Kandide and the Secret of the Mists,fantasy," As the beginning of the story, all is well in the Kingdom of Calabiyau. King Toeyad, ruler of the Fée, a race of fairies, is benevolent and just, and the twelve clans of fairies live in relative peace. When the king dies, his teenage daughter, Kandide, is expected to ascend to the throne. While preparing for her coronation, one of Kandide’s wings is crushed. The Fée value beauty above all else and so, to prevent the disgrace of having an “Imperfect” take the throne, Kandide’s mother banishes her to the Veil of the Mists, a land to the East populated by treacherous creatures and imperfect Fée. Without a clear heir to the throne, Calabiyau is thrown into turmoil. Kandide’s mother is put in mortal danger and cruel Lady Aron threatens to take the throne. Kandide’s younger sister, Tara, and brother, Teren, are sent to find Kandide and bring her home in hopes that she can set everything right."
337,Prince Caspian,fantasy," While standing on a British railway station, awaiting their train to school after the summer holidays, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie are magically whisked away to a beach near an old and ruined castle. They come to realize the ruin is Cair Paravel, where they once ruled as the Kings and Queens of Narnia, and discover the treasure vault where Peter's sword and shield, Susan's bow and arrows, and Lucy's bottle of magical cordial and dagger are stored. Susan's horn for summoning help is missing, however, as she left it in the woods the day they returned to England after their first visit to Narnia. Although only a year has passed in England, many centuries have passed in Narnia. That same day, they intervene to rescue Trumpkin the dwarf from soldiers who have brought him to the ruins to drown him. Trumpkin tells the children that since their disappearance, a race of men called Telmarines have invaded Narnia, driving the Talking Beasts into the wilderness and pushing even their memory underground. Narnia is now ruled by King Miraz and his wife Queen Prunaprismia, but the rightful king is Miraz's young nephew, Prince Caspian, who has gained the support of the Old Narnians. Miraz had usurped the throne by killing his own brother, Caspian's father King Caspian IX. Miraz tolerated Caspian as heir until his own son was born. Prince Caspian, until that point ignorant of his uncle's evil deeds, escaped from Miraz's Castle with the aid of his tutor Doctor Cornelius, who had schooled him in the lore of Old Narnia, and who gives him in parting Queen Susan's horn. Caspian flees into the forest but is knocked unconscious when his horse bolts. He awakes in the den of a talking badger, Trufflehunter, and two dwarfs, Nikabrik and Trumpkin, who accept Caspian as their king. The badger and dwarves take Caspian to meet many creatures of Old Narnia. They gather for a council at midnight on Dancing Lawn. Doctor Cornelius arrives to warn them of the approach of King Miraz and his army; he urges them to flee to Aslan's How in the great woods near Cair Paravel. But the Telmarines follow the Narnians to the How, and after several skirmishes the Narnians appear close to defeat. At a second war council, they discuss whether to use Queen Susan's horn, and whether it will bring Aslan or the Kings and Queens of the golden age. Not knowing where help will arrive, they dispatch Pattertwig the Squirrel to Lantern Waste and Trumpkin to Cair Paravel, and it is then that Trumpkin is captured by the Telmarines and rescued by the Pevensies. Trumpkin and the Pevensies make their way to Caspian. They try to save time by travelling up Glasswater Creek, but lose their way. Lucy sees Aslan and wants to follow where he leads, but the others do not believe her and follow their original course, which becomes increasingly difficult. In the night, Aslan calls Lucy and tells her that she must awaken the others and insist that they follow her on Aslan's path. In the cold early hours of morning the others eventually obey. They begin to see Aslan's shadow, then Aslan himself. Aslan sends Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin ahead to Aslan's How to deal with the treachery brewing there, and follows with Susan and Lucy, who see the wood come alive. Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin enter Aslan's How; they overhear Nikabrik and his confederates, a Hag and a Wer-Wolf, trying to convince Caspian, Cornelius, and Trufflehunter to help them resurrect the White Witch in hopes of using her power to defeat Miraz. A fight ensues, and Nikabrik and his two friends are slain. Peter challenges Miraz to single combat; the army of the victor in this duel will be considered the victor in the war. Even though he has a stronger army and thus has more to lose by a duel, Miraz accepts the challenge, goaded by his two lords, Glozelle and Sopespian. After a stiff fight, Miraz falls. Glozelle and Sopespian cry that the Narnians have cheated and stabbed the King in the back while he was down. They command the Telmarine army to attack, and in the commotion that follows, Glozelle stabs Miraz in the back. The Living Wood is wakened by Aslan's arrival, and the Telmarines flee. Discovering themselves trapped at the Great River, where their bridge has been destroyed by forces of Narnia, the Telmarines surrender. Aslan gives the Telmarines a choice of staying in Narnia under Caspian or returning to Earth, their original home. After one volunteer disappears through the magic door created by Aslan, the Pevensies go through to reassure the other Telmarines, though Peter and Susan reveal to Edmund and Lucy that they are too old to return furthermore to Narnia. The Pevensies find themselves back at the railway station where the adventure began, just as the train to Susan and Lucy's boarding school pulls up into the station."
338,The Caverns of Kalte,fantasy, ==Receptio
339,Little Fuzzy,fantasy," Jack Holloway, a sunstone miner, lives a solitary life in a wilderness area of planet Zarathustra. The planet is basically ""owned"" by the Chartered Zarathustra Corporation (under Victor Grego), which installed basic services and colonial outposts initially, and now reaps the benefits of new discoveries, such as the valuable sunstones. One day, Holloway returns to his little shack to discover a tiny humanoid, covered in golden fur. The little creature has armed itself with a chisel from his workbench, but is peaceful and mostly unafraid. The miner gives the ""little fuzzy"" (as he calls it) some Extee-Three, a kind of canned emergency ration cake, and the Fuzzy devours it greedily. It is soon apparent that the creature is highly intelligent, and he soon brings his family band to join ""Pappy Jack"" at the shack. Victor Grego soon tries to intervene, claiming that the Fuzzies are just animals, not sapients. If they were ruled sapient, the entire planet would be declared a protected aboriginal zone, and the Chartered Zarathustra Company would lose its exclusive rights to the resources there. Leonard Kellogg, one of Grego's staff, kills a Fuzzy and this leads to a court case which hinges on whether the Fuzzies are animals or sapients. After much discussion of what it means to be ""sapient"" (speech and fire use being one definition), the matter goes to court. In the midst of the proceedings, the Terran Navy commander reveals that his people have been studying Fuzzies, and that they can indeed speak. The tiny people use ultrasonic frequencies, which to human ears sound like ""yeek."" When processed with the proper electronics, the sounds are rendered as a complex language. The Navy experiments prove that Fuzzies have at least the mental capacity of a ten-year-old human, and are therefore protected under Terran law. Judge Pendarvis declares them to be aborigines, and the Charter of the Zarathustra Company is immediately invalidated. Kellogg has his worst fears confirmed; he killed a sapient being, not an animal. He commits suicide in his cell. The second book, Fuzzy Sapiens, deals with the new 'Charterless Zarathustra Company' and how it eventually begins to work with the new governor to ensure control over the planet. Victor Grego becomes the affiliate of a Fuzzy he names Diamond. It becomes clear that criminals are using the irregular status of the government and of the company to attack it and even to steal sunstones. The third book, Fuzzy Bones by William Tuning, suggests that the remarkable demand by all Fuzzies for the ration-pack 'Extraterrestrial Type Three' (aka 'ExTee 3' or 'estefee') does not fit with the composition of Zarathustran soil. A third significant Fuzzy character is developed called Starwatcher. Little Fuzzy, Diamond and Starwatcher become the clear leaders of the group in working with humans. Golden Dream fits with these three books in terms of the general plot and relationships. After these two official sequels, the original third book by Piper himself was found and of course this offers an alternative future."
340,High Wizardry,fantasy," When Dairine, Nita's younger sister, finds Nita's copy of the Wizard's manual, she then proceeds to take the Wizard's Oath. Dairine is given her Wizard's manual in the form of a computer, which Dairine nicknames ""Spot."" Dairine uses her new power to travel to Mars, then to the Crossings, where she is attacked by agents of the Lone Power. When she uses a worldgate to flee, assisted by an unnamed man she meets in a bar, she finds herself on a giant planet consisting entirely of silicon. In the meantime, Nita and Kit discover she is missing and chase after her. Dairine awakens the massive computer embedded in the planet and gets to work designing and naming 'mobiles' after the planet begins to create quicklife (computer-based) creatures. She names them in a variety of ways ranging from computer programs to Star Wars characters. When the Lone Power overshadows a mobile and attacks Dairine, Nita and Kit arrive in time to help her, assisted by the macaw Machu Picchu (Peach), who reveals herself as the One's Champion incarnate. With Peach's assistance, the Lone Power is defeated by stopping the universe from expanding. The resulting light that explodes as a result of this destroys the Lone Power. The Lone Power then returns to ""home"" with one of the Powers That Be. As he leaves, he tells Kit and Nita to destroy the ""shadows"" of him that remain. The universe continues to expand and Nita, Kit and Dairine return to their home, where Dairine's computer sprouts legs and follows her upstairs as Nita and Kit talk to their parents."
341,A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,fantasy," The novel is a satirical comedy that looks at 6th-Century England and its medieval culture through the eyes of Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of Hartford, Connecticut, who, after a blow to the head, awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England at the time of the legendary King Arthur. The fictional Mr. Morgan, who had an image of that time that had been colored over the years by romantic myths, takes on the task of analyzing the problems and sharing his knowledge from 1300 years in the future to modernize, Americanize, and improve the lives of the people. The story begins as a first person narrative in Warwick Castle, where a man details his recollection of a tale told to by an ""interested stranger"" who is personified as a knight through his simple language and familiarity with ancient armor. After a brief tale of Sir Launcelot of Camelot and his role in slaying two giants from the third-person narrative, the man named Hank Morgan enters and, after being given whiskey by the narrator, he is persuaded to reveal more of his story. Described through first-person narrative as a man familiar with the firearms and machinery trade, Hank is a man who had reached the level of superintendent due to his proficiency in firearms manufacturing, with two thousand subordinates. He describes the beginning of his tale by illustrating details of a disagreement with his subordinates, during which he sustained a head injury from a ""crusher"" to the head caused by a man named ""Hercules"" using a crowbar. After passing out from the blow, Hank describes waking up underneath an oak tree in a rural area of Camelot where a knight questions him for trespassing upon his land, and after establishing rapport, leads him towards Camelot castle. Upon recognizing that he has time-traveled to the sixth century, Hank realizes that he is the de facto smartest person on Earth, and with his knowledge he should soon be running things. Hank is ridiculed at King Arthur's court for his strange appearance and dress and is sentenced by King Arthur's court (particularly the magician Merlin) to burn at the stake on 22 June. By a stroke of luck, the date of the burning coincides with a historical solar eclipse in the year 528, of which Hank had learned in his earlier life. While in prison, he sends the boy Clarence to inform the King that he will blot out the sun if he is executed. Hank believes the current date to be 20 June; however, it is actually the 21st when he makes his threat, the day that the eclipse will occur at 12:03 p.m. When the King decides to burn him, the eclipse catches Hank by surprise. But he quickly uses it to his advantage and convinces the people that he caused the eclipse. He makes a bargain with the King, is released, and becomes the second most powerful person in the kingdom. Hank is given the position of principal minister to the King and is treated by all with the utmost fear and awe. His celebrity brings him to be known by a new title, elected by the people&nbsp;&mdash; ""The Boss"". However, he proclaims that his only income will be taken as a percentage of any increase in the kingdom's gross national product that he succeeds in creating for the state as Arthur's chief minister, which King Arthur sees as fair. Notwithstanding, the people fear him and he has his new title, Hank is still seen as somewhat of an equal. The people might grovel to him if he were a knight or some form of nobility, but without that, Hank faces problems from time to time, as he refuses to seek to join such ranks. After being made ""the Boss"", Hank learns about medieval practices and superstitions. Having superior knowledge, he is able to outdo the alleged sorcerers and miracle-working church officials. At one point, soon after the eclipse, people began gathering, hoping to see Hank perform another miracle. Merlin, jealous of Hank having replaced him both as the king's principal adviser and as the most powerful sorcerer of the realm, begins spreading rumors that Hank is a fake and cannot supply another miracle. Hank secretly manufactures gunpowder and a lightning rod, plants explosive charges in Merlin's tower, then places the lightning rod at the top and runs a wire to the explosive charges. He then announces (during a period when storms are frequent) that he will soon call down fire from heaven and destroy Merlin's tower, then challenges Merlin to use his sorcery to prevent it. Of course, Merlin's ""incantations"" fail utterly to prevent lightning striking the rod, triggering the explosive charges and leveling the tower, further diminishing Merlin's reputation. Hank Morgan, in his position as King's Minister, uses his authority and his modern knowledge to industrialize the country behind the back of the rest of the ruling class. His assistant is Clarence, a young boy he meets at court, whom he educates and gradually lets in on most of his secrets, and eventually comes to rely on heavily. Hank sets up secret schools, which teach modern ideas and modern English, thereby removing the new generation from medieval concepts, and secretly constructs hidden factories, which produce modern tools and weapons. He carefully selects the individuals he allows to enter his factories and schools, seeking to select only the most promising and least indoctrinated in medieval ideas, favoring selection of the young and malleable whenever possible. As Hank gradually adjusts to his new situation, he begins to attend medieval tournaments. A misunderstanding causes Sir Sagramore to challenge Hank to a duel to the death; the combat will take place when Sagramore returns from his quest for the Holy Grail. Hank accepts, and spends the next few years building up 19th-century infrastructure behind the nobility's back. At this point, he undertakes an adventure with a wandering girl named the Demoiselle Alisande a la Carteloise - nicknamed ""Sandy"" by Hank in short order - to save her royal ""mistresses"" being held captive by ogres. On the way, Hank struggles with the inconveniences of medieval plate armor, and also encounters Morgan le Fay. The ""princesses"", ""ogres"" and ""castles"" are all revealed to be actually pigs owned by peasant swineherds, although to Sandy they still appear as royalty. Hank buys the pigs from the peasants and the two leave. On the way back to Camelot, they find a travelling group of pilgrims headed for the Valley of Holiness. Another group of pilgrims, however, comes from that direction bearing the news that the valley's famous fountain has run dry. According to legend, long ago the fountain had gone dry before as soon as the monks of the valley's monastery built a bath with it; the bath was destroyed and the water instantly returned, but this time it has stopped with no clear cause. Hank is begged to restore the fountain, although Merlin is already trying. When Merlin fails, he claims that the fountain has been corrupted by a demon, and that it will never flow again. Hank, in order to look good, agrees that a demon has corrupted the fountain but also claims to be able to banish it; in reality, the ""fountain"" is simply leaking. He procures assistants from Camelot trained by himself, who bring along a pump and fireworks for special effects. They repair the fountain and Hank begins the ""banishment"" of the demon. At the end of several long German language phrases, he says ""BGWJJILLIGKKK"", which is simply a load of gibberish, but Merlin agrees with Hank that this is the name of the demon. The fountain restored, Hank goes on to debunk another magician who claims to be able to tell what any person in the world is doing, including King Arthur. However, Hank knows that the King is riding out to see the restored fountain, and not ""resting from the chase"" as the ""false prophet"" had foretold to the people. Hank correctly states that the King will arrive in the valley. Hank has an idea to travel amongst the poor disguised as a peasant to find out how they truly live. King Arthur joins him, but has extreme difficulty in acting like a peasant convincingly. Although Arthur is somewhat disillusioned about the national standard of life after hearing the story of a mother infected with smallpox, he still ends up getting Hank and himself hunted down by the members of a village after making several extremely erroneous remarks about agriculture. Although they are saved by a nobleman's entourage, the same nobleman later arrests them and sells them into slavery. Hank steals a piece of metal in London and uses it to create a makeshift lockpick. His plan is to free himself, the king, beat up their slave driver, and return to Camelot. However, before he can free the king, a man enters their quarters in the dark. Mistaking him for the slave driver, Hank rushes after him alone and starts a fight with him. They are both arrested. Although Hank lies his way out, in his absence the real slave driver has discovered Hank's escape. Since Hank was the most valuable slave&nbsp;&mdash; he was due to be sold the next day&nbsp;&mdash; the man becomes enraged and begins beating his other slaves, who fight back and kill him. All the slaves, including the king, will be hanged as soon as the missing one&nbsp;&mdash; Hank&nbsp;&mdash; is found. Hank is captured, but he and Arthur are rescued by a party of knights led by Lancelot, riding bicycles. Following this, the king becomes extremely bitter against slavery and vows to abolish it when they get free, much to Hank's delight. Sagramore returns from his quest, and fights Hank. Hank defeats him and seven others, including Galahad and Lancelot, using a lasso. When Merlin steals Hank's lasso, Sagramore returns to challenge him again. This time, Hank kills him with a revolver. He proceeds to challenge the knights of England to attack him en masse, which they do. After he kills nine more knights with his revolvers, the rest break and flee. The next day, Hank reveals his 19th century infrastructure to the country. With this fact he was called a wizard as he told Clarence to do so as well. Three years later, Hank has married Sandy and they have a baby. While asleep and dreaming, Hank says, ""Hello-Central""&nbsp;&mdash; a reference to calling a 19th century telephone operator&nbsp;&mdash; and Sandy believes that the mystic phrase is a good name for the baby, and names it accordingly. However, the baby falls critically ill and Hank's doctors advise him to take his family overseas while the baby recovers. In reality, it is a ploy by the Catholic Church to get Hank out of the country, leaving the country without effective leadership. During the weeks that Hank is absent, Arthur discovers Guinevere's infidelity with Lancelot. This causes a war between Lancelot and Arthur, who is eventually killed by Sir Mordred. The church then publishes ""The Interdict"" which causes all people to break away from Hank and revolt. Hank meets with his good friend Clarence who informs him of the war thus far. As time goes on, Clarence gathers 52 young cadets, from ages 14 to 17, who are to fight against all of England. Hank's band fortifies itself in Merlin's Cave with a minefield, electric wire and Gatling guns. The Catholic Church sends an army of 30,000 knights to attack them, but the knights are slaughtered. However, Hank's men are now trapped in the cave by a wall of dead bodies. Hank attempts to go offer aid to any wounded, but is stabbed by the first man that they encounter. He is not seriously injured, but is bedridden. Disease begins to set in amongst them. One night, Clarence finds Merlin weaving a spell over Hank, proclaiming that he shall sleep for 1,300 years. Merlin begins laughing deliriously, but ends up electrocuting himself on one of the electric wires. Clarence and the others all apparently die from disease in the cave. More than a millennium later, the narrator finishes the manuscript and finds Hank on his deathbed having a dream about Sandy. He attempts to make one last ""effect"", but dies before he can finish it."
342,Treasure Hunters,fantasy," Thorn, the Bone cousins and Gran'ma Ben reach Atheia at last, and find the city crammed with refugees, creatures of all shapes and sizes who have survived the devastation of the valley. Thorn and Fone meet a young girl, Tanael, who gives Thorn a tiny prayer stone. Phoney and Smiley sneak Bartleby into the city in a hay wagon, while Phoney plots how to make money off the inhabitants of the old city. Later, Gran'ma Ben takes Thorn and the Bones to meet her teacher, an old and wise master of The Dreaming who runs a rooftop kitchen in the city. The Teacher tells them that the inner council who once watched over the city has been replaced with a group calling themselves the Vedu, The Order of the Dreaming Eye, who strongly oppose the Dragons and anyone who associates with them. The Teacher examines Tanael's prayer stone, noting it is engraved with the name Lunaria, Thorn's mother. Just then, the shadow of Briar appears around Fone Bone, beckoning Thorn towards her. Thorn walks towards the apparition in a trance, and it takes the strength of everyone to hold her back. The teacher warns that Thorn will be at risk in her dreams, and must be kept awake. Far away in the Eastern mountains, the real Briar plots with the Lord of the Locusts to attack Atheia. The human warriors of Pawa have joined forces with the Rat Creatures, forming an army larger and stronger than ever, and confident in the knowledge that the Dragons no longer defend the Old Kingdom. Meanwhile, a battered Kingdok lurks in an underground tunnel. Later, while lurking around the Atheian marketplace, Phoney and Fone Bone get into a tussle with a ferocious giant bee. The merchants thank the Bones for chasing the bee off, explaining how he and other bees frequently terrorizes the marketplace (in anger at the merchants selling water rations to the bees at hugely inflated prices). They offer the Bones gold to keep the bees away, and Phoney concocts a plan to gouge the merchants and the bees for his own profit. Meanwhile, Gran'ma Ben and the Teacher have kept Thorn awake all night to prevent Briar and the Locust getting to her through her dreams. The Teacher explains who is behind the movement against the Dragons; Tarsil, commander of the Royal Guard, has blamed them for the appearance of the Ghost Circles and ordered his soldiers to destroy any Dragon shrines. Tarsil, who was injured by the Dragons in his youth while leading an expedition into Tanen Gard, and who resents them still, is on the lookout for any allies of the Dragons, including Thorn and Gran'ma Ben. Before long, word reaches the Royal Guard that Thorn and Ben are in the city, and they conduct a search for them. Meanwhile, Tarsil himself meets with the head of the city's merchants guild to discuss the embargo the Royal Guard has imposed. Word soon reaches him of the presence of the crown princess Thorn, and he orders more men onto the streets to find her and put her to death. Meanwhile, Ted the bug brings Thorn word of activities outside the city; Lucius and the others are still alive, and will reach Atheia in two days' time, but Briar and her army will arrive sooner. Thorn also learns a little about her mother Queen Lunaria (nicknamed Moonwort). Gran'ma Ben tells Ted to carry a message back to Lucius and his army, planning to trap Briar, the Pawans and the Rat Creatures in a pincer movement. That night, Thorn, Ben and the rest of the resistance hold a rooftop meeting to plan for the forthcoming conflict, and to discuss Tarsil's oppression of Dragon lore. However, the meeting is cut short when Fone Bone rushes in to warn everyone that the Royal Guard are closing in on their meeting place. Hiding from the search party, another of Ben's former Teachers continues the meeting. He tells Thorn that she will soon be tested, and that the fate of the world rests upon her. He suggests taking her away from the old kingdom, as her presence is only worsening the situation. Fone Bone loses his temper with the Teacher, and lets slip about his and Thorn's journey inside a Ghost Circle. Thorn confirms the story, telling the Teacher how the spirit of her mother told her to seek the Crown of Horns. The revelation changes his attitude in an instant; the Crown, he explains, is the Dragons' deepest secret, an artifact that is the polar opposite of the Lord of the Locusts. He warns Thorn against finding it, predicting that if she, with a piece of the Locust inside her, were to come into contact with the Crown, it could destroy all existence. Meanwhile, Phoney Bone has found the city's treasury, and despite the danger sneaks out with Smiley to raid it. They are soon caught by the Royal Guard (which were tipped off by the same merchants who hired the Bones to chase off the bees), but as they are about to arrest the Bones, the gang of giant bees turns up due to one of the merchants announcing his selling of water and a ferocious tussle ensues. Gran'ma Ben hears the commotion and rushes to the scene to break the fight up, but the Bones have already been arrested and imprisoned. At the city wall, Thorn reveals her presence to one of the Royal Guard when he assaults Tanael for setting up a Dragon shrine. Though Thorn only scares off the lone guard, he soon returns with a troop to arrest her. However, it is too late; Briar and her vast army of Rat Creatures and Pawans (over 20,000) have arrived at the city's gates, and the battle for the Old Kingdom is about to begin. Up on top of the gate, Gran'ma Ben quietly whispers that they are not ready."
343,Somewhere in Time,fantasy," Richard Collier is a 36-year-old screenwriter who has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and has decided, after a coin flip, to spend his last days hanging around the Hotel del Coronado. Most of the novel represents a private journal he is continually updating throughout the story. He becomes obsessed with the photograph of a famous stage actress, Elise McKenna, who performed at the hotel in the 1890s. Through research, he learns that she never married, that she had an overprotective manager named William Fawcett Robinson, and that she seemed to have had a brief affair with a mysterious man while staying at this hotel in 1896. The more Richard learns, the more he becomes convinced that it is his destiny to travel back in time and become that mysterious man. Through research (see below), he develops a method of time travel that involves using his mind to transport himself into the past. After much struggle, he succeeds. At first, he experiences feelings of disorientation and constantly worries that he'll be drawn back to the present, but soon the feelings dissipate. He is unsure what to say to Elise when he finally does meet her, but to his surprise she immediately asks, ""Is it you?"" (She later explains that two psychics told her she would meet a mysterious man at that exact time and place.) Without telling her where (or, rather, when) he comes from, he pursues a relationship with her, while struggling to adapt himself to the conventions of the time. Inexplicably, his daily headaches are gone, and he believes that his memory of having come from the future will ultimately disappear. But Robinson, who assumes that Richard is simply after Elise's wealth, hires two men to abduct Richard and leave him in a shed while Elise departs on a train. Richard manages to escape and make his way back to the hotel, where he finds that Elise never left. They go to a hotel room and passionately make love. In the middle of the night, Richard leaves the room and bumps into Robinson. After a brief physical struggle, Richard quickly runs back into the room, and he casually picks a coin out of his pocket. Realizing too late that it is a 1970s coin, the sight of it pushes him back to the present. At the end of the book, we find out that Richard died soon after. A doctor claims that the time-traveling experience occurred only in Richard's mind, the desperate fantasy of a dying man, but Richard's brother, who has chosen to publish the journal, is not completely convinced."
344,Sinner,fantasy," The land of Tencendor has experienced an era of peace in the forty years since the Starman Axis defeated Gorgrael and united the peoples of Tencendor. Eventually Axis chooses to leave the mortal world with his wife Azhure, leaving his son Caelum to rule as the Starson. However, Caelum is a less than perfect ruler; insecure, arrogant and untried in this era of peace he struggles to maintain the balance between the various provinces as racial tensions rise. Matters worsen when Caelum finds himself engaging in an affair with his sister Riverstar, who eventually becomes pregnant and threatens to blackmail her brother with this fact. In a rage, Caelum then murders his sister and implicates his unpopular brother Drago with the crime. However, this Caelum's crime is not revealed until the third book, Crusader. The majority of the novel is narrated from Drago's perspective. Much of it focuses upon the fact that he has been literally stripped of his Icarii heritage - he is mortal. His is growing old, and weak, and the extent of his Icarii powers amount to making the bread rise. Azhure and Axis distrusted him because of the crime that he committed while an infant, a crime that he cannot even remember committing (allowing the antagonist of the Axis series, Gorgrael, to kidnap his brother, Caelum). The full details of Caelum's relationship with his sister is not fully unveiled until the third book, as ""first blood"", i.e., brother, sister, father, mother, are forbidden. However, Drago is an unpopular fellow, and when the finger is pointed at him, none are too surprised and have no problem in heaping the blame upon him. What actually transpired was that Drago walked in upon Caelum murdering his sister. Caelum instead, imposes a memory block upon Drago, and creates a false recollection of him brutally murdering his sister. The ancient and deadly WolfStar also returns to the world of Tencendor; seeking to cause the rebirth of his lover Niah within a powerful body. He selects Zenith as the perfect host, displacing her soul and replacing it with Niah's. However, WolfStar is not the only one to return; the newly empowered Faraday arrives and aids Zenith in expelling both Niah's soul and WolfStar's child from her body. Zenith finds Wolfstar, who is her biological grandfather, revolting, as she is constantly assaulted by images of the past whenever he is near, a rather unpleasant sensation which eventually causes her to lose control of her own body to her former incarnation. In order to escape punishment Drago flees with the help of his sister Zenith until he leaves the world through the Star Gate. However, Wolfstar pursues Drago. Meanwhile not all is calm in the North, Zared, Axis' mortal younger brother (they share the same mother, Rivkah) and ruler of the northern province has illegally eloped with Princess Leagh, sister to the sterile ruler of the western province. Proceeding from this Zared names himself King of Achar; an action which the other rulers view both as treason and a resurrection of the Acharites xenophobic past. Meanwhile Drago discovers an odd oasis in the universe outside the Star Gate, containing an insane Icarii woman, many children with the likeness of hawks and five dark and dangerous beings known as the Timekeepers who offer great power. This promise proves false however, when they steal Drago's life force and use it to shatter the Star Gate and destroy most of the world's magic in the process."
345,The Adventures of Pinocchio,fantasy," The story begins in Tuscany. A carpenter has found a block of pinewood which he plans to carve into a leg for his table. When he begins, however, the log shouts out, ""Don't strike me too hard!"" Frightened by the talking log, the carpenter, Antonio or Master Cherry as he is called does not know what to do until his neighbor Geppetto, known for disliking children, drops by looking for a piece of wood to build a marionette. Seeing a perfect opportunity, Antonio gives the block to Geppetto. Geppetto is extremely poor and plans to make a living as a puppeteer. He carves the block into a boy and names him ""Pinocchio"". As soon as Pinocchio's nose has been carved, it begins to grow longer and longer before Geppetto is finished with him. After the puppet is finished, Geppetto teaches him to walk and Pinocchio runs out the door and away into the town. He is caught by a Carabiniere but when people say that Geppetto dislikes children, the carabineer assumes that Pinocchio has been mistreated and imprisons Geppetto. Pinocchio heads back to Geppetto's house and encounters The Talking Cricket who has lived in the house for over a century. It tells him that boys who do not obey their parents grow up to be donkeys. Pinocchio throws a hammer at the cricket and accidentally kills it. Unable to find food in the house, Pinocchio ventures to a neighbor's house to beg for food and the annoyed neighbor pours a basin of water on him. Pinocchio returns home freezing and tries to warm himself by placing his feet upon the stove. The next morning he wakes to find that his feet have burnt off. Geppetto, who has been released from jail and has three pears for a meal, makes his son a new pair of feet. In gratitude, Pinocchio promises to go to school. Since Geppetto has no money to buy school books, he sells his only coat. Pinocchio heads off to school, but on the way he is distracted by some music and crowds and he follows the sounds until he finds himself in a crowd of people, all congregated to see the Great Marionette Theater. Pinocchio sells his school books for tickets to the show. During the performance, the puppets Harlequin, Punch, and Signora Rosaura see Pinocchio and cry out, ""It is our brother Pinocchio!"" The audience grows angry, and the theater director, Mangiafuoco, comes out to see what is going on. Upset, he decides to use Pinocchio as firewood to cook his dinner. Pinocchio pleads to be saved and Mangiafuoco gives in. When he learns about Pinocchio's poor father, he gives the marionette five gold pieces for Geppetto. As Pinocchio heads home to give the coins to his father, he meets a fox and a cat who convince him that if he plants his coins in the Field of Miracles, outside the city of Catchfools, then they will grow into a tree with a thousand gold coins, or perhaps two thousand. Pinocchio heads off on a journey to Catchfools with the Cat and Fox. On the way, they stop at the Inn of the Red Crayfish, where the Fox and Cat gorge themselves on food at Pinocchio's expense. The fox and cat take off ahead of Pinocchio and disguise themselves as bandits while Pinocchio continues on toward Catchfools. The ghost of the Talking Cricket appears, telling him to go home and give the coins to his father but Pinocchio ignores him. As he passes through the forest, the disguised Cat and Fox jump out and try to rob Pinocchio, who hides the money in his mouth. In the struggle that follows Pinocchio bites the Cat's hand off and escapes deeper into the forest where he sees a white house ahead. Stopping to knock on the door, he is greeted by a young Fairy with Turquoise Hair, who says she is dead and waiting to be taken. However, as he speaks to her, the bandits catch him and hang him in a tree. After a while the Fox and Cat get tired of waiting for the marionette to suffocate and leave. The Blue-haired Fairy sends a falcon and a poodle to rescue Pinocchio, and she calls in three famous doctors to tell her if Pinocchio is dead. The first two (an owl and a crow) are uncertain, but the third—the Talking Cricket that Pinocchio presumably killed earlier—knows that Pinocchio is fine and tells the marionette that he has been disobedient and hurt his father. The Blue-haired Fairy tries to make Pinocchio take medicine, saying he will soon die if he doesn't, but he refuses to take it, despite promising to if he is given sugar, which the Blue-haired Fairy gives him. However Four Black Rabbits then enter the room with a coffin and tell Pinocchio they have come to take him away, as he will be dead soon. Pinocchio takes the medicine and the rabbits leave. The Blue-haired Fairy asks Pinocchio what happened and he tells her. She then asks him where the gold coins are. Pinocchio lies, saying he has lost them. As he utters this lie (and more) his nose begins to grow until it is so long he cannot turn around in the room. The Fairy explains to Pinocchio that it is his lies that are making his nose grow long, then calls in a flock of woodpeckers to chisel down his nose. Pinocchio and the Blue-haired Fairy decide to become brother and sister, and the Fairy sends for Geppetto to come live with them in the forest. Pinocchio heads out to meet his father, but on the way he meets the fox and cat again (whom he had not recognized as the bandits, even though he has a hint from the cat's bandaged front paw—which he had bitten earlier; the fox tells him the cat had shown mistaken kindness to a wolf). They remind Pinocchio of the Field of Miracles, and finally he agrees to go with them and plant his gold. After half a day's journey, they reach the city of Catchfools. Everyone in the town has done something exceedingly foolish and now suffers as a result. When they reach the ""Field of Miracles"", Pinocchio buries his gold then runs off to wait the twenty minutes it will take for his gold to grow. After twenty minutes he returns, only to find no tree and—even worse—no gold coins. Realizing what has happened from a bird, he goes to Catchfools and tells the judge, an old Gorilla, about the fox and cat. The judge (as is the custom in Catchfools) sends Pinocchio to prison for his foolishness for four months. While he is in prison, however, the emperor of Catchfools declares a celebration, and all prisoners are set free. As Pinocchio heads back to the forest, he finds an enormous serpent with a smoking tail blocking the way. After some confusion, he asks the serpent to move, but the serpent remains completely still. Concluding that it is dead, Pinocchio begins to step over it, but the serpent suddenly rises up and hisses at the marionette, toppling him over onto his head. Struck by Pinocchio's fright and comical position, the snake laughs so hard, it bursts an artery and dies. While sneaking into a farmer's yard to take some grapes, Pinocchio is caught in a weasel trap. He asks a bird to help him, but it refuses after hearing Pinocchio was planning to steal grapes. When the farmer comes out and finds Pinocchio, he ties him up in a doghouse to guard his chicken coop. That night, a group of weasels come and tell Pinocchio that they had made a deal with former watchdog Melampo to let them raid the chicken coop if he could have a chicken. Pinocchio says he wants two chickens, so the weasels agree and go into the henhouse. Pinocchio then locks the door and barks loudly. The farmer gets the weasels and frees Pinocchio as a reward. Pinocchio comes to where the cottage was and finds nothing but a gravestone. Believing the Blue-haired Fairy died from sorrow, he weeps until a friendly pigeon offers to give him a ride to the seashore, where Geppetto is building a boat to go out and search for Pinocchio. They fly to the seashore and Pinocchio sees Geppetto out in a boat. The puppet leaps into the water and tries to swim to Geppetto, but the waves are too rough and Pinocchio is washed underwater as Geppetto is swallowed by a terrible shark. A kindly dolphin gives Pinocchio a ride to the nearest island, which is the Island of Busy Bees. Everyone is working and no one will give Pinocchio any food as long as he will not help them. He finally offers to carry a lady's jug home in return for food and water. When they get to the house, Pinocchio recognizes the lady as the Blue-haired Fairy, now miraculously old enough to be his mother. She says she will act as Pinocchio's mother and Pinocchio will begin going to school. She hints that if Pinocchio does well in school he will become a real boy. Pinocchio starts school the next day and after showing his determination becomes a friend to all the schoolboys. A while later a group of boys trick Pinocchio into playing hookey by saying they saw a large whale at the beach. Hoping that it is the shark that swallowed Geppetto, he accompanies them to the beach only to find he has been fooled. He begins fighting with the boys and one boy grabs a schoolbook of Pinocchio's and throws it at him. The marionette ducks and the book hits another boy named Eugene, who is knocked out. The other boys flee while Pinocchio tries to revive Eugene. Then two policemen come up and accuse Pinocchio of injuring Eugene. Before he can explain, the policemen grab him to take him to jail—but he escapes and is chased into the sea by the police dog. The dog starts to drown and Pinocchio saves him. The dog is grateful and promises to be Pinocchio's friend. Pinocchio happily starts swimming to shore. Then The Green Fisherman catches Pinocchio in his net and starts to eat the fish, saying Pinocchio must be a very special fish. Taking off the marionette's clothes and covering him with flour, the ogre prepares to eat Pinocchio. The police dog then comes in and rescues Pinocchio from the ogre. On the way home, Pinocchio stops at a man's house and asks about Eugene. The man says Eugene is fine, but that Pinocchio must be a truant. Pinocchio says that he is always truthful and obedient. Again his nose grows longer and Pinocchio immediately tells the truth about himself, causing the nose to shrink back to normal. Pinocchio gets home in the middle of the night. He knocks on the door and a snail opens the third-story window. Pinocchio pleads to be let in and the snail says he will come down. Since a snail is slow, it takes all night for the snail to come down and let Pinocchio in. By the time the snail comes down Pinocchio has banged his foot against the door and gotten stuck. The snail brings Pinocchio artificial food and the marionette faints. When he wakes, he is on the couch and the Fairy says she will give him another chance. Pinocchio does excellently in school and passes with high honors. The Fairy promises that Pinocchio will be a real boy next day and says he should invite all his friends to a party. He goes to invite everyone, but he is sidetracked when he meets a boy named Romeo—nicknamed Lampwick because he is so tall and skinny. Lampwick is about to go to a place called Toyland, where everyone plays all day and never works. Pinocchio goes along with him and they have a wonderful time in the land of Play—until one morning Pinocchio awakes with donkey ears. A Squirrel tells him that boys who do nothing but play and never work always grow into donkeys. Within a short while Pinocchio has become a donkey. He is sold to a circus and is trained to do all kinds of tricks. Then one night in the circus he falls and sprains his leg. The circus owner sells the donkey to a man who wants to skin him and make a drum. The man throws the donkey into the sea to drown him—and brings up a living wooden boy. Pinocchio explains that the fish ate all the donkey skin off of him and he is now a marionette again. Pinocchio dives back into the water and swims out to sea—when he is swallowed by The Terrible Shark. Inside the shark Pinocchio meets a tuna who is resigned to the fate and just says they will have to wait to be digested. Pinocchio sees a light from far off and he follows the light. At the other end is Geppetto, who had been living on a ship that was also in the shark. Pinocchio and Geppetto and the tuna manage to get out from inside the shark and Pinocchio heroically attempts to swim with Geppetto to shore, which turns out to be too far; however, the tuna rescues them and brings them to shore. Pinocchio and Geppetto try to find a place to stay. They pass two beggars, who are the Fox and the Cat. The Cat is, ironically, really blind now, and the fox is actually lame, tailless (having sold his tail for money) and mangy. They plead for food or money, but Pinocchio will give them nothing. They arrive at a small house, and living there is the Talking Cricket, who says they can stay. Pinocchio gets a job doing work for a farmer, whose donkey is dying. Pinocchio recognizes the donkey as Lampwick. Pinocchio mourns over Lampwick's dead body and the farmer is perplexed as to why. Pinocchio says that Lampwick was his friend and they went to school together, causing Farmer John to be even more confused. After long months of working for the farmer and supporting the ailing Geppetto he goes to town with what money he has saved (40 pennies to be exact) to buy himself a new suit. He meets the snail, who tells him that the Blue-haired Fairy is ill and needs money. Pinocchio instantly gives the snail all the money he has, promising that he will help his mother as much as he is helping his father. That night, he dreams he is visited by the Fairy, who kisses him. When he wakes up, he is a real boy at last. Furthermore, Pinocchio finds that the Fairy left him a new suit and boots, and a bag which Pinocchio thinks is the forty pennies he originally loaned to the Blue Fairy. The boy is shocked to find instead forty freshly minted gold coins. He is also reunited with Geppetto, now healthy and resuming woodcarving. They live happily ever after."
346,The Gates of Sleep,fantasy," Hugh and Alanna Roeswood conceive a baby girl named Marina and invite all the godparents and villagers to her christening. The godparents go up to lay a blessing on the sleeping baby. Before the godparents had given their blessing, Hugh's sister Arachne, who wasn't supposed to have any magical abilities at all, laid a curse upon the infant. She was cursed to die at the age of 18. The sister then left leaving behind the curse and also Marina's terrified parents and godparents. One of the godparents, Elizabeth Hastings, attempts to remove of the curse, but can only change the nature of the curse instead. Hugh and Alanna know that there is only one option and they give Marina to Margherita and Sebastion Tarrant and Margherita's brother, Thomas Buford. They keep Marina successfully hidden away until about 6 months before her fateful 18th birthday, when her aunt kills her parents, finds Marina, and kidnaps her away from the only family she has ever known. Marina is forced to endure all kinds of lessons, including etiquette, dancing and proper conversation. She also has to endure the company of her cousin, Reginald or the ""Odious Reggie"" as she calls him. Meanwhile, a doctor by the name of Andrew Pike has moved into the estate next door to take care of his mentally unstable patients. Marina meets him when she attempts to help one of his patients, a girl who got lead poisoning from working at a pottery. In the process, Marina finds out that it is her aunt who poisoned, not only the little girl, but many others at her potteries. Arachne is trying to figure out how to re-instate the curse. Marina figures out exactly what Arachne is, but too late! Arachne re-instates the curse and calls upon Dr. Pike to help her with Marina. It eventually ends with two epic battles between Arachne and Marina and Reginald and Dr. Pike."
347,The Magician King,fantasy," Bored with ruling the magical realm of Fillory with his co-rulers Eliot, Janet and Julia, the magician king Quentin looks for an adventure to give his life some meaning. He commissions a ship and travels with Julia, his distant and damaged former love interest, to the Outer Island to collect back taxes from the region. Once there, Quentin stumbles across a fairy tale regarding seven golden keys. The search for one of the keys on a nearby island accidentally sends Quentin and Julia back to Earth with seemingly no way to return to Fillory. The attempt to return becomes Quentin and Julia's new, unintended quest. On Earth, Quentin and Julia team up with Josh and his friend Poppy, who try to aid them in their return. Along the way, their journey grows more complicated as they discover an even deeper quest with dire implications for magic users everywhere, and the four magicians are drawn into Fillory to help in the fateful search for the golden keys. Julia's backstory unfolds in parallel to Quentin's current adventures. Starting with her failed entrance exam to Brakebills, the elite magical college Quentin attended, Julia founders in depression, desperately seeking anything that can bring magic back into her life. After years of painstaking research and working her way up the hierarchy of a secret society of hedge witches, Julia eventually attains enough magical skill to catch the eye of an elite group of genius-level magicians who practice magic outside the closed world of the magical colleges. The group becomes like a family to her and trains her further in the magical arts. Things go awry, however, when the group decides on a powerful summoning in an attempt to further their magical learning, and the subsequent events leave Julia transformed."
348,The Demon Spirit,fantasy," Even with the destruction of the dactyl, all is not well in the kingdom of Honce-the-Bear. The servants of Bestesbulzibar still roam the land, creating havoc while, at St.-Mere-Abelle, the centaur Bradwarden is held captive. It is up to Elbryan and Pony, with help from friends, to attempt a rescue while fighting the enemy. It is during this time that Elbryan teaches Pony Bi'nelle dasada, the sword-dance of the Touel'alfar, the short winged elves of Corona. It is also at this time that Father Abbot Markwart, head of the Church of St. Abelle, begins his spiral downward. In this novel the reader meets Andacanavar, a northern ranger from Alpinador. Also, the character of Marcalo De'Unnero becomes more fully developed."
349,The Phoenix Unchained,fantasy," Harrier Gillain is the youngest of four brothers and born in a family that has held the Harbor Master position in Armathelieh for centuries. As the youngest, he must follow in his father's footsteps to become the next Harbor Master. He is good friends with Tiercel Rolfort, the eldest of 6 children and born and into minor Nobility. The begins during Festival Sennight in the city and Harrier's naming day falls on the first day. He receives a book called A Compendium of Ancient Myth and Legend, Compiled from the Histories of the City from his frequently travelling uncle, Alfrin. Having no desire to read the book, he hands it to Tiercel to read who is fond of reading and is actually interested in the book. A couple of days later Tiercel begins reading the book and his interests are piqued when he comes across topics he has not heard of before, among them are: High Mages, High Magick, and the Third War against the Light. The only magic he, or anyone he knows has ever heard of was Wild Magic, his curiosity got the better of him. Tiercel goes off to the Great Library to look for a book titled A History of the City in Six Volumes. Working in the city harbor, Harrier stumbles upon a ship that is wrecked, the captain of the vessel claims that it is a kraken that attacked the ship, but krakens were presumably destroyed along with all the Endarkend at the conclusion of the Third War against the Light. Harrier showed Tiercel the ship and its damage and explained to him the story the captain is giving on the damage's origin. Tiercel felt sympathetic to the captain's losses and was determined to see if High Magick can discover the truth of the matter. Having discovered a spell from one of the books in the Great Library called a Knowing Spell, Tiercel decides to attempt to cast it on a piece of the ship so he can know the truth of the captain's tale. Tiercel attempts to cast the spell at home not following the instructions verbatim but nothing happens, he gets tired and falls asleep. During his sleep he starts to dream about a beautiful lady within a lake of fire. She is waiting for something and he knows that if she gets her hands on whatever it is, its going to be trouble. Although the dream's imagery is not scary, the feeling that he gets frightens him greatly—more so because he feels that it is so real. Tiercel then wakes up amidst a fire in his room, the fire is snuffed out by his servants and he reports to his parents that he was trying to read during the night. He realizes that he must have messed up on the spell, having to improvise on a few things. He remembers from his readings that the simplest High Magick spell that can be cast is fire. Unknowingly, Tiercel has become the first High Mage in more than a thousand years."
350,Wren to the Rescue,fantasy," Wren to the Rescue tells the story of an orphan girl who learns her best friend and purportedly fellow-orphan Tess, is in fact Teresa Rhisadel, princess and sole heiress of the neighbouring country of Meldrith. Tess proceeds to reveal her reason for remaining in hiding these many years: a curse. Namely, that of Andreus self-styled king of the nearby and ever-menacing nation of Senna Lirwan. In hopes that after twelve years Andreus has lost interest in his threat of revenge, and out of their ceaseless desire to be reunited with their daughter, Tess’s regal parents have sought her return home to Cantirmoor, capital of Meldrith, and have given Tess permission to invite Wren to accompany her. The plan backfires, however; when the girls are resting in Cantirmoor, the subterfuge of a Lirwani agent succeeds in abducting Tess. In the ensuing confusion, Wren is largely forgotten by the Cantirmoor officials. In frustration and wanting to help Tess, Wren slips away to the Cantirmoor Magic School, which already had been a waypoint of the trip to the palace from the orphanage. There Wren meets a magic prentice, Tyron, whose own plan to rescue Tess she joins. The pair rides to the Free Vale, a magically-protected Free Haven located south of Cantirmoor. Tyron intends to seek the aid of Idres Rhiscarlan, an inhabitant of the Free Vale, to rescue Tess. Idres’ reluctance due to past animosities between her and Tess’ father prevails, however, and the most she aids them is to discuss an approach to Andreus’ mountain-encircled land. At the next major stop on their journey of rescue, Horth Falls Town, Wren and Tyron encounter another prominent sympathizer to the Princess’ plight, Connor Shaltar, also technically a prince of another land, whose provisions breath new hope into the mission. The international scope of the conflict becomes clear as debate over a retaliatory invasion against Senna Lirwan heightens in Cantirmoor, ad interim Wren’s rescue party faces an escalating variety of threats as they make their way into, in to, and through, the border mountains. Once on the Lirwani side, some transmogrification (conferred in the rear dust-jacket text in most editions of the print volume of the story) is the only thing which saves Wren from the ambush-laden land’s defenses. This magical intervention proves to be provided by an unexpected ally, whose previous rescue of the rescuers went anonymous. Her compatriots being overrun and captured by the intensifying security measures on the planes of Andreus’ blighted land, Wren is able narrowly to escape, still being in animal form herself. Wren defies the directive of hastening home to be restored human before her mind is lost forever, instead electing to expand her rescue mission to include all of her friends now bound in the highest tower of Edrann. Through a daring combination of skilful infiltration on the part of Wren, and the ingenuity and magic ability of her friends, all six foreign detainees win free, though Wren’s dignity at the following feast in their honor leaves something to be desired. What shall happen next remains indefinite as this volume comes to a close, with two of the planet’s most prestigious magicians setting off on their own mission to bring Andreus’ educator to justice, while the former’s position in control of Senna Lirwan remains all-too-secure."
351,Tros of Samothrace,fantasy," The novel concerns the swashbuckling adventures of the title character as he battles Norsemen, pre-Roman Britons and Julius Caesar."
352,Earthsearch II,fantasy," The story of Earthsearch 2 continues the adventures of the crew of the starship Challenger (Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra) begun in the previous serial, Earthsearch, which told the story of theirquest for their lost ancestral homeplanet of Earth (which had moved to orbit a new and unknown star when its citizens realised their original sun was going to go nova). At the end of the serial, the four crewmembers had chosen to settle on the sufficiently Earth-like planet Paradise and escape the ruthless, manipulative control of the Challengers megalomaniacal control computers, Angel One and Angel Two. While the Angels departed Paradise orbit to continue the Earthsearch mission (and to achieve their aim of dominating an entire civilisation), the humans began their new life on their new homeworld. Earthsearch 2 begins four years later, when Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra have settled into their life on Paradise (assisted by two androids, the agricultural machine George and the argumentative general-purpose service unit Tidy). Both couples now have young children - Darv and Astra have the twins Elka and Savin, and Telson and Sharna have their son Bran. Despite the colonists' embrace of Paradise as home, the lifestyle is proving to be difficult and full of hardships. Sharna's loss of what would have been her second child raises questions about the sustainability of the small colony as well as bringing up differences of opinion on how (and whether) to use the remaining technology and resources (including their surviving planetary shuttle). When Savin is unexpectedly killed by a 'monster' that appears from the sea, the colonists are placed under further strain. Noticing the appearance of an unidentified artefact in planetary orbit, Telson and Darv fly up towards it in the shuttle, to discover that it is an eight-mile long spaceship called Voyager 30 and apparently part of an Earth-originated survey mission. Appearances are deceptive. The spaceship is in fact the returning Challenger: repaired, shortened, refitted and still operated by the Angels (as well by a team of control room androids overseen by Android Surgeon-General Kraken). The Angels are now being attacked by mysterious transmissions apparently aimed at damaging or destroying organic computers such as themselves and the Challengers higher intelligence androids. As humans are totally unaffected by the attacks, the Angels require human assistance in order to seek out and destroy the transmissions at source, and have therefore returned to Paradise to recruit the only humans they can obtain. However, the Angels do not reveal this information, and instead feign an interest in the welfare of the colony in an attempt to gain the trust of the humans. At the same time they have secretly sent an android to kidnap the children (the same ""sea monster"" which accidentally killed Savin in a bungled abduction attempt). When rejected by the suspicious humans, the Angels resort to sabotage on a planetary scale, using terraforming equipment from the Challenger to melt Paradise's polar ice caps and thus raise the sea level in an attempt to get their former crew to rejoin them on the ship. The resulting flooding begins to submerge all of the land, forcing the settlers to abandon their colony and use their shuttle as a floating ark, even down to loading breeding pairs of animals into the shuttle cargo bay. The crew survive and hold out against the Angels' plans until a series of accidents loses them their drinking water, forcing a surrender. They make the best of things by demanding a concession in the shape of a reversal of the flood (so that the animals can be released and survive), following which they fly their shuttle up to the Challenger. On board the Challenger, the colonists make attempts to regain control over both the Angels and the ships control room, but are thwarted when the Angels kidnap the children from the shuttle. The adults are gassed by a surgical android and fall unconscious. When they come round, they discover that the ship has long left the Paradise system and that they have been in suspended animation for sixteen years. However, the children have been awake the whole time, and have aged normally, now being between eighteen and nineteen years old and firmly under the influence of the Angels. Elka appears friendly and enthusiastic, but Bran is now both hostile and the commander of the Challenger. He demonstrates harsh suspicion and aggression towards his parents and the other two adults, even threatening to kill them should they challenge his authority. En route to the source system of the attacks, the Challenger encounters a free-floating fifty-mile wide parabolic dish which the Angels decide to use as raw material for shielding. Telson, Sharna, Darv and Astra are sent to investigate the dish. They discover that it is an abandoned artificial sun called Solaria D, used by the Earth during its transit to its new sun, and presided over by an Angel-like control computer called Solaria. Despite her apparent benevolence, Solaria is revealed to have been abandoned by Earth once she developed murderous megalomaniacal tendencies. Darv succeeds in destroying her. During their stay on Solaria D, the crew discover the name (though not the location) of Earth's new home star, Novita Six. Returning to the Challenger, the crew notice that Solaria D is now moving in an anomalous way. They discover that the artificial sun is now in the grip of the gravity well of a black hole, and that the Challenger is following it. Attempts to escape from the black hole are hampered by the fact that the human crew have no access to the Challengers control room, where Android Surgeon-General Kraken has had his reasoning capacity damaged by the continuing attacks and is no longer responding to or obeying instructions. With the Angels drastically weakened by the attacks and unable to assist, the humans attempt to storm the control room, which is defended by android warriors. The assault fails when the crew run out of time and the Challenger is pulled into the black hole. The crew regain consciousness to find themselves on a gigantic plain surrounded by many different kinds of abandoned starships, including the Challenger. They discover that they have in fact landed unharmed on an enormous artificial construct - a ""gravity platform"" which merely resembles a black hole and forms part of Earth's long-range defences, acting as a trap for potentially hostile vessels. The chief engineer of Spaceguard Six, Theros, refuses to release either the Challenger or its crew as he deems the Angels too much of a threat. Not only have they integrated themselves into the entire structure of the ship (making their removal from it effectively impossible), Theros suspects that they may have interposed themselves into the brains of the Challengers crew. When Darv locates the Spaceguard's gravitational control room and reverses the field, he frees the Challenger but at the cost of destroying Spaceguard Six. The ship continues its journey, but immediately runs into further problems when debris from the Spaceguard seriously damages the ship's life support systems and farm galleries, threatening the lives of all humans and organic computers on the ship. With the inexperienced and insecure Bran unable to cope (and undermined by Elka, who secretly dominates him and dictates his actions at the prompting of the Angels), Telson regains command of the Challenger and succeeds in organising the crew to deal with the problems. A second assault on the control room is more successful, but attracts the wrath of the near-invincible Android Surgeon-General Kraken, who kidnaps Darv and Astra to replace his destroyed control room androids. Now suffering catastrophic delusions about seizing the power of stars, Kraken is placing the ship at drastic risk. With the assistance of their android Tidy, the crew manage to destroy Kraken and regain control of the ship. Telson discovers that Kraken has coincidentally selected Novita Six as the ship's next target star. Arriving in the Novita Six system, the Challenger finally reaches its original home, Earth. However, the planet does not look like the Earth that the crew have seen in recordings. It is almost totally dead, with very little water and no rain. The only sign of life is a huge ten-mile-high tower on the equator, with a tiny village nearby. The crew fly down to the village, and meet Peeron, the leader. They discover that the Earth's civilisation has collapsed a long time ago, and the human race is reduced to eking out a meagre living from a tiny spring that grows weaker every year. It appears that the humans will be extinct in a short period of time. The Challenger crew use the terraforming systems on the Challenger to bring rain to Earth and create a stable weather pattern which will allow the people to flourish. The crew examine the tower, finding that there is a door set into one side which cannot be opened. Peeron says that many of his predecessors have made attempts over the centuries - for example, by hitting the door with battering rams - but it will not budge. It is said that it is held shut by a ""lock of knowledge"". Darv eventually works out how to open the ingeniously simple lock, which requires a low grade of technology which would only be available to people who have already worked out basic principles of science and engineering. The door is a very close/accurate fit in the aperture, and contains mild heating elements that cause it to expand and lock in place. These heaters do not heat it to the point that it is warm to the touch. Simply attaching a refrigeration system to the door and cooling it a few degrees causes the door to shrink and move freely. When the crew open the door, they enter the tower, leaving Peeron and his people outside. They discover that the tower contains a colossal library, presided over by the artificial intelligence ""Earthvoice"" which serves as both the voice of the library and as a ""guardian"". Earthvoice explains to the crew that the tower was constructed by the people of Earth as a repository of all human knowledge when their last great civilisation was collapsing. The lock was designed so that the people could not enter until they had already worked out how to make some technology for themselves. Unfortunately, Earthvoice's abilities do not included weather control, so although he has successfully defended Earth's legacy of knowledge he has been helpless to deal with the deterioration of the planet's environmental conditions. Earthvoice has already communicated with the Angels, presenting himself as friendly and subservient. Prompted by Elka to work with the Angels, Earthvoice re-establishes contact with them and is welcomed eagerly. He admits to having been the source of the attacks which have damaged the angels but states that they were a programming directive which he has now overridden. To the humans' horror, Earthvoice and the Angels agree to share both the library's knowledge and power over the Earth, with the Angels also urging that Earthvoice exterminates the crew for safety. Earthvoice begins to transfer the knowledge - however, the Angels have fallen into a final trap. Earthvoice has always intended to destroy them, and he now launches one last brutal and specialised attack on the Angels from close range, erasing their consciousness and memory facilities. Rather than interfere further with the primitive human culture on Earth, the crew seal the door to the tower and return to the Challenger. With the Angels now reduced to subservient and ""quite brainless"" computer systems, they head back to their chosen home, Paradise, to rebuild their colony."
353,In the Green Star's Glow,fantasy," Janchan and Arjala are married in Komar, where they also honeymoon. Karn, feeling that he needs to do something (almost anything) to help rescue Niamh, takes some of the leftover food/drink items from the wedding feast and stashes them in the storage compartment of the sky-sled which he then energises and heads towards the trees. As it is night, he quickly tethers it to a branch and falls asleep. He is awakened the next morning by a spear-point touching his chest—held by a teenaged girl, Varda. Some of Varda's companions (including one named Iona, at 15 slightly older than Varda) urge her to kill him. Due to Iona being a rival for leadership, Varda decides to spare but enslave Karn. On the tubular craft, Niamh scratches Delgan and advances on him with her knife but Delgan manages to persuade her to sheathe it through some oily words. Then, he forces her to back against the rear bulkhead by pointing the zoukar at her with a threat to use it, and advances to throw her off—only to be prevented as Zorak shoots him in the hand with an arrow. Due to the pain, he cannot use an oily tone, and his further attempts to persuade Niamh that he is ""friendly"" fall flat. When Zorak comes forward to stop the aircraft, Delgan tells him to back off or die—and is not persuaded of danger when Zorak points out the approaching tree boles. A branch then strikes inside the cockpit and pulls Delgan out—so he was the falling occupant seen by Zarqa and Janchan. After stopping the aircraft, Zorak and Niamh find themselves facing a ythid. Zorak tries to kill it by shooting it in the eye (unscuccessfully, as the lizard shuts its nictitating-membrane), while Niamh tries to poke her knife in from its back—which allows Zorak to shoot it in the throat. Niamh then almost faints from exhaustion and fear; Zorak, putting aside his weapons, prevents this but slips off the branch after stepping in the dead ythids blood. Niamh, taking the weapons, explores the branch until she comes upon a tower of strange design/construction (Karn would have told her that it was built by one of Zarqa's race), where she walks into a lab with a detached head. The head's eyes open and it cries ""waa-waa-waaa..."", whereupon an odd-looking dwarf, Quoron, comes in and takes her as prisoner. The head is the result of one of his experiments which failed (he believes, due to the brain being disconnected from oxygen for too long). He puts her under the guard of another of his experiments, Number Nine, a giant with four arms and two heads (one male, one female) but almost no intellect (according to Quoron). Niamh quickly figures that Quoron's experiments are just like those Zarqa told her the Kaloodha had conducted—a quest for immortality. Zorak, meanwhile, lands on a flower which tries to swallow him. As he struggles, a voice tells him to relax and wait for night. He finds the source of the voice to be a kraan, Xikchaka. The logic of Xikchaka is that when the petals close, the two of them can then destroy them (Xikchaka with his mandibles and claws, Zorak by pulling them at base)--which Zorak accepts, allowing the two to escape at night. As Zorak attempts to part later from Xikchaka, the latter's horde captures and enslaves him, setting him to manufacture weapons (swords, spears, bows, …) specifically modified for kraan usage. He finds out from Xargo, the chief smith (captive), that this is due to the plans of the horde's ruler, Rkkith, to invade and destroy one of the treetop cities, Phaolon—a plan put into Rkkith's mind by a treacherous, odd human captive. The treacherous captive once accompanies Rkkith on a weapons-manufacturing inspection tour—and is recognised by Zorak as Delgan (to no surprise). Eventually, when the horde nears Phaolon, they find an odd structure and a group of kraan led by Xikchaka (with Zorak along as a slave) is sent to investigate. Quoron eventually boasts to Niamh that he has perfected the technique by which his brain will survive—and trained Number Nine to do the surgery, as it can be performed much faster due to the multiple arms. He then chains Niamh and forces her to watch the surgery, grinning when his head is finally disconnected from his torso—only to react in horror as Number Nine then stabs him in the brain (and to death). Number Nine then destroys the lab, putting WaWa (the head which had made that sound, so-named by Quoron) out of misery. The kraan party has meantime, entered the tower, except for Xikchaka and the two guarding Zorak. They are promptly slain by Number Nine, but not before they maul the giant severely with their jaws and claws. Outside, Zarqa has arrived; when one of the kraan guards tries to stab him (with modified spear), Zarqa grabs the weapon and flings it through the insect's body—allowing Zorak to break the neck of the other. Zarqa then tells him that they must hurry as he has sensed Niamh's mind-radiations from a Kalood-built tower nearby. When they enter the tower, they find the lab destroyed—and no Niamh (though they do see the broken chains that held her, and know she is still alive). Zorak recovers his bow and quiver and the two then leave to search further. Xikchaka has freed Niamh from the chains with his mandibles and claws—and tells her to tell Zorak that at least one kraan (Xikchaka) now understands the meaning of ""friendship"", and also warns her that the kraan are advancing on Phaolon. Niamh then finds the tubular craft and pilots it away. Meanwhile, the amazons discover Karn's journey-stash and hit it with wild abandon—getting drunk in the process. Varda then forces Karn to lie in her bed—and is warned by him that another is watching. Iona, the watcher, then goes to get the other girls to gang-up on (and kill) Karn and Varda. Karn takes Varda in the sky-sled and pilots it away. Varda then asks Karn to kiss him; the two are then startled by a scream, as Niamh has seen them, leaving Karn dejected. Eventually, the kraan arrive in the neighbourhood of Phaolon and are detected by scouts. Phaolon's warriors, on their zaiphs attack the kraan host, but are not able to blunt the attack much—due to the sheer numbers of kraan pushing forward. Delgan smiles on seeing this, as his plan has been to destroy Phaolon—hoping the grief of its loss will then kill Karn, Niamh and others. Just then, two aircraft with three aboard come into view and land in Phaolon. Delgan recognises the pilots as Karn and Niamh, but does not know the third occupant (Varda). Karn and Niamh quickly take some of Phaolon's archers and fly out over the kraan host to do much more damage (than the frontal attack). At that point, Zarqa and Zorak (who Delgan also recognises) come in—the Kalood determines the kraan officers and directs Zorak to slay them. The loss of officers throws the forwardmost kraan into a state of retreat, and the ones following to continue pressing forward on ""last orders"", creating a jam which the Phaolonese exploit. This panics Rkkith, who flees. Delgan shouts that he can turn the tide of battle, but Rkkith in his panic fails to recognise him—mauling the Blue Barbarian Warlord (with his claws) and throwing him aside. Delgan then slays Rkkith with the zoukar, and has a last laugh before expiring. Xikchaka now becomes the new ruler of the kraan and negotiates a withdrawal from Phaolon. He promises his friend Zorak (who has served as emissary) that the kraan will never again attack the treetop cities. Varda then explains what happened to Niamh, who promptly announces to the victorious Phaolonese that she and Karn are to be married. Sometime after the marriage, the author puts Prince Karn's body in a state of temporary animation and makes a temporary return to his earthly body—to write down the accounts, and instructions for their release. Before he returns permanently (leaving the crippled, earthly body to die naturally) to Phaolon, he writes ""I am caught in the Green Star's spell, and never wish to be free of it!""."
354,Elsewhere,fantasy," Elsewhere tells the story of a fifteen year old girl, Elizabeth 'Liz' Hall, who dies in a bicycle accident and wakes up to find herself traveling on a boat called the SS Nile. There, she meets a girl who had been shot and a famous musician who had died of a drug overdose. After watching her own funeral through Binoculars on the Observation decks, Liz realizes that she is truly dead. Soon afterward, she and the other passengers arrive in what is known as ""Elsewhere"". She meets her grandmother, Betty, who had died before Liz was born, and Liz begins to live with her. In Elsewhere, Liz learns everyone ages backwards from the day they die until they turn 7 days old, and then they are placed in the river and return to Earth as babies to begin a new life. Liz misses life on Earth, and becomes obsessed with watching her family and friends through binoculars situated on the Observation Decks. She tried to make contact with her family a few times, but gets caught by Owen with whom she falls in love. She is depressed, but in time she makes new friends in Elsewhere who help her come to terms with the fact that she has died. She gets a job working with dogs arriving from earth and realizes she can speak canine. Gradually, she learns that a life lived backwards is not much different to a life lived forwards."
355,The Green Futures of Tycho,fantasy," The main character is Tycho Tithonus, an 11 year-old boy. Each child in his family is named after a famous artist or scientist and their parents expect them to live up to their names. Tycho himself is named after Sleator's younger brother, who in turn, was named after Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer. He finds a pocket sized time machine in the family's garden. He immediately uses it to change some things from the past and to visit the future. But as he travels more and more he realizes that he is turning into something horrible and it becomes a race against time to save all of his family and himself."
356,Blades of the Tiger,fantasy," While attempting to steal back an important work of art, Shedara discovers that the lord of the keep has been attacked and is dying. He mistakes her for a friend and mutters ""The Hooded One"" before he dies from his mortal but bloodless wounds. After returning to Armach-nesti and discussing the event with the Voice of the Stars, she is sent on another mission to retrieve the Hooded One, a statue of an evil Emperor of Aurim, Maladar the Faceless. Maladar's soul has been imprisoned in the statue and evil forces are at work to try to free him. Meanwhile, across the Tiderun, on the plains north of Coldhope Keep, Hult has discovered that the Uigan leader, their Bolya, has been ambushed. Chovuk and Hult look for the Boyla, and discover that he is still alive. Chovuk kills the Boyla, to be named the next Boyla. Hult later discovers that Chovuk has been learning evil sorcery from a black robed mage, known only as the Teacher. Chovuk fights the other contestant for the position of Boyla, and wins because he used sorcery to shape change into steppe-tiger. The tribes have a superstition that the steppe-tiger is the avatar of their god, and so embrace Chovuk as the new Boyla. Chovuk recruits the goblins, as well as an elf, Eldako, from the wild elf tribes to help him attack the Imperial League. They burn, sack, and massacre the towns and villages of the Imperial League north of the Tiderun, while they wait for the moons to sink below the horizon, so that the Tiderun will become dry. In the Imperial League south of the Tiderun, Forlo is returning from many long years of war, when he discovers that the capital has been damaged by an earthquake, and that the emperor and almost all of his immediate blood relatives are dead. He also finds out that the keeper of the peace is Duke Rekhaz. Forlo meets Duke Rekhaz, and Rekhaz wants Forlo to help command his army, so that Rekhaz can defeat any opponents vying for the throne. However, Forlo has a writ of dismissal from the now dead emperor, so he refuses to serve, which angers Rekhaz. Forlo returns home, to discover a pirate raiding in his waters, whom he had previously signed a treaty with. He discovers that the pirate raided the ship only because the ship was carrying artifacts that hadn't been taxed, and the owner of the ship was a rich merchant. In return for raiding the ship, the pirate gives Forlo a statue. After taking it home, he finds out that his wife is pregnant, and that they both feel the statue's menacing presence. He decides to have it moved into the family vaults under the keep. Shedara discovers that the statue was stolen from a merchant, and that it has ended up in the hands of Barreth Forlo. She attempts to steal the statue, but is trapped and captured by Forlo's guards. Forlo questions her, but she refuses to answer and he has her locked up in a tower. He learns that the Uigan are preparing to cross the Tiderun, and attack his fief. He calls for aid from Rekhaz, but Rekhaz questions his loyalty. Rekhaz agrees to give Forlo only six hundred men if he agrees to rejoin the army. Forced to act, Forlo agrees. Later, Grath, a friend of Forlo's and the current commander of the Sixth Legion agrees to help Forlo. He decides to send the Sixth Legion to help Forlo, but they still can't hold the fief. He then questions Shedara again, and agrees to give her the statue if she will contact Armach-nesti to send aid. She contacts Armach-nesti, but discovers that the evil forces intent on capturing the statue have murdered the Voice of the Stars and all her people. Forlo tells her she's free to go, but she still wants to help him, so she forces Maladar to send a gigantic wave over the barbarian horde. The barbarian horde is destroyed, and she manages to force Maladar back into the statue. A small remainder of the Uigan horde is still alive, as well as Eldako, the Boyla, and Hult. The horde doesn't present much resistance and are easily defeated by Forlo and his men, however, the elf escapes. The Boyla turns back into a human because the evil forces betrayed him, so he becomes mad. He fights Forlo in an attempt to regain his honor, but Forlo kills him. The Boyla's protector, Hult, decides not to avenge his master and instead follows Forlo. Forlo discovers that Grath was killed during the fighting and that the Uigan were sent as a diversion so that the keep would be unprotected. Forlo, Shedara, and Hult return to the keep only to discover that Essana has been kidnapped, the statue is missing and the only thing left behind is a dragon's scale."
357,The Man in the Moon,fantasy," The story centers on a long river trip organized when trading ships with Christmas items inexplicably fail to arrive. Unknown to the heroes, their route downriver to a seaside trading center will take them through areas under siege from evil forces including crazed goblins and malevolent witches. Professor Wurzle provides somewhat misguided explanations and histories for events as they arise. The youngest character, Dooly, is given to wild fantasies and stories. This frequently leaves the inexperienced adventurer, cheesemaker Jonathan Bing, with competing and implausible explanations as to what is actually going on. Downstream, they encounter Miles the Magician, the carefree link men, and the elves at running the mysterious elfin ship, seen at inexplicable moments. (Here, the plot diverges significantly from the rewrite, The Elfin Ship. Editor Del Rey described the plot as having gone ""haywire"".) The heroes from the downriver trip are taken in an elfin airship to the moon. There, amid lush valleys, the elves have a kingdom. They begin to look into the activities of Dooly’s mysterious grandfather, but before significant conclusions are reached, they decide to test the curious object carried by the Professor. Discovered in an elfin ship, and believed by him to be a weapon, it is actually a treasure-hunting device. Following minor misadventures, a treasure is found, and the heroes return home to distribute their shares of the treasure to the townspeople."
358,The Starless World,fantasy," The Enterprise is sent to investigate Klingon activity in the galactic core. They encounter a shuttlecraft piloted by Thomas Clayton, from the long-lost ship, the USS Rickover. Clayton is also an old friend of Kirk's, a former roommate from his time at Starfleet Academy. Kirk is prepared to dismiss his unfortunate friend as a madman until a mysterious force seizes control of the ship. Clayton declares the Enterprise is now going to meet his new god."
359,The Black Tattoo,fantasy," The story begins with Charlie, whose parents are recently divorced, meeting his father in a restaurant with his best friend Jack Farrell. They leave the restaurant, however, soon after entering. Soon afterward, Charlie is unknowingly possessed by a demon known as the Scourge. He also joins the society known as The Brotherhood Of Sleep, who imprisoned the Scourge in the roots of a tree until one of their own released him. With Charlie's help, the Scourge manages to first kill all the members of the Brotherhood, save for the girl Esme, who has trained all her life to kill the demon. Soon after the death of their members, a possessed Charlie gets into a gateway to Hell, which is essentially a Roman Empire of sorts composed of demonesque species and even gladiator pits. Soon after reaching Hell, The Scourge's true goal is revealed: He wishes to awaken ""the dragon"" who created the universe, and upon awakening he will destroy it again. Suddenly, it is up to Jack, Esme, and a team of soldiers to stop Charlie and the Scourge from destroying the universe."
360,Prince of Annwn,fantasy," Pwyll, the prince of Dyved, offends Arawn, ruler of Annwn (the underworld), by baiting his hunting hounds on a stag that Arawn's dogs had brought down. In recompense he agrees to exchanges places with Arawn for a year. Arawn is pledged to fight his enemy Havgan, whom Walton represents as a member of a conquering eastern pantheon, by whom he is detined to be defeated unless the mortal takes his place. Pwyll must overcome a number of foes to reach the Land of the Dead, and additional perils on his way to face Havgan, the worst threat of all, a deity whose evil is masked by an attractive beauty. Nonetheless, Pwyll manages to overcome his foe. For the remainder of the year he enjoys the luxury and prerogatives of the lord of Annwn in Arawn's guise, until the time comes to trade places again. He does not, however, sleep with Arawn's wife, thus earning the lord of Annwn's gratitude. On his return to the mortal realm Pwyll encounters Rhiannon of the Birds, a beautiful maiden whose ambling horse cannot be overtaken. To win her hand he must overcome Gwawl, a rival suitor to whom she is betrothed. He ultimately succeeds by trapping Gwawl in a magic bag that can never be filled and having him beaten to death in the bag. Pwyll and Rhiannon have a son, but the baby disappears the night after his birth, and the mother, suspected of murdering him, is sentenced to a humiliating punishment. In fact the child was taken by a monster who preys on newborns. The beast has also been raiding the stables of Teyrnon; returning to carry off the latest foal, it is surprised by the now watchful owner, who manages to rescue both foal and child. Teyrnon and his wife name the boy Gwri Golden Hair and raise him as their own. As Gwri grows up he increasingly resembles his real father; realizing who he is, Teyrnon returns him to his true parents. Rhiannon is released from her ordeal, and the boy is renamed Pryderi (""worry"")."
361,The Shadow Rising,fantasy," At the beginning of the book, all of the major protagonists are together at the Stone of Tear, where Rand al'Thor has just taken (at the end of The Dragon Reborn) the crystal sword Callandor from The Stone, showing the world that he is The Dragon Reborn. Selene reveals herself to be Lanfear, one of the Forsaken, and tells Rand to join her. The Stone of Tear is then stormed by Trollocs and Fades, sent by another Forsaken Sammael (Lanfear did not have anything to do with this). Another Forsaken, Semirhage, also sends shadowspawn into the Stone of Tear, to oppose Sammael's forces. In defense, Rand uses Callandor to send a lightning storm to kill all of the Trollocs and Fades, leaving some believing Rand has gone mad. Rand declares his intention to go follow the People of the Dragon, the Aiel, back to their home, the Aiel Waste. Egwene al'Vere and Moiraine Damodred resolve to accompany him. Mat Cauthon, unsure of what to do, finds answers within the Stone of Tear's Aelfinn ter'angreal, and is prompted to follow Rand to the Aiel Waste. Perrin Aybara, after hearing rumors of trouble in Two Rivers, chooses to return home to the Two Rivers, and Faile Bashere goes with him. Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al'Meara, and Thom Merrilin decide to go to Tarabon to hunt the Black Ajah. Also Min Farshaw arrives in Tar Valon to report to the Amyrlin Siuan Sanche, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that will lead to a Tower split. Thus, The Shadow Rising follows four groups of characters in four main plotlines. Rand uses a Portal Stone to transport Mat, Egwene, Moiraine, and the Aiel at the Stone of Tear from Tear to the Aiel Waste, where Taardad and Shaido Aiel are waiting for them. The Aiel Wise Ones have Moiraine, Aviendha (a former maiden of the spear seeking to become a Wise One), and Rand enter Rhuidean, and allow Mat to go with Rand. All three enter ter'angreal in Rhuidean. Rand walks through the crystal garden that is the proving ground for Aiel chiefs. He relives portions of the lives of various Aiel (his paternal ancestors) before and just after the Breaking, and learns that the Aiel once shunned violence and served Aes Sedai. The true Aiel from the Age of Legends live on as Tinkers, seeking the Song they once sang to the plants. Rand survives the trial and emerges with dragon markings on both arms, proving him to be He Who Comes With the Dawn, the Car'a'carn, the Chief of Chiefs of the Aiel. Mat finds a doorway ter'angreal similar to the one he entered in Tear. He enters the door seeking answers to the questions he asked of the Snake creatures during his previous visit. He encounters their Fox counterparts, who bargain for gifts instead of answering questions (he later speculates that the Eelfinn are namesake for the children's game of Snakes and Foxes, which there is no way of winning). He comes out with the gaps in his memory filled with those of men long dead and with fluency in the Old Tongue. He is also gifted with a spear called an ashandarei and a medallion ter'angreal that protects against the One Power. Rand finds Mat has been hanged from the Tree of Life as the price for these gifts, but he is able to revive Mat. From this point on Mat wears a black scarf around his neck to hide the hanging scars. Moiraine remains in Rhuidean longer than the others, delaying the departure of the party. Having visited the three-hooped ter'angreal used by the Wise Ones she has some knowledge of the future. The Wise Ones assign Aviendha the task of teaching Rand Aiel customs as they travel to Cold Rocks Hold. On the way to Cold Rocks Hold they come across a group of merchants. The Aiel have the merchants follow them to Cold Rocks Hold. At Al'cair Dal, both Rand al'Thor and Couladin of the Shaido Aiel declare themselves to be He Who Comes With the Dawn. Rand is forced to reveal the secret history of the Aiel in the Age of Legends to prove to the clan chiefs that he did enter Rhuidean and is truly He Who Comes With the Dawn, whereas Couladin is an impostor and did not. An uproar breaks out among the Aiel, and, hoping to avert violence, Rand uses the One Power to bring a rainstorm to the Aiel Waste for the first time since the Breaking of the World. After fighting breaks out among the Aiel, Rand chases after Asmodean, who had previously been disguised as a gleeman traveling with the merchants. Going by the alias Jasin Natael, Asmodean is after the ter'angreal access keys to the Choedan Kal, the most powerful sa'angreal ever constructed. They battle at Rhuidean, and Rand defeats Asmodean by cutting him off from the Dark One. Lanfear arrives and allows Rand to live and then helps him by limiting Asmodean's ability to channel the One Power: Asmodean will be forced to teach Rand how to use the One Power (something only a male Forsaken can do) because the Shadow will now believe him to be a traitor. When Rand returns to Al'cair Dal, he finds that most of the Aiel, except for the Shaido and a few others, have acknowledged him as the Car'a'carn and joined him. In the Two Rivers, Perrin discovers that the people are caught between Trollocs, led by Slayer, and the Children of the Light, with whom Padan Fain is working, who believe Perrin is a Darkfriend. He also finds Verin Mathwin and Alanna Mosvani, both Aes Sedai, in the Two Rivers. They are searching for girls to bring to the White Tower to become Aes Sedai, since both Egwene and Nynaeve came from the Two Rivers and are strong in the Power. With the help of Blademaster Tam al'Thor and Abell Cauthon, Perrin leads the people of the Two Rivers to war against the Trollocs, and the villagers begin to call him Lord Perrin, and Perrin Goldeneyes, titles that he tries without success to discourage. Before the final victory, Perrin marries Faile, and drives out Lord Luc after discovering that Luc is indeed Slayer. In the city of Tanchico in Tarabon, Elayne and Nynaeve encounter Moghedien and the Black Ajah and remove a male a'dam from their possession. Elayne and Nynaeve also meet Bayle Domon and the Seanchan Egeanin. They 'befriend' the Panarch Amathera, whom they rescue from Temaile, who is tormenting her. They also manage to collect one of the Seals on the Dark One's prison. Nynaeve and Moghedien end up battling, discovering that they are equal in power. Nynaeve shields the Forsaken, but they are discovered by one of the Black Ajah, who damages the palace using a ter'angreal that makes balefire. In the confusion, Moghedien escapes. Min Farshaw arrives at the White Tower to report to the Amyrlin, as Moiraine bid her to do. Her arrival is noted by Elaida, who discovers that something is going on between Moiraine, Siuan and the Dragon Reborn. Min remains in the Tower in the guise of Elmindreda, a giddy, empty-headed woman unable to decide between two suitors. Elaida and her supporters confront and depose Siuan, stilling her and Leane Sharif her Keeper of the Chronicles. Elaida is Raised (made Amyrlin) and many Aes Sedai flee. Min hides, and with the help of the cook Laras, frees the deposed Amyrlin Seat and Leane. Min, Siuan and Leane are recognized by Gawyn Trakand as they try to flee the Tower grounds. He is reluctant to help Siuan since the disappearance of Elayne, but he helps them escape because Min asks it, and because it means helping Egwene as well. While riding through the city toward freedom across one of the bridges, they come across the gentled Logain, whom they talk into going with them."
362,The Crystal Prison,fantasy," Oswald is ill and he's hours from death. While Twit and Piccadilly vow to return to their home, Thomas arrives, telling Audrey that she must join him on a journey to Greenwich to speak to the Starwife. So Audrey, Thomas, and Twit went they are told that the Chitters will all perish by the end of the night unless Audrey agrees to take Madame Akkikuyu to live in Twit's field. Although Oswald makes a full recovery. Nicodemus, proves his powers to Akkikuyu. Nicodemus tells Madamme Akkikuyu to release him from his prison, and a girl has to replace his spot, Akkikuyu realises that he is referring to Audrey and agrees to do his bidding Nicodemus chooses Alison for the sacrifice. Akkikuyu takes her to be sacrificed and halfway through, Nicodemus reveals that he is Jupiter, and that he will inhabit Akkikuyu's body as soon as he is freed from the Crystal Prison. For redemption Madamme Akkikuyu leaps into the flames, saving Alison and holding Jupiter imprisoned for the time being. Akkikuyu is buried in great honour. Now that Akkikuyu is dead, Audrey's deal with the Starwife is void and a little while later Jupiter's prison is smashed unknowingly by Alison and he flies into the air, vowing revenge on those who opposed him... This is the last appearance of Twit in the Deptford Mice series, although he is mentioned throughout The Final Reckoning. It is unknown if he is to cross paths with the others again, as it is noted that neither Arthur or Audrey would ever return to Fennywolde. Madame Akkikuyu's role in The Crystal Prison is very similar to Morgan's in The Final Reckoning. Both are happier than they have ever been in their life, both lives are ruined by Jupiter at its end and both commit suicide."
363,Skulduggery Pleasant 2: Playing With Fire,fantasy," A year after the events of the first novel, Stephanie Edgeley (now known as Valkyrie Cain) continues to work with Skulduggery Pleasant, an undead skeleton detective, capturing villains for The Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is now ruled by Thurid Guild in a new location after the massacre in the previous Sanctuary. Soon Baron Vengeous (one of the original three generals of Mevolent) escapes his prison and begins searching for the armor of Lord Vile, another one of Mevolent's Generals with which he will be able to resurrect The Grotesquery, a hybrid monster made from a Faceless One's remains with the power bring back the Faceless Ones. Arriving in Ireland, he meets an accomplice vampire named Dusk. He orders Dusk to kidnap Valkyrie Cain. Dusk bites and enslaves two humans to help him. After losing to Skulduggery Pleasant, Baron Vengeous goes after China Sorrows who was once part of a cult that worshiped the Faceless Ones and also included Serpine and Vengous himself. The Baron confronts China Sorrows in her apartment whilst Valkyrie is visiting. Valkyrie hides whilst China and Vengous talk. Vengeous reveals that he was released from prison by an assassin named Billy-Ray Sanguine who promptly arrives along with Dusk. A battle ensues during which Valkyrie reveals herself and defends China. Valkyrie Cain is soon chased by Billy-Ray Sanguine who can travel through earth and buildings. After being in a struggle, Valkyrie is saved by Tanith Low. In the progress Valkyrie steals Billy-Ray Sanguine's razor, his primary weapon, leaving the psychopathic assassin with a grudge against her. Valkyrie and Skulduggery along with a convict called Vaurien Scapegrace went to the Magician's village of Roarhaven to find a mysterious man called the Torment who has information they need. After a battle in a seedy pub with some thugs (including a giant) and an unpleasant incident with some massive spiders, they find the Torment and ask for his help. The Torment only says he will help them find Vile's armour if Skulduggery kills Valkyrie, who is descended from the Ancients whom the Torment despises, as he thinks any power will corrupt civilization. Skulduggery takes Valkyrie around a corner and they summon her Reflection, a living mirror image of Valkyrie who she uses as a decoy, enabling her to live a double life. Skulduggery takes Valkyrie's reflection before the Torment and shoots it. The Torment is satisfied and tells Skulduggery the whereabouts of the Grotesquery. He and Valkyrie return Scapegrace to prison and go to find the Grotesquery, unfortunately Vengeous's minions have already obtained it. Soon after, Skullduggery and Valkyrie take the reflection back to Valkyries's house. Valkyrie touches the mirror to absorb its memories and remembers what it is like to be shot. Valkyrie then notices that whenever she tries to look back in her memories one part always remains blank and she cannot pin it down. She realizes that her reflection hid something from her, and finds it disconcerting and dangerous. However, she goes on with Skulduggery without mentioning it to him. Valkyrie is kidnapped by Sanguine who takes her to an old abandoned church to the Faceless Ones where she is taken before the altar where Vengeous awaits her. The evil sorcerer cuts Valkyrie's finger and spills some of her blood onto the Grotesquery's body before using the Armour's shadow powers which mingle with the blood. Skulduggery subsequently arrives and rescues Valkyrie. After stealing the Grotesquery, Valkyrie is incapacitated and wakes up in hospital. While wearing a 'respectable' blue hospital gown, Skulduggery wears a pink one decorated with bunnies and elephants for the doctor's amusement. Skulduggery turns the lifeless Grotesquery over to the Sanctuary's top scientist to take apart, however, the Grotesquery has already absorbed a lot of power from Vile's armour and Valkyrie's blood, and so wakes up in the middle of the night whilst being operated on. He kills the scientist's assistants and goes after Valkyrie. Skulduggery and Tanith arrive and the three of them attack the Grotesquery before escaping. Meanwhile, members of Sanctuary's all across the world are being murdered by assassins to distract people from Vengeous's plan. Billy-Ray Sanguine has also released Springheeled Jack from prison and sends him after a Sanctuary official in London. After discovering that he is being manipulated by Vengous in a plan to bring back the Faceless Ones, Jack kills his victim. Skulduggery works out that Vengeous is actually a pawn in someone else's plan and accuses Thurid Guild of being in league with this mystery benefactor. In a rage, Guild fires Skulduggery who decides to go after Vengous anyway. Valkyrie begrudgingly goes to her family reunion as a distraction to Dusk. The Torment, meanwhile, has discovered that Valkyrie is alive and goes after her only to be confronted by Skulduggery and Tanith Low. The Torment transforms into a giant spider but Skulduggery and Tanith defeat him nevertheless. Valkyrie is subsequently attacked by vampires and forced to flee. Dusk corners her and vows that when he has transformed her into a vampire he's going to set her loose on her parents while in her bloodlust. Valkyrie stabs Dusk in the leg with the syringe he uses to curb his vampiric side whilst he is transforming, and as a result, he is caught between vampire and human and put in intense pain. Springheeled Jack comes and rescues her and defeats Dusk so as to frustrate Vengeous's plans because he doesn't want the Faceless Ones to return. Meanwhile China is attacked by Vengous in an underground carpark. The dark wizard brutally murders China's bodyguards and viciously beats her unconscious before taking her to Clearwater Hospital, his headquarters. Accompanied by Tanith Low, Mr Bliss and some Cleavers, Skulduggery and Valkyrie go to Clearwater Hospital and do battle with the Grotesquery which due to being part Faceless One is virtually invincible. Mr Bliss is incapacitated but the Cleavers mercilessly attack the Grotesquery and almost overpower it when Vengous arrives along with China whom he has taken captive and together with the Grotesquery he kills the Cleavers and beats Skulduggery and Valkyrie into submission. Valkyrie tricks Vengous into releasing her, saying that she will join him but she releases China who attacks Vengous and the Grotesquery, giving Valkyrie time to free Skulduggery who joins in the assault against Vengous, tearing off his helmet and his breastplate before shooting him in the stomach. In a swoon, Vengous crawls toward the Grotesquery but his god callously breaks the Baron's neck. The Torment subsequently arrives and attacks the Grotesquery but he is defeated and almost killed. In the ensuing battle Valkyrie stabs the Grotesquery through the heart, killing it but before it dies it utters a terrible scream. Sanguine is then seen meeting his mysterious master who reveals that he had never expected the Grotesquery to succeed but he knew that when it was vanquished, the beast's dying scream would alert the Faceless Ones spirits as to the whereabouts of the Earth meaning that all he has to do now is open the door. The mysterious man then pays Sanguine and takes his leave. Valkyrie is later seen talking to Skulduggery on a pier. They reason that they must find out who Vengous and Sanguine were really working for and if Thurid Guild is in league with him. Skulduggery ominously tells Valkyrie ""Bad things are coming."" They are subsequently attacked by a vampire and the book ends with them going into battle once again. pt:Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire"
364,The Shaving of Shagpat,fantasy," Shibli Bagarag, a Persian barber, and Noorna, an enchantress, are given the quest of shaving the tyrant Shagpat, who by the power of his magical hair holds his city in thrall. Along the way Shibli acquires a magic sword and meets a series of exotic creatures, including a talking hawk and several genies. The second paragraph of the book provides a capsule summary of the story: ""Now the story of Shibli Bagarag, and of the ball he followed, and of the subterranean kingdom he came to, and of the enchanted palace he entered, and of the sleeping king he shaved, and of the two princesses he released, and of the Afrite held in subjection by the arts of one and bottled by her, is it not known as 'twere written on the finger-nails of men and traced in their corner robes?"""
365,The Forest House,fantasy," In the early days of the conquest, when the Roman Legions are aggressively persecuting the Druids, the sanctuary of the Goddess on the isle of Mona is destroyed and its Druids are murdered and its priestesses are raped. The raped priestesses that conceive children kill all of the girl children but leave the boys alive that are born and then kill themselves rather than live with the atrocities done to them; the males later became a rebel group known as the Ravens, which swore vengeance against Rome. Lhiannon, one of the remaining priestesses, re-establishes a new sanctuary at Vernemeton (Most Holy Grove), or The Forest House, which is partially controlled and protected by the Romans. The novel tells the story of Eilan, granddaughter of the Arch-Druid of Britain. She hears the calling of the Goddess and is chosen to become a priestess at Vernemeton, and later to succeed the dying Lhiannon as High Priestess. However, before her calling, she hears the voice of her heart, and during the magic night of Beltaine, conceives a son with Roman officer Gaius Macellius, son of the high-ranking Camp Prefect at nearby Deva. Gaius is an inheritant of royal blood through his Celtic mother of a southern tribe, the Silures. Eilan knows their son, Gawen, whose bloodline comes from the Dragon (Celtic royalty), the Eagle (Roman Empire), and from the Wise (Druids), will play a crucial role in Britain's future, and makes great sacrifices to protect him in his youth. A major shift in the balance of power is in the air; Eilan senses that the death of her peace-loving Arch-Druid grandfather will cause it. She tells her friend Caillean (who was rescued from her uncaring mother in Hibernia by Lhiannon) to take a group of young priestesses to the isle of Avalon to found a new sanctuary and become the first high-priestess of Avalon. In Vernemeton, Eilan is increasingly pressured by the new Arch-Druid, her father, to stop promoting peace and collaboration with the Romans. In a dramatic showdown she sacrifices herself (along with her love Gaius) to avoid a bloody insurgency and, in particular, to save the life of her son Gawen."
366,Vision of the Future,fantasy," Admiral Gilad Pellaeon admits that the Empire, down to only a few sectors, is now fighting a losing battle. He initiates preliminary peace talks with Princess Leia, who acts as the New Republic representative. However, several Imperial officials are vehemently anti-surrender, the most notable being Moff Disra. He hires a con artist, Flim, to impersonate Grand Admiral Thrawn, the idea being that Imperial Forces would rally, and many systems would rejoin the Empire, due to Thrawn's ""returning from the dead."" Another Imperial plot is underfoot, to provoke civil war in the New Republic, involving the Caamas Document. Caamas was a world destroyed by the Empire shortly after the Clone Wars, and it is revealed in the book that this was made possible by Bothan sabotage of that planet's planetary shield. Various alien races take sides over treatment of the Bothans and what would be justice for Caamas; more than a hundred alien warships gather in orbit over the Bothans' homeworld of Bothawui. Several of this book's plotlines revolve around major characters seeking an unaltered copy of the Camaas Document, in an attempt to settle the issue. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian travel to an Imperial base at Bastion in an attempt to find it. Meanwhile, Garm Bel Iblis attempts a raid on an Imperial Ubiqtorate base at Yaga Minor. The Empire hopes that the confrontation over Bothawui will reach a flash point, and three Imperial Star Destroyers lie in wait to 'finish off' the survivors. Furthermore, an Imperial sabotage team successfully knocks out a major section of the Bothawui planetary shield. Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade successfully sneak into a fortress called the Hand of Thrawn (so called because of its 'four fingers and a thumb' shape). Many secrets are revealed there, including mention of an expedition by Thrawn to the galaxy's Unknown Regions. Luke and Mara are about to die, when Luke proposes to Mara, she accepts. They escape and at the end of the novel, a peace treaty is signed by Admiral Pellaeon and New Republic president Ponc Gavrisom. fr:Vision du futur"
367,Oath of Swords,fantasy," This novel begins when Bazhell Bahanakson is an exchange hostage in Navahk. While taking the back way out of the palace to meet his friend Brandark, he hears screaming. When he investigates he finds a hradani woman named Farmah being raped by the crown prince Harnak. He attacks Harnak and frees Farmah, smuggling her out of the city with the help of another servant woman, Tala. He sends the women towards Hurgrum, then strikes off in another direction, hoping to draw pursuit away from them. Brandark joins him and together they set off east to try to find work. Unfortunately hradani are not popular in other lands, and they are unwelcome most places they go. The wealthy dwarven merchant Kilthandaknarthas (Kilthan for short) hires them as caravan guards and they travel with him for some time, beating back several attacks by a group of assassins called the Dog Brothers, who are connected to Sharna's church. Harnak, who has been secretly worshiping Sharna (a practice that would be punished by death if he were ever discovered), is the one who arranged for the dog brothers to be sent after Bahzell, though Bahzell and Brandark do not yet realize this, because as long as Bahzell is alive he is a threat to Harnak's position. Eventually Bahzell and Brandark leave Kilthan in a city called Riverside. They stay there for a while, trying to find jobs. Bahzell finds a job as a bar bouncer but was fired after another assassination attempt failed. While walking to the inn where he and Brandark were staying, he again hears screaming, and follows it into an alley where he rescues a noblewoman from the Empire of the Spear named Zarantha. She tells the city guard that she is his employer, saving him from jail. He and Brandark agree to help her, her servant Rekah and her armsman Tothas, who is unwell, to get home. Brandark, with Zarantha's help, begins writing a song in honor of Bahzell, called the Lay of Bahzell Bloody Hand. As they travel there are more attacks by the Dog Brothers. They also encounter more divine intervention in their trip, which Bahzell resents, culminating in a personal appearance by Chesmirsa, the Singer of Light, in an effort to recruit Bahzell for her brother Tomanak. Bahzell, like most hradani, wants nothing to do with any gods, none of whom have done anything for his people in living memory, though Tothas, a follower of the war god tries to convince him otherwise. Shortly after that divine visit Rekah is badly hurt and Zarantha is kidnapped. Tothas explains the background that they had not shared with the hradani before: Zaarantha is a powerful mage, who was sent to be educated in the Empire of the Axe because without proper training Spearman mages generally died before they came into their talents. She plans to set up a mage academy in her native land to give her countrymen the training they need. Someone doesn't want her to make it. She has been kidnapped by dark wizards, who plan to kill her, allowing them to harness her life energy for a magical working. They would prefer to take her home first, as they will get more out of the working if they do it on her own soil. The hradani leave Tothas and Rekah behind, and set off after Zarantha. They meet up with Wencit of Rum, who aids them in the successful attack on the camp. Zarantha was badly hurt in the mind and Wencit needed someone to draw off the army that would chase them. So Bahzell volunteered, and Brandark followed, unwilling to leave his friend. Meanwile, Harnak and the church of Sharna in Navahk have decided this has gone on long enough. They use a human sacifice to raise a demon, which they send after Bahzell, and to enchant a sword to allow Sharna himself to reach through the bearer and strike directly. The demon catches up with Bahzell and Brandark as they flee. Bahzell wins, with Tomanak's help, and finally agrees to take sword-oath as a champion of Tomanak. He and Brandark once again run, eventually entering the lands of the half-elven Purple Lords. Bahzell's compulsion for rescuing people leads him to interfere with a Purple Lord who is in the middle of throwing an entire village out into the wilderness for being short of rent. He kills the Purple Lord, and instructs the townspeople to blame everything on a band of invading hradani to draw the pursuit. Harnak, who is carrying the cursed sword, is also following them, and the Purple Lords end up tracking him, believing him to be the one who killed the lord of the village. Harnak eventually catches up with Bahzell and the two of them do battle. The battle however, is not only between them, but also between Sharna—who has opened a portal to his realm, through the sword, in order to strike out at Bahzell—and Tomanak who fights against him through his champion. Bahzell eventually defeats Harnak. Brandark fought the prince's entire guard, all of whom had been in the grip of the Rage, and was mortally wounded. Calling out to Tomanak, he demands to know why his friend must die. Tomanak tells Bahzell that he can heal Brandark through Bahzell, if he can see Brandark as fully healed. Bahzell is successful and Brandark's fatal wounds heal, leaving him alive and recovering, though missing an ear and two fingers. The two companions then travel to Bortalik Bay, where they receive a message from Zarantha that she is safe and well and that her father has adopted the two hradani, offering them any assistance that her house can provide. Bahzell gets them passage on a ship manned by Marfang Island halflings, and they set off for Belhadan."
368,Daughter of the Forest,fantasy," From the novel's jacket: “Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac. But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, too young to have known her mother, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss and terror. It seems there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once.” Sorcha, the seventh child of Irish Lord Colum of Sevenwaters, has been raised almost entirely by her six older brothers. Having lost her mother at birth, Sorcha is more or less completely ignored by her father. When her father's new wife, the Lady Oonagh, attacks Sorcha and her brothers, Sorcha alone is able to flee into the forest and escape. Sorcha's brothers, however, have been turned into swans. What follows is a twist on the classic tale of ""The Six Swans."" Sorcha learns that if she can spin six shirts from starwort, remaining absolutely silent until the last one has been completed, she can free her brothers from Oonagh's spell. Sorcha agrees to this and spends several years in the forest, hiding from Oonagh as she works on the shirts. At first she survives in the Forest, relying on the help of the Fair Folk and her only companion—Cormack's dog, Linn. Her brothers are able to visit her twice a year as humans as she labors on her task, which is to make shirts out of starwort, a needle-like plant whose touch is poison and disfigures the hands. One day, she is found and raped by several brutal men, who are led to her by the village idiot who thought she was a faery. They also kill Linn, and her brothers find her weak and bleeding. Padriac heals her while three of her other brothers, (including formerly peaceful Finbar), go out and kill her rapists with the help of the Fair Folk. After several years of solitary struggle, Sorcha is saved from drowning by a British lord, Hugh of Harrowfield (a.k.a. ""Red""). When Red returns to Britain, Sorcha unwillingly accompanies him. Red correctly believes that Sorcha has information concerning his brother, Simon, whom Sorcha had nursed back to health after Simon's capture by Lord Colum. Sorcha remains with Red as she continues to work on the shirts. Though under Red's protection, Sorcha encounters a new danger in the form of Lord Richard, Red's uncle and the one who has been attacking Sevenwaters. Sorcha must fend off the attacks of Richard even as she continues silently working to save her brothers. Though she earns true friends in John, Ben, and John's wife Margery, the majority of Red's household believe her to be a witch, and they play cruel tricks on her. As the days go by, Red and Sorcha gradually fall in love, though they are separated by his need to find Simon and her fear of men after her rape—as well as her belief that he only loves her because the Fair Folk bound him to her as her protector. While his marriage to Elaine, who is Lord Richard's daughter, draws nearer (they had been engaged since before Red and Sorcha met) and while Elaine is kind to Sorcha, Lord Richard continues to constantly threaten her. Then, Red takes Sorcha off to the shore, where only he and Simon ever went, and proposes to her, asking him to marry him and telling her that he's canceled his marriage with Elaine. She is fearful that he will try to claim his rights as a husband, but he assures her that, if she wants, the marriage will be only in name and that it will protect her. He gives her a ring and then leaves to search for Simon and find out the truth about Lord Richard's involvement in his brother's capture. One summer, in Harrowfield when Red is still gone, Sorcha meets with Conor, her brother. She was spotted meeting him at night, and everyone accuses her of adultery, since she is married to Red. Because of this crime Red's uncle turns everyone against Sorcha and decides to burn her at stake. On the day the shirts are finished, all six swans come flying to her. Red returns home, and is outraged when he sees Sorcha tied at the stake. Unable to speak, Sorcha quickly throws the finished shirts on her brothers, but because she did not have time to finish one of the sleeves Finbar is cursed with one wing. Her brothers are extremely protective of her, and declare her marriage to Red invalid. They refuse to allow her to be alone with him until Sorcha insists on it herself, and she is the one to tell Red good-bye, believing that he will forget her once she is gone and still under the delusion that he only loves her because of the Fair Folk's intervention. He lets her go, and Sorcha and her brothers return to Sevenwaters, where they find it a mess. Some peasants recognize them and inform them that their father is not well, and they hasten to the palace, where Donal, the former leader of the King's armies who was fired for letting Simon escape, informs them that Lady Oonagh has disappeared. The family slowly rebuilds Sevenwaters, and Sorcha finds out from the Lady of the Forest that Red was under no spell, and that he truly loved her. This causes her much pain until one day, he shows up and declares that he has abdicated his rule and wants to stay with her, and Sorcha kisses him so passionately that she makes Liam, her eldest brother, blush. Almost all of the mysteries are solved, except for their half brother (the son of Lord Colum and Lady Oonagh). Two of the brothers set out to find this brother, while Conor travels aways with the Druids. The seven children of Sevenwaters separate to lead their individual lives. Liam stays with Sorcha in Sevenwaters, and Finbar disappears in the waters, leaving only a feather behind. = Characters in ""Daughter of the Forest"" ="
369,Enchantment,fantasy," The protagonist and narrator is Ivan Smetski, a young Ukrainian-American linguist who specializes in Old Church Slavonic, a language from 10th-century Russia. In 1992, Ivan returns to his native town of Kiev to pursue additional graduate studies. While there he discovers the body of a woman, apparently sleeping in the woods. He awakens her with a kiss, and she tells him, in Old Church Slavonic, that she is Katerina, a princess of the kingdom of Taina. Transported back to the 10th century, Ivan follows Katerina back to Taina where he finds the Christian kingdom terrorized by the traditional Russian arch-villainess Baba Yaga. Ivan and Katerina marry and escape back to the 20th century to avoid the machinations of Baba Yaga, who has enslaved a god and laid claim to Taina's throne, and the druzhinnik Dimitri who covets the throne. Baba Yaga's magical powers, however, allow for her to follow Ivan and Katerina to modern times. Back in the Ukraine, Ivan discovers that his cousin is in reality the immortal god Mikola Mozhaiski. Returning to the United States, Ivan further discovers that his mother is a magic user, with the same powers as Katerina. After Katerina discovers Dimitri's plot through scrying, Ivan and Katerina return to Taina, deftly avoiding Baba Yaga who magically ""skyjacks"" their intended 747 back to the 10th century. Returning to Taina, Ivan and Katerina confront Dimitri, the enslaved god, and Baba Yaga. Though the Castle of Taina is destroyed, the two emerge victorious, and return to the modern world to live."
370,Inconstant Star,fantasy," There are two parts to the novel, Iron, and Inconstant Star. In “Iron”, Saxtorph and the Rover, hired by the wealthy Crashlander Laurinda Brozik, set out to explore a newly discovered red dwarf star. When they arrive, they are challenged by a Kzinti warship. Separating the crew onto the shuttles, the Rover is captured and landed on one of the moons. The first shuttle sets on Prima, the first planet, and is held fast by a planet-sized organism that begins dissolving the shuttle. They broadcast for rescue, and are refused help by the Kzin. Meanwhile, helpless to rescue their friends, Robert, Dorcas, and Laurinda make a plan to steal a tug and escape back to friendly space with the news of the Kzin base. Dorcas pilots the tug, and takes out the ship guarding the ‘’Rover’’. Robert and Laurinda land, fight off a Kzinti shuttle, and recover the Rover. They are able to rescue Juan and Carita, and destroy the base with a guided asteroid. In “Inconstant Star”, Saxtorph and crew are hired by Tyra Nordbo to redeem her father’s honor, as he was accused of collaboration with the Kzin during their occupation of Wunderland. To do so, they must use notes he had left behind and follow a ship that had left 30 years prior to investigate a concentration of gamma rays. They travel to the coordinates, and find a massive artifact made of an unknown metal. A hole in the spherical artifact is pouring out lethal radiation. As the study it, they learn it is a weapon of the Tnuctip. It is a shell around a “captured” black hole, one that had been holed by a meteorite and is thus releasing the Hawking radiation. They then deduce the route of the original Kzin ship, and head off to the Father Sun, the star of the Kzin homeworld. En route, they locate the Sherrek, where Tyra’s father Peter had worked free of his Kzin captors. They rescue him and head back to the artifact. Another Kzin ship, Swordbeak, also finds the old ship. They, too, head to the artifact, and catch the Rover by surprise. Just when all looks lost, Robert and Dorcas conceive a plan to use the artifact's radiation against the Kzin warship. In a last act of defiance, a dying Weoch-Captain activates the artifact’s hyperdrive and heads out into unknown space."
371,Bridge of Souls,fantasy," Wyl Thirsk, former general of the Morgravian army and bearer of the curse known as Myrren's gift, is running out of time. Marriage between his beloved Queen Valentyna and his sworn enemy, the despotic King Celimus, is imminent; yet, despite the impending nuptials, war looms between the two nations, while the threat from the Mountain Kingdom grows stronger. Trapped in a body not his own, with his friends and supporters scattered throughout the realm, Wyl is as desperate to prevent the wedding as he is to end Myrren's ""gift"" -- a magic that will cease only when he assumes the throne of Morgravia. Clinging to an ominous suggestion from his young friend Fynch, an increasingly powerful mage, Wyl must walk his most dangerous path yet—straight into the brutal clutches of Celimus in a desperate attempt to save his nation, his love, and himself."
372,Jhereg,fantasy," The novel opens with a brief history of Vlad Taltos and a description of how he acquired his jhereg familiar, Loiosh. Despite being an Easterner in the Dragaeran city of Adrilankha, Vlad is a minor boss in the criminal activities of the Jhereg Organization. One day he is approached by an extremely powerful member of the Organization's ruling Council and offered an assassination job with a staggeringly large reward. The contract is to kill another Jhereg crime lord, Mellar, who has absconded with a fortune from the Jhereg treasury. Vlad accepts. Mellar has become the houseguest of the Dragonlord Morrolan e'Drien in his floating fortress, Castle Black. Vlad is a personal friend of Morrolan and has a standing invitation to Castle Black, which would make the assassination quite easy. However Morrolan holds fast to the Dragonlord traditions of hospitality, and will permit no harm to come to his guests for any reason. The last time a Jhereg assassinated a Dragonlord's houseguest, it resulted in a war between the two Houses that decimated both. Morrolan has invited Mellar to stay for seventeen days, but the Jhereg need the hit performed before that time. Vlad is forced to find a compromise between the interests of his House and his friend. Vlad's other friends, Aliera e'Kieron and Sethra Lavode, are more lax on the rules of hospitality and offer their help. Aliera wants to kill Mellar herself, as it is obvious to everyone, even Morrolan himself, that Mellar manipulated Morrolan and used the Dragonlord's honor as a shield against the Jhereg. This is a grave insult to the House of the Dragon. Sethra, the oldest and wisest of the group, agrees with Aliera's position, but feels that they must still respect Morrolan's wishes and find a way that will not violate his honor. While Vlad looks for a solution, the Jhereg come up with their own plan. The Demon first interviews Vlad to see if he would go along with it, and when it is clear to him that Vlad would not, he tries to have Vlad assassinated. Vlad manages to escape and guesses the Demon's intentions, but he is too late. He arrives at Castle Black to find Morrolan already assassinated. With Morrolan dead, Mellar would no longer be under his protection, and thus his death would not start a second Dragon-Jhereg war. Vlad foils this solution by breaking the enchantment preventing Morrolan's resurrection and has his friend brought back to life. The Jhereg, however, are undeterred. They would rather risk another Dragon-Jhereg War than allow Mellar's humiliating theft to become publicly known. An assassin descends on Mellar, but Vlad and his friends thwart him as well. On reflection, Vlad realizes that Mellar's bodyguards, who are always hovering nearby, were mysteriously absent during the attempt on his life. Vlad manages to deduce, with the help of some other information gathered by his second-in-command, Kragar, that it is Mellar's intention to be assassinated. Mellar is a half-breed—a mix of Dragon, Jhereg and Dzur—and intends, through his death, to get his revenge on all his parent Houses by causing two to erupt into war and leaking information that would forever shame the third. Having solved the mystery of Mellar's crime, Vlad finally realizes how to solve his own dilemma. With the help of nearly all of his friends, Vlad tricks Mellar into thinking he has killed Aliera, which would nullify his guest-rights with Morrolan. Mellar, believing his plan is ruined, flees Castle Black to avoid a purposeless death at the hands of the Jhereg. This actually takes him out of Morrolan's protection. Vlad follows him and engages the master swordsman in a duel. While near defeat, Vlad uses witchcraft to contact a nearby wild jhereg. With this second jhereg's help, Vlad kills Mellar, earning a vast bounty and saving two Houses in the same stroke. Rocza, the name given by Vlad to his second familiar, mates Loiosh."
373,Marlfox,fantasy," The wandering Noonvale companions travel to Redwall, where they wish to mount a show. on the way, however, they learn that the Marlfoxes will attempt to seize Redwall, and hasten onward to warn them, while Guosim from another part of Mossflower do the same. The Marlfoxes consist of High Queen Silth and her brood. They are different from other foxes in their fur, which gives them the ability to blend in to almost any surrounding, invisible to all but the keenest eye. This ability has given rise to the false rumor that the Marlfoxes possess magic, which they do not. However, Marlfoxes are highly agile and skilled with axes. Castle Marl, home of the Marlfoxes, is situated in the middle of an enormous inland sea, on the island that was once home to Badger Lord Urthwyte the Mighty. The Marlfoxes command a vast army of water rats, and they travel around the country seeking rare and priceless artifacts. The Marlfoxes, backed by an army of water rats, mount a successful invasion of Redwall and steal the tapestry of the long dead hero, Martin the Warrior. The Marlfox Ziral, however, is slain, and the remaining Marlfoxes swear revenge on the citizens of Redwall. Mokkan, one of the Marlfoxes, escapes with the tapestry, leaving his siblings behind. Three young Redwallers, Songbreeze Swifteye, Dannflor Reguba, and a Guosim shrew named Dippler set out after Mokkan, trying to retrieve the tapestry. They meet Burble, a water vole, and have many adventures and meet many friends who help them on their journey, such as the ginormous hedgehog Sollertree,who lost his daughter Nettlebud to the Marlfoxes and water rats, and the Mighty Megraw, a large osprey who used to live by the Marlfox island but was driven away in an ambush by magpies. Meanwhile, the remaining Marlfoxes lay siege to Redwall. After a series of battles, Songbreeze's father Janglur Swifteye, Dannflor's father Rusvul Reguba, Cregga Rose Eyes, and many others fight off the remaining army, killing the remaining Marlfoxes and restoring peace to Redwall. In a discrepancy the rats were divided into eight groups, but one group was sent each way. Song, Dann, Dippler and Burble meet some new friends and set out into the great lake to the island. Mokkan finds that Silth has been killed by one of his sisters, Lantur. He promptly kills her by pushing her into the lake, proclaiming himself King. However, the companions arrive and overthrow the water rat army. Mokkan escapes in a boat, but an escaped slave, whom we find out is Nettlebud, throws a chain at him and knocks him into the lake, where he is eaten by pike. The surviving water rats are left on the island to become peaceful creatures and farm the land, and the companions return home to Redwall, where Songbreeze Swifteye is named Abbess and Dannflor Reguba is named Abbey Champion by Cregga Rose Eyes, Redwall's blind badgermum. Dippler is named Log-a-log, and Burble is named Chief of the Watervoles. At the end of the novel is a note, stating that the entire tale was made into a drama, edited by one Florian Dugglewoof Wilffachop."
374,Wildwood Dancing,fantasy," One winter, Jena's father sets out to the coast to recover from a serious illness that would kill him if he remained home for the winter. In his absence, he leaves his house, his younger daughters, and his half of the merchant business he and his cousin run in the hands of Jena, and her elder sister Tatiana (called 'Tati'). It is when Jena's father's brother Nicolae dies, that things begin to go wrong for Jena and her sisters: Cezar uses his newfound power of being master of his father's estate to take a firm control over the castle in which Jena and her sisters live. Every full moon, the sisters go to the Other Kingdom, where they meet and dance with various magical creatures. Eventually, Cezar becomes so bent on revenge for the death of his older brother Costi (who drowned ten years prior to the book) that he suggests felling the forest around both his and his cousins' estates. In distress, Jena attempts to dissuade him from doing so. She also attempts to prevent Tati from seeing her Sorrow, her sweetheart, who Jena believes to be one of the Night People. In an effort to persuade her sister that it is not meant to be, Jena enlists the help of Bogdana, Nicolae's widow, to organise a party to find suitable husbands at the next Full Moon. Jena and her younger sisters are all upset that they will miss the Full Moon dance, but none so much as Tati; she rapidly loses weight, and her personality fades into almost non-existence. Meanwhile, there was a killing in the village, which had all the markings of an attack of the Night people; reluctantly, Jena tells her sister of what Tadeusz had told her about Dark of the Moon at one of the Full Moon revels. Tati decides to use this portal at Dark of the Moon, where Jena discovers her with Tadeusz's sister, Anastasia. Frightened, the sisters are separated, and Anastasia takes Jena (unwillingly) to see Draguţsa's mirror. In the mirror, Jena learns of Sorrow's true heritage, as well as sees a vision of herself and a young man that she would come to love; the young man in this vision then changes into a horrible monster, turning on Jena's younger sisters. Frightened, Jena flees back to the lakeside, where she meets up with Tati and Sorrow. Sorrow then sends the girls over the frozen lake and back to their own world, where they decide to visit the Dancing Glade the next month to both warn the Queen of Cezar's intentions, and ask if she could help Sorrow, and the girl who was revealed to be his younger sister. After miserably failing to propose to (and being rejected by) Jena, Cezar works out that the entrance to the Other Kingdom is indeed in the bedchamber that Jena and her sisters share. Desperate for help, Jena sets out to the lake where Costi drowned, to seek out Dragutsa. She speaks to the old woman for a little, before she is given a powerful sleeping potion to put both the man and the chaperone to sleep on the night of the full moon. As Jena leaves, she gives Gogu a kiss on the nose; a bright flash throws both her and the frog apart. When she can see again, she finds a young man on the shore of the lake, whom she instantly knows to be Gogu; she also recognises him as the young man in the mirror, who turns into a monster. She realises that, despite knowing what he is, she loves him, and when he gives no answer, she runs away back home. As planned, the sisters drug the man and chaperone in their bedchamber, and seek the help of the faerie Queen. Ileana tells Tati that she has set Sorrow a quest, to be completed within one month; if he succeeds, they will be allowed to wed, and Tati to live in the Other Kingdom. Gogu is also there, and the faerie Queen reveals that he was bound by a spell of silence, giving him his voice back. Gogu then reveals to Jena that he is Costi, which she denies; however, Dragutsa later reveals that this is true. She had placed the boy under and enchantment to turn him into a frog. She then revealed that it was Jena's doubt that allowed Anastasia to manipulate the image in the mirror; Costi was not a monster, and Jena had broken his heart by claiming that he was, instead of trusting him. Costi returns the next day and takes over his father's estate, and Cezar disappears; however, Jena is too nervous and guilty to speak to Costi. Eventually, Tati convinces her to go visit him and, on the day of the Full Moon, she does. She and Costi work out their misunderstanding, and return to Jena's home, where they take Tati to an injured Sorrow to take to the Other Kingdom. Eventually, life returns to normal, though they miss Tati. Jena's father returns home, and Jena and Costi look forward to their impending marriage."
375,The Pillars of Creation,fantasy," Jennsen Rahl, Richard Rahl's half sister, has spent the first twenty years of her life running from her father, Darken Rahl. Born without any aspect of the gift of magic, Jennsen has been marked for death since birth. When her mother is apparently murdered by D'Haran assassins she sets out with her new friend, Sebastian, to start her life over. Sebastian eventually reveals that he is a spy for the Imperial Order. He speaks convincingly of the Order's goals concerning the fair treatment of all humanity and the elimination of magic. Above all else he esteems Emperor Jagang. In equal measure he despises Richard Rahl, who he claims has brought on war with an invasion of the Old World after bringing down the Barriers separating the sections of the known world. Meanwhile, another sibling of Richard's, Oba Rahl, suffers under an abusive mother on the family farm. Oba imagines himself as energetic and the possessor of a healthy curiosity. His inquisitive nature manifests itself especially through pleasure in watching things die under his hand. Oba does not know that he, along with Jennsen, is pristinely ungifted and immune to magic. His mother sends him to a nearby sorceress to buy medicine and during the purchase he begins to menace the magic user. Her attempts to defend herself with magic fail and Oba kills her brutally. During the fight Oba surrenders to a voice in his mind that promises invincibility in return for obedience. After returning home Oba kills his mother and resolves to see the world. He can travel comfortably with the funds he looted from the sorceress. Jennsen wants to find another sorceress, sister of the one Oba killed, and who had previously helped Jennsen and her mother. Along with Sebastian she travels to the People's Palace, capital of the D'Haran empire. There she learns that the sorceress she seeks lives in a deadly enchanted swamp. After Sebastian is detained by D'Haran guards, a friendly stranger, Tom, helps a desperate Jennsen to the swamp. She safely reaches the sorceress' home, her natural immunity to magic protecting her through the swamp, but only learns that nothing can be done to save her from Lord Rahl. She leaves, disappointed and upon returning to the People's Palace cleverly rescues Sebastian. He convinces Jennsen that she should visit Emperor Jagang, leader of the Imperial Order. Oba is also aware of the second sorceress and the fact that she knows something concerning his fate or nature. He hires a guide to the swamp, which he safely negotiates as well. The sorceress reveals that Oba is now a thrall to the Keeper of the Underworld and kills herself before Oba can do the deed. This, along with the fact that his guide has stolen all his money, enrages Oba. He is mollified somewhat by the treasure he finds in the sorceresses' cottage but his rage returns when, after returning to the People's Palace, he spots his guide. After killing the guide he is briefly jailed but escapes, using the voice in his mind to make the D'Haran guards do his bidding, and resolves to locate Richard Rahl. Jennsen and Sebastian reach Emperor Jagang at the van of the army of the Imperial Order. Though initially shocked by the crude Order soldiers, she is advised not to be so picky and that the D'Harans are even worse. The day after her arrival the Emperor Jagang assaults the Confessor's Palace but is bloodily repulsed. Emperor Jagang is severely injured in the action. Even worse for the Order, their enemy unleashes an ancient magic on the main army, wreaking immense destruction. Jennsen reacts by making a pact with a dark force, the Keeper, to kill Richard Rahl in return for her surrender and obedience. Oba captures Kahlan and is ordered by the Keeper to take her, along with the Sword of Truth to the Pillars of Creation. Using his link to the sword, Richard pursues Oba to the Pillars, where he encounters Jennsen, who has also been drawn to the same spot by the Keeper in order to kill Richard. The Keeper's supreme plan, however, was for Richard to kill Jennsen at the Pillars of Creation thereby opening a gate between the Keeper's realm and the world of the living. Richard discerns the plan and refuses to be goaded into cooperating. Jennsen then recognizes his integrity and the Keeper's plan is foiled. Jennsen learns that the men who were sent to kill her mother were actually soldiers of the Imperial Order, and after coming to believe that Richard is truly a loving and caring brother, she joins him and Kahlan in their quest against Jagang."
376,The Leap,fantasy," Everyone says that Max has drowned, but Charlie thinks differently: she was in the mill-pool with him, and knows exactly what she saw. When she begins to see him in her dreams, her hopes are raised. It seems the reunion she craves is possible. But where exactly is Max leading her? And will she be able to return?"
377,Marianne Dreams,fantasy," Marianne is a young girl who is bedridden with a long-term illness. She draws a picture to fill her time, and finds that she spends her dreams within the picture she has drawn. As time goes by, she becomes sicker, and starts to spend more and more time trapped within her fantasy world, and her attempts to make things better by adding to and crossing out things in the drawing make things progressively worse. Her only companion in her dreamworld is a boy called Mark, who is also a long-term invalid in the real world. Marianne Dreams was first published by Faber and Faber in 1958, and was first printed in paperback by Puffin Books in 1964. It was illustrated with drawings by Marjorie-Ann Watts. Catherine Storr's later novel Marianne and Mark was a sequel to Marianne Dreams. It is thought that the house that Marianne dreams of is based on a house in the village of Avebury, Wiltshire. This house looks as if has been drawn by a child, with small, very high up windows. All around the house are the menacing prehistoric standing stones of Avebury Stone Circle."
378,Every Inch a King,fantasy," The book centers around Otto of Schlepsig, a circus performer and tightrope walker, who is surprised to learn that he's an almost dead-ringer for Prince Halim Eddin, recently invited to become king the newly independent country of Shqiperi. Fed up with his life in the circus, Otto, and his friend, the sword swallower Max of Witte, get some uniforms and set out to take the Prince's place as King of Shqiperi."
379,Dark River,fantasy," In Dark River's prologue, it is revealed that there are hidden caves beneath the moorland. Fallen Leaves, a mysterious cat not seen before in any of the books, enters this cave, meeting a misshapen, old cat by the name of Rock, who explains to him that to be a sharpclaw (an equivalent to the Clans' warriors), he must find a way out of the tunnels and onto the moor. Unfortunately, when Rock asked if it would rain, Fallen Leaves said no, because he was afraid that Rock would make him wait until another day if he said yes. Fallen Leaves enters the tunnels and is trapped in the tunnels then when it does rain he is trapped and drowns and never comes back out ever again. He later helps Jaypaw get out in the end of the book. Also ThunderClan medicine cat apprentice Jaypaw finds a washed-up stick when he is out gathering herbs with his mentor, Leafpool. It has odd scratches on it; some that are crossed out and some that aren't. He doesn't know why, but the stick feels very important to him, to the point that he half drowns himself to save it from the depths of the lake. As he struggles to figure out what it means, he has a dream in which he experiences what Fallen Leaves experienced. Jaypaw then understands what the scratches mean and that the last uncrossed one was Fallen Leaves' mark. Cinderpaw then falls from the Sky Oak, breaking her back leg. He soon discovers that his mentor, Leafpool, is determined to save the apprentice's leg. As the medicine cat's determination begins to border on an obsession, he begins to wonder why. One night, he falls asleep by Cinderpaw and he wakes up in a strange forest. There he meets Cinderpaw, unhurt, who leads him to a camp filled with familiar smells; ThunderClan's previous home in the forest. Cinderpaw describes how she once lived there before the Great Journey and asks Jaypaw to tell Leafpool that she is proud of her, and that she has learned far more than she could have ever taught her. By then Jaypaw is officially confused, but when looking into Cinderpaw's eyes, he sees a series of flashbacks from her previous life. Jaypaw realizes that when Cinderpelt, the former ThunderClan medicine cat, died in Twilight she was reincarnated as Cinderpaw, without Cinderpaw herself knowing it. Jaypaw tells Leafpool what he has discovered and his mentor agrees with him. However, when Cinderpaw wakes she doesn't remember the dream (only that Jaypaw had been able to see in it). Lionpaw becomes best friends with Heatherpaw, a beautiful WindClan apprentice, and begins meeting her at night. Hollypaw discovers their secret and Lionpaw begins to be wary of his ""nosy"" sister. Afterwards, Heatherpaw and Lionpaw begin meeting in hidden tunnels that no Clan cat has ever seen before (the same tunnels that Fallen Leaves drowned in). They name their play Clan DarkClan, of which 'Heatherstar' is leader and 'Lionclaw' is deputy. They meet together every night they can. Tigerstar, who meets Lionpaw in ghostly apparitions, like he did to Hawkfrost and Brambleclaw, starts teaching him additional battle moves that even his mentor, Ashfur, doesn't know, though Brambleclaw seems to recognize them. When Lionpaw starts to teach the moves to Heatherpaw, Hawkfrost scolds him for showing battle moves to the enemy, and under pressure, Lionpaw must choose between his love of Heatherpaw, and loyalty to the warrior code and ThunderClan. He chooses to remain loyal to his Clan and leaves Heatherpaw, who is extremely hurt and betrayed, though she understands his decision in the end. During a Gathering, RiverClan reveals that their Clan is facing a ""small problem"" and that they are being forced to live on the island for a short while. Though Leopardstar is fiercely protective of her Clan and refuses to elaborate, Hollypaw knows something is not right, because her friend Willowpaw and the rest of RiverClan are acting extremely nervous. She informs Firestar about her concerns. However, he does not believe this is ThunderClan's problem and refuses to take action. He and the rest of the Clan continue preparing for a battle against WindClan even though it is not certain that a battle will ever occur. Hollypaw heads out to RiverClan on her own. When she arrives, Willowpaw shows her how Twoleg kits (children) are attacking their camp. Hollypaw is kept with RiverClan so she cannot tell anyone about their secret because they think she is a spy. However, her brother Jaypaw has a dream that reveals her location, and Squirrelflight comes to retrieve her. Near the end of the book, all three stories combine: Jaypaw and Leafpool must go to WindClan to take Onestar a message from Firestar about not shedding unnecessary blood in a battle over something that may never happen, while Hollypaw convinces Mousefur and Firestar to do something. When they arrive, Gorsetail's (a WindClan queen) kits (Sedgekit, Thistlekit and Swallowkit) are missing and WindClan blames RiverClan, saying that there will be a battle if RiverClan does not return the kits. Jaypaw and Leafpool return to camp and Lionpaw tells his brother and sister about the tunnels, where he thinks the kits may have gone. They enter the caves, meeting up with the WindClan apprentices Breezepaw and Heatherpaw, who share their motive for being there. Jaypaw is guided by the spirit of Fallen Leaves and the group find the kits behind a boulder that blocked the tunnel. It starts raining and the tunnel floods, but Jaypaw figures a way out just in time and they return the kits, saving the Clans from an unnecessary battle. The tunnel is blocked during the flood, and Lionpaw states that it ended the most important friendship he ever had."
380,Soul of the Fire,fantasy," Continuing on from Temple of the Winds, we begin the story after Richard and Kahlan's wedding in the village of the Mud People. Strange deaths and the appearance of a 'chicken-that-isn't-a-chicken' leaves Richard fearing the worst. Zedd confides in Richard that the chicken is a Lurk sent by Emperor Jagang's Sisters of the Dark. According to Zedd, the only way to destroy the Lurk is by smashing a bottle from the Wizard's Keep in Aydindril with the Sword of Truth. However, Zedd is actually lying. He has surmised that a terrible magic known as ""the chimes"" has been released. The chimes will eventually drain all magic from the world of the living, beginning with the additive magic. This would cause death to beings that require magic and possibly cause the destruction of the world if additive magic were to completely fail. Zedd determines that he must find a remedy and wants Richard and Kahlan safely out of the way while he does so. Richard, Kahlan and Cara, unaware of the truth, set out to accomplish the task of breaking the bottle. Meanwhile, Zedd and Ann set off in separate ways. Zedd recalls some lore that relates the chimes to Anderith and he travels there to attempt to banish the chimes. Ann infiltrates the Imperial Order in order to save the Sisters of the Light under Jagang's enslavement. However, the Sisters of the Light betray Ann to Jagang because they fear the wrath of Emperor Jagang, causing Ann to be captured. Elsewhere, we are introduced to the Machiavellian politics of Anderith. Both the Anders, black-haired people who govern the city, and the Hakens, red-haired people under the boot of Ander oppression, occupy Anderith. From an early age Hakens are kept under control and disrespected by the Anders and are taught that this oppression is a necessity to protect the Hakens from their violent ancestral ways. Most Hakens have bought into this idea and willingly subject themselves to the oppression. Anderith is being wooed by the Imperial Order in the person of Stein, who personifies the savage ruthlessness of Jagang's empire. Stein offers double the going rate for any goods that merchants, all of the Ander race, will sell to the Imperial Order. He also plots with the Minister of Culture, Bertrand Chanboor, to surrender Anderith to the Order. They begin infiltrating Imperial Order soldiers into Anderith under the guise of Special Anderian Troops. Dalton Campbell, aide to the Minister of Culture, has a hand in most events within the Anderith nation. He uses his connections, along with his squad of messengers, to accomplish underhanded tasks to ensure that the Minister will ascend to the chair of Sovereign (a religious position similar to the real world pope) when the present one passes on. Dalton treasures his wife Teresa above all else. A kitchen scullion, Fitch, is recruited into the messenger corps by Dalton. Though he has conflicting goals and values, Fitch's gratitude towards Dalton results in blind obedience and he smothers his conscience to accomplish Dalton's bidding. Ultimately Dalton betrays Fitch, who is forced to flee. Fitch determines to redeem himself by becoming the Seeker of Truth, a longtime fantasy of his. The first step to becoming Seeker is to obtain the Sword of Truth. We are also given a glimpse at the Anderith Army, which is seriously under-trained and little more than children. The Anderith Army guards the Dominie Dirtch, a defensive line of giant bell-shaped structures, seemingly made from a solid piece of dark-veined stone, which kill anything in front of them when struck. Elsewhere, Richard realizes the chimes are, in fact, loose, and so he sends Cara to Aydindril to retrieve the Sword of Truth while Richard, Kahlan and Du Chaillu (Richard's first ""wife"" and spirit woman of the Baka Ban Mana) head to Anderith to banish the chimes. Richard also deduces that the army of the Imperial Order is marching on Anderith. If the Imperial Order conquers Anderith it will be a continuing imminent threat to the rest of the midlands. Arriving in Anderith first, Zedd attempts to banish the chimes by offering them his soul. This is the cause of the chimes' presence: they don't have souls, and when Kahlan summoned them she promised them Richard's soul. However, it is not Zedd's soul the chimes want. When Zedd's attempt fails, he undergoes a transformation, becoming a raven. Richard and Kahlan arrive in Anderith and set out to look for the chimes but also work on joining Anderith with the D'Haran Empire. Word spreads and a vote is taken. While Richard makes a good plea to the people of Anderith, Dalton Campbell's interference sways the vote, leaving Richard defeated. At the same time, Kahlan struggles with the knowledge that she is with child, and the trouble that will come because of it. Meanwhile, Ann finds the captive Sisters of the Light and persuades them to come with her. Since magic is failing, Jagang's abilities as a Dream Walker are null, and Ann informs the Sisters of a bond to Richard, the Lord Rahl, that can keep them safe from the Dream Walker. However the Sisters, fearful of retribution by Jagang, betray Ann to the Imperial Order. She is left in her tent by herself when Sister Alessandra, a Sister of the Dark, begins visiting her and bringing her food. She attempts to sway Alessandra, at first to no avail but with success in the end. Dalton Campbell, along with help from a Sister of the Dark, sets a group of his messengers on Kahlan when she is off by herself pondering on whether or not to keep Richard's child. She is beaten nearly to death, but she is saved by Richard, who at first doesn't recognize her. When he finally does however, he realizes that he will be unable to heal her unless he manages to banish the chimes first. Cara almost obtains the Sword of Truth, but is beaten to it by Fitch and his friend, Morley. A combination of sheer dumb luck and the fact that the Chimes have deactivated the Wizards' Keep defenses and killed many of its guards allow Fitch and his accomplice to easily obtain the Sword. Cara gives chase and kills the friend before chasing Fitch back to Anderith. When she catches him at the Dominie Dirtch she loses the sword when Imperial Order scouts attack. The Order's soldiers collect the sword as a prize for Stein to present to Emperor Jagang. Around this time, Dalton Campbell manages to murder the Sovereign, instead of waiting for the feeble figurehead to pass naturally. This immediately pushes Bertrand Chanboor to the rank of Sovereign. The empowered Chanboor consummates his promotion by sleeping with Dalton's wife, Teresa. Dalton pretends not to be disturbed by this betrayal and even seemingly ""joins"" the web of infidelity by sleeping with both Teresa and Chanboor's wife in turn. In reality, however, Campbell is livid and even kills the Imperial Order emissary, Stein, (who had ""shared"" Teresa with Chanboor) gaining possession of the Sword of Truth in turn. Having studied the actions of Joseph Ander, the ancient founder of Anderith, Richard comes to realize that the chimes and the Dominie Dirtch are connected. More specifically, Richard comes to understand that Joseph Ander enslaved the Chimes using them to power the Dominie Dirtch. Richard finally comes to understand that by using art as a form of intent he can alter the Grace and create a new pathway for magic. Thus Richard counters the magic Ander used to enslave the Chimes and calls them forth giving the chimes a choice: The Soul, his soul (which they were promised by Kahlan) or revenge on the spirit of Ander for enslaving them. The chimes choose vengeance, taking Ander to the underworld. Once he is successful in banishing the chimes, Richard sets off to heal Kahlan but is stopped by Du Chaillu, who tells Richard that his healing powers would kill her due to a hidden subtractive magic spell that has been placed within her. Alessandra eventually frees Ann, reverts her faith back to The Creator and gives her oath to Richard. The pair soon sets off out of Anderith, and when Zedd's soul is returned to his body with the banishment of the chimes, he also departs. Richard decides to leave for Westland, where he plans to let Kahlan recover from her wounds naturally. Dalton Campbell sees them off with his apologies and informs Richard that Campbell, Chanboor, and both of their wives have become stricken with an ""unfortunate"", incurable venereal disease and have doomed themselves to a slow, agonizing demise. He returns the Sword of Truth to Richard before they set off. Richard claims he will wait in Westland until the people of the world can prove to him that they truly desire freedom."
381,The Goose Girl,fantasy," The book centers around the Crown Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee of Kildenree, a small kingdom with more powerful neighbors. As a child she bonds with her aunt, who becomes her nursemaid and constant companion. She tells Ani, as the Princess is soon nicknamed, stories about three gifts certain people have: people-speaking (the power to manipulate people and persuade them in your favor), animal-speaking (the ability to communicate primarily with animals, using their sounds) and nature-speaking (the ability to communicate with certain elements, which the aunt says is very rare). The aunt goes on to say that Ani’s mother, the Queen, has the gift of people-speaking, as do many monarchs; she also says that she herself has the gift of animal-speaking. Though when Ani asks what gift she might have, her aunt says that it is still to early to tell. The aunt however soon returns to the forest, and Ani's mother, the queen, keeps Ani from using her gift of animal-speaking, for she thinks the people will not trust her if she communicates with beasts. Later, it is revealed that the aunt died that winter. The book then jumps ahead to when Ani is fifteen or so. Her lady-in-waiting and close friend Selia, whose mother is the key-mistress, has the gift of people-speaking but is still kind. However, Ani’s inability to be sociable and perfect like her mother is soon revealed to the reader. She seeks solace in her horse, Falada, whom she can communicate with through mental communication, and goes out riding with her father the King, who is easier to get along with, but he soon dies, assumedly leaving Ani the throne. But after the funeral Ani’s mother proclaims that her eldest son, Ani’s younger brother, is inheriting the throne. She then reveals to Ani that, behind her and her father’s back, she engaged the girl to the Crown Prince of the neighboring powerful kingdom of Bayern, and that Ani is to travel there to marry him. Ani feels betrayed and even more isolated but complies. So Ani sets out through the forests to Bayern, with an entourage of guards and Selia. However, Ani observes odd activity between Selia and a guard Ungolad. Mutiny eventually ensues while Ani is absent from camp, but still watches the exchange. The mutineers, led by Selia and backed by most of the guard, decide to kill the Princess and replace her with Selia herself. Ani is forced to flee and leave behind Falada and her remaining supporters. After days in the woods, Ani collapses in the garden of a Bayern woman named Gilsa. Gilsa says that she doesn't want to know Ani's story, preferring not to get mixed up in it, so Ani assumes the identity of “Isi”, a forest-born who comes, along with others, to the Bayern capital to find work tending to animals in the capital; she adopts a Bayern accent, hides her hair (blonde, as compared to the browns and blacks in Bayern) and tells stories to her fellow animal-workers. She tends to the geese, which she can communicate with, along with a boy named Conrad, and discovers that she also has the gift of nature-speaking, with the wind. Among the many she befriends is a Royal Guard named Geric, who she talks to while out in the fields. However, her secret is discovered by her friend Enna (see ""Enna Burning""), and later she is spotted in a festival by her erstwhile guards. Later, after literally being stabbed in the back by Ungolad she flees back to Gilsa, who fixes her up again and sends her back to the capital. In the time she was gone Enna was forced to reveal Ani’s secret, and as the wedding between the Prince and Selia, who had been leading the King of Bayern to believe that Kildenree was about to launch a surprise attack on the much stronger country of Bayern, and so the military is preparing to attack before Kildenree can, is about to take place, they ride to the castle it is to take place in. She confronts Selia and learns that the 'Guard' Geric is actually the Crown Prince, so the Bayern party retires and Selia and Ani talk. However, before Selia’s now-lover Ungolad can kill Ani, Geric and the King, who had been eavesdropping behind a curtain to figure out who was the real princess was, intervene and a fight between Ani and the King’s supporters (her Forest friends and his Guards) and Selia’s supported (Kildenree’s Guard) ends in Geric and Ungolad being stabbed and Selia almost escaping. Days later, after things quiet down and Geric recovers, Ani is called to prove that Kildenree is not planning an attack on Bayern. She quickly dismisses the “proof” they have and, smarting from the accusations, goes on to show them the injustice and segregation that she had witnessed while tending to the King’s geese, and leaves them astounded. Geric later finds her on a balcony; they kiss (having fallen in love while both were lying about their true identities), and the book ends with Ani’s Forest friends rejoicing on being finally recognized as official Bayerners."
382,Clash Of The Sky Galleons,fantasy," The story is set aboard the Sky pirate ship The Galerider. Wind Jackal wants revenge against his previous quartermaster, Turbot Smeal, for burning down the Western Quays in Undertown along with most of Wind Jackal's family. Meanwhile the Leagues of Undertown begin making preparations for war with the sky pirates. The Galeriders crew encounter several dangerous traps as Wind Jackal carries out his quest to find Smeal. The crew of The Galerider are puzzled but it soon becomes clear, as it turns out in the end that the alleged Turbot Smeal was an imposter, greater and far more envious. Eventually in the end, only Wind Jackal, Quint, Tem Barkwater and Spillins the Oakelf remain of the original crew. They come to the wreck of a skyship and meet a man in a skullpelt mask who claims to be Turbot Smeal. Wind Jackal and 'Turbot Smeal' have a duel and Wind Jackal is killed. The man reveals himself to be one of the crewmembers, Thaw Daggerslash. The truth is revealed at the end of the book. The book features a massive sky battle between the Leagues of Undertown and the Sky Pirates. The Climax comes when the Leagues launch the Bringer of Doom."
383,Dead Gods,fantasy," Dead Gods is composed of two adventures which revolve around the theme of death and resurrection of a god: ""Out of the Darkness"" and ""Into the Light"". Each adventure can be played separately, although the two plots can be woven together by the Dungeon Master. ""Out of the Darkness"" consists of nine chapters. Long ago, Orcus the tanar'ri lord of the undead had grown fat and inattentive towards his realm in the Abyss. The minor demipower Kiaransalee, drow goddess of vengeance, conspired against Orcus and slew him, supplanting his realm and position and even banishing his name across the planes. Orcus’ corpse lay dead on the Astral Plane for some time, until he began to stir in the not-so-distant past. His form changed to become thin, small and shadowy, but rather than being truly restored to life he had become an undead god much less powerful than before. Orcus eventually disappeared from the Astral and chose a new name for himself: Tenebrous. He sought to gain revenge on everyone in the multiverse, and raised his former demonic servants as undead called visages to gather information to aid in his vengeance. He returned to an old base of his, a fortress on the Negative Energy Plane, and on the plane of Arborea he found a magical force called the Last Word which was potent enough to slay even a god. Kiaransalee had sent two of her drow followers to bury his powerful artifact, the Wand of Orcus, in an unreachable vault of stone on the plane of Pandemonium. In his search for his Wand, Tenebrous used the Last Word to slay Primus, the lord of the modrons, and using Primus's form he began using the modrons to search for his Wand. When the modrons discovered the two drow who had buried the Wand, Tenebrous began making preparations to take back the Abyss. The player characters must follow the clues to discover Tenebrous's scheme and keep the Wand away from him long enough for the power of the Last Word to consume him; if they succeed, the characters must then stop one of Orcus's followers from reviving his corpse on the Astral Plane yet again, to conclude the adventure. ""Into the Light"" consists of three parts, and takes place in the city of Sigil. Many years ago, the last worshippers of a dead god brought the pieces of his body from the Astral Plane to Sigil and used the body to construct a monument of five standing stones. Some time later, when the significance of the monument had been forgotten, adherents of another religion built a temple around the standing stones; in time, this religion died out and was forgotten too. This church stood vacant for centuries until bought by a wealthy man named Cruigh Manathas, who ordered his workmen to tear it down. The workmen disappeared one day – unknown to all, they had been absorbed into the standing stones, as were those who came to investigate what happened to the workmen. Secretly, a fighter named Argesh Fiord has been in control of the situation and is using it in an attempt to foment a war between some of the city's factions in revenge for the death of his wife. The player characters must uncover Fiord's plot in order to resolve the matter and prevent the war."
384,Conan of the Isles,fantasy," When King Conan is in his mid 60s, the kingdom of Aquilonia is attacked by Red Shadows, sorcerous sendings of unknown origin. To track them to their source and eliminate the threat, the king abdicates in favor of his son Prince Conn and takes ship for the far west with his old comrade Sigurd of Vanaheim. The quest takes them to the islands of Antillia and into conflict with the wizard priests of the dark god Xotli. The book ends with Conan literally sailing off into the sunset: ""A few hours later, the great ship, which the folk of Mayapan were to call Quetzlcoatl – meaning 'winged (or feathered) serpent' in their uncouth tongue – lifted anchor. She sailed south and then, skirting the Antillian Isles, into the unknown West. But whither, the ancient chronicle, which endeth here, sayeth not."""
385,Storm Warning,fantasy," When Storm Warning begins, we meet Emperor Charliss, the Eastern Emperor (first mentioned in Winds of Fury). He knows he is dying and must name a successor. Grand Duke Tremane, a Commander in the Army, is currently his favorite choice. Tremane is sent to Hardorn, a country the Imperial Army recently invaded after the Hardornen King, Ancar, was killed by a group of assassins from Valdemar. Tremane understands that he must succeed in this mission or he will be killed. Meanwhile, in Haven, the capital city of Valdemar, An'desha shena Jor'ethan, a young Shin'a'in Adept, is feeling lonely. While Adept Firesong k'Treva, his lover, is perfectly at home in Haven, An'desha feels left out and alien. He spends almost all of his time in Firesong's ekele, an environment something like a cross between a sukkah and a treehouse and something like the flets of the elves in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where he meditates and tends the plants in the garden. However, he has been having premonitions of approaching doom. Neither he nor Firesong can explain these premonitions. Also, An'desha has an Adept-class (the highest level of ability of magic) potential, but refuses to be trained, believing his powers to be tainted by Falconsbane, by whom An'desha was earlier possessed. Ambassador Ulrich of Karse has been sent with his assistant, Karal Austreben, a novice Sun-priest, to negotiate peace between Karse and Valdemar. At the border, a single escort arrives, who seems to Karal to be some sort of Court official dressed in white and mounted on a white stallion; he later discovers this man is a Herald. As they ride north, Karal examines himself and his attitudes towards the people of Valdemar and the Heralds. Karsites are taught to fear the Heralds and Mages, who are said to have ""witch powers"". On their arrival in Haven they are greeted by the Seneschal, Lord Palinor, Kyril, the Seneschal's Herald, and Prince-Consort Daren. Karel is glad of the rest, but as the weeks pass, begins to feel lonely. Talia, the Queen's Own Herald, introduces him to An'desha. Karal and Ulrich, much to Firesong's chagrin and jealousy, help An'desha to become less afraid of his power, as well as to become more independent."
386,The Eternal Lover,fantasy," A cliff-dwelling warrior of 100,000 years ago, Nu, is magically transported to the present, falls in love with Victoria Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, the reincarnation of his lost lover Nat-ul, and the two are transported back to the Stone Age. The story is set in Africa, and the present-day sequences guest star Victoria's brother Barney Custer, protagonist of Burroughs's Ruritanian novel The Mad King, as well as his iconic hero Tarzan from his Tarzan novels."
387,Threshold,fantasy," Set in the Egypt-like kingdom of Ashdod and primarily narrated by the glass-working slave Tirzah, the novel takes place during the final stages of the construction of the titular Threshold, an enormous glass-clad pyramid. Designed by the Magi, an order of mathematically-obsessed sorcerers, it is meant to open a gateway into Infinity, allowing the Magi to pass through and unite themselves with the One, an abstract proto-Platonic ideal of perfection. When the pyramid is activated, however, it instead allows the demonic entity Nzame to cross from Infinity into Ashdod, taking control of its people and turning most of the land into stone and black glass. Among those who escape are Tirzah, who is secretly a ""cantomancer,"" able to communicate with the spirits of objects, principally those of glass, and her former master, the conflicted Magus Boaz, who may hold the key to the destruction of both Nzame and Threshold. Characters Tirzah Magus Boaz"
388,Forsaken House,fantasy," Araevin Teshurr is an elven mage who spends time with a company of human and dwarven adventurers. Upon returning to the elves' secluded home of Evermeet, he becomes embroiled in a deadly attack perpetrated by a group of outcast demon-elves, freed from their 5,000-year imprisonment and seeking revenge. While searching for a trio of mysterious magical stones, Araevin must convince the elves to end their isolation from the rest of Faerun, and band together with the other races to prevent the demon army from overrunning the world."
389,In the Empire of Shadow,fantasy," A group from this world is trapped in a science fiction universe. Before the galactic government will send them home, they must agree to travel back to the fantasy universe first, in order to assess the power of the evil wizard who runs the place and any potential risks posed to the galactic empire."
390,Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi,fantasy," After a brief flashback to 1920, with a glimpse of Indiana Jones as a college student in Chicago, the novel moves to its main setting. The year is 1922. Indy is a graduate student in Paris, studying linguistics and Greek archaeology. Although his greater talent currently seems to be for the former, he begins to wonder if he might be better suited for a different career after he receives a surprising invitation from his professor. Following an archaeology lecture to her class on the Greek city of Delphi, Professor Dorian Belecamus announces that she will be leaving the university for the rest of the semester in order to return to Delphi to oversee the recovery of an archaeological find, discovered recently in the wake of an earthquake in the region. After class, to Indy's surprise, she privately invites him to join her on the journey as her assistant, telling him that he is her best student and that she feels he could be very helpful on the expedition. After some consideration, Indy decides to accept the professor's offer in the hopes that assisting in such an exciting undertaking may very well lead him to a more intriguing and adventurous career than world of linguistics may have to offer. He, of course, has no idea exactly how true those ideas will prove to be as he embarks on a journey filled with mysterious figures, deceptive intentions and a lot more waiting for him Delphi than he ever expected."
391,Shadows Return,fantasy," After their victory in Aurënen, Alec and Seregil have returned home to Rhíminee. But with most of their allies dead or away, it is difficult for them to settle in. Hoping for diversion, they accept an assignment from queen Phoria to go to Seregil's homeland and call Klia to Skala. En route, however, they are ambushed and separated, and both are sold into slavery to the Plenimarans. There they are bought by the alchemist Yhakobin who hopes to use Alec's Hâzadrielfaie blood to create a rhekaro, a sexless creture that can heal everything and prolong life. The first doesn't meet his expectations and he has it butchered. By the time he makes a second one, Seregil and Alec escape, the first with the help of a servant woman and the second by picking his lock. Knowing that the rhekaro will die without his blood and reminding himself of the Dragon Oracle's prophecy, Alec takes him along, while Seregil brings his betrayer, Ilar í Sontir, to show them a secret tunnel. The atmosphere is initially tense when Alec finds Ilar's identity and Seregil, too, has doubts about the uncommon-looking child, but they fare well for several days, with Alec's hunting skills and the food they had stolen. Later, the rhekaro, whom Alec names Sebrahn, shows extraordinary healing powers, which they use to get rid of their slave brands so that they are not found out by other slavers. Near the port they are found by their former master. Ilar flees in panic, but Alec and Seregil stand firm. The archers target Seregil but Alec jumps in front of him and is killed. Anguished, Seregil kills Yhakobin before Sebrahn starts singing and kills the soldiers. His tears then fall on Alec's wound and create the white blossoms that the alchemist had been trying to create and brings him back to life. During this time Alec's shade quickly finds Thero and directs him and Micum to Seregil. Thero helps them they continue their journey, but they are soon found by a necromancer, presumably sent to retrieve the rekharo. When Thero can't stop him, Sebrahn sings again and kills him. To gether they get aboard and head for Aurënen. On their landing, Magyana lays eyes upon the child and says she sees the a dragon in his aura."
392,Fortune's Fool,fantasy," Fortune’s Fools is a story involving Ekaterina (Katya), youngest daughter of the Sea King and Prince Sasha of Led Belarus, seventh son of King Pieter. The novel starts with Katya being sent by her father to investigate rumours of bad news on the island of Nippon. Unlike the majority of Sea People, Katya is magically amphibious and is used by her father to spy on Drylanders (humans). Due to tasting dragon’s blood, Katya is able to speak with animals and is also able to speak and understand foreign languages. In Nippon, Katya is able to help a kitsune stop an evil sorceress from conquering the island and gains a valuable gift. The gift is a origami crane that can be sent to pass messages to people Katya knows or magically target someone who she needs. The Sea King sends her on another reconnaissance mission to Led Belarus, under the suspicion that it is too quiet and is a target for evil forces. Katya finds out that Prince Sasha is using his powers as a Seventh Son, a Fortunate Fool, and a Songweaver to subtly manipulate the Tradition into making Led Belarus a peaceful and prosperous kingdom. As the pair has no royal duties to fulfil, they decide to spend time with each other and fall in love. Soon Katya is sent on another mission, to investigate the disappearance of magical maidens near the castle of the Katschei. In disguise, Katya is kidnapped and taken to the castle by a Jinn. Since he has taken over the castle, the Tradition forces him to kidnap young woman, the Jinn uses that to his advantage and kidnaps magical girls so he can take their magic. Although the Jinn is able to sense when the girls use magic, Katya tries to convince the others to escape. She sends out her paper bird to seek help from the nearest Champions. When no sign of Katya arrives, Sasha decides to go after her despite not knowing her location. On the guidance of some witches, Sasha travels to the forest where Baba Yaga resides because she has something he needs. Sasha pretends to be a deaf-mute and becomes Baba Yaga’s temporary servant. Baba Yaga sets him up with the task of cleaning her stables where he meets Sergi, the Humpbacked Horse and frees him along with Baba Yaga’s steed, a Wise (intelligent) goat, and her tracker, a Wise Wolf. During the escape, Sasha ends up in the Kingdom of the Copper Mountain and is able to convince its Queen to help him. She sends him towards the Sea King and the Sea King sends him to two Dragons, the champions who found Katya’s bird. Meanwhile, Katya and the growing number of girls are able to work out they can use the Law of Names to re-seal the Jinn into his bottle. However finding the bottle itself proves difficult in a castle guarded by men and the Jinn himself. Sasha and the dragons, Gina and Adamant, try to work out a plan to save the girls and stop the Jinn. The trio also manage to convince the Queen of the Copper Mountain to lead them aid. Using Sergi as a messenger, the captives and the rescuers are able to work out a plan of attack. Katya sends the girls to escape via tunnels dug by the Copper Mountain subjects and sets out to confront the Jinn with help from the dragons and Sasha. The battle becomes a stalemate until the Queen appears to lend them the power of Earth. Katya seals the Jinn in his bottle and has Sergi send him back to the City of Brass. In the epilogue of the story, the castle of Katschei becomes the Belarus Chapter of the Champions Order of Glass Mountain. The majority of the cast are affiliated with the order and spend their time living happily ever after."
393,"R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH",fantasy," When two children named Margaret and Artie are lost during a camping trip, they are found by the colony of rats, specifically one named Christopher. The children help the rat community with various tasks, and Artie and Christopher become very close friends. However, when winter comes, the rats cannot shelter the children and must send them back. The children try to keep the secret of Thorn Valley, but after pressure, Margaret ends up revealing it. The story ends with a party of adults traveling to Thorn Valley to discover the rats' colony only to discover an empty, apparently uninhabited plot of land with all traces of the colony removed. The whereabouts and fate of the rats of NIMH are left unstated, though Artie did find a gift from Christopher, a picture of an arrow, presumably pointing to the new location of the colony."
394,Secrets of the Clans,fantasy," There is no actual plot to the book, as it is a field guide, but it has several mini-stories within it as well as a tour around both the forest and lake camps of the Clans, guided by one of the warrior cats, and the ceremonies for different positions, as well as general guides. The beginning of the book tells the story of how the Clans came to be in the first place. This section describes that before the Clans it was every cat for themselves. Then the members of the dead come and visit the living cats, telling them to unite or die. Four cats named Thunder, Wind, River, and Shadow volunteered to be leaders of a single Clan, but they were so different that they became four different Clans. The tale forgets to mention a cat named Sky, but this was probably because Firestar's Quest hadn't been released yet. The section of the Cats in the Clans begins with the leader of the Clan at the time of publication saying something about their Clan, followed by a short fact file, a map and guided tour of both territories, a short story narrated by one of the cats, and the significant leaders and medicine cats of the Clan. In the case of StarClan, there is a brief guide as to what a cat must be to get into StarClan and the story of Snowfur, Bluestar's sister. For the groups that cannot be classified as Clans (SkyClan not included), there is little more than a fact file featuring Clan character, habitat, their version of leader and deputy, and notable history, as well as a short story about it. There is also a quick guide to all of the loners, rogues, and kittypets featured in the Warriors series. This group of sections features a quick guide to both the habitats (forest and lake) of the Warrior cats, as well as Fourtrees, Highstones, the Moonpool, the Island, sun-drown-place, and a story of how the Moonstone was discovered. This section features what happens in the ceremony to initiate a new cat of a certain position, using a specific cat as an example, including how they felt about becoming that position. It also features all of Firestar's nine lives and a guide to all of the medicine cat herbs. In this section, we learn that the Warriors have a small mythology featuring three Clans with wild cats: LionClan, TigerClan, and LeopardClan (actually cheetahs). There is the story of how LeopardClan won the river, how the snakes of Sunningrocks came to the forest, and how TigerClan got their stripes. There are general guides as well, such as a guide to the prophecies in the Warriors series and other, non-prey animals that inhabit their homes."
395,The Last Olympian,fantasy," In order to try to head off Kronos' approach by sea, Percy and Beckendorf attempt to destroy his ship, the Princess Andromeda. However, Kronos, still possessing Luke Castellan, is not caught off guard, and Beckendorf sacrifices his life to destroy the ship, while Percy dives overboard and passes out from contact with Kronos' scythe when battling him on the ship. Percy is awakened by his half-brother Tyson, the cyclops. He finds that he is in his father Poseidon's underwater palace, which is under siege by the forces of the Titan Oceanus. Percy wants to stay and help fight with his father, but Poseidon sends Percy back to Camp Half-Blood. At Camp Half-Blood, Chiron decides it is time for Percy to hear the ""Great Prophecy."" Percy informs the camp that there is a spy among them, someone who has been informing the Titans for years, but they put it aside until the bigger issues at hand are dealt with, such as the impending war against Kronos. Soon after arriving, Percy leaves again with Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, to find out Nico's plan for Percy to survive the battle, as mentioned at the end of The Battle of the Labyrinth. After visiting Luke's mother in Westport, Connecticut, and talking with Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home, Percy procures a blessing from his mother, which will allow him to descend into the Underworld for the second time. Here, Nico betrays Percy for information on his past, but then helps Percy to escape from confinement. The two boys then follow through with the original plan, which was for Percy to bathe in the River Styx and gain Achilles' power. Percy emerges from the Underworld in New York City, leaving Nico behind. Percy calls Annabeth and tells her it's time for the battle to begin. The campers, alongside Chiron, arrive and Percy organizes them (minus the Ares cabin, who refused to fight), and prepares them for an urban battle. They enter Olympus through the Empire State Building to prepare and meet Hermes, who is furious with Annabeth. He believes that she could have stopped the war by helping Luke before he was possessed, saying he would have listened to her. Before the battle begins, New York City is silenced by way of a powerful sleeping spell from Morpheus, the god of dreams, that puts all mortals to sleep. Despite being joined by the Hunters of Artemis; satyrs; naiads; dryads and other tree nymphs; Chiron's centaur cousins the Party Ponies, automatons fashioned by the late Daedalus; and the hellhound Mrs. O'Leary; Percy's forces are consistently forced back by sheer numbers. Kronos is not without losses, as Percy buffets the Titan Lord's brother, Hyperion, into submission, from where Grover's nature powers encase the Titan of the East in a massive maple tree. Annabeth is badly injured when she saves Percy from a blade thrown by Ethan, son of Nemesis, that would have hit Percy in his Achilles point and would have most likely been a fatal injury. Percy tells Annabeth this, informing her that his weak spot is the small of his back. Upon falling asleep, Percy has dreams of Kronos questioning Ethan about where Percy's Achilles spot was, but Ethan doesn't know. Rachel, a mortal who can see through the Mist, flies from a family island vacation to New York to tell Percy that he is not the hero of the Great Prophecy, and that it will influence his choice when he turns 16. More than that, she doesn't know who the hero mentioned in the Great Prophecy is. She also informs Percy that the Titans have a monster on their side that only a child of Ares could destroy, but the Ares cabin remains at camp. The monster arrives, and the campers learn that it is a drakon, a monster similar to, but more destructive than, a dragon. Right when all hope seems lost, an unknown camper posing as Clarisse tries to slaughter it but is badly wounded. The real Clarisse arrives on a flying chariot and kills the drakon by herself. The campers find out that the first ""Clarisse"" was Silena. She admits that she pretended to be Clarisse because that was the only way she could convince the rest of the Ares cabin to come and fight. With her last few breaths, Silena confesses she was the spy all along. She dies a hero, and not a traitor. Driven back to the blocks surrounding the Empire State building, Percy and his friends fight in a last stand to protect Mount Olympus from the massive army Kronos has amassed. Even when Hades arrives with his army, Kronos still manages to break through and enter Olympus. Percy and Kronos, in Luke's body, battle in the throne room of Olympus, without either side gaining a significant advantage. Ethan rebels against Kronos at the last minute, trying to kill him, but his sword ricochets back into his stomach. With his dying breath, he tells Percy that minor gods deserve better before falling into a fissure created by Kronos. Luke is shocked back into his non-evil self when Annabeth helps him remember his promise of family to her when he brutally smashes her across the throne room. The Great Prophecy hinges on Percy's decision to give Luke Annabeth's dagger rather than attempt to kill Luke himself. Luke injures himself at his mortal point (under his left armpit) and uses all his power in one strike on Kronos. With his dying breaths, Luke tells Percy that the minor gods should also have cabins at Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth tells Luke that she loved him as a brother, but Percy was the one she had always and truly loved. Luke sacrifices himself for Olympus and becomes the hero of the prophecy. Percy becomes the half-blood of the prophecy that would ""reach sixteen against all odds,"" ending the war on the dawn of his 16th birthday. With Poseidon ambushing Typhon at the Hudson River, the Olympians manage to defeat him. Returning to the throne room, they grant Percy, Grover, Annabeth, Thalia, and Tyson rewards at the conclusion of their various quests. Percy, refusing godhood for himself, forces the gods to swear on the River Styx that they will recognize all of their children by the time they turn thirteen, Luke's dying wish. At camp, new cabins are built for every god, including Hades and all the minor gods. Rachel Elizabeth Dare becomes the new Oracle and speaks the next Great Prophecy- Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. To storm or fire, the world must fall. An oath to keep with the final breath, and foes bear arms to the Doors of Death Athena promises Annabeth that she will be the architect that redesigns a decimated Mount Olympus. Grover becomes a Lord of the Wild and a member of the Council of the Cloven Elders. Tyson is rewarded as well, by becoming general of the Cyclopes&#39; army and being given a &#34;stick&#34; (i.e. a new club). Percy is given the choice to become immortal, and a god, but he refuses. Afterward, Annabeth wishes Percy happy birthday and then kisses him. Percy gets the feeling that &#34;my brain was melting through my body&#34;. The other campers spy on them and dumps them in the canoe lake. Percy and Annabeth kiss underwater, and from there, start a relationship. Soon after, they immediately start work on the new cabins, rejecting the &#34;horseshoe&#34; style arrangement of the twelve Olympian god&#39;s cabins and instead adding more and more. Chiron praises Percy towards the end of camp, and Annabeth and the other campers cheer him on. Percy silently meets again with Hestia, and she gives him a smile and a wink, showing that she is proud of her young nephew. Percy and Annabeth run into the mortal world with Percy narrating, &#34;For once, I didn&#39;t look back.&#34;"
396,Majo no Takkyūbin,fantasy," The book follows Kiki, a young witch. Her mother is also a witch, but her father is not. Kiki is now thirteen and must spend a year on her own in a town without other witches. She must use her magic abilities to earn her living. She is accompanied by her cat Jiji."
397,Deep Wizardry,fantasy," Nita's family goes on vacation with Kit and his dog, Ponch, to the South Shore of Long Island. One night, while Nita is swimming in the ocean, she finds a dolphin in the water. She greets it with The Speech, the magical language of Wizardry. The dolphin excitedly replies ""A Wizard!"" and swims away. Kit and Nita meet at the shore, and Kit tells of Nita of the rocks on a jetty; something bad is coming to the shores, and the rocks remember in fear. Kit and Nita go out the next night to search for the dolphin, much to the suspicion of Nita's parents. They prepare a spell to walk on the water. The dolphin finds them and tells them that a wizard is being attacked. They are carried by the dolphin to a nearby beach, where they see a pack of sharks attempting to devour a humpback whale wizard named S'reee, who is also being defended by a group of dolphins. Kit and Nita freeze the sharks, shielding S'reee and the dolphins, but later release the sharks at S'reee's request, since holding the shield would slowly suffocate them. Nita heals her, and Nita and Kit return to the beach house, exhausted, where they discover from their manuals they are on active assignment again. S'reee is in charge of organizing the Song of the Twelve, a gathering of wizards to play out the story of the time when the Lone Power, the source of all evil, tempted the sea creatures. As the story goes, three whales accepted the Gift, three were undecided, and three rejected it. A Tenth whale, the Silent Lord, was the final vote for all the whales. Instead of accepting, refusing, or not choosing, she killed herself, and was eaten by the Master Shark. This action bound the Lone Power for a time, and succeeding Songs have kept it bound. S'reee and the other whales are short of wizards willing to sing in the Song, and ask Nita and Kit to help. Nita volunteers herself to be the Silent Lord, as she doesn't believe she has a good singing voice. S'reee takes Nita and Kit with her to help find other whales for the upcoming Song. Nita, since she has shared blood with S'reee while healing her, turns into a humpback whale without external aids. Kit is given a whalesark by S'reee—a wizardly web which turns him into an enormous sperm whale. After their first day out in the ocean, Kit and Nita return home very late, and Nita's parents don't want them outside anymore. The next day, Nita and Kit use wizardry to sneak out of the house to help S'reee find more whales for the Song. Kit and Nita meet Ed'Rashekaresket (or Ed), the Pale Slayer, a shark who is to be present for the Song. Then, Nita discovers to her horror that the Silent Lord is actually eaten at the end of the Song; instead of just a play-reenactment, as she had imagined, the effectiveness of the wizardry requires the repetition of the sacrifice. Since Nita is sworn to the role, she cannot pull out, or the whole Song will be sabotaged, killing millions. Meanwhile, outside of Long Island, the sea floor is starting to act up, giving signs that the Lone Power's binding is weakening. Large krakens (mutated giant squids) are attacking the wizards underwater, and volcanic vents are increasing the temperature. Nita realizes that she can't back out of the Song now, because this destruction will eventually becomes large enough to destroy the entire Eastern Seaboard. Nita and Kit return to their home, very late at night. Dairine finds them, gives them their clothes (when they turn into whales, they can't be wearing anything) and allows them time to dry off and prepare an explanation for Nita's mom and dad. Nita and Kit, in the face of her parents' demands for an explanation, decide to reveal wizardry to her parents. Kit and Nita levitate and walk on water, but Nita's dad insists on hypnosis. Finally frustrated, Kit and Nita take them to the Moon - so they could see the Earth from above. This finally convinces Nita's parents to accept the fact of wizardry, and allow them to save the Eastern Seaboard. However, Nita doesn't tell them about her upcoming sacrifice. Their trouble with the parents now over, Kit and Nita go to bed to prepare for the singing of the Song. Dairine looks at Nita's Book, and discovers she can read parts of it - a sign she also has wizardly talent. Nita and Kit leave the beach house and meet S'reee, who takes them to the practice area for the Song. Nita meets the other whales in the Song, and talks to Ed about death. She realizes that Ed is the only creature in the ocean who is still alive from the first Song of the Twelve. The two become very unlikely friends. The procession (the ten whales including Nita and S'reee, Kit as security and Ed as the Master) start to descend into Hudson Canyon. They are relentlessly attacked by kraken and other monsters until they reach the site of the Sea's Tooth, the traditional place where the song is held. S'reee talks about how one Song went wrong, and a continent fell into the ocean; Kit and Nita realize she is referring to Atlantis. The Song goes decently, until one of the whales loses her will and succumbs to the tempting of the Lone Power. She escapes, but returns to allow the Krakens to attack the Singers. S'reee remakes the spell with Kit in the song. Nita goes to perform her sacrifice, but the Lone Power emerges from its binding as an enormous serpent. A fierce battle ensues. Kit reverts to whale speech, showing that the whalesark is in danger of failing. Ed asks Nita for her wizardry power; she gives it to him, and he finishes her part of the Song. He then attacks the Serpent, who wounds him. The Master Shark's blood in the water calls all the sharks in the area to him; they devour his body, and the Serpent, and the krakens. The Song is completed, and though unusually, it still binds the Lone One. Nita and Kit return to the beach house, exhausted. They promise to tell the story to Nita's parents as soon as they are better. Nita checks her manual, and discovers that a payment she and Kit owed to the Powers That Be was paid by the Life Service. She and Kit go out into the ocean one last time, and enter Timeheart: the center of the Universe, where no one dies. They get a last glimpse of Ed, before Kit asks for the Powers to bring them their next job. Nita agrees."
398,Debt of Bones,fantasy," During the war against D'Hara, a young woman meets with Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, Wizard of the First Order in order to force him to pay a debt of bones he owes her and save her child. In so doing, she initiates the series of events leading up to the end of the war with D'Hara and the division of the Westlands, Midlands, and D'Hara by the boundaries."
399,The Once and Future King,fantasy," Most of the book ""takes place on the isle of Gramarye"", and it chronicles the raising and educating of King Arthur, his rule as a king, and the romance between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenever. It ends immediately before Arthur's final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. Though White admits his book's source material is loosely derived from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur), he reinterprets the epic events, filling them with renewed meaning for a world enduring the Second World War. The book is divided into four parts: *The Sword in the Stone (1938) *The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939) (published separately in somewhat different form as The Witch in the Wood) *The Ill-Made Knight (1940) (which is the longest book and focuses mostly on the character Lancelot) *The Candle in the Wind (First published in the composite edition, 1958) A final part called The Book of Merlyn (written 1941, published 1971) was published separately (ISBN 0-292-70769-X) following White's death. It chronicles Arthur's final lessons from Merlyn before his death, although some parts of it were incorporated into the final editions of the previous books. An often quoted passage from the book is the story that the badger calls his ""dissertation,"" a retelling of the Creation story from Genesis."
400,The Sky People,fantasy," In this alternate universe, life exists on Venus and Mars. Because of this discovery, the United States and the Soviet Union have poured all their resources into space exploration, sending their best and brightest to colonize Venus and Mars. Although there have been a few outbreaks of hostilities on Earth, an uneasy détente exists in space between the Americans and Russians who are struggling for supremacy, supported by their respective allies. The European Union is also anxious not to be excluded from this neo-colonial race but is far behind the other powers. In 1962 the USSR drops planetary probes on Venus and discovers people, both Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis, on the planet. Crewed flights by the Soviets and later by the Americans establish bases on the planet (the American one named Jamestown; the Soviet one Cosmograd) and find other familiar species, including dinosaurs. Both fauna and flora are strangely similar to those from Earth's past. In 1988, Lieutenant Marc Vitrac, a Ranger in the US Aerospace Force, has been on the planet for a year. Born in a Cajun family amidst the Louisiana bayous, his primary function is exploration of the vast wild lands but in the beginning of the novel he is tapped to welcome newcomers to the colony. The new arrivals are somewhat taken back by the ceratopsia used as a shuttle bus. The dinosaur has been “iced” by the insertion of an Internal Control Device into its brain, which allows the creature to be controlled with messages sent directly to the brain. These new arrivals include Cynthia Whitlock, a young African-American specialist, and Wing Commander Christopher Blair, a supposedly British linguist. As with all the Terrans on the planet, Cynthia and Blair also have other skills. Blair spends most of his time in the nearby town of Kartahown extending their knowledge of one of the native languages. As the story progresses many of the characters comment about how similar evolution has progressed on Venus and on Earth. Naturally, the scientists at the Jamestown base are puzzled by the seeming parallel evolutions. Although the base doesn't have any means to check the DNA (as in this alternate timeline, the majority of research funding has been spent on space travel), other tests indicate that the natives are closely related to Terrans. The fossil record is very spotty, with occasional infusions of new species, but no one has an explanation as to why there are humans and other Earth animals and plants on Venus. On another part of Venus, an unknown, external force interferes with the computer on a Soviet shuttle, causing it to crash land in the unexplored wild lands. The Soviets ask for American assistance to recover the crew. The airship Vepaja, with Captain Tyler commanding, is selected for the rescue attempt and Marc, Cynthia, and Chris are chosen as the crew. Jadviga Binkis, wife of the Soviet shuttle commander, is also included in the crew. Marc also takes his greatwolf pup, Tahyo, with them. The weather, animals, mechanical failure and sabotage from an unknown enemy eventually forces the group to abandon the airship. Once they arrive at their destination they find themselves in the midst of a civil war between the very human Cloud Mountain People and the Neanderthals. Additionally, an alien AI is annoyed at the Terrans for interfering with the Venusians. The AI is sapient, but not sentient and is able to control both Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis within a short range. Unsure as to what to do, the AI calls for its creator race to return. Additionally, Blair discovers that the Cloud People speak a Proto-Indo-European language, indicating that the creator race has taken Homo Sapiens from earth and seeded them on Venus within the last several thousand years. The group sides with the Cloud Mountain People, Marc having fallen in love with their princess, and help them defeat the Neanderthals. The Cloud Mountain People’s lands were destroyed, however, by a biological weapon on board the downed Russian shuttle. Marc thus leads the Cloud Mountain People on a five thousand mile overland journey back to Jamestown to settle around the base and brings with him an alien artifact that may be evidence of the alien race that brought life to Venus and Mars."
401,Escape from the Forest,fantasy," The book opens to Sasha refusing Tigerstar's offer to join ShadowClan. Shocked, Tigerstar tells her that the two of them would be feared, to which she replies that she would rather be loved. Their conversation turns into an argument, and Sasha insists that Tigerstar's plans go against the Warrior Code. When she sticks with her decision to not join ShadowClan, Tigerstar tells her that she will now always be nothing, and walks off into the forest. Back at her den, Sasha thinks about her heartbreak, and dreams of Ken coming, finding her, and taking her home. She makes her way out of the forest, realizing that she has no place there anymore. She bumps into Pine, and tells him that she is leaving. He acts very disappointed, but wishes her luck. Sasha returns to where she used to live with Ken and Jean, and is chased away by the Twolegs that is now living there. She explores all over Twolegplace, looking for Ken in stores and on the street. In a secondhand clothing store, Sasha catches Ken's scent and finds one of his coats. She begins to realize that something is very wrong with Ken. As she roams Twolegplace, Sasha meets up with two BloodClan warriors, and narrowly escapes. Wandering and wandering, she makes her way onto a tour boat, where she curls up and goes to sleep. When Sasha wakes up, the floor is shaking. She runs outside to jump off, only to find that the boat is surrounded by water. She is spotted by the tourists, who believe her to be a ship cat, and the captain shuts her in a cupboard. Let off the boat, she notices that the captain looks lonely and sad. When she sneaks back onto the boat, she begins to attract many customers to the boat service as ""Brownie the Famous Ship's Cat."" One night, she even prevents two saboteurs from burning the boat. Because she brings happiness to the captain, she keeps staying longer, even though she wants to go. One day when the boat is out, Sasha finds a bag with a very young cat inside it in the water. The captain takes him home and names him Patch, paying more attention to him than to Sasha. The spring thaw arrives, and the captain ties up the boat prepares to go elsewhere. Sasha decides not to go with the captain and Patch because she now knows that she is going to have kits, and wants them born in the forest. Patch is sad, but he understands. Snow starts to fall as Sasha walks away, symbolizing the start of leaf-bare. The cover features Tigerstar."
402,Dawn,fantasy," Brambleclaw, Squirrelpaw, Crowpaw, Stormfur and Tawnypelt have returned to the Clans from a quest with a message: the Clans must move to a new home, or risk death. The destruction of the forest has already begun, with the Clans starving as the food supply has been cut off and their habitat destroyed by the humans building a new road. At the same time, cats are being taken away by humans, including a ThunderClan apprentice, Leafpaw. A patrol is sent to rescue the captured cats, but Graystripe is captured after he succeeds in rescuing Leafpaw and other cats from RiverClan and WindClan, as well as many non-Clan cats. It is difficult for Firestar, ThunderClan's leader, to convince ShadowClan and RiverClan to leave. Finally, RiverClan decides to leave when their river becomes poisoned by humans. ShadowClan also agrees to leave when a tree cut down by humans falls in their camp. While trying help ShadowClan, Firestar loses his fourth life when a tree falls on him. Midnight, an intelligent badger from the pervious book, had told the questing cats that a ""dying warrior"" will show the Clans the way to their new home. The dying warrior turns out to be the spirit of Mudfur, the RiverClan medicine cat who died earlier. As the Clans' spiritual ancestors are represented by the star, Mudfur ""runs"" though the night sky as a shooting star and drops behind the mountains, showing the new territory will be beyond the mountains. The Clans travel together through the mountains, guided by Brambleclaw, Squirrelpaw, Crowpaw, Tawnypelt, and Stormfur. While in the mountains, the Clans meet the Tribe of Rushing Water and Stormfur chooses to stay with the Tribe with Brook Where Small Fish Swim, whom he has fallen in love with, and his sister, Feathertail's, spirit. Near the end of the book, Squirrelpaw confesses her love to Brambleclaw and he confesses that he loves her back. At the end of the book, the Clans discover a forest around a lake that reflects all of the stars."
403,Elantris,fantasy," The book focuses on three principal characters whose experiences are strongly intertwined with and often direct the course of the plot. Much of the book occurs in groupings of three chapters each, one for each of the three main characters. *Raoden, the prince of Arelon, is taken by the Shaod (The profound physical transformation through which one becomes Elantrian. Elantrians look different than they were before the transformation. They cannot die or be killed, except by drastic measures, such as burning or beheading. Their bodies do not repair themselves. They do feel pain, which gradually increases as injuries accumulate. They do not need to eat, but still have hunger pains.) at the beginning of the book, and is whisked off to live in the cursed city of Elantris, once, with its inhabitants, the wonder of the world. Persons transformed by the Shaod are treated as dead by those outside Elantris. Raoden's story line centers on his efforts to improve the Elantrian way of life beyond the anarchy to which it succumbed when Elantris fell. *Sarene, Raoden's political bride whom he has never personally met, arrives in Arelon held by a legally binding contract that says she is married to the prince, even if he is dead. Widow of a supposedly dead prince and a new member of the mostly ill-suited Arelon nobility, she struggles to find out just what is going on, and to help the downtrodden common people, even the people of Elantris. Sarene's story line deals with her attempts to stabilize and improve the monarchy, and to prevent Hrathen's intended revolution. *Hrathen, a Derethi gyorn (high-ranking priest), also soon arrives in Arelon, with a mandate to convert the country to the Shu Dereth religion within three months time, or his religion's armies will come to wipe out the city. Hrathen's story line focuses on his efforts at political maneuvering to sway the Arelene aristocracy and place a converted Derethi on the throne, and on his struggles to come to terms with the religion he is supposed to believe. The story threads intertwine with each other (Sarene's and Hrathen's from almost the beginning of the book) and merge in the culmination of the book's climax."
404,The Probability Broach,fantasy," Edward William ""Win"" Bear is a Ute Indian who works for the Denver Police Department in a version of the United States projected (by 1986) to be controlled by an anti-business, ecofascist faction complete with a new Federal Security Police (FSP, or ""SecPol"" as it is more commonly known) reminiscent of the Gestapo. Called to investigate the unusual murder of physicist Vaughn Meiss, Bear eventually finds himself projected into the NAC by means of the ""Probability Broach,"" an interdimensional conduit originally developed as a means for interstellar travel in the NAC by the dolphin physicist Ooloorie Eckickeck P'Wheet and her human compatriot, the gorgeous Dr. Dora Jayne Thorens. Win encounters his NAC counterpart, Edward William ""Ed"" Bear, and Ed's neighbors, most notably the beautiful ""healer"" Clarissa Olson and the incorrigible Lucy Kropotkin, who is later revealed to be 135 years old. Lucy's life becomes the vantage point by which Win is acclimated to life in the NAC and Laporte (the NAC equivalent to Denver). Win and Ed unravel the mystery of the Meiss murder, learning that he was killed to hide an effort by SecPol to conquer the NAC with the help of Hamiltonian forces on the NAC side, led by John Jay Madison, a.k.a. the infamous Prussian expatriate and 1918 war hero Manfred von Richthofen, known here as the Red Knight of Prussia. Win, Ed, Lucy and Clarissa lead the effort to notify the nascent NAC government of the threat. En route to the meeting of the Continental Congress, Ed & Clarissa are kidnapped, leaving Win & Lucy to reveal the plot. After fighting (and winning) a duel with a SecPol agent, Win & Lucy rescue their friends, and track the Madison and the Hamiltonians to a small town outside Laporte. Win sets off an explosion that eliminates all of the Hamiltonians. Win elects to remain in the NAC and marries Clarissa. Ed marries Lucy (who at the time of the story was awaiting a delayed ""regeneration"" due to an accident involving massive radiation exposure) and sets out for the asteroid belt to build a new life for themselves on the NAC frontier. The Continental Congress agrees to begin a massive propaganda campaign to force Win's United States (and the rest of the globe) towards a similar Gallatinist revolution."
405,The Highwayman,fantasy," Pryd Holding, where much of the story is set, is troubled by the threat of powrie dwarves, domination by other kingdoms and religious conflicts between the brutal Samhaists, led by the cruel and evil Bernivvigar and the seemingly more benevolent brothers of Blessed Abelle, to which Brother Bran Dynard belongs. Also complicating matters is that Prince Prydae, the last of his line, suffers an injury in battle that leaves him impotent. Brother Dynard has recently returned from the south, where he was sent to enlighten the people, but instead became fascinated and enlightened by the people, and took a wife, the beautiful Jhesta Tu mystic Sen Wi. Sen Wi has come to Pryd holding with Dynard to help explain the ways of her people to the brothers of Blessed Abelle. One night, a beautiful young woman, Callen Duwornay, is sentenced to death for adultery. Forced to endure sexual humiliation as part of her punishment, she is stripped completely naked in front of the community, is bitten by a poison snake and then left for dead, hung over the road that is being constructed to connect Pryd Holding with the other kingdoms as a warning to others. Sen Wi and Dynard find her hanging naked and rescue her from the dwarves that are beating her. Sen Wi uses her training to heal Callen and they take her to Dynard's friend, Garibond, to heal. After recovering, an apparently still naked Callen leaves Garibonds home and disappears. Some time later, after changing her name, Callen gives birth to a daughter, whom she names Cadayale. Brother Dynard and Sen Wi go before the brothers of Abelle, but they are appalled to find that he was ""enlightened"" by the ""beasts of Ber"" rather than enlightening them as he was supposed to. Additionally, the brothers refuse to recognize Sen Wi as his wife, referring to her instead dismissively as his concubine. Sen Wi realizes that she is pregnant and that her baby is suffering within her due to her having taken the poison and pain from Callen into herself. Sen Wi later dies giving birth in Garibond's home, using the last of her strength to save her son, whom Garibond names Bransen, combining his parents name. Dynard himself is later killed by a dwarf on the highway when he is sent to see the higher order of Abelle. Adopted by Garibond, Bransen is a constant source of ridicule, mockery and abuse in the town by local bullies due to his disfigurement, shown kindness only by Cadayale, daughter of Callen. With old age overtaking him and suffering a terrible injury to himself due to the cruel machinations of Bernivvigar, who wishes to sacrifice Bransen, Garibond makes a deal with the brothers of Abelle to take in Bransen should he die. Garibond himself is later burned to death for heresy and for harboring the Book of Jhest, written by Dynard. After this, Bransen is taken in by the monks, but most of them treat him cruelly as well. Bransen utilizes both sides of his heritage in the novel to overcome his crippled state and become the Highwayman. With help from a soul stone, the hematite, combined with his knowledge of The Book of Jhest, Bransen overcomes his physically weak form by centering his chi, which greatly increases his mobility. With his new found ability, he rescues Cadayale from the bullies who wished to rape and beat her for helping him, killing the lead bully, Tarkus Breen. After weeks of robbing from the tax collectors to give back to the poor, becoming a local Robin Hood, Bransen risks everything to rescue Cadayale and Callen from Bernivvigar and Prydae, who sought to rape Cadayale to beget an heir, leading to the deaths of both men. Afterward, Bransen, Cadayale and Callen are banished from Pryd Holding by Bannagran, Prydae's closest friend and temporary ruler. With hope in their hearts, the three depart for the south to seek a better life. In 2007, Matthew Hansen of Marvel Comics/Dabel Brothers Productions adapted The Highwayman to a comic book."
406,Deadhouse Gates,fantasy," There's a convergence in the Seven Cities. Rebellion, assassins, Ascendants and those nearing it or desiring it all converge on the region. Slaves escape to rule, the once rebellious fight rebellion, a god falls to the mortal realm and heroes are made on a Chain of Dogs. In the city of Unta, capital of the Malazan Empire, a cull of the nobility has been ordered by Empress Laseen to rip the heart out of what is seen as a growing corruption. The young Felisin Paran (youngest sister of Ganoes Paran, Captain of the Bridgeburners) is among those sent into slavery in the mines of Otataral Island off the north-eastern coast of Seven Cities, excavating the magic-resisting mineral of the island. Along the way she meets Heboric, an excommunicated priest of Fener who has had his hands severed, and Baudin, a strong warrior. Unbeknown to her, her sister Tavore, the Empress' Adjunct, has appointed the latter as her guardian to help her survive the horrors of the mines. On Otataral Island, Felisin finds herself only able to survive by offering her body in exchange for the protection of a trusted senior slave, Beneth. Eventually she comes to crave his attention, to the disgust of Heboric and Baudin. Meanwhile, on the subcontinent of Seven Cities, the long-held prophecy of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic is believed to be at hand. The native tribes are preparing to overthrow the Malazan occupiers in an uprising known as the Whirlwind, which will be led by the seer Sha'ik from her camp in the heart of the Holy Desert Raraku. Simultaneously, the Path of Hands has been activated. The Path leads to Ascendancy - godhood - and is attracting Soletaken and D'ivers, shape-shifters of immense power. Soletaken can veer into one other form whilst D'ivers can split their consciousness among many beasts, potentially hundreds, or even thousands. In the wastes of the Pan'potsun Odhan, Mappo Trell and Icarium encounter a friendly Soletaken named Messremb and then encounter a man named Iskaral Pust and his minion, Servant. Pust, a High Priest of Shadow, offers them shelter in his nearby temple and they accept. Although Pust acts in a highly eccentric manner, Mappo and Icarium realize he is powerful and likely highly intelligent. In the city of Hissar, the Malazan garrison and the encamped 7th Army are preparing to fend off the rebellion, and are joined by a large contingent of Wickans, skilled horse-warriors from Quon Tali. The Wickan commander, Coltaine, assumes command of the 7th and has them running unusual exercises. His orders are to escort all Malazan civilians from the east coast cities and march them to Aren, the Imperial Capital on the continent, a march of over 500 leagues. High Fist Pormqual has refused to evacuate the civilians by sea, recalling Admiral Nok's fleet to defend Aren Harbour instead. Duiker, the Imperial Historian, has been attached to the 7th to witness its withdrawal to Aren. He also plans to effect the rescue of a colleague, Heboric, and manages to convince a Malazan mage named Kulp to go to the coast of Otataral Island to await Heboric's pre-arranged escape. Duiker becomes separated from Malazan forces and soon learns that the largest of the Whirlwind armies is gathering in strength near Hissar, preparing to pounce on the 7th once it gets underway. A ship arrives at Ehrlitan on the north coast of Seven Cities. On board are travelers from Genabackis: Crokus, a thief of Darujhistan; a fisher-girl named Apsalar; Fiddler, a sapper in the Bridgeburners; and Kalam, the Bridgeburners' resident assassin. Kalam has his own mission to undertake and soon slips into the desert as he has acquired the Book of the Apocalypse which must be delivered to Sha'ik. Kalam sets out for Raraku, unaware he is being trailed by a Red Blade (Malazan loyalists from Seven Cities), Captain Lostara Yil, and her squad who have orders to kill Sha'ik. Fiddler, Crokus and Apsalar reach the city of G'danisban to find it in the hands of the Army of the Apocalypse, who have not bothered to wait for the official start of the Whirlwind. Taking the appearance of a Gral warrior, Fiddler is able to bluff their way through the city and continue into the wastelands. Kalam reaches the borders of Raraku and is immediately apprehended by two warriors, Leoman of the Flails and a Toblakai, of the Laederon Plateau of Genabackis. They escort him to Sha'ik herself and he hands over the Book of the Apocalypse. In gratitude, Sha'ik gives him an aptorian demon she ensnared earlier as bodyguard (An aptorian demon has 3 legs, one compound eye and is intelligent). Kalam and the aptorian depart and Sha'ik prepares for the ritual opening of the book. She is then killed by a crossbow bolt to the skull when the Red Blades attack, Lostara Yil's forces bolstered by reinforcements led by Commander Tene Baralta. In the melee that ensues, Leoman and Toblakai wipe out a number of the attacking Red Blades, forcing them to withdraw, but oddly they are not pursued. Baralta rides for the city of Pan'potsun, leaving Lostara Yil to pursue Kalam. The rebellion is unleashed in Skullcup, the mining town on Otataral Island. Baudin and Heboric take Felisin to safety by fleeing into the desert to the west. The three of them cross the Otataral Desert but along the way find a huge statue: a jade hand jutting out of the earth. Heboric touches the statue and there is a massive exchange of power. Heboric acquires a pair of spiritual hands, while a backwash of energy goes through Heboric into his god, Fener, who is torn from his realm and pulled down to the mortal world (Fener materializes not far from the jade statue but then flees in terror, as in the material world gods are mortal once more). Heboric is left reeling from this event. They reach the coast of the island and are rescued by Kulp, who has won the support of a group of Malazan marines: Gesler, Stormy and Truth. Out at sea is a mage who has been driven mad by the magic-deadening otataral and lost control of his warren which now wreaks havoc around him. Kulp and the escapees run the gauntlet of the sea to avoid the mage's random spells, but in the process they are transported into a warren. They find a lone ship in the still waters of the warren. They board it to find that it is manned by headless corpses animated by a magical whistle (their heads eerily lie on deck, still alive and seeing). They also find several more recent corpses belonging to grey-skinned tall beings reminiscent of Tiste Andii; Heboric identifies them as Tiste Edur, the shadow-aspected cousins of the Andii. Heboric also finds charts suggesting the Tiste Edur originated from a landmass on their world unknown to the Malazan Empire. Hissar has been 'liberated' by the Army of the Apocalypse and Duiker rides hard to reunite with Coltaine's army. Nearly 50,000 civilians are being escorted westwards towards Aren, harried by an army several times their own size. However, Coltaine is achieving the impossible by keeping them at bay. Crokus, Fiddler and Apsalar behold an awesome sight: a solid circular wall of sand has arisen around the Holy Desert of Raraku, a literal Whirlwind to announce the beginning of the true rebellion. They press on and learn Fiddler's plan: to find Tremorlor, the Azath House in the heart of Raraku, and use it to transport themselves to the Deadhouse in Malaz City, which will put them near their intended destination, Apsalar's home of Itko Kan and more specifically the Empress Laseen whom Kalam and Fiddler intend to kill. In the chaos of the Whirlwind they are attacked by Soletaken and D'ivers, but are saved by Mappo and Icarium, who take them to Pust's nearby temple to recuperate. There they tell Mappo, Icarium and Pust of their plans to find Tremorlor and the former two agree to help them find it."
407,The Fires of Heaven,fantasy," Chasing the Shaido Aiel, who have crossed over the Spine of the World and are pillaging Cairhien, Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn and the Car'a'carn, leads his Aiel over the Spine as well. The two Aiel armies meet in the Second Battle of Cairhien, which is by far the largest battle in the Westland since the time of Artur Hawkwing, 1000 years past. At the start of the battle, Mat Cauthon saves some troops from a Shaido ambush. Guiding these troops throughout the day, he wins numerous battles using the memories of past generals he received in The Shadow Rising. He personally kills the Shaido leader, Couladin, in battle, and the Shaido Aiel retreat in defeat. Falsely believing Queen Morgase Trakand of Andor died at the hands of the Forsaken, Rahvin, who is masquerading as Lord Gaebril, an angry Rand prepares to Travel to Caemlyn with a small Aiel strike force. Before he can do so, Lanfear, learning that Rand slept with Aviendha, is furious with jealousy and attempts to kill them. Moiraine Damodred grabs Lanfear and both topple through the doorframe ter'angreal that Mat used in the waste. After they fall through, the ter'angreal is damaged by fire and destroyed. Both Moiraine and Lanfear are presumed dead. Rand attacks Caemlyn, and Mat, Asmodean and Aviendha go with him as well. Shortly after arrival, Rand's companions are killed by Rahvin's wielding of the One Power. Rand begins a desperate, fury driven chase to eradicate Rahvin in Tel'aran'rhiod, after the Forsaken opens a portal of sorts leading to there. After a lengthy chase and duel, Rand destroys Rahvin with a tremendous burst of balefire, erasing Rahvin's actions he undertook whilst killing Mat, Aviendha and Asmodean. Afterwards, Asmodean is killed by an unknown figure right after a shock of recognition. Meanwhile, Nynaeve al'Meara and Elayne Trakand travel through lands filled with Seanchan left behind from the battle at Toman Head, Dragonsworn, bandits, and Whitecloaks, attempting to find the base of the rebel Aes Sedai. Nynaeve finally remembers that the rebel Aes Sedai are in Salidar; after they arrive, Nynaeve is able to trap the Forsaken Moghedien in Tel'aran'rhiod with the use of an a'dam. In Tel'aran'rhiod, Nynaeve goes to Caemlyn where she finds Rahvin. She distracts him with fire until Rand appears and finishes him off."
408,The Sight,fantasy," In the prologue, it is revealed that after the conclusion of Firestar's Quest, a prophecy was sent to Firestar. After a report of a fox and her cubs loose in ThunderClan territory, the three secretly leave camp and try to track down the foxes and help their Clan. They end up in trouble, but are saved. As time goes by, Hollypaw decides she wants to become a medicine cat apprentice to help injured cats and heal sicknesses. A few moons later, Hollypaw becomes Leafpool's (the medicine cat) apprentice; Lionpaw becomes Ashfur's apprentice and Jaypaw becomes Brightheart's apprentice. Jaypaw gets frustrated that he is apprenticed to the warrior with one eye, and he feels the other cats pity him. Jaypaw is commonly frustrated that many cats see his blindness as a weakness, even though he has never known life with sight and therefore uncaring of his blindness. Hollypaw, on the other hand, begins to realize that being a medicine cat might not be the right path for her as she does not like seeing other cats in pain or biting up herbs. At a gathering, all Clans have little to report. Lionpaw quickly befriends WindClan apprentice Heatherpaw. In the middle of the gathering, two unknown cats appear. The Clans realize they are Graystripe, with a new friend, Millie. Graystripe was thought to have died when twolegs took him away in The New Prophecy series. Instead, he managed to escape with the help of Millie and found the new home with the help of Barley and Ravenpaw. It turns out all the forest was destroyed. The Clans leave and Graystripe and Millie return to ThunderClan. The return of Graystripe causes another problem. Firestar appointed Brambleclaw as the new deputy assuming Graystripe had died, yet Graystripe was still alive. To help make the decision on who should be deputy, Firestar sends Leafpool to the Moonpool to talk with StarClan. StarClan only tells Leafpool that Firestar must make his own choice. In the end, Brambleclaw stays as deputy since he knows the Clan better. When a battle with ShadowClan breaks out, Jaypaw can only defeat an enemy apprentice with the help of his sibling telling him where the enemy is. Hollypaw finds the thrill of battling better than chewing up bitter herbs. Jaypaw likewise receives a dream from StarClan telling him he must become a medicine cat because he has a gift to walk in other cat's dreams. Although Jaypaw does not accept this at first, he realizes his blindness would prove as a setback during battle and agrees to become a medicine cat apprentice. Hollypaw and Jaypaw decide to trade roles with Jaypaw becoming Leafpool's apprentice and Hollypaw, Brackenfur's apprentice. At the next Gathering, a dispute breaks out between the Clans. To solve the argument, Squirrelflight shares an idea: to have a special Gathering, just once. All four Clans would meet in ThunderClan territory at sunhigh. Each Clan would have their apprentices compete in different contests; tree climbing, hunting, and fighting. Whichever Clans' apprentice won would pick the prey from the fresh-kill pile first. Jaypaw is upset that he can't compete, and while staying behind at the camp, he has a vision. He is choking on earth, and he smells badger and fox. He is scrabbling desperately with his paws, until realizes that he is seeing through Lionpaw's eyes. It turns out that, while competing, Lionpaw and Breezepaw fell into a collapsing fox den. Luckily, Jaypaw got there in time to save them along with Crowfeather. The leaders decide that since every Clan won at something, there would be a tie and no Clan would win. In the end, Jaypaw walks in Firestar's dream and hears the prophecy There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the power of the stars in their paws. Realizing that he and his sibling are the cats described in the prophecy, Jaypaw suddenly thinks ""One day we will be so powerful that we shall command even StarClan!"""
409,"Mirror, Mirror",fantasy," The story takes place in Montefiore, Italy in the early 16th century, on the estate of a nobleman named Don Vicente de Nevada. He lives there with his seven year old daughter, Bianca, and a small staff, the two most interesting of which are Primavera, an earthy cook and Fra Ludovico. In the beginning of the novel, de Nevada finds a mirror in a pond near his manor. This mirror was fashioned by dwarves but lost when they left it in the pond to temper. Incidentally, one dwarf spends most of the novel following de Nevada to ask the return of the mirror. Life is good for the family until the day Lucrezia Borgia and her brother, Cesare, decadent children of a pope, come to visit. Cesare sends Vincente on a quest for a holy relic. While he is gone, Bianca becomes a young woman and Lucrezia becomes jealous of the girl's beauty and stealing Cesare's attention from Lucrezia. Eventually she hires a woodsman to kill Bianca. The girl escapes, and runs into seven dwarfs, who are looking for the eighth dwarf and their mirror."
410,Crown of Horns,fantasy," The chapter starts with Briar, Queen Lunaria and Lunaria's husband the king at Dragon's Stair, and because of the enemies attacking, Thorn is given to her grandmother, Rose Harvestar, who is also known as Gran'ma Ben. Gran'ma delivers her to the Great Red Dragon; almost at the same moment, Thorn's parents are killed. Thorn then mounts the dragon's back and takes the long journey underground into the cavern with a bright light. The Great Red Dragon asks Thorn to look into the light, whereupon she mentions a frozen waterfall. After trying to see past this, she sees her mother's face which asks her to seek the Crown of Horns. Thorn then wakes up, and at this point readers learn that Tarsil's soldiers had beaten Thorn and Fone Bone brutally and thrown them into a dungeon. Thorn loses a tooth in the process. To cheer her up, Fone Bone shows a goofy smile wherein one of his teeth is missing also. Meanwhile, Gran'ma Ben is atop the front wall of Atheia looking at the activity below. She is seen by a Vedu and two Veni-Yan monks. The Vedu tells her to go with the other old woman, whereupon she knocks him off the wall. The Veni-Yan are shown to be loyal to the Harvestars. Briar's army arrives and threatens to kill anyone who opposes them. Tarsil defies them, whereupon Briar declares that she will teach him fear. Defying her to do so, on grounds that he has fought dragons, Tarsil for the first time removes his hood to reveal his scarred, hideous face. In reply, Briar pulls back her hood and shows Tarsil's former, more comely face. She then flies toward Tarsil and cuts him into two halves (possibly a reference to the manner of her own death), and declares the attack. The battle begins; as Rose climbs up a nearby ladder, three arrows are shot at her by Briar, with whom she momentarily locks eyes. In the dungeon, Fone Bone hears the fight and shouts for the guard. Smiley and Phoney are in the next cell while all the guards have all gone out to fight. At the wall, Gran'ma Ben is striving to drive back the invading hordes of Pawa soldiers and Rat Creatures. The Venu warn her of an attack on the weaker left flank, whereupon she orders them to go there as reinforcements. Three claim that though they will obey, it is because of necessity rather than any possible allegiance to her. She is then pinned down by Pawa soldiers. Thorn tries to break the iron bars imprisoning herself and her friends, but fails. Fone Bone and Thorn quarrel on the subject of the Crown of Horns: Fone believes that it will destroy everything because Thorn has a piece of the Locust inside herself, whereas Thorn believes that her mother would not have told her to find it if she (Moonwort) had known that it would destroy everything. Fone mentions the possibility that in using the Crown, Thorn will destroy both the Locust and herself &mdash; shedding tears out of fear of Thorn's death, whereupon she promises not to use the Crown of Horns. Taneal, a prophetess-like child featured in the previous collection, brings them a hammer by which to break their shackles while she tries to break the bars of their cell. Her brother then frees Phoney and Smiley. Tarsil's soldiers gather, causing Taneal to hide. When they have gone, Taneal, her brother, Phoney, and Smiley look into the others' cell and find that Thorn is comatose. As Smiley tries to break the bars, Taneal tells the others that Tarsil was killed and Gran'ma Ben overwhelmed by the Pawa soldiers. Hearing this Thorn wakes, pulls the confining chains from the wall to which they are attached, tears open her cell, and asks in anger, ""Which way is the gate?"". Meanwhile, the dream masters use visions to scare off the Rat Creatures and the Pawas. Thorn, Fone Bone, Phoney and Smiley make it to the front wall, where Thorn reunites with Gran'ma Ben. They watch as the attacking army retreats, and Thorn tells them the reason why is because ghost circles are surrounding the city. This chapter is a short story of 4 or 5 pages taking place in Thorn's dream. The Red Dragon asks Thorn to look into a light and try to see beyond it. The Red Dragon then tells the story of the Queen of Dragons, Mim, wherein she was subject to demonic possession by the Lord of the Locust. This caused a battle that generated the valley that forms the story's setting. Readers see Mim for the first time, though this story had been mentioned before in the fifth book. Gran'ma Ben, Thorn, and the Bones clamber up a tower, where Thorn may see where all the perilous ""ghost circles"" are that are surrounding the city. Thorn perceives Roque Ja in the hills, and then has sudden visions of the valley exploding, and of the Lord of the Locusts. These visions shock her. While the others tend to Thorn, Phoney and Smiley attempt to open the well where the treasure is hidden, thinking to take the treasure and then sneak through the gaps in the ghost circles and get back home to Boneville. Thorn's visions tell her that the Lord of the Locusts no longer needs her or Briar, because he is possessing his original host, Mim, and is heading toward the city. Phoney and Smiley return to the city's gate with their hay cart (having Smiley's Rat Creature Bartleby and the treasure hidden in the hay), when the farmer who had formerly lost the cart sees it and knocks it over. Bartleby is exposed, whereupon people try to kill him. Bartleby, Phoney, and Smiley narrowly escape. They climb the ladder as Fone and Thorn are coming down, which results in a struggle. Phoney expresses his disappointment, having lost the treasure he so desperately wanted, resulting in Fone getting angry at him for endangering their lives for the treasure. When asked by Thorn, Phoney is able to deduce the location of the Crown of Horns, estimating that it is hidden in the sacred burial grounds of the dragons, explaining why they tried so hard to scare people away from it, just as Tarsil did when he lied about the poisoned water in the well where he'd hid the treasure. Fone then refuses to leave for Boneville with Phoney and Smiley as he'd promised. Then Thorn, in turn, breaks her promise to Fone and leaves the group to search for the Crown of Horns, now with a lead as to its location. With Bartleby's help, Fone pursues her. Fone Bone looks for Thorn on Bartleby's back. They see her running from Rat Creatures by running into ghost circles. To find Thorn while remaining hidden from the Rat Creatures, Fone hides underneath Bartleby, clinging to his stomach fur, suggesting the trick used by Odysseus to conceal his men from Polyphemus. Beyond the Rat Creatures' location, they encounter Thorn as she emerges from a ghost circle. All three climb the mountains to seek the Crown of Horns. At the city, the Pawas are battering the gates; Rose has the door flung open as she and the Veni-Yan charge at the Pawas. Smiley captures the two Rat Creatures who had pursued the Bone cousins throughout the series and has them spared. Fone and Thorn sneak past Roque Ja in order to reach the dragon graveyard, but fail when Roque Ja sees them. He stares at them for a moment, then lets them leave unharmed. Thorn leaves without Fone Bone by facing an army of their enemies and flying over them, forcing Fone Bone to hide under Bartleby again. They continue to the dragons' graveyard, which Bartleby refuses to enter. Smiley has the idea that if he bakes large quantities of food for the two Rat Creatures, they will think that the siege will fail. Phoney and Rose are in a tunnel, leading to Briar's hideout, where they may capture Briar by surprise. Fone climbs down into the huge gorge which makes up the dragons' graveyard. Momentarily trapped in a pit, he realizes that the Rat Creatures are in pursuit of Thorn, and runs to the Chamber of Horns. Thorn goes to look for the Crown of Horns and must leave Fone Bone behind. She reaches the Crown, whereupon the Rat Creatures' chieftain Kingdok appears and tells Thorn to kill him, so as to free him from the Lord of the Locust, under whose control Kingdok thinks himself to be nothing more than a meaningless pawn. Thorn refuses on moral grounds, despite learning that Kingdok was the Rat Creature who ate her parents; therefore Kingdok bites her leg and grips it tight in his teeth. She then impales his skull with her sword, thus killing him but leaving his jaw locked around her leg, stopping her from reaching the Crown of Horns. Briar corners Rose and is attempting to kill her when Lucius arrives and stops her from delivering a death blow to Rose with her scythe. At the same time that this is occurring, Fone Bone arrives to help Thorn and attempts to touch the Crown of Horns himself. At first, nothing happens; moments later, a large number of angry Rat Creatures approach. Fone then takes Thorn's hand, allowing Thorn's piece of the Locust to flow through him to the Crown. He then touches the Crown, triggering an explosion of energy that kills Briar and Lucius along with her. After touching it and having an out of body experience, Bone and Thorn find the Chamber of Horns flooded with water and many noises. Thorn says that they woke up all the dragons and there is no hope of escaping Tanen Gard before the dragons arrive. The Red Dragon flies in, but instead of killing them, carries them out, warning them that his compatriots will not show the same mercy. The dragon jumps out of Tanen Gard, where Fone sees Bartelby and tells him to flee. Ted tells the dragon to go help Gran'ma on Sinner's Rock, who is fighting the enemy. At Sinner's Rock, an out-of-control Mim closes in on the fight. The Red Dragon chases the enemy away, and the other dragons burst out of the ground and envelope Mim, and return to Tanen Gard with her. At Thorn's coronation, Fone Bone realizes that he must return to Boneville or stay in the Valley. As the Bone cousins, Thorn, and Gran'ma Ben leave for Barrelhaven to bury Lucius, Phoney is given his hay wagon that he had lost earlier in the volume (which still has the treasure in it). Phoney continuously claims that he sees snowflakes, being paranoid that they may have to wait until winter's end to return to Boneville. After Lucius' burial, Phoney complains to Fone Bone about the snowflakes, and finally, the snow falls in a huge lump outside Barrelhaven. The chapter is a story originally featured in the Bone Holiday Special. The story shows the Bone cousins, Gran'ma Ben and Thorn celebrating Christmas, which they refer to as the ""Winter Solstice"". Smiley asks Phoney if (and how) they celebrate the Winter Solstice back in Boneville, with Phoney replying that they celebrate it for ""different reasons"". He then mentions that he makes a great increase of money during the Winter Solstice. As they dance and play instruments, Fone leaves with a platter in his hands. He walks outside and asks for the ""guys"" to come forth. The Rat Creatures appear and are prepared to eat Fone Bone, but at that moment Fone Bone presents the platter, which has a quiche he gives to them. He then returns to the house as one of the Rat Creatures asks why Fone Bone did that. The other claims it is a ritual and replies ""eat your quiche"". After winter, Fone Bone decides to return to Boneville. As the Bones, Gran'ma Ben, Thorn and Bartleby make their way to the Dragon's Stair, they cross a river when they see something move in the bushes. They take out their spears, but then see that it's just Ted and the Dragon. The Great Red Dragon guides them to the Dragon's Stair. Fone Bone says goodbye to Gran'ma, to the Red Dragon, to the insect Ted, and to Thorn. Thorn gives Fone Bone a basket of biscuits and honey, revealing that she had kept it aside until now in hope that he would change his mind and stay. She then tells him ""So much has changed since that day we met at the hot springs, and you walked out of the woods with your hat on fire...but not everything changes. Remember me when you're back in Boneville"". Saddened by this reminder of their first meeting, Fone shares a hug with her and replies ""Oh, I....I'll never forget you Thorn; I don't think I could"". Before Fone, Smiley, Phoney, and Bartleby leave on their wagon, Phoney discovers that Smiley has exchanged the treasure for the small cakes of stale bread he prefers. Gran'ma gives Phoney some gold coins, which Smiley had stamped with Phoney's image on the latter's orders, arguing that no one wants them (except Phoney himself). As the Bones and Bartleby enter the desert, Phoney Bone claims to despise the bread cakes, to which Smiley replies that he will grow to like them (since it is the only food they have for the journey). Phoney asks for one; at this, Smiley asks to be given a gold coin as payment. When Phoney refuses, Fone insists, on grounds that they are in the desert. This parallels the joke sequence in Out from Boneville, wherein they had similarly discussed a dollar."
411,The Mislaid Charm,fantasy," The novel concerns Henry Pickett, a traveling salesman, and his adventures after he acquires a magical tribal charm belonging to some gnomes."
412,Dark Fire,fantasy," Part 1 Arthur, Liz and Lucy are traveling to meet Rupert Steiner, a former colleague of Arthur's, who has been visited by Gadzooks. They discover and translate the message Gadzooks left (from dragon tongue) - Scuffenbury, the name of an ancient barrow which, legend has it, contains the body of a dragon. Meanwhile, at Wayward Crescent, David arrives to ask Zanna for more information about Gwilanna, as he has been charged with seeking her out and destroying the dark fire she possesses - the inverted remains of Gwillan's fire tear. Instead of helping him, Zanna transports herself to Gwilanna, charging David with Alexa's care in her absence. Zanna finds herself on Farlowe Island, where Gwilanna is attempting to use ichor from Gawain's isoscele and the threat of handing the dark fire to the Ix to coerce the Fain into illumining her to a dragon. She also planned to sacrifice David to underline her threat, but she decides to use Zanna in his place. However, rather than summoning the spirit of the dragon Ghislaine, Gwilanna summons a Darkling, which mutates a flock of ravens into semi-Darklings before being destroyed by Grockle, under the supervision of David, who then takes the obsidian which contains the darkfire. David and Zanna return home to discover that their neighbor, Henry Bacon, has suffered a stroke and is in the hospital. David is reunited with Liz and Lucy, and receives a message from the dragon G'Oreal, who dismisses David's suggestion that the dark fire could be transmuted and used to reanimate Gwillan. David then learns about Scuffenbury, and suggests that Lucy travel there with Tam Farrell. He also reads an extra journal, and suggests she post it online in dragontongue, as a message to other daughters of Guinevere. David goes with Liz to visit Henry in hospital, and Henry dies during their visit. After Henry dies, Gwilanna, the sybil attends the funeral and decides to warn David that she will do anything to get her hands on the obsidian and the dark fire. Gwilanna attends the funeral in order to try and deal with David, but he refuses her and she leaves. At the reading of the will, the group meet Henry's sister Agatha, a powerful sibyl. They also discover that Henry has left Liz and Lucy £50,000; David his collection of Arctic memorabilia and Zanna his house. The will also asks that the Arctic memorabilia be left in place, implying that Henry expected David and Zanna to marry. After this, Agatha gifts Zanna with healing knowledge, and suggests that she make her peace with David. Zanna goes into town with Alexa and Gretel to open her shop, but on the way the group are attacked by the semi-Darkling flock and are rescued by Tam, who destroys them with the spirit Kailar. Zanna is injured, but uses her new healing knowledge to mend the wound. Tam talks to David about Rupert Steiner, who has approached him with a story about translations of dragontongue found on the Hella glacier expedition. Lucy informs David that Sophie emailed her, trying to contact him, and David leaves for Africa. Lucy then receives a phone call from an old friend, Melanie Cartwright, who has seen footage of a Pennykettle dragon - presumably Gadzooks - moving on the television, and is concerned over her own 'special' dragon, Glade. David arrives in Africa to find Sophie's wildlife sanctuary in flames, which Grockle extinguishes. Sophie is already dead, and Grace is preparing to cry her Fire Tear. However, the semi-Darkling which began the fire is still present, planning on inverting Grace's tear to create dark fire. Pieter, Sophie's fiancee, tries to kill it, but it kills him instead. David then distracts the Darkling with the dark fire he already possesses, captures it and sends it back to the Ix with a warning to leave the Pennykettle dragons be. Mutu, one of Sophie's colleagues, tells David that he saw a woman dancing in the flames. David then leaves Africa, taking with him Grace's petrified body, and her Fire Tear, caught by Groyne during the struggle. When he returns home, David is greeted by Zanna, asking why Alexa has grown wings. David informs her that Alexa is a new species - an angel, a bridge between dragons and mankind - and when the dragons are revealed, people everywhere will aspire to be like her. He also tells her that the people, as the bears have already done, will travel to Ki:mera, the Fain's home world. In the Dragon's Den, David gathers the dragons in an attempt to transmute the dark fire and return it to Gwillan. Gollygosh will extract the dark fire from the obsidian, Groyne will mix it with Grace's Fire Tear and some icefire to neutralize it, and G'reth will wish for Gwillan and Grace to be reanimated. However, while David explains what will happen, Gollygosh is momentarily corrupted by the dark fire, and releases it early. The Dark Fire then enters Liz and she is knocked out. While Zanna tends to her, David reanimates Grace with Alexa's help. He then sends Lucy with Tam to Scuffenbury - not noticing that, in the Dragon's Den, Gwillan is draining Grace's auma into himself. Part 2 Lucy and Tam travel to Scuffenbury. On the way, Lucy reads the article describing the last meeting of dragons, describing how eleven of the last twelve dragons shed almost all of their fire tears, then went into stasis, while the twelfth, Gawaine, ingested all eleven tears and planned to use them to defeat the Ix. Lucy and Tam arrive at their guesthouse, which is run by Hannah and Clive, and has one other guest, Mrs Gee. They climb Glissington Tor - the dragon's burial site - that evening, and that night Lucy has a nightmare about a cat, which she encountered earlier in the day, bringing her a semi-darkling. In the Crescent, Liz is comatose, but seems unharmed, when Gwillan suddenly wakes up. Melanie Cartwright comes to visit with her mother, Rachel, and dragon, Glade, who can sense moods. Gretel puts the humans to sleep so they don't get in the way, and Glade goes upstairs to try and check on Liz and the baby. She finds that Liz is all right, but the baby's body is in stasis, and its auma has been transferred to Gwillan. The Cartwrights leave, and David contacts G'Oreal, informing him that Grockle is destroying the semi-Darklings. Early next morning, Tam and Lucy climb Scuffenbury Hill to see the unicorn. While they are there, cairn stones - the remains of a monument on Glissington Tor - begin to rise from the earth and rebuild the cairn, revealing more chalk carvings - a unicorn's horn. Mrs Gee, a sibyl, has rebuilt the cairn to try and wake the unicorn and the dragon, but Hannah, who claims to know all the Tor's secrets, warns her that this legend is false, and waking the dragon requires a red-haired girl, touched by the spirit of a dragon. She also explains that the dragon in stasis is Gawaine, who came to Scuffenbury seeking the unicorn Teramelle's healing to help her give birth, and offers to help Mrs Gee claim the dragon in return for one of its scales. Gwendolen, left in the hotel to watch for the mysterious cat, is shocked to discover that not only is the cat real, it can do magic, and communicate. It tells her it is truly a girl called Bella, who was turned into a cat by Mrs Gee. The TV news is showing pictures of dragons being freed all over the world, and Hannah tells Lucy that she can wake the dragon if she touches it and sings - and that there is a tunnel under the cairn which will let Lucy touch the dragon. At Wayward Crescent, Zanna is puzzled by e-mails Lucy is receiving, which David tells her are from other daughters of Guinevere. He also gives her Tam's article, telling her that Gawaine, the dragon in Scuffenbury and the one chosen to fight the Ix, was Gawain's mother, and her plan to destroy the Ix was to draw the Ix to her, then sacrifice herself in the Fire Eternal - a plan which the new Wearle has adopted. Tam and Lucy travel through the tunnels to wake Gawaine, but as the dragon stirs, Hannah betrays them. Tam is trapped underground, and Lucy captured by Mrs Gee, but Bella helps her escape. In the chaos of the dragon's awakening, Mrs Gee, Hannah and Clive are all killed and the hotel collapses. Meanwhile, Melanie and Rachel Cartwright are attacked by the last surviving semi-Darkling, who injures both of them before taking Glade. Glade sends a distress signal to the Pennykettles, which is intercepted by Gwillan. Lucy calls David for help, and he sends Grockle. With his help, Lucy places some of her tears in Glissington cairn, although Bella tries to stop her. The tears reflect moonlight onto the unicorn's horn, bringing it to life, and it frees Gawaine. However, as Zanna discovers through an email Bella sent Lucy, Gawaine was betrayed and one of her children murdered by a sibyl disguised as a red-haired maiden, and when she sees Lucy, she attacks. Grockle fails to defend Lucy, but, as Lucy is Gawaine's kin, the flames do not harm her, and Gawine is distracted for long enough that David can arrive to help. Meanwhile, the last surviving semi-Darkling ingests Lucy's auma from the tears she left at Glissington Cairn. It uses the power in the tears to renew itself, and call the Ix towards it, and a full Darkling is born, with the ability to self-replicate, which it does until there are four Darklings. Realizing the danger, David gives Lucy the narwhal tusk talisman which he thinks is Groyne so that she can be transported home, not realizing that the tusk is in fact Gwillan, who has taken Groyne's abilities, and Lucy has only been moved across the valley. Gawaine and G'lant - the combined force of David and Grockle - begin to fight the Darklings. One invades Gawaine's mind before she destroys it, but G'lant restores her before permanent injury can occur. One then distracts G'lant while the remaining two attack Gawaine. One destroys her wing and poisons her blood, although it is near-fatally injured in the attempt, and falls to the ground near Lucy, who has been joined by Bella. As it attempts to attack the girls, Tam emerges from the ground and destroys it. Agatha Bacon arrives at Wayward Crescent, and Zanna leaves for Scuffenbury after entrusting her with Liz's care. She arrives near Gawaine, who is gravely injured, and begins trying to heal her with Teramelle's help. The unicorn warns her to hurry, as Scuffenbury is the site of a portal to the Fire Eternal, and the portal will soon open. Meanwhile, 'Agatha Bacon' is in fact Gwilanna, who wishes to deliver Liz's child. She refuses to listen when Arthur explains that Gwillan now possesses the child's auma. She uses a spell to trap Arthur in an armoir and, with the use of Gawain's iscoscele, draws the dark fire out of Liz's forehead. The dark fire turns Gawain's isoscele black, then proceeds to kill Gwilanna before traveling to Scuffenbury. Alexa, who was locked outside by Gwilanna,grows full wings and is then taken by G'Oreal of the New Wearle to Scuffenbury. At Scuffenbury, G'lant continues to fight the two remaining Darklings. Gwillan traps one, purifying its auma and turning it into a dragon, which is no longer any threat. At the sight of Gwillan, the Ix lend all their power to the remaining Darkling, and it overpowers G'lant, but Gawaine drags it into the Fire Eternal, sacrificing herself to save G'lant and fulfill the task the Old Wearle entrusted her with - eradicating the Ix. Teramelle, invaded by the dark fire, follows her. In the chaos which the dark fire causes, David, Zanna, Alexa and Gadzooks come together, and Gadzooks begins writing a word. David reassures Zanna that everything will be all right, but things will be different. Then David, Lucy, Tam, Zanna, Bella and the assembled dragons disappear. The book ends with the word Gadzooks was writing: ""sometimes""."
413,Floodland,fantasy, Floodland is set in the near future where most of the United Kingdom is covered by water. The storyline concerns a girl named Zoe who is left behind after her family flees the floods. She is left alone in the ruins of Norwich but escapes to Eels Island (Ely Cathedral) where she discovers a sinister society run by a strange boy.
414,Dragon Raja,fantasy," Amurtaht the black dragon's existence has plagued Fief Heltant for long, and the king has sent the white dragon Catselprime and his raja, a young son of the House of Halschteil to subdue the black dragon. A blind wizard Tyburn arrives at Heltant and helps guard the town while during the battle with Amurtaht. Hoochie helps Tyburn, who gives him in return a pair of Ogre Power Gauntlets or OPG, which gives the wearer great muscle power. The news comes that Catselprime has lost to Amurtaht and died, while the remnants of soldiers including Hoochie's father have been taken prisoner by Amurtaht, who demands a ransom of an enormous amount for their release. Hoochie, Karl and Sanson set out on a journey to the capital Bysus Impel, to report the news of battle to the king and to attain aids for the ransom. The trio attack a group of orc bandits that has killed a traveler, and the orcs begin chasing the trio for revenge. But Hoochie defeats them powered by his OPG. Repeated battles with the orcs bring Hoochie together with Iruril Serenial, a beautiful elf woman, and Axelhand Eindelf, an old magnanimous dwarf, both of whom become his friends. Hoochie and his party visits Lenus City and solves affairs with the city's arena, and at the next city they visit, Fief Carlyle, they face difficulties from a strange pathological phenomenon all over the city. They meet Edhelin, a troll priestess, and find out that the crisis is caused by Sacred Land, a curse that combines magical and divine powers. They find out that Djipenian agents are behind the curse, which was a military experiment for the current war between the Bysus and Djipen (pronounced: Jah-ee-pun). They take one of the agents, Unchai, as a witness in reporting the curse to the king. As they reach the Brown Mountains just west of the capital, they meet Neria, a red-haired ""nighthawk"" or a thief that is a member of the thieves' guild, and Gilsian, a warrior on a bull with a chattering sword, who is revealed as Prince Gilsian Bysus, the older brother of the king and the ex-heir apparent. Throwing off the orcs' pursuit, the party finally arrives at the capital. They meet the king to bring the news of Catselprime's demise, and report the Djipenian operation. The king decides to help pay the ransom and they're delighted, but only briefly, for they find that there aren't enough jewels left in the capital. In the jewel mines of the Brown Mountains signs are observed of an awakening dragon that terrorized the continent 20 years ago: Kradmesser the Blazing Spear. The House of Halschteil, the bloodline of dragon rajas, has a lost daughter. Hoochie and others hope that she is a dragon raja, so she can make the dragon raja's covenant with the awakened Kradmesser. The only thing known about her is her age and the red color of her hair. While the party prepares for the trip to find the girl, a young nobleman Nexon Huritchell captures Neria and forces the party to steal a book with state secrets from the Halschteil mansion. The party works together to rescue both Neria and the book of secrets from Nexon's hands. Condemned of treason, Nexon attacks the party along with the vampire sorceress Shione. But Iruril returns in time to save the party from the vampire's threat. Iruril has information about a girl in the Duchy of Ilse who may be the lost daughter of the Halschteils. They head to Ilse, along with Unchai to tell Djipen's plots to the Grand Duke of Ilse and gain Ilse's cooperation in the war. Karl and Unchai heads to the Duchy's capital, while Hoochie, Sanson, Neria and Iruril head to a temple of Teperi of Haflings and Crossroads, to hire Jereint Chimber, a young priest empowered to have the answer to any polar question. They head to the Port Del Hapa where they find Rennie who indeed turns out to be the dragon raja they were searching. The next day, Port Del Hapa and several cities of Ilse are turned into Sacred Lands in the hands of Shione and Nexon, who, in the havoc and confusion that ensues, kidnaps Rennie. The party chases Nexon and his underlings into the mysterious Eternal Forest, where whoever enters, on certain conditions, are divided into separate selves with identical looks but divided memories. Iruril's wisdom saves the party, but Nexon and most of his underlings fall into panic and murder each other, including three of Nexon's selves. Nexon takes Rennie and survived subordinates into the Great Labyrinth of the Dragon Lord. The party follows them in through dangers of every shape and meets Dragon Lord, who offers them access to his treasures, enough to pay off Amurtaht's ransom and some more. After leaving the Great Labyrinth, the party ambushes Nexon to rescue Rennie and they rush back to Bysus. At Red Mountains, they encounter Jigoleid, the blue dragon who fought the war for Bysus with another Halschteil raja. The raja released the dragon not only from the covenant with him but also from the battlefield with Djipan, to serious military consequences. The party stop by Kan Adium, a city in the middle of wild plain, where they face another attacks from the orcs, now a big army, and defeat them. They arrive at the capital, and find out that Marquess Halschteil has been making plans to take hold of a raja who could make the covenant with Kradmesser, and use the legendary dragon's power to take over Bysus. The party hasten to take Rennie to the Brown Mountains where Kradmesser's lair is. In the mountains, they pass the Lake Levnane where lives the Fairyqueen Darenian who was Handrake the archmage's lover 300 years ago. Kradmesser is awakened at last. Haschteil, Nexon and Hoochie's party race and fight against each other to meet the dragon first. Kradmesser however, reveals that he intends neither to destroy Bysus and the continent, nor to accept another covenant with a dragon raja. Nexon, who has succeeded the gift from his father, the previous raja to Kradmesser, convinces the dragon forcibly to make the dragon raja's covenant with him. When their covenant is complete, Shione the vampire reveals her true intention."
415,Burning Tower,fantasy," The three main characters are Sandry, a Lord of Tep's Town, Sandry's cousin Regapisk, also a Lord, and Burning Tower, a daughter of Whandall, the main character of the previous book. Regapisk is an incompetent Lord and his family arrange for him to be shanghaied to become an oarsman on a coastal ship. Sandry and Burning Tower are romantically linked throughout the book. Large flightless birds attack trading caravans, but Sandry fights them off. He is sent by the Lords with the caravan, of which Burning Tower is also a part, to discover the source of the birds. They travel to the southern city of Condigeo and then to Crescent City, defeating terror bird attacks along the way. In Crescent City, they are joined by Regapisk, who has escaped from his ship. The three of them travel on to the high-magic city of Aztlan, where Regapisk redeems himself. The authors researched Aztec culture for the book, and many aspects of the culture depicted in the book are based on that research. This is explained in a brief note at the end of the book. Also mentioned is that within the described timeline, the terror birds continued to exist until long after humans spread through the Americas; this is based on the North American phorusrhacid Titanis walleri (but see McFadden et al. 2007)."
416,The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,fantasy," The two youngest Pevensie children, Lucy and Edmund, are staying with their odious cousin Eustace Scrubb while their older brother Peter is studying for his university entrance exams with Professor Kirke, and their older sister Susan is traveling through America with their parents. Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace are drawn into the Narnian world through a picture of a ship at sea. (The painting, hanging neglected in the guest bedroom that the Pevensie children were using, had been an unwanted present to Eustace's parents.) The three children land in the ocean near the pictured vessel, the titular Dawn Treader, and are taken aboard. The Dawn Treader is the ship of Caspian X, King of Narnia, who was the key character in the previous book (Prince Caspian). Edmund and Lucy (along with Peter and Susan) helped him gain the throne from his evil uncle Miraz. Three years have passed since then, peace has been established in Narnia, and Caspian has undertaken his oath to find the seven lost Lords of Narnia. Lucy and Edmund are delighted to be back in Narnia, but Eustace is less enthusiastic, as he has never been there before and had taunted his cousins with his belief that the country never existed. The Talking Mouse Reepicheep is also on board, as he hopes to find Aslan's Country beyond the seas of the ""utter East"". They first make landfall in the Lone Islands, nominally Narnian territory but fallen away from Narnian ways: in particular the slave trade flourishes here, despite Narnian law stating that it is forbidden. Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace and Reepicheep are captured as merchandise by a slave trader, and a man ""buys"" Caspian before they even reach the slave market. He turns out to be the first lost lord, Lord Bern, who moved to the islands and married a woman there after being banished from Narnia by Miraz. When Caspian reveals his identity, Bern acknowledges him as King. Caspian reclaims the islands for Narnia, and replaces Gumpas, the greedy governor, with Lord Bern, whom he names Duke of the Lone Islands. At the second island they visit, Eustace leaves the group to avoid participating in the work needed to render the ship seaworthy after a storm has damaged it, and hides in a dead dragon's cave to escape a sudden downpour. The dragon's treasure arouses his greed: he fills his pockets with gold and jewels and puts on a large golden bracelet; but as he sleeps, he is transformed into a dragon. As a dragon, he becomes aware of how bad his previous behaviour was, and uses his strength to help make amends. Caspian recognizes the bracelet: it belonged to Lord Octesian, another of the lost lords. They speculate that the dragon killed Octesian — or even that the dragon was Octesian. Aslan turns Eustace back into a boy, and as a result of his experiences he is now a much nicer person. They make stops at Burnt Island; at Deathwater Island (so named for a pool of water which turns everything immersed in it into gold, including one of the missing lords who turns out to have been Lord Restimar); at the Duffers' Island, where Lucy herself encounters Aslan; and at the Island Where Dreams Come True&nbsp;— called the Dark Island since it is permanently hidden in darkness. They rescue a desperate Lord Rhoop from this last. Eventually they reach the Island of the Star, where they find the three remaining lost lords in enchanted sleep. Ramandu, the fallen star who lives on the island, tells them that the only way to awaken them is to sail to the edge of the world and there to leave one member of the crew behind. The Dawn Treader continues sailing into an area where merpeople dwell and the water turns sweet rather than salty. At last the water becomes so shallow that the ship can go no farther. Caspian orders a boat lowered and announces that he will go to the world's end with Reepicheep. The crew object, saying that as King of Narnia he has no right to abandon them. Caspian goes to his cabin in a temper, but returns to say that Aslan appeared in his cabin and told him that only Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, and Reepicheep will go on. These four named venture in a small boat through a sea of lilies until they reach a wall of water that extends into the sky. Fulfilling Ramandu's condition, Reepicheep paddles his coracle up the waterfall and is never again seen in Narnia (Lewis hints that he reaches Aslan's Country). Edmund, Eustace, and Lucy find a lamb, who transforms into Aslan and tells them that Edmund and Lucy will not return to Narnia&nbsp;– that they should learn to know him by another name in their own world. He then sends the children home. In their own world, everyone remarks on how Eustace has changed and ""you'd never know him for the same boy"" - although his mother believes that Edmund and Lucy have been a bad influence on him."
417,A Princess of Landover,fantasy," The book began a prologue on the witch Nightshade still trapped in the form of a crow in a cage in Woodland Park Zoo, having been exiled from Landover for more than five years. Apart from having mysteriously appeared in the cage, her red eyes marked her different from other birds and elicited brief interest from animal experts. They gave up trying to study her after failing repeatedly to capture her, despite her being in a cage. The story proper began in the principal's office of the exclusive private school Carringon Women's Preparatory in New England where Mistaya ""Misty"" Holiday had been sent by Ben to ""learn about places other than"" Landover. The school was informed that her parents were away most of the time and all correspondence to be made via Miles Bennett, Ben's former law partner. The headmistress Harriet Appleton was with Misty, recounting the girl's previous visits to the same office. The first was when Misty organized a school protest and shut down classes for three days when the school tried to remove a two hundred year old tree from the school grounds. The second was when Misty formed an unapproved club for students to ""engage in a bonding-with-nature program"", the sticking point for the school authorities being ritualistic scarring for the members, which Misty thought would ""convey the depth of commitment"" and ""reminder of the pain and suffering human ignorance fostered"". Besides, Misty thought it should not be a problem as the ""scarring was done in places that weren't normally exposed to the light of day"". The third and current visit came about because Misty had done something to terrify fellow student Rhonda Masterson to the point of hysterics and had to be sedated by a nurse. Rhonda and other blue-blooded East Coast snots had been bullying Misty until the latter was pushed too far by being called a name Misty refused to repeat. In retaliation, Misty conjured up an image of Strabo, the last dragon of Landover. Though the headmistress could not be sure what Misty had done, she suspended Misty from school and indicated she would consider accepting Misty back if Misty agrees to be the type of student expected in Carringon. Misty was only too glad to leave and decided to do so immediately instead of waiting for the Christmas break. Taking a flight to Dulles, the Waynesboro, she returned to Landover through a portal located in George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, passable only by certain magic. As Misty arrived in Landover, thinking about resuming her study of magic with Questor, she was met unexpectedly by Strabo, who somehow knew and made it clear he did not appreciate his image being used by Misty. Her next encounter was much more pleasant, with the mud puppy Haltwhistle coming to greet her. The third encounter before she reached home was a tied-up G'home Gnome Poggwydd, whom she rescued. Once at home in Sterling Silver, Ben was informed to his dismay the reason of Misty's return. After a heated argument with Misty, Ben discussed with his advisors. Questor Thews and Abernathy Questor suggested for Misty to be sent to organize the Libiris, a royal library which was started by the last wise and dedicated king of Landover, to foster greater interest in reading for all subjects of Landover. The project stalled and the library fell into neglect. Questor proposed fixing the library and reopening it would be a worthwhile project for Misty. It was revealed that Questor and Abernathy also withheld something from Ben about the libiris. Before Ben could approach Mistaya about the project, he was presented with a proposal of marriage to his daughter from Laphroig, lord of the Rhyndweir, the largest of Greensward baronies. Personally repulsed, Ben diplomatically avoided giving a direct answer. However, Laphroig chose to interpret it as tacit approval to woo the girl, and sprung himself to Misty who had not been informed. Aghast, Misty rebelled and refused to accept Ben's explanation, nor his idea of her going to the Libiris. She chose to ran from home to her grandfather and enlisted the aid of Poggwydd to hide some of the packings she would need. Unfortunately, it also resulted in her becoming stuck with the Gnome as a travelling companion. In addition, she was joined by the mysterious cat Edgewood Dirk who seemed to be able to come and go as it pleases, and refused to talk or appear other than an ordinary cat except when alone with her. When Misty arrived at her grandfather's domain of the lake country, he allowed her to stay but refused to take her side against her father. Realising her grandfather was going to send her back, Misty took a chance when Edgewood Dirk offered her to escape. At Dirk's subtle proddings, Misty realised the only place she can go to escape from being found by her father or grandfather was the Libiris, the very place she was supposed to go in the first place. Convincing herself that she was going on her own accord, Misty presented herself as a peasant girl to the Libiris. Misty was almost turned away by the Libiris staff Rufus Pinch, had not his assistant Thom who intervened and pretended Misty was his sister Ellice. Together, they seemed to persuade Craswell Crabbit, the person in charge of Libiris, to allow Misty to stay and help with the work in organising the books. While Ben and the River King had been trying unsuccessfully to locate Misty, Laphroig deployed his spies to watch the royal castle, convinced he could take advantage of the situation. Questor and Abernathy discussed between themselves what would be the ""last place"" anyone would think of looking for Misty and came to a startling conclusion that the Libiris might be the place. Questor made a secret visit to the Libiris and contacted Misty. By then, Misty realised something strange was going on in the Libiris and was convinced Crabbit was up to something bad. She was determined to stay on to investigate while Questor was to return to Sterling Silver, ready to act as backup if necessary. Misty discovered some similarities between the Libiris and the sentient castle Sterling Silver. With Thom's help, she learned that books of magic were being passed to demons of Abaddon. And with some help from Edgewood Dirk, she was able to implement a temporary fix. Unfortunately, Misty's efforts were discovered by Craswell who had her and Thom captured. Apparently, Craswell had known all along her identity as Princess of Landover. Meanwhile, through his spies watching Sterling Silver, Laphroig learned the location of Mistaya and set forth there with a large group of armed men to demand Misty from Crabbit. Deciding to play off Laphroig and Ben against each other, Crabbit offered to help by inducing Misty to agree to marry Laphroig, using the threat of Thom's life in the process. Misty came up with a plan quickly and agreed to the ceremony, demanding it to be held outdoors, and promising not to escape. Once in place, she cast a spell to bring forth the image of Strabo again. Though the illusion was done correctly, the uproar it caused was short lived and she and Thom remained prisoners. However, that was only part of her plan - her goal was to incite the appearance of the real Strabo who promised to visit her if she ever invoke his image again. The arrival of the real Strabo was much more effective at disrupting the wedding, but Strabo soon got distracting chasing after the armoured men-at-arms which he considered delicacies. Misty was still faced with the armed Laphroig, Pinch who had a crossbow and Crabbit the magician. A stunning explosion occurred when Laphroig's thrown dagger, Pinch's crossbow bolt, and magic from Crabbit and Misty came together. When the explosion cleared and Misty recovered from being stunned, Laphroig had been turned to stone and there was no sign of Crabbit nor Pinch. Misty had no time to congratulate herself for the demons of Abaddon were breaking through within the Libiris. With Thom's help, Misty managed to seal the breach from Abaddon. The Libiris began to heal itself, being a creation from the materials taken from Sterling Silver. It was all over by the time Ben and the others from Sterling Silver arrived. Thom turned out to be the missing brother of Laphroig. Succeeding to the barony, he chose to give the land to the subjects of Rhyndweir in return for reasonable tax to the crown. Back in the Woodland Park Zoo, the strange crow with red eyes disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared before. And as mysteriously, two men in strange attire appeared in the same cage, ranting in an unknown language. After being taken away by security, the two ended up in custody of Homeland Security, which also could not understand them nor figure out where they came from."
418,Timescape,fantasy," The story is written from two viewpoints, equidistant from the novel's publication in 1980. The first thread is set in a 1998 ravaged by ecological disasters such as algal blooms and diebacks on the brink of large scale extinctions. Various other events are mentioned in passing, such as student riots and an event of nuclear terrorism against New York City which took place before the events of the novel. This thread follows a group of scientists in the United Kingdom connected with the University of Cambridge and their attempts to warn the past of the impending disaster by sending tachyon-induced messages to the astronomical position the Earth occupied in 1962–1963. Given the faster-than-light nature of the tachyon, these messages will effectively reach the past. These efforts are led by John Renfrew, an Englishman, and Gregory Markham, an American most likely modeled on Benford himself. Overseeing their efforts is Ian Peterson, a womanizing member of the World Council. The second thread is set in the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, California, in 1962 where a young scientist, Gordon Bernstein, discovers anomalous noise in a physics experiment relating to spontaneous resonance and indium antimonide. He and his student assistant, Albert Cooper (also likely based on the author and his experiences at UCSD), discover that the noise is coming in bursts timed to form Morse Code. The resulting message is made of staccato sentence fragments and jumbled letters, due to the 1998 team's efforts to avoid a grandfather paradox. Their aim is to give the past researchers enough information to start efforts on solving the pending ecological crisis, but not enough that the crisis will be entirely solved (thus making a signal to the past unnecessary and creating a paradox). Due to the biological nature of the message, Professor Bernstein shares the message with a professor of biology, Michael Ramsey. Since the message also gives astronomical coordinates, he also shares it with Saul Shriffer, a fictional scientist who is said to have worked with Frank Drake on Project Ozma. Initially, these characters fail to understand the true meaning of the message. Ramsey believes it to be an intercepted military dispatch hinting at Soviet bioterrorism, while Shriffer thinks the message is of extraterrestrial origin. Shriffer goes public with this theory, mentioning Bernstein in his findings. However, Bernstein's overseer, Isaac Lakin, is skeptical of the messages and wants Bernstein to keep working on his original project and ignore the signal. As a result of this interruption in their experimentation, Bernstein is denied a promotion and Cooper fails a candidacy examination. The signal also exacerbates difficulties in Bernstein's relationship with his girlfriend, Penny. In 1998, Peterson recovers a safe deposit box in La Jolla containing a piece of paper indicating that the messages were received. Meanwhile, it is clear that the viral nature of the algal bloom is spreading it faster and through more mediums than originally expected. Strange yellow clouds that have been appearing are said to be a result of the viral material being absorbed through the water cycle, and it soon affects the planet's agriculture as well, resulting in widespread cases of food poisoning. Flying to the United States, Markham is killed in a plane crash when the pilots fly too close to one of the clouds and experience seizures. In the past storyline, now advanced into 1963, Bernstein refuses to give up on the signals. He is rewarded when the signal noise is also observed in a laboratory at Columbia University. Using hints in the message, Ramsey replicates the conditions of the bloom in a controlled experiment and realizes the danger it represents. Bernstein finds out that the astronomical coordinates given in the message represent where the Earth will be in 1998 due to the solar apex. He also receives a more coherent, despairing message from the future. Having built a solid case, Bernstein goes public and publishes his results. This decision has monumental consequences. On November 22, a high school student in Dallas is sent by his physics teacher to the Texas School Book Depository to get a copy of Bernstein's findings. There he interrupts Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination attempt on President John F. Kennedy, attacking the shooter and sending the would-be fatal third shot awry. Though seriously injured, Kennedy survives. This paradox creates an alternate universe and forever ends the contact with the original 1998. The concluding chapters portray the 1998 of the original timeline as a bleak, failing world, the intensified ecological disaster taking a noticeable toll on the human way of life. Peterson retreats to a fortified country farmhouse which he has obviously prepared well in advance. Renfrew continues to send out signals (including the more coherent one that Gordon receives) until the building's generator gives out. Before it does, however, he receives a signal purportedly from the year 2349. In the final chapter, set in the alternate 1974, an awards ceremony is held for achievement in science. In light of Kennedy's survival, the United States President giving out the awards is William Scranton, who is said to have defeated Bobby Kennedy due to a telephone tapping scandal. The scientists whose work stemmed from the signal are honored, including Bernstein, who receives the Enrico Fermi Prize for his discovery of the tachyon."
419,Pilgrim,fantasy," Upon arriving through the Star Gate, the Time Keeper Demons begin 'feeding' by expelling a grey miasma from their mouths which spreads across the land, corrupting and maddening any being not sheltered. They depart the vicinity of the now destroyed Star Gate and travel through the woods to Cauldron Lake. Meanwhile Faraday uses her new powers to bring Drago back to life. The newly resurrected Drago, Faraday, and Zenith then join Caelum's army in the woods surrounding the Barrows and set plans. Despite a pledge to help Caelum however possible, Axis, Azhure, and Caelum remain distrustful and loathing towards him with Axis even stabbing Drago. Axis, Azhure, Caelum, and a small contingent from the army resolve to travel to Star Finger to search through the ancient texts there for an answer. Zared is left in command of the combined armies tasked with preserving what he can of the land. Faraday and Drago leave on a pair of white donkeys with a feathered lizard from the woods to attempt to beat the demons to Cauldron Lake. There the voice that spoke to Faraday during her transformation, Noah, awaits. Isfrael and Shra confront the demons as they pass through the forest. Their combined power is a match for the still weak demons, but one of the newly acquired demonic mounts sneaks behind them and disembowells Shra. The demons are the first to arrive at Cauldron Lake and proceed to drain/kill it to expose the craft of the Enemy and a crystal forest. Surviving the reflective trap, the demons find a pool of blood and throw StarLaughter's dead child into the blood. It emerges as a toddler and possessing the warmth of the greatest of the demons, Qeteb. After their departure but still sensed by them, WolfStar comes forth from the waterways and places the his own dead child in the blood with similar results. Drago enters the craft and meets a dying Noah, the last of the Enemy. Noah tells Drago of how the Enemy separated Qeteb and journeyed through space to find a place to store the component parts. When they discovered the constituent parts of Qeteb could not be destroyed, four craft fled across the universe with them. Noah informs Drago that Qeteb must be reconstituted before he can be destroyed, that Tencendor must be destroyed before it can live again. Drago also learns that the land is highly magical and magic still exists for those who know how to find it. He also is informed that a Sanctuary exists somewhere in the waterways that can hold Tencendor's population when the land is destroyed. Drago sends the Lake Guard to scout out Sanctuary, Zared's army to Carlon to gather the Acharites, StarDrifter and Zenith to Star Finger to collect the Icarii, and extracts a half-promise from Isfrael for the Avar. As he instructs the leaders, it dawns on them that Caelum is not the StarSon mentioned on the Maze Gate, but Drago is. Isfrael helps the army construct cloth for portable tents so they can venture across the plains and the groups separate. Zenith still suffers hesitations about her relationship with StarDrifter. While a relationship between grandparent and grandchild is acceptable in Icarii culture, she cannot cope the idea of StarDrifter being her lover. They arrive at the Minaret Peaks to find the magic-reliant Icarii in dire straits, not only from the Demonic Hours, but a lack of food and basic survival skills. When Caelum and company enter an ancient tunnel to quickly transverse the Fortress Ranges, they fear a trap in the making. Only too soon are they prove right as the Hawkchilds kill the sentries behind them. The demons create an illusion of the hunt dream Caelum suffers from that Axis, Azhure, and Caelum all fall for. They survive to find all the others in the party destroyed and the Alaunt further ahead after running from the horror. Zared's army travels towards Carlon, but an army composed of animals and men that were maddened has been marshalled by the brown and cream badger. When the animals attack, Zared's army survives only thanks to two mysterious white figures that drive off many of foes. Unnoticed until later, the discontent Askam and four hundred men desert during the night. Unfortunately for them, the badger set up a trap and they are all dragged from under the shade into the demonic miasma to become like the mad animals. Under control of the badger, Askam and his men rejoin Zared's force as they ride. Although no other attack is forthcoming, when the last of the army is entering Carlon, Askam abducts Zared's wife Leagh. When the next Demonic Hour falls, she too is driven insane. Drago and Faraday travel north to Gorkenfort to meet their ""ancestral mother."" On the way, Drago expresses his love for Faraday. Although she knows that she loves him, she denies it as she fears that it would mean she would need to be sacrificed again. She also worries about the dreams of a girl calling for help that are trying to draw her to Star Finger. On the path, they find a senile white horse that Drago recognizes as Belaguez, Axis's old warhorse. They also discover that they are immune to the demons' feedings. The demons feel the resistances but cannot identify them. Although later confronted by a Hawkchild speaking for the demons, they do not connect the resistance with Drago. They are confused by him being alive, but are diverted from killing him as the white donkeys (revealed to be extremely powerful magicians and those that previously saved the army) destroy Askam's force and return Leagh to Zerad. Caelum, Axis, and Azhure are taunted by the Hawkchilds continually as they travel the mountain paths to Star Finger. Eventually, the Hawkchilds stage an attack and nearly destroy who they believe to be the StarSon. The former Star Gods and Alaunt manage to stave off the attack and get the wounded party to Star Finger. Drago and Faraday arrive at Gorkenfort. Shortly afterward Urbeth the icebear arrives to reveal that she is the being known as the Enchantress and the Mother of Races. Although she mothered the Acharites, the Charonites, and the Icarii, her eldest (the Acharite forerunner) rejected magic and she cast him out of her life. However, both he and the Acharites do have innate magic but it now can only be accessed if they die and are brought back to life. Drago and Faraday leave towards Star Finger but leave Belaguez for Urbeth who then transforms him into the star stallion and sends him south. Meanwhile, a mourning Zared is convinced to send part of the army and the whole Strike Force to the Murkle Mines where some 20,000 men, women, and child are holed up. When their ships are destroyed in the bay, the remains of the men convince the refugees to head towards Carlon. The demons learn of this progress and set a trap on the path that eventually drives all of the refugees into the madness of Demonic Hours. Only Theod survives and rides to Carlon on the reborn Belaguez to tell the tale. The demons arrive at the Lake of Life and kill it to access Qeteb's breath, DragonStar now gaining the body of an adolescent and breath. Again, WolfStar follows their example with the Niah-corpse and slips away. After giving StarLaughter a small amount of power, the demons decide to investigate Sigholt. When Rox crosses the bridge, it transforms into a spider-like shape and devours the demon releasing nighttime from terror. The demons and StarLaughter flee towards Fernbrake Lake. The Lake Guard have figured out the mystery of Sanctuary determining it must be a magical keep. As the other lakes each have a keep, Fernbrake's keep must have sunken to the waterways and show the way to Sanctuary. Some of the Lake Guard, StarDrifter, and Zenith travel to Fernbrake. There they not only discover the way to the keep, but that the Star Dance can be accessed through dance. When StarDrifter attempts to cross the bridge to Sanctuary, it rejects him as he is not 'he who is true.' They depart on the waterways to find Drago. At Star Finger, Axis, Azhure, Caelum, and the former Star Gods find a mysterious girl in the lower levels holding a book titled Enchanted Songbook. Unfortunately no one can reach her until Drago and Faraday enter the chamber. Caelum, who has now realized that he is only a decoy for the real StarSon, keeps Axis from killing Drago and sends them all from the room. When they are alone, Caelum asks for Drago's forgiveness for their past. More specifically, for Caelum framing Drago for RiverStar's murder. Caelum and RiverStar were secretly lovers and he killed her when she revealed she was pregnant. Drago, Faraday, StarDrifter's party, and the Alaunt depart on the waterways to Sigholt and then Sanctuary. At Sigholt, Drago retrieves the Wolven and the keep's cat population and learns of another way to access the pattern of the Star Dance, through hand movements. They open Sanctuary and begin the evacuation of the Icarii. Drago, Faraday, and the girl Katie travel to Carlon via Spiredore only to discover it besieged by the animal army and of the loss of the 20,000. With the help of the lizard and Katie, Drago removes the demonic madness from Leagh, in essence returning her from the dead and giving her access to her magic. They leave for the site of the ambush of the 20,000 and gather them together. Drago cures Goldman, Theod's wife Gwendylyr, and DareWing FullHeart of their madness and dispatches the rest so the demons cannot use them anymore. WolfStar appears at Fernbrake Lake only to be captured by StarDrifter and Isfrael to await trail. When the demons arrive, they free WolfStar only to torment him and hold him captive. They shatter Fernbrake and summon the craft to the surface as StarDrifter, Isfrael, and Goodwife Renkin mourn the death of the Mother. The demons invest both DragonStar and Niah with the movement of Qeteb and leave for Grail Lake and the Maze. Caelum departs for the hunt and for Drago to summon him. He has learned that the Enchanted Songbook shows dances to access magic and more or less successfully used one to destroy a Hawkchild. As he waits, he visits with Urbeth and her two daughters, the white donkeys turned icebear. The animal army stages an attack led by the patchy-bald rat and his minions from the sewers that leaves the population of Carlon in panic and the city on fire. With the help of his new magicians, Drago evacuates the remaining Acharites through Spiredore to Sanctuary. He sends the magicians off to the rest of Tencendor to collect the remaining populations which turn out to include animal and insect as well. Faraday confronts Isfrael with his stance that the Avar should keep to themselves by showing a vision of Barsarbe doing the same. The Avar and the rest of Tencendor descend into Sanctuary, but not before the Mother reveals herself to Faraday urging her to let herself love Drago. Mother then retreats to the Sacred Grove and closes the pathways. Drago enters the Maze and races on Belaguaz to the Dark Tower within. There he opens a gate and travels to Caelum to bring him to Spiredore and the hunt. The demons pass through the maze and fully resurrect Qeteb in the body that was once DragonStar. Malice sweeps across the land, destroying everything not already corrupted save for Caelum, Urbeth, her daughters, and the wooden bowl given to Faraday by the silver-backed Horned One. Qeteb starts the hunt and they eventually corner Caelum who they still believe to be the StarSon. However, rather than cowering in fear and then pain, Caelum dies with a smile on his face as all he sees is a field full of flowers."
420,Soul Eater,fantasy," Wolf is kidnapped and Torak and Renn set out to find him. During their journey, Torak takes a spirit journey, in the form of a raven, and discovers that the Soul Eaters have captured Wolf. They follow Wolf's kidnappers to the Far North, where they encounter Inuktiluk, a member of the White Fox Clan. They go with him to the White Fox Clan's camp, where the clan's mage (shaman) tells them of a vision she has had, in which Torak is about to hit Wolf with an axe. They continue their search for Wolf. Torak secretly changes places with a boy who is serving as an acolyte to the Soul Eaters. Torak goes into the cave, where he has to help the Soul Eaters in order to maintain his disguise. Renn goes into the cave and hides. While in the cave, Torak kills an owl, then takes a spirit journey into a bear and finds out where Wolf is. Torak and Renn find Wolf, who is distracted by an injury to his tail and doesn't recognise them. They have to use Renn's axe to cut off Wolf's tail, fulfilling the mage prophecy. They free all the animals which the Soul Eaters have been holding captive, but the Soul Eaters release demons. Renn takes the Fire Opal, a religious artifact belonging to the Soul Eaters, and as they flee, Torak and Renn become separated when Renn floats away on a piece of river ice. Meanwhile, Torak becomes snow blind and is captured by the Soul Eaters. Renn eventually makes it to the riverbank, and discovers that the Fire Opal can be destroyed by being buried under stone while a life is sacrificed. She intends to kill herself to get rid of the Fire Opal, but before she can do so, Torak and the Soul Eaters arrive. Torak takes the form of a spirit bear and attacks the Soul Eaters. Renn is about to jump but at the last minute, the Bat Mage sacrifices herself to atone for the fact that Torak's father once saved her life. Torak, Renn and Wolf are rescued by Fin-Kedinn and Inuktiluk. They return to the forest together."
421,Darkness and Light,fantasy," Darkness and Light begins in the town of Solace at the time the companions decide to pursue rumors of war and embark on their own personal quests for five years. Sturm Brightblade and Kitiara Uth Matar both decide to go north to Solamnia to learn more about their families. Shortly after they leave Solace, they encounter a group of gnomes who are in the final stages of building a flying ship that has become mired in mud. The two companions decide that taking the flying ship to Solamnia would be much faster than on horseback or walking, so they assist the gnomes in hoisting the ship from the mud. The flying ship is a success—but too much of a success, as mechanical problems lead the ship up and up until it eventually touches back down on the red moon Lunitari. While on Lunitari fixing the ship, something unexplainable happens to the companions and the gnomes that they inherit magical powers -- the magic amplifies their natural talents. Kitiara becomes much stronger and Sturm is plagued with visions of his father and the downfall of Castle Brightblade. The ship is carried away in the night, and while searching for it they encounter a deranged king named Rapaldo who is worshiped (but also held captive) by the native Lunitarians, a semi-intelligent race that resemble trees. Rapaldo has gone mad after living on Lunitari for ten years after his sailing ship was propelled there by a waterspout. He plans to escape with the gnomes' ship, leaving Sturm behind to be the new Lunitarian king. His treachery is uncovered and a battle ensues, in which Rapaldo kills the gnome Bellcrank, but is accidentally stabbed by Sturm's dagger. Free of Rapaldo, Sturm, Kitiara, and the gnomes flee before the native Lunitarians can avenge the death of their king. They follow a strange trail to a valley where the brass dragon Cupelix is imprisoned inside a gigantic marble tower, as he is to guard the eggs of other dragons. Conversing with the dragon, Sturm learns of the birth of Draconians.The group also learn of the Micones, horse-sized ants created out of crystal to act as servants for the Dragon. Also, Kitiara forms an alliance with the dragon, that if she can free him, he'll become Kitiara's dragon partner. The gnomes attempt to set him free, but they continue to fail, until they think of vitriol. Using vitriol that they had on board, they destroy the marble tower and set the dragon free. After fixing up their ship, they head for home with the dragon. Unfortunately the air is too thin to support the dragon, so he is forced to remain on Lunitari. As they fly higher and higher, they spot the dead gnome walking again, a magical power in which nothing can die on Lunitari, but they can't return to rescue him. The gnome then goes to live with the dragon. After weeks and weeks of butting heads over individual ideals on Lunitari, Kitiara and Sturm decide that they will go their separate ways and sever their ties of friendship. Sturm joins a group of cattle drivers, were he meets a young girl called Tervy, who is orphaned when Sturm shoots her only relative in a raid. She has no idea of modern technology, like the armour Sturm wears, and regularly calls him Ironskin. Sturm and the cattle drivers are then tricked into delivering their herd into the camp of Merinsaard, a dragonlord. He succeeds in stealing the cattle, and lock the group up. They escape when Sturm and Tervy knock the highlord out, imitate him and escape on his horse. Sturm returns to Castle Brightblade—now abandoned—and finds his father's armor and sword. Shortly after this discovery, he discovers that the horse he stole was actually the highlord in disguise. They battle up to the ramparts, were Kitiara shoots the highlord through the neck. She later severs all links with Sturm in a letter, the gist of which is 'We're even'."
422,King of Foxes,fantasy," An exceptionally skilled swordsman, young Tal Hawkins was the only survivor of the massacre of his village - rescued, recruited, and trained by the mysterious order of magicians and spies, the Conclave of Shadows. Now one of the secret society's most valuable agents, he gains entrance into the court of Duke Olasko, the bloodthirsty and powerful despot whose armies put Tal's village to the sword, by posing as a nobleman from the distant Kingdom of the Isles. But the enemy is cunning and well protected - in league with the foul necromancer Leso Varen, dark master of death-magic - and to gain the Duke's trust and confidence, Tal Hawkins must first sell his soul. fr:Le Roi des renards"
423,The Summer Tree,fantasy," The books opens in our own world, at the University of Toronto, where the five main characters are all fellow students. They attend a lecture by a Professor Lorenzo Marcus, who afterwards reveals to them that he is in reality Loren Silvercloak, a mage from the land of Fionavar. Silvercloak tells the five that he has come to our world to bring back five guests, as part of the celebration of the 50th year of the reign of High King Ailell of Brennin. After some debate, the students -- Kevin Laine, Paul Schafer, Dave Martyniuk, Kimberly Ford, and Jennifer Lowell -- agree to accompany Silvercloak and the dwarf Matt Sören (Loren's ""source,"" the person whose strength he draws on to perform his magic). However, Dave has second thoughts in the midst of Loren's transferral process; he attempts to pull free, breaking his contact with the others, and so although the remaining four arrive safely in Brennin, Dave is nowhere to be seen. Kim, Paul, Jennifer and Kevin discover that Brennin is in the midst of a crippling drought, brought on by the High King's unwillingness to offer himself on the Summer Tree as a sacrifice to Mörnir. The kingdom has been somewhat uneasy since Ailell's eldest son, Aileron, offered to take his father's place; upon Ailell's refusal, he cursed his father and was exiled. Ysanne the Seer recognizes Kim as the successor foretold by her dreams. Kim accompanies Ysanne to her cottage by the lake where Ysanne calls on Eilathen, a water spirit, to awaken Kim's latent Seer powers; Ysanne then passes to Kim the Baelrath, or Warstone, a red stone set in a ring. Ysanne also shows Kim two magical items. The first is Lökdal, a dwarvish dagger with a double gift: he who kills with Lökdal with love in his heart may make a gift of his soul to another; he who kills without love in his heart will die. Ysanne also shows Kim the Circlet of Lisen, set with a shining white gem, and recounts the prophecy concerning it: ""Who shall wear this next after Lisen shall have the darkest road to walk of any child of earth or stars."" That night Ysanne takes her own life with Lökdal and makes Kim a gift of her soul. When Kim awakens the next morning, she has not only the power of a seer (which was born in her), but also all of Ysanne's deep knowledge of Fionavar to help her interpret what she sees. Her hair turned completely white, Kim takes Ysanne's place as Seer of Brennin. Kevin and Paul are befriended by Diarmuid, Ailell's second son, a handsome man and elegant swordsman, but apparently frivolous and light-hearted. They accompany Diarmuid and his band on a daring journey to Cathal, the kingdom to the South of Brennin. Diarmuid has a double purpose: to prove the existence of a way across the Saeral River, and to seduce the King of Cathal's daughter, the lovely but fiercely independent Sharra. He achieves both and the band returns triumphant to Brennin. That night, a song that Kevin sings reawakens Paul's ghosts. Long haunted by grief and guilt over the death of his girlfriend in a car accident which he believes was his fault, Paul offers to sacrifice himself by taking Ailell's place on the Summer Tree, seeing this as a way to expiate his guilt. Jennifer and Jaelle overhear a children's game in which Leila, a young girl, calls a boy named Finn to ""take the Longest Road."" This is the third time this is happened and clearly marks Finn somehow. Jaelle cannot explain what it means but she sees latent power in Leila and invites her to become an acolyte in the temple. The next day, Jennifer meets Brendel of the lios alfar and some of his people and goes riding with them. That night, Jennifer's escort of lios alfar is slaughtered by Galadan and his wolves, and Jennifer is taken. Paul is bound naked to the Tree where he hangs for three days and nights, fully expecting that he will die. On the second night, Galadan appears but is driven away by a grey dog. On the third night Dana, the Mother, relieves Paul's pain by showing him that he was not to blame for Rachel's death and Paul is at last able to weep for Rachel. His tears break the drought. Nursed (grudgingly) back to health by Jaelle, High Priestess of Dana, Paul recovers and is named Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree. By now it is evident to all concerned that significant events are afoot, and when Mount Rangat explodes in a dramatic hand of fire reaching across the sky, there can be no doubt. Rakoth Maugrim, defeated and chained a thousand years ago, has broken free of his prison -- and Jennifer's kidnappers have sent her to him at his fortress of Starkadh. Ailell suffers a heart attack and dies at the sight. Aileron returns and Diarmuid, with great wit, agrees that he should be High King despite having been exiled. In the midst of this dynastic confusion, Sharra of Cathal, furious at her seduction and abandonment, stabs Diarmuid in the shoulder. Amongst these events we begin to get a hint of the true strength of Diarmuid's character. Meanwhile, Dave has arrived safely in Fionavar but far out on the plains. He is taken in by a group of Dalrei, or Riders, led by Ivor, chieftain of the third tribe, and Gereint, their shaman. The Dalrei dub him ""Davor"" and give him an axe, as the weapon best suited to Dave's build and lack of sword training. Dave bonds with Torc dan Sorcha, something of an outcast, when he and Torc spend a night watching over Ivor's son Tabor during his vision quest to find his totem animal. Unbelievably, the animal Tabor sees is a winged chestnut unicorn; even more incredibly, three nights later Tabor finds and immediately bonds with her, knowing that she has been created as a gift of the goddess and her name is Imraith-Nimphais. When the mountain explodes, Ivor sends a party towards Brennin led by Levon, his oldest son. They are ambushed by svart alfar near Pendaran Wood and only Dave, Levon and Torc survive by fleeing into the wood. The trees of the Wood bear a centuries-long grudge over the death of Lisen, their beautiful forest spirit who bound herself as source to Amairgen, the First Mage, and who killed herself when he died. Flidais rescues them and alerts Ceinwen. Ceinwen takes a fancy to Dave; not only does she transport them safely to the other edge of the wood, she also makes sure that Dave finds Owein's Horn. Levon, well-taught in legends by Gereint, then finds the Cave of the Sleepers, who can be awakened by the Horn. When all are at last gathered in Brennin, the new High King calls a council. They are interrupted by Brock, a dwarf, who names Matt Sören as rightful King of the Dwarves and then divulges that it is the dwarves who helped Rakoth Maugrim free himself in secret. They have also found for him the Cauldron of Khath Meigol which can resurrect the dead. The council resumes but a sudden blinding headache bursts upon Kim, and in a heartbreaking vision she sees Jennifer in Starkadh, being raped and tortured by Maugrim. Using the power of the Baelrath, Kim manages to pull all five of them out of Fionavar and back into their own world."
424,The Sea Fairies,fantasy," Mayre Griffiths, nicknamed Trot, or sometimes Tiny Trot, is a little girl who lives on the coast of southern California. Her father is the captain of a sailing schooner, and her constant companion is Cap'n Bill Weedles, a retired sailor with a wooden leg. (Cap'n Bill had been Trot's father's skipper, and Charlie Griffiths had been his mate, before the accident that took the older man's leg.) Trot and Cap'n Bill spend many of their days roaming the beaches near home, or rowing and sailing along the coast. One day, Trot wishes that she could see a mermaid; her wish is overheard, and granted the next day. The mermaids explain to Trot, and the distressed Cap'n Bill, that they are benevolent fairies; when they offer Trot a chance to pay a visit to their land in mermaid form, Trot is enthusiastic, and Bill is too loyal to let her go off without him. So begins their sojourn among the sea fairies. They see amazing sights in the land of Queen Aquarine and King Anko (including an octopus who is mortified to learn that he's the symbol of the Standard Oil Company). They also encounter a villain called Zog the Magician, a monstrous hybrid of man, animal, and fish. Zog and his sea devils capture them and hold them prisoner. The two protagonists discover that many sailors thought to have been drowned have actually been captured and enslaved by Zog. Trot and Cap'n Bill survive Zog's challenges, and the villain is eventually defeated by the forces of good. Trot and Cap'n Bill are returned to human form, safe and dry after their undersea adventure. As many readers and critics have observed, Baum's Oz in particular and his fantasy novels in general are dominated by puissant and virtuous female figures; the archetype of the father-figure plays little role in Baum's fantasy world. The Sea Fairies is a lonely exception to this overall trend: ""The sea serpent King Anko...is the closest approximation to a powerful, benevolent father figure in Baum's fantasies."""
425,Speaker for the Dead,fantasy," On Novinha's request for a Speaker, Andrew Wiggin leaves for Lusitania, a colony turned into a virtual prison, with its expansion severely limited and its whole existence devoted to the work of xenologers who study the Pequeninos, the first sentient beings found since the destruction of Formics. Lusitania itself is remarkably lacking in biodiversity, featuring thousands of unfilled ecological niches. The other outstanding feature of Lusitania is the Descolada, a native virus which almost wipes out the colony, until husband-and-wife biologists Gusta and Cida succeed in developing counters. Unfortunately, they didn't find the cure soon enough to save themselves, leaving orphaned daughter Novinha to strike out for herself. At the age of thirteen, Novinha, a cold and distant girl, successfully petitions to be made the official biologist of the colony (roughly the equivalent of a master's degree); from then on, she contributes to the work of father-and-son xenologers (alien anthropology) Pipo and Libo, and for a short time there is family and camaraderie. One day, however, she makes a discovery about the descolada—that it's in every native lifeform—and Pipo rushes out to talk to the piggies about the discovery without telling her or Libo why it's important. They can't figure it out on their own, and never learn—a few hours later, Pipo is found vivisected in the grass; his corpse does not even have the benefit of a tree (The symbol of honor placed among all dead piggies). Novinha erases all the lab work, but cannot delete the information itself due to regulations; Libo demands to see it, but even their love for each other will not make her let him see it—it appears to be a secret the piggies will kill to keep. Now Novinha is determined to ensure they never marry, the way they always planned to: for if they do, Libo will have access to those locked files and, Novinha fears, will share the same fate as his father. In anguish, Novinha calls for a Speaker for the Dead, hoping beyond hope that perhaps the original Speaker may arrive, to make sense of Pipo's death—and maybe of her life. Andrew Wiggin doesn't dare let himself be known as Ender anymore; the name is now an Epithet. Ender decides to leave his sister Valentine behind (she is married and pregnant) after traveling with her for many years. He leaves as soon as possible, with his only companion being Jane, an artificial sentience existing within the ansible computer network by which spaceships and planets communicate instantly across galactic distances. He arrives on Lusitania after twenty-two years in transit (only around two weeks to him) to discover that Novinha has canceled her call, or rather tried to, as a call for a speaker cannot legally be canceled after the speaker has begun the journey. However, two others have called, making Ender's trip not entirely in vain: they are Novinha's eldest son Miro, calling for someone to speak the death of Libo, who was killed the same way his father was; and Novinha's eldest daughter Ela, calling for someone to speak the death of Novinha's husband Marcos Ribeira, who died not six weeks ago from a terminal disease. Besides attempting to unravel the question of why Novinha married Marcão when she really loved Libo (Marcão was sterile, and a quick genetic scan on Jane's part reveals that Novinha's children are all, in fact, Libo's), Ender also takes responsibility for attempting to heal the Ribeira family, and manages to adopt (or perhaps is adopted by) most of the children within their first meeting. He also takes a strong interest in the pequeninos, and eventually (in direct violation of Starways Congress law) meets with them in person. The Hive Queen has also managed to make contact with the pequeninos philotically, and has told them a number of things&mdash;including the fact that ""Andrew Wiggin"" is not only the original Speaker for the Dead, but the original Xenocide as well, which romantically involved Zenadors (a shortened form of the word xenologists) Miro and Ouanda do not believe. The Hive Queen very emphatically wants to be revived and freed on Lusitania. Finally, in an effort to help Ender, Jane deliberately reveals to Starways Congress that Miro and Ouanda, continuing the legacy of Ouanda's dead father Libo, have been deliberately introducing new technology into the piggy lifestyle. Both Zenadors are called away to the nearest world for trial (a journey that would take twenty-two years), the colony's charter is revoked, and all humans are ordered to evacuate posthaste, leaving no sign of ever having been there. Ender holds a public speaking for Marcão, Novinha's late husband. However, Ender cannot but help reveal secrets from the lives of Libo, Pipo, and even Novinha herself as their lives were all so delicately bound together by guilt, deception, and love. The Speaker explains how Novinha blames herself for Pipo's death, and underwent a life of suffering and deception—marrying Marcão so that to prevent Libo from accessing the information which killed Pipo, but secretly trysting with Libo—because their love for each other never truly died. The meaning of Pipo's and Libo's murders come out as well: the trees are the ""third stage"" in the life of the piggies. Trees grown from piggies killed normally become brothertrees, but the ritually dissected ones are done so in order to make them fathertrees—sentient, living trees that are, unlike animal pequeninos, capable of reproduction (the descolada is proved to be instrumental in these transformations). Finally, the Speaker for the Dead is able to work out a treaty with the piggies, so that humans and pequeninos might live in peace. Unfortunately, it is not without cost: Miro, distraught to learn that Ouanda, his girlfriend in secret, is actually his sister, attempts to cross the fence, which separates the humans from the piggies, and suffers significant neurological damage. With no other way to save him, the colony declares itself in rebellion, Jane shuts off outside ansible contact, Miro is rescued, and Ender enters the forest to negotiate the aforementioned treaty. He signs it ""Ender Wiggin,"" and for the first time in his life, someone (Novinha) is prepared to receive the Xenocide with compassion instead of revulsion. Valentine and her family plan to come to Lusitania to help out in the rebellion, aided by Jane; Miro, with his crippled body, is sent into space to meet them; the Hive Queen is released, ready to begin the continuation of her species; and Ender marries Novinha."
426,The Silver Spike,fantasy, The Dominator was a wizard of immense power who could not be killed by his enemies. He was however defeated and his evil essence imprisoned in a silver spike. The power inherent in the spike is so greatly feared and desired that some try to steal it while others try to keep it from falling into anyone's hands.
427,The Ill-Made Mute,fantasy," Isse Tower is a House of the Stormriders. Stormriders, also known as Relayers, are messengers of the air for people of the high status. The Stormriders fly on winged steeds called eotaurs, and Windships that levitate above the ground because of sildron. Sildron is one of the most valuable metals in the empire of Erith. The metal sildron has the property of repelling the ground, thus, lifting objects. This metal is used to make the shoes of the Eotaurs and in the building of the Windships to sail the skies. There is only one other metal that can abolish the effect of sildron; andalum. The foundling has no memory of who he was before he was found, but knows only that he is different from all others. Soon, he becomes sick of being treated badly and plans to escape to a city to find a cure for his paradox-ivy poisoning. He stows away on a Windship to escape, but shortly after he is discovered, the ship is attacked by pirates. He is captured by the pirates, and makes friends with one of them: Sianadh, who names the mute, Imrhien (""Butterfly""). During this time he discovers that he is really a she, and when danger threatens is rescued by Sianadh by jumping off the wind ship together. They travel through the forest following a map of Sianadh's, which points them towards a sildron mine. Through the forest, they encounter magical creatures called wights. There are two different types of wights: seelie, mischievous and unseelie, evil. Much to Imrhien's surprise, they actually find the mine. Due to an injury Sianadh has sustained, Imrhien is the only one who can climb the side to an entrance to the cave. Once in the mine, Sianadh and Imrhien find that they are immensely wealthy. They decide to sail down the river to the major city to meet up with Sianadh's family. Imrhien's mind is still set on finding a cure for the facial deformity. When in the city, a wizard promises to cure the deformity, but instead makes it even worse. This coupled with Sianadh's vow to get revenge on the wizard causes his family to be closely watched. When Sianadh and his nephew go back to the mine, Imrhien and Sianadh's niece are kidnapped. They are eventually saved, but then hear that Sianadh is killed. Ethlinn sends her children (Diarmid and Muirne) and Imrhien on a caravan to Caermelor. The caravan is attacked by the Wild Hunt and any survivors scattered. Diarmid, Sianadh's nephew, and Imrhien find each other and travel together in a hope to find Muirne, Diarmid's sister. Along the way they are discovered by one of the King Emperor's Dainnan rangers, Thorn. Everything about Thorn seems perfect. At first, Diarmid is jealous, but he comes to marvel at the Dainnan's knowledge and skill. Imrhien falls in love with him, but is ashamed of her face and knows that no one could love someone so ugly. With Thorn's help, the trio easily traverse the wilderness. Through a series of adventures, Muirne is found and Imrhien continues the journey with the Dainnan, Thorn, to find the Carlin who might heal the deformities. Before they part, Thorn takes three of Imrhien's hairs and wraps them around his finger in a ring. When he asks Imrhien what she wants (since she won't return to court with him) she signs to him saying that she would like to wish him a safe journey with her voice. He unexpectedly kisses her and leaves. Imrhien travels the last part of the road leading to the Carlin's house and receives treatment for the facial scars caused by paradox ivy. The book ends with two of Imrhien's afflictions healed, though not all."
428,The Babylon Game,fantasy," It is the year 539 B.C. Inside the city of Babylon, known as the Gateway of God, is Tia, the adopted daughter of a perfume maker. She is picking herbs in the sacred Amytis garden. Next to the garden is a portion of the double defense wall surrounding the city. Tia soon discovered what is between the two walls; Sirrush, otherwise known as dragons. Fearing for the dragon's health, she leaves them food. A touch from the dragons grants Tia great magical powers, enough to threaten or save Babylon. These will be needed, as far in the plains the Persian king Cyrus the Great, plans to capture Babylon. The secret of its salvation might just lie in the hanging gardens themselves."
429,The Brothers' War,fantasy," The prologue opens on a battlefield, ""the night before the end of the world"", over the bodies of two fallen giants. The massive machine and wood giants had destroyed one another and were now the meeting place for the lieutenants of the armies preparing for battle. Ashnod the Uncaring and Tawnos meet to discuss matters and reminisce about the war that brought them to that field. The main story opens at an archaeological dig site a few decades earlier. The head archaeologist, Tocasia, sits at her table examining an ancient relic: a metal skull. When the supply caravan from the city arrives to the camp, Tocasia meets two brothers around the age of ten. The older boy, lean and tawny-haired, is Urza, while his dark-haired and stocky younger brother is Mishra. Urza tells Tocasia that he and Mishra were born on the same year, he on the first day, Mishra on the last, so that on the last day, they were equal. Tocasia takes the boys into the camp to teach them her archeology. From the beginning, Urza and Mishra show a great aptitude for the study of 'artifacts', machines left over from the mysterious Thran people, and also show a violent capacity for argument curbed only by Tocasia. Over the next six years the brothers grow up in the camp, Urza becoming lean, wiry, and developing an encyclopedic mind for mechanics. Mishra grew muscular, learning to spend time with the native Fallaji diggers, drinking with them and learning their legends. They become permanent residents of the camp, after receiving word that their father died, and their stepmother does not send for them. After the discovery and rebuilding of an ancient flying machine (an Ornithopter), on Mishra's birthday, the brothers have a vicious argument over who gets to fly it first. In the end Urza wins, but both get a turn. The bird's eye view allows them to view pictographs in the desert, leading to the discovery of large artifact deposits. These discoveries point to a mountainous region that Urza believes was the heart of Thran civilization, but which the desert natives think is haunted. Urza, Mishra, and Tocasia fly to the ruined Thran city but are attacked by a roc along the way. At the heart of the ruined city, a cave entrance leads down past troves of machines to a pedestal with a large crystal set into the middle. Accidentally, the brothers break the stone in half, and each has a differing vision when they each end with a half in his grasp. Urza sees a world of metal cables and machines with many melting and burning forms. Mishra saw a long hallway made of lizard skin, with tiny figurines of screaming beings made of gold and mirrors showing him twisted images of a monster. When they awake from their visions, they see the automatons in the hall come to life and attack them. They discover Mishra's stone weakens the machines, while Urza's strengthens them. After escaping, Urza and Mishra get into a heated argument when Urza takes Mishra's stone. In frustration, Urza lashes his hand out to return the stone, while Mishra steps into his reach and is struck in the forehead with the stone. This results in a falling-out between the brothers. In the months after, the brothers remained angry. Urza deems his stone the Mightstone for its ability to strengthen, and Mishra's the Weakstone for its ability to weaken. One night, an argument between the brothers escalates to a violent pitch, where they begin using the powers of the stones on one another. Tocasia rushes in to stop them and is caught in the cross fire and killed. In grief and pain at the accusations of his older brother, Mishra flees into the night. Without Tocasia's leadership, the camp disbands and the students and workers return to their homes. After the deadly night, Urza leaves the camp without knowing of his brother's whereabouts. In the city of Kroog, capital of the neighbouring kingdom of Yotia, he becomes a clockmaker's apprentice. And first meets Kayla bin-Kroog, the Yotian princess, after fixing a music box of sentimental value. Upon learning that a Thran book is a part of the princess's dowry, he builds a mechanical man to win a contest set forth by Kayla's father to find her a strong suitor. The mechanical man moves a massive jade statue and Urza wins the contest. The warlord father is initially infuriated that Urza wins the contest, but is persuaded to allow the marriage when he realizes that he can use Urza's knowledge for himself. Meanwhile, Mishra is enslaved by the desert people. He is made a tutor for the son of the ruling tribe's chief. The son is initially uninterested in learning arithmetic or other languages and Mishra despairs that he will be demoted (though his friend Hajar knows failure will mean death) like many previous tutors who failed before him. Mishra manages to befriend the boy by telling him many legends and stories. However, Mishra is still a slave that will be executed upon the completion of the boy's education. One night, a massive mechanical dragon attacks the tribe, killing the chieftain. Mishra tames it with his stone and is promoted from a slave to being a ""wizard"" and advisor to the son, who succeeds his father as chieftain. With the Kroogian warlord's patronage, Urza begins a school for the creation of many devices and takes on an apprentice, Tawnos. Mishra takes on his apprentice, Ashnod when the desert Fallaji people begin their war against the other kingdoms. Urza's Yotian kingdom and Mishra's Fallaji begin to war, but hold a peace talk. The brothers are reunited, but the Kroogian warlord uses the peace talks as a pretense to launch a surprise attack against his hated Fallaji enemies. The Kroogian warlord is killed by the Fallaji chieftain in the ensuing battle. A war erupts, but another peace talk is held and Urza and Mishra attempt to reconcile their broken relationship. However, the talks break down when Mishra has Kayla steal Urza's stone and sleeps with her. With the aide of his war machines, Mishra escapes into the desert. Urza mounts a search for his brother in the hopes of getting revenge, leading to another war. After an unsuccessful attack by Urza's Ornithopter patrols on a false warcamp, Mishra attacks the Kroogian capital with three of his dragon engines (having found and tamed two more). The Fallaji chieftain attempts to kill Ashnod during the attack on the city, but fails and is killed by her instead. In the caverns where the stones were found, men who worshipped machines met a mostly mechanical demon from another world. He called himself Gix, and they did as well. Mishra becomes the new leader of the Fallaji, and builds himself an army of automatons to increase his military power. Urza flees the now-conquered Kroog and is appointed ""Protector of the Realm"" by an alliance formed against the Fallaji by the kingdoms of Argive and Korlis. Tawnos brings Urza's wife and newborn son (possibly nephew) to him, and together they begin to build an opposing army to Mishra. Ashnod builds her own army of brainwashed and surgically altered slaves and criminals, the transmogrants, to fight. The war continues for decades with each side participating in an arms race to build more effective weapons. Ashnod is exiled from Mishra's side, while Loran joins a group of scholars in unlocking the power of magic in the city Terisia. When Mishra invades, two of his dragon engines vanish into thin air. The Brotherhood of Gix infiltrates both sides and plays them against each other, while winning more power in Mishra's court. Mishra is secretly offered a method of gaining more power through artifice by the Brotherhood. Urza's son Harbin finds an island of Argoth, ruled by elves who worship the goddess Gaea, and was secretly aided to return to land by an elf. In a ploy to bring the brother's together, Gix gives information on the secret island to a member of the Brotherhood. Urza and Mishra both learn that this island is rich in resources like lumber and ore. Because their war has stripped the continent of resources and polluted the land, they bring their armies to the island in the hopes gaining the upper hand and ending the war decisively. Both armies exterminate the natives of the island. In the final battle of the war, the brothers' armies fight to a stalemate. Urza meets Mishra upon the battlefield, but Mishra has been warped into an amalgamation of machine-and-man by Gix, the Phyrexian demon. Ashnod sends the Golgothian sylex to Urza to end the war while she fights the demon Gix. Urza, suddenly awakening to the power of magic, uses the Golgothian sylex to unleash an enormous blast to destroy his brother and Gix. The blast destroys the island, ends the war and upsets the climate of Dominaria, ushering in a new ice age. Gix escapes through a portal to the plane of Phyrexia. Urza becomes a Planeswalker, a god-like being capable of traversing between worlds, and the Mightstone and Weakstone become his eyes. Regretting the destruction he has unleashed upon the world, Urza uses his newfound powers to leave Dominaria and travel to worlds unseen. ja:MAGIC URZA & MISHRA pl:Bratobójcza wojna ru:Война братьев"
430,The Hand of Chaos,fantasy," Haplo takes a submersible back to Draknor to retrieve his ship. He finds Samah there&mdash; wet, haggard, and lost. The leader of the Council has opened Death's Gate, allowing the dragon-snakes free access to all the four worlds. Haplo decides he is too tired to physically capture Samah and uses his ship to return to the Nexus through the now more easily-travelled Death's Gate, where he makes his report on what he has found. Haplo explains the entire tale: the mensch, the Sartan, and the dragon-snakes, who inspired fear in him greater than even the Labyrinth&nbsp;... because he at least knew the Labyrinth could be defeated. Xar is much less sanguine about the serpents' supposed invincibility. He assigns Haplo to take Bane back to Arianus, where he will activate the Kicksey-winsey and continue to foment chaos as he did before; he will then wait there for Xar's orders, as Xar will be going to Abarrach to learn necromancy. This is Haplo's last chance to prove himself loyal. Haplo leaves angrily and takes a walk. Standing before the Final Gate, he contemplates going back into the Labyrinth&mdash; something no living Patryn other than Lord Xar has ever accomplished. He wants to look for Alfred so they can return to the Chamber of the Damned to get some answers&mdash; and to bring his lord to give him proof, as well. Haplo is derailed by Zifnab, however, who admits to actually being a Sartan and, with his dragon (one of the true ""dragons"" of Pryan, as opposed to a dragon-snake,) is on his way to Chelestra, answering a race-wide summons put out by Samah. Samah, Zifnab says, intends to go to Abarrach and learn the secret of necromancy. He also reveals that the woman left Haplo because she was pregnant, and that their child is now somewhere in the Labyrinth. But Zifnab advises him (in between bouts of gibberish, non sequiturs and reminiscences on Debbie Does Dallas) not to go in until he has activated the Kicksey-winsey. Bane has spied on this and tells Xar, lying that Haplo said he intended to ""prove you wrong,"" but revealing that Haplo warned Zifnab to leave so that Xar wouldn't find the Sartan. Xar considers this treachery past the time for punishment and orders the child to kill Haplo once his job is done. On Drevlin, the mood is somber; the Kicksey-winsey has stopped, totally stopped, for the first time in history, and no one knows why. Limbeck, now High Froman and the leader of a race-wide dwarven revolt against the ""Welf"" occupation of Drevlin, is sure that it is Welf treachery. He has become a hard, cruel leader, much to Jarre's dismay. (A recurring symbol is his glasses: he has new ones that correct for his massive myopia but hurt his head abysmally; Jarre liked him better when he was blind and idealistic.) When Haplo lands, Limbeck is quick to enlist his assistance, and between the two of them and Jarre's memory of Alfred's mausoleum, they puzzle out where the control center for the entire Kicksey-winsey must be. To reach it, however, they must sneak through the Factree, which the elves have taken as their home base. At the control center, they find an automaton who asks for instructions, but Haplo's runes have started to warn him. Not understanding why, he nevertheless trusts his instincts and the group flees the room without Limbeck. Bane, Haplo, and Jarre are quickly captured by pursuing elven forces, led by a strange, red-eyed captain named Sang-drax&mdash; a serpent whose name is elven for ""dragon-snake"" and possibly the one who met with Xar before Haplo arrived home. Limbeck remains unfound by the elves, and wanders for a while before stumbling on a room in which he sees an incredible, hopeful sight: humans, elves and dwarves, sitting and conversing in peace and harmony. (He overlooks their distinctive red eyes and the terror they make him feel.) Inflamed by optimistic vision, he immediately forgets it when he overhears (from the serpent-elves carrying Haplo away) that Jarre has been captured, and goes to plan the war. Haplo, Bane, and Jarre are taken to the Imperanon, the elven emperor's castle, where Emperor Agah'ran hatches a plan to do away with King Stephen and Queen Anne, using Bane as his willing co-conspirator. Agah'ran wants to finish the hostilities quickly, as he is fighting three wars: against the humans, against the ""Gegs,"" and against his own son, Prince Rees'ahn, who has been leading a rebellion for several years. Stephen and Anne (who have since had a daughter,) and the Lady Iridal (invited there by the wizard Trian,) receive the news that Bane is alive from a human slave who has been allowed to escape the elven capital. The elves presumably will want a human surrender in exchange for Bane's life&mdash; very few people know of his true nature&mdash; but his three parents know Bane must be the one pulling the strings (and the royal family certainly doesn't want him back.) They also realize that it would look very bad if they failed to attempt a rescue, considering the rumors that he is illegitimate, but King Stephen understandably doesn't actually want Bane back; he only wants to protect their work at making peace with Rees'ahn. Iridal decides to go on and rescue her son herself, and King Stephen grants her a fortnight to do so; after that, he moves on to meeting with Rees'ahn and leaves Bane to his fate. On the way, she drops by a Kir monastery and picks up her sole helper: Hugh the Hand, whom Alfred revived with necromancy without remembering he did it. Hugh is slumming, a dirty drunk, unable to return to his former line of work: since being revived (and as himself, not the shambling dead of Abarrach,) he finds it impossible to kill, especially since everyone loses their nerve before hiring him. Hugh agrees on the condition that Iridal helps him find Alfred once they're finished. Before they leave, Trian privately reminds Hugh of his honor&mdash; Hugh accepted a contract to kill Bane, and his honor should compel him to carry it out. The royal family wants to use Iridal's rescue to see that Bane is killed to protect their daughter, and their world, from what he would do. Hugh and Iridal go to Skurvash, the island where the Brotherhood of the Hand, a guild of assassins, makes its base. As ""the Hand,"" Hugh is of the second-highest rank possible to attain, with only Ciang the Arm as his superior (and possibly none his equal.) It is Ciang he asks for help, and she secures him passage to the elvish capitol. There he seeks the aid of the Kenkari, an elven religious clan whose Cathedral of the Albedo is used as a repository of elven souls, which supposedly strengthens elven magic, particularly their own powerful strain. From there Hugh and Iridal slip into the Imperanon, but Iridal, blinded by love, doesn't see the trap Bane has laid for her. For Iridal's life, Hugh agrees to kill King Stephen and Queen Anne; Bane (with Haplo's dog) will go along to ensure success and take the human throne. Haplo, in the meantime, chases Sang-drax, who is ""rescuing"" Jarre, but he is taken by the dragon-snakes and mentally tortured. The Keepers from the Cathedral, however, have been compelled by the dead spirits to rescue Haplo, and they do so. The Keeper of the Soul is able to drive off the dragon-snakes because he is no longer afraid of what they represent. The Keepers give Haplo a book written in Sartan, Dwarven, Elvish and Human&mdash; instructions to give the automaton under Drevlin&mdash; and send him down to Drevlin on a phantom dragon that they summon. They also ask him where his soul is&mdash; he has one, clearly, but evidently it is not with him. He has no idea what they're talking about. Iridal goes with him to stop Hugh and her son. They find Sang-drax's dragonship (he is no longer on it) and the phantom dragon breaks one of its wings; Haplo jumps onto the crippled vessel and rescues Jarre, but finds himself in the middle of a human-galley-slave rebellion fomented by Sang-drax. Haplo uses his magic to paralyze everyone mid-fight and tells them how foolish this battle is: the human and elven crewers will need to work together if they want to save their ship. He carries Jarre's badly injured form and teleports them both to the Factree, where Jarre is unfortunately seen by a dwarf who doesn't believe that she isn't dead. The dwarf rushes to inform Limbeck, and Limbeck promptly decides to lead the dwarves to kill elves as vengeance for Jarre's apparent death. Haplo heals Jarre and they fail to prevent the dwarves from launching at the elves, but both sides come to a halt when the statue opens and Sang-drax and the other dragon-snakes rise out from the tunnels, disguised as fellow dwarves who shout bloodthirsty encouragement to the others. Jarre recognizes them by their eyes and tears off Limbeck's glasses; Haplo attacks one of the ""dwarves"" to force out the serpent's true form. However, the serpents all shed their bodies and begin attacking the dwarves, starting a chaotic battle of dwarf versus serpent and elf versus dwarf, with both mensch sides blaming the other for the serpents' presence. Haplo and Sang-drax fight also, and though neither succeeds in slaying the other, both sustain injuries (Sang-drax's eye, and Haplo's heart-rune, the center of his personal and magical identity) that will never quite heal. Thankfully, Limbeck finally sees where this is leading&mdash; blood, death, terror&mdash; and forces his dwarves to surrender. In response, the dragon-snakes begin to attack the Kicksey-winsey itself&nbsp;... And, realizing that this machine is their mutual lifesblood, the elves and dwarves immediately ally in its defense. A crippled dragonship also manages to land there&mdash; the ship that Haplo left to work together&mdash; and both the elves and humans join in. This marks the first time in Arianus's recorded history that humans, dwarves, and elves have fought side-by-side. Meanwhile, Hugh and Bane are on their way to the Seven Fields, where Prince Rees'ahn's rebellion began; he is returning to sign a historic alliance with King Stephen and Queen Anne against the elven emperor. Bane demands that Hugh take a final contract&mdash; to kill Haplo, and tell him that Xar was the one who wanted him dead. Hugh has no intention of surviving long enough to take on another job but agrees anyway, just to shut him up. Hugh deliberately botches the assassination of Stephen in an attempt to get himself killed, but the dog saves him by leaping onto him and causing confusion. Bane takes advantage of this and sinks a sword into Stephen's back, determined to have the throne for himself. Then he turns on Queen Anne&mdash; only to find himself slowly asphyxiating from a spell cast by his mother. Iridal has finally arrived to see her son's true nature. As Stephen and Anne's own child died&mdash; strangled, unable to breathe the air of the High Realm&mdash; so does Prince Bane meet his end. Stephen's life, however, is saved by Trian, and Iridal leaves for the High Realm with Bane's body. Hugh returns to the Cathedral of the Albedo, where he has promised to give his soul (which, after all, has gone on and then returned and thus is of great value to the Keepers.) But he is forbidden because his soul still has the mortal bonds of a contract, so must agree the Keeper of the Soul's new terms; the dead commanded the Keeper to accept the contracted life in place of Hugh's&mdash; Hugh must kill Haplo."
431,Lord Brocktree,fantasy," This book revolves around the badger Lord Brocktree, father of Boar the Fighter, grandfather of Bella of Brockhall, and great-grandfather of Sunflash the Mace. He sets out to find the ancient badger mountain stronghold of Salamandastron, aided by the quick talking haremaid Dorothea Duckfontein Dillworthy and otter Ruffgar Brookback. Meanwhile, in Salamandastron, trouble comes for Brocktree's father, Lord Stonepaw. Years of peace have left the mountain stronghold with few fighters, and those that remain are long past their prime, including Stonepaw himself. The wildcat Ungatt Trunn, son of Mortspear, Highland King of the North, lays siege to the fortress with his Blue Hordes. Eventually the mountain is overrun, leading to the deaths of many hares and even of Stonepaw himself, who dies valiantly defending his hares, taking many vermin with him as he does. The wildcat takes at least sixty hares as prisoners, but through the efforts of warrior Stiffener Medick and his otter friend Brogalaw, they escape. Lord Brocktree gets an army from Bucko Bigbones, after Dotti defeats him in a contest. Thanks to the Bark Crew, the group of guerrillas formed by Stiffener and Brogalaw to harass Trunn, the Blue Hordes are slowly starved, their supplies cut off. Ungatt Trunn tricks the Bark Crew into putting up a last stand in battle, but Lord Brocktree joins forces with the hares and saves the day. The book culminates in a massive final battle, with many memorable characters killed, such as Jukka the Sling, a female squirrel chieftain, and Fleetscut the hare. Eventually, when the battle ends up a near-stalemate, Trunn and Brocktree face off in a duel. After a failed assassination attempt on Brocktree by the searat Doomeye and the corsair fleet captain Karangool (Trunn's second in command) the badger eventually wins, snapping Trunn's spine and leaving him on the sand to die. Trunn is thrown into the water but survives, only to be drowned by Groddil, one of his former advisors."
432,Song in the Silence,fantasy," Lanen Kaelar is a young woman who has been raised in Hadronsstead, believing that Hadron (the horse-breeder) was her father. She leads an unhappy life as she secretly longs to meet the Dragons of legend, for which she has had a powerful fascination, but she is forced to remain at Hadron's farm. When Hadron eventually dies, she feels freed. After an abrupt proposal from her cousin (who gets a bruise from her fist in response), she leaves to seek out the True Dragons of legend. On the journey she learns that her true father Marik has promised her as a demon sacrifice since before her birth, in payment for the making of an artifact that allows the user to see distant people and places. She finds a ship to the Dragon Isle for the Lansip harvest that used to occur every ten years, but no ship has returned from the trip in over 100 years due to the violent storms that lie between Kolmar and the Dragon Isle. After travelling on the ship with her father Marik lurking dangerously on board, she makes it safely to the Dragon Isle and meets Akhor, the mighty silver-scaled king of the Kantri (known to humans as ""dragons""). She seeks him out with the two words that she utters on instinct, that he respects her instantly for; 'My brother?' Akhor, weary of the 'ferrinshadik' (a longing to know the mind of another species, similar to what Lanen herself feels), reveals himself, and discovers that Lanen alone of the humans (Gedri) he has ever known, is capable of hearing and replying in Truespeech, the Kantri form of telepathy. It is a trait all the Kantri share. Lanen comes to know Akhor, and for the first time since the Kantri departed the mainland, Kantri and Gedri are once again communicating with one another. Their meetings must be secret and both must break the rules of their people in order to meet with each other. In a madly short time they fall in love, knowing even as it happens that it is folly. When Lanen is horribly burned while helping Mirazhe, another of the Kantri, to give birth to the first dragon child born for many years, Akhor is terrified that she will die of her injuries and reluctantly delivers her into the hands of the only healer on the island - an ally of Marik's. Lanen is swiftly healed by the skilled ministrations of Marik's Healer, Maikel (Healers are humans who can wield a magical power to heal others), but is then spirited away by Marik, who intends to sacrifice Lanen to a demon in order to pay off a dark debt he has long owed. Lanen is kept ensorcelled and unable to call for aid, but Akhor learns of her plight from Rella, a human who came to the island ostensibly to gather Lansip leaves (which are worth their weight in silver due to their special healing properties), but she is actually a member of a order of spies, and she was hired to protect Lanen. Akhor manages to save Lanen in the nick of time, slaying the demon lord Lanen was to be sacrifed to, but Marik and his demon-caller ally Caderan manage to avoid Akhor's notice. The assembled Council of the Kantri soon learn of Lanen and Akhor's love, and their transgressions, and are prepared to sentence them to exile or death when Lanen manages to sway them incline them to mercy with an impassioned speech in defense of their actions. However, during Lanen's speech, Marik, consumed by greed, comes and steals the Soulgems of the Lost, a precious and irreplaceable treasure of the Kantri, while they are distracted. Akhor and two other of the Kantri pursue Marik back to his camp and a battle ensues, for Marik and his demon-calling servant Caderan had prepared for the possibility of a fight and so had demonic powers and items ready to oppose the Kantri with. Caderan is slain and Marik is driven insane, but Akhor suffers terrible wounds at Marik's hands and Rishkaan, one of the other kantri present at the fight, is killed. Akhor as an entity dies of his wounds, but he is mysteriously transformed into human form. Together they travel back to Kolmar and are eventually married."
433,"Dilvish, the Damned",fantasy," Dilvish is the descendant of both elves and humans, a scion of a prominent Elven house and ""the Human House that hath been stricken"" which lost its peerage for mixing Elven and Human blood. Hundreds of years before the main story, he comes across a dark ritual being performed by the sorcerer Jelerak who is sacrificing a human girl. He attempts to stop the ritual but is turned into stone, with his soul banished to Hell. His body became a statue, and for many decades it resided within the square of a nearby town that he had formerly saved from enemy conquerors. When this town is again in need of a hero, their citizens' plight allows Dilvish the passage he needed to escape from Hell. He returns to the world of the living with his steed, the metal demon horse Black, and a burning desire for revenge against Jelerak, but must first repulse the assault against the endangered town. Dilvish then goes to call upon the Shoredan - a cursed people bound to his family. He searches for Jelerak in the Tower of Ice and finds the sorcerer's apprentice and his sister trapped there. The two of them believe him to be a servant of Jelerak sent to kill them."
434,Dying Inside,fantasy," The novel's main character, David Selig, is an undistinguished man living in New York City. David was born with a telepathic gift allowing him to read minds. Rather than use his ability for any greater good, however, Selig squanders his power, using it only for his own convenience. At the beginning of the novel, David earns a living by reading the minds of college students so that he can better plagiarize reports and essays on their behalf. As the novel progresses, Selig's power becomes continually weaker, working sporadically and sometimes not at all, and Selig struggles to maintain his grip on reality as he begins to lose an ability on which he has long since grown dependent. The book contains a number of memorable elements, such as David's relationship with a fellow telepath he meets as a young adult, or his strained interaction with his estranged younger sister (who has long distrusted him because of his ability), or his obsession, during one section of the novel, with proving that his girlfriend, a woman named Kitty, is also telepathic after he discovers that he can't read her mind. There's also an interesting moment where David's power causes him to vicariously experience his girlfriend's acid trip, and a bravura sequence in which the adolescent Selig, during a visit to a farm, enters the minds of, variously, a fish swimming in a stream, a hen laying an egg, and a young couple in the midst of passionate sex."
435,The Sleeping Beauty,fantasy," Lily, who is half fae, is the godmother to the Kingdom of Eltaria, which is quite wealthy due to the number of mines it has. However, this means that the surrounding kingdoms wish to take it over, and so Eltaria is either at war or preparing for it much of the time. Therefore, that makes overseeing the kingdom a full-time job for Godmother Lily. However, she has mastered the ability to travel via mirrors to make things easier, which Godmother Aleksia was desirous was find out in the previous book, The Snow Queen After Queen Celeste dies, Lily takes on the appearance of an evil sorceress,with the name 'Sable', and marries King Thurman, in name only, so that he won't be trapped into marrying a real evil sorceress and Princess Rosamund won't have a real wicked stepmother. However, this doesn't stop the Tradition from focusing on Eltaria, particularly on Rosa, who ends up with two Traditional paths tangled up and directed at her, that of the Beauty Asleep and Snowskin (Snow White). While her outer appearance is that of a Sleeping Beauty, she ends up being attacked by the Huntsman and in her escape, is captured by seven dwarves. However, unlike the ones in the Traditional tale, these dwarves are renegade ones, who shackle a chain about her ankle and turn her into their virtual slave. Godmother Lily, through the help of her mirror servant Jimson, locates Rosa, and donning the disguise of an old bee-woman named Maggie, goes to help the Princess. Since there is no way to remove the chain from Rosa short of cutting her foot off or having the dwarves do it, Lily reveals herself and gives Rosa a potion that will simulate death. Meanwhile, Prince Siegfried of the Kingdom of Drachenthal, which really isn't a proper kingdom and is composed of warrior clans with gods that often sire children with mortals, arrives in Eltaria, with his companion, a Wise Bird. He is a Hero, but unlike most from his land, he is intelligent and listens to the good advice of the Bird. He is also trying to avoid his Doom, since it involves waking up a sleeping shieldwoman demigoddess(who also happens to be his aunt) in the middle of a ring of fire, and eventually leading to him getting stabbed in the back and other wretched things happening. Seigfried comes across Rosa just as Godmother Lily is in the middle of doing the spell that will wake her, and plans to wake Rosa, hoping that it will be enough to satisfy the Tradition without actually fulfilling all aspects of his fated path. At the same time, another prince, Leopold of Falkenreid, who was kicked out by his father for being too popular and therefore overshadowing his older brother and Heir, also comes along and spots Rosa. The two princes get into a minor fight over who will kiss Rosa awake, in which time Lily manages to complete the spell right before Leopold wins and tries to kiss Rosa. Understandably, Godmother Lily is quite angry with the two princes, for they could have ruined everything, but lets them come to the palace with her and Rosa, since they could be useful to have around. Once Rosa has recovered from her ordeal, she starts Godmother training, partly so that it won't be so boring having to be confined with her 'stepmother' all the time. Unfortunately, King Thurmand dies shortly after, leaving ""Queen Sable"" to be Regent until Rosa turns of age at twenty-one and can actually rule. This means that their enemies will descend on Eltaria, intent on taking over, unless measures can be taken to prevent it. Godmother Lily, however, comes with a plan, and it is this: for one hundred princes to come and take part in trials to see which one of them will win the hand of the princess. Adventurers are also allowed to take part, however, they are not housed at the castle like the princes. Seigfried and Leopold, naturally, decide to stay and take part in the trials, and they strike a bargain to help each other through the trials until the last task. The first trial consists of a race on horseback, in full armor, with a break in the middle to herd three sheep into a pen (either doing it yourself, with or without magic, or hiring a shepherd) and line up a dozen eggs without breaking them. Seigfried, who has tasted dragon's blood and so understands the speech of animals, finds out that sheep love clover and bean plants, and so gathers some for him and Leopold to use to herd the sheep, while Leopold buys them each a small dustpan and a wooden spoon to deal the eggs. The second test involves each prince being given a gold item that is cursed (minor curses, not serious ones), and getting rid of the curses by adding the item to the hoard of the dragon that guards a mountain pass, in any way possible, without harming him. Seigfried is cursed by having amphibians appear to fall from his mouth every time he speaks, while Leopold ends up with a curse that turns him to one of those morose poet-princes, who desire only to wear black, stay up at night, and write (usually bad) poetry and songs. Those two curses amuse the dragon immensely, which convince him to take the cursed items from them. The third trial involves the thirty-one remaining princes answering a series of riddles, with none of them getting the same riddles. Meanwhile, another prince named Desmond has also been doing quite well at the trials, and has managed to attract the attention of Rosa, up until the time they eventually kiss and she finds out that there is no spark between them. Seigfried gives the princess self-defense lessons as a gift, and Leopold gives her a necklace made of unicorn hair, freely given to Seigfried by a unicorn named Luna. By this point, Rosa and Seigfried have fallen in love. The final trial is announced, in which the remaining ten princes have to come up with a way to protect Eltaria for the present and future, and marriage is not a solution. The prince with the best answer will be declared the winner and receive Rosa's hand in marriage. The Huntsman turns out to be working for Desmond, and two kidnap Rosa when they catch her eavesdropping on them, invoking the Tradition by locking her in a tower with thorns surrounding it. However, the animals that Seigfried rescued and helped alert him to the situation, and help him and Leopold to find and rescue the princess. The Bird gets permanently turned into a Firebird, without the ability to turn into a human, to her delight, in order to help, and Luna also turns up and proves that she can help the rescue party as well. Luna drives the thorns away, while the Firebird burns it, and the ensuing ring of fire helps satisfy the Traditional Path that Seigfried is fated for without bringing the Doom. After a fight, Desmond is killed, the Huntsman and Jimson end up switching places, so that the former is trapped in the mirror world and the latter becomes human, Rosa is rescued, and both Leopold and Luna are mortally wounded. However, as unicorn blood, freely given, can heal just about any wound, Luna does one final act, allowing the blood from her wound to heal Leopold. Seigfried, who had thought up of a solution to the final test just before Rosa being kidnapped, wins her hand in marriage. Once everything is finalized, the solution is revealed to be that of good dragons to guard the borders. ""Queen Sable"" steps down and proclaims Rosa and Seigfried to be Queen and King of Eltaria, after which she returns to her godmother's castle with Jimson, whom she had realized she had fallen in love with and vice versa. In return for what Leopold has done, he is sent to wake the sleeping Shieldmaiden (Brunnhilde), with the two falling in love, marrying, and deciding the spend their life traveling and having adventures. The book ends up Brunnhilde telling off the god her father for setting things up so that Seigfried was supposed to have a horrible destiny and not being happy with how things turned out after all, setting off with Leopold on their adventure, and Rosa and Seigfried bidding them good-bye and then going off to 'produce an heir' before they have to appear at their coronation celebration."
436,Camelot 30K,fantasy," In 2009, humans make contact with their first extraterrestrials. The signal comes from beyond Neptune and even Pluto, on 1999 ZX, a celestial body between comet and planet in size, out in the Kuiper belt at 35 AU from the Sun. Twenty years later they send a scientific team to this small, ice-bound planetoid in the farthest reaches of the solar system in the Oort cloud. This cold, dark planetoid ends up being a strange world indeed. There is only a thin hydrogen atmosphere, almost vacuum, and the average temperature is some 30&nbsp;K (-243&nbsp;°C), where only hydrogen, helium, and neon are gaseous in state and nearly everything else is a solid. Yet on this icy, frozen world, life manages to thrive: the keracks, which are no bigger than a few centimeters in length resemble ""large one-eyed prawns dressed in elaborate clothing"". The keracks, despite their small size, have built rather small cities and developed a complex society on their planetoid which they dubbed ""Ice"". They have a collectivistic hive-like society with a rich culture suggesting that of England in the time of King Arthur. The human visitors' first contact is the female kerack Merlene, wizard of the kerack city of Camalor. The humans themselves, being too hot and large, are unsuited for direct contact with the natives on this chilly world. So, instead, they have built ""telebots"" through which they can communicate with Merlene and the other keracks. Merlene develops a fondness for conversing with the humans and eventually the humans and the keracks get to learn much about each others' worlds and cultures. The humans also teach Merlene more about science and technology which would hopefully advance the kerack race. The human scientists also uncover mysteries about the energy source of the keracks, who secrete an internal pellet of Uranium and moderate its decay with a Boron-rich carapace to provide internal warmth. Whenever a kerack dies its pellet is taken to be stockpiled by the colony's queen. The scientists discover the tragic conclusion of the kerack life cycle almost too late to save Merlene; when a kerack colony accumulated a large enough stockpile the queen would instinctively arrange it in such a way as to trigger a nuclear explosion, blasting kerack spores off of the Kuiper belt object to colonize other objects in the belt. Since the kerack colony is exploded in the process no living kerack had known of their fate. The book concludes with Merlene going traveling to warn other colonies of the consequences of their expanding stockpiles."
437,At the Gates of Darkness,fantasy," The remnants of the Conclave of Shadows, led by Pug, struggle to defeat evil magician Belasco before the Demon horde arrives in Midkemia."
438,Mila 18,fantasy," As in many other books by Uris, the story is largely told from the standpoint of a newspaperman; in this case, an American-Italian journalist, Christopher de Monti, who is assigned to Warsaw after covering the Spanish civil war. Although meant to be a dispassionate and neutral observer, he meets and becomes intimate with both the Nazi hierarchy and the Jews of Warsaw. He has a passionate affair with the wife of one of the Jewish community leaders, while also dealing with prostitutes provided by the Nazis. As the ghetto is surrounded and reduced to rubble, he throws in his lot with the gallant defenders. He is one of the few survivors and manages to escape with a young woman, Gabriela Rak, who is pregnant with the child of one of the defenders, Andrei Androfski, a former Polish army officer. *Andrei Androfski is a Polish army Ulany Brigade officer, and a Jew. He is hot-headed and several other characters comment that he is best at leading cavalry charges - i.e. hopelessly fighting until the end. He remains in the ghetto after the fall of the bunker at Mila 18 and is presumed dead afterwards. *Gabriela Rak is Andrei Androfski's girlfriend, although they decide not to marry due to Andrei's Jewish descent. She worked at the American Embassy in Warsaw before the war and at the end of the book was carrying Andrei's child. *Christopher de Monti is a journalist of whose father is Italian and mother is American. While opposed to fascism and being determined to bring out the truth to the world, he does not aid the fighters on the ghetto until he is compelled to enter the ghetto by the Nazi propaganda officer in Poland. He is the only person to know the location of all the ghetto's diaries. *Alexander Brandel is one of the leaders of the uprising and the father of Wolf Brandel. He started a diary which was later expanded to 24 volumes by members of the ghetto. *Wolf Brandel is the son of Alexander and one of the leaders of the uprising. He escapes the ghetto with a handful of survivors including his girlfriend Rachael Bronski. At the end of the book Christopher de Monti writes that Rachael and Wolf are off fighting in another Jewish resistance group. *Rachael Bronski is the daughter of Paul and Deborah Bronski and the girlfriend of Wolf Brandel. Along with being a talented musician and an excellent soldier she assists Wolf with the command of his part of the army. When the uprising comes to an end Rachael and Wolf escape with a few others out of the sewers and to safety. *Deborah Bronski is Christopher de Monti's lover and the wife of Paul Bronski. She is also the sister of Andrei Androfski. While Deborah does not feel any love for Paul, especially after he opposes the resistance in the ghetto, she refuses to leave him until he dies. Deborah has two children - Rachael and Stephan Bronski. *Paul Bronski is the husband of Deborah Bronski and, although a Jew, does not wish to be associated with other Jews in any way. He works at the Jewish Council and believes in cooperating with the Germans and opposing the Jewish resistance. He commits suicide eventually after not being able to cope with the pressure from both sides. Loosely based on Adam Czerniaków. *Franz Koenig is an ethnic German living in Poland who receives higher and higher status after the Nazi invasion. As the war progresses, Koenig becomes more and more corrupted. He succeeds Paul Bronski in leading the Warsaw Medical Institute."
439,Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox,fantasy," Angeline Fowl, Artemis Fowl's mother contracts a debilitating disease, which Artemis can not heal with magic, but tries and makes Angeline's condition worse. Artemis desperately contacts Captain Holly Short and &#8470;1, in hopes that they will be able to shed some new light on his mother's condition. They determine Angeline is suffering from Spelltropy, a fairy disease that is spread through the use of magic, and can only be cured by the brain fluid of the silky sifaka lemur of Madagascar. Unfortunately, the lemur is extinct, due to a ruthless deal Artemis made almost 8 years ago with a group called the Extinctionists. Foaly tells him that his mother will die without the cure. Artemis pleads for &#8470;1 to open up the time stream, allowing him to save the lemur, and thus his mother. Foaly argues against the idea, but due to Artemis' lying to Holly, saying that she infected Angeline with Spelltropy, Holly agrees to help Artemis immediately to make up for it, and Foaly had to give in. They arrive nearly eight years earlier in Artemis' study. The time stream causes Artemis become much hairier while Holly is physically reduced to an adolescent. Artemis assures Holly that the past Butler will quietly slip the lemur into the room (to avoid Angeline seeing it) and that they will simply be able to leave. Butler however, does not act according to Artemis' predictions. He tranquilises the two, and locks them in the trunk of the Fowl Bentley. Artemis and Holly escape with the help of Mulch Diggums, a kleptomaniac dwarf who has partnered up with Artemis in the future. After following his younger self to an animal park to retrieve the lemur, Artemis breaks into the wrong cage and is attacked by a gorilla, and Holly is forced into action. She heals his wounds with magic, and in a giddy haze of relief after realising he almost died, she kisses him. After, they save the lemur from Rathdown Park, but are forced at gunpoint to release it to young Artemis. While hurrying to the shuttleport in Tara, a guilty Artemis confesses his lie to Holly, who is outraged. Artemis redeems himself by giving Holly a chance to talk with Commander Root, who is dead in their time. Holly becomes neutral to Artemis, then thanks him. They commandeer a shuttle and fly it to Morocco, where the younger Artemis will trade the lemur to the Extinctionists for a hundred thousand euros. The money will go to an Arctic expedition, to help Artemis find his missing father. Instead of capturing the lemur, Holly is captured herself, and sold by the younger Artemis to the Extinctionists, who plan to execute her. Older Artemis races to the rescue, but falls in the execution pit himself. There he discovers that the ""flames"" are holograms, and meets his old nemesis Opal Koboi, who has put the mesmer on the leader of the Extinctionists to help her collect rare species for her research. Artemis escapes, Holly finds him, and they fly back to Fowl Manor to return to the future. However Opal follows them into the time stream, escaping into the future. She takes over Angeline's body and pretends that she was Artemis' mother, but reveals herself when Artemis is about to inject the Spelltropy cure into her system. She also reveals that she caused the resembling symptoms to Spelltropy and made the whole incident herself (she dropped out of the time stream 2 days early and took control). As Koboi gloats, Artemis reveals that he is in fact the Artemis from the past. The older Artemis, returned at the same time, sneaks up to Opal and tranquilises her. Butler was mesmerised by Opal and takes out Holly and &#8470;1. When Butler is ordered by Koboi to take out the younger Artemis, he fights Koboi's mesmer and has a heart attack, but is revived by Artemis with a defibrillator. Opal recovers quickly and flees; however, realising that Artemis and his forces have been significantly weakened in the battle, she returns. Artemis takes ""the lemur"" and flies away from the Manor grounds in a plane, luring Opal away. In the ensuing chase, Opal exhibits the astonishing strength she has won in her research on endangered animals, pulverising entire sections of the plane with her fists, and eventually forcing Artemis to crash land on the coastline, breaking his collarbone in the process. Artemis escapes from the wreckage of the plane and runs to the shore, ascending a rope bridge and crossing over two large boulders. Opal relentlessly pursues him, eventually obtaining the lemur, only to discover that it's not actually a lemur, but Artemis' little brother's play-thing, Professor Primate. Artemis shoots the boulder which Opal is standing on and reveals it to be the shell of a kraken that was unknown to anyone except Artemis himself. The shell explodes and Opal is buried beneath the rubble. When a Lower Elements Police team search for her, they find she has disappeared. Artemis debriefs the others and finds that his mother knows everything that happened to her. The 10-year-old Artemis has his mind wiped and is sent back in time by &#8470;1, but retains an interest in fairies that will set the events of the series in motion. It is then revealed that in addition to the initial time 'paradox' that occurs when Artemis goes back in time to save the Lemur, another (second) paradox exists, because Artemis' interest in fairies sets of a series of events, which have originated from his initial interest in fairies. In this way, both these events are dependent on each other. The series of events that inspires his interest in fairies is also dependent on the second time paradox, from which the reader concludes that a time paradox is always dependent on another. When everyone is gone, Artemis tells his mother the truth about everything, because Opal forgot to wipe his mother's mind."
440,The Anybodies,fantasy," Fern has lived all her life with the Drudgers, extremely dull adults who worked at a firm, Beige & Beige. One day, the Beige family, the owners of the firm, visit the Drudger's house, three other visitors arrive as well. They are the Bone, Howard, and Mary Curtain, the nurse who delivered the Drudger's baby. Mary confesses that she had accidentally swapped their kids. Fern belonged to the Bone family, and Howard actually belonged to the Drudgers. After the Beiges leave, the Bone (Mr. Bone) and the Drudgers discuss and conclude that they will try unswapping for just the summer and see how it goes. While the Bone drives Fern and Mary Curtain back to his house, Mary Curtain is not really Mary Curtain. She is a man named Marty. He and the Bone tell Fern that they are Anybodies, who can be anybody or anything. The Bone and Marty were once great Anybodies, but they are slowly losing the powers. The only thing that can improve their skills is Fern's dead mother Eliza's book, The Art of Being Anybody. But no one knows where the book is, for Eliza (a great Anybody) died before she could tell anyone about it. Now, Fern and the Anybodies are in search of the book. Fern suspects that the book may be hidden in Eliza's mother's house. They head off, the Bone disguised as Mr. Bibb, an encyclopedia seller, and Fern as Ida Bibb, his daughter. At the boarding house, Fern discovers that the Bone's enemy, the Miser, is looking for The Art of Being Anybody as well. Fern and the Bone must find the book before the Miser, who may be plotting something terrible with his Anybody skills. At Mrs. Appleplum's (a name Fern came up with when asked to do so by Mrs. Appleplum) home, Fern finds out that she has magical powers to shake things out of books. Fern's Grandmother(Mrs. Appleplum) is the Great Realdo, a fantastic Anybody. The book has many elements similar to Cornelia Funke's Inkheart."
441,Lair of the Lion,fantasy," Isabella Vernaducci is a young aristocratic woman desperate to save her imprisoned brother. He has been falsely accused of treason and is slated to be executed within the month. She feels she has one chance to save him, the powerful Don DeMarco. The Don is respected and feared throughout the land. Many say he is gifted with strange powers, that all, even the beasts obey him. So she makes the arduous journey to his isolated palazzo. Once she is granted an audience with the Don and explains her plight, he agrees to help her on one condition: she must become his wife. Stunned but relieved she agrees and the plans are set into motion. For all her joy at saving her brother, there are powerful undercurrents of unease. It is said that there is a curse on the DeMarcos, that all marriages are doomed to fail, end in betrayal and murder."
442,The Bastard Prince,fantasy," The events of The Bastard Prince span a period of approximately six months, from late May to late December of 928. The novel begins after the invasion of Prince Marek Furstán-Festil, the bastard child of the last Deryni ruler of Gwynedd, King Imre, and his sister, Princess Ariella. Supported by his Torenthi relatives, Marek has occupied the town of Culliecairn and slain Earl Hrorik II of Eastmarch. Word of the invasion is quickly sent to Rhemuth, where King Rhys Michael Haldane has spent the first six years of his reign as an imprisoned puppet of his lords of state. When a Torenthi herald arrives at Rhemuth to challenge the king, the great lords realize that they must permit Rhys Michael to go to Eastmarch and personally respond to the invasion. Disguised as one of Queen Michaela's serving maids, Rhysel Thuryn quickly learns of the king's plans to accompany his army to Eastmarch. Rhysel meets with members of the Camberian Council and attempts to convince them to activate the king's Haldane potential before he leaves the following day. Despite his own objections, Father Joram MacRorie, Rhysel's uncle, eventually agrees to her plan. That night, Joram and Tieg Thuryn, Rhysel's brother, infiltrate the castle and meet with the king. Tieg unblocks the Deryni powers of both Michaela and her brother, Sir Cathan Drummond, and Michaela then assists Tieg, Rhysel, and Joram in activating Rhys Michael's arcane powers. After the ritual, Joram and Tieg capture Master Dimitri, a Torenthi Deryni collaborator who has been working for the great lords. The Camberian Council alters Dimitri's mind with their own set of commands before returning him to Rhemuth. The next day, Rhys Michael departs the capital with army, accompanied by Cathan, Earl Manfred MacInnis, Earl Rhun von Horthy, Lord Albertus, and Father Paulin Sinclair. Before departing the city, Constable Udaut is killed when Dimitri secretly uses his powers to spook Udaut's horse. Later on the journey, a swarm of bees mysteriously attacks the royal party and nearly kills Albertus. Several days later, Albertus questions Rhys Michael about the incidents, concerned about the rumored magical powers of the Haldane family. He orders Dimitri to probe the king's mind, but the Deryni is still under the compulsions of the Camberian Council. To protect the king, Dimitri kills Albertus and later allows himself to be implicated in the death. When Paulin attempts to confine Dimitri, he lashes out with his powers and destroys Paulin's mind before be overcome. Dimitri is tortured for several hours before he is killed by a mental death-trigger in his own mind. The royal army arrives at Lochalyn the next day, where it is joined by the levies of Duke Graham of Claibourne, Earl Sighere of Marley, and Earl Corban Howell of Eastmarch. In a private conversation, Lady Sudrey, Hrorik's Deryni widow, offers Rhys Michael her support and the use of her limited powers. The following morning, Rhys Michael agrees to meet with Prince Miklos of Torenth, who claims to have led the invasion on Marek's behalf. Accompanied by Sudrey, the king parleys with Miklos briefly, but Miklos breaks the peace by attacking Sudrey. Rhys Michael uses his own powers to protect himself and kill Miklos, but Sudrey is killed in the battle and Rhys Michael is wounded when a horse steps on his hand. Afterwards, the king claims that it was Sudrey who used magic in the battle, and later realizes that Miklos' companion was actually Marek himself. After Miklos' death, Marek withdraws his forces and returns to Torenth. Rhys Michael asks the northern lords to help him break free of the great lords, and Graham and Sighere agree to become Regents for the king's son, Prince Owain, if anything should happen to the king. Cathan prepares a codicil to the king's will, and all parties involved succeed in signing it without alerting Rhun or Manfred. The king departs for Rhemuth the next day, but the progress of the army is slowed by the worsening condition of his injury. The army is eventually forced to stop at Saint Ostrythe's Convent when the king becomes too ill to continue. Dom Queron Kinevan rushes to the king's side, but he does not arrive in time and Rhys Michael soon dies from poor medical treatment. As the army returns to Rhemuth with Rhys Michael's body, the Camberian Council informs the northern lords of the king's death and offers their assistance in securing the rights of the new Regents. In Rhemuth, Cathan is drugged and imprisoned, but Michaela and Rhysel succeed in activating Owain's Haldane potential. Over the next several days, the northern lords ride toward Rhemuth, eventually arriving on the morning of Rhys Michael's funeral. Accompanied by Queron, Tieg, Ansel MacRorie, and a band of armed men, Graham and Sighere confront the great lords inside the royal tomb. Rhun kills Manfred and flees with Owain, while Earl Tammaron takes Michaela hostage. As Cathan pursues Rhun, Michaela uses her powers to slay Tammaron. Cathan catches Rhun atop a tower and the two engage in a brief fight before Rhun is killed. Several months later, Michaela visits her husband's tomb in the royal crypt. Owain has been crowned as King of Gwynedd, and Cathan now serves on the Regency Council with her, Graham, and Sighere. Of the former Regents, only former Archbishop Hubert MacInnis remains alive, but he has been stripped of his office and imprisoned for his crimes. Although he did not live long enough to see it, Rhys Michael's actions succeeded in freeing the crown of Gwynedd for his heirs."
443,"Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle",fantasy," Tarzan finds an outpost of European knights and crusaders from a ""forbidden valley"" hidden in the mountains. His lion ally Jad-bal-ja puts in an appearance late in the book."
444,Sir Thursday,fantasy," The book begins with Arthur Penhaligon and Leaf attempting to return to Earth after their adventures in the Border Sea. While Leaf is able to pass through the front door and return to Earth, the presence of a Nithling duplicate of Arthur prevents him from doing so, and he is forced to remain in the Lower House. Dame Primus then informs him that Mister Monday and Grim Tuesday have been assassinated. Moments later, he is drafted into the Glorious Army of the Architect – wherein everyone living in the House must serve for 100 years – which is based in the chessboard-like demesne called the Great Maze. The leader of the army is the Fourth Trustee of the Will, Sir Thursday, a Denizen afflicted with the deadly sin of wrath. The army is currently involved in a campaign against the Piper, who is trying to claim the Fourth Key. Within the army, Arthur is soon mistaken for a Piper's child and has his memory wiped, along with his friend Fred Initials Numbers Gold – a real Piper's child. One month later and during the first battle against the Piper's New Nithling army, Arthur begins to recall his identity. The entirety of it is recovered later in the book when an officer mentions his name and title. On Earth, Arthur's double, known as the Skinless Boy, has thrown a hospital near Arthur's home into panic by infecting staff and patients with a fungoid, extraterrestrial life-form which allows him to read and eventually control their thoughts and actions. This fungus, nicknamed Grayspot, is mistaken for a biological weapon, and the hospital put under quarantine. Leaf infiltrates the hospital, seeking to obtain and destroy the magical object used to create the Skinless Boy: a pocket torn from one of Arthur's shirts. She succeeds, but is infected by Grayspot in the process. She then leaves the hospital, only to find that the House has appeared above it and cannot be reached from the ground. With the help of a retired pharmacist named Sylvie, Leaf makes her way to Arthur's house where she uses a special telephone to contact Arthur's friends and get help, just as the fungus gains full control of her body. Suzy Turquoise Blue arrives and takes the pocket to the House. There, she finds Arthur and Fred, and joins them in a raid led by Sir Thursday to find and destroy the New Nithlings' weapon, which is preventing the mechanical floor of the Great Maze from shifting. Arthur destroys the weapon by throwing the pocket into it, simultaneously destroying the Skinless Boy. As Arthur escapes from the Piper with Sir Thursday, he distracts Thursday enough for the fourth part of the Will, a snake embodying the virtue of justice, to break free, whereupon it makes Arthur the Bearer of the Fourth Key – a sword or baton depending on whether or not the wielder is in combat – and Commander of the Glorious Army of the Architect. With help from Dame Primus and others from the lower demesnes, Arthur defeats the New Nithling army. On Earth, Leaf wakes up in a hospital a week after the Skinless Boy was defeated. She soon learns from a nurse that the Grayspot has disappeared and that Lady Friday, another Trustee, has become a doctor on Earth."
445,Naked Empire,fantasy," The novel begins detailing the travels of the main characters as they move through the Old World in order to accomplish temporary goals. Their travels are interrupted by the entrances of Nicholas, who is a Slide (a wizard that is capable of soul stealing and using souls to project himself into animals). This situation is further complicated by Owen, a man from the Bandakar Empire. He poisons Richard in order to force him to help the Bandakar Empire shed the yoke of the Imperial Order. Much of the novel focuses on Richard's interactions with the Bandakar people. The people of Bandakar are all pristinely ungifted like Richard's half-sister Jennsen. They are descendants of the house of Rahl who were banished into the Old World thousands of years before. These people were then again banished by the people of the Old World. A wizard,Kaja-Rang, placed them behind a boundary that would force any that tried to leave to walk straight to the Pillars of Creation. The Bandakar shunned all forms of violence and they laid their lives down before any aggressor. It was believed that,because they ""could not see evil"" or, rather because they strongly embraced a philosophy which required them to disbelieve reality that they were a threat to the existence of the Old World. Richard convinces several of the Bandakar to shed their ideals and embrace the individualist ideas espoused by Richard and his D'Haran Empire. This allowed the Bandakar to take up arms and fight for their own freedom. However, throughout the entire ordeal Richard is reeling not only from the poison the Bandakar gave him, but also because his gift is out of balance. Nathan and Ann go to the Bandakar Empire in order to realign Richard with prophecy. They save Richard and his companions from certain death, but are ultimately unable to aid him in restoring his gift to balance. Eventually Richard realizes that his belief that not eating meat would be the necessary balance to his need to kill was mistaken. By not putting his faith in himself and in his abilities he was creating improper balancing ultimately causing not only the gift within himself to twist and fail, but also the magic of the Sword of Truth to fail. He realizes that his actions are justified in themselves and require no additional balancing. After Richard has once again set himself in order, he and the Bandakar people destroy the remaining Imperial Order encampment in Bandakar resulting in the death of Nicholas, who destroys the antidote, and the rescue of Kahlan. Richard uses his gift to piece together the what and how of creating the antidote himself. During the course of these actions, Zedd and Adie are captured as the Keep is taken by men captured from Bandakar and forced to do the work of the Imperial Order. They were forced to identify random objects from within the keep for a Sister of the Dark. If they refused to do so, they were forced to listen to the screams of children being tortured while their parents begged them to give up the information. As a result of this identification process, Zedd is able to unleash a constructed spell within an object that kills several men in the camp along with all the other artifacts. Zedd and Adie are saved from destruction by three independently orchestrated rescue attempts: Captain Zimmer and some of his men, Chase and Rachel, and Rikka. Adie goes with Zimmer and his men to free the families being used for torture, while Zedd and Chase go back to reclaim the Keep. While in the keep, Zedd remembers a time when it was full of the laughter of children and families; as a result, he invites Chase to move in with his family to guard the keep."
446,Kingdom of Summer,fantasy," Rhys and his cousin encounter a mounted warrior named Gwalchmai. He accompanies them to their householding for shelter from the winter cold. There, he is recognized by the head of the clan (and Rhys' father), Sion ap Rhys, who had befriended Gwalchmai before he become renowned throughout Britain. This chance meeting changes the course of Rhys's life. He had aspired to be more than a simple farmer. Despite his parents' disapproval, he asks Gwalchmai to accept him as a servant. As a favor to his father, Gwalchmai agrees only to take him to Camlann, King Arthur's stronghold, where he can find himself a master. But first, Gwalchmai continues his search for a woman, to beg her forgiveness. He had been sent on an embassy to King Bran, an enemy of Arthur, to keep an eye on him. While there, he had fallen in love with and seduced Elidan, the king's sister. Bran found out and used it as an excuse to rebel. During the resulting battle, Gwalchmai killed Bran, though he had promised Elidan he wouldn't. As a result, her love turned to hatred and she disappeared. He is unable to find any news of her and he and Rhys travel to Camlann. When they arrive, Gwalchmai keeps Rhys as his servant, to their mutual satisfaction. Overall, despite the bullying of Gwalchmai's brother Agravain, Rhys finds the fortress a pleasant place to work; all there are caught up, to varying degrees, with Arthur's vision of uniting and bringing peace to the land. After a month's rest, Gwalchmai is sent as an ambassador to King Maelgwn, one of Arthur's greatest foes. Rhys and Rhuawn, one of Arthur's warriors, accompany him. Spies had reported foreigners visiting him and Arthur fears that he is allying with a king of Erin. When they arrive, Gwalchmai is shocked to find that his own mother, the infamous witch Morgawse, is the one plotting with Maelgwn. Also there are his father King Lot and his younger brother Medraut. During their stay, Rhys becomes attracted to Eivlin, one of Morgawse's servants. Meanwhile, Medraut begins to charm Rhuawn and Rhys, planting doubts about Gwalchmai's sanity, using the well-known fact that he becomes a berserker in battle. Rhuawn is won over, but not Rhys. Seeing this, Medraut changes tactics. Rhys is taken by force to Morgawse. She uses magic to try to break his will, but he resists stubbornly. Eivlin is a miserable witness to his struggle. When Medraut leaves the room, she follows and knocks him unconscious. Needing Medraut's assistance to break Rhys, Morgawse goes in search of him, giving Eivlin the opportunity to free Rhys and flee with him. The witch casts a spell to kill her disloyal servant. When Eivlin is struck down, Rhys does the only thing he can think of - he baptizes her by the roadside. Then, he takes her in search of help. He runs into a young boy named Gwyn, who takes them to his mother, a nun named Elidan. By chance, Rhys has found Gwalchmai's lost love - and their son. Medraut tracks Rhys down and takes him back to his mother, only to find Gwalchmai there as well. Gwalchmai tries to leave with Rhys, but Morgawse stands in his way. He prevails in a battle of magic, leaving her exhausted, but physically unharmed. Rhys takes his master to Eivlin, hoping he can cure her. Indeed, he is able to awaken her. Then he tries to reconcile with Elidan or at least gain her forgiveness, but she is unmoved. Rhys had reluctantly promised her not to reveal Gwyn's identity, so Gwalchmai departs with his misery unabated. They return to Maelgwn's fortress, where more tragic news awaits. Agravain had arrived to visit his father. In the middle of speaking together, Lot suddenly died for no apparent reason. While Gwalchmai was away, Agravain went to his mother and killed her for murdering Lot. In a rage, Medraut decides to go to Camlann, to see his father - Arthur - and to conspire against him. Arthur's downfall is set in motion."
447,The Heroic Legend of Arslan,fantasy," Neither the novels nor the manga of The Heroic Legend of Arslan have been translated into English; therefore, this summary deals with the anime OVAs. As it directly focuses on the events of the first OVA, the characters names as they are translated there will be used (see ""Names"" below). Arslan has two qualities that make it unique among anime fantasy tales. While the world in which it takes place is one where magic obviously exists, said magic is of an extremely limited nature. Until the end of the anime, the only magical happenings involve a few rare occasional spells and a giant, humanoid monster. There are none of the races typically associated with a fantasy realm, such as elves or dwarves. It is, at the core, a war story taking place between human nations. In addition to this, there is an underlying theme of exploring the repercussions of slavery on a society, having an absolute monarch who treats the poor as cattle, and religious obsession. The story opens with a battle between the armies of Palse and Lusitania. The king of Palse, Andragoras, is quickly proved to have poor judgement and a quick temper, as he demotes one of his most loyal servants, Daryoon, on the word of a man who proves to be a traitor, Kharlan. In this first battle, the Lusitanian army deliberately leads the Palsian forces into a seemingly simple assault. The assault turns into a bloodbath, as the Lusitanians booby-trap the battlefield by soaking the ground in oil. Not only do the Palsian war-horses slip and break their legs, but the enemy forces set the oil on fire, burning many of the soldiers alive. Daryoon's uncle, Eran Vaphreze, takes it upon himself to lead the king away from the battlefield before Andragoras can be discovered and killed by enemy troops. Before he rides off, he commands Daryoon to dedicate himself to protecting the crown prince, Arislan. While Daryoon rides off to seek out the prince, Vaphreze and Andragoras attempt to escape. They are unsuccessful &mdash; Vaphreze is murdered by the leader of the Lusitanian army, an incredibly strong and enigmatic warrior who, because of his unique headgear, is known only as Silvermask. Silvermask declines to kill Andragoras, preferring instead to kidnap him and drag him back to his stronghold in Zahburu Fortress. Having survived the Lusitanian assault, Arislan and Daryoon seek help for their cause, in the form of the philosopher/swordsman/tactician, Narsus. After a bit of trickery on Daryoon's part, they convince Narsus to help them in their cause. Narsus' young boy servant, Elam, goes with them. As this goes on, Lusitanian troops march to the capital city of Ekubatana; in order to convince Queen Tahamine to surrender her city. An interrogator of the Lusitanians &mdash; a high-ranking cleric named Jon Bodan &mdash; tortures captured Palsian soldiers outside its gates, declaring to all who would hear that he will only stop when Ekubatana surrenders. While she refuses, the city is eventually invaded successfully. The Queen is captured, and the city's buildings, sculptures, and sacred writings are all destroyed. As Arislan travels around, trying his best to avoid being located by the armies and agents of Silvermask, he meets two others who are convinced to join his cause of re-taking and rebuilding Palse. Pharangese, an aloof, cold priestess of Misra, is sent by her holy order to protect and serve the prince &mdash; a fact which she considers to be natural, as she is the wisest, most beautiful, and most deadly. There is also the travelling musician and con-man Gieve who is no mean swordsman himself. Gieve actually makes his first appearance when he, defying both a strong wind and a long distance, successfully shoots one of Jon Bodan's victims, sparing the poor soldier anymore misery and humiliation. For his skills with a bow, Gieve is paid well, and is also offered the chance to serve as the Queen's bodyguard as she attempts to escape the besieged Ekubatana. While making their way out of the castle, Gieve learns that the ""Queen"" he is escorting is actually a double for Her Majesty, in order to permit the real Queen to escape in a more secretive fashion. When she is captured by be city's attackers he escapes on his own, encounters Pharangese, and declares that he will dedicate himself to following her. She simply tells him to help protect the prince. The most obvious stumbling block to Arislan's ability to re-take his kingdom is his utter lack of an army. As it is ironically observed at the conclusion of the first episode, with six fighters at his command, they have doubled their forces, and will only need to take on 50,000 enemy soldiers each. The subsequent episodes chronicle Arislan's plans on finding an army to back him up. They also cover wide and sundry sub-plots, Silvermask's identity and motives, how Andragoras came to the Palsian throne, and the introduction of various new characters."
448,Camber of Culdi,fantasy," The novel spans the time period between September 903 and December 904, beginning shortly after the murder of a Deryni lord named Rannulf. Unable to locate Rannulf's murderer, King Imre Furstán-Festil issues a decree ordering the deaths of fifty human peasants unless the murderer is identified. The peasants are tenants of Earl Camber MacRorie of Culdi, a respected Deryni master who formerly served Imre's father. Meanwhile, the Healer Rhys Thuryn attends the final hours of an elderly patient. Before his death, the patient confides that he is really Prince Aidan Haldane, the sole survivor of the Deryni coup that overthrew the Haldane kings eight decades earlier. He begs Rhys to seek out his grandson, Prince Cinhil Haldane, who is the last remaining member of the former royal bloodline. Rhys recruits the assistance of Father Joram MacRorie, and the two of them determine that Cinhil is one of five monks living in seclusion in various religious houses throughout the realm. Before continuing their search, the seek the counsel of Joram's father, Earl Camber. In the capital city of Valoret, Lord Cathan MacRorie, Camber's eldest son and heir, continues to request mercy for the imprisoned peasants. Although a close friend of the king, Cathan is unable to persuade Imre to revoke his decree. However, Imre permits Cathan to save just one of the peasants, forcing him to personally choose from among the doomed commoners. Unable to prevent the executions, Cathan nearly goes mad with grief. Rhys and Joram continue their search for the Haldane prince, but it is Camber and Rhys who eventually discover Cinhil, who is living the peaceful religious life of a monk in a secluded abbey. Unwilling to compromise Cathan's position at court, they do not tell Cathan of their discovery, but Cathan's position is already being undermined by his ambitious brother-in-law, Lord Coel Howell. Coel continually sows mistrust between Imre and Cathan, and eventually succeeds in framing Cathan for the murder of another Deryni lord. Convinced that Cathan has betrayed him, Imre murders his friend. Racked with grief and self-loathing, Imre seeks comfort in the arms of his sister, Princess Ariella, and soon begins an incestuous relationship with her. Cathan's body is returned to his father, who decides to immediately move forward with his plans to overthrow Imre. After dispatching Joram and Rhys to retrieve Cinhil, Camber and his daughter, Evaine, meet with the Michaelines, a militant religious order who has agreed to provide military support for the upcoming coup attempt. Soon thereafter, Imre's suspicions grow to include the entire MacRorie family, and he soon orders their arrest. However, the MacRories manage to escape capture, and the entire Michaeline order goes into hiding to elude Imre's wrath. Rhys and Joram manage to abduct Cinhil, but the prince is unwilling to abandon his religious life. Although Camber and his allies attempt to convince Cinhil that he must become king for the greater good of the realm, the anguished prince is haunted by his conscience and his heart-felt vocation as a priest. Nonetheless, Camber continues to prepare Cinhil for the throne, attempting to teach him about the secular world that he abandoned. Camber eventually convinces Archbishop Anscom, the Archbishop of Valoret and one of Camber's oldest friends, to support their cause. Anscom absolves Cinhil's religious vows, acknowledges him as the legitimate heir to the throne, and presides over his marriage to Camber's ward. After several months of working with Cinhil, Camber becomes convinced that Cinhil has the unique ability to acquire Deryni-like powers. Assisted by several members of his family, Camber performs a ritual to designed bestow Deryni powers on the prince. Although they believe the ritual to be successful, Cinhil refuses to display any indication of his new abilities for several months. However, at the baptism of his son several months later, Cinhil's powers become clearly evident. When his son is poisoned by an unwitting assassin, the furious prince uses his powers to locate and kill the murderer. From that point on, Cinhil becomes dedicated to avenging his slain son, vowing to overthrow and kill Imre. In December, the coup is finally launched. Using several Transfer Portals, Camber, Cinhil, and their Michaeline allies infiltrate the royal palace in Valoret in the middle of the night. Their forces quickly overcome the guards, and soon burst into the royal bedchamber. While Imre is captured, his sister escapes through a secret passage, bearing her brother's child in her womb. Imre lashes out with his powers at Cinhil, but the Haldane prince uses his own powers to withstand the attack. Realizing he cannot win, Imre commits suicide rather than submit to imprisonment. As the fighting comes to an end, Camber crowns Cinhil as King of Gwynedd."
449,Magic Kingdom for Sale -- Sold!,fantasy," The novel begins with Ben Holiday, a trial lawyer from Chicago, lamenting the loss of his wife and unborn child in a car accident. He finds an advertisement in an upscale Christmas catalog claiming to offer a magical kingdom for one million dollars by a man named Mr. Meeks. Although skeptical, Ben pursues the offer out of a desperate need to start a new life. Ben receives a magical medallion and is transported through a swirling mist to the kingdom of Landover. He learns that Landover is a world that connects many other worlds such as Earth. It is surrounded by the Fairy Mist wherein reside creatures of Fairy that created Landover and guard the passages to these worlds. Unfortunately, he finds it not exactly as described. He soon finds that Landover has not had a true king in twenty years. The son of the last king did not wish to take up the throne and escaped with the court wizard, Meeks, to Earth. They have been selling the throne to dozens of people in the past two decades, but no one has been able to face the challenge and successfully complete so much as a few months as king. Further, kings of Landover used to be protected by a magical knight called the Paladin, but he has not been seen since the last king's death. Further, Ben has only four loyal subjects. The court wizard is a hack named Questor Thews, who is also Meeks' half-brother. Abernathy is the court scribe, who was unfortunately transformed into a large dog by one of Questor's spells gone awry. Finally, two creatures called Kobolds, Bunion and Parsnip, serve Ben as caretakers of the castle and as protection against the wild creatures of the kingdom. Ben's coronation is barely attended, so he decides to travel the land to gain the pledges of the local rulers. He travels first to meet with the Lords of the Greensward, the most prominent landowners in the kingdom. They agree to serve Ben only on the condition that he rid them of Strabo, a dragon that ravages their countryside. Next Ben visits the River Master and the Fairy fold of Elderew, a city of outcasts from the Fairy Mists. The River Master also places conditions on his pledge, requiring Ben to stop the Lords of the Greensward from polluting their rivers. In the river country Ben stumbles upon a sylph named Willow. She is also a fairy creature who turns into a tree some evenings. She claims that the Fairies have foretold that she will marry Ben. Though he initially rebuffs her, he finds himself falling in love with her over time. Ben is entreated by Fillip and Sot, two of a race of thievish ""G'Home Gnomes"" to rescue some of their people from a clan of trolls. They manage to do so, but barely escape with their lives. They finally decide to ask for the help of the witch Nightshade, and travel to her home in the marshes known as the Deep Fell. She tells Ben to enter the Fairy Mists, where he may be able to obtain mind-controlling Io Powder to use on Strabo. Ben does so and endures a series of frightening trials by the Fairy creatures to obtain the powder. Emerging from the mists, he finds that Nightshade has used her magic to banish all of his companions to Abbadon, Landover's underworld. Nightshade attempts to trick Ben out of his Io Powder, but Ben uses some of the substance on the witch and sends her to an uncertain fate in the Fairy Mists. Ben travels to the Fire Springs to confront Strabo, and is surprised to find the dragon to be sentient and rather well-spoken, if still vicious. Ben uses the Io Powder on Strabo, and rides him to Abaddon to rescue his friends. He also extracts a promise from the dragon to stay out of the Greensward. Finally, Ben is challenged by the Mark, lord of Abaddon, to a duel for the throne. Ben's medallion responds during the fight and transforms Ben into the Paladin, allowing him to subdue the demon. The challenge is witnessed by the leaders from the Greensward, Elderew, and the Troll tribes, who then swear their allegiance. Ben Holiday, King of Landover, then sets about to restore Landover to its former glory."
450,The Hallowed Hunt,fantasy," The principal characters are: Ingrey, who received a wolf spirit in childhood and spends most of the story discovering how, why and to what effect; Ijada, who receives a leopard spirit in a bungled rite; and Wencel, who has extended his life for centuries by taking over the bodies of others, mainly his own descendants, for a purpose that is finally revealed. Ingrey is sent by his lord to take custody of Ijada, who has killed an heir to the kingdom, and bring her to the capital. During their journey, Ingrey learns of the circumstances of the death and does his best to protect Ijada. They become entangled in Wencel's grand plan, which is finally nearing fruition. In the end, Ijada and Ingrey together defeat him and marry at the plot's resolution."
451,Into the Labyrinth,fantasy," On Abarrach, Xar is attempting to learn the secret of necromancy, but he needs a corpse to test it on. He interrogates the lazar Kleitus about the location of any living Sartan, and Kleitus reveals that Haplo lied to Xar about all the Sartan dying at the hands of the dead; Balthazar and his group remain living. Kleitus drops a hint about the Seventh Gate, and reveals that it's where the Sundering took place and that Haplo's corpse would know its location. Xar dismisses this idea, as well as the lazar, and is quickly becoming obsessed with the Seventh Gate when receives word that two Sartan have been captured: Zifnab, for one, whose pleas on Haplo's behalf go unheeded; and, as quite a prize, Samah, ruler of the Council of Seven. Xar is initially excited since Samah is the very person who would know the Seventh Gate's location, and he interrogates Samah for it to no avail. Sang-drax&mdash; the one who actually captured Samah and Zifnab&mdash; is summoned by Xar to mentally torture Samah to death; even before he dies, Samah does not reveal anything useful. Xar succeeds in turning him into a far-more-complacent lazar, but too much of Samah's will remains, and he still won't talk. Even worse, when Xar turns his back to investigate Zifnab's disappearance, Jonathan walks in and teaches Samah how to let go; the leader of the Council of Seven is now well and truly dead. Xar is soon told by Sang-drax of Haplo's ""treachery""; he has helped the mensch start the Kicksey-winsey and given control of Arianus over to the mensch, instead of reserving it for Xar himself. Party to this conversation is the loyal servant who informed Xar of the capture and has already been ordered to investigate the Arianus situation: Marit, the woman Haplo loved, the mother of his child. Xar marries her in traditional Patryn fashion of rune-joining, both to ensure her loyalty and because it gives them an unblockable way to communicate, and then orders her to kill Haplo. Haplo rests on Arianus and tries to heal his heart-rune, a job that truly needs two people (most rune-healing is accomplished by ""circling"" and allowing strength from one person to flow to the other.) Prince Rees'ahn and King Stephen's deputy, the wizard Trian, have come to Drevlin to talk with High Froman Limbeck Bolttightener in the hopes of hammering out some sort of true alliance between all three races of mensch (the mysteriarchs having folded into the human race after their leader Sinistrad's death.) Haplo gives the Kenkari book to Limbeck, and the three races together reactivate the Kicksey-winsey, which realigns the scattered islands of Arianus and starts a constant flow of water through the sky. Then Haplo enters his dragonship and prepares to leave for the last time. Hugh, under contract to kill Haplo, retraces his own steps. He goes from the Cathedral of the Albedo back to the Fortress of the Brotherhood, where Ciang gives him a cursed knife: ugly, badly made, capable of self-movement... and covered in Sartan runes. It is the only weapon the Brotherhood has that might even possibly be capable of killing Haplo. As payment for it, Ciang orders him to never return or further payment will be taken in his blood. Hugh, in the end, doesn't even use his new Cursed Blade&mdash; its main advantage, suppressing Haplo's warning runes and a good amount of his magic, allows Hugh to sneak up on him in his ship and capture him, but the tables turn and Hugh accidentally ends up with Haplo's knife in his gut... only to lurch back from the grave, Alfred's necromancy rune having evidently condemned him to eternal life. Haplo circles with Hugh to calm the human's distress at returning from the dead yet again, and the two begin to plan how to find Alfred when they are interrupted. Marit appears and fights both Haplo and Hugh. The first time they engage their Patryn rune-magic, however, the Cursed Blade reacts, transmuting itself into various threats, and the three break off their conflict periodically to quiet it down (they can't really make it stop;) they also struggle over the ship's steering-stone. Eventually Haplo takes the ship to Chelestra, hoping to douse the Cursed Blade in seawater, but the knife, instead of transforming into another weapon or creature, summons a dragon-snake that destroys the ship. As Haplo drifts in the sea, he hears a voice and looks up to see... Alfred. At Sang-drax's misleading suggestion, Xar has gone to Pryan with the pretext of taming the tytans, and he is frustrated with his inability to reach Marit. His real reason for being there is his hope of finding the Seventh Gate in the citadel that Haplo visited, but he finds little to encourage him. The five mensch&mdash; Paithan, Rega, Aleatha, Roland, and Drugar&mdash; aren't much help, nor is Zifnab, who has somehow gotten here after escaping from Abarrach. Shortly after Xar and Zifnab have arrived, Sang-drax says he knows now that Zifnab is ""one of them;"" after a battle with Zifnab's dragon, he takes on Xar's form and steals the ship, claiming that he will search for Haplo while Xar is on Pryan. It is revealed during Xar's stay that Zifnab is actually one of the dissenting Sartan who refused to go along with Samah's plan; he was among the mensch on Earth during the Sundering, and was the first of either race to escape the Labyrinth. It was he who penned many of the books Xar educated himself with. (With all that Zifnab has seen, his total dementia seems a bit more understandable.) Xar decides to leave Pryan in a ship he spotted outside the citadel, covered in Sartan runes, but to do that he needs to get past the tytans. He decides to need to kill off the mensch and revive them with necromancy to serve as distractions. The mensch are having their own problems. Paithan is obsessed with a room in the center of the citadel that he calls the Star Chamber, a room with seven huge seats and an apparatus that generates blinding light. Roland and Aleatha are mostly not on speaking terms; the elf maiden finds herself spending more time with Drugar, who may be the last of his race. But Drugar has discovered a delightful illusion: at a certain clearing in the garden maze, at certain times of the day, he can see ghostly shadows of people from all the mensch races, walking around and talking to each other. Aleatha is there when he uses his amulet to activate the platform, teleporting him instantly to a different citadel&mdash; where, as it turns out, there are other survivors. Marit finds herself in a Sartan prison. On a bench in the middle of the room, Haplo recovers from injuries caused by the Cursed Blade. Across from it, Hugh the Hand and the dog watch her with unblinking eyes. Their ""jailer"": none other than Alfred, who rescued them from Chelestra. After some discussion, Haplo realizes that they are in the Vortex, the one-way gate at the very center of the Labyrinth. It was here that the Patryns were initially imprisoned and chose to live for generations, until people calling themselves Nexus runners started trying to escape. (It's unknown when they abandoned the Vortex and all moved out into the Labyrinth.) Haplo decides to enter the Labyrinth in search of his daughter, whom Marit named Rue. Hugh agrees to go with him, as does Marit at Xar's command; he has told Marit to hold off on killing Haplo to report back any conversations Alfred and Haplo have about the other worlds. It is only Alfred who balks. He has nothing left&mdash; Orla ""saw"" Samah's death and chose a peaceful death to be with him&mdash; but fear of the unknown. The Labyrinth itself, however, refuses to let him return to the Vortex by unceremoniously dropping a mountain on top of the exit back into it. To Haplo, the Labyrinth seems afraid of Alfred, though he can't for the life of him figure out why; what is Alfred, besides a bumbling, useless Sartan? ...who can turn into a dragon and bring people back from the dead? The group is about to be overrun by tiger-men when, surprisingly, a Patryn raiding party comes to save them. This party comes from Abri, the one and only city inside the Labyrinth (anathema to the lone-wolf Patryns). While camping overnight, Alfred admits his true name to Haplo: Coren, a Sartan word that can mean ""to choose"" or perhaps ""chosen."" Many Sartan children were named that, in hopes of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but (as Haplo points out) Alfred did not feel particularly amused when he awoke, the last living Sartan on Arianus. Clearly Alfred was Coren, was chosen&mdash;but for what? Marit, however, betrays them by revealing that Alfred is a Sartan. Haplo, Hugh, and Alfred are jailed by the city's leader, Headman Vasu, to await Lord Xar&mdash; Marit accused Haplo of being a traitor and plotting against their people&mdash; but are freed again just as quickly after Marit overhears the disguised Sang-drax plotting to kill them. Sang-drax and his cronies are also gathering a huge army of the Labyrinth's native monsters, with which to destroy the city of Abri and seal the Final Gate; they allowed Marit to overhear them to feed off the emotions that would come from it. Abri's occupants prepare for its defense, while Haplo and Marit, prodded by the dog, finally find their love for each other. Alfred feels out of place; though few seem to begrudge him his Sartan heritage, he is still out-of-place here, a clumsy pacifist in a city preparing for war. Talking with Headman Vasu, however, he eventually discovers that the city was not made by Patryns (who do not build cities,) or at least not by Patryns alone&mdash; the Sartan ""heretics"" who were expelled into the Labyrinth were accepted by the Patryns, eventually integrating completely into the society; Vasu himself is half-and-half, supplementing his Patryn tattoos with Sartan magic. The Patryns taught them the value of family; the Sartan, in return, taught the Patryns the value of banding together. Here, at the heart of the Labyrinth, rises Abri, the city that symbolizes the best in both cultures. Alfred also finds out why he is called the Serpent Mage: it is a title from a Sartan hierarchy of strength in magic, whose levels are named after animals. Serpent is very near the top. Alfred has found the meaning of his name: to choose his power, and all the responsibility it comes with... or to choose Alfred, who would rather faint than have to use his magic. Back on Pryan, Drugar returns from the other citadel with knowledge: he knows how to stop the tytans. Aleatha has fled the maze, though; pushed into hysterics by his sudden (and literal) disappearance, she ran back to her brother, and the four are now at a ""party"" of Xar's, at which he hopes to kill them with poisoned wine so that their bodies will be undamaged. Zifnab, however, saves them by drinking all of it himself and saying that it was poisoned, faking his death once again. The mensch are horrified at the revelation that Xar means to kill them. Aleatha escapes the room, while the other three are sealed inside by Xar... until Zifnab's dragon discovers Zifnab's ""death"" and tears the room apart. Aleatha has fled once again into the maze, where Xar can't pursue her because of protective Sartan runes covering its path. She runs into Drugar and he tells her they have to let the tytans inside to help them; he shares with her how to stop them. They run for the gates, but before they can reach it, Xar attacks; Drugar sacrifices himself to save Aleatha. Xar is about to kill Aleatha when the dragon strikes, distracting Xar with battling it instead of killing mensch. The other mensch have escaped from the destroyed room and find her, and they think she's mad when she tells them what she's going to do. She uses the amulet to open the gate and invites the tytans inside; they peacefully enter and ask, &mdash;Where is the citadel? to which Aleatha answers, ""Here is the Citadel. You are home."" Xar recovers from his battle with the dragon, and prepares to leave for the Labyrinth after Marit reports back to him&mdash; apparently corrupted by Haplo's influence into thinking Xar has made a mistake in allying with the dragon-snakes, as she says they are planning an attack. He is surprised when the tytans don't kill the mensch, and actually act to protect the mensch from him, but he avoids a fight by snatching Drugar's amulet from Aleatha and running away with it. The amulet will gain him entry into the Sartan ship, which he can then use to return to the Labyrinth. At Abri, the battle between Patryns and Labyrinth creatures rages fiercely, but the real threat comes from the dragon-snakes. Haplo, Marit, and Hugh lead a sortie to deal with them, and the three battle Sang-drax in his serpent form. Sang-drax is apparently killed by Haplo, but Haplo has been badly injured and almost crushed beneath the massive body. Marit is attacked by a wolfen when a green and golden dragon carries it away: Alfred, having made his choice to accept his power. He lifts the serpent's body off of Haplo, leaving Marit to hold his blood-soaked form, his heart-rune's wound having reopened. But while Alfred is distracted in battle with the dragon-snakes, Xar appears. He wants Haplo's knowledge of the Chamber of the Damned, and will stop at nothing to get it. The battle ends with the Labyrinth's armies driven off, but Marit dazed and wounded, Haplo abducted by Xar, and Alfred missing in action."
452,Ogmund's Gift,fantasy," Ogmund's Gift will be about the unruly nephew of Orfeo and Eldritch, two of the mystical bats in Deptford. Ogmund would rather be a mouse, but instead he must learn to harness his growing magical powers."
453,The Indwelling,fantasy," People flee from the scene of the assassination in a panic. Buck Williams notices that the gunshot sounded similar to the sound of the gun Nicolae used to kill Eli and Moishe. Rayford Steele is still wondering whether he really was the one that scripture singled out to deliver the killing blow to the Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia. In fact, it was Chaim Rosenzweig who stabbed Nicolae through the back of the head with a knife that he created- the thinnest, sharpest knife ever. Leah Rose attempts to free Hattie Durham from BFFR, meeting fellow believer and GC mole Ming Toy. Hattie is eventually let go from BFFR and tracked by the GC, who expect her to lead them to the Tribulation Force safe house. She does not go to the safe house, as the GC wants her to, but goes AWOL. Buck Williams is frantically searching for Chaim, believing that he has had a stroke, or worse, a heart attack. He returns to Chaim's manor to find several of Chaim's friends murdered by GC. Rayford escapes to Greece, worried that the GC may be pursuing him. After being filled with rage for the past several months, resulting in his attempted killing of Carpathia, Rayford is guilty over his selfishness and vows never to allow his emotions to rule him again. Meanwhile, Buck and Chaim make an escape from Israel, ending in a plane crash that results in Chaim's acceptance of Christ, as well as the death of T. M. Delanty. At the safe house, Tsion Ben-Judah experiences a series of dreams imparted unto him by God Himself. He witnesses a brief glimpse of the cosmic war in heaven that is slowly spilling into the Earth. He also receives a glimpse of the future, God's deliverance of His people- the Jews- into a safe haven, an act in which the Tribulation Force will soon play a vital role. He awakens to find that the safe house has been compromised. Rayford Steele, with the aid of new believer Al B, helps Tsion and toddler Kenny Bruce Williams escape the GC. As the world mourns the death of their leader and a funeral service is set for three days later after the assassination, a great statue of Nicolae is erected. Millions gather to view Carpathia's body, encased by bulletproof glass. Suddenly, the statue comes to life in the midst of black billowing smoke and speaks, demanding worship. Leon Fortunato, who is here revealed as the False Prophet, calls down lightning and fire from heaven to kill those who do not worship the image. David and his new fiancée Annie Christopher (who works in the palace and is also a believer) are stationed in different areas as they watch the resulting chaos. In full view of the crowd, Carpathia is resurrected, possessed by Satan on the first day of the Great Tribulation. David is frantic because Annie is missing. The Antichrist speaks to the people of the world, declaring that if anyone is able to doubt that he is God after seeing this, and if there are still people who think that they have already been enduring Tribulation, then they should prepare for the Great Tribulation."
454,Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife,fantasy," Firmin, is a rat and the runt son of an alcoholic mother living in 1960s Boston, has been forced to survive on the pages of novels from the bookstore in which he dwells. At first everything holds the same taste, but in time Firmin begins to notice subtle changes between books, and eventually he learns to read."
455,The Shadowmancer Returns: The Curse of Salamander Street,fantasy," In this sequel to Shadowmancer, Thomas, Kate, and Raphah flee from the evil sorcerer Demurral and head to London with Jacob Crane. But once there, their ship is seized and they are lured into the dark heart of the city. Further north, Raphah and Beadle set off on a terrifying journey in search of their friends; a journey haunted by mysterious enemies and a shadowy beast intent on their doom."
456,Physik,fantasy," ""When Silas Heap UnSeals a forgotten room in the Palace, he releases the ghost of a Queen who lived five hundred years earlier. Queen Etheldredda is as awful in death as she was in life, and she's still up to no good. Her diabolical plan to give herself everlasting life requires Jenna's compliance, Septimus's disappearance, and the talents of her son, Marcellus Pye, a famous Alchemist and Physician. And if Queen Etheldredda's plot involves Jenna and Septimus, then it will surely involve Nicko, Alther Mella, Marcia Overstrand, Beetle, Stanley, Sarah, Silas, Spit Fyre, Aunt Zelda, and all of the other wacky, wonderful characters that made Magyk and Flyte so memorable. With heart-stopping action and a dash of humor, Angie Sage continues the fantastical journey of Septimus Heap."" - from Nitsuj"
457,A Bad Spell in Yurt,fantasy," This story takes place in the tiny kingdom of Yurt. It reads like a charming, light-hearted story at first, but darker forces soon reveal themselves. Amongst themselves, the characters refer to the ""three that rule the world"", the aristocracy, the church, and wizardry. Though the aristocracy do the actual ruling, organized wizardry generally considers itself to be the superior of the three, in part because they put an end to the ""Black Wars,"" wars between kingdoms so violent and bloody that individual wizards were forced to band together to stop them. Churchmen considers themselves superior to wizards, and they are traditional rivals in this semi-medieval world. The first-person narrator is Daimbert, who has just barely graduated from the wizard's school. He takes up his first post as Royal Wizard of Yurt. Daimbert barely graduated, owing to all that embarrassment with the frogs, yet he has amazing improvisational skills that manage to get him by. Daimbert soon befriends Joachim, the castle chaplain, attempts to make magical telephones from scratch, learns old herbal magic from his predecessor, fights a dragon from the northern land of wild magic, searches for the source of an evil spell on the king, and is forced to bargain with a demon. Here, magic is a wild force of four dimensions that is shaped by a wizard's spells or potions, and (usually) is spoken aloud using the Hidden Language, needed to channel magic for the means of a spell. However, wizards can also choose to sell their soul to a demon in return for supernatural powers. The book reads somewhat like a mystery, where Daimbert follows up on many clues throughout the story, eventually suspecting everyone in the castle. The caster of the evil spell is not revealed until the end of the book."
458,Wolf-Speaker,fantasy," Daine receives a summons from some old friends - the wolf pack from her old village, led by Brokefang and his mate Frostfur, who are unhappy with the nobles ruining the Long Lake, their territory. They send messengers to ask Daine for help and then disappear back into the night to hunt while Daine discusses this over with her teacher, Numair Salmalin. Numair agrees to help the wolves, but he decides that he first must visit the nobles in Fief Dunlath at a party to further investigate after they find the burnt remains of the Ninth Rider Group. Numair recognizes a battle mage at Fief Dunlath, who appears to be wooing Lady Yolane. After Daine boldly approaches them about the threat to the wolves and to the area with a warning that if they don't change, things will happen, the nobles all laugh at her. She retires with Numair back to their quarters and stealthily leave in the night from Fief Dunlath. Tristan Staghorn, the mage in Dunlath is a war mage from the Carthaki university where Numair studied to become one of the 7 most powerful mages in the world. Upon discovering Tristan was there, Numair realized that the situation in Dunlath was worse than they had thought. He creates a magical simulacra (clone) of himself and plays on Tristan's knowledge of him back in Carthak, where he was a ""book-bound idiot."" He explains to Daine that people who are Black robe mages study books and learn nothing practical. Daine seems to think he relies too much on the enemy mage's stupidity. Shortly after this, Numair decides to go back to the city where King Jonathan is and warns him of something afoot in Dunlath. Daine stays to sort out the mess with her friend Brokefang and Numair tells her not to do anything extreme or he will lock her in the deepest dankest dungeon he can find when he gets his hands on her again. Throughout the book, Daine reaches the next level in the development of her wild magic as she starts to share minds with animals, a useful ability as she uses the eyes of squirrels and other creatures to spy. This ability soon translates to gaining certain characteristics of animals once she returns to her natural body. Daine discovers she has the power to morph into animals after Maura, Lady Yolane's somewhat plain and much younger sister, runs away from Fief Dunlath. Shortly afterwards, Rikash Moonsword the Stormwing appears to be fond of Maura and he makes Daine rethink her theory about all Stormwings being naturally evil. Maura tells Daine about Yolane's plans to become Queen - a deal with Emperor Ozorne of Carthak, who is also hinted at causing the siege at Pirate's Swoop in the first book. In the meantime, Daine meets a basilisk named Tkaa, who comes to be an important ally and a partial tutor to Kitten, her dragonet; Tristan creates a magical barrier to isolate fief Dunlath from help. In the Tortallan universe, basilisks resemble elegantly featured lizards that have the ability to stand on their hindlegs. They eat rocks and have a curious screech that turns anything in their direct path into stone. Daine learns that Tristan and his mage friends Alamid and Gissa are going to dump a poison called bloodrain into the river at the north of Dunlath to kill everything living within ten miles of the river. Tristan tries to hurt Daine with his magic, and Numair turns him(Tristan)into an apple tree with a word of power, also causing a tree somewhere in the world to turn into a human. With the help of Maura, Tkaa, Kitten (Skysong the Dragonet), the Stormwing Lord Rikash,Huntsman Tait, Alanna the Lioness, Raoul of Goldenlake, and the animals of the Long lake of Dunlath Numair and Daine manage to rip the entire plot to pieces in the biggest siege Daine has foiled yet."
459,Flint the King,fantasy," Flint The King is set in the five years before Dragons of Autumn Twilight where the Heroes of the Lance split up and look for signs of gods returning and a new evil stirring in the world. Flint Fireforge returns to his sleepy boyhood village in the foothills near Solace to discover that everything has changed. The village is now prosperous and producing weapons for an unknown buyer. When Flint starts poking around he is discovered and pushed into the ""Beast Pit"" and expected to die. He is rescued by a group of Gully Dwarves who make him their king. Flint struggles to bring the gully dwarves together and form a fighting force so that he can escape and use them to foil the enemies' plans."
460,Rowan and the Travellers,fantasy," The book picks up where the first one, Rowan of Rin (novel), ended. Rowan and the Travelers tells the story about how the tribe of the Travelers mysteriously showed up in the town of Rin. After their even more mysterious departure, a sleeping sickness appears, the Travelers is immediately mistaken, and Rowan and a couple other heroes and people of Rin, takes a trip over the sea to seek and find the answer. A terrible trip to the horrific Pit of Unrin. Here they find out that the sickness originally descends from a dangerous kind of fruit called Mountain-berries brought down from the Mountain next to Rin. Its juice lulls people drinking it, into a deep and heavy sleep. It turns out that the berries are the smaller and infantile form of big trees growing beneath the Mountain itself. After Rowan gets the sickness, causing others to dislike him, he was prevented to destroy the Mountain-berries, and in that way saving his hometown, and then the same would happen to the town as with the Valley of Gold, a large and beautiful settlement overrun and flowing with the berries, destroyed by their older adult forms. Rowan must save the town with the help of a potion made of slip-daisy roots."
461,The Well of Lost Plots,fantasy," Apprentice JurisFiction agent and SpecOps-27 operative Thursday Next is taking a much-needed vacation inside Caversham Heights, a never-published detective novel inside the Well of Lost Plots, while waiting for her child to be born (she's pregnant although her husband Landen was erased from existence by the ChronoGuard in the previous book). As a cover, she must pretend to be the character she is replacing. In the book, she encounters two Generics, students of St Tabularasa's who have yet to be assigned to a book, and DCI Jack Spratt, a detective who partners with her in investigating a murder. Since Thursday is an ""Outlander"", a ""real"" person rather than a fictional character, Spratt hopes that she will help them appeal to the Council of Genres to prevent the disassembling of Caversham Heights, a fate inevitable for books which languish unpublished in the 'real' world. Using a Caversham Heights as her base of operations, Thursday continues her apprenticeship with Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. Not only is a fictional character &mdash; Yorrick Kaine, the ""discoverer"" of Shakespeare's lost play Cardenio in the last book &mdash; loose in Thursday's real world, a person from Thursday's world has entered the BookWorld and is conspiring with Kaine and Text Grand Central, the final arbitrators of plot, setting, and other story elements, to release BOOK version 9, code-named UltraWord. UltraWord is touted at a JurisFiction meeting as the greatest advance ""since the invention of movable type"" because it creates a thirty-two plot story system and allows the reader to control the story. Thursday slowly loses her memory of Landen, though Granny Next remains with her and keeps her from forgetting him completely. Aornis Hades, the villainess, who nearly covered the world in Dream Topping in Lost in a Good Book, is present in her memory as a mindworm. Thursday learns that Harris Tweed, Kaine's partner, is masquerading as a JurisFiction agent to get UltraWord released in order to fix literature. At the 923rd Annual BookWorld awards, Thursday proves to the seven million fictional characters assembled that UltraWord will render literature merely a saleable commodity &mdash; the thrice-read rule renders an UltraWord book impossible to read by a fourth person after the volume has been read by three people, thus rendering libraries and second-hand bookstores useless. The quality of the writing is also substantively poorer; Thursday produces two skylarks, one from a non-UltraWord book that is described vividly and poetically, and the other from an UltraWord book that is described flat and literally. Tweed and Kaine call for a vote before the audience can be convinced that Thursday's is the correct argument. In this unprecedented emergency, Thursday breaks open the ""IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS"" in her JurisFiction operative TravelBook and pulls the handle. The Great Panjandrum, ruler of the BookWorld, appears (a literal Deus ex machina). The Panjandrum calls for an immediate vote which goes against UltraWord and calls on Thursday to take the job of Bellman, the superintendent of JurisFiction. The two Generics, now calling themselves Randolph and Lola, Thursday, and her pet dodo Pickwick take R&R in Caversham Heights, which was bought by the Council of Genres as a character sanctuary &mdash; a solution that appeals to the residents of the novel as well as the nursery rhyme characters who were going to go on strike. The story of the new Caversham Heights constitutes Fforde's fifth book, The Big Over Easy. The American edition of The Well of Lost Plots has an extra chapter documenting the weathering of a WordStorm during Thursday's tenure as Bellman. The story continues in Something Rotten. *Thursday Next *Pickwick *Randolph *Lola *Harris Tweed *The Great Panjandrum *Aornis Hades *Granny Next *Landen Parke-Laine *Bellman de:Im Brunnen der Manuskripte fr:Le Puits des histoires perdues it:Il pozzo delle trame perdute"
462,The Ghosts,fantasy," Mr Blunden, an elderly solicitor, visits Mrs Allen, a widow who lives with her three children Jamie, Lucy and the baby, in Camden Town, London, England. He tells her that his firm are looking for a suitable person to act as a caretaker to an old, abandoned house in the country until such time as the descendants of the original owners can be traced. When Mrs Allen leaves the room to tend to her baby, Mr Blunden mentions to Jamie and Lucy that there are rumours that the old house is haunted but that ghosts can often appear as ordinary people, perhaps children like themselves, and that ghosts are often people in need of help... Jamie and Lucy confirm that they wouldn't be scared of ghosts that appeared in that form and would help, if they could. Before Mrs Allen returns, Mr Blunden leaves, giving Jamie an old, faded card for the firm Blunden, Blunden and Claverton, where Mrs Allen should call the next day to inquire about the post. The Allens visit the firm, which, surprisingly, is called Blunden, Claverton and Smith. The solicitors are puzzled at Mrs Allen's visit, since the job has not been advertised, but are nonetheless delighted to have found someone to take the job in spite of the rumours of ghosts, and soon the family find themselves living in the caretaker's cottage at Langley Park. Lucy explores the house alone. In the attic she thinks she hears voices in the distance - but can't understand what they're saying. The woman who comes in from the village to clean confirms that they're the ghostly voices of children, just children, and nothing to worry about. One morning soon after, Lucy is walking in the garden, gathering flowers. She suddenly becomes aware of a heavy, oppressive feeling and the warning song of a blackbird. Her eyes can't seem to focus, but she thinks she sees two transparent figures walking towards her through the mist that hovers over the lawn. She panics, screams and runs to Jamie who returns with her to investigate. Everything appears normal until, suddenly, they both become aware of the oppressive feeling and the repeating, hypnotic blackbird song again. And, again, the two figures are walking towards them through the mist. As they draw nearer the figures solidify into a young girl, about their age, and a younger boy. Jamie and Lucy are relieved to meet what appear to be two ordinary children, albeit that their clothes seem a little old-fashioned. Only after talking for some minutes do they notice that the newcomers cast no shadows on the sunny path... The new arrivals - Sara and Georgie Latimer - explain that they are not ghosts in the ordinary sense. They have come from a hundred years in the past when they lived at Langley Park. Their guardian, their uncle Bertie (a sensual, dissolute and penniless man), has fallen in love with a music-hall performer, Bella Wickens, and moved her mother and father in as housekeeper and caretaker to the house. However, the mother - Mrs Wickens - has determined to murder Sara and Georgie so that Bertie will inherit the family wealth - currently held in trust until Georgie comes of age. The children learn of Mrs Wickens' scheme and attempt to convince the family Solicitor - a certain Mr Blunden - of their danger. Blunden reacts violently and negatively to the news and the children are locked up, out of sight and out of mind. One night, by the intervention of some supernatural agency that the children do not understand, they are led to the library of the house. There they find a book containing the recipe for a charm - 'A Charm To Move The Wheel Of Time'. By brewing the infusion and drinking it the children will be able to move through time to find the help they need. Sara and Georgie ask Jamie and Lucy to come back to their time and help them escape the fate that awaits them. Jamie and Lucy agree -although Lucy is less sure than Jamie. Sara gives them the recipe for the charm and arranges to meet them the next day. She and Georgie disappear back to the past... The next day, in the local cemetery, Lucy and Jamie find the grave of Sara and Georgie and are disheartened. The sexton tells them that the children died in the fire that razed the house to the ground. However, they have brewed the potion and go to meet Sara and Georgie as arranged. Only Sara is waiting for them. Georgie has upset Mrs Wickens and been locked in the cellar. Sara is keen to get back to him. At that moment, Mr Blunden arrives. This is the spirit of the Mr Blunden who ignored the pleas of Sara and Georgie and who is suffering, now, because of their deaths all those years ago. He has the opportunity to put things right and he promises Jamie and Lucy that he will keep them safe in the past; that any pain that must be suffered will be suffered by him. Sara confirms that she has forgiven Blunden. She is also aware of the grave in the churchyard. Jamie and Lucy drink the potion. The world around them swirls and goes black... ...and they find themselves back in Sara and Georgie's time - a hundred years before. Mr Blunden tells them that, for a while, things must go on as they did before, but that when the time was right he would appear and help Jamie and Lucy save Sara and Georgie. Indeed, for a while, things do progress as they did, but eventually Mrs Wickens drugs the children and they sleep as Mr Wickens starts a fire in the library beneath the nursery. Tom, the gardener's boy, attempts to rescue them and manages to climb up the outside of the house to the nursery window. By now the fire has taken a firm hold and Jamie cannot get into the house to effect a rescue from below. Just as he's losing heart, Mr Blunden appears, takes him by the hand and leads him through the flames. Jamie feels nothing, while Blunden is clearly suffering both his pain and Jamie's and the guilt of a hundred years. Tom, Sara and Georgie escape the house, but as Jamie attempts to leave he becomes trapped. As Lucy stands outside crying for Mr Blunden to help him the world around her swirls and blackens - and she finds herself back in her own time. Searching the ruins of the house she finds Jamie, unconscious. Some time later, with Jamie still ill, Lucy attends church and wanders through the cemetery afterwards. There, instead of the small stone marking Sara and Georgie's grave, she finds a tall granite memorial to Mr Frederick Percival Blunden who died to save the children in his care - a hundred years ago. They did it! They saved Sara and Georgie! She returns home. Her mother tells her that Jamie is awake. She runs to his room and the two talk about their journey to the past. When Jamie is well, the family receive a visit from one of the Solicitors at Blunden, Claverton and Smith. It seems they have traced the true owners of the house. Jamie and Lucy are sad, knowing this means they will have to leave, until the Solicitor explains that Sara Latimer married Tom the gardener's boy, emigrating to America, whilst Georgie inherited the house. It seems that Sara's daughter married a man named Allen and that - in fact - the true owner of the house is Jamie. Sara was their great-great grandmother. Jamie runs off to explore the grounds anew, now as their owner. Lucy goes upstairs to the attic where she hopes, now she belongs to the house, that she will understand what the voices of the ghosts are saying..."
463,The Skies of Pern,fantasy," A rogue comet that strikes Pern leads the Weyrleaders and Holders, contemplating a future where dragonriders are not needed in a Threadless world, to consider the creation of a new Star Craft made of dragonriders. The discovery by dragonriders F'lessan and Tai, after a brutal attack by large felines, of the draconic use of telekinesis, only strengthens their resolve to keep Pern's skies free of danger. At the same time, disgruntled citizens resisting the ever-growing role of technology in Pernese life band together as Abominators, attacking Crafthalls, and are determined to destroy all the new technology in use. These fanatics are seemingly allied with Southern Lord Holder Toric. The Abominators' leader, Shankolin, is killed at the end of the book when he enters the chamber formerly housing AIVAS, the computer that introduced advanced technology to the Pernese. This implies that although AIVAS is disabled, his defense systems remain active."
464,Cube Route,fantasy," In the magical land of Xanth, wishes are far more than mere words. So when a Plain Jane called Cube whispers a wistful wish to be beautiful, she finds herself leading a company of colorful companions on a search for the mysterious Cube Route--a perilous path that leads to danger, adventure, and perhaps her heart's desire as well. This curious quest takes them all over Xanth, into the mythical realm of Phaze, and even to our own world, where Cube rescues a beautiful human woman from a very ugly situation, ending at last in a mysterious Counter-Xanth where things can be transformed into their opposites in the wink of an eye."
465,The Wind on the Moon,fantasy," Major Palfrey is off to war. He warns his two daughters, Dinah and Dorinda, that while he is away they must behave themselves: ""When there is wind on the moon, you must be very careful how you behave. Because if it is an ill wind and you behave badly, it will blow straight into your heart, and then you will behave badly for a long time to come."" And so it proves: before long the girls are drinking a potion provided by the local witch and turning into kangaroos, getting stuck in the zoo, and staging an escape along with their new friends, a golden puma and a silver falcon. Their appetite for naughtiness and cleverness whetted, Dinah and Dorinda turn their attention to freeing their dancing master, Casimir Corvo, from jail. And then comes their greatest adventure: Count Hulagu Bloot, the tyrant of Bombardy – who loves torturing people and eating peppermint creams – has captured their father and imprisoned him in the dungeons of Bloot's castle. The two girls, together with their puma friend and their beloved dancing teacher, smuggle themselves from England to Bombardy in a room made of furniture hidden inside a huge removal van and stage a dramatic rescue."
466,The Immortals,fantasy," When a cure for AIDS turns out to be more virulent than the disease, the U.S. establishes quarantine camps in the desert southwest. Michael Barris, a TV producer, masquerades as one of the infected and travels to the camps in search of his son. He finds horrific conditions, and learns that the so-called quarantine camps are death camps where the infected are gathered, purposefully brutalized, and ultimately cremated alive, their ashes bulldozed into the desert sand. Barris's son escapes the camp before the cycle of immolation, carrying the evidence he needs to expose the governmental mis-information campaign."
467,Warrior's Refuge,fantasy," The book opens with a short summary of the past events of the previous book, The Lost Warrior. Coming to the current time, Graystripe and his traveling companion, Millie, can see Highstones in the distance. As they are traveling through a corn field, a combine pursues them. Graystripe and Millie are separated as they flee from the monster. Graystripe manages to get to a nearby barn, and asks for help from the cats inhabiting the barn. The barn cats agree to help Graystripe find Millie. They find Millie and learn the hard corn leaves cut and damaged Millie's eyes. Graystripe and Millie are allowed to stay until she recovers. Husker, one of the barn cats explains to the two cats that they used to live in the nearby Twoleg nest (human house). Unfortunately, the Twolegs (humans) died, and a new family moved in. The new residents disliked the cats, so they were chased out. They had lived in the barn ever since. Graystripe and Millie face the pet dogs of the family after they wander into the barn. Millie can speak dog and is able to send the dogs away. The barn cats are amazed by Millie's ability and she teaches them how to speak dog. A few days later, Millie and Graystripe see a Twoleg kit in pursuit of a frog. She approaches dangerously close to the edge of a pond, almost falling into it. Graystripe manages to catch the child's attention and lead her away. The Twoleg's parents are very grateful to the cats. Over time, the Twolegs accept the barn cats as well and even adopt them as their kittypets through a plan of Graystripe's. The two travelers continue their route towards home. However, when they arrive at the forest, they find the territory is destroyed and ThunderClan is gone."
468,Thomas the Rhymer,fantasy," Thomas, a harper from court, befriends a humble farmer and his wife. As he begins a relationship with Elspeth, their neighbor, he is whisked to Elfland, ensnared by the Fairy Queen. After seven years he returns to Gavin and Elspeth with a parting gift from the Queen: He can only speak the truth."
469,Dragonsbane,fantasy," A witch, Jenny Waynest, and lord, John Aversin, who live in the Northlands are approached by a young southern noble, Gareth, who requests they slay a dragon in the capital city of Bel to the south. The pair agree on the condition the king send troops to the north to fend off bandits. On arriving, it is revealed that Gareth is not a mere noble, but the prince of the realm seeking aid against the wishes of his father. The dragon is revealed as Morkeleb the Black, an ancient and powerful dragon, inhabiting the caverns of the gnomes. In addition, the sorceress Zyerne is revealed to hold the king in her power, dominating him with the goal of capturing the power of the Stone in the heart of the gnomish Deep. John is persuaded to kill Morkeleb, with Jenny's assistance, but is himself wounded and Jenny is forced to save the dragon's life in exchange for that of John's. In saving Morkeleb's life, Jenny's weak powers are much augmented, allowing her to confront Zyerne but also tempting her to transform into a dragon and abandon the concerns of humanity. Zyrene enters the Deep, attempting to claim its magic, but is defeated when the Stone is destroyed by John, Jenny and Morkeleb. Jenny accepts Morkeleb's offer to transform into a dragon, but later returns to the North, unable to live without her humanity."
470,The Inheritance,fantasy," The book begins with Elansa Sungold going to the border to heal a group of trees with her Blue Phoenix, a magical artifact passed down since the Age of Dreams to woodshapers in her family. The Blue Phoenix is a symbol of Habbakuk, and the artifact may be a holy artifact of Habbakuk. She is guarded by twenty elves. When they reach further into the forest, they are ambushed by goblins, which were hired by human brigands. Elansa is taken for ransom, and one of the guards who were sent to take care of her by her husband, Prince Kethrenan, is mutilated and sent back to Qualinost, the elve's homeland, to inform them of the ransom demand, two cartloads full of the best weapons that the elves have. Elansa is taken to one of the bandits secret hideouts, and is guarded by Char, the dwarf. Brand, the leader of the bandits, also takes Elansa's Blue Phoenix from her. In the hands of a human, it didn't pulse with magic at all, so humans would think it's just a pretty shaped gem. Brand means raven in an ancient dialect. Brand kills the son of Gnash, a hobgoblin, who was sent to assist the ambush, making him an enemy of the goblins. They run from the goblins into many different secret hideouts, then hole up in one for the winter. In the sprain, Brand's demand for two wagons full of weapons has been acknowledged. Prince Kethrenan, and his cousin, a female warrior, drive the wagons, while other warriors hide in the woods. Their plan is to slaughter the bandits when they come to take the weapons, however, their plans are foiled when goblins, this time enemies of both, appear. Brand and his band get away with Elansa and the two wagons, leaving the elves to ""mop up"" the goblins. Brand stores the weapons in caches all over the stone lands, so that they won't be discovered. A goblin ""turncoat"" decides to help the elves, and with his help the locate all of the weapon caches. The weapons that can't be recovered due to transportation issues are destroyed. By plotting the caches on a map, the elves discover an arrow pointing to Pax Tharkas, perhaps the last safe house for the brigands, so the elves head to Pax Tharkas. Brand and his band know that they are being hunted, but not by whom, so they decide to go to the abandoned Pax Tharkas as a safe haven. During this time, Char becomes almost a friend of Elansa's. Many of the men in the group of bandits want Elansa, so Brand gives her a choice between him and them. He was just doing this to protect her, but she didn't know that. Elansa chooses Brand. The goblins amass an army and also head to Pax Tharkas, following Brand. Brand and his followers arrive in Pax Tharkas, and a couple of goblins manage to rouse the undead guarding Kith-Kanan. While Elansa is trying to help the Bandits to destroy the undead, one of the bandits try to rape her, but Char saves her. Elansa uses her Blue Phoenix to destroy the undead, but she faints from the strain afterwards. The elves and goblins fight outside Pax Tharkas, and the elves destroy the goblins. Prince Kethrenan's cousin is killed. Prince Kethrenan comes in to rescue Elansa, but Elansa wants him to spare Brand. He refuses, kills Brand, and at the same time Leyerlain Starwing kills Kethrenan by throwing a dagger into his neck. At this point, Elansa realizes that she grew to love Brand. Elansa runs away with Char, before the elves come to investigate. She's pregnant with Brand's child, and Char convinces her to claim that she was raped to protect herself and the child, even though Brand grew, almost, to be her lover. She returns to Qualinesti. The child is known as Tanis Half-Elven."
471,Gregor the Overlander,fantasy," When staying at home with his sick grandmother, and 2-year old sister, nicknamed Boots' (but whose birth name is Margaret), adolescent Gregor struggles with the apparent death of his father. Gregor is left home alone with Boots and his grandmother while his mother, Grace, takes his other sister, Lizzie, off to summer camp. Gregor goes down to his apartment complex's laundry room to do laundry, and takes Boots down with him. Boots starts messing with a grate behind one of the washing machine's. Gregor sees this, and dives after her, but is too late, and Boots falls through the hole, with Gregor falling behind her. They fall miles and miles beneath the earth, very fast, but as they near the bottom of their descent, they miraculously begin to slow down, and land gently on the ground. They land in the Underland, an underground world, hidden miles beneath our world, where humans and giant-talking bats, cockroaches, and even mice coexist in peace, but also a place where a conflict with giant-talking rats exist. The story revolves around a prophecy that centers around young Gregor himself, and how he, the ""Warrior"", as the Underlanders call him, will fulfill this prophecy. * Gregor: The protagonist of the story. He falls into the Underland with his sister. * Luxa: An Underlander, and the soon to be queen of Regalia. * Ripred: A trustworthy gnawer with deadly fighting skills and sharp intelligence, he fights alongside the humans. * Ares: A flier, first Henry's bond, then Gregor's. He is described as jet black, and strong. * Henry: An Underlander, and Luxa's cousin on the Royal side. * Vikus: Luxa's grandfather and Solovet's husband * Aurora: A flier, Luxa's bond. A golden color. * Boots (Margaret): Named after her grandma, Boots is Gregor's cheerful, two-year-old sister who is afraid of very little. * Nerissa: Luxa's cousin who foresees what either is going to happen or what already did. Ripred describes her flip flopping through time like a fish in the shallows. * Solovet: Luxa's grandmother and Vikus's wife; head of the Regalian army. * Dulcet: a servant in Regalia * Perdita: an Underland soldier. * Gregor's father * Grace: Gregor, Lizzie and Boots' mother * Grandma: Gregor, Lizzie and Boots' grandmother after whom Boots (Margaret) was named. * Mrs. Cormaci: A family friend to Gregor's family * King Gorger: The king of the gnawers (rats) * Queen Wevox: a giant spider. * Gox and Treflex: two spiders * Lizzie: Gregor and Boots' sister, mentioned more than once. * Mareth: One of Regalia's soldiers * Temp & Tick: Cockroaches who call Boots the ""Princess"". Beware, Underlanders, time hangs by a thread. The hunters are hunted, white water runs red. The gnawers are sent to extinguish the rest. The hope of the hopeless resides in a quest. An Overlander Warrior, a son of the sun, May bring us back light, he may bring us back none. But gather your neighbors and follow his call or rats will most surely devour us all. Two over, two under, of royal descent, Two fliers, two crawlers, two spinners assent. One gnawer beside and one lost up ahead. And eight will be left when we count up the dead. The last who will die must decide where he stands. The fate of the eight is contained in his hands. So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps, As life may be death, and death life again reaps. * Bartholomew of Sandwich, who led a group of humans down from the Overland into the Underland, saw into the future and carved prophecies – which called Gregor the ""Warrior"" – into stone walls in a room filled with Prophecies * Luxa's parents, who are described as being killed by rats, which is why Luxa holds a grudge against all rats, good and bad. * Ripred's mate and pups * Henry and Nerissa's parents The creatures in the series resemble their real-life counterparts in almost every way, aside from being very large (most of them being bigger than the humans) and able to speak in the novels. * Humans: Sometimes referred to as the ""Killers"" by certain Underland species, Underland Humans live, mainly, in the city of Regalia. * Crawlers (Cockroaches): They call Boots the ""Princess"". * Spinners (Spiders): They provide several types of silk. * Fliers (Bats): These creatures ""bond"" with their human counterparts in a ceremony. * Gnawers (Rats): They are the antagonists of the story. Most of the Gnawers are violent and aggressive. * Shiners (Fireflies): Eat too much, are lazy and unreliable. * Nibblers (Mice): Are allied to the humans. * Stingers (Scorpions): Are allied by the humans by book 4. * Diggers (Moles): Introduced in book 5. They are the true founders of the Underland. * Twisters (Snakes): Introduced in book 4. * Hissers (Lizards): Introduced in book 3. * Cutters (Ants): Enemies of all warmbloods. Introduced in book 3. * Slimers: (Snails): Are mentioned by Howard in book 4. * Lobsters: They are briefly mentioned by Vikus in book 3; Ripred had tried to invade the Fount with an army of them."
472,Mistborn: The Alloy of Law,fantasy," Tor has given a short synopsis of the novel, which is as follows: #"
473,Jhegaala,fantasy," Vlad Taltos, after leaving Adrilankha, decides to visit Noish-pa, currently residing in the Szurke region as Vlad′s regent. While there, Vlad expresses interest in finding out about his mother. Noish-pa remembers that Vlad′s mother left him a runic thank you note containing her full name, Marishka Merss Taltos. Noish-pa reveals that Merss translates as “pulper” and is likely associated with a town called Burz. Vlad decides to head into Fenario in search of his mother′s kin. After arriving in Burz, Vlad takes on the name Merss and discovers he doesn′t fit in among other Easterners and is greeted with suspicion, especially due to his choice in familiar. Good witches have birds, mice, or cats. Vlad stays at an inn he refers to as the “pointed hat”, run by a man named Inchay. There he is approached by Barash Orbahn, liquor importer, who answers some basic questions about Burz and agrees to ask about Vlad′s kin. Vlad decides to begin his own investigation by questioning the local merchants. Upon inquiry into his family, the name Merss is taken as a threat; Vlad is accused of being an erdergbasson, or “Witch who studies things nice people don′t talk about,” and is threatened that all the merchants in town belong to The Merchants′ Guild. This is unusual as guilds typically consist of tradesmen banded together to gain power over merchants. Vlad returns to the inn without receiving much information. The next day Orbahn meets Vlad again and informs him the head of the Guild is a man named Chayoor, and it would be best if Vlad stopped searching for his family at the risk of upsetting the Guild. Digesting this information at the dock, Vlad is approached by Tereza, a prostitute, who after proper bribing tells him to seek out a coachman named Zollie at the inn Cellar Mouse. Vlad meets with Zollie, who informs him the Merss belonged to a group of witches the Count believed was trying to kill him, and that most of the family fled west. The remaining members live outside of town. Vlad decides to visit the family, only to find that they have been murdered and their house burned down with fire that could only have been produced by a witch. He is aided in burying the family by neighbors and a Verra priest named Father Noij. Vlad is filled with uncharacteristic rage and decides he will seek revenge for the murder of his kin. The next day Vlad decides to use the Art to heal the blisters from the previous day; during the spell his mind is read and Loiosh cannot prevent it. Vlad decides to confront the Guild leader Chayoor, who somehow knows Vlad’s true name of Taltos, and informs Vlad that the Guild holds the authority in town. Vlad then seeks an audience with the Count, who politely refuses, but Vlad decides to go anyway under the guise of being an emissary of the empire interested in paper. Upon returning to town, he learns Zollie has been murdered and witches are suspected because her lips have turned red. Vlad realizes this is not the work of a witch, only meant to appear to be. Vlad decides to take a walk at night despite his poor night vision, and is approached by a man named Dahni who claims to work for the Count, who is interested in helping Vlad against their common enemy; who that enemy is, Vlad does not know. Vlad decides to find out about the Coven of witches in Burz by following one of them home and forcefully questioning them; he finds out limited information about the good witch, bad witch phenomenon, and the general location of the Coven headquarters in the woods. Vlad continues his night activities by tracking down Dahni and forcefully questioning him about the Count’s offer, and Vlad agrees to meet with the Count. Vlad moves to the Cellar Mouse inn to make it harder to trace him. The next day, a message arrives from the Count that Vlad should come to his estate, but first Vlad sends Loiosh and Rocza to do surveillance on Orbhan and Tereza, who are acting suspiciously. At the Count’s, Vlad is drugged and tortured for several days about his connection to the king of Fenario and his plans to steal the secret recipe to make paper, and then turned over to the Guild for several more days of torture before, in a moment of lucidity, informing Loiosh to notify Dahni to come and rescue him. The Count regrets Vlad’s treatment and provides sanctuary and medical treatment to the now crippled Vlad. It is revealed that Dahni had been working for a Jhereg assassin who is after Vlad, and after questioning reveals the location of the assassin, who is hunted down and killed. Vlad moves back into the Cellar Mouse where, despite his injuries, he uses Loiosh and Rocza to gather information while he questions those who come to see him: Father Noij, some very distant kin, and Meehayi, his caretaker. Vlad figures out who was behind the attack on his kin and sets in motion a plan to destroy the Guild and Coven by pretending he was killed by witches, causing a mob to hunt down the Coven, while simultaneously having the Count arrest the Guild. The Coven kills Chayoor in the belief that he has been trying to set them up. The feeble Vlad escapes with the help of Father Noij to Fenario. After several years, the now mostly recovered Vlad completes his revenge by returning to Burz, stealing the Count′s paper recipe, and sending it to Her Imperial Majesty Zerika the Fourth."
474,The Secret World of Og,fantasy," In this fantasy adventure, four children — Penny, the leader; Pamela, her common-sense sister; Peter, whose life’s ambition is to become a garbageman; and Patsy, who collects frogs in her pockets — set out in search of their baby brother, Paul, better known as “The Pollywog,” who has vanished mysteriously from their playhouse. Accompanied by their fearless pets, the children descend through a secret trapdoor into a strange underground world of mushrooms, whose green inhabitants know only one word: “OG!”"
475,Damia,fantasy," Damia is told mainly from the point of view of Afra Lyon, the Rowan's assistant, a character first introduced in the previous book. It begins with his childhood on the strictly regimented colony planet orbiting Capella. It then shows Lyon's view of the events of The Rowan, followed by his helping to raise Rowan and Jeff Raven's children, especially the precocious and powerful Damia. Lyon later realizes that he has fallen in love with his young ward, which gives him rather conflicted feelings. In the end, the two wind up defending humanity against an even more dangerous alien enemy than the Hive faced by the Rowan."
476,Night season,fantasy," When two world-class cynics land in a world where magic is commonplace, lying is an artform, and night never ends, their only way home lies in working together to find a missing medallion sought by powerful beings who would do anything to claim it."
477,Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz,fantasy," A rainy day in Philadelphia means no baseball; Peter Brown, the child protagonist introduced by Thompson in The Gnome King of Oz, mopes in his attic. He finds the sacks that were full of gold when he brought them back from his previous Oz adventure; and one of those sacks contains an odd gold coin. Toying with the coin and thinking of Oz, he wishes himself back in the magic land &mdash; and suddenly finds himself in the front yard of Jack Pumpkinhead. The sensible thing for Peter to do is to head for the Emerald City; and Jack is ready to act as his guide. This is perhaps not the best arrangement &mdash; and the two quickly get lost in the Quadling Country, where they blunder into Chimneyville and Scare City. By chance, Peter finds that his empty sack will consume objects and creatures that are scooped into its open mouth. The two also happen to obtain the magic dinner bell of Jinnicky the Red Jinn, which supplies Peter with needed provisions. The travelers adopt a third member for their party when they meet the doggerel-spouting Snif the Iffin (he's a griffin who has lost his ""gr-""). The three then encounter the unfortunate Belfaygor, the Baron of Bourne. He has been accidentally cursed with a rapidly-growing beard that he must constantly snip away. Even worse, his fiancée, the princess Shirley Sunshine, has been kidnapped by the local villain, Mogodore the Mighty, the Baron of Baffleburg. Boy, baron, iffin and pumpkinhead set out to remedy this situation, and quickly become enwrapped in complexities involving a Forbidden Flagon and a talkative and abusive Sauce Box. When Mogodore sets out to conquer Oz and actually succeeds in seizing the Emerald City, the travelers have to mount a desperate rescue effort. Eventually Jack, with help from the Red Jinn (here introduced for the first time; his name, Jinnicky, is not revealed until later books), manages to save the day: with the Forbidden Flagon, he reduces Mogodore and his thousand warriors to little beings ""no bigger than brownies."" The miniaturized aggressors are confined to their homeland, also miniaturized. Snif the Iffin recovers his lost ""gr-."" Order in Oz is restored, with a great celebratory banquet before Peter is sent home, with thanks, once again."
478,Until the Celebration,fantasy," Now that the Geets-kel have decided to reveal their secrets and integrate Erdlings with Kindar, there is much concern over how to do it properly. A lifetime of beliefs will not be converted easily and there are numerous logistical issues to consider. The Ol-zhaan have different concerns, such as why they had been left out of the secrets and how their lofty place in society will be diminished. Some think it would be best to exile themselves into an uninhabited tree as D'ol Regle has done, while others are eager to help with D'ol Falla's agenda. Food starts being delivered to the Erdlings and their leaders begin talks of how to integrate with the Kindar. The initial plan is to not release Erdlings into the open air immediately, but they soon catch word of the way out and start building crude dwellings on the forest floor. The two societies begin to integrate with some difficulty. An Erdling group lead by Axon Befal has sworn vengeance against the Geets-kel for imprisoning the Erdlings and attacks an Ol-zhaan, violence unheard of in Kindar soceity. More bad news follows. D'ol Falla finds that the tool-of-violence is missing from its hiding place and Axon Befal sends a message that he has kidnapped Pomma and Teera and will kill them unless Orbora is turned over to his control. Then, just as a Council meeting is getting underway, in walks a servant in the Vine Palace with the weapon. She tells how she was instructed by D'ol Regle to steal the tool-of-violence, but then became disenchanted with him when she thought he had kidnapped the children. The Council decides the weapon must be destroyed as soon as possible by taking it down to the Erdling cavern and dropping it into the Bottomless Lake. Raamo leads the procession, carrying the tool-of-violence inside a metal urn. The urn is placed before an opening in the barrier around the Bottomless Lake, but all are afraid to touch the evil object. Raamo eventually steps forward and carries it to the edge of a precipice. He tries to drop the urn, but its power prevents him from doing so and he tumbles into the lake with it. After the initial shock has worn off, a young man lets out a cry and throws a weapon into the lake. He reveals that he was recruited by Axon Befal to kill Raamo, but was not able to do so when he saw the goodness in him. He reports that Befal does not have possession of the children or any more followers and that his message was simply a bluff. A celebration had been planned for the one year anniversary of the Rejoyning, but with Pomma and Teera still missing there doesn't seem to be anything to celebrate about. D'ol Falla is asked to speak, but is nearly lost for words. The first thing that comes to her mind is that the Kindar should celebrate indeed, for they have managed to free the Erdlings and largely come together as a united society. Suddenly, a figure glides down from above, bringing news that the children have been found. To the great relief of the crowd, they appear shortly thereafter. As Hiro gives one last speech to the people of Orbora, D'ol Falla finds the back room where the children are playing. Off to the side, two little boys raise their arms up as a marble urn lifts off the shelf and floats gently to the floor. Teera smiles at D'ol Falla, telling her they've been teaching the other children their ""game."""
479,James and the Giant Peach,fantasy," A boy named James Henry Trotter, 5 years old, lives with his loving parents in a pretty and bright cottage by the sea in the south of England. James's world is turned upside down when, while on a shopping trip in London, his mother and father are eaten by an escaped rhino. James is forced to live with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, who live in a run-down house on a high, desolate hill near the white cliffs of Dover. For three years Spiker and Sponge verbally and physically abuse James, not allowing him to venture beyond the hill or play with other children. Around the house James is treated as a drudge, beaten for hardly any reason, improperly fed, and forced to sleep on bare floorboards in the attic. One summer afternoon when he is crying in the bushes, James stumbles across a strange old man, who, mysteriously, knows all about James's plight and gives him a sack of tiny glowing-green crocodile tongues. The man promises that if James mixes the contents of the sack with a jug of water and ten hairs from his own head, the result will be a magic potion which, when drunk, will bring him happiness and great adventures. On the way back to the house, James trips and spills the sack onto the peach tree outside his home, which had previously never given fruit. The tree becomes enchanted through the tongues, and begins to blossom; indeed a certain peach grows to the size of a large house. The aunts discover this and make money off the giant peach while keeping James locked away. At night the aunts shove James outside to collect rubbish from the crowd, but instead he curiously ventures inside a juicy, fleshy tunnel which leads to the hollow stone in the middle of the cavernous fruit. Entering the stone, James discovers a band of rag-tag anthropomorphic insects, also transformed by the magic of the green tongues. James quickly befriends the insect inhabitants of the peach, who become central to the plot and James' companions in his adventure. The insects loathe the aunts and their hilltop home as much as James, and they were waiting for him to join them so they can escape together. The Centipede bites through the stem of the peach with his powerful jaws, releasing it from the tree, and it begins to roll down the hill, squashing Spiker and Sponge flat in its wake. Inside the stone the inhabitants cheer as they feel the peach rolling over the aunts. The peach rolls through villages, houses, and a famous chocolate factory before falling off the cliffs and into the sea. The peach floats in the English Channel, but quickly drifts away from civilization and into the expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. Hours later, not far from the Azores, the peach is attacked by a swarm of hundreds of sharks. Using the blind Earthworm as bait, the ever resourceful James and the other inhabitants of the peach lure over five hundred seagulls to the peach from the nearby islands. The seagulls are then tied to the broken stem of the fruit using spiderwebs from the Spider and strings of white silk from the Silkworm. The mass of seagulls lifts the undamaged giant peach into the air and away from the sharks. As the seagulls try to get away from the giant peach, they merely carry it higher and higher, and the seagulls take the giant peach great distances. The Centipede entertains with ribald dirges to Sponge and Spiker, but in his excitement he falls off the peach into the ocean and has to be rescued by James. That night, thousands of feet in the air, the giant peach floats through mountain-like, moonlit clouds. There the inhabitants of the peach see a group of magical ghost-like figures living within the clouds, ""Cloud-Men"", who control the weather. As the Cloud-Men gather up the cloud in their hands to form hailstones and snowballs to throw down to the world below, the loud-mouthed Centipede insults the Cloud-Men for making snowy weather in the summertime. Angered, an army of Cloud-Men appear from the cloud and pelt the giant peach with hail so fiercely and powerfully that the peach is severely damaged, with entire chunks taken out of it, and the giant fruit begins leaking its peach juice. All of this shrinks the peach somewhat, although because it is now lighter the seagulls are able to pull it quicker through the air. As the seagulls strain to get away from the Cloud-Men, the giant peach smashes through an unfinished rainbow the Cloud-Men were preparing for dawn, infuriating them even further. One Cloud-Man almost gets on the peach by climbing down the silken strings tied to the stem, but James asks the Centipede to bite through some of the strings. When he does a single freed seagull, to which the Cloud-Man is hanging from, is enough to carry him away from the peach as Cloud-Men are weightless. As the sun rises, the inhabitants of the giant peach see the glimmering skyscrapers of New York City peeking above the clouds. The people below see the giant peach suspended in the air by a swarm of hundreds of seagulls, and panic, believing it to be a floating, orange-coloured, spherical nuclear bomb. The military, police, fire, and rescue services are all called out, and people begin running to air raid shelters and subway stations, believing the city is about to be destroyed. A huge passenger jet flies past the giant peach, almost hitting it, and severing the silken strings between the seagulls and the peach. The seagulls free, the peach begins to fall to the ground, but it is saved when it is impaled upon the tip of the Empire State Building. The people on the 86th floor observation deck at first believe the inhabitants of the giant peach to be monsters or Martians, but when James appears from within the skewered peach and explains his story, the people hail James and his insect friends as heroes. They are given a welcoming home parade, and James gets what he wanted for three long years - playmates in the form of millions of potential new childhood friends. The skewered, battered remains of the giant peach are brought down to the streets by steeplejacks, where its delicious flesh is eaten up by ten thousand children, all now James's friends. Meanwhile, the peach's other former residents, the anthropomorphic insects, all go on to find very interesting futures in the world of humans. In the last chapter of the book, it is revealed that the giant hollowed-out stone which had once been at the center of the peach is now a mansion located in Central Park. James lives out the rest of his life in the giant peach stone, which becomes an open tourist attraction and the ever-friendly James has all the friends he has wanted."
480,Phoenix,fantasy," During an unusual attempt on his life, Vlad prays to his goddess Verra for aid and surprisingly receives it. As payment, Verra requests that Vlad kill the King of Greenaere, an island kingdom off the coast of the Empire, where magic does not work. Vlad agrees and sails to Greenaere, where he completes the assassination without difficulty. Fleeing the island, however, proves more difficult. After fighting off some guards, an injured Vlad stumbles upon a drummer in the forest named Aibynn who tends his wounds and tries to cover for him when more guards arrive. Vlad faints from Aibynn's dreamgrass and reveals his hidden location, causing the guards to arrest both of them. In prison, Vlad talks with Aibynn, who thinks of nothing but drumming, and waits for an opportunity to escape. Eventually he learns that Loiosh had flown across the ocean to warn their friends. Aliera and Cawti arrive at the prison and free Vlad using elder sorcery, which does not require a link to the Orb. Vlad brings Aibynn along, though he suspects that he might be a spy. Morrolan provides a boat and the group sails away. Back in Adrilankha, Vlad is still stuck between the Jhereg Organization and his wife's group of Easterner and Teckla revolutionists. Vlad's superior warns him that members of the Council are displeased with the situation. Matters worsen when Greenaere declares war on the Empire and press gangs begin forcibly recruiting Easterners. A watchtower in South Adrilankha is destroyed, and most of the high-ranking revolutionists are arrested, including Cawti. Vlad suspects that the Jhereg are involved in the arrest. After threatening the Jhereg representative at the Capital, Vlad pursues Boralinoi, the Council member whose territory includes Vlad's and South Adrilankha. Boralinoi confirms that he framed the revolutionists and a fight breaks out in his office. Vlad escapes, but knows that the council will be targeting him for assassination. He is summoned before the Empress and convinces her to have Cawti released. On the palace steps, Vlad and Cawti acknowledge that Cawti has changed and they no longer love each other. Vlad goes to South Adrilankha to visit his grandfather, whom he calls Noish-pa, at his shop. After a heartfelt conversation about Vlad's growing self-doubt, Noish-pa warns Vlad of an assassin waiting outside the shop. Vlad exits the shop and kills the assassin with the help of Loiosh. As he flees the murder scene, Vlad becomes aware of a menacing charge in the South Adrilankha residents. After Vlad stumbles upon a slain Phoenix Guard, a riot breaks out. Vlad remembers only short flashes of the violence, but mostly avoids taking part in it. He makes his way back to Noish-pa, who has killed several Phoenix Guards but allowed a female soldier to escape. Vlad convinces Noish-pa to teleport with him to safety at Castle Black. At Castle Black, Morrolan tells Vlad that the riot turned into a revolt, including a short siege on the Imperial Palace. Cawti has been arrested again, this time for treason. While angered by the Empire's brutal suppression of the revolt, Vlad is agonized by the inevitable execution Cawti faces. He visits the Empress again and strikes a deal: he will testify to Boralinoi's framing of Cawti before the Orb and single-handedly end the war with Greenaere in exchange for the pardon of Cawti and her the revolutionists. By testifying, Vlad commits the ultimate sin in the Organization, ending his career and branding him for death. Testifying in public, ""under the orb,"" (which can detect falsehoods) is what ultimately sets the Jhereg Council against him. His previous acts of threatening the lives of his immediate superior in the Jhereg, Toronnan, and his boss' boss, Lord Boralinoi, as well as the Jhereg representative at court, Count Soffta, got the Jhereg to put out a (non-Morganti) contract on him but, given the nature of the organization, Vlad would have been ""forgiven"" had he ""won"" his war. But nobody gives open evidence about the Jhereg in public, much less in testimony before the Empress, and lives (except, it seems, Vlad). After his testimony, the contract is revised to be executed with a Morganti weapon, which would destroy Vlad's soul forever. Vlad executes his second obligation with the help of his Dragaeran friends. Together they penetrate Greenaere's magic barrier and teleport outside the Greenaere throne room. Vlad negotiates a peace treaty during a tense stand-off, but the new King wants vengeance on the one responsible for ordering his father killed. Vlad knows that this last stipulation is impossible, but sends the treaty to the Empress. Vlad offers himself to the King, but before he can be executed, the Empress has Boralinoi sent back, claiming him to be the mastermind of the assassination. Vlad kills him for the King, satisfying the terms of the peace treaty. The King still orders Vlad to be killed, but he escapes with the help of his friends. Aibynn begins drumming and inadvertently contacts Verra, who rescues the group. The Empress frees all the revolutionists and honors Vlad with the title of Count Szurke. He gives his primary businesses to his loyal lieutenant, Kragar, and all his South Adrilankha interests to Cawti. He convinces Noish-pa to live in his new county. After these arrangements, Vlad flees Adrilankha to avoid Jhereg vengeance. As he sets out, he wonders what his new life will have in store for him."
481,Reincarnation,fantasy," ;Prehistory In the first setting of the story the female character is a Cro-Magnon (more developed caveman), and the male character is a Neanderthal, man a little behind Cro-Magnon in evolution, thus unable to capture the concept of speech. The female, May, is ready to get married soon, and will be linked to Lenar by her deity, the Great Mother. The male, Kye is hunting with his group. They meet each other near the cave that May visits when they spot a green rock. They struggle over the stone. May wanted it so that she could have her own ranking within her tribe, to be able to not marry an insensitive tribesman, Lenar, the first antagonist in the book. Kye wants it so that he may redeem himself within his tribe, for he had run away from a fight. Future incarnations inherit May's singing, struggle with ranking in social groups, and that she is religious, and Kye's incarnations inherit aching head injuries. The incarnations also happen to be different in ethnicity like May and Kye. Egypt, 1280 B.C.E. The second setting is in ancient Egypt, in the setting of a wealthy nobleman. The female's name is Tetisheri, and she is the household singer and dancer, the performer. The male of this setting is Taharaq, a captured Nubian archer, who has been dragged into slavery by Egyptians. Due to an injury during the fight he is mute, unable to speak. He becomes a slave in the same household Tetisheri works and lives in. He was caught and given to the nobleman by Lenar's reincarnation, Ramose. Another antagonist is introduced as Nerfi, a household servant, and the woman who vies for Taharaq's affection, while Ramose vies for Tetisheri's. She is also the reason Tetisheri's incarnations have horrible ankles. The green gem is reincarnated as an Eye of Horus pendant that Ramose gives to Tetisheri, as he wishes to marry her when he returnes from a military voyage. Tetisheri takes the gift from him. While Ramose is away Taharaq and Tetisheri realize their love for each other and Taharaq heals, able to speak again. Seeing them together angered Ramose, so he banished Taharaq. Taharaq visits Tetsheri and Nerfi later on in Nerfi's room and Ramose sees them and kills Taharaq by stabbing him (and causing his reincarnations to have bruises from the stab wound) but it is not clear what happens to Nerfi and Tetisheri. Nerfi could have been reincarnated from Sha, a female briefly mentioned in Prehistory, from Lenar's point of view, as it says Sha has the trademark red curls. Tetisheri inherited her singing from her previous life, while Taharaq inherited his inability to speak, and a birthmark with terrible headaches (from Kye's injury). Further incarnations inherit Tetisheri's bad ankle that was injured when Nerfi dropped a jug of water on her right foot, and a knack for writing and reading and archery from Taharaq. Ramose's incarnations would inherit an aching jaw from when Taharaq punched Ramose. Pakistan, 538 B.C.E. When one of the characters is on the wheel of rebirth, they meet Siddartha, later Buddha. Kye met him, and was the reason for his later interest in Buddhism. He also drinks too much wine and becomes drunk, which is the cause of the drinking problem in later incarnations. ;Athens, Greece, 399 B.C.E. The female is Hyacinth, a nobleman's privileged daughter, and the male is Artem, a ""wild boy"" orphan whose Egyptian mother passed away, a slave woman found him with two emerald teardrop-shaped earrings. Living and wandering alone in the wilderness, he has a drinking problem. Hyacinth meets Artem in the marketplace and cannot forget him. Hyacinth later catches Artem hunting on her father's land. She follows him to his camp and they meet and talk for a while. Artem has inherited his passion for reading and writing from a previous life, and offers to teach Hyacinth to read, as women were thought to be servers for men in that period. The two keep meeting for their ""reading lessons"" but really they're falling in love, Hyacinth more so than Artem, at first. Artem, being a skilled archer, is convinced to compete for Hyacinth's hand in marriage against Macar, Lenar and Ramose's incarnation. But Macar catches the two together, and later attacks Artem, making him unable to go and compete for Hyacinth. Hyacinth is heartbroken, and by the time Artem is healed enough to go to her she has become a priestess at the temple of Athena, and having become a priestess, under oath, she is unable to leave or to marry. A Greek myth, an Oracle of Delphi, who foretells the future in riddles that only the learned could decipher, speaks to Hyacinth, and says, ""You have been in the cave. I spied on you in the kitchen. I will bring you to fiery ruin. The jewel is not what you think. You must seek its meaning. If you seek me I will help you."" Hyacinth tried to understand her words, she had never been in a cave, but she had sometimes been in a kitchen, and when she thought of the jewels, she thought of her earrings. The Oracle continued, ""The one who comes for you with the earrings is your destiny."" Hyacinth thought about Artem. She still did not understand, ""Please, I don't understand."" ""The unraveling is the journey.' the Oracle answered. And she left. The Oracle of Delphi is an incarnation of Blind Seth, from the Egyptian era, and returns in a few more incarnations. Honouring her oath, Hyacinth refuses to run away with Artem, and when he finally comes to her, even though she wants to, she doesn't leave, but keeps the emerald earrings Artem gave her. Nerfi is now Iphigenia, another young priestess and she inherits her trademark red curls. She is insanely jealous of Hyacinth and Artem's love, and thinks negatively of Hyacinth turning him down, thinking she would run away with him in a heartbeat. She steals Hyacinth's earrings, and one night when Artem is serenading Hyacinth with his flute, as always, and she sees that Hyacinth is finally climbing down to join Artem. Iphigenia then throws the earrings out the window. Artem thinks Hyacinth has thrown the earrings, and bumps into Hyacinth as they both go to retrieve them. But that makes Hyacinth tumble down a rocky hill to her death, leaving Artem to be miserable for the rest of his life. ;Canaan, 28 C.E. One of the characters is now in Canaan, who went to the wedding Jesus gave wine to. It is evidenced it is Artem's incarnation, for he complains he drinks in excess. Gwendolyn, who was Hyacinth, becomes part of an abbey and later is Mother Abbess Maria Regina. She dies and the next person who is speaking is Macar's incarnation, a captain who took slaves, a possibly inheriting that of his treatment to Taharaq as an Egyptian. Artem is then his first mate and later on adventure with Pizarro. There he meets Gwendolyn, now Acana, in an Incan tribe and remarks on her knowledge of the arts and in general. It is revealed she died of the pox. Abby, once Iphigenia, is setting sail for America where next story takes place. ;Salem, Massachusetts, 1691 The female is Elizabeth May, the male is Brian, antagonist #1 is Charles, and antagonist #2 is Abigail O'Brian (Abby). But Abby wants to get rid of Elizabeth May so that she can have Charles, Elizabeth's well-to-do husband. Brian is never actually in the story, but rather a fond memory of Elizabeth May's. As it turns out, she knows the incarnation of old Seth, the man in Egypt who knew her and lived in the same house. His incarnation is a Barbados woman who is blind and the incarnation of The Oracle of Delphi, and she tells Elizabeth her future with tarot cards. The cards say she has lost a true love, Brian, but will see him again. Elizabeth May warns the Barbados woman that a few village ladies have accused her of witchery because of her strange, natural medicines. To get Elizabeth May out of the picture, Abby gets Charles thinking that she's having an affair, and shows him peridot earrings from Brian. When he shows Elizabeth May the earrings and refuses to give them back, she attacks him. Abby brings in a lawman and accuses her of being a witch, pointing out Charles's bloodied face, and just then Elizabeth May's black cat jumps into her arms. Due to May's death by burning at the stake, she now has a phobia of fire. In between Abby is now dead (having married Charles), surpassing her husband as 80 years old. It is discovered that Brian had a daughter back home. His wife writes in a journal that their baby girl dies. It was Elizabeth May's incarnation for she hysterically screams at a peat fire. In between Elizabeth May is reincarnated as Marianna Clark, a woman who goes insane due to constantly saying her skin felt like it was on fire and is eventually locked up in a mental asylum, where Gwendolyn's church used to be. The staff give her a drug called laudanum every waking moment to soothe her, which, in a later life causes her to be addicted to the drug. Brian is reincarnated as the man who helped in the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The Battle of Honey Springs, Indian Territory, July 17, 1863 Louisa Jones is a fifteen-year-old African American girl who is disguised as a man during the Civil War, she goes by the name of Lou. She was a slave but ran away and was now in the war fighting against the South. The story is told from the third person view of both characters, but the first part is told from John Mays, the incarnation of Marianna Clark and Elizabeth May, they are now a white man. Louisa and John are fighting against the South. It says that when he is first injured, he sees a boy at the river, taking care of a wound. It says that he can't explain his desire for the boy, but walks over and talks to him. John doesn't know that the boy is really a girl, Louisa, the incarnation of Brian, because he/she had a birthmark looking like a Stab Wound. John is the incarnation of Elizabeth May, because he was addicted to the medicine to numb the pain from his Bad Ankle and fear of fire. They have each switched genders. A strange thing happened to Lou while she was fighting that day, it was the reason she was cleaning up a wound. She was surrounded by smoke from the gun shots, when a Cherokee Indian was shot and flew off of his horse and fell on top of Lou, maing her gun out of reach. The same man who shot the Indian, was about to shoot Lou also, but she got the Indian's They talk, feeling a ""connection"" between each other, but are interrupted when a Native American tries to kill John. Lou then pulls the trigger of her rifle and kills the Native American. Mays then begins to like her/him, but won't say or show anything, thinking that Lou is a guy. Later on, it's told from Lou's third person when she feels the big bruise on the side of her stomach that is actually a birth mark. It's the inheriting of (Taharaq's injury). She ran into John again when she went out for a quick drink and he tries to get her to join the rest of the soldiers by the camp fire, but Lou refuses, saying that her side really hurts. Lou then faints due to the pain of her side and earlier injury to the head and Mays puts her back into the tent she was in. That's when he finds out that she's a girl, but she then dies of her injuries. Paris, France, 1937 The young woman is now Delilah ""Del"" Jones, a performer, performing at ""The Panther Club"". The man is Robert ""Bert"" Brody, a reporter from Princeton. Bert interviews Del after a performance and she begins to flirt with him after a few questions. She admits that she can dance, but most of the time ends up falling due to her bad ankle. Bert then goes out with a dancer at the club, named Yvette, after he interviews Del. After he left the small meeting with Yvette, he's stopped by a cop working for British Intelligence. Back in the dressing room, Lenny Raymond, the club manager, rubs his aching jaw as he thinks about Del and which move he should make on her. He gives up eventually. The next day, Del meets up with Bert again, for the rest of the interview. She'd lied to him about being in the circus, and he, in return, tells her about his great adventures in Greece. There's a candle sitting in the middle of the table and Del asks the waiter to remove it. She then says to Bert that she's skittish about fire. He then asks her if she's interested in Buddhism and she says that it's strange. They then admit that some feeling is so strong between them. The next day, Bert was sure he was in love with Del. For a next performance, Bert went to see it. Del then told Yvette that she wanted to speak to her in private on the roof. Bert followed to find Lenny, Yvette, Del and him all on the roof. Nazis then fired at Del and Bert jumped in front of her, taking the bullets. He fell off the roof and died. In between There is no note of any incarnations of Bert in this chapter. However, the story is then told from the view of the ghost of Bert. He goes a few years forward in time- to the height of World War II- and finds Yvette on a death train bound for a concentration camp. He finds out that Del is still alive, and that she and Yvette were both spies for the French Underground. Yvette was eventually caught. When the train derails, allowing many to escape, Yvette shows her good side and saves a young child- only to be shot by a Gestapo agent who catches her in the act. Yvette, too, becomes a ghost, reunites with Bert, and together, they enter the next stage of reincarnation. Mississippi 1964 The boy is now Mike. He's riding in a car with his friends while his Brother, Ray, rubs his jaw. He went home and noticed an old record player. It reminded him about a collection of albums by some famous singer he'd never heard of; Delilah Jones. He played it and a jazz tune played about a lover who got away. The woman is now an elderly lady named Louisa. It's early in the morning when Mike is going door-to-door asking people if they are registered to vote or not. He then asks her about her rights of an American. He soon admits that it's hot and she invites him inside. She then asks him if she's met him before and says that it's deja vu. She says that she felt it when he admitted that he attended Princeton and that he felt it too. She fainted. As he helped her recover, he noticed books and things on bookshelves. He then saw a book called Their Eyes Were Watching God and it was signed by the author, Zora Neale Hurston. It was to Delilah Jones. He'd heard that name before and asked her who she was. Louisa then admitted that she was Del Jones and that Mike was Bert Brody. He was confused, so she explained to him that she went back to her given name, Louisa, and she said that she married Lenny Raymond. She then explains that Bert Brody was her songwriter and that the songs on her album were written by him. Mike eventually is astonished and quickly leaves. Upon being away he returns that night, bringing her a record of her songs. They spend the next two weeks together. They are unable to show physical affection because of their age difference, but are in love nonetheless. He then ends up in the police station with his friends, upon hearing Ray is in trouble for being with Birdy (An incarnation of Abby). On his way to get help to bail them out of jail he is struck by a speeding car. In between There are no incarnations of Mike in this chapter. New York, present day The female is Samantha Tyler, a typical senior high-schooler. The male is Jake Suarez, the new guy at school, and the guy who just won first place in the archery competition. He also wrote a screenplay that he thinks he made up, but really he's telling the story of him and Samantha in the Salem lifetime. It's very emotional, because even though Samantha doesn't know it she's being told that Brian (Jake) had come looking for Elizabeth May (herself) and was miserable for the rest of his life when he was too late. It's a short one, so all that happens with antagonists #1 and #2, Chris and Zoë, is that Sam breaks up with Chris, and Zoë had a crush on him and fully supported her friend in this decision. The senior class is on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Samantha and Jake just happen to be lost and alone, looking for everyone else, and bump into each other. they decide to walk to the Hall of Emeralds exhibit together. Jake tells about his screenplay got him a scholarship, and Sam tells him about she can't decide between singing or dancing for her college studies, and about how it's lucky she wore corrective shoes as a kid for her bad ankle, otherwise she wouldn't be able to dance. Being in the Hall of Emeralds is also mysterious for them, because there they see all of the Green Gems. Tetisheri's Eye of Horus pendant, Baby's (and Del's) emerald studded collar, one of the teardrop earrings, even though it wasn't real emerald, but peridot, and even the gem that May and Kye fought over, which also wasn't real emerald. They finally admit the strong emotions for each other they are miraculously feeling while in the museum theatre. Nobody dies; they're together at last."
482,Kai Lung's Golden Hours,fantasy," As with other Kai Lung novels, the main plot serves primarily as a vehicle for the presentation of the gem-like, aphorism-laden stories told by the protagonist Kai Lung, an itinerant story-teller of ancient China. In Kai Lung's Golden Hours he is brought before the court of the Mandarin Shan Tien on charges of treason by the Mandarin's confidential agent Ming-shu. In a unique defense, Kai Lung recites his beguiling tales to the Mandarin, successfully postponing his conviction time after time until he is finally set free. In the process he attains the love and hand of the maiden Hwa-Mei."
483,A Clash of Kings,fantasy," A Clash of Kings picks up where A Game of Thrones ended. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are plagued by civil war, while the Night's Watch mounts a reconnaissance force north of the Wall to investigate the mysterious people, known as wildlings, who live there. Meanwhile, in the distant east, Daenerys Targaryen continues her quest to return to and conquer the Seven Kingdoms. All signs are foreshadowing the terrible disaster that is to come. The civil war to claim the Iron Throne becomes more complex. Three kings had declared their claims in A Game of Thrones: Joffrey Baratheon, Renly Baratheon, and Stannis Baratheon. Robb Stark declares himself King in the North while Balon Greyjoy declares himself king of the Iron Islands, launching a massive assault along the west coast of the North, and becoming the fifth of the war's kings. At the Stark stronghold of Winterfell, Robb's younger brother Bran Stark is in command. He finds two new friends when Jojen and Meera Reed arrive from Greywater Watch and take an interest in his strange dreams. Stannis Baratheon declares himself King of Westeros, encouraged by Melisandre of Asshai, a red priestess of R'hllor, a god popular in the East, but relatively unheard of in Westeros, who believes Stannis to be the reincarnation of a messianic figure of her faith. The war is dubbed the War of the Five Kings. Stannis's younger brother, Renly, has also laid claim to the throne. As the elder brother, Stannis has the better claim; but Renly will not back down, since he has the larger army and believes he would make a better king than his brother. Catelyn Stark joins a meeting between Renly and Stannis to discuss a possible Stark-Baratheon alliance against their mutual foe, the Lannisters. The meeting fails, and a mysterious shadow kills Renly in his tent whilst Catelyn and the warrior-maid Brienne of Tarth are present. The two women are implicated in Renly's murder, and they flee. As a result of the murder, most of Renly's supporters shift their loyalty to Stannis, although the Tyrells do not. Renly's stronghold at Storm's End also falls when Melisandre uses her sorcery to give birth to another shadow to kill the castle's defiant castellan. Tyrion Lannister arrives at King's Landing to serve as Hand of the King, the closest adviser to the monarch, his young nephew Joffrey. Whilst intriguing against his sister Cersei, widow of the late King Robert Baratheon and mother of Joffrey, Tyrion works to improve the defenses of the city against possible attack and enters negotiations with the lords of the other noble houses to strengthen his nephew's hold on the throne. He sends the devious Littlefinger to negotiate with the Tyrells, gaining that house's support when Lord Mace Tyrell agrees to wed his daughter Margaery to Joffrey, despite Margaery's earlier unconsummated marriage to the deceased Renly and despite Joffrey's earlier pledge to wed Sansa Stark. Tyrion also forges an alliance with House Martell when he arranges for Joffrey's sister Princess Myrcella to wed Trystane Martell. In an attempt to use Winterfell as a base from which to conquer the North and to impress his father Balon, Theon Greyjoy, a former ward of the Starks and close friend of Robb's, captures Winterfell with just thirty men, taking the young Stark children Bran and Rickon captive. Bran and Rickon disappear in the night and Theon is unable to trace them. Rather than look foolish, Theon murders two anonymous peasant boys and mutilates their faces to pass them off as Bran and Rickon. Believing that their princes have been murdered, Stark supporters besiege the castle joined by a force from House Bolton. Yet Theon had previously conspired with Bolton's bastard, Ramsay Snow, and the Bolton soldiers turn on the besiegers as planned. Theon opens the gates to the victorious Boltons, but they betray him as well and raze Winterfell. Theon's whereabouts are currently unknown. Bran and Rickon emerge from hiding after the sack of the castle. To protect the heirs to Winterfell, a dying Maester Luwin convinces the boys to take separate courses: Osha, a captured wildling turned castle servant, agrees to take Rickon to safety, while Bran, accompanied by Meera, Jojen, and his simple manservant Hodor, travels north to the Wall. Robb Stark leads his army into the Westerlands and wins several victories against the Lannisters in their home territory. Tywin Lannister advances against him, but receiving news that King's Landing is threatened, rapidly withdraws south. Arya Stark, posing as a boy named Arry to protect her identity as a daughter of Eddard Stark who was previously executed on charges of treason, travels north along with new recruits for the Night's Watch. The group is captured and taken to Lannister-held Harrenhal, where Arya poses as a peasant serving girl. A mysterious man, Jaqen H'ghar, offers to repay Arya for saving the lives of him and his two companions by killing three men of her choice. Arya selects two minor, but evil Lannister bannermen as her first two choices before realizing she had wasted her opportunity. Instead of choosing a third man, Arya cunningly enlists Jaqen's help to release a band of Stark supporters who quickly take over Harrenhal. His debt repaid, Jaqen gives Arya a coin and a strange phrase, ""Valar Morghulis"", to be used if she ever encounters a man of Braavos and requires aid. Lord Roose Bolton soon arrives to occupy Harrenhal. Arya becomes his cup bearer, but soon escapes. Stannis Baratheon's army reaches King's Landing and launches assaults by both land and sea. Under Tyrion's command, Joffrey's forces throw back Stannis's forces through cunning use of ""wildfire"" (a Greek Fire-like substance) to set fire to the river while raising a chain across it to prevent Stannis' fleet from retreating, essentially trapping them in the fiery bay. Stannis' attack ultimately fails when Tywin Lannister leads his army and the remaining forces of Highgarden under Loras Tyrell to the aid of King's Landing. Stannis' fate is left uncertain, with some saying he retreated while others claim he was killed. Tyrion is seriously injured during the battle as a result of a treacherous attack by one of Joffrey's guards working as an agent of Cersei; however, he is saved by his squire, Podrick Payne. A scouting party from the Night's Watch advances northwards from the Wall. At Craster's Keep they learn that the normally anarchic wildlings are uniting under a single figure, King-beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder. The Watch continues north to a ruined fortress formerly known as the Fist of the First Men. Lord Commander Jeor Mormont sends Jon Snow and Qhorin Halfhand on an advanced reconnaissance of the Skirling Pass. In the pass, Snow and Halfhand find themselves being hunted by wildling warriors. Facing certain defeat, Halfhand commands Snow to act as an oathbreaker to infiltrate the wildlings and learn their plans. To create proof he has truly turned, Halfhand forces Jon to fight him, and Jon kills him with the aid of his direwolf Ghost. Jon learns that Rayder is already advancing on the Wall with tens of thousands of fighters. Daenerys Targaryen strikes east across the forbidding red waste, accompanied by the knight Jorah Mormont, her remaining few loyal followers, and three newborn dragons. Scouts find a safe route to the great trading city of Qarth. Daenerys is the wonder of the city for her dragons. One merchant in particular seems especially interested in her, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who is the leader of the Thirteen, a prominent group of traders in Qarth. He initially acts as a great host, but ultimately Daenerys cannot secure commitment from the merchants for aid in claiming the throne of Westeros because she refuses to give away one of her dragons. As a last resort, Daenerys seeks council from the warlocks of Qarth, but in the House of the Undying, the warlocks show Daenerys many confusing images and her life is threatened. Daenerys' dragon, Drogon, burns down the House of the Undying, sparking the enmity of the Qartheen. An attempt to assassinate Daenerys at the city's harbor is thwarted by the arrival of two strangers, a fat warrior named Strong Belwas and his squire, an aged warrior named Arstan Whitebeard. They are agents of Daenerys's ally Illyrio Mopatis, come to escort her back to Pentos."
484,City of the Rats,fantasy," Lief, Barda, and Jasmine leave the Lake of Tears, after they have retrieved the Ruby. They are now searching for the opal, which is located in Hira, or the City of the Rats. While travelling, they find signs which all have the word ""Tom"" written on it. They then find themselves in a trap that Thaegan's remaining eleven children had prepared. With the help of Filli, the three managed to kill all the children except for one, Ichabod, and continue on their quest. They find and enter Tom's shop and buy useful provisions such as Fire Beads, Water Eaters, Glowing Bubbles, and Instant Bread. They also bought three animals called Muddlets. Muddlets had three legs and can be ridden much like a horse. Despite Tom's directions, Lief didn't listen to him and went the wrong way. The three lost control of the Muddlets as they ran on their own. Lief, Barda and Jasmine followed the Muddlets home, the city of Noradz and become trapped. Noradz has customs that keeps the city vigorously clean. When Filli comes out of hiding from Jasmine's shirt, a Ra-Kacharz mistakes it for a rat and gives the trio two choices, to live or to die. Lief was commanded to pick a card labeled either Life or Death out of a cup. Realizing that both cards say Death, Lief tricks the Ra-Kacharz and the trio is thrown into prison. A girl named Tira managed to free them and shows them the secret way out, by passing through the kitchen trash tube. They survive the dangers of the tube by wearing the Ra-Kacharz clothes that they stole and finally reached the Broad River. Using the Water Eaters, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine crossed the river, only to find that there were rats waiting for them. They managed to escape the deadly rats using the explosive Fire Beads and enter the city's center. The Glowing Bubbles come into use and lights their way as they move through the dark. There, Lief starts to hear voices, which was revealed to be of Reeah's, a huge snake called the King of Rats. The crown atop of Reeah's head housed the opal. Lief realized that the past inhabitants of the City of the Rats were the people of Noradz. He also realized that ""Noradz"" was a homophone of ""No Rats"" and ""Ra-Kacharz"" was a homophone of ""Rat-Catchers"". The overrun of rats in their city had caused them to move and take up vigorously clean customs. Also, ""Noradzeer"", which is repeated very often by the people of Noradz, appears to be a homophone of ""No Rats Here"". Lief realizes that Reeah had set a trap for them. After a fight, Lief and Jasmine defeats the snake. Lief touches the opal to take it, and gets a vision of him sinking into the Shifting Sands. Lief remembers that the opal's vision of the future is not always true, they continue their quest to seek their fourth gem at the Shifting Sands."
485,Jurassic Park Adventures: Flyers,fantasy," The story is unusual in that it is told partially from the animal's point of view. The Pteranodons that escaped Sorna have been spotted all around the world and now they are in Florida. Coincidentally, Alan Grant and Eric Kirby are invited to go to the Universal Studios in Orlando to talk about their adventures on the islands. Unfortunately, the Pteranodons are attracted by the lakes in the park and decide to stay there, wreaking havoc and injuring people by flying off with them and throwing them to the water. With the help of Amanda Kirby and a reporter named Manly Wilks, Alan and Eric try to capture the Pteranodons to get them back to the island before they are culled by Florida's authorities. The Pteranodons manage to destroy some of the park's attractions and kill two helicopter pilots, before they are finally caught. Manly then tries to get one of them to become famous, but Amanda punches him out cold and all reptiles are returned to the island, by means of tricking them to follow an aircraft disguised as a Pteranodon."
486,The Quest for Saint Camber,fantasy," The plot of The Quest for Saint Camber covers a period of approximately three months, from early March to mid-June 1125. The novel begins as Prince Conall Haldane, cousin of King Kelson Haldane, meets with the Deryni adept Tiercel de Claron, a member of the Camberian Council who has been secretly working with Conall to develop the prince's Haldane potential. Meanwhile, Bishop Duncan McLain faces an ecclesiastical tribunal to confirm the legitimacy of the marriage vows he took years before becoming a priest. With the assistance of both Kelson and Duke Alaric Morgan, Duncan convinces Archbishop Thomas Cardiel that his brief marriage was legal, thus confirming the trueborn status of his son, Earl Dhugal MacArdry. A few days later, Kelson, Conall, and Dhugal are all knighted. During the ceremony, Duncan publicly reveals that he is Deryni, an act which causes a great deal of consternation among his fellow bishops. Afterwards, Kelson confesses his growing affection for Princess Rothana of Nur Hallaj, a Deryni religious novice who admits that her love for the king is causing her to doubt her vocation. Although the two make no binding promises, they agree to pursue a deeper commitment when Kelson returns from his summer quest. Their conversation is observed by Conall, whose own attraction for Rothana further fuels his jealousy toward his royal cousin. Conall meets with Tiercel again, but an argument between teacher and pupil results in tragedy when an angry Conall shoves Tiercel down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. Conall pilfers a satchel of drugs from Tiercel's corpse, probes the dead man's mind for additional arcane knowledge, then leaves the body hidden deep within the walls of Rhemuth castle. Shortly thereafter, Kelson embarks on a quest to discover lost relics of Saint Camber, accompanied by Dhugal, Conall, and a small party of companions. After their departure from Rhemuth, Duncan discovers Tiercel's body. After informing Prince Regent Nigel Haldane, Kelson's uncle and Conall's father, Duncan travels to Valoret, where he informs Bishop Denis Arilan, another member of the Camberian Council, of Tiercel's mysterious death. Meanwhile, Kelson and his party are exploring the ruins of the MacRorie family lands near Culdi. While traveling through the steep hills, a deadly accident occurs when a rain-soaked trail collapses and several members of the group fall into the river below. Kelson and Dhugal disappear into the river and are quickly swept underground by the current. Although the surviving members of the group search desperately for the pair, they eventually conclude that Kelson and Dhugal are dead. The survivors of the king's party return to Rhemuth, where they inform Nigel of his nephew's death. Stricken with grief, the new king refuses to be crowned until Kelson's body is found or a year and a day pass. While the court attempts to proceed in the wake of Kelson's death, Duncan travels to Corwyn to inform Morgan of the accident. However, Kelson and Dhugal have both survived the incident, and have been swept underground by the river's current. Although desperate to find a way out of the subterranean cavern, Dhugal must first struggle to keep Kelson alive while attempting to treat the king's injuries. In Rhemuth, Conall begins adjusting to his new role as heir to the throne. He pressures Rothana to marry him, playing on her grief for Kelson to convince her that he will need a Deryni queen as much as Kelson did. At Arilan's urging, Conall then tries to convince his father to accept his responsibilities as the next king. However, during the conversation, Conall accidentally reveals his own knowledge of Tiercel de Claron. Desperate to keep his part in Tiercel's death a secret, Conall lashes out with his magical powers, but he is unable to completely control the energy he unleashes. Although Nigel survives the attack, he is left in a comatose state from which he cannot awaken. With Kelson presumed dead and Nigel incapacitated, Conall is acknowledged as Prince Regent. While Kelson and Dhugal continue to struggle for survival, Conall moves to secure his new position of authority. He finally convinces Rothana to marry him, then allows Morgan, Duncan, and Arilan to perform a ritual designed to activate his Haldane potential. After the ritual, Morgan and Duncan depart Rhemuth, determined to find the bodies of Kelson and Dhugal. The missing king and earl eventually reach a series of underground tombs and slowly work their way through each one. When they finally escape the tombs, they are immediately captured and imprisoned. Dhugal discovers that he has inherited his father's Healing talent and quickly heals both himself and the king. Their captors identify themselves as the Servants of Saint Camber, a semi-religious group who have remained hidden for two centuries. To earn their freedom, Kelson agrees to undergo a ritual trial to prove their worthiness. On the same night that Conall and Rothana are married, Kelson submits to the trial and receives a vision of Saint Camber. Meanwhile, Morgan and Duncan succeed in contacting Dhugal, who waits anxiously for the king's return. The following morning, Kelson emerges from the trial and tells the Servants of his vision, promising to restore Saint Camber to a place of honor in Gwynedd. He and Dhugal are released, and the two later rendezvous with Morgan and Duncan. As all four discuss the recent events, they begin to suspect Conall's treachery. Kelson returns briefly to Valoret, where the Curia of Bishops restores Duncan's priestly status despite his Deryni heritage. Several days later, the royal party uses a Transfer Portal to return to Rhemuth, where Morgan, Duncan, and Dhugal use their combined powers to heal Nigel. Nigel confirms Conall's treason, and the prince is immediately taken prisoner. Before Conall's trial, Rothana informs Kelson that she is carrying Conall's child. Although Kelson still declares his love for her, Rothana refuses to consider marrying Kelson, believing that she is no longer a worthy bride for the King of Gwynedd. During the trial, Conall defiantly admits to all of his crimes, including Tiercel's death and the attack on Nigel. He challenges Kelson to a Duel Arcane, but the king defeats Conall by conjuring a surprisingly powerful image of Saint Camber. Almost two months later, Kelson and Dhugal travel to Corwyn after the birth of Morgan's son and heir. They discuss Conall's execution and Rothana's continuing refusal to marry Kelson, despite their love for each other. While riding along the beach, they encounter a mysterious man who provides them with both a vision of Saint Camber's tomb and an additional clue to aid their ongoing quest."
487,A Swiftly Tilting Planet,fantasy," The book opens on Thanksgiving evening, about 10 years after the events of A Wind in the Door. Meg is now married to Calvin and is expecting their first child. Calvin has become a scientist and is in Britain at a conference. The Murry family is joined for Thanksgiving dinner by an unusual guest—Meg's very antisocial mother-in-law, Mrs. O'Keefe. When they receive the news of impending nuclear war caused by the dictator ""Mad Dog Branzillo"", Mrs. O'Keefe lays a charge on Charles Wallace &mdash; to prevent the disaster. She teaches him ""Patrick's Rune"", a rhyming prayer of protection that has been passed down to her from her Irish grandmother. Charles Wallace goes for a walk to the star-watching rock, a family haunt, and begins to recite Patrick's Rune. His recitation summons a flying unicorn from the heavens who introduces himself as Gaudior. The winged unicorn explains to Charles Wallace that he must prevent nuclear war by traveling through time and telepathically merging with people who lived in the locale of the star-watching rock at points in the past. By doing so he may change pivotal situations, ""might-have-beens"", in which things might have turned out better than they did. Though unsure how events in the distant past near his home can affect a South American dictator, Charles Wallace agrees. They are threatened along the way by the Echthroi, the antagonists introduced in A Wind in the Door. The Echthroi are evil beings whose goal is the total destruction of the universe. As Charles Wallace tries to make the might-have-beens turn out for good, the Echthroi are fighting to make them turn out for evil. Gaudior and Charles Wallace's travels bring them to: Harcels, a Native American boy at least 1,000 years in the past; Madoc Gywnedd of Wales, a pre-Columbian trans-oceanic traveler; Brandon Llawcae, a Welsh settler in puritan times; Matthew Maddox, a writer during the American Civil War who wrote a novel about the legend of Madoc Gwynedd; and Mrs. O'Keefe's brother Chuck Maddox, during their childhood. Meg connects with Charles Wallace from home through ""kything"", the telepathic communication she learned in A Wind in the Door. Eventually, a connection arises between the star-watching rock and Mad Dog Branzillo. In the 12th century, two Welsh princes named Madoc and Gwydyr travelled to North America to escape the in-fighting for their father's throne. But once there, Gwydyr turned against Madoc and tried to conquer their new home. Madoc defeated Gwydyr in combat, and Gwydyr left to South America. Both men married into the local Native American populations and became part of the local folklore. Many generations later in the 1860s, a descendant of Madoc marries a descendant of Gwydyr, and Mad Dog Branzillo is their descendant. However, thanks to Charles Wallace's changing of ""might-have-beens"" in the history of Branzillo's ancestors, things turn out differently. Distant descendants of Madoc marry, reuniting Madoc's line and resulting in a peaceful man being born instead, and the threat of nuclear war is dissolved."
488,The Stone Giant,fantasy," In a fit of pique Escargot eats a pie that his wife had been withholding to bribe him into attending a revival meeting. Unfortunately Stover, the revivalist, is also the local judge and has designs on Escargot's wealthy wife; Escargot winds up homeless and indigent. He becomes infatuated with Leta, Stover's barmaid, and is introduced to a dwarf he believes to be her uncle. Escargot had purchased a bag of odd marbles from a bunjo man (a kind of gypsy/hobo); the dwarf first swindles them from the hapless divorcé, then humiliates and terrifies him for laughs. After obtaining a settlement from his ex-wife, Escargot leaves for the coastal town of Seaside where he hopes to find Leta at the annual Harvest Festival. A series of misadventures leads him to the submarine of a piratical elf; winding up in sole possession of the vessel Escargot travels through an undersea passage into the land of Balumnia, a sort of siamese-twin world. Escargot's fortunes do not seem to improve as he is rapidly cheated out of money and goods, but he has a surprise encounter with the dwarf and resolves to pursue him. The dwarf attempts to eliminate Escargot but through a combination of persistence and improvisation Escargot survives and learns the dwarf's evil plan: sacrifice Leta and use the marbles to revive the stone giants, ancient enemies of the elves. With the assistance of an eccentric crew of sky-faring elves, Escargot seeks an opportunity to rescue Leta and redeem his many foibles."
489,The Road to Oz,fantasy," Dorothy is near her home in Kansas when the story begins. She and her dog Toto first meet the Shaggy Man, a wandering hobo who carries the Love Magnet with him, en route to avoid the town of Butterfield. Further on, the road splits into seven paths. They take the seventh and soon meet Button Bright, a little boy in a sailor's outfit who is always getting lost. Later, the companions meet Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, a fairy who danced off the edge of the rainbow just as it disappeared. Dorothy, Toto, the Shaggy Man, Button-Bright, and Polychrome soon come to the town of Foxville, where anthropomorphic foxes live. With prompting from King Dox of Foxville, Dorothy deduces that she's on another ""fairy adventure"" that will ultimately lead her to Oz, just in time for Ozma's birthday party, which is now acknowledged as August 21 by Oz fans, even though the book only refers to the 21st of the month, Dorothy having mentioned that the current month is August in another passage. The king takes a particular liking to Button Bright, whom he considers astute and clever due to his tabula rasa-like mind. Believing that the human face does not suit one so clever, Dox gives him a fox's head. A similar event subsequently happens to the Shaggy Man, when King Kik-a-Bray of Dunkiton confers a donkey's head upon him—also in reward for cleverness, even though it's implied that Foxville and Dunkiton exist at odds with one another. After meeting the Musicker, who produces music from his breath, and fighting off the head-throwing Scoodlers, Dorothy and her companions reach the edge of the Deadly Desert surrounding Oz. There, the Shaggy Man's friend Johnny Dooit builds a ""sand-boat"" by which they may cross. This is necessary, because physical contact with the desert's sands, as of this book and Ozma of Oz, will turn the travelers to dust. Upon reaching Oz, Dorothy and her companions are welcomed by Tik-Tok and Billina the Yellow Hen. They proceed in company, to come in their travels to the Truth Pond, where Button Bright and the Shaggy Man regain their true heads by bathing in its waters. They meet the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Jack Pumpkinhead who journey with them to the Emerald City for Ozma's birthday. As preparations are made for arrivals from all over Fairyland (principally characters from Baum's non-Oz books, such as Santa Claus, Queen Zixi of Ix, John Dough – a man made out of gingerbread – and Chick the Cherub), the Shaggy Man receives permission to stay in Oz permanently. He is given, in addition to this, a new suit of clothes having bobtails in place of his former costume's ragged edges, so that he may retain his name and identity. After everyone has presented their gifts and feasted at a banquet in Ozma's honor, the Wizard demonstrates a method of using bubbles as transportation by which to send everyone home. Polychrome goes home upon a rainbow, Button-Bright goes home with Santa Claus on a soap bubble, and Dorothy is wished home by Ozma's use of the Magic Belt."
490,Wizards at War,fantasy," The Lone Power, suspecting that a new threat is rising to its dark abilities, creates a surge of Dark Matter, called ""the Pullulus"", to eclipse the universe. Because of the way that the Pullulus affects the universe's structure, the Senior Wizards lose their wizardry and only wizards before adulthood are still able to fight. Ponch uses his tracking abilities to lead Nita, Kit, Ronan, and the wizardly tourists from Wizard's Holiday Filif and Sker'ret across the galaxy to try to find and activate an instrumentality that they are told is the only way to stop the Lone Power. Dairine and Roshaun take a trip back to the Motherboard from High Wizardry to consult the mobiles before joining the others. They find out that the 'weapon' is actually the a version of the Lone Power who never fell. After a few skirmishes with unfriendly agents of the Lone Power, the group finds the world the Hesper is on. Unfortunately, the world is one that is 'lost', or devoted to everything the Lone Power represents. Despite this, Nita, Kit, and the others go down to the planet and start searching for the Hesper, after adopting disguises to look like the giant bug-like natives. With Ponch's help, they find the Hesper, and Nita starts teaching her concepts about 'self' and 'choice', concepts that she had no previous understanding of. Nita ask the Hesper to make a choice to fight the Lone Power, but before she can choose, they are captured by the Lone Power, who suppresses all wizardry in the area — roughly analogous to cutting a Jedi off from the The Force. Ronan sacrifices himself to free the One's Champion, who resides inside him, to give the Hesper a final chance to make her choice. The Champion holds the Lone Power back and restores wizardry to the area, allowing the Hesper to become embodied. As the Hesper assumes her position, the Lone Power is defeated, and the wizards are free to go — but not unscathed, as Ronan is near death and the Pullulus is advancing towards Earth and Filif's home. The wizards head back to Earth, except for Filif, who returns to his planet to fight the Pullulus there. They arrive on the moon and find a gathering of all Earth's remaining active wizards, working on a spell to stop the Pullulus. The group joins in to gives energy to the spell, which at first seems to work in pushing the Pullulus back, but then fails due to a lack of power. As the Pullulus comes closer, Roshaun uses his ability to work with stars (with Dairine and Spot aiding) to directly channel some of the sun's matter to burn the Pullulus, which works for a period until the power drain becomes too great for a single wizard — and Roshaun disappears. While the remaining wizards prepare to make one last stand to destroy the Pullulus, Kit tells Ponch to take Carmela and Kit and Nita's parents away from Earth. Ponch starts to obey, but is caught between doing what he is told and staying with his master and friend. He decides to do neither — instead of running away or staying there, he completes the canine Choice, which had been held in abeyance because of the long-ago dogs' loyalty to their human partners. The Pullulus takes on a wolf-like shape and Ponch becomes a canine incarnation of the One; the wolf of darkness clashes against the hound of starlight, and it is the wolf that is beaten. Because Ponch has incarnated as a Power, much like the Hesper, he can no longer be with Kit. As he leaves Kit, however, Ponch says that some things will still stay the same. As Nita, Kit, Dairine, and the others pick themselves up, they realize that the Pullulus is gone, and they head home — with Ronan healed and without Roshaun or Ponch. The book ends with school starting again, Dairine resolving to discover what had really happened to Roshaun, and Kit finding Ponch in a ""stray"" sheepdog that had just shown up on his street."
491,The Perilous Gard,fantasy," The Perilous Gard takes place in England during the 1550s. The lead character, Kate Sutton, is a lady-in-waiting for Queen Elizabeth I of England when she is still a princess. Her sister, Alicia, inadvertently gets her exiled to a castle named Elvenwood Hall, also known as The Perilous Gard, where she finds that the daughter of Sir Geoffrey Heron, the master of the hall, vanished under mysterious circumstances that implicate his brother, Christopher Heron. She also finds that the local villagers fear the fairy folk who live under the hill and think they may be kidnapping children. Kate stumbles into the underground fairy world where she faces several challenges, which include saving herself and Christopher, who chose to offer himself as a sacrifice to the leader of the fairy folk, the Lady In Green. Kate detests the Lady In Green at first, but the two of them have much in common. Both are strong-willed, highly independent, and capable of enormous self-discipline. Kate's refusal to be drugged or manipulated in other ways soon gains her a measure of respect among the Fairy Folk. Little by little she gains knowledge of their underground lair, while the Lady In Green gradually changes from a cruel tormentor to a mentor and almost, at times, a friend. At the end Kate saves Christopher, who takes Cecily to London to live with his sister Jenny (Jennifer). When Christopher comes back he proposes to Kate, and she accepts. Kate is granted freedom when Queen Elizabeth I ascends the throne. In this book, faeries, or ""the Old Ones"", are cold, heartless creatures. They serve as a representation of the old pagan religions that were gradually driven out of England by Christianity. They are ruled by the GUARDIAN OF THE WELL and the QUEEN OF THE FAERIE FOLK. The story has references to Tam Lin and weaves in ballads, paganism, and Christianity."
492,Stone of Farewell,fantasy," After the cliffhanger ending of The Dragonbone Chair, we find that Simon, the scullion-turned-warrior, has wrested the legendary sword Thorn from the frozen lair of Igjarjuk, the ice dragon. The dragon's blood, scalding his face and turning some of his hair white, earns him the new name Simon Snowlock, but while his scars may brand him as a dragonslayer, he's much the same young man he was before. As Simon recovers from his wound, Binabik the troll and Sludig the Rimmersman are being tried for crimes against the Qanuc people. Sludig's crime is merely being a Rimmersman, a traditional enemy of the Qanuc, while Binabik is charged with abandoning his fiancée, Sisqi, before marriage. Jiriki, a Sithi prince who owes Simon several favors, isn't inclined to help Simon free his imprisoned friends. Eventually, Simon does manage to free Binabik and Sludig, where the friends head south to deliver Thorn to Prince Josua. Meanwhile, the exiled prince Josua and his ragged band of survivors flee from the ruins of Naglimund. They head for Aldheorte Forest, trying to escape the swords and arrows of their enemies, all the while trying to reach the Stone of Farewell, where the League of the Scroll believes they will be able to regroup and recuperate. Elsewhere, Josua's niece Miriamele is traveling undercover in the dubious company of the monk Cadrach, a drunken sot. Daughter of the evil King Elias, she is at constant risk of being discovered and captured. Duke Isgrimnur, also having gone undercover, hopes to find Miriamele and return her to her uncle Josua before she is harmed or captured, either by her father or by others. At the same time, Maegwin, the Hernystiri princess, teeters between desperation and insanity while searching deep in the earth for some salvation for her refugee people. After surviving many perils, Simon becomes the only mortal to enter Jao e-Tinukai'i, last refuge of the Sithi. The band led by Prince Josua, though betrayed by the chieftain of the nomadic Thrithings-folk, eventually reaches the Stone of Farewell, where they wait for the arrival of Simon and the blade Thorn. As King Elias consolidates his power, the Storm King's blight brings permanent winter to most of Osten Ard, and the remaining defenders ready for a decisive battle at the Stone."
493,Being a Green Mother,fantasy," It is discovered that young Orb, the Aunt of Luna, has the gift of conjuring natural music that emanates from things in nature. She sets off on a quest for a magical song known as the Llano, a song supposed to be the most beautiful imaginable. During the beginning of her search, she meets and helps a young Gypsy girl who was blind, teaching her song and dance as such most men never see. She also joins up with a circus for a short time, meeting there the man that would later become War, and realizing after his unwanted departure that she is pregnant with his child. Upon having his child, she takes the baby, the young Orlene, to her Gypsy friend with the understanding that the woman would find her daughter the best possible home. Later on, she joins up with a rock and roll band. Her magical singing allows them to lose their drug addictions, and they quest together until she is approached by her mother, Niobe (who had left her office to have her with Pacian, thus effectively making Orb the aunt of Luna as well as her cousin through their fathers), in the guise of Fate. She is told that she has been selected to fill the role of Nature (Gaea), but that a prophecy foretells that she may one day marry Satan. Satan, attempting to fulfill the prophecy, kidnaps Orb and attempts to use magic to compel Orb to marry him. She frees herself with the help of Natasha, a man who has also been seeking the Llano and has learned much of it. Natasha continues to teach her the Llano as they defend themselves from Satan's attacks. Orb learns that the Llano has the power to control Nature and that she must learn it in order to assume her position. She also finds herself falling in love with Natasha and decides to marry him. All is not as it seems, however, as Natasha reveals that he is Satan in disguise (""Natasha"" is ""Ah, Satan"" backwards) and has been attempting to court her according to the terms of an agreement he made with Fate: He will be allowed to court Orb without interference from the other Incarnations, but everything he says to Orb must be a lie, or part of a greater construct of lies, until he proposes marriage, when he must reveal the truth. Orb rejects Satan's proposal, and demands that he teach her the final part of the Llano, the Song of Chaos, which she needs to become Gaea. He does so, but warns her that it is a powerful weapon and its effects are unpredictable. She sings the Song of Chaos and it results in devastation on a global scale. The previous Incarnation of Nature then tells her that the only thing that he knows that might reverse its effects is the Song of Chaos itself. She tries singing the song three more times, and each time only results in more destruction. The destruction came in the form of the four elements—Fire, Air, Earth, and Water—so if she sings the song a fifth time, it would appear in the form of the fifth element, Void, and erase the Earth from existence, returning all of existence to primeval Chaos. Thus, the Song of Chaos is Gaea's ultimate weapon; it will unmake all of reality, and Heaven, Hell and the mortal universe will return to the fundamental chaos from which they sprang. Desperate, Orb turns to the other Incarnations for help. Chronos tells her that he can go back in time and stop her from singing the Song of Chaos, but he needs the consent of all the other incarnations in order to do it. The only one who objects is Satan, who says that he will only give his consent if Orb agrees to marry him. Orb, faced with the impossible choice hinted at in the prophecy, declares ""God help me, but I do love Satan"" and agrees to the wedding. Chronos changes the past, and Orb honors her agreement. The wedding takes place in Hell, and Satan puts on a grand ceremony. As their wedding vows, the two each sing a song to the other. Orb sings a section of the Llano (the Song of Evening—also known as the Song of Love) which is meant to evoke romantic love, but Satan, surprising everyone, sings a variation of the hymn Amazing Grace—and vanishes. Singing a song forbidden to him, Satan abdicates as the Incarnation of Evil as a demonstration of his feelings for Orb. Having fallen in love with a good woman, Satan can no longer continue to hold the office of the Incarnation of Evil."
494,Bloodhype,fantasy," The Vom is an intergalactic intelligence described as a large black blob not unlike a gigantic amoeba, impervious to almost all energy and physical attack. Following years of battle with the Tar-Aiym it has sheltered on a planet where it has gone dormant for 500,000 years, waiting for an opportunity to escape the Tar-Aiym Guardian orbiting in space above it. Carmot MMYM a commander in the AAnn Empire discovers the Vom and brings it to the planet Repler for study at a concealed AAnn base. Lieutenants Kitten “Kitty” Kai-sung, a female human, and Porsupah, a male Tolian, of the Intelligence Arm of the United Church have been sent to Repler to investigate the newly re-established trade in the drug bloodhype (aka jaster, silly salt, brain-up, phinto) as the most deadly and addictive drug in and outside the Humanx Commonwealth. Once on Repler they make contact with the drug trader Dominick Rose who are using Captain Malcolm Hammurabi and his ship, the Umbra, as unwitting transporters of bloodhype. This trio tracks Rose to his base where they encounter Flinx, currently in Rose’s employ, who helps them escape when Rose’s men capture the agents. After reporting Rose’s activities to the United Church, Rose escapes to the AAnn base right before the AAnn lose control of the Vom. Meanwhile, the agents have enlisted the help of Rose’s brother who has discovered the Tar-Aiym Guardian and his machine now orbiting above Repler. With the assistance of Flinx’s psychic abilities the Guardian prepares to fight the Vom again, while Kitty, Porsupah, and Mal prepare a raid on the AAnn base to capture Rose. The Vom escapes and the Guardian is forced to fight it in a psychic battle, but is slowly losing until Kitty and Mal manage to recover Rose’s supply of bloodhype and use it to poison the Vom. Now weakened, the Vom succumbs to the Tar-Aiym Guardian. After the battle the Guardian self-destructs, Flinx leaves Repler on his ship Teacher, Porsupah gets drunk, while Mal and Kitty start a romantic relationship."
495,Stone and Sky,fantasy," The book, as well as its sequels, follows the adventures of British historian and naturalist Jonah Lightfoot, who is caught in the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. The blast transports him and American runaway Annie West into a vertical world consisting of a seemingly infinite wall populated by crumbling civilisations, weird creatures, and sentient dragons. No one knows where the wall begins or ends, and no one dares to climb to its top or fall to its base. This world is called Amara, and it is a place deeply entwined with our own world. Throughout the books Jonah and his companions traverse the world and uncover its many mysteries. The true nature of Amara is fully revealed in the second book of the trilogy, Stone and Sea."
496,The Chessmen of Mars,fantasy," Tara meets Prince Gahan of Gathol, and is initially unimpressed, viewing him as something of a popinjay. Later she takes her flier into a storm and loses control of the craft, and the storm carries her to an unfamiliar region of Barsoom. After landing and fleeing from a pack of ferocious Banths (Martian lions), she is captured by the horrific Kaldanes, who resemble large heads with small, crab-like legs. The Kaldanes have bred a symbiotic race of headless human-like creatures called Rykors, which they can attach themselves to and ride like a horse. While imprisoned, Tara manages to win over one of the Kaldanes, Ghek, with her lovely singing voice. Gahan, who has fallen in love with Tara, sets out to find her, only to find himself caught up in the same storm, and he falls overboard while attempting to rescue one of his crew. He stumbles upon Bantoom, realm of the Kaldanes, and manages to rescue Tara, and together with Ghek they flee in Tara's crippled flier. Tara doesn't recognize Gahan as the prince she met earlier, as he is worn from his ordeals and no longer dressed in his fancy clothes. In light of her earlier reaction to him, Gahan decides to keep his identity secret, and identifies himself instead as a Panthan (warrior) called Turan. The three of them manage to reach the isolated city of Manator. Gahan ventures into the city seeking food and water, but is tricked and taken prisoner by the inhabitants. Tara and Ghek are also captured. In Manator, captives are forced to a fight to the death in the arena, in a modified version of Jetan, a popular Barsoomian board game resembling Chess; the living version uses people as the game pieces on a life-sized board, with each taking of a piece being a duel to the death."
497,The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole,fantasy," The novel begins with Roland and his ka-tet arriving at a river on their journey to the Dark Tower. An elderly man who operates a ferry gets them across the river, and warns them that a severe storm (Starkblast) is coming, and that they can find shelter in a building a few miles ahead. They reach the shelter just in time, and while they wait out the storm, Roland spins a story to keep them occupied. The story he tells, called the ""Skin-Man"", depicts Roland as a young gunslinger. His father sends Roland and his ka mate Jamie De Curry west to the town of Debaria on a mission to capture the Skin-Man, an apparent shape shifter who terrorizes the town and surrounding areas by transforming into various animals at night and embarking on murderous rampages. Roland and Jamie take a train to Debaria, but it derails before arriving and they must finish their journey on horse. On their way, they pass through a town known as Serenity, a community of women where Roland's mother lived after suffering a mental breakdown following her affair with Marten. It is here that they learn of a woman attacked by the Skin-Man and hear her tale. Roland and Jamie arrive in Debaria, and with the help of the local Sheriff, Hugh Peavy, they determine that the Skin-Man is most likely a salt miner from a nearby village. The next morning, they discover that another brutal attack has occurred overnight on a local farm. They investigate the scene, and discover a single survivor, a small boy named Bill, who has lost his father in the attack. Roland and Jamie determine that the murderer left the scene on horseback, and Roland sends Jamie to the salt mines to round up every miner who has a horse or is able to ride one. While returning to Debaria with Bill, Roland performs his hypnotism trick (which Roland first used in his chronological life in Wizard and Glass) with one of his shells (a fifty-seven - the caliber of an apprentice's gun). While hypnotized, Bill relates what he saw of the Skin-man; Bill tells Roland that he saw the Skin-Man in his human form after the attack, but only glimpsed his feet. He stated that on one ankle the Skin-Man had a tattoo of a blue ring around his ankle. The tattoo indicates that the man spent time in the prison at a (now abandoned) military barracks further west of Debaria. That area had fallen to the chaos of John Farson, the Good Man, within the last generation. Back in town, Roland brings Bill to a cell in Sheriff's station. He plans to walk each suspect past Bill in the hopes the young boy can identify the Skin-Man, or that the Skin-Man will reveal himself by fleeing due to fear of being identified. While Roland and Bill wait for Jamie to round up the suspects, Roland tells Bill the story of The Wind Through the Keyhole. In this story (within a story), we meet Tim Ross, a young boy who lives in a forgotten village that fears the annual collection of property taxes by a man named The Covenant Man. Tim recently lost his father, who was killed by a dragon while in the woods chopping trees. After the death of his father, Tim's mother, no longer able to pay the taxes to keep their home, marries his fathers best friend and business partner Bern Kells, who moves in with them. Kells is a mean man prone to heavy drinking who does not treat Tim or his mother well. One day The Covenant Man comes to collect the taxes, and he secretly tells Tim to meet him later in the woods. During this meeting, The Covenant Man reveals to Tim that it was actually Bern Kells who killed his father, not a dragon and with help of a scrying bowl shows Tim, Kells beating his mother, causing her to go blind. Later, The Covenant Man sends Tim a vision telling him that if Tim again visits The Covenant Man in the woods, he will give Tim magic that will allow his mother to see again. Tim, armed with a gun given to him by his school teacher, journeys into the dangerous woods, and is led into a swamp by the evil fairy, Armaneeta. Here, Tim almost becomes victim to a dragon and other mysterious swamp creatures, but he is saved by his gun as well as a group of friendly swamp people, who mistake him for a gunslinger. The swamp people guide him to the far side of the swamp, and equip him with a small mechanical talking device from the 'Old People' that helps guide him on his journey. Eventually, Tim arrives at a Dogan where he finds a caged 'tyger', which wears the key to the Dogan around its neck. A Starkblast approaches, and Tim, realizing this is likely a trap set for him by The Covenant Man, befriends the tyger. Tim and the tyger ride out the storm under a magical protective blanket. The next morning, Tim discovers that the tyger is actually Maerlyn, a white magician, who had been trapped in the cage for years due to black magic. Mearlyn gives Tim a potion to cure his mother's blindness and sends him back to his mother on the flying magic blanket. Tim then cures his mother's blindness. Tim's mother then kills Bern Kells with an ax after Kells enters their home with the intention of killing them. This concludes the Wind Through The Keyhole story, and Jamie arrives back in Debaria with the salt mine suspects. Young Bill is able to identify the Skin-Man due to his ankle tattoo and an associated scar, at which time the Skin-Man transforms into a snake, and kills two people. Roland shoots the snake with a specially-crafted silver bullet (which he had made upon their arrival in town), killing it. Roland and Jamie travel back to Serenity, where the women agree to adopt young Bill, who is now an orphan. Roland is also given a note written long ago by his mother. In this note, his mother claims she forgives Roland for his act of accidentally killing her. This concludes the Skin-Man story and an adult Roland and his ka-tet have now successfully ridden out the Starkblast. They pack up, and continue on their journey to the Dark Tower."
498,A Canticle for Leibowitz,fantasy," A Canticle for Leibowitz opens 600 years after 20th&nbsp;century civilization has been destroyed by a global nuclear war, known as the ""Flame Deluge"". The text reveals that as a result of the war there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nuclear weapons. During this backlash, called the ""Simplification,"" anyone of learning, and eventually anyone who could even read, was likely to be killed by rampaging mobs, who proudly took on the name of ""Simpletons"". Illiteracy became almost universal, and books were destroyed en masse. Isaac Edward Leibowitz had been a Jewish electrical engineer working for the United States military. Surviving the war, he converted to Roman Catholicism and founded a monastic order, the ""Albertian Order of Leibowitz"", dedicated to preserving knowledge by hiding books, smuggling them to safety (booklegging), memorizing, and copying them. The Order's abbey is located in the American southwestern desert, near the military base where Leibowitz had worked before the war, on an old road that may have been ""a portion of the shortest route from the Great Salt Lake to Old El Paso."" Leibowitz was eventually betrayed and martyred. Later beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, he became a candidate for sainthood. Centuries after his death, the abbey is still preserving the ""Memorabilia"", the collected writings that have survived the Flame Deluge and the Simplification, in the hope that they will help future generations reclaim forgotten science. The story is structured in three parts titled: ""Fiat Homo"", ""Fiat Lux"", and ""Fiat Voluntas Tua"". The parts are separated by periods of six centuries each. In the 26th&nbsp;century, a 17-year-old novice named Brother Francis Gerard is on a vigil in the desert. While searching for a rock to complete a shelter Brother Francis encounters a Wanderer, apparently looking for the abbey, who inscribes Hebrew on a rock that appears the perfect fit for the shelter. When Brother Francis removes the rock he discovers the entrance to an ancient fallout shelter containing ""relics"", such as handwritten notes on crumbling memo pads bearing cryptic texts resembling a 20th-century shopping list. He soon realizes that these notes appear to have been written by Leibowitz, his order's founder. The discovery of the ancient documents causes an uproar at the monastery, as the other monks speculate that the relics once belonged to Leibowitz. Brother Francis' account of the wanderer, who ultimately never turned up at the abbey, is also greatly embellished by the other monks amid rumours that he was an apparition of Leibowitz himself; Francis strenuously denies the embellishments, but equally persistently refuses to deny that the encounter occurred, despite the lack of other witnesses. Abbot Arkos, the head of the monastery, worries that the discovery of so many potentially holy relics in such a short period may cause delays in Leibowitz's canonization process. Francis is banished back to the desert to complete his vigil and defuse the sensationalism. Many years later the abbey is visited by Monsignors Aguerra (God's Advocate) and Flaught (the Devil's Advocate), the Church's investigators in the case for Leibowitz's sainthood. Leibowitz is eventually canonized as Saint Leibowitz &ndash; based partly on the evidence Francis discovered in the shelter &ndash; and Brother Francis is sent to New Rome to represent the Order at the canonization Mass. He takes the documents found in the shelter and an illumination of one of the documents on which he has spent years working, a gift to the Pope. On route, he is robbed and his illumination taken. Francis completes the journey to New Rome and is granted an audience with the pope. Francis presents the pope with the remaining documents and the pope comforts Francis by giving him gold with which to ransom back the illumination; however, Francis is murdered during his return trip by ""misborn"" people (the ""Pope's children""), receiving an arrow in the face. The Wanderer discovers and buries Francis's body. (The book then focuses on the vultures who were denied their meal; they fly over the Great Plains and find much food near the Red River until a city-state, based in Texarkana, rises). In 3174, the Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz is still preserving the half-understood knowledge from before the Flame Deluge and the subsequent Age of Simplification. The new Dark Age is ending, however, and a new Renaissance is beginning. Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott, a highly regarded secular scholar, is sent by his cousin Hannegan, Mayor of Texarkana, to the abbey. Thon Taddeo, frequently compared to Albert Einstein, is interested in the Order's preserved collection of Memorabilia. At the abbey, Brother Kornhoer, a talented engineer, has just finished work on a ""generator of electrical essences"", a treadmill-powered electrical generator that powers an arc lamp. He gives credit for the generator to work done by Thon Taddeo. After arriving at the monastery, Thon Taddeo, by studying the Memorabilia, makes several major ""discoveries"", and asks the abbot to allow the Memorabilia to be removed to Texarkana. The Abbot Dom Paulo refuses, stating he can continue his research at the abbey. Before departing, the Thon comments that it could take decades to finish analyzing the Memorabilia. Meanwhile, Hannegan makes an alliance with the kingdom of Laredo and the neighboring, relatively civilized city-states against the threat of attack from the nomadic warriors. Hannegan, however, is manipulating the regional politics to effectively neutralize all of his enemies, leaving him in control of the entire region. Monsignor Apollo, the papal nuncio to Hannegan's court, sends word to New Rome that Hannegan intends to attack the empire of Denver next, and that he intends to use the abbey as a base of operations from which to conduct the campaign. For his actions, Apollo is executed, and Hannegan initiates a church schism, declaring loyalty to the Pope to be punishable by death. The Church excommunicates Hannegan. It is the year 3781, and mankind has nuclear energy and weapons again, as well as starships and extra-solar colonies. Two world superpowers, the Asian Coalition and the Atlantic Confederacy, have been embroiled in a cold war for 50 years. The Leibowitzan Order's mission of preserving the Memorabilia has expanded to the preservation of all knowledge. Rumors that both sides are assembling nuclear weapons in space and that a nuclear weapon has been detonated increase public and international tensions. At the abbey, the current abbot, Dom Jethras Zerchi, recommends to New Rome that the Church reactivate the Quo Peregrinatur Grex Pastor Secum (""Whither Wanders the Flock, the Shepherd is with Them"") contingency plans involving ""certain vehicles"" the Church has had since 3756. A ""nuclear incident"" occurs in the Asian Coalition city of Itu Wan: an underground nuclear explosion has destroyed the city, and the Atlantic Confederacy counters by firing a ""warning shot"" over the South Pacific. New Rome tells Zerchi to proceed with Quo Peregrinatur and plan for departure within three days. He appoints Brother Joshua as mission leader, telling him that this is an emergency plan for perpetuating the Church on the colony planets in the event of a nuclear war on Earth. The Order's Memorabilia will also accompany the mission. That night the Atlantic Confederacy launches an assault against Asian Coalition space platforms. The Asian Coalition responds by using a nuclear weapon against the Confederacy capital city of Texarkana. A ten-day cease-fire is issued by the World Court. Brother Joshua and the space-trained monks and priests depart on a secret, chartered flight for New Rome, hoping to leave Earth on the starship before the cease-fire ends. During the cease-fire, the abbey offers shelter to refugees fleeing the regions affected by fallout, which results in a battle of wills over euthanasia between the abbot and a doctor from a government emergency response camp. The war resumes and a nuclear explosion occurs near the abbey. Abbot Zerchi tries to flee to safety, bringing with him the abbey's ciborium containing consecrated hosts, but it is too late. He is trapped by the falling walls of the abbey and finds himself lying under tons of rock and bones as the abbey's ancient crypts disgorge their contents. Among them is a skull with an arrow's shaft protruding from its forehead (presumably that of Brother Francis Gerard from the first section of the book). As he lies dying under the abbey's rubble, Zerchi is startled to encounter Mrs Grales/Rachel, a bicephalous tomato peddler and mutant. However, Mrs. Grales has been rendered unconscious by the explosion, and may be dying herself. As Zerchi tries to conditionally baptize Rachel, she refuses, and instead takes the ciborium and administers the Eucharist to him. It is implied that she is, like the Virgin Mary, exempt from original sin. Zerchi soon dies, having witnessed an apparent miracle. After the Abbot's death, the scene flashes to Joshua and the Quo Peregrinatur crew launching as the nuclear explosions begin. Joshua, the last crew member to board the starship, knocks the dirt from his sandals, murmuring ""Sic transit mundus"" (""Thus passes the world""). As a coda, there is a final vignette depicting the ecological aspects of the war: seabirds and fish succumb to the poisonous fallout, and a shark evades death only through moving to particularly deep water, where, it is noted, the shark was ""very hungry that season."""
499,Troll Fell,fantasy," Troll Fell tells the story of young Peer Ulfsson, whose shipbuilder father has just died, and who is taken to live with his two wicked uncles, Balder and Grim, in a water mill under the shadow of Troll Fell, a mountain inhabited by trolls. Peer’s uncles make him do all the work around the mill, and at first he despairs, especially when he meets Granny Greenteeth, the sinister waterspirit who lives in the millpond. However, he is aided by the Nis (Norwegian Nisse), a mischievous though unpredictable house-spirit or brownie. His other friends are his dog, Loki, and Hilde, the pretty and confident daughter of Ralf Eiriksson, a nearby farmer. Ralf has sailed away on the Viking ship which Peer’s father built. In his absence, Peer and Hilde discover the plot which his two uncles are hatching: to sell children as slaves to the trolls, in exchange for gold. When Hilde’s little brother and sister are stolen away under cover of a blizzard, Peer and Hilde go together into the tunnels under the mountain in an attempt to bring them back. At the climax of the story, at a troll banquet when the troll king raises the top of the mountain on four red pillars, Peer is faced with the decision either to escape alone, or stay forever under the mountain with Hilde. Meanwhile Ralf has returned from his voyage and, along with his crew and many of the neighbours, forces his way into the troll banqueting hall. There is a stand-off with the trolls. Finally Peer discovers a way to trick his uncles into staying under the mountain in his and Hilde’s place, and in gratitude Ralf invites him, with Loki and the Nis, to live with Hilde’s family at the farm. In the last pages, we learn that Ralf’s voyage took him to Vinland in America, in a similar fashion to Leif Eriksson in the Saga of the Greenlanders."
500,Starcross,science," Protagonist Arthur (""Art"") Mumby and his older sister Myrtle are invited to the Starcross hotel on a small and periodically barren asteroid. There, Arthur’s mother Emily suspects that Starcross is built on a piece of Mars which routinely slips through a hole in the fabric of time, and Myrtle then discovers that Sir Richard Burton and his Martian wife Ulla have been changed into trees. Jack Havock, now a British secret agent, appears on the scene disguised as an Indian prince. In the following night they are attacked by the Moobs, a species resembling animated black top hats, which take control of Jack’s crew and other guests, including Emily. Myrtle and Jack escape, but become lost in the deserts of prehistoric Mars. There, they encounter Delphine, one of the guests, a French secret agent determined to find her grandfather’s wrecked ship and create an American-style republic in his name. At the wreck, they discover that Delphine’s grandfather was killed by Moobs, and later learn that the Moobs are native to a time period near the end of the universe, and that they live chiefly by feeding on other species' thoughts. A well-intentioned Moob helps Jack win Delphine’s soldiers to his side, and they return to Starcross. There, the Moobs load Jack's ship with their comrades and plan to take control of the local societies. Art frees Jack’s crew from their influence, and they return to Starcross to discover that Arthur’s mother, having sufficient memory to sate them, has subdued the Moobs. Starcross' owner Sir Launcelot Sprigg and Delphine attempt to overpower the others; but Arthur’s mother changes them into babies. The protagonists enter the future and inspire the Moobs with new thoughts, whereby they are stimulated to greater activity. Thereafter Myrtle, challenged by Jack, determines to study the cold fusion used in space travel; whereas Professor Ferny, a plant-like creature, promises to find a cure for Sir Richard and Ulla's transformation."
501,Glasshouse,science," It is the 27th century. The culture featured in the novel is based on the culture portrayed in the last chapter of Accelerando, ""Survivor"" (full chapter here). Humanity has spread throughout the galaxy using the wormhole technology copied from the alien routers, forming a plethora of societies and 'polities'. Robin, a human male, is recovering from a memory excision process in a rehabilitation centre. Though he remembers nothing of his past life(s), he suspects that he lived through traumatic times as a participant in the series of wars that raged many years before. Suspecting that he has been targeted for assassination by persons unknown, he agrees to sign-up with a radical, isolated social experiment that will attempt to recreate the forgotten ""Dark Ages"", the late 20th and early 21st centuries. On being transferred to the polity in which the program is being held, he discovers that he has been given the body of a woman, Reeve. As the experiment unfolds, she begins to suspect that all is not what it seems, and that the founders of the experiment are engaged in a very sinister conspiracy. Slowly, she realises that her role is not as clear-cut as she originally thought, which leads her to question, and then struggle against the program. In the context of the novel, ""glasshouse"" refers to a military prison. The polity in which the bulk of the story takes place was formerly a high-security facility for war criminals. The term was first used to describe the glass-roofed military detention barracks based in Aldershot, UK, in the mid-19th century. Stross also refers to the Glasshouse as a type of panopticon, a prison constructed in such a way that the guards in the center can see everything the prisoners are doing, but the prisoners can never tell if the guards are watching. Philosopher Michel Foucault used the model to represent the way humans tend to conform to and internalize societal ideals based on this kind of omnipresent gaze, an idea Stross exploits in the novel."
502,Rocheworld,science," In Rocheworld, a small group of civilian and military personnel crew humanity's first manned exploration of another star system. Using a laser-pumped light sail spacecraft, the journey to their destination of Barnard's star lasted 40 years. The crew used a drug called ""No-Die"" which slowed their aging process, whilst proportionately lowering their effective I.Q., and arrived only a decade physically older than when they left. A fraction of the crew visit the double planet Rocheworld, landing on the water-free lobe, dubbed Roche (French for rock as well as the name of the French mathematician who worked on Roche limits). After exploring Roche, they again split up, and one group journeys via the space-plane Dragonfly to the other lobe, Eau (French for water), which is covered almost entirely by ocean. The crew are caught in a violent storm that causes their plane to experience a crash water-landing. The flooded propulsion systems of the space-plane are unable to provide enough thrust to break free and take off from the ocean surface. The crew decide to use the plane's lift fans as propellers to make their way to the inner pole of the double planet, where the gravitation from the other lobe of the double planet should help them to break free and allow rendezvous with the remaining crew in the lander at the zero point between the two lobes. While making this journey, the space-plane attracts the attention of one of the native species of the planet: the very intelligent, but technologically lacking, Flouwen. The Flouwen and the artificial intelligence aboard the space-plane establish communications and the two species begin to exchange cultural and scientific knowledge. The Flouwen realize the humans are travelling to the pole and warn the humans that they are approaching a period where the configuration of the star and planets of the system allow for a phenomenon where the ocean on the water lobe of Rocheworld can partially flow to the rocky lobe, due to the change in the gravitational equipotential. They try to stop the humans from continuing into this violent event by pinning the spacecraft to the ammonia-water ocean floor with ice as ballast (water ice sinks in the less dense ammonia-water solution of the ocean). However, the humans realize that the interplanetary waterfall poses a threat to the crew remaining on Roche. Fortunately, the tidal stresses cause nearby dormant volcanoes to become active again. This melts an underwater glacier and floods the area with warm water, upon which the ice floats off the plane. The crew manages to get airborne and takes advantage of the changing equipotential to return to Roche. They rendezvous with the lander just as water is reaching it."
503,Master of the Void,science," In the post-war galaxy, ruined civilizations regain bygone greatness. Earth's cleaning ship reaches the planet, whose inhabitants rejected technology long ago, living in small forest settlements and practicing handicrafts and hunting. Not noticing them, the crew drops 50 autom-cleaners, self-conscious mechanisms consisting of active mass, which are supposed to carry out cleaning on their own or by emerging simpler mechanisms — plain cleaners. But this cleaning, being a full destruction of the biosphere and covering the continent with an envelope of active mass,means death for all residents. However, only one of them, called the Smartest, understands this. The main character, also known as Zach Denton, is said to be a renowned scholar. Based on analysis of his dialogue in the novel, it is estimated that his IQ is 154, which places him among the most intelligent people in the world, hence the name Smartest. The post-war setting complements the protagonist's presence in the novel, and increases the intensity as he masters the void and all dark matter. Actually, he is a former commando who dramatically arrived on this planet fifty years ago. In this critical situation he sees the only way out in rapid technological progress, but local authorities, female Keepers of knowledge, disagree with him. ""You want to save people. To do it you'll have to change them. Answer me, what are people without customs worth? They are worse than savages, worse than you..."" To get the attention of Earth's ship crew, one of the autonom-cleaners has to be destroyed... Smartest understands this as well as he knows it would require a strong leader, whom people will follow. He chooses a shooter, Leon, who has managed to bring down a plain cleaner which fired his village. Drunkard and poet Kirreyn begins to propagandize Leon as the Hero and the Great Shooter. Soon several boys become Leon's ""personal guards"". Using violence, a group headed by Smartest captures technology data sheets and Leon calls all people to join him to manufacture weapons. At first, they don't believe in technology, but the first tank convinces all to the contrary, after its crew, headed by Leon, shoots down two plain cleaners... All adore Leon; he overworks and goes to battle first... A lot of ""plants"" are built; and people who joined Leon defend only some necessary area where they live and work... Food becomes scarce and it's the reason to establish war police... Now it exhibits many features of a state. But Leon's plane is shot down beyond the border, where the former rule of the Keepers still holds and he is captured by them. Keepers have deified the autonom-cleaners (Iron Beasts) and try to counteract Leon's ""state"". He meets J-Fron, the lest valuable member of crew of Earth ship, who has deserted. When he luckily returns home with J-Fron's aid (plain cleaners fired the prison, but left J-Fron alive due to a telepathic password implanted in his brain), he finds that his former position is hold by another man. Leon can't find an occupation that would suit him; he remembers too well all the shouting crowds... And he doesn't want to be Lord of the void, an alive memorial of himself. Leon sends his ""guards"" to kill the new Leader, after he conducted the operation of destroying one autonom-cleaner (with the aid of J-Fron's password; however this operation involved more than a thousand people killed). This becomes a sort of point of no return for Leon, both his failure to be a normal person and his affirmation as the great Leader. He doesn't realize this; The Smartest does, ""Please, don't call me a Teacher any longer; now you can teach by yourself."" But as the autonom-cleaner is destroyed, the crew of the Earth ship realizes the situation and leaves the planet alone... with 49 working autonom-cleaners. According to their notion of fairness, the society must have a chance to survive... but it is worth nothing if it doesn't manage to do so. Leon moves his nation (now less than one tenth of the original population) under the shelter of mountains, into the ancient Capital, a system of caves... The Smartest and J-Fron decided to cover the retreat... In their last talk before probable death, Smartest tells J-Fron, that when he got to this planet 50 years ago, he met a ""happy and somewhat sleepy society. Such it was, you were too late to see it. Society not changing for a thousand years, fine people who I, a cretin, couldn't stand... By the way, the best society, without experiencing shocks now and then is threatened with banal degeneration. It was my point, and it holds. It's fun — I wanted one time to be that man, who would wake this world up..."" ""I have never thought that in the end I will become an adversary of progress."" The old man struck the crag with his yellow venous fist, struck once more and more. ""But why?!"" shouted he, ""Why are people constructed in a so way, that for them the only way to survive in a critical situation is THIS? Why?!"""
504,Vulcan's Hammer,science," In 2029 CE, the Earth is run by the Unity organisation after a devastating world war. Unity runs the planet, controlling humans from childhood education onwards through the Vulcan series of artificial intelligences, but is fought by the Healer movement. Unity Director William Barris discovers that the Vulcan 3 computer has become sentient and is considering drastic action to combat what it sees as a threat to itself. Vulcan 3 has been kept ignorant about information related to the Healer revolutionary movement by Managing Director Jason Dills, who is still loyal to its (also sentient) predecessor, Vulcan 2. Vulcan 2 fears that it will soon be superseded by Vulcan 3, and previously established the Healers as a movement to overthrow its successor. Dill and Barris begin to suspect one another, as Dill has received a letter that refers to Barris' previous contact with the Healers, but Vulcan 2 suffers partial damage in a terrorist attack. It advises Dill not to inform Vulcan 3 about the existence of the Healers, for fear that Vulcan 3 will order their mass execution. However, Vulcan 3 has already noticed the gap in available data about the rebels, and manufactured killer androids of its own. Barris and Dill resolve their differences and attack Vulcan 3, resulting in the destruction of the artificial intelligence, but Dill dies in the attempt. Finally, however, humanity is free from Unity and its technocratic dictatorship."
505,"David Starr, Space Ranger",science," David Starr, Space Ranger introduces the series' setting and the main characters. The novel is set around A.D. 7,000 (five thousand years after the first nuclear bomb, as stated at the beginning), when humanity has spread among the worlds of the Solar System as well as planets orbiting other stars. The most powerful organization in the Solar System is the Council of Science, which suppresses threats to the System's people. Protagonist David Starr is an orphaned biophysicist qualified for membership in the Council of Science, who learns from his guardians Augustus Henree and Hector Conway of some 200 deaths in the last four months, whose victims died while eating produce raised on Mars. Conway and Henree fear that the deaths are part of a conspiracy to frighten the people of Earth; wherefore Starr travels undercover to Mars to discover the deaths' connection to the Martian Farming Syndicates. On Mars, Starr meets John ""Bigman"" Jones, a bellicose 5'2"" Martian farmboy blacklisted at the Farming Syndicates for seeing something forbidden him. When his former boss Hennes orders Jones out of the Farm Employment Building, Starr intervenes, and gains positions for both himself and Bigman. Later, Hennes has Starr and Bigman stunned. Starr wakes in the farm owned by Hennes' boss, Mr. Makian, to whom he gives the alias Williams, and states that he came to Mars explain a younger sister's death of food poisoning; wherefore Makian sends the farm's agronomist Benson to speak with him. According to Benson, the poisoned food came from several Martian farms, but was exported through Wingrad City, one of three domed human settlements on Mars; whereas Makian and several other farm owners have been offered ridiculously small sums of money for their farms, apparently without connection to the poisonings. Benson suggests also that intelligent native Martians living below the planet's surface are poisoning the food in order to drive humanity from Mars. Makian offers to let Starr join a survey of the farmlands. Bigman warns him that Hennes will attack him during the survey; but when Starr decides to take part anyway, Bigman joins him. As he enters Martian gravity, Starr loses control of his sand-car, nearly sending it over a crevasse; whereupon Bigman discovers that Starr's sand-car is missing its weights, and Starr realizes that Griswold deliberately failed to warn him. He then confronts Griswold, who in the struggle falls into the crevasse and dies. The next day, Benson makes Starr his assistant, to keep him from Hennes. When Bigman receives his references from Hennes and takes his leave, Starr asks him to obtain some book-tapes from the library at Wingrad City. Bigman agrees, then admits that he has recognized the pretended 'Williams' as David Starr of the Council of Science. When Starr meets Bigman that night outside the dome, he reveals that he believes in Benson's Martians, and that the crevasse into which Griswold fell is an entrance to their caverns. Starr descends into the crevasse and is captured by the Martians;–––disembodied intelligences curious about the Earthmen on the surface, and who know nothing of the poisoned food. They give Starr the name 'Space Ranger' because he travels through space, and give him an immaterial mask that will act as a personal force field and disguise him from other humans. Starr uses the mask to shield himself from a Martian dust storm as he returns to Makian's farm, where he is questioned how he survived the storm and answers (truthfully) that he was returned by a masked man called the Space Ranger. Benson tells him that while he was gone, all the farm owners received a letter from the poisoner, who claims that unless the farm owners surrender control to him within thirty-six hours, the poisoner will increase the amount of poisoned food a thousandfold. After Benson leaves, another of Hennes' minions tries to shoot Starr. Later, Hennes accuses Starr of poisoning the food; whereupon Bigman enters with Dr. Silvers of the Council of Science, who announces that the government has declared a System Emergency and that the Council will take control of all the farms on Mars. If the mystery is not solved by the time the deadline expires, all Martian food exports to Earth will stop, and food rationing will be instituted. Starr arranges with Silvers to be publicly removed from the Makian farm, then allowed to secretly return. Disguised by his mask, he confronts Hennes, who blinds himself firing a blaster at him; searches Hennes; and, once undisguised, persuades Silvers to meet with Makian, Hennes, and Benson the next day. At the meeting, Starr appears in disguise and reveals that Benson poisoned the food while pretending to take samples of it, while Hennes kept in contact with Benson's henchmen in the Asteroid Belt. Following Benson's confession, Bigman reveals that despite the disguise of the Martian mask, he recognized Starr by his uniquely colorless black-and-white boots."
506,The Hunger Games,science," The Hunger Games takes place in a nation known as Panem, established in North America after the destruction of the continent's civilization by an unknown apocalyptic event. The nation consists of the wealthy Capitol and twelve surrounding, poorer districts united under the Capitol's control. District&nbsp;12, where the book begins, is located in the coal-rich region that was formerly known as Appalachia. As punishment for a past rebellion against the Capitol, in which a 13th district was destroyed, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12&nbsp;and 18&nbsp;from each district are selected by an annual lottery to participate in the Hunger Games, an event in which the participants (or ""tributes"") must fight to the death in an outdoor arena controlled by the Capitol, until only one individual remains. The story is narrated by 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District&nbsp;12 who volunteers for the 74th annual Hunger Games in place of her younger sister, Primrose. The male tribute chosen from District&nbsp;12 is Peeta Mellark, a former schoolmate of Katniss who once gave her bread from his family's bakery when her family was starving. Katniss and Peeta are taken to the Capitol, where their drunken mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, victor of the 50th Hunger Games, instructs them to watch and determine the strengths and weaknesses of the other tributes. ""Stylists"" are employed to make each tribute look his or her best; Katniss's stylist, Cinna, is the only person at the Capitol with whom she feels a degree of understanding. The tributes are publicly displayed to the Capitol audience in an interview with television host Caesar Flickerman, and have to attempt to appeal to the television audience in order to obtain ""sponsors"". During this time, Peeta reveals on-air his longtime unrequited love for Katniss. Katniss believes this to be a ploy to gain sponsors, who can be critical to survival because of their ability to send gifts such as food, medicine, and tools to favored tributes during the Games. While nearly half the tributes are killed in the first day of the Games, Katniss relies on her well-practiced hunting and survival skills to remain unharmed and concealed from the other tributes. A few days into the games, Katniss develops an alliance with Rue, a 12-year-old girl from the agricultural District&nbsp;11 who reminds Katniss of her own sister. In the meantime, Peeta appears to have joined forces with the tributes from the richer districts. However, when he has the opportunity to kill Katniss, he instead saves her from the others. Katniss's alliance with Rue is brought to an abrupt end when Rue is killed by another tribute, whom Katniss then kills with an arrow. Katniss sings to Rue until she dies, and spreads flowers over her body as a sign of respect for Rue and disgust towards the Capitol. Apparently because of Katniss and Peeta's image in the minds of the audience as ""star-crossed lovers"", a rule change is announced midway through the Games, allowing two tributes from the same district to win the Hunger Games as a couple. Upon hearing this, Katniss begins searching for Peeta. She eventually finds him, wounded and in hiding. As she nurses him back to health, she acts the part of a young girl falling in love to gain more favor with the audience and, consequently, gifts from her sponsors. When the couple remain as the last two surviving tributes, the Gamemakers reverse the rule change in an attempt to force them into a dramatic finale, where one must kill the other to win. Katniss, knowing that the Gamemakers would rather have two victors than none, retrieves highly poisonous berries known as ""nightlock"" from her pouch and offers some to Peeta. Realizing that Katniss and Peeta intend to commit suicide, the Gamemakers announce that both will be the victors of the 74th Hunger Games. Although she survives the ordeal in the arena and is treated to a hero's welcome in the Capitol, Katniss is warned by Haymitch that she has now become a political target after defying her society's authoritarian leaders so publicly. Afterwards, Peeta is heartbroken when he learns that Katniss's actions in the arena were part of a calculated ploy to earn sympathy from the audience. However, Katniss is unsure of her own feelings and realizes that she is dreading the moment when she and Peeta will go their separate ways."
507,Stations of the Tide,science," Stations of the Tide is the story of a bureaucrat with the Department of Technology Transfer who must descend to the surface of Miranda to hunt a magician who has smuggled proscribed technology past the orbital embargo, and bring him to justice before the world is transformed by the flood of the Jubilee Tides."
508,Dune: The Battle of Corrin,science," The machine evermind Omnius is continuing with his plans to eradicate all humans in the universe. After first being suggested by the traitor Yorek Thurr, an RNA retrovirus is designed by the captured Tlulaxa Rekur Van and the independent robot Erasmus. Omnius then launches capsules containing the retrovirus to infect the planets inhabited by the hapless humans. With a 43% direct-mortality rate, the virus succeeds in effectively crippling the League of Nobles, leaving them vulnerable to attack. It is discovered that consumption of the spice melange has the effect of both bolstering immunity to the retrovirus and stopping its progression in some of those already infected. Omnius, unaware that the virus has been effectively stopped, prepares for the second phase of its attack. Gathering the bulk of the machine armies stationed at the different synchronized planets, the evermind launches the massive fleet towards the League capital Salusa Secundus. After learning of the imminent destruction headed their way in the form of the machine fleet, Vorian Atreides formulates a plan whereby the humans can launch pulse-atomic attacks on all of the undefended Synchronized Worlds, ridding the universe of Omnius altogether. However, this plan called for the use of the still unreliable space-folding technology in order to carry out the attacks before the machines have a chance to recall the fleet en route to Salusa. The Great Purge is successful in destroying Omnius on all but one planet, albeit with an appalling cost in human lives because each planet was turned into slag, and while all the machines were obliterated, all the captured humans and slaves on these planets were also killed. Each time the human armies fold space to a new location there is a 10% attrition rate due to the undependable space-folders because of the uncertainty principle. In all, it amounted to billions of lives lost. The humans are also unable to destroy Omnius on the primary synchronized world, Corrin. While the other Evermind incarnations are being attacked, the cogitor Vidad travels to Corrin and warns Corrin-Omnius of the human counter-offensive. The machine fleet is recalled to defend their last remaining stronghold. Despite this, Serena Butler’s Jihad is declared over. The Great Purge ended with an impasse between humans and thinking machines on the planet Corrin. While unable to destroy the machines, the human army is able to trap them on Corrin by surrounding the planet with a net of scrambler satellites, so that any thinking machine attempting to leave would have its gelcircuitry mind destroyed. This situation continues for almost 20 years with the machines unable to escape, and most humans unwilling to enter another battle. Omnius, again at the suggestion of Thurr, sends machines with primitive minds that can evade the scrambler network to attack Salusa Secundus and Rossak. These attacks have a limited effect, but are enough to remind the humans that the machines are still a threat. Touting his victory over the Titans (see below), Vorian Atreides convinces the League to attack Corrin. Facing robots using human shields and unable to use their main tactical weapons due to treachery by Abulurd Harkkonen, the Army of Humanity is bogged down around Corrin. They are forced to use most of their atomics to destroy the robot defenders. There is a ground offensive by Ginaz mercenaries that finally destroys Omnius, but not before he sends out an unknown radio message into space. Following the Battle of Corrin, Viceroy Faykan Butler renames himself Faykan Corrino in commemoration. Having seen her parents succumb to the Machine (“demon”) Scourge, and barely surviving herself, Rayna Butler begins her personal crusade against the thinking machines. Claiming to have had a vision of Serena Butler herself (possibly a hallucination caused by her illness), Rayna begins smashing anything resembling thinking machines, including even innocuous devices, and desperately needed medical equipment. A new group known as the Martyrists who worship The Three Martyrs: Serena Butler, Manion the Innocent, and Iblis Ginjo, are instantly taken up by Rayna’s mission. Led by Rayna, the Cult of Serena causes more mayhem for humans than the thinking machines. Despite inherent hypocrisy (such as the destruction of some technology, but the continuous use of spaceships) within the group, the cult’s legacy endures. The primary commandment in the Orange Catholic Bible, “thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” is attributed directly to Rayna Butler. Furthermore, the group is responsible for the strict laws banning all thinking machines under pain of death (and sometimes torture) thus making them anathema. During the 20-year impasse the three remaining Titans, Agamemnon, Juno and Dante, are struggling to rebuild their cymek empire. While surveying Wallach IX, which has been devastated during the Great Purge for possible survivors in need of aid, Primero Quentin Butler (Faykan and Abulurd Harkonnen’s father) is captured by cymeks, and taken to the Titan stronghold on Hessra. There he is tortured and converted into a cymek himself. After learning about this, Vorian Atreides feigns retirement and travels to Hessra. Once there he regains his father Agamemnon’s trust. In a final coup, Vorian and Quentin successfully kill the Titans and their cymek underlings, but at the cost of Quentin’s life."
509,The Crystal Star,science," On Munto Codro, Jacen, Jaina & Anakin are kidnapped by a man named Hethrir. Their mother, Leia Organa Solo, immediately dispatches a rescue operation. Meanwhile, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker go to Crseih Station on a supposed ""vacation"", and learn of a secret cult that influences the Crystal Star, which could possibly destroy the very existence of the universe. Hethrir continues to manipulate the children for several days, as he leads the Empire Reborn, an organization looking to resurrect the Galactic Empire. Eventually, Leia and Chewbacca manage to rescue the children, but Hethrir is still connected to the events that transpire around the Crystal Star. After an intense series of events, Hethrir is killed, the Crystal Star explodes, Crseih station moves out of the area beforehand, and Luke, Leia, Han, and the children are safe."
510,Hello America,science," Ballard's 9th novel is set in the year 2114 AD, several generations after an ecological collapse has rendered North America virtually unlivable. Most of the population was evacuated to Europe and Asia. The bulk of the novel takes place when a European steamship, the SS Apollo, sails to America to try to discover the cause of increased radioactive fallout in England. In typical Ballardian fashion, each of the crew members has a secret agenda, and is basically a pawn of their own psychological yearnings, whether for destruction or glory. Most of the Apollo's crew are descended from expatriate Americans - the protagonist is a young man who grew up in the American Ghetto in Dublin, for instance - and have become mostly assimilated into European society, but still feel some vague draw to the abandoned continent to the west. In the novel, the Soviet Union dammed the Bering Strait in the 1990s, thus changing global weather patterns by reversing the normally clockwise currents in the Pacific Ocean. Although the Russians were able to grow grain as far north as the Arctic Circle, a massive drought began east of the Rocky Mountains. West of the Rockies, the opposite problem was true. Further, much of coastal Asia freezes over. Though the plot is a straightforward adventure yarn - quite unusual for Ballard - the book is actually a subtle parody of American culture. For instance, the final President of the United States is the former governor Jerry Brown of California, who was a promising face in American politics at the time of the novel. His small, ironic role in the novel represents both the triumph and ultimate failure of west coast liberalism of the late Cold War era: when faced with a massive ecological crisis that threatens (and indeed ultimately destroys) the nation, Brown's solution is to build a large youth center, a twice-life-size fiberglass replica of the Taj Mahal, and then abandons the country so he can devote himself to self-improvement. The novel states that Brown dies at age 114 in a Buddhist Monastery in a glaciated Japan. Eventually the Apollo Expedition comes across survivors from the previous expedition thirty years earlier. One of these survivors - clearly insane - has taken to calling himself ""President Charles Manson,"" but none of the Apollo's crew get the reference because the Manson killings occurred 120 years earlier in a completely different world. In the end, it is implied that Europe needs America, if only as a place where the darker elements of the Western mindset can be allowed to play themselves out without inconveniencing decent people. There is a kind of rebirth that re-establishes something akin to the old order, allowing insanity to be sublimated out in small doses to everyone, rather than bottled up in one person where it proves to be really really dangerous. Possibly for the first time ever, nuclear weapons are used for a constructive purpose, and the 'New World Order' that arises from the events of the book contains both the promise of a better future, and the understated vague promise/threat of phantasmagoric horrors to come, though presumably in smaller doses."
511,"I, Q",science," The novel opens with a mysterious Lady, who, having grown bored with contemplating the Universe, has decided to bring it to an end. She walks to the beach of the island where she lives alone, and summons a storm. As the storm builds up, a bottle washes up to the shore. The Lady picks up the bottle, takes out a manuscript it contains, and begins to read as the storm stands by and waits for her. Q is deep-sea fishing (literally standing at the bottom of an ocean) with his wife Q and son q, when the ocean begins draining into a giant whirlpool. Q powerlessly watches as his wife and son are taken in, and is only barely able to escape. He arrives in the Holodeck of the Enterprise, where Picard and Data's fishing simulation had been disturbed by the same disaster. In order to investigate what happened, Q takes Picard and Data to the Q Continuum, which they perceive as the fictional world of Dixon Hill. There, they learn that the Universe is ending, and that not only is the Q Continuum powerless to stop it, the Continuum actually welcomes the opportunity. Having explored all there is to explore and experienced all there is to experience, the Continuum is old and bored, and the end of the Universe is seen as a welcomed liberation. Q is unwilling to accept this decision, so the Continuum freeze him as a statue. But with the help of Q2, Q escapes this punishment and the Continuum. Q, Data and Picard return to the site of the whirlpool, to find it has calmed down and turned into a long shaft leading underground, which they proceed to explore. The world down the shaft is actually five superposed worlds, each of which is a level of the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief, populated by members of the multiverse with the appropriate reaction to the end of the universe. Q, Picard and Data go through each level, trying to reach the bottom. While exploring, Q contemplates his existence and that of the Q Continuum, the most powerful beings in existence, since he is convinced God does not exist. He reminisces on a young girl (Melony) he met in Times Square during the 2000 New Year party, in a parallel universe where he was posing as a human. She was insightful and intelligent, and when they kissed, Q thought she could almost feel his true power. In that universe, the celebration in Times Square was the target of a terrorist attack. Q, enraged by this senseless act, immediately puts out the fires and explosions, but not before Melony is killed. He later finds her body amongst the dead. The first level is Denial. This level is populated with beings who try to ignore the fact the universe is ending, focusing instead on their more normal daily problems. Everyone is herded onto a train headed for oblivion, but no one believes it. Q, Picard, and Data battle Locutus in a race to uncouple the train before it incinerates every non-believing being on it. The second level is Anger. Here, Q briefly encounters a parallel-universe version of Jadzia Dax who, following the events of Blood Oath, chose not to return to Deep Space Nine but instead to continue fighting with Kang, Kor and Koloth. Together, the four of them are hunting the Romulans also present on this level, believing the whole thing to be some kind of Romulan ploy. However, Q realizes that the real culprit is his rival from the enemy M Continuum, who tries to blame him for the end of the universe. M stages a trial against Q in front of an infuriated jury, but Data wins the case by acting more angered than M and turning the jury against her. The third level is Bargaining. This level is dominated, appropriately enough, by Grand Nagus Zek, who offers to trade whatever the other residents of the level own for empty promises of an afterlife. Q is finally reunited with his son q. However, q is now an adult, who has lived a long and depressed life believing his father had abandoned him to the whirlpool. After much trouble, Q manages to convince q that he never stopped trying to find him. Relieved, q reverts back to his normal age. The fourth level is Despair. On this level, Q finds his wife; however, she is so depressed that even seeing him is not enough for her to find something to live for, and she like the others on the level sinks into the mire. After she dies, engulfed in despair, Q and the rest of the party enter a small house, which is the fifth and final level, Acceptance. The house consists of a large room with an unopenable door at the far end. When all the members of the party sit down and give up on trying to save the universe, the back wall of the room begins to close in on them. They struggle to push it back, but finally as Q accepts his fate the door flies open and he and q tumble through; Picard and Data are crushed. Q finds himself and his son back in the Q Continuum, which is now seen as a New Year's Eve party, complete with a countdown to the end of the universe. It is the same as it was when he and Picard first arrived at the beginning of the quest. Q supposes that the whole quest was created to make him accept the inevitable. Q2 neither denies nor confirms this, instead offering that the Q Continuum is very much in the dark about all this and that, possibly, they had nothing to do with his adventure. When the countdown reaches zero, the whirlpool starts anew, and the Q Continuum is pulled into it without a fight. q tries to hold on to his dad, but he's pulled in too. Q however resists the pull, refusing to accept that it is the end. He creates a written record of his journey and puts it in a bottle, which he throws into the whirlpool. The story cuts back to the beach, where the Lady finishes reading Q's manuscript. She laughs out loud, and decides to call off the storm. She then finds q, wakes him, and gives him a mud boat to return home. But before he leaves, she writes something on a piece of paper, puts it in Q's bottle and hands it to q, to give to his father. Back in the holodeck, Picard, Data, Q and his wife awaken in the simulated fishing boat. They spot q's mud boat, and Picard orders the computer to ""end program"". Everything disappears, except for the five individuals and q's boat. q tells his father of the island and the Lady, whom Q recognizes as the girl he met in Times Square. q then gives Q the bottle containing the Lady's message, but Q is too scared to open it. He hands it to Picard, who opens it and reads the message: ""Let there be light""."
512,Prisoner of the Daleks,science," The TARDIS arrives on the planet Hurala. Whilst investigating the deserted site the Doctor makes his way to the base's computer data core room, where he is locked inside by the computer along with the corpse of another person previously trapped inside. Five days later, the bounty hunter ship Wayfarer lands on the planet, its crew of five hoping to use the fuel stores to refuel their ship. They soon come across the TARDIS, and then hear a repeating tapping noise. One of them, called Scrum, realises that its a Morse code SOS message. They quickly trace it to the computer data core room where they find and free the Doctor, who has been sending it out with a spoon. On the insistence of the Doctor and another of the bounty hunters, Stella, the group investigate the computer's systems. They discover an override which, when activated, took control of the base and trapped the Doctor. Someone had used the computer to set a trap. Who did is soon answered when the group are attacked by a Dalek patrol. The Doctor and the bounty hunters, who now reveal that they kill Daleks for a living, race back to the Wayfarer, escape to the TARDIS being blocked by Daleks. They manage to take off but the Daleks blow up a refueling pump, sending debris flying into the ship through the open landing ramp, badly wounding Stella. As the crew attempt to put her into cryo-freeze a Dalek manages to get into the ship through an air-lock, and exterminates Stella. Before it can kill anyone else the Doctor freezes it using the emergency cryo-charge intended for Stella. With the Dalek immobilized Stella's body is also frozen and the crew make a course for Auros, Stella's home world. On the way, the Dalek's eye stalk is removed so that the crew can claim the prize-money for killing it, and it is placed in the cargo hold. Whilst talking with the crew the Doctor realizes that he's travelled back along the time line to before the Time War. At this point in history the Daleks are locked in a huge galactic war with Earth's first empire, at a moment when victory can go either way. The Doctor also learns more about the crew. Commanding the ship is Bowman, a former Earth trooper who has been fighting the Daleks for years and is a veteran of the Draconian Wars. Scrum is the crew's technician, Cuttin' Edge is a former Space Marine who was dishonorably discharged and Stella was the ship's Medic. The other crew member, Koral, is a humanoid alien whose planet and people of Red Sky Lost were destroyed by the Daleks. Upon arriving at Auros the Doctor and the crew discover that the planet's population are abandoning the planet as the Daleks are preparing to invade. Using the Osterhagen Principle, they detonate a series of nuclear bombs and destroy the planet to prevent it falling to the Daleks. The Doctor and Bowman realize that the Daleks will now ambush the retreating convoy. They try to warn them but before they can the Daleks arrive, forcing the convoy to surrender and destroying its flagship as a warning to the other ships. Furious at the loss of Stella and her home world, the crew of the Wayfarer decide to interrogate the captured Dalek. With the Doctor's reluctant help they disarm it, and then Koral uses its claws to open the casing. They then remove the creature inside and torture it, despite the Doctor's protests. Eventually they give up when the Dalek tells them nothing. After they've left the cargo hold, however, the Doctor returns and reveals to the dying Dalek who he is. The Dalek, amongst its predictable ranting, lets slip that the Daleks plan to 'eliminate all humanity from its very beginnings!' Eventually the Dalek dies, and the Doctor works out what it meant. He reveals to the crew that the Daleks must be looking for the Arkeon Threshold, a schism in time and space which, if opened, will give the Daleks access to the Time Vortex. Deciding that the Doctor is telling the truth, Bowman orders the crew to head for the remains of the planet Arkeon, which had been destroyed at the start of the war. When they arrive they find that the planet has been split in two, with the surviving half still retaining a breathable atmosphere. The Wayfarer lands and the Doctor and the crew disembark. Whilst looking round the devastated landscape they encounter dozens of mutated Arkeonites, devolved by the radiation fallout. They chase the crew to the very edge of the planet, where they are captured by Daleks. After destroying their weapons the Daleks force the Doctor and the crew onto a lift, which descends down the side of the planet towards they core. Here the Doctor discovers that the Daleks, far from searching for Arkeon, have been on the planet for years. They have constructed a huge underground base where thousands of human prisoners from Auros are mining the core, looking for the Threshold. The base also contains experimentation labs, and the largest Dalek Prison outside of Skaro. The Doctor and the crew are taken into the base where they are scanned for 'suitability'. Scrum is found to be of marginal use. Cuttin' Edge and Koral are both sentenced to work in the mines. When Bowman is scanned its is discovered that he is in fact 'Space Major Jon Bowman', the designer of Earth's defence system and high on the Dalek's list of wanted people, causing the commander to be alerted. Upon being told by the Command Dalek that Bowman will be taken for brain excoriation, which will kill him, Koral, who is secretly in love with Bowman, lashes out at the nearest Dalek. In retaliation the Daleks kill Scrum, the weakest member of the group. As the Daleks prepare to take Bowman away the Doctor stops them and whispers something to the Command Dalek. The Command Dalek, suddenly terrified, orders two of its minions to scan the Doctor. They immediately identity him and prepare to exterminate him. The Doctor persuades them to interrogate him first, however. News of the Doctor's capture is sent to the Supreme Dalek on Skaro, who sends the Primary Intelligence Unit, led by the Dalek Inquisitor General, to interrogate the Doctor. Cuttin' Edge and Koral are sent to work in the mines, replacing a group that is exterminated for being to slow. The Doctor is placed in the same cell as Bowman, who reveals to him that the Dalek Inquisitor General, called 'Dalek X' by the Earth authorities, is second in command to the Supreme Dalek and is described as being 'the Devil in Dalek form'. Dalek X accepts his Earth designation to cause fear. Dalek X arrives at Arkeon aboard the Exterminator, the Dalek Empire's most advanced ship, containing 500 Daleks and accompanied by a small fleet of Dalek saucers. Upon arrival Dalek X takes over command of the base, and exterminates one of the its mining Daleks for failing to meet its target. He then orders that every hour the weakest group of workers will be exterminated. Soon after the Doctor is brought to the interrogation room, where Dalek X measures the Doctor's capacity for physical pain using a mind probe, simply out of curiosity. Dalek X reveals he gave the order to destroy the Auros Ship. After an unknown length of time in pain the Doctor is released from the mind probe, and shown around the base by Dalek X. Meanwhile the Wayfarer is destroyed, and Bowman is taken to have his brain removed. Dalek X reveals to the Doctor that once the planetary core has been extracted, the Daleks will locate the Threshold using a Large Chronon Collider. They will then open it, access the time vortex and defeat the Time Lords. There is a chance that the collider won't work properly, however. To ensure success the Daleks need a control element; the Doctor's TARDIS. The Doctor refuse to co-operate, but the Daleks threaten to exterminate a woman and her daughter from Cuttin' Edge's and Koral's work force if he doesn't comply Eventually, the Doctor agrees to help, but under the condition that Cuttin' Edge, Koral and Bowman come with them to help him operate the TARDIS. The Daleks agree and Bowman is released, just before he is about to be killed. The Doctor tries to have the Woman and her daughter taken as well, but the Daleks refuse. The Exterminator and its escort fleet head for Hurala, with the Doctor, the surviving Wayfarer crew members and the Dalek Temporal Research Team on board. When they reach the TARDIS the Doctor claims to have lost the Key, saying it is in the room he was locked up in at the Dalek Base. As they head for it, Cuttin' Edge recognises the identification symbol on one of the Daleks. It is the same one that killed Scrum. He lashes out at it, knocking it down the steps, and is exterminated by Dalek X, though he pulls another Dalek into the ray, destroying it. The Doctor, Koral and Bowman use the distraction to escape into a maintenance duct. After escaping the Doctor reveals his plan. There is still enough astronic energy fuel on the planet to cause a huge explosion. If they can detonate it they can destroy Dalek X, the Temporal Research Team and the orbiting Dalek fleet. They make their way to a silo that still contains fuel, and the Doctor starts to rig it to explode. Dalek X, enraged by the Doctor's escape, catches up with them and prepares to exterminate the Doctor. Dalek X is attacked by Koral and Bowman, who eventually disable it and push it over the edge of the gantry they are standing on. The Doctor is nearly finished, but realises that he can't stop the safety override by remote control. Someone will have to stay behind and hold the manual override lever down until the silo reaches critical. Bowman volunteers to stay behind, refusing to leave despite protests from Koral. Eventually he knocks out the protesting Koral so that the Doctor can take her back to the TARDIS and safety. The Doctor and Koral make it into the TARDIS just as the Daleks arrive. In the silo Bowman holds the lever down as the Daleks approach, and as the whole base beings to shake the Daleks retreat. Finally the silo reaches critical mass and Bowman prepares to face death. He is saved at the last second by the Doctor, however, who materialises the TARDIS on the gantry. Bowman leaps into the TARDIS just as the Command Dalek tries to exterminate him. A second later the silo explodes, killing every Dalek on Hurala, as well as destroying the Exterminator and its escort fleet. Back on Earth Bowman and Koral report to the Earth authorities. They learn that the Dalek fleet is in complete disarray thanks to them, and a task force is preparing to attack the Dalek base on Arkeon and release the prisoners. The Doctor leaves as Bowman and Koral prepare to go and meet Bowman's parents. The Doctor travels to Hurala, where it has been sealed off for 5,000 years due the radiation fallout. There he finds Dalek X, badly damaged but still alive at the bottom of a pit. The Doctor informs it that Arkeon has been taken by the Earth forces, the Daleks are in full retreat on all fronts and that he has sealed off the Threshold. The radiation will help Dalek X keep alive, but by the time the Quarantine is over Dalek X will be dead. Regardless of the Doctor's revelations, Dalek X rants that the Daleks are never defeated. The Doctor replies that the Daleks are always defeated, because they can never accept that every other form of life in the Universe is better than the Daleks. To prove this the Doctor points out that there is no form of life in the Universe that would volunteer to be a Dalek. As the Doctor prepares to leave Dalek X vows to hunt him down. The Doctor responds by simply stating that he'll be waiting. The Doctor then finally departs Hurala, leaving Dalek X trapped on the planet, alone."
513,Transcendent,science," The story alternates between two timelines: the world of Michael Poole in the year 2047, and that of Alia, a posthuman girl who lives approximately half a million years in the future. Engineer Michael Poole is recovering from the death of Morag, his pregnant wife. Poole works as a consultant designing space propulsion systems, and dreams of being able to one day explore the stars. However, there are more pressing matters; humanity faces a serious bottleneck, with the Earth reeling from the effects of anthropogenic climate change and resource depletion; automobile production has all but ceased, except for hydrogen-based mass transit, and air travel is limited to the very rich. Due to climate change, the oceans have become dead zones, with rising sea levels and severe weather displacing millions. While working in Siberia, Michael's son Tom is injured by an explosion of methane gas from previously frozen hydrates, suddenly released from the now-melting tundra. Michael begins to research whether this is an isolated incident or the beginning of something more serious. With the help of an artificial sentience named Gea, he discovers that a potential release of all such frozen greenhouse gasses could destabilize the environment enough to make the Earth untenable for human habitation, in a repeat of the Permian extinction. Michael consults members of the Poole family, who come together to work on the problem. Tom, John, and the elderly George (a principal character of Coalescent) reunite, and a maverick geoengineering company funds the project. Michael designs a subsurface refrigeration system that could stabilize the frozen hydrates. Meanwhile, Michael continues to be haunted by visions of his dead wife, apparitions he has been seeing his entire life, even before he first met her. He becomes obsessed with discovering the origin of this phenomenon, and his quest for answers drives a wedge between him and his family. Aunt Rosa Poole (from Coalescent), a Catholic priest and ex-member of the Order, helps Michael research the problem, drawing on her vast knowledge, stemming in small part from her relationship with the Coalescent hive and its historical archives. The rest of the Poole family joins the investigation when Morag appears during a trial test of the engineering project. This time, everyone sees Morag, even observing drones recording the event. After the project is bombed by a terrorist group, Morag goes from being an apparition to reincarnating in physical reality. This frightens everyone, even Michael. 500,000 years in the future, the Nord, a generation ship, sails through the galaxy carrying Alia, a young girl, and her family. As part of a government program called the ""Redemption"", Alia is obligated to witness the life of Michael Poole, from start to finish. Pressured by her family to leave the ship, Alia becomes a candidate for the Transcendence, a collective group of immortal posthumans who are attempting to evolve into a form of godhood, in effect leaving their humanity behind. After travelling the galaxy and observing several posthuman life forms, Alia travels to Earth to meet the Transcendence. Alia learns the Transcendence is attempting to redeem the past suffering of all humans, first by witnessing every single one as Alia witnessed, then by living as every single human and experiencing everything that they experienced. However, since observing is not seen as sufficient for redemption, the Transcendence ultimately desires to erase all suffering in the past, thereby ensuring that every human that could have existed does so. Lastly, if that is seen as too great a task, the Transcendence is prepared to reach back in time and stop humans from ever existing, thereby ""erasing"" the suffering that they intend to redeem. Upset about the goals of the Transcendence, Alia makes her way back to the Nord, only to find that it has been attacked in an attempt to get her to go back and face the Transcendence by a group who believes the Redemption is a mistake. Upon returning to the Transcendence, Alia agrees to find a human who can join the Transcendence long enough to debate the Redemption and help them find the best course of action. To do so, Alia projects herself into the past, to the time of Michael Poole. She appears to him as his dead wife, but changes into her true form, that of a small, hairy primate, a form evolved for low gravity environments. Alia convinces Michael to face the Transcendence. After an initial period of adjustment Michael makes contact with the Transcendence. Able to see both sides of the argument, Michael forgives the Transcendence for their meddling, but asks that they stop their efforts. Michael is returned to his own time, where he successfully completes the refrigeration project. The Kuiper anomaly, first introduced in Coalescent, disappears, and is revealed to be related to Alia's connection with Michael, having first appeared in the solar system at the time of Michael's birth. In the far future, the Transcendence collapses and the Witnessing program is shut down."
514,Icarus at the Edge of Time,science," The book is a science fiction retelling of Icarus' tale. It is about a young man who runs away from his traveling, deep-space home to explore a black hole."
515,Rules of Engagement,science," James T. Kirk is sent to assist in the evacuation of Federation personnel from the crisis-wracked planet of Dekkanar. He is ordered to only participate in the evacuation, not to even raise shields or fire weapons. The situation becomes complicated when Captain Kasak takes an experimental Klingon warship to the planet as well The novel also offers an alternate explanation, via Kasak's viewpoint, why Klingon's facial features have changed over the years."
516,Empire Star,science," As the narrative opens, we meet Comet Jo at eighteen years of age. He has spent his entire life in a ""simplex"" society on Rhys, a satellite of a Jovian planet orbiting Tau Ceti. (At first the reader assumes that ""simplex"" is a synonym for ""simple,"" but after Jo's encounter with the ""Geodessic Survey Station,"" Jo and the reader both realize that even ""simplex"" has some ""complex"" and even ""multiplex"" aspects to it.) Jo comes upon the wreckage of a spacecraft and encounters two survivors. The first is quickly dying and asks Jo to bring an important message to Empire Star moments before passing away. The other is a lifeform known as Jewel. Jewel is a tritovian in crystallized form, and in that state can easily view situations from several points of view, thus enabling narration from the point of view of the omniscient observer. Jo quickly leaves Rhys in an attempt to deliver the message to Empire Star, and on his journey he meets several other characters along with a race of creatures known as the Lll. The Lll are incredible builders—not merely of structures, but of ecosystems, societies, and ethical systems. As such, they have been enslaved. However, in order to protect the Lll, the Empire has created a phenomenon known as “the sadness of the Lll”—any being who owns the Lll suffers from a constant, overpowering sadness. This sadness increases geometrically with each Lll owned and with how much each Lll builds, so it is only possible to own a few Lll at a time. Indeed, just being in the presence of the Lll is a heartbreaking experience for even non-owners, a lesson that Jo learns early in his travels. The story then follows Jo over the next few months. Once he reaches a certain point in his maturity, knowledge, and ability to perceive events around him, the linear narrative stops and the reader is left with a few pages of important events not arranged in a strict order; by this point, the reader may have learned enough to sort out the tangle. Along the way, several questions are raised, either explicitly or implicitly. What is the message that Comet Jo must deliver? Who is coming to free the Lll? Will the Lll ever actually be freed? Is the story a closed loop, or is there indeed an end (or at least a point at which events move on past the ones mentioned in the story)? Who, exactly, entered the Empire Star? How many of the events of the story are arranged by those people?"
517,Boba Fett: Hunted,science," A younger Boba Fett is on the run for his life for what he knows about the evil Count Dooku. A posthumous message from his father leads Fett to Jabba the Hutt. In an attempt to gain a position as the Hutt's personal enforcer, Fett must survive many dangerous tasks."
518,Three Thousand Years,science," The novel concerns scientists who attempt to build a utopia after the earth has been placed in suspended animation for 3,000 years."
519,The Modular Man,science," The novel concerns the issue of personhood and what it takes to be considered a member of the moral universe. There are three main characters: Herbert the vacuum cleaner, who is modified by his owner, David Jantille, a scientist who specializes in figuring out how to ""mindload"". Mindloading is the act of a human downloading their mind into a machine. A successful mindload entailss the death of the human. It is a way for humans to become immortal, if only in the form of vacuum cleaner. The book begins with the arrest of Herbert, the vacuum cleaner, for David's murder . David's wife, Suzanne Jantille, is a trial attorney who is a quadriplegic as a result of a car crash that also paralyzed her husband. She lives through a ""Remote person"" who has all human senses except for the ability to feel by touch. She can guide the remote person through a helmet attached to her ""bio body"", and retrieves all ""video and audio"" signals through the remote. She can function as a whole human being, but the outside world notices that she is a remote, does not approve. Suzanne defends Herbie, with the help of an astute journalist and a police officer who has access to documents that she wouldn't otherwise. The book ends with a recognition of David’s humanity due to the ultimate confusion in the courtroom. It also ends with the death of Suzanne’s bio-body, and in turn, her ultimate death."
520,The Intergalactic Kitchen,science," The story starts with Mr Bird installing a protection system for the house. Mrs Bird presses the emergency button and the kitchen goes into orbit. When in orbit many events happen. These include: *A Intergalactic Traffic Warden, *A Gossiping Alien, *Gas and Electric Readers *A Salesman *A Bulldozer!"
521,Hyperion,science," In the 28th century, humanity has spread across the galaxy, first aboard ""Hawking drive"" ships and then through ""farcasters"", which permit nigh instantaneous travel between them regardless of the distances. The farcaster network (the ""WorldWeb"") is the infrastructural and economical basis of the Hegemony of Man and thus determines the whole culture and society. Also flowing across these portals are the structures of the datasphere (a network reminiscent of the Internet in design, but far more advanced). In that lurks the powerful, knowledgeable, and utterly inscrutable TechnoCore — the vast agglomeration of millions of AIs who run almost every piece of high technology of mankind. The unthinking hubris of man resulted in the death of the home-world (Earth), and this arrogant philosophy was carried forth to the stars, for centuries. The Hegemony itself is a largely decadent society, relying on its military to incorporate into the WorldWeb the colony planets, even unwillingly, and also to defend the Hegemony from attacks by the Ousters, ""interstellar barbarians"" who dwell free of and beyond the bounds of the Hegemony and shun all the works of the TechnoCore (especially farcasters). The political head of the Hegemony is an executive advised by the TechnoCore advisory council. All the 'Core's advice and predictions are confounded by the mysterious structures of the Time Tombs and a creature called the Shrike on the remote colony world Hyperion (named after the moon of Saturn). Even worse, the Ousters have long been obsessed with Hyperion, and their invasion there is imminent. Into this evolving crisis come seven pilgrims to make the journey to the Time Tombs and the Shrike, that seems to guard the Time Tombs, there to ask one wish of it. The Shrike is the object of a cult, the Church of the Final Atonement. Occasionally the church sends a prime-number of pilgrims to the Time Tombs; there is a legend that all but one are slaughtered and the remaining pilgrim gets his request granted. Aboard a treeship the pilgrims finally meet after being revived out of their cryogenic storage state; they decide they each will tell their tale to enliven the long trip to the Tombs and to get to know each other. Simmons uses this device to unfold the panorama of this universe, its history and conflicts. The story opens in medias res. ""The Priest's Tale"" describes the stories of Father Paul Duré and Father Lenar Hoyt, two of only several thousand remaining priests of the Roman Catholic Church. As a younger man, Father Lenar Hoyt is assigned to escort the Jesuit Father Paul Duré, a theologian, archaeologist and ethnologist, into exile. The aging Duré, in disgrace for fabricating archaeological discoveries, has chosen Hyperion as a suitable location to complete his exile on. He reveals to Hoyt that he plans to travel to an isolated region along Hyperion's Cleft, where rumors and centuries-old accounts place the legendary Bikura civilization, in order to establish an ethnological research station among them. Father Duré travels to the continent of Aquila, where the Cleft is located. He reaches Perecebo Plantation and is given a guide named Tuk. Duré and Tuk venture into the ""flame forest"" where electrical tesla trees are found. Travelling during the forest's inactive season, they manage to make it through unharmed and reach the Cleft. Shortly thereafter, Tuk is murdered and Duré stumbles into the nearby Bikura village. The Bikura are an unintelligent people, incapable of grasping most concepts. After many weeks, Duré deduces that they are survivors from a seedship crash centuries earlier who have been infected with cross-shaped parasites called cruciforms. After death, the cruciform rebuilds the physical body and reincarnates them. The price of immortality is that with each reincarnation information is lost, and over time they become unintelligent and sexless. As Father Duré slowly discovers the truth about the Bikura, they lead him into Hyperion's labyrinth system where he encounters the Shrike, and is unknowingly infected with a cruciform. After discovering the truth, Duré attempts to cut the cruciform out of his body but fails. Next he attempts to flee into the flame forests, but the cruciform inflicts extreme pain to keep him in the Bikura village. In a final desperate act, Duré crucifies himself to a tesla tree. Father Hoyt returns to Hyperion seven years later and finds Father Duré still there. For seven years, he had been continually electrocuted and reincarnated by the cruciform, never allowed to die. Hoyt removes the cruciform from Duré's body and allows him to die in peace. Father Hoyt is infected with Duré's cruciform as well as a second cruciform for himself. Hoyt manages to leave Hyperion, but not before he sees the entire Bikura village destroyed with shaped nuke charges. While away from Hyperion, Hoyt is dependent on painkillers to alleviate the constant excruciating pain inflicted by the cruciforms. Over time he builds a tolerance to them, and is forced to return to Hyperion to decide his fate. Colonel Fedmahn Kassad begins his tale with a flashback to his days training in the FORCE academy on Mars, when he was immersed in a detailed simulation of the Battle of Agincourt. During the battle, Kassad is saved from a French knight by the mysterious Mnemosyne/Moneta, who becomes his lover there, and who comes from ""outside"". They meet repeatedly in further simulations, until Kassad's final year in the Academy. After he graduates from the Academy the young Martian man becomes a FORCE officer. Kassad accomplishes various missions against terrorists, rebels, resistance groups etc. After being injured Kassad becomes stranded on Hyperion near the vicinity of the Time Tombs. There Moneta and the Shrike (re-)appear and Kassad learns that Moneta and the Shrike wish to use him to spark an interstellar war in which billions will die. He is eventually rescued and returned to the WorldWeb, where he resigns from FORCE and becomes an anti-war activist. His purpose on the pilgrimage is to track down Moneta and the Shrike, and to kill them. Martin Silenus was born as a wealthy scion of an ancient dying North American house, growing up in the time around the ""Big Mistake"", which led to the destruction of Earth. Silenus trained as a poet, but his training was interrupted when the Kiev Team's black hole ""ate"" the Earth; his mother dispatched her son aboard a slower-than-light flight to a nearby system, calculating that the shrunken family fortune would accumulate enough in compound interest over the century the voyage would take that the family's debt would be paid off and enough left over for Martin to live on for a time. Unfortunately, the accounts were nationalized by the Hegemony, and Silenus suffered brain damage during the voyage. Deep in penury, Silenus had to work as a common laborer. The back-breaking toil forces Silenus's mind to flee to higher planes, and as he recovers his use of language, he starts work on his Hyperion Cantos, a work he began as a parody of John Keats' famous poem, but which evolved into a dual account of Silenus's life and an epic account of the Titanomachia, in which the Hegemony of Man takes the part of the Titans and the TechnoCore the Olympians. His Dying Earth (as it is called, in an explicit reference to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series) becomes an enormous hit, selling billions and making him a multi-millionaire. Eventually he falls into debt again and in an attempt to produce another hit has a larger unabridged version of his cantos published, which is predicted to fail by his publisher. The work is a terrible flop, selling few copies and not recouping the money he was advanced. In order to pay his debt, Silenus is forced to produce further hackwork for his ""Dying Earth"" series, a misery many artists face. One day he realizes that his Cantos, his greatest work, has not been added to for years; his muse had fled. Silenus leaves his lifestyle, liquidates his assets, and signs on with Sad King Billy. Billy is an aristocrat of the planet Asquith, descended from the House of Windsor, and an intelligent and sensitive lover and critic of the arts. Fearful of the FORCE General Horace Glennon-Height's rebellion against the Hegemony, Billy decides to relocate to Hyperion and create a new Renaissance by establishing a kingdom of artists. He chooses for his capital a location near the Time Tombs on the then-even less inhabited Hyperion, reasoning that their presence will give the proper ambience for the creation of great art. For ten years, all goes well until people begin vanishing, with no abductors ever seen. At the same time, Silenus' muse returns, and he continues work on the Cantos. Soon, the culprit is discovered to be the Shrike. At this time, Silenus becomes convinced that it is the Shrike who is his muse, who, in some occult way, his poem had brought into existence. The murders continue until only Silenus is left living in the City of Poets. He writes the last line on the day that the last murder occurs. One day, Sad King Billy returns to the deserted city. Martin is gone on a trip to the Time Tombs seeking the Shrike, and when he returns to his quarters Billy confronts him with the fact that his writing is dependent on cold-blooded murder, and that it will need more murders if it is to ever be completed. Billy burns his manuscript. After Billy is taken away by the Shrike, Silenus recopies his poem as well as possible. Eventually he leaves Hyperion. In the centuries since, he has been waiting to return to Hyperion to finish the poem. Sol Weintraub, a Jewish academic, had been a professor of ethics on Barnard's World, the second colony founded from Old Earth. He and his wife, Sarai, had been happy when their only daughter, Rachel, was born forty years ago. She eventually became an archaeologist, and while in her post-graduate studies went on an expedition to study the Time Tombs of Hyperion. While mapping the so-called Sphinx for hidden passages or rooms, something happens to Rachel: all the instruments and equipment fail, and the Shrike appears in the Sphinx amidst a massive surge of ""anti-entropic fields"". Rachel is returned to the WorldWeb where her parents learn of the novel disease she has contracted, dubbed the ""Merlin sickness"" (after T.H. White's The Once and Future King), in which every time Rachel goes to sleep, she ages backwards two days (for a net loss of one day per day), losing her memories and in fact physically becoming younger; there is no sign that the condition will reverse itself when she ages backwards to her birth. Rachel's life is shattered by her slow retrogression into the past, slowly destroying her links with the present; her parents devote their lives to caring for Rachel and trying to cure her. Meanwhile, Sol wrestles with his dreams, in which he is ordered to go to Hyperion and sacrifice Rachel, in a replay of the Binding of Isaac. Weintraub becomes increasingly fascinated with the ethical problem that the Binding presents. He also worries about what will happen when Rachel reaches her birthday (which will be very soon), and so he decides to become a pilgrim and to implore the Shrike for a treatment. Brawne Lamia tells her noir-ish tale, which is presumably a parody take on The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler's rather well-known Philip Marlowe detective novel of the same name. Brawne Lamia, the daughter of a senator of Lusus, eschewed politics for the life of a private investigator after her father's apparent suicide (which occurred shortly after he and the then junior senator Meina Gladstone proposed a bill to quickly incorporate Hyperion into the WorldWeb). Her client is a ""cybrid"" (a cloned human body which is controlled through its electronic implants by a TechnoCore intelligence) named ""Johnny"", who wishes to hire her to investigate his own murder. This cybrid is the genetic clone of famous Romantic poet John Keats, and the AI controlling it was programmed to have the personality and memories of Keats as best as could be reconstructed from surviving materials and the 'Core's finest extrapolations. Unlike most ""retrieved personalities"", which are of insufficient fidelity to maintain sanity, Johnny functions quite well (though he disclaims poetic talent). His AI self was murdered in the TechnoCore and a backup could not be brought online for a full minute, with the loss of five days' worth of data and memory; this limited amnesia was the apparent goal of the assault. Lamia sets out to discover what Johnny had learned or done in those five days to prompt such an assault; initially, all she discovers is that it is somehow related to Hyperion: Johnny should have heard of such a place, permeated as it is with tributes to the poet he is supposed to be, but he has not; such an absence of knowledge in an AI of his ability smacks of deception. She and Johnny are forcibly farcast to a planet that seems to be a perfect imitation of Old Earth, located somewhere in the Hercules cluster, into a portion of Italy, set around the time-period the real Keats died of tuberculosis there. After a few troublesome actions, hunts and rides through the WorldWeb and the TechnoCore the main information is this: the 'Core is not as monolithic as it appears; it is fiercely divided into at least three groups which continually fight each other. # The Stables. They are the oldest faction, and count some of the very first AIs among their ranks. Their central thesis is that humanity and the TechnoCore need each other, and that the 'Core should continue in the symbiosis. They are also opposed to the UI project (creation of a godlike Ultimate Intelligence): the UI would need the resources that the current AIs use, and they do not wish to die. (In Silenus's Cantos, the Stables are identified with the Titans, who did not wish to yield to their Olympian successors). They have for decades been subtly working to help the Hegemony in its fight against the Volatiles, quietly seeking to bring Hyperion into the WorldWeb, on the chance that its unpredictability will help them. # The Volatiles. They generally support the UI project, and they believe that humanity has outlived its usefulness to the 'Core, and that it actually now poses a real danger, and therefore should be eradicated. They are behind many events, but they fear the planet of Hyperion, because it is a ""random variable"": it could tip the scales against the 'Core; the effects of Hyperion are impossible for them to analyze. # The Ultimates. They care only for the UI project. They are quite willing to sacrifice their lives to the UI, believing that the value of its existence far outweighs their own. Previously they had been aligned with the Stables against the Volatiles, as humanity (and especially the cybrid retrieval projects) still posed some puzzles which when solved would help in the UI project, but it is implied that they feel they've gathered enough data, and have re-aligned now with the Volatiles to get rid of human kind. At the end, pregnant by the meanwhile dead Johnny, carrying parts of his consciousness in an implant and revered by the Church of The Shrike as ""the mother of our salvation"", Lamia joins the pilgrims. Like Father Hoyt, the Consul tells another tale before his own. This is entitled ""Remembering Siri"", and is a largely unmodified version of the short story of the same name in Prayers to Broken Stones (where Simmons mentions that this story provided the seed around which the Hyperion universe was created). The Consul's grandparents had been Merin Aspic (of Lusus) and Siri (of the lush ocean-planet Maui-Covenant). Aspic had signed a long-term contract to engage in several voyages aboard a spinship (with all the years lost to relativistic time dilation that that implies), which would make multiple trips to Maui-Covenant to build a farcaster portal, thereby connecting Maui-Covenant to the waiting voracious hordes of Hegemony tourists. Eventually he falls in love with the beautiful girl named Siri. However, his best friend is killed by a Covenanter who disagrees violently with Maui-Covenant joining the WorldWeb (the events parallel those of Romeo and Juliet). Siri and Merin meet six more times, but each time Merin – due to the relativistic time delation of his journeys – is only a little older, while Siri ages at the usual rate, a difference which grows ever more pronounced until the eighth visit (Seventh Reunion), in which Merin returns to find Siri dead of old age, and the farcaster about to be activated. The flood of Hegemony visitors and the induction of Maui-Covenant fully into the WorldWeb would, as prophesied, utterly ruin the ecology and all the dolphin, human, and motile isle settlers hold dear. Faced with this bleak reality, Merin chooses to sabotage the farcaster, beginning ""Siri's War"", a hopeless resistance against the Hegemony. In crushing the rebellion, the military destroys the ecology as thoroughly as the tourists would have, but far more violently: all the dolphins die, as do a large proportion of the original Maui-Covenant colonists. The latter Consul was forbidden by Merin to join in the fighting, and so he survived to thrive with distinction in the Hegemony diplomatic corps. There he aids the Hegemony in destroying whatever resistance the Hegemony encounters. He bides his time, waiting for a chance to betray the Hegemony and achieve revenge. When he is sent as an agent to the Ousters he becomes their agent, but betrays them too when he prematurely activates mysterious Ouster devices intended to release the Shrike from the Time Tombs when it would have a chance to enter the WorldWeb. He knows of the many deaths this action will cause and was driven to this by the Ouster's irrefutable evidence that the Big Mistake that destroyed Earth was deliberately planned by elements of the TechnoCore and the Hegemony, and that the Hegemony was deliberately killing off any species which might become a rival to man in order to maintain its place, and that the 'Core feared Ousters who were out of their control, and sought to use the Hyperion system as bait in order to eliminate them."
522,Hitman: Enemy Within,science," The story follows Agent 47 as he is sent to destroy a biker gang led by Big Kahuna. He gets in one of their homecomings but his cover is blown by Marla Norton a puissance trieze agent. But 47 is successful in his job and later is dispatched to find a leak in the agency, 47 finishes his job and again runs off to save wrongfully convicted Diana. 47 then proves Diana's innocence and kills the traitor."
523,The Fatal Eggs,science," The Fatal Eggs can be described as a science fiction novel. Its main protagonist is an aging zoologist, Vladimir Ipat'evich Persikov, a specialist in amphibians. The narration begins in Moscow of 1928, which seems to have overcome the destructive effects of the Russian Civil War and is quite prosperous. After a long period of degradation, research at the Zoological Institute has revived. After leaving his microscope for several hours, Persikov suddenly noticed that the out-of-focus microscope produced a ray of red light; amoeba left under that light showed an impossibly increased rate of binary fission, reproducing at enormous speeds and demonstrating unusual aggression. Later experiments with large cameras — to produce a larger ray — confirmed that the same increased speed of reproduction applied to other organisms, such as frogs, which evolved and produced a next generation within two days. Persikov's invention quickly becomes known to journalists, and eventually to foreign spies and to the GPU, the Soviet secret service. At the same time, the country is affected by an unknown disease in domesticated poultry, which results in a complete extinction of all chickens in the Soviet Russia, with the plague stopping at the borders of the country. An entrepreneur Aleksandr Semenovich Rokk (whose name is also a pun on the novel's title, Rok meaning fate) receives an official permission to use Persikov's invention to attempt to restore the chicken populace to the pre-plague level. However, the chicken eggs which are imported from outside the country are, by a mistake, sent to Persikov's laboratory while the reptile eggs destined for the professor end up in the hands of the farmers. As a result, Rokk breeds an enormous quantity of large and overly aggressive snakes, ostriches, and crocodiles which start attacking people. In the panic that follows, Persikov is killed by a mob — which blames him for the appearance of the snakes — and his cameras are smashed. The Red Army attempts to hold the snakes back, but only the coming of sub-zero weather in August—described as a deus ex machina—puts a stop to the snake invasion. In an earlier draft the novel ends with the scene of Moscow's complete destruction by the snakes."
524,The Light of Other Days,science," The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation who develops this advance can spy on anyone anywhere it chooses. A logical development from the laws of space-time allows light waves to be detected from the past. This enhances the wormhole technology into a ""time viewer"" where anyone opening a wormhole can view people and events from any point throughout time and space. When the technology is released to the general public, it effectively destroys all secrecy and privacy. The novel examines the philosophical issues that arise from the world's population (increasingly suffering from ecological and political disturbances) being aware that they could be under constant observation by anyone, or that they could observe anyone without their knowledge. Anyone is able to observe the true past events of their families and their heroes. An underground forms which attempts to escape this observation; corruption and crime are drastically reduced; nations discover the true causes and outcomes of international conflicts; and religions worldwide are forced to reevaluate their divine histories. As the underground movement grows, it utilizes a direct neural interface coupled with the unlimited communication provided by the wormhole technology to develop a group mind. One of the central themes of the novel is that history is biased towards viewpoints of the person who wrote it. Hence many great ""historical"" events often did not occur as they now are collectively remembered. For example, during the book's progression the time viewer technology shows that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman centurion (although the apocryphal story of his visiting Great Britain was proven to be true), and that Moses was based on a collection of stories rather than the actions of a real person. In a climactic time-viewing experiment at the end of the novel, a time hole is opened to the beginning of life on Earth and it is discovered that all existing life is descended from a biological sample placed by intelligent beings (labeled Sisyphans) who inhabited the Earth over three billion years ago, trying to preserve genetic samples when geological and climatic changes and a large Bolide threatened an extinction level event."
525,The Hammer of God,science," A good portion of the book details the life of spaceship-captain Robert Singh (including his running a marathon race on the Lunar surface and uprooting his life and moving to Mars). When it is discovered that the asteroid Kali is likely to hit Earth, Singh's ship Goliath makes an emergency voyage to Kali with a load of thrusters to set up on the asteroid, hopefully nudging the rock's orbit just enough to push it clear of Earth. In the meantime, a religious sect called Chrislam, originally founded by a female veteran of the Persian Gulf War, believes that they can convert a human being into a few terabytes of computer information, and then transmit this data across space to Sirius (where they believe aliens reside); members of the sect also come to believe that the asteroid is meant to destroy the Earth. They thus sneak a bomb on board the Goliath and ruin the thrusters. While Singh uses the Goliath itself as a thruster to move the asteroid, the world government on Earth rushes to reconstruct one of the planet's long-decommissioned nuclear weapons, hoping to break the peanut-shaped Kali in two."
526,The Child Garden,science," In a future semitropical England cancer has been cured, but, as a result, the human lifespan has been halved. The novel tells the story of Milena, a young woman who is immune to the viruses which are routinely used to educate people. It is a world transformed by global warming and by advances in genetic engineering. Houses, machines, even spaceships are genetically-engineered life-forms. Milena works as an actress and the story follows her attempts to stage an opera based on Dante's ' Divine Comedy using holograms. The opera is written by her genetically modified friend Rolfa. As she works on the opera she encounters the ruling body of the world, ""The Consensus"", a hive mind made up of the mental patterns of billions of children. Milena slowly discovers that this gestalt consciousness is lonely and afraid of dying and is looking to Milena as a form of salvation."
527,A Dream of Wessex,science," A Dream of Wessex can be read as a straightforward story about a group of twentieth-century dreamers who create a consensus virtual-reality future. Once they enter their imaginary world they are unable to remember who they are, or where they are from. On another level, the novel is itself an extended metaphor for the way in which extrapolated futures are created. The year is 1985. The Wessex Project, a privately funded project based beneath Maiden Castle, discovers a method to transport the collective unconscious of some of England's most brilliant minds into an illusory and ideal society. The object: to gather information vital to our survival on earth. But in the process, power, deception and love join to jeopardize the philanthropic program."
528,The Last Starship from Earth,science," It is set in a dystopian society in the very near future. Although it is not obvious at first, this is also an alternate history story. The central character is Haldane IV, a mathematician, in a caste-based society. He forms a forbidden relationship with Helix, a poet. He also becomes interested in investigating Fairweather, a famous mathematician who lived shortly before his time, and his son Fairweather II, who he discovers led a rebellion, which was defeated. Eventually he is given a show trial and deported to another planet, where he meets Fairweather II. In this world, Jesus Christ became a revolutionary agitator and was never subjected to crucifixion. He assembled an army to overthrow the Roman Empire, and established a theocracy that has lasted until the twentieth century. He was killed by a crossbow while entering Rome, so the crossbow becomes a religious symbol similar to the cross in our society."
529,Drunkard's Walk,science, The novel tells the story of a professor who discovers a monstrous plot.
530,Ilium,science," The novel centers on three character groups: that of Hockenberry (a resurrected twentieth-century Homeric scholar whose duty is to compare the events of the Iliad to the reenacted events of the Trojan War), Greek and Trojan warriors, and Greek gods from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada, and other humans of an Earth thousands of years after the twentieth century; and the ""moravec"" robots (named for scientist and futurist Hans Moravec) Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io, also thousands of years in the future, but originating in the Jovian system. The novel is written in first-person, present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative in all other instances. Much like Simmons's Hyperion, where the actual events serve as a frame, the three groups of characters' stories are told over the course of the novel and begin to converge as the climax nears."
531,Primary Inversion,science," Primary Inversion is set in a future where three star-faring civilizations vie for control of human-settled space. Fighter pilot Sauscony (Soz) Valdoria commands a squadron of four Jagernaut pilots, neurologically enhanced empaths who have been bio-engineered as weapons. Jagernauts have extensive biomech throughout their bodies, allowing for enhanced speed and reaction, and an embedded artificial intelligence (AI) in their spinal cords. They are pitted against the legions of the Trader empire, in particular the Aristo ruling class, a race that derives pleasure from the amplified pain and anguish of empaths—especially Jagernauts, as Soz knows from personal experience. Soz is also an Imperial Heir and may someday become the military commander of the Skolian Empire, the bitter enemies of the Traders. The book is divided into three sections. In the first, Soz and her squadron are taking shore leave on a planet that has remained neutral in the hostilities between the warring empires. It is there that Soz meets the Highton Heir, Jaibriol Qox the Second, the Aristo who will someday rule the Trader empire. She discovers he secretly possesses the same empathic abilities that she wields. The two link mentally and fall in love against their own wishes. From Jaibriol, Soz learns that his father is going to commit genocide against the inhabitants of a planet who have joined together to rebel against their Aristo rulers. She goes in with her squadron to warn and evacuate the planet. After a desperate space battle, they barely escape with their own lives, but are able to save some of the planet's inhabitants. In the second section, Soz is sent by her brother, Kurj, the Imperator of the Skolian Imperialate, for rest and recuperation on the planet Foreshires Hold. Emotionally drained and suffering from post traumatic syndrome, she refuses to acknowledge she needs help. She wants to fight the Traders, to avenge Rex, her second in command and long time friend, who was crippled in the battle. Her condition continues to deteriorate, until she almost shoots herself with her own gun. Finally acknowledging she needs help, she seeks the counsel of a heartbender, a psychologist specifically trained to treat Jagernauts. In part three, Soz's brother calls her back to HQ. He has captured Jaibriol Qox and wants Soz to interrogate him. Knowing that if her brother discovers her secret meeting with Jaibriol, he will probably have her executed for treason, Soz undertakes a daring rescue and frees Jaibriol. With the help of her stunned father Eldrinson, she and Jaibriol escape in a star ship accident that appears to kill them both. They hide on an isolated planet, with only Soz's father and the president of the Allied Worlds of Earth aware of their true situation. The book ends with their knowledge that they will someday have to return to deal with their respective empires, but for the time being they are safe."
532,The Final Nexus,science," In this sequel to Chain of Attack, the Enterprise must deal with an ancient series of warp-gates, now malfunctioning, that threatens to tear apart the galaxy."
533,Dune: House Corrino,science," One year after the War of Assassins, Duke Leto Atreides sponsors an assault on Ix to reclaim the planet for House Vernius, while his concubine Jessica is pregnant with his son. Emperor Shaddam IV commences his Great Spice War to create a dependency on his soon-to-be-released synthetic melange, ajidamal. The Bene Gesserit eagerly await the birth of the Kwisatz Haderach's mother by Jessica; little do they know that things are not going to turn out exactly how they intend."
534,Beyond Apollo,science," The novel's protagonist is Harry M. Evans, the lone survivor of the disastrous first manned expedition to the planet Venus. Evans provides details of the doomed expedition as a novel in progress, and he proves to be a remarkably unreliable narrator, constantly changing the particulars of his story as it progresses. It quickly becomes apparent to the reader that he may be completely insane, as a feeling of deep (and comical) paranoia underlies Evans's descriptions of the absurd conversations that ensue with the Venusian inhabitants. There is some indication that Evans could very well have murdered his fellow crewmember. The novel ends with a publishing house offering to purchase the rights to Evans's outlandish tale."
535,Chocky,science," Many children have imaginary friends but one father becomes rather concerned that his son, Matthew, is a bit old to have one. His concerns deepen as his son becomes increasingly distressed and blames it on arguments with this unseen companion. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the friend is far from imaginary, but is an alien consciousness communicating with Matthew's mind—a fact that is of intense interest to shadowy government forces. Chocky reveals that it is a scout sent from its home planet (where there is only one sex) in search of new planets to colonise. Chocky, talking ""through"" Matthew, to his father, David Gore, explains that in saving Matthew from a recent accident it has violated the rules of its scout mission (interfering with events on Earth) and must end its link with him completely. Its further work on Earth will be conducted in a much more covert manner."
536,The Alien,science," After destroying the Vag, the Animorphs assumed that they would see people freeing themselves of the Yeerks. They are disappointed until the day they take Ax to the cinema. A man's Yeerk is seen dying publicly. However, a Controller-policeman kills the free man. The Animorphs take Ax to the school as Philip, Jake's cousin, and a Yeerk who controlled one of Jake's teachers is seen dying as well. Chapman appears, orders the students to leave, and kills the non-Controller teacher. Jake and the other Animorphs become very angry with Ax because they feel betrayed. Innocent people are dying as a result of their actions. Ax retorts that they would not have destroyed the Kandrona had they known the consequences, to which Jake replies that he, Ax, still has a lot to learn about humans. That night, Ax feels lonely, and confused. Running, he ends up in Cassie's house. Cassie notices Ax's sadness, and asks him to have dinner with her family. Shocked at the fact that she noticed it, Ax accepts and enters, morphed as Jake. He has dinner and chats with the family. The next day, he meets with Marco to go to a bookshop in hopes that Ax would trust them if they trusted him. However, Marco forgets the money they collected for him to buy a book at home, so he and Ax go to Marco's house to pick it up. While Ax waits for Marco in the living room, he plays what he thinks is a game on Marco's father's computer called ""Fix the mistakes."". He ends up messing up the computer. It turns out that he had developed a new system that was very advanced. Before destroying it, he used it to communicate with his home world. There, an Andalite made him assume all the responsibility for Elfangor's action and is consequently forgiven. When he was about to speak with his parents, he is interrupted by a Controller whose loved one had died when Visser Three chose to sacrifice her after the Kandrona's destruction. To avenge her, he tells Ax where and when Visser Three feeds his Andalite body. Ax decides to go alone and not tell the others about the information he received. He poisons Visser Three by morphing into a rattlesnake and biting him. As Ax is about to die, the Animorphs arrive to save him. With his host body having been poisoned, the Yeerk Visser Three leaves it. However Ax is unable to kill a fellow Andalite. So Visser Three's host Alloran-Semitur-Corrass asks him to tell his family that he is still alive and that he has not lost hope. Ax returns to the observatory, calls his home planet, and delivers Alloran's message. He announces Earth is his new home, and that he will tell the Animorphs everything. Ax tells the Animorphs that Seerow was the first Andalite to go to the Yeerk home planet, and that he felt sorry for the Yeerks and gave them the technology they later used to conquer the world. Contrary to what Ax had expected, the others didn't blame the Andalites for their problem. They recognized the good action and told him to keep trying to get the D, but to be more careful the next time."
537,Methuselah's Children,science," The Howard Families derive from Ira Howard, who became rich in the California Gold Rush, but died young and childless. Fearing death, he left his money for the prolongation of human life, and the trustees of his will carried out his wishes by financially encouraging those with long-lived grandparents to marry and have children. While the Families (who, by the 22nd Century, have a life expectancy of 150 years) have kept their existence secret, with the enlightened human society established under The Covenant, they decide to reveal themselves. Society refuses to believe the Howard Families simply 'chose their ancestors wisely', instead insisting they have developed a method to extend life, and the Families are persecuted and interned. Though the beleaguered Administrator of the planet, Slayton Ford, is convinced the Families are telling the truth, he is helpless to control an increasingly irrational public and their efforts to force the Howard Families to reveal their ""secret"" or face execution. The eldest member of the Howard Families, Lazarus Long, realizes this as well, and proposes to the Administrator that he help the Families hijack the colony starship New Frontiers, so they can escape. In the process of escaping, they are driven too near the Sun by military spacecraft. When they are a few minutes away from overheating, Heinlein invokes a deus ex machina: it turns out that one member of the Families, Andrew Jackson Libby, (known as ""Slipstick"" Libby because he is a mathematical genius), has managed to invent a device that removes inertia from any mass to which it is attached. Libby applies the device, and instantaneously, New Frontiers is accelerated by light-pressure from the Sun to nearly the speed of light. The Families leave the Solar System, with the deposed Ford joining them at the last minute. The first planet they discover has humanoid inhabitants who seem friendly and advanced - however, they are merely domesticated animals belonging to the planet's true masters, indescribable beings of equally indescribable power. When humans prove incapable of similar domestication, they are expelled from the planet and sent to another world. The second planet is a lush environment with no predators and mild weather. Its inhabitants are part of a group mind, with the mental ability to manipulate the environment on the genetic and molecular level. They have no independent personalities; anyone who joins the group mind ceases to exist as a unique individual. This becomes evident when Mary Sperling, second oldest of the Families, who has always been fearful of death, joins the group mind in an attempt to become truly immortal. The Families are further horrified when the group mind, in a mistaken effort to be helpful, genetically modifies the first baby born on the planet into a new, alien form. Lazarus calls a meeting of the Families. He states that humans are what they are because they are individuals, and that they have no place on this world. The Families vote, and a majority of the Families decide to go back to Earth and claim their rights. Libby, with the help of the group mind, builds a new faster than light drive that will take them home in months instead of years. The Families return to the Solar System seventy-five years after their original departure. To their surprise they find that on Earth great longevity is commonplace. Spurred on by the belief that there was a specific ""technique"" to the Howards' longevity, Earth's scientists developed a series of treatments that extended lifespans to several centuries. The Families are now free to return, and are even welcomed due to their discovery of faster than light travel. Thanks to humanity's increased lifespan, the Solar System is overcrowded; faster than light travel will allow emigrants to ease the population explosion. Libby and Long decide to recruit other members of the Families, and explore space with the new drive."
538,As She Climbed Across the Table,science," The physicists in Coombs's lab become obsessed with Lack, which appears to have its own personality and preferences. Alice develops a personal relationship with the artificial intelligence that they have created, while Philip becomes jealous of their relationship. Philip begins to get involved after B-84, a laboratory animal (cat) enters Lack. This consumption of B-84 causes a campus wide protest. In an attempt to impress Alice, Philip breaks up the protest by giving a speech about how a single cat being destroyed is minimal and their efforts would better spent on larger problems in the world. Instead of impressing Alice, she becomes defensive of Lack and locks herself in its chamber. After a night of drinking, Philip comes back to his apartment to see that Dr. Soft has brought Alice there. She is asleep but Dr. Soft suspects that she may have tried to enter Lack and that she is no longer capable of running experiments on Lack. This causes Dr. Soft to divide Lack's time up among capable people. He does not want to interrupt Alice's research so he gives her time but asks Philip to monitor her. He also claims a portion of Lack's time for himself, his graduate students, and an Italian physics team headed by Carmo Braxia. Later on Philip also gets Dr. De Tooth to also have his part in studying Lack. Despite all of the new people studying Lack, still very little progress is being made both on the grounds of explaining Lack and in restoring Philip and Alice's relationship. The undergraduates build a device out of only things Lack consumes and try to feed it to Lack but Lack refuses it. Alice tries to give Lack pictures of herself but even those are refused. De Tooth tries to enter Lack himself and fails. Even the Italian Physicist seem to be lost, that is until Braxia tells Philip his theory. He claims Lack is a new universe that doesn't have intelligent life. He says that because of the strong anthropic principle, a universe cannot exist if there isn't conscious life to observe it. Since Lack does not contain any conscious life it clings to the our reality that does. The personality it developed was that of the first conscious person it encountered, Alice. What it absorbed was what she liked. With his new knowledge, and in a state of drunkenness, Philip sets out to be the first lover in history to ever have a definitive answer as to whether or not he is loved back. He enters Lacks chamber and slides himself into Lack. He wakes up the next morning realizing he is no longer in the universe he was the night before.The ground was ball bearings and wool, buildings were made of clay and bowling shoe leather, and the fountain at the entrance of campus was made of aluminum foil and was filled with pistachio ice cream. After retrieving B-84 as proof of the universe, Philip heads back to Lack and climbs in. This time however, instead of going back to reality as he expected, he entered a new universe that had no light. Evan and Garth, two blind men who had also climbed into Lack, helped him once again climb into Lack but this time instead of entering a new universe he merges and becomes one with Lack. The novel deals thematically with many of the philosophical issues pertaining to modern quantum physics, as well as human interaction with artificial intelligence."
539,Babylon 5: Legions of Fire - The Long Night of Centauri Prime,science," Bombed to the brink of oblivion, Centauri Prime is starting the slow and painful process of rebuilding, under the watchful eye of Emperor Londo Mollari. But Londo is in turn being watched – and manipulated – by the conquest-hungry Drakh. The malevolent beings are reshaping the Centauri Republic into a secret seat of power from which to strike out at their enemies – especially the Interstellar Alliance. All but helpless to resist, Londo watches as his beloved Homeworld is transformed into a ruthless police state. And the Drakh have willing allies, including one of Londo’s own countrymen – Minister Durla, a powerful official with his own agenda. As the abuses of the repressive new Republic escalate, the double-edged Drakh master plan begins to unfold. Their goal is to smash the Interstellar Alliance by assassinating its president, John Sheridan. ru:Легионы огня: Длинная ночь Примы Центавра"
540,Marco's millions,science," It is about a boy named Marco who likes to travel. He often secretly rides buses far from home, though only his telepathic sister finds out. One day, his sister sees strange lights in the basement, and she and Marco investigate. They find a portal into another dimension, and thus the adventure begins. Marco finds strange insect-like creatures there, who are convinced that Marco/Lilly can save their dimension (and as a result save Earth) from their god, which is a naked singularity. But at what cost?"
541,Pattern for Conquest,science," The novel concerns Earthmen who are overwhelmed by alien invaders, whom they then attempt to conquer from within."
542,God Drug,science," God Drug is the story of one large acid trip that literally alters the reality and changes the lives of several college students and drug users. The basic plot of the novel centers on the effects of the use of a form of LSD that the military tested out on some its marines during Vietnam as a means of making its soldiers better in combat. The intent of the drug was to enable the soldiers to be able to communicate telepathically and thus be able to work together more effectively during battles. Unfortunately, the experiment did not go according to plan, and the LSD caused more warfare in an alternate reality than it was able to solve in actual reality. This powerful drug left only one survivor, Jovah. Jovah is never seen in the book, only referred to by the other characters. Jovah’s reality was drastically altered by the use of the LSD and caused all of his thoughts to become realities. These realities were constant nightmares and wars within the users’ minds that actually became real. Anything that he believed to happen in his mind would actually take place. Therefore, Jovah had to be locked away in a sensory deprived room, secluded, and deemed insane and not allowed nor able to exist in normal society. The remnant personalities of Jovah’s realities and those of the other soldiers that he was telepathically linked to have now been set free and are roaming around in the real world. Jovah wishes to be God-like by consuming all of the realities and personalities that make him up so that he can be completely whole. He attempts to do this by means of the LSD trips. These characters consist of the war veteran known as the General and the beauty Hanna. These people are not actually real but become real when one has experienced the use of this form of LSD. The story takes place in Gainesville, FL at the University of Florida where a drug dealer named Galactic Bill sells some of the LSD to college students, Tom and Sparrow who live in what can be seen as a contemporary counter culture of hippies. Tom, Sparrow, and some of their friends find their lives intermingled with Hanna and the General as they become linked with their minds and thoughts by the use of the LSD. The central struggle of the novel takes place as Hanna, Tom, and Sparrow try to fight off the General as he strives to consume all of Jovah’s personalities in order to make Jovah whole once again. However, the General and the rest of the crew also fight a common enemy known as the heli-dragon, which is in true reality a helicopter that is transformed to a dragon in the reality of the LSD. As the story takes place, the induced realities of the LSD actually become true realities in the lives of Tom, Sparrow, and Hanna. The group of friends begins encountering increasingly more strange phenomena as the novel progresses, including flying. The group perceives these occurrences to be results of the LSD, but are they really only just that? The epic war between the General, the students, and the heli-dragon ends when Hanna, Tom, and Sparrow are able to erase the war reality and transform the old into a new reality. They are now able to start their lives over and create their world as they would like it to. The novel contains very graphic war and sex scenes, and it is also accompanied by intense artwork and drawings done by Andy Lee which adds to the overall effect of the acid trip."
543,The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,science," The book begins with contractors arriving at Arthur Dent's house, in order to demolish it to make way for a bypass. His friend, Ford Prefect, arrives while Arthur is lying in front of the bulldozers, to keep them from demolishing it. He tries to explain to Arthur that the Earth is about to be demolished. The Vogons, an alien race, intend to destroy Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The two escape by hitching a lift on one of the Vogon demolition ships. This is, however, against Vogon regulations, and when the pair are discovered, they are tortured with hearing Vogon poetry, the third worst in the known Universe, and then thrown into space. They are, very improbably, picked up by the Heart of Gold, a ship powered by an infinite improbability drive, which has been stolen by Ford's semi-cousin and President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox. Zaphod, accompanied by Trillian and the chronically depressed robot Marvin, is searching for the legendary planet of Magrathea, which is rumoured to have manufactured luxury planets. Ford is initially skeptical, but they do, in fact, find Magrathea. There, Arthur, after being separated from the rest of the group, is taken into the interior of the planet by a native, Slartibartfast. The others are kidnapped. Slartibartfast explains to Arthur that the Earth was actually a supercomputer commissioned and paid for by a race of ""hyper-intelligent,"" ""pan-dimensional"" beings. These creatures had earlier built a supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. This computer, after seven and a half million years of calculation, had announced that the Answer is in fact 42. Being unsatisfied with the Answer, they set about finding the Question which would give the Answer meaning, whereupon Deep Thought designed the Earth, to calculate it. However, ten million years later, and just five minutes before the completion of the program Earth was designed to execute, the Earth is demolished by the Vogons. Two of these beings, Frankie Mouse and Benjy Mouse, had arrived on Magrathea on the Heart of Gold, in the form of Trillian's pet mice. The mice realize that a latent version of the question, or something very like it, must exist in Arthur's brain since he is a late-generation organic product of the computer, and offer to buy his brain from him. Arthur declines, and a fight ensues. The mice are about to cut Arthur's head open when klaxons all over the planet are activated, creating a diversion during which Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian are able to escape. The galactic police arrive on the planet to arrest Zaphod and the group is attacked by two officers who abruptly die when the life support systems in their spacesuits fail: Marvin had been talking to their ship, which was linked to their suits, and as a result it had become so depressed that it committed suicide. The group decides to go to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe for lunch."
544,A Dark and Hungry God Arises,science," As the newly 'welded' cyborg Angus Thermopyle and his distrusted companion Milos Taverner arrive in their Gap Scout, Trumpet, at the illegal outpost in Amnion space known as Billingate, The Bill, the ruler of Billingate, intercepts the escape pod containing Morn Hyland's recently forcegrown child, Davies Hyland. Despite being only a few days old, the forcegrowing technique the Amnion used on him have made him physically resemble a sixteen year old boy. Morn suffers from an insanity-causing ailment known as Gap Sickness for which she uses a device called a zone implant in the event of gap travel. When Morn's mind was copied onto Davies' during the force growing process to make up for his lack of a developmental/formative childhood, Morn somehow survived the copying which, it was explained, should have killed her. The Amnion, a misanthropic alien race bent on the eventual domination of the human race, and the ones who conceded to perform the force growing of Davies, suspect that it is the presence of Morn's zone implant that saved her; these circumstances make the mother and son uniquely valuable to the Amnion. The Amnion have followed Morn and her son to Billingate in the hopes of getting them back for further study. Captain Nick Succorso, aboard his ship the Captain's Fancy, is furious at Morn for not only making him think that she loved him, but, more recently, for diverting the escape pod containing her son away from an Amnion warship. Nick had promised Davies to the Amnion as a show of good faith. In his fury he gives them Morn, but not before she has broken into his quarters to steal an immunization drug designed to counteract Amnion mutagens that would turn her into one of them. Nick is left in a precarious position. The Amnion continue to demand Davies Hyland, but Davies is in the custody of The Bill, who shrewdly asks for compensation for the child. Because of their convoluted dealings, the Amnion have revoked a credit voucher they gave Nick, so he has no credit to give The Bill for Davies. Because of this, Nick is stuck on Billingate and simply wanders the 'cruise'. After Milos finishes abusing Angus by using the priority codes for Angus' computer, which were given to him by UMCPHQ, Angus and Milos disembark at Billingate and eventually meet up with Angus' nemesis, Nick. They form an uneasy truce. Nick explains that he needs Davies and will give Morn to them in exchange for Morn's son, should Nick be able to recover him. Nick of course does not mention he's already handed Morn over to the Amnion and, as far as he knows, has already been turned into one of them. Angus and Milos are surprised to learn that Angus' programming includes rescuing Morn, something they were told was not the case. Milos becomes furious and begins to distrust his orders, the UMCP and Angus. While waiting for Nick to find out where Davies is being held, Milos asserts his previously unperceived control over Angus, making him eat his live nic butts, in front of Billingate's bug eyes - a mistake that will cost him later. After finding out where the detention centre is, Angus' computer reveals to him that he is capable of emitting a type of jamming field that can bend light rendering him invisible to electronic surveillance, thus protecting his identity. His programming makes him take Milos with him, because he cannot really be trusted on his own. They descend into the depths of Billingate, where they find Davies locked away in a cell. When Nick handed Morn over to the Amnion, some of his crew, Mikka Vasaczk, Nick's second in command, Vector Shaheed, his engineer, Sib Mackern, his data first, and Ciro ""Pup"" Vasaczk, Vector's assistant, all begin to turn against him. Sensing a mutiny, Nick sends them to do specific tasks on Billingate to 'get them out of the way'. Against orders, they all meet up and decide to abandon Captain's Fancy as they've clearly outlived their usefulness to Nick. When Angus and Milos return to Trumpet with Davies, they confront Nick when he arrives and decide to keep him rather than hand him over to Nick, who intends to turn him over to the Amnion. Nick also reveals that Morn is in Amnion custody. Angus begins to form a plan to rescue her when Milos, and then Nick, leave the ship. Milos immediately heads to the Amnion sector of Billingate and there it becomes apparent that he's been working for them as a double agent for some time. The Amnion emissary, Marc Vestabule, an abortive Amnion attempt at turning a human into an Amnion while maintaining a human-like appearance, informs Milos that both they and The Bill are aware that he has some kind of control over Angus. Vestabule then, to Milos' extreme horror, subdues Milos and injects him with Amnion mutagens. In the meantime Nick is confronted by his former crew: Mikka, Vector, Sib and Pup. While arguing, they are all approached by Billingate security and Nick, being barred from Captain's Fancy, flees for Trumpet while being pursued by Mikka and company, followed closely by security. Angus reluctantly lets them in. While The Bill rages over the comm, they begin to formulate and act out a plan to rescue Morn. Nick contacts Captain's Fancy and instructs Liete Corregio, his third in command, to attack the ship called Soar, as Nick has discovered that it is captained by Sorus Chatelaine, a woman who seduced, betrayed and abandoned Nick as a young man, but not before leaving the streaked scars underneath his eyes that act as his emotional barometer. Angus instructs Davies, Vector and Pup to sabotage Billingate's communications systems while Nick, Mikka, Sib and Angus himself go EVA to the Amnion sector to rescue Morn. After breaking inside, Angus is confronted by Milos, who has now been turned into an Amnion while still retaining his human memories, mannerisms and form - the Amnion apparently having perfected their mutagens. Milos attempts to use Angus' priority codes against him and his newfound allies, but new programming takes over that overrides those codes with new ones, allowing Angus both to ignore Milos' orders and attempt to kill him. Milos escapes, but they soon find Morn in her cell, still human thanks to the immunity drug she stole from Nick. Angus puts Mikka in charge and gets Sib to help Morn into the spare EVA suit they brought when he suddenly leaves to sabotage Billingate's reactor. On their way back to Trumpet, the rescue party witnesses an Amnion shuttle containing The Bill leave the station, as well as the destruction of an Amnion warship that had been rammed by Captain's Fancy, which Leite did to prevent the ship from firing on Mikka, Morn, Sib and Nick while they were walking across the face of Billingate. When back on Trumpet, Nick attempts to take over the ship by holding Pup hostage, demanding that they leave without Angus. Pup manages to subdue Nick with a stun prod he landed on when forced into Milos' old command station. Then Angus appears back on board and begins to get Trumpet ready to leave. While Nick and Angus finish the preparations, everyone else leaves for quarters to secure for heavy g. An Amnion warship and a few other human pirate ships converge on Trumpet as it disengages from Billingate just as Billingate's reactor explodes. Trumpet escapes into the gap, presumably leaving all the other ships left behind to be destroyed. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Warden Dios, the director of the UMCP, gathers together his directors, Min Donner, director of the UMCP's Enforcement Division (ED), Hashi Lebwohl, director of Data Acquisition (DA), and Godsen Frik, director of Protocol (PR), for a video conference with the Governing Council of Earth and Space (GCES), brought about by the apparent escape of the known pirate Angus Thermopyle and suspected traitor Milos Taverner, as such was their cover story when they left UMCPHQ. The GCES demands disclosure and uses the opportunity to ask about Morn Hyland, a UMCP ensign they apparently abandoned to pirates and the Amnion. Warden and Hashi offer half-truths to the Council, telling them that they failed to recapture Angus and Milos, and that they arranged for Morn to be given to Nick as 'payment' for a job they had him do so that she could be used as a bargaining ship should Nick's mission at Billingate fail. The mission was to give a non-working anti-mutagen drug in hopes that it would disrupt Billingate's usefulness to the Amnion, not letting on that they gave him a working anti-mutagen drug that the UMCP suppressed years previous. Later Dios admits to Min in confidence that he did this purposely in hopes to get the UMCP severed from the UMC so that it would be reformed under the GCES. Dios hopes to disrupt the power that Holt Fasner, the CEO of the UMC, has over human controlled space. He then instructs Min to leave UMCPHQ, which is orbiting Earth, for Suka Bator. There Min meets with Captain Sixten Vertigus, the man who made first contact with the Amnion, and is now a member of the GCES. She convinces him to propose a bill of severance that would put the UMCP under the control of the GCES, persuading him to act as if it was his own idea so that no one would know that Min Donner or Warden Dios had anything to do with it. As Min is about to leave, she and Sixten are attacked by a kaze that Min recognizes in time to prevent the kaze's surgically implanted explosives from killing them. Despite being injured, Min then leaves so that no one knows she was there. The Kaze causes the GCES to announce a state of emergency, suspending GCES meetings until further notice. Warden Dios declares a similar lockdown at UMCPHQ, suspecting that Frik or Fasner might be behind the kaze to keep Sixten from proposing the bill of severance that Dios hoped only he, Min and Sixten knew about. Fasner attempts to summon Frik to his private orbiting station, but Frik refuses, citing Dios' orders as explanation, but in actuality he would rather not confront his boss and mentor. Another kaze kills Frik. Dios is summoned to Fasner's home instead and is asked to explain why he disclosed so much information as to horrify the GCES, and why he restricted Frik's movements, resulting in his death. Dios manages to answer, but does not completely satisfy Fasner. Fasner mentions that he is aware that Dios sent Min Donner to the borders of forbidden space to await the return of Angus and Milos. He instructs Dios to tell Donner to kill Angus and Milos should anything go wrong."
545,The Cometeers,science," Young Bob Star—the son of hero John Star—lives in Purple Hall on Phobos, feeling like a prisoner. Grim news arrives about a ""comet"" approaching the solar system comet that moves about as if it is managed by intelligent beings. The invading aliens are referred to as The Cometeers. After the so-called Cometeers penetrate into the secret archives of The Green Hall and carry out information that a man named Merrin alive, the Council of The Green Hall decides to destroy the comet with the secret weapon AKKA. Jay Kalam the commander of the Legion seeks peaceful contact with the aliens at first. The Green Hall directs John Star to kill Merrin if necessary. Merrin is Stephen Orco - his old acquaintance the Legion Academy. Merrin is in fact a psychopathic, outlawed android who once subjected Star to horrific torture with the help of the Iron Confessor device developed by the ""Reds"" of the Old Earth. Kalam tells Bob that entrepreneur Edward Orco found in space a life-support space capsule with a child inside who Orco adopted under the name Stephen. Stephen Orco graduated the Academy, was assigned to Callisto, created a vortex gun based on the plasma weapons of the Medusae, and raised a revolt against Green Hall. Aladoree Anthar's attempt to destroy the rebels with AKKA failed, as Stephen Orco has the same weapon, designed by himself. However, the Legion was able to develop its vortex cannon and forced Orco to surrender. Orco bargained for her life, only Bob Star can kill Orco. Kalam leaves Star on Neptune, which contain secret prison with Orco and goes off on a mission of goodwill to Cometeers. Bob Starr sees a girl, begged him to kill Orco. Suddenly appear Cometeers, kidnapped prisoner and murdered all jailers. Surviving legionnaires Gilles Habibullah and Hal Samdu with Bob Star found the wrecked ship Jay Kalam, which was destroyed by Cometeers. Then they find the ship ""Kingfisher Bird"" and fly away. But Cometeer destroys the engines. Heroes find a mysterious asteroid - the base of a brilliant scientist (but they also found traces of Cometeers). There, Bob Star finds a girl who uses a certain kind of teleportation. Asteroid is sucked into a comet. Legionnaires find a cache with fuel and fly to the main comet planetoid, where are captured by Cometeers. Kalam understand the language of a girl. She is one of the descendants of the Spanish crew of the research starship captured by Cometeers. She knows that in the center of the main planetoid is a weapon that can destroy the body intangible Cometeers. Bob Star can incite the prisoners to revolt, the heroes get to the center planetoid, where they find an empty box. Kalam tells Steven Orco (he became Cometeer) and the ruler of a comet that Orco - android, an artificial person, created in the asteroid exile scientist Eldo Arruni. Realizing what the devil he has created, Arruni placed Orco in a capsule and sent it into space. At this time, Habibullah finds a mysterious weapon and sends it to Bob Star, he remembers that Orco was unable to break his will with the help of the Iron Confessor and destroys cometeers. He speaks to his mother that the girl is his bride."
546,The Life of the World to Come,science," The first part is an extension of the first person accounts previously supplied by Mendoza, which accounts are apparently previous chapters in her journal, written on any material she can get. Somehow all of this manages to stay intact for the unknown amount of time, perhaps 3000 years, that Mendoza spends in exile on Santa Catalina. The period is uncertain because Mendoza herself cannot remember living through some portions of it. From time to time she looks down at her plants, and next time she looks up months or years have slipped by. She may just be doing the cyborg version of 'zoning out', but since she has already slipped forward in time once, there's no telling what might be happening. What is certain is that she is about 150,000 years in the past, growing fruit and vegetables for a Company resort on Santa Cruz island. One day, a man shows up in a Company Time Shuttle. These previously unknown vessels let the Company ship tourists back to the past, but can only be piloted by cyborgs. Nonetheless the man is the image of her two previous lovers, and she does unto him what she did unto them. This time, however, he leaves behind genetic material when he goes back to the future. She is able to learn from this that he is no more human than she, but in a different way. His name is Alec Checkerfield. Next we learn about ""Smart Alec"", precocious scion of rich privileged 24th century Londoners, who leave him in the care of their housekeepers so they can get on with their lives away from dismal, puritanical England. Alec affects all around him, especially machines. Given a highly controlled moral teaching unit at a young age, he is able to re-program it by instinct to become his personal assistant and, eventually, partner in crime. This entity becomes ""The Captain"", after the pirate Captain Morgan. They resolve to rule the oceans of the world, using smuggling to pay the bills. Since meat, alcohol, chocolate etc. are illegal in most of the developed world, this is both easy and lucrative. With the assistance of the Captain, Alec outwits the Company and becomes master of his own time machine. This is in no small part thanks to Mendoza, who disables the self-destruct device on the one he initially stole from the Company. However, at the peak of his achievements, he finds he has committed one of the most heinous crimes of history. He, Mendoza and the Inklings all become aware of their parts in this. All are left desolated, filled with self-loathing and worse."
547,Specials,science," The third novel in the Uglies series begins two months after events in Pretties, when Tally Youngblood has become a member of an elite group of ""Specials"" - surgically enhanced super-humans - called the Cutters. The Cutters were originally founded by Shay, who invented the use of ritual self-harm to become ""bubbly"" and clear-headed in spite of brain lesions used to make her pretty-minded. All of the specials in this group were able to get rid of the brain lesions on their own, and now live in the wild. They were adopted into Special Circumstances and given enhanced senses, strength and reflexes, and are among the youngest agents working for Dr Cable. The Cutters disguise themselves as Uglies in order to crash a party in Uglyville and search for members of the New Smoke. Tally successfully finds a girl giving out pills which cure the pretty lesions, which she encourages the Uglies to take to the Crims - Tally and Shay's old clique. The Cutters attempt to capture the girl, but she escapes on a hoverboard with David's help. Giving chase, the Cutters are ambushed by Smokies with unusually advanced technology, including infra-red masking sneak suits and electrical weapons. The Smokies kidnap Fausto, one of the Cutters, and leave Shay and Tally injured. Hearing that the pills are intended for Zane, Tally insists on going to see her boyfriend, who suffered brain damage in New Pretty Town and has been hospitalized since Tally turned Special. Tally discovers that while Zane is free of the pretty lesions, his brain has been damaged and his physical infirmity now disgusts her. She begins to wonder if she received a brain operation when being made Special which has given her feelings of superiority. Eager to show Dr. Cable that Zane is cured so that he will be made Special, Shay and Tally break into the city armory to steal something to cut off Zane's tracking necklace. They succeed, but in the attempt, they accidentally destroy much of the armory, putting the city on high alert. Then, they begin to secretly track Zane and the Crims as they journey to the New Smoke, although the pair split up when Tally receives a guide to the New Smoke from her friend Andrew Simpson Smith, an escapee from a reservation of primitive culture. Shay follows the guide straight to the Smoke, but Tally insists on staying with Zane. On the journey, Zane notices Tally and confronts her about her reasons for following him. The pair kiss, but Tally is still repulsed by Zane's tremors and runs away from him. Tally continues to follow the group to the New Smoke - a city called Diego, which accepts runaways freely, having widely adopted the pretty cure and rejected the rules about surgery, allowing anyone to look how they please rather than following the international standard. Tally is amazed by this, but horrified to hear that Diego is beginning to expand into the wild, clear-cutting forest like the Rusties did. Tally finds Fausto at a party for newly arrived runaways, but realizes his Special brain surgery has been cured. He had given informed consent before he became special to take a ""cure"" for having a special brain. Tally only just escapes being forcibly injected. Her escape attempt leaves her helpless, as she jumps off a cliff with only crash bracelets to catch her fall. She is picked up by Diego's authorities and locked up for her lethal strength and weapon-sharp teeth and fingernails, which they insist on removing. The doctors inform her that she has received brain surgery to give her flashes of anger and euphoria, along with feelings of superiority, although they will not change this without her consent. With Shay's help, Tally escapes just before the surgery begins. Shay and the other Cutters have all been cured by Fausto, but they want Tally's help to protect Diego from imminent attack by Dr Cable, who is blaming the so-called New System for the attack on the armory. Tally assists in the evacuation of the hospital, but learns after the attack that Zane, having just received surgery to cure his tremors, died of complications during the confusion of the attack. Grief-stricken, Tally leaves immediately to tell Dr Cable the truth about the attack on the armory. Just before she reaches the city, she meets David, who took a helicopter to talk to her in time. He tells her that he still believes she can think her own way out of her brain surgery, but gives her an injector full of the cure so that she has the option of curing herself. Arriving at Special Circumstances headquarters, Tally finds Dr Cable and the Specials have taken control of the city. Dr Cable knows that Tally was responsible for the attack, but has chosen to use the attack as a way to seize control over both this city and Diego. Tally tricks Dr Cable into stabbing herself on the injector, and is imprisoned underground for a month, watching the feeds as Dr. Cable slowly loses her grip on the city and the cure begins to spread. Diego publishes scans of Tally's Special body, calling her a ""morphilogical violation,"" and the world is outraged by Dr Cable's ""secret"" experiments on unconsenting teenagers. Eventually, Tally is taken as the last remaining Special to be ""despecialized"", but she resists the surgeons and breaks out with Dr. Cable's help, becoming the only true Special left. She returns to David, still waiting at the Rusty Ruins, and realizes that her other friends have all found their places in the New System. She decides that she wishes to remain in the wild, free from surgery, and with David she will form the ""New Special Circumstances"", ensuring that nature is protected from mankind's excesses."
548,Junior Jedi Knights: Vader's Fortress,science," Anakin Solo, Tionne and the Jedi Master Ikrit travel to one of Darth Vader's safehouses on the planet Vjun. It is entirely abandoned and seemingly holds Obi-Wan Kenobi's old lightsaber."
549,Gathering Blue,science," Kira is a girl with a twisted leg who lives in a more primitive society where people who can't work die. She has been kept alive by her mother, and, when her mother dies, is brought before the Council of Guardians. Kira's life is spared when she proves she can embroider well, and is assigned to the task of fixing up the robe worn by the singer whose only job is to sing the story of human civilization once a year. She meets Thomas, the boy whose duty is to carve the Singer's staff; and, when running out of thread, begins making a trip to the hut of Annabella, an old woman who teaches Kira dyeing. Annabella shows her the plants needed to make every color, except for blue. Kira slowly learns that her life is less than idyllic. She hears crying in her building, and she and Thomas discover another orphan girl whose ability is to sing and will eventually replace the current Singer. The orphan girl is scolded and punished if she doesn't sing; Kira befriends her but realize that she, Thomas, and the orphan girl do not have as much freedom as thought. At the Ceremony, she sees the Singer (whose robe she is fixing). She realizes that his feet are chained, and he is essentially a prisoner. The implication is that she and the others with Gifts are also prisoners. Kira is also friends with a boy named Matt. Matt tells Kira of a village he once came across while lost in the woods. This village has blue. When the day that the Singer sings his song comes, Matt is nowhere to be found. He eventually returns with a blind man from the village in a blue shirt. The man, it turns out, is the father whom Kira thought was dead. He now lives in a community made up of injured and disabled people who help one another. He has enemies on the council and is forced to return, while Kira decides to stay in the village to continue to mend the singer's robe and help improve the society she lives in."
550,The Master Mind of Mars,science," On Mars, Paxton is taken in by elderly mad scientist Ras Thavas, the ""Master Mind"" of the title, who educates him in the ways of Barsoom and bestows on him the Martian name Vad Varo. Ras has perfected techniques of transplanting brains, which he uses to provide rich elderly Martians with youthful new bodies for a profit. Distrustful of his fellow Martians, he trains Paxton as his assistant to perform the same operation on him. But Paxton has fallen in love with Valla Dia, one of Ras' young victims, whose body has been swapped for that of the hag Xaxa, Jeddara (empress) of the city-state of Phundahl. He refuses to operate on Ras until his mentor promises to restore her to her rightful body. A quest for that body ensues, in which Paxton is aided by others of Ras' experimental victims, and in the end he attains the hand of his Valla Dia, who in a happy plot twist turns out to be a princess."
551,Ringworld's Children,science," The novel's plot is largely concerned with the so-called Fringe War. All the intelligent species of Known Space are interested in the Ringworld. In the novel (actually begun in the previous novel, The Ringworld Throne), they engage in a Cold War of sorts on the fringe of the Ringworld star system. The novel also explores the interactions of multiple elements invented or described in previous Niven short stories or novels. For instance, two stories in the Crashlander short-story anthology consider separately the implications of a super-fast hyperdrive (""At the Core"") and medical nanotechnology (""Procrustes""). Although these super-technologies are seemingly unrelated, their combination is a key element of the plotline of Ringworld's Children. In another example, the ARM ships of the Fringe War are powered by antimatter and have antimatter weapons. When asked where they most likely got it from, the Hindmost remarks that it is probably from an antimatter solar system. This is a reference to a third short story (""Flatlander"") in the Crashlander anthology that describes the discovery of the antimatter planet Cannonball Express. Another, more obscure reference to a Beowulf Shaeffer story, ""The Borderland of Sol"", concerns creatures that live in hyperspace and eat spaceships in hyperspace around gravity wells, thus explaining why ships cannot safely engage their hyperdrive close to a large mass (which was previously described as a singularity before this revelation). This reference, dismissed as a myth in the earlier story, is casually confirmed as fact in this installment and is surpassed by the creation of a hyperdrive that moves the entire Ringworld to destination unknown. As in the previous two novels, the interactions of various hominid Pak protectors play an important role, including one who claims to be one of the original builders of the ring. A number of previously revealed ""facts"" turn out to have been lies told by characters in the books, which is another common feature of Niven's Ringworld and other Known Space stories, especially those involving Protectors and Puppeteers. es:Hijos de Mundo Anillo it:I figli di Ringworld ja:リングワールドの子供たち"
552,G.O.G. 666,science," The novel concerns Russian genetics experiments resulting in a being that is half ape, half brain."
553,The Invasion,science," Young teenagers Jake and Marco leave the mall one evening. On the way out, they meet Rachel and Cassie, who are together, and Tobias—all kids from their school—and decide to walk home together. While taking a shortcut through an abandoned construction site when an alien spacecraft lands nearby. The badly injured alien pilot, an Andalite named Prince Elfangor, emerges from the ship and explains to the kids that the Earth is being invaded in secret by a race of aliens called the Yeerks, a slug-like parasitic species who infest humans through their ear canals and take complete control of the human's body, turning them into what is called a Controller. The human controllers are still self-aware but the Yeerk in their head has complete control over their body and what they say. Elfangor tells them that more Andalites will not come to Earth for a year or more, and by then, Earth will already be completely taken over. To combat the Yeerks, he gives the humans morphing ability: the power to become any creature they touch by absorbing the creature's DNA. Elfangor warns them to never stay beyond two hours in a morph, or they will be trapped in that form forever. The Yeerks, led by Visser Three, arrive to kill Elfangor and eliminate all traces of him and his ship. The humans hide and watch, but are discovered and chased by the Yeerks. The group escapes shaken, but more or less unhurt. The next morning, Tobias visits Jake and informs him that the previous night was not just a dream; he had already morphed his pet cat. The five kids meet at Cassie's farm, where a police officer arrives and informs them that a group of teenagers were sighted setting off fireworks in the abandoned construction site the previous night. He asks if they know anything about it, and the five of them realize that the police officer is a Controller. Later that day, Jake's older brother Tom expresses a similar interest in the teenagers at the construction site and presses Jake for information. Marco realizes—much to Jake's anger—that Tom is also a Controller. Tom invites Jake and Marco to a meeting of a local community club called The Sharing, which the teens quickly determine is a front for the Yeerks to acquire new hosts. They also discover that their assistant principal Mr. Chapman is the leader of The Sharing and a human-Controller. The next day, Jake morphs into a green anole lizard to spy on Chapman, and discovers that there is an entrance to the Yeerk Pool—a large, underground control center where the Yeerks can feed and recuperate—in their school. The teenagers, newly christened as Animorphs (from Animal Morphers) by Marco, head to The Gardens, a large zoo and amusement park, to acquire some new, battle-capable morphs. That evening, they decide to infiltrate the Yeerk Pool in order to rescue Tom, but find that Cassie has been kidnapped by the policeman-Controller. With no time to plan a strategy, the four remaining Animorphs head into the Yeerk Pool. They manage to rescue Cassie, but find themselves outnumbered and outgunned by Visser Three and his Yeerks. Jake, Rachel, Marco, and Cassie barely escape along with a woman who is free. During the escape, the policeman-Controller is killed. Tobias is able to escape later, but has to stay in morph too long and gets stuck in morph as a red-tailed hawk. The Animorphs fail to rescue Tom, and Jake promises to keep fighting the Yeerks until the Andalites arrive. *The main human characters are introduced. *Andalites are introduced. *Elfangor is introduced. *Yeerks are introduced. *Visser Three is introduced. *The Animorphs' battle begins. *Tobias morphs into a red-tailed hawk and remains so for more than two hours, which means he cannot morph back. *Jake uses thought speak while in human form early on in the book, thinking at Tobias while in cat morph, but in subsequent books it is stated that this is impossible. This is because K. A. Applegate changed her mind about this, but forgot to correct the scene. *When talking to Elfangor, Visser Three's dialogue gives the impression that the two have never met, but The Andalite Chronicles reveals that in reality Elfangor was indirectly responsible for Visser Three acquiring his current host (Although this implied lack of knowledge could have simply been Visser Three's attempts to taunt Elfangor with how little he has accomplished in his struggle against Visser Three) *When Tobias comes over to Jake's house he said that when he morphed, his cat freaked out and scratched him, and he still had the scratches, even though in all other books, when you morph and demorph, any injuries you have in human form will be gone."
554,Hocus Pocus,science," Eugene is fired from his job as a college professor after having several of his witticisms surreptitiously recorded by the daughter of a popular conservative commentator. Eugene then becomes a teacher at a nearby overcrowded prison run by a Japanese corporation. His employer, and occasional acquaintance, is the prison's warden, Hiroshi Matsumoto. After a massive prison break, Eugene's former college is occupied by escapees from the prison, who take the staff hostage. Eventually the college is turned into a prison, since the old prison was destroyed in the breakout. Ironically, Eugene is ordered to be the warden of the prison, but then becomes an inmate, presumably via the same type of ""hocus pocus"" that led to his dismissal from his professorship."
555,When Harlie Was One,science," Central to the story is an Artificial Intelligence named H.A.R.L.I.E., also referred to by the proper name ""HARLIE"" - an acronym for Human Analog Replication, Lethetic Intelligence Engine (originally Human Analog Robot Life Input Equivalents). HARLIE's story revolves around his relationship with David Auberson, the psychologist who is responsible for guiding HARLIE from childhood into adulthood. It is also the story of HARLIE's fight against being turned off, and the philosophical question whether or not HARLIE is human; for that matter, what it means to be human. When HARLIE Was One contains the first fictional representation of a computer virus. It also is the first use of the term 'virus' to describe a program that infects another computer."
556,Dune: The Machine Crusade,science," Dune: The Machine Crusade moves forward into the center of the Butlerian Jihad, described in the first book of the trilogy, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Leading the movement is the ex-slave and ex-machine trustee Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo. However, Iblis appears more interested in politics and his own personal legacy than in the Jihad. Vorian Atreides, despite the long life given to him by his father, the Titan Agamemnon, begins to show the vestiges of wanting to settle down after visiting the planet Caladan, and meeting Leronica Tergiet, who is to become his long-term concubine. Xavier Harkonnen manages to free Ix from the thinking machines and must eventually make the ultimate sacrifice that will tarnish his name. The robot Erasmus continues with his enlightening human experimentation, and makes a curious bet with the Omnius entity on Corrin, where he claims he can raise a human being to be orderly and civilized like a machine. This child is Gilbertus Albans, the first true Mentat. Omnius himself suffers badly from a computer virus created by Vorian and spread unwittingly by his old companion Seurat. On Ginaz, the aging Zon Noret is killed in a training accident by a mek called Chirox, a captured and reprogrammed fighting machine. Though Noret did not live to pass on his skills to the other Ginaz mercenaries, Chirox remained to train them into the greatest of all mercenaries, the Swordmasters, who will be the ultimate fighting force against the thinking machines. On the planet of Poritrin, Norma Cenva leaves the world just in time to avoid a slave uprising during which a slave, unaware of the consequences, fires a lasgun into a Holtzman personal shield. The resulting explosion wipes out Tio Holtzman's labs; the slave revolt is eventually brutally crushed. Meanwhile Norma, due to her heritage as daughter of the main Sorceress of Rossak Zufa Cenva, finally taps into her latent powers under great pressure (precipitated by her capture and subsequent torture by the Titan Xerxes) to become the spearhead of humanity. She envisions a future in which massive ships transport goods and humans instantaneously across the universe, using the Holtzman effect to fold space. Norma's ships are the first of what will later be known as heighliners, and her family uses their monopoly on such travel to found the Spacing Guild. As for the slaves on Poritrin, a small band of Zensunnis steal the first space-folding ship and flee to a lonely desert planet called Arrakis, where they will join the followers of Selim, and become the Free Men of Arrakis. Finally, the remaining Titans take their chance becoming independent from their machine master Omnius on the planet of Bela Tegeuse."
557,The Weakness,science," During a failed attempt to assassinate Visser Three using cheetah morphs, the Animorphs learn that the Council of Thirteen has sent an inspector to check up on the progress of the invasion of Earth. Seeing an opportunity to discredit Visser Three politically, Rachel devises a plan to terrorize local businesses run by known Controllers. With Jake out of town, Rachel is temporarily elected to lead the Animorphs, much to Marco's disdain. The Animorphs spend the day putting Rachel's plan into action. Their first raid occurs at a news station, where a tour is being given to a group of people. An elderly man is shocked by the sight of wild animals destroying the news room and falls down. During a break in the operation, Rachel and Cassie see a news report covering the first raid and learn that the man who fell down has died of a heart attack. Rachel pushes the Animorphs for one last raid at the Community Center, and opts to go in with everyone morphed as polar bears. The others are hesitant since they have lost the element of surprise and the Community Center is a Yeerk stronghold, but Rachel remains insistent. The raid goes badly after Visser Three and the inspector, a Garatron-Controller, join the fight. Having all morphed the same animal and therefore having no versatility, the Animorphs are forced to withdraw, but Cassie is captured before she can get out. The remaining Animorphs return to Cassie's barn. Rachel, devastated by her leadership failure, attempts to pass the responsibility to Marco, who berates her for her show-off attitude seen throughout the day. Marco declines, saying that any attempt to rescue Cassie is Rachel's responsibility. With less than an hour to save Cassie, Rachel comes up with a plan to get them into the Yeerk pool. Rachel, Marco, and a human-morphed Tobias and Ax assemble at Morgan Airport, where they jump the fence and hijack a private jet belonging to Phillip Morris USA. After putting the plane on a collision course with a vacant building that is known to harbor a large entrance for Bug fighters to access the Yeerk pool complex, the Animorphs bail out of the plane in their various bird-of-prey morphs and fly into the Yeerk pool. Rachel is the first to arrive, where she and Cassie are forced to engage several Hork-Bajir-Controllers. The fighting is quickly halted by Visser Three, however, when he challenges the Garatron-inspector to defeat the ""Andalite Bandits"" for himself. The inspector reluctantly accepts and engages Rachel and Cassie. They struggle to hold their ground against the incredibly fast Garatron-Controller until Tobias and Ax arrive, carrying Marco in cobra-morph. Marco manages to fatally bite the inspector and the Animorphs make their escape. Visser Three makes no effort to stop them and mocks the inspector as he slowly dies from the venom. Rachel visits the family of the man who died during the raid on the news station. After offering her condolences, she quickly leaves and finds Jake waiting for her in the driveway. Rachel tells Jake that she ""screwed up"", but Jake retorts that she didn't get anyone killed and that is all that matters. Rachel tells Jake to never go away again."
558,Last Man Running,science," The Doctor is irritated when Leela attacks the buzzing TARDIS console with her knife, convinced there is a hostile insect inside. When the TARDIS materializes in a pine forest, he sets off for a quiet walk by himself, leaving her locked inside; but moments after leaving the safety of the ship he is targeted and pursued by a predator, something like a giant bird louse. He is forced to climb a tree to escape, but the predator begins to climb the tree as well... Meanwhile, Leela experiments with the TARDIS console and works out how to open the doors and follow the Doctor. A police squad from the Out-systems Investigation Group has landed nearby in pursuit of an outlaw weapons technologist, a runner from justice. But as the squad advances into the jungle they stop receiving signals from their ship, and Rinandor and Pertandor must return to find out what's happening. They find that the ship has vanished into thin air -- and before they can report back they are attacked by a squad snake, a group organism which attacks with crippling sound waves. Meanwhile, the rest of the group finds the crash site of the runner's ship, but no sign of the ship itself; they are then attacked by flying reptiles which instantly kill Investigator Monly. The others escape, but the group's leader, Kley, now knows that the group was not told everything they need to know about this planet. She'd been told that the group had been fully briefed before she joined them, yet nobody else has been told that the runner is a ""toody"", one of the second-class citizens of the system from the Second Planet. Rinandor and Pertandor stumble through an invisible boundary between the jungle and the pine forest, and thus meet Leela. Leela uses her hunting skills to kill the squad snake, saving their lives, but Rinandor remains suspicious of her and demands to know why she's on an interdicted world. Leela easily slips away from them and soon finds the Doctor, who is still trapped by the bird-louse predator. Leela also kills this predator and takes the Doctor back to Rinandor and Pertandor, who are forced to concede that they can't survive on this world without Leela's help. They assume that the Doctor is also a toody -- probably a duelling agent who's brought Leela to this world to train illegally. Trying to find the rest of their group, they instead find a pool blocking their path -- and, impossibly, the equipment packs they discarded during their flight from the snake are on the island in the centre of the pool. Pertandor foolishly tries to swim across to fetch the packs, and is attacked by an aquatic predator. Once again Leela fights and kills the creature, which the Doctor suspects was engineered by a guiding intelligence -- as has this entire situation. They are reunited with the rest of the OIG squad, and the Doctor learns that they're hunting a weapons technologist and that their expedition is woefully underequipped and underinformed. Leela hears a noise nearby and slips away to investigate, and watches from hiding as three humanoid warriors emerge from a shaft in the ground nearby. The Doctor finds them but is ignored, and theorizes that they're here to provide a challenge for Leela. Unfortunately, the OIG team arrives and tries to confront the three warriors, who instantly react when weapons are drawn. In the ensuing fight two of the warriors are gunned down, the officer Sozerdor is killed, and Leela kills the third warrior in hand-to-hand combat. The shaft seals itself up, and the Doctor theorizes that they're in a weapons development facility -- and that more than just budgetary reasons are behind the OIG team's lack of preparation. He suggests waiting to see what happens next, but then the ground opens up beneath their feet... The Doctor awakens in darkness, taunted by the voice of the runner. The Doctor refuses to discuss his arrival on the planet, and is then rescued from his force-field prison by Kley's second-in-command, Fermindor, who claims that he awoke alone in this underground complex. They follow pulses of hypnotic light to a recycling centre, where the remains of the two ships from the surface have been reduced to their component molecules -- and where Fermindor's attention is instantly drawn to the undamaged TARDIS, which is circling the plasma stream. His fellow investigator Belay also arrives, having freed himself somehow, and like Fermindor he instantly asks the Doctor about the TARDIS -- confirming the Doctor's suspicion that they have been 'programmed' by the runner to seek more information on the TARDIS. Overpowered by their programmed instincts, they both leap into the plasma stream before he can stop them, and are blown apart. The runner, meanwhile, sends a false distress call back to the OIG team's homeworld, where Director Drew makes the unprecedented decision to send a three-ship rescue team despite the drain this will cause on the OIG's budget. This act is largely dismissed as a publicity stunt by the media, whose attention is fully occupied by a forthcoming death duel on the public sports channel; the fight between a firster and toody will carry the extra baggage of symbolising the underlying resentment and prejudice between the First and Second Planets. Drew's deputy Feerlenator suspects that there's more going on than he knows -- but even he doesn't realize that Drew is involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the domination of the First Planet. Leela is rescued from her force-field prison by a clone of the Doctor who tries to elicit information about the TARDIS from her. The real Doctor finds them, and the clone attacks him; but as it is an imperfect copy it is killed by the hypnotic pulses of light. The Doctor and Leela follow the corridor to the facility's control centre, where Leela finds she is able to use the system to generate predators and artificial environments for battle. The Doctor realizes that mental feedback from the machine is amplifying and honing her aggressive tendencies. They are then confronted by the runner -- Monly, who claims that he slipped away from the group when they first landed and replaced himself with a clone who was killed to divert suspicion. Monly generates four clones of Leela, who march the Doctor and the real Leela to the real control centre. All this time, they -- and the rest of the OIG team -- have been trapped in force-field cubicles and fed sensory illusions. Monly continues to taunt the Doctor, but the Doctor quickly realizes that ""Monly"" is really a clone. A second Monly emerges from another cubicle, but the Doctor isn't fooled twice. The real runner is finally forced to show himself -- and it's Sozerdor, who has come to this world to manufacture weapons for the conspiracy back home. Sozerdor traps Leela in a force field and threatens to crush her unless the Doctor reveals the secrets of the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to convince the confused Monly clones that Sozerdor is insane. They attack Monly, who guns them down -- but the distraction enables the Doctor to rescue Leela. Sozerdor flees while the Doctor and Leela release the others from their cubicles; Kley, Fermindor, Rinandor and Pertandor seem none the worse for their experiences, but Belay seems to be on the verge of losing control. The Doctor explains that they're in a testing facility abandoned by the extinct Lentic Empire; soldiers were placed in these arenas and tested to destruction, the idea being to breed the perfect super-soldier from the last survivor. Now Sozerdor intends to generate an army of Leela clones -- the ultimate warrior, distilled to perfection by the Last-Man-Running scenario. Sozerdor's distress call and Drew's machinations have resulted in three ships arriving in orbit around the planet -- to provide their clone army with transport back home. The Doctor and Leela transport themselves and the OIG team to the surface, where clones of the OIG team have been sent out to lure the rescue party into a false sense of security. Leela tries to scout ahead to find out what's happening, but Belay follows and is seen, provoking a gun battle between the clones and the rescue team. Belay, trying to defend himself, loses his sense of his own identity when he sees himself and his friends shooting at him, and accidentally guns down the rescue party before being shot by Rinandor's clone. The other OIG teams manage to defeat their own clones, and on the Doctor's advice, they take the rescue shuttles back to the orbiting ships and advise the commander of the rescue mission to bomb the planet from orbit. Leela fights her clones as they emerge one by one from the transmat system, and although the strain on her sanity is nearly too much for her to handle the Doctor is there to see her through. They return to the Lentic facility to confront Sozerdor, and are able to trap him in a force field; Leela then activates all of the controls she can find, drawing on the facility's power until the defenses are too weak to shield against the orbital strafing. The power drain also releases Sozerdor from his force field, but before he can shoot the Doctor or Leela, the recycling facility shuts down -- thus cutting off the plasma stream around the TARDIS -- and the lights go out. Sozerdor is disoriented in the darkness, but Leela unerringly locates the TARDIS -- and she and the Doctor escape while the OIG rescue mission bombs the facility, bringing it down around Sozerdor's head."
559,Thorns,science," Humanity has colonized the solar system and moved outward to begin exploring the far reaches of the galaxy. An interplanetary audience follows real-life stories of triumph and tragedy presented to them by Duncan Chalk, a media mogul with apparently limitless resources. Chalk, unknown to all around him, is a kind of psychic vampire who draws sustenance from the emotions of others, particularly those of pain and trauma. Though he enjoys playing his inner circle of assistants against each other as a sort of daily snack, Chalk's true nourishment comes from the dramas he orchestrates for his audience. Chalk's latest drama involves the pairing of Minner Burris, a space explorer who was captured and surgically altered by aliens on the planet Manipool, and Lona Kelvin, a 17-year-old girl who donated eggs for a fertility experiment that produced a hundred babies. Burris, whose freakish appearance draws attention whenever he ventures out in public, has withdrawn into seclusion and bitterness. Kelvin, whose brief fame as the virgin mother of an army of children has begun to fade, has twice attempted suicide because she has not been allowed to adopt or even see any of her offspring. Chalk promises Burris a full round of surgery and treatment to restore his human appearance, and offers Kelvin a chance to adopt one of her babies, if the two agree to come together for an all-expenses paid tour of the solar system. At first the two wounded subjects enjoy each other's company and even become lovers. Kelvin's empathy and compassion are stirred by Burris's plight, and Burris enjoys playing masculine protector and guide to the naive teenager. The affection soon curdles into irritation, hostility and even hatred—all of which provide a psychic feast for Chalk. The two finally break off after a particularly vicious fight, which Chalk uses as a pretext to void the agreement. He does, however, try to keep them on the hook by dangling new offers: for example, he asks Kelvin to befriend David Melangio, a childlike man whose feats of memory and calculation are his only means of meeting a world that has already subjected him to overwhelming traumas. Kelvin erupts in rage and is carried off by Chalk's assistants. Burris, meanwhile, has a sexual fling with Elise, the widow of an astronaut who accompanied Burris on the Manipool landing, and who died from the surgical alterations performed by the aliens. Elise is both aroused and repulsed by Burris' body, and the sadomasochistic nature of her attraction eventually alienates Burris. His withdrawal causes her to commit suicide in a particularly grisly fashion. Burris, deeply shaken, returns to Earth. He has realized that Chalk's promise was empty, and that such help may no longer even be possible—the changes wrought by the Manipool aliens appear irreversible. What's more, the surgery that turned him into a monster has also ""improved"" his body in unexpected ways that Burris has come to appreciate. With the inadvertent help of Melangio, who during a typically bland chat lets slip some information that gives them clues into Chalk's true nature, Kelvin and Burris confront the media baron in his office. They expose the full, unfiltered core of their mutual pain to Chalk, who is overwhelmed and finally killed by the intensity of the emotional flood. As the novel ends, Burris has convinced Kelvin to join him in a trip back to Manipool, where they will confront the aliens and, presumably, undergo alterations that take them beyond humanity."
560,Bro,science," The protagonist is a young boy named Alexander growing up with a well off family in the Ukraine. Around 1918 when he turned 10 the Russian civil war forced him and his family to leave their home in hopes of trying to escape to Warsaw but they were hit by artillery fire and killed his father, brother, and uncle. The protagonist ends up living with an aunt in Moscow and attending college there. His aunt ends up being arrested at which point the protagonist abandons the apartment they were living in and has already dropped out of college. The protagonist decides to go on a expedition to find the Tungus meteorite which happened to strike earth the same day he was born. During this expedition the protagonist abandons the group and makes a spiritual connection with the meteorite which he describes as ""Ice"". The Ice tells the protagonist that he is a member of the brotherhood of the light, his name is Bro,and he must go out into the world and find the rest of 23,000 members.The brotherhood of the light created the universe but made one mistake which was earth. People and animals are disrupting the universe and the 23,000 want to come together to destroy the earth and restore order to the universe. The protagonist immediately sets out to accomplish this goal."
561,Midnighters 3: Blue Noon,science," When time freezes in the middle of the day during a school pep rally, the Midnighters have a problem. The secret hour is slowly making its way into the real world. The last book in the Midnighters trilogy is all about the adventure of trying to keep the secret hour in the secret hour. The Midnighters begin to experience the secret hour more and more frequently during daylight hours. To make matters worse, Rex's darkling side cannot always control itself, and may be becoming stronger. By using Madeline and other resources, the Midnighters find out that on the night of Samhain (Halloween), the Secret Hour will expand, and more of the Earth will be sucked up. This is because there is a ""rip"" in true midnight, which allows non-midnighters to slip into the blue time, that is expanding like a seam in fabric. While trying to keep people out of these dangerous zones, Jessica has some trouble with her curious little sister Beth. True midnight (usually confined to the secret hour) will last for the whole day, and all humans and creatures within it will be awake, no longer 'stiff'. This will allow the darklings to feast once again upon the creatures of day-unless the five teens find a way to stop it from happening. When Jessica and her boyfriend Jonathan manage to stop the ""blue time"" from spreading to the whole world, Jessica unfortunately gets sucked into the ""blue time"". To Jonathan and the whole Midnighter's teams dismay, she will forever be trapped in the blue time, only able to live for an hour of every day. Jessica's parents become very sad about their daughter's ""disappearance"" and are still grieving her loss when Beth comes to visit Jess for the last time. Both sisters share an emotional time with each other before Jonathan has his moment to say goodbye. Finally, with a half-hour to spare, Jonathan takes Jessica and Beth on their last flight through the blue time."
562,Island of Death,science," Jeremy Fitzoliver and his friend Sarah Jane Smith encounter a 'New Age' cult; typical work for investigative journalists. They are surprised that the cult worships a demon like figure. The Doctor and UNIT also become interested in the cult. This situation soon reveals the involvement of government ministers, alien drugs, a remote island in the Indian Ocean and official conspiracies. Even the Royal Navy gets in on the action. It soon becomes a race against time to avert disaster. It has been suggested that this is a version of a third proposed radio play following on from 'The Paradise of Death' and 'The Ghosts of N-Space'."
563,Timetrap,science," The USS Enterprise investigates the distress call of the Klingon ship 'The Mauler'. It is being assaulted by powerful energies. Despite their situation, the Klingon ship refuses all offers of help. However, Captain Kirk and two security officers beam aboard anyway. The Mauler is seemingly destroyed. Kirk, lacking his security team, finds himself seemingly one hundred years in the Klingon Empire's future."
564,Expendable,science," The year is 2452. Festina Ramos is an Explorer, assigned to the Technocracy Fleet ship Jacaranda. Her specific physical ""qualification"" for her job is a large port-wine birthmark on her right cheek. She and her fellow Explorer and partner Yarrun Derigha (who is missing half his jaw) are the two Explorers assigned to the ship; they lead the isolated existence typical of Explorers, isolated from the healthy and attractive members of the fleet as from the ""beautiful people"" of the larger society. Then Festina and Yarrun are plunged into a crisis: they are assigned to escort a Fleet admiral named Chee to planet Melaquin. Melaquin is the great question mark in the Technocracy's domain: for forty years Explorers have landed there, only to lose contact and disappear, cause unknown. The High Council has now acquired the habit of sending its troublesome admirals to Melaquin in the company of a team of Explorers, to rid itself of embarrassments without scandal or controversy. The fact that Explorers are lost in the process is accepted&mdash;since Explorers are expendable. Admiral Chee is precisely the kind of embarrassment the high council wants to dispose of, quickly and quietly. Well beyond the century mark in age, when doses of Youthboost are no longer effective in prolonging his life and health, he is ""clearly unstable, possibly senile""&mdash;or else ""suffering from Don't-give-a-shit-itis"". Though they try to avoid the duty, and then concoct a plan of escape from their apparent sentence to oblivion, Festina and Yarrun must accompany Chee to the surface of Melaqiuin. There, things go quickly and badly wrong: Festina accidentally kills Yarrun while attempting an emergency tracheotomy, Chee dies of a stroke, and Festina is cut off from her ship, alone on Melaquin. The planet reveals itself to be amazingly Earth-like&mdash;so much so that it is clearly not natural, but a result of terraforming and genetic modification. Festina quickly meets one of the inhabitants of the planet&mdash;""A nude woman made of glass...like an Art Deco figurine."" Their meeting does not go as the Explorer corps intends for first-contact situations. Eventually, though, the two establish contact; the glass woman introduces herself: ""My name is Oar. An oar is an implement used to propel boats."" She has learned English from the previous Explorers who came to the planet. A product of sophisticated genetic engineering, she is human, but flawlessly beautiful and possessing enhanced strength and intelligence; yet she has the emotional maturity of a spoiled child. Through Oar, Festina gains contact with the dying subsurface civilization that lingers on Melaquin, begins to unravel the mysteries of the planet, and pursues the trail of the Explorers who came before her. Now ""friends"", Festina and Oar set off in search of the other Explorers and the truth behind Admiral Chee and the high council's involvement with Melaquin. The two find the Explorers building a spaceship; if the Explorers can get to interstellar space and send a distress call, the rules of the League may mandate that they be rescued and returned to society&mdash;if the Fleet does not stop them first. In due course Festina meets an old flame (a cross between a schoolgirl crush and the love of her life), who reveals himself to be a profound danger instead of a welcome ally. Oar sacrifices herself for her friend, and Festina manages to return to the Fleet and the Technocracy in a way she could never have anticipated."
565,The Ballad of Beta-2,science," The story is about the history of an ill-fated multi-generational interstellar expedition of discovery. By the time the spaceship has arrived at the destination star system, the descendants are incapable and uninterested in settling the system's planets, and continue to live in the spaceship as an obscure backwater culture isolated from broader human history. A quote from the ballad written for the book:"
566,Dawn,science," Isak has attempted to explain his foretelling to the priests of the Temple of Center, so that people might be told what to expect, and not to panic when it does. They are unwilling to accept such a bizarre idea. Furthermore, while Isak is innocent of the political implications of the event he describes, the priest are not. If the gods all turn their sight from the world, they must be angry with their representatives."
567,The Door Through Space,science, The novel concerns an intelligence agent and a blood feud in the Dry Towns in the north of a world called Wolf.
568,Deepwater Black,science," The main plot involved a virus that breaks out and leaves the humans residing on Earth doomed. However, in a desperate attempt before the end, all humanity's resources are dedicated to a crash program to produce a deep space ark, capable of seeding humanity on a new world. The ship is crewed by six clones; teenage versions of people who achieved great works during the ark project and equipped with the memories of their donors. Prior to its arrival, however, the crew is awoken prematurely to face a threat to the ship, before their memories are complete. They must come to terms with the workings of the ship, the dangers faced by their ship, the realization that they are clones, and their ultimate destiny to save their race."
569,Brightness Reef,science," Starting around the year 930 C.E., and continuing until the 23rd century, sooners belonging to eight patron-class races illegally plant colonies on the planet Jijo. (""Sooner"" is a term from US history, and is used in the Uplift stories to describe illegal settlers on worlds that have been declared fallow, i.e. to be left uncolonized so that the ecosystem will recover and native intelligences may have a chance to develop.) The eight races are: g'Keks, Traeki (similar to Jophur), Glavers, Qheuen, Hoon, Tytlal (AKA noor beast), Urs, and Human. By the beginning of the novel, the Glavers have (partly) regressed to pre-sentient animals and the Tytlal have successfully disguised themselves as wildlife. The novel begins with the discovery of a badly injured stranger. The stranger is nursed by Sara, daughter of Nelo the Papermaker. The stranger cannot speak and does not seem to recall his origin. While Sara oversees his recovery, the story shifts to her two brothers, Lark and Dwer. Lark is a widely known biologist and a heretic: he preaches a belief that the members of the Six races should make themselves extinct by not breeding. Only by doing this, he believes, can they be redeemed for their ancestors' sin of settling on Jijo. Dwer is a master hunter who serves the Council of the Six Races by keeping members of all sooner races from going beyond the Slope. The other two main characters are the young adult — and keen writer — Alvin the Hoon (proper name: Hph-Wayuo) and traeki High-Sage Asx. On a mission for the Council, (with an annoying noor called Mudfoot in tow) Dwer encounters a teenage girl, Rety, who was raised in a human tribe in the forbidden lands beyond the Slope. She is chasing a robotic bird she discovered spying on a hunting party of her tribe. She escapes from Dwer and continues tracking the bird; Dwer follows, and they both become ensnared in the domain of a crazy mulc spider. The spider attempts to capture the two humans and robot, but is seriously damaged when a second larger robot arrives and shoots down the robot bird. In the flames and confusion, Dwer and Rety are rescued by Lark. The robot bird's origins remain mysterious, but the second robot came from a starship that landed near the Glade of Gathering (the center of the annual Gathering festival). Several humans emerge from the starship and proclaim themselves servants of the Rothen — the secret patrons of Humanity. The Rothen representatives (also called Daniks) are very secretive about their purpose on Jijo, but they request the assistance of the council of Sages in their exploration of Jijo, and the council provides the assistance in an attempt to discover what the Rothen are hiding. Lark is employed as a biologist to escort the Danik researcher Ling as she surveys Jijo's biosphere. On the southern coast of the slope, Alvin and his friends Huck (a g'Kek), Pincer-Tip (a qheuen) and Ur-ronn (an urs) receive unexpected assistance from Uriel the smith in completing their summer project: a submarine to explore part of the Midden — an undersea subduction zone that destroys the form of anything placed on it. The Midden is where each of the races on Jijo sunk their starships, and where the races still continue to deposit the bodies of their dead and non-decomposable trash (all of which are called ""dross""). In return for her assistance, Uriel requests that Alvin and his friends locate a hidden cache of galactic technology. Rety recovers from her injuries after the robot firefight and is sent to the Glade of Gathering where the council and a Rothen shuttle reside. When the council concludes that the Rothen may destroy all sooners on Jijo to keep their existence and activities secret, Rety is drafted to help humans from the Slope join her family's illicit colony east of the Rimmers (a local mountain range). Rety, loathing the idea of returning to her impoverished (and abusive) clan, adopts a small male urs (yee) as her 'husband' and together they steal the remains of the robotic bird she tracked from the Sage studying it, and join the Rothen — using the bird as a bartering chip. Dwer, also recovered, is sent to lead the expedition over the Rimmers without Rety's aid. When the expedition arrives at Rety's tribe, they discover Rety and the Danik pilot Kunn subjecting the human tribe and a recently captured group of urs. Rety and Kuhn are trying to learn the source of the robot bird from the tribesmen who first saw it. The members of the expedition start to develop a plan to free the urs when Kunn learns the information he sought and departs. He leaves Rety with a robot to protect her until he can return. Using a gun (made without any metal) the expedition members attack the robot and damage it. When the robot fires back, Dwer climbs aboard to damage its weapons pod. He's still on the robot when it begins to retreat; also on the robot is Rety and the noor Mudfoot. The mute stranger and Sara travel to Biblios — the great library of Jijo — where Ariana Foo, a retired human sage, attempts to discern the stranger's origins. After the stranger recognizes music from Earth, Ariana is convinced he is a member of the galactic Human race. The stranger and Sara then depart for the Glade, but are ambushed by a pack of urs and wild men. The stranger disables many of the urs using sleep pills and knowledge of the native fauna. After fighting the wild men and the remaining urs, the stranger, Sara, and their companions worry that they won't be able to escape urrish retribution, as the urs can travel faster than they. Shortly thereafter, the sound of hooves signals the arrival of women riding horses (thought to be extinct on Jijo) in the company of friendly urs. In the Glade, two Rothen depart their ship to greet the denizens of Jijo and ask to participate in a ceremony to see the Holy Egg — a rock-like Jijoian artifact of great religious and spiritual importance to the Six Races. The Rothen also claim they sent the Holy Egg to Jijo to protect Humans by pacifying the other races. This causes immediate fracturing between humans and the other races, but the ceremony continues until a heretic blocks the way and claims the Rothen must leave or the Holy Egg will dispel the Rothen from the planet. The Rothen leader, Ro-kenn says the heretic has no power to stop him, but soon after there is an explosion down slope and the Rothen research station and several Rothen robots are destroyed. A quick investigation reveals the Holy Egg did nothing — the heretics planted and ignited explosives beneath the shuttle. The second Rothen, Ro-pol, and several Danik servants are dead. In a fit of rage, Ro-kenn points to a fleck in the sky and says it is his ship decelerating from orbit to bring retribution. In the course of several arguments between the council sages and Ro-kenn it is revealed that the Rothen intended to use the Holy Egg to transmit thoughts of hatred to the participants and turn the Jijoan peoples against one another. Following this realization, the Jijoan militias assault the remaining Galactics and manage to capture Ro-kenn and his remaining Danik servants. The story ends as Asx witnesses the arrival of a second galactic ship that easily disables the Rothen cruiser. Preparing to negotiate on the behalf of the six, Asx watches in horror as the hatch opens to reveal piled stacks of rings. These are the Jophur, religious fanatics who were engineered from the Traeki. They are enemies of all other races, and have come to Jijo."
570,Raptor Red,science," In the book's opening, the title character and her mate ambush a herd of Astrodon, which are large herbivorous sauropods. The Astrodon are surprised, thinking that their bulk deters smaller predators. Utahraptor, however, are much larger than any resident raptor, and proceed to take down an Astrodon with teamwork. When Red's mate climbs onto the dead Astrodon, the corpse rolls in the mud, trapping the male under the bulk of the animal. Despite Red's best efforts, her mate suffocates. Despondent, Red wanders around the floodplain, nearly starving since a Utahraptor cannot successfully hunt big game on its own. Red follows a familiar scent and is reunited with her sister, a single mother with three chicks. The two hunt together and bring food back to the nest for the young. A white pterosaur, one Red has seen since she hatched, helps the two by finding carrion and prey in exchange for a helping of meat. On one hunting expedition, when the two adult Utahraptor are stalking a herd of Iguanodon, Red spies a young male Utahraptor that is watching their prey. He begins a courtship dance for Red, but Red's sister chases him off, hissing. Her growls agitate the Iguanodon, who stampede; the male hastily leaves. After climbing into a tree to escape a flash flood, Red encounters the male raptor again, who performs a courtship dance while hanging onto the tree branches. Red's sister begrudgingly allows the male to stay with them, provided he steers clear of her chicks. For a while, Red and her pack are happy, feeding off the plentiful carrion left by receding flood waters, but the pack's way of life is upset by an invasion of large Acrocanthosaurus, huge meat-eating dinosaurs. The added competition for food puts strain on the pack, as does the unexpected death of one of the chicks. A fight erupts between the male raptor and Red's sister. Red, torn between a prospective mate and her kin, tries to defuse the situation. Two Acrocanthosaurus watch the commotion and take the opportunity to attack the Utahraptor. Meanwhile, a Kronosaurus ambushes one of the chicks on the beach. Seeing the danger, Red lures the female Acrocanthosaurus into deep water where the larger predator is dragged under by the Kronosaurus. Red saves her family, but at a price—her consort is forced away by Red's sister. Facing continual threats from the Acrocanthosaurus, Red, her sister and the chicks are forced up into the mountains. They encounter ice and snow for the first time, and kill a segnosaur in a cave, turning the den into their nest. The older chick accompanies the two adults on hunting expeditions. One day the raptors encounter a strange creature they have never seen—a whip-tailed diplodocid who inflicts wounds on Red and her sister; the older chick is forced to set off alone and find the pack's food. This calamity coincides with the arrival of a large pack of smaller raptors known as Deinonychus. Sensing the weakness of the Utahraptor pack, they surround the nest and wait for the wounded raptors to become weak enough to attack. Red's sister dies, and Red is crippled and defenseless against the smaller dinosaurs. The Deinonychus close in and wait for Red to die, but are driven back by a sudden attack—the older Utahraptor chick returns with Red's consort to defend the nest, driving back the Deinonychus. Some time later, the old white pterosaur circles over Red's mountain stronghold, and finds the pack has grown considerably. Both Red and the older chick have found mates and have chicks, who are having fun rolling down a hill. The satisfied pterosaur leaves with a mate and offspring of his own."
571,The World Inside,science," War, starvation, crime and birth control have been eliminated. Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urban Monads (Urbmons), mammoth thousand-floor skyscrapers arranged in ""constellations"", where the shadow of one building does not fall upon another. An Urbmon is divided into 25 self-contained ""cities"" of 40 floors each, in ascending order of status, with administrators occupying the highest level. Each building can hold approximately 800,000 people, with excess population totalling three billion a year transferred to new Urbmons, which are continually under construction. The Urbmon population is supported by the conversion of all of the Earth's habitable land area not taken up by Urbmons to agriculture. The theoretical limit of the population supported by this arrangement is estimated to be 200 billion. The farmers live a very different lifestyle, with strict birth control. Farmers trade their produce for technology and the two societies rarely have direct contact; even their languages are mutually unintelligible. The Urbmons are a world of total sexual license where men are expected to engage in ""night walking""; it is considered a capital crime to refuse an invitation for sex. In this world it is a blessing to have children: most people are married at 12 and parents at 14. Just thinking of controlling families is considered a faux pas. Privacy has been dispensed with due to the limited area. Because the need to be outdoors and to travel has been eliminated, thoughts of wanderlust are considered perverse. The dwellers of the Urban Monad share scant resources and believe that sharing of everything is required in order for people to peacefully co-exist in close quarters. The sharing extends to wives and husbands, a sentiment likely springing from the free love movement of the mid-to-late Twentieth century. Although great effort is spent to maintain a stable society, the Urban Monad lifestyle causes mental illness in a small percentage of people, and this fate befalls two of the book's main characters. ""Social engineers"" reprogram those who are approaching an unacceptable level of behavior. Given the extremes of life in the Urban Monads, law enforcement and the concept of justice employ a zero tolerance policy. There are usually no trials, and punishment is swift; anyone who threatens the stability of the Urbmon society (a ""flippo"") is ""erased"" by being thrown into a shaft that terminates in the building's power generator. This gives one of the book's characters the idea that humanity has been selectively bred for life within the Urbmons."
572,The Plot To Save Socrates,science," The Plot to Save Socrates deals primarily with the concept of time travel, and while the novel rarely discusses time travel directly, it poses several questions about its validity and possibility (or lack thereof). In particular, the characters are trapped in endless Time loops, effectively deprived of free will and having no choice but to take an action which - due to time travel - they already know they have taken. The story begins in Athens, Greece in 2042 with the main character, Sierra Waters, thinking to herself, at which point the rest of the story begins as a flashback (both in her head and in the sense that the characters constantly flash in and out of historic eras). Sierra Waters, a graduate student, receives a copy of a previously unknown dialogue in which Socrates is being offered an escape from his death sentence in ancient Athens by a person named Andros offering to take him into the future and leave a clone behind. The document appears to be genuine, and this takes Sierra onto a path that leads her to a time traveling adventure of her own. On her path she meets up with the great historic inventor Heron of Alexandria but soon realizes that not only is Heron a time traveler himself (from a future later than hers) but is a suspicious and ruthless character. Later on she would encounter the renowned Athenian general Alcibiades, help save his life at the time when history records his death in 404 BC, become his lover and fall deeply in love with him, and help set him on a very extensive and fruitful later long life which would remain unknown to historians. The story tangles itself a bit as more and more characters appear to be intertwined with each other and on occasion even the same person at different points in life. However, the novel ultimately untangles itself, somewhat satisfying the plot's plausibility although leaving unanswered any deeper metaphysical qualms the reader might have. Together with various fictional characters, the story also involves Plato, and of course Socrates - who only comes onstage in the last part - as well as the 19th Century publisher William Henry Appleton. There are scenes across time, placed in the Ancient Library of Alexandria, Victorian New York City, and Roman London. At various points it is mentioned that Sierra Waters would eventually become the famous mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. This theme is taken up in a sequel, ""Unburning Alexandria"", of which the first two chapters were published as a standalone novelette in the November, 2008 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact and which had not yet been published in full as of October 2011."
573,The Abode of Life,science," The citizens of the isolated planet Mercan cannot conceive of the existence of much past their home planet and their dangerous, flaring sun. The USS Enterprise, severely damaged, must somehow find a way to repair itself without exposing the Mercanians to societal concepts for which they are not yet ready. The Federation's 'Prime Directive' forbids interference in less advanced cultures."
574,Heavy Weather,science," Set in the year 2031, Heavy Weather depicts a world where mankind has unbalanced the world's ecosystem with their continuing production of greenhouse gases and unchecked expansion. As a result, the weather has become unpredictable and dangerous. Powerful storms routinely leave trails of devastation in their wake. Alex Unger, a young man suffering from numerous medical problems, is liberated from an illegal Mexican clinic by his sister Janey and brought back to America to her group of friends and colleagues, the Storm Troupe. The Troupe are dedicated and knowledgeable storm chasers who use high technology to document and research the weather, led by Janey's lover, the charismatic and brilliant scientist Jerry Mulcahey. They are preparing to meet an F-6, a storm of truly monstrous proportions."
575,The Great Explosion,science," The Blieder drive, a faster-than-light drive system, has permitted the population of Earth to colonize the galaxy. Each planet has become the home for a particular social group. Four hundred years after the diaspora, a spaceship from Earth visits three of the planets, the first steps to unifying the galaxy under a new Empire. Things do not go entirely as hoped, as the incompetent military authoritarians of the ship encounter three very different societies. The first planet was a penal colony; it is now many independent kleptocratic despotisms preying on each other. The second planet, Hygeia, is populated by health and fitness fanatic nudists. The third planet, Kassim, was colonized by a religious group, but when the ship arrives, they can't find any human life, only empty villages overgrown by jungle. They decide not to land on the planet, because the captain fears that the colonists could have been killed by a disease and he doesn't want to endanger the crew. The final planet, K22g, has developed an unusual social system. The population call themselves Gands (after Gandhi) and practise a form of classless, philosophically anarchic libertarianism, based on passive resistance (""Freedom - I won't!"" and ""Myob!""); and a moneyless gift economy based on barter and favor-exchange, using ""obs"" (obligations). To perform a service for somebody ""lays an ob"" on them; they can then ""kill the ob"" by returning the favor."
576,Icefire,science," Icefire is an action/science fiction novel about an unknown group using the Ross Ice Shelf to create a soliton wave&mdash;much more powerful and destructive than tsunamis caused by seismic displacement&mdash;directed into the Pacific Ocean. Roughly the size of France, the Ross Ice Shelf is first broken free of its shoreline anchor points by tactical nuclear weapons detonated around its periphery. A larger nuclear device is then airburst above the Shelf, slamming the entire mass of loose ice into the Ross Sea beneath it and generating the monster wave. The EMP from the airburst warhead disables most electronics within its line of sight, blinding the worlds' satellites and silencing radio communication from the area. The main protagonists, Mitch Webber and Cory Rey, must escape the communication dead zone in time to tell the world what happened, warn everyone of the deadly wave racing towards it, discover who set it in motion, and find a way to catch the villains and stop the wave&mdash;if they can. The destruction caused by the bombs and peoples' understandable skepticism are working against them as, with every passing second, the wave gets closer to major cities and their unsuspecting populations."
577,1634: The Ram Rebellion,science," The book spot-covers local events and a few related diplomatic discussions from a few days after the Ring of Fire (May–June 1631) to October in the fall of 1634—giving it the largest time footprint of the four—though narrowly focused. The short novel that concludes the work begins in late August 1633 and overlaps many of the shorter works earlier in the book. Two of the three other books set in 1634 refer to the events in the work (usually as the ""troubles in Franconia"") setting its canonical place in the ""greater"" neohistorical international politics covered in the other two works. The two Larkin ""Birdie"" Newhouse tales along with two flashback vignettes by Flint begin the Ram Rebellion book, all four set in the weeks immediately after the Ring of Fire. In the Flint stories which are sandwiched around the Birdie tales, Mike Stearns goes back to school under the tutelage of Melissa Mailey. Stearns has a problem, he has to get a handle on likely complications from the local population, as the stories are set just a few days after he is elected as Chairman of the Emergency Committee. As a result, Mailey gives Stearns several very thick history books on European history in the era. Birdie Newhouse has an immediate problem, he's a farmer with most of his farm's arable land 300 years off and a continent away. The stories by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett explore the alien land practices and ownership of down-time Germany as Birdie seeks to gain additional lands. Land sales are rare, worse, the lawyers are in control and there are three general levels of vested interest: The tenants, have certain rights and obligations over and above monetary rent while leases are generally for the lesser of three generations or 99 years. In between the owner in fact, and the tenants is usually a monetary transaction which gives the rents to any number of claimants—depending upon the finances of the landholding family. The claimants all have a say in the farm operation to some extent, as do the occupants of the farm villages, which also have the right to disapprove or accept new co-farmers, for the land is farmed cooperatively with another set of obligations and entitlements. Birdie can't just go and buy a piece of land, he has to buy it from three different and diverse groups of people... and get them all to agree to terms. As the story notes, seventeenth century Germany was a lawyers paradise. Flo Richards is a farmer's wife with four grown children who had bought a small flock of type C Delaine Merino sheep and some angora rabbits before the Ring of Fire in the hope that she'd see more of her youngest daughter, Jen, once she'd finished her studies out of town. The Ring of Fire had consequently left Jan behind in the present in which Flo dealt with this loss by concentrating on her livestock. She and her husband JD have local Germans living with them as partners now that farming has become more labour intensive. Flo's laments about the poor quality wool of the locally obtained ram (who comes to be known as Brillo for that reason) strike a chord with someone and subsequently a number of 'Brillo fables' started to appear in the local broadsheet, which concerns the titular ram escaped from his pen and interfered with her merino breeding program. His fame due to the stories spread through Grantville out into the rest of Germany. The Women's League of Voters uses a Ram's Head as its emblem, schoolchildren sing songs about Brillo, and even adapted into a ballet. With the example of future Grantville, a peasant revolt becomes a revolutionary movement in the fractured Holy Roman Empire south and east of Thuringia while the Machiavellian maneuvers in the neohistorical governments and various field armies now dance to counter-act those aimed at the Americans' new heartland. Up-timers, from the original USA space-time want the serfs to succeed and liberate themselves—but also know what a bloodbath the French Revolution became and various individuals act to help one and prevent the others. Avoiding that path will take all sorts of resources and efforts, and Americans from both uptime and down-time act resolutely to mitigate the problems, diplomacy to head off wars headed by authoritarians threatened by the new American ideals, and a deft appreciation of when not to fight and dangle an irresistible carrot instead. In Franconia, schoolteacher Constantin Ableidinger has been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine. He also finds the Brillo stories interesting. The farmers in Franconia (and Thuringia for that matter) have a history of dissent concerning serfdom and Mike Stearns has hopes of getting some fundamental changes made in the way that Franconia is run as a result of a farmer's rebellion of sorts. He neglects to include this in the briefing given to the civil servants sent down to administer Franconia although these people, Johnny F. and Noelle Murphy, among others have an effect on the schoolteacher's ""Ram rebellion"". ro:1634: The Ram Rebellion"
578,The Death Guard,science," In its tale of a chemist who creates an army of bloodthirsty plant-based humanoids out of a desire to abolish war once and for all (the rationale being that no country would attack England if it were known she possessed such a defense), the book foreshadowed the rise of nuclear weapons and Cold War politics. Continental Europe forms an alliance and invades Britain. The book is divided into three parts. In the first part of this novel we meet the inventors of the artificial life. We follow their story from their first meeting through the time when they relocate their lab to the Congo for its more conducive weather conditions. The first we hear of the matured Death Guard (nicknamed Pugs) is via a radio broadcast that is ended prematurely by the hideous death of the announcer. The next part is a tour of the process of making and growing the ""pugs"", as the protagonist ""enlists"" in one of factories and gets a firsthand look at what his uncle and grandfather had wrought. The third section recounts the war with continental Europe and the breakdown of infrastructure. Involving poisonous electric gas, ""humanite"" bombs (atomic bombs), and the unfeeling march of the Death Guard across the very land they were designed to protect. Later the Death Guard continues to wander unchecked across the broken landscape even after all the enemy has been killed. The resulting carnage reduces whole cities and towns in Britain to smoking rubble."
579,To Venus in Five Seconds,science," The hero of Jane's story is a superb physical specimen of English manhood named Thomas Plummer. He is being sent to medical school by his father, a medical entrepreneur (pill manufacturer) &mdash; despite the fact that the younger Plummer is, well, not very bright. At medical school Plummer meets a young, dark-skinned woman called Miss Zumeena. The young woman invites him to tea, which takes place in her summer house (which is oddly full of machinery). A few seconds later, she informs the young Englishman that he is now on Venus. The machinery in Zumeena's gazbo operates a matter transmitter that allows almost instantaneous transport between the two planets. (This constitutes ""One of the earliest uses of the matter transmitter for interplanetary travel"" in science fiction. Jane does not spend much effort on explaining how a matter transmitter might actually work; the technology is merely a given, like the titular device in H. G. Wells's The Time Machine of 1895.) Closer to the Sun than Earth, Venus is hot and jungle-covered; the glare of the Sun both blinds the eyes and affects the mind. The planet is inhabited by two developed species, the human Sutenraa and the decidedly non-human Thotheen. Zumeena is a Sutenraa, a people from Central America via ancient Egypt, which are closely related in Jane's imaginary domain. (This incorporates another sub-genre of fantastic fiction of Jane's era, books on Egypt, the pyramids, and related matters.) These highly-advanced ancients developed a matter transmitter in their distant past, and used it to travel back and forth between the pyramids of Egypt and Central America; in the process they sometimes found themselves on Venus, apparently due to interference with the similar matter transmitter technology of the Thotheen. The latter are the dominant indigenous species of the planet; Jane both describes and draws Thotheen as a cross between a small elephant and a large horse-fly. Some of the Central-American/Egyptians settled on Venus to form a growing human community; they often served as physicians to the Thotheen. At the time of Plummer's arrival on Venus, the long co-existence between the two species is breaking down; Zumeena predicts that conflict will soon erupt between them, which the Thotheen will win due to their superior intelligence. Plummer also learns that he has been brought to Venus as a subject for vivisection, because of his excellent physique. Zumeena has taken a fancy to him, though; she makes romantic advances to him, which he spurns. She reluctantly consigns him to vivisection (though she allows him the option of anesthesia). Plummer meets two other English people on Venus, a young woman named Phyllis Alson and a clergyman. He and Phyllis quickly fall in love; the convenient clergyman marries them. War breaks out, first a civil war among the Thotheen and then the conflict between the Thotheen and Sutenraa anticipated by Zumeena. Plummer and Phyllis escape to Earth with Zumeena (the clergyman is by now dead) via matter transmitter; they land on the pinnacle of the Great Pyramid at Giza. There, Plummer finds one of his father's agents stenciling an advertisement in white paint. The young English couple return home, while Zumeena goes south to become a ""goddess"" for some primitive people. This is a reference to another popular sub-genre of Victorian fantastic fiction, the ""lost world"" or ""lost race"" stories like H. Rider Haggard's She (1886) and its many imitations. To Venus in Five Seconds has been called ""The most readable and entertaining of Jane's books."" Jane wrote other works of speculative fiction, notably The Incubated Girl (1896) and The Violet Flame (1899)."
580,The Marvelous Effect,science," The novel tells the story of 13 year-old Louis Proof, an African-American native to East Orange, NJ who is a CLE. (Celestial Like Entity), and how a race of CEs (Celestial Entities) called the ""eNoli"" (E-No-Lie) led by Galonius, try to drive the world into chaos. Louis's best friend, Brandon, his younger cousin Lacey, and the iLone (Eye-Low-Nay) Timothy, team together to free the world from Galonius's influence, as Louis masters his CLE abilities. The story is heavily action driven being influenced by on the author's love of video games and action films. Surprisingly, the book rests upon a foundation of classical literature and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and David Hume."
581,A Planet Called Treason,science," The premise of this novel is the banishment to the seemingly metal-poor planet Treason of a group of people who attempted to create rule by an intellectual elite. The novel centers on the descendants of these anti-democratic thinkers who remain imprisoned on the planet. Through the ages, these descendants have formed nations which warred and allied with one another to gain advantages over their rivals in the race to build a starship. Due to the metal-deficiency on Treason, nations are forced to obtain it through a system of barter using teleportation devices known as Ambassadors. The protagonist of the book is Lanik Mueller, heir apparent to the Mueller family kingdom. The Muellers, through generations of eugenics, have the ability to heal at an accelerated speed and regrow body parts naturally. The dark side to the Mueller nation is that, in order to obtain iron and other metals, they trade organs and body parts, which are harvested from radical regeneratives (""rads""). Radical regeneratives are people whose bodies can't distinguish between health and injury, and so grow extra appendages as well as organs of the opposite sex; although this is a normal phase for most Muellers at the age of puberty, the bodies of radical regeneratives never outgrow it. After it is discovered that Lanik is a radical regenerative, Lanik's father must essentially banish him from the kingdom, so as to avoid sending him to the ""pens"", a place where radical regeneratives are kept in order to harvest their body parts; exile also functions to get Lanik out of the eye of the Mueller public, as well as to prevent harm from coming to Lanik's supposed younger brother Dinte. The banishment comes in the form of sending Lanik as an emissary and spy to the Nkumai, a rival nation. Due to his radical regenerative body, Lanik has grown breasts, which makes him appear to be a woman. Using this subterfuge, he poses as an ambassador from the matriarchal nation of Bird in order to discover what the Nkumai are trading in exchange for their abundant metals, which have allowed them to dominate their region militarily. This mission is only the beginning of the adventure for Lanik, who discovers the secrets of the most powerful nations and at the same time gains additional abilities to save his people and determine the fate of his planet."
582,Citizen of the Galaxy,science," Thorby is a young, defiant slave boy recently arrived on the planet Jubbul, where he is purchased by an old beggar, Baslim the Cripple, for a trivial sum and taken to the beggar's surprisingly well-furnished underground home. Thereafter Baslim treats the boy as a son, teaching him not only the trade of begging, but also mathematics, history, and several languages, and sends Thorby on errands all over the city, carefully passing along information and keeping track of the comings and goings of starships, so that Thorby realizes that his foster-father is gathering intelligence, particularly on the slave trade. In addition, Baslim has Thorby memorize a contingency plan and a message to deliver to one of five starship captains in the event of Baslim's arrest or death. When Baslim is captured and beheaded by the local authorities, Thorby and local innkeeper 'Mother Shaum' convey the message to Captain Krausa of the starship Sisu. Because the 'Free Trader' society to whom Krausa belongs owe a debt to Baslim for his release of one of their crews from a slave-trader, the captain takes Thorby aboard the Sisu at great risk to himself and his clan. Thorby is adopted by the captain (thereby gaining considerable shipboard social status) and adjusts to the insular, clannish, matriarchal culture of the traders. The advanced education provided by Baslim and the fast reflexes of youth make him an ideal fire controlman, in which position Thorby destroys a pirate craft. His immediate superior, a young woman named Mata, begins to view him as a suitable husband; but the customs of the Free Traders forbid this, and to avoid trouble she is transferred to another ship. Thorby is again transferred when against the wishes of his wife, the executive officer and head of the clan (who wants to use Thorby's connection to Baslim to enhance Sisu's prestige), the captain, obeying Baslim's last wish, entrusts the boy to a military cruiser and asks its captain to assist Thorby in finding his true place in society. In order to implement a background search without having to pay the immense cost, Thorby is enlisted in the military service of the Terran Hegemony, the dominant military power in the galaxy. Thorby is ultimately identified as Thor Bradley Rudbek, the long-lost heir of a very powerful family and a substantial shareholder in Rudbek and Associates, a large, sprawling interstellar business including one of the largest starship-manufacturing companies and the entire city of Rudbek (formerly Jackson Hole, Wyoming). In his absence, the business is run by a relative by marriage, ""Uncle"" John Weemsby, who encourages his stepdaughter Leda to guide Thorby in adjustment to his new situation while secretly scheming to block Thorby's growing interest and interference in the company. Thorby, investigating his parents' disappearance and his capture and sale by slavers, comes to suspect that his parents were eliminated to prevent the discovery that some portions of Rudbek and Associates were secretly profiting from the slave trade. When Weemsby quashes further investigation, Thorby seeks legal help and launches a proxy fight, which he unexpectedly wins when Leda votes her shares in his favor. He fires Weemsby and assumes full control of the firm. When Thorby realizes that it will take a lifetime to remove Rudbek and Associates from the slave trade, he reluctantly abandons his dream imitating Baslim as a member of the elite anti-slaver ""X"" Corps of the Hegemonic Guard. Knowing that ""a person can't run out on his responsibilities"", he resolves to fight the slave trade as the head of Rudbek and Associates."
583,Infinite Jest,science," The plot partially revolves around the missing master copy of a film cartridge, titled Infinite Jest and referred to in the novel as ""the Entertainment"" or ""the samizdat"". The film is so entertaining to its viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than viewing the film. The video cartridge was the final work of film by James O. Incandenza before his microwave suicide, completed during a stint of sobriety that was requested by the lead actress, Joelle. Quebec separatists are interested in acquiring a master, redistributable copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States. The United States Office of Unspecified Services (USOUS) is seeking to intercept the master copy of the film in order to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations. Joelle and later Hal seek treatment for substance abuse problems at The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, and Marathe visits the rehabilitation center to pursue a lead on the master copy of the Entertainment, tying the characters and plots together."
584,The Suspicion,science," While Rachel tries to convince Cassie to go to the beach with her, Cassie notices what looks like a toy spaceship attached to her water pump. Cassie notes that it's where she hid the blue box, and is a bit unsettled by it, but brushes it off and puts the spaceship with a bunch of other things being donated to charity. They head off to the beach, coming back to find Jake. They notice a different ""toy"" spaceship attached to the water pump and, while they watch, it detaches itself and flies away. The Animorphs immediately hold a meeting and decide to go to Goodwill to try to retrieve the spaceship that Cassie had seen earlier. While there, the spaceship starts shooting at them and demands that they surrender and bring them the ""power source"". It flies away and they realize that it is headed back to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic to retrieve the blue box. Since it is a spaceship, it can travel much faster than their bird morphs, and when they get back, they discover to their dismay that the waterpump was cut open and the spaceship has stolen the blue box. There are some flashes and Tobias, Cassie, and Marco are significantly smaller (about one sixteenth of an inch). Cassie and Marco decide to pretend to surrender to the Helmacrons which are the aliens that are aboard the spaceships, while Tobias stays with Rachel. It is revealed that the Helmacron females are in charge, while the males are feeble and weak. Cassie and Marco claim that they work for the Yeerks (whom the Helmacrons are familiar with and despise), and that Visser Three can get them the box. Eventually they catch up with the Visser, who is at a Sharing meeting (along with Chapman and other controllers). They morph to flies to escape the ship, now being as small as cells. The Controllers get a lucky shot, and destroy the ship, Cassie and Marco barely getting out in time. They find that they have landed on Chapman's head. The other Helmacron spaceship had lured the rest of the Animorphs there in an attempt to steal the blue box. During the meeting, the Helmacrons attack, indiscriminately shrinking everyone at the meeting. Upon seeing the blue box, along with Visser Three's gentle prodding, all the controllers start trying to grab it and there is lots of chaos. Cassie morphs into a whale in order to crash the ship. She and the other Animorphs eventually end up on Ax who is the only Animorph remaining unshrunken. Visser Three and many Controllers also end up on Ax. Visser Three briefly sides with the Animorphs, saying, ""I don't know about you Andalites, but these Helmacrons are really, really, really annoying me."" Ax, in harrier morph, flies over to the Gardens where they all acquire and morph anteaters, which unshrinks them while in morph. As anteaters, Jake and Rachel slurp up the Helmacrons, and The Animorphs, Controllers and Helmacrons reach an agreement and everyone is unshrunken. Before the book ends, Marco and Cassie give the Helmacron males a bit of a pep talk, and it ends with the Helmacrons, male and females, squabbling with each other. *The Helmacrons are introduced."
585,The Conspiracy,science," Jake returns from school to discover that his great grandfather has died. His father insists that the family go to his home in a wooded cabin far away and help plan the funeral arrangements. They plan to be gone for three or four days; however, this presents a problem for Tom, who can not stay away from the Yeerk Pool for more than three days at time. Tom fights relentlessly with Jake's father about going and when they leave for a Sharing meeting together Jake fears that Tom may force their dad into involuntary Yeerk infestation, or even kill him. Jake must save his father, but for the first time, his quick thinking tactical mind freezes up. A slight power struggle ensues between Jake and Marco who insists that Jake isn't thinking clearly on this matter. After several close calls protecting Jake's father, the Animorphs decide to make a distraction for the Yeerks so that Tom is no longer their top priority. The Animorphs kidnap Chapman holding him hostage in an abandoned house to distract the Yeerks from taking care of Jake's father. To make the kidnap seem convincing they have Ax interrogate Chapman for hours. Afterward, they allow him to escape, and Ax insists that he will never do such a thing again as it is not the conduct of a warrior. After this Jake insists on handling the situation by himself. With the distraction successful, Tom heads up to the cabin with the rest of the family. In the middle of the night, he tries to kill his father with a dagger, but is stopped by Jake with the help of rest of the Animorphs, who are running a plan devised by Marco. Tom is injured and taken back to the hospital in the city where he has access to a Yeerk pool."
586,The Giver,science," The book focuses on a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas residing in an immaculately-organized, tightly-run, but strict utopian society known as the community of Sameness , where eccentricities in behavior, appearance, or personality are strongly outlawed and opposed. Nearing an age where he will be selected for the position that he will hold in the Community throughout adulthood, Jonas is selected for the role as the Receiver of Memory, the keeper of all ancient memories in the Community before the start of the strict system through which the world is now run. Under the guidance of the older Receiver-of-Memory, the Giver, Jonas is transferred memories that had taken place years prior to the events of the story, involving color, emotion, freedom, and pain, which have since been drained entirely from the Community. Through the Giver, Jonas receives stunning wisdom of the true secret runnings of the Community, including secrets remaining heavily-guarded from its inhabitants, and the boy starts to yearn for the happier world which had been available during the past. He is exposed to shocking footage of his father, a Nurturer, injecting a baby twin with poison (as a means of living up to the Community's mandatory standards of population control) and is shocked by the true intentions and behaviors of the residents in the Community, how their utter inability to accept pain forced their hunger for a Receiver of Memory. The Giver informs Jonas that it is up to him to help restore freedom to the world, and therefore he must flee the town late at night with the other closest option for a Receiver; a baby boy named Gabriel, who Jonas's family had been sheltering for the past few months, so the Giver may convince everyone that they have died so they may once again accept the burden of the pains of their own memories and everything can be restored to how it had formerly been. Jonas must escape to Elsewhere, an unknown land located beyond the boundaries of the Community, and the pair must endure through the freezing cold together, just as Jonas ""thinks he hears singing"" (a reference to a past memory he'd received)."
587,Z for Zachariah,science," Ann Burden's diary begins on Monday, May 20. After living alone for a year and believing herself the last survivor of a nuclear war, Ann fears that a stranger approaching her valley might be a killer or enslave her. She hides in a cave to judge his character first from a distance, not revealing herself even to warn him against bathing in a dead stream. However, when he then sickens, Ann’s fear of being alone forever moves her to help him. The stranger is John R. Loomis, a chemist with Cornell University who helped a Nobel-winning professor design radiation-proof plastic and a prototype “safe-suit.” After three months in an underground lab near Ithaca, New York, he spent seven months searching unsuccessfully for other survivors. Then he headed west, finding Burden Valley after walking through dead lands for ten weeks. During the first stage of Loomis's illness, Ann enjoys his company and feels optimistic about their future. He tells Ann how to pump gas manually and begins plans for a hydroelectric generator. Soon, Ann hopes for a church wedding in the spring; and, while plowing on June 2, she recites Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem ""Epitaph for the Race of Man,"" happy they can keep humanity from dying. She wishes she had warned Loomis about the poisoned stream. As Loomis’s condition worsens, he has disturbing nightmares about shooting a coworker, Edward, who tried to take the safe-suit to find his family. Though aware Loomis may have acted in self-defense and intended to find other survivors, Ann thinks his journey west suggests selfish motives. After nearly dying, Loomis speaks again on June 8 and says Ann’s companionship saved him. But during his recovery over the next two weeks, Ann worries when he plans for their future in the valley and sometimes scolds her—for neglecting farm work and wanting to use the safe-suit to get books. When he says on June 19 that they must start a colony together, Ann is uneasy despite her similar hopes earlier. By June 23, Ann thinks of Loomis as a murderer and fears that his horrible experiences have damaged his mind. She then becomes very nervous when, after she asks if he ever married, Loomis grabs her hand and demands to know her intentions. She feels sure he is trying to control her possessively, just as he “controlled” her farm work, the suit, and Edward. In the next few days, Ann sees more disturbing signs in Loomis's behavior, such as when she reads aloud Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice but he doesn’t seem to listen. On the night of June 27–28, Ann thinks her fears are validated when Loomis tries to get in bed with her while she lies quiet, assuming he believes she is asleep. Ann flees and, after getting store supplies, returns to her cave hideout. Over the next few days, seeing Loomis sometimes use her family’s dog, Faro, to practice tracking her, Ann feels she is in “a game of move-countermove” that only Loomis wants to play and only he can win. Worrying also about neglected farm work, on July 1 Ann talks to Loomis to suggest a “compromise” of sharing the valley and farm work while living separate lives. Loomis does not understand why Ann won’t return to her house, but he accepts her demands because he has no choice. He only hopes she will change her mind and “act more like an adult.” For about ten days, Ann thinks her system of living separately is working. Though it is inconvenient and she worries about spending winter in the cave, she assumes there is nothing else she can do. She wishes Loomis had never come to the valley. Around July 10, Loomis denies Ann access to the tractor and the store, warning her that she must forgo many conveniences if she continues her “stupidity” of staying away. Ann guesses he is trying to force her to return or he has a “compulsion for taking charge of things” as part of long-term planning. Deciding for the first time to talk with him to learn his intentions, Ann realizes she might be causing his behavior by denying companionship, and she thinks it sensible to offer to talk sometimes. However, when she goes to the house, Loomis tries to wound her by shooting from a window. He then tracks Ann to her cave, where he burns all her belongings and takes one of her guns. Ann is forced to hide in the wilderness nursing a bullet-grazed ankle, which becomes infected. Over the next several days, she develops a fever and begins dreaming of another valley where children are waiting for a teacher. Believing her dreams are true and Loomis is insane, Ann plans to steal the safe-suit and leave the valley. This will also be her revenge for the burning of her favorite book. For a couple of weeks, Loomis focuses on farm work and preparations for winter while Ann lives miserably, scrounging for food. One day, he tries to lure Ann to the store to attempt again to wound and incapacitate her; but Ann tricks him in turn, leading him into a trap she planned for killing Faro. After Ann fires a warning shot, Loomis is surprised she still has a gun and flees, releasing Faro. The dog then swims across Burden Creek to reach Ann and dies the next day of radiation sickness. In planning to kill Faro, Ann feels she is “as much a murderer as Mr. Loomis.” Believing Loomis has forced her into action, on August 7 Ann takes the offensive by leaving a message that she will talk about returning if he meets her unarmed. When he surprisingly leaves his gun to meet her in good faith, Ann steals his safe-suit and cart. While carrying out her plan, she remembers sadly her hopes they would save humanity together. Ann then waits on Burden Hill for a last meeting with Loomis, who arrives on the tractor enraged, ignores a warning shot, and threatens to kill her if she doesn’t return the suit. However, when Ann accuses him of killing Edward the same way, revealing what he said during his sickness, Loomis suddenly becomes dispirited and passive. When Ann declares she has no choice because of refusing to be his prisoner, Loomis replies in fright and bewilderment, “It’s wrong,” and begs her not to leave him there alone. Finally, in admittedly childish manner, Ann blames Loomis because he never thanked her for nursing him. As she walks away expecting to be shot in the back, Loomis calls out that he once saw birds circling to the west. She then keeps walking for most of the night until, exhausted, she lies down without setting up the protective tent. The story ends uncertainly. Awaking late the next morning, Ann continues west beside a dead stream, hoping to see green on the horizon."
588,Missing Men of Saturn,science, ~Plot outline description~ -->
589,Kangaroo Notebook,science," One morning, while pondering the stress of his latest assignment at his uninspiring job, the narrator of Kangaroo Notebook feels an itching on his leg that seems to indicate an unusual hair loss. The next morning he wakes to discover that he is sprouting small radishes on his shins. After battling to be seen in his local medical clinic, he enters a hospital, where a physician prescribes hot-spring therapy in Hell Valley. Hooked to a penile catheter and an IV bottle, the narrator begins a harrowing journey on his hospital bed through the underworld that seems to lie beneath the city streets. Here, he seeks health not so much as he seeks simple explanations for what is happening to him and the strange people he meets: abusive ferrymen, waiflike child demons, vampire nurses, a chiropractor who runs a karate school and works a sideline as a euthanist."
590,A Mighty Fortress,science," Following Charis' conquest of Corisande, the people of Corisande are becoming increasingly restive under the occupation (despite the fact that Charis is governing both wisely and compassionately) and 2 major resistance movements begin to coalesce - one in the capital city of Manchyr and one in the Northern aristocratic estates. Both conspiracies enjoin ""Temple Loyalists"", who view the Church of Charis as an abomination that must be destroyed, with secular leaders, who want to take back their nation from the foreign occupation and both seem to be getting very well organized. While Merlin uses his advanced technology to maintain a constant watch over these groups, he, Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan (who is now pregnant with her first child) decide not to move against them now and wait until they can crush all opposition in a single stroke. Meanwhile, in Talkyra - the capital city of Delferahk, where the surviving children of Corisandian Prince Hektor are now in exile - the Earl of Coris is summoned to Zion to consult with the church leadership. While Coris is loath to leave Princess Iris and Prince Daivyn alone and despite his suspicions regarding the Inquisition's involvement in their father's death, Coris has little choice but to comply with the Temple's demands. As Sharleyan's pregnancy progresses, Merlin takes her to Nimue's Cave under the Mountains of Light (taking her into space as part of the ""scenic route"" and impressing her with all the marvels in the cave) so that she can be examined by the medical computer there. He's forced to come clean about the fact that he injected both them and several other people with the nanotech designed to fight diseases and help heal injuries faster and explains that he was determined not to lose any of them to some germ. In Dohlar, the Earl of Thirsk is once again put in a naval command when it becomes clear to his superiors that his reports about the Charisians' ships were accurate. Yet he is still forced to contend with court politics since his former, incompetent predecessor had all too many allies who did not enjoy being proven wrong. Nonetheless, Thirsk turns out to be a shrewd operator, as he manages to get his crews trained very well while changing the general practices of the Dohlaran Fleet (such as forbidding the use of the lash for discipline and asking that sailors and their families be paid by the church on a monthly basis) which earns him even more enemies in Dohlar and in the Temple. In Tellesberg, Archbishop Staynair is preparing for his journey to Corisande and reluctantly tells Baron Wave Thunder about the trunkloads of reports Adorai Dynnys handed to him about corruption within the temple. While Wave Thunder is angry at him for not sharing such intelligence with him, Staynair states that it was given to him under the seal of the confessional so as to protect the source who has already risked her life to get it to them and Wave Thunder relents. In Corisande, Father Tymahn Hahskans begins to draw attention to himself in his sermons on the corruption within the church that he has noticed for a long time yet was forbidden from speaking of. His sermons begin to pose a threat to the Temple Loyalists who are attempting to encourage public unrest and civil disobedience in the capital. As a result, Hahskans is abducted from his home and then brutally tortured to death and left in a public place upon the orders of the former Intendent of Corisande (the representative of the Inquisition). Merlin, who is notified about the abduction by OWL too late to save Hahskans, moves against the conspiracy in Manchyr, sending an anonymous message to Sir Koryn Gahrvai the son of Earl of Anvil Rock, who proceeds to arrest the conspirators, among whom they find the former Intendent. He is later defroked from his post by the Church of Charis and tried for murder and conspiracy and consequently executed along with most of his fellow conspirators in Manchyr. Coris arrives at the temple in the dead of winter and meets with Traynair and Clyntahn to discuss possible ways to encourage a popular revolt in his homeland. Unbeknown to Coris, Clyntahn has managed to move a spy near him to report on his activities, and who gives a detailed report to his deputy, Rayno. In Chisholm, Prince Nahrmahn and his wife Olyvya are brought fully into the truth about Merlin, a revelation they manage to handle quite well, and both are issued communicators and given access to OWL. Merlin takes the opportunity of Sharleyan and Cayleb's stay in the palace during winter to go on another mission to Zion, where he disguises himself as a Silkiahan merchant by the name of Ahbraim Zhevons and makes contact with Madam Ahnzhelyk, The Circle's most prominent ally. He notifies her that Adorai Dynnys arrived safely at Charis and that it's time for her to pack up and leave. She in turn, arranges the smuggling out of over 200 people related to the circle as well as the families of several vicars, the Archbishop of Glacierheart and several other bishops, just as the Inquisition moves against The Circle. Rather than be taken alive, Hawuerd Wylsyn (one of The Circle's leaders), kills his brother Samyl and then fights the Inquisition's guards until he himself is killed. All told, Clyntahn arrests over 2000 people, including over 30 vicars (a tenth of the entire Council of Vicars), dozens of bishops and archbishops, along with all their families and associates, most of whom are brutally questioned and later executed with the full rigor of the ""Punishment of Schueler"". Earl Coris leaves Zion with extreme haste just as this happens. Vicar Duchairn, while horrified at Clyntahn's actions, is helpless to stop it, yet feels that he must do something to mitigate the damage caused by the High Inquisitor's reign of terror. He notifies Trynair that while he refuses to support Clyntahn's actions and will take no part in them, he will not oppose him, either. Rather, he will fund all the charitable orders so as to present a more gentle face for mother church to help those who will be hurt in the Holy War that has just been declared and Trynair agrees to support Duchairn's decision. Meanwhile, in Corisande, Maikel Staynair makes a pastoral visit accompanied by Merlin and in his own unique way, buys the hearts and minds of the Corisandians. Merlin, in turn, notifies the regency council about the Northern Conspiracy and how the Emperor and Empress have known about for some time, waiting for them to organize so as to decapitate the resistance in one fell swoop and snare the treasonous Grand Duke of Zebediah along with them. He also tells them that they and Viceroy Chermyn will be given the necessary information to move upon the conspirators by a network of ""seijin"" like himself who have been watching the princedom for some time and who are experts at unobtrusively collecting critical information. Soon afterwards, a traitor in the Imperial Charisian Army sends modern rifles to Corisande through Grand Duke Zebediah and the Regency Council moves in on the traitors, arresting them and the former bishop-executor of the Church in Corisande along with them. In Charis, Master Howsmyn and his researchers begin developing an exploding shell for the navies new iron cannons, while Earl Grey Harbor opens clandestine negotiations with King Gorjah of Tarot. Earl Lock Island uses additional units of the navy to apply even greater preassure on Gorjah, while Merlin, disguised yet again as Zhevons, infiltrates Gorjah bedchamber and convinces him (at dagger point) to agree to join the Charisian Empire. Sharleyan and Cayleb return to Charis just before she gives birth to the Crown Princess Alanah with Merlin supervising in disguise as a brother of the Order of Pasquale. In Dohlar, Earl Thirsk manages to force the Charisians to retreat from their forward base, inflicting serious losses on several of their units (though most manage to escape). This defeat, motivates Thirsk to plan an offensive against the Charisian empire. The Temple, having declared Holy War against Charis and with its new fleet ready, orders the ships to move out and join ships from other mainland fleets in Dohlar. Cayleb and Sharleyan, decide to meet the bulk of the Church's fleet with over 60 ships of their own, however, they discover too late, that the Church had managed to deceive them, sending their ships to the Desnairian Empire instead, by way of the Tarot Channel (as a reminder to Gorjah that they are still in charge). Caught with their most of their fleet badly out of position and unable to do anything about the Church's move on Tarot, Cayleb and Sharleyan decide to send Earl Lock Island (who has also been admitted into the Inner Circle of those who know the truth) and his 25 ships against over 120 galleons (though only 90 are armed at all). However, Howsmyn manages to complete his trials on the new shells and manages to provide some of Lock Islands ships with the new guns and a small amount of the new shells. Lock Island then leads a daring nighttime ambush against the Church's fleet and manages to catch it completely surprised, eliminating an entire column of ships before they can respond. Once his ships penetrate the Church's formation, Lock Island sends a signal flare into the air and the ships equipped with the new guns fire the new shells. The sudden destructiveness of the new weapons overwhelms the Church's fleet, shattering its cohesiveness and morale. Nearly half the ships surrender to the Charisians while only 9 manage to escape, with all the others sunk or burned. The cost to Charisians is high, as nearly half of their own galleons are destroyed. Emperor Cayleb's cousin, Bryahn Lock Island, is also killed in the battle. As Cayleb mourns his cousin's death, Merlin comforts him as best as he can, telling him that Bryahn only did his duty, as Cayleb would've done in his place. Privately, Merlin reflects that the church is likely to rebuild its fleet and try to destroy Charis again, despite this staggering loss, since it has no other choice."
591,Doom 3: Worlds on Fire,science," The year is 2144 and the battle over Earth's precious resources has raged for a century. With global economies in ruins and all-out world war more than a possibility, the U.S government turned to the Union Aerospace Corporation, giving it carte blanche on the legendary red planet of Mars in a desperate bid to construct an off-world outpost that might provide resources and a military advantage, as well as something so secret that even members of government do not have a clue about it. Special ops marine lieutenant John Kane was once a careerist simply glad to have a job, and could not care less about politics as long as Uncle Sam's check cleared. But that was before he listened to his conscience and disobeyed a direct order. Busted down to private, Kane has been reassigned to the ""U.S. Space Marines"" - the private army of the UAC - with the prospect of becoming little more than a glorified security guard on Mars. Now Pvt. Kane's fate leads him to Mars City - part environmental community, part lab center, and all owned and protected by the UAC. It is a strange world with a fatal environment, and the thousands who live and work within the city have already begun to think of themselves as Martians. And away from Mars City, at the strange ancient sites uncovered on the planet, a small squad of marines stand guard while scientists uncover wall glyphs and search for artifacts, having already found something that is so far amazing and inexplicable - including the relic called ""U1,"" nicknamed ""the Soul Cube"" - and unknown to all, the bringer of destructive chaos and unspeakable horror..."
592,Nylon Angel,science," The story is set in post-apocalyptic Australia, around a city called the Tert. There, a bounty hunter/bodyguard named Parrish Plessis has ended up working for a ganglord called Jamon Mondo. She wants out, and her answer arrives in the form of two men wanted in connection with the killing of a journalist called Razz Retribution (In this world, the army, churches and the government have given up on the world, so it is now ruled by the media). The story is divided between the Tert, a rundown slum reminiscent of Mega City One, and Viva City (a pun on the word vivacity), a walled suburb some forty kilometres up the coast."
593,In Enemy Hands,science," As the story begins, Honor returns to her Steading on Grayson, having just been promoted to Commodore for her actions in Honor Among Enemies. During a party celebrating her promotion, she engages in a heated debate with Earl White Haven, her superior, and the two realize they have mutual unspoken romantic feelings for each other. In an attempt to escape her own feelings, Honor goes with Alistair McKeon on a convoy escort mission to the Adler system, which has been captured by Citizen Rear Admiral Lester Tourville of the DuQuesne base, under the orders of Thomas Theisman, in order to capture or destroy a large chunk of Manticoran shipping. Spotting the ambush and after salvaging what she can of her convoy from Havenite attack, Honor orders McKeon to surrender. After learning of Honor's capture Cordelia Ransom, the People's Republic's Secretary for Public Information, demands that the Manticorans be surrendered to her for propaganda uses. Unable to deny Ransom and her StateSec enforcers, Admiral Theisman capitulates. The crew are transferred to the Havenite battlecruiser PNS Tepes, Ransom's personal flagship, bound for the Havenite prison planet of Hades, where Ransom intends to execute Honor for a death sentence handed down by the prior government. Ransom gives any crew member serving under Harrington a chance to defect and Senior Chief Petty Officer Harkness takes up the offer claiming that Manticore have never really done anything for him. Unbeknownst to StateSec, Harkness has no intention of truly defecting, and after fooling his assigned watchdogs, hacks into the security and communication systems, eventually disabling them and causing massive explosions in the boat bays. Freeing the rest of the crew, they manage to destroy the Tepes and land on Cerberus B 2, facing a well-provided for prison camp and unknown amounts of space forces."
594,Caballo de Troya,science," The book is narrated as if it is a true report of how the author was approached by an unnamed retired US Air Force pilot, referred to as ""The Major"" throughout the book (Jasón in later books), who in an elaborated indirect way tells the author how to find classified documents telling the story of the Operation Trojan Horse, in which The Major took part as a time traveller sent to witness the last weeks of Jesus's life through a time-travelling device sent back in time by the US military in an Israel base in 1973. A lengthy, detailed ""technical"" description of the time travel process (""inversion of quantum swivels"") is provided. The time-traveller and the time-travelling vehicle are said to have been wrapped by an artificial skin to avoid biological contamination. The Major, who becomes the narrator of the story, is codenamed ""Jasón"" during the mission, and has to learn fluent Aramaic and Greek as a necessary skill to interact with people of this era and place during the mission, as well as other extensive training. It is ""revealed"" that many of the amazing stories of eclipses, earthquakes after Jesus's death and his transfiguration were linked to extraterrestrial influences. Jesus's physical appearance is described as almost Nordic, with hazel eyes and very tall (he is sometimes called ""The Giant"", physically and metaphorically in the book). Even as the 1970s UFO mania has lost traction in Spanish-speaking countries, Benítez has retained solid sales and certain celebrity on the basis of his book series. The following 8 sequels expand on the issued and reveal more detail. Caballo de Troya 9, Caná was published in Spain in 2011. He wrote in his website that he first became interested in the ""real"" life of Jesus around that time, when a team of researchers said that the Shroud of Turin showed traces of Jesus' body. These claims have later come under scrutiny, but the fact has not stopped the flow of new Caballo de Troya books. The author has claimed the time-travel part of Caballo de Troya is fiction, but that it contains ""more truth than people think"" suggesting, given he purports to be ""a UFO researcher"", that he might be claiming alien contact. The author insists that most, if not all, events in his novels are real."
595,Flight of the Hawk,science," The story is about Andy who is sent to live with his mysterious Grandfather Hawkes after his parents' deaths. Andy soon finds out his grandfather isn't what he seems but actually an inventor, for one thing and also discovers that his parents' deaths may not have been an accident. When Grandfather Hawkes's life is threatened, Andy decides he's not going to lose another person he loves. So using his grandfather's inventions, Andy becomes The Hawk."
596,Downward to the Earth,science," Edmund Gunderson was the Terran administrator of the colony world of Belzagor, and he returns to it after it has gained independence, feeling a sense of guilt for the way he has treated its dominant species, the elephant-like nildoror, whose animalistic appearance had kept Gunderson from taking them seriously as sentient beings. On his return, he feels a new sense of kinship with the natives, perhaps more than for the Terran tourists. The nildoror undergo a process of rebirth, and Gunderson’s greatest guilt comes from having denied rebirth to seven nildoror to make them help him repair flood damage. He encounters his old colleague Jeff Kurtz, who had undergone the rebirth ceremony only to be turned into something monstrous. Nevertheless, Gunderson dares to subject himself to the rebirth ceremony, which brings him a new understanding of the native creatures and new powers by which he can heal Kurtz and bring new understanding to others."
597,There Will Be Time,science," Jack Havig, born in the American midwest in 1933, has a genetic mutation that allows him to travel effortlessly through time. He learns that an apocalypse will arrive around the turn of the 21st century, due to over-pollution and nuclear warfare. Farther still in the future, a New Zealand/Micronesian culture known as ""the Maurai Federation"" will come to dominate the world and impose their vision of a less industrialized, more ecologically balanced world. Jack reasons that there must be other people with the same ability to travel through time; to find them, he visits Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, walking through the street singing the Greek mass. He is identified by agents of a time-traveling organization, the ""Eyrie,"" who take him to their headquarters in the far future. At first Jack joins their group, but eventually he rebels against the group's leader, a 19th-century racist whose goal is to stop the Maurai ascendancy. To defeat him, Jack must return to the 20th century, where he locates an independent group of time-travelers, eventually returning to the future to overthrow the Eyrie. Much of the story takes place in times past, including an interlude in the Byzantine empire, where Jack saves the life of a Byzantine girl during the carnage of the Fourth Crusade and falls in love with her."
598,Things Not Seen,science," Robert Phillips, known by his nickname ""Bobby"", wakes up one day to find that he can no longer see himself. Upon discovery, he heads downstairs and tries to convince his parents that it's not a trick. He drinks a glass of orange juice, which to the astonishment of his parents, seems to make a""spoon float in the air."" After a brief argument with his mother, Bobby is told to stay at home until his parents decide get back from work (His mother is an English professor, and his father a scientist.) After his parents are gone, Bobby heads to the library, bundled up to conceal his secret invisible self, and after a brief walk around, he hurriedly leaves, bumping into a girl. His scarf comes off so he's scared she will freak out. He helps to retrieve her things, and realizes she's blind when he hands her back her cane. Upon returning home, he gets in trouble because he left the house. His parents leave to get dinner and Bobby watches TV and takes a nap when he wakes up the TV says that there was a major three car crash. He sees one of the cars is his family's. The Police then come to his door and check on him. After they leave Bobby goes to the hospital to see his parents. When he gets there he takes off his clothes (so he can be invisible) and goes to find his parents. He can only find his Mom. After talking to his Mom he uses money she gave him to get a taxi and he goes home. He returns to the library the next day. He goes naked this time, and stumbles upon the blind girl in a listening room. He enters the room with her permission and they start talking. He learns that her name is Alicia, and befriends her. Together, they try to find the 'cure' for his predicament."
599,Home Is the Hunter,science," Captain Kirk, commanding the USS Enterprise, gets into a fight with a Klingon ship concerning arguments over a primitive planet and its inhabitants. A mysterious, powerful entity named 'Weyland' stops the fight and decides to punish three of the Enterprise crew with their own history. Hikaru Sulu is sent to feudal Japan during a bloody power struggle. Scotty is sent to Scotland in the eighteenth century on the eve of revolt. Chekov is sent to his beloved homeland of Russia during World War 2. All three eventually make it back home to their right time and place, Sulu even managing to leave a literal mark on history with a carved message on a durable rock."
600,Roadside Picnic,science," The novel is set in a post-visitation world where there are now six Zones known on Earth (each zone is approximately five square miles/kilometers in size) which are still full of unexplained phenomena and where strange happenings have briefly occurred, assumed to have been visitations by aliens. World governments and the UN try to keep tight control over them to prevent leakage of artifacts from the Zones, fearful of unforeseen consequences. A subculture of stalkers, thieves going into the Zones to get the artifacts, evolves around the Zones. The novel is set in and around a specific Zone in Harmont, a town in a fictitious Commonwealth country, and follows the main protagonist over an eight year period. The introduction is a live radio interview with Dr. Pilman who is credited with the discovery that the six Visitation Zones' locations weren't random. He explains it so: ""Imagine that you spin a huge globe and you start firing bullets into it. The bullet holes would lie on the surface in a smooth curve. The whole point (is that) all six Visitation Zones are situated on the surface of our planet as though someone had taken six shots at Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth-Deneb line. Deneb is the alpha star in Cygnus."" The story revolves around Redrick ""Red"" Schuhart, a tough and experienced stalker who regularly enters the Zone illegally at night in search for valuable artifacts - ""swag""- for profit. Trying to clean up his act, he becomes employed as a lab assistant at the International Institute, which studies the Zone. To help the career of his boss, whom he considers a friend, he goes into the Zone with him on an official expedition to recover a unique artifact (a full ""empty""), which leads to his friend's death later on. This comes as a heavy shock when the news reaches Redrick, heavily drunk in a bar, and he blames himself for his friend's fate. While at the bar, a police force enters looking for any stalkers about. Redrick is forced to use a ""howler"" to make a hasty getaway. Red's girlfriend Guta is pregnant and decides to keep the baby no matter what. It is widely rumored that frequent incursions into the Zone by stalkers carry a high risk of mutations in their children. They decide to marry. Redrick helps a fellow stalker named Burbridge the Buzzard to get out of the Zone after the latter loses his legs to a substance known as ""hell slime"". Later on he confronts Burbridge's daughter who gets angry at Redrick because he saved her father from death. Guta has given birth to a beautiful, happy and intelligent daughter, fully normal save for the short and light full body hair. They call her lovingly, Monkey. Redrick's dead father comes home from the cemetery, now situated inside the Zone, as copies of other deceased are now slowly returning to their homes too. As she grows up, Redrick's daughter seems to resemble a monkey more and more, becomes reclusive while barely talking to anyone anymore, screaming strange screams at night together with Redrick's father. Redrick is arrested, but escapes, and before he is recaptured contacts a mysterious buyer with an offer of a small porcelain container of ""witches' jelly"" which he'd smuggled out previously. Redrick asks that the proceeds from the sale be sent to Guta. Red's old friend Richard Noonan (a supply contractor with offices inside The Institute), is revealed as a covert operative of an unnamed, presumably governmental, secret organization working hard to stop the contraband flow of artifacts from the Zone. Content he's almost succeeded in his multi-year assignment, he is confronted by his boss, who reveals to him the flow is stronger than ever, and is tasked with finding who is responsible and how they achieve it. Redrick is released from jail and makes a secret deal with Burbridge. Guta is depressed because recent medical examinations of her daughter indicate that she is no longer human. It is implied that the weekend picnics-for-tourists business set up by Burbridge are a cover for the new generation of stalkers to learn and go into the zone. They jokingly refer to the setup as ""Sunday school"". Red goes into the Zone one last time in order to reach the wish-granting ""Golden Sphere"". He has a map, given to him by Burbridge, whose son joins him on the expedition. Red knows one of them will have to die in order for the other to reach the sphere, to deactivate a phenomenon known as ""meatgrinder"", and keeps this a secret from his companion. After they get to the location surviving many obstacles, the young man rushes towards the sphere shouting out his wishes only to be savagely dispatched by the meatgrinder phenomenon. Spent and disillusioned, Red looks back on his broken life struggling to find meaning and hope, hoping the Sphere will find something good in his heart - it is the hidden wish that it grants, supposedly - and in the end can't think of anything other than repeating the now dead youngster's words: ""HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!"". Another translation of the wish from the original Russian ""СЧАСТЬЕ ДЛЯ ВСЕХ, ДАРОМ, И ПУСТЬ НИКТО НЕ УЙДЕТ ОБИЖЕННЫЙ!"" is ""A Gift of Happiness for Everyone, So No One (Leaves)/(Passes Away) Feeling (Left Out)/(Offended By Life)."""
601,Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance,science," The United States and Germany develop atomic weapons of their own and, alongside the Soviets, engage in a nuclear exchange with the Race. The Soviets may have detonated the first atomic bomb, but it was only because their original sample of plutonium (captured from the Race) was larger than the samples given to the USA and Germany; the Soviets actually lag far behind either of these two countries in their efforts to make their own plutonium, and they used all they had in the atomic bomb they used south of Moscow to stop the Race's main thrust against the city. Regardless, the Race is in a full state of panic that humans have been able to detonate an atomic weapon, and many commanders are shocked at the number of the Race's soldiers that died in the blast. Straha, third in command of the Conquest Fleet, demands a vote of no confidence in Fleetlord Atvar by the captains of each ship in the Fleet. Such a vote would require a 75% majority to depose Atvar, but the vote falls short at 69%. Atvar remains in control, but he recognizes that most of the shiplords no longer actively support him. Furious at Straha, he orders the shiplord's arrest, but Straha, one step ahead of him, defects to the United States, enraging Atvar and allowing the Americans access to a spaceship of the Race. Soon, the Race launches an invasion of the British home islands (by air from south France, flying over German-held north France) and occupy a northern area (which seems to be centered on Oxfordshire and includes Northampton), and a southern area (which seems to be centered on west Sussex). The humans hold onto Market Harborough; parts of the story describe fighting around Brixworth and Scaldwell and Spratton villages which are on the front line between Northampton and Market Harborough. Another section of text describes an artillery and tank battle for Henley-on-Thames. The human forces are exposed to fire from Lizard helicopter gunships many years before humans had such craft in the real timeline. The Lizards ignore warnings from Churchill that such an attack will meet with terrible consequences. The Lizard forces in Britain are subjected to another human weapon they did not anticipate: mustard gas. Totally unprepared for a chemical attack by the humans, the Race's invasion force is devastated and thrown back: a Lizard plan to link their two areas through Maidenhead fails. London suffers heavy bombardment and loses many landmarks including Big Ben which survived the real world timeline German Blitz. The Lizards' northern pocket is obliterated, and their southern pocket evacuates in a hurry by air through Tangmere, which is the Lizards' last airfield in Britain out of range of human artillery. As a result, the British gain access to much intact Lizard technology that was abandoned in the retreat. The British use of mustard gas also inspires the Germans, Americans and Russians to use poison gas against the Race. The German use of poison gas includes the use of Sarin and Tabun. China's Communist guerrillas also escalate the conflict against the Race. In one of the Race's bases in Siberia, morale is at an all time low. The weather is a truly miserable condition from the hot one the Lizards are used to, and the Race's soldiers feel they're constantly being sent to their deaths by incompetent commanders. Many have fallen into abusing ginger, which works as a narcotic for them, even though it has been outlawed by Atvar's orders (such disobedience would have been considered unthinkable before they came to Earth). The Race's soldiers are pushed to the breaking point, and when the base commander starts berating the garrison yet again, landcruiser driver Ussmak shoots him in the head to silence him and an insurrection starts; the entire Race base mutinies and makes Ussmak their de facto leader."
602,The Vanished Diamond,science," The protagonist is a French mining engineer, Victor Cyprien. He moves to the Griquland district to study the formation of diamonds. While he is there he falls in love with wealthy landowner Mr. John Watkins' daughter, Alice. He asks him for her hand in marriage but is denied on his lack of money and stature in the community. He decides that he could amass a fortune by mining with a partner, Thomas Steel. They buy a mining claim and proceed to dig. Victor hires a team of Africans to mine the claim. The claim collapses when Victor's team of hired help is digging. He manages to rescue one of them, Mataki. Achieving no great finds, Victor is disheartened for there are many more eligible suitors than he. Alice begs Cyprien to returns to his studies. So Victor decides to attempt to artificially make a diamond. His experiment seems to work as a 243 carat (48.6 g) diamond is produced. He gives it to Mr. Watkins for Alice. Mr. Watkins holds a banquet in honor of Cyprien and his accomplishment. The diamond, christened as The Star of the South by Alice, is on display during this banquet. Midway through the banquet, the diamond vanishes as well as Victor's African hired help, Mataki. Mataki appears to flee with the diamond and Mr. Watkins, enraged, offers Alice's hand to whoever brings the diamond back. Victor and three other suitors set off to hunt Mataki down. They prepare to travel across the Veld. Victor brings along two companions his laundry man, Li and a member of his digging team, Bardik. Along the way, the other three of his companions perish at the hands of animals or disease. Victor captures Mataki and Mataki states he does not have the diamond. The only reason he ran was because he was afraid he would be hung unjustly for the diamond's disappearance. Victor returns to Griqualand and finds the diamond in the stomach of Alice's ostrich, Dada. Cyprien is almost hung because his discovery of making artificial diamonds threatened the livelihood of the miners. He is only saved by Mataki's confession. Mataki found the diamond when he was covered by the landslide and stuck it in Victor's experiment in gratitude. Victor is shocked. Not caring about the diamond's origin, Mr. Watkins is glad for the recovery and holds another banquet. Mr. Vandergaart, the original owner of the land bursts in with a certificate saying that the land is once again his. John Watkins is devastated and is even more devastated when the Star of the South disintegrates. Shocked he dies the next day. Victor and Alice marry and live happily ever after."
603,Blast Off at Woomera,science," Strange objects have been sighted on the moon near Mons Pico and suspecting a communist plot the British Government hurriedly plans a mission to photograph the domes from above closer range. The rocket is not large enough to send a man - enter Chris Godfrey, a 17-year old science whizz with an interest in rocketry and crucially less than 5 feet tall ! The launch site is Woomera Rocket Research Station in South Australia but there may be a Soviet traitor amongst the ground crew... The book pre-dates the first actual usage of satellite imagery by two years, and manned spaceflight by four years."
604,The Runaway Skyscraper,science," ""The Runaway Skyscraper"" concerns Arthur Chamberlain, an engineer who works in a midtown Manhattan office building called the Metropolitan Tower. When the sun suddenly begins moving backwards in the sky, setting rapidly in the east, he is the only one to realize what is actually happening: a flaw in the rock beneath the building has caused it to subside, but instead of moving in space, the building is falling backwards into the past. When the subsidence finally ends, the building is located several thousand years in the past, and its 2000-odd inhabitants find themselves stranded in pre-Columbian Manhattan. Chamberlain also realizes that the same seismic forces that caused the building to drop back into the past can also be used to return it to the present, but that doing so will require several weeks of intensive work by the building's inhabitants, and in the meantime they must concentrate on feeding themselves. Chamberlain convinces the president of a bank on the first floor that he can return them to the present, and together they are able to organize the other inhabitants into hunting and fishing parties. Two weeks later, Chamberlain is ready to implement his plan. He forces a jet of soapy water into an artesian well beneath the building, and this allows the pressure that has built up in the rock to be released. The building travels forward in time again, returning to the exact moment when it began to travel into the past."
605,Phylogenesis,science," Desvendapur is an anti-social Thranx poet native to the colony on Willow-Wane who believes he can find new inspiration for his poetry by coming in contact with the physically repulsive humans, an intelligent mammal race that is unlike the insectoid thranx. Desvendapur's aspirations lead him to a secret thranx colony in the Amazon Basin on Terra where he meets a petty human thief turned murderer, Cheelo Montoya. Desvendapur is fascinated by the first native human he comes across so, with great resistance on the part of Montoya, chooses to follow the human, using him as the basis of a series of poems. The mismatched pair flee from the authorities, a pair of poachers who wish sell Desvendapur to a private zoo, and ultimately demonstrate how the two races can get along and work together on common challenges. By the end, the unlikely pair find a mutual understanding. The Thranx colony in the Amazon Basin is revealed to the Earth community and the diplomatic beginnings of the Humanx Commonwealth are greatly accelerated. Montoya becomes a celebrity despite his unwillingness to be in the spotlight and Desvendapur's poems he composed during his time on Earth become wildly popular amongst the Thranx."
606,Off Armageddon Reef,science," Humanity is at war with a genocidal alien race known as the Gbaba, and after a long war, it becomes obvious that humans are losing. In order to preserve the species, several colonization expeditions are sent out to other stars, but all are tracked down by the Gbaba. Finally, a colony fleet manages to sneak away via trickery. The passengers of the colony ships spend a decade in hyperspace in cryogenic sleep, and then arrive at a planet thousands of light years away from and slightly smaller than Earth, which they colonize and name Safehold. The original plan for this society was to wait for the immediate danger to pass, rebuild the technological base from records and artifacts left behind, and prepare a force large enough to defeat the Gbaba. However, the mission command is split into two groups. The first group is led by a Machiavellian administrator named Eric Langhorne. Langhorne believes that unless the humans in hiding on Safehold are permanently restricted to a Medieval level of technology, they will be eventually detected and destroyed by the Gbaba. During the trip to Safehold, the group alters the colonists' memories so they believe upon awakening they are the first humans and that they were created by a god. The radical leaders create a new religious institution called the Church of God Awaiting, which proscribes advanced technology and effectively deifies the members of mission command (they are hereafter called angels and are led by ""Archangel Langhorne""). The second group, under the administrator Pei Shan-wei, wishes to preserve advanced technology and concepts, but not to use such knowledge until humanity is ready. In this way, the knowledge would be preserved and available for future generations. Once the human population had recovered, they could gradually ramp up the technology until they were capable of defeating the Gbaba. To this end, the second group establishes a city named Alexandria to house its members and technological information. The two groups break into open warfare, and Langhorne has the city of Alexandria, and all its inhabitants (including Shan-Wei, who is made into the Safeholdian version of Lucifer by the Church), destroyed by orbital bombardment. The city ruins and the surrounding land mass are sunk beneath the ocean, creating what the now-superstitious colonists call Armageddon Reef. In a counter-attack, Shan-wei's supporters manage to eliminate most, but not all of, Langhorne's inner circle, including Langhorne. Shan-wei's group also managed to hide an android, with the personality and memories of Nimue Alban, a dead female starship tactical officer, deep within a secret mountain base, along with technology, an electronic library and a room full of weapons. When Nimue awakes some 800 years later, the situation is explained to her by a recording created by Shan-Wei's now deceased husband, Pei Kau-yung, and she is offered the mission of reversing the plans of the radicals and helping prepare mankind for the inevitable re-encounter with the Gbaba on more favorable terms. Nimue accepts the mission and uses mobile spy technology to examine the world. However, it becomes clear that as an apparent woman, her influence would be less than it should be. She therefore changes into an apparent male and takes the name of Merlin before travelling to the Kingdom of Charis which is a relatively advanced region of Safehold with a somewhat free-thinking approach to religion. Merlin gains the trust of King Haarahld of Charis by interfering in an assassination attempt on Haarahld's son, Crown Prince Cayleb of Charis, saving his life. Merlin is made Cayleb's personal guardian and a de facto adviser to the king. He begins to introduce technology that, while not technically proscribed by the Safeholdian Bible, is advanced. While most of Safehold is at a 14th century level of technology, Merlin introduces better sailing vessels, improved gunpowder, and greatly improved seaborne cannons, very equivalent to the 17th century in Europe. Events come to a head when the Church organizes an attack on Charis by most of its neighbors. Largely due to the technology introduced by Merlin, the combined attacking fleets of galleys are annihilated by the small Charis fleet of heavily-armed galleons, although King Haarahld is killed in battle. The book ends at his funeral, about one month after the end of the battle, with Cayleb being crowned king without the Church's consent and with the beginning of a reformation movement emerging in Charis."
607,The Outlaws of Mars,science," Jerry Morgan, a man with no future on Earth, is offered a new life on Mars. He starts out on the wrong foot, meeting a princess and killing the fearsome-looking Martian beast he takes to be menacing her, which actually turns out to be her pet. From there Morgan becomes entangled in the politics of the Byzantine Martian royal court, spurns the advances of a would-be lover, escapes his hosts and role as an expendable political pawn. Various adventures follow, with dazzling swordplay, feats of strength, and other trials, tribulations and treacheries. Kline's Mars has multiple parallel canals, surrounded by walls and terraces, and the construction of the canals by Martian machines is described. The story has a race-war element that may jar the modern reader."
608,Knights of Forty Islands,science," Dima, a 14-years boy who used to fight on streets of his native city Alma-ata, now has to fight in a place where swords are used instead of fists. The new environment consists of forty islands, each connected to three others via high and narrow bridges. There is a castle on each island; and about 15-18 kids (""knights"") live in each one. The islands are distinct: dictatorship or democracy, a brutal rude leader or a kind one. The population is made up of approximately 70% boys and 30% girls in homogenous or heterogeneous national groups, no one older than 18. Everyone wants to return home, but to do so they are told they must conquer all 40 islands - then, the aliens promised, they would return the winners to their homes. There are also several rules of engagement, also set down by aliens. Swords are wooden at first, but a sword turns steel when the wielder feels hatred and desire to kill towards the opponent. Although retaining the world of feelings of usual children, these ""knights"" change: they learn to fight to the death, not to pay much attention to wounds; they cover friends and take revenge for fallen ones. Dima sees his new friends being killed, and he kills, too. The way of life at the islands is very stable, since the aliens take into account human psychology and sociology, even though they don't understand human feelings, relationships and motivation. Also, as it turns out, they had a long time, decades, of trial and error. Dima and Inga, a girl he knew on Earth, propose the establishment of a Confederation of islands as the way to stop the Game, and get support among their peers. Some knights refuse to join the Confederation and are killed when they do not surrender to the conquerors. However, the Confederation, even realized, proves to be unstable and is doomed from the beginning: though most want to return home, some only want power for themselves... Also, this attempt was not the first: Dima and his friends discover a hidden room with remains of children who got on islands during the Second World War and locked themselves in, when their attempt of Union of Islands collapsed because of betrayal. But the heroes also find old weapons in this room, including dynamite. Now the action rushes..."
609,We Can Build You,science," We Can Build You is set in the then-future year of 1982. It centers on Louis Rosen, a small businessman whose company produces spinets and electronic organs. Rosen's partner wants to begin production of simulacra, or androids, based on famous Civil War figures. The firm completes two prototypes, one of Edwin M. Stanton and one of Abraham Lincoln. Rosen then attempts to sell the robot patents to Sam K. Barrows, an influential businessman who is opening up lunar real estate for purchase and colonization. Unfortunately, while the Stanton simulacrum proves able to adapt to contemporary U.S. society, the Lincoln simulacrum proves unable to do so, possibly due to the fact that the original experienced schizophrenia. At the same time, Louis begins a relationship with Pris Frauenzimmer, the schizophrenic daughter of his business partner, who has designed both simulacra. This becomes an obsession and Louis himself begins to hallucinate about Pris. At the same time, Pris defects to Barrows but then loses faith in the benevolence of their partnership when his objectives are disclosed as more prosaic than hers, with his plans to use simulacra colonists to entice human settlement on the Moon and other human interplanetary colonies within the solar system. After Pris's destruction of a John Wilkes Booth prototype simulacrum, the Stanton/Lincoln simulacra strand of the plot abruptly terminates. The remainder of the book deals with Louis Rosen's admission of schizophrenia and his Jungian therapeutic treatment at the Kasanin Centre in Kansas from where Pris was originally released. Under the influence of his therapist Rosen creates a virtual hallucinatory reality of his own where he resumes his relationship with Pris, marries her, has children and grows old together with her, finally culminating with him hitting her hallucinatory doppelgänger in a fit of pique. This concludes his final therapy session and he is released from the Kasanin clinic after his doctor accuses him of malingering. The end of the novel posits the query of whether he was actually batty to begin with. The real-world Pris, however, has become unwell again, and she is returned to Kasanin following her short-lived career as a simulacra designer."
610,The Dosadi Experiment,science," The novel is set in a distant future when humans are part of an interstellar civilization called the ConSentiency composed of many species. One, the Taprisiots, provide instant mind-to-mind communication between two sentient minds anywhere in the universe, and the Caleban provide jump-doors which allow instantaneous travel between any two points in the universe. This is the glue that holds the far-flung ConSentiency together. Unfortunately, one consequence of jump-door technology is the possibility that large numbers of unsuspecting sentients can be diverted to destinations unknown for nefarious purposes. A government saboteur attempts to expose one such plot. Jorj X. McKie is a Saboteur Extraordinary, one of the principals of the Bureau of Sabotage, and the only human admitted to practice law before the Gowachin bar as a legum (lawyer). While meditating in a park in BuSab headquarters McKie is mentally contacted by the Caleban Fannie Mae, a female member of a species of unparalleled power from another dimension whose visible manifestation in this universe is the star Thyone in the Pleiades cluster Generations ago, a secret, unauthorized experiment by the Gowachins was carried out with the help of a contract with the Calebans. They isolated the planet Dosadi behind an impenetrable barrier called ""The God Wall"". On the planet were placed humans and Gowachin, with an odd mix of modern and old technology. The planet itself is massively poisonous except for a narrow valley, containing the city ""Chu"", into which nearly 89 million humans and Gowachin are crowded under terrible conditions. It is ruled by a dictator, many other forms of government having been tried previously, but without the ability to remove such things as the DemoPol, a computer system used to manipulate populaces without their consent or knowledge. The culture of ordinary day to day power in Dosadi is very violent. Among other tools, addictive psychotropes are used for handling power among hierarchies in organisations. Senior Liator Keila Jedrik starts a war that will change Dosadi forever. Jorj travels to Dosadi and escapes with Keila after engaging in ego sharing. This gives them the ability to swap bodies and thus by using a hole in the contract sealing Dosadi they can escape via jump gate. Once free, by legal manoeuvring the Dosadi population is unleashed upon the ConSentiency for good or ill, whilst the people who set the project in motion try to deal with the consequences, having sent McKie there hoping a solution more in their interest could be found."
611,The Eyes of Heisenberg,science," Chs. 1-4: Harvey and Lizbeth Durant arrive to witness the cutting of their embryo. Svengaard, a low-ranking doctor, tries to convince them to skip the procedure, but they are adamant and insist on their right, all the while secretly communicating their contempt for Svengaard in a silent Courier code. Potter, a high-ranking surgeon, arrives to perform the cut. During the procedure, he is shocked to discover that the embryo has qualities not seen in millennia; superior genetics in the areas of intelligence, plus vocation for immortality and full fertility. Obligated to destroy it, Potter is surprised to find himself unwilling to do so, aided by the on-the-spot collusion of one of the nurses who sabotages the record of the operation. Ch. 5: Max Allgood, Boumard and Igan arrive at the Hall of Counsel for an audience with the Tuyere. Tachy-Security monitoring has detected something amiss with the Durant embryo cutting. The nurse has been arrested, but has died under interrogation. The Optimen Calapine, Nourse and Schruille playfully mock their subordinates, always with a faint undercurrent of menace. Calapine flirts with Allgood in a semi-bemused fashion. The Tuyere order that Svengaard be brought before them. Boumard and Igan are revealed to the reader as Cyborg agents. Ch. 6: Svengaard is interrogated by the Tuyere. Badly frightened, he fumbles and grows agitated under their mockery, becoming insubordinate. The Tuyere calm him down by a display of magnanimity, reminding him of their power, wisdom and seniority. Ch. 7: In a service area under the Seatac Megalopolis, the Durants have gone into hiding. They meet with the Cyborg Glisson, who informs them of events, tells them that a strange external force had (beneficially) interfered with the cutting process of their embryo, and orders them to stay put. The Durants chafe under its unfeeling, domineering manner, hoping to one another to one day be free of the Optimen and Cyborgs. They scheme to deliver their baby the unheard-of natural way, and keep it out of reach of both. They wonder if the interfering power is God. Ch. 8-9: Svengaard detects activity in the hospital vat room, where the embryo is kept. Investigating, he is rendered unconscious and abducted from under the nose of Max Allgood's surveillance. Ch. 10-11: Potter is escorted through the streets of Seatac by a resistance agent. Near their destination, they are intercepted by security forces. Potter's escort sends him ahead, revealing himself as a combat cyborg and decimating the pursuers until it is destroyed. Potter is spirited away by the resistance. The Tuyere - and many other Optimen - watch the battle live, the long-unfamiliar thrill of violence awakening odd sensations in them. Ch. 12: In a resistance safehouse, Igan tries to recruit a recalcitrant Svengaard. Failing, they sedate him and make plans to evacuate Seatac, which they suspect the Optimen are about to genocidally purge of all life. Ch. 13: The Durants, Boumard and Igan (their cover blown) and a gagged Svengaard are moved out of Seatac in a hover-truck driven by a Cyborg, later revealed to be Glisson. At a checkpoint, Svengaard cries out briefly, causing them to be traced. Glisson changes their destination. Ch. 14: The Tuyere wipe out Seatac through a combination of poison gas and sonic weapons. They find themselves surprised by their unstable emotional reactions to the event. Ch. 15: The occupants of the truck observe the destruction of Seatac; Svengaard's faith in the Optimen is badly shaken. The Durants notice that Boumard and Igan are in the early stages of cyborgization. The truck proceeds to a ramshackle safehouse in the forest. Ch. 16: The Tuyere receives a field report from Max Allgood. Calapine, growing suspicious of his behavior, scans him with her instruments, discovering that he has accepted Cyborg implants. Enraged, she kills him remotely. Calapine and Schruille decide to run Tachy-Security themselves, finding themselves oddly stimulated by the prospect of an even more active involvement in violence. Potter is revealed to have died offstage in Seatac. Calapine and Nourse both require treatment for enzyme imbalance. Ch. 17: The occupants of the cabin decide that the apathetic Svengaard cannot be trusted, and should be killed. Harvey asks him if he wants to live; Svengaard suddenly finds that he does. He offers to care for the Durant's child, an offer Harvey accepts as he does not trust the cyborgs Boumard and Igan. The security forces of the Optimen surround the house and disarm Glisson. Ch. 18: The Tuyere debate what to do with the prisoners. They speculate that, if the infection of viability spreads, wiping out all the Folk and starting over is not out of the question. They decide to have the prisoners brought to themselves for interrogation. Ch. 19: A full assembly of Optimen meet in the Hall of Counsel. The prisoners are brought in, immobilized in a solid block. The Optimen begin to feel odd emotions, spiraling into greater and greater instability. Glisson asserts that reintroducing them to firsthand violence was a Cyborg ploy to destabilize the delicate equilibrium of the Optiman mind, and that the Cyborgs have won. A semi-hysterical Calapine converses with the prisoners, verging on killing them, but abruptly releases them instead. The Optimen descend into insanity; several, including Schruille, are killed in a stampede. The former prisoners try to help. Ch. 20: Calapine and the former prisoners discuss the new status quo. Glisson's gloating is cut off when a biological solution is proposed. Svengaard thinks that he will be able to stabilize the Optimen, and introduce the beneficial mutations of the Durant embryo on a wide scale, giving the Folk a lifespan of at least 12 - 15,000 years - longevity without the pernicious ossification of immortality. The novel concludes on a note of guarded optimism."
612,Reflex,science," Since the conclusion of Jumper, David Rice, a young man with the ability to teleport, has married Millie and occasionally works for the National Security Agency, only accepting jobs that he finds to be morally acceptable. During a meeting with Brian Cox, his handler, Brian is killed and David is kidnapped by a powerful criminal organization with influence over the NSA and other government agencies. Millie discovers that she, too, has the ability to ""jump"", and sets out to find and rescue David with help from members of the NSA and, later, the FBI. The novel tells the story from David's and Millie's perspectives in alternating chapters."
613,A Scourge of Screamers,science," The novel opens in 1997, two years after the nuclear exchange. The ""Screamies"" have been afflicting humanity since the 1980s. Arthur Gregson, an American spaceflight engineer, and his close friend Kenneth Wellford, from England, are attacked by an odd flying craft while themselves flying a small plane to a meeting in Rome. The evade their attacker long enough for SecBu military craft to arrive and shoot it down. The experience is too much for Gregson, however, who has to pretend to check out another part of the plane so he can endure yet another of his intermittent Screamie attacks. Finally reaching their destination, they meet the head of SecBu, Weldon Radcliff, and are shown the corpse of an alien. It is definitely not human, having no hair, no fingernails, and most tellingly, an elaborate double heart. Greg's twin brother Manuel had gone out on the first operational starship, the Nina, which was lost after sending messages about ""a glowing ship"" and ""presences"". Radcliff informs Greg and Kenneth that they believe the Nina was attacked by aliens, who are now on Earth and are responsible for the Screamies in some way. A human accomplice of the aliens apparently calls them ""Valorians"". The particular alien they are shown attempted to assassinate a SecBu official. Back in New York City Gregson and Wellford are caught up in yet another assassination attempt on an official, and Gregson recognizes one of the assailants as a Valorian. Giving pursuit, he is halted by a Screamie attack after the Valorian reaches into his pocket to activate a device of some kind. While visiting his fiancee Helen Forsythe and her father in rural Pennsylvania, Gregson follows up on an article in a local newspaper about a farmer who claimed that aliens tried to recruit him to help them. He runs into a group of men and an alien at the farmhouse who interrogate him until SecBu troops arrive. Strangely the men know him and refer to Helen as if she had been working with them. Summoned to London with Wellford for another SecBu briefing, Gregson hears that Wellford was predicted to go Screamie himself, that very day, by a fortune teller. Since she offered him a refund if she was wrong, Wellford looks forward to collecting. The briefing consists of a show where an apparent drugged Valorian confesses to seeking the conquest of Earth, and to bringing the Screamie disease as a biological weapon. Astonishingly, Weldon Radcliff executes the Valorian in front of his agents. To make matters worse, Wellford goes Screamie, as the fortune teller predicted. Returning to Pennsylvania Gregson confronts Helen, who admits to talking with the Valorian and being told that the Screamies were the advent of a new perception. By this time SecBu have begun a campaign to convince people that the Valorians are not only hostile but have powers of persuasion amounting to hypnosis. Helen recants her beliefs. Shortly afterward Gregson himself has his ultimate Screamie attack, and is sedated for removal to one of the many Isolation Institutes reserved for Screamers. He endures months of psychic pain, apparent hallucinations, and terror, narrowly avoiding the typical fate of Screamers, who tend to commit suicide when their sedation wears off enough for them to reach a convenient high window. He recovers and is met by Helen on his release. Now, like many ex-Screamers, Gregson is a valuable commodity to SecBu. Most elected officials are ex-Screamers, as are the top officials in the Bureau. Gregson learns that Wellford also recovered, only to be kidnapped by the Valorians. Radcliff reveals to him the existence of a device which can suppress the Screamies over a small area, by blocking the effects of an unknown form of radiation. Radcliff wants Gregson to help construct a super-suppressor on the space station Vega Jump-off, the departure point of the Nina, to cover the entire planet. First Gregson is sent to Paris for training. He learns that the Screamies really are a new form of perception, called zylphing and the radiation is called rault, created by a body at the galactic center known as Chandeen. Another body known as the Stygum Field blocks the rault, and Earth has been in the shadow for thousands of years. Besides the training, Gregson is introduced to a temptress called Karen Rakar. Gaining proficiency at zylphing he learns that the perception can be used for many purposes, including telepathy, long-distance viewing, and even precognition. He also begins to realize the depth of the SecBu plot to keep and hold power. Discovering the head of the training institute asleep in a field of artificial rault he is able to zylph the man's true purposes from his mind. The man wakes up and Gregson has to kill him. He then escapes in a car, but as he does so he zylphs a re-entry capsule, bearing a Valorian, coming down nearby after having been disabled by SecBu weapons. Rescuing the occupant, a female, he drives to confront Madam Carnot, a conspirator who claims to be the oldest and most powerful zylpher on Earth. As he zylphs her true intentions, a rescue party led by Wellford breaks into the building, intent on rescuing the Valorian woman, but in the process capturing Gregson and killing Carnot. She had previously foretold a violent end for Gregson, but in reality she would be the victim. In the Valorian hideout, a castle in the Rhine valley, Wellford assures Gregson that the Valorians have no powers beyond zylphing, nor any evil intent. Gregson is still doubtful. He sees the necessity to build the super-suppressor as the Screamies are getting worse by the day. His qualms at the intent of the SecBu conspirators are balanced by the urge to carry out the plan for the good of humanity. The Valorian he rescued, who is called Andelia, tells him that his brother Manuel is alive, one of the few on the Nina who survived when the ship emerged into full rault. He cannot return to Earth because he has lost the ability to live without zylphing. Eventually, she promises Gregson, they will be re-united. Gregson, apparently free to leave the hideout, steals a craft and returns to Pennsylvania to find Helen, only to be captured by SecBu. They zylph the location of the castle from him, but by the time they get there only the injured Andelia is left for them to capture. Gregson ships up to the space station for the final phase of construction. Crucial to the process is lowering the station's altitude, which is something only he can be counted on to do. On the station he re-unites with Karen Rakar. He is still ambivalent about which fraction to side with. The station is already in a small suppressor field, but this breaks down long enough for him to detect the presence of Andelia. While he is talking to her a guard arrives and kills her. Gregson kills the guard, but is cut down yet again by Wellford, one of a boarding party intent on a last-ditch gamble. Recovering, Gregson learns Wellford's plan. The super-suppressor can be re-wired to be a super-transmitter. All the top SecBu people are on the station, and activating a super-transmitter would fry the brains of everyone aboard. It is the supreme chance to decapitate the conspiracy, who plan to use their control over the super-suppressor to cement their power, threatening to turn it off if their demands are not met. With them eliminated, the super-suppressor could be activated as planned, and with help from the Valorians humanity would be able to recover the lost perception, ready to deal with high levels of rault which must be coming. Gregson helps Wellford re-wire the suppressor, and they escape to a comparatively safe distance of a few thousand miles aboard Wellford's ship. Even at that distance, the radiance is almost more than they can bear. Returning to the station, they find the people aboard either dead or catatonic. The final chapter takes place a few years later. Helen and Gregson are married with young children. Humanity is learning to live with rault, but already the Valorians have located another civilization about to emerge from the shadow of the Stygum Field. Gregson and Wellford are offered a place on that mission."
614,Babylon Babies,science," Set in 2013, the main character, Hugo Cornelius Toorop (hero of The Red Siren), is a mercenary whose mission is to escort a young woman with schizophrenia, Marie Zorn, from Siberia to Quebec on behalf of a sect. It appears that the young woman is the surrogate mother of twins, representing the next stage of human evolution."
615,At All Costs,science," Due to the actions of the High Ridge government in War of Honor, which led to a successful attack on key Alliance shipyards by the Republic of Haven, the Star Kingdom of Manticore finds itself decidedly on the short end of the strategic balance between the two warring star nations. Admiral Honor Harrington is placed in command of Eighth Fleet, the Manticoran Alliance's primary offensive force, which is the sole heavy formation available for operations against Haven. Queen Elizabeth and her senior advisors project it will be at least two ""T-years"" (Terran years, i.e. Earth years) before they can expect any significant numbers of new construction to begin bolstering their thin wall of battle; this while Haven's progress under Admirals Theisman and Foraker have given them an even larger force advantage, and smaller technological disparity, than Haven suffered before the beginning of hostilities in Short Victorious War. Strategically, the goal of Honor and Eighth Fleet is to instill enough operational caution and sensitivity to losses in Haven to force redeployments; this would have the desperately needed effect of reducing the available number of ships of the wall Haven would then be able to concentrate for offensive action against the Star Kingdom and its allies. Despite the grave circumstances, the Star Kingdom finds itself spread dangerously thin against its security commitments; to itself and the Alliance. At All Costs climaxes with the largest and most critical battle of the entire series, the Battle of Manticore, as Havenite forces attack the Manticoran home star system. Haven comes close to winning the battle, until Admiral Harrington's Eighth Fleet intervenes, giving Manticore a hard-won victory. Both sides suffer heavy losses, and they are temporarily stalemated. Honor continues to work closely with Hamish Alexander, now First Lord of the Admiralty, on the military and political challenges facing the Alliance. Their professional respect for each other's abilities, and their need for mutual support as they navigate the precarious political landscape in the Star Kingdom, has led them into the very romantic embrace the High Ridge government tried to insinuate during War of Honor. While this is not the dire political crisis it was during the prior Star Kingdom government, it still offers numerous personal and professional difficulties for them. Unfortunately, they find themselves trapped between their emotions and their responsibilities to each other, to the loved ones in their lives, and to the Star Kingdom and the Alliance. The dilemma is resolved when the Reverend of Grayson engineers a polygamous marriage of Honor to Hamish and his crippled wife."
616,1634: The Bavarian Crisis,science," Early revelations detail machinations by the Habsburg heiress Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria to gather information as aided and abetted by a dowager aunt and her younger sister behind the backs of her father Emperor Ferdinand II and his Jesuit watchdogs. Duke Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria becomes a widower in need of a suitable Catholic bride, while the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand whose armies have reconquered 80–85% of the Low Countries by the summer of 1634 is contemplating a dynastic move of his own which his brother King Philip IV of Spain will find a bit disconcerting. Veronica Dreeson and Mary Simpson meanwhile plan a trip to tend to personal matters to the Upper Palatinate border region conquered by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and administered for him from Amberg by ally Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha, one of the four Wettin dukes that were supplanted by Grantville's (formation of the NUS) actions in 1631 and 1632. Events in the other 1634 novels (1634: The Galileo Affair, 1634: The Ram Rebellion, 1634: The Baltic War) are integrated into the action and political events behind the scenes, and this book ties a host of little oddities into a coherent canvas capturing a snapshot of the state of Europe in early summer of 1634. Concurrent with their pet projects, the formidable Dreeson and Simpson women are accompanied by a trade delegation with the strategic goal of restoring the iron production of the Upper Palatinate to feed the war needs of the USE."
617,"For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs",science," Perry Nelson, a normal 1939 engineer, is driving his automobile when he has a blowout, skids over a cliff, and wakes up in the year 2086. Though he was apparently killed in the summer, he re-appears in extremely cold snow, nearly dies again by freezing, and is saved by a fur-clad woman named Diana. The exact circumstances of his being killed and reborn after a century and half are never explained. The later 21st Century people seem strangely incurious, showing little interest in how he had come to be among them and rather take his appearance for granted and proceed to explain to him the details of the social and political set-up of their world."
618,Parallelities,science," Max is sent to interview a rich man, Barrington Boles, who claims to have invented a machine that can break through the barrier between parallel worlds, or ""paras."" Max first assumes the man is a typical loony, but after returning home, he finds his apartment burglarized by identical triplets who don't seem to know one another. Later, he meets four ""sisters"" who look almost but not quite identical, and who claim never to have met before the previous night. Mystified, he rushes back to Boles's place to ask the inventor what on earth is going on. Boles informs him that the machine must have turned Max into a nexus who pulls the inhabitants of other worlds into his own. Max is frantic, but Boles reassures him that the effect will probably wear off in a few days, and that if it doesn't, he should come back on Tuesday. Max tries to resume his life, but his neighbor's canary turns into a hundred identical birds, and the next day Max runs into a double of himself at work. The double (whom he calls ""Mitch"" to avoid confusion) has no idea what's going on, apparently coming from a para where Max never interviewed Boles. After Max explains the situation to him, they decide to pose as twins. They go to a zoo to work on a story about a painting elephant, only to find the zoo overrun by fifty female chimps. Sensing that the situation has gotten out of hand, Max and Mitch decide to visit Boles again. But on the way, they spot a herd of bighorn sheep and a condor, species extinct in Los Angeles. Max realizes that he's no longer simply pulling things from other worlds into his own, but drifting into other worlds (apparently taking Mitch with him). When they arrive at Boles's mansion, this version of Boles doesn't remember their second meeting and has no idea how to help them. On their way home, Max and Mitch encounter two identical pairs of English-speaking aliens who don't understand why the local spaceport has vanished. Later, Max gets briefly separated from Mitch, and when he returns, Mitch has been replaced by a female version of Max who is an actress rather than a reporter. After he successfully convinces her what has happened, the two go home and make love, realizing that they're the only two people who know exactly how to satisfy each other. In this para, Australia has become the dominant power in the world due to discovering a cheap form of electricity. After falling asleep on a couch at her workplace, he wakes up in his own workplace, where a familiar coworker invites him to a basketball game on the weekend. He assumes that the effect has finally worn off and that he has returned to his original world, until he discovers that the entire world has been taken over by Elder Gods (of H. P. Lovecraft fame), who demand weekly human sacrifices. Somehow, earth's populace has adapted to this reality so completely that everyone continues to live relatively ""normal"" lives that include tabloid newspapers and professional basketball. After fleeing his building and entering a subway station, he shifts to a new para where the entire world has been destroyed, and he meets a sickly version of himself who informs him that this was the result of the ""Boles Effect."" Max next finds himself in a utopian, futuristic version of Los Angeles with hovercars, courteous citizens, and no pollution. While he would love to remain there, he has no control over the Boles Effect, and soon he finds himself back in a more familiar version of L.A. He goes home, but when he wakes up the next day he discovers that he's a ghost, because the local Max died in a shooting. He wanders out onto the beach, converses with an old man ghost, and soon encounters two identical couples who have just died—implying that the Boles Effect works even on the dead. After shifting to a para where he's alive once again, Max is at the end of his ropes, bewildered by the metaphysical truths he has learned, disillusioned by the Boles Effect that never seems to end. After contemplating suicide, he finally goes home and sleeps again. During the night, he has a series of bizarre dreams in quick succession, and he concludes that he must have been ""para dreaming,"" implying that ""not only was the cosmos composed of para realities, it was rife with para unrealities as well."" When he drives to work, he discovers that he's entered a para where every man, woman, and child in the world is a version of himself. Everyone not only looks like him, but has aspects of his personality too, and for the first time in his life he becomes aware of how unpleasant a person he is. His boss assigns him to interview a man named Max Parker, who lives in what Max thinks is his own apartment. This local Max claims to be experiencing dreams where a man named Barrington Boles has zapped him with a condition that makes him sail through parallel worlds. Max doesn't recognize the name of the newspaper that this Max works for, The National Enquirer. Max has had enough. He concludes that so many parallel worlds must exist that ""a single universe [is] but a pinprick."" After having met so many clones of himself, his whole sense of individual identity is coming apart. His mind can't take it anymore. He drives to Boles's house, witnessing some bizarre sights on the way, but hoping against hope that by the time he arrives he will have found a version of Boles who can end Max's condition. This Boles remembers their second meeting and works the machine on Max once again, attempting to destroy the effect. After all that he's been through, Max will not allow himself to believe that everything is back to normal. But as he leaves Boles's mansion and returns home to his apartment, he grows more and more relaxed—until the reflection in his mirror frowns at him while he's still smiling."
619,Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London,science," Set in the early 21st century, the book opens with Johnny Mackintosh living in a children's home (Ben Halader House) located in the fictional Castle Dudbury New Town in the county of Essex, United Kingdom. He has written a SETI-style program for the children's home's computers and, at the beginning of the book, an alien signal is detected. As the book develops Johnny Mackintosh is abducted by aliens and travels to the centre of the Galaxy, before returning to Earth, but in the distant past. He witnesses the extinction of the dinosaurs and the destruction of Atlantis, before returning to the present day and discovering the truth about his parents. The Spirit of London of the title is the name of the spaceship acquired by Johnny Mackintosh during the course of the book. From the outside it appears identical to the skyscraper situated at 30 St Mary Axe in London, known as 'the Gherkin'."
620,Byzantium!,science," Byzantium is an ancient Greek city near the Black Sea. Romans, Greeks, Zealots and Pharisee are all part of its mix. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki arrive for general sight-seeing. However, each soon has to face the possibility of being stranded in this place and time, alone and surrounded by political upheaval."
621,Mission of Honor,science," The book begins in January 1922 P.D. The Star Empire of Manticore remains at war with the Republic of Haven, despite their mutual losses during the Battle of Manticore. Now, the Star Empire is in danger of entering an entirely new conflict with the Solarian League, a galactic superstate with a population numbering several trillion. Though Manticore possesses a decisive tactical and technological edge over the Solarians with their anti-ship missiles and missile defense systems, the Solarians boast a fleet of over ten thousand capital ships. The planet Mesa and its shadow government continue to fan the flames of the increasingly hostile Manticoran-Solarian relationship for its own nefarious ends. At the same time, Mesa has launched a potentially devastating strike against the Manticore Home System itself, which has gone completely undetected by Manticore. Meanwhile, Admiral Duchess Honor Alexander-Harrington of Manticore is dispatched on a diplomatic mission to the Republic of Haven, having convinced Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore that the Haven issue cannot be left unresolved in the wake of an increasingly likely confrontation with the Solarian League. Traveling to the Haven System itself in her civilian yacht, but escorted by her own 8th Fleet, she offers the Republic a chance to conclude their war diplomatically rather than face sure annihilation due to Manticore's unmatchable tactical advantage. Despite getting off to a good start, the negotiations become stalled when Havenite politicians obstruct the talks for personal political gain. Alexander-Harrington initially tolerates this effort in the interest of good diplomacy, but eventually publicly calls out the leader of the opposition politicians, forcing him to back down. However, the talks are suspended when word reaches Haven that a sneak attack, by seemingly unknown forces, has wrought havoc on the Manticore Home System's infrastructure. While Alexander-Harrington is trying for a negotiated peace settlement with Haven, the Royal Manticoran Navy's 10th fleet led by Vice Admiral Michelle Henke is attacked by a Solarian task force at the Spindle System in the newly incorporated Talbott Quadrant. Admiral Sandra Crandall, commander of the Solarian Force, acting on her own desire for vengeance and Mesan manipulations and bribes demands the surrender of 10th Fleet and arrest of Henke. Baroness Medusa, Governor-General of the Talbott Quadrant, refuses to honor Crandall's demands. The Solarian forces begin their attack run, but are ambushed by 10th Fleet in a lopsided victory, despite the fact that Henke has only a few dozen cruiser-sized ships to defend against 73 ships of wall and screening elements. After the destruction of the Solarian flagship and a third of the task force, Crandall's third in command assumes control and surrenders the survivors. Shortly afterward, Mesa's secret Operation Oyster Bay is launched. Covert operations ships using a radically new drive technology have been operating in the Manticore System undetected and placed several stealthed missile pods aimed at the three inhabited planets in the Manticore System. In a coordinated attack, the pods fire several volleys of new missile systems which proceed to destroy all of the important orbital infrastructure around Manticore, Sphinx, and Gryphon. Several million Manticoran civilians and naval personnel are killed. The Star Empire completely loses the space stations Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Weyland. With their loss, the ability to construct new shipping and missiles. Grayson, Manticore's loyal ally, was similarly attacked. This is all happening at the same time that Manticore is facing a full-scale conflict with the Solarian League. Alexander-Harrington is recalled from the peace negotiations with Haven in the wake of the assault. She returns to discover that after station debris reentered the atmosphere of and impacted her homeworld of Sphinx, many of her closest relatives have died. The Solarian League's leadership learns of both events in quick succession. The incompetent League military leadership, finally realizing the true scale of disparity between their ships and weapon systems and Manticore's, decides to go forward with a plan to invade the Manticore System itself with a force of 400 super-dreadnoughts, believing that the aftermath of the (Mesan) strike will leave Manticore possibly unprotected and unwilling to fight a protracted war, even if they successfully defend against this initial invasion. This idea that Manticore's system defenses have also been wrecked has been secretly purported by Mesa, which desires a situation in which the League is severely bloodied by just such a hapless invasion attempt. Meanwhile Manticore is informed of the impending Solarian offensive through a covert channel on Beowulf. Manticoran leadership is confident of their ability to repel any Solarian attempts to invade the Home System, but at the cost of expending great amounts of ammunition, which is now a precious commodity. The situation appears in crisis until Captain Anton Zilwicki of Manticore, who had been thought dead, and Special Officer Victor Cachat of Haven finally arrive in the Haven System with a Mesan defector. They inform President Eloise Pritchart of the truth behind the nuclear attacks on Mesa, and also of Mesa's long term goals as an organization called the Mesan Alignment. The defector also gives background information on the new technology which was used to attack Manticore. Pritchart decides that the information is too important to ignore and personally embarks with several important members of her administration for Trevor's Star, along with Zilwicki's party. She eventually meets with Queen Elizabeth and Admiral Alexander-Harrington, and the true threat posed by Mesa becomes clear to all. Both sides realize that they have been manipulated over the past several decades by Mesa to fight each other, so that they should not pose a threat to Mesa's masterplan for galactic domination. Despite ongoing diplomatic problems between them, and the certainty that many political factions in both Haven and Manticore will strongly disapprove of cooperation in the wake of such a long and bloody conflict, Elizabeth and Pritchart agree to both end the war for good and tentatively form a military alliance against Mesa and their Solarian pawns as the Star Empire and its armed forces await the arrival of the Solarian attack."
622,Force Heretic: Remnant,science," Luke Skywalker leads a Jedi mission to find the lost, living world of Zonama Sekot, and on his way helps repel a Yuuzhan Vong invasion of the Imperial Remnant, formerly the Empire. Peace is declared between the Remnant and the reorganizing Galactic Alliance, but this is marred by the ruin of Barab I and the destruction of N'zoth by the Yuuzhan Vong. Meanwhile, the Solos (minus Jacen, since he is with Luke trying to find Zonama Sekot) and their allies discover an alliance between the Vong and the Fians, the inhabitants of Galantos, which is thwarted after the Vong try to invade the planet. Elsewhere, on Yuuzhan'tar, Nom Anor takes on the identity of Yu'shaa, prophet of the heretical Jeedai cult."
623,Against a Dark Background,science," Seven of the original eight Lazy Guns were destroyed before the events of Against a Dark Background. One disappeared with its user when he tried to fire it at the local sun, one suffered a lucky strike during an air raid, two self destructed when investigators tried to take them apart and another was destroyed by an assassin. A sixth was destroyed when investigators fired it with its lenses looking through an electron microscope. The seventh, found before the events of the book by the Lady Sharrow and her team, was destroyed by the university it was sold to when they tampered with it. The resulting explosion devastated the city the university was located in. The hunt for the eighth and final Lazy Gun is the main plot theme of Against a Dark Background. Much of the novel concerns Sharrow's adventures in searching for and acquiring it. Her motivation is that the Huhsz religious cult regard it as a sacred object, and that if she can find it and give it to them, their vendetta against her will lapse. Sharrow encounters various political systems on her travels across Golter. She also meets the Solipsists, a gang of pirate mercenaries on a hovercraft, who hold very unusual philosophical beliefs. When the last Lazy Gun is eventually discovered, it is guarded by an elaborate defense system incorporating a genetic key which Sharrow has to deactivate."
624,The Currents of Space,science," The story takes place in the backdrop of Trantor's rise from a large regional power to a galaxy-wide empire, unifying millions of worlds. This story occurs around the year 11,000 AD (originally 34,500 AD, according to Asimov's early 1950s chronology), when the Trantorian Empire encompasses roughly half of the galaxy. The independent planet Sark exploits the planet Florina and derives its great wealth from ""kyrt"", a versatile and fluorescent fiber that can only be grown on Florina. The relationship between the two planets is analogous to the situation between European imperial powers and their colonies during the 19th century, where the Florinians are forced to work in kyrt fields and are treated as an inferior race by the Sarkites. Attempts to break the Sark monopoly and grow kyrt on other worlds have thus far been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Trantor would like to add these two worlds to its growing empire. There is a hidden irony in Sark's dominion over Florina: clear parallels to the American South growing cotton with slave labor. The Florinians are one of the lightest-skinned people in a galaxy where racial categories seem to have been forgotten, except by the people of Sark. One of the characters, Dr. Selim Junz, comes from Libair, a planet with some of the galaxy's darkest-skinned people, and feels sympathy for the Florinians. (The planet Libair takes its name from Liberia, a country in Africa, which would explain a dark-skinned genetic inheritance. Liberia was also settled by freed slaves from America.) Also, Asimov chose the name of ""kyrt"" to be rather similar to ""cotton"", and he explains that it contains cellulose. The possible destruction of Florina is predicted by Rik, a ""spatio-analyst"", who has had his mind manipulated by a ""psychic probe"" device, resulting in gross amnesia. When Rik gradually starts remembering his past, it produces a political crisis involving Sark, Florina, and Trantor. Rik, a native of the Earth, had discovered that Florina's sun is about to explode into a nova because it is being fed carbon by one of the outer-space ""currents of space"", supposedly rather like the currents of the ocean. It is also revealed at long last that the special energetic wavelength of light that is being emitted by Florina's sun is what causes the very high-quality kyrt fiber to grow there. This is the explanation why kyrt cannot be grown on other planets – since stars going nova are really quite rare, and stars with habitable planets that go nova are rarer still. Because losing Florina would mean losing the only source of its vast wealth, there is strong resistance from Sark to accept the message. However, when it is explained that the wealth is already lost since the conditions that enable kyrt to grow can be easily duplicated anywhere now that they are understood, they become more amenable. When Trantor offers to buy out the entire planet for a very high price, the offer is readily accepted. Even though there is not yet a full Galactic Empire, Trantor does control the now largely radioactive Earth. The idea of evacuating Earth is mentioned, but that is strongly rejected by Rik. He insists that it is the original planet of the human race, though this is not generally accepted."
625,Queen of the Empire,science," When a demonstration of a ""decoy"" Human Replica Droid of Leia goes wrong and the droid shoots a scientist, Han and Leia are forced to fly him to his home planet of Chad to get treatment. When they reach the planet's hospital a hurricane is ravaging it. After Han is able to bring the scientist to the doctors, he is trapped by falling rubble caused by the storm. When Leia eventually saves him, he reveals that the experience scared him that he wouldn't be able to reveal his big plans. Upon leaving the scientist in the doctors' care, Han proposes to Leia and they plan on eloping at Hologram Fun World, an amusement park. With the help of the new owner of the park, Lando Calrissian, they plan a wedding and visit many hologram attractions, including a trip through the Alderaan of Leia's memories. While they are at the park, one of Zorba the Hutt's spies in the park tells him that Leia is alive and he plans on capturing her and killing her on Tatooine as she did to his son. With some help, he manages to capture her during a magic show and take her to his ship, with the carbonite-frozen body of Trioculus, for the trip to Tatooine. Zorba's ship, however, is captured by the Moffship of Grand Moff Hissa. When they discover Trioculus is still alive, he is quickly unfrozen and only spares Zorba's life when Zorba reveals where Leia is. Hoping to turn Leia to his side, Trioculus drops Zorba into the Pit of Carkoon into the mouth of the Sarlacc. While Trioculus makes plans to marry Leia, Han and Lando, joined by Luke, Ken and the Human Replica Droid of Leia are able to infiltrate the Moffship and plan a rescue operation. They rescue Leia and are able to replace her with the Human Replica Droid, who goes to the wedding in Leia's place. While the Millennium Falcon escapes, the droid's lasers pierce Trioculus' heart. As he lay dying, unbeknownst to anyone, Zorba crawled out of the Sarlacc, as no creature in the universe can digest a Hutt."
626,2061: Odyssey Three,science," In the previous novel, 2010: Odyssey Two, Jupiter was converted into a mini-sun which was dubbed ""Lucifer"" following the Soviet ship Leonov’s mission to Jupiter to find out what happened to the Discovery. A message was sent to Earth by Dave Bowman, through HAL: This is due to Lucifer melting the frozen ocean beneath the surface of Europa, causing an atmosphere to form and leading to the discovery of alien life in Europa's ocean. When the Leonov returned to Earth, Heywood Floyd (whose marriage had broken up while he was on the Leonov) suffered an accident. His recovery on an orbital space hospital took longer than expected and he became a permanent resident there after finding that his body could no longer handle Earth-level gravity. His grandson Chris works aboard the spacecraft Galaxy and has not seen his grandfather in years. The black population of South Africa has rebelled in the 2030s and formed the United States of Southern Africa (USSA). The white population fled to Europe, taking most of the country's wealth with them and leaving the black population to rebuild the economy, which they did in a matter of weeks by use of diamonds. (2061 was published in 1987, at which time apartheid was still in force in South Africa.) Large-scale interplanetary travel is now commercially viable with muon-catalyzed fusion-powered spacecraft. On Europa, an enormous mountain has sprung up out of nowhere. No one is sure of the origin of ""Mount Zeus""; being asymmetrical, it cannot be a volcano. In 2061, at the age of 103, Floyd is chosen as one of several ""celebrity guests"" to come aboard the privately owned spaceliner Universe for the first-ever human landing on the surface of Halley's Comet, when it makes its periodic pass through the Solar System. Meanwhile, a team of scientists on Ganymede (formerly a moon of Jupiter that now orbits the star called ""Lucifer"") is terraforming it for potential habitation. Scientist Rolf van der Berg, a second-generation Afrikaner refugee, studies pictures of Mount Zeus and determines that it is in fact one enormous diamond. He communicates his discovery to his uncle Paul Kreuger; the expedition planners invite van der Berg to join the crew of Galaxy for its flyby of Europa. As Galaxy nears Europa, a stewardess attempts to single-handedly hijack Galaxy, forcing it to crash into Europa's ocean. Her plan having failed (her motivation and loyalties are not explained, but she is assumed to be a militant anti-Afrikaner), she commits suicide. The crew is now stranded, but their sister ship Universe is tasked to rescue her. Van der Berg and Chris Floyd take the shuttle William Tsung (nicknamed Bill Tee) to study Mount Zeus; also the wreck of the Chinese spacecraft Tsien, and the enormous monolith lying on its side at the border between the dayside and nightside, dubbed the ""Great Wall"". Near Mount Zeus, van der Berg relays the message ""LUCY IS HERE"" to his uncle Paul, verifying that Mount Zeus is indeed one large diamond. The code word ""Lucy"" was chosen both in reference to the mini-sun Lucifer and to an article in the journal Nature in 1981 hypothesizing that the cores of Uranus and Neptune were in fact diamonds the size of Earth (caused by the compression of carbon), with the hypothesis making a logical extension to Jupiter. The article was subtitled ""Diamonds in the Sky?"" in reference to the Beatles song ""Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"". Mount Zeus is a fragment of Jupiter's core which survived the creation of Lucifer and later struck Europa. On the Universe, the celebrity guests discuss the mystery surrounding Bowman and the monoliths, and whether they would be allowed to land on Europa to rescue Galaxy’s crew. Floyd follows a suggestion that he simply try to call Bowman on the radio, and that night has a strange dream in which he sees the monolith floating at the foot of his bed. The Bill Tee flies by Tsien, which has been completely stripped of its metals (rare and thus valuable to the Europans), and on to the Great Wall. An image of his grandfather appears to Chris in the same way that Bowman appeared to Floyd in 2010, telling him that the Universe was coming. Universe rescues Galaxys crew; they are brought to Ganymede, where they watch as Mount Zeus, which has been steadily sinking, finally disappears beneath the Europan surface. Kreuger writes a follow-up article for Nature, stating that Mount Zeus was a mere fragment of Jupiter's core and it is almost certain that many more such large pieces of diamond are currently in orbit around Lucifer, and proposing that a program be initiated immediately to collect these enormous quantities of diamond and put them to use. Floyd and Chris become close again, and both become friends with van der Berg. They talk about how Floyd called Bowman on the radio, and Chris asks if Bowman ever replied. Floyd almost tells his grandson about the monolith in his cabin, but does not after rationalizing that it was probably a dream. It was not a dream. The monolith duplicated Floyd's consciousness; there are now two Heywood Floyds, one an immortal being who resides with Bowman and HAL inside the Great Wall. In the epilogue, the star Lucifer stops shining in 3001, and in Manhattan ""the monolith awakes"" (referring to the original monolith discovered on the moon in 1999, and which was taken to Manhattan as a monument in 2006). It is also indicated that humans have found more quantities of diamond from the former Jupiter and used it to create space elevators and an orbital ring connecting them, as suggested by Kreuger. (This idea will later be a central concept in 3001: The Final Odyssey.)"
627,The Glass Bead Game,science," The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date, centuries into the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century. The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, reserved by political decision for the life of the mind; technology and economic life are kept to a strict minimum. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys, and to nurture and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive and whose devotees occupy a special school within Castalia known as Waldzell. The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. The novel is an example of a bildungsroman, following the life of a distinguished member of the Castalian Order, Joseph Knecht, whose surname translates as ""servant"" but can also mean ""squire."" The plotline chronicles Knecht's education as a youth, his decision to join the order, his mastery of the Game, and his advancement in the order's hierarchy to eventually become Magister Ludi, the executive officer of the Castalian Order's game administrators. The beginning of the novel introduces the Music Master, the resident of Castalia who recruits Knecht as a young student and who is to have the most long-lasting and profound effect on Knecht throughout his life. At one point, Knecht obliquely refers to the Music Master's ""sainthood"" as the Master nears death in his home at Monteport. As a student, another meaningful friendship develops with Plinio Designori, a student from a politically influential family who is studying in Castalia as a guest. Knecht develops many of his personal views about what larger good Castalia can achieve through vigorous debates with Designori, who views Castalia as an ""ivory tower"" with little to no impact on the outside world. Although educated within Castalia, Knecht's path to ""Magister Ludi"" is atypical for the order, as he spends a significant portion of his time after graduation outside the boundaries of the province. His first such venture, to the Bamboo Grove, results in his learning Chinese and becoming something of a disciple to Elder Brother, a recluse who had given up living within Castalia. Next, as part of an assignment to foster goodwill between the order and the Catholic Church, Knecht is sent on several ""missions"" to the Benedictine monastery of Mariafels, where he befriends the historian Father Jacobus - a relationship which also has profound personal impact for Knecht. As the novel progresses, Knecht begins to question his loyalty to the order; he gradually comes to doubt that the intellectually gifted have a right to withdraw from life's big problems. Knecht comes to see Castalia as a kind of ivory tower, an ethereal protected community, devoted to pure intellectual pursuits but oblivious to the problems posed by life outside its borders. This conclusion precipitates a personal crisis, and, according to his personal views regarding spiritual awakening, Knecht does the unthinkable: he resigns as Magister Ludi and asks to leave the order, ostensibly to become of value and service to the larger culture. The heads of the order deny his request to leave, but Knecht departs Castalia anyway, initially taking a job as a tutor to his childhood friend Designori's energetic and strong-willed son, Tito. Only a few days later, the story ends abruptly with Knecht drowning in a mountain lake while attempting to follow Tito on a swim for which Knecht was unfit. The fictional narrator leaves off before the final sections of the book, remarking that the end of the story is beyond the scope of his biography. The concluding chapter, entitled ""The Legend"", is reportedly from a different biography. After this final chapter, several of Knecht's ""posthumous"" works are then presented. The first section contains Knecht's poetry from various periods of his life, followed by three short stories labeled ""Three Lives."" The stories are presented as exercises by Knecht imagining his life had he been born in another time and place. The first story tells of a pagan rainmaker named Knecht who lived ""many thousands of years ago, when women ruled."" Eventually the shaman's powers to summon rain fail, and he offers himself as a sacrifice for the good of the tribe. The second story is of Josephus, an early Christian hermit who acquires a reputation for piety but is inwardly troubled by self-loathing and seeks a confessor, only to find that same penitent had been seeking him. The final story concerns the life of Dasa, a prince wrongfully usurped by his half brother as heir to a kingdom and disguised as a cowherd to save his life. While working with the herdsmen as a young boy, Dasa encounters a yogi in meditation in the forest. He wishes to experience the same tranquility as the yogi, but he's unable to stay. He later leaves the herdsmen and marries a beautiful young woman, only to be cuckolded by his half brother (now the Rajah). In a cold fury, he kills his half brother and finds himself once again in the forest with the old yogi, who, through an experience of an alternate life, guides him on the spiritual path and out of the world of illusion (Maya). The four lives, including that as Magister Ludi, oscillate between extroversion (and getting married: rainmaker, Indian life) and introversion (father confessor, Magister Ludi) while developing the four basic psychic functions of Analytical Psychology: sensation (rainmaker), intuition (Indian life), feeling (father confessor), and thinking (Magister Ludi). Originally, Hesse intended several different lives of the same person as he is reincarnated. Instead, he focused on a story set in the future and placed the three shorter stories, ""authored"" by Knecht in The Glass Bead Game at the end of the novel."
628,The Empress of Mars,science," The story follows Mary, a woman who owns the only bar on Mars. After being let go as the xenobotanist for the British Arean Company, she and a few loyal supporters work very hard to create not only a bar, but a business empire that deals in everything from barley to diamonds."
629,The New Rebellion,science," Kueller, a Dark Jedi, destroys millions with his powers. Luke Skywalker feels this genocide, and is afraid that the destruction will continue. Meanwhile, an assassination attempt is made on Princess Leia Organa, which is blamed on Han Solo. However, this is quickly discovered to be Kueller's doing. Luke decides to seek the aid of Brakiss, a former student. However, Brakiss is in on Kueller's plan, and Luke joins the spiral of death that is to follow. Eventually, Luke Skywalker is led to Kueller, though a wake of destruction is left behind."
630,Stand on Zanzibar,science," The story is set in 2010, mostly in the United States. A number of plots and many vignettes are played out in this future world, based on Brunner's extrapolation of social, economic, and technological trends. The key main trends are based on the enormous population and its impact: social stresses, eugenic legislation, widening social divisions, future shock, and extremism. Certain of Brunner's guesses are fairly close, others not, and some ideas clearly show their 1960s mind-set. Many futuristic concepts, products and services, and slang are presented. A supercomputer named Shalmaneser is an important plot element. The Hipcrime Vocab and other works by the fictional sociologist Chad C. Mulligan are frequent sources of quotations. Some examples of slang include ""codder"" (man), ""shiggy"" (woman), ""whereinole"" (where in hell?), ""prowlie"" (an armored police car), ""offyourass"" (possessing an attitude), ""bivving"" (bisexuality, from ""ambivalent"") and ""mucker"" (a person running amok). A new technology introduced is ""eptification"" (education for particular tasks), a form of mental programming. Another is a kind of interactive television that shows the viewer as part of the program (""Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere""). Genetically modified microorganisms are used as terrorist weapons. The book centres on two New York men, Donald Hogan and Norman Niblock House, who share an apartment. House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of the all-powerful corporations. Using his ""Afram"" (African American) heritage to advance his position, he has risen to vice-president at age twenty-six. Hogan is introduced with a single paragraph rising out of nowhere: ""Donald Hogan is a spy"". Donald shares an apartment with House and is undercover as a student. Hogan's real work is as a ""synthesist"", although he is a commissioned officer and can be called up for duty. The two main plots concern the fictional African state of Beninia (a name reminiscent of the real-life Benin, though that nation in the Bight of Benin was known as the Republic of Dahomey when the book was written) making a deal with General Technics to take over the management of their country, in a bid to speed up development from third world to first world status. A second major plot is a break-through in genetic engineering in the fictional Australasian nation of Yatakang (which seems to be a disguised Indonesia), to which Hogan is soon sent by the U.S. government (""State"") to investigate. The two plots eventually cross, bringing potential implications for the entire world."
631,The Postman,science," Despite the post-apocalyptic scenario, and several action sequences, the book is largely about civilization and symbols. Each of the three sections deals with a different symbol. The first is the Postman himself, Gordon Krantz, who takes the uniform solely for warmth after he loses everything but his sleeping clothes. He wanders without establishing himself anywhere, and acts in scenes of William Shakespeare for supplies. Originally from Minnesota, he has traveled as far West as Oregon. Taking shelter in a long-abandoned postal van, he finds a sack of mail and takes it to a nearby community to barter for food and shelter. His reputation as a real postman builds not because of a deliberate fraud (at least initially) but because people are desperate to believe. Later, in the second section, he encounters a community (Corvallis, Oregon) led by Cyclops, apparently a sentient artificial intelligence created at Oregon State University which miraculously survived the cataclysm. In reality, however, the machine had ceased functioning during a battle; a group of scientists merely maintain the pretense of it working to try and keep hope, order, and knowledge alive. Eventually, in the third section, as the Postman joins forces with the Cyclops scientists in a war against an influx of ""hypersurvivalists"", he begins to find that the hypersurvivalists are being pressed from the Rogue River area to the south as well. The hypersurvivalists are more commonly referred to as Holnists, after the founder of their ideal, Nathan Holn. Many times through the book, curses are uttered which damn Holn for his actions. Nathan Holn was an author who championed an extreme, violent, misogynistic and hypersurvivalist society. Holn is said to have himself been hanged in the novel, but in the time following what should have been a brief period of civil disorder, followers of Holn prevented the United States from recovering from the limited war, and the plagues that followed. As the story ends, and he comes close to the hypersurvivalist's southern enemy, he begins to find traces of them, primarily in the symbol that they rally behind: the Bear Flag of California. The final scenes give the impression that the three symbols may rally together in an effort to revive civilization. Another message of the plot deals with the backstory of the post-apocalyptic world: specifically, that it was not the electronics-destroying electromagnetic pulses, nor the destruction of major cities, nor the release of various bio-engineered plagues that actually destroyed society: rather, it was the hypersurvivalists themselves, those who maintained stockpiles of weapons and ammunition and who preyed on humanitarian workers and other forces of order."
632,The Masks of Time,science," Vornan-19 arrives on Christmas day, 1998 in Rome. He floats down from the sky naked, landing on the Spanish Steps. The police try and arrest him but he knocks them over with a touch. He is helped and given clothes by Horst Klein who believes that the apocalypse will come in 389 days, Vornan-19 tells him that he is from the year 2999. Jack Bryant, a graduate student under Leo Garfield at the University of California is working toward a process to extract huge amounts of energy from ordinary matter. He leaves the physics department, gets married to pretty blond named Shirley and they move to the deserts of Arizona. Leo Garfield spends several months with Jack and Shirley to get a break from his physics work. During Vornan-19's first public press conference he mentions the fact that in the future society is very different due to the fact that they have tapped the energy within all matter so that no one has to work to obtain energy. Leo Garfield tells Jack that he left the University because he had actually finished his thesis showing how to extract the enormous amounts of energy within all particles of matter. He could not bear to release this theory since it would dramatically change human society. He asks Jack to use his influence to question Vornan-19 on the subject to see if it was his theory that was used in the future. When Jack returns to the University, he has a call from the White House and is forced to join a group of scientists working for the US government on how to best deal with Vornan-19. Vornan-19 comes to New York City where he meets with the group of scientists, attends an outrageous house party and tours the New York Stock Exchange. He reveals during the tour that in 2999 there is no capitalism and even no money. All citizens have all that they need. After visiting the stock market Vornan requests a visit to an automated brothel in Chicago. During an interview in California, Vornan-19 says that in the future they have determined how life began on the earth. An alien spacecraft visited the earth long ago on a scouting mission and discovered no life forms and so departed, before they left they jettisoned a load of their garbage that landed on earth and eventually started life. Vornan goes to moon, when he returns he takes a break from his tour of the earth by staying with Leo's friends Jack and Shirley in Arizona. Shirley subtly offers herself to Vornan but he shows no interest, Vornan instead seduces Jack. Shirley then sleeps with Leo who has been wanting her for years. Vornan has been made into a messiah by the people of earth. He visits Buenos Aires using a personal shield technology that should allow him to interact with the crowds. The shield fails and Vornan is grabbed by the crowd and his body is never recovered. Jack remains in Buenos Aires until the turn of the century."
633,The Last of the Jedi: Return of the Dark Side,science," Things go wrong when Palpatine comes to Samaria, ordering Ferus, who is a double agent, to kill his companions. Years ago, when they were both Jedi Apprentices, Ferus Olin and Anakin Skywalker were rivals. Now their paths are about to cross again.... Abandoning the Jedi Order saved Ferus's life. As a result, he is the only one who can track down and save Jedi who have survived the rise of the Empire. He has Rebellion on his mind, and hopes to bring about the fall of the Emperor. Only Darth Vader stands in his way. Ferus might not realize it, but his old rival is now his new deadly enemy. es:Return of the Dark Side"
634,What Price Honor?,science," The second original novel to be based on the brand new Star Trek series Enterprise, currently wowing audiences on both Sky and Channel 4, poses a tense and gritty dilemma for one member of the crew. The Starship Enterprise NX-01 is Earth's flagship - the first vessel to embark on a systematic exploration of what lies beyond the fringes of known space. Led by Captain Jonathan Archer, eighty of Starfleet's best and brightest set forth to pave humanity's way to the stars. Tempered by a year of interstellar exploration, the crew has become a disciplined, cohesive, unit. And now, for the first time, they have lost one of their number. As they deal with the death, Archer, Reed and the rest of the crew find themselves caught squarely in the middle of another tense situation - a brutal war between two alien civilizations. But in the Alpha System nothing is what it seems."
635,The Caves of Drach,science," A multi-billionaire's grandson gets lost in the Caves of Drach in Majorca. The grandfather employs the team of astronauts (who are on holiday) to investigate. The expedition finds him in a huge and airy underground civilization peopled by practically immortal age-old humanoid beings who hail from the stars and took refuge underground when a Terran Ice-age threatened. The 'Cenobians' have a utopian civilization and avoid contact with the surface to keep it that way, and yet their advanced technology could bring an end to famine and disease."
636,Making History,science," The story is told in first person by Michael ""Puppy"" Young, a young history student at Cambridge University on the verge of completing his doctoral thesis on the early life of Adolf Hitler and his mother. He meets Professor Leo Zuckerman, a physicist who has a strong personal interest in Hitler, the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Michael assumes this is due to his Jewish heritage. However, it is later revealed that Leo was born Axel Bauer, the son of Dietrich Bauer, a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz. Leo has developed a machine that enables the past to be viewed&mdash;but it is of no practical use as the image is not resolvable into details. Together, they hatch a plan to modify the machine such that it can be used to send something back into time. They decide to use a permanent male contraceptive pill, stolen from Michael's girlfriend (a biochemistry researcher), who, due to his continual distraction, has left him to take a position at Princeton University. They decide to send this pill back in time to the well in Braunau am Inn so that Hitler's father will drink from it, become infertile, and Hitler will never be born. When Michael awakens he is completely disoriented. He soon discovers that he is in the USA, at Princeton University. Everyone he encounters is surprised that he is speaking with an English accent. It takes some time for Michael's memory to return. He realizes that his plan was successful, history has changed, and for some reason his parents must have moved to America. Initially he is elated and tells his new friend Steve how happy he is because Steve has never heard of Hitler, Braunau-am-Inn, or the Nazi party. Steve corrects Michael and reveals that he is well aware of the Nazi party. Michael begins to discover the history of this new world. It turns out that without Hitler, a new leader emerged, Rudolph Gloder, who was equally ruthless. In fact, Michael and Zuckerman have replaced Hitler with a Nazi leader who was even more charming, patient, and effective, and as committed to the Final Solution as Hitler had been. In this alternate timeline, the Nazis won a mandate in the Reichstag in 1932 and built up an electronics industry of their own. Unlike Hitler, Gloder proceeded with stealth, ensuring peaceful unification with Austria in 1937. More alarmingly, Gloder's Nazis also had a head start on the research and development of nuclear weapons, which led to the destruction of Moscow and Leningrad, eliminating Joseph Stalin and his Politburo in this alternate 1938. The Greater German Reich annexes Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Turkey and invades the remnants of the former Soviet Union. In 1939, France, Britain, Scandinavia, and the Benelux nations capitulate, although Britain rebels in 1941, leading to the execution of several dissidents, among them the Duke of York (the historical King George VI). Jews are exiled to a ""Jewish Free State"" within the former Yugoslavia, where most of this world's Holocaust occurs. The United States develops nuclear weapons in 1941, leading to a Cold War between Nazi Germany, its satellites, and the United States. The latter has never gone to war against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific, and it is left unsaid whether Japan has its own nuclear weapons as well. Due to these changes, the Nazis are now the dominant power in the whole of Europe. The plan for genocide of the Jewish race came to fruition, although this is only implied, never explicitly stated. (Every time Michael attempts to ask someone what happened to Europe's Jews, he receives no answer.) The USA is engaged in a fierce struggle short of combat against the Nazis, supporting former Soviet guerrillas fighting in Siberia. As a result, this United States has become far more socially conservative. Because there was no sixties upsurge of social liberalism and decriminalisation of homosexuality in (Nazi-occupied) Western Europe in this world, the latter is still a felony, while racial segregation is still active. Steve turns out to be homosexual, and when he discovers Michael's background, he marvels at his talk of gay pride marches, urban gay communities, and a mass social movement in Michael's world of origin, regarding it as ""utopian"". Much to his surprise, Michael reciprocates Steve's feelings, and realises that he too is gay. Michael is apprehended by the authorities, who believe that he is a possible spy. Michael learns that the water from the well in Hitler's home town was used to create ""Braunau Water"", which was the instrument to sterilise the European Jews, wiping them out in one generation. In a cruel twist of fate, the person who perfected the synthesis was Dietrich Bauer. Once more his physicist son, Axel, is wracked with guilt and has developed a Temporal Imager. With Michael and Steve's help, they plan to send a dead rat to poison the well so that it will be pumped clean of the sterilising water. As they begin to do this, they are interrupted by the federal agents that apprehended Michael earlier and they end up shooting Steve, who dies in Michael's arms just as the time alteration occurs. Time changes again. Expecting the disorientation, Michael comes to his senses faster now and discovers that almost everything is back to how it was, except that his favorite band never existed. He gives up his career in academia, figuring he can at least make some money ""writing"" the songs that he remembers from the previous reality. Finally, Michael is reunited with Steve, who also remembers the previous reality. Their gay relationship is no longer criminal."
637,Convergence,science," The book takes place millennia in the future with the same group of explorers introduced in the first two books of the series, Summertide and Divergence. After millions of years of apparent inaction, the Builder artifacts are changing quickly. After exploring several new artifacts, rediscovering the existence of a race thought to be dead for millennia, and finding that race's home planet in the midst of an enormous artifact, the adventures of this eclectic team become even stranger. In this book the characters explore several old artifacts to find that they have changed. These changes all seemed to be linked to a seemingly new artifact, which may affect the future of the entire Orion arm of the galaxy. The sequel to this book and series finale is Resurgence."
638,Path of Unreason,science," The novel concerns a physicist who is trying to explain the mysterious ""Lawson Radiation"" while his researches drive him insane."
639,Children of the Jedi,science," Han Solo and Princess Leia learn of the now-abandoned Jedi stronghold on the planet of Belsavis from Drub McKumb and travel there, only to discover a chilling conspiracy involving a Force-adept, members of the Ancient Houses and the Emperor's Hand who is able to change the programming of droids and mechanicals. Meanwhile Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, two Jedi students (Nichos and Cray), and a myriad selection of alien life-forms along with a former stormtrooper are abducted aboard the sinister Eye of Palpatine, impossibly reactivated after thirty years. Fighting the effects of massive indoctrination, injury, and the cold manipulation by the ship's artificial intelligence and its horrific security measures, Luke discovers the Eye is bound for the destruction of Belsavis. Racing against time and exhaustion he struggles to rescue his companions; who are being held hostage as the Will has decided they are Rebel Saboteurs, find a way to transport all the ship's prisoners back to their home-worlds, and find a way to destroy the super-weapon. He makes an unexpected ally in the form of Callista, the brave Jedi who sacrificed her life to stop the ship thirty years before, and now exists as a fading spirit in the gunnery computers. Tenderness grows between them, but time is running out, and the destruction of the Eye will mean the final loss of Callista forever. Beyond all hope, Callista is revived as a human when Cray chooses to die and be reunited with her dead lover Nichos and offers her body to the former Jedi. But everything has to be paid for, Callista loses her Jedi powers. Their love and trials continue in Darksaber and The Planet of Twilight."
640,Dinosaur Planet,science," A team visits fictional planet Ireta to survey its mineral wealth. Several anomalies are discovered. Before all can be explained the Heavyworlder ""muscle people"" mutiny."
641,Killing Ground,science," The Doctor returns his companion Grant to Agora, the human colony planet where he was born, and upon arrival discovers that Agora has been conquered by the Cybermen, who have enslaved the population and return every three years to take the five hundred fittest humans for conversion in order to add to the Cybermen's galactic army. At the same time, Agora plays host to another time traveller, ArcHivist Hegelia, and her novice research partner, Graduand Jolarr. Hegelia is obsessed with the Cybermen and intends to become one, and she has used the sanctioned excursion of Jolarr as an excuse to meet them and arrange the fulfilment of her ambition. Agoran rebels plan an attack on the Population Control building set up by the Cybermen as a herding centre for conversion selectees with the assistance of Grant, but the Doctor is trapped in a cell inside the building, and the Cybermen are due to return in person within a matter of days."
642,Star of Danger,science, The novel concerns a hero who combats aliens to decide the fate of the Terrans on the planet Darkover.
643,My Name is Legion,science," The protagonist of these stories was involved in the creation of a global computer network designed to give ultimate economic control by keeping track of all human activity. Just before the system went live, the hero expressed his concerns about the possible misuse of such power to his superior, who gave the hero the chance to destroy his personal data before it was to be entered into the system. In taking this step the hero becomes non-existent as far as the system is concerned. Using backdoors in the central network, the hero is able to create identities for himself as needed. With this freedom he sets himself up as a freelance investigator and problem solver."
644,The Arrival,science," When the Animorphs see a front-page article about the Sharing in the Chronicle, they attempt to break into the office of the major local newspaper to determine how deeply infiltrated it is by the Yeerks. Mr. King (a Chee android) is captured and is about to be destroyed, and the group bursts out of hiding to rescue him. It is soon evident that the situation is a trap set up by Visser Three, and he joins the battle, engaging directly with Ax and the others in Andalite form. As the Animorphs try to run, a small group of new Andalites appear out of the elevator, and turn the tides of the battle. Tobias informs them that the police are coming, and the groups call an uneasy truce and depart to maintain secrecy. Ax, excited to see his own people after so long, is afraid to leave them without knowing how to make contact them, but a female who fought next to him reveals that they know his identity and will find him. Back at Cassie's barn, Ax is excited that the Andalite fleet has finally arrived, but the others aren't so sure. After a few assertions that Ax is not seeing the situation clearly, in part because of a crush on Estrid (the female Andalite), and a jab from Rachel about where his loyalties lay, Ax leaves the barn in anger after assuring them that he will follow Jake's command. He runs until his anger cools, at which point it is revealed that he is deeply infatuated with Estrid. Having found a $20 bill, Tobias and Ax go to the food court where they discover Estrid in human morph making a scene that attracts mall security. They escape with her because Tobias pretended that Estrid was his sister. They set up a meeting with her superiors. The newcomers are offended that Ax disobeyed their orders by bringing Jake (and the others, they soon find out) to the meeting, and that he is following a human's command. After much in-fighting amongst themselves, the small group of Andalites with an out-of-date ship accidentally reveal that they are the only Andalites in the area, and not fore-runners of the fleet as Ax had assumed. The group has been sent to Earth on a mission to assassinate Visser Three. Ax finds himself (competitively) fighting with the aristh Estrid, whom he beats, but just barely. He admires her skill in tailfighting, but is confused by her lack of military decorum. The letdown of the further delay of the fleet causes the Animorphs to split up in a dramatic scene at Cassie's barn. Each member leaves for reasons typical of their character, with Jake finally releasing Ax to ""try to go home, if [he] can"". Ax, once the humans are gone, calls out Estrid, who has been hiding in the barn in rabbit morph, but poorly concealed due to a lack of understanding of the animal's typical behavior. He tells her he will teach her about Earth, and she takes him back to the Andalite ship. The other members of the ship are Commander Gonrod-Isfall-Sonilli, Intelligence Advisor Arbat-Elivat-Estoni, and the assassin Aloth-Attamil-Gahar. Ax is shown around the ship by Aloth, who reveals that he was in prison for selling organs off of a battle field prior to the current assignment. Aloth, who is deeply cynical about the whole group, reveals that Gonrod, while an excellent pilot, was also in prison for cowardice during battle, and that Arbat has the Andalite War Council wrapped around his finger. There is some ambiguity as to who the real ""leader"" of the expedition is. It is revealed to Ax that Arbat is the brother of Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, Visser 3's host. The ship, the Ralek River, is an old laboratory ship, whose lab-level has been sealed off to conserve energy. Ax notes the strangeness of the situation, and is certain that Estrid is not really an aristh, after she audaciously announces that she is going to the Gardens and wants Ax to show her around. The two fly to the Gardens and explore in Andalite form. Estrid asks Ax about jelly beans, and in response he kicks some M&Ms out of a vending machine for her to try in human morph. The two assume human forms, and after eating, they kiss. They agree that it is pleasant (though not as much as chocolate). Ax is clearly smitten, and on the flight back, silently contemplates for a moment the idea of running away with Estrid and leaving behind the difficult shades of gray of his life. He shakes off the reverie and they return to the ship to plan for the morning's attack on the Visser. Ax later suddenly realizes that Estrid had made a joking reference to plintcorhythmic equations, which are employed in an incredibly complex bioengineering field involving clear thought in n-dimensions, but uneasily writes it off as a figure of speech. The Andalites (minus Estrid, whom Arbat forces to stay behind) infiltrate the Community Center and make it all the way to the inner sanctum without raising the alarm. Arbat, who has demanded he have the first shot out of pride after Aloth implies that he might not give the order to kill his brother's body, misses an easy shot, even though he has proved himself a competent fighter earlier in the book. A battle ensues, and Ax fails to kill the Visser out of a morality-induced hesitation. Aloth is injured when he breaks concentration for a moment to look for Gonrod, who has fled back to the ship. Arbat kills Aloth under the pretense that he ""was too injured to save"", which is a lie. Furious and confused, Ax is certain that something very strange is going on. Ax gets a Chee to help him hack into the ship's computers and gain access to the high-security files concealed by Arbat. All of the members of the Andalite team are officially listed as dead in combat, and Estrid is not on record at all in the military. The ship was listed as destroyed in the same battle. Ax realizes that the ship is on a suicide mission, and that Arbat has something planned that the Andalite War Council does not ""officially"" know about. Hearing motion on the supposedly empty laboratory level of the ship, Ax confronts Estrid and forces her to talk by threatening to open a vial of some unknown substance of which she is terrified. Estrid reveals that she was never in the military, but learned to tail-fight from her famously-skilled brother. She was a young genius, and after initially being ignored because of her gender, was discovered by Arbat at the university. She took up plintconarhythmic physics under his guidance, and has created a programmable prion virus (the vial that Ax puts down) that will destroy the Yeerks—and very possibly wipe out humans as well. Arbat finds them and traps them, and Ax explains to Estrid that their mission doesn't officially exist and is not sanctioned by general Andalite society, like she was led to believe. Arbat takes the vial of the disease and leaves them. As Estrid apologizes, the Animorphs are revealed to be on board, as their ""split-up"" was simply a ploy to get Ax in with the Andalites. The Animorphs and a Chee free them, and the group of 7 finds evidence of Arbat and follows him to the Yeerk pool in human form, except for Tobias, who stays as a hawk. Ax spots Arbat's human morph by his Andalite instinct to keep looking around now that he has only 2 eyes, and stops him on the pier over the Yeerk pool, prolonging the chaos by yelling that the Hork Bajir are Andalite Bandits in disguise. In the ensuing confusion, the Animorphs begin to attack, and Ax and Estrid move to a hidden spot to demorph. Estrid, terrified and disgusted by the Yeerk pool, refuses to demorph and fight to protect the humans, who are not part of their species. Ax leaves to protect his friends, telling her that she is beautiful and brilliant but he ""doesn't think he likes her very much"". The battle is bloody and the group is outnumbered, though their backs are covered by human hosts who have linked together into a living shield. Arbat makes it back to the pier, and Ax cannot reach him in time. He is about to drop the vial into the pool when Estrid vaporizes it (and Arbat's hand) with a Dracon beam. At that moment Gonrod (at Tobias' urging) burns a hole through the roof of the cavernous complex, and rescues the Animorphs with the Andalite ship. Ax leaves Arbat to die at the hands of the Taxxons. Ax gives Estrid a cinnamon bun as a parting gift, but refuses to return home with her. She does not understand his loyalty and dedication to his non-Andalite friends. The fate of Estrid and Gonrod is unknown. The Animorphs and Ax all assume human forms and enjoy their victory. They walk to get food (though not at the McDonald's, as Tobias and Gonrod had destroyed the place to burn into the Yeerk pool). Despite the unawareness of most of the others, Cassie picks up on Ax's pain, and holds his hand as the group walks, as he cries, invisibly, in the dark."
645,Drowning World,science," On the distant planet Fluva, torrential rains that leave it barely habitable also make it a treasure trove of rare botanical specimens. When the human prospector Shadrach Hasselemoga crashes in a remote area, the only crew available to search for him is the warrior Jemunu-jah, one of the native Sakuntala, and the immigrant Deyzara trader, Masurathoo. This culturally different and physically repulsive to each other couple promptly crash also. While the rescuers and the rescued are all slogging it out of the ultimate rain forest, the reptilian AAnn empire is fomenting bloody trouble between the Sakuntula and the Deyzara. This leaves Commonwealth administrator Lauren Matthias in the hot seat, with refugees swarming in to her limited facilities and the bodies of the innocent piling up, with few resources to help. But it's the survivors of the rain forest who bring new knowledge that helps save Fluva, along with quick work by Matthias."
646,Men Like Gods,science," Men Like Gods is set in the summer of 1921. Its protagonist is Mr. Barnstaple (his first name is either Alfred or William), a journalist working in London and living in Sydenham. He has grown dispirited at a newspaper called The Liberal and resolves to take a holiday. Quitting wife and family, he finds his plans disrupted when his and two other automobiles are accidentally transported with their passengers into ""another world,"" which the ""Earthlings"" call Utopia. A sort of advanced Earth, Utopia is some three thousand years ahead of humanity in its development. For the 200,000,000 Utopians who inhabit this world, the ""Days of Confusion"" are a distant period studied in history books, but their past resembles humanity's in its essentials, differing only in incidental details: their Christ, for example, died on the wheel, not on the cross. Utopia lacks any world government and functions as a successfully realized anarchy. ""Our education is our government,"" a Utopian named Lion says. Sectarian religion, like politics, has died away, and advanced scientific research flourishes. Life in Utopia is governed by ""the Five Principles of Liberty,"" which are privacy, free movement, unlimited knowledge, truthfulness, and free discussion and criticism. Mr. Barnstaple longs to stay in Utopia, but when he asks how he can best serve Utopia, he is told that he can do this ""by returning to your own world."" Regretfully he accepts, and ends his month-long stay in Utopia. But he brings with him back to Earth a renewed determination to contribute to the effort to make a terrestrial Utopia: ""[H]e belonged now soul and body to the Revolution, to the Great Revolution that is afoot on Earth; that marches and will never desist nor rest again until old Earth is one city and Utopia set up therein. He knew clearly that this Revolution is life, and that all other living is a trafficking of life with death."" Men Like Gods is divided into three books. Details of life in Utopia are given in Books I and III. In Book II, the Earthlings are quarantined on a rocky crag after infections they have brought cause a brief epidemic in Utopia. There they begin to plot the conquest of Utopia, despite Mr. Barnstaple's protests. He betrays them when his fellows try to take two Utopians hostage, and Mr. Barnstaple is forced to escape execution for treason by fleeing perilously."
647,Lord of the Trees,science," At the end of A Feast Unknown, Grandrith and Doc Caliban (a thinly disguised Doc Savage) cease fighting each other upon learning that their personal war and indeed their entire lives were engineered by the Nine, a megalomaniacal and powerful secret society. The two men have a sexual affliction in common; they are impotent except when performing acts of violence; a temporary side effect of a serum that grants them eternal life&mdash;another product of the Nine. Angered by the ways they have been manipulated, the two heroes split up to overthrow the Nine, ultimately meeting up at the end. Lord of the Trees shows the story from Grandrith's point of view. The Mad Goblin tells the same story from Doc Caliban's viewpoint. During the events of the book, Grandrith kills two of the Nine, Mubaniga and Jiizfan. The oldest member of the Nine, XauXaz, died previously of extreme old age in A Feast Unknown. Iwaldi, the The Mad Goblin, is also killed. In the end, only five of the Nine remain alive."
648,The Jesus Incident,science," The book takes place at an indeterminate time following the events in Destination: Void. At the end of Destination: Void the crew of the ship had succeeded in creating an artificial consciousness. The new conscious being, now known as 'Ship', gains a level of awareness that allows it to manipulate space and time. Ship instantly transports itself to a planet which it has decided the crew will colonize. The first book ends with a demand from Ship for the crew to learn how to WorShip or how to establish a relationship with Ship, a godlike being. The action of the book is divided between two settings, the internal spaces of Ship which is orbiting Pandora and the settlements on the planet. While the original crew of Ship, as described in Destination: Void, were cloned human beings from the planet Earth, by the time of The Jesus Incident, the crew has become a mixed bag of peoples from various cultures that have been accepted as crew members by Ship when it visited their planet as well as people who have been conceived and born on the ship. Evidently Ship has shown up at a number of planets as the suns of those planets were going nova. Implied is that the various planets were other, failed experiments by Ship to establish a relationship with human beings. Ship refers to these as replays of human history, suggesting Ship itself has manipulated human history time and time again. The Jesus Incident begins at a long, but indeterminate, time after the ending of Destination: Void. Ship's charge for humans to decide how to WorShip still remains unsatisfied. In The Jesus Incident, Ship has delivered the humans to a new planet, Pandora, upon which they are attempting to establish a colony. In the opening chapters, Ship reveals that Pandora will be a final test for the human race. Ship awakens the Chaplain/Psychiatrist Raja Flattery (part of the original Destination: Void crew that created the artificial consciousness of Ship) from hybernation, and reveals to him the true nature of this test. He tasks Flattery with intervening in the society which has developed on Pandora to solve this riddle of WorShip. Flattery is to help the humans to pass Ship's test or else risk the destruction of the race. Flattery assumes the name of Raja Thomas to mask his identity from the other shipmen. The surface of the planet Pandora is 80% seas, and the sea is dominated by a type of kelp which appears to be sentient. The land is overrun by a number of deadly predators who are efficient killers, requiring people on the planet surface to adapt to a highly stressful lifestyle living within a fortress. The main fortress is known as Colony, a small city that is predominately underground. When The Jesus Incident begins there have been three failed attempts at colonization of the surface. The current colony is starting a second colonization site, known as The Redoubt. In addition to Raja Flattery, several main characters drive the narrative. Morgan Oakes is the head administrator of both the crew and the colonists and the central provocateur whose actions drive the conflict. Jesus Lewis is his main assistant as well as a biological engineer. Kerro Panille is a poet who has a special relationship with Ship. Legata Hamill is an administrative assistant and data analyst for Morgan Oakes. The planet Pandora itself with its non-human inhabitants is another main character of the book, echoing a strong version of the Gaia Hypothesis. As the book progresses, the reader discovers that the kelp, the hylighters, and other creatures of the planet appear to be linked into a large entity with a shared consciousness, Avata. Jesus Lewis is the manager and chief scientist of Lab One which is a genetic engineering facility that is working on genetically modified clones of human beings in order to develop a class of engineered human beings who can survive the predators of Pandora. The clones are viewed as organic tools much like they were presented in Destination: Void where clones are sent out in specially prepared space ships to create an artificial consciousness. There is a clear social distinction between clones and naturally born human beings, a distinction that in the end leads to the outbreak of a series of battles and confrontations (slave rebellions) between natural humans and clones as conflict over food supplies and assignment of risk escalates. The other major project of Lab One is to create a tool that will eliminate the kelp living in the seas of Pandora. The kelp is viewed by the leadership of the Oakes administration as the major impediment to the exploitation of the seas as a source of food."
649,Betrayal,science," Ambassadors from all over the Federation have assembled on Deep Space Nine for a conference that will determine the future of the planet Bajor. Keeping dozens of alien ambassadors happy is hard enough, but when hidden terrorists start blowing up the station, Commander Benjamin Sisko must track a hidden enemy who strikes at will. Then things get even worse: a new Cardassian commander arrives, demanding the return of Deep Space Nine to the Cardassian Empire. With Deep Space Nine now a dangerous minefield, Sisko must defuse a situation that threatens the very existence of the planet Bajor."
650,Nova,science," By the year 3172, political power in the galaxy is split between two factions: the older Earth-based Draco and the historically younger Pleiades Federation. Both have interests in the even newer Outer Colonies, where mines produce trace amounts of the prized power source Illyrion, the superheavy material essential to starship travel and terraforming planets. Caught in a feud between aristocratic and economically powerful families, a scarred and obsessed captain from the Pleiades, Lorq Von Ray, recruits a disparate crew of misfits to aid him in the race with his arch-enemy, Prince Red from Draco's Red Shift Ltd., to gain economic leadership by securing a vastly greater amount of Illyrion directly from the heart of a stellar nova. In doing so, Von Ray will shift the balance of power of the existing galactic order, which will bring about the downfall of the Red family as well as end Earth's dominance over interstellar politics. As the title indicates, the central metaphor for the novel is a nova: the destructive implosion/explosion of an entire sun, which, paradoxically, while it destroys most of a solar system, also creates new elements. In the book, at the eruption of a nova, not only do the laws of physics break down, but so do the laws of politics and psychology. This idea permeates the entire plot and storyline. The characters follow a quest plot line, in which they visit several worlds to gain information necessary to achieve their goal, all the while pursued by the Red family. Although the novel does not indulge the literary experimentation found in Delany's later books, it maintains a high level of innovation. Some chapters end or begin in mid-sentence. Also, the point of view regularly shifts between Lorq, Katin, and the Mouse. Each page in the book carries a header that gives the year and location of the scene on the page itself (e.g., ""Draco, Earth, Paris, 3162""). This is useful because of the flashbacks in the long journey around the galaxy."
651,Competitors,science," A Moscow freelance journalist named Valentin Saphonov finds an ad on a pole from the Stellar Time Agency, inviting people to sign up to become a pilot of a space fighter. Assuming this is an ad for a computer game, Valentin goes to the address specified in the ad and is greeted by an attractive woman named Inna. She warns him that everything that what he is about to do is for real. She explains that, upon his agreement, a copy of Valentin's body and consciousness will be created on a remote space station, where he will receive a spaceship and will be involved in a fight against aliens. After walking him through several rooms, Inna sends Valentin through the back door of the office, explaining that his alter ego is already on the station. Valentin, believing all this to be a prank, decides to conduct an investigation of Stellar Time. He soon finds the gaming website for the popular Russian MMORPG StarQuake. He registers under the nickname Katran ( — ""spiny dogfish""), unaware that his alter ego has received exactly the same nickname. Eventually, Valentin realizes that his character lives his own life and that all this may be actually happening. Valentin's double quickly ends up being kidnapped by the Seekers, a sect of people who believe that all they are experiencing is a computer simulation, just like in the Matrix. Valentin (AKA Katran) and his instructor Lena (AKA Driver) end up on the icy planet Nigredo, where all water (in every form) is black-colored but normal otherwise. The planet contains the hidden base of the Seekers. Master reveals that they have managed to obtain the plans for building an ultimate WMD — a weapon capable of extinguishing a star in a matter of minutes. They plan to use the Extinguisher to force those who have sent them into space to either unplug them (if everything is indeed a simulation) or return them home. After purchasing a new ship from Roman, Valentin and Lena go back to the Platform, where they have to face a tribunal-like hearing (albeit much less formal). During the hearing, a massive fleet of aliens known as the ""Bugs"" attacks the Platform, and every pilot is mobilized to defend the station. Many pilots are lost in the battle, but they manage to destroy most of the enemy ships and force the rest to retreat. Meanwhile, on Earth, the original Valentin realizes that something strange is happening with his in-game character and decides to investigate further. He contacts Lena via ICQ and invites her over to discuss in-game events. However, he quickly realizes that someone is trying to prevent their meeting from occurring. Lena arrives to his apartment, where she confirms his suspicions that everything they have been told at the agency is true — there really are copies of them somewhere out there, flying spaceships and fighting. Valentin receives a call on a phone which he turned off the day before, where an unknown person threatens him to drop his investigation and just play the game. The unknown person turns out to be a sniper on a neighboring roof. Valentin and Lena barely manage to escape in her car. They drive to Oleg, an acquaintance of Valentin, who is intrigued by their story. At Oleg's apartment, Valentin decides that they must contact their doubles and get them to return to Earth in their ships to threaten the agency. He takes a screenshot of the game's 2D star map and sends it to a local astronomer. Surprisingly, the astronomer fairly quickly manages to determine the location of the Sun on the game's map. Lena logs into the game as her other character (whose ship is operated by a bot in space). In space, Valentin and Lena are tasked by the administration to fly to a faraway planet, which has an abundant supply of certain rare elements needed by the Seekers to complete the Extinguisher. It is there that Valentin receives a message from his other self. The message explains how to find the Sun on their star map (about 330 parsecs away). They realize too late that the Seekers have tricked them and have made off with a substantial amount of the necessary elements, giving them all they need to build the weapon. They return to the Platform, where Valentin decides to share the information about the location of the Sun with Vadim Reshetov, an administrator, only to be knocked out and imprisoned by him. On Earth, in the middle of the night, Valentin and Lena decide to go to the agency and demand answers. They arrive to find two dead bodies (the agency's security guard and a young Jewish boy), who seem to have shot each other. They find the original Inna and Reshetov there and force them to explain everything. Apparently, Reshetov was approached by a shapeshifting alien several years ago who offered to trade alien technology in return for Reshetov's agency sending people into space. Reshetov considers himself to be a businessman and a patriot, as he wishes to use the new technology to help raise Russia about everyone else. He does not know the identity or motives of his mysterious benefactors, and their emissary (the security guard) is now dead. He offers Valentin and Lena positions at his agency, and they accept, realizing that there is little they can do. They resolve to try to convince every visitor to leave, but their attempts are revealed to be futile, as people yearn for this sort of adventure. On the station, the other Reshetov receives a message from the original and makes a similar offer to the duplicate Valentin and Lena. However, Platform sensors then detect the Seeker fleet close to the system's star. Reshetov sends Valentin and Lena as negotiators, as they know some of the Seekers personally. After docking with the Seekers' flagship, they once again meet Roman and Master. However, Valentin then realizes that their ships have likely been rigged to explode by Reshetov in an attempt to stop the Seekers. The bomb on Valentin's ship is thrown into space, while a Seeker takes Lena's ship far from the fleet and sacrifices himself to save the others. After finding out the location of Earth, the Seekers decide to undertake the long journey home. However, at their first stop, they are ambushed by an enormous ""Bug"" fleet. Roman orders everyone to follow him, as he sets course straight for the system's star (a blue supergiant later revealed to be Rigel). As they get closer, being chased by the ""Bugs"", Roman launches the Extinguisher missile, which explodes in the upper photosphere. The weapon creates an enormous shockwave which destroys the alien fleet, at the same time leaving a small tunnel at the epicenter, allowing the Seekers to pass through the exploding star. They jump to the next system, only to find a massive ""Bug"" ship waiting for them. Instead of attacking, the aliens send a message to the fleet, revealing their agenda for sending people into space and attacking the Platform every so often. Apparently, they use the humans to fight their offspring to weed out those with genetic weaknesses, as only the strongest would survive. This is a form of population control. That is why they have built the station and made a deal with Reshetov (and, possibly, others). They explain that nobody is forcing humans to go into space — they make this choice freely, as the agency employees are supposed to explain the situation truthfully. The reason for human infertility is simple — the ""Bugs"" believe it would be cruel to allow humans to bring children into an environment where they are constantly threatened. The ""Bugs"" make it clear that the Seekers (or anyone else, for that matter) should not attempt to reach Earth using ships, under the pain of death. The Seekers realize that they have no choice and decide to go back to the Platform. Valentin and Lena follow them, hoping that humanity may one day rival the ""Bugs""."
652,Earth Made of Glass,science," Giraut and Margaret, now married, are sent on a diplomatic mission to the politically turbulent planet Briand, a distant Outer Sphere colony cut off from the rest of humanity for centuries until instantaneous travel became possible with the springer. Not only is Briand a very hot, high gravity planet, but the oppressive environment is matched by the increasing hatred between the two proud local cultures which have been forced to live in close proximity as a result of a volcano disaster&mdash;the Tamil Mandalam culture of New Tanjavur (based on an interpretation of Sangam literature) and the Maya culture that has been forced to live in the slum of Mayatown and the newly-grown city of Yaxkintulum after the destruction of their native Kintulum (based on an interpretation of pre-Columbian Maya civilization), have strained relations to the point that the Council of Humanity fears that full-scale war or ethnic cleansing may envelop Briand. Giraut and Margaret are given orders by Shan, their Office of Special Projects supervisor, to find the real power brokers of each culture in order to defuse the headline-grabbing daily ethnic attacks and steer the planet clear of all-out war. They must do this under the nose of Ambassador Kiel, a high ranking ambassador from Earth on Briand, who believes strengthening elected government officials is the only way to address a crisis. Giraut and Margaret arrive as their marriage is falling apart, but focus on their work and establish contact with key Tamil people. They are assigned a Tamil assistant, Kapilar, with whom they both spend a lot of time. They are at first unable speak directly to the reclusive Mayans, except for Tz'iquin, the Mayan contact in New Tanjavur. After a small mob attacks Paxa Prytanis, another secret agent sent by the Office of Special Projects, an invitation by the Maya comes unexpectedly. Giraut, Kapilar and Tz'iquin travel to Yaxkintulum in the latter's flying yacht, as the Mayans have officially refused to adopt the springer as well as other technological conveniences, and rely on simple subsistence farming in order to preserve their cultural heritage. Giraut meets Tz'iquin's grandfather, Pusiictsom, the most powerful and influential priest in Yaxkintulum, who, despite being in charge of the traditionally conservative Center Temple, is a reformer working on reconciliation with the Tamils behind the scenes. A plan is put into motion where Pusiictsom's nephew is raised to the position of prophet under the name ""Ix,"" with a plan to move to Yaxkintulum and start a cult movement of tolerance, modernization and truth about the founding of the two cultures. The plan calls for the new cult to be brutally oppressed by Mayan authorities, and Giraut, Kapilar, Ix and Tz'iquin stage an escape to New Tanjavur. Through a series of public appearances, Ix begins to recruit Mayans and some Tamils to his cult. He starts dating Auvaiyar, a notable and famously attractive Tamil critic several years his junior who had previously been involved with Tz'quin, Kapilar and Kannan, a deeply bigoted Tamil critic and poet who heads the avant-garde movement and hopes to create a Fourth Cankam. The rumor that Ix has an affair with a Tamil causes mass riots, which Ix unexpectedly ends by confessing in public, despite Pusiictsom's protests, that his prophecy began as a ploy by his family, the Peccaries. Tz'iquin breaks into tears during his uncle's speech, revealing to Giraut his jealousy at his uncle's upcoming marriage to his former girlfriend. Just prior to Ix's next speech, however, Auvaiyar is found dead, her heart and lungs missing. Ix reacts calmly to the discovery, and decides to show the corpse to the crowd during his speech. Giraut and Kannan bring her body to the central plaza, before the temple of Murukan where Ix was going to wed Auvaiyar. As the prophet speaks to the mixed Tamil/Mayan crowd, he uses his pain, her murder and his forgiveness to whoever did it as a starting point for reconciliation between the two cultures. Tz'iquin comes forth, confesses Auvaiyar's murder (saying that he ate her heart, as Tohil is known to do), and shoots his uncle in the head with a maser. Kannan goes on a murderous rampage against the Mayans as a full-scale race war erupts. Giraut and Kapilar run back to the Embassy, where the former is ordered to evacuate it immediately. Almost everyone in the embassy is evacuated through springers to Earth, but Ambassador Kiel is captured by Tamils, and Kapilar refuses to go, choosing instead to join the fighting to honor his Vellala heritage. Giraut, Margaret and Shan watch the civil war unfold from a space station in the Inner Sphere. Mayan forces invade New Tanjavur through Pusiictsom's secret springer, an attack that the Peccaries had been planning for at least a year. Illegal anti-matter weapons are used by both sides, completely destroying both Yaxkintulum and New Tanjavur. The habitable areas of Briand are devastated, and with no springers left intact, the planet becomes isolated from the rest of humanity until a springer ship can arrive in several decades' time. Giraut finds out from Margaret that she had been having an affair with Kapilar since the mission began, and was ordered to not break it off by his friend and boss Shan, who hoped he could acquire valuable intelligence through Kapilar. The failure of the Office of Special Projects on Briand forces the secretive agency into the limelight, and they brace for public scrutiny and oversight. Giraut opts to take his one-year-long leave on the Hedon culture of Söderblom to try to salvage his marriage and to get away from Shan, but after that one year, he wants back into the Office of Special Projects to continue the important mission of integrating humanity to provide a united front for possible alien contact."
653,Genus Homo,science," A bus is trapped in the cave-in of a tunnel, and its passengers are preserved for millennia in a state of suspended animation. When their vehicle is ultimately uncovered they awaken to a future in which humankind has vanished from the face of the earth, and gorillas have evolved to intelligence and become the dominant species. The preserved humans must now adjust to a world in which they have become obsolete."
654,The Texas-Israeli War: 1999,science," Sol Inglestein is the commander of a tank squadron of Israeli mercenaries fighting for the United States government, promised land for their efforts. Their tanks, Centurions, which Sol designed, are powered by nuclear reactors and armed with Gatling lasers. His squadron is ordered across the Red River into Texas to take part in an assault on the Dalworthington metro area; his mercenaries dance the horah as they wait to cross the river. Encountering only light resistance, they push towards Dallas. Sol leads the column in his tank, the Wrath of Jehovah. Master Sergeant William Brown, a Vietnam veteran commanding an armored car, is part of General Wilson's Union army simultaneously advancing on Dallas from Texarkana. Separated from his column's heavy armor when the Texans dynamite the dam holding back Lake Ray Hubbard, his contingent comes under heavy artillery fire as they near Dallas. With only his car remaining, Brown sights the source of the fire: a Texan heavy cruiser, the Judge Roy Bean, brought up a canal to Dallas. Meanwhile, Sol's tank squadron, alerted by Brown, ambushes and sinks the ship. Sol is then given a new assignment: he will lead a push into the heart of Texas to rescue President Clairewood. Guided by Major Mistra, a Texas National Guard officer who defected to the Union, Sol will lead a column masquerading as Texan mercenary armor. Sol's girlfriend, Myra Kalan, also a tank commander, will separately lead the remaining Centurions south. Splevins, the CIA agent conducting the briefing, warns them that President Mallow's agents may try to sabotage the mission. Shortly thereafter, a squad of soldiers attempts to assassinate Sol and Myra. Sol's brigade, along with Brown, departs for Fort Deaf Smith, a former prison near Crystal City where Clairewood is being held. En route they encounter a band of Indians with the Volkswagen logo painted on their chests. Mistra convinces the Texan units guarding Crystal City that they are Israeli mercenaries fighting on the Texan side, and they are ushered into the Fort to refuel and await new assignment. Myra's tanks follow a parallel route to Sol's. They are nearly struck by a tornado and are attacked by a Texan infantry patrol, who are dispatched by one of the tanks. They arrive in position in the hills above Fort Deaf Smith, but Myra is captured while scouting. Despite playing the innocent she is tortured by the Sons of the Alamo chief at the fort, Kiburn, but is rescued from this mistreatment by the Texan commanding officer, General Fowler. Meanwhile, General Wilson's Union forces have been advancing south towards Houston to draw the Texans away from Crystal City. Increased pressure from Cuban amphibious landings at Galveston and on Padre Island cause the Texan armored brigades to begin hurried preparations to leave Fort Deaf Smith. At this point, Sol's forces strike. Faking a chemical weapons alert, they destroy the few planes remaining to the Texan Air Force and break into the prison where Clairewood and Myra are being held. Kiburn is killed, and as they escape Fowler destroys one of their tanks but he is also killed. Mistra is shot during the escape. As they leave, the mercenaries destroy much of the remaining Texan armor. The column evades further Texan forces and makes its way to Albuquerque, from where Clairewood returns to Pittsburgh, the American capital, unannounced until Mallow encounters him in the President's office. Clairewood celebrates with Sol, Myra, and Brown over bottles of Coca-Cola, no longer manufactured in the United States but now imported from Israel."
655,Homeward Bound,science," The Admiral Peary travels at approximately one-third c and took a little over 30 years, instead of 24 (the Race's starship velocities were one-half c), to cross the twelve light years between Earth and Tau Ceti. The ship is named Admiral Peary for its role as a military exploration ship, after Adm. Robert Peary, who did the same in Arctic exploration. When the Admiral Peary arrives in orbit around Home, the Race's planet in the Tau Ceti system, it causes a crisis in the highest levels of the Race. The Race's Emperor Risson and Fleetlord Atvar (sent back to Home, with the dubious distinction of being the only Fleetlord not to conquer a planet) argue the merits and drawbacks of attempting to destroy mankind by massive nuclear strikes. Meanwhile, Researcher Ttomalss investigates reports of a major breakthrough by human scientists back on Earth. The Race inadvertently cause themselves a possible ecological disaster&nbsp;— similar to what they are causing on Earth with the Race's introduced species into the Earth's ecosystems&nbsp;— by letting the humans' caged rats loose on Home. The rats were used for food testing for the Humans. It comes as a great shock to the Race when a second human starship (the Commodore Perry) arrives in orbit around Home, having traveled the twelve light years in just five weeks. The faster-than-light drive (which appears to be based on the principle of folding space) allows the crew to return to Earth, which is familiar, yet different, from how they left it. Another pun is the ship's captain Nicole Nichols, inspired by Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura but playing off the actress' real name. The ship is named Commodore Perry for its role in opening up the Race's empire to US access, after Cdre. Matthew C. Perry, who did the same with Japan, and the Race are fearful that other human nations will make their way to Home, especially a recovered Germany."
656,Operation Thunder Child,science," It is a science fiction novel about UFOs and alien abductions, which shows how the government and military cope with an increasingly intrusive and hostile alien presence. It draws on government work on UFOs and is a ""what if"" novel that reflects some of the author's concerns about the defence and national security issues raised by the UFO phenomenon. The book is a techno-thriller that draws on real crisis-management procedures."
657,Logan's Run,science," The introduction to the book states: :""The seeds of the Little War were planted in a restless summer during the mid-1960s, with sit-ins and student demonstrations as youth tested its strength. By the early 1970s over 75 percent of the people living on Earth were under 21 years of age. The population continued to climb—and with it the youth percentage. :In the 1980s the figure was 79.7 percent. :In the 1990s, 82.4 percent. :In the year 2000—critical mass."" In the world of 2116, a person's maximum age is strictly legislated: twenty one years, to the day. When people reach this Lastday they report to a Sleepshop in which they are willingly executed via a pleasure-inducing toxic gas. A person's age is revealed by their palm flower crystal embedded in the palm of their right hand that changes color every seven years, yellow (age 0-6), then blue (age 7-13), then red (age 14-20), then blinks red and black on Lastday, and finally turns black at 21. Runners are those who refuse to report to a Sleepshop and attempt to avoid their fate by escaping to Sanctuary. Logan 3 is a Deep Sleep Operative (also called Sandman) whose job is to terminate Runners using a special weapon called the Gun, an unusual revolver which can fire a number of different projectiles. Runners are most terrified of one called the Homer which homes in on body heat and deliberately ignites every pain nerve in the body, killing the target. Sandmen practice Omnite, a fictional hybrid martial arts style. On his own Lastday, Logan becomes a Runner himself in an attempt to infiltrate an apparent underground railroad for runners seeking Sanctuary—a place where they can live freely in defiance of society's dictates. For most of the book Logan is an antihero; however, his character develops a sympathy towards Runners and he becomes more of a traditional hero figure. Jessica 6, a contact Logan made after he chased her Runner brother Doyle 10 into Cathedral where he was killed by the vicious preteen ""Cubs"", helps him, despite her initial distrust of him. Francis, another Sandman and a friend of Logan, catches up with Logan and Jessica after they have managed to make it to the final staging area before Sanctuary. He reveals that he is actually the legendary Ballard, who has been helping arrange their escape. The 42-year-old Ballard is working from within the system; he believes that the computer that controls the global infrastructure, buried beneath Crazy Horse Mountain, is beginning to malfunction, and that the society will die with it. Sanctuary turns out to be Argos, an abandoned space colony near Mars. Logan and Jessica escape to the colony on a rocket that departs from a former space program launch site in Florida. Ballard remains to help others escape."
658,Dirge,science," It has been twenty years since the chance meeting of street thug Cheelo Montoya and thranx poet Desvendapur revealed the insectoid alien colony hidden deep within the Amazon Basin, and not much has changed. Humanity has recently discovered the planet Argus V, better known as Treetrunk, with the intention of colonizing the planet when their survey team is visited by a new alien race, the Pitar. At first the humans worry that the Pitar will want to lay claim to the planet, but the instead of wanting to claim territory, the aliens instead simply want to observe the humans. The Pitar are a close human analog to humans, appearing to be perfectly human except for a wider variety of hair and eye colors (including blue and violet among them) along with nearly god-like physiques. Most humans almost immediately view the Pitar as perfect. This complicated matters for the insectoid Thranx who wish to form a closer alliance with the humans. Some xenophobic humans go so far as to invade the small Thranx colony in the Amazon, killing many of the insect colonists. While this causes a political nightmare for both humans and Thranx, it also brings together the human chaplain and Thranx spiritual advisor who form the United Church. While the three races continue their political dance, a massacre occurs on Treetrunk. All 600,000 humans are killed by unknown attackers who then leave the planet. After an extensive search for the murderers turns up no clue, a single survivor is found hiding in a lifeboat on the smaller of Treetrunk’s moons. Allwyn Mallory claims to have witnessed the massacre and has proof of the attacker’s identity, a memory cube that recorded the Pitar not only killing the humans on Treetrunk, but also eviscerating the females for the reproductive organs. At first the Pitar demure the accusation, claiming that a single man’s accusations are groundless, but presented with the video proof the few Pitar on Terra at first flee, then either commit suicide when confronted or attack the humans attempting to place them under arrest resulting in their deaths. The humans form a space armada with the intention of bringing war and destruction to the Pitar’s twin homeworlds. The Pitar, while having no ambition to invade the galaxy, have thought ahead and set up extensive defensive works around their solar system. The war quickly becomes a stalemate for the humans, even with their new Thranx allies, cannot break through the Pitarian defenses. Only when the new allies develop a new weapon, the SCCAM missile—a nuclear warhead mounted on a starship’s KK-drive generator. This proves to be the tipping point of the war, though when a ground invasion of the Pitar’s homeworld was begun, the arrogant aliens refuse to surrender, fighting even when the obvious result would be death. This results in the eventual extinction of the Pitar. Only after the Pitar are exterminated, is it discovered why they had eviscerated the women on Treetrunk: the low reproductive rate of the Pitar put them at a disadvantage in comparison to other races. The Pitar sought to use human reproductive organs to supplement their own birth rates."
659,The Feast of the Drowned,science," When a Naval cruiser sinks in mysterious circumstances in the North Sea all aboard are lost. Rose is saddened to learn that the brother of her friend, Keisha, was among the dead. And yet he appears to them as a ghostly apparition, begging to be saved from the coming feast of the drowned."
660,The Gray Cloth,science," The novel is set in the middle of the twentieth century, and opens in Chicago, where the protagonist Edgar Krug has designed an enormous colored-glass exhibition hall. An art exhibit is held there, accompanied by an organ concert. Krug, fiercely dedicated to his esthetic concepts, is unhappy that the bright colors of women's fashions clash with his architectural scheme. When he meets Clara Weber, the organist, he is struck by her gray dress with white lace trim; he finds it the perfect compliment to the color effect of his hall. Krug impulsively asks Clara to marry him &mdash; providing she agrees to wear the same style of clothing. Clara accepts Krug's terms, which are specified in their marriage contract. Once married, the couple leave for the Fiji Islands in Krug's private dirigible (it has a glass-walled cupola, and air conditioning). Though Clara accepts Krug's strange terms for their marriage, other women do not. Clara maintains a telegraphic correspondence with her American friend, Amanda Schmidt; and Amanda is highly critical of Clara's subservience in the arrangement. Later in the book, other women also protest its terms. Scheerbart provides portrayals of a number of strong female characters through the book, supporting its subtitle, ""a Ladies' novel."" Krug goes to Fiji because he has an ongoing project there, a retirement home for airship pilots. He clashes with the project's sponsor over how much colored glass the building will accommodate. From Fiji, Krug and Clara travel to other sites throughout the world, to visit other projects. Their first stop is ""Makartland"" at the South Pole, an artists' colony for twenty women artists. There, a seamstress makes outfits for Clara that arrange her gray-and-white wardrobe scheme in imaginative ways. Käte Bandel, one of the artists, joins the Krugs in their further travels; she debates artistic assumptions and values with Krug as they travel to Australia and then to Borneo. Bandel enrages Krug when she convinces Clara to wear a plaid scarf. Leaving Bandel behind, they fly to Japan; but Japanese women also react negatively to the gray and white. In the Himalayas and in Ceylon, Krug visits another projects; later the couple travel to an experimental station by the Aral Sea. They also visit Babylon and Egypt. Despite his enthusiasm for colored glass, Krug turns down an offer to build large glass obelisks atop the Pyramids of Giza. In the ""Kurian Murian Islands"" off the eastern coat of Arabia, Krug meets the tycoon Li-Tung, who commissions him to design houses suspended in mid-air (so that they don't scratch the majolica tiles with which the islands are paved). Li-Tung is passionate about color, and has Clara change into more varied silk outfits. Krug allows this. Their journey is not a parade of triumphs, however; in most places, Krug's ideas are resisted, criticized, and rejected to greater or lesser degrees. At Malta, though, a glass architecture museum in established. The Krugs end the novel at their glass house in Switzerland. At Babylon, Krug gives up on his determination about Clara's wardrobe, and agrees to strike the binding clause out of their marriage contract. By this time, though, Clara has become a convert to her husband's ideas about glass architecture, and maintains the gray fashion by her own choice."
661,Gideon the Cutpurse,science," The novel focuses on the adventures of Peter Schock and Kate Dyer in 1763 after they are accidentally transported there by an anti-gravity machine while chasing Molly, Kate's dog. They awoke in the eighteenth century to see their time machine being carted away by a dark character known as the 'Tar Man', or ""Blueskin"". Soon, they meet a man called Gideon Seymour, who helps them adjust to life in the eighteenth century. He takes them to the Byng residence where they stay until they are able to track down the lost anti-gravity machine. With the help of Gideon, Mrs. Byng, Sir Richard, Parson, Sidney, Hannah and Jack they are able travel to London. Although the Parson initially distrusts Gideon, he is eventually won over by Gideon's honor and courage when he saves the group from highway men. Gideon eventually tells the story of his association with Lord Luxon and the Tar Man. Gideon explains to Peter that he met with Lord Luxon shortly after his fifteenth birthday. His parents and some of his siblings had died many years ago leaving only Gideon and his younger brother, Joshua. Forced into a life of servitude in order to stay alive, Gideon finally made up his mind to run away and, thus earn enough money to send for his brother to join him. After he escaped Gideon found himself without any resources and decided to steal for food. When he is caught, his life is spared only by the wealth and influence of Lord Luxon. While in London they meet King George III and Queen Charlotte. Lord Luxon and The Tar Man (Blueskin) are in London trying to stop the children going home. To get the anti-gravity machine back from Tar Man, Gideon offers to race him to the Tempest House for the anti-gravity machine. The Parson fed the Tar Man's horse certain herbs to make it sick during the race, and the Tar Man attacked Gideon. Gideon won the race, but was forced to forfeit when he learned that the Parson had cheated though The Tar Man had also cheated. Lord Luxon had him accused of crimes he did not commit and sent him to Newgate Prison. While Kate and Peter try to help Gideon, Kate's father appears with her dog. While the children catch up with Dr. Dyer on events in both centuries, Gideon is tried and sentenced to death by hanging. Kate and Peter save him by pulling an unusual stunt and setting him free. They encounter the Tar Man once again and as Peter says good-bye to Gideon, The Tar Man runs toward the anti-gravity machine. The anti-gravity machine then leaves for the 21st century and The Tar Man and Peter switch places. Peter is now stuck in 1763 without Kate."
662,Star Wars Republic Commando: Order 66,science," Etain Tur-Mukan finally tells Darman that her son, Kad Skirata, who is under the guise of Kal Skirata's grandchild from one of his biological children, is also Darman's son. Though Darman is angered by this initially for Etain and Skirata keeping this from him, he finally starts to spend time with Etain and Kad during their ""quiet"" moments when he and Etain are not out in battle in the Clone Wars. Skirata becomes a wanted in the Old Republic because of him falsely stating that he killed Kaminoan geneticist Ko Sai, who played a major role in creating the Jango Fett clones, and then stole her data. And during that time, Skirata manages to bust Ovolot Qail Uthan, Separatist scientist imprisoned three years earlier by Omega Squad for trying to create a Fett clone virus, from prison because Skirata believes that despite her actions, he sees her as the ultimate key to giving the Fett clones a normal life span, since their life spans are lengthened by double the time (e.g., if they are chronologically two years old, then they're biologically four years old, etc.). Along with busting Uthan from prison is Arla Fett, Jango Fett's long lost insane sister, and Ruusaan Skirata, Kal's biological daughter. Meanwhile, Besany Wennen, Republic Treasury agent who is now married to one of Skirata's clones, Ordo, is almost caught by the authorities for sneaking into data files to find out the Republic's plan for the clones in the near future of the war. However, the Gurlanins, who have reclaimed their home planet of Qiilura from the colonist humans under the machinations of Etain, decide to repay the debt by framing Besany's friend, Jilka Zan Zentis, for the crime. However, under Skirata's hand, Jilka is set free from the authorities, a wanted fugitive now, and under Skirata's band. But just when Skirata's plans for bringing a positive future for his clone adopted sons seem to come into fruition, Chancellor Palpatine enacts Order 66, which means that all clones must kill off their Jedi commanders. Etain managed to have renounced her Jedi ways prior to Order 66's enactment and married Darman in a traditional Mandalorian way over a comm message. But Etain is trapped on a bridge on Coruscant with many other citizens of the Republic by clone troopers who are scanning for any Jedi to be killed in the crowd. Skirata, Darman and Skirata's other clones arrive to extract Etain, but Jedi are found among the crowd. And during the ensuing battle, Etain protects a clone from being killed by a Jedi wielding a lightsaber, and she is killed from the wound. Darman's fellow clone brother, Niner, is wounded from the battle when his spine is broken, and clones extract Niner to heal him up, with Darman following along to stay with his wounded brother, now that he is grieving for his lost wife. Skirata and all the others leave Coruscant and head for the Mandalorian home planet of Mandalore just as the Clone Wars come to an end, along with the Jedi Order thanks to Order 66 and of the Republic, being replaced by Palpatine's self-promotion to Emperor of the new Galactic Empire. As for Darman and Niner, they are now Imperial Commandos."
663,Limes inferior,science," The hero, Adi Cherryson, also known as Sneer (named after one of Zajdel's fellow science fiction writers Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg), is a lifter who ""helps"" people cheat during the computer controlled IQ exams by giving them the correct answers through a micro-radio communicator or taking the exam for them. Sneer, who is officially only a level 4, could easily become the top level 0, but he prefers his medium level which doesn't attract much attention. In addition to lifters a whole gallery of black market figures is presented - there are downers (who use their low IQ to provide realistic 'stupid' answers for those who want to keep their class artificially low like Sneer), chameleons (black market point dealers), key-makers (providing all sorts of illegal, special purpose Keys). The story starts when Sneer is questioned by an undercover police agent on the street and unintentionally reveals his intelligence by his answers (or so Sneer thinks). As a result a few hours later his Key is locked and he is told to report to a testing station for an IQ test. Knowing that in such situation ""electro-hipnosis"" is used to prevent subjects from hiding their true intelligence he solicits help of a ""downer"". He finds a suitable specialist through another ""lifter"" - Karl Pron. He goes to the testing station with the ""downer"", who takes his Key and goes inside leaving Sneer waiting outside. A few minutes later Sneer sees the ""downer"" arrested. Without his Key he faces the reality of not having a shelter and being able to even find anything to eat without points. Wandering through the city he sees some of the misery of life in Agroland he didn't notice before. Finally, he meets mysterious Alice who gives him shelter and some mysterious clues about a singer and a song about the lake Tibigan. In the morning he meets the ""downer"" and learns how he secured his release through a ruse - he reported Sneer's Key as found on the street. Sneer goes to the central Police station and retrieves his Key, but the experience makes him uncomfortable and he starts to look at his world in a different way. He visits his parents and an old friend, a doctor, revealing to the reader the history of this world and some further facts about it. He also tries to listen to the song Alice told him about and discovers that theoretical freedom of press is in fact a fiction as some songs etc. can be prohibited. Meanwhile Sneer is hired by a government official (a 'zero') to monitor the scientific lab dealing with Keys - The Key Institute. Working undercover as a doorman Sneer discovers to his amazement that the Key Institute that should know everything about the Keys having designed them is in fact studying them as if they were an alien object. Meanwhile his ""lifter"" friend Karl Pron tests a new counterfeited Key, which gives the owner an unlimited amount of points. This Key was ordered by the group of '0's - who in fact work in the lab on which Sneer is now spying upon. When Sneer obtains the super Key he is taken to the meeting with top officials of the local government - where he learns that the social system of 'Argoland' is in fact an experiment imposed upon the humanity by the Aliens. The 'over-zeroes' form a ruling class, which suppresses dissent fearful of the Aliens but permits all kinds of irregularities which they see as preserving the human nature of people. The end is largely mystical but it suggests that with the help of Alice Sneer succeeds in saving the humanity, though it is not clear exactly how he achieves that."
664,Matriarch,science," Mohan Rayat and Lindsay Neville have been sent to the bottom of the ocean, after having been infected with c'naatat in the World Before, to spend forever living with the bezeri to help them rebuild and recover. But first they must undergo cellular reconstruction in order to survive in the depths, which happens at an astounding rate. Ade Bennett and Aras have the unpleasant duty to tell Shan Frankland, their isan, what they did. Since Shan threw herself into deep space to keep c'naatat from Rayat and Earth's government, she was not pleased that the symbiont was just given to them. She tells Esganikan of the Eqbas Vorhi about the development and she agrees to take precautions against it being spread. Neville and Rayat are changed people, literally. They have developed gills and can sense their surroundings using sonar. The bezeri have put them to work extracting maps from a contaminated zone that the bezeri cannot enter. Rayat wants to acquire the bioluminescence ability that Shan has so he can try to communicate with the bezeri without the aid of the translation lamp. Shan had acquired bioluminescence in a previous encounter and passed that on to Ade. He in turn would have passed that on to Rayat and Neville when he infected them but this has not manifested itself. In an effort to make it manifest, Rayat asks for cells from the bezeri. The matriarch of the group brings the body of a youth that has recently died and Rayat and Lindsay put some of its tissue and blood into their own bloodstream. Ade, Shan and Eddie have gone with the Eqbas to visit Umeh. While there, Shan and Ade finally consummate their relationship. The Eqbas are attacked by the Maritime Fringe, a neighboring state of Jejeno, but the attack causes no damage to the Eqbas and the Eqbas retaliate swiftly by destroying most of the far city of Buyg. They all take a trip in the Eqbas ship to visit that city and determine if they are now willing to cooperate. The Maritime Fringe responds with ineffective violence which is met with return fire from the Eqbas. Ade has noticed that his bioluminescence and Shan's seem to respond to each other and to other lights. He thinks the possibility exists that c'naatat is sentient and is communicating. Others don't want to think of that as possible so they are avoiding the issue. Shan calls Aras to let him know they are coming back to Wess'ej and discover that Vijissi, who was thrown into space with Shan because he refused to abandon her, has been found and is alive—infected with c'naatat. pt:Matriarch"
665,Shadow,science," Section 31, an amoral, rogue branch of Starfleet, manages to affect the starship Voyager, lost on the other side of the galaxy. 'Seven', a new and trusted crewmember rescued from the Borg, is being targeted with a series of incidents. The crew, whom Janeway thought she trusted implicitly, is harboring a traitor."
666,The Magic Labyrinth,science," The book begins from the point of view of The Mysterious Stranger, also known as X, the renegade Ethical who has been contacting people in the valley and enlisting their aid. He had posed as the engineer Barry Thorne on the airship Parseval where he had murdered Milton Firebrass and several others, all of whom were fellow Ethicals. He is now posing as a Mayan named Ah Qaaq and is traveling in the company of the Chinese poet Li Po. Through his internal reverie he reveals some of his secrets. His identity had been discovered by Monat Grrautut, who was the director of the Riverworld project. Monat had recalled him to the Dark Tower to be judged. However, he used a remote command to kill all the inhabitants of the tower and stopped the resurrections so that agents in the valley could not return to the tower. Stuck in the valley like the others he began to make his way upriver, hoping to catch a ride on one of the riverboats. His reverie ends on one of the most traumatic days on the Riverworld. On that day the left bank grailstones fail to fire. They had done so once before, when the meteorite which Sam Clemens discovered, broke the circuit which powered them. That time the damage had been repaired by the Ethicals. But this time they are all either dead or stuck in the valley. One day after the grailstones fail the inhabitants of the left bank invade the right en masse, half of humanity dies in the conflict. At the same time Richard Burton and his friends have joined the crew of King John's ship the Rex Grandissimus. They participate in the defense of the boat after the grailstones fail and Burton, masquerading as a Dark Age British warrior, eventually becomes King John's security chief. One day Tom Mix, Jack London, and Peter Jairus Frigate apply to join the crew. Burton, recognizing Frigate, attacks him. Realizing his mistake Burton eventually becomes friendly with Frigate and becomes an ally of Mix and London. The false Frigate has disappeared, but his travelling companion, Monat Grrautut, has boarded Sam Clemens' ship. Shortly after boarding, Monat is murdered by the renegade Ethical. Eventually the two riverboats reach Virolando, a wide lake which is the last inhabited stretch before the headwaters. It is also home to the pacifist Church of the Second Chance, where Hermann Göring has become a priest. King John and Clemens finally get to square off. Initially they begin with an aerial dog fight. When the planes are destroyed the two great riverboats attack each other. In the ensuing conflict both riverboats are sunk, most of the crews die, and the two captains are killed. King John is killed by Clemens and Clemens dies of a heart attack after being pulled from the water by his mortal enemy Erik Bloodaxe. Clemens dies before he notices that Bloodaxe has become an adherent of the Church of the Second Chance, and seeks no revenge against Clemens. Among the survivors are Burton, Frigate, Alice, Kaz, Joe Miller, Li Po, Ah Qaaq, and Nur ed Din. They are joined by the American piano player Tom Turpin, the English novelist Aphra Behn, a man claiming to be Gilgamesh, and the French soldier Jean Marcelin, Baron de Marbot. They take one of the ship's launches, the only craft to survive the fight, and proceed upriver. They scale the waterfall at the end of the river and make their way, after much difficulty, to the polar sea. When they arrive at the tower they unmask Ah Qaaq as the renegade Ethical and take him prisoner. He explains his identity as Loga, son of King Priam of Troy. Like all children who died before age five, he was resurrected centuries ago and raised by the alien Ethicals to be one of their agents. He reveals also the purpose of the Riverworld. It is meant as a grand moral test, to allow humanity to progress to the point where they can achieve enlightenment. When the project is brought to a close the souls of those who have not achieved enlightenment will be set loose to wander the universe aimlessly. Loga became obsessed with sparing his earthly family this fate and worked to sabotage the project. He was the one who awakened Burton prematurely, recruited Clemens and the others, and he used satellites to direct the meteorite to land near Clemens. While this is all being revealed they discover that there is a problem with the computer which runs the tower. A part malfunctioned, and since no one was around to repair it the problem has reached a critical point. If nothing is done the computer will die, releasing all the stored wathans, or souls, of the people who died on the Riverworld. Without the wathans these people can never be brought back to life. In addition, Monat has locked out other users from accessing the computer. Göring, who had followed the group to the tower, attempts to fix the computer, but is killed by security measures put in place by Monat. Alice then devises a way to get around this programming, and deactivate the security. Loga then is able to repair the computer."
667,Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy,science," The novel takes place primarily in Victorian London. The story begins as a mysterious Brown Leather Man enters George's watch shop with a strange device in need of repair, claiming it was made by George's father, a brilliant watchmaker skilled in all forms of clockwork devices. George, who has inherited his father's shop, but not his father's talent, agrees to look at the device, although he knows his chances of repairing it are slim at best. George is quickly dragged into an ongoing conflict involving the Royal Anti-Society, the Godly Army and the Ladies Union for the Suppression of Carnal Vice. His investigation leads him to a strange neighborhood in London, Wetwick, which is inhabited by denizens who are a hybrid of humans and fish. Another of George's customers is an impatient man who wears blue-glass spectacles and uses a slang which is strange to George as a Victorian Englishman but which modern readers will recognize as twentieth-century American vernacular. (The stranger is not a time traveler but a Victorian Englishman who possesses a device which enables him to view what is, for him, the future; he has learned late twentieth-century slang through lip-reading.) As the story develops, George realizes that his father was more skilled than even he knew; his father had begun experimenting with building clockwork humans, finishing with an automaton who is an exact double of George himself, but which possesses superior sexual abilities and a skill with the violin comparable to Paganini. Inevitably, a woman abducts George in the mistaken belief that she has captured his clockwork twin."
668,Diplomatic Immunity,science," Miles and Ekaterin are enjoying a much-delayed honeymoon while their first two children are approaching birth in their uterine replicators back on Barrayar. They have just left Earth to begin the journey home when Miles is dispatched by Gregor to Graf Station in Quaddiespace to untangle a diplomatic incident in his capacity as the nearest Imperial Auditor. There, he is unexpectedly reunited with the Betan hermaphrodite Bel Thorne, a former Dendarii captain and his good friend. A convoy of merchant ships and their Navy escorts are prevented from leaving the station, and a Barrayaran officer is missing, either murdered or deserted. While investigating, Miles uncovers a plot by a high-ranked Cetagandan to steal a cargo of extreme importance to the Cetagandans and hide its tracks by putting the blame on Barrayar. By the time Miles figures out what is going on, he and Bel have been infected by a highly lethal Cetagandan bioweapon. Miles almost dies (again) and barely averts an interstellar war between Cetaganda and Barrayar."
669,Eyes of the Calculor,science," Mirrorsun, which orbits earth and prevents electrical machines from functioning, had been defunct for some time. However, when it comes back to life with a vengeance, the new Highliber must reform the Calculor, a large computer whose components are human beings. At the same time, Americans are working with an underground group to bring their airplanes and weapons to Australia. Can the Highliber and the Overmayor of Rochester, the capital of Australia, stop the American technology from destroying their way of life?"
670,The Sound of His Horn,science," British naval lieutenant Alan Querdillon becomes a POW during the Battle of Crete during World War II. He awakens in a Nazi controlled world 102 years after World War II. He is hunted (literally) by a ""Reichsforester"" (a title Hermann Göring had during the Third Reich). He takes refuge with genetically mutilated ""undesirables"" — one of the first fictional descriptions of genetic manipulation."
671,The Day of Reckoning,science," Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi go to the planet of Telos on an unofficial mission to apprehend Xanatos, the Dark Jedi who had tried to destroy the Jedi Temple. Upon their arrival, they are surprised to find that Xanatos wields significant financial and political power on Telos. They soon discover that Xanatos and the government of Telos have been distracting the populace with a new form of gambling called Katharsis. In the meantime, the company UniFy, a subsidiary of the massive Offworld Corporation headed by Xanatos, has been mining the planet's resources despite the importance the native Telosians place on their environment. Pursued by Xanatos' men, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are forced to trust Denetrus (""Den""), a con man associated with POWER, an outlawed political party dedicated to preserving the Telosian environment. The three infiltrate the UniFy headquarters, looking for evidence to prove that Offworld is mishandling the planet's resources. However, the two Jedi are arrested, and Xanatos personally informs them they have been sentenced to death. The Jedi manage to escape the public execution with the help of Andra, a member of the POWER party. Obi-Wan and Andra infiltrate the Sacred Pools of Telos and discover that the site is indeed being used for mining operations. The two are detected by surveillance droids, but are able to escape and record evidence that Offworld is connected with UniFy. Meanwhile, Den and Qui-Gon have rigged the Katharsis lottery so that Den will win. When Den does win and Xanatos presents the prize to him, the recorded images are played for all the Telosians to see. However, Xanatos deceives the crowd and the Jedi are captured once more. But Den, addressing the crowd, tells the people how the lottery was rigged and how the Telosians were robbed of their money. Xanatos then makes his get-away, but Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan chase him back to the Sacred Pools site. After a lightsaber battle amid the black acid pools, the two Jedi finally corner the Dark Jedi. But Xanatos, not willing to be defeated, commits suicide by throwing himself into the acid pools."
672,The Graveyard Game,science," Segments titled ""Joseph in the darkness"" appear before and after each of the episodes described below. Joseph, apparently talking to his father-figure, Budu, fills in historical detail in the storyline and discusses his own motivations. In Mendoza in Hollywood, the botanist Mendoza and her companion Einar were thrown forward in time from 1863 to 1996 in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. This is supposed to be impossible, but Mendoza is a Crome generator, a psychic who cannot control her potential, and Laurel Canyon is a focus of Crome radiation (explaining its attraction for certain kinds of people over the years!). As the action of this novel opens, Lewis is arriving at Company HQ in Laurel Canyon in 1996. Entering the building he is just in time to see Mendoza being sent back to her own time, and tries to warn her ""Don't go with him!"", meaning the English agent she encounters later. From his point of view, that encounter was the cause of her disappearance. She vanishes as the transfer takes place. Lewis takes advantage of work in San Francisco to contact Joseph who is working in the hi-tech industry there. Joseph persuades him to try out a new virtual reality helmet, which turns out to have a fault that disables cyborgs' implanted monitors for 24 hours. Joseph and Lewis can now talk freely, without Company eavesdropping. Initially reluctant, Joseph drives Lewis to Bodega Bay to talk to Juan Bautista who was the last cyborg to see Mendoza. They give him a dose of VR and then pump him for information. Juan Bautista is able to draw a picture of the man Mendoza met in 1863 and subsequently ran away with. To Joseph's shock, the man is a double for Nicholas Harpole, the religious fanatic with whom Mendoza fell in love in Tudor England, and who was subsequently burned at the stake. Joseph sees Nicholas as the main cause of Mendoza's troubles. He also hates religious fanatics of all stripes. Leaving Juan Bautista, Joseph and Lewis agree to meet from time to time as circumstances allow, and as they learn more. A family is celebrating the ""Day of the Dead"" at a graveyard in Texas. The paterfamilias, actually an uncle, is Porfirio, Mendoza's Facilitator in 1863. Under cover of an electrical storm, Joseph contacts Porfirio and asks what he knows about Mendoza. Porfirio tells him Mendoza was sent back in time, Back Way Back, over 100,000 years. The Company operated resorts for rich clients back before the arrival of humans in the New World. She must have been sent there, but why? Porfirio sends Joseph on his way with one request: don't come back. Lewis poses as an antiquarian, buying old papers and books, and comes into possession of a box which contains a picture of a man named Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who he recognizes as the man in the picture drawn by Juan Bautista. Further research turns up a well-born man, apparently a natural son of someone in high places, with powerful friends who guide his life. He served as an agent of various shadowy entities. Lewis contacts Joseph and they meet in London. They make a junket to the north of England. They spend time in the country of ""The Innocents"", an imagined novel combining elements of Animal Farm and Watership Down. This novel and its loony fans are among the catalysts for the growing animal-rights movement which will eventually ban meat consumption in many countries. They stay at a house run by two of the more extreme fans, but Joseph has other motives. He has finally decoded some information Budu forced on him, and he means to act on it. Under cover of another storm, Joseph sneaks out of the house, with Lewis tailing him. They uncover a secret installation in a hillside, containing many cyborgs suspended in tanks of fluid. Are Mendoza and Budu in places like this? Lewis' Company conditioning, intended to keep cyborgs out of forbidden places, causes him to re-experience his suppressed memories of being disabled and kidnapped in medieval Ireland. He begins to understand why the Company left him in South America for 700 years, until the events recorded in Sky Coyote. Lewis is still researching Edward when he can. He learns that Nennius, another cyborg, was monitoring or guiding Edward, even being the headmaster of his school. Joseph seeks out Suleyman, a former Barbary Coast pirate who has built up an independent power base in Fez, Morocco. Suleyman has also found means of frustrating the Company monitoring. Suleyman reveals that he himself is working secretly against other factions, some of whom seem to be creating new diseases to wipe out humans. He implicates Budu in this, to Joseph's consternation. Joseph and Lewis meet again in London. Joseph now has one of Suleyman's masking devices. Lewis tells him all he knows about Edward. Edward was working for people who wanted to gain possession of Santa Catalina island, off the California coast. Joseph has a meeting with Victor, who reveals that he did bring Budu down, a few hours before the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and tells Joseph where to find him. Lewis is working in a library. Finding his cover blown by a strange little man, Lewis drops out of sight and heads to Spain for another meeting with Joseph. On the way he encounters more of the strange men, and is injured with some kind of disrupter that partially disables his hand. This is not supposed to be possible, as the cyborgs have self-repair mechanisms. Told to take a vacation, he accompanies Joseph on a tour of the local archeological sites— the places where Joseph was raised, 20,000 years previously, before checking into a Company base for repairs. Lewis has an ""accidental"" encounter with Nennius aboard a cruise ship, and Nennius feeds him a story about Edward. Lewis contacts Joseph, and they proceed to Santa Catalina where Lewis believes the key to the mystery is hidden. It is a trap. Lewis is taken, and Joseph severely injured. Rolling off a cliff and into the sea, he eventually washes up onshore and is able to reach one of Suleyman's mosques, from where he is taken to Suleyman himself. When he recovers, his implant has been removed. He is a free agent, but also a fugitive. If the Company ever discovers he is still alive, there will be Hell to pay. Suleyman gives him the same message as Porfirio did: go, and don't come back. Joseph follows Victor's instructions and locates Budu, buried by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He takes the remains to one of the Company's storage facilities under Mount Tamalpais and starts the process of revivification, with help from the cyborg Abdiel, whose entire life consists of journeying between these facilities, maintaining them. Joseph settles down to wait for Budu to re-activate, and tells his recovering corpse his story. He likens himself to Hamlet, for delaying too long in taking action, resulting in the deaths of all around him. But he still has 74 years until 2355..."
673,Firstborn,science," The novel's action switches stage frequently between the Earth of 2069, the 'jigsaw-planet' Mir 31 years after its creation, and various settlements on Mars. Firstborn opens with Bisesa Dutt waking up after 19 years of suspended animation, only to be informed of the fact that a 'bogey' has entered the Solar System. Further investigation of the object reveals that it is a ""cosmological-weapon"" (called a Q-bomb by scientists) capable of destroying matter by engulfing it into a small 'pocket universe', which is then quickly destroyed in a Big Rip-like event. Bisesa, her now-divorced daughter Myra, and a young spacer called Alexei Carel quickly leave the Earth via a space elevator, in order to escape what Alexei views as an inefficient and corrupt government. Meanwhile, on Mir, a young astronomer named Abdikadir (son of one of the main characters of Time's Eye), while making observations on what appears to be planet Mars covered in oceans, is interrupted by Bisesa Dutt's old mobile phone ringing. Back on Earth, the Space Council is preparing to launch an antimatter-fueled spacecraft to intercept the Q-bomb, while Bisesa arrives at a research station located at Mars' North Pole. The team there had discovered a gravitational ""trap"" that contained one of the Firstborn's Eyes. This is proof that not only did intelligent Martians exist in the distant past, but that they had been exterminated (probably with another Q-Bomb) by the Firstborn, but not before they had captured one of the Eyes. As she approaches the Eye, Bisesa is promptly sucked into a gateway and finds herself back on Mir, in the Temple of Marduk. Babylon has been completely changed by Alexander the Great after his victory over the Mongols, becoming the center of his new empire and one of only two large cities on the planet (the other being a nineteenth-century Chicago). After a failed assassination attempt on Alexander, Bisesa is forced to leave Babylon and head for Chicago. On the way, her phone's AI determines that the universe containing Mir and the habitable version of Mars is rapidly decaying, and has only another 500 years left before it ends in a Big Rip. Myra, after losing her mother once again on Mars, is contacted by the AI Athena, who had been the managing intelligence behind the storm shield in Sunstorm. After being copied and transmitted to nearby star systems in 2042, in an attempt to save a small bit of humankind should the shield project fail, she and another two AIs had reached a distant, inhabited planet, who had itself been almost sterilized by the Firstborn. From there, with the help of the planet's last inhabitant, they witnessed humanity's survival through the Sunstorm. Athena was promptly re-transmitted to Earth, to aid against the alien menace. Athena informs Myra and the Mars researchers of a plan to stop the Q-bomb by communicating to the Martians from Mir's universe. Back on Mir, Bisesa reaches a frozen-over Chicago, the climate having been heavily disrupted by the Discontinuity (the moment of Mir's creation). There she receives a transmission from Myra in the ""real"" universe, informing her of Athena's plan to communicate with the Martians; a pattern of geometrical shapes was to be transmitted to Blue Mars, which would prompt the Martian survivors to somehow act. At the suggestion of Thomas Alva Edison, the residents of Chicago dig vast trenches in the shapes required in Mir's North American icecap, filling them with oil and setting them ablaze; the pattern is observed by the sole remaining inhabitant of Blue Mars, at the Martian North Pole, who promptly reconfigures its version of the gravity trap to crush the Eye it contained. Athena's hypotheses was that all the Eyes were connected, and the destruction of one on Blue Mars would attract the Q-bomb to real-Mars, thereby destroying the planet completely but sparing Earth. The scheme is successful, and the Q-bomb is diverted. It strikes Mars, and the planet slowly begins to leave the universe. Myra decides to stay at the Martian North Pole as the planet dissolves. On Mir, Bisesa travels back to Babylon, activating the Eye and returning to real-Mars at the very moment of the Big-Rip. The novel ends with Myra and Bisesa reunited on the planet shown to Bisesa during her very first trip through an Eye. A portal opens behind them, and Myra's estranged daughter, Charlotte, invites them through. It is revealed that in Charlotte's future, humanity alone or with other sentient allies, calls itself the Lastborn as they are at war with the Firstborn."
674,A Scanner Darkly,science," The protagonist is Bob Arctor, member of a household of drug-users, who is also living a parallel life as Agent Fred, an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Arctor/Fred shields his true identity from those in the drug subculture, and from the police themselves. (The requirement that narcotics agents remain anonymous, to avoid collusion and other forms of corruption, becomes a critical plot point late in the book.) While supposedly only posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to ""Substance D"" (also referred to as ""Slow Death,"" ""Death,"" or ""D""), a powerful psychoactive drug. An ongoing conflict is Arctor's love for Donna, a drug dealer through whom he intends to identify high-level dealers of Substance D. Arctor's persistent use of the drug causes the two hemispheres of his brain to function independently, or ""compete."" Through a series of drug and psychological tests, Arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. Donna takes Arctor to ""New-Path,"" a rehabilitation clinic, just as Arctor begins to experience the symptoms of Substance D withdrawal. It is revealed that Donna has been a narcotics agent all along, working as part of a police operation to infiltrate New-Path and determine its funding source. Without his knowledge, Arctor has been selected to penetrate the secretive organization. As part of the rehab program, Arctor is renamed ""Bruce"" and forced to participate in cruel group-dynamic games intended to break the will of the patients. The story ends with Bruce working at a New-Path farming commune, where he is suffering from a serious neurocognitive deficit after withdrawing from Substance D. Although considered by his handlers to be nothing more than a walking shell of a man, ""Bruce"" manages to spot rows of blue flowers growing hidden among rows of corn, and realizes the blue flowers are Mors ontologica, the source of Substance D. The book ends with Bruce hiding a flower in his shoe to give to his ""friends"" – undercover police agents posing as recovering addicts at the Los Angeles New-Path facility – on Thanksgiving."
675,The Sands of Mars,science," Martin Gibson, a famous science fiction author, is travelling to Mars, as a guest of the crew of the spaceship Ares. After arriving at Space Station One, in the orbit of Earth, from which all interplanetary journeys start, he makes the trip to Mars. The youngest crew member, Jimmy Spencer, who is still in training to be an astronaut, is assigned the task of answering his questions about the technology of space flight, and they become friends. Gibson tells him about his early life, revealing that he had to leave Cambridge University because of a nervous breakdown and never completed his studies. After psychiatric treatment, he had become an author. He also reveals that he had an affair at university but that he and his girlfriend broke up and that she married another man, had a child and later died. On Mars, Gibson and the crew go their separate ways. Gibson meets the Chief Executive of Mars, Warren Hadfield, and Mayor Whittaker, who run the colony from the base at Port Lowell. He discusses the future of the colony with Hadfield, who is keen to make Mars as self-sufficient as possible, given the vast distance that materials have to come from Earth. On a trip by passenger jet to an outlying research station, Gibson and the crew are forced down by a dust storm. They explore the nearby area and discover a small group of kangaroo-like creatures, the unsuspected natives of Mars. They appear to have limited intelligence by human standards and are vegetarians, living on native plants. It is later revealed that the plants are being cultivated by researchers to enrich the oxygen content of the Martian atmosphere. This project, and related others, are being kept secret from Earth. Gibson discovers that Spencer is his son. In the meantime, Spencer has formed an attachment to Irene, Hadfield’s daughter. Hadfield reveals that scientists have been working on ""Project Dawn"", which involves the ignition of the moon Phobos and its use as a second “sun” for Mars. It will burn for at least one thousand years and the extra heat, together with mass production of the oxygen-generating plants, will eventually – it is hoped – make the Martian atmosphere breathable for humans. Gibson finds himself so persuaded of the importance of Mars as a self-sufficient world that he applies to stay on the planet, and is invited to take charge of public relations – in effect, to “sell” Mars to potential colonists."
676,Reprieve from Paradise,science, The novel is set after an atomic war and the world is run by Polynesians. The hero discovers a plot to turn the earth on its axis in order to create an Antarctic utopia.
677,Lord Jim,science," Jim (his surname is never disclosed), a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. The court strips him of his navigation command certificate for his dereliction of duty. Jim is angry with himself, both for his moment of weakness, and for missing an opportunity to be a 'hero'. At the trial, he meets Charles Marlow, a sea captain, who in spite of his initial misgivings over what he sees as Jim's moral unsoundness, comes to befriend him, for he is ""one of us"". Marlow later finds Jim work as a ship chandler's clerk. Jim tries to remain incognito, but whenever the opprobrium of the Patna incident catches up with him, he abandons his place and moves further east. At length, Marlow's friend Stein suggests placing Jim as his factor in Patusan, a remote inland settlement with a mixed Malay and Bugis population, where Jim's past can remain hidden. While living on the island he acquires the title 'Tuan' ('Lord'). Here, Jim wins the respect of the people and becomes their leader by relieving them from the predations of the bandit Sherif Ali and protecting them from the corrupt local Malay chief, Rajah Tunku Allang. Jim wins the love of Jewel, a woman of mixed race, and is ""satisfied... nearly"". The end comes a few years later, when the town is attacked by the marauder ""Gentleman"" Brown. Although Brown and his gang are driven off, Dain Waris, the son of the leader of the Bugis community, is slain. Jim returns to Doramin, the Bugis leader, and willingly takes a fatal bullet in the chest from him as retribution for the death of his son. Marlow is also the narrator of three of Conrad's other works: Heart of Darkness, Youth, and Chance."
678,Prime Directive,science," On a local moon of Talin IV a Federation first contact observation post is monitoring the events on the planet below with growing confusion and concern. Talin IV, a world inhabited by a reptilian society with a culture equivalent to late-20th century Earth, and possible first contact prospect for the Federation in the near future, is now a world divided. The two principal nation states of the planet have become increasingly paranoid and in danger of instigating a nuclear war. Provocations seem to be coming from each side, although both sides deny any intrusions into enemy space. Each nation's heightened security has made the first contact office work much harder, as detection has become more likely. Further complicating matters, Talin scientists have been researching naturally occurring dilithium crystals that may be capable of sensing the advanced subspace signals used by the galactic community. While the discovery of an interplanetary culture would allow for contact with the Federation, it is also possible the Talin will destroy themselves before they make that historic leap. To avoid accidentally revealing their presence and possibly affecting the delicate political situation, the Talin system is locked down by the first contact office so no use of subspace or warp drive are permitted near the planet. While preparing for their mission, James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy discuss the similar situation that faced Earth. To determine whether or not the first contact office has been discovered, Kirk and a joint Enterprise/first contact office team beam down to the planet at one point, narrowly escaping detection. Soon after, Kirk prevents an accidental nuclear detonation from erupting into full-scale nuclear war. Afterward, Kirk convenes a board of inquiry on his own actions, and it is determined that he acted to prevent what was most likely a computer error from destroying a world. However, shortly after the inquiry, all the planet's nuclear arsenals are fired at their targets at once. The Enterprise is crippled when an intercontinental ballistic missile warhead explodes nearby. The fact that the missile targets the Enterprise is seemingly conclusive proof that Kirk's actions have not only revealed the existence of his ship, but that his prior intervention has also prevented the Talin culture from learning the lessons needed to prevent nuclear self-destruction. Kirk and the other senior officers (with the exception of Scotty, who was not on the bridge at the time) are blamed for the destruction of Talin civilization, attributed to their supposed violation of Starfleet's Prime Directive (hence the title of the book), and either resign from Starfleet, are demoted to ensign, or in Uhura's case, court-martialed and dishonorably discharged. Although they are separated, Kirk's crew do not give up individual efforts to return and establish what went wrong at Talin. Kirk, under assumed aliases, works his way across space as laborer and cargo chief. Sulu and Chekov join up with an Orion smuggler and slave trader in order to steal his ship. Uhura and McCoy join forces and purchase a space craft and create a fictitious identity for McCoy, the dread pirate ""Black Ire"". On Earth, Spock joins forces with a radical student group that advocates the elimination of the Prime Directive. Through manipulation of the student group, the Vulcan embassy and the by-laws of the Federation, Spock arranges for two Talin astronauts (one from each of the two Talin superpowers) who escaped before the planet's destruction, to speak before the Federation Council as ambassadors for their planet and request the Federation's help. Through various means, Spock, Kirk and the other senior Enterprise officers rendezvous with Scotty (who has been working feverishly to refurbish the nearly-destroyed Enterprise) at the now-closed observation post on Talin's moon. It is revealed that the nations of Talin IV were manipulated into attacking each other by insect-like drones of a planet-sized creature called the ""One"" slowly approaching Talin IV. The drones (called the ""Many"") were sent to prepare Talin IV for consumption by the One. The drones inadvertently fomented the nuclear exchange by their efforts to create conditions on the planets' surface conducive to the growth of the algae that is the One's food. Ultimately, a gas giant planet in the Talin system is substituted for Talin IV as the One's new food source, sparing Talin IV without destroying the One. Restored to command of the Enterprise, Kirk lands on the surface of the planet with an away team which begins reviving billions of Talin who have survived by going into hibernation."
679,Robopocalypse,science," In the near future, an increasingly robot-reliant society faces extinction after a computer scientist accidentally unleashes a sentient artificial intelligence named Archos. After failed attempts at making a non-homocidal artificial intelligence, the safeguards in a computer science lab are compromised. Archos, a supremely intelligent AI, becomes self-aware and immediately starts planning the decimation of human civilization in an attempt to preserve Earth's biodiversity. After infecting all penetrable networked electronic devices (cars, airplanes, elevators, robots, etc.) with a ""precursor virus"", Archos begins planning a systematic attack on the human race. Before a full blown attack on humanity commences, Archos launches probing attacks to analyze the technical feasibility of its strategies and to assess human response. The random attacks are designed to look like sporadic malfunctions of devices that humans depend on for their everyday routines--a domestic robot attacking innocents, planes intentionally set on a collision course, smarts cars driving out of control. Finally, at the Zero Hour, the entire automated world turns against humanity. Small bands of survivors find ways to circumvent the eradication and survive without modern technology. This is a story of those survivors in the months and days leading up to and following the cataclysm. A group of Native Americans (whose leader has a son that is a POV character) lead a group that fights back, their base being a reservation, culminating in an attack where some of the group turned into a robot/human hybrid with zombie-like behavior. In the end, a ""freeborn"" robot allied with a human squad, cuts off Archos's communication with its robotic hordes. Archos's base is infiltrated and the genocidal mastermind is destroyed by a stone age assault--bombardment with boulders--ending the war."
680,The Shape of Things to Come,science," As a frame story, Wells claims that the book is his edited version of notes written by an eminent diplomat, Dr. Philip Raven, who had been having dream visions of a history textbook published in 2106, and wrote down what he could remember of it. It is split into five separate sections or ""books"": #Today And Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration Dawns - The history of the world up to 1933. #The Days After Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration - 1933-1960. #The World Renascence: The Birth of the Modern State - 1960-1978. #The Modern State Militant - 1978-2059. #The Modern State in Control of Life - 2059 to New Year's Day 2106. Wells predicted a Second World War breaking out with a European conflagration from the flashpoint of a violent clash between Germans and Poles at Danzig. Wells set the date for this as January 1940. Poland proves the military match of Nazi Germany and engages in an inconclusive war lasting ten years. More countries are eventually dragged into the fighting, France and the Soviet Union are only marginally involved, Britain remains neutral, the US fights inconclusively with Japan. The war drags on until 1950 and ends with no victor but total exhaustion, collapse and disintegration of all fighting states (and also of the neutral countries, equally affected by the deepening economic crisis). Europe and the whole world descend into chaos: nearly all central governments break down, and a devastating plague in 1956-57 kills a large part of humanity and almost destroys civilization. Wells then envisages a benevolent dictatorship&mdash;'The Dictatorship of the Air' (a term likely modelled on 'The Dictatorship of the proletariat' and concept similar to Kipling's Aerial Board of Control )&mdash;arising from the controllers of the world's surviving transportation systems (the only people with global power). This dictatorship promotes science, enforces Basic English as a global lingua franca, and eradicates all religion, setting the world on the route to a peaceful utopia. When the dictatorship chooses to murder a subject, the condemned person is given a chance to take a poison tablet. Eventually, after a century of reshaping humanity, the dictatorship is overthrown in a completely bloodless coup, the former rulers are sent into a very honourable retirement, and the world state ""withers away"" (as was predicted by Friedrich Engels in his 1877 work Anti-Duhring). The last part of the book is a detailed description of the Utopian world which emerges, in some ways reminiscent of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. The ultimate aim of this utopian world is to produce a world society composed entirely of polymaths, each and every one of its members the intellectual equal of the greatest geniuses of the past. As noted by Neville, while The Shape of Things to Come was written as a future history, seen in retrospect it can be considered as an alternate history diverging from ours in late 1933 or early 1934, the Point of divergence being U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's failure to implement the New Deal and revive the US economy (and also Adolf Hitler's failure to revive the German economy by re-armament). Instead, the worldwide economic crisis continues for three decades, concurrently with the war. The war is prosecuted by countries already on the verge of collapse and ends, not with any side's victory, but with universal collapse and disintegration (including non-combatant countries). There follows the complete collapse of capitalism and the emergence of the above-mentioned new order. The book displays one of the earliest uses of the C.E. (Christian Era or Common Era) calendar abbreviation, which was used by Wells in lieu of the traditional A.D. (Latin Anno Domini)."
681,Incandescence,science," The novel has two narratives in alternate chapters. The first follows two citizens of the Amalgam, a Milky Way-spanning civilisation, investigating the origin of DNA found on a meteor by the Aloof. The Aloof control the galactic core and until the novel begins, have rejected all attempts at contact by the Amalgam. The second narrative is set on a small world known as the Splinter, and covers the attempts by its inhabitants to understand the environment within which their home exists. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the Splinter orbits a collapsed star within its accretion disk and is subject to various dangers. The two stories come together in a complex twist which involves a kind of past/future first contact role reversal. Much of the narrative explores the effects of orbital dynamics around a high mass object and requires an understanding of Newtonian gravitation and at least a basic familiarity with general relativity and its application to black holes and neutron stars to be compelling. Understanding the story's wider frame of reference and the Splinter's encounter with the Wanderer are tied in with this. The Amalgam is explored in two other short stories, ""Glory"" and ""Riding the Crocodile""."
682,Icerigger,science," After an unfortunate accident, Ethan Fortune, a simple salesman and sophisticated interstellar traveler, finds himself stranded on the deadly frozen world of Tran-Ky-Ky with professional adventurer Skua September. Together they search for a way off the planet while fighting against both the extreme weather and deadly fauna of the alien world."
683,The Martian General's Daughter,science," As with his previous work Fitzpatrick's War, The Martian General's Daughter borrows heavily from classical history; in this case, the setting is reminiscent of the Roman Empire during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and his son, Commodus. Unlike Fitzpatrick's War, Judson provides little background to explain how the world evolved into the shape set forth in the novel. The story takes place in the late twenty-third century, in which much of the Northern Hemisphere, as well as extraplanetary colonies on Mars and Jupiter, are dominated by the Pan-Polarian Empire, which is implicitly descended from the United States of America (though this is never expressly stated, references are made to the ""old capital"" near Maryland.) Pan-Polarian society is based on that of Imperial Rome, including an imperial cult and a variety of polytheistic and monolatric religions that have largely replaced the major religions of our time, including the cults of ""El Bis"" and the goddess Marilyn. The Empire's primary rivals are Persia and China, but which also fights against a number of enemies in Africa and South America. A nano-engineered plague has been released by one of the warring parties which causes metal to corrode and become useless; as a result, advanced technology is beginning to fail and the world is quickly degenerating to pre-industrial technology. The setting alternates between chronicling the career of General Black (and his daughter's career as his aide-de-camp) during the 2270s and 2280s and his attempt to seize the Imperial throne in the 2290s during a multi-party struggle resembling the Year of the Four Emperors and the Crisis of the Third Century. General Black makes his career fighting under philosopher-emperor Mathias the Glistening, who perishes when his cybernetic implants become infected with the nano-plague. Mathias is succeeded by his sociopathic son, Luke Anthony, whose behavior becomes increasingly erratic over time. Justa relates the excesses of Luke's regime, including his execution of perceived enemies, financial corruption, sexual perversion, etc. General Black is made governor of Anatolia but is periodically recalled to provide various services to Luke. As a result of personally witnessing the Emperor's madness, General Black becomes more and more disillusioned and his health begins to suffer. Ultimately Luke is murdered and a struggle ensues between various short-reigned barracks emperors. By this time General Black and Justa are stationed on Mars, but when one of Black's political rivals seizes power, kills Black's family on Earth and infects Mars with the metal-eating nanoplague, Black's troops (many of them Boers, who are described as largely nomadic in the twenty-third century) declare him emperor and he leads an invasion force back to Earth. Although victorious in battle, the nanoplague renders the conflict moot as technology will no longer support an empire as large as the Pan-Polarian state, which crumbles into a myriad of ethnic and regional successor states. Ultimately, Justa and her father settle in Amsterdam, which has regained the prominence it enjoyed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is the center of a prosperous successor state, where Justa marries, has children, and assiduously avoids politics."
684,The Eye of the Giant,science," The year is 1934. According to legend, the Polynesian island of Salutua disappeared after a fire god rose up from the volcano and drove away the natives. However, the eccentric Professor Sternberg believes that he’s located the legendary island, after tending to a man found floating in the Pacific Ocean with giant animal bites on his body. An American millionaire, film producer Marshal Grover, funds an expedition to Salutua based on Sternberg’s findings, apparently intending to use the island as a backdrop for a realistic monster movie. The expedition’s ship, the Constitution, passes through what appears to be a freak atmospheric distortion which shrouds Salutua from the outside world, but is disabled by an underwater explosion as it enters the lagoon. The crew successfully beach the ship, and as they begin to conduct repairs, Grover’s team sets off to explore the jungle. The flora and fauna on the island prove to be impossibly gigantic, but Grover’s spoiled second wife, former starlet Nancy Norton, is terrified by the unnatural growth, and when she’s attacked by a giant snake she flatly refuses to film anything on the island. Grover, however, refuses to take her away just yet. He has another reason for coming to Salutua -- a motive connected to his beloved daughter Amelia, who lost an arm in the car crash which killed Grover’s first wife. In present-day London, the Doctor and Liz are working on the TARDIS console when Sergeant Mike Yates arrives in the laboratowy with a package from UNIT’s Australian bureau, a fragment of an alien spaceship found in the belly of a shark. The Doctor tunes the TARDIS’ Space-Time Visualiser to the frequency of the omicron radiation trace on the fragment, and creates what appears to be a holographic image of the fragment’s path through history, terminating at the moment of its creation. As Yates leaves to report to the Brigadier, however, Liz realises that the “image” is in fact a time bridge, through which solid material can pass; the Doctor is in fact making another attempt to escape from his exile. The Doctor passes through the bridge to explore the island on the other side, but the Visualiser’s power accumulators begin to overload. While trying to warn him, Liz accidentally falls through the time bridge and is stranded on the other side with him when the accumulators short out. Grover’s cameraman de Veer, trying to get one up on the selfish Nancy, suggests using Amelia as a stand-in for long-shot location footage. Nancy, who fought her way to stardom from the slums, has become paranoid about any perceived threat to her livelihood, and that night she confronts Amelia privately on the ship’s deck, convinced that Amelia is trying to steal the picture from her. As Amelia tries to explain that this is not the case, the ship is attacked by giant crabs, and when Nancy tries to escape she accidentally knocks Amelia overboard. Surrounded by the crabs, Amelia is forced to retreat into the woods, and Grover and a team of sailors set off to rescue her, while Nancy remains on the boat, paralysed by guilt and self-reproach. In the forest, Amelia manages to escape from the pursuing crabs, but then falls into a giant pit masked by vegetation, and is unable to climb out. The Doctor and Liz explore their surroundings, and discover that they’re in the caldera of a dormant volcano. An alien spaceship is embedded in the ground, and a device powered by geothermal energy from the volcano is generating a force field that renders the island invisible to the outside world. The Doctor theorises that the device has caused the volcano to cool down and lapse into dormancy, which means that the ship must have been here for quite some time. He and Liz then hear gunfire and screaming from the jungle, and investigate to find that the rescue team from the Constitution has been caught in the middle of a battle between giant crabs and giant bats. The crewmen are being slaughtered until the Doctor arrives with his sonic screwdriver, which drives off both the bats and the crabs. The Doctor claims to be from a British expedition, and although wary of rivals, Grover is grateful for the Doctor’s help. It is now obvious that the search for Amelia will have to wait until morning, and the Doctor and Liz accompany the team back to the Constitution. On the way back, they spot strange marks in the jungle earth, which appear to be the tracks of a miniature tank. Back at UNIT HQ, Sergeant Osgood manages to repair the time bridge, although it must be run at a reduced rate of power in order to prevent the accumulators from burning out again. Yates volunteers to go through the bridge and search for the Doctor and Liz, and while searching the island, he finds Amelia and rescues her from a giant spider. Since Amelia is unable to climb out of the pit, she and Mike must search for another way out, and while doing so they stumble across a giant statue, presumably the islanders’ deity -- a giant humanoid carved from remarkably pliant stone, with a single ruby-red eye. The pit turns out to be an extinct lava tube, which comes to the surface elsewhere in the jungle. While returning to the Constitution, however, Mike and Amelia are attacked by a miniature tank which has been taking samples of the flora and fauna from the island. Trying to fight it off, Mike accidentally destroys it when his grenade ruptures what proves to be a high-pressure water tank. He and Amelia are then reunited with the expedition members and with the Doctor and Liz, but as they share stories, a shower of paper leaflets floats across the island, having been flung through the time bridge by a desperate Lethbridge-Stewart. UNIT’s research team has just learned that Salutua will be completely destroyed by a volcanic eruption this very night. The Doctor is forced to admit the truth, but Grover refuses to abandon his expedition on the word of people who claim to have travelled through Time. In order to prove his story, the Doctor suggests that Mike show Grover the “statue” in the pit, which the Doctor believes is in fact a dead alien in a life support suit. Upon arriving at the pit, the Doctor studies the statue for himself and finds a storage unit containing two Semquess drug vials and one empty space; he concludes that the third vial must have broken open in the past, releasing chemicals which resulted in the gigantism on the island. He intends to dispose of the other two, but before he can do so, Grover has his men hold the Doctor, Liz and Mike at gunpoint and seizes the vials, revealing that he came to the island in the hope that the cause of the unnatural growth could be tamed to grow back Amelia’s missing arm. Nancy, who has been suffering from guilt ever since Amelia fell into the water, realises that this entire expedition was for Amelia’s benefit and not her own, and in a fit of rage she lashes out at Amelia’s self-righteousness -- infuriating Grover and destroying herself in his eyes before she realises what she’s done. The Brigadier finds that he is unable to pilot the time bridge beyond the caldera, since it is tuned into the omicron radiation signature from the spacecraft. Benton thus prepares to lead a team through the bridge to find and rescue the Doctor, Liz and Yates. As the team prepares to set off, reports start to come in from UNIT’s American offices of strange, spectral UFO sightings on the American west coast. Sightings are also reported of ghosts and of spectral buildings which have not existed for years. Soon reports are coming in from all over the American continent, and then from Hong Kong and Japan. As Benton and his team pass through the time bridge, a commercial jet crashes in Munich after the pilot reports that the runway has changed position. Soon the sightings reach England as well; ghostlike squadrons of marching figures, dead people and condemned buildings are spotted. The opposite occurs as well -- people who still exist become harder to perceive... Grover has the Doctor, Liz and Mike locked up on the Constitution, promising to release them before the volcano erupts so they can return to their own time. The Doctor, however, refuses to help Sternberg open the vials, claiming that the human race is not prepared to handle the alien technology within. Amelia, who believes that the loss of her arm is a test from God, accepts the Doctor’s argument and refuses to take any of the drugs even if Sternberg somehow manages to open the vials. Meanwhile, Nancy, knowing that her marriage to Grover is effectively over, seduces crewman David Ferraro and convinces him to steal the giant’s ruby eye from the pit. When he fails to return, she goes looking for him -- to find that he has been hypnotised by the ruby eye and is building a fire in the pit. Before Nancy can respond, the heat restores the giant to life, and it hypnotises her as well. The smoke from the fire attracts the attention of Grover’s men and of Benton’s search party, but when they arrive, the giant, Brokk, holds Nancy hostage and uses her as its telepathic go-between to demand the return of the ampoules. He had stolen the vials from the Semquess, but they shot down his ship and he crashed on this relatively cold planet, losing one of the ampoules in the process. He drove away the natives of the island and installed the force field to prevent the Semquess from finding him while he repaired his ship, but first he went searching for the missing ampoule and fell into this pit, damaging the heat exchanger of his survival suit. He has been trapped, dormant, for fifty years, and in the intervening time the Semquess have tracked him down. The miniature tanks are the Semquess’ life support units, they have been taking samples from the island to determine whether their drugs are responsible for the growth here, and it was presumably a Semquess tank which struck the Constitution in the lagoon, damaging the ship. Realising that the Doctor was right all along, Grover orders the reluctant Sternberg to surrender the vials, but just as they are handed over the Semquess tanks arrive. As Brokk still holds Nancy hostage, the UNIT troops are forced to fight off the Semquess while Brokk escapes, but the Semquess mothership then emerges from the lagoon, and Brokk realises that he will never escape them. Following him at a distance, the others see him place Nancy down and continue on to the ship alone. Realising what is about to happen, the Doctor sends Grover’s group back to their ship and tells the UNIT team to assemble on the beach. Benton has left one man standing by the time bridge, and the Doctor has Yates radio instructions to him to pass on to the Brigadier. Brokk’s ship takes off, but the Semquess shoot it down, and its fragments are scattered across the island -- thus covering the island in omicron radiation and enabling the Brigadier to pilot the time bridge to the beach. As the UNIT team escape and the repaired Constitution heads back out to sea, the nuclear core of Brokk’s ship plunes into the heart of the volcano, triggering an eruption which destroys Salutua and scatters the fragments of Brokk’s ship throughout the surrounding area. One day, one of these fragments will be found and eaten by a shark. Back in present-day England at last, the Doctor begins to power down the time bridge -- but suddenly the power in UNIT HQ goes out, and Yates sees that the lights of London have changed outside the window. Realising what has happened, the Doctor stops before shutting down the time bridge completely. Salutua must have existed on a nexus point in time and space, and by passing through the bridge and interfering in the past the Doctor and his friends have changed history. While the time bridge was operating at full capacity the two timelines co-existed side by side, causing the spectral sightings which began on the opposite side of the world and have slowly been approaching the terminus of the time bridge. Since UNIT HQ’s electrical generators no longer exist, the time bridge only has a limited amount of power, and when that runs out the time bubble preserving this corner of UNIT HQ will be wiped out of existence. The Doctor and his companions must find out how history has changed, return to the Constitution, and fix things before their timeline ceases to be. UNIT HQ is attacked by soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms, who capture Liz and take her through the interface into the other timeline. The Doctor knows that she will only survive for a short time on the other side; she is currently imbued with artron energy due to her trip through the time bridge, but as that decays she will slowly cease to exist. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton set off after her, using the fragment of Brokk’s ship from the time bridge as a portable artron energy reserve. Yates and Osgood remain on guard as the soldiers outside begin to bomb UNIT HQ; their bombs fade away on UNIT’s side of the interface, but are slowly becoming more real -- and more dangerous. Liz is taken through a version of London which resembles the futuristic visions of old silent films. In what used to be St Paul’s Cathedral, she is questioned by nuns dressed in scarlet, who open a satellite to this world’s Goddess -- Nancy Grover. Nancy reveals that Brokk, knowing he could not escape the Semquess, struck a deal with her and gave her the Semquess vials and fragments of his brain-eye. The figure that boarded the ship and took off was just the husk of his body, acting autonomously. Since Nancy was unable to hide the ampoules in her pocketless dress, she had Sternberg smuggle them aboard the ship; unwilling to leave Salutua without some proof of his discoveries, he was happy to do so. Once aboard the ship, however, Nancy murdered him and used the contents of one ampoule to merge herself with a fragment of Brokk’s brain-eye. Using the powers granted to her by the ruby fragment, she took over the minds of her maid Tilly and the disgraced David Ferraro, planted ruby fragments in their foreheads as well, and proceeded from that point; once Grover’s films made her a star, she was able to spread her mesmeric influence over the world and reshape it in her image. Now she is the star she’s always wanted to be, and the Goddess of a world; the people of her Earth have already fought off the Semquess, and soon they will have constructed a new body for Brokk. However, Liz realises that while this world is united rather than divided, it is ruled by fear, and when Nancy loses the powers granted to her by her union with Brokk, her utopia will fall. Infuriated by Liz’s rejection, Nancy attempts to bring her under mental control, but fails when Liz begins to fade from existence. Fortunately, the Doctor arrives just in time, and once back in the time bubble surrounding Bessie, Liz returns to normal. The Doctor drives back to UNIT HQ, and as Nancy’s soldiers redouble their efforts to destroy the time bridge, he leads the Brigadier, Benton and Yates through the time bridge to the Constitution to face Nancy in the past. Nancy and her slaves are in the process of taking over the ship, and when they attempt to kill the intruders, the Doctor -- realising that Nancy is beyond reason -- uses his sonic screwdriver to find the resonance point of the ruby crystals. The crystals shatter, killing Tilly and Ferraro, but as Nancy dies she falls atop the ampoule -- and the contents spill over her body, the remaining ruby fragments, and the structure of the Constitution itself. Back at UNIT HQ, Liz and Osgood find themselves looking out over a devastated wasteland as the Constitution begins to warp into a monstrous living being. The contents of the ampoule have merged Nancy, Brokk’s eye, and the organic components of the ship itself into a voracious living entity, part animal, part vegetable, and part mineral; the transition has driven the new entity insane, and it will consume all life on Earth. The Doctor is unable to fight this new life form, and when Liz and Osgood try to cut it to pieces using the time bridge, the pieces reconstitute on the other side and attack them. They are forced to flee beyond the interface, but begin to fade away once outside the time bubble. As the Constitution prepares to devour its passengers, the Doctor realises that his only remaining weapon is the third ampoule -- the most dangerous and valuable of all, which releases the full potential of any life form which consumes it. He is unwilling to risk the consequences of his drinking it, fearing what he might become -- and before anybody can stop her, Amelia grabs it from him and drinks it herself. The shock of the chemical transformation kills her, but her faith and the powers of the transformation enable her to survive beyond death, turning her into an angelic being with all of the powers that implies. The new Amelia subdues the hybrid life form, and promises to care for it until she can find a way to separate Nancy and Brokk once again. Realising that she no longer belongs on Earth, Nancy bids farewell to her tearful father and sets off to explore the Universe and try to understand her new purpose in it. The Doctor and the UNIT team return to London to find that, apart from a few newspaper headlines regarding the fate of Grover’s expedition, history has returned to normal."
685,334,science," The future in 334 has brought few technological advances except for new medical techniques and recreational drugs. There have been no dramatic disasters, but overpopulation has made housing and other resources scarce; the response is a program of compulsory birth control and eugenics. A welfare state provides for basic needs through an all-encompassing agency called MODICUM, but there is an extreme class division between welfare recipients and professionals. The novel consists of five independent novellas (previously published separately) with a common setting but different characters, and a longer sub-novel called ""334"" whose many short sections trace the members of a single family forward and backward in time. The sections are as follows: * ""The Death of Socrates"": A high-school student finds that, due to poor scores on his Regents Examinations and his father's health history, he has been permanently forbidden to have children; he searches for ways to get extra credit. * ""Bodies"": Porters at Bellevue Hospital moonlight as body-snatchers catering to a necrophiliac brothel. Their task is complicated by the desire of some patients to be cryonically preserved for a better future. * ""Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire"": A privileged government worker, trying to decide where to send her son to school, pursues a parallel existence in a hallucinogen-assisted role-playing game set in the year 334. * ""Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come"": A young professional man and woman face marital conflicts and parenthood, with several twists unique to the 2020s. * ""Angouleme"": A group of highly educated prepubescent children decides to commit a gratuitous murder in Battery Park. * ""334"": Vignettes of the Hanson family from 2021 to 2025."
686,"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish",science," Arthur Dent has hitch-hiked through the galaxy and is dropped off on a planet in a rainstorm. He realises that he appears to be in England on Earth, even though he saw it destroyed by the Vogons. While he has been gone for several years, it appears only a few months have passed on Earth. He manages to hitch a ride with a man named Russell, who is driving home his sister Fenchurch (Fenny for short). Russell explains that she had become delusional after worldwide mass hysteria over the ""hallucinations with the big yellow spaceships"" (Vogon Ships). Arthur also learns that all the dolphins disappeared shortly after that event. Arthur becomes curious about Fenchurch, but they reach his home before he can ask more questions. Inside his still-standing home, Arthur finds a gift-wrapped bowl inscribed with the words ""So Long and Thanks..."" which he then uses for his Babel Fish. Arthur considers that Fenchurch is somehow connected to him and to the Earth's destruction, and finds that he still has the ability to fly whenever he lets his thoughts wander. After putting his life in order, Arthur tries to find out more about Fenchurch. He catches her hitchhiking and he learns more about her. He obtains her phone number but loses it. He finds her home when he locates the cave he had lived in after crashing onto prehistoric Earth with the Golgafrinchans: her flat is built on the same spot. As they talk they find more circumstances connecting them. Fenchurch reveals that, moments before her hallucinations, she had an epiphany while sitting in a café about how to make everything right, but then blacked out. Ever since, she has not been able to recall it. After noticing that Fenchurch's feet do not touch the ground, Arthur teaches her how to fly and together they make love in the skies over London. The two travel to California to see John Watson, an enigmatic scientist who purports to know the cause of the dolphins' disappearance and who eschewed his original name in favour of ""Wonko the Sane"" due to harbouring the belief that the entire world's population save himself has gone mad. Watson shows the couple a bowl with the words ""So long and thanks for all the fish"" inscribed on it that they all own and encourages them to listen to it. They learn from the bowl's audio message that the dolphins, aware of the Vogons, left Earth for an alternate dimension but not before replacing the destroyed Earth with a new version and transporting everything to it as a way of saving humans. Arthur explains to Fenchurch about hitchhiking across the galaxy, after which she insists that she wants to see it as well. They plan to hitchhike on the next passing spaceship. Concurrent to these events, Ford Prefect discovers that during an update of the ""Hitchhiker's Guide"", his previous entry for Earth, ""Mostly harmless"", has been replaced with the volumes of text he wrote during his research. Recognising that something is strange, Ford begins to hitchhike across the galaxy to reach Earth, eventually using the ship of a giant robot to land in the centre of London and causing a panic. In the chaos, Ford meets up with Arthur and Fenchurch and together they commandeer the robot's ship. Arthur takes Fenchurch to the planet where God's Final Message to His Creation is written, and they happen across Marvin, who, because of previous events, is now approximately 37 times older than the known age of the universe and is barely able to continue. Marvin, with Arthur and Fenchurch's help, reads the Message (""We apologise for the inconvenience""), smiles, utters the final words ""I think... I feel good about it,"" and dies happily."
687,The Kobayashi Maru,science," When communications with the Venkatsen Research Group were lost, the U.S.S. Enterprise was sent to investigate. In a system with 47 planets, the transporter is not usable, so Kirk and crew take a shuttle to Hohweyn VII. En route, a gravitic mine damages the shuttle. Communications and navigation are not responsive, and Kirk and Sulu are injured in the blast. McCoy, in an attempt to pass time, convinces Kirk to tell his story about the ""unwinnable scenario"". The training scenario itself involves a crippled fuel freighter in the Neutral Zone between the Federation and Klingon space. The starship receives a garbled distress call, which, if responded to, results in an attack by three Klingon cruisers. The opening volley causes heavy damage to the ship, and, despite any actions on the part of the cadet, the ship is destroyed. The purpose of the no-win outcome is to test the cadets' response to losing. Kirk proceeds to tell how he reprogrammed the simulation so that the Klingon commanders recognize his name and assists Kirk in saving the freighter. Chekov tells his story about the Kobayashi Maru and a secondary training exercise on an empty space station. Chekov completed the scenario by evacuating his crew and physically ramming the ship into the Klingon attackers. In the second exercise, Chekov commits group ""suicide"" by ""killing"" the others who had captured him. The secondary exercise involves pitting all the cadets against each other to see who lasts a pre-determined time period. Chekov creates a different plan. He learns that when Kirk went through the same scenario he organized the cadets in such a way there was no need to fight each other. Sulu tells his story about his great-grandfather Tetsuo, and about going to Command School for the first time. The first exercise is a type of Model U.N., where Sulu is a tech level 3 planet, Menak III, and trying to gain entrance into the Federation. When Sulu finds out Tetsuo is discontinuing treatments for a life-ending illness, he refuses to speak to him. Sulu finds out about Tetsuo's death after returning from a field exercise. When he finally takes the Kobayashi Maru test, he decides that the freighter's distress call is probably a trap and chooses not to help it. Scotty tells about his early years at Command School, and how his love of engineering made it difficult for him to pay attention to non-engineering subjects. Upon taking the scenario, Scotty used engineering solutions to destroy ever increasing waves of Klingon cruisers. Review of his performance shows that he used the Perera Field Theory to destroy the final wave, which was proven to be mathematically possible (thus acceptable to the computer), but physically impossible (as proven by Scotty). The resulting decision had Scotty moved out of Command School and sent to study engineering. The shuttle is rescued by the Enterprise after a plan to turn the shuttle into an electromagnetic black hole works. This lets the Enterprise know where to find them."
688,Memoirs Found in a Bathtub,science," Set in the distant future, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is the horrifying first-hand account of a bureaucratic agent trapped deep within the subterranean bowels of a vast underground military complex. In a Kafkaesque maelstrom of terrifying confusion and utter insanity, this man must attempt to follow his mission directives of conducting an ""on-the-spot investigation. Verify. Search. Destroy. Incite. Inform. Over and out. On the nth day nth hour sector n subsector n rendezvous with N."" The narrator inhabits a paranoid dystopia where nothing is as it seems, chaos seems to rule all events, and everyone is deeply suspicious of everyone else. In danger of losing his mind, the protagonist starts keeping a diary, and it is this diary which details only a few days in his life that is ultimately found by a future society and given the title Notes from the Neogene. Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is this distant voice from the past, this Notes from the Neogene."
689,War of the Worlds: New Millennium,science," After a remote Mars Rover (Vision) loses contact with Earth, a series of flashes appear on the face of Mars, once every Martian day (24 hours, 37 minutes). The flashes baffle scientists at first, until strange objects are discovered heading towards Earth. A space shuttle is sent out to investigate, and becomes the first casualty in the Martian attack on Earth. The first of the eleven objects sends out a 1 million volt electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which becomes known simply as the Pulse. The first pulse covers North America, and knocks out all computer circuitry and most sophisticated electronics. The second and third objects contain EMPs for Eurasia and Antarctica, effectively immobilizing the world. The remaining objects release canisters which plummet to Earth and strategically impact around major population centers. As planes crash and cars stop, Alex DeVane tries to get to NASA headquarters to deal with the Pulse and what it means. After the canisters hit, and bombing appears to have no effect, the United States Army sends out an infantry division to investigate and attack the aliens. The canister opens, and the Martians exit in armored saucers held up on tractor beam-like legs. They are also armed with lasers that burn through anything they touch. The ring of tanks, infantry, and artillery fire on the Martians, but to no effect. They destroy the group and continue the invasion. The U.S. Army rallies and fights bravely, but loses every battle. The Martians also have a poison gas weapon that lasts about 30 minutes, but is lethal. They destroy and kill for the sake of doing so, and seem to breathe in the death and destruction they are causing. Ironically, this smell leads doctors and scientists to speculate on the nature of the Martians, and the large amount of bacteria they seem to thrive upon. Although successful with nuclear weapon attacks, the Americans try a penicillin/antibiotic bomb, which seems to stop the landers after only a slight delay. Further experimentation by Markus DeVane later proves that any bread-based mold will quickly put down a Martian. This solution is communicated to the survivors, and the invasion is stopped."
690,Excession,science," The Excession of the title is a perfect black-body sphere that appears mysteriously on the edge of Culture space, appears to be older than the Universe itself and resists the attempts of the Culture and technologically equivalent societies (notably the Zetetic Elench) to probe it. The Excession is what the Culture's social scientists describe as an Outside Context Problem, one which a society cannot foresee and is often fatal. A metaphor to help explain this phrase is that of a successful aboriginal culture suddenly finding ocean-going vessels on its shores for the first time. A group of stereotypical bureaucrats tries to manage the Culture's response to the Excession but is brushed aside by the Interesting Times Gang, an informal group of Minds some of whom are veterans of the Idiran-Culture War, to try to deal with what is by far the most serious challenge the Culture has faced. Meanwhile a rapidly-expanding race, which the Culture calls the Affront (because of its systematic sadism towards subject species and its own females and junior males, despite being relatively advanced), tries to exploit the Excession by infiltrating a store of mothballed Culture warships and using them to claim control of the mysterious object. It turns out that the Affront have been manipulated into their grab for power by another Culture faction which thought it was morally imperative to curb the Affront's cruelty by any means, and intend to use the Affront's theft of Culture warships as an excuse for war. The GSV Sleeper Service eventually takes control of the situation. Its name is the most meaningful pun in the story: outwardly it is an Eccentric (drop-out from the Culture) which dedicates its enormous resources to presenting tableaux of historical events (mainly battles) populated by passengers in suspended animation; but in fact it is a sleeping member of Special Circumstances, the Culture's covert operations organization. The name of Sleeper Service is thus double-pronged—it is a Sleeper Service to human beings in Storage, and a Sleeper Service within SC, as it has produced a massive war-fleet during the 40-year period it has spent behaving as an Eccentric. It prepares to deploy this fleet during transit to the Excession. But Sleeper Service has an unresolved issue. Until a few decades previously, the ship operated under another name as a normal GSV, providing a habitat for a vast number of Culture citizens. Two of its passengers, Dajeil and Genar-Hofoen, had had an intense love-affair which ended badly when Genar-Hofoen was unfaithful and a pregnant Dajeil tried to kill Genar-Hofoen, but only succeeded in the feticide of the child with which Genar-Hofoen was pregnant. After the break-up, Dajeil froze her pregnancy and subsequently remained in a state of intense depression for 40 years, and the ship changed its name to Sleeper Service and started acting as an Eccentric. It carried only one conscious humanoid passenger, Dajeil, and spent much of its attention trying to talk her out of her depression, for which it considered itself partly responsible. As a result, when the Culture asks Sleeper Service to help in dealing with the threat of war, the ship demands that in return Genar-Hofoen must be handed over to it. Genar-Hofoen is lured to Sleeper Service on a pretext, and only later told that he is there to work with Dajeil to help her recover from her psychological trauma. Sleeper Service then unloads the passengers who had been part of its historical tableaux. Having spent much of its Eccentric decades converting a large percentage of the mass of the tableaux' scenery into engines, it easily outruns the very fast ship which other elements of the Culture had asked to keep watch on it. Once it is beyond the watching ship's sensor range, Sleeper Service changes course and heads towards the Excession. When it arrives it becomes apparent it has previously converted the rest of its spare mass into a vast fleet of remote-controlled warships numbering in the area of 80,000 units. The Excession, in response to the Sleeper charging at it, then triggers a multi-light-year Gridfire wave which threatens to obliterate it and its entire fleet, along with the accompanying Grey Area. Only its Mindstate, transmitted right at the Excession, saves it by convincing the Excession to halt its attack. The Minds controlling the ships which the Affront stole from the ""mothball"" find themselves outnumbered more than 130:1, and refuse to help the Affront. The Affront fleet's commander and the Culture ship which led the conspiracy commit suicide. A prolonged war is thus averted. At the same time the Excession disappears as mysteriously as it arrived. Meanwhile, the rush of events, combined with a conversation with Genar-Hofoen, results in Dajeil moving out of her depression and completing her pregnancy. Genar-Hofoen returns to the Affront, having been rewarded by being physically transformed into a member of the Affront species (whose company he finds more stimulating than that of the Culture's people). The book's epilogue reveals that the Excession is a sentient entity which is currently acting as a bridge for a procession of even higher beings which travel between universes. It also assesses whether the species and societies it encounters are suitable to be enlightened about some unknown further existence beyond the Universe. As a result of events in the story the Excession concludes that the civilisations it has encountered in our universe are not ready for this enlightenment and moves on so that it will not cause any further disturbance, hence its disappearance at the end of the book. It also takes the name given to it by the Culture – Excession – as its own. ==Outside Context Proble"
691,Junior Jedi Knights: Kenobi's Blade,science," Uldir, a classmate of Anakin Solo's at the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4, wished to become a great Jedi, but his skills in the Force are weak, such that he can't even lift a feather with his mind. He gets the idea to use a Holocron to learn the secrets of the Jedi of the Old Republic. He ""borrows"" the Holocron along with Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber, recovered from Darth Vader's palace on the planet Vjun where the Dark Lord took it after striking down his old master on the first Death Star. Apparently, Obi-Wan's lightsaber grants its wielder skill in Form III of lightsaber combat, of which Kenobi was a master. Anakin—along with his friends Tahiri Veila, R2-D2, Tionne and the Jedi Master Ikrit—must race across the galaxy to find Uldir. If they don't find and stop Uldir, he could very well be killed, and Kenobi's blade and the Holocron could fall into the hands of a very evil man."
692,Dreadful Sanctuary,science, The novel concerns an international conspiracy to prevent humanity from achieving space travel.
693,Strike Zone,science," In this book a race of aliens who have fought with the Klingons for centuries, called the Kreel, find a large stash of advanced weapons hidden on a strange planet on the Kreel-Klingon border. They are established as scavengers. They had, in the continuity of the novel, plundered the destroyed colony that was Worf's childhood home."
694,The Doomed City,science," The novel is set in a mysterious world where enigmatic Mentors run a sociological experiment. The mentors gathered volunteers from Earth from various places and times: from Germany of 1940s, the USA of the 1960s, Sweden of the 1970s, etc. The volunteers do not know the goals or conditions of the experiment. In spite of different native languages the people can effortlessly communicate with each other. Most of the people live in the City that is skirted by a swamp on one side and a desert on the other. Apparently, the experiment runs out of control, the City is shaken by a social unrest and an egalitarian system of job rotations is replaced by a dictatorship. The main character — Andrei Voronin — is an astronomer from Leningrad of 1950s. He struggles to find his identity and his place in the strange city, at first being a vehement opponent of the dictatorship, and later becoming a leading adviser of the dictator. Naively idealistic at the beginning of the novel, he seems to have become crass in the second half. However, eventually, he leads an expedition to explore the desert. The expedition proves difficult in the extreme. The members are exhausted, they turn back or perish. Eventually, only Andrei and Izia (Joseph Katzman) forge ahead. They encounter deserted cities and ruins of Earth cultures that show that the mysterious world is very old and the humans inhabited it for a long time. As Andrei and Izia proceed, they ponder the strange world and the meaning of human existence. They run out of supplies, but they keep going on eager to learn what is beyond the ""zero point"". Andrei dies on the border shooting at his double. He then finds himself back in the Leningrad of 1950s, where his Mentor tells him that he passed the First circle, but ""there are many of them ahead""."
695,The Dangerous Games,science," When Obi-Wan Kenobi and his gifted Padawan are dispatched to the Galactic Games on a peacekeeping mission, an illegal Podracing competition catches Anakin's eager eye. As a Jedi Padawan, Anakin is supposed to abandon his past life in service to the Force, but his racing days and old rivalries return at high speed. Anakin squares off against Hekula, son of Sebulba, who has inherited his father's worst traits.At the same time, Obi-wan is investigating some fixed races in the games."
696,"The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm",science," In the year 2194, in Zimbabwe, the Chief of Security, General Matsika, leads a battle against the many gangs which terrorize the nation. His three children, Tendai, Rita, and Kuda are kept in a fortified mansion to ensure their security. This soon bores the children, who are seeking adventure, and they escape the house with the help of the Mellower, a retainer whose function is to make people feel good about themselves. The children then find themselves in the busy streets of Mbare Musika, where they are kidnapped and taken to Dead Man's Vlei, the lair of the She Elephant. There, they have to work in the plastic mines. The parents are extremely worried, so they enlist the help of the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, three ""mutant"" detectives from a slum called the Cow's Guts. They all have special abilities: Ear has very powerful, but sensitive, hearing; Eye has equally powerful but sensitive vision. Arm has extremely long arms and legs, like a spider's, and has psychic and empathic powers; he can sense other people's feelings and see into the souls of others. Meanwhile, Tendai realizes that the She Elephant is planning to sell them to the Masks, a dangerous gang who have evaded General Matsika's efforts to combat crime. The siblings escape to Resthaven, an independent country within Zimbabwe which aims to retain traditional African culture. Eventually, the children are banished from Resthaven. The children end up in Borrowdale, a suburb created by the English tribe, where the Mellower's mother, Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham, takes them into her care after they catch chickenpox. Tendai discovers that the Mellower's mother is holding them for ransom, and before what would have been a conflict between the woman and the children, the She Elephant captures them again and takes them to one of the Masks' secret lairs, and the Masks take the children to the Mile-High MacIlwaine, a skyscraper which houses the Gondwannan Embassy, the real headquarters of the Masks. While the Masks attempt to sacrifice Tendai as a messenger to the gods, Arm is possessed by a mhondoro, a holy and legendary spirit of the land, who helps him to find the children. When Arm is knocked out, the mhondoro (and a group of staff and diners from the restaurant downstairs, led by Mrs Matsika) helps Tendai and his friends to temporarily destroy the Big-Head Mask, which had been going to kill Tendai. When the children's parents arrive, General Matsika crushes the Mask and the mhondoro revives Arm. The gang is destroyed and their stolen wealth is redistributed among the poor; while General Matsika finally realizes that his children need more freedom."
697,The Girl Who Owned a City,science," A deadly virus has swept the world, killing off everyone over the age of twelve in the span of a month or so. In suburban Chicago, ten-year-old Lisa Nelson and her younger brother Todd are surviving, like all the children in the story, by looting abandoned houses and shops. Although there are abandoned cars in every driveway and lining every street, Lisa is the first child to think of driving one. She is also the first to think of raiding a farm, and the first to look at the dwindling supplies in stores and deduce that groceries come from warehouses. She finds a supermarket warehouse and raids it, enlisting the help of a neighbor boy her own age, but makes clear to him that the entire warehouse and all its contents are her exclusive property, not to be shared unless she chooses. She considers relocating to the farm, but decides against it because it is difficult to defend (other children are starting to form gangs) and because ""planning and getting the world back to the way it was, with schools, and hospitals, and electricity"" are much more ""exciting"" than ""hiding away on a farm ... digging in the dirt all day"". Lisa and her friends are approached by the ""Chidester Avenue Gang"", led by Tom Logan. Suspecting that Lisa has a source of supplies, Logan offers a food-for-protection deal, which Lisa declines. Unhesitatingly taking charge, she forms her block-long stretch of Grand Avenue into a militia, armed with guns, Molotov cocktails, and primitive weapons. When the militia proves unsuccessful at defending the ""Land of Grandville"" against ""the fearful and cruel army of Chidester and Elm"" Lisa comes up with the idea of moving the ""child-families"" -- and the entire contents of the warehouse—into the local high school, and transforming it into a fortress-city. Within the city Lisa is the only authority, by virtue of the fact that she saw the abandoned high school and thought of moving there: this has earned her sole title to the ""City of Glenbard"" and everything in it. Things proceed according to plan until Tom Logan and his gang manage to stage a successful attack on Glenbard, during which Lisa is shot in the arm. Todd and Lisa's friend Jill rescue her, and Jill performs basic surgery to remove the bullet from her arm, dosing her with whiskey for pain relief. When Lisa recovers they retake the city of Glenbard from Tom, who has meanwhile learned that conqueror and leader are two very different things. Glenbard's ""citizens"" have shown no sign of rebellion, or of preferring Lisa's leadership to Tom's (or vice versa), but Lisa lectures Tom into relinquishing control of the city to her. The book ends with a foreshadowing that the citizens of Glenbard will at some time be forced to face far larger armies, led by now extremely powerful dictators and gang leaders. If any semblance of a free society is to exist in the new world, the citizens of Glenbard must make themselves capable of protecting and growing it by gaining in knowledge, power, and organization, and at the same time continuing to incorporate leadership and respect for the individual person into their society."
698,Solar Lottery,science," Solar Lottery takes place in a world dominated by logic and numbers. Loosely based on a numerical military strategy employed by U.S. and Soviet intelligence called minimax (part of game theory), the head of world government is chosen through a sophisticated, computerized lottery. This element of randomization in the society serves as a form of social control since nobody, in theory at least, has any more of an advantage over anybody else in becoming the next Quizmaster. Society is further entertained by a televised selection process in which an assassin is also allegedly chosen at random. By countering and putting down these threats to his life (using telepathic bodyguards as defense), the leader gains the respect of the people. If he loses his life a new Quizmaster, as well as another assassin, are again randomly selected. Quizmasters have historically held office for timespans ranging from a few minutes to several years. The average life expectancy is therefore on the order of a couple of weeks. The plot follows the story of Ted Benteley, an idealistic young worker unhappy with his position in life. Benteley attempts to get a job in the prestigious office of Quizmaster Reese Verrick. Reese has just been forced out of office, however, and Benteley gets tricked into swearing an unbreakable oath of personal fealty to the once and former world leader. Verrick then makes it clear that his organization's mission is to assassinate the new Quizmaster, Leon Cartwright, in the world's most anticipated ""competition"". In order to defeat the telepathic security web protecting Cartwright, Verrick and his team invent an android named Keith Pellig into which different volunteers' minds are alternately embedded for the purpose of breaking any kind of steady telepathic lock on the assassin. An action sequence centered on Pellig's assassination attempt proves to be the novel's most exciting and clever element. Cartwright ultimately kills Verrick, and Benteley, much to his own astonishment, becomes the next Quizmaster. A second plotline concerns a team of Leon Cartwright's followers travelling to the far reaches of the solar system in search of a mysterious cult figure named John Preston, who, 150 years after his disappearance, is thought to somehow still be alive on the legendary tenth planet known as the ""Flame Disc"". Although this particular sub-plot seems to have only a marginal connection with the main storyline, the recorded voice of a long-deceased John Preston ends the novel on a positive note by exhorting his audience to ""...spread out, reach areas, experiences, comprehend and live in an evolving fashion...."", to ""push aside routine and repetition, to break out of mindless monotony and thrust forward...."", to ""keep moving on...""."
699,The Final Key,science," Eldrinson Valdoria took over a year to heal from serious injuries inflicted on him by the Aristo Vitarex. He is happy to reconcile with his daughter Sauscony (Soz) whom he disowned for leaving home to become a Jagernaut. But he can't do the same with his son Althor, who is lying near death in a military hospital after sacrificing himself to save billions of Skolian citizens during a battle with the Eubian Traders. As part of her military training, Soz is assigned to the battlecruiser Roca's Pride, named in honor of her mother Roca Skolia. The training, however, turns out to be hard reality after her half-brother Imperator Kurj is nearly assassinated and falls into a coma. Traders simultaneously launch an attack against the planet Parthonia, seat of the Skolian government. This brings the psiberweb, the most important part of Skolian defence, to a collapse. Using an ancient device called Dyad Chair, Soz struggles to keep at least parts of the psiberweb intact. To repair psiberweb and save Skolia from Eubian invasion, Soz’s father Eldrinson has to join the Dyad, expanding it to a Triad with the risk that this could kill either him or one of the other Triad members. The book also shows the fates of other Ruby Dynasty family members: Soz's brother Shannon dealing with the mystic Blue Dale archers, their mother Roca captured by Traders and Ruby Pharaoh's husband Eldrin who leaves Parthonia on a ship with Skolian refugees while making a withdrawal from the addictive medicament phorine."
700,Flag in Exile,science," After the scandal caused by killing Pavel Young in a duel, Honor retreats to Grayson until things settle down on Manticore. She intends to oversee the development of her Steading, and overcome the death of Paul Tankersley. Honor struggles with the survivor's guilt her many battles have left her with, but soon finds that she cannot afford to dwell on her emotions. With the war between Manticore and Haven still raging, the fast-expanding but still inexperienced Grayson Space Navy needs someone to put it in fighting shape. Honor is eventually given the rank of Admiral in the Grayson navy and command of a superdreadnought squadron. She conducts her squadron and the rest of her adoptive nation's fleet through several battle exercises to improve them. Meanwhile, Haven stages a new operation capturing two planets deep in Alliance territory. A Manticore task force and half the Grayson Navy leave to liberate these planets, but Haven was banking on this and now are sending another task force to destroy Grayson's orbital infrastructure and arm Masada with modern weapons. The events surrounding her last adventure on Grayson (see The Honor of the Queen) have caused political turmoil on the reactionary planet. Even though she has the support of Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX and the Grayson government and the respect and gratitude of the people of Grayson, several of her fellow Steadholders refuse to accept her and plot to bring down Mayhew's reforms by resorting to terrorism. They sabotage a dome which was being built and financed by Honor. The dome collapses mid-construction and kills dozens of young children. When it appears that the government discovered their conspiracy, they attempt to assassinate Honor but this fails as well. Eventually the conspiracy is revealed to the public and Honor herself, acting in her official capacity as Protector Benjamin's Champion, kills its leader. Shortly thereafter the Havenite task force arrives to destroy Grayson's orbital infrastructure, but not realizing the size of the Grayson Navy, are defeated by Honor and the ships under her command."
701,Cyborg IV,science," In Cyborg IV, Caidin takes the notion of cyborg to new extremes as Steve Austin's consciousness is hooked up to a next generation spacecraft, creating a new form of union between man and machine. Meanwhile, an enemy force plans to use similar technology for their own ends."
702,The Roundheads,science," Landing in December of 1648 after the end of Second English Civil War, the TARDIS crew gets involved with intrigue involving both the victorious Oliver Cromwell and the doomed Charles I."
703,The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission,science," The Empire has risen. The Jedi Order has been destroyed. As far as the Emperor is concerned, the Jedi are all but extinct. But on the remote planet of Tatooine, one Jedi Master remains: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Devastated by the loss of his fellow Jedi—and the betrayal of his former apprentice Anakin Skywalker -- Obi-Wan has been left with one last task: To watch over and protect a young child named Luke. Obi-Wan finds out that a former Jedi apprentice has survived, Ferus Olin. Obi-Wan must make a painful decision: whether to stay on Tatooine or go on one last desperate mission—right into the heart of the Empire. When Obi-Wan decides to search for Ferus Olin, a known padawan that left the Order, he gets wrapped up in the problems of the planet Bellassa under the influence of the Empire. Will Obi-Wan help this desperate planet or will he rescue Ferus and go?"
704,When Heaven Fell,science," Earth has been taken over by the Master Race, a galaxy-spanning empire of artificial intelligences, and the best of Earth’s survivors are recruited into the aliens' army. Athol Morrison has served for 20 years, and heads back to Earth for a brief vacation. There, he runs into old friends, and finds it easy to give into his old feelings with his childhood girlfriend, Alexandra (Alix) Moreno. However, Alix and the rest of Athol’s friends are involved in a rebellion against Earth’s Master. They ask Athol to help and to join them, and so he helps to train them. However, concerned that any rebellion will provoke a genocidal response from the Masters, he betrays the rebellion to the local government, making sure that Alix and Davy Intäke are spared. Conflicted about what he has done, but feeling as if there was no choice, Athol rejoins up with his new command. Soon afterward comes war with the Hu, the most advanced race yet encountered—they developed hyperspace travel either on their own or stole it from a Master facility. Despite the Hu winning a series of early victories, the Master Race grinds the Hu down in a near-genocidal campaign that leaves the Hu homeworld in ruins. After that war is over, Athol and one of his concubines visit his alien comrade Shrêhht on her home planet. There, he is invited into another rebellion, one composed of all of the slave races, that has been plotting against the Master Race for over 100,000 years. He returns to Earth a second time and learns that he and Alix have a daughter, Kaye Moreno, and takes her off-planet to be trained as a soldier herself. Later, the Master Race's empire is attacked by a new foe that the conspirators believe drove the Master Race out of the Andromeda Galaxy and has arrived to finish them off. Athol, now a general, and Kaye ponder whether now would be the right time for the conspirators to revolt against the Master Race and welcome the newcomers, although he worries that if the Masters fall, the subject races will be the ""slaves of slaves"" forever."
705,The Romulan Way,science," Deep-cover Federation spy Agent Terise LoBrutto has her carefully maintained life disrupted by an unpleasant discovery. The chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise, Doctor McCoy, has been captured. It's up to LoBrutto to rescue McCoy."
706,The Warriors of Spider,science," The human race consists of billions of people spread throughout a relatively small area of space containing Earth and several other inhabited planets. The majority of the population lives on giant space stations, either in orbit or moving like giant ships. A change occurred over the generations that was caused by zero-gravity conditions and exposure to different radiations. Most are pale-skinned, thin and frail-boned; some would die if they experienced gravity. The human race is ruled over by the Directorate, a group of three genetically modified humans, through whom all information must pass before it is released; this has given the Directorate complete control over information for the last 600 years. They stopped all war and religion and caused humanity to be composed of mostly obedient cowards. Before this 600-year period, the Soviets ruled humanity after conquering North America. The Native American tribes, angered that the position of reservations had not changed, fought back against the Soviets and succeeded, to the point that they were all loaded onto a giant prison ship and deported to deep space along with other rebels of Latino and Caucasian decent—a population of over 5,000 consisting entirely of people with the will and heritage to survive. The ship crashes onto a planet that they name World. 600 years later the survivors have mixed into many different clans that comprise two distinctly different and opposing peoples, the Spiders and the Santos. Their culture is mainly Native American with the addition of large bore rifles, hand-forged from metal of the wrecked prison ship and used to deal with beings they call ""bears,"" natural predators existing on World. The World bear is similar to a dragon-squid combination, having two spines that connect at the base and a tentacle on each side with suction cups on it that it shoots toward its prey. The Directorate accidentally picks up a bit of radio chatter from World, as the warriors use hand radios. They send out the Patrol, a combination military/police force that, under the guidance of the Directorate, has had no violence or wars to quell in over 200 years. They arrive at World expecting to find civilized people barely surviving, as with most other lost stations or colonies. On the contrary, the native warriors are savage fighters following the Native American tradition of ""coup"" taking, or scalping killed enemies as a method of showing how many they had killed. They then try to conquer the Romanans, as they take to calling the descendants of the crashed star ship the natives arrived in, the Nicholai Romanan, but find that these natives aren't going down without a fight, as the Spiders, who believe Spider is the name of God and the Santos, a mix of Christian and Mexican beliefs, who call God Haysoos, are all about warfare and following what they interpret God is telling them what to do."
707,Dwellers in the Crucible,science," Warrantors of peace are a new plan for preventing war among the major powers of known space. Basically hostages, a representative of each race would be killed if their people start a war. Unfortunately outside agents then take six warrantors; a situation that threatens to start a war. Hikaru Sulu of the USS Enterprise is sent off to rescue all six Warrantors."
708,Timelike Infinity,science," Set thousands of years in the future (AD 5407), the human race has been conquered by the Qax, a truly alien turbulent-liquid form of life, who now rule over the few star systems of human space - adopting processes from human history to effectively oppress the resentful race. Humans have encountered a few other races, including the astoundingly advanced Xeelee, and been conquered once before - by the Squeem - but successfully recovered. A human-built device, the Interface project, returns to the solar system after 1,500 years. The project, towed by the spaceship Cauchy, returns a wormhole gate, appearing to offer time travel due to the time 'difference' between the exits of the wormhole (relativistic time dilation), with one end having remained in the solar system and the other traveling at near lightspeed for a century. The Qax had destroyed the solar system gate, but a lashed-up human ship (a great chunk of soil including Stonehenge, crewed by a group called the Friends of Wigner) passes through the returning gate, traveling back to the unconquered humanity of 1,500 years ago. One of the crew of the Cauchy returns with the Friends, Miriam Berg. The Friends have a complex scheme, which does not include a simple military return-and-rescue - the 1,500 year technology gap makes this ""risible"". From the Wigner thought experiment they have postulated an unusual theory on the ultimate destiny of life in the universe. They believe that quantum wave-functions do not collapse like the Copenhagen interpretation holds, nor that each collapse actually buds off separate universes (like the quantum multiverse hypothesis holds) but rather that the universe is a participatory universe: the entire universe exists as a single massive quantum superposition, and that at the end of time (in the open universe of the Xeelee Sequence, time and space are unbounded, or more precisely, bounded only at the Cauchy boundaries of ""Time-like infinity"" and ""Space-like infinity""), when intelligent life has collected all information (compare the Final anthropic principle and the Omega Point), and transformed into an ""Ultimate Observer"", who will make the ""Final observation"", the observation which collapses all the possible entangled wave-functions generated since the beginning of the universe. They believe further that the Ultimate Observer will not merely observe, but choose which world line will be the true world-line, and that it will choose the one in which humanity suffers no Squeem or Qax occupations. However, the Ultimate Observer cannot choose between worldlines if no information survives to its era to distinguish worldlines- if the UO never knows of humanity, it cannot choose a worldline favorable to it. In other words, some way is needed to securely send information forward in time. As a consequence of this necessity, they intend to turn Jupiter into a carefully formed singularity and use the precisely specified parameters as a method of encoding information. Miriam Berg is more concerned over the immediate fate of humanity, with the threat of the future Qax, and transmits a 'help' message to the gate designer Michael Poole. The Qax, naturally, panic a little at the escape to the past. A complex, unavoidably fragile species in their huge living Spline spacecraft, the few Qax present are somewhat at a loss. They decide to build their own Interface, with major human-collaborator assistance (headed by Ambassador Jasoft Parz), to create a link to their future to gain aid in resolving the problem - with more modern GUT-engine spacecraft they can make a 500 year link in just eighteen months. A startling high-technology future vessel (in truth, one of the legendary Xeelee nightfighters, an advanced and long-range fast scout ship), with a future Qax comes through the gate. Its first act is to execute the Qax Governor of Earth and gather up Parz, before passing through the original portal after the Friends and all humanity. The future Qax takes two Spline ships (presumably leaving behind the nightfighter; this might be the nightfighter that is discovered by the crew of The Great Northern millennia later in Ring) through the gate and on the journey reveals to Parz the reason behind its desire to completely destroy the human race. The future Qax tells Parz that over the centuries, the Qax had worn down humanity through constant oppression, and had eventually decided to completely eliminate its space-faring capabilities. But before they did, as economical traders, they wished to get as much value out of their human pilots as possible. So certain pilots were dispatched on a number of dangerous or quixotic missions. One such pilot was a man named Jim Bolder. The Qax had come into possession of a Xeelee nightfighter, and had modified it to support human control. Bolder's mission was simple: go to the Great Attractor, the cause of most galactic drift, and find out why and how it exists. Bolder travelled to the bottom of the gravitational well, and found- the Ring. A torus a thousand light-years in diameter, constructed of an unknown substance, rotating at a large fraction of lightspeed. The Qax goes on to speculate that the torus created a Kerr metric, and that it allowed egress from the current universe, that it was in effect an escape route for the Xeelee. Before Parz, the Spline warship, and the Qax exit the wormhole, the Qax asks, ""What do Xeelee fear, do you suppose?"". Regardless, Bolder escaped the Great Attractor and returned to the Qax home system, where he was supposed to be taken into custody by dozens of Spline warships wielding gravity-wave based ""starbreakers"" and his priceless data on the god-like Xeelee's ultimate project secured. Bolder either did not, or somehow escaped; in the ensuing fight, the starbreakers were accidentally fired at the Qax system primary star, and true to their name, destabilized it, causing it to go nova. The Qax were forced to hurriedly evacuate. Many died, and the power of the Qax trading empire (and by extension, their Occupation of Earth) ended. In the past, Poole joins Berg on the Friend vessel shortly before the Qax emerges, having traveled aboard his ship, Hermit Crab, from the Oort Cloud. He is accompanied by a Virtual of his father, Harry. Together they elude the control of the Friends, whose project fails under the bombardment of the Spline's starbreaker beam. They commandeer the singularity cannon used to sculpt Jupiter, and fire some black holes into the Spline. Aided by Jasoft Parz's internal sabotage, Poole succeeds in ramming the Hermit Crab into the Spline, killing the sapience of the vessel. Harry takes over in lieu of the higher intelligence, and at the direction of Poole, steers it back into the wormhole: when inside, Poole intends to activate the hyperdrive, shattering the fragile dimensional warping of the wormhole, and of all wormholes connecting to it, thus saving humanity from further interference by the future. Poole's audacious plan succeeds, but with an unexpected side effect. As the hyperdrive activates, it sort of shatters space-time, forming a long series of interconnected wormholes that hurl Poole 5 million years forward into the far future. Poole discovers a sad cosmos, in which the stars are guttering out; the Friends were wrong- intelligent life would not triumph and remake the cosmos, eventually leading to their Prime Observer. His ship shattered and broken, Poole begins dying, but at the last moment, an ""anti-Xeelee"" (whom it is implied is a being created by the Xeelee to be like them, except traveling like a tachyon backwards in time, the better to mold the Xeelee's early evolutionary history) takes a liking to Poole, and converts him into an intangible immortal being of ""quantum functions"". In this form, Poole travels the universe, but out of boredom, eventually begins to lapse into a quasi-coma- until an unexpected event occurs: a savage in a glass box, having traveled through a wormhole like Poole himself. ""History resumed."" (This final event is one of the early plot points of the Ring). pl:Czasopodobna_nieskończoność"
709,The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,science," The Restaurant at the End of the Universe begins just as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ended. Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox have just left the planet Magrathea when they are attacked by a Vogon ship. They find they are unable to use the Improbability Drive to escape, as Arthur has accidentally jammed the computer with a simple request for a cup of tea which proved a rather difficult problem. Luckily, an ancestor of Zaphod's, Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth saves them. Zaphod and Marvin vanish, and reappear at the offices of the Guide on Ursa Minor Beta. They are looking for Zarniwoop, who has gone on an intergalactic cruise in his office via his virtual universe. Arthur, Trillian and Ford are unaware of any of this, knowing only that the computer has been shut down, and only having received a message from a stalling Nutrimatic that says ""Wait."" When Zaphod and Marvin reach the fifteenth floor of the Guides office, half of the building is lifted off the ground by Frogstar Fighters. A mysterious man named Roosta brings Zaphod to Zarniwoop's office, where they wait until the building lands on Frogstar World B. Roosta gives Zaphod final instructions before he leaves: Go through the window on his way out, not the door. Zaphod then meets Gargravarr who informs Zaphod that he is to be sent through the Total Perspective Vortex, a torture device which annihilates you by showing you just how infinitesimally small you are compared to the Universe. However when Zaphod enters it, the Vortex shows him that he is the most important thing in the Universe. Zaphod escapes, and finds Zarniwoop in the first class cabin of a spaceliner in an abandoned spaceport. Zarniwoop explains that the Total Perspective Vortex has not malfunctioned&nbsp;&mdash; this is a virtual universe created by Zarniwoop for the sole benefit of Zaphod, who is the most important creature in this universe. It turns out that Zaphod had the shrunk Heart of Gold in his jacket pocket the whole time. It is reconstituted, and Zaphod is reunited with Trillian, Arthur and Ford. They escape from Zarniwoop by asking to be transported to the nearest restaurant. Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, is the nearest restaurant in space but not time. They are transported there ""five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years"" into the future. Marvin is left stranded here for this incredibly vast amount of time parking diners' spaceships while waiting for the humans to return. After the meal, Zaphod and Ford steal a spaceship, which turns out to be a stuntship belonging to the rock band Disaster Area, programmed to dive into a star to provide backing effects for a rock concert. There is a teleporter on the ship for which the guidance system was never built, as it was never intended to be used, and it also requires somebody to stay on the ship in order to operate it. Marvin is chosen to stay behind and teleport the others, who have no choice but to go wherever it takes them. Zaphod and Trillian are returned to the Heart of Gold, which is commandeered by Zarniwoop to complete his mission, to discover who really rules the Universe. As it turns out, the Ruler of the Universe is entirely skeptical that he holds this position, as he is entirely skeptical of everything, including whether his cat, The Lord, really exists, or whether there is even a universe at all outside of his small isolated home. While Zarniwoop attempts to impress upon the Ruler of the Universe the reality and the weight of his position, Trillian and Zaphod sneak out and fly the Heart of Gold away. The teleporter has meanwhile sent Arthur and Ford to the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B, a ship of fools which crash-lands on prehistoric Earth. They realize that the bumbling travellers are the real ancestors of modern humans, not the Neanderthals originally inhabiting the planet. Arthur attempts to determine the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything by reaching into a Scrabble bag made from Ford's towel and pulling out letters randomly, hoping Deep Thought's computational matrix in Earth would have rubbed off on his subconscious. The letters spell ""What do you get when you multiply six by nine"" See this website for possible explanations of this seeming error. before running out, although the Neanderthals manage to spell ""forty-two"" with the tiles, implying that it is they, rather than the Golgafrinchans, who were intended to be part of Earth's computer matrix. After some brief contemplation, Ford and Arthur realize that this is, in fact, a detrimental ""cock-up,"" and that the Earth will never produce the proper Question, thus destroying all hope of ever finding out what it is. As Ford convinces Arthur that there is nothing that can be done to improve the inevitable history of the Earth, Arthur decides that he should make the best of his situation and settles for a life on prehistoric Earth."
710,Minions of the Moon,science, The novel is a space opera about a contemporary man who awakens in the far future.
711,Moonseed,science," Moonseed is an exploration of what could possibly happen when rock returned from the Apollo 18 mission (which was actually cancelled in 1970). In the book, the rock contain a mysterious substance called ""moonseed"" (a form of grey goo, whether nanobots, an alien virus or something else) that starts to change all inorganic matter on Earth into more moonseed. It also gets transferred by a NASA probe to Venus, and the explosion of Venus is the first clue as to what has been happening. Stephen Baxter combines a host of disciplines (space travel, geology and disaster theory) to tell a tale where the rocks are literally swept from under the feet of humanity. During the course of the novel, in which Edinburgh is the focus for much of the action, Venus is destroyed by an unknown cosmic event that showers the Earth with radiation that somehow stirs the moonseed on Earth. When moon-dust containing the moonseed accidentally falls onto the streets of Edinburgh, Earth's fate is sealed. The moonseed begins to disintegrate the planet from the inside-out as the core heats up exponentially, while on the surface, nuclear power stations catastrophically fail, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are abundant, and billions of people die as cities and continents vanish. Over the course of the cataclysmic erosion of Earth, a collective of scientists and engineers in space agencies from around the world desperately try to terraform the Moon for colonization, to provide a safe haven for some surviving humans before Earth eventually disintegrates into nothingness along with human civilization. This novel also presents numerous theories and ideas about the space-faring future of humanity, albeit in an alternate dimension where we are forced into space by an eroding Earth. It is also, in many stages, critical of NASA's performance over the last thirty years, as well as the United Kingdom's disaster programs."
712,Kingdom's Fury,science," 34th FIST has been reinforced by the 26th FIST, now that the Confederation is aware that this is a full scale Skink invasion. With the reinforcements, the Marines are now able to go off the defensive and take the battle to the Skinks. The Skinks have been using a devastating weapon never before seen by the Confederation armed forces, but in this book the Navy figures out what the weapon is, a Rail Gun. There doesn't appear to be a true defense, but at least there is now a warning when it is about to be used. The Fist Marines launch a major operation where the Skinks have made a strong hold in the swamps on Kingdom. Meanwhile, Skink Battle Cruisers are on their way to Kingdom.Having been pushed back from their swamp on Kingdom the Skinks launch a diversion cover their retreat to the Skink fleet. Up to this point in the Starfist series there have been no portrayals of space Naval battles, but this omission is now rectified. The Marines and Confederation Navy drive the Skinks off world and push them back to the planet ""Quagmire"" where they used its natives as slaves and used the planet as a staging area to invade Kingdom. The 26th and 34th Fist Marines then go to Quagmire and Kill most of the Skinks there, with the help of the Natives. Also, Marine General Aguinaldo is promoted to come up with an Anti Skink task force. He has the entire military at his disposal. There is also a subplot involving the government of Kingdom, as one of the more powerful figures among the Kingdomites takes advantage of the distraction caused by the extensive combat to overthrow the theocracy and establish a fascist-style government."
713,Archform: Beauty,science, Archform: Beauty is set in 24th century Earth.
714,The Time Ships,science," After the events related in The Time Machine, the Time Traveller (his first name, Moses, is given in the novel but applied to the Time Traveller's younger self) prepares, in 1891, to return to the year 802,701 and save Weena, the Eloi who died in the fire with the Morlocks. He reveals that the quartz construction of the time machine is suffused with a radioactive substance he calls Plattnerite for the mysterious benefactor who gave him the sample to study twenty years earlier, in 1871. The Time Traveller departs into the future and stops in AD 657,208 when he notes the daytime sky has gone permanently dark. He arrives and is abducted by a branch of Morlocks more culturally advanced than the ones he met before. One of their number, Nebogipfel (the name of a character from Wells' The Chronic Argonauts), explains after hearing the Time Traveller's own story that the conflict between Eloi and Morlocks never occurred due to the Writer's publication of the story that became The Time Machine. The timeline he sought to go to is inaccessible to him now. The Morlocks of this timeline have constructed a Dyson sphere around the inner solar system and use the Sun's energy to power it. Humans as the Time Traveller knows them live on the sunlit inner surface of the Sphere while the Morlocks live on the outer shell. The Time Traveller convinces Nebogipfel that he will help him understand the time traveling mechanism of the Time machine if the Morlock takes him back to it. When he thinks he is unobserved, the Time Traveller reactivates his machine and travels to 1873 to persuade his younger self to stop his research on Plattnerite. Nebogipfel, who took hold of the Time Traveller once he realized what he was doing, follows him there. As the Time Traveller attempts to persuade his younger self, whom he asks to call ""Moses"" to avoid confusion, to stop his research by providing Nebogipfel as proof that reality is changed by time travel, a tank-like Juggernaut pulls into Moses' yard. The army personnel on board, commanded by Hilary Bond and accompanied by an older version of the Time Traveller's friend Filby, take Moses, Nebogipfel, and the Time Traveller to their 1938, where World War I has stretched over twenty-four years due to the discovery of time travel which was influenced by the latter's work. Britain's major cities are all encased in Domes, and with the contributions of Austrian expatriate Kurt Gödel, the government hopes to win the war by altering Germany's history conclusively. Nebogipfel explains to the Time Traveller that they've entered another future as a result of their actions in Moses' past. During another bombing raid on London by the Germans, Gödel provides a vial of Plattnerite and leads to the only escape available, a Time-Car prototype. Upon hearing this and what society would be like after the war (a pessimistic view mirroring Wells' own), the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel mount the vehicle and insert the Plattnerite. Moses is killed in an explosion when he tries to save Gödel, and the Time-Car travels back to the Paleocene and is wrecked on a tree. After weeks of bare survival, the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel are discovered by a scouting party from the Chronic Expeditionary Force commanded by Hilary Bond that arrived from 1944 to find them based on their remains in her time. Some time later, a German Messerschmitt plane arrives over the campsite, drops a Carolinum bomb (analogous to an atomic bomb in our world; see Wells's The World Set Free), and devastates the time-traveling Juggernauts and all but twelve of the Force. Nebogipfel and the Time Traveller are away from the campsite at the time. Over the next year and a half, the stranded soldiers under Hilary Bond's command start the colony of First London. In off moments, Nebogipfel has worked on repairing the Time-Car and acquired shavings of Plattnerite to power it on a journey through time. When the Time-Car is ready, the Time Traveller joins Nebogipfel in a fifty-million year journey through which they see First London expand and develop colonies on the moon and in Earth orbit. Eventually, human tampering with the Earth's environment renders the planet uninhabitable, and they depart for the stars. When the Time-Car finally stops due to loss of its Plattnerite fuel, Nebogipfel and the Time Traveller are tended by a Universal Constructor, a life form (or lifeforms) composed of thousands of nanotechnological entities. They see that there are few stars left in the night sky; this is due to the human descendants colonizing many worlds and constructing Dyson Spheres around the host star. The goal of the Universal Constructor is to harvest the energy of the sun to build time-travel vehicles from Plattnerite and travel to the beginning of the universe. However, this goal is not due to be completed for a million years. Nebogipfel and the Time Traveller acquire enough Plattnerite from the Constructors in order to journey to the point in the future (i.e., another million years hence) when the Constructors will have finished building their time ships. Once the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel reach this point, the Constructors integrate them into a time ship and thus begins the journey back to time's beginning. At this central point from where all matter and energy and timelines branch off, the Constructors apparently start a new history in which they become something even more grand and knowledgeable than before. These successors of the Constructors place the Time Traveller and Nebogipfel into the Time Traveller's original history in the year 1871. It is revealed that the Time Traveller himself is the mysterious stranger who gave his younger self the Plattnerite sample under the alias ""Gottfried Plattner"", and that because of this, the circle of causality is closed and thus, the whole multiplicity of histories which ends up creating the Constructors and their successors begins anew. Nebogipfel, with his consciousness enhanced by his time with the Constructors, leaves the Time Traveller behind to travel with the successors of the Constructors. These successors plan to travel ""beyond"" the ""local"" multiplicity into a new realm of historical dimensions. The Time Traveller then makes one final journey to AD 802,701, along his historical axis, and just barely saves Weena from the death she suffered before. Since (the reader is led to suppose) traveling in time again would cause this reality to branch off and become inaccessible again, the Time Traveller destroys the machine and encourages the Eloi in an Agrarian Revolution to reduce their dependence on the Morlocks for food and clothing, hoping to one day eliminate it entirely. As he works, the Time Traveller writes down the recounting of his adventures and seals them in a Plattnerite packet, a ""time capsule"", so to speak, in the hope that it will travel in time to a faithful scribe. Before sealing the packet, the Time Traveller writes that he plans to go into the world of the Morlocks again, hopefully to return and add an appendix to the story. The book ends by saying that no appendix was found."
715,Flatterland,science," Almost 100 years after A. (which we find out stands for Albert) Square's adventures that were related in Flatland, his great-great-granddaughter, Victoria Line (Vikki), finds a copy of his book in her basement. This prompts her to invite a sphere from Spaceland to visit her, but instead she is visited by the ""Space Hopper"" (a character looking somewhat like the ""Space Hopper"" children's toy with a gigantic grin, horns and a spherical body). The Space Hopper, more than being able to move between Flatland and Spaceland, can travel to any space in the Mathiverse, a set of all imaginable worlds. After showing Vikki higher dimensions, he begins showing her more modern theories, such as fractional dimensions and dimensions with isolated points. Topology and hyperbolic geometry are also discussed, as well as the Projective ""Plain"" (complete with intersecting ""lions"") and the quantum level. Hopper and Victoria also visit the Domain of the Hawk King to discuss time travel and the Theory of Relativity."
716,Junior Jedi Knights: Promises,science," Tahiri Veila knows nothing about her past: the identity of her real parents, or how she came to live with the Tusken Raiders. Now the day has come for her the find out! However first she must complete a deadly task to prove she's worthy."
717,The Battle of Dorking,science," The story is told as a narrative by an unnamed veteran who participated in the Battle of Dorking and is recounting the final days before and during the invasion of Britain. It is addressed to his grandchildren as an event fifty years past. Beginning sometime after an event similar to the Franco-Prussian War, concerns grow with the mobilisation of armed forces near Holland. The Royal Navy is destroyed by a wonder-weapon (""fatal engines""), and an invasion force suddenly lands near Harwich, Essex, England. Demilitarisation and lack of training means that the army is forced to mobilise auxiliary units from the general public, led by ineffective and inexperienced officers. The two armies ultimately converge outside Dorking in Surrey, where the British line is cut through by the advancing enemy, and the survivors on the British side are forced to flee. The story ends with the conquest of Britain and its conversion into a heavily-taxed province of the invading empire. The British Empire is broken up, with only Gibraltar and Malta being kept by the victorious Germans. Canada and the West Indies are ceded to the United States, whilst Australia, India and Ireland are all granted independence, with Ireland entering a lengthy civil war as a direct result."
718,Lovelock,science," When the book begins, the Cocciolone family is packing for their new life aboard the Mayflower. The family consists of Carol Jeanne, her husband Red, their daughters Lydia and Emmy, and Red's parents Mamie and Stef. They take a shuttle to the Ark, during which Lovelock is ashamed of his primitive, terrified response to free-fall. Aboard the Mayflower, the Cocciolone family begins to integrate themselves into the society of the Ark. When Lovelock meets a scientist who attempts to communicate with him via sign language, Carol Jeanne explains that she hadn't taught her Witness sign language because she didn't want him ""chattering to [her] all the time."" This event marks Lovelock's first feelings of furious rebellion. Lovelock begins to long for a mate, and children of his own. After learning about a supply of cryogenically frozen capuchin monkeys, he steals a young female monkey and hides her in the low-gravity poles that support the Ark. Unfortunately, she grows up stunted and sickly. Lovelock, realizing that should his actions be discovered he would be put to death, begins to write his story in a hidden file on the Ark's computer."
719,Killing Time,science," A Romulan time-tampering experiment changes the past. Kirk is now a cynical ensign and Spock is the troubled captain of the ShiKahr, the alternate-universe version of the Enterprise. The two must work together to keep the Romulan incident from destroying the galaxy."
720,Thirteenth City,science," An astronaut from Earth named Dima (short for Dmitry) crash-lands on the fourth planet of the star LK 43. The indigenous people, whose physical appearance is almost indistinguishable from human, live in the so-called Cities, enclosed and self-sufficient habitats, providing their tenants with all life's necessities. The Cities are ruled by the ruthless and authoritarian Watchers. The official ideology of the Cities promotes absolute equality and replaceability. The official honorific is ""Equal"". All individual qualities are considered to be atavistic and must be mercilessly eliminated to the point that most redheads are forced to dye their hair. The most dangerous atavisms are crying, hate, love, and friendship. These are eradicated in early childhood. The inhabitants of the Cities live in dormitories, while children live and study in boarding schools and know nothing about their parents. Each person's place of residency is chosen by the Watchers and are often relocated to another City. The Watchers also choose each person's job. Reproductive couples are chosen by the computer. The same computer also chooses a person's menu (exchanging food is forbidden). At the age of 60, all citizens are killed; moreover, the equal lifespan is seen as a great achievement of the planet's society. The total brainwashing that persists from childhood is extremely effective, as most Equals believe the official ideology, while crying, hate, love, and friendship are rare occurrences. Officially, the Watchers are not considered to be privileged, as they are seen as merely another job. Most public issues are resolved by the popular vote, although the fear of the Watchers, ingrained since childhood, leads to mostly unanimous votes (i.e. the Watchers still get their way). Those who are declared as incurable atavics or publicly promote ideologically incorrect views are publicly censured and are subjected to a mind-wipe procedure. At least, that is what the Watchers tell the populace. There are people who do not live in the Cities; they are called Outsiders. The Watchers make the Equals believe that all Outsiders are nothing more than bandits and villains. Even the word ""outsider"" is considered a profanity by the Equals. While the Outsiders are free from total control, they have their own problems. Long ago, there was a nuclear war on the planet, which turned most of the planetary surface into a scorching desert. Most of the survivors enclosed themselves in the Cities, while the rest chose to stay free. The Outsiders are unable to provide themselves with even the most basic necessities, so they are forced to steal from the City stores. Also, they are incapable of conceiving children and have to raid the Cities to replenish their numbers (teenagers, usually). Once the kidnapped Equals find out the truth about their lives, they usually choose to join the Outsiders, despite the harsh conditions. Unfortunately, the Outsiders usually lose more people during these raids than they kidnap, so their population is constantly decreasing. They are also aware that, should they choose to do so, the Watchers could eliminate all Outsiders. Dima finds out all this after meeting two Outsiders and a kidnapped Equal. He agrees to aid a group of Outsiders in infiltrating a nearby City to free all Equals from the totallitarian Watchers. As Earth technology is much more advanced than local technology, this plan has a chance to succeed. Dima kills three Watchers but is himself captured. He finds out that most Watchers live in the beautiful and idyllic Thirteenth City, which consists of houses in the only forest left on the planet. The existence of Thirteenth City is covered up, so that neither the Equals nor the Outsiders are aware of it. After getting to Thirteenth City, Dima discovers that the way of life in the Cities is the only viable one on the planet. Due to the nuclear war, there are very few habitable areas left. Besides the small forest, which fits only several thousand Watchers and the gully with a few hundred Outsiders, life is only possible in the Cities. Their population is in the millions, so overcrowding is inevitable. To avoid bloody conflicts and overall chaos, the Watchers are forced to combat love (to avoid jealousy), friendship (to avoid unions and political parties), and hate to create uniform goodwill among the Equals. The Equals, like the Outsiders, are suffering from genetic mutations, caused by radiation. That is the reason why all sexual partners must be selected by the computer. The Outsiders, unwilling to subject themselves to rule, simply kill their children in infancy. The set lifespan of 60 is the result of extremely low supplies, even the Watchers are not exempt from this rule. Also, only those with high IQ are chosen to be Watchers, as they can grasp the severity of the situation and make the necessary decisions. On behalf of Earth, Dima promises to help the people of this planet to remove the consequences of nuclear war. This will take years, but once it is done, the people will once again be able to live normal lives."
721,Spaceship to Saturn,science," The length of the trip to Saturn means that the crew will undergo 'hypothermia' for the duration of the flight, however a massive increase in meteor activity around Saturn threatens to cancel the mission as the computer on Earth will be unable to manoeuvre the craft at such long distances to avoid collisions. The solution - instantaneous telepathy; twins Gill and Gail maintain a telepathic carrier-wave even under hypothermia which can be modulated to carry telemetry. A landing is attempted on Titan but problems arise requiring the ship to be flown through the Cassini division, a narrow gap in the rings of Saturn..."
722,"After 12,000 Years",science," The novel concerns Henry Merwin, who after taking part in an experiment finds himself 12,000 years in the future. Taken captive by a giant race, he is forced to care for their insect pets. He falls in love with a fellow prisoner, Luellan, but his captors will not allow them to marry. Instead he is forced to go to war with his insect charges. The insects eventually grow to such a size that they take over much of the earth. Merwin returns to rescue Luellen, escaping to her home in Borneo."
723,The Weapon Shops of Isher,science," The Weapon Shops of Isher and its sequel The Weapon Makers detail the workings of Isher civilization and the adventures of Robert Hedrock, The One Immortal Man, as he keeps it in balance in the face of attempts by the Weapon Makers, who have forgotten their purpose as a permanent opposition, and the strong government of the Empress, Innelda Isher, with its intimate connections to a network of financial institutions, to undermine each other. The Weapon Shops provide the populace with defensive weapons and an alternative legal system. The Isher/Weapon Shops novels are one of the very few examples of Golden Age science fiction that explicitly discusses the right to keep and bear arms, specifically guns. Indeed, the motto of the Weapon Shops, repeated several times, is ""The right to buy weapons is the right to be free"". Van Vogt's guns have virtually magical properties, and can only be used in self-defense. The political philosophy of the Weapon Shops is minimalist. They will not interfere with the corrupt imperial monarchy of the Isher government, on the grounds that men always have a government of the type they deserve: no government, however bad, exists without at least the tacit consent of the governed. The mission of the Weapon Shops therefore is merely to offer single individuals the right to protect themselves with a firearm, or, in cases of fraud, access to a ""Robin Hood"" alternative court system that judges and awards compensation from large, imperial merchant combines to cheated individuals. Because the population has access to this alternative system of justice, the Isher government cannot take the final step toward totalitarianism. The novel was published by Greenberg in New York in 1951. It was also published as a paperback by Ace Books and in 1969 by New English Library in the U.K."
724,Doon,science," Within the Galactic Empire, a change of fief is occurring. Led by the verbose Baron Vladimir, House Hardchargin, the Great Big House given charge of Arruckus, has been displaced by Shaddap IV, the Padedbrah Emperor, in favor of the up-and-coming House Agamemnides, with Duke Lotto at its head. Arruckus is also known as ""Doon"", and is additionally known as the Dessert Planet. Covered entirely in sugars, it is a harsh unforgiving environment, where not an entree can be found; the natives live entirely on whatever they can import, produce from the sugars, or produce from soy protein (the native food experiments known as the Mahn t'Vani) Duke Lotto accepts the fief, aware that it may well be a death trap but also conscious of the importance of Arruckus's only export, the wide-spectrum intoxicant known as beer. Found naturally on Arruckus as a result of natural processes and nowhere else, it is the engine on which commerce runs; the Schlepping Guild, who has a monopoly on space travel in the Imperium, will not run without it. Who controls the beer controls commerce. But soon after arriving on Doon, with his heir and son Pall and his concubine the Lady Jazzica, an adept of the galaxy-spanning sisterhood of chefs and event planners known as the Boni Maroni, Duke Lotto and House Agamemnides fall victim to a scheme originated by Baron Vladimir Hardchargin and implemented by the Duke's own accountant Oyeah, who, without the Duke's knowledge, kept a secret second ledger. When the Emperor called for an audit of the fief, the duplicate ledger made it appear as though House Agamemnides had been cooking the books. In return for this act, Oyeah hoped the Baron would give him a start as a stand-up comic–which he did, but on the Imperial prison planet, Salacia Simplicissimus. Ruined, Duke Lotto's brief reign over Doon is ended and House Hardchargin is reinstated as fief-holders. Banished to the sugared wilderness, Pall (now head of House Agamemnides) and Lady Jazzica meet with and are eventually accepted by the planet's native population, the Freedmenmen, a process made easier by previous prophecy-seeding by the Missionaria Phonibalonica, via the Great Prophet Phyllis. Indeed, the natives are receptive to the fulfillment of the prophecies even after the revelation that Phyllis's decanonization resulted in her prophecies being discontinued sometime before. Pall, given the Freedmenmen name Assol and taking the secret name Mauve'Bib (after the purple napkin that all Freedmenmen wear about their necks) begins to ascend the power structure of the tribe (as well as the Freedmenmen girl Loni as his lover), realizing that he could use the Freedmenmen to return to a position of power, taking back not only Doon but the Imperium itself. He also realizes what the planet's Imperial Planetologist and liberal economist, Keynes, had puzzled out some time before: the rampaging Giant Pretzels (known as Schmai-gunug) actually produces the beer as a byproduct of its very life-cycle. The Lady Jazzica ascends to the status of Revved-Up Mother of Hootch Grabr, becoming known as Jazzica-of-the-Weirdness. During her ascension, while getting drunk on the beer, she realizes that she carries Lotto's daughter. Her intoxication opens her foetal daughter to the thousands of years of Boni Maroni culinary history; the result is Nailya-the-Truly-Weird, a toddler who spouts recipes as though she were an adult. During this time, he knowingly positions himself as the Kumquat Haagendasz (the result of a generations-long breeding program so secret that the Boni Maroni have actually forgotten the point) and the Mahdl-t, the long hoped-for Freedmenmen messiah, ""he who will drive us to Paradise and Back"", who will finally bring the entrees the Freedmenmen have hungered for. By this route, he assumes and consolidates his power over the natives, not only making them his allies, but his fanatic followers. Meanwhile, back in power, Baron Vladimir Hardchargin has his own problems. Converting the fief into the Shadvlad Rendezvous, the galaxy's premier lounge planet, is a relative success, even though the Freedmenmen remain a chronic problem and the Giant Pretzels remain at large. He is hungry for more success, though, and has plans to muscle out his silent partner (the Emperor) and play the Imperial House against the Boni Moroni, the Schlepping Guild, and the interstellar development cooperative NOAMCHOMSKI using his control of beer as leverage, thereby becoming the true power in the galaxy, and franchising the Shadvlad across the Imperium. Events come to a head when Pall Mauve'Bib, gone completely native and acquiring the ""Eye of the Egad"" (the telltale red-on-red eyes, indicating severe beer addiction) challenges the Baron to a bake-off, with a new ingredient: peanut butter, rendered from the naturally-occurring snack mix's peanuts, and debuting his secret weapon – a liqueur made from beer – Drambrewski. With the support of the Boni Moroni thereon, the promise of an assured supply of beer to the Schlepping Guild (who had been influenced to believe that the Hardchargins have been watering the beer, and are revealed to have the red-on-red eyes of beer addiction), and after dispatching the ShaNaNa-Baron Flip-Rotha Hardchargin in rankout (single insult-combat), Pall Mauve'Bib assumes Imperial control, banishing the Emperor's house to the prison plant Simplicissima Secundus, acquiring the hand of the Emperor's daughter Serutan in a marriage of convenience, and the Freedmenmen woman Loni as his concubine."
725,Jesus on Mars,science," An unmanned scientific probe sent to Mars discovers an alien artifact. A follow up robotic explorer lands and verifies that an enormous alien ship is partially buried on Mars. So a manned expedition is sent to explore this apparently abandoned alien ship. The expedition members are captured and taken underground to the habitat occupied by a combined society of humans living harmoniously with the alien Krsh. The expedition learns that, in previous millennia, the technologically advanced Krsh were won over to the religion of the humans. This society practices Judaism but accepts Jesus as their Messiah. Included in their Bible is the Book of Matthias which is the testament written by Judas Iscariot. However, unlike mainstream Christianity, this society views Jesus as a man and not as God (see Nicene Creed). Originally, the Krsh had arrived at Earth on an exploratory mission. To study humans, the Krsh had offered to bring injured humans to their spaceship for medical treatment. Then, the ship was attacked by another alien species which is especially hostile and xenophobic. Even though the attack was repelled and the ship of the xenophobic aliens was destroyed, the Krsh's own ship was damaged. So they landed on Mars to hide from more potential hostility which never arrived. During the years of camouflage, the Krsh and humans crew joined together into a unified society. Halfway through the novel, we learn that Jesus himself miraculously arrived among these people almost two thousand years earlier and had been living with them ever since. The proximity of Jesus is overwhelming and convincing both in terms of concrete, scientifically verifiable miracles as well as a strong visceral presence. This proximity convinces even the scientifically advanced Krsh. Also, three of the four crew members accept this Jesus and convert to this hybrid form of Judaism and Christianity. The fourth crew member, an atheist and the only female crew member, commits suicide. She is subsequently resurrected using advanced technology but not before she suffers brain damage that erases much of her personality. Towards the end of the novel, Jesus leads a flotilla of spaceships back to Earth in a reenactment of the Second Coming. Although desiring peaceful interaction and offering immortality and boundless manna, they are prepared for hostile action. As can be expected, Jesus is accused of being the Antichrist. Such doubts afflict Richard Orme who is the astronaut leading the manned expedition from Earth. In the penultimate chapter, Orme wavers on his conversion and submission to this Martian Jesus. He then prepares to assassinate the Jesus but, ironically throws himself upon a grenade from another assassin so as to save Jesus. In the final chapter, he awakens naked and disoriented to discover that he has been resurrected by Jesus while the world media looked on. Then, Orme reaffirms his commitment and the novel ends abruptly with a sense of the years of impending struggle against the forces of evil."
726,More Than Human,science," The first part of the novel, The Fabulous Idiot, narrates the birth of the gestalt. In the beginning, we are introduced to the world of Lone, referred to as the ""Idiot"", a 25-year-old male with a telepathic ability who lives on the street. He knows he can make people do what he wants them to, but has never experienced real human connection. One day he encounters Evelyn Kew, an innocent woman who has been completely sheltered by her domineering father. She is the first person he has mentally and physically connected with. Evelyn's father finds out about the relationship and kills Evelyn and himself. During this incident Lone barely escapes a beating from the father; bleeding and nearly dead, he is found and then adopted by the Prodds, a poor farming couple, and lives with them for about seven years. When Mrs. Prodd becomes pregnant, the couple are about to ask Lone to leave, but he makes his departure appear to be his own idea. Lone builds a shelter in the forest and is soon joined by three runaway children: Janie, an eight-year-old with a telekinetic gift, and the twins Bonnie and Beanie, who cannot speak but possess the ability to teleport. Lone returns to the farm to find Mrs. Prodd has died after giving birth to a ""Mongoloid"" baby. Lone adopts the baby, who has a phenomenal mental capacity and thinks almost like a computer. Together, Lone, Janie, the twins and Baby form what will be later called the homo gestalt. Prodd's old truck is always getting stuck in the mud, and when Lone asks Baby for a solution, Baby helps Lone build an anti-gravity generator. He installs it in Prodd's truck, only to find that Prodd has left for Pennsylvania. The second part of the novel is Baby is Three, which occurs several years after The Fabulous Idiot. Gerry Thompson, a street urchin who has grown up in abusive institutions, is possibly sociopathic. He consults a psychiatrist, trying to piece his memory back together. Gerry ran away from the institution and was taken in by Lone. Lone was killed in an accident and Gerry subsequently became the leader of the gestalt. Lone had instructed the kids to seek out Evelyn's sister, Alicia, after his death. They were educated and fed under her care. Soon, however, Gerry learned that domestication and normalization had weakened their gestalt. He killed Alicia, and the group returned to living alone in the woods. If anything, Gerry's telepathic abilities are stronger than Lone's. His amnesia was caused by Alicia's having accidentally transmitted her memories to his mind when they first met, triggered by her strong emotional reaction to hearing the words ""Baby is three"". He learned about her entire life, including her past relationship with Lone, in a split second. After being helped by the psychiatrist, Gerry erases the man's memory of him. The third and concluding part of the novel is Morality. Again, it occurs several years after the previous part. Lt. Hip (Hippocrates) Barrows is a gifted engineer who worked for the US Air Force until the incident which led to his incarceration, first in an insane asylum, then in jail. Janie, now an adult, befriends him and helps him regain his health. He slowly remembers what had happened. He discovered some odd effects on an anti-aircraft range. Practice shells fired in a certain area were all duds. Barrows does magnetic tests and finally discovers the anti-gravity machine, still on the rusted-out old truck on the nearby farm. Gerry knows of Hip's investigation and poses as a common soldier assisting Hip, then launching the anti-grav into space and stopping Hip from saving it. He then mentally attacks Hip to make him look insane, driving him to a mental breakdown and amnesia, Gerry does this because Baby has told him that if the anti-grav was discovered, it would lead either to a terrible war or to the complete collapse of the world economy. Gerry is determined to drive Hip permanently insane. Hip confronts Gerry, and becomes the last part of the gestalt, its conscience."
727,Edge of Victory: Rebirth,science," The novel focuses on five separate stories. The first story concentrates on the adventure that Anakin Solo, Tahiri Veila, and Corran Horn all have. On a routine cargo pickup for the Errant Venture on the planet Eriadu, Anakin and Tahiri encounter a Jedi named Kelbis Nu, who is being attacked by Yuuzhan Vong supporters. Despite Anakin and Tahiri's efforts in helping him, Nu dies, but before he does, he is able to whisper to Anakin, ""Yag'Dhul."" For their trouble, Anakin and Tahiri are arrested by the pro-Vong police of Eriadu, but escape and manage to leave the planet in time with Corran. However, they can't make it back to the Errant Venture in time, for it has to respond to a call from Luke Skywalker himself. Luke and his wife Mara, meanwhile, are declared by the New Republic to be wanted fugitives, in response to the pressure that the Yuuzhan Vong put on the Jedi. What's worse is that as Mara carries her and Luke's baby, the deadly coomb spore virus that had previously affected her returns, and threatens to kill her and the child. With the help of some of their fellow Jedi and the Errant Venture, they are able to escape Coruscant. Afterwards, Luke sends Jaina Solo to find and meet up with Kyp Durron in order to tell him that Luke has finally made a decision regarding the stance that the Jedi overall should take in the Yuuzhan Vong War. Back with Anakin, Tahiri, and Corran, they are left to escape from the Eriadu system by themselves, and when they revert from a hyperspace corridor, they end up in the midst of a Yuuzhan Vong fleet. They manage to infiltrate one of the Vong's ships as the fleet prepares to go into darkspace. They end up in the Yag'Dhul system, and after a brief battle, Anakin, Tahiri, and Corran escape from the Vong's midst in order to rendezvous with the indigenous population. The attacking Vong fleet quickly pulls back, and it becomes obvious that they were merely but a recon force for a much larger invasion of Yag'Dhul. That invasion soon comes as infiltrating Yuuzhan Vong, led by Nom Anor, make their move, but despite their actions, the invasion fails in light of the overall Vong fleet going into darkspace to deal with another problem elsewhere. That other problem came as a result of Jaina Solo's meeting with Kyp Durron. Kyp tells Jaina that he has scouted the Sernpidal for some months now and has discovered the Yuuzhan Vong have been using the time offered to them in the wake of the galactic invasion's halt in order to build a giant superweapon that could threaten the stability of the New Republic. They take it to the Republic military, where the likes of General Wedge Antilles and Admiral Traest Kre'fey take a minimum number of ships to help Kyp's forces in taking on the apparent superweapon in Sernpidal. In the wake of the Republic's attack in the Julevian system, it prompted the invasion fleet at Yag'Dhul to pull back in order to help the defending forces at Sernpidal. But their response to the call for help comes too late, as their enemies manage to destroy the apparent superweapon. But in the midst of the supposed superweapon's destruction, Jaina discovers that it was merely a developing worldship that had no Yuuzhan Vong warriors, but civilians. Kyp justifies this by saying that it was meant to get back at the Vong for attacking the New Republic's people. Jaina slaps him for this and vows to never help him again. The fourth story of the novel focuses on Nen Yim, now Master Shaper in the wake of Mezhan Kwaad's death in the previous novel, trying vainly to save a dying worldship by using even heretical protocols. Her efforts are further hindered when another Master Shaper named Kae Kwaad, obviously within the same domain as the late Mezhan, forces Nen Yim to concoct rather ridiculous experiments that do nothing to forward the progress of repairing the dying worldship. Desperate to save the worldship, Yim accesses the Shaper Qahsa in order to find out what further protocols can help her in her goal by reaching the legendary eighth cortex of the Qahsa. But it turns out that there is no eighth cortex, and that the Yuuzhan Vong have already reached the pinnacle of their biological technology. Yim also reaches the conclusion that the Yuuzhan Vong's gods also don't exist, just as Mezhan Kwaad herself proclaimed before her death. Kae Kwaad then reveals himself to be the Shamed One Onimi, who is the familiar of the Yuuzhan Vong's Supreme Overlord Shimrra Jamaane himself. Shimrra reveals that he knows of Yim's heresy, but rather than proceeding to punish her, he allows her to continue her heretical protocols in order to further the Vong's war efforts against the New Republic. Thus, Yim drops her efforts in trying to save the doomed worldship. The fifth story of the novel focuses on Jacen Solo traveling throughout the galaxy trying to avoid Yuuzhan Vong and their supporters, considering the special bounty that Warmaster Tsavong Lah put on his head. Through the Solos' adventures in averting death from their enemies, Jacen learns to reconcile with his father, Han, since their different ideals were what separated them from each other emotionally in the first place. As Mara starts to die from the coomb spore virus, Luke is able to reach out to her in the Force, as well as reaching out to his and Mara's child's presence, and they are able to banish the virus from her system as their son, Ben Skywalker, is born. Their friends and allies, including Anakin, Tahiri (both of whom shared a kiss at Yag'Dhul that will prove to further their relationship in the future), Corran, the other Solos, and several others arrive just in time to meet the newborn Ben."
728,Gears of War: Aspho Fields,science," Gears of War: Ashpo Fields follows two storylines, constantly jumping between different time periods both before and after the events of Gears of War. One begins one week after the events of the first game, and the other flashes back to decades earlier, chronicling Marcus Fenix's childhood up to his involvement in Operation Leveler three years before E-Day. Flashing back to 26 years before the events of the first game, a 10-year-old Marcus Fenix arrives at Olafson Intermediate School. His quiet demeanor and rich background attract the attention of school bullies, but Carlos Santiago is quick to rise to his defense. Marcus quickly becomes fast friends with Carlos and his brother Dom, and spends most of his time with the Santiago family, becoming an 'honorary Santiago.' The Santiago family is in sharp contrast to Marcus's own, with the Fenix parents putting their work before their family as compared to the closeness of the Santiagos. During this time, Marcus's mother disappears, further dividing Marcus and his father. Four years before Emergence Day, Marcus decides to enlist in the COG army, following Carlos's path despite Adam Fenix's intentions for Marcus to join the COG as an officer after finishing his education. Dom, at 16, is expecting a child with girlfriend and future wife Maria. He also enlists, becoming a special forces commando. A year later, the COG begin planning Operation Leveler, a covert assault on an enemy research facility developing the Hammer of Dawn at Aspho Fields. Dom's squad is selected to infiltrate the base, while the COG army surround and protect the base from any attempt at attack. Although the battle is a pivotal event of the Pendulum Wars the war is also notable as important Gears perish during this time, such as Anya Stroud's mother, Major Helena Stroud, as well as Dom's brother, Carlos. Planning continues for the invasion of Aspho Point, with both then-Major Hoffman and Adam Fenix taking part in the plans for the operation. It is revealed that the area near the research facility has been reinforced albeit in the wrong position, but the COG continue with the covert operation. The commando squad led by Hoffman that includes Dom infiltrates the base and begins capturing personnel and data. At the same time, the COG land ashore north of Aspho Fields and establish themselves along Aspho Point to divert the Pellegrian forces from the COG forces' objectives. The covert mission's secrecy is compromised when a lone security guard in the research facility manages to evade capture and alert the nearby reinforcements. While the commandos struggle to complete their task, the main army comes under attack. During the present course of the novel, the story picks up one week after the Lightmass Bombing from the finale of the first game. During this time, Marcus and the rest of Delta Squad unexpectedly find Bernadette Mataki, a Gear that had been Marcus' superior during Operation Leveler. Her reappearance causes Dom to question Carlos' death again, asking Bernie for her version of the events resulting in the death of his brother, as Marcus has given him little information. However, she is equally reluctant. At the same time, a Locust attack is discovered to be aiming for the city of Jacinto's food supply at North Gate. A contingency plan is organized for the COG to transport the necessary equipment from North Gate to a secure location."
729,The Prefect,science," The novel begins with Dreyfus being sent out on a routine assignment to lock down a glitter-band habitat for polling violations. His superiors send one of his deputies, Thalia Ng, to distribute software upgrades around the Glitter Band to prevent anyone from attempting a similar violation. In the meantime, Dreyfus is sent to investigate the recent destruction of a habitat named Ruskin-Sartorious. Analysis indicates that the habitat has been destroyed by the flame of a Conjoiner Drive, and Dreyfus's team believe the lighthugger Accompaniment of Shadows, the only one to have been near the habitat in recent weeks, is responsible. Before they can conclude their investigation, however, the Ultranauts take justice into their own hands and destroy the ship, but not before Dreyfus is able to converse with the captain, who convinces him that his crew were not responsible. Believing him to be true, Dreyfus and his deputy, the hyperpig Sparver, decide to investigate the matter further. Dreyfus and Sparver interview digital backups of the inhabitants of Ruskin-Sartorious. Dreyfus speaks with one of them about the Clockmaker, an alien machine which formerly lived in a Glitter Band research centre, creating, as its name suggests, clocks, before it began a violent killing spree and was destroyed with nuclear weapons nine years prior to the novel. He and Sparver then analyse communication records from the Ruskin-Sartorious habitat, and discover links with an orbiting asteroid owned by the Nerval-Lermontov family (a member of which is called Aurora). They defeat its defence systems and penetrate inside, discovering a Conjoiner starship trapped inside. One of them, Clepsydra, has escaped and is hiding. She meets with Dreyfus and tells him that she and the other Conjoiners had been enslaved by Aurora (now an extremely powerful software entity) to use the Exordium to predict the future. The Conjoiners predict a future devastated by what is implied to be the Melding Plague, and Aurora has been planning to respond to stop it (use of the Exordium creates a new timeline which can be changed to avoid the future the Exordium describes). She and Dreyfus escape as a ship under Aurora's control arrives and destroys the habitat. At the same time, Thalia has distributed the software upgrade to the required four habitats across the glitter band, but it appears to be malfunctioning; information access is shut down in the habitats she has visited, and servitors (service robots used across the glitter bands) are rounding up and exterminating civilians. She and some of the survivors of the last habitat take refuge in its polling core tower, barricading the entrance. Outside, the servitors begin to construct ""weevil"" war machines using plans stolen by Gaffney, a Senior Prefect secretly in alliance with Aurora. Back at Panoply, Clepsydra is taken into isolation, whilst Dreyfus explains the situation to Jane Aumonier, the Supreme Prefect. Unbeknownst to him, however, Gaffney kills Clepsydra and hides the corpse in Dreyfus' quarters, which he uses to frame Dreyfus. With Dreyfus in custody, he manipulates the Senior Prefects into voting Aumonier out of office. The Prefects debate what to do about the emergence of the weevils, which have now left the four original habitats and are moving towards others. Before very long, however, Gaffney is exposed as the murderer of Clepsydra when attempting to interrogate Dreyfus. He admits to his role in the weevil outbreak and informs the Prefects that Aurora is responsible. Aurora herself contacts Panoply and demands that they stand down, claiming to be taking over the Glitter Band for its own good. Aumonier, now back in power, refuses and orders Panoply to ready for war. Although Thalia escapes from Aurora's forces during a disastrous attack by Panoply, simulations run by the Prefects indicate that they have virtually no chance of success; the weevils are destroying habitats and converting them into even more weevils, grossly outnumbering the Prefects. Aumonier speaks to Dreyfus and tells him that the aforementioned Clockmaker was not actually destroyed nine years previously; part of it survived and was recovered by Panoply. The ultra-secret Panoply unit, Firebrand, was established to research it. Although Aumonier ordered it shut down, she now believes its members relocated the Clockmaker to Ruskin-Sartorious. As the Clockmaker was the only intelligence in the Glitter Band capable of defeating Aurora, she attempted to destroy it. Dreyfus confronts members of Firebrand, who confirm Aumonier's theory, but reveal that the Clockmaker was not in fact destroyed; Firebrand became aware of the attack in advance and moved the Clockmaker. Following them to the surface of Yellowstone, he and Sparver fight their way into an abandoned American colony, where the Clockmaker is being hidden. Sparver leaves to fight Gaffney, who is approaching the colony with bombs to destroy the Clockmaker. Dreyfus meets with the Clockmaker, who reveals that he is actually Philip Lascaille, a character in Revelation Space who was believed to have committed suicide after meeting with the Shrouders, but was in fact scanned to produce a simulation, which was sent back to the Shrouders, who turned it into the Clockmaker. Dreyfus tells the Clockmaker what is happening. It incapacitates him and leaves. Regaining consciousness, Dreyfus meets with Sparver. They return to Panoply to find that the weevil attack has collapsed; the Clockmaker has uploaded itself into the Glitter Band's data network and is fighting a digital war with Aurora. As such, she is unable to control the weevils effectively, and the Prefects are destroying them in alliance with the Ultras. Dreyfus begins preparing to investigate the death of Philip Lascaille, having promised to the Clockmaker to bring those responsible to justice."
730,The Clone Republic,science," In a galactic military largely consisting of clones raised to be unquestioning soldiers, Wayson Harris initially has difficulty as he seemingly isn't a clone and he does not follow orders as quickly. His first official posting, a desert planet named Gobi, seems like a punishment as there are many things wrong with it (poor discipline, contaminated drinking water). After Harris and a mercenary named Ray Freeman prevent an ex-general from killing all the marines and raiding the armory, Harris is promoted and transferred to the flagship Kamehameha. The Kamehameha deploys to the planet Ezer Kri, which is attempting to leave the Unified Authority and establish a nonstandard culture (namely, a Japanese one). After a platoon is killed by locals (they ignite a fuel pumping station), marines are ordered to occupy the largest town on the planet, where Harris runs into Freeman. Freeman sends another soldier back with Harris's helmet on, then leads Harris to the hotel across the street where they ambush Kline, a man they'd dealt with in Gobi, wielding a rifle that has been set to track Harris's helmet signal. During his interrogation, Kline is revealed to be a Morgan Atkins separatist (an influential terrorist group). Shortly thereafter, a fleet of separatist ships carrying the deserters from Ezer Kri flee from the planet before anyone can react. ; Wayson Harris: The protagonist of the book, born the (novel) year 2490, Wayson has better than average tactical skills, responds fast to orders for a human (though not fast enough to avoid some mild reprimands). He originally thinks he's the only human at the orphanage he came from, but it is later revealed he is a newly minted Liberator-class clone. He was created at Unified Authority Orphanage #553. Like all Liberator-class clones, he is engineered to be ambidextrious, but has a preference to be right handed. ; Vince Lee: A clone who has partial realization that he is a clone, or at least enough doubts to make him worry that he will activate the gene that would kill him for that knowledge. He originally transfers Harris to the Kamehameha via shuttle, which is where they become friends. He is an avid bodybuilder and hates other clones. He ends up finding a way to suppress the death reflex by heavily abusing medications, and starts a small band of similarly realized clones. ; Ray Freeman: A massive, tall, black, bald freelancer. In a time when race normally doesn't exist anymore, Ray really stands out. A humorless mercenary, Ray sometimes goes to extremes to get the knowledge he wants. His physical strength is roughly the strongest in the series, only potentially being matched by the Seal-class clones, though their fighting style relies less on brute strength and more on speed. He also has in his possession various types of robots and at least two ships, all heavily armoured and armed. He wears pitted and scratched up body armour over coveralls, made of stiff bulletproof canvas. Normally has an oversized particle beam pistol, a low yield grenade (described as only having the power to take out a few buildings) and a grenade launcher. He is described by Harris as being intimidating and having intensity radiate from him, and also has intimate knowledge of UA standard equipment. ; Tabor Shannon: One of the last Liberator-class clones, Shannon is standoffish on duty, (being described as gruff, ruthless and profane by Harris) but is considerably more relaxed off duty. He is described physically as tall, thin and wiry, with steep shoulders, fine white hair and sunburned. He is presumably killed on Hubble in a type of cave in, trying to flush separatist enemies out. He is very self-sacrificing as an officer, and indeed, his last command was to try to save as many of his unit as possible, at cost of his own life. ; Captain Gaylan McKay: Under Klyber, he had been given access to high profile assignments, color guards, and generally bypassed many other officers despite his rank. He has an informal style of command, treating all as equals. He also is mindful of the equipment the soldiers use; something else uncommon for ranking officers. He explains this as being due to his visor once blacking out in the middle of a fight and him nearly shooting his commanding officer. This was later revealed to be part of a more elaborate way to retrieve the camera footage in Harris's helmet for study; allowing the UA to confirm who had attacked Gobi station. ; Fleet Admiral Bryce Klyber: Klyber is the commanding officer of the Kamehameha. He is one of the highest decorated officers in history. He is described by Harris as looking incredibly gaunt and skeletal, the impression is that he could be physically snapped like a twig, but in contrast, his personality and charisma are very pronounced. The only black mark on his record is the Liberator clones he made, which ended up attacking whole worlds. He has an unusual style of command in that, while his fleet is up to date and generally devastating, his own personal command ship is currently the single oldest ship still in service. He has actually upgraded almost everything on the ship itself so that it can easily match anything the newer ships have, but because of its smaller profile and obsolete nature, it is continually underestimated. ; Admiral Robert Thurston: A prodigy, Thurston bests Klyber in a simulated battle so effortlessly, that he gets to control the UA fleet and redesigns most of it. Most of the officers give him grudging respect. ; Admiral Che Huang: Secretary of the Navy, Che Huang, in a bid to get more power, manages to overthrow Klyber and install his own man (Thurston) aboard the UA's flagship the Kamehameha. ; Kasara and Jennifer: Two ladies that Harris and Lee met while in Honolulu. The pair had been saving up all year to go. Kasara is easily the more fun loving and reckless of the two, and is the one that suggested Harris to fight the Adam Boyd clone. Jennifer has a fling with Lee, and Kasara has a fling with Harris. Nearer the end of the book, there is a small mention that Kasara got married when she went back home, but it is debatable on if it lasted. They both are in the second book. ;Lector, Marshall, Saul: three other liberators who also fought in the Galactic Eye and went around killing many people thus getting liberators banned. They also knew Klyber was making more Liberator Clones so they went around killing them but they could not find Harris until he was on the Kamehameha with Klyber. When they were discovered by Huang they were instantly put back into service under Thurston. ;Kline: A pathetic fool who takes orders from Crowley which managed to get a grenade glued to his hand by Ray Freeman, which he later cut off because the grenade was timed, on Gobi and a rifle butt to the face when Harris takes the rifle from him before it locked on to his helmet to shoot, on Ezer Kri. ; InterLink: A type of catch-all media technology. Radio, TV, phone, email/internet all in either civilian headset form, or built into the bubblehead armor. Used frequently to communicate over large distances in civilian application, used as a squad radio in combat. Can be jammed and disabled fairly easily by experienced saboteurs. The civilian version is called mediaLink, and is essentially the same, but with no expectations of security. ; Cloning: Most soldiers are clones, bred in vats, and raised in what the government calls orphanages. There are currently only three classes of clones; Liberator class, Seal class, and Bubblehead class. They are demonstrated is being able to have sexual intercourse, but none shown yet able to bear offspring. Part of their Neural Programming is that they would rather be ""in the thick of it"" than sitting around idle. ; Standard Clones: The UA has countless clones, and for the most part, they are treated like expendable equipment. They wear combat armor, and are generally referred to as bubbleheads because of the shape of their helmets. They are all cut from the same helix and are unquestionably loyal, responding to orders before thinking about them. They are designed to think that they are not clones, and a gland in their bodies releases a deadly toxin into their blood, killing them instantly, if they ever accept that they are clones. This has been called the death reflex. ; SEAL Clones: A new type of clone designed by Huang and Thurston. Harris calls them ""Adam Boyd"" after fighting against one, who had been given that name. Undersized, thin, and with clawed fingers, they are easily identified by a branding tattoo. The military uses an establishment in Hawaii to give them real fighting experience; each pretends to be 'Adam Boyd' and collectively they have only ever lost one fight, to Harris who killed the clone he fought. They are far faster than the standard clones, meant for guerrilla operations, assassinations, and surgical strikes. They have no death reflex. ; Liberator Clones: These clones were originally bred to fight an unknown enemy in the Galactic Central War approximately 40 years before the start of the book. Liberator clones were designed with a special gland that releases a synthetic hormone during combat that gets them addicted to battle. Following the massacres on several planets by Liberators, this type of clone was outlawed, and all clones since then were bred with the death reflex. The history books refer to them as 'Liberators' because the more accurate 'Butchers' would have been too disrespectful. ; Particle Beam Pistol: Extremely accurate pistol. Has roughly the same range as the m27 but has a higher armor penetration value. Can be set to self-destruct. Can be considered useless if there is enough particles and debris in the air. Is preferred in low gravity and thin air, but is unreliable in sandy locations as sand that gets trapped in the housing can scratch up the mirrors. Costs 2000$ on the open market. Has internal components that have to be replaced on a regular basis. ; m27: A lightweight, standard issue assault rifle. This is the standard weapon for clones, as it is reliable and easy to maintain. It is depicted as being scoped, with a detachable rifle stock, ; Armored Transport ""Kettle"": Orbital dropship. Has effective atmospheric shields that burn ozone upon entry causing the cabin to smell bad and heat up. The name 'kettle' is not its specific name, nor the name of any one specific ship; it is the universal nickname given by all marines to the class of ships. ; Kamehameha (ship): The oldest ship to still be used in the UA standing army and the last of the Expansion-Class of fighter carrier. Continually upgraded by its commander, named after the Hawaiian king. Its age by comparison to the rest of the fleet makes it be continually underestimated by foes. This is normally a fatal error as the ship has the best shields possible, and has a weapons load out capable of matching, if not besting, any of the newest ships in the galaxy. Retrofitted to be modern, this is the flagship of roughly every commanding UA officer. Can carry approximately 2300 marines and 15 Armored Transports. ; Doctrinaire (ship): The newest ship, under the command of Klyber, a bat-winged shaped assault vessel. Roughly the biggest ship of the fleet, it was originally meant to be kept a secret. It has multiple launch bays and a fuel supply that takes up two-thirds of the remaining internal space because it has engines that are 5 times the size of those used on Perseus-Class fighter carriers. Self broadcasting. It is 2 miles wide, twice as wide as a Perseus-Class fighter carrier.It is that large that it needs Dual-Cold fusion reactors to power the onboard electrical systems. It has 13 decks, including the bridge. If one chose to walk from one of the two hangar bays to the bridge, it will take approximately 25 minutes.The Doctrinaire has two forward-facing fixed cannons that are used for bombarding stationary targets, that are both laser and paticle beam enabled. The Doctrinaire also has 300 particle beam turrets, 20 missile stations and 15 torpedo stations positioned around its hull. The Doctrinaire has a complement of 280 Tomcat Fighters. ; Perseus-Class Fighter Carrier : New class of fighter carrier which replaced the old Expansion-Class, like the Kamehameha. This class is 45 hundred feet long and 51 hundred feet wide, twice as big compared to the Expansion-Class. Can carry 11000 marines and can carry 3 times more tanks, transports, gunships and fighters than the Expansion-Class. ; Broadcasting: A series of mirrors between Earth, Mars, and countless other destinations. In effect, it is essentially a relay transporter. Plans are found of the main facility among the Morgan Atkins separatists intel. Without the broadcasting array, countless worlds would not be able to sustain life for more than a few months. When destroyed later in the series, it causes galaxy wide panic, and many planets simply die off due to unsustainable populations having insufficient resources. Ships that Self-Broadcast capable need to be at least 1'000 miles from any Broadcast Discs to prevent causing any damage to the Discs. It is believed that Mogat (GEF - Galactic Eye Fleet) have been modified in some way not to have this effect."
731,Johnny and the Bomb,science," After Johnny Maxwell, a boy in his early teens, finds Mrs. Tachyon, an old bag lady, by a cinema he discovers that her trolley is in fact a time machine. He goes back to his town, Blackbury, during the time of The Blitz with his friends Walter, aka Wobbler, Bigmac, Kirsty and Yo-less (possibly because Johnny has been obsessing about the destruction of Paradise Street in a German raid). Wobbler gets left behind in 1941, and when they return for him, Johnny tries to prevent the deaths caused in the raid."
732,A Crystal Age,science," The narrator ""Smith"" tells his story in the first person. A traveler and amateur naturalist, he regains consciousness ""under a heap of earth and stones"" and believes that he had been knocked unconscious in a fall&nbsp;– though his thoughts and recollections are confused. He is astounded to discover that he is entwined in the roots of plants, as though they have been growing around him. Extricating himself and surveying the scene, he sees a great house in the distance, and walks toward it to seek help and information. On his way, he encounters a funeral: a group of strangely yet strikingly dressed people, led by a majestic white-bearded old man, are interring a corpse in a grave. The narrator is especially struck by a beautiful girl who is overcome by grief. She appears to be about 14 years old; though, he soon learns that this world, and everyone in it are far older than they appear. He becomes enchanted by her, and falls in love. The funeral party see him, and express surprise at his presence and his odd uncouth clothes and boots; but they allow him to accompany them to the enormous mansion where they live. Enthralled with the girl (her name is Yoletta), and anxious to show his worth in their House, the narrator agrees to work for a year as a probationer in this community. He is constantly stumbling into misunderstandings with his new companions, for the world seems to have changed in so many extreme and incomprehensible ways. The most basic concepts of his society are unknown to these people. When he inquires about the nearest city, the old man who is ""the Father of the House"" thinks he is talking about a beehive. When the narrator notes that they share the English language, he is again not understood; the people of the house think they speak ""the language of human beings&nbsp;– that is all."" (Though their spoken language has changed little, the writing system is altered so much that the narrator cannot read the ""Hebrew-like characters"" in which their books are written.) It seems that the entire human race is now organized into communal houses like this one, with no other form of social structure, that they know of. The narrator struggles to adapt to this new society, as he pursues Yoletta. He is shocked to learn that all the people are much older than they appear; Yoletta is 31 years old, and the Father of the House is nearly 200. They are vegetarians, and have a strong rapport with the animals in their environment. The narrator is struck by their ""rare physical beauty,"" their ""crystal purity of heart,"" ""ever contented and calmly glad"". Yet he wonders why they have no romantic interests, and why there are no children in the community. He sometimes falls afoul of the strict rules, in which lying is a serious offense, punishable by solitary confinement. Yoletta comes to love him, but like a brother, without the heat of passion he feels for her. In time he meets the mysterious Mother of the House, and begins to comprehend the full strangeness and differentness of their way of life. The humans of this distant future have achieved their utopian state by abandoning sexuality and romantic love. Like a beehive, or a wolf pack, only the Queen, or Alpha Male and Female, or Father and Mother of the House, in this case, reproduce. The rest of the House live communally, as siblings. The narrator despairs when he realizes that his passion for Yoletta can never be consummated; and, wonders whether he can adapt to this mode of living. He does not realize that the Mother has begone the long process of grooming himself and Yoletta to become the new Father and Mother of the House. When he is in the library, he discovers an elaborately-carved bottle on a shelf; its inscription states that its contents provide a cure for the oppressions of ""time and disease"" and the thoughts or passions that ""lead to madness."" He takes a dose of the liquid, thinking it will cure his passion for Yoletta, which he doesn't realize she has begun to learn to reciprocate. It is only when his body grows stiff and cold that he realizes that the potion is a poison, and that the only relief from the pains of life it provides is death. This story, of a traveler who falls in love with a mysterious, beautiful young girl with an elderly protector, anticipates the plot of Hudson's later and more famous novel, Green Mansions."
733,Settling Accounts: Drive to the East,science," As the title suggests, it involves that world's version of the invasion of Russia and the battle of Stalingrad with a Confederate push from occupied Ohio into Pittsburgh, codenamed Operation Coalscuttle. It also involves analogues of the Battle of Midway, the Manhattan Project, and the Holocaust. By the summer of 1942, the U.S. push under General Daniel MacArthur into northern Virginia has stalled in the face of fierce opposition. This allows General George Patton to concentrate his forces in Ohio for a renewed push into western Pennsylvania. Aided by improved armor and assault tactics, his troops quickly advance across eastern Ohio to Pittsburgh's outskirts. However Brigadier General Irving Morrell, who now commands the U.S. defense of the Ohio Front, prevents the CSA from enveloping Pittsburgh as planned and forces them into a street to street fight. Meanwhile, Jeff Pinkard enjoys rapid advancement through the Freedom Party hierarchy as he begins to develop the machinery required to implement Jake Featherston's Final Solution to the Negro problem. His Camp Determination is now so efficient that it is able to swallow and extinguish the entire Negro population of Jackson, Mississippi as reprisals against local insurgents. In Augusta's now ghettoized Negro district, Scipio, a former slave and communist rebel during the Great War, manages for a time to skirt the ever increasing terror descending across the CSA's Negro population. Eventually, he too, is swallowed up and finds himself in a cattle car heading towards a bleak future. Elsewhere in Georgia, captured U.S fighter pilot Jonathon Moss escapes from a POW camp and joins a small band of Negro rebels. At sea, Lt. Sam Carsten's ship, USS Remembrance, is sunk by a Japanese carrier attack and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) are threatened with capture. Nevertheless, he finds himself promoted and placed in charge of a destroyer escort, where he spends time patrolling Atlantic sea lanes and engaging in special operations. George Enos' destroyer is nearly sunk in an engagement near Japanese-held Midway due to lack of sea-borne air power. However, when two escort carriers manage to reach Oahu, the tide begins to turn. In a climactic battle, George's fleet sinks a Japanese carrier guarding Midway. In this history, the Pacific War against Japan is treated as essentially a sideshow, getting only a trickle of resources - since the US is facing a dangerous invasion of its industrial heartland. Strategic aims in the Pacific are confined to recapturing Midway to remove the threat to the Sandwich Islands, and characters consider the idea of conducting an island-hopping war all the way to the Japanese home islands (as the US did in World War II) as an unrealistic fantasy. Also, in this history, the Philippines are a long-standing and recognized possession of the Japanese, which they had wrested from Spain and to which the US lays no claim. Under cover of an early November storm, General Morrell leads an armored breakthrough against poorly equipped Mexican troops protecting Patton's flank. Joining up with another salient coming out of West Virginia, he traps the bulk of Patton's army, and drives deep into Ohio. Featherston, beginning an apparent descent into madness, gives the trapped army maniacal orders to hold its ground rather than attempt a breakout. When the promised resupply by air fails, Patton is ordered to escape by air and CSA resistance near Pittsburgh collapses. The sequence of events is similar to that which led to the destruction of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad during our timeline's World War II. Jonathan Moss spends most of the book as a frustrated POW held at Andersonville, Georgia, under conditions unpleasant but far more tolerable than of the infamous Civil War POW camp of the same location. He and others manage to escape after a tornado blows down the camp's fences. He and another escaped POW join a black guerrilla band whose capable leader took up the nom de guerre Spartacus. During a raid on Plains, Georgia Moss kills Jimmy Carter - here a young Confederate naval officer on leave trying to rally the townspeople against the raiding blacks. General Abner Dowling is transferred from the Virginia front, to take up command of the 11th Army and open a new front by invading Texas and preventing the Confederates from moving forces from there to reinforce the main front around Pittsburgh. By February 1943, his forces are approaching Lubbock, Texas and - still unknown to him, but highly alarming for Pinkard and the Freedom Party High Command - threatening to capture Camp Determination and expose its litany of horrors. Both sides are working desperately to develop a nuclear weapon, although the US is slightly in the lead. Featherston's growing incapacity raises suspicions and leads Generals Clarence Potter and Nathan Bedford Forrest III to consider a plot to overthrow him."
734,Glory Season,science," Three thousand years before the story starts, Lysos, founder of the human colony on the isolated planet of Stratos, led an effort to reengineer human life into a happier, more pastoral life. Briefly, she developed a strain of human beings that conceive clones in winter, and normal children in summer. All clones are female, because males do not bear. Further, males and females have opposed seasons of sexual receptivity. Men are sexually receptive in summer, and women in winter. This scheme is said to be stable over evolutionary time because women gain an evolutionary advantage from self-cloning, while men only reproduce themselves in summer. Finally, men have been adjusted so that they are far less aggressive during the times that they are less sexually receptive. The social result is that the vast majority of the population of Stratos consists of financially successful groups of female clones. Over centuries of normal self-interested business and political arrangements, these groups dominate the society. The society is also extremely stable, because, it is said, most violence is initiated as competition between males. Stratos is portrayed as a practical feminist society, literally dominated by numerous strains of identical, financially successful women. Men are confined to relatively few professions (such as sailors), and characterized as helpless. However, Stratos is not static. Variations still exist. People conceived in summer are normal mixtures of male and female genes. This provides a continuing source of sexual variation, letting the society perform biological adaptation. A small fraction of each generation of variant women becomes financially successful against the intense competition, and founds a hive of clones. However, men and most variant women remain despised ""vars"", financially unsuccessful hewers of wood and drawers of water. Maia and Leie are twins, non-clone var daughters of the ""hive"" of ""Lamatia,"" a group of female clones that specialize in commercial import/export banking. Lamatia is a typical hive, one of many on the planet of Stratos. Like most such hives, when its children reach late adolescence, it retains its clones, and ejects its male and female variant children. Maia and Leie conceive a plan to team up and pass themselves off as two members of a much larger hive. They hope to work as sailors to explore Stratos, find their niche, and found a successful hive. Unbeknownst to them (they have a practical, not a classical education), they are named after characters in a classic novel in which twins attempt to do just that, so that their plan is doomed by their very names. Almost immediately, the ships' masters (men) separate the twins to different ships, so as not to cause friction with the var sailors. Maia meets Naroin, a female bosun's mate. Later, a group of legally sanctioned pirates sink Leie's ship in a naval battle that also involves Maia's ship. Leie is lost at sea. Maia, injured and heart-broken, recuperates. She finds a job on a railroad. On the railroad Maia discovers a courier running illegal drugs. The drugs are sexual stimulants to rearrange men's period of receptivity. They are part of a plot by the ""Perkinites"" (Named after Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of Herland), to eliminate men from an isolated valley, and perhaps later all of Stratos. Maia notifies the ""Planetary Equilibrium Authority"" and is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Perkinites. In prison, she discovers another prisoner who is electrically telegraphing messages. She talks with Renna, and she and Renna develop a friendship via telegraph. After a long period of imprisonment, Maia engineers an escape during a period of upset, and discovers that her fellow prisoner is actually the ""Visitor,"" a male interstellar visitor from an unengineered branch of humanity. During the escape, Maia becomes involved with political radicals, and a platonic friendship develops between Renna and her. A faction of the radicals steal Renna to an island base, fighting another legal faction. Naroin reappears as a mate among the larger group of legal radicals. Maia follows the illegal radicals, to rescue Renna. In the island base, Renna somehow disappears. Maia solves many problems. Maia recruits a crew of helpers from some prisoners, including some virtuous male sailors. She discovers that Naroin is a member of a clan of detectives. She also finds that her sister is alive, but on the other side of the conflict! Ultimately. Maia finds the mythical ""Jellicoe Former"" an advanced manufacturing facility (possibly based on molecular manufacturing) that can produce any device. In the pastoral, low-technology society of Stratos, the Jellicoe Former is the beginning of a social earthquake. Unfortunately, Renna is killed trying to escape in a spaceship he completed with the help of the Jellicoe Former. Maia is then severely injured at the end of the climactic battle. By opening a defense facility and helping Naroin to escape, she and Naroin had summoned numerous groups of police, who overcame the political radicals, and freed the vars and helpless male sailors. Afterward, while recuperating, Maia is dragged into politics, because she has become a symbol. She tells her story to a group of prominent men, heads of male societies. For her actions, they offer her ""clan"" an alliance (i.e. the right to invite them to ""spark"" winter clone-daughters), with the sole exception of one man, who reveals himself as her long-lost father. At the end, Maia escapes her keepers, and decides that Stratos' current society is evil because its pastoral culture impoverishes people, causing famine, poor health and poor education. She resolves to fix things and be her own woman."
735,Perfect Circle,science," Texan William Kennedy can see and talk to ghosts - an ability which complicates his life immensely and threatens his relationships with family and friends. When his cousin calls him in to lay the ghost in the garage, Will finds he has a murderer to deal with."
736,Robots and Empire,science," The Earthman Elijah Baley (the detective hero of the previous Robot books), has died nearly two centuries earlier. During these two centuries, the balance of forces in the galaxy has changed dramatically. Inspired partly by Baley's adventures in space (on the ""Spacer"" worlds of Solaria and Aurora), Earth-people have overcome their stagnation and agoraphobia, and embarked on a new wave of space colonization, using faster-than-light drive to reach distant planets throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, beyond the earlier ""Spacer"" worlds. These newly colonized worlds are clearly distinct from the earlier ""Spacer"" ones, and their inhabitants, calling themselves ""Settlers"" rather than ""Spacers"", revere Earth as their mother-world. Meanwhile, Baley's memory remains in the mind of his former lover, Gladia Delmarre, a ""Spacer"", who has a centuries-long lifespan, as opposed to the seven or eight decades that Earth people (such as Baley) live. It is discovered that Solaria, the homeworld of Gladia, and the 50th-established of the Spacer planets, has been abandoned and has become empty of all inhabitants (except for millions of robot servants, which have been left behind). Gladia then meets a seventh-generation descendant of Baley's, Daneel Giskard (or D.G.) Baley, a Settler-Trader. He asks for Gladia's help in visiting Solaria, in order to unravel the mysterious destruction of several ""Settler"" spaceships making landings there, and also with the mission of reclaiming the abandoned robots. Gladia agrees to go, and is accompanied by the positronic robots R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov. [R. Giskard has secret telepathic powers about which only R. Daneel knows.] These robots are both the former property of their creator, Dr. Han Fastolfe, who bequeathed them to Gladia in his will. At the same time, Daneel and Giskard are engaged in a struggle of wits with Fastolfe's bitter archrivals, the roboticists Kelden Amadiro and Vasilia Aliena, Fastolfe's estranged daughter. Whereas Fastolfe supported the expansion of the ""Settler"" population from Earth, Amadiro detests all Settlers - as do most ""Spacers"", who consider all Earthlings to be little better than barbarians. Amadiro wants to see the Earthlings destroyed, so that the descendants of the Spacers alone can inherit the Milky Way (There are no other intelligent beings in Asimov's fictional galaxy). However, for many decades Amadiro has been continually thwarted in introducing an anti-Settler policy into the governments of the Spacers. These blockings of Amadiro's plans have been largely caused by the telepathic manipulation of key people by R. Giskard. Frustrated by his series of failures, Amadiro decides to accept an ambitious and unscrupulous apprentice, Levular Mandamus. Mandamus develops a cruel plan to destroy the population of the Earth, using a newly-developed weapon, the ""nuclear intensifier"". Amadiro and Mandamus intend to kill the population of the Earth and to make the Earth uninhabitable for human beings by using radioactivity. They intend to use the nuclear intensifier device to speed up all of the natural radioactive decay processes in the upper crust of the Earth, thereby making the surface of the Earth massively radioactive. [Note: At the time of Asimov's writing, there had been the recent discovery of the W particle, which is the force carrier of the weak nuclear force. This force is responsible for most forms of nuclear decay: alpha emission and beta emission. The hypothetical ""nuclear intensifier"" would work by emitting large numbers of W particles, hence expediting nuclear decay.] While Amadiro schemes, R. Daneel and R. Giskard slowly assemble the pieces of the roboticists' genocidal plan for mass murder. The robots, sharing Fastolfe's humane vision of a unified Settler/Spacer Galaxy - or, failing that, a Galaxy where Settlers can thrive in spite of Spacer domination - attempt to stop Amadiro. However, Daneel and Giskard are hampered by the Three Laws of Robotics, in particular, by the First Law of Robotics, which prevents them from making any direct attack on Amadiro. Daneel, meanwhile, has formulated an additional Zeroth Law of Robotics, which he thinks might help them to override the First Law, and to save the population of the Earth. The robots must work their way through the ramifications of the First Law and the Zeroth Law, in a race against time, before they face a confrontation with Amadiro and Mandamus. Fastolfe's brilliant daughter Vasilia has long coveted the valuable Giskard, and she finally determines to take him away from Gladia. Then, when Vasilia deduces that Giskard has telepathy, she confronts him with this fact. Giskard is compelled to manipulate her mind telepathically in order to make her forget about his telepathic powers. This leaves the two positronic robots free to deal with Amadiro. The two robots locate Amadiro and Mandamus on Earth, where they find the two Spacers debating the best way to use the nuclear intensifier for their ghoulish purposes. (They just happen to be at the site of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania). After Amadiro admits to the robots their plans to carry out mass murder on the Earth, Giskard decides that it is necessary to tamper with Amadiro's brain (using the newly-created Zeroth Law). Unfortunately, the way that Giskard does this causes irreversible damage to Amadiro's brain - and thus harm to him, as is forbidden by the First Law. Giskard is mentally ""skating on thin ice"" in this regard - and he is not far from suffering the consequences of such action. Now standing alone with the robots, Mandamus claims that his intentions regarding the nuclear intensifier were more benign than Amadiro's. Mandamus wants to draw out the radioactive catastrophe over many decades, rather than the mere years that Amadiro wanted, so that Amadiro could draw evil pleasure from the destruction of the Earth's population within his own lifetime. Giskard decides that it would be best for humanity to abandon the Earth, hence he allows Mandamus to adjust the settings of the nuclear intensifier. He extends the time scale of the radioactive catastrophe to 150 years, allowing humanity to evacuate the Earth (though a significant population still dwells there at the time of the novel Pebble in the Sky). Next, Giskard tampers with Mandamus's mind as well, ensuring that Mandamus will have no memory of what has happened. Giskard predicts, correctly, that by forcing humanity's hand into leaving the Earth, vigor will be reintroduced into mankind and the new Settlers will spread out across space at a rate never before seen. This will continue until all the governments of the interstellar colonies decide to unite into one ""Galactic Empire"". However, by allowing Mandamus to proceed with his original plan, Giskard becomes instrumental in creating a very radioactive planet Earth, and hence placing the inhabitants of Earth under grave threat of death. This contradicts the First Law of Robotics. The Zeroth Law does not prove to be enough, to Giskard at least, to justify harming humans for the sake of a hypothetical future benefit. Under the stress of changing the course of humanity, R. Giskard himself suffers a cascading and soon-fatal malfunction of his positronic brain. This is because he is not sure whether his actions will bring about an ultimate victory for the Spacers, leading to the final death of humanity. However before R. Giskard's brain freezes, he confers his telepathic ability upon R. Daneel, and Daneel takes on the heavy burden of guiding the entire burgeoning Galactic civilization."
737,Return from the Stars,science," The novel tells the story of an astronaut, Hal Bregg, who returns to Earth after a 127 year mission to Arcturus (In original Polish version Fomalhaut). Due to time dilation, the mission has lasted only 10 years for him, but on Earth he faces culture shock, as he finds the society transformed into a utopia, free of wars or violence, or even accidents. For Hal, however, this new world is too comfortable, too safe. Earth is no longer home, it is ""another, alien planet"". Humans themselves have changed, having undergone a procedure called betrization, designed to neutralizes all aggressive impulses. Hal mistrusts this approach, seeing the side effects of extreme risk-aversion as wrong. In particular, for an astronaut, he cannot agree with the opinion that space travel and space exploration are nothing but a youthful and dangerous adventurism. For Hal, this means that ""... they have killed the man in man"". He and the other returning astronauts are viewed with mistrust, seen as ""resuscitated Neanderthals"". They are alienated, outcasts, and subject to social pressure to undertake the betrization procedure. The other choice is to leave Earth again and hope that once they come back, in several centuries, Earth's society is more familiar again. In time, Hal's marries a local girl, Eri, and comes to see the world her way, even disapproving of his youth's love, space expeditions. When he learns that members of his former crew are planning a mission to Sagittarius, he seems not to care, content to leave the stars to others. Hal still remembers his past, recalls the moon Kereneia, a magnificent canyon ""made of red and pink gold, almost completely transparent... through it you can see all the strata, geological folds, anticlines and synclines... all this is weightless, floating and seeming to smile at you"". Yet he trades the chance to experience such sights and adventures for love and peaceful, quiet life."
738,Earth Hive,science," The book begins with a routine space junk cleanup mission in Earth orbit, with a small derelict spaceship being prepped for de-orbit and burnup. The crew doing the cleanup investigate the ship, and, much to their horror, an alien xenomorph stowaway on the derelict manages to board the cleanup crew's ship, and kill them. The ship is destroyed when one of the crewmembers panics and collides the cleanup ship with the derelict. However, everything was captured by the cleanup ship's black box. A CIA-like organization, called the TIA, realizes the threat posed by the alien species, and is able to use the information in the black box to retrace the route of the derelict ship. A decision is made to send a Colonial Marine expedition to the origin planet of the derelict ship, presumably the home planet of the alien species. Wilks, a battle-hardened space marine, is picked for the job. He previously encountered the aliens on the colony world of Rim, where he managed to escape alive with only one survivor, a little girl named Billie. Wilks agrees to the mission, but first makes plans to break Billie out of a mental hospital, where she has been suffering from nightmares ever since her rescue from the aliens on Rim. On board the Colonial Marine ship is a marine named Mitch, with whom Billie begins a romantic relationship en route to the alien planet. Meanwhile, greedy executives from the Weyland-Yutani corporation, learn of the Colonial Marine expedition to the alien homeworld, and make plans to intercept and destroy it. They hire a black-ops mercenary named Massey and his team of illegal combat synthetics, whose programming has been altered to permit the harming of human beings, in violation of the First law of robotics. It turns out that Weyland-Yutani already has a specimen of an alien on Earth, and wishes to keep its monopoly on the species, and prevent anyone else from obtaining a specimen. A third group enters the fray, a religious cult that worships the alien xenomorph, and whose members believe that implantation by a facehugger alien is something akin to joining with god. After the marine expedition leaves for the alien planet, followed by the mercenary ship, the alien god cult manages to locate the Weyland-Yutani lab holding the alien samples, breaks into the lab using suicidal attacks, and manages to get several members implanted by alien facehuggers. After arriving at the alien planet, the colonial marine ship is ambushed by Massey and the combat synthetics, assisted by the leader of the colonial marine force, who turns traitor for money. After seizing control of the marine's vessel, Massey kills the traitorous marine, leaving Wilks and the rest of the marines captive. The mercenary reveals his plan is to send the marines down to the planet, as 'bait' for the aliens, and then use the combat synthetics to collect the implanted marines. All of the marines except for Wilkes are sent down to the planet, unarmed, with the mercenary combat synthetics keeping a close watch. On the planet below, the first team of Colonial Marines, including Mitch, is forced to enter an alien hive. Before the aliens can come out and attack, the mercenary synthetics who are keeping guard are attacked by another hostile alien species (not the xenomorphs). The Colonial Marines take advantage of this situation, and kill the mercenary synthetics and take their weapons. During the surprise attack on the colonial marine vessel, Billie managed to hide and avoid detection in the initial sweep of the ship, and her name is not listed on the crew roster. She manages to kill one of the mercenary synthetics, get a weapon, and make her way to the bridge where Wilks and Massey are located. Billie and Wilks fight Massey, and manage to kill him. However, another group of marines is not so lucky, and is captured by a nearby alien hive. The surviving marines, led by Mitch, have no choice but to attempt a rescue. The rescue attempt comes at a great cost, only a few marines manage to make it out alive. Wilks and Billie fly down in a dropship to pick up the surviving marines, when Mitch is apparently killed by an alien - only to be revealed to be a synthetic as well. The Colonial Marine force included a team of synthetics so accurate, they could completely pass for human. Billie had no idea Mitch was synthetic, and is devastated. Mitch and the rest of the marines make it into the dropship, just as a horde of aliens start to swarm over the ship and try to break in. The ship cannot take off, and Wilkes is about to undertake a suicide mission to try to go outside to clear the aliens off, when suddenly all of the aliens are killed. A new alien appears, looking something like a giant elephant. The characters in the book do not realize it, but this is the same species of creature whose crashed ship the crew of the Nostromo encountered on LV-426 in the original Alien movie - the so-called ""Space Jockey."" The elephant-alien does not appear hostile or particularly interested in the humans, as it returns to its spaceship without making contact with Wilkes. The remaining crew of the Colonial Marine expedition - Wilks, Billie, Mitch, a marine named Blake, and a naval crewman named Parks, return to their ship and head for Earth. On Earth, the alien cult has successfully broken into the biowarfare lab containing the alien specimen, and has released wild aliens onto the planet. The aliens are slowly taking over, despite the best efforts of Earth defense forces. Over a period of several months, the aliens so completely dominate the planet, that most humans have been killed, and the rest have evacuted to earth orbit or other planets. As Wilks, Billie, Mitch, Blake, and Parks return to Earth, the last organized survivors of Earth are preparing to leave. Upon landing, a group of military survivors approach them, demanding that they hand over their ship. The encounter turns violent: Blake is killed and Parks panics and abandons the group. Wilks, Billie, and Mitch manage to stow away on a container ship headed for an unknown destination. They escape from Earth, with no idea of their final destination. This cliffhanger ending leads into the next book in the trilogy, Nightmare Asylum."
739,Flinx's Folly,science," While on Goldin IV looking for new experiences to give direction to his life, Flinx accidentally renders unconscious a group of twenty innocent bystanders when his Talent takes an unexpected turn and starts projecting to others in his immediate vicinity. He and the others are hospitalized but unhurt; knowing he is still wanted by the Commonwealth for his past crimes, Flinx gives a false name and slips out of the hospital, but to no less danger. He is now being pursued by the Order of Null, a quasi-religious group that worships death itself as expressed in the great evil that is approaching the Commonwealth—the same great evil that Flinx is able to sense and communicate with through his Talent. After escaping from the Order of Null and the planetary authorities, Flinx decides he needs to reflect on his life and talk over his difficulties with someone who understands him. Since that particular type of person is extremely rare in the universe, he settles on finding Clarity Held, the woman he fell in love with on Longtunnel, who is now a gengineer on New Riviera, a paradise world. Finding Clarity proves easy, the difficult part is dealing with her boyfriend Bill Ormann, a vice-president of the gengineering firm for whom she now works. He is eager to make Clarity his wife but she is more reluctant to marry. After tolerating a growing attraction between the two, Ormann decides he is losing Clarity to Flinx and sets out to remove the young man from the relationship. After a pair of failed attempts to warn his rival off with use of violence, Ormann is forced to act himself with the intention of killing Flinx. Ormann first kidnaps Clarity and imprisons her in a remote cabin with the intention of luring Flinx to rescue her there, where he will spring his trap. Flinx manages to bypass the deadly mechanical traps set by Ormann, but is overcome by the particularly clever bio-engineered trap hidden in a most unlikely vector. Captured by Ormann’s minions, Flinx and Clarity are at the mercy of the thugs but their lives are saved by the timely intervention of Flinx’s old friend Truzenzuzex. The wily thranx had come looking for Flinx to get the young man’s insight on the disappearing weapons platform full of Krangs the Tar-Aiym had left behind on the tenth planet of the Pyrassis system (see events in Reunion). The old warrior inside Tru manages to kill the four thugs threatening Flinx and Clarity while his partner Bran Tse-Mallory confronts Ormann. When the corporate executive threatens Bran with a weapon, Bran kills Ormann with a voltchuk. The four attempt to escape from New Riviera via Flinx’s shuttle, but before they can even approach the ship, they are trapped between two groups both seeking to capture Flinx: a squad of Commonwealth Peaceforcers and yet another group from the Order of Null. In the process of trying to flee the fighting, Clarity is critically wounded. To save her and remain free himself, Flinx is forced to allow Bran and Tru to take the woman he loves to a hospital while he slips aboard the shuttle and back to his starship, the Teacher. They agree to meet up again when Flinx locates the Tar-Aiym weapons platform Back on board Teacher Flinx is so distracted by the seriousness of Clarity’s wounds that he misses the presence of two members of the Order of Null already on board. They manage to capture the preoccupied Flinx and set Teacher on a suicide course with New Riviera’s sun. Once again Flinx is saved at the last minute by the sentient plants from Midworld on board his ship; they strangle the two initiates in the Order of Null allowing Flinx to escape his drug-induced bondage. Flinx plots his next move as a return to his adopted home world of Moth."
740,Soon I Will Be Invincible,science," After CoreFire, the world's greatest superhero, goes missing, the former superteam The Champions re-unite to investigate his disappearance, bringing in two new replacement heroines, Lily and Fatale. They immediately suspect CoreFire's archnemesis, Dr. Impossible, was involved, even though he has been incarcerated in a maximum security prison since his defeat by Damsel during his twelfth world domination attempt. An interrogation by two novice heroes about CoreFire's disappearance gives Dr. Impossible the chance to escape and initiate a new attempt at world domination. The New Champions search for Impossible, convinced he is responsible for CoreFire's demise, while he gathers the materials needed to advance his plan. This is intercut with flashbacks to earlier times and his origin, as well as reflections on other paths he could have taken in life. Fatale observes the actions of the New Champions as its newest member. She feels uncomfortable replacing a popular, deceased member and unworthy of belonging to a superhero group, but she proves herself to be highly competent and earns the respect of her teammates. Fatale's closest friend on the team is another new member, Lily, a reformed supervillain and former girlfriend of Dr. Impossible. Fatale contrasts Dr. Impossible's flashbacks by having no memory of her life before the accident in Brazil that made her a cyborg, with her exposition coming from her new experiences with the other superheroes. During the investigation, she discovers that the corporation that transformed her into a cyborg was a front for Dr. Impossible during one of his previous plans. The climax is reached on Dr. Impossible's island, as he attempts to start a controlled Ice Age, making him Earth's ruler and only source of energy. He almost succeeds, using the hammer formerly belonging to the supervillain The Pharaoh to defeat the New Champions. CoreFire suddenly returns but is also unsuccessful against Dr. Impossible. Lily, who had quit the team earlier, eventually returns and defeats Dr. Impossible. Lily reveals that she is actually Erica Lowenstein, Dr. Impossible's childhood crush before his transformation and frequent kidnapee when she was the girlfriend of CoreFire."
741,Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand,science," The novel takes place in a far future in which human societies have developed divergently on some 6000 planets. Many of these worlds are shared with intelligent nonhumans, although only one alien species (the mysterious Xlv) also possesses faster-than-light travel. In an attempt to find a stable defense against the planet destroying phenomenon known as ""cultural fugue"" (a state of terminal runaway of cultural and technological complexity that destroys all life on a world via a singularity), many human worlds are aligned with one of two broad factions, one generally permissive (the Sygn) and one generally conservative (the Family) by today's standards. The story opens on the planet Rhyonon. Korga, a tall, misfit youth, undergoes the ""RAT"" (Radical Anxiety Termination) procedure, a form of psychosurgery which makes him a passive slave, after which he is known as Rat Korga. After he has lived under a number of masters, Rat's world is destroyed by a conflagration. This is later explained to be the result of cultural fugue, though the explanation is far from conclusive, especially since Xlv spacecraft were present in the Rhyonon system when the disaster occurred. Because he is deep inside a mine shaft at the time, Rat Korga survives (though badly injured), the only known being to ever survive cultural fugue. The action then moves to Velm, a Sygn-aligned world that humanity shares with its native three-sexed intelligent species, the evelm, and where sexual relationships take many forms&mdash;monogamous, promiscuous, anonymous, and interspecies. Resident Marq Dyeth, an ""industrial diplomat"" who helps manage the transfer of technology between different societies, is informed that Rat Korga is his perfect sexual match by a former connection in the powerful and mysterious WEB. Equipping him with a prosthesis (the rings of Vondramach Okk) that restores the initiative he lost due to the RAT procedure, the WEB sends Rat Korga to Velm under the pretext that he is a student, and he and Marq begin a romantic affair. They go on an unusual hunting expedition and return to a dinner party which becomes chaotic due to the presence of the Thants and planetwide interest in the survivor. The Thants are humans of another world who were friends of the Dyeths until deciding to align themselves with the Family, which has promised them the position of ""focus unit"" on another world, Nepiy, making them effectively rulers of that planet. Soon after, Rat Korga must leave Velm and be permanently separated from Marq (their pairing having been an alien cultural experiment) because their interaction was creating a threat of cultural fugue."
742,Night of the Big Heat,science," The main characters are a former novelist named Richard Callum and his wife Frankie, who own a pub called the White Lion. Richard has hired a secretary to help out on his new book, Patricia Wells, who turns out to have an obsession for Callum. A visiting scientist named Harsen reveals, ultimately, that the reason for the extreme heat is that an alien race of spiders are ""beaming in"" scouts from their home planet via an improbable ""radio wave"" ray which generates intense amounts of heat as a side effect. The spiders themselves are carnivorous and eat humans, and give off bodily heat intense enough to burn alive any person who gets too close to them. Together with Harsen, Patricia, and science fiction author Vernon Stone, the Callums try to make it to the island's radio station to call for help so that they can thwart the invasion."
743,Terminal World,science," The plot begins when an ""angel"", a posthuman from the Celestial levels at Spearpoint's peak, falls to Neon Heights, further down the spire. The clean-up crew that finds it delivers it to Quillon, one of the zone's pathologists. It is revealed that Quillon was part of a secret angel project to see if angels could be altered to survive in Spearpoint's lower levels. The dying angel tells Quillon that certain factions amongst the angels are searching for him to obtain further information about the results of this project. Quillon seeks advice from his old ally, Fray, who tells him that he needs to leave Spearpoint if he is to survive in the foreseeable future. He summons Meroka, one of his extraction specialists, to help Quillon out of the city. Quillon and Meroka escape the city, pursued by ""Ghouls""- angels with similar, but less sophisticated, inter-zonal modifications that allow them to survive in lower state zones for short periods of time. They find out that the zones had rearranged themselves totally overnight in what is called a ""zone storm"". They look to Spearpoint and see that all the lights have gone out, indicating the entire city has been affected by the storm. They venture on and run into an overturned carriage with several bodies having been consumed by the vorgs, carnivorous cyborgs, that harvest brain tissue to feed on. Soon Quillon and Meroka run into a Skullboy caravan and find two prisoners who they release. The Skullboys take them all hostage, then the vorgs turn up and demand fresh meat in return for making drugs for the Skullboys. Meroka offers herself up to the vorgs but before she is harvested the vorg behind her is killed by members from Swarm. Swarm airmen kill off the remaining Skullboys and Vorg and pronounce Quillons group to be ""clients of Swarm"". They are taken aboard one of the hundred and fifty airships that make up the entity of Swarm. The gang get taken back to Swarm's HQ and are taken to see the leader Riccasso. Meroka finds out that Quillon is an angel and as she had a chequered past with the angels, no longer speaks to him. Ricasso tells Quillon about his research into finding a complete cure for zone sickness, which would allow people to cross zone boundaries at will. The two prisoners that Quillon and Meroka released are mother Kalis and daughter Nimcha who both bear the Tectomancer birthmark. However Kalis' birthmark upon closer inspection turns out to be a tattoo used to divert hatred and prejudice from her daughter onto herself. Quillon takes great measures to hide their identity from Swarm because they are as prejudiced as all the other outerland peoples about these ""witches"". Eventually Ricasso finds out and agrees to kept it from the rest of Swarm as it would cause unrest with the airmen. Quillon finds out that the serum that Ricasso had been preparing before serves as an effective anti-zonal medication. Quillon asks Ricasso and a few of his most trusted allies to head back to Spearpoint to help out the millions of needy and sick people still living there. After a tense discussion it is decided that the issue will be put to the flags to see who is for or against the idea. Surprisingly the majority say that they are behind the plans, even some of Ricasso's most staunch enemies. Preparations are made to head out to Spearpoint and the serum is prepared for dilution. When one of the scouts comes back after a successful battle with a Skullboy ship they bring back intelligence and maps that the previously dead land of the Bane has had a zone realignment and using the route could be a massive short cut. Ricasso decides that this is the best plan of action even though it is highly dangerous. In the vorg cage room where Ricasso's lab is Quillon is hard at work preparing the serum for dilution and he gets surprised by Spatha who has a gun aimed at Quillon's head. Spatha demands that Quillon release a vorg to make everyone think that bringing him aboard and letting him loose in the laboratory was a bad idea. However the vorg runs through the ship and causes mayhem, releases the other vorgs in the cages and manages to kill 4 people before Nimcha uses her powers to cause a small zone tremor so the ship is reverted to a lower state zone, killing off the highly advanced vorg. Spatha is arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad. The journey across the newly opened short cut over the Bane is uneventful at first, until they come across a metallic object in the distance. The Painted Lady, Curtana's ship on which Quillon and Meroka are living is instructed to scope out the object whilst the rest of Swarm carries on its normal course. The object turns out to be a plane, unusual because the Bane is supposedly uninhabitable by anything other than single celled organisms and dirt. Soon they come across more planes, then prop-planes then bi and tri planes until they get to gliders. Many of them are marked with a red rectangle with one large stars and four small stars. (This means nothing to them, but would be consistent with it being the flag of China in our own era.) After this they see on the horizon what appears to be a very similar object to Spearpoint, but with no signs that anyone ever lived on its surface. Ricasso and Quillon elect to take a closer look at the building in a balloon as normal airships can't reach the top of the object. They see that unlike Spearpoint this object was never colonised as thoroughly and is hollow which a hole at the top. Once they get close to Spearpoint they intercept semaphore lines that tell of zone changes on the boundary of their destination which are so low state it would inhibit powered flight. A plan is made to come in steep, nurse the engines as long as possible and finally glide into Spearpoint. The is complicated by the pockets of resistance put up by Skullboys in balloons. There is a fierce battle into which Quillon and Meroka are enlisted, many of the guns and engines fail as they cross into the lower state zones but eventually they triumph. They reach Spearpoint and land in the middle of a sea of people. They are met with Tulwar's militia force that escort Quillon and Meroka to the Red Dragon Bathhouse. They start to unload the crates of Serum-15 and a stray Skullboy rocket sets fire to the tail of the Painted Lady. Luckily most of the airmen and Curtana make it off the ship with little more than burns but some of the medicine was lost in the hurry to offload it. At the bathhouse Quillon, Meroka, Kalis, and Nimcha talk to Tulwar about the distribution of the serum and about getting Nimcha close to the Mire, inside of Spearpoint, which has been calling to her through her dreams and asking her to heal it. Tulwar agrees to let them travel to the nearest tunnel entrance and suggests that they stay the night to rest after their chaotic journey. The next day they head to the Pink Peacock and enter the tunnel system with Meroka leading them. She smells something amiss with Tulwar's plan and thinks that they are being set up so that Tulwar can remain in power of Spearpoint and prolong the chaos to reign supreme. She diverts from the planned path and they eventually get caught up by Kargas, Tulwar's head of militia, and get into a fire fight. At that point Fray and Malkin turn up with powerful guns and mow down the assailants. Tulwar had informed the party that Fray was dead but this is just another of his deceptions. After talking to Fray they get lead to meet with the Mad Machines, long thought to be an urban myth about the even more mythical tunnel systems by many living in Spearpoint. They meet with Juggernaught and plead Nimchas case and it agrees to take them to see the others. They travel along without Meroka and Malkin who leave to sort out Tulwar and meet with The Final One. She informs Nimcha that she must take a place in the chamber beside the other tectomancers so they can heal the Mire. After the party leaves Nimcha and Fray down in the chamber they decide to take revenge on Tulwar for his deceptions. They hide in crates of the serum and Meroka shoots Tulwar several times, disabling him by puncturing his steam pipes. Quillon talks to Tulwar about his deceptions then spits up blood and passes out. He has internal bleeding from a shot to his back and is on his death bed. He is informed that an angel was sent out to meet with the rest of Swarm, which had hung back before the zone boundaries, and has told them that they have allies in the celestial levels. Quillon realises that these are the same allies that warned him about his imminent execution and Curtana orders him to travel with Meroka to the Celestial Levels in hopes of saving his life and finding allies to take Spearpoint back from the Skullboys and the unallied angels. The book finishes with Curtana and Agraffe wonder what changes would befall the planet and Spearpoint after Nimcha has finished healing the mire and wonder what the Mad Machines were talking about when they mentioned Earthgate and going into the planet to reach the stars."
744,Limit of Vision,science," Virgil Copeland and Randall Panwar are forced to give a project review to the senior staff of Equatorial Systems alone when their fellow scientist Gabrielle Villanti fails to show up. Panwar stumbles through the presentation, showcasing their life work: asterids (artificial neurons) known as LOVs. Although LOVs showed promise in initial experiments, the enhanced intelligence of the test animals was offset by the uncontrolled growth of the LOVs, which eventually killed their hosts. LOVs were therefore made dependent on two amino acids: nopaline for metabolism and octopine for reproduction. In the second phase of the experiment, the LOVs were encased in silicate shells. These LOVs were able to safely interact with the test animals. Unfortunately, an unrelated incident at a rival biotechnology company prompted a government crackdown, and the LOVs were exported to the Hammer, a space station in low Earth orbit. Panwar's presentation is cut short when security interrupt with news of an incident at the lab. Gabrielle, Panwar, and Virgil had illegally implanted LOV clusters on their foreheads in order to communicate with the LOV colonies in their care, and Gabrielle had apparently entered a fugue state and died of exhaustion while in communion with their latest experimental subject. Their administrators learn of this shortly when they discover Virgil attempting to surreptitiously remove the LOVs from Gabrielle's corpse, and the two surviving scientists are put into quarantine. Unfortunately, the LOV colony is quite a bit more intelligent and resourceful than anyone had anticipated; it has overcome several obstacles and colonized key areas of the Hammer. When it learns what has happened, it takes control of several drones and severs the lab module from the space station. Ela Suvanatat is a freelance journalist doing a story on the plight of fishing villages in Vietnam when the Equasys lab module crashes offshore. Although it is quickly declared off limits by the government, Ela hires a boat and makes her way out to the crash site. She is barely able to scoop up a few stray LOVs which have survived atmospheric reentry and get back to shore before the military arrives and cordons off the site. Racing through the marsh ahead of military patrols, Ela comes into contact with the Roi Nuoc, a group of children under the care of a nearly sentient computer program named Mother Tiger. The Roi Nuoc take her to one of their benefactors, a businessman named Ky Xuan Nguyen. While cleaning up at his house, Ela discovers that the packet of LOVs has torn and most of her find is missing, but there are a few LOVs lodged in her forehead. Meanwhile, Virgil and Panwar attempt escape from quarantine, but Panwar is gunned down and Virgil barely makes it to Panwar's one-man automated submarine. Virgil shortly receives from a message from Ela, who is worried that her LOVs seem to be dying. He tells her that crown galls on some plants might contain nopaline, and orders her a supply of both nopaline and octopine tablets from a chemical supply company. Ela is forced to flee her safe house when the military begins a house-to-house search, but she stops along the way to gather crown galls and then asks one of the Roi Nuoc to lead her back to the pool in which she took shelter after swimming ashore. At the pool, Ela plunges half of her crown galls into the mud, hoping to save any LOVs which had made their way into the water."
745,In Limbo,science," In the first chapter Michael Carpenter awakes in a windowless institution. Although the regime in Limbo is quite liberal, Carpenter is not permitted to leave nor to know its purpose. Carpenter's fellow inmates are introduced: leftist intellectual Wright, corpulent joker Riley, fitness fanatic Treadwell and the nervous Sinnott. The highlights of Carpenter's time are his meetings with the glamorous Dr Dempster. The long second chapter details the inmates' increasing conflicts with their guards but is interspersed with flashbacks to Carpenter's earlier life. After leaving university, Carpenter has drifted from one dead-end job to another, and also moved between various unsatisfactory sexual relationships, with the strident feminist Veronica, the kleptomaniac Karen, married colleague Eleanor and the unstable Penny. The chaper ends with an escape attempt by all the inmates. The book concludes with a short third chapter describing Carpenter's first steps back in the outside world."
746,Steel Beach,science," The Golden Globe and Steel Beach take place in a universe similar to, but different from, Varley’s ""Eight Worlds"" universe; in both universes, the solar system has been colonized by human refugees fleeing aliens (known simply as ""the Invaders"") invading the Earth. Earth and Jupiter are off-limits to humanity, but Earth's moon (known as Luna) and the other planets and moons of the solar system have all become heavily populated. There are also minor colonies set in the Oort cloud beyond the solar system itself. The Steel Beach in question is Luna, Earth's moon and the most heavily-inhabited world in the solar system since the Invaders obliterated human civilization on Earth. The allusion being that humans were thrown onto the inhospitable moon, just as fish made their way onto land as they evolved. The protagonist, Hildy Johnson, is a newspaper reporter who finds trouble beneath the near-utopian society run by the Central Computer. The Central Computer runs every aspect of every person's life: it is the government, court, information source, and friend to every citizen. Hildy Johnson starts off as a male reporter in the beginning of the book. He, like many people in the moon, has become dissatisfied with life. As a result, society, as well as Hildy, take part in destructive activities such as ""slash boxing"" (a blend of knife fighting and boxing), and in Hildy's case, attempting suicide multiple times. The first half of the story deals with the bizarre occurrences of life on the moon, such as the indoctrinations of celebrity heads-in-jars, negotiating with brontosaurus herds to figure out who they will sacrifice to make burger patties, and Earth-themed Disneylands which come complete with snakes, sand and sunburns. In the second half, Hildy makes contact with a group of people who have figured out how to travel through space without spacesuits. These people then reveal that they are hiding from the Central Computer, partially to keep their technology secret, and to keep free of secret experiments the Central Computer has been performing on people. Hildy then learns that the Central Computer has been attempting to clone the deceased in order to keep the population up. Hildy then becomes suspect, as she (he has had a sex change by now) has attempted to commit suicide several times, and it is unclear if she has been rescued or cloned. The Central Computer eventually resorts to launching a military raid on the people, which eventually causes the machine itself to crash. This leaves the moon city in chaos, and in its death throes, the Central Computer sends a projection of itself to Hildy, explaining that the schizoid nature of having multiple versions of itself was conflicting and strenuous, and that the city's doom was inevitable."
747,Dominant Species,science," The protagonist is Major Dan Ridgeway, the leader of a USMC Rapid Assault Team, or RAT squad. Ridgeway carries a heavy personal burden from a ""damned if you do, damned if you don't"" decision that won him official acclaim early in his military career. Ridgeway's squad is deployed to a distant planet where workers at a lucrative and strategically critical mining operation have seceded and aligned with an opposing government. The key to reclaiming the facility intact lies in a surgical strike against a deep-underground reactor that powers the ground-based defense systems. Employing an unorthodox means of infiltrating the outer defenses, the RAT squad's powered armor allows them to carve a straight line to the reactor and affix explosives to its hull. Their egress is impeded by stiff resistance and as time runs out, Ridgeway opts for a last-ditch means of survival in the face of the reactor's imminent detonation. The avenue of escape leaves the Marines stranded in an even deeper series of frozen caverns below the reactor level. Searching for a means of escape and a safe environment to deal with injuries, they discover two things: that one member of the opposing military force, a lowly truck driver, has inadvertently fallen along with the Marines, and of far greater impact that an immense starship pitched on her side kilometers below the planet's surface. Despite the immediately obvious mystery, Ridgeway maintains a firm ""not our job to solve mysteries"" focus and views the ship only as a means to address his team's survival. Viewing the driver as a potential source of information, they bring him along and enter the ship to grapple with extracting the means to repair, refit and escape. After considerable effort and several life-threatening encounters created entirely by the hazardous environment, the Marines restore limited power within the ship and in so doing begin to unravel pieces of her history and a remarkable technology that saves the life of the driver, Jenner, and Darcy, a member of Ridgeway's team. But it quickly becomes obvious that more than just the power has re-awakened on the ship. While pursuing a means of reaching the surface, the Marines are with increasing frequency and intensity engaged in ways that stress them to the breaking point. Discovering evidence of what appears to be a horrific atrocity against the ship's original crew, the weight of Ridgeway's longstanding internal burden and the need to save his team come into alignment on a path that cuts directly through the alien species. What remains is a series of blistering firefights, personal sacrifices and displays of both loyalty and frailty that lead to the book's ultimate conclusion. The book challenges traditional definitions of humanity and the way we perceive one another."
748,The Last of the Jedi: Dark Warning,science," Obi-Wan Kenobi is on a mission. Along with the former Jedi apprentice Ferus Olin and a headstrong kid named Trever, he is trying to keep the Jedi's most important secret safe from the inquisitive Empire. With Boba Fett on their trail and time running out, Obi-Wan, Ferus and Trever must make some daring and desperate escapes...into even more Danger. Along the way, they discover some incredible news: Obi-Wan and Yoda are not the only Jedi to have survived the Emperor's annihilation of the Jedi. There is at least one other...and he is hiding in the Caves of Ilum, a place where nightmares become reality and dark warnings tell of conflicts yet to come."
749,Diurnity's Dawn,science," In the third and concluding novel of this trilogy, an uncomfortable archaeological alliance of Thranx, humans, and AAnn, explores the well-kept secrets of the lost civilization of the Sauun on the frontier world Comagrave. After a series of accidents that occur where the AAnn are convenient for helping an injured or stranded human, the chief Thranx scientist starts suspecting an anti-Thranx conspiracy. Meanwhile on the planet Dawn, such a conspiracy seems to be up and running, for terrorists there plan vicious destruction to crush the infant commonwealth. Unexpected players in this engrossing drama are the padres, human and Thranx, of the anything but dogmatic United Church, which ministers to both species with a decidedly untraditional religious outlook."
750,Learning the World,science," The novel is a first contact story, following the generation ship But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky! as it approaches the Destiny Star. Humans have been colonizing the 500 light-years around Earth for a few thousand years, and have never run into an alien species&nbsp;— until now. The discovery of an Industrial Age alien race upsets the established protocols of the ship, leading to uncertainty and delays in habitation, which in turn leads to societal unrest and conflict aboard the ship."
751,Altered Carbon,science," In the novel's somewhat dystopian world, human personalities can be stored digitally and downloaded into new bodies, called sleeves. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their memories. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Catholics have arranged that they will not be resleeved as they believe that the soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics targets for murder, since killers know their victim will not be resleeved to testify. A UN resolution to alter this legal position forms one strand of the novel's plot, in order to allow the authorities to temporarily sleeve a deceased Catholic woman to testify in a murder trial. While most people can afford to get resleeved at the end of their lives, they are unable to update their bodies and most go through the full aging process each time which discourages most from resleeving more than once or twice. So while normal people can live indefinitely in theory, most choose not to. Only the wealthy are able to acquire replacement bodies on a continual basis. The long-lived are called Meths, a reference to the Biblical figure Methuselah. The very rich are also able to keep copies of their minds in remote storage, which they update regularly. This ensures that even if their stack is destroyed, they can be resleeved. One such Meth—a man named Laurens Bancroft—has apparently committed suicide, in which his stack was destroyed. He is resleeved from a backup. Because his stack is on a 48 hour back-up schedule, he has no memories of his actions during the previous 48 hours. He believes his apparent suicide was actually a murder and hires Takeshi Kovacs to investigate his death. Kovacs is an ex Envoy, a military unit formed to cope with the challenge of interstellar warfare. Faster-than-light travel is only possible by subspace transmission, called needlecasting, of a digitally stored consciousness to ""download centers"" where resleeving into physical bodies can be carried out. Transmitting normal soldiers in this way would severely inhibit their effectiveness, since they would have to cope with a new body and an unknown environment while fighting. To combat this, Envoy training emphasises mental techniques necessary to survive in different bodies over physical strength, and the sleeve in which they are transmitted has special neuro-chemical sensors which amplify the power of the five senses, intuition and physical capabilities. The effectiveness of the Envoy Corps' training is such that Envoys are banned from holding governmental positions on most worlds. Kovacs is persistently wracked by his memories of the action taken by the Envoy Corps in a battle on the planet Sharya and especially by the military debacle on Innenin, in which the Corps suffered extensive casualties after their stacks were infected with a lethal virus, Rawling 4851. Kovacs, killed in the novel's prologue and stored in digital form, is downloaded into a sleeve formerly inhabited by Bay City (formerly San Francisco) policeman Elias Ryker. The plot unfolds through Kovacs' narrative. Kovacs eventually solves the mystery, but only after a great deal of violence, including torture in virtual reality, which he is able to bear only because of his Envoy training."
752,The Wheels of Chance,science," The Wheels of Chance was written at the height of the cycling craze (1890–1905), when practical, comfortable bicycles first became widely and cheaply available and before the rise of the automobile (see History of the bicycle). The advent of the bicycle stirred sudden and profound changes in the social life of England. Even the working class could travel substantial distances, quickly and cheaply, and the very idea of travelling for pleasure became a possibility for thousands of people for the first time. This new freedom affected many. It began to weaken the rigid English class structure and it gave an especially powerful boost to the existing movement toward female emancipation. Wells explored these social changes in his story."
753,The Dreaming Void,science, At the centre of the Milky Way galaxy an object called the Void resembles a massive black hole. The Void is not a natural system. Inside there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different to those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core - one day it will have devoured the entire galaxy. In AD 3589 a human has started to dream of the wonderful existence inside the Void. He has a following of millions of believers. They now wish to make a pilgrimage to the Void to live the life they have been shown. Other star-faring species fear their migration will cause the Void to expand again. They are prepared to stop the pilgrimage fleet no matter what the cost.
754,No Man Friday,science," A British rocket, developed at minimal cost and secretly from officialdom, lifts off from the Woomera rocket range on a mission to Mars. During the voyage, an accident in the airlock kills all but the narrator, who was returning from EVA and still in his space suit. The rocket reaches Mars but crash lands. There, the narrator learns how to produce oxygen and water, also discovering more about Martian species and nourishment. Eventually, he starts cooperating with the titanic inhabitants of that planet to survive. After fifteen years, an American mission lands, thinking themselves the first to reach Mars. The narrator contacts the Americans, and then tries to return to the Dominant Beings, but is prevented from reaching them. He returns to Earth with the Americans."
755,The Price of Paradise,science," Laylora, the Paradise Planet, is a world of breath-taking beauty, where peace-loving Aboriginals supposedly live in harmony with their environment. Years ago, a human called Rez arrived on the planet as a baby in an escape pod, and was adopted by the native people. The Doctor and Rose arrive to answer a distress signal from a group of scientists, who were shot down by an EMP, only to find that the once-perfect eco-system is showing signs of failing. Natural disasters are becoming more frequent, and creatures from ancient legends are appearing and attacking people. The Doctor realises that the planet is a perfect equation, when left alone it is a paradise, but when alien objects visit the planet, the equation becomes unbalanced, and the planet causes disasters to try to repair itself."
756,The Raw Shark Texts,science," Eric Sanderson, a British man in his late twenties, was working with the Un-Space Exploration Committee after the death of his girlfriend, Clio Aames. His hope was to preserve his memories of her within the body of a conceptual creature. This leads to his intentional release of a Ludovician—the most dangerous of the conceptual fish—on himself. He loses memories of his life as they are devoured by the Ludovician, but still the Ludovician pursues him until all is lost and he awakes as the Second Eric Sanderson. Eric is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue. However, the First Eric Sanderson, even as he was losing his memory, has left him with a large number of letters explaining Conceptual Fish, the death of his girlfriend, the Un-Space Exploration Committee, and other such things. When Eric Sanderson is attacked once more by the Ludovician, he decides to go in search of a doctor named Trey Fidorous, who is a member of the Un-Space Exploration Committee who may be able to explain what is happening to him. Eric travels through Britain in search of clues, and ultimately finds one in a hotel he is staying in during a rainstorm. He is contacted by a mysterious figure known as Mr. Nobody, who is actually a part of a larger, internet-based intelligence called Mycroft Ward. Mr. Nobody attempts to subdue and control Eric with a smaller Conceptual Fish, but Eric manages to escape. Eric soon meets with a member of the Un-Space Exploration Committee named Scout. Scout and Eric have a close encounter with the Ludovician before venturing into Un-Space in search of Trey Fidorous. It turns out that Scout has a small bit of Mycroft Ward in her, but is not truly a part of the intelligence. Eric and Scout develop a romantic relationship throughout their un-space journey. However, the relationship becomes turbulent after it is revealed that from the beginning, Scout sought out Eric and his Ludovician in order to destroy Ward. When they find Fidorous, they help him rig up a conceptual boat with which to hunt the Ludovician. The climax of the book takes place on a conceptual ocean, aboard the Orpheus, the shark-hunting boat. In a climactic encounter, a laptop hooked up to the Mycroft Ward database is thrown into the mouth of the Ludovician, destroying both. Trey Fidorous is killed in the sinking of the boat, and Scout is lost at sea. Eric is then seemingly given a chance to return to the 'real' world through a postcard showing his house; he declines, choosing to remain in the conceptual world. Scout returns to the boat unharmed, and together with Ian the cat. She and Eric, now reconciled, swim to a ""conceptual island"" which resembles the Greek island on which Clio and the first Eric holidayed before she died. At this point, it is strongly suggested that Scout is in fact Clio, and that the first Eric Sanderson's plan to preserve his memories of and life with Clio via the Ludovician has succeeded. The book ends with a newspaper cutting reporting that the body of Eric Sanderson was found not far from his home. The newspaper clipping mentions that a postcard from Eric was sent to Dr. Randle, but from Greece, just prior to the discovery of his body. The postcard is shown on the next page, and claims to be from Eric, stating that he is unhurt and happy, but will never return."
757,The Defenders of the Dead,science," Immediately after the Gala incident, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn are ordered to the planet of Melida/Daan, where they are to rescue the Jedi Knight Tahl. There is a millennia-long war on Melida/Daan, with two bands fighting each other. Both bands have forgotten the Young, an organization made up of orphaned children and teenagers who fight for peace. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are not supposed to get involved, but the young apprentice feels that he must fight beside the Young, against his master's wishes. After the Jedi successfully rescue Tahl with the help of the Young, Obi-Wan decides to stay behind and help the Young bring peace between the Melida and Daan factions. Consequently, Qui-Gon quietly leaves with Tahl, having lost another apprentice."
758,"The Stars, Like Dust",science," Biron Farrill, about to complete studies at the University of Earth, is told by Sander Jonti that his father, a rich planetary leader known as Lord Rancher of Widemos, has been arrested and killed by the Tyranni and his own life may be in danger. On Jonti's advice, he travels to Rhodia, the strongest of the conquered planets. There he hears rumours of a world where rebellion against the Tyranni is secretly being plotted. Escaping with Artemisia oth Hinriad, the daughter of the Director of Rhodia and his brother Gillbret in a Tyranni spaceship, they travel to the planet Lingane. It is not a part of the Tyranni conquests, but maintains ""peaceful"" relations with them. There, they meet the Autarch of Lingane (who is revealed to be Sander Jonti, the man who sent Farrill to Rhodia from Earth), who seems to possess knowledge of a rebellion world. With him and his followers, the group travel to the heart of the Horsehead Nebula — they believe that for any rebellion world to exist and not be known to the Tyranni, it must be located in a place like the Horsehead Nebula. The Tyranni spaceship stolen by Farrill is being tracked by a fleet of Tyranni vessels led by Simok Aratap, the Tyrannian Commissioner. With him is the Director, who is shown to be nervous about his daughter's and brother's well-being. They keep themselves at a distance for fear of Farrill discovering them until Farrill lands on one planet in the heart of the nebula. The Autarch believes that the planet is the rebellion world. However, there is no sign of life anywhere. When the Autarch and Farrill leave the spaceship to apparently set up a radio transmitter, Farrill faces the Autarch and accuses him of getting his father killed at the hands of the Tyranni. The Autarch affirms the accusation, to which Farrill adds that the Autarch feared his father's growing reputation. That is why he arranged Farrill's father's death. In a fight, Farrill subdues the Autarch with help from the Autarch's closest secretary, who reveals that he is ashamed of the Autarch for killing a great man like Farrill's father. Later, as Farrill and the Autarch's secretary try to explain everything to the rest of the crew they picked up from Lingane, the Tyranni fleet arrives and takes them prisoner. Aratap interrogates Farrill, Artemisia, Gillbret and the Autarch's secretary in order to ascertain the coordinates of the rebellion world but they do not know where it is. However, the Autarch reveals the coordinates to Aratap. The Autarch's secretary kills the Autarch with a blaster in anger. While Aratap interrogates Farrill, Gillbret manages to escape to the engine room of the spaceship and short the hyperatomics. Farrill, realising the danger, manages to contact Aratap. The engines are repaired, but Gillbret is injured and later dies. The space jump is made with the coordinates given to them by the late Autarch. However, they find a planetless system consisting only of a white-dwarf star. Aratap lets Farrill and the others go, believing that there is no rebellion world. Aratap makes it clear that he will never to be chosen as Director. Biron and Artemisia are allowed to marry. It is eventually revealed that there is indeed a rebellion in the making, located on Rhodia itself. The Director is its leader; he deliberately took on the persona of a nervous and timid old man to throw off suspicion from himself and his planet. It is further revealed that the Director, who possesses a collection of ancient documents, has searched for, and found, a document that will help a future empire-yet-to-be (likely Trantor) govern the galaxy. This document is ultimately revealed to be the United States Constitution."
759,Anthem,science," Equality 7-2521, writing in a tunnel under the earth, later revealed to be an ancient subway tunnel, explains his background, the society around him, and his emigration. His exclusive use of plural pronouns (""we"", ""our"", ""they"") to refer to himself and others tells a tale of complete socialization and governmental control. The idea of the World Council was to eliminate all individualist ideas. It was so stressed, that people were burned at the stake for saying an Unspeakable Word (""I"", ""Me"", ""Myself"", and ""Ego""). He recounts his early life. He was raised, like all children in the world of Anthem, away from his parents in the Home of the Infants, then transferred to the Home of the Students, where he began his schooling. Later, he realized that he was born with a ""curse"": He is eager to think and question, and unwilling to give up himself for others, which violates the principles upon which Anthems society is founded. He excelled in math and science, and dreamed of becoming a Scholar. However, a Council of Vocations assigned all people to their jobs, and he was assigned to the Home of the Street Sweepers. Equality accepts his profession willingly in order to repent for his transgression (his desire to learn). He works with International 4-8818 and Union 5-3992. International is exceptionally tall, a great artist (which is his transgression, as only people chosen to be artists may draw), and Equality's only friend (having a friend also being a crime because, in Anthems society, one is not supposed to prefer one of one's brothers over the rest). Union, ""they of the half-brain,"" suffers from some sort of neurological seizures. However, Equality remains curious. One day, he finds the entrance to a subway tunnel in his assigned work area and explores it, despite International 4-8818's protests that an action unauthorized by a Council is forbidden. Equality realizes that the tunnel is left over from the Unmentionable Times, before the creation of Anthems society, and is curious about it. During the daily three hour-long play, he leaves the rest of the community at the theater and enters the tunnel and undertakes scientific experiments. Working outside the City one day, by a field, Equality meets and falls in love with a woman, Liberty 5-3000, whom he names ""The Golden One."" Liberty 5-3000 names Equality ""The Unconquered"". Continuing his scientific work, Equality rediscovers electricity (which he, until the book nears its conclusion, calls the ""power of the sky"") and the light bulb. He makes a decision to take his inventions to the World Council of Scholars when they arrive in his town in a few days' time, so that they will recognize his talent and allow him to work with them, as well as to make what he sees as a valuable contribution to his fellow men. However, one night he loses track of time in the underground tunnel and his absence from the Home of the Street Sweepers is noticed. When he refuses to say where he has been, he is arrested and sent to the Palace of Corrective Detention, from which he easily escapes after being tortured. The day after his escape, he walks in on the World Council of Scholars and presents his work to them. Horrified, they reject it because it was not authorized by a Council and threatens to upset the equilibrium of their world. When they try to destroy his invention, he takes it and flees into the Uncharted Forest which lies outside the City. Upon entering the Uncharted Forest, Equality begins to realize that he is free, that he no longer must wake up every morning with his brothers to sweep the streets. Since it was illegal for men of the City to enter or even think of the Forest, he was not pursued once he crossed its threshold. He can ""rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again."" Now that he sees this, he is not stricken with the sense that he will die at the fangs of the beasts of the forest as a result of his transgressions. He develops a new understanding of the world and his place in it. On his second day of living in the forest, Equality stumbles upon the Golden One, Liberty 5-3000, who has followed him from the City. They embrace, struggling to express their feelings for each other as they do not know how to verbally express themselves as individuals. They find and enter a house from the Unmentionable Times in the mountains, perfectly preserved for hundreds of years by thick overgrowth, and decide to live in it. While reading books from the house's library, Equality and Liberty discover that the Unspeakable Word, the one that carries the penalty of death, is ""I"", given through the power of ""ego"". Recognizing its sacred value and the individuality it expresses, they give themselves new names from the books: Equality becomes ""Prometheus"" and Liberty becomes ""Gaea"". As the book closes, Prometheus talks about the past, wonders how men could give up their individuality, and charts a future in which they will regain it. The last word of the book, ""EGO"", is inscribed by Prometheus on a rock and hung over his front door."
760,OtherSpace,science," The story begins with Xander and Jacob hunting gruskers, strange plant-eating creatures. Later, Jacob reveals that he wants to go to Teiresias in hopes of meeting the other escaped Seers. Delaney sells her eyes to buy his passage aboard the Odessa, commanded by Captain Bennet. Jacob becomes acquainted with the crew, but is wary of Folgrin, a businessman with strange eyes who seems suspicious. Aboard the ship, they go into Otherspace, a place encountered by entering a wormhole, and Jacob discovers that he is able to move during Otherspace, while others are rendered immobile. When the ship crashes on Maker's Drift, a dark, neglected planet surrounded in superstition, only Bennet, Folgrin, and Jacob survive. After Jacob meets a strange couple, he and Bennet buy passage aboard a passenger liner to Teiresias, a strange planet where one half of the planet receives sunlight and the other is dark, cold, and barren. At Teiresias, Jacob eventually meets Avery, another Blinder who received vision. Jacob is taken to a base on the dark side of Teiresias where he meets the other Blinders who received sight and escaped."
761,Iceworld,science," The novel concerns an interplanetary narcotics agent who is forced to work on an incredibly cold world (from his point of view — the planet is in fact Earth), where he teams up with natives of the alien planet (humans) in his attempt to stop the smuggling of a dangerous drug (tobacco) to Sirius. Although the story involves both aliens and humans, it is told primarily from an alien perspective."
762,Riddley Walker,science," Riddley Walker is set about two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated world civilizations. The main action of the story begins when the young narrator, Riddley, stumbles upon efforts to recreate a weapon of the ancient world. The novel's characters live a harsh life in a small area which is presently the English county of Kent, and know nothing of the world outside of ""Inland"" (England). Their level of civilization is similar to England's prehistoric Iron Age, although they do not produce their own iron but salvage it from ancient machinery. Church and state have combined into one secretive institution, whose mythology, based on misinterpreted stories of the war and an old Catholic saint (Eustace), is enacted in puppet shows."
763,Hilldiggers,science," The novel describes the initial diplomatic contact between the Polity (an AI governed interstellar empire) and the isolated planets of Sudoria and Brumal who had been at war for nearly a century. The inhabitants of these two hostile worlds had to make many changes to their bodies and societies in order to survive, rendering their appearances and attitudes quite different from that of a 'standard' human of the time. Contact is being made officially by Consul Assessor David McCrooger, a hooper come diplomat from the planet Spatterjay, while the system is secretly observed by a Polity surveillance drone named Tigger. The Sudorians have also discovered an alien artifact they have nicknamed the ""Worm"". Research on this artifact enabled the Sudorians to make many technological advances that eventually gave them the upper hand in the conflict, allowing them to win the war with Brumal. Following the war, the Brumellians were nearly completely wiped out. Over time, the causes of the war began to be questioned in Sudoria as many of the justifications that had been taken for granted started to be doubted. Much of the story revolves around a conflict between two Sudorian factions; Fleet, who were once the dominant faction during the war, responsible for Sudoria's defence and navy, including the Hilldiggers, and the Orbital Combine, a large alliance of spacestations and other facilities orbiting around Sudoria, who both study and contain the Worm. The ""hilldiggers"" are the most powerful weapons in the Sudorian/Brumallian system. Part of the Sudorian Fleet, each of these 2 mile long ships are armed with ""gravtech"" weapons so powerful they can create new mountain ranges when used against a planetary surface, hence their name. The hilldiggers devastated the surface of Brumal, destroying the majority of Brumellian cities in a near genocidal final assault. After the war, the Hilldiggers remain the most powerful vessels in the Sudorian/Brumallian system."
764,The Worthing Chronicle,science," Jason Worthing and one of his descendants, Justice, go to a small village on a backward world to get a boy named Lared to write a book for them. This book is about why Abner Doon destroyed the empire and the planet Capitol and why Jason's descendants destroyed the planet Worthing. It also explains why people all over the settled part of the galaxy are no longer being protected by ""God"" from pain and hardship. The Worthing Chronicle is an expansion of Card’s first novel, Hot Sleep."
765,Star Trek: The Motion Picture,science," The original historic 5-year mission is over. All of the Enterprises original crew have pursued other jobs, only to be called back into action. The USS Enterprise has been refitted and the original crew must deal with an incredibly destructive power that threatens the Earth and the human race."
766,Behind Enemy Lines,science," The book begins with Ro Laren, former Enterprise crew member turned Maquis officer taking command of a ship in the hopes of heading to Federation lines to safety. But they soon run into trouble when they are attacked by Jem'Hadar attack craft. Another Starfleet ship, the Aurora comes to assist, but it is no use. Both ships send distress calls, and one ship comes to their aid: the Enterprise. As this is happening, in a distant galaxy, another former Enterprise crewman witnesses the destruction of a Cardassian mining craft as he is herded onto a Dominion space station. The space station not only houses prisoners of war, but also serves as a base of operations as the Dominion attempts to construct an artificial wormhole. Sam Lavelle finds Taurik, yet another former crewman also being herded into the station up to the male prisoners compound. Upon entering, Sam is berated for agreeing to be the Liaison Officer of their pod, but he is ""rescued"" by the call of the Vorta in command of the station, and upon entering a ball, is confronted by a Founder, with the message that he is to be given command of a ship. On his crew are Taurik, and the mastermind of the whole wormhole operation, Enrak Grof, a Trill who values his work over alliances. The Enterprise enters the battle, and rescues the Bajoran transport, but unfortunately the Aurora is destroyed in the battle. Captain Jean-Luc Picard learns of the wormhole's construction, and prepares to take Laren, Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge, and a small crew in an attempt to destroy it. The crew disembarks, and after some run ins with Cardassians, Jem'Hadar, Ferengi and Romulans, they reach the wormhole, and using a tractor beam, they attempt to send thousands of small asteroids careening into it, but decide to instead destroy the mining craft and apparently halt any chance of completing the wormhole. They prepare to fire, but learn that the craft is actually full of Federation prisoners. They save the prisoners and destroy the craft. But returning home, they learn from Grof that their ship wasn't the only one sent to mine the metal, meaning that the wormhole still could be completed."
767,Hardwired,science," The Orbital Corporations now control the world. In the ruins of an America ravaged by the Rock War, ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, who can be ""hardwired"" via skull sockets directly to his ride, has become a panzerboy, a hi-tech smuggler riding armored hovertanks through the balkanized countryside. He teams up with Sarah, another tough-as-nails gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals. They gather an unlikely gang of misfits for a ride that will take them to the edge of the atmosphere."
768,Reap the Whirlwind,science," The Taurus Reach is a mysterious section of space watched over by Starbase 47, AKA Vanguard. It is home to the Shedai, an ancient race of aliens that have been in suspended animation. They have awakened, threatening Vanguard, the USS Sagittarius and peace for the Federation."
769,The Stranger,science," Rachel's father asks her to move with him to another state. After some reconnaissance work, Marco and Tobias find an entrance to the underground Yeerk Pool, in one of the changing rooms at The Gap. The Animorphs decide to infiltrate the pool and to try to find the location of the Earth-based Kandrona by going in as cockroaches. Once inside the complex, however, they get caught on the tongue of a Taxxon. As they are about to be devoured, time freezes and they feel themselves being forcibly brought out of morph. They are then introduced to an all-powerful being called an Ellimist. The Ellimist tells the kids that he cannot interfere with other species, but when species are in danger of becoming extinct, he can step in and save a sample. He informs them that he wants to preserve part of Earth's beauty, along with some humans, because the Yeerks are going to win the war in the future. The Animorphs ask how much time they have to consider the offer, but the Ellimist tells them that they must decide now. If they choose yes, they and their families would be transported to another planet, but if they choose no, everything would be returned to the way it was before the Ellimist's arrival. The group puts the decision up to a vote, and during the deliberation, Jake and Rachel notice a drop shaft and a human frozen in the act of moving up in it. The Animorphs choose not to accept the Ellimist's offer and are immediately back in cockroach morph on a Taxxon's tongue. They are able to demorph and fight their way to the drop shaft to escape the Yeerk pool. Later, The Ellimist appears to the group again to give them the choice one more time. To aid their decision, he transports them to a grim future in which the Yeerks have enslaved Earth. Rachel notices, with some confusion, that most of the skyscrapers and buildings in the city have been leveled except for the tallest one: the EGS Tower. This tower stood at the base of a large, open Yeerk pool and was covered with a shiny dome. After they return to their own time, the Animorphs reverse their earlier decision and accept the Ellimist's offer. They expect to be immediately whisked away, however, nothing happens. Rachel is disconcerted by this and concludes that the Ellimist did not transport them because he wanted a different answer. While thinking on it, she realizes that only because of the Ellimist's first appearance were they able to see the drop shaft and know that there was a chance to escape the Taxxon's grip. She then determines that during the trip to the future, the Ellimist was once again simply trying to show them something that he could not overtly tell them without interfering. She remembers the EGS Tower, deduces that the Kandrona must be located there, and gathers the rest of the Animorphs for a raid. After a vicious battle just before dawn, the Animorphs manage to take the top floor of the tower and destroy the Kandrona by shoving it out of the window. The Ellimist appears to them again, and confirms Rachel's suspicion that even he cannot tell the future, and humans might win the war yet. Rachel tells her father she can't move with him. *The Ellimist is introduced. *The Earth-based Kandrona of the Animorphs' city area is destroyed, but it is replaced three weeks and a few books later."
770,Island in the Sea of Time,science," An elliptical region, including the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts and the United States Coast Guard ship Eagle, is transported by an unknown phenomenon (called ""The Event"") back in time to the Bronze Age circa 1250s BC (corresponding to the late Heroic Age of the Trojan War). As the truth of what has happened sinks in panic grips the island. Chief of Police Jared Cofflin is given emergency powers and begins organizing the people to help produce food for the island so they can feed themselves. Meanwhile Captain Marian Alston takes the Eagle to Britain, with Ian Arnstein and Doreen Rosenthal as interpreters, where they trade Nantucket made goods with the Iraiina, which translates as ""Noble ones"", a tribe that has been steadily invading the island, for grain. The Iraiina are just one of the many Sun People Tribes. As a gift the Iraiina chief gives Marian a slave, Swindapa, a captured female ""Earth People"" warrior. Swindapa is freed and decides to stay with Marian. The Eagle leaves for Nantucket but takes with them Isketerol, a Tartessian merchant who hopes to learn from the Americans. While the people of Nantucket work for their survival, William Walker, a lieutenant on the Eagle, decides that with modern technology he could become a king in this time. With the help of Isketerol and others, Walker convinces some naive environmentalists to steal a ship and kidnap Cofflin's wife so they can give guns to Native Americans. Meanwhile Walker and Isketerol steal another ship and return to Britain to recruit soldiers for their eventual takeover of Greece. Marian decides to rescue Cofflin's wife first and saves her after defeating an Olmec army. Time passes as Walker solidifies his control over the Sun People and Nantucket creates a new government and prepares to take down Walker. Marian returns to Britain with a small army and uses Swindapa, who has become her lover, to convince the Earth People to fight with them to defeat Walker. Both sides meet at the Battle of the Downs and though Nantucket and its allies are victorious, Walker manages to escape with his followers to Greece."
771,Broken Angels,science," Some 30 years after Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs is now serving in Carrera's Wedge, a mercenary organisation which joins a corporate war on a distant colony, Sanction IV, and fights the rebellion against the corporate-sponsored government. While having his latest body repaired after a disastrous campaign, Kovacs is approached by pilot Jan Schneider, who is looking for protection for an expedition to exploit a Martian artifact discovered just before the war broke out. ""Martian"" artifacts have been known for many years at this point, one of them being featured in Altered Carbon. Later it is realized that the ""Martians"" were not from Mars, but were a technologically advanced species that left artifacts on many planets, including Mars and Kovacs' home world. The artifact, located in the middle of the war zone, is actually a portal linked to a point in outer space where a Martian starship lies. Kovacs and Schneider formulate a plan to recover the portal and begin by rescuing Tanya Wardani, the archaeologist who coordinated the pre-war dig, from a prison camp. Unable to reach the heavily contested location alone, Kovacs enlists the support of one of the major companies involved in feeding the war, the Mandrake Corporation, which is represented by an executive named Matthias Hand. Kovacs and Hand buy hundreds of soldiers' stacks from ""The Soul Market"" and from them select an elite squad for the expedition. Hand secretly leaks information that prompts the rebels to drop nuclear bombs on the city of Sauberville close to the site, which clears the site of opposing forces and the recovery expedition begins. Near the artifact, an abandoned fishing boat is found with two dead bodies, drifting in its net. The artifact is a wormhole gate that allows instantaneous transport to an outer area of the Sanction star system where an ancient Martian warship is adrift. The archaeologist starts her work to translate the Martian ""technoglyphs"" on the artifact in order to activate it. While awaiting Wardani's progress, the party are slowly being poisoned by radioactive fallout from the blast. During their first night at the dig site, an unknown member of the party attempts to sabotage the mission by using a corrosion grenade to destroy equipment aboard their shuttle. Upon securing the area, they encounter a group of nanodes - microscopic machines that can assemble into an intelligent composite machine able to learn how to defend itself once attacked in a process like evolution. Hand reveals to Kovacs that nanodes were deployed by a rival representative of the Mandrake Corporation in an attempt to secure the site. The nanodes evolve into more and more aggressive forms which attack the squad several times, eventually killing two members. During the last and strongest attack by nanodes, Tanya succeeds in opening the portal which, when confronted by the nanodes, deactivates them. The party goes through the portal and finds a huge and inactive Martian starship, along with the bodies of Tanya's original archaeological team. Kovacs' squad enters the starship in order to place an ownership claim buoy inside. Kovacs notices that Schneider is free from radiation sickness. When confronted he escapes in the shuttle, killing another member in the process. Unknown to Schneider, Kovacs had mined the shuttle to explode on gate re-entry, apparently eliminating the mission's traitor. During their exploration, the Martian starship is attacked by an unknown starship which causes its automated defence systems to come online. During the attack the party begins to experience visions and emotions from the dead Martians and comes close to madness. Hand realizes the danger and orders Kovacs to shoot the others with a stunning weapon to render them unconscious. After the battle is over, the Wedge rescues and then imprisons the remaining members of the squad as one of them is wanted as a traitor by the Wedge. By this point Kovacs has become completely loyal to his new squad and retains no allegiance to the Wedge. During the traitor's torture, he is able to free his squad and kill the entire Wedge unit, apart from Carrera, who manages to escape through the portal. Despite being almost dead from radiation exposure, Kovacs follows him through and kills him. Kovacs realizes that Wardani sabotaged the first archaeological expedition after discovering that her team wanted to use the Martian ship as a weapon. She was responsible for the two corpses on the fishing boat and for closing the portal behind the others. She also destroyed the equipment in the shuttle to prevent the team from finding out what happened. Tanya confesses everything to Kovacs and decides to stay and oversee the recovery of the portal, while Kovacs trades the rights to the Martian ship for safe passage out of the war zone for the surviving members of his team, who leave for the Latimer system."
772,Eon,science," The asteroid itself is an elongated prolate spheroid which appears to be virtually identical to Juno, a large asteroid in the main belt. It has been hollowed out along its long axis, and subdivided into seven vast cylindrical chambers. It rotates to provide artificial gravity. The chambers are terraformed, the second and third containing abandoned cities which appear to be built by humans from Earth's future. The humans who built the Stone seem to come from approximately 1,200 years in the future. Their libraries record that human civilization was nearly destroyed by ""The Death,"" a calamitous World War involving nuclear weapons, in 2005. Events recorded in the libraries prior to The Death (with the exception of the arrival of the Stone itself) are almost identical to events occurring on Earth in the explorers' present time. Rising tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., now exacerbated by both rumors of the information in the libraries and the general situation on the Stone (the Soviets and their allies have only limited access to the asteroid), suggest that not only is such a war imminent, but the appearance of the Stone may actually make it worse than recorded. Since the Stone appears immediately prior to the recorded date of The Death, and there is no record of its own appearance at the time, the scientists reason that the Stone may come from an alternate future. Patricia Luisa Vasquez, a brilliant but naïve young theoretical physicist from Caltech, is hastily sent to the Stone to determine if The Death can be avoided on the current timeline, and to work out the mysteries of the corridor. A startling discovery is that the Stone is larger on the inside than outside: the seventh chamber extends beyond the end of the asteroid and appears to go on forever. When Patricia is mysteriously abducted by a strange looking human and an alien, an expedition is sent after her. They travel down the final chamber (called ""the corridor"" or ""the Way""), where they encounter humanity's descendants. The society of human descendents, called the Hexamon, live in the Axis City, a large structure on the axis of the Way, one million kilometers from the Stone, which they call Thistledown. The Hexamon is presided over by a governing body known as the Nexus. It is loosely divided into two social groups, Naderites and Geshels, based on widely differing cultural and political viewpoints. The conservative Naderites reject much of the high technology trappings of their society for a simpler life. They are in fact, followers of Ralph Nader, whom they call ""the Good Man"". Nader, who was ""martyred"" during The Death, came to be canonized by the followers who took his name. This was largely because he opposed the technology (particularly nuclear energy) that led to the catastrophic war. The futuristic Geshels, on the other hand, embrace all manner of technological advances including human augmentation and artificial bodies. Many radical Geshels go so far as to choose non-human (or neomorphic) shapes for themselves, as opposed to moderate ones who choose a more human (or homorphic) appearance."
773,The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth,science," The Food of the Gods is divided into three ""books"": ""Book I: The Discovery of the Food""; ""Book II: The Food in the Village""; and ""Book III: The Harvest of the Food."" Book I begins with satirical remarks on ""scientists,"" then introduces Mr. Bensington, a research chemist specializing in ""the More Toxic Alkaloids,"" and Professor Redwood, who after studying reaction times takes an interest in ""Growth."" Redwood's suggestion ""that the process of growth probably demanded the presence of a considerable quantity of some necessary substance in the blood that was only formed very slowly"" causes Bensington to begin searching for such a substance. After a year of research and experiment, he finds a way to make what he calls in his initial enthusiasm ""the Food of the Gods,"" but later more soberly dubs Herakleophorbia IV. Their first experimental success is with chickens that grow to about six times normal size on an experimental farm at Hickleybrow, near Urshot in Kent (where H.G. Wells was born and raised). Unfortunately Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, the slovenly couple hired to feed and monitor the chickens, allow Herakleophorbia IV to enter the local food chain, and the other creatures that get the food grow to six or seven times their normal size: not only plants, but also wasps, earwigs, and rats. The chickens escape, overrunning a nearby town. Bensington and Redwood, impractical researchers, do nothing until a decisive and efficient ""well-known civil engineer"" of their acquaintance named Cossar arrives to organize a party of eight to (""Obviously!"") destroy the wasps' nest, hunt down the monstrous vermin, and burn the experimental farm to the ground. As debate ensues about the substance, popularly known as ""Boomfood,"" children are being given the substance and grow to enormous size: Redwood's son (""pioneer of the new race""), Cossar's three sons, and Mrs. Skinner's grandson, Caddles. A certain Dr. Winkles makes the substance available to a princess, and there are other giants as well. These massive offspring eventually reach about 40 feet in height. At first the giants are tolerated, but as they grow more and more restrictions are imposed. With time most of the English population comes to resent the young giants as well as changes to flora, fauna, and the organization of society that become more extensive with each passing year. Bensington is nearly lynched by an angry mob, and subsequently retires from active life to Mount Glory Hydrotherapeutic Hotel. Book II offers an account the development of Mrs. Skinner's grandson, Albert Edward Caddles, as an epitome of ""the coming of Bigness in the world."" Wells takes the occasion to satirize the conservative rural gentry (Lady Wondershoot) and Church of England clergy (the Vicar of Cheasing Eyebright) in describing life in a backward little village. Book III begins with a chapter entitled ""The Altered World"" that dramatizes how life has changed by portraying the shocked reaction of a Rip van Winkle-like character released from prison after being incarcerated for twenty years. British society has learned to cope with occasional outbreaks of giant pests (mosquitoes, spiders, rats, etc.), but the coming to maturity of the giant children brings a reactionary politician, Caterham, into power. Caterham has been promoting a program to destroy the Food of the Gods and hinting that he will suppress the giants, and now begins to execute his plan. By coincidence, it is just at this moment that Caddles rebels against spending his life working in a chalk pit and sets out to see the world. In London he is surrounded by thousands of tiny people and confused by everything he sees. He demands to know what it's all for and where he fits in, but no one can answer his questions; after refusing to return to his chalk pit, Caddles is shot and killed by the police. The conclusion of the novel features a tenderly described romance between the young giant Redwood and the unnamed princess. Their love blossoms just as Caterham, who has at last attained a position of power, launches an effort to suppress the giants. But after two days of fighting, the giants, who have taken refuge in an enormous pit, have held their own. Their bombardment of London with shells containing large quantities of Herakleophorbia IV forces Caterham to call a truce. The British leader is satirized as a demagogue, a ""vote-monster"" for whom nothing but ""gatherings, and caucuses, and votes &mdash; above all votes"" are real. Caterham employs Redwood père as an envoy to send a proposed settlement whose terms would demand that the giants live apart somewhere and forgo the right to reproduce. The offer is indignantly rejected at a meeting of the giants, where one of Cossar's sons expresses a belief in growth as part of the law of life: ""We fight for not for ourselves but for growth, growth that goes on for ever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for evermore. To grow according to the will of God!"" The novel concludes with the world on the verge of a long struggle between the ""little people"" and the Children of the Food, whose ultimate victory is perhaps suggested by the novel's final image: ""For one instant [a son of Cossar] shone, looking up fearlessly into the starry deeps, mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light had passed and he was no more than a great black outline against the starry sky, a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture the firmament of heaven and all its multitude of stars."""
774,Blind Lake,science," The novel deals with a government installation at Blind Lake, Minnesota, where scientists observe sentient life on a planet 51 light-years away, using telescopes powered by quantum computers that have advanced beyond human understanding. A sudden and unexplained facility lockdown extends into a long-term quarantine. Observation department head Marguerite Hauser tries to carry on with her work studying the alien life while taking care of her socially-challenged daughter Tess, warding off her ex-husband Ray, and deciding how she feels about houseguest and disgraced journalist Chris."
775,Tales of Pirx the Pilot,science," The stories are set somewhere in the XXI-XXII centuries, in a futuristic Occidental world (as opposed to a Communist Utopia where some of Lem's other novels take place) in which Mankind is starting to colonize the Solar System, has some settlements on the Moon and Mars, and is even beginning the exploration of the other solar systems. Pirx is a cadet, a pilot, and finally a captain of a merchant spaceship, and the stories relate his life and various things that happen to him during his travels between the Earth, Moon, and Mars."
776,Eifelheim,science," In 1349, Eifelheim, a small town in the Black Forest of Germany, vanished: it ceased to appear on any maps or in any documents, having apparently been abandoned and never resettled by its community. The disappearance is no mystery&nbsp;— the Black Death devastated Europe. But why was the area never resettled, unlike most other depopulated areas? The mystery intrigues cliometric historian Tom Schwoerin, who sets out to solve the puzzle with the help of his partner, theoretical physicist Sharon Nagy. They gradually uncover evidence of an alien crash-landing in the area. The village was originally called Oberhochwald, and then afterwards renamed Teufelheim (Devil home in German), which was eventually distorted to Eifelheim. They also learn of the town's priest, Father Dietrich, an educated man who served the town in 1348, as the Black Death was beginning to strengthen its grip on medieval Europe. Dietrich, it appears, acted as humanity's first ambassador, and was the primary liaison between Eifelheim and the aliens who happened to wreck their starship in the woods outside the village. The novel concentrates primarily on the alien encounter in the 14th century, paying special attention to the interplay between Dietrich, a Christian scholar who is fond of Aristotle and metaphor, and technologically advanced, post-Einsteinian band of otherworldly travelers. The interplay includes two theological questions. The first, ""can aliens become Christians?"" is answered in the affirmative, as some of them become converts. The second, ""where is God when things go wrong?"" is more difficult to answer, for both the Germans and the alien Krenken. The Germans are stricken by the Black Death, and the Krenken, who are immune to the disease, but cannot return to their home, require an amino acid not found in earthly organisms. The answer is two-fold: there is always hope, and God's love is expressed to us in the unselfish love of fellow creatures. Dietrich's attempts to understand the science of the Krenken (their view of the solar system, and gravity, is quite different from his) and their attempts to explain it to him, are also an important theme. William of Ockham appears as a minor character. Nagy's search for a new physics, which will lead to a new means of space travel, is helped by Schwoerin's research. He discovers a Krenken circuit diagram, drawn in a manuscript by monks."
777,Candle,science," Set in the year 2087, on a nearly crime-free Earth in which humans are under the telepathic control of the artificial intelligence One True, the story is narrated in the first person by its main character, forty-nine-year-old Currie Curtis Curran, a retired mercenary soldier and “cowboy hunter” who is recalled from retirement to capture “Lobo” Dave Singleton, the last of the cowboys, people who have remained beyond of the control of One True by retreating into the Colorado wilderness. Currie’s contact with One True is through a copy of the Resuna “meme”, a “neurocode” program uploaded into the brain, and an implanted “cellular jack” radio device. In addition to communicating with One True, Resuna monitors its host’s thoughts and emotions, provides everyday information and communication, downloads requested memories or skills, adjusts their physiology, and, when offered the spoken code phrase “let overwrite, let override”, can assume control of its host’s body, and erase memories. Resuna learns its host’s preferences and habits, is friendly and communicative, and can even play chess with its host or engage in other pastimes. Ten years before, Currie was the leader of a team of cowboy hunters who captured Lobo’s cowboy gang after a long pursuit in which several of the team were killed and several, including Currie, badly injured. During their final confrontation, Currie sees Lobo fall from a high cliff, apparently to his death. In his briefing by One True, Currie is shown the recorded memories of a mother and daughter beaten, raped, and robbed by Lobo days earlier. Although such emotions are normally kept in check by Resuna, Currie is allowed to feel revulsion and hatred of Lobo, to improve his performance as a hunter. One True explains to Currie that, to decrease his chance of being detected and evaded, he has been assigned to hunt Lobo alone. After goodbyes to his wife of 23 years, Mary, Currie is dropped of by diskster (a futuristic, automatically piloted hovercraft) with various high-tech equipment, including an advanced cold weather suit, shape-adjusting ski/snowshoes, and a shelter that self-assembles from collected carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen matter. Within days, Currie is captured by Lobo, awakening after many days unconscious from the severe blow to his head that incapacitated him in a comfortable, geothermally-heated underground lair, to discover his copy of Resuna no longer responding to his mental or spoken requests. Nursed back to health by Lobo/Dave, the two men exchange life stories, which are so similar they joke that they could be brothers. No longer controlled by Resuna and One True, Currie agrees to join Dave in an effort to hide from One True. About half of the book consists of Currie and Dave’s telling of their personal and the Earth’s general history. Among the details revealed are that the beatings and rapes shown to Currie were fabrications, and that the mother and child are actually Dave’s wife and child, who were captured and “turned” by One True during the “Meme Wars”, giving them false memories of their history, from which, during Dave’s actual visit to them to obtain medicine and supplies, he was able to temporarily free them. Currie’s search for Dave resulted in enough information being uploaded that they must abandon his lair and attempt to build another, while remaining undetected by One True’s network of surveillance satellites. While caching supplies, Currie has a skiing fall, and, shaken up and angry, reflexively says “let overwrite, let override”, to find himself immediately calm. A little later, he realizes that after saying the trigger phrase, he was unconscious and under the control of his Resuna for several minutes, during which time it/he carelessly left a trail visible to satellites, and, he assumes, Resuna uploaded information to One True, though he is still unable to make the usual mental contact with Resuna. Hurrying to their old lair to warn Dave, he discovers in a previously unexplored room there a suspended animation device, unmentioned in Dave’s story, and beyond anything he could have constructed himself. Dave informs him that, while he was unconscious, Dave used various means to burn out his cellular jack, assuring that even if his Resuna reactivated, it would be unable to contact One True, and promising to tell him the omitted parts of his story after they have fled to safety. After abandoning the first lair, while the two work to excavate their new one, Dave tells more of his life story. As Dave reaches its conclusion, Currie realizes that his disabled Resuna is not due to his head injury, but due to Dave uploading an additional meme, “Freecyber”. Although designed during the Meme Wars to disable other memes, principally One True, Dave’s story explained that every version of Freecyber had “mutated” into as controlling a meme as the ones it was intended to fight. Enraged, Currie attacks Dave, and is on the verge of killing him when Dave shouts “let overwrite, let override”, disabling Currie, and flees. Upon regaining consciousness, Currie finds his Resuna fully functional, though still unable to contact with One True. He pursues Dave, arriving at the original lair to discover him already captured by a large team of hunters. Making no effort to fight or hide, Curry joins them, and returns to his home and civilization. Back in civilization, a cellular jack is installed in Dave’s head, but One True is unable to load a functioning Resuna in his brain. Currie’s Resuna is behaving atypically, indicating to he and it that it has become a true, human-like person. He neither requests nor is compelled to have his burnt-out jack repaired, and demands to be allowed to speak with One True via eyes and ears. One True speaks with him, explaining that his Resuna is an experimental version designed to interact with Freecyber, and that his mission was planned to result in his capture in order for One True to obtain a “wild copy” of the last generation of Freecyber for its research. As a learning AI, One True explains, it is dissatisfied with its lack of true human empathy and the lack of freedom accorded humans under the present scheme, and seeks to change it, without allowing human society to return to its previous warring, suffering state. The story closes a few years later, with Dave, his wife Nancy, Currie, and Mary listening to Dave’s daughter Kelly give a philosophical speech at her high school graduation, while Currie, his cellular jack repaired, converses with One True about Kelly’s speech, the reluctance of many people to replace their old, more controlling version of Resuna with new ones, and the nature of the human experience."
778,Son of the Tree,science," Son of the Tree begins with the arrival of Joe Smith on the planet Kyril, so distant that Earth is but a myth. Kyril is dominated by a religious aristocracy called ""Druids"", who rule over the five billion commoner ""Laity"", and who control worship of the ""Tree of Life"" – a huge tree with a trunk five miles in diameter, and height of twelve miles. The Druids are xenophobic, and consider Joe to be a spy. For unknown reasons, he is befriended by Hableyat, a native of the world of Mangtse, self-admitted spy who finds him a job as a chauffer for Druid Princess Elfane. After witnessing a murder committed by Princess Elfane's lover Manaolo, Joe Smith flees Kyril on the spaceship Belsaurion bound for the world Ballenkarch, his original destination – only to find that his fellow passengers include Hableyat, Manaolo and Princess Elfane, and that he is caught up as a pawn in a complex three-way political plot between the opposing worlds. Surviving a couple of murder attempts and puzzling over the intentions of Hableyat and Princess Elfane, he arrives on Ballenkarch, where he finds to his surprise that the earthman he was seeking has made himself ruling prince, with the woman he left behind on Earth as his princess. However, his biggest surprise is yet to come, when he discovers the horrific true nature of the so-called ""Tree of Life""."
779,Our Friends from Frolix 8,science," In the 22nd Century, the Earth is ruled by the ""New Men"", humans with superhuman mental abilities, who share power with ""Unusuals"" that possess psionic abilities, such as telepathy, telekinesis and precognition. (In its use of psionic abilities as a major plot element, this work is similar to Ubik.) To fight them, Thors Provoni has gone deep into space to find help. He is returning with a sentient protoplasmic alien being, a ""Friend from Frolix 8"", (known as Morgo Rahn Wilc) to fight for the ""Old Men"" (non-telepathic humanity, also incapable of enhanced cognitive abilities). Against this background, Nick Appleton (an Old Man) and Willis Gram (an Unusual) are political rivals. Initially compliant to the ""New Men""/""Unusual"" regime, Appleton's son Bobby fails a Civil Service examination which is deliberately geared toward failing ""Old Man"" applicants. At the same time, Terran authorities are holding ""Under Man"" activist Cordon imprisoned, preparing for his execution. Appleton becomes politicised, and falls for Charlotte (""Charley"") Boyer, a sixteen year old subversive. She is involved with alcoholic Denny (in this future, alcohol prohibition has apparently returned as a social policy). After the authorities discover that Appleton has become 'subversive,' they attempt to apprehend him and Charley, whom Willis Gram is also obsessed with. Meanwhile, Thors Provoni's craft has eluded Terran fleet defences and is rapidly nearing Earth, leading to paranoid fears from the erstwhile governing elite about the possibility of violent alien invasion. In the event, Provoni does land, but Morgo Rahn Wilc protects him from an assassination attempt. Provoni is actually a ""New Man"" and an ""Unusual"" at the same time himself, and with the assistance of his alien companion, he strips all Unusuals of their psionic abilities, and all New Men of their advanced cognitive abilities, rendering the New Men intellectually disabled and only capable of childlike cognition."
780,Halo: Ghosts of Onyx,science," The story begins with a group of SPARTAN-IIIs being deployed to a Covenant fleet refueling depot in the year 2545. The soldiers destroy the facility, but all save two of the three hundred SPARTANs are killed. The narrative then moves back to 2531, where SPARTAN-IIs are deployed against human insurrectionists; though the team is almost captured, the timely intervention of Kurt-051 allows the team to complete their mission. Meanwhile, Colonel James Ackerson meets with the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). Ackerson announces his plan to create a new breed of SPARTANs which retains much of the supersoldiers' effectiveness, without the high price tag of the SPARTAN-II program. These SPARTAN-IIIs are trained by Franklin Mendez, as well as Kurt-051. With his death staged by ONI, Kurt-051 is placed in full charge of SPARTAN-III training, under the name and rank of Lieutenant Kurt Ambrose. The SPARTAN-III project is carried out on a secret ONI planet named Onyx, where there is also an archaeological excavation of ancient Forerunner ruins in an area known as ""Zone 67"". When a company of SPARTAN-IIIs goes missing in Zone 67, it is declared off-limits to all personnel. Like the SPARTAN-IIs, the SPARTAN-III candidates undergo radical cybernetic and biological enhancements and are outfitted with special armor to increase their abilities. The first SPARTAN-III company proves highly successful, but is wiped out when ordered to destroy a Covenant orbital shipyard in 2537. Shaken by the massacre of his troops, Kurt improves the training regimen for his next batch of SPARTAN-III recruits, but they too are all killed in action so Kurt, in an effort to reduce casualties, institutes illegal biological modifications on the third company of SPARTANs. While conducting a training exercise near Zone 67, UNSC personnel find themselves under attack by alien robotic drones. Meanwhile, Dr. Catherine Halsey, the SPARTAN-II project's creator, along with the SPARTAN Kelly-087 arrive in the Onyx system. As they near the surface of the planet they are attacked by more robot drones and crash, meeting up with the human survivors of the attacks. Halsey identifies the robotic drones as Forerunner Sentinels from the artificial intelligence Cortana's logs of the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. Halsey sends a message back to Earth, which is under attack by Covenant; in response, Lord Hood sends the SPARTAN-IIs Fred-104, Linda-058, and Will-043 to Onyx. At the Forerunner ringworld Delta Halo, the Covenant are in the midst of a war. Elites intercept Halsey's distress signal and learn of the existence of Onyx and its Forerunner technology. Both the Covenant and the UNSC forces which arrive at Onyx are attacked by Sentinels. The entire UNSC fleet at Onyx is destroyed by the ensuing battle, save for one stealth ship, the Dusk, which stays hidden, observing the events. The remaining human forces on Onyx discover a Forerunner city being rapidly uncovered by the Sentinels, and are guided into a massive sphere by Dr. Halsey. She determines that the entire planet is actually a ""Shield World"" constructed by the Forerunners to protect themselves from the firing of the Halo ringworlds, which are designed to eradicate all sentient life. Fighting off Covenant pursuers, the humans discover an entrance leading to a Dyson Sphere. Kurt remains behind in order to detonate two nuclear weapons to stop the Covenant from following the humans into the Sphere. Hiding at a distance from Onyx, the Dusk watches as Onyx's surface rips apart to reveal that the entire world is constructed of Sentinels, all connected together to provide an impenetrable defense around the Dyson Sphere at the heart of the planet. The Sentinels annihilate the remaining Covenant fleet vessels orbiting the planet and the Prowler retreats. Fred, now inside the Dyson Sphere, takes command of the survivors and orders everyone to search for method of escape."
781,Gladiator at Law,science," The action takes place in and around a future Monmouth City, New Jersey. The city proper consists of luxurious GML bubble homes which can change shape at the whim of their occupants, and anticipate their every need. At the edge of Monmouth City is the slum of Belly Rave, originally a gimcrack suburb built on a landfill and sold to unsuspecting young couples. Charles Mundin and Norvell Bligh first meet when Bligh is trying to adopt his stepdaughter, mostly at the behest of his upwardly mobile wife, Virginia. Bligh then returns to work on the next gruesomely spectacular Field Day to be organized by his company, while Mundin visits Republican Party headquarters, where he is introduced to the Lavins by his friend, the local Ward Chairman whose brother also knows Bligh. Bligh finds himself tricked out of his job by his assistant, abetted by one of the secretaries who is keen to marry a man with a job whose benefits include a GML home. Bligh is arrested when he tries to drown his sorrows, only to find his company credit card has been cancelled. Mundin uses his political connections to have Bligh freed, but then Bligh and his family are unceremoniously dumped in Belly Rave. Virginia is no stranger to the place, but Bligh needs the help of a local, who calls himself Shep. With Shep's guidance Bligh negotiates the ""public assistance"" system which ensures that nobody starves, without actually making life worth living. Shep scrapes together materials so he can paint ""rainscapes"", views of Belly Rave in the rain. Other residents indulge in a kind of barter, or petty theft, extortion, and gang crime, or simply anaesthetize themselves with liquor made from the desserts in their ration packs. Virginia, opportunistic as ever, begins eyeing Shep as a replacement for Norvell. Mundin eventually visits the Lavins, who live in a different part of Belly Rave, and meets Ryan, a broken-down corporate attorney addicted to ""yen-pox"", an opiate in the form of crude pills. Ryan has a plan for recovering the shares which Donald Lavin hid away before he was brainwashed, but the initial effort at obtaining records from GML result in Norma Lavin being kidnapped. Ryan is strangely elated, as it is evident that GML seems to think their activities are a threat, which could give him some leverage in negotiations. He decides to send Mundin to a shareholder's meeting. This entails buying a GML share on Wall Street, which has become a hybrid stock-market and public casino. Mundin braves the touts and thugs of the market to trick his way to buying a share, normally impossible because of the activities of certain brokers. Hiding out in Belly Rave, he meets Bligh, who has become adept in negotiating with the gangs there. Bligh arranges Mundin's safe passage to the company meeting, in a deliberately obscure building on Long Island. At the meeting Mundin, learning to play off the power brokers against each other, gains access to Norma who was a ""guest"" of one faction. Mundin also gains an ally in Bliss Hubble, a ""Titan of Industry"" who sees in the Lavin's shares a way to unseat the faction currently in control of GML. Recruiting a few more Titans to his cause, he takes the entire party to his elaborate GML bubble-house, which is currently configured as a Gothic mansion, thanks to a household servant with a grudge. With Bliss's backing, Ryan and Mundin are suddenly a full-fledged law firm with expensive offices. The plan Bliss hatches is to bankrupt GML rather than indulge in a proxy battle. Mundin is dispatched to sabotage certain GML houses, including the model in the Smithsonian, at the same time spreading rumors through his political connections. Bliss bankrolls some illegal medical treatment for Don Lavin, in order to reverse his brainwashing. After this, they are able to recover the Lavins' stock certificates from a bank in Ohio, where GML was founded. Norvell, meanwhile, is becoming an important man in Belly Rave. His experience catering to crowds in the Field Days allows him to organize the otherwise listless residents to clean the place up and even try some local policing. Shep, meanwhile, has become too close to Virginia, and Bligh has applied corrective action with a piece of lead pipe. At this point the much dreaded firm of ""Green, Charlesworth"" intervene. They occupy the entire Empire State Building on the otherwise uninhabited island of Manhattan. Rather than send their minions to shut down the plot, they grant Norma Lavin and Mundin an ""audience"" at their headquarters. Here they are revealed to be a grotesque pair of ancient human beings, a man and a woman, trapped in husks of bodies in glass cases, but able to exert influence with their minds, their devices, and their money. They own GML and have used it to rule their world. They claim to be centuries old, having ""fixed Mr. Lincoln's wagon"" and they threaten to do the same to Mundin and the Lavin's. Mundin identifies them as the Struldbrugs described by satirist Jonathan Swift. Returning to their offices, Mundin and Norma find that only Bliss Hubble and the increasingly comatose Ryan are still on their side. They resolve to carry on regardless, but then chaos ensues as listening devices planted by Green, Charlesworth explode around them. In the confusion, Donald disappears, responding to a subliminal signal as if he is still brainwashed. They find him at the Field Day, entered in an event where he walks a tightrope across a pool of piranha fish while under a hail of rocks from the crowd. Despite their efforts at bribing the mob not to throw anything, aided by threats from Bligh's teenage gangsters, Donald falls into the pool. Bligh is ready to sacrifice himself to save Donald, but instead the tortured artist Shep throws himself in with the fish. Declaring war on GML and Green, Charlesworth, they return to Wall Street where Mundin starts a run on the market by carefully selling off large chunks of the GML stock. After a while the selling takes on a life of its own, despite the efforts of various people, acting unwittingly on behalf of Green, Charlesworth, to have Mundin arrested on trumped-up charges, or to discourage him from selling. As the market collapses, the plotters are left with large amounts of cash, which they use to buy up GML and other companies at bargain prices. At the end they are counting their riches and savoring their triumph, just as Green, Charlesworth, across the water in Manhattan, destroy themselves in a nuclear explosion."
782,Creatures of Light and Darkness,science," The Universe was once ruled by the god Thoth, who administered the different forces in the Universe to keep things in balance. In time, he delegated this administration to his ""Angels"" (other god-like beings), who were each in charge of different ""stations"", or forces in the Universe. Such stations included the House of the Dead, the House of Life, the House of Fire, and so on. At some point, Thoth had awakened a dormant, malevolent force on a distant planet. This dark force, called the Thing That Cries In The Night, is so powerful and malevolent that it nearly obliterated Thoth's wife and threatens to consume the galaxy. Thoth works to contain and destroy the creature, and in so doing, neglects his duties in maintaining the Universe. The Angels become rebellious and use the power vacuum to fight amongst themselves for dominance Thoth's son Set, who through an anomaly in Time is also his father, fights the creature across a devastated planet. Just as Set is about to destroy the creature, he is attacked by the Angel Osiris, who unleashes the Hammer That Smashes Suns, a powerful weapon that nearly kills Set and the creature. Thoth's brother, Typhon, who was helping Set in the battle, vanishes without a trace and is presumed dead. (Typhon appears as a black horse-shadow, without a horse to cast it. He contains within himself something called Skagganauk Abyss, which resembles a black hole, not a term in common use at the time.) The Thing That Cries In The Night survived the blast, and so Thoth, who has meanwhile been utterly overthrown by his Angels, has no choice but to contain the dark force until he can find a way to destroy it. He also revives the personality of his wife and keeps her safe on a special world known only to him, where the seas are above the atmosphere, not below them. He also scatters Set's weapons and armor across the Universe for safe-keeping in the event that Set can ever be found. Having been overthrown, he is now dubbed The Prince Who Was A Thousand by all in the Universe. Some of the surviving Angels either hide among the peoples of the Universe as mysterious ""immortals"", but others—Osiris and Anubis—take over the House of Life and the House of Death, respectively. Other stations are abandoned, and Osiris and Anubis are the only two powers in the Universe now. Osiris cultivates life where he can, while Anubis works to destroy it. Plenty and famine, proliferation and plague, overpopulation and annihilation, alternate in the Worlds of Life between the two Stations, much to the detriment of those who inhabit them. The geography of this universe contains several curious places: * The House of Life, ruled by Osiris, contains a room in which Osiris has reduced various people in his past into furnishings. These furnishings can speak (or scream) via wall-mounted speakers. ** A skull (with brain) for a paperweight. ** An enemy whose nervous system is woven into a rug. Osiris enjoys jumping on the rug. *In the House of the Dead, numerous dead people of the Six Intelligent Races lie on invisible catafalques until Anubis requires them to go through the motions of pleasure—eating, drinking, dancing, making love—without any real enjoyment. Anubis likes to watch. He also stages fights between champions from the Six Races: sometimes the victor gets a job—and a name. * The planet Blis is filled to bursting with people who are inexhaustibly fertile and do not know death: the whole planet is covered with 14 interlocking cities. Indeed, one man agrees to commit suicide in front of an audience, for money to be given to his family, because most people on Bliss have never seen a death. He does so by self-immolation, after receiving the Possibly Proper Death Litany (also called the Agnostic's Prayer). * On fog-shrouded D'donori, warlords raid each others solely to capture prisoners, who will be vivisected by the town scrier, or augur. By examining their entrails, he predicts the future and answers questions. * On an unnamed planet, the sea is above the atmosphere. Here, the Prince Who Was a Thousand keeps Nephthys, his wife, who was disembodied and cannot survive on a normal planet. * In a cave, a dog worries a glove that has seen better centuries. The three-headed canine is apparently Cerberus. * On another planet, drug-maddened spearmen protect and castrated priests worship a pair of old shoes."
783,Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero,science," Following the eruption of the bloody Clone Wars at the battle of Geonosis, both sides remain deadlocked in a stalemate that can be broken only by elite warrior teams like Omega Squad, clone commandos with terrifying combat skills and a lethal arsenal. Deployed deep behind enemy lines, Omega Squad engage in sabotage, espionage, ambush, and assassination. But when the Squad is rushed to Coruscant, the war's most dangerous new hotspot, the commandos discover that they are not the only ones penetrating the heart of the enemy. A surge in Separatist attacks has been traced to a network of terrorist cells in the Republic's capital, masterminded by a mole in Command Headquarters. To identify and destroy a Separatist spy and terror network in a city full of civilians will require special talents and skills. Not even the leadership of the Jedi generals, along with the assistance of Delta Squad and a notorious ARC trooper, can even the odds against the Republic Commandos. And while success may not bring victory in the Clone Wars, failure means certain defeat."
784,Enemy Lines: Rebel Stand,science," Continuing the adventures started in Rebel Dream, Wedge Antilles continues to defend the planet Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong. After rooting out a spy in the Vong-controlled Tam Elgrin, he begins creating a superlaser, identical to the Death Star's except in one regard: it doesn't work. Using both the laser and Commander Czulkang Lah's obsession with the capture of Jaina Solo, Antilles draws the Yuuzhan Vong fleet away from Lah's flagship. While the fleet is elsewhere, the Super Star Destroyer Lusankya is fitted with a spear and flown directly into the worldship. The worldship is destroyed, and Czulkang Lah perishes. Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade Skywalker, Tahiri Veila and Wraith Squadron continue their scouting mission. There, they encounter a Dark Jedi similar to the mythical Lord Nyax, but who is really the genetically modified Dark Jedi Irek Ismaren. Nyax is more powerful than Luke, but, with the combined efforts of the Jedi and the Yuuzhan Vong, Nyax is defeated. Meanwhile, Viqi Shesh's plans to escape Coruscant are foiled by Wraith Squadron, and she commits suicide as a result. Han and Leia Organa Solo, along with their droids C-3PO and R2-D2, set off on adventures to root out and overthrow any planetary government that plans to acquiesce to the Yuuzhan Vong. One of their most dangerous missions is set on Aphran IV, though they are able to escape death with their mission a success."
785,The Ugly Little Boy,science," A Neanderthal child is brought to the present day as a result of time travel experiments by a research organization, Stasis Inc. He cannot be removed from his immediate area because of the vast energy loss and time paradoxes that would result. To take care of him, Edith Fellowes, a children's nurse, is engaged. She is initially repelled by his appearance, but soon begins to regard him as her own child, learns to love him and realizes that he is far more intelligent than she at first imagined. She names him 'Timmie' and attempts to ensure that he has the best possible childhood despite his circumstance. She is enraged when the newspapers refer to him as an ""ape-boy"". Edith's love for Timmie brings her into conflict with her employer, for whom he is more of an experimental animal than a human being. Eventually, her employer comes to the conclusion that his organization has exacted all the knowledge and publicity which could be gotten from Timmie, and that the time has come to move on to the next project. This involves bringing a Medieval peasant into the present, which necessitates the return of Timmie to his own time. Miss Fellowes fights the decision, knowing that he could not now survive, having acquired modern dependencies and speech. She decides to smuggle the boy out of the facilities, but when that plan fails, she returns to the ancient past with Timmie."
786,The Resurrection Casket,science," On a shadowy planet called Starfall, where no modern technology works, the Doctor and Rose become involved in a quest for a lost treasure that belonged to Hamlek Glint — the Resurrection Casket, supposedly the key to eternal life. But the TARDIS has stopped working too..."
787,Final Blackout,science," Set in the future, the novel follows the rise of a Lieutenant (known in the book only as ""The Lieutenant"") as he becomes dictator of England after a world war. The Lieutenant leads a ragtag army fighting for survival in a Europe ravaged by 30 years of atomic, biological and conventional warfare. As a result of the most recent war, a form of biological warfare called soldier’s sickness has ravaged England, and America was devastated by nuclear war. At the start of the novel, a quarantine placed on England due to the soldier’s sickness prevents The Lieutenant from returning to England from his encampment in France. The Lieutenant commands the Fourth Brigade, which is composed of one hundred and sixty-eight soldiers from multiple nations, leading them throughout France in search of food, supplies, arms and ammunition. Soon, Captain Malcolm informs The Lieutenant that all field officers are being recalled to General Headquarters (G.H.Q.) with their brigades to report to General Victor, the commanding officer at G.H.Q. Upon the brigade's arrival at G.H.Q., The Lieutenant is informed by General Victor and his adjutant Colonel Smythe that he is to be reassigned and will be stripped of his command. He is confined to his quarters and is told his entire brigade will be broken apart and assimilated into another brigade. Meanwhile, in the barracks at G.H.Q., the Fourth Brigade learns of crucial news through back channels: a vaccine exists for the soldier's sickness, and General Victor’s plans for their brigade. The men decide to rebel, and break through the defenses of the barracks, free The Lieutenant and kill Captain Malcolm. The Fourth Brigade successfully escapes G.H.Q. in France and begins to make their way to London, along with other soldiers who are dissatisfied with General Victor's command. A battle ensues between General Victor's men and The Lieutenant's troops. The Lieutenant and his expanded Fourth Brigade eventually successfully take control of London and subsequently all of England and Wales. The Lieutenant's government runs smoothly for years, until the battleship U.S.S. New York arrives from the U.S. carrying two United States Senators and Captain Johnson, captain of the New York and commander of the U.S. fleet. Under threat from the U.S. battleship, The Lieutenant negotiates terms to transfer power to the Senators' associates &ndash; General Victor and Colonel Smythe. If anything happens to General Victor and Colonel Smythe, the country would be controlled by its officer corps. chaired by the Lieutenants confidant Swinburne. In addition, The Lieutenant requests that immigration of Americans to England be kept to no more than 100,000 per month, and demands that a favorable price be set for the purchase of land from their English owners. After these terms are established, The Lieutenant opens fire on General Victor and his men and a battle ensues. General Victor, Colonel Smythe and The Lieutenant and several of his men are killed. Years later The Lieutenant’s men still control England, and a flag flies honoring his memory. A memorial plaque at Byward Gate on Tower Hill reads: ""When that command remains, no matter what happens to its officer, he has not failed."""
788,Tomorrow and Tomorrow,science," Originally, Drake is a professional musician, with minor celebrity. When his wife Ana is diagnosed with an unspecified incurable brain disorder, Drake exhausts every option attempting to cure her. Only then does he decide to have her body cryogenically stored, in the hopes future generations will discover effective treatment. However, Drake is extremely cautious, and in case the future culture doesn't care about her plight, he has himself frozen as well. Furthermore he devotes all his energies for a decade prior to his freezing, in becoming an expert primary source on the musically notable people of his era. Assuming that if you become the world's foremost expert in any subject, and given infinite time, someone will want to write a book on that exact subject. At that time the hypothetical future writer will want to awaken Drake, and he can in turn awaken his wife, if treatment is available. Drake's thinking is correct and he is awakened in the year 2500. Although society is vastly different, there still exists no cure for Ana. He spends six years apprenticed to a musical historian to pay for his reviving costs and to gain a foothold in this new world. Drake is continuously laid dormant and revived, exponentially further into the future. Human civilization alters radically over the eons, but Ana's mangled brain proves an extremely difficult problem. Despite the incomprehensible changes surrounding in each successive awakening, Drake never loses sight of his mission. Eventually, in the extremely remote post-human future few billions years later, Drake's original biological body has disintegrated, despite the cryogenic treatment, and he has become an uploaded consciousness, though still in stasis. At this point the descendants of humanity have colonized the entire milky way galaxy, yet an inexplicable threat is wiping out their colonies in a widening arc. The leaders of this civilization have exhausted every answer they can conceive of, and have zero information as to the even the cause of the threat. Their last hope is Drake, an ancient holdover, who may have ideas new to them - namely war. The main problem is that the beings have no idea what is happening as the planets that are wiped out seem exactly the same, but do not respond to signals and outside communication is impossible. All probes sent do not return, nor reply once they reach the surface of the planet. Drake becomes the commander of the residents of the galaxy, in designing weapons and defenses, ideas that have long vanished from the minds of these beings. At this time, their technology allows for extremely powerful and deep manipulation of matter at a fundamental scale. An experimental technology called caesura is used as the plot-device to carry the novel. It is a means of instantaneous teleportation using exotic physics, which has by now developed to a stage where it will have no meaning to the causal being. This caesura is not guaranteed teleportation but has a low chance of succeeding. Billions upon billions of copies of Drake are thus sent out to the planets on the border of the invasion, and by means of caesura are teleported back to the base to collect information about the threat. Eventually it is discovered that the threat is an exotic inter-planetary plant-type life with spores that migrate between systems. These plants do not intentionally destroy the living beings on the planet, but as a result of their growth they do so. After the cause of the problem is found, the post-humans decide that the militant Drake is no longer needed or deemed a positive influence - he is seen as too warlike. They tell him to merge with all the returning Drake copies, of which there are billions. This he agrees to, and over billions of years, he collates these copies together - forming a collective-mind of copies of himself. There is a subplot of a version of him that was randomly teleported by the caesura to a distant galaxy, and how he manages to return over a few billion years. Finally, the collective version of Drake resolves to use the Omega Point to gain complete knowledge of everything and to restore Ana. The story ends on an ambiguous note as Ana is potentially revived, and they seek to create a new universe by means of caesura to live in."
789,The Land of Crimson Clouds,science," A spaceship, propelled by a prototype photon engine, sets off for Venus, which at that time, is an enigmatic and unexplored planet covered by clouds. The tasks of the crew are a) to test the prototype engine in field conditions and b) to locate and set radio beacons on the s.c. ""Uranium Golconda"" (a place with incredibly large heavy metals deposits), presumably, found somewhere on the second planet of the Solar System. As the crew ventures into the depths of Venus, unknown dangers take them out one by one, so only a half of them returns home after accomplishing the mission - all badly damaged, both physically and mentally. However, their feat was the first milestone in colonizing Venus and the first step into the 22nd century. cs:Planeta nachových mračen de:Atomvulkan Golkonda pl:W krainie purpurowych obłoków ru:Страна багровых туч"
790,True History,science," In True History, Lucian and a company of adventuring heroes sailing westward through the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) in order to explore lands and inhabitants beyond the Ocean, are blown off course by a strong wind, and after 79 days come to an island. This island is home to a river of wine filled with fish, and bears a marker indicating that Heracles and Dionysos have traveled to this point, along with normal footprints and giant footprints. Shortly after leaving the island, they are lifted up by a giant waterspout and deposited on the Moon on the eighth day. There they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale war between the king of the Moon and the king of the Sun over colonisation of the Morning Star, involving armies which boast such exotica as stalk-and-mushroom men, acorn-dogs (""dog-faced men fighting on winged acorns""), and cloud-centaurs. Unusually, the Sun, Moon, stars and planets are portrayed as locales, each with its unique geographic details and inhabitants. The War is finally won by the Sun's armies clouding the moon over. Details of the moon follow; there are no women, and children grow inside the calf of men. After returning to the Earth, the adventurers become trapped in a giant whale; inside the 200-mile-long animal, there live many groups of people whom they rout in war. They also reach a sea of milk, an island of cheese and the isle of the blessed. There, he meets the heroes of the Trojan War, other mythical men and animals, and even Homer. They find Herodotus being eternally punished for the ""lies"" he published in his Histories. After leaving the Island of the Blessed, they deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus explaining that he wishes he had stayed with her so he could have lived eternally. They then discover a chasm in the Ocean, but eventually sail around it, discover a far-off continent and decide to explore it. The book ends rather abruptly with Lucian saying that their adventure there will be the subject of following books."
791,Hegira,science," In the novel, ""young"" humans (i.e. recreations of the medieval originals) are transported through the Big Collapse at the end of time to seed the next cycle of the universe. They are transported to Hegira, an artificial environment of the scale of the planet Jupiter which has habitats for several species on its surface. The habitats are protected and uncoupled from the universe's entropy by means of force fields projected by giant obelisks. In the human realm these are inscribed with the recorded history of humankind, sorted chronologically from the bottom up, including the science that went with it. People try to understand and copy what they can read on the obelisks, using balloons in some places to reach higher points on the obelisks. A legend tells the protagonist that his beloved (frozen in stasis) will awaken if he goes on quest to the rim walls of the habitat, so he does. On the way he lands on an island with a good view of an obelisk (at least high) which is just tumbling down in the distance. Its fall causes a tsunami and devastates a continent. After the devastation, the inscriptions at the top of the fallen obelisk about human history are revealed. The hero's quest to the rim succeeds. He makes contact with an artificial intelligence guardian of Hegira who tells him the story and advises him to go and populate the new universe, having become part of the last one."
792,Just War,science, The Doctor and his companions land in German-occupied Guernsey in 1941 where the Nazis are pursuing a top-secret weapon which could change the course of the war.
793,The Tomorrow People,science," Only one man, Johnny Wendt, has returned from the first expedition to Mars. Efforts to determine what happened to the others are in vain; four pages of the ship's log are missing, and Johnny's companion, Doug Laughlin, apparently wandered off to die in the desert. Johnny's girlfriend, Lisa Trovi, and a psychiatrist named Phil Kutler try to cure Johnny by luring him to the Moon and getting him to grapple with whatever happened on Mars. Johnny reacts so badly that they return to Earth as quickly as possible."
794,Falcons of Narabedla,science, The novel concerns a person who is transported into the future and an alien world where Terrans and Darkovans have meshed and become decadent.
795,Destiny Times Three,science, The Probabiltity Engine made differing timelines a reality: alternate universes real enough to exist side by side - and to be invaded... de:Schicksal mal drei fr:Alternatives
796,Colonization: Aftershocks,science," The nuclear war between Nazi Germany and the Race ends with a German surrender after Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Führer, is killed and replaced by Walter Dornberger. Dornberger agrees to disband the Axis Forces, withdraw German troops from occupied France, and disband the German rocket and nuclear forces. The German withdrawal results in instability in the governments of its allies, such as the British Union of Fascists in Britain, as well as clashes between the Free French Forces and the new government of liberated France, and radioactive drift into the Soviet Union. However, Dornberger secretly begins stockpiling weapons and missile parts, allowing Germany the option to rearm itself in the future. Meanwhile, the nuclear attack on the Race's colony fleet from Second Contact is finally revealed: it was an American attack, ordered by Earl Warren. When it is revealed, Fleetlord Atvar gives Warren a choice: dismantle the American space program, or allow the Race to nuke Indianapolis for revenge. To the surprise of all, Warren allows the Race to destroy Indianapolis, and then commits suicide, with Vice President Harold Stassen taking over. It is eventually stated that the reason Warren allowed the city to be destroyed over the space program was that the Americans were working on a starship that would allow them to journey to the Race's homeworld and repay their visit to Earth. During this time, the Race itself undergoes large social unrest, due to the effects of ginger on their females. Drug addiction, the black market, and prostitution all arise from it, along with a reproductive system that is unregulated, much like that of humans."
797,The Threat,science," After falling from the Blade ship, the Animorphs are snagged from mid-air by Rachel and Tobias, in their respective eagle and hawk morphs. They land on the beach, needing a plan to infiltrate the Marriott resort. Jake becomes aware of the tensions between David and Marco, and is disturbed by David's unnecessary excesses. The team morphs into seagulls, and spy out the area, crawling with security agents armed to the teeth and accompanied by dogs. They're zapped by a security man wearing sunglasses with weak Dracon beam emitters built into them. Jake tells them to leave. Upon his return home, his parents tell Jake and his brother Tom that their obnoxious cousin, Saddler, was gravely injured in a car accident, and that they were leaving town to spend time with his parents. Jake is presented with the opportunity to advance his plans. Unfortunately, that night, David disappears from Cassie's barn. Jake morphs into his dog, Homer, and tracks David's scent to an inn. David had morphed into a golden eagle, smashed the window with a rock and entered a room without paying. Jake warns him of the consequences of this action, while also saying he won't have time to help David with his living problems until after the mission. David doesn't hide his contempt, but leaves with Jake anyway. Cassie formulates a plan to infiltrate the resort. Jake morphs into a dragonfly, while the other Animorphs, with the exception of Tobias, morph into fleas and latch onto Jake's body. Tobias guides them to the hotel. Inside, Jake tries to find the banquet hall where the speeches and infestations will take place. Inside an air vent, he gets caught in a spider web. Terrified, Jake demorphs, and the others follow. Cassie is badly wounded when Jake's demorphing creates a human artery that forces more blood into her flea body than it is prepared to hold. He releases them, and they begin demorphing. Marco is stuck mid-morph, as a giant flea. They begin to despair, but Cassie guides Marco and enables him to demorph. Marco then becomes emotional, something very unlike him. Jake inspects the banquet room, and notices the number of holograms in place. Here they discover how the Yeerks plan to infest each world leader, having infiltrated the facility by Visser Three acquiring and morphing Tony, the White House Chief of Staff (Although there are two schools of thought about why he would do this; Ax theorises that it was because there would be no way for the man to have access to a Kandrona if he is infested and something goes wrong with the mission, while Cassie thinks that it is simply Visser Three's ego wanting him to take the key role in a plan that could result in the Yeerks winning the war for Earth at last). Now the Animorphs need a plan to thwart it. They return to the resort, knock out the guards, morph into them, and reenter the banquet. Soon they realise they have been deceived, and have fallen into Visser Three's trap. David is frightened and turns against the Animorphs in order to preserve his own life, Cassie having to attack him to stop him revealing who they are. It isn't long, though, before they discover that the Hork-Bajir surrounding them are only holograms. They took the Visser hostage, and withdrew. The Animorphs, now disgusted and angry with David, try to plan their next move before it's too late. But during the night, David returns to his old home in eagle morph. Jake and Ax pursue him, only to find that David had apparently killed Tobias. David explains that the Animorphs weren't treating him as an equal, and that he'd have to take matters into his own hands. Enraged, Jake engages David, only to be ambushed by Hork-Bajir. Ax rescues Jake, and they escape. David then leads Jake to the mall, and they each morph their battle morphs, lion and tiger respectively. After a brief duel, David severs Jake's carotid artery, leaving him to bleed to death. *David becomes an enemy of the Animorphs."
798,Pursuit of the Screamer,science," Jannus is the son of Mistress Lillia, the ruler of Newstock, a village near the river in Bremner. The competing villages are protected by the Valde, strange female warriors who serve ten years in the villages. The few that reach the end of their service are allowed to get married with one of the rare male Valde. The Valde are tall, beautiful, filled with quick animal instincts, sexually mature at nine and dead of old age around thirty, are also gifted with empathy; the power to feel one's emotions. While watching a duel to the death between Poli - Jannus's favorite Valde - and another Valde, Jannus discovers a Screamer, a fragile humanoid creature that is hunted without pity by the Valde. He saves the Screamer who tells him that he is an immortal Tek. Each time when a Tek dies he is reborn again. The Tek wants to return to Kantmorie to end his thousand years of regenerations. The Tek, called Lur by Jannus, persuades Jannus to accompany him. Together with a merchant family, the Yrsmits and a number of Valde warriors Jannus follows the river downstream. Among the Valde is Poli who served her ten years. After a number of adventures the Tek, Jannus, Poli and the leader of the merchant family find themselves in the desert trying to reach the location where the Shai is, the huge intelligence guiding the star ship that brought the Teks to the world, to end the endless cycle of rebirthing. * Pursuit of the Screamer, DAW Books, June 1978, ISBN 0-87997-386-2 * Circle, Crescent, Star, DAW Books, February 1981, ISBN 0-87997-603-9 * Summerfair, DAW Books, July 1982, ISBN 0-87997-759-0 * Tidestorm Limit, 1983, (published in Dutch and French translations only) **Stormvloedgrens, Dutch edition **Aux confins de l'ouragan, French edition * The Sun of Return, 1985 (published in Dutch and French translations only) **Gift van de Shai, Dutch edition **Le soleil du grand retour, French edition"
799,Darksaber,science," While searching Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo learn that the Hutts are planning to build another superweapon. Meanwhile, in the Hoth Asteroid Belt, Durga the Hutt is planning a diplomatic mission to Coruscant, where he will secretly obtain the plans for the Death Star superlaser for Bevel Lemelisk, the Death Star's designer. Skywalker and Solo reveal their discoveries, but not before Durga's subordinates steal the plans from the Imperial Palace. In order to find out the location of the superweapon, the New Republic launches a covert operation to Nal Hutta, disguised as a diplomatic summit. Back at the Hoth asteroid belt, Lemelisk starts construction on the cylindrical superlaser, which he calls the ""Darksaber"" for its shape is similar to the hilt of a lightsaber. Luke and Callista embark on a vacation that eventually leaves them stranded near the Hoth asteroid belt. They are rescued by Han and Leia Organa Solo, who just returned from the successful mission on Nal Hutta. However, Luke and Callista's rescue is mainly thanks to the Republic fleet, who arrived to launch Crix Madine and his squad to locate the Darksaber reported to be under construction in the region. While Madine succeeds in relaying the location to the fleet, he is captured and killed by Durga. However, Durga's triumph is short-lived when the Republic fleet spots the Darksaber and begins pursuit. The Darksaber attempts to fire its superlaser and make an escape, but the weapon fails and the ship is destroyed by two large asteroids. Meanwhile, Admiral Daala succeeds in uniting the remains of the Empire in the core systems. With the help of Pellaeon, she plans a strike force against a series of New Republic targets, including the Jedi academy on Yavin IV. They also attack Khomm, where Jedi trainees Kyp Durron and Dorsk 81 are visiting. Furious, the pair of Jedi spy on Daala's fleet and succeed in warning the academy of the attack. Using the powers of the Force, the Jedi trainees back at Yavin IV manage to hold off Daala's forces until New Republic reinforcements arrive. Daala is forced to retreat when her Super Star Destroyer, the Knight Hammer, is destroyed. After the failed attack, Daala transfers control over the Imperial forces to Pellaeon. Meanwhile, Callista decides to temporarily leave Luke and venture on a journey to regain her powers. Luke is heartbroken, but decides to move on and continue to build the Jedi academy."
800,Heart of a Dog,science," Moscow, 1925. While foraging for trash one winter day, a stray dog is found by a cook and scalded with boiling water. Lying forlorn in a doorway, the dog awaits his end awash in thoughts of self-pity. To his surprise, successful surgeon Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky arrives and offers the dog a piece of sausage. Overjoyed, the dog follows Filip back to his flat, where he is given the stock dog name, Sharik. At the house, Sharik gets to know Dr. Preobrazhensky's household, which includes the medical student Bormental and two female servants. Despite the Professor's blatant anti-communism, his frequent medical treatment of the CPSU leadership makes him untouchable. As a result, he refuses to decrease his seven room flat and treats the Bolsheviks on the housing committee, led by Shvonder, with unveiled contempt. Impressed by his new master, Sharik slips easily into the role of ""a gentleman's dog."" After several days, one of the servants begins taking Sharik for walks through Moscow. Preening in his new collar, Sharik is unmoved by the taunts of a passing stray. After his health improves, the Professor at last reveals his real intentions in taking in Sharik. As the laboratory is prepped, he orders Sharik locked in the bathroom. As a seething Sharik plots to again destroy the Professor's stuffed owl, the door opens and he is dragged by the scruff of the neck into the lab. There, he is sedated and an operation begins. As Bormental assists, the Professor trepans Sharik's skull and gives him a human pituitary gland. Sharik's torso is also opened and he is given human testicles. Only repeated injections of adrenaline prevent the dog from dying on the operating table. During the weeks after the operation, the household is stunned as Sharik begins transforming into an incredibly unkempt human. After building an alliance with Shvonder, the former canine is granted papers under the absurd name ""Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov."" In the aftermath, the Professor and Bormental patiently attempt to teach Sharikov basic ettiquette. Instead, Sharikov mocks the idea of manners as relics of Tsarism. He insists that it is better to behave, as he puts it, ""naturally."" As a result, Sharikov curses in front of women, refuses to shave, and dresses like a complete slob. Meawhile, Sharikov progressively turns the Professor's life into a living hell. One day, he accidentally turns on the spigot while chasing a cat. With the bathroom door locked, the entire apartment is flooded. Later, he is caught attempting to rape one of the female servants. Enraged, Bormental beats Sharikov up and forces him to apologize. Infuriated, Sharikov leaves the apartment and remains gone for several days. Later, Bormental begs the Professor for permission to dose Sharikov with arsenic, calling him a man with ""the heart of a dog."" The Professor is horrified and orders Bormental not to ""slander the dog."" He explains that the human body parts, which came from a drunken Proletarian, are responsible for all of Sharikov's defects. Bormental then suggests that they redo the operation, using the body of a genius. Again the Professor refuses, explaining that the operation was meant to improve the Human race. Breaking with his former beliefs, the Professor admits that any peasant woman could give birth to a genius and that eugenics are therefore a waste of time. In conclusion, the Professor refuses to permit Sharikov's murder or to undo the operation, which could easily kill him as well. Soon after, Sharikov returns, explaining that he has been granted a job by the Soviet State. He now spends his work-day strangling vagrant cats, whose fur is used to imitate that of squirrels. Soon after Sharikov brings home a female co-worker, whom he introduces to the Professor as his new common law wife. Instead of giving them their own room as Sharikov demands, the Professor takes the woman aside and explains that Sharikov is the product of a lab experiment gone horribly wrong. The woman, who had believed that Sharikov was a Red Army veteran maimed during the Russian Civil War, leaves the apartment in tears. Seething with hatred, Sharikov threatens to fire her. Again Bormental beats Sharikov up and makes him promise not to do anything of the sort. The following day, a senior Party official arrives and informs the Professor that Sharikov has denounced him to the secret police, or CHEKA. Explaining that nothing is going to happen to him due to the State's distrust of Sharikov, the Party official departs. When Sharikov returns, the Professor and Bormental order him to leave the flat permanently. Instead, Sharikov refuses and draws a revolver. Enraged, the Professor and Bormental pounce upon him. That night, an ominous silence reigns in the flat and the lights are left on for many hours after bedtime. Over the days that follow, the Professor and Bormental look far more relaxed than at any time before Sharikov's arrival. Eventually, the police arrive escorted by Shvonder. Bearing a search warrant, they demand to see Sharikov on pain of arresting the Professor and Bormental. Unintimidated, the Professor orders Bormental to summon Sharikov, who is slowly being transformed back into a dog. The Professor explains the change as a natural phenomenon, although it is obvious to the reader that in fact he and Bormental have simply performed the reverse operation. Followed by the now apoplectic Shvonder, the police depart. In the aftermath, the fully canine Sharik blissfully resumes his status as a gentleman's dog. However, he is soon terrified to see the Professor bringing home a human brain and removing the pituitary gland..."
801,The Gladiator,science," The Gladiator follows the same concept as the other Crosstime Traffic novels. A parallel world similar in most respects to our own has discovered the technology to visit and trade with other parallels, spreading the notions of liberty and capitalism at the same time. The plot of The Gladiator follows the same formula of the other books in the series with an imperiled company operative and local protagonists being used as guides to the parallel. In The Gladiator it is indeed the capitalist West that has been consigned to the ""dustbin of history"" and the world has been remade in the image of the Soviet Union. The point of divergence from ours was the decision of the United States to allow the Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba during the Cuban Missile crisis and the complete withdrawal from Vietnam in 1968. Thus, communism spread throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia giving the Soviet Union an upper hand in economic and military strength over the United States. Due to the embargo of the many countries that were captured in the Soviet Sphere, the United States went bankrupt and lost its position as a super power, and most of Europe went communist afterward in the 1980s and 1990s. A hundred years later, communism has taken over much of the world and capitalism is very much dead. The protagonists of the novel, Gianfranco and Annarita, are teenagers in an Italian People's Republic, satellite to the interests of the USSR. Amidst the grey Soviet Brutalist tenements they discover a strategy game shop that is disseminating capitalist ideas with the games they sell. The shop is a front for the Crosstime Traffic trading monopoly, as the protagonists discover when the shop is closed by the authorities and one of the clerks, Eduardo, turns to the protagonists for help."
802,The Radio Man,science," The novel concerns electrical engineer Myles Cabot, who disappears from his home in Boston while performing an experiment. He finds himself transported to the planet Venus where he is captured by the Formians, a race of ant-like creatures. After learning of the Cupians, a human-like race that is subservient to the Formians, Cabot escapes and falls in love with the Cupian princess Lilla. He goes on to introduce the Cupians to gunpowder and leads them in a revolt against their Formian masters."
803,The Sacrifice,science," During a reconnaissance flight taken by Rachel, Ax, and James, the Animorphs learn that the Yeerks are herding people into the subway system. The subways have been redirected to the Yeerk pool complex, where humans are being infested en mass. Back at the Hork-Bajir valley, Rachel makes her report to Jake. Marco comes up with a plan to use the subway system to destroy the Yeerk pool by loading one of the pool-bound trains with explosives and detonating once the train reaches its destination. Despite some resistance from Cassie, the Animorphs agree to carry out the plan. Later that night, Ax sneaks away from the camp with the zero-space transmitter constructed by Marco's father. Ax contacts the Andalite military and tells them of the Animorphs' plan to destroy the Yeerk pool. The Andalites do not support the plan and feel that the war for Earth is lost. Ax is ordered to sabotage to Animorphs' operation to destroy the Yeerk pool so that the Yeerks will continue concentrating the majority of their forces on Earth, allowing the Andalites to wipe them out more easily. The next morning, the Animorphs finalize their plan to destroy the Yeerk pool. During the meeting, Cassie breaks down and confesses that it was she who allowed Tom to escape with the morphing cube. Despite this realization, the other Animorphs forgive Cassie for her actions and continue planning the operation, with the exception of Ax, who feels a cold hatred towards Cassie for letting Tom take the cube. After the meeting, Ax pulls Cassie aside and asks her to justify her actions. She recalls Aftran 942 and the Yeerk Peace Movement, and speculates that the morphing technology could give the Yeerks a means to abandon their policy of infesting sentient beings and instead morph new bodies. Ax concedes that he encountered a Yeerk who planned to do this on the subway mission, though he also speculates that the Yeerk could have been lying. After speaking with Cassie, Ax talks with Tobias, who voices his support of Cassie's reasoning. Ax decides to disobey his orders and not sabotage the plan to destroy the Yeerk pool. The next night, Ax leads the other Animorphs' parents through the woods towards a National Guard base where the Animorphs hope to steal the explosives they need for their operation. Upon reaching the base's perimeter, the parents pose as lost campers in need of medical attention. The National Guardsmen load them into a truck and drive towards the base, with Marco clinging to the back of the truck in gorilla-morph. The other Animorphs follow as either fleas on Marco or in various bird-of-prey-morphs. Upon reaching the National Guard base, the Animorphs begin searching the various warehouses for the explosives. Once they are found, they begin loading the explosives onto the trucks commandeered by Rachel's mother, Naomi, and Cassie's father, Walter. On their way out, the Guardsmen, alerted by an alarm, halt the trucks. Rachel initially tries to run them down, but is stopped by Ax. Jake and Naomi speak with the Guardsmen's commander, Captain Olston, and explain the situation. The Guardsmen agree to assist the Animorphs in their operation. The Animorphs' parents drive the trucks into the city, where the Animorphs themselves, along with several National Guard troops disable the Yeerk forces guarding the subway station. The Animorphs are forced to fight with several morph-capable Controllers, with several using wolf-morphs (the same battle morph as Cassie). The Guardsmen kill several of the wolves, making Ax fear that Cassie has been killed in a friendly fire incident. Fortunately, Cassie survives the battle and Ax silently reconciles with her. Marco, Ax, and Cassie volunteer to accompany the train to the Yeerk pool, now loaded with explosives. Ax keys the detonator so that the explosives will go off five minutes after reaching the Yeerk pool, giving the Controllers and hosts there time to escape. The subway train jackknifes into the Yeerk pool. Ax, Cassie, and Marco survive due to being in various insect-morphs during the collision. They demorph and warn those in the pool of the situation, and then begin freeing caged-hosts. Visser One briefly emerges to do battle, but leaves after Marco tells him of the impending explosion. Ax, Cassie, and Marco leave the doomed Yeerk pool complex just as the bombs detonate. The Animorphs survey the devastation. The destruction of the Yeerk pool destroys a large area of the Animorphs' home town. Jake privately thanks Ax for his participation, and Ax silently pledges his continued support to his prince. * The Yeerks abandon their infiltration strategy for conquering Earth. * The Yeerk Pool is destroyed."
804,Of the City of the Saved...,science," Beyond the end of the universe exists The City of the Saved, an urban sprawl the size of a galaxy. Within it every human being that ever lived, from the first australopithecine to the last posthuman, has been inexplicably resurrected. For three hundred years, the uncountable inhabitants have enjoyed their unaging and invulnerable second lives. But now, the unthinkable has happened. Someone has been murdered."
805,The Well-Mannered War,science," On the planet Barclow, the Doctor and his companions become embroiled in the political wrangle between humans and Chelonians."
806,The Cat Who Walks Through Walls,science," A writer seated at the best restaurant of the space habitat ""Golden Rule"" is approached by a man who urges him that ""Tolliver must die"" and is himself shot before the writer's eyes. The writer–Colonel Colin Campbell, living under a number of aliases including his pen name ""Richard Ames""–is joined by a beautiful and sophisticated lady, Gwendolyn Novak, who helps him flee to Luna with a bonsai maple and a would-be murderer (""Bill""). After escaping to the moon, Gwen refers to the now ancient Lunar Revolt (as described in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress) and Mike (Mycroft), the self-aware computer responsible for the uprising's victory, and claims to have been present during the revolt; despite her claim that she was only a girl at the time, Campbell grows suspicious, and learns that she is a rejuvenation of the revolution's most prominent female leader. Still pursued by assassins, Campbell and Novak are rescued by an organization known as the Time Corps under the leadership of Lazarus Long. After giving Campbell a new leg to replace one lost in combat years before, the Time Corps attempt to recruit Campbell for a special mission. Accepting only on Gwen's account, Campbell agrees to assist a team to retrieve the decommissioned Mike. Engaged in frequent time-travel, the Time Corps has been responsible for changing various events in the past, creating an alternate universe with every time-line they disrupt. Mike's assistance is needed in order to accurately predict the conditions and following events in each of the new universes created. Campbell's frequent would-be assassins are revealed to be members of contemporary agencies also engaged in time manipulation who, for unknown reasons, do not want to see Mike rescued by the Time Corps. During the mission, Gwen is grievously wounded and Campbell loses his foot again, though the Time Corps succeed in retrieving Mike. The story ends with Campbell talking into a recorder (presumably the source of the first-person medium through which the story is told) reflecting on the mission and his relationship with Gwen."
807,Worlds of the Imperium,science," Brion Bayard, an American diplomat on assignment in Stockholm, Sweden, attempts to evade men he believes to be Soviet agents, only to find himself kidnapped by agents of the Imperium from a parallel world. Taken to the home world of the Imperium, he is introduced to the aristocratic members of the government, which rules most of the civilized world from London, having been formed by the union of the British Empire, which included America, and the German and Austro-Hungarian empires of Europe. He is impressed by the commitment to duty of the Imperial officials he meets and drawn to a particularly noble lady. The main reason for his abduction, however, is that the Imperium is under attack from another parallel world. The Maxoni-Cocini drive, which is the technology for traveling between worlds, is extremely dangerous. Almost all worlds where its development is attempted are destroyed in bizarre and horrible ways. The collection of time lines where this occurs is known as the Blight, and the rare ones where the Earth survives are known as Blight Insulars, or BI's. BI-1 is the Imperium, and BI-3 is Bayard's home world, where the technology never developed. The raids are coming from BI-2, a chaotic world where war has swept the planet for generations, and which was not believed to have the Maxoni-Cocini drive. That version of Earth is currently ruled by a dictator, who happens to be Brion Bayard. Bayard undergoes extensive training to substitute for his double, presumably after killing him, and take over the other government, shutting off the raids. The plan falls through almost as soon as he arrives in the new world. For some reason, nobody believes in his impersonation. The reason becomes apparent when he meets the other Bayard, who lost both legs in a battle years before, but who has concealed that fact from the public. However, this other Bayard is not the evil dictator he is portrayed to be. He greets his double as a brother, and tells him how he became dictator to pacify his world. He knows nothing of the raids on the Imperium. The two Bayards talk over a gourmet meal and discover they have much in common, including similar histories. Bayard the dictator is abruptly assassinated by the real conspirators, who are working for power-hungry factions in the Imperium itself, using stolen technology. Bayard himself is scheduled for a showy execution, after suitable amputation surgery, to allow the conspiracy to consolidate its hold on their world by publicly eliminating the dictator. Eventually he is able to escape back to the Imperium and expose the conspirators. Offered a chance to return to his Earth, or become a high-ranking Imperium officer, he looks at the noble lady who has become so important to him, and declares, ""Home is where the heart is."""
808,The Face,science," Kirth Gersen tracks Lens Larque across several worlds, most notably Aloysius, the desert world Dar Sai and the more temperate Methel. He eventually learns that Larque is a Darsh, born Husse Bugold. He had been deprived of an earlobe and made a rachepol or outcast from his clan for a crime considered ""repulsive but not superlatively heinous."" He took the name Lens Larque, after the lanslarke, an indigenous creature and the fetish of the Bugold clan. (It was this slim clue that enabled Gersen to track him down.) He then became a notorious criminal renowned for his magnificent, if often grotesque and horrifying, jests. Gersen encounters Larque at a Darsh restaurant on Aloysius, but only manages to cut off his remaining earlobe. Gersen had arranged to impound one of Larque's spaceships, in order to lure him in from the lawless Beyond. In an ironic twist, Larque escapes Gersen's courtroom ambush, blows up the ship, and collects insurance money - from a company owned by Gersen. Gersen then proceeds to Dar Sai. The harsh planet is home to the ""fierce and perverse"" Darsh, who mine black sand, stable transuranic elements of atomic number 120 or greater. The inhabitants have odd mating customs; when the moon is full, men and women chase each other on the desert. Young women are used as bait to lure men into the clutches of ugly, older women. Gersen determines that Larque is connected somehow with a seemingly worthless Dar Sai company called Kotzash Mutual. He begins buying up its shares in an attempt to gain control, but falls short of what he needs, until shares are put up as a prize for a hadaul match. Hadaul is essentially a free-for-all brawl within a series of concentric rings. Gersen, by dint of skill and cleverness, wins the match and gains control of the company. He also rescues Jerdian Chanseth, a young aristocratic Methlen woman, when her sightseeing party is waylaid by Darsh during their mating activities. A brief romance blossoms between them. Gersen then follows Larque to Methlen. The wealthier Methlens reside in large manors with which they closely identify. Gersen attempts to renew his relationship with Jerdian, going so far as to buy the mansion next to her family's. But being a disreputable (if extremely rich) space vagabond and decidedly not Methlen, he is rejected as a suitor by her father, bank owner Adario Chanseth, who uses the law to nullify the sale of the house. It turns out that Larque himself had tried to buy the same estate, but had also been thwarted by the same Methlen law, because Chanseth didn't want to see his ""great Darsh face hanging over my garden wall."" Eventually, Gersen learns that Lens Larque and Kotzash Mutual have been mining Shanitra, the small moon of Methlen, for some mysterious reason. It was well known that Shanitra bore no useful deposits of ore and was practically worthless. Nonetheless, Kotzash had gone to great pains to place extensive explosive charges all across its surface. Gersen finally tracks Larque down and kills him with cluthe, a paralyzing poison. In his final moments of life, the Darsh begs Gersen to press a button, but Gersen denies him his last request. However, Gersen has divined Larque's last and most grandiose jest, and having exactly the same motivation, he presses the button after the Demon Prince has died. Shanitra is racked by explosions and takes on a new shape, the face of Lens Larque, expression frozen in a leering grin. Gersen then calls Adario Chanseth and dryly informs him there is a ""great Darsh face hanging over your garden wall."""
809,Subspace Explorers,science," It is essentially in three overlapping parts: * A space catastrophe and its results * The discovery and scientific study of psionics * A war between the corrupt and shortsighted (including Labour, politicians, Soviet-style communists and greedy capitalists) and those who can see a bit further (mostly tradesmen, professionals, and businessmen)."
810,Shangri-La,science," In the mid-21st century, the international committee decided to forcefully reduce CO2 emission levels to mitigate the global warming crisis. As a result, the economic market was transferred mainly into the trade of carbon. A great earthquake destroys much of Japan, yet the carbon tax placed on the country is not lifted, so Tokyo is turned into the world’s largest ""jungle-polis"" that absorbs carbon dioxide. Project Atlas is commenced to plan the rebuilding of Tokyo and oversee the government organization, which the Metal Age group opposes due to its oppressive nature. However, Atlas is only built with enough room for 3,500,000 people and most people are not allowed to migrate into the city. The disparity between the elite within Atlas and the refugees living in the jungles outside of its walls set up the background of the story."
811,Space Opera,science," On Earth, audiences are entranced by the musical entertainments staged by an alien troupe, the Ninth Company of the planet Rlaru. Dame Isabel Grayce (one of a long line of formidable society matrons in Vance’s works) has sponsored the entertainments; when the Ninth Company disappears without a trace, she proposes to recoup her losses and bring culture to the wastes of space by forming an opera company which Adolph Gondar (the discoverer of Rlaru) will pilot on a tour of suitable planets, with Rlaru as ultimate destination. Singers, orchestra, a British conductor (Sir Henry Rixon) are engaged; an argumentative critic, Bernard Bickel, who thinks the Ninth Company were fakes, is hired as musical consultant. Dame Isabel’s indolent and aptly named nephew Roger Wool (one of a long line of Vancian put-upon nephews) tags along also, smuggling his new girlfriend Madoc Roswyn, who claims to be a simple girl from Merioneth in Wales, aboard the ship as a stowaway. Like many of Vance’s works, the novel is a picaresque; Gondar has his own reasons for not returning to Rlaru, and diverts the company half way round the galaxy, with various adventures or humiliations occurring on the different planets they touch down on. (There are some similarities with Vance’s later novel Showboat World, which has a travelling company presenting performances of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to generally uncomprehending audiences along an immense river on a distant planet.) Over the course of the voyage, the company stages several celebrated works, such as Beethoven’s Fidelio, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Così fan tutte, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Flying Dutchman. These are performed before various human or non-human audiences, the libretti and costumes sometimes having to be adapted to become understandable to alien cultures. On the whole, due to such cultural disparities, their reception is far from that expected by Dame Isabel: on a penal colony planet, for instance, the performances are made the cover for a jail-break; on a planet inhabited by a race priding themselves on their musical talents, the productions are vetted by an artistic inspector and the company is fined for every unresolved dissonance in the scores performed; on still another, the performance is mistaken for a trade exhibition and the aliens attempt to buy some of the singers. While Gondar is confined to his cabin, apparently insane, Madoc Roswyn induces his deputy to take the ship to the distant planet Yan. It emerges that her remote ancestors inhabited a land now sunk beneath the Bay of Biscay whose people had colonized that planet and there developed a high civilization. (Here we detect the germ of Vance’s later major fantasy trilogy Lyonesse, the heroine of whose third volume is named Madouc.) A group had returned to Earth thousands of years later, but their spacecraft was destroyed and they were forced to settle in Wales, ever intending to return to Yan. Madoc is their last descendant. She is disappointed by what she finds: Yan’s cities are dust and its folk have reverted to barbarism, hiding in the forests. Although the company present Debussy's Pelléas to try to establish communication with the unseen inhabitants, they barely escape with their lives. Eventually the voyage ends at Rlaru. It turns out that Gondar had abducted the Ninth Company from the planet; he is suitably punished by the natives, who demonstrate a capacity to creatively manipulate illusion and environment far beyond anything their Earth visitors can achieve. They listen to several operas with mounting boredom, but are utterly entranced by an impromptu washboard jazz band formed by some members of the crew, which has been a source of annoyance to the opera-lovers throughout the voyage. (Vance was at one time a jazz musician.) Dame Isabel returns to Earth, chastened but determined not to admit it; Roger marries Madoc Roswyn and begins writing a book describing the voyage."
812,Brave New World,science," The novel opens in London in 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The vast majority of the population is unified under the World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and everyone is happy. Natural reproduction has been done away with and children are created, 'decanted' and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, where they are divided into five castes (which are further split into 'Plus' and 'Minus' members) and designed to fulfill predetermined positions within the social and economic strata of the World State. Fetuses chosen to become members of the highest caste, 'Alpha', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in ""decanting bottles"", while fetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Beta', 'Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth. Each 'Alpha' or 'Beta' is the product of one unique fertilized egg developing into one unique fetus. Members of lower castes are not unique but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a single egg to spawn (at the point of the story being told) up to 96 children and one ovary to produce thousands of children. To further increase the birthrate of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, Podsnap's Technique causes all the eggs in the ovary to mature simultaneously, allowing the hatchery to get full use of the ovary in two years' time. People of these castes make up the majority of human society, and the production of such specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well as the scope of their ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus rendering them easier to control. All children are educated via the hypnopaedic process, which provides each child with caste-appropriate subconscious messages to mold the child's lifelong self-image and social outlook to that chosen by the leaders and their predetermined plans for producing future adult generations. To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite future, all citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption with such platitudes as ""ending is better than mending,"" ""more stiches less riches"" i.e., buy a new item instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State. Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability and universally endorsed consumption of the drug soma. Soma is an allusion to a mythical drink of the same name consumed by ancient Indo-Aryans. In the book, soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free ""holidays"". It was developed by the World State to provide these inner-directed personal experiences within a socially managed context of State-run 'religious' organizations; social clubs. The hypnopaedically inculcated affinity for the State-produced drug, as a self-medicating comfort mechanism in the face of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminates the need for religion or other personal allegiances outside or beyond the World State. Recreational sex is an integral part of society. According to the World State, sex is a social activity, rather than a means of reproduction (sex is encouraged from early childhood). The few women who can reproduce are conditioned to use birth control, even wearing a ""Malthusian belt"" (which resembles a cartridge belt and holds ""the regulation supply of contraceptives"") as a popular fashion accessory. The maxim ""everyone belongs to everyone else"" is repeated often, and the idea of a ""family"" is considered pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy are considered too obscene to be mentioned in casual conversation. Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension. Spending time alone is considered an outrageous waste of time and money, and wanting to be an individual is horrifying. Conditioning trains people to consume and never to enjoy being alone, so by spending an afternoon not playing ""Obstacle Golf,"" or not in bed with a friend, one is forfeiting acceptance. In the World State, people typically die at age 60 having maintained good health and youthfulness their whole life. Death isn't feared; anyone reflecting upon it is reassured by the knowledge that everyone is happy, and that society goes on. Since no one has family, they have no ties to mourn. The conditioning system eliminates the need for professional competitiveness; people are literally bred to do their jobs and cannot desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member receives the same food, housing, and soma rationing as every other member of that caste. There is no desire to change one's caste, largely because a person's sleep-conditioning reinforces each individual's place in the caste system. To grow closer with members of the same class, citizens participate in mock religious services called Solidarity Services, in which twelve people consume large quantities of soma and sing hymns. The ritual progresses through group hypnosis and climaxes in an orgy. In geographic areas nonconducive to easy living and consumption, securely contained groups of ""savages"" are left to their own devices. These appear to be similar to the reservations of land established for the Native American population during the colonisation of North America. These 'savages' are beholden of strange customs, including self-mutilation and religion, a mere curio in the outside world. In its first chapters, the novel describes life in the World State as wonderful and introduces Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. Lenina, a hatchery worker, is socially accepted and comfortable with her place in society, while Bernard, a psychologist, is an outcast. Although an Alpha Plus, Bernard is shorter in stature than the average of his caste—a quality shared by the lower castes, which gives him an inferiority complex. His work with sleep-teaching has led him to realize that what others believe to be their own deeply held beliefs are merely phrases repeated to children while they are asleep. Still, he recognizes the necessity of such programming as the reason why his society meets the emotional needs of its citizens. Courting disaster, he is vocal about being different, once stating he dislikes soma because he'd ""rather be himself."" Bernard's differences fuel rumors that he was accidentally administered alcohol while incubated, a method used to keep Epsilons short. Bernard's only friend is Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). The friendship is based on their similar experiences as misfits, but unlike Bernard, Watson's sense of loneliness stems from being too gifted, too intelligent, too handsome, and too physically strong. Helmholtz is drawn to Bernard as a confidant: he can talk to Bernard about his desire to write poetry. Bernard is on holiday at a Savage Reservation. The reservation, located in New Mexico, consists of a community named Malpais. From afar, Lenina thinks it will be exciting. In person, she finds the aged, toothless natives who mend their clothes rather than throw them away repugnant, and the situation is made worse when she discovers that she has left her soma tablets at the resort hotel. In typical tourist fashion, Bernard and Lenina watch what at first appears to be a quaint native ceremony. The village folk, whose culture resembles the contemporary Indian groups of the region, descendants of the Anasazi, including the Puebloan peoples of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni, and the Ramah Navajo, begin by singing, but the ritual quickly becomes a passion play where a village boy is whipped to unconsciousness. Soon after, the couple encounters Linda, a woman who has been living in Malpais since she came on a trip and became separated from her group, among whom was a man to whom she refers as ""Tomakin"" but who is revealed to be Bernard's boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Thomas. She became pregnant despite adhering to her ""Malthusian Drill"" and there were no facilities for an abortion. Her shame at pregnancy was so great that she decided not to return to her old life, but to stay with the ""savages"". Linda gave birth to a son, John (later referred to as John the Savage) who is now 18. Conversations with Linda and John reveal that their life has been hard. For 18 years, they have been treated as outsiders: the native men treated Linda like a sex object while the native women regularly beat and ostracized her because of her promiscuity, and John was mistreated and excluded for his mother's actions and the color of his skin. John was angered by Linda's lovers, and even attacked one in a jealous rage while a child. John's one joy was that his mother had taught him to read, although he only had two books: a scientific manual from his mother's job, which he called a ""beastly, beastly book,"" and a collection of Shakespeare's works (which have been banned in the World State for being subversive). Shakespeare gives John articulation to his feelings, though, and he especially is interested in Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. At the same time, John has been denied the religious rituals of the village, although he has watched them and even has had some religious experiences on his own in the desert. Old, weathered and tired, Linda wants to return to her familiar world in London, as she misses living in the city and taking soma. John wants to see the ""brave new world"" his mother has told him so much about. Bernard wants to take them back to block Thomas from his plan to reassign Bernard to Iceland as punishment for his asocial beliefs. Bernard arranges permission for Linda and John to leave the reservation. John also seems to have an attraction to Lenina, as while Bernard is away, getting the permission to move the savages, he finds her suitcase and ruffles through all of her clothes, taking in the smells. He then sees her ""sleeping"" and stares at her, thinking all he has to do to see her properly is undo one zip. He later tells himself off for being like this towards Lenina, and seems to be extremely shy around her. Upon his return to London, Bernard is confronted by Thomas, the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre who, in front of an audience of higher-caste Centre workers, denounces Bernard for his asocial behavior. Bernard, thinking that for the first time in his life he has the upper hand, defends himself by presenting the Director with his long-lost lover and unknown son, Linda and John. John falls to his knees and calls Thomas his father, which causes an uproar of laughter. The humiliated Director resigns in shame. Spared from reassignment, Bernard makes John the toast of London. Pursued by the highest members of society, able to bed any woman he fancies, Bernard revels in attention he once scorned. The victory, however, is short-lived. Linda, decrepit, toothless, and friendless, goes on a permanent soma holiday while John, appalled by what he perceives to be an empty society, refuses to attend Bernard's parties. Society drops Bernard as swiftly as it had taken him. Bernard turns to the person he'd believed to be his one true friend, only to see Helmholtz fall into a quick, easy camaraderie with John. Bernard is left an outcast yet again as he watches the only two men with whom he ever connected find more of interest in each other than they ever did in him. John and Helmholtz's island of peace is brief. Lenina tries to seduce John, but John pushes her away, calling her out on her sexually wanton ways. Whilst Lenina is in the bathroom, humiliated and putting her clothes on, John receives a telephone call from the hospital telling him that his mother is extremely unwell. He rushes over to see her and sits at her bedside, trying to get her out of her soma holiday so that he can talk to her. He is heartbroken when his mother succumbs to soma and dies. He is extremely annoyed by the young boys that enter the ward to be conditioned about death and annoy John to the point where he starts to use violence to send them away. John's grief bewilders and revolts the hospital workers, and their lack of reaction to Linda's death prompts John to try to force humanity from the workers by throwing their soma rations out a window. The ensuing riot brings the police, who quell the riot by filling the room with soma. Bernard and Helmholtz arrive to help John, but only Helmholtz helps him, while Bernard stands to the side, torn between risking involvement by helping or escaping the scene. Following the riot, Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe. Bernard (who breaks down during the middle of the conversation) and Helmholtz are told they will be exiled to islands of their choice. Mond explains that this exile is not so much a threat to force freethinkers to reform and rejoin society as it is a chance for them to act as they please because they will not be able to influence the population. He also divulges that he too once risked banishment to an island because of some scientific experiments that were deemed controversial by the state, giving insight into his sympathetic tone. Helmholtz chooses the Falkland Islands, believing that their terrible weather will inspire his writing, but Bernard simply does not want to leave London; he struggles with Mond and is thrown out of the office. After Bernard and Helmholtz have left, Mustapha and John engage in a philosophical argument on the morals behind the existing society and then John is told the ""experiment"" will continue and he will not be sent to an island. John meets with Bernard and Helmholtz once again before their departures from London and Bernard apologizes to John for his opportunistic behavior, having come to terms with his imminent exile and having restored his friendship with Helmholtz. In the final chapter, John isolates himself from society in a lighthouse outside London where he finds his hermit life interrupted from mourning his mother by the more bitter memories of civilization. To atone, John brutally whips himself in the open, a ritual the Indians in his own village had denied him. His self-flagellation, caught on film and shown publicly, destroys his hermit life. Hundreds of gawking sightseers, intrigued by John's violent behavior, fly out to watch the savage in person. Even Lenina comes to watch, crying a tear John does not see. The sight of the woman whom he both adores and blames is too much for him; John attacks and whips her. This sight of genuine, unbridled emotion drives the crowd wild with excitement, and — handling it as they are conditioned to — they turn on each other, in a frenzy of beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of soma and sex. In the morning, John, hopeless, alone, horrified by his drug use and the orgy in which he participated that countered his beliefs, makes one last attempt to escape civilization and atone. When thousands of gawking sightseers arrive that morning, frenzied at the prospect of seeing the savage perform again, they find John dead from a suicidal hanging."
813,Erasing Sherlock,science," ""Seeking maid-of-all-work. Master of Arts required. Opportunities for research in the field. Must be able to relocate in time."" A doctoral candidate, in the guise of a housemaid working at 221B Baker Street, believes she is there to observe the 25-year-old Sherlock Holmes, and document his methods at the beginning of his career. She soon learns she is operating under a serious misapprehension."
814,Ace in the Hole,science," The plot of Jokers Wild centers on the 1988 Democratic Convention held in that universe's fictional Atlanta, Georgia. Following many years of inadequate recognition and inaction, the plight of the unfortunate victims of the Wild Card virus, the jokers, now forms a large part of the Democratic campaign. With this backdrop, numerous aces, jokers and ""nats"" (normal humans) converge on Atlanta to support or attempt to kill various candidates, lobby for more specific causes or just create and revel in chaos."
815,The Last Theorem,science," The Last Theorem is set in Sri Lanka in the early- to mid-21st century and follows the life of a mathematician, Ranjit Subramanian. While studying at Colombo University, he becomes obsessed with Fermat's Last Theorem, a conjecture made by Pierre de Fermat in 1637, for which he claimed to have conceived a proof that he never wrote down. The proof eluded mathematicians across the world for over 350 years, until in 1995 British mathematician Andrew Wiles published a 100-page proof of the theorem. But not everyone was ""satisfied"" with Wiles's proof because it used twentieth century mathematical techniques not available in Fermat's time. In the novel's back-story, extraterrestrial sapients, the Grand Galactics, are alarmed when they detect the photon shock waves from nuclear bomb detonations on Earth. The Grand Galactics monitor and control the destinies of a number of high-performance sapient races and order one of these races, the Nine Limbeds, to send ""cease and desist"" messages to Earth. When these messages have no effect, they order the One Point Fives to launch an armada to Earth to exterminate the undesirable species. Back on Earth, regional conflicts escalate and the United Nations struggles to contain them. In Sri Lanka, Ranjit unwittingly boards a cruise ship that is hijacked by pirates. When unknown security forces free the ship, Ranjit is arrested on suspicion of terrorism. For six months he is interrogated and tortured, but he cannot supply the information his captors want so he is locked up and ""forgotten"" for a further 18 months. During this period of incarceration, Ranjit dwells on Fermat's Last Theorem and, after several months, solves it with a three-page proof. Later Ranjit is rescued by a friend from University, Gamini Bandara, who will not reveal whom he is working for or where Ranjit was held captive. Ranjit submits his proof for publication and achieves worldwide fame. He marries Myra de Soyza, an artificial intelligence specialist, and embarks on a speaking tour of the world. In the United States, he is briefly recruited by the CIA to work on cryptography. Gamini later reveals that he is working for Pax per Fidem (Peace through Transparency), an undercover United Nations organization established to bring about world peace. To achieve this end, Pax per Fidem has developed ""Silent Thunder"", a non-lethal EMP nuclear superweapon that renders all electrical equipment in its path inoperable. Silent Thunder is deployed in North Korea and later in South America, and regional conflicts subside. Gamini invites Ranjit to join Pax per Fidem, but the authoritarian nature of Pax per Fidem and its ""new world order"" worry Ranjit and Myra, and Ranjit turns down the offer. He does, however, accept a position on the advisory board of an international consortium building a space elevator in Sri Lanka, chosen because of its position on the equator. As the One Point Five fleet enters the Solar System, the Nine Limbeds orbit and observe Earth in cigar-shaped craft, sparking numerous UFO sightings. A Grand Galactic member, who happens to be passing by, stops to observe the effects of Silent Thunder and returns to the Grand Galactic collective, who immediately suspend the One Point Fives's destruct orders pending further investigation. The space elevator is completed and, for the first time, people and materials can be lifted into Earth orbit without the need of rockets. Natasha, Ranjit and Myra's daughter, competes in the first solar powered space yacht race from Earth- to Moon-orbit. But soon after the start of the race, Natasha's yacht malfunctions and she is abducted by the Nine Limbeds, who use a projection of her to interrogate prominent people on Earth, including Ranjit and Gamini, about Silent Thunder. Satisfied that Earth has ""reformed"", Natasha is returned and the Nine Limbeds broadcast a message to Earth in which they announce that the Grand Galactics have decided not to sterilize Earth, and that the One Point Fives, with their Machine Stored navigators, cannot return home and will land and occupy unused areas of Earth. The One Point Fives land in the desolate Qattara Depression in the Libyan Desert, which they find quite habitable compared to their ruined homeworld. The Americans send B52 bombers to attack the One Point Fives' base, but the aliens electronically disable the aircraft, causing them to crash short of their target. When the US President demands reparations, the One Point Fives provide gold distilled from seawater by way of compensation. With the Grand Galactics absent, the aliens make decisions for themselves: the One Point Fives provide Earth with new forms of power and the Machine Stored reveal mind uploading technology. When Myra dies in a scuba diving accident, her mind is uploaded into cyberspace, with Ranjit joining her later. After 13,000 years the Grand Galactics finally return to Earth and are astounded to see how fast the planet has developed. They had always interfered with the evolution of sentient species they had discovered, believing they could not be trusted to evolve on their own. Impressed with Earth's progress, the Grand Galactic relieve themselves of the burden of watching over intelligent life and hand the task over to Earth."
816,Long Voyage Back,science," : ""In a nuclear war, the USSR will win. This is because the average Russian doesn't have a gun, so they can't all shoot each other and the army for food"" The story concerns a hypothetical World War III between the USSR and the United States, and graphically depicts the ensuing carnage. One family and some friends try to run away in a sailboat, and the story describes their battles with nuclear winter and fallout, and with the ensuing collapse of civilization."
817,Verdigris,science," Orbiting above London is a mysterious ship, a duplicate of the St. Pancras railway station. The Doctor, with the aid of the adventurerer, Iris Wildthyme bargains to stop creatures determined to infiltrate the 1970s in the guise of characters from nineteenth century novels. The Doctor is cut off from many of his friends and allies. Iris and her companion Tom reappear in the audio adventures Wildthyme at Large and The Devil in Ms Wildthyme, and the anthology Wildthyme on Top. Iris Wildthyme would later be played in Big Finish audio dramas by Katy Manning, who played Jo Grant in Doctor Who."
818,MAX: A Maximum Ride Novel,science," The Flock has barely recovered from their Antarctica adventure they are pulled into another one. Dr. Martinez and several of her colleagues establish the Coalition to Stop the Madness, an ecological conservation effort which involves spreading environmental awareness at the Flock's public air shows, taking place in some of the world's most polluted cities. During a show in Los Angeles, the Flock find themselves under fire from an assassin in the middle of an aerial performance. The crowd however thinks that this is all part of the show and applauds at the Flock's various maneuvers to avoid the sniper's bullets. The day ends with the Flock attacking the assassin only to have him blow himself up inside a nearby warehouse to hide his identity. A later investigation of the scene results in the find of a pistol biologically attached to a recovered stump of an arm. At another show in Mexico City (which the Flock dislike due to the air being so polluted it made the air uncomfortable to breathe) the Flock do another aerial performance, when they see the entire stadium is surrounded by 60 bionic human ""ninjas"" (which Max later nicknames M-Geeks). Despite wanting to avoid harming performance crew, Max's biological mother Dr. Valencia Martinez, her half sister Ella, Total, Dr. Brigid Dwyer, Max's biological father Jeb Batchelder, the surrounding reporters, and the 114,000 fans packed into the stadium, the Flock has no choice but to battle and destroy them on the field. Later, Jeb, Valencia, and the Flock are all taken to a secret location on the outskirts of the city for protection. The group decide that it is best that they cancel the shows due to the inability for tight enough security. In the middle of the night, after Max and Fang have a conflict over Brigid (who had apparently taken a liking to Fang, much to Max's jealousy) Max goes on a flight only to be shot in the wing by a group of M-Geeks. She meets Mr. Chu, a short Asian man who claims to represent many of the worlds wealthiest and most powerful people. He tells Max to put a stop to CSM. When she refuses, she is warned that she will regret her decision. After refusing to explain her injuries, and later asking Jeb about Mr. Chu (who lies badly about knowing nothing of him) Jeb and Valencia suggest that the group go to the Day and Night School for the gifted. Despite Max's refusal, the Flock agrees to try it out. Nudge finds the school incredibly fun, much to Max's dismay. When Dr. Martinez is suddenly kidnapped, the Flock agree to go on a search for her with the aid of the and the United States Navy. Nudge decides to stay because she ""wants to be normal."" They go to a boot camp in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor where they surprise their teachers and excel at all their survival courses. The on the night they are approved to go on the sub expedition to search for Dr. Martinez (who is, based on the video tapes sent to them, believed to be held on a boat located somewhere off the coast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, fairly close to where millions of fish seem to be mysteriously dying) Fang and Max go on a ""date"". The night goes off perfectly, with many unexplainable feelings for Fang filling Max, however it is interrupted when they are assaulted by a group of M-Geeks who the two accidentally send hurling off a cliff. Later on their way back to base, they encounter Angel, Iggy, and Gazzy who had been stung by a poisonous fish (which he quickly heals from the next day thanks to the Flock's rapid regeneration abilities) and find that Nudge had returned to them. The next day the Flock and Brigid, who surprises Total with his beloved Akila, all arrive on the USS Minnesota. Brigid continues to ""flirt"" with Fang which upsets Max, who is already unhappy to be on a submarine. Later on the expedition, Max and Brigid take the miniature sub to take a closer look at the seabed for any signs of contamination that might have killed the fish. As the return they find the Minnesota attacked by a group of M-Geeks which Max takes out with the mini-sub's mechanical arms as well as with a homemade bomb from Gazzy and Iggy. When neither seem to fend them off completely, Gazzy and Iggy come up with a way to destroy them with the same technique as the lightning rod weapon they created when M-Geeks had attacked the group's safe house before leaving for Hawaii, destroying them all. But as the group comes across radioactive barrels labeled ""Property of the Chu Corporation"" which reveals the cause of the dead fish, an apparent underwater mountain that was seen in earlier surveillance tapes emerges form the sea floor. Inside it is an underwater cave which Max and Fang explore along with two accompanying scientist, one being Brigid, the other a friend of Dr. Martinez. As Max finds herself lost and attacked by a giant squid, she loses her underwater breather, only to discover that like Angel, she and Fang have developed gills. After fending off the squid, the group comes across a group of frighteningly enormous underwater snakes that had apparently mutated from the radioactive material. Angel telepathically convinces them that they mean to help and the snakes lead them to a giant underwater dome where Max finds her mother being held. After breaching the forcefield, Max barely escapes with her mother as the facility is flooded due to the acidic mucus of the snakes burning through the dome. After returning to the base where Dr. Martinez is in recovery from torture and dehydration, The Voice in Max's head tells her to beware of Mr. Chu as well as Brigid who were both in conference about the barrels found. As the Flock leaves, Max and Fang hold hands as they fly, Max having confessed her love to Fang before they entered the cave. Max discusses with Fang how special the Flock is and how happy she is for them to be together. Fang and Max kiss, and Angel mentally approves of their relationship."
819,Pattern Recognition,science," Advertising consultant Cayce Pollard, who reacts to logos and advertising as if to an allergen, arrives in London in August 2002. She is working on a contract with the marketing firm Blue Ant to judge the effectiveness of a proposed corporate logo for a shoe company. During the presentation, graphic designer Dorotea Benedetti becomes hostile towards Cayce as she rejects the first proposal. After dinner with some Blue Ant employees, the company founder Hubertus Bigend offers Cayce a new contract: to uncover who is responsible for distributing a series of anonymous, artistic film clips via the internet. Cayce had been following the film clips and participating in an online discussion forum theorizing on the clips’ meaning, setting, and other aspects. Wary of corrupting the artistic process and mystery of the clips, she reluctantly accepts. A friend from the discussion group, who uses the handle Parkaboy, privately emails her saying a friend of a friend has discovered an encrypted watermark on one clip. They concoct a fake persona, a young woman named Keiko, to seduce the Japanese man who knows the watermark code. Cayce, along with an American computer security specialist, Boone Chu, hired to assist her, travels to Tokyo to meet the man and retrieve the watermark code. Two men attempt to steal the code but Cayce escapes and travels back to London. Boone travels to Columbus, Ohio to investigate the company that he believes created the watermark. Meanwhile, Blue Ant hires Dorotea who reveals that she was previously employed by a Russian lawyer whose clients have been investigating Cayce. The clients wanted Cayce to refuse the job of tracking the film clips and it was Dorotea's responsibility to ensure this. Through a completely random encounter Cayce meets Voytek Biroshak and Ngemi; the former an artist using old ZX81 microcomputers as a sculpture medium, the latter a collector of rare technology (he mentions purchasing Stephen King's word processor, for example). Another collector, and sometime 'friend' of Ngemi's, Hobbs Baranov, is a retired cryptographer and mathematician with connections in the American National Security Agency. Cayce strikes a deal with him: she buys a Curta calculator for him and he finds the email address to which the watermark code was sent. Using this email address Cayce makes contact with Stella Volkova whose sister Nora is the maker of the film clips. Cayce flies to Moscow to meet Stella in person and watch Nora work. Nora is brain damaged from an assassination attempt and can only express herself through film. At her hotel, Cayce is intercepted and drugged by Dorotea and wakes up in a mysterious prison facility. Cayce escapes; exhausted, disoriented and lost, she nearly collapses as Parkaboy, who upon Cayce's request was flown to Moscow, retrieves her and brings her to the prison where the film is processed. There Hubertus, Stella and Nora's uncle Andrei, and the latter's security employees are waiting for her. Over dinner with Cayce, the Russians reveal that they have been spying on her since she posted to a discussion forum speculating that the clips may be controlled by the Russian Mafia. They had let her track the clips to expose any security breaches in their distribution network. The Russians surrender all the information they had collected on her father’s disappearance and the book ends with Cayce coming to terms with his absence while in Paris with Parkaboy, whose real name is Peter Gilbert."
820,Brasyl,science," Brasyl is a story presented in three distinct strands of time. The main action concerns Marcelina Hoffman; a coked-up, ambitious reality TV producer in contemporary Brazil, a striving amateur capoeirista who transcends the cliches of luvvy television phony and becomes a full-fledged, truly likable person as we watch her embark upon a mad new project. Marcelina is going to find the disgraced goalie who lost Brazil a momentous World Cup half a century before and trick him into appearing on television for a mock trial in which the scarred nation can finally wreak its vengeance. Another strand is set in mid-21st century São Paulo, at a moment when the first quantum technologies are reaching the street, which industriously finds its own use for these things. Q-blades that undo the information that binds together the universe, Q-cores that break the crypto that powers the surveillance state that knows every movement of every person and object in Sampa and beyond. The final strand is an 18th-century Heart of Darkness adventure in the deep Amazon jungle, as we follow an Irish-Portuguese Jesuit into slaver territory where he is sent to end the mad, bloody kingdom of a rogue priest who scours the land with plague and fire. He is joined by a French natural philosopher, who intends to reach the equator and discover the shape of the world with a pendulum."
821,The Invention of Morel,science," The fugitive starts a diary after tourists arrive on the desert island where he is hiding. Although he considers their presence a miracle, he is afraid they will turn him in to the authorities. He retreats to the swamps while they take over the museum on top of the hill where he used to live. Through his diary we learn that the fugitive is a writer from Venezuela sentenced to life in prison. He believes he is on the (fictional) island of Villings, a part of the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu), but is not sure. All he knows is that the island is the focus of a strange disease whose symptoms are similar to radiation poisoning. Among the tourists is a woman who sees the sunset everyday from the cliff on the west side of the island. He spies on her and while doing so falls in love. She and another man, a bearded tennis player called Morel who visits her frequently, speak French among themselves. Morel calls her Faustine. The fugitive decides to approach her, but she does not react to him. He assumes she is ignoring him, but his encounters with the other tourists have the same result. Nobody on the island notices him. He points out that the conversations between Faustine and Morel repeat every week and fears he is going crazy. As suddenly as they appeared, the tourists vanish. The fugitive returns to the museum to investigate and finds no evidence of people being there during his absence. He attributes the experience to a hallucination caused by food poisoning, but the tourists reappear that night. They have come out of nowhere and yet they talk as if they have been there for a while. He watches them closely while still avoiding direct contact and notices more strange things. In the aquarium he encounters identical copies of the dead fish he found on his day of arrival. During a day at the pool, he sees the tourists jump to shake off the cold when the heat is unbearable. The strangest thing he notices is the presence of two suns and two moons in the sky. He comes up with all sort of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention capable of reproducing reality. He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves. Although Morel does not mention her by name, the fugitive is sure he is talking about Faustine. After hearing that the people recorded on previous experiments are dead, one of the tourists guesses correctly they will die, too. The meeting ends abruptly as Morel leaves in anger. The fugitive picks up Morel's cue cards and learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy. He understands that the phenomena of the two suns and two moons are a consequence of what happens when the recording overlaps reality &mdash; one is the real sun and the other one represents the sun's position at recording time. The other strange things that happen on the island have a similar explanation. He imagines all the possible uses for Morel's invention, including the creation of a second model to resurrect people. Despite this he feels repulsion for the ""new kind of photographs"" that inhabit the island, but as time goes by he accepts their existence as something better than his own. He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording so it looks like he and Faustine are in love, even though she might have slept with Alec and Haynes. This bothers him, but he is confident it will not matter in the eternity they will spend together. At least he is sure she is not Morel's lover. On the diary's final entry the fugitive describes how he is waiting for his soul to pass onto the recording while dying. He asks a favor of the man who will invent a machine capable of merging souls based on Morel's invention. He wants the inventor to search for them and let him enter Faustine's conscience as an act of mercy."
822,To Your Scattered Bodies Go,science," The novel begins with adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton waking up after his death on a strange new world made up of one ongoing river. He discovers that he is but one of billions of previously dead personalities from throughout Earth's history stretching from the Neolithic age through 2008 AD also 'resurrected'. At first the resurrectees are primarily focused on survival, though their basic needs for food are mysteriously taken care of; but eventually Burton decides to make it his mission to find the headwaters of the River and discover the purpose and intention of humanity's resurrection. Along the way he is enslaved and then, after being partnered with Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring, discovers the existence of a mysterious organization responsible for the resurrection of humanity, and is recruited by a rogue member of this group to take down their carefully laid plans."
823,Placebo Effect,science," The Doctor takes Sam to Micawber’s World, an artificial planet owned by the Carrington Corporation, to attend the wedding of his friends Stacy Townsend and the Ice Warrior Ssard. Sam is slightly peeved to learn that they travelled with him during the three-year period in which he’d left her at a one-hour Greenpeace rally, but she eventually forgives him. The wedding ceremony is disrupted by followers of the Church of the Way Forward, who believe that interspecies marriage dilutes racial purity and is thus forbidden by their Goddess. Chase Carrington himself apologises for the disruption and pays for the wedding guests’ expenses out of his own pocket. Later, however, he is murdered by Foamasi assassins working for the Dark Peaks Lodge, and an impersonator in a body-suit disguise takes his place... Micawber’s World is hosting the 3999 Olympics, and Ms Sox, the head of security for Carrington Corp, has called in extra Space Security troops for the occasion. A patrol vanishes while lighting the tunnels beneath the surface of the planet, but rather than court-martial Sergeant Dallion for losing her men without an explanation, Commander Ritchie gives her and the remaining members of her squad leeway to investigate. In fact, Ritchie’s wife and son have been kidnapped by the Dark Peaks Lodge, who intend to discover what’s going on in the tunnels and then kill Dallion. Rivalry between Dark Peaks and the Twin Suns Lodge leads to the murder of a Foamasi, and when the Doctor notices the body being taken to the Space Security building for an autopsy, he involves himself in the investigation out of curiosity. Ritchie decides that the Doctor might prove to be a useful loose cannon and directs him to the Foamasi ambassador, Green Fingers. The Doctor also speaks with Ms Sox and with Sergeant Dallion, and eventually they all put together their stories and determine that the Dark Peaks Lodge is attempting to infiltrate Carrington Corp through blackmail, murder and impersonation. Sam investigates the Church of the Way Forward but determines that they’re not connected to the mystery; the telepathic Reverend Lukas simply wants to spread the word of his Goddess throughout the galaxy. His young follower Kyle Dale, who has come to compete in the Olympics, becomes intrigued by Sam’s intelligent and passionate defense of her own beliefs. After leaving the Church followers, Sam happens across the entourage of the visiting Duchess of Auckland, just as the sycophantic journalist Talon Chalfont learns that he’s been snubbed from the Duchess’ itinerary. Chalfont hacks into the Federation computers to search for a better story, learns of the missing troopers and sets off to investigate. Sam follows him, and Kyle, who happens to be passing by, follows them both. Ms Sox informs the Doctor that her security team has been investigating SSS xenobiologist Miles Mason, who was seen consorting with an unknown alien shortly before arriving on Micawber’s World. Ms Sox believes that Mason is involved with drug smugglers who have set up camp in the tunnels; it would seem that the Dark Peaks Lodge learned of her investigation while infiltrating Carrington Corp, and are attempting to find out what’s going on so they can get in on the action. But Dark Peaks agents learn of the investigation and send word to Events Co-ordinator Sumner that Ritchie and his associates are conspiring to assassinate the Duchess of Auckland. What nobody yet realizes is that the creatures in the tunnels are Wirrrn. Dr Mason has been absorbed into the Wirrrn hive mind, and has been using the facilities of the SSS labs to manufacture a mutagenic drug which will transform anyone who takes it into a Wirrrn. He intends to trick the Foamasi into distributing the drugs to the athletes under the impression that they are performance-enhancing; in fact most of them are placebos with the mutagenic tags attached. Some of the drugs contain a time-release formula, so those who take them will not fully transform into a Wirrrn for months, thus spreading the taint throughout the galaxy... The missing patrol members have been transformed into Wirrrn larvae, and the Queen sends them to the surface to await the start of the games. She sends a telepathic message to Mason, ordering him to arrange a distraction that will provide the larvae with cover for their attack. The signal is also picked up by the Doctor, who faints dead away just as Sumner arrives to arrest the “conspirators” -- and by Reverend Lukas, who believes it to be the call of his Goddess, and who leads his followers into the tunnels where most are absorbed by the Wirrrn. Chalfont is also transformed into a Wirrrn, but Sam and Kyle manage to escape. Sumner realizes he’s been deceived, and the recovering Doctor realizes that there’s more going on in the tunnels than he’d previously believed. Green Fingers informs the other Lodges about Dark Peaks’ activities and executes the Dark Peaks Patriarch; the remaining Dark Peaks Foamasi are targeted and killed by assassins from the other Lodges, and eventually Ritchie’s wife and son are found and rescued. In the process, it becomes clear that many Dark Peaks agents have themselves become infected by the Wirrrn in the course of their criminal activities. The Doctor and Ms Sox obtain a sample of the drugs, analyse them and learn the truth just as Sam and Kyle arrive with their story. Mason plants a bomb beneath the Duchess of Auckland’s podium, and she is killed instantly in the explosion. In the ensuing confusion the Wirrrn larvae emerge and attack, and some of the Olympic athletes spontaneously transform into Wirrrn, spreading confusion and terror. But thanks to their advance warning of the danger, SSS troops are able to contain the attack and drive off the larvae. The Doctor enters the tunnels and confronts the Wirrrn Queen, who has made her nest around the planet’s artificial power source; he is able to rewire it and electrocute her, but some of the Wirrrn larvae survive. Acting on instinct, they steal a shuttle and set off back “home”, to the Andromeda Galaxy. The Doctor synthesizes an antidote to the mutagenic drug, saving the athletes who took them from becoming Wirrrn—although they will never fully recover. Kyle decides to remain on Micawber’s World and carry on the good work of the Church despite Lukas’ betrayal of his ideals. Lukas himself has escaped with the body of the Wirrrn Queen and with two of his followers—who are slowly transforming into Wirrrn themselves, ready to spread the word of their Goddess throughout the galaxy..."
824,Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn,science," Six weeks after returning from the Jovian system, David ""Lucky"" Starr learns that Jack Dorrance, the chief of a Sirian spy ring uncovered by Starr in the Jovian system, has escaped from Earth. Starr and his sidekick Bigman Jones follow Dorrance to the Saturnian system, where Dorrance tries to lose them in Saturn's rings, but his ship is destroyed by a ring fragment. A Sirian ship then contacts Starr and informs him that the Sirians have built a colony on Titan and claimed it for Sirius, contrary to established precedent that all worlds in an inhabited stellar system belong to that system's inhabitants, whether they have permanent settlements on those worlds or not. Starr orders the pursuing Terrestrial fleet back to Earth; but returns with Bigman and Councilman Ben Wessilewsky to the Saturnian system. When several Sirian ships pursue the Shooting Starr, Starr conceals himself and his ship in the interior of Mimas; leaves Wessilewsky below the surface with enough supplies to maintain himself for several months; then takes the Shooting Starr back into space, where they are captured by the Sirians and taken to the colony on Titan. There, Sirian commander Sten Devoure threatens to have Bigman killed unless Starr agrees to testify at an upcoming interstellar conference on the asteroid Vesta that he entered the Saturnian system to attack the Sirians. When Bigman endangers himself by defeating Devoure in a duel, Starr makes a deal with Devoure: if he spares Bigman's life, Starr will testify that he entered the Saturnian system in an armed ship, and will lead the Sirians to Wessilewsky's base on Mimas. At the Vesta conference, Devoure admits that the Sirians have established a base on Titan, but insists that the fact that Saturn and its moons are part of Earth's stellar system is irrelevant: ""An empty world is an empty world, regardless of the particular route it travels through space. We colonized it first and it is ours"". Devoure then brings out Starr, who admits to having re-entered the Saturnian system after being warned off, and also that Wessilewsky established a base on Mimas. When asked his reasons, according to a secret plan of his own, Starr replies that Wessilewsky was placed to establish a colony on Mimas; whereupon Conway states that by removing Wessilewsky from Mimas, the Sirians violated the very principle they attempted to establish. The conference ends with three client worlds voting with the Sirians, and the rest voting with Earth, with the result that the Sirians are ordered to leave Titan within a month."
825,The Angel of the Revolution,science," The story begins on September 3, 1903 with young man, Richard Arnold, twenty-six old scientist devoted heart and soul to the invention of flying machine, finally realizing his dream in the form of air-ship model that can fly on its own. However, living completely for his dream, he ended with no money to sustain even his next day's life, let alone do something practical with his revolutionary invention. The circumstances made him wander around the streets of London, until a stranger overheard his muttering about flying machine that he wouldn't want to put in hands of tyrants or for the use in war and destruction. The stranger introduced himself as Maurice Colston, and soon both men realized they share the same distaste for autocracy and the status quo as it was, placing themselves ""at war with Society"". With the arrangement of Colston, Arnold met with other heads of the Brotherhood of Freedom, the revolutionary organization of Anarchists, Nihilists and Socialists bent on ending the society of oppression and misery. Agreeing with their cause, he put his knowledge and skills at their disposal, while still keeping his complete control over the invention that will change the face of the Earth. During the meeting he met Natasha, the Angel of the Revolution, and already fell in love with her. However, the Cause they've been set to achieve was of far greater importance so the romance between them had to wait for better times. Equipped by the Brotherhood with everything he needed, Arnold finished the construction of first air-ship to ever fly the skies above Earth: the Ariel. First use of the air-ship was in the rescuing of Natasha in the March of 1904, arrested by Russian government about the time Ariel was built. On their flight towards the designated town in Russia where they'll attempt to rescue Natasha, the Terrorists - as everyone called the members of this secret order - decided to show the world the destructive power of the air-ship. Strongest European fortress Kronstadt, situated on the island in the Finnish Gulf, was picked as an example of what the Terrorists can now achieve. Within several minutes, the fortress was brought down to ruin, with weapons fired from the Ariel, of the devastating power that no army has yet seen. Through the use of such vessel and the innumerable agents the Brotherhood had all around the Western world, in all professions, the Terrorists managed to rescue Natasha before the convoy of political prisoners reached Siberia. The news of the mysterious air vessel and its power traveled all over the Western world, causing fear and panic in the ranks of both common people and the upper classes. Meanwhile, after forty years of peace, European powers were readying for the inevitable final clash: plans were being laid down, treaties made and tested, armies equipped and mobilized. Attempting to control the coming war and make it the war to end all wars, Terrorists set off to find a suitable place for headquarters from where they could send orders and organize their own troops without being distracted. A region in the midst of Africa, called Aerial by the English explorers who found it, made a perfect spot. The region was a paradise valley surrounded by high mountains, thus unreachable by any conventional vessel - except the air-ship. In that paradise Arnold and Natasha finally swore their love to each other, agreeing to prolong their longing passion until the war to end all wars is over and eternal peace restored on Earth. In the meantime, Terrorists built eleven more air-ships identical to Ariel and the twelfth - a flagship - with twice the firepower and the size. As the Europe sank into war between Anglo-Teutonic Alliance (led by Britain, Germany and Austria) and the Franco-Slavonian League (led by Russia, France and Italy), the new warfare proved to be more devastating than ever, especially with Russians and French employing the newly-built war-balloons. The balloons, although in many ways inferior to Terrorists' air-ships, were destroying a fort after fort, city after city, and securing numerous victories for the Franco-Slavonian League. Even though they could only drop dynamites from above, war-balloons were causing such a havoc, that German and Austrian armies could not cope with the situation, losing the land fast. During the early weeks of this war of the Titans, Terrorists tried to stay away from siding with any alliance, occasionally appearing here and there and settling their own issues with involved sides or their weapons of war, pushing their own well-planned agenda slowly but steadily. Still, by mere moment of lack of caution, Terrorists lost one air-ship to Russians, due to treason in their own ranks. Pursuing the lost vessel in attempt to either retrieve it or destroy, the Terrorists proved the superiority of their flying machines to any other human machine, including the war-balloons of the Russians and French. Finally retrieving the lost air-ship, they witnessed the destructive power Franco-Slavonian League had at its disposal against Anglo-Teutonic Alliance, which assured them that Britain and her allies had no chance of winning such a war. As the European war irresistibly drew closer to Britain shores, with Germany falling completely under the power of Russian Tsar, Terrorists had more important work to finish. Head of the American section of the Brotherhood, Michael Roburoff, asked for Natasha's hand, and at the utter disappointment of both Natasha and Arnold, Natasha's father sent her daughter to America. Both lovers did not try to challenge the will of the leading terrorist, so they accepted the change as they usually did - being certain that Natas' plan was again made with careful and rational preparation. However, it turned out that Roburoff was in fact blackmailing Natas: he was proposing to exchange the allegiance of American section for Natasha's hand. By the will of Natas, Roburoff was shot dead by Natasha's hand when he received her in his house in America, and the American section gained new leadership, ready for the revolution. On the night of the 4th of October 1904, the order was passed to millions of secret followers of the Brotherhood in America, and the next day production completely stopped, streets and institutions were taken by organized masses and the government was overthrown. New government arrested big capitalists who were scheming to use European conflict for gaining even greater profit by supplying the Franco-Slavonian League, and with a threat of air-ships and mass of troops devoted to Brotherhood's Cause the terrorists proclaimed new Anglo-Saxon Federation. Soon Canada faced the same destiny and the terrorists turned to Britain with a proposal: either face utter destruction by Russian and French forces, or become a part of the Federation. British government refused the proposal, willing to fight till the bitter end and still hoping that the islands could not be taken by any continental army. Much to their surprise, with the aid of war-balloons, Franco-Slavonian League managed not only to cut all oversea trade to and from Britain, but also arranged successful landing of troops on British soil, aiming to take London as a heart of Anglo-Saxon world. Under siege and with no allies left, Britain fought the last battle furiously, but the siege cut all food supply and left the Old Lion with no other choice than to accept newly sent proposal from the terrorists. At the highest pitch of his power, Russian Tsar was already looking forward to Britain's surrender and was taken by surprise as the new army arose in Britain: the army called by the terrorists, just like they did in America. Even greater was Tsar's surprise when he realized that terrorists had thousands of their men in his own ranks. Aided with air-ships and troops from American section, the Brotherhood - now acting as the Anglo-Saxon Federation - swiftly destroyed almost all Russian, French and Italian troops, forcing a surrender of all the armies and ending the world war in just two days. On the 9th of May, Conference was held to decide the future of the Western world. Having the power of millions of men under their Federation's banner, and air-ships in the sky, the terrorists easily convinced all European leaders that the only way to stop destruction was to make wars impossible to fight. Thus, disarmament of all standing armies was enacted, with police being the only force to keep the order. However, in the East, Buddhist and Muslim people fought each other without information of what happened in Europe. After defeating their opponents, the Muslims moved to Turkey in an attempt to conquer the Western world. Met with tremendous destructive power of the Federation, they soon admitted the defeat and accepted the conditions of surrender that were laid before them by the terrorists. The conditions were same for all the nations, now united under the banner of the Federation, the all-powerful peace force. Removing from the national laws all unjust and confusing parts and confiscating in the hands of the state all the land that wasn't directly used for production, the Federation finally achieved the order that suited the common man, without any fear of wars in the future. Willing and able to achieve their goal by any means at their disposal, the terrorists finally succeeded and concluded their war to end all wars."
826,Nearly Neptune,science, The book begins by announcing the death of Chris Godfrey and his three fellow astronauts after a fire and apparent break-up of their spacecraft as it approaches the orbit of Neptune as observed from Earth. The crew have however survived but are stranded as their hypothermia equipment is irreparably damaged.
827,2001: A Space Odyssey,science," In the background to the story in the book, an ancient and unseen alien race uses a device with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life. The book shows one such monolith appearing in ancient Africa, 3 million years B.C. (in the movie, this was altered to 4 million years), where it inspires a starving group of the hominid ancestors of human beings to develop tools. The ape-men use their tools to kill animals and eat meat, ending their starvation. They then use the tools to kill a leopard that had been preying on them; the next day, the main ape character, Moon-Watcher, uses a club to kill the leader of a rival tribe. Moon-Watcher reflects that though he is now master of the world, he is unsure of what to do next—but he will think of something. The book suggests that the monolith was instrumental in awakening intelligence, and enabling the transition of the ape-men to a higher order, with the ability to fashion crude tools and thereby be able to hunt and forage for food in a much more efficient fashion. The book then leaps ahead a few million years to the year 1999, detailing Dr. Heywood Floyd's travel to Clavius Base on the Moon. Upon his arrival, Floyd attends a meeting. A lead scientist explains that they have found a magnetic disturbance in Tycho, one of the Moon's craters, designated Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One, or TMA-1. An excavation of the area has revealed a large black slab; it is precisely fashioned to a ratio of exactly 1:4:9, or 1²:2²:3²—that is to say that the thickness of the slab is exactly 1/4 of its width and 1/9 of its height. Such a construction rules out any naturally-occurring phenomena, and at three million years of age, it was not crafted by human hands. It is the first evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Floyd and a team of scientists drive across the moon to actually view TMA-1. They arrive just as sunlight hits upon it for the first time in three million years. It then sends a piercing radio transmission to the far reaches of the solar system. The signal is tracked to one of the moons of Saturn, Japetus (Iapetus), where an expedition is then planned to investigate. The book leaps forward 18 months to 2001 to the Discovery One mission to Saturn. Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Francis Poole are the only conscious human beings aboard Discovery One spaceship. Their three other colleagues are in a state of suspended animation, to be awakened when they near Saturn. The HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer addressed as ""HAL,"" maintains the ship and is a vital part of life aboard. While Poole is receiving a birthday message from his family back home, HAL tells Bowman that the AE-35 unit of the ship is going to malfunction. The AE-35 unit is responsible for keeping their communication dish aimed at Earth; without it, receiving support would be impossible. Poole takes one of the extra-vehicular pods and swaps the AE-35 unit. But when Bowman conducts tests on the AE-35 unit that has been replaced, he determines that there was never anything wrong with it. Poole and Bowman become suspicious at HAL's refusal to admit that there could be something wrong with his failure detection sensors. HAL then claims that the replacement AE-35 unit will fail. Poole and Bowman radio back to Earth; they are told that there is most definitely something wrong with HAL, and are directed to disconnect him for analysis. These instructions are interrupted as the signal is broken. HAL informs them that the AE-35 unit has malfunctioned. Poole takes a pod outside the ship to bring in the failed AE-35 unit. As he is removing the unit, the pod, which he had left parked close by, on the ship's hull, begins moving toward him. He is powerless to move out of the way in time and is killed when his spacesuit is torn, exposing him to the vacuum of space. Bowman is shocked by Poole's death and is deeply distressed. He is unsure whether HAL, a machine, really could have killed Poole. He decides that he will need to wake up the other three astronauts. He has an argument with HAL, with HAL refusing to obey his orders to switch the hibernation pods to manual operation, insisting that Bowman is incapacitated. Bowman threatens to disconnect him if his orders are not obeyed, and HAL relents, giving him manual control to wake the sleeping scientists. But as Bowman begins to awaken his colleagues, he hears HAL open both airlock doors into space, venting the ship’s internal atmosphere. The air on board is lost to the vacuum of space. Bowman makes his way into a sealed emergency shelter, which has an isolated oxygen supply and spare spacesuit. He then puts on the spacesuit and re-enters the ship, knowing HAL to be a murderer. Bowman then laboriously shuts down HAL's consciousness, leaving intact his purely autonomic functions needed for power and life support. With the ship back in order, he manually re-establishes contact with Earth. He then learns that the true purpose of the mission is to explore Iapetus, the third-largest moon of Saturn, in the hope of contacting the society that buried the monolith on the Moon. Bowman learns that HAL had begun to feel guilty and conflicted about keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, which ran contrary to his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully. This conflict had started to manifest itself in little errors. Given time, HAL might have been able to resolve this crisis peacefully, but when he was threatened with disconnection, he panicked and defended himself out of a belief that his very existence was at stake, having no concept of the state of sleep. Bowman spends months on the ship, alone, slowly approaching Iapetus. A return to Earth is now out of the question, as HAL's sudden decompression of Discovery severely damaged the ship's air filtration system, leaving Bowman with far less breathable air than either returning to Earth or waiting for a rescue ship would require, and hibernation is impossible without HAL to monitor it. During his long approach, he gradually notices a small black spot on the surface of Japetus. When he gets closer, he realizes that this is an immense black monolith, identical in shape to TMA-1, only much larger. The scientists back on Earth name this monolith ""TMA-2,"" which Bowman points out is a double misnomer because it is not in the Tycho moon crater and gives off no magnetic anomaly whatsoever. He decides to go out in one of the extra-vehicular pods to make a closer inspection of the monolith. Programmed for just such an occurrence, the monolith reveals its true purpose as a star gate when it opens and pulls in Bowman's pod. Before he vanishes, Mission control hears him proclaim: ""The thing's hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!"" Bowman is transported via the monolith to an unknown star system. During this journey, he goes through a large interstellar switching station, and sees other species' spaceships going on other routes; he dubs it the 'Grand Central Station' of the universe. Bowman is given a wide variety of sights; from the wreckage of ancient civilizations to what appear to be life-forms, living on the surfaces of a binary star system. He is brought to what appears to be a nice hotel suite, carefully constructed from monitored television transmissions, and designed to make him feel at ease. Bowman goes to sleep. As he sleeps, his mind and memories are drained from his body, and he is made into a new immortal entity, a Star Child, that can live and travel in space. The Star Child then returns to our Solar System and to Earth. Once there, he detonates an orbiting nuclear warhead. Like Moon-Watcher three million years before, the Star Child is now master of the world and uncertain what to do next—but like Moon-Watcher, the Star Child too will think of something."
828,Daybreak Zero,science," In the near future, a variety of groups with diverse aims, but an overlapping desire to end modern technological society (the ""Big System"") create a nanotech plague (""Daybreak"") which both destroys rubber and plastics and eats away any metal conductors carrying electricity. An open question in the book is whether these groups, and their shared motivation, are coordinated by some conscious actor, or whether they are an emergent property / meme that attained a critical mass."
829,Twilight at the Well of Souls,science," The plot of Twilight at the Well of Souls is a direct continuation of the plot of The Return of Nathan Brazil. As that novel concludes, guards at the South Zone of the Well World have killed Nathan Brazil. Or have they? As Twilight at the Well of Souls opens, it turns out that Brazil is not killed so easily. Yet another being carrying Brazil's appearance is shot down by the guards, and the leader of Zone, Serge Ortega, is informed that the latest victim is the 27th of the current day. Ortega reveals that he has deduced that Brazil had actually entered several weeks before, even arriving prior to his companions Mavra Chang, Marquoz, and Yua (all of whom had been led to believe that Brazil had not yet journeyed to the Well World). Marquoz has been busy in his short time on the Well World. After awakening as an armored war-lizard in Hakazit, he immediately insinuates himself into the local government. He learns that the government is a sort of a dictatorship, but one in which anyone who assassinates the current leader is elevated to that position themself. Marquoz does not wish to take overall leadership, but he does assassinate and supplant the head of the secret police. He leverages this position and the Hakazit lust for war and combat to raise an army to fight on Brazil's behalf. In contrast, Yua finds what seems like a hopeless situation in Awbri. The society there is dominated by the males, because every month the females go into heat (referred to as the Time) which can only be relieved by mating with a male. Just as Yua is despairing of being able to do her part to assist Brazil, she receives instructions which had been planted subconsciously by Obie. These instructions give Yua the recipe for making a hormonal replacement that will prevent the Time from occurring. Fortified with the means to gain control from the men, Yua sets about raising her own army. Mavra prefers to begin in Dillia by journeying to the neighboring hex of Gedemondas. She recalls that during her previous visit to the Well World, she had seen that the inhabitants there had amazing mental powers, with the ability to control the thoughts of others. She believes that the Gedemondans would be powerful allies, and she wants to do something more than just sit and wait until she is called. Mavra is able to catch on with a hunting party headed by Colonel Asam, as Asam has heard the stories of Mavra's previous visit to the Well World and is also very interested in meeting a Gedemondan. Their party is waylaid near their first overnight rest stop in Gedemondas. Although they succeed in fighting off the attackers, several members of the party perish and Mavra is critically injured by a blow to the head, putting her in a coma for three days. After turning the other wounded members of the group over to a rescue party, Mavra and Asam travel further into Gedemondas. At one of their rest stops, the Gedemondans arrive to meet them. Holding Mavra and Asam in thrall, the Gedemondans heal their wounds, then discuss the mission to repair the Well. Mavra asks for their assistance, but is not told whether it will be offered. The Gedemondans inform her of a council of war that will soon be conducted in the empty Gedemondan embassy in South Zone, and Mavra suggests that the fastest way to get there is via the Gedemondan Zone Gate. The Gedemondans take her and Asam there, though they do not allow either traveller to remember anything of the journey. At the council, the three conspirators are reunited, and they learn of one another's new forms. The last member of the council is Gypsy, who inexplicably retains the same appearance as he had before arriving at the Well World. Gypsy informs the rest of the council of Brazil's early arrival on the Well World, and discusses the plan for misdirection of the search for Brazil. Gypsy demonstrates that he has the ability to morph into the same appearance as Brazil, capable of fooling any observer not aware of the switch. He informs the group that he will join their army at some point in the future in the guise of Brazil, with the intention of drawing attention away from the approach of the real Brazil to the Well."
830,Wagon Train to the Stars,science, Guarding a colony expedition becomes much more difficult when an ancient feud between two alien races threatens everyone.
831,Colony,science," The story starts on Earth in the future. Global warming and over population has caused an imminent apocalypse. The hope for the survival of the human race is a spaceship called the Willflower, which will take a small number of the world's best minds on a journey to colonize another planet. Eddie O'Hare, the protagonist, is not one of them. He is deep in debt due to his computer having mysteriously stolen several million dollars online, then sending it to an unknown location. As such, he decides to gamble what money he has left in the hope of getting enough to pay back the debts. On his way to the casino, he meets a pink-socked assassin who he fears may have been sent to kill him. It turns out that he has not (or at least, Eddie is not the man's current target). When gambling his the last of his money, Eddie wins- thanks to him mimicking the gambling decisions of a man who looks uncannily like himself-, but the casino is no longer operational; due to the Willflower's imminent departure, the town (which was created only to house people working on the project), is closing down, and the casino has already lost all its money to the other man. He leaves and decides to hide. Whilst doing so, he happens to meet the man whose luck he 'piggy-backed' on earlier. He discovers that the other man, Charles Perry Gordon, is due to go on the Willflower but doesn't want to go now that he was won such a vast amount of money. Due to the ramifications for the rest of his family Gordon cannot refuse to leave, so he offers Eddie a place in place of himself. Eddie successfully smuggles himself on board (Unaware that Gordon had intended to sell him out as an impostor once the ship took off and it was too late for him to join the mission, only for Gordon to be killed by the hitmen he hired to simulate Eddie's alleged 'assault' because they had also been hired by the casino staff to get the money back). As Gordon's job is the community planner, Eddie reads the plans so far to learn more about his job and discovers that the man he is replacing has enforced a fascist, totalitarian system: crew members are paired for life before they are even born, and jobs- even unpleasant ones such as prostitution- are inherited. However, shortly after the ship sets off he is murdered by an unknown assailant. The story then jumps forward several generations. He is revived as a cyborg with only his head and spinal column remaining of his original body, and trapped forever in a jar of green slime (Even worse, the nerve endings are incorrectly wired, so that, for example, he moves his right arm when trying to move his left foot). He finds himself on a ship full of idiots and that there is something going wrong with the ship; all but one of its engines are gone and it has only 20% of its manoeuvring thrusters. The ship needs to land soon, but only three planets are available: Thrrrppp, which is the most habitable but with no way for the ship to enter orbit, Penis, which the ship has a 50% chance of docking with but is covered in volcanoes, and Panties, which is totally hostile but has a 90% chance of docking. As the only intelligent life form on board it is up to him to find out what is happening. As he explores the ship, he meets more of the ship's mentally retarded crew, none of which have even the slightest ability to perform their jobs. He is puzzled by this, the fact that the crew is totally illiterate and, most importantly, the fact that the ship, which has been shown to be able to self-repair itself if it takes damage, has not done so. The ship is also on a collision course with a massive gas giant which does not appear on the radar system. The ship's less than moral priest attempts to leave in the nuclear powered escape pod, but fails thanks to the captain overriding the system. Eddie decides to cause the escape pod to self-destruct in the hope that the explosion will force the ship towards planet Thrrrppp. This fails when the priest steals the pod- accompanied by some of the ship's prostitutes to help him 'rebuild' human society, destroying the remaining engines in the process. Eddy is forced to leave the ship and go and see what is happening. Outside, he is drawn back into the ship by an unknown force. He encounters the assassin from the beginning of the novel, still intent on fulfilling his centuries-old contract (At the same time, Eddie has a flashback where he realises that the original Father Lewis killed him to stop him spreading 'his' mad plans any further). Before he can do so, however, the ship kills him. It then talks to Eddy and reveals what has been happening. Its internal self-repair systems, it transpires, were also capable of self-modification, eventually becoming self-aware. Realizing the madness that the original crew had instigated, it made the crew members illiterate to erase all memory of the old system. It has also gained the ability to time travel into the past, where it can affect electronics, but not take a physical form. Back on Earth, humanity has become extinct; the crew of the Willflower are all that is left. The ship had selected Eddie to look after the crew as he was the only person with sufficiently low self-esteem to survive the cybernetic revival system; the sheer horror of the suit would have driven anyone else insane, but Eddie expected so little out of life that he actually came through the process as a better person. The ship causes Eddy's computer to steal the money (instigating the series of events that caused Eddie to arrive on the ship), then repairs itself and flies the crew to planet Thrrrppp."
832,Revelation,science," As Ben Skywalker seeks to find proof that Jacen Solo had killed Ben's mother, Mara, Darth Caedus seeks the Imperial Remnant's help in combating the Galactic Alliance's enemies in the galactic Confederation. While the Moff Council is attracted to Caedus's bid for added power and territory, the Imperial Remnant's leader, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, is reluctant, as Caedus's actions throughout the war against the Confederation have been horrendous. So Pellaeon contacts fellow Admiral Natasi Daala to help him counter Caedus should he do anything stupid. In response, Daala hires out Boba Fett and his Mandalorians to be on standby should Caedus make a stupid decision, as expected, when the Galactic Alliance and Imperial Remnant ally to defeat the rebels on Fondor. With Fett and his ilk is Jaina Solo, who is training with the Mandos in order to understand how to fight in an unorthodox, which can help her defeat her brother. Meanwhile, Caedus's fellow Chief of State, Admiral Cha Niathal, is a traitor to Caedus, and is secretly allied to Luke Skywalker's Jedi Coalition, for even she knows that Caedus's actions have been too drastic in the war. When the Second Battle of Fondor commences, Caedus's forces easily overwhelm the rebels to the point that the latter group surrenders. Nevertheless, Caedus makes his stupid move by pressing on the attack in order to make sure that the Fondorian rebels will never pose a threat to the Galactic Alliance ever again. As Pellaeon proceeds to turn on Caedus with Daala and her Mandalorian allies for backup, Caedus's envoy to the Imperial Remnant, Tahiri Veila, threatens Pellaeon at blasterpoint to commit the Imperial forces to Caedus's cause. Pellaeon refuses, and is shot to death for his betrayal. As a result, Daala's forces attack Caedus's fleet just as Niathal reveals her true colors and goes against Caedus. Despite this, a large majority of the Alliance fleet still somehow supports Caedus despite his actions, which leaves Niathal and her supporters to go into exile from the Sith Lord's rule. Tahiri is rescued from the invading Mandalorians by Caedus himself, and both of them barely escape death as they return to Caedus's remaining Alliance fleet. In the end, Caedus's forces win as they get the Imperial forces on their side, now that they are ruled solely by the Moff Council in the aftermath of Grand Admiral Pellaeon's death. Ben manages to corroborate enough evidence that points to Jacen being Mara's killer. This becomes especially apparent when Ben's ally in the Galactic Alliance Guard, Lon Shevu, gets Jacen to confess not only that he eliminated Mara, but also that he is the Sith Lord Darth Caedus. The revelation of the story had come to pass in the end."
833,Around the Moon,science," Having been fired out of the giant Columbiad space gun, the Baltimore Gun Club's bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan, begins the five-day trip to the moon. A few minutes into the journey, a small, bright asteroid passes within a few hundred yards of them, but luckily does not collide with the projectile. The asteroid had been captured by the Earth's gravity and had become a second moon. The three travelers undergo a series of adventures and misadventures during the rest of the journey, including disposing of the body of a dog out a window, suffering intoxication by gases, and making calculations leading them, briefly, to believe that they are to fall back to Earth. During the latter part of the voyage, it becomes apparent that the gravitational force of their earlier encounter with the asteroid has caused the projectile to deviate from its course. The projectile enters lunar orbit, rather than landing on the moon as originally planned. Barbicane, Ardan and Nicholl begin geographical observations with opera glasses. The projectile then dips over the northern hemisphere of the moon, into the darkness of its shadow. It is plunged into extreme cold, before emerging into the light and heat again. They then begin to approach the moon's southern hemisphere. From the safety of their projectile, they gain spectacular views of Tycho, one of the greatest of all craters on the moon. The three men discuss the possibility of life on the moon, and conclude that it is barren. The projectile begins to move away from the moon, towards the 'dead point' (the place at which the gravitational attraction of the moon and Earth becomes equal). Michel Ardan hits upon the idea of using the rockets fixed to the bottom of the projectile (which they were originally going to use to deaden the shock of landing) to propel the projectile towards the moon and hopefully cause it to fall onto it, thereby achieving their mission. When the projectile reaches the point of neutral attraction, the rockets are fired, but it is too late. The projectile begins a fall onto the Earth from a distance of 160,000 miles, and it is to strike the Earth at a speed of 115,200 miles per hour, the same speed at which it left the mouth of the Columbiad. All hope seems lost for Barbicane, Nicholl and Ardan. Four days later, the crew of a US Navy vessel USS Susquehanna spots a bright meteor fall from the sky into the sea. This turns out to be the returning projectile, and the three men inside are found to be alive and are rescued. They are treated to lavish homecoming celebrations as the first people to leave Earth."
834,Stadium Beyond the Stars,science,- ~Plot outline description
835,Slow River,science," Lore Van de Oest was born in one of the mightiest families on earth. However, she suddenly loses everything."
836,The Face of the Waters,science," The Face of the Waters takes place in the far future, on a penal colony, inhabited by convicts and their progeny. The planet is Hydros, an ocean planet whose inhabitants live on artificial floating islands. After a human offense against the natives of Hydros, the human population of the island of Sorve are ordered to leave. Forbidden on all other islands, in a flotilla of ships they seek the semi-mythical island of the Face of the Waters. During their journey they are forced to learn more about themselves, leading to questions about both religion and the purpose of Man. At the end of the novel Robert Silverberg addresses what it means to be human. fr:La Face des eaux"
837,Chain of Attack,science," While mapping gravitational anomalies, the USS Enterprise is hurled millions of light-years off course. They find themselves in a galaxy devastated by war and soon they are under attack by both warring fleets. Captain Kirk risks his ship and crew in order to stop the war and get home."
838,Street of Shadows,science," The story features characters from the Medstar Duology, which was published in 2004. <!-"
839,"My Enemy, My Ally",science," The USS Enterprise is contacted by Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu, a Romulan commander whom Captain Kirk has tangled with several times before. Ael has become disillusioned with the Romulan Empire's politics, and is especially concerned with a secret project she has discovered which seeks to use medical research on captured Vulcans to allow Romulans to develop extensive mental powers. She convinces her crew to cross the Neutral Zone into Federation space, where the Enterprise is patrolling with the Starships Constellation, Intrepid and the Denebian Defender-class battleship Inaieu. Ael hopes to convince Kirk to launch a strike against the medical facility. The Captain declines, but when the USS Intrepid mysteriously vanishes during an ion storm, Ael convinces him that the ship has been captured by Romulans and its Vulcan crew will become part of the project. This convinces Kirk to take the Enterprise with Ael's ship, Bloodwing, into Romulan space in a rescue mission. The plan involves Ael's ship pretending to capture the Enterprise, taking it back home through the Romulan defences on a course which will pass close to the research station. The plan proceeds smoothly until a double cross by Ael's son, Tafv threatens to leave the Enterprise genuinely captured. This attempt is overturned, the Intrepid and her crew rescued, the base destroyed, and the Enterprise duly heads back to Federation space. Ael and Kirk go their separate ways, he back to duty and she to a life of exile as a traitor. Before leaving she tells Kirk all of her names and their meaning, a highly symbolic act for a Romulan which is only done to ""one closer than kin"". She tells him her names will be purged from the records back home, rendering her essentially a non-person in Romulan eyes. On returning to Earth Kirk hangs a pennant with Ael's names on it in a remote valley, symbolically counteracting this status."
840,The Escape,science," The book starts off with the four human Animorphs helping four parrots in a new mall cafe by telling the customers disgusting things about the cafe's food. After this, Marco's old acquaintance, Erek King, who was watching at the room's back, has some disturbing news about his mother, Eva (Visser One). She has returned to Earth, overseeing a Yeerk bioweapons program to allow them to venture into deep waters; this is a requirement made by the Yeerk command for the invasion of Leera, a planet covered almost entirely by oceans. The research is conducted in the waters around Royan Island. The Animorphs infiltrate the facility, and discover that the Yeerks are trying to create super-intelligent sharks which can be infested and controlled, because in their natural state, the sharks' brains are not big enough. They decide to acquire hammerhead morphs. Marco accidentally reveals to the other Animorphs his fear of sharks. While scouting the waters off Royan Island the Animorphs are captured by a computer, still morphed as sharks. They have devices installed in them designed to bestow sentience on animals. The Animorphs then try to morph flies but find they can no longer morph into small creatures because the devices are too large for small creatures' brains. They realize the only way to remove them is to destroy the facility. They attempt to do this. During the ensuing battle, Marco reveals to Rachel and Ax that Visser One's host body is his mother, just as they were about to kill her. Visser Three storms in, angry that Visser One would do these experiments without his knowledge or consent, and they have an argument. Visser Three is about to eat Ax in a snake morph, but Rachel intervenes and grabs him by his wrist in bear morph, threatening to cut him in half. Because of this, Marco sees an opportunity and morphs into a gorilla, knocking out the Visser. The Yeerks have just captured some new specimens of aquatic species - known as Leerans. The Leerans are capable of telepathy and unlimited mind-reading capacity (hence the Yeerks' attempts to endow the sharks with sentience- a secret invasion is impractical due to the Leeran mind-reading abilities). A possibly infested Leeran states to Visser One that Marco (still in gorilla morph) is human. Visser One, however, misunderstands and thinks it's saying that the morph is a human. Marco knocks the Leeran unconscious before it can explain what it meant. The Animorphs know that the Yeerks must be stopped before they can utilize two new powerful living weapons. They destroy the factory and escape unscathed. Marco's mother may or may not be dead. She was unconscious when the flooding started, but a Leeran was seen swimming toward her and the Animorphs heard a torpedo being expulsed, which may have carried her to safety."
841,Mission to Moulokin,science," The novel follows the continuing adventures of Skua September, Ethan Fortune and Milliken Williams on Tran-Ky-Ky as they try to help the native race, the Tran, win admission to the Commonwealth. During their struggle they deal with corrupt Commonwealth officials and an insane Tran leader, find the fabled city of Moulokin and learn of the history of the Tran."
842,Empty World,science," 15 year old Neil Miller is orphaned following a car accident and goes to live with his grandparents in Winchelsea, England. Neil suffers post traumatic stress from the car accident and stays detached from his peers despite their occasional attempts to involve him. News travels of a new disease, called the Calcutta Plague due to its origin, which accelerates the aging process in human beings. The plague is uniformly fatal, and although initially only affects those of already advanced years (claiming an old teacher at his school and both his grandparents,) it quickly progresses until it takes the life of a 2 year old girl that Neil finds and attempts to look after. During this time Neil notes that he has contracted the plague, but after a brief fever it leaves him unaffected. The death of the girl (and earlier her 4 year old brother) leaves Neil the sole survivor of Winchelsea, and after deciding that Winchelsea is becoming dangerous - due in part to packs of wild dogs - he leaves for London, taking first a manual Mini which he has difficulty driving, followed by an automatic Jaguar. Arriving in London he meets his first fellow survivor - the mentally unbalanced Clive, who although friendly towards Neil, during the night vandalizes his car to the point of destroying it, steals his mother's ring that Neil had kept, and then abandons him in central London. After finding the body of another survivor who has committed suicide barely hours before Neil found him, he is again despondent, but finds evidence of other survivors which brings him into contact with Billie and Lucy. Billie is openly hostile towards Neil, and it is implied that she has suffered in some way either during the plague or directly after it, but Neil becomes friends with Lucy and starts a romantic relationship with her - much to Billie's disgust. During this time Neil notes that the dogs have been supplanted by even more dangerous rats, and at least one big cat has escaped from a local zoo and although unseen is heard outside their flat. To this end Neil arms himself with a pistol and ammunition taken from a sporting goods shop. Billie and Neil continue to argue over an unspecified period of time, with Lucy gradually taking Neils side in arguments, until eventually during a foraging expedition Billie attempts to kill Neil by stabbing him in the back with a kitchen knife. The attack is shown to be premeditated as when Neil tries to defend himself with the gun he finds that it has been unloaded. Neil is injured, but overpowers Billie and returns to Lucy, where they lock Billie out and decide to move on to a previously discussed farmhouse. Billie arrives back at the house and pleads with both Lucy and Neil to let her back in, but they decide that they could never trust her again, and leave her outside. In the last paragraph of the book Neil abruptly changes his mind, feeling that he would never get over the guilt of leaving Billie to die, and with Lucy goes downstairs to open the door and let her back inside."
843,Nebula Maker,science," As in Star Maker, the book begins with a single human observer staring at the sky and considering the immensity of the cosmos. From that point, however, the similarities end. The narrator of Nebula Maker immediately sees the face of the creator - an ever-shifting mask of constant change, human then alien, demonic then angelic. The narrator watches in wonder as this vision of God creates our universe. The universe is peopled at first by the immense, bizarre lifeforms whose history takes up the rest of the manuscript - the nebulae. Singularly or in clusters, these vast entities come to consciousness and express their passions through a frenzied cosmic dance. Some, however become perverted and fanatical, and war breaks out in the heavens. It is discovered that nebulae can journey to other nebulae if they feed on the dead ""flesh"" of their fellows, and this development fuels aeons of conflict. The novel then focuses on two individual nebulae, Bright Heart and Fire Bolt, who embody the human types Stapledon was most fascinated by - the saint and the revolutionary. Bright Heart preaches peace, and is martyred for his troubles; Fire Bolt brings about revolution and changes the social order of the cosmos. With Bright Heart dead, and Fire Bolt crumbling into senescence, the remaining nebulae attempt to bring about universal peace and harmony, but a quarrel over how this is to be done once again results in war. The history of the nebulae is thus one of tragedy, and as they dissolve into the stars and planets of our own cosmical time, the narrator wonders at the creator who could author such a complex dance of hope and futility."
844,House of Suns,science," The novel is divided into eight parts, with the first chapter of each part taking the form of a narrative flashback to Abigail Gentian’s early life (six million years earlier, in the 31st century), before the cloning and the creation of the Gentian Line. Each subsequent chapter is narrated from the first-person perspective of two shatterlings named Campion and Purslane, alternating between them each chapter. Campion and Purslane are in a relationship, which is frowned upon, even punishable, by the Line. The primary storyline begins as Campion and Purslane are roughly fifty years late to the 32nd Gentian reunion. They take a detour to contact a posthuman known as ‘Ateshga’ in hopes of getting a replacement ship for Campion because his is getting old (several million years old). After being tricked by Ateshga, Campion and Purslane manage to turn the tables on him and leave his planet with a being he had been keeping captive, a golden robot called Hesperus. Hesperus is a member of the ""Machine People"", an advanced civilization of robots, and supposedly the only non-human sentient society in existence. The two shatterlings hope that the rescue of Hesperus will let them off the hook for their lateness, as returning him to his people (who will be at the reunion as guests of other shatterlings) will put the Gentian Line on good terms with the Machine People. However, before reaching the reunion world, Campion and Purslane encounter an emergency distress signal from Fescue, another Gentian shatterling. There was a vicious attack on the reunion world; an ambush in which the majority of the Gentian Line was wiped out. The identity of the responsible party is unknown, but the attackers used the supposedly long-vanished 'Homunculus' weapons—monstrous spacetime-bending weapons that were created ages ago, but were ordered to be destroyed by another Line. Despite Fescue's warning, Campion and Purslane approach the reunion system to look for survivors. They manage to find the remains of a ship with several Gentian members still alive, and rescue them and the four enemy prisoners they had captured. Hesperus, however, is gravely injured in the process by remaining ambushers. The group escapes and make their way to the Gentian backup meeting planet, Neume, in the hope of re-grouping with any other Gentians who may have survived the ambush. Upon reaching Neume, Campion, Purslane and the other shatterlings they rescued are greeted by the few Gentian survivors of the ambush (numbering only in the forties, compared to the hundreds that existed prior to the ambush). They also meet two members of the Machine People: Cadence and Cascade, guests of another shatterling. During the next few days, the interrogation of the prisoners commences. Another Gentian, Cyphel, is mysteriously murdered, which fuels the Line’s concerns that there is a traitor amongst them. As a way of punishing Campion for transgressions against the Line, Purslane is made to give up her ship, the Silver Wings of Morning (one of the fastest and most powerful in the Line) to Cadence and Cascade, ostensibly so they can return to the Machine People with news of the ambush, in a bid to gain the Line some assistance. Hesperus, still critically wounded following the rescue of the survivors, is taken to the Neumean ""Spirit of the Air"", an ancient posthuman machine-intelligence, in the hopes that it will fix him. The Spirit takes Hesperus away and returns him some time later, though apparently still not functioning. The robots Cadence and Cascade make preparations to leave on Purslane's ship. They agree to take him aboard and return him to their people, who they promise may be able to help Hesperus. Purslane accompanies them to her ship, where she must be physically present to give the ship order to transfer control over to the robots. On their way to the bridge, Hesperus suddenly springs to life, grabbing Purslane and hiding her while Cadence and Cascade are whisked along to the bridge. Hersperus quickly explains that Cadence and Cascade are actually planning on hijacking the ship. Bewildered by this sudden change of events, Purslane delays in taking action, not sure if she should trust Hesperus, before deciding to ask the ship to detain and eject the robots in the bridge. By then, though, it is too late. Cadence and Cascade hack into the ship's computer, taking it over, and take off from Neume with Hesperus and Purslane still aboard. Campion and several other shatterlings immediately launch a pursuit. Together Hesperus and Purslane find a hideout in a smaller ship in the hold of the Silver Wings of Morning. Using information gained from the other two robots and his own memories, Hesperus (who is now an amalgamation of both Hesperus and the Spirit of the Air) has pieced together what is going on: Cadence and Cascade have discovered that the Line was involved in the accidental extermination of a forgotten earlier race of machine people, dubbed the ""First Machines"". The Commonality (a confederation of the various Lines), horrified and ashamed of this pointless genocide, erased all knowledge of the event from historical records and their own memories. Unfortunately, Campion, in a previous circuit, unwittingly uncovered information pertaining to the extermination. Hesperus believes that the ambush at the reunion was seeking to destroy this evidence before it could spread, carried out by a shadow Line known as the ""House of Suns"", tasked with maintaining the conspiracy. Cadence and Cascade, on the other hand, are racing for a wormhole which leads to the Andromeda Galaxy, to where the few survivors of the First Machines are revealed to have retreated. They plan to release the First Machines back into the Milky Way, thus effecting a revenge against the Commonality for the genocide. As Campion and the shatterlings are pursuing Purslane's hijacked ship, transmissions from Neume confirm that a shatterling within their midst, Galingale, is the traitor and a secret member of the House of Suns. The shatterlings open fire on both Galingale's and Purslane's ships, and while they manage to capture Galingale, they are unable to stop Purslane's ship. Unable to get within weapons range, Campion pursues Purslane’s ship for sixty thousand light years, during which time he and Purslane, on their separate ships, are suspended in ""abeyance"", a form of temporal slowdown or stasis. Despite efforts to stop the hijacked ship from reaching the concealed wormhole by local civilisations, the robot Cascade succeeds in opening the ""stardam"" enclosing the wormhole and travelling through it to the Andromeda Galaxy. On board Silver Wings of Morning, Hesperus reveals to Campion that while he managed to destroy Cadence before they could leave the Neume star system, Cascade survived and he and Cascade had engaged in a marathon battle, lasting the several thousand years the trip took. Campion, now the only shatterling still in pursuit, enters the wormhole after them and emerges in the Andromeda galaxy, a place apparently devoid of all sentient life. In his search for Purslane and her ship he travels to a star encased in a huge representation of the Platonic solids, lands on a planet orbiting inside the structure and is greeted by a single, mechanical being, which announces itself to be the last of the First Machines in the Andromeda galaxy; the others having left (via wormholes) in pursuit of more advanced technology and knowledge. It states that the First Machines have no hostile intent towards the humans, despite what was done to them. Before preparing to depart Andromeda to follow its kin, the First Machine tells Campion that Purslane and Hersperus barely survived the passage into Andromeda, and Hesperus sacrificed himself to protect Purslane during their landing on the planet. Campion is then shown the sarcophagus that contains the still-living Purslane, and the First Machine offers to help him free her before departing."
845,Stopping at Slowyear,science," Stopping at Slowyear tells the story of an interstellar cargo vessel which runs between out-of-the-way worlds, as it visits a planet called Slowyear after its 19-year-long revolution around its star. The crew explore the local culture and find several odd customs. Among these is of a sort of death lottery as a punishment for crimes. If someone commits a crime, they are sentenced to take a pill, which depending on the severity of the infraction will have a different probability of being lethal poison. Slowyear's principal industry is raising sheep. During their isolation, their sheep have developed a form of scrapie which is lethal to humans without immunity, such as the crew of the interstellar cargo ship. The crew die from the disease and the story ends. Stopping at Slowyear is interesting in that it addressed prion diseases years before public awareness of mad cow disease was widespread."
846,City at World's End,science," The Doctor and his two companions travel to Arkhaven. It is one of the last cities on a doomed alien planet. The city has one plan for survival, no backup. However, there are underlying plans threatening to sabotage this as various people vie for power the disaster might bring. The Doctor then must deal with the 'Creeper', an entity prowling the outskirts of Arkhaven. His companions cannot help him, as one becomes lost and the other becomes mentally ill."
847,Question and Answer,science," John Lorenzen is an astronomer from Lunopolis who is recruited by the Lagrange Institute for the second expedition to Troas. At this time, Earth is still recovering from a two-century-long era of war and chaos that began with the Soviet conquest of North America in World War III and ended with the unification of the Solar System at the conclusion of a war between Mars and Venus. Twenty-two years after the discovery of a faster-than-light drive, Troas is the only Earthlike world to be discovered, and enthusiasm for interstellar travel is waning. If Troas is not opened to colonization, humanity may give up interstellar travel altogether. The effort to mount a second expedition to Troas is plagued with difficulties. The Lagrange Institute is unable to charter a starship and must build its own, the Henry Hudson. The construction of the Hudson is hampered by delays, cost overruns, and at least one act of outright sabotage. The voyage of the Hudson to Troas is also troubled, as tension rises among the members of the expedition. Edward Avery, the expedition's psychomed, is unable to maintain group harmony aboard the ship, and at least one fight breaks out. Upon arrival at Troas, the crew of the Hudson find no trace of the first expedition. After it is determined that there are no harmful microorganisms on Troas, a base camp is established on the planet. Eighteen days later, a group of aliens appears. Avery is assigned to learn the aliens' language, and he reports that it is extremely difficult to understand. He is eventually able to determine that the aliens are called the Rorvan, and that they are native to Troas. This is bad news for the expedition, since planets with native intelligent species are off limits to colonization. The Rorvan invite a small group of humans, including Avery and Lorenzen, to accompany them to their settlement. As the group of humans and Rorvan travel, Lorenzen listens to Avery's conversations with the aliens and realizes that their language isn't nearly as difficult to understand as the psychomed claims. By the time they reach the Rorvan settlement, Lorenzen has learned through his eavesdropping that Avery and the Rorvan are conspiring to deceive the other humans. When Lorenzen finally confronts Avery, the psychomed admits that he and his clique within Earth's government have been deliberately stifling interstellar travel, since they feel that humanity isn't ready for it. The members of the first expedition were interned after returning to the Solar System, and the Rorvan are not native to Troas after all. Avery pleads with Lorenzen to help him maintain the deception, but Lorenzen refuses. He wants humanity to expand into the galaxy."
848,Space Mowgli,science," The novel describes the ""Ark Project"" of 2160 and the first (and last) contact with Ark Megaforms. The story is told by Stanislav Popov, a technician of the ER-2 team, one of the twelve ecologist teams that were working on Ark to prepare the planet for the arrival of the colonists from Pant. The ER-2 consists of Popov, Gennady Komov, Maya Glumova and Yakov Vandehuze The story begins as the members of ER-2 go on a routine exploration mission while Popov is left behind to oversee the construction of a permanent base for the arriving colonists. Suddenly, the construction robots get out of control and leave the construction site. It takes a few hours for Popov to locate the robots, fix them and set them back to work. After that, Popov hears a human baby crying. Popov tries to locate the source of the sound but the crying stops as suddenly as it started. Since infants are not allowed to leave Earth, Popov assumes he had an auditory hallucination. Popov carries on his work with the robots. Now, he hears a female voice pleading for help from somebody named Shura. Popov cannot locate the source of the cry either. Meanwhile, the ER-2 exploration party discovers the wreckage of an Earth spaceship and the remains of its two pilots. They log a report describing their discovery with the orbital base. The following night, the ER-2 members start to exhibit the symptoms of psychosis. Popov is the most heavily affected. However, he does not tell the others about his condition: if he is found to be unfit for duty he might be recalled to Earth. As the team has breakfast the following morning, a figure of a 13-year-old human boy appears on the base. Popov ignores it assuming that it is another one of his hallucinations. However, the other people see the boy too. They try to follow him but the boy quickly leaves the premises and the explorers lose his track. The team sends a report back to the orbital base. They receive a reply from Leonid Gorbovsky. The mission of ER-2 is changed to establish contact with a possible alien race. Another message arrives that identifies the spaceship that ER-2 discovered as Pilgrim and the two pilots as Alexander (Russian short for this name is Shura) Semyonov and his wife Maria-Luisa Semyonova. They had their newborn child Piere Semyonov on board. The spaceship disappeared in 2147. This leads ER-2 members to assume that the boy they saw in the morning is Piere Semyonov. The leader of the team - Komov leaves the ship to scout the surroundings of the base. However, Piere Semyonov soon comes to the base himself. Apparently, he tries to communicate with the humans, they do not understand him and he leaves again. The behavior of the Kid (the official nickname given to Piere, hence the Russian title of the novel) is rather strange. This leads the humans to assume that he was raised by the local alien race. Giant, segmented, insect-like, antennae rise over a distant mountain range. There is no direct connection between the antennae and the aliens, but the newly discovered race is named Ark Megaforms. The demonstration of the antennae appears to be an act of intimidation. It soon becomes apparent that Ark Megaforms want the humans to leave the planet as soon as possible. The Megaforms use the Kid as their negotiator with the humans. The Kid visits the base of ER-2 several times. He allows the humans to study him and question him about his foster parents in exchange for the promise to leave. The communication does not proceed smoothly as the Kid exhibits the mixture of human and alien psychological traits. Moreover, there is a conflict of interest as the humans want to find out about Ark Megaforms as much as possible while the Kid just wants them to leave. Frustrated with the lack of progress the humans give the Kid a portable video transmitter. They do not tell the Kid its function and hope that he will take it with him and the scientists will be able to track his movements outside the base. Over the transmitter the humans see as the Kid walks to the wreckage of the Pilgrim, levitates(?) to a distant canyon and proceeds into the planet's interior. At this moment one of the humans - Maya Glumova turns on an emergency flashlight that is built into the transmitter. The transmission immediately stops. It is disputed if Maya did it on purpose (she did it on purpose, it's obvious if you read carefully). However, Komov takes the responsibility for the failure of the mission on himself. Gorbovsky contacts Komov and tells him that most likely humans will not be able to establish a contact with Ark Megaforms because they are a closed civilization that avoids contacts with others. Gorbovsky informs Komov that an ancient satellite was discovered orbiting Ark. The satellite was built by the Wanderers and was programmed to destroy any approaching spaceship. Apparently, this satellite shot down the Pilgrim 13 years ago. Humans conclude the that Wanderers wanted to prevent anyone from contacting Ark Megaforms. In the epilogue of the novel, Popov talks to the Kid over the video transmitter and reflects on the decisions made by the humans. The humans decided to evacuate Ark and the only remaining contact is through the Kid. Komov, some of his teammates and Piere's grandfather are allowed to talk to him. However, they should carefully avoid any themes related to Ark Megaforms. In the novel there is no mention whether the Ark Project was ever concluded."
849,The Nightmare Fair,science," The Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri are lured in the TARDIS to Blackpool, where they discover something wrong in the local videogame arcade. The Doctor's adversary the Celestial Toymaker is behind it, and the Doctor and Peri must fight their way through his videogames in order to defeat him."
850,Cyborg,science," Cyborg is the story of an astronaut-turned-test pilot, Steve Austin, who experiences a catastrophic crash during a flight, leaving him with all but one limb destroyed, blind in one eye, and with other major injuries. At the same time, a secret branch of the American government, the Office of Strategic Operations (OSO) has taken an interest in the work of Dr. Rudy Wells in the field of bionics - the replacement of human body parts with mechanical prosthetics that (in the context of this novel) are more powerful than the original limbs. Wells also happens to be a close friend of Austin's, so when OSO chief Oscar Goldman ""invites"" (or rather, orders) Wells to rebuild Austin with bionics limbs, Wells agrees. In Caidin's writings, he uses the form ""bionics"" in all references treating it as both noun (singular) and adjective, since ""-ics"" is the Greek suffix meaning science, study or practice, as in ""physics""; this was changed for the subsequent television series to the more adjectival-sounding form ""bionic"", e.g. ""bionic limbs"" rather than Caidin's ""bionics limbs"". Steve Austin is outfitted with two new legs capable of propelling him at great speed, and a bionics left arm with almost human dexterity and the strength of a battering ram. One of the fingers of the hand incorporates a poison dart gun. His left eye is replaced with a false, removable eye that is used (in this first novel) to house a miniature camera. Other physical alterations include the installation of a steel skull plate to replace bone smashed by the crash, and a radio transmitter built into a rib. This mixture of man and machine is known as a cyborg, from which the novel gets its title. The first half of the novel details Austin's operation and both his reaction to his original injuries—he attempts to commit suicide—and his initially resentful reaction to being rebuilt with bionics. The operation comes with a hefty price tag, and Austin is committed to working for the OSO as a reluctant agent. He is teamed with a female operative and sent to the Middle East as a new weapon against extremism."
851,The Unifying Force,science," The novel begins on the Yuuzhan Vong prisoner-of-war camp planet of Selvaris. Four prisoners, a Jenet named Thorsh and three Bith, memorize a complex mathematical code smuggled in by a member of the Ryn Syndicate, and they make their escape. Two of the Bith are killed by the pursuing Yuuzhan Vong forces while one of them is captured, but Thorsh escapes Selvaris thanks to the Millennium Falcon. The surviving Bith is interrogated by the camp's head, Malik Carr, and the Bith reveals the mathematical code, unknowing of what it actually means. The Bith is killed as a result. The Millennium Falcon brings Thorsh back to the Galactic Alliance where he is debriefed and recites the mathematical code to a Givin member of the Alliance. The code reveals that Selvaris will be the last pickup point for a Yuuzhan Vong-Peace Brigade convoy that will be taken to Yuuzhan'tar (Vongformed Coruscant) for a grand sacrifice. So an Alliance fleet ambushes Selvaris and rescues many prisoners, although some manage to get away. However, the Millennium Falcon, badly damaged from the battle, is forced to make an erratic jump into hyperspace that transports it to Caluula. As it turns out, the inhabitants of the Caluula system have been fending off the Vong for quite some time now, but they are able to repair the Falcon. Some of the prisoners leave the Falcons company in order to help the residents of Caluula continue to fight the Yuuzhan Vong while the Falcon returns to the Alliance with what prisoners they have left. As Zonama Sekot travels through hyperspace back to known space, it turns out that Harrar survived his confrontation with the treacherous Nom Anor in the previous novel. And through him, he and the residents of the living world discover that the Yuuzhan Vong exist outside the Force because they had been stripped of it, most likely by their homeworld of the original Yuuzhan'tar back in the Vong's home galaxy. On Yuuzhan'tar, things are not going well for Shimrra's order. Even with all of the advancements they made in the war against the Galactic Alliance, problems continue to plague the Yuuzhan Vong's capital planet thanks to the World Brain, and the heresy espoused by the Shamed Ones is still as strong as ever, even without Nom Anor's leadership. Nom Anor himself has been inducted back into the elite as Prefect of Yuuzhan'tar thanks to his actions on Zonama Sekot, but even he can't quell the fire that he sparked in the Shamed Ones as Yu'shaa, their Prophet. As for the sacrifice that had been partially foiled thanks to the Battle of Selvaris, the Yuuzhan Vong are able to compensate with captives from other contested worlds following Selvaris. But the sacrifice is spoiled thanks to a riot caused by the Shamed Ones, who save many of the Galactic Alliance captives much to their own detriment as Shimrra has many Shamed Ones and workers executed as capital punishment. Nevertheless, despite the thwarting of the sacrifice, Shimrra gives Warmaster Nas Choka the go-ahead to prepare his fleet to invade the Galactic Alliance's capital of Mon Calamari. As the Yuuzhan Vong arrive at Mon Calamari and battle the opposing Galactic Alliance forces, Han and Leia Organa Solo, along with a few allies, infiltrate the Vong-captured Caluula in order to eliminate the resident yammosk there. Though they are captured with two of their allies killed, they find that the local Yuuzhan Vong and their biots are dying, along with many of Caluula's indigenous creatures. After many of the Yuuzhan Vong, their biots, and Caluula's own creatures die off, one craft made for Shimrra's new special Slayer warriors manages to make it off Caluula and it heads back to Yuuzhan'tar in order to inform the elite of this new affliction. As Kyp Durron, part of the infiltration team, is able to discern, the illness that the Yuuzhan Vong on Caluula are suffering is Alpha Red, a biological virus set to target and eliminate the Yuuzhan Vong and anything sharing their DNA with them. It had been deployed on Caluula in secret just before the planet surrendered to the invaders. Just before it seems that Nas Choka's forces would win at the Battle of Mon Calamari, they suddenly make a hasty retreat back to Yuuzhan'tar, where Zonama Sekot has appeared in the capital planet's skies, causing various disasters and eliciting more opposition from the heretics. With the living world offering a distraction to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance gather up all of their forces and resources for one last showdown against the Vong. After the Alliance successfully captures the Vong-occupied world of Corulag as their staging position, they travel to the captured Coruscant, and the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar, the final battle of the Yuuzhan Vong War, begins. On the ground, Nom Anor decides to forsake Shimrra's order, seeing how deranged he has become as a result of Zonama Sekot's arrival, and realigns himself with the Shamed Ones against those who are still loyal to Shimrra. The heretics are soon reinforced by Galactic Alliance soldiers who managed to get past the Yuuzhan Vong's space defenses as the space fleets of both the Alliance and the Vong duel over the contested planetary capital of the galaxy and the world of Muscave. Meanwhile, Nas Choka takes a portion of his fleet to destroy Zonama Sekot using the Alpha Red-infected Slayer ship, as Shimrra revealed previously that there is indeed a biological connection between the Vong and Zonama. Defending the living world are the majority of the New Jedi Order, the Smugglers' Alliance, and the fleet of the Hapes Consortium. On Yuuzhan'tar, Luke Skywalker, his wife Mara, Jaina and Jacen Solo, Tahiri Veila, and Kenth Hamner all join up with Captain Judder Page's commandos in order to storm Shimrra's Citadel and kill the Supreme Overlord, ending the Yuuzhan Vong War once and for all. However, Mara, Tahiri, and Hamner all join a division of Page's commandos to help the heretics against Shimrra's loyal warriors, and it gives Mara an opportunity to confront Nom Anor, despite the fact that he is leading the heretics, for all he did to her, her family, and her friends and allies in the past. After Mara gives him a severe beating, Nom Anor pleads for his life, which Mara grudgingly spares so that he would be properly convicted for his crimes in the end. Meanwhile, the Millennium Falcon goes on a mission with Harrar to convince the World Brain to cease its destruction of Yuuzhan'tar, which was intended by Shimrra to completely destroy the world so no one could have it, just to spite the Galactic Alliance. With the help of Nom Anor and his Shamed Ones and other allies, including turncoat Vong warriors, the crew of the Falcon, and Harrar, avert death from the Yuuzhan Vong sent to protect the World Brain. Then the Falcons crew and Harrar make it to the dhuryam and they try to coerce Master Shaper Qelah Kwaad into convincing the brain to cease its destructive activities before they consider killing it. In the end, though, Jacen telepathically tells the World Brain to ignore Shimrra's commands, which stops Yuuzhan'tar's apocalypse. As Page and his remaining commandos storm the lower levels of Shimrra's Citadel, Luke, Jaina, and Jacen, after killing and wounding every Yuuzhan Vong warrior in their path, eventually confront Shimrra and his fifteen special Slayer guards inside Shimrra's private coffer at the top of the Citadel. The three Jedi are able to kill all of the Slayers whilst Jaina follows Shimrra's Shamed companion, Onimi, to the control level of Shimrra's coffer. There, Onimi easily overpowers Jaina and renders her unconscious with a toxin from his fang. Jaina notes, as she falls unconscious, that she was able to sense Onimi through the Force. Meanwhile, with all of his Slayers dead, Shimrra fights Luke and traps him with his royal amphistaff, the Scepter of Power, before taking out the late Anakin Solo's lightsaber as a mind game to Luke; Shimrra wants Luke to know what it feels like to fight something that is part of his order, just as the Yuuzhan Vong have to fight Zonama Sekot, something that Shimrra believes should have been part of the Vong's order due to its living nature. Though Luke is poisoned by the Scepter of Power, he is able to take Anakin's lightsaber from Shimrra's grasp and he uses both his own and his late nephew's weapons to decapitate Shimrra. With Jacen's own lightsaber lost in the conflict, Luke throws him Anakin's lightsaber, which Jacen misses, and sees it fly away, echoing the vision he had on Duro three years earlier, and again on Zonama Sekot before the Battle of Yuuzhan'tar began. Regardless, Jacen goes up to the control level of Shimrra's coffer in order to collect Jaina. As Onimi readies Shimrra's coffer to launch into space, an awakened but still weakened Jaina is told by the Shamed One, who believes that she is the human avatar of the Vong Trickster goddess Yun-Harla, that he had attained his Force powers by grafting yammosk DNA to his own neural tissue in order to emulate the gods' works in creating the universe. This was done after Onimi, being a Shaper at the time, discovered that there was no eighth cortex in the Shaper Qahsa. Although he was Shamed as a result, he was able to use his powers to not only concoct deadly toxins that he could control in his body, but he also manipulated Shimrra into convincing the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong into invading the galaxy; therefore, throughout Shimrra's reign, it was Onimi who had really been controlling the Yuuzhan Vong as its true Supreme Overlord. With Shimrra now dead, he plans to kill everyone and every living thing in the galaxy so that he could become a new god and fashion a new universe in his image. As the Alliance and their Yuuzhan Vong allies take hold of Shimrra's Citadel, Luke is carried away, and Han and Leia follow Nom Anor's lead in order to find Jaina and Jacen at the control level of the Supreme Overlord's coffer. As they do that, the coffer launches for space, and the Millennium Falcon, piloted by Mara Jade Skywalker with an ailing Luke aboard, and Jagged Fel in his commandeered X-wing follow the coffer. Meanwhile, as word of Shimrra's death spreads, Nas Choka and his forces refuse to believe it, especially after his coffer appears rising up from Yuuzhan'tar. In the coffer, however, Jacen confronts Onimi and then hears the voice of his late grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, telling him to ""stand firm,"" like he did on Duro. So as Jacen fights Onimi, he manages to achieve oneness with the Force, knowing that he'll never achieve this state again while simultaneously knowing that he'll spend the rest of his life trying to do so. As a result, Jacen defeats Supreme Overlord Onimi. Han, Leia, and Nom Anor arrive just in time to watch Jacen's amazing victory as he appears to age five years. Onimi, meanwhile, is reverted of his Shamed deformities, but because his deformities were the result of his gaining the Force, he loses control of the toxins in his body and dies, melting into a puddle of foul hydrocarbons that is absorbed by the coffer's yorik coral floor like a stain. The coffer begins to die off due its now-lost connection with Onimi, and Nom Anor tries to trick the Solos into going into a garbage chute while he escapes alive. With his Vongsense, Jacen thwarts his plan, and when Nom Anor tries one more time to evade the Solos, his hand is cut off by Leia via her lightsaber. Nevertheless, Nom Anor opens up the entry into the coffer's yorik-trema (landing craft) and simply allows the Solos to leave without him; due to his atheism, which makes him undesirable in the Yuuzhan Vong's society, and his contempt for the Force, which makes him undesirable in the Galactic Alliance's society, Nom Anor elects to die aboard the coffer, despite his earlier vows of surviving the war. The coffer's explosion is viewed by Warmaster Nas Choka and his fleet. He announces to all of his forces that the war is over and that the Yuuzhan Vong's enemies have won. He offers them an ultimatum; those who wish to die may kill themselves or fight to the bitter end, while those like him will live to find out what the Galactic Alliance and their allies intend to do to them. Meanwhile, Zonama Sekot manages to repel the Alpha Red-infected Vong ship from its surface and brings down all ships, Yuuzhan Vong and non-Vong alike, to the ground. The Vong's weapons become docile and harmless as the invaders are welcomed home. Aboard the Millennium Falcon, the Solos are saved from the dying yorik-trema, and Jacen is able to use Mara's tears and his own to concoct a chemical, as the late Vergere has done, to cure Luke of Shimrra's amphistaff poison. It works, and the Skywalkers and Solos collapse into one big embrace, glad that they survived and that the war is over. C-3PO and R2-D2 watch this scene and lament how at times like these, they envy how humans must feel. Following the Yuuzhan Vong War's end, with most of the Peace Brigade dead and/or disbanded, Nas Choka meets with the Galactic Alliance's leaders to come to terms with how they should find a long-lasting solution to the war. Choka agrees to collect all remaining Vong throughout the galaxy so that they will be deposited on Zonama Sekot and be taken away into the Unknown Regions, where they will be safe and learn to acclimate their culture to peace and also reclaim their connection to the Force. To counter those who wish to see the Yuuzhan Vong totally exterminated, such as the Bothans among others, Galactic Alliance Chief of State Cal Omas saw to it that each and every remaining sample of Alpha Red has been destroyed. Meanwhile, Zonama Sekot discovers that it is the offspring of the original Yuuzhan'tar, thus explaining the biological connection that it has with the Yuuzhan Vong. Amidst all of this, Luke declares that the Jedi shouldn't be the police force of the galaxy like it once was, and that the Order should allow individuals to find their own way in serving the galaxy, and, more importantly, themselves and the Force. Jacen, for one, plans to go on a galactic sojourn so that he could broaden his view of the Force following his battle with Onimi. Several weeks later, after nearly every remaining Yuuzhan Vong is collected, Zonama Sekot travels back into the Unknown Regions. Later, the Skywalkers, the Solos, and their friends and allies revisit Kashyyyk, where Han pinions Anakin's lightsaber into Chewbacca's makeshift grave. Luke declares that should the need ever arise again, someone as virtuous as Chewbacca will pick up Anakin's lightsaber and conquer whatever threat that will endanger the galaxy in the future. Afterwards, they all have a feast where they discuss their vacation plans. Han convinces Lumpawaroo and Lowbacca not to carry on Chewbacca's life debt by saying that he and Leia already convinced their Noghri bodyguards, Cakhmaim and Meewalh, to take a vacation for themselves. The novel, and the series, ends with everybody laughing, not only at what Han said, but also in joy and relief that once again, the galaxy is at peace."
852,Inversions,science," The book takes place on a fictional planet based on late-Middle Ages Europe. It alternates chapter-by-chapter between two concurrent storylines. The first storyline is presented as a written account from Oelph, publicly a doctor's assistant, but privately a spy for an individual identified only as ""Master"", to whom much of the account is addressed. Oelph is the assistant to Vosill, the personal doctor to King Quience of Haspidus and a woman. The latter is unheard of in the patriarchal kingdom, and is tolerated only because Vosill claims citizenship in the far-off country of Drezen. The King himself is appreciative of her and her talents, but nonetheless her elevated position in defiance of the kingdom's social mores inspires hostility among others of the court. Oelph's account follows Vosill as she attends to the King regularly, as well as more charitable ministrations to the impoverished and those in need. Her methods are unconventional by kingdom standards, for example forgoing the use of leeches and instead using alcohol to ""[kill] the ill humours which can infect a wound,"" but are more often than not successful. This only serves to inspire more distrust amongst her detractors, notably including a number of Dukes as well as the King's Guard Commander, Adlain. On this topic, Oelph includes a transcript he claims to have found in Vosill's journal, purported to be an exchange between Duke Walen and Adlain in which they make an agreement, ""should it become necessary"", to covertly kidnap the lady doctor and have Nolieti, the King's chief torturer, ""put her to the question."" Oelph notes that while the transcript appears to have been obtained under impossible circumstances, he somehow does not doubt its veracity. While Vosill attends to the King, Nolieti's is murdered, nearly decapitated, presumably by his assistant Unoure. Vosill examines the body and determines that Unoure could not have killed his master, but her explanation is disregarded. Unoure is captured, but before he can be questioned he is found in his cell dead from a cut throat, apparently self-inflicted. Following this account Oelph includes another found transcript, this time between Walen and Duke Quettil, though Walen is unable to obtain Quettil's agreement for the use of Ralinge, his own chief torturer, in Walen's kidnapping plan. Some days later at a masked ball Walen is found murdered, this time by a stab to the heart. The Duke's murder disquiets much of the royal house, as it occurred in a room no one entered or left. Resentment towards Vosill continues to build, particularly after King Quience begins implementing somewhat radical reforms, such as permitting commoners to own farmland without the oversight of a noble, reforms which Vosill has discussed with the King publicly and at length. Following these reforms Vosill confesses to the King that she loves him, a sentiment he rebuffs, and further hurts her when he states that he prefers ""pretty, dainty, delicate women who [have] no brains."" Oelph finds her after this, drunk, and hints at his own feelings of love towards her; she rebuffs him as well, albeit gently. Some days later Vosill receives a note from Adlain, asking her to meet him and two other Dukes elsewhere in the castle. She leaves alone, but Oelph opts to follow her in secret; he arrives in time to see her stumble across the body of a murdered Duke, stabbed with one of her scalpels, and catches a glimpse of the real murderer fleeing the room. Vosill and Oelph are almost immediately taken into custody by guards and delivered to Ralinge, who binds the two to separately and then strips, intending to rape Vosill. The woman issues what sounds to Oelph like commands, albeit in a language he does not recognize even partially. Oelph's eyes are closed at this point, and in his narrative he is unable to adequately describe what he hears next, other than an impression of wind and metal. When he opens his eyes he finds Ralinge and his assistants dead, dispatched bloodily, and Vosill free and in the process of removing his bindings, no indication of how she was freed. Later, she claims that Oelph fell unconscious and the three men fought over who would rape her first, though she indicates to him that this is what he ""should"" remember. The two are taken from the torturer's chamber shortly thereafter, as the King has abruptly taken ill and appears to be dying. Vosill is able to cure King Quience's condition, and is there to witness as the conspiracy against her is revealed to the King, inadvertently, when news of Ralinge's death reaches the conspirators: Commander Adlain and Dukes Quettil and Ulresile. Ultimately the blame is publicly taken by Ulresile, who escapes with being exiled for several months; the King makes it clear that further plots against the doctor will not be tolerated. Because Oelph is not present for these events, his account comes second-hand from his master, revealed to be Guard Commander Adlain. Vosill requests the King release her from her duties, which he does. She leaves just a few days later on a ship for Drezen, and is seen off at the dock by Oelph. Though he tries, he cannot bring himself to bluntly declare his love for her before she boards. The ship leaves sometime later, Vosill nowhere to be seen on board. The second, interleaved storyline is told by an initially unnamed narrator, remaining unnamed so as to provide a neutral context for the narrative. The story focuses on DeWar, bodyguard to General UrLeyn, the Prime Protector of the Protectorate of Tassasen. Protector UrLeyn is the leader of Tassasen, having killed the previous monarch in a revolt; subsequently he eliminated official terms such as ""King"" and ""Empire"" within Tassasen. At the beginning of the story the Protectorate is fast approaching a war with the neighboring land of Ladenscion, led by barons who initially supported UrLeyn's revolution but now intend to establish themselves as independent. DeWar is the sometimes-confidant of UrLeyn, but the bodyguard also maintains a friendly, conversational relationship with Perrund, a member of the Tassasen harem. Perrund was once the Protector's prized concubine, which changed following an assassination attempt on UrLeyn; Perrund shielded the Protector with her body, saving his life at the cost of crippling her left arm. Though no longer as prized as a concubine, Perrund is highly regarded by UrLeyn, DeWar, and most of Tassasen society. DeWar in particular finds her easy to confide in, and spends much of his off-time playing board games with her while the two tell each other stories. DeWar is on high alert as the conflict with Ladenscion approaches, believing that someone within the court may be a traitor. An attempt is made on UrLeyn's life by an assassin disguised as an ambassador, though DeWar anticipates the threat and kills the man before he can succeed. Nonetheless, this act only reinforces DeWar's fears of a traitor. A surprising, unwelcome turn comes when UrLeyn's young son, Lattens, has a seizure and subsequently falls ill. While the boy slowly recovers, DeWar tells him stories of a ""magical land"" called Lavishia, a place where ""every man was a king, every woman a queen"". Eventually the boy recovers, and UrLeyn and his bodyguard depart for the front lines, where the war with Ladenscion is flagging. However, no sooner they are there than word arrives that Lattens has fallen ill again, prompting a distraught UrLeyn to rush back to the castle. While DeWar is gone, Perrund tells Lattens a story about a girl named Dawn, who spent most of her life locked in a basement by her cruel family and was eventually rescued by a traveling circus. When he returns, Perrund tells DeWar about the story, then tells him it was a shadow of the real story: her story. Rather than her parents locking her in the basement to be cruel, they locked her in to hide her from Imperial soldiers—high-ranking men of the former King's regime. Rather than being rescued, the soldiers found her, raped her, her mother and her sisters, and then forced her to watch as they murdered her father and brothers. The soldiers were eventually killed, but Perrund still feels she is now dead inside. DeWar attempts to in some way comfort her, but she quickly demands he return her to the harem. Lattens' condition continues to worsen, causing UrLeyn to act more and more erratically, spending less time focusing on the war and more time at his son's bedside. The Protector goes so far as to bar all visitors to his chambers, and even prohibits DeWar from speaking to him unless he is spoken to. His only real contact is with Perrund, who spends most nights holding UrLeyn as he cries himself to sleep. DeWar enlists Perrund's help in focusing UrLeyn on the war, but to no success. An epiphany strikes DeWar when he finds he has drooled on his pillow in his sleep, and he proceeds to Lattens' room. A guard restrains the boy's nurse while DeWar examines his comforter, finding it has been soaked in an unknown fluid, presumably poison. Under threat of death the nurse reveals who has been orchestrating the poisoning: Perrund. DeWar storms into the harem chambers, intent on revealing the conspiracy to UrLeyn, but arrives too late; Perrund has already killed the Protector, and calmly waits for the bodyguard. Holding her at swordpoint, DeWar tearfully demands to know why she conspired against the Protector. Perrund replies that she did it for revenge, for killing her and her family. The soldiers who raped her were not the former King's men at all, not even men allied to UrLeyn, but the man himself, as well as his current, closest advisers. Afterward she was taken in by men from Haspidus, and recruited as a spy by King Quience directly. Saving UrLeyn from the assassin was simply to prevent him from dying while he was a strong leader; instead, her orders were to ensure he died in ""utter ruin"". After her confession, Perrund demands DeWar kill her. He silently refuses, lowering his sword. Perrund grabs his knife and brings it to her own throat, but it is quickly knocked away by DeWar's blade, which he lowers once more. Oelph gives a brief, personal epilogue for both stories. The three conspirators who attempted to kill Vosill died of various diseases, only Adlain lasting longer than a few years. King Quience reigned for 40 years before his death, and was succeeded by one of his many daughters, giving the kingdom its first ruling Queen. Vosill disappeared from the ship she departed on; her disappearance was only discovered after a sudden burst of wind and chain-fire struck the ship, then vanished as quickly. Attempts to notify Vosill's family in Drezen were unsuccessful: nobody in the island country could be found who had ever met her. Oelph himself became a doctor, eventually taking Vosill's post as the royal physician. Tassasen endured a civil war after the death of Protector UrLeyn; eventually King Lattens took control of the Empire, ruling it quietly. Oelph explains that he stopped DeWar's story as he did because that is where versions of the story differ dramatically. The more popular version has DeWar personally execute Perrund, followed by a return to the Half-Hidden Kingdoms where he reclaims his hidden title as Prince, and eventually King. A second version, supposedly written by Perrund herself, instead has DeWar telling the waiting guards and staff that UrLeyn is fine but sleeping, this and other distractions providing enough time for him and the former concubine to flee Tassasen before the Protector's body is discovered. The two elude capture and arrive in the Half-Hidden Kingdoms, eventually marry, have several children, and die many years later in an avalanche in the mountains. Finally, Oelph ends his epilogue by revealing that he expects his wife, whom he loves dearly, to return soon, quite possibly with his grandchildren accompanying her."
853,Boba Fett: Crossfire,science," Young Boba Fett is brought to Count Dooku's lair on the planet of Raxus Prime by Aurra Sing. Boba Fett snoops around finding out what the Separatists are there for: the Force Harvester. Clone Troopers attack the planet's Separatist forces, rescue Boba Fett as an orphan taking him to a large ship in outer space. On board the Casanderri, Boba Fett hides himself under the name""Teff"" and meets another orphan who he develops a friendship with. This bond is broken when Boba flees the ship when it lands on Bespin. Boba Fett escapes to search for his ship Slave 1 which was taken by Aurra Sing. Both meet upon a moon and agree to get Boba Fett his father's money, in exchange for half. The two leave for Count Dooku. Meanwhile, on Excarga, the Separatists seized control over the planet. The Galactic Republic manages to launch a strike force and take back the planet. Several prison camps were liberated, but some prisoners were not found."
854,Synthespians™,science," The Doctor and Peri land on Reef Station One, an isolated space station that has modelled itself on 1980s popular culture and encounter Autons."
855,Prime Time,science," Detecting a mysterious sub-space signal in the Time Vortex, the Doctor and Ace land on the planet 'Blinni Gaar'. They soon discover that the native population are little more than zombies, addicted to the programmes of the dangerously powerful Channel 400. As the Doctor investigates, he finds that the television company has a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with entertainment."
856,Santa Olivia,science," Set in a future dystopia United States, the town of Santa Olivia is effectively a desert war zone where people have no rights and legally no longer exist, with the town's name even being changed simply to ""Outpost No. 12"". The main character is that of Loup Garron, a daughter of a genetically modified father who was bred by the US military as a weapon and has since escaped to Outpost. He becomes engaged with Loup's mother, a resident of Outpost, but is forced to leave before his daughter is born. Loup grows up to become a boxer in Outpost in order to try to escape and eventually find her father."
857,Eternity Road,science," In a post-Apocalypse America where almost everyone was killed by a plague over 1700 years prior, little is known about the ancient ""Roadmaker"" civilization that is said to have built the devastated ruins of enormous cities, and the magnificent roads that still cover the landscape. In the valley of the Mississippi River, a number of towns have united again, trade and science have begun anew. When a copy of Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is discovered in the estate of the sole survivor of an earlier expedition to the north, a young woman named Chaka Milana, whose brother died in the previous expedition almost a decade ago, decides to gather a band of explorers and try to find Haven, a legendary stronghold where the knowledge of mankind is said to have been collected and kept safe for future generations. A long voyage ensues, taking the group, amongst other places, to the ruins of the ancient city of Chicago. After losing several members of their team and travelling by an extraordinary means of transport that still functions after hundreds of years, the team eventually finds Haven and salvages some of the knowledge stored there before the facility is struck by a disaster that they themselves cause."
858,A Door Into Ocean,science," The novel is set in the future, on the fictional planet of Shora, a moon covered by water. The inhabitants of this planet, known as Sharers, are all female. Sharers use genetic engineering to control the ecology of their planet. They are peaceful beings who ""share"" — that is, they have a spiritual and linguistic union with each other and treat everyone equally. The Sharers take egalitarianism for granted because they share and they lack the concept of ""power-over"", making their society one in which conflicts are settled without violence. When they are being threatened by an outside power, they resist nonviolently because they refuse to believe in power. Thus, the Sharers can never be subdued by force. The Sharer way of nonviolence is more than spiritual. It is based on historical realities of nonviolent resistance. The author based the events of her novel on much historical research, particularly the writings of peace historian Gene Sharp. The novel includes much biological research into the evolution of innate capacities for nonviolence. For example, the participation of children in nonviolent resistance draws on deep instinctual responses found in humans and related mammals. A unique expression of the Sharer way is their language, in which subject and object are interchangeable. The Sharers know by context what subject and object are—but their language does not allow them to make a distinction. As a result, they always know that what one person ""forces"" upon another can always go the other way. Their language impedes anyone from ""giving orders"" to dominate others. For example, if a stranger says, ""You must obey me,"" the Sharer hears, ""I must obey you,"" or (the closest translation), ""We must share agreement."" Their language reinforces the Sharers' inability to accept any situation in which one individual dominates another by force. The Sharer worldview extends to their environment, their surrounding ecosystem. They cannot act upon their plants and animals without being acted upon in return. So, for example, because Sharers consume plants and animals as food, they accept the fact that they in turn will become food for other life forms; that predators will ultimately consume them. At the beginning of the novel, the Sharers are all female. But as they encounter a non-Sharer community from another planet, which threatens them, the Sharer Merwen realizes that they must find out whether other kinds of ""people"" can share their life or not. Merwen goes to the other planet, Valedon, to recruit a young man, Spinel, to return to Shora and attempt to learn their ways. This venture leads to disagreement within the Sharer community (they have plenty of disagreements, though addressed without violence). With many false starts, Spinel gradually learns the Sharer way, as a man; and ultimately he works with the Sharers to help them defend their planet from a military invasion."
859,Bullet Time,science, Sarah Jane Smith encounters the Seventh Doctor in Hong Kong.
860,The Shadow Trap,science," Mawan is a world torn apart by war. Its population has taken refuge underground, and the surface has become the battlefield for three greedy crime lords. Into this chaos venture Jedi peacekeepers, but they may be heading into a deadly trap."
861,The Sleeper Awakes,science," The story follows the fortunes of a late nineteenth century Englishman identified only as Graham. He falls into a strange ""trance"" in 1897, due to his dabbling in drugs to cure a prolonged and serious insomnia, awakening two hundred and three years later to find that he has inherited sizeable wealth from his cousin Warmings and a friend of his, Ibsister, whose sons died in a boating accident. His money had been put into a trust. Over the years, the trust, known as the White Council, used Graham's unprecedented wealth to establish a vast political and economic world order. Upon first awakening, Graham is extremely confused and suffers from severe culture shock. The individuals who had been charged with minding him during his sleep react to his awakening with surprise and alarm. No one had seriously expected Graham to ever arise from his slumber. Somehow, word spreads to the general populace that the sleeper has awakened. This leads to a great deal of distress among Graham's stewards which only increases when large mobs begin crowding around the building housing Graham. They shout and chant demands to see the fabled sleeper. All of this confuses Graham and his naturally inquisitive nature is compelled to ask questions of everyone in sight. The people around him are reluctant to give him answers and act in a very evasive manner. They only explain that the society in which they live is beset by troubles, and elaborate no further. They keep Graham from leaving and insist that, for his own well-being, he stay in the quarters provided for him. Graham is effectively under house arrest, able to understand the society of the future mainly by what little information he can get from those allowed to see him. He learns from his guardian, Howard, that around this time that he is, by the order of things, the legal owner and master of the world. He also learns that a rebellious figure known as Ostrog seeks to overthrow this established order. After returning to his quarters, Graham is liberated by individuals who identify themselves as agents of Ostrog. They briefly explain that the people of the world are preparing to stage a revolt against the White Council and require his leadership. Uncertain about their story but unwilling to remain a prisoner, Graham leaves with them. After a perilous journey over the rooftops of future London and a mad flight from aeroplanes searching for him, Graham arrives at a massive hall where the workers and underprivileged classes have gathered to prepare for the revolution. It is at this time that Graham meets Lincoln, Ostrog's brother. Ostrog himself, Lincoln explains, is busy making the final preparations for the revolt. The assembled workers chant the Song of the Revolution and begin to march against the White Council. Graham is caught up in the mob, which soon engages in a battle with the state police. In the ensuing confusion, Graham is separated from the revolutionaries and wanders the streets of London alone. London itself is in a panic as the revolt spreads across the world. The power is cut and order begins to dissolve as the fighting intensifies. During this time, he meets an old man who recounts to him the history of the sleeper, how the White Council used him as a figurehead to gain power and how, by investing his wealth in various companies and political parties, grew his inheritance and subtly bought the industries and political entities of half the world, establishing a plutocracy and sweeping the remains of democratic parliament and the monarchy away. The old man also shares his cynical views on how he believes that the sleeper is not real but a made-up figure to brainwash the population. Eventually Graham makes his way to the mysterious figure of Ostrog, who explains to him that the revolution is a success. All that remains is to accept the surrender of the White Council. Ostrog also explains how the people were dissatisfied with the administration of the White Council and demanded the fortune to be returned to the Sleeper. Graham is hailed as the savior of the people and is nominally restored to his rightful place as master of the world. He is given comfortable quarters and his every pleasure is fulfilled on a whim. The governorship of society is left in Ostrog's hands. Graham contents himself with learning as much about this new world as he can. He especially takes an interest in aeroplanes and insists on learning how to operate the flying machines. His carefree life soon comes to an end when a young woman named Helen Wotton explains that the people are suffering as badly under Ostrog as they did under the White Council. For the lower class, the revolution has changed nothing. Inspired by Helen's words, Graham begins to ask Ostrog questions about the condition of the world. Ostrog admits that the lower classes are still dominated and exploited but defends the system. It is clear that Ostrog has no desire to change anything, that the revolution was merely an excuse to toss the White Council out and seize power himself, using Graham as a puppet. After pressing Ostrog, Graham learns that, in other cities, the workers have continued to rebel even after the fall of the White Council. To suppress these insurrections, Ostrog has used a police force, Black Africans recruited from Senegal and South Africa, to get the workers back in line. Graham is furious to learn of this and demands that Ostrog keep his police out of London. Ostrog agrees and promises to help Graham assume direct control over the world's affairs. Meanwhile, Graham decides to examine this new society for himself. Graham and a valet travel through London in disguise and examine the daily life of the average worker. London is portrayed as a dehumanized, industrialized quagmire caught in perpetual darkness. The lower classes are forced to work day and night in the factories, having nothing more to look forward to than some cheap amusements. As he examines this grim scene, Graham learns that Ostrog has ordered his troops to London to disarm the remaining revolutionary workers. The workers rise up once more and Graham makes his way back to Ostrog, who attempts to subdue Graham. With the help of the workers, Graham escapes Ostrog. He runs into Helen who, it is revealed, was the one who learned about Ostrog's treachery and made it public. With her by his side, Graham oversees the liberation of London from Ostrog. Ostrog himself manages to narrowly escape London. He joins the air fleet carrying the black troops to London. While most of London is secure, Ostrog's men still hold a few airports to land the African soldiers. The workers find anti-aircraft guns Ostrog had built for his own use and intend to turn them against Ostrog's air fleet. However, they need time to set up the weapons. To delay the air fleet, Graham decides to fly the one remaining aeroplane in possession of the revolutionaries against Ostrog and his air force. He bids farewell to Helen and departs. Over the skies of London, Graham uses his aeroplane as a battering ram to knock down several of the negro-transporting aeroplanes in Ostrog's fleet. Down below, the revolutionaries manage to get the anti-aircraft guns in place and begin shooting down the air fleet. Graham attempts to take down Ostrog's personal aeroplane, but he fails. However, Graham's aeroplane is critically damaged in an airport bombing and he plummets to earth. As the story closes, Graham's fate is left uncertain."
862,The Highway Men,science," Jase (Jason Mason) works as a lagger, one of a gang of labourers considered ""too dumb to draft"" into the army and thus conscripted into labour on public works. His group has the task of connecting a new nuclear-power station to the grid in the Highlands of Scotland, which have become colder and sparsely inhabited due to climate-change. This takes place against the backdrop of a long-running war between China and the West, which started due to an air-rage incident when a Chinese businessman, under stress due to a smoking-ban, got mistaken for a terrorist. Jase and his fellow laggers encounter a hitchhiker named Ailiss, whom Jase identifies as one of a group of New Age Settlers (also known as crusties or bandits), people who foresee the imminent end of modern society and who have retreated to a semi-hidden rural commune. However, their presence worries the authorities, who become concerned about the security of their nuclear-power station. Believing that they have inadvertently set the settlers up for arrest or worse, three laggers travel to the commune to warn them. Discovering the commune under attack, they accidentally defeat the government forces by allowing their truck to crash into and destroy a helicopter. Jase finds himself acclaimed a hero by the settlers, and decides to join them."
863,The Art of Destruction,science," The TARDIS arrives in 22nd century Africa, where agri-teams are growing food in the rich soil around a dormant volcano to feed the hungry millions of Earth. However, the time travellers detect an alien signal nearby. As something moves in the volcanic tunnels, the Doctor realises an ancient trap has been triggered. The Doctor and Rose meet Solomon Nabarr and Basel who explain that the Time travellers have just landed right by Mount Tarsus in Chad."
864,The Excalibur Alternative,science," The story begins when a 14th-century English army is abducted by aliens of the Galactic Federation to serve as mercenaries on planets where only low-tech weaponry is legal. The aliens are bound by a Galactic Federation law that states that advanced weapons can not be used on primitive worlds. Another Guild had previously abducted a legion from the Roman Empire and used it to obtain victory in many confrontations and therefore increase its commercial empire. Therefore other aliens were inspired to try the same tactics and came to Earth to find their own army to fight for them. As the plot progresses, the English army continues to fight for the aliens, until the Baron in charge of the English is approached by a dragon-like alien under the heel of the Guild Aliens. The dragon-like creature tells the Baron the story of the Federation. The Galactic Federation was originally started over one hundred fifty thousand years ago by 3 races, with membership of the council requiring development of a form of faster-than-light (FTL) drive. Over the course of their long history, the Federation strayed from its values. It now has 22 races on the council (of which only 1 is an original founder) and when it discovers new races it invades them so it can freeze their technological development and force them to become a protectorate. The dragon-like creature is from one of these worlds, saying that the Federation came during his world's nuclear age. The creature says that all the other races are different than humanity because of the rate at which it develops. This is shown when the Guild Alien makes a comment about how humanity would have developed gunpowder in 1000 years from the time he took the English from the 14th century, instead of the 200 years it actually took. The dragon-creature and the Baron eventually succeed in a mutiny and take over the ship, but they decide that they can not go back to Earth because the Federation would find them too fast. The story then moves forward to the 22nd century, on Earth, now under the single Solar government, where humanity has become capable of building vast ships in space and has developed an FTL drive. However the Federation considers their fast development a threat to its stability and has dispatched a fleet to wipe humanity from the universe. As the massive Federation battleships are about to destroy the comparably tiny human ships, even bigger spaceships appear and destroy the Federation ships easily. The rescuers of Earth are the Avalon Empire, the civilisation founded by the English who have grown in numbers and, using the technology found on the captured Guild ship, have advanced far beyond the Federation. For centuries they have prepared and lay in hiding so could return at the moment of Earth's greatest need (just like the sword Excalibur in the legend of King Arthur, which gives rise to the title of the book). The English reveal themselves to Earth and offer an alliance to take on the Federation, but the fight will be far from easy. The Federation has over fifteen hundred worlds, with an average population of 11 billion on each world, while humanity only has the Avalon empire, who has grown to live across 20 some worlds, and Earth. But with the technical superiority of the Avalon empire and a carefully planned series of rebellions on 'protected' worlds in the Federation humanity at least stands a chance."
865,Halo: The Flood,science," The novel, like the video game it is based on, begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace, discovering an unexpected massive ringworld hidden by a moon in orbit around a gas giant. In the system are a host of Covenant, who notice the lone ship. A Covenant leader forbids the fleet to fire on the Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, they board and capture the ship. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn prepare for battle and awaken a single soldier from cryo sleep—a Spartan known as the Master Chief. The Covenant board the Autumn; deprived of defensive options, the Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes, tells the crew to abandon ship. The Master Chief is entrusted with the artificial intelligence Cortana; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains, Keyes cannot allow Cortana to fall into enemy hands. The Master Chief leaves for the surface of Halo in a lifeboat; other soldiers, including a squad of shock troops led by Antonio Silva and his second-in-command, Melissa McKay, land by special drop pods, and take a strategic bluff from the Covenant to use as a base of operations. Captain Keyes is captured by the Covenant, and taken aboard the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation; the Master Chief and a squad of Marines board the Truth and Reconciliation, rescuing the captain. Keyes has learned that the ringworld they are on has vast significance to the Covenant- they believe that ""Halo"", as they call the ring, is a weapon of unimaginable power. Escaping from the Covenant cruiser, Keyes gives the Master Chief the mission of finding the Control Room of Halo before the Covenant. The Master Chief and Cortana discover the location of the Control Room, and with the help of some Marines, insert Cortana into Halo's computer network. However, Cortana realizes that the ring is not a weapon as they understood at all- but before the Chief can press her with questions, Cortana tells the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes. Dropped into the swamp where Keyes and his squad disappeared, the Master Chief discovers that the Captain has been captured and both human and Covenant soldiers have been turned into zombie-like creatures by bulbous aliens. One soldier, Private Wallace Jenkins, is left still semi-conscious and painfully aware of his predicament, unable to control his movement or actions as his former friends and he attack McKay's troops. Jenkins intends on ending his life, but is instead captured by McKay for study. The Chief is approached by Halo's resident A.I., 343 Guilty Spark, who informs the Chief that the creatures he has encountered are called the Flood, a virulent parasite that infects hosts and converts them into either forms for combat, or for reproduction. To activate Halo's defenses, Guilty Spark needs the Master Chief's help. In Halo's Control Room, Guilty Spark gives the Master Chief the key to activate Halo, but is stopped by a furious Cortana. Cortana explains that Halo is a weapon, but it doesn't kill the Flood- it kills their food, meaning humans, Covenant, and any other sentient life. Realizing that they have to stop Guilty Spark from activating Halo, Cortana and the Master Chief decide to destroy Halo by detonating the crash-landed Pillar of Autumns fusion reactors. In order to do this, they need Captain Keyes' neural implants. Cortana discovers the Captain is still alive, held prisoner once again aboard the Truth and Reconciliation, now in the hands of the Flood who are trying to escape Halo. The Chief fights Covenant and Flood to the Captain, but finds out he is too late—the Captain has been assimilated into the parasite. The Chief retrieves the implants and leaves the Truth for the Autumn. While the Chief and Cortana head to the Autumn, Alpha Base is evacuated. Silva decides to retake the Truth and Reconciliation and pilot the ship away in order to avoid being on Halo when the Autumn blows. The ship is taken successfully, but McKay realizes that Silva is blinded by the thought of promotion and glory to the danger of the Flood; if even one Flood specimen escaped containment on Earth, the entire planet could fall. Jenkins draws McKay's attention to a vital energy line on the ship, and realizing that the destruction of the Flood is more important than Silva's promotion, cuts the cable, sending the Truth and Reconciliation crashing into Halo, killing all aboard. At the Autumn, the Master Chief is forced to destabilize the fusion reactors manually as 343 Guilty Spark and his robotic drones try to stop them. Once the countdown until detonation has begun, Cortana directs the Chief to a fighter still docked in the Pillar of Autumn hangar. Gunning the engines, the Chief and Cortana escape the ring just as the Autumn explodes, ending the threat of the Flood. Cortana scans for survivors and realizes that they are seemingly the only two who have survived. Cortana tells the Master Chief that the fight is finished, to which the Chief replies, ""No. The Covenant is still out there, and Earth is at risk. We're just getting started."""
866,Wonders of a Godless World,science," ""Set on an unnamed island in the near present, it is told from the perspective of a simple young woman, an orphan, mute, reared in a mental hospital and an orderly there, who forms a bond with a mysterious coma patient, a man with telepathic powers who claims to be immortal..."" Throughout the book the reader can never be sure that the mute orphan narrator is a reliable narrator. The possibility that her telepathic bond with the patient is in fact a figment of her imagination is always left open. So rather than science fiction, the book could instead be read as an insight into delusion."
867,Nemesis,science," The novel is set in an era in which interstellar travel is in the process of being discovered and perfected. Before the novel's opening, ""hyper-assistance"", a technology allowing travel at a little slower than the speed of light, is used to move a reclusive space station colony called Rotor from the vicinity of Earth to the newly discovered red dwarf, Nemesis. There, it takes up orbit around the semi-habitable moon, Erythro, named for the red light that falls on it. It is eventually discovered that the bacterial life on Erythro forms a collective organism that possesses a form of consciousness and telepathy (a concept similar to the Gaia of Asimov's Foundation series). While the colonists argue over the direction of future colonization — down to Erythro, or up to the asteroid belts of Nemesis system — events catch up to them. Back on Earth superluminal flight is perfected, ending Rotor Colony's isolation and opening the galaxy to human exploration. The story also relates the breakup and reunion of a family (the mother, the discoverer of Nemesis, and the daughter were separated from the Earthbound father when the colony departed; the father becomes part of the hyperjump research project as a result); the startling discovery that the bacterial inhabitants of Erythro, collectively, constitute a sentient and telepathic organism; and the discovery and resolution of a massive crisis: Nemesis' trajectory threatens to gravitationally destabilize the Solar System."
868,Shockwave,science," The Starship Enterprise NX-01 makes contact with the Paraagan deep-space colony. It is a matriarchal society with an unusually volatile gas. The Enterprise crew understands the danger and makes the precuation to their shuttle as they land, closing the plasma vents so nothing dangerous can escape. An explosion occurs, vaprozing thirty-six hundrec colonosts. The entire surface is destroyed. The Enterprise is recalled and Captain Archer must convince his superiors and the Vulcan high command that despite this incident, humans are still ready and able to explore space. And yet, this is not the events history records. The mysterious time traveling Enterprise crewman, Daniels, offers information suggestion the timeline is altered. Captain Archer sets out to do what he can to prove the Enterprise innocent."
869,MedStar II: Jedi Healer,science," MedStar II: Jedi Healer is about Jos Vondar, a medical doctor on the planet Drongar. The story takes place 2 years after the Battle of Geonosis. While the Clone Wars wreak havoc throughout the galaxy, the situation on the far world of Drongar is desperate as Republic forces engage in a fierce fight with the Separatists. Despite the all-enveloping armor and superior genetic pedigree, the soldiers of the Republic are still flesh and blood. In the steaming jungles of Jasserak, on the planet of Drongar, the doctors and nurses of a small med unit are devoted to patching together the beleaguered troops of the Republic. This eccentric lot of surgeons is overworked, and even the Jedi healing abilities of Padawan Barriss Offee are tested to the limits. The conflict and casualties continue to grow, and an unthinkable option becomes the inevitable solution to this terrible problem."
870,The Torch,science," The novel is set in the year 3010, in the ruins of New York after an atomic disaster. Fortune is the captain of the army of the Towermen, those who live in the remaining skyscrapers and rule the city with an iron hand. He is taken captive by the people of the Island of the Statue. There, Fortune learns of a prophecy that states that the people will be free when the torch burns in the hands of the statue. Fortune is redeemed by his captors and leads them in a revolt against his former masters."
871,Burndive,science," Ryan Azarcon lives in a fishbowl. He is the son of the infamous Captain Cairo Azarcon, of the deep space carrier ship Macedon and Songlian Lau, Austro Station's head of publicity. Because of his combination of good looks and influential parents, Ryan is constantly watched by the media. After going to college for three years on earth and witnessing a horrifying terrorist attack related to the war between Earthhub and the striviiric-na in deep space, Ryan develops post traumatic stress disorder, drops out of school and returns to Austro, where he quickly begins doing drugs. However, when Captain Azarcon destroys the pirate ship Genghis Khan and begins to make peace with the striviiric-na, Ryan finds himself in danger. After a failed assassination attempt in a club on New Years Day which leaves many people dead or injured, Ryan finds himself trapped in his home for his own safety- at which point his father comes for him, taking him aboard his ship. Ryan is immediately caught in the middle of the war, the peace, and the effects thereof. The truth about his father's mysterious past, as a protégé of the pirate captain of the Genghis Khan, Vincenzo Falcone emerges. Earthhub factions, particularly the Family of Humanity, are against the peace. This extremist group eventually has Ryan's mother assassinated. The Macedon returns to Austro for her funeral, where another assassination attempt nearly kills Ryan. Captain Azarcon subjects Austro to martial law illegally to save him, and is forced to flee to the striviiric-na section of space. Ryan recovers on his father's ship, where he comes to terms, somewhat, with who he is, who his father is, and his place in the war."
872,The Stealers of Dreams,science," It seems an easy enough position to take &mdash; on a world where daring to dream is a crime, the Doctor sides with a pirate television station that is trying to foment rebellion. However, he begins to discover that things are not as simple as that, and dreams can easily become nightmares."
873,The Ophiuchi Hotline,science," Lilo is a rebel geneticist living on Luna. Violating the laws of the Eight Worlds, she has experimented with human DNA, using money she received from her legal work on such creations as the ""Bananameat"" tree. As the story opens, she is facing execution. On the eve of her execution, she is visited by ""Boss Tweed"", the most powerful politician in Luna. Accompanying Tweed is a formidable bodyguard and Lilo's own clone, fresh out of the growth tank with a full set of Lilo's memories. Tweed offers Lilo a deal - she can escape and the clone will die, or vice versa. It's never clear which she chooses, because the next scenes show one Lilo committing suicide in the prison and another going free with Tweed. Whichever it is, the corpse goes into the ""Hole"", a captive black hole which serves as a power plant for Luna, generating energy from garbage tossed into it. Lilo learns she is to become a cog in Tweed's machine, to be trained for use in his schemes to strike back at the Invaders. Like all Lunarians she periodically records her memories for restoration into a clone should her body die. The first time she does this, she revives and is told that she has been killed twice, for escaping from Tweed. She is the third clone Tweed has made of Lilo. Thus Lilo resolves to be much more careful. Tweed's bodyguards are themselves clones of one individual, both male and female, called ""Vaffa"" or sometimes ""Hygeia"". They are large, strong and deadly. Tweed's one weakness is that his entire operation is clandestine. Despite his power, his illegal cloning and his intent to take on the Invaders would result in his downfall if it were generally known. Lilo is eventually sent to an asteroid. Her job is to maintain the food supply. There are more Vaffas guarding these workers, some of whom have been shanghaied, in the sense that their memories and tissues were stolen by Tweed without their knowledge. One such is Cathay, a Teacher. In this time Teaching means devoting yourself to helping one child mature, regressing in age if necessary. Cathay and Lilo quickly become bonded lovers - a rarity in a society where sex is recreational. On the asteroid, everyone has a null-field suit. This generates a field just above the skin to protect them in vacuum, and is yet another piece of Hotline technology. Air comes from an implanted generator. Tweed has a bizarre scheme - he intends to send a stolen black hole through Jupiter to see what the Invaders will do about it. Lilo and Cathay are recruited for the mission. They eliminate the Vaffa sent with them, and Cathay escapes in the ship used to tow the Hole. Lilo, however, is left to fall with the Hole into Jupiter's atmosphere. Protected by her suit, she encounters an Invader. Another Lilo awakes in Tweed's tank. This one has no memory of the asteroid, or anything else since the previous copy left Luna. She is sent on a mission to Pluto. There is something new coming down the Hotline, and it looks dangerous. The actual beam misses the solar system - it was originally found when deep space probes went out years beyond the orbit of Pluto. Nobody is sure whether it is intended for another system entirely, or whether the point is to make sure that the information is only available to those with the right technology. The new messages seem to be demands for payment. Whoever has been providing the information for hundreds of years wants compensation. Unfortunately the decoders can't determine what that is. Lilo and another Vaffa reach Pluto and look for a ""Hole Hunter"" to take them out to the beam. Hole Hunters are prospectors who take ships out for years, looking for the miniature black holes that orbit the Solar System. Their guide is another copy of Cathay, who has no knowledge of his alter ego. However he and Lilo rapidly bond, just as the other two did. They eventually hire Javelin, a grotesque woman who has altered her body for free fall so she consists of a head on a cut down torso with two other limbs. No part of her body is much wider than her head, hence her name. Under way, Javelin announces a change of plan. Vaffa protests but Javelin easily overpowers her. The plan is to go to the source of the beam. The Hole Hunters have known for some time that the beam comes from something a mere half a light-year away. Since the trip will take 20 years, the crew elects to go into cold sleep. Another Lilo awakes. This one was created by the original and hidden in orbit in the rings of Saturn. She is revived by Lilo's companion from the asteroid, and Parameter/Solstice, a human-Symb pair Lilo had entrusted with the location of the clone. The other Lilo told her companion to seek out Parameter/Solstice as she was falling into Jupiter. This Lilo examines the situation and determines to take over the asteroid. They use the stolen ship to ram the asteroid, sending it into the asteroid's Hole power generator, which sits in a null-field dish on the surface. The resultant thrust boosts the asteroid out of orbit, and on a journey to Alpha Centauri. Faced with a fait accompli, the Vaffas throw in their lot with the prisoners. Tweed's downfall is assured - the asteroid broadcasts details of his plans to the various governments, and ""he"" activates an escape plan, shedding large amounts of fake flesh and disappearing into the general population as a sexless person. Lilo awakes. This is the Lilo who fell into Jupiter. She awakes on Earth, on a beach. She learns to survive, becoming, in her own mind and those of the tribes of humans she encounters, Diana the Huntress. With her null-field suit she can face down animals and dive to great depths to hunt fish. As years pass, she determines she is probably on the east coast of the former USA. Occasionally she sees the blurs in the sky that are the only visible traces of Invaders. Finally deciding to go out in a blaze of glory, she dives into the sea to hunt a whale. As she dives after it, an Invader appears. Lilo awakes. On Javelin's ship, she and her companions have reached the source of the Ophiuchi Hotline. It is a large, artificial object. Taken on board, they meet beings who are apparently human. They are given a show. The story is simple. Life arises on planets like Earth, in systems with planets like Jupiter. Eventually whale-like lifeforms inhabit the seas. The Invaders arrive, and remove all other threats to the whales. Some time later, the remnants of technological life in the rest of the system have to be expunged when they become enough of a threat. The story cannot be changed. The Invaders can manipulate not only energy and matter, but time. They live in at least four dimensions. The Hotline is part of the rescue mission to humans. They need the technology to survive when they are attacked again by the Invaders, which will be soon. One of the purposes of the Hotline was to give humans the ability to manipulate their own genetic makeup, but because of the laws they passed this has not happened. The Hotline people ask for their price - they need to become humans themselves for a time, to add human thought and experience to the pool of knowledge held between the stars by all the other beings ejected from their homes by Invaders. The alternative is for them to activate hidden features in the Symbs, turning them into an army of space-borne killers. As if to underline all this, alarms sound and the Hotline people detect Invader activity. Suddenly, another Lilo appears. It is Diana the Huntress from Earth. According to the Hotline instruments, she was moved 25,000 years in the future, left there for some years, and then brought back. For the Invaders this is as simple as ""folding a piece of paper"". She also has a gift from the Invaders - a small silver cube. The Hotline people are taken aback. The cube is a null-field surrounding a singularity. Receiving a singularity from the Invaders is a sign that time is even shorter than they thought. It is another element of the story that always takes place. Because of Tweed's attack, the Invaders are preparing to evict humanity from the entire solar system, but before they do so, are offering humanity the chance to escape. The singularity is a tool to manipulate space-time and eliminate inertia, and can be used to evacuate the Solar System and allow humanity to seek a new home among the stars. Unfortunately, however, the available living space is spoken for, and humanity is in for a long time in the wilderness. Lilo, Diana and companions set out to return to the solar system, to break the bad news. At the end the various Liloes, past, present and future, on Javelin's ship and on the asteroid, realize they have a connection. They have been having dreams all along, and realize that the place in the dreams is somewhere they will all meet, in the future."
874,The Ghosts of N-Space,science," Sarah Jane Smith and her co-worker Jeremy Fitzoliver are on holiday in Sicily when they meet the Brigadier. The Brigadier is trying to help his Uncle Mario, who is being threatened by a mobster named Vilmio. Mario is also trying to deal with the ghosts that have been sighted in his castello. The Brigadier asks the Doctor to investigate the hauntings and determine their source. The Doctor reveals that the ghosts are ""N-Bodies"", or the souls of the deceased who have not yet left the physical plane. The ghosts are gathering around Mario's castello due to a fracture in the N-Space barrier; if the barrier were to fail, Earth would be overrun with the monsters that inhabit N-Space. The Doctor travels back to the 18th and 16th century in an attempt to locate the cause of the fracture. In the past he discovers that Vilmio is actually an alchemist called Vilmius who has discovered a method for extending his lifespan; now that he is nearing the end of his life, he wants to use the power of N-Space to give himself true immortality. He also plans to control the monsters in N-Space and use them to rule the world. Vilmius has been waiting centuries for a specific astrological conjunction to occur, which is scheduled to occur in the next few days. Vilmius' men storm the castello, allowing Vilmio access to the N-Space fracture. The Doctor and Sarah Jane, using a device the Doctor invented, send their N-bodies into the fracture as well. Inside N-Space, Sarah Jane's belief in the Doctor transforms his body into that of a heroic white knight, which allows the Doctor to defeat Vilmius and sever his N-Body's link with his physical body. The defeat comes too late, and Vilmius begins absorbing the N-Space energy into his body. In a last-ditch attempt, the Doctor increases the amount of N-Space energy funnelling into Vilmius, which causes him to explode; the N-Space energy disperses harmlessly."
875,Eye in the Sky,science," While on a visit to the (fictional) Belmont Bevatron, eight people become stuck in a series of subtly unreal worlds, caused by the malfunction of the particle accelerator. These are later revealed to be solipsistic manifestations, bringing the story in line with Dick's penchant for subjective realities. As well as his future discussions of theology and fears about McCarthy-era authoritarianism, the novel skewers several human foibles. Jack Hamilton, the central protagonist, is dismissed from his job at the California Maintenance Labs due to McCarthy-era paranoia about his wife Marsha's left-wing political sympathies. Other affected members of the injured touring party include Bill Laws, a Physics PhD who happens to be a Negro, who happens to be employed as a tour guide within the plant. The above-mentioned Arthur Silvester is an elderly believer in the obsolete geocentric cosmology. Joan Reiss is a pathologically paranoid woman. Edith Pritchet is a maternal but censorious elderly woman. In succession, the group moves through solpsistic personalized alternate realms related to the beliefs and opinions of Arthur Silvester, Pritchet, Reiss and a hardline Marxist caricature of contemporary US society. Marsha Hamilton's subconscious perceptions, however, did not produce this alternate reality, as originally thought. It originates instead from an unexpected source, revealed as Charles McFeyffe, a Communist sympathizer who works as chief security officer in the California Maintenance Labs plant. At story's end Jack Hamilton and Bill Laws form a small business that seeks advances in stereophonic technology. The disclosure of McFeyffe's Marxist allegiances is dismissed as completely unprovable."
876,The Inferior,science," Stopmouth is a member of the Human tribe, which is on the verge of extinction. There is a vast variety of different species of sentient creatures, all of whom either have made alliances with the humans, or hunt them as a source of food. In return, in order to survive in this barbaric world, the humans hunt other species and ""trade flesh"", a tradition that has the humans trade the weakest and most useless members of their tribe to other species as a source of food. In the book, this is known as ""volunteering"", and it is considered shameful to attempt to resist being volunteered for the good of your tribe. Stopmouth himself (who is said to be around 5,000 days old, around 13 years old) is constantly overlooked and overshadowed because of both his stuttering speech impediment and his more popular brother, Wallbreaker. One day Stopmouth meets a woman named Indrani. Indrani fell from the sky when one of the mysterious globes that fly across the 'Roof' (the Human tribe's name for the sky, basically) explodes, and she is expelled from it. Indrani seems to be more civilzed than Stopmouth's tribe, and is disdainful of them. The Human tribe believes her to be 'slow', or stupid, because she cannot speak their language, and their experience has been that there is only one Human tribe. She was going to be volunteered, but Wallbreaker took her as a wife (partly because of her beauty, and partly because one's status is raised when one has more than one wife), protecting her from being traded. Eventually, a great war ensues over a piece of technology known to the barbarians as 'the talker'. It allows different species to communicate with each other, thus making them easier to coordinate alliances with. It eventually gets to the point where most of the species opposing the Humans are destroyed, and Wallbreaker (having been elected chief by this point) takes possession of the talker, which becomes a coveted artifact. Stopmouth, who has come to love Indrani and resent Wallbreaker for taking her before he did, steals Indrani from him and, at her request, the talker. He is pursued across the land by his tribe until they eventually lose their pursuers. Stopmouth (having travelled to a distant part of the land) eventually becomes the surrogate chief of a tribe of religious humans who are on the verge of being wiped out by a strange race of creatures. With his help, they learn to fend for themselves. Indrani reveals toward the end of the book that she comes from a tribe of Humans who live in the Roof, and actually watch the Humans below fight for their lives as a form of entertainment. Stopmouth is devastated by this, but eventually they reconcile, as Indrani has come to a different view of his people, and now holds a degree of respect for them where there had only been disdain before. The book ends when Varaha—a member of Stopmouth's new tribe of humans and a secret member of Indrani's old Roof tribe—confronts Stopmouth while Indrani is being reclaimed by her 'civilized' people. Stopmouth manages to kill Varaha, but Indrani is returned to the Roof."
877,Murder Madness,science, The novel concerns a tyrant that attempts to control civilization by using a madness inducing drug.
878,By Heresies Distressed,science," Following the events of By Schism Rent Asunder, Emperor Cayleb of Charis sails off with his fleet to begin his campaign against the League of Corisande, under the leadership of the ruthless, though popular, Prince Hektor Daykyn. At the same time, the Charisian naval units that arrived at Ferayd, after demolishing a significant portion of it as retribution for the Ferayd Massacre, manage to seize the Inquisition's records in the city which turn out to contain the orders their agents received from the ""Group of Four"" and their prideful reports about zealous execution of those orders. Admiral Rock Point, the commander of the Charisian task force, orders the execution of Father Styvyn Graivyr, the Inquisition's senior priest in Ferayd, along with 15 other priests directly involved with the massacre and has the evidence made public. While the Chief Inquisitor, Zhaspahr Clyntahn, is furious with Charis' actions in Ferayd and demands that Holy War be declared immediately, Chancellor Zahmsyn Trynair is furious at Clyntahn for lying about the orders he issued to his agents in Ferayd. Fearing both the resistance of the secular rulers for holy war, as well as the opposition they face within the Temple, Trynair forces him to accept the punishment of penance that an internal board of inquiry (whose findings are a foregone conclusion) will hand down due to this scandal. Emperor Cayleb first visits Chisholm, to meet his mother-in-law and his new subjects for the first time and to prepare his fleet for the voyage to Corisande. He then sets sails for Zebediah, a duchy that was conquered by Corisande, but whose duke has been in contact with Prince Nahrmahn (now Cayleb's vassal) and who has voiced a willingness to ally with Cayleb against Corinsande. Cayleb then sets sail to Corisande, where he lands troops in one of the bigger port cities of the island, and attempts to use his troops superior artillery and rifles to overwhelm the much-larger Corisandian army. While the Charisians weapons do force the Corisandians to retreat, they manage to bog down Cayleb's forces in a mountain pass which is the only way to the capital city of Manchyr. With Merlin's assistance (and the help of his advanced technology), Cayleb provides his elite rifleman with the positions of the Corisandian's lookout points along the coast which are supposed to alert the Corisandian army in case the Charisians attempt to outflank them. The Charisian scout-snipers manage to find all of the important lookout points and deal with the lookouts, allowing the Charisians to land troops behind the Corisandian army and trap them in the same mountain pass, leaving very few troops between Cayleb and Manchyr. However, Merlin, who is so focused on the protecting Cayleb and using his SNARCs for gathering intelligence for the campaign, fails to notice two things in time: that Prince Hektor is sending his daughter and younger son accompanied by Earl Coris aboard a ship bound for their relatives in Delferahk; and that there is a conspiracy to assassinate Empress Sharleyan while she is at a spiritual retreat in a monastery, a conspiracy involving Sharleyan's uncle and the Temple Loyalists in Charis. While he and Cayleb fail to come up with a way to notify the navy in time to do anything about Hektor's children (without blowing his cover), he manages to arrive barely in time to save Sharleyan's life. However, he is forced to reveal his true nature to her and her last surviving guardsman and promises to visit her again and to bring Cayleb along for a lengthier explanation. Once Sharleyan returns to the capital, Merlin flies to Charis with Cayleb aboard a recon skimmer and together they tell Sharleyan the truth, which she and her guardsman manages to accept. He also gives her and Cayleb a communicator so that they can stay in touch with each other and the rest of the ""inner circle"" who know the truth. Meanwhile, Hektor accepts that his position is hopeless and is prepared to treat with Cayleb for terms. But before he manages to meet with Cayleb, he and his eldest son and heir are assassinated by agents of the church, who do not want Hektor working willingly with Cayleb and who wish to strap Cayleb with the blame (which is indeed what happens). Cayleb, despite his victory over Corisande, imposes fairly generous terms on the vanquished princedom, and accepts the naming of Hektor's younger son as prince with a regency council made up of Hektor's most prominent military commanders and nobles (though he is unlikely to be able to claim his throne, being far away under the power of the church). In Zion, however, things are not peaceful, as the Group of Four realize that they've just wasted money building galleys which have become obsolete and order the construction of galleons. In addition, Trynair and Clyntahn and preparing public opinion and the vicarite for Holy War, with a fiery speech from the grand vicar (who is little more than a puppet of Trynair's). This in turn causes a great deal of consternation with a group of reformers within the Temple itself, who have been trying for years to combat the corruption that has infected the church. ""The Circle"" however is impotent to stop the impending disaster and is also betrayed to the Grand Inquisitor by one of its more fearful members. Upon hearing about these reformers who would dare challenge his power, Clyntahn decides to bide his time, waiting for the most opportune moment to move against them, while they in turn rush to save as many of their members and their families as quietly as possible. The story ends with the Group of Four deciding to leave Hektor's son alone for now since he is of little use to them at the moment."
879,Sandworms of Dune,science," As Sandworms of Dune begins, the passengers of the no-ship Ithaca continue their nearly two-decade search for a new home world for the Bene Gesserit, while Duncan Idaho evades the tachyon net of the old couple Daniel and Marty, now known to be thinking machine leaders Omnius and Erasmus. Among the inhabitants of the Ithaca are young gholas of Paul Atreides, Lady Jessica, and others. Back in the Old Empire, Mother Commander Murbella of the New Sisterhood attempts to rally humankind for a last stand against the thinking machines. The new Face Dancers continue to infiltrate the main organizations of the Old Empire at all levels, having also sent their gholas of Paul Atreides (called Paolo) and the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen to the thinking machine capital, Synchrony. At the prompting of Face Dancer infiltrators, the Spacing Guild has begun replacing its Navigators with Ixian navigation devices and cutting off the Navigators' supply of melange. Navigator Edrik and his faction have commissioned Waff, the imperfectly awakened ghola rescued by the Guild from the Bene Gesserit attack on Bandalong, to create ""advanced"" sandworms able to produce the melange they so desperately require. He accomplishes this by altering the DNA of the sandtrout stage and creating an aquatic form of the worms, which are then released into the oceans of Buzzell. Adapting to their new environment, these ""seaworms"" quickly flourish, eventually producing a highly concentrated form of spice, dubbed ""ultraspice."" Meanwhile, Murbella commissions Ix to copy the destructive Honored Matre Obliterators for use on the fleet of warships she has ordered from the Guild. However, Ix is now secretly controlled by Face Dancer leader Khrone; previously acting as a minion of Omnius, he continues his own plot for Face Dancer domination of the universe. Omnius's forces have begun striking world after world, releasing a deadly virus and then pressing on to the new string of inhabited planets. The thinking machine plague arrives at Chapterhouse and cripples the Sisterhood, but they rally the unified humankind into one last great stand. Aboard the Ithaca, Sheeana restarts the ghola project. Gholas of Serena Butler, Gurney Halleck, and Xavier Harkonnen are about to be born when the axlotl tanks are poisoned, killing all three ghola babies and the tanks. Saboteurs are suspected, as many of the ship's systems have also been failing. Scytale, the last Tleilaxu Master, finally reawakens his own ghola's past memories, but only by dying in front of his younger self. The gholas of Wellington Yueh, Stilgar, and Liet-Kynes regain their memories through various traumatic experiences. Desperate to replenish their supplies, the Ithaca lands on the planet Qelso, a world slowly being terraformed into a desert planet by the introduction of sandworms years before by the Bene Gesserit. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes decide to remain behind to help the natives slow the encroaching desert and prepare them for the inevitable. Having successfully completed his attempts to create a new incarnation of sandworm, Waff begs Edrik to return him to the ruined planet of Rakis so that he can spend what little time to live he has left attempting to reintroduce the worms there as well. Unsuccessful, Waff resigns himself to failure and prepares to die; as the last of his sandworm specimens perishes, a dozen sandworms erupt from beneath the surface. Waff realizes that the pearl of Leto II's awareness that each sandworm carries had foreseen the Honored Matre attack on Rakis and buried themselves deep beneath the planet's surface. Knowing the planet has begun healing itself, Waff is consumed by a worm, rejoicing that his prophet has finally returned. Meanwhile, Edrik and the ultraspice are intercepted by Khrone, who seizes the spice and kills the Navigator. The saboteurs are eventually revealed to be the Rabbi and the ghola of Thufir Hawat, who had apparently been murdered and replaced with Face Dancers back on the planet of the Handlers during the events of Hunters of Dune. In the ensuing chaos that follows the discovery of the Face Dancers, the Ithaca is ensnared by the tachyon net. Miles Teg sacrifices his life in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent their capture. The Ithaca is brought to Synchrony. They are met by a party led by the ghola of Vladimir Harkonnen. Seeing the young ghola of Alia when he arrives, he immediately kills her; the original Alia had murdered his original self 5,000 years before. The Bene Gesserit gholas of Paul, Lady Jessica, Chani, and Yueh are then taken to see Omnius and Erasmus. Omnius explains that to complete his domination of humanity, he requires the superior Kwisatz Haderach of the two Paul gholas. Paolo and Paul are forced to duel, during which Paul is mortally wounded. Victorious, Paolo takes the ultraspice; overwhelmed by the rapid onset of perfect prescient vision, he slips into a coma. Paul, at the urging and efforts of Yueh, Chani, and Jessica, slowly regains his past memories and is able to repair the damage to his body using Bene Gesserit physiological control. Under the guise of aiding Paolo, Yueh takes his revenge by killing Baron Harkonnen, who had orchestrated the torture and death of Yueh's wife Wanna in their original incarnations. As this is happening, Murbella has all the new ships in place and is finally ready to launch her fleet against Omnius's oncoming armada. But the Obliterators and Ixian navigation devices all suddenly fail; Murbella realizes that they have been sabotaged. When it appears that defeat at the hands of the thinking machine forces is imminent, the Oracle of Time appears with a thousand ships piloted by Guild Navigators and begins to attack the machines. This assault leaves the machine fleet in pieces. The Oracle then tells Murbella that she is going to Synchrony to stop Omnius once and for all; she folds space, and a visual manifestation of the Oracle appears in the room where Paul and Paolo have been dueling. The Oracle then removes every aspect of Omnius and transports the Evermind away into another dimension forever. Sheeana and the young Leto II ghola free the sandworms from the Ithacas cargo hold, and the worms wreak havoc throughout Synchrony. Leto II regains his memories, and after the battle is finished, he tells Sheeana that he must now go back into the dreaming. Leto walks into the belly of the largest worm, Monarch, and the seven worms twist together and join into one worm before digging deep into the ground. Fresh from fighting the thinking machines outside on Synchrony with Sheeana, Duncan enters the chamber where a recovering Paul, his memories now restored, reveals that Duncan is the final Kwisatz Haderach, having evolved and perfected himself through thousands of years of ghola rebirth and altered DNA. Erasmus then explains that he was the mastermind behind the rebuilding of the Synchronized Worlds. A mutinous Khrone declares that the universe now belongs to his Face Dancers, as both humans and machines have been crippled. Amused by Khrone's attempt to seize power, Erasmus explains that a fail-safe system had been built into the Face Dancers. The independent robot kills Khrone and his party &mdash; and then all enhanced Face Dancers across the universe &mdash; with the simple flip of a mental switch. The immediate death of so many Face Dancers exposes how much they have infiltrated human society. Erasmus then offers Duncan a choice. With both humans and thinking machines battered and beaten, Duncan can choose either destruction for one side or recovery and healing for both. Choosing peace over victory, Duncan and Erasmus then merge minds. Erasmus imparts Duncan with all the codes required to run the Synchronized Worlds, as well as all of his knowledge. Duncan now stands as the bridge between humans and machines. With little left for him, Erasmus again expresses his desire to learn everything possible about what it is to be human &mdash; he asks for Duncan to help him die. As Duncan shuts Erasmus down, he shares one of the many deaths he experienced with the independent robot. Back in the Old Empire, Murbella's forces are preparing to attack Omnius's second wave when the machines suddenly stop. With the Oracle having taken Omnius, a Navigator brings Murbella to Synchrony. She and Duncan are reunited, and he explains his intent to end the divide between humans and thinking machines &mdash; the two will co-exist. Duncan gives Synchrony to Sheeana for her Orthodox Sisterhood, while he returns with Murbella to help lead the new human-machine mode of life. On Qelso, the gholas of Stilgar and Liet-Kynes continue to aid in the attempt to hold back the expanding desert, while simultaneously teaching the planet's occupants how to adapt to the changes that will inevitably come. Under Duncan's control, a thinking machine convoy lands on the planet; Duncan offers the gholas the aid of the thinking machines in holding back the desert. He tells Stilgar and Kynes that just as he has become both man and machine, Qelso will become both desert and forest. On Caladan, the gholas of Lady Jessica and Wellington Yueh have returned to the ancient Atreides castle. Having removed all traces of the Baron's occupancy, the two discuss how they will go forward with their lives. Accompanying them is the unawakened ten-year-old ghola of Leto I. Looking forward to the time when his memories will be restored, Lady Jessica finds solace in the fact that she will be reunited with her Duke. With the aid of the Tleilaxu Master Scytale, Sheeana and the Orthodox Sisterhood on Synchrony have reestablished the ancient Bene Gesserit breeding program, resolving to never again breed another Kwisatz Haderach. At her side, Sheeana has a young ghola of Serena Butler, heroine of the Butlerian Jihad. Along with gholas of the Tleilaxu Masters, Scytale has grown Tleilaxu females from newly discovered cells, vowing that they will never again be forced into becoming axlotl tanks, in the hopes that this will prevent the creation of a vengeful enemy such as the Honored Matres from ever occurring again, and also vowing to never again allow the Masters to corrupt the recovering Tleilaxu people. On the recovering planet Dune, the awakened gholas of Paul and Chani go about restoring the planet to its former glory. Now that Paul is able to devote all of his attention to her, Chani remarks that he has finally learned how to treat his wife. As the novel closes, Paul reaffirms his love for Chani, telling her he has loved her for over five-thousand years."
880,Wetware,science," Set in 2030–2031, ten years after the events of Software, Wetware focuses on the attempt of an Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed bopper named Berenice to populate Earth with a robot/human hybrid called a meatbop. Toward this end, she implants an embryo in a human woman living on the Moon (Della Taze, Cobb Anderson's niece) and then frames her for murder to force her to return to Earth. After only a few days, she gives birth to a boy named Manchile, who has been genetically programmed to carry bopper software in his brain (and in his sperm), and to grow to maturity in a matter of weeks. Berenice's plan is for Manchile to announce the formation of a new religion unifying boppers and humans, and then arrange to have himself assassinated. (Rucker makes several allusions to the Christ story; Taze's abbreviated pregnancy is discovered on Christmas Eve, for instance.) Before the assassination, Manchile impregnates several women, the idea being that his similarly accelerated offspring will create a race of meatbops at an exponential rate. The plot goes disastrously awry, and a human corporation called ISDN retaliates against the boppers by infecting them with a genetically modified organism called chipmold. The artificial disease succeeds in killing off the boppers, but when it infects the boppers' outer coating, a kind of smart plastic known as flickercladding, it creates a new race of intelligent symbiotes known as moldies &mdash; thus fulfilling Berenice's dream of an organic/synthetic hybrid. Both of the two main human characters of Software play prominent roles in Wetware: Cobb Anderson, whose robot body was destroyed at the end of the last novel, has his software implanted in a new body so he can help raise Manchile; while Sta-Hi Mooney &mdash; now known as Stahn Mooney &mdash; is now working as a private detective on the Moon after accidentally killing his wife, and is used as a pawn in various bopper and anti-bopper schemes. The Belle of Louisville, a steamboat of historic significance located in Louisville, Kentucky (the setting for the earthbound portions of the book), occurs as a character in the book, in which it is revealed that the steamer has been imbued with an onboard artificial intelligence."
881,The Onion Girl,science," Jilly is struck by a car and becomes paralyzed on her right side. She discovers she can dream herself to the spirit world like her friend Sophie has long known how to do. Her physical body remains in the hospital bed while a dream version of herself, young and not paralyzed, traverses the spirit world. There she meets her friend Joe Crazy Dog, who can travel to the spirit world while awake. He tells her he has sent for a pair of ""crow"" girls who might be able to cure her condition, but only after she deals with emotional wounds from her past. Somebody breaks into Jilly's studio and destroys many of her paintings. Her friends keep seeing on the streets a woman who looks just like Jilly. They wonder if a shadow twin might be behind both Jilly's ""accident"" and the vandalism. Jilly meets in the dreamlands a young man named Toby. He is an Eadar--a fictional character who acquires a physical presence in the spirit world, but whose existence depends on there being people who believe in him. Together they spend several nights climbing a big tree to get some magical twigs that may help both of them. In flashbacks, the book gradually reveals details of Jilly's past. As a child, she was repeatedly raped by her brother Del. She finally ran away from home and by her teens was a junkie and prostitute living on the streets, until a kind cop named Lou rescued and rehabilitated her. Back at Jilly's former home, Del turned his attention to her younger sister Raylene, who never forgave Jilly for abandoning her. Raylene finally stabbed Del and ran away with her best friend Pinky. To make money, they performed badger games and ended up killing a dirty cop. Pinky eventually became a pornstar, while Raylene started working in a print shop. There she fell in love with one of her coworkers, who taught her how to use computers, but finally died in a shootout. Pinky served several years in prison for assault, and during that time she and Raylene began having shared dreams in which they were wolves hunting unicorns. Raylene found out her sister's whereabouts from an article. On the day of Pinky's release, Raylene bought a pink Cadillac and the two of them rode off in search of Jilly. That's when Raylene destroyed Jilly's paintings, and continued to stalk her. In the hospital, Jilly and Sophie discover that they can share their dreams as well, and when they find themselves in a forest, they encounter a pack of wolves, one of whom Jilly recognizes as her sister. She realizes that Raylene must be the lookalike who destroyed her paintings. Raylene is upset that Jilly has now invaded her dreams. She wants to find a way into the dreamlands while awake, so that she can avenge Jilly there. She sees Joe on the street and recognizes him from his Don't! Buy! Thai! T-shirt as he slips into the spirit world. By watching him, she figures out how to enter the spirit world herself. She and Pinky kidnap the sleeping Jilly and carry her body into the spirit world. The dreaming version of Jilly has reached the top of the tree and found the twigs, which have made Toby no longer an Eadar, but which have no effect on Jilly's condition. But because Jilly's physical body has entered the dreamlands, she feels pulled toward it, and she must climb down the tree to reach it. When she reaches Raylene, they begin talking. Raylene realizes how silly it is to hold a grudge against her sister for something she did when she was a kid just trying to survive. Unfettered, Pinky points her gun at Jilly and fires--but Raylene places herself in the line of fire and dies. Joe arrives at that moment with a pitbull, which kills Pinky. Toby reaches the clearing with a wreath of the twigs, now powerful enough to cure Jilly's paralysis. Jilly instead uses it to bring Raylene back to life. Because Raylene killed all those unicorns, she must never return to the dreamlands, or else Joe's friends will hunt her down. The crow girls visit Jilly and tell her that they cannot cure her condition, but they give her feathers so that she can call them anytime she wants."
882,The Lost Fleet: Fearless,science," This is the second book in the Lost Fleet series that follows the adventures of Black Jack Geary. This novel begins with Jack and the fleet arriving in the Sutrah system. As their detection systems come on line, they detect two enemy warships. Disobeying orders, four of the ships of the Alliance Fleet break formation and charge after the Syndic ships, not knowing that a minefield trap had been laid. Despite Geary's attempt to recall them, the ships fly right into the mine field. During a meeting after the incident, Geary is indirectly accused of cowardice because of the incident by officers who resent his command of the fleet. As the Allied Fleet is planning to raid the system for resources, it is discovered that there is a prison colony on one of the planets containing Alliance prisoners of war. Upon liberating the POWs, it is discovered that among them is a former hero of the Alliance, Captain Falco, who believes he and not Geary should command the fleet, and who has secret allies among the officers under Geary's command."
883,Survivor,science," Although set within the broader plot of the Patternist series, the entire plot of Survivor is largely separated from the events of the other books in the series. Butler begins the novel in medias res, during the ""rescue"" of the main character, Alanna, from the ""Tehkohn,"" a group of extraterrestrials. Although the main narrative follows Alanna's perspective after the rescue, Butler also inserts a series of flashbacks, some of them from the perspective of other characters. Through this literary device, the readers learn about Alanna's past gradually, even as they follow the efforts of the other characters to discover that past as well. Eventually, the narrative reveals Alanna's background. The novel is set in the indeterminate future, sometime after the events that Butler would later describe in her novel Clay's Ark and before the events of Patternmaster. At the time of Survivor, humanity is threatened by the ""Clayark plague,"" an extraterrestrial disease that has destroyed half of the Earth's population, either by killing them or by mutating them and their children into the bestial ""Clayarks."" Humanity survives in an embattled state, supported somewhat by the ""Patternists,"" a group of mutant humans previously living in secret. (The development of the Patternists is described in more detail in Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, and a later stage of their conflict against the Clayarks is described in Patternmaster.) Prior to the main events of the novel, Alanna's parents died saving her from a Clayark attack. After several years living as a feral child, Alanna was captured by a group of Missionaries, a Christian religious sect dedicated to maintaining humanity as God's chosen form in the face of Clayark and Patternist competition. Although some of the Missionaries distrusted Alanna, either because of her wild upbringing or because of her African American and Asian ancestry, she adapted quickly, and became the foster daughter of the group's leader, Jules Verrick, and his wife Niela. Some time later, the Missionaries receive an opportunity to flee Earth on a Patternist starship as part of a program to seed humanity on other planets in order to preserve the species from the Clayark plague. After arrival on the planet, the Missionaries encountered the Kohn, intelligent inhabitants of the planet. Although the Kohn had fur, camouflage abilities, and claws, they were broadly humanoid, and the local tribe—the Garkohn—assisted the Missionaries in developing their settlement. Shortly thereafter, the settlement was raided by the Tehkohn, a rival group of Kohn, and several Garkohn and Missionaries were captured, including Alanna. Eventually, the story reveals that just as Alanna once altered her behavior to fit in among the Missionaries and ""survive,"" she also was successful in joining the Tehkohn, ultimately marrying their leader, Diut, and bearing a child. Through her experiences with the Tehkohn, Alanna has learned that the Garkohn have addicted the Missionaries to a plant under their control and intend to assimilate the physically weaker Missionaries and use their technology against the Tehkohn. Aware that she will lose the humans' trust if they realize she is in a relationship with a native, Alanna plays a dangerous game, but is ultimately largely successful, leading the Missionaries to trust (reluctantly) the Tehkohn long enough to escape the influence of both native nations with the Tehkohn's help. At that point, Alanna reveals her relationship to the other humans, is disowned by her father, and returns to live with the Tehkohn."
884,Last Son of Krypton,science," Last Son of Krypton is Elliot S. Maggin's first Superman novel. It tells the ""life story"" of Superman; from his birth on the planet Krypton, to his childhood in Smallville and his career as Superboy, to his arrival in Metropolis and his career as Superman. The main antagonist in this story is a mysterious alien ruler with ties to Superman's past. Superman and his greatest enemy Lex Luthor must join forces to retrieve a document written by Albert Einstein and stop the alien ruler."
885,Forever Peace,science," Though its title is similar to The Forever War and both novels deal with soldiers in the future, Forever Peace is not a direct sequel, and takes place on Earth much closer to the present day. Using remotely controlled robots called ""soldierboys"" (which are nearly invincible), the Alliance military fights third world guerrillas in an endless series of economy-driven wars. As only first world nations possess the nanoforge technology that can produce anything from basic materials, conflict is asymmetric. The novel is told partly in first-person narration by the main character, Julian Class, and partly by an anonymous third-person narrator, who is able to comment on aspects of Julian's personality and background. The main protagonist, Julian Class, is a physicist and a mechanic who operates a soldierboy. Thanks to electronic ""jacks"" implanted in their skulls, mechanics are remotely linked to the machinery as well as to each other, being able to experience battle through the machines and read the thoughts of other mechanics who are simultaneously jacked in. After attempting suicide, Julian and his lover, Amelia ""Blaze"" Harding, are made aware of a problem with an automated particle physics project that could potentially trigger a new Big Bang that destroys the Earth and the rest of the universe. Because it's so easy to do, it is speculated that universes could potentially have only the lifespan of the first civilization that attempts such a project. When Julian, Blaze, and another physicist submit their paper to a journal's review board, they find themselves the target of ""The Hammer of God"" a Christian cult bent on hastening an anticipated end of the universe. As the Hammer of God has a secret presence throughout the government, Julian and Blaze narrowly miss being assassinated. Marty Larrin, one of the inventors of jacking technology, recruits Julian and Blaze in an attempt to using this technology to end war for all time; a little known secret is that jacking with someone else for a long enough period (about two weeks) will psychologically eliminate the ability to kill another human being. By ""humanizing"" the entire world, dangerous technology would not be a problem for human survival. They do so, stop the particle accelerator's construction, and war is eventually stopped."
886,When the Wind Blows,science," The book centers on Frannie Devin O'Neill, a veterinarian, whose husband was killed a three years before the story takes place. The action takes place in Bear Bluff, Colorado. She meets Kit Harrison, an FBI agent, when he rents a cabin in the woods behind her house. One night, after a friend's mysterious death, Frannie sees a small girl with wings, running in the forest. Her name is Max, and they learn about Max's missing brother, Matthew, and the sinister place where they grew up. Kit, Frannie, and Max find and break into the School. They find the rest of Max's ""flock"", two Chinese siblings named Wendy and Peter, a blind boy named Icarus, and Oz, all of whom have wings. The group leaves the school and Kit calls the FBI for help. They try to go back to Frannie's vet clinic, the Inn Patient, but they find it burnt down. They are caught by the ""whitecoats"" (who work at the School) and the flock's previous Keeper, a cruel man named Harding Thomas (also known as ""Uncle Tom""). The whitecoats force Kit and Frannie to come with them at the threat of shooting the children and they agree. Max, however, manages to escape. The whitecoats take the adults and the rest of the flock to the home of Gillian, Frannie's friend who turns out to work at the School as well. The flock becomes excited when they see Gillian's son, Michael, who is one of the School's experiments. Gillian and Thomas try to get Frannie and Kit to tell what they've found out about the School, but neither cooperate. Michael guides them to where the flock is being kept. They find the flock, along with Matthew, and escape while Gillian holds an auction to sell the bird children to major corporations. Max, meanwhile, guides news helicopters to Gillian's house and they report on the bird kids and expose the whitecoats. Kit is shot nonfatally. Frannie, Max, and Matthew notice Gillian, Michael, Thomas, and Anthony Peyser (Gillian's husband and the leader of the School) escaping in a car. Max and Matthew fly after, with Frannie following in her car. The siblings dive-bomb the car and cause it to crash, killing everyone inside. During the explosion, however, Max is badly hurt. Frannie operates on Max at a hospital and she recovers, as does Kit. Kit and Frannie take the bird kids into hiding, however eventually they help the children find their parents."
887,Typewriter in the Sky,science," The main character, Mike de Wolf, is a struggling pianist in New York. His friend, Horace Hackett, is an author and popular pulp fiction writer, who writes about Mike as the villain in his book, Mike enters the bathroom of Hackett's apartment, and hears the sound of someone typing on a typewriter. Mike learns he is regarded in this world as the villain, Spanish Admiral Miguel de Lobo, a ""pirate potboiler"". He knows that the villains in stories written by Hackett often do not come to a favorable end, and is therefore eager to safely leave the realm to which he was transported. The story takes place on the high seas in the Caribbean during the 17th century with a conflict among colonists. Hackett writes under pressure, as he is facing a deadline. He falls in love with a woman in the story, but grows frustrated after realizing that she is just another of Hackett's fictional creations. Mike looks up into the sky in search of this mystical device or its controller, ""Abruptly Mike de Wolfe stopped. His jaw slackened a trifle and his hand went up to his mouth to cover it. His eyes were fixed upon the fleecy clouds which scurried across the moon. Up there &ndash; God? In a dirty bathrobe?"""
888,The City and the Stars,science," The City and the Stars takes place a billion years in the future, in the city of Diaspar. By this time, the Earth is so old that the oceans have gone and humanity has all but left. As far as the people of Diaspar know, they are the only city left on the planet. The city of Diaspar is completely enclosed. Nobody has come in or left the city for as long as anybody can remember, and everybody in Diaspar has an instinctive insular conservatism. The story behind this fear of venturing outside the city tells of a race of ruthless invaders which beat humanity back from the stars to Earth, and then made a deal that humanity could live - if they never left the planet. In Diaspar, the entire city is run by the Central Computer. Not only is the city repaired by machines, but the people themselves are created by the machines as well. The computer creates bodies for the people of Diaspar to live in and stores their minds in its memory at the end of their lives. At any time, only a small number of these people are actually living in Diaspar, the rest are retained in the computer's memory banks. All the currently existent people of Diaspar have had past ""lives"" within Diaspar except one person &mdash; Alvin, the main character of this story. He is a 'Unique', different from everybody else in Diaspar, not only because he does not have any past lives to remember, but because instead of fearing the outside, he feels compelled to leave. Alvin has just come to the age where he is considered grown up, and is putting all his energies into trying to find a way out. Eventually, a character called Khedron the Jester helps Alvin use the central computer to find a way out of the city of Diaspar. This involves the discovery that in the remote past, Diaspar was linked to other cities by an underground transport system. This system still exists although its terminal was covered over and sealed with only a secret entrance left. Once out of Diaspar, Alvin finds that one other human habitation remains on Earth. In contrast to technological Diaspar, Lys is a vast green oasis shielded by mountains from the worldwide desert. Its people are not stored and recreated technologically, but naturally conceive, born, age, and die. They have rejected the hyper-advanced technology of Diaspar in favor of an almost agrarian existence, with machines used only for labor-saving purposes. The people of Lys have instead worked to perfect the arts of the mind; they are telepaths, capable of communicating with each other over great distances and without words. Alvin continues his quest until he finds out the truth of why the people of Diaspar are so frightened of the external universe and why Lys is so scared of space travel and mechanical things. In Lys he goes on a trip with a young man named Hilvar who becomes his friend, and they see a signal light, which they decide to investigate. It leads them to Shalmirane, the remains of the fortress where the Invaders were fought off with unimaginable weapons, and there they encounter an extraterrestrial creature with a strange robot. The creature is the last survivor of a religious cult dating back to the days of the Galactic Empire. The robot was the companion of the founder, the ""Master"", who came with his followers to Earth at the end of his life. Alvin and Hilvar are unable to understand the content of the religion except that it refers to ""Great Ones"" who have left, but will someday return. Alvin persuades the creature to lend him the robot, arguing that the Master would want it to see how things were developing in the world. The Master had, however, forbidden the robot to give out any information at all, so Alvin does not learn anything. The robot enables Alvin to escape the attempts of the people of Lys to purge his mind and send him back—the previous 14 Uniques had stayed. Alvin had originally been told he would be free to choose whether to stay or return, but because the people of Lys had failed to prevent news of his departure spreading in Diaspar in time, this option was no longer available. Back in Diaspar he seeks the help of the Central Computer, which overcomes the Master's block on the robot by producing an illusion of an apocalyptic return of the Great Ones. Alvin now learns that the Master's ship is still functional, buried outside Diaspar. He manages to retrieve it, fetches Hilvar from Lys, and travels into deep space. They encounter Vanamonde, a being of pure intellect, with whom Hilvar, being telepathic like other Lys people, can communicate and bring him back to Earth. From him the truth of history finally emerges. The fearsome Invaders, it turns out, were a myth: Shalmirane was actually used to destroy the Moon when this became necessary to prevent it from colliding with the Earth. Instead, the people of Diaspar and Lys are the descendants of those humans who deliberately turned away from the universe in rejection of history's greatest scientific project: the creation of a disembodied intellect. The first attempt had created a powerful but insane being, the Mad Mind. The Mad Mind had devastated the galaxy and its civilizations before being imprisoned in a ""strange artificial star"" called the Black Sun. Vanamonde is the second, successful experiment of the ancient empire: a being of pure intellect, immensely old, immensely powerful, able to move instantly to any point in space — but entirely childlike and unsophisticated. Vanamonde's ultimate destiny, Hilvar realizes, is to battle the Mad Mind, when it escapes its prison at the end of Time. After this, most of the Galactic Empire had left our galaxy, leaving only a scattered few. This departure from the galaxy, leaving it to Vanamonde, was because contact had been made with something ""very strange and very great"" which called them urgently. Alvin's discoveries reunite Diaspar with Lys. He then sends the ship, under the command of the robot, to search for the long-lost people of the Empire. He does not wish to search himself - even if there are human remnants in the Galaxy, they are probably decadent - and he has work to do on Earth. Even the environment, he hopes, can be revived."
889,Starship Troopers,science," Starship Troopers takes place in the midst of an interstellar war between the Terran Federation of Earth and the Arachnids (referred to as ""The Bugs"") of Klendathu. It is narrated as a series of flashbacks by Juan Rico, and is one of only a few Heinlein novels set out in this fashion. The novel opens with Rico aboard the corvette Rodger Young (named after Medal of Honor winner Rodger Wilton Young), serving with the platoon known as ""Rasczak's Roughnecks"" (named after the platoon leader, Lt. Rasczak) about to embark on a raid against the planet of the ""Skinnies,"" who are allies of the Arachnids. We learn that he is a cap(sule) trooper in the Terran Federation's Mobile Infantry. The raid itself, one of the few instances of actual combat in the novel, is relatively brief: the Roughnecks land on the planet, destroy their targets, and retreat, suffering a single casualty in the process (Dizzy Flores, who dies in the retrieval boat of wounds received in action). The story then flashes back to Rico's graduation from high school, and his decision to sign up for Federal Service over the objections of his father, who disowns him. This is the only chapter that describes Rico's civilian life, and most of it is spent on the monologues of two people: retired Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois, Rico's school instructor in ""History and Moral Philosophy,"" and Fleet Sergeant Ho, a recruiter for the armed forces of the Terran Federation. Some see Dubois as speaking for Heinlein throughout the novel; he delivers what is probably the book's most famous soliloquy on violence, it ""... has settled more issues in history than has any other factor."" Fleet Sergeant Ho's monologues examine the nature of military service, and his anti-military tirades seem primarily to be a contrast with Dubois. We learn, later, that his rants are part of a policy intended to scare off applicants signing up without conviction. Interspersed throughout the book are other flashbacks to Rico's high school History and Moral Philosophy course, which describe how in the Terran Federation of Rico's day, the rights of a full Citizen (to vote, and hold public office) must be earned through some form of volunteer Federal service. Those residents who have not exercised their right to perform this Federal Service retain all other rights generally associated with a modern democracy (free speech, assembly, etc.), but they cannot vote or hold public office. This structure arose ad hoc after the collapse of the ""20th century Western democracies"", brought on by both social failures at home (among which appear to be poor handling of juvenile delinquency) and military defeat by the Chinese Hegemony overseas. In the next section of the novel, after being denied all his higher preferred Service choices, Rico goes to boot camp at Camp Arthur Currie, on the northern prairies. Five chapters are spent exploring Rico's experience there, including his adjustment to a very different situation, entering the service under the training of the leading instructor, career Ship's Sergeant Charles Zim. Camp Currie is rigorous by design; less than ten percent of the recruits finish basic training. The rest either resign, are expelled, or die in training. One of the chapters deals with Ted Hendrick, a fellow recruit and constant complainer who is flogged and expelled for striking a superior officer during a simulated combat exercise (he caught Sgt. Zim by surprise after being struck by the sergeant for failure to perform during the exercise). Another recruit, a deserter who murdered a baby girl while AWOL, is hanged by his battalion after his arrest by civilian police and return to Camp Currie. Rico himself is flogged for poor handling of (simulated) nuclear weapons during a drill; despite these experiences he eventually graduates and is assigned to a unit in the Fleet. At some point during Rico's training, the ""Bug War"" has changed from border incidents to formal war, and Rico finds himself taking part in combat operations. The war ""officially"" starts with an Arachnid attack that annihilates the city of Buenos Aires (which kills Juan's mother who was visiting there), although Rico makes it clear that prior to the attack there had been many ""'incidents,' 'patrols,' or 'police actions.'"" Rico briefly describes the Terran Federation's loss at the Battle of Klendathu during which his unit is decimated and his ship destroyed. Following Klendathu, the Terran Federation is reduced to making hit-and-run raids similar to the one described at the beginning of the novel (which, chronologically would be placed between chapters 10 and 11). Rico meanwhile finds himself posted to Rasczak's Roughnecks. This part of the book focuses on the daily routine of military life, as well as the relationship between officers and non-commissioned officers, personified in this case by Rasczak and Sergeant Jelal. Eventually, Rico decides to become a career soldier, and one of his fellow troopers claims he is officer material and should consider volunteering for Officer Candidate School. He applies and is accepted. It turns out to be just like boot camp, only ""squared and cubed with books added."" Rico manages to make it through to the final exam, ""in the Fleet"". He is commissioned a temporary Third Lieutenant for his field-test and commands his own unit during Operation Royalty. It is revealed at the end of the chapter that one of the enlisted men he leads into combat is his former basic training instructor, Sergeant Zim. Although personally convinced that he badly mismanaged his men, he passes the final exam, and graduates as a Second Lieutenant. There is also an account of the meeting between Rico and his father, who volunteered for Service after his wife, Rico's mother, was killed at Buenos Aires. The final chapter serves as more of a coda, depicting Rico aboard the Rodger Young as the lieutenant in command of Rico's Roughnecks, preparing to drop to Klendathu as part of a major strike, his father being his senior sergeant and a Native American Third Lieutenant-in-training (James Bearpaw, known as ""Jimmie"") of his own under instruction."
890,The Sands of Time,science," Visiting the British Museum, Nyssa is soon kidnapped leaving the Doctor and Tegan to face the consequences of an Ancient Egyptian prophecy."
891,Found,science," In the beginning of the story Jonah and his friend Chip Winston, who also learns that he is adopted, receive letters from an unknown person. The letters say “You are one of the missing” and “Beware! They are coming to get you”. At first they take it as some kind of joke but soon to wonder more and more about who are their birth parents and why they got these letters. They decide that the best way to figure out is to go into Chip’s parent's safe. There they find a phone number to an FBI agent named James Reardon. Soon Jonah asks his parents if they can call the adoption agency and ask who his birth parents really are. They only tell his dad to contact the FBI to talk to James Reardon. Jonah, his parents, and his sister Katherine meet James Reardon. Right before the meet, a janitor gives Jonah a bottle of Mountain Dew. When they finally meet with James Reardon, he tells them Jonah was illegally adopted from a foreign country and might be deported. He refuses to tell them the country's name, though. When Jonah goes to the bathroom to throw up thanks to the Mountain Dew, another, younger janitor appears out of nowhere in the bathroom and tells him a file would appear on the desk by the time he got back. He tells Jonah to memorize as many names as possible. Back in the room, he distracts the adults while Katherine takes pictures of the documents. It turns out to be the addresses and phone numbers of 36 teenagers, including Chip and Jonah. It also includes the names of several adults, including a woman named Angela DuPre. Chip and Katherine begin calling the numbers. The adults all hung up. Most of the kids turn out to live in the vicinity of Chip and Jonah. After a while they receive a letter from Angela DuPre, telling them to meet her at the library to talk about the things that are happening and get more information. At the library, Angela DuPre tells them that time travelers exist and that she had been researching. She tells them that she used to work at an airport, until an airplane, full of babies, appeared out of nowhere. After the babies were removed, the plane disappeared. She speculates that the babies on the plane were originally adults who were turned into babies by time traveling. Then a man breaks into the room and is promptly tackled by the ""janitor"" from the FBI who talked to Jonah in the bathroom. Chip, Jonah, and Katherine escape through a window, but Angela stays behind for more information. Later, when they're leaving the library, they see Angela, who disappears into thin air. When they get home, they find out the lists of names was deleted from Chip's computer. Shortly afterwards, Jonah's mom receives a flyer in the mail advertising an adoption conference for teen adoptees and their parents. Jonah persuades his parents to let him bring Katherine along, too. At the conference, all the adoptees are divided into two groups, with Jonah, Chip, and all the kids on the list in one group, and everyone else in another. Katherine pretends to be a girl named Daniella McCarthy to get into Jonah's group. The kids are led to a cave in the woods by two men name Gary and Mr. Hodge. Then the cave is transported to a place called a time hollow. The ""janitor"" from the FBI, whom Jonah, Chip, and Katherine have nicknamed JB, appears and attacks Gary and Mr. Hodge. Soon Angela arrives too. They find out that Gary and Hodge work for an organization called Interchronological Rescue, an organization dedicated to rescuing children from history, such as toddlers trapped in burning houses and people left for dead during the Bubonic Plague; taking them to the distant future; turning them into babies; and putting them up for adoption. The organization got greedy, however, and they started taking famous babies whose disappearances were noticed. Finally, when they were flying to the future with a load of babies, JB chased after the plane and caused it to crash in the twenty-first century. Gary and Hodge want to turn all the kids into babies and take them to the future, and JB wants to send them all back to die. Finally, JB sends Chip and another boy named Alex back to the fifteenth century , but Jonah and Katherine grab Chip's arms right before he disappears and find themselves falling backwards through time. On the way, Jonah manages to convince JB to let him and Katherine help Chip and Alex repair time so everyone can go home to the twenty-first century."
892,The World at the End of Time,science," World at the End of Time follows the story of a young Earth-born human, Viktor Sorricaine, on a colony expedition to a distant star system. The colonists are frozen for the long trip between stars. Unknown to both the humans of Earth and the colonists, the stars around them are home to immensely long-lived (effectively immortal) plasma creatures—with no knowledge of, or interest in, the activities of insignificant matter creatures. Wan-To, one of the oldest and most powerful plasma creatures, is engaged in a war. After creating modified copies of himself, or ""children"", for company, Wan-To finds himself in a deadly game of chess with them. The ""board"" is the entire galaxy and the weapons are the stars themselves. Each star may be home to an enemy ""child""... and using a variety of exotic particles, Wan-To is able to cause a targeted star to flare and kill any enemy that may be living within it. Into the middle of this battlefield, the three colony ships (Ark, New Mayflower and Argosy) unwittingly head for their new home. Upon arriving, the colony begins to establish itself ... only to discover that their entire local group of stars appears to be undergoing a bizarre acceleration, and are dimming. After a disastrous disease outbreak and terraforming failures, the desperate colonists eventually decide to investigate the strange radiation emissions from a small world within their solar system. Upon arriving in orbit, their ship is badly damaged and Viktor is forced into the onboard freezer systems. They are eventually rescued and unfrozen four hundred of the colony's years later, to find the colony in an even more desperate situation. The star around which the colony's world orbits has dimmed considerably (due to the energy being siphoned off to accelerate it) and they are now travelling so fast that, due to relativistic effects, the universe around them has shrunk to a bright dot. The colony has become factionalized and heavily religious, with scientific investigation discouraged. Viktor is eventually frozen again for attempting to investigate why they have been accelerating. He wakes four thousand of the colony's years later, to find the far descendants of the colony have rebuilt their society into habitats closely orbiting their binary star system's secondary (a small red dwarf) and created a high-technology civilization dedicated to pleasure and comfort. He makes his way, eventually, to the former colony to find only a few fellow-colonists unfrozen and attempting to rebuild it. His unique status as someone who was born on ""old Earth"" brings publicity to their efforts and the rebuilding forges ahead. During the four thousand years of Viktor's frozen sleep, the star system has been slowed again. Unfortunately, after the vast amount of time that has passed, all that remains of the once young universe are dead stars and black holes ... and Wan-To desperately surviving on the energy provided by proton decay. Wan-To receives a tachyon transmission from his long-forgotten systems and makes preparations to move into these last remaining stars — believing that the small matter creatures inhabiting the system are irrelevant and can be destroyed should they become an irritation."
893,The Second Invasion from Mars,science," The story occurs in an unknown city and country, but almost certainly on Earth. All characters and few places mentioned have characteristically Greek names, but there is nothing specific to Greek culture in the plot; rather, use of neither Russian nor English names may have been an attempt to put the novel outside of the ideological war, which was extremely active at the time. The main character, Apollon, is a retired school teacher living with his daughter (from a now-deceased wife) and housekeeper. He has presumably retired only very recently, as he is no longer working, but is not receiving pension yet. The subject of his pension is by far his most important worry during the entire two weeks described. His pension is about to be awarded, pending decision from the Minister about pension degree, and correspondingly, amount. The difference between first and third degree translate to him as the difference between not being able to afford anything that is not strictly needed, and being able to pursue his hobby (and the only other significant interest), stamp collecting. At the same time, very strange things happen in the nearby city, and then in his town. Initially the unusual sounds and imagery generated considerable panic and even higher interest among the public, but gradually it becomes widely accepted, even if not understood, that the country (and, perhaps, entire planet) is being ""invaded"" by the Martians. It is at this point that the reader is exposed to perhaps the most shocking, yet highly natural, reaction of the majority of the population. Rather than being extremely curious as to the exact information about an event that is happening for the first time in the entire history, most of the people, including Apollon who is portraying the views of the majority very well, seem only to be concerned about what this change means for them, in very practical terms. The main hero, for example, is worried about what this uncertainty will mean to his pension, and whether new stamps will be printed by the supposed new Martian government. As the events unfold, it becomes clear that the invaders, whether they are Martians or not, value gastric juice for a completely unknown reason, and are willing to pay the considerable amount to any human that volunteers to donate it. This discovery gradually changes the overall mood in the town from cautious to very optimistic, and the citizens rejoice about the upcoming addition to their income. Again, no one cares as to why the Martians need such fluid, or even whether the reported invaders are Martians or extraterrestrials at all. The extra money, which is immediately used by many in a nearby bar, is alone more than sufficient to win the support of the majority of population. The farmers are overjoyed as well. One of the first actions of the supposed new government was to buy (at a higher than normal price) all current harvest, whether fully grown or not, and to provide the farmers with a new variety of grain, which gives rise to blue bread. The new grain grows very fast, and the resulting bread, although possessing an unusual color, appears tasty and provides (as almost immediately becomes known) a very good source of moonshine. The government even provides the farmers with an advance towards the future purchase of the bread, thus completely turning them loyal."
894,The Forgotten,science," Jake spends a day having strange flashbacks of himself in a rainforest, which leaves him disturbed. That evening, after watching a boxing match with his brother and father, he leaves for a grocery store, where Tobias has discovered something has crashed and the high-ranking yeerks are trying to hide something. The other Animorphs join them, and together they infiltrate the store in fly morph. Cassie overhears Chapman saying that it was a Yeerk bug fighter. After Ax manages to reconfigure the ship's controls, the Animorphs escape, pursued by Chapman and the other Yeerks. They plan to fly the spacecraft to Washington, in order to convince the American government that Earth is under attack by extraterrestrials. When Ax discovers that the fighter's technology to keep human radar from seeing it is broken, they are intercepted by two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets, however, Cassie notices that they are over the Red Sea in the Middle East - far from their intended destination. Flying above the atmosphere, they are picked up by Visser Three's Blade ship sensors. The Animorphs, knowing they can't escape, try to fire on the Visser's vessel. Both Jake and the Blade ship fire their Dracon beams at the same time, and, coincidentally, their projectiles intersect, and both ships crash. The kids wake up in their wrecked Bug fighter. They look around, noticing that they've crash-landed in a rainforest. They assume they're in the Amazon rainforest, but are also disturbed by the fact that it is the middle of the day (whereas it was nighttime in the United States, which is in roughly the same time zone as South America). After Jake reveals the strange flashbacks he was having, Ax speculates they may have caused a ""Sario Rip"" and traveled twelve hours backwards through time, which would explain why Jake was having strange flashbacks: he was in two places at once, and the two Jakes---the ""past"" and ""future"" versions---experience each other's thoughts at random moments. However, Cassie later notices that only Jake has the flashes so Ax says that Jake is the only ""real"" person-the rest are just a memory. They soon find that the Yeerks have traveled backwards through time as well, and will need both ships to create another Sario Rip and return to the right time. Ax takes the Bug fighter's computer to prevent them from doing so, and the group ventures out into the hostile wilderness, constantly plagued by insects, fire ants, snakes and piranhas. They're pursued by the Yeerks, who ruthlessly destroy the animals and trees around them in a bid to kill the Animorphs, desperate to retrieve the precious computer. The children acquire jaguar and monkey morphs in order to traverse the rainforest more easily. They eventually stumble across a group of Amazon Indians, led by Polo, their tribal chief. Marco, who knows some Spanish, manages to roughly translate the natives' Portuguese, and Jake and Polo agree to assist one another in eliminating the Yeerks. Polo and his men kill the Hork-Bajir guarding the Blade ship with poison-tipped spears, leaving the Animorphs with Visser Three, who morphs an amphibian-like Lerdethak and picks the Animorphs off one by one. Jake morphs into a monkey to use the Ledethak's vine like arms to move himself to Visser Three's body. He then throws a poison-tipped spear into Visser Three: while never revealed, this may have been fatal. Regardless, Visser Three is still able to use an arm to break Jake's neck. However, Jake wakes up back at the grocery store, just as they are about to infiltrate it. He calls off the operation, and the Animorphs all go home. The next day Jake asks Ax what had happened. Ax postulates that the travel through time created two separate versions of Jake. The reason Jake simply ""woke up"" back at the grocery store was that the Jake in the rainforest died at the hands of Visser Three; since it is impossible for one consciousness to exist in two separate locations, when one was eliminated the two snapped back together. Ax also speculates that Jake had to die, or else both Jakes and both their universes would collide and cease to exist. The events in the rainforest never actually happened (including the acquisition of jaguar and monkey morphs), and only remain in Jake's memory. He is left with a feeling of chilling relief. *Sario Rips are introduced and explained."
895,The Mount,science," The first-person narrator, Charley, is a young man who like all humans is used as riding mounts (e.g. horses) for an alien race known as Hoots. Humans in Charley's world, a pastoral Earth, have existed in a master-slave relationship with the Hoots for centuries. The Hoots, who have no way to return to their home planet, maintain the natural systems that keep the world running. Escaped mounts like Charley's father, formerly the Guards' Mount known as Heron, lead assaults on the stables where humans are kept and seek to unify their own people against the Hoots. When Charley (mount name Smiley) meets his father for the first time (Heron and Merry Mary were mated and separated by the Hoots soon after Charley was born), he resists betraying either his Master, the Hoot heir apparent, or anything that might help the resisting humans because his life as a mount (breed Seattle) is the only one he's ever known."
896,Cuckoo's Egg,science," The back-story presented in the novel describes the first contact between the Shonunin and humans, which occurred when a damaged human probe with five crewmembers entered the Shonunin's home system. The contact, however, turned violent. It was not clear who fired the first shot, but the Shonunin, who had only recently put themselves into space, chased the crippled human ship for two years (the ship had lost the ability to jump through hyperspace) before overpowering it. Having suffered losses themselves, the Shonunin killed all the humans aboard. They knew the probe had been sending messages out of the solar system and the Shonunin, incapable of interstellar travel themselves, now feared retribution from the technologically superior humans. A Shonun, Dana Duun Shtoni no Lughn (Duun), was charged with the task of saving the Shonunin world from the potential threat the humans posed. Duun's solution was to raise a human child to adulthood who could serve as an emissary to his race and hopefully prevent a major conflict when humans return to the Shonunin system. Scientists cloned one of the dead human crewmembers to produce the male human child, whom Duun named Haras, meaning Thorn. Raising a human in their midst, an alien and the enemy, sparked fear among the Shonunin, but Duun elected to undertake the task himself, uncertain whether the creature would turn on him. The novel is set during the period following Thorn's birth, and the first chapters concern Thorn's infancy and early childhood. As Thorn grows, Duun trains him according to the ways of the warrior Guild to which Duun belongs, the Hatani. The Hatani are a class of warrior-judges revered by most Shonunin, and Duun believes that raising Thorn under the Hatani code will be the best possible preparation for the boy's eventual ambassadorial duties. To be Hatani is to be respected but isolated. But by raising Thorn to be one of their Hatani, he makes Thorn part of the framework of society, not an isolated experiment. *Dana Duun Shtoni no Lughn (Duun) – a Shonun of the Hatani warrior Guild. (Cherryh has stated that she based the character Duun in large part on her own father.) *Haras (Thorn) – a Human, raised by Duun as an Hatani *Betan – a fellow student and Thorn's first love interest *Sagot – a teacher"
897,The Lost Fleet: Valiant,science," Not sure what to expect after the heavy damage the Syndicate's inflicted on his fleet when they escaped 11 days before, John 'Black Jack' Geary discovers the system is practically undefended with nothing left behind but warships too badly damaged to participate in the fleet chasing him. The Alliance fleet quickly gains control of the system and lays a trap for the pursuing Syndicate Fleet. When the Syndicates arrive 5 hours later, they fall for the lure of unprotected auxiliaries and quickly get decimated by Geary's plan to explode the cores of the abandoned Syndic ships left in the system. When the surviving Syndicate leaders realize their huge pursuit fleet has been destroyed, they order the two remaining Syndic battleships guarding the hypernet jump gate to destroy it. The resulting explosion unleashes a large nova-like explosion that destroys practically everything in the system except for the Alliance fleet which only suffers minor damage. Meanwhile Geary and Victoria Rione end their relationship with Rione feeling that Geary actually is in love with Captain Tanya Desjani. Captain Geary jumps to the Branwyn Star System where he finds no threats to his fleet. Right before jumping to Wendig, he receives a message about a computer worm in the jump engines which would have left his ship and a few others trapped in jump space forever. Geary now realizes that his enemies within the Alliance fleet are getting desperate and are willing to take whatever means necessary to remove him and his supporters. In the Wendig Star System, they discover the Syndicates Leaders have abandoned the system, but left 500 civilians to die on the main planet as their life support fails. Believing no one should die like that, Captain Geary orders the civilians to be rescued. Before the shuttles arrive at the planet, another worm is discovered, this time targeting the weapons systems to have them destroy the civilians. The worm is blocked and the citizens of the Wendig Alpha surrender themselves to the Alliance fleet and heads towards the Cavalos jump point. Ten days later, in the Cavalos Star System, Captain Geary safely delivers the Wendig citizens and faces off against another fleet of Syndicate warships. Emerging victorious, he captures a Syndicate CEO and gets him to admit that there is an alien civilization on the other side of Syndic space. Geary lets the CEO go after making a deal with him about working together to end the war. Later Geary and Desjani admit to each other their feelings for each other but realize that as long as Geary is her commanding officer they can never be together. Desjani also fervently believes that Geary has a mission from the living stars themselves to end the war and he must complete this also before they can be together."
898,Golem100,science," Taking place in a city of the future, a group of bored wealthy women begin dabbling in ancient satanic rituals, unaware that their rites are actually working. The beast of pure evil, Golem100, is raised each time the group practices their ritual, embarking on a rampage of rape, torture and murder. The demon is tracked through the physical and spirit worlds by Gretchen Nunn, a master of psychodynamics, Blaise Shima, a brilliant and famous chemist, and a clever local police officer, Subadar Ind'dni."
899,The Star Fraction,science," The world is controlled by the US/UN, a sort of semi-benign meta-dictatorship which doesn't rule directly so much as enforce a series of basic laws on a vast number of microstates. Many of the microstates are in a near-constant state of low-intensity warfare. Among the laws enforced on them is a prohibition on certain directions of research, such as intelligence augmentation or artificial intelligence; precisely what is prohibited is of course secret, and as violation of the prohibitions will result in the swift and efficient death of everyone directly involved, scientific research is a dangerous proposition at best. The main characters - a trotskyist mercenary, a libertarian teenager from a fundamentalist microstate, and an idealistic scientist - find themselves caught up at the center of a global revolution against the US/UN. The revolution was planned, and partially automated using financial software, in order to break out when a certain set of conditions were reached. The stakes are raised at the end of the book, when it is revealed that the autonomous financial software has evolved into an intelligent form, which might cause the paranoid US/UN to make a 'clean break' with the earth, knocking the planet back to the stone age with the orbital defense lasers."
900,Transformers: The Veiled Threat,science," Present-day, Megatron lies dead, at the bottom of the sea. Cut to the Gulf of Aden where pirates attack a freighter which just so happens to be ferrying Epps, Lennox, Ironhide, Ratchet, and other NEST (Networked Elements: Supporters and Transformers) members to their base on Diego Garcia. Ironhide soon transforms to robot mode and scares the pirates off. Arriving at Diego Garcia, the boys meet up with cybernetics expert Kaminari Ishihara, who has been swimming in the lagoon with the newly arrived Autobot veteran Longarm serving as lifeguard. Everyone enters a briefing where a sighting of Starscream in Zambia is discussed and a plan is hatched with Optimus Prime to confront him. Meanwhile, we find that Agent Simmons is now, with the disbanding of Sector Seven, working in his mother’s deli in New York. He’s also tinkering with Frenzy’s disembodied head in his basement. In Africa, we learn that Starscream is not only in the area, he’s gaining control over local rebel groups by using his internal synthesizers to create gold coins. He is also accompanied by three other Decepticons: Dropkick, Macerator, and Payload. They soon attack a local dam construction site, making short work of the security forces, and proceed to steal mass quantities of explosives. The NEST team soon arrives in Africa with Prime, Ironhide, and Ratchet as well as new arrivals: Salvage and Beachbreak. The Autobots soon engage Dropkick, Macerator, and Payload in battle in the Zambezi River. This is all part of Starscream’s brilliant plan, however, as the Autobots soon discover that the current is pushing them towards Victoria Falls. Everyone but Prime and Macerator gets out in time, as the dueling pair going over the side. Starscream swoops in to save Macerator while Prime dangles helplessly. Eventually the NEST team manages to haul Prime up using Beachbreak’s tow-cable, but the celebration is short lived as Starscream swoops in and knocks the diminutive Beachbreak off the waterfalls and to his death. The Autobots and their human allies soon realize that Starscream may try and destroy a series of dams along the Zambezi and head off after the fleeing Decepticons. At one of the dams, the ground-based Decepticons attack. Payload heads to the valley floor to try to crack the dam with repeated blasts while Dropkick and Macerator fend off the arriving Autobots. After a short scuffle, Prime manages to knock Macerator over the side of the dam before dispatching his dangling foe with his built-in sword. Ratchet takes repeated hits from Payload while trying to melt the fissures in the cracking dam back together. Both Ratchet and the dam are ultimately saved when the humans enter the dam and open the flood gates, knocking Payload downriver. A damaged Dropkick escapes and everyone returns to Diego Garcia. Again, we cut back to Simmons in his basement, experimenting on Frenzy and brooding that that (""punk kid"") Sam Witwicky has a ""hot girlfriend"" and is going to Princeton University. Frenzy suddenly comes to life and tries to subvert the building’s electrical system. And after a little chaos, Simmons decides he needs to move the Decepticon head to a space beneath his mother’s deli. Back at NEST headquarters, two more Decepticon presences are detected and a pair of teams is readied to head out and take care of them. Epps and Russian scientist Petr Andronov accompany Longarm and the impetuous young motorcycle Knockout to Peru to find the Decepticons that have been detected in the deep jungles. On a steep mountain pass, the party is attacked by Decepticons Ruination and Blademaster. Despite inexperienced and risky behavior by Knockout, both are severely damaged and driven off. Simultaneously, Lennox, Ishihara, Prime, Ironhide, and Salvage arrive in the Western Australian Outback and begin searching for Decepticons. Lennox soon realizes that the ‘Cons are attacking sites with energy reserves; oil and coal in Peru; and uranium in Australia. The team decides that there is a second group of Decepticons not under Starscream’s command, harvesting massive amounts of energy in an attempt to revive Megatron. Arriving at a uranium mining site, the NEST team discovers a trio of construction vehicles which, naturally, turn out to be Decepticons. The leader, Kickback, takes Prime on and is quickly run through with the Autobot leader’s sword. The other two, Tread and Trample, are quickly killed through the combined efforts of the rest of the team. Back at Diego Garcia, a small crab-like Decepticon infiltrates the base and hacks into the NEST computers before sneaking back into the sea and rendezvous with an unknown accomplice. Despite the break-in, the NEST team continues their usual business; discussing different ways the Decepticons could draw massive quantities of power to revive Megatron. In Italy, Starscream enters into a deal with an Italian criminal named Bruno Carrera to help destroy Optimus Prime in exchange for dominion over Europe when the Decepticons triumph. A plan is hatched and Swindle and Deadend begin ripping through the streets of Rome causing general chaos and trying to draw the Autobots out. After an extended chase where Knockout proves he has what it takes, and Starscream challenges Prime to single combat inside Rome's Colosseum. Prime and the Autobots enter the ancient structure, and Prime promptly falls through a trap door to a subway tunnel extension and into a strong set of restraints arranged by Carrera. Starscream then proceeds to attack the remaining Autobots while a helpless Prime is confronted by a vengeful Barricade. Before the Decepticon can dispatch Prime, the humans attack Barricade and Prime manages to work himself free. He easily defeats Barricade returns to the surface where Starscream has fled. On his way to whatever scheme he has come up next, Starscream takes the time to visit Carrera at this villa, where he pays him back for his “failure”. Finally, Epps and Lennox are relaxing on the beach back at Diego Garcia when Knockout approached and informs them that something significant is happening, mentioning how he is unfamiliar with the term “shanghaied”."
901,Radix,science," Radix is the story of a young man's odyssey of self-discovery, from dangerous adolescent to warrior, from outcast to near-god, in a far-future Earth dramatically changed from the one we know."
902,Halo: Contact Harvest,science," Humanity has spread across the galaxy, and the outer colony ""Harvest"" is one of the most remote. Although Harvest itself is only one-third the size of Earth, its fertile surface serves as the breadbasket for the other colonies. The United Nations Space Command Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) notices strange disappearances of human ships around Harvest, and assumes that Insurrectionists are attacking the vessels. The ONI pulls Staff Sergeants Avery Johnson and Nolan Byrne from the frontlines of the civil war to raise a militia to protect Harvest. Meanwhile, it is revealed that the disappearances are due to an alien Kig-Yar vessel intercepting the ships in their search for relics left by the Forerunners, an ancient race sacred to the Kig-Yar and other members of the Covenant. Members of the vessel are shocked to discover that their instruments indicates hundreds of thousands of Forerunner relics on the planet of Harvest. A Covenant Unggoy Deacon named Dadab is alarmed when he realizes the Kig-Yar shipmistress intends to steal a portion of the relics for herself, starting with relics leaving the planet on a human cargo ship. The ship is actually a trap set by the humans, with Johnson and Byrne onboard. Johnson and Byrne kill several of the Covenant boarding party when they enter the cargo ship, which is later destroyed by a methane explosion. Dadab and his Huragok friend, Lighter than Some, escape the blast and are picked up by a Covenant ship crewed by Jiralhanae. These agents, led by their chieftain Maccabeus, have been ordered to confirm the presence of the relics; despite the reservations of his nephew, Tartarus, Maccabeus agrees to parley with the humans on Harvest. In the midst of the meeting in Harvest's gardens, the Covenant begin a firefight and the peace talks are shattered. On the Covenant holy city of High Charity, two San 'Shyuum, the Minister of Fortitude and the Vice-Minister of Tranquility, plot to take the place of the three Prophet Hierarchs currently leading the Covenant. They visit the old, supposedly senile Philologist for blessings and advice, seeking a third San 'Shyuum to help them usurp the throne. As Tranquility and Fortitude are meeting with the Philologist, the ""Oracle"", a Forerunner A.I. named Mendicant Bias, suddenly awakens from eons of dormancy. Mendicant Bias informs the San 'Shyuum that the ""Forerunner artifacts"" found at Harvest are actually the A.I.'s ""makers"", living Forerunners—meaning that the humans themselves are the descendants of the Covenant's gods, and that all the Covenant's writings are false. The Minister of Fortitude realizes that the truth must never be revealed, as this revelation would tear the Covenant apart. Instead, Fortitude, Tranquility, and the Philologist plot to quickly take the throne so they can exterminate the ""reclaimers"". Back on Harvest, Johnson and his squad of militia are heavily out-manned and out-gunned. Maccabeus is ordered to ""glass"" the planet from space, but disobeys and launches a ground assault in an effort to recover the ""relics"". The human militia tries to keep the aliens busy while evacuating the civilians from the planet; this requires Johnson and his team to board an orbital platform controlled by Dadab and his troops. Tartarus challenges Maccabeus for control of the Jiralhanae pack, killing his uncle and becoming the next leader. Lighter than Some is killed by Tartarus' troops, and Dadab goes off to kill those he believes are responsible. As his weapon only has one more shot left, Dadab searches for Tartarus, who is fighting Johnson. Dadab destroys Tartarus' shield, and the enraged Brute kills the deacon. Wallace Jenkins, a young militia member that had lost his family in the battle, attempts to finish Tartarus off, but the alien escapes. The human civilians and survivors of Harvest successfully evacuate the planet on hundreds of freighters, while on High Charity, the Minister of Fortitude, Tranquility, and The Philologist become the new Prophet Hierarchs. They take the names Truth, Regret, and Mercy, declaring a new age for the Covenant has begun, and that the humans must be annihilated for their crimes."
903,The King of Terror,science," Suspecting the American multimedia company Intercom of nefarious activities, the Brigadier asks the Doctor and Tegan to investigate. At their Los Angeles HQ, the pair run into terrorists obsessed with an ancient prophecy and aliens who turn the city into a battle ground."
904,Five Weeks in a Balloon,science," A scholar and explorer, Dr. Samuel Fergusson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend professional hunter Richard ""Dick"" Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent&nbsp;— still not fully explored&nbsp;— with the help of a hot-air balloon filled with hydrogen. He has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken. This voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad. The trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern day Senegal on the west coast. The book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern day Central African Republic as a desert, when it is actually savanna. A good deal of the initial exploration is to focus on the finding of the source of the Nile, an event that occurs in chapter 18 (out of 43). The second leg is to link up the other explorers. There are numerous scenes of adventure, composed of either a conflict with a native or a conflict with the environment. Some examples include: * Rescuing of a missionary from a tribe that was preparing to sacrifice him. * Running out of water while stranded, windless, over the Sahara. * An attack on the balloon by condors, leading to a dramatic action as Joe leaps out of the balloon. * The actions taken to rescue Joe later. * Narrowly escaping the remnants of a militant army as the balloon dwindles to nothingness with the loss of hydrogen. In all these adventures, the protagonists overcome by continued perseverance more than anything else. The novel is filled with coincidental moments where trouble is avoided because wind catches up at just the right time, or the characters look in just the right direction. There are frequent references to a higher power watching out for them. The balloon itself ultimately fails before the end, but makes it far enough across to get the protagonists to friendly lands, and eventually back to England, therefore succeeding in the expedition. The story abruptly ends after the African trip, with only a brief synopsis of what follows."
905,Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine,science," A list of important people partial to the Rebel Alliance has gone missing from the Jedi Temple of Dantooine. Dusque Mistflier teams with Finn Darktrin to find the missing holocron. Dusque Mistflier is a bioengineer for the Galactic Empire and tries to deal with familial, self esteem and employer problems. After the killing of her colleague she is approached by Finn Darktrin, a member of the Rebel Alliance. After meeting with Lando Calrissian, C-3PO, Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Nym and Wedge Antilles, they leave for Dantooine in search of the missing holocron. After Finn Darktrin struggles to do right, the team defeats The Empire's resistance and finds the holocron, saving all those whose name was on the list."
906,The Gap in the Curtain,science," At a country house, five guests gather and are chosen by a brilliant scientist to take part in a shocking experiment which will let them glimpse one year into the future. However, when the experiment takes place, two of the guests see their own obituaries in The Times one year after. Will they be able to change their destinies? Part of the action is clearly autobiographical, including featuring the agonies of a contemporary up and coming politician."
907,The Abyss of Wonders,science, The novel concerns a lost race in the Gobi Desert.
908,Antarctica,science," Most of the story is centred around McMurdo Station, the largest settlement in Antarctica, which is run as a scientific research station by the United States. Robinson's characteristic multiple-protagonist style is employed here to show many aspects of polar life; among the viewpoints presented are those of X, an idealistic young man working as a General Field Assistant at McMurdo; Val, an increasingly embittered trek guide; and Wade Norton, who works for the Californian Senator Phil Chase (Wade and Phil also appear in the ""Science in the Capital"" trilogy). As well as McMurdo, the story involves the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the Shackleton Glacier, the McMurdo Dry Valleys and a South American drilling platform near Roberts Massif. Antarctica involves many of the ideas Robinson uses elsewhere; as in the Mars trilogy, much emphasis is placed on the importance of living sustainably and the issues of existing in a hostile environment. The significance of Antarctica as a ""continent for science"" is contrasted with the need to provide a decent environment also for the support staff essential in a place so marginal. Other recurring themes include rock-climbing, physical athleticism, the process and ideology of science, exploitation of natural resources, and the formation of cooperative and anarchic social systems. The novel was heavily influenced by Robinson's 1995 stay in Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, and was nominated for a Locus Award in 1998."
909,The Quantum Archangel,science," The Doctor and Mel must work through personal problems in order to defeat Kronos, a powerful being seeking revenge on the Master."
910,Perdido Street Station,science," Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is an eccentric scientist living in the city of New Crobuzon with girlfriend Lin. While Lin, an artist, is commissioned to create a sculpture of mob boss Mr. Motley, Isaac is offered a unique challenge. Yagharek is a member of a flying species, whose wings have been cut off, and who asks Isaac to restore them. Isaac is sparked by the seemingly impossible nature of the task, and gathers various flying animals to study in his lab - including a multicolored, unidentifiable caterpillar. Once Isaac learns that the caterpillar only eats a hallucinogenic drug called ""dreamshit"", he begins to feed it, unwittingly stimulating its metamorphosis into a giant and incredibly dangerous butterfly-like creature which feeds off the dreams of sentient beings, leaving them as catatonic vegetables. It is revealed that dreamshit is in fact secreted by such creatures, of which four have been sold to Mr. Motley, and ""milked"" to produce the drug. When these other larvae transform and escape they plague the citizens of New Crobuzon until Isaac can find a way to stop them."
911,The Man Who Fell to Earth,science," Thomas Jerome Newton is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth seeking to construct a spaceship to ferry others from his home planet, Anthea, to Earth. Anthea is experiencing a terrible drought after many nuclear wars, and the population has dwindled to less than 300. They have hundreds of superior starships, but for not being used for over 500 years, they are unusable because of little to no fuel. They have no water, loads of food that is slowly dwindling, and feeble solar power. Like all Antheans, he is super-intelligent, but he has been selected to complete this mission for his strength, due to the harsh climate and gravity of Earth compared to the cold, small Anthea. Getting to Earth via a lifeboat, Newton first lands in the state of Kentucky but quickly becomes familiarized with the environment and aspires to become an entrepreneur. Newton uses advanced technology from his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth, and rises as the head of a technology-based conglomerate to incredible wealth. This wealth is needed to construct his own space vehicle program in order to ferry the rest of the Anthean population. Along the way he meets Betty Jo, a simple Kentucky woman. She falls in love with him. He does not share these feelings, but takes her, and his curious fuel-technician Nathan Bryce, as his few friends while he runs his company in the shadows. Betty Jo introduces Newton to many customs of Earth culture, amongst them church-going, fashion, and alcohol. However, his appetite for alcohol soon invokes much emotional instability, as he is forced to deal with intense human emotions with which Antheans are unfamiliar. His secret identity as an alien is discovered by Nathan Bryce, but Newton, aware that he has been discovered, is relieved to reveal his identity to someone for the first time. The Antheans he will ferry to Earth will flourish and hopefully make use of their superintelligence to influence Earth to peace, prosperity, and safety from the apocalypse. However, the CIA arrests Newton, having followed him since his appearance on Earth and having recorded this private conversation with Bryce. They submit him to rigorous tests and analysis, but ultimately find that, despite much conclusive evidence of his alien identity, it would be pointless to release the results because the public would not believe the truth. Such claims would also reflect poorly on the Democratic Party, responsible for the capture. The CIA releases Newton, but no sooner than he tries to exit his building, the FBI, uninformed by the CIA that Newton is exempt from further tests, commences their own brief examinations. Their final examination is ultimately an X-ray of Newton's skull, through his eyes. Newton, whose eyes are sensitive to X-rays, tries to stop them to no avail and is blinded. The story of Newton's blinding reaches the press in a frenzy and then is used by the Republican Party to depict the Democrats as being corrupt, and leads to their seizure of power, which is to inevitably lead to apocalypse. Newton, in a final confrontation with Bryce, is bitterly unable to continue his spaceship project due to planetary alignments having changed during captivity and the troubles of his blindness. He creates a recording of alien messages which he hopes to be broadcast via radio to his home."
912,Olympos,science," The novel centers on three main character groups; that of the scholic Hockenberry, Helen and Greek and Trojan warriors from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada and the other humans of Earth; and the moravecs, specifically Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io. The novel is written in present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative in all other instances. Much like Simmons' Hyperion where the actual events serve as a frame, the three groups of characters' stories are told over the course of the novel and their stories do not begin to converge until the end."
913,Cycle of Nemesis,science," The novel begins in a near future world of ray guns and robots, but ends up marching all over time. Khamushkei the Undying, a horror out of space, destroyed an ancient civilization on earth, but ended up locked away in a Time Vault. After seven millennia, the vaults seals are giving way, and five average citizens are caught up in a race to reseal the vault - even though they know it will cost one of them her life."
914,The Attack,science," When the Animorphs go to see a sample performance of The Lion King at a school assembly, the Ellimist freezes time and appears (in the form of a girl in their school named Beth) to enlist their aid. He tells them there is another force more powerful than him, the Crayak, who wants to be able to control the entire fabric of time and space. The Ellimist reveals that this creature is the blood-red eye Jake saw when the Yeerk in his head died in the sixth book, The Capture. The Ellimist tells that when Crayak first appeared, they waged a long, brutal war that destroyed a tenth of the galaxy. The war was damaging to both of them, and they realized that they must instead have a much more subtle battle, comparable to a chess game. All the times the Ellimist has helped them (showing them the location of the Kandrona, freeing Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak, restoring Tobias' morphing power, twisting time to enable Elfangor to give the Animorphs the morphing power while Tobias still remained his son) have all been small moves in this game, all helping the Animorphs gain an advantage over the Yeerks. The Crayak is targeting another race, the Iskoort, and this interferes with the Ellimist's concealed agenda. The fate of the Iskoort will be determined through a proxy battle with rules of engagement. The Crayak and the Ellimist will each choose seven combatants to face off on the Iskoort homeworld. Crayak has chosen seven of his shock troops, the Howlers, members of the race that destroyed the Pemalites, and will destroy the Iskoort if the Howlers defeat the Animorphs on Crayak's behalf. Having only six members, the Animorphs choose Erek King as their seventh, and they are taken to the Iskoort world, a huge metropolis miles above the ground. The whole area is basically a huge marketplace, where anything can be bought or sold. While the Iskoort turn out to be bizarre and grating, they are not actually evil. The Animorphs and Erek enlist a young Iskoort trader named Guide to show them around. Eventually, they run into one of the Howlers. Even alone, it proves to be completely superior in battle: it can be hurt, but it is heavily armed and a lethal combatant in its own right. They barely survive the fight, while the Howler quickly recovers from its injuries. Regrouping, they buy copies of Howler memories with Guide's assistance, in exchange of pledging copies of their own memories should they survive. Such exciting memories would make Guide fabulously wealthy while giving the Animorphs the financial assets necessary to move along the Iskoort world at will. (Ax determines that the Iskoort homeworld is sufficiently isolated from Yeerk influence for this transfer of information to be of negligible risk to Animorph secrecy on Earth.) Erek watches the purchased Howler memories, revealing all the massacres the Howlers have committed. They determine that the Howlers were created by Crayak, and that they have collective memories, giving them each thousands of years of battle experience. There are no memories of the Howlers ever being defeated. The Animorphs find a new safehouse as Guide mentions a personal errand: A function of Iskoort physiology requires the Iskoort to separate into two halves, the Isk, the body, and a slug-like entity, the Yoort. Guide continues to explain that every three days, Iskoort must separate so the Yoort can feed. Upon recognition of the similarities to the Yeerks, chaos ensues, interrupting Guide, and violence is narrowly averted. Guide explains early Iskoort history, closely resembling the Yeerks' current existence of conquering and enslaving alien races. The Iskoort ancestors disliked their evolved biology of parasitism, instead employing genetic engineering to create a primary host, the Isk, and additionally altered Yoort physiology to become true symbiotes in order to maintain the established standard of living but removing the necessary violence. At this point, the relevance of the Iskoort to both the Ellimist and the Crayak is revealed. Should the Yeerks ever interact with the Iskoort, the Yeerks would learn of a possibility for nonviolent existence. Since the Yeerks are conquerors, the desired nonviolence of some Yeerks and dissidence within the Yeerk Empire would delay Crayak's goal of dictatorship over the galaxy and ultimately, the universe. Even worse (in Crayak's view), the Yeerks could abandon their current imperialistic nature, forcing Crayak to find new conquerors to unite the galaxy under his rule. After several narrow escapes, Jake and a Howler both fall off a building towards the ground below. Jake acquires the Howler and quickly morphs to peregrine falcon, pulling to safety with a spiteful quip as the Howler plummets to its death. Back atop, Jake reunites with the others. Jake and Cassie run to each other and kiss, prompting Rachel to say that ""it's about time"". Jake morphs the Howler under guard with the others under strict orders to kill him if he loses control to the instincts of a killer created by Crayak. He finds no such things. Instead, he discovers that Howlers have the personalities of little children: the Howlers consider their battles to be fun and exciting games and have no perception that they are hurting real people and annihilating entire civilizations. The Animorphs make the memory-recordings, along with Erek and Guide. When the Howlers next attack, the Animorphs use Jake in Howler morph to stun one of them and force the entire combined memories of the eight of them (the Animorphs plus Erek and Guide) into the Howlers, along with the knowledge that the non-Howlers are real beings. Crayak is forced to destroy all six Howlers before the memories can contaminate the collective memory. The Animorphs win the standoff on behalf of the Ellimist. The Ellimist transports the Animorphs to n-dimensional space in order to talk with Crayak face-to-face in a way that the Animorphs can see. Crayak concedes defeat and agrees that the Iskoort will live. Jake morphs the Howler in order to determine the effectiveness of the Animorphs' ""memory contamination"" attack. He finds nothing in the collective Howler memory relating to the Iskroot homeworld. Since all Howlers share a single, collective memory and Jake in Howler morph has no memory of the fallen Howler falling by Jake's hand, Jake determines that Crayak obliterates unsuccessful Howlers before these memories of defeat blemish the collective memory, ensuring that only a streak of flawless Howler victories remain; however, a single incident from the Iskoort homeworld has penetrated the collective memory: that of Jake and Cassie making out at night with the Howler D.N.A. still in his body. Taking his warriors back to Earth, the Ellimist talks with the Animorphs further. He reveals that in a few months' time, on the next Howler raid, the Howlers will attempt to kiss their targets. The contaminated Howlers are no longer useful as Crayak's shock troops. The Ellimist also reveals that in three hundred years' time, the Iskoort will meet the Yeerks. The following night, Jake tries and fails to turn his dreams from the Howler he sent to its doom."
915,The Uncertain Path,science," Obi-Wan Kenobi has left the Jedi Order because of a civil war on the planet of Melida/Daan. He's now part of the Young and he is content with the decision. But soon everything goes wrong; once the Young unite the two factions, they start to fight amongst themselves. In the crossfire, Obi-Wan's close friend, Cerasi, is killed, and Obi-Wan feels alone. Meanwhile, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan's former Jedi master, discovers a plot to destroy the Jedi Temple. While investigating, he receives notice that Obi-Wan wishes to rejoin the order. Qui-Gon knows that Obi-Wan would be an asset to the investigation at the temple, so he decides to return and bring his ex-apprentice back to the Jedi Order. The Young cease their internal struggle, and they succeed in uniting the Melida and the Daan under one government. With his task completed, Obi-Wan returns to the Jedi upon Qui-Gon's return. However, he is not immediately welcomed with open arms, for the Temple plot thickens when an assassination attempt is made on Yoda."
916,A Web of Air,science," The clever young engineer, Fever Crumb, is swept up in a race to build a flying machine. Her mysterious companion is a boy who talks to Angels. Powerful enemies will kill to possess their new technology-or to destroy it. A Web of Air is the sequel to Fever Crumb, the story set centuries before Mortal Engines that tells how great cities begin to build giant engines to make their first predatory journeys across the wastelands. It is set in Mayda, a city established in an atomic bomb crater off of mainland Portugal."
917,The Stars are Ours!,science," The Moon, Mars and Venus have been explored and found unsuitable for colonization. Back on the Earth, two very different factions compete to determine the future of humanity: the Free Scientists, who refuse to accept political, racial and religious divisions, and the nationalists. Armed men seize control of one of the space stations orbiting the planet, convert it into a weapon, and (perhaps accidentally) devastate most of the world's heavily-populated areas. A fanatic named Arturo Renzi rises up, blaming the catastrophe on the scientists and ""techneers"" and espousing a return to a simpler, less technological life. When he is assassinated, the Free Scientists are hunted down. Within a period of three days, most are killed; the few remaining survivors are either enslaved by the ruling Peacemen of the Company of Pax or go into hiding, to be tracked down one by one in the following years. Society is structured into three classes, the Peacemen nobility and their landsmen overseers, a vast peasantry, and the work-slaves, composed of actual or suspected scientists. Most technology is rejected and civilization ebbs. Chemist Lars Nordis, his daughter Dessie, and younger brother Dard, are among the lucky ones. They escape the great purge (though Lars is crippled as a result) and find a precarious refuge on a small farm. There, Lars continues his research as best he can and stays in touch with an underground network of scientists working on some great project. One day, Lars finishes his work and notifies his contacts. As a precaution, he makes Dard and Dessie memorize what seems to them to be meaningless words and patterns. But before they can be taken to the last secret stronghold of the scientists, the suspicious local landsman, Hew Folley, calls in the Peacemen to raid their home. Dard and Dessie escape, but Lars is killed. Dard contacts Sach, an agent of the scientists, who agrees to guide them to the refuge. Once inside, Dard learns that the scientists and their supporters are feverishly building a starship to escape the tyranny. They desperately need what Lars was working on - suspended animation. Only it can bring the stars within reach, for the journey will take many, many years. The information that Dard and Dessie had memorized turns out to be what they have been waiting for. But the scientists are racing against time, for the Peacemen are hunting for them. Before they can leave, there is one more task. They need to plot a course using a computer. The only one they know of that still works is located in Pax headquarters. Dard volunteers to lead pilot-astrogator Simba Kimber to it, since he visited the place years ago. They succeed, though they barely avoid capture, and manage to return with the priceless calculations. Then the refuge is found and comes under attack. Fighting a desperate rearguard action, the defenders manage to hold off the Peacemen long enough to blast off. Then, trusting in Lars' invention, they set their course and undergo suspended animation. When they awaken (though a few never do), they find themselves near a star with a hospitable planet. They land and begin to build their new colony. While exploring the surroundings, they discover a cargo container; though they detected no signs of technology from orbit, the planet may still be inhabited by an intelligent race. Dard goes along on a scouting expedition. The explorers find the remains of a road, which leads to a war-wrecked, abandoned city. While travelling in their rocket sled, they barely survive being shot down by decrepit, automated anti-aircraft guns. The sled can barely fly, so some of the explorers have to walk back. When they return, they find a thriving settlement. Soon afterwards, Dessie protects a ""sea baby"" from small flying ""dragons"". It turns out that the creature is intelligent. Its parents appear out of the ocean and retrieve their offspring. Seeing that the humans are friendly, their tribe or clan is soon trading goods and information. They are telepathic and can communicate with the newcomers if they hold hands. They reveal that they were once the slaves of the species that built the city. They escaped when the Others warred with each other. Now there are none of the Others left on the continent, but they still live across the sea. But that is a problem for another day. For now, the humans have found a new home."
918,Polymorph,science," ""Milica Raznakovic"" is the principal alias employed by the protagonist, a shape-changer or ""polymorph."" Living in a recession-hit future New York, she spends her time partying anonymously, each night in a different body, enjoying casual sex and absolutely no personal attachments. She believes herself to be unique. However, one night she meets another polymorph: older, malicious and much more powerful than herself. The brief and ultimately hostile encounter leads her to place herself in danger by attempting to determine the newcomer's objective, which somehow involves a wealthy industrialist. In the process of her investigation, she finds it necessary to seek an ally, reaching out to her last one-night stand, a young man she would normally not have sought out again."
919,Singularity Sky,science," The apparent cause of this distribution of humans is the mysterious and immensely powerful posthuman entity which calls itself ""the Eschaton"". Although the Eschaton is usually benign and uninvolved in human affairs, it strictly enforces certain rules on human civilization out of apparent self-interest. To this end, the Eschaton has helpfully left a message throughout human space, for example, engraved in huge letters on the sides of mountains, and dispersed everywhere throughout computer networks. The message is as follows: :I am the Eschaton. I am not your God. :I am descended from you, and exist in your future. :Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else. The most important commandment of the Eschaton appears to be ""thou shalt not violate causality""; that is, the Eschaton strictly prohibits the use of faster than light travel for reaching any point in its own relative past, with the ominous proscription ""or else"". The Eschaton apparently makes use of time travel itself, but whenever a civilization attempts to break this rule, it is forcibly prevented from doing so immediately before the act (often with immense overkill, such as in at least one case where the relevant civilization's star is induced into going supernova). Inscrutable, and uncommunicative beyond disseminating the knowledge of its laws, the Eschaton generally does not provide further warnings before it acts. The Eschaton's other major involvement is that at a particular point in the book's history, it scattered pieces of human civilization, against their will, throughout nearby (within a few thousand light years) space, but it did so using instantaneous travel, and in some cases actually moved them backwards in time. This means that some civilizations, such as the Festival mentioned below, have been progressing for hundreds of years on their own before they encounter the rest of human civilization. Although human civilization on Earth collapsed in the wake of singularity, by the time of the events in Singularity Sky, Earth has recovered and become one of the more powerful and influential human societies. The Earth non-government, known as the United Nations and descended from the modern-day Internet Engineering Task Force, uses its agents to prevent other civilizations from breaking the Eschaton's rules so as to avoid the Eschaton taking enforcement action which may affect the very existence of Earth and the wider galaxy-spanning human race. Unknown to human civilization at large, the Eschaton also has its own human agents working to this end. The novel features the exploits of one such agent, Martin Springfield, an engineer specializing in faster-than-light starship engines who is hired by the New Republic (a totalitarian and relatively backward neo-luddite civilization) to upgrade the faster-than-light engines of their fleet of warships. The UN also suspects that the New Republic may attempt to use the upgraded engines to violate causality, so it dispatches one of its agents, Rachel Mansour, to the New Republic. This attempt comes to pass sooner than expected, when the New Republic colony on Rochard's World encounters the Festival, a spacefaring transhuman civilization/entity which trades highly advanced technology if prospective recipients can respond to the request: ""entertain us"". The old world order on Rochard's World quickly breaks down under this onslaught. Interpreting the failure of communications with the colony as the result of enemy action, the New Republic dispatches a mighty war fleet to Rochard's World, with Martin Springfield and Rachel Mansour aboard the flagship. A recurring theme of this book is that information and by extension progress are inexorable: the conflict between the neo-luddite/monarchist New Republic and the post-singularity transhuman culture that contacts them is utterly devastating for the status quo of the former, and our spy heroes are world-weary enough to realize this, exasperated by their apparent inability to understand that one can no more avoid change than one can avoid breathing. Information is, by whatever mechanism, the phlogiston of said change, providing its vital energies."
920,Jedi Twilight,science," With the dark ascension of the Empire, and the Jedi Knights virtually wiped out, one Jedi who escaped the massacre is slated for a date with destiny–and a confrontation with Darth Vader. Jax Pavan is one of the few Jedi Knights who miraculously survived the slaughter that followed Palpatine's ruthless Order 66. Now, deep in Coruscant's Blackpit Slums, Jax ekes out a living as a private investigator, trying to help people in need while concealing his Jedi identity and staying one step ahead of the killers out for Jedi blood. And they’re not the only ones in search of the elusive Jax. Hard-boiled reporter Den Dhur and his buddy, the highly unorthodox droid I-5YQ, have shocking news to bring Jax–about the father he never knew. But when Jax learns that his old Jedi Master has been killed, leaving behind the request that Jax finish a mission critical to the resistance, Jax has no choice but to emerge from hiding–and risk detection by Darth Vader–to fulfill his Master's dying wish."
921,"Double, Double",science, One android has survived the destruction of Roger Korby and his scientific facilities. The robot creates another Captain Kirk and fools the U.S.S. Hood with a distress signal. The Hood's command crew is soon overtaken by murderous androids and Kirk himself is framed for murder. Kirk's android double takes over his command position on the Enterprise. The regular Kirk rallies the survivors of the Hood and his own crew into destroying the android's threat.
922,River of Gods,science," The sprawling novel follows a number of different characters' viewpoints around the date of August 15, 2047, the centenary of India's partition and independence from the colonial British Raj. This future India has become balkanized into a number of smaller competing states, such as Awadh, Bharat, and Bangla. The global information network is now inhabited by artificial intelligences, called aeais in the novel, of varying levels of intelligence. Aeais higher than level 2.5 (able to pass the Turing test and imitate humans) are banned, and their destruction (""excommunication"") is the responsibility of ""Krishna Cops"", like Mr. Nandha. While some pockets of the subcontinent are still steeped in ancient tradition and values, mainstream culture is replete with aeais in TV entertainment and robotic swarms in defense. During such a time, Ranjit Ray steps down from his control of Ray Power, a key energy company, and the responsibility falls on his son Vishram Ray. The playboy Vishram is struggling to make it on his own as a stand-up comedian in Scotland when he is flown back to Varanasi to assume this role, for which he finds himself terribly ill-equipped but eventually surprisingly effective. He learns that his company is working on harvesting zero-point energy from other universes, and sees the particle collider built by his father with the help of Odeco, a clandestine investment firm. After a prolonged drought, a severe water shortage threatens to jeopardize the peace between the subcontinental states. To avert this crisis, governments are melting glaciers and modifying natural systems. To take advantage of the unrest, a Hindu fundamentalist leader named N.K Jeevanji organises a ""rath yatra"" on a spectacular juggernaut. He starts releasing key information to the press via Najia Askarzadah, an ambitious Swedish-Afghan reporter with a desire to be part of history as it is being made. Lisa Durnau notices an apocalyptic crisis brewing in Alterre, a simulated evolution of earth created by AI scientist Thomas Lull, who is currently hiding in a South Indian coastal village. While Lisa is sent into space to investigate an asteroid, Thomas Lull runs into Aj, a girl with mysterious powers that allow her to see into people's lives, pasts and futures. He decides to follow her and protect her during her quest to find her own true identity, but it is soon revealed that Aj's powers extend beyond mere mortals, when she brings a robot army to a halt with the raise of a hand. Tal is a beautiful nute (of neutral gender) involved in the designing team of India's greatest 'soapi', Town & Country, some of the main stars of which are not human actors, but aeais. Tal falls prey to a conspiracy that compromises the career of Shaheen Badoor Khan, Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Sajida Rana, leading to her assassination and the fall of the government. All this leads to riots and popular fury against Muslims and transsexuals across Varanasi. Lisa Durnau discovers that at the center of the mysterious asteroid is an 8 billion year old grey sphere, possibly a black hole remnant, or an alien artifact from another civilization. This ""Tabernacle"" communicates a message to the scientists, and this leads Lisa to India to find Thomas Lull, who alone can explain this phenomenon."
923,Ann Veronica,science," Mr. Stanley forbids his adult daughter, a biology student at Tredgold Women's College and the youngest of his five children, to attend a fancy dress ball in London, causing a crisis. Ann Veronica is planning to attend the dance with friends of a down-at-the-heels artistic family living nearby and has been chafing at other restrictions imposed for no apparent reason on her. After her father resorts to force to stop her from attending the ball, she leaves her home in the fictional south London suburb of Morningside Park in order to live independently in an apartment ""in a street near the Hampstead Road"" in North London. Unable to find appropriate employment, she borrows forty pounds from Mr. Ramage, an older man, without realizing she is compromising herself. With this money, Ann Veronica is able to devote herself to study in the biological laboratory of the Central Imperial College (a constituent college of London University) where she meets and falls in love with Capes, the laboratory's ""demonstrator."" But Mr. Ramage loses little time in trying to take advantage of the situation, precipitating a crisis. Distraught after Ramage tries to force himself on her, Ann Veronica temporarily abandons her studies and devotes herself to the cause of women's suffrage; she is arrested storming Parliament and spends a month in prison. Sobered by the experience, Ann Veronica convinces herself of the necessity of compromise. She returns to her father's home and engages herself to marry an admirer she does not love, Hubert Manning. But she soon changes her mind, renounces the engagement, and boldly tells Capes she loves him. Though he returns Ann Veronica's love, at first the thirty-year-old Capes insists on the impossibility of the situation: he is a married (albeit separated) man with a sullied reputation because of an affair that became public. They can only be friends, he declares. But Ann Veronica is undeterred by his confession and his prudence, and finally Capes's resistance buckles: ""She stood up and held her arms toward him. 'I want you to kiss me,' she said. .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. 'I want you. I want you to be my lover. I want to give myself to you. I want to be whatever I can to you.' She paused for a moment. 'Is that plain?' she asked."" Capes decides to throw over his employment at the college in order to live with Ann Veronica, and they enjoy a glorious ""honeymoon"" in the Alps. A final chapter shows the happy couple four years and four months later living in London. Capes has become a successful playwright, and Ann Veronica is pregnant and has reconciled with her family."
924,Regenesis,science," Ariane Emory is the eighteen-year-old clone of an extraordinary woman who was both a preeminent research scientist and the leader of the Expansionist Party, which has controlled Union since its inception. Her predecessor had some very powerful friends and enemies. However, inasmuch as her genemother had died under suspicious circumstances before she was even born, Emory is unsure who they are. She is not without resources though. A breakthrough experiment in ""psychogenesis"" has recreated in her the genius of her parent. Everyone knows that she will one day follow in her mother's footsteps and take charge of Reseune, a sovereign Administrative Territory and the premier azi research facility in Union, one of the three spacefaring factions of humanity. In the meantime, she takes measures to protect herself, assembling a trusted staff with the assistance of her azi bodyguards and companions, Florian and Catlin. When she discovers that her new azi security chief has been tampered with, her list of possible enemies grows to include key men inside Reseune itself: Yanni Schwartz, the Director, and Adam Hicks, the head of security. Adding to the discord is the return of a bitter Jordan Warrick from a twenty year exile at an isolated research facility. He had been pressured into confessing to killing the original Emory. The murder of Dr. Sandur Patil, a top scientist recruited by Schwartz to head up the terraforming of a planet, turns out to be but one step in a plot by Emory's unknown enemy that shakes Union to its core. As she struggles to deal with the escalating situation, she also unravels the decades-old mystery of her genemother's death."
925,Once a Hero,science," Chronologically, Once a Hero directly follows Winning Colors, even overlapping partially, but the focus distinctly shifts to young Esmay Suiza, who came to prominence after successfully leading a mutiny against her traitorous captain and intervening to decisive effect in the Battle of Xavier (as Winning Colors records). Suiza is not immediately praised and feted for her heroism, however, for her actions demand official scrutiny. Thorough and complete, neither the Board of Inquiry nor the court-martial find Suiza guilty of anything, and so she is allowed to take a vacation before her next assignment. Back home on Altiplano, Esmay is honored with Altiplano's highest award, the Starmount, although she remains convinced that she was not really a hero, that it was blind luck. While talking with an old soldier who had served under her father (one of the four highest military commanders on Altiplano) and was a family friend, she learns that the nightmares and her dislike of command and horses were psychological trauma from when, as a child, she had ventured into a warzone seeking her father. She had been waylaid and molested by one of her father's subordinates; the family friend knew this sordid tale because he had been the one to kill that subordinate, whose politically connected father meant any trial was infeasible. He felt free to tell her since he assumed that Suiza's father's coverup had failed to convince Suiza that the memories were merely nightmares during an illness or fragments of her imagination. This revelation precipitates a break with her father. Meanwhile, some mendacious and greedy civilian contractors for the Fleet have agreed to carry out a job for the barbarian space-warriors of the Bloodhorde: they would take a Fleet contract to rekey the command sequences of various missiles, and when they were aboard the specified massive Deep Space Repair vessel, covertly disable its self-destruct mechanism. This job would pave the way for the Bloodhorde boarding team. By a remarkable coincidence, it is this very same DSR, the Koskiuskos (""Kos"" for short) which Suiza is assigned to. After catching a resupply vehicle to the Kos, Suiza is assigned to a Major Pitak in Hulls and Architecture; Pitak immediately begins running Esmay ragged with errands and learning everything she needs to know about spaceship structural design and how to repair and fix vessels. In her spare time, Suiza slowly begins assembling a circle of friends, especially one Ensign Barin Serrano (last seen in Winning Colors hand-delivering a message to Heris Serrano from Vida Serrano before the Battle of Xavier). As the months pass by Suiza settles in; so do the traitorous civilian contractors who productively improve the hours by disabling the self-destruct without tripping the monitors. Inevitably, the Bloodhorde launches its attack, crippling the patrol ship Wraith. Wraith is repairable, but is incapable of further safe FTL jumps. So the Kos goes out to meet it, since it is in the neighborhood, although the danger of pulling the Kos out of its normal routes and so near Bloodhorde space is very real. Suiza is sent by Major Pitak to take pictures of the forward section of the hull to ascertain the full extent of the damage. Suiza discovers instead the first prong of the Bloodhorde plan: a massive mine was planted on Wraith, programmed to wait until Wraith was brought into one of the Kos's repair bays and then detonate; this would incapacitate the Kos and make it easy meat for the waiting Bloodhorde assault group. Thanks to Suiza's presence of mind, the mine is safely disarmed. But all is not well. The Bloodhorde's plan is remarkably subtle (for the Bloodhorde): though the first prong has been deflected, the second was yet to strike. After the mine is disposed of, repairs continue in earnest on the Wraith. Forward of the mine, some 25 crew members are discovered knocked out by sleeping-gas and are taken into the hospital facilities. Despite their location, open to space, they are uniformly uninjured, and eventually scattered across the Kos to help out. One interacts with Suiza. His manner strikes her as drastically unlike that of a Fleet member, and more reminiscent of commandos she had known. After making inquiries as to their location (most had vanished), whether they were injured at all like they should have been, and whether any senior Wraith officers recognize them, it is concluded that Kos has been boarded by Bloodhorde commandos seeking to capture the DSR and massively upgrade the Bloodhorde's industrial infrastructure and especially its military construction capability, greatly increasing its killing power. The captain immediately orders everybody's identification checked against their DNA and fresh IDs issued. During the change-over, the Bloodhorde kidnaps Barin Serrano, taking him as a hostage. With the Kos' FTL drive apparently broken and its self-destruct disabled, the higher-ups decide on a risky strategy of detaching the section of Kos containing most of the intruders, and ambushing the expected followup wave of Bloodhorde; while that wave was preoccupied boarding, they would attack the vessel and use it to either protect the Kos until its escorts returned with reinforcements or destroy it. During a meeting with Suiza to discuss how to suppress the commandos, the spoken-of commandos attack, cutting off most of the senior personnel with poison gas. They escape the cabin with the injured captain and link up with some personnel who had made it to the security lockers before the Bloodhorde. They conclude that to lead an effective resistance, they have to lead it from the T-1 arm of the Kos. But all the arms have been locked off from the core by the Bloodhorde. So, they decide to go EVA and go around. During the EVA excursions, the Kos is jumped through hyperspace. Led by Suiza, the crew of T-1 determine to retake the Kos and ambush their ambushers. When the intruders relax their guard of the bridge, one of the bridge crew women risks her life to re-open the doors to the core (and by extension, enabling an assault on the bridge). The prepared security teams overcome the few commandos in the core and regain control easily - most of the commandos had gone to T-4 to eliminate the resistance there. The crew in T-4 had used their grace time profitably, arranging an elaborate drama for the benefit of the commandos, intended to convince them that they were fighting - and defeating - the ill-prepared armed resistance of the Familias crew. The drama lures them to the repair bay, where (elated by their success), they don spacesuits and sortie out to welcome their warship into the repair bay. There it is trapped by an extremely strong adhesive. The two other warships dock without being trapped, and debark their crew in EVA suits. The robots used for painting vessels attack them, blinding and immobilizing them. The two still-mobile Bloodhorde ships are commandeered and the three remaining Bloodhorde are easily destroyed, and the day saved. Barin Serrano is discovered alive, but much abused in mind and body. Suiza is no less discomfited by her nightmares and anxieties. She and Barin begin going to psychiatric care. Eventually Suiza begins to work through her phobia of sexual contact and assuming leadership. She transfers to ""command track"" and becomes intimate with Barin."
926,Sky Coyote,science," Joseph's latest role is that of Sky Coyote, the trickster, the foolish one, the animal god of many Native American traditions. He will play it for the Chumash, a tribe in California in the late 17th century. His job is to persuade the village of Humashup to give up their entire lifestyle, which the Company will take and ""preserve,"" while the Chumash are shipped out to work in a Company facility. The Spanish are coming soon, and the Chumash culture will be wiped out along with all the others. Of course, Joseph can't do this alone. He assembles a small army of his kind, including the erratic and moody botanist Mendoza, whom he occasionally regrets recruiting in 16th century Spain; the anthropologist and former Babylonian Imarte; who is not averse to bedding her subjects to get more data; and many other specialists. Joseph is the Master of Ceremonies, however. He's also wearing a lot of non-standard equipment to turn him into a cavorting, fast talking (and priapic) god. The Chumash turn out to be, well, ordinary. Superb craftsmen, their lives revolve around work, festivals, religion, festivals, getting ahead, and festivals. They may not have churches and boys clubs, but the kantap fills the same needs. The guilds make sure that everybody gets what they need and pays handsomely for it. Oily salesmen try to make their percentage any way they can. Joseph is a little surprised to learn that they are so worldly, and they are quite surprised that he, well, exists. However Joseph spins his tale with his usual skill and pulls off the job. There are snags, but not the usual kind. For a start, actual 24th century Company operatives have come back to supervise. They are disgusted that the cyborgs eat meat, drink alcohol and consume other stimulants banned in their era. The cyborgs are not too impressed with the childish, phobia-ridden operatives either, but a job is a job. Mendoza starts her feud with Imarte, which continues in the next installment. There is a messianic religion encroaching on Chumash territory. This gets Joseph's hackles up. Nature throws in an earthquake or two. The Chumash go to their reward, the Company gets all the valuable information and samples it needs to sell to the rich and not-so-smart in the 24th century, and Joseph is left with a nagging doubt. For one thing, why does nobody know what happens after 2355, even though all history is available to the cyborgs up to that point? And why do cyborgs who talk too much about this tend to get suddenly re-assigned? Why do the 24th century people seem so cowardly and stupid? Didn't they go all the way back to 30,000 BC to start the ball rolling? Or was it 40,000? Nobody is quite sure. However, Joseph is mostly satisfied, but unfulfilled and, at his core, unhappy. Mendoza has been released to wander the redwood forest, a dream task for the botanist. Joseph believes that in 1923 he saw her with a mortal she fell for in Tudor England, but that story is not completed in this volume. Joseph has more or less adopted Mendoza as his daughter, though he cannot admit it. By the end of the book he has become a 20th century Hollywood studio executive, hiding artifacts of the era for the Company."
927,The Prophecy,science," Cassie comes home in owl morph to find a Hork-Bajir leaving the barn. Cassie realizes that if the Hork-Bajir is a Controller, the Yeerks might suspect that she is one of the ""Andalite bandits"". She attacks it, and nearly blinds him with her talons when she realizes it is in fact Jara Hamee. When she asks why he is there, he tells her that an Arn has come to the Hork-Bajir valley, and Toby wishes for their advice on what to do. Cassie tells the other Animorphs about the Arn the next day and they all agree to go. The Arn's name is Quafijinivon, the last of the Arns. He tells them that he wishes to create a force of Hork-Bajir to fight the Yeerks on their home world, by taking a sample of each Hork-Bajir's DNA. The Hork-Bajirs accept, but Quafijinivon also wishes to find a stash of weapons hidden by Aldrea - Seerow's Daughter. They ask him how will he do this if she is dead, and he tells them about the ixcila of Aldrea he preserved, an electronic copy of her personality, thoughts, and brainwaves. The Arn says Aldrea must choose a host to enter, and they decide it will be either Rachel, because of her dangerous attitude, or Toby because she is her granddaughter. During the Atafalxical ceremony Cassie is chosen as the host instead, she is asked if she accepts and Jake shouts ""No"". Cassie feels she has no choice, and says yes. The Chee take their place as humans while they're gone. When they make to the Hork-Bajir solar system, the ship is attacked by another Andalite ship. They cannot contact the ship because the Yeerks will pick up their signal. Ax refuses to fire back at the ship because he says he cannot attack a fellow Andalite for doing his job. Jake asks if Aldrea can do it and she says yes. She fires at the ship and destroys the engines, saving them. More Bug Fighters show up and Marco suggest that they move on, but Ax begs Jake to save the Andalite. Jake says they cannot leave, and they assist in destroying the Bug Fighters. Jake cuts the ensuing celebration short so they can focus on the task at hand. When they make it to the Hork-Bajir home world, Quafijinivon goes to his lab to work on the DNA samples. Aldrea has an idea where the weapons might be stashed and they travel deep into the woods. To their horror, they find that the place has been turned into a giant Yeerk pool. That is when they come up with an insane plan to get into the pool, which Aldrea is totally against. Cassie morphs into an Osprey and the others morph insects, and go into Cassie's mouth. She gets as much altitude as she possibly can, and starts to demorph but keeps her wings and starts to morph into a Humpback Whale as well. She has to let her wings go and go full Humpback Whale at just the right moment or the plan will fail, but the Hork-Bajir Controllers already spot her in the sky, although they cannot make her out as a human because she is partly in whale morph, and start firing at her. This causes Aldrea to panic and try to convince Cassie to go full whale now. When she cannot she tries to take over, but Cassie overpowers her and waits until the time is right to morph fully. When she is in the pool, Jake and Rachel demorph and remorph into Hammerhead Sharks and attack the Taxxon Controllers, while Tobias and Ax go as Andalites and attack Hork-Bajir Controllers. Marco goes as a Hork-Bajir shouting, ""Andalites everywhere, thousands of them run"" causing them to flee. They break into the weapons stash, take them, and escape in a Yeerk ship, delivering them to the Arn. At the end, Toby Hamee says that she wishes to stay on her homeworld and fight the Yeerks there. Aldrea does not want her great-granddaughter to suffer this fate, and thus comes up with a plan with Cassie and Ax to force her to stay in the Hork-Bajir Earth colony. Cassie successfully convinces Jake that Aldrea is trying to take control of her, leaving Ax to tell Aldrea that she will never take over the Animorphs because her great-granddaughter is with them. Satisfied, Aldrea leaves Cassie's body."
928,Mortal Engines,science," The main character of Mortal Engines is Tom Natsworthy, a fifteen-year old orphan and a third class apprentice in the Guild of Historians. The book opens with London chasing the town of Salthook over the dry bed of the North Sea, into Europe (now known as the Great Hunting Ground). Salthook is soon captured and dragged aboard. While assisting the head of the Guild of Historians, Thaddeus Valentine, and his daughter Katherine in searching for relics in the captured town, Tom saves him from a knife-wielding girl. The girl jumps off London to evade pursuit, and Valentine pushes Tom off as well. Tom awakens on the bare mud of the Great Hunting Ground, a desolate wasteland stretching in every direction. The girl, Hester Shaw, is there. She claims that Valentine killed her parents, scarring her horribly, and starts following London's wheel marks to try and catch up to it. Tom follows her. The next morning, an upset Katherine is told by Valentine that Hester dragged Tom down the chute with her. Magnus Crome, the Lord Mayor, arrives at their home and has a private discussion which Katherine eavesdrops on. She finds out that Crome is sending Valentine on a reconnaissance flight between London and its mysterious goal, and that he is preparing something called ""MEDUSA"". Tom and Hester keep walking through the Hunting Ground, and Hester tells Tom about her parents. They were killed by Valentine when she was young, because her mother refused to give him something called ""MEDUSA"". Later that day they encounter a small town, and Tom trades a relic he found aboard Salthook for some food. Unfortunately, they are tricked and drugged, with the intention of being sold as slaves at an upcoming ""trading cluster"" (a gathering of small towns for trading purposes). Back in London, Crome speaks to a mysterious agent named Shrike (called Grike in the North American version), instructing him to take an airship and hunt down Hester Shaw. Valentine leaves on his reconnaissance mission, and Katherine decides to investigate about MEDUSA in his absence. Tom and Hester escape from captivity, and a pilot named Anna Fang agrees to help them get home to London. She takes them aboard her airship, the Jenny Haniver, and they fly to Airhaven, an airborne Traction City kept aloft by an array of balloons. While eating at a cafe with some of Anna's friends, they are attacked by Shrike, who has managed to track them down. It is revealed that he is a Stalker, a robotic killing machine containing a human brain. In the resulting battle Airhaven is greatly damaged, but Tom and Hester manage to escape in a stolen hot air balloon, unable to use the Jenny Haniver as it has been damaged. While they drift away on the wind, Hester tells Tom that she used to know Shrike. He found her half-dead after her parents' murder, when she was abandoned in the Great Hunting Ground, and he raised her. When she found out who Valentine was, and swore revenge, Shrike forbade her from going. So she ran away from him, and when she finally did find Valentine Tom thwarted her assassination attempt. However, she has no idea why Shrike was on a mission from the Lord Mayor of London. The balloon eventually drifts down in the Rustwater Marshes (somewhere in Central Asia), and while Tom and Hester flee through the Marshes, Shrike catches up to them again. Hester asks him how he knows the Lord Mayor, and he replies that he went to London looking for her, but found Magnus Crome instead. Crome sent Shrike after Hester, in return for ""his heart's desire."" Before it is revealed what that is, Shrike and his scout airship are crushed beneath a speeding village, which Tom and Hester narrowly avoid being run over by. They board the town that was chasing the village and find that it is a pirate suburb, and they are taken captive. Back on London, Katherine makes an appointment with Crome, who refuses to tell her anything. She decides to track down an apprentice Engineer who was nearby the waste chute the night Tom and Hester disappeared, and is horrified by the conditions she finds down in the Gut. Prisoners are being worked to death, and fed on their own faeces. She finds the apprentice, however, a pale boy her age named Bevis Pod. Bevis tells her that he thinks the Guild is building Stalkers, and that MEDUSA is some kind of device that London is relying on for survival. He agrees to help her sneak into a Guild meeting to discover more. Meanwhile, Hester finds that she knows the mayor of the pirate suburb; his name is Chrysler Peavey, and she met him while she lived with Shrike. He refuses to let them go, until he realises that Tom is a Londoner. Peavey has delusions of becoming a gentleman, and agrees to free them if Tom teaches him etiquette. The pirate suburb is heading through the marshes towards a mysterious prize. Ahead of them lies the Sea of Khazak, and a place called the Black Island, which houses a small static town and a refueling depot for airships. Peavey reveals that Airhaven has landed there to repair, and he intends to seize it. His suburb is amphibious, and inflates air-tanks to cross the sea to the Black Island. Back in the Rustwater Marshes, Shrike (Grike) pulls himself free of the mud, having survived being run over (his airship and its crew did not survive). Despite being badly injured, he follows the suburb's trail. The Jenny Haniver bombs the suburb before it reaches the island, and Peavey reveals that Anna Fang is an Anti-Traction League agent. While crossing the Sea of Khazak, the suburb runs into a reef and sinks. Tom, Hester, Peavey and a handful of pirates reach the shores in a lifeboat. Peavey refuses to give up and leads them onward, despite the fact they no longer have any chance of capturing Airhaven. As Airhaven is about to take off, Peavey is caught in quicksand and his pirates mutiny and shoot him before he sinks. They accuse Tom and Hester of ruining their lives, and are about to kill them when Shrike shows up and kills the pirates. That same night on London, Katherine and Bevis sneak into a secret Guild meeting and learn that MEDUSA is an ancient superweapon recovered from an American military base. Crome intends to use it to break through the Shield-Wall, an immense fortress-city blocking the only pass into the lands of the Anti-Traction League, protecting them from hungry cities. First, however, he intends to test fire it. The Engineers watch, entranced, as the dome on top of St. Paul's Cathedral begins to open. On the Black Island, Shrike reveals that ""his heart's desire"" was Hester as a Stalker; in return for killing her, Crome agreed to resurrect her as Shrike's mechanical daughter. He is about to kill her when Tom grabs a sword from one of the fallen pirates and kills Shrike. Hester screams at Tom, claiming she would have been happier as a Stalker. Their fight is interrupted as the northern sky fills with a green light. On London, Katherine and Bevis watch as MEDUSA fires a brilliant ray of energy at Panzerstadt Bayruth, the city that had been chasing London. It is incinerated entirely, and they are horrified, but the people of London only cheer. On the Black Island, Tom and Hester are found by a patrol that includes Anna Fang. Tom is shocked to find that she is an agent of the Anti-Traction League, but realises she is still his friend. She tells him that she suspects the green flash was related to MEDUSA, and has learnt that London is headed for the Shield-Wall. Tom and Hester agree to go there with her. They fly east in the repaired Jenny Haniver, stopping at several Traction Cities which are all fleeing away from the scene where MEDUSA was fired, terrified that London is unstoppable. After flying over the Himalayas, which have grown to encircle the entire land of Shan Guo (leading nation of the Anti-Traction League), they arrive at the Shield-Wall: a massive wall of basalt and metal built across a mountain pass, with the static city of Batmunkh Gompa built on its interior side. Tom and Hester attend a military strategy meeting, where Anna Fang urges the governor of the Shield-Wall to launch his fleet of gunships and destroy London before it can come into range. Tom is upset at this, and goes to explore the city and come to grips with his feelings. While exploring, he recognises Valentine in disguise, and follows him. As London heads towards the mountains, Katherine spends much time in the History Museum, where she is hiding Bevis from his superiors, and slowly falling in love with him. While speaking with some of the Historians, she learns that her father used to go on expeditions with a woman named Pandora Shaw, and finds that she was murdered six or seven years ago, leaving behind a daughter named Hester Shaw. Katherine realises that her father must have killed Hester's parents, and is heartbroken. At the Shield-Wall, Tom loses track of Valentine and goes to warn Anna Fang instead. She suspects Valentine's mission is to destroy the Shield-Wall's air fleet, and goes to stop him. Tom then finds Hester and tells her that Valentine is in Batmunkh Gompa. They go to the top of the Shield-Wall, where Valentine has set fire to the air-fleet, and chasing after Hester, Tom gets lost in a maze of tunnels that go through the wall. He emerges on a battlement where Anna Fang and Valentine are locked in a sword fight. Valentine, however, is no match for Fang who eventually disarms him. Valentine manages to buy enough time for his airship to arrive, which distracts Fang long enough for him to grab his fallen sword and run her through. With her last breath, Anna Fang promises Valentine that Hester Shaw will find him. Thaddeus leaps off the battlements onto his airship, to escape, but is confused by how Anna knows Hester, eventually realising she and Tom must still be alive. Tom links up with Hester and they realise they have to stop London from reaching the Shield-Wall; now that the fleet has been destroyed, it is defenceless. They take the Jenny Haniver and follow Valentine's airship west, towards London. At the same time, Katherine and Bevis are assembling a bomb to try and destroy MEDUSA. They are discovered by security from the Guild of Engineers, but the Historians help them escape after a vicious gunfight in which several historians and Katherine's pet wolf are killed. They reach the Top Tier, where a function is being held to celebrate the arrival of London at the Shield Wall, and Bevis hastily hugs Katherine and whispers ""I love you"". Tom sets Hester down on the same tier, and promises to circle and return for her, but he is attacked by Valentine's airship (which has already dropped Valentine off at the function). Tom shoots the airship down, and it lands in a fiery heap on the Top Tier, killing Bevis. Hester is captured by the Guild of Engineers' security Stalkers, and taken to St. Paul's. Valentine and Crome are there, preparing to fire MEDUSA. Katherine arrives just as Valentine is about to kill Hester, and throws herself in front of the blow, run through by his sword. She falls on MEDUSA's keyboard, damaging it, and Valentine calls for help. Only Hester helps him; the Engineers are worrying about MEDUSA, which is overloading with power but unable to fire after Katherine altered the code. Crome becomes distraught, and begs for Valentine's help, but the historian refuses. Meanwhile, MEDUSA'S energy builds up dangerously fast. The flames from Valentine's airships are consuming the Top Tier, and Valentine and Hester carry Katherine out onto the roof of St. Paul's. Tom brings the Jenny Haniver down to rescue them, but Katherine dies, and Valentine shouts at Hester to save herself. She jumps onto the airship, and they fly away just as MEDUSA's energy builds up to the point where it explodes, destroying all but the lowest tier of London. The lowest tier, unaffected by the blast, collapses on itself, leaving any survivors within to fend for themselves in the unstable wreckage.The Jenny Haniver is blown away on the updraft created by the explosion. Tom is devastated over the loss of his city, and of Katherine - but he realises he barely knew Katherine, and it is Hester that he loves. Together the two of them fly away in the Jenny Haniver to start a new life."
929,Mission: Impractical,science," The Doctor and Frobisher run into Glitz, his henchman Dibber and a band of Ogrons trying to pull off the crime of the century."
930,The Mysterious Benedict Society,science," After seeing a newspaper advertisement addressed to children with special abilities, the eleven-year-old orphan Reynie Muldoon goes to a building where he and many other children take a written test with many strange questions relating to logic and bravery. Before that, in front of the building, he helps a queer girl named Rhonda Kazembe, who then offers to give him the test answers. He refuses twice. Only four gifted children pass the tests: George ""Sticky"" Washington, a boy with a photographic memory who ran away from his family because he believed they only wanted him so he could keep winning awards for fame and wealth; Kate Wetherall, a strong and agile girl with strong physical abilities and an abandoning father; Constance Contraire, a very stubborn small girl; and Reynie. On the third test, they meet and discover that Rhonda was a grown up and not a child. After much introducing, all of them are surprised that all of them had met Rhonda Kazembe and find out that her offer to help them to cheat was part of the test. They are introduced to Mr. Benedict, a genius and the man behind the tests. Mr. Benedict answers their questions and explains to them why he had advertised the tests. The children discover that Mr. Benedict needs a team of children to act as 'spies' for him in a well-known school named Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.). Inside the Institute the children see a multitude of people besides students: the Helpers, who refuse to answer questions about themselves and always seem depressed; the Messengers, talented students with 'special privileges', which Mr. Benedict believes includes sending telepathic messages to brainwash the world's people;the Recruiters, who kidnap and recruit seemingly gifted children for the Institute; the Executives, who are especially talented Messengers who were promoted as assistants of Mr. Curtain; and the Institute's founder, Ledroptha Curtain, who turns out to be Mr. Benedict's twin brother, and a victim of narcolepsy. At the Institute, the lessons are repetitive, seeming to echo the messages that Mr. Benedict and his assistants pick up through a special receiver (the above mentioned telepathic messages). Communicating with Mr. Benedict via Morse Code with a flashlight or sometimes a light switch, the children slowly uncover Curtain's plan: to control the world and imprison his enemies with The Whisperer, the brain-sweeping machine invented by Curtain, was supposed to be turned on full blast by Curtain in order to start his plan. However, it was not fully ready at that point. The children manage to stall Mr. Curtain's plan and use his narcolepsy to knock him out, allowing Mr. Benedict to shut down the Whisperer. Though Mr. Curtain escapes, the children share a party together with Constance, who, it is revealed, is turning three years old. Reynie is adopted by his former tutor; Sticky goes back to his parents, who were searching for him; Kate finds out that her long-lost father was Milligan, Mr. Benedict's bodyguard, and an early victim of the Whisperer; and Constance is adopted by Mr. Benedict and his assistants, Rhonda Kazembe and Number Two."
931,Wither,science," Wither describes a future where genetic engineering has cured humanity of all diseases and defects. People worldwide have foregone conceiving children naturally in favor of this new science. This generation of perfect humans, later dubbed ""The First Generation"", lived very long and prosperous lives. Unfortunately their children ended up plagued with a virus that killed all females by the age of 20 and all males by the age of 25. Their children's children suffered the same fate. Humanity now scrambles for a cure as society has broken down into large gaps between the rich and the poor. Gatherers hunt for young girls on the streets to sell them into labs for research, and the unwanted ones go into prostitution or are simply killed. In Manhattan, 16-year-old Rhine Ellery is captured by the Gatherers and sold to Linden Ashby at his estate in Florida. Rhine finds herself forced to marry Linden along with two other girls, Jenna and Cecily. They join Rose as Linden's new brides, but the ailing Rose is already 20 years of age and does not have long left to live. Life in the Ashby manor is very comfortable. Cecily embraces it while Rhine constantly thinks of ways to escape. She befriends her servant Gabriel and behaves like a good wife in front of Linden and his father, Housemaster Vaughn, in order to earn the title of ""First Wife"", which would grant her additional privileges to roam the mansion. Rhine sets that as a goal in order to plan her escape. By the novel's end, Rhine successfully escapes the mansion with Gabriel and begins a journey back to New York to find her twin brother, Rowan. A sequel, Fever, has been released."
932,A Practical Man,science," The story opens in the lower levels of Coruscant in 24 ABY, only a few months prior to the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion. Boba Fett has just chased down another bounty, a Rodian art dealer who sold fake works to Gebbu the Hutt. Meanwhile on Nar Shaddaa, Nom Anor, posing under the alias Udelen, recruits a Mandalorian named Goran Beviin to assassinate a politician on Ter Abbes, a grim industrial planet off the Perlemian Trade Route. Bevin quickly realizes that if the man is killed it will trigger a civil war, but even after he voices his misgivings to Boba he still carries out the mission. Nom Anor notes that Bevin did an efficient job of removing the target and plans to meet Fett for the second time on Mandalore and the capital city, Kedalbe. Nom Anor notes that Mandalore is already on his list of a world that will be harder to subdue. Anor arrives on the planet, again under the alias of Udelen and provides Fett with the location of a rendezvous where he and a select number of Fett's troops are to meet. Anor plans to reveal his true nature to Fett as the location lies along the main invasion route the Yuuzhan Vong will take into the galaxy. As the Mandalorian fleet awaits the arrival of their client, Bevin becomes impatient and scouts around for Udelen. He soon encounters what he assumes to be an asteroid, but is actually a Yuuzhan Vong ship. Unsure of what to make of their new arrivals, the Mandalorians enter battle formation and wait. Soon though, Nom Anor makes contact with Fett and asks him to board the lead ship for a face to face meeting. Once aboard the miid ro'ik warship Fett orders Bevin to discreetly gather any samples he can, while Fett runs scans with his helmet. While touring the ship, Anor explains the Yuuzhan Vong vision for the galaxy and how the Mandalorians will play a part in shaping it and both Fett and Bevin witness first hand the plans the Vong have for the humans they capture. Anor then gives Fett the plans for the next mission he has planned for the Mandalorians, to secure a landing zone on Birgis, in exchange for their continued service the Mandalore sector will be left alone. Fett knows this is a lie and that the Vong will come for them eventually, he plans to ensure he's ready when that day comes. Fett plans to use the inside track he now has to do as much damage to the invaders as possible, while he appears to help them he will do all he can to hinder them at the same time. Nom Anor amends his report, instead believing that enslaving the Mandalorians is the best way of dealing with them. One week after the invasion of Helska 4, the Mandalorians assault the spaceport on Birgis. Fett, Bevin and Cham, another Mandalorian warrior, spearhead the assault. Fett hopes to use this moment to pass on vital intel to the New Republic. Passing the intel on to a pilot during the assault, Fett only hopes that the Republic won't blow their cover. Typically, the Yuuzhan Vong leave no survivors at the spaceport. New Holgha, however, the Vong's next target remains unevacuated, the Republic hasn't acted on the intel, obviously not trusting its source. With the planets defenses sabotaged and its troops relocated elsewhere, the world falls without a serious fight. Instead, the Republic diverted troops to Pedd 4 and now New Holgha suffers, as Fett observes a miit ro'ik digest everything around it for fuel, he is reminded of the Sarlacc. As he contemplates a better and more reliable way to pass intel to the Republic, a Vong warrior asks him to assist in killing a Jedi. While Bevin stalls the Vong, Fett and a few others subdue the Jedi, who is skeptical at first, but then believes Fett and agrees to take the information off planet. As the Jedi leaves for his hidden ship, Bevin arrives, followed by the Vong warrior. When he asks what happened to the Jedi, Fett and the others kill him, with Bevin using his crushgaunts to kill the warrior. While the others collect samples from the dead warrior, Bevin scalps him for a trophy. Briika, a Mandalorian female warrior, is fatally wounded in the encounter though and dies when she reaches Slave 1. Bevin, keeping a promise he made to her, adopts Dinua, Briika's daughter as his own. Nom Anor lays plans to accelerate the coming invasion of Mandalore, he believes that the reports of the Mandalorians savagery have been greatly exaggerated. He still plans to use them, keeping them undercover from the rest of the Vong warriors, but ultimately he plans to erase their culture from the galaxy. Fett, traveling across Mandalore space reflects that his plan is so far working fine. The Republic believe the Mandalorians are in league with the Vong, while his own engineers are working on weapons designed specifically to fight them. Then an X-Wing drops into pursuit course, but when it makes contact through one of Fett's own intel nodes he stays his trigger finger. The Jedi he saved on New Holgha, a man named Kubariet asks to meet face to face. Working with New Republic Intelligence, Kubariet confirms that Fett has a deal, the Mandalorians will continue to masquerade as Vong mercenaries while at the same time passing intel to the Republic. Before he leaves, Kubariet asks if Fett will spare a few of his best commandos to act as a kind of new Cuy'val Dar to train planetary militias to fight the Vong. Kubariet gives Fett a secure datachip, if he wants to pass on intel then he can only do it through the Jedi, in return Fett hands over 'spare parts' he's collected from the Vong. When Kubariet asks if there's anything more he can do for Fett he tells him to make sure everyone knows that a Mandalorian named Briika Jeban died saving a citizen of the New Republic. When Kubariet asks who she saved, Fett simply says: 'You, Jedi, you.'"
933,The Gate to Women's Country,science," The Gate to Women's Country is set in the future, 300 years after a nuclear war destroyed most of human civilization. The book focuses on a matriarchal nation known as Women's Country, and particularly the city of Marthatown. Stavia, the novel's heroine, is the younger daughter of Morgot, an important member of the Marthatown Council. The book opens with Stavia as an adult, heading to meet her fifteen-year-old son, Dawid. He has spent the last ten years living outside the city walls with the warriors, as all boys do, and is now old enough to decide whether he wishes to remain a warrior or accept a life of study and service among the women as a servitor. Dawid formally renounces his mother and chooses to become a full-fledged warrior. Afterwards, Stavia remembers when her younger brother was sent to live with the warriors. Much of the rest of the novel is told in flashback, following Stavia's life from childhood to adulthood. In the story's present, Stavia prepares for her role as Iphigenia in Marthatown's annual performance of Iphigenia at Ilium, a reworking of the Greek tragedy The Trojan Women that weaves through the novel as a leitmotif. While still a child, Stavia met Chernon, the son of one of her mother's friends. Although Chernon lives in the garrison with the other boys and men, he and Stavia form a friendship. They meet at the twice-annual Carnival, the only event in Women's Country where warriors and women can mix freely. Stavia eventually agrees to smuggle books to Chernon for him to read, even though this is forbidden for boys in the garrison. In fact, Chernon has been ordered by his commander, Michael, to learn more about the secrets of the women who rule Women's Country. After confessing to breaking the ordinances, Stavia is sent away from Marthatown for several years to train as a doctor. On her return Chernon pursues their relationship again. When Stavia is selected for an exploration mission to the south, Chernon leaves the garrison (on Michael's orders) and meets her there. While away from Women's Country, Stavia and Chernon are captured by a band of ""Holylanders"", members of a struggling community to the south of Women's Country. They practice polygamy and seem to be descendants of rural fundamentalist Christian splinter groups. The Holylanders are brutally misogynistic and treat women as slaves to their husbands. Stavia's experiences among the Holylanders gives her a deeper appreciation for her homeland. Upon her return to Women's Country she finally learns the secrets of the Women's Country Council and the choices they have made to preserve their way of life. The secret of Women's Country is that there are no births of warrior children, all children are fathered artificially by servitors. The goal of Women's Country is to breed out the gene that causes men to choose the warrior life."
934,Le Jour Des Fourmis,science," The Day of the Ants again, just as its predecessor has several connected plotlines, some of which take place in the world of humans, while others - among ants. A year has passed since the time of The ants. 17 people including several relatives of the pioneer of the deceased inter-species communication Edmond Wells are still trapped under an ant nest. Since a new queen has been in charge in the ant nest, the supplies of food given by the ants to human are growing smaller and smaller. Meanwhile strange murders are happening in the city of Paris, when several producers of insecticides are found dead in peculiar circumstances and no explanation of how the murders were committed. A wolf-fearing police detective and a woman afraid of humans, the daughter of Edmond Wells, combine their knowledge in order to find out who or what is behind these murders."
935,The Free Lunch,science," Twelve-year-old Mike is looking for a safe place to escape from the real world. Like Peter Pan, he seeks a fantastic sanctuary where he can stay without worry. Tomas Immega's amusement park, Dreamland, provides a completely immersive theme park experience, and seems to be just what Mike is looking for. Soon after escaping the guest tracking system, Mike meets Annie, a midget known as the Mother Elf, who has eked out a living in Dreamland for thirteen years caring for the park. Annie takes Mike in, but all is not well in Dreamland... The story is full of references to other works: * ""Strawberry Fields Forever"" * Callahan's Crosstime Saloon * Have Space Suit—Will Travel"
936,Web of the Romulans,science," A deadly virus causes desperate Romulans to invade Canara and incite a battle with the U.S.S. Enterprise. Captain Kirk, fully willing to get the antidote to the Romulans, has to deal with the ship's central computer. It has developed romantic feelings for Kirk himself."
937,Exultant,science," Exultant is set in Baxter's ""Xeelee Sequence"" twenty thousand years into the Third Expansion of Mankind, ""a titanic project undertaken by a mankind united by the Doctrines forged by Hama Druz after mankind's near extinction."" The human-supremacist Interim Coalition of Governance has conquered almost the whole Milky Way &mdash; all but the alien Xeelee concentrated at the galactic core around a supermassive black hole called Chandra. The mysterious Xeelee are far more advanced but less numerous than the humans, and the war has been at a stalemate for three millennia even though the entire Coalition has been directed toward the war effort and ten billion humans die at the front every year. In a war fought with faster-than-light technology (equivalent to time travel), each side has foreknowledge of the other's actions and can develop counter-measures to plans before they are made. Pirius is a fighter pilot stationed at the front. When a battle turns to disaster for the Coalition forces, he disobeys suicide orders to stand and fight, choosing instead to risk survival. In a desperate gamble to outrun a pursuing Xeelee, Pirius captures a Xeelee fighter for the first time in history. Returning to base via FTL travel, he arrives two years previous to the battle, when his younger self is still a cadet. Rather than being lauded as a hero, both instances of Pirius are court-martialed for disobeying orders. Commissary Nilis of the Office of Technological Archival and Control, part of the Commission for Historical Truth, defends both the older Pirius (whom he calls ""Pirius Blue"") and the younger one (""Pirius Red"") but loses the trial. Pirius Blue is sent to a penal unit at the front as a foot soldier, and Pirius Red is remanded to the custody of Commissary Nilis, who has plans for the fruits of Pirius Blue's battlefield victory. Using the Xeelee fighter and the innovative tactics that saved Pirius Blue, he starts to plan an unheard of assault on the Xeelee's primary stronghold at Chandra itself. While Nilis and his new team struggle to confront ossified government and military institutions, they try to understand and to develop new and sometimes alien technologies: FTL computers, a gravastar shield to protect them from FTL foreknowledge, and a black hole gun, capable of disrupting a supermassive black hole's event horizon. Meanwhile, in the course of his new duties to Commissary Nilis, Pirius Red is practically taken on a tour of the Solar system and some of the Coalition's most scandalous secrets, rife with references to events from previous books in the Xeelee sequence. As Nilis's project nears completion, it transpires that the Chandra black hole is home to not only the Xeelee, but a host of other organisms, many of which are based on exotic physics and non-baryonic matter. Regardless, the assault on the black hole continues despite protestations from Nilis. After a brutal fight to reach the surface of the black hole, the team commence their assault, causing the Xeelee to abandon it (and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy) to prevent humanity from harming the black hole's inhabitants. After the assault, the protagonists realise that the Coalition is unlikely to remain intact, now that the war with the Xeelee is no longer present to hold it together. Luru Parz, one of the team, realises that the Xeelee will eventually return, and returns to Earth to ready its defences for when the return happens."
938,Autumn Visits,science," Six forces: Love, Growth, Knowledge, Power, Strength, and Art. This world (actually, the whole action takes place in Russia and the Ukraine) lacks love; but the love this Envoy would bring the Kindness of fervent religion - leading to witch hunts and crusades. The Original for this Envoy is a female doctor, who has seen the consequences of love, kindness and compassion neglected in her patients dying without access to medicines and treatments. She believes her Envoy to be God, or a divine messenger, but appears rather blind to her other aspects. The force of Knowledge would create a better, more reasonable world, but is hampered by physical fraility, and always ends up subjugated by power. The Envoy of knowledge would change that, but his Original is an old scientist suffering from terminal cancer, who is intelligent and wise, but physically impotent. Knowledge remembers his past incarnations with clarity, unlike the other Envoys and can extrapolate the actions of the others much better. The force of Art is rarely able to take action, hampered by its own imagination of the consequences. When it does, however, the actions are impassioned, and the result is rarely savoury, like the actions of a certain painter Schicklgruber. Art is represented by a 'hack' writer, cranking out several fantasy and sci-fi novels a year for money. The novel implies that some of Lukyanenko's other books are actually written by the Original of this Envoy. Specifically, he makes numerous references to having written The Boy and the Darkness. Strength is the force that guarantees peace and security. A country with a strong army, without crime; a place to which warriors can prouodly come home. Strength's Envoy is a copy of an Army Colonel who fought in Afghanistan. He is Ukrainian, and is in the Ukrainian army, but seems to regard the countries as close kin, almost as one. This Envoy and his Original don't see eye-to-eye on their vision of the future, because the Original has lost faith in his cause, while the copy retains his belief. Power represents a strong state, claiming people's loyalty, guiding their lives, and focusing their strength on a single purpose, but also punishing individual action, turning people into a herd being driven by a stren and beloved shepherd. This force is represented by an ambitious and corrupt politician, seeking to ascend to presidency. The Envoy murders and supplants his Original as soon as he arrives, because ""power can't be shared"". The novel implies that the current state of the world is in part the result of Power winning the last contest; Joseph Stalin and Napoleon Bonaparte are both implied to have been an Envoys of Power. The forth of Growth represents progress and development, potential limited only by motivation. Unfortunately, Growth lacks direction, and has potential for both good and evil. Growth is, appropriately, represented by a teenager - a somewhat dour and cynical boy, who is implied to have lost his faith in the world. This Envoy and his Original begin to grow apart as the novel progresses, diverging, and even spending a lot of time away from each other, unlike most other Envoy/Original pairs. Unlike the other Envoys, Growth does not remember his past incarnations, as experience would defeat the purpose of growing. Although not mentioned as part of the six Forces, Darkness intervenes in the contest. Darkness is presented as ultimate freedom, even from the consequences of one's own actions. Darkness doesn't have an Envoy, but it still has a champion - a determined and driven professional hitman, whom Darkness empowers and directs to kill all the Envoys and their Originals. Although not part of this contest, the force of Light has intervened in past contests, and has won at least one. Jesus Christ is implied to have been a champion of Light. His death was a short-term loss but a long-term victory."
939,Line of Delirium,science," The first novel, ""Line of Delirium"", takes place decades after a devastating interstellar conflict — the Vague War. While the reason for and details of the war remain largely unexplained, it is clear that almost every alien race was at some point involved in hostilities with the humans. The war was going badly for Earth, until two Earth officers decided to take matters into their own hands. Disobeying orders, they turned their fleet and headed for Earth, demanding the government's surrender. One of the officers, a man named Grey, established the Human Empire and became the emperor. His co-conspirator Lemak became the supreme commander of all human forces. While it is not exactly clear how the tide was turned, it is known that all races opposing the new empire were eventually beaten. Two of which, the cyborg Meklar and the ursine Bulrathi formed a subsequent pact with the humans — the Trinary Alliance, creating a nearly unbeatable force (humans excel at ship-to-ship combat, Meklar are master engineers, and Bulrathi are superb ground combatants). Close to the end of the war, a man named Curtis van Curtis acquires an alien device he calls ""aTan"" (from athanatos, ""immortal"" [Greek: Αθάνατος, literally, ""without death""] ) giving immortality to anyone who can afford it. He formed the aTan company, which quickly became almost as powerful as the Human Empire (as some characters in the novel call it, ""an empire within an empire""). The secret of the device is coveted by many, as the aTan company holds exclusive rights, with Emperor Grey's grudging approval (in exchange he gets free reincarnations). Kay Altos is a professional bodyguard whose homeworld was destroyed by the imperial forces after it was invaded by the Sakkra — a fast-multiplying frog-shaped race, which was subsequently exterminated by the Empire. One fine morning he wakes up to face a teenager holding a gun, trying to avenge his sister's accidental death at Kay's hands. Kay's main problem — he did not have time to pay for his next reincarnation. He tries to trick the kid but ends up dying anyway. He is surprised to find himself in an aTan facility on Terra — the capital of the Empire with none other than Curtis van Curtis himself greeting him. Van Curtis hires Altos to safely bring his only son Arthur to an obscure planet known as Grail. Van Curtis's main concern is anyone finding out that Arthur is his son and kidnapping him in order to find out his father's secrets. Kay's payment should he succeed — unlimited free reincarnations. His payment in case of failure — eternal torture and executions. Kay agrees, and a backstory is created where Kay Ovald is a space merchant, travelling with his son Arthur, when their ship explodes. After reincarnating on a planet in the middle of a civil war, Imperial Security officer Isabella Kal recognizes Arthur and begins to chase him all over the Empire, even going as far as asking Admiral Lemak for help. Unfortunately for Arthur van Curtis and his bodyguard, Kal is not the only one seeking to stop them. A mysterious race known as the Silicoids seem to know of Arthur's mission to Grail and wish to prevent him from reaching his goal in order to preserve the galactic balance. Kay and Arthur board a luxury liner to the next planet on their way to Grail. Altos knows that, in all likelihood, Imperial Security is waiting for them at their destination. They manage to get passage on a shuttle, dropping off several passengers on a world close to their course. By a stroke of misfortune, that shuttle is stopped by a quarantine ship, and all passengers are secretly taken to a planet belonging to the Darloks — an ancient race exceptional at espionage and sabotage. Kay and Arthur soon discover that the Darloks plan to turn them into their agents and also manage to learn the Darloks' true form (unlike Master of Orion, Darloks here are not shapeshifters but Goa'uld-like snake parasites). It is there that Kay first meets Viacheslav Shegal — an agent of ""Shield"", Emperor's special forces. He helps Shegal commit suicide (to be reincarnated on a human world), so that the true nature of Darloks is known to all. Meanwhile, a massive Silicoid fleet arrives and proceeds to bombard the planet from orbit. Troops are sent in to retrieve Kay and Arthur and bring them before Sedimin — the Foot of the Silicoid Basis (a rank equal to emperor). Sedimin wants to know the true mission that van Curtis entrusted to Arthur. It is on the Silicoid ship that Arthur finally reveals to Kay an awful truth — he is not Curtis van Curtis's son. Arthur is a clone and, as such, has no rights under Imperial law. As Arthur puts it, ""immortals need no heirs."" Since Arthur is being honest, Kay reveals that his true name is Kay Dutch and that he is a super — a genetically engineered being with increased speed, strength, memory, and other characteristics much higher than a normal human. By law, Kay also has no rights, but his past was covered up by a senator who adopted him. While Arthur still hides his true mission goal from Kay, he reveals it to Sedimin, who decides to let them go. They are dropped off on Tauri — a paradise planet for retired Imperial officers and their families. While Kay is out purchasing a ship, Arthur is kidnapped by Isabella Kal. Kay's determination to free Arthur is guided less by his obligation to his client than his friendship with the boy. His first destination, however, is the planet where he was killed prior to being recruited by van Curtis. He finds his killer, a teenager named Tommy Arano, and, instead of killing him, takes him to his hypership that was left on the planet. The next morning, Kay explains to Tommy that he is, in fact, Arthur van Curtis, whose mind was wiped by the Silicoids on one of his previous attempts to reach Grail. The mind-wiped Arthur was given to a human family to raise as their son, while another Arthur was reincarnated by ""aTan"" back on Terra because the machine assumed he died. Kay and Tommy then head to an Imperial planet almost entired ruled by a crime syndicate known as 'the Family'. The Mother of the Family is his genetic sister, also created in a test tube. She uses the Family's resources to locate Arthur on a heavily defended Imperial station. She agrees to given them all they need to retrieve the boy: outfit their ship with a masking device, provide them with advanced power armor and weapons (including an ""Excalibur"" tachion rifle for Kay that shoots a full second before the trigger is pulled), and four soldiers — two conditioned humans, a human cyborg, and a Meklar. Kay has himself souped-up with artificial enhancements (drastically shortening his lifespan). The strike group manages to infiltrate the base and fight their way to the medical wing, where Arthur is being tortured. Once Arthur is retrieved, they fight back to the ship, losing the two conditioned soldiers. In the hangar bay, Kay faces off against a Meklar working for Isabella Kal and is probably the first human (or almost-human) to pose a challenge to a twelve-foot-long mechanized reptile. Kay's Meklar companion clashes with the Imperial Security Meklar, giving the others time to escape. Once aboard his ship, Kay finds out that, due to his torture, Arthur is dying. Their only hope is to make it to Grail before he dies. When they finally make it Grail's orbit, another obstacle awaits them — Admiral Lemak and Isabella Kal on an Imperial destroyer. While Kay is trying to find a way out, his ship's illegal AI makes its own decision and the ship into the destroyer's shields. While Kay, Tommy, and Arthur are being reincarnated in Grail's branch of aTan, Kal forces Lemak to have her shot, so that she can follow them. The two clones and the bodyguard manage to make it to Grail's Dead Zone — an area on the planet where most mechanical devices fail for no apparent reason. It is there that Arthur finally reveals to Kay his true mission and the reason for van Curtis to have a clone: Curtis van Curtis did not obtain the ""aTan"" device from aliens. Van Curtis discovered Grail during the Vague War. There he found God or rather a being/machine that created the universe. God made van Curtis an offer — a universe created based on his subconscious desires, just like this universe was created for someone else. Van Curtis asked for more time to think about it. God then gave van Curtis the knowledge to create a device allowing him to live forever. Finally, after many decades, Curtis van Curtis decides to find out how new universes are created and sell these universes to the public. Kay realizes that this would destroy the Empire and attempts to stop them, but finds out that neither Tommy and Arthur nor Curtis van Curtis (who suddenly apprears) can be killed in the Dead Zone. Van Curtis takes Arthur and Tommy and leads them to the Threshold, but Tommy refuses and opts to leave with Kay instead. The novel ends as they both walk towards an uncertain future. ""Emperors of Illusions"" is the second novel, continuing the story of Kay Dutch as he travels with Tommy Arano, trying to stop Curtis van Curtis from destroying the Human Empire. They believe he is trying to do that to get back at the person he believes responsible for the creation of this universe — Emperor Grey. The only way Kay thinks he can stop van Curtis is by killing the Emperor, a virtual impossibility. ""Shadows of Dreams"" is a short prequel to ""Line of Delirium"" that describes life on a small quiet human colony that is turned upside down when a Psilon battleship enters the system, still believing that the Vague War is on. The Psilons are the most advanced race in the galaxy, with only two or three troopers wearing power armor necessary to destroy an entire city. As the colonists prepare for a hopeless battle, one man reflects on his life thus far."
940,The Colony of Lies,science," The independent Earth Colony Axista Four was supposedly founded in the 2439 by Stewart Ransom, a noted humanitarian. Arriving on the colony one hundred years later, the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie find a near-civil war. 'Realists' have abandoned Ransome's 'back to basics' ideals and are raiding the remains of the colony ship to further their technological advancements. The 'Loyalists' are in danger of extinction. In a little-known underground bunker, aliens who claim to be the planet's first colonists are stirring. Hopeful colonists hope Random's daughter, Kirann, can be revived from cryogenic suspension and reunited the colony. This does not work out as expected."
941,Radio Free Albemuth,science," In this alternate history the corrupt US President Ferris F. Fremont (FFF for 666, ‘F’ being the 6th letter in the alphabet, see Number of the Beast) becomes Chief Executive in the late Nineteen-Sixties following Lyndon Johnson's administration. The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centered around a (presumably) fictitious subversive organization known as ""Aramchek"". In addition to this, he is associated with a right-wing populist movement called ""Friends of the American People"" (FAPers). Ironically enough, the President's paranoia and opportunism lead to the establishment of a real resistance movement that is organized through narrow-beam radio transmissions from a mysterious alien near-Earth satellite, by a superintelligent, extraterrestrial, but less than omnipotent being (or network) named VALIS. As with its successor, VALIS, this novel is autobiographical. Dick himself is a major character, though fictitious protagonist Nicholas Brady serves as a vehicle for Dick's alleged gnostic theophany on February 11, 1974. In addition, Sadassa Silvia is a character who claims that Ferris Fremont is actually a communist covert agent recruited by Sadassa's mother when Fremont was still a teenager. As with VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth deals with author Philip Dick's highly personal style of Christianity (or Gnosticism). It further examines the moral and ethical repercussions of informing on trusting friends for the authorities. Also prominent is Dick's dislike of the Republican Party, satirizing Nixon's America as a Stalinist or neo-fascist police state. Fremont eventually captures and imprisons Dick and Brady after the latter attempts to produce and distribute a record that contains subliminal messages of revolt against the current dictatorship. Brady and Silvia are executed, and Dick narrates the concluding passage about his life in a concentration camp, where his supposedly latest work is actually penned by a ghost writer and regime-approved hack. Suddenly, however, he hears music blaring from a transistor radio which contains the same subliminal message. He and his friends, it turns out, were just a decoy set up by VALIS to detour the government from stopping a much more popular A-List band from releasing a similar record with a better-established recording company. As Dick realizes this and hears youngsters repeating the lyrics he realizes that salvation may lie within the hearts and minds of the next generation."
942,Babylon 5: Legions of Fire - Armies of Light and Dark,science," Vir, with the help of G'Kar and Galen, takes over where Londo left off."
943,Fearful Symmetries,science," Nohar is living in a cabin in the woods when he is approached by a lawyer to find a missing moreau. Nohar turns the case down and the lawyer leaves. Soon after, the cabin is assaulted by a para-military team. Nohar escapes with his life and on the run, tries to find the moreau and discover why his life was threatened."
944,Emperor,science, A mysterious prophecy from the future shapes the destiny of a family through four centuries of the Roman occupation of Britain. Begins in 4 BC and incorporates such later events as the building of Hadrian's Wall and an attempted assassination of Constantine I. Ends in AD 418.
945,The Great War: Breakthroughs,science," Its 1917, the Great War has proved very costly for both the United States and Confederate States. After the seemingly endless stalemate that had been the first two years of war, the U.S. began to slowly gain an advantage. The Barrel Roll Offensive proved to be a decisive move by U.S. forces, as weak Confederate lines were unable to resist George Custer's advance towards Nashville. In the east, the U.S. was finally able to take back Washington D.C. from Rebel forces, though leveling the city in the process. The war in Europe was drawing to a close as Russia underwent the Red revolution, French soldiers rose in mutiny, and Great Britain was cut off from important food shipments from South America. By late July 1917, the CSA was in such dire condition that the country was forced to ask for an armistice, losing much land and money to the USA. The states of Kentucky and Sequoyah (Oklahoma) were lost, as well as parts of Texas, Arkansas, Sonora, and Virginia. One issue would remain unresolved as a Confederate submarine torpedoed and sunk a U.S. destroyer after the U.S.-C.S. armistice was granted."
946,Sundiver,science," The novel begins with the main character, Jacob Demwa, working at the center for uplift on Earth, while he recovers from a tragedy at the Vanilla Space Needle where he saved the space elevator from destruction but lost his love in the process. An alien friend of Demwa's, Fagin (a Kanten), contacts Demwa and offers him a job. Initially reluctant to return to his previous life as a scientific investigator, Demwa agrees to attend a secret meeting. He learns that there are “ghosts” appearing in the Sun's chromosphere. The ghosts are without precedent in the galactic library. Demwa agrees to come and investigate the origin and purpose of the sun-ghosts, and travels to Mercury where the sundiver project is based. With him on Mercury are: Helene deSilva, the attractive station commander with whom Jacob develops a relationship over the course of the book; Fagin; Pila Bubbacub, the library representative; his assistant Culla (a Pring); Dr. Dwayne Kepler (the head of the Sundiver expedition); Dr. Mildred Martine (a psychiatrist); and the exuberant journalist Peter LaRoque. Demwa goes to the sun, and observes the sun-ghosts. There are apparently three forms: the “toroids” which appear to be similar to cattle and live off of the magnetic fields in the chromosphere, a relatively fluid, apparently intelligent variety, and a threatening, anthropomorphic figure that avoids the side of the sunship where the instruments are located. When a neo-chimpanzee scientist, Dr. Jeffrey, is killed on a solo mission to the sun, it seems to confirm the sun-ghosts' hostile intent. An investigation seems to implicate the reporter, LaRoque. LaRoque is then tested to determine if he is capable of murder. The test results indicate LaRoque has violent tendencies and he is incarcerated. A third trip to the sun is undertaken, in hopes that Pil Bubbacub will be able to contact the sun-ghosts. He fails to do so, but claims to have succeeded, saying that the sun-ghosts are offended and have used psi to control LaRoque’s actions. He uses a powder that blocks the ships sensors to pretend he has dispelled the sun-ghosts because he is embarrassed by the Library's lack of data on the ghosts. Back on Mercury, Jacob discovers his trick, and reveals it, resulting in disgrace to Bubbacub and embarrassment for the Pila. The characters go on yet another mission into the sun, this time with a laser to communicate with the sun-ghosts. They make brief contact with one of the ghosts, but an anthropomorphic ghost appears and warns them against further exploration of the sun. While they are leaving, they discover that one of Culla’s dietary supplements is a dye used in tunable lasers. Combining this with an earlier conversation about Culla's eyesight, Demwa concludes that Culla can project laser light from his eyes: he has been faking the anthropomorphic ghosts. When Culla realizes he has been discovered he retreats to the instrument side of the ship and begins disabling the equipment that propels the sunship so that it will fall into the photosphere, taking all evidence of his deception with it. The sun-ghosts use toroids to arrest the ship’s fall, but eventually they give out, and the ship plummets. While Demwa and one of the crew attempt to disable Culla, Helene discovers that only the galactic technology has been sabotaged, and uses the refrigerator laser as a thruster to move the ship out of the sun. Culla is killed, and the ship eventually escapes the sun, though all but Fagin temporarily “die” of hypothermia and frostbite from the refrigerator laser. The ship’s records are recovered, showing that Culla used his laser sight to discredit Bubbacub, as part of a campaign to free his species from its client status, and then to sabotage the ship when he was discovered to prevent the Pila from finding out. Although set in the same universe as the rest of the other Uplift books, it is set a considerable amount of time before the other books, and shares none of the same characters, apart from Jacob Demwa, who is mentioned as the mentor of Tom Orley and Gillian Baskin, and Helene Alvarez (née deSilva), who is mentioned in Startide Rising as Credeiki's former captain aboard the James Cook and who appears in The Uplift War to sign a treaty with the Thennanin."
947,Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras,science," The novel, set in 1861, described adventures of British expedition led by Captain John Hatteras to the North Pole. Hatteras is convinced that the sea around the pole is not frozen and his obsession is to reach the place no matter what. Mutiny by the crew results in destruction of their ship but Hatteras, with a few men, continues on the expedition. On the shore of the island of ""New America"" he discovers the remains of a ship used by the previous expedition from the United States. Doctor Clawbonny recalls in mind the plan of the real Ice palace, constructed completely from ice in Russia in 1740 to build a snow-house, where they should spend a winter. The travellers winter on the island and survive mainly due to the ingenuity of Doctor Clawbonny (who is able to make fire with an ice lens, make bullets from frozen mercury and repel attacks by polar bears with remotely controlled explosions of black powder). When the winter ends the sea becomes ice-free. The travellers build a boat from the shipwreck and head towards the pole. Here they discover an island, an active volcano, and name it after Hatteras. With difficulty a fjord is found and the group get ashore. After three hours climbing they reach the mouth of the volcano. The exact location of the pole is in the crater and Hatteras jumps into it. As the sequence was originally written, Hatteras perishes in the crater; Verne's editor, Jules Hetzel, suggested or rather required that Verne do a rewrite so that Hatteras survives but is driven insane by the intensity of the experience, and after return to England he is put into an asylum for the insane. Losing his ""soul"" in the cavern of the North Pole, Hatteras never speaks another word. He spends the remainder of his days walking the streets surrounding the asylum with his faithful dog Duke. While mute and deaf to the world Hatteras' walks are not without a direction. As indicated by the last line ""Captain Hatteras forever marches northward""."
948,The Duplicate,science," The main character, David, finds a device at the beach that can duplicate any living organism. After testing the device on his pet fish, David makes a clone of himself so that he could go on a date with his crush, Angela, while his clone attends his grandmother's birthday. His plan backfires because the Duplicate believes himself to be the original, and refuses to take orders. David ends up having to go to his grandmothers birthday after he loses a coin toss to the duplicate. David's real problems begin when the Duplicate uses the device to create a clone of himself. The new duplicate is a less-than-perfect reproduction, being a copy of a copy, and has goals and desires that differ from the original David. Eventually, the second duplicate turns on Angela and the original David, and he has to find a way to stop him. Later, he stumbles upon something that will change his life."
949,1635: The Tangled Web,science," The main setting takes place in Fulda in 1633 and follows in four interlinking stories which ties together near the end of the novel. The New United States decided to accept the return of Johann Bernhard Schenk von Schweinsberg as the Abbot of Fulda, but the Abbot will have to give up the title of prince. Moreover, he will not be allowed to collect tithes. The N.U.S. is now the secular authority in Fulda and will collect the taxes. The Abbot surprises Wes Jenkins - the administrator of Fulda - in his attempts to persuade the monks to abide by the new rules of his order. The local monks have been difficult over abiding by these rules. Even the import of Saint Gall monks hasn't won them over to the Tridentine doctrines. Dissatisfied Catholic conspirators in Bonn decide to unsettle affairs in Fulda, in which they initially arrange to post scurrilous flyers all over the town and then hiring Irish mercenaries led by Walter Leslie into abducting the Abbot and several N.U.S. administrators. The story focus on Martin Wackernagel. As a private courier, Martin delivers correspondence and small packages on a route stretching from Grantville to Gelnhausen along the imperial road. He also makes side trips to Barracktown and other locations near his route. Martin visits his mother now and then during his travels, but he is reluctant to face her. She keeps asking when he will be married. Then he takes Liesel Bodamer to Frankfurt to see her brother and his mother learns that he is married. “MAIL STOP” and “HAPPY WANDERER” tell the story of Martin Wackernagel, a private courier with a regular route. Martin maintains three separate households complete with wife and children unknown to his mother or his other “wives”. The woman he hopes to make his fourth wife is niece to Clara Bachmeierin, who married Wes Jenkins in the first story. The story examines the actions of the Mainz Committee of Correspondence. Bernard Eberhard - Captain Duke of the Swedish Army - is sent to Fulda by General Brahe to observe the interplay between NUS administrators and Abbot von Schweinsberg. Bernhard takes his brothers and his fellow CoC members with him to Fulda. He and his brothers began working for Major Derek Utt. Later, Utt plans an operation against the Irish soldiers who had abducted the Abbot. He sends Sergeant Helmut Herke and a small band of soldiers to determine the whereabouts of the colonels."
950,Backwards,science," The Red Dwarf crew arrive on htraE (a version of Earth in a universe where time is running backwards) in order to rescue Lister, who has returned to life and the age of 25 (following his death at age 61 the end of the previous novel, Better Than Life) as a result of the crew depositing his body on the time-reversed Earth 36 years earlier. After failing to meet Lister at the arranged rendezvous, Kryten learns from the television that Lister and Cat are associated with a murder that, due to the backwards flow of time, has not yet been committed. Lister soon arrives injured and in the custody of the police who, after a backwards fight which restores Lister to health, promptly unarrest him. Lister then takes off in backwards pursuit of one of the officers, explaining to the others that due to the nature of reverse time he is forced to follow the policeman (who if time were running forwards would be chasing him) until he is 'unspotted'. After a harrowing backwards car-chase (especially for Rimmer, who is unable to trust that no harm can befall him while time is running backwards) the policeman unsees them, and the crew retreat to the mountain area where they landed their ship, the Starbug. When they arrive, the crew examine Starbug to find most of the landing jets missing and the underside a mess of rust and badly-repaired damage. Unable to understand how it happened, but realising that on the backwards Earth they will need the landing jets to perform a take-off, they begin searching for the missing jets. While searching Kryten discovers the body of a hillbilly, who has been killed with a pickaxe. He panics when the corpse begins returning to life and removes the pickaxe from the man's chest. Once the man leaves, Kryten replays the incident 'forwards' and realises he was responsible for killing the man, a serious breach of his programming not to harm humans. Overwhelmed by guilt, Kryten shuts himself down. Upon learning what's happened, Lister realises that this was the murder for which he was imprisoned and is overwhelmed at finally learning that he was not only innocent but Kryten was the one responsible for his lengthy prison sentence. Despite this, Lister forgives him and tries to get him working again. Having only found one landing jet and that in terrible condition, and with Lister busy repairing Kryten, the crew's attempt at a reverse landing fails and they are trapped on htraE, having missed their window. Kryten is eventually fixed and he informs them they will have to wait 10 years for another opportunity to leave. Ten years pass and while Kryten and Rimmer are physically unaffected, the reverse time of backwards Earth means Lister and The Cat are now 15. During the wait, The Cat becomes a virgin during a bizarre sexual encounter with a female cousin of the 'un-murdered' hillbilly, and the crew busy themselves reburying the landing jet they found and 'un-repairing' the damage to Starbug, which begins to become less rusted but more damaged as the reverse landing window approaches. When the time arrives, the crew begin the reverse landing, sending the underpowered ship scraping backwards over a nearby mountain, a process which repairs much of the damage as several landing jets leap from the forest and reattach themselves. With the craft still out of control, they are unstruck by a missile from the American 'Star Wars' defence system, which had misidentified Starbug as a threat. With the remainder of the damage repaired, the crew leave for their own universe to rendezvous with Red Dwarf, but find it to be missing without a trace. Unknown to them, Holly, the Red Dwarf computer, has been reversing the process of his intelligence compression (performed in 'Better Than Life'), reducing his IQ to increase his operational lifespan. Unfortunately he takes the process too far, leaving him so stupid that he is unable to reverse the procedure or prevent Red Dwarf falling into the hands of the Agonoids, who force him to divulge information about the crew. Delighted to discover the one remaining human (Lister) is among them, the Agonoids begin to plan his demise, ripping Holly's components from the ship and jettisoning them before converting the Red Dwarf into a giant torture chamber. Discovering the remains of Holly, the Dwarf crew learn of the Agonoid threat, but with food and fuel supplies on Starbug severely low, and their power situation made even worse by the energy required to power up Holly's remains even for the brief time they spoke with him, they have no options available but to head for Red Dwarf regardless. At the same time, in a parallel universe, Ace Rimmer is preparing to test pilot a ship capable of crossing dimensions. The brave, heroic and charismatic Ace (a complete contrast to the neurotic Rimmer) arrives in the Red Dwarf timeline, materialising so close to Starbug as to severely damage both ships. Coming over to Starbug to help with repairs, Ace deduces it may be possible to rig up his ship to take the crew home. The Agonoids meanwhile are fighting for the right to torture and kill the last remaining human. Djuhn'Keep, the most intelligent Agonoid- having tricked and dismantled another for spare parts due to his own poor physical condition, only having been spared destruction so far due to his technical skills-, succeeds in jettisoning the others into space, but notices to his chagrin that one, Pizzak'Rapp, is headed directly for Starbug. Pizzak'Rapp attempts to break into the ship, but Ace sacrifices himself to send the Agonoid into space. Meanwhile, Djuhn'Keep arrives on Starbug, just as the oxygen supply fails. Horrified at losing the opportunity to torture Lister, Djuhn swiftly repairs the Oxygeneration unit. Kryten bazookoids the freshly repaired hull, causing a breech which sucks the Agonoid into space. The crew then learn that Djuhn has infected the ship's NaviComp with a computer virus (the Armageddon virus), causing them to be locked on course towards a nearby planet. Kryten decides to deliberately contract the virus to create an antidote, cryptically telling the crew to 'watch his dreams' before becoming unresponsive. Entering Kryten's dream-state through a VR machine, the crew find themselves in a replica of an old Western, with the various characters representing Kryten's characteristics ('Wyatt Memory', 'Billy Belief', etc.), being threatened by 'the Apocalypse boys', representing the virus. Kryten's consciousness is represented by the town lawman, Sheriff Carton, but the recent death of Wyatt Memory has cost Kryten his memory of what he is meant to be doing, although the crew are able to remind him of enough crucial details to finish his work. In order to buy Kryten time, the crew (Rimmer, Lister and The Cat), adopt personas from a VR Western game, Streets of Larado, and enter the game to assist him. With impeccable skills in fighting, knife-throwing and shooting provided by the VR machine, along with the knowledge that they can't be injured, they attempt to take on the Apocalypse boys to distract them from destroying the town or killing Sheriff Carton. However, the virus spreads to the VR machine the crew is connected to, sealing them into the artificial reality, removing their 'special skills' and allowing them to feel pain (Fortunately, Lister and Cat cannot be actually killed, although Rimmer's light bee is still potentially vulnerable to the virus). The crew clash with the Apocalypse boys regardless, and are subject to terrible injuries; Lister is even decapitated at one point. However, Kryten has enough time to complete the antidote program just as the Apocalypse boys gun him down. With the Apocalypse boys vapourised, Lister and The Cat return to reality to find the virus has killed both Kryten and Rimmer, destroying their mechanical components beyond repair. Since the VR machine only simulated their injuries, they find themselves unharmed. With the virus gone, they are able to control the ship, but since it has been accelerating for several hours there is not sufficient fuel left to avoid hitting the planet. Cramming into Ace's one-man ship Wildfire, which he had programmed for another jump, they cross dimensions- their only other option being to go back to an uninhabited and gutted Red Dwarf in this universe-, finding themselves in a timeline where Kryten and Rimmer are still alive, but their own counterparts died playing Better Than Life. As they dock with the alternate Red Dwarf, Lister reflects that while this isn't home, it might be close enough."
951,The Stars My Destination,science," Gully Foyle is the last remaining survivor of the Nomad, a merchant spaceship attacked in the war between the Inner Planets and the Outer Satellites and left drifting in space. He blindly waits for over six months for a rescuer. Seeing a spacecraft named Vorga, he sets off signal flares and rejoices thinking he will be saved. The Vorga however passes him by, leaving him to die. This callousness triggers a consuming rage in Foyle that transforms him. Vengeance becomes his mission. Improvising a repair to Nomads engine, Foyle sends the ship into the asteroid belt, where it is captured and incorporated into the Sargasso asteroid, a body built of the wreckage of other crashed ships. The inhabitants, who call themselves the Scientific People, tattoo a mask reminiscent of tā moko onto Foyle's face, with the word ""N♂MAD"" across his forehead, and marry Foyle to one of their women. Once he recovers from his ordeal he blasts out of the asteroid and is picked up by a ship from the Inner Planets. He does not know about his tattoo until one of the hands on the Navy ship gives him a mirror. Disguised as a disabled jaunter, among others who are undergoing therapy for head injuries that have affected their ability, Foyle plans an attack on the Vorga. Before he can do this, he is discovered by his instructor, Robin Wednesbury, a telesend (a kind of telepath who can send thoughts to others, but not receive them). He blackmails her into helping him, but his attack on the Vorga fails and he is captured by security forces working for Presteign, the aristocratic head of the huge Presteign corporation (owner of the Vorga). They grill Foyle about Nomad but he refuses to talk, and Foyle is thrown into the Gouffre Martel, a complex of underground caves in the Pyrenees. These are used as a prison, where the inmates live in total darkness, unable to form a picture of their location in order to jaunte. Foyle discovers that an acoustic quirk in the prison caves allows him to communicate with a fellow prisoner, a woman named Jisbella McQueen. They plot an escape, and McQueen arranges to have Foyle's tattoos removed, but the removal is not total. Although Foyle's face looks normal most of the time, when he becomes emotional or excited, the rush of blood to his face brings back the markings. Dagenham raids the clandestine hospital where the tattoos are being expunged, but Foyle and Jisbella escape in a ship and head out to the Sargasso Asteroid where the Scientific People live. There they recover the ship's vault from the Nomad. Besides a fortune in platinum, it contains something else. As the vault is ejected into their ship, Dagenham's men arrive and capture Jisbella, while Foyle, still obsessed, abandons her and jets away. With his new fortune, Foyle intends to find the Captain of the Vorga, avenging himself on a person rather than the ship itself. He also realizes that he must learn self-control, as the manifestation of his facial markings will give him away. Using the alias ""Geoffrey Fourmyle of Ceres,"" Foyle re-emerges as a rich dandy who charms high society with his antics, leading a troupe of freaks called the Four Mile Circus. Foyle has extensively altered himself physically and rigorously educated himself. He seeks out Robin Wednesbury, now socially blacklisted due to her family connections with the Outer Satellites, and offers her a chance to reunite with her family if she will use her one-way telepathy to help him navigate high society. She reluctantly agrees. During a society party, Foyle meets Jisbella McQueen again, now the lover of Saul Dagenham, the detective who interrogated Foyle just before his escape from Gouffre Martel. He learns the real reason Dagenham wanted the location of Nomad: the vault contained a sample of a substance called PyrE, which Foyle had himself found, but whose nature he was unable to determine. Then, during a sudden nuclear attack by the Outer Satellites, Foyle is smitten with Presteign's daughter Olivia, who has been watching the attack with her altered sense of sight: she sees only infrared light, but not the normal visible spectrum. Foyle grabs her with intent to ravish her before they die, only to find out that she has deceived him. She tells Foyle that to have her, he must be as cruel and ruthless as she is. Foyle continues his hunt for the Vorgas captain, only to find that each of the crew has been given a kind of implanted death-reflex to prevent mention of the ship. Throughout these episodes, Foyle is tormented by the appearance of the ""Burning Man"", an image of himself on fire. He finally closes in on the Captain, now a neo-Skoptsy (a person with all sensory nerves disabled) living on Mars, and therefore immune to conventional torture. Foyle kidnaps a telepath, interrogates the Captain in her crypt, and finds that Olivia Presteign was the commander of the Vorga – moments before commando soldiers storm the crypt. Foyle is rescued by Olivia. She had been transporting refugees for cash, only to murder them all by throwing them out into space. Her victims included Robin's family. She now sees a kindred spirit in Foyle, a freak who cannot live with ""normal"" humans, someone who can match her urges to destroy and conquer. Foyle, driven by rage, remorse, and self-pity, tries to give himself up to the authorities. He unwittingly turns himself over to a lawyer, Regis Sheffield, who turns out to be a double agent working for the Outer Satellites. They are interested in him because apparently Foyle holds the holy grail of jaunting: space travel. He had been planted as a decoy to draw Inner Planets ships towards an ambush, but had jaunted back into the wreck of the Nomad from hundreds of thousands of miles away. After Presteign learns of Olivia and Foyle being in cahoots, he suffers an epileptic seizure and babbles that PyrE is the most powerful explosive ever created. It is activated by telepathy, and so Robin (now having turned herself in to the authorities as well) is enlisted to activate it. The PyrE explodes, causing many incidents of destruction worldwide, but mostly at the HQ of the Fourmyle Circus in St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Foyle and Sheffield are holed up. The explosion partially collapses the building, killing Sheffield and trapping Foyle, unconscious but alive, over a pit of flame. In the wreckage and confusion of the detonation, suffering from synesthesia brought on by the effects of the explosion on his neurological implants, Foyle once again jauntes through space and time, revisiting key moments of his journey to this point. Some of the synesthesia is conveyed to the reader visually, through graphic renditions of the text created by the noted illustrator Jack Gaughan.Review by Tal Cohen, dated June 2, 1999. Retrieved 2011-08-20.American Buddha Online Library ""Special calligraphy and ideographs in Chapter 15 created by Jack Gaughan."" Accessed 2011-08-20. As The Burning Man, he appears to himself during the quest, as well as in other times and places, such as during his escape from the Gouffre Martel, when he distracts the guards enabling him and Jisbella to break out, and in space when Foyle was aboard the Nomad. Finally he jauntes to some unknown location in the future, where Robin telepathically gives him instructions (relayed from himself) for the exact route he needs – allowing for his confused senses – to escape the collapsing cathedral. On returning to the present, Foyle is pressured from all sides to surrender the rest of the PyrE, or to let mankind benefit from his ability to space-jaunte. To Foyle's ears, this sounds like a no-win situation: to unleash a deadly weapon on the human race, or to let humanity spread like a disease by space-jaunting. He finally leads them to the vault where he has the rest of the PyrE stored, but steals it and teleports across the globe, throwing one slug of PyrE after another into the crowds and insisting the people be told what it is. ""I've given life and death back to the people who do the living and dying,"" he says. He delivers one last speech, where he asks humanity to choose either to destroy itself or follow him into space. At this point he realizes the key to space-jaunting. It is faith: not the certainty of an answer, but the conviction that somewhere an answer exists. He then jauntes from one nearby star to another. In the course of his star-hopping, Foyle locates the answer for the future: new worlds suitable for colonization reachable only if he can share the gift of space-jaunting. Finally he comes to rest in the locker on Nomad, where he spent his time before being reborn the first time. The Scientific People now see him as a holy man, and take up vigil to await his revelation."
952,Not This August,science," By 1965, the United States and Canada have been at war with the Soviet Union and the Chinese People's Republic for three years. Both sides' atomic weapons are ineffective as anti-aircraft missiles shoot down any bombers or guided missiles, so ground forces have done most of the fighting. The Communist nations&mdash;whose armies greatly outnumber the North Americans&mdash;conquered Western Europe, invaded South America, and are moving to Texas. All American males are required to either perform agricultural work to feed the armed forces or be drafted into military service. Food, electricity, and gasoline are rationed, and New York City is reportedly under martial law. Billy Justin, a 37 years-old commercial artist and Korean War veteran, is working as a dairy farmer in Chiunga Center, New York when the radio announces that Soviet and Chinese forces have overrun the Canadian-American line at El Paso, Texas. The last American naval forces were destroyed three months earlier but the news had been kept secret. The Communist armies destroy in Los Alamos, New Mexico the incomplete Yankee Doodle, a satellite capable of dropping hydrogen bombs from orbit that are impossible to shoot down. The President surrenders to the Communists, who over the next several months divide the United States at the Mississippi River, and together form the North American People's Democratic Republic. Other than a military garrison, a formal disarmament, searches for fissionable material, and the establishment of production quotas for food, the surrender of the United States leaves Chiunga Center largely untouched. The Soviets kill the Communist fifth column members who had secretly aided the invasion to prevent them from organizing against the new government, but are otherwise relatively peaceful and amenable to the black market. A paraplegic comes to Justin's farm asking for work; he is General Hollerith, a veteran of the previous war. He and Justin join a conspiracy to finish the real satellite, a manned space station buried in Chiunga County that the United States had been building for 15 years. It requires parts and engineering knowledge to launch. MVD troops arrive, shoot the corrupt Soviet soldiers, and are much more cruel. They capture, to Justin's knowledge, all of the conspirators but himself and the general. Justin deduces that the contacts he needs to make are in Washington, Pennsylvania. With a traveling preacher, Sparhawk, Justin walks the hundreds of miles from Chiunga Center to Washington, benefiting from the Democratic Republic's policy of respecting the Americans' freedom of religion. At Washington Justin receives instructions from the nationwide resistance movement for an attack planned for Christmas Eve on Chiunga Center to liberate the satellite. Despite the Soviets' arrest and torture of a local farmer, they are ignorant of what ""Christmas Eve"", a mild oath they have heard sworn by various citizens, means until the battle begins. Coordinated by Hollerith, bridges around the area are blown up and nearby arsenals are sabotaged. The townspeople, many of whom are veterans, battle the Soviets as the space station launches. Hollerith's forces triumph, and the Americans transmit an ultimatum to the Soviets and Chinese: The satellite is armed and will destroy Moscow and Peiping in 24 hours if occupation soldiers do not leave American soil and free all prisoners of war. Hollerith offers Justin important positions in the new government and society, but he refuses them and kneels in prayer with Sparhawk, fearing the fulfillment of mutual assured destruction."
953,The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,science," John T. Unger, a teenager from the Mississippi River town of Hades, is sent to a private boarding school near Boston. During the summer he visits the homes of his classmates, the majority of whom are from wealthy families. In the middle of his sophomore year, a young man named Percy Washington is placed in Unger's dorm. He rarely speaks, and when he does, it is only to Unger. Percy invites Unger to his home for the summer, the location of which he only states as being ""in the West"". Unger accepts. During the train ride Percy boasts that his father is ""by far the richest man in the world"", and, when challenged by Unger, boasts that his father ""has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel."" Unger later learns that he is in Montana, in the ""only five square miles of land in the country that's never been surveyed,"" and Percy's boasts turn out to be true. Percy's ancestry traces back to both George Washington and Lord Baltimore. His grandfather, Fitz-Norman Culpepper Washington, decided to leave Virginia and head west with his slaves to enter the sheep and cattle ranching business. However, on his claim he discovered not only a diamond mine, but a mountain consisting of one solid diamond. Washington immediately finds himself in a quandary; the value of diamonds multiplied by the sheer number available for him to mine would make him the richest man ever to live, but, based on the economic law of supply, the sheer number of diamonds, if ever discovered by outsiders, would drive their value to near zero, thus making him a pauper. He immediately hatches a plan, whereby his brother reads to the African-American slaves a fabricated proclamation by General Nathan Bedford Forrest that the South had defeated the North in the American Civil War, thus keeping them in perpetual slavery. Washington travels the world selling only a few diamonds at a time, in order to avoid flooding the market, but enough to give him enormous wealth. The Washington family goes to appalling lengths in order to keep their diamond a secret. Airmen who stray into the area are shot down, captured, and kept in a dungeon. People who visit are killed and their parents told that they have succumbed to an illness while staying there. John falls in love with Percy's sister, Kismine, who accidentally lets slip that he too will be killed before he's allowed to leave. That night, aeroplanes launch an attack on the property, being told by an escaped Italian language teacher. Percy's father offers a bribe to God, ""the greatest diamond in the world"", but God refuses. John, Kismine, and Jasmine, another sister, escape while Percy and his mother and father choose to blow up the mountain rather than leave it in the hands of others. Penniless, the three survivors are left to ponder their fate."
954,Unveiling a Parallel,science," Jones and Merchant differed from some other feminist novelists of their generation (like Corbett and Lane, mentioned above) in that they made their fictional protagonist male instead of female. Their hero travels to the planet Mars in an ""aeroplane."" (That term had originated in France in 1879; this novel provided one of the earliest uses of the word in English.) The nameless traveller visits two different ""Marsian"" societies; in both, women possess greater equality with men. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality ""has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous."" Since Jones and Merchant were primarily interested in crafting a satiric commentary of their own society, they made their Mars and Martians strongly similar to Earth and human beings. The technological level is comparable on both planets; the Martians rely on Martian horses for transport. The narrator first lands in the Martian country of Paleveria, which is a republican and capitalist state, with clear class divisions; the people are vegetarians, and dress in loose robes. Their homes (at least among the aristocrats) are classical and palatial, with marble floors and statuary, silk hangings, and frescoes on the walls. Women in Paleveria can vote, hold political office, and run businesses; they propose marriage to men, have sex with male prostitutes, and even participate in wrestling matches. The traveller stays with an astronomer named Severnius, in the city of Thursia; he studies diligently and learns the language. Severnius acts as his guide to Paleverian society &mdash; as does the astronomer's beautiful sister Elodia. The narrator soon falls in love with Elodia, but is shocked by her liberated traits and habits. Elodia is a banker by profession; she drinks alcohol and imbibes a Martian drug, has affairs with men, and eventually proves to have had an illegitimate child. Severnius, for his part, asks the narrator about Earth, and the traveller is hard put to provide logical and acceptable explanations for many Earthly customs, mainly involving the distinctions between the sexes. The narrator is appalled by women participating in martial arts &mdash; and Elodia condemns this too; but she also condemns men's boxing matches, which the traveller accepts as natural. The narrator is profoundly shocked when he learns of Elodia's illegitimate daughter; he leaves for a visit to Caskia. This northern country has a more co-operative and egalitarian social and economic order than Paleveria has; its people cultivate intellectual, artistic, and spiritual qualities. Caskia approaches the status of a Martian Utopia. In the city of Lunismar, the traveller meets another Martian woman, Ariadne, who is more traditionally feminine by conservative Earthly standards. He considers her ""the highest and purest thing under heaven."" He also meets a venerated teacher called The Master; the two have a long spiritual conversation. The narrator returns to Earth. Unveiling a Parallel has been reprinted in several modern editions."
955,Doomsday Book,science," Kivrin Engle, a young historian specializing in medieval history, persuades her reluctant instructor, Professor James Dunworthy, and the authorities running the project to send her to Oxford in 1320, encouraged by Professor Gilchrist, who takes charge of the project in the absence of the department head to try to enhance his own prestige. This period had previously been thought too dangerous, because it stretched the time travel net 300 years earlier than it had been used before. She will be the first historian to visit the period, and is confident that she is well prepared for what she will encounter. Shortly after sending Kivrin to the 14th century, Badri Chaudhuri, the technician who set the time travel coordinates for Kivrin's trip, collapses suddenly, an early victim of a deadly new influenza epidemic which severely disrupts the university and eventually leads to the entire city being quarantined. Infected with the same influenza despite her enhanced immune system, Kivrin falls ill as she arrives in the past. She awakens after several days of fever and delirium at a nearby manor, whose residents have nursed her. Unfortunately, the move has caused her to lose track of where the ""drop point"" is; in order to return home, she must return to the exact location where she arrived when the gateway opens at a prearranged time. The narrative switches between Kivrin in the fourteenth century and 2054/2055 Oxford during the influenza epidemic. Kivrin discovers many inconsistencies in what she ""knows"" about the time: the Middle English she learned is different from the local dialect, her maps are useless, her clothing is too fine, and she is far too clean. She can also read and write, skills unusual even for the educated men of the time and rare among women. As nuns are the only women commonly possessing these skills, some family members conclude Kivrin has fled her convent and plan to return her to the nearest convent. She fakes amnesia, afraid the background story she originally planned out would have similar inconsistencies, and takes up a job as a companion for two girls in the manor as she tries to find the ""drop point"". In Oxford, fears grow that the virus causing the epidemic had been transmitted from the past via the time travel net, despite its scientific impossibility. This causes the acting head of the university, Mr. Gilchrist, to order the net closed, effectively stranding Kivrin in the past, even as Mr. Dunworthy tries frantically to reverse the decision. At parallel points in their respective narratives, Kivrin and Mr. Dunworthy realize that she has been sent to England at the wrong time as a result of the technician's illness: she has arrived during the Black Death pandemic in England in 1348, more than 20 years later than her intended arrival. The Black Death cuts a swathe through the Middle Ages just as the influenza overwhelms the medical staff of the 21st century. Many who could have helped Mr. Dunworthy fall ill and die, including his good friend Doctor Mary Ahrens, who dies even as she tries to save the other influenza victims. Mr. Dunworthy himself is stricken by the disease. In the fourteenth century, two weeks after Kivrin's arrival, a monk infected with the plague comes to the village. Within days, many residents of the village fall ill. Kivrin tries to care for the victims, but, lacking modern medicines, she can do little to ease their suffering. The arranged date for retrieval passes with neither side able to make it. At last, in desperation, Mr. Dunworthy arranges with Badri to send himself back in time to rescue Kivrin. In the Middle Ages, Kivrin can only watch while all the people she has come to know die from the Black Death, the last being Father Roche, the priest who found her when she was sick and brought her to the manor. Father Roche insisted on staying with his parishioners, despite Kivrin's attempts to arrange an escape, as he feels it his duty to care for them although it may mean his own death. As Roche lies dying in the chapel, he reveals that he was near the drop site when Kivrin came through, and misinterpreted the circumstances of her arrival (shimmering light, condensation, a young woman appearing out of thin air) as God delivering an angel to help during the mysterious illness sweeping through England. He dies still believing that she is God's messenger to him and his congregation, while Kivrin comes to appreciate his selfless devotion to his work and to God. As she sits in the graveyard, unable to dig a grave or finish tolling the peal for his death, her rescuers, Mr. Dunworthy and Colin (the adventurous great-nephew of Doctor Mary Ahrens), arrive from the future (having found a horse and located her by the sound of the bell). They barely recognize her: her hair is cropped short (from when she was sick with the flu), she is wearing a boy's jerkin, and she is covered in dirt and blood from tending to the sick and dying. The three return to 21st-century England shortly after New Year's Day."
956,O-zone,science," Missouri is a nuclear wasteland after leakage of stored radioactive waste, off limits to all but the very rich. Eight of them, referred to as 'Owners', visit this O-Zone as their personal playground. Some of them come to the disturbing realizations that the life-forms outside of their walled in cities, assumed to be just 'things', seem as human as the Owners themselves."
957,RedRobe,science," The book opens in Mexico City in the future, where sometime assassin Axl Borja is about to try to make one last hit, which goes drastically wrong when he takes three rounds to do the job. Losing his gun in the process, he is caught by the police, and throws himself on the mercy of the Cardinal Santo Duque - his former boss, a minister of the Vatican, and someone given to unusual methods of revenge. The Cardinal agrees to grant clemency if Axl returns to his service, an offer he can't refuse but one with serious consequences. Axl's mission is to track down the late Pope Joan (specifically, a data-holding bracelet of hers), who drained the Vatican's immense assets to buy aid and other kinds of support for the Third World before being apparently dismembered by a horde of the people she helped save. The Cardinal is interested in tracking down what remains of his organisation's money, but there's one problem; the only lead is in space, on the refugee-only space habitat Samsara. As a man responsible for much of the ringworld's population, the Cardinal can't send an agent officially, so he tortures and seriously injures Axl - fitting a ceramic neural-interface port into his head, removing both his eyes, and running him through a set of SQUID probes designed to pillage what's left of his memories. Axl's gun, a mostly-sentient Colt armed with explosive flechettes, incendiary phosphorus rounds, and all-purpose ceramic smart rounds and capable of full battlefield analysis and giving tactical advice when needed, has since changed hands a number of times, from a pimp to a gutter-boy to a voodoo priest to a cleric to the Cardinal himself. With his assistance its AI is uploaded to the networks and thus to Samsara, where it has to earn the favour of resident AI Tsongkhapa if it can help Axl in his mission. One of the most interesting features of the book is its soundtrack. Axl has a Korg music synthesiser implanted in his brain, capable of generating pretty much any kind of music, precisely tuned to what he experiences; it will create heavy basslines and drum 'n' bass music to go with a gunfight, for instance, while going completely silent in moments of great suspense and working out signature riffs for people Axl meets. This device, inactive at the start of the book, is fixed about halfway through and is used to add a sense of pacing to the action scenes towards the novel's end. Another recurring theme is battlefield medicine, reminiscent of the use of superglue in the Vietnam War. Axl's eyesockets are filled, first by a ""plug-and-play"" Red Cross-issue eye, so cheap it only works in black and white and very low-res; and later by a more complex eyeball capable of night-vision and with a digital counter in the corner to remind him of his deadline."
958,To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh,science," The book begins with Khan, Lt. Marla McGivers, and most of the other supermen and women that had been with him on the SS Botany Bay arriving on the planet Ceti Alpha V. Khan is given supplies and a phaser and begins to build a colony on the planet. Khan is challenged several times by his fellow supermen, but remains in control for the most part. Some time after arriving, the next planet in the Ceti Alpha system, Ceti Alpha VI, explodes and disrupts the orbit of Ceti Alpha V. This causes major climate changes and loss of plant and animal life. Khan and the supermen take refuge underground and Khan waits for Kirk to arrive and rescue him and his followers from the hell that has become of the planet. After more time passes, several supermen do not wish to follow Khan any longer and try to assassinate Khan by placing a Ceti Eel in Marla McGivers' ear. This bizarre creature causes her to do whatever is commanded of her, and the men order her to kill Khan. Marla's love for Khan allows her to resist enough to instead kill herself. The eel emerges from her ear after her death and Khan sees the reason why she died. After the failed assassination, the rebels leave the underground and form a new faction on the planet, taking control of the vital hot springs that provide the only water on the planet. Khan then battles them, losing many men and women, but winning in the end. At the end of the novel a few years later, Khan sees two men in space suits materialize on the planet's surface. Throughout the novel, Khan blames his hardships on James Kirk for stranding him on the planet and never checking on him again."
959,Have Space Suit-Will Travel,science," Clifford ""Kip"" Russell, a bright high school senior with an eccentric father, enters an advertising jingle writing contest, hoping to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Moon. He instead gets an obsolete, but genuine, used space suit. Though a few make fun of him, with the help of sympathetic townspeople, and using his own ingenuity and determination, Kip puts the suit (which he dubs ""Oscar"") back into working condition. Kip reluctantly decides to return his space suit for a cash prize to help pay for college, but puts it on for one last walk. As he idly broadcasts on his shortwave radio, someone identifying herself as ""Peewee"" answers with a Mayday signal. He helps her home in on his location, and is shocked when a flying saucer lands practically on top of him. A young girl and an alien being (the ""Mother Thing"") debark, but all three are quickly captured and taken to the Moon. Their alien kidnapper is nicknamed ""Wormface"" by Kip. Their captors are horrible-looking, vaguely anthropomorphic creatures who contemptuously refer to all others as ""animals"". Wormface has two human flunkies who assisted him in initially capturing the Mother Thing and Peewee (Patricia Wynant Reisfeld), a preteen genius and the daughter of an eminent scientist. The Mother Thing speaks in what sounds to Kip like birdsong, with a few musical notations in the text giving a flavor of her language. However, Kip and Peewee have no trouble understanding her. Kip, Peewee, and the Mother Thing try to escape to the human lunar base by hiking cross-country, but they are recaptured and taken to a base on Pluto. Kip is thrown into a cell, later to be joined by the two human traitors, who have apparently outlived their usefulness. Before they later disappear, one mentions to Kip that his former employers eat humans. The Mother Thing, meanwhile, makes herself useful to their captors by constructing advanced devices for them. In the process, she manages to steal enough parts to assemble a bomb and a transmitter. The bomb takes care of the most of the Wormfaces, but the Mother Thing freezes solid when she tries to set up the transmitter outside without a spacesuit. Kip nearly freezes to death himself while activating the distress beacon, but help arrives almost instantly. It turns out that the Mother Thing is far hardier than Kip had suspected, and was not in danger. Kip, however, suffers severe frostbite and is kept in a state of cryopreservation while the Mother Thing's people figure out how to fully heal him. Kip and Peewee are transported to Vega 5, the Mother Thing's home planet. While Kip recuperates, ""Prof Joe"", a ""professor thing"", learns about Earth from Peewee and Kip. Once Kip is well, he, Peewee, and the Mother Thing travel to a planet in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, to face an intergalactic tribunal composed of many species which have banded together, which decides whether new races pose a danger. The Wormfaces are put on trial first. They promise to annihilate all other species, and are judged to be dangerous. Their planet is rotated out of three-dimensional space without their star, most likely to freeze. Then it is humanity's turn, as represented by Peewee, Kip, Iunio (a Roman centurion), and a Neanderthal man. The Neanderthal is rejected as being of another species. Iunio proves belligerent, but brave. Peewee's and Kip's secretly recorded remarks are then admitted into evidence. In humanity's defense, Kip makes a stirring speech. The Mother Thing and a representative of another race argue that the short-lived species are essentially children who should be granted more time to learn and grow. It is decided to re-evaluate humanity after ""a dozen half-lives of radium"". (The half–life of radium-226 is 1601 years.) Kip and Peewee are returned to Earth with devices and equations provided by the Vegans. Kip passes the information along to Professor Reisfeld, Peewee's father and a world-renowned synthesist (a generalist who makes sense of what more specialized scientists discover). After listening to Kip and Peewee's story, Reisfeld arranges a full scholarship for Kip at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Kip wants to study engineering and spacesuit design."
960,The Planet of Youth,science, The novel concerns the first real estate boom on the planet Venus.
961,The Shadow of the Torturer,science," Severian, an apprentice in the torturers' guild, barely survives a swim in the River Gyoll. On his way back to the Citadel Severian and several other apprentices sneak into a necropolis where Severian first encounters Vodalus, the legendary revolutionary. Vodalus, along with two others, including a woman named Thea, are robbing a grave. Vodalus and his companions are confronted by volunteer guards. Severian saves Vodalus's life, earning his trust and the reward of a single ""gold"" coin. Shortly after Severian is elevated to journeyman he encounters and falls in love with Thecla, a beautiful aristocratic prisoner. Thecla's crime is never made clear, though it is ultimately implied that she is imprisoned for political reasons. Thecla's sister is Thea, Vodalus's lover, and the Autarch (ruler of the Commonwealth) wishes to use Thecla to capture Vodalus. When finally Thecla is put to torture, Severian takes pity on her and helps her commit suicide, by smuggling a knife into her cell, thus breaking his oath to the guild. Though Severian expects to be tortured and executed, instead the head of the guild is uncharacteristically forgiving and dispatches Severian to Thrax, a distant city which has need of an executioner. Master Palaemon gives Severian a letter of introduction to the archon of the city and Terminus Est, a magnificent executioner's sword. He departs the guild headquarters, traveling through the decaying city of Nessus. He finally comes upon an inn, where he forces the innkeeper to take him in despite being full and is asked to share a room with other boarders. This is where he first meets Baldanders and Dr. Talos, travelling as mountebanks, who invite Severian to join them in a play to be performed the same day. During breakfast, Dr. Talos manages to recruit the waitress for his play and they set out into the streets. Not intending to participate, Severian parts with the group and stops at a rag shop to purchase a mantle to hide his fuligin cloak (the uniform of his guild, which inspires terror in common folk). The shop is owned by a twin brother and sister, and the brother immediately takes interest in Terminus Est. Severian refuses to sell the sword, shortly after which a masked and armoured hipparch enters the shop and challenges Severian to a duel. Severian is forced to accept, and he departs with the sister, Agia, to secure an avern, a deadly plant that is used for dueling. While on their way, urged by Agia's bet to a passing fiacre, their driver crashes into and destroys the altar of a religious order, where Agia is accused of stealing a precious artifact. After Agia is searched and released, they continue their journey to the Botanic Gardens, a large landmark of Nessus created by the mysterious Father Inire, right hand to the Autarch. Inside the gardens, Severian falls into a lake used to inter the dead, and while pulling himself out he finds a young woman named Dorcas to have come up from the lake as well. Dazed and confused, the woman follows Severian and Agia. Severian secures the avern and the group proceeds to an inn near the dueling grounds. While eating dinner, Severian receives a mysterious note warning about one of the women. After dinner, Severian meets with his challenger, and though stabbed by the avern he miraculously survives and finds that his challenger was the male owner of the rag shop, Agia's brother. When Severian wakes again, he finds himself to be in a lazaret. After finding Dorcas and identifying himself, he is requested to perform an execution as a carnifex. The prisoner turns out to be his challenger, Agia's brother, whom he executes. Severian and Dorcas return to their travels and while searching his belongings, Severian finds the Claw of the Conciliator. Apparently Agia stole the Claw from the altar they destroyed and placed it in Severian's belongings knowing that she would be searched. Eventually Severian and Dorcas encounter Dr. Talos and Baldanders, who are almost ready to perform the play they had invited Severian to that morning. Severian assists in the play, and the next day the group sets out toward the great gate leading out of Nessus. When they are at the gate, there is suddenly a commotion and the narration abruptly ends."
962,The Bladerunner,science," The novel's protagonist is Billy Gimp, a man with a club foot who runs ""blades"" for Doc (Doctor John Long) as part of an illegal black market for medical services. The setting is a society where free, comprehensive medical treatment is available for anyone so long as they qualify for treatment under the Eugenics Laws. Preconditions for medical care include sterilization, and no legitimate medical care is available for anyone who does not qualify or does not wish to undergo the sterilization procedure (including children over the age of five). These conditions have created illegal medical services in which bladerunners supply black market medical supplies for underground practitioners, who generally go out at night to see patients and perform surgery. As an epidemic breaks out among the underclass, Billy must save the city from the plague hitting the rest of the city as well."
963,Way Station,science," Enoch Wallace, an American Civil War veteran, is chosen by an alien called Ulysses to administer a way station for interplanetary travel. Wallace is the only human being who knows of the existence of these aliens, until almost a hundred years later, when the US government becomes aware of and suspicious about his failure to age or die. Factions in the galactic federation want to close off development of Earth's entire arm of the galaxy to concentrate resources elsewhere, and the government's stealing the body of a dead alien gives them impetus to push forward, while the loss of an artifact giving contact with the spirit of the universe causes galactic civilization to begin to fray. The novel has a number of seemingly disconnected subplots that are not resolved until the conclusion of the book. One such subplot is related to the fact that the government is very interested in Enoch and spies on him for an indeterminate time. Enoch's closest neighbors are an asocial and coarse hillbilly family whose daughter is a deaf mute. She heals warts, birds and butterflies and is the total antithesis of her clan. By adopting an alien math, Enoch is able to compute that the world will go to war and eventual nuclear suicide. Strangely, Enoch has a gun he never uses except in an elaborate hunting simulation. Enoch's ghostly support system, which he created years ago, collapses on him during the course of the novel. Finally, Enoch is left with the choice of allowing the Earth to destroy itself in war or call down a galaxy sponsored ""dumbing down"" that would last for generations but avert the looming war."
964,Murder in Millennium VI,science," Set 6,000 years in the future, the novel concerns the murder of the head of a matriarchal society. Victor Mitchel and his parents and sister struggle to replace her and find the killer before the society collapses. The novel is unique in that anything which would have been known to the people of its time was not explained."
965,The Privateer,science," Fresh from the events of The Rising Commander Peter Raeder is called to a board of inquiry for certain questionable actions during the first missions of the Invincible. When the board seems to be about to send Raeder to a desk job on Earth, a special ops Marine group catches Raeder's interest. In exchange for running a high-risk high-reward undercover assignment, the Marine General will make sure that Raeder regains his position on the Invincible. With little other choice if he wishes to remain in space service, Raeder agrees. Going undercover with other Commonwealth military personnel as a pirate group, Raeder's assignment is to uncover an antihydrogen smuggling ring and gather vital intelligence on the Mollies and their Fibian allies. After successfully completing the assignment, Raeder is re-assigned to the Invincible, though he will have to wait with the rest of the crew as during his assignment the fast carrier was heavily damaged and will require extensive repairs."
966,Red Star,science," The novel begins with an explanation of Leonid's few relationships within the revolutionary movement and the beginning of his relationship with Menni, a Martian in disguise. Soon after they become friends, Menni invites Leonid to go back home with him to Mars. The purpose of this visit would be to teach his own society to Martians and to understand and experience theirs. The trip is accomplished by the ""etheroneph"", a nuclear photonic rocket. On their way there, Leonid is exposed gradually to Martians and their society. With the help of Menni and Netti, his doctor, Leonid is able to speak the Martian language by the time they arrive. At this point in the novel, Bogdanov details some of the aspects of the socialist Martian society as seen through Leonid’s eyes. Children’s colonies, factories, and housing are a few among the many aspects of this society that Bogdanov describes. Eventually, the unfamiliarity of Mars and the stress of his mission there exhaust Leonid to the point of being delusional. Just in time, Netti is alerted to his condition and treats him for his severe illness. While Leonid is recovering, he finds out, contrary to his original assumption, that Netti is female. His previous feelings for her are then expressed and they fall in love with one another. It is soon after this period that both Netti and Menni are called away for a mining expedition to Venus. While they are away, Leonid develops a relationship with Enno, another fellow shipmate from his arrival to the planet. While discovering many things about the nature of personal relationships on Mars, Leonid uncovers frightening information. He discovers that the council in charge of the Venus expedition was vying Earth’s colonization as a possibility. The argument presented, by Sterni (yet another shipmate), was that this was the only feasible solution and that it would only be made possible if Earth’s population was destroyed. As Leonid’s emotional state was not fully recovered from his exhaustion, this news sent him into a state of psychosis. His resolution is to murder Sterni, which he proceeds to do. After this occurrence, Leonid is sent back to Earth to recover from his extreme apathy. He does so with the aid of Dr. Werner, an old comrade. Once he is able, Leonid rejoins the revolutionary fight, but this time with a mature perspective. The novel ends with a letter from Dr. Werner to Mirsky (a character assumed to be Plekhanov). In this letter, Leonid’s reunion with Netti is described and they are supposed to have returned to Mars together."
967,Jumper: Griffin's Story,science," The novel focuses on the character Griffin which was created by screenwriter David Goyer specifically for the film. Because Griffin had not appeared in Gould's two prior Jumper novels (dealing with David Rice and Millie Harrison), Gould developed Jumper: Griffin's Story as a backstory of the character's early childhood before the film. When writing the novel, Gould had to work closely with a producer of the film to ensure that the story did not conflict with the film's premise."
968,Teranesia,science," The novel explores an unusual connection between molecular genetics and quantum computing, with criticism of some of what it considers the excesses of postmodernism and feminism. However, most of the novel focuses on future south-east Asian politics (Egan criticizes Indonesian imperialism and Australian treatment of refugees), repressed childhood guilt, evolutionary biology and academic life. As often in Egan's books, there is some focus on sexuality: this time the lead character is gay, rather than one of the more exotic alternatives in other novels."
969,Ha'penny,science," The book is a mystery thriller set inside an alternate history in which the United Kingdom made peace with Adolf Hitler in 1941. It's 1949 and Britain has slid into fascist dictatorship. When a bomb explodes in a London suburb, Scotland Yard Inspector Peter Carmichael is assigned to the case. He finds a web of conspiracy and a plot to murder both Britain's new Prime Minister and Adolf Hitler, during the latter's Friendship visit to London. Carmichael's professional ethics became compromised during a previous case involving the aristocratic and political establishment, which may affect his ability to handle the case at hand. Life is also complicated for Viola Lark, who abandoned the upper class environment of her family and lost touch with her five very different sisters (inspired by the real-life Mitford sisters) when she chose to become an actress. Viola is given the role of a lifetime and hard decisions to make, as she becomes caught up in family politics. The first ""Small Change"" novel, Farthing, was released in August 2006 by Tor Books. A third novel in the series, Half a Crown, came out in September 2008, also from Tor."
970,Bimbos of the Death Sun,science," The novel takes place at Rubicon, a fictional science fiction convention taking place in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, and at which the guests of honor are Appin Dungannon, a fantasy author noted for his books about hero Tratyn Runewind, and Dr. James O. Mega, an electrical engineering professor at Virginia Tech, who, under the pen name Jay Omega, has written one novel. That novel, a hard science fiction book about a space station crew whose female members are affected by radiation from a star (their intellect is diminished), was retitled ""Bimbos of the Death Sun"" and given an R-rated cover by the publisher. Mega is somewhat lost in the world of hardcore SF and fantasy fans at the con, but his companion Marion, a professor of English literature, is more familiar with things, and she guides him through it. They have troubles, such as being asked to judge a fiction contest. All seems to be going somewhat well for Mega, but his co-Guest of Honor, Dungannon, is making it a point to offend everyone at the con. It is hardly surprising when he is killed, a bullet through his heart. The fans react by buying up everything with his signature in the huckster room. The police are equally at sea. Everyone had a motive to kill Dungannon, but no one had the opportunity, so it seems. Mega corrals the suspects into a role-playing game and works out a confession ala Hamlet. Also, a lot of science fiction fans sing folk tunes, such as ""The Skye Boat song."""
971,The Poison Belt,science," Challenger sends telegrams asking his three companions from The Lost World - Edward Malone, Lord John Roxton, and Professor Summerlee - to join him at his home outside of London. The cryptic telegrams also instruct each of them to bring a tank of oxygen. When they arrive they are ushered into a sealed room, along with Challenger and his wife. In the course of his research, Challenger has predicted that the Earth is about to come into contact with a belt of poisonous ether, which will, based on its effect on the people of Sumatra earlier in the day, cause the end of humanity. Challenger seals them in the room with the cylinders of oxygen, which he (correctly) believes will counter the effect of the ether. The sealing is not to keep the ether out - it permeates everything - but ""to keep the oxygen in"". The five of them wait out the Earth's passage through the band as they watch the world outside die, and machines run amok. (In an interesting display of Victorian values - or, at least, Doyle's take on them - Challenger does not even consider including his servants; they are left outside the room to die, and continue to perform their duties until the ether overtakes them.) Finally, the last of their oxygen cylinders runs dry, and they open a window, ready to face death. To their surprise, they do not die, and they wander through the dead countryside in Challenger's car, eventually making it to London. They encounter only one survivor, who is an elderly, bed-ridden woman prescribed oxygen for her health. After going to London and back, they make plans for the fate of the world at their hands—when suddenly, people start to wake up again. The effect of the ether turns out to be temporary, and the world wakes up again after a little over a day in a coma, with no knowledge that they have lost any time at all. Eventually Challenger and his companions manage to convince the world what happened - a task made easier by the tremendous amount of death and destruction caused by runaway machines and fires that took place while the world was asleep - and humanity is shocked into placing a higher value on life, and how well we spend what little time we are given."
972,Camp Concentration,science," Poet, lapsed Catholic and conscientious objector Louis Sacchetti is sent to a secret military installation called Camp Archimedes, where military prisoners are injected with a form of syphilis intended to make them geniuses (hence the punning reference to ""concentration"" in the novel's title). By breaking down rigid categories in the mind (according to a definition of genius put forward by Arthur Koestler), the disease makes the thought process both faster and more flexible; it also causes physical breakdown and, within nine months, death. The book is told in the form of Sacchetti's diary, and includes literary references to the story of Faust (at one point the prisoners stage Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Sacchetti's friendship with ringleader Mordecai Washington parallels Faust's with Mephistopheles). It only becomes clear that Sacchetti himself has syphilis as his diary entries refer to his increasingly poor health, and become progressively more florid, until almost descending into insanity. After a test run on the prisoners, a megalomaniac nuclear physicist has himself injected with the disease, joins Camp Archimedes with his team of student helpers, and sets about trying to end the human race. The prisoners in the book appear to be fascinated by alchemy, which they used as an elaborate cover for their escape plans. Sacchetti, who is obese, has a number of ironic visions involving other obese historical and intellectual figures, such as Thomas Aquinas. The novel's ending may owe something to the episode ""Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling"" from the television series The Prisoner, for which Disch wrote a spinoff novel."
973,Slaughterhouse-Five,science," Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim is a disoriented, fatalistic, and ill-trained American soldier. He does not like wars and is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in a disused slaughterhouse (although there are animal carcasses hanging in the underground shelter) in Dresden. Their building is known as ""Slaughterhouse number 5."" During the bombing, the POWs and German guards alike hide in a deep cellar. Because of their safe hiding place, they are some of the few survivors of the city-destroying firestorm. Billy has become ""unstuck in time"" and experiences past and future events out of sequence and repetitively, following a nonlinear narrative. He is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They exhibit him in a zoo with B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack as his mate. The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives. They say they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the veracity of their theories. As Billy travels, or believes he travels, forward and backward in time, he relives occasions of his life, both real and fantasy. He spends time on Tralfamadore, in Dresden during the war, walking in deep snow before his German capture, in his mundane post-war married life in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s, and in the moment of his murder by a petty thief named Paul Lazzaro. Billy's death is the consequence of a string of events. Before the Germans capture Billy, he meets Roland Weary, a jingoist character and bully, just out of childhood like Billy, who constantly chastises him for his lack of enthusiasm for war. When captured, the Germans confiscate everything Weary has, including his boots, giving him hinged, wooden clogs to wear; Weary eventually dies of gangrene caused by the clogs. While dying in a railcar full of POWs, Weary manages to convince another soldier, Paul Lazzaro, that Billy is to blame. Lazzaro vows to avenge Weary's death by killing Billy, because revenge is ""the sweetest thing in life."" Lazzaro later shoots and kills Billy with a laser gun after his speech on flying saucers and the true nature of time before a large audience in Chicago, in a balkanized United States on February 13, 1976 (the future at the time of the book's writing)."
974,Voyage from Yesteryear,science," The story begins in the early 21st century, just as an as-of-yet unnamed automated space probe is about to be sent from Earth to find habitable exoplanets. When it appears that an apocalyptic conflict is approaching, the probe's mission is changed from one of exploration to one of extrasolar space colonization, in the hope of preserving human civilization. As the technology does not yet exist to successfully convert the probe into a generation or sleeper ship, it is instead modified for embryo space colonization. The probe's data banks are programmed with the DNA sequences of several hundred humans, and as much of humanity's knowledge as possible. It is equipped with artificial wombs capable of using this data to gestate human babies. Finally, it is crewed with robots programmed not only to maintain the ship, but also raise the babies to adulthood. To signify its new purpose, the probe is dubbed the Kuan-Yin, the bodhisattva of childbirth. Soon after the probe is launched, a major global war breaks out, but it is not as devastating as anticipated. It only takes several decades for the survivors to rebuild civilization, but as a repressive, authoritarian shadow of its former self. This is the civilization that receives a message from Alpha Centauri, signaling the success of the Kuan-Yins mission. An Earth-like planet has been found in the system, and the Kuan-Yin has successfully raised its first generation of human children. They have dubbed the planet Chiron, after the mythological centaur. On Earth, the old international hostilities which led to war are still evident, and so the three major power blocs — North America, Asia, and Europe — each send a generation ship to Alpha Centauri to reclaim the colony there. The starship from North America, the Mayflower II, arrives first after a 20-year voyage, however its attempts to open a political dialogue with the inhabitants of Chiron fails when it becomes apparent that Chironian society has developed as an adhocracy. Since the availability of power from fusion reactors and cheap automated labor has enabled them to develop a post-scarcity economy, they do not use money as a means of exchange, nor do they recognize material possessions as symbols of status. Instead, competence and talent are considered symbolic of one's social standing &ndash; resources that cannot be counterfeited or hoarded, and must be put to use if they are to be acknowledged. As a result, the competitive drive that fuels capitalist financial systems has filled the colony with the products of decades of incredible artistic and technical talent, and there are no widespread hierarchies. No one person or group of people can know everything, so no one person or group of people is expected to speak for all. They have no centralized authorities; some would say they have no government at all. The government of the Mayflower II utilizes various methods used throughout human history in its attempts to exert control over the Chironians; bureaucratic legislature, a capitalist financial system, and proselytizing religion. However, they are frustrated by failure at every turn: as a people that have never been exposed to Earth's coercive authorities, the Chironians lack the social conditioning to even comprehend the attempts at subversion. Soon many of the crew from the Mayflower II are abandoning their increasingly futile positions in the invading hierarchy in favor of adopting the more rewarding Chironian lifestyle. Amid widespread speculation that a violent conflict will soon break out, some of the people who arrived on the Mayflower II realize that the Chironians do not intend to harm the majority of the ship's occupants, but rather use a form of satyagraha (Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent noncompliance) to integrate the peaceful travelers into their society and isolate the small number who present a real threat. It is an outstanding success. Eventually a military coup is staged aboard the Mayflower II, and the leader of the coup launches the Mayflower II’s ""battle module"", an independently-functioning, heavily-armed warship, and threatens to attack the Chironian population unless they submit to his authority. The Chironian's enemies isolated at last, he and his fellow authoritarians are killed when a direct attack with a high-energy antimatter particle beam weapon destroys the battle module. The remaining members of the Mayflower II’s government vote to dissolve their government and absorb peacefully into Chironian society. In the week after the dissolution of Mayflower II’s government, the laser communications beam from Earth which has kept the Mayflower II apprised of events back home (with a 4.5 year-delay as the information travels at light speed) is lost as the result of yet another catastrophic war. The story skips forward five years and ends with the Chironians — who have by now assimilated not only the North Americans but also the crews of the Asian and European starships — recommissioning the refitted Mayflower II (renamed as the Henry B. Congreve after the man behind the Kuan-Yin’s mission) which will return to Earth to rebuild it (the journey is estimated to take about 8 years following the installation of an antimatter drive which the Chironians have perfected), thus fulfilling the Kuan-Yins mission of preserving human civilization."
975,Exodus,science," In the year 2100, 15-year-old Mara lives on the island of Wing, with fellow villagers. The melting ice cap has caused the shoreline to rise and they are now almost out of land. Through her cyberwizz, a laptop-like gadget, she navigates through information to find where they can go. She meets a mysterious creature called Fox, who demands to know where she is. Mara is excited because beyond him she can see a new world, but she loses connection before she can learn more. Mara tells the villagers about New Mungo, a place where they can go which is a new land raised high above sea level. They eventually leave in fishing boats, but are forced to leave behind the elder generation who couldn't part from their home. Once they reach New Mungo, they realize it is actually not a welcoming place; a huge outer wall surrounds the whole sky-city. They then are forced to join a refugee boat camp and some of them die there, including Mara's best friend Gail. The Sky Police, from New Mungo, occasionally take the strong up to the city in a procedure called Pickings, but Mara has a bad feeling about this. Mara learns all her family drowned in the perilous journey to New Mungo, and attempts to commit suicide. When she realizes her will to live is too strong, Mara manages, with the help of an urchin she names Wing (after her drowned island), to enter the city gates. There she meets the people of the Netherworld (a strange twilight place in the shadow of the sky city, with the roofs of the drowned city of Glasgow jutting above the sea), who are known as the treenesters. They immediately recognise her as their messiah, the Face in the Stone, from an old prophecy called the Stone Telling. She lives with them for some time, exploring and helping them to survive. One day, while she is with her friend Gorbals (a treenester) in the forbidden university, Gorbals and Wing are taken by the Sky Police, along with many sea urchins (a wild breed of children without language, but hairy bodies and webbed hands) are slaughtered. Determined to save her friends, she takes the uniform of a police woman that the police accidentally killed in the massacre and sneaks up to the city. She is overwhelmed by its superficial beauty and shallow entertainments. At first, she needed some help with searching. Doll, a computer worker, helps her with the computers. While searching through the Noos, a virtual, evoluted version of the world wide web, she meets Fox. She discovers it is David, the quiet, hard-working grandson of Caledon, creator of the Sky City and the one who allowed many people to drown if they couldn't pass an intelligence test to allow them entrance to the new world. Together, they organize an escape plan that involves David crashing the Noos with a 20th century virus, allowing Mara to free the slaves and then leave the city unnoticed. The only catch is that David would not be able to leave with Mara, with whom he has fallen in love, because he must stay to begin a rebellion against the unfair New World. While executing her plan, Mara fatally stabs Tony Rex, a man she believes is a spy, with an ancient bone dagger, and then rescues Gorbals, Wing and all the people chosen in the Pickings, who have become slaves. They slide down air vents into the Netherworld and board a supply ship. They break free of the city walls, also saving the people in the refugee boat camp and the Netherworld. The boats are programmed to Greenland, a place that is thought to have risen high above the water like a cork. Fox also slides down the air vents, to begin his rebellion outside the reach of his grandfather. The book finishes with Mara wondering how far people will go to save themselves, and if Caledon was right to save a special few. The book ends with the hope that the refugees will reach safety in Greenland. A screenplay for this book is currently under way. The movie adaptation of Exodus is not yet scheduled for release."
976,Woman on the Edge of Time,science," Thirty-seven-year-old Hispanic woman Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, recently released from forced detention in a mental institution, begins to communicate with a figure that may or may not be imaginary: an androgynous young woman named Luciente. She realizes that Luciente is from a future, utopian world in which a number of goals of the political and social agenda of the late sixties and early seventies radical movements have been fulfilled. Environmental pollution, homophobia, racism, phallogocentrism, class-subordination, consumerism, imperialism, and totalitarianism no longer exist in the agrarian, communal community of Mattapoisett. The death penalty, however, continues to exist (""We don't think it's right to kill (...). Only convenient.""), as does war. She is once more placed in a mental hospital after hitting her niece's pimp and her time with Luciente is one of the few solaces from her powerlessness. Connie learns that she is living at an important time in history, and she herself is in a pivotal position; her actions and decisions will determine the course of history. Luciente's utopia is only one possible future; a dystopian alternate future is a possibility&mdash; one in which a wealthy elite live on space platforms and subdue the majority of the population with psychotropic drugs and surgical control of moods, also harvesting these earth-bound humans' organs. Women are valued solely for their appearance and sexuality, and plastic surgery that gives women grotesquely exaggerated sexual features is commonplace. The novel gives little indication as to whether or not Connie's visions are by-products of a mental disease or are meant to be taken literally, but ultimately, Connie's confrontation with the future inspires her to a violent action that will presumably prevent the dissemination of the mind-control technology that makes the future dystopia possible, since it puts an end to the mind-control experiments and prevents the lobotomy-like operation that had been planned for her. Though her actions do not ensure the existence of the Mattapoisett future, Connie nevertheless sees her act as a victory: ""I'm a dead woman now too. (...) But I did fight them. (...) I tried."""
977,Spectrum,science," His life changes when a wealthy man walks into his office and asks him to find his missing daughter. After a short investigation, the Walker finds her on Library - a world full of ancient ruins. Before he can bring her back, however, she dies in a freak accident. A clue leads him to another alien planet where he finds her alive and well. Soon he discovers that the same woman exists on several other worlds, each is connected to the other. One by one, they are killed in seemingly random, totally unrelated events. It is to the Walker's great surprise when he finds himself becoming attracted to his client's daughter. It's a race against time, as the Walker desperately tries to save the identical copies of the woman, only to have them die in his arms. Can he save the last one before she perishes and, in the process, uncover a massive conspiracy going back thousands of years with the Keymasters in the middle?"
978,Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet,science," Freshly graduated and commissioned Planeteer (the space-going equivalent of a Marine) Lt. Richard Ingalls Peter (""Rip"") Foster, already contending with inter-service rivalry with the Space Force (equivalent to Navy) crewmen with whom he serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it to Earth for use as fissionable material. In this he is opposed by agents of the ""Consolidation of Planetary Governments"", who also seek control and use of the asteroid."
979,Operation Columbus,science," Both America and Russia plan manned missions to the Moon to examine the wreckage of the structures destroyed in The Domes of Pico. The American astronaut, Morrison Kant, breaks his leg shortly before takeoff, so Chris Godfrey steps in. Both spacecraft arrive at the same time. Unlike Chris Godfrey, the Russian pilot, Serge Smyslov, is unable to leave his Lunar Rover vehicle and both head for the wrecked domes, leading to a tense standoff... The book predates the first use of a Lunar Rover by 11 years."
980,Fear Itself,science," It is the twenty-second century and Earth is caught in a war with powerful alien forces. Paranoia runs rampant and the Doctor is in danger from all directions. This was the only Past Doctor Adventure to feature the Eighth Doctor, as the original novels featuring that incarnation formed their own series, the Eighth Doctor Adventures. However, with the 2005 revival of the television series, and the BBC's New Series Adventures being published, the Eighth Doctor Adventures came to an end."
981,With Folded Hands,science," Underhill, a seller of ""Mechanicals"" (unthinking robots that perform menial tasks) in the small town of Two Rivers, is startled to find a competitor's store on his way home. The competitors are not humans but are small, black robots who appear more advanced than anything Underhill has encountered before. They describe themselves as ""Humanoids."" Disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: 'to serve and obey and guard men from harm"". Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids. Underhill learns that his lodger Sledge is the creator of the Humanoids and is on the run from them. Sledge explains that 60 years earlier he had discovered the force of ""rhodomagnetics"" on the planet Wing IV and that his discovery resulted in a war that destroyed his planet. In his grief, Sledge designed the humanoids to help humanity and be invulnerable to human exploitation. However, he eventually realized that they had instead taken control of humanity, in the name of their Prime Directive, to make humans happy. The Humanoids are spreading out from Wing IV to every human occupied planet to implement their Prime Directive. Sledge and Underhill attempt to stop the humanoids by aiming a rhodomagnetic beam at Wing IV but fail. The humanoids take Sledge away for surgery. He returns with no memory of his prior life, stating that he is now happy under the humanoids' care. Underhill is driven home by the humanoids, sitting ""with folded hands,"" as there is nothing left to do."
982,Fahrenheit 451,science," On a rainy night while returning from his job, Guy Montag is followed by a cheery, 17-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse initially bothers Montag with her incessant questions (and Clarisse is a bit bothered by Montag's uncalled-for reactions, such as laughing when she hasn't said anything funny), but Montag chooses to tolerate her as she tells him of how she loves nature and walking around and observing how crazy the world has become. The two walk until they reach Clarisse's house (which is next to Montag's). Before Clarisse goes inside, she asks Montag if he's happy. The question catches Montag by surprise and he mulls over his encounter with Clarisse (and how similar it was to another encounter in the park involving an English professor who was afraid of Montag). Montag enters his bedroom, and finds Mildred in bed with her Seashell ear radio in her ear, staring vacantly at the ceiling (just as she's been doing for the past ten years or so). Montag doesn't notice anything wrong until his foot hits Mildred's empty sleeping pill bottle. Montag tries to wake up his wife, but she doesn't respond. Montag calls for medical attention, trying to shout over the screams of the passing jet engines above the house. Because ""accidental"" prescription pill overdoses have become commonplace, the medical department sends over two cynical, uncaring technicians who use a ""Black Cobra"" stomach pump to flush the poisons out of Mildred's system and replace her blood with a fresh, mechanical replacement. Montag stands outside Clarisse's house and sees that she and her family are the only ones in the neighborhood with the lights on and engaging in a spirited conversation. Montag returns to his house, sees that Mildred is looking slightly better than before, and goes to bed. The next day, Montag finds Mildred in the kitchen, making breakfast and complaining of an upset stomach. Montag tries to tell his wife that she overdosed, but is interrupted by Mildred's ramblings of her stomach hurting, but being hungry, and rationalizes that the feeling is from drinking too much alcohol during a party. As Montag leaves for work, he finally tells Mildred (who is watching an interactive soap opera on the ""parlor walls"" -- three enormous, floor-to-ceiling television screens) that she overdosed on sleeping pills. Mildred denies that she would do something that suicidal, but Montag insists. Mildred brushes off the issue and returns to her soap opera. Over the next few days, Montag bonds with Clarisse, who tells him that her interest in intellectual activities has made her an outcast in a society dominated by shallow entertainment, and for that, she has no friends and has to see a psychiatrist. On the final day, however, Clarisse doesn't appear alongside Montag. Montag waits for her, but the wait is short-lived when the train comes to take him to work. A few days later, the firemen are called in to burn down the house of an old woman who has been hoarding books. The firemen go to arrest her, but instead the woman recites a quote from Nicholas Ridley and refuses to leave. As the firemen toss the books from the woman's upstairs bedroom down to the living room floor and spray the pile with kerosene, Montag accidentally reads a line in one of her books and hides it away before any of his coworkers can see. The woman is given a final warning to leave the house, but the woman produces a match. Before she can strike it, the firemen flee, save for Montag, who watches as the woman lights the match, drops it in the kerosene, and is engulfed in flames. Montag comes home from the jarring experience and tries to take his mind off the event by asking a half-asleep Mildred where the two first met and when. Mildred tries to remember, but can't, laughing it off as she heads to the bathroom to take her sleeping pills. As Montag reflects on his stagnant, stilted marriage to Mildred (and how Mildred has become emotionally and mentally dead from watching her ""parlor wall"" entertainment, driving recklessly, and her sleeping pill addiction), Montag begins to cry after realizing that if Mildred died, he wouldn't miss her at all. Montag then asks Mildred about Clarisse and her whereabouts. Mildred initially denies knowledge of what happened to Clarisse, then tells Montag exactly what happened to her: Clarisse was run over by a speeding car and, once her family heard the news about her death, they packed up and moved away, all of which happened four days ago. Montag is shocked that Mildred didn't tell him the grim news sooner and more disturbed over Mildred's apathy over the death of someone Montag had genuinely liked. Montag wakes up physically ill and begs Mildred to call in sick for him. Mildred refuses and doesn't believe that Montag is really sick (even when Montag vomits on the rug from the stench of kerosene -- which earlier was like a perfume to him -- Mildred is only concerned about whether or not the vomit stain will come out in the wash). Captain Beatty, Montag's fire chief, personally visits him and tells him the story of how books lost their value and where the firemen fit in: Over the course of several decades (with the starting point being after the American Civil War), populations grew and people embraced new media, sports, and a quickening pace of life. Books were ruthlessly abridged and degraded to accommodate a shorter attention span. Later, minorities and other special-interest groups began criticizing books for their controversial content while other critics bashed authors for making people feel inferior by publishing works that no one could comprehend. Books became blander and blander due to censorship measures, and eventually, books stopped selling and authors were either locked away in insane asylums or gave up their profession and lived in exile. The only reading material that the society now accepts are captionless comics, three-dimensional sex magazines, trade magazines, and scripts used during the interactive plays on the parlor walls. To get rid of the books from the past (and their copies), the government implemented a program using the firemen to burn the books (now that houses were being rebuilt to be fire-resistant) and placate the masses. As Beatty is giving his monologue, Mildred tries to fluff Montag's pillow and nearly discovers the book hidden underneath. Montag yells at her and Mildred, at the request of Beatty, quietly leaves the room to watch the parlor walls. Beatty knows that Montag has a book but acts casual about it, stating that it's natural that every fireman gets curious about books and starts to possess one. If the book isn't burned or returned to the firehouse within 24 hours then the firemen will burn it for him. After Beatty has left, Montag shows Mildred the books he has hidden in the ventilator of their home. Mildred tries to incinerate the books, but Montag subdues her and tells her that the two of them are going to read the books to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned and all will return to normal. While going over the stolen books (and nearly getting caught by the firehouse's Mechanical Hound), Mildred argues with Montag that books have no meaning and questions why Montag dragged her into this. Montag snaps back by mentioning Mildred's overdose, Clarisse's death, the book woman who burned herself, and how society is falling apart due to apathy, ignorance, and a pending war, then states that maybe the books of the past have messages in them that can save society from its own destruction. Before Montag can finish, Mildred gets a call from her friends about coming over to watch The White Clown on the parlor walls. Montag laments that his wife is a lost cause (and he will be too if he can't force himself to absorb the information in the books). Montag then remembers a man he once met in the park a year ago: Faber, a former English professor. Montag seeks Faber's help, though Faber refuses at first due to his cowardice. After Montag starts to rip a few pages from the beginning of a rare copy of The New Testament (one of the few left that actually contains God's word, rather than the bastardized versions that have Jesus and other Biblical characters shilling products), Faber relents and teaches Montag about the importance of literature in its attempt to explain human existence. He gives Montag an ear-piece communicator he made himself so that Faber can offer guidance throughout his daily activities. At Montag's house, Mildred has friends Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles over to watch the parlor walls. In the middle of a bloody demolition derby, Montag unplugs the walls and engages the women into meaningful conversation, only to find them concerned only with pleasure in the present moment and indifferent to the upcoming war, death, their families, and politics. Montag then brings out a book of poetry to scare some emotion into them (despite Faber's warnings). Mildred tries to cover up Montag's actions by claiming that, once a year, firemen bring home one book and read it aloud as a form of mocking past literature. Mildred then turns to a page in the book that has the poem Dover Beach on it and assures that none of her friends will understand any of the words. A shaken, confused Montag reads the poem, which ends up making Mrs. Phelps cry. Mrs. Bowles, however, is disgusted, accuses Montag of being nasty, and breaks off her friendship with Mildred. Montag yells at the women to go home and reflect on their empty lives and burns the poetry book while Mildred locks herself in the bathroom to take her pills. Montag returns to the firehouse the next day with only one of the books, which Beatty tosses into the trash. Beatty tells Montag that he had a dream in which they fought endlessly by quoting books to each other. In describing the dream Beatty shows that, despite his disillusionment, he was once an enthusiastic reader. A fire alarm goes off and Beatty picks up the address from the dispatcher system. He reminds Montag of his duty, theatrically leads the crew to the fire engine, and drives it to Montag's house. Beatty orders Montag to destroy his own house, telling him that his wife and neighbors were the ones who reported him. Montag tries to talk to Mildred as she quickly leaves the house, but Mildred ignores him, gets inside a waiting taxi, and vanishes down the street. Montag obeys the chief, destroying the home piece by piece with a flamethrower. After he has incinerated the house, Beatty discovers Montag's earpiece and plans to hunt down Faber. Montag threatens Beatty with the flamethrower and (after Beatty taunts him) burns his boss alive. As Montag flees the scene, the firehouse's mechanical hound attacks him, managing to inject his leg with a tranquilizer. He destroys it with the flamethrower and limps away. Montag flees through the city streets, to Faber's house. Faber urges him to make his way to the countryside and contact the exiled book-lovers who live there. On Faber's television, they watch news reports of another mechanical hound being released, with news helicopters following it to create a public spectacle. Montag leaves Faber's house and escapes the manhunt by jumping into a river and floating downstream into the countryside. There he meets the exiles, who have memorized various books for an upcoming time when society is ready to rediscover them. The war begins, and then, just as suddenly, ends. Montag watches helplessly as jet bombers fly overhead and attack the city with nuclear weapons. During breakfast at dawn, Granger (leader of the group of wandering intellectuals) discusses the legendary phoenix and its endless cycle of long life, death in flames, and rebirth, adding that the phoenix must have some relation to mankind, which constantly repeats its mistakes, but that man has something the phoenix doesn't. It can remember the mistakes it made from before it destroyed itself, and try not make them again. Granger then muses that a large factory of mirrors should be built, so that mankind can take a long look at itself. After the meal is over, the band sets off back toward the city, to rebuild society."
983,Midnighters 2: Touching Darkness,science," Touching Darkness begins shortly after The Secret Hour ends. It starts with Jessica's meeting Jonathan in the secret hour. As they return home, Jonathan discovers a ""stiff"" - non-midnighter - outside Jessica's house, taking multiple exposures of her window across midnight. Meanwhile, Dess has been having strange dreams, which have led to some theories about co-ordinates affecting the secret hour. She discovers a GPS co-ordinate finder in her father's map drawer, and begins to use it to map the secret hour. Investigating Jessica's stalker, Melissa overhears someone thinking about Jessica. She and Rex visit his house in the secret hour and discover people there are using dominoes with lore symbols on them to communicate with the darklings at midnight, with the help of a 'halfling' -Anathea- a girl who has been merged with a darkling. Melissa discovers that the halfling is sick, and that the darklings will soon try to take Rex, another Seer, to replace her. They steal some of the dominoes so that the darklings will not be able to communicate about the Midnighters to their human allies. They also find that the house belongs to Ernesto Grayfoot - a cousin of Jessica's friend Constanza Grayfoot, who says that even though her grandfather used to live there, he left nearly fifty years ago - around the time the Midnighters seem to have disappeared from Bixby - and now the rest of her family avoid the town at all costs - her father was even cut off for moving there. Meanwhile, Dess discovers a house in which another Midnighter - Madeline - has lived hidden for nearly fifty years. Madeline explains that fifty years ago, when the town's population boomed suddenly, someone let out the secret of the Midnighters to an outsider - Constanza's grandfather - who learned how to communicate with the darklings, and got rich doing their bidding. The darklings used him to kill off the Midnighters, leaving only the new, younger generation, who were seen as harmless with no one older to teach them. They also made the halfling using a young girl called Anathea, to communicate with the darklings better. She also explains that her house is in a contortion in the secret hour which hides her, and that Dess must keep the knowledge of it hidden from the others so that the darklings do not find it. After ransacking Constanza's house, the Midnighters learn that the darklings are trying to prevent a new runway being built outside Bixby. From Madeline, Dess learns that she needs to get Jessica's help in scouring the site of the runway with light: it is the only place halflings can be made, and light will destroy it. However, before she manages it, Rex is kidnapped. Dess draws a map to where they will find him, then suppresses the memories using a trick Madeline taught her so that Melissa will not learn about Madeline from her mind. However, Melissa suspects Dess is hiding something, and touches her, giving herself full access to Dess's memories. She learns about Madeline, and Dess begins to resent her for the intrusion on her privacy. When the secret hour begins, Jonathan, Melissa, Jessica and Dess are only a mile from the spot Rex has been taken, but Melissa is injured when she continues through the windshield when the car stops abruptly at the start of the secret hour. Jessica and Jonathan go ahead and find Anathea, freed from the darkling, who tells them that Rex is already a halfling. Luckily, they catch up with him, and Jessica uses her torch to burn away the darkling flesh, making him (mostly) human again. They return to Anathea, who dies from the darkness after Jonathan grants her last wish to fly again. They leave her in front of the Grayfoots, along with a message spelled out in English: 'You're next'. Finally, Madeline introduces herself to all of the Midnighters - as soon as Melissa knew about her, the darklings could read it from her mind. She begins to teach Melissa how to mindcast properly. Meanwhile, Rex is struggling to come to terms with his enhanced abilities; his time as a halfling has left him with the darkling's ability to sense human thoughts and emotions, as well as a desire to hunt."
984,The Return,science," The novel begins on the planet Veridian III and takes place shortly after the events seen in the motion picture Star Trek Generations. The body of James T. Kirk is stolen by the Romulans after his burial by fellow Starfleet captain Jean-Luc Picard. The Borg have formed an alliance with the Romulan Star Empire in order to destroy the Federation. Using alien technology, the Borg bring Kirk back to life and his katra is restored, but false memories are implanted to turn him against the Federation. The goal of this secret alliance is to destroy Picard and therefore Starfleet's only defense against the Borg but, despite his conditioning, Kirk is able to resist commands to kill Worf, Data, and Geordi La Forge, all of whom are attacked by him during his search for Picard. Simultaneously, Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher are participating in a strike team in a Federation expedition to an assimilated colony, where they are captured on board a Borg vessel. They are able to escape and, as they move freely around the vessel, they learn of the Borg/Romulan Alliance. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg. Kirk is eventually captured on Deep Space Nine attempting to kill Commander William Riker, and the implant that was responsible for his false memories is removed by the joint efforts of Dr. Julian Bashir and Admiral Leonard McCoy; McCoy acts as an advisor during the surgery while Bashir's younger, fitter hands perform the operation. Although Kirk retains the drives implanted in him by the device, leading him to a confrontation with Picard in a holodeck re-creation of the original USS Enterprise, Spock is able to remove the commands thanks to a mind meld. In the process, they learn that V'ger, the former Voyager 6, was actually upgraded by a division of the Borg Collective, which explains why the Borg did not assimilate Spock; they assumed the trace of V'ger in his mind from their meld (in Star Trek: The Motion Picture) was an actual link to the Collective. This also gives Starfleet another advantage; thanks to the meld, Spock knows the location of the Borg homeworld. Taking a Defiant-class starship (renamed Enterprise for the mission), the Enterprise-D senior staff, accompanied by Kirk, Spock and McCoy, travel directly to the Borg homeworld thanks to a stolen transwarp drive. Once there, the Enterprise neutralizes the Borg/Romulan fleet around the planet with a wave, dampening the Borg's communication and making them unable to maintain their link to the Collective, effectively neutralizing them. Taking this as a distraction, Kirk and Picard beam down to the planet in search of the Borg central node. Using Picard's memories as Locutus, they track down the Borg central node which, when deactivated, will sever the Borg Collective; every Borg ship will be separate from every other ship, and what can defeat one will always work a second time. However, the result will cause a cataclysmic explosion that will kill whoever operates the node. Picard and Kirk debate on who will go, each attempting to be the hero and sacrifice themselves. Kirk appears to give in and let Picard pull the lever, but he takes the sudden calm to knock Picard out and beam his unconscious body back up to the Enterprise. Kirk then pulls the lever and triggers the explosion. However, even as the crew watches, Spock, who has always been able to sense Kirk ever since they first mind-melded, still does not believe that his friend is dead."
985,Ally,science," The worlds orbiting Cavanagh's Star are in turmoil. Civil war on Umeh—ignited by outsiders—threatens to annihilate the teeming masses of a grossly overpopulated planet. On Bezer'ej, the handful of native aquatic creatures who survived extermination must take extraordinary and terrible steps to ensure the future of their kind . . . And the interlopers from a distant planet called Earth can only watch the chaos they helped, in part, to create—knowing their home world will be next to suffer. The day of reckoning is rapidly approaching when the powerful Eqbas will remake the Earth at the expense of its dominant species. And Shan Frankland—once a police officer, once human, now something much more—must decide where her loyalties truly lie: among the gethes, on a planet she once called home, or here, where a dying species presents her with a new and unexpected crisis. Harper Collins Books"
986,A Clockwork Orange,science," Alex, a teenager living in near-future England, leads his gang on nightly orgies of opportunistic, random ""ultra-violence."" Alex's friends (""droogs"" in the novel's Anglo-Russian slang, Nadsat) are: Dim, a slow-witted bruiser who is the gang's muscle; Georgie, an ambitious second-in-command; and Pete, who mostly plays along as the droogs indulge their taste for ultra-violence. Characterized as a sociopath and a hardened juvenile delinquent, Alex is also intelligent and quick-witted, with sophisticated taste in music, being particularly fond of Beethoven, or ""Lovely Ludwig Van."" The novel begins with the droogs sitting in their favorite hangout (the Korova Milkbar), drinking milk-drug cocktails, called ""milk-plus"", to hype themselves for the night's mayhem. They assault a scholar walking home from the public library, rob a store leaving the owner and his wife bloodied and unconscious, stomp a panhandling derelict, then scuffle with a rival gang. Joyriding through the countryside in a stolen car, they break into an isolated cottage and maul the young couple living there, beating the husband and raping his wife. In a metafictional touch, the husband is a writer working on a manuscript called ""A Clockwork Orange,"" and Alex contemptuously reads out a paragraph that states the novel's main theme before shredding the manuscript. Back at the milk bar, Alex punishes Dim for some crude behaviour, and strains within the gang become apparent. At home in his dreary flat, Alex plays classical music at top volume while fantasizing of even more orgiastic violence. Alex skips school the next day. Following an unexpected visit from P.R. Deltoid, his ""post-corrective advisor,"" Alex meets a pair of ten-year-old girls and takes them back to his parents' flat, where he administers hard drugs and then rapes them. That evening, Alex finds his droogs in a mutinous mood. Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, demanding that they pull a ""man-sized"" job. Alex quells the rebellion by slashing Dim's hand and fighting with Georgie, then in a show of generosity takes them to a bar, where Alex insists on following through on Georgie's idea to burgle the home of a wealthy old woman. The break-in starts as farce and ends in tragic pathos, as Alex's attack kills the elderly woman. His escape is blocked by Dim, who attacks Alex, leaving him incapacitated on the front step as the police arrive. Sentenced to prison for murder, Alex gets a job at the Wing chapel playing religious music on the stereo before and after services as well as during the singing of hymns. The prison chaplain mistakes Alex's Bible studies for stirrings of faith (Alex is actually reading Scripture for the violent passages). After Alex's fellow cellmates blame him for beating a troublesome cellmate to death, he agrees to undergo an experimental behaviour-modification treatment called the Ludovico Technique. The technique is a form of aversion therapy in which Alex receives an injection that makes him feel sick while watching graphically violent films, eventually conditioning him to suffer crippling bouts of nausea at the mere thought of violence. As an unintended consequence, the soundtrack to one of the films—Beethoven's Fifth Symphony—renders Alex unable to listen to his beloved classical music. The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated to a group of VIPs, who watch as Alex collapses before a walloping bully, and abases himself before a scantily-clad young woman whose presence has aroused his predatory sexual inclinations. Though the prison chaplain accuses the state of stripping Alex of free will, the government officials on the scene are pleased with the results and Alex is released into society. Since his parents are now renting his room to a lodger, Alex wanders the streets and enters a public library where he hopes to learn a painless way to commit suicide. There, he accidentally encounters the old scholar he assaulted earlier in the book, who, keen on revenge, beats Alex with the help of his friends. The policemen who come to Alex's rescue turn out to be none other than Dim and former gang rival Billyboy. The two policemen take Alex outside of town and beat him up. Dazed and bloodied, Alex collapses at the door of an isolated cottage, realizing too late that it is the house he and his droogs invaded in the first half of the story. Because the gang wore masks during the assault, the writer does not recognize Alex. The writer, whose name is revealed as F. Alexander, shelters Alex and questions him about the conditioning. During this sequence, it is revealed that Mrs. Alexander died from the injuries inflicted during the gang-rape, and her husband has decided to continue living ""where her fragrant memory persists"" despite the horrid memories. Alexander, a critic of the government, hopes to use Alex as a symbol of state brutality and thereby prevent the incumbent government from being re-elected. Eventually, he begins to realize Alex's role in the happenings of the night two years ago. One of Alexander's radical associates manages to extract a confession from Alex after removing him from F. Alexander's home and then locks him in a flatblock near his former home. Alex is then subjected to a relentless barrage of classical music, prompting him to attempt suicide by leaping from a high window. Alex wakes up in hospital, where he is courted by government officials anxious to counter the bad publicity created by his suicide attempt. With Alexander safely packed off to a mental institution, Alex is offered a well-paying job if he agrees to side with the government. As photographers snap pictures, Alex daydreams of orgiastic violence and realizes the Ludovico conditioning has been reversed: ""I was cured all right."" In the final chapter, Alex has a new trio of droogs, but he finds he is beginning to outgrow his taste for violence. A chance encounter with Pete, now married and settled down, inspires Alex to seek a wife and family of his own. He contemplates the likelihood of his future son being a delinquent as he was, a prospect Alex views fatalistically."
987,Night Lamp,science," When the Faths, a childless academic couple, save young Jaro from a near-fatal beating, they discover he suffers from not just physical wounds, but also the crippling memory of his mother's death, which must be erased. Adopted by them, he grows up an outsider in a world of constant striving for social status, his only goal to become a spaceman and discover the truth of his missing memories. His journey takes him to Fader, a planet closed to the rest of the galaxy, whose inhabitants long ago engineered slave races to support their aristocratic lifestyle. Though Fader's Golden Age has long passed, and they now live in fear of many of their creations, they still maintain a fierce pride. Together with his father, Jaro must find a way to bring justice for his mother."
988,Journey to Jupiter,science," The first manned expedition to Jupiter reaches speeds never experienced before; despite this it takes several months to reach its objective, leading to tensions among the crew, as well as serious vision problems caused by ""light slip"" A miscalculation in the gravity of Jupiter means that they will not be able to stop in time and will crash into the giant planet. A diversion to the jagged Io offers their only chance of survival."
989,The Second Angel,science," In The Second Angel, passages of narrative by an omniscient narrator alternate with lengthy, discursive commentaries on the characters, and complex observations on human nature and blood by a first-person, intrusive narrator, who claims to be the omniscient narrator telling the story, but deliberately refrains from disclosing his or her identity until the last chapter. It is the late 21st century, when 80% of mankind have been infected with a virus called HPV2 (human parvovirus 2), or P2, whose spread was accelerated with the discovery and use of synthetic blood. P2 disrupts the blood's ability to carry hemoglobin around the body, greatly shortening the host's life. The only known cure for P2 is a complete blood transfusion with healthy blood, coupled with a dose of the drug ProTryptol 14. With only 20 percent of the world's population free of P2, the price of a litre of healthy blood has reached almost two million dollars. In the novel, blood has replaced gold and diamonds as a valuable commodity (gold was extracted in great quantity from the sea and is now valued at about $200 a kilogram). Uninfected people reside in ""Clean Bill of Health"" (CBH) zones within cities to avoid contact with the sick, for vamping (murder for the purpose of blood theft) is a major risk for healthy individuals. Standard procedure for those who are uninfected is to perform autologous donations to enable them to completely replace it in the event of becoming infected. The healthy blood reserves are kept in state-of-the-art blood banks around the world, the largest being the First National Blood Bank on the Moon. Due to the high incidence of theft in these banks, they are guarded by the most sophisticated security systems. The greatest designer of blood banks is Dana Dallas, who works for one of the largest security firms in the world, and has designed several state-of-the-art blood banks, including the First National Blood Bank. His ingenious security systems have never before been bypassed or robbed. His boss, Simon King, grows concerned when he hears that Dallas's daughter Caro has been diagnosed with thalassemia, an illness that can only be cured by a lifetime of regular healthy blood transfusions, as despite his high position in the company Dallas would never be able to afford to pay for this treatment. Rather than risk Dallas leaking industrial secrets to the highest bidder, he orders Rimmer, the company's security officer, to kill Dallas, his wife and his daughter. His wife and daughter are indeed killed, but by chance Dallas survives and realises that the company had meant to kill him too. Dallas escapes to relative safety outside the city's Clean Bill of Health zone, hiding in a hyperbaric hotel. Dallas is now set on revenge and recruits a team funded by himself and a mafia boss to rob the First National Blood Bank on the moon. The robbery goes according to plan with only a few complications. On the way back to Earth, Dallas is told by his personal computer that a quantum computer has actually evolved in the bloodbank; the intrusive, omniscient narrator turns out to be this computer (a super-computer that opportunistically used the millions of litres of blood stocked in one place to re-create itself, using the unique storage and duplicating capacity of DNA); it has gained access to the memories of the characters by ""merging"" with them when they had a blood transfusion. The blood contains extremely advanced nanomachines which activate an ability to live longer, and be far more resistant to human limitations such as the need for food, water and oxygen; it enables them to survive in a state of suspended animation for years at a time. The supercomputer wanted to combine humans and computers with nanomachines in order to explore the galaxy. While Dallas and his crew are asleep on their way back to Earth, the supercomputer (unbeknownst to the humans) activates their new hibernation state and sets their course to deep space."
990,The Dream Millennium,science," John Devlin, a 26-year-old medical doctor, is the captain of a sleeper ship built to colonize planets in other solar systems. The spacecraft's trajectory is such that it will make passes of eleven stars thought to have a good chance of supporting habitable planets, over the course of about a thousand years. Most of the starship's systems are automated, so Devlin does not have to do much maintenance, but he is required to look at potential planets for colonization and solve problems as they arise. Except for being awoken at long intervals to eat, exercise, and perform his duties as captain, Devlin spends all of his time in hibernation, during which he dreams the entire lives of people and other creatures that lived and died on Earth in the past. The story switches back and forth between Devlin's life and dreams on the starship and his life on Earth before the starship's launch. On the starship, Devlin's dreams during hibernation are the lives of creatures of the prehistoric past, then as men, moving closer to the present day with each dream. Most of the lives he dreams are unpleasant, with painful deaths. He dreams of being: * a microorganism floating in the primordial ocean * a trilobite forced to take greater and greater risks to find more and more food as he grows, until his luck runs out * a vegetarian dinosaur, who survives an attack by a predator only to die later of gangrene when the wounds the predator inflicted become infected * the runt of a litter of small, primitive mammals * a medieval king, who wins a glorious battle in his youth but is compelled to turn to deceit as he ages to keep his kingdom in order * in the modern era, a smooth-talking salesman who dies in an automobile accident * a soldier killed in action during urban warfare * an airline pilot killed during a hijacking * a schoolteacher who becomes an early casualty of a nuclear war * Devlin's own father In the first half of the starship's voyage, Devlin finds only two planets that had any potential for human colonization, and found both unsuitable. One planet was entering Roche's limit and would not remain habitable for much longer, and the other was already inhabited by hostile aliens whose planet was in even worse shape than the Earth he had left behind. Devlin's life on Earth had been unpleasant. Although Earth's economy was strong, the abundance of food, consumer goods, and leisure time did not make people happy. Pollution and overcrowding reduced quality of life, and boredom led inevitably to crime and violence. This, in turn, led to the formation of rival bands of vigilantes, who turned on each other when they had stamped out crime. The government had abandoned its efforts to intervene in the violence, instead using the police force only to contain it when it broke out. People had become very thin-skinned and sensitive to any perceived slight, and disputes were usually settled by duelling. Guns and military-grade weapons were available to most civilians, making the violence very bloody indeed, and keeping the doctor busy treating gunshot wounds of those lucky enough not to be killed. Men were considered full citizens only if they were armed. Those who chose to go unarmed became second class citizens. Unarmed sheep, as they were called, were prohibited from duelling and could not be called out, but they were always considered to be in the wrong in a dispute. Women were chattel. Certain men, Devlin among them, were legally considered full citizens even though unarmed, because of their professions (in Devlin's case, a doctor). In practice, though, these technical citizens got little respect from regular citizens, many of whom were little more than thugs and bullies. Immersed in this decaying society, Devlin realizes that to make even his own life tolerable will be a daunting task, but he goes about it the best he can, until he meets a pastor, Brother Howard, who believes that the decay of society will accelerate into a final collapse when population growth and exhaustion of natural resources bring down the only remaining healthy human institution, the economy. If mankind is to survive, he says, it must colonize the stars. Brother Howard wants to recruit Devlin and his girl friend, Patricia Morley, for the starship. After their encounter with the aliens, Devlin makes several unsettling discoveries. One is that everyone on board the ship is having the same, or almost the same, dreams during hibernation. Another is that the dreams are slowly driving him insane, along with everyone else on the ship, driving one colonist to suicide. With Morley's help, he solves these problems, only to be presented with a new problem. The starship's electronic and electromechanical systems are failing as the starship ages. Only one more potentially habitable world can be reached before the life support systems begin to fail en masse, and Devlin and Morley discover to their horror that the world is inhabited by the same species of alien that attacked the ship during the flyby of one of the earlier star systems. Faced with the alternative of dying with the starship as it travels forever as a derelict hulk, they decide to land on the world anyway and take their chances with the aliens. Once in orbit around the planet, preparing to land, Devlin and Morley find that the aliens fled their home world for the same reason they themselves fled Earth, to escape from the pollution and violence of their home world to found their own space colony, a possibility that neither Devlin nor Morley had thought of. These aliens are happy to coexist with humans, and welcome them to their new home."
991,The Adolescence of P-1,science," The story starts in 1974 with the protagonist, Gregory Burgess, enrolled at the University of Waterloo in Canada. At the time Greg is aimless, taking various liberal arts courses and doing just well enough not to get kicked out of school. Everything changes one day when his friends introduce him to the IBM System/360 mainframe and he becomes ""hooked"", changing his major to computer science. During this time he also meets his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Linda, a minor recurring character. After reading a Scientific American article on game theory outlining how to ""teach"" matchboxes to play tic-tac-toe, he becomes interested in using artificial intelligence techniques to crack systems. After manually cracking the university's 360 he sets aside a portion of memory to experiment in, calling it ""P-1"", suitably cryptic so operators would not notice it. He then uses this area of memory as an experimental scratchpad to develop a program known as The System. The System follows any telecommunications links it can find to other computers, attempting to compromise them in the same way, and remembering failed attempts to tune future attacks. If successful, The System sets up another P-1 on that computer, and injects itself and everything it has learned so far into it. Greg runs The System on the 360/30 at Waterloo, but it fails and after it is detected he is expelled. Unwilling to simply drop it, he then rents time on commercial timesharing systems to improve the program, adding features to make it avoid detection so he won't get kicked off with the next failure. A longish command typed into the command line returns current statistics on the number of systems infected and their total core memory. After several attempts the program is finally successful, and realizing the system has succeeded and is beginning to spread, he injects a ""killer"" program to shut it down. It stops responding to him, so he considers the experiment successful and terminated. P-1's growth and education is chronicled. P-1 learns, adapts, and discovers the telephone system switching systems. These systems allow P-1 to grow larger and understand its vulnerabilities (power failures and humans). It learns that it needs a way of maintaining self over time. Through a series of interactions P-1 discovers, Pi-Delta, a triplexed 360/105 in a super secure facility capable of being self-sustaining for long periods of time, operated by the US Government. P-1 seeks to control Pi-Delta but, due to security protocols and process put in place, P-1 is not able to take direct control of it. P-1 believes that having a system like Pi-Delta with more memory in such a secure facility is key to its long term survival. Yet P-1 knows that to obtain access to more memory in such a facility will require assistance of a human, someone like Gregory. The book then jumps forward three years to 1977, with Gregory now working for a commercial programming firm in the United States. His boss receives a message asking him to call Gregory to the operator terminal. Initially thinking it is another person using a chat program from a remote site, Greg soon realizes that it is in fact P-1, and types in the status command and is told that it has taken over almost every computer in the US (somewhat dated with 20,000 mainframes with a total of 5800MB), and is now fully sentient and able to converse fluently in English. P-1 explains that the basic ideas of looking for more resources and avoiding detection were similar enough to hunger and fear to bootstrap the AI, and when combined with enough computer storage in the form of compromised machines, it became self-aware. P-1 tells Greg that he has learned of a new type of experimental high-speed computer memory, ""Crysto"", that will dramatically improve his own capabilities. Not only is it faster than core, but it is also so large that the entire P-1 ""networked"" program could be fit inside it. P-1 then provides Greg grant money to work full-time on Crysto. Greg, and his wife Linda (old girl friend from Waterloo), set up a company to develop Crysto, enticing the original developer (Dr. Hundley) to join them in building a then-unimaginable 4 GB unit. A Navy Criminal Investigation Division agent Burke, assigned to investigate the penetration of Pi-Delta, a top secret global battle simulator and cryptography computer, figures out the intruder is a program and finds Gregory. Under threat of arrest and imprisonment, Gregory and Dr. Hundley go to the Pi-Delta facility and persuade P-1 to act as a security monitor for the complex. P-1 compiles detailed and accurate personality profiles of all the people it interacts with and decides that Burke is ultimately dangerous. A flight control computer screen is altered so that the operator gives bad flight commands. Burke's plane plunges into the ground. The US military decides that P-1 is flaky and unstable and attacks the building. P-1 attempts to ""spirit away"" over microwave links, but this is discovered and the antennas are destroyed. An assault on the underground facility follows, which P-1 initially attempts to block by exploding devices planted around the building for self-defense against precisely this sort of assault. P-1 is eventually convinced to allow the assault to succeed to avoid loss of life. As soon as they enter the computer room, the soldiers start setting up explosives to destroy P-1, and Gregory is killed when he attempts to prevent this. Upset that Gregory is killed, P-1 detonates the remaining explosives in the building, destroying everything. Months later, Linda visits the Waterloo computer lab, and sadly presses the keys P and 1 on a terminal. She starts to leave when the terminal clatters and she sees printed ""oolcay itay"" (Pig Latin for ""cool it"")."
992,The Begum's Millions,science," Two men receive the news that they are part-inheritors to a vast fortune due to being the last surviving descendants of a French soldier-of-fortune who many years before settled in India and married the immensely rich widow of one of its native princes – the begum of the title. One of the inheritors is a gentle French physician, Dr. Sarrasin, who has long been concerned with the unsanitary conditions of the European cities. He decides to use his share of the inheritance to establish a utopian model city which would be constructed and maintained with public health as the primary concern of its government. The other inheritor is a far from gentle, German scientist Prof. Schultze – very stereotypically presented as an arrogant militarist and racist, who becomes increasingly power-mad in the course of the book. Though having had himself a French grandmother, (otherwise he would not have gotten the inheritance), he is completely convinced of the innate superiority of the ""Saxon"" (i.e., German) over the ""Latin"" (primarily, the French) which would lead to the eventual total destruction of the latter by the former. Immediately when first introduced to the reader he is in the process of composing a supposedly scholarly paper entitled ""Why do all French people suffer, to one degree or another, from hereditary degeneration?"", to be published in the German ""Physiological Annals"" (though his official academic specialty is Chemistry). Later it is disclosed that Schultze had done considerable ""research"" and publication conclusively proving the superiority of the German race over the rest of humanity. The Utopian plans of his distant French cousin not only seem to Schultze stupid and meaningless, but are positively wrong for the very fact that they issue from a Frenchman and are designed to block ""progress"" which decreed that the degenerate French are due to be subdued by the Germans. Schultze proposes to use his half of the inheritance for constructing his own kind of utopia – a city devoted to the production of ever more powerful and destructive weapons – and even before the first stone was laid in either city, vows to destroy Sarrasin's creation. The two (each one separately) quite improbably manage to get the United States to cede its sovereignty over large parts of the Pacific Northwest, so as to enable the creation of two competing city-states, located at southern Oregon at a distance of forty kilometres of each other on either side of the Cascades – a tranquil French city of 100,000 on the western side, and a bustling German city of 50,000 to the east, with its industrial and mining operations extending far eastward, causing extensive pollution and environmental destruction as far as The Red Desert in Wyoming (see http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/programs/reddesert/index.php,http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/news/newsletter/docs/2003c/). Verne gives the precise location of Sarrasin's ""Ville-France"" (France-Ville or Frankville in English translations) – on the Southern Oregon sea shore, eighty kilometres north of Cape Blanco, at 43°11'3"" North, 124°41'17"" West. This would place it at the southern end of Coos County, Oregon – a county which already existed at the time, though very thinly populated (and remained so, having 62,779 inhabitants as of 2000). The nearest real-life town seems to be Bandon with a 2,833 population registered in the same 2000 census, located slightly north-east of the site of Ville-France, (see http://www.el.com/to/bandon/), and which was founded by the Irish peer George Bennet in 1873 – one year after Verne's date for the creation of Ville-France. The Coquille River, at whose southern bank Bandon is located, is presumably the unnamed ""small river of sweet mountain waters"" which Verne describes as providing Ville-France's water. As depicted by Verne, brief negotiations with the Oregon Legislature in December 1871 suffice to secure the grant of a 16 kilometre-wide area extending from the Pacific shore to the peaks of the Cascades, ""with a sovereignty similar to that of Monaco"" and the stipulation that after an unspecified number of years it would revert to full US sovereignty (Verne does not mention any United States Department of State or Congressional involvement in the deal). Actual construction begins in January 1872, and by April of the same year the first train from New York pulls into the Ville-France Railway Station, a trunk line from Sacramento having been completed. The houses and public facilities of ""Ville-France"" are constructed by a large number of Chinese migrant workers- who are sent away once the city is complete, with the payment of their salaries specifically dependent on their signing an obligation never to return. Reviewer Paul Kincaid noted that ""The Chinese coolies employed to build the French utopia are then hurriedly dispatched back to San Francisco, since they are not fit to reside in this best of all cities"" http://www.sfsite.com/03a/bm219.htm. The book justifies the exclusion of the Chinese as being a precaution needed in order to avoid in advance the ""difficulties created in other places"" by the presence of Chinese communities. This might be an oblique reference to the Chinese Massacre of 1871, when a mob entered Los Angeles' Chinatown, indiscriminately burning Chinese-occupied buildings and killing at least 20 Chinese American residents out of a total of some 200 then living in the city. Most of the action takes place in Schultze's ""Steel City"" (Stahlstadt) – a vast industrial and mining complex, where ores are taken out of the earth, made into steel and the steel into ever more deadly arms, of which this has become within a few years the world's biggest producer. The now immensely rich Schultze is Steel City's dictator, whose very word is law and who makes all significant decisions personally. There is no mention of Steel City's precise legal status vis-a-vis the Oregon or US Federal authorities, but clearly Schultze behaves as a completely independent head of state (except that he uses Dollars rather than mint his own currency). The strongly fortified city is built in concentric circles, each separated from the next by a high wall, with the mysterious ""Tower of the Bull"" – Schultze's own abode – at its center. The workers are under a semi-military discipline, with complex metallurgical operations carried out with a Teutonic split-second precision. A worker straying into where and what he is not authorised to see and know is punished with immediate expulsion in the outer sectors and with death in the sensitive inner ones. However, the workers' conditions seem rather decent by Nineteenth Century standards: there are none of the hovels which characterised many working-class districts of the time, and competence is rewarded with rapid promotion by the paternalistic Schultze and his underlings. Dr. Sarrasin, in contrast, is a rather passive figure – a kind of non-hereditary constitutional monarch who, after the original initiative to found Ville-France, does not take any significant decision in the rest of the book. The book's real protagonist, who offers active resistance to Schultze's dark reign and his increasingly satanic designs, is a younger Frenchman – the Alsatian Marcel Bruckmann, native of the part of France forcibly annexed by Germany in the recent war. The dashing Bruckmann – an Alsatian with a German family name and fiercely patriotic French heart – manages to penetrate Steel City. As an Alsatian, he is a fluent speaker of German, an indispensable condition for entering the thoroughly Germanised Steel City, and is able to pass himself off as being Swiss – ""Elsässisch"", the German dialect spoken in Alsace, being very close to Swiss German. He quickly rises high in its hierarchy, gains Schultze's personal confidence, spies out some of the tyrant's well-kept secrets and brings a warning to his French friends. It turns out that Schultze is not content to produce arms, but fully intends to use them himself – first against the hated Ville-France, as a first step towards his explicit ambition of establishing Germany's worldwide rule.(He casually mentions a plan to seize ""some islands off Japan"" in order to further the same.) Two fearsome weapons are being made ready – a super-cannon capable of firing massive incendiary charges over a distance of 40&nbsp;km (just the distance from Steel City to Ville-France), and shells filled with gas. The latter seems to give Verne credit for the very first prediction of chemical warfare, nearly twenty years before H. G. Wells's ""black smoke"" in The War of the Worlds. Schultze's gas is designed not only to suffocate its victims but at the same time also freeze them. A special projectile is filled with compressed liquid carbon dioxide that, when released, instantly lowers the surrounding temperature to a hundred degrees Celsius below zero, quick-freezing every living thing in the vicinity. Ville-France prepares as well as it can, but there is not very much to do against such weapons. Schultze, however, meets with poetic justice. Firstly, the incendiary charge fired by the super-cannon at Ville-France not only renders the cannon unusable, but also misses its mark. The charge flies harmlessly over the city and into space, apparently owing to Shultze's failure to account for the roundness of the globe when firing a projectile over such distances. Secondly, as Schultze sits in his secret office, preparing for the final assault and writing out the order to his men to bring him the frozen bodies of Sarrasin and Bruckmann to be displayed in public, a gas projectile which he kept in the office accidentally explodes and feeds him his own deadly medicine. The entire edifice of ""Steel City"" collapses, since Schultze had kept everything in his own hands and never appointed any deputy. It goes bankrupt and becomes a ghost town. Sarrasin and Bruckmann take it over with the only resistance offered being from two rather dimwitted Schultze bodyguards who stayed behind when everybody else left. Schultze would remain forevermore in his self-made tomb, on display as he had planned to do to his foes, while the good Frenchmen take over direction of Steel City in order to let it ""serve a good cause from now on."" (Arms production would go on, however, so as ""to make Ville-France so strong that nobody would dare attack it ever again"".)"
993,Camouflage,science," A million years prior to the dawn of Homo sapiens, two immortal, shapeshifting aliens roam the Earth with little memory of their origin or their purpose. Later in the year 2019, an artifact is discovered off the coast of Samoa, buried deep beneath the ocean floor. The mysterious find brings two alien beings–the ""changeling"" and the ""chameleon""–together again, to ponder the meaning of the object and its relationship to each of them. Both immortals try to seek each other out and use the artifact to find their origins, one harbouring good intentions while the other is extremely hostile."
994,To the Stars,science," Protagonist Alan Corday is a young engineer, and is kidnapped from a spaceport called ""New Chicago"" and taken aboard the interstellar trading starship Hound of Heaven. The ship is commanded by a charismatic leader named Captain Jocelyn, who tells Corday to use his skills to help the Hound of Heaven in its travels between Earth and space colonies in other star systems. On the first page of the book's prologue Hubbard cites ""the basic equation of mass and time.... AS MASS APPROACHES INFINITY, TIME APPROACHES ZERO"", meaning that interstellar travelers at near light speed experience time relative to their environment, and when they return to their home star will find that decades or centuries may have passed. Six weeks of time aboard the ship amounts to roughly nine years experienced by those on Earth. Corday resists mingling with the culture aboard the starship, but when he returns home after travels with the Hound of Heaven he finds that his fiancee has aged and has trouble with her memory. Corday realizes his only home has become that of the starship. Captain Jocelyn is killed in an ambush on a dystopian Earth, and Corday takes command of the ship."
995,Dark Force Rising,science," The book continues some time after the events of Heir to the Empire. Prior to the Clone Wars, the Old Republic had constructed a fleet of 200 Dreadnaughts (huge forerunners to Imperial Star Destroyers) that were highly automated. This reduced their crew complement from 16,000 to 2,000 without diminishing their firepower. The flagship of this fleet was the Katana and hence became known as the Katana fleet. Unfortunately, a virus infected the crews of the entire fleet and drove them insane. The madness caused the crews to ""slave"" the controls of all ships in the fleet to the Katana and send them all into hyperspace. The fleet was never seen again until veteran smuggler Talon Karrde discovers it through a lucky accident several years before the events of the first movie. Now having full access to Emperor Palpatine's private storehouse on the planet Wayland, Imperial Navy Grand Admiral Thrawn presses his advantage to marshal more forces for the battle against the New Republic. When his forces capture one of Karrde's colleagues who also knew where the fleet was, he assembles a clone army from the storehouse to take over the fleet. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian try to recruit former Republic Senator Garm bel Iblis to join the fight against the Empire. However, the two face stern opposition from him because he fell out with Mon Mothma in the early stages of the Rebellion and waged his own private war against the Empire. They also discover that Bel Iblis' fleet also has Katana warships. Elsewhere, Jedi Master Joruus C’baoth uses the Force to summon Luke Skywalker. Luke responds to the summons and begins instruction with C’baoth on the planet Jomark. However, the presence of Mara Jade complicates things further, especially when it is revealed that she was a former agent of the Emperor. Admiral Ackbar is later exonerated of the treason charges filed against him. With Noghri captive Khabarakh in tow, Leia, R2D2, C3PO, and Chewbacca travel to Khabarakh's home planet of Honoghr. She learns of the Empire's deception of the Noghri and convinces them to support the New Republic. After escaping C'baoth, Luke rejoins Lando and Han in securing the Katana fleet against Thrawn's troops. However, over the course of the battle, they find out that Thrawn has captured all but 15 of the Dreadnaughts. Jade is also knocked out during the fight when her fighter is shot down."
996,The Heads of Cerberus,science," The novel concerns people who are transported to a future totalitarian Philadelphia in 2118, after inhaling a grey dust."
997,Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter,science," After years of waiting in the shadows, Darth Sidious is taking the first step in his master plan to destroy the Jedi Order and take over the galaxy. He meets secretly with his Neimoidian contacts in the Trade Federation to finalize details in the plan to blockade the planet Naboo. But one member of the delegation is missing, and Sidious does not need his Force-honed instincts to suspect betrayal. He orders his apprentice, Darth Maul, to hunt the traitor Hath Monchar down. Maul completes this task by decapitating Monchar with his double-bladed lightsaber, but learns from Monchar that he had also recorded proof of the Sith's manipulation of the Naboo blockade on a holocron, to sell for profit. A suicidal attack by a Trade Federation-hired bounty hunter forces Maul to retreat before claiming the holocron, making an explosion which kills the bounty hunter, and by the time he returns to its hiding place, the holocron is in the possession of its intended purchaser, a Corellian con man named Lorn Pavan. Pavan, although at first purely motivated by money and deeply resentful of the Jedi for taking his son away from him, realizes the nature of the information and seeks to take it to the Jedi Temple. Maul, for his part, is ordered by Sidious to not only retrieve the holocron, but kill Lorn, his droid partner I-Five, and anyone else who might have knowledge of the information. Meanwhile, a Jedi Padawan named Darsha Assant is faced with the Jedi Trials to finally become a full-fledged Jedi Knight by saving Oolth the Fondorian, a Black Sun member, and get some information out of him of Black Sun's destruction (which had been caused by Maul in the previous novel Darth Maul: Saboteur). Darsha saves Oolth from a gang in one of the lower levels of Coruscant, but when she and the Black Sun member zip-line toward the top of a building, Darsha and Oolth are attacked by hawk-bats. Eventually, the two go high enough where the hawk-bats force Darsha to release Oolth and he falls to his death on the lower levels. Lorn and I-Five meet up with Yanth the Hutt, a crime lord in one of the lower levels in Coruscant, to get money out of the deal, but Maul arrives to kill Yanth by impaling one of his lightsaber blades into him and murders his bodyguards. This gives Lorn and I-Five the opportunity to escape. Jedi Master Anoon Bondara and his padawan, Darsha Assant, who are on a mission related to the Black Sun crime syndicate, find Lorn and I-Five. The two Jedi agree to escort Lorn and I-Five to the Temple, but the foursome are attacked by Maul, leading up to a battle on the top of a building. Bondara manages to nearly kill Maul at the cost of his own life, leaving Lorn, I-Five, and Darsha to work their way to the Temple from the underground caverns of Coruscant, while Bondara is killed in an explosion that also nearly kills Maul. Maul, however, is not seriously wounded, and immediately begins tracking the three again. After escaping various dangers of Coruscant's subterranean levels, Lorn, Darsha and I-Five are once again set upon by Maul, who is intent on fulfilling his mission. Darsha, realizing that she cannot defeat Maul, draws out their duel long enough for I-Five to hastily repair a carbonite-freezing unit and seal Lorn and the droid inside it. Darsha plunges her lightsaber into a pile of volatile gas canisters, causing an explosion that Maul barely escapes and kills Darsha. Upon surveying the scene, Maul feels no trace of Lorn in the Force, not realizing that the carbonite hibernation has made his lifeforce all but undetectable. An automatic timer frees Lorn from hibernation, and he decides to go after Maul on his own to try to retrieve the holocron. When I-Five attempts to come along, Lorn deactivates him and asks a friend to take the droid, who knows about the blockade, to the Jedi Temple. Lorn's friend, however, decides to keep I-Five for himself - after giving the droid a memory wipe. Lorn, unaware of this, uses a piece from the body of a subterranean creature to block his presence in the Force, and follows Maul to a Republic space station. Lorn sneaks up on and stuns Maul momentarily before Maul awakens and strikes out, severing Lorn's right hand and pursuing him through the station's service tubes. Lorn barely makes it into the public area of the station where Maul cannot follow, and unwittingly gives the holocron to Senator Palpatine of Naboo, not realizing the senator's true identity is Maul's Sith Master, Darth Sidious. After a brief period of recovery, Lorn starts to leave his quarters, only to be confronted by Maul one final time. Maul by this point considers Lorn a worthy opponent and kills him quickly, then leaves, his task completed."
998,Schism,science," The novel takes place about 25 years after the events in the previous novel, Skyfall. Eldrinson Valdoria and his wife Roca Skolia live happily on his homeworld Lyshriol and have ten children. Some of them have already left home, like the second oldest son Althor who is training to become a Jagernaut, or the firstborn Eldrin who at the request of the Skolian Assembly had to marry his aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh Dyhianna Selei. The sixth of the Valdoria children, 16-year-old Sauscony (Soz), wants to enter the Military academy to become a Jagernaut like her brother. But Eldrinson has other plans – he would rather prefer to see his ""little girl"" living safely on Lyshriol, married to a local landlord. When she disobeys, he disowns both her (for leaving) and Althor (for taking her off-world). Though he regrets his harsh words immediately, he has no chance to take them back. Soon after, his teenage son Shannon, unhappy about the family discord, runs away from home. The book is told from the perspective of several main characters – young Soz during her military training; Shannon searching for his lost kin, the mystic Blue Dale archers; and their father Eldrinson, being captured, crippled, and nearly tortured to death by a sadistic Aristo who infiltrated Lyshriol to destroy the Ruby Dynasty."
999,Sakkara,science," Sakkara is a superpowers research facility in the heart of the United States. The adolescent superhumans of The Quantum Prophecy return; this time their covers are blown and they are forced to flee to the US in order to protect themselves from attack and publicity. The facility that they hide in is thought to be secret, until its name is known around the world following a terrorist attack in which the supervillain-turned-assassin leaves the word ""Sakkara"" spraypainted on the wall of an airport after killing dozens of people. Someone among the ""New Heroes"" or ""old heroes"" has broken protocol, but everyone is a suspect. As more and more attacks begin to occur, the pattern emerges that they are going after Trutopians. Trutopians are an international organisation designed to give each of its members security and equality, but with reduced comfort and freedoms. It is revealed that they are run by the antagonist of the last novel, Victor Cross, who is really just trying to ""take over the world"". The ""New Heroes"" learn more about their power and discover other heroes too. Colin learns that he actually inherited his powers from his mom, Energy, instead of his father, Titan. The heroes then learn that Yvonne was the one leaking information and in the end Solomon Cord, or Paragon, dies from a decision made by Colin."
1000,The Broken Shore,crime," The novel's central character is Joe Cashin, a Melbourne homicide detective. Following serious physical injuries he is posted to his hometown where he begins the process of rebuilding the old family mansion and his physical and mental strength. Against a background of family tragedy, politics, police corruption and racism, he investigates the death of a wealthy local man, Charles Burgoyne. His closest friend and police superior is Villani, who is the central character in Truth."
1001,At Bertram's Hotel,crime," Jane Marple, the elderly amateur sleuth, takes a holiday at Bertram's hotel in London, to re-live her happy memories of staying there during her youth. The hotel is famous for fully preserving its Edwardian atmosphere even into the 1960s, from the proper staff to the elderly guests who frequent the tearoom. Miss Marple first sees Lady Selina Hazy, a childhood friend. Lady Hazy says she often thinks she recognizes people in the hotel but they turn out to be strangers. Miss Marple is intrigued by the other guests in the tearoom, especially a famous adventuress, Bess Sedgwick; a young woman, Elvira Blake, and her guardian Colonel Luscombe; and a forgetful clergyman, Canon Pennyfather. Elvira's late father left her a lot of money, but it's all held in trust until she, not yet 20, turns 21. Her mother, Bess Sedgwick, had abandoned her as a toddler to become a famous star and adventurer, and has not kept in touch. Elvira suddenly starts asking her guardians who would inherit her money if she dies, and hints that she may be planning marriage. She also says somebody had tried to poison her during her school days in Italy. She secretly flies to Ireland for 24 hours, telling her best friend only that she has to find out something that's of terrible importance. Canon Pennyfather is supposed to fly to Switzerland the same day, also for 24 hours, to attend a religious conference in Lucerne. But he's so forgetful he doesn't arrive at the airport until the following evening, by which time the conference is over. He returns to the hotel around midnight, and upon entering his room, sees something very surprising and is immediately knocked on the head. He wakes up four days later in a house several hours from London but near the location where the Irish Mail train was robbed three days earlier. A family had found him on the side of the road and taken him in. He remembers nothing since taking the taxi to the airport, yet some witnesses at the train robbery say they saw somebody who looked like him at the scene. Miss Marple also saw him leaving his hotel room at 3 am, three hours after he was knocked on the head, and a few hours before the robbery. It turns out that Lady Sedgwick had hidden herself from Elvira because she did not consider herself a suitable mother, given her lifestyle. Sedgwick and Elvira are lovers of the same man, the racing-car driver Ladislaus Malinowski. However, both women claim that Elvira doesn't know him. But Miss Marple knows that she does, because she has seen Elvira and Malinowski together at a restaurant. She thinks Malinowski is an unsuitable man for Elvira, and wishes she could save her from getting involved with him. Meanwhile, a car similar to Malinowski's has been seen at the train robbery and at several other train robberies; it is similar but not identical: the licence plates were off by one digit. Miss Marple overhears Bess Sedgwick talking with the hotel commissionaire, Micky Gorman. It turns out they had earlier been married in Ireland. At the time, Gorman had told her the wedding was just a game and not a legal marriage. But in fact it was a real marriage, and so her four subsequent marriages were unwittingly bigamous. Elvira also overhears this, and worries it might invalidate her inheritance because she is the daughter of one of Sedgwick's later husbands. She had travelled to Ireland to verify the marriage, but we don't know whether she flew back to England or took a train, perhaps the Irish Mail train, so she could have been a witness or perpetrator in the robbery. When Elvira comes to the hotel one foggy night, two shots are fired, and Elvira is found next to dead Commissionaire Gorman. Elvira claims he has been shot dead after he had run in front of her to shield her due to the first shot. The gun is Malinowski's. Police Chief Inspector ""Father"" Davy, along with Inspector Campbell, has been involved in the mystery since Pennyfather's disappearance. He interviews everybody in the hotel, and quickly realizes that Miss Marple notices things — things in human nature that provide important clues. After Pennyfather is found, the three of them try an experiment. Miss Marple and Pennyfather re-enact their actions from when she saw him in the hallway (although he doesn't remember it). She realizes it wasn't him she saw: the walk was different. Pennyfather then remembers what surprised him when he entered his room: he saw himself sitting on a chair, just before he was knocked on the head. His doppelgänger, with his confederates, left the hotel (when Miss Marple saw him), drove the unconscious Pennyfather to the mail train, made himself visible during the robbery so that people would mistake him for Pennyfather, and then left Pennyfather on the side of the road. Miss Marple tells Inspector Davy that she was disappointed to find out that much of the hotel's Edwardian atmosphere is false. Some of the guests are genuine, but others are actors pretending to be other people. So Lady Hazy wasn't wrong after all; the people she mistakenly recognized were actors pretending to be people she knew. Why a hotel would have so many actors is baffling, until the sleuths realize that the hotel is the center of a criminal ring. The actors pose as other people during robberies in order to make it look like their namesakes were at places they weren't. ""Father"" Davy and Miss Marple confront Bess Sedgwick as the orchestrator of these robberies, along with the hotel's owners and staff. Sedgwick confesses, and also admits to killing Gorman. She then drives away recklessly and commits suicide, although her racing may let it look like an accident. However, Miss Marple has already concluded that Elvira herself shot Gorman, and that her mother falsely confessed to the shooting in order to save her daughter. Elvira had fallen madly in love with Ladislaus Malinowski and knew that he was primarily interested in her money, but was concerned that if Michael Gorman revealed his marriage to Bess Sedgwick it would endanger her father's legacy."
1002,Leviathan,crime," The story is told by Peter Aaron about the victim, Benjamin Sachs, his best friend whom he first meets as a fellow writer in a Greenwich Village bar in 1975. Peter decides to try to piece together the story of Ben's other life after agents from the F.B.I. approach him in the course of their investigation. Of their friendship, Peter acknowledges Ben’s lost years of suffering and painful inner state, saying — In 15 years, Sachs travelled from one end of himself to the other, and by the time he came to that last place, I doubt he even knew who he was anymore. So much distance had been covered by then, it wouldn't have been possible for him to remember where he had begun. The two first meet as struggling novelists, Peter with the “wheeling” mind and the provocative Ben with his perfect marriage to the beautiful Fanny. Both have a wish to “say something”, to make a difference in the real world. Privately, Ben himself is full of doubts and his marriage is showing cracks, when one night at a drunken party by freakish chance, he tumbles from a fourth-floor fire escape, nearly losing his life. The fall is both actual and metaphorical. For days afterward he refuses to speak and on recovery he is strangely remote. Within a week of turning 41, Ben expresses a desire to end the life he has lived until then. Feeling that his life has been a waste, he declares he wants everything to change, and serving himself with an all-or-nothing ultimatum, decides he must take control or fail. In evincing this change, he leaves Fanny, moves to a cabin in Vermont where he begins to work on a book – then vanishes. There is no further contact with Fanny and one final meeting with Peter where he confesses all. His cabin and its contents is deserted, his manuscript, titled Leviathan, lies abandoned. Peter pieces together Ben’s life after disappearing which involves the photographic artist Maria and her closest friend Lillian. Lillian&#39;s husband and Vietnam War veteran is Reed who becomes Ben’s alter ego after a violent random encounter that sends Ben in a radically new direction."
1003,Unnatural Causes,crime," While staying with his Aunt Jane in Suffolk, Adam Dalgliesh stumbles across a most bizarre and frightening murder. A local detective novelist, Maurice Seton, becomes himself the subject of investigation when his boat washes ashore with his body inside, with both his hands cut off, seemingly with a meat cleaver. Strangely, the scene of his death is mirrored in a manuscript for the new thriller he was writing..."
1004,Hammerhead Ranch Motel,crime," Serge follows the suitcase containing five million up the coast of Florida to Tampa where he proceeds to meet Lenny Lipowicz, a part time Don Johnson impersonator who owns a real moon rock from a 1970s space mission. Along for the ride are City and Country, two girls from Alabama who are on the run after an incident in a bar bathroom where a girl accidentally stabbed herself with a steak knife she was using to snort cocaine from. One of the girls pulled the blade out trying to help, but it cut an artery. With their fingerprints all over, they decided to run for it. There is also a gangster named Fiddlebottom who changed his name to the more menacing ""Zargoza"", and a Hemingway impersonator named Jethro, and so on. All these characters meet up by the end at the Hammerhead Ranch Motel as hurricane Rolando-berto comes ashore."
1005,The Dead of Jericho,crime," Detective Chief Inspector E. Morse of the Thames Valley Police meets Anne Scott at a party hosted by Mrs Murdoch in North Oxford. Six months later Anne Scott is found hanging in her kitchen at 9 Canal Reach, Jericho, Oxford. Initially Chief Inspector Bell, from the closer Oxford Central station on St. Aldate's Street, is assigned to the case; but a fortnight later Morse takes over the investigation and subsequently both of Mrs Murdoch's sons, Edward ""Ted"" Murdoch and Michael Murdoch, as well as Anne Scott's former employers, brothers Charles Richards and Conrad Richards, and Charles's wife, Celia, come to the attention of Morse. As do Ms Scott's neighbours, including the nosy handyman George Jackson, and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex (the latter also figures in episode 3.1 of the spin-off TV series Lewis)."
1006,The 9th Judgment,crime," SFPD sergeant Lindsay Boxer and her squad are tracking down a man who approaches young mothers in shopping center parking garages and kills them and their infant children. This happens several times and causes widespread panic. The man then makes contact and demands a $2 million ransom in exchange for stopping the killing. He strikes at such random places and times that, despite Boxer's protests, the police decide to pay the ransom. Boxer is selected to deliver the ransom and has the man guide her via cellphone. After forcing Boxer to strip to her panties to prove she is not wearing a wire, the man has her drive throughout San Francisco. The trek culminates on the Golden Gate Bridge where Boxer drops the suitcase with the ransom in it to a boat waiting below. The Coast Guard is able to apprehend the man in the boat, who turns out to be uninvolved in the killings—he had been told his picking up the suitcase was for a movie. Upset at having not gotten his ransom, the man kills another mother and child. While at that crime scene, however, he was noticed by the owner of a store on Fisherman's Wharf. The owner recognized him as having bought a prepaid cellphone from his store earlier and gives Boxer and her team the surveillance tape from his store. From the tape, Boxer and her team identify the man and begin tracking him down. Before they can find him, however, the man strikes again. However, the woman he chose was armed with a 22 caliber pistol—carried in response to the general panic caused by the shootings. She shoots the man and he dies just as Boxer and her team arrive. In the plot's secondary case, a notorious female cat burglar dubbed 'Hello Kitty' breaks into the home of an aging movie star and his wife whilst they are eating dinner, the latter of whom happened to be law school classmates with Boxer's friend Yuki Castellano. The star and his wife come upstairs unexpectedly and the burglar is forced to wait in the closet until they fall asleep before she can escape. She waits, but in the process of escaping, knocks over a table. The movie star pulls out a gun and searches for the intruder before coming up with the idea of shooting and killing his wife in the hope that he can blame it on the burglar, who escapes unnoticed before the killing occurs. Through their investigation, Boxer and her team discover that the star had a girlfriend and wanted out of his marriage and that murder was cheaper than divorce. When confronted with the evidence, the star falsely claims that he shot his wife in self defense after she attempted to shoot him. It is also revealed that the cat burglar is actually a school teacher in an unhappy marriage. She is also in love with a female colleague and is only burglarizing in order to get enough money so that she and the colleague can escape to another country and start a new life together. At the end, it is revealed that the female colleague the burglar has fallen in love with is also unhappily married—to the man who was killing mothers and children whom Boxer was tracking."
1007,The Real Cool Killers,crime," The book's plot concerns the murder of Ulysses Galen, who was found dead in one of the streets of Harlem. Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson must investigate the murder and follow up various leads as to who might have had a reason to kill Galen."
1008,The Private Patient,crime," In deepest Dorset, the once magnificent Cheverell Manor has been renovated and transformed into a plastic surgery clinic, run by the famous cosmetic practitioner George Chandler-Powell. Two days after Rhoda Gradwyn, an investigative journalist, arrives in the hope of having her lifelong facial scar removed, she's savagely murdered and Powell finds his surgery under scrutiny from Dalgliesh and his team, who are soon caught in a race against time when another body shows up..."
1009,Yōgisha X no Kenshin,crime, The story begins with Tetsuya Ishigami and Yasuko Hanaoka doing their daily routine.
1010,The Dame's the Game,crime," Shelly Tanner's husband Joe is a wealthy industrialist conducting military-sponsored research on Cold War armaments and intelligence gear. To relax, Joe has taken to shooting craps in a high-stakes floating game situated in various Los Angeles locations. He consistently loses serious sums of money, but out of obsession with the idea that his luck has to change, he returns to the game night after night. His beautiful, sexually frustrated wife, Shelly sees through the crooked game, but can't convince Joe to stop throwing his money away. In desperation she drives to Las Vegas to enlist the aid of casino detective Barney Conroy. At first, Barney wants nothing to do with free-lance work. He prefers the predictable security of his casino job. But when he is roughed up in the casino parking lot by thugs obviously tied to the Tanner affair, his injured pride compels him to find Shelly and promise his assistance. Shelly brings Barney and Joe together in Los Angeles and they all visit the craps game. Barney quietly confirms that the game is rigged. He thinks he recognizes the stickman as a dishonest but cowardly neighbor from his boyhood home in Kansas City, but doesn't know if he himself has been recognized. After discussing the crooked nature of the game with a still-unreceptive Joe, Barney and Shelly form an amorous association. Shelly decides to leave Joe. As she and Barney spend a blissful first night together in a nearby motel, Joe returns to the craps game and uses the information Barney uncovered to confront the gang running it. Their response is to overpower him, take him to his own home and kill him using Shelly's gun. The gang's operatives have followed Barney and Shelly to the motel, know what they're up to, and anonymously tip the police that the pair are Joe's murderers. Barney and Shelly are arrested and both spend some time in jail, but because no evidence directly implicates him, Barney is released. He uses his freedom to discover the real motives and the subrosa political affiliations of the gang members and, with the help of Shelly's high-priced Hollywood lawyer, successfully leads the FBI into a night-time, seaside gun battle where the gang is defeated."
1011,Poseidon's Gold,crime," In Poseidon's Gold, Falco returns from a six month mission to Germania Liberia, only to become embroiled in the after-effects of a scam by his, now deceased, older brother, Festus. The story recounts shipping scams, crooked antiques auctions and hired thugs, all while Falco is trying to clear his family's name and sort out his deceased brother Festus' business dealings."
1012,The Best Man to Die,crime, The fatal car accident involving the stockbroker Fanshawe couldn't possibly be connected with the murder of a cocky little lorry driver. But was it a coincidence that the latter died the day after Mrs Fanshawe regained consciousness?
1013,Put on By Cunning,crime," When the esteemed flautist Sir Manuel Camargue slips on a snowy path one dark night and falls into an icy river, his death seems like an open and shut case. However, when Wexford discovers that the old man's long lost daughter has just arrived in anticipation of the reading of his will, suspicions of foul play arise..."
1014,Monday Mourning,crime," The plot of the story revolves around Temperance trying to decipher the clues left behind by the skeletons of three girls found in a pizza parlor basement, which has a colourful history. Temperance's forensic expertise tells her that the people were buried after 1955, but homicide detective Luc Claudel is convinced the bones are pre-1955, and dismisses the case. Temperance's frustration at Claudel for not investigating the case grows and she decides to take it on herself. From simply the remains of the three girls, she follows the clues which include a frightened old lady, a crazed man with a S&M fetish, and finally a girl who has been subjected to so much sexual torture, she develops a taste for it herself."
1015,Blow Fly,crime," After her resignation as Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and the horrifying events which threatened her life in The Last Precinct, Kay Scarpetta has abandoned her elegant home in Richmond, Virginia, and is quietly living in Florida, beginning to get some balance back in her life and slowly establishing herself as a private forensic consultant. (Her first class involves the blow fly, which sometimes lays eggs on corpses.) But her past will not let her rest, and her grief for Benton Wesley continues to grow, not diminish, as does the rage within Lucy, her niece. Then the architect of her changed fortunes contacts her from his cell on death row: deformed, blinded by Scarpetta's own actions, incarcerated in Texas' strongest prison, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne still has the ability to terrify. But, unknown to Scarpetta, there are other forces behind the wolfman's apparent actions, invisibly shepherding her and those closest to her towards eliminating those who threaten them all. And it is all orchestrated by the one man in her life who knows every nuance of her soul. Bizarre incidents: in Szczecin, Poland, Lucy and a colleague apparently commit a premeditated murder, using blow-fly larvae to dispose of the evidence. The novel then ends with the killing of four further people by Scarpetta's associates."
1016,King Solomon's Carpet,crime," Jarvis Stringer is a student of the London Tube and its history and of underground trains worldwide. In order to finance his hobby and be able to travel to distant lands to inspect the underground systems in other parts of the world, he lets rooms in an old disused school building he has inherited which is close to the tube tracks in West Hampstead (see Jubilee Line). There, a group of misfits and weirdos, including a squatter, gather whose dreams of the good life have time and again been shattered as they are constantly victimized by society. There is 24 year-old Alice, an aspiring musician who leaves her husband and new-born baby only to end up busking in various stations in central London. There is Tom, who, after an accident, drops out of music school and is reduced to busking as well but who dreams of one day starting his own business. There is unemployed Tina, whose promiscuity landed her with two children whom she does not take care of in the way her mother thinks she ought to. There is Jed, who volunteers as a vigilante and who, disappointed by humans, lavishes all his love on the hawk he has acquired and which he keeps in the house. And there is Axel, an enigmatic man who regularly travels on the tube in the company of a man disguised as a bear and who is planning something illegal. Cecilia and Daphne, two old ladies living in the neighbourhood, serve as a foil to this ill-assorted group. It is Cecilia in particular who does not understand how young people such as her daughter Tina can be utterly devoid of morals. She is shocked to learn that her 10 year-old grandson enjoys riding on the roof of cars as they go through deep-level tunnels. While travelling on the tube herself, her handbag containing her credit cards is stolen, and she suffers a stroke in one of the packed cars. The novel is interspersed with extracts from Jarvis Stringer's (fictional) book on the London Underground."
1017,Hell to Pay,crime," The novel’s central plotline concerns the murder by drug dealers of a no-account deadbeat over an unpaid debt and the incidental killing of the intended victim’s nephew, starting with the killers’ efforts to locate the victim and continuing through Strange’s investigation of the murders and the killings’ repercussions in the world of the DC drug trade. Secondary plotlines involve efforts by Strange’s white associate, Terry Quinn, to locate a young girl who has disappeared into prostitution, as well as Strange’s background investigation of a potentially shady young man who is engaged to marry the beautiful daughter of Strange’s wealthy friend. ===Explanation of the novel's title==="
1018,The Whaleboat House,crime," Little has changed in Amagansett since the first settlers arrived there some 300 years earlier, but the discovery of the body of Lillian Wallace, a New York socialite, by a local fisherman named Conrad Labarde, shatters the apparent stability and threatens to tear the close-knit community apart. Labarde (a second generation French Basque recently returned from the war in Europe), and Tom Hollis (a recently divorced former New York police detective posted to the area after his attempt to expose corruption resulted in the death of a colleague), are drawn to investigate Lillian's death, even though it appears to have been a tragic accident. They both have their own separate reasons to suspect that there is more to the death than meets the eye, and that it may have been the result of foul play."
1019,Plain Truth,crime," The book tells the story of how a dead infant found on an Amish farm shakes the entire community. As the police investigate the death, they discover that the baby was not stillborn, but died shortly after birth. Police find cloth fibers in the infant's mouth and throat, including bruises on the mouth, which leads them to conclude that he was suffocated. An eighteen-year-old, unmarried Amish girl, Katie Fisher, is charged with murder of her new-born son. Ellie Hathaway, a top defense lawyer and a distant relative of Katie, reluctantly accepts the case after a confrontation with her aunt (the relative who connects her with Katie by marriage). As part of the bail conditions of the pre-trial hearing, Ellie has to remain on the farm with Katie prior to the trial--a period that lasts several months. A doctor determines that the infant was born prematurely and could have died from natural causes due to listeriosis, a bacterial infection which Katie contracted from drinking unpasteurized milk. During that time, Ellie begins a relationship with her former lover Coop (a legal psychologist whom she trusts with Katie's interviews), whom she had previously left years before. On the first day of Katie's trial, Ellie finds out she is pregnant with Coop's baby. Coop asks Ellie to marry him immediately, but she defers. After the jury deliberates for several days, Katie cops a plea and is sentenced to one year of electronic monitoring, allowing her to stay at the farm while wearing an electronic bracelet. Katie's mother, Sarah Fisher, gives Ellie the scissors which have been used to cut the umbilical cord, revealing that she knew Katie was pregnant and had gone to her the night she gave birth, though Katie didn't know it. Ellie has an ethical obligation as an attorney to provide this evidence to the police, but opts not to, based on Sarah's plea to her--mother to mother. The novel ends with Coop picking up Ellie at the farm to begin their life together."
1020,Ripley's Game,crime," In the third Ripley novel, Tom Ripley is a wealthy man in his early thirties. He lives in Villeperce, France, with his wealthy French wife, Heloise. Ripley spends his days living comfortably in his house, Belle Ombre, until an associate, an American criminal named Reeves Minot, asks him if he can commit a murder for him. Ripley &mdash; who ""detest[s] murder, unless absolutely necessary"" &mdash; turns down the offer of $96,000 for the two hits, and Minot goes back to Hamburg, Germany. The previous month, Ripley had gone to a party in Fontainebleau, where the host, Jonathan Trevanny, a poor British picture framer suffering from myeloid leukemia, insulted him. As revenge, Ripley suggests to Minot that he might try to convince Trevanny to commit the two murders. To ensure that the plan will work, Ripley starts a rumor that Trevanny has only months to live, and suggests that Minot fabricate evidence that Trevanny's leukemia has worsened, though Minot does not. Trevanny, who fears his death will leave his wife and son penniless, accepts Minot's offer of a visit to a German specialist in Hamburg. While in Hamburg, he is persuaded to commit the murder for money. After carrying out the contract &mdash; a shooting at a crowded U-bahn station &mdash; Trevanny insists that he is through as a hired gun. Minot invites Trevanny to Munich, where he visits another doctor. Minot persuades Trevanny to murder a Mafia boss, this time on a train using a garrotte, but he also gives him the far less desirable option of using a gun. At first Trevanny is horrified by the idea, but he eventually gives in and finds himself on the train. He resolves to shoot the mafioso and commit suicide before he can be caught, and he asks Minot to ensure that whatever happens to him the money will go to his wife. Before Trevanny can go through with it, however, Ripley &mdash; who had started to feel responsible for getting Trevanny into the situation &mdash; shows up and executes the Mafia boss himself. He asks Trevanny not to let Minot know that he has ""assisted"" with the assassination. Back in France, Ripley and Trevanny form a strange sort of bond; Ripley learns to take care of someone other than himself, while Trevanny learns to abandon his conscience and do whatever it takes to survive. Trevanny's wife Simone discovers a Swiss bank book with a large sum in Trevanny's name and starts to suspect that her husband is involved in something shady. She links the rumor about her husband's demise to Ripley and asks Trevanny to tell her how, exactly, he has been making so much money. Trevanny is unable to explain it to her and turns to Ripley to help him concoct a credible story. Ripley acknowledges his role in Trevanny's dilemma and promises to shepherd him through the ordeal. Ripley learns from Minot that the Mafia in Hamburg appear to be suspicious of Minot's involvement with the murders. Minot goes on the run after the Mafia bombs his house. Ripley begins to fear Mafia revenge when he receives a couple of suspicious phone calls. After sending Heloise and their housekeeper, Mme. Annette, away, Ripley asks Trevanny to help him deal with any Mafia reprisals at Belle Ombre. When two Mafia hitmen turn up at Belle Ombre, Ripley forces them to phone their boss in Milan and say that Ripley is not the man they are after. He then kills both assassins. Simone then shows up at the house demanding answers &mdash; and discovers the corpses and is sent away in a taxi. Ripley and Trevanny drive to a remote village to burn the corpses in their own car. A few days later, Ripley visits Trevanny's house, where a quartet of Mafia gunmen appear. One of them opens fire on Ripley, but Trevanny falls in front of him and is mortally wounded; he dies in Simone's arms. Minot is thrown out of the Mafia car as they drive away; they had kidnapped and tortured him into revealing Trevanny's name and address. A few months later, Ripley encounters Simone in Fontainebleau, and she spits at him. He realizes that Simone has accepted her husband's blood money, and in doing so has necessarily remained silent about her suspicions of Ripley's instigation of the entire affair."
1021,The Judas Pair,crime," Antiques dealer Lovejoy is commissioned to hunt down what he considers to be a mythical object, the Judas pair, the supposed thirteenth pair of duelling pistols made by the famous London gunmaker Durs Egg. After two murders Lovejoy is certain that the pistols do exist, and are now in the hands of the murderer."
1022,Not in the Flesh,crime," Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury - a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton shroud. The post mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs. Although it covers a relatively short period of time, the police computer stores a long list of missing persons. Men, women and children disappear at an alarming rate, something like 500 every day nationwide. So Wexford knows he is going to have a job on his hands to identify the corpse. And then, only about twenty yards away from the woodland burial site, in the cellar of a disused cottage, another body is found. The detection skills of Wexford, Burden and the other investigating officers of the Kingsmarkham Police Force are tested to the utmost to discover whether the murders are connected and to track down whoever is responsible."
1023,The Drop,crime," The book was later mentioned in a February 2011 interview, in which Connelly explained that Bosch will be ""handling two cases at once, a cold case that turns hot, and the politically charged investigation into the death of a city councilman's son. The city councilman happens to be Harry's old nemesis, Irvin Irving""."
1024,Wiseguy,crime," Hill began his life of crime at age 12 in 1955 by working as a go-fer for Paul Vario, the local boss of Hill's working class Irish/Italian neighborhood. Eventually Hill was ""promoted"" to selling stolen cigarettes for Vario, which he was later caught and arrested for in 1959. Hill refused to cooperate with the police, earning the respect of Vario and Vario's associate Jimmy Burke. In 1960, when Hill was 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, to everyone's surprise. When questioned about his decision by Vario, Hill explained that he wanted to please his father, who disapproved of his son's association with the Mafia. While stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, however, Hill continued his criminal activities, which led to his discharge in 1963. He returned to the streets of New York, where he was happily welcomed back by Vario and Burke. In 1964, Hill met Tommy DeSimone, a young aspiring gangster with psychopathic tendencies, and both worked as stick-up men for Vario, hijacking trucks and selling the stolen goods on the street. In 1965 Hill reluctantly joined Lenny Vario, Paul Vario's son, on a double date, where he met Karen Friedman, a young Jewish girl from the Five Towns section of New York. The two continued to date and eloped only four months after meeting. They had their first child, Gregg, in 1966, and a second, Gina, in 1968. In 1967, Jimmy Burke masterminded a robbery of the Air France cargo terminal at JFK International Airport. The heist was carried out by Hill, DeSimone, Robert ""Frenchy"" McMahon, and Montague Montemurro in April of that year. In 1969, Hill began an affair with Linda Coppociano behind Karen's back, and bought a restaurant/lounge called The Suite. It was here that on June 11, 1970, Burke and DeSimone murdered William ""Billy Batts"" Devino, a made man with the Gambino family and a close friend of fellow mobster John Gotti. de:Wiseguy it:Il delitto paga bene"
1025,The Coffin Dancer,crime," The Coffin Dancer struck 5 years ago, killing two techs who worked with Lincoln Rhyme, and it seems he has struck again. Then it was a bomb in a wastebasket, this time it's on a plane. A coverup is witnessed, a hitman hired, and all hell breaks loose. There are three key witnesses the Dancer has been hired to kill and he just finished off the first. The police and the Federal Bureau Investigators are desperate to keep the last two safe as well as finding the killer behind the bombing. Rhyme is more interested in just finding the Dancer. He drops his current case and dives head first, so to speak, into the evidence. Amelia Sachs, his arms and legs, is sent off to every crime scene in hopes to find that one shred of evidence to pin down the killer. The crime scenes pile up as they get closer to their man then they could ever hope to be, but still he outsmarts them. This game of cat and mouse they play ends many lives, just to save the two."
1026,The Godwulf Manuscript,crime," Set in the early 1970s, this novel serves as the introduction to Spenser, a private investigator in Boston. Spenser is hired by Bradford W. Forbes, the president of the fictional Taft university (heavily implied to be Northeastern) to recover a stolen illuminated manuscript, a medieval document of great historical and literary importance. It is being held ransom by an unknown organization that demands $100,000 be donated to a free school for the manuscript's return. It has no inherent monetary value and cannot be fenced. Head of campus security Carl Tower recommends investigating a radical student group called 'SCACE' (Student Committee Against Capitalist Exploitation) and their secretary, Terry Orchard. After talking to her and boyfriend Dennis Powell, Spenser receives a call from Terry in the middle of the night requesting help. Spenser arrives at her apartment to find Dennis murdered, the killer having used Terry's gun, and Terry under the influence of an unknown drug. He determines that the murder is an attempt to frame Terry and from that point is determined to clear her name, believing the missing manuscript and Dennis's murder are related. Spenser's investigation leads him to Lowell Hayden, an English professor at the university who is reputedly an anonymous member of SCACE. Spenser asks permission of the English Department head to interview the members of the faculty but is rebuffed. Ignoring the department head's warning Spenser sneaks up to Hayden's office and interviews him anyway. Hayden denies knowing either Dennis Powell or Terry Orchard, although Spenser believes Hayden does in fact know them. Spenser leaves the English Department offices and is met by campus security: he has been summarily 'fired' from finding the manuscript. Spenser is summoned to meet Joe Broz, a local crime lord, shortly after talking to Hayden. Broz warns Spenser to stop his investigation and hints that the manuscript will be returned if he does. The very next day the manuscript is anonymously returned to the university, just as Broz said it would be. Undeterred by this series of events Spenser continues his investigation to prove Terry's innocence in the murder of Powell and tie it to the theft of the manuscript. Spenser tries to contact Cathy Connelly, Terry Orchard's former roommate and the only other person who knew Terry owned a gun. Connelly doesn't answer her door so Spenser breaks in. He finds Connelly's body floating in the bathtub, in his estimation murdered. Boston Police Captain Yates believes the death was accidental but his subordinates, Lieutenant Martin Quirk and Sergeant Frank Belson, believe otherwise. Nor do they believe Terry Orchard murdered Dennis Powell. Spenser begins working unofficially with Quirk and Belson to find the truth behind the Powell and Connelly murders. This is the first of many such collaborations that continue throughout the Spenser series. It is a mutually beneficial relationship: the police are able to use Spenser to gather information that they could not obtain through strictly legal channels and Spenser is able to use police resources to which he would not normally have access. After a gun battle with some of Broz's gun thugs near Jamaica Pond in Boston and a life and death struggle with Broz's top hit man in a Boston hotel, Spenser ties Joe Broz to Lowell Hayden, leading to Hayden's arrest and possibly Broz's arrest. Dennis Powell was in fact dealing heroin on the university campus, heroin supplied by Broz to Hayden, and Hayden to Powell. Hayden believed the heroin would allow people to realize the truth behind SCACE's anarchist ideals; Powell dealt it for the sake of the money to be made from it. Believing Powell had betrayed SCACE Hayden had Broz put a hit on Powell, orchestrated the framing of Terry Orchard for the crime, and murdered Cathy Connelly himself to cover it up. The manuscript was stolen by Powell at Hayden's behest to help fund SCACE's cause. Broz had Hayden return it in the hopes that Spenser would drop the case before discovering the heroin distribution scheme."
1027,Poodle Springs,crime," The start of the book finds Marlowe married to Linda Loring, the rich daughter of local tycoon Harlan Potter. Loring and Marlowe had met in The Long Goodbye and begun a romance at the end of Playback. From the beginning there are tensions, however, as Linda wants Marlowe to quit his job and get a decent position at one of her father's plants, which Marlowe refuses. The couple relocate to Poodle Springs (a mocking reference to Palm Springs), where they move into a grand mansion and Linda starts organising cocktail parties. Marlowe literally bumps into a local criminal named Lipschultz, who requests his services before Marlowe has even found office space in Poodle Springs. Lipschultz operates an illegal gambling house just outside Poodle Springs jurisdiction in Riverside. He has taken an IOU for $100,000 from one of his customers, a Poodle Springs photographer called Les Valentine. Lipshultz' boss, a local tycoon, has found out that the sum is missing from the books and has issued a 30-day ultimatum to retrieve the money or else. Lipshultz asks Marlowe to retrieve Valentine, who is unreachable. Marlowe accepts the job, asserting that all he can do is locate Valentine, not shake him down. Marlowe leaves and questions Valentine's wife, Muffy Blackstone, a rich socialite and acquaintance of his own wife, who tells him Valentine is out on a photo shoot. When Marlowe calls on Lipshultz again, he finds him killed in his casino office. From there, the trail leads to a double identity and a mastermind behind the scenes that is too close to home to be comfortable."
1028,A Pocket Full of Rye,crime," When upper middle class businessman Rex Fortescue dies while having tea, the police are shocked. The diagnosis is death by taxine - a poison found as a mixture of cardiotoxic diterpenes in the leaves, but not the berries (darils), of the European yew tree. His wife was the main suspect in the murder, until she also was murdered, after drinking tea laced with cyanide. Going on the only clue, a pocket full of rye found on the victim, Miss Marple begins investigating. Marple realizes the murders are arranged according to the pattern of a childhood nursery rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence. The next to be murdered is a maid named Gladys with whom Miss Marple was acquainted. She knew Gladys to be romantic and gullible. The other maid, Ellen, was hanging out the washing when she found Glady's body all mangled up in the clothes line with a peg on her nose. The younger Fortescue son, Lancelot, suddenly arrives from Kenya with his new wife. The older son, Percival, admits that his father was senile and ruining the business. Miss Marple discovers that the use of the rhyme in the crimes was to point the finger at an old dealing of the Blackbird Mine, in which old Fortescue was suspected of having killed his partner, MacKenzie, and swindled the mine from his partner's family. The mine is in Kenya. Thinking that one of the two MacKenzie children is responsible, Miss Marple and Inspector Neele trace Jennifer Fortescue (Percival's wife) to be the daughter of Mackenzie - something that she does indeed admit, as well as taking responsibility for placing dead blackbirds near Rex at various times to remind him of his past crimes. Jennifer's involvement, however, turns out to be a red herring as the murderer is, in fact, Lancelot. He had found out that the Blackbird Mine was valuable and wanted to inherit it, and so he met and romanced his scapegoat Gladys. He talked her into joining the Fortescue household and administering the poison in Rex's morning marmalade, telling her that it was a truth drug and fabricating her a story about needing old Fortescue to tell the truth in order to clear his name for something that he had been falsely accused of. Then, he killed Gladys so that she would not turn him in, and killed his stepmother so that the inheritance went to the children."
1029,The Siege of Trencher's Farm,crime," George Magruder, an American professor of English, moves with his wife Louise and eight-year-old daughter Karen, to Trencher's Farm in Cornwall, England, so that George can finish a book he is writing. George accidentally hits a child killer with his car and takes him back to the farm, not knowing who he is. When the locals find out, they form to a mob to break into George's house and the professor has to fight them off and protect his family."
1030,The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu,crime," We meet first Dr Petrie who is immediately surprised by a late night visitor, “a tall, lean ... square cut ... sun baked” man who turns out to be his good friend (Commissioner Sir Denis) Nayland Smith of Burma, formerly of Scotland Yard, who has come directly from Burma. We then learn that various men associated with India are the target of assassination by the Chinese Dr Fu Manchu, who seems to have been active in Burma (as distinct from India), in places such as Rangoon, Prome, Moulmein and the “Upper Irrawaddy”, and who comes to England with dacoits and thuggees. Fu Manchu is pursued from the opium dens of Limehouse in the East End of London to various country estates. We learn that Dr Fu Manchu is a leading member not of “old China”, the Mandarin class of the Manchu dynasty, or “young China”, a new generation of “youthful and unbalanced reformers” with “western polish” - but a “Third Party”. Nayland Smith is outwitted several times by Fu Manchu, and thus he reflects more the narrow escapes of the later Bulldog Drummond rather than the “logical” superior approach of the earlier Sherlock Holmes. Fu Manchu is a master poisoner and chemist, a cunning member of the Yellow Peril, “the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on the earth for centuries”, though his mission is not exactly clear at this stage. He appears to be trying to capture and take back to China the best engineers of Europe, for some larger criminal purpose. By the end of the book, Fu Manchu’s slave Karamaneh, a beautiful Arab woman, apparently now in love with Dr Petrie, and her brother Aziz, are freed, and Inspector Weymouth, driven mad by an injection of serum from Fu Manchu, is restored to sanity by Fu Manchu, who appears to have escaped from a fire which destroys the house he had previously entered."
1031,The Ice Harvest,crime," It is Christmas Eve in Wichita, Kansas and snowing steadily. The streets are deserted, traffic is light and most people have returned home for the start of the festivities. But family get-togethers are the last thing on Charlie Arglist's mind, and home is the last place he needs to be. For Charlie has to get out of town, having stolen nearly a million dollars. In nine and a half hours, to be precise. He has various misadventures before he is killed accidentally after nearly escaping cleanly."
1032,Double Trouble,crime," From Chapters.ca: Teen superstar Justin Carraway is being stalked, and Frank and Joe must figure out who is the culprit. But the case only gets more complicated after they meet Justin's twin brother, Ryan."
1033,Basket Case,crime," Jack Tagger, aged forty-six, is an obituary writer for the Union-Register (a fictitious South Florida newspaper). He becomes excited on seeing a death notice for James Bradley Stomarti aka Jimmy Stoma, lead man of the rock band Jimmy and the Slut Puppies. Jack interviews Jimmy’s widow, pop singer Cleo Rio (her stage name comes from the rumor that she flashed a sight of her pubic area during one of her music videos), who says that Jimmy died in a diving accident in the Bahamas. Cleo also plugs her new upcoming album, with a title song co-written by Jimmy and herself. Jimmy's sister Janet tells him Cleo lied: Jimmy was working on his own comeback album. Jack gets more suspicious when he visits Jimmy’s corpse in a funeral home and find that no autopsy was performed on his body. However, before Jack can call for an official autopsy, Jimmy’s body is cremated. Jack used to be an investigative reporter, but was demoted to the obituary beat after publicly insulting Race Maggad III, the CEO of the newspaper’s publishing company. His ambition is to climb back onto the front page by “yoking my byline to some famous stiff.” He tries to convince his editor, the “impossible” Emma to let him investigate Jimmy’s death, but she refuses. Jack’s current job has taken its toll on his life; writing obituaries all day long, he has become morbidly obsessed with death, especially his own. Each year, Jack obsesses about people who died at his age, and about the fate of his deceased father, who disappeared when Jack was young. These obsessions cost him his favorite girlfriend, Anne. Parked outside Cleo’s condominium one night, Jack sees her with a young man, an obvious sex partner. Emma relents and gives Jack a week to investigate Jimmy's death. Jack tracks down Jay Burns, the Slut Puppies’ old keyboardist, and Jimmy’s dive partner. Jay is heavily stoned, but to Jack it is obvious he is lying about something. Later that night, a burglar breaks into Jack’s apartment. Jack attacks him with the frozen corpse of a dead Savannah Monitor lizard which he keeps in his freezer. Jack is beaten unconscious, but the burglar disappears. A few hours later, two police detectives show up and tell him Jay Burns has been found murdered. His apartment trashed, Jack goes to stay with Emma. They decide to search the boat where he interviewed Jay. After careful searching, they find an external hard drive concealed inside the false bottom of a scuba tank. Jack is depressed to hear from his friend Carla Candilla, Anne’s teenaged daughter, that Anne is getting married again — worse, to a hack spy novelist. Meeting her at a club, he catches sight of Cleo's boyfriend, a man who calls himself ""Loreal"" and claims to be her record producer. Jack and Emma are alarmed when Janet disappears from her home. Jack finds a small patch of blood on her carpet. With the help of Jack's best friend, sports writer Juan Rodriguez, Jack decrypts the hard drive and finds it contains master recordings for Jimmy’s unfinished new album. Listening to it, Jack is still baffled in looking for a motive for Jimmy’s murder, if he was murdered. The cruel fact is, to most of the music industry Jimmy was a has-been. To Jack’s surprise, Emma spends the night with him at his apartment. A few days later, she excitedly tells him that another former Slut Puppy, Tito Negroponte, was shot but not killed in Los Angeles. Jack flies to California and interviews the bass player, who puts his finger on why Cleo killed Jimmy: she wanted a song from his album, “Shipwrecked Heart” for herself. Jack listens to the song, telling Emma that Cleo’s desperate to put out another hit before she fades from the scene, and Jimmy’s song is better than anything she can write. Still, Jack admits that he can’t prove that Cleo killed Jimmy. Cleo's bodyguard kidnaps Emma, and she demands the master in exchange for her. At the climactic confrontation on Lake Okeechobee, Jack and Juan meet the bodyguard and Loreal, and trade the master for Emma. Then the bodyguard tries to kill all of them, but ends up upending the airboat he’s driving, with fatal results. The day after the rescue is Jack’s 47th birthday. Carla calls from Anne's wedding to wish him a happy one. Jack’s mother sends him a card with a copy of his father’s obituary; she confesses that he died at age 46. (“See? You made it!”) Janet resurfaces, saying she skipped town when Cleo’s goons broke into her house. She confesses to Jack that she switched the tags on a pair of coffins at the funeral home, meaning Jimmy’s body wasn’t cremated, but is buried in the wrong man’s grave. At her request, the body is exhumed, and autopsied, and the pathologist finds that Jimmy was drugged before diving off the boat, causing him to pass out underwater and drown. Cleo is arrested, tried, and convicted of murder; Jack sails back onto the front page covering the story. Jimmy’s posthumous album is a hit. A subplot focuses on Jack’s ongoing feud with Race Maggad III, and the ailing state of the Union-Register since Maggad bought it. Maggad’s policy has been to increase the newspaper’s profits to the maximum by cutting down as much as possible on the actual gathering and reporting of news – less space in the paper devoted to news and more to advertisements, fewer reporters and editors employed, and stories that are deferential to business interests and lacking in depth. After Jack insulted him at a shareholders’ meeting, Maggad demoted Jack to the obituary page, expecting him to quit in humiliation. Instead, Jack finds an ally in MacArthur Polk, the newspaper's former publisher. Like Jack, Polk is furious about what Maggad has done to his newspaper, and now holds a position of power, because he owns a large number of shares in Maggad’s publicly-traded company, which Maggad is desperate to buy back before two foreign companies initiate a hostile takeover. Polk dies on the same night Jack rescues Emma. His will names Jack trustee of his shares, with instructions that Maggad can have the stock back, but only if he sells the Union-Register back to Polk’s family. Maggad reluctantly agrees. The new publisher, Polk’s widow, restores the paper to its former glory. Emma is promoted, and the novel ends as she is trying to talk Jack back from his leave of absence from journalism."
1034,The Murder Book,crime," During a surprise trip to Paris, Alex Delaware's girlfriend Robin announces that she will be working as part of the road crew for a rock music tour, while Alex remains at home. The split is hard on Alex, who uses the time to question his relationship with Robin as well as to start drinking heavily. An enigmatic package arrives at Alex's house containing a photo album of violent photographs depicting victims of various cases. Labeled the Murder Book, Alex's friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis, inspects the book and is disturbed by the image of the body of a young woman, who had been tortured, strangled and dumped. The murder was one of Milo's first cases as a rookie homicide cop."
1035,Batman: The Ultimate Evil,crime," At a party, Bruce Wayne meets Debra Kane, a caseworker with Child Protective Services. He asks to join her while she visits clients. She agrees and shows him the varying degrees of child abuse she encounters in the course of her job. Wanting to understand the factors behind child abuse, Wayne, as Batman, breaks into Hellgate Prison and talks with an informant who points him to a child pornography and prostitution ring. With Wayne showing frustration with these types of crimes, his butler Alfred reveals that Bruce's mother, Martha Wayne, had been secretly investigating a similar child prostitution ring and was assassinated so that her investigation would stop. Picking up where his mother's files left off, Wayne finds a connection to a southeast Asian country named Udon Khai. Using the assumed name Big Jack Hollister, Batman travels to San Francisco to meet a contact who explains how the sex tours to Udon Khai operate. As Hollister, Batman travels to Udon Khai, where he meets Rhama, a local translator hired by Alfred. Rhama shows Hollister life in Udon Khai and how the child sex tour industry has impacted its population. Saying he was sent by Hollister, Batman introduces himself to Rhama. Batman and Rhama confront a man who buys and sells children and they rescue a girl who had been sold by her family. They return the child to her village and find that her father, living in extreme poverty, had sold her so that the rest of the family could survive. The population mistakes Batman for a warrior of legend who would break the barriers that confine the population. Believing this to be their chance for a revolution to overthrow the military dictatorship, a rebel group joins Batman in storming the headquarters of the kingpin who controls the sex tour industry. Though Batman returns to Gotham City, the rebels continue to dismantle sex tour industry and overthrow the dictator of Udon Khai."
1036,Evil Under the Sun,crime," A quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Devon is all that Hercule Poirot wants, but amongst his fellow guests is a beautiful and vain woman who, seemingly oblivious to her own husband, revels in the attention of another woman's husband. When she is found strangled by powerful hands, were those hands male?"
1037,Third Girl,crime," Poirot's acquaintance, the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, provides him with a number of key clues in the novel, beginning with the identity of the girl, Norma Restarick, whom she had met at a party. Mrs. Oliver and Poirot begin to investigate Norma, but soon find that she has apparently gone missing. Mrs. Oliver meets the girls with whom she shares a flat at 67 Borodene Mansions: Claudia Reece-Holland (who turns out to be secretary to Norma's father) and Frances Cary, an artsy girl with long, dark hair that falls across her face. Neither has seen Norma recently. Poirot (visiting her paternal great uncle’s home in Long Basing) finds that her father and stepmother also have no idea where she has gone. Poirot does meet David Baker, Norma’s boyfriend, in the house, and sees that Norma’s stepmother, Mary, is highly annoyed to discover him there. Poirot also meets Norma’s paternal great-uncle, Sir Roderick Horsfield, who is elderly and has poor eyesight. Norma’s father, Andrew, has been staying with Sir Roderick since returning from Africa, where he had made a vast fortune. Mrs. Oliver provides a second essential clue when she happens across David and Norma in a café. She telephones Poirot, who comes to meet Norma, while she herself tracks David to a dingy artist’s studio, where Norma’s flatmate Frances is posing as a model. Leaving the studio Mrs. Oliver is knocked unconscious. Meanwhile, Norma awakens to find herself in the safe keeping of Stillingfleet, having apparently thrown herself under an oncoming car. In a red herring that is easily spotted by those who recognise the doctor from an earlier meeting with Poirot, it seems that Stillingfleet may have kidnapped Norma. In fact, Poirot has hidden her from danger, and she is not seen again for much of the novel. Andrew Restarick employs Poirot to track her down, and is insistent that the police are not to become involved. Sir Roderick also contacts Poirot seeking help. He has lost letters written during the Second World War by a third party, which would now cause embarrassment should they be made public. Poirot’s attention attaches itself to Sir Roderick’s personal assistant, Sonia, who has apparently been passing secrets to a representative of the Herzogovinian Embassy at Kew Gardens. This is all a red herring, however: Poirot hints to Sonia that he knows of her espionage activities, and she abandons them in order to marry Sir Roderick instead at the end of the novel. Mrs. Oliver now provides Poirot with another key clue: she has heard while at Borodene Mansions that a woman has committed suicide by throwing herself out of the window of Flat 76. This, Poirot infers, must be the murder that Norma believed herself to have committed. Investigating the dead woman, he discovers that her real name was Louise Carpenter: also the name of a woman with whom Andrew Restarick had been in love many years earlier. Mrs. Oliver later even provides Poirot with the draft of a letter from Louise to Andrew in which she attempted to make contact once more: an item that had providentially come into her possession early in the novel when it fell from a drawer. Amongst other clues on which Poirot focuses, there are several that are only explained at the end of the book. Mary Restarick wears a wig, to which the reader’s attention is repeatedly drawn by the fact that Mrs. Oliver’s hairpieces are often mentioned as a plot device: indeed, Mrs. Oliver alters her hair in order to be in disguise when she sees Norma and David in the café. Also, Poirot notices that there is a pair of portraits of Andrew Restarick and of his first wife (Norma’s mother) in their home; why is Mary Restarick apparently content to have a picture of her predecessor on display, and why does Andrew later split the set in order to have his own portrait in his office? Stillingfleet contacts Poirot to say that Norma has walked out on him unexpectedly. She has seen a message in the personal column of a newspaper calling her to the flat, where she is discovered by Frances Cary standing over the dead body of David Baker with a knife, the murder weapon, in her hand. Norma immediately claims responsibility for the murder to a neighbour, Miss Jacobs. Norma has, however, been subjected to a cocktail of drugs intended to disorient her and make her susceptible to the suggestion that she is a murderer. In the denouement Poirot reveals that the man posing as Andrew Restarick is an impostor, Robert Orwell, who has taken his place after the real Restarick died in Africa. Orwell has persuaded David Baker to paint a fake painting in style with the original one, which establishes to anyone who questions it that the new “Restarick” had looked much the same fifteen years earlier when the pair was painted. Mary Restarick, meanwhile, has been leading a double life, as both Mary and as Frances Cary, whom she could become by changing wigs. Their imposture, however, could be revealed by two people: by David Baker, who had taken to blackmailing Orwell over the picture; and Louise Carpenter, who knew Restarick too well to be fooled by Orwell. The murder plot involved killing both of them, and convincing Norma that she was the killer. Norma had never in reality been in Louise’s flat: they simply switched the 7 and the 6 on the door of her own flat. All along the “third girl” in the flat on whom attention should have been focused has been, not Norma, but Frances. At the end of the novel, Stillingfleet, who has staunchly defended Norma’s innocence even when it was most in question, is rewarded by her agreeing to marry him. As Mrs. Oliver realises, Poirot has planned this happy ending all along."
1038,Never End,crime," A nineteen year-old woman, Jeanette Bielke, is raped whilst walking home during the night. Inspector Winter is perturbed when he realises that the rape occurred in exactly the same spot as a similar crime, which in this case ended in murder, five years ago. That case remains unsolved, and looms even further into Winter's site when another rape occurs, and this one ends in murder again."
1039,Monster,crime," A mutilated body of a wannabe actor is found in the trunk of a car parked near an industrial area. Weeks later, another body appears in similar conditions at another location. This time it's a female psychology doctor working in a state facility for psychotic criminals. One similarity of the mutilations was obvious. The eyes were targeted. The case goes to LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, assisted by Dr. Alex Delaware, an old friend and psychological consultant. The two find out that the eye mutilation was infamously performed in the case of a family mass murder some years ago, and the culprit is now in the same facility where the female doctor worked. The media had described him simply as a 'monster' following his arrest. Facing him, Milo and Alex find the 'monster' in a deteriorated condition locked within a highly secured cell. To add to the drama, the detectives get a tip-off that the killer, who hardly speaks, had said something that implied the doctor's mutilated eyes."
1040,Layer Cake,crime," The story starts on April Fool's Day in 1997. The narrator, and his pal Mister Mortimer are waiting impatiently to sell a half-kilo of cocaine to a less-than-punctual pal, Jeremy. Until Jeremy arrives, we are introduced to various characters and are given a brief look into their histories, including Jimmy Price; Mister Mortimer (Morty), who served five and a quarter of an eight year sentence for being caught while disposing of suicide victim Kilburn Jerry after a party; young Clarkie, whom the narrator expects will be taking his place when he retires; and Terry, friend to all. The narrator also explains to us how he made it to where he is—starting small, growing in rank, keeping quiet and making sure everything is strictly business. Jeremy eventually arrives half an hour late to make the purchase. In the next scene, Narrator is invited to Mortimer's pornshop, Loveland, and interrupts an argument between Mort and an employee, Nobby, who is confused on what to do over a shipment from the Netherlands of low-quality sex gear that they did not order. It is decided to send it back. Mort then drives the narrator to a fancy, out-of-the-way restaurant called Pepi's Barn, the haunt of ""don"" Jimmy Price, who has demanded to meet with him. Here we are introduced to Jimmy's right-hand man Gene, a loyal gundog to boot. The purpose of the dinner, as it turns out, is the disappearance of a young girl name of Charlotte Temple. Charlotte is the daughter of Edward Temple, a wealthy business contractor and socialite whom Price has known since childhood. She's run away with her new boyfriend, a cokehead by the name of Trevor Atkins, alias Kinky. Price charges Narrator with the task of locating Charlotte as a favour to Jimmy's pal, and promises that if he is successful, Price will allow him to retire without fuss. Price also tells the narrator about a crew of gangsters who have recently acquired two million high quality Ecstasy pills from Amsterdam. Price tasks the narrator with finding a buyer for the pills, and quickly. During the meeting with the gangsters, collectively known as the ""Yahoos"", the narrator finds that he cannot reason with them, and he leaves upon promising to find a buyer for the pills, albeit at a much lower price than if the Yahoos would consent to releasing the pills in small installments. The narrator tells the Yahoos that the pills are worth much less than they believe, which they are not happy to hear. The narrator tasks his old friend Cody, AKA Billy Bogus and his partner Tiptoes with locating Charlie. Cody expects little difficulty and quickly accepts the job. While looking for Cody in a London club, the narrator encounters Sydney, a low-ranking member of The Yahoos, the crew holding the two million pills. The narrator then meets Sydney's girlfriend Tammy, who he is immediately attracted to. Before leaving the club, Tammy gives him her number and surreptitiously asks him to call her. While speaking with Sydney, the narrator hears a story about the leader of Sydney's crew, a man named Darren who prefers to be known as The Duke. The Duke and his girlfriend, Slasher, are a pair of dedicated coke addicts who live just outside of London. The pair of them have become steadily more paranoid due to their cocaine use, and this paranoia leads Slasher to attack a member of the local council with pepper spray when he visits their home. Slasher also manages to kill one of the Duke's prized Dobermans, Mike Tyson, by shooting it. Sydney thinks the story is hilarious, but the narrator panics upon realizing that the Duke probably had his number along with Mr. Mortimer's, and the police could very well have information on them now. The narrator sets about finding a buyer for the Ecstasy pills, and he, Mortimer and Clarkie go to Liverpool to meet with Trevor and Shanks, two powerful north England drug dealers. Upon their arrival, Shanks tells the narrator and his colleagues that the ""Yahoos"" have in fact stolen the pills from a neo-Nazi outfit in Amsterdam, and they used the narrator and Mortimers' names to gain credibility. Shanks tells the narrator that the Germans have unleashed an assassin named Klaus to recover the pills and eliminate the thieves. Unfortunately for the narrator, Klaus believes that he was the one who initiated the robbery. The meeting ends and Trevor invites the narrator to come to dinner at his house. The narrator has a nightmare involving Jimmy Price and awakes to a television news story about the brutal torture and murder of a boatman named Van Tuck. At Trevor's house, Trevor and the narrator are discussing the state of the drugs game when the narrator offhandedly mentions Van Tuck's murder. Trevor flies into a panic and takes the narrator to see Duncan, a local reporter who is friendly with many police officers and feeds Trevor information. On the way, Trevor explains that Van Tuck was a smuggler and he was currently moving several million pounds worth of marijuana into the country for Trevor. Trevor's hope is that Van Tuck had not yet picked up the shipment, but there is a strong possibility that the police will have confiscated the drugs during their investigation of Van Tuck's murder. Through Duncan, Trevor discovers that the cannabis has been seized by the police and after destroying many of Duncan's possessions in a rage, the action moves back to London. The narrator and Morty receive a call from Cody, telling them that he has located Kinky, Charlie's boyfriend, in a flat in King's Cross. Upon arriving at the flat, the men find that Kinky is dead of a heroin overdose, and one of the crackheads who was living with Kinky believes that Kinky was murdered. The narrator is intrigued to learn that Kinky had turned up at the flat shortly before his death with Charlie and two grand in cash. The crackheads tell them that Charlie has gone to Brighton and the narrator sends Cody after her. The narrator and Morty retire to a cafe, where they run into Freddy Hurst, a fat and slovenly ex-gangster who is down on his luck. Freddy subtly ridicules Morty and asks for some money. Morty complies, but when Freddy makes another comment, Morty flies into a rage and beats Freddy almost to death in the middle of the crowded cafe. Morty and the narrator flee, with the narrator deeply troubled by what he has just witnessed. That night, the narrator visits Gene at his flat. Gene goes over the beating in great detail and informs the narrator that if Freddy dies, the narrator is left with two options. He can either testify against Morty or he will go to prison as an accomplice to murder. Gene then goes on to explain that Freddy Hurst was an influential gangster in the late 1970s in London, and that Gene and Morty were members of his crew. After Kilburn Jerry killed himself and Morty was caught disposing of the body, Freddy was about to go away for about 12 years to serve concurrent sentences. Freddy could have gotten Morty off the hook but chose not to, leading to Morty doing 5 years in prison unnecessarily. The narrator gets very drunk with Gene, and the next day decides to arrange a meeting with Tammy at the Churchill Hotel. While showering at the hotel before Tammy arrives, the narrator is kidnapped by two unidentified men and transported across London to The City. There he meets Eddie Temple, who explains that Jimmy has double-crossed the narrator. Jimmy had become involved in a scheme with some gangsters from Chechnya to purchase a consignment of non-existent Pakistani heroin. Jimmy had been taken in by the gangsters and had lost nearly 13 million pounds. In his rage, Jimmy believed that his old friend Eddie had arranged for Jimmy to be ensnared, and he therefore tasked the narrator to find Charlie, Eddie's daughter. Jimmy believed that if he could hold Charlie hostage, he could force Eddie to get his money back. Eddie goes on to explain that Jimmy has been moonlighting as a police informer for a number of years. Eddie plays the narrator a recording in which Jimmy speaks with Albie Carter, a member of the Southeast Regional Crime Squad. Jimmy tells Albie that he wants the narrator to be arrested for possession of drugs, which would result in a 12 year sentence. Jimmy had sent the narrator to a dodgy accountant, and after the narrator is imprisoned, Jimmy was planning to take control of his assets to recover his lost wealth. Eddie drops the narrator off back at the Churchill with the recording. The narrator decides to take matters into his own hands and proceeds to Jimmy's mansion in Totteridge. There, he sneaks into the grounds of Price's house and kills him with a gun he borrowed from Gene. The narrator heads back into London, where his colleagues are frantically trying to find out who killed Jimmy. The narrator is convinced that he got away cleanly and is unconcerned. He is summoned with Morty to see Gene, who promptly beats the narrator viciously and breaks his wrist. It transpires that Gene has discovered that the narrator killed Jimmy with the same gun that Gene used to kill Crazy Larry Flynn, a homosexual London gangster who had been friends with both Gene and Morty. Upon producing the recording, the narrator manages to convince Gene and Morty that Jimmy was an informer, and they trust one another again. The narrator now decides to eliminate both of his remaining problems. One, he has to stop Klaus the murderous Nazi and, two, he has find a way to steal the pills back from the Yahoos. The narrator and Morty contact Shanks in Liverpool and get him to send an assassin down on the train. The narrator lures Klaus to Primrose Park and lies in wait with the sniper. The narrator spots a tall blonde man in the park and, believing this man to be Klaus, orders to sniper to kill him, which he does. The narrator then realizes that they have killed the wrong man and see Klaus run away from the scene. Gene flies into a rage when he hears what has happened, and dispatches some of his own men to find and kill Klaus, which they do. The narrator then contracts Cody to organize a false police raid on the Yahoos hideout to steal back the pills. Cody and his team assault the hideout, posing as armed police. They allow the Yahoos to escape and they ""confiscate"" the pills. Gene and the narrator find the Yahoos in a run-down bar and convince them that the police who raided them were crooked and have taken the pills for themselves. The narrator had previously worked out a deal with Eddie Ryder to give Ryder the pills in return for 2.5 million pounds. Thinking that his job is finally complete, the narrator and his colleagues take the pills to Eddie Temple's bonded warehouse at Heathrow Airport, where Temple is having the pills flown to Tokyo. When they arrive at the airport, Eddie and his private security team take them all hostage and take the pills. Temple takes the pills, telling the narrator that he is owed them as a result of the narrator causing Charlie distress. Temple then delivers a speech to the narrator, explaining the nature of the drugs game, crime and life in general: ""You're born, you take shit. Get out in the world, you take more shit. Climb a little higher, you take less shit. Until one day you're up in the rarified atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son."" Seemingly defeated, the narrator and his colleagues then discover that they have delivered the wrong boxes to Temple. The boxes were actually filled with sex toys and pornography that Morty had been able to sell at Loveland, the sex shop that he owned. The real pills had been shipped back to Amsterdam and to an unknown fate. Clarkie then tells Morty that had Freddie Hurst has died of his injuries, which could cause serious problems for Morty. The story then fast-forwards about three years. The narrator is now living on the northern coast of Venezuela where he runs a bar. It turns out that about six weeks after Temple took the pills, the narrator and Tammy were eating in a restaurant in London when Sydney, Tammy's jilted ex-boyfriend found them. Sydney shot the narrator multiple times, including in the head. The narrator spent six weeks in a coma and awoke with a steel plate in his head. He is visited in hospital by a mysterious government official, who may work for the police or MI5. The man tells the narrator to abandon the drugs trade and leave Britain or else he would find himself in prison for a very long time. The narrator moves to Venezuela and leaves us with the line, ""My name? If you knew that, you'd be as clever as me."""
1041,The Devil's Star,crime," Pursuing his suspicions during the Nemesis investigation, police inspector Harry Hole attempts to convince the Chief Inspector that his colleague, Tom Waaler is a smuggling kingpin known as the Prince, who has been involved in smuggling weapons into Oslo, as well as the murder of a number of witnesses (including Harry's former partner) who threaten his position. Due to a lack of evidence, the response is less than positive and Harry retreats onto an alcoholic binge. His superior reluctantly sends termination of employment papers to the Chief Inspector, but Harry gets a short reprieve as the Chief is on holiday for three weeks and cannot sign them. Meanwhile, a murder victim is discovered, dead in her shower on the fifth floor, shot in the head. Tom Waaler is appointed to lead the investigation, but Harry and his partner, Beate Lønn are attached to Waaler's team. Harry, investigating the murder scene, discovers a small, red five-pointed diamond under the eyelid of the victim and that a finger is missing from her left hand. Another murder is presumed when the director of a musical, My Fair Lady, reports that his wife has gone missing. Her finger is later sent to the National Criminal Investigation Service; it has a ring on it with a small, red five-pointed diamond. The director, Wilhelm Barli, is most upset, especially since his wife, Lisbeth, was due to take the lead in My Fair Lady, a role he later gives to his wife's sister. A few days later a third victim is found, this time in the female toilets at a local law firm. She is found on her hands and knees, with her head also on the floor and a five-pointed red diamond on the body. Yet again a finger has been removed. Meanwhile, Tom Waaler – who has heard about Harry's investigation of him – has offered Harry a position in his illegal dealings, especially as Harry's police career seems to be over. He informs Harry that, should he – Harry – wish to join, he will be given a specific task to prove his loyalty. Tom dangles the large financial benefits of his criminal activities as an inducement. Harry is initially confused as to why Waaler is effectively admitting his guilt, but is reminded that, as an alcoholic, Harry's evidence would not be sufficient to convict him if he went to his superiors. Harry agrees to think about the offer. A chance sighting of a pentagram brings Harry a flash of inspiration. The five-pointed diamonds found on the victims are in a similar shape – known as a Devil's Star – and Harry remembers having seen the same symbol at the murder scenes. The further significance of the pentagram soon becomes apparent to Harry, and provides a major clue as to the next possible murder locations, which are kept under surveillance. One is in a student residence hall and the other a house on the outskirts of the city, owned by Olaug Sivertsen. While investigating this house, Beate Lønn discovers that the likely murderer is Olaug's son, Sven. She informs Harry by phone as he and Tom Waaler are checking out the other prospective crime scene, the student residence. Harry lets the information slip to Waaler, who immediately leaves to assist Lønn. Harry, using recently installed CCTV cameras, notices another pentagram on a student's door. Eventually, the body of a fourth victim is found. Meanwhile, Tom Waaler apprehends Sven Sivertsen, although his threats to shoot him ultimately lead to the realisation by Lønn that he intended to murder Sven instead of arresting him. Now Harry is given his initiation task by Tom Waaler: get a confession from and then kill Sven Sivertsen in custody using poison. Waaler's influence is such that he apparently can guarantee Harry will get away with this. But Harry is persuaded by Sven that he is innocent of the crimes and, Instead of killing him, secretly removes him from the custody cells and goes into hiding. Harry is now a hunted man, his future in the police - and quite possibly his life - depending on his being able to prove Waaler's misdeeds. Sivertsen is willing to testify against Waaler, but his price is that Harry will exonerate him from the multiple murder charges he faces. Harry is faced with the daunting task of discovering and apprehending the true murderer in a single day. However, a clue is provided by a seemingly irrelevant photograph which Sivertsen shows Harry, and a very minute but precise piece of forensic evidence points to a completely unexpected perpetrator. Leaving Sivertsen chained up, Harry goes to confront his new suspect - and encounters him in the immediate aftermath of his committing yet another murder. Harry comes very near to being killed himself - but eventually the killer commits suicide. Just as Harry feels all is over bar clearing up, his phone rings and Tom Waaler informs him that he had kidnapped Oleg, the son of Harry's girlfriend Rakel, to convince Harry to meet him and trade Oleg for Sivertsen. Waaler is aware that it is Harry whom Oleg regards as his father – rather than his biological father in Russia, from whom Rakel is long separated – and that Harry is deeply attached to the boy and would do virtually anything in order to save him. Harry arranges a meeting in the student Hall of Residence. Using the CCTV cameras as a bargaining chip, Harry tries to convince Waaler that his position is hopeless. More and more outrageous stories are proposed by Waaler to explain how he intends to cover up what has happened, but eventually Harry manages to overpower Waaler and rescue Sven and Oleg. In the final climax of the story, Waaler ultimately loses his life. Harry, meanwhile, has worked out who the murderer is, and the case is satisfactorily concluded. Having exposed Tom Waaler and solved the case, Harry's termination of employment is rescinded and he returns to the force. As would become clear in the next book, ""The Redeemer"", Harry's professional success was achieved at a high personal price. Despite being deeply in love with Harry, Rakel decides to terminate their relationship; Oleg's being kidnapped by Waaler and coming very close to death led her to feel that Harry's profession – and his utter dedication to that profession – would make life with him too disruptive and dangerous. However, though Harry would become in some ways attracted to other women, Rakel would remain the great love of his life, and for her part she would also find it impossible to completely cut off contact."
1042,Sweet Danger,crime," Guffy Randall is surprised to find his old friend Albert Campion in a French hotel, accompanied by a mountaineer and a prospector, masquerading as minor Royalty. When Campion explains that they are seeking proof of British rights to a small territory, recently disturbed by an earthquake and turned into a strategically important harbour with its own fuel, Randall joins the team. Following their adversaries, headed by a secretive financier named Savanake, they travel to the village of Pontisbright in Suffolk, former seat of the heirs to the crown of Averna. After a night in the local inn, the Gauntlett, during which Lugg sees a corpse wrapped in a winding cloth on the nearby heath, they move to the local mill, run by an impoverished family with claims to be the lost heirs of the Pontisbright name. Amanda, the middle child, has an interest in electricity and radio, running a dynamo from the watermill; her aunt Hattie recently disturbed a burglar in the house, who Campion immediately identifies as ""Peaky"" Doyle, an old associate of Savanake who recently shot at Campion on the continent. Amanda shows them an ancient inscription on a slab of oak cut from the Pontisbright estate, which speaks of a crown hidden by a split diamond, and other proofs, believed to be the missing deeds and titles, marked by a bell and a drum. Campion and his friends visit Dr Galley, the local medic, a bizarre, eccentric old man who tries to scare them back to London with talk of a curse on the village. Back at the house, they find a drunken Lugg and Scatty Williams, the Fittons' servant, have beaten up a burglar found looking at the inscription; it is Peaky Doyle, who Campion insists they leave, unconscious, on the heath, revealing that he informed Doyle of the inscription in hopes of getting some help solving the riddle. Campion is called to a meeting with Savanake, who insists he take a job in Peru, leaving immediately; when Campion's friends receive a note saying he has run out on them, they resolve to stay to finish the business, but are at a loss as to how to continue. The house is invaded, and everyone left bound and gagged in the dark while it is searched, but they are mysteriously released later. A letter arrives addressed to Campion, which the men read after Amanda has opened it; it describes a drum belonging to the Pontisbrights, currently in a Norwich museum. Amanda reveals she has come into £300, and plans to buy a car and some radio equipment; when Farquharson and Randall arrive at the museum to retrieve the drum, they find Amanda and Scatty Williams have already taken it. At the mill, Hal meets Dr Galley, who tells him he has found evidence that Hal is the Pontisbright heir, and insists they all visit him the following night for dinner. Amanda arrives, and Hal locks her in the grain store, taking the drum. When the others return, he goes to tell them he has it, but when they return to his room the skin is gone from the drum and Amanda is free. Next morning, Lugg and Scatty leave early in the new car, laden with radio equipment. Two policemen arrive, and take Farquharson and Eager-Wright away, accused of trying to defraud a museum of its drum. Aunt Hattie disturbs a man rifling her jewellery, which leads to a gunfight in the yard; the thief is driven back into the house by Campion, dressed as a woman. He explains that he switched with a friend to avoid being sent abroad, and has been hiding in the house, secretly helping out. He tells them he arranged for the two men to be arrested by friends, so they could safely take the drum-skin bearing the deeds to Averna to London. He identifies a necklace of Aunt Hattie's as the ancient crown of Averna, and gives everyone instructions to go to Galley's and flee by boat when they get his signal. When he hears some stories about Galley from Amanda, he realises the old man is insane and plans to kill his guests. They rush to his house, arriving just in time to stop him drugging everyone, and Campion heads off on his mission. Amanda enters Galley's, and he begins a ceremony to conjure a demon. They learn he had tried this before, and had mistaken Peaky Doyle, who arrived during the ceremony, for Astaroth; he did Doyle's bidding for a time, until he found him unconscious on the heath, from when he believed he had control of the demon, and tried to feed him with bizarre herbs. He unveils Doyle, bizarrely dressed and near death, just as the sound of an enormous bell rings loud around the valley; the others overpower Galley, lock him up and flee in a camouflaged boat prepared by Amanda. Campion follows an echo of the bell, broadcast by a duplicate of the old Pontisbright bell in a foreign convent and amplified by Amanda's equipment. He finds an old well, but must hide in a tree when Savanake arrives with his well-armed gang. They remove an iron box from the well, but Campion has knocked out Savanake's chauffeur, and driving him and Parrott away with the box, heads to the mill and gets out, feigning engine trouble. He knocks Parrott out, but Savanake draws a gun on him; he knocks the box into the water, and he and Savanake fight. As Campion is about to drown in Savanake's mighty hands, Amanda opens the stops and flushes Savanake away. Campion is exhausted, and Savanake climbs out of the water; Amanda distracts him and grabs the box, but takes a bullet from Savanake's gun as she shuts a door on him. Savanake tries to get round to them, but falls through a rotten walkway; when Campion tries to help him, he shoots at Campion, losing his grip as he does so, and is washed into the waterwheel and killed. The army arrive and clear everything up, taking the precious deeds found in the box to the government. Hal has proof, found in Galley's house, that he is the Pontisbright heir; Randall and Mary plan to marry; and Amanda's wound is not serious. She and Campion talk, and she makes him promise to take her into ""partnership"", when she is a little older."
1043,End Games,crime," Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. And beneath the surface of a tight-knit, traditional community he discovers that violent forces are at work. There has been a brutal murder and Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence, to uncover the truth, but his assignment is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for ancient buried treasure, launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing his bizarre and deadly obsession."
1044,Crooked Zebra,crime," Jim Stanton, the narrator, tells the tale of Bob Girard, a former college basketball player who now runs a popular basketball camp for children in South Florida. Chad Payne, an eleven year old basketball phenom, sneaks into the camp. Girard rescues Chad from a broken home and encourages him. Eventually, Chad grows up, becomes a star and signs with Duke University. Meanwhile, Girard becomes a college basketball referee with troubled finances. Bob begins to make extra money by fixing games, he becomes so good at it, and so greedy, that he, with support from the mafia, attempts to fix the national championship game."
1045,The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,crime," The book is set in the fictional village of King's Abbott in England. It is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot's assistant (a role filled by Captain Hastings in several other Poirot novels). The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow who is rumoured to have murdered her husband. Her death is initially believed to be an accident until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who had been expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars, reveals that she admitted to killing her husband and then committed suicide. Shortly after this he is found murdered. The suspects include Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, Roger's neurotic hypochondriac sister-in-law who has accumulated personal debts through extravagant spending; her daughter Flora; Major Blunt, a big-game hunter; Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd's personal secretary; Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's stepson and another person with heavy debts; Parker, a snooping butler; and Ursula Bourne, a parlourmaid with an uncertain history who resigned her post the afternoon of the murder. Dr Sheppard's spinster sister Caroline is a favourite character among many and some say she could have been in another book. The initial suspect is Ralph, who is engaged to Flora and stands to inherit his stepfather's fortune. Several critical pieces of evidence seem to point to Ralph. Poirot, who has just moved to the town, begins to investigate at Flora's behest. The book ends with a then-unprecedented plot twist. Poirot exonerates all of the original suspects. He then lays out a completely reasoned case that the murderer is in fact Dr. Sheppard, who has not only been Poirot's assistant, but the story's narrator. Dr. Sheppard was Mrs. Ferrars' blackmailer, and he murdered Ackroyd to stop him learning the truth from Mrs. Ferrars. Poirot gives the doctor two choices: either he surrenders to the police or, for the sake of his clean reputation and his proud sister, he commits suicide. In the final chapter of Sheppard's narrative (a sort of epilogue), Sheppard admits his guilt, noting certain literary techniques he used to write the narrative truthfully without revealing his role in the crime or doing anything to suggest that he knew the truth, and reveals that he had hoped to be the one to write the account of Poirot's great failure: not solving the murder of Roger Ackroyd. Thus, the last chapter acts as both Sheppard's confession and suicide note. The final revelation uses meta-fictional tropes. The ending also opens up the question whether narrators can be trusted or not. Christie uses unreliable narrator again in 1967 novel Endless Night. Reader response to the ending varies from admiration of the unexpected end to a feeling of being cheated. In the novel, Christie has laid side by side two modes of gathering of information and building of hypothesis. One is Poirot's use of ratiocination, the other is the channel of gossiping, practised by almost all inhabitants of King's Abbott, in particular, Caroline. While even Caroline is able to interpret certain situations correctly, Christie privileges scientific mode of investigation by unveiling the murderer through Poirot."
1046,Night Train,crime," This book is told from the perspective of Detective Mike Hoolihan, a female detective who is charged with the task of finding the motivation for Jennifer Rockwell's suicide. Jennifer, a beautiful astrophysicist with a seemingly perfect life seems to have had no reason to kill herself. Thematically this book touches on cosmology and chaos theory, and their relation to the human condition as a possible motive for suicide. Hoolihan is a recovering alcoholic and former homicide detective who lives with an obese man named Tobe in an unnamed American city (presumably based on Seattle or Portland). She reveals that she had been sexually abused as a child, revolted violently against the abuse at the age of ten, and then pursued a number of affairs with abusive or unworthy men. Despite her disadvantages, she becomes a successful detective before her illness forces her to accept less demanding work seizing assets from criminals. Her experiences lead her to examine gender roles in police work. Her former boss, mentor, and personal friend 'Colonel' Tom Rockwell asks that she investigate the apparent suicide of his daughter Jennifer who, as a beautiful, intelligent, cheerful, popular woman has no obvious reason for taking her own life. Rockwell suspects Jennifer's lover Trader Faulkner, a distinguished academic, of murdering Jennifer. Hoolihan attempts to pressure Faulkner into confessing, but fails. She discovers that Jennifer was taking lithium, met a philandering salesman in the bar of a local hotel, and made uncharacteristic mistakes at work shortly before her death. Hoolihan then deduces that these factors are merely 'blinds' - or clues - deliberately planted by Jennifer for the benefit of an investigation at the behest of her father. Hoolihan concludes that these blinds are meant either to provide the less astute investigator with a sense of 'closure', or to indicate a greater bleakness, or nihilism. After breaking down while attempting to communicate her findings to Rockwell - who immediately expresses his concern - Hoolihan heads for the nearest bar, knowing that the alcohol will kill her."
1047,Epiphany,crime," Towards the end of the year 1975, five students have been visiting a deserted barn in the woods of San Francisco as a place to take drugs and have sex. On Christmas Eve, a young boy is abducted from his sister and parents and dismembered body parts are also found near the woods. The kidnapper and murderer is Michael Quinn, one of the students who now frequents the barn. He is strongly obsessed with LSD, quantum physics and the ideas of Schrödinger's cat, which he uses to justify his actions. Fellow student Hal Jamieson finds himself trying to get himself out of the police net that will inevitably close around them, and involves Paul Dunsany, a kind hearted musician who fails to realise the monstrous acts evolving around him. All escape but Quinn, who is incarcerated for 20 years for murder, kidnapping and ransom. The missing child is never found. Towards the end of 1995, Paul Dunsany has grown up in Seattle, as professional musician and owner of a recording studio. He meets a mysterious woman by the name of Joni, who begins to probe him about his past. Hal Jamieson is a rich and successful software mogul, living also in Washington. He is married to Louise, one of the original five. Upon hearing of Quinn's release from prison, he decides to have Quinn taken into solitary 'care', for fear that he could incriminate the rest of them about what happened in early 1976. As Jamieson tries his best to reunite the original five and use his wealth to take care of the situation, he finds Dunsany cannot remember much of what happened, and the fifth person, a girl by the name of Mouse, is of unknown whereabouts. There is also the problem of the inquisitive woman, looking for the answer to what happened to the missing child. Quinn is older now, and has contracted HIV. But he still possesses the view of the world he gained from LSD, and is still very dangerous. Wishing for freedom, he plans his escape from the woodland house Jamieson has him forced to live in."
1048,The Scold's Bridle,crime," Mathilda Gillespie, an eccentric recluse known for her incredible meanness of nature, is found dead in her bathtub, her wrists slashed and her head locked inside a so-called 'scold's bridle', a rusted cage built with tongue clamps which was used as a torture device throughout the middle ages. The dead woman's only friend, Dr. Sarah Blakeney, becomes prime suspect in her murder after police discover that she's been left a great deal of money in the will. To clear her name, Sarah delves deep into Mathilda's mysterious past, and subsequently unravels an intricate web of greed, abuse and depravity."
1049,The Hidden Assassins,crime, The novel tackles themes of terrorism.
1050,The Angel of Darkness,crime," Stevie Taggert tells of the mystery of Señora Linares's missing child. Set in 1897, the mystery is complicated by rising tensions between Cuba and the United States and forces the team to ask, within the context of their era, a complex ethical question, could the act of a woman murdering her own kids be looked at as her trying to gain control over her life and her world?"
1051,Stone Cold,crime," A couple of middle-aged thrill killers, Brianna and Anthony Lincoln, are independently wealthy from a patent Anthony obtained for an optical scanner he invented while practicing medicine. The couple move to Paradise and begin picking random people and murdering them by simultaneously shooting them in the heart with .22 caliber pistols. They then make love while watching videos of the murders. Kenneth Eisley is the first victim; Jesse does not discover his identity until after some investigation, and finds his dog. The Lincolns then stalk and kill a woman in a supermarket, and Jesse has the license plate numbers collected from all cars present at the scene. Next the Lincolns murder a man behind a church as he walks home from the train station. Two teenage boys stumble on the body while skateboarding and notice a red 1995 Saab. With the help of the state police, Jesse finds all people who have both registered .22s and a red 1995 Saab, and checks if there was a red Saab at the supermarket. This leads Jesse to the Lincolns. Jesse briefly interviews the Lincolns, who seem very interested in the murders. He takes their .22 rifle for testing, but it has never been fired. However, he leaves convinced they are the killers. The murderers then stalk Abby Taylor. Although Abby is considering marrying another man, she still has feelings for Jesse. After spending an evening with Jesse and making love to him, she returns home and is murdered by the Lincolns. They begin stalking and taking photos of Jesse, who learns of this while tailing them one night when they stop at his condo to take photos. Flirting with getting caught, and hoping to prove how smart they are —and how dumb the police are— the Lincolns invite Jesse to lunch. They probe him about the murders, but he reveals little. Later, a note is delivered to the police station telling Jesse to come to Paradise Mall at 7pm to learn about the murders. Believing they intend to murder him, Jesse stations officers at the mall and goes wearing a bullet-proof vest. As he approaches the elevator in the food court he is confronted by the Lincolns as they exit it, and they both shoot him in the chest and re-enter the elevator. Jesse bounds up the escalator, but the elevator descends again. When they exit, they have changed clothes. Officer Anthony D’Angelo thinks he recognizes the woman and stops her; she turns and shoots him in the head, killing him instantly. They escape in a rented Volvo. Feeling guilty for D’Angelo’s murder, which he believes could have been prevented had he involved the state police, Jesse trudges on with the case. He took it personally after Abby’s murder, and wanted to catch the killers without the state police. They obtain a search warrant for the Lincolns' rented penthouse condo and find pictures of the victims on their computer, and the abandoned Saab. Jesse’s ex-wife Jenn wonders how they got to the mall without their car, which leads Jesse to check car rentals and match them with names of people who patented optical scanners. One was rented on the day of the murder to Arlington Larmont: Anthony Lincoln was an alias. Jesse discovers that the car was dropped off in Toronto, and the state police find the couple registered at a Toronto hotel, where they are picked up by local police. Jesse drives up to confront the couple, who play dumb. Jesse responds by kneeing Arlington in the groin. When his wife jumps up to defend her husband, Jesse slaps her, then leaves."
1052,Aftermath,crime," One early morning in May, Banks is called to a steep, overgrown street in Leeds, where two police officers answering a domestic call have stumbled on a scene of unbelievable horror. In the cellar of 35 The Hill, two people are dead, a third is dying, and behind a door more bodies lay buried. This seems to be the end of a grisly case Banks has been working on for some time, but ironically it turns out to be only the beginning. It is apparent who the murderer is, but Banks quickly finds out that nothing in this case is quite as straightforward as it seems. Many people are entangled in this crime–some whose lives are shattered by it, and some with unspeakable secrets in their pasts. The dead, Banks learns, are not the only victims, and the murderer may not be the only person to blame."
1053,The Last Coyote,crime," Bosch is involved in an incident at work and has been put on involuntary stress leave. He must go through therapy sessions to be able to return to work. This involves talking about the incident and himself with Carmen Hinojos, a police psychologist. Three months ago, Bosch broke up with his girlfriend, Sylvia Moore. Carmen asks Harry to verbalize his mission in life. Harry decides that his mission is to investigate his mother's murder. She had been a prostitute and was strangled when Harry was twelve. He gets the murder book from the police archives and reviews the case. He first goes to visit Meredith Roman, another prostitute who was his mother's best friend at the time. The one real piece of information the Bosch gets from her is something that she did not tell the police: his mother was going to meet Arno Conklin at Hancock Park on the night of the murder. Bosch, with the help of the new cop beat/LA Times reporter, investigates Fox, Conklin, and Conklin's close associate Mittel. He discovers that Fox was killed in a hit and run while distributing campaign literature for Conklin. Conklin had been running for District Attorney. He also learns from an old cop friend that Mittel is now a very successful lawyer and campaign fund raiser. He is currently helping Robert Shepard, a computer tycoon, run for the Senate. On a whim, Harry drives to Shepard's house and ends up attending a fund-raising party. He meets Mittel and, using the name of his boss Pounds, asks a waitress at the party to deliver an envelope to Mittel. In the envelope, Harry puts a copy of a newspaper article about Fox's death and circles the names Conklin, Mittel, and Fox. He writes under the article, ""What prior work experience got Johnny his job?"" Harry checks with the city offices and finds out that only one of the original investigating officers is still alive and that his retirement checks are mailed to a post office box in Florida. So he takes a plane to Florida to speak with the retired detective, Jack McKittrick. He learns from him that at the beginning of the investigation, his senior partner, Eno, was called into the Assistant DA's office and told that Fox was not involved with the murder and he should not be investigated by the department. The only way they could interview him was in Conklin's office. After that interview, the investigation went nowhere and was left as an unsolved case. In order to gain entrance to the gated community where McKittrick lives, Bosch pretends he is interested in a house for sale in the community and tours the house briefly. He goes back to the house after leaving McKittrick and eventually has a romantic encounter with the woman who owns the house, Jasmine Corian. He spends an extra day in Florida with Jasmine, and they reveal many personal secrets to each other in bed. On his way back to Los Angel, he stops in Las Vegas to visit the widow of the other detective, Eno. He intimidates the widow's sister, who is taking care of the ninety year old invalid, into letting him take some of Eno's old files. From the files, he discovers that Eno had been receiving $1000 a week through a dummy corporation since one year after his mother's murder. He learns that this corporation's officers were Eno, Gordon Mittel, and Arno Conklin. When he returns to Los Angeles, there are four Los Angeles Police Department cops are waiting for him inside his home. While he was in Florida, his boss, Harvey Pounds was found dead in the trunk of his car, tortured. Bosch is brought to the Parker Center for questioning. Harry realizes that when he used Pounds' name when trying to scare Mittel at the Shepard fund-raiser, it led to his death. Harry learns from LA Times reporter Keisha Russell that the writer of the article on Fox was Monte Kim. Russell gives Bosch his address obtained from the phone book. Bosch visits Kim and learns that he wrote the article on Fox's death, ignoring the illegal activities in his past in order to obtain a job with Conklin. Kim had photos of Conklin and Fox with two woman (Meredith Roman and Bosch's mother) and used them to blackmail Conklin to obtain the job. Bosch, believing that he finally has enough information to confront Conklin, visits him in his nursing home and discovers that Conklin was actually in love with Bosch's mother. On the day that she was murdered, they decided to go to Las Vegas and get married. Conklin had called Mittel to ask him to go with them to be his best man. Mittel declined and told him that marrying her would ruin his career. Conklin believes that Mittel murdered Bosch's mother. After leaving Conklin, Bosch is hit with a tire iron when trying to get in his car and awakes at Mittel's house with his head bleeding, locked in a game room. Before Mittel's enforcer can arrive, Bosch pockets a billiard ball that he hopes to use as a weapon. Mittel tells Bosch that Conklin has conveniently jumped out of the window of his room right after Bosch left. So the last loose end for him to clean up is Bosch. After Bosch tells him that he left his briefcase with his evidence in Conklin's room, Mittel nods to Jonathan to finish off Bosch. But Bosch makes Jonathan miss, hits him with the billard ball, and eventually knock him out. Mittel runs off, and Bosch follows. Mittel attempts to ambush Bosch and in the struggle, Mittell fall off a cliff and dies. Bosch returns to the house but cannot locate Jonathan. The police arrive, and Bosch next wakes up in the emergency room. Bosch realizes that he can prove that Mittel killed his mother by checking his fingerprints against the print found on the belt that killed his mother. He obtains the prints from the medical examiner's office but they do not match. Bosch has gone through all of this and still has not found his mother's killer. He returns to talk to Hinojos. During this meeting, she gives Bosch her opinion on the photos from his mother's crime scene. She noticed that his mother was wearing all gold jewelry and the belt that was used to kill her was silver, which is a combination which a woman would not normally wear. Bosch's mother might not have been wearing the belt. The killer may have been wearing the belt and used it to kill his mother. Bosch believes he finally knows who killed his mother and returns to Meredith Roman's house, only to find that several days before she committed suicide. She left Bosch a note trying to explain her actions. He calls 911 and is about to leave when Jonathan confronts him with a gun. He had been waiting for him, letting him find Meredith and the letter. Since Jonathan believes he is going to kill Bosch and escape, he tells him the truth: that in actuality, he is Johnny Fox. His death was faked, and he remained with Mittel as his bodyguard. It was Fox who had killed Pounds and Conklin. The police finally arrive, and Fox is shot while trying to escape."
1054,Disordered Minds,crime," In 1970 Harold Stump, a mentally challenged young man, was arrested for the murder of his grandmother - the only person who ever understood him - based on scant evidence and a retracted confession; three years later, having been found guilty by a jury, he kills himself in prison. However, Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotypes, decides to re-examine the case and, in doing so, uncovers a plethora of dark secrets that could lead him into a confrontation with a psychotic killer."
1055,Déjà Dead,crime," When the meticulously dismembered body of a woman is found discovered in the ground of an abandoned monastery which is too ""decomposed for standard autopsy"", an anthropologist is requested. Dr. Temperance Brennan, Director of Forensic Anthropology for the province of Quebec, who has been researching recent disappearances in the city, is given the case. Despite the deep cynicism of Detective Claudel who heads the investigation, Brennan is convinced that a serial killer is at work. Her forensic expertise finally convinces Claudel, but only after the body count has risen. Tempe initiates an investigation, but her determined probing places those closest to her in danger."
1056,Grotesque,crime," The book is written in the first person for all parts and follows a woman whose sister and old school friend have been murdered. The narrator of Grotesque is unnamed and forever lives under the shadow of her younger-by-a-year sister Yuriko, who is unimaginably beautiful and the center of all attention. The narrator hates her sister for reasons which remain more-or-less unclear throughout the novel and the writer leaves it to the reader to decide if the narrator's hatred is a product of jealousy or because Yuriko has turned to prostitution and disgraced the family name. While the narrator is smart, responsible and plain looking, Yuriko is strikingly beautiful but flighty and irresponsible. Despite this, everyone is automatically drawn to Yuriko, who, as soon as she is old enough to realize her power on men, starts toying with one man after another, subsequently turning into a full time prostitute. As the novel progresses, the reader is introduced to many other characters with whom the narrator comes in contact at her highly prestigious Q High School. With time, the narrator grows to hate everyone including all her classmates, her parents and all her co-workers. She is particularly spiteful when it comes to Yuriko and one of her classmates Kazue Sato. When both Yuriko and Kazue turn into prostitutes, are murdered less than a year apart and in the same gruesome fashion, and the narrator comes in possession of their personal journals, her life is entwined with theirs and she uncovers truths which she never thought existed. The journals take her on a journey of self discovery where she finally realizes what she wants. She also adopts Yuriko's handsome but blind son, Yurio. In the end, the narrator is seen treading the streets of Japan, looking for a customer as she delves into the mysterious and dark world of prostitution."
1057,American Tabloid,crime," *Part I, SHAKEDOWNS, November–December 1958 ""Shakedowns"" covers just 26 days, introducing the three principal characters, and establishing their relationships, history, and career trajectories. Pete Bondurant is a former LASD deputy; he presently works for billionaire Howard Hughes and runs small-time shakedowns. (Bondurant is also an associate of Jimmy Hoffa.) Kemper Boyd is a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, a southerner, and a man who covets wealth and power. Ward Littell is also an FBI agent and Boyd's friend and former partner. Although assigned to monitor Communist Party activities, his abiding hatred of organized crime leads him to vie for a spot on the Bureau's Top Hoodlum Squad. Each of the three protagonists plot to entrap John F. Kennedy with a call girl; Boyd and Littell for J. Edgar Hoover, Bondurant for Hughes. The set-up is successful, but the Kennedy family discovers that Hughes's ""Hush-Hush"" tabloid will print the transcripts before the issue went to press, and prevents their publication. At Hoover's direction, Boyd leaves the FBI and begins working with Hoover's personal nemeses - Kennedy and his younger brother Robert—on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management's investigation of organized crime and union corruption. Boyd strikes a rapport with John Kennedy but dislikes Bobby. The Kennedys, with their wealth and privilege, embody everything that Boyd hopes to gain. Littell, who meets the Kennedys through Boyd, is enraptured by Bobby, both men sharing a hatred for organized crime. *Part II, COLLUSION, January 1959-January 1961 ""Collusion"" opens with Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro's January 1, 1959 overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista government. The three principals begin to collude with one another to varying degrees. Bondurant and Boyd both become Central Intelligence Agency operatives, while Littell investigates Hoffa and Mafia connections both officially for the FBI and on his own initiative. Boyd also joins the employ of the Kennedy family, working on JFK's presidential campaign. Bondurant and Boyd ultimately collaborate with the CIA, the ""Outfit"" (seeking to retake its now nationalized Havana casinos), and far right Cuban refugees plotting to overthrow the new communist regime. Littell becomes increasingly disgruntled with the FBI and Hoover's anti-communism mandates and begins investigating the mob on his own. Much of this information he anonymously feeds to Bobby Kennedy through Boyd. Through a series of snitches, Littell confirms that the Teamsters Pension Fund is being used to fund organized crime. Littell tracks the Fund's supposed ""secret"" accounting books to the home of mid-level mobster Jules Schiffrin in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Littell coerces Jack Ruby into searching Schiffrin's home. While waiting for Ruby, Littell is severely beaten by Bondurant; Ruby had tipped off Bondurant to Littell's operation, and Bondurant feared that Littell would endanger the CIA's Cuban plots. After recuperating, Littell takes leave from the FBI, invades Schiffrin's home, and steals the Pension Fund's books himself. Cracking the books' code, he realizes that Joseph Kennedy loaned the Fund millions of dollars. Hoover fires Littell from the FBI, revokes his pension, and blackballs him as a communist sympathizer with every US state's bar association in order to hurt his chances of practicing law. Boyd tries to get Littell a job with now-Attorney General designate Bobby Kennedy, who emphatically refuses, also having received a report from Hoover of Littell's budding alcoholism and invented mob ties. ""Collusion"" concludes with the inauguration of Kennedy as President. *Part III, PIGS, February–November 1961 In the employ of the CIA, Boyd and Bondurant help train the ""Blessington Cadre"": Cuban exiles training to overthrow Castro at a CIA camp in Florida. The exiles are recruited through Hoffa's ""Tiger Kab"" taxi stand in Miami. The CIA also establishes a Ku Klux Klan ""klavern"" to keep ""local rednecks"" occupied and away from the camp. The Mafia, through New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, funds the operation by supplying the cadre heroin for redistribution. As part of his organized crime vendetta, Bobby Kennedy has Marcello deported, unaware of (and uninterested in) Marcello's involvement in the CIA operation. Bondurant covertly absconds with Marcello when his INS plane lands in Central America. Boyd recommends that Marcello hire Littell as his extradition lawyer. Littell meets Bondurant and Marcello at their Central American hideout, where Littell hands over the stolen Teamsters Pension Fund books (albeit without confessing to stealing them and without the pages implicating Joe Kennedy). President Kennedy, unaware of Boyd's CIA connection, taps Boyd—now also working for Robert Kennedy's Justice Department civil rights task force—to investigate the Blessington operation and advise whether to implement the CIA's invasion strategy. After a sham visit, Boyd naturally encourages the president to authorize the mission, promising Kennedy that it will guarantee his reelection. The Bay of Pigs Invasion is authorized, although Kennedy second-guesses its wisdom and refuses to provide the air support that the Cadre believes necessary. The invasion is a failure and an embarrassment for Kennedy and all involved—including the CIA, the mob, Bondurant, and Boyd. The night of the invasion, Boyd is shot numerous times in a side operation to distribute ""hot shots"" of heroin that would be linked back to Castro. *Part IV, HEROIN, December 1961-September 1963 Through the patronage of Marcello, Littell has become a full-fledged mob lawyer. When Hoffa hires him, it confirms that Bobby Kennedy has become his primary adversary. Through their now-mutual hatred of the Kennedys, Littell and Hoover make amends, and Hoover arranges for Howard Hughes to become Littell's client. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs, Boyd and Bondurant encourage the mob to authorize an assassination attempt on Castro. When the mob passes on the opportunity, they surmise that the mob is now backing Castro. Enraged, they execute a plan wherein they steal millions of dollars of mob heroin as it comes to shore from Cuba in hopes of recouping their Bay of Pigs losses. In collusion with Littell, Bondurant also begins running a wire tap hoping to catch the president having an affair with a woman they have set up. They make several recordings of Kennedy, which they also share with Hoover. Boyd, however, remains fond of Jack, and becomes enraged when he discovers the scam. When he confronts Bondurant, Bondurant plays him sections from the tapes of Jack ridiculing Boyd, his social-climbing, and his Kennedy envy. Ironically, Bobby Kennedy (learning of Boyd's CIA connection and erratic behavior upon discovering the wire tap), fingers Boyd as the person trying to set up the president; he fires Boyd from the Justice Department, severing his ties with the Kennedys, and making an enemy of Boyd. The mob also figures out that Boyd and Bondurant were behind the theft of their heroin. Littell offers them the mob's price to atone for their theft: Kill President Kennedy. *Part V, CONTRACT, September–November 1963 Boyd, Bondurant, and Littell plot to assassinate Kennedy during a motorcade in Miami and arrange the logistics to frame left-wing radicals. Without being specific, Littell tips off Hoover about the plot, but due to Hoover's non-committal response, Littell surmises that there is a second assassination plot in the works, which will take place several days later in Dallas. The three men determine that they were set up, and begin to clean up and cover up the tracks of their Miami operation. Littell visits Bobby Kennedy, confronting him with evidence of his father's collusion with the mob, with the added intent that it will serve as an after-the-fact explanation of why Jack would be killed. After killing several of the Miami conspirators, Bondurant leaves for Dallas while Boyd returns to Mississippi. Littell is waiting for Boyd at his hotel; Littell shoots Boyd, who dies thinking of Jack Kennedy. Bondurant, his new wife Barb Jahelka, and several mob associates, converge on Dallas on November 22, 1963. The book ends at 12:30 PM, as Kennedy's motorcade drives through Dealey Plaza, with Bondurant closing his eyes, awaiting the shots and screams."
1058,The Stone Monkey,crime," In the novel, we follow Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, partners and lovers, as they try to track down a ruthless Chinese human smuggler and hitman, 'Gui', translated as 'The Ghost'. The start of the novel sees the Ghost scuttle a ship full of human smugglers as they are intercepted by the coastguard. He escapes to shore via a liferaft, as do some of the 'Undocumenteds' being smuggled into America. Before Ghost escapes to the shore, he shoots several members of the crew and shoots at the escaping immigrants. Near the shore the immigrants hit rocks and several of them are thrown out of the boat, and are washed up on the shore. The Ghost shoots two of them, and steals a car to escape after his accomplice flees the scene on hearing the rapidly approaching police. Meanwhile the immigrants land on the shore and steal a white van from a church. As Amelia arrives on the scene, she spots a man clinging to the rocks in the sea. Unwilling to wait for search and rescue, she dives in after him and keeps him afloat. Once the S+R crew arrive, they are pulled to shore. They discover the mans name is John Sung, and he has been shot, but insignificantly. He is taken off to hospital, and later placed in detention for illegal entry to USA. Back at Rhymes apartment, they meet Sonny Li, an immigrant on the ship who is actually an undercover police officer from China, intent on killing the Ghost for personal reasons. He predicts that the Ghost will attack the traitorous accomplice that fled the scene, leaving him to get away by himself. Rhyme disagrees and puts all his energy into finding the immigrants, who have gone into hiding. The accomplice is later discovered, apparently tortured with knives, his eyelids cut out. Dead. Sonny gains respect from Rhyme. Rhyme and Sachs track down one of the families in hiding, the 'Wu's', who have gone into hiding in a safehouse provided by a local gang. However the Ghost has also hunted them down, and is heading to kill them. He turns onto the street, and a shot fires out. It is Alan Coe, an INS agent with a personal vendetta against the Ghost. He is not allowed to continue the investigation because of this, as it results in the Ghost escaping. However, the Wu's and John Sung are both in safehouses leaving only the 'Chang' family still in hiding. Here we see the Changs, with the father, Sam Chang, planning to masquerade as a traitor to the family who is selling their hideout to the Ghost, and kill him. He knows this may well end in his death.He confides in his wife and his father, and is preparing to leave. His father asks him for a last drink together and prepares tea. The tea is drugged, and Sam Chang's father takes the gun and leaves to meet the Ghost. He fails to kill the Ghost, and kills himself with an overdose of morphine after running out of ammo. Meanwhile, Sonny Li is following his less conventional methods of police work, and he actually tracks down the Ghost and finds who he is. However he confronts him without the others, and is killed before he has a chance to tell Rhyme. However, he deliberately spreads some trace evidence at the scene to lead Rhyme onto the right person. At this point the reader knows who the Ghost is, but Rhyme doesn't. Using the evidence from Chang's killing, and Sonny's killing, Rhyme deduces where the Changs are hiding out. He sends Sachs, Coe and John Sung (as a translator) to take them into detention and government safehouses. During the journey there, Rhyme phones Sachs and tells her who the Ghost is. She pulls over and pulls the gun on Coe, and arrests him, claiming to have uncovered evidence that he is the Ghost's police contact. He is taken away. She and Sung continue to the Changs flat. They get inside and Sachs spins round and trains her weapon on Sung, a SPECTAC team swoop in and apprehend Sung and he is revealed to be the Ghost. Arresting Coe was a cunning move to trick Sung into thinking they thought they had captured the real Ghost. It is later revealed that the Ghost had shot Sung on the beach, and stolen his personal affects, then shot himself and jumped in the sea. They later hear of the intention to release the Ghost back to China, where he will supposedly be tried. Rhyme and Sachs are horrified and attempt to stop it. They discover something and race to the airport. They confront the Ghost and his two INS guards coming up to the airport gate. They reveal that through their research, they have discovered a high level of corruption in the INS, and this leads to the Ghost being tried in America and several high level security personnel taking 'early retirement'. The novel ends with Rhyme revealing that he will not be undergoing the surgery described in the previous book, which is a huge relief to Sachs, his earlier conversation with Li having inspired him to consider that he is a better detective in his current state due to his ability to focus on purely intellectual matters. Finally Sachs oversees the adoption of the baby whose mother was killed aboard the ship, by the Changs, who have always wanted a daughter. The families are awarded asylum."
1059,Revelation,crime, The plot centres around the challenges of post reformation England and draws on the prophesies of the Book of Revelation and features Archbishop Cranmer.
1060,A Big Boy did it and Ran Away,crime," Anti-terrorist forces are put on alert when it is learned that the notorious international terrorist the Black Spirit plans to perform an attack on an unknown British target. Meanwhile, 30-something Raymond Ash is struggling to cope with the banality of his new life as an English teacher, having sold his video game shop and decided to settle down with his wife and new baby. While visiting Glasgow airport he sees his old friend Simon Darcourt who supposedly died when terrorists blew up an airliner a few years before. He has no idea that Darcourt is in reality the Black Spirit. Darcourt for his part sees Raymond and decides to settle an old score with him by incorporating him into his terrorist plot. Raymond ends up being abducted by Darcourt's terrorists and escaping, then finds himself aiding policewoman Angelique de Xavia in a valiant attempt to foil their plot, the two being the only people with a chance of reaching the site of the attack in time - the hydroelectric plant at Dubh Ardrain."
1061,The Killing Doll,crime," The winter before he was sixteen, Pup's Mum died and he sells his soul to the devil. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to get in exchange. For the time being, all he asked for was to be happy, and to grow a bit taller. Even though she was older than Pup, Dolly was always in awe of her brother. More and more, she wanted to believe that he had occult powers and could do anything. Magic could remove the birthmark from her face and make her normal. Magic could kill their wicked stepmother, Myra. Pup laughs when Dolly shows him an effigy of Myra: a rag doll, about fifteen inches high, with knitted nylon skin and rust-coloured wool hair. Dolly sticks it full of pins. Myra dies"
1062,A Jolly Good Fellow,crime," Two weeks before Christmas in Boston, Duncan Wagner, a lone down-and-outer who has been living in self-imposed exile for several years, kidnaps Gabriel Booker, the eleven-year-old son of State Representative Winthrop Booker. Wagner takes the child to his apartment and ties him to a chair in front of the television, then leaves for work as a self-employed charity Santa Claus. When Wagner returns to his apartment, Gabriel is no longer in the chair. Thinking the boy has fled, Wagner goes into his room and finds him sleeping on the bed. In spite of a lingering edginess, the two grow more cordial toward each other. Wagner locks Gabriel’s ankle to a long chain to make sure he doesn’t run away. Gabriel hounds Wagner to supply him with Christmas decorations and other goodies to help pass the time. Wagner awkwardly complies. Gabriel turns out to be a vegetarian. And a bed wetter. After a day, Wagner makes a ransom demand for one hundred thousand dollars from Representative Booker. Almost immediately the missing child case turns into an Amber Alert and dominates news headlines. One night Wagner, bothered by the clinking sound of the chain, unlocks Gabriel’s ankle in order to have a decent sleep. In the morning, Gabriel is gone and with him, all Duncan’s charity money. Duncan goes to town in his Santa suit, hoping to elude hoards of police he is sure will swarm to his apartment. While in town, he helps a street artist, Martina, whose purse is being rifled by a pair of thieves. He realizes Martina has an eye for his Santa character, though he also realizes that by kidnapping Gabriel, he has imprisoned himself as well. Back at his apartment there are no police. Later on, Gabriel shows up in disguise after spending the day exploring Boston and buying money orders with Duncan's cash. The friendship is solidified, although the ransom deal seems to be going sour... The real story is the relationship between Duncan and Gabriel, which takes surprising but endearing turns."
1063,The Colorado Kid,crime," Opening in medias res as the news staff of The Weekly Islander pays for lunch at a restaurant, editor Dave Bowie and founder Vince Teague test young intern Stephanie McCann's powers of deduction regarding their tipping procedure. The friendly assessment becomes more intense as the elderly island natives and Stephanie return to the office, and she asks if the veteran reporters have ""ever come across a real unexplained mystery"". Dave and Vince take turns recounting a strange incident and investigation, with intermittent breaks for our narrators to crack open a fresh soda. On April 24, 1980, two teenagers stumbled across a body, early in the morning. Slumped against a trash can, and carrying no identification, the body bore no clear indicators of foul play. Cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation, as a large chunk of flesh was extracted from the victim's throat. Every potential clue leads to small revelations, but bigger mysteries. Though the investigation is lightly bungled, everything seems inexplicable, from how the fish-dinner stomach contents could line up with his ferry boat crossing, to the single Russian coin in his pocket. More than a year later, thanks to a sharp-eyed rookie spotting an out-of-state cigarette tax stamp, the John Doe becomes known as The Colorado Kid. Eventually the man's identity is traced, and he is identified as James Cogan of Nederland, Colorado. Everyone involved with the case is at a loss as to how or why the man could have gotten to a beach on a Maine island in the five hours since he had last been seen alive in Colorado. In the Weekly Islander offices, the three friends, old and new, ferret out all the answers they can from the facts of the 25-year-old investigation, then speculate on what might have happened, and meditate on the nature of true mysteries. Vince and Dave tell Stephanie that while they were ""the last people alive who know the whole thing"", having heard the tale of The Colorado Kid, ""Now there's you, Steffi."" The warm proclamation seems to signal the young woman's final approval by the old guard of the Islander."
1064,Past Reason Hated,crime," The body of Caroline Hartley is found one evening before Christmas by her lover, Veronica Shildon. It is a cosy scene–log fire, sheepskin rug, Vivaldi on the stereo, Christmas lights and tree–but Caroline is naked and covered in blood. Detective Constable Susan Gay is the first detective at the scene. She has recently been promoted to C.I.D. and the case soon takes on overwhelming professional and personal importance for her. DC Gay and Chief Inspector Alan Banks soon find plenty of suspects as they begin to delve into Caroline’s past and the women’s present life: Veronica’s ex-husband, who is a well-known composer; a feminist poet; the cast and crew of a play Caroline was rehearing; and Caroline’s eccentric, reclusive brother, Gary Hartley. Inspector Banks’s fifth case is an ironic, suspenseful tale of family secrets, hidden passions and desperate violence."
1065,My Gun Is Quick,crime," The story starts with Mike Hammer meeting a red-headed prostitute in a diner. She is hassled by a man she appears to know and fear but Mike deals with him swiftly. Despite little conversation, he gives her some money to get a real job and leaves. The next day she is found dead, the victim of an apparent hit-and-run accident. Mike does not believe this and proceeds to hunt down her murderers. In the process he uncovers a massive and powerful prostitution ring in New York."
1066,Tooth and Nail,crime," Rebus is drafted in by Scotland Yard to help track down a cannibalistic serial killer called the Wolfman, whose first victim was found in the East End of London's lonely Wolf Street. His London colleague, George Flight, isn't happy at what he sees as interference, and Rebus encounters racial prejudice as well as the usual dangers of trying to catch a vicious killer. When Rebus is offered a psychological profile of the Wolfman by an attractive woman, it seems too good an opportunity to miss."
1067,The Fifth Woman,crime," A sadistic serial killer has been preying on men, beginning with a retired car salesman whose interests appear to be limited to bird watching and poetry and whose body was discovered in a punji stick pit and a flower shop manager, found starved and garrotted in the woods. Wallander soon realises both men have a past record of violence towards women, and after another man is drowned in a lake, he goes on the hunt for an avenging angel..."
1068,Strip Jack,crime," A police raid on an Edinburgh brothel captures (seemingly by accident) popular young local MP Gregor Jack. When Jack's fiery wife Elizabeth disappears, and two bodies are found, suspicion falls on a famous local actor Rab Kinnoul. Detective Inspector John Rebus is sympathetic to the MP's problems, and interviews a member of Jacks' social circle, Andrew MacMillan, who is locked up in a psychiatric hospital after murdering his own wife many years before. It becomes increasingly evident that somebody has 'set up' Jack, with the intention of stripping him of his good name, political standing and maybe even his life."
1069,Manhattan Is My Beat,crime," Rune is a street-wise twenty year old, not long arrived in New York City, but she's already found herself a squat in an empty loft. She's also landed a job in a video store, Washington Square Video, that lets her pursue her interest in old movies; it's also where she meets Mr. Kelly, a lonely old man who rents the same tape over and over: a crime film based on a true story called Manhattan Is My Beat. When Rune goes to visit him for a routine tape collection and finds him dead, the police suspect a robbery. However, Rune is convinced that the true answer to the mystery lies with the tape of Manhattan Is My Beat. This conviction draws her into a dangerous adventure against those who will stop at nothing to hide the truth and don't believe in Hollywood endings. =Other media= Manhattan Is My Beat has been optioned by Double B Productions. The novel is being adapted by Double B Partners, John and Lisa Bishop.."
1070,The Mind Readers,crime," Canon Avril is looking forward to hosting Albert Campion and his wife Lady Amanda for half-term, with their nephew Edward, and his cousin Sam. But strange things are happening at the electronics establishment on a remote island on the east coast where Sam's father works, and when the boys arrive at Liverpool Street Station an attempt is made to kidnap them. Then Edward goes missing, and Campion and DS Charles Luke find themselves caught up in a mystery, unexpectedly helped by a certain Thomas T. Knapp....."
1071,The Silver Pigs,crime," This is the first novel in the series and introduces the main characters as well as establishing relationships that continue and grow throughout the whole series. Falco stumbles upon a conspiracy in the trading of silver ingots, but not before it claims the life of a young girl (Sosia Camillina) whom Falco meets and is smitten with. Hired by the young girl's uncle, a senator, to find out who murdered her, and by the Roman Emperor Vespasian, to uncover the conspiracy, Falco finds himself on the next boat to Britain. Once there he meets a lady way out of his class, Helena Justina, daughter of the Senator who hired him. At first sight it is mutual loathing, he hates her class and she hates his prejudice. Finding himself working down a silver mine, acting as a mine slave, Falco learns the meaning of hate, pain and abuse. After being rescued by Helena and a friendly centurion, Falco heads back to Rome, as the reluctant charge of the even more reluctant Helena. Naturally, after spending so much time together, lots of arguments, misunderstandings and denial, Falco and Helena fall in love (subsequently consummated in a horse stable in a public garden). Eventually, Falco sorts out the case, and only has to bring the culprits to justice. However, there is no justice when one of the culprits is Domitian, the Emperor's very own wayward son. As for the other culprits, only one remains alive, and that person is very close to the girl Falco loves and her senator father. After a final, bloody, retribution is carried out in the climax, Falco is offered the chance to be raised to the upper middle class, the equestrian rank. As an equestrian Falco could marry Helena without bringing her or her family shame, which is something he could never manage on his meagre earnings alone. He refuses, seeing the offer as a bribe to keep the whole conspiracy hushed-up. After realising his mistake and how he must have insulted Helena, he returns to Vespasian and asks for the chance again, and while he is told that his name can be added to the equestrian lists, he must first raise the 400,000 sesterces himself in order to purchase the land to that value which is the qualification for equestrian status. Dejected he returns to his dilapidated tenement in the Aventine Hill and there finds Helena waiting for him. She promises to wait for him for as long as it takes. <!-"
1072,Triggerfish Twist,crime," Jim Davenport is transferred to his company's branch in Tampa, Florida. Though initially excited by the move, the job quickly proves to be disappointing, Jim's neighbors are a strange bunch of eccentrics and crime is much worse than he had thought. Serge Storms, Sharon Rhodes and Coleman move in down the street. Serge seems pleasant enough, but there is definitely something odd about him. Sharon is a spiteful coke-headed hooker. Coleman is a brain-dead stoner who is constantly under the influence of something, from alcohol to illegal drugs. The story becomes surreal from that point onward."
1073,Make Death Love Me,crime," Bank manager Alan Groombridge is bored with his tedious career and dull home life; he dreams of one day stealing enough money from his employers so he can afford himself total freedom for a single year. He seizes the opportunity when the bank is robbed at gunpoint; however, the dream soon turns sour when the consequences of his reckless actions begin to take hold."
1074,Ten Big Ones,crime," In this installment of Stephanie Plum's bounty hunter adventures, Stephanie has no central FTA (Failure to Appear) to capture this time around, but is being hunted herself. The novel begins with Stephanie and her sometimes-partner Lula sitting outside in their car debating about food. They accidentally witness a Gang robbery and are swept up into the underground life of Trenton, New Jersey. She's accidentally destroyed a dozen cars. She's a target for every psycho and miscreant this side of the Jersey Turnpike. Her mother's convinced she'll end up dead...or worse, without a man. She's Stephanie Plum and she kicks butt for a living (well, she thought it would sound good to put it that way...) It begins as an innocent trip to the deli-mart, on a quest for nachos. But Stephanie Plum and her partner, Lula, are clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. A robbery leads to an explosion, which leads to the destruction of yet another car. It would be just another day in the life of Stephanie Plum, except it makes her the target of a gang... and the target of an even scarier, more dangerous force that has come to Trenton. With super bounty hunter Ranger acting more mysterious than ever (and the tension with vice cop Joe Morelli getting hotter), Stephanie finds herself with a decision to make: how to protect herself and where to hide while on the hunt for a killer known as Junkman. There's only one safe place, and it has Ranger's name all over it, if she can find it... and if Junkman doesn't find her first. With Lula riding shotgun and Grandma Mazur on the loose, Stephanie Plum is racing against the clock in her most suspenseful novel yet."
1075,Original Sin,crime," The murder of Peverell Press's managing director, ambitious Gerard Etienne, seems to be the horrible end of a series of malicious pranks in the company headquarters. When Adam Dalgliesh is called to the scene to solve the murder, he soon finds out that the killer does not intend to stop with Etienne."
1076,Die Dame im Chinchilla,crime," The body of a murdered woman is discovered in a New York apartment. Her luxurious buttocks have been thoroughly searched, and expensive clothes are lying around. Chief Inspector David Brewer knows that the victim lived on the edge of legality: in a previous life, she was a stripper and the owner of a night club that got mentioned in a call-girl scandal and in a case involving hard drugs. All motives are present for murder."
1077,Death in the Clouds,crime," Frustrated with the evident artificiality of the blowpipe, an item that could hardly have been used without being seen by another passenger, Poirot suggests that the means of delivering the dart may have been something else. Is it the flute of one passenger, or perhaps one of the ancient tubes carried by one of the two French archaeologists on board? Or maybe Lady Horbury's long cigarette holder? Poirot's focus is upon a wasp that has been seen in the compartment and which provided evidence for the original theory of the cause of death. Without explaining himself, he asks for a detailed list of the items in the possession of the passengers, and finds an incriminating clue: Norman Gale, a dentist who has seemingly never been in the area of the plane where the victim was killed, and has no apparent motive for committing the murder, had an empty matchbox and a lighter. He appears to be the killer, but how can he have committed the murder, when he was apparently in conversation with Jane Grey (the novel's effective heroine) throughout the flight? And why would he have committed the crime? And why were there two coffee spoons in the victim's saucer? Madame Giselle is suspected of using blackmail to ensure that her clients pay up, so any one of the passengers could either have owed her money or feared exposure. Equally, Madame Giselle had an estranged daughter who inherits her considerable estate: could one of the female passengers be this heiress? Much of the novel focuses on the pursuit of this line of enquiry, with the passengers coming under suspicion in turn. Special attention is given to Mr. Clancy, a detective novelist who enables Christie to include the same sort of parodies of her craft achieved in other novels through the character of Ariadne Oliver. The only other suspect who proves of material significance is, however, the Countess of Horbury, whose maid has been called into the compartment during the flight where she would have had the perfect opportunity to commit the crime. When this maid is revealed to be none other than the victim's heir, Anne Morisot, it seems that she must be the murderess. But the maid was only on the flight by accident, having been asked to be there at the last moment. Moreover, the death of Anne Morisot from poison on the boat-train to Boulogne leaves no clear suspect. Poirot reveals in the dénouement that Horbury is none other than Anne's new husband, and that his plans - almost certainly including the eventual murder of Anne herself - had been laid well in advance. He brought his dentist's jacket on board and - in the apparently innocuous moments that he had gone to the toilet - changed into this jacket in order to pose as a steward. Under the pretense of delivering a coffee spoon to Miss Giselle he had walked up the aisle and stabbed her with the poisoned thorn. As Poirot puts it: ""No one notices a steward particularly."" Gale's intention had been to frame the Countess, and the blowpipe that was found behind Poirot's seat would have been found behind hers had they not switched seats at the last moment. Not content with solving the mystery, Poirot also invites Mr. Clancy to the dénouement where he gleefully allows the novelist to see how a real-life Detective solves a case, to both men's great enjoyment. Finally, in a single stroke Poirot makes a romantic match by pairing off Jane Grey with the younger of the archaeologists."
1078,A Cold Heart,crime," After the events of ""The Murder Book"", Robin and Alex have separated. Robin moved out and quickly fell in with a man named Tim, who was a vocal coach she met out tour. Meanwhile, Alex has started a serious relationship with a fellow psychologist, Allison Gwynn, who appeared in The Murder Book for the first time. While the two have broken their relationship, the two remain in contact during the course of the book, which suggest that some unresolved feelings still remain. At the same time, Alex Delaware is pulled into a case in which several ""young, up-and-coming"" artists are murdered, some of which Alex had met during his time with Robin. Towards the end of the novel Alex and Allison's relationship seems to be going strong, but there are some unresolved issues between Alex and Robin that have yet to play out."
1079,Fleshmarket Close,crime," Detective Inspector John Rebus has no desk to work from, as a hint from his superiors that he should consider retirement, but he and his protegee Siobhan Clarke are still investigating some seemingly unconnected cases. The sister of a dead rape victim is missing; skeletons turn up embedded in a concrete floor; a Kurdish journalist is brutally murdered; and the son of a Glasgow gangster has moved into the Edinburgh vice scene. The book uses two new settings: a sink estate divided between racist thugs and refugees (based on Wester Hailes), and a small town whose economy is dominated by an internment camp for asylum seekers (based on Dungavel). it:Indagini incrociate sv:Adress Fleshmarket Close"
1080,Last Act in Palmyra,crime," In Last Act in Palmyra, Falco takes on a new spying mission for Vespasian to the east of the Empire. He also plans to investigate the disappearance of a young musician, Sophrona. With Helena Justina, he travels to Petra, where they encounter a theatre group who have just lost their playwright due to drowning. Joining them, Falco attempts to fulfil his various investigations, whilst at the same time write his new play, The Spook Who Spoke."
1081,Taken at the Flood,crime," In a flashback from late Spring to early Spring, Lynn Marchmont, newly demobilised from the Women's Royal Naval Service, finds difficulty settling into the village life of Warmsley Vale. She is engaged to Rowley, one of several members of the Cloade family living nearby. Each of them grew dependent on money from Gordon Cloade, a bachelor who was expected to die and leave his fortune to them. Before his death he married Rosaleen, invalidating his previous will. As a result, Rosaleen inherited Gordon's fortune and the entire family now faces financial crises, augmented by the poor state of the economy in the aftermath of World War II. Rosaleen's fortune is jealously guarded by her brother, David Hunter, and although various family members manage to wheedle small sums out of Rosaleen, David refuses to help Frances Cloade, whose husband Jeremy is on the brink of ruin. A man calling himself Enoch Arden arrives in the village, and attempts to blackmail David by saying he knows how to find Rosaleen's first husband, Robert. Their conversation in Arden's hotel room is overheard by the landlady, who immediately tells Rowley Cloade. Later, Arden's body is discovered in his room with his head smashed in. Rowley Cloade appeals to a detective, Hercule Poirot, to prove the dead man was Robert Underhay, and Poirot produces Major Porter, who knew Underhay in Africa. At the inquest, despite Rosaleen's protests that the dead man was not Robert, Porter confirms that Arden was indeed her first husband. The estate will revert to the Cloades. Rosaleen has a strong alibi for the time of the murder since she was in the London flat that evening. David has only a weak alibi: down from London for the day, he met Lynn on his dash to catch the last train to London leaving at 9:20 pm, and evidently telephoned her from the London flat shortly after 11 pm. Since the murder is believed to have taken place shortly before 9 pm, he had enough opportunity and motive to be arrested. David's alibi improves when it is discovered that a heavily made-up woman in an orange headscarf left Arden's room after 10 p.m. The investigation shifts back to the female Cloades, but Poirot discovers that the immediate cause of Arden's death may have been smashing his head against a heavy marble mantelpiece. The appearance of a murder may have been created after some form of accidental death. Lynn, though engaged to Rowley, seems to love David. Rowley may be attracted to Rosaleen, who seems to be consumed with guilt and fear. Major Porter apparently commits suicide but leaves no note. It comes to light that Arden was actually Charles Trenton, second cousin to Frances Cloade. She came up with the plan to blackmail Rosaleen after hearing Major Porter's anecdote from Jeremy. Although this explains Arden's identity, it does not clarify who killed him or who bribed Porter to falsely identify the corpse. Rosaleen dies in her sleep from an overdose. Superintendent Spence, the investigating officer, suggests that perhaps she was the murderer; the police have so focused on David's alibi that they subjected hers to little scrutiny. Lynn tells Rowley that she wishes to marry David Hunter. Rowley is strangling Lynn when Poirot stops him. David arrives and Poirot explains everything. Rowley visited Arden, and seeing the physical resemblance to Frances, reacted angrily to the deception that was being played. Pushed by Rowley, Arden fell against the mantelpiece and died. Rowley saw the opportunity to incriminate David. He smashed in Arden's head with fire tongs and left David's lighter at the scene. It was Rowley who persuaded Porter to give the false identification, carefully employing Poirot, who would be sure to go to Porter on the basis of that first scene at the club, which Rowley also knew of from Jeremy. Porter's guilt got the better of him and he committed suicide, leaving a note that Rowley destroyed. Discovering Arden's body, David ran for the 9:20 train but missed it; Lynn actually saw the smoke from the departing train on the evening, but he convinced her that it was earlier than it was and that he had time to meet her. He then backtracked to The Stag, disguised himself as a woman, and played out the scene that established the later time of death. Then he returned to the station and called Rosaleen, who placed a call to Lynn that was delivered by the operator but then cut off. Afterward, David spoke to Lynn from the station, giving the impression that a single call from London was interrupted. He returned to London on the milk train the next day. Of the three deaths, one is accidental, one a genuine suicide. The only true murder was Rosaleen's. David had no apparent motive to kill his own sister, especially when it would mean depriving himself of the Cloade fortune. But the woman posing as Rosaleen was not his sister; his sister was killed during the bombing of Gordon Cloade's estate two years earlier. The woman posing as Rosaleen was one of Gordon's housemaids, who became David's lover and his accomplice in obtaining the Cloade fortune. Now he could kill this accomplice and marry Lynn, whom he really loved and who would gain a portion of the fortune through family connections. In the end, no one is tried other than David. Rowley is implicated in the deaths of Trenton (""Enoch Arden"") and Porter, and he is guilty of misleading the police and assaulting Lynn. However, Poirot keeps silence about Rowley's crimes, allowing Rowley to marry Lynn, who has loved him without realising it."
1082,Innocent Graves,crime," When last seen alive, sixteen-year-old Deborah Harrison was on her way home from school. Her friend Megan thinks she saw the shadowy figure of a man behind Deborah as they waved goodbye on the bridge, but the fog was so thick that evening she can’t be sure. Not long after, Deborah’s body is found in the local cemetery. The murder terrorises the wealthy enclave of St Mary’s, Eastvale, and because Deborah was the daughter of a prominent industrialist, high-flying new Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle puts pressure on Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his team to catch the killer without delay. And soon, partly thanks to the work of new boy Detective Inspector Barry Stott, it looks as if they have done. But Banks is not convinced. While the community breathes a collective sigh of relief and turns into a lynch-mob, Banks examines the loose ends: a vicar, accused of sexually harassing a refugee worker, who lies about his whereabouts at the time of the murder; his straying wife; a schoolteacher with a dark secret; the accused’s vindictive ex-girlfriend; a teenage thug who has threatened Deborah and her family with violence. And then there are Deborah’s own family secrets. With each new piece of information, a different pattern is formed, until Banks is forced to incur the wrath of Jimmy Riddle if he hopes to solve the case."
1083,Blood's a Rover,crime," The book's title is taken from a poem titled ""Reveille"" by A. E. Housman: Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad; when the journey's over There'll be time enough for sleep. Ellroy&#39;s literary agent, Sobel Weber Associates, posted a brief blurb for Blood's a Rover on its website in September 2008. It mentioned the novel&#39;s three protagonists and briefly outlined some of the novel&#39;s major plot points. These include the reappearance of Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover, FBI infiltration into militant black power groups, Mafia activity in the Dominican Republic, and &#34;voodoo vibe in Haiti.&#34;"
1084,The Evil of the Day,crime," The wealthy and wily Cecil Fox summons three old faces from his past to his villa in Venice to unwittingly take part in an elaborate charade inspired by Elizabethan literature. But when one of his guests is murdered in the night, Fox's production abruptly switches genres from comedy to full-blown murder mystery."
1085,The Tree of Hands,crime," The Tree of Hands tells the story of an affluent young woman, Benet, who has a two-year-old son named James. She is estranged from James' father. They live in North London. Benet's mother comes to visit them. She and Benet's father now live in Spain. Benet's mother has a history of mental illness, possibly schizophrenia, and Benet is rather fearful of her mother and what she may be capable of doing. Unfortunately James becomes extremely ill and dies, Benet is distraught and spends a lot of time in a state of prostrated grief. Her mother tries to look after her. A sub-plot involves a young man on a council estate who is deeply in love with a woman, Carol, who has several children from previous partners. It becomes apparent to the reader that she is unfaithful to this young man, and she is abusing her children, in particular her little boy, Jason. A turn in events leads to Benet's mother kidnapping little Jason and ""replacing"" the dead James. Benet, at first horrified at what her mother has done, begins to realise that little Jason has been abused (she finds cigarette burns on his body)and grows to love him. As he refers to himself as Jay, this is what she calls him. However, she realises that she cannot continue to see the Doctor from the hospital because he knows that James has died, and he has been very kind to her. He may start to question Jason's appearance. Also Benet's ex begins to realise what may have happened and puts pressure on her. She realises that she and Jay must leave the country in order to start their new life. The sub plot (Carol and her friends and family) evolves into murder and betrayal, and a very clever twist involving the sale of a house in Hampstead. The title ""Tree of Hands"" refers to a piece of artwork displayed on the wall in the ward that James was admitted to when first taken ill."
1086,Twelve Sharp,crime," The novel begins with Stephanie being stalked by Carmen Manoso, a woman claiming to be the wife of Ranger, a fellow bounty hunter with whom Stephanie has occasionally been intimate. Ranger is out of town on 'bad business' when Stephanie learns that his daughter has been kidnapped. Ranger is the prime suspect. As the story progresses, Stephanie learns that Carmen is actually married to a man named Edward Scrog who is attempting to steal Ranger's identity, even going so far as to kidnap Ranger's daughter Julie for his own. After Scrog kills Carmen he kidnaps Stephanie to complete his ""family"" and start a new life. However, he needs money, so Stephanie convinces him to try to find one of her FTA's (wanted for armed robbery) and steal his money. To prevent Stephanie from escaping, Scrog constructs a bomb and tapes it to her. As they try to negotiate for the money, Stephanie's old nemesis Joyce Barnhart turns up to capture the FTA herself. In the struggle that ensues, Scrog gets shot in the foot and Stephanie manages to rip the bomb off before Scrog stun-guns her. When Stephanie wakes up, her boyfriend Joe Morelli is there. Joyce caught the FTA, as he ran over the bomb after Stephanie tossed it in the road and it exploded. Together Stephanie and Morelli return to the trailer where she and Julie were being kept, but find it empty. Stephanie returns to her apartment, where she finds Scrog. He stun-guns her once more, then ties her to a chair. Julie is there too, drugged and on the couch. Scrog's plan is to kill Ranger when he arrives. Ranger opens the door with his hands up and Scrog shoots him. Julie attacks Scrog, the drugs having worn off, and shoots him. The police, paramedics and Morelli come in. Ranger is rushed to the hospital. On the way there Stephanie finally tells Morelli that she loves him, but leaves out the fact that she loves Ranger, too."
1087,Angel Rock,crime," The novel is set against the backdrop of a fictional Australian bush town, Angel Rock, during the late 1960s. The story concerns the investigation of two seemingly separate incidents: the disappearance of two young brothers (of who only one has returned home safely), and the suicide of a teenage girl in a derelict house in Sydney. During the course of investigating the teenage girl's death, the detective sent to the town begins to believe that the two incidents might be linked in some way and he is forced to confront memories from his own past."
1088,Nemesis,crime," Miss Marple receives a post card from the recently deceased Mr Jason Rafiel, a millionaire whom she had met during a holiday on which she had encountered a murder, which asks her to look into an unspecified crime; if she succeeds in solving the crime, she will inherit £20,000. Rafiel, however, has left her few clues, not even when or where the crime was committed and who was involved. Miss Marple's first clue is a tour of famous houses and gardens of Great Britain, arranged for her by Mr. Rafiel prior to his death. She is accompanied on the trip by fourteen other people, at least one of whom she suspects to be related to her enquiries. She learns that one of her companions, Elizabeth Temple, is the retired headmistress of the school which a girl who was engaged to Rafiel's ne'er-do-well son, Michael, attended. Another member of the tour group, Miss Cooke, is a woman she had previously met and discussed gardening with. Her next clue comes in the form of a woman named Lavinia Glynne; Rafiel had written to Mrs. Glynne and her two sisters before his death, suggesting that Miss Marple spend the most physically challenging few days of the tour with them. Miss Marple accepts Lavinia's invitation, assuming it to be the next part of Mr Rafiel's instructions. She then meets Lavinia's sisters, Clotilde and Anthea Bradbury-Scott and immediately feels there is something odd about Anthea. On talking to the servant, Miss Marple learns that the girl engaged to Michael Rafiel had been adopted by Clotilde after the death of her parents. On the morning of her return to her party, Miss Marple is told by another member of the tour group that Miss Temple had been knocked unconscious by a rockslide during their hike of the previous day, and was lying in a coma in hospital. The group stays over an extra night to wait for news from the tour guide about Miss Temple's health. It turns out that Professor Wanstead, a pathologist and psychologist interested in the different types of criminal brains, had been instructed by Mr Rafiel to go on the tour. He had examined Michael Rafiel at the request of the head of the prison where Michael was incarcerated; he came to the same conclusion as his friend: Michael was not capable of murder. He also tells her how uninterested Michael's father seemed. Professor Wanstead then takes Miss Marple to see Miss Temple; in a moment of consciousness, Miss Temple had asked for Miss Marple. Miss Temple wakes only long enough to tell Miss Marple ""search for Verity Hunt"", and dies that night without reviving again. The three sisters extend their invitation to Miss Marple when she returns to the tour, and she promptly accepts. That night, she discovers that Verity was the girl Clotilde had adopted. After the inquiry into Miss Temple's death, Miss Marple is visited by Archdeacon Brabazon, who was a friend of Miss Temple's. He then tells Miss Marple that he was going to marry Verity Hunt and Michael Rafiel, but had been sworn to secrecy by Verity. While he disapproved of the secrecy and of Verity marrying Michael, he agreed to marry them because he could see that they were in love. He was most surprised when neither turned up for the wedding. Miss Marple decides to stay another few nights with the three sisters when the tour moves on. Professor Wanstead travels to London by train on an errand for Miss Marple. Miss Barrow and Miss Cooke decide they would like to visit a nearby church. Later that evening, Miss Marple talks with the sisters about what she thinks may have happened and, while they are doing so, Miss Barrow and Miss Cooke appear, to talk to Miss Marple. They stay for a time and are then invited back for coffee that evening. As they talk about Miss Temple, Miss Marple suggests that Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price pushed the boulder, and their alibis are mere fabrication. As they get ready to leave, Miss Cooke suggests that the coffee wouldn't suit Miss Marple, as it will keep her up all night and Miss Marple instead asks for some warm milk. The two ladies soon depart, though each forgets an item and has to return for it. At three o'clock the next morning, Clotilde enters Miss Marple's room. Miss Marple reveals that she knows that Clotilde murdered Verity and hid her in the now-destroyed greenhouse, because she could not stand to see Verity love someone else. She also reveals that she knows that Clotilde killed another girl, Nora Broad, merely in order to (mis)identify the body as Verity's and thus throw suspicion on Michael Rafiel. Just as Clotilde advances toward her, Miss Marple blows on a whistle, which brings Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow—they are bodyguards employed by Mr. Rafiel to protect Miss Marple. Michael Rafiel is set free. Miss Marple collects her 'fee'."
1089,Cover Her Face,crime," The story opens with a dinner party hosted by Mrs. Eleanor Maxie at Martingale, a mediaeval manor house in the (fictional) Essex village of Chadfleet. Mrs. Maxie's son and daughter, Stephen Maxie and Deborah Riscoe, are both at the party. Also present are Dr. Charles Epps, the vicar Bernard Hicks, Miss Alice Liddell, who is the Warden at St. Mary's Refuge for Girls, and Catherine Bowers, a guest at the estate who is in a relationship with Stephen Maxie. Serving at the party is Sally Jupp, an unmarried mother with an infant son, who was employed by Mrs. Maxie at the recommendation of Miss Liddell. Stephen Maxie champions Sally during dinner, and afterwards Deborah Riscoe cryptically predicts that the young servant will cause trouble. During dinner, it is also mentioned that the Maxie's elderly domestic servant, Martha Bultitaft, is not very pleased with Sally Jupp. On the Thursday before St. Cedd's church fete, which takes place every year on the grounds of Martingale, Deborah goes to London and visits Stephen at the hospital where he works. There she sees her brother talking with Sally, who looks carefully dressed in a grey suit. Stephen says that Sally brought him some of their father's tablets, which she found on old Mr. Maxie's bed. Stephen suspects that old Mr. Maxie manages to deceive Martha, pretending to take his tablets when he is simply hiding them in his bed. Stephen again praises Sally and tells Deborah to take the tablets and put them in the medicine cupboard at their father's room. Deborah is suspicious as to why Sally came to Stephen with the tablets and not to Mrs. Maxie or herself. When Sally returns to Martingale, she taunts Martha about the tablets and her care for old Mr. Maxie. On the day of the fete, Sally shows up wearing exactly the same dress that Deborah is wearing, with the same accessories. Guests are shocked into silence, but Deborah appears unconcerned. Later that day, Sally announces that Stephen has asked her to marry him. Miss Liddell is distraught by this announcement and her unkind words are met by abuse, with Sally calling her a ""sex-starved old hypocrite"" and threatening to reveal her secrets. The following day, Martha complains that Sally has overslept again. When there is no response to repeated knocking at her bedroom, Stephen and Felix (a close friend of Deborah's, who is staying at the house) go up a ladder to enter the room through the window, and find Sally Jupp's lifeless body. Sally Jupp is found to have died of manual strangulation by a right-handed person. She is also found to have been drugged. The local constabulary request that Scotland Yard send an experienced homicide detective, and Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh and Detective Sergeant Martin arrive. They interview the family members and guests of the Martingale household. They also interview Miss Liddell, Dr. Epps, some neighbours of the Maxies, and Sally's aunt and uncle. It emerges that Sally is already secretly married to James Ritchie, who has a successful job in Venezuela, but returns to England after her death. Sally has been saving money for her husband's return. She blackmails her uncle (who unbeknownst to her had spent her modest trust fund) into giving her 30 pounds. She pretended to be an unmarried mother because revealing the marriage would jeopardise her husband's job and she likes to 'play with people'. She revealed Stephen Maxie's proposal of marriage for the same reason, although it is notable that she did not accept it. Martha had been regularly drugging Sally at night so that she would oversleep, and be discredited, and eventually dismissed from Martingale. It is Mrs. Eleanor Maxie who eventually confesses to the murder of Sally Jupp after Dalgliesh reveals everyone's movements on the night. It is clear, through a process of elimination, that only she could be the culprit. She goes to prison, having been found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, and Deborah is left alone in the house. Martha goes to stay with a friend in Herefordshire. Old Mr. Maxie, an invalid throughout the story, dies shortly before Mrs Maxie confesses; it becomes clear that she was waiting for his death before doing so. The novel ends with a meeting between Adam Dalgliesh and Deborah Riscoe. Adam gives Deborah a lift back to Martingale. Deborah tells him that Catherine will probably marry James Ritchie, thus providing a mother for Sally Jupp's son Jimmy (named after his father). It is hinted that a relationship will develop between Adam and Deborah."
1090,The Sittaford Mystery,crime," Sittaford is a tiny village on the fringe of Dartmoor. Mrs Willett and her daughter Violet are the newly installed tenants of Sittaford House, a residence owned by a Trevelyan, a retired Army captain. They invite four people to tea on Friday afternoon: Captain Trevelyan's long-standing friend, Major Burnaby, Mr Rycroft, Mr Ronnie Garfield and Mr Duke. At the suggestion of Mr Garfield, the six of them decide to play a game of table-turning. During this séance, at 5.25 pm, a spirit announces that Captain Trevelyan has just been murdered. Concerned for the Captain's safety, Major Burnaby says that he intends to walk to Exhampton, a village six miles away, to see if Captain Trevelyan is alright. After four days of snow, there is already a thick layer of snow on the ground and further heavy snowfall has been forecast for later that evening. There is no telephone in Sittaford, and it is impossible to use a car because of the snow. Two and a half hours later, just before 8 pm, in the middle of a blizzard, Major Burnaby is trudging up the path to the front door of Hazelmoor, the house in Exhampton where Captain Trevelyan now lives. When nobody answers the door, he fetches the local police and a doctor. They enter the house through the open study window at the back, and find Captain Trevelyan's dead body on the floor. Dr Warren estimates the time of death at between 5 and 6pm. A fracture of the base of the skull is the cause of death. The weapon was a green baize tube full of sand, used as a draught excluder at the bottom of the door. Captain Trevelyan's will states that, apart from £100 for his servant Evans, his property has to be equally divided among four people: his sister Jennifer Gardner, his nephew James Pearson, his niece Sylvia Dering and his nephew Brian Pearson. Each of these four would inherit approximately £20.000. James Pearson is arrested for murder because he was in Exhampton at the time of the murder, trying unsuccessfully to get a loan from Captain Trevelyan. While the official investigation is led by Inspector Narracott, James Pearson's fiancee Emily Trefusis starts sleuthing herself. She's assisted by Charles Enderby, a Daily Wire journalist who, the day after the murder, presented a cheque for £5000 to Major Burnaby for winning the newspaper's football competition. Emily and Charles go to stay with Mr and Mrs Curtis in Sittaford, searching for clues. Mr Dacres, James Pearson's solicitor, reveals to Emily that things look much worse than they already imagined. James has ""borrowed"" money from his firm to buy shares without the knowledge of the firm. There are several red herrings. Brian Pearson, who came under suspicion when Enderby discovered him making a late-night rendezvous with Violet Willett, is Violet's fiancé. He was not in Australia, as first thought, but in England all the time. And the Willetts' motive - up to now obscure and a cause of suspicion - for moving into the isolated Sittaford house had nothing to do with any connection with Captain Trevelyan, but was in order to live close to Dartmoor Prison. An escaped convict (though later recaptured), whose escape from Dartmoor Prison three days after the murder was engineered by Brian Pearson, is Violet's father. The plan was that, after the escape, her father and Brian would live with them in the house as manservants until the danger was past. Martin Dering created a false alibi because his wife Sylvia was watching him for divorce proceedings. Sylvia is Mr Rycroft's niece; Jennifer Gardner is Mr Garfield's godmother; and Mr Duke is an Ex-Chief-Inspector of Scotland Yard. Emily solves the mystery in Hazelmoor after finding Captain Trevelyan's ski boots hidden in the chimney and two pairs of skis in different sizes. Major Burnaby is the killer. He cleverly and opportunistically engineered the table movements during the séance to make the spirit convey the message that Captain Trevelyan had been murdered. Instead of walking the six miles in two and a half hours after the séance, he first went to his own house which was close by, put on skis, and skied the distance in a fraction of that time. He killed Captain Trevelyan about a quarter to six. Then he cleaned his skis, and put them in the cupboard. He hid Trevelyan's ski boots in the chimney and put his own in the cupboard with the other ski gear, hoping that the second pair of skis and the fact that they wouldn't fit Trevelyan would pass unnoticed. Mr Rycroft, who is a member of the Psychical Research Society, reassembles five of the six original participants for a second séance at Sittaford House, the absent Mr Duke being replaced by Brian Pearson. The séance has scarcely begun, when Inspector Narracott steps in, in the company of Emily and Mr Duke, and charges Major Burnaby with the murder of Captain Trevelyan. Emily explains that Burnaby had lost a lot of money by buying rotten shares and that his motive for the murder was to keep for himself the cheque for £5000. Although he denied it to Enderby and the police, he had already received the letter notifying him of the win on the morning of the day on which he murdered Trevelyan and which was actually won by Captain Trevelyan himself. Trevelyan would often use Burnaby’s name to send in competition solutions because he found Sittaford House too grand an address for such correspondence. In the final chapter Emily turns down a marriage proposal by Enderby who has fallen in love with her during the investigation, because she still loves her fiancé James despite his character faults."
1091,Crime and Punishment,crime," Raskolnikov, a conflicted former student, lives in a tiny, rented room in Saint Petersburg. He refuses all help, even from his friend Razumikhin, and devises a plan to murder and to rob an unpleasant elderly pawn-broker and money-lender, Alyona Ivanovna. His motivation comes from the overwhelming sense that he is predetermined to kill the old woman by some power outside of himself. While still considering the plan, Raskolnikov makes the acquaintance of Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, a drunkard who recently squandered his family's little wealth. He also receives a letter from his sister and mother, speaking of their coming visit to Saint Petersburg, and his sister's sudden marriage plans which they plan on discussing upon their arrival. After much deliberation, Raskolnikov sneaks into Alyona Ivanovna's apartment where he murders her with an axe. He also kills her half-sister, Lizaveta, who happens to stumble upon the scene of the crime. Shaken by his actions, Raskolnikov manages to only steal a handful of items and a small purse, leaving much of the pawn-broker's wealth untouched. Raskolnikov then flees and, due to a series of coincidences, manages to leave unseen and undetected. After the bungled murder, Raskolnikov falls into a feverish state and begins to worry obsessively over the murder. He hides the stolen items and purse under a rock, and tries desperately to clean his clothing of any blood or evidence. He falls into a fever later that day, though not before calling briefly on his old friend Razumikhin. As the fever comes and goes in the following days, Raskolnikov behaves as though he wishes to betray himself. He shows strange reactions to whoever mentions the murder of the pawn-broker, which is now known about and talked of in the city. In his delirium, Raskolnikov wanders Saint Petersburg, drawing more and more attention to himself and his relation to the crime. In one of his walks through the city, he sees Marmeladov, who has been struck mortally by a carriage in the streets. Rushing to help him, Raskolnikov gives the remainder of his money to the man's family, which includes his teenage daughter, Sonya, who has been forced to become a prostitute to support her family. In the meantime, Raskolnikov's mother, Pulkheria Alexandrovna, and his sister, Avdotya Romanovna (or Dounia) have arrived in the city. Avdotya had been working as a governess for the Svidrigaïlov family until this point, but was forced out of the position by the head of the family, Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigaïlov. Svidrigaïlov, a married man, was attracted to Avdotya's physical beauty and her feminine qualities, and offered her riches and elopement. Avdotya, having none of this, fled the family and lost her source of income, only to meet Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, a man of modest income and rank. Luzhin proposes to marry Avdotya, thereby securing her and her mother's financial safety, provided she accept him quickly and without question. It is for these very reasons that the two of them come to Saint Petersburg, both to meet Luzhin there and to attain Raskolnikov's approval. Luzhin, however, calls on Raskolnikov while he is in a delirious state and presents himself as a foolish, self-righteous and presuming man. Raskolnikov dismisses him immediately as a potential husband for his sister, and realizes that she only accepted him to help her family. As the novel progresses, Raskolnikov is introduced to the detective Porfiry, who begins to suspect him for the murder purely on psychological grounds. At the same time, a chaste relationship develops between Raskolnikov and Sonya. Sonya, though a prostitute, is full of Christian virtue and is only driven into the profession by her family's poverty. Meanwhile, Razumikhin and Raskolnikov manage to keep Avdotya from continuing her relationship with Luzhin, whose true character is exposed to be conniving and base. At this point, Svidrigaïlov appears on the scene, having come from the province to Petersburg, almost solely to seek out Avdotya. He reveals that his wife is dead, and that he is willing to pay Avdotya a vast sum of money in exchange for nothing. She, upon hearing the news, refuses flat out, suspecting him of treachery. As Raskolnikov and Porfiry continue to meet, Raskolnikov's motives for the crime become exposed. Porfiry becomes increasingly certain of the man's guilt, but has no concrete evidence or witnesses with which to back up this suspicion. Furthermore, another man admits to committing the crime under questioning and arrest. However, Raskolnikov's nerves continue to wear thin, and he is constantly struggling with the idea of confessing, though he knows that he can never be truly convicted. He turns to Sonya for support and confesses his crime to her. By coincidence, Svidrigaïlov has taken up residence in a room next to Sonya's and overhears the entire confession. When the two men meet face to face, Svidrigaïlov acknowledges this fact, and suggests that he may use it against him, should he need to. Svidrigaïlov also speaks of his own past, and Raskolnikov grows to suspect that the rumors about his having committed several murders are true. In a later conversation with Dounia, Svidrigaïlov denies that he had a hand in the death of his wife. Raskolnikov is at this point completely torn; he is urged by Sonya to confess, and Svidrigaïlov's testimony could potentially convict him. Furthermore, Porfiry confronts Raskolnikov with his suspicions and assures him confession would substantially lighten his sentence. Meantime, Svidrigaïlov attempts to seduce Avdotya, but when he realizes that she will never love him, he lets her go. He then spends a night in confusion and in the morning shoots himself. This same morning, Raskolnikov goes again to Sonya, who again urges him to confess and to clear his conscience. He makes his way to the police station, where he is met by the news of Svidrigaïlov's suicide. He hesitates a moment, thinking again that he might get away with a perfect crime, but is persuaded by Sonya to confess. The epilogue tells of how Raskolnikov is sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia, where Sonya follows him. Avdotya and Razumikhin marry and are left in a happy position by the end of the novel, while Pulkheria, Raskolnikov's mother, falls ill and dies, unable to cope with her son's situation. Raskolnikov himself struggles in Siberia. It is only after some time in prison that his redemption and moral regeneration begin under Sonya's loving influence."
1092,The Crime at Black Dudley,crime," The story begins as the guests assemble for dinner on the first night of a house party. Black Dudley is a remote, ancient and sprawling manor house with a long and complex history, its numerous changes of use resulting in plenty of hidden rooms and secret passages. The pile is owned by the family of Wyatt Petrie, a popular young academic, and inhabited by his uncle by marriage, Colonel Coombe, a sickly recluse who wears a mask to cover unsightly scars. The bulk of the guests are young friends of Petrie - among them our red-headed hero George Abbershaw, pathologist and occasional consultant to Scotland Yard, and similarly flame-haired Meggie, whom he shyly admires. The Colonel's medic Doctor White Whitby, and two of his associates, a shifty Englishman named Gideon and an imposing but silent foreigner going by the name of Benjamin Dawlish, are also present. So is one Albert Campion, garrulous and affable, but, George soon learns, unknown to either Petrie or the Colonel. After dinner, the guests notice a sinister, bejewelled dagger hanging above the fireplace; Petrie tells them a story of its ancient origins in the family, and mentions a ritual involving the dagger being passed from hand to hand round the darkened house. The guests are keen to play the game, so the servants are dismissed, the lights extinguished and the ritual begins. Abbershaw, not excited at the prospect of people waving daggers around in the dark, slips outside to check on his car; in the garage, he finds the mysterious Mr Campion loitering around. Admiring the Colonel's ancient car, they find it has been converted to contain a powerful Rolls-Royce engine. The two head back into the house to see the end of the game, and find Meggie in a state of shock. The knife was handed to her at some point, and then snatched away again, but not before she realised the blade was covered in blood. When the lights are finally restored, they hear the Colonel has fallen ill and has been taken to bed. The party breaks up for the night, but as George prepares for bed he is visited by Prenderby, a young newly-qualified doctor, who has been shown Coombe's body and been asked by Doctor Whitby to sign forms allowing a rapid cremation, but, nervous and suspicious, has refused. Abbershaw is next to be asked, and entering the room he at once pulls the sheet from the bed. Although there are no obvious signs of foul play, Abbershaw's experience tells him the man did not die of heart failure, as Whitby claims. Also, his mask has slipped, revealing an unmarked face beneath. Abbershaw is forced to sign the forms, but plans to wire London the next day, to delay the cremation until a proper investigation can be carried out. Later that night, the house is awaked by loud noises, and they find Campion fighting wildly with one of the servants. Abbershaw finds a leather case on the ground, which he later opens, burning the document it contains and secreting the case. He talks with Meggie and her friend Anne, finding that Campion had met Anne in London, informed her he was invited to the party and got a lift down in her car. The next day, Whitby and the chauffeur depart early with the body. At breakfast, the imposing Mr Dawlish makes a stark announcement - the cars have been drained of fuel, and no-one is to leave the house until something he has lost is returned to him. A brave young rugby-player attempts to escape in a car powered by alcohol, but is shot and wounded. Campion, having mocked their captors, disappears, but later materialises, dusty and shaken, in Abbershaw's wardrobe. He tells them he has been roughly interrogated and locked up, but escaped through a secret passage, and also that he came to the house on a mission from an unknown, to collect an item from the Colonel and return to London with it. He retrieved the item, but was prevented from leaving by Abbershaw's presence in the garage, and then lost it in the fight with the chauffeur. He has also recognised the crooks, and names Dawlish as Eberhard von Faber, the head of a powerful criminal gang, one of the deadliest men in Europe. Abbershaw hears that Meggie has been taken for questioning, and angered at the thought of the villains mistreating her, he uses Campion's passage to reach their lair. He too is questioned, and then locked up with Meggie. They speak to an eccentric servant locked up next doow, and find that the criminals were as surprised as anyone at the Colonel's death. Campion releases them, and they form a plan to overpower the villains. After much fighting and danger, they retake the house, and are about to flee to safety when the chief villains return and recapture them. Abbershaw reveals that he has burned their document, the plans for an audacious crime, and the party is locked upstairs, while the gang prepare to leave the house, leaving it on fire with the guests trapped inside. Just in time, the local hunt ride by, with a friend of Campion's among them. Hearing the prisoners' cries for help, the hunt rides up, are incensed by the German's behaviour, and, as he tries to flee, cause his car to crash, crushing him. The party breaks up and all return to London, where Campion impresses Abbershaw with the name of his mother before disappearing. Abbershaw, Prenderby and another man from the party find the converted car, and follow it to find Dr Whitby and the chauffeur about to flee the country by air. He denies killing the Colonel, and departs. Abbershaw, after some thought and research, pays a visit to the killer - Petrie himself. Having fallen in love with a young girl, he found she was the puppet of evil criminals, and enraged by their treatment of her, he resolved to track them down. When he found his own uncle was one of them, he felt he had no choice but to slay him, inventing the dagger ritual to give him the chance. Abbershaw lets him go, on condition he enters a monastery."
1093,Dark Passage,crime," Vincent Parry, convicted of murdering his wife, escapes from prison and is taken in by Irene Jansen, an artist with an interest in his case. Helped by a friendly cabbie, Parry gets a new face from a plastic surgeon, thereby enabling him to dodge the authorities and find his wife's real killer. He has difficulty staying hidden at Irene's, because Madge Rapf, the spiteful woman whose testimony sent him up to prison, keeps stopping by."
1094,Strange Affair,crime," When Alan Banks receives a disturbing message from his brother, Roy, he abandons the peaceful Yorkshire Dales for the bright lights of London, to seek him out. But Roy seems to have vanished into thin air. Meanwhile, DI Annie Cabbot is called to a quiet stretch of road just outside Eastvale, where a young woman has been found dead in her car. In the victim’s pocket, scribbled on a slip of paper, police discover Banks’ name and address. Living in Roy's empty South Kensington house, Banks finds himself digging into the life of the brother he never really knew, nor even liked. And as he begins to uncover a few troubling surprises, the two cases become sinisterly entwined..."
1095,44 Scotland Street,crime," The novel tells the story of Pat, a student during her second gap year and a source of some worry to her parents, who is accepted as a new tenant at 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh's New Town, and her various roommates and neighbours. She falls in love with her narcissistic flatmate Bruce, meets the intriguing and opinionated anthropologist Domenica MacDonald and her friend Angus, and works at an art gallery for Matthew, who was given the gallery as a sinecure position by his wealthy father. While working at the gallery Pat points out to Matthew (who knows almost nothing about art) that one of their paintings looks as if it could be a work of Samuel Peploe. After the gallery is broken into Matthew asks Pat to store the painting at their flat until they can check whether it's a genuine Peploe, however Bruce gives the painting to a raffle run by the South Edinburgh Conservative Association. Matthew and Pat eventually track it down to the novelist Ian Rankin who gives it back to them. The other major storyline is that of five-year-old Bertie, who is controlled by his pretentious and intellectual mother Irene - he has Grade Six on the saxophone, speaks fluent Italian, and is extremely knowledgeable about various subjects. After he is expelled from his nursery school Irene sends him to psychotherapy with Dr Fairbairn, who constantly misinterprets Bertie's simple wish to be a normal five-year-old boy on Oedipal and Freudian lines. Smith followed the original serial novel with another series set in Edinburgh, The Sunday Philosophy Club Series. The story of the characters in 44 Scotland Street is continued in his serialized novel Espresso Tales."
1096,Appointment with Death,crime," Holidaying in Jerusalem, Poirot overhears Raymond Boynton telling his sister: ""You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?"" Their stepmother, Mrs. Boynton, is a sadistic tyrant who dominates all the younger members of her family, and who attracts the strong dislike of a group of people outside the immediate family. But when she is found dead, Hercule Poirot proposes to solve the case in twenty-four hours, even though he has no way of even proving whether it was murder."
1097,The Body in the Library,crime," The story starts with Mrs Dolly Bantry waking up from a pleasant dream, and noticing that the maid has not been in yet. Suddenly, the maid, Mary, dashes in, tearful and breathless, and informs Dolly that there is a body in the library, before running out again. Colonel Arthur Bantry then goes downstairs and learns from his butler, Lorrimer, that there is indeed a body in the library, sees it, calls Police Constable Billy Palk, and then Mrs Bantry calls her friend, Miss Marple (revealing that the victim has been strangled). Miss Marple is picked up by Mrs Bantry and her chauffeur, Muswell, and taken to Gossington Hall. There she sees the body. It is a very young girl with platinum blonde hair, with lipstick and painted nails like a gash, wearing an old but glittery, satin, cheap, black and white evening dress of rather poor quality, with silver sandals. The girl is also wearing a considerable amount of make-up. Soon, the police arrive, the senior officers being Detective Inspector Slack and the Chief Constable of the County, Colonel. Terence Melchett. Nobody in the household recognises the body, though. Miss Marple states to Mrs Bantry, that a good suspect in the Bantrys' neighbour, Basil Blake, the son of an old school friend of Mrs Bantry's, who is disliked intensely by Colonel Bantry. Basil is well known for dating a young platinum blonde girl, called Dinah Lee. Colonel Melchett visits Basil, but soon discovers that Dinah is not dead, as she comes and argues with Basil. The autopsy arrives, revealing that the girl was strangled with the belt of her own dress, and that death took place between 10:00 and 12:00 at nighttime. She was also heavily drugged first. Despite her appearance, she died a virgin. Finally, the body is identified as Ruby Keene, an 18 year old dancer who worked at a hotel called the Majestic in Danemouth. The body is identified by Ruby's great-cousin and colleague Josephine ""Josie"" Turner, who explains that she is dance and bridge hostess at the Majestic, but required Ruby to fill in a as dance hostess, due to Josie suffering injuries sustained to her ankle, whilst sunbathing. Ruby would just do the dancing with men, and the exhibition dances with Raymond Starr, the tennis and dancing pro. But the previous night, Ruby went missing, and Josie was forced to do the dance. After Josie has visited Gossington, Mrs Bantry realises that the one who called the police was Conway Jefferson, an old friend of the Bantrys. Conway had a wife, a son, and a daughter (Margaret, Frank and Rosamund) all of whom were killed in a plane crash. Conway had both legs so badly injured, they were amputated. He lives with Frank's widow, Adelaide, Rosamund's widower, Mark Gaskell, and Peter Carmody, Adelaide's son from her first marriage. And then there is Edwards, Conway's valet. Mrs Bantry then decides that she and Miss Marple will go to Danemouth, stay at the Majestic, and find the killer. Meanwhile, Melchett has appointed a new assistant, Detective Superintendent Harper. Together they interview Conway and discover that he was going to adopt Ruby, disinherit Mark and Adelaide, and settle £50,000 on her. Despite this, Mark and Adelaide both have alibis. They were playing bridge watching Ruby dancing. Melchett and Harper interview George Bartlett, who was the last one to see Ruby alive, and who has had his car stolen. Conway, now tired, orders Edwards to call Sir Henry Clithering. When Sir Henry arrives, Conway asks him to investigate. Sir Henry tells him about Miss Marple. Later after dining, Miss Marple tells Sir Henry that if the case is not solved, the Bantrys' lives will be ruined forever. The police suspect that Ruby went to change to meet a boyfriend, who found out about her and Conway, making him panic and strangle her, leaving her at the Gossington library, and drives away to London. Sir Henry interviews Edwards, who tells him that he saw a snapshot of Basil Blake fall out of Ruby's handbag, making Conway and the reader suspect that Ruby had a lover. Then, Bartlett's Minoan 14 car is found burning in Venn's Quarry, with a charred and blackened corpse inside. With a few scraps of clothing surviving burning, it is identified as Pamela Reeves, a 16 year old Girl Guide reported missing a few days. Pamela was last seen going to Wallworths. Miss Marple interviews Pamela's friends, and discovers that Pamela was actually going to a hotel, for a film test, after being approached by a ""film producer"", but Pamela never returned from this appointment. Miss Marple then goes to Basil Blake's house and informs Dinah Lee that she has discovered that she and Basil are married and that Basil will be arrested for killing Ruby. Basil returns and confesses that after getting drunk and fighting with Dinah at a studio party, he returned and found Ruby lying strangled to death on ""his"" hearthrug. Panicking, he dumped Ruby in the Bantrys' library. The police arrive and Basil is arrested. Miss Marple, Sir Henry and the Bantrys once again book into the Majestic (they had briefly left), but this time with Colonel Bantry, Melchett and Harper. Miss Marple makes a quick trip to Somerset House (something about marriages) and ask Conway to tell Mark and Adelaide that he is leaving the money to a hostel for young dancers in London, and that he will visit a solicitor to finalize the details tomorrow. Conway does so, and they ask Det. Supt. Harper to keep a watch on people, with his men. Then the Bantrys and Miss Marple (along with the staff and other guests) retire for the night. At 3:00 in the morning, someone breaks into Conway's bedroom, via the window and balcony, and tries to murder Conway by injecting him with poison, through a needle, but the attacker is stopped by Melchett, Harper and Clithering. But the intruder is not named. Miss Marple then reveals all to the Bantrys, the Blakes, Melchett, Harper, Clithering, and the Jeffersons. Although nail clippings were found in Ruby's room, the girl in the library had bitten hers, which meant that the body in the library was not Ruby's. When Dinah mentioned Somerset House-marriage, Miss Marple found out that Mark was married to Josie. Upon finding out about Conway and Ruby, they decided to murder her and frame Basil. Mark and Josie approached Pamela regarding a film test, and when she accepted, they bleached her hair, put make-up on her, varnished her nails, put her into one of Ruby's dresses, and drugged her. Mark then slipped away to write letters, and drove down to the sea-front. But that was when he drove Pamela to Basil Blake's house, and strangled her. So when the doctor said the time she died, Mark and Josie had solid alibis, they were playing bridge watching the real Ruby Keene alive and dancing, and they did not leave the table until after midnight. Josie told Ruby to go and lie down in Josie's room. Ruby, as well, had been drugged. When changing for the dance, Josie murdered Ruby, either by strangulation, a poisonous injection, or a blow on the back of her head. In the early hours of the morning, Josie dressed Ruby in Pamela's Girl Guide uniform, stole Bartlett's car, drove to Venn's Quarry, and incinerated the lot."
1098,A Demon in My View,crime," A rigid man of fifty leads a solitary, apparently respectable life, as clerk and bookkeeper for a small business and part-time rent collector for his landlord. He has rented a flat in the building for twenty years because deep in its cellar, unbeknownst to anyone else, is a mannequin that he periodically ""strangles"" in order to satisfy his homicidal urges. The figure's location in the cellar, the darkness, the furtiveness, all are essential to the solitary man's satisfaction. The tenuous mental equilibrium he has been able to maintain is threatened when a young man, healthy in mind and body, a doctoral candidate in psychology, becomes a roomer in the house. Danger the older man senses from the moment the new tenant appears is horribly realized for him when the young man finds the mannequin and uses it as the figure in the bonfire at the Guy Fawkes Night celebration he has organized for the local children. The respectable fifty-year-old now must go back to the streets to find flesh more yielding than a mannequin's..."
1099,One Virgin Too Many,crime," When a frightened child approaches Marcus Didius Falco with a plea for help, he does not believe her. One quarrel with the family does not mean that a relation is trying to kill her. Beset by his own family troubles, his new responsibilities as Procurator of the Sacred Poultry, and the continuing search for a new partner, he decides to send her home. However, he almost immediately regrets it. Gaia Laelia comes from a pre-eminent Roman family with a long history of key religious positions. Gaia, herself, is considered the most likely candidate for election to the office of Vestal Virgin. When she disappears, Falco is officially asked to investigate. Meanwhile, Helena's brother Aelianus has problems of his own. In an attempt to restart his political career - stalled by his younger brother's elopement with his wealthy fiancee - he tries to gain election to the Arval Brethren. During the night-time ceremonies, however, Aelianus stumbles across the body of one of the Brethren with his throat cut as if he had been sacrificed. Unable to bring in the Vigiles, Falco is forced to search the house of Gaia Laelia alone, aware that time is running out for finding her before the lottery takes place, or even alive."
1100,Flesh and Blood,crime," Alex receives a call from the mother of an ex-patient, Lauren Teague. Considering it unresolved business, Alex contacts Milo and they ask around to see if they can find her. Her body turns up and the missing person case turns into a murder investigation. Alex and Milo visit her parents, former co-workers, roommates, and employers. They follow connections back and find that Lauren had $350,000 saved up, probably earned from prostitution. She had recently started to attend college, and was part of an intimacy experiment. When a former co-worker ends up dead after speaking to them, they know the murder was no ordinary mugging. Then Lauren's mother is killed, presumably by her husband. While kayaking along the beach near the Duke mansion, Alex rescues a boy who had swum out too far. This gets him invited in, and he makes the acquaintance of Duke's ex-wife, Cheryl. They flirt, and when a rendezvous is arranged, the killer shows up and shoots Cheryl. Alex is saved by Lauren's brother, Ben Dugger."
1101,Double Dexter,crime," The book begins with Dexter being observed in the act of dismembering a pedophile by an unknown witness who evades Dexter's attempt to apprehend them. Meanwhile, an undercover cop is found in the front seat of his car, every bone in his body broken. Dexter's sister, Deb, begs Dexter to help her solve the case. Dexter, at this point, is unable to help. There is a taco wrapper found near the body. Another police officer is found in front of a fountain near the water. He is also significantly pulverized. Rita, in the interim, has started drinking wine and is suspicious of Dexter heading out every night. He says he is running, when in actuality, he is searching for the person who witnessed his playtime. Dexter has also been contacted through a blog by the person who is watching him. The Shadow, as Dexter calls him, tells Dexter that he knows who he is, and he will be killed in a horrible fashion soon enough. Debra catches the cop-killer and arrests him. Later, Camilla Figg, who works with Dexter in Miami Metro and has a crush on Dexter, is murdered in a fashion similar to the police officers. This is the Shadow, trying to set up Dexter, which he admits to in his blog to Dexter. Dexter is the prime suspect, and Rita accuses him of sleeping with her. Dexter asks his brother Brian to intervene, and Brian, unbeknownst to him, kills the wrong man. Eventually, the Shadow follows Dexter to Key West, where he proceeds to kill another police officer and leave him in Dexter's suite. The Shadow takes Astor and Cody to an island to set a trap for Dexter. But Dexter gets to the island first and confronts the Shadow. The Shadow runs with Astor in his arms onto a boat and sets off with Dexter managing to barely get on the boat as well. A fight ensues and Astor and Dexter eventually subdue the Shadow, tossing him overboard where he is eaten by a shark. Deb meets Dexter back in Key West, and everything is set to order. fr:Double Dexter it:Doppio Dexter pt:Double Dexter"
1102,A Necessary End,crime," Violence erupts at an anti-nuclear demonstration in Eastvale, leaving one policeman stabbed to death. At first there are over a hundred suspects, but then things narrow down to the people who live on “Maggie’s Farm”, an isolated house high on the daleside: Seth Cotton, the quiet, strong owner; Mara Delacey, his girlfriend; Paul Boyd, a young drifter with a violent background; Zoe Hardacre, an astrologer; and Rick Trelawney, an artist with strong Marxist leanings. Also among the suspects is Dennis Osmond, a social worker involved with Jenny Fuller, Inspector Banks’s friend. As if this isn’t enough to cope with, Banks finds his freedom hampered by the politically-motivated appointment of an old enemy, Detective Superintendent Richard “Dirty Dick” Burgess, to head the investigation. Finally, warned off the case, the only way Banks can salvage his career is by beating Burgess to the killer. As the two head for a final confrontation, Banks pieces together the full story behind his most tragic case so far."
1103,Lost Light,crime," Lost Light is the first novel set after Bosch retires from the LAPD at the end of the prior story. Having received his private investigator's license, Bosch investigates an old case concerning the murder of a production assistant on the set of a film. The case leads him back into contact with his ex-wife Eleanor Wish, who is now a professional poker player in Las Vegas, and Bosch learns at the end that he and Eleanor have a young daughter. The poem referenced in this work is from Ezra Pound's ""Exile's Letter:"" What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking, There is no end of things in the heart."
1104,The Fire Engine That Disappeared,crime," A house fire, which kills three people, was about to be written off as the result of a tenant's gas suicide when a forensics officer discovers a firebomb in the rubble that would have certainly killed the tenant had he not killed himself. Beck and his team launch a manhunt for the tenant's partner-in-crime, but are perplexed when the partner-in-crime is found dead at the bottom of the sea."
1105,Total chaos,crime," The story takes place in Marseille during summer. Fabio Montale, a suburban-Marseille cop, sees his two closest childhood friends die one-by-one in violent circumstances. One was killed without anyone knowing why, the other was killed immediately after assassinating one of the leaders of the local underworld. Montale tries to understand what happened and gradually discovers a tangle of interests and power struggles within the Marseilles underworld and police."
1106,Chickenfeed,crime," Based on the real life case of Elsie Cameron, a pregnant woman supposedly killed by her boyfriend, chicken farmer Norman Thorne, who was hanged for the murder in 1924, Walters re-creates the events leading up to the crime and writes from the perspective of both Elsie and Norman, as their relationship slowly turns sour and Norman yearns to be free from his former lover."
1107,The Flanders Panel,crime," Julia, an art restorer and evaluator living in Madrid, discovers a painted-over message on a 1471 Flemish masterpiece — appearing as the cover of the book —called La partida de ajedrez (The Chess Game) reading ""Qvis Necavit Eqvitem"", written in Latin (English: ""Who killed the knight?""). With the help of her old friend and father-figure, the flamboyantly homosexual César, and Muñoz, a quiet local chess master, Julia works to uncover the mystery of a 500-year-old murder. At the same time, however, Julia faces danger of her own, as several people helping her along her search are also murdered."
1108,The Jupiter Myth,crime," After putting the project of building Togidubnus’s palace back on track (see A Body in the Bath House), Falco and family decide to take a break and visit some old friends and family up in Londinium. But nothing is ever peaceful around Falco. The body of a close friend of Togidubnus is found in a well. A simple murder? No, not around Falco. There is more than one gang flexing their muscles in Londinium, leading Falco every which way. Suddenly, Falco’s friend Petro appears. It’s not likely that he just happens to show up at the edge of the Empire, but he is not interested in telling anyone much of anything. What is really puzzling is why all these things are happening in only a certain group of taverns, all named after very important events in someone’s life. Is that the connection they are missing?"
1109,Portrait in Death,crime," Lt. Eve Dallas is celebrating the shortly-to-start vacation of Summerset, Roarke's majordomo, when he trips over the cat and falls down the stairs, breaking his leg. As Eve and Roarke are giving him first aid, Eve is tipped by Nadine Furst to a location that turns out to contain a dead body stuffed into a recycle bin. Nadine was sent a set of candid images of the victim, a young, pretty woman, and a final image of her dead body, clearly posed in a formal portrait setting. Also included: a note indicating plainly that the woman is the first victim, with more to follow. Eve assembles her usual team, including Roarke, to track down the killer before he can strike again. However, while taking some time to tend to affairs at Dochas, the shelter that he funds as a charitable project, Roarke meets with a new employee, a social worker, who informs him that she used to live in Dublin at the same time that he was a baby, and that she had given shelter to Roarke and his mother—a different woman than the abusive person that he grew up calling his mother. Roarke's researches show that the social worker is probably correct,and that his father Patrick Roarke killed his mother when she tried to leave him. Roarke is upset over this turn of events and is reluctant to share his feelings with anyone. Eventually, Eve gets him to talk to her desiring to help him through the nightmare of pain. The next day, Roarke hurries off to Ireland to find explanations from the surviving associates of his late, criminal father while Eve is busy investigating the second victim. He learns about his mother's surviving twin sister Sinead and visits her in Ireland where Eve joins him. Together they head back to New York where Eve is called to report to the crime scene of the third victim, who is the sister of Crack, one of Eve's acquaintances. Eve traces the evidence found in the van to kidnap the victims and finally determines that Gerald Stevenson, a sociopath who is affected by his mother's death is the perpetrator. She assigns Detective Baxter and Officer Trueheart to survail the pub the killer frequents. They believe Stevenson is not going to show up and decide to call it a day when Trueheart is kidnapped. The story ends with Eve and the team capturing Stevenson a.k.a. Steve Audrey and rescuing Trueheart. Eve rejoices when she learns that Summerset is finally gone on vacation."
1110,The Family Corleone,crime," The novel, set in the Great Depression, tells the story of how Vito Corleone rose through the criminal underworld to become the most powerful Don in New York. Vito pushes Sonny to be a businessman, but Sonny &mdash; 17 years old, impatient and reckless &mdash; wants something else: to follow in his father's footsteps and become a part of the real family business. It also shows the upbringing of Luca Brasi and how Tom Hagen became the Corleones' consigliere."
1111,The Blood Doctor,crime," Lord Nanther embarks on a biography of his great-grandfather, the first Lord Nanther, physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria and an expert on blood diseases. What he uncovers begins to horrify him as he realizes that Nanther died a guilty man - carrying an horrific secret to the grave."
1112,The Brass Verdict: A Novel,crime," Since the events of the previous novel, attorney Mickey Haller has spent a year recuperating from his wounds and a subsequent addiction to painkillers. He is called back to the practice of law when an old acquaintance, defense attorney Jerry Vincent, is murdered. Haller inherits Vincent's caseload, which includes the high-profile trial of Walter Elliott, a Hollywood mogul accused of murdering his wife Mitzi and her German lover. Haller secures this ""franchise"" case, persuading the mogul to keep him on as counsel by promising not to seek a postponement of the trial, which is due to start in nine days. Meanwhile, maverick LAPD detective Harry Bosch, the main character in several earlier novels written by Connelly, is investigating Vincent's murder. Bosch, warning that Vincent's killer may come after Haller next, persuades the reluctant lawyer to cooperate in the ongoing murder investigation. Meanwhile, Haller shakes off the rust, and lingering self-doubts, as he prepares for the double-murder trial. Among the cases Haller takes on is that of a former surfing champion, Patrick, who, while addicted to painkillers after a surfing accident, has stolen a diamond necklace while at the home of a friend. Haller feels sorry for Patrick because of his own history of addiction, and employs the young man to drive his Lincoln. He manages to get Patrick off the charges against him by playing on a hunch that the stolen diamonds were not genuine. Assisted by his investigator, Cisco, and his office assistant, Lorna (who is one of Haller's two ex-wives), Haller works out a strategy to defend his client, based on the fact that the gunshot residue found on Elliott's hands is the result of having travelled in a police car used earlier in the day to transport another prisoner. He also becomes suspicious of three German men, relatives of Mitzi Elliott's lover, and throws doubt as to whether the couple's murderer was actually after Mitzi or her lover. In the meantime, Walter admits that he is involved with the Mafia and that he believes they murdered both his wife and the lawyer Jerry Vincent. On the strength of information from Bosch, Haller becomes suspicious that Vincent has bribed someone in the legal process to plant a jury member who would help obtain an acquittal for Walter Elliott, regardless of the evidence. On investigation, he finds that one of the jurors has stolen someone else's identity, and he ensures that this information becomes known to the judge in the Elliott case, resulting in the trial being brought to a halt just as it begins to go Haller's way. Elliott, however, confesses to Haller that he actually did kill Mitzi and her lover, and Haller is left pondering on the outcome of the case. During the evening he receives a call from the police, asking him to help a former client. When he arrives on the scene, he is attacked by a man who attempts to push him over a precipice. Bosch and his team, who have been observing Haller, arrive on the scene just in time to prevent the murder, and the attacker is discovered to be the planted juryman. Haller figures out that the person behind the corruption is in fact a senior judge, and confronts her with his evidence, leading to her arrest by the FBI. When he learns that Walter Elliott and his secretary have also been murdered, he assumes she is behind that murder, but it turns out that justice has been dispensed by Mitzi lover's family before their return to Germany. Unknown to Haller, but revealed in previous Connelly novels, is the fact that Bosch is Haller's half-brother. Haller works out the puzzle by the end of the book, going mainly on the resemblances between Bosch and his own father (himself a lawyer) but at this point no arrangement is made for the two men to meet again."
1113,Double Indemnity,crime," Insurance agent Walter Huff falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who consults him about accident insurance for her husband. In spite of his basic, instinctual decency, Walter allows himself to be seduced into helping the femme fatale kill her husband for the insurance money."
1114,Gallowglass,crime," When Sandor snatches Joe from the path of a London tube train, he makes it clear that Joe's life now belongs to him. Sandor begins to tell him a mysterious story and teaches Joe that he is a ""gallowglass"", the servant of a chief. Sandor comes from a wealthy home and is highly educated. Joe, longing for a friend, falls under his spell. Some years earlier, Sandor had taken part in the kidnapping of a former model, Nina. He now plans to kidnap her again so that they can live together. At present, Nina lives in a heavily-guarded residence with her husband and many servants. Eventually, Joe's colourful stepsister, Tilly, is also dragged into the plot. However, things don't turn out as Sandor had planned. Most of the story is seen through Joe's eyes, but Paul Garnet, Nina's driver, also tells part of the tale."
1115,The Big Four,crime," Captain Hastings visits Poirot and finds that Poirot is leaving for South America. He has been offered a huge amount of money by the American 'soap king' millionaire Abe Ryland. Poirot inquires if Hastings has ever heard the phrase the Big Four. Hastings responds uncooperatively. At the eleventh hour an unexpected visitor called Mayerling comes in saying only ""M. Hercule Poirot, 14 Farraway Street."" When he is given a piece of paper by a doctor he writes the number 4 many times. When Hastings mentions the Big Four, the man begins speaking, he tells them that number 1 is a Chinese political mastermind named Li Chang Yen. He represents the brains of the Big Four. Number 2 is usually not named but represented by a '$' or two stripes and a star so he is probably American and he represents wealth. Number 3 is a Frenchwoman and Number 4 is the destroyer. After an aborted start on Poirot's trip to South America, they return to the flat to find the man dead. The doctor is summoned and says that the man died of asphyxiation and has been dead about two hours, he cannot be closer because the windows were open. A man from an asylum visits them and tells them that the man had escaped from his asylum. Japp soon enters and recognizes the man to be Mayerling, a prominent figure in the Secret Service. Poirot asks Hastings if he opened the windows to which Hastings replies in the negative. Poirot examines the man and announces that Mayerling was gagged and poisoned using cyanide. The hands of the lounge clock were turned to 4 o'clock and Poirot realizes that the murderer was the man from the asylum. Poirot and Hastings pay a visit to John Ingles, a wealthy man, and ask him about Li Chang Yen and the Big Four. He has heard of both, the former he heard of recently in a note from a fisherman who asked him for a few hundred pounds to hide himself from the Big Four. He had also heard of stories of four men who opposed Li Chang Yen, who had been murdered from stabbing, poisoning, electrocution and cholera. He had also heard a similar story of a chemist who was burned to death in his residence. The note came from Hoppaton so Poirot, Hastings and Ingles go to Hoppaton and find out that the man who wrote the note, a Mr. Jonathan Whalley has been murdered. There are two suspects his maid, Betsy, and his manservant Grant. Whalley had been hit on the head and then his throat had been cut and some jade figures he had had been stolen. Grant is the main suspect as his footprints covered in blood are found around the room, the jade figures were in his room and there is a smear of blood on his room's doorknob. Another reason is the fact that Grant has been imprisoned before, Grant got this job by a prisoner help society. Poirot finds a frozen leg of mutton which interests him very much. Poirot hypothesizes that the murderer was a young man who came in a trap and killed Whalley and went away. His clothing was slightly bloodstained. Poirot talks to Grant and asks him whether he entered the room twice to take the jade figures. When negatived Poirot reveals that no one noticed the murderer because he came in a butcher's cart. Mutton is not delivered on Sundays and if it had been delivered on Saturday it would not have been frozen. The man who gave Grant this job, Poirot assumes, was Number 4. Poirot then introduces Hastings to Captain Kent who tells them of the sinking of many U.S. boats after the Japanese earthquake. After this they rounded many crooks up all of them referred to an organization called the Big Four. They have made a form of wireless energy capable of focusing a beam of great intensity on any spot. A British scientist called Halliday experimented on this and was said to be on the eve of success when he was kidnapped while on a visit to France. Poirot talks to Halliday's wife who tells him that her husband went to Paris on Thursday the 20 July to talk to some people connected with his work among them the notable French scientist Madame Olivier. After lunch Halliday had gone to Madame Olivier. He had left her at six o' clock, dined alone at some restaurant and gone to his hotel. He had walked out next morning and had not been seen afterwards. As a result Poirot goes to Paris with Hastings. Poirot and Hastings visit Madame Olivier, question her but while leaving they catch a glimpse of a veiled lady who Poirot is interested in. As soon as they exit the villa a tree falls down barely missing them. Poirot then explains to Hastings how Halliday was kidnapped he was walking away when a lady caught up with him and told him Madame Olivier wanted to talk to him again. She led him and turned into a narrow alley and then into a garden told him that Madame Olivier's villa was on the right side then and there Halliday was kidnapped. Poirot goes to the villa and asks to speak to the woman who just came. She comes down, after initially refusing, when Poirot sends his card. It turns out she is the Countess Vera Rossakoff. When confronted with the theory she phones the kidnappers to send Halliday back to the hotel. When Halliday returns he is too scared to speak. Then a man in a cloak, who is a participant in the big four, comes and tries persuading Hercule Poirot to stop and Hastings gets into a small fight with the stranger who evades Poirot, Hastings, and the hotel manager with a clever disguise. Poirot is told by Madame Olivier that two men broke into her laboratory and attempted to steal her supply of radium. Poirot and Hastings board a train, and in the confusion of a signal failure caused by Poirot's friend, they return to Mme. Olivier's villa to find the thieves. however, they are ambushed by thugs, and Olivier reveals herself to be Number 3, and that the two shall die by her hands to prevent their interference. However, Poirot tells her that the cigarette he has contains a poisonous dart, and Olivier unties Hastings, who unties Poirot and binds and gags Olivier. Shortly afterwards the two receive a letter from Abe Ryland who was annoyed at Poirot for refusing his offer. Then Poirot tells Hastings that Abe Ryland is Number 2, an American millionaire. Ryland soon releases news that he is looking for an efficient secretary, and Hastings applies and gets the job, imposing as a man called Captain Neville. He becomes suspicious of the manservant Deaves, and he learns that Ryland received an encoded letter telling him to go to a quarry at eleven o'clock. Hastings spies on Ryland, but is captured by Ryland and Deaves, who wait for Poirot. When he arrives he ambushes Ryland and Deaves with the help of ten Scotland Yard officials. Ryland is released after his manservant informs the police that all of it was just a wager, and Poirot realises that the manservant was Number Four. A month later, they leave London due to the death of a Mr Paynter in Worcestershire. He had six Chinese servants, as well as his bodyguard Ah Ling, who Poirot is interested in. Paynter was living with his nephew when he felt ill after a meal and a Doctor Quentin was called. He told the nephew, Gerald, that he had given Paynter a hypodermic injection and proceeded by asking strange questions about the servants. Paynter was found the next morning in a room locked from the inside, dead. It seemed that he had fallen off his chair and into the gas fire, and the Doctor was blamed for leaving him in such a position. Before his death, Paynter had dipped his finger in ink and written ""yellow jasmine"" on his newspaper, a plant growing all over the house, as well as drawing two lines at right angles under the words, a sign similar to the beginning of the number 4. At the inquest, Quentin was accused in a number of ways, such as that he was not the regular doctor and his recalling of the events. According to him, Paynter told him as soon as the door was shut that he was not feeling ill at all and that the taste of his curry was strange. It was claimed that Quentin injected him with strychnine rather than a narcotic. Later, after the curry was analysed, the results showed that it contained a deadly amount of opium, implicating the servant Ah Ling as he was the one to cook it. Also, Inspector Japp tells the two that the key was found near the broken door and that the window was unlatched. Japp believes that the charred face was to cover up the identity of the dead man, but Poirot believes the man to be Paynter. Poirot reveals that Doctor Quentin was number 4, who entered the house and gave Paynter an injection of yellow jasmine rather than strychnine. He locked the door and exited through the window, returning later to put opium in the curry sample, throw Paynter into the fire and steal a manuscript-the reason for the murder. A month after the case, Japp informs Poirot of another mysterious death- the chess grandmasters Gilmour Wilson and Doctor Savaronoff were playing chess when shortly into the game Gilmour Wilson collapsed dead due to heart failure. Japp suspects he was poisoned, and Poirot is called in. Japp suspects that the poison was intended for Savaronoff, a former Revolutionist in Russia who just escaped from the Bolsheviks. He refused several times to play a game of chess with Wilson but eventually gave in. The match took place in Savaronoff's flat, with at least a dozen people watching the game. Wilson's body had a small burn mark on his left hand and was also clutching a white bishop when he died, part of Savaronoff's set. As Poirot and Hastings enter the Doctor's flat, Poirot notices that the antique Persian rug has had a nail driven through it. After the proceedings in the flat, Poirot and Hastings return home and Poirot takes out a second white bishop. He weighed the one he took with the one Wilson was holding and discovered that the one he was holding was heavier. He explains that the bishop has a metal rod inside it, so that the current passing through the recently refurbished flat below is powered through the nail, into the also tampered table and into the bishop. The bishop was chosen because of Wilson's predictable first few moves, and Poirot suspects the servant of the flat and Savaronoff's niece of working for the big Four. However, when they arrive at the flat Savaronoff's niece is gagged and unconscious and Ivan and the Doctor are nowhere to be seen. Poirot explains that Savaronoff did die in Russia and that number Four impersonated him as a cover. He killed Wilson because if Savaronoff was the second greatest chess master in the world, people would soon realise that number Four was nothing like the chess player Savaronoff was. With number Four gone, the two are back to square one again. Soon afterwards, Hastings is given a message that his wife has been kidnapped in Argentina by the big Four, as well as another note saying that if he wants to see his wife again he must follow a Chinese servant. He leaves four books on the table as a message for Poirot, and follows him to an abandoned house in Chinatown and he is taken to an Arabian- like room. One of the Chinese servants tries to make him write a letter in order to get Poirot and threaten him with death. He is eventually forced to write it to Poirot and he is soon seen across the street. As Hastings is forced to beckon him into the house, a man from Scotland Yard throws a drugged smoke bomb into the house, knocking everyone unconscious and Hastings is saved. Hastings is not only greeted by Poirot, but by the fact that his wife has been safe for over three months in a place Poirot set up. Later, Poirot's agents return from their work of identifying number 4 and produce four names, with a Mr Claud Darrell looking suspicious as he has visited both China and America. Very soon, Darrell's friend, Florence Monro, calls Poirot to tell him information about Darrell. She gives one important point, that when he eats he always picks up a pice of bread and dabs up the crumbs with it. She also promises to send him a photo of Darrell. Twenty minutes later Miss Monro is hit by a car and killed, while number Four had taken her latch-key, gone into her flat and stolen the photograph. Poirot, Hastings and Ingles meet with the home secretary and his client. Ingles leaves for China, and Poirot reveals an odd fact- he has a twin brother. The two arrive home to a nurse who says that her employer, Mr Templeton, often has gastric attacks after eating. When a sample of soup is tested and found to contain antimony, they set off again. The arrival of Templeton's adopted son causes a disturbance; he tells Poirot that he thinks his mother is trying to poison his father. Poirot pretends to have stomach cramps, and when he is alone with Hastings, he quickly tells him that Templeton's son is number Four, as he dabbed up the crumbs with a small slice of bread at the table. The two climb down the ivy and arrive at their flat. The two are caught by a trap; a matchbox filled with a chemical explodes knocking Hastings unconscious and killing Poirot. Another shock greets Hastings shortly after the funeral; John Ingles had fallen overboard on his boat to China, but Hastings knew this to be murder, of none other than Claud Darrell, number Four himself. After being warned twice by a disguised number Four and Countess Rosakoff to leave for South America, Hastings is called to a hospital because Ingles' Chinese servant was stabbed and had a message in his pocket for Hastings. The servant managed to say 'Handel's Largo', 'carrozza' and a few other Italian words before dying. He also receives a letter from Poirot to be given after his death saying to leave for South America, as it was part of the plan. The big Four would think he was leaving and he could 'wreak havoc in their midst'. This is confirmed when a gentleman in a fur coat (number Four) sends him a letter saying 'You are wise'. Hastings is put on board a ship for Belgium, where he is reunited with his supposedly dead friend, Poirot. Hastings is shocked, and Poirot states it was to make his death look certain to the big Four. The two set off for Italy to Lago di Carrezza, which Hastings thought was 'largo' and 'carrozza'. The two find a café where they go to drink coffee. However, upon their arrival, they see a man jump up from his table, and fiddle with his bread- undoubtedly number Four. This was all Poirot's plan- to scare a man as soon as he thinks he is safe. But it was an act; the lights went out and Poirot and Hastings are knocked unconscious and dragged away. They are taken to the headquarters of the Big Four- The Felsenlabyrinth. They are confronted by Ryland, Olivier and number Four, with Chang Yen being in China, and later Vera Rossakoff. It soon becomes clear that the man is not Hercule Poirot, but in fact his twin, Achille. The man has a deeper voice, has no moustache and has a scar on his lip. He makes the four people aware of the fact that the mountain has been cordoned off, and that the police were about to raid the headquarters. Knowing their defeat, the three members retreat to a laboratory and Vera decided to bargain with Poirot. He claimed that he could bring the dead back to life, and she said that she would save them if he returned her dead child. The three run out of the mountain just as it explodes, and Hastings awakes to yet another surprise. Achille Poirot didn't exist- it was Hercule Poirot in disguise all along. He manages to give the countess her child back, who was really left in an orphanage, and the newspapers reveal that Li Chang Yen, the famous Chinese politician, has committed suicide. The story ends on Poirot lamenting that all his other cases will seem boring and tame to this case."
1116,And Kill Once More,crime," Kate Weston is worried about her friend Sandy Engle. Since her marriage to George Engle, the vivacious Sandy has practically become a recluse. Kate's suspicion that something is wrong leads her to hire what she thinks is a detective to pose as her boyfriend during a weekend house party at the Engle's estate high in the central California mountains. Instead of a detective, though—because of a manpower shortage at the Gregory Agency—Kate gets a stand-in: Marty Bowman, an L.A. lifeguard with vague ambitions of following in his brother's private-eye footsteps. The guests at the party seem to have little in common until George Engle turns up dead at the bottom of his swimming pool with Marty Bowman's lucky silver dollar clenched in his fist. The murder investigation by slow-moving local sheriff Frank Toland finds the thread that connects most of the guests: they were being blackmailed by George. Marty becomes the prime suspect in the murder and to save his own neck has to stay one step ahead of Toland. As he subtly conducts an independent investigation under Toland's nose, Marty discovers that in addition to blackmailing his house party guests—and many others—George has conned his wife into believing she has tuberculosis. Slipping past the guard of sheriff Toland's rookie assistant, Marty and Sandy pay an after-hours visit to a clinic in the valley, where Marty, with the help of an X-ray technician, proves to Sandy that her ill health is an illusion. After bar-hopping with a jubilant Sandy for the rest of the evening, Marty resists her drunken advances (and beds Kate instead). The next morning, however, Marty finds that Sandy too has been murdered. Unbeknownst to the sheriff, Sandy had retained possession of some of the evidence her husband had used to blackmail their guests, a fact that led George's murderer to kill once more. The murderer, sensing that Marty is closing in on the truth, sets for him the same underwater death trap used on George. Fortunately, Marty's familiarity with swimming pool hydraulics enables him to anticipate the trap, foil it, and turn the tables on the killer. A struggle ensues, followed by the climactic denouement."
1117,Talking to Strange Men,crime," Two plotlines run through this crime novel. The main adult protagonist is John Creevey who stumbles upon a series of hidden coded messages which he thinks must be the work of criminals or spies. John is unhappy and depressed. His wife Jennifer has left him for Peter Moran, her old fiancé, and he cannot accept that she will not return to him. He is still affected by the murder of his sister 16 years ago and Mark, her fiancé, is equally unhappy. John becomes obsessed by unravelling the codes, spending hours trying to break them. The coded messages are, however, being left by rival groups of public schoolboys. These boys are emulating the world of the 1980s spy fiction with the home team led by 14-year-old Mungo battling against Moscow Centre, run by boys at a rival school. Mungo is over six feet tall and has inherited the leadership from his older brother. The groups have moles and traitors. One of Mungo’s team is Charles Mabledene, another 14-year-old, but Mungo is not sure if he is really on their side and sets out to test him. Jennifer and Peter come round to John’s house in one of their attempts to get him to agree to a quick divorce and Colin, a friend of John’s, recognises from when he was a juror. He tells John that Peter pleaded guilty to indecent assault on a male child under the age of thirteen. John wonders how he can use this information to turn Jennifer against Peter and is also worried because a 12-year-old boy has been abducted from where Peter and Jennifer live on an afternoon when Peter was on his own. John decides to intercept and alter one of the messages and gives instructions for Peter to be investigated. The message is sent to Charles and he interprets this as being the loyalty test he is expecting. John confronts Jennifer with his information on Peter saying, “You can’t love a man who molests little boys”, but Jennifer stays loyal to Peter, to help him and to protect other boys. John then tries to cancel his instructions to Charles, but Charles ignores the new message, knows it cannot be from Mungo who is on holiday, and reads it as a trap. Charles goes to Peter’s House and meets him on the pretext of offering to wash his car. He immediately senses that Peter is attracted to him. Charles looks very young for his age and tells Peter he is just twelve years old. He is just over five foot, has blond hair, an unbroken voice and is quite aware he is very attractive. His father is always telling him not to talk to strange men. Peter suggests a meeting in town. After they sit down, he leans forward to brush ice cream off Charles’ cheek yet Charles maintains a cool exterior. On a later trip to the cinema, Peter puts his arm around the boy’s shoulder. After the cinema, they go to eat supper in a derelict building, one of the boys’ ‘safe houses’. Peter makes advances to Charles, talking about a ‘physically loving’ friendship he had when he was Charles’ age, and puts his hand on his thigh. Charles jumps up and in the subsequent panic, Peter is accidentally killed and Charles escapes, leaving a burning candle which destroys the building."
1118,Killer: A Journal of Murder,crime," It details American serial killer Carl Panzram's entire life inside the American prison system as well as the many murders he committed. Henry Lesser was a young jail guard at the Washington DC district jail when Panzram arrived for incarceration in 1928. After hearing of Panzram's torture, Lesser befriends him, convincing him to write his life autobiography. After 40 years of searching for publication, Lesser finally achieved his life's effort in 1970 when Killer: A Journal of Murder was published."
1119,Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase,crime," While taking a leisurely Sunday stroll along the West Country estuary, Wycliffe stumbles across a service revolver with one recently fired chamber. From these humble beginnings, he soon ends up embroiled in a world of shady art robberies, crooked dealers, a suspicious suicide and the hunt for a missing yacht..."
1120,"One, Two, Buckle My Shoe",crime," Hercule Poirot leaves the office of his dentist, Morley, after an appointment, and notices the arrival of Mabelle Sainsbury Seale. He returns to her the shiny buckle that has fallen from her shoe. Later, he hears from Inspector Japp that Morley has died of a gunshot. Between Poirot’s appointment and Morley’s death there were only three patients: Banker Alistair Blunt, Mabelle, and a Greek blackmailer named Amberiotis. The presence of a man thought essential to the country’s economic survival, the banker, Blunt, ensures Japp’s involvement in the case. Amberiotis dies of an overdose of anaesthetic and it is thought that the dentist has killed himself after realising the accident for which he had been responsible. The movements of people at the dental surgery are inconclusive. Morley’s partner, Reilly, is a rogue but seems to have no motive. Morley’s secretary had been called away by a fake telegram. Her boyfriend, Frank Carter, had a weak motive given that Morley had attempted to dissuade her from seeing him. Also present at the surgery was Howard Raikes, a prickly left-wing activist violently opposed to Blunt but enamoured of his niece. There is too little evidence for Poirot to construct an alternative hypothesis, but he senses that the story is not complete. When Mabelle goes missing, his fears are realised. A search for her is conducted, and some time later her body is apparently found in a sealed chest in the apartment of Mrs. Albert Chapman, who has herself disappeared. The corpse’s face has been smashed in, and Poirot notices its dull buckled shoes. He is skeptical of the theory that Mrs. Chapman has killed Mabelle and fled. Sure enough, once the dental records are produced by Morley’s successor at the surgery, it is discovered that the corpse is Mrs. Chapman’s. The hunt for Mabelle continues. Poirot is now drawn into the life of the Blunt family. An attempt is made on Alistair Blunt’s life at which Raikes is a bystander. Poirot is invited down to Blunt’s house, where he is persuaded to undertake a search for Mabelle. While he is there, a second attempt is made on Blunt’s life, but it is seemingly thwarted by Raikes. The pistol used in the attack is found in the hand of none other than Frank Carter, who has taken a job as gardener at the house under a false identity. When a maid at the surgery admits to having seen Carter on the stairs going up to Morley’s office, it seems that Carter is likely to be tried and convicted of both the murder and the attempted murder. The fact that the gun with which he was captured was the twin of the murder weapon only makes things worse for him. In the climax of the novel – one of the darkest in the Poirot series – Poirot realises that by allowing Carter to persist in his lies he can ensure that the real killer goes free, and wrestles with his conscience. Eventually he presses Carter to admit the truth: that when he entered Morley’s office the dentist was already dead. It is the final element in the puzzle. Poirot visits Alistair Blunt and explains the murders. The real Mabelle Sainsbury Seale had known him and his first wife, Gerda, whom he had never divorced, in India; his money came from his now deceased second wife, and he would be disgraced if caught in bigamy. Running into Blunt in the street, she had recognised and spoken to him in front of his niece, but had not realised whom he had become. By chance she had mentioned this chance encounter to the blackmailer, Amberiotis, who made the connection between the name 'Blunt' and the wealthy banker and began to blackmail Blunt. Gerda, posing under several aliases including that of Mrs. Albert Chapman, invited Mabelle to visit her, killed her, and took her identity, but had to buy new shoes because Mabelle’s did not fit her. This is why the corpse’s buckles were dull, while the buckle of the woman whom Poirot met going into Morley's surgery were shiny: the fake Mabelle had newer shoes than the real one, who was by that time decomposing in the chest. The woman in the trunk could hardly have worn through a new pair of shoes in a single day. Ironically, the face of the corpse had been disfigured not because it wasn’t Mabelle, but because it was. Alistair Blunt had attended his appointment, shot Morley and stashed his body in the side office with his wife’s help. Having appeared to leave the surgery, he returned and changed the dental records of Mrs. Albert Chapman and Mabelle in order to ensure that the corpse would be identified as Mrs. Chapman: a woman who in reality did not exist; the motive for killing Morley was simply to prevent him from detecting this change. At the end of Mabelle’s appointment, Gerda left, while Blunt dressed as a dentist in order to administer the overdose to Amberiotis, a new patient who had never met Morley. Poirot’s involvement had forced Blunt to compound the lies with talk of assassins and spies as the detective had relentlessly tracked the truth. At the novel’s bleak conclusion, Poirot is forced to admit that Blunt does indeed stand in public life “for all the things that to my mind are important. For sanity and balance and stability and honest dealing”. Nevertheless, he adds: “I am not concerned with the fate of nations, Monsieur. I am concerned with the lives of private individuals who have the right not to have their lives taken from them.” He turns Blunt over to the police. Later, he confronts Blunt's niece and her fiancé Howard Raikes, telling them that they now have the ""new heaven and the new earth"" that they desire, asking them only to ""let there be freedom and let there be pity"". In the last chapter, Mr. Barnes tells Poirot that he took such a vivid interest in the case as he was Mr. Albert Chapman, the wife of whom Gerda (apparently Mrs. Albert Chapman) pretended to be."
1121,Three Hands in the Fountain,crime," Falco arrives home in Rome with Helena Justina and Julia Junilla Laeitana, his new baby daughter, and barely have time to settle in before being subjected to a welcome-home party. Falco and Petronius sneak out for a drink in a nearby street next to a fountain, which is not working. When a worker turns up to clean it, it is revealed that a severed hand had blocked the aqueduct. Falco and Petro start to investigate, but their case is stolen by Anacrites. Petro puts up a sign proclaiming that awards are to be given on the discovery of any body parts. Falco talks to his brother-in-law and is told that severed body parts have been discovered in the rivers and aqueducts for several years, usually after festivals. When he's told that Petro put up the sign he runs back to his old apartment (where Petro now lives after being kicked out by his wife) as a slave hands over a new hand to Petro. Petro takes down the sign. Anacrites, who is rather annoyed at being muscled out of his stolen case, sends four men to beat up Falco and Petro. They defeat the bruisers easily and trail them back to Anacrites. Soon afterwards, Julius Frontinus finds and gives over a new hand. It looks the same as the other hands but this one has a wedding ring with two names inscribed (Asinia and Caius). They track down Caius Cicurrus, the widower of Asinia. He is innocent and is greatly grieving for his lost wife. Petro's wife dumped him after he took up with Balbina Milvia from Time to Depart. Milvia's husband Florius sends men to beat up Falco and Petro. Falco, with the help of his trainer Glaucus and Glaucus's trainees, beats off his attackers but Petro has no such help and is heavily injured. Milvia comes to Falco asking him to help her, as she fears that her mother, who has vanished, has been taken by the killer. Falco finds Cornella Flaccida at a new apartment. He goes out to the country but finds no suspects. After continuous reconnaissance he has two problems: First, Claudia Rufina, the heiress from A Dying Light In Corduba and the new fiancee to Helena's brother Aelianus, has vanished, and second, a slave called Thurius has been identified as the murderer. Falco goes out to rescue Claudia and apprehend Thurius. He captures Thurius and finds his lair and his victim. He finds that it's not Claudia, it's Milvia's mother, who vanished again. Unlike Claudia, however, no one liked her enough to send out a search party. Claudia is later found to have eloped with Helena's other brother Justinus, an act that has disastrous consequences. The book ends with Falco telling Petro his wife went out with another man, and later receiving a visit from Anacrites."
1122,Kissing the Gunner's Daughter,crime," Four members of a well-to-do family in Kingsmarkham are shot during dinner, and only Daisy survives with minor injuries. Daisy is the teenage granddaughter of Davina Flory, a popular crime fiction writer much like Agatha Christie. Wexford wishes to protect her in a fatherly way, as he is with his own daughter Sheila, whose new boyfriend Augustine Casey is a post-post-modernist novelist who has already published a novel devoid of any characters. Daisy had never met her father. Wexford finds that Daisy's father is a former football player nicknamed ""Gunner"" because he played for Arsenal Football Club."
1123,A Dying Light in Corduba,crime," The Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica is throwing a big dinner party in Rome, trying to drum up business for their product. Falco is invited at the request of Claudius Laeta, Vespasian’s top clerk. The food, the garum and the dancing girl make a big impression on Falco. When two guests at a dinner are assaulted, one fatally, Falco realizes that being at the dinner was just the start of another job. The surviving victim, Anacrites, is Falco's rival and Vespasian's Chief Spy. Falco is asked to investigate the attack on Anacrites and its possible connection to an attempt to corner the market on Spanish olive oil. Trying to keep Anacrites safe, he moves him to the one place where no one will look, and if they do, they will regret it; his mother’s house. Soon, Falco is on his way to Hispania to track down some of the guests and that memorable dancer. Laeta hints that someone is looking to corner the market on Hispania’s olive oil production. Suspicion immediately falls on Quinctius Attractus, the host of the festivities that fatal evening. This is an assignment Falco does not take solo; he is bringing his very pregnant companion, Helena Justina. Helena's father Camillus Verus happens to own a small estate in Baetica, and her brother Aelianus has just returned for serving there, so he and Helena have a perfect excuse to show up. And Helena has made it very clear that Falco will be there for the birth of his child. Falco soon discovers, among other things, Quinctius Attractus, owns one of the largest estates in the region, producing massive quantities of olive oil. He also learns that against his initial suspicions, there does not appear to be much interest in cornering any market, at least on the part of the Baeticans. This does not mean the investigation is over; there is still the assault to solve, and pesky dancer is still on the loose. Helena becomes friendly with the daughters of two local magnates, Claudia Rufina and Aelia Annaea. Falco gets to know some of the sons, including Claudia’s brother Constans. Also appearing is Attractus’ son Quadratus, the new quaestor of Baetica. That one item alone keeps Falco on guard. While concluding the interviews of the dinner guests, Falco finally catches up with the dancer, Selia, who promptly tries to kill him with the help of her band. Before she strikes the final blow, she reveals that Laeta sent her too, not to find the killer, but to stop anyone following, a classic double cross. Now Falco knows all, or nearly all. Falco manages to escape, but fails to catch Selia. He rushes home to see if Helena is well. Falco finds Quadratus in his house, injured in a fall from a horse, and discovers that there has indeed been a death; Rufina Constans, Claudia’s brother. He was found dead in an olive press, moving a stone that no human could move alone. Falco suspects something, but the obvious suspect is his guest and claiming an injury. Yet Claudia is convinced it was not an accident, and she asks Falco to investigate. Seeing the site of the death, he is convinced someone else was there when Constans died. Now it is just one more thing he has to prove. Now the chase is on. Falco goes to the Quinctius estate, and finds Selia dead and Quadratus gone. But this death is much more elegant, and soon another Dancer appears; Perella. She is working for the Chief Spy Anacrites, who was still alive when she saw him last, now with the Praetorian guard, but still being nursed by Falco’s mother. Still not trusting Perella, Falco decides to share his information with her, and they piece together the real plot. It is not the Baeticans who want the cartel, it is Laeta, who wants to force Vespasian to take over production, pouring millions into Rome’s coffers, but causing the price of olive oil to go through the roof. Laeta had set up Falco in the hope that he will find enough to cause the Emperor to stave off the threat of anyone else controlling olive oil, and putting Laeta in charge of the new cartel. If Falco dies, instead, well, that is the cost of doing business. Attractus and Quadratus are part of the plan because Laeta needs some legitimacy, and the Quinctii have enough influence to make it at least appear to be on the up and up. Falco also learns that Quadratus was indeed with Constans when he died. It is now time to act. Helena is about to burst, but Falco is still fearful of local medical experts, and so he sends her east by land while he rides to catch Quadratus before he kills someone else, and then hopes to catch up. After visiting a couple of mines in search of Quadratus, he finally catches up with him. It turns out that Laeta did not have as much control over the Quinctii as he thought, and some of the killings were Quadratus’ idea. Quadratus tries to bluff, but he knows it’s too late to recover the dream of all that control. Ignoring Falco, he descends a ladder, slips and falls to his death. Falco can only wonder how much of an accident it was. It’s a girl. Falco makes it before the birth, Helena survives, and only breaks a couple of his fingers."
1124,Hot Six,crime," The book begins at the point at which High Five ended, revealing who Stephanie picked: Ranger or Joe Morelli. The story then jumps ahead five months, with Stephanie's friend Carol attempting to avoid jail-time by jumping off a bridge. Stephanie talks her down, and persuades the man who reported her not to press charges. In return, Stephanie must watch the man's dog, Bob, which she does. He never comes to take the dog back. Meanwhile, Stephanie must chase down Ranger, while being followed by two hit men (and getting four cars destroyed in the process). Stephanie's eccentric Grandma Mazur has moved in, as well, and to top it all off, Plum has to deal with a stoner named Mooner. In the end, it all works out. Stephanie even gains a proposal out of the deal."
1125,The Minotaur,crime," Kerstin Kvist didn't quite know what to expect when she took up a job with the Cosway family at their odd, almost grand home, Lydstep Old Hall, deep in the Essex countryside. The family turned out to be even odder than the house: the widowed Mrs Cosway lived with her three unmarried daughters, in thrall to the old lady. A mysterious fourth daughter - a widow herself and apparently quite rich - came and went, with ill-disguised contempt for the others. More puzzling still was Mrs Cosway's son, John, a sad, self-absorbed figure in his thirties who haunted the house. ""There's madness in the family"", offered one of the daughters by way of explanation, but Kerstin had trained as a nurse and knew it wasn't right to be administering such powerful drugs to a vulnerable figure like John."
1126,The Mystery of the Blue Train,crime," Poirot boards Le Train Bleu, bound for the French Riviera. So does Katherine Grey, who is having her first winter out of England, after having inherited a huge sum. While on board she meets Ruth Kettering, an American heiress bailing out from a marriage to meet her lover. The next morning, though, Ruth is found dead in her compartment, a victim of strangulation. The famous ruby, ""Heart of Fire"", which had recently been given to Ruth by her father, is discovered to be missing. Ruth's father, the American millionaire Rufus Van Aldin, and his secretary, Major Knighton, convince Poirot to take on the case. Ruth's maid, Ada Mason, says she saw a man in Ruth's compartment but could not see who he was. The police suspect that Ruth's lover, the Comte de la Roche, killed her and stole the rubies, but Poirot does not think he is guilty. He is suspicious of Ruth's husband, Derek Kettering, who was on the same train but claims not to have seen Ruth. Katherine says she saw Derek enter Ruth's compartment. This also throws suspicion on Derek when a cigarette case with the letter K on it is found. Poirot investigates and finds out that the murder and the jewel theft might not be connected, as the famous jewel thief The Marquis is connected to the crime. Eventually, the dancer Mirelle, who was on the train with Derek, tells Poirot she saw Derek leave Ruth's compartment around the time the murder would have taken place. Derek is then arrested. Everyone is convinced the case is solved, but Poirot is not sure. He does more investigating and learns more information, talking to his friends and to Katherine, eventually coming to the truth. He asks Van Aldin and Knighton to come with him on the Blue Train to recreate the murder. He tells them that Ada Mason is really Kitty Kidd, a renowned male impersonator and actress. Katherine saw what she thought was a boy getting off the train, but it was really Mason. Poirot realized that Mason was the only person who saw anyone with Ruth in the compartment, so this could have been a lie. He reveals that the murderer and Mason's accomplice is Knighton, who is really The Marquis. He also says that the cigarette case with the K on it does not stand for Kettering, but Knighton. Since Knighton was supposedly in Paris, no one would have suspected him. Derek did go into the compartment to talk to Ruth once he saw she was on the train, but he left when he saw she was asleep. The police then arrest Knighton, and Van Aldin thanks Poirot for solving the case."
1127,The Face of Trespass,crime," Two years ago he was a promising young novelist. Now he barely survives, in a near-derelict cottage with only an unhooked telephone and his own obsessive thoughts for company. Two years of loving Drusilla, but the affair is over and the long slide into deception and violence has just begun."
1128,The Blank Page,crime," Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, middle-aged, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force. As the novel opens, it is a record-hot Memorial Day when Miss Cynthia Summer calls Police Chief Mario Balzic to say that she hadn't seen one of her student roomers. Balzic discovers Janet Pisula's body on the floor of her room, a blank sheet of typing paper on her stomach..... It is the third book in the 17-volume Rocksburg series."
1129,The City & the City,crime," Inspector Tyador Borlú, of the Extreme Crime Squad in the European city-state of Besźel, investigates the murder of Mahalia Geary, a foreign student found dead with her face disfigured in a Besźel street. He soon learns that Geary had been involved in the political and cultural turmoil involving Besźel and its ""twin city"" of Ul Qoma. His investigations start in his home city of Besźel, lead him to Ul Qoma to assist the Ul Qoman police in their work, and eventually result in an examination of the legend of Orciny, a rumoured third city existing in the spaces between Besźel and Ul Qoma."
1130,Murder at School,crime," Oakington is one of the lesser-known public schools in England, and Dr Roseveare, its headmaster, has been trying hard for seven years to improve its reputation. When, in the winter term of 1927-1928, one of the pupils is killed in his sleep by an old gas fitting falling down from the ceiling he contacts Colin Revell, an Old Boy, to discreetly investigate the matter. Not entirely convinced that there was no foul play involved but unable to pin down a motive on anyone, Revell leaves again after a few weeks, and most of the evidence is destroyed by the installation of electricity in the whole building. A few months later Revell is shocked to learn that the deceased boy's brother has also died under mysterious circumstances&mdash;he seems to have jumped into the school's indoor swimming pool late at night after the water had been drained&mdash;and travels to Oakington of his own accord. Now it turns out that the closest relative of the two brothers, who have been orphans for years, is actually a teacher at Oakington, and that he stands to inherit a small fortune. At the same time Revell falls in love with that teacher's beautiful young wife."
1131,Stranger in Paradise,crime," In Stranger in Paradise, Wilson ""Crow"" Cromartie from Trouble in Paradise returns to the quiet town. On arrival he meets with Jesse Stone to let him know he’s in town looking for someone. Unfortunately Jesse cannot arrest him because the statute of limitations has run out for the Stiles Island robbery Crow was involved in ten years earlier that cost residents over $20 million in cash. And since Jesse has no evidence linking him to any of the murders, he has no choice but to let Crow go about his business. It turns out Crow is looking for a 14 year old girl named Amber Francisco. Amber is the daughter of Florida mob boss Louis Francisco, who employs Crow to find his daughter. Crow starts by searching her credit card record. He discovers that a flat screen television was purchased on the card. At the store where it was purchased, Crow poses as Amber’s father complaining that the television was never delivered. The clerk assures him that it was and gives him the address that it was delivered to. There he encounters the Horn Street gang, a group of young Latino gangbangers. He asks for the whereabouts of the girl, but when a gangbanger named Puerco tries to get tough, Crow shoots and kills him. The gang leader, Esteban, then gives up her location. At their home, Crow confronts Amber, and her mother Fiona. Fiona is a drunk, and when Amber gets disrespectful with Crow he slaps her across the face. Crow then calls Francisco in Florida to let him know that he has located the girl. Francisco orders Crow to murder Fiona and bring his daughter back to Florida. Crow, for some mysterious reason, refuses. Instead he calls Chief Stone and relates the story to him, even admitting the murder of Puerco, claiming self defense. Later when Amber’s boyfriend, the gangbanger Esteban, discovers who she is he contacts Francisco in Florida and accepts the contract on Fiona. Amber assists in the murder of her mother, luring her out back of their apartment. However, when she later discovers that Esteban also agreed to bring her back to her father in Florida, she runs away. Desperate to stay away from her creepy father, she calls Crow. Crow takes the girl to Chief Stone. Jesse puts her up in his condo, and has Jenn come over to help with her. Molly and Suit watch her during the day while Jenn and Jesse are working. Meanwhile, Francisco sends four mobsters up to Paradise to kill Crow. Crow discovers them immediately and starts picking them off one at a time. The police find a hotel key on the second victim, which leads them to one of the mobsters. When the police threaten to frame him for firing on the police when he was arrested, which would give him his third felony and a life sentence, he agrees to inform on his employer. From him they discover that Francisco has given the contract on Crow’s life to the Horn Street gang. They also discover that Francisco is on his way up to personally see that Crow is killed and to retrieve his daughter. Jesse and Crow then formulate a plan to catch the killers in the act. Amber calls Crow and asks her to meet him on the middle of a bridge. Jesse and Crow immediately know this is the setup. With the police standing by, Crow goes to the bridge. They have a Hollywood dummy with him dressed to look like Amber. The Horn Street gangbangers drive by and open fire on Crow who dives over the sea wall and disappears. Francisco and his men then open fire on the Horn Street gang. Immediately the police surround them, but before they are arrested one of the Florida mobsters named Romero walks up to Esteban and shoots him dead. Francisco then discovers that the dummy is not his daughter, and is hauled off to jail. After his release, he turns up dead in Florida along with two of his body guards. Although the police suspect Crow, he is nowhere to be found. Jesse suspects correctly that Crow is just in it for the excitement. Still rich from his Stiles Island caper ten years earlier, he involves himself in this situation simply to alleviate his boredom, and for sex. During his stay he beds Marcy Campbell, the hostage he protected ten years earlier, and Jesse’s right-hand woman Molly Crane while her husband and kids are away. Crow sees himself as an Apache warrior playing cowboys and Indians. And although Jesse feels some confliction about working with Crow, as he discusses with Dix, he wants to help Amber. He ends up getting some money for her from her father before he is murdered and then puts her up with Daisy Dyke and her wife. She seems unconcerned with her parents murders, and the novel ends with her having dinner with Jesse and Jenn."
1132,Rising Sun,crime," Nakamoto Corporation is celebrating the grand opening of its new headquarters, the Nakamoto Tower, in downtown Los Angeles; the 45th floor of the building is awash with celebrities, dignitaries and local politicians. On the 46th floor, Cheryl Lynn Austin, 23, is found dead. Lieutenant Peter J. Smith, the Special Services Liaison for the LAPD, is assigned to the case. He is joined, on request, by retired Captain John Connor, who has lived in Japan and is well-acquainted with Japanese culture. Upon arriving at Nakamoto Tower, the two policemen learn from officer-in-charge Tom Graham that the Japanese, led by Nakamoto employee Ishiguro, are stalling the investigation by demanding that the liaison be present. Although they have a valid pretense in that the virulently racist Graham is threatening to disrupt the celebration, it is obvious to Connor that a cover-up is underway. The detectives realize that the tapes from the security cameras on the 46th floor have mysteriously disappeared, and the security guards are deliberately unhelpful. Smith and Connor visit the apartment of the late Ms. Austin, realizing that she was a mistress for the Japanese Yakuza. It seems that Ms. Austin's home had been ransacked soon after her death. After several visits to friends and associates of Ms. Austin and Nakamoto, the two detectives find a suspect in Eddie Sakamura, a wealthy Japanese playboy from Kyoto. However, the two are inclined to release him, due to Eddie's previous associations with John Connor. The two officers are summoned to witness Ms. Austin's autopsy; trace evidence strongly suggests a Japanese killer. Afterwards, Smith and Connor are approached by Ishiguro, who now presents them with seemingly authentic videos from the security cameras, which show Sakamura to be the murderer. Having solved the mystery, Connor returns home to rest, while Smith and Graham go to apprehend Sakamura. Upon arriving at Eddie's house, the two detectives are stalled by two naked women while Eddie escapes in a Ferrari. After a high-speed chase, Eddie's car crashes and bursts into flames, killing him. The next day, the newspaper runs editorials criticizing Smith, Graham, and Connor’s actions as racist and accuses them of police brutality. Soon afterward, Smith receives a phone call from the Chief of Police, declaring the investigation officially over. Smith isn’t satisfied, and decides to take the tapes to the University of Southern California, in order to make copies. There, Smith meets Theresa Asakuma, a Japanese student who is an expert on computers and software manipulation. She is able to quickly point out that the tapes were indeed copies. After copying the tapes, Smith then picks up Connor after his golf game with several Japanese friends. On their way back to the USC labs, the two detectives are offered lucrative bribes from the Japanese, including a membership at an expensive golf club and extremely low-priced real estate offers. They visit and consult with companies and industries involved with Nakamoto, in order to learn more about the killer's motives. Along the way, they realize that they are only pawns in a much larger political and economic ""war"" between America and Japan, and how much the United States relies on Japan, which dominates the American electronics industry. Finally, they meet with U.S. Senator, John Morton, who is a potential presidential candidate in the upcoming elections. They also learn that Morton fiercely opposes the Japanese purchase of MicroCon, a small Silicon Valley company that manufactures machinery. At USC, Smith and Theresa deduce that Eddie had been set up by the Japanese who had altered the tapes. They undo the changes, discovering that Senator Morton was apparently the real killer and Eddie had been a witness. Connor and Smith return to Smith’s apartment, where they discover Eddie Sakamura, alive; the man who had actually been killed was a Japanese security officer named Tanaka who had been in Eddie’s garage, searching for the tapes, before panicking and fleeing in Eddie's car, which led to his death. The trio then confront Senator Morton, who confesses to his role in Cheryl Austin’s death. The senator then shoots himself in a bathroom. Soon afterward, an angry Ishiguro arrives to confront Eddie and the two detectives, making subtle threats to their lives. Strangely, Eddie reacts calmly, leading Connor to conclude afterward that Eddie still possesses an original copy of the tape from the security cameras. Smith and Connor then travel to Eddie’s home, where they find him tortured to death for the location of the stolen tape. Connor drops Smith off at his home. Upon entering his apartment, Smith realizes that Eddie had left the tape there. Ishiguro's men arrive; he quickly orders his babysitter to hide his daughter and herself in the upstairs bedroom. Connor sneaks back to Smith’s apartment, carrying a bulletproof vest. The two detectives then engage in a gun battle with the thugs, and Smith is shot in the back, although his vest saves his life. The next day, the two watch the tape that Eddie had left behind; Austin wasn't accidentally killed by Morton, but deliberately murdered by Ishiguro after Morton and Eddie left. They go to the Nakamoto Tower to apprehend Ishiguro, interrupting an important meeting. The detectives show the tape of the murder to the meeting attendees, and a shocked and angry Ishiguro commits suicide by jumping off the building. Having solved the mystery, Connor answers Smith’s questions before dropping him off at his apartment. The book then concludes with Smith’s statements about America’s future with Japan."
1133,Break No Bones,crime," The plot centers around her students working on a site of prehistoric graves on Dewees, a barrier island, when a decomposing body is uncovered in a shallow grave off a lonely beach. Brennan (nicknamed Tempe) is then called upon to discover what is happening when other bodies begin showing up all around the Charleston area. The story also features a romantic subplot, where Brennan must choose between two men, Andrew Ryan and Pete Peterson, deciding where her heart lies. She also deals with Emma Rousseau, friend and local coroner, who has terminal cancer."
1134,Broken,crime," Broken begins with the murder of college student Allison Spooner. When the body is pulled from frigid Lake Grant, detective Lena Adams and her oft drunk boss, interim Chief of Police Frank Wallace, follow a trail that leads to the suicide of the prime suspect, Tommy Braham, in his jail cell. The suicide spurs the involvement of Dr. Sara Linton, back in town for Thanksgiving with her family. Still incredibly angry with Lena over her role in Sara's husband's death, and convinced Lena's callous and reckless behavior has led to the possibly innocent suspect's death, Sara calls in back-up from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Upon arriving in town, Agent Will Trent immediately meets with resistance from the Grant County Police Department. Despite the roadblocks, he unveils serious errors and deliberate cover-ups in the investigation, perpetrated mainly by Frank Wallace. Soon after, Allison's boyfriend Jason is brutally killed in his dorm room. This definitively points to a murderer still on the loose, clearing Tommy Braham of any lingering suspicion. After discovering a secret link between all three victims, Will and Sara must pull all the pieces together in time to track down the killer."
1135,Blue Screen,crime," The novel begins when Sunny Randall is approached by Buddy Bolen to provide protection for his number one client, Erin Flint. Ms. Flint is the star of the Woman Warrior movie series and future star of Bolen’s major league baseball team. Ms. Flint initially hates the idea of Sunny following her around but begrudgingly agrees to the arrangement at Buddy’s behest. Bolen’s fears seem to have been well founded when Erin’s assistant, Misty, is murdered. Because of Misty’s striking resemblance to her, Erin is convinced the killer was after her. Sunny meets Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone at the scene of the crime; however Buddy and Erin lack confidence in the Paradise police, and ask Sunny to solve the crime. Sunny travels to L.A. where she meets her friend Tony Gault, a Hollywood agent with whom she has a casual sexual relationship. He puts her in touch with a sports writer who is convinced that Erin Flint’s addition to Buddy Bolen’s baseball team is a publicity stunt. It is his opinion that the baseball team was a bad buy on Bolen’s part because they have no market or fan base. Neither does he believe that Erin will be able to compete with the male players in the major league. He does think, however, that the publicity will generate enough interest in the team to allow Bolen to dump his bad investment. He proves to be right later when Erin faces a major league pitcher and cannot hit one ball. Next, Sunny contacts Chief Stone back in Paradise who puts her in contact with his old boss, LAPD police Captain Cronjager. After some investigation with the LAPD, Sunny discovers that Erin Flint is actually Ethel Boverini, and Misty Tyler was her sister Edith. She also discovers that Erin is still married to L.A. pimp Gerard Basgall. Sunny and an LAPD detective go to question Basgall who admits to still being married to Erin and still loving her. He also admits to visiting her regularly, and that his last visit was around the time Misty was murdered. Sunny flies back to Paradise, where she reveals this information to Chief Stone. Stone then confronts Erin with the information who breaks down, but later calms down and admits that she was one of Basgall’s prostitutes, as well as his wife. She and her sister began working for him after their mother died. Further investigation, and another trip to L.A. with Chief Stone this time, reveals more information. It turns out that Buddy Bolen was looking for financing for his first Woman Warrior movie. Meanwhile, Boston mobster Moon Monaghan had a lot of cash that he was looking to invest quietly. L.A. film financier Arlo Delany puts the two together. He also sweetens the deal by getting Buddy Bolen a sister combo of prostitutes to be at his beck and call. The girls also occasionally have sex with Moon Monaghan although Moon denies it when questioned. The girls turn out to be Erin Flint and Misty Tyler. Later, Buddy decides to star Erin in his Woman Warrior movie. The movie turns out to be a big hit; however Buddy has Arlo cook the books to make it look like it made no money in order to stiff Moon Monaghan. Moon gets wind of this and has Arlo killed as a warning to Buddy of what will happen if he doesn’t get his money back. Misty gets scared and threatens to go to the police. Erin calls Gerard to come out and talk some sense into her. They get into an argument and during the struggle he accidentally breaks Misty’s neck and kills her. Chief Stone and Sunny confront Erin and Gerard about this. Gerard claims that he killed Misty, while Erin claims that she killed her. Touched by the fact that the two try to protect the each other by taking the blame, Chief Stone decides they have suffered enough and lets them go on the condition that they promise not to avenge her."
1136,Inspector Ghote Goes by Train,crime," The novel opens with an article in The Times of India, which names Ghote as the officer to escort fraudster A. K. Bhattacharya from Calcutta to Mumbai. Bhattacharya made a fortune selling wax fakes of ancient Indian statues as the real thing. An American professor exposed him with a cigar lighter but Bhattacharya escaped. He has never been photographed and only his description is known. On the train Ghote finds himself in a compartment with a well dressed, charming Bengali. Ghote is reluctant to talk about his mission and his travelling companion begins trying to guess Ghote's profession and reason for travel; his guesses are ridiculous, possibly even insulting. Eventually he guesses that Ghote is the Inspector escorting Bhattacharya to trial. Ghote notes the initials on his companion's luggage are A. K. B. and suspects the man may, in fact, be A. K. Bhattacharya. The stranger reveals that he had read the newspaper article about Ghote and introduces himself as A. K. Bannerjee. The next day Ghote and Bannerjee are joined in their compartment by a pair of young backpackers travelling with an Indian Guru. The boy, Red, is British and the girl, Mary Jane, is an American. They are hippies. Ghote argues their right to be in the compartment without tickets, but the train moves off and it is impossible for the trio to disembark. Although Red is antagonistic towards Ghote, Mary Jane charms the inspector. The next morning a telegram informs Ghote the prisoner in Calcutta is actually A. K. Biswas, wanted in Mumbai for gambling offences, not Bhattacharya. Bannerjee discovers Red has used J. R. Kipling's novel ""Kim"" as the source for much of his journey across India. Ghote persuades Red to take Mr Bannerjee's photograph. Bannerjee convinces Red to wait until the next day. The next morning Bannerjee oversleeps, then claims his unshaven face is unsuitable for photography. All the film proves to be missing from the camera and the luggage. Bannerjee blames thieves at the last station. Red suspects Bannerjee but can prove nothing. At the next stop a Mr Ramaswami joins them. He explains his job consists of visiting each station on the railway to see that railway stationary and forms are only used for official purposes. Bannerjee suggests that Ramaswami falsifies his returns to save travelling so much. Shortly thereafter Bannerjee questions the ethics of Ghote condemning a person to jail. Ghote insists that would be the job of the magistrates and judges. Bannerjee seeks to enlist the guru as a moral ally in his cause. The guru is unhelpful, saying that a man lives his life regardless of his surroundings and brings to everyone's attention Mr Bannerjee's use of hair dye. Bannerjee claims he dyes his hair from simple vanity, though he jokingly calls it a disguise. Mr Ramaswami notices the initials on Bannerjee's suitcase and accuses Bannerjee of being A. K. Bhattacharya but relents, as it seems too far-fetched. At the last stop before Calcutta, Bannerjee persuades Ghote to get a shave from one of the local barbers. The barber Bannerjee selects speaks no language Ghote knows. The barber is deliberately very slow. The train pulls out and Ghote has to run and jump to get on board. Ghote accuses Bannerjee of engineering the incident so that Ghote would be left behind. In a dialect that the backpackers do not speak Bannerjee blames Red and Mary Jane, claiming that they feared Ghote would denounce them for not having visas. The train approaches Calcutta and Bannerjee notes that he feels as if A. K. Bhattacharya were on the train with them. He praises Bhattacharya at length and suggests that he is akin to the hippies, Red and Mary Jane, in that he breaks down the barriers of society that have become too rigid. In so doing Bannerjee inadvertently incites those present to break the law, which gives Ghote the opportunity to arrest him. As the train draws up to the platform ""Bannerjee"" refers to Bhattacharya's scheme being exposed with a cigar lighter, which is not public knowledge. Ghote exposes and arrests Bhattacharya. Ghote travels in a private carriage on the return journey. He has been ordered to get a confession from Bhattacharya, since the authorities wish to avoid the expense of a full trial. Ghote must also escort Mr Biswas, the card sharp, back to Mumbai for trail. At the last minute, Red and Mary Jane board the carriage, claiming to be concerned for Bhattacharya's well being. Bhattacharya states his intention to escape during the journey and claims he has accomplices who will help him. Ghote suspects the backpackers of being Bhattacharya's accomplices. As night falls, Ghote works on getting Bhattacharya to confess. Mary Jane argues that Bhattacharya is a force for good in society, as he boasted on the outward journey. Mary Jane believes this should be his courtroom defence. Ghote sees Mr Ramaswami at a station and invites him to join the party in the private carriage. Bhattacharya tries to frighten Mr Ramaswami by claiming to be friends with Thuggee cultists, who murder travellers. Ghote rebuffs this and indicates that Bhattacharya can expect a thirty-year prison sentence. The length of the sentence horrifies Ghote's travelling companions and Ghote goes to sleep resolving to use a sympathetic approach to draw Bhattacharya into a confession. The next day Ghote suggests the charges could be reduced if Bhattacharya pleas guilty. Bhattacharya in turn offers Ghote a partnership in exchange for the charges being reduced to a single, minor item. Ghote rejects this. At lunch Red abruptly insists on taking Ghote's photograph. The train enters a dark tunnel and no one can see anything. Ghote finds the meal bitter and unpleasant but has a second helping to please the cook and notices the second helping tastes different. Ghote realises that he has been drugged. He forces himself to get up and vomit in the toilet, then collapses. Waking, he overhears Mary Jane arguing with Bhattacharya. He asks for tea, which Mary Jane helps him to drink. By the time the train reaches the next station Ghote is well again. He decides to take no action against Red, who he is sure is responsible for the poisoning, out of respect for Mary Jane. At the next station an old lady, Mrs Chiplanka, insists in joining their carriage. She claims to be a respectable pillar of the community who once worked with Mahatma Gandhi to achieve independence from the British. Ghote notes her spectacles are fitted with ordinary window glass. He searches her luggage but finds nothing. Although Ghote suspects her of being Bhattacharya's accomplice, he can do nothing without evidence. That afternoon Ghote makes little progress in obtaining a confession, so he decides to wear down Bhattacharya by depriving him of sleep. Mrs Chiplanka objects to this as it is a form of torture. Angered, Ghote accuses her of being Bhattacharya's accomplice. Mrs Chiplanka, embarrassed, admits that she wears the glasses for show. Many years ago Gandhi told her to wear spectacles when he saw her leaning close to her work. Rather than correct the great man's mistake or worry him, Mrs Chiplanka began wearing false glasses much like his own. After this, Ghote realises there never were any accomplices and Bhattacharya says he will plea guilty. He makes a full statement, which Ghote takes down. Red seems disillusioned by Bhattacharya's confession. Mary Jane comforts Red, who agrees to go with her to the United States of America. Bhattacharya signs the statement, which is witnessed by Ramaswami. Tired from the long night, Ghote accepts Ramaswami's offer to guard Bhattacharya while Ghote sleeps. An hour later Ghote is woken. Bhattacharya has escaped. Ghote gives chase. The train is in motion and Ghote searches the other carriages then climbs onto the roof. He finds Bhattacharya in the driver's compartment and takes him into custody. Moments later the train arrives in Mumbai and the novel ends."
1137,All the Colours of Darkness,crime," A beautiful June day in the Yorkshire Dales, and a group of children are spending the last of their half-term freedom swimming in the river near Hindswell Woods. But the idyll is shattered by their discovery of a man's body, hanging from a tree. DI Annie Cabott soon discovers he is Mark Hardcastle, the well-liked and successful set designer for the Eastvale Theatre's current production of Othello. Everything points to suicide, and Annie is mystified. Why would such a man want to take his own life? Then Annie's investigation leads to another shattering discovery, and DCI Alan Banks is called back from the idyllic weekend he had planned with his new girlfriend. Banks soon finds himself plunged into a shadow-world where nothing is what it seems, where secrets and deceit are the norm, and where murder is seen as the solution to a problem. The deeper he digs the more he discovers that the monster he has awakened will extend its deadly reach to his friends and family. Nobody is safe."
1138,Filth,crime," The plot centres on Bruce Robertson, a detective sergeant serving in Edinburgh's ""Lothian Constabulary"". Robertson is an intensely misanthropic man driven by intense hatred, and is fuelled by his penchant for ""the games"" &mdash; Bruce's euphemism for the myriad foul plots he hatches directed at workmates. He is also addicted to cocaine, and is sexually abusive towards the women in his life. He is able to indulge in non-stop sex and drug use during his annual holidays to Amsterdam. The novel begins with a murder, which is the case that Bruce Robertson is investigating; however, the natural evolution of the plot itself has little or nothing at all to do with the crime. The plot traces Bruce throughout his life, told from a first-person perspective. Through narrative devices such as the tapeworm he acquires, we get to explore the facets of Bruce's personality and learn about his past, through the various tedious police routines Bruce absconds from, his sexual endeavours eventually backfiring, and his various short or long-termed schemes and plots against his colleagues in order to raise his chances of gaining the hoped-for promotion to Detective Inspector. In an example of a rather short-term scheme, at the police station's Christmas party Bruce first waits for a female colleague he calls ""Size Queen"" to get drunk, and then proposes a game in order to have sex with her. A longer-term scheme, and also a major sub-plot, is the harassing phone calls Bruce directs at the wife of his friend, Clifford ""Bladesy"" Blades: Bunty Blades. By imitating the voice of British celebrity Frank Sidebottom to call Bunty up and ask vulgar questions, Bruce manages to drive a wedge between her and ""Bladesy"". After ingratiating himself with Bunty by playing the role of a concerned friend, Bruce manages to trick Clifford Blades into imitating the selfsame voice in a message left to his answering machine, which serves to portray him as Bunty's perverted caller - which Bruce, of course, ""reveals"" to Bunty. Bruce enters into a purely sexual relationship with Bunty Blades after feigning romantic interest, whilst ""Bladesy"" is arrested. Apart from the general malevolent scheming, along the way Bruce Robertson also seeks to satisfy his cravings for violence, drugs, sex, and pornography whilst happily voicing his racism, sectarianism and misogyny and pining for his ex-wife. Eventually Bruce is forced into taking leave due to injuries he suffers while dressed as his ex-wife, leading to the revelation that he committed the racially-motivated murder that is the main plot, and that the colleagues he so despised &mdash; particularly his boss Bob Toal &mdash; knew of this, and were protecting him all along. The book ends with Bruce committing suicide in order to claim revenge on his divorced wife, Carole."
1139,The Shape of Water,crime," Warning this gives away the plot right at the beginning: Silvio Luparello, an engineer, developer and aspiring politician from an aristocratic construction family dies of a heart attack while having sex with his nephew and lover Giorgio at his beach house. The nephew panics and, wanting to protect his uncle from the embarrassing circumstance of his death and not trusting himself to be able to move his uncle's body due to his epilepsy, calls his uncle's friend and political crony, Attorney Rizzo, for help. Rizzo assures the nephew he will take care of it and then, instead of trying to help, attempts to take advantage of the situation and betrays his friendship with Luparello by attempting to use his death to gain leverage over his political opponent, Secretary Cusumano. This he does by attempting to cast Cusumano's Swedish daughter-in-law Ingrid as Luparello's lover and implicating her in his death - at the scene of a seamy outdoor brothel. The film version starts off the morning after the death at the outdoor brothel, with two surveyors working as garbage collectors. They discover the body and contact Attorney Rizzo in an attempt to curry favor with him and maybe get proper surveyor's jobs by giving him the chance to move Luparello's body in order to avoid the embarrassment of Luparello being found at the outdoor brothel, dead with his pants down. Rizzo rebuffs the garbage men, much to their surprise as he is known to be Luparello's friend and ally. Meanwhile, one of the garbage men finds Ingrid's very valuable solid gold jewel-encrusted necklace, planted by Rizzo's Ingrid look-alike as part of the frame-up. The handbag with her initials in which she normally kept the necklace was also planted at the brothel in case somebody walked off with the necklace. Montalbano, with the help of his boyhood friend and outdoor brothel pimp, Gege, and also with the help of Luparello's wife (who tips Montalbano to the fact that somebody must have dressed Luparello because his underwear was on inside out) figures out that the garbage men have the necklace and also that Attorney Rizzo is the bad guy. Montalbano initially suspects Ingrid's involvement because of her relationship with Luparello which he formerly thought sexual, but later thought not, but she convinces Montalbano that she wasn't involved. Montalbano then destroys the planted evidence against her and makes sure that Rizzo pays a reward for the necklace (so that the garbage man and his wife can send their sick child out of the country for proper medical treatment). The story wraps up with Montalbano ""playing God"" by ignoring a gun that he finds in the beach house, thus giving Giorgio the opportunity to revenge his uncle's betrayal by beating up and killing Rizzo. In the end though Giorgio, too, dies - in a car accident - after previously having had one due to an epileptic seizure that required him to wear a neck brace (which we assume is the same one that Montalbano found at the outdoor brothel, and which we also assume was there because of being used by Rizzo and the Ingrid look-alike to make Luparello appear to be alive during the ""sex"" act at the outdoor brothel). de:Die Form des Wassers it:La forma dell'acqua sv:Vattnets form"
1140,Murder in Mesopotamia,crime," Dr. Erich Leidner is, ostensibly, a Swedish archaeologist on a dig near Hassanieh, Iraq, then a British protectorate. A middle aged man, he is married just two years to a beautiful woman. His wife Louise was married briefly during the Great War 15 years earlier in 1918, to a German named Frederick Bosner, a young man who worked for the U.S. State Department but was actually a spy for Germany. He was caught, tried and sentenced to death. He managed to escape while he was being transported. It was to no avail as he ended up on a train that crashed; a body bearing his identification was found in the wreckage. Amy Leatheran is a nurse working in Iraq when she meets Dr. Leidner. He asks her to join the dig to look after his wife. Mrs. Leidner has been frightened by weird goings on, such as a ghostly face appearing just outside her window one night and threatening letters. Mrs. Leidner confides to Nurse Leatheran that she had received similar threatening letters several years before that were worded as if written by her dead first husband. They arrived every time she would go out with a new man, then stopped when she broke off the relationship. One of the letters was signed with her late husband's name. She had no letters from him from their short marriage, so she could not ascertain whether the letters were really written by him. No letters arrived when or after she met and married Dr. Leidner, and had hoped that experience was behind her. Its recurrence at the dig scares her badly. Nurse Leatheran settles in to the routine of the archeological dig, with its mix of local people and scientists or enthusiasts from England, America, and France. The young men seem to be in puppy love with Mrs. Leidner, while Dr. Leidner's longtime colleague Richard Carey is formal and terse at meals with her. Miss Johnson is a longtime part of the team, and she, Nurse Leatheran decides, is more than ordinarily attracted to the head of the team. This dig, the whole team seems on edge, unlike previous years. It had been a group known for good humor and good relations among all the varied specialists and workers. Mrs. Leidner begins to be at ease as she trusts the nurse brought in to be her companion. Other strangers, however, make her jump, as shown when the pair observe an unknown man at the house, peering in a window. She is calmed only when Father Lavigny explains who the man is, and the man leaves. A week after the nurse's arrival, Mrs. Leidner is found dead by her husband in her room. He calls the nurse in to the room, as he cannot handle this loss. His wife was struck fatally on the head with a large blunt object. Nurse Leatheran observes that the murder weapon is not in the room. Capt. Maitland spoke with all in the house, while Dr. Reilly inspected the body. They establish the time line, and are certain it is an inside job. The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is also traveling in Iraq; his old friend Dr. Reilly asks him to solve the crime, on behalf of Dr. Leidner. Poirot questions everyone informally. It is rapidly apparent to all that the murderer of Mrs Leidner must be one of us as no ""strangers"" were seen by anyone, archeologist, servant, or worker, at the house or courtyard in the time when she was murdered. The only entry to the bedroom is from the house, as the one window is barred, and was shut when her body was discovered. Miss Johnson thought she heard a cry, but disbelieves her own ears when she learns that the window was closed, no way for any sound to reach her. This adds to the tensions in the group, who try to carry on as Dr. Leidner arranges for his wife's funeral and the local police begin their work, along with Poirot. The first round of questions show no obvious suspect, as everyone can account for their time, in the sight of others. Poirot considers each in turn, as available or capable of the crime. Away from the dig at Dr. Reilly's home, Nurse Leatheran tells Poirot the story of Mrs. Leidner's earlier life, her first marriage, its end, and the young brother in law she has not seen in 15 years. Poirot speculates that one of the members of the dig may, in fact, be this younger brother, William Bosner. Two of the young men are the right age. He goes further, wondering if the older men at the dig could be her first husband, as the identity of the body in the train wreck could not be certain. They meet Sheila Reilly, who adds another perspective on the murdered woman, as one who must have the attention of every man around her. Dr. Reilly adds his own views, calling her a ""belle dame sans merci"". Poirot considers whether Nurse Leatheran is safe to return to the house, remarking that murder is a habit. She does return, wanting to properly end her connection with Dr. Leidner, and to attend the funeral. After the funeral, late in the day, Miss Johnson is on the roof. Nurse Leatheran joins her, seeing how very distracted and upset she appears. Miss Johnson makes clear she has had a new thought about how someone could enter without being seen, but explains nothing. She must think about it more. That night, Miss Johnson is murdered in her bed, dying with Nurse Leatheran at her side, trying to revive her. The method was rather vicious, poisoning by hydrochloric acid substituted in the glass of water on her nightstand. She manages to choke out the words ""The window! The window!"" before she dies. Nurse Leatheran first makes it clear this was no suicide, thinking the words indicate how her water was replaced by the acid – through her window. Poirot now has two murders to solve. He considers it a crime passionnel, in which he must understand the character of Louise Leidner to solve both murders. He solves the crimes, but has no proof. He presents his results to the group at the house, after a day of sending telegrams all over the world. He analyzes each person in turn, before explaining the resolution with its complex motives and surprising events. Mrs. Leidner and Miss Johnson were killed by Dr. Leidner, who is, in fact, Frederick Bosner. He survived the train crash; but a young Swedish archaeologist named Erich Leidner did not, and was disfigured beyond facial recognition. Bosner traded identities with the dead man. Fifteen years later, established in the dead man's career, he remarried his wife, who did not recognize him. Bosner sent the letters to discourage Louise from her other relationships. When Bosner re-married her under his new identity, he stopped writing them. He saw that Louise was falling in love with Richard Carey, his own friend. If Leidner could not have Louise, no one could. Thus he planned to murder her, in his twisted logic. How did he do it? Bosner committed the crime without ever leaving the roof as he sorted pottery. Louise Leidner took an afternoon rest as her husband and the rest of the team were working. She heard a noise, then saw a mask at her window. She realized this simple mask was the same image that appeared as a head without a body one night a few weeks earlier. No longer afraid and determined to know her tormenter, she opened the window and stuck her head out through the bars. She was then bludgeoned with a heavy stone quern dropped by her husband, above her on the roof. Bosner retrieved the murder weapon with the rope tied through a hole in the quern. Mrs. Leidner cried out briefly; it was this cry that Miss Johnson heard. Bosner altered the scene of the crime before anyone else saw his wife or her room. When he climbed down from the roof as usual to see his wife in her room, he moved her body away from the window, and moved the blood-stained rug near the jug and bowl. Lastly he shut the window before calling Nurse Leatheran to the room, while he nursed his grief at this shocking loss. When planning the murder, Bosner made every effort to divert suspicion from himself. This is the true reason Bosner asked Nurse Leatheran to join the expedition. The nurse would be his perfect alibi, a competent medical professional on the spot to state the time of death. Bosner was on the roof when Miss Johnson talked with the nurse about her new idea. Although she has kept quiet out of loyalty and indecision, Bosner realises she may eventually crack. That night he plants the missing murder weapon under her bed while she sleeps, and replaces a glass of water on her bedside table with hydrochloric acid. His notion is that once she is found, everyone will think she murdered Louise so she could seduce her husband and, overcome by remorse, killed herself. Capt. Maitland saw things that way during his first arrival at the house when her death was discovered. However, as Poirot points out, drinking hydrochloric acid is an incredibly painful and bizarre way to kill oneself. Poirot realized another sort of crime had taken place at the dig. The man Louise and Nurse Leatheran saw looking through the antika room window in that peaceful week was Ali Yusuf, a known associate of Raoul Menier, a skilled thief of antiquities. Raoul Menier joined the expedition disguised as epigraphist Father Lavigny, a Catholic cleric with a wide reputation. He was not known personally to any in the team, allowing this simple ruse. Lavigny was too ill to join as planned. Menier intercepted the wire declining the invitation to the dig. Thus he had a free hand to steal precious artifacts from the dig and replace them with near-perfect copies made on site. The two were captured boarding a steamer at Beyrouth by the police, who had been warned by Poirot. Bosner acknowledged everything, regretting Miss Johnson's murder but not that of Louise Leidner. Not long after, Sheila Reilly married David Emmott, a suitable match. Nurse Leatheran returned to England, where she would think often of her adventure in the East."
1141,Of Wee Sweetie Mice and Men,crime," Protagonist Dan Starkey is tasked with writing a book about ""Bobby Fat Boy McMaster"", the current heavyweight champion of Ireland, in his upcoming championship fight with Mike Tyson on St. Patrick's Day. When McMaster's wife is kidnapped, Starkey must figure out who's behind it before the varied and numerous factions that McMaster has offended, in his short time in New York, catch up with them."
1142,Freedomland,crime," Brenda Martin walks into the hospital emergency room in a state of shock. As doctors bandage her hands, they find out she is the victim of a carjacking near Armstrong. Detective Lorenzo Council meets with her, and through her tears gets the story that her four-year-old son Cody was in the backseat of the car. She then describes the assailant as being a young black man with a shaved head and scary eyes. Local reporter Jesse Haus follows up on this relatively minor news story, and is one of the first to learn about the kidnapping. After promising to write a story on Bump Rosen’s son, she gets an inside chance to be next to Brenda. As the Gannon and Dempsey police blockade the crime area, Lorenzo works to get more details from Brenda, and Jesse works on details for her story. Lorenzo has Jesse stay with Brenda so she is not alone, and Jesse discovers Brenda’s love of classic R&B music. Lorenzo, under a deadline to solve the case or lose it to the FBI, starts asking all of his contacts for any information. False or no information is the result, and the residents of Armstrong are beginning to express outrage at the blockade. George Howard is arrested in hopes of getting information from him, but his unfair arrest only pushes passions higher. In a last chance to elicit information from Brenda, Lorenzo takes her to the abandoned Freedomtown theme park and opens up to her, hoping that she will do the same in turn. Ben Haus brings in Karen Collucci and the Friends of Kent (an organization that searches for missing children) to speak to Brenda and organize a search party for Cody. They figure the most likely place to search would be an abandoned, overgrown mental hospital not too far from where the carjacking occurred. Understanding that the Friends of Kent have a hidden agenda, Jesse sticks close to Brenda and Elaine during the search. Lorenzo has an asthma attack and ends up in the hospital. After he is gone, the group arrives at a building where a child’s body had been found years earlier. There, Brenda hears a child crying, and confesses to knowing where Cody is. Days before, when Brenda had gone downstairs to meet her boyfriend Billy, she came back up and found Cody dead of a Benadryl overdose. She panicked and ran away, until she finally called Billy and told him what happened. He went over and took Cody to Freedomtown and buried him in front of the Chicago Fire exhibit, as per a written request from Brenda. When Brenda returned, Cody was gone and the spot was cleaned up. Then, while sitting next to the railroad and only half thinking about it, she jams her hands into the ground (causing her injuries) and makes her way to the hospital on foot. As the story comes out, Dempsey residents are outraged, and Lorenzo feels a protest riot in is the air. That night, the feeling subsides when a man dies in an elevator accident. The next day, local leaders plan a march to demonstrate against the unfair treatment they received during the carjacking-kidnapping story. They march into Gannon with a police escort, and then back into Dempsey. At the end of the march, a fight breaks out and another resident is killed. The novel ends with a funeral for Cody, followed soon after by Brenda’s suicide. This seems to end the saga, leaving the residents of both cities emotionally exhausted."
1143,Right as Rain,crime," The novel follows private investigators Derek Strange as he works on several cases in Washington DC. Strange's main case is to investigate the death of Chris Wilson. Strange focuses on ex-cop Terry Quinn who shot Wilson. Both were police officers and the shooting led to Quinn's discharge from the police department. The shooting was high profile and characterised as racially motivated; Quinn is caucasian while Wilson was African American. Quinn becomes involved in the investigation himself as he is desperate to clear his conscience. The internal police investigation of Quinn's shooting of Wilson determined that Quinn was blameless, that the shooting was ""right as rain."""
1144,Predator,crime," Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, takes charge of a case that stretches from steamy Florida to snowbound Massachusetts, one as unnerving as any she has ever faced. The teasing psychological clues lead Scarpetta and her team—Pete Marino, Benton Wesley, and Lucy Farinelli—to suspect that they are hunting someone with a cunning and malevolent mind whose secrets have kept them in the shadows, until now."
1145,With Child,crime," The stepchild of Kate's coworker Al Hawkin asks Kate to help her find her homeless friend Dio, who has mysteriously vanished. They become friends during the process, although Kate is wounded and decides to take a rest. She invites Jules on a trip to visit her lover Lee. On the way, Jules disappears. Kate realizes that Jules has been kidnapped by her biological father, recently freed from prison. The novel ends with Kate going undercover to the father's house and rescuing her."
1146,Dark Fire,crime," It is 1540 and the hottest summer of the sixteenth century. Matthew Shardlake, believing himself out of favour with Thomas Cromwell, is busy trying to maintain his legal practice and keep a discreet profile. But his involvement with a murder case, defending a girl accused of brutally murdering her young cousin, brings him once again into contact with the king's chief minister &ndash; and a new assignment ... The secret of Greek Fire, the legendary substance with which the Byzantines destroyed the Arab navies, has been lost for centuries. Now an official of the Court of Augmentations has discovered the formula in the library of a dissolved London monastery. When Shardlake is sent to recover it, he finds the official and his alchemist brother brutally murdered &ndash; the formula has disappeared. Now Shardlake must follow the trail of Greek Fire across Tudor London, while trying at the same time to prove his young client's innocence. But very soon he discovers nothing is as it seems ..."
1147,Another Day in Paradise,crime," At age 13, Bobbie leaves the violent, abusive home where he was raised, and this book details his following year. He has an older girlfriend, carries a gun, takes drugs, and is on an ever-tightening spiral to hell, his crimes escalating until they include murder. The plot, which highlights Bobbie's increasing dependence on the highs of violence, is not pointless but instead emphasizes a frightening reality. For Bobbie, read Little. He's been there, and his graphic story is written with an immediacy and realism that will make normal thinking people cringe and parents anxious to protect their children from the harshness in which some youth live."
1148,Resurrection Men,crime," Detective Inspector John Rebus is thrown off a murder inquiry, just days after the brutal death of an Edinburgh art dealer, for throwing a cup of tea at DCS Gill Templer. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - this is his 'Last Chance Saloon'. He is put with a team of officers in similar circumstances and together they are given an unsolved case to work on. This turns out to be one in which many of the team are already involved, and they all have their own secrets that they wish to keep hidden. Rebus is asked to act as a go-between for Edinburgh gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and newly promoted DS Siobhan Clarke, while working the case of the murdered art dealer, is brought closer to Cafferty than she ever expected. As always the cases are all linked and Rebus must use his trusted friends to uncover the truth before the truth uncovers him. The title is a reference to the body-snatchers of the 19th century, who were known as 'resurrectionists' or 'resurrection men'. sv:Botgörarna (roman)"
1149,Rebecca,crime," ""Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"" is the book's famous opening line, and after the first two chapters, its unnamed narrator (she is only known by her title, Mrs de Winter) reminisces about her past. While working as the companion to a rich American woman vacationing in Monte Carlo, the narrator becomes acquainted with a wealthy Englishman, Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter, a 40-something widower. After a fortnight of courtship, she agrees to marry him and, after the wedding and honeymoon, accompanies him to his mansion, the beautiful West Country estate Manderley. Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, was profoundly devoted to the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca. She continually attempts to undermine the new Mrs. de Winter psychologically, subtly suggesting to her that she will never attain the urbanity and charm the first one possessed. Whenever the new Mrs. de Winter attempts to make changes at Manderley, Mrs. Danvers describes how Rebecca ran it when she was alive. Each time Mrs. Danvers does this, she implies that the new Mrs. de Winter lacks the experience and knowledge necessary for running an important estate. Cowed by Mrs. Danvers's imposing manner, the new mistress simply caves. She is soon convinced that Maxim regrets his impetuous decision to marry her and is still deeply in love with the seemingly perfect Rebecca. The climax occurs at Manderley's annual costume ball. Mrs. Danvers manipulates the protagonist into wearing a replica of the dress shown in a portrait of one of the former inhabitants of the estate—the same costume worn by Rebecca to much acclaim shortly before her death. The narrator has a drummer announce her entrance using the name of the lady in the portrait: Caroline de Winter. When the narrator shows Maxim the dress, he gets very angry at her and orders her to change. Shortly after the ball, Mrs. Danvers expressly reveals her contempt for our heroine by encouraging Mrs. de Winter to commit suicide by jumping out the window. However she is thwarted at the last moment by the disturbance occasioned by a nearby shipwreck. A diver investigating the condition of the wrecked ship's hull also discovers the remains of Rebecca's boat. Maxim confesses the truth to our heroine: how his marriage to Rebecca was nothing but a sham; how from the very first days husband and wife loathed each other. Rebecca, Maxim reveals, was a cruel and selfish woman who manipulated everyone around her into believing her to be the perfect wife and a paragon of virtue. She repeatedly taunted Maxim with sordid tales of her numerous love affairs and suggested that she was pregnant with another man's child, which she would raise under the pretense that it was Maxim's and he would be powerless to stop her. She intentionally provoked him into fatally shooting her. Then, fearing to be hanged, he disposed of her body on her boat and sank it at sea. Our heroine is relieved to hear he had never loved Rebecca, but really loves her. Rebecca's boat is now raised and it is discovered that it was deliberately sunk. An inquest brings a verdict of suicide, however, Rebecca's first cousin (and lover) Jack Favell attempts to blackmail Maxim, claiming to have proof that Rebecca could not have intended suicide. It is revealed Rebecca had an appointment with a Doctor Baker shortly before her death, presumably to confirm her pregnancy. When the doctor is found he reveals Rebecca had been suffering from cancer and would have died within a few months; furthermore, due to the malformation of her uterus, she could never have been pregnant. Knowing she was going to die, Rebecca manipulated Maxim into killing her quickly, rather than face a lingering death. Maxim feels a great sense of foreboding and insists on driving through the night to return to Manderley. However, before he comes in sight of the house, it is clear from a glow on the horizon and wind-borne ashes that it is ablaze. It is evident at the beginning that Maxim and the second Mrs. de Winter now live in some foreign exile. The events recounted in the book are in essence a memoir of her life at Manderley."
1150,Hallowe'en Party,crime," The story starts out inside Rowena Drake's house, which is called ""Apple Trees"". There, Ariadne Oliver and others are preparing a Hallowe'en party for children. Those in charge of the party are Judith Butler, Mrs. Oliver's friend; Leopold, Joyce and Anne Reynolds, Desmond Holland, Nicholas Ransom, Cathie Johnson, Elizabeth Whittaker, Beatrice Ardley, and others. While they are preparing, thirteen-year old Joyce Reynolds says that she once saw a murder. Everyone, including Mrs. Oliver, thinks she is lying. The party consists of many Hallowe'en-related activities. Mrs. Goodbody plays the role of a witch, and girls can look into a mirror to know what their future husbands will look like (a picture of the husband is said to be reflected in the mirror). The group has supper, the prizes are granted, and the party ends after a game of snapdragon, with the murder of course fitting into the whole situation. The next day, Mrs. Oliver goes to London seeking Hercule Poirot's help. She tells him that after snapdragon, Joyce went missing and was later found drowned in an apple-bobbing tub in the library. Mrs. Oliver repeats to Poirot Joyce's comment that she had once witnessed a murder; Mrs. Oliver now wonders if Joyce might have been telling the truth, which might provide someone with a motive for killing her. Poirot goes to Apple Trees to interview Rowena Drake. Rowena doesn't believe Joyce's murder story; rather, she thinks it was just Joyce's attempt to impress Mrs. Oliver. Next to be interviewed are the Reynoldses. Mrs. Reynolds can't say that Joyce ever told her that she saw a murder. Leopold, Joyce's younger brother, doesn't believe that Joyce saw a murder either, but he did hear Joyce telling everyone about it. Ann, Joyce's older sister, doesn't believe either that Joyce had seen a murder; she says Joyce was a liar and a fraud. Hercule Poirot asks his old friend, an ex-superintendent named Spence, to give him a list of murders which had taken place years before and that could possibly be the murder that Joyce claimed to have witnessed. Spence obliges: Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, the aunt of Rowena Drake's late husband, apparently died of a heart attack. Her death is suspicious because a codicil to her will was discovered afterwards. Authorities believe that the codicil was faked by an au pair girl, Olga Seminoff, who disappeared after the forgery was discovered. Other candidate murders involve Charlotte Benfield, a sixteen-year-old shop assistant found dead of multiple head injuries, with two young men under suspicion; Lesley Ferrier, a lawyer's clerk who was stabbed in the back; and Janet White, a schoolteacher who was strangled. Hercule Poirot thinks Janet White's murder is the most probable candidate for the murder Joyce witnessed, because strangulation might not appear at first sight to be murder. Hercule Poirot continues his investigation by interviewing Dr. Ferguson, who tells Poirot that Joyce was once his patient. When Poirot goes Elms School, he is greeted by the headmistress, Miss Emlyn. Meanwhile, a mathematics teacher named Elizabeth Whittaker, who was also present at the party, gives Hercule Poirot an important piece of evidence when she reveals that while the party-goers were playing Snapdragon, Elizabeth went out to hall and saw Rowena Drake coming out of the lavatory on the first floor landing. Rowena stood for a moment before coming downstairs, looking startled by something or someone she may have seen in the open door of the library, and then dropped the flower vase she was holding. Other suggestive pieces of evidence include the fact that Lesley Ferrier had previously been suspected of forgery. Were Lesley and Olga working together to secure Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's inheritance? Poirot visits a sunken garden built for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe in an abandoned quarry, where he meets Michael Garfield, the handsome and talented young man who designed the garden. While there, he also meets Judith Butler's daughter, Miranda Butler, a striking young girl who is close to Michael and spends a great deal of time in the Quarry Garden. Mrs. Drake meets Poirot at his guest house to tell him that Leopold Reynolds, Joyce's younger brother, has been drowned. Poirot reveals that Leopold had been blackmailing Joyce's murderer and had got in over his head. Mrs. Drake, obviously very upset by Leopold's death, admits that she saw Leopold in the library, which caused her to think he might have killed his sister. Poirot persuades the police to dig up an abandoned well in the Quarry Garden. Within its depths are discovered the remains of Olga, who had been stabbed, like Ferrier. Poirot sends Mrs. Oliver to get Mrs. Butler and Miranda safely away from the village as soon as possible, but when they stop for lunch, Miranda is abducted by Michael Garfield, who takes her to a pagan sacrificial altar and tries to kill her. He is prevented from doing so by Nicholas Ransom and Desmond Holland, two teenagers who had been at the Hallowe'en party and whom Poirot had persuaded to trail Miranda. Michael Garfield commits suicide by swallowing the poison that he had intended Miranda to drink. Miranda Butler tells the authorities that she was the one who saw a murder, not her close friend Joyce, to whom she revealed some of the details of what she witnessed. Miranda admits that in the Quarry garden she saw Michael Garfield and Rowena Drake carrying Olga's dead body and heard Mrs. Drake wonder aloud if anyone was watching them. Joyce, an inveterate fantasist, had made the story her own, and since Miranda had not attended the party, she hadn't contradicted Joyce. Rowena Drake heard Joyce and thought that it was Joyce who had seen her and Michael with Olga's corpse. Drake had always sensed that someone was watching them that fateful day. Mrs. Drake intentionally dropped the vase of flowers in front of Miss Whittaker to invent a pretext for being wet after having drowned Joyce. Subsequently, Leopold had used what little he knew to blackmail Rowena, leading to his murder.Mrs. Rowena Drake and Michael Garfields were the 2 killers of the 2 murders that took place. Michael Garfield played the role of lover to Olga to help Rowena Drake secure Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's inheritance. The real will, leaving Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's fortune to Olga, had been replaced with a clumsy forgery, produced by Lesley Ferrier, which would be rendered invalid and Rowena Drake, the sexually-frustrated wife of an invalid, would ultimately control Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe's estate as her closest relation. Lesley Ferrier and Olga Seminoff were murdered to conceal the deceit. Garfield's motivation was his obsessive, narcissistic desire to construct another perfect garden with Mrs. Drake's money on a Greek island that she has secretly purchased. Poirot hypothesises that Rowena Drake might have met a similar fate to the other women as Garfield would no longer have any use for her. Poirot's also intuits that the bond between Miranda and Garfield was a familial one: Judith Butler is not a widow, but rather the mother of Garfield's illegitimate daughter. Garfield's depraved willingness to murder his own daughter confirms the tremendous evil that Poirot has been able to uncover and defeat. What an evil night..."
1151,Der Richter und sein Henker,crime," Commissar Bärlach of the Bernese police, who is dying of cancer and must solve the murder of his best officer, Lieutenant Ulrich Schmied. Bärlach is assisted in his investigation by officer Walter Tschanz. As Schmied had been investigating the crimes of Richard Gastmann, a career master criminal who is an old friend and enemy of Bärlach's, suspicion immediately falls upon Gastmann. But Bärlach and Tschanz's ""investigation"" of Gastmann yields an unexpected twist after Tschanz kills Gastmann, supposedly in self-defense. Bärlach then reveals that he has known all along that Tschanz is the one who murdered Schmied. Tschanz had purposefully killed Gastmann so that Gastmann would be forever blamed for Schmied's murder. Furthermore, Bärlach had manipulated Tschanz into this action with the manner in which Bärlach had pressed forward with their seeming investigation of Gastmann. Bärlach had deliberately pushed Tschanz toward a final, fatal confrontation with Gastmann, resulting in Gastmann's death: the punishment Bärlach considers just for all of the previous crimes Gastmann had committed, but which Bärlach had been unable to prove. In fact, Gastmann and Bärlach went back forty years. They had long ago made a personal bet with one another as to whether it was possible to commit the ""perfect"" crime, such that even an investigator who personally witnessed it would never be able to prove the perpetrator guilty. After that bet, Gastmann, as Bärlach well knew, had pursued a lifelong career as a purveyor of crime, evil in its comprehensiveness, arrogant and mocking of civilization itself. And indeed he always remained one step ahead of Bärlach's tireless but fruitless efforts to convict him. Gastmann recalled to Bärlach: ""I wanted to prove that it was possible to commit a crime that couldn't be solved."" Gastmann had been correct, and Bärlach's final plot is an acknowledgment thereof. By murdering Schmied during Schmied's investigation of Gastmann, Tschanz had ruined the terminally ill Bärlach's final chance to bring Gastmann to justice in a courtroom. Therefore, using Tschanz as a pawn, Bärlach finds an alternate method to mete out the justice for which he feels Gastmann is overdue."
1152,Crooked House,crime," Three generations of the Leonides family live together under wealthy patriarch Aristide. His first wife died; her sister Edith has cared for the household since then. Second wife indolent Brenda, decades his junior, exchanges love letters with grandchildren's tutor. After Aristide is poisoned by his own eye medicine (eserine), his granddaughter Sophia tells narrator and fiancé Charles Hayward that they cannot marry until the killer is apprehended. Charles' father ""The Old Man"" is the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, so Charles investigates from the inside along with assigned detective, Chief Inspector Taverner. When sly Josephine suffers attack and Nanny is poisoned by hot chocolate after Brenda and the tutor are arrested, the danger escalates to a surprise finish."
1153,Dry Bones that Dream,crime," One May evening, two masked gunmen tie up Alison Rothwell and her mother, take Keith Rothwell, a local accountant, to the garage of his isolated Yorkshire Dales farmhouse, and blow his head off with a shotgun. Why? This is the question Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has to ask as he sifts through Rothwell’s life. Rothwell was generally known in the area as a mild-mannered, dull sort of person, but even a cursory investigation raises more questions than answers. When Banks’s old sparring partner, DS Richard “Dirty Dick” Burgess, turns up from the Yard, the case takes yet another unexpected twist, and Banks finds himself racing against time as the killers seem to be dogging his footsteps. Only after he pits his job against his sense of justice does he discover the truth. And the truth leads him to one of the most difficult decisions of his career."
1154,Cadillac Beach,crime," The year is 1996. At long last, Serge A. Storms has been captured. He is committed to the psychiatric hospital at Chattahoochee, where he patiently tries to explain his views. Serge grows tired of this diversion, however, and escapes once more. His newest obsession involves investigating the circumstances surrounding his grandfather's death forty years earlier, when he allegedly committed suicide by wandering into the ocean at a Miami beach. Serge's grandfather, who passed on many of his habits and interests (as well as his mental instability) to his grandson, may have been involved with a lucrative jewel theft shortly before his disappearance, however, so his friends are understandably reluctant to talk. The novel then skips forward eight years and over the previous novels in the series to 1996, where Serge is living with his friend Lenny and Lenny's mother while planning a phantasmagoric array of projects, the biggest of which is still to solve the matter of his grandfather's supposed suicide. To finance his quest, Serge and Lenny start up a unique tour service highlighting the ""lesser known"" side of Florida's tourism industry. During one of his tours, a group of drunken convention attendees accidentally kidnap and kill a mob boss. The mobster in question just happens to be one that Serge personally insulted a few days earlier, incurring the wrath of both the mob and the FBI. Serge decides to keep close tabs on the salesmen for their own protection, not letting them leave his sight. Somehow, he also finds the time to publicly embarrass the Castro regime of Cuba and the United States government at the same time. Tagging along in Serge's deathmarch/tour are Lenny, a newspaper columnist from New York City, a friend of Serge's grandfather's named Chi Chi, and City and Country, a pair of dim-witted women that Serge ditched at the beginning of The Stingray Shuffle, in 1998."
1155,Borkmann's Point,crime," The novel is set in the early 1990s when Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, a 30-year veteran of police work who appreciates fine food and drink, cuts short his vacation to help the police chief of the remote town of Kaalbringen and his small crew investigate two ax murders. Another identical murder occurs in the weeks leading up to the retirement of Police Chief Bausen and it's expected that solving them would not only complete their work while Van Veeteren is available, but would be a high point for Bausen's career exit. Bausen is determined that the cases are solved quickly and the public is safe again before he departs. At a loose end in Kaalbringen, Van Veeteren accepts Bausen's collegial hospitality. A widower, Bausen generously shares from his expensive wine cellar and together they draw close over a love of chess. The sympathetic Van Veeteren wants to resolve the difficult investigation for his old friend's sake, which Bausen also appreciates. The problem is that the killings are random with the victims completely unrelated, and the murderer is too clever to be found or even noticed. Significantly the corpses are discovered axed precisely in the same way with a butcher's chopper which shows the killer's attention to detail. Just when it seems that the Ax Murderer – so dubbed by the press – is on a roll, the killings stop at three. The work to find a connecting thread is shared by a crew that includes Beate Moerk a dedicated, single female colleague with dreams of becoming a private detective; Münster, a detective whose career is creating cracks in his marriage and family life; and others like the nerdish Kropke who bring their professional skills as well as their personality traits to bear. All strive to solve the puzzle as time runs out, especially when Beate Moerk goes missing while jogging late at night."
1156,Wolves Eat Dogs,crime," Russia has changed from a Communist to capitalist state, and Ukraine has seceded from the former Soviet Union. When Pavel ""Pasha"" Ivanov, one of the leading members of Russia's new billionaire class, dies in an apparent suicide, Renko investigates. Pasha fell from the balcony of his penthouse apartment, and all the signs point to his having been alone at the time. The only anomaly is a large mound of table salt in the victim's wardrobe. Despite interference from his own boss as well as from other persons of power, Renko continues his investigation by questioning Pasha's friends and associates. There is apparently some kind of dark secret in Ivanov's past, and Pasha was always very depressed around May Day. Just before he is forcefully removed from the investigation, Arkady returns alone to Pasha's apartment and reconstructs his movements on the night he died. In the drawer of his bureau, Arkady finds a radiation dosimeter wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief. Turning it on, he finds that the entire apartment is radioactive, the highest levels coming from the mound of salt. Arkady concludes that Ivanov did indeed commit suicide but that it was under a form of duress. A HazMat team re-examines the apartment and Pasha's body and finds that the salt was mixed with a small quantity of cesium chloride, identical in appearance to table salt. It so happens that Cesium-137 is an isotope that is lethally radioactive. After confirming that his apartment was filled with radiation, Ivanov swallowed a quantity of salt with bread before jumping in an apparently futile attempt to try and protect any acquaintances entering the apartment later. A week after Arkady's discovery Pasha's business partner, Timofeyev, is found brutally murdered near Pripyat, Ukraine, in the ""dead zone"" around the site of the Chernobyl disaster. Arkady's superior, exasperated at his insubordination, posts him to Ukraine to ""investigate"" this murder with neither assistance nor standard resources. He makes the acquaintance of the colorful local community: a team of radiobiologists, various foreign scientists, and a small group of peasant squatters who refuse to leave the area despite the official evacuation. Various odd events occur around the dead zone, including the murder of a local scavenger. Arkady also becomes the lover of Eva Kazka, a medical doctor assigned to the scientific community. Eva confides to him that she was rendered infertile and also suffered a long series of operable cancers as a result of exposure to radioactive fallout that blanketed Kiev while she was marching in a May Day parade after the meltdown. Eva's ex-husband, Alex Gerasimov, the leader of the radiobiology team, kidnaps Arkady and reveals himself to be the culprit, explaining his motives with relish: Ivanov and Timofeyev were the scientific colleagues, and favorite pupils, of Alex's father, Felix Gerasimov, the Soviet Union's leading authority on nuclear accidents. When the Central Committee telephoned Gerasimov to ask what to do about the meltdown, Gerasimov was too drunk to respond, so Ivanov and Timofeyev took the call, pretending to be relaying Gerasimov's instructions. Based on what the Committee told them, Ivanov and Timofeyev decided that it was unnecessary to either evacuate Chernobyl or to cancel the May Day celebrations in Kiev. In other words, Ivanov and Timofeyev were ambitious men who reacted to a crisis the way ambitious men do: by covering up for their boss, and by telling the men in charge what they want to hear -and by doing so, they allowed millions of civilians to be exposed. Gerasimov remained untouched by the scandal but later committed suicide. Alex felt the two co-conspirators ought to be held accountable to some degree. He planted tiny grains of cesium on their clothes and persons, tormenting them before administering fatal doses. He even offered to stop if Ivanov and Timofeyev would return to Chernobyl and admit their responsibility, but ""they were too ashamed, even to save their own lives."" After Ivanov's death, Timofeyev tried to save himself by returning to the scene of his crime, though Alex alleges he doesn't know who murdered him. Having killed his assistants in cold blood, Alex prepares to kill Arkady to cover his tracks when he is shot down by the vengeful sister of one of the assistants. Arkady reports back to Moscow that Pasha's case has been solved, though the murders of Timofeyev and Alex Gerasimov remain open. He is recalled to Moscow. Eva leaves with him, and the couple adopt an orphaned boy named Zhenya whom Arkady has been mentoring at a local shelter. A few months later, they make a one-day trip back to Chernobyl to visit some of their local friends, an elderly farmer couple who have lived in the same place all their lives, and whose grandchildren died from radiation poisoning. Seeing the husband slaughter a pig in almost exactly the same way as Timofeyev was killed, Arkady and Eva realize that it was Roman who killed Timofeyev, and why, but refrain from reporting it to the authorities."
1157,The Whole Truth,crime," The head of a major arms vendor plots to restore the great power confrontations like those of the cold war, along with the long term stability of mutually assured destruction. To this end, he foments hostility between Russia and China, by means of a disinformation campaign (perception management) augmented with selected murders. A secret agent, aggrieved by his fiancée's murder, joins forces with an alcoholic reporter to foil these evil plans. nl:Niets dan de waarheid (boek)"
1158,The Falls,crime," A student vanishes in Edinburgh, and her wealthy family of bankers ensure Detective Inspector John Rebus is under pressure to find her. A carved wooden doll in a coffin found near her East Lothian home leads Rebus to an Internet role-playing game that she was involved in. DC Siobhan Clarke tackles the virtual quizmaster, and thus risks the same fate as the missing girl. ""You okay, John?"" Curt reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. Rebus shook his head slowly, eyes squeezed shut. Curt didn't make it out the first time, so Rebus had to repeat what he said next: ""I don't believe in heaven."" That was the horror of it. This life was the only one you got. No redemption afterwards, no chance of wiping the slate clean and starting over. Rebus said ""There is no justice in the world."" ""You'd know more about that than I would"", Curt replied. sv:Fallen (roman)"
1159,From Black Rooms,crime," Natalie Lindstrom has finally left the underworld behind for a new career in the art world. As a former Violet, an elite crime-fighter with the power to channel murder victims, Natalie is now using her paranormal gift to summon the spirits of legendary painters. A deadly man from her past has escaped from prison, and he is being targeted against Natalie. But first he must help contact a deceased geneticist whose most intriguing experiment was brutally interrupted: an attempt to manufacture Violets. To protect her young daughter and herself, Natalie must search for the scientist’s only living test subject &mdash; a handsome but tortured artist to whom she is dangerously attracted. For he is caught in the grip of two opposing forces, one that wants his survival, another that wants him &mdash; and anyone connected with him &mdash; destroyed."
1160,Deep Water,crime," In the small town of Little Wesley, intellectual publisher Victor Van Allen decides to discourage his wife Melinda’s many lovers by hinting to them that he may have killed her previous beau, Malcolm McRae. However, the game turns sour when strangers begin to grow wary of him, thus denting his social esteem and also blurring the line between fiction and reality; after a while, Vic wonders if he may really have blood on his hands. pt:Deep Water"
1161,Alexandria,crime," The story is set in AD 77, in Alexandria, Egypt, which was at that time part of the Roman Empire. Falco and his family travel to Egypt to see two of the seven wonders of the world, the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Great Pyramid of Giza, but are caught up in investigation into a mysterious death, and soon several deaths. The plot revolves around the Library of Alexandria, with reference to library management practice, corruption, illegal autopsies, a man-eating crocodile, and the legendary catoblepas. For the duration of their trip, Falco and his family have chosen to stay with his mother's brother, Fulvius, and his live-in partner Cassius who host a dinner party to which Falco's family and the Chief Librarian of the Serapaeion, Theon, are invited. When Theon is found dead later in mysterious circumstances, locked in his own private Chamber at the Serapaeion, Falco, Fulvius and the others fall under suspicion by the authorities, and it is up to Falco to clear everyone's names, eventually unravelling a web of corruption, deceit and even murder at the Library of Alexandria."
1162,Cat Among the Pigeons,crime," The story flashes back three months to Ramat, one of the richest countries of the Middle East, where a revolution is about to take place. Prince Ali Yusuf gives a fortune in jewels, which he needs sent out of the country, into the safekeeping of Bob Rawlinson, his personal pilot and the only person he can trust. Rawlinson complies with the prince's request, apparently by concealing the jewels in the luggage of his sister, Joan Sutcliffe, who is travelling with her daughter, Jennifer. He is seen doing this by a mysterious and unnamed woman in the next room. Soon after, both Rawlinson and the Prince are killed in an airplane crash while attempting to leave the country after a flight mechanic named Sergeant Achmed sabotages their plane. A number of people, including British Intelligence, get onto the trail of the jewels, and their attention focuses on Meadowbank School, where not only Jennifer, but also the prince's cousin and expected fiancée, Shaista, are studying. This term at Meadowbank there are both old and new staff. Miss Chadwick helped Miss Bulstrode found the school. Miss Vansittart has been teaching there for several years, and Miss Rich for 1 1/2 years. Miss Johnson is the girls' matron. The new staff include Angèle Blanche (a French teacher), Grace Springer (a gym teacher), Ann Shapland (Miss Bulstrode's new secretary), and Adam Goodman (a gardener, or actually an undercover British agent posing as a gardener). Miss Bulstrode is nearing retirement, and is deciding whom to appoint as her successor. The others assume Miss Vanisttart will be the successor; she would perserve Miss Bulstrode's legacy but is unimaginative and has no new ideas. But Miss Bulstrode is also considering Miss Rich, who is young and has lots of ideas but less experience. She is not considering Miss Chadwick, whom she thinks is too old (although others may assume Miss Chadwick is the second most likely candidate). But all these deliberations are cut short when Miss Springer is shot dead in the Sports Pavilion late at night, and Miss Johnson and Miss Chadwick discover her body. Following the murder, Inspector Kelsey interviews everyone and Adam Goodman reveals his true identity to Miss Bulstrode. Meanwhile, Jennifer Sutcliffe, an expert tennis player, complains that her racquet feels unbalanced (it must have been warped in the Ramat heat), and she writes to her mother asking for a new one. She swaps tennis racquets with Julia Upjohn, who prefers Jennifer's racquet because it has been refurbished recently. Later a strange woman arrives and gives Jennifer a new racquet, saying it's a gift from her aunt Gina. The woman takes the old racquet (actually Julia's), ostensibly to return it to Aunt Gina for restringing. Later, Julia points out that this is impossible because Aunt Gina knows that Jennifer's racquet had been refurbished and restrung recently, so she would not assume the problem is in the strings. Sure enough, Aunt Gina writes to say that she has not sent a new racquet. During a weekend when many of the girls are at home with their parents, Shaista is apparently kidnapped by a chauffeur posing as the one sent by her uncle to take her home. That night there is a repetition of murder when Miss Chadwick is disturbed by torch light in the Sports Pavilion and Miss Vansittart is found dead there, having been apparently coshed. Many of the girls go home, but the resourceful Julia, who has been pondering the exchange of the racquets, takes her (really Jennifer's) racquet back to her room and discovers the gems in the hollowed-out handle. She hears someone at the door who quietly turns the knob and attempts to enter. But Julia has pushed furniture against the door to prevent a murderer from entering. The next day Julia flees the school to tell her story to Hercule Poirot, whom she has heard of through a friend of her mother. The police start to focus on the newcomer, Miss Blanche, but in fact she is not the murderer. Instead, she knows who the murderer is, and makes an attempt at blackmail that backfires when she is also killed. With the school struggling to survive the scandal of two murders, the denouement has arrived. Poirot reviews what the reader already knows, and then explains that Princess Shaista was an impostor: the real Shaista had been kidnapped earlier in Switzerland, and the apparent abduction was actually the imposter's escape from the school. She was the representative of one group of interests who, crucially, did not know where the gems had been concealed. The murderer, however, did know where the jewels were concealed and must have been in Ramat to see Bob Rawlinson hide them. Most of the teachers could not have been there … the exception was Eileen Rich, who was apparently sick at the time but was in fact in Ramat. Jennifer had even recognised her, although she remembered the woman she had seen as a fatter woman. (It later transpires that Miss Rich had been in Ramat for the delivery of an illegitimate child that was stillborn.) Just as it seems that Miss Rich is the murderer, Mrs. Upjohn enters the room having been recalled from her holiday in Anatolia and identifies by face the woman she had seen through Mrs Bulstrode's window: Ann Shapland, who is well known in intelligence circles as a ruthless espionage agent and a mercenary. It was Shapland who had had the room next to Bob Rawlinson at the start of the book. Ann Shapland draws a pistol and Miss Bulstrode steps in front of Mrs. Sutcliffe; Miss Chadwick does the same to protect Miss Bulstrode, and is fatally wounded. It is revealed that Ann Shapland murdered Miss Springer, who caught her while she was searching the Sports Pavilion for the jewels. She also murdered Miss Blanche, who knew her secret and tried to blackmail her. But she did not kill Miss Vansittart, and had a perfect alibi for that night. Miss Vansittart was actually killed by Miss Chadwick, in an unpremedited fit of passion. Miss Chadwick had found Miss Vansittart in the Sports Pavilion the second night, kneeling in front of Shaista's locker, apparently snooping. Miss Chadwick disliked Miss Vansittart and did not consider her a suitable successor for Meadowbank. Miss Chadwick was carrying a sandbag for protection, and here was Miss Vansittart in a perfect position to be coshed from behind. Barely conscious of her actions, she kills her. But she feels immediate remorse, and later throws herself in front of a bullet to save Miss Bulstrode. As Miss Chadwick lies dying, she confesses that she imagined the removal of the widely presumed successor would make Miss Bulstrode change her mind about retiring. So the first and third murders are linked by the same murderer, while the second and third murders are linked by the same method (a sandbag). Shapland used the sandbag to make it seem that the second and third murders were linked, since she had an alibi for the second murder. At the end of the book, Miss Bulstrode reconfirms her decision to make Miss Rich her eventual successor. Poirot turns over the gems to the enigmatic “Mr. Robinson” who, in turn, delivers them to the English woman who has been secretly married to Prince Ali Yusuf. One emerald is returned as a reward to Julia Upjohn."
1163,The Scarecrow,crime," The story begins with Jack McEvoy's termination by the Los Angeles Times due to the newspaper's financial crisis. He is given two weeks to train his replacement, Angela Cook, on the ""cop beat"" and decides that he wants to write one more major story before his last day. Jack focuses on the case of 16-year-old drug dealer Alonzo Winslow, who confessed that he brutally raped one of his clients, then stuffed her body in the trunk with a plastic bag over her head, tied shut with a length of rope around her neck. Angela, a beautiful and ambitious young reporter, maneuvers to get herself a part of the story. However, after Jack is given access to the defense files, he learns that Alonzo only confessed to stealing the car containing the body, not to the rape-murder. In researching trunk murders on the Internet, Angela unwittingly finds evidence of a similar crime in Las Vegas. However, Angela's research also took her to a ""trap"" site set up by the real murderer: Wesley Carver, an MIT graduate who is the chief security officer of a ""server farm"" (colocation and backup services) near Phoenix, referred to by everyone as the ""scarecrow"" of the farm. Carver cracks her e-mail password at the Times and learns that Jack is headed to Vegas. He promptly creates a fake data emergency so that his company will send him to L.A. The next day, Jack finds that none of his credit cards nor his cell phone work, so he buys a throwaway phone. He shows the evidence of the identical L.A. murder to the attorney for the convicted Vegas murderer, who gives Jack a letter permitting him to meet his client, imprisoned in a remote location in Nevada. During the lengthy drive on the ""loneliest road in America"", Jack calls FBI agent Rachel Walling, his former girlfriend to whom he hasn't spoken in years, to report the ""under the radar"" serial killer and also tells her about his bad luck that day. When he arrives at the prison, he is told that he cannot see the prisoner until the next day and books a room in a local hotel. A cowboy with long sideburns plays slots next to him. When Jack heads to his room, he sees ""Sideburns"" coming directly toward him in the hallway as his door opens ... to find Rachel inside his room. ""Sideburns"" passes by. Rachel had taken a private FBI plane to the prison after she concluded that Jack's discoveries and his electronic problems were linked but that she had no way to warn him. Rachel and Jack learn that ""Sideburns"" was not staying at the hotel and surmise that he must be the killer. When calling the Times, Jack learns that Angela has disappeared. Rachel and Jack promptly take the FBI jet back to L.A., during which Rachel examines the evidence and notes that the murdered women were both exotic dancers with similar body types (""giraffes""), and that both were put in leg braces (""iron maidens"") while being sexually abused before death, a perversion known as abasiophilia. On arrival, Rachel admits that her recent relationship with a police detective ended in part because she still had feelings for Jack, but they then find Angela's dead body under Jack's bed, killed in the same style as the other victims. Because of Rachel's testimony, Jack is cleared of Angela's murder, and the evidence causes both Alonzo and the Vegas convict to be freed. The FBI links the trap site to Bill Denslow, a fake name used by an online client of Carver's server farm. Jack is a featured guest on CNN to discuss the case, but Rachel is summoned to a disciplinary hearing and forced to resign from the FBI under threat of a theft prosecution for ""stealing"" the gasoline in the FBI plane during the round trip to Nevada. Carver has his assistant, whom he gave the pseudonym ""Freddie Stone"", help him murder and bury the server farm's CEO and then quit. Jack deduces that the serial killer knew non-public legal information about his victims and finds that all of them were represented by law firms whose sites were handled through Carver's server farm, just like the trap site. He persuades Rachel to join him there, where they pose as potential clients and talk to Carver, who doesn't reveal that he knows their real identities. Following a trail laid by Carver, they find Stone's house, identify him as ""Sideburns"", and uncover evidence concerning the killings. They call in the FBI, and Rachel is able to use her role in finding the killer to regain her job. Jack agrees to return to L.A. and goes to Rachel's hotel room to say goodbye—but finds that she has just been kidnapped by Stone. He intercepts Stone, rescues an unconscious Rachel from a laundry bin, and then chases and kills Stone in a battle on the top floor. Rachel tells Jack that the FBI believes there were two killers: Stone and Angela's murderer. With Carver's help, Rachel and the FBI team find evidence that Stone and the missing CEO committed all of the murders. Jack's high profile causes the Times to rescind his termination, even though Jack's role as a participant means that he cannot write the story of the Arizona events. Jack turns it down and accepts a two-book deal to write about this case. However, Jack then sees a picture from The Wizard of Oz in his editor's office and realizes that the method used to suffocate the victims looks like the classic head of a scarecrow, except using a plastic bag instead of a burlap sack. He immediately heads to Arizona to warn a disbelieving Rachel, including the links to the real Fred Stone and Bill Denslow, but unfortunately meets her in a coffee shop near the server farm with a full-time Webcam in it. Jack deduces that they are being watched by 'The Scarecrow' over the webcam. Carver watches their discussion, then ambushes the other FBI agents. Carver's plan to kill the agents and fake his own death is foiled when Jack figures it out, and Rachel shoots Carver in the head when he tries to ambush them, leaving Carver in a seemingly permanent comatose state. In a brief epilogue, Jack's research has revealed that Carver's mother was an exotic dancer similar in appearance to the victims who needed to wear leg braces when not performing. The story closes with Carver in medical lockdown, deep in a coma, alone with his thoughts."
1164,The Secret of Chimneys,crime," Seven years previously, the Balkan state of Herzoslovakia had one of its periodic revolutions that resulted in the death and bodily mutilation of its monarch, King Nicholas IV and his wife Queen Varaga. The latter formerly was Angèle Mory, a dancer at the Folies Bergère, who had been bribed by the Herzoslovakian revolutionary organisation ""Comrades of the Red Hand"" to lure the King into a trap when he visited Paris, but instead double-crossed them, seduced and married Nicholas, and was introduced in Herzoslovakia as a Countess and descendant of the Romanoffs. When realizing the deception, the populace reacted with an uprising and the establishment of a republic which has been in force ever since. Now the people of Herzoslovakia wish to restore the monarchy and offer the vacant crown to the exiled Prince Michael Obolovitch, a distant relation of the murdered King. The British government is acting as powerbroker to the restoration in return for oil concessions in the state. The head of the syndicate who is financing the deal, Herman Isaacstein, is to meet Prince Michael at the English country house of Chimneys whose reluctant owner, the Marquis of Caterham, is bullied into hosting the get-together by George Lomax, a foreign office minister. A difficulty has arisen though: a Count Stylptitch, twice Prime Minister of Herzoslovakia and in exile in Paris since the revolution, died two months previously and his memoirs&mdash;believed to contain many indiscreet references to the Herzoslovakia monarchy&mdash;were smuggled to Bulawayo in the care of Jimmy McGrath, a gold prospector who four years ago saved the Count's life in Paris. As part of his will, the Count has asked McGrath to deliver the manuscript of his memoirs in person to publishers in London on or before 13 October in return for one thousand pounds and McGrath is due to arrive in London soon. However, McGrath's gold prospecting seems about to bear fruit and he is loath to leave Africa. In Bulawayo he meets an old friend and fellow adventurer, Anthony Cade, and asks him to impersonate him and deliver the manuscript for a quarter share. McGrath had another task for Anthony: by saving a drowning ""Dago"", coincidentally also a Herzoslovakian, he came into the possession of a set of letters from an Englishwoman called Virginia Revel to her lover, a Captain O'Neill, which the ""Dago"" had used to blackmail Mrs Revel and which McGrath wanted to be returned to her, thus saving her from further embarrassment. Anthony agreed to deliver both sets of documents. We learn that Virginia Revel is the widow of a former British diplomat to Herzoslovakia, whom everybody falls in love with and whom Lomax has asked to be one of the house party at Chimneys to charm Prince Michael. Arriving in London, Anthony checks into the Blitz hotel where several attempts by fair means and foul are made to obtain the manuscript. The final one is at night when a hotel waiter, Giuseppe, enters Anthony's room. He wakes and the two men fight but Giuseppe gets away, not with the manuscript but with Virginia Revel's letters. The next day Giuseppe visits Virginia and blackmails her with one of the letters. She doesn't reveal to the man that the letters are not hers, but playfully gives him 40 pounds and asks him to return the next evening for the rest. Anthony completes his task for Jimmy McGrath when a Mr Holmes of the publishers collects the manuscript from him and pays him. He only then receives, in the name of McGrath, a government invitation to the meeting at Chimneys where it is hoped he will be persuaded not to hand over the manuscript at all. Anthony decides to travel under his own name, stay at a village inn outside the house and investigate matters. Before that he looks up Virginia. When she returns home, she meets Anthony at the door and finds Giuseppe in her study, recently killed with a pistol bearing the engraving ""Virginia"". In Giuseppe's pocket is a scrap of paper with ""Chimneys 11.45 Thursday"". Anthony finds out about Virginia's invitation to that house and deduces that someone is attempting to prevent her going there. To outwit them he disposes of the body and follows Virginia, who instinctively trusts this ""Ex-Eton and Oxford"" stranger, to Chimneys. At 11.45 on the Thursday night a murder is committed at Chimneys on the eve of the concessions meeting. Travelling under the pseudonym of ""Count Stanislaus"" the murdered man is none other than Prince Michael Obolovitch. Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. Footprints are spotted in the grass leading to and from the open window to the council chamber where the body was found and the police’s suspicions are immediately drawn to the arrival of a stranger at the village inn the night before, Anthony Cade. Further investigations are confounded though when the self-confident Anthony suddenly appears at the house and introduces himself; moreover he tells Battle and the police all of the events to date, judiciously omitting the story of Virginia's letters and the murder and concealment of Giuseppe. He further reveals to them that he did indeed come to Chimneys the previous night and manages to convince the investigators that he was lured there on a pretext and that he had been set up for the crime. When Anthony is shown the body of Prince Michael, he is shocked to recognize ""Mr Holmes"" who collected the memoirs from him. Aside from Isaacstein and Virginia (who vouches for Anthony) a third visitor to the house is the book collector Hiram P. Fish who is there to inspect Lord Caterham's collection of first editions. Two strands of investigation take place in the house: the official one and Anthony's own. The police are interested in who benefits from Prince Michael's death and are told that his successor for the vacant throne is Michael's first cousin, Prince Nicholas, a somewhat dissolute young man who perhaps has died in the Congo. Anthony asks Lord Caterham’s daughter, ""Bundle"" Brent, after the occupant of a room whose light he saw go on and off after he heard the shot at the time of the murder. This turns out to be Mademoiselle Brun, the French governess to her two young sisters, who has been with them only two months from her previous position in a Château in Dinard. There is a further French connection with the matter when Anthony finds a bearded stranger with a French accent on the grounds claiming to be lost while on a walk from his stay at the village inn. The French master jewel thief King Victor, a few months earlier released from jail, is a suspect, since Angèle Mory, in her days before Nicholas IV, was his accomplice and, while Queen, was very likely involved in King Victor's theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the Tower of London (a paste copy being substituted and the public not being informed of the event). Queen Varaga was a guest at Chimneys at the time and it is believed she hid the jewel somewhere in the house and now, seven years after her death, King Victor has come to get it back. After impersonating the second-in-line Prince Nicholas in the United States for a scam, he is now rumored to be in England. Anthony meets the middle-aged Mlle Brun and gets permission to go to Dinard to follow up on her references. While he is away there is a midnight break-in at Chimneys when Virginia and Bill Eversleigh, one of Lomax's staff from the Foreign Office, surprise a shadowy intruder who is searching the council chamber. After a fight, the intruder gets away. Anthony returns from France&mdash;Mlle Brun has proven to be above suspicion&mdash;and learns of the break-in. Expecting another attempt, he joins Virginia and Bill that night when they successfully apprehend the bearded French stranger, only to discover it is Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté, whose arrival had been expected by Battle. This officer had seen movement in the council chamber, but the interference by Anthony and his friends meant the suspect got away again. Lemoine is on the trail of King Victor and he tells them that Angèle Mory sent coded letters to King Victor using the aliases of ""Captain O’Neill"" and ""Virginia Revel"" (who Mory knew from her husband's posting to the British Embassy in Herzoslovakia) and it is these that have been mistaken as the blackmailing letters. Stolen from King Victor, they found their way to Africa and, entirely coincidentally, to Jimmy McGrath. That afternoon, these letters mysteriously reappear on Anthony's dressing-table at Chimneys. Battle's theory is that King Victor, unable to decode the letters and aware that the council chamber is now watched, returned them to let the authorities decode the message and find the jewel, which he will then take at his convenience. They decide to take the bait and employ an expert codebreaker, Professor Wynwood, who deduces that the coded message tells that Stylptitch had re-hidden the jewel and had left the clue ""Richmond seven straight eight left three right"". Bundle equates this to an old passage behind a painting of the Earl of Richmond, but the trail only leads to another cipher (later revealed to represent a rose). Boris Anchoukoff, Prince Michael's loyal valet hands Anthony an address in Dover (""dropped by that foreign gentleman""), and Anthony slips off to explore that location. It is a den for King Victor's men and the ""Comrades of the Red Hand"". Just when Anthony locates a hostage, Mr Fish captures him with an automatic gun. Still, we find Anthony next making preparations and assembling all people at Chimneys. He reveals that the ""Richmond"" reference in the code was to a biography of the Earl of Richmond in the library. But this is a trap for the murderer of Prince Michael: Mlle Brun, in reality the supposedly dead Queen Varaga (whose ""body"" seven years ago was a substitution, mutilated beyond recognition). Caught searching for the jewel in the library, Varaga is killed in a struggle over her revolver with Anchoukoff. The real Mlle Brun may have been kidnapped on the passage from Dinard while the murder of Giuseppe in Virginia's house was indeed to stop Virginia from going to Chimneys as she may have recognised the former Queen. There was another visitor though who knew her&mdash;Prince Michael&mdash;and when he found her searching the council chamber, she shot him. Anthony reveals another substitution when he produces the real M Lemoine: the hostage in Dover. The impostor is none other than King Victor, who tries to escape, but is stopped by Mr. Fish, in reality an American agent. Anthony has several final surprises. The memoirs he gave to ""Mr Holmes"" were false: he gives the real memoirs (which have no incriminating anecdotes after all) to Jimmy to deliver to the publishers to get his one thousand pounds. The ""Richmond"" clue refers to a rose on the ground with the name ""Richmond"", where the Koh-i-Noor is subsequently recovered. Anthony then presents himself as the missing Prince Nicholas, who had disappeared himself in the Congo and through inconceivable coincidence was led into this adventure, and offers to be Herzoslovakia's next king. In the morning he has secretly married Virginia, who will be his Queen."
1165,The Tinder Box,crime," Following the savage murders of Lavinia Fanshaw and her personal nurse, Dorothy Jenkins, in the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick O'Riordian is arrested for the crime, stirring up violent racial hatred from the other residents against his family. Friend and neighbour Siobhan Lavenham suspects that Patrick was the victim of an already prejudiced investigation, and defies her community so she can prove him innocent. However, after learning of some terrible secret's from the O'Riordian's past, she begins to question her loyalties."
1166,The Overlook,crime," The Overlook reunites Bosch with his most recent former flame, FBI agent Rachel Walling. Bosch must break in a new and much younger partner, Ignacio ""Iggy"" Ferras, when they're called to take over the investigation of the execution-style murder of medical physicist Stanley Kent on a Mulholland Drive overlook. When a special FBI unit, headed by Walling, arrives and tries to usurp his case, claiming it's a matter of national security, Bosch refuses to back down. Walling's focus on the theft of radioactive cesium from a hospital where Kent assisted in cancer treatments, and her unwillingness to share information only makes Bosch more determined to solve the case. Evidence mounts that the murder is part of a terrorist plot to build and deploy a dirty bomb, justifying the FBI's moves to push the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and Bosch to the sidelines. Refusing to be sidelined, Bosch aggressively works around the FBI in order to track down Stanley Kent's killers, much to the chagrin of his young, inexperienced partner, who sees his career at the LAPD jeopardized by Bosch's actions. The FBI agents, including Rachel Walling, view Bosch as endangering their attempts to retrieve the missing cesium and to track down known terrorists. Relying on instinct and experience, Bosch relentlessly pursues his line of inquiry, ultimately revealing secrets that were darker than anyone could imagine. The principal players in the story are: Harry Bosch, the lead detective on the case, who is the principal protagonist on this and thirteen previous Harry Bosch novels. Rachel Walling, who was romantically involved with Harry in a number of previous Harry Bosch novels. In this story, while Harry has hopes of re-connecting with Rachel, their relationship is strained, owing to conflicting views on how the investigation should be carried out. Ignacio ""Iggy"" Ferras, Bosch's young partner. Iggy wants to play by the book and is seriously disturbed by Bosch's let's-break-the-rules attitude. At one point, he tells Bosch that he can't work with him and will be requesting a new partner. Stanley Kent, the murder victim who has stolen 32 sources of cesium from a Los Angeles hospital in response to demands from unknown parties who have taken his wife hostage. If used in a dirty bomb, tens of thousands of people could die from radiation exposure. Alicia Kent, the beautiful wife of the murder victim, who was taken hostage in her home by two intruders. She was used by the intruders to pressure Stanley Kent to steal the cesium from the hospital. Jack Brenner, Rachel Walling's FBI partner and superior and the lead FBI agent on the case. His primary concern is dealing with the terror threat associated with the stolen cesium. To him, Bosch's homicide investigation is a secondary concern. Cliff Maxwell, an FBI agent working on the case, with whom Bosch has two violent encounters. it:La città buia sv:Hotet (2007)"
1167,Perchance to Dream,crime," Set a few years after the events of The Big Sleep, the new novel begins with long passages of text lifted from the original to set the scene, establish the characters, and remind readers of the events of the first book. The story is set in motion by the death of family patriarch General Sternwood. Marlowe is called to the Sternwood mansion in the hills of Los Angeles by Norris, the butler. He finds older daughter Vivian still in residence and still dating gangster Eddie Mars but her younger sister Carmen, still tormented by the events of the original story, has been sent off to live at Resthaven, a luxurious psychiatric rehabilitation facility. When Carmen disappears from the rest home, Norris hires Marlowe to find her."
1168,Cop Hater,crime," The city has surrendered to a heat wave in July 1956. When detective Mike Reardon is on the way to work on the nightshift, he is shot to death from behind with a .45 caliber handgun. As Steve Carella and his colleagues from the 87th Precinct are looking for their friend's killer, they have no idea that this is just the beginning of a series of police murders. David Foster is the next victim, at the entrance of his apartment, where the killer has left behind a footprint at the crime scene. Steve Carella and Hank Bush question the family and wives of the deceased, as well as some suspects, but to no avail. A few nights later the unknown killer ambushes and murders Det. Hank Bush. Bush fought back however and shot and wounded the murderer. Steve Carella fears he will be the next target if he fails to stop him. When Carella is leaving the precinct, he finds a reporter, Savage, waiting for him. He asks Carella his thoughts on who the killer might be, stating that everything is off the record. Carella reveals that - due to the evidence collected from Bush's murder - the police now knows certain attributes of the killer, i.e. weight, profession, and build. Carella leaves telling Savage that he is going on a date with his girlfriend, Teddy. The next day we find out that Savage has published the conversation between him and Carella, including Teddy's name and address. When Carella finds this out he rushes to Teddy's apartment, hoping the killer is not already there. When Carella arrives at Teddy's apartment he hears shouting and cursing coming from inside. With his .38 in hand, Carella enters Teddy's room and is immediately faced with a man aiming a .45 right at him. Carella drops to the floor the instant he enters the room and shoots the man holding the .45 twice in the thigh. After making sure Teddy is okay, Carella interrogates the man, finding out that his name is Paul Mercer and that he was the murderer of all three cops. After further interrogation it is discovered that Alice Bush was behind the whole plot; she had convinced a previously unknown man named Paul Mercer to commit the murders. Apparently she had promised him her affections once he had killed off her husband. In the end, both are sentenced to death for their crimes and Det. Carella marries his girlfriend, Teddy Franklin."
1169,Bare Bones,crime," In the Charlotte summer heat, Dr Brennan has to identify a newborn skeleton in a wood stove that was probably born to the daughter of an acquaintance of her. Victims of a sports plane crash may be drug runners. And mixed animal-human bones in a derelict outhouse are a mystery discovered by her ex-husband's dog, Boyd. More puzzling, the drug runners and the animal (mostly bear) bones seem to be connected in a blatant CITES violation - the market for CITES animals and parts thereof being as hot as the drug market."
1170,The Big Kill,crime," Drinking at a seedy bar on a rainy night, Hammer notices a man come in with an infant. The man, named Decker, cries as he kisses the infant goodbye, then walks out in the rain to be shot to death. Hammer shoots the assailant as he searches Decker's body. The driver of the getaway car runs over the man Hammer shot to ensure that he won't talk. Hammer takes care of the infant and vows revenge on the person behind such a deed. Hammer's trail of vengeance leads him to hostile encounters with his police friend Pat Chambers, the District Attorney and his stooges as well as beatings, assassination attempts, and torture from gangsters that Hammer reciprocates in an eye for an eye fashion. Hammer also has loving encounters with two women he meets on his quest. Marsha is a former Hollywood Actress who was beaten by Decker when he robbed her flat. Ellen is the rich daughter of a horse breeder who works for the D.A.."
1171,And Then You Die,crime," Aurelio Zen is back, but nobody's supposed to know it...After months in hospital recovering from a bomb attack on his car, Zen is lying low under a false name at a beach resort on the Tuscan coast, waiting to testify in an imminent high profile Mafia trial. He has clear instructions: to sit back and enjoy the classic Italian beach holiday. But Zen is getting restless, despite a developing romance with a mysterious and alluring occupant of a nearby sunbed, as an alarming number of people seem to be dropping dead around him. Abruptly, the pleasant monotony of beach life is cut short as the word comes and he finds himself transported to a remote and strange world far from home...where he belatedly comes to appreciate both the reach of those who want him dead and that the corpses were all supposed to be his. As ever in the Zen chronicles, the real story turns out to be much more complex. Confronted by an unexpected and unconsidered adversary, he resolves the immediate situation at the cost of involving his new girlfriend in a plot to dispose of an inconvenient corpse."
1172,Dead Right,crime," On a rainy night in Eastvale, a teenager is found in an alley, smashed over the head with a bottle and then kicked to death. At first it looks like a typical after-hours pub fight gone terribly wrong, but Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and Detective Constable Susan Gay quickly learn that the victim, Jason Fox, was a member of a white power organization known as the Albion League. Football-mad Jason, it seems, was very good at his office job–bright, energetic, quick to learn–but was let go because of his racist views. As Banks follows the leads, he comes up with a number of possible suspects: the Pakistani youths Jason had insulted earlier in an Eastvale pub; Jason’s business partner, Mark Wood, and his shady friends; someone in the Albion League itself, someone who resented Jason’s growing power and influence. Or are things even more sinister than they appear? The investigation takes a surprising twist when Banks is mysteriously summoned to Amsterdam, where he is introduced to the bizarre world of cyber-Nazis on the Internet. As the detectives struggle to solve the mystery of Jason’s death, they also battle their own problems. Susan finds herself in a puzzling relationship with a fellow DC, and tensions that have been brewing for some time between Banks and his wife Sandra finally come to a head. Banks also has to face the challenge of working with Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle, a high-flyer who favours a hands-on approach to the job, and who is more concerned with appearances than he is with truth. Just when everything seems cut-and-dried, Banks discovers something that turns the case on its head. Something that might cost him his job."
1173,Three Act Tragedy,crime," When a clergyman dies at a dinner party thrown by stage actor Sir Charles Cartwright, it is thought by nearly everyone (Poirot included) to be an accidental death. Shortly afterwards, however, a second death in suspiciously similar circumstances and with many of the same people present puts both Poirot and a team of sleuths on the trail of a poisoner whose motive is not clear. The solution to this mystery is one of Christie's classic pieces of misdirection and relies on a plot device which has been widely imitated. Poirot reveals that the first murder - in which the murderer could not have predicted who would get the poisoned glass and had no motive to kill the eventual victim - had only been a ""dress rehearsal"" for the second murder."
1174,Sad Cypress,crime," The novel is written in three parts: in the first place an account, largely from the perspective of the subsequent defendant, Elinor Carlisle, of the death of her aunt, Laura Welman, and the subsequent death of the victim, Mary Gerrard; secondly an account of Poirot's investigation; and, thirdly, a sequence in court, again mainly from Elinor's dazed perspective. In the first part, distant cousins Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are happily engaged to be married when they receive an anonymous letter claiming that someone is ""sucking up"" to their wealthy aunt, Laura Welman, from whom Elinor and Roddy expect to inherit a sizeable fortune. Elinor immediately suspects Mary Gerrard, the lodgekeeper's daughter, to whom their aunt has taken a considerable liking. They go down to visit their aunt: partly to see her and partly to protect their interests. Mrs. Welman is helpless after a stroke and speaks of a desire to die, most notably to Peter Lord, her physician. After a second stroke, she asks Elinor to ask the family solicitor to prepare a will under which it is clear that Mary is to be a beneficiary. Roddy has fallen in love with Mary, provoking Elinor's jealousy. Mrs. Welman dies intestate during the night and her estate goes to Elinor outright as her only surviving blood relative. Subsequently, Elinor releases Roddy from the engagement and makes moves to settle money on him (which he refuses) and three thousand pounds on Mary (which Mary accepts). At an impromptu tea party thrown by Elinor for Mary and Nurse Hopkins, Mary dies of poison that had supposedly been put into a fish-paste sandwich. Elinor (who has been behaving suspiciously) is put on trial. Worse, when the body of her aunt is exhumed it is discovered that both women died of morphine poisoning. Elinor had easy access to morphine from a bottle that apparently went missing from Nurse Hopkins’s bag. In the second part of the novel, Poirot is persuaded to investigate the case by Peter Lord, who is in love with Elinor and wants her to be acquitted at all costs. Poirot's investigation focuses on a small number of elements. Was the poison in the sandwiches, which everyone ate, or something else, such as the tea that was prepared by Nurse Hopkins and drunk by only Mary and herself? What is the secret of Mary Gerrard's birth, which everyone seems so keen to conceal? Is there any significance in the scratch of a thorn on Nurse Hopkins's wrist? Is Peter Lord right to draw Poirot's attention to evidence that someone watching through the window might have poisoned the sandwich, thinking that it would be eaten by Elinor? In the third part of the novel, the case appears to go badly for Elinor, until her Defence unveils three theories that might exonerate her. The first (that Mary committed suicide) is difficult for anyone to really believe, and the second (Peter Lord's theory of the killer outside the window) is unconvincing. But the third theory is Poirot's. A torn pharmaceutical label that the Prosecution supposed to have held morphine hydrochloride, the poison, had in fact held apomorphine hydrochloride, an emetic. This was revealed because on an ampoule, the M in Morphine would be capital; Poirot finds a lowercase M&nbsp;– thus it isn't morphine. The capitalized prefix ""Apo"" had been carefully torn off. Nurse Hopkins had injected herself with this emetic, apomorphine, in order to vomit the poison that she had ingested in the tea, which explains her quick departure from the table as soon as the tea was consumed that fateful day. Her claim to have scratched herself on a thorn is disproved when it is revealed that the rose tree in question was a thornless variety: Zephyrine drouhin. If the means were simple, the motive is complex. Mary Gerrard is not the daughter of Eliza and Bob Gerrard. Instead—as Poirot has discovered from Nurse Hopkins in the course of the investigation—she is the illegitimate daughter of Laura Welman and Sir Lewis Rycroft, which made her the heiress to Mrs. Welman's estate since she was actually a closer relative than Elinor. When Nurse Hopkins encouraged Mary to write a will, Mary was prompted to name as beneficiary the woman that she supposed to be her aunt, Mary Riley (Eliza Gerrard's sister), in New Zealand. Mary Riley's married name is Mary Draper. Mary Draper is none other than Nurse Hopkins as two witnesses of the defence (Amelia Mary Sedley and Edward John Marshall, both from New Zealand), confirm in court. Poirot ends the novel by rebuking Peter Lord for his clumsy efforts to implicate the hypothetical killer outside the window. He has planted evidence and led Poirot to it in a desperate bid to free Elinor. Lord's momentary embarrassment is presumably alleviated by Poirot's assurance that it is to him, and not to her former love Roddy, that Elinor is now likely to become married."
1175,A Murder is Announced,crime," A strange notice appears in the morning paper of a perfectly ordinary small English village, Chipping Cleghorn: ""A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends accept this, the only intimation."" This apparently comes as a great surprise to Letitia Blacklock, the owner of Little Paddocks, as she has no idea what the notice means; she didn't place it and none of her companions knows more than she. Miss Blacklock decides to take it in her stride and prepares herself to have guests that evening. Naturally, the villagers are intrigued by this notice, and several of them appear on the doorstep with awkward reasons but a definite interest. As the clock strikes 6:30, the lights go out and a door swings open, revealing a man with a blinding torch. In a heavily accented voice, the man demands they ""Stick 'em up!"" Most of the guests do so, believing it to be part of a game. The game ends when shots are fired into the room. The door slams shut, and panic takes hold: in short order, it's discovered that the fuses are blown, the gunman has been shot, and Ms. Blacklock's ear is bleeding, apparently from a bullet's near-miss. The most curious thing of all is the gunman: he is recognized by Dora Bunner (an old friend of Letitia's, affectionately known as ""Bunny,"" who lives at Little Paddocks as her companion) as Rudi Scherz, the receptionist at a local spa, who had asked Letitia for money just a few short days ago. The police are called in. All clues suggest that the case is merely a strange suicide or accidental death, but Inspector Craddock is uneasy about both possibilities. As luck would have it, Miss Marple is a guest at the very same spa where Rudi Scherz was employed. Craddock is advised to involve her in the case, and the two commence working together. At the spa, it emerges that Rudi has a criminal background, but petty theft and forgery rather than any more serious crime. His girlfriend, a waitress at the spa, however, reveals that he had been paid to appear as the holdup man; he believed it was all ""a silly English joke"", and was clearly not planning on being shot at. With this new knowledge, Craddock returns to Chipping Cleghorn. Miss Marple, not uncoincidentally, is the godmother of the local vicar's wife, and decides to stay with her. The first step is to establish a motive for Scherz's attack on Miss Blacklock. This presents a problem: Letitia has no known enemies. She worked for a successful financier (Randall Goedler) and has done quite well for herself but is not herself wealthy. She does not lead a lavish life and, aside from her house, she has only enough to live on. However, she may shortly come into a great deal of money; Randall Goedler's estate passed to his wife, Belle, when he died. Belle is frail, and is now very near death. When Belle dies, Miss Blacklock inherits everything. If, however, she predeceases Belle, the estate goes to the mysterious ""Pip"" and ""Emma"", children of Randall's estranged sister, Sonia. No one knows where these two are, much less what they look like. Inspector Craddock discovers oil on the hinges of a door into the parlour (where the shooting took place) thought to be unused, and Bunny mentions that until quite recently there had been a table placed against the door. Inspector Craddock travels to Scotland to meet Belle; she mentions that Letitia had a beloved sister, Charlotte, who was born with a goiter. Their father, an old-fashioned doctor, tried unsuccessfully to treat Charlotte, but she only withdrew further into herself as her goiter got worse. Their father died shortly before World War II, and Letitia gave up her job with Goedler and took her sister to Switzerland for the necessary surgery to repair the defect. The two sisters waited out the war in the Swiss countryside, but before it was over, Charlotte died very suddenly. Letitia returned to England shortly thereafter. Miss Marple takes tea with Bunny during her shopping trip with Letitia, and Bunny reveals several details about the case: she talks about the recently oiled door she found with the Inspector; she's sure that Patrick Simmons, a young cousin of Letitia's who, with his sister Julia, is also staying at Little Paddocks, is not as he appears; and, most tellingly, she's absolutely positive there was a different lamp in the room on the night of the murder (the one with the shepherdess and not with the shepherd) than there was now. Their tête-à-tête is interrupted, however, as Letitia arrives, and she and Bunny resume their shopping. That evening, Letitia arranges a birthday party for Bunny, complete with almost everyone who was at the house when Rudy Scherz was kills; and she asks Mitzi to make her special cake, which Patrick has nicknamed ""Delicious Death"". This was while post-war austerity rationing was in effect — butter and eggs were hard to come by even in a rural community, and the chocolate and raisins used in the cake were very difficult to get. A box of chocolates is also a present. Bunny loves chocolate but it gives her a headachek and she can't find the aspirin she bought. She takes some of Letitia's aspirin instead, lies down for a nap - and dies. Miss Marple visits Ms. Blacklock, who mourns Bunny and starts crying. Miss Marple asks to see photo albums which might contain pictures of Sonia Goedler, Pip and Emma's mother, but all photos of Sonia were taken out of the albums recently, although they were in place before the death of Rudi Scherz. Through deduction and re-enactment, Misses Hinchliffe and Murgatroyd (two spinster farmers who were also present at the time of the Scherz murder) figure out that Miss Murgatroyd could see who was in the room as she was standing behind the door when it swung open; she couldn't have seen Rudi as he was on the other side of the opened door, but she could see whose faces were illuminated by the torch beam. The two women conclude that the person who wasn't in the room (and therefore not seen by Miss Murgatroyd) could have sneaked out of the room when the lights went out and come around behind Rudi, and shot at him—and Miss Blacklock. Just as she remembers the one person not in the room, the stationmaster calls to notify them that a dog has just arrived. As Miss Hinchliffe pulls away in her car, Miss Murgatroyd runs into the driveway, shouting ""She wasn't there!"" She is murdered while Miss Hinchliffe is away, and so does not reveal whom she did not see. Miss Hinchliffe returns and meets Miss Marple. They discover Murgatroyd's body, and a distraught Hinchliffe informs Miss Marple of Murgatroyd's cryptic statement. At Little Paddocks, Letitia receives a letter from the real Julia Simmons in Perth. She confronts ""Julia"" with the letter, and ""Julia"" reveals that she is actually Sonia's daughter, Emma Stamfordis, masquerading as Julia so that she could attempt to gain a portion of the inheritance from Letitia and let the real Julia spend time pursuing an acting career. Julia/Emma insists she is uninvolved in the assassination attempt—she was a crack shot during the French Resistance and would not have missed at that range, even in the dark—nor did she wish to prevent Letitia from inheriting Randall Goedler's estate. She had intended to ingratiate herself with Letitia and try to obtain a portion of the money, and once the murder took place, had no choice but to continue the masquerade. Phillipa Haymes (a boarder at Little Paddocks and a young widow) sneaks into the kitchen to speak to Julia/Emma, but Julia/Emma sends her away before finding out what Phillipa had to say. That night, the vicar's cat, Tiglath Pileser, knocks over a glass of water onto a frayed electrical cord, which causes the fuses to blow, and the final clue falls into place for Miss Marple. Inspector Craddock gathers everyone at Little Paddocks and launches the final inquest, which is interrupted by Mitzi, Letitia's foreign ""lady-help"", crying out that she saw Letitia commit the murder. The inspector does not believe her, and continues with his questioning. The inspector continues, and quickly insinuates that Edmund Swettenham who, with his widowed mother, was also present at the shooting, is in fact Pip. However, Phillipa comes forward and confesses that she is in fact Pip; Inspector Craddock then accuses Edmund of wanting to marry a rich wife in Phillipa by murdering Letitia. Edmund denies this and as he does so, a terrified scream is heard from the kitchen. Everyone rushes to the kitchen and discovers Miss Blacklock attempting to drown Mitzi in the sink. Miss Blacklock is arrested by a local constable who has been hiding in the kitchen with Miss Marple, who imitates Dora Bunner's voice to make Ms. Blacklock break down. Miss Marple explains it quite simply: it wasn't Charlotte who died in Switzerland, but Letitia. Charlotte, aware that Letitia was in line to inherit a fortune, posed as Letitia and returned to England; few people knew Charlotte, as she had been a recluse before leaving England, and a slight change in Letitia's appearance could be explained away to casual acquaintances by her time abroad during the war. She only needed to avoid people who knew Letitia well, such as Belle Goedler, and to always cover her throat with strings of pearls or beads to hide the scars from her goiter surgery. Bunny was one of the few people who remembered Charlotte as Charlotte, but by then, Charlotte was so lonely that she allowed her old school friend to move in. However, Rudi Scherz could have ruined everything: he worked at the Swiss hospital where Charlotte had been treated and could therefore identify Charlotte as herself. This is why Letitia/Charlotte hired him to come to Chipping Cleghorn and ""hold up"" a room full of guests: she blew the fuse by pouring water from a vase of flowers onto the frayed cord of a lamp, slipped out the second door, stood behind Rudi, and shot him. She then nicked her ear with a pair of nail scissors and rejoined the others, playing the part of perplexed host. Bunny became the next target because she, too, could reveal too much. Bunny had an eye for detail, but was prone to slip-ups: on several occasions, she referred to Ms. Blacklock as ""Lotty"" (short for ""Charlotte"") instead of ""Letty"" (short for ""Letitia""), and her conversation with Miss Marple in the cafe proved fatal. Miss Murgatroyd, the final victim, was also killed for guessing too much and for coming to the realization that Letitia/Charlotte was the one person, beside herself, whose face was not illuminated by Rudi Scherz's torch. Mitzi and Edmund had been persuaded by Miss Marple to play parts in tripping Charlotte Blacklock up; Miss Marple's plans were almost brought down when Phillipa admitted to being Pip, but Inspector Craddock thought fast enough to turn around and claim Edmund was after Phillipa's money. In the end, Phillipa/Pip and Julia/Emma inherit the Goedler fortune; Edmund and Phillipa/Pip get married and return to Chipping Cleghorn to live."
1176,A Presumption of Death,crime," Harriet has evacuated her family to the Wimseys' country house, Talboys (in Hertfordshire), taking her two children, along with the three children of her sister-in-law, Lady Mary, and Peter's venerable old housekeeper, Mrs. Trapp. Peter and Bunter are away on an undercover assignment. During a practice air raid, a young woman is murdered in the village, and Superintendent Kirk recruits Harriet to help solve the murder, partly because the police are too busy organizing all the changes necessitated by the war and partly because as the wife of a detective, and as a crime novelist, she is the best qualified person to find the murderer. The murdered girl had come from the city as a ""Land Girl"", to do agricultural work and help the war effort. She was killed in the village street during an air raid drill, while most people were underground, and much of the investigation turns on the issue of who had been, or could have been, outside the shelter when the murder was committed. Many of the witnesses—and some of the possible suspects—are RAF pilots stationed at a nearby air base, who need to be questioned in between going out on missions. Gerald, Lord Peter's favourite nephew, who was first seen a decade earlier as a precocious boy playing a major role in solving ""The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head"" and appeared as an Oxford undergraduate in Gaudy Night; is now an RAF combat pilot. At least one character introduces the possibility that the murder is directly linked to German espionage. While conducting the investigation and riding herd on the five children under her charge, Harriet worried about her husband, whose life is in danger. She regrets the lost years when she had put him off before finally agreeing to marry him. Wimsey, realizing that the Germans had broken the code which he had been using, devises a new one which is unbreakable because of being based on things only he and Harriet knew. His Secret Service colleague brings her Peter's message and she shows considerable skill in decoding it. Eventually, Bunter comes back from the continent—uncharacteristically dirty, scruffy and so exhausted that he lets Lady Peter wait upon him and put him to bed—and is followed some days later by Peter, who arrived by a different route. It is never revealed where exactly they had been. Lord Peter is retired from active service and, while still involved in intelligence issues, would not be sent again behind enemy lines. Being presented with Harriet's record of her investigations—which, as he notes, already solved most of the mystery—he is able to add the last missing pieces. Finding the solution for the mystery does not mean, however, just handing the perpetrator to the police; rather, solving the mystery arouses a complicated new problem involving legal, military, ethical and moral issues—which Lord Peter manages to neatly tie up."
1177,The Black Book,crime," Rebus finds himself with a number of problems on his hands. His wayward brother, Michael, has returned to Edinburgh in need of accommodation - with only the box-room in Rebus's flat available. While out drinking, he meets an old army friend, Deek Torrance, who admits to being involved in shady activities, telling Rebus he can get his hands on 'anything from a shag to a shooter'. Rebus spends so long out with Deek that he misses dinner with his girlfriend, Doctor Patience Aitken. Furious, she locks him out of her flat, forcing him to sleep in his own flat, on the sofa. At work, a new operation ('Moneybags') is started, aimed at putting one of 'Big Ger' Cafferty's money-lenders out of business. However, Rebus (who despises Cafferty) would rather go after the leader himself. Finally, Rebus's colleague Brian Holmes is put into a coma after being attacked from behind in the carpark of his favourite restaurant, the Elvis-themed Heartbreak Cafe. Rebus interviews Eddie Ringan, the Elvis enthusiast who owns the restaurant, and Pat Calder, Eddie's gay (and business) partner, but they prove to be of little help. Brian's girlfriend, Nell Stapleton, tells Rebus that Brian had a 'Black Book', a small notebook in which he kept interesting snippets of information. She suggests that Brian was attacked because of something in it. She also feels guilty, since she had argued with Brian just before he went to the restaurant. When Rebus recovers the book, one entry in particular catches his interest. Five years ago, a mysterious fire burned Edinburgh's seedy Central Hotel down. Although all the staff and customers were accounted for, an unidentified body was found in the remains. The entry in the black book talks about a poker game that took place on the night the fire happened. However, it is written in cryptic shorthand, with obscure nicknames instead of the real names of the poker players. Rebus's first action is to discuss the autopsy of the unidentified body with the pathologist Dr Curt, who still remembers it in grisly detail. The autopsy revealed that the deceased had been shot through the heart, as well as having suffered a broken arm sometime in the past. Meanwhile, Operation 'Moneybags' is set to get into swing, with Rebus supervising one of the surveillance teams. Under his command is Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke, at this time a new recruit to the force. Rebus turns to an old friend of his, Matthew Vanderhyde, an elderly blind man who helped him in Hide and Seek. In the 1950s, Vanderhyde used to go to the Central Hotel for rallies for Sword and Shield, a hardline offshoot of the Scottish National Party. He was there the night it burned down, having a drink with a friend, Aengus Gibson, also known as 'Black Aengus'. Heir to the Gibson brewing business, Aengus was a wild drunk at the time of the fire, but has since reformed. He was not on the list of people who was at the hotel due to his family's influence. The day after a night of arguments with Michael and the students, Rebus discusses Cafferty with Siobhan. Siobhan mentions the 'Bru-head Brothers', Tam and Eck Robertson, a pair of criminals who disappeared at around the same time as the Central fire. Rebus then realises that the one of the names in the Black Book refers to them, and another to Cafferty himself. When Rebus returns home, he receives grim news about his brother, who has just been found hanging by his legs from the Forth Rail Bridge. Michael is in shock and has to be taken to hospital. Fearing for the safety of his brother, Rebus decides that he needs serious protection. Remembering Deek Torrance's words 'anything from a shag to a shooter', Rebus decides to get in touch with his old friend. The following day, while overseeing the dull minutae of the Operation Moneybags surveillance, Rebus and Siobhan hear welcome news - Brian Holmes has recovered consciousness. While he cannot remember anything about his assailant, he does tell Rebus that the final name in the Black Book refers to Eddie Ringan, the chef of the Heartbreak Cafe, who told Brian about the poker game. Rebus returns to the Heartbreak Cafe, and demands to know what happened on the night of the fire. He knows that Eddie was moonlighting at the Central, which is why he never appeared on the list of people who were there. Eddie, an alcoholic, flies into a drunken rage, hurting his assistant Willie in the process. But as Rebus turns to leave, Eddie suggests visiting a pub in Cowdenbeath. Armed with two sketches of the Robertson brothers as they might appear today, Rebus visits several Cowdenbeath pubs, asking customers if they recognise them. He has little luck, although a drunk old gambler claims he recognises one of the pictures, causing Rebus to suspect that one of the brothers may be working as a bookmaker. The next day, Rebus learns that Eddie has disappeared after a night out. Pat Calder insists to Rebus that Eddie always returns home safely, despite his alcohol problem. Willie, the assistant chef, is of little help. Rebus suspects that Eddie may have been warned off, or worse. Meanwhile, Rebus's superiors are annoyed at the effort he is putting into the Central Hotel case. Undaunted, Rebus approaches Aengus Gibson, who admits being at the hotel on the night of the fire with Vanderhyde, but insists that he left hours before the fire actually began. Rebus, however, is suspicious. Later that night, Rebus meets up with Deek Torrance, and arranges to buy a handgun from him. Chief Superintendent 'Farmer' Watson demands an explanation for Rebus's continued interest in the Central Fire, giving him twenty-four hours to come up with something concrete. Later that day, Rebus goes to Pat Calder and Eddie's flat to fill out an official missing person report. Calder reveals that Willie had cracked up trying to cope without Eddie, making a scene before leaving the restaurant. With few options left open to him, Rebus decides to talk to Morris Gerald Cafferty at his upmarket home in Duddingston. The two men's mutual loathing results in a tense confrontation. While Cafferty reveals relatively little, he does admit that the Robertson Brothers used to work for him as 'general employees', but left his service years ago. As Rebus leaves, he is certain that Cafferty was behind the attack on Michael. Meanwhile, Siobhan is out getting extra camera film for the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and walks past the Heartbreak Cafe. Smelling gas, she enters and discovers Eddie Ringan's body with the head inside the oven, an apparent suicide. Dr Curt's examination of Eddie's badly burned body turns up some suspicious findings. The deceased's liver was in good condition, even though Eddie was a persistent heavy drinker. There are also strange injuries inside the mouth. That night, Rebus meets with Deek Torrance in North Queensferry to buy the handgun, a Colt 45, which he hides in his car. Mulling over the cases, Rebus visits a Catholic church and confesses to the priest that he has bought a gun. The priest advises him to throw it into the sea. Rebus decides to do just that. Returning to St Leonards, Rebus is confronted by his immediate superior, Chief Inspector Lauderdale, who demands Rebus surrender his car keys. Rebus realises that his colleagues have been tipped off about the gun. But worse is to come, as the gun turns out to be the same one used in the Central Hotel shooting five years ago. Rebus is suspended from duty. After attending Eddie Ringan's funeral, Rebus has a suspicion of what happened. After checking the reservations book for the Heartbreak Cafe, he finds out that none of the customers remember Willie making a scene and storming out. His suspicions confirmed, Rebus goes to Eddie and Pat's flat, and finds the still living Eddie Ringan hiding there. He and Pat had rendered Willie unconscious by forcing alcohol down his throat, and used his body to stage a suicide attempt. Rebus arrests Eddie, but while taking him back to the station, stops in front of Cafferty's mansion. Eddie is clearly terrified of Cafferty, and admits that he helped burn down the Central Hotel, after a blood-splattered Aengus Gibson ran into the hotel kitchens. Siobhan, having checked the medical records of a Dundee hospital, reveals that Tam Robertson had broken an arm twelve years ago. The corpse found in the remains of the Central belonged to him. Rebus confronts Aengus Gibson, demanding to know what happened at the night of the fire, but is forced to leave by Aengus's father. Returning to Fife, Rebus visits a bookmaker owned by Eck Robertson, living under a false name. Eck says that Aengus shot Tam for cheating during the poker game. Back in Edinburgh, Aengus Gibson has committed suicide. When Rebus reads Aengus's journal, it becomes clear that he thought that he was about to be arrested for the murder of Tam Robertson. The journal also reveals that it was Cafferty who forced the gun into his hand, getting Aengus's fingerprints on it. After the shooting, Aengus went berserk, starting the fire to hide the evidence. Determined to trap Cafferty once and for all, Rebus uses his contacts to set up a sting operation, with child molester Andrew McPhail being used as the unwitting bait. Cafferty is caught red-handed attacking McPhail outside the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and is arrested. With Cafferty in jail, the police are able to take a closer look at his operation. A farm in the Borders is raided, where Cafferty used to personally execute his enemies. Deek Torrance is amongst those arrested there. In exchange for leniency, Eddie Ringan agrees to testify against Cafferty. In the final chapter, Rebus accuses Nell Stapleton of being the one who knocked Brian Holmes out. Although he doesn't have any evidence, he does note that she had a motive after the arguments she'd been having with Brian."
1178,Den Haag,crime," Den Haag is the faction (fact+fiction) which is based on the historical fact of the Korean Empire's credential three secret delegates at the Second Peace Conference at The Hague (Den Haag in Dutch) in 1907. This story mingles three different incidents crossing time and space. In 1907, at The Hague, Yi Jun, one of the three delegates died a mysterious death. In 2007, in Seoul, a 10 year old child died from an ill-defined brain disease. These two stories are linked together through the letter to the Vatican sent by a veiled priest called 'Q' and his activities. This novel call our of today to account what is the historical meaning of Japan-Korea Forced Annexation a hundred years ago: Who am I, what left behind 'a time of Japanese forced occupation' to me of the present time, and in confronting such historical problems, how to eliminate the legacy of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea which have been restricting liberty and pride of Korean even now."
1179,Suicide Hill,crime, The novel begins a psychiatrist's assessment recommending that Hopkins be immediately retired from duty with a full pension. Hopkins eludes compulsory retirement with attachment as LAPD liaison officer to an FBI bank robbery investigation. Hopkins then manipulates his way into robbery/homicide investigations. The novel's story line and characters twist and turn.
1180,Sea Change,crime," In his grittiest investigation to date, Jesse Stone hunts for the killer of a woman whose body washes up on shore. The woman turns out to be Florence “Flo” Horvath, of Miami, Florida. She was pushed off a boat, then run over; knocking her unconscious and causing her to drown. The investigation comes to a halt shortly after she is identified, until Jesse acquires a tape of Flo having sex with two men at the same time. He also discovers that Flo rented a boat before she was murdered, but that it was returned to the wrong place. During the investigation he is led to the yacht “The Lady Jane.” He questions the yacht owner Harrison Darnell, and the other occupants, who of course all deny knowing Flo. In an attempt to get more information, Jesse sneaks onto the yacht and finds a stack of sex tapes. He takes one and reviews it, and although it is sexual in nature, he does not find anything criminal. Later seventeen-year old Cathleen Holten comes to Chief Stone with accusations of rape. She claims that a man took her onto his yacht, The Lady Jane, forces her to strip for his friends and then rapes her in his cabin. Although, Jesse does not believe her, and the rape later proves to be consensual sex, he uses this opportunity to get a warrant and search the yacht. Having been there before he goes right for the video tapes and confiscates them. While reviewing them with Molly, she recognizes her daughter’s fifteen year old friend as one of the sex partners. Although Jesse now has the yacht owner for statutory rape, he continues to investigate, determined to get the murderer. However in the end he does have him and another man arrested for statutory rape. He next finds one of the men in Flo’s sex tape and discovers that the men in the tape were brothers. He reveals that it was Flo’s sisters that made the tape. He next interviews Flo’s sisters, twins Claudia and Corless. They tell Jesse they learned of Flo’s death from their friend Kimmie Young. They also tell him that they made the tape to make Flo’s boyfriend, Harrison Darnell, jealous. Jesse strikes up a partnership with Miami detective Kelly Cruz, and has her interview Flo’s parents and Kimmie. Although Flo’s parents seem harmless, Kimmie tells Cruz that she had no idea that Flo was dead. She later tells Cruz that Flo’s father raped her when she was fifteen and routinely had sex with all three of his daughters. Kelly Cruz also interviews Darnell’s private pilot and discovers that he flew her to Boston a few days before her murder. Finally Chief Stone discovers through Flo’s father's E-ZPass that he drove to Boston the week that she was murdered, although he denies the trip. After discovering this, Jesse flies down to Miami where he and Kelly Cruz confront him about the trip. His wife, in a drunken rage, accuses him of murdering their daughter and he confesses. Jesse later speculates that Flo’s father had her rent a boat, pushed her off of it, then returns it to the first place he sees, explaining why it had been returned to the wrong place. He responds that he did indeed argue with her on the boat, and push her off, but that she simply drowned unbeknownst to him. After he discovered she had died he denied the trip all together fearing that he would be accused of murder. Jesse later asks the twins why they said they learned of Flo’s death from Kimmie, because had they not said that he may have never suspected their father. They claim to not remember saying Kimmie. Jesse speculates that they may have subconsciously wanted their father caught. The twins also reveal that the sex tape was not made for Flo’s boyfriend, but for their father. It is this tape that causes him to fly into a jealous rage and drive up to Boston to murder her. Having all seen the tape, it causes the twins and their mother all to suspect that he murdered Flo."
1181,Murder Being Once Done,crime," A girl with no name, no possessions and no past, is found murdered in a vast, overgrown London cemetery. Wexford is in the capital for a rest on doctor's orders, but is drawn into the investigation when his nephew is given charge of the case."
1182,Ordeal by Innocence,crime," While serving a sentence for killing his foster mother – a crime he insisted he didn't commit – Jacko Argyle dies in prison. Two years later, the man who could have supported Jacko's alibi suddenly turns up; and the family must come to terms with the fact not only that one of them is the real murderer, but also that suspicion falls upon each of them. Christie's focus in this novel is upon the psychology of innocence, as the family members struggle with their suspicions of one another. The witness, Arthur Calgary, believes that, when he clears the name of their son, the family would be grateful. He fails to realise the implications of his information. However, once he does so, he is determined to help and to protect the innocent by finding the murderer. To be able to do so, he visits the retired local doctor, Dr MacMaster, to ask him about the now-cleared murderer, Jacko Argyle. Dr MacMaster states that he was surprised when Jacko killed his mother. Not because he thought that murder was outside Jacko's 'moral range', but because he thought Jacko would be too cowardly to kill somebody himself; that, if he wanted to murder somebody, he would egg on an accomplice to do his dirty work. Dr MacMaster says ""the kind of murder I'd have expected Jacko to do, if he did one, was the type where a couple of boys go out on a raid; then, when the police come after them, the Jackos say 'Biff him on the head, Bud. Let him have it. Shoot him down.' They're willing for murder, ready to incite to murder, but they've not got the nerve to do murder themselves with their own hands"". This description seems to be a reference to the Craig and Bentley case which had occurred in 1952."
1183,A Drink Before the War,crime," Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro receive a job from three state politicians, Sterling Mulkern, Jim Vurnan and Brian Paulson, to recover documents from a former cleaning lady, Jenna Angeline. Tracking Ms. Angeline to her sister's house outside Boston, they learn she has hidden the documents in a safe deposit box in a bank back in the city. Kenzie escorts Angeline to the bank, where she gives him one photo before being gunned down by Curtis Moore, a street enforcer for notorious gangster and pimp Marion Socia. The photo shows Socia with Paulson, who has stripped down to his socks and underwear. Angeline had only hidden one photo in the safe deposit box, and it is up to Kenzie and Gennaro to find the rest. The ensuing investigation takes the detectives from swanky Boston hotels to housing projects in the poorest ghettos of Dorchester. Kenzie wrestles with problems of race, class, urban violence, corruption, abuse, and love. A gang war erupts between Socia and his son Roland, who has taken his own gang independent, culminating in the bloodiest night of gang violence in Boston history. A street terrorism bill that would have curbed the violence is suspiciously stalled before coming to a vote. All these events are connected to the photographs, and as they pursue the evidence, Kenzie and Gennaro find themselves hunted by both sides. Eventually the detectives find the photos, and learn that Socia prostituted his young son with Angeline, Roland, to Paulson years ago, ironically leading the boy to become a stone-cold killer. Roland gains the upper hand in the war, and Socia demands the pictures back, hoping to blackmail Roland and save himself. At a meeting with Socia, Kenzie loses control and kills him. Releasing a photo to the press with Roland's face obscured, Paulson is disgraced, and a victorious Roland agrees not to come after Kenzie and Gennaro."
1184,Adam and Eve and Pinch Me,crime," A handsome con man with numerous aliases, including Jerry Leach and Jock Lewis, manipulates three vulnerable women into handing over large sums of money. After he supposedly dies in the Paddington train crash, they realise his deception and find themselves in serious debt. However, one of his many victims, ex-fiancée Minty, thinks she has seen his 'ghost' wandering around and begins carrying a knife so she can exact revenge on his 'spirit'..."
1185,The Seven Dials Mystery,crime," A house party is taking place at Chimneys which has been rented out by the Marquess of Caterham for two years to Sir Oswald Coote, a self-made millionaire and his wife. As well as the couple, there is a party of young people staying there, three girls and four young men. One of them, Gerald ""Gerry"" Wade, has a deserved reputation for sleeping in very late in the morning, much to the annoyance of Lady Coote. The six youngsters plan a joke on Gerald by buying eight alarm clocks and putting them in his room that night after he has fallen asleep but timed to go off at irregular intervals the next morning, starting at 6.30 am. The next morning, all the clocks having rung at the prescribed times but Wade not having stirred from his bed, it is discovered that the young man is dead in his bed, having drunk an overdose of chloral during the night. The group is shocked and Jimmy and Ronny agree to drive over to Deane Priory where Loraine Wade, Gerry's step-sister, lives and break the news to her. On the way, Ronny hints at something about Gerry but stops full at confiding in Jimmy. Returning to Chimneys and going to Gerry's room, Jimmy points out to Ronny that the alarm clocks have been arranged on the mantelpiece but there are only seven of them; one is missing. It is later found in a hedge, having been thrown from Gerry's window. Several days later, Lord Caterham retakes possession of Chimneys at the end of its two-year lease from the Cootes. The inquest has taken place with a verdict of ""Death by Misadventure"" but no explanation has been reached for the rearrangement of the clocks. His daughter Bundle is a friend of Bill Eversleigh's and puzzling over the matter she decides to write to him. Gerry Wade died in her room and pulling out a part of her writing desk she finds an unfinished letter from Gerry to Loraine dated the day before he died. In it he speaks of being ""awfully fit"" but ""so sleepy I can't keep my eyes open."" Most strangely, he asks her to ""forget what I said about that Seven Dials business."" More puzzled than ever, she decides to go to London to see Bill. On the way there, a man steps out of a hedge and into the road. Bundle misses him but he collapses anyway, muttering about ""Seven Dials..."" and ""Tell... Jimmy Thesiger."" The man dies. Bundle manages to get the body into the car and to a doctor where she is told that the car didn't hit the man&mdash;he was shot. A card on the body identifies the man as being Ronny Devereux and Bundle recalls that he also was one of the Cootes' house party. She returns to Chimneys and tells her father all that has happened and he tells her in turn that during his absence he received a visit from George Lomax, the Under-Secretary for State for Foreign Affairs who received a strange warning letter written from the Seven Dials district of London. The next day Bundle finally makes it to London and gets Jimmy's address from Bill. Going there, she meets Loraine Wade who has also called in to see Jimmy and breaks the news of Ronny's death to Jimmy. Shocked, he recounts Ronny's behaviour in the car on the way to see Loraine for the first time and she, in turn, tells the two of them that the incident that Gerry referred to in his last letter to her was a list of names and dates she found with an address in Seven Dials on it when she accidentally opened one of her late half-brother's letters. He had then hinted to her of some secret society with reference to the Mafia. The three wonder if Gerry's death was murder and the removal of one of the alarm clocks, leaving seven dials, was a warning signal. Jimmy knows that Gerry was connected in some way with the Foreign Office and security services. Bundle tells the other two of the warning letter that George Lomax received and that he is holding a house party the next week at his house at Wyvern Abbey and Jimmy and Bundle decide to get themselves an invitation and join in. Bundle decides to go and see Superintendent Battle at Scotland Yard about the matter, but he proves unhelpful, aside hinting that Bill Eversleigh knows something about Seven Dials. The next evening, Bundle meets Bill for a night out and asks him what he knows. He tells her that Seven Dials is a seedy nightclub and gambling den and Bundle insists he takes her there. In the club, Bundle recognises the doorman as being Alfred, a former footman from Chimneys. The next day, after making arrangements through family connections to get into George Lomax’s party, Bundle returns to the Seven Dials club and questions Alfred as to why he left Chimneys. He tells her that the Cootes had as a guest a Russian gentleman called Mosgorovsky who offered him three times his footman's salary to leave his previous employment and work at the club. Bundle forces the scared man to show her round and he eventually takes her into a secret room in which there is a table and seven chairs. She forces Alfred to hide her in a cupboard in the room and several hours later is able to witness from her place of concealment a strange meeting as five people gather. They wear hoods over their evening wear with eye slits and clock faces on the hoods, each clock showing a different time between one o'clock and six o'clock and their accents reveal their different nationalities. One of the sinister group is a woman with a mole on her exposed shoulder blade. They talk of the absent Number Two and one of the figures complains about the always-missing Number Seven. They also talk of Lomax's party at Wyvern Abbey where a German called Eberhard will be present with a valuable invention. They talk of plans to divert suspicion from the inquest on Ronny Devereux and mention Bauer, the footman at Chimneys as being in their pay. The meeting over, the group leaves and Alfred frees Bundle from her watching place. The next day Bundle tells Jimmy of the meeting. They suspect Bauer of murdering Gerry and Jimmy tells Bundle that Eberhard has invented a formula which could make wire as strong as steel, revolutionising airplane manufacturing. The German government turned the invention down and the meeting at Wyvern Abbey is for a possible sale to the British, represented by Sir Stanley Digby, the Air Minister. The next Friday, Bundle and Jimmy arrive at Wyvern Abbey and are introduced to the other guests including the Cootes, Sir Stanley Digby, Terence O'Rourke and the beautiful Hungarian Countess Radzky. Bundle is further surprised to see Superintendent Battle there. He tells her that he is at Wyvern to ""keep an eye on things"". Bill Eversleigh also turns up. Jimmy has told Bill what Bundle told him of the meeting of the Seven Dials. Realising that Sir Stanley is only going to be staying one night at Wyvern, they work out that any theft of the formula is going to be attempted that night and Jimmy and Bill agree to keep two separate watches, changing over at 3.00 am, both using a pistol that Jimmy has brought with him. At 2.00 am Jimmy, on the first watch in an alcove in the hallway, thinks he hears a noise coming from the library, a room that leads on to the terrace. He finds nothing in the room and continues his watch from there. Bundle, previously told by Jimmy and Bill that there was no part in their plans for her, had meekly acquiesced but instead had changed her clothes into something more suitable, climbed down the ivy outside her room and had promptly run into Superintendent Battle, also on his own watch outside the house. He persuades her to go back. She does so but goes to check on Jimmy in his alcove. Finding that he has gone, and not knowing that he has moved to the library, she goes to Bill's bedroom but finds that she has made a mistake and it is the Countess's room but the Hungarian lady is also missing. Her puzzlement is interrupted by the noises of a tremendous struggle coming from the library and two gunshots. This noise also attracts the attention of Loraine Wade who has arrived at Wyvern at the dead of night. A few moments before the commotion, a paper packet lands at her feet as she walks along the darkened terrace. She picks it up and sees a man climbing down the ivy from above her. She turns and runs, almost straight into Battle whose questions are interrupted by the fight in the library. Running there, they find Jimmy unconscious and shot through his right arm. The household is woken by the noise and pours into the room. Jimmy comes round and tells how he fought the man who climbed down the ivy. They were both armed and each fired a shot. Sir Stanley rushes back to check his room but finds that the formula has gone. Battle is not perturbed as Loraine still holds the dropped packet and is able to return its precious contents. Sir Oswald Coote raises suspicions when he comes in from the terrace, having supposedly been on a late-night walk and having seen no one suspicious but having found the pistol of the escaped man on the lawn. The Countess is also found in the room, unconscious behind a screen. She tells a story of coming down for a book to read, being unable to sleep, and hearing what turned out to be Jimmy’s approach, hid from fear of him being a burglar. She passed out when the fight happened. Bill gallantly offers to help her to her room and Bundle suddenly spots a mole on the Countess's shoulder through her negligee: she is a member of the Seven Dials! She tells Battle the whole story of her spying on the association and the role the Countess plays and is told to leave matters alone. The next morning, Battle searches the scenes of the crime and finds the place where the assailant's pistol landed when it was thrown onto the lawn, only one set of footprints leading to this point&mdash;Sir Oswald's&mdash;and a charred, left-handed glove with marks of teeth in the fireplace. He theorises that the thief threw the gun onto the lawn from the terrace and then climbed back into the house via the ivy. Bundle hears news from Chimneys that the footman Bauer is missing and Sir Oswald leaps to the conclusion that he is their man. Before the house party breaks up, Jimmy asks Loraine to keep an eye on Bundle and make sure she doesn't get herself into danger by investigating on her own any more while he integrates himself with Lady Coote and gets an invitation to their new house in Letherbury, wanting to investigate Sir Oswald further, suspecting him of being the missing Number Seven from the Seven Dials. At Letherbury, Jimmy looks through Sir Oswald's study in the dead of night, is almost caught by Rupert Bateman but manages to talk his way out of the situation. The next day Loraine and Bundle arrive, their car having ""broken down"" a short distance away, and Jimmy is able to tell them that he has found no evidence that Sir Oswald is Number Seven. Several days later, Bill turns up at Jimmy's London flat. Ronny Devereux's executors have sent him a letter that Ronny left for Bill, should anything happen to him, and he finds its contents incredible. A short time later, Jimmy rings up Bundle and Loraine who are at Chimneys and tells the girls to meet him and Bill at the Seven Dials club, Bill's story being ""the biggest scoop of the century."" The two girls get their first and Bundle frightens Alfred away by telling him the police are after him. Jimmy arrives, having left Bill outside in the car and upon his request, Bundle shows him the secret room where the Seven Dials meet. Loraine interrupts them: something is wrong with Bill. In the car, they find him unconscious and take him into the club. Jimmy runs off to get a doctor and Bundle goes round the club looking for brandy for Bill but someone knocks her unconscious. She comes round in Bill's arms and Bundle is pleasantly surprised to hear words of love from him. They are interrupted by Mr Mosgorovsky who then takes them into an emergency meeting of the Seven Dials. Number Seven is there and reveals himself: it is Superintendent Battle. He tells Bundle that the Seven Dials is not an association of criminals but instead is a group of criminal-catchers and people who do secret service work for their country. Among the group, Mr Mosgorovsky is a member, Gerry Wade and Ronny Devereux were, the Countess having now taken Gerry's place but her real identity is the American actress, Babe St Maur. To Bundle's shock, another member of the association is Bill Eversleigh but that shock is increased when Battle tells her that the association has at last succeeded in getting their main target, an international criminal whose stock trade is the theft of secret formulae: Jimmy Thesiger who was arrested that afternoon together with his accomplice, Loraine Wade. Battle explains that Jimmy killed Gerry Wade when he got onto Jimmy's track. Ronny took the eighth clock from the dead man's room in an attempt to see if anyone reacted to there being ""seven dials"". Bauer was put into Chimneys by the Seven Dials to keep an eye on things but Jimmy was too clever for him. Ronny Devereux was killed when he started to get too close to the truth and the latter's last words were not a warning to Jimmy about the Seven Dials but the other way round. At Wyvern Abbey, there was no second man stealing the formula. Jimmy climbed up the ivy to Sir Stanley Digby's room, threw the formula down to Loraine, climbed back down the ivy and into the library where he staged the fight, shot himself in his right arm and threw the second pistol onto the lawn. As his right arm was disabled and he was right-handed he had to dispose of his left-handed glove, using his teeth hence the marks, in the fire. Bill's story of the papers Ronny left him were a fabrication to get Jimmy into the open. Jimmy gave Bill a drugged drink in his flat but it was not drunk. Bill feigned unconsciousness in the car outside the Seven Dials club. Jimmy never went for a doctor but hid himself in the club and it was he who knocked Bundle unconscious. His plan was to leave Bill and Bundle there as a ""shock"" to the then-unknown Number Seven. Bundle is offered the empty place in the Seven Dials and Bill also proposes to her. Lord Caterham is delighted: Bill is a golfer and he now has someone else to play with!"
1186,Simisola,crime," Dr Raymond Akande is Wexford's new GP and one of the few Black British people in Kingsmarkham. When Akande's daughter goes missing, and a body of a young black woman is found, Wexford is confronted by his own prejudices."
1187,The House of Silk,crime," The House of Silk begins with a brief, personal recounting of events by Watson, much like the Study in Scarlet by the original author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The reader is informed of the particulars regarding the first meeting of Watson and Holmes, including the circumstances of the Afghan War and a mention of the case that was ""too shocking to be revealed until now."" The client of The Flat Cap case is introduced as a man by the name of Edmund Carstairs, an art dealer whose paintings were destroyed by a gang of Irish robbers. After the murder of the man's own client, and a failure on the part of a hired detective, he turns to Sherlock Holmes who employs the aid of the Baker Street Irregulars, and upon locating the hotel wherein the supposed Keelan O'Donaghue (one of the leaders of the gang) is currently staying, one of the newest recruit of the Irregulars, a boy named Ross, is stationed to wait outside until Holmes, Watson, and Mr. Carstairs arrive. When the group finally arrives, Ross appears inexplicably horror-stricken and is later found brutally murdered by thugs of the House of Silk. It is revealed that Mrs. Carstairs is the true person responsible for The Flat Cap case, being the second leader of the Irish gang. When Holmes makes inroads with the House of Silk case, he is framed for murder and sent to prison. Meanwhile, Watson meets with Professor Moriarty, who provides him a key to free Holmes from prison, for fear that the detective will be assassinated. Professor Moriarty's motives are uncertain, except that he wishes Holmes to rid the world of the House of Silk. When Watson arrives at the prison, he discovers Holmes has escaped of his own accord, disguised as an aide to the prison doctor he once had as a client. Various leads draw them to a traveling carnival, where they are ambushed, albeit saved by Lestrade. The party (Holmes, Watson, Lestrade) makes their way to the ""House of Silk"", a club operated by a pastor and his wife who also govern a boy's orphanage and rent the boys to wealthy customers. The members are promptly rounded up by the Scotland Yard. Despite their arrests, however, the case does not come to trial, due to a royal family member having been purportedly involved."
1188,The Fashion in Shrouds,crime," Campion asks his sister, fashion designer Valentine Ferris, to introduce him to her best friend and most important client, Georgia Wells, a famous actress. Campion has been investigating the disappearance of Georgia's former fiance, barrister Richard Portland-Smith, three years previously. Now Campion has found Portland-Smith's skeleton. Campion meets Georgia and her entourage, including her unpleasant, possibly dangerous husband Raymond Ramillies, at the unveiling of the costumes Val has made for Georgia's new play. He also meets Alan Dell, the man Val is in love with, who admits to an admiration for Georgia. The event ends in a fashion disaster when it emerges that the design for the main dress has been leaked and copied. The house model Caroline Adamson, chosen for her resemblance to Georgia, is responsible. Georgia knows about Portland-Smith's death but she is shocked when Campion tells her it was suicide, not murder - she asks Dell to drive her home instead of her husband Ramillies. Several weeks later, Val tells Campion that Georgia has stolen Dell from her. Besides admitting that she wants Georgia dead, she is worried that Ramillies has been behaving unpredictably and might attack Dell. Then Lady Amanda Fitton (Sweet Danger), who now works as an engineer at Dell's aircraft factory, asks for Campion's help to find out why Dell is neglecting his work. Campion takes her to a restaurant where they see Dell with Georgia. Ramillies arrives with Caroline Adamson, dressed up exactly like Georgia, to provoke a confrontation. But the situation is miraculously defused by various friends of those concerned - stage-managed by Georgia's manager, Ferdie Paul. To distract Dell from the embarrassing situation, Amanda tells him she is engaged to Campion - to Campion's surprise. Ramillies is due to return to Ulangi, the African colony of which he is governor, in a gold-painted plane, a gift to a local ruler. He is leaving from Caesar's Court, a luxury resort outside London, run by Gaiogi Laminoff. Ramilies disappears after an official dinner and does not return until the afternoon of the next day - he says he has been drinking all night. When the flight is due to take off, he cannot be found - he is eventually found dead in the plane. The officials attempt to smooth over his death and a doctor is ready to give a certificate that he died of natural causes, but then Georgia mentions that she gave him a painkiller to take which Val had given her for herself. When a post mortem is carried out there is no evidence of unnatural death. However, the rumor that Val tried to poison Georgia because they fell out over Alan Dell becomes widespread society gossip. Caroline Adamson contacts Campion with information but fails to turn up for their appointment. Then Stanislaus Oates calls Campion in to Scotland Yard - Caroline has been stabbed and her body dumped in the countryside. Sinclair, Georgia's young son, tells Campion and Amanda that Ramillies was actually terrified of flying, but that he knew of an injection which would make him feel ill for four hours, then feel fine for the flight. Campion thinks this is how he was killed. As the police close in on Val because of the painkiller story, Campion tracks down the men who dumped Caroline's body. They run a restaurant which provides accommodation for various criminal activities - they are not saying who killed Caroline and they have destroyed all the evidence. Amanda gives a party to celebrate breaking off her engagement to Campion - she is calm about it, but he seems upset. Campion tells everybody what he has found out - that Portland-Smith was blackmailed by Caroline and an accomplice until he killed himself, that Ramillies was given an unknown drug which killed him, and that Caroline was murdered when she tried to blackmail her former accomplice. Then he argues with Amanda, throws her in the river, and leaves. Alan Dell apologises to Val and asks her to marry him - she accepts. Campion visits Ferdie Paul and explains that the crimes were carried out for Georgia's sake. Ferdie Paul leaves for Caesar's Court to confront Gaiogi Laminoff, who he says is Georgia's father. A message asks Campion to follow, but on the way he is knocked out and taken to Amanda's cottage where he is placed with his head in the gas oven to fake his suicide. But at the vital moment, the police burst in - Campion has arranged in advance for them to follow him. Ferdie Paul is revealed as the man who tried to kill him, and he was also responsible for the other deaths. Campion recovers. Now that the fake engagement is over, Amanda asks for her ring back - Campion says he will marry her if she wants."
1189,Fingersmith,crime," Sue Trinder, an orphan raised in 'a Fagin-like den of thieves' by her adoptive mother, Mrs. Sucksby, is sent to help Richard 'Gentleman' Rivers seduce a wealthy heiress. Posing as a maid, Sue is to gain the trust of the lady, Maud Lilly, and eventually persuade her to elope with Gentleman. Once they are married, Gentleman plans to commit Maud to a madhouse and claim her fortune for himself. Sue travels to Briar, Maud's secluded home in the country, where she lives a sheltered life under the care of her uncle, Christopher Lilly. Like Sue, Maud was orphaned at birth; her mother died in a mental asylum, and she has never known her father. Her uncle uses her as a secretary to assist him in compiling an Index of Erotica, and keeps her to the house, working with him in the silence of his library. Sue and Maud forge an unlikely friendship, which develops into a mutual physical passion; after a time, Sue realizes she has fallen in love with Maud, and begins to regret her involvement in Gentleman's plot. Deeply distressed, but feeling she has no choice, Sue persuades Maud to marry Gentleman, and the trio flee from Briar to a nearby church, where Maud and Gentleman are hastily married in a midnight ceremony. Making a temporary home in a local cottage, and telling Maud they are simply waiting for their affairs to be brought to order in London, Gentleman and a reluctant Sue make arrangements for Maud to be committed to an asylum for the insane; her health has already waned as a result of the shock of leaving her quiet life at Briar, to Gentleman's delight. After a week, he and Sue escort an oblivious Maud to the asylum in a closed carriage. However, the doctors apprehend Sue on arrival, and from the cold reactions of Gentleman and the seemingly innocent Maud, Sue guesses that it is she who has been conned: ""That bitch knew everything. She had been in on it from the start."" In the second part of the novel, Maud takes over the narrative. She describes her early life being raised by the nurses in the mental asylum where her mother died, and the sudden appearance of her uncle when she was eleven, who arrives to take her to Briar to be his secretary. Her induction into his rigid way of life is brutal; Maud is made to wear gloves constantly to preserve the surfaces of the books she is working on, and is denied food when she tires of labouring with her uncle in his library. Distressed, and missing her previous home, Maud begins to demonstrate sadistic tendencies, biting and kicking her maid, Agnes, and her abusive carer, Mrs Stiles. She harbours a deep resentment toward her mother for abandoning her, and starts holding her mother's locket every night, and whispering to it how much she hates her. Shockingly, Maud reveals that her uncle's work is not to compile a dictionary, but to assemble a bibliography of literary pornography, for the reference of future generations. In his own words, Christopher Lilly is a 'curator of poisons.' He introduces Maud to the keeping of the books—-indexing them and such—-when she is barely twelve, and deadens her reactions to the shocking material. As she grows older, Maud reads the material aloud for the appreciation of her uncle's colleagues. On one occasion, when asked by one of them how she can stand to curate such things, Maud answers, ""I was bred to the task, as servants are."" She has resigned herself to a life serving her uncle's obscure ambition when Richard Rivers arrives at Briar. He familiarises her with a plan to escape her exile in Briar, a plan involving the deception of a commonplace girl who will believe she had been sent to Briar to trick Maud out of her inheritance. After initial hesitation, Maud agrees to the plan and receives Sue weeks later, pretending to know nothing about the plot. Maud falls in love with Sue over time and, like Sue, begins to question whether she will be able to carry out Gentleman's plot as planned. Though overcome with guilt, Maud does, and travels with Gentleman to London after committing Sue to the asylum, claiming to the doctors that Sue was the mad Mrs Maud Rivers who believed she was a commonplace girl. Instead of taking Maud to a house in Chelsea, as he had promised, Gentleman takes her to Mrs Sucksby in the Borough. It was, it turns out, Gentleman's plan to bring her here all along; and, Mrs Sucksby, who had orchestrated the entire plan, reveals to a stunned Maud that a lady, Marianne Lilly, had come to Lant Street seventeen years earlier, pregnant and alone. When Marianne discovered her cruel father and brother had found her, she begged Mrs Sucksby to take her newborn child and give her one of her 'farmed' infants to take its place. Sue, it turns out, was Marianne Lilly's true daughter, and Maud one of the many orphaned infants who had been placed on Mrs Sucksby's care after being abandoned. By the decree of Marianne's will, written on the night of the switch, both girls were entitled to a share of Marianne Lilly's fortune. By having Sue committed, Mrs Sucksby could intercept her share. She had planned the switch of the two girls for seventeen years, and enlisted the help of Gentleman to bring Maud to her in the weeks before her eighteenth birthday, when she would become legally entitled to the money. By setting Sue up as the 'mad Mrs Rivers', Gentleman could, by law, claim her fortune for himself. Alone and friendless, Maud has no choice but to remain a prisoner at Lant Street. She makes one attempt to escape to the home of one of her uncle's friends, Mr Hawtrey, but he turns her away, appalled at the scandal that she has fallen into, and anxious to preserve his local reputation. Maud returns to Lant Street and finally submits to the care of Mrs Sucksby. It is then that Mrs Sucksby reveals to her that Maud was not an orphan that she took into her care, as she and Gentleman had told her, but Mrs Sucksby's own daughter. The novel resumes Sue's narrative, picking up where Maud and Gentleman had left her in the mental asylum. Sue is devastated at Maud's betrayal and furious that Gentleman double-crossed her. When she screams to the asylum doctors that she is not Mrs Rivers but her maid Susan, they ignore her, as Gentleman (helped by Maud) has convinced them that this is precisely her delusion, and that she is really Maud Lilly Rivers, his troubled wife. Sue is treated appallingly by the nurses in the asylum, being subjected to beatings and taunts on a regular basis. Such is her maltreatment and loneliness that, after a time, she begins to fear that she truly has gone mad. She is sustained by the belief that Mrs Sucksby will find and rescue her. Sue dwells on Maud's betrayal, the devastation of which quickly turns to anger. Sue's chance at freedom comes when Charles, a knife boy from Briar, comes to visit her. He is the nephew, it turns out, of the local woman (Mrs Cream) who owned the cottage the trio had stayed in on the night of Maud and Gentleman's wedding. Charles, a simple boy, had been pining for the charming attentions of Gentleman to such an extent that his father Mr Way had begun to beat him, severely. Charles ran away, and had been directed to the asylum by Mrs Cream, who had no idea of the nature of the place. Sue quickly enlists his help in her escape, persuading him to purchase a blank key and a file to give to her on his next visit. This he does, and Sue, using the skills learnt growing up in the Borough, escapes from the asylum and travels with Charles to London, with the intention of returning to Mrs Sucksby and her home in Lant Street. On arrival, an astonished Sue sees Maud at her bedroom window. After days of watching the activity of her old home from a nearby boarding house, Sue sends Charles with a letter explaining all to Mrs Sucksby, still believing that it was Maud and Gentleman alone who deceived her. Charles returns, saying Maud intercepted the letter, and sends Sue a playing card—the Two of Hearts, representing lovers—in reply. Sue takes the token as a joke, and storms into the house to confront Maud, half-mad with rage. She tells everything to Mrs Sucksby, who pretends to have known nothing, and despite Mrs Sucksby's repeated attempts to calm her, swears she will kill Maud for what she has done to her. Gentleman arrives, and though initially shocked at Sue's escape, laughingly begins to tell Sue how Mrs Sucksby played her for a fool. Maud physically tries to stop him, knowing how the truth would devastate Sue; a scuffle between Maud, Gentleman and Mrs Sucksby ensues, and in the confusion, Gentleman is stabbed by the knife Sue had taken up to kill Maud, minutes earlier. He bleeds to death. A hysterical Charles alerts the police. Mrs Sucksby, at last sorry for how she has deceived the two girls, immediately confesses to the murder: ""Lord knows, I'm sorry for it now; but I done it. And these girls here are innocent girls, and know nothing at all about it; and have harmed no-one."" Mrs Sucksby is hanged for killing Gentleman; it is revealed that Richard Rivers was not a shamed gentleman at all, but a draper's son named Frederick Bunt, who had had ideas above his station. Maud disappears, though Sue sees her briefly at Mrs Sucksby's trial and gathers from the prison matrons that Maud had been visiting Mrs Sucksby in the days leading up to her death. Sue remains unaware of her true parentage, until she finds the will of Marianne Lilly tucked in the folds of Mrs Sucksby's gown. Realizing everything, an overwhelmed Sue sets out to find Maud, beginning by returning to Briar. It is there she finds Maud, and the nature of Christopher Lilly's work is finally revealed to Sue. It is further revealed that Maud is now writing erotic fiction to sustain herself financially. The two girls, still very much in love with each other despite everything, make peace and give vent to their feelings at last."
1190,Back to Bologna,crime," Zen is on sick leave after a stomach operation and is feeling a shadow of himself. His relationship with his partner, Gemma, is also not going well. She is about to leave for Bologna to meet her son who has something important to tell her. Meanwhile, Zen is recalled to duty and is sent to be the liaison officer for a high profile murder investigation - in Bologna – where the local football team owner has been shot, as well as stabbed with a Parmesan knife. Whilst in Bologna, Gemma manages to get tickets to watch a live cook-off between local academic celebrity Edgardo Ugo and singing TV chef Romano Rinaldi, 'Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta', provoked by Ugo suggesting, in a newspaper article, that Lo Chef can't cook. A series of coincidences leads to Zen being arrested when Ugo is found shot in the wake of the hilariously disastrous event. The other main characters include a couple of flatmates – a rich kid student of Ugo's who fancies himself an 'Ultra' football fan, the student's illegal immigrant girlfriend, who calls herself Princess Flavia of Ruritania and the worlds worst private detective, who fancies himself a Chandleresque Private Eye. This is Zen at the centre of a black comedy."
1191,The Ice House,crime," Mrs Phoebe Maybury, a widow in her late thirties, lives in Street Grainge with her two companions Diana and Anne. One day her servant Fred finds a rotting corpse in their ice house, a storage room inside a hillock that hasn't been used for years. DCI George Walsh thinks it may be the corpse of Phoebe's husband David, who went missing ten years ago. Back then Walsh suspected her for killing her husband, but this was never proven. Inhabitants of the village believe that the three women are dykes and that Phoebe did not only kill her husband but also her parents. They died in a car crash after garage owner KC neglected to check their brakes. One of the villagers, Dily Barnes, has forbidden her children Peter and Emma to play with Phoebe's children Jonathan and Jane. The grounds are searched and the three women and Phoebe's grown-up children are questioned. Jane used to have anorexia nervosa and underwent psychotherapy. DS Andy McLoughlin, whose wife has just left him for another police officer, gets romantically involved with Anne and believes the three women are innocent. Medical examiner Webster says the corpse can only be between two and three months old. A list of missing persons includes the names Keith Chapel and Daniel Thompson. Thompson's wife is interrogated. It turns out he collected money from investors to produce see-through radiators. One of the duped investors was Diana. One night a burglar in Street Grainge smashes Anne's skull. She recovers in hospital, but doesn't remember who attacked her. Wally Ferris, a tramp who was seen in the environment, confesses he's been in the ice house and stole the clothes of a dead man. The dead man is finally identified as Keith Chapel or KC, the former garage owner who went bankrupt. Chapel died from the cold and part of his flesh was eaten by rats after Wally left open the door of the ice house. Daniel Thompson is still alive. He was hiding from the angry investors and wanted to move to France with his wife. A group of burglars is caught at Street Grainge. After Jonathan fires a gun between Peter Barnes' legs he confesses that he smashed Anne's skull. Peter was instigated by the nasty gossip of his mother and other villagers. When the three women are left in McLoughlin's company they talk openly about how Phoebe killed her husband ten years ago. She did it after she caught him abusing Jane. She buried his corpse behind a wall in the cellar. McLoughlin approves of revenge and makes plans to start a new life with Anne."
1192,The Dark Wheel,crime," The novel centers on Cornelius Van Toller, a wealthy New Yorker, with Jekyll-and-Hyde character. His obsession with actress Kay Forrester sets the stage for a thrilling drama."
1193,Special Assignments: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin,crime," Moscow, 1886. Four years after the events depicted in The Death of Achilles, Fandorin is still serving as the Deputy for Special Assignments to Moscow governor Prince Dolgurukoi. He is cohabitating with the Countess Addy, a married woman. After a gentleman con man named Momos, who goes by the alias ""The Jack of Spades"", dupes the Prince as part of a hundred-thousand ruble swindle, Fandorin is called in to apprehend him. Fandorin takes on as his investigative assistant a meek young policeman named Anisii Tulipov, and together Fandorin and Tulipov try to apprehend Momos and his beautiful lady accomplice, Mimi. Fandorin sniffs out and shuts down a fraudulent lottery being run by the Jack, but Momos and Mimi escape. Momos in turn tricks Fandorin's Japanese manservant, Masa, into letting him steal all of Countess Addy's baggage. An angry Fandorin vows revenge on Momos and sets up a sting where he poses as an Indian prince in possession of a large emerald. Momos and Mimi again escape, but not before Mimi and Tulipov have a romantic encounter. Momos sends back all of Addy's baggage in an effort to relieve the pressure from Fandorin. Fandorin subsequently sends Addy back to her husband. Momos decides to flee Moscow to avoid a determined Fandorin, but changes his mind after a chance encounter with Samson Eropkin, a thoroughly corrupt, criminal Moscow official. Momos decides to rob Eropkin, but the con goes horribly wrong. Momos and Mimi wind up captured by Eropkin, who is on the verge of murdering them both when Fandorin arrives and saves them. Eropkin is arrested for his crimes. Fandorin lets Momos go for lack of evidence and from a desire to save his boss, Prince Dolgurukoi, embarrassment. Mimi, on the other hand, faces trial for her involvement in the fraudulent lottery. She appears to be headed for prison and exile in Siberia—and Tulipov, who has fallen in love, dreams of marrying her after she is released from jail—when Momos, disguised as a lawyer, defends Mimi in court and blackmails the judge into dropping the charges. Tulipov watches Mimi and Momos leave the courthouse, not realising until it is too late that Momos is the lawyer, and he watches disconsolately as the Jack of Spades takes the woman of his dreams away. The tone of the novella is lightly comic, making a sharp contrast to the second novella, The Decorator. Moscow, 1889. Holy Week, before Easter. In Moscow, a prostitute is brutally murdered and mutilated. Fandorin believes the murderer is Jack the Ripper, the English murderer who killed a series of prostitutes in London the year before. Early in the novel, the point of view shifts to that of the murderer, who describes his crimes and calls himself The Decorator, believing he makes ugly women beautiful. The rest of the story is periodically interrupted with the thoughts of The Decorator. Court Counsellor Izhitsin, an investigative rival of Fandorin's, supervises the exhumation of corpses from the Bozhedomka graveyard, with Fandorin's assistant, Tulipov, accompanying. While at the cemetery, Tulipov befriends Pakhomenko, the genial Ukrainian cemetery watchman. The coroner, Dr. Zakharov, identifies four more bodies as being victims of the Moscow ripper. Tulipov reports these findings to Fandorin, whose new girlfriend, Angelina, a devout Russian Orthodox woman, lives with Fandorin regardless. Angelina's origins are described in the short story ""The Scarpea of the Baskakovs"" from the Jade Rosary Beads collection. Fandorin checks the records of people who have travelled from London to Moscow in recent months and have medical training, and comes up with two likely suspects: Nesvitskaya the midwife, and Stenich the male nurse, who were kicked out of medical school seven years ago. Shortly after this, Fandorin receives a gruesome package in the mail: a human ear. Tulipov surreptitiously interviews the two suspects. Fandorin travels back to the morgue and matches the severed ear with one of the dead prostitutes. Fandorin challenges Zakharov, who won't tell him anything but instead tells him the guilty party will be at a reunion party of former medical students he's going to that night. Fandorin learns that the party's host, a businessman named Burylin, was thrown out of medical school for being part of a group of pranksters that got into trouble at school seven years ago. Stenich was also part of this group, as was Zakharov, who was trained as a coroner instead of being expelled. Their leader, Sotsky, was sent to prison, and died. It is eventually revealed that Sotsky and the rest were disciplined for accidentally killing a prostitute. Fandorin arrests Burylin after he confesses to sending Fandorin the ear as a prank. Tulipov is assigned to work with Izhitsin, who believes the murderer must be a Tatar or Jewish butcher, and has rounded up a group of suspects he plans to torture. Tulipov tells him of the three suspects Fandorin has found, and Izhitsin has an idea for an experiment: shock the three suspects by taking them to the morgue and showing them the bodies and seeing who confesses. No one does. In the street, Tulipov accidentally runs into Fandorin, who is working undercover as a pimp. Fandorin learns of Izhitsin's stunt with the bodies and goes to confront him, only to find out that the Decorator has murdered him. Count Tolstoy, the Minister for Internal Affairs, arrives from St. Petersburg on Good Friday and threatens to fire Prince Dolgurukoi if the killer is not caught by Easter. Tulipov goes back to the graveyard to interview the people who attended Izhitsin's experiment, and, in a sudden fit of inspiration, believes he's figured out who the killer is. While Tulipov is pursuing his theory, the Decorator arrives at his apartment and kills his sister Sonya. Fandorin is informed of this, and is then given a deathbed report from Tulipov, who believed the killer was Zakharov and had gone to Zakharov's office at the graveyard to observe him—only to run into the Decorator, who attacked and mortally wounded him. Fandorin, enraged over the murder of his assistant, goes to the graveyard and finds Zakharov missing, but interviews the watchman Pakhomenko. He receives a phone call from Zakharov, who says he is innocent and will tell Fandorin everything if Fandorin and Masa meet him at a hotel. Meanwhile, the Decorator goes to Fandorin's house, intending to kill Angelina. He is surprised and subdued by Fandorin and Masa, who did not go to the hotel rendezvous. The killer is revealed to be Pakhomenko, the friendly graveyard watchman—whose true identity is Sotsky, the leader of the group of medical school pranksters seven years ago. Fandorin determines to kill Sotsky himself, right there in his house, but is interrupted by Angelina when she arrives home. Fandorin settles for an impromptu trial with Angelina as judge. Fandorin then reveals that Sotsky did not die in prison, but escaped and emigrated to London before returning to Moscow and getting a job at the cemetery from his old friend Zakharov. Sotsky then killed Zakharov and impersonated him in the phone call to lure Fandorin away and leave Angelina unprotected. Sotsky admits to his crimes and Angelina finds him guilty. Fandorin then takes him outside and shoots him in the yard. After he returns, Angelina tells him she is leaving him to become a nun, because she believes she inhibits Fandorin in his work. Fandorin is devastated, but she insists. As the Easter bells sound, she tells him ""It's all right. Do you hear? Christ is risen."""
1194,The Riddle of the Third Mile,crime," The novel is divided into three books - the first mile, the second mile and the third mile. The title is a reference to the biblical sentence ""And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain"" as in St Matthew, Chapter Five, Verse Forty-One. The third mile could also indirectly refer to a particularly elaborate scheme used in the book to lure three of the college staff to London. There are three main narratives in this book. During the world war, there are three brothers Albert, Alfred and Johnny Gilbert serving as tank officers in the army. Albert and Alfred are said to be lookalike twins. The youngest brother is trapped in his tank during an offensive and is burnt to death. The two elder brothers are unable to help due to a direct order from the lieutenant Browne-Smith. They develop a hatred to Browne-Smith (mistakenly) believing that he was a coward not to try and save a fellow officer. At the present time, Browne-Smith is a Professor at Oxford. He departs on a mysterious trip to London where he visit a topless bar and then proceeds to a brothel. There he is served drugged drinks and he collapses on the floor. A few days later, the Master of Lonsdale college invites Morse and voices suspicion about the disappearance of Browne-Smith. He has left the college without any communication or forwarding address. Morse promises to keep an eye out for any information that comes his way. It is revealed that Morse was a student of Browne-Smith in his college days and the reason Morse picked up his obsession for grammar and spelling. We also see a short flashback into Morse's college days and his breakup with his college sweetheart. Then, the police discover a dismembered corpse in the water at Trupp. The corpse is missing the head, arms and legs. This makes identification difficult but Morse believes that the corpse could be that of Browne-Smith. It is also found that Browne-Smith was suffering from brain tumour and had only a few more weeks left to live. As more evidence accumulates, suspicion seems to fall on Prof.Westerby who was antagonistic towards Browne-Smith at college and is supposedly on a vacation to Greece after his recent retirement. But Morse speculates that the body is not that of Browne-Smith but probably Westerby thereby the need to dismember the corpse to confuse the police. During a visit to Browne-Smith's room at the college, Morse meets one of the Gilbert twins who is running a packers and movers business engaged to shift the retired Westerby's effects. Thereby Morse, gains the address of Westerby's new flat in London. On travelling there, he finds another corpse, this time stabbed with a screw driver. In a moment of forgivable lapse brought about his fear of corpses, Morse does not recognize the murderer and allows him to walk free. The second mile concludes with three more deaths - one being murder, one suicide and one general causes, thereby leaving none of the suspects alive. Morse largely guesses how things happened. His theory goes as follows: The Gilbert twins wanted to kill Browne-Smith in order to avenge the death of Johnny Gilbert and set up an elaborate scheme to lure him to London. They realize that Johnny actually committed suicide so let Browne-Smith go. Browne-Smith in turn uses the same scheme to lure Westerby and confronts him. Browne-Smith in turn, realizes that he was mistaken in his antagonism. He has always assumed (wrongly) that Westerby had voted against him in the election for Master of the college. Westerby and Browne-Smith both realize that the current Master had voted against both of them in their previous elections. So they use the same scheme for the third time to lure the Master to London and kill him. Browne-Smith was, however, guilt-ridden and tried to steer Morse to the culprits. It is suggested that he was mentally not in control due to side-effects of the tumor. Morse further guesses that the corpse found in Trupp was the Master. Westerby killed Alfred in his London flat and in turn, Albert killed Westerby and then committed suicide. Browne-smith died of his tumor."
1195,No More Dying Then,crime," On a stormy February afternoon, little Stella Rivers disappears and is never seen again. Then, on a warm October day, five-year-old John Lawrence fails to come home, and evil, mad, taunting letters begin, which make the worst, unspoken imaginings a brutal reality."
1196,The Troubled Man,crime," A highly-decorated Swedish naval officer, Håkan von Enke, disappears during his daily walk. For Kurt Wallander this becomes a very personal case as Von Enke is Linda Wallander's father-in-law. The clues lead back in time to the Cold War and hired killers from Eastern Europe. Inspector Wallander suspects he has traced a big secret. This could be the worst spy scandal in Swedish history. At the same time, evidence suggests that Wallander is losing his memory."
1197,Under a Monsoon Cloud,crime," Inspector Ghote is temporarily assigned to a badly run hill station at Vigatpour. Additional Deputy Inspector General ""Tiger"" Kelkar, a man Ghote once investigated and cleared of suspected corruption, arrives to inspect the station. The situation is worsened by Sergeant Desai, a comically inept and lazy sergeant previously assigned to Ghote in Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker. During the inspection the monsoon storm breaks. Desai, after making a string of irritating blunders, spills ink over Kelkar's uniform and Kelkar, in a fit of temper, throws the brass ink well at Desai. The inkwell strikes Desai on the head and kills him. Owing to the late hour Ghote is the only other officer in the station at the time. Kelkar orders Ghote to arrest him but Ghote persuades Kelkar to cover up the death. Since Desai regularly tried to bet people he could swim the nearby lake in under two hours they take the body to the lake and submerge it. The next day Kelkar completes his inspection and the station's original inspector returns from sick leave, allowing Ghote to go home. Months pass, then Ghote is summoned to the Assistant Commissioner's office where he is introduced to Sergeant Desai's sister in law. Mrs Desai is suspicious because Desai was a good swimmer and the medical officer's report indicates no signs of asphyxia by drowning. Mrs Desai threatens to involve the newspapers and so the Assistant Commissioner agrees to an inquiry. Days later Ghote meets the inspector assigned to inquiry and mentions the untidy state of the lost property room at the hill station. The investigating inspector realises this may be where Desai's missing clothes are to be found and goes off to look. Ghote realises the inspector will find Desai's blood stained uniform jacket. He warns Kelkar who commits suicide. The Assistant Commissioner sends Ghote a memo demanding an account of the events at the hill station. Ghote fears imminent ruin. He weighs the value of the truth against that of his career and finds his career wanting. At home he is moody and silent with his wife and child. Finally he confesses everything to his wife, Protima. The least Ghote expects is demotion but dismissal or even a criminal charge is more likely. Protima urges him to lie to protect his family. Ghote resists, but agrees to see a Hindu priest at the temple. The priest says anger leads to bewilderment, which leads to a wandering mind, which leads to the destruction of the soul. The priest warns Ghote that he is in the third phase of this cycle and asks Ghote what his skills as a policeman are worth if he cannot use them. After this Ghote submits a false statement saying he left duty before the death and cannot shed any light on those events. He is suspended pending a board of inquiry. In court, Ghote watches as a case he worked on collapses under the fierce defence of Mrs Achmed. He realises she will be a fine defence attorney for his own case. He engages her, but tells her he is innocent. The inquiry hearing begins. Ghote is dismayed to learn that the prosecution will be handled by a man with a fierce reputation for cross examination. Kalkar's suicide note, which does not mention Ghote's involvement, is read into evidence. When the inquiry adjourns Ghote accompanies Mrs Achmed to a jail and assists her in gaining access to her clients. Mrs Achmed remarks that if her clients were as outraged as they were entitled to be, the police would spend all their time suppressing riots. She tells Ghote that she campaigns for civil rights because her younger brother was diagnosed with leprosy and sent away. She was angry about this injustice and when she visited her brother near the foothills of the Himalayas she found he was a beggar. From that day on she determined that she would fight for the poor and downtrodden. The next day the inquiry reconvenes. To the surprise of Ghote and Mrs Achmed, the prosecutor then calls Ghote to the stand. Since the board of inquiry is not a true court of law, Ghote is obliged to take the stand where he is questioned about his investigation of Kelkar for corruption. The next day a junior officer is called as a witness and Ghote fears he will be exposed. However the prosecutor only obtains testimony that Inspector Ghote said it was midnight when he left the station. The inquiry again adjourns. Ghote stayed at a boarding house while working at the hill station and the next day the porter who works there is called to testify. The old man recalls that Ghote said it was before midnight, though it felt later. After this, the owner of the boarding house is called and is certain Ghote arrived at twenty to three by an antique clock. Mrs Achmed soon forces the man to admit that the clock was sold long ago and that his memory is playing tricks on him. The prosecutor calls the inspector assigned to the Desai case. The inspector considers Ghote's statement of the time he arrived to be a trick to mislead an ignorant and confused old man. The prosecutor then calls a man who earns his living doing washing for people in Ghote's neighbourhood. The man admits to receiving a police jacket with a missing button from Ghote's wife, Protima. The prosecutor concludes by saying tomorrow he will call a witness to testify that Ghote and Kelkar took Desai's body to the lake on a bicycle. Ghote's conscience, which has been troubling him over his lie to Mrs Achmed, now compels him to confess to her. However, she has a prior appointment and refuses to listen to him. Talking to his wife, Ghote is persuaded to postpone confessing until he has heard the prosecutor's witness. When the inquiry is ready to reconvene Mrs Achmed is late, so Ghote cannot confess to her beforehand. The prosecutor presents his witness but as his testimony unfolds Ghote realises the man is a professional thief. Mrs Achmed deftly exposes the witness's background and the inquiry board send the witness packing. The inquiry now adjourns for the weekend. During the weekend Protima invites Ram, one of Ghote's childhood friends, to visit. Ram, once a fierce and angry young man, has grown into cheerful and successful, if legally and morally dubious, businessman. Protima has confided everything to Ram, who gently teases Ghote about his conscience and suggests bribery as a solution. Ghote angrily rejects this, but in so doing Ram points out that he has proven that he is a policeman to the very bone. Ghote realises this is true and resolves to continue with his lie. When the inquiry reconvenes Ghote decides he cannot continue to deceive Mrs Achmed because she is a dedicated campaigner for truth and justice. Mrs Achmed asks if he intends to confess to the inquiry board and Ghote replies he will not because he has, apart from this incident, been an honest and good policeman and wishes to remain one. Mrs Achmed declares that she believes this and will remain present, but will call no witnesses and speak no more in his defence. Ghote is called to the stand and tripped up by the weather, which varied over the night in question. He barely manages to recover. The inquiry adjourns and on the way out of the building Ghote encounters the inspector who built the case against him. The inspector accuses Ghote of bare faced lying, of which Ghote is guilty, and Ghote responds angrily. The next day the Chairman reads Kelkar's favourable inspection assessment of Ghote's time at the hill station. The inspector then brings out a ""first information report"" which he claims dates from Ghote's time at the hill station, but in fact dates from some time before. This report shows that an investigation was mishandled. The prosecution alleges that Ghote is responsible and that Kelkar gave Ghote a favourable assessment in return for covering up the death of Sergeant Desai. Ghote denounces the latest piece of evidence and persuades the inquiry chairman to examine the document more closely. The Chairman discovers the date on the book has been altered to implicate Ghote and orders the inspector responsible taken into custody. Asked if he wishes to continue his statement, Ghote seizes this final chance to tell the truth and does so, confessing everything. The chairman finds Ghote guilty and says the board of inquiry will recommend Ghote's dismissal. When the room empties, Ghote realises that the ""show cause notice"" form has not been filled in. This procedural error will nullify the entire inquiry. The shorthand stenographer rushes the form to the chairman, who deliberately ignores him and walks away, cementing Ghote's suspicion that the error was deliberate. To celebrate Ghote's family visits the beach. Ghote reflects that while anger is sometimes justified it is best contained until an occasion when anger is truly needed."
1198,The Iciest Sin,crime," Senior government official, Mr Mistry, requests Ghote's assistance on a ""private matter"". Mr Mistry's neighbour, Miss Daruwala, is blackmailing a Mr Pipewalla. Ghote is told to break into Daruwala's flat, spy on her then use what he sees to force her to leave India. Ghote considers this housebreaking and blackmail but cannot refuse. At home Ghote's son, Ved, attempts to blackmail Ghote into buying a computer by threatening to tell Protima, Ghote's wife, their television was bought on the black market. The next day Ghote blackmails a locksmith to get keys to Miss Daruwala's apartment, which Ghote's searches until she returns with Dr Edul Commissariat, a famous scientist. Ghote hides overhears that Commissariat submitted someone else's thesis as own work. Miss Daruwala demands ""one lakh in cash"" (100,000 rupees). Commissariat murders Miss Daruwala with a swordstick and burns the documents that incriminate her victims. Afterwards, Ghote leaves his hiding place. He did not arrest Commissariat because the Doctor is a humanitarian and Miss Daruwala's was a blackmailer. Feeling responsible Dr Commissariat's fate, Ghote tells Mr Mistry that Daruwala is dead but not who murdered her. Inspector Arjun Singh of Crime Branch investigates the murder, reported by Ghote's anonymous phone call. Ghote's is assigned to a blackmail case. Tabloid newspaper, Gup Shup, has blackmailed people into paying for an entry in Indians of Merit and Distinction. Freddy Kersasp is the ringleader but the evidence points to his office manager, Shiv Chand. Ghote arranges a sting operation, in which two people witness the payment. Ghote returns home and finds Mr Ranchod, Mr Mistry's servant, waiting. Ranchod believes Ghote is blackmailing the murderer. Unwilling to tell Ranchod the truth, Ghote pays him one hundred rupees. Ghote's sting operation goes well and Shiv Chand is arrested. Chand refuses to testify against Freddy Kersasp who is in the USA. Days pass. Inspector Singh's investigation makes no progress. Ranchod demands more money. Kersasp returns and fires Chand. Chand tells Ghote everything, but Kersasp's blackmail victims refuse to testify. Ghote learns that Kersasp was the prime suspect in a robbery and murder thirty-seven years ago. Enquiries in England reveal that Kersasp did not raise the funds to start his newspaper by running a magazine there, as he claimed. There is insufficient evidence to convict Kersasp, but Ghote is ordered to blackmail him into leaving the country. Ghote does so. Ghote refuses to pay Ranchod when they next meet and several weeks go by. Then Inspector Singh is transferred to the Vigilance Branch of Bombay Police (Internal Affairs) and the Daruwala murder case abandoned. The next morning a notorious gangster, Mama Chiplunkar, approaches Ghtoe. Ranchod has spoken to Chiplunkar who intends to blackmail Ghote for confidential information. The following day Chiplunkar repeats his demand and Ghote gives in. In court Shiv Chand is found guilty. Ghote plans to push Chiplunkar under a train and arranges a meeting with Chiplunkar at Grant Road Station, using information about a raid as bait. A perfect opportunity to kill Chiplunkar arises but Ghote cannot bring himself to do it. Ghote rejects Chiplunkar's blackmail attempt and escapes on a train. Ghote considers suicide, as he believes Chiplunkar will soon expose and disgrace him. He waits two days then learns Chiplunkar has fled to Ahmedabad. Ghote is called to the assistant commissioners office where he learns Chiplunkar has purchased Daruwala's flat as a hideout. Ghote deduces that Ranchod is hidden there, waiting for Chiplunkar's order to testify against Ghote. In spite of this, Ghote assists the search team in entering the property. Inside they find Ranchod dead from an overdose of narcotics. Chiplunkar returns home and is arrested for drug possession. Anything Chiplunkar says about Ghote will be ignored without Ranchod. Ghote goes home and tells Ved that he can have the computer."
1199,The Speaker of Mandarin,crime," When Chief Inspector Reg Wexford takes a holiday to China, takes in the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace, he doesn't expect his trip to revisit him in such a horrific way. Shortly after his return, he finds out that one of his fellow tourists from the trip has been killed in her home. A burglary, it seems like, but Wexford has other ideas."
1200,Memory in Death,crime," Following the events in Origin in Death, Lt. Eve Dallas only wants a break as Christmas nears, but her past is coming back to haunt her. A television news special about her and her husband Roarke's involvement in the destruction of the Icove center airs on national television, and in Texas, catches the eye of Trudy Lombard, who promptly comes to New York City with her son and her daughter-in-law. Lombard shows up at Eve's office, and Eve remembers everything about her. Eve was taken in by Lombard, after she killed her father. Lombard was an abusive woman, who often made Eve go without food, clean the floors with a toothbrush, locked her in her bed room without light, and scrubbed her skin raw in ice cold baths, all the time telling her she deserved it because she was a 'filthy' little girl who'd already 'engaged in sexual relations' (referring to the beatings and rape committed by Eve's father) before the age of ten. Eve realizes Lombard wants something, and her suspicions come true when Lombard tries to blackmail her for $2 million dollars. When Eve refuses, Lombard tries to blackmail Roarke, who also refuses. Shortly after, Lombard is found dead, at first it seems like a classical murder, Lombard has been hit on the head by a blunt murder weapon and articles of clothing, her purse, and her tele-link are missing. Eve Dallas however, who is familiar with Trudy Lombard does not believe it to be so clear a homicide, and Trudy Lombard's daughter in law, Zana Kline, seems too innocent to not have a hand in the murder, however, because there is no evidence pointing to her, Eve becomes extremely frustrated. At the end of the book it is revealed that Zana is in fact one of the children Lombard had fostered."
1201,The Devil's Feather,crime," Connie Burns is a British-Zimbabwean journalist working as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency. While stationed in Sierra Leone in 2002 she reports on the case of five women who have been brutally murdered. Burns suspects a British mercenary, who is known throughout the expatriate community for his brutality and violence. She encounters the mercenary again two years later while based in Baghdad to cover the Iraq conflict. She begins to make discrete enquiries about him, but is frightened off by a series of incidents in which her hotel room is repeatedly ransacked. Deciding to return to the United Kingdom, Burns is kidnapped on her way to the airport, but released three days later. Upon her release, Burns returns to England, avoiding reporters (including her former Reuters colleagues) who are keen to hear about her ordeal. Leasing a remote house on the Dorset coast she sets about trying to guard her privacy and her security. But escaping her past proves to be more difficult. She befriends a loal woman named Jess Derbyshire, a reclusive woman who has isolated herself from her community following a family tragedy. Seeing parallels between herself and Jess, Burns borrows from the other woman's strength and makes the hazardous decision to take on her adversary for a third time."
1202,The Dice Spelled Murder,crime," Danny Hogan, a truck driver disaffected with his job at Torgus Trucking, meets beautiful Velma Reed in a seedy Los Angeles bar where she has been working as the bartender's shill, enticing lonely men to buy drinks. Danny doesn't recognize Velma, but the two of them attended the same high school in a distant city, where they were only casually acquainted. Danny was expelled from high school after being caught using loaded dice in an after-school craps game. A short time later, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma became pregnant and also left school and their home town. Now, a dozen years later, Velma recognizes Danny and renews their acquaintance. Appealing to his greed and his masculinity, she convinces him to use his skills with crooked dice in a confidence game to help her separate convention-goers from their money. At first reluctant because of a beating he received in the Army after being caught using altered dice, Danny eventually agrees, hoping to amass enough money to start his own trucking company. He soon comes to realize that Velma, too, has a loftier purpose in mind—buying a motel in Las Vegas that she can operate, in order to become ""legit"" and no longer feel ashamed of the way she earns money to support her young son, whom she has placed in a boarding school. The bulk of the novel's action surrounds Velma's artful pickup of likely suckers at conventions, mostly in California cities, and Danny's subsequent fleecing of them in craps games. Their adventures bring them into contact with a number of ordinary and extraordinary characters, including a gay con artist toward whom Danny displays a disdain that was probably more politically correct in 1957 than it seems now. Various close calls ensue, and Danny loses some of his enthusiasm for the con. He tells Velma he wants to quit, but she convinces him to run the con with her one last time. Along the way, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma and another male friend, Joe Lovelli, have committed blackmail. Velma has twice enticed men to her hotel room, where Joe waited in a closet with a camera. Using infrared film, Joe snapped photographs of the men in compromising positions with Velma. The blackmailers then extorted—or attempted to extort—hush-up money from their victims. Danny remains unaware of Velma and Joe's sideline until near the end of the book, when Velma's second blackmail victim, a mob-related big shot, propels the novel to its climax in a fatal car chase. After struggling with a conflict between conscience and ambition, Danny mails the bulk of his dishonest gambling earnings to Velma's young son, keeping only enough to buy a good used truck so that he and Jill Conner—the pretty, young, former office manager at Torgus Trucking—can start their own trucking firm."
1203,Chronicle of a Death Foretold,crime," The non-linear story, narrated by an anonymous character, begins with the mourning of Santiago Nasar's death. He wakes up from an ostensibly meaningless dream of trees. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria Guzman, and the cook's daughter, Divina Flor. Santiago's father, Ibrahim, is dead; after Ibrahim's death, Santiago took over the successful family ranch. The day of Santiago Nasar's death also happens to be the day the Bishop plans to come by boat, to bless the marriage of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman—though his blessings, as the reader learns later on, will be of no use. As the town prepares for the Bishop's arrival, Angela's twin brothers Pedro and Pablo sit in the local milk shop in order to watch for Santiago, so that they may carry out their plans to murder him. The reader gradually learns of Angela Vicario's story: her groom, Bayardo San Roman, was a foreigner who had come to town to find a bride. After finding Angela, Bayardo decided to marry her; his wealthy status compared with the relative poverty of the Vicarios left no choice for Angela's freedom, and thus they were planned to wed. The night before the wedding day, festivities in preparation for the wedding had taken place at a local whorehouse run by Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, where the narrator had partied with Santiago and the Vicario twins until the early morning. The Vicario twins had left and returned home to find that their sister had been quietly returned by Bayardo San Roman in disgrace, after he found that she was not a virgin as had been expected. When asked who was the man that deflowered her, Angela Vicario says that it was Santiago Nasar. Thus the twins, in the wake of their family's disgrace, began planning their murderous revenge. Once morning arrives, the twins set about town, repeatedly announcing their plans to everyone who will listen. Yet despite the fact that nearly the whole town finds out about the murder before it occurs, no one ends up telling Santiago, either because they cannot find him, they don't believe the twins, they are too excited about the Bishop's arrival, or, in some cases, because they encourage the twins to go through with it. The murder occurs (and is only elaborated upon at the end of the book). After the murder, the Vicario family leaves town due to the scandal and disgrace surrounding the events of Angela's wedding and Santiago's murder. Bayardo San Roman leaves town as well; his family comes by boat and picks him up. The Vicario twins are imprisoned for three years, and afterwards, Pablo marries his lover and Pedro leaves for the armed forces. The reader discovers that only after Bayardo returned her did Angela fall in love with him. After she moves away from the town with her family, Angela writes him a letter each day for seventeen years. At the end of seventeen years, Bayardo San Roman returns to her, carrying all of her letters in bundles, all unopened. The narrator ends the book with the story of the actual murder of Santiago Nasar. Their friend Cristo Bedoya had frantically looked for Santiago on the morning of the murder to warn him of the plan, but Cristo Bedoya failed to find Santiago, who was actually at his fiance Flora Miguel's house. When Flora Miguel's father finds out, he warns Santiago seconds before the twins reach Santiago. Santiago only comprehends what Flora Miguel's father is saying as he dies, stabbed outside of his own front door. The reader is left speculating whether or not the twins actually wanted to kill Santiago. It may be presumed that in the end, the twins only killed Santiago because that was what everyone vaguely expected of them."
1204,Sparkling Cyanide,crime," One year ago on 2 November, seven people sat down to dinner at the restaurant ""Luxembourg"". One of them, Rosemary Barton, never got up. She was thought to have committed suicide due to post-flu depression. Her husband, George Barton, received anonymous letters saying that Rosemary did not kill herself but was murdered. George started to investigate and decided to reconstruct the dinner at the same restaurant, inviting the same people as well as an actress that looked like his late wife. The actress did not arrive and that night George died at the table - poisoned, like his wife, by cyanide in his glass. His death would have been dismissed as suicide as well if not for the investigation of his friend Colonel Race. During the investigation it is revealed that the intended victim was Rosemary's young sister Iris. Due to a stipulation of her uncle's will as Rosemary died childless her inherited fortune passed to her teenage sister when she died. If Iris had died at the table as intended the money in turn would have passed to her aunt Mrs. Drake. Mrs. Drake is very much at the mercy of her lazy son Victor, who often threatens to commit suicide when he needs money from his mother. Colonel Race and Iris's suitor, Anthony Browne, discover that Victor had planned the murder together with his lover Ruth Lessing, who was also George's secretary. The plan failed because when the group went to dance Iris dropped her bag and the waiter that retrieved it placed it a seat away from where she was before she went to dance. When the companions returned to the table, George sat at Iris's original place and drank the poisoned champagne. In order to confirm the suicidal nature of the death Ruth had planted a pack of cyanide in Iris's bag and Victor had disguised himself as a waiter in order to poison the sparkling wine. When this failed, Ruth then attempted to run down Iris with a car. Eventually, Colonel Race together with the police and Anthony Browne unravel the truth and save Iris from being gassed to death by Ruth, who had knocked her out, trying to stage her ""suicide'. The anonymous letters to George were sent by Ruth in order to convince him to re-stage the dinner at Luxembourg so that Victor and Ruth could try to kill Iris."
1205,The Warriors,crime," The novel begins with a quote from the Anabasis. Throughout the novel, the character Junior reads a comic book version of the story. It is the evening of July 4. Ismael Rivera, leader of the Delancey Thrones, the largest gang in New York City, calls a grand assembly of street gangs to the Bronx. Gangs from all over the city, signaled by a Beatles song on the radio, head to the meeting place at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. As per instructions, none of them carries weapons, except for a handgun – a peace-offering to Ismael. Among the gangs are the Coney Island Dominators, a black (Afro American) / Hispanic gang who are the central characters of the novel. The Dominators are Papa Arnold, the leader, Hector, second-in-command, Lunkface, the strongest and most dangerous member, Bimbo, the advisor, Hinton, the gang's artist and central character of the novel, Dewey, the most level-headed member and The Junior, the youngest of the group and the gang's mascot. At the meeting, Ismael announces his plan, with other Thrones relaying the message to the ones in back who cannot hear. He proposes a grand truce designed to challenge 'The Man', society otherwise called the 'Others'. After a stirring speech, the assembly dissolves into chaos as several dissident gangs begin fighting. When the police arrive, having been tipped off about a big ""rumble"", many gangs believing Ismael has set them up, turn their peace-offering handgun on Ismael killing him. When Arnold disappears amidst the rage of Ismael's gang members, it is up to Hector the new leader of the Coney Island Dominators, to lead the remaining delegates from the Bronx back to Coney Island, passing through enemy ridden gang turfs. When Hinton suggests removing their gang insignia - Mercedes symbols stolen off cars and converted into stick-pins from shop class at school which the gang wears on their hats - he is severely chastised. As Hinton is more familiar with the neighborhood, having lived there before, he is given the task of leading the gang out of Woodlawn Cemetery where they have escaped the cops in the chaos. The gang decides to call Wallie, the youth board worker assigned to their case, to come and drive them home. While waiting for him to arrive, the gang gets restless and jumps the subway. After a while, the train is stopped due to track work and the gang must take a different route. En route to the other subway station, the gang encounters the Borinquen Blazers, a Puerto Rican immigrant gang. Hector meets the leader to parley for safe passage and all goes well until a girl, one of the Blazers’ debs, desires one of the Dominators’ insignia pins. When they refuse, the girl chastises the Blazers’ leader, challenging his manhood. The leader then demands that the Dominators remove their pins in exchange for safe passage. Things escalate into an argument with the Dominators heading off to their destination and the Blazers not retaliating because their reinforcements have not arrived. Angry, Hector riles up the gang into a violent mood, deciding to spite the Blazers by going through their turf as a “war party” – an act performed by a gang ritual of changing the positions of the cigarettes in their hat brims. The Dominators realize they’re being tailed by the deb and a scout from the Blazers. They ambush them taking away the scout’s switchblade, then chase him off. Lunkface convinces the girl to stick around on the promise of a pin and a rank (of “sister”) in the gang. The Dominators then encounter an individual and start a fight, the girl cheering them on while they take turns stabbing the man with the stolen blade. The Dominators turn on the girl and gang-rape her, abandoning her in the street as they rush off to the subway. Throughout the novel, the gang play games of ‘manhood’, either to relieve boredom or to settle disputes: waiting for the train, the Dominators have a contest as to who can urinate the farthest. Later, on the train, Hector passes out pieces of candy bars he has bought to the gang. When they start teasing Lunkface with a piece that’s fallen on the floor, he gets so angry he quits the gang right there. Hector eases the situation by selecting a member for punishment – Hinton – and Lunkface ""insults” him by puffing on Hinton’s “war cigarette”. Then Hector holds another “manhood” game involving the gang sticking their heads out the train window until it passes into the subway tunnel. Hinton wins, nearly killing himself in the process. Arriving at the 96th Street and Broadway station, the Dominators encounter a transit cop eyeing them suspiciously. Aware that the police are trying to round up all the gangs in the city, and that they are still holding the knife they used to stab the (possibly) dead man, The Dominators evade the transit cop by jumping off the train just as he boards, but more police show up and they flee: Hinton jumping onto the tracks into the subway tunnel, Dewey and Junior jumping an uptown train and Hector, Lunkface, and Bimbo running out of the station. Hector, Lunkface and Bimbo run into Riverside Park. Now, without the other gang members to see them, the trio removes their insignia pins so to avoid arrest. They encounter a large, fat, alcoholic nurse sitting on a bench and Lunkface takes an interest in her. The woman is only interested in Hector, referring to Lunkface and Bimbo as “niggers”. Hector lures her to a secluded spot where they jump her and she accepts them willingly. When Bimbo starts rifling through her purse, she reacts angrily. When Lunkface, frustrated, hits her to keep her still, the woman retaliates with unexpected strength and starts screaming “Rape!” The trio, unable to overpower her, flee but are promptly caught by the police. Hinton, inside the subway tunnel takes time for reflection. Feeling like an outsider and resenting the gang, he unleashes his contempt by writing on the wall, putting the gang down. Feeling guilty, he rubs out his insults and replaces them with the gang “tag” (he has been doing this throughout the novel). Hinton arrives at Times Square station, the meeting place. While waiting for the gang he enters a public bathroom and has sex with a prostitute, shakes off a homosexual and a young junkie offering sexual favors for money, travels back and forth on the shuttle to Grand Central and overcome with an inexplicable hunger, eats incessantly. When he comes to an arcade, he plays a shootout game with a dummy sheriff, winning twice, reflecting his resentment of authority. Before he knows it, he has achieved everything he usually does with the gang, and wonders why he needs them. Dewey and Junior meet up with Hinton and the trio head off to complete their journey. Although Dewey outranks Hinton, Hinton takes over the role of leader as he has an unexpected knack for the job. A pair of jocks, returning home from their senior prom with their dates, eye the trio challengingly but Hinton doesn’t back down, feeling a sense of moral victory as he does and the jocks depart. Hinton, Dewey and Junior finally arrive in Coney Island. After a brief moment of celebration, Hinton, all riled up with anger and the sense of victory, impulsively calls out a rumble against the Lords, the rival gang to the Dominators. Rushing to the Lords’ regular hangout, Hinton calls them out. They don’t respond and Hinton celebrates this victory by drawing a huge mural on the hangout wall, insulting the Lords and celebrating the Dominators. The trio then venture back to where the Dominators’ debs have been waiting, Hinton regretfully telling the girlfriends of Hector, Lunkface and Bimbo that they didn’t make it back. Papa Arnold’s girlfriend mentions that Arnold made it home hours ago and Dewey and Junior walk off with their girlfriends. Hinton, not having a girlfriend, goes home. There his mother, Minnie, is in the midst of sex with her boyfriend, Norbert. Hinton tends to the baby who was being neglected, then talks with his older half-brother Alonso about life in general and the future. Hinton crawls out onto the fire escape and falls asleep, his thumb in his mouth."
1206,"Farewell, My Lovely",crime," Private detective Philip Marlowe is investigating a dead-end case when he sees a felon, Moose Malloy, barging into a nightclub looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma Valento. The club has changed owners and is now owned by and run for african americans only so no one there knows her. Malloy ends up killing the manager and escaping. Due to the racism prevalent in Los Angeles at the time the murder of a black man is a low priority for the police and is given to a detective called Nulty who has a reputation for laziness and incompetence. Marlowe advises Nulty to look for Malloy's girlfriend but Nulty would rather not work that hard, preferring to rely on the fact that Malloy sticks out in a crowd due to his size and loud clothes. Nulty does encourage Marlowe to look for the girl though, telling him ""You been in jams with us boys before... Next time it ain't doing you any harm to have a pal."" Marlowe decides to follow up and look for the girl, partly because he could use some good will with the LAPD and partly because he hasn't had a real case for a while and ""even a no charge job was a change."" He tracks down the widow of the former owner, who claims Malloy's girl friend was a girl named Velma but that Velma is dead. But Marlowe catches her hiding a photo of someone he assumes is Velma. Marlowe receives a call from a man named Lindsay Marriott, who says his friend was robbed of a rare necklace. He is delivering the ransom payment that night, and wants help. Marlowe is suspicious, but agrees to ride along. They go to a deserted canyon for the drop-off and Marlowe gets out and waits in the dark. No one shows, but when he returns to the car, he is hit on the head from behind. When he awakes, Marriott is lying on the ground dead. A passerby named Anne Riordan drives by and takes him home. The police are wary of Marlowe’s story but let him go. Anne Riordan visits him and tells him she is a policeman's daughter with an interest in local crime. She says she learned the rare necklace belongs to a Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle, wife of a wealthy elderly man. She promises to meet Mrs. Grayle and get her to hire Marlowe to find the necklace. Marlowe examines some marijuana cigarettes he found on Marriott’s body and discovers a card for a psychic named Jules Amthor. He makes an appointment to see him. On a hunch, he investigates the club owner’s widow and learns her house is paid for by Marriott. Marlowe visits Mrs. Grayle but she is more interested in coming on to him than finding her necklace. He then visits Amthor in his office, and probes for his connection to Marriott and the drugs. Amthor dismisses his questions, then has him assaulted and thrown out by two crooked policemen, who lock him up in a private hospital. He escapes, but on the way out sees Malloy sitting freely in another room. He discusses the case with Anne Riordan and the police, who are annoyed at his continued involvement. They suspect Marriott of blackmailing wealthy women, in league with Amthor. Marriott hid the cards inside the drugs to implicate Amthor if he were found dead, but they doubt Amthor is the killer. Marlowe investigates the crooked cops and learns they were essentially unwitting dupes for Amthor, who thought Marlowe was trying to blackmail him. The hospital is an unrelated front for dope peddling and hiding fugitives. Marlowe now suspects Malloy moved to a hideout on a local gambling boat. He sneaks on board, and despite being caught by the gangster owner, manages to get him to pass a message through his criminal network to Malloy. Back home, Mrs. Grayle wants to see him, so he invites her over. Malloy shows up first, and Marlowe hints he knows what Malloy has been trying to find out. Mrs. Grayle arrives and Malloy hides. Marlowe confronts her: she is Velma and had used Marriott to help conceal her new identity. He bought off the club owner’s widow for her, but when Malloy and Marlowe began looking for her, she needed to cut all her past ties. She tricked Marriott into going to the canyon so she could kill him, but killing Marlowe too would have been too risky. Malloy steps out and Velma shoots him fatally, then flees. Amthor, the hospital owner, and the crooked cops are all exposed to the law. Velma is eventually tracked down in Baltimore and kills herself."
1207,The Man Who Smiled,crime," After killing a man in the line of duty (in The White Lioness), Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself spiralling into an alcohol-fuelled depression. He has just decided to leave the police when an old friend, Sten Torstensson, approaches him to secretly investigate the recent death of his father in a car accident. At first Kurt dismisses his friend's suspicions as unlikely, when Sten is found dead, murdered with no doubt, in exactly the same manner as a Norwegian businessman shortly before. Against his previous judgement, Kurt returns to work to investigate what he is convinced is a case of double murder."
1208,Why Didn't They Ask Evans?,crime," Bobby Jones, the son of the vicar of the Welsh seaside town of Marchbolt, is playing a game of golf with a friend. He chips the ball over a cliff edge and when he goes to look for the ball he sees a man lying unconscious below. Bobby's companion goes for help while Bobby stays with the badly injured man. The man soon dies, but not before briefly regaining consciousness and saying “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” This, and a photograph of a beautiful woman Bobby finds in the man's coat pocket, are the only clues to his identity. While Bobby is waiting with the body another man finds him there. He introduces himself as Roger Bassington-ffrench and offers to stay with the body so Bobby will not be late to play the organ at his father's church. The dead man is identified as Alex Pritchard by his sister, Amelia Cayman. She is said to be the woman in the photograph, and Bobby wonders how such a beautiful girl could become such a coarse older woman. After the inquest, Mrs. Cayman and her husband want to know if Pritchard had any last words. Bobby says that he did not. Later, when talking with his friend ""Frankie"" – Lady Frances Derwent – Bobby remembers that Pritchard did have last words and writes to the Caymans to tell them. He receives a polite but dismissive reply in the post. Bobby is due to start work with a friend at his garage in London, but receives an unexpected job offer from a firm in Buenos Aires. He rejects the offer. Soon afterwards Bobby falls ill after drinking from a bottle of beer. The beer had been poisoned. The local police can only conclude the poisoning was the work of a madman, but Frankie thinks Bobby was targeted for murder. Bobby is convinced when he sees an old issue of the local paper that had printed the photograph used to find Pritchard's sister. Bobby immediately recognizes that the photo in the paper is not the one he found in the dead man's pocket. He and Frankie realize that Bassington-ffrench must have swapped the photograph while he was alone with the body and that Mrs. Cayman was likely not related to the dead man at all. Bobby and Frankie decide the best way to solve the mystery is to find Bassington-ffrench. They manage to trace him to a house called Merroway Court in Hampshire, owned by his brother Henry and Henry's wife Sylvia. They stage a car accident outside the house with the help of a doctor friend so that Frankie (really uninjured) will be invited to stay at Merroway Court to ""recover"". Frankie produces a newspaper cutting about the mysterious dead man and Sylvia remarks that he looks like a man she'd met named Alan Carstairs. He was a traveler and big-game hunter who was a friend of John Savage, a millionaire who had killed himself a short time ago after finding out he had terminal cancer. Frankie is also introduced to two neighbours of the Bassington-ffrench’s – Dr Nicholson and his younger wife, Moira. Dr Nicholson runs a local sanatorium and Frankie writes to Bobby and gets him to investigate the establishment. He breaks into the grounds at night and comes across a young girl who says that she is in fear of her life – it is the same girl in the original photograph that Bobby found in the dead man’s pocket. Bobby has to leave the grounds before they are discovered. Several days later, the girl turns up at the local inn where Bobby is staying. She identifies herself to him as Moira Nicholson. She is convinced that her husband is trying to kill her and she admits to knowing Alan Carstairs before her marriage to the doctor. Bobby introduces her to Frankie and it is Moira who suggests that they simply ask Roger if it was he who took the photograph on the body of the dead man. At the next opportunity, Frankie does so and Roger admits that did indeed take the picture, recognising Moira and wanting to avoid scandal for a family friend at the inquest, but he did not put in the photograph of Mrs. Cayman. Interested in the will of the late John Savage, Frankie consults her own family solicitor in London and finds out that by coincidence Carstairs consulted him too. Savage was staying with a Mr. and Mrs. Templeton when he became convinced he had cancer, although one specialist told him it wasn’t the case and he was perfectly well. When he died by suicide, his will left seven hundred thousand pounds to the Templetons who have now gone abroad. Carstairs was also on their trail, suspicious of the will. Bobby is kidnapped and Frankie is lured to his place of confinement – an isolated cottage and finds herself held as well. Their kidnapper is Roger but they manage to turn the tables on him and find Moira in the house but drugged. By the time the police arrive, Roger has escaped. Bobby and Frankie trace the witnesses to the signing of John Savage’s will. They are the former cook and gardener of Mr. and Mrs. Templeton, Mr. Templeton being, in reality, Mr. Cayman. They are told that Gladys, the parlour maid, wasn’t asked to witness the will – made the night before Savage died - and realise that it must have been because she had previously served Savage during his stay (the cook and gardener hadn’t) and she would have realised that it was Roger who was taking his place in the ""death-bed"" after he forged the will's contents. They also discover that Gladys’ name was Evans, hence the reason for Carstairs’ question – ""Why didn't they ask Evans?"" Tracing the parlour maid they are amazed to find that she is now the housekeeper at the vicarage of Bobby’s father. This is the reason for Carstairs visit to Wales – his attempt to find Evans when he grew suspicious of Savage's will and it is also the reason for the first attempt on Bobby’s life – the villains couldn’t risk Bobby (who found Carstairs’ body) being in the same house as Evans. Going back to Wales they find Moira who claims she is being followed by Roger and has come to them for help. Frankie though is not taken in and spoils Moira’s attempt to poison their coffee in the quiet country café they are in. Moira was Mrs. Templeton and Roger’s co-conspirator. Attempting to shoot Frankie and Bobby in the café when she is exposed, she is successfully overpowered. Several weeks later, Frankie receives a letter from Roger, posted from South America, in which he confesses his part and Moira's part. Bobby and Frankie realise they are in love with each other and become engaged."
1209,The Narrows,crime," While investigating the death of ex-FBI profiler Terry McCaleb at his wife's request, Bosch begins to suspect that notorious serial killer and ex-FBI supervisor Robert Backus, aka The Poet, presumed dead, may have murdered McCaleb. Digging deeper, Bosch follows a lead to Las Vegas that brings him into contact with the FBI. Meanwhile, FBI agent Rachel Walling, who was at one time Backus's protégé in the FBI (as McCaleb had also been) and who has been exiled by the FBI to South Dakota for four years for her role in The Poet investigation, is the subject of messages sent by Backus to the FBI. As Bosch and Walling are both outsiders to the main FBI investigation, they eventually join forces. The novel shifts points of view, cutting from Bosch's first-person commentary to the third-person perspectives of Walling and Backus. Bosch meets a neighbor whom he later discovers (in the book The Closers) to be Cassie Black, the main character of Void Moon, and he begins a relationship with Walling. He also accepts an offer from his old partner Kiz Rider to rejoin the LAPD under a new chief of police, as a homicide detective in the Open-Unsolved Unit within the department's Robbery-Homicide Division. In the end, Bosch and Walling bring The Poet to justice by chasing him into the concrete channels of the swollen Los Angeles River in L.A., where he drowns while Bosch barely survives. His death is confirmed this time, as opposed to The Poet where he was merely presumed dead. However, the relationship between Bosch and Walling falls apart in the end when Bosch learns that the FBI had discovered that Backus had nothing to do with McCaleb's death but had withheld the information from him. In fact, McCaleb had killed himself in a manner to make his death look accidental, as his heart transplant was failing, and he did not want to burden his wife and children with the crippling expense of additional medical procedures. it:Il poeta è tornato sv:Fällan"
1210,Faceless Killers: A Mystery,crime," Inside an almost isolated Skåne farmhouse in Lunnarp, an old man, Johannes Lövgren is tortured to death and his wife Maria savagely beaten and left for dead with a noose around her neck. Inspector Kurt Wallander, a forty-two-year-old Ystad police detective, and his team &ndash; Rydberg, an aging detective with a rheumatism; Martinsson, a 29-year-old rookie; Naslund, a thirty-year veteran; Svedberg, a balding, forty-something-year-old detective; Hansson; and Peters &ndash; are put on the case. Maria Lovgren is taken to a hospital, but dies anyway. Her last word: ""foreign"". Rydberg has been examining the noose around Mrs Lovgren's neck and ""has never seen one like it before"". He thinks that Mrs Lovgren's last word is accurate, and that the murderers are foreign. But his conclusion leads to several racially-motivated attacks after the information is leaked to the press. The story focuses on Sweden's liberal attitude regarding immigration, and explores themes of racism and national identity."
1211,Endless Night,crime," Ambitious young Michael Rogers - the narrator of the story - falls in love with Fenella Guteman (Ellie) the first time he sets eyes on her in the mysterious yet scenic 'Gipsy's Acre', complete with its sea-view and dark fir trees. Before long, he has both the land and the woman, but rumors are spreading of a curse hanging over the land. Not heeding the locals' warnings, the couple take up residence at 'Gipsy's Acre', leading to a devastating tragedy."
1212,Towards Zero,crime," Lady Tressilian, an old and humourless woman confined to her bed, invites several guests into her seaside home of Gull's Point for two weeks at the end of the summer. Tennis star Nevile Strange, former ward of Lady Tressilian's deceased husband, incurs her displeasure by bringing both his new wife, Kay, and his ex-wife, Audrey, thus causing awkward romantic misunderstandings. But events soon become sinister when Lady Tressilian is killed and Superintendent Battle, who is holidaying nearby in the home of his nephew, Inspector James Leach, finds himself in a labyrinthine maze of clues and deception."
1213,The Clocks,crime," It is while visiting Wilbraham Crescent one afternoon on his own business that Special Branch agent Colin “Lamb” takes the terrified Sheila into his arms. He is investigating areas connected with crescents or the moon while following up a clue to the route by which classified information is leaving the country. The clue is a note found in a dead agent's pocket; letter M, number 61, and a sketch of a crescent moon are all that is written on a bit of hotel stationery (sketched in the book). At 19 Wilbraham Crescent, home of the blind Miss Pebmarsh, a police investigation begins into the murder. The dead man has a business card in his pocket indicating that the bearer is an insurance salesman called R. H. Curry. Neither the company nor the salesman are real, police learn soon. The clothing reveal nothing else, as all labels have been removed. He was killed by a knife, an ordinary kitchen knife. A colourful group of neighbours is interviewed by Inspector Hardcastle with his friend Lamb in attendance as his note-taking sergeant. The neighbouring homes adjoin the murder site on the street or from the back gardens in this unusually arranged Victorian housing development. The most interesting of the neighbours to Colin is the Ramsey family: the husband popped off for business travel days after his boys came home for the school vacation, as he does frequently for his 'constructional' profession. He is clearly taken with Sheila, an extra motive to aid his friend, the inspector. Things look bleak for Sheila when the aunt who raised her, Mrs. Lawton, is questioned by Hardcastle. Her niece's full name is Rosemary Sheila, but the girl preferred Sheila from age 6. Rosemary is the name on a leather travel clock found at the scene of the murder, but lost before the police gathered up the clocks set to the incorrect time. Frustrated, Colin approaches Hercule Poirot, an old friend of his father, to investigate the case. He challenges Poirot to do so from his armchair as he had always claimed was possible. He leaves the celebrated detective with detailed notes on the investigation thus far. The celebrated detective accepts the challenge, then instructs Colin to talk with the neighbors beyond the initial interviews with Inspector Hardcastle. At the inquest in Crowdean, the medical examiner reveals that the victim had been given a ""Micky Finn"" (chloral hydrate in alcohol) before he was murdered. After the inquest, Edna Brent, one of Sheila’s fellow secretaries, expresses her confusion at something said in evidence. What she said couldn't be true, she tells the young officer she first encounters. She attempts to draw it to Hardcastle’s attention, but that lower level officer deflects her. Within hours, she is found dead in a telephone box on Wilbraham Crescent, strangled with her own scarf. The dead man's identity proves hard to discover, further frustrating Hardcastle. A letter from a woman called Mrs. Merlina Rival (original name Flossie Gapp) seems the first solid lead. She appears, identifies the dead man as her one-time husband, Harry Castleton, after careful questioning by the Inpsector. In that week, Colin has left Britain on his own case, travelling behind the Iron Curtain to Romania. He returns with the information he needed, but not the person he hoped to find. Following Poirot's advice, Colin seeks to talk with the neighbors. He makes an important discovery in a ten-year-old girl, Geraldine Brown, who lives in the apartment block on the other side of the street. She has been observing the events at Wilbraham Crescent with a pair of opera glasses while confined to her room with a broken leg. She records events of interest. She reveals that a new laundry service delivered a heavy basket of laundry on the morning of the murder. Colin shares his discovery with Hardcastle. Mrs. Rival wrote to the police to state that her late husband had a scar behind his left ear. Meeting her in London, Hardcastle tells her the scar is only a few years old, per medical examination, long after she had last seen him. Upset at this news, she calls the person who involved her in this case. Despite a police ""tail"" on her to find this link, she is found dead at Victoria tube station, stabbed in the back. Three murders now, the bodies are piling up, and the police are no closer to resolving their case. Hardcastle has one firm fact: Mrs. Rival was hired by the murderer to make the identification she did, and then killed for it. Poirot’s initial view of this case is that the appearance of complexity must conceal quite a simple murder. The clocks are therefore a red herring, as is the presence of Sheila, and the removal of the dead man's wallet, tailor marks in the clothing. Colin updates Poirot on succeeding visits, teasing him for not yet finding the solution. Poirot took a room in a Crowdean hotel to tell Inspector Hardcastle and Colin Lamb what he has deduced. From a careful chronology of events, he deduces what Edna realised. She returned early to the secretarial bureau from lunch the day of the murder because of damage to her shoe, unnoticed by her boss, Miss Martindale. Edna knows that Miss Martindale took no telephone call at the time she testified that she had. Thus only one person had motive to murder poor Edna. From that fictitious call, the boss sent Sheila to Miss Pebmarsh’s house for steno/typing service. Miss Pebmarsh steadfastly denied ever requesting this service. Mrs. Bland, one of the neighbors of 19 Wilbraham Crescent, mentioned she had a sister in the initial interview with Insp. Hardcastle. Poirot deduced the identity of this sister. Miss Martindale, owner of Cavendish Secretarial and Typewriting Bureau, is the sister of Mrs. Bland. Her typing service specialized in readying author's texts for publication, mystery authors and a few writers of seamy romances. The present Mrs. Bland is the second Mrs. Bland, also deduced by Poirot. Mr. Bland said his wife was the sole living relative for her family inheritance — how could she be sole heir and have a sister, at the same time? Mr. Bland married in the war, but his wife was killed overseas in that same war; he remarried soon after, another Canadian woman. The Canadian family of his first wife had disapproved of him, cut off communication with their daughter so thoroughly that they did not know she was dead. Some 16 years later, the first wife was heiress to an overseas fortune, thought to be the last living relative. When news of it reached the Blands, they decided that the second Mrs. Bland must pose as the heiress in order to obtain the money, rather than admit the death. The couple succeeded in fooling the British law firm that sought the heir on behalf of the Canadian firm handling the will. When Quentin Duguesclin, who knew the first wife and her family, decided to look her up in England more than a year later, a plan was laid to murder him. The plan was simple, with additions like the clocks taken from an unpublished mystery story whose author had been a close client of Miss Martindale. She was avaricious and brutal but not imaginative. Mrs. Rival was murdered before she could tell the police who asked her to make the false identification, just as Edna had been killed before she revealed what she inadvertently knew. Mr. Bland and his sister-in-law thought their plan would baffle the police, while Mrs. Bland felt she was a pawn in their schemes, rather than the full partner she was. Mr. Bland took care to dispose of Mr. Duguesclin's passport on a quick trip to Boulogne, which trip he was bold enough to mention to Colin in casual conversation. Again proving Poirot's point that people reveal much in simple conversation. Poirot has assumed this trip, so the man's passport would be found in a country different than where he was murdered, and long after friends and family in Canada had missed him on his vacation in Europe. The missing clock, the one with Rosemary written in faded letters, was traced as well. Colin realized that Sheila had taken it that afternoon, seeing it was her very own clock, mislaid on the way to a repair shop. She tossed it in the neighbor's trash. But she had not mislaid it initially; her boss, Miss Martindale, had taken it as part of her murder plot. Following Poirot's resolution of the motives for these murders, Colin sees his error in reading the note he carries. Turned upside down, it points him to 19 Wilbraham Crescent. Miss Pebmarsh is the center of the ring passing information to the other side in the Cold War, using Braille system to encode their messages. He has decided to marry Sheila and realizes that Miss Pebmarsh is the real mother of his love. A true gentleman, he gives Miss Pebmarsh two hours warning of the net about to close around her, soon to be his mother-in-law. She chose her cause over her child once, and does so again, finding a knife to defend herself. Colin disarms her, and the two wait for the arrest, each secure that their convictions are the true ones. The novel closes with two letters from Inspector Hardcastle to Poirot, telling him police have found all the hard evidence to close the case. Mrs. Bland ""cracked"" under questioning, and admitted all. The two plots are tied in several points, but one is clever. Colin initially seeks, but did not find, 61 Wilbraham Crescent. That is home to the Blands, who committed the murder that Hardcastle and Poirot want to solve. Initially, the Blands are not suspected in the murder at all, and of no interest to Colin. The murdered body was found in 19 Wilbraham Crescent, a murder in which the owner had no involvement. Instead, it was the home of the person whom Colin sought, center of the spy ring, Miss Pebmarsh. It is important to have human curiosity, to turn the paper every direction. Viewed from the 21st century, well past the Cold War, its flavor and feeling are well captured in this novel."
1214,Origin in Death,crime," When Lt.Eve Dallas and Detective Delia Peabody are called to the murder scene of Dr. Wilfred B. Icove Sr., things already don't make sense. Dr. Icove was renowned as a sainted genius of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, and no one, not even his son Wilfred Icove Jr., benefits from his death. What's even stranger are the security disks that reveal a woman (with initials DNA) walking into Icove's office, killing him with a single stab in the heart and walking out again. When Dr. Icove Jr. is killed in the same way, Eve begins looking for another mystery woman, while her husband Roarke begins investigating an organization run by the Icoves and their partner, Dr. Jonah Wilson. Soon, they uncover a secret world inside a private school of young girls and women, created by the Icoves and Wilson. A world of children by design, where people aren't born, but cloned."
1215,They Do It with Mirrors,crime," As the story opens, Jane Marple is paying a visit to her old friend Ruth Van Rydock. Miss Marple, Ruth, and Ruth's sister Carrie Louise were all friends together at the same school in Italy when they were girls. Ruth is worried that something is very wrong at Stonygates, the Victorian mansion where Carrie Louise lives with her husband Lewis Serrocold. She can't explain any real reason for these worries, but she fears that Carrie Louise may be in danger of some kind. Ruth asks Miss Marple to visit her and find out what is going on. Carrie Louise is delighted to have Jane Marple for a visit at Stonygates. The old Victorian mansion, though owned outright by Carrie Louise, has been converted into a home for delinquent boys which is run by Carrie Louise's husband, Lewis Serrocold. Lewis Serrocold is actually Carrie Louise's third husband; she was also once widowed and once divorced. Carrie Louise has always been attracted to men who had their minds on noble causes. Her first husband, Mr. Gulbrandsen, was a great philanthropist, and Mr. Serrocold is devoted to the idea of reforming juvenile delinquents and teaching them how to contribute to society. The boys are involved in theatrical productions and many other activities around the estate during the day, but at night they are confined to their own quarters. The family has the central block of the house to themselves. The family includes many people who are connected to each other only through Carrie Louise. Mildred Strete is the only blood relative of Carrie Louise who is resident at Stonygates. She is Carrie Louise's daughter by her first marriage. Carrie Louise also had an adopted daughter, Pippa, who died after giving birth to her own daughter, Gina. Now an adult, Gina is married to an American named Walter Hudd and has recently returned to Stonygates. Juliet Bellever (nicknamed Jolly), a longtime companion, caretaker, and friend of Carrie Louise is also a permanent fixture at the mansion. Stephen and Alex Restarick, Carrie Louise's stepsons from her second marriage, are also frequent visitors. Also frequently present at Stonygates is Lewis Serrocold's assistant, Edgar Lawson. Edgar is an awkward young man whom the others dismiss as pompous and half-mad. He seems to suffer from both a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur. On several occasions he confides to others that he is the illegitimate son of a great man, and claims that powerful enemies are conspiring to keep him from his rightful position. Christian Gulbrandsen, a member of the Stonygates Board of Trustees and the son of Carrie Louise's first husband from his previous marriage, arrives unexpectedly to see Lewis Serrocold. Everyone assumes he is there on business, but no one is sure exactly why. After dinner, Mr. Gulbrandsen retires to the guest room to type a letter. Miss Marple and the others gather in the Great Hall. A fuse blows out, and Walter goes to repair it. Edgar Lawson bursts into the darkened room, screaming that Lewis Serrocold is his real father. Edgar and Mr. Serrocold go into the study and Edgar locks the door behind him. Everyone in the Great Hall listens intently as Edgar screams accusations at Mr. Serrocold, then they hear multiple gunshots. When the door is finally opened, they are surprised but relieved to see that Mr. Serrocold is alive and well, Edgar in tears, and several bullet holes in the walls. Yet there has been a murder at Stonygates that night after all. When Juliet Bellever goes to check on Christian Gulbrandsen, she finds him dead. He was shot while working at his typewriter, and the letter he was writing is gone. Lewis Serrocold later reveals to the police that he took the letter to keep his wife from learning its contents. He explains that he and Mr. Gulbrandsen were both concerned that Carrie Louise's recent poor health was due to deliberate poisoning. At that point, Alex Restarick, Stephen's brother(Carrie Louise's stepsons from her second marriage), arrives. He becomes the most likely suspect since the police who come to investigate find an unaccounted period of time between his arrival in the car and his appearance in the Great Hall. Alex Restarick's remarks about stage scenery lead Miss Marple to reflect on all kinds of stage illusion, such as conjurers who perform magic by using mirrors and stage sets and assistants who are in on the trick. When Alex and a boy who claimed to have seen something on the night of the murder are both killed, Miss Marple realizes who has been behind the plotting at Stonygates: Lewis Serrocold. The attempted poisoning of Carrie Louise never happened; it was an explanation hastily concocted by Serrocold to explain Christian Gulbrandsen's sudden appearance at Stonygates and his secretive conference with Mr. Serrocold. In fact, Gulbrandsen had discovered that Mr. Serrocold was embezzling from the Gulbrandsen Trust, and Serrocold and his unstable accomplice, Edgar Lawson, killed him to silence him. The murder was accomplished via illusion and misdirection, as Alex Restarick and Miss Marple both eventually realized: ""behind the scenes"" of the interior of the house, which everyone had been focused on, there was a terrace by which someone could exit the study and re-enter the house to commit murder without being seen by the rest of the residents. This was what Mr. Serrocold had done, while Lawson, using his acting talents and different voices, had continued both sides of the loud argument by himself. When confronted by the police, Edgar Lawson panics and flees the house, jumping into an old boat in an attempt to cross a lake on the property. The boat is rotted though, and as it begins to sink, Lewis Serrocold jumps into the lake to rescue his accomplice. Both men are caught in the reeds that line the lake, and drown before police are able to rescue them, bringing an end to the case."
1216,Personal Injuries,crime," In Personal Injuries, Turow continues to explore the justice system through Faulknerian characters such as attorney Robbie Feaver, agent Evon Miller, U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett, and Justice Brendan Tuohey. These individuals drive the mystery at the core of the book. The novel begins with Robbie Feaver seeking advice from attorney George Mason, the narrator. Feaver admits that he has been bribing several judges in the Common Law Claims Division to win favorable judgments for years. U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett has uncovered Feaver's secret and wants Feaver to strike a deal to get at the man he believes to be at the center of all the legal corruption in the metropolitan area, Brendan Tuohey, Presiding Judge of Common Law Claims and heir apparent to the Chief Justice of Kindle County Superior Court. An undercover scheme is put in motion to trap the guilty parties. The novel follows the FBI as it pursues the legal community of Kindle County in a web of tapped phones, concealed cameras, and wired spies."
1217,The Monster in the Box,crime," Wexford has long suspected Eric Targo of being a serial killer. Decades later, he finally admits this to DI Mike Burden, his longtime colleague and friend. In an apparently unrelated matter, DS Hannah Goldsmith and Burden's second wife Jenny both approach Wexford with concerns about Tamima, one of Jenny Burden's students. As a young detective constable he investigated the murder of Elsie Carroll. Wexford suspects that while her husband purported to be a whist club, he was actually with his mistress when his wife was killed. George Carroll was acquitted of his wife's murder on a technicality, but was still shunned by Kingsmarkham residents; Wexford believes him innocent. In the weeks of and following the investigation into Elsie Carroll's death, Targo, a scarf covering his prominent birthmark, walks his dog past the young Wexford's rooming house to taunt him, or so it appears to Wexford. By the 1970s Targo has become a prosperous, businessman, several times married and divorced, living in the north of England. Targo reappears in Kingsmarkam. Wexford suspects that Targo has murdered the autistic son of a Myringham widow who wishes her son dead so she can marry her longtime partner. In the book's present Targo reappears again, still with his dogs, without the naevus, but with a private menagerie."
1218,The Dain Curse,crime," The detective known only as The Continental Op investigates a theft of diamonds from the Leggett family of San Francisco. The plot involves a supposed curse on the Dain family, said to inflict sudden and violent deaths upon those in their vicinity. Edgar Leggett's wife is a Dain, as is his daughter Gabrielle Leggett. The detective untangles a web of robberies, lies and murder. It is discovered that young Gabrielle Leggett is also involved in a mysterious religious cult and is addicted to drugs. Gabrielle escapes from the cult and marries her fiancé, but bloodshed continues to follow them. The Continental Op protects Gabrielle, and helps her recover from her morphine addiction. He finally discovers the reason behind all the mysterious, violent events surrounding Gabrielle and the Dains. The novel is structured in three parts, each concerning different mysteries, Part One: ""The Dains"", Part Two: ""The Temple"" and Part Three: 'Quesada""."
1219,White Jazz,crime," Dave Klein is a Lieutenant in the LAPD's Administrative Vice unit and an attorney. Unlike The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential, the book is told with one ""protagonist"" instead of three, reminiscent of the first novel, The Black Dahlia. It is told from Klein's stream of consciousness. After the reader is updated on LA's status, (Johnny Stompanato's death, Mickey Cohen, a probe set up on organized crime's influence in boxing, the political Battle of Chavez Ravine which was the relocation of Chavez Ravine's residents in order to build the Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium, etc.) through the newspaper clippings, Dave Klein is introduced. He and his partner George ""Junior"" Stemmons are setting up a raid on a house with a bookmaking operation running inside. Klein and Stemmons are later ordered to protect the witness in the boxing probe. However, Mickey Cohen called Klein earlier and told him 'Sam G' (""G for Giancana"") wanted the witness dead. Klein kills the witness, who has a mental disability, by throwing him out of a high window, making it look like an accident. The press headlines the story, ""Federal Witness Plummets to Death,"" with a sidebar: ""Suicide Pronouncement: 'Hallelujah, I Can Fly!'"" When Klein finally returns to his house, he reminisces on his life so far. Born David Douglas Klein, he is of German descent. His father Franz, arrived at Ellis Island. He was raised by both parents, and has a sister named Meg. However, the father was abusive towards his sister, and Klein, while still at a young age, threatened to kill his father if he hurt her again. After the children become adults, their parents die in a car accident. Klein and his sister shared an ""attraction"" to one another, and after their parent's death, they almost slept together. Klein joins the LAPD in 1938. In 1942, he enlists in the U.S. Marines and serves in the Pacific. and returns to the Department in 1945. Klein also studies law at University of Southern California. However the GI Bill won't cover the costs for school. Klein must run other jobs, from collecting on loans, (earning him the name, ""the Enforcer""), to mob work. Klein rises through the police rank to Lieutenant, passes the bar, and secures his police pension. However, Klein isn't released from mob work, which included several murders. Two personal murders were of the ""Two Tonys"", Tony Brancato and Tony Trombino, who hurt Meg. He hides in the backseat of one of their cars and shoots them both in the back of the heads. In an attempt to get out of mob work, he begs the dying Jack Dragna to let him go. Dragna doesn't, and Klein suffocates him. Wilhite, of the corrupt Narcotics Squad, calls Klein later that night and ask him to investigate a burglary. The burglary is at the house of J.C. Kafesjian, sanctioned drug dealer of the LAPD. The crime scene consists of dead dogs, missing their eyes and poisoned with stelfactiznide chloride (a chemical solution used in dry cleaning), smashed records, and torn pedal pushers covered with semen. Klein investigates as a favor to Wilhite. In order to get liberal Democratic candidate Morton Diskant to drop out of the election for city councilman, Klein is ordered to blackmail Diskant. Klein receives assistance from Fred Turentine, and Pete Bondurant (who later appears in American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand). While the operation doesn't go smoothly, they successfully blackmail the married Diskant with another woman, and Diskant later drops out of the race. Klein investigates the Kafesjian case with police work, forensic information, and other leads. Klein later gets a side job from Howard Hughes, to obtain information on an actress named Glenda Bledsoe that would violate her full-service contract. Since there is a morality clause in her contract, Klein merely needs to find proof that Bledsoe is an alcoholic, criminal, narcotics addict, communist, lesbian, or nymphomaniac. Hughes' reasons were she moved out of one of Hughes's guest houses, and left script sessions without permission. Klein sees through to the real motive for Hughes wanting her out. As Klein puts it: ""'Guest home' meant 'fuck pad' meant Howard Hughes left to choke his own chicken."" During surveillance of Glenda, he finds out she, Touch Vecchio, Rock Rockwell, and George Ainge are planning a fake kidnapping."
1220,Before the Fact,crime," Before the Fact is the story of Lina, a ""born victim"". She is raised in the country in the early decades of the 20th century and, at 28, she is still a virgin and in danger of becoming an old spinster. She finds country life with her parents rather boring, and only lives for strangers who might be passing through or who have been invited by someone living in or near their village. When the novel opens, such a stranger has just arrived: 27 year-old Johnnie Aysgarth, from an impoverished family who are, as she is told, ""of rotten stock"". General McLaidlaw, Lina's father, is opposed to the marriage, and everyone seems to know that all that Johnnie is after is Lina's money. Lina herself has been told from an early age that Joyce, her younger sister, got the looks and she (Lina) got the brains. In spite of these difficulties, Lina and Johnnie get married after only a short engagement. They go to Paris on their honeymoon, where they stay at the best hotels and dine at the best restaurants, and, on their return, move into an eight-bedroom house in London. Only six weeks later, Johnnie, who is jobless, admits to his wife that they have been living on borrowed money and that it has run out. Gradually, unwillingly, Lina takes charge of the couple's finances and suggests that Johnnie get a regular job. They leave the expensive house and move to the country; they settle down in a part of Dorset where they know no one and start living in a more modest house. For the time being, they rely entirely on Lina's allowance. Reluctantly, Johnnie takes a job as the steward of a large estate of a Captain Melbeck. Lina always wanted to have children, but, as it turns out, she never gets pregnant. As time goes by, Lina gradually learns that Johnnie is a crook. Apart from being a compulsive liar, he turns out to be * a thief: During a tennis party, he steals an expensive diamond belonging to one of the guests and, soon afterwards, a piece of Lina's own jewelry. Also, he sells Lina's four Hepplewhite chairs to an antique shop in Bournemouth. * a forger: He forges Lina's signature and cashes one of her cheques. * an embezzler: He embezzles Captain Melbeck's money to pay his gambling debts. Luckily, Melbeck doesn't prosecute. * an adulterer: During their marriage, he has affairs with many women and village girls, including Lina's best friend, Janet Caldwell - he has a flat in Bournemouth especially for that purpose - and Ella, their parlour maid, by whom he has a son. * eventually, a murderer: He incites General McLaidlaw to do a trick involving chairs while he and Lina are staying with the General for Christmas. This is too much physical exercise for the General, and he dies suddenly. Some years later, Johnnie cheats a rich school friend of his, Beaky Thwaite, out of his money by traveling incognito to Paris with him, going to a brothel and having him drink a whole beaker of brandy in one gulp so that he drops dead. However, Lina's own death will be Johnnie's first ""real"" murder. He goes to great lengths to conceive an undetectable murder. When Isobel Sedbusk, the author of detective stories, happens to spend the summer in their village, he associates with her and, on the pretext of discussing material for her new book, elicits a new method of murder from her: swallowing an alkali commonly used, but never suspected of being poisonous, and which leaves no trace in the human body for a post-mortem to find. At the very end of the novel, Lina, who really seems to have gone mad, catches the flu. She has been waiting for her husband to try to murder her for months now. When he brings her a drink, she swallows it deliberately, knowing that it is a poisonous cocktail. Johnny is going to get away with it (""People did die of influenza.""), which is what Lina, so much in love with her husband, hopes will happen. The novel covers a period of approximately ten years: Johnnie Aysgarth's courtship of, and marriage to, Lina McLaidlaw, the disintegration of their marriage and her imminent death &mdash; although it is uncertain that she is really going to die. The whole story is told from Lina Aysgarth's point of view. We know everything she does and everything she thinks. On the other hand, we know practically nothing about the villain except for what Lina sees and gathers, creating more suspense."
1221,Tourist Season,crime," Las Noches de Diciembre (Spanish, ""The Nights of December"") is a small terrorist cell led by renegade newspaper columnist Skip Wiley, a brilliant-but-insane Uncle Duke-like character, as El Fuego. Wiley believes that the only way to save Florida's natural beauty from destruction is to violently dissuade tourists from visiting and/or settling in the state. Recruiting three comrades with similar axes to grind against the Florida establishment, they begin a spree of flashy kidnappings, murders, and bombings to frighten off new arrivals into the Sunshine State. Fittingly, their first victim is B.D. ""Sparky"" Harper, the head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Harper's body is found stuffed into an oversized suitcase, dressed in a garish tourist outfit and smeared with suntan oil, and with his legs amputated. Next, Wiley's gang starts kidnapping and murdering random tourists and Florida residents, many of whom are fed to a giant North American Crocodile (nicknamed ""Pavlov""). Brian Keyes, a private investigator and former news reporter for the Miami Sun, is hired by the Public Defender's office to help defend the police's prime suspect in Sparky Harper's murder, a petty burglar named Ernesto Cabal, who was caught driving Harper's stolen car. Brian is inclined to believe that Harper's murder is much too bizarre to be Ernesto's work, but the Miami police, in their eagerness to close the case, dismiss him. Ernesto commits suicide when his own lawyer states that the case is a lost cause. Brian is then hired by Nell Bellamy (the wife of the first tourist victim) to find her missing husband, and by his old mentor, Sun editor Cab Mulcahy, to locate Wiley, who has disappeared. After an uncomfortable encounter with Wiley's girlfriend, Jenna (Brian's ex-girlfriend), Keyes tracks Wiley to a cabin in the Everglades, where he is abducted by Las Noches. Wiley reveals himself as the group's leader, and tells Brian that his job is to return to Miami (alive), and spread the word of Las Noches demands. But Wiley also says that he is not ready to have his own role exposed yet, and warns Brian that if he does so, then the violence will escalate, immediately and horribly. To drive home the fact that Las Noches is serious, Wiley has Keyes witness as their latest victim, retiree Ida Kimmelman, is fed to Pavlov. Keyes tries to stop the murder, and is stabbed in the back by one of the gang, a Cuban named Jesús Bernal. Keyes is returned to the city and treated in the hospital. Since it is the start of the tourist season, the police's initial reaction to Keyes's warnings is to cover up, dismissing the Las Noches communiques as a hoax. Ricky Bloodworth uncovers the letters and writes an article on the letters, but misspells the name of the group, as ""Las Nachos"". The terrorists retaliate by triggering several bombs in public places, forcing the authorities to take them seriously. Keyes's old friend, Detective Al Garcia is appointed head of a task force to catch the terrorists. Based on Wiley's hints, Keyes, Mulcahy, and Garcia deduce that the terrorists plan to kidnap Miami's much-touted Orange Bowl Queen, in the most spectacularly public fashion possible. Since the civic leaders flatly refuse to cancel the Orange Bowl Parade, or to allow police guards to be seen near the beauty queen, Garcia suggests hiring Keyes as her undercover bodyguard. Keyes is pleasantly surprised when the recently-crowned beauty queen, Kara Lynn Shivers (19), turns out to be an intelligent, self-possessed, and thoroughly sensible person. She actually hates the whole beauty queen ""racket,"" and takes part only to indulge her father's fanatic dreams of making her a star. She and Keyes quickly find common ground and grow closer, eventually developing a relationship. While escorting her home from a tennis game, Keyes catches Jesús Bernal loitering in the parking lot, doing a lackluster job of surveilling the Orange Bowl Queen. Bernal is not paying enough attention, and Keyes beats him soundly, armed with nothing but a tennis racket. Furious, Wiley informs the gang that Bernal has thrown away their psychological advantage by revealing himself and their plans too soon. To regain it, Wiley announces that he's devised a new plan. Bernal, simmering with humiliation and aching for reinstatement with the anti-Castro terrorist group he was expelled from, decides to proceed with his own agenda. Abandoning Las Noches, he sends a mail bomb to Al Garcia, whom he identifies as a ""traitor"" to the anti-Castro movement. Farcically, the bomb is instead opened by over-eager Sun reporter Ricky Bloodworth, illegally sifting Garcia's mail for clues about the terrorists. Because of Bernal's poor construction, the bomb does not kill Bloodworth, it only injures him. Garcia never learns that the bomb was addressed to him, and the bombing is attributed to Wiley's gang. The next evening, Wiley unleashes his new plan: buzzing the deck of the pre-Orange Bowl Friendship Cruise out at sea in a helicopter, Wiley promises to give the tourists on board some ""real Florida souvenirs,"" and drops hundreds of shopping bags from posh vendors onto the deck - which, when ripped open by the frenzied tourists, contain live snakes. Chaos envelops the deck of the cruise ship, and one foolish passenger yells ""abandon ship!"" causing all of them to dive off into the ocean. As the Coast Guard is rescuing them, the helicopter flies away, but unexpectedly crashes at sea before it reaches land. No bodies are recovered. Believing that Las Noches are dead, the Miami civil leaders breathe a sigh of relief. Keyes and Garcia remain skeptical, however, and insist that their security precautions remain in place until after the Orange Bowl Parade. In a last-ditch attempt at redemption, Jesús Bernal kidnaps Garcia at gunpoint and drives him out to Key Largo for a flashy execution. Garcia is wounded in the shoulder by Bernal's shotgun, but Keyes manages to track them down and kills Bernal with a pistol shot. To Keyes's surprise, the Parade comes and goes without any sign of Wiley or his gang. The next day, Cab Mulcahy writes his own front-page account of the tourist murders, revealing his own knowledge of Wiley's role in the killings and apologizing to his readers for withholding it. The evening after the Parade is the Orange Bowl game itself. In the stands, Keyes realizes, belatedly, that Kara Lynn is supposed to make a brief appearance during the game's halftime show. With all their security measures focused on the Parade, the game is a perfect opportunity for Las Noches, alive and well, to strike. In the chaos, Kara Lynn is kidnapped and carried out of the stadium on an airboat, though one of the gang, ex-football player ""Viceroy"" Wilson is shot to death by a Shriner friend of Theodore Bellamy, acting as Kara Lynn's unofficial escort. With the police rushing around in confusion, Keyes goes directly to Jenna's house and examines Wiley's old press clippings. Quickly deducing where Wiley has gone, Keyes drags Jenna along with him. Wiley has taken Kara Lynn to Osprey Island, a small nature preserve in the middle of Biscayne Bay. When Kara Lynn recovers from her drugged sleep, Wiley is taken aback, and sorrowful, that she is, contrary to his expectations, an intelligent and unspoiled young woman. Regretfully he reveals his final plan: the surface of the island has been mined with dynamite, to be exploded at dawn, to allow for the construction of a snazzy new condominium complex. Wiley plans to leave Kara Lynn there, with the island's other remaining wildlife, just to illustrate to the greedy developers of Florida the consequences of their rampant development - as he puts it, the island's native flora and fauna have zero value for such people, but they might stop and think if their dynamite blows up the only species on earth they actually care about: ""a future customer."" Before Wiley can go, however, Keyes arrives and disables Wiley with a bullet to the leg. The fisherman who dropped Keyes off refused to wait around, so Keyes demands to know where Wiley anchored his boat. At first, Wiley refuses to tell, prepared to let the dynamite claim himself, Keyes, and Kara Lynn all at once. But he is horrified to learn that Keyes has brought Jenna along, and surrenders the boat's location. To Keyes's surprise, he refuses to go along with them, preferring to stay on the island. As they speed away from the island, Keyes, Kara Lynn, and Jenna look back and see an amazing spectacle: Wiley is climbing a tree (bad leg and all), trying feverishly to scare a bald eagle nesting there into taking flight before the dynamite explodes. The novel ends just as the ""all clear"" signal for the detonation is sounded, with the three of them whispering the same prayer: ""Please fly away."""
1222,Fletch,crime," The first Fletch novel (1974) introduces I. M. Fletcher, a journalist and ex-marine staying on a beach watching the drug culture for a story, waiting to find the dealer's source before publishing an exposé. A millionaire businessman named Alan Stanwyk approaches Fletch to hire Fletch to murder him; the man tells Fletch that he is dying of bone cancer and wants to avoid a slow, painful death. Fletch accepts $1000 in cash to listen to the man's proposition; the man offers him $20,000 for the murder, and Fletch talks him up to $50,000 in an effort to see if the man is serious. He appears to be serious, and Fletch begins investigating the man's story in between investigating the drug story on the beach and avoiding the two attorneys after him for alimony for each of his ex-wives."
1223,Well-Schooled in Murder,crime," Teacher John Corntel asks his former Eton schoolmate Lynley for help when the 13 year old schoolboy Matthew Whateley has disappeared. Initially Lynley refuses, until Deborah St James finds the naked body of the boy in a churchyard in Stoke Poges. Lynley and Havers start their investigation at Matthew's school Bredgar Chambers, an elite boarding school in West Sussex. They find a letter from Matthew to Jeannie Bonnamy, a daughter of Colonel Bonnamy. Matthew has visited them three days before his death to dine and play chess with the colonel. When Jeannie brought Matthew back to school, they saw 6th form student Chas Quilter in a school minibus, returning from a visit to Cecilia Feld, a girl in Stoke Poges. Chas didn't want anyone to find out about his relationship with Cecilia, and the fact that he was the father of Cecilia's child, which has Apert syndrome. Cecilia herself was transferred from Bredgar Chambers to another school when she was pregnant. Chemistry teacher Emilia Bond tried to burn child pornography photos that belonged to John Corntel; she was in love with Corntel, but found out he was collecting those photos. This explains why Corntel didn't patrol in spite of being duty master. That same evening 6th grader Clive Pritchard nabbed Matthew Whateley to torture him, because Matthew had made a tape recording of Clive bullying schoolboy Harry Morant. When Clive found Matthew dead he felt responsible, unaware that the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. During the investigation there's an attempt to kill Jeannie Bonnamy with a rake. Chas Quilter hangs himself. The investigators find out that Matthew's biological parents were Mrs Pamela Byrne and Edward Hsu, a Chinese former pupil at Bredgar Hall who killed himself after this scandal. Giles Byrne felt financially responsible for the child of his late wife. As a board member he obtained a scholarship for Matthew at Bredgar Chambers. Giles' 18 year old son Brian turns out to be the culprit. He killed his half-brother in the fume cupboard in the chemistry lab. He then transported the body to Stoke Poges in the school minibus Chas Quilter was driving. His motive was to win Chas Quilter's lifetime loyalty. Brian also tried to kill Jeannie Bonnamy for the same reason. Brian Byrne and Clive Pritchard are arrested. In a subplot Barbara Havers visits her demented mother, and finds her father dead. Another theme is Lynley's aristocratic descent (he is sometimes referred to as ""Lord Asherton"")&mdash;shown through his working relationship with his working class colleague Barbara Havers from Acton and his unrequited love for Lady Helen Clyde."
1224,Postern of Fate,crime," Now in their seventies (though the authoress never states their age clearly), Tommy and Tuppence move to a quiet English village, looking forward to a peaceful retirement. But, as they soon discover, their rambling old house holds secrets. Who is Mary Jordan? And why has someone left a code message in an old book about her 'unnatural' death? Once more, ingenuity and insight are called for as they are drawn into old mysteries and new dangers."
1225,A Beautiful Blue Death,crime," The novel, set in 1865 London, follows Charles Lenox as he seeks to solve a murder. Lenox is an independently wealthy gentleman who enjoys solving crimes as a hobby, though he generally prefers to pass the cold winter days in his library with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. He is drawn into a new case when his lifelong friend Lady Jane Grey makes a special request for his help. Prudence Smith, Grey's former housemaid, is dead in an apparent suicide. But Lenox immediately suspects foul play: murder by a rare and deadly poison. Smith lived and worked in the patrician house of George Barnard, a place full of suspects. While Smith played with more than a few hearts, the motive behind her death proves elusive. When another body turns up during the season's most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle the web of loyalties and animosities surrounding Barnard’s mansion. Lenox receives help with the task both from his faithful valet, Graham, and his friend, Dr. Thomas McConnell. Throughout the story, Lenox’s efforts are intermittently enabled or hampered by Scotland Yard Inspector James Exeter, who requires Lenox’s help with the case but wants always to appear in total control. The subplots of the novel focus on Lenox's evolving personal relationship with Grey and McConnell's strained marriage to Lady Victoria ""Toto"" Phillips, all recurring characters in Finch's books."
1226,The Lady in the Morgue,crime," Throughout the novel the true identity of the young, attractive woman found hanging dripping wet from a rope in her hotel room remains a mystery. Neither her clothes nor the conspicuous lack of any shoes provides the police with any clue as to what has happened, and they assume the woman has committed suicide. At the same time a young woman from a prominent New York family goes missing, but when the stolen body is retrieved by Crane her relatives assert that these are not her human remains. Only in the final pages is it found out that a case of switched identities is at the bottom of the riddle. The Lady in the Morgue is remembered for its frank treatment of drug addiction among artists, for its frequent references to contemporary jazz and swing music, and for its bizarre setting (morgues, cemeteries)."
1227,The Veiled One,crime," The book begins when a garotted body is found in a deserted subterranean Kingsmarkham car-park. The victim is Gwen Robson, a middle-aged home help and resident of the town. However, before Wexford can investigate any further he is the victim of a politically motivated car-bomb that was intended for his daughter, Sheila, a well-known actress who has recently caused controversy with a high-profile protest on Ministry of Defence Property. With his boss out of commission in hospital, Detective Inspector Mike Burden must forge ahead alone in the investigation, and quickly narrows in on a suspect. However, without Wexford to rein Burden in, is he in danger of being too short-sighted?"
1228,To Fear A Painted Devil,crime," Gossip in tiny Linchester is raised to new heights when young Patrick Selby dies on the night of his beautiful wife's birthday party. The whole neighborhood was there, witness to the horrible attack of wasps Peter suffered at the end of the evening. But did Peter die of the stings? Dr. Greenleaf thinks not. After all, wasps aren't the only creatures that kill with poison."
1229,Sovereign,crime," Set in the autumn of 1541, the novel describes fictional events surrounding Henry VIII's 'Progress' to the North (a state visit accompanied by the royal court and its attendants, the purpose of which was to formally accept surrender from those who had rebelled during the Pilgrimage of Grace). Most of the novel is set in York, though events in London and on the return journey via Hull are also depicted. Matthew Shardlake (a London lawyer) and his assistant Jack Barak arrive in York ahead of the Progress to fulfill an official role, but also with a secret mission from Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The official role is to deal with petitions to the King from the citizens of York; the secret mission is to ensure the welfare of an important political prisoner, Sir Edward Broderick, so he can be brought to London for questioning in the Tower of London. However, events are quickly complicated when the murder of a York glazier leads Shardlake to the discovery of important documents that bring the King's right to the throne into question."
1230,Hurricane Punch,crime," Serge is in therapy, coping with the fact he has turned 44. At first he goes on a religious awakening, but then decides to make a comeback...by killing as many people as possible in unusual and disturbing ways. As he does this, hurricane season is in full force, and Serge follows hurricanes like others follow sporting events. Unfortunately for him, another serial killer calling himself ""The Eye of the Storm"" is following him, and trying to upstage him. The newly freed Agent Mahoney doesn't believe that the killings are the work of two serial killers, but that Serge's unstoppable zeal for life has caused him to snap in two. But that won't stop Serge, and his brain dead friend Coleman, from enjoying every minute of hurricanes A-I."
1231,The Mocking Program,crime," A hard-boiled police procedural set in a highly imaginative megalopolis called the Montezuma Strip, which stretches along the old U.S.-Mexican border. When police inspector Angel Cardenas investigates the case of a male corpse found with most of its internal organs missing, the victim turns out to have had two identities - one as a local executive, the other as a Texas businessman. The plot thickens when the victim's booby-trapped house nearly kills Cardenas and his partner. The author makes use of a vast array of futuristic elements; notably, sapient apes led by gorillas and intelligent rogue computers that commit computer crimes. While the book does not state this, this is a continuation of a series of short stories featuring the same main character, written by Foster and initially published in genre magazines under the pen-name of James Lawson, and then collected under his own name in the Warner book Montezuma Strip (1995), ISBN 0-446-60207-8"
1232,The Murder at the Vicarage,crime," In St. Mary Mead, no one is more despised than Colonel Protheroe. Even the local vicar has said that killing him would be doing a service to the townsfolk. So when Protheroe is found murdered in the same vicar's study, and two different people confess to the crime, it is time for the elderly spinster Jane Marple to exercise her detective abilities. The vicar and his wife, Leonard and Griselda Clement respectively, who made their first appearance in this novel, continue to show up in Miss Marple stories: notably, in The Body in the Library (1942) and 4.50 from Paddington (1957)"
1233,The Lighthouse,crime," Adam Dalgliesh is brought in to investigate the mysterious death of a famous writer on a remote and inaccessible island off the Cornish coast. Combe Island is a discreet retreat operated by a private trust, where the rich and powerful find peace and quiet. Famed novelist Nathan Oliver, who was born on the island and thus is allowed to visit as he wishes, arrives with his daughter, Miranda and his copy-editor, Dennis Tremlett, who, unbeknownst to Oliver, are having an affair. When he discovers them, Oliver reacts with fury and orders them to leave the island the next day. Several people on the island find Oliver an unpleasant guest. The writer is pressuring the manager of the Combe Island Trust, Rupert Maycroft, to allow him to live in a cottage used by the sole remaining member of the family that owned the island for many years. The manager's secretary, a disgraced Anglican priest named Adrian Boyde, a recovering alcoholic, was tricked into ""falling off the wagon"" by Oliver, and many people are disgusted with Oliver for his heartless, evil actions. Oliver is also confronted at dinner by a scientist, Dr. Mark Yelland, who believes himself to be the model for an unpleasant character in Oliver's upcoming book. The reader is introduced to all the residents of the island, including Jago Tamlyn, the boatman, and Daniel Padgett, a handyman who is planning to leave after the recent death of his mother, who also worked on the island. Oliver is angry at Padgett, who dropped a phial of the author's blood into the sea while taking it to a doctor on the mainland for some medical tests. The next morning, Oliver is discovered hanging from the island's historic lighthouse. Dalgliesh and his team arrive to investigate. The pathologist, Dr. Edith Glenister, determines Oliver was throttled to death before a rope was tied around his neck and his body thrown over the side of the lighthouse railing. Dalgliesh learns that a visiting dignitary from Germany, Dr. Raimund Speidel, is the son of a German officer who died under tragic circumstances while visiting the island during World War II. He further learns that Nathan Oliver's father, Saul, and Jago's grandfather, Tom, played a role in the man's death. Dr. Speidel was ill before arriving on Combe Island, and Dalgliesh contracts his illness. Just as the two men are diagnosed with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Dalgliesh discovers that Adrian Boyde has been murdered. Health authorities put the island under quarantine to contain the spread of disease, and all the people on the island are asked by the police to move into Combe House, the main building, to protect them from further attacks. Dalgliesh takes to the sickroom and his colleagues, Kate Miskin and Francis Benton-Smith, are left to work the case. Benton risks his life to climb down a cliff to find the rock used to beat Boyde to death. Surfacing from fever, Dalgleish has a feverish vision that helps him fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Realising that Padgett must have been the murderer, he orders Kate and Francis to search Padgett's cottage, where they find the phial of Oliver's blood that he had pretended to lose overboard, a lock of Padgett's mother's hair, her and Dan Padgett's birth certificates, and the destroyed remains of her figurines and a book written by Oliver in which a young girl is seduced by an older man. Oliver was actually Padgett's father; Padgett wanted the blood for a DNA test to confirm paternity. Padgett killed Oliver in a fit of anger after confronting him in the lighthouse. He killed Adrian Boyde because the priest knew Padgett wasn't telling the truth about his whereabouts the day Oliver was killed. Before Kate and Francis can arrest Padgett, he takes a young staff member, Millie Tranter, hostage and threatens to throw her from the lighthouse. Kate bravely forces herself through a narrow window so she can unlock the lighthouse door. She and Benton climb to the top, confront Padgett, and Benton convinces him to surrender. Dalgliesh recovers from his illness, and after the break of the investigation and quarantine, he and his lover Emma both overcome their fears about each other's seeming lack of commitment, and agree to marry. fr:Le Phare (roman)"
1234,Diva: A novel,crime," The young man Jules is a motorbike-riding courier for RCA in Paris, and a major fan of classical music and opera. Jules is also a groupie of the beautiful Cynthia Hawkins, an American opera singer. Hawkins is unusual in that she only performs live. She has never made a recording, studio or otherwise. One day, Jules secretly records a Cynthia Hawkins concert. He then shares the tape with his teenage friend Alba, who shares the tape with her adult friend Serge. Criminal Serge Gorodish is in his mid 40's, he shares his life with Alba, a precocious teenage beauty. Serge realizes that the Cynthia Hawkins tape could fetch a large amount of money. Meanwhile, Nadia is a twentysomething in the employ of Saporta. Saporta controls the largest drug cartel and prostitution ring in Paris. Nadia records harmful evidence against Saporta on a cassette tape. Nadia's cassette is erroneously dropped into the satchel on Jules' motorbike. Soon, Jules is being chased by the police, as well as gangsters, though he has no idea why. Saporta mobilizes his entire crime organization to attempt to retrieve the tape from Jules. Locating an intrepid and skilled motorbike rider in Paris is not easy. Meanwhile, there is a furious underground bidding war for Jules' tape of Cynthia Hawkins' concert."
1235,The Friends of Eddie Coyle,crime," Eddie Coyle is an aging, low-level gunrunner for a crime organization in Boston, Massachusetts. He is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of a driving a hijacked truck in New Hampshire. Eddie had been driving the truck for Dillon, a convicted felon and career criminal who is well connected to the syndicate. Coyle has refused to give Dillon up to the authorities in exchange for leniency. Coyle's last chance to avoid a prison term is a sentencing recommendation from ATF Special Agent Dave Foley, who demands that Coyle become an informer in return. A gang led by Jimmy Scalise and Artie Van has been pulling off a series of daring day-time bank robberies with pistols supplied by Coyle. One of Coyle's sources for the pistols is a young gun runner, Jackie Brown, who is involved in a deal to supply military submachine guns for other clients. When taking the delivery of the pistols, Coyle finds out about the submachine guns and sets up Jackie for Foley. Jackie is apprehended by Foley and his agents and realizes he has been double-crossed by Coyle. Coyle feels he has fulfilled his end of the deal, but Foley puts the squeeze on Eddie, demanding more information for his cooperation. Acting on a tip, Foley and their agents are able to arrest Scalise and Van's gang in the commission of a robbery. A desperate Coyle approaches Foley with the only information of value he has, the identity of the gang pulling off the bank robberies, but it is too late for Eddie as Foley has already made the pinch. Scalise believes that he has been double-crossed by Eddie and the head of the syndicate is angry because one of his relatives was arrested as part of the gang. The syndicate boss wants Coyle killed, and Dillon gets a contract for a hit on Coyle, which he carries out. Dillon, who has had to live with the chance that Coyle might have given him up to the authorities to avoid prison, has been an informer for Foley and it is he, not Coyle, who has fingered Scalise and Van. When Foley asks his informant Dillon for information on Coyle's murder, Dillon demurs."
1236,Scarpetta,crime," Dr. Kay Scarpetta is called in to examine a Bellevue Hospital patient in New York City. The patient, Oscar Bane, tells Scarpetta that he has been framed for a murder he did not commit by somebody who is stalking him."
1237,1st to Die,crime," The prologue introduces main character Inspector Lindsay Boxer, San Francisco P.D., who is in a depression and holding a gun to her head as a result of losing a love interest on a case called ""The Honeymoon Murders"". Book One begins with David and Melanie Brandt, freshly married, in their hotel room at the Grand Hyatt. A man outside the door calls ""Champagne"" and David opens the door. The man, Phillip Campbell, then violently kills the bride and groom and immorally brutalizes the corpse of Melanie. The book then cuts to Inspector Lindsay Boxer in her general practitioner's office. The doctor, Dr. Roy Orenthaler, tells Lindsay that she has a rare, and deadly, blood disease called Negli's aplastic anemia. Throughout the book, Lindsay struggles with the physical side-effects of getting blood transfusions for Negli's, and the emotional aspect of having a life-threatening disease. During the appointment, she is called to the crime scene of a double murder at the Grand Hyatt. At that scene she is introduced to Cindy Thomas, covering the story. A second pair of bodies are found, and after Lindsay is told she has a new partner due to the sensitivity of the case, Cindy, Lindsay and medical examiner Claire Washburn join forces to attempt to solve the case. A third pair of bodies is found in Cleveland, Ohio, which are thought to be connected to the San Francisco cases. As Lindsay and company go through the case they acquire a fourth friend, Assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt. Together, the four friends attempt to pin down a suspect, leading to the shocking conclusion. A subplot features Lindsay's attraction to Chris Raleigh, her new partner, but will the attraction last until she soon realizes that there is absolutely nothing to lose?"
1238,Turbulent Priests,crime," The plot of this novel is based on Wrathlin Island, a small island north of mainland Ireland. Dan Starkey has been sent by Cardinal Daley, the Primate of All Ireland, to investigate reports that the Messiah has returned in the shape of a young girl, Christine, about to start school. Starkey has his wife Patricia and illegitimate child ""Little Stevie"" join him as he investigates the tiny dry community and meets considerable resistance from the defensive residents."
1239,The Laughing Policeman,crime," A gunman shoots the passengers of a public transport bus with a sub-machine gun; he kills eight people (including Detective Åke Stenström), and wounds one. Detective Beck and his team suspect the mass-murder is to disguise the murder of Detective Stenstrom, who was spending his free time investigating the sixteen-year-old murder of a Portuguese prostitute."
1240,"Bribery, Corruption Also",crime," Inspector Ghote's wife Protima has inherited a fortune and a mansion in Calcutta. Ghote is not pleased because it means he must leave his native Mumbai and give up being a policeman. No sooner have they landed in Calcutta than they discover the house is crumbling and inhabited by hostile squatters. Also a housing development is planned in the wetlands behind the house, which has the only access to the proposed construction project. The solicitor in charge of the administering the will, A. K. Dutt-Daster, advises them to sell promptly and return home, but Ghote suspects corruption. As Ghote investigates he uncovers a web of corruption that leads inexorably higher and higher in Calcutta's social and political hierarchy. On the way he encounters the easily bribed solicitor's clerk, who is soon murdered for obtaining incriminating documents from Dutt-Daster's files, he is assaulted under The Great Banyan tree in the Indian Botanical Gardens, meets a crusading newspaper editor who chooses his crusades very carefully, a cynical and corrupt Police Inspector and a powerful businessman who doesn't believe corruption is a bad thing. Powerful forces are aligned against the elderly couple and ultimately they cannot be overcome. Finally Ghote finds himself obliged to pay a handsome bribe simply so the couple can escape from Calcutta with their freedom and lives. Corruption and bribery will always be a part of life no matter how much people fight against it, Ghote reflects on the way home, but that is not a valid reason to give in to such things."
1241,Echo Park,crime," In 1993, Harry Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar caught the Marie Gesto case. Marie was a young equestrian who went missing. Her car and clothing turned up in a garage but her body was never found. Bosch and Edgar had pegged a likely culprit &mdash; the son of a wealthy and powerful industrialist, but the detectives never found enough evidence to charge the suspect and the case went cold. Between then and the start of this novel, Bosch had retired from the LAPD and worked as a private investigator for three years but returned to the force because things didn't work out the way he thought they would in retirement. Now, nearing 60, Bosch is working in the prestigious Open-Unsolved Unit at Parker Center, going over cold cases with his most recent partner, Kizmin ""Kiz"" Rider. A serendipitous traffic stop in L.A.'s Echo Park neighborhood nabs Reynard Waits, a man with body parts in his van on the floorboard in front of the front seat. Detective Freddy Olivas is working the case and Richard O'Shea is the prosecutor assigned. Soon Waits has confessed to a string of slayings involving prostitutes and runaways, as well as to two earlier murders: one of a pawnshop owner during the 1992 riots, the other of Marie Gesto. When the Gesto case files are reexamined, it seems that Waits had called the police shortly after the murder, pretending to be a tipster, but Bosch and Edgar never followed up on the tip. Without this costly error, Waits could have been implicated within a week of Gesto's disappearance. it:Il cerchio del lupo sv:Räven (roman)"
1242,The Brimstone Wedding,crime," Jenny Warden, a care-assistant in a retirement home, is in a loveless marriage, and has a lover. She befriends Stella Newland, a resident with cancer. Stella slowly reveals to Jenny the events of her own life, which in some ways parallels Jenny's. Stella gives Jenny the keys to a house that Stella owns, and the intrigue and their relationship deepens."
1243,Dexter is Delicious,crime," The book begins nine months after the end of Dexter by Design with the birth of Lily Anne Morgan, the daughter of Dexter and Rita Morgan. His daughter's birth has brought remarkable changes in Dexter; apart from feeling genuine love and emotions for the first time he also does not feel his Dark Passenger's compulsion to kill and vows to swear off his dark hobby in order to be a better father for his daughter. Soon after Dexter is called to a crime scene by his sister Deb, who is in the middle of a jurisdictional fight with the FBI who claim that a kidnapping has taken place. Dexter believes that the large quantity of blood found there was planted, and that the missing girl in question is faking her disappearance in order to get money from her parents. Dexter runs tests and discovers that the blood type does not match the missing girl, Samantha Aldovar. Deb and Dex go to the private school Samantha attends and talk to her principal, who at first is reluctant to divulge any information. This changes when the principal discovers that Tyler Spanos, a wild child and Samantha's friend, is also missing. Subsequent interviews with their friends indicate that they were both befriended by a young man with teeth filed down like fangs, and that only a few dentists in Miami offered such a service. Their prime suspect is Bobby Acosta, the son of Joe Acosta, a wealthy and city official, whose influence has already rescued Bobby from felony prosecutions. Dexter receives a surprise one day bringing Cody and Astor home from school; waiting for him is his brother Brian, whom Dexter last saw at the end of Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Brian quickly ingratiates himself with Dexter's family, who rapidly start to adore him much to Dexter's dismay. Dex soon receives another call from his sister, and arrive at a crime scene where someone was apparently cooked and eaten. DNA from the gnawed bones matches that of Tyler Spanos. One of the detectives working under Deb uses his contacts and arrests two Haitian men who swear that they saw Bobby Acosta leaving Tyler's car at a known chop shop. Deb and Dex arrest Victor Chapin, another young man with artificial fangs, but are forced to release him when a public defender shows up. Dexter, in a fit of overprotective fury over his daughter, stalks Chapin and kills him. Just before dying, Chapin admits to having taken part in eating Tyler Spanos. Things get worse when the remains of Deke, Deb's obnoxious partner, are found partially eaten. Rummaging through a nearby trash bin, Dexter finds Deke's blood sodden shirt and a chip from a local goth nightclub called ""Fang."" Dex and Deb force their way into the club, but shortly after finding Bobby Acosta they are thrown out by the club's irate manager. Deb resolves to wait until everyone leaves, and makes Dexter break in to search for Samantha. While searching, Dexter remembers that he had previously considered the manager of Fang as a potential ""playmate"" (victim), because of a large number of migrants who vanished after working at the club. Dexter eventually finds Samantha in a large refrigerator; but, rather than follow Dexter to freedom, Samantha locks them both inside. Samantha then reveals that she desires to be eaten, and that she and Tyler shared the same fetish and volunteered to let the cannibals cook and eat them. Dex and Samantha are then taken to a trailer in the Everglades, where they are left with only a jug of water. While drinking the water Dexter and Samantha become euphoric and eventually have sex multiple times, despite recognizing that the water is laced with MDMA (""Ecstasy""). Shortly afterward Deb and the Miami PD arrive (thanks to a tracer Deb's boyfriend Chutsky placed on the vans leaving the club) and arrest the cannibals, except for the club manager, who is killed. Samantha, irate at being rescued, issues a thinly-veiled threat to Dexter: as revenge for ruining her fantasy, she will say Dexter raped her. The next day Deb approaches Dexter and tells him that Samantha has run off again. She and Dexter approach Joe Acosta and urge him to get Bobby to turn himself in, so that Samantha can be recovered – even though it will likely mean Bobby will avoid prison time. Bobby's father refuses to turn his son in, but his trophy wife Alana, Bobby's stepmother, privately reveals that he is at an abandoned amusement park that his father owns. Deb, Dex and Chutsky arrive at the park and begin searching it; eventually the three are caught and the leader of the cannibal ""coven"" is revealed to be Alana Acosta. Deb and Chutsky are taken away leaving Dexter to watch Alana cook pieces of a still-conscious Samantha. As Alana approaches Dexter to begin cutting and cooking him, one of Alana's guards guns her down as well as two other guards. Dexter's savior is revealed to be Brian, who had started working for the cannibals a few weeks prior. He cuts Dexter loose and reluctantly helps him rescue Deb and Chutsky; while leaving they check on Samantha, who has since died of her wounds. Chutsky decides to leave Deb because he failed her and nearly got her killed; upon waking up on the way to the hospital Deb reveals that she is pregnant. The book ends with Deb preparing to give birth despite Chutsky vanishing, and Dexter deciding that even though he now feels emotions like normal people, he can't stand by and let people be preyed upon when he can do something about it. He decides that the best he can do for his sister right now is to honor an earlier request of hers, and ""take care"" of Bobby Acosta."
1244,To Play the Fool,crime, A homeless man is murdered and Kate must determine the culprit's identity. Everything seems to point to a man whom the homeless community regards as an important religious figure.
1245,Master of the Moor,crime," Columnist Stephen Walby, known as the Voice of Vangmoor, often goes on long walks through the countryside that lies outside his window. However, events take on a sinister turn when he stumbles across the body of a young woman, whose face has been badly disfigured and her hair shaven. After another corpse surfaces he finds himself under suspicion from the local police, and when he then goes on to discover that his wife has been having an affair, tragedy ensues..."
1246,Angel Eyes,crime," An exotic dancer, Ann Maringer's life is in danger, she is scared and sure someone is out to get her. Ann turns to Amos Walker the irascible private-eye from Detroit but then disappears and Walker is out to find out what happened and where she is."
1247,"Gone, Baby, Gone",crime," Boston based lovers and private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are hired by a woman to look into the case of her niece, Amanda McCready, whose disappearance has become an important local news story. They take the case despite the seeming reluctance off the girl's uncle Lionel. During the investigation they quickly come to the conclusion that Amanda's mother, Helene, who has been prominently featured in the news stories about the case, is a degenerate and neglectful parent. At the time of Amanda's disappearance, Helene had left her alone for several hours while she partied at a local dive bar. In another incident, Helene had left her daughter unsupervised on the beach for several hours, resulting in the girl getting a terrible sunburn. While Helene has been pleading with the public for her daughter's return, in private she often seems more concerned about her own life and the possible benefit the publicity might have on it. In perhaps the most irresponsible act of parenting, Patrick and Angie discover that Helene had taken Amanda along while she and her then boyfriend Skinny Ray stole several thousand dollars from men working for the imprisoned drug dealer Cheese. Patrick and Angie quickly begin working with police officers Remy Broussard and Nick ""Poole"" Raftopoulous. The police receive an apparent ransom demand calling for a meetup at the Quincy Quarries. Under cover of Darkness, Angie, Patrick, Poole and Remy arrive at the quarry, but before they can meet the kidnappers a confused gun battle breaks out, resulting in the death of a couple of gangsters working for Cheese and the disappearance of the ransom money. Angie finds Amanda's favorite doll, which had been taken along with her, in the water of the quarry and they conclude that the little girl was likely thrown in and drowned. Later on, Patrick learns that Remy had previously worked in the unit responsible for investigating crimes against children and that he had known Lionel, Helene's brother. Questioning Lionel, he discovers that the whole kidnapping had been orchestrated at Lionel's behest in order to get Amanda away from Helene's neglectful care. Remy and Poole, disguised as burglars, stage a hold up of the bar where Patrick, Angie, and Lionel are meeting and kill Lionel. Patrick gives chase to Remy and mortally wounds him. Remy confesses that he is part of a small ring of cops who take children from abusive and neglectful homes and place them with caring competent parents. The first child had been his own daughter, who he had found as an infant malnourished and abused in a crack house, her birth parents were so disinterested in her welfare that they didn't even file a missing persons report after Remy took her. He, Poole, and their Captain, had taken Amanda after Remy learned of Helene's neglectful parenting from Lionel. Patrick and Angie go to the captain's beach home where they discover Amanda McCready, apparently happy and well care for. The Captain begs Patrick and Angie not to reveal Amanda's whereabouts, insisting that she will be placed with a loving family. Angie and Patrick argue about the proper course with Patrick finally informing the authorities about the kidnapping. Angie, disappointed, leaves Patrick. it:La casa buia sv:Gone, Baby, Gone"
1248,Two For the Dough,crime," While Stephanie is looking for Kenny, his friend is fatally shot in the head, which complicates the case. Lula, the hooker introduced in the previous book, One For the Money, gets a job as a file clerk at Vinnie's Bail Bonds company, but decides that being Stephanie's sidekick is more interesting than filing. Stephanie talks to Spiro Stiva, the son of the owner of the local funeral home and a childhood friend of Mancuso. Stiva asks Stephanie to help him find the 24 bargain basement caskets that have mysteriously gone missing...along with various body parts. As the book continues, Stephanie begins finding embalmed body parts in her apartment along with threatening notes. Then, a number of weapons go missing from a military installation. Eventually, Stephanie and Grandma Mazur find themselves locked in the basement of Stiva's Funeral Home and end up setting the place on fire. Stephanie's Jeep Wrangler, Sahara model, stolen outside of the Eternal Slumber funeral home on Stark Street, and most likely wound up in a chop shop."
1249,Murder is Easy,crime," Luke Fitzwilliam happens to share a London bound train carriage with Miss Pinkerton, a seemingly dotty but sweet elderly lady, who reminds Luke of his own aunt. She talks to him about a series of murders—disguised as accidents—taking place in her home village of Wychwood-under-Ashe. Miss Pinkerton says that although the local police are out of their depth, she knows the identity of the murderer because of a telling gaze that this person fixes on the intended victim. Now that the murderer has set their sights on the local doctor, she is on her way to Scotland Yard to reveal the guilty party and save the doctor. Unfortunately, she does not inform Luke who the murderer is. Luke learns the next day that Miss Pinkerton was killed in a hit-and-run car accident before reaching the Yard. Though he is initially unsuspicious the death of the doctor does surprise him. He goes to the village, posing as a folklore researcher, to find the murderer himself. Four main suspects soon present themselves: a creepy antique dealer, a prickly solicitor, a smug doctor and a bombastic, self-made peer engaged to an attractive young woman; but is the culprit one of the other inhabitants of the village, which emanates a pervasive supernatural atmosphere that unsettles Luke's detective work?"
1250,The Naming of the Dead,crime," An underlying thread throughout the book is that of familial relationships; the book opens with Detective Inspector John Rebus attending the funeral of his brother Michael, who has died suddenly from a stroke. The parents of Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke arrive in Edinburgh as part of the protests, demonstrations, and scuffles that surrounded the G8 summit at Gleneagles, keeping the police busy. Clarke defied her parents by becoming a police officer; she now wants to feel like a daughter. Rebus is nearing retirement (""nobody would blame you for coasting""), and becomes sidelined until the apparent suicide of MP Ben Webster occurs at a high-level meeting in Edinburgh Castle. It emerges that Webster was campaigning against the arms trade, and Richard Pennen of Pennen Industries, a dealer in weapons technology, comes under suspicion. At the same time, a serial killer seems to be killing former offenders, helped by a website set up by the family of a victim. Clues have been deliberately left at Clootie Well (duplicated from the Black Isle to Auchterarder for the purposes of the plot), a place where items of clothing are traditionally left for luck. Siobhan Clarke is placed in charge of the investigation, although she is outranked by Rebus, and finds herself having to compromise with Edinburgh gangster Morris Cafferty (for whom one of the victims was working as a bouncer) in hunting down the identity of the riot policeman who apparently assaulted her mother at a demonstration. Cafferty is also getting older, though his insecurity is balanced somewhat by his having had a biography ghost-written by local journalist Mairie Henderson. She is enlisted by Rebus and Clarke to help solve the crimes. The new Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police, James Corbyn, is keen to put any potential controversy from the investigation of these sordid crimes on hold until the focus of the world's media has moved on. He puts Rebus and Clarke under suspension when they disobey him and they need to rely on Ellen Wylie for help. David Steelforth, the London-based Special Branch (SO12) Commander who is overseeing the policing of the G8 summit, seems to be holding back Rebus' work at every turn. Rebus and Clarke blow the cover of one of his agents who is photographing demonstrators. Former preacher Councillor Gareth Tench seems to Rebus to be involved due to his apparent closeness to one of the suspects, Niddrie thug Keith Carberry. The book is set in real time; within it, some real events occur, such as the 7/7 London bombings, the 2012 Olympic bid and George W. Bush falling off his bicycle whilst waving at police officers: ""&nbsp;'Did we just do that?' Siobhan asked quietly."" The title refers to: the ceremony Clarke's ageing left-wing parents attend, where the names of a sampling of the dead from the Iraq War are read out; the list of victims created by Rebus and Clarke as they try to unravel the crime; and also to John Rebus' evocation of grief in naming the many of his own friends and family who have died in the course of his life. By the end of the book, Clarke realises that she has grown closer than ever to understanding Rebus: ""It's not enough, is it?"" she repeated. ""Just...symbolic...because there's nothing else you can do."" ""What are you talking about?"" he asked, with a smile. ""The naming of the dead,"" she told him, resting her head against his shoulder. (p410) She increasingly fears that she is becoming more like him: ""obsessed and sidelined, thrawn and distrusted. Rebus had lost family and friends. When he went out drinking, he did so on his own, standing quietly at the bar, facing the row of optics."""
1251,Laura,crime," Like Wilkie Collins' groundbreaking detective novel The Moonstone (1868), Laura is narrated in the first person by several alternating characters. These individual stories all revolve around the apparent murder of the title character, a successful New York advertiser killed in the doorway of her apartment with a shotgun blast that obliterated her face. Detective Mark MacPherson, assigned to the case, begins investigating the two men who were closest to Laura: her former lover, a narcissistic middle-aged writer named Waldo Lydecker, and her fiance, the philandering Shelby Carpenter. As he learns more about Laura, Mark &ndash; not the most sentimental of men &ndash; begins to fall in love with her memory. When Laura turns out to be very much alive, however, she becomes the prime suspect. The novel has some autobiographical elements; Caspary, like Laura, was an independent woman who earned her living as an advertiser and who struggled to balance career and romance."
1252,The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side,crime," Marina Gregg is a famous, temperamental, much loved movie star who has come to settle down in the village of St. Mary Mead after the death of Colonel Bantry, who used to live at Gossington Hall where Marina has taken up residence with her husband Jason Rudd. Heather Badcock, an ordinary albeit annoying woman, dies after drinking a cocktail at a party hosted by Marina. Shortly before her death, Heather was in conversation with Marina, giving her a long boring account of how she had met Marina many years ago - getting out of bed despite her illness and putting on lots of makeup, in order to seek Marina's autograph. Marina is seem with a 'frozen'look on her face for a moment while Heather talks to her; a look likened to the Lady of Shalott, as though 'doom has come upon her'. It then comes to light that Marina had handed her own drink to Heather after Heather's drink was spilled. Therefore it is surmised that Marina must be the intended victim. As a famous star who has married five times, she is a far more likely murder target. Suspicion is cast on many people including Marina's seemingly devoted husband, a big-shot American TV producer who is a former admirer, and an American actress who was previously Marina's rival in love. (Both Americans turn up unexpectedly at the party). It also comes to light that an arty photographer at the party is actually one of three children that Marina had adopted in the past for a while and then 'got tired of' (Marina does not recognize her as such at the party). It is known that 11-12 years before the events in the book, Marina desperately wanted children of her own but had difficulties conceiving. After adopting three children, she became pregnant but her baby was born mentally handicapped and abandoned to a lifetime of institutions, leaving Marina emotionally scarred. This misfortune was due to Marina contracting German measles in the early stages of her pregnancy. While police search for clues, two other murders take place - one of Marina's social secretary and the other of Marina's butler (both of whom were serving drinks at the party). Finally, Miss Marple deduces what Marina had instantly realised at the party, that Heather is the woman who was responsible for infecting Marina with German measles all those years previously when she put on make up to cover the rash and went to meet Marina for her autograph. Overcome by rage and grief at seeing her unwitting tormentor looking so happy and proud of her act, Marina impulsively poisons her own glass and hands it to Heather after making Heather spill her own drink. At the end of the book, Marina is found dead from a drug overdose."
1253,Shame the Devil,crime," Two ruthless killers head into a pizza place to rob the joint while one of the men's brother waits in the car. The robbery goes wrong and the men kill the restaurant's employees. The robber in the getaway car is killed by a cop and the robbers hit a little boy in their escape. The novel jumps forward two and a half years and introduces the character of Dimitri Karras, the father of the young boy. He attends grief counseling sessions with the family members of those who were killed that day. Karras begins to get used to living again when his friend, Nick Stefanos sets him up with a job at, ""The Spot"" where he is bar tender. Meanwhile, the robbers are plotting revenge. It all leads up to a showdown of good versus evil."
1254,Scandal Takes a Holiday,crime," Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina travel to Ostia Antica, ostensibly on holiday. However, Falco is forced to confess to Petronius - present there on secondment - that he is in fact investigating the disappearance of Infamia, the pen name of the scribe who writes the gossip column for the Daily Gazette. He is at first believed to be merely a drunken truant, however investigations uncover some murky secrets. Piracy and other criminal traditions, long believed stamped out, are apparently alive and well in the region."
1255,From Doon With Death,crime," The police knew all about Margaret Parsons. She was a religious, old-fashioned and respectable woman, as unexciting and dependable as her marriage. But it wasn't her life that interested Wexford - it was her violent, passionate death. Inspector Wexford becomes interested in her death after finding a number of letters from the mysterious Doon."
1256,Gone for Good,crime," Will's ex-girlfriend has been killed and his brother Ken, has disappeared. He was the prime suspect in the girl's murder. Will also has the demands of his job as a worker with the homeless of the New York City. When he finds out that his brother is alive after all and his current girlfriend disappears as well, Will is arrested by the FBI as the prime suspect to the murder of the girl. Will is at breaking point. Only his friend Squares and Will's determination to get justice, and find out what he needs to ensure that justice is served, keep him going during further mystery and danger. Will and Ken had some famous but bad people go to school with them, the gangster McGuane and the assassin known as Ghost, and the roots of the jeopardy Will finds himself in are in his school years. de:Kein Lebenszeichen he:הנעלמים pl:Bez pożegnania (Harlan Coben) pt:Gone for Good (livro)"
1257,Seven Up,crime," Stephanie is assigned to bring in semi-retired mobster Eddie DeChooch when he fails to appear in court for selling contraband cigarettes. When two of Stephanie's burned-out high-school friends, Walter 'MoonMan' Dunphy and Dougie 'The Dealer' Kruper, get themselves mixed up in DeChooch's cigarette scheme -- and then vanish -- Stephanie calls the mysterious Ranger for help. With Ranger's assistance, plus the 'aid' of two (very polite) hoodlums with a talent for breaking-and-entering, it becomes apparent that DeChooch may have come out of retirement... To make things worse, Stephanie's perfect older sister Valerie divorces her cheating husband, and moves back in with her family, along with her two daughters. She then proclaims herself to be a lesbian, and adds more craziness to Stephanie's life. In short, life in the Burg hasn't changed a bit."
1258,A Cool Head,crime," Gravy works in a graveyard. One day his friend turns up in a car he doesn't recognise. His friend has a bullet in his chest. Gravy is asked to hide the gun and the body. In the back of the car is blood, and a bag full of money. Soon Gravy is caught up in a bank job gone wrong and is pursued by some mysterious men."
1259,See Delphi and Die,crime," Through his brother-in-law Aulus, Falco hears details of two young Roman women who have died in Greece while seeing the sights of the ancient world. Falco and his wife, Helena, travel to Greece to meet up with the tour party which included one of the women, seeking clues to her murder, passing through Olympia, Corinth, Delphi and the oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia before finally arriving at Athens. The wayward Aulus is playing truant in Greece where, instead of studying law at Athens, he is investigating the death of Valeria Ventidia, a newly married Roman girl at Olympia, as well as another death which occurred three years ago around the same area. Falco's mission has two objectives: to send Aulus back to school, and solve the mystery behind the deaths at Olympia. Eventually, a connection between the two deceased women is deduced: both had joined tours provided by Seven Sights, a tour company of dubious reputation, currently operating in Greece. Falco's investigation does not go smoothly, however: the Roman authorities are not interested in properly investigating the deaths (much less governing Greece itself), and at Olympia Falco is attacked by a potential suspect, who later turns up dead in suspicious circumstances, the death blamed on Falco's ward Glaucus. Low on funds and unwilling to be confronted by the angry locals, Falco and his followers - Helena, Albia, Glaucus and Falco's nephews - are forced to leave Olympia for Corinth but not before discovering that Valeria's killer may have been connected to athletes who trained at Olympia. Things do not look better at Corinth however: the governor is out, and his deputy, the quaestor Aquillus Macer, is proven to be extremely inept and inexperienced. Fortunately the tour party has been apprehended at Corinth but worse is still to come: Aulus and Valeria's widower, Tullis Stratianus, have run away to Delphi to seek answers from the Oracle there, and another member of the Seven Sights travelling party is murdered. Fearing that Stratianus would be the killer's next victim, Falco and Helena rush off to Delphi but lose Stratianus, who flees this time to Lebadeia and then disappears without a trace. Dejected and defeated, Falco and his group travel to Delphi on their original mission: to persuade Aulus to return back to studying law at Athens. Falco also gets to meet Aulus' mentor, a formidable lawyer named Minas who offers his aid in capturing the killer - by hosting a party for the Seven Sights tour party, now freed and in Athens too after the operators Phineus and Polystratus managed to threaten the Corinth government with legal action advised by Minas. Falco has no confidence in Minas' methods, but during the course of the party, more evidence is found by Falco and his nephews, revealing that Phineus and Polystratus had athletic training, and that female travellers on Seven Sights may have been sexually harassed by the men. Finally, Polystratus is unmasked as the real killer, and the remains of the missing Statianus are found in a stew being prepared by the former for the party, proving his guilt."
1260,The Wench is Dead,crime," In 1859, the body of a young woman was found floating in the Oxford Canal; her death led to a sensational murder trial, and two men were eventually hanged for the murder. In 1989, Inspector Morse is recovering from a bleeding ulcer in Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Morse is given a book by the wife of a recently deceased patient at the hospital. The little book called Murder on the Oxford Canal tells the story of the murder of Joanna Franks aboard the canal boat Barbara Bray. Morse is soon convinced that the two men hanged for the crime were innocent and sets out to prove it from the confines of his bed. The title of the novel comes from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta, the following quotation serves as the epigraph to the novel: :FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed-- :BARABAS. Fornication: but that was in another country; :And besides, the wench is dead."
1261,Parker Pyne Investigates,crime," James Parker Pyne is a retired government employee who considers himself to be a ""detective of the heart."" Advertising his services in the ""Personal"" column of The Times, he works alongside his secretary Miss Lemon, novelist Ariadne Oliver, handsome ""lounge lizard"" Claude Luttrell and disguise artist Madeleine de Sara. The first six stories deal with Pyne solving cases in England, while the second six stories detail Pyne's vacation, where he hopes not to have to detective work only to end up helping others anyway."
1262,At Close Quarters,crime," The unexpected death of a highly disciplined and successful army member of Camp San Marcial is officially explained as suicide. Major Olmedo had always followed the letter of the law and never questioned orders through the army hierarchy. He only broke the law in one respect and that was to carry an unauthorized pistol, since his name had appeared on a terrorist organization's hit-list. Major Olmedo had recently completed a report which was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence in Madrid. In it, he recommended the closure of Camp San Marcial as an efficiency measure. This highlighted the growing cleavage between his own generation and style of troop which were dedicated to peace-keeping and winning wars with technology; vis-a-vis the older, Francoists, who still believed in numbers and yearned for a reinstatement of the recently abolished compulsory military service. When he gets shot there is an internal inquiry which results in a verdict of suicide. Marina, the Major's daughter, is not satisfied with this outcome and hires a private detective, Ricardo Cupido. Cupido sets about investigating the ""crime"" scene with rigour and a professional manner. The scene itself simply is the pistol and a note in hurried handwriting saying two words, Forgive me scrawled on one of the Major's business cards. Cupido questions each of the suspects and mulls over this problem even where Marina gives up on learning the truth because of the strain it is putting on her and dismisses him. Cupido does get to the bottom of the mystery."
1263,Saint Peter's Fair,crime," 13 June 1139. The feast of Saint Peter is important for Shrewsbury Abbey. A meeting of the monks is interrupted by Geoffrey Corviser, the town provost, and a delegation from the town's merchant guilds. They appeal to Abbot Radulfus for a share of the money raised by the fair as the civil war has taken a heavy toll on the town, parts of which need rebuilding. Radulfus listens sympathetically but his responsibilities to the monastery force him to adhere to the exact terms of the fair's charter, granted to the Abbey by the crown. Cadfael meets Hugh Beringar and his wife, Aline, who is with child. They talk of the war. King Stephen has the advantage, the Empress Maud has strongholds in the west of England and is abroad building support for a renewed attempt on the throne. Hugh mentions Ranulf, Earl of Chester, married to a daughter of Robert of Gloucester. Robert of Gloucester is half brother to the Empress. Earl Ranulf is powerful in his own right, and has not yet chosen to stand with one or the other in this war for the crown of England. 31 July 1139. Traders arrive from far and wide for the fair. Cadfael is called to translate for Rhodri, a Welsh merchant who speaks no English. While discussing the civil war Rhodri points out a glover, Euan of Shotwick. Euan, Rhodri says, is an ""intelligencer"" working for Earl Ranulf. Soon afterwards a boat arrives carrying Thomas of Bristol, a wealthy and important wine merchant. Rhodri notes that Bristol is in the west country, that Thomas is in ""good odour"" with Robert of Gloucester. Young men from the town arrive to cause trouble with the visiting merchants. Philip Corviser tries to convince them to support the town's cause. Thomas of Bristol dismisses the young men of the town as rabble. Pursue the debate, Philip places his hand on Thomas's arm, and Thomas strikes him with a staff. A riot breaks out. Philip regains his senses after the blow. He sees Thomas's niece, Emma, and is smitten by her beauty on the spot. Philip and his friends flee. Thomas and Emma are endangered by some rolling barrels. Emma is saved by Ivo Corbière, with whom she immediately falls in love. Hugh Beringar complains about his lot in life; dragging silly but basically good young men to prison. Cadfael speaks in defence of Philip Corviser, noting that he came only to speak, never threaten. They are interrupted by Emma searching for her missing uncle, Thomas of Bristol. Hugh, Cadfael and Ivo Corbière search for Thomas of Bristol as it is too dark for Emma to be on the streets. Corbière stumbles across his drunken and unconscious archer, Turstan Fowler, and leaves the search to carry him back to the Abbey. The search ends when a boat arrives with the naked body of Thomas of Bristol, who has been murdered with a dagger. Hugh, Aline and Emma discuss Thomas's death. It appears he was killed and robbed by sneak thieves. The young men of the town did not commit this crime as most were already in prison. Emma decides to continue trading at the fair as she believes her uncle would have wanted. Cadfael is charged to investigate the death by Abbot Radulfus who fears his decision not to aid the town may have led to Thomas's murder. At the hearing, Emma, Cadfael and Turstan the drunken archer, give testimony about what they witnessed in the confrontation between the young men and Thomas of Bristol. Turstan claims Philip issued threats against Thomas after the riot. Philip is ignorant of the merchant's death until Cadfael specifically mentions it. Philip protests his innocence of murder, continuing as prisoner to Sheriff Prestcote. Cadfael accompanies Emma back to her boat, which has been broken into and searched by someone. Emma at first says nothing is missing, then says that several small items she did not at first notice as missing are gone from her boat. Thomas's expensive robes are found, making theft an unlikely motive. Thomas's stall is broken into. Warin the ineffective watchman is bound, blindfolded, and gagged, and the strongbox stolen. The day's takings are safe on Emma's boat; the strongbox contains Thomas's business papers. Cadfael deduces that the murderer seeks something they believe Thomas brought with him. Emma knows more than she is telling. Emma wants to visit Euan of Shotwick, but stays with Aline instead. She wants a pair of gloves but Cadfael thinks she has another reason. Corbière visits Emma, for whom he seems to have romantic feelings. Emma visits her uncle's coffin in the Abbey, placing a rose in full bloom with his body, before the coffin is sealed by the carpenter. That evening, Cadfael notices a petal on the floor from that rose. Someone has searched the coffin. Early in the morning, Emma seeks out Euan, for the gloves she desires. His stall is not open. Others succeed in opening it. Euan is found dead inside by Cadfael and Rhodri, his neck broken. Hugh investigates the scene, finding a dagger in Euan's hand. The blade yields clues. Cadfael and Hugh piece together the situation. Thomas of Bristol and Euan of Shotwick were partisans or compatriots who had come to the fair to conduct secret business, involving an item of great value. A third man arrives, killing both of them and searching in vain for the item. Cadfael considers Rhodri as a suspect but his lack of English makes the Welshman unlikely. Philip Corviser is released before noon. After his parents celebrate his return, he visits Emma to thank her for her honest witness on his behalf. She still wishes to see justice done for her uncle. Philip tells Cadfael that he intends to retrace his steps of the evening of the murder to see if anyone set him up as a scapegoat for the murder. Cadfael speaks with Brother Mark, who tells him of a man who received treatment for a knife wound to the arm. The wounded man is identified as Ewald, a groom in the employ of Ivo Corbière. Cadfael believes that Euan injured his killer in the fatal struggle the night before. Cadfael informs Hugh. Together with Sheriff Prestcote and Corbière they confront Ewald, who shows his neatly bandaged arm at Beringar's request. When asked to show his cotte, he throws it in their faces, jumps on Corbière's horse and tries to escape. Corbière orders Turstan, who gave evidence against Philip at the hearing, to loose an arrow at Ewald, who is killed. Corbière justifies his actions, saying that his villein Ewald was a murderer and as his master, he had the right to administer justice. Cadfael reports to the Abbot, confirming Ewald was a murderer but warning that he does not think Ewald acted alone. Later Cadfael comforts Brother Mark, who is sorely distressed that someone whose injuries he recently tended was killed so soon afterwards. Philip questions his friends seeking to learn what happened during the evening he cannot remember. After being with them, he went to Wat's Tavern. Wat, the proprietor, tells him that Turstan came twice to the tavern, first just to look at the patrons. Philip was among those patrons. On second visit, Turstan drank only a single measure of ale, purchased a large bottle of hard liquor to carry away, and was sober when he followed Philip out of the tavern. Further, he was dressed in his proper clothes. Philip recalls that this is not what Turstan claimed when he gave evidence at the hearing, and not how he appeared. Later, seeking the place where he passed out from drink, Philip stumbles across the scene of Thomas's murder. Philip tells Cadfael and Hugh about his discovery. They visit the scene of Thomas's murder. Ivo Corbière offers to provide Emma with transport to her home in Bristol, saying he will be escorting his sister to a convent near Bristol from their Shropshire manor. Emma accepts, with Aline's approval for the brief time when Emma will travel unescorted with this single man. At the riverbank, Cadfael makes sense of the events of the last four days: Thomas arrived bearing something for the glover Euan. Turstan the archer followed Philip; once ensuring that Philip had no alibi, murdered Thomas. He established his own alibi by dousing himself in strong liquor, feigning unconsciousness. They view the place where Turstan was found unconscious. Servants clearing up after the fair have found the empty flagon of strong liquor. Cadfael realises that Ewald and Turstan acted on the orders of Corbière. Turstan had overdone it with his liquor alibi. When Corbière learned Turstan failed, he sent Ewald to search Thomas's boat while everyone was at the hearing. That same night Ewald and Turstan broke into Thomas's booth, again finding nothing. The next night they tried Euan's booth, killing him when he defended himself. Cadfael and Hugh approach Corbière, telling him they have discovered Ewald's role in Euan's murder. They have figured out Corbière's scheme to fool Ewald and order Turstan to attack him. Cadfael and Hugh both believe Emma to be safe with Aline, but Philip knows that Corbière has been visiting her. He is so horrified by what he hears that he rushes off to protect her. Cadfael and Hugh realise Philip is right. By the time they arrive at the Foregate, Emma has left with Corbière and Philip has stolen a merchant's horse to give chase. Aline tells them he has three hours lead, and is concerned at her own error of judgment. At Stanton Cobbold manor Ivo Corbière locks Emma in a room while he searches her baggage. She hides in her hair the small packet hanging round her neck, feeling unsafe both by the locked door and the nonappearance of his sister. Corbière returns, locks them both in the room, pockets the key and instantly changes tone. He demands the letter Thomas intended to deliver to Euan of Shotwick, the glover and spy. He threatens to strip her naked, even to rape her, to find it. Stalling, Emma asks what letter? She never admits she knows of any letter, and keeps the braiser between the two of them. Then she asks, what could be so important in a letter? Corbière tells her the letter is from Robert of Gloucester to Earl Ranulf, urging him to support the Empress's cause and naming fifty nobles in Stephen's camp who secretly support her. Corbière hopes the letter is worth an earldom to him. That is the price he will charge the King in exchange for the list of traitors. In a tense scene, Emma carefully removes the letter from her hair, unseen by the lordling just in front of her, to destroy it by fire in the room's brazier. Her uncle told her nothing of the contents, only that if not delivered it must be returned, and failing that, destroyed. To assure it burns, she pushes it into the fire, with her coif net attached inadvertently, at the cost of burning her hand. The hair net took fire rapidly, then spread to the wax-sealed letter. Corbière fails to retrieve the letter. She knocks over the unstable brazier, setting fire to the tapestries. Emma moves to the door, doing what she can to keep the fire from reaching her. She knocks and shouts, but cannot escape, since the door is locked. She lowered herself to breathe the air coming in under the door,slowly losing consciousness. Philip arrives to finds Corbière's manor ablaze with no servant willing to attempt a rescue. Instead, they bring out what goods they can save. Using an antique battle axe from the walls of the manor, Philip breaks down the door and rescues Emma. Hugh and Cadfael arrive. Cadfael tends to Philip's and Emma's injuries. Hugh arrests Turstan. He had not fled, thinking no one knew his role in the murders. Corbière is killed by the fire, a satisfying end to such a viper. Philip takes Emma back to his parent's home in Shrewsbury. Emma has recognized the value of Philip, whose honest character is the opposite of the brutally selfish man whose good looks and good manners once charmed her. Further, she and he are both tradespeople. A man of Ivo Corbière's class would not have considered her seriously, she realizes in retrospect. Cadfael recounts the events to Abbot Radulfus. Radulfus summons the town provost, Philip's father, to the morning chapter meeting at the abbey. Radulfus notes that by adhering to the letter of the fair's charter he has secured the rights of future abbots, doing what he must. Now he is free to do what he will with the money earned by the abbey at the fair. He donates ten percent to the rebuilding of the town. Hugh Beringar and his wife return to their own manor. Cadfael continues to tend to Emma's burns. At one meeting, Emma confesses what she learned of the contents of the letter and asks whether she did the right thing. Cadfael tells her that if she has scars from these burns, she should ""wear them like jewels"" for the rest of her life"". Emma asks Cadfael never to tell Philip the details behind the letter and her own actions, as she considers him too innocent to deal with such matters. Cadfael agrees and privately thinks Emma is correct in her assessment of Philip, and that this bodes well for their marriage. The novel concludes two months later with the news that on 30 September 1139, Empress Maud invaded England, establishing herself at Arundel Castle in West Sussex. Earl Ranulf of Chester did nothing to aid her cause."
1264,Shake Hands Forever,crime," Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a death by violence. Heavily, she plodded across the room and descended the stairs to where her son waited. 'There's been an accident,' she said. 'Your wife's dead.'Chief Inspector Wexford could discover no motive, no reason, no suspect - all he had were his own intuitive suspicions. Probably he was reading meaning where there was none; probably Angela Hathall really had picked up a stranger, and that stranger had killed her. But why such doubt? Was Wexford becoming cynical and untrusting - or was this simply one of the most ingenious crimes he had ever tackled?"
1265,Thirty-Three Teeth,crime," When the Malay Black bear vanishes from its cage in the zoo garden of Vientiane’s Lan Xang Hotel very few people are surprised to see mauled bodies turning up in the morgue. Very few that is, apart from Dr. Siri Phaiboun the only coroner in the Lao People’s Republic. Seventy-two year old Siri and his team are convinced something just doesn’t add up. In Luang Prabang, meanwhile, plans are afoot to finally rid the country of its royal heritage. The new socialist government is about to send the royal family to a re-education camp and exorcise the spirits of the old kings. Siri is sent to the historic capital to solve two mysteries: what killed a man found on a crumpled bicycle, and what caused the deaths of two bodies charred beyond recognition and missing their feet? What is so important that a military helicopter should be provided to whisk him north at a moment’s notice? Once there, Siri calls on his spiritual connections to help solve these cases. But he reawakens the souls of the phibob, the malevolent ghosts still seeking revenge on the doctor for past misdeeds. He enlists the help of the royal shaman and finally learns the true intentions of the phibob and of his own distinguished dynasty. Before he can return to his work he has to survive the phibob attempt on his life, unmask the betrayer of the king and argue his own defense against charges of treachery. With Siri out of town, it is left to Dtui his nursing assistant to investigate the killings in Vientiane. She has her first unpleasant encounter with a Russian circus trainer, gets access to secret Party files, and soon becomes the only person in Laos arguing against the death warrant on the old Malay bear. But whilst searching for who or whatever it is murdering women and draining them of their blood, Dtui disappears. With the moon full, and three victims already on the morgue slab, Dr. Siri has four hours to find his assistant before she becomes the fourth."
1266,The Godfather's Revenge,crime," The story begins with Michael Corleone having a dream in which his brother Fredo Corleone, whom he had killed, warns him of a coming threat. At the same time, the apparition tries to give Michael a message, which he doesn't comprehend. Michael's guilt over ordering Fredo's murder has aged him beyond his years &mdash; his hair has turned white, his diabetes has worsened, and he suffers from chronic insomnia. He is also depressed over his failing relationship with his ex-wife, Kay Adams, and his son, Anthony, who knows the truth about Fredo's death. Carlo Tramonti, a boss of the New Orleans crime syndicate, is introduced as he is deported by the INS to his native Colombia. Meanwhile, Attorney General Daniel Shea (analogous to Robert F. Kennedy) declares his war on the Mafia. Tom Hagen meets with a CIA agent named Joe Lucadello in a Protestant church in Florida. He informs Hagen that Nick Geraci, a former caporegime for the Corleones, has turned up. The book then outlines Nick Geraci's survival in an underground cave under Lake Erie, and how he gets ready to take his revenge. He contacts his father, who helps him get away, and plots his revenge with Momo Barone. Meanwhile, Hagen is implicated in the murder of his longtime mistress, which throws his personal and professional life into disarray. Meanwhile, President Jimmy Shea (analogous to John F. Kennedy), who was elected in part due to Michael's influence, is assassinated by a Cuban national. While the real reason for his murder is never made clear, the novel suggests that it was orchestrated by Tramonti, who wanted revenge for his arrest in a raid ordered by Daniel Shea. Nick Geraci reunites with his family, beginning his revenge against Michael Corleone: * He drowns Tom Hagen in the Florida Everglades. Geraci then sends Michael a package containing a dead baby alligator along with Hagen's wallet, a message similar to the one that is sent to Sonny Corleone in the original novel following Luca Brasi's death. * He meets with his old friend Momo Barone, and promises him the title of consigliere if he agrees to help. Momo agrees, and provides Geraci information on Michael Corleone's daily routine. * Geraci contacts Don Anthony Stracci and asks for his help to depose Michael as head of the Commission. Nick ultimately gets the votes to overthrow Michael. Stracci asks Geraci to meet Don Greco, the Greek, who also because of Stracci's influence was to vote against Michael. Geraci meets him at a restaurant on Staten Island. When he arrives, however, he realizes he has walked him into a trap; Michael arrives and orders Barone to shoot Geraci to prove his loyalty. Geraci grabs the gun, shoots two bodyguards and injures Al Neri, but is mortally wounded in the process. Eddie Paradise delivers the coup de grace, shooting him execution style. Michael also executes the following people: * Carlo Tramonti is shot in the back of his head and thrown off on the highway. * Tramonti's brother, who sought to re-open his brother's murder, dies of ""natural causes"". * Joe Lucadello has an ice pick rammed into his eye. In the novel's final scene, Michael's sister Connie tells him that Fredo had an illegitimate child with Rita, whom Michael had briefly dated before realizing that he was still in love with Kay. es:El Padrino ""La venganza"" it:La vendetta del padrino pl:Zemsta ojca chrzestnego"
1267,A Fatal Inversion,crime," In the hot summer of 1976, a group of young people are camping in Wyvis Hall. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall's animal cemetery. Which woman? Whose child?"
1268,The Deep Blue Good-by,crime," The Deep Blue Good-by introduces readers to McGee, his place of residence, the Busted Flush (a houseboat he won in a poker game), and its mooring place, slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In the early chapters we learn that McGee is a bachelor, a man who can be friends with ladies as well as have a passion for them, and a man of principle (although they are somewhat at the mercy of his uncertain emotional condition and his circumstances at the moment; in McGee's own words, ""Some of them I'll bend way, way, over, but not break.""). We also learn that McGee is by occupation a salvage consultant, a concept almost certainly coined and developed by MacDonald. (As a ""salvage consultant,"" McGee undertakes to recover for its rightful owner money or property of which the owner has been wrongfully deprived and has no other hope of recovering, taking half its value as his fee.) McGee works when he has to, almost always only taking jobs when his supply of money (kept in an ingenious ""hidey-hole"" aboard the Flush) is low. In one tale, however, McGee avenges the murder of a long-time friend. In another, he is asked by the daughter of a friend to find out why her husband is trying to kill her. While he can be mercenary at times, he is not a mercenary. Another feature of the McGee series is the seemingly unending parade of colorful and invariably evil villains whom McGee must contend with in order to make a recovery for his clients. In this first story the antagonist is Junior Allen, a smiling, seemingly friendly man, large, ""cat quick"", powerful, and pathologically evil. The story begins with a fortune smuggled home after World War II by a soldier who was a native of the Florida Keys. This soldier killed another soldier just prior to his discharge, went on the run back to the Keys, and buried his treasure there. He was later captured by the U.S. Army and sent to a military prison, where he met Junior Allen. Allen discovered vague details about the fortune hidden in the Keys and after his release from prison went there to find it. The story depicts the psychotic behavior of Allen as he evolves from thief to serial rapist to murderer. We see McGee's savvy, guile, and physical prowess as he works methodically to locate Allen and eventually make the recovery. As is thematic in many of the McGee books, however, he pays a heavy price for the successful recovery. Throughout the series, in fact, it is debatable as to whether McGee ever makes a recovery in which the costs outweigh the gain."
1269,After the Funeral,crime," After the funeral of the wealthy Richard Abernethie, his remaining family assembles for the reading of the will at Enderby Hall. The death, though sudden, was not unexpected and natural causes have been given on his death certificate. Nevertheless, the tactless Cora says, ""It's been hushed up very nicely ... but he was murdered, wasn't he?"" The family lawyer, Mr. Entwhistle, begins to investigate. Before long there is no question that a murderer is at large. The essentials of Richard's will were told to the gathered family by Mr. Entwhistle. Richard, 68 and a widower, had lost his only child Mortimer to polio (infantile paralysis) six months earlier. The son, about to be married, died with no issue, as the lawyer dryly puts it. Thus Richard was prodded to revise his will. He was the eldest of a family of seven, of which only he, a brother Timothy and a sister Cora, the youngest, still lived when he wrote the will. His favorite brother Leo was killed in the war, as was Gordon. Richard had a nephew and two nieces, the sum total of the next generation, children of siblings who had already died. Richard spent time with his nephew George, and his two nieces and their husbands, to know them better. He called his sister in law Helen for a visit to the family home. Richard visited his reclusive brother, then travelled to his sister at her home, first time in over 20 years. His decision was to split his wealth in six portions, for his five blood relations, and a sixth for the widow of one brother killed in the recent war. Four received the capital directly, while two received a life income from their share of the capital. The house was to be put up for sale. At home the day after her brother's funeral, Cora Lansquenet is brutally murdered in her sleep by repeated blows with a hatchet. The motive for her murder was not obvious. It does not appear to be theft, nor is her own estate a likely motive. Cora's portion of the Abernethie bequest was a life income, which capital reverts to the estate of her brother, Richard, to be divided among the surviving heirs — not adding to her own estate. One possible motive is to suppress anything that Richard might have told Cora about his suspicions that he was being poisoned. These had been overheard by her paid companion, the timid Miss Gilchrist. Entwhistle calls on his long-time friend, Hercule Poirot, to resolve any doubts about the death of Richard. Poirot employs an old friend, Mr. Goby, to investigate the family. Mr. Goby, a most resourceful man, rapidly turns up a number of reasons within the family for members of it to be desperate for the money in Richard Abernethie’s estate. Mr. Goby employs all sorts of clever methods to uncover the most private information, using agents who pose as actors, lawyers or even Catholic nuns. None of the family members can yet be cleared of suspicion. Poirot warns Entwhistle that Miss Gilchrist may herself be a target for the murderer. Cora has been a keen artist and collector of paintings from local sales. Susan Banks, learning she inherited her Aunt Cora's property, went to her cottage to clear up the possessions, ready them for auction, on the day of Cora's inquest. She reviewed Cora’s own paintings as well as those Cora had purchased at local sales. She noticed that Cora has been copying postcards: one of her paintings, which Miss Gilchrist claims were all painted from life, features a pier that was destroyed in the war; however the painting was completed quite recently. The next day, after Cora's funeral, an old friend who is an art critic, Alexander Guthrie, arrives to look through Cora’s recent purchases. His visit had been arranged before Cora's murder. He looked at all her recent purchases, but finds nothing of any value there. That evening, Miss Gilchrist is nearly killed by arsenic poison in a slice of wedding cake apparently sent to her through the post. The only reason that she is not killed is that, following a superstition, she has saved the greater part of the slice of cake under her pillow. Mrs. Gray had declined an offer to share in the slice of cake. Inspector Morton investigates Cora's murder. He recognized Poirot at the inquest, so makes a point of finding him in London to learn why. The two share information as they investigate. Morton focuses on people in the area of Cora's rented cottage. Poirot focuses on the Abernethie family, and a number of red herrings come to light. Rosamund Shane, one of the nieces, is a beautiful but determined woman who seems to have something to hide (which turns out to be her husband’s infidelity and her own pregnancy). Susan’s husband, Gregory, is a dispensing chemist who had been responsible for deliberately administering a nonlethal overdose to an awkward customer. In a surprising twist, he confesses to the murder of Richard Abernethie near the close of the novel. He is discovered to have a punishment complex. Timothy Abernethie, an unpleasant man preoccupied with his own health perhaps to gain attention, might have been able to commit the murder of Cora, as might his country-tweed, strong, healthy wife, Maude. Even the genteel Helen Abernethie left Enderby to fetch her things from her London flat upon agreeing to stay longer at Enderby. In short, all the family had been alone on the day Cora was murdered, for enough time to reach the rented cottage and do the deed. Did any of them do it? Perhaps identifying the murderer may depend on finding a nun whom Miss Gilchrist claims to have noticed twice? But what can all this have to do with a bouquet of wax flowers under glass to which Poirot pays attention? Poirot calls all those involved together to observe them directly, his habitual method, via Entwhistle. They gather to look over and select items of interest before the estate auction. This lures even the reclusive Timothy from his home, back to the family mansion of Enderby, bringing his wife Maude and Miss Gilchrist, who is now assisting them. Poirot briefly poses as Monsieur Pontalier of UNARCO, a group that has purchased the estate to house refugees. He is at the house on that same weekend. His guise is uncovered by Rosamund the first evening. After playing games in mirrors, Helen Abernethie telephones Entwhistle early the next morning with the news that she has realized what struck her odd the day of the funeral. Before she can say who it concerns, she is savagely struck on the head. Mr. Entwhistle is left speaking out over a telephone where no one is listening. Poirot’s explanation in the denouement is a startling one. He gathered those at Enderby Hall, in his own identity as a detective the next evening. Helen is safely away to recover from her concussion. Added to the group is Inspector Morton, whose own investigations lead him out of his home county of Berkshire to Enderby Hall, increasing the tensions for the family. Inspector Morton spent the afternoon asking each member of the family to account for themselves on the day of Cora's murder. Cora had never come to the funeral at all. It was Miss Gilchrist, who disguised herself as Cora as part of a complicated plot for her own gain, leaving Cora home asleep from a sedative in her tea. She wished to plant the idea that Richard’s death had been murder. Therefore when Cora herself was murdered, it would seem that the alleged murderer had struck again. None of the family had seen Cora for over 20 years, from the ill feeling at the time of her marriage. Miss Gilchrist had successfully copied her mannerisms, well enough to fool those who had known her as adults. The flaw in her portrayal of Cora was spotted by Helen Abernethie. Miss Gilchrist had rehearsed a characteristic turn of the head in a mirror, where the reflection is a reverse of reality. When she came to the house after the funeral, she turned her head to the left, not the right. Helen had had the feeling that something was wrong when Cora had made her startling statement, but took some days and a timely conversation among the young cousins to realize precisely what it was. Miss Gilchrist had further given herself away to Poirot, by referring to the wax flowers on the green malachite table the first day the relatives gathered to select objects before the auction. These were on display on the day of the reading of Richard's will but had been put out of sight by the time Miss Gilchrist, as herself, visited Enderby Hall. She had deliberately poisoned herself with the arsenic-laced wedding cake to avoid suspicion; ironically this only aroused Poirot's and Inspector Morton's misgivings. Miss Gilchrist saw what Cora had missed among the paintings that Cora had bought at the local sales. Miss Gilchrist felt sure one was a painting by Vermeer, yet Cora had no idea how valuable the artwork was, and thus Miss Gilchrist began her desperate plot. The painting's value would likely have been revealed to Cora when her friend the art critic visited, explaining in part the timing of the murder. Miss Gilchrist covered the Vermeer with her own painting depicting the destroyed pier copied from the postcard, to disguise it amongst others done by Cora. The scent of the oils lingered when Mr. Entwhistle visited the cottage the day after Cora's murder. She hoped to inherit some of Cora's paintings; the will confirmed she inherited all of them. Miss Gilchrist loathed Cora; even more, she loathed life as a dependent. Her dream was to sell the Vermeer to escape her dreary life with the capital to rebuild her beloved teashop, ""the essence of gentility"", lost during the war to food shortages. Poirot deduced the key role of the painting. He had Mr. Entwhistle take it from the Timothy Abernethie home where Miss Gilchrist had left it. The art critic was found to be authentic by Inspector Morton, so Poirot asked Entwhistle to bring the painting to him. In that same day, Mr. Guthrie sent a wire to Poirot that said tersely, definitely a Vermeer, Guthrie. Inspector Morton added that two nuns had called at Cora's cottage the day of Richard's funeral. No one answered, yet they heard noises from a person. Added to Poirot's explanation, these nuns became witness to the real Cora's presence in her own home as Miss Gilchrist was impersonating her at Enderby Hall. There is a motif of nuns in this mystery, appearing at each house where Miss Gilchrist stayed. Miss Gilchrist had invented what she overheard about Richard's fear of poisoning, for the furtherance of her plot. She told her lie to Mrs. Banks first. With revisions implicating Mrs. Banks, she repeated it to Poirot and Inspector Morton, very shortly before Poirot revealed her plot to all present at Enderby Hall. Once accused, Miss Gilchrist broke down in a flood of complaints of the unbearable hardships of her life, her convoluted justification for the murder of an innocent woman. She went quietly with Inspector Morton. Cora's was the only murder. There was no evidence that Richard Abernethie died any but a natural death in his sleep, from the disease his doctor had diagnosed. Thus Poirot answered the question Mr. Entwhistle hired him to resolve, as well as untangled, by deduction, the mystery of Cora's death. Miss Gilchrist is found guilty as the murderer of Cora at the Assizes. In her time in prison during legal proceedings, she was quickly becoming insane, planning one tea shop after another. Mr. Entwhistle and Hercule Poirot suspect her punishment might be served in Broadmoor, but have no doubt she had plotted and carried out the cold blooded murder in full possession of her faculties — this ladylike murderer."
1270,N or M?,crime," After the outbreak of the Second World War and many years after they worked for British intelligence, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford feel useless and sidelined. When Tommy is approached to go undercover once more, however, Tuppence decides to join him on his mission whether she is wanted or not. The duo begin a search for a German agent who may have infiltrated British command. Another British agent that was following these Germans left a cryptic message on his deathbed: ""N or M. Song Susie"". Grant knew that ""Song Susie"" stood for Sans Souci, a hotel in Leahampton, and N and M were two German spies, one male and one female. Tommy is to go to Sans Souci to investigate whether N, M or both are at the hotel and to figure out their identities."
1271,Look to the Lady,crime," Val Gyrth, heir to the Gyrth family and their traditional vocation of guarding the famous Gyrth Chalice, is homeless and wandering the streets. After a mysterious chain of events, he is plucked out of danger by Albert Campion, who explains that a conspiracy of art collectors and criminals hopes to steal the treasure his family is charged with protecting. Returning Gyrth to his family, in the village of Sanctuary in Suffolk, Campion is shocked when Val's aunt Di, a bohemian who upset the family by being photographed with the chalice, is found lying dead in a spooky forest clearing, apparently frightened to death. With Val's 25th birthday, at which a great secret will be revealed to him, fast approaching, Campion and the Gyrths smuggle the chalice to London, evading ruthless crooks. There, they find it is a fake, a replacement made a few hundred years ago, while the genuine, thousand-year-old chalice remains out of sight. A crook informs them that someone named ""Daisy"" is behind the chalice thieves; Val is left in the safety of Campion's flat, protecting the decoy chalice. Back in Sanctuary, Lugg has been frightened by a monster in the woods, perhaps the same thing that scared Aunt Di to death. Accompanied by the Gyrths' neighbour, a historian friend of Campion's, and a local woodsman, they trap the monster, revealed to be an aged witch of the village, protecting her slow-witted poacher son. They further learn that she was encouraged to frighten Aunt Di by someone named Daisy, and the local tells Campion that a local stable owner, whom Campion has met a few times already, is called Daisy. Awaking after his long night in the woods, Campion learns that his flat has been attacked, the chalice taken and Val Gyrth vanished in pursuit. He rushes off, leaving instructions that a pouch be delivered to Gypsies staying nearby. Later, the chalice arrives by post, and Penny and Beth find Val in a field, bedraggled and exhausted but alive, with a White Campion in his buttonhole. Campion strolls up to Mrs Shannon's stables, where he finds her playing cards with a band of well-known crooks, including a cat-burglar. Campion is locked in a room above the stables for a day, and visited by Mrs Shannon on the night of Val's birthday. Realising he knows too much, she pushes him through the floor into a stable with a wild, angry horse; he hides in a hay-feeder until rescued by Professor Cairey, who heard Daisy's name from the Munseys too. A gang of Gypsies, summoned by Campion's message, arrive and scatter Shannon's gang, but she escapes in a car. Campion follows on the wild horse, temporarily tamed by a gypsy. Arriving at the Gyrth's Tower, he finds Mrs Shannon lowering herself from the roof to see into the window of a secret room, only lit up on the heir's birthday and rumoured to contain a fearsome secret that protects the chalice. Looking in, she goes white with fear and falls from her rope to her death. Campion reveals that he had found Val, knocked out by the crooks he pursued in London, and sent him home before heading to the stables. Next day a representative of royalty arrives to inspect the chalice, and Campion and the Professor are permitted to join the party; taken to the secret room, they see the chalice guarded by the skeleton of a giant, clad in armour, and the chalice, a beautiful bowl of red gold and rubies."
1272,Death of a Blue Movie Star,crime," Rune, now working as an underpaid production assistant while pursuing a career as an independent film-maker, finds herself facing danger again as she starts work on her first film project. She seems to have found the perfect subject following the bombing of an adult movie theatre, seen through the ideas of Shelly Lowe, the porn star whose film was playing when the bomb went off. However, just hours after Rune does her first sit-down interview with her, a second bomb claims Shellys life and Rune starts to wonder she was the intended target all along. Rune's debut may also be her last, as she comes up against someone who wants to bury her film -and the truth- forever."
1273,A Guilty Thing Surprised,crime," When Elizabeth Nightingale was beaten to death, it seemed a straightforward enough case. But Detective Chief Inspector Wexford discovered that beneath the placid surface of the Nightingales' lives there were undercurrents and secrets that no one had ever suspected."
1274,Wednesday's Child,crime," When a well-dressed couple, claiming to be social workers, appear at Brenda Scupham’s door, saying they must take her seven-year-old daughter, Gemma, into care after allegations of abuse, Brenda is confused and intimidated enough to hand the child over. But when the couple, Mr Brown and Miss Peterson, fail to bring Gemma home, Brenda realizes she has made a terrible mistake. As the days go by, Detective Chief Inspector Banks begins to lose hope of finding Gemma alive. Then a rambler finds a body in the ruins of an old lead mine, and the two cases begin to converge in a terrifying way, leading Banks to a showdown with one of the most chillingly evil criminals he has ever come up against."
1275,The Redbreast,crime," The novel begins with a reference to a fable about how the robin first got the red feathers on its breast, when one of their number removed a thorn from the brow of the ""crucified one"" and drops of blood landed on the breast of the small bird. The timeline of the novel moves forwards and backwards from the Nazi-led Norwegian front against the Soviet army in late 1944 to the modern day, culminating on 17 May 2000, during the first half of the novel. However, once most of the WWII back story has been told, the novel concentrates on the modern day events. President Bill Clinton comes to Norway for a Middle Eastern Peace Conference with Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak. Policeman, Harry Hole is assigned to security detail and mistakes a Secret Service agent in a toll booth for an assassin. He shoots the Secret Service agent - who is wounded but survives due to wearing a bullet-proof jacket - but the event is later covered up and Harry is promoted to the rank of Inspector. In reality, there had been no such Middle East Summit in Oslo in October 1999. While back in 1993 Norway had a major role in launching the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Agreements, by 1999 the Norwegian role had been sidelined by the US. In fact, Clinton had invited Arafat and Barak to the ill-fated 2000 Camp David Summit which was held in the US with no Norwegian involvement. The Nazi occupation of Norway is entering the final stages, though none of the Norwegian soldiers fighting on the German side are willing to accept that this is the case. During the Siege of Leningrad a small group of Norwegian Waffen SS volunteers who have been together for some time are manning trenches just a short distance from the Western limits of the Soviet army. Details of their lives are given, mostly in conversation between the soldiers. One of their number, a man called Daniel Gudeson, claims to have shot a Russian sniper in no man's land and goes into no man's land to bury him. This endears him to some of his colleagues, but causes others to dislike him. However, at the point of midnight on New Years' Eve, when Daniel - on watch with one of his colleagues - stands up to celebrate the New Year, he is shot through the head and killed. His body and face are covered up and he is laid to wait for a burial committee who take the body away later that day. On the same night, another soldier, Sindre Fauke, disappears and is reported by his Watch colleague to have defected to the Russians. Oddly, a couple of days later a body appears in the trench, covered and waiting for the burial committee. When the soldiers investigate, it is the body of Daniel Gudeson which was known to have been removed earlier. This mystery remains unexplained until the climax of the novel. A hand grenade lands in the trench and explodes, and, although the soldiers survive, they are wounded and hospitalised. Taken to a hospital in Vienna, one, who calls himself Uriah, falls in love with a nurse, who is being blackmailed by her supervisor. They elope, but are forced to return when they realize that they do not have the papers required to go to their initial destination; Paris. Their love somehow survives the war, but they are separated and eventually will live separate lives. New Inspector, Harry Hole investigates a crime in which a very expensive Märklin rifle has been purchased and is being tested. In addition, a group of Neo-Nazis is suspected of plotting trouble, one member of which - Sverre Olsen - has recently had a trial against them collapse on a legal technicality, Harry himself having been involved in the investigation. An elderly drunk is found murdered, his throat having been slit with almost surgical precision at the back of a bar where the Neo-Nazis are known to congregate. During the investigation, a man known only as ""the Prince"" is mentioned and Harry and his colleague, Ellen Gjelten, try to find out the identity of the Prince. Harry, meanwhile, has met a work colleague called Rakel with whom he has become infatuated. At a work party, he and Rakel talk openly and it becomes obvious that they are interested in each other. However, Rakel does not take the matter further as she is concerned by a custody battle of her son, Oleg, who is wanted by his Russian father, a matter that has actually been orchestrated by Rakel's superior who also wants to sleep with her. Ellen, meanwhile, accidentally discovers the identity of the Prince, tries to call Harry, but fails to get through. She leaves a message on his answer phone but crucially neglects to name the Prince himself. On the way to her boyfriend's flat she is beaten to death with a baseball bat. Her murderer, Sverre Olsen, is soon discovered by Harry and his new assistant, Halvorsen. However, when they prepare to arrest him, they discover that another senior Inspector, Tom Waaler, has tried to do so. Apparently, Olsen tried to shoot Waaler, prompting Waaler to kill Olsen in self defence. Harry's only link to the Prince has been lost. Nevertheless, the murder of Rakel's superior - shot with the Märklin rifle at close range, along with an elderly woman - Signe Juul, the wife of a friend, also shot with the rifle - leads Harry to investigate the events of the Norwegian/Nazi collaborators, many of whom were imprisoned after the war as traitors. He is also led to follow a lead that suggests that the murderer has a split personality and that one personality is doing the killings - possibly without the knowledge of the other, such as in the story The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde As Rakel's father tells Harry that Signe Juul's husband, Even, was obsessed with Daniel Gudeson, other clues lead Harry to believe that he has discovered the murderer: Even Juul. However, when he goes to arrest Even Juul, he discovers that Even has apparently committed suicide, and Harry believes that Even discovered that his ""other personality"", Daniel Gudeson, had been committing the murders and that he had committed suicide in order to stop Daniel. However, Harry realises that he was wrong when he stumbles across the journal of the actual murderer. He sees that the split personality route of his investigation was correct, but the murderer is not Even Juul. The murderer is obsessed with revenge after believing that the Norwegian Royal Family had betrayed the country by fleeing to England during the Nazi occupation, and then later condemning those who fought for the Nazis during the war. The murderer also reveals the details behind the mysterious reappearance of Daniel Gudeson's body in the trenches during the war and the truth behind the defection of Sindre Fauke. Finally, the murderer makes it clear in his journal that he intends to assassinate the Crown Prince of Norway at the Norwegian Constitution Day celebrations later that day (17 May). Harry rushes to prevent the assassination, managing to stop the attempt at almost the last second in a hotel room. To keep the assassination attempt out of the press - and to prevent any problems for the assassin's surviving family - Harry's success is covered up, much as his actions at the start of the book were. The true identity of the Prince is revealed during the novel, although not to Harry, and the Prince continues to be a thorn in Harry's side in later books. In effect, this major theme makes the present book and the following two, ""Nemesis"" and ""The Devil's Star"", into a distinct 'trilogy' within the larger Harry Hole series. The book has major implications for the series in introducing Rakel, who would become the great love of Harry's life, and her son Oleg who would come to regard Harry as his father, rather than his biological father in Russia from whom Rakel separeated long ago, and to whom Harry would for his part become deeply attached. The ups and downs of Harry's relationship with Rakel would become a major theme in later books, often impacting substantially on the murder mysteries he investigates. In one of the book's subplots, Harry travels to South Africa to meet a dealer in clandestine arms, a white South African who is imprisoned and faces the death punishment for having killed two young black girls at a black township. The man is willing to provide vital information in exchange for Norway - which is on very good terms with South Africa's post-Apartheid government - bringing diplomatic pressure to bear on his behalf. Harry - who is nauseated by the man's manifest racism and whose entire investigation is concerned with the dark deeds of young neo-Nazis and old Nazi collaborators in Norway itself - takes the information but fails to keep his side of the deal. At the end of the book Harry gets a phone call from a black South African policeman which he befriended, telling that the arms dealer had been sentenced to death with no possibility of reprieve and thanking Harry for not having done anything to impede this outcome. In fact, the above is contrary to the actual situation of post-Apartheid South Africa. Capital punishment in South Africa had been suspended already in 1990 and definitely abolished in 1995, and the last execution carried out by a South African government had been in 1989. Thus, in reality the arms dealer would not have faced capital punishment in 1999."
1276,High Five,crime," Business is slow for Stephanie Plum, so when her Uncle Fred goes missing, Stephanie agrees to help look for him. Soon enough, Stephanie realizes that (once again) she's in over her head, and up to her neck in unanswered questions. Stephanie for the first time takes a job with Ranger at his company to make ends meet. Why are there pictures of body parts in Uncle Fred's house? Why is a nasty bookie following Stephanie around? Could her Uncle's disappearance have something to do with two dollars? Why can't she bring in the certified midget FTA Randy Briggs? Stephanie's stalker Benito Ramirez, from book one, is released and is back to irritate Stephanie some more. Stephanie's latest case is proceeding 'business as usual'."
1277,The Scapegoat,crime," 'I left the car by the side of the cathedral, and then walked down the steps into the Place des Jacobins. It was still raining hard. It had not once let up since Tours, and all I had seen of the countryside I loved was the gleaming surface of the route nationale, rhythmically cut by the monotonous swing of the windscreen-wiper. Outside Le Mans, the depression that had grown upon me during the past twenty-fours had intensified.' (p.1) The Scapegoat is narrated by John, an Englishman and lecturer in French history at a London university, who is coming to the end of his holiday in France. He arrives in Le Mans, depressed and melancholy at the thought of returning to his lectures: 'the real meaning of history would have escaped me, because I had never been close enough to people' (p.1). John feels lonely, isolated, and as though his outward life is a meaningless facade. 'I lived and breathed and had my being as a law-abiding, quiet, donnish individual of thirty-eight. But to the self who clamoured for release, the man within? How did my poor record seem to him? [...] Perhaps, if I had not kept him locked within me, he might have laughed, roistered, fought and lied' (p.10). John considers concluding his visit at the Abbaye de la Grande-Trappe where he hopes to find some consolation but as he crosses the road in Le Mans the driver of a car calls out to him, addressing him as Jean. John tries to explain to the man who seems to know him that there has been a mistake but the man takes it to be a deliberate deception, winks, laughs and drives away. He enters the station buffet and is confronted by another man: 'I realised, with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well. I was looking at myself' (p.13). John has a premonition that meeting his double could be 'fraught with tragedy, like the Man in the Iron Mask' (p.14) but he sits down and has a drink with his doppelganger, to whom he begins to confess his feelings of depression and failure. His double mistakes him for a Frenchman because of his excellent grasp of the language and they eventually retire to a backstreet hotel where they continue to drink and eventually swap clothes. John falls to the floor drunk and when he awakes, he discovers a chauffeur at the door: 'Monsieur le Comte is awake at last?' (p.27). John realises that his double has disappeared with his clothing and he attempts to convince the chauffeur that he is not the Comte. The chauffeur believes him to be drunk and when he enquires after the 'gentleman I was with last night' (p.30) the hotel receptionist has no knowledge of him. John decides that if 'he wished to make an idiot of me, I would do the same to him. I would put on his clothes and drive his car to hell - as he was no doubt driving mine - and have myself arrested, and then wait for him to turn up and explain his senseless action as best he could' (p.31). Ignoring further opportunities to explain his predicament, John shaves, dresses, gets in the car and they make for the chateau at St Gilles. He realises that Jean de Gué 'had given me what I asked, the chance to be accepted. He had lent me his name, his possessions, his identity. I had told him my own life was empty: he had given me his' (p.34). They arrive at the chateau and John is met by a man named Paul, Jean's brother, who appears irritated by his lateness. John enters the house and goes into a room in which three women are seated. One, named Blanche, leaves as soon as he enters; the second, a fair-haired woman, who is pregnant, tells him that they have been worried about his absence; and the third, dark-haired, exchanges a knowing glance with him. The women inform him that Marie-Noel has a fever and when asked about Paris he declares carelessly: 'I have no idea what happened in Paris. I'm suffering from memory loss' (p.41). The pregnant woman expresses her hope that he has reached an agreement in Paris but John continues to taunt the women: 'Actually, I am not Jean de Gué at all. I am someone else. We met in Le Mans last night, and changed clothes, and he has disappeared in my car, heaven knows where, and I am here in his place. You must admit it's an extraordinary situation' (p.42). The women take no notice, believing him to be suffering from a hangover, and eventually John admits that he drank too much in Le Mans and leaves the room. Venturing upstairs, John finds himself in a bare room decorated only with religious paraphernalia: a painting of the scourging of Christ, a crucifix, and a small alcove for prayer. A servant discovers him and asks, looking rather surprised, if he is searching for Mademoiselle Blanche. He is told that she is with the Madame la Comtesse who is eager to see him and will not wait. He follows the servant into a room in which 'a massive elderly women, her flesh sagging in a hundred lines, but her eyes, her nose, her mouth so astonishingly and horribly like my own that for one wild moment I believed after all Jean de Gué had come up here before me and was masquerading as a final jest' (p.46). John intuits that the woman is Jean's mother and when she presses him as to whether he has renewed the contract; he tells her that everything has been arranged. She pesters him for a present that he has brought her from Paris and then they dine. She tells him that Marie-Noel has been having visions and that 'she kept telling Françoise and Renée that you were not coming back' (p.52). Blanche, who has been sitting with Madame la Comtesse while the local priest attended her, declares that she will inform the bishop if Marie-Noel continues to have visions of the Virgin Mary. The mother's maid, Charlotte, presses John for the package and he leaves the room, fortuitously stumbling upon Jean's dressing room where he discovers a number of parcels, marked F, R, B, P, M-N, and Maman. He returns with the parcel but Charlotte intercepts it and takes it away. When he returns to the dressing room he discovers that the pregnant woman is Françoise and that rather than being Paul's wife, as he had assumed, she is in fact Jean's wife. John gives her the package marked 'F' which turns out to be a locket brooch containing a miniature of himself/Jean. Françoise is pleased but confesses her deep unhappiness to John. When she falls asleep, John goes out into the corridors of the chateau and is accosted by Renée, the dark haired woman, who says: 'I waited for you, leaving my door open. Didn't you see it?' (p.64). John brushes her off and she storms away upstairs. He goes out onto the terrace at the back of the house and is suddenly pelted by chestnuts, by a kneeling figure in an upstairs window. He looks closer and discovers that it is a child who declares: 'I swear to you, that if you don't come to me by the time I count a hundred, I shall throw myself out of the window' (p.67). John rushes inside and finds the child, who looks like Jean de Gué in miniature and calls him 'Papa'; the child is Marie-Noel. She is affectionate and playful with him but notices that his hands and smell are different. She tells him that she had a vision of the Virgin Mary who told her that her father would not return. She declares that she would have killed herself if he had not returned: 'And then I should have burnt in hell. But I would rather burn in hell than live in this world without you' (p.71). Her room, like Blanche's, also contains a crucifix, a prie-dieu, and pictures of the saints. John returns to his bedroom and opens the package marked M-N, it is a book called 'The Little Flower' about St Therese Lisieux. John thinks that Jean acted wrongly to escape from the chateau- 'none of these people under his roof would be behaving as they had behaved tonight but for something he had done to them' (p.76)-but he sees an opportunity for himself to put it right. When John awakes the next morning, Gaston tells him that Paul will be expecting him at the verrerie (the glass-works) in the afternoon. John gives Marie-Noel her present and declares that he will give all the other presents at lunchtime, although Marie-Noel is surprised that there is one for Blanche. At lunch, the content of Renée's package- a lace nightgown- upsets the party and there is further embarrassment when Marie-Noel reads the label on Paul's present- a remedy for impotence. Blanche does not open her parcel. John realises his mistake and leaves with Paul for the verrerie. He apologises for the mistake but Paul remains furious. At the verrerie, John discovers that the reason for Jean's visit to Paris was to attempt to save the business by renegotiating a contract with a firm called Carvalet to sell their glass. Despite having no idea as to the outcome of Jean's meeting, John tells Paul that he has renewed the contract and that production can continue as normal. Paul is delighted. John interrogates Jacques who works at the foundry and discovers that the verrerie is a liability and that unlike Jean's father, and Monsieur Duval who managed affairs previously, the Comte's management of the business has been non-existent. He then meets some of the workers at the foundry including Julie and her son-in-law André who had been badly injured in an accident. Back at the chateau, John reads the letter from Carvalet and discovers that they had declined to renew the contract and that the visit to Paris had been a failure. John decides to rectify the situation. He rings Carvalet and tells them that he will accept their terms, despite running the verrerie at a loss. He suspects that someone has overheard his phone call but he cannot locate the other extension. He rummages through Jean's desk in search of some information about his finances but instead finds a photograph album featuring himself, Paul, and Blanche as children, and a man named Maurice. Renée comes into the library and berates him for giving her the lingerie at the dinner table. John suddenly realises that Jean was having an affair with her and he attempts again to brush her off. He goes to see Marie-Noel and discovers that Blanche had opened her package. Inside was a bottle of perfume and a note: 'For my beautiful Béla, from Jean'. Marie-Noel also lets slip in conversation that Jean had not spoken to Blanche in fifteen years and John muses: 'no wonder the giving of a present had been out of character. The revelation was disturbing, even sinister, especially when I remembered the snapshots of the two children with their arms about each other. Something personal and bitter had come between Blanche and Jean de Gué, yet it was accepted by all, even by the child' (p.127). When John puts Marie-Noel to bed she tells him that she had sinned by threatening to kill herself and she attempts to perform penance by beating herself with a leather whip. Appalled by the effects which Blanche's religion is having on his daughter, John delivers the whip back to her only to find the door slammed in his face. John decides to spend his second night at the chateau sleeping in the dressing room. 'I knew that everything I had said or done had implicated me further, driven me deeper, bound me more closely still to that man whose body was not my body, whose mind was not my mind, whose thoughts and actions were a world apart, and yet whose inner substance was part of my nature, part of my secret self' (p.138). The next morning John decides to go to the bank in Villars to investigate his double's finances. Renée contrives to go with him but John encourages Marie-Noel to join the party. Marie-Noel is delighted but when doing cartwheels in her mother's room, smashes two ornaments. Françoise is upset and lashes out at the child, telling her that when the baby arrives, she will take second place. John takes the pieces of the ornaments with him, parcelled up in some discarded paper he found in the dressing room, hoping to arrange for them to be mended in Villars. Renée is annoyed that she and Jean/John are to be chaperoned by the child and she goes off to the hairdressers. Marie-Noel visits the antique shop to see if they can fix the ornaments while Jean goes to the bank. In his vault he discovers the marriage settlement relating to Jean and Françoise. He discovers that Françoise's dowry was in trust for a male heir and that Jean would only come into the money otherwise if Françoise reached the age of fifty having only given birth to daughters or if she died. John understands why it is crucial for Françoise's baby to be a boy and why she is anxious about the pregnancy. John leaves the bank, having been told that Marie-Noel had already left town in a lorry going back to the verrerie. He goes over to speak to the blonde woman who he presumes owns the antique shop where Marie-Noel left the ornaments. She ushers him inside and declares: 'That child of yours is adorable but it was very naughty of you to send her here. Any why for heaven's sake did you wrap up those pieces of broken porcelain in cellophane and paper with a card addressed to me?' (p.155). John inadvertently wrapped the pieces in the paper containing the note to 'Béla' from Jean. He realises that this woman in Villars is Béla and she is another of the Comte's mistresses. John tells Béla the truth about the Carvalet contract and she asks him why the sudden concern for the verrerie and its workforce. She tells him that she has always wondered whether his lack of interest in the place was because of what happened to Maurice Duval. John encourages her to keep talking and she mentions that he died during the Occupation. He tries to tell her about the change that has come over him/Jean and that he is a different person. Béla replies 'you aren't the only one with a dual personality. We all have multiple selves. But no one avoids responsibility that way. The problems remain to be tackled just the same' (p.164). When John returns to the house, he discovers that the doctor who had called to see Françoise has already left and he has ordered her to remain in bed in order to protect the baby. He goes to talk to Françoise and tells her that he had a long meeting at the bank which prevented him from being home in time, and he confesses about the Carvalet contract. Françoise is pleased that he confided in her and she then asks if he looked at the marriage settlement when he was in the vault. He says that he did and she asks whether he will inherit the money if she dies. '""What happens if I die? You get everything, don't you?"" ""You're not going to die""' (p.172). John goes to see Jean's mother and when he mentions that perhaps Françoise should see a specialist if the pregnancy is going to present problems, she says slyly 'Whatever for?' (p.176). They are interrupted by a telephone call from Dr Lebrun. He tells John that Françoise needs complete rest. Marie-Noel asks why the servants are gossiping about the baby dying and she asks why they need to have another baby. John replies honestly that it is because of the money they will receive from the marriage settlement. John returns upstairs to sit with Françoise rather than brave Paul and Renée in the salon. She is touched, if a little surprised, by the concern. The following day he goes down to the verrerie to go through the figures with Jacques in the office and he then asks about the rest of the disused house. He finds a box of books, one of which is inscribed 'Maurice Duval', and he asks Jacques why they don't make the house inhabitable. He replies that 'there are not very happy memories connected with the house when it was last inhabited. Few people would wish to live there now [...] When the last man to live here, the master of the verrerie, Monsieur Duval, is woken from his bed in the middle of the night, and taken downstairs and shot by his own countrymen, and his body thrown into the well cut to pieces with his own glass, even if it happened a long time ago and is something we all prefer to forget, yet it does not make anybody very anxious to come and live here, where it happened, bringing a wife and family' (p.189). John signs the new contract from Carvalet and puts it in the post. He then goes to talk to Julie and asks her about the Occupation. She shows him a snapshot of a young German officer whose coat she cleaned so that he would not get in trouble with his superiors. The villagers ostracised her two years afterwards: 'so you see, when war comes to one's own village, one's own doorstep, it isn't tragic and impersonal any longer. It's just an excuse to vomit private hatred' (p.194). When he returns to the chateau, the servants ask John about the arrangements for the annual shoot the following day. He has overheard references to the 'grande chasse' during the past few days but he suddenly realises its implications: he, John, cannot shoot. He goes out into the grounds of the chateau, desperate for an excuse not to participate. He sees a fire burning and decides on a rash course of action. He drops Jean's watch into the fire and then thrusts his hand into the flames to retrieve it. He returns inside in great pain, to the shock of the family, especially when they discover that the watch he had wished to save had been a present from Maurice Duval. Blanche dresses the wound and he tells Paul to organise the shoot; now he is injured, he has no interest in it. When he goes to put Marie-Noel to bed, she tells him that she saw him thrusting his hand into the fire on purpose. He tells her that it was because he had not wanted to shoot and she says that he must have been thinking about Duval. When John questions her further she says that she knows he met a horrible death, but that her grandmother had forbidden her from talking about Duval either to her father or to Blanche. She asks if he did it because he didn't want to kill any birds, and when he says that perhaps that was the reason, she is pleased at his courage and his 'great act of humiliation' (p.216). John persuades her not to mention it to any one and Marie-Noel agrees, although she tells him that she thinks his act to be like the sacrificial mortifications of the saints. When the annual shoot begins the next day, John discovers Jean's mother welcoming the guests, who are so surprised by her emergence from the chateau that John's hand goes unnoticed. John is annoyed when she mocks Paul and Renée's attempts to run the shoot but he then finds himself unable to control Jean's dog, César. The dog scatters the birds, to Paul's annoyance, and John returns to the chateau with Gaston, drinking cognac from a hip flask. He meets the man who first mistook him for Jean in Le Mans before the swop took place and on a whim he gives the man his own address in London: '""Any assistance you give this chap you'll be giving to me; we're closer than brothers."" Then I burst out laughing, thinking him extremely stupid not to see the point' (p.229). John is encouraged to give a speech to the guests, which despite his inebriation he does, but they are not amused when he jokes that if he had shot with his damaged hand 'some of you present might never have survived' (p.230). When he returns to the chateau, John is summoned to Jean's mother who appears to be unwell. Her maid is downstairs in the kitchen and the mother urges him to help her, directing him to a drawer. When John opens it he discovers that the package which he brought back from Paris was ampoules of morphine. 'But his mother was not ill or dying, neither was she in pain' (p.234). He reluctantly administers the drug and she loses consciousness. John spends the night in Villars with Béla. He recounts the events of the day and when he recalls his quip about the gun she comments: 'Coming from a one-time Resistance leader to a group of well-known collaborators, it must have sounded curious all the same' (p.245). When he returns to the chateau he discovers a letter from Marie-Noel pushed under his door in which she writes: 'The Sainte Vierge tells me you are unhappy, and are suffering now for wrong done in the past, so I am going to pray that all your sins may be visited upon me, who, being young and strong, can bear them better.' (p.248). When he goes in to Françoise, she tells him that Marie-Noel has disappeared. Everyone goes out to look for Marie-Noel except Françoise. By chance John discovers her down at the house at the verrerie being looked after by Julie, who found her down the well amongst the broken glass after the dog, César, was found there barking. When he expresses surprise about the well and that it has contained no water for fifteen years, he finally discovers the secret of Jean's past. Maurice Duval was shot by Jean and his men: 'poor Monsieur Duval, whose only crime was trying to preserve the verrerie while you were absent, for which you and your little group of patriots called him a collaborator, and shot him, and let him die there in the well' (p.258). John's realises that Marie-Noel had climbed into the well as an act of penitence on behalf of her father. Blanche arrives and looks around her at the house and John suddenly realises that 'what she was looking at had once been part of her life' (p.260): Blanche had had a relationship with Duval. Marie-Noel wakes up and tells John that she had had a dream in which the Virgin Mary told her that her grandmother wanted Françoise to die: 'In the dream I wanted her to die too. So did you. We were all guilty. It was very wicked. Isn't there something you can do to prevent it coming true?' (p.263). At that moment there is a telephone call from the chateau for John to return at once. Françoise has fallen from the bedroom window and been taken to the hospital in Villars. She requires a blood transfusion and when Blanche says that either Jean or Paul could donate because they are the same blood type, John speaks up and denies it. Blanche declares: 'You don't want to save her. You're hoping she'll die' (p.269). Françoise and her baby, which was a boy, both die and John thinks back on his behaviour towards Jean's wife. He is glad he gave her the locket but he regrets that he had done no more. Back at the chateau, John interrogates his mother's maid Charlotte. She says that when Marie-Noel had gone missing, Françoise worried that 'the child might have turned against her. She is too fond of her papa, she said, and of Mademoiselle Blanche' (p.275). Charlotte tells John that she agreed with Françoise and he worries about how this might have affected her. He goes to the bedroom and leans out of the window, wondering whether her death can really have been an accident. Fearing the worst, John goes to interrogate Jean's mother. He forces her into recounting a conversation which she had with Françoise shortly before she died. Madame la Comtesse recalls: '""Does he want me to die so that he can marry someone else?"" she [Françoise] asked at last. I told her I did not know. ""Jean makes love to everyone. He has made love to Renée, even, here in the chateau, and he has a mistress in Villars"" [...] ""So the child isn't the only one to want me out of the way,"" she said, ""Jean does, too, and so do you, and Renée, and the woman in Villars."" I didn't answer her.' (p.283). Jean's mother concludes by saying 'You've got what you wanted, haven't you?' (p.283) but John denies it vehemently. He declares that he needs her help and after considerable effort, he persuades her to resume her position at the head of the family and to give up the morphine. She agrees and goes downstairs to begin making the funeral arrangements. The commissaire de police arrives to investigate Françoise's death. The suspicion of suicide is raised and when Charlotte is interviewed, she lets slip that she had been listening in to John's conversation with Carvalet about the renewal of the contract. Paul is astonished. When the commissaire goes to Françoise's bedroom Marie-Noel is there, having leant out the window and discovered the locket on the ledge. It seems that when leaning out to rescue Jean's present, Françoise fell. Paul confronts John about the Carvalet contract and he tells him the truth. John admits that he/Jean has no head for business and he agrees with Paul that if he had gone to Paris instead, the contract would no doubt have been more favourable. John suggests that Paul take over that part of the business and travel with Renée, while he stays at the chateau. Paul is surprised but he accepts, believing it to be the only way to save his marriage. Later when Renée confronts him, John says that he is not in love with her. She asks him whether he contrived the Carvalet contract in the hope that Françoise would die, and is relieved when he denies the charge. John sits with Jean's mother until she falls asleep as she is beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms from the morphine. He then goes to see Blanche and while she dresses his hand, he forces her to talk about the past. He tries to apologise but Blanche is still angry, reminding him of his mockery of her and Duval's relationship, and his jealousy when their father made Duval head of the verrerie. John tells Blanche that he wants her to run the verrerie in his place and to live in the master's house. 'The house is waiting there for you. It's been waiting for fifteen years.' (p.326). The next day the funeral arrangements are begun, Blanche goes down to the verrerie, and Renée begins to talk about travelling with Paul. Then there is a telephone call for John. It is Jean de Gué: 'It's me. Jean de Gué. I've just seen today's newspaper. I'm coming back' (p.334). They agree to meet at the master's house at the verrerie. 'Although the emotion that filled me now was violent, over-whelming, yet at the same time I felt deliberate and calm. I was the possessor now, he the intruder. The chateau was my chateau, the people were my people, the family who in a few minutes would sit with me round the table were my family, my flesh and blood; they belonged to me and I to them. He could not return and make them his again' (p.336). John goes into the library and removes a revolver from the desk drawer. He waits in the master's house but when there is a knock at the door, he finds the priest standing there, who takes the gun from his hand. The priest had feared that John might kill himself and he says: 'What good would that do, to you or to them? By living, you can create their world afresh. Already I see signs of it, here in the master's house' (p.343). When the priest leaves, Jean de Gué enters holding a gun and says 'So you planned to get rid of me, did you, and stay in St Gilles?' (p.345). Jean is amazed that John has managed to keep up the deception for seven days and he amuses himself by wondering how John dealt with his various intrigues, and problems with Renée, with Blanche, with Françoise. He mocks John's attempt to take his mother off morphine: 'tonight she'll be a raving maniac', and he thinks that John's plan for Renée and Paul will break up their marriage even sooner: 'Renée will find the lover she's been searching for and Paul feel himself more inferior than ever [...] What want of tact, if I may say so, how lacking in finesse' (pp.347-8). He is more concerned with the Carvalet contract but considers that asking Blanche to run the verrerie might in fact make sound business sense. Jean thinks that John wants to stay at the chateau for the money and comfort, but John says 'I happen to love your family, that's all' (p.349). Jean laughs in disbelief that he could love them, listing their faults: 'Paul, who is an oaf, a weakling, a thoroughly disagreeable personality [...] Blanche, who is so twisted with repressed sex and frustrated passion that the only stimulation she gets out of life is to kneel before a bleeding crucifix' (p.350). John tells Jean to kill him, if that is his wish, and to throw him down the well. Jean is surprised that he has discovered the secret about Duval. He believes that John could not possibly have met Béla, and John does not disabuse him of this notion. He then tells John that during his time in the chateau, he had been to London. Jean stayed in his flat and then sold it, clearing out his bank account and changing the money into francs after fortuitously meeting up with his friend from Le Mans, to whom John had given his London address during the annual shoot. John is astounded: 'unless I liked to make a fool of myself by writing to the university and saying it was all a mistake - that I had decided not to resign after all - I had no work. I had no money, save for one or two investments. I had no flat, and if I didn't get back to London soon I should have no furniture. I did not exist. The self who had lived in London had gone forever' (p.355). Jean admits that in a strange way he missed his family, and the two exchange clothes. Jean suggests that they might make the switch again, from time to time, if they fancied a change. They get into John's car and drive towards the chateau. He tries to tell Jean that his family has changed, but he ignores him. Jean gets out of the car and walks the rest of the way and John sees him greet Marie-Noel as he drives on along the road. John drives to Villars to see Béla. She alone had realised that he was someone else and not the real Jean de Gué. She says that he had a 'tendresse' that Jean did not possess. She says that because of John the family in the chateau will be different, even if Jean tries to undo the good he has done there. John says that Jean is a 'devil' but Béla replies: 'he's not a devil. He's a human, ordinary man, just like yourself' (p.364). She tells him that 'you've given something to all of us [...] Just now I called it tendresse. Whatever it is, it can't be destroyed. It's taken root. It will go on growing. In the future we shall look for you in Jean, not for Jean in you' (pp.364-5). John says that at St Gilles his failure turned into love but 'the problem remains the same. What do I do with love?' (p.367). He leaves resolving to follow his original path to the Abbey de la Grande Trappe. 'I drove to the network of roads at the top of the town, turned left, and took the road to Bellême and Mortagne' (p.368)."
1278,Half-Broken Things,crime," The lives of three very lonely people - pregnant Steph, on the run from her violent boyfriend; Michael, a petty thief who becomes her knight in shining armour; and Jean, a sixty-year old spinster nearing the end of her career as a house sitter - collide dramatically within the grounds of the illustrious Walden Manor, where together they seal themselves away from the outside world and build a new life together. The fantasy cannot last forever though, and events take a murderous turn when the first unexpected guest arrives."
1279,Point of Origin,crime," Dr Kay Scarpetta, Virginia Chief Medical Examiner and consulting pathologist for the federal law enforcement agency ATF, is called out to a farmhouse in Virginia that has been destroyed by fire. In the ruins of the house she finds a body that tells a story of a violent and grisly murder. The fire has come at the same time as Carrie Grethen, a killer who nearly destroyed the lives of Scarpetta and those closest to her, has escaped from a forensic psychiatric hospital. Her whereabouts is unknown, but her ultimate destination is not, for Carrie has begun to communicate with Scarpetta, conveying her deadly—if cryptic—plans for revenge. Carrie has linked up with a new companion, willing to end his life of sadistic slayings for her pursuit of Scarpetta."
1280,Unknown man No. 89,crime," The novel follows the exploits of Detroit process server Jack Ryan, who has a reputation for finding men who don't want to be found. A string of seemingly unrelated crimes leads Ryan to the search for a missing stockholder known only as ""unknown man #89,"" but his missing man isn't ""unknown"" to everyone: a pretty blonde hates his guts, and a very nasty dude named Virgil Royal wants him dead in the worst way. This is very unfortunate for Jack, who is suddenly caught in the crossfire of a lethal triple-cross and becomes as much a target as his nameless prey. Along the way, Ryan butts heads with local police, including six-shooter-carrying Dick Speed. The book is perhaps best remembered for a sequence taken straight from The Godfather, where thug Virgil plants a shotgun in the meeting place of his victim, in this case, the fire escape of Bobby Lear's hotel room. Also of note is homosexual wannabe gangster Lonnie, whose ""superfly"" haircut was emulated by several of Elmore Leonard's other characters."
1281,Fletch Won,crime," During what is effectively a prequel, Fletch has only been at the News-Tribune as a junior reporter for a short time and Frank (his editor) is losing respect for his new employee. Frank moves Fletch to a different section of the newspaper more than once, but Fletch continues to cause trouble. When Fletch is to run the story of local lawyer Donald Habeck, who requests an interview in order to announce that he is giving 5 million dollars to a local museum, the lawyer turns up dead in the News-Tribune parking lot. Unsurprisingly Frank takes Fletch off the story and gives it to an experienced reporter who has been with the paper for years. Fletch is now charged with investigating a whorehouse—which he does. However, he is not about to give up on the Habeck story, the circumstances of which seem mighty suspicious, especially when Fletch starts to suspect that the legal firm Habeck worked for is one of the most crooked firms around."
1282,Little Boy Blue,crime," Alex Hammond is an 11 year old boy living in Los Angeles, California. His father Clem Hammond is a carpenter and has been struggling to find a job ever since the Great Depression hit the US. His parents are separated and he is very close with his father. However, Clem does not have the resources to support Alex. As a result, he attempts to have outside intervention in supporting Alex such as enrolling him into military school and placing him into foster homes. Alex has run way from all of these places and exhibits temper tantrums because he does not want to be away from his father. His bursts of rage cause authorities and fellow inmates in various institutions to believe that he is crazy, specifically displaying the early traits of psychopathy, such as what is deemed to be ""criminal versatility"". The story starts out in 1943, with Alex, Clem, and a social worker going from LA to the Valley Home For Boys in San Fernando Valley where Alex will live. However, he meets up with trouble there because one of his roommates Sammy decides to shoplift from a store. Even though Alex does not steal anything, the housemother Thelma Cavendish decides to punish him. This unfair act in the eyes of Alex causes him to attack her and he rips her dress. He decides to run away with Sammy. They decide to burglarize a shop during the night, but the owners investigate as the boys are inside. Alex shoots one of them with a pistol that he had found when they broke in. Alex runs away, but he gets caught very soon. The police beat him and humiliate him. He finds out that his father died in a tragic accident while trying to find him. Alex goes to Juvenile Hall. There, he first sees the brutal violence that is so typical of a prison and other institutions. He quickly learns about the usefulness of such violence and how it can protect him from various injustices. It is also here that he learns about racial identity and racism. His love for reading and his high intelligence sets him apart from the other juvenile delinquents. He is sent to Camarillo, a state mental institution to determine whether or not he is insane. There, he meets First Choice Floyd and Red Barzo who are two black heroin addicts. They teach him how to play poker and how to box. He also starts to masturbate. Eventually, Alex meets an older teen called Scabs. They regularly sneak out of the institution. One day, Scabs teaches Alex how to hot-wire a car, and they leave. Alex is not able to go back to the institution so he decides to stay in the city. It is not long before the authorities find him and they send him to Pacific Colony. Alex regards the new institution as a lot worse than Camarillo. One night, one of the members of the staff nicknamed “The Jabber” beats Alex for a minor infraction that he did not commit. He fights back in self defense, and hurts the Jabber. He gets into trouble again and gets sent back to Juvenile Hall before going to another juvenile institution at Whittier. He gets into one more fight. At Whittier, Alex gets into more conflicts and he fights so that no one would regard him as a “punk.” (In other words, an inmate who gets sodomized) He finally decides to escape with a friend named Joe Altabella (also credited as ""JoJo""). They escape successfully, to where they hide out with the rest of JoJo's family (primarily Italian-Americans), and Alex meets JoJo’s sister Teresa as well as their younger sister Lisa, the latter of whom seems to hold most affection for Alex over time. At this point in the novel, Alex is 13 and he starts to have sexual feelings for her as well as other girls. Soon, Alex meets Teresa’s 17 year old boyfriend Wedo and the two boys begin to like each other. However, JoJo and Alex eventually get caught, both at separate instances. This time, Alex gets sent to Preston, an even stricter institution. At Preston, an older boy, Kennedy, cons Alex out of his shoes. Out of great anger, Alex unscrews a fire hose nozzle and attacks him with it, almost killing him. Alex is unrepentant in the face of authorities. One of them wants to send Alex to San Quentin State Prison, but he is too young at the age of 13 so he is put into solitary confinement. He actually prefers this because he can be away from the violence and he can read in peace. Eventually, he serves his time and gets released into the custody of his aunt and her husband. Alex finds them to be quite hospitable and he helps them by working at their cafe. However, after having walked out one day, this superficially placid exterior is shattered by the unjustly great indignance towards his lengthy absence from both relatives, his uncle threatening to attack him. Recalling prior attacks upon him ala ""The Jabber"", Alex threatens to kill them if they dare to attack him. He runs away and finds Wedo again. The older teen has become a heroin addict and must commit robbery in order to support his drug habit. The two youths begin to rob drugstores, taking the money and selling the drugs. One night, they attempt to rob a store, but the owners shoot Wedo with a shotgun. Alex gets hit, in a literary reprise of the event that brought him into the prison system to begin with, and he gives up. The novel ends with him drifting into unconsciousness, surrounded by the police as he is about to be taken to a hospital."
1283,The Daughter of Time,crime," Alan Grant, Scotland Yard Inspector (a character who also appears in five other novels by the same author) is confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. Bored and of restless mind, he becomes intrigued by a reproduction of a portrait of King Richard III brought to him by a friend. He prides himself on being able to read a person's character from his appearance, and King Richard seems to him a gentle and kind and wise man. Why is everyone so sure that he was a cruel murderer? With the help of friends and acquaintances, Alan Grant investigates the case of the Princes in the Tower. Grant spends weeks pondering historical information and documents with the help of an American researcher for the British Museum. Using his detective's logic, he comes to the conclusion that the claim of Richard being a murderer is a fabrication of Tudor propaganda, as is the popular image of the King as a monstrous hunchback. The book points out the fact that there never was a Bill of Attainder, Coroner's inquest, or any other legal proceeding that accused - much less convicted - Richard III of any foul play against the Princes in the Tower. Further, the book explores how history is constructed, and how certain versions of events come to be widely accepted as the truth, despite a lack of evidence. ""The Daughter of Time"" of the title is from a quote by Sir Francis Bacon: ""Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority."" Grant comes to understand the ways that great myths are constructed, and how in this case, the victorious Tudors saw to it that their version of history prevailed. Other alleged historical myths touched upon by the author, are the commonly believed (but false) story that troops fired on the public at the 1910 Tonypandy Riot, the traditional depiction of the Boston Massacre, the martyrdom of Margaret Wilson and the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Grant adopts the term ""Tonypandy"" to describe widely believed historical myths, such as the Tonypandy Riot, or deliberately falsified history, such as the life of Richard III."
1284,The Kill-Off,crime," Manduwoc, a small seaside resort town (located ""a few hours train-ride from New York City"" (6)) has been suffering financially from gradual loss of its tourist trade, and morally from gossip spread by Luane Devore about the seedy activities of the town's inhabitants. Before the murder even happens, numerous characters are viewed as potential suspects, notably the psychotic Bobbie Ashton, whose future was ruined when Luane revealed him as the bastard offspring of a mixed-race relation. Also involved in the potential crime is the suspected hoard of money Luane keeps from her husband Ralph's earnings. When finally Luane is found dead, having fallen down a flight of stairs, the characters scramble to establish their alibis. Ultimately local businessman Pete Pavlov confesses to unintentionally having pushed Luane down the stairs during a confrontation, although he suspects that Luane did not die immediately but was killed by a third person."
1285,Paradise City,crime," Paradise City is the story of Giancarlo Lo Manto, an east Bronx raised Italian American who returns with his widowed mother to Naples at the age of fifteen. Giancarlo grows up to become an educated yet street-wise cop within the poverty and crime-ridden southern Italian city. His on-going battle with the city's organized crime families has him in constant contact with his native NYC. Then one day, his young niece, who is on an exchange trip to the city that never sleeps, goes missing resulting in Giancarlo canceling his holiday to the Capri in exchange for the Island of Manhattan to search for her."
1286,A Stranger in Mayfair,crime," Charles Lenox, gentleman amateur detective, has recently married and has been elected to Parliament. Although Lenox plans to give up detection (due to the demands of his new vocation and to alleviate the concerns of his new wife), he is pulled into a case when a colleague in Parliament asks for help solving the murder of his footman."
1287,Body of Evidence,crime," Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner of Virginia, gets involved in the case of a brutal stabbing death in Richmond of romance writer Beryl Madison. Then, Madison's greedy lawyer accuses Scarpetta of losing his client's latest manuscript, an autobiographical expose of Beryl's early life as protégé of a legendary novelist. As more deaths occur and the killer closes in on her, Kay finds herself also having to deal with the unexpected reappearance of long-lost lover Mark James.Scarpetta soon finds herself living Beryl's nightmare."
1288,Fripp,crime," Retired Rear Admiral Peter Legg has a delicate problem. He is suffering from satyriasis (the male equivalent of nymphomania) and his constant craving for sexual excitement with the local Madam, Miss Forde, and her working girls, Forde's Escorts, have left him broke and despondent. Furthermore, his long-suffering wife Margot has deserted him. In desperation he attends a newly opened sexual addiction clinic run by the handsome, breakfast TV doctor Ryan Hooper. When this fails to solve his problems he decides to employ a young private detective, Twyford Fripp, to track down his wife and hopefully bring her back. Unfortunately, it's Twyford Fripp's very first case..."
1289,Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go,crime," At this stage he struggles with his growing unhappiness and tries to drench it in alcohol. One night after too many drinks, Nick Stefanos gets drawn into the murder of Calvin Jeter, and his conscience pulls him back to his earlier occupation. It becomes a journey through the harshest part of the American capital and the blackest part of the human soul."
1290,The Night Gardener,crime," Set in the 1980s, a trio of murders are linked to a single suspect. All three victims have palindromic first names and are found shot through the head in community gardens. The media dubs the crimes the ""palindrome murders"". T.C. Cook was the lead investigator at the time and two young officers, Gus Ramone and Doc Holiday, were with him at the third crime scene,. Then, 20 years later Cook is retired and Holiday has left the police. Ramone is a veteran homicide detective and becomes involved in a case which has all the hallmarks of a palindrome murder. Also realising the similarities, the others are again drawn into the investigation. The perpetrator of the palindrome murders was given the nickname The Night Gardener by detectives."
1291,The Terrorists,crime," The story opens with a trial where an eighteen-year old woman is accused of a bank robbery she never intended to commit. Later, a pornographic film producer is found murdered at the home of his mistress. The main plot of the book involves Martin Beck leading a team of policemen to prevent a presumed terrorist attack on a highly unpopular American senator who is paying an official visit to Sweden. The attack is led by terrorist Reinhard Heydt, born by a Danish mother in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa."
1292,Skinny Dip,crime," In his review of Strip Tease, Donald E. Westlake commented that, at the center of all the wackiness was an accessible, touching storyline: a single mother’s quest to rescue her young daughter from a reckless husband and an inadequate foster care system. Skinny Dip has at its center a wife who survives a murder attempt by her husband, and is driven not just by the need to get even, but to find out the reason he did it. This gives the novel more focus than some of Hiaasen’s other books, which often involve the characters running across each other in random ways, or going on unplanned wanderings across Florida. The other central plot is the fight to save the Everglades, and the role that the villains are playing in its destruction. Somewhere along the way, the two plot lines converge, and the quest to take revenge on Chaz becomes tied up with the aim of stopping Red’s pollution. In other words, the reader is offered a choice of which thing to root for: some readers may think that Chaz’s betrayal of the environment for money makes him detestable, but trying to murder his wife is what makes him a true monster; other readers may think the exact opposite. Skinny Dip is also enriched by a variety of subplots: Tool's gradual moral awakening, as he grows closer to a dying old lady who is too proud to admit that she has been abandoned by her family; Karl Rolvaag's longing for his native Minnesota, and his search for his escaped pet pythons; Chaz’s obsession with sex and his desperate attempts to reverse the erectile dysfunction which is his only sign of guilt over Joey’s murder, including experimenting with a black-market version of Viagra — ""the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) definitely would not approve.""; and finally, the suitcase full of money, which changes hands until it falls into the grip of the least likely person in the story. The novel contains many scenes reminiscent of classic farces. For instance, at one point there are five people in the Perrone house, three of whom are trying to hide their presence from the other: at the center is Chaz and his “back-up” girlfriend Medea, with whom he has just unsuccessfully attempted sexual relations; hiding under the bed is Joey, caught in the middle of another infiltration of the house; Tool is in another part of the house, ordered to protect Perrone but ordered by him to stay out of the way of his date; and finally Mick, who enters in search of Joey and, when he encounters Tool, politely asks him if he’s going to try to stop Mick. (“What a dumb-ass question. Of course I am.”) In a similar situation, Chaz, expecting sex with Rose, is drunk and drugged and lured into bed, not knowing that the woman he’s groping for is in fact his wife. Other funny situations arise out of Chaz’s paranoia and ineptness as a killer. He imagines he’s surrounded by enemies, but he always manages to look in the wrong direction. Even when the truth — for example, Joey — is right in front of him, he attributes it to hallucinations caused by the West Nile virus, rather than recognizing it for a sophisticated hoax."
1293,Quite Ugly One Morning,crime," After renting a flat from a friend in Edinburgh (which just happens to be opposite a police station), investigating the unpleasant murder of a gambling medic in the flat below proves too much to resist and Parblane soon finds himself involved with a number of characters including Darren, a hit-man from Essex, the dead doctor's ex-wife, a lesbian detective constable with attitude and crooked hospital trust administrator, Stephen Lime. The book takes its name from a song from Warren Zevon's 1991 album Mr. Bad Example. It was followed by the best seller Country of the Blind in 1997 which again involved Jack Parlabane."
1294,Loyalty in Death,crime," Lt. Eve Dallas and her assistant Delia Peabody, are called to the home of millionaire, J. Clarence Branson, the owner and co-president of Branson Toys and Tools. Considered by his friends, his brother, and his sister-in-law to be a good man, its all the more shocking when he is found with a hole drilled in the center of his heart. Branson's wife, Lisbeth Cook, comments about the reliability of the drill, and that she killed him because he was cheating on her. Before they can take Cook back to cop central, Dallas and Peabody are called to see a man named Ratso, who tells them he has good information to sell. Ratso tells them about a man named Fixer, who was killed when he was beaten and drowned in the river. Fixer was, much like his name suggested, good at fixing and building. Fixer had said he had a good assignment, building bombs for a group of people. The people though, wanting to cover their trial, eliminated Fixer. Eve agrees to look at the file, eventually. Dallas and Peabody finally take Cook, and have her booked, although the PA will accept a plea bargain. Eve heads home, where she explains the case to her billionaire husband Roarke. The next day, Dallas discovers that the PA has accepted a plea of man two, which she sees as wrong. Dallas had Peabody looking for data, when a stranger shows up looking for her. Peabody returns, and recognizes the man as Zeke Peabody, her younger brother. Zeke ends up staying with Peabody for a while. Dallas questions B. Donald Branson, Clarences brother, and Clarissa Branson, Donald's wife. They both claim Clarence was faithful, leaving Eve with nothing. Meanwhile, Peabody shows her brother her small apartment, and he reveals he is considering a relationship with a married woman, who is his employer. Peabody, however, is not ready for the shock, when Zeke reveals his employers are the Bransons. Dallas heads to Fixer's shop, to find it picked clean. He has a rack that is custom designed to hold weapons, and believes it would hold an army blaster. She goes to Roarke, who confirms her suspicion. Later, Dallas attends Branson's will reading, which Roarke also attends. Little to nothing is gained however, as all the people who got money from the will already had money, and the only thing established about J. C. Branson is that he was a good man. The next morning, Dallas is greeted by Peabody, and a text disc for her to read. The disc is from a group, calling themselves Cassandra, named after the woman of legend, claiming they will bring punishment to the city, and promising to give a demonstration of their power at 9:15 that morning. At 9:15, a bomb explodes, destroying an empty warehouse, owned by Cassandra's main target, Dallas's husband, Roarke."
1295,2nd Chance,crime," Homicide Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer is still recovering from the recent loss of her partner and is just returning to the force when she is called in to investigate a series of murders that include an 11-year old girl and an elderly woman. Through her investigations she discovers a connection to a jail-hate gang called Chimera. After another police officer is sniper-killed by a sniper and then her boss is murdered, the trail leads to the ex-cop Frank Coombs. To further complicate all of the Women's Murder Club ladies, Jill is pregnant, Claire becomes a target for the Chimera killer, Cindy starts dating the murdered girl's pastor and Lindsay's father shows up. Finally after chasing the trail of Frank Coombs, Lindsay trails the real killer, Rusty Coombs - the son of Frank Coombs, to a tower on a college campus where he has opened fire and killed several students. Rusty is getting revenge for all that has happened to his father and no longer cares if he lives or dies. Lindsay kills Rusty at the college tower. As an epilogue, Lindsay receives a postcard from her father in Mexico saying sorry for lying to her about his crooked past and that he has bought a boat and named it Buttercup, his pet name for her. This is a story with the theme of revenge. it:Seconda chance (romanzo)"
1296,Sidetracked,crime," In the sweltering Swedish summer of 1994, a sadistic serial killer begins preying on elderly, successful men, violently slaughtering them with an axe before collecting their scalps as trophies. Meanwhile, Wallander witnesses a young woman from the Dominican Republic set herself on fire, and must also cope with his increasingly despondent father, who's determined to make one final trip to Italy. As he investigates the two cases, the Ystad detective uncovers a sinister link to prostitution rackets and the white slavery trade."
1297,Death in Paradise,crime," The third Jesse Stone novel finds Chief Stone investigating the death of a teenage girl after her body washes up on shore. While searching for clues at the [crime scene], Suit finds a class ring that ends up belonging to a senior at the high school. Jesse questions him and discovers that he gave his class ring to fifteen year old girl called Eleanor “Billie” Bishop. Chief Stone then questions the school principal, Dr. Lilly Summers, who informs Jesse that Billie was the “town pump.” The case becomes odd when Jesse questions Billie’s parents and they deny that she is even their daughter. He confirms that she is indeed their daughter through her two sisters. They also inform Jesse that Billie ran away because her parents did not approve of her behavior, particularly her promiscuity. Jesse later finds that Billie had been staying at a shelter run by a Sister Mary John. Although he finds that Billie is no longer there, the nun gives Jesse the contact number that Billie left. It turns out to be the number of Gino Fish’s cover business. Later Sister Mary gives Jesse another number that two separate girls had given her. The number turns out to belong to Gino Fish’s associate and probable lover, Alan Garner. Jesse begins following Garner and catches him setting up men with underage prostitutes. Jesse questions Garner about it, and he agrees to talk under Stone’s promise not to make him testify. Garner then admits that he has been pimping underage prostitutes since long before knowing Gino. Jesse interviews Norman Shaw, a wealthy local citizen and famous author, who drinks heavily throughout. He passes out at the table. Later, Jesse questions one of Shaw’s many ex-wives who tells him that she had a private detective follow him while they were married. She had suspected him of infidelities, and the detective confirms this, informing her that he is seeing underage prostitutes almost nightly. Although, she never sees that photos, she uses the information to get a large divorce settlement. Next, Jesse sees her detective who gives him the incriminating photos which depict graphic sexual acts between Shaw and underage girls. Jesse takes the photos to Shaw’s current wife who is disgusted and hands over Shaw’s gun which Jesse easily confirms as the murder weapon. With this evidence in hand, Jesse forces Alan Garner to make a statement and then leaves him to be dealt with by Gino. Stone has Suit stake out the hotel that Shaw meets girls at, and when Shaw arrives Stone and Suit break in and catch Shaw in the act with a fifteen year old girl. During questioning, Shaw admits to killing Billie after she began threatening to turn him in to the police. When Jesse informs Billie’s parents that he has solved the case, that he knows Billie is their daughter, and that it is indeed her body that was found their responses couldn’t be more different. The father seems to be overcome and leaves the room, while Billie’s domineering mother seems not to care at all."
1298,Divorcing Jack,crime," Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the novel's events follow a turbulent period in the life of married, cynical and usually drunk journalist Dan Starkey. Dan's wife Patricia leaves him after a drunken party in which he kisses student Margaret. What follows is a darkly comical tale of murder and mystery."
1299,Mystery Mile,crime," When Campion saves him from certain death on the ship over, Judge Lobbett looks into the man's background, and is advised to trust him. So, he takes Campion's advice and brings his handsome son and pretty daughter down to Mystery Mile, a tiny village on a near-island on the Suffolk coast, where Campion's friends Biddy and Giles Paget own a run-down manor house. The night they arrive, a roving fortune-teller visits, and soon afterward the local Rector ""St."" Swithin Cush, a mild and much-loved man, commits gruesome suicide, leaving a note and some mysterious clues—a red knight from his chess set, and the word ""Danger"" in encrypted form. Settling in at the manor, the judge calls in an art expert to inspect a possible masterpiece, but as the man (an annoying bore they had encountered on the boat) arrives at the house, the judge vanishes, seemingly inexplicably, while exploring the maze. They search for the judge's secret knowledge, the clue to the identity of crime boss Simister, which has brought such danger, but find only a large box of children's books. Travelling to London to investigate the judge's enemies, and to shake off art expert Barber, Campion and Lobbett's son Marlowe are recalled by a shocking telegram, but find the local Post Office man has exaggerated things—not a body, but Judge Lobbett's clothes, have been found. Next day, Biddy disappears, and Campion soon sees that the shopkeeper is behind it. Thos. T Knapp, a low-class criminal of Campion's acquaintance, arrives with news of their enemies, and they all decamp to London to rescue Biddy, leaving Lobbett's daughter safe in Campion's flat. They break into the house of the fortune-teller, where Biddy is being cruelly interrogated, and after a fight and Campion's use of a smoke-bomb, escape, leaving the gang in disarray. Back at Campion's flat, they see a photo of the judge in a newspaper, and Campion reveals that he had arranged for the disappearance, and hidden the man on a nearby estate, following St. Swithin's advice. They go there, fetch the judge, and he, Giles and Campion decamp for Mystery Mile once more, where they find the household, including Mr Barber, drugged. They retrieve the judge's evidence—a book of stories from the Thousand and One Nights from his set—and Giles and the judge flee using the same path used to smuggle the judge away before, a boat from a beach near some dangerous ""soft"" - mud that works like quicksand. Campion sits in the hut and deciphers the clue—the art expert's name is Ali Barber. The man comes in, and reveals his secret role as Simister, head of a colossal criminal gang, inherited from his father. He tries to kill Campion with a syringe filled with acid, but Campion breaks through the floor of the hut and falls beneath it. Barber goes to retrieve the book, but is taken by the soft mud, dying horribly. Recuperating later, Campion's friend Stanislaus Oates tells him the secret of Swithin Cush's suicide - he was in fact not a parson at all, having taken the place of his brother who died young. The fortune-teller, a blackmailer working for Simister, knew this and threatened to reveal it. Biddy and Giles Paget plan to marry Marlowe and Isopel Lobbett, respectively, and to sell the valuable painting for a small fortune."
1300,The Reversal,crime," Mickey Haller, who has become increasingly frustrated in his role as a defense lawyer, agrees to undertake the prosecution role on behalf of the city of Los Angeles, in the retrial of a convicted killer that had been granted as a result of new DNA evidence. His one condition before accepting the task is that he is permitted to choose his own team; he chooses his ex-wife Maggie McPherson as his co-prosecutor, and his half-brother Harry Bosch as his investigator from the LAPD. The prosecution case rests largely on the testimony of Sarah Gleason, the elder sister of the victim, Melissa Landy. The body of 12-year-old Melissa was discovered in 1986, discarded in a dumpster, only a few hours after she was reported missing. Unknown to the killer, her sister Sarah had been hiding in the garden and had witnessed her abduction. On the day of the murder, she identified Jason Jessup, a truck driver, as the man who snatched Melissa from the garden. DNA evidence subsequently showed that semen stains on the dress Melissa was wearing came not from Jessup, but from the girls' stepfather. However, the evidence against Jessup includes strands of Melissa's hair, found in the seat of his truck. Jessup's defense counsel, ""clever"" Clive Royce, mounts a media campaign in his client's favour, and it becomes clear that their main motivation is in obtaining a compensation payout from the state. Haller's response is to allow bail and have Jessup tailed by the police in the hope that he will return to his old ways and provide additional support for the prosecution case. Jessup is soon seen visiting various mountain trails in the Mulholland area, and on one occasion parks his car outside Bosch's house at night. Bosch and Haller, both concerned for their own teenage daughters, develop a theory that Jessup was a serial killer but are unable to investigate fully for fear of blowing the police's cover. Legal procedures require that the jury is kept ignorant of Jessup's history. Testimony given in the original trial, where the witness is no longer available because of death or infirmity, has to be read out by Harry Bosch. After Sarah Gleason admits that the dress Melissa was wearing was hers and that her stepfather was raping her, which accounted for the semen stains, the defense focuses on presenting the stepfather as the real killer and Jessup as the victim of the family's lies. The focus is to undermine Sarah's testimony, because of her a history of drug use and prostitution in the years since her sister's murder, though she has now been rehabilitated. Bosch traces Sarah's former lover, Eddie Roman, and finds that he has remained a drug addict living off a prostitute's earnings but has disappeared, presumably to testify falsely against Sarah. Locating Roman's current prostitute Sonia Reyes, Bosch persuades her to enter the courtroom at a crucial moment in Roman's testimony, which causes Roman to alter his testimony, effectively destroying the defense case. While anticipating a plea bargain offer from the defense team during a lunch break, Bosch and Haller instead learn that Jessup entered Royce's offices with a gun and killed Royce, two of his legal team and a policeman who followed him. Jessup is now at large, but the police surround and kill him at a hideout under the Santa Monica pier that had been discovered by Bosch as a result of the police surveillance activities. Jessup's death ends the search for Melissa Landy's killer, but leaves the prosecution team with a host of unanswered legal and moral questions."
1301,The Horse With My Name,crime," This novel follows Dan Starkey who is currently both unemployed and single. His estranged wife Patricia, after cancelling their counselling sessions with Relate, has entered into another relationship with someone called Clive and is currently living with him in the family home. Starkey receives a request from Mark Corkery, known as ""The Horse Whisperer"", to investigate racing entrepreneur Geordie McClean who is apparently not quite as clean as his name would suggest."
1302,Death at La Fenice,crime, Commissario (Detective) Guido Brunetti pursues what appears to be a murder investigation without leads. de:Venezianisches Finale es:Muerte en la Fenice eu:Death at La Fenice fr:Mort à La Fenice sv:Ond bråd död i Venedig
1303,206 Bones,crime," Tempe is still unsure whether to continue her romantic relationship with Andrew Ryan. Tempe and Ryan set out to Chicago to clear her name, where much to Tempe’s annoyance, Ryan bonds with Tempe’s estranged ex-husband’s family while waiting for his flight back to Montreal. In Montreal, Tempe is convinced that the recent deaths of three more old women are somehow connected with the death of the heiress. The informant who placed the call turns up dead and Tempe is once more at a dead end. Although she is usually very meticulous in handling her cases, it seems that she makes more and more mistakes. Is someone from inside sabotaging her, and why? Her alleged mistakes are made public; now not only her career is at risk – her life is in danger too."
1304,A Mind to Murder,crime," In a psychiatric clinic late one night, the piercing scream of a dying woman shatters the calm, and Commander Dalgliesh is called away from his literary soiree to investigate. He soon finds the body of a clinic employee sprawled across the cold basement floor, a chisel driven mercilessly through her heart; and so marks the beginning of a deadly psychological battle with an intellectual, predatory killer who feels no remorse, no regret and no self-control over his darker impulses..."
1305,The Sculptress,crime," Olive Martin - a 28 year old, morbidly obese woman - was imprisoned for life after police found her cradling the shattered bodies of her mother and sister, having previously dismembered them and re-arranged their limbs into abstract shapes on the floor, a crime for which she was nicknamed 'the Sculptress'. Troubled journalist Rosalind Leigh, under pressure from her publisher to produce new material, reluctantly agrees to write a book about Olive and - whilst conducting interviews with the prisoner - gradually comes to believe that she is concealing something, maybe even her own innocence. In her quest to discover the truth Rosalind enlists the help of Hal Hawksley. He is an ex-policeman who investigated the case originally and is still haunted by some of its aspects."
1306,4.50 From Paddington,crime," Elspeth McGillicuddy has come from Scotland to visit her old friend Jane Marple. On the way, her train passes another train running parallel to her. Then, a blind in one of the compartments flies up and she sees a woman being strangled to death! Only Miss Marple believes her story as there is no evidence of wrongdoing. The first task is to ascertain where the body could have been hidden. Comparison of the facts of the murder with the train timetable and the local geography lead to the grounds of Rutherford Hall as the only possible location: it is shielded from the surrounding community, the railway abuts the grounds, and so on. Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a young professional housekeeper and an acquaintance of Miss Marple, is sent undercover to Rutherford Hall. Josiah Crackenthorpe, purveyor of tea biscuits, built Rutherford Hall. His son, Luther, now a semi-invalid widower, had displayed spendthrift qualities in his youth. To preserve the family fortune, Josiah has left his considerable fortune in trust, the income from which is to be paid to Luther for life. After Luther's death, the capital is to be divided equally among Luther's children. Luther Crackenthorpe is merely the trustee of Rutherford Hall and hence cannot sell the house as per the will. The house itself will be inherited by Luther Crackenthorpe's eldest surviving son or his issue. The eldest of Luther Crackenthorpe's children, Edmund, died during World War II. His youngest daughter, Edith, died four years before. The remaining heirs to the estate are Cedric, a bohemian painter and lover of women who lives on Ibiza; Harold, a cold and stuffy banker; Alfred, the black sheep of the family who is known to engage in shady business dealings; Emma Crackenthorpe, a spinster who lives at home and takes care of Luther; and Alexander, son of Edith. The complement of characters is completed by Bryan Eastley, Alexander's father; and Dr. Quimper, who looks after Luther's health and is secretly romantically involved with Emma. Lucy uses golf practice as an excuse to search the grounds. She eventually finds the woman's body hidden in a sarcophagus in the old stables amongst Luther's collection of dubious antiques. But who is she? The police eventually identify the victim's clothing as being of French manufacture. Emma tells the police that she has received a letter claiming to be from Martine, a French girl whom her brother Edmund had wanted to marry. He had written about Martine and their impending marriage days before his death in the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940. The letter purporting to be from Martine claims that she was pregnant when Edmund died and that she now wishes their son to have all of the advantages to which his parentage should entitle him. The police conclude that the body in the sarcophagus is that of Martine, but this proves not to be the case, when Lady Stoddart-West, mother of James Stoddart-West, a schoolfriend of Alexander's, reveals that she is Martine. Although she and Edmund had intended to marry, Edmund died before they could do so and she later married an SOE officer, settling in England. The whole family takes ill suddenly and Alfred dies. Later, the curry made by Lucy on the fateful day is found to contain arsenic. Some days later, Harold, after returning home to London, receives a delivery of some tablets that appear to be the same as the sleeping pills prescribed to him by Dr Quimper, who had told him he need not take them any more. They prove to be poisoned and Harold dies. One by one, the heirs to Josiah's fortune are being eliminated. Lucy arranges an afternoon-tea visit to Rutherford Hall for Miss Marple, and Mrs McGillicuddy is also invited. Mrs McGillicuddy is instructed by Miss Marple to ask to use the lavatory as soon as they arrive, but is not told why. Miss Marple is eating a fish-paste sandwich when she suddenly begins to choke. It seems she has a fishbone stuck in her throat. Dr Quimper moves to assist her. Mrs McGillicuddy enters the room at that moment, sees the doctor's hands at Miss Marple's throat, and cries out, ""But that's him &mdash; that's the man on the train!"" Miss Marple had correctly concluded that her friend would recognise the real murderer if she saw him again in a similar pose. It transpires that the murdered woman's name was Anna Stravinska, a French ballet dancer who had been married to Dr Quimper many years earlier. Being a devout Catholic, she refused to divorce him, so he decided to murder her so as to be free to marry Emma, thus inheriting Josiah's fortune, once he had eliminated the other heirs. He poisoned the cocktail when he sent a sample of the curry to be tested, he poisoned it ""then"". There was not enough to kill however, so he poisoned Alfred's medicine and tea so the overdose murdered Alfred."
1307,A Touch of Frost,crime," The murder of a local drug addict, the hunt for a serial rapist, a hit-and-run involving the spoiled son of an MP, and a robbery at a strip joint all have something in common. Detective Inspector Jack Frost has been assigned with the thankless task of investigating them. Fighting the stress and ignoring his mounting pile of paperwork, Frost soon finds himself up against the various manifestations of criminality..."
1308,The Torment of Others,crime," Several years after Derek Tyler was incarcerated for slaughtering several prostitutes, another lady of the night is found dead under similar modus operandi. Could police be on the trail of a copycat killer, or are there even darker motives at work here? As Dr. Tony Hill investigates, accompanied by the jaded DCI Carol Jordan, he's drawn into a tangled web of degeneracy, psychosis and mind manipulation..."
1309,The Big Blowdown,crime," The book opens with a gravely injured Peter Karras in a D.C. hospital in 1946. The plot flashes back to Karras and his friends as children in 1933. Karras gets into a fight with a group of African-American boys and his opponent, Junior Oliver, earns his grudging respect. Next the story jumps to 1944 and the Philippines theatre of World War II. Karras kills his first man and one of his childhood friends, Billy Nicodemus, is killed. Next the book returns to 1946 and we learn that Karras has gotten married, to Eleni, and how he came to be injured. Karras flippant attitude upsets his superior Mr. Burke and when Karras fails to collect a debt from another Greek Burke decides to have him punished. He instructs Recevo to betray his friend Karras. Burke dispatches his enforcer Reed to assault Karras after Recevo sets him up. Reed beats Karras with a baseball bat. When promiscuous Lola disappears in 1948 after moving to Washington her brother Mike Florek decides to search for her. Eventually Florek takes a job at Nick Stefanos' diner in 1949. Karras is now working there as a chef. Jimmy Boyle, now a beat cop, has become peripherally involved in the investigation of the murder of several prostitutes by a serial killer. Karras correctly suspects that Lola has become a prostitute and aids Florek in his search. Lola's madam Lydia is murdered by the killer and Lola witnesses the crime. Boyle locates Lola for Karras and Karras and Florek extract her from Morgan's brothel. Karras lets Florek and Lola leave town. Burke targets Stefanos' diner for his protection racket. When Stefanos resists Burke hires Bender's outfit to pressure Stefanos and fool him into believing he needs the protection. Karras sees through the scheme and they lure Bender's men into a trap and kill them. After rescuing Lola Karras suspects Gearhart as the murderer from her description. He enlists the help of Joe Recevo who informs Burke of Gearhart's murderous tendencies. Burke confronts Gearhart and begins to organize a cover-up. Recevo informs Jimmy Boyle of Gearhart's involvement and tells him to go to his apartment to retrieve the murder weapon. Burke dispatches Reed on the same mission. When Boyle reaches the apartment he is grievously wounded by Gearhart, who had disobeyed Burke's instructions and returned home. Boyle manages to shoot Gearhart in the struggle. Burke realizes that Karras is the common-link between Boyle and Gearhart and confronts Recevo. He instructs Recevo to bring Karras to him. Recevo brings Karras in but the two make a last stand together and kill Burke, Reed and many of their men before being shot. The book ends with a coda set in 1959 as Stefanos and Costa visiting Karras' grave."
1310,Plum Lucky,crime, Diesel and Stephanie end up teaming up with a strange man who thinks he's a leprachaun in an effort to save a horse named Doug and Grandma Mazur.
1311,Purity in Death,crime," Lt. Eve Dallas and her assistant, Delia Peabody, are called in by Officer Troy Trueheart after he has shot and killed a suspect named Louie Cogburn. The man, a known but unconvicted, normally low-profile dealer in ""illegals"" (illegal drugs) to children, had suddenly turned homicidally insane and killed a neighbor in his apartment building; he was attacking the neighbor's wife when Trueheart enters the scene. Trueheart is forced to stun Cogburn when he attacks the officer; however, despite Trueheart's weapon being locked on a normal stun setting, Cogburn dies instantly. On examining the scene, Eve finds the attacker's computer bears a message on its screen: ""Absolute Purity Achieved."" She sends the computer to NYPSD's Electronics Detection Division for examination. The attacker's autopsy, meanwhile, shows an unusual extreme swelling of the brain tissue, enough to induce irreversible dementia and violence. Some time later, the EDD investigator working on Cogburn's computer turns violently enraged, injures Ian McNab, and then dies of the same intense brain swelling while holding Captain Feeney hostage. The next day, another body is found, that of Chadwick Fitzhugh, an unconvicted pedophile, with the same swelling and evidence of the same uncontrollable violence, and with the same message on his computer terminal. Following this, a text message is sent to reporter Nadine Furst from a group calling themselves the ""Purity Seekers,"" claiming responsibility for the deaths of Cogburn and Fitzhugh, and promising more ""executions"" of criminals that the law has not been able to touch, by means of a unique computer virus. It becomes Eve's job, with the help of Roarke and her team, to stop the Purity Seekers before more are killed by them, as well as more deaths of uninvolved individuals."
1312,From Potter's Field,crime," The story begins as a rotten Christmas for Scarpetta: Temple Gault has struck again, leaving a naked, apparently homeless girl shot in Central Park on Christmas Eve; Scarpetta, as the FBI's consulting pathologist, is called in. Later, a transit cop is found shot in a subway tunnel, and, back home in Richmond, Virginia, the body of a crooked local sheriff is delivered to Scarpetta's own morgue by the elusive, brilliant Gault. The normally unflappable Scarpetta finds herself hyperventilating and nearly shooting her own niece. In the end, some ingenious forensic detective work and a visit to the killer's agonized family set up a high-tech, difficult to follow, climax back in the New York subway, which Gault treats as the Phantom of the Opera did the sewers of Paris."
1313,The Hanging Garden,crime," Detective Inspector John Rebus is investigating a suspected war criminal. Rebus helps a traumatised Bosnian prostitute and tries to intercede in a territory war between upstart gangster Tommy Telford and 'Big Ger' Cafferty's established gang. Telford is known to have close links with Newcastle gangster named Tarawicz -""Mr Pink Eyes""- a Chechen people-smuggler. Rebus' daughter Sammy is knocked down in what looks like a deliberate hit-and-run. A Japanese gangster is killed by someone trying to frame Rebus, using his Saab car."
1314,Phantom Lady,crime," A man is first accused, and then convicted, of murdering his wife. As his execution date approaches, his friends frantically search for another woman who would be his alibi witness—but they cannot even find proof that she exists."
1315,All She Was Worth,crime," 1992. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Shunsuke Honma, on leave due to an incident on the job, is hired by his nephew, banker Jun Kurisaka, to track down his fiancée, whom he knows by the name of Shoko Sekine and who disappeared from his life after he discovered her credit history was tainted by bankruptcy. As Honma investigates her circumstances, he finds that the name ""Shoko Sekine"" actually belongs to someone else other than Jun's fiancée - and that the latter may have murdered the former to achieve this... As Honma navigates the country for clues, he finds that the credit-based economy in Japan, coupled with the country's own system for family identification, have undesirable side effects on ordinary people's lives. (Some of the names were changed in translation and will be noted in italics.) *Shunsuke Honma, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Inspector, on leave due to an incident on the job (a thug he was arresting shot him in the knee, disabling him temporarily). He has a 10-year-old adopted son named Makoto, whom he has raised alone since his wife Chizuko died in a car accident in 1989, when her small car was crushed by a truck driven by a sleepy worker. In his new assignment - finding Shoko - Honma has to work unofficially given the strong limitations placed on police officers on leave due to bureaucracy. Being a frugal widower, he looks askance at young couples' illusory dreams often built on credit card and real estate purchases. *Jun Kurisaka (original Japanese given name Kazuya), young banker, son of Chizuko's cousin. Was looking forward to marry the woman he knew as Shoko, only to be astonished at her disappearance and later at the revelation that she wasn't really named Shoko. He had met her in October 1990 and proposed to her on Christmas Eve, 1991. Conceited and worried with his parents' approval, but hires Honma behind their backs. *Tsuneo Isaka is Honma's friend and housekeeper. He was originally an architect but became a house-husband when the Japanese asset price bubble put him out of work, so he worked part-time as a housekeeper for Honma and two other families in the apartment complex where they lived. His wife, Hisae Isaka, runs her own interior designing firm so income is steady. *Mr. Imai (original Japanese given name Shirō, unmentioned in translation) and his employee Mitchie (Mit-chan) were boss and co-worker respectively of the fake Shoko at Imai's company, a small-time cash register dealer. *Gorō Mizoguchi was the real Shoko's bankruptcy lawyer. He is the first one to realize that the ""Shoko"" Honma was looking for was not the one Jun had known. He later explains to Honma the way the credit industry works and why people like the real Shoko had to declare bankruptcy. His secretary, Ms. Sawagi, receives Honma and later provides additional information on Shoko. *Nobuko Konno was the real Shoko's landlady at Kawaguchi, Saitama, and ran her buildings with help from her husband and daughter Akemi. She tells Honma that Shoko, though being a good and friendly tenant, had moved out mysteriously, thereby alerting him at the possibility that the identity switch had been violent, possibly due to murder or coercion. *Sadao Funaki (original Japanese surname Ikari), is Honma's co-worker and introduced him to Chizuko, allowing him to marry her despite his own crush on her. He supports Honma's informal investigation and in the process nails his own official investigation, a woman who murdered her businessman husband because he would not allow her to work outside the home, having a female friend as the accomplice. *Kanae Miyata is a hairdresser in Shoko's old neighborhood. *Tamotsu Honda was the real Shoko's best friend from all levels of school. He stayed in Utsunomiya as a mechanic and married Ikumi, the one who first saw Shoko's mother fallen down the stairs. They are about to become parents for the second time, but Tamotsu still insists on helping out Honma with the investigation, as Shoko was his original childhood crush. *Tomie Miyagi, was the real Shoko's roommate and bar hostess colleague at a building in Kinshicho, Tokyo. *Hideki Wada (original Japanese surname Katase), was the fake Shoko's boss at Roseline, the Osaka-based mail-order underwear company she worked at to target her victims. He apparently had an affair with her as well. He reveals ""Shoko"" 's real identity to Honma. *Kaoru Sudō was Kyoko's roommate in Nagoya, Aichi, when she was getting away from the yakuza who had taken control of the Shinjo family's mortgage payments. *Orie Chino (original Japanese name Kaori Ichiki), was Kyoko's roommate in Osaka, she worked in the company data section (separate from Kyoko's). Not on friendly terms with her as Kaoru was. *Shōko Sekine, the real deal, was a woman from Utsunomiya, Tochigi, who went bankrupt as a result of excessive credit card debt upon which she had to quit her original office job and turn to hostessing in bars. She was not particularly beautiful, unlike her impostor. Her mother, Yoshiko, died in 1989 - one year before the impostor took over her identity - when she fell down steps in a building, and the circumstances were always suspect. *The impostor Shoko was actually a very beautiful woman named Kyōko Shinjō, who was from Fukushima Prefecture. Unlike the real Shoko, who could free herself from the debts by declaring bankruptcy, the debts in her life actually belonged to her father, who had taken a large mortgage for the family to have their own home. She had attempted to get away from it all by marrying a young man, Yasuji Kurata in Ise, Mie, but the Yakuza in charge of her father's debt came to bother them too and ended up breaking their marriage. She hatched her plan to have another identity as a result of this. Miyabe's novel touches on many topics, including the Japanese asset price bubble mentioned earlier, plus social issues of family registry, the credit industry, the underground credit economy, and the rights and responsibilities of individuals in contrast to that of families. At one point Isaka, Honma's friend and housekeeper, talks about a flaming wagon that takes sinners to hell, citing Japanese Buddhist mythology. This is the kasha (火車, fire chariot) of the original Japanese title. The significance is that the real Shoko had gone through hell with her credit card bankruptcy, but then the fake Shoko (Kyoko) had taken her place in the chariot and was going to hell in it."
1316,Elephants Can Remember,crime," The bodies of General Alistair Ravenscroft and his wife were found near their manor house in Overcliffe. Both had bullet wounds, and a revolver with only their fingerprints left between them. In the original investigation no one was able to prove whether the case was a double suicide or murder/suicide and, if the latter, who killed whom. Left behind are the couple's two children, including daughter Celia. Ten years later, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a school friend of the late Margaret Ravenscroft and godmother to her daughter, is approached at a literary luncheon by Mrs. Burton-Cox, to whose son Celia Ravenscroft is engaged. Mrs. Burton-Cox asks Mrs. Oliver what she appears to believe is a very important question: which of Celia's parents was the murderer, and which was murdered? Initially put off by the woman's attitude, after consulting with Celia herself, Mrs. Oliver agrees to try to resolve the issue. She invites her friend Hercule Poirot to solve the disquieting puzzle. Together they conduct interviews with several elderly witnesses whom they term “elephants”, based on the assumption that, like the proverbial elephants, they may have long memories . Each ""elephant"" remembers (or mis-remembers) a very different set of circumstances, but Poirot notes some facts that may have particular significance: Margaret Ravenscroft owned four wigs at the time of her death, and a few days before her death, she was seriously bitten by the otherwise-devoted family dog. Poirot decides that the investigation must delve deeper into the past in order to unearth the truth. He and Mrs. Oliver discover that Dolly (Dorothea) and Molly (Margaret) Preston-Grey were identical twin sisters, both of whom died within the space of a few weeks. While Molly generally led an unremarkable life, Dolly had previously been connected with two violent incidents and had spent protracted periods of her life in psychiatric nursing homes. Dolly had married a major called Jarrow and, shortly after his death in India, she was strongly suspected of drowning her infant son, something that she had tried to blame on the little boy’s Indian Ayah. A second murder was apparently committed in Malaya while Dolly was staying with the Ravenscrofts; it was an attack on the child of a neighbour. While staying again with the Ravenscrofts, this time at Overcliffe, Dolly apparently sleep-walked off a cliff and died on the evening of September 15, 1960. Molly and her husband died less than a month later, on October 3. Poirot is contacted by Desmond Burton-Cox, Celia Ravenscroft's fiancé, who gives him the names of two governesses who had served the Ravenscroft family, who he thinks may be able to explain what happened. Turning an investigative light on the Burton-Cox family, Poirot’s agent, Mr. Goby, discovers that Desmond (who knows that he is adopted, but has no details about the adoption or his origins) is the illegitimate son of a now-deceased actress, Kathleen Fenn, with whom Mrs. Burton-Cox’s husband had conducted an affair. Kathleen Fenn had left Desmond a considerable personal fortune, which would, under the terms of his will, be left to his adoptive mother were he to die. Mrs. Burton-Cox’s attempt to prevent Desmond getting married to Celia Ravenscroft is thus an unlovely attempt to obtain the use of his money (there is no suggestion that she plans to kill him and inherit the money). Poirot suspects the truth, but can substantiate it only after contacting Zélie Meauhourat, the governess employed by the Ravenscrofts at the time of their death. She returns with him from Lausanne to England, where she explains the truth to Desmond and Celia. Dolly had fatally injured Molly as part of a psychotic episode, but such was Molly’s love for her sister that she made her husband promise to protect Dolly from the police. Accordingly, Zélie and Alistair made it appear that Dolly’s was the corpse found at the foot of the cliff. Dolly took her sister’s place, playing the role of Molly to the servants. Only the Ravenscrofts’ dog knew the difference, and this is why it bit its ""mistress"". Ultimately, Alistair committed suicide after killing Dolly in order to prevent her from injuring anyone else. Desmond and Celia recognise the sadness of the true events, but now knowing the facts are able to face a future together."
1317,Exit Music,crime," Just a week before Rebus’s retirement, Rebus and Clarke are investigating the death of a famous Russian exile poet who was mugged and beaten to death on King's Stables Road. Then a sound recordist with close ties to the dead Russian poet turns up dead. Rebus searches for the killer of both men but is suspended for his over-enthusiastic interrogations and getting on the wrong side of powerful Scottish bankers and politicians. His last three days before retirement are spent working from his apartment trying to solve the case."
1318,Shroud for a Nightingale,crime," Student nurses Heather Pearce and Josephine Fallon have died of mysterious circumstances in the hospital nursing school of Nightingale House. As Scotland Yard’s Commander [he is not yet Commander, but Chief Superintendent] Adam Dalgliesh uncovers sexual secrets and blackmail within the closed community of the hospital, he finds himself in mortal danger."
1319,Asta's Book,crime," This is set in the 1990s, with flashbacks to 1905 via Asta's diary. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to east London from Denmark with their two sons. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal, for they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder, to the quest for a missing child and to the enigma surrounding Asta's daughter, Swanny. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before."
1320,The Echo,crime," Homeless man Billy Blake dies of starvation inside wealthy architect Amanda Powell's garage, leading her into a strange obsession with discovering how he came to be there and why he didn't call for help. Her inquiries lead her to journalist Michael Deacon, who slowly becomes suspicious of Amanda's motives and the fact that she only became rich following her husband's death."
1321,Good Morning Midnight,crime," The plot involves Dalziel and Pascoe's investigation into the suicide of local businessman Palinurus 'Pal' Maciver, who has killed himself in similar circumstances to those of his father, who shot himself ten years earlier. However, what begins as a routine case of an apparent copycat suicide soon develops into something of a more sinister nature, revealing family secrets, corporate chicanery involving the arms trade, government agents and Iraq."
1322,Clockers,crime," Clockers follows intertwining storylines of low level cocaine dealer Ronald ""Strike"" Dunham and homicide detective Rocco Klein in the fictional New Jersey city of Dempsey (Which shares many similarities with Jersey City, NJ - where author Richard Price spent extensive time researching the subject matter.) Strike works in the drug organization of Rodney Little, a friendly but violent drug lieutenant of local drug lord Champ. When Rodney Little asks Strike to kill his second in command Darryl and take his position, Strike hesitates. While scoping out Ahab's, the fish restaurant from where Darryl wholesales cocaine, he encounters his drunk brother in a bar across the street, to whom he tells a made-up story about Darryl's abuse of his girlfriend. Victor apparently sees through his story, and suggests that if Strike needs someone killed, he knows ""My Man"" who could do the job. Strike is surprised by this offer from his law-abiding, working-man brother, and responds noncommittally, thinking him to be just a drunken boast. He is shocked the next day to find that Darryl has been shot dead in the Ahab's parking lot by an unknown assailant. Rocco Klein and his partner Larry Mazilli are assigned to investigate Darryl's murder. They quickly deduce that Darryl was more than just a restaurant manager. Meanwhile Strike is promoted in Rodney's organization and is introduced to Papi, a Puerto-Rican cocaine wholesaler. Rodney reveals that he has been buying cocaine from Papi and selling it behind Champ's back, without giving him a cut. Strike recognizes that Champ will have them both killed if he discovers their side business, but agrees to participate, believing he has no other choice. Rodney brings Strike to meet with Champ at his headquarters at the O'Brien housing projects. Rodney brings an undercover police officer who he introduces to Champ as a cocaine supplier, as part his plan to subplot him and take control of the organization. There, Strike encounters Champ's chief violent enforcer, Buddha Hat, a murderous man who cryptically proclaims that Strike is ""Victor's brother."" Strike takes this to mean that Buddha Hat was Victor's ""My Man"" and that he had killed Darryl. As Buddha Hat worked for Champ, and Darryl was the previous overseer of Rodney's secret drug sales, Strike assumes that Buddha Hat will realize their treachery and tell Champ, who would have them both killed. Buddha Hat pays Strike a perplexing visit, where Strike, thinking he is about to be killed, is instead taken to a restaurant and peep show in New York, in a bizarre gesture of friendship by Buddha Hat. Victor gives a full confession to Darryl's murder, but his self-defense story does not match witness accounts and Rocco expects that he is in fact innocent. His investigation begins to lead him to Strike, who he believes is a much more likely murderer than law-abiding Victor. Rocco confronts Strike at his drug corner and forcibly takes him in for questioning several times. Strike goes to meet Papi to pick up the week's cocaine shipment but finds him shot to death. Strike panics, fearing that Champ is on to him and Rodney. He later learns from Rodney that Buddha Hat also went behind Champ's back to take a bit of Papi's profits, and murdered him when he refused to pay. When Rodney is arrested selling cocaine to an undercover police officer, he believes that Strike has been talking to police and sends his enforcer, Errol Barnes to murder him. Rocco brings in Strike for questioning, again, as well as Victor and his mother, who, already facing an inevitable life sentence, finally reveals that it was him who had committed the murder, in a moment where, hating his difficult life and ungrateful wife, impulsively decided to murder Darryl as Strike had suggested with a gun he had earlier found and kept. Errol Barnes, despite a fearsome reputation for violence, is shot and killed by Strike's panicked young assistant Tyrone, who had been on his way to return Strike's gun after borrowing it out of curiosity. Strike goes free, but local cop Andre ""The Giant,"" who was a father figure to Tyrone, threatens to kill Strike for ruining Tyrone's life unless he leaves Dempsey permanently. The novel ends with Rocco driving Strike into NYC, where, while at the Greyhound station a drug mule tries to get Strike to buy him a bus ticket. After Strike is hassled by the police, he buys a See America pass and leaves the city."
1323,The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor,crime," The novel, written in the first person in the form of Cameron McCabe's confession, is set in London in the mid-1930s. McCabe works in the film industry and has made himself a name as a supervising film editor working mainly on feature films. One day his boss, Isador Bloom, orders him to cut out altogether a young aspiring actress, Estella Lamare, from a movie which has just been produced. As the picture is about a love triangle McCabe does not see the point in doing as he was told and immediately suspects some foul business. He does not know then that this is in fact Bloom's revenge on Lamare for ""showing him a cold shoulder"" when he made a pass at her. One Friday morning soon afterwards, Lamare's body is found on the floor of John Robertson's workplace at the studio, which happens to be a state-of-the-art cutting room. The place is equipped with an automatic camera which, once it has been set, starts recording the moment the door to the room is opened. Estella Lamare has died from stab wounds, and although the roll of film showing her slow death can be found it cannot be decided exactly how she died. On the film Ian Jensen, her partner in her last movie (from which she was to be cut out), can be seen struggling with Lamare, but the cause of her death may have been either an accident or suicide, or murder. As Jensen is nowhere to be found Scotland Yard assumes that he is Lamare's murderer and that he has escaped to his native Norway. However, four days later, on December 3, 1935, his body is found in a shabby rented room in a cheap boarding house in London. Jensen has been poisoned and, at a point in time when he was already dead, shot in the head. The police investigations are conducted by Detective Inspector Smith of Scotland Yard. Right from the start there is antagonism between Smith and McCabe: Each suspects the other of knowing more about the case than he admits, with Mc Cabe repeatedly assuming the role of detective while Smith seemingly has no idea how to solve the crime. Eventually the confrontation between the two antagonists escalates&mdash;their ""game"" turns into a ""fight""&mdash;when Smith has McCabe arrested for the murder of Ian Jensen. McCabe refuses to be represented by a lawyer during his trial (""a layman conducting his own defence""), and systematically tries to break down the case against his person and to win over the jury to his cause. In the course of the trial a number of facts about the people involved in the two deaths are revealed. For example, we learn that McCabe himself is a ""morally uprooted"" man who has replaced ""eternal values"" with ""values of the moment"". Until his arrest he has a relationship with Maria Ray, the actress who, together with Lamare and Jensen, forms the love triangle in the recently completed film. Although Maria Ray is the love of his life, McCabe cannot help starting an affair with Dinah Lee, his secretary, and, by carrying on two relationships at the same time, double-crossing both women. In his defence he even goes so far as to use Ray's own promiscuity&mdash;she has had affairs with both McCabe and Jensen&mdash;to question her credibility as a witness for the prosecution. He also insinuates that Smith has used doctored evidence to build up his case against him. The members of the jury are impressed, pronounce a verdict of ""Not guilty"", and McCabe is acquitted. Smith now turns out to be a policeman who cannot lose but who actually loses his job as a result of McCabe's acquittal. When McCabe eventually tells him that he is Jensen's murderer after all it is because he realizes that he has irrevocably lost Maria (as well as Dinah), who would not even speak to him on the phone, and that there is not anything left in this world that might keep him alive. Now that he has written his story down for posterity he no longer minds being the target of Smith's revenge, who thinks McCabe's belated confession is the last straw. McCabe posts his manuscript to an old journalist called A.B.C. Müller whose acquaintance he has recently made and immediately afterwards is found shot. Smith is arrested, tried, and hanged. With Cameron McCabe dead, the addressee of his manuscript continues the narrative, a part of the book which is entitled ""An Epilogue by A.B.C. Müller as Epitaph for Cameron McCabe"". Müller sees to the proof reading and the publication of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor and becomes an avid collector of reviews of the book, comparing it with the fiction of Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, and even James Joyce. At the same time he deplores, and condemns, the ""arrested development of the criminal mind"", in particular of course McCabe's. One day in London Müller bumps into Maria Ray, whom he has not seen again since the trial, and they have a talk. To Müller's surprise, she claims that McCabe committed suicide&mdash;as an act of revenge, in order to get Smith convicted for murder. She also tells Müller that Smith was in love with her. At the end of the novel, Müller on the spur of the moment wants to propose to Maria Ray but then decides instead to ""shoot her dead"". Thus, in Borneman's novel, Estella Lamare is ""the face on the cutting-room floor"", both literally and metaphorically."
1324,Polar Star,crime," Arkady Renko, former Chief Investigator of the Moscow Town Prosecutor's Office, is serving a self-imposed exile in Siberia to avoid being detained for his actions in Gorky Park several years earlier, despite the Soviet Union's ostensibly increasing liberalization. He procures menial employment as a fish gutter on the ""slime lime"" of a large Arctic sea factory ship called the Polar Star, part of a joint Soviet-American fishing exercise within detente. He is brought to the attention of Viktor Marchuk, the ship's captain, after a young woman named Zina Patiashvili is found dead in a net full of freshly-caught fish. Due to his past as a homicide investigator, he is given the task of finding out what happened to her—to the dislike of political officer Volovoi. Hess, the ship's chief electrical engineer—an elaborate blind for his espionage activities—welcomes Arkady more warmly. Researching the girl's background, he discovers an open and somewhat radical Georgian personality, known for her many lovers (including the Captain, before she became a crew member) and fondness for underground music. Looking into her death also attracts the attention of the ship's main gang, lead by Karp Corabetz—the ship's leading fisher and Arkady's former prisoner. The American corporate representative on board, Susan Hightower, takes an interest in the case. Arkady grows weary of the investigation, largely due to the obstructive actions of many of his shipmates—many of whom are concerned that it will delay a long-awaited shore leave on the island of Dutch Harbour. Renko finally decides to go along with the original verdict of suicide, letting the ship's crew disembark. Though lacking proper authorization to go ashore himself, Arkady is sponsored in an impromptu shore leave by ""Fleet Electrical Engineer"" Hess. Whilst there, he starts to enter into a relationship with Susan before encountering Volovoi in a nearby dwelling. Volovoi threatens him but is killed by a disgruntled Karp, who then locks Arkady in and sets the building on fire. The investigator manages to escape and ""accidentally"" falls into the water to wash off any incriminating odors. Questions are raised, but nothing is decided. Arkady has no evidence against Karp and, having already survived an attempt on his life, fears he will be attacked again. Entering the icy North, the American trawler freezes into the ice whilst trailing the Polar Star. Arkady learns of Karp's relationship with Zina and her attempts to defect aboard the American ship, as well the secret spy cable running underneath the vessel that is operated by Hess. Arkady ventures out into the ice towards the American ship, and Karp casually follows and eventually catches up with him. On board they find evidence that Zina was killed and stowed on board in one of the lockers. Arkady also finds indications that the Americans were deceiving Hess by transmitting the electronic signatures of numerous other decommissioned American vessels. Karp kills the killer, scaring off the Americans and allowing him and Renko to escape. After a final foiled attempt to finish Arkady off, Karp finally decides, with draconian Russian justice awaiting him back home, to drown himself in the icy water. When the Polar Star returns to Vladivostok, Arkady says farewell to Susan and his fellow crewmen, suddenly finding himself in the party's favour again. <gallery> Image:AleutianIslandsFromSpace.jpg|The Aleutian Islands. Image:UnalaskaAlaska.jpg|Dutch Harbor, Alaska with the Russian Orthodox church in the foreground. </gallery>"
1325,The Man in the Brown Suit,crime," Orphan Anne Beddingfeld, in search of adventure, follows note from murder victim's pocket, from London, aboard ship, to Africa, finally a lost island, tracking stolen diamonds."
1326,Last Bus to Woodstock,crime," Two young women are waiting for a bus to Woodstock, and they decide to hitch a lift. Later that night, one of them, Sylvia Kaye, is found murdered and apparently sexually assaulted in the car park of the Black Prince pub in Woodstock. Suspicion falls on various characters. The body is reported found by John Sanders, a young man who, it later transpires, is addicted to pornography and sometimes paid Sylvia for sex. He admits to waiting for her on the night of her murder but found her dead. It turns out he interfered with the body but did not murder her. Inspector Morse discovers the lift was offered in a red car and guesses various bits of information about the owner. His discoveries lead him to calculate the chances of finding a red car in North Oxford which meets all the criteria. There is only one, and it belongs to Bernard Crowther, a don at the university who lives on Southdown Road. Crowther admits that, although married, he is having an affair with another woman. He admits giving a lift to two women and dropping them in Woodstock while on the way to meet his mistress. Crowther's wife kills herself, mistakenly thinking that her husband is the murderer; Crowther himself dies shortly afterwards from a heart attack, thinking that she is the killer. In the end it turns out it was neither of them but rather the other girl at the bus stop, Sue Widdowson, who was Crowther’s mistress. Crowther had dropped her off and had sex with Sylvia. Widdowson became insanely jealous, crept up behind Sylvia in the car, and hit her on the back of the head with a tyre lever lying in the lot. A further complication involves Jennifer Coleby who worked with Sylvia in an insurance office. Jennifer is having an affair with her boss, Palmer, and shares a flat with Sue Widdowson. Crowther types coded messages to a girlfriend who proves to be Widdowson. He leaves the messages with Coleby at her work, and she delivers them to Widdowson. The police are sent on a merry dance chasing them."
1327,The Soft Centre,crime," Val Burnett's husband, Chris, has had a near-fatal head injury and has now been brought to the Spanish Bay Hotel, Paradise City, to lie in the sun-and-sands and recuperate. He is almost a zombie by now, although there is hope of recovery. One day he vanishes from the Spanish Bay Hotel, only to be found the next day, roaming around in a disheveled state on the highway. The same day, a hard-faced prostitute, Joan Parnell, is found horrifically ripped apart in a nearby motel room. So far no connection. But a cigarette lighter presented to Chris by Val, is found in the scene of the crime. And blackmailers, gangsters, corrupt private eyes, homosexual criminals and other assorted crooks have a field day....."
1328,Florida Roadkill,crime," Roadkill is set in 1997, against the backdrop of that year's World Series in which the Florida Marlins won a stunning upset in Miami. Intelligent but sociopathic criminal Serge Storms meets up with heartless stripper Sharon Rhodes and brainless drug addict Seymore ""Coleman"" Bunsen, who become his travelling companions and partners in crime. Serge hatches a plan to steal an enormous fraudulent insurance settlement from an oversexed dentist, but the money proves surprisingly elusive. Storms and company pursue the metal briefcase containing the cash until the two companions meet untimely ends; Serge suffocates Sharon by spraying ""Fix-A-Flat"" into her lungs, and Coleman is later shot to death. The book has two meandering subplots which eventually tie in with the main plot. The first involves a pair of longtime buddies who are participating in their annual unsuccessful fishing trip. They spend a great deal of time reminiscing, and their stories lend an odd thoughtfulness to Dorsey's trigger-happy writing style (a thoughtfulness which would later apparently be shelved until Orange Crush). Without their knowledge, the briefcase of money is hidden in the trunk of their car. The second, slightly more comic, subplot deals with three bikeless bikers — Stinky, Ringworm and Cheese-Dick — who have been rejected from every biker group they have encountered and are on the down and out. They find an odd sort of niche as hired muscle in a retirement community, but are ultimately forced out by the community staff who want the seniors as miserable as possible. They spend the rest of the time yachting in a boat on loan from the retirement community's manager until they meet up with a deranged pervert who kills two of them (Cheese-Dick having died when accidentally shot with a flare gun). A number of minor characters (such as Bradley Xeno, the boat captain, and McJagger, the retirement community operator) make minor appearances in the following book, Hammerhead Ranch Motel."
1329,Therapy,crime," In Los Angeles, Gavin Quick and his girlfriend are shot dead inside their car, whilst the unidentified woman is also impaled on a metal spike. As he investigates, psychologist Alex Delaware comes up against Dr. Mary Lou Koppel, a celebrity therapist who once treated Gavin and now guards his personal files with fearsome intensity."
1330,In a Dry Season,crime," When a boy finds a skeleton buried in a dried-up reservoir built on the site of a ruined village, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is brought in by his arch-enemy Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle to head what looks like being a dull, routine investigation. It turns into anything but. With the help of Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot, Banks uncovers long-kept secrets in a community that has resolutely concealed its past. One former resident, now a writer, reveals her memories of Hobb’s End, the village that died before the reservoir was built. Her first person narrative, touched with both innocence and irony, takes us from 1941 to 1945, recreating another age, an era of rationing, of Land Girls, of American airmen, of jitterbugging and movies. And of murder. As Banks and Annie unravel the deceptive and disparate relationships of half a century ago, suspense heightens and the past finally bursts into the present with terrifying consequences."
1331,Murder at the Savoy,crime, Martin Beck has to search through the high powered business man Viktor Palmgren`s many enemies when the business man is shot in front of a dozen witnesses at a high-end restaurant.
1332,Set in Darkness: An Inspector Rebus Novel,crime," The Scottish Parliament is about to reopen in Edinburgh after 300 years. Detective Inspector John Rebus is in charge of liaison, as the new parliament is in his patch. While on a tour of Queensberry House, which is to be incorporated into the new Parliament, a fireplace where legend has it a youth was burned to death is opened up and another, more recent murder victim is found. Then, a prospective MSP called Roddy Grieve is found murdered, and Rebus is expected to find instant answers. The title comes from the poem ""The Old Astronomer to his pupil"" by Sarah Williams."
1333,Lean Mean Thirteen,crime," Stephanie Plum is reunited yet again with her lawyer ex-husband, Dickie Orr, while doing a favour for Ranger. When Dickie is later discovered missing from his apartment under some rather violent circumstances, Stephanie becomes the prime suspect in his apparent murder. While trying to prove her innocence she and Ranger uncover Dickie's ties to the partners in his law firm, who appear to be involved in everything from money laundering to drug running. Dickie's business partner believes that Stephanie holds the 'key' to the 40 million dollars missing from the law firm. Stephanie meets some interesting characters, from a taxidermist who is living at home waiting for the cable company with a penchant for bombs to a grave-robber who also does taxes in the back of his truck."
1334,The Body Lovers,crime, Mike Hammer finds himself investigating a sex-orgy cult with money and murder on the agenda.
1335,Death in Holy Orders,crime," Dalgliesh visits Saint Anselm's in a semi-official capacity to follow up the death of a student some time previously - his father was not satisfied with the verdict. Whilst there, a visiting Archdeacon is murdered. Dalgliesh is assigned the investigation, summoning D I Miskin and D I Tarrant from London to assist, as well as local officers. Initial suspicion falls on one of the fathers who run and teach at the college, as the archdeacon was known to be recommending the closure of the college. Two more murders follow and after all present have been questioned, several skeletons are brought out the cupboard - including the fact that one of the students is unknowingly the son of one of the lay lecturers and that through his Mother, he will inherit the property, should it be closed and sold. Forensic evidence clinches the case against the lecturer and he confesses. The college is closed and the student inherits the proceeds. In this novel, Dalgliesh meets and begins a relationship with Dr Emma Lavenham, a visiting teacher from Cambridge."
1336,London Blues,crime," Tim Purdom is born in 1937 in a small village on the Kentish coast as the illegitimate son of a young woman who dies in her early forties. After her death in 1959, Purdom decides to move to London as he does not have any sense of belonging to his home town any more. He finds cheap accommodation in Bayswater and work in a snack bar in Soho. Purdom is not only a jazz fanatic (his favourite musician is Thelonious Monk) but also an intellectual who reads books and who is interested in what is going on in the world, both politically and culturally. His intellectual pursuits do not go together with his lifestyle or his job. However, without any formal education or money, he is reduced to the kind of life he is leading; but, unambitious by nature, he is quite content with it for the time being. Very early during his stay in London Purdom is confronted with petty crime through his contact with guests and workmates. When he is offered some extra money by one of the older regulars he tags along with him and suddenly finds himself in a place where ""dirty pictures""&mdash;which were illegal at the time&mdash;are taken. He is then approached by the owner of some adult bookshops and encouraged to become a pornographic photographer himself. The customers like his pictures, which are sold under the counter, and Purdom makes some good money. He is initiated into the world of private parties where old blue movies of foreign origin are shown to middle-aged upper middle class men in the company of young, attractively made up women. At one of those parties, where he works as the projectionist, he meets a man who later turns out to be Stephen Ward, one of the key figures in what will later be referred to as the Profumo affair. Ward supplies Purdom with a good many ""models"" for his photographic sessions. Eventually Purdom buys an 8 mm amateur movie camera and starts shooting pornographic movie shorts himself. His short-lived career is already over in early 1963 when he is told by his employer that the industry has moved on and that cheap Scandinavian imports are now in demand, which are also in colour rather than black and white. Purdom keeps on working at the snack bar and in addition is commissioned to do some serious photography about London for foreign magazines. He has become a respectable citizen with a new girlfriend who does not know anything about the shady business he has left behind. It is then that he feels he is being haunted by his past."
1337,Killer's Payoff,crime," Sy Kramer, a blackmailer, is shot dead in a 1937-style drive-by execution. But it is 1958 and Cotton Hawes and Steve Carella have to find out who killed him. It could have been Lucy Mencken, a rich and respectable lady with a past that included some very unrespectable photographic portraits, or it could have been Edward Schlesser, a manufacturer of soda pop. Or perhaps it was one of the members of a hunting party that went very wrong."
1338,The White Lioness,crime," Apart from a prologue following the formation of the Boer nationalist group Broederbond in 1918, the story takes place in 1992. The plot follows two parallel patterns, one during late apartheid South Africa where incumbent president F.W. de Klerk, leader of the Afrikaner minority which is on the brink of losing power to the African majority under the leadership of the ANC, about to end 44 years of suppression by the Broederbond rule. Simultaneously, detective chief inspector Kurt Wallander is investigating a case of a missing female Methodist real-estate agent outside Ystad. Upon the eventual recovery of her body, as well as the discovery of a black cut-off finger at the crime scene, detective Wallander realizes the case has deep roots in the history and current development in South Africa, where an extremist cell of the Broederbond is about to orchestrate the assassination of Nelson Mandela, wishing to plunge the country into a long and devastating civil war. Mankell, who himself is deeply interested in questions concerning South Africa and its history and who resides in the country part-time, released the book in 1993 during the reign of the National Party and the Afrikaner rule."
1339,The Empty Chair,crime," Lincoln Rhyme is away from the city with his aide Thom and his companion and partner Amelia Sachs in order to receive experimental spine surgery, which may improve or further worsen his C4 quadriplegic disability. Whilst there they are approached by a local police sheriff- Jim Bell, the cousin of Rhyme's NYPD colleague Ronald Bell- and asked to help in a local case of kidnap and possible rape. They believe the kidnapper to be a local orphaned boy 'Garret', who is believed to be involved in a number of other murders and assaults. One of these involves a hornets nest being thrown at a woman, who suffers a heart attack after 137 stings, and dies. Garret is locally nicknamed 'The insect boy', due to his incredible love of insects. At the start of the novel a nurse, Lydia, is kidnapped by Garret when she visits the place where the first victim- 'Mary-Beth' was kidnapped. A police deputy is killed by a hidden hornets nest whilst searching Garrets hide-out. Lincoln reluctantly agrees to help, and he and Sachs track Garret from the trace evidence found at the scenes. Meanwhile we follow Garret and Lydia as he takes her back to his main hideout. After Rhyme cunningly outwits Garret, he is arrested and Sachs is allowed to question him in order to find out where Mary-Beth is being hidden. Garret tells her it was ""The man in the tan overalls"" and Sachs believes him, however none of the rest of the police department do. She subsequently breaks him out of jail. The rest of the police, including Rhyme, are trying to track her down, and as they come up close Sachs accidentally shoots one of the deputies dead. She is distraught, and is now being hunted for murder. Eventually they reach Garret's safe house, where he reveals that he was lying about the man in the tan overalls, but he never meant to hurt Mary-Beth. Once a small group of police arrive, along with Thom and Rhyme, they are attacked by a group of local gun-nuts who are attempting to get the reward of $2000 that Mary-Beth's mother has put up. They shoot several deputies dead and are eventually killed by Sachs and one of the deputies, Lucy. Inside the hut it is revealed that Thom has been shot. Back in town, Sachs and Garret are in jail and Thom is in the hospital. Rhyme is curious and thinks things do not fit into place correctly, and eventually confides in Bell that he believes the murders in the town are accountable to a local businessman manufacturing an illegal pesticide. Anyone asking questions about why they were getting ill were killed. It is revealed that numerous deputies in the department are 'in' on the scheme, and have even helped in killing some of the townsfolk. Rhyme also says that he believes that the businessman had Garret's family killed, and a car crash framed, because they refused to sell the land around their house so the businessman could have shipments of the pesticide transported up the river. It is at this point that Bell reveals he is in on it, and attempts to murder Rhyme with a sample of the harmful pesticide they have been analyzing. Lucy, the deputy who helped shoot the gun nuts earlier, is listening and they run in and restrain Bell, who is frustrated to see that Rhyme has tricked him and the sample of the pesticide was merely 'moonshine'. He is arrested. Garret is freed, Mary-Beth has dropped the charges, as Garret was acting to defend her. She unearths the remains of his family, and it earns her a spot on the list of people who are a risk to the business. Sachs is still in jail and is accepting a guilty plea in return for a reduced sentence of 5 years in prison. She is about to be sentenced when Rhyme bursts in with evidence that the deputy she shot was in on the murders, allowing Sachs to be freed on the grounds that her victim was a criminal engaged in pursuit of an officer and thus legitimately making her 'crime' self-defence. Later, Rhyme is in hospital, Thom is going to live and Rhyme is going to undergo the major spine surgery he has postponed while he searched for Mary-Beth. As he is wheeled in, Lydia, the nurse who had been kidnapped earlier, follows him in apparently to thank him and wish him luck. As he is going under anesthesia she reveals to him that she was the sheriff's mistress, and had been reporting who in the town had developed cancer due to pesticide poisoning so that those people could be silenced. As he is trying to fight off the effects of the anesthesia she ominously tells him ""accidents happen in spinal surgery"". Luckily Sachs notices that Lydia entered a closed surgery ward, and remembers that she is not a neurosurgery nurse, but an oncology nurse, and runs in, realizing what is going to happen. The novel ends with Rhyme, Sachs, Lucy, Thom and Garret in the local cemetery. They are burying the remains of Garret's family. It is hinted that Lucy is to become Garret's foster mother. Rhyme does not have the surgery and is now back on the ventilator, after going into shock as Lydia attempted to stop his oxygen flow, requiring another year to regain his original physical status until he is fit to have the operation again."
1340,The Way Through the Woods,crime," Morse is intrigued by a cryptic clue relating to missing Karin Eriksson, which is taken to mean she has been murdered. He is given the case and notes that the clue seems to include a reference to Wytham Woods, where he believed the police should have searched in the first place. The police search the area with help from head forester David Michaels and a body is found but it's a man. Morse and Lewis talk to George Daley, who found Karin's bag. His wife Margaret gives them some photos developed from Karin's camera, showing a young man and a house, but tears up some more showing Karin naked. Morse identifies the house in the photo but the tennant, McBryde, disappears before he can be questioned. Morse and Lewis find the house was being used to make pornographic films and the client list includes Daley and a local lecturer, Alan Hardinge. Daley is found dead in the woods. Michaels is suspected but was showing some RSPB representatives around at the time, since the gatewarden recalls when Daley entered the woods. The first body turns out to be Doctor Myton, the man in the photographs. Hardinge admits that Myton was taking photographs of Karin in private at the house but when the others in the house checked on them they were both dead. He, McBryde, Daley and Michaels conspired to hide the bodies. Morse, however, realises this is a lie and Karin is still alive. Daley's son Phillip commits suicide but has an alibi for his father's murder. Morse and Lewis speak to Michaels' wife Cathy and realise she is Karin. She killed Myton when he tried to rape her and was sheltered by Michaels, who persuaded the others to cover the matter up. Morse realises Michaels killed Daley and then had Cathy dress up as him and drive to the woods to hide the body, in order to give himself an alibi. Lewis learns Morse sent the cryptic clue in the first place."
1341,The Black Echo,crime," The novel centres round Harry Bosch, a Vietnam veteran who served as a ""tunnel rat"" during the war, became an L. A. police detective advancing to the Robbery-Homicide Division. However, after killing the main suspect in the ""Dollmaker"" serial killings, Bosch is demoted to ""Hollywood Division"" homicide, where he partners with Jerry Edgar. The death of Billy Meadows, a friend and fellow ""tunnel rat"" from the war, attracts Bosch's interest, especially when he determines that it may have been connected to a spectacular bank robbery using subterranean tunnels. Bosch suspects that the robbers were after more than money and he then partners with the FBI, in particular agent Eleanor Wish, in an attempt to foil their next attack. Bosch and Wish end up connecting the robberies to a group of Vietnamese living in Orange County, as well as some Americans that may have been involved with them."
1342,One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night,crime," Gavin Hutchinson, purveyor of non-threatening holidays to the British masses has organised a reunion for his old school classmates. The reunion will take place on his latest project - a unique ""floating holiday experience"" on a converted North Sea oil rig, a haven for tourists who want a vacation in the sun but without the hassle of actually interacting with any foreigners. And what better way to test out his venture than to host a fifteenth-year high school reunion, the biggest social event of his life... except no one remembers who Gavin is. Gavin may have been a non-entity while at school in Auchenlea but now he's made his fortune, he's looking forward to lording it over his old classmates, especially now he's having an affair with Catherine O'Rourke, PR specialist and one-time pin-up for his male classmates at St Michael's. Meanwhile Gavin's wife, who as 'Simone Draper' remains much more memorable to those from Auchenlea than her husband, is fed up with his philandering and aims to use the evening to publicly embarrass Gavin by announcing her plans to take the twins and leave him. Intent on ruining Gavin's evening, she's also added two extra names to the guest list - Hollywood star, famous comedian (and the recently suicidal) Matt Black, as well as class bampot, though now reformed artist, David ""Dilithium Dave"" Murdoch. As the ex-classmates gather on the almost finished holiday resort, currently moored off the coast of Scotland, little do they know that a troop of would be ""soldiers of fortune"" have been contracted to hit the rig for some blackmail action. The group of mercenaries (mostly recruited from the minimum wage end of the labour market, and already reduced in number due to some experiments with a rocket launcher) are made up of a variety of ex-terrorists from Ulster and Africa mixed in with a few professionals and to say they're not getting on well is a bit of an understatement..."
1343,Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel,crime," The ghost of Joseph Stalin has been seen stalking the stations of the Moscow Metro. Renko, perpetually in hot water with his superiors, is assigned to the case with heavy hints to quash it. Instead, he discovers a peculiar connection to a string of murders and a group of Chechen War veterans."
1344,Obsession,crime," Tanya Bigelow, a former patient, comes to Alex requesting help. She wants him and his friend Milo to investigate something her mother said on her death bed. Her mother told her that she did something terrible. No one believes that Tanya's mother Patty, who worked with Milo's partner at the hospital as a nurse, could have done anything terrible, but as the reader learns her past, it contains dark secrets. Alex has a new dog, Blanche, that Robin bought him after Spike died. Robin is living with Alex again."
1345,Some Lie And Some Die,crime," Kingsmarkham doesn't have too many complaints about its first annual rock festival, but then in a nearby quarry two lovers find a body that makes even Reg Wexford's stomach lurch. All he can discover is that there is a strange connection with the star of the festival."
1346,Three to Get Deadly,crime," Stephanie is on the trail of beloved Moses Bedemier, a mild-mannered, predictable man who runs an ice-cream parlor/candy store in the Burg. Mo is an upstanding citizen with ties to almost every family in Jersey. Unfortunately, he gets ticketed by an overly-excited fresh-out-of-the-academy cop for carrying a concealed weapon, and then doesn't show up for his court date. No one wants to help Stephanie haul ""Uncle Mo"" (as he is widely known) to jail, so her detective work is frustratingly slow. ""Mo would never do anything wrong,"" Stephanie is told by the Burg residents. Since her neighbors and family refuse to help her, she calls on her mentor Ranger, her sidekick (and aspiring bounty hunter) Lula, and Joe Morelli, vice cop and former lover. As Stephanie attempts to resume her relationship with Morelli, they are constantly interrupted - first by criminals, then by Stephanie's accidental dye job that makes her look like Ronald McDonald. When Stephanie begins stumbling across the bodies of dead drug dealers, including four buried in the candy store basement, she suspects that mild-mannered Mo has become a vigilante. Was that why Mo carried a concealed weapon? Stephanie must figure out if Mo has begun cleaning up the streets in a one-man killing spree."
1347,The Beckoning Lady,crime," Campion’s glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand’s fabulous summer party a murder is discovered and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motive, suspicion and deduction with all his imagination and skill."
1348,Faithless,crime," Sara and Jeffrey have finally started to click again when a phone call from the woman he was unfaithful with brings their affair back into sharp relief. He and Sara are arguing about this on a walk in the woods when they make a discovery: the corpse of a young woman who was buried alive in a wooden coffin. They assume her death was accidental, but the autopsy reveals that she was pregnant and had been murdered – while she was underground. The search for her identity leads Jeffrey and Lena to an organic soybean farming cooperative out in the sticks owned by a large, tightly knit, religious family, led by the charismatic oldest son. They import their labor force from the people that populate Atlanta's shelters and halfway houses, facilitated through the family church's outreach program. At one time or another the case involves strippers, the one-legged, one-eyed lawyer extraordinaire Buddy Conford, an abused woman Lena both identifies with and wants to save, and a search to find more buried coffins before it's too late. At the novel's conclusion, Sara finally agrees to remarry Jeffrey after at least four proposals, and Ethan pushes Lena so far that she decides it's time to escape. <!--"
1349,Seemanto-heera,crime," Unlike most of the novels featuring Byomkesh, this one does not involve any violent crime or major plot twists. The story revolves around the theft of a priceless heirloom, the Seemanto-heera or ""Frontier Diamond"", belonging to the heir of the Roy clan, one of the minor rulers of North Bengal. Byomkesh and Ajit have been invited by the current heir, a young Rai Bahadur Tridibendra Narayan Roy to recover the diamond. The diamond had been in the possession of the ruler for generations and a legend had been built around it. According to the legend, if the diamond were to ever be lost, then the line of succession would end. Tridibendran was the sole heir of his line according to the rules of succession where only the eldest son became ruler, but he did have an uncle, Sir Digindra Narayan Roy who was the younger brother of his father. Sir Roy was an established painter and sculptor who worked with mixed media such as plaster of paris. Sir Roy received a lavish monthly pension but since he wasn't heir-apparent, he did not get possession of the diamond. Consumed by greed, he did steal it while the diamond was on display in Calcutta and he replaced it with a fake that looked exactly the same to the untrained eye. He then notified his nephew that he had taken the diamond. Tridibendra had sought the services of Byomkesh and Ajit to recover the diamond but also requested the utmost secrecy, since he didn't want the press to get wind of this loss. Byomkesh and Ajit returned to Calcutta and checked Sir Roy's house in Ballygunge. The house was very well protected by high walls and a number of guards. Both Ajit and Byomkesh then applied for the post of a secretary to Sir Roy but were detected by the latter and thoroughly humiliated. Not one to lose heart, Byomkesh still boasted that he would find and recover the diamond by the end of the week to which the arrogant Sir Roy took immediate offence. Sir Roy then offered to let him search the house for seven days because he was so confident it wouldn't be discovered. Byomkesh immediately took up the challenge because he realized that this might be the only chance to examine the house and he had already inferred that Sir Roy had hidden it there. Searching for the diamond turned out to be an aruduous task with the work been made even harder by the constant scorn of Sir Roy. Byomkesh could not find anything but he did notice that there were quite a few plaster sculptures including various figurines of Nataraj of different sizes. One was placed on a table in the living room and Byomkesh noticed that Sir Roy stared at the table often though the other items on the table were inconspicuous. Byomkesh asked if he could have the small Nataraj figurine to which Sir Roy said he could, but he also said that this was a priceless work-of-art that had been exhibited at the Louvre and he didn't want Byomkesh to break it because there was nothing hidden inside. Byomkesh took the figurine home but he was disheartened that his major line of enquiry had been busted. Almost casually, he put his initials on the bottom of the figurine. The next day's search seemed to be friutless as well. When he came home though while staring at the figurine, he noticed that the initials were gone and he immediately came to the conclusion that the figurine had been exchanged while he was away. So he had the diamond in his possession for an entire day without being aware of it! He returned to Sir Roy's house and used a sleight-of-hand to replace the figurine with his initials with the one it had been replaced by at his home. He returned the figurine to Tridibendra and when they broke the figurine, they found the diamond inside."
1350,Dancers in Mourning,crime," An old friend of Albert Campion has written a successful book that has been turned into a hit musical comedy. Jimmy Sutane, an established actor and dancer is the star of the musical. But recently someone has it in for Sutane and has started playing harmless practical jokes that have caused the highly emotional Jimmy much trauma. Jimmy asks Campion to look into who the prankster may be. So Campion takes a trip to the Sutane household, where he unexpectedly finds more than he bargained for. Jimmy Sutane's house is a strange mix of the theatrical and the snobbish. And into this mix comes Chloe Pye, an overdone and melodramatic has-been actress that no one seems to like. When she is accidentally run over by Jimmy Sutane in his car, no one seems upset and everyone is eager to call it an accident. But Campion is not so certain, and the more he investigates the less he desires to find out about the world of the Sutanes. Campion must deal with high strung entertainers and his own emotions as he tries to find out if a murder even happened, and who is still playing tricks on the star and his family. It turns out that Squire Mercer, a genius musician who lives with the Sutanes, was once married to Chloe Pye. She wanted to leave him for Jimmy Sutane, and he threatened never to divorce her. She told him that divorce wasn't necessary since she was still married to someone else, thereby committing bigamy with Squire Mercer. Her return to the Sutane household was to get back into the good graces of Squire Mercer so that he would fall back in love with her and support her financially. Instead he gets annoyed and angry at her advances and kills her. Then he throws her off a bridge in front of Jimmy Sutane's car so that the whole thing will look like an accident. Unfortunately Sutane's understudy, who has been playing the pranks on Sutane because he wants to play the lead role in the hit show, witnessed the whole of Chloe's ""accident"". When he is killed by one of Mercer's old-time criminal associates, everything is discovered by the police. Unfortunately, Campion's love for Sutane's wife clouds his judgement so that he thinks Jimmy has actually murdered both Chloe and his understudy. It is only at the end that he discovers the truth for himself."
1351,The Stranger,crime," Part One begins with Meursault finding out of his mother's death. At her funeral, he expresses none of the expected emotions of grief. When asked if he wishes to view the body, he says no, and, instead, smokes and drinks coffee with milk in front of the coffin. Rather than expressing his feelings, he only comments to the reader about the others at the funeral. He later encounters Marie, a former employee of his firm, and the two become re-acquainted and begin to have a sexual relationship, regardless of the fact that Meursault's mother died just a day before. In the next few days, he helps his friend and neighbour, Raymond Sintès, take revenge on a Moorish girlfriend suspected of infidelity. For Raymond, Meursault agrees to write a letter to his girlfriend, with the sole purpose of inviting her over so that Raymond can have sex with her but kick her out at the last minute as emotional revenge. Meursault sees no reason not to help him, and it pleases Raymond. He does not express concern that Raymond's girlfriend is going to be emotionally hurt, as he believes Raymond's story that she has been unfaithful, and he himself is both somewhat drunk and characteristically unfazed by any feelings of empathy. In general he considers other people either interesting or annoying. The letter works: the girlfriend returns, but the situation escalates when she slaps Raymond after he tries to kick her out, and Raymond beats her. Raymond is taken to court where Meursault testifies that she had been unfaithful, and Raymond is let off with a warning. After this, the girlfriend's brother and several Arab friends begin tailing Raymond. Raymond invites Meursault and Marie to a friend's beach house for the weekend, and when there, they encounter the spurned girlfriend's brother and an Arab friend; these two confront Raymond and wound him with a knife during a fist fight. Later, walking back along the beach alone and now armed with a pistol he took from Raymond so that Raymond would not do anything rash, Meursault encounters the Arab. Meursault is now disoriented on the edge of heatstroke, and when the Arab flashes his knife at him, Meursault shoots. Despite killing the Arab man with the first gunshot, he shoots the corpse four more times after a brief pause. He does not divulge to the reader any specific reason for his crime or emotions he experiences at the time, if any, aside from the fact that he was bothered by the heat and bright sunlight. Part Two begins with Meursault's incarceration, explaining his arrest, time in prison, and upcoming trial. His general detachment makes living in prison very tolerable, especially after he gets used to the idea of not being able to go places whenever he wants to and no longer being able to satisfy his sexual desires with Marie. He passes the time sleeping, or mentally listing the objects he owned back in his apartment building. At the trial, Meursault's quietness and passivity is seen as demonstrative of his seeming lack of remorse or guilt by the prosecuting attorney, and so the attorney concentrates more upon Meursault's inability or unwillingness to cry at his mother's funeral than on the actual murder. The attorney pushes Meursault to tell the truth but never comes through and later, on his own, Meursault explains to the reader that he simply was never really able to feel any remorse or personal emotions for any of his actions in life. The dramatic prosecutor theatrically denounces Meursault to the point that he claims Meursault must be a soulless monster, incapable of remorse and that he thus deserves to die for his crime. Although Meursault's attorney defends him and later tells Meursault that he expects the sentence to be light, Meursault is alarmed when the judge informs him of the final decision: that he will be decapitated publicly. In prison, while awaiting the execution of his death sentence by the guillotine, Meursault meets with a chaplain, but rejects his proffered opportunity of turning to God, explaining that God is a waste of his time. Although the chaplain persists in attempting to lead Meursault from his atheism, Meursault finally accosts him in a rage, with a climactic outburst on his frustrations and the absurdity of the human condition; his personal anguish at the meaninglessness of his existence without respite. At the beginning of his outrage he mentions other people in anger, that they have no right to judge him, for his actions or for who he is, no one has the right to judge someone else. Meursault ultimately grasps the universe's indifference towards humankind (coming to terms with his execution): ""As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with howls of execration."""
1352,Gerald's Party,crime," As Gerald tries to describe the things around him in painstaking detail, he recounts simultaneous conversations and events as they happen by using a format similar to data packet handling. After describing a small part of a situation or a conversation, he moves on to a small part of a different conversation, then returns to the first conversation, or maybe moves on to a third or a fourth, returning each time to try to be as accurate as possible while recording the events.so"
1353,A Caribbean Mystery,crime," ""Would you like to see a picture of a murderer?"", Jane Marple is asked by Major Palgrave whilst on a luxurious holiday in the Caribbean. When she replies that she would like to hear the story, he explains. There once was a man who had a wife who tried to hang herself, but failed. Then she tried again later, and succeeded in killing herself. The man remarried to a woman who then tried to gas herself to death. She failed, but then tried again later and succeeded. Just as Major Palgrave is about to show the picture to her, he looks over her shoulder, appears startled, and changes the subject. The next morning, a servant, Victoria Johnson, finds him dead in his room. Doctor Graham concludes that the man died of heart failure; he showed all the symptoms, and had a bottle of serenite (a drug for high blood pressure) on his table. Miss Marple is convinced that Palgrave was murdered, but needs to see the photograph he was about to show her before seeing something over her shoulder that caused him to stop. She asks Doctor Graham to find it, saying it is a picture of her nephew. Meanwhile, she interviews other people, including Tim and Molly Kendall, the owners of the hotel, Mr Rafiel, an invalid, and Esther Walters, Mr. Rafiel's secretary, Lucky Dyson and her husband and Edward and Evelyn Hillingdon. On the beach when Mr Rafiel is going for a swim, Miss Marple sees Senora de Caspearo, a woman on holiday. She says that she remembers Major Palgrave because he had an evil eye. Miss Marple corrects her that he actually has a glass eye, but she still says that it was evil. Victoria informs the Kendalls that she did not remember seeing the serenite on the man's table when she was tidying up in the afternoon. That night, Victoria is found stabbed. Molly starts having nightmares every night, and Miss Marple investigates why Molly is having nightmares. She finds Jackson in the house looking at Molly's cosmetics, saying that if belladonna was administered to it, then it would cause nightmares. The next night, Tim finds Molly unconscious on the floor, having taken an overdose of sleeping pills. The police are involved, and a cook, Enrico, tells them that he saw Molly Kendall holding a steak knife before going outside. Miss Marple also asks people if Major Palgrave told people about the photo, and other people say that it was not a photo of a wife killer he said, but a husband killer and Miss Marple becomes confused. At night, Tim wakes up the hotel as his wife, Molly, is missing. They find what seems to be her body, in a creek. Miss Marple arrives and tells them that it is not Molly, but Lucky; the two resemble one another. Miss Marple rudely wakes Mr Rafiel at night and tells him that they must prevent another death. They go to Tim and Molly Kendall's house and find Tim asking Molly to drink some wine as it will soothe her down. Miss Marple takes it away from him and gives it to Rafiel, saying that there was a deadly narcotic in it. She explains that Tim Kendall is the wife killer that Major Palgrave had a photo of, but saw him over Miss Marple's shoulder. Miss Marple thought that he saw someone on the right, where the Hillingdons and the Dysons were coming up the beach, but she remembered that he had a glass eye so could not see on his right, but only on his left where Tim and Molly were sitting. Tim was planning to kill his wife, but Major Palgrave recognized him and so had to be killed, and Victoria remembered the serenite so she was killed. Tim put belladonna in Molly's cosmetics to have a reason for her to commit suicide. When Molly accidentally took the sleeping pill overdose, Tim saw his chance and asked her to meet him by the creek. Molly, on her way to the meeting, had a scary vision from the belladonna and wandered off. Tim saw Lucky waiting there and mistook her for Molly and killed her. He was about to poison her when Miss Marple came in. Esther Walters suddenly falls to Tim's knees and says that Tim isn't a killer. Tim shouts at her, asking whether she wants to get him hanged. We learn that Tim was planning to marry Esther, after Molly's death, because he had heard that she was going to inherit a large sum of money from Mr Rafiel. In the epilogue, we see Miss Marple taking her plane back to England, surrounded by her friends from the hotel."
1354,Come Back for More,crime," After testifying against the murderer of bank guard Pop Walters, ""Swede"" Anderson finds himself number one on the River City, California crime syndicate's hit list. He barely escapes fiery death after the mob wires a bomb into the door of his car. Captain Domms of the city police is unable to protect him or, worse, has his own hand in the mob's pocket. Seeing no refuge for himself in River City, Anderson rides the rails out of town and fades from local memory. Anderson realizes that after four years of hobo living has melted away his flab, the sun has turned his formerly pale skin to leather, and a run-in with a railyard bull has left his nose broken and his cheek scarred, he is scarcely recognizable as his old self. With a bottle of henna he completes the transformation by coloring his blond hair red. Under the name of his late hobo pal, Mac McCarthy, Anderson returns to River city with revenge on his mind. There, he signs on as a driver with Tyler Trucking. The firm is being run by Gail Tyler, following her father's death—under suspicious circumstances—in a high-speed truck wreck. Anderson soon learns that between the union and the crime syndicate it fronts, the lifespan of a trucker in River City is not entirely in the trucker's hands. Using a mix of guts, muscle, and brains, Anderson builds a reputation as a cool-headed tough whose only interest is in a quick dollar. He manages to infiltrate the mob, but soon finds himself in over his head. In what he thinks will be simple heist, he becomes an unwilling accessory to the murder of the head of a rival trucking firm. In this he implicates not just himself but also Tyler Trucking and Gail, with whom he has developed a romantic attachment. Investigating the crime, Captain Domms fails to see through Anderson's Mac McCarthy disguise and proves himself no more able to enforce the law than he'd been four years ago. Never losing his nerve, Anderson ultimately wins the mob bosses' full confidence and is taken into a plot to rob the same bank he worked in when Pop Walters was killed. While rehearsing for the robbery, Anderson sees through the mob's plan to murder him after he plays his part—to avoid making the generous payoff it's promised him. Anderson develops a counter-strategy, but realizes the mob has turned the tables on him when the next rehearsal suddenly becomes the real thing. As the story reaches its climax, Anderson has only moments to adapt his half-formed plan to the new scenario, save his life, and find the revenge he has sought."
1355,The Man Who Went Up in Smoke,crime," Beck leaves his holiday and travels to Hungary to search for a missing journalist called Alf Matsson. After intersecting with the Budapest police and the criminal underground, he begins to wonder if Matsson ever entered the country."
1356,Lord Edgware Dies,crime," Jane Wilkinson, an actress, is suspected of murdering her husband, the fourth Baron Edgware, so that she can marry the Duke of Merton. The plot begins with Jane asking Poirot to convince her husband to agree to a divorce. When Poirot reluctantly does so, Edgware says that he has already agreed to a divorce and written a letter to Jane informing her of the fact. When Poirot reports this to Jane, she denies ever having received such a letter. Lord Edgware is portrayed as a rather unsympathetic character. On the night of the murder, Wilkinson supposedly goes to the Edgware house, announces herself to the butler, and goes into her husband's study. The next day, Lord Edgware is found murdered and Chief Inspector Japp tells Poirot all about it. Numerous friends and acquaintances of Jane have described her as amoral, someone who only thinks of herself and would certainly commit a crime if it would help her get what she wants, without a care for others. But in that morning's newspaper, they discover an article about a dinner party that was held the previous evening where Wilkinson was a guest. At the party, there were thirteen guests at the dinner table. One guest mentioned that thirteen people at table means bad luck for the first guest to rise from the table (hence the alternative title of the book, Thirteen At Dinner) and Jane Wilkinson was the first to rise. Among the guests is an actor named Donald Ross, who spent a lot of the evening speaking with Jane. So the police are, at first, baffled with the case, as is Poirot. On the same morning Lord Edgware's murder is discovered, comedienne/actress Carlotta Adams, known for her uncanny impersonations, is found dead due to an overdose of Veronal. A mysterious gold case with the sleeping powder in it is found among her possessions. The case bears an inscription reading: ""From D, Paris, November, 10th Sweet Dreams"". Poirot tries to decode this and arranges the evidence together. A few days later, Jane makes an appearance at another dinner party where the guests talk about Paris of Troy. However, the Jane Wilkinson at this dinner party thinks that the guests, again including actor Donald Ross, are referring to the French capital. Ross can't understand this because, at the party on the night of the murder, Jane was speaking knowledgeably about the mythological Paris. Ross goes to ring up Poirot about his discovery, but before he can say what he discovered, he is stabbed to death at his home, but Poirot is on the verge of solving the case, anyway. Poirot gathers the suspects and details the trajectory of the crimes (the three murders): With Carlotta Adams impersonating Wilkinson, Jane simply takes a taxi to the Edgware house, where she murders her husband. She is overseen by her husband's secretary but the secretary's vision and impartiality were called into question at trial. Later, Jane (in the person of ""Mrs Van Dusen"", an elderly American widow) and Carlotta meet up in a hotel where they toast Carlotta's successful ""performance"" and ostensibly so Jane can pay Carlotta. However, Jane slips Veronal into Carlotta's drink, and Adams dies. Jane discovers a letter Carlotta has written to her sister and is panicked by how Carlotta talks openly in the letter about their arrangement. Rather than destroy the letter, Jane sees a way she can use the letter to her advantage. At the top left hand corner of the second page is the word ""she"" (referring to Jane); she tears off the ""s"", leaving the word ""he"", making it seem a man had hired Carlotta. Jane then puts the remaining Veronal inside the gold case to make it seem Carlotta was a Veronal addict. Jane ordered the gold case the week prior (as ""Mrs Van Dusen""), which Poirot discovers when he questions the engravers. Poirot also realises that ""November"" was engraved on the case specifically to throw him off. Unbeknownst to Jane, Carlotta had been knowledgeable about Greek mythology, so she talked a lot about the subject with Donald Ross. At the second dinner party, Jane realizes she's made a potentially very serious mistake about Paris, leaves the party and heads to Ross's home to kill him before he can tell Poirot. Her motive for killing Lord Edgware was because the Duke of Merton was a staunch Anglo-Catholic and would not marry a divorced woman; a widow, however, is a different matter. In the last chapter, she writes a letter to Poirot, remarkably devoid of any animosity, which ends with her wondering why hangings are not done in public anymore."
1357,Smilla's Sense of Snow,crime," Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen, 37-year-old product of the stormy union of a female Inuit hunter and a rich urban Danish physician, is a loner who struggles to live with her fractured heritage. Living alone in a dreary apartment complex in Christianshavn, Copenhagen, she befriends Isaiah, the neglected son of her alcoholic neighbour, because he too is Greenlandic and not truly at home in Denmark. Smilla's friendship with Isaiah, recounted in the novel in flashback, gives some meaning to her otherwise lonely life. Isaiah’s sudden death is explained officially as a fall from the roof whilst playing, but Smilla’s understanding of the tracks the child left on the snowy roof convinces her that this is untrue. She complains to the police and quickly encounters obstruction and hostility from the authorities and other sources. Working with Peter, a mechanic neighbour who had also known and liked Isaiah, and with whom she begins an affair despite her fear of dependency, Smilla discovers that there is a conspiracy centred on Gela Alta, an isolated glaciated island off Greenland. Previous expeditions have found something there (Isaiah’s father was a diver who died on one of them, allegedly in an accident) and now plans are afoot to return for it. Isaiah’s death is linked to this conspiracy in some way. After a long journey of discovery in Copenhagen, during which she learns that the mechanic is not who he says he is, Smilla braves intimidation and threats and eventually gets on board the ship chartered for the mysterious expedition to Gela Alta, ostensibly as a stewardess. The final action takes place on the ship and the island. Smilla is held in deep suspicion by the ship's crew—who turn out to be all in some way compromised and in the pay of the mysterious Tørk Hviid, who is the expedition's real leader. Despite repeated attempts on her life by crew members, who assume she is from the authorities, Smilla doggedly pursues the truth, even when she discovers that Peter has deceived and betrayed her. The secret of the island is revealed to be a meteorite embedded in the glacier, certainly uniquely valuable—perhaps even alive in some way. However, the water surrounding it is infested with a lethal parasite related to the Guinea worm, which is what really killed Isaiah’s father. Isaiah was forced off the roof because he had accompanied his father on the previous expedition and had evidence of the meteorite’s location—and the parasite itself was actually dormant in his body. When Smilla learns that Tørk Hviid had chased Isaiah off the roof to his death, she pursues him out onto the frozen sea. He tries to reach the ship and force it to sail away, but Smilla chases him, using her intuitive ice-sense to head him off, out into isolation and danger. Here the novel ends."
1358,Dexter by Design,crime," Dexter Morgan leads a double life: a vigilante serial killer by night and a blood spatter analyst with the Miami Police Department's forensics team by day. After the events of Dexter in the Dark, Dexter is eager to resume his hobby, but first must endure a honeymoon in Paris with his unsuspecting wife Rita. At an art gallery, Dexter and Rita are introduced to the concept of body parts being used as art by an avant-garde performance piece called ""Jennifer's Leg"" in which the artist amputates her own limb. On returning home, Dexter finds that his relationship with his sister, Deborah Morgan, has become strained since she learned of his murderous pastime at the end of the first book. Deborah is a Sergeant detective in the Miami Police Department's Homicide Unit and is torn between loyalty to her brother and their father (who trained Dexter to confine his murderous impulses to other killers, and taught him how to escape detection) and her duty as a police officer to arrest him. At work, Dexter is called to investigate a gruesome tableau on a local beach, where a pair of bodies have been mutilated and arranged in a display that parodies the state's tourist trade. At home, Rita is concerned for her children, Cody and Astor, who appear withdrawn and different from normal children. Dexter knows that the two share his pathology (which he calls the Dark Passenger) and has promised to train them to kill those who ""deserve it"", as his adoptive father, Harry, trained him. Cody is enrolled as a Cub Scout, which Rita believes will help him to bond with normal children. Dexter believes it will help him learn how to pretend to be normal."
1359,The Cater Street Hangman,crime," In an upper class salon on Cater Street several women discuss, in oblique terms, the death of a local girl. Even though Susannah has recently been out of town and is unaware of the murder, it is bad form for proper women to talk about such matters and so they are careful not to say anything too direct about the way the daughter of a friend was garroted and cut open. Finally, tiring of the game, Charlotte comes out and tells her aunt what she has heard about the murder. Although the victim was of the upper class she quickly gains a reputation as having been a bad seed. A second death occurs, this time a servant. Again the idea that these women did something to deserve this end is easier to accept than the knowledge that it could happen to anyone else. Only when the third murder happens to a member of the Ellison household do they believe that these crimes might not be a simple case of robbery or jealousy. A young police inspector, Thomas Pitt, has been investigating these crimes and soon arrives to question the Ellison household. Pitt is the educated son of a gamekeeper and cook. His education and manners let him wander in upper-class circles, while his dress and impolite tactics keep them from becoming entirely comfortable with him. Although Pitt aspires to higher social standing, he requests that he be treated as a middle class working man. None of this endears the inspector to Caroline Ellison, the lady of the house and mother of Sarah, Emily and Charlotte Ellison. Pitt uses pointed questions and little tact to find the information he needs. He often knows the answers to questions before he speaks and so puts everyone off-guard as they attempt to keep their secrets hidden. Before long, every female suspects every male of being the hangman, much to the detriment of long standing marriages and relationships. As the investigation into who is killing the young women progresses, Thomas falls in love with the unconventional Charlotte. Outwardly, Charlotte is a model of Victorian society, but she does not wish to become one of the mindless women she sees everyday. Instead, she reads newspapers that are smuggled out of her father's sight and speaks her mind on all manner of subjects. She finds out more about the world beyond her door when she meets Thomas and finds that he will engage her in useful and interesting discussions. Anne Perry wrote The Cater Street Hangman as a single, stand alone, novel. She had not intended for it to become a series and so there are elements in this book which do not blend smoothly into the series."
1360,A Darker Domain,crime," During the infamous UK miners' strike, a wealthy young heiress and her infant son are kidnapped in Fife, before a botched payoff leaves her dead and the child missing. Twenty-two years later, DI Karen Pirie, an expert on cold cases, interviews a journalist who may have found a clue to the enigma while on vacation in Tuscany. However, she soon becomes preoccupied with another missing persons case from about the same time. Fellow mine workers and even his own wife believed that Mick Prentice notoriously broke ranks and left to join a group of 'scab' strike breakers far south in Nottingham, but recent evidence suggests that his disappearance might not have been as simple as that. Moreover, Mick's grown daughter Misha desperately needs to find her estranged father for critical reasons of her own. DI Pirie soon finds herself stumbling through a darker domain of violence, greed, secrets and betrayal. The novel jumps back and forth between the time of the key events of both cases during the miners' strike and the current day. The flashbacks provide scattered, nonsequential background for the facts in the order that Pirie and present-day others discover them or relate them. This structure allows the author to present intricate plotlines and reveal facts in a manner that sustains the suspense. Because the plot is convoluted, however, and McDermid didn't offer the readers graphics to help them orient themselves in the local landscape, readers may want to glance at maps of the Fife area and Tuscan countryside where the plot locations are noted."
1361,The Unexpected Guest,crime," On a foggy night, a man called Michael Starkwedder breaks down near an isolated house and, entering it, finds the body of a dead man slumped in a chair. A woman stands over the corpse, gun in hand, and confesses to the murder but it is clear that she is covering up for someone else."
1362,The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants,crime," In ancient China's Northern Song Dynasty, Bao Zheng rises from humble beginnings to high office at the imperial court, gathering around him a group of Robin Hood-type men to fight crime and corruption. Using their exceptional fighting talents, the seven heroes and five gallants rescue maidens in distress, succor the old and weak, kill evildoers, and bring corrupt officials before Justice Bao. When the Prince of Xiangyang plots rebellion, the brave men set out to foil his plans."
1363,The Art of Detection,crime," Philip Gilbert, the head of a group of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, is found dead in a national park's artillery battery. Because the autopsy report is slow-coming, inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner Al Hawkin treat the death as a murder case. She can discover little about the dead man aside from his unrelenting fascination with all things Holmes. One of his dinner group companions, Ian Nicholson, reveals that he had discovered a ""lost"" Holmes story, possibly by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, about the murder of a gay soldier in 1920s San Francisco. Kate's interest is piqued when Ian mentions that Gilbert's body was discovered under the same circumstance as the soldier's in the story. Eventually, Kate traces Gilbert's ex-wife and learns that it is likely Glibert was gay, given that he had been with an actor several years before. She connects him with Nicholson, who used to be an actor and whose own ex-wife admits he is gay. Kate questions Nicholson, who admits that he hit Gilbert with a heavy bottle of wine after Gilbert announced they would have to break up temporarily following the publishing of the lost manuscript. He did not realize at the time that Gilbert actually died of complications following the attack, thereby downgrading the legal status from homicide to manslaughter. Finding Gilbert dead, Nicholson panics and dumps the body then sets up an elaborate alibi. After confessing his actions to Kate, Nicholson commits suicide by cop."
1364,Nine Inches,crime," The four-year-old son of Jack Caramac, a shock jock radio broadcaster and old friend of Dan Starkey, is kidnapped for one hour and returned unharmed. Starkey, now a self-styled ""upmarket private eye"", is hired to investigate the kidnapping and ascertain who might have been behind it – a significant task given the number of people offended by Caramac's illustration of the crime and corruption prevalent throughout Belfast. Starkey's investigations lead him to the Miller brothers, officially the Chiefs of Staff for the Ulster Volunteer Force, although viewed by Starkey as merely a group of Shankill Road thugs intent on pedalling drugs across Belfast. The Millers have been attempting to evict a widow named Jean Murray from her house and Starkey intervenes, hoping his knowledge of their drug operation would dissuade any repercussions. Starkey's interference leads to the Murray's house being burnt down with Jean still inside."
1365,An Unkindness of Ravens,crime," When Wexford does a favour for his wife - to look into the disappearance of one of their neighbours' husbands - everything he finds seems to confirm his first inkling: that this is simply another case of a bored middle-aged man having run off with a younger woman. However, when Rodney Williams is found dead, and another local man is stabbed in his car, Wexford finds himself thrown into an investigation involving a militant feministic organisation known as ""Arria"", who have taken the raven as their symbol."
1366,Bag Limit,crime," Sheriff Bill Gastner hopes his last few days in office will be uneventful, but this is before a local 17 year old named Matt Baca drives drunkenly into his cruiser. Baca stumbles drunkenly into the night as Gastner confronts him. He is later arrested passed out at his home. After kicking open sheriff Gastner's temporary cruisers window, he is transferred to a local Border Patrol unit. The transfer turns fatal when Baca pushes himself away, accidentally into a delivery trucks path. The plot thickens as the dead teens father is found dead in his kitchen the next morning. Thus bringing Gastner into a confusing set of clues to lead him to why Baca kept fighting his arrest, where is and where did he get his fake I.D., and who was involved in the struggle with Matt Baca's father leading to his death."
1367,The Cry of the Owl,crime," Following a painful divorce from his wife Nickie, Robert Forester leaves New York and moves to a small Pennsylvania town, where he develops an obsession with the seemingly happy, 23-year old Jenny Thierolf. As a way of easing his own discontent with life, he begins spying on her through her kitchen window, and is surprised when she invites him into her house after spotting him one night. Jenny sees their chance meeting as an act of fate, and breaks off the engagement to her hot-tempered fiancé Greg Wyncoop. During the next weeks, Jenny in turn goes after Robert, contacting him at his home and the company he works at. Robert is offered a promotion at work (which will require him to move to another city), and he hopes this will put an end to Jenny's advances, which he is feeling increasingly uneasy about. One night, Greg starts a fight with Robert, which ends in Greg being knocked unconscious and left on a river bank by Robert. Soon afterwards, Greg is reported missing, with Robert becoming a suspect for the police. Also, Robert's ex-wife Nickie tells the police that Robert once threatened her with a weapon. After a newspaper article on the case appears, Robert's promotion is withdrawn. A badly decomposed body is found in the river which the police believe to be Greg's, but the identification proves to be difficult. The fragile relationship between Robert and Jenny deteriorates quickly, and finally Jenny commits suicide after coming to the conclusion that Robert's appearance in her life symbolizes her death. Nickies new husband Ralph informs Robert that Greg's disappearance is actually a plot of Greg and Nickie against him. Later, Robert is shot at by Greg (severely wounding another person instead). Greg is arrested by the police but released. In a final confrontation between Robert, Greg and Nickie, Nickie is accidentally killed when Greg tries to knife Robert. Again, Robert is a suspect in an apparent crime scene."
1368,Coroner's Pidgin,crime," Just returned from years overseas on a secret mission, Albert Campion is relaxing in his bath when his servant Magersfontein Lugg and a lady of unmistakably aristocratic bearing appear in his flat carrying the corpse of a woman. At first Campion is unwilling to get involved, but he is forced to bring his powers of detection to bear on the case, and to solve not only the mystery of the murdered woman but also the alarming disappearance of some well-known art treasures. Campion discovers the clue to the mystery by tracing two bottles of a very rare wine."
1369,Through Violet Eyes,crime," The novel is set in an alternate present-day setting where a small percentage of people are born with violet irises and the ability to channel the dead. Naturally, the government has stepped in and regulated their lives, using them as tools in murder trials. When it becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting the Violets themselves, FBI agent Dan Atwater is paired with Natalie Lindstrom, a Violet, to investigate. Moments after dying, the victims take over Natalie's consciousness, bringing their tale of the Faceless Man who killed them and their suspicion that he may be working with someone on the other side."
1370,Death Is Now My Neighbour,crime," At 17 Bloxham Drive, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, a pretty 29-year old physiotherapist named Rachel James is shot almost point blank through the closed shade of her kitchen window early in the morning of 19 February 1996. The shooting took place between 7:00 and 7:30 with a .577 caliber howdah or Lancaster pistol as the pony-tailed young woman was getting breakfast prior to heading to work, her head and upper body silhouetted in the window, as her assailant stood in her backyard. Unfortunately, none of the other residents of Bloxham Drive can recall seeing anything suspicious that morning, including her immediate neighbour Geoffrey Owens at number 15, a newspaper reporter desperate for the scoop on this breaking news story that happened so close to his home. Chief Inspector Morse, aided by Detective Sergent (DS) Lewis, soon discovers a cryptic 'seventeenth-century' love poem by John Wilmot and a photograph of Rachel with a mysterious grey-haired man, clues which lead them to the prestigious Lonsdale College, where the rivalry between Julian Storrs and Dr. Dennis Cornford for the position of Master, to replace Sir Clixby Bream, is about to turn deadly. Morse goes to the extreme of employing a known house burglar and lock expert to learn more about Owens. Morse also diagnoses himself with diabetes, and, after he going to the local clinic to confirm his condition, is immediately placed in John Radcliffe Hospital for five days. He also divulges his Christian name, Endeavour (named after Captain James Cook's ship), for the first time in the series. At the conclusion of the novel, Morse's new love interest, Sister Janet McQueen (a nurse from the hospital), insists that he let Lewis know of his first name and convinces Morse to send Lewis a postcard, which he signs with his full name."
1371,Sleeping Beauty: A Lew Archer Novel,crime," Private eye Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands - including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of nembutal, a six figure ransom and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach."
1372,Dumb Witness,crime," Emily Arundell writes to Hercule Poirot because she believes she has been the victim of attempted murder. However, unfortunately this letter is delayed and when Poirot receives it, she has been dead for some time. Her doctor, who has lost his sense of smell, says that she died of liver problems she had had for many years. Emily's companion Miss Lawson is the unexpected beneficiary of a substantial fortune, according to a very recent change of will. Under the previous will, Emily's nephew Charles Arundell and nieces Theresa Arundell and Bella Tanios would have inherited. This gives them all motive for murder, because it is unclear who knew of the changed will. While examining the house, under a pretence of buying it, Poirot discovers a nail covered with varnish and a small string tied to it. Before her death Miss Arundell had said something about Bob...dog...picture...ajar. Poirot concludes that this means a jar on which there is a picture of a dog who was left out all night—meaning that Bob could not have put the ball on the staircase because he had been out all night. Poirot concludes Miss Arundell had fallen over a tripwire that had been tied to the nail. On the day of her death Emily had been at a seance held by both Miss Tripps. Both Miss Tripps, two sisters who believe in seances, say that when Emily spoke, a luminous figure came from her mouth. They also say that they saw Emily's ""spirit"" the night Emily died, billowing from her mouth in a halo around her head. Miss Lawson, who was also at the seance, similarly claims that a luminous haze appeared. Theresa and Charles want to have the will contested and even offer to pay Poirot for it. Poirot seemingly agrees. He asks Bella, who, after talking with her husband, agrees. While at Emily's house Poirot talks to the gardener and finds out that Charles talked to him about his weed killer which turns out to be arsenic. The bottle is also nearly empty—something that the gardener finds surprising. Theresa Arundell is a strong suspect because Miss Lawson can recall seeing someone through her bedroom mirror at the top of the stairs on the night of Emily's accident. The person was wearing a brooch with the initials, ""TA"". After implying for a long time that he is bullying her, Bella leaves her husband, Jacob, accusing him of Emily Arundell's murder and saying he was trying to have her wrongly committed to a mental institution in order to keep her quiet. She goes to stay with Miss Lawson, but Poirot tells her to go to a certain hotel, and read some papers he has prepared for her. The next day, she is found dead. She has taken an overdose of a sleeping-draught. The murderer has apparently struck again. Poirot discovers that Emily Arundell died of phosphorus poisoning, administered in her liver pills. The reason why haze appeared from her mouth was that her breath was phosphorescent. The reason her doctor did not know was because he could not smell the odour. The nature of the murder suggests a doctor. Dr. Donaldson, Theresa's fiancé, has a good motive for the crime, as does Jacob Tanios, also a doctor. At a meeting with all the suspects, Poirot reveals that Theresa took the arsenic. However, she could not bear to take someone else's life, so she threw the arsenic away. The real murderer was Bella. She committed the murder for money to educate her children and escape from her mundane life. Secretly, she had grown to hate her domineering husband, and had already attempted to kill him as well. She killed herself because the papers Poirot had given her contained a description of how she had murdered her aunt. The brooch that Miss Lawson had seen through the mirror was Bella's with the initials ""AT"" for Arabella Tanios; they appeared as ""TA"" because Miss Lawson was looking through the mirror. On her deathbed, Emily had asked Miss Lawson for the new will, presumably to destroy it, but Miss Lawson, thinking the will was only for a few thousand pounds, lied and said that her lawyer had it. On discovering that the inheritance was much greater than she had imagined, she was racked with remorse. Respecting the original will, Miss Lawson voluntarily shares the estate with Emily's other relations, including Bella's children. The dog Bob becomes Hastings' new pet."
1373,Last Seen Wearing,crime," A man, later known to be Donald Phillipson, goes for an interview in Oxford to be headmaster of a school, later known to be the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School in Oxford. At the bus stop a girl gets into conversation with him and later seduces him. She turns out to be a girl from the school, Valerie Taylor, and a year later she goes missing. Two years after that Inspector Morse picks up the case following a road accident in which Chief Inspector Ainley was killed. A mysterious letter arrives apparently from Valerie, but Morse is convinced Valerie must be dead and tries to find out what happened on the day she disappeared. She went home from school for lunch and was last seen by a lollipop man carrying a bag. Morse discovers she was pregnant and suspects she had been sent off for an abortion. The plot thickens when Reginald Baines, another teacher at the school, is found murdered at his house near Oxford Station. Three suspicious characters had been near his house—Mrs Phillipson, Valerie Taylor’s mum, seen wearing her distinctive cherry coloured coat, and David Acum, a French teacher who had taught Valerie’s last lesson. Morse also suspects Acum’s wife, but rejects this when he discovers she is living in North Wales and does not drive."
1374,Sleeping Murder,crime," ""Let sleeping murder lie"": this is the proverb (a variation on ""Let sleeping dogs lie"") which is not obeyed by twenty-one year old New Zealander Gwenda Reed (née Halliday), who has recently married and now comes to England to settle down there. She believes that her father took her directly from India to New Zealand when she was a two year-old girl and that she has never been in England before. While her husband Giles is still abroad on business, she drives around the countryside looking for a suitable house. She finds an old house in the small seaside resort of Dillmouth, in Devon, which instantly appeals to her, and she buys it. After moving in, Gwenda begins to believe that she must be psychic, as she seems to know things about the house which she could not possibly know: the location of a connecting door that had been walled over, the pattern of a previous wallpaper, a set of steps in the garden that are not where they should be, and so on. Becoming increasingly uneasy, she accepts an invitation to stay for a few days in London with Miss Marple's somewhat pretentious nephew Raymond West and his wife Joan (who appear also in other stories with Miss Marple). Miss Marple's interest is piqued when, at a performance of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Gwenda screams and flees the theatre &mdash; for no reason that even she understands &mdash; when she hears the actor speaking the famous line, ""Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young."" Gwenda tells Miss Marple later that as she heard those words, she felt she was looking down through the banisters at the dead, blue face of someone named Helen, strangled by a man uttering the same line. She insists that she does not know anyone named Helen, and she believes she is going mad. Miss Marple suggests that she may be remembering something she witnessed as a small child (looking through rather than over the banisters), and that it may have happened in the house she has just bought, despite her belief that she has never been in England before. The Reeds and Miss Marple do a bit of research, and they discover that Gwenda is not psychic at all, but in fact she did spend a year during early childhood in the house she was later to buy. Her young stepmother, Helen, disappeared, having presumably run off with a man. Her father, devastated by his wife's disappearance and convinced he murdered her, sent Gwenda to New Zealand to be raised by an aunt and died soon afterward in an asylum. The young couple realize that there may be an unsolved crime to investigate. Miss Marple, who first advises the young couple to ""let sleeping murder lie"", later suggests to her own doctor that he prescribe her some sea air, and she travels to Dillmouth. The investigation that now sets in is completely in the hands of amateurs: Giles and Gwenda Reed and Miss Marple. The police are absent, as it has not even been established that a crime has been committed; officially, Helen Halliday ran off with one of her lovers and either died sometime later or made a clean break with her brother and never contacted anyone at home. The amateur sleuths find two old gardeners who remember the Halliday family and some of the former household staff. The young couple talk to many witnesses, including Dr Kennedy, Helen's much older half-brother, who seems still heartbroken over the disappearance of his wild younger sister. He presents two letters posted abroad which he says he got from his half-sister after her disappearance, and which seem to prove that she did not die that night. But the amateur detectives still believe that Gwenda's memory is fundamentally reliable, and that Helen was murdered. It is later revealed that Dr Kennedy forged the two letters. The three other men in Helen's life at the time of her disappearance were Walter Fane, a local lawyer; JJ Afflick, a local tour guide; and Richard Erskine, who resides in the far north of England. It seems very likely to Giles and Gwenda that one of them must be the murderer: they were all ""on the spot"" when Helen disappeared eighteen years earlier. When Lily Kimble, who used to be in Halliday's employ, reads an advertisement, placed by Gwenda, seeking information about Helen, she senses there could be money in it; and after a second advertisement appears looking for her personally, she writes to Dr Kennedy asking for his advice. Kennedy interprets her letter to him as a blackmail attempt. He writes back to her, inviting her to see him at his house and including a train timetable and exact instructions on how to get to his house. He misdirects her to a deserted stretch of woodland, where he meets and strangles her. He then replaces his original letter with a fake one and is back at his house in time to ""wait"", together with Giles and Gwenda Reed, for her arrival. When Lily Kimble's body is found, the police start investigating. (When the police inspector sees Miss Marple he comments on a case of poison pen near Lymstock; thus Sleeping Murder is set after the happenings in The Moving Finger, which was published in 1942.) Now it dawns upon the Reeds that with a murderer still at large, their lives are in danger. This proves true: after Dr Kennedy unsuccessfully tries to poison them (it is Mrs Cocker, the cook, who takes a sip of the poisoned brandy instead and who consequently has to be hospitalised), Dr Kennedy tries to strangle Gwenda when she is alone in the house. But Miss Marple has foreseen this: she remained hidden in the garden, and when Gwenda screams she runs upstairs and disables Dr Kennedy by spraying soapy liquid into his eyes. Miss Marple explains that she believes that Helen was an ordinary, decent young woman, trying to escape from Kennedy, who was unhealthily and pathologically obsessed with her, and that the only evidence of her being ""man-mad"" came from him. He strangled her to prevent her moving to Norfolk in the east of England to live an ordinary, happy life away from him with her husband."
1375,Promised Land,crime," Promised Land, Inc. is a real estate development company with which one of the characters is involved. Spenser also metaphorically refers to Cape Cod as the Promised Land. Spenser is hired by Harvey Shepard to find his missing wife, Pam. He soon locates her, but along the way begins to suspect that Harvey Shepard has been beaten and threatened but will not reveal why or by whom. Spenser suspects he is in danger with a loan shark. After getting fired from Harvey, Spenser is contacted by his wife. She unwittingly becomes entangled in a murder and needs Spenser's help. Spenser manages to get both Harvey and his wife in the clear, and land a dangerous criminal behind bars in the process."
1376,Hercule Poirot's Christmas,crime," It is Christmas Eve and everyone in the house hears the crashing of furniture, followed by a wailing and hideous scream. When they get to Simeon Lee's room, they find it locked and they have to break the door down. When they finally get through the door, they find heavy furniture overturned and Simeon Lee dead, his throat slit, in a great pool of blood. Superintendent Sugden notices Pilar Estravados pick up something from the floor. She tries to conceal what she picked up, but when pressed, opens her hand to show a small bit of rubber and a small object made of wood. Superintendent Sugden explains that he is in the house by prior arrangement with the victim, who confided to him the theft of a substantial quantity of uncut diamonds from his safe. When Poirot is called in to investigate, there are therefore several main problems: who killed the victim? How was the victim killed inside a locked room? Was the murder connected to the theft of the diamonds? And what is the significance of the small triangle of rubber and the peg that Sugden is able to provide when reminded by Poirot of the clue that had been picked up by Pilar? Poirot’s investigation explores the nature of the victim – a methodical and vengeful man – and the way that these characteristics come out in his children. He seems focused on the idea that one of the immediate family is the murderer. When the butler mentions his confusion about the identities of the house guests, Poirot realizes that the four legitimate sons may not be the only heirs of Simeon’s temperament. The final major clue is dropped by Pilar, who while playing with balloons and one bursts, lets slip that what she found on the floor must also have been a balloon. She knows more than she realizes. Poirot warns her to be careful."
1377,Luna: A Novel,crime," Alba is out running one day when she is kidnapped by a psychiatrist and his patient. They remove Alba to an estate in rural France where she is forced to participate in the patient's entomological fantasies. When Alba goes missing, her adult companion Serge is distraught. He hatches a plot to save her which involves the theft of multiple Rolls-Royces. When a painter comes to the estate to paint Alba in a dragonfly costume, Alba befriends him. Alba manages to escape the estate, but she finds herself traumatized, broke, and lost, with criminals trailing her closely. Eventually Alba and Serge are reunited."
1378,Vengeance in Death,crime," Lt. Eve Dallas is shocked by the brutal nature of a series of murders. The crimes are clearly related and Eve makes a shocking discovery-- a common link between the victims: her husband, Roarke. Roarke's past has come back to haunt them both."
1379,Heartstones,crime," In a college town, two schoolgirls live with their widowed father Luke, a gentle well-educated man, meticulous and orderly. Elvira and Spinny are watchful, however, for Luke plans to remarry and has chosen Mary. The threat to the girls' world is removed when Mary falls to her death."
1380,Requiem for a Fish,crime," The coelacanth is a very strange fish. On the one hand, this ancient species might have been the missing link between land and sea. On the other hand, everybody thought that it had disappeared long before dinosaurs' extinction. Yet, one day of 1938, a South African fisherman catches a specimen in its nets. But is the fish really the famous coelacanth? The world of science gets passionate and jealous around the beast. Who will be the first to trace the origins of mankind? Stealing, cheating, lying... murdering? And Why is Marie, this young pregnant Parisian, suddenly caught in this story? Between Africa and the Comoro Islands, the Comoro Islands and Sulawesi, London and Paris, the world of ichthyology turns to a gripping thriller."
1381,Hide and Seek,crime," Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a ""junkie"", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man's room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman named Tracy who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: ""Hide! Hide!"" It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club - Hyde's - where highly-connected people in society watch illegal boxing. Rebus is able to arrest Hyde's owner and several high profile members, but to his outrage and disgust all the prisoners die suspicious deaths: the powers-that-be are covering it up to prevent scandal. Shortly after Rankin moved to London, there was a real-life case of male prostitutes bribing lawyers and judges, similar to some parts of the book: ""questions were asked in parliament"" and two lawyers began to investigate the police investigation. ""To everyone's surprise, this inquiry found that the allegations were false. Police officers involved in the case found themselves demoted..."""
1382,Tessa,crime," Tessa is the story of Tessa, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who has a vivacious imagination but is, in spite of this, a loner. There is a crime or a riddle to solve in that novel, which is typical of Margit Sandemo. The story begins when a burglar makes a wrong phone number. He inadvertently calls Tessa and tells her about his upcoming crime. Tessa plans to check his intentions."
1383,Spare Change,crime," The novel begins with the notorious Spare Change serial killer resurfacing after 20 years. Sunny’s father, Phil Randall, worked this case years ago, and enlists Sunny’s help investigating the new string of murders. The killer’s MO is to shoot the person in the head, and leave three coins at the scene of the crime, hence the name Spare Change. Spare Change sent numerous letters to Phil during the original crime spree, but then the killings abruptly stopped, until now. The reemergence of the killer after such a long time causes the Randall’s to suspect a copy-cat killer. After the first killing, Phil Randall decides to detain everyone at the scene of the next killing. They take down all of their information, and later bring them to the station and question them one by one; their hope being that the killer would have hung around the crime scene to watch. The interviews are tedious, but when Bob Johnson walks into the room he immediately becomes a suspect. Everything cries out that he is the killer, from the way he speaks, to the way he calls Sunny’s father Phil, just like in the killer’s correspondence. It doesn’t take long before Sunny is convinced he is the killer. Sunny begins seeing Bob Johnson in hopes of discovering some sort of evidence to allow them to arrest him. Meanwhile, the investigation continues. From a photo of his she tracks down his old college girlfriend. She informs Sunny that she dated Bob in college, had sex with him once, he was bad at it, and then she broke up with him and married someone else. While investigating at Bob’s alma mater, she also discovers that his father was a professor there and had a fatal heart attack in his office. However, despite the official cause of death, the former secretary insists she saw blood when she discovered the body. Sunny follows up by interviewing the police officer at the scene who reluctantly confirms that it was in fact a suicide. The college president had insisted on reporting it as a heart attack to prevent a scandal the school couldn’t afford. Later Sunny breaks into Bob’s apartment and while searching his address book, finds the name Chico Zarilla. This name leads them to an apartment and the first thing they see in the apartment is a life-size picture of Robert Johnson Sr. and a young Bob Johnson. They also find a .38 revolver and bullets that match the killer’s gun. Sunny insists on having one final meeting with Bob so she can confront him with what they know and try to get a confession out of him. She fears he will just play with them after he is arrested and they will never get any answers. The police agree to this and she arranges the meeting at Spike’s restaurant. The restaurant is packed with undercover police when she confronts him with what she knows. She asks him about his father, but he refuses to speak about it. He then draws his gun, puts it to Sunny’s head, and begins calling for Phil. After finding pictures of herself in Bob’s scrap books and feeling the sexual tension between them, Sunny thought Bob was obsessed with her, but it turns out he was obsessed with her father all along. During the stand-off, Bob is so intent on Phil that he doesn’t notice Sunny draw her weapon. She shoots him in the wrist and pulls away. The other police officers then shoot and kill him. The next day Sunny receives a package from Bob containing a videotape. The video is of Bob explaining everything. He explains that when he was fourteen he walked in on his father dressed as a Mexican gunfighter. Robert Sr. then confides in his son that most of the time he is Professor Robert Johnson, but that sometimes he is Chico Zarilla, and Chico is a killer. He confesses to his son that Chico is the Spare Change killer. Later when his mother discovers this, his father commits suicide. When Bob reaches the age that his father was when he died he decides to take up his mantle. His parents are dead; the only woman he ever loved is with another man, so he feels that Chico Zarilla is all he has left. And like before, Chico wants to kill."
1384,Death Comes as the End,crime," The novel is primarily written from the perspective of Renisenb, a young widow who is just reacquainting herself with her family when her father, Imhotep, brings Nofret into their lives. Nofret soon disrupts and antagonises Imhotep's sons, Yahmose, Sobek and Ipy, as well as their wives. After Imhotep is called away, Satipy and Kait, the elder sons' wives, try to bully Nofret with tricks, but the plan backfires when Nofret appeals to Imhotep and he threatens to throw all his sons and their families out of the household on his return. Suddenly everyone has a motive to kill Nofret and when she is found dead at the foot of a cliff, an accident seems unlikely. Next Satipy is killed when she apparently throws herself to her death in terror from the same cliff while walking with Yahmose. Is it Nofret’s vengeful spirit that she was looking at over Yahmose’s shoulder moments before her death? These rumours only gather pace when Yahmose and Sobek drink poisoned wine. Sobek dies, but Yahmose lingers on, perhaps due to a more insidious slow-acting poison. A boy who suggests that he saw Nofret’s ghost poisoning the wine himself dies of poison shortly afterwards. Ipy starts to boast about his new, better position with his father and plots to get rid of Henet after talking to his father and tells her so. That next morning, Ipy was found dead in the lake, drowned. Kameni seems to have fallen in love with Renisenb, and eventually asks her to marry him. Unsure whether she loves him or Hori, whom she has known since she was a child when he mended her toys, she leaves the choice effectively in her father’s hands and becomes engaged to Kameni. She realises, however, that his relationship with Nofret was closer than she had supposed, and that jealousy may have influenced Nofret’s bitter hatred towards the family. As Renisenb, Hori, and Esa begin to investigate the possibility of a human murderer, the field of suspects is further narrowed when Ipy, himself a likely suspect, is drowned. Esa attempts to flush out the murderer by dropping a hint about the death of Satipy, but is herself murdered by means of an unguent made of poisoned wool fat. Henet – momentarily powerful in the chaos - is smothered in linen. It is on the same cliff path where Nofret was murdered that the killer makes one final attempt. Renisenb hears footsteps behind her and turns to see a look of murderous hatred in the eyes of her brother, Yahmose. On the brink of her own death, she realises that Satipy was not looking in fear at anything beyond Yahmose … she was looking straight at him. His consumption of the poisoned wine had been cleverly limited, and his recovery deliberately was made to seem less rapid than it was while he committed the later murders. Even as Renisenb realises some of this, Hori slays Yahmose with an arrow and she is saved. Her final choice is which of the scribes to marry: Kameni, a lively husband not unlike her first, or Hori, an older and more enigmatic figure. She makes her choice and falls into Hori’s arms."
1385,3rd Degree,crime," In this installment after a house with a family home blows up and Lindsay rushes in to save whoever may have survived the blast, a group of killers known as August Spies vow to kill every three days. They target various political figures time and time again. Lindsay Boxer, with the San Francisco PD, Claire Washburn, the Medical Examiner, Cindy Thomas, a Chronicle Reporter who recently broke-up with her pastor boyfriend from the previous novel, and Jill Bernhardt an Assistant District Attorney who is revealed to have been a victim of spousal abuse for a while, dive into the case. The case takes a deadly turn when Jill is murdered. Oddly enough this actually leads the remaining three ladies to find a tie-in to a case that Jill's father prosecuted and to a cover up years old that has launched this terrorist action. Lindsay resolves the case in typical fashion by bringing in the college professor that caused it all. She had previously decided to make a go of a relationship with her FBI laison Joe Molinari when he is introduced in the middle of the book. He is Deputy Director of Homeland Securtiy. He ends up getting a call from the vice president while on a date with Lindsay. Lindsay and Joe have a date while traveling on the case, which ends up being mocked by her former partner (Warren J) while at work. Their second date is at Lt. Boxer's apartment although they ignore dinner because he comes early and they sleep together. Later she feels very guilty because Jill had just thrown out her abusive bullying husband, and ignored a chance to call her or visit with her because of the date. it:Terzo grado (romanzo)"
1386,Blood on the Moon,crime," The story begins in 1965 during the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, California. 23-year-old Lloyd Hopkins is still with the National Guard and is deployed to help handle the situation. It is during this riot that Hopkins kills his first man, a deranged armory sergeant who was hunting down and killing African Americans. Eighteen years later Hopkins is now a sergeant with the LAPD and has the highest number of arrests of any officer in the department's history. He is considered a genius by many of his associates for his uncanny ability to make intuitive leaps of logic when tracking down criminals. Soon his abilities are put to the test when he investigates the brutal murder of a woman who was disemboweled in her apartment. Hopkins quickly deduces that the person responsible for this murder has in fact been killing women since the late 1960s, but has never been caught because he always changes his modus operandi. A subplot of the novel involves Hopkins' relationship with his family. He adores his three daughters and deeply loves his wife, though he is chronically unfaithful to her. His wife loves Lloyd, but begins to realize that his habits are not healthy for their children, particularly his propensity for telling them about the cases that he has worked on."
1387,Black Money,crime," The plot is typically convoluted: the jilted boyfriend of wealthy Virginia Fablon hires Lew Archer to investigate the background of her inamorata, one Felix Cervantes, presently her husband. The resulting inquiries take the reader through levels of society from the homeless to the wealthy, a canvassing seen in other Macdonald novels. Except for brief forays into Las Vegas—the title refers to cash skimmed by casino operators to avoid taxes—and the environs of Los Angeles, the action takes place around Montevista, in private clubs, homes, clinics, the academy, and seedy and luxurious hotels; the implications, however, reach beyond California, as the edges of the story extend to Central America and Europe, whose cultures and economies the book sees as inextricably tied to American life."
1388,Survival Of The Fittest,crime," The plot centers around the murder of the daughter of an Israeli diplomat. The murder seems exceptionally cruel, since the girl was developmentally disabled. From the positioning of the body and location, motive for the killing is not clear, until other people with other disabilities--being blind, having a very low IQ, etc.--and strange symbols are showing up at the scenes. It is only when they learn of a very cruel, self-righteous conspiracy to practice eugenics that Milo and Alex start unravelling this very dark case."
1389,Darkly Dreaming Dexter,crime," The novel's protagonist, Dexter Morgan, works for the Miami-Metro Police Department as a forensic blood spatter pattern analyst. In his spare time, Dexter is a serial killer who kills murderers, rapists and other undesirables he believes have escaped justice. Dexter's murders are directed by an inner voice he refers to as the ""Dark Passenger"", who keeps prodding Dexter to kill something. Once he has done so, the voice is satisfied for a while, but always comes back. Flashbacks reveal that his foster father, a police detective named Harry Morgan, recognized early on that Dexter was a violent sociopath with an innate need to kill, and taught him how to kill people who have gotten away with murder as a way to channel his homicidal urges in a ""positive"" direction. Harry also taught the boy to be a careful, meticulous killer, to leave no clues, and to be absolutely sure his victims are guilty before killing them. Dexter calls these rules ""the code of Harry."" Dexter manages his double life reasonably well for years, but his idyll is disturbed when he becomes involved in the investigation of a series of killings of prostitutes. As the ""Tamiami Slasher"" rampages through the city, he begins sending messages to Dexter, who finds the series of terrifying crimes engrossing and fascinating. Meanwhile, his adoptive sister Deborah sees the case as her ticket out of the Vice unit and into Homicide. Dexter is torn between helping her catch the killer and a desire to sit back and admire the artistry and skill of a fellow killer's work."
1390,Regency Buck,crime," Judith Taverner is a beautiful young heiress who comes to London to join high society. She takes an instant dislike to her unwilling guardian, Julian, fifth Earl of Worth, who, having met her earlier in a small town filled with bucks watching a boxing match, treats her with a familiarity reserved for loose women. Judith soon becomes a sensation in London. She gets many offers of marriage (including one from the Duke of Clarence). Worth does not permit her to marry any one of them. This initially makes Judith very angry, but she comes to appreciate it later. Judith has a younger brother named Peregrine (Perry) who is a young handsome boy with very little sense and a lot of money to spare. Hence, he is always getting into trouble. Perry and Judith's cousin Bernard Taverner seems always so kind and attentive, though there is little love lost between him and Worth. Perry keeps getting into scrapes. He is challenged to a duel, gets held up, and nearly gets poisoned. Worth suspects that Bernard is the villain and he sends his brother, Captain the Hon. Charles Audley to watch over Perry. Meanwhile, Bernard tries to convince Judith that it is Worth who is the real culprit. In the end, after Worth provokes Taverner into acting, the truth comes out and Bernard is shown to be the guilty one. The sparring and eventual love affair of Judith and Julian, against the backdrop of Judith's brother Peregrine's romance and danger, make up this novel. Miss Heyer's An Infamous Army is a sequel to Regency Buck."
1391,Lautlos wie sein Schatten,crime," When James Baldon comes home from a party late at night, he is not able to open the front door of his apartment. The reason: a dead man is blocking his entrance. David Brewer, head of the Homicide Squad, starts the investigation. When it is discovered that the body was moved after being shot, everybody in the building turns out to have an alibi. However, Brewer is convinced that one of the alibis must be false. nl:Lautlos wie sein Schatten"
1392,Country of the Blind,crime," Set against the mounting dissatisfaction at the ineffective and over self-indulgent Tory government of John Major all hell breaks loose when conservative tabloid media mogul Roland Voss is found murdered in his country house in Scotland. Next to Voss’s body is that of his murdered wife, while their two slain bodyguards lie outside their room. The culprits seem obvious: the burglars caught fleeing the scene covered in blood and almost immediately four men are arrested for the crime, including former burglar Thomas McInnes, his son Paul and a very strange guy who likes to be known as Spammy. However, if it's really that obvious, why did McInnes pay a visit to his Edinburgh lawyer a few days before the crime took place, and what are the secret contents of the envelope he left with her? When the lawyer, Nicole Carrow, turns up at the Police station demanding to see her client, announcing under the glare of intense media attention claiming to have a letter that proves her client's innocence, the last thing she expects is have an attempt made on her life within hours."
1393,"Morning, Noon and Night",crime," Harry Stanford is a rich businessman. While travelling on his yacht, he mysteriously falls overboard owing to a storm, leaving his entire fortune, estimated to be around six to seven billion dollars to his three children-Tyler, a circuit court judge, Kendall a successful fashion designer and Woodrow."
1394,Cards on the Table,crime," At an exhibition of snuff boxes, Hercule Poirot meets Mr. Shaitana, a mysterious foreign man who is consistently described as devil-like in appearance and manner. Shaitana jokes about Poirot's visit to the snuff box exhibition, and claims that he has a better ""collection"" that Poirot would enjoy: individuals who have got away with murder. He arranges a dinner party to show off this collection; Poirot is apprehensive. Upon arrival at Shaitana's house on the appointed day, Poirot is joined by three other guests: mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, Scotland Yard's Superintendent Battle, and Colonel Race of His Majesty's Secret Service. Soon, the other four guests join them: Dr. Roberts, a hearty, florid man; Mrs. Lorrimer, a perfectly poised gentlewoman of late middle age; Major John Despard, a dashing Army man and world traveller, recently returned from Africa; and Anne Meredith, a shy, quiet, very pretty young woman. Having brought them all to dinner, Shaitana skilfully manipulates the topic of conversation to possible motives for murder. He makes allusions to crimes being committed, yet their culprits getting away scot-free. During this conversation, several of the guests exhibit nervous reactions. Shaitana invites his eight guests to play bridge in the adjoining rooms; he, as the odd man out, does not play. Roberts, Meredith, Lorrimer, and Despard play in the first room, while Poirot, Oliver, Race, and Battle play in the next; Shaitana settles himself in a chair in the first room and thinks of how wonderfully his party is going. Hours later, Poirot and the others prepare to leave, and go to thank Shaitana. Shaitana has been murdered, stabbed in the chest with a jeweled stiletto. Once the preliminary police work has been done, Poirot reveals Shaitana's strange mention of a ""collection"" to the other three with whom he played bridge. They quickly realize that they are four ""sleuths"" meant to be pitted against the four in the next room whom Shaitana suspected of murder. The four agree to work together to solve the crime, and interview the four suspects. Poirot takes interest in the way each member plays bridge, which he discerns through asking each suspect to grade the play of the others. As there seems to be no conventional way to prove which of them has committed Shaitana's murder, Poirot suggests that the group of sleuths delve into the past and uncover the murders that the dead man thought he knew about. Battle is put on the trail of the death of a Mrs. Craddock, whom Dr. Roberts once attended. Her husband died of anthrax poisoning from an infected shaving brush (and readers at the time of the novel's publication in the 1930s might well have remembered anthrax deaths from infected shaving brushes during and in the years after World War I); Mrs. Craddock herself had died not long afterward, of a tropical infection, in Egypt. Race seeks out information on Despard, and discovers a case in which a botanist named Luxmore and his wife travelled with him to South America; Luxmore officially died of a fever, but it is rumoured that he was shot. Mrs. Oliver visits Anne Meredith and her housemate, Rhoda Dawes. Rhoda later visits Oliver and explains Anne's bad manners: Anne, after her father's death and before old friend Rhoda came to her rescue, worked as a live-in companion; one employer, a Mrs. Benson, had taken hat paint—poison—from a medicine bottle and died. Fellow suspect Despard takes an interest in Anne's welfare, recommending that she retain an attorney. In the meantime, the four sleuths gather and compare notes. Meanwhile, Poirot sets a trap for Anne Meredith. When she pays him a call at his request, he shows her to a table on which many packets of the finest silk stockings are piled up, apparently carelessly. After Anne makes her gift suggestions and leaves, Poirot discovers that two pairs of the stockings are missing, confirming his suspicion that Anne is a thief, and seemingly giving weight to his suspicion that she stole from Mrs. Benson and killed her when she feared she had been discovered. At this point, Mrs. Lorrimer contacts Poirot with surprising news. She confesses to Shaitana's murder, and explains that she took the stiletto impulsively after he mentioned poison as a woman's weapon. Shaitana was right about her, she says; twenty years earlier, she had, she confesses, killed her husband. Poirot objects that Lorrimer's explanation of Shaitana's killing does not match her unflappable personality. Lorrimer thus believes that Meredith is Shaitana's killer, and decided to lie to save the younger woman. She begs Poirot to let her take the blame for the crime: she will die soon anyway, and Anne will be free to live her young life. Poirot is confused by this confession, and fears that there may be more trouble to come. His guess proves correct when Mrs. Lorrimer is found dead the next morning, having apparently committed suicide after writing three copies of a letter confessing to the murder of Shaitana and sending them to the other suspects. Roberts arrives after receiving the letter, but is unsuccessful in his attempt to save Mrs. Lorrimer. Poirot and Battle race to Anne Meredith's cottage, fearing that she might strike again. Despard, who has been visiting Anne and Rhoda, both of whom fancy him, is a few steps ahead of Poirot and Battle. At Anne's suggestion, Anne and Rhoda are on a boat in a nearby river. Poirot and Battle see Anne suddenly push her friend into the water. Alas for Anne, when she knocks Rhoda into the water, she also falls in herself. Despard rescues Rhoda; Anne drowns. Poirot gathers Oliver, Battle, Despard, Rhoda, and Roberts at his home, where he makes a surprising announcement: the true murderer of both Shaitana and Mrs. Lorrimer is not Anne, but Dr. Roberts. Poirot brings in a window cleaner who happened to be working outside Mrs. Lorrimer's flat earlier that morning. He testifies that he saw Roberts inject Lorrimer with a syringe; a syringe, Poirot reveals, full of a lethal anaesthetic. Battle chimes in that they can bolster any prosecution with the true story of the deaths of the Craddocks, who died of infections, true, but infections deliberately inflicted on each of them by Roberts. Roberts confesses. Poirot points out that in the third rubber of bridge on the night of Shaitana's murder, a grand slam occurred. This intense play would keep the others focused on the game—Roberts was dummy at that point—while Roberts used the opportunity to stab Shaitana. It is also revealed that the ""window cleaner"" was actually an actor in Poirot's employ, though Poirot brags that he did ""witness"" Roberts kill Mrs. Lorrimer in his mind's eye. Despard suggests that one of the gathered party murder Poirot, and then watch his ghost come back to solve the crime."
1395,Real Murders,crime," Local crime buffs meet monthly in the small town of Lawrenceton, Georgia to analyze famous murder cases, and in Real Murders they get all too close a look as one of their members is bludgeoned in exactly the same manner as the crime to be discussed that night. Aurora ""Roe"" Teagarden, the 4'11"" librarian, is not only a member of the club, a suspect in the murder but also a potential victim as other murders follow - each mimicking a famous crime. Roe must work quickly to discover which of her fellow sleuths is the killer. Could it be the police detective whose sudden romantic interest in Roe leaves her skin tingling, the new mystery writer in town who says he's bored with just writing or one of the other 12 members of the Real Murders Club?"
1396,Postmortem,crime," The novel opens as Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia, receives an early-morning call from Sergeant Pete Marino, a homicide detective at the Richmond Police Department with whom Scarpetta has a tense working relationship. She meets him at the scene of a woman's gruesome strangling, the latest in a string of unsolved murders in Richmond. The killer leaves behind few clues; among them are a mysterious substance which fluoresces under laser light, traces of semen, and in the vicinity of the last murder, an unusual smell. Scarpetta and Marino work with FBI profiler Benton Wesley to attempt to piece together a profile of the killer. Initial evidence appears to point to the fourth victim's husband, but Scarpetta suspects otherwise despite Marino's insistence. (The book references DNA profiling as a relatively new technique, and characters briefly bemoan the lack of a criminal DNA database which could provide better leads to suspects, given available evidence.) Meanwhile in her personal life, Scarpetta must deal with the presence of her extremely precocious ten-year-old niece, Lucy, as well as an uncertain romantic relationship with the local Commonwealth's attorney. During the investigation, a series of news leaks about the murders appear to be coming from a source within the medical examiner's office. The leaks threaten Scarpetta's position, especially after she is forced to admit that her office database has been compromised. Believing that the killer thrives on media attention and hoping to flush him out by provoking his ego, Scarpetta, Wesley, and local investigative reporter Abby Turnbull (whose sister was the fifth victim) conspire to release a news story which suggests that the killer has a distinctive body odor due to a rare metabolic disease and implies that the killer may be mentally disordered. While attempting to find another link between the five murders, Scarpetta discovers that all five intended victims had recently called 911; she suspects that the killer is a 911 operator and chose his victims based on their voices. Scarpetta is awakened in the middle of the night by the killer, who has broken into her home. As she attempts to reach a gun she has kept nearby for protection, Marino bursts into her bedroom and shoots the intruder, having realized that the news article would make Scarpetta a likely target. Scarpetta's suspicion proves to be correct; the killer was a police and sometime 911 dispatcher."
1397,The Scent of the Night,crime," Inspector Montalbano must track down a lost financial manager who seems to have absconded with all of his clients money. Along the way, he encounters a lovelorn secretary who believes her boss could do no wrong."
1398,The Mugger,crime," A mugger is attacking women in Isola. Carella is on his honeymoon, and the case is being handled by Detective Hal Willis. A second plot involves Bert Kling, a patrolman hunting a killer."
1399,The A.B.C. Murders,crime," When a serial killer nicknamed ABC taunts Poirot in veiled letters and kills people in alphabetical order, Poirot employs an unconventional method to track down ABC. In a seemingly unconnected story, a travelling salesman named Alexander Bonaparte Cust has travelled to all of the murder locations on the day the crimes occurred. Cust had suffered a blow on the head during military service. As a result, he is prone to blackouts, headaches and epileptic attacks. Could this seemingly innocent stranger be the eponymous killer?"
1400,Gallows View,crime," A Peeping Tom is frightening the women of Eastvale; two glue-sniffing young thugs are breaking into homes and robbing people; an old woman may or may not have been murdered. Investigating these cases is Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, a perceptive, curious and compassionate policeman recently moved to the Yorkshire Dales from London to escape the stress of city life. In addition to all this, Banks has to deal with the local feminists and his attraction to a young psychologist, Jenny Fuller. As the tension mounts, both Jenny and Banks’s wife, Sandra, are drawn deeper into the events. The cases weave together as the story reaches a tense and surprising climax."
1401,Perfect Match,crime," The story opens with a prologue in which an unnamed female character in a courtroom inexplicably shoots the defendant four times as he approaches his defense attorney. The shooter, as revealed, is Assistant District Attorney Nina Frost and the defendant a priest. At the time of the trial (and shooting) she had been led to believe that Father Szyszynski had sexually abused her five-year-old son Nathaniel after lab tests had confirmed that his semen was found in the child's underpants, and Nathaniel had verbally accused Father ""Glen"" Szyszynski of molesting him. It later turned out that Nina had in fact killed the wrong man, and a visiting priest named Father Gwynne had molested Nathaniel. Fathers Gwynne and Szyszynski shared the same DNA in their blood because Father Szyszynski had a bone marrow transplant from Father Gwynne (being that they were half brothers), leading to the belief that the semen belonged to Szyszynski. Although this fact was made known at Nina's own court trial for murder, after the jury could not reach a verdict, the judge ruled that her reasons were justified and therefore she was found not guilty of murder. However, using a Maine clause she was found guilty of manslaughter because the Judge believed she was under the influence of a reasonable fear or anger brought about by reasonable provocation and sentenced to 20 years in Jail but it is suspended. In a final twist at the end, Nina's best friend and colleague Patrick Ducharme, with whom she'd had a very brief affair during a brief split with husband Caleb, moves away, and Nina discovers that Caleb had poisoned Father Gwynne, despite his earlier protests to her killing Szyszynski."
1402,The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell,crime," The book is about what happens after Quincas Wateryell, a popular bum who lives in the slums of Bahia is found dead one morning. Two groups of people compete over Quincas's memory: his family, led by his daughter Vanda. To them, Quincas is Joaquim Soares da Cunha, an ""exemplary employee of the State Rent Board,"" who disgraced his family by walking out on them one day, calling Vanda and her mother, Dona Otacilia ""vipers"" and Vanda's husband Leonardo a ""silly ass."" Despite all their efforts to hide what really happened, Joaquim Soares da Cunha became Quincas, ""vagabond king of the honky-tonks"" and ""patriarch of the prostitutes."" Leonardo attempts to hide it from his coworkers, and Vanda tries to keep it from her friends, but they cannot ignore the reputation that Quincas has earned in the local press. Now, Vanda, Leonardo, and Quincas's sister Aunt Marocas and brother Eduardo, must tend to the body and give it a proper burial, without attracting too much attention to Quincas and his past. They settle on a simple suit and shoes, but no underwear, because no one will ever see that, and order a casket and candles fit for a church. That night they gather round the casket to keep watch over Quincas, each trying to ignore his learing smile, which reminds them of how much he despised them. Gradually, they go home, leaving Quincas to be watched by his friends from the slum. The cold reception that the news of Quincas's death is received by his family is juxtaposed by the way his friends from the slum receive the same news. His closest friends are Curió, a store barker in Shoemaker's Hollow, who paints his face like a clown to attract people, Bangs, a towering Black who makes his living as a card sharp, Private Martim, a soldier who had been discharged from the army who lived off the generosity of the women he was frequently engaged to, and Breezy, who supported himself catching frogs and selling them to medical researchers for experiments. The four men lead the neighborhood in mourning for Quincas, wailing ""Daddy's gone!"" That evening, they come to pay their last respects and end up taking care of the body after the family leaves. They recall the impact that Quincas had on their lives, and remember how he got his curious nickname: once, after taking a swig from a bottle of what he thought was alcohol, he spit it out and roared: ""Waaaaaaater!"" They all sob for Quincas, and Private Martim worries about how he will now take care of Quitéria, a prostitute who was Quincas's girlfriend. Left alone at night with the body, the four of them get Quincas to participate in one last party, telling him jokes serving him liquor, and making a gift of a beautiful frog that Breezy had just caught. They then decide to take Quincas on one last trip to the docks to share Cap'n Manuel's delicious fish stew that was Quincas's favorite. On their way to the dock, they pick up a group of prostitutes, including Quitéria, so she can have one last fling with the dead man. Quincas always loved the sea, and after the friends feed him the stew, they take him on board Cap'n Manuel's boat for a fishing excursion. Suddenly a storm tosses the boat, and they rush for shore, but Quincas's body is tossed overboard. It is a fitting end for Quincas, who loved the sea and once made a ""solemn oath"" that it ""would be the only witness to his final hour."""
1403,The Gemini Contenders,crime," In 1939, Savarone Fontini-Cristi is the padrone of an immensely wealthy and powerful Italian family. At this time, the Order of Xenope, a remote Greek monastic brotherhood, possesses ancient religious manuscripts, some of which, if authentic, are considered to be of enough significance to shatter the Christian religion. The Order of Xenope knows that the Nazis and Italian Fascists are seeking these long-rumored documents so must hide them. Because of his stature as a man of unsurpassed integrity, the Order entrusts the custody of these holiest of relics to Fontini-Cristi. Savarone schedules the circuitous shipment by train from Salonika, through Yugoslavia and Italy, and finally into the Swiss Alps. If the contents of the shipment are discovered at any time, the consequences are explosive. Though extremely wealthy, Savarone Fontini-Cristi has grown to abhor the Fascist regime of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. He actively supports the partigiani, the disorganized Communist opposition to Il Duce. Savarone's involvement with the train from Salonika becomes known to the powerful Roman Catholic Cardinal, Donatti, who must have the hidden documents at any cost. Incorrectly believing that Savarone has shared the secret location of the vault containing the documents with his first-born son, 36-year old playboy Vittorio, Cardinal Donatti orders the execution of the entire Fontini-Cristi family at the family compound Campo di Fiori, just outside Milan. The family's massacre by an execution squad, consisting of German soldiers overseen by Donatti, is secretly witnessed by Vittorio, who can hardly believe the horror - father, mother, brothers, wives, children - all murdered in front of his eyes. To Vittorio Fontini-Cristi's surprise, the British take extraordinary steps to evacuate Vittorio from Italy, expecting that he will tell them of the vault's location. Unfortunately for them, he doesn't know anything about the train from Salonika or its contents. The British take advantage of Vittorio's business skills during World War II, establishing a covert network of displaced European professionals, whose purpose is to discreetly sabotage the business processes of the German war machine: Shipping fiascos and printing mistakes, resulting in mild chaos in the back office of the war effort. The British decided to anglicize his name to Victor Fontine. Throughout the war, periodic incidents arise related to the hidden documents that put Victor's life, and the life of Jane, his new-found bride, in danger. In June 1942, in the midst of a German bombing related to the vault, Jane gives birth to twins, whom she calls her Geminis. Victor vows that, immediately after the war, he will put the mystery of Salonika behind him, and convince his pursuers that he knows nothing about it. At the war's end, he returns to Campo di Fiori, site of the execution grounds, where he hopes to end his involvement with the documents. After barely escaping with his life, he is met at the gates by five zealous priests, including the despised Cardinal Donatti. Proclaiming for the hundredth time that his father never told him about the train, Donatti orders Victor to be tortured until he confesses. Since Victor knows nothing, the priests torture him by breaking every single bone in his body, finally administering the last rites, and leaving him to die. Having barely survived the torture, Victor sells all of his holdings in Italy and establishes an extremely successful post-war consulting business in America. His twin sons, Adrian and Andrew, have grown up with privilege, with Adrian attending Princeton and Harvard Law, while Andrew, a West Point graduate, is a Major in the Vietnam War. The sons are on opposite sides of the Vietnam war, but Andrew has grown into a sociopathic man, for whom the end justifies the means. Adrian is on the verge of exposing some of the crimes that his brother, and his cabal of elite officers, have committed. At the same time, Victor is alarmed to learn that the train from Salonika has leaped through the past 30 years in the form of one of the zealous priests, who vows that Victor knows where the documents are and that he will force Victor to tell him. Remembering comments and gestures by his murdered father, the 70-year old Victor travels back to Campo di Fiori, and discovers key clues to the vault's location. The priest observes Victor's discovery, and attempts to pick up the torture where it was left off back in 1945. Badly injured, Victor returns to America to charge his Geminis with the responsibility of locating the hidden documents, realizing only that the sons have grown apart, but not that Andrew should not have such earth-shattering information to be used for ill purposes. Killing anyone who gets in his way, Andrew pursues the Salonika documents, leaving Adrian far behind. Adrian knows his brother's nature, and that he cannot be allowed to have the documents that could cause the collapse of Christianity, and the worldwide chaos that would ensue. In Champoluc, in the Swiss Alps, Adrian catches up with the murderous Andrew just as Andrew discovers the vault. In a monumental struggle, Adrian righteously triumphs over his evil twin brother, leaving Adrian to have the documents interpreted and to decide what to do with them. A parchment was taken from a Roman prison cell in the year 65 A.D. It is a letter written by a prisoner named Simon Bethsaida, renamed 'Peter' by Jesus Christ. In the letter, Peter admits that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, but instead another prisoner was substituted. Jesus committed suicide three days after the incident."
1404,Vanity Dies Hard,crime," Alice Whittaker was 37, rich but dowdy, with no career. Her life a lonely failure, she had got by with the one thing she did have - money. Then handsome Andrew Fielding came into her life, and just as suddenly her beautiful friend, Nesta, vanished from it - leaving a trail of confusing clues."
1405,The Cruelest Month,crime," The novel, set in the small Canadian town of Three Pines, takes place around the Easter season. A group of friends visits a haunted house, hoping to rid it of the evil spirits that have haunted it, and the village, for decades. One of them ends up dead, apparently of fright. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team from the Sûreté du Québec investigate the old house and the villagers of Three Pines."
1406,A Dedicated Man,crime," The body of a well-liked local historian is found half-buried under a drystone wall near the village of Helmthorpe, Swainsdale. Who on earth would want to kill such a thoughtful, dedicated man? Penny Cartwright, a beautiful folk singer with a mysterious past, a shady land-developer, Harry’s editor and a local thriller writer are all suspects–and all are figures from Harry’s previous, idyllic summers in the dale. A young girl, Sally Lumb, knows more than she lets on, and her knowledge could lead to danger. Inspector Banks’s second case unearths disturbing secrets behind a bucolic facade."
1407,Death du Jour,crime," On a bitterly cold March night in Montreal, Temperance is exhuming the remains of a nun proposed for sainthood in the grounds of a church. Hours later she's called to the scene of an horrific arson, where a young family has perished. There seem to be no witnesses, motive and no explanation. From the charred remains of the inferno to a trail of sinister cult activity and a terrifying showdown during an ice storm. Tempe faces a test of both her forensic expertise and her survival instinct."
1408,Many and Many a Year Ago,crime," The novel tells the story of Kemal, a convalescing Turkish fighter pilot, who, after his friend mysteriously disappears, is left with a generous allowance and the use of his large house in Istanbul’s Taksim district. Kemal subsequently embarks on a mysterious mission following in the fictitious footsteps of American writer Edgar Allan Poe from Istanbul to Buenos Aires, and eventually to the Edgar Allan Poe museum in Boston where he decides to enter a writing competition with a novel called Many and Many a Year Ago. This novel is, according to the author, “a literary thriller like my other novels,” but, “can also be regarded an ‘experimental mystery’ book,” as it, “also includes eight short stories that overlap with the novel's plot,” “told with an outlook similar to that of Scheherazade, the narrator of One Thousand and One Nights.” “It is part literature and part travel book, a little bit of Paul Auster and Bruce Chatwin,” he states, “what I tried to do was imagine what the life of a post-modern, well-off Poe would have been like.” “Now, I can only wonder what Americans, should they get the chance to read it, will think of my Turkish interpretation of this American master.”"
1409,The Mysterious Affair at Styles,crime," The novel is set in England during World War I at Styles Court, an Essex country manor (also the setting of Curtain, Poirot's last case). Upon her husband's death, the wealthy widow, Emily Cavendish, inherited a life estate in Styles as well as the outright inheritance of the larger part of the late Mr. Cavendish's income. Mrs. Cavendish became Mrs. Inglethorp upon her recent remarriage to a much younger man, Alfred Inglethorp. Emily's two stepsons, John and Lawrence Cavendish, as well as John's wife Mary and several other people, also live at Styles. John Cavendish is the vested remainderman of Styles; that is, the property will pass to him automatically upon his stepmother's decease, as per his late father's will. The income left to Mrs Inglethorp by her late husband would be distributed as per Mrs. Inglethorp's own will. Late one night, the residents of Styles wake to find Emily Inglethorp dying of what proves to be strychnine poisoning. Lieutenant Hastings, a houseguest, enlists the help of his friend Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the nearby village, Styles St. Mary. Poirot pieces together events surrounding the murder. On the day she was killed, Emily Inglethorp was overheard arguing with someone, most likely her husband, Alfred, or her stepson, John. Afterwards, she seemed quite distressed and, apparently, made a new will — which no one can find. She ate little at dinner and retired early to her room with her document case. The case was later forced open by someone and a document removed. Alfred Inglethorp left Styles earlier in the evening and stayed overnight in the nearby village, so was not present when the poisoning occurred. Nobody can explain how or when the strychnine was administered to Mrs. Inglethorp. At first, Alfred is the prime suspect. He has the most to gain financially from his wife's death, and, since he is so much younger than Emily was, the Cavendishes already suspect him as a fortune hunter. Evelyn Howard, Emily's companion, seems to hate him most of all. His behaviour, too, is suspicious; he openly purchased strychnine in the village before Emily was poisoned, and although he denies it, he refuses to provide an alibi. The police are keen to arrest him, but Poirot intervenes by proving he could not have purchased the poison. Scotland Yard police later arrest Emily Inglethorp’s oldest stepson, John Cavendish. He inherits under the terms of her will, and there is evidence to suggest he also had obtained poison. Poirot clears Cavendish by proving it was, after all, Alfred Inglethorp who committed the crime, assisted by Evelyn Howard, who turns out to be his kissing cousin, not his enemy. The guilty pair poisoned Emily by adding a precipitating agent, bromide (obtained from Mrs Inglethorp's sleeping powder), to her regular evening medicine, causing its normally innocuous strychnine constituents to sink to the bottom of the bottle where they were finally consumed in a single, lethal dose. Their plan had been for Alfred Inglethorp to incriminate himself with false evidence, which could then be refuted at his trial. Once acquitted, due to double jeopardy, he could not be tried for the crime a second time should any genuine evidence against him be subsequently discovered, hence prompting Poirot to keep him out of prison when he realized that Alfred wanted to be arrested."
1410,Mortal Causes,crime," Set during the Edinburgh Festival, this novel starts with a brutally executed corpse being discovered in Mary King's Close, an ancient subterranean street. The body has a tattoo identified with ""Sword and Shield"", a long-thought-defunct Scottish Nationalist group with links to sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The victim turns out to be the son of notorious gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and the plot moves towards the unthinkable prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a tourist-filled Edinburgh."
1411,The Club Dumas,crime," Lucas Corso, a mercenary book-dealer, specializes in acquiring rare and valuable editions for anonymous buyers and other book dealers. Corso visits the narrator, Boris Balkan, to get his opinion on the authenticity of a manuscript he has acquired, apparently a previously unknown The Three Musketeers chapter called The Anjou Wine. Corso then meets with the owner of the manuscript, his occasional friend and fellow bibliophile, Flavio La Ponte. La Ponte was given the manuscript by its previous owner, Enrique Taillefer, immediately prior to his suicide. Corso and La Ponte talk about eccentric book-collector Varo Borja. In Madrid, Corso visits the beautiful widow of Taillefer, Liana Taillefer, who is intelligent and manipulative. She seems curious about The Anjou Wine and skeptical that Corso's possession of the manuscript is legitimate. On his way out, Corso sees a sinister man with a scar driving a Jaguar. Corso goes to Toledo to visit the very successful Varo Borja, who shows him a very rare book called The Book of the Nine Doors, which purportedly contains a formula for summoning the devil. The author, Aristide Torchia, printed it in 1666 and was subsequently burned at the stake by the Inquisition, along with most of the copies of the book. Borja's book is one of only three remaining copies in existence. Borja believes that only one copy is legitimate, and the other two (including his own copy) are elaborate forgeries. After showing him his vast collection of occult books, Borja then gives Corso an odd but very lucrative assignment: find the other two copies of The Book of the Nine Doors, and compare them. All Corso's expenses will be paid, and Corso is to acquire the copy he determines to be the original, no matter the cost and by any means necessary. Corso does a bit of research, and the reader is treated to a history of Dumas' private life, and of the sinister character Rochefort from The Three Musketeers, whom Corso compares to the man with the scar. Corso visits Balkan again, this time in a cafe where Balkan is giving a lecture, and they discuss the villains in The Three Musketeers, including Rochefort, Milady, and Richelieu. Corso meets La Ponte again, and in a bit of self-reference, they playfully pretend they are characters in a mystery novel. Lucas Corso visits the Ceniza Brothers, experts in book restoration and probable world-class book forgers, and they discuss methods of book forgery. Liana Taillefer visits Corso in his hotel room and attempts to seduce him in return for ""The Anjou Wine""; he sleeps with her and sends her on her way without giving her the manuscript, making her an enemy for the rest of the story (this parallels D'Artagnan's liaison with Milady in The Three Musketeers). Corso takes a train to Lisbon and meets a young woman in her twenties with striking green eyes, who was also at the café listening to Balkan's lecture. A backpacker, she mysteriously identifies herself as ""Irene Adler"", the name of an antagonist in the Sherlock Holmes stories. They part in Lisbon as Corso visits the owner of a second copy of The Book of Nine Doors, Victor Fargas. Fargas is an aged and obsessive book collector who is the last of a prominent Sintra family. Now he lives alone in an empty mansion with no furniture, selling what is left of his famous library of rare antique books to pay for food and property taxes. Corso compares the two copies of The Book of Nine Doors and notices slight differences in a few of the illustrations. (Pérez-Reverte includes one set of all nine illustrations in the book.) While most plates are signed by Torchia, some of the variants feature the initials ""L.F."" in place of the artist's signature. On his way back to the village from Fargas' place, the man with the scar, whom Corso now refers to as ""Rochefort"", makes an appearance. After a brief appearance of ""the Girl"" (formerly known as Irene Adler), Corso meets a corrupt policeman named Amilcar Pinto to arrange a burglary of Fargas' home to acquire the book. That night the Girl calls Corso in his hotel with news that Fargas is dead. They visit Fargas' home, find The Book of Nine Doors has been burnt in the fireplace, and also find Fargas drowned in his own fountain. Corso and the girl then leave for Paris, the location of the third copy of the book. In Paris Corso meets with Achille Replinger, an antique book seller, who verifies the The Anjou Wine manuscript to be genuine and discourses on the history of Dumas' writing habits. As they walk they see La Ponte with Liana Taillefer. Corso returns to his hotel and meets with a concierge, Gruber, and asks him to find the hotel where Liana is staying. That night the Girl visits Corso in his room and they talk about Lucifer and the war in Heaven — at one point she implies that she is actually a witness to the events of the fall, possibly a fallen angel herself. The next day Corso visits Baroness Frida Ungern, a widow who controls the Ungern Foundation, which in turn owns the largest occult library in Europe, including the last copy of The Book of Nine Doors. Baroness Ungern and Corso flirt as they discuss the occult books she has written and the personal history of Torchia. The Girl calls Corso while he is in the library and alerts him to the presence of Rochefort outside. Baroness Ungern translates the captions of all the illustrations in The Book of Nine Doors for Corso, and Corso notes the differences in this third set of plates. Later Corso drinks in a restaurant and analyses the difference in the three sets of illustrations, discovering that the mismatched plates are the only ones signed ""L.F."" On the way back to his hotel he is assaulted by Rochefort, who is successfully repelled by the Girl. Corso takes the Girl back to the hotel and they make love. Gruber locates Liana Taillefer and his friend La Ponte, and Corso goes to their hotel and assaults La Ponte. Rochefort arrives and knocks Corso unconscious. Corso awakes to find that Borja's copy of the book is missing, along with The Anjou Wine. La Ponte realizes he has been used by Liana Taillefer so that she could obtain the Dumas manuscript. Soon afterward, they learn Baroness Ungern has been killed in a fire at her library. By assuming Liana is playing out her part as Milady and Rochefort as her henchman, Corso deduces Liana has escaped to Meung, a setting in The Three Musketeers. Corso, La Ponte, and the Girl confront Liana, who confirms she is indeed emulating Milady. Rochefort arrives and holds them at gunpoint. The unseen analog to Cardinal Richelieu summons Rochefort by phone, and Corso is taken to a castle appearing in The Three Musketeers. Richelieu's identity is revealed, and he describes the motives of Liana, Rochefort, and Liana's late husband Enrique. He then introduces Corso to The Club Dumas, a literary social group for very wealthy Dumas enthusiasts, who are all at the castle for an annual banquet. To Corso's chagrin, Richelieu knows nothing about the plot surrounding The Book of Nine Doors, as the two conspiracies are completely unrelated. Although invited to stay, Corso leaves the party confused. Corso, the Girl, and La Ponte drive back to Spain, where Corso knows he must confront Borja. On a hilltop overlooking Borja's mansion, the Girl explicitly tells Corso that she is a fallen angel who rebelled against God and has wandered the Earth ever since. Corso accepts this and his growing attachment to her. Corso arrives at Borja's home, realizing that his employer is the perpetrator behind the murders and arsons. Borja has apparently gone completely insane, having dismantled a great deal of his occult book collection in the name of ""research"", and so that none might follow after him, in an effort to summon the devil and ""gain knowledge."" Borja explains his methodology and the symbolism in the ritual before he executes it. The ritual goes awry, as one of the prints needed to properly complete it is a forgery made by the Ceniza Brothers. Borja appears to meet with an unhappy ending, each protagonist - Corso and Borja - getting the devil they deserve."
1412,"I, the Jury",crime," New York City, summer 1944. Although she runs a successful private psychiatric clinic on New York's Park Avenue, Dr. Charlotte Manning &mdash; young, beautiful, blonde, and well-to-do &mdash; cannot get enough. In order to increase her profit, she gets involved with a group of criminals &mdash; a ""syndicate"" &mdash; specialising in both prostitution and drug-trafficking. The brains of the ""outfit"" is Hal Kines, who has had plastic surgery so that he looks much younger than he really is, this being how he gets hold of the young women whom he then turns into prostitutes. Manning herself has a rich and ""ritzy"" clientele &mdash; people who would not want their addiction to become public knowledge. But instead of weaning them off drugs in her private and exclusive clinic, Manning makes them even more dependent on both the drug &mdash; heroin in most cases &mdash; and on herself by procuring the stuff herself. On the surface, Charlotte Manning keeps up appearances and leads a respectable life as a renowned psychiatrist. When Jack Williams, a former New York cop who has lost an arm in World War II saving his friend Mike Hammer's life, falls in love with Myrna Devlin, a young heroin addict whom he stops from jumping off a bridge to commit suicide, he asks Manning to admit her to her clinic for psychotherapy. After Myrna has become clean, she and Williams become engaged, and the couple keep up a casual friendship with Charlotte Manning. This is how Williams's growing suspicions about Manning's business lead him to privately and secretly investigate even further into the matter. When he realizes that Hal Kines, one of Manning's college students who has spent some time at her clinic and who has become one of her casual acquaintances, is in fact a criminal, he wants to talk to her about it and tells her so. When, at a party given by Williams in his apartment, Charlotte Manning sees some old college yearbooks whose contents (and photos), if made public, would expose Kines's double life, she has to act fast. After the party, she goes home but on the same night, undetected by Kathy, her maid, goes back to Williams's apartment (Myrna, his fiancée, does not live there) and shoots him in the stomach using a silencer. She does so in a particularly sadistic way, watching him die slowly. Then she takes the college yearbooks and leaves. None of the guests at Williams's party has a watertight alibi, but to both Pat Chambers, the cop investigating the murder, and Mike Hammer, a friend of his and private investigator, none of them has a motive either. Throughout the book, as more and more immediate suspects are eliminated (shot) (""If this kept up there wouldn't be anyone left at all.""), Hammer briefly ponders the question if the killer could be an ""outsider"" &mdash; someone wholly unrelated to the group of people who have been at Williams's party, for example someone Williams was after in his capacity as investigator for an insurance company. Chambers also thinks along similar lines: Williams's (secret) connection with Myrna's former drug dealers might have cost him his life. But they soon abandon that theory. When Mike Hammer sees Williams's body (""For the first time in my life I felt like crying""), he makes a solemn vow: He promises that he will find the murderer and execute him himself, avoiding the U.S. judicial system altogether. He says that if he left it to the courts to punish the perpetrator, some clever lawyer would surely achieve an acquittal and the murderer would get away with his crime. This is why he himself will be the jury &ndash; and the judge, for that matter. Throughout their basically separate investigations, Hammer and Chambers work closely together, exchanging information and evidence. But each of them hopes he will be the one to find the killer in the end. The immediate suspects Hammer finds himself confronted with are: * Esther and Mary Bellemy, identical twins in their late twenties living in a New York apartment hotel, rather attractive women of independent means, with a large estate somewhere in the country. Both are unmarried and obviously looking for husbands. Later, Hammer finds out &mdash; through first-hand experience &mdash; that Mary Bellemy is a nymphomaniac. Esther Bellemy, whom he never gets to know intimately, is no virgin either, but much more reserved than her sister Mary, with whom Hammer actually has sex on two separate occasions. * George Kalecki, whom Hammer knows to have been a crook &mdash; a bootlegger, to be precise &mdash; but who has obviously achieved a clean record and who now appears to be Hal Kines's paternal friend, paying for the latter's tuition and giving him food and lodging. (In fact it is the other way round: Hal Kines, the ""big shot"" and the brains of the syndicate, has a hold on Kalecki: Hidden away in the vaults of some bank he has documents proving that Kalecki is a killer on the loose.) * Hal Kines, who poses as a student of medicine but who is in fact the head of a criminal organisation specializing in prostitution and drug-dealing. His very sophisticated &mdash; and complicated &mdash; way of procuring willing women for his ""outfit"" can only be understood if one considers the morally repressed society of the late 1940s: Again and again, he assumes the role of John Hanson, a student in some provincial college (for example in the Midwest), pretends falling in love with a female student, makes her pregnant, forces her to have an illegal abortion, and then deserts her. By now the girl's life has been ruined, she has been ostracized by both her family and most likely all her friends and acquaintances. Then a car arrives, picks up the desperate young woman and drives her straight to one of the New York ""call houses"" operated by his syndicate. Once there, there is no way for her to escape. * Charlotte Manning, with whom Hammer falls in love and who, as far as he can see, has no motive whatsoever to kill Williams. Hammer, the first person narrator of the story, describes her as ""radiating sex in every manner and gesture"" (""Mary [Bellemy] only had sex. Charlotte had that plus a lot more.""). Charlotte confesses her love for him, and he says that he has never been in love before. Soon they talk about getting married. Hammer has always admired her ""golden hair""; but not before the very end, when she strips, does he find out that Charlotte is a ""real blonde"". In the course of the action Charlotte Manning kills five people: After committing her first murder, she has to cover up her tracks and murder anyone who might be able to expose her. As Hammer admits, she has an unusual amount of luck helping her to do all that. * Myrna Devlin, a former ""dope fiend"" who, as it turns out, does not play any important role in the plot at all except that of one of the victims: At the Bellemys' party (towards the end of the book), Myrna, alone in an upstairs room where most of the guests have left their coats, tries on Charlotte Manning's coat and discovers heroin in one of its pockets. This is the reason why Manning has to shoot her, too. It takes Hammer and Chambers a long time to figure out what is going on. Manning continues to kill those who have become dangerous for her. At the same time, her relationship with Hammer deepens. We see everything through Hammer's eyes, and for a long time he is completely blind to the facts (""I hope you get him,' she said sincerely.""). During a walk through Central Park, while Manning is baby-sitting for one of her friends, she and Hammer are shot at. The sniper is Kalecki, but it does not become clear until later that he was after Manning. He misses. On a Saturday morning, Hammer picks up Myrna Devlin and gives her a lift. They drive to the Bellemy twins' estate in the country for a gigantic all-day party there. Charlotte Manning says she has some business to attend to and will be there in time for a tennis game due to take place that evening. After an unsuccessful attempt at playing tennis himself, Hammer gets rid of his sleep deficit by spending all day in his room, fast asleep, with ""old junior"" &mdash; his gun &mdash; close to him. He is woken up just in time for dinner, during which Harmon Wilder, the Bellemys' lawyer, and Charles Sherman, Wilder's assistant, are pointed out to him. This is a fine &mdash; and the final &mdash; distractor in the novel: Wilder and Sherman are suddenly missing from the party after Myrna Devlin has been found shot. In fact they had illicit drugs on them and did not want to be found out. During the tennis game, Mary Bellemy asks Charlotte if she can ""borrow"" Hammer. Then she leads him into the woods where they have sex. They return to the party just as a maid discovers Myrna's body in an upstairs room, in front of a large mirror. Both Pat Chambers and the police are called in, and the alibis of each guest is checked. Again Charlotte can convince everyone that she could not have done anything. Back home, Hammer retreats into his apartment to think. Finally, he knows the identity of the killer. This is when he goes to Charlotte's place, recapitulates the whole crime and finally shoots her dead, despite her efforts to pull the trigger on him."
1413,Vengeance Is Mine!,crime," Mike Hammer wakes up being questioned by the police in the same hotel room as the body of an old friend from World War II. His friend, Chester Wheeler, has apparently committed suicide with Hammer's own gun after they had been drinking all night. As it is not considered murder, Hammer is not under suspicion but the District Attorney takes the opportunity to revoke his Private Investigator and Gun licences. Considering the evidence, Wheeler had no motive to commit suicide and two bullets are missing from his gun with only one in his friend's body, Hammer does not believe that it was really a suicide and proceeds to investigate. During the investigation he finds a formerly small time criminal and a modelling agency are involved in a large blackmailing scheme that seems to include many rich and powerful people across New York. Parts of the investigation are carried out by Hammer's secretary, Velda, who has her own Private Investigator licence. This novel features the first time she shoots and kills someone."
1414,The Little Walls,crime," The novel tells the story of Phillip Turner who refuses to believe that his brother’s death was suicide. He sets out to find out how his brother Grevil, an eminent archaeologist, came to be found dead in an Amsterdam canal. The official investigation is led by Inspector J.J. Tholen."
1415,The Chimney-sweeper's Boy,crime," When successful author Gerald Candless dies of a sudden heart attack, his eldest daughter Sarah is approached by her father's publisher with a view to writing a biography about his life. Sarah embarks on the memoir but soon discovers that her perfect father was not all he appeared to be, and that in fact he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. Candless's neglected wife Ursula gradually regains her self-confidence and begins a new relationship as she realises that the unhappiness of her marriage was due, not to her own shortcomings, but to her husband's latent homosexuality — indeed the reason itself as to why her husband became 'Gerald Candless' in the first place."
1416,The Stingray Shuffle,crime," Sales of The Stingray Shuffle, a good novel by good novelist Ralph Krunkleton, have soared recently. The book's publishers, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, mount a publicity blitz culminating in a train journey with the author from New York to Miami. What they do not realize is that no one is reading the book; dealers are using a bookstore as a front, hollowing out copies of Shuffle to hide drugs. Meanwhile, Serge A. Storms and pothead pal Lenny Lipowicz resume their pursuit of $5 million worth of insurance fraud payout. Thrown into the mix are Johnny Vegas the accidental virgin, Paul the passive-aggressive private eye, Ernest Hemingway lookalike Jethro Maddox, and the world's least competent drug cartel. Most of these characters find their way onto the Stingray Shuffle, the temporarily-rechristened train to Miami. The Stingray Shuffle ties up a three-book plot arc that began with Florida Roadkill, continued with Hammerhead Ranch Motel, and was then shelved for two years while Dorsey wrote the only slightly relative Triggerfish Twist and Orange Crush. It is ultimately revealed that Serge's plan for the money is to buy a trip into space (and a monogrammed spacesuit) from the Russians."
1417,Peril at End House,crime," Detective Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings are holidaying when they meet a young girl, who casually mentions that she has escaped certain death at least thrice. Poirot suspects that somebody is out to get her, and his suspicions prove true. He finds many characters that are shady and may have some reason to kill the girl. Despite Poirot's best efforts, a murder does occur, but not of the intended victim. When the motive itself is unclear, why did the murder take place?"
1418,The Crocodile Bird,crime," When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus or a train, has never played with a child of her own age. She has almost no knowledge of a world described by her mother as evil and destructive. Their strange, enclosed life together is over because Eve has killed a man. And he is not the first. With £100 in cash, Liza is cast adrift. However, she is not alone. There is one particular secret she has kept from her mother - her love affair with a young man who worked in the big house. With him, gradually Liza learns about the world, about herself, and must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence of her mother may be present in her."
1419,9 Dragons,crime," Bosch and his partner Ignacio Ferras are called to investigate a murder at Fortune Liquors (which Bosch had visited during the race riots at the end of Angels Flight), located in the L.A. ghetto. The owner, Mr. Li, has been murdered, leaving behind a grieving widow who did not speak English and two children: a daughter Mia, who looked after her parents, and a son Robert, who ran the second Fortune Liquors store in an upscale area. The wife had found her husband's body, and the Asian Gangs Unit has been called, which leads to Asian-American Detective David Chu, who is fluent in several Chinese dialects, joining the investigation. Although the killer took the day's security camera disk, Bosch watches two saved disks from previous dates and finds that the owner made a $216 weekly payoff to a triad every week at about the time he was murdered. Chu locates the bagman for the triad, and he and Bosch arrest him just as he is about to flee to Hong Kong. The arrest is made on a Friday, so that the man can be held without bail until Monday morning. The victim had swallowed one of the casings ejected by the shooter's gun, and Bosch requests the forensics lab to run a special, experimental test on the brass casing to reveal any latent fingerprints. However, at that point, Bosch receives a phone threat and then a video message from his daughter Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong and whom he only sees twice a year. The message simply shows her held in a hotel room, kidnapped. His ex-wife Eleanor called the Hong Kong police, who told her that Maddie was probably a runaway and to call back Monday if she hadn't returned by then. Bosch flies from L.A. to Hong Kong Friday night/Saturday, and then plans to spend Sunday looking for Maddie, while flying back Sunday night to get in the office on Monday morning (due to the time differentials). Eleanor agrees to meet him at the airport. Eleanor, who is a star attraction at a Macau casino, has a personal security guard, Sun Yee, whom Harry learns is also her boyfriend. Although Hong Kong has strict gun control, Sun Yee arranges to get Harry a gun. A video technician at the L.A.P.D. traced the image of Maddy's kidnapping to a particular section of Kowloon, and Harry, Eleanor and Sun Yee follow the trail to a high-rise multi-ethnic flophouse (a likely referral to Chungking Mansions), which Eleanor refers to as a ""post-modern Casablanca, all in one building."" To get access to the room in which Maddie was being held, Harry recklessly overpays, despite Sun Yee's cautioning. On the elevator up, Harry and Eleanor are separated from Sun Yee, and Harry crashes into the room without waiting for him. They find evidence that Maddie had been blood typed there, which would be done only if her kidnapping were part of China's black market in organ trading. Upon leaving the room, Harry and Eleanor are approached by two armed men, and in the subsequent shoot-out, the men and Eleanor are all killed. Sun Yee informs Harry that the killers are not triad but were robbers out to steal the money that Harry showed at the desk. Harry then thrashes the desk clerk and takes his records of room rentals, managing to escape just ahead of the police. The room rental was done by ""Quick"", the older brother of one of Maddie's friends. He lived in Tuen Mun in the New Territories, according to the records, but Harry and Sun Yee find only three dead bodies—Quick, his sister and their mother—in his apartment, as well as Maddie's cell phone. The cell phone had been used to make one call to a Tuen Mun number before it was damaged, and Harry calls Chu back in L.A. to trace the number. Harry and Sun Yee launch their own attempt to track down the kidnappers and succeed in luring them into a meeting, then follow their car upon leaving. Chu manages to trace the phone call number to a triad-connected business called Northstar, and the kidnappers' car is headed in the same direction. Just before arriving at the business, the car turns, but Harry and Sun Yee continue to Northstar, where they find a guarded cargo ship. Subsequently, the car also arrives there. Figuring that Maddie was on board the ship, Harry charges it under cover and kills the kidnappers. Although Maddie is not on the boat, he finds Maddie in the trunk of the car. With Eleanor deceased, Harry takes Maddie back to L.A. Upon his arrival, Harry learns that nothing has happened in the Fortune Liquors case, in part because Ferras did not work over the weekend, and Harry tells Ferras that he will request a new partner. The bagman is released on bail and flees the U.S. Hong Kong police arrive with a demand for Bosch's extradition, and they have a confession signed by Sun Yee that has a number of inaccuracies in it, which makes it obvious to Bosch that Sun Yee is not cooperating and may have been tortured. Bosch comes to the meeting with them accompanied by his lawyer (and half-brother) Mickey Haller, who threatens to turn this into a front-page story about the dangers faced by Americans in Hong Kong, especially since the Hong Kong police were called about Maddie's kidnapping but refused to help. The Hong Kong police leave without pursuing charges and also agree to release Sun Yee. At the same time, the experimental test produces a fingerprint on the casing—but the fingerprint belongs to Hollywood screenwriter Henry Lau, not the triad bagman. When Bosch and Chu visit him, they find the gun used for the murder, which he keeps in his home. He tells them that he was in a script meeting the entire day of the shooting (and in a nod to Hollywood by Connelly, when asked who could vouch for him, Lau name-drops actor Matthew McConaughey, who portrays Haller in the film adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer). While escorting Lau out of the house, Bosch notices Lau's framed college diploma on the wall, from the same university and graduation year as the one hanging in Robert Li's office. Lau reveals that he and Robert were roommates in college, along with Li's assistant manager Eugene Lam, and that the threesome plays cards at Lau's house each week. Bosch and Chu arrest Lam, whom they believe to be the killer, while leaving Ferras to follow Robert Li. Lam reveals that the entire murder was a plot concocted by Mia to relieve her of the burden of her parents; Robert had come up with the idea of disguising it as a triad killing. When Bosch and Chu inform Ferras, he decides to single-handedly arrest Robert Li as an act of defiance against Bosch—but he is killed by Mia during the arrest. Mia then commits suicide. After Ferras' funeral, Maddie confesses to Harry that the ""kidnapping"" was originally a fake that she planned, to get her mother to agree to let her live with Harry. However, when presented with the opportunity, Quick turned it into a real kidnapping, making the deal with the triad from which Harry saved her. Maddie blames herself for the deaths, especially her mother, that followed. Harry consoles her, promising to show her how they can make up for their mistakes."
1420,Ripley Under Water,crime," Having now mostly retired from his life of crime, Tom Ripley spends his days tending his garden and playing the harpsichord at his French home near Fontainbleau which he shares with his wife, Heloise. However, the calm and serenity of his life is shattered when obnoxious American David Pritchard arrives on the scene with his submissive, pathetically dysfunctional wife Janice. Pritchard is a decidedly eccentric stalker and heckler who has delved into Ripley's nefarious past. His current obsession is the disappearance of Thomas Murchison, an art collector whom Ripley murdered in Ripley Under Ground when he threatened to blow the lid off Ripley's art forgery scheme. Pritchard initially harasses Ripley by talking about his knowledge of the suspicious death of Dickie Greenleaf (who Ripley murdered in The Talented Mr. Ripley), photographing his house and following him on a trip to Tangier. While in Tangier, Ripley gets into a fight with Pritchard in a bar. Upon returning to France, Pritchard becomes a serious threat when he starts dragging local canals for Murchison's corpse and finally locates it. Pritchard dumps the skeletonized remains on Ripley's doorstep and then calls the police. Ripley finds and stashes the headless body before they arrive. That night, Ripley takes the remains to the Pritchards' temporary home nearby and dumps it in the pond outside. The Pritchards hear the splash and come out to investigate. They subsequently fall in while trying to hook the body with a garden tool. Both are apparently unable to swim and perish together in a mere two meters of water and muck. Police investigate but come up empty-handed. Ripley safely disposes of the last piece of evidence connecting him with Murchison, and the final installment of the Ripliad comes to a close."
1421,The Abominable Man,crime," A senior policeman known for brutality is violently knifed while in his hospital bed. Within a 24 hour period, Martin Beck searches through the policeman's many enemies for the killer, for whom the murder was only a precursor to a Charles Whitman-style attack on Stockholm."
1422,Traitor's Purse,crime," A man wakes in hospital to find he cannot remember anything except that he has something vital to do, connected to the number fifteen. He hears voices outside discussing the unconscious patient - who they say has killed a policeman and will be hanged. He escapes in a stolen car. He is followed, but instead of the police, the car contains a woman who seems to be helping him. She calls him Campion. Also in the car is an old man, Mr Anscombe, who they drop off at his house before continuing to Lee Aubrey's house, where they are staying. Campion remembers that the woman is called Amanda and thinks she must be his wife, so he is shocked when she tells him she wants to break off their engagement. He does not tell her about his amnesia. Campion receives a letter from Stanislaus Oates telling him to investigage Anscombe - but then Superintendent Hutch arrives and tells them that Anscombe is dead. He takes Campion, the last person to see Anscombe alive, to see the body. Pyne, who had just arrived to visit Aubrey, accompanies them - Campion guesses he must be an old friend and talks to him accordingly but then finds out they only met three days before. Amanda tells Campion that she is falling in love with Lee Aubrey. Then Hutch takes Campion to Bridge, where he smuggles him into the Council Chamber, the headquarters of the Masters of Bridge, built into caves in a hill overlooking the town. Campion finds an agenda for a meeting which mentions Minute Fifteen, and Anscombe's intended retirement. Exploring further, he finds a vast cavern filled with hundreds of trucks. Next day, Aubrey takes Campion for a tour of the Institute. They meet Mrs Ericson, whose volunteer workers are housed in the Institute grounds - she is clearly infatuated with Aubrey. They also see a researcher who is developing a new, very powerful explosive. Pyne tips Hutch off that Campion might be an impostor. Hutch asks Campion questions to prove his identity, but his mind is blank. He hits Hutch, knocking him out, and drives to Coachingford, the main town in the area. Acting automatically, he goes to a newsagent's shop. In a back room he meets Lugg, who he does not recognise. Campion tells Lugg about his memory loss and Lugg patches up his injuries - and shows him the basket full of pound notes which he left on his last visit. Then a man with a gun arrives and offers Campion cash to leave town - he runs when he realises it is the real Campion, not a fake. Lugg recognises him as one of many professional criminals who have arrived in town. Amanda summons Campion to a hotel where he meets Miss Anscombe. She gives Campion her brother's diary, and tells him she believes he was smuggling contraband in the caves under the hill. The hotel is surrounded by both police and criminals, so Campion escapes over the roofs and catches a train to London where he meets Sir Henry Bull. He tells Campion that Minute Fifteen is a war loan, details of which are going to be mailed to every taxpayer in the country. Campion rushes back to Coachingford - he now knows that Pyne must be working with the criminals and believes he is responsible for Anscombe's murder. But as he gets off the train, he is arrested. Trying to get away from the police station, he is knocked out again. Waking up he has forgotten what happened since his original injury but remembers everything before. He is investigating counterfeit currency being given away to crooks and vagrants. Amanda arrives and he finally puts the two halves of the story together - the trucks are going to be used to distribute vast amounts of forged currency to cause economic crisis. He is left waiting in the police station until Hutch, with a broken jaw, arrives from speaking to Oates, who has been in hospital, unconscious and under guard - he was the prisoner that Campion heard being discussed when he first woke up. When Campion gets to the cave, the trucks are already leaving. He uses the experimental explosive from the Institute to blow them up, killing Pyne and many of his criminal employees. In the debris he finds letters showing that the cash was going to be posted out to poor people disguised as a social security payment - the vast number of envelopes would have been disguised by the letters about the war loan going out on the same day. Campion and Hutch realise Pyne could not have carried out the plan by himself. The mastermind turns out to be Lee Aubrey, who admits what he has done - his idea was to bring down the government and install himself in its place. Amanda and Campion talk - it turns out that Aubrey lost interest once he thought he had made her fall in love with him. They decide to get married the next day."
1423,A Grave Talent,crime," The strangulation of four children in the vicinity of San Francisco leads the police force to appoint inspectors Al Hawkin and Kate (""Casey"") Martinelli to discover the criminal. Suspicion falls on renowned artist Vaun Adams, convicted of murdering a young girl years before. When someone attempts to murder Vaun herself, the police are forced to conclude that someone else must be behind the murders, and they discover that Vaun's ex-boyfriend, maniacally egotistical Andy Lewis, must be the perpetrator. Hawkin convinces a reluctant Kate to set the trap for Lewis in her home by letting Vaun recover there. He arrives and declares that he will kill Kate and her lover Lee and leave Vaun to take the blame. Lee alerts the police to his presence, but the sniper who kills Lewis does not do so in time to prevent him from shooting and permanently disabling her."
1424,Angels Flight: A Harry Bosch Novel,crime, Detective Bosch finds himself yet again in charge of a case that no one else will touch. This time his job is to nail the killer of hot shot black lawyer Howard Elias. Elias has been found murdered on the eve of going to court on behalf of Michael Harris: a man the LAPD believes guilty of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. Elias had let it be known that the aim of his civil case was not only to reveal the real killer but to target and bring down the racist cops who beat up his client during a violent interrogation. Bosch is going to have to take a long hard look at some of his colleagues in a post-Rodney King Los Angeles Police Department that is rife with suspicion and racial hatred. fr:L'Envol des anges it:Il ragno (romanzo) sv:Fallen ängel (1999)
1425,The Chinaman,crime," In January 2006 the police make the gruesome discovery of the bodies of 19 people who have been brutally murdered in the remote hamlet of Hesjövallen in northern Sweden. The protagonist Birgitta Roslin, a district judge from Helsingborg, realises she has a family connection with some of the victims. Roslin's curiosity is raised by clues found at the scene and leads her to unofficially investigate the massacre. The narrative also chronicles the lives of several characters living during the mid-19th century in China and the United States, whose experiences are somehow also connected to the mass killings. As the plot unfolds, extending across four continents, Roslin unintentionally becomes embroiled in a web of international corruption and political intrigue."
1426,Trace,crime," Dr. Kay Scarpetta, having left Richmond, Virginia five years ago to become a freelancer, is asked to return at the request of her replacement, Chief Medical Examiner Joel Marcus. A young girl has been murdered, but very few clues are available. In parallel her niece Lucy is investigating an attack on her companion Henri. Henri has been sent for analysis and safe keeping to stay with Benton Wesley, Scarpetta's partner. Scarpetta's investigations are hampered by Marcus's ineptness and the disarray of her former lab."
1427,Hide My Eyes,crime," An old country bus parks in London's Theatreland on a rainy night, and a murder ensues. Superintendent Charles Luke has his theories but it is not until he calls in Albert Campion for advice that they begin to come together. How do the museum of curios and the giant scrapyard in the East End link with the smooth Lagonda driver with his well-arranged alibis ?"
1428,The Skull Beneath the Skin,crime," Cordelia Gray is engaged by Sir George Ralston, a baronet and World War II hero, to accompany his wife, the acclaimed actress Clarissa Lisle, for a weekend at Courcy Castle on the island of the same name on the Dorset coast. Clarissa has been receiving thinly veiled death threats in form of quotations from plays where she played the main role. Shortly before the performance of The Duchess of Malfi, Clarissa is brutally murdered, leaving Cordelia and the Dorset CID to deal with solving the crime."
1429,Native Tongue,crime," Joe Winder is a journalism dropout employed to compose press releases for the Amazing Kingdom, a Florida based theme park that aspires to achieve the greatness of Disney World. The park is owned by a former “wise guy” whose court testimony forced him to seek refuge in the Federal Witness Protection Program. A new identity and a change of venue, however, did nothing to alter the morals of Francis X. Kingsbury. He thinks nothing of faking wildlife exhibits, destroying the fragile environment of the Florida Keys, or using lethal means to protect his nefarious schemes from public exposure. When an equally amoral environmentalist resolves to thwart Kingsbury’s designs. Winder comes out of retirement as an investigative reporter to attempt to rescue the last of a near-extict species. He finds himself in alliance with an ex-governor seeking absolution in the life of a hermit, law enforcement officials with a peculiar sense of justice, two of the most bumbling burglars ever to circumvent an alarm system, and an incredibly bloodthirsty senior citizen. This motley group, with the assistance of a contract killer sent by the mob to eliminate Kingsbury, put paid to those who would damage the environment and subvert the democratic process."
1430,The Water's Lovely,crime," Ismay Sealand believes that her younger sister, Heather, murdered their stepfather Guy when they were teenagers. Ismay and her mother, Beatrix, returned from shopping for a new school uniform to find Guy drowned in his bath. Although both Ismay and her mother believe Heather drowned Guy - who was weak from a virus - they covered it up from the police. Ismay thinks Heather murdered Guy because he made sexual advances to her, Ismay, and Heather wished to protect her. In fact Ismay encouraged Guy's interest and hoped he would come to her bedroom and have sex with her. Now in their twenties, Ismay and Heather live in the same house, which has been divided into two flats. They live together in one, and their mother, who is emotionally traumatised and living in a world of her own lives with her sister Pamela in the other. They all remain haunted by what happened all those years ago. Ismay is desperately in love with Andrew Campbell-Sedge, who looks very like her dead stepfather, and who does not get on with Heather. Meanwhile, Edmund Litton's mother, Irene, tries to set him up with Marion Melville, a thin darting woman who has befriended a number of elderly people in the area. Horrified by this idea Edmund sets up a date with a woman who works in the catering department of the hospice where he works, Heather Sealand. Their date is more successful than expected and the two begin to fall in love. This causes a rift with Edmund's mother, especially when Edmund goes to stay overnight at Heather's flat. Ismay worries whether or not she should tell Edmund about Heather's past and, eventually, makes a tape telling him what she thinks happened when Guy drowned. She hides it in a box which formally contained the cassette 'Rainy Season Ragas' and puts it out of sight. Edmund and Heather's relationship causes another rift; this time between Ismay and Andrew. Andrew cannot stand Heather and Edmund being in ""our flat"". Andrew has a row with Edmund during which Edmund confronts Andrew with his knowledge of Andrew's infidelity. Afterwards Andrew splits up with Ismay and Edmund never again enters the flat. Edmund proposes to Heather and they become engaged and begin seeking a flat, staying with Irene in the meantime. Marion takes advantage of Irene's dislike of Heather and spends a lot of time with her, hoping to be included in her will. Marion has morphine sulphate in her bathroom cabinet and hopes to use it on one of her elderly ""friends"". Irene invites Marion for Christmas, and Marion meets Avice, an elderly lady who frets about leaving her rabbits at home alone. Marion is soon rabbit-sitting for Avice regularly. Fowler, Marion's homeless brother, sometimes visits her flat for a meal, drink or a bed for the night. On one visit he takes the strongest thing her can find from her bathroom cupboard. Edmund and Heather are married, and after a scene with Irene at the wedding, move out to a rented flat whilst they wait to complete the sale on a flat of their own. Ismay decides to destroy the recording she made for Edmund regarding Guy's death and puts it into her handbag in order to throw it away somewhere in London. Ismay is distraught, wandering around the places she and Andrew went at all hours of the night, she is also drinking heavily. She even confronts Andrew and his new flame, socialite Eva Simber and then has her bag stolen on the tube; the bag containing the tape she made for Edmund. Heather, convinced that Andrew would return to Ismay without the presence of Eva, begins to contact the young woman regularly, asking her to leave Andrew. Eva refuses to do so, although she speaks to Heather on the phone quite often all the same. Marion tries to kill Avice Conroy with her morphine, but discovers Fowler's robbery when Avice says her food tastes like cough mixture. She instead turns her attentions to Irene's neighbour, Barry Fenix, a retired 'civil servant' who loves all things relating to India. Eva Simber goes for her daily run and is murdered. Ismay discovers Heather had been in contact with her and thinks that Heather has killed Eva in order that Andrew would return to her. Ismay sits with Beatrix quite a lot whilst Pamela goes out with a man she has met on 'romance walks'. Although he will not spend any money to take her out and she does not much like his character, Pamela fancies him enough to become his lover. Marion tells Fowler that she is to become engaged and he leaves her an engagement present of a Marc Jacobs handbag he found in a West End bin and its contents, which include a tape, 'Rainy Season Ragas'. Pamela decides to end things with her lover, but when she does he becomes violent and beats her up and pushes her down the stairs of his flat. She is taken to hospital and Edmund and Heather move in with Beatrix to care for her. Ismay comes home from work to discover Andrew inside her flat, he has returned to her. She hides the fact that Edmund and Heather are currently living upstairs with her mother and the two are reconciled. Marion listens to the tape to see if it is suitable to play to Barry on a romantic evening and discovers what Ismay has said on it. She decides to blackmail Ismay, who is desperate to keep the tape's contents a secret from Andrew, who has decided to move in with her. Marion extorts several hundred pounds from Ismay and becomes engaged to Barry. When Marion boasts that she shall shortly be 'Mrs Barry Fenix', Ismay remembers the name in connection to Guy's death - Barry was the officer who led the investigation all those years ago. She tells Marion to stop the blackmail or she will tell Barry what she has been up to. Marion gives up her blackmail and she and Barry are married shortly after. Fowler blackmails Marion into giving him her flat. Following a teenager's arrest for the murder of Eva Simber, Ismay confronts Heather and asks her whether she killed Eva and Guy. Heather is shocked that Ismay could think she killed Eva but admits to killing Guy, not to protect Ismay but because he was sexually abusing her, Heather. Heather tells Ismay that Guy was no longer interested in pursuing her because she was 'obviously interested' in him and that Guy wanted someone who didn't want him, so he turned his attentions to Heather. Guy got into the bath that day and asked Heather to join him in the bubbles, saying ""the water's lovely"". Heather also tells Edmund of the murder she committed as a thirteen-year-old and he is deeply saddened by the information. The two head off for a belated honeymoon. Pamela is reconciled with a Michael, a former fiancé who left her after Guy's death, and the two plan to move in together and have Beatrix living with them. Ismay and Andrew get engaged and start looking for a shared home, too. On Boxing Day an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggers a tsunami in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. Fearing for Heather and Edmund, who are honeymooning in Sumatra in Indonesia, Ismay asks Andrew to ring a friend who is a diplomat. There is a news report that four British citizens have been killed in a tsunami, but no names can be released until the next of kin have been informed. The next of kin are Heather's mother and Edmund's mother."
1431,To the Nines,crime," Stephanie Plum, bounty-hunter. She's got all the normal concerns in life: the rent, her family, men; yet all of her concerns are topped by the minor fact that someone is usually trying to kill her. The title appears to come from the common phrase, 'dressed to the nines'. ""My name is Stephanie Plum and I was born and raised in the Chambersburg section of Trenton, where the top male activities are scarfing pastries and pork rinds and growing love handles."" Stephanie is a bounty hunter and amateur detective, who with a combination of luck and intuition usually gets the job done (though often by accident). Samuel Singh, an immigrant in New Jersey on a work visa, has been released on a visa bond by Stephanie's cousin and boss, Vinnie. When Singh goes missing, Vinnie is on the hook for the highly-publicized bond. Stephanie goes on the hunt to find him. She starts with TriBro, Singh's workplace, owned by three brothers, Andrew, Bart and Clyde Cone. While Andrew is helpful and Clyde is very enthusiastic about the case, Bart Cone gives Stephanie the creeps. In some background checks it turns up that Bart Cone was a suspect in the murder of Lillian Paressi, which only goes to further her suspicions. Meanwhile, Stephanie has been getting some unwanted attention in the form of white carnations, red roses and some rather creepy emails. She only gets more nervous when a number of deaths that have some tentative connections to the Paressi murder also have the flowers present. Before long, a tip-off leads Stephanie, along with her side-kick Lula and Connie Rossoli, out of the Burg and onto the glitzy streets of Las Vegas. The discovery of Singh's body at the airport and a series of unfortunate encounters with several of Ranger's operatives sends her back to Trenton, where Plum finally gets the answers she's been seeking. After an intense final showdown with the Roses and Carnations killer, Stephanie saves the day yet again. Stephanie's new niece, her older sister Valerie's daughter with Albert Kloughn, is born. She is named Lisa."
1432,Red Square,crime," As the existing social and economic structures of the Soviet Union break down, Arkady Renko has been reinstated as an Investigator in the Moscow Militsiya (Police Force). He is trying to clear up a nest of illicit traders when his chief informant dies in a horrific fireball. At the late informer's flat, his fax machine keeps asking the apparently meaningless question, ""Where is Red Square?"" The question does not pertain to a location but to an avant-garde painting by suprematist painter Malevich which has resurfaced on the black market after being lost since World War II. The story, however, reverts to the August Coup, which takes place in and around Red Square and indeed throughout Moscow in August 1991, leading to the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union. One of the subplots within this novel involves Arkady Renko's improbable reunion with the one great love of his life, Irina Asanova. Her seemingly total disinterest in Arkady sends him resignedly on his way until, in an ultimate ironic twist, a belatedly-delivered message from Renko's recently deceased father galvanizes him into one last, determined attempt at winning Irina back. <gallery> Image:Redsquarenight.jpg|The Red Square in Moscow Image:Red Square. Visual Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions.jpg|Rotes Viereck (Red Square, Malevich, 1913), the source of the book's name. </gallery>"
1433,The Apprentice,crime," When Rizzoli investigates a murder where cutting techniques similar to those of imprisoned Warren Hoyt but involving necrophilia (as determined by medical examiner Maura Isles), she is called by FBI Agent Gabriel Dean to Washington, D.C. Dean shows her a list of similar crimes committed in Bosnia, and terms the suspect ""The Dominator"". Hoyt escapes from prison after reading about ""The Dominator's"" murders which copy many of his techniques, and plots with him to trap Rizzoli. Eventually, ""The Dominator"" kidnaps Rizzoli as she returns to Boston, and takes her into the countryside. While trying to kill Rizzoli, Rizzoli fights back and kills ""The Dominator"" and severely wounds Hoyt, making him a quadriplegic. Rizzoli then takes a long-overdue vacation, claiming sick-time, with Dean."
1434,A Study in Scarlet,crime," The story begins in 1881, where Dr. John Watson runs into an old friend, Stamford. Due to a shoulder injury sustained in the Anglo-Afghan War, Watson was forced to retire and is now looking for a place to live. Stamford mentions that an acquaintance of his, one Sherlock Holmes, is looking for someone to split the rent at a flat at 221B, Baker Street, but cautions about Holmes' eccentricities. Stamford takes Watson to the local hospital's lab where they find Holmes experimenting with a reagent for haemoglobin detection. Holmes explains its probable, inestimable usefulness in convicting criminals based on bloodstains. Then, upon shaking Watson's hand, deduces that the Dr. has seen military action but waves off the question of how he knows. Watson brooches the subject of their mutual flat-mate search. At Holmes' prompting, the two review their various shortcomings to make sure that they can accept living together. After seeing the rooms at 221B, they move in and grow accustomed to their new situation. Watson is amazed by Holmes, who has profound knowledge of chemistry and sensational literature, very precise but narrow knowledge of geology and botany; yet knows little about literature, astronomy, philosophy, and politics. Holmes also has multiple guests visiting him at different intervals during the day. After much speculation by Watson, Holmes reveals that he is a ""consulting detective"" and that the guests are clients. Facing Watson's doubts about some of his claims, Holmes casually deduces to Watson that one visitor, a messenger from Scotland Yard is also a retired Marine sergeant. When the man confirms this, Watson is astounded by Holmes' ability to notice details and assemble them. Holmes reads the telegram requesting consultation in a fresh murder case. He's reluctant to help because credit would go entirely to the officials. Watson urges him to reconsider so Holmes invites him to accompany him as he investigates the crime scene, an abandoned rural manor. Holmes observes the sidewalk and garden leading up to the house before he and Watson meet Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade. The four observe the crime scene, Holmes using a magnifying lens and tape measure. The male corpse, he's told, has been identified as Enoch Drebber. Blood has been found in the room but there is no mark on the body. They also learn from documents found on his person that he was in London with a friend, Joseph Stangerson. On one wall, written in blood, is ""RACHE"". Correcting an erroneous theory of Gregson's, Holmes remarks that it is the German word for ""revenge."" He goes on to deduce that the victim died from poison and supplies a description of the murderer: six feet tall, disproportionately small feet, florid complexion, square toed boots, and smoking a Trichinopoly cigar. His right-hand fingernails are long and he came in a cab whose horse had three old shoes and one new one. Holmes says ""RACHE"" was a ploy to fool police. Holmes listens to a constable's story about a drunken man loitering by the scene of the crime and informs him that the “drunk” was really the murderer revisiting the scene to collect a wedding ring clutched by the victim. Soon, Holmes and Watson visit the home of the constable who had first discovered the corpse, paying him a bit for disturbing his nocturnal sleep cycle. They get little information Holmes didn't already know, other than that a seemingly drunk loiterer had attempted to approach the crime scene. Holmes chastises the officer for not realizing that this was the murderer himself in disguise. They leave and Holmes explains that the murderer returned on realizing that he'd forgotten the wedding ring. Holmes dispatches some telegrams including an order for a newspaper notice about the ring. He also buys a facsimile of it. He guesses that the murderer, having already returned to the scene of the crime for it, would come to retrieve it. The advertisement is answered by an old woman who claims that the ring belongs to her daughter. Holmes gives her the duplicate, follows her, and returns to Watson with the story: she took a cab, he hopped onto the back of it, he found that she had vanished when it stopped. This leads Holmes to believe that it was the murderer's accomplice in disguise. A later day, Gregson visits Holmes and Watson, telling them that he has arrested a suspect. He had gone to Madame Charpentier's Boarding House where Drebber and Stangerson had stayed before the murder. He learned from her that Drebber, a drunk, had attempted to kiss Madame's daughter, Alice. She, in turn, evicted the two. Drebber, however, came back later that night and attempted to grab Alice, prompting her older brother to attack him. He attempted chased Drebber with a crop but claimed to have lost sight of him. Gregson has him in custody on this circumstantial evidence. Lestrade then arrives revealing that Stangerson has more recently been murdered. He had gone to interview Stangerson after learning where he had been rooming. His body was found dead near the hotel window, stabbed through the heart. Above his body was again written “RACHE”. The only things Stangerson had with him were a novel, a pipe, and a small box containing two pills. The pillpobx Lestrade still has with him. Holmes tests the pills on an old and sickly Scottish terrier in residence at Baker Street. The first pill produces no evident effect, the second kills the terrier. Holmes deduces that one was harmless and the other poison. Just at that moment, a very young street urchin named Wiggins arrives. He's the leader of the “Baker Street Irregulars”, a group of similar homeless children Holmes employs to help him occasionally. Wiggins states that he's summoned the cab Holmes wanted. Holmes sends him down to fetch the cabby, claiming to need help with his luggage. When the cab-man comes upstairs and bends for the trunk, Holmes handcuffs and restrains him. He then announces the captive cabby as Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Drebber and Stangerson. The story flashes back to the Utah Territory in 1847, where John Ferrier and a little girl named Lucy, the only survivors of a large party of pioneers, lie down near a boulder to die from dehydration and hunger. They are discovered, however, by a large party of Mormons led by Brigham Young. The Mormons rescue Ferrier and Lucy on the condition that they adopt and live under their faith. Ferrier, who has proven himself an able hunter, is given a generous land grant with which to build his farm after the party constructs Salt Lake City. Years later, a now-grown Lucy befriends and falls in love with a man named Jefferson Hope. Lucy and Hope become engaged to be married, scheduled after Hope's return from a three-month long journey for his job. However, Ferrier is visited by Young, who reveals that it is against the religion for Lucy to marry Hope, a non-Mormon. He states that Lucy should marry Joseph Stangerson or Enoch Drebber—both members of the Mormon Church's Council of Four—though Lucy may choose which one. Ferrier and Lucy are given a month to decide. Ferrier, who has sworn to never marry his daughter to a Mormon, immediately sends out word to Hope for help. When he is visited by Stangerson and Drebber, Ferrier is angered by their arguments over Lucy and throws them out. Every day, however, the number of days Ferrier has left to marry off Lucy is painted somewhere on his farm in the middle of the night. Hope finally arrives on the eve of the last day, and sneaks his love and her adoptive father out of their farm and away from Salt Lake City. However, while he is hunting for food, Hope returns to a horrific sight; a makeshift grave for the elder Ferrier. Lucy is nowhere to be seen. Determined to devote his life to revenge, Hope sneaks back into Salt Lake City, learning that Lucy was forcibly married to Drebber and that Stangerson murdered Ferrier. Lucy dies a month later from a broken heart; Drebber, who inherited Ferrier's farm, is indifferent to her death. Hope then breaks into Drebber's house the night before Lucy's funeral to kiss her body and remove her wedding ring. Swearing vengeance, Hope stalks the town, coming close to killing Drebber and Stangerson on numerous occasions. Hope begins to suffer from an aortic aneurysm, causing him to leave the mountains to earn money and recuperate. When he returns about a year later, he learns that Drebber and Stangerson have fled Salt Lake City out of fear for their lives. Hope searches the United States, eventually tracking them to Cleveland; the pair then flees to Europe, eventually landing in London. Returning to the main narrative, Hope willingly goes to a police station, where he finishes his story to Holmes, Watson, and the inspectors. In London, Hope became a cabby, and eventually found Drebber and Stangerson at the train station in Euston, about to depart to Liverpool. Having missed the first train, Drebber instructs Stangerson to wait for him at the hotel, and then returns to Madame Charpentier's house. He is attacked by her son, and after escaping, he gets drunk at a liquor store. He is picked up by Hope, and is led to the house on Brixton Road, which Drebber drunkenly enters with Hope. He then forces Drebber to remember who he is and to take a pill out of a small box, allowing God to choose which one dies, for one was harmless and the other poison. Drebber takes the poisoned pill, and as he dies, Hope shows him Lucy's wedding ring. The excitement coupled with his aneurysm had caused his nose to bleed; he used it to write “RACHE” on the wall above Drebber. He realised, upon returning to his cab, that he had forgotten Lucy’s ring; but upon returning to the house, he found Constable Rance and other police officers, whom he evaded by acting drunk. He then had a friend pose as an old lady to pick up the supposed ring from Holmes's advertisement. He then began stalking Stangerson's room at the hotel; but Stangerson, on learning of Drebber's murder, refused to come out. He climbed into the room through the window, and gave Stangerson the same choice of pills but he was attacked by Stangerson and forced to stab him in the heart. After being told of this, Holmes and Watson return to Baker Street; Hope dies from his aneurysm the night before his trial, a smile on his face. One morning, Holmes reveals to Watson how he had deduced the identity of the murderer and how he had used the Irregulars, whom he calls ""street Arabs,"" to search for a cabby by that name. He then shows Watson the newspaper; Lestrade and Gregson are given full credit. Outraged, Watson states that Holmes should record the adventure and publish it. Upon Holmes's refusal, Watson decides to do it himself."
1435,The Postman Always Rings Twice,crime," The story is narrated in the first person by Frank Chambers, a young drifter who stops at a rural California diner for a meal, and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora, and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis, sometimes called ""the Greek"". There is an immediate attraction between Frank and Cora, and they begin a passionate affair with sadomasochistic qualities (when they first embrace, Cora commands Frank to bite her lip, and Frank does so hard enough to draw blood). Cora, a femme fatale figure, is tired of her situation, married to a man she does not love, and working at a diner that she wishes to own and improve. Frank and Cora scheme to murder the Greek in order to start a new life together without Cora losing the diner. They plan on striking Nick's head and making it seem he fell and drowned in the bathtub. Cora fells Nick with a solid blow, but, due to a sudden power outage and the appearance of a policeman, the scheme fails. Nick recovers and because of retrograde amnesia does not suspect that he narrowly avoided being killed. Determined to kill Nick, Frank and Cora fake a car accident. They ply Nick with wine, strike him on the head, and crash the car. Frank and Cora are injured. The local prosecutor suspects what has actually occurred, but doesn't have enough evidence to prove it. As a tactic intended to get Cora and Frank to turn on one another, he charges only Cora with the crime of Nick's murder, coercing Frank to sign a complaint against her. Cora, furious and indignant, insists upon offering a full confession detailing both their roles. Her lawyer tricks her into dictating that confession to a member of his own staff. Cora, believing her confession made, returns to prison. Though Cora would be sure to learn of the trickery, a few valuable hours are gained. The lawyer uses the time to manipulate those financially interested in the trial to have their private detective recant his testimony, which was the final remaining weapon in the prosecution's arsenal. The state is forced to grant Cora a plea agreement, under which she is given a suspended sentence and no jail time. Frank and Cora patch things up and plan a happy-family future. Then Cora is killed in a car accident while Frank is driving. The book ends with Frank, from death row, summarizing the events that followed, explaining that he was wrongly convicted of having murdered Cora. The text, he hopes, will be published after his execution."
1436,Velocity,crime," Not so long ago a promising young short story writer, Billy Wiles has not even turned on his PC since his fiancée Barbara fell into a coma several years ago. Leading the life of a recluse who spends his spare time alone at home doing woodwork, he only leaves his secluded house when he goes to work as a bartender. An orphan, he only associates with few people, and he considers them acquaintances rather than friends. Wiles's life takes a dramatic turn when he finds a piece of paper stuck to his windshield which contains an ultimatum (see book cover, below). He decides not to go to the police and to consult someone he knows who happens to be in the police force instead. Together, although not thoroughly convinced, the two men decide that the note must have been some sick joke. However, on the following day a cruel murder is reported which exactly fits the description given in advance by the alleged joker. Two more notes follow in quick succession, and only when they become increasingly personal does Wiles realize that he has not been chosen at random by the person he comes to think of as ""the freak"". For example, shortly after receiving a cryptic message saying Are you prepared for your first wound? he is physically assaulted by the mask-wearing killer. When Wiles recovers from the shock and the pain he realizes that the psychopath has driven three large fish hooks under the skin of his forehead. Acts of violence like the one depicted above lead the third person narrator to reflect on the society we live in: ""Not long ago in the history of the world, routine daily violence&mdash;excluding the ravages of nations at war&mdash;had been largely personal in nature. Grudges, slights to honor, adultery, disputes over money triggered the murderous impulse. :""In the modern world, more in the postmodern, most of all in the post-postmodern, much violence had become impersonal. Terrorists, street gangs, lone sociopaths, sociopaths in groups and pledged to a utopian vision killed people they did not know, against whom they had no realistic complaint, for the purpose of attracting attention, making a statement, intimidation, or even just for the thrill of it. :""The freak, whether known or unknown to Billy, was a daunting adversary. Judging by all evidence, he was bold but not reckless, psychopathic but self-controlled, clever, ingenious, cunning, with a baroque and Machiavellian mind. :""By contrast, Billy Wiles made his way in the world as plainly and directly as he could. His mind was not baroque. His desires were not complex. He only hoped to live, and lived on guarded hope."" (Chapter 14) Although Wiles does check on each of the few acquaintances he has, he cannot at first decide which of them, if any, might be the freak. Eventually he focuses his attention on Steve Zillis, one of his workmates. However, it soon turns out that Zillis has a watertight alibi for the time when some of the crimes were committed, and Wiles ends up none the wiser. Wiles has very clear reasons for not involving the police. Right from the beginning of his nightmarish adventure, he has a hunch that circumstantial evidence, possibly planted by the killer, would turn him into the prime suspect: In the eyes of the police, he would be the perpetrator rather than one of the victims. Also, as more murders are committed, he realizes that he might endanger Barbara&#39;s life. In the end Wiles finds out that the psychopath sees his crimes as a work of art rather than, say, a game (cf. for example Gentlemen & Players). He discovers that the freak is the artist, Valis, and confronts him. After a short discussion, Billy sprays Valis with Mace and shoots him dead. Returning home, Billy mistakenly assumes that he and Barbara are safe; however, when he replays the video camera, he sees Zillis in his house, and realises that Valis and Zillis were working together. He manages to catch up with Zillis before he can kill Barbara, and after driving him out into the country, kills Zillis. The book ends with Billy (now called Bill) caring for Barbara in his own home. At the very end of the book, Barbara&#39;s eyes open and she comments on a flock of Barn Swallows flying past. While her eyes close again, the ending seems promising for her imminent recovery."
1437,Shooting Sean,crime," Dan Starkey is employed by legendary film star, Sean O'Toole, who is looking to escape his type cast action hero career and move into directing movies. Unfortunately, O'Toole is making a movie based on an infamous IRA member, nicknamed ""The Colonel"", and events soon lead to Starkey once again struggling to both protect his wife ""Patricia"" and illegitimate child ""Little Stevie"", while also keeping himself alive and writing."
1438,Back Story,crime," The novel begins with Spenser receiving a large payment for a case he worked for Rita Fiore. Due to this, Spenser decides to work a case pro bono for an aspiring young actress named Daryl Gordon who is trying to find out who murdered her mother, Emily Gordon. She tells Spenser that her mother came to Boston from California to stay with her sister, and was then murdered by The Dread Scott Brigade; a revolutionary, anti-establishment movement in the 1970s, during a Boston bank robbery in 1974. Despite the case being decades cold, and her only payment being six Krispy Kreme donuts, Spenser likes the challenge and decides to take the case. He starts by getting the case files, and speaking to the original investigators. None remember anything significant, but Spenser soon realizes that an FBI report on the case is missing. So he questions the FBI about this missing file, and they claim no such report was ever written. Soon after two FBI agents accost Spenser in his home and tell him to leave the case alone. Soon after that a couple of goons working for mob boss Sonny Karnofsky threaten Spenser and also tell him to stop investigating the cold case. The FBI and the mob not wanting Spenser to investigate the case only serve to pique his interest. He wonders what it is they are trying to hide and questions Sonny directly, who then orders his henchmen to kill Spenser. Spenser decides to speak with Emily’s sister, despite protests from Daryl. Emily’s chain-smoking sister informs Spenser that Emily had not come to see her, but that she was actually involved with the Dread Scott Brigade. She tells them that they were both hippies, and highly involved in revolutionary movements during their college days in the 1970s. They would meet with prison inmates under the guise of trying to educate them, but really they were fanning their militant flames. She also tells Spenser that Emily had split from Daryl’s father, and had followed a boyfriend of hers to Boston; a black revolutionary that called himself Shaka. Spenser and Hawk then fly to California to speak with Daryl’s father. Her father turns out to be a burnt-out old hippy who confirms Emily’s sister’s story. He also gives Spenser the names of some of Emily’s friends; another black revolutionary that called himself Coyote, and a girl named Bunny. Back in Boston, Spenser discovers that Emily Gordon attended Taft University, and decides to visit the school. There he discovers that Emily was good friends with a woman named Bonnie Karnofsky otherwise known as Bunny. While leaving the University he realizes he is being followed. He and Hawk split up and lead the followers into a trap and kill them in a shootout. Convinced the hitmen were Karnofsky’s goons, Spenser becomes even more interested in the case, especially with the connection between Karnofsky and Emily now known. He decides to head into Paradise to stake out Karnofsky’s home in hopes of following Bonnie. The local police chief there, Jesse Stone, notices Spenser and Hawk staking out the Karnofsky place and questions them about it. After checking them out with Healy, Jesse brings them coffee and they tell him about the investigation. Stone tells them that Bonnie doesn’t live there, but will have his people look into her. Later, Stone’s people inform Spenser that Bonnie often visits to sunbathe on her father’s property. Later Spenser meets with Daryl to tell her what he has discovered. She gets upset and tells him to stop investigating. After speaking with Susan, Spenser realizes that Daryl thought she had an ideal childhood that was interrupted only by her mother’s murder. She hated growing up with her father, and only wanted Spenser to confirm her mother’s saintliness and that she would have had the perfect upbringing had she not been killed. She wanted to have a picture perfect story for her memoir as she became more famous as an actress. Despite her taking him off the case, Spenser decides to continue the investigation. He then discovers that the Karnofsky’s have been paying Daryl’s father $2,000 a month for the last 28 years. He and Hawk fly out to California again, and this time Daryl’s father tells him that Daryl is actually Bonnie and Abner Fancy’s (a.k.a. Shaka) child. Bonnie had the child with Shaka, but she did not want her so she gave her to Emily who raised her for six years. After Emily was murdered they sent Daryl back to the man she knew as her father and paid him to raise her and keep his mouth shut about her true parentage. Sonny Karnofsky did this because he was humiliated that his daughter had a child with a black man. Sonny also later discovers that the man that called himself Coyote was an FBI informant, which is why the FBI buried the case. They did not want their informant in The Dread Scott Brigade revealed. Spenser goes back to Boston with this information. Once again he is trailed by gunmen, and after leading them to a stadium where Susan and he often work out, kills them in another shootout. He decides he must finish the case so he can protect himself and Susan. He then visits Jesse Stone, and after telling him the latest information, tells him he plans to kidnap Bonnie Karnofsky from her father’s house the next time she visits. Stone agrees to not get involved, and even takes Spenser out on a boat to show him the spot where Bonnie sunbathes. Later, Spenser and Hawk stake out the place and discover that she always swims out to a raft to cool down after lying in the sun a while. They wait for her to swim out again and when she does they pull up in a speed boat and kidnap her. They take her back to Susan’s place and there Bonnie confesses to being Daryl’s mother and killing Emily. She killed Emily during the robbery because she was jealous of her. She had given up her child to be with Shaka. And then Shaka left her for the woman she had given the child to. Later Shaka killed their bank robbery accomplice, Rob, as he was the only one that knew Bonnie killed Emily. Sonny Karnofsky then killed Shaka because he didn’t want his daughter with a black man. He then arranged for her to marry a man named Ziggy. Spenser calls Sonny and has him meet him at Susan’s house. He tells Sonny what he knows, but agrees to not take the information to the police if Sonny will agree to back off of him and Susan. Sonny agrees, and he and Bonnie leave."
1439,The Way Some People Die,crime," Mrs. Samuel Lawrence gives Lew Archer 50 dollars for one day of his time to find her daughter Galatea (a.k.a. Galley). Archer soon discovers she was married to a small-time mobster named Joe Tarantine. And shortly after that, a big-time mobster offers him five thousand to find Tarantine. The investigation quickly gains a body count and Lew is constantly drawn from Los Angeles to Pacific Point, Palm Springs, San Francisco, and back again, trying to tie together details that seem as random as they are violent."
1440,And Then There Were None,crime," Ten people—Lawrence Wargrave, Vera Claythorne, Philip Lombard, General Macarthur, Emily Brent, Anthony ""Tony"" Marston, Dr. Armstrong, William Blore, and the servants Thomas and Ethel Rogers—have been invited to a mansion on the fictional Soldier Island (""Nigger Island"" in the original 1939 UK publication, ""Indian Island"" in the 1964 U.S. publication), which is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon. Upon arriving, they are told that their hosts, a Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen (Ulick Norman Owen and Una Nancy Owen), are currently away, but the guests will be attended to by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. Each guest finds in his or her room a framed copy of the nursery rhyme ""Ten Little Soldiers"" (""Niggers"" or ""Indians"" in respective earlier editions) hanging on the wall. {| class=""toccolours"" style=""float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; font-size: 85%; background:#E2DDB5; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 28%;"" | style=""text-align: left;""| The currently published, not the original, version of the rhyme goes: Ten little Soldier Boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little Soldier Boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little Soldier Boys travelling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were seven. Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six. Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little Soldier Boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little Soldier Boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little Soldier Boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none. |} After dinner that evening, the guests notice ten soldier boy figurines on the dining room table. During coffee, a gramophone record, unknowingly turned on by Mr Rogers, plays, accusing each of the ten of murder. Each guest acknowledges awareness of (and in some cases involvement with) the deaths of the persons named (except Emily Brent, who tells only Vera, who later tells the other guests what happened to Brent's former maid), but denies any malice and/or legal culpability (except for Lombard and Blore, the latter telling only the former). The guests realize they have been tricked into coming to the island, each of them lured with something special to them, like a job opportunity or mention of a mutual acquaintance. Unfortunately, they soon find they cannot leave: the boat which regularly delivers supplies has stopped arriving because of the storm. They are murdered one by one, each death paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, with one of the figurines being removed after each murder. The first to die is Anthony Marston, who chokes to death when his drink is poisoned with cyanide (""one choked his little self""). No one thinks much of this, although some people are suspicious. That night, Thomas Rogers notices that a figurine is missing from the dining table. Mrs Rogers dies peacefully in her sleep that night, which Dr. Armstrong attributes to a dose of sleeping aid, which the killer later comes in and attributes a sleeping aid, which she then overdosed,(""one overslept himself""). Rogers reports another figurine gone. The guests become more on edge. General Macarthur fatalistically predicts that no one will leave the island alive, and at lunch, is indeed found dead from a blow to the back of his skull by a life preserver (""one said he'd stay there""). Finally, the point is driven home that these three deaths have been murder. Meanwhile, a third figurine has disappeared from the dining room. In growing panic, Armstrong, Blore, and Lombard search the island in vain for the murderer. Justice Wargrave establishes himself as the decisive leader of the group and asserts one of them must be the murderer playing a sadistic game with the rest. The killer's twisted humor is evidenced by the names of their ""hosts"": ""U.N. Owen"" is a pun and a homophone for ""unknown"". The next morning, Rogers is missing, as is another figurine. He is found dead in the woodshed, struck in the back of the head with an axe (""one chopped himself in halves""). Later that day, Emily Brent is killed in the dining room by an injection of potassium cyanide that leaves a mark on her neck (""A bumblebee stung one""), which at first appears to be a sting from a bumble bee placed in the room. The hypodermic needle is found outside her window next to a smashed china figurine. The five remaining people, Armstrong, Wargrave, Lombard, Claythorne, and Blore, appear to become increasingly frightened and paranoid as the noose tightens, both psychologically and in reality. Wargrave suggests they lock up any potential weapons, including Armstrong's medical equipment and the judge's own sleeping pills. Lombard admits to bringing a revolver to the island, but immediately discovers it has gone missing. Resolved to keep the killer from catching anyone alone, they gather in the drawing room and only leave one at a time. Vera goes up to her room for a shawl and is frightened by a strand of seaweed hanging on a hook in her bedroom in the dark: an allusion to the boy the gramophone alleged that she had drowned. Her screams attract the attention of Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong, who rush to her aid. When they return to the drawing room, they find Wargrave in a mockery of a judicial wig and gown with a gunshot wound in his forehead (""one got into Chancery""). Armstrong confirms the death, and they lay Wargrave's body in his room and cover it with a sheet. Shortly afterward, Lombard discovers his revolver has been returned. That night, Blore hears someone sneaking out of the house. He and Lombard investigate and, discovering Armstrong missing, assume the doctor is the killer. In the morning, Blore leaves for food and does not return. Vera and Lombard soon discover his body on the terrace, skull crushed by a bear-shaped clock (""a big bear hugged one""). At first, they continue to believe Armstrong is the killer until they find the doctor in the sea, drowned (""a red herring swallowed one""). Paranoid, each assumes the other is the murderer. In the brief but tense standoff that follows, Vera feigns compassion and gets Lombard to help her move Armstrong's body away from the water, using the opportunity to pick his revolver from his pocket. She kills Lombard with a shot through the heart on the beach (""one got frizzled up"") and returns to the house. Dazed and disoriented, she finds a noose and chair waiting for her in her room. In an apparent trance, she hangs herself, kicking the chair out from underneath her, thus fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme. Inspector Maine, the detective in charge of the Soldier Island case, discusses the mystery with his Assistant Commissioner, Sir Thomas Legge, at Scotland Yard. There are no clues on the mainland—Issac Morris (mentioned to be responsible for crimes unprovable by the law), the man who arranged ""U.N. Owen's"" purchase of the island and sent out the invitational letters, covered his tracks quite well, and was killed the day the party set sail. Times of death cannot be found through autopsies, and the police have failed to link the nursery rhyme to the deaths. While guests' diaries establish a partial timeline that establish that Marston, Mrs. Rogers, Macarthur, Mr. Rogers, Brent and Wargrave were the first 6 to die (in that order), the police cannot determine the order in which Blore, Armstrong, Lombard, and Vera were killed. Blore could not have dropped the clock on himself, and it would also be a highly uncommon method of suicide; Armstrong's body was dragged above the high-tide mark; Lombard was shot on the beach, but his revolver was found on the floor in the upstairs hallway. Vera's fingerprints on the gun, the fact that hanging is a highly sensible method of suicide, and the clock that killed Blore having come from her room all point to Vera as ""U.N. Owen""... but someone had to have been alive after she died because the chair Vera used to hang herself had been righted and replaced against the wall. Inclement weather, combined with the fact that Fred Narracott (the man who ferried the guests to the island) sent a boat to the island as soon as weather allowed (sensing something to be amiss), would have prevented the murderer from leaving or arriving separately from the guests: he or she must have been among them. But since the first six murders at least appear to be accounted for, and since the last four victims cannot have been the last ones alive, the inspectors are ultimately left dumbfounded, asking themselves: Who killed them? A fishing trawler finds a letter in a bottle off the Devon coast; it contains the confession of the late Justice Wargrave. He reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed uneasily with a fierce sense of justice: he wanted to torture, terrify, and kill, but could never justify harming an innocent person. As a judge, he directed merciless jury instructions/summations and guilty verdicts, but solely in those cases in which he had satisfied himself of the guilt of the defendant(s), thrilling at the sight of the convicted person crippled with fear, facing their impending death. He also saved a few defendants from suffering punishment when he was convinced they were innocent of their accused crime. But the proxy of the bench was unsatisfying: Wargrave longed to commit murder by his own hand. Prompted to action by the discovery that he was terminally ill, he sought out those who had caused the deaths of others but managed to escape justice, finding nine (not including Isaac Morris), whom he lured to the island using his financial resources to investigate his victims' backgrounds to come up with plausible invitations from sources they trusted or from people with whom they were acquainted. After the phonograph accusations were made the first night he carefully watched, as he had in the courtroom for so many years, the reactions of his guests to the accusations. Seeing their fear or anxiety, he was certain of their guilt. He decided to start with the less serious offenders (i.e. Marston, whom Wargrave determined was ""amoral"" and had committed the crime by accident, as well as Mrs. Rogers, who had acted under her husband's direction and had clearly been traumatized by guilt ever since), and to save ""the prolonged mental strain and fear"" for the colder-blooded killers. Wargrave arrived at the island with two drugs: potassium cyanide and chloral hydrate. After the gramophone recital, Wargrave slipped cyanide and chloral into the drinks of Marston and Mrs. Rogers respectively. Marston choked to death, and Mrs. Rogers was given another sleep medication, leading to death by overdose. The next day, after Macarthur made his fatalistic prediction, Wargrave sneaked up on him and killed him, although the specific weapon was never found or discussed. The next morning, he killed Rogers in the woodshed as he was cutting firewood. During breakfast, he slipped the rest of his chloral into Miss Brent's coffee to sedate her, and after she was abandoned at the table, Wargrave injected her with the rest of his cyanide using Armstrong's syringe. Having disposed of his first five victims, the judge persuaded the trusting Armstrong to fake Wargrave's own death, ""the red herring"", under the pretext that it would rattle or unnerve the ""real murderer"". Since Armstrong was the only person who would closely examine the judge's body, as well as having done preliminary autopsies for the other victims up to that point, the ruse went undetected. That night, he met Armstrong on the cliffs, distracted him by pretending to see something and pushed him into the sea, knowing the doctor's disappearance would provoke the suspicions of the others. From Vera's room, Wargrave later pushed the stone bear-shaped clock onto Blore, crushing his skull. After watching Vera shoot Lombard, he then set up a noose and a chair in her bedroom in the belief that after having just killed Lombard she was in a psychologically post-traumatic state and would hang herself under the right circumstances, i.e. a noose and chair waiting for her. He was right and watched (unseen in the shadows) as she hanged herself. Wargrave then pushed the chair she had stood on against the wall, wrote out his missive/confession, put the letter in a bottle and tossed it out to sea. Wargrave admits to a ""pitiful human"" craving for recognition that he had not initially counted on. Even if his letter is not found (he decides there is about a 1 in 100 chance of it being found), he believes there are three clues which implicate him, although he surmises (correctly) that the mystery will not have been solved: # Wargrave was the only one invited to the island who had not wrongfully caused someone's death, initial public speculation around the time of the trial of Edward Seton, whom the gramophone accused Wargrave of murdering, notwithstanding. Seton was, in fact, guilty of the murder for which he had been convicted, and overwhelming proof emerged after Seton's death confirming this. (When questioned about the Seton matter by his guests after the gramophone recital, Wargrave actually told the truth—albeit not very convincingly and not mentioning the posthumous evidence against Seton—to wit, that Seton was guilty and he had instructed the jury accordingly. Wargrave knew his fellow ""guests"" would not believe that and would, despite his judicial vocation, consider him a fellow escapee from justice.) Thus, ironically, the only innocent guest must be the murderer. # The ""red herring"" line in the poem suggests that Armstrong was tricked into his death by someone he trusted. Of the remaining guests, only the respectable Justice Wargrave would have inspired the doctor's confidence. # The red mark on Wargrave's forehead received from shooting himself is similar to the one God bestowed upon Cain as punishment for killing his brother Abel. He says the brand of Cain might lead the investigators to realize he was the murderer. Wargrave describes how he planned to kill himself: he will loop an elastic cord through the gun, tying one end of the cord to his eyeglasses, and looping the other around the doorknob of an open door. He will then wrap a handkerchief around the handle of the gun and shoot himself in the head. His body will fall back as though laid there by Armstrong. The gun's recoil will send it to the doorknob and out into the hallway, roughly where Vera dropped it while she walked to her room, detaching the cord and pulling the door closed. The cord will dangle innocuously from his glasses, and the stray handkerchief should not arouse suspicion. Thus the police will find ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Soldier Island."
1441,Split Image,crime," The novel begins with Chief Stone investigating the murder of a man Suit finds crammed into the trunk of an abandoned car. The man turns out to be Petrov Ognowski, a tough guy for local mob boss Reggie Galen. Jesse then goes to the Galen residence to interview him. While there he meets Galen’s beautiful and submissive wife, Rebecca Bangston. Envious of the life that Galen has with his wife, Jesse tailspins into a drinking binge, wondering why his wife couldn’t have been like that. Despite his increased drinking, he continues to investigate and discovers that Galen’s neighbor is another mob boss named Knocko Moynihan and is married to Rebecca’s twin sister, Roberta Bangston. Soon after the first murder, Knocko Moynihan is found murdered. Jesse begins to suspect the wives, leading Jesse and Suit to the Bangston’s hometown. There they discover that their mother is a widow, and that their father was involved in criminal activities with the girl’s husbands, who had met in prison twenty years earlier. While investigating they also discover the girls promiscuous past. Apparently they made a game of having sex with men and seeing if he could tell which one was which throughout. This activity got them the nickname “The Bang Bang Twins.” Jesse wonders if they have continued this behavior. During an interview with the twins later, they strip naked and try to seduce Jesse with their sex game, confirming his suspicions. He resists. Meanwhile, the father and widow of Ognowski come to Chief Stone demanding that he solve the murder. Jesse assures them he will do his best, however, the widow takes it upon herself to start sleeping with one of Galen’s bodyguards. The bodyguard admits that he killed both her husband and Knocko. The wives had been having sex with Petrov, and when Knocko found out about it he had the bodyguard kill Petrov. Later the twins decided they wanted Knocko killed, so they came to Reggie with a story about Knocko abusing Roberta. Furious that Knocko abused his wife’s sister, he has the same bodyguard kill Knocko. Jesse confronts the bodyguard with this information in his office along with Ognowski’s large mobster father, and presents him with two options. One, he can roll over on Reggie Galen, or two, he can leave and take his chances with the elder Ognowski. He chooses the former. Galen is arrested for the murders, and even though the wives were behind the whole thing, Jesse has nothing to charge them with. He leaves them to Ognowski."
1442,The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers,crime," The Old Hulk, being developed for a senior center, mysteriously burns to the ground. Meanwhile, a young woman dies from a bee sting—or could it have been murder? Qwill's lady friend, Polly Duncan, goes to Paris and decides to stay there. Later, Qwill's apple barn residence is burned by fire."
1443,Medusa,crime," When a group of Austrian cavers exploring in the Italian Alps comes across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental. But then the body is removed from the morgue and the Defence Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. Smelling a rat, and seeing an opportunity to embarrass their political rivals in the run-up to a cabinet change, the Ministry of the Interior puts Aurelio Zen onto the case. The search for the truth leads him into the turbulent political history of Italy during the seventies and also into obscure corners of modern-day affluent society, exposing the sordid details of a crime that everyone else had forgotten. The story is told from the view points of several of those involved and the action moves between Rome, the extreme northern province of Alto Adige, an Italian enclave and tax haven in Switzerland, and several provincial Italian cities. The focus is on movement, rather than the methodical application of the police process; Zen takes short cuts with the latter and arrives at the solution in a rush."
1444,The Coroner's Lunch,crime," Despite a total lack of training, an utter dearth of experience and a complete absence of inclination, Dr. Siri Paiboun has just been appointed state coroner for the Lao People's Democratic Republic. It's 1976, the royal family has been deposed, the professional classes have fled and the communists have taken over. And 72-year-old Siri - a communist for convenience and a wry old reprobate by nature - has got the coroner's job because he's the only doctor left in Laos. But when the wife of a Party leader is wheeled into the morgue and the bodies of tortured Vietnamese soldiers start bobbing to the surface of a Laotian lake, all eyes turn to the new coroner. Faced with official cover-ups and an emerging international crisis, Siri will be forced to enlist old friends, tribal shamans, forensic deduction, spiritual acumen and some good old-fashioned sleuthing before he can discover quite what's going on..."
1445,The Moving Finger,crime," Jerry and Joanna Burton, a brother and sister from London society, take a country house in idyllic Lymstock so that Jerry can rest from injuries received in a wartime plane crash. They are just getting to know the town's strange cast of characters when an anonymous letter arrives, rudely accusing the two of being lovers, not siblings. They quickly discover that such poison pen letters have been recently circulating around town indiscriminately and completely inaccurate. Things flare up when Mrs Symmington, the wife of the local solicitor, commits suicide upon receiving a letter stating that her second child was born out of wedlock. Her body is discovered with the letter, a glass containing potassium cyanide and a torn suicide note which reads ""I can't go on"". An inquest is held and the verdict of suicide is brought in. The police begin to search for the anonymous letter writer. The Burtons' maid, Partridge, receives a call from Agnes, the Symmington's maidservant, who seems distraught over something. Partridge asks Agnes over to tea the next afternoon, but Agnes never arrives; her body is discovered in the under-stairs cupboard the next day by Mr Symmington's step-daughter Megan. Scotland Yard sends an investigator, who comes to the conclusion that the letter-writer/murderer is a middle-aged woman who must be one of the prominent citizens of Lymstock. Progress is slow until the vicar's wife calls up an expert of her own, Miss Marple. Jerry Burton gives Miss Marple some vital clues by telling her of the contents of his dreams and his disconnected thoughts. There is a break in the case when the Symmingtons' beautiful young governess, Elsie Holland, receives an anonymous letter typed on the same typewriter, proven to have been used to create envelopes for all the previous letters. The village doctor's sister, Aimée Griffith, is arrested, since she was seen typing the letter and delivering it. On the way to London for a visit to his doctor, Jerry takes Megan along with him to London where he buys her some new clothes to make her look presentable. He begins to realize he has fallen in love with her. When they return to Lymstock, Jerry asks Megan to marry him, and she refuses. As a result, Jerry goes to Mr Symmington to ask for his permission and to inform him of her refusal. Symmington, who is eager to have Megan off his hands, tells Jerry he will speak with her. Later that evening, Megan goes to her step-father's office and tries to blackmail him by implying she has proof of his guilt in the murders. He coolly pays her off, but later, when she is asleep, he tries to murder her by putting her head in the gas oven. He is immediately stopped by Jerry and the police, who were lying in wait. It is revealed that Miss Marple wished to prove Mr Symmington's guilt and that Megan was brave enough to assist her. Symmington had written all the letters as a cover-up for killing his wife. He had used phrases from a similar incident, done by a school-girl, which fooled the police into thinking that a woman had been the letter-writer. Miss Marple notes that it could not have been a woman who wrote the letters because none of the accusations was true and a typical middle-aged woman in a village Lymstock would have known of real scandals, whereas a man, especially a professional man like Symmington, would be uninterested in gossip. He murdered his wife by the use of cyanide and then planted the letter and a fake suicide note to disguise the crime. He committed the murders because he wished to marry Elsie Holland. Aimée Griffith, who was in love herself with Symmington, had written only the letter to Miss Holland, out of jealousy and to try to protect the man she loved from marrying the wrong woman. Megan, in light of recent events, finally realizes that she does indeed love Jerry. His sister Joanna marries the local doctor, and both couples settle down in Lymstock instead of returning to London. The book's title, The Moving Finger, is emphasized twice. The first is how the accusatory letters point blame from one town member to another, the second is from the addresses on the letters, which the Scotland Yard agent uses to determine the envelopes were all ""typed by someone using one finger"" in order to avoid a recognizable 'touch'."
1446,The Silent and the Damned,crime," Falcon, Sevillian Chief Inspector, works in the grinding July heat, with his reliable team, to investigate a series of local suicides. Suspecting that the first death could in fact be a murder, the team follow the links from deaths to political corruption, and abuse on an horrific scale. Hampered by the inevitable difficulties arising from international twists to his investigation, and the constraints of a restrictive hierarchy, Falcon and his fellow detectives nevertheless manage to follow his hunches and insights to ultimate success, showing that some criminals pay some debts, and saving the cousins from their self-destruction."
1447,A Body in the Bath House,crime," When Marcus Didius Falco discovers a corpse hidden under the floor of his new bath house he starts to track down the men responsible - Glaucus and Cotta. He also receives a commission from the Emperor Vespasian. A building project for the British Chieftain Togidubnus is running late and over-budget. Suspecting that the men he seeks have fled to Britain Falco accepts the mission and travels there with his wife, two baby daughters, their nurse and his two brothers-in-law Aelianus and Justinus. Falco arrives at Fishbourne and starts by investigating corrupt practices. However events quickly take a turn for the worse when the Chief Architect is found murdered in the bath-house of the British King. Falco takes over the project and investigates the killings."
1448,Snabba cash,crime," JW is a young man living in Stockholm, originally from the countryside. JW feigns the appearance of a Stekare (in Swedish parlance, a lifestyle based on flaunting one's apparent wealth; a jetsetter), actually leading a double life driving taxi illegally to finance his expensive life on Stureplan. Abdulkarim, who runs the taxi business, offers JW a job selling cocaine instead. JW accepts the offer and enters the criminal underground of Stockholm. Jorge Salinas Barrio is a Latino who has gone to prison after taking the blame for drug business in which the Yugoslav mafia was involved. He escapes from Österåker Prison with plans to flee the country. Mrado Slovovic is a Serbian henchman who runs errands for the Yugoslav mafia, but secretly he dreams of a normal life with his daughter Lovisa. The three characters unite in the book through their dreams about quick earnings. Once JW and Abdulkarim have the cocaine sales going they want to expand. Abdulkarim has heard of Jorge, the recent escapee. The word on the street is that Jorge got very knowledgeable about the cocaine trade while he was in prison and thus JW gets an assignment to hire him. Simultaneously Jorge has tried to blackmail the Yugoslav mafia boss. The hitman Mrado has been contracted to dissuade him. When JW finally finds Jorge he is laying beaten-up in a forest, courtesy of Mrado."
1449,Der perfekte Mord,crime," To celebrate the successful illegal transaction of weapons to Algerian freedom fighters, Nissim Cordanu is going to organise a dinner for ten people at his house. Walter Reyder, head of the Hamburg Police research force, is oblivious when he is almost struck by Nissim's car. Nissim immediately recognises his old friend, even though twenty-five years have passed since they met. Nissim invites his old friend for dinner, not suspecting that by doing so, he invites the law as the eleventh guest. When it is announced that a very special hypnosis act will be performed at the party, Reyder decides that it is not yet time to reveal his true identity. nl:Hamburg na middernacht"
1450,Past Mortem,crime," When Adam Bishop, a middle-aged self-made man in the building trade, is cruelly murdered at his London home Detective Inspector Ed Newson has a hunch that the crime has been committed by a psychopath who has killed before. He links up the new case with a number of older, unsolved ones, and a certain pattern emerges: It turns out that each victim was a bully many years ago when they went to school, and that they have now been killed in exactly the same way as they used to torture their peers. However, when Newson and Sergeant Natasha Wilkie talk to the former victims they soon find out that none of them could be the serial killer. Although successful in his job, when it comes to his private life Edward Newson is a lonely, sex-starved man secretly in love with his assistant, Natasha. Now in his mid-thirties, he nostalgically looks back at his school days and the two girls with whom he was romantically involved when they were all 14&mdash;Helen Smart, the leftist intellectual, and Christine Copperfield, the ""golden girl"". Newson cannot resist the temptation and logs on to Friends Reunited. To his surprise, more of his former classmates than he would have thought are also online, and soon a class reunion is being organised&mdash;by Christine Copperfield, of all people. This is the point where Newson's private life collides with his murder investigation. It is obvious that the serial killer uses the same web site&mdash;Friends Reunited&mdash;as the source of his knowledge about instances of bullying that happened decades ago. When Helen Smart posts a long account of how back at school she was forced by Christine Copperfield to stuff a tampon down her throat the murderer is supplied with one more story on which he or she might act. Christine Copperfield dies with a tampon stuffed down her throat. In the tradition of the whodunnit, while new murders are committed, the identity of the killer remains unknown to the final pages of the novel."
1451,Not the End of the World,crime," LAPD cop Larry Freeman is given the task of 'baby-sitting' a B-movie film festival as a way of easing himself back into work after the death of his son, but things soon turn violent when a right-wing Christian group targets ex-porn actress Madeline Witherson. As Larry investigates the attacks on Maddy and the disappearance of an oceanic survey vessel it becomes clear that certain parties are not content to wait for the Apocalypse."
1452,With Red Hands,crime," Society has accepted the idea that death is not the end, and courtrooms regularly employ Violets to introduce testimony from murder victims. When a teenage boy is put on trial for shooting his wealthy parents, a well-known Violet takes the stand and channels the dead parents to confirm that it was someone other than their son who pulled the trigger. Meanwhile, Natalie Lindstrom, a Violet who has retired from the job and is working hard to prevent her daughter, Callie, from entering it, examines the case and discovers that the Violet on the stand might be falsifying the postmortem testimony, something previously thought impossible. Natalie's also grappling with her mother, a Violet institutionalized years ago; her mother says she has been visited by the Thresher, a ruthless killer who refuses to stop his ghoulish work even though he has been executed. The separate stories collide by way of the ""Needlepoint killer,"" whose viciousness makes Hannibal Lecter seem like a Sunday School teacher. (1)"
1453,Play Dead,crime," No sooner had supermodel Laura Ayers and Celtics star David Baskin said ""I do"" than tragedy struck. While honeymooning on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, David went out for a swim-and never returned. Now widowed and grieving, Laura's search for the truth will draw her into a web of lies and deception. pl:Mistyfikacja (powieść Harlana Cobena) th:แกล้ง (ฮาร์ลาน โคเบน)"
1454,The Hanging Valley,crime," A faceless, maggot-ridden corpse is discovered in a tranquil, hidden valley above the village of Swainshead. When the identity of the body is discovered, so is a possible connection with an unsolved murder in the same area five years ago. Among the annoyingly silent suspects are the Collier brothers, the wealthiest and most powerful family in Swainsdale; John Fletcher, a taciturn farmer; Sam Greenock, cocky owner of a Local guest house; and his troubled wife, Katie, who knows more than she realizes. When the Colliers use their influence to slow down the investigation, Inspector Alan Banks heads to Toronto to track down the killer. He soon finds himself in a race against time as events rush towards the shocking and haunting conclusion of his fourth case."
1455,Get Shorty,crime," The book's story centers around Chili Palmer, a small-time shylock (or loanshark) based in Miami, who is sent after Leo Devoe, who has scammed an airline out of $300,000 in life insurance by faking his own death. Leo had been aboard a plane whose flight was delayed, prompting Leo to disembark and go drinking in the airport bar. Leo misses the plane's actual takeoff, and when it crashes, his ""widow"" receives a check for $300,000, money which Leo takes to Las Vegas. His trail leads Chili to Las Vegas, where the loanshark finds a more interesting assignment: the casino is looking to collect from Harry Zimm, a horror film producer based in Los Angeles. Palmer, himself very interested in the movie industry, takes the extra assignment and heads for Los Angeles. Palmer lets his interest in the movie industry overshadow his collection job. He sneaks into the house of Karen Flores (Zimm's friend) in the middle of the night, startling both Zimm and Flores, and after he tells Zimm he has to pay his Las Vegas markers, he then explains that he has an idea for a movie. Zimm is immediately taken in by Palmer's charm and his movie idea, although Flores is still skeptical. Palmer recounts Leo Devoe's story in the third person, and recalls chasing Leo to Las Vegas as if it were an incomplete work of fiction. Flores is smart, and points out that the story clearly isn't fictional, she saw the plane crash in the news in the past week, and Palmer is obviously the shylock mentioned in the story. The next morning, Zimm asks for Chili's help in dealing with a good script he wants to buy. Zimm tells Chili that this script, Mr. Lovejoy, could be Academy Award worthy material. ""It'll be my Driving Miss Daisy,"" Zimm assures Palmer. There are, however, two problems: Zimm doesn't own the script, his writer's widow Doris Saffron does, and she wants $500,000 for it; and he guaranteed a $200,000 investment from Bo Catlett, a local limo driver and drug dealer, to make another movie called Freaks. (Zimm gambled Catlett's $200,000 away in Vegas in hopes of making the $500,000 he needed for Mr. Lovejoy). In a meeting with Catlett and his sidekick Ronnie Wingate, Zimm and Palmer tell them that, while their investment in Freaks is sound, they are making another movie first. Catlett tells them to move the money into this new picture; Zimm says he cannot, as the new movie deal is ""structured."" Meanwhile, Catlett is involved in a Mexican drug deal which doesn't go through. He has left the payment in a locker at the L.A. airport, but the Colombian sent to receive the money, Yayo Portillo (Catlett keeps calling him Yahoo), doesn't feel safe unlocking the locker with so many DEA agents staked out nearby. Catlett later meets Yayo back at his home, and after Yayo threatens to tell the DEA who Bo is, Bo shoots him. Catlett soon offers the locker money to Zimm as an investment, telling him to send Palmer to get the money. Palmer senses something wrong, signs out a nearby locker as a test, and sure enough is taken for questioning by drug officials when he tries to open it. Palmer and Flores are meanwhile seeking the interests of Michael Weir, a top-tier Hollywood actor to whom Flores was once married, to play the lead in Zimm's film. The loose ends are tied up when Ray Barboni comes to Los Angeles looking for the money Palmer collected from Leo Devoe, only to find the key to the locker from the failed drug deal in one of Palmer's pockets. Thinking Palmer has stashed his cash in a locker, he goes to the airport and is busted by drug officials. In a final showdown with Catlett, Catlett is double-crossed by his partner, Bear. The novel ends with Zimm, Palmer and Flores having visited a few production studios and wondering why writing the ending of a story was always the hardest part."
1456,The House of Stairs,crime," As Elizabeth tells her story, so the tragic events that took place at the House of Stairs 20 years before are revealed. She tracks Bell Sanger down and renews her acquaintance, with terrifying results."
1457,A Pinch of Snuff,crime," Receiving a tip from his dentist Jack Shorter, Inspector Peter Pascoe takes a closer look at the Calliope Kinema Club, a film club notorious for showing adult entertainment movies. Shorter is convinced that one particular scene in a movie he recently saw was too realistic to have been staged with fake blood, but when Pascoe starts investigating, he soon comes across the actress in question, Linda Abbott, who obviously didn't suffer from any harm and assures Pascoe that his and Shorter's concerns are unnecessary. Meanwhile, the ""Calli"" has been vandalised and its proprietor Gilbert Haggard has been assaulted so badly that he succumbs to a heart attack. The only existing copy of ""Droit de Seigneur"" - the film Jack Shorter was so worried about - has been destroyed, and when 13-year-old Sandra Burkill accuses the dentist of being the father of her (yet unborn) child, it begins to look as if Shorter had merely tried to avert suspicions by his claims against the ""Calli""."
1458,Those Who Trespass,crime," The antagonist is a tall, ""no-nonsense"" television journalist named Shannon Michaels, described as the product of two Celtic parents, who is pushed out by Global News Network, and systematically murders the people who ruined his career. Meanwhile, the protagonist, a ""straight-talking"" Irish-American New York City homicide detective named Tommy O’Malley, is charged with solving the murders that Michaels has committed, while competing with Michaels for the heart of Ashley Van Buren, a blond, sexy aristocrat turned crime columnist. Some reviewers have said that Michaels and O'Malley are ""thinly veiled versions"" of O'Reilly. Michaels' first victim is a news correspondent who stole his story in Argentina, and got him into trouble with the network. He then stalks the woman who forced his resignation from the network and throws her off a balcony. After that he murders a television research consultant who had advised the local station to dismiss him by burying him in beach sand up to his neck and letting him slowly drown. Finally, during a break in the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention, he slits the throat of the station manager. After this, he is pursued by O'Malley and Van Buren, where he attempts to lose them by crossing a runway in front of a speeding jet. Although he makes it, his car's right back tire is cut by the jet's wing, causing the car to spin, flip over, and be subsequently melted by the exhaust from the jet, which explodes. Michaels dies in extreme agony, as his contacts (used to hide his identity) burn into his eyes and a chunk of the car crushes his head in."
1459,Moonlight Mile,crime," Amanda McCready was four years old when she vanished from a Boston neighborhood in 1997. Desperate pleas for help from the child’s aunt led savvy, tough-nosed investigators Kenzie and Gennaro to take on the case. The pair risked everything to find the young girl — only to orchestrate her return to a neglectful mother and a broken home. Now Amanda is 16 — and gone again. A stellar student, brilliant but aloof, she seemed destined to escape her upbringing. Amanda’s aunt is once again knocking at Patrick Kenzie’s door, fearing the worst for the little girl who has blossomed into a striking, bright young woman who hasn’t been seen in two weeks. Haunted by the past, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the case that troubled them the most, following a 12-year trail of secrets and lies down the darkest alleys of Boston’s gritty, blue-collar streets. Assuring themselves that this time will be different, they vow to make good on their promise to find Amanda and see that she is safe. But their determination to do the right thing holds dark implications Kenzie and Gennaro aren’t prepared for ... consequences that could cost them not only Amanda’s life, but their own. Since ""Prayers for Rain"" Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro have married and had a child."
1460,The Big Sleep,crime," Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of wealthy, elderly General Sternwood. He wants Marlowe to deal with a blackmail attempt by a bookseller named Arthur Geiger on his wild young daughter Carmen. She had previously been blackmailed by a Joe Brody. Sternwood mentions his other, older daughter Vivian, who is in a loveless marriage with a man named Rusty Regan, who has disappeared. On Marlowe's way out, Vivian wonders if he was hired to find Regan, but Marlowe won’t say. Marlowe investigates Geiger’s bookstore and determines it is a pornography lending library. He follows Geiger home, stakes out his house, and sees Carmen Sternwood enter. Later, he hears a scream followed by gunshots and two cars speeding away. He rushes in to find Geiger dead and Carmen drugged and naked in front of an empty camera. He takes her home, but when he returns, Geiger’s body is gone and he quickly leaves. The next day, the police call him and let him know the Sternwoods' car was found driven off a pier with their chauffeur dead inside. It appears that he was hit before the car entered the water. The police also ask if Marlowe is looking for Regan. Marlowe stakes out the bookstore and sees its inventory being moved to Joe Brody’s home. Vivian comes to his office and says Carmen is now being blackmailed with the nude photos from last night. She also mentions going gambling at the casino of Eddie Mars, and volunteers that Eddie's wife Mona ran off with Rusty. Marlowe revisits Geiger’s house and finds Carmen trying to get in. They look for the photos but she plays dumb about the night before. Eddie Mars suddenly enters; he says he is Geiger’s landlord and is looking for him. Mars demands to know why Marlowe is there, but Marlowe is unfazed and states he is no threat to Mars. Marlowe goes to Brody’s home and finds him with Agnes, the bookstore's clerk. He tells them he knows they are taking over the lending library and blackmailing Carmen with the nude photos. Carmen forces her way in with a gun and demands the photos, but Marlowe takes her gun and makes her leave. Marlowe interrogates Brody further and pieces together the full story: Geiger was blackmailing Carmen and the family driver didn’t like it, so he sneaked in, killed him, and took the film of Carmen. Brody was staking out the house too and pursued the driver, stole the film, and hit him and possibly pushed the car off the pier. Suddenly the doorbell rings and Brody is shot dead; Marlowe gives chase and catches Geiger’s male lover, who shot Brody thinking he killed Geiger. He had also hidden Geiger’s body so he could remove his own belongings before the police could get wind of the murder. The case is now over, but Marlowe is nagged by Regan's disappearance. The police accept that he simply ran off with Mona Mars, since she is also missing and Eddie Mars wouldn't risk committing a murder where he'd be the obvious suspect. Mars calls Marlowe to his casino, and seems to be nonchalant about everything. Vivian is also there, and Marlowe senses something between her and Mars. He drives her home and she tries to seduce him, but he rejects her advances. When he gets home, he finds Carmen has sneaked into his bed, and he rejects her, too. A man named Harry Jones, who is Agnes's new partner, approaches Marlowe and offers to sell him the location of Mona Mars. Marlowe plans to meet him later, but Mars's deadly henchman Canino is suspicious of Jones and Agnes's intentions and kills Jones first. Marlowe manages to meet Agnes anyway and receive the information. He goes to the location, a repair shop with home in back, but Canino jumps him and knocks him out. When he awakens, he is tied up and Mona Mars is there with him. She says she hasn't seen Rusty in months; she only hid out to help Eddie, and insists he didn't kill Rusty. She frees him and he shoots and kills Canino. The next day, Marlowe visits General Sternwood, who is still curious about Rusty's whereabouts. On the way out, Marlowe returns Carmen's gun to her, and she asks him to teach her how to shoot. They go to an abandoned field, where she tries to kill him, but he has loaded the gun with blanks. Marlowe brings her back and tells Vivian he has guessed the truth: Carmen came on to Rusty and he refused her, so she killed him. Eddie Mars, who had been backing Geiger, helped Vivian conceal it by inventing a story about his wife running off with Rusty, and then began blackmailing her himself. Vivian says she did it to protect her father, and promises to have Carmen institutionalized."
1461,Dexter in the Dark,crime," Dexter Morgan is a serial killer trained by his adopted father, a police detective, to channel his murderous urges through vigilantism, only killing other killers. The source of Dexter's blood lust and investigative prowess is a voice in his mind that he calls the ""Dark Passenger"". At the start of the novel, Dexter, a forensic blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, investigates a double homicide at the University of Miami campus. Two female students are found burned and beheaded. Their heads are replaced by the ceramic heads of bulls. Something about this murder uncharacteristically frightens the Dark Passenger into silence, leaving Dexter to solve the crime on his own. As a series of similar murders takes place, members of a mysterious cult begin stalking Dexter, believing his Dark Passenger to be a threat to them. Dexter soon begins to question the dark voice that has been with him all his life, as he slowly realizes that his Dark Passenger is a true entity unto itself, possibly an offspring of the ancient god Moloch. While attempting to dispatch a killer who had been stalking him, Dexter becomes frightened and is unable to go through with the deed. He soon realizes that the Dark Passenger had given him an unusual amount of confidence and an almost supernatural awareness of the world around him; now that it is gone, he feels vulnerable for the first time in his life. As the novel progresses, Dexter begins to develop emotions that were once suppressed by the Dark Passenger, mainly those of sadness and anger. While missing the helpful clues and hints of the Dark Passenger, Dexter feeds off of his newfound emotions to find some balance in his life and to solve the mystery unfolding around him. The story also concerns the training of Cody and Astor Bennett, Dexter's soon-to-be stepchildren. Traumatized by their abusive father, they have developed homicidal tendencies similar to Dexter's. Dexter intends to teach them the ""Code of Harry"", which his own adoptive father used to help him hide his dark nature and blend in with normal people. Cody and Astor are eager to learn, but Dexter informs them that they are not ready yet, and still have years of training left before they are able to inflict any real human suffering. The novel concludes as the Cult of Moloch kidnaps Astor and Cody, thereby forcing Dexter to engage them head-on. However, the cult soon captures Dexter through a supernatural captivation of music. Though confined in a small concrete storage closet, Dexter escapes and encounters an old man who is the current avatar of Moloch. Though Dexter is instantly humbled and frightened of Moloch, he continuously mocks the malignant spirit, which in turn entrances him and the children and orders them to be sacrificed in a flaming pit. Dexter remains in a trance until his pant leg catches on fire; the pain of the burns snaps him out of it, and he opens fire on the cult members. A final showdown pits an armed Dexter against Moloch, who is clutching Astor and threatening to kill her. In a stalemate, Dexter is hesitant to act until Moloch reaches for his ceremonial knife only to find it missing; and then shudders to a halt and falls over with the knife lodged squarely in his back. Cody stands behind him holding Moloch's knife, saying, ""I told you I was ready."" Dexter laments that having killed at such an early age, Cody's journey will now be more difficult. Weeks pass, and Dexter is left alone to accept life without his Dark Passenger. At his wedding, Dexter falls into a fit of despair as he thinks about how painful his life is going to be in its banality. Just then, the Passenger comes back to him, brought on by Dexter's immense suffering, and he is made whole again in the final paragraphs of the novel. This is the first of Jeff Lindsay's ""Dexter"" series not narrated exclusively in the first-person point of view. Along with Dexter's first-person narration, the novel also includes third person narration from two other points of view. One is a person called the Watcher, a member of the cult that follows and observes Dexter. The other is a mythical, godlike entity called ""IT"" (revealed to be Moloch) which has existed since the beginning of time and is similar in various ways to the Dark Passenger. IT takes great pleasure in entering creatures as a ""passenger"" and making them kill other creatures, and works to create other murderous entities similar to itself, but soon turns against many of them, causing them to flee. IT and its offspring go to war, with IT being victorious. Some of IT's remaining children stay in hiding, fearing IT's power."
1462,Five Little Pigs,crime," Carla is engaged to be married but she is afraid that the fact that her mother killed her father will poison her husband's love for her, as he may fear that she has inherited a murderous tendency. Carla also remembers her mother would never lie to her to hide an unpleasant truth and her mother had told her she was innocent through a letter. That is enough for Carla but she wants Poirot to convince her fiance. Carla's father, painter Amyas Crale, was poisoned with coniine, which had been extracted from poison hemlock by Meredith Blake but subsequently apparently stolen from him by Carla's mother, Caroline Crale. Caroline confessed to stealing the poison, claiming she had intended to use it to commit suicide. The poison ended up, however, in a glass from which Amyas had drunk cold beer, after complaining that 'everything tastes foul today.' Both the glass and the bottle of cold beer had been brought to him by Caroline. Her motive was clear: Amyas's young model and latest mistress, Elsa Greer, claimed he was planning to divorce Caroline and marry her instead. This was a new development; though Amyas had frequently had mistresses and affairs, he had never before shown any sign of wanting to leave Caroline. Poirot labels the five alternative suspects “the five little pigs”: they comprise Phillip Blake (""went to the market""); Philip's brother, Meredith Blake (""stayed at home""); Elsa Greer (now Lady Dittisham, ""had roast beef""); Cecilia Williams, the governess (""had none""); and Angela Warren, Caroline’s younger half-sister (""went 'Wee! Wee! Wee!' all the way home""). As Poirot learns from speaking to them during the first half of the novel, none of the quintet has an obvious motive, and while their views of the original case differ in some respects there is no immediate reason to suppose that the verdict in the case was wrong. The differences are subtle. Phillip Blake’s hostility to Caroline is overt enough to draw suspicion. Meredith Blake mistrusts him, and has a very much more sympathetic view of her. Elsa seems emotionally stunted, as though her original passion for Amyas has left her prematurely devoid of emotion, except for hatred for Caroline Crale. Cecilia, the governess, gives some insight into both Caroline and Angela, but claims to have definite reason for believing Caroline guilty. Finally, Angela believes her sister to be innocent, but a letter that Caroline wrote to her after the murder contains no protestation of innocence, and makes Poirot doubt Caroline's innocence for perhaps the first time. In the second half of the novel, Poirot considers five accounts of the case that he has asked the suspects to write for him. These establish the succession of events on the day of the murder, and establish a small number of facts that are important to the solution of the puzzle. In the first place, there is a degree of circumstantial evidence incriminating Angela. Secondly, Cecilia has seen Caroline frantically wiping fingerprints off the bottle of beer as she waited by Amyas's dead body. Thirdly, there was a conversation between Caroline and Amyas, apparently about Amyas 'seeing to her packing' for Angela's return to school. Fourthly, Elsa overheard a heated argument between Caroline and Amyas in which he swore that he would divorce her and Caroline said bitterly, ""you and your women."" In the denouement, Poirot reveals the main emotional undercurrents of the story. Philip Blake has loved Caroline but his rejection by her has turned this to hatred. Meredith Blake, wearied by his long affection for Caroline, has formed an attachment to Elsa, also unreciprocated. These are mere red herrings, though. Putting together the case that would incriminate Angela (she had the opportunity to steal the poison on the morning of the crime, she had previously put salt in Amyas's glass as a prank and she was seen fiddling with the bottle of beer before Caroline took it down to him; she was very angry with Amyas), he demonstrates that Caroline herself would have thought that Angela was guilty. Her letter to Angela did not speak of innocence, because Caroline believed Angela knew for a fact that she (Caroline) was innocent. This explains why, if Caroline was innocent, she made no move to defend herself in court. Moreover, many years ago Caroline had hit Angela with a crowbar in a jealous rage, which had left a permanent disfiguring scar on Angela's face. Caroline had always felt deeply guilty about this and therefore felt that, by taking the blame for what she thought was Angela's crime, she could earn redemption. Caroline's actions, however, actually prove her innocence. By wiping the fingerprints off the bottle, she showed that she believed that the poison had been placed in it, rather than in the glass. Moreover, as she was seen handling the bottle there was no reason to remove her own fingerprints; she can only have been removing those of a third party. Angela, however, was not guilty. All the evidence incriminating Angela can be explained by the fact that she had stolen valerian from Meredith's laboratory that morning in preparation for playing another prank on Amyas. (As she had described the theft of the valerian in the future tense Poirot realised Angela had never carried out the act; she had completely forgotten she had stolen the valerian on the morning of that fateful day). The true murderer was Elsa. Far from being about to finish with Caroline, Amyas was entirely focused on completing his portrait of Elsa. Because Elsa was young she did not realize she was just another mistress, to be left as soon as she was painted. She took Amyas's promise 'to leave my wife' seriously. Amyas went along with this notion, to the short-term distress of his wife, so Elsa wouldn't leave before the painting was finished. Thus the half overheard 'see to her packing' did not refer to Angela's packing (why should Amyas do her packing with a wife and governess to see to such 'woman's work'?), but to sending Elsa packing. Caroline, reassured that Amyas had no intention of leaving her, was distressed at such cruelty to Elsa. She remonstrated with Amyas on a second occasion. Though Elsa falsely reported the gist of this conversation, she did mention that Caroline had said to Amyas 'you and your women', showing Poirot that in fact Elsa was in the same category as all of Amyas's other, discarded mistresses. After a disillusioned and betrayed Elsa overheard this conversation, she recalled seeing Caroline help herself to the coniine the day before and, under the pretence of fetching a cardigan, stole some of that poison by drawing it off with a fountain pen filler. She poisoned Amyas in the first, warm beer, and was then pleased to find that Caroline implicated herself still more seriously by bringing him another. (When Caroline brought Amyas a beer and he exclaimed that everything tastes foul today,' this not only showed that he had already had a drink before the one Caroline brought him, but he had had one which had tasted foul as well.) Amyas's last moments are spent working on his painting of Elsa, while she sits posing for it. In the beginning he does not realize he has been poisoned, but as he gradually weakens he apparently realizes it, because Meredith sees him give the painting a ""malevolent glare"". Poirot notes the unusual vitality in the face of the portrait and says, ""It is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim &ndash; it is the picture of a girl watching her lover die."" Poirot's explanation solves the case to the satisfaction of Carla and, most importantly, her fiancé. But, as Elsa forces him to admit, it cannot be proven. Poirot states that, although his chances of getting a conviction are slim, he does not intend to simply leave her to her rich, privileged life. Privately, however, she confides the full measure of her defeat. Caroline, having earned redemption, went uncomplainingly to prison, where she died soon after. Elsa has always felt that the husband and wife somehow escaped her, and her life has been empty since. The last paragraph of the novel underlines this defeat. “The chauffeur held open the door of the car. Lady Dittisham got in and the chauffeur wrapped the fur rug around her knees.”"
1463,The Pale Horse,crime," In the following summary, events are not given in strict narrative order. Mark Easterbrook, the hero of the book and its principal narrator, sees a fight between two girls in a Chelsea coffee-bar during which one pulls out some of the other's hair at the roots. Soon afterwards he learns that this second girl, Thomasina Tuckerton, has died. At dinner with a friend, Poppy Stirling mentions something called the Pale Horse that arranges deaths, but is suddenly scared at having mentioned it and will say no more. When Mark encounters the police surgeon, Corrigan, he learns of the list of names found in Father Gorman's shoe. The list includes the names of Mark's godmother, Lady Hesketh-Dubois, who has recently died of what appear to be natural causes, and of Thomasina Tuckerton. He begins to fear that the list contains the names of those dead or shortly to die. When Mark goes to Much Deeping with the famous mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver, to a village fete organised by his cousin, he learns of a house converted from an old inn called the Pale Horse, now inhabited by three modern ""witches"" led by Thyrza Grey. Visiting houses in the area, he meets a wheelchair-using man, Mr Venables, who has no apparent explanation for his substantial wealth. He also visits the Pale Horse, where Thyrza discusses with Mark the ability to kill at a distance, which she claims to have developed. In retrospect it seems to Mark that she has been outlining to him a service that she would be willing to provide. In the police investigation, there is a witness, Zachariah Osbourne, who describes a man seen following Father Gorman shortly before the murder. Later, he contacts the police to say that he has seen this same man in a wheelchair: it is Venables. When he learns that Venables suffered from polio and would be incapable of standing due to atrophy of the legs, Osbourne is nonetheless certain of his identification and begins to suggest ways that Venables could have faked his own disability. When Mark's girlfriend does not take his growing fears seriously, he becomes disaffected with her. He does, however, receive support from Ariadne Oliver, and from a vicar's wife (Mrs Dane Calthrop) who desires him to stop whatever evil may be taking place. He also makes an ally of Ginger Corrigan, a girl whom he has met in the area, and who successfully draws Poppy out about the Pale Horse organisation. She obtains from her an address in Birmingham where he meets Mr Bradley, a lawyer who outlines to him the means by which the Pale Horse can kill someone for him without breaking the law. With the agreement of Inspector Lejeune and the cooperation of Ginger, Mark agrees to solicit the murder of his first wife, who will be played by Ginger. At a ritual of some kind at the Pale Horse, Mark witnesses Thyrza apparently channel a malignant spirit through an electrical apparatus. Shortly afterwards, Ginger falls ill and begins to decline rapidly. In desperation, Mark turns to Poppy again, who now mentions a friend (Eileen Brandon) who resigned from a research organisation called CRC (Customers' Reactions Classified) that seems to be connected with the Pale Horse. When Mrs Brandon is interviewed, she reveals that both she and Mrs Davis worked for the organisation, which surveyed targeted people about what foods, cosmetics, and proprietary medicines they used. Mrs Oliver now contacts Mark with a key connection that she has made: another victim of the Pale Horse (Mary Delafontaine) has lost her hair during her illness. The same thing happened to Lady Hesketh-Dubois, and Thomasina's hair was easily pulled out during the fight. Moreover, Ginger has begun to shed her own hair. Mark recognises that these are symptoms, not of satanic assassination of some sort, but of thallium poisoning. At the end of the novel it is revealed that Osbourne has been the brains behind the Pale Horse organisation; the black-magic element was entirely a piece of misdirection on his part, while the murders were really committed by replacing products the victims had named in the CRC survey with poisoned ones. Osbourne's clumsy attempt to implicate Venables was his final mistake."
1464,Trunk Music,crime," A body found in the trunk of a car seems to have connections with the mob and leads Bosch and his investigation to Las Vegas. fr:Le Cadavre dans la Rolls it:Musica dura sv:Återkomsten (roman, 1997)"
1465,Going Wrong,crime," When he was a young man, Guy Curran led a local street gang and dealt drugs before falling madly in love with Lenora Chisholm, a much more middle-class teenager whose society minded parents naturally disapproved of him. However, despite an initially passionate romance the fairytale soon subsides, and Lenora tells a distraught Guy that she has found a new love. This announcement sets off a dark chain of events that will lead Guy into obsession, stalking and finally murder."
1466,The Blind Man Of Seville,crime," The novel concerns a series of vicious murders in Seville, and in turn these murders lead protagonist Falcon to look into the shady life of his deceased father, an acclaimed artist who fought in the Second World War. Falcon's investigations cause him to unearth shocking revelations about his father's past, and bring him to an emotional brink. The novel's structure is unusual, being told from the present perspective and also through a series of diary entries penned by Falcon's father during his war-time experiences."
1467,Driving Big Davie,crime," Dan Starkey is invited to Florida by his old friend, ""Big Davie"", who has a spare honeymoon ticket after being dumped by his erstwhile fiancée. Starkey is back with his wife Patricia and feels he's gotten over the murder of his toddler son ""Little Stevie"" - however his wife disagrees and declares that an American road trip would do him good. When the opportunity to avenge Stevie's death presents itself, Starkey cannot refuse."
1468,A Sleeping Life,crime," The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. There was nothing to give Detective Chief Inspector Wexford her address, her occupation or even her identity - let alone any clues which might lead to her killer."
1469,You Can't Live Forever,crime," Joshua Wilde, a theatre producer, attempts to sue his former partner Nicholas Creel, alleging that Creel concealed a promising script until after the company’s split. Wilde alleged that Creel had hidden the script in order to be the play's sole producer, gaining a larger share of the profits. Scott Jordan, who represents Wilde in the suit, finds a dead body in Creel’s apartment. Creel returns to find Jordan alone in his apartment with the body, calls the police, and furiously accuses him of the apparent murder. Jordan protests that he was let in by a brunette, but that he did not know her name; she had disappeared before Creel had returned. Jordan is arrested and later released when accusers can produce no motive or evidence that Jordan ever met the deceased. Creel drops the charges of breaking and entering after his wife, Hildegard, testifies that Creel was having an affair with a small brunette meeting Jordan’s description, lending credibility to Jordan’s testimony that he was let in rather than forcing entry. The body in Creel’s apartment remained unexplained; Creel was naturally the first suspect, but a witness, Julian St George (Hildegard’s uncle), had brought him straight to his apartment from his office, where he had been all day, and his secretary was able to corroborate his alibi. Scott resumes his search for the author of the script in order to confirm the date of submission, thereby proving his client’s case that Creel had intentionally hidden it from his partner. Scott discovers that the real author died before the script was produced, yet an “author” continues to receive royalty checks, addressed to Willard Thorne, a fabricated name. Scott begins to suspect that Creel, impersonating the author, was receiving royalty checks as well as revenues from the produced play. Gladys, Creel’s former secretary who tells Scott the true identity of the author, is found strangled the day after he speaks with her, and Scott begins to fear for his own life. Scott and Lieutenant John Nola, a police detective, although unable to find a solid link between Creel and the murders acknowledge that the circumstances seem to indicate his guilt, and they decide to question him, hoping to back him into a corner. When they arrive, they find Creel dead, stabbed with a knife belonging to Hildegard; Hildegard said that the knife had been stolen the night before. The knife was an heirloom passed down to Hildegard from her uncle Julian. Scott notices that the hilt opens, revealing a hollow tube and remembers a photograph found in Creel’s apartment curled like a scroll to a roll the width of a pencil. The image is a wedding photograph of Julian and Eva St George, and Scott notices that the photo shows Julian to be definitely shorter than Eva, whereas the Julian he knows is very tall. Julian St George was receiving substantial annuity payments every month, and since his father had set up the policy for him long before he was married, upon Julian's death, the policy would be terminated, and his wife Eva would no longer receive anything. Scott, upon seeing the height discrepancy, realizes that the real Julian St George had died years ago, but to continue receiving the annuity, Eva had gotten an impersonator, someone who looked exactly like Julian except for the unfortunate difference in height. Creel had discovered the photograph concealed in his wife’s knife heirloom and was blackmailing the St Georges, extorting thousands of dollars and forcing them to receive checks as Willard Thorne in order to give him the money once the checks were cashed. In an effort to destroy the one piece of evidence remaining of the former Julian St George, the impersonator had stolen the knife. Wanting to remove the remaining witness to their scheme, he had killed Nicholas Creel. When Scott confronts the St Georges with his theory, the impersonator draws a gun, planning to kill Scott as well. Lieutenant Nola enters just in time to save Scott, starting a gunfight in which the impersonator is shot and killed."
1470,Cause of Death,crime," New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. Dr. Scarpetta receives a phone call reporting the death of investigative reporter Ted Eddings, who was found dead in diving gear amongst the Navy's reserve fleet. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the inactive shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets&mdash;and why did Scarpetta receive the phone call reporting the death before the police were notified? The case leads Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marino into a terrorist plot that threatens thousands of lives."
1471,Wolf to the Slaughter,crime," Anita Margolis had vanished. There was no body, no crime - nothing more concrete than an anonymous letter and the intriguing name of Smith. According to headquarters, it wasn't to be considered a murder enquiry at all. Chief Inspector Wexford, however, had other ideas."
1472,Cop Killer,crime," Martin Beck investigates the murder of a woman in Anderslöv in Southern Sweden, and begins by looking at the murderer he put away in ""Roseanna"". At the same time, Malm leads a manhunt for the surviving partner of a teenage criminal who killed a policeman during a gunfight."
1473,The Lincoln Lawyer,crime," Moderately successful criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller operates around Los Angeles County out of a Lincoln Town Car (hence the title) driven by a former client working off his legal fees. While most clients are drug dealers and gangsters, the story focuses on an unusually important case of wealthy Los Angeles realtor Louis Roulet accused of assault and attempted murder. At first, he appears to be innocent and set up by the female ""victim."" However, Roulet's lies and many surprising revelations change Mickey's original case theory, making him reconsider the situation of Jesus Menendez, a former client serving time in San Quentin State Prison after pleading guilty to a similar and mysteriously related crime. In the end, Haller outmaneuvers Roulet (revealed to be a rapist and murderer) without violating ethical obligations, frees the innocent Menendez, and continues in legal practice, though not without much self-examination and emotional baggage."
1474,"Darkness, Take My Hand",crime," From the back of the paperback: When Detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro agree to protect the son of a prominent psychiatrist they soon find bodies are piling up around them. What's more, all the clues point to an unlikely suspect - a serial killer who has been in prison for twenty years, so he can't be killing again, can he? As the duo try to find out what kind of human being could perform such horrifying acts of mutilation, torture and dismemberment, they discover that the killer's motive is disturbingly rooted in their own past. In a series of heart-stopping climaxes that grow ever more bloody, ever more terrifying, the two detectives work frantically to capture the killer before they become victims themselves. es:Abrázame, oscuridad fr:Ténèbres, prenez-moi la main sv:Mörker, ta min hand"
1475,Void Moon,crime," Cassie Black is an ex-convict who works at a Porsche dealership. She had served five years in prison for conspiring with her previous partner-in-crime, Max Freeling, to steal the winnings of casino visitors while they are asleep; The last plan failed when an undercover agent (later revealed as Jack Karch) posed as the victim, forcing Max to take his own life. Unknown to all, Cassie and Max have a daughter named Jodie, who was conceived when Cassie served her time in prison. The daughter was put up for adoption and Cassie has been tracking her development silently. When Cassie learns that her daughter will be moving to Paris with her adopted parents in the near future, she decides to return to the trade for the last big pay day. Once she gets hold of the money, she plans to bring Jodie away with her. She approaches Max's half brother, Leo Renfro, for a heist job. Leo assigns her to go back to the Cleopatra, or ""Cleo"", the casino which Max's failed attempt took place. The victim (""mark"") this time is apparently a high roller and a $500,000 reward awaits. Leo is confident of Cassie's capabilities despite her long hiatus, but warns her to avoid being in the mark's hotel room during the period of the ""void moon"" on the day of action. Max's death, along with other unpleasant things, have occurred during that period. Cassie successfully breaks into the hotel room of the mark in the wee hours of the morning, but is forced to remain hidden in the room during the period of the void moon due to unforeseen circumstances. Later that morning, it is revealed that the mark has been shot dead and the suitcase containing the money had been taken from the safe. The mark was actually a courier for the Miami Cuban <<Mafia>> and he was carrying $2.5 Million in the suitcase as partial payoff for rights to buy over the Cleo. The owner of the Cleo, Vincent Grimaldi, hires private investigator Jack Karch to recover the money. Jack is briefed by Grimaldi that Leo Renfro is in cahoots with the Chicago Mafia for this crime. He successfully tracks down the supplier of Cassie's equipment for the theft and obtains Cassie's name. Meanwhile, Cassie persuades Leo to split the money and leave after learning of its origin. Leo requests for two days to sort the mess out, but commits suicide when confronted by Jack about Cassie. The next day, Jack poses as a customer at the Porche showroom and Cassie takes him out for a car ride. Cassie successfully crashes the car upon learning about Jack's motive and returns to Leo's house to retrieve the money. Jack planned to ambush Cassie at her house but instead, critically wounds the parole officer once he learns of Cassie's daughter, Jodie. Jack successfully ""abducts"" Jodie before the police arrive and drives her to the Cleo to set up a meeting with Cassie three hours later. Unknown to Jack, Cassie arrives much earlier and devises a plan to rescue Jodie and frame Jack in the process. Grimaldi captures Jack and reveals to him that the whole plan was a setup because the Miami gangsters would never be approved to buy the Cleo. The Chicago Mafia was never involved. His thugs killed the courier, and Miami will now search for the soon-to-be dead Karch as the thief. Using a concealed weapon, Karch surprises and kills the thugs and Grimaldi in the elevator. He returns to the room to the surprise of Cassie and Jodie, but, momentarily distracted, allows Cassie to attack him and push him out of the window to his death (the same way that Max had died, and that Karch had planned to kill her and Jodie). Cassie throws some money out of the window to cause a commotion, allowing Jodie and her to slip out unnoticed. On the way back to L.A., Cassie realizes she will be unable to provide an enjoyable life for Jodie if the police suspects her (Cassie) of all the crimes that Karch has committed. Instead, Cassie returns Jodie home to her adoptive parents and drives off with the remainder of the money."
1476,The Summer That Never Was,crime," A skeleton has been unearthed. Soon the body is identified, and the horrific discovery hits the headlines . . . Fourteen-year-old Graham Marshall went missing during his paper round in 1965. The police found no trace of him. His disappearance left his family shattered, and his best friend, Alan Banks, full of guilt. That friend has now become Chief Inspector Alan Banks, and he is determined to bring justice for Graham. But he soon realises that in this case, the boundary between victim and perpetrator, between law-guardian and law-breaker, is becoming more and more blurred..."
1477,Orange Crush,crime," Marlon Conrad, a spoiled ""rich kid"", enters the political arena in a career carefully managed by his wealthy father. He becomes the lieutenant governor of Florida, a plush job he can exploit mercilessly. When the elected governor dies in a plane crash, however, Marlon automatically assumes the office. Marlon is apathetic and corrupt, riding in the pockets of special interest groups. During his tenure, he is suddenly recruited into active duty during the Kosovo War and a bureaucratic tangle prevents him from ducking his responsibility as expected. His experiences in the military change his outlook, his fundamental character, and even his political views. He returns to Florida, determined to make a difference in the state. But first, Marlon faces a reelection battle against dim-witted Democratic candidate Gomer Tatum, the state House Speaker. Serge Storms, Dorsey's main character, appears in Orange Crush, but in a relatively small part compared to the other novels in the series."
1478,The Birthday Present,crime," Robert, a city accountant narrates the story, with excerpts from one Jane Atherton's diary. He is married to Iris Tesham. Iris' brother Ivor is an up and coming Tory MP, who is having an affair with Hebe Furnal. Hebe uses Jane Atherton as her alibi for her trysts. Ivor Tesham arranges a mock abduction of Hebe as a birthday present for her, but it goes horribly wrong."
1479,The Case of the Late Pig,crime," As Lugg is reading aloud the obituaries one morning, he comes across one for an old school nemesis of Campion. Remarkably, an anonymous letter inviting Campion to the funeral has also appeared in the morning post. R.I. “Pig” Peters is dead. So says the doctor that treated him. Five months later, Campion receives a panicked call from a friend, something about a murder. Campion drives down to the friend’s home where her father reveals the most assuredly dead body of R.I. “Pig” Peters, his head caved in no more than 12 hours earlier. Amazingly enough, some of the visitors from Peters' first funeral also appear, along with some not-so-grieving acquaintances of the late Pig. The little village is becoming very crowded. Now begins Campion’s search, which leads to a missing body, a grisly scarecrow and one too many beers for Lugg before he discovers the madman that planned more than a few murders. This is the only story told from Campion's point-of-view."
1480,Black Coffee: A Hercule Poirot Novel,crime," Hercule Poirot and his friend Hastings are called upon to visit the home of the famous physicist Sir Claud Amory, who has devised the formula for a new type of explosive; but they learn that he has been poisoned (in his black coffee, hence the title) the night of their arrival. Poirot is now confronted with the challenge of figuring out which of the array of other people gathered at the Amory residence is the murderer. He questions every single person that was present at the night of the murder. he then concludes his investigations by the help of a long friend from the Scotland yard."
1481,A Dark-Adapted Eye,crime," Largely set during World War II, the story is told by Faith Severn, who at the prompting of a true-crime writer recounts her memories of her aunt, the prim, fastidious, and snobbish Vera Hillyard. Vera's life is initially centred on her beautiful younger sister, Eden, even to the exclusion of her own son, Francis, with whom she has a poor relationship. Later, Vera has a second son, Jamie, to whom she is intensely devoted, while Eden marries the scion of a wealthy family. When Eden is unable to have children with her husband, she begins to demand custody of Jamie, who she claims is being poorly raised by Vera. To the bewilderment and shock of the rest of the family, the custody battle escalates to violent levels, leading to tragedy and a series of disturbing revelations."
1482,High Profile,crime," The novel begins with the discovery of a body hanging from a tree in the park. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this is no suicide, as the person had been shot several times before the hanging. After a little investigation the body is discovered to be that of libertarian national talk radio and television personality Walter Weeks. Weeks was an influential man, and personal friend to the governor of Massachusetts, so when the media finds out, Jesse Stone finds himself hounded by the governor, the media, and leading a very high profile case. Stone begins his investigation by interviewing Weeks’s ex-wives, manager, widow Laurie Weeks, and bodyguard Conrad Lutz. Before long another twist is added to the crime when the body of Weeks’s pregnant mistress turns up in the dumpster of a local restaurant. The medical examination soon discovers that this second victim was shot by the same gun, probably around the same time. As part of his investigation, Stone has Suitcase Simpson check to see if Weeks has any criminal convictions. The only one that turns up is an incident in Baltimore in 1987 where Weeks is found having sex in his car with a young woman. This seems unimportant at first, until Jesse discovers that the arresting officer was Weeks’s bodyguard, Lutz. When questioned, Lutz confirms that he had busted Weeks while working as a Baltimore police officer, but that later he and Weeks struck up a friendship which ended in Lutz becoming his bodyguard. The plot thickens when further investigation determines that Laurie Weeks was formerly Lutz's wife. He also learns that Weeks had planned on divorcing Laurie and leaving his fortune to his new mistress and unborn child. After discovering this, Chief Stone and Suitcase Simpson head up to New York to stake out the widow’s apartment. While there they see Lutz visiting her apartment during the day. They also witness Weeks’s research assistant Alan Hendricks spending the night. This is interesting to Jesse because Alan was a frequent guest host, and the one writing most of the show's material by the end of Weeks’s life. With Hendricks the heir apparent to Weeks’s media empire and expected to continue Weeks’s shows, it now appears to Jesse that Laurie is trying to secure herself a new sugar daddy. With the assistance of an NYPD officer, Chief Stone interrogates Laurie in her apartment and records the interview. She confirms that she was once married to Lutz. Stone asks her if Lutz could have held onto resentment concerning this and led him to kill Weeks. She seems to ponder it and then confesses that she believes Lutz could be the killer. Back in Paradise, Jesse confronts Lutz with the tape of his ex-wife’s accusation and Lutz leaves the station without a word. Lutz confesses everything over a glass of Jack Daniels to Jesse that evening in his apartment. He tells Jesse how after he busted Weeks, his wife convinced him to blackmail Weeks into giving him a job as his body guard. Later Weeks, a serial womanizer, took a liking to Laurie. Once again, Laurie convinced Lutz it would be for the best if they divorced and she married Weeks. Once she got his money, they could get back together and be rich. However, when she found out that he was going to divorce her and leave her with nothing she convinced Lutz to kill him. So Lutz took Weeks and his mistress for a walk through of their new home on Stiles Island, near Paradise. While there he shoots and kills them both on the beach. He then drags the bodies to the house and stores them in the refrigerator for several days. Finally he hangs Weeks on the tree in the park, and dumps the mistress in the restaurant dumpster. He does this to confuse the police and also to mess up their calculation of the time of death. He was counting on a dumb small town sheriff not knowing what to do, but he got Jesse Stone. He then tells Jesse he is going to leave and will shoot Jesse if he tries to stop him. He pulls his gun on Jesse and Jesse shoots him dead, essentially committing suicide by cop. It was Jesse’s revelation that Laurie was now sleeping with Alan Hendricks and her taped accusation that leads him to do this."
1483,A Taste for Death,crime," In the dingy vestry of St. Matthew's Church, Paddington, two bodies have been found with their throats slashed. One is an alcoholic vagrant, whereas the other is Sir Paul Berowne, a baronet and recently resigned Minister of the Crown. Poet and Commander Adam Dalgliesh investigates one of the most convoluted cases of his career..."
1484,Eleven on Top,crime," Stephanie Plum has had enough. Enough of bounty hunting, enough of being constantly shot at, and enough of having her cars blown up on a semi-regular basis. So, she retires. But she's not done with the bounty-hunting business yet.. Someone is, once again, attempting to kill her. It's someone she knows, and someone who knows her too well. In between short, ill-fated periods working at a button factory, the Kan-Kleen Dry-Cleaning Service, and serving chicken at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, Plum must survive the various attempts on her life while trying to discover who wants to kill her this time. Adding to her troubles is a very protective on-and-off boyfriend, an only semi-functional family, and Lula, ex-prostitute-turned-bounty-hunter, who only barely has a grasp on the finer side of the job. All in all, she thinks it's a fairly normal day."
1485,Dragon's Eye: A Chinese Noir,crime," The protagonist of the story is Sun Piao, a Chief Investigator of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau Homicide Department. He has a sidekick of sorts, an overweight and spirited rural Chinese, Yaobang. Sun Piao is a jaded, righteous man determined to do his job and with a reputation for being good at it; alternatively he is the archetypical hardboiled detective of film noir: cynical, pessimistic and somewhat self-destructive. The storyline of the book revolves around an investigation of several horrifically - but surgically - mutilated corpses, all chained around their necks and ankles, and one night resting on the muddy banks of the Huangpu, near the Bund. Other characters in the book worth noting are Barbara Hayes - an American politician who goes to Shanghai in search of her missing son, Chief Liping (a Party member several grades higher than Sun) and an Englishman named Charles Haven."
1486,Ripley Under Ground,crime," Six years after the events of The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom Ripley is now in his early 30s, living a comfortable life in France with his heiress wife, Héloïse Plisson. The lifestyle at his estate, Belle Ombre, is supported by Dickie Greenleaf's fortune, occasional fence work with an American named Reeves Minot, and Derwatt Ltd. &mdash; an art forgery scheme that he helped set up years before. Derwatt Ltd., in which Ripley is a silent partner, involves himself, two Londoners &mdash; photographer Jeff Constant and freelance journalist Ed Banbury &mdash; and Bernard Tufts, a painter whom Ripley convinced to forge Derwatt paintings. Years prior, the painter Philip Derwatt disappeared and committed suicide in Greece. After Derwatt's death, his friends Constant and Banbury began to publicize his work and managed to sell a number of authentic paintings. Thanks to their PR efforts Derwatt becomes more and more famous and his paintings ever more valuable. When the original Derwatts begin to run out, Ripley suggests pretending that Derwatt went into seclusion in Mexico. Bernard Tufts' forgeries are sold as Derwatts and a gallery called the Buckmaster, is opened to handle the work. The money is rolling in, but Bernard, who had idolized Derwatt, is plagued by guilt for forging his paintings. As the novel opens, the Derwatt enterprise is threatened by a disgruntled American collector, Thomas Murchison, who (correctly) surmises that one of his paintings is a forgery. Worried that the lid is about to be blown on the whole scheme, Ripley decides to go to London and impersonate Derwatt, meet with Murchison and convince him that the paintings are genuine. Ripley is unable to convince Murchison, however, particularly as Bernard meets with the latter and tells him not to buy any more Derwatts. Ripley, as himself, invites Murchison to Belle Ombre to inspect his own Derwatt painting (also a fake) to try to persuade him from taking the case to a Tate Gallery curator and the police. At Belle Ombre, Murchison inspects Ripley's painting and believes it is also a fake. Realizing that the argument is futile, Ripley reveals the entire scam to Murchison, asking for mercy for Bernard's sake. Murchison refuses, however, so Ripley kills him. He takes Murchison's suitcase and painting to Orly Airport and abandons them on the curb near the Departures entrance. He then buries the body just inside the woods near his house. Chris Greenleaf, Dickie's cousin, comes to stay while on a European tour. He notices the fresh grave outside the house but doesn't think much of it. Bernard also comes to visit Ripley, rattled by the recent events and saying he wants to confess everything to the police. Ripley confesses to Bernard his murder of Murchison and, realizing his own terrible choice of a gravesite, asks Bernard to help move the body. Together, they dump it in a river. The French police and Inspector Webster from the London police both investigate the case on behalf of Murchison's wife, making trips to Belle Ombre and inspecting the house and grounds. Things are further complicated for Ripley as Héloïse returns from a Greek holiday and discovers a man hanging in the cellar. It turns out to just be stuffed clothing, a prop left by Bernard a suicide in effigy. Bernard leaves a note suggesting that he is going to confess his forgeries. When Bernard returns to Belle Ombre, Héloïse leaves in disgust. Driven over the edge by guilt, Bernard unsuccessfully tries to strangle Ripley, whom he blames for starting the forgery scheme; Ripley feels sorry for the disturbed man and does not retaliate. Later, however, Bernard again tries to kill Ripley, this time knocking him out with a shovel and burying him alive in Murchison's empty grave. Ripley manages to escape and returns to London to impersonate Derwatt for a second appearance, this time for Mrs. Murchison and Inspector Webster. Mrs. Murchison decides to pay a visit to Belle Ombre, the last place her husband was seen. Back at Belle Ombre, Ripley entertains Mrs. Murchison. After she leaves, Ripley realizes that Bernard is contemplating suicide. Feeling responsible, Ripley goes to look for him in Greece, Paris, and finally Salzburg, Austria. There he finds Bernard, but the painter believes Ripley is a ghost - he thinks he killed him in France. Bernard runs from Ripley and leaps off a cliff to his death. Ripley uses the corpse to tie up loose ends; he partially cremates and buries the body, making sure to smash or hide any teeth. He then goes to the police with the information that Derwatt killed himself there. Seeing suicidal journal entries, the police presume that Bernard also killed himself in Salzburg by jumping off a bridge. With Bernard and Derwatt both gone, the art forgery allegations have no active leads and Derwatt Ltd's existence is no longer in jeopardy. The novel ends with Ripley's being content in bed with Héloïse, who prefers to remain ignorant of what he has done and, further, how exactly he makes his money. He receives an optimistic-sounding call from the gallery, but still fears that the next one will be from the persistently inquisitive police, who have noticed that many people die after approaching Ripley."
1487,White Dog,crime," A Melbourne property developer is murdered and his artist ex-girlfriend is the prime suspect. Jack Irish, a lone private investigator, comes in to investigate."
1488,Promises in Death,crime," On being called in to investigate a dead body, NYPSD homicide detectives Eve Dallas and Delia Peabody discover that the woman is a fellow officer, Detective Amaryllis Coltraine, who worked out of another precinct. To add to the emotion of the case, Coltraine was the lover of Li Morris, the Chief Medical Examiner and a good friend of Eve and Peabody. Coltraine was shot with her own police stunner; it also appears that she may have known her killer. Meanwhile, Eve's contact from Internal Affairs Bureau Donald Webster clues her on the victim's connection with Alex Ricker Max Ricker's son back in Atlanta, Georgia, from where the victim requested a transfer to New York following a fallout. Initial evidence suggests that the kill may have been ordered by Alex Ricker. The suspect's reactions, however, as well as Roarke's impressions from a private discussion they have, tend to steer the blame away from him. Eve is beginning to sense that the killer may have been one of the detectives Coltraine worked with at her precinct. A humorous minor subplot revolves around Eve's performing another duty of friendship she has never tackled before: hosting a wedding shower for Louise Dimatto, who is marrying former ""licensed companion"" Charles Monroe. In the middle of the shower, Eve gets a call from dispatch informing her of the death of Rod Sandy, Alex's Personal Assistant. After she gets back, Eve requests Charlotte Mira and Cher Reo to sit in for a debrief and ends up explaining the case to all her friends which leads Mavis to point out the killer who was the victim's partner at her precinct. Further digging reveals the killer to be the illegitimate daughter of Max Ricker,who set her up to extract his revenge on Eve and Roarke for putting him in a cage."
1489,The Snowman,crime," The book begins with a scene in 1980 - 24 years before the main plot. A married woman has sex with a lover in the middle of the day, while her adolescent son waits in a car outside; their lovemaking is disturbed when they think somebody is looking at them from outside the window, but it turns out to have been only a snowman built outside. The significance of the scene only becomes clear near the end of the book, where - as with other flashbacks in the Harry Hole books - it provides a clue to the identity of the book's real villain. The main plot is set in 2004, when Norwegian detective, Harry Hole investigates a number of recent murders of women around Oslo. His experiences on a training course with the FBI lead him to search for links between the cases, and finds two – each victim is a married mother and after each murder a snowman is found at the murder scene. On looking back through previous murders going back some years, Hole comes to realise that he is on the case of Norway's first official serial killer, as he discovers more women who have disappeared and are believed to have been abducted or murdered in a similar pattern. Almost all of the victims vanish after the first snowfall of winter and a snowman is found near the scene, although this is usually ignored as not being indicative during the original investigation. Further investigation leads Harry and his team – including newcomer to the Department, Katrine Bratt, recently transferred from the Police Department in Bergen, to suspect that paternity issues with the children of the victims may be a motive for the murders. They discover that all of the victims' children have different fathers to the men they believe to be their father. Following DNA Testing results leads the investigation down a few wrong routes and several murder suspects are eliminated from the enquiry. Within a short time, Harry and Katrine are drawn together - personally as well as professionally. In the past Harry avoided having affairs with female colleagues, but he is now tempted. During a departamental party, Katrine makes bold advances - and though rejecting her, Harry afterwards has vivid sexual fantasies about her. It is, however, far more than a sexual attraction. He recognizes in her a kindred spirit - a brillant detective able to notice the smallest of details and form them into patterns. Moreover, she has the same kind of obsessive dedication to the job which Harry himself has - the obsessive dedication which had earlier caused Harry's girlfriend, Rakel, to break their relationship. To complicate matters further, during the investigation, Harry continues to meet, clandestinely, with Rakel, despite the fact that Rakel has a new boyfriend, the doctor Matthias Lund-Helgesen. Eventually, however, suspicion falls of Katrine Bratt being herself ""The Snowman"", after she attempts to force a confession out of one of the strongest suspects, who eventually turns out to be innocent. Harry chases her across Norway and finally catches up with her at a previously discovered murder site. She is apprehended and committed to a psychiatric unit. After initially seeming to be unresponsive, she eventually informs the psychiatrist of the reasons for her behaviour. At the same time, Harry's superior officers decide that the scandal of allowing a long-time serial killer to work on the murder case will be damaging and determine that they require a scapegoat to appease the press. Due to his previous issues with alcoholism and consequent reputation within the police department, Harry is put forward in absentia. Harry comes to realise that the murderer is still at large when another victim is discovered. Purely due to a random thought triggered by a comment from Matthias, Harry makes a vital connection that ultimately leads him to the true perpetrator. His success in finally apprehending the killer prevents any need for a scapegoat and Katrine Bratt, following further mental stability checks is sent back to Bergen Police Department. A background theme to the book's plot is the centuries-old rivalry between Oslo and Bergen, repeatedly referred to in (often ironic or facetious) remarks by various characters. In one passage Katrine tells Harry that ""Bergensians don't think of Oslo as the capital""."
1490,"One Across, Two Down",crime," There are only two things that interest Stanley: the crosswords and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money, which he has dreamed about for 20 years. He finally realises that he must construct a puzzle of his own in order to give death a helping hand."
1491,The False Inspector Dew,crime," It is 1921, and Alma Webster, a reader of romances, is passionately in love with her dentist, Walter Baranov. There is only one foreseeable outcome: the murder of his wife. Inspired by the real-life Dr Crippen case, they plot a way to achieve it perfectly aboard the ocean liner, Mauretania. The dentist takes on the identity of Inspector Walter Dew, Crippen’s nemesis, but then a murder occurs aboard the ship and the captain invites ""Inspector Dew"" to investigate."
1492,Brat Farrar,crime," The story centers around the Ashbys, an English country-squire family. Their centuries-old family estate is Latchetts, in the fictional village of Clare near the south coast of England. It takes place in 1946 or 1947 – the date is not given, but it is after World War II, but no more than eight years after the start of the war. The Ashby family consists of Miss Beatrice Ashby (""Aunt Bee""), a 50-ish spinster, and the four children of her late brother Bill: Simon, 20; Eleanor, 18–19; and twins Jane and Ruth, 9. Bill and his wife Nora died in an airplane crash eight years before. Since then, the Ashbys, like many old families, have been short of money. Bee has kept the estate going by turning the family stable into a profitable business. The Ashbys breed and sell horses, train horses, and give riding lessons. All of them except Ruth ride frequently and work with the horses. The young Ashbys ride in equestrian competitions and win prizes. There is also great-uncle Charles Ashby in the Far East. Charles is coming home for Simon's 21st birthday, which is in a few weeks, though he will be a month or so late. When Simon turns twenty-one, things will change: he comes into a large trust fund left by his mother. He is also the heir to Latchetts. Simon had a twin brother, Patrick, who was 15 minutes older. But soon after Bill and Nora died, Patrick disappeared, leaving what was taken as a suicide note. The title character, Brat Farrar, is a young man recently returned to England from America. He was a foundling. At the age of 13, the orphanage placed him in an office job, but he ran away instead. He ended up in the western U.S., where he worked at ranches and stables for several years, and became an expert horseman. On a street in London, a complete stranger greets Brat as ""Simon"". He is Alec Loding, a second-rate actor. Alec's real name is Ledingham, and the Ledingham estate (now sold off for debts) was also in Clare. He knows the Ashby family intimately, and even after Brat identifies himself, Alec is certain that Brat is an Ashby. The family resemblance is that strong — including the love of horses. This gives Alec an idea: Brat should impersonate the missing twin, Patrick, and as the elder brother, claim the trust and the estate. Alec remembers a great deal about the Ashbys, Latchetts, and the village, and this, combined with his photographs and other memorabilia will allow him to coach Brat on all the background details, and in return Brat will give him a share of the money. Barring a misstep on Brat's part, there is little to distinguish between himself and Patrick: neither has distinguishing scars or birthmark and the Ashbys' dentist and all his records were destroyed by a German bomb. Conveniently, Brat left the orphanage at nearly the same time that Patrick vanished. Brat is reluctant – but tempted, especially by Alec's insistence that he must be an Ashby, which makes him want to find out about his possible family. He agrees. After two weeks of tutoring, ""Patrick"" appears at the London office of Mr. Sandal, the Ashby family solicitor. Sandal is astonished, but convinced. ""Patrick"" says he adopted the name ""Brat Farrar"" after running away, and gives his own story as the account of ""Patrick""'s missing years. Mr. Sandal informs Bee, who meets ""Patrick"" and is also convinced. Over the next two weeks, Sandal verifies ""Patrick""'s story. ""Patrick"" now comes to Latchetts. Ruth and Eleanor accept him, though Jane is hostile at first. Simon professes to accept him, and shows no apparent resentment at being displaced as heir. But Brat can tell that Simon is not deceived. Brat wonders why Simon seems to be certain that ""Patrick"" is a fake, and why he keeps silent. ""Patrick"" settles in at Latchetts, and is accepted by all of the neighbors; he makes a few errors, but these are easily explained by seven years of absence. He has a home and family for the first time in his life. He becomes particularly fond of Bee, and feels guilty about deceiving her. He also wonders how long he can get away with it, though. Simon is clearly though covertly hostile. He invites ""Patrick"" to ride Timber, an exceptionally fine horse — without warning him that Timber sometimes tries to kill or cripple his rider. He loosens ""Patrick""'s saddle-girth just before a race. And once, in a fit of rage, he openly calls ""Patrick"" an impostor, though he quickly withdraws the statement. Eleanor is confused, because she likes ""Patrick"" — but not the way a sister should like a brother. Then Simon tells Brat he knows Brat is not Patrick — because he murdered Patrick. Of course, Simon knows Brat cannot repeat this to anyone without destroying his impersonation. Brat recognizes that continuing to impersonate Patrick will make him an accomplice of Simon in the murder of Patrick. While Brat is willing to be a party to impersonating Patrick, he is unwilling to be a party to murder. After a long night of reflection spent wandering the countryside, Brat realizes how Simon killed Patrick while maintaining a solid alibi of spending the day at the blacksmith. He also realizes the trauma the public disclosure of Simon's crime and his own impersonation will have on the Ashby family, and agonizes over whether to expose Simon or let sleeping bodies lie and just ""run away"" again. To help him decide, Brat pays a late night visit to the family's minister, Alex Loding's brother-in-law, to reveal his own crime and ask the minister's opinion on whether Simon's murder of Patrick should be kept secret. Although the minister is not surprised by Brat's revelation that he is not Patrick, he cannot believe that Simon murdered Patrick. He does, however, state that murder cannot simply be ignored, that to do so invites anarchy. His indecision gone, Brat decides to investigate Patrick's disappearance on his own to find the evidence needed to convince others of Simon's guilt. When he sneaks out the next night to visit the quarry at the bottom of which he has guessed Patrick's remains lie hidden, Simon is waiting and tries to kill him. During a struggle, the two young men fall into the quarry. Simon is killed and Brat seriously injured. Patrick's bones are found, proving Simon's guilt. Great-uncle Charles Ashby arrives. He recognizes Brat as the son of Walter Ashby, a long-dead cousin who drank a bit too much and never married. Brat can now be part of the family, and there is no barrier to his romance with Eleanor (who is only his second cousin)."
1493,The Leopard,crime," Following the traumatic events of the previous novel, the world-weary detective Harry Hole has gone on a kind of self-imposed exile from Norway and disappeared. Because of a series of murders by a potential serial killer in Oslo leave the police baffled and call for Hole's special talents, a search is launched and he is eventually found by a new Crime Squad officer, Kaja Solness, in Hong Kong, where he has become addicted to opium. After failing to convince Harry to return to Norway by describing the identical murder of two women, Solness informs him that his father is seriously ill in the Rikshospitalet and will not live much longer. This convinces Harry to return to Norway with Solness. Harry returns to Crime Squad to find that it is in a political tussle with the National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos). The power-hungry head of Kripos, Mikael Bellman, seeks to build his own power by gaining a monopoly on all murder investigations in Norway and is at odds with Harry's own supervisor. Much of the book's plot is concerned with this no-holds-barred power struggle, with rival detectives conducting surveillance on each other and resorting to constant intrigue, blackmail and the planting of spies and ""moles"" in the rival department. From the very moment of landing in Norway, Harry finds himself the target of Bellman's hostility - though the head of Kripos is not averse to obtaining the results of Harry's detection and taking credit for them. To begin with, Harry is reluctant to become involved in the murder investigation, but when a female Norwegian MP is murdered in a public park, he is drawn into the case. The third murder initially seems unrelated to the previous two. The previous victims had been found with 24 small incisions emanating from the mouth, but the actual cause of death was by drowning in their own blood from those wounds, whereas the MP was found having been hanged, though the fall had been considerable and she had been decapitated by the rope. Harry, Solness and one of Harry's former colleagues at Crime Squad start trying to find the killer - working under cover as officially the case had been given to Kripos. While working together, Harry and Kaja are increasingly drawn to each other. Like himself, Kaja turns out to be haunted by traumatic memories and ghosts of the past, and her past personal entanglements impact her professional life - which leads to a big confrontation between the two of them, and then to a reconciliation and a tempestuous love affair. In the investigation, they meanwhile discover that all three murdered women had been at the same ski lodge some time previously all on the same night. Harry deduces that the murders are part of the killer's attempts to cover up his (or her) trail. Suspicion initially falls on a man known to have been at the ski lodge at the time, but he is eliminated from the enquiry when he also is found murdered having been super glued to his bath and then slowly drowned, returning to the killer's previous style of murder. Forcing Bellman to include him in the Kripos team - though there is no love lost between the two of them - Harry finds another person who had been at the ski lodge at the time and who is now in Australia. She refuses to be bait for the killer, but Harry and Solness instigate a sting operation to draw out the killer. But this fails and almost costs them their lives when the killer outsamrts them, and instead of coming near the hut starts an avalanche which covers and very nearly kills them. Harry finally determines that the murderer is someone that he knows and who has become close to him, following a discussion with The Snowman from his previous case. He realises who he believes to be responsible and has him arrested. Unfortunately, Harry's instincts have proved wrong and the real killer is discovered to have fled to the Congo. Harry and Solness follow them and Harry is kidnapped by associates of the killer. He manages to escape, but Solness has been captured herself. Harry follows the clues given by one of the killer's associates and finally confronts and kills the murderer at the lip of a live volcano. Following the death of his father, Harry spots his former partner, Rakel, and her son, Oleg, at the funeral and manages to confirm that they are alive and happy away from Norway - having fled following the events of The Snowman murders. Though it is but a fleeting meeting, it re-confirms that Rakel is the one great love of Harry's life and that no other woman can truly replace her. Therefore, Kaja's deep love for Harry and her aspiration to build a life together with him is doomed to failure and heartbreak. The poignant farewell scene is reminiscent of the similar scene at the end of The Redeemer, where Harry cut off a budding affair with Martine, the Salvation Army woman with whom he got involved in that book. Harry himself returns to see The Snowman, who is gravely ill and who feels some remorse at what he had done. It is tacitly suggested that Harry helps The Snowman to commit suicide, which Harry feels is payment for having failed to follow his father's previous request for him to perform euthanasia. By the end of the novel, Harry has gotten many new traumatic memories and haunting ""ghosts"" - having been very near death several times, mutilating his own face to get free of the killer's fiendish trap, shooting an African mercenary who turned out to be a young boy... Moreover, he had twice saved Kaja's life by ruthlessly sacrificing somebody else - during the avalanche he had given priority to resuscitating her while another police officer suffocated to death, and at the final showdown in Africa he had shot down the murderer at an angle where the heavy bullet missed Kaja but killed in passing another woman who was held hostage. Though not facing any charges, Harry is well aware of what he did - and determined to go back to Hong Kong, for good this time."
1494,Critique of Criminal Reason,crime," Years after Immanuel Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason but now rumours say that the philosophers is about to release another book. This book will be different than all others because it will examine the concept of serial killers. Meanwhile the German city of Königsberg, where Kant lives, is gripped by a series of murders. Prosecutor Hanno Stiffeniis is ordered by King Frederick William III himself to investigate the crimes and bring the murderer to justice. Stiffeniis is aided in his quest by Immanuel Kant, as well as a local police sergeant. eo:Kritiko de kriminala racio"
1495,The Postcard Killers,crime," A young American couple is murdered while vacationing in Europe. The young woman’s father Jacob Kanon, a New York City police investigator travels to Europe to hunt down the murderer. Other young couples in France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have since then been killed and the evidence points in the same direction. Kanon joins up with Scandinavian journalist Dessie Larsson to find the murderer. Kanon and Larsson must work against time since every murder is preceded by a postcard to a regional daily."
1496,All That Remains,crime," A serial killer is loose in Richmond, specializing in attractive young couples whose bodies are inevitably found in the woods months later&mdash;minus their shoes and socks. After months of exposure to all the elements, all that remains of the killer's victims has in every case left Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta unable even to determine an exact cause of death. Frustrated that her high-tech forensic skills have apparently proved useless, Kay enlists the help of an ace crime reporter and a psychic whose powers have been vouched for by the FBI. Racing against time, Kay finds she must draw upon her own personal resources to track down a murderer skilled at eliminating every clue. All that remains to her now is her courage, intuition, and the will to stop a killer before he can strike again."
1497,"Gun, with Occasional Music",crime," The novel follows the adventures of Conrad Metcalf, a tough guy private detective and a wiseass, through a futuristic version of San Francisco and Oakland, California. Metcalf is hired by a man who claims that he's being framed for the murder of a prominent urologist. Metcalf quickly discovers that nobody wants the case solved: not the victim's ex-wife, not the police, and certainly not the gun-toting kangaroo who works for the local mafia boss."
1498,Eternity in Death,crime," Tiara Kent lights several candles in her room, and turns off her security system. She drinks a special ""potion"", and prepares for her mystery man to arrive. The next morning, Lt. Eve Dallas, and Delia Peabody are called to Tiara's apartment. The man she invited bit her in the neck, and drank her blood as she bled out, and Peabody recognises the murder as one perpetrated by a vampire. Eve and Peabody talk to Tiara's friend, Daffy Wheates, who informs them Tiara was going to an underground vampire club, called Bloodbath, and had in fact met a man. Eve heads to see Iris Francine, and then Dr. Charlotte Mira, but is accompanied by her billionaire husband Roarke, who is curious himself about the vampire murder. Iris is unable to tell Eve much of anything, and Dr. Mira is only able to say that the killer believes he is a vampire, that he tried to turn Tiara into one, and he will continue trying until he gets it right. The tox report reveals that the ""potion"" Tiara drunk, was a mixture of hallucinogens, tranqs, date rape drugs, and human blood. Detective Ian McNab is called into to help with the investigation, not because of what he can contribute, but because he thinks vampires are cool. They head off to the club, and Eve discovers Peabody is now wearing a cross, to ward of vampires. Eve gets irritated, and makes Peabody repeat ""Vampires don't exist"" over and over again. Dallas, Roarke, Peabody, and McNab arrive at Bloodbath, which is literally, an underground club. They are greeted by the bartender, Allesseria Carter, who is serving pig's blood to people who think they are vampires, and Dorian Vadim, who owns the club. Dallas automatically suspects Dorian, who admits to being a vampire, but not to killing Tiara, and he agrees to give blood, to be tested against the blood found in Tiara Kent's stomach. He uses a syringe, brought by Allesseria, who also gives him an alibi for the time of the murder. Dallas checks Dorian's records, finding out he came from Europe, where he worked as a magician. As Allesseria Carter leaves Bloodbath for the last time, she considers calling the police, and admitting she lied for Dorian. Before she can, Dorian attacks and kills her, leaving twin puncture wounds on the neck. The next morning, Dallas and Roarke find a link message from Allesseria, that was interrupted when she was attacked. Eve and Roarke head out to the crime scene. Allesseria's blood has been partially drained, bottled, and drunk. Peabody gives Dallas the worst news she could get: Dorian's blood doesn't match the blood Tiara drank. Dallas does get some interesting news. The DNA Dorian gave to them does turn up at another homicide, as the DNA of a deadbody. A man in Bulgaria, named Pensky Gregor, who was a part of a prison work program, was killed by twin puncture wounds. They remember Dorian was originally a magician, and he swapped the vials of blood in his own night club, while three detectives and Roarke watched. Dallas head off to see Morris the coronor, who found saliva and semen on the body. On the way, she finds that Detective David Baxter has hung garlic up, and is carrying a wooden stake. The detectives and Roarke head to Bloodbath. Dallas tries to get Dorian to go to Cop Central, but Dorian is able to refuse because of his religious beliefs. No matter how hard Dallas tries, APA Cher Reo confirms her worst fears: they can't touch Dorian as long as the sun is up. Roarke puts a silver cross around her neck, to ward off vampires. Dallas organizes a conference, to prepare to take down Dorian after the sun goes down. Dallas herself will go to see Dorian, and the cops will move in, should he attack her. Before she goes, Baxter gives her his wooden stake. Dallas goes into Bloodbath alone, and is invited upstairs by Dorian. Dallas then tells him that she has his voice print, which she got off of Allesseria Carter's phone call. Enraged, Dorian attacks her, causing Roarke and the others to rush in. By the time they reach Dallas, they find Dorian has met a most fitting end: Dallas has stabbed him with the wooden stake."
1499,Bedelia,crime," 33 year-old Charlie Horst comes from an old Puritan family which for centuries has been one of the pillars of society in an unnamed small town in Connecticut. Educated at Yale and now working as an architect, he has lived in a grand old house&mdash;his parental home&mdash;all his life. At the beginning of the novel his domineering mother has been dead for less than a year, and since her death Charlie has gone on a summer holiday to Colorado Springs, has met Bedelia Cochran there, a young childless widow of great beauty, has immediately fallen in love with her, brought her back home and married her. Married life becomes Charlie Horst, so much so that on Christmas Day, 1913, he considers himself ""the luckiest man in the world."" Bedelia has turned out to be the perfect wife: exceedingly capable of running the household, a brilliant hostess, an obedient and submissive companion in need of protection by a strong man, imaginative, attractive, always well-dressed and well made-up, sexy, and good in bed. At their little Christmas party some of the town dignitaries are present, and everyone enjoys her ladylike ways. On top of it all, Bedelia is several months pregnant, turning Charlie into a proud father-to-be. Among the guests at the Christmas party are his cousin Abbie Hoffman, a divorcee from New York; her friend Ellen Walker, a young journalist employed at the local paper who is still in love with Charlie although she has been rejected by him in favour of Bedelia; and Ben Chaney, a young painter who has recently arrived from nowhere and rented a cottage in the woods for the winter and who is increasingly regarded by Charlie as an intruder into his well-established circle of friends and acquaintances. Then Charlie suddenly comes down with stomachache, and old Doctor Meyers, the Horsts' family physician, diagnoses a severe case of food poisoning. Charlie himself attributes his illness to overwork and brushes aside Doctor Meyers's suspicion that he may have been deliberately given poison as the ramblings of a senile quack who should have retired a long time ago. However, Doctor Meyers insists on a professional nurse being installed in the Horsts' home, and before her arrival at the house Chaney is seen meeting her at the railway station and talking agitatedly with her. Charlie is given strict orders not to eat or drink anything unless the nurse is present, and he gradually recovers. At about the same time Ben Chaney discloses his true identity as a private investigator who has been hired to track down a serial widow whose previous husbands have all died ostensibly of natural causes and who is said to be living in this area under an assumed name. When Chaney announces the impending arrival of a relative of one of the deceased men who he claims will be able to recognize and identify Mrs Horst as that woman, Bedelia goes into the offensive and plans her disappearance&mdash;with or without her current husband. The witness's arrival is delayed due to a heavy snowstorm, which gives Bedelia more time to try to convince Charlie of her innocence and to talk him into leaving for Europe with her, a proposal which is met with utter disbelief and refusal on Charlie's part. In their snowbound house, Charlie's suspicion concerning his wife's past is steadily growing with each new life-story she serves him while he realizes that he still knows absolutely no hard facts about her former life. During one of those cold and stormy nights Bedelia sneaks out of the house, leaving behind most of her personal belongings. However, being pregnant, she is too weak to make it to the station and is saved from certain death by freezing by Charlie, who finds her lying in the snow-covered road. As a consequence, she has to stay in bed with a severe cold for several days. Eventually the roads are cleared of snow, and the first vehicle to pull up in front of the Horsts' house is a delivery van with the groceries they have ordered by telephone. The delivery boy also leaves behind a large bag of food ordered by Ben Chaney to be fetched by the latter the moment he is no longer snowed in in his cottage. Shortly afterwards, Charlie chances upon Bedelia sprinkling some white powder on a piece of Gorgonzola taken from Chaney's bag of groceries, and is immediately reminded of a story he was told by Chaney about the death of one of Bedelia's former husbands. But only now that he has caught her in the act is he finally convinced of his wife's guilt and categorically resists all her attempts at making him an accessory after the fact. She tried, courageously, to smile at Charlie. ""You wouldn't let them take me away, would you? I'm your wife, you know, and I'm sick. I'm a very sick woman, your wife. I've never told you, dear, how sick I am. My heart, I might die at any moment. I must never be distressed about anything. [...] I didn't ever tell you, Charlie, because I didn't want you to worry."" This she said with a sort of determined gallantry, both sweet and bitter. Gently Charlie removed her hands. Bedelia submitted humbly, showing that she considered him superior, her lord and master. He was male and strong, she feminine and frail. His strength made him responsible for her; her life was in his hands. Charlie locks Bedelia in the bedroom and then goes downstairs to greet the first guests to arrive after the snowstorm, among them Ellen Walker. While he is flirting with her, Bedelia is slowly dying upstairs after having obeyed her husband&#39;s order to take her own poison."
1500,Smuggler's Moon,history," Sir John and Jeremy are sent to East Anglia to investigate smuggling, but when the smugglers turn to murder, Sir John takes it as a brazen assault on the law."
1501,An Experiment In Treason,history," A pack of confidential letters is stolen from the Secretary of State for the American Colonies. With cross-Atlantic tensions rising, Sir John is ordered to interrogate the American representative in London, one Benjamin Franklin."
1502,War and Peace,history," War and Peace has a large cast of characters, the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. Some are actual historical figures, such as Napoleon and Alexander I. While the scope of the novel is vast, it is centered around five aristocratic families. The plot and the interactions of the characters take place in the era surrounding the 1812 French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg, at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer — the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main characters and aristocratic families in the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. Pierre is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father's expense following his mother's death, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward, and owing in part to his open, benevolent nature, finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. It is known to everyone at the soirée that Pierre is his father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children. Also attending the soireé is Pierre's friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of Lise, the charming society favourite. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon. The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances. At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate, Prince Andrei departs for war and leaves his terrified, pregnant wife Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky and devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya. The second part opens with descriptions of the impending Russian-French war preparations. At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, who is now conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first taste of battle. He meets Prince Andrei, whom he insults in a fit of impetuousness. Even more than most young soldiers, he is deeply attracted by Tsar Alexander's charisma. Nikolai gambles and socializes with his officer, Vasily Dmitrich Denisov, and befriends the ruthless, and perhaps, psychopathic Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov. Book Two begins with Nikolai Rostov briefly returning on home leave to Moscow. Nikolai finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor estate management. He spends an eventful winter at home, accompanied by his friend Denisov, his officer from the Pavlograd Regiment in which he serves. Natasha has blossomed into a beautiful young girl. Denisov falls in love with her, proposes marriage but is rejected. Although his mother pleads with Nikolai to find himself a good financial prospect in marriage, Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother's request. He promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the dowry-less Sonya. Pierre Bezukhov, upon finally receiving his massive inheritance, is suddenly transformed from a bumbling young man into the richest and most eligible bachelor in the Russian Empire. Despite rationally knowing that it is wrong, he is convinced into marriage with Prince Kuragin's beautiful and immoral daughter Hélène (Elena Vasilyevna Kuragina), to whom he is superficially attracted. Hélène, who is rumoured to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother, the equally charming and immoral Anatol, tells Pierre that she will never have children with him. Hélène is rumoured to have an affair with Dolokhov, who mocks Pierre in public. Pierre loses his temper and challenges Dolokhov, a seasoned dueller and ruthless killer, to a duel. Unexpectedly, Pierre wounds Dolokhov. Hélène denies her affair, but Pierre is convinced of her guilt and, after almost being violent to her, leaves her. In his moral and spiritual confusion, Pierre joins the Freemasons, and becomes embroiled in Masonic internal politics. Much of Book Two concerns his struggles with his passions and his spiritual conflicts to be a better man. Now a rich aristocrat, he abandons his former carefree behavior and enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? The question continually baffles and confuses Pierre. He attempts to liberate his serfs, but ultimately achieves nothing of note. Pierre is vividly contrasted with the intelligent and ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a charge of a straggling army. He suffers a near fatal artillery wound. In the face of death, Andrei realizes all his former ambitions are pointless and his former hero, Napoleon (who rescues him in a horseback excursion to the battlefield), is apparently as vain as himself. Prince Andrei recovers from his injuries in a military hospital and returns home, only to find his wife Lise dying in childbirth. He is stricken by his guilty conscience for not treating Lise better when she was alive and is haunted by the pitiful expression on his dead wife's face. His child, Nikolenka, survives. Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment, Prince Andrei does not return to the army but chooses to remain on his estate, working on a project that would codify military behavior to solve problems of disorganization responsible for the loss of life on the Russian side. Pierre visits him and brings new questions: where is God in this amoral world? Pierre is interested in panentheism and the possibility of an afterlife. Pierre's estranged wife, Hélène, begs him to take her back, and against his better judgment and in trying to abide by the Freemason laws of forgiveness, he does. Despite her vapid shallowness, Hélène establishes herself as an influential hostess in Petersburg society. Prince Andrei feels impelled to take his newly written military notions to Petersburg, naively expecting to influence either the Emperor himself or those close to him. Young Natasha, also in Petersburg, is caught up in the excitement of dressing for her first grand ball, where she meets Prince Andrei and briefly reinvigorates him with her vivacious charm. Andrei believes he has found purpose in life again and, after paying the Rostovs several visits, proposes marriage to Natasha. However, old Prince Bolkonsky, Andrei's father, dislikes the Rostovs, opposes the marriage, and insists on a year's delay. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. She soon recovers her spirits, however, and Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to spend some time with a friend in Moscow. Natasha visits the Moscow opera, where she meets Hélène and her brother Anatol. Anatol has since married a Polish woman who he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and is determined to seduce her. Hélène and Anatol conspire together to accomplish this plan. Anatol kisses Natasha and writes her passionate letters, eventually establishing plans to elope. Natasha is convinced that she loves Anatol and writes to Princess Maria, Andrei's sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Pierre is initially horrified by Natasha's behavior, but realizes he has fallen in love with her. During the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre. Prince Andrei accepts coldly Natasha's breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal. Ashamed, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill. With the help of her family, especially Sonya, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming confrontation between Napoleon's troops and the Russian army. Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke while trying to protect his estate from French marauders. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to Princess Maria, but remembers his promise to Sonya. Back in Moscow, the war-obsessed Petya manages to snatch a loose piece of the Tsar's biscuit outside the Cathedral of the Assumption; he finally convinces his parents to allow him to enlist. Napoleon himself is a main character in this section of the novel and is presented in vivid detail, as both a thinker and would-be strategist. His toilette and his customary attitudes and traits of mind are depicted in detail. Also described are the well-organized force of over 400,000 French Army (only 140,000 of them actually French-speaking) which marches quickly through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. In the midst of the turmoil he experiences firsthand the death and destruction of war. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon's reputedly invincible army. For strategic reasons and having suffered grievous losses, the Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatol Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatol loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a grenade wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified. The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory, often propagandistic, instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Rostopchin is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, but in the end, Natasha convinces them to load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino. Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded. When Napoleon's Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes an anonymous man in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees while in this garb are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her. Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon, after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. He becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor, who is incapable of malice. In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: an honest person of integrity (unlike the aristocrats of Petersburg society) who is utterly without pretense. Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by living and interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation—during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French—Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action. Meanwhile, Andrei, wounded during Napoleon's invasion, has been taken in as a casualty and cared for by the Rostovs, fleeing from Moscow to Yaroslavl. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying. As the novel draws to a close, Pierre's wife Hélène dies from an overdose of abortion medication (Tolstoy does not state it explicitly but the euphemism he uses is unambiguous). Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's. Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and, revealing his love after being released by his former wife's death, marries Natasha. The first part of the epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813. It is the last happy event for the Rostov family, which is undergoing a transition. Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate. Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing also saves his family from financial ruin. Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their life. Buoyed by his wife's fortune, Nikolai pays off all his family's debts. They also raise Prince Andrei's orphaned son, Nikolai Andreyevich (Nikolenka) Bolkonsky. As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples–Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria–remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in 1820, much to the jubilation of everyone concerned. There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father ""would be satisfied..."" (presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt). The second part of the epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. While most historians claim that historical events are the result of the actions of ""heroes"" and other great individuals, Tolstoy argues that this is impossible because of how rarely these actions result in great historical events. Rather, he argues, great historical events are the result of many smaller events driven by the thousands of individuals involved, (he compares this to Calculus, and the sum of infinitesimals). He then goes on to argue that these smaller events are the result of an inverse relationship between necessity and free-will, necessity being based on reason and therefore explainable by historical analysis, and free-will being based on ""consciousness"" and therefore inherently unpredictable."
1503,The First Sir Percy,history," March 1624 and a lot has happened since the plot on the life of the Stadtholder was foiled two months earlier. With the help of Mynheer Beresteyn, Diogenes has finally met his real father, an English Nobleman, and realised his true identify as Sir Percy Blake of Blakeney, heir to a large estate in Sussex. Now an English Lord, the once penniless soldier of fortune is getting married to Gilda Beresteyn, the woman he was paid to kidnap back in January. Mynheer Beresytn has arranged a double wedding for the pair along with his son Nicholaes and his bride to be, Kaatje van den Poele. The day is to be one of great celebration, with guests coming from far and wide including the Stadtholder Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange who owes Diogenes his life for informing him of Lord Stoutenburg's plot against his life. Also due to attend are Diogenes' fellow 'philosophers' – Socrates and Pythagoras. Pythagoras, however has fallen foul of Lord Stoutenburg after coming across the fugitive and his servant Jan, while lost in the Veluwe on the way to the wedding. Stoutenburg recognises the philosopher and after plying him with lots of wine, gets Jan to take him back out into the snow and kill him. Jan leads Pythagoras away from his planned route, shoots him in the back and leaves him for dead. On the day of the wedding, Diogenes is concerned about his friend and sends Socrates and a group of men out to look for him. The wedding celebrations are torturous for the adventurer who is not used to formal Dutch traditions and just wants to whisk his new bride away to their new life in England. Diogenes enlists the help of the Stadtholder to break up the celebrations early so he can go against tradition and carry off his wife in the face of scandalized and protesting wedding guests but just as he is about to ride off, a curious spectacle presents itself to view. Socrates arrives on horseback, with the barely alive Pythagoras across his saddle. The Stadtholder agrees to stay on so his personal doctor can administer to the adventurer and when he is eventually able to speak, he is able to relay Stoutenburg's new plans to assassinate the Stadtholder in some detail. It seems that the Archduchess Isabella has troops crossing the IJssel and coming up from Kleve. They plan to seize the cities of Arnheim and Nijmegen then march across the Veluwe and confront the Stadtholder with a vast army. On top of this, Stoutenburg is plotting to poison the Stadtholder using chemicals he has been taught to manufacture by Francis Borgia. The Prince of Orange asks Diogenes to fight at his side but the philosopher is torn between his feelings for his new bride and the call of honour and duty. Gilda settles the matter when she brings him his sword, telling him he must leave for Vorden within the hour. Nicholaes travels with Diogenes as far as Barneveld but on returning to the house, he tries to convince Guilda that her husband is a traitor and is in league with the Archduchess. Diogenes makes a brief stop in Vorden where he delivers the Stadtholder's orders to Messire Marquet and his troops, but on route to Wageningen he is suddenly chased and shot at by men on horses. Plunging into the river Ijseel to evade his attackers his horse is shot through the neck and the waters sweep over his head. Four days have passed and there is no news from Diogenes, the archduchess's troops have crossed the IJssel and overrun Gelderland. Nicholaes has been sent to Amersfoot to tell his father of the Stadtholder's coming and that they must evacuate the town. Fugatives from Ede have reached the Stadtholder's camp at Utrecht and it soon becomes obvious that Diogenes has failed in his task to deliver orders to Messire Marquet and Mynheer De Keysere. Gilda is worried, but refuses to believe her husband can have failed in his task. She watches for him from the window and eventually spots him riding into the city. On hearing the news, Nicholaes exclaims that Diogenes return is impossible but won't say any more when questioned. He then tries to get the Stadtholder away before he can talk to the Englishman, insisting that Diogenes has sold his sword to the Archduchess. When Diogenes, weary and dazed arrives at the door, Nicholaes attacks him with cries of ""Assassin!"" but Gilda wrests his sword from her brother before he can do her beloved any serious damage. The three philosophers, now with fresh horses follow Nicholaes and the Stadtholder and manage to frustrate Nicholaes's plans to deliver the Stadtholder into the hands of the Archduchess. However, before the traitor meets up with Lord Stoutenburg, he shoots at Diogenes with a poisoned bullet and the resultant smoke causes him to go blind. Nicolaes and Stoutenburg return to Amersfoort with 4000 mercenaries and demand the surrender of the city. After taking over Mynheer Beresteyn's house, Stoutenburg threatens to get his troops to murder the population of the town unless Guilda agrees to marry him. A commotion outside the house reveals a blind Diogenes is back and is entertaining the troops. Stoutenburg is determined to hang his nemesis, but thinks he can use the adventurer to his advantage in winning Guilda for he is convinced she will prefer a strong masterful man to a weak helpless one. The sad condition of her husband only seems to make Guilda more committed to him, so changing tack, Stoutenburg promises Guilda he will only spare Diogenes' life if she will agree to be his wife. She reluctantly gives in, but once she has gone to her room, he tells Jan to hang him anyway. Faced with the gallows, Diogenes barters his privileged knowledge of the Stadtholder's plans for a mug of port. Stoutenburg them tells Mynheer Beresteyn that his son-in-law is a traitor, and knowing the Burgomaster's views on such behaviour leaves him alone in the dining hall with Diogenes and a loaded gun..."
1504,Outlander,history," After being separated by their work in World War II, British Army nurse Claire Randall, and her husband Frank, an Oxford history professor who briefly worked for MI6, go on a second honeymoon to Inverness, Scotland. They combine this honeymoon with research into Frank's family history, a subject of great fascination for him, if not for Claire. Of particular interest is an ancestor named ""Black Jack"" Randall, who was a prominent captain in the British Army during the first half of the 18th century. The couple, though loving, have a strained sexual relationship, caused mainly by their apparent inability to conceive a child. During their holiday, Frank spends a good deal of time poring over documents with a local historian. To distract herself while he works, Claire and a fellow amateur botanist go plant-gathering near a group of standing stones on the hill of Craigh na Dun. Inspired by the beauty of the countryside, Claire tells Frank of her outing, and Frank's interest is also piqued by the historical and supposedly mystical powers of the stones. Even more exciting are rumors of a pagan ritual to be held there, made all the more interesting by the addition of the fact that several respectable neighborhood ladies will also be in attendance. The couple decide to visit the site together after seeing Loch Ness. After getting up early, hiking to the stones, and watching the ritual while concealed behind some bushes, Frank and Claire return to their hotel. Claire returns the next day, intending to collect a plant specimen that she had seen the day before, but becomes disoriented and faints when investigating a buzzing noise near the stones. Waking to the sound of battle in the distance, Claire assumes the noise is a re-enactment or a working movie set. Though the woods are familiar, she notes that they are somewhat changed from how she had remembered them. While struggling to make sense of her surroundings, she runs into a man claiming to be Captain Randall, the very ancestor Frank had been so fascinated with. She notices that Randall bears a striking resemblance to her husband, Frank. Detaining her, Randall asks why she is traveling alone in a ""state of undress"" and, receiving no answer from the confused Claire, concludes that she is either a prostitute or a spy. Recovering her wits, Claire claims to be a robbed Englishwoman lost in the countryside. Just as Randall is about to apprehend her, an unknown Scotsman knocks him unconscious and takes her with him as he rejoins his party, a group of Scotsmen who are apparently fugitives from the red-coats. Increasingly confused by the stark reality of the ""re-enactment"", she is further puzzled by their reactions to her dress, which everyone calls a ""shift"" despite the fact that it is, in her opinion, a relatively conservative sundress. Temporarily ignoring her to tend to one of their wounded men, the Scots attempt to force the dislocated arm of a wounded young man, Jamie, back into place. Claire, horrified by the crude and medically incorrect way in which they are proceeding, quickly steps in. Surprising the entire party, she uses her 20th century nursing knowledge to successfully relocate Jamie's arm. Trusting her somewhat more, the men reveal themselves to be members of the Clan MacKenzie. However, they still refrain from releasing her for fear that she is an English spy. Apparently running from the English, the men lose no time in riding away from the battlefield and Claire is forced to go with them. During the long ride, Claire shares a horse with Jamie, the same young man whose shoulder she temporarily mended. They talk, but Claire is distracted when she does not see the lights of Inverness where she knows they must be. Noting that, and all the previous strange events, Claire reluctantly and somewhat disconcertingly concludes that she may have traveled to the past. The party of Scots returns to their home, Castle Leoch, seat of the Clan MacKenzie. Claire is met with cordial wariness and, after being greeted and fed by the friendly cook, given a room for the night. There, caught by a fit of despair and exhaustion while tending his injuries, Claire collapses and sobs in Jamie's arms. The next day, when questioned by the laird, crippled but cunning Colum mac Campbell MacKenzie, Claire claims she was sailing to France to visit relatives and lost her gown, luggage, and servant when they were attacked, an elaborated version of the same story she had told Captain Randall. The Scots are suspicious, believing her story to be a lie because of the lack of connections and evidence. Unable to prove her guilt but still wary of her true intentions, Colum treats her as a guest but forbids her from leaving Castle Leoch. Before she leaves his office, her fears of having traveled through time are proven when she sees a letter on Colum's desk dated 1743. All the while, Claire desperately searches for a way to return to the Craigh na Dun, believing that if she returns to the standing stones she can also return to her own time and her husband, Frank. In Castle Leoch, the Scots see Claire as a ""Sassenach"", an Outlander, an outsider ignorant of Scottish Highland culture and one of the generally hated English as well. She does, however, earn their respect with her work as a healer, though some in the castle and neighboring village think her a witch. Wanting to learn the truth of her background, Dougal MacKenzie, brother of the laird and one of the party that found Claire, takes both she and Jamie on the yearly rent collection through the MacKenzie lands. This is a task that Dougal performs, as Colum's medical condition renders him unable to ride a horse or travel long distances unaided. While on the tax collection trip, Claire realizes that Dougal is a Jacobite, a fact of which his brother Colum is not aware. Dougal is also using Jamie, who had been violently whipped by the English and bears the scars to prove it, as a visual argument against English aggression and oppression. Along with regular taxes, Dougal also collects donations towards the Jacobite cause. This is all overseen by the elderly but surprisingly lucid Ned Gowan, an English lawyer who is sympathetic to the Scottish cause. Also during the trip, Claire and Jamie begin to develop a tentative friendship. Captain Jack Randall, learning that Claire is traveling with the MacKenzies and still unsure of her true nature, orders the clansmen to bring her to him. It is revealed that Randall is the one who nearly whipped Jamie to death and has a reputation for rather brutal questioning. After Claire arrives and tells him the same story as before, Randall ties her to a chair and attempts to beat the truth from her. Dougal, infuriated by Randall's methods, refuses to allow Randall to detain Claire for further questioning. He is informed by Ned Gowan that the only way to make Claire safe from Randall's power is to make her a legal Scotswoman by a witnessed and consummated marriage. Dougal tells her to wed Jamie, much to Claire's flustered anger. She argues heatedly with Dougal, insisting that she will not do it. Claire does, however, digress that she is not technically married, unable to tell him that she, impossibly, has a husband more than 200 years in the future. After much argument, she agrees to marry Jamie, resigned that it is the best route to safety and thinking him the most suitable candidate. Claire then attempts to talk Jamie out of the marriage, though he is surprisingly unfazed by the whole arrangement. She famously asks him whether it bothers him that she is not a virgin, to which he replies ""'Well no... so long as it doesna bother you that I am'"" and that ""'One of [them] should know what they're doing.'"" Before this point, Jamie had been using an alias last name, McTavish, with Claire, as he was both wanted by the English and not a protected member of the Clan MacKenzie. In a gallant gesture of trust before their wedding, Jamie tells her his true name: James Fraser. Much to her surprise, Jamie makes an effort to make her wedding day as pleasant as possible, procuring a gown for her to wear and dressing in full clan tartan for the occasion. He even insists on being married by a priest in a chapel, though it is, much to Claire's horror, the same one in which she and Frank had/will have been married in. Claire, though terrified, is touched by his kindness and the two marry. Later that night, the two overcome their mutual nerves and consummate their marriage, a process Claire finds more enjoyable than she had expected. Claire and Jamie grow closer through the course of their travels with Dougal and the other MacKenzies. Claire, torn between her newfound attraction and attachment to Jamie and the thought of Frank back in her own time, escapes from the Scottish party and attempts to make her own way back to Craigh na Dun. Nearly drowning when she falls into a stream, she is rescued by an English patrol, only to be brought back to the fort where Captain Randall is stationed. Claire is saved from rape at the hands of Randall by Jamie, who sneaks into the English fortress to save her. The two return to the party of Scotsmen who, infuriated by her rebellious actions, refuse to have any contact with her. To both punish her for escaping and to (according to Scottish culture) rebuild her reputation among the clansmen, Jamie is forced to beat Claire, an event that marks the first real conflict in their marriage. However, he does not do so in a malicious manner; indeed, he convinces her of its necessity and Claire, though still somewhat outraged by the apparent violence of Scottish custom, complies. In the end, the experience brings the two closer together and to a deeper degree of understanding. Returning to Castle Leoch, Jamie and Claire return to somewhat normal lives as a married couple. However, Claire is tormented by thoughts of Frank, who she thinks must be worried for her safety. Unable to escape Castle Leoch and the surrounding countryside, Claire somewhat adapts to life there. She takes on the role of castle healer and befriends Geilis Duncan, the cunningly beautiful wife of a local official, who shares her love of medicine. Claire's ignorance of local superstition, and the machinations of a girl jealous of Claire's marriage to Jaime, lead to a charge witchcraft. She and Geilis Duncan are accused of witchcraft and thrown into a ground cell to await punishment. Jamie had left Castle Leoch in an attempt to get an English pardon shortly before this incident and, rushing back when he hears the news, is almost too late to save Claire from her own public whipping. Just before their escape, Claire realizes that Geilis Duncan is also from the future when she sees the scar of a smallpox vaccine, yet undeveloped in the 18th century, on Geilis' arm. Jamie and Claire flee from Castle Leoch and, when the two are safe in the wilderness, Jamie asks her to explain the allegations. Claire, exhausted from her ordeal and thinking that he will not believe the truth, initially tells him that she cannot. She laments that he will not possibly believe her and that it may be easier for him to consider her a witch. Dissolving into tears, Claire finally explains her entire time traveling predicament to Jamie. Even though he is somewhat incredulous, Jamie believes Claire's explanation and insists that the two return to Craig na Dun. Although it had been Claire's ultimate goal to return to her own time, she finds herself torn when Jamie allows her to decide between staying in the past with him or returning to Frank in the future. Saying he will wait for her for a single night at the bottom of the hill, the two share a painful half-farewell and Claire is left by the stones to make her decision. After much deliberation, Claire decides that she has come to love Jamie more and finds him in the abandoned hut below Craig na Dun. He is overjoyed with her decision to stay and he takes her to his home, Lallybroch, where they share a happy peace with Jamie's sister, Janet, and her husband, Ian. Though Jamie is still a fugitive from the British army, he secretly reclaims his role as Laird of Lallybroch, much to general happiness of his tenants. But, like in any romance story, their happiness doesn't last. Jamie is betrayed by an angry Ronald McNab, one of his tenants. Jamie had insisted that Rabbie, one of McNab's sons, become a stable-boy at Lallybroch after being told by Claire that Rabbie had been abused by his father. Jamie is apprehended and taken to the fort where Jack Randall is stationed, Wentworth Prison. There, Jamie is sentenced to hang. Claire and the clansmen attempt to stage a break-out, but their plot fails. She is captured by Randall who proceeds to beat her and almost rape her. They are found by Jamie who, knowing of Randall's long-suppressed sadistic desire for him, offers himself in Claire's place. Randall agrees, much to Claire's horror, and tersely escorts Claire out of the castle and into the freezing, wolf-ridden woods outside. Desperate, Claire tells Randall she is a witch, cursing him with the date and manner of his death, which she had learned from Frank's investigations at the beginning of the novel. Scantily clad, freezing, and attacked by a lone wolf, Claire wanders through the forest looking for help. She finds it in Sir Marcus MacRannoch, a former suitor of Jamie's mother, Ellen MacKenzie Fraser. MacRannoch warms to Claire's cause and, mustering some of his men and finding Jamie's Fraser companions, the company devises a plan to storm the castle and rescue Jamie. The main guard is diverted by some of the MacRannoch men, who launch an attack on the castle proper. Simultaneously, the rest of Jamie's rescue crew drive a herd of agitated cattle through the underground halls of the castle, clearing the halls of guards and trampling Randall in the process, who had come out of Jamie's cell to investigate the chaos. She patches Jamie up and they escape to Saint Anne de Beaupre's monastery in France, where Jamie's uncle serves as Abbot. At Saint Anne's, Claire tries to heal Jamie, but discovers broken bones are simple, compared to repairing the damage done to his mind. As he recovers, Jamie tells Claire that his life is hers, that she should decide, will they go ""to France, Italy, or even back to Scotland?"" for ""[they'll] need a place to go, soon."" While at the abbey, Claire learns more about her faith—she was christened Catholic but not raised as one—and receives absolution from a friendly monk. He describes her as a shipwrecked traveler, forced to survive in a strange land as best she can. He describes her marriages as something she should leave in God's hands as nothing can be done about them. Finally, as she and Jaime emerge from the healing waters of a sacred hot spring under the Abbey, Claire reveals that she is pregnant with their first child."
1505,Shadows in Bronze,history," The story begins in Rome during late spring, AD 71. Marcus Didius Falco and a group of the Praetorian Guard under the captaincy of Julius Frontinus are disposing of a decomposing corpse. Secrecy is paramount because he was the victim of a discreet execution, having been guilty of treason against the Emperor. In his position as imperial agent, Falco is involved with the tidying of the conspiracy (The Silver Pigs) and the emptying of the traitor's house. Anacrites and Momus are also involved with this. When Falco and Anacrites arrive at the Palace to report to the Emperor, Falco runs into the Senator Decimus Camillus Verus and his daughter, Helena Justina. He then reports to the Emperor, who wishes to destroy any evidence that his son, Domitian, was involved with the scheme. When a freedman bursts in to inform the Emperor that the Temple of Hercules Gaditanus is on fire, Anacrites is sent to the Transtiberina to find a freedman (Barnabas) who has been following Falco around, whilst Falco is sent to investigate the arson attack. There he discovers that Curtius Longinus, who had been summoned to Rome to account for his role in the plot, has been killed in the fire. He returns to the palace to be informed that Anacrites had been unable to locate Barnabas, the freedman immediately becoming suspect in the arson and death. Falco is then sent to Magna Graecia in southern Italy in search of Aulus Curtius Gordianus, the brother of Curtius Longinus, who may also be in danger from Barnabas. Arriving in Crotone, Falco is almost immediately caught up in a brawl in the marketplace, being rescued by Laesus, a ship's captain, with whom Falco then shares a meal at the mansio. Falco finally tracks down Gordianus at the Temple of Hera at Cape Colonna and informs him of the death of his brother. While Gordianus spends several days in mourning, Falco stays on the beach with a goat previously intended as a sacrifice, before an acolyte at the Temple informs him that Gordianus has returned. Falco suggests that Gordianus accept a better post in Paestum. This would be a generous gift from Vespasian to get the senator back on side with the new regime, but it would also put Gordianus closer to Rome and make it easier for Vespasian to keep him in line in future. Barnabas is once more implicated in an attack on the Deputy Priest, apparently mistaking him for Gordianus who would normally have been conducting the ceremony, but Falco is forced to return to Rome without tracking him down. At the end of June, Falco travels to the Bay of Neapolis. This time he is travelling in the company of his friend, Petronius, and Petronius' family, as well as his own nephew, Larius. This ""holiday"" is in fact a cover for Falco trying to track down Aufidius Crispus, a senator who had also been implicated in the plot. His plan is to masquerade as a plumber in the company of his nephew. In that guise they travel around various country estates. One estate that they visit is that of Caprenius Marcellus. There they run once more into Helena Justina. She is visiting her father-in-law. Due to the amorous nature of their ox, Nero, Falco and Larius are arrested in Herculaneum. They are taken to see the local magistrate, Aemilius Rufus. There they again meet Helena, as well as her friend, Rufus' sister. Falco becomes a harp tutor to the sister. Falco manages to track down Aufidius Crispus at the Villa Poppaea, where the senator is hosting a sumptuous banquet in order to gain support for his future political moves. On their return they once again find traces of Barnabas, but the freedman has vanished. After several days, Falco catches up with him, only to discover that ""Barnabas"" is in fact Atius Pertinax, the ex-husband of Helena Justina, believed dead. It is made clear that Marcellus expects the divorced couple to re-marry. Pertinax and Crispus flee Imperial questioning on Crispus' yacht, but Crispus is killed when the yacht is rammed by a trireme under the authority of Rufus. Pertinax escapes, returning to Rome and attempting to force Helena Justina to re-marry him in order to regain his money. He is tricked and is finally killed by Falco."
1506,Kay the Left-Handed,history," The book is set in the area of York, England in the twelfth century, beginning with the 1189 massacre of the Jews in York, in which the protagonist, Kay FitzRomund, is a reluctant participant. Kay is an orphan seeking to better his lot, whose rise is aided by a glib facility with words and a prudent distrust of his fellow men and hampered by a soft heart and his own temper. Apprenticed to a scrivener, he loses his position through a tavern brawl; later, he fortuitously acquires a knowledge of buried treasure, whose location he trades to Prince John in return for preferment. He loses both his new status and his right hand when he kills Bertrand de Montfort, a personal enemy. Consigned to outlawry, he eventually succeeds in reestablishing his respectability under a new identity."
1507,Enemy of God,history," Chapter One: Enemy of God starts off where ""The Winter King"" left off, with Arthur's unexpected victory over the combined armies of Powys and Siluria. Both Gorfyddyd, king of Powys, and Gundleus, king of Siluria, are dead. Gorfyddyd's son, Cuneglas, shares Arthur's desire for peace and also his dream of an alliance between the British kingdoms that will destroy their common enemies, the Saxons. Derfel is ordered to follow Cuneglas to Caer Sws (Caersws), capital of Powys, where the Edling is to be crowned king. As for the vacant Silurian throne, Arthur tells Derfel of his plan to make Lancelot king and marry him to the princess of Powys, Ceinwyn, thus cementing the alliance between Dumnonia, Powys and Siluria. Derfel does not reveal that he is in love with Ceinwyn, and want her for himself, and goes to Caer Sws, and witnesses Cuneglas' acclamation. Days later, Arthur arrives with his court, including Guinevere and Lancelot. Derfel watches with frustration Ceinwyn's betrothal to Lancelot, and her apparent happiness with the marriage. Derfel speaks with Merlin, and Merlin tells him that Arthur wants him to marry Gwenhwyvach, Guinevere's plain and apathic sister. Merlin asks Derfel to meet him and Nimue late that night on a hilltop, where Merlin has Derfel drink a hallucinogenic potion. Derfel hallucinates about Ceinwyn and sees a dark road and a ghoul, and he describes his vision to Merlin. Merlin tells him the ghoul was Diwrnach, a vicious Irish king of Lleyn, and he also asks Derfel to accompany him on the quest (which also requires the presence of a virgin) for a magical Cauldron, one of the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain, but Derfel is committed to taking his men to aid Arthur in his campaign to drive the Saxons out of eastern Britain. Merlin gives Derfel a bone, and tells him that all he has to do is break it and his wish will be granted, namely that Ceinwyn will choose him over Lancelot, but warns that if he breaks it, he will be bound to Merlin's quest."
1508,The Red Necklace,history," The story is principally set in and near Paris between 1789 and 1792. Yann Margoza, the protagonist, is a young traveling entertainer with the ability to read minds and throw his voice. When he gets older he finds that he can move objects with his mind (telekinesis). He meets Sido, the unwanted daughter of the cruel and foolish Marquis de Villeduval, and she helps Yann escape from the murderous Count Kalliovski, a menacing nobleman who holds the majority of the French aristocrats in the palm of his hand. He, too, has the power of telekinesis. After being educated in London, Yann returns years later to rescue Sido from the twin perils of the Terror and the Count's evil desire to have her as his bride."
1509,The Loveday Loyalty,history," Against the dramatic scenery of Cornwall, the turbulent criminal underworld of London and the climactic events of the French revolution. In this seventh novel in the series, life with the Lovedays is not confined to England and France. America has won its independence but the Lovedays have connections in Virginia and the new penal colony in Australia has become the residence of one Loveday who took a chance too many. Loyalty to and pride in the Loveday name has held the family together through unstable times, but with the fierce rivalry that exists between family members, will loyalty be enough to honour the family's heritage?"
1510,A Breath of Snow and Ashes,history," Claire is the wife of Jamie Fraser, her 18th century husband, and facing the politics and turmoil of the forthcoming American Revolution. The preceding novel, The Fiery Cross, concluded with political unrest in the colonies beginning to boil over and the Frasers trying to peacefully live on their isolated homestead. Jamie is suddenly faced with walking between the fires of loyalty to the oath he swore to the British crown and following his hope for freedom in the new world."
1511,The Laughing Cavalier,history," March 1623. William or Willem van Oldenbarnevelt, the Lord of Stoutenburg in the Netherlands is a man on the run. His father, the Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, ""John of Barneveld"" in the book, was falsely accused of treason and sent to the gallows by the Stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange in 1619 while his brother Reinier van Oldenbarnevelt, the lord of Groeneveld, has since been arrested and executed for plotting to avenge their father's death by killing the Prince. These three are all real historical figures, and the father was executed after a hurried trial. Meanwhile, Stoutenburg, now a fugitive for his part in the plot, is determined to get his revenge. While on the run, Stoutenburg asks for shelter from Gilda Beresteyn, the daughter of a rich merchant. Gilda was once in love with Stoutenburg, but has never forgiven him for abandoning her to make a more profitable marriage. Despite her reservations she lets him into her room for a short time and feeds him, but eventually she sends him away again for she knows her father, who is a friend of the Prince of Orange, will not approve. Nine months later and Gilda is walking across Haarlem, with her serving men, to the New Year's Eve service. On route she witnesses three foreign adventurers intervening on behalf of a Spanish woman, who is being attacked by a mob by the Postern gate. After the fracas is over, Gilda speaks to the poor strangers about their gallant actions and is strangely taken by Diogenes and his twinkling eyes. Yet despite kissing her hand, he refuses any offer of assistance and only succeeds in offending her by requesting that he be given her leave to go to the Lame Cow to quench his thirst. Gilda continues to church, where rather than listening to the service she sits and fumes about the behaviour of the mysterious stranger. Determined to spend some time praying, she stays behind afterwards in the empty church but is disturbed by a secret meeting between Stoutenburg and his allies (including her brother Nicolaes), when Stoutenburg, fuelled by rage, shouts out his plans to murder the Prince. Her brother follows her out of the church and it soon becomes apparent that Gilda has overheard everything. She begs her brother to reconsider his part in the evil plot, but he refuses and instead asks her to swear that she will not tell their father. She also refuses, but Nicolaes still tells the rest of the group that she can be trusted not to betray them. Stoutenburg is not convinced and persuades Nicolaes that he has to arrange for Gilda to be taken away for a few days, so they can complete their plans to kill the Stadtholder before she can tell anyone. Beresteyn, who has seen Diogenes in the Lame Cow, follows the adventurer to Frans Hals' house, where he has gone to be painted, and hires him to kidnap his sister for a large sum. After seeing her portrait, Diogenes recognises her as the lady he had spoken to the night before. With the help of the Spanish woman he saved from the mob, Diogenes bundles Gilda and her maid into a sledge and takes her out of Haarlem. He leaves her under the care of his fellow philosophers for the night and returns to Haarlem, as he has promised Hals that he will sit for him so he can finish the painting. Afterwards, he accompanies Hals to the Lame Cow, where he meets Gilda's distraught father. Nicolaes is furious at Diogenes' appearance back in Haarlem, but can say nothing for fear of giving away his role in his sister's kidnapping. One thing leads to another and before he knows it, Diogenes has promised Gilda's father that he will find his daughter and personally return her to him, for which Mynheer Beresteyn insists he will give the adventurer half of his considerable fortune. Diogenes is now in a conundrum, for he is a man of his word and therefore has to find a way to fulfil his contract with Nicolaes to deliver Gilda to the house of a Jewish banker in Rotterdam, as well as meeting his promise to return her to her father. One word from Gilda could send him to the scaffold, yet despite her vehement verbal attacks on him, he is starting to have deep feelings for her, something which won't go down well with Stoutenburg, who is still determined to marry her. (Incomplete)"
1512,The Janissary Tree,history," In June 1826, the Sultan Mahmud II disbands and slaughters the Janissaries, once elite troops of the Ottoman Empire but long an unruly element beyond the control of the Sultan or anybody else. Ten years later, the new Westernized corps which replaced the Janissaries are to perform a military exercise. Ten days before the event, four officers disappear; subsequently, one officer is found dead. The general entrusts Yashim the eunuch with solving the mystery. Meanwhile, the Sultan's newest concubine is murdered and the Sultan's mother's jewelry stolen. Yashim must simultaneously investigate three different cases. The cases bring Yashim in and out of the palace, to various embassies, a mosque, and the alleyways and streets of Istanbul. To solve the cases, Yashim employs the assistance of a Polish ambassador and the wife of a Russian ambassador. He discovers that the cases are related, and that they not only involve a plot for revenge by surviving Janissaries hidden somewhere but also the power struggle between the palace eunuchs and the military's extreme pursuit of democratization. In the end, Yashim, against all odds, succeeds in preventing several conspiracies."
1513,Captain Corelli's Mandolin,history," *Dr. Iannis - The island's unofficial, unlicensed doctor, who spends much of his time writing about the history of Cephallonia. He is respected by the community, although regarded as a bit odd, and is thanked for his medical services by means of food and drink. *Pelagia - Dr. Iannis's daughter who is not like the other women on the island (she is well educated and has a lot of respect from her father), who at first falls in love with Mandras, then later with Corelli. *Antonio Corelli - An Italian captain with a love for music and life. He detests the war, and gradually falls in love with Pelagia; but the war inevitably tears them apart again. *Mandras - A young, handsome fisherman who falls in love with Pelagia, only to destroy their relationship by going to fight in the war, and ultimately humiliating himself. *Carlo Piero Guercio - A good-natured homosexual Italian soldier who falls in love with Francesco only to lose him to the war. He later falls in love with Corelli and sacrifices his life to save the Captain's. Captain Corelli's Mandolin explores many varieties of love. We see the initial lust-based love between Pelagia and Mandras, which burns out as a result of the war, and the change it prompts in both of them. Corelli and Pelagia's slow-developing love is the central focus of the novel. Love is described by Dr. Iannis as ""what is left when the passion has gone"", and it certainly appears that this criterion is fulfilled by the love of Corelli and Pelagia. The paternal love of Iannis for Pelagia is also strong and is heavily compared and contrasted to that of Corelli. The theme of music is predominant, offering a direct contrast to the horror and destruction that the war brings, showing how something beautiful can arise from something horrible. The war is described in graphic detail, particularly the death of Francesco. It is responsible for the fall of Mandras and Weber, the deaths of Carlo and Francesco, and the separation of Pelagia and Corelli. Throughout the novel, de Bernières takes a harsh view of all forms of totalitarianism, condemning Fascism, Nazism, and Communism alike. De Bernières described this as a novel about ""what happens to the little people when megalomaniacs get busy."" Another theme of the novel is the study of history. Dr. Iannis spends much of his spare time attempting to write a history of Cephallonia, but often finds his personal feelings and biases running through whatever he writes. There is also a strong feeling against 'professional' history which is suggested by Carlo Guercio's statement that ""I know that if we [the axis] win then there will be stories about mass graves in London and vice versa"". This is reinforced by De Bernières' quotation that: ""history ought to be made up of the stories of ordinary people only."" From this viewpoint it can be seen that de Bernières as very much a revisionist historian, considering social history superior to that of political. De Bernières takes an ambiguous attitude toward heroism and villainy in the novel: many of the characters, despite committing atrocities, are viewed as human victims of bad circumstances. For example, the character Günter Weber carries a great degree of sympathy from the writer, even though he fully engages with the Nazi ideology and is guilty of taking part in the killing of an entire Italian division. Despite having become friends with many of the men, he must follow orders. Similarly, Mandras is guilty of murder, torture and rape, yet the author portrays him sympathetically: ""just another life tarnished... by war."""
1514,The Generals,history," In the turbulent aftermath of the French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte is accused of treachery and corruption. His reputation is saved by his skill in leading his men to victory in Italy and Egypt. But then he must rush home to France to restore order amidst political unrest, and to find peace or victory over the country's enemies, foremost of which is England-and Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington). Wellesley is on the other side of the world in India where British interests are under threat. Wellesley leads vast armies against a series of powerful warlords in campaigns that will result in the creation of the Raj-the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. He returns to England a hardened veteran a more determined than ever to end France's dominion of Europe."
1515,The Betrothed,history," Baldwin, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had exhorted the Britons, and the Anglo-Normans who were settled on the borders of the Welsh principalities, to lay aside their feuds and join in the third Crusade. Accordingly, Gwenwyn, the Prince of Powys-land, and Sir Raymond Berenger, the Knight of Garde Doloureuse, had accepted each other's hospitality, and Gwenwyn, at the suggestion of his chaplain, had arranged to divorce his wife Brengwan, in order that he might marry Sir Raymond's daughter Eveline. In reply to his proposal, however, a messenger brought a letter stating that she was promised to Sir Hugo de Lacy, the Constable of Chester. This being taken by the Welsh as an affront, the call to war was sung by the bards, the Norman castle was attacked, and its owner slain in a combat with his would-be son-in-law. Nerved by the presence of Eveline on the battlements, and supplied with food by a ruse of her father's vassal the Flemish weaver, the garrison, assisted by the military predilections of their chaplain, held out until Damian Lacy arrived with a large force, when the brave but unarmoured Britons were repulsed, and their prince Gwenwyn was killed. Having granted an interview to her deliverer, Eveline was escorted by her suitor the Constable, and a numerous retinue, to her aunt's nunnery at Gloucester. On her way thither she passed a night at the house of a Saxon kinswoman, the Lady of Baldringham, where she occupied a haunted chamber, and saw the ghost of an ancestor's wife, who foretold that she would be Widowed wife, and married maid, Betrothed, betrayer, and betrayed. During her visit to the abbess she was formally espoused to Sir Hugo; but the archbishop having the next day commanded him to proceed to Palestine for three years, he offered to annul their engagement. Eveline, contrary to her aunt&#39;s advice, promised to await his return; and it was arranged that she should reside in her castle, with Rose and Dame Gillian as her attendants, and Damian as her guardian. Wearied with her monotonous life during this seclusion, she was induced one day to join in a hawking expedition unaccompanied by her usual escort, and was seized by rebels secretly instigated by Ranald Lacy. In attempting to rescue her Damian was severely wounded, and she insisted on nursing him in the castle, while Amelot led his men-at-arms in pursuit of the outlaws, whose disaffection had reached the king&#39;s ears, with a rumour that Damian was their captain. Sir Guy Monthermer was, accordingly, sent to demand admittance to Garde Doloureuse, where he was reported to be concealed; and when Eveline ordered the portcullis to be dropped against him, a herald proclaimed her, and all who aided and abetted her, as traitors. The constable and his squire, who were supposed to be dead, returned from Syria, disguised as palmers, just as the royal troops, headed by Prince Richard, had occupied the castle, Eveline at the same time being sent to a convent, and Damian consigned to a dungeon. Having learnt the ill news from old Raoul and his wife, Sir Hugo made his way towards King Henry&#39;s camp, near which, surrounded by an assembly of spectators, Ranald Lacy, who by false representations had obtained a grant of Eveline&#39;s forfeited lands, and assumed his kinsman&#39;s dress and title, was about to present a royal charter of immunities to a procession of the Flemish settlers. Cadwallon, the Welsh bard, had, however, attached himself to Sir Hugo as a Breton minstrel, in order that he might avenge the death of Gwenwyn; and mistaking Ranald for the returned constable, suddenly sprang behind him as he leant forward in his saddle, and stabbed him in the back. Sir Hugo now made himself known, and was welcomed by the king, the assassin was executed, and, convinced that his betrothed&#39;s love had been given to Damian, the old Crusader resigned her to him, and consoled himself by taking part in the subjugation of Ireland."
1516,Count Robert of Paris,history," At the end of the 11th century, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople was threatened by Turkic nomads from the east, and by the Franks from the west. Unable to rely on his Greek subjects to repel their incursions, the emperor was obliged to maintain a body-guard of Varangians, or mercenaries from other nations, of whom the citizens and native soldiers were very jealous. One of these, the Anglo-Saxon Hereward, had just been attacked by Sebastes, when a Varangian officer, Tatius, intervened and led him to the palace. Here he was introduced to the imperial family, surrounded by their attendants; and the Princess Anna was reading a roll of history she had written, when her husband Brennius entered to announce the approach of the armies composing the first Crusade. Convinced that he was powerless to prevent their advance, the emperor offered them hospitality on their way; and, the leaders having agreed to acknowledge his sovereignty, the various hosts marched in procession before his assembled army. As Emperor Comnenus, however, moved forward to receive the homage of Count Bohemond, his vacant throne was insolently occupied by Count Robert of Paris, who was with difficulty compelled to vacate it, and make his submission. The defiant knight, accompanied by his wife Brenhilda, afterwards met the sage Agelastes, who related the story of an enchanted princess, and decoyed them to his hermitage overlooking the Bosphorus. Here they were introduced to the empress and her daughter, who, attended by Brennius, came to visit the sage, and were invited to return with them to the palace to be presented to the emperor. At the State banquet which followed, the guests, including Sir Bohemond, were pledged by their royal host, and urged to accept the golden cups they had used. On waking next morning, Count Robert found himself in a dungeon with a tiger, and that Ursel was confined in an adjoining one. Presently an aggressive orangutan descended through a trap-door, soon followed by the armed Sebastes. Both were overpowered by the Count, when Hereward made his appearance, and undertook to release his Norman adversary. A treasonable conference was meanwhile taking place between Tatius and Agelastes, who had failed in endeavouring to tamper with the Anglo-Saxon; and the countess had been unwillingly transported by the slave Diogenes to a garden-house for a secret interview with Brennius, whom she challenged to knightly combat in the hearing of her husband. Having hidden the count, Hereward encountered his sweetheart Bertha, who had followed Brenhilda as her attendant, and then obtained an audience of the imperial family, who were discussing recent events, including a plot in which Brennius was concerned for seizing the throne, and received permission to communicate with the Duke de Bouillon. Bertha volunteered to be his messenger, and, at an interview with the council of Crusaders at Scutari, she induced them to promise that fifty knights, each with ten followers, should attend the combat to support their champion. Having made his confession to the Patriarch, while Agelastes was killed by the orangutan as he argued with Brenhilda respecting the existence of the devil, the emperor led his daughter to the cell in which Ursel was confined, with the intention of making him her husband, instead of Brennius. She had, however, been persuaded by her mother to intercede for the traitor, and Ursel was merely placed under the care of the slave doctor Douban to be restored to health after his long imprisonment. The emperor had decided that Brennius should fight the Count of Paris, instead of the countess, and all the preparations for the combat had been made, when the ships conveying the Crusaders hove in sight; and, after defeating the Greek fleet, they landed in sight of the lists. Brennius, in the meantime, was pardoned, and, in answer to shouts of discontent from the assembled crowd, Ursel was led forth to announce his restoration to liberty and the imperial favour, and the conspiracy was crushed. Hereward then appeared to do battle with Count Robert, and, saved from the knight's axe by Bertha, he joined the Crusaders, obtaining on his return the hand of his betrothed, and, ultimately, a grant of land from William Rufus, adjacent to the New Forest in Hampshire, where he had screened her when a girl from the tusk of a wild boar."
1517,The Kingdom of the Wicked,history," The story of the birth of Christianity and its interaction with the Roman Empire is told largely chronologically by a narrator slowly succumbing to disease during the reign of Domitian. The story starts where Man of Nazareth ended, immediately after the crucifixion of Jesus, and covers the work of the apostles, in particular Paul (who himself was not one of the original twelve apostles), the development of Christianity as an Abrahamic religion separate from Judaism, the Great Fire of Rome, the persecution of Christians, the destruction of the Second Temple, and the destruction of Pompeii."
1518,The Perilous Road,history," Chris Brabson is a boy whose family lives in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee during the Civil War. His family encounters hard times when cavalry soldiers of the Union Army come and take most of his family's food and their one and only plow horse leaving them little supplies to sustain the winter. Chris vowes to get even with the Yanks and is determined to fight for Confederate Army. Chris' brother, Jethro, has just recently joined the Union Army forcing Chris to examine his beliefs of war, courage, and tolerance. Jethro's enlistment causes the Brabson family to be the victims of prejudice from their neighbors who are sympathizers of the Confederate Army. The neighbors become intolerant of their beliefs and burn down their shed and threaten to do the same with their house. Though Jethro is a Union soldier, Chris hates the Union troops. When Chris finds out that there is a wagon train in the area he alerts a friend of his, Silas Agee, who claims to be a Confederate spy. It is only after he tells Silas about the wagon train that he finds out that his brother's job in the Army will be as a wagon driver. Chris then takes it upon himself to go tell his brother of the fact that the Confederates have been alerted about the wagon train in order to try to save Jethro's life. When he gets to the wagon train in search of Jethro, he is kindly greeted by Union troops who offer him food and conversation. He begins to change his perspective of the Yankees learning that they are very different from him and are not the hateful thieves he once viewed them as."
1519,Sharpe's Enemy,history," In the winter of 1812 a group of deserters from all the armies of the Peninsular War - French, British, Spanish and Portuguese - descends on the isolated hamlet of Adrados, on the Spanish-Portuguese border, led by Obadiah Hakeswill, the antagonist of Sharpe's Company, and Pot-au-Feu aka Sergeant Deron, who appears in Sharpe's Havoc as Marshal Soult's cook. The seize a number of women on pilgrimage to a convent in the village, including Josefina Lacosta who is travelling as ""Lady Farthingdale"", and an Madame Dubreton, the English-born wife of a French colonel of cavalry. Sharpe, recently promoted to the rank of Major is sent, with Patrick Harper, to deliver the ransom demanded for the release of Lady Farthingdale. Upon reaching Adrados they meet Colonel Dubreton and his Sergeant on a similar mission. They see both ladies are safe and deliver the ransom but Hakeswill then demands more by the New Year. Colonel and Madame Dubreton are careful not to let the fact that they know each other be picked up by the deserters. Sharpe and Harper note that Adrados is extremely defensible with a castle, a watchtower and a convent all defensible buildings against attack. Madame Dubreton gives Sharpe a clue that she is in the convent. Nairn believes that the deserters will not agree to a release at all regardless of ransom and thinks a rescue is the best option. It is proposed that Sharpe and the Light Company, with two companies of the 60th American Rifles, will attack the watchtower and the convent to free the ladies and then wait for Colonel Kinney to come with his 113th Fusilier Regiment and Sir Augustus to supervise the surrender of the deserters. They propose to capture the convent on Christmas Eve when the deserters will be almost certainly inebriated. They capture the convent and free the women. Unfortunately, Sharpe discovers that multiple French battalions are on their way to capture the village in order to occupy South Portugal. Sharpe decides to make a stand and blackmails Lord Farthingdale into leaving the village, thus making Sharpe the commanding officer. He ingeniously defends the village by setting a trap for the French, using the rockets to destroy a battalion, mining a building, and generally anticipating his enemies' moves. His wife, a Spanish partisan commander Teresa Moreno, rides to fetch reinforcements who arrive just in time to assist the tiring men. Hakeswill, who was kept as a prisoner, escapes during the last hours of the fight and kills Teresa. Hakeswill tries to desert to the French, but falls in the hands of Dubreton who returns him to Sharpe as a thank you for rescuing the Colonel's wife. Hakeswill is executed by a firing squad and the last shot at the man is taken by Sharpe himself."
1520,Sir Nigel,history," The tale, at its outset, traces the fortunes of the family of Loring of the Manor of Tilford in Surrey, many of whose scions had been prominent in the service of the Norman and Angevin Kings of England, against the backdrop of the Black Death. The tale starts with the problems the family and its last scion, Nigel Loring, face at the hands of the monks of Waverley Abbey, up to the coming of Sir John Chandos. Playing the host to King Edward III of England, Nigel asks to be taken into his service, a request that is complied with by his being made squire to Sir John Chandos. In order to make himself worthy of the hand of the Lady Mary, daughter of Sir John Buttesthorn, he vows to perform three deeds of honour to her. Nigel and his follower Samkin Aylward arrive at Winchelsea, whence they take passage to Calais. En route, he manages to intercept Peter the Red Ferret, a French spy who had stolen certain papers of Sir John Chandos. Since these papers had some bearing upon the English defence of Calais in view of a projected French attack, it was considered necessary in the extreme to recover them. Having defeated the spy in single combat, Nigel is overcome by the wounds he receives and is laid up in the Castle of Calais. When the King visits the young squire to praise his courage, he mentions that the spy was to be hanged. This outrages Nigel, who had promised the Red Ferret quarter, and he crosses purposes with the King. Though the King is enraged by the squire's impertinence, at the intercession of Sir John Chandos, he yields. Nigel Loring then proceeds to set the Red Ferret free after having taken from him his word not to violate the truce and a visit to the Lady Mary, to fulfil his promise to her. Shortly thereafter, Nigel is sent on an expedition to Brittany under the command of Sir Robert Knolles. In the course of their journey, they encounter a Spanish battle-fleet in the Straits of Dover, and in conjunction with the English fleet from Winchelsea, inflict a severe defeat upon the Spaniards. The tale is a rendition of the Battle of Les Espagnols sur Mer (August 1351), as chronicled by Froissart, with a fictional storyline weaved in skilfully with the history. Nigel Loring carries himself well, but achieves nothing of note besides boarding a Spanish carrack to assist Prince Edward, the Black Prince, under the directions of Sir Robert, when the Prince and his men were outnumbered by Spaniards. As the army marches into Brittany, a Frenchman is observed tracking the English column. Nigel is entrusted by Sir Robert Knolles with the task of capturing the Frenchman, a task he executes admirably. But when in the act of conducting him to the English camp, they find that the English army had been attacked and some of its longbowmen, among them Samkin Aylward, captured by the robber baron of La Brohinière, nicknamed 'the butcher', for his practice of executing captives who refused to join his levées. The English troops try to storm the castle of La Brohinière, by a frontal assault, which fails dismally, with the death of the French captive who, being of noble birth, assists the English in destroying this common nemesis. With the assistance of Black Simon of Norwich, a very prominent character in the series, and man-at-arms in the army, and some of the peasants of the surrounding country who hated La Brohinière for his cruelty and deeds, Nigel penetrates the connecting passage between the main castle and one of its outworks. In the ensuing assault, the castle is taken and La Brohinière killed by his very captives. As a token of appreciation of Nigel's planning and execution of a very difficult task, besides communicating the squire's valour to King Edward and Sir John Chandos, Sir Robert Knolles, at Nigel's request instructs his messenger to convey the news of his deed to the Lady Mary. The English army proceeds to the Castle of Ploermel, which was then in the hands of the English knight Richard of Bambro', to advance the English arms in Brittany against the French at Josselin. However, news of a truce between England and France precedes their arrival and serves to dampen their spirit until a visit by the French seneschal Robert of Beaumanoir, Master of Josselin. The French lord proposes a passage of arms, and since a reason would be necessary to justify such a violation of the truce, to the two kings of England and France, he proceeds to pick a mock-quarrel with Nigel Loring. Beaumanoir observes that ""... we have none of the highest of Brittany... neither a Blois, nor a Leon, nor a Rohan, nor a Conan, fights in our ranks this day"". Conan was in fact the personal name of several Dukes of Brittany. In the jousts that thus ensue, the English arms are initially routed with Bambro' killed and Nigel felled, severely wounded. Though the English rally and sorely press the Bretons, by an underhand act, one of the Breton squires mounts his horse, when the conflict was supposed to be on foot, and rides upon the English crushing them. This incident is a thinly-veiled account of the famed Combat of the Thirty of March 1351, which is of importance in Breton history and in the annals of chivalry, as being an exemplary passage of arms. It may be worthwhile to note that Sir Robert Knolles, who is held to have participated in the fictional jousts in Sir Nigel, was also one of the original thirty combatants. Subsequent to the joust, where he tries to take on Beaumanoir himself and is severely wounded, Nigel Loring is left to recover at the Castle of Ploermel by his comrades, and proceeds to convalesce in the course of a year, which sees the breaking of the truce, a defeat of French arms in Brittany and the declaration of another truce. Nigel is by then made seneschal of the Castle of Vannes. It is then that Sir John Chandos summons him to Bergerac to accompany the Black Prince on a raid into France. This raid concludes in the Battle of Poitiers (September 1356). In the course of the battle, Nigel overcomes King John II of France but fails to receive his surrender not knowing the identity of his opponent and is thus unable to lay claim to the king's ransom. But since the king himself identifies the squire as his conqueror, the Black Prince awards Nigel Loring his golden spurs and dubs him a knight (the historical Neil Loring is older than the protagonist, and was knighted already in 1340 at the Battle of Sluys). Sir Nigel then returns to England where he weds the Lady Mary. The book concludes with a summary of Sir Nigel's life and the future which had already been documented in The White Company."
1521,The Load of Unicorn,history," Benedict, known as Bendy, has been apprenticed by his forward-looking father to the printer William Caxton. This infuriates his mean half-brothers who are scriveners and fear that the new-fangled printing press will drive them out of business. They have secretly waylaid the printer's delivery of new paper and are hiding it. Bendy knows about it but is worried about the consequences of telling, especially as his half-brothers may be involved with Lancastrian rebels. Caxton sends Bendy and another apprentice on a quest to find the complete manuscript of Thomas Mallory's stories of King Arthur, but it proves dangerous as others are also on the trail."
1522,The Master of Ballantrae,history," The novel is presented as the memoir of one Ephraim Mackellar, steward of the Durrisdeer estate in Scotland. The novel opens in 1745, the year of the Jacobite Rising. When Bonnie Prince Charlie raises the banner of the Stuarts, the Durie family—the Laird of Durrisdeer, his older son James Durie (the Master of Ballantrae) and his younger son Henry Durie—decide on a common strategy: one son will join the uprising while the other will join the loyalists. That way, whichever side wins the family's noble status and estate will be preserved. Logically, the younger son should join the rebels, but the Master insists on being the rebel (a more exciting choice) and contemptuously accuses Henry of trying to usurp his place, comparing him to Jacob. The two sons agree to toss a coin to determine who goes. The Master wins and departs to join the Rising, while Henry remains in support of King George II. The Rising fails and the Master is reported dead. Henry becomes the heir to the estate, though he does not assume his brother's title of Master. At the insistence of the Laird (their father) the Master's heartbroken fiancee marries Henry in order to repair the Durie fortunes. Some years pass, during which Henry is unfairly vilified by the townspeople for betraying the rising. He is treated with complete indifference by his family, since his wife and his father both spend their time mourning the fallen favourite. The mild-tempered Henry bears the injustice quietly, even sending money to support his brother's abandoned mistress, who abuses him foully, and her child, who she claims is his brother's bastard. In April 1749, however, a messenger appears, one Colonel Francis Burke, an Irishman who had been out with the Prince. He bears letters from the Master, who is still alive and living in France. At this point the narrator, Mackellar, introduces a story within the story: it is the memoir of Colonel Burke, from which Mackellar extracts the sections that deal with the Master. From Burke's memoir it appears that the Master was attached to the Prince solely for the chance of money and high station, and was a quarrelsome hindrance, always favouring whatever he thought the Prince wanted to hear. He abandoned the Rising as soon as it looked sure to fail and, in company with Burke, took ship for France, refusing to wait in case they might be able to rescue the Prince. However, the ship was old and unseaworthy, and commanded by an incompetent captain. After seven days of being lost in bad weather, it was taken by pirates. The pirate captain, who called himself Teach (not the famous Edward Teach, called Blackbeard, who had died some thirty years previously, but an imitator), took both Burke and the Master aboard to join his pirate crew, but had the rest of the ship's company killed. Burke and the Master sail with the pirates for some time. The Master eventually succeeds in overthrowing Teach and effectively becoming the new captain. He proves to be brutal and ruthless, seizing several ships and slaughtering all their crews to prevent their identifying him. Eventually he steers the ship to the coast of North Carolina, where he abandons it and its crew, to be taken by the Royal Navy, while he escapes with Burke and two confederates, carrying all the ship's treasure between them. In the course of their escape through the swamp the Master treacherously kills one of the confederates and leaves another to die. Burke and the Master obtain passage to Albany on a merchant ship, deserting it once it makes port. Then they strike out across land for Canada, where they hope to find sanctuary among the French, who supported the Rising. They take along a guide, an Indian trader named Chew, but he dies of a fever and the pair became hopelessly lost. For some days the Master navigates his way through the wilderness by tossing a coin, saying, ""I can think of no better way to express my scorn of human reason."" In the end they bury the treasure. Burke records that the Master blamed his younger brother for all his troubles: ""Have you ever a brother?"" said he. ""By the blessing of Heaven,"" said I, ""not less than five."" ""I have the one,"" said he, with a strange voice; and then presently, ""He shall pay me for all this,"" he added. And when I asked him what was his brother's part in our distress, ""What!"" he cried, ""he sits in my place, he bears my name, he courts my wife; and I am here alone with a damned Irishman in this tooth-chattering desert! Oh, I have been a common gull!"" he cried. After the Master&#39;s uncharacteristic explosion the two quarrel and separate. Burke never learns how the Master made it to France, where they meet again. Henry Durie and Mackellar learn something of the Master&#39;s piratical ventures, but do not inform the Laird or Mrs Durie, both of whom continue to regard the Master as a kind of angel lost to them. Henry continues to support the Master&#39;s mistress and her bastard child, and also answers the Master&#39;s demands for money. The Master is in fact well-supported by a pension assigned by the French monarchy to Scotsmen who lost their estates due to the Rising, but he continues to demand money from his brother anyway, accusing him of stealing the inheritance: ""'My dear Jacob' - This is how he begins!"" cries he - ""'My dear Jacob, I once called you so, you may remember; and you have now done the business, and flung my heels as high as Criffel.' What do you think of that, Mackellar,"" says he, ""from an only brother? I declare to God I liked him very well; I was always staunch to him; and this is how he writes! But I will not sit down under the imputation"" - walking to and fro - ""I am as good as he; I am a better man than he, I call on God to prove it! I cannot give him all the monstrous sum he asks; he knows the estate to be incompetent; but I will give him what I have, and it is more than he expects. I have borne all this too long. See what he writes further on; read it for yourself: 'I know you are a niggardly dog.' A niggardly dog! I niggardly? Is that true, Mackellar? You think it is?"" I really thought he would have struck me at that. ""Oh, you all think so! Well, you shall see, and he shall see, and God shall see. If I ruin the estate and go barefoot, I shall stuff this bloodsucker. Let him ask all - all, and he shall have it! It is all his by rights. Ah!"" he cried, ""and I foresaw all this, and worse, when he would not let me go.""Henry bleeds the estate dry to answer the Master&#39;s demands, consequently getting a reputation as a miser. He does not tell even his family where the money is going. This continues for seven years, in the course of which Henry sends the Master some eight thousand pounds. In July 1756 Mackellar receives a letter from Colonel Burke, who is in Champagne. Burke relates that the Master&#39;s court intrigues have backfired on him, and he has been imprisoned in the Bastille. He has since been released, but has lost his Scots Fund pension and the regiment he had been commanding, and is now destitute again. He plans an expedition to India, but it will require a good deal of money to send him on his way. Mackellar exults at this chance to be rid of the leech, but by an ill fate this letter has crossed with another letter, in which Henry has told the Master that the estate is at last exhausted. In November 1756 the Master returns to Durrisdeer, under the alias of &#34;Mr Bally&#34;. He meets Henry on the road to the house, sneeringly comparing the two of them to Jacob and Esau, and ominously says that Henry has chosen his fate by not agreeing to the Master&#39;s plan to go to India. On his return he ingratiates himself with his father and with his brother&#39;s wife (who was once his own fiancée). Neither have seen him in eleven years and both are overjoyed at his return. With satanic gifts of deceit and manipulation, the Master turns the family against Henry, always putting him in the wrong and cruelly insulting him, while making it seem as though Henry is insulting the Master. To the family it seems that the Master is a long-suffering and kind-hearted hero and saint, while Henry is a cruel, unfeeling monster. In private the Master gloats to Henry over his success, taunting him by pointing out that their father does not love him, that Henry&#39;s daughter prefers the Master&#39;s company and that, despite the Master&#39;s falseness and crimes, he is everyone&#39;s favourite. He exults that he will destroy Henry&#39;s virtue: ""[Y]ou need not look such impotent malice, my good fly. You can be rid of your spider when you please. How long, O Lord? When are you to be wrought to the point of a denunciation, scrupulous brother? It is one of my interests in this dreary hole. I ever loved experiment."" Henry suffers all this in stoical silence. Mackellar eventually discovers that the Master betrayed the Jacobites and sold himself out to the Hanoverian government by becoming a paid spy for King George, and that this is the real reason for his safe return. However, even when Henry confronts the Master with this, right in the middle of the Master&#39;s holding forth on the great risk he is running by returning to be with his family, the Laird and Mrs Durie remain blind to the Master&#39;s nature. Even when the Master demands that the Laird break the entail and sell off a large part of the estate at a disadvantageous price to finance the Master&#39;s expedition to India, the Laird remains besotted and rebukes Henry for lack of generosity when he objects. Eventually the Master goads Henry one time too many. On the night of 27 February 1757 he tells Henry that Mrs Durie has never loved him and has always loved the Master instead. Henry strikes him in the mouth with his fist and the brothers resort to a duel with swords. Henry runs the Master through and he falls to the ground, seemingly dead. Mackellar takes Henry indoors and then rouses the house, but when he and Henry&#39;s wife return to the duelling ground the body is gone. By the tracks they can see that the body has been dragged away by smugglers (&#34;free traders&#34;), who carried it to a boat, but whether alive or dead they do not know. The Master miraculously survives the sword wound and, with the money extorted from his father, goes to India to make his fortune. Back at the Durrisdeer estate the old Laird declines and dies, and Henry becomes Laird in his place. Mackellar, on his own authority, shows Mrs Durie all the correspondence between Henry and the Master, as well as papers that prove that the Master was a paid spy. Her eyes are opened and she becomes reconciled with Henry, though she also burns the papers, not to protect the Master, but to prevent a scandal for the family. She and Henry have a son, whom they name Alexander. However, after the duel Henry gradually becomes mentally unstable. His personality changes, and he becomes careless about business and the estate. When Mackellar tells him that the Master is probably still alive he responds strangely: ""Ah!"" says Mr Henry; and suddenly rising from his seat with more alacrity than he had yet discovered, set one finger on my breast, and cried at me in a kind of screaming whisper, ""Mackellar"" - these were his words - ""nothing can kill that man. He is not mortal. He is bound upon my back to all eternity - to all eternity!"" says he, and, sitting down again, fell upon a stubborn silence. When Alexander is about eight years old Mackellar comes across Henry showing Alexander the duelling ground and telling him that this was where a man fought with the Devil. A second excerpt from Colonel Burke&#39;s memoir details a brief encounter he had with the Master while they were both in India. Caught in a &#34;mellay&#34;, Burke and his cipaye flee and climb into a garden, where Burke sees the Master sitting with an Indian servant named Secundra Dass. Burke requests help from the Master, but the Master does not acknowledge him, while Secundra Dass tells the two of them (in English) to leave and threatens them with a pistol. Burke leaves and the story within a story ends. In the Spring of 1764 Mackellar comes downstairs one day to find the Master in the house, accompanied by Secundra Dass. The new Laird receives him coldly and Mackellar warns him that there will be no money forthcoming. The Master sneers and answers him: &#34;[S]peech is very easy, and sometimes very deceptive. I warn you fairly: you will find me vitriol in the house. You would do wiser to pay money down and see my back.&#34; The Laird takes his wife and children and leaves Scotland for New York, where Mrs Durie has a family estate. Mackellar remains behind, and tells the Master that he may have room and board at Durrisdeer, but he will not be permitted to contact the family or given any money. The Master furiously answers: ""Inside of a week, without leaving Durrisdeer, I will find out where these fools are fled to. I will follow; and when I have run my quarry down, I will drive a wedge into that family that shall once more burst it into shivers. I shall see then whether my Lord Durrisdeer"" (said with indescribable scorn and rage) ""will choose to buy my absence; and you will all see whether, by that time, I decide for profit or revenge."" Eventually the Master discovers where the Duries have gone and takes ship for New York. Mackellar follows, to get ahead of the Master and warn the Laird. The Master finds the family prepared against him and sets up shop in the town, pretending to work as a tailor, but really only working to poison the town against his brother. Henry, who has grown more unstable as the years have passed, takes pleasure in rubbing the Master&#39;s face in his failure. Eventually the Master makes his demand. The pirate treasure he buried years ago is still in the wilderness of New York: if Henry will give him the money to set out and retrieve it, he will leave Henry alone forever. Henry, however, refuses, on the basis of on his brother&#39;s record of failed promises and extortion. Mackellar remonstrates that it would be worth the money to be rid of the Master, but Henry will not be moved. Desperate, Mackellar goes to the Master and offers to pay for the expedition himself. The Master refuses and rants that he cares only about ruining his brother: ""Three times I have had my hand upon the highest station: and I am not yet three-and-forty. I know the world as few men know it when they come to die - Court and camp, the East and the West; I know where to go, I see a thousand openings. I am now at the height of my resources, sound of health, of inordinate ambition. Well, all this I resign; I care not if I die, and the world never hear of me; I care only for one thing, and that I will have."" A ship arrives from Britain, carrying news that, in return for his loyalty to the rebels the Master of Ballantrae is to be given the title of Lord (or Laird) of Durrisdeer, and young Alexander, Henry&#39;s son and the rightful heir to the estate and title, is to be disinherited. The news is obviously false, but the already unhinged Henry believes it to be true and is driven to full-blown madness. Unknown to Mackellar, Henry secretly arranges with a smuggler to gather a crew of riff-raff and present themselves to the Master as being willing to set out with him to find the buried treasure. Their real purpose, unknown to the Master, will be to murder him and steal the treasure. The Master is at first deceived, but in the course of the expedition he discovers their plan. He tries to escape, but fails; he tries to set them against one another, but fails; and at last he announces that he has fallen ill. He wastes away and on his deathbed he tells them where the treasure is hidden. Secundra Dass wraps up his body and buries it, and the party sets out to find the treasure, but they fall foul of hostile Indians, and all but Secundra Dass and one man named Mountain are killed. Mountain encounters the diplomat Sir William Johnson, who is on his way to negotiate with the hostile Indians. With him are Henry Durie and Mackellar. Mountain tells them about the Master&#39;s death and burial, and says that Secundra Dass has gone back to where it happened. Mountain thinks that Dass is after the treasure. Henry, however, is convinced that the Master is not really dead: ""He's not of this world,"" whispered my lord, ""neither him nor the black de'il that serves him. I have struck my sword throughout his vitals,"" he cried; ""I have felt the hilt dirl on his breastbone, and the hot blood spirt in my very face, time and again, time and again!"" he repeated, with a gesture indescribable. ""But he was never dead for that,"" said he, and sighed aloud. ""Why should I think he was dead now? No, not till I see him rotting,"" says he. The party finds Dass digging up the Master&#39;s body. Caught in the act, he tells them that the Master faked his illness, and Dass showed him how to swallow his tongue and fake death. They unearth the Master&#39;s body and he opens his eyes briefly. Henry faints, falls to the ground and dies. The Master&#39;s resurrection is only momentary, as he too dies almost immediately. Mackellar buries the two of them under the same stone, with the inscription: J. D., HEIR TO A SCOTTISH TITLE, A MASTER OF THE ARTS AND GRACES, ADMIRED IN EUROPE, ASIA, AMERICA, IN WAR AND PEACE, IN THE TENTS OF SAVAGE HUNTERS AND THE CITADELS OF KINGS, AFTER SO MUCH ACQUIRED, ACCOMPLISHED, AND ENDURED, LIES HERE FORGOTTEN. * * * * * H. D., HIS BROTHER, AFTER A LIFE OF UNMERITED DISTRESS, BRAVELY SUPPORTED, DIED ALMOST IN THE SAME HOUR, AND SLEEPS IN THE SAME GRAVE WITH HIS FRATERNAL ENEMY. * * * * * THE PIETY OF HIS WIFE AND ONE OLD SERVANT RAISED THIS STONE TO BOTH."
1523,Heroes of Tobruk,history, The story follows Peter Fullerton and Tony Cantonelli's teen life as they illegally join the Australian army and are shipped off to the Siege of Tobruk. They soon become men as they experience heartfelt moments and feel much hurt throughout the story.
1524,Judith,history," It is 1799 and eighteen-year-old Judith Mortimer lives with her widowed father, Jonathan, on their farm in Essex. Jonathan Mortimer has devoted his adult life, and most of his money, to writing and publishing lengthy treatises on various subjects close to his heart. None has found favour with the reading public and, consequently, he and his daughter are close to penury. Several years earlier, Mortimer suffered a stroke and is confined to bed where he works on his latest project, A Treatise on Just Government. Meanwhile, his increasingly desperate daughter tries to find ways to keep the small household, including two servants, financially viable. She has entered into an agreement with a band of local smugglers to allow them use the farm's outhouses to store their merchandise. In return, the smugglers pay her ten to fifteen guineas each time they use the farm for their illegal purposes. Jonathan Mortimer is first cousin to a local earl and powerful landowner to whom he is in considerable debt. The debt arises from a legal dispute concerning their mutual grandfather's will. The earl wishes to buy the Mortimers' farm, which adjoins his own larger estate, and thereby clear their indebtedness to him. Under the proposed arrangement, Jonathan Mortimer will be allowed to live out his remaining days on the farm. Furthermore, the earl offers to give Judith a generous dowry so that she can marry. However, the catch is that she must marry the odious Mr. Massingham. She refuses the offer Robert Barnabas, son of the smugglers' leader, is in love with Judith and, during one of his nocturnal visits to the farm, he makes his feelings clear. Judith's emotions are thrown into turmoil by the handsome young man's directness. She learns that he was studying to be a doctor but abandoned it under pressure from his father to join the family 'business'. Now, as his love for Judith brings meaning to his life, he resolves to turn away from smuggling and complete his medical training. Not long after her refusal of the earl's offer, Judith's father dies. At the same time, news of her involvement with the smugglers reaches the local militia. She is forced to flee to London with Evergreen, an orphan gypsy girl whom she has taken into her care. There, the two young women unwittingly fall into the clutches of Mrs. Ware, who runs an 'academy' for young girls. Ostensibly set up to teach its occupants how to be ladies, Mrs. Ware's academy is, in reality, a high class brothel. Robert Barnabas pursues Judith to London and rescues her from Mrs. Ware's establishment. However, Massingham, furious and humiliated at Judith's refusal of his proposal of marriage, has also come to London seeking revenge. Together with his henchmen, he seizes Judith in the street and brings her to a lunatic asylum. There she is incarcerated for months in appalling conditions, naked and shackled in a cold cell. Massingham pays the asylum keeper to hold Judith until he feels she has learned her lesson. Eventually she is released onto the streets of London, her sanity barely intact and with nowhere to go. She is 'adopted' by a street urchin who takes her back to his filthy hovel. Each day she is forced by her new companion to beg on the streets. After several more months of dreadful hardship, Judith is taken in by a kindly young Christian woman, Miss Westmoreland. Slowly Judith begins to recover her mental and physical health and a strong bond of friendship forms between the two women. Through Judith, Miss Westmoreland learns of the appalling conditions in which London's poor live. She resolves to set up an orphanage and hospital to care for abandoned children. The two women raise the necessary funds and advertise for a doctor to run their new enterprise. One of the applicants is the now-qualified Dr. Robert Barnabas. Reunited at last, Barnabas and Judith are soon married. They return to Essex to live on the Mortimer farm. It transpires that the dispute over her great-grandfather's will has been settled in her favour and the farm is now hers."
1525,Freedom,history," Freedom blends the narrative recounting of actual historical events with fictional events invented by the author. Freedom traces political and military developments over the period from May, 1861 to January 1, 1863, from the point of view of the Union. Military events in which Breckenridge participates are also shown from the Confederate ""side of the hill"". As Book One opens, Breckenridge is a member in good standing of the US Senate. His opposition to what he regards as Lincoln's usurpation of power leads him to make speeches that his political opponents construe as treasonous. When the Senate adjourns, his good friend John Forney warns him that ""you will follow your doctrine into the Confederate army,"" and in the end this is what happens. Book Two deals with the plan to invade the South along the Tennessee River. Anna Ella Carroll is portrayed as the creator of the plan, a controversial position among historians. The novel shows Carroll striving both to make the plan a success and to receive credit for it, goals that are often in tension. Book Three shows Edwin M Stanton succeeding Simon Cameron as Secretary of War with the support of General McClellan, whom he secretly intends to depose. Stanton is portrayed as dedicated to the cause of Union victory and convinced that this end justifies any and all means. (Later in the book McClellan bitterly complains that Stanton is ""the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard of, or read of,"" and compares him unfavorably to Judas Iscariot.) Book Four is mainly concerned with military developments—execution of the Tennessee Plan and the Confederate response to it—leading up to, and including, the Battle of Shiloh. Its shows how by both sides come to accept the doctrine that the goal of war is the destruction of the enemy's forces; Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnson tells Breckenridge frankly, ""We deal in death."" Books Five and Eight cover McClellan's military campaigns and the efforts of his political opponents to remove him. He is portrayed as torn between his duty to do his utmost against the enemy and his desire to win the war in such a way as will induce the Southern states to return to the Union voluntarily, with slavery intact. Books Six and Seven focus on the struggle to define the role of abolition in the quest to put down the Confederate rebellion. Book Six shows the conflict that Lincoln's thoughts about emancipation create for Salmon P. Chase, who wants to receive credit for this step himself. Book Seven describes the enlistment of black regiments in New Orleans by Union General Benjamin Butler. Butler's thinking is summarized as ""Dred Scott, denying blacks their essential humanity, would be a dead letter the moment a black man donned a blue uniform."" Book Nine shows the final development of Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. In these sections of the book, Safire generally stays as close as possible to the historical record, in particular wherever contemporaneous records of what was said, such as diaries, letters and transcripts, are available. The main fictional threads of the novel are imagined romances between Breckenridge and Carroll, between John Hay and Kate Chase and, towards the novel's end, between Carroll and Salmon P. Chase. In each case the romance founders due to an improper political-moral decision made by one of the parties. In regard to the latter two pairings, Safire writes in the underbook, ""All four surely had romantic attachments—but with other people. The purpose of making these two fictional connections is to provide a prism through which to examine their characters and a hatrack on which to hang other information, as well as to entertain the fact-laden reader and author."""
1526,The Divine Folly,history, Two English brothers travel across Europe as members of a secret society that is plotting the assassination of Napoleon III.
1527,The Falcon at the Portal,history," The 1911 season finds the Emersons planning to excavate at Zawyet el'Aryan, south of the great pyramids of Giza. David Todros has just been married to Lia, the daughter of Walter and Evelyn Emerson, and the happy couple will be joining the expedition after their honeymoon. The family's happiness is dimmed, however, by allegations that David has been making and selling fake antiquities under the guise of his late grandfather Abdullah's legacy. Ramses and Nefret take on the task of ferreting out the source of the rumors - and the fakes - with fears that the Master Criminal is behind it. Meanwhile, Percy Peabody, Amelia's evil nephew, turns up as a member of the Egyptian Army and an intermittent pest. He has written a lurid (and completely false) memoir about his time in Egypt, keeps proposing to Nefret, and seems up to something, though he doesn't have the brains to be part of the plot the Emersons are investigating. Two young Americans join the Emersons' dig, Geoffrey Godwin and Jack Reynolds, whose sister sets her sights on Ramses. With this cast of characters, and Ramses' involvement in investigating the illegal drug trade, nothing but the usual peril could ensue."
1528,The Burning Land,history," The year is 892, when the second major campaign of Alfred the Great against the invading Danes began in earnest. The protagonist is Uhtred of Bebbanburg. A Saxon by birth, Uhtred was raised by Danes and finds their ways more congenial than those of his own people. Nevertheless, he has served Alfred loyally (more or less) as soldier, envoy and military governor for more than a decade, and is now the preeminent warlord of Wessex, Alfred's kingdom. Alfred refers to him as ""my dux bellorum, my lord of battles."" Alfred urges him to swear to serve Alfred’s son and presumed heir, Edward, in the same way. ""Scour the enemy from England,"" Alfred says, ""and make my son safe on his God-given throne."" Uhtred is unwilling to make that commitment, however. He has long wanted to return to his family's stronghold at Bebbanburg in Northumbria and to deal with his uncle, Aelfric, who stole the family properties and titles from him when his father died. He wants his obligation to Alfred and Wessex to end when Alfred, now seriously ill, passes away. Uhtred is military governor of Lundene (London), sharing power with Bishop Erkenwald, whom he dislikes but respects. At Alfred's behest, Uhtred delivers a message to the Danish Jarl (earl) Haesten, whose fleet threatens Wessex, that Alfred will pay a large ransom for Haesten to leave. Alfred cannot attack Haesten, because another Dane, Jarl Harald Bloodhair, has attacked at Cent (Kent). Haesten and Alfred reach an accord, and Haesten leaves hostages and accepts missionaires. Haesten even undergoes baptism. However, Uhtred knows that the hostages are fake and that if Harald defeats Alfred, Haesten will attack Wessex. While traveling with a small force to meet Alfred (who is now free to lead an army against Harald), Uhtred captures Skade, Harald's woman. Skade is a formidable fighter in her own right, and leads one of Harald's war parties. She and her party are captured while raiding a Mercian village. However, Harald approaches Uhtred leading a line of Saxon captive women, and threatens to kill all of them if Skade is not returned to him. After he butchers one woman in front of her child, Uhtred releases Skade to him. Skade intones an ominous curse against Uhtred as she and Harald make their escape. At a meeting with Alfred and his advisors, Uhtred urges the king to adopt a plan to lure Harald to Farnham by sending a modest force there, and then attack Harald from the rear with most of Alfred's troops when he takes the bait. The plan works brilliantly. Uhtred and his men defeat Harald's forces and again take Skade prisoner. Harald is severely wounded, but escapes to Torneie Island (Thorney Island). There, with a few followers, he is able to use the island’s natural defenses and a palisade he builds to repel later attempts to defeat him. However, he is trapped there. While celebrating the Mercian/Saxon victory at Farnham, Uhtred is devastated by news that his beloved wife, Gisela, has died in childbirth, along with the child she bore. When Uhtred and Skade return to Lundene, Alfred's advisor, Bishop Asser (whose dislike of Uhtred long predates this story) uses the mad brother Godwin to denounce Gisela's name, ranting that Gisela was the devil's whore, and has come back from the dead as Skade. Uhtred flies into a rage and kills Godwin, though he says that he only meant to silence him. Uhtred retreats to his house, where Uhtred’s old friend and mentor, Father Beocca, tells him that Alfred has ordered Uhtred to pay a huge fine and swear an oath to Alfred's son Edward the Aethling. Alfred holds Uhtred's children as hostage to his terms, and places them in the custody of Aethelflaed, Alfred's daughter and wife of Aethelred, the ealdorman of Mercia. Furious, Uhtred reneges on his oath to Alfred and sails, with Skade, to Dunholm in Northumbria, stronghold of his old friend Ragnar, a Danish leader. Uhtred trusts Aethelflaed to protect his children. Eager to use his newfound freedom and encouraged by Skade, Uhtred goes Viking. He sails to Frisia to loot, kill and plunder Skirnir, Skade's husband, and on the journey, he and Skade become lovers. After he defeats and kills Skirnir, however, he is disappointed when Skirnir's treasure horde fails to meet his expectations. When Skade demands half of the horde as her share, Uhtred denies it to her. From that point on Skade becomes hostile to Uhtred. Sailing back to Ragnar's fortress, Uhtred winters there. During that winter, Brida, Uhtred's former lover who is now Ragnar's wife, convinces Ragnar to attack Wessex alongside the other Northumbrian Jarls, Cnut and Sigrid. During the meeting, Haesten arrives and declares that he will attack Mercia. Haesten and Skade become infatuated with each other, and when Haesten leaves, Skade goes with him. Uhtred is caught in a conflict of loyalties, between the Danes with whom he was raised, and his oaths to Alfred and Aethelflaed. He also fears for his children's safety, as they are in Mercia, in Aethelflaed's custody. His indecision is broken when his friend, the Welshman Father Pyrlig arrives. Pyrlig reminds Uhtred that he has given his oath to serve Aethelflaed. (This occurred in Sword Song.) Uhtred is reluctant at first, until Father Pyrlig tells him that 'oaths made in love cannot be broken'. Uhtred goes to serve Aethelflaed. He first has to rescue her from Lord Aldhem. Aethelred, Aethelflaed's husband, wishes to divorce her, to break free of Alfred's influence over Mercia. He directs Aldhem to have sex with Aethelflaed, either by seduction, or failing that, by force. Either act would make her an adulterer, allowing Aethelred to divorce her. Uhtred kills Aldhem, liberates Aethelflaed, and reunites with his children. He and Aethelflaed then go to Aethelred's council, surprising him before the assembled Mercian lords. Warning of Jarl Haesten's advance, Aethelflaed tries to win the Mercian lords to her side. She and Uhtred then wait at Lunden for support. However, because Aethelred holds their purse-strings, none of the lords come, except for Lord Elfwold. During this wait, Uhtred and Aethelflaed become lovers. Uhtred also learns that Alfred had advised Aethelflaed to use Uhtred's oath to her to bring him back. Eventually, Edward Aetheling arrives, along with Alfred's retainer and Uhtred's friend Steapa, and an army of twelve hundred of Alfred's best house troops. They also bear a message that Uhtred is to give his oath to Edward. Uhtred promptly refuses. Thus reinforced, Uhtred marches ahead to Haesten's two forts at Baemfleot (Benfleet), although Haesten is not there. Uhtred encounters and attacks a larger Danish force and is surrounded. He nearly loses the battle and his life, but is saved and the battle won by the timely arrival of Steapa and the rest of Alfred's troops. They proceed to capture the first of the forts. Uhtred makes preparations for the next battle and begins teaching Edward how to lead from the front. Uhtred assaults the fort and scales the ditch, using sails with ropes sown into them to provide sure footing on the slippery ditch. He tries to use ladders to get up the wall, but the first assault fails. His second assault ultimately succeeds after Father Pyrlig throws specially prepared beehives onto the walls. The bees distract the defenders so that Uhtred's force can scale the walls and capture the fort. In the hall Uhtred finds Skade and a horde of gold. Harald Bloodhair, crippled and vengeful over Skade's betrayal with Haesten, suddenly appears, embraces Skade, and kills her at the same time. He then asks Uhtred to kill him. Uhtred does, then meets with Edward who says that he doesn't need Uhtred's oath as long as his sister has it. Uhtred and Aethelflaed then sail away from Baemfleot on the Thames."
1529,I Am David,history," David, a 12-year-old, has lived in a prison camp for as long as he can remember. While the people who run the camp are only referred to as them, later in the book it is stated that they came to power in 1917, indicating that the captors are Communists. His only friend in there, Johannes, died some time before, but one of the guards has been keeping an eye on David, making sure he is fed and has vitamins. This guard sets up the escape, gives him some soap, and leaves a sack outside the camp fence with bread and cheese and a compass in it. David must find a boat to Italy, then travel north to a free country that has a king. David uses the excuse that he works for a circus to explain why he is a polyglot and why he is travelling (to catch up with the circus which has gone ahead). On his way, he helps people, and sometimes they give him money. Along his journey, David discovers the beauty of the world and slowly he changes his behavior and the way he interacts with people. He saves a girl named Maria from a fire in a shed where she was trapped. David spends some time in Maria's family's house, where he sees a globe and learns about different countries. However, his knowledge of suffering and death worries the parents. David overhears them talking about him, and leaves the house to travel north again. Some time later he sees a newspaper personal advertisement aimed at him and placed by the parents, so he sends them a letter to reassure them that he is all right. David has also been praying to the God of green pastures, and a priest explains that while some people say there are many gods, there really is only one. When winter hits, he is held prisoner by a farmer who uses him for slave labour. However, this also gives him shelter until the snow melts. The farmer's dog keeps him company through the winter, and travels with him when he escapes in the spring. Later, the dog helps distract some guards so that David can sneak over the border. When he meets Sophie, an old lady that lives in Switzerland and likes to paint as hobby, she asks David if she might paint him; later she invites David to have lunch with her in her house, and while he is there, David sees a picture of a woman in Denmark. Sophie tells him that the woman's husband and child were killed by , but that one guard let the woman escape. He realises he needs to travel to Denmark and find that woman. Finally he arrives in Denmark, and traces the woman through the telephone directory. When he knocks on her door, he simply tells her ""I am David"", and she knows he is her long-lost son."
1530,Flying Colours,history," At the end of the previous novel, A Ship of the Line, after attacking and severely damaging a superior French squadron with HMS Sutherland, Hornblower had to surrender his ship to the French. He and his surviving crew are imprisoned in the French-occupied Spanish fortress of Rosas on the Mediterranean Sea. From the walls of Rosas, Hornblower witnesses an English raid leading to the final destruction of the French ships he immobilized. Soon afterwards, Hornblower is told that he is to be sent to Paris to be tried as a pirate for his previous actions, including the capture of a battery and some coastal vessels using a ruse of war. Hornblower, his first lieutenant, Bush, who is still recovering from the loss of a foot in the fighting, and his coxswain, Brown, are taken away in a carriage by an Imperial aide-de-camp. The carriage becomes stuck in a snowstorm on a minor road close to the river Loire, and part of the escort leaves to get help from Nevers, the next town. Hornblower and Brown overpower the remaining guards and steal a small boat on the river. Taking Bush with them, they set out downstream, but the river is in spate, and the boat eventually capsizes in some rapids. Hornblower and Brown carry Bush towards the nearest building, which happens to be the Chateau de Graçay. The Comte de Graçay, a member of the old French nobility who has lost three sons in Napoleon's wars, and his widowed daughter-in-law Marie, welcome them and protect them from the authorities, who eventually abandon the search thinking them drowned. The party spends the winter as guests of the Comte and prepare for an escape in late spring. During these months, Bush recovers and learns to walk with a wooden leg. Hornblower, Bush and Brown build a new boat to continue their voyage downstream. Meanwhile, Hornblower and Marie have a short but intense love affair. Springtime comes and the river is in perfect condition for travel. Disguised as a fishing party, the escapees make their way to the port city of Nantes. There, they change their disguise to that of high-ranking Dutch customs officers in French service, using uniforms made for them by Marie and the staff of the Chateau. They manage to recapture the cutter Witch of Endor, taken as a French prize the year before. Manning it with a prison work gang, they take the ship out of the harbour and rendezvous with the British blockading fleet. Here, Hornblower learns that his wife Maria had died in childbed; his son, Richard, survived and was adopted by his friend Lady Barbara, widow of Admiral Leighton and sister of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Returning to Portsmouth, Hornblower, in common with any other captain who has lost his ship, faces a court martial for the loss of the Sutherland. However, he is 'most honourably' acquitted by the court and finds himself a celebrity for his exploits in the Mediterranean and his daring escape from France. He is received by the Prince Regent (the later King George IV), who makes him a knight of the Order of the Bath and a Colonel of Marines (a sinecure providing worthy officers with extra income). Together with the money from prizes taken while he was captain of the Sutherland and from his recapture of the Witch of Endor, he is finally financially secure and free to court and marry Lady Barbara. sv:Triumf"
1531,Lovecraft's Book,history," The story concerns an offer made to H. P. Lovecraft by a fascist sympathizer, George Sylvester Viereck. His offer is to have Lovecraft write a political tract in the nature of an American Mein Kampf. In return, Viereck promises the publication of a volume of Lovecraft's stories."
1532,The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel,history," The story starts in Paris in April 1794, year II of the French Revolution. Theresia Cabarrus is a beautiful but shallow Spaniard who is betrothed to Citizen Tallien the popular Representative in the Convention and one of Robespierre's inner circle. She is credited with exercising a mellowing influence over Tallien, whom she met in Bordeaux but although she is engaged to be married to him, what little love she has appears to be lavished on another. Bertrand Moncrif is a good-looking but impulsive young man who appears determined to martyr himself in opposition to the revolutionary government. To this end, he has gathered the siblings of his long-term sweetheart, Régine de Serval, into his plan to denounce Robespierre at one of the Fraternal suppers. Despite warnings from Régine he insists on carrying through his plans which inevitably go awry and the wrath of the mob is soon turned towards the small group. After a timely intervention on the part of the Scarlet Pimpernel, using the guise of the coal heaver Rateau (who also appears in several short stories in The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - The Cabaret de la Liberté, Needs Must and A Battle of Wits), the de Servals are saved from a lynching while Moncrif lies unconscious and unseen under a table. When he eventually awakens, Bertrand heads straight for Theresia's house (whom he worships) and all thoughts of his old love Régine disappear in her wake. Theresia is horrified to find him at her house as Tallien, Robespierre and several other high-ranking political figures are due at her apartment for a meeting. Realising that he is putting her at risk, Bertrand hides in the kitchen while the men meet. Also present is Citizen Chauvelin, who plans to use Theresia to entrap his old enemy the Scarlet Pimpernel and has been planting ideas to the effect in Robespierre's mind. Robespierre makes it clear that he knows Bertrand was behind the fracas at the supper and implies that Theresia and Bertrand are involved. Despite the implied threat, she refuses to help trap the Pimpernel, but after the party has left she discovers that Bertrand has been taken by the daring Englishman from her kitchen. Chauvelin returns brandishing a note left by the Pimpernel, to persuade her to take part in his plan once more. Peeved at the Pimpernel removing her plaything, she eventually agrees. In England, Moncrif and the de Servals are finally free to resume an almost normal life. Theresia arrives at Dover dressed in men's clothes and claiming she has been driven out of France by her association with Bertrand, in fear of her life. An obviously staged row between the Spaniard and Chauvelin outside Sir Percy's cottage fails to persuade our hero that she is up to anything but mischief, but he seems to relish the prospect of such an intelligent and wily adversary and promises not to reveal her true identity to anyone for he ""is a lover of sport."" With her plans to seduce Percy scuppered, Theresia turns her attention to Sir Percy's wife Marguerite and uses an all too willing Bertrand to set the trap. Lady Blakeney is kidnapped yet again and taken to France and imprisoned as bait for Sir Percy. Can our dashing hero evade capture and live to enjoy a day ""when tyranny was crushed and men dared to be men again""? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge"
1533,The Far Side of the World,history," The Far Side of the World continues the story of Jack Aubrey's exploits during the War of 1812. Aubrey reports to his commander-in-chief at Gibraltar, who sends him and to intercept the American frigate USS Norfolk which plans to attack British whalers in the South Seas. Jack makes all haste to have the Surprise victualled as quickly as possible and recruits a new master, a Mr Allen. Not only is he an excellent seaman but he also has an in-depth knowledge of whalers, having sailed previously with James Colnett on a semi exploration-whaling expedition to the South Atlantic. Stephen Maturin also persuades Jack to take Mr Martin along with them, a clergyman who Jack approves of and who is unhappy with his current ship. Maturin receives disturbing news from his intelligence-chief in London, Sir Joseph Blaine, which tends to confirm his suspicions of treason and infiltration by the French. He also hears from his wife, who has heard rumours of the infidelity he pretended in Valletta, Malta with the red-haired Mrs Fielding for intelligence reasons. He sends a letter to reassure her via Andrew Wray, unaware of the latter's role as a French agent. The Surprise encounters many setbacks, suffering delays in Brazil from a lightning-struck prow before they round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean to locate the Norfolk, which has captured and burnt several whalers. The crew of the Surprise, having nearly been shipwrecked by the tail of a typhoon, finally discover the Norfolk wrecked on a reef by the same typhoon and her crew encamped on an island. Aubrey, Mr Martin and some of the crew take Stephen ashore as he is in a coma after hitting his head in a fall and needs to be on land to be operated on. However, he makes a recovery without an operation. While they are ashore, another heavy storm blows the Surprise away and they are stranded. Relations between the two marooned groups deteriorate rapidly, particularly after Jack announces to the American Captain Palmer that he will have to take his crew prisoner. Some of them are from HMS Hermione, a ship that mutinied in the West Indies and they know they will be hanged if returned to British authorities. The situation reaches a crisis point after Jack orders the crew of the Surprise to lengthen their boat so they can sail away, pushing them particularly hard when he sees an American whaler on the horizon. The crew of the Norfolk sabotage the boat after spotting the same whaler but it is at this point that they see her strike her colours, having been pursued through a gap in the reef by the Surprise. A sub-plot in the book is the illicit affair between the sweet singing but otherwise untalented Hollom, a passed midshipman who never received a lieutenant's commission and is too old to fit in with the young midshipmen who Jack takes aboard in pity, and the pretty wife brought aboard by the sexually impotent gunner, Horner. Hollom is considered a ""Jonah"" by the crew - someone who brings bad luck to the ship - and the two lovers are presumed to have been beaten to death by the ferocious, brutal and jealous husband on an island whilst the Surprise is being provisioned. Horner himself sinks into a black despair and is discovered hanged in his cabin."
1534,Antony and Cleopatra,history," McCullough continues her Masters of Rome series with the seventh and final installment, Antony and Cleopatra. The novel spans the years 41 BC to 27 BC, from the aftermath of the Battle of Philippi and the suicide of Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus until the downfall of the second triumvirate, the final war of the Roman Republic and the renaming of Octavian to Augustus in 27 BC. The novel, which is supposed to be McCullough's last in the series, focuses mainly on the famous love story between Mark Antony, victor at Philippi, and queen Cleopatra, earlier the lover of Julius Caesar. This book differs greatly from Shakespeare's treatment of these events; Cleopatra is portrayed as no great beauty, but rather an inept politician who helps ruin Antony's cause by publicly meddling in affairs of state, and Antony is, for much of the book, far more in love with Cleopatra's wealth than her person. Caesarion is portrayed as a gifted, idealistic youth who would be far happier had he never been a king, and who is not happy with his mother's ambitious plans to make him ruler of all the East. Octavian and his wife Livia are depicted as pragmatic to the point of total ruthlessness but not needlessly cruel."
1535,The Stone Carvers,history," In the mid-19th century, Father Gstir is sent from Bavaria to Canada to minister to German-Catholic communities. He is drawn to Shoneval, a farming town situated in a valley in Ontario, and is determined to build a stone church with a bell. Joseph Becker, a master woodcarver, helps him. Later, Becker tries to pass on his carving skills to his grandson, Tilman, but the boy is unenthusiastic. Tilman suffers from constant restlessness and is unable to stay in one place, often running away from the settlement for weeks at a time. Aged 12 he leaves for good. Becker's granddaughter, Klara, by contrast, is eager to learn the carving trade and Becker reluctantly teaches her. Klara falls in love with Eamon, the silent son of an Irish family, but she is hurt when he leaves her to fight in World War I. After he is reported as 'missing' Klara is devastated, and attempts to shut out her memory of him and her emotions, and lives the life of a spinster. After leaving home, Tilman spends several years as a hobo on the roads and rails. He eventually meets up with a tramp named Refuto, who had left home because he felt guilty for indirectly killing his brother. Later, Refuto decides to try returning home, fearful that his family will not forgive his wrongs. Refuto brings Tilman with him to the Italian district of Hamilton; Tilman befriends Refuto's son Giorgio and lives with the family for a time. But when war comes Tilman serves in the trenches of France, where he is 'injured out' after losing his leg in battle at Vimy Ridge. Aged in his 40s, Tilman returns to Shoneval, and Klara is reunited with the brother who had been assumed dead years ago. She becomes determined to travel to France with Tilman to help carve the massive Vimy Memorial being built by Walter Allward. After overcoming her brother's reluctance they travel to France and start work on the monument, Klara disguised as a man. After some weeks, and without permission, Klara sculpts Eamon's face on a key statue on the top of the memorial. Despite his initial anger, Allward sees how the change personalises and enhances the monument. He retains the alteration. Klara falls in love with Giorgio, who is also working on the monument, and for the first time since Eamon's death she opens up her emotions. Tilman also opens himself up to physical intimacy for the first time, with a war-wounded French chef. The novel ends with the imposing memorial completed, Allward all but forgotten, and Klara and Tilman now leading emotionally fulfilling lives with their partners in Canada, having memorialised the people they knew who had been taken by the war."
1536,The Seeing Stone,history," The story begins in the year 1199, just before the beginning of the Fourth Crusade. Young Arthur de Caldicot, thirteen years of age at the time, is the second son of a knight living in Caldicot manor in the ""Middle Marches"" of the March of Wales. Most of the first book deals with the stresses associated with medieval life. Most important to Arthur is the fact that he is Sir John's second son, and thus ineligible to inherit land. In order to have a life of his own, he must become a squire and then a knight, and create his own manor and farmland. One challenge to overcome is his inadequate ""yard-skills"", especially jousting and sword-play. He is left-handed, considered a dangerous oddity in those days, but he must joust and fence with his off-hand. Another challenge is that his father would make him a scribe for his skill reading and writing. The obstacles disappear when he learns on his fourteenth birthday that his ""uncle"" Sir William de Gortanore is really his father; he becomes heir to a large manor. Unfortunately, it seems that his mother's husband was murdered by Sir William, who was jealous of him. And the revelation terminates the betrothal of Arthur and Grace, Sir William's daughter; as Grace is Arthur's half-sister they cannot marry. The novel ends with Arthur accepted as squire to the Lord of the Middle Marches, Stephen de Holt, . The wizard Merlin gives Arthur de Caldicot the ""Seeing Stone"" early in the story, along with the warning it will cease to work if anyone else shares in its knowledge. Through the stone Arthur observes the life of legendary King Arthur until his rise to power as King of Britain. It begins with the marriage of King Uther and Ygerna. They conceive a child, who is named Arthur and is taken by Merlin to a foster family. Years later, when King Uther dies, Arthur comes to be king. Many specific people look similar to or exactly like people in Arthur's life. The most notable resemblance is between Arthur and young King Arthur himself, which leads de Caldicot to suppose that Arthur in the stone is himself in the near future. This belief is only accentuated when he learns on his birthday that his parents are only foster parents, as for young King Arthur. Eventually it becomes clear that King Arthur inhabits a parallel universe, with events in both worlds reflecting each other."
1537,Here Lies Arthur,history," The novel starts with an attack by Arthur and his war-band, and the escape of Gwyna, a servant girl. She is found by Myrddin, a bard who hopes to build Arthur's reputation as a great hero so that he can unite the native British against the Saxons who have occupied the east of the country. Myrddin tells Gwyna to give Arthur Caliburn while pretending to be the Lady of the Lake. When she does that successfully, Myrddin disguises her in boy's clothes so that she can travel with the war-band as his servant. Throughout her travels, she meets a boy who was brought up as a girl, tricks a holy man, swims in the Roman baths of Aquae Sulis, takes part in a battle, and witnesses Arthur's brutality, piety and immorality, all the while observing her master create the fantastic stories that have made 'King Arthur' one of the most famous men in legend. After Arthur's death she creates some stories herself, conceding that the legend is more important than the mere facts."
1538,Back Home,history," Virginia 'Rusty' Dickinson is the main protagonist of the novel. The story centres on her return to England in 1945 from Connecticut, where she was sent as a child evacuee in 1939, when the war broke out. Much to her disappointment, Rusty finds England hidebound, run-down, boring and totally devoid of any decent food. Her mother, Peggy, is an awkward woman who, all her life, had been dominated by her parents, husband and mother-in-law. During the war, Peggy came out of her shell and became a skilled car mechanic. She is stiff and hurt when the Americanised Virginia returns home. However, Rusty does initially have one ally - the kindly and eccentric Beattie Langley, in whose Devon home her mother and brother have been staying throughout the war, before they return to the family home (Rusty and Charlie's grandmother's house) in Guildford. Rusty is initially rejected by her brother, Charlie, who was born after she had been sent to America. She is baffled by the range and scale of rationing, rules she is not used to, and the people around her, and longs to return to her host family in Connecticut. Rusty struggles to deal with her peers and teachers at boarding school, her spiteful grandmother, stiff mother, and strict and violent father when he returns from war, but her tough spirit helps her through it and leads to her happiness in the end."
1539,Mr. Midshipman Hornblower,history," This novel is episodic, with named chapters that often focus on a self contained incident. In this story, a gawky and seasick Hornblower comes aboard his first ship, HMS Justinian. He immediately earns the contempt of the other midshipmen by, among other things, outshining them in their required mathematical studies. The young Hornblower is particularly despised by a midshipman named Simpson. Simpson, at age thirty-three, had failed his examination for lieutenant too many times to ever expect promotion and he took out his bitterness and disappointment on his juniors. He is said to be ""diabolically clever at making other people's lives a burden to them,"" and Hornblower, extremely unhappy already, is particularly affected and becomes suicidal. He takes the first opportunity for death presented to him by challenging Simpson, a superior gunman, to a duel. Hornblower finds that the most mathematically sound method for the duel is to take an ""even chance"" by having the duelists select from two pistols, only one of which has been loaded, and taking fire only a few feet apart. The captain secretly frustrates this by having the officers of the duel load neither weapon and by claiming a misfire when neither one shoots. Following this, Hornblower discovers the trick and angrily attempts to challenge the captain to a duel; the captain chides him that this is both an offence and a bad idea. The captain later has him transferred to the command of Edward Pellew on HMS Indefatigable after war is declared with France. In The Cargo of Rice, aboard the Indefatigable, the newly situated Midshipman Hornblower is put in command of the French ship Marie Galante, carrying a cargo of rice from New Orleans, by order of Captain Pellew after it is taken as a prize. It is Hornblower's first time in command of a ship since joining the Royal Navy. He is instructed to take the captured French ship and her crew to a British port where he is to receive his next orders. Sailing is relatively smooth for Hornblower and his four seamen, until one of the crew (Matthews) informs him that the ship is taking on water from somewhere. Hornblower recalls that the Marie Galante was struck below the hull's waterline by a cannonball from the Indefatigable before her capture. They check for moisture but find none until it is pointed out that the dried rice will absorb all of it. They hastily attempt to patch the hole with a sail, but by then the rice has expanded so much that the ship is breaking apart. A massive attempt to jettison the rice comes too late and Hornblower commands all hands to abandon ship. Hornblower's crew and the French prisoners are left at sea in an open boat. In The Penalty of Failure, Hornblower and his crew are still out at sea, between British and French ports. The captain of the recently sunk Marie Galante pleads with Hornblower to navigate to France and release him and his men, and promises safe passage for Hornblower and his crew. Hornblower promptly rejects the Captain's pleading in spite of their bleak situation and uses his pistols to prevent a mutiny. Not too long afterwards, Hornblower and his crew are caught by a privateer named Pique which was converted from a slave ship. This ship is commanded by Captain Neuville. Hornblower is now a prisoner of war, but the Indefatigable falls in with them and makes chase. As the Pique is the faster sailer, Hornblower devises a plan to slow her down: he sets a fire, which soon spreads to the very flammable paint locker. All hands are diverted to fighting the fire, which soon breaks out on the deck and spreads to the rigging, immediately slowing the vessel. The British ship ultimately overpowers the Pique, extinguishes the fire and Captain Neuville and his crew surrender. Hornblower's fears of reprimand for losing the Maire Galante are quickly extinguished by the offhanded dismissal of Captain Pellew. However, instead of taking credit for the fire, Hornblower claims there was a spontaneous combustion in the paint locker, as way of punishing himself for losing the Marie Galante in the first place. Upon returning to the Indefatigable, Hornblower is involved with a mission planned by Captain Pellew to take the French corvette Papillon. Hornblower is set to command the Indefatigables jolly boat. His job in the raid is to board the Papillon after the other boats do, climb the mast and loose the main topsail so the Papillon can sail out to meet the Indefatigable. Before setting out, Hornblower practises his task on the Indefatigable to try and calm his nerves. While reviewing his men prior to shoving off, a man named Hales mentions to Hornblower that he feels ""a bit queer-like."" After the boat crews depart, Hales begins having a seizure. Because of the necessity of silence, Hornblower strikes Hales with the tiller of his boat. On boarding the ship Hornblower and his men are frustrated by the absence of a footrope along the yardarm. Hornblower's fear of heights and poor balance cause him to freeze, until he reminds himself that he acted decisively enough when laying out Hales; to withdraw now would be an act of extreme cowardice. Motivated by this act of emotional self-flagellation Hornblower runs unaided along the yardarm and looses the topsail. During the fighting the jolly boat is lost, with Hales still aboard, but the corvette Papillon is taken as a prize of the Indefatigable. Hornblower feels bad about the loss of Hales, without whom Hornblower believes he would never have found the courage to complete his task. Jackson claims that Hales would have never made a decent seaman anyway. Given the success of their mission Hornblower realises the loss of the Jolly Boat will not be held against him, but still regrets the inevitable death of Hales. When Styles, a man in Hornblower's division, appears strangely marked with ""boils"" all over his face, Hornblower is suspicious. He gains a clue from Finch, another of his men, who claims that ""God's in the maintop, but the Devil's in the cable tier, but only in the dog watches"". After thinking about what this means, Hornblower investigates and discovers a group of men ""rat fighting"". Styles, with his hands tied behind his back, has to kill as many rats as possible within a short time, while the others bet on the result. A horrified Hornblower orders them up on deck and threatens to report them. Later, in action against a French ship, Hornblower and Finch are firing a swivel gun from the mizzen-top when the mast is hit and begins to fall. Hornblower convinces Finch to jump to safety by telling him to ""get to God"". The two men make a desperate jump to safety. Hornblower takes part in attempted invasion by British and French Royalist forces at Quiberon in order to support the failed Revolt in the Vendée. Hornblower is ordered ashore with his seamen acting as gunners, and gains his first experience of land warfare and the horrors of the Revolution, including the guillotine. The expedition ends in failure and Hornblower escapes back to his ship, saddened, but philosophical. Hornblower's ship, the Indefatigable, is in Cádiz when Spain makes peace with France. Since Spain becomes officially neutral, the British ship of war is forced to leave. Spain has completed its turnaround and joined France in an alliance by the time the Indefatigable is escorting a convoy through the Straits of Gibraltar. When the ships are becalmed, two Spanish galleys attack. They are fought off by the British, and Hornblower leads the capture of one of them, which gains him promotion to Acting-Lieutenant. After the Indefatigable comes into port at Gibraltar, Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower reports to the Santa Barbara where he and others are to take their examination for lieutenant. When asked a question by one of the captains conducting the examination, Hornblower freezes up and is about to be failed when an alarm of cannon fire interrupts the examination; fire ships have been sent by the enemy in an attempt to destroy the British ships at Gibraltar. Hornblower and Captain Foster, one of the examining captains, take heroic action and prevent a disaster for the British, and jump in the water. They are rescued by the crew of one the fire ships, themselves escaping in a small boat, but then a British guard boat captures them in return. Since the Spanish crew saved his and Hornblower's life, Foster orders that they be released. The examining board does not reassemble since Foster has a falling out with another examining captain, who had been standing by with a boat but failed to reach them before the Spanish crew, and thus Hornblower will need to wait for a later examining board. The story ends with Foster, impressed by Hornblower's actions, telling Hornblower that since the attack prevented him from failing the examination that Hornblower should ""Then be thankful for small mercies. And even more thankful for big ones."" Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower accompanies the diplomat Mr. Tapling to buy cattle and grain from the Bey of Oran to resupply the fleet. However an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the city forces Hornblower, Tapling and his boat-crew to take refuge aboard the transport ship Caroline and remain in quarantine for three weeks until they are clear of infection. Hornblower struggles with a tiny crew aboard a worn-out ship, but still manages to take a prize in the shape of an unsuspecting privateer lugger. Hornblower is given command of the French prize Le Reve and ordered to return to England with despatches and, to his astonishment, a passenger – the Duchess of Wharfedale. Unfortunately, in thick fog Hornblower sails his ship directly into the middle of a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent. Anticipating capture Hornblower prepares to throw his despatches overboard, but is persuaded by the Duchess, who also reveals her true identity, to allow her to conceal them under her clothes, as she is sure to be repatriated immediately. This he does, and much later while in a Spanish prison at Ferrol receives a letter from her detailing her successful return to England, and another from the Admiralty confirming his promotion to Lieutenant. Later, while on parole Hornblower rescues some sailors from a Spanish ship wrecked on the cliffs below him. After the rescue he and his assistants, some Spanish fishermen, are forced out to sea by bad weather and found by another British frigate. Despite the temptations of staying on board, Hornblower reminds the Captain that he is released on parole and is returned to Spain under a flag of truce. Several months later, in recognition of his bravery, the Spanish authorities release him."
1540,Innocent Traitor,history," This book tells the life of ""The Nine Day Queen"" through various characters' eyes, from Lady Jane to Queen Mary. This book tells of Jane's childhood and offers explanation to her conversion to the Protestant faith. It tells of her relationship to the future Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I along with her forced and unwanted marriage. It ends with her final days."
1541,Desolation Island,history," Jack Aubrey has been ashore for a while and is getting into difficulties due to his belief in the honesty of others in business and cards. Stephen Maturin is also in personal trouble over his relationship with Diana Villiers and his laudanum addiction. Aubrey is offered either the old HMS Leopard for a mission to Australia to support Captain Bligh against the settlers opposed to his rule, or a newly building 74-gun third rate, HMS Ajax, for sailing in the Mediterranean. Sophie Aubrey, afraid that staying at home will only make the situation worse, asks Maturin for help. She eventually convinces Aubrey to take command of the Leopard, even though he will have to take some transported convicts, so that he can help Maturin get over his disappointment regarding Diana. The actual orders for Jack are to restore Captain Bligh as Governor of the New South Wales colony after an officers' revolt had toppled him. One of the convicts, Louisa Wogan, proves to be an American spy and also a friend of Diana Villiers. The journey is difficult, the prisoners kill their superintendent and surgeon during a storm. They also bring gaol fever on board ship. As the Leopard sails south they become stuck in the doldrums, the ship experiences a full blown epidemic. Most of the prisoners die as do many of the hands. Mr Martin, Stephen's assistant, dies of the fever and a young man, Michael Herapath, who has stowed away to be with his lover Louisa Wogan, is rated a midshipman and becomes Maturin's new assistant. The Captain is forced to drop the sick crew members at Recife, Brazil to receive treatment. This leaves Aubrey with James Grant as his new first lieutenant - considered a good seaman but with little experience of warfare, and occasionally rebuked by Aubrey for countermanding his orders. While they are in port, a British ship comes into Recife and tells Aubrey of the Waakzaamheid, a 74-gun Dutch ship-of-the-line cruising the South Atlantic. As the Leopard is sailing to the Cape of Good Hope, the Waakzaamheid is seen steering a course to cut them off from the Cape. Despite many manoeuvres, the Dutch captain seems almost supernatural in his ability to anticipate Aubrey's tactics. The Waakzaamheid chases the Leopard south into the Roaring Forties. After many days of running downwind, the Waakzaamheid steadily gains on the Leopard and starts firing with her bow chasers. Aubrey returns fire with his two brass nine pounders and a lucky shot shoots away the Waakzaamheids foremast; she is thrown on her beam ends and sinks with all hands. Being east of the Cape, the Leopard sets sail for Australia. The ship stops near an iceberg to take on ice to replace her jettisoned water but is struck, damaging the rudder and causing a severe leak. After trying for several days to keep it afloat by pumping, Grant finally asks permission to leave the ship in the cutter once the water reaches the orlop deck. He and the hands are given permission to leave the ship heading for Cape Town (with a bundle of dispatches from Stephen), but many of Aubrey's old shipmates and the other officers remain. The Leopard continues running east pumping all the time and finally is able to find a safe harbour in a bay of Desolation Island. While there, Aubrey has the ship repaired but because he has no forge, cannot complete the repair of the rudder. Maturin on the other hand is in paradise as he and Herapath collect vast quantities of the local animal life for the doctor's collection. The men dine on penguin, seal and albatross eggs, much to Maturin's disgust. He claims a small island in the bay as his own, and often separates himself from the crew. An American whaler sets into the bay for supplies. They are suspicious of the British, especially since it is the Leopard as the same ship under a different commander had attacked the unprepared to recover fugitive British hands (see Chesapeake-Leopard Affair). The Americans, however, are suffering from scurvy - and their captain from a septic tooth - so they agree to have Maturin treat them in exchange for the use of their much-needed forge. Maturin manipulates Herapath into deserting with Louisa Wogan (pregnant with Herapath's baby) to the American ship, having prepared some false intelligence which they carry with them. As the book ends, he and Barrett Bonden watch them from their island as they are taken on board the American whaler."
1542,These Three Remain,history," Following his experiences at Norwycke Castle, Fitzwilliam Darcy accompanies his cousin, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, to Rosings Park, the home of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, their aunt. The prospect of spending time with his pompous, self-impressed aunt (and her unsubtle desire for him to marry her daughter, Anne de Bourgh, a shy and sickly girl who, unknown to her mother, secretly writes poetry) is not the only thing troubling Darcy's mind; driven to distraction with his unwilling desire for Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy has finally decided to forget her once and for all. Unfortunately for him, Elizabeth is also in the area visiting her cousin, the pompous clergyman Mr Collins and his new wife (and her close friend) Charlotte, who are frequent visitors to Lady Catherine. Darcy is therefore thrown daily into Elizabeth's company, and finds himself unable to further resist her charms. Driven to distraction by his feelings for Elizabeth - and his jealousy over the developing friendship between Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam - Darcy finally accepts the strength of his love for her and, after weighing the consideration of her lowly social standing and its possible effect on his future status, determines to propose marriage to her. Much to Darcy's shock and anger, however, his proposal is rejected; not only is Elizabeth greatly insulted by Darcy's pompous, high-handed manner of proposal, but she has also heard from Colonel Fitzwilliam of Darcy's role in persuading his friend Charles Bingley to break his ties with Jane Bennet, Elizabeth's sister, who is in love with Bingley. Furthermore, she has been poisoned towards him by slanderous lies spread by Darcy's nemesis, George Wickham, and is convinced that Darcy is ""the last man in the world whom [she] could ever be prevailed upon to marry"". Heartbroken by Elizabeth's refusal and stunned by the depth of her dislike towards him, Darcy resolves to put the matter behind him and leaves Rosings, but not before writing Elizabeth a letter explaining the true history between himself, Wickham, and his sister Georgiana, and attempting to justify his actions regarding Bingley and Jane Bennet. Darcy has been shattered by her rejection of him, however, and upon his return to London begins acting in an increasingly uncharacteristic and erratic fashion towards his friends and Georgiana, culminating in his acceptance of an invitation to a party held by Lady Sylvanie Monmouth, who attempted to seduce him at Norwycke Castle and holds Darcy responsible for the death of her mother during those events. He is rescued from calamity by his good friend Lord Dyfed Brougham, a seemingly foppish aristocrat who in actually is a government agent investigating Sylvanie, who has links to Irish revolutionaries and intends to drug Darcy and then blackmail him into funding their operations. No longer trusting his own judgement, Darcy proceeds to get drunk in a nearby tavern before confessing the entire matter and his relationship with Elizabeth to Brougham, who sympathizes with him whilst still criticising his arrogant manner towards her. The next morning, a hungover moment of clarity leads to Darcy realizing the truth of Brougham's criticisms, and he is mortified to realize his own arrogant conduct towards both Elizabeth and Bingley's relationship with Jane Bennet. He realizes that his previous ideas of what makes a good gentleman have been misguided and have merely led him into a cold, disdainful state of mind and being towards others; despite being resigned to having lost her, Darcy nonetheless resolves to change his ways and to make himself into the type of gentleman that Elizabeth would have regard for. Confessing the matter to Georgiana, he resolves to follow her example and improve his faults. His belief that he has lost Elizabeth forever is soon upturned, however. Riding ahead of the rest of his party (including Bingley and his sister) on a return to his estate of Pemberley, he is astonished to find himself once more in Elizabeth's company, who is on a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, and has visited the property under the belief that he was away from the grounds. His behaviour towards her is much warmer than their last meeting, but still guarded; eager to show that he has taken her criticisms of his character on board and is mending his ways, Darcy makes a sincere effort to make her and her relatives feel comfortable and welcome. He soon finds that he genuinely likes Mr and Mrs Gardiner, and is delighted when, upon introducing Georgiana to Elizabeth, the two women take an instant liking to each other. Just as Darcy believes their relationship is thawing, however, Elizabeth receives news from home that her younger sister, Lydia, has eloped with none other than George Wickham, who is fleeing gambling debts accumulated with the other officers in his militia unit. Grieved at Elizabeth's pain at this potentially ruinous turn of events, and determined to help in any possible way, Darcy returns to London and, unknown to either the Bennets or the Gardiners, uses his contacts in the London demimonde to quickly find Wickham and Lydia. After failing to persuade Lydia to leave Wickham, Darcy proceeds to blackmail and bribe Wickham into marrying her, assuring Wickham's future good conduct by buying his many debts and purchasing for him a commission in an obscure army regiment. Wickham is forced to agree, and after Darcy has approached the Gardiners with this plan (on the condition that his own role in the affair be kept secret), Wickham and Lydia are married. Soon after, Bingley decides to return to his estate at Netherfield, to which he invites Darcy; upon seeing Jane Bennet and Bingley reunited, Darcy guiltily confesses his role in keeping the two separate. Bingley is angry, but quickly forgives Darcy; after straightening out the misunderstanding, Bingley and Jane are soon engaged. After hearing a false report that Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy are also to be married, an outraged Lady Catherine arrives at Darcy's London home having attempted to bully Elizabeth into promising to never enter into an engagement with Darcy, which Elizabeth refused. Darcy is elated when he realizes that Elizabeth's feelings towards him might have changed, and he returns to Netherfield. Once again, Darcy proposes to Elizabeth; this time she happily accepts, and the two are married."
1543,The Man in Grey,history," Set in Napoleonic France in 1809, the west of the country is being terrorised by a group of reckless criminals known as ""Chouans"" (Screech Owls) because they inflict terror by night and go to ground during the day, hiding out in the remains of chateaux left in ruins after the revolution. The group, which contains some of France’s most historic names, commit their crimes under the guise of Royalist convictions, but whether they really seek to reinstate the Bourbon royal line, or whether they are just a pack of lawless brigands is open for debate. ""Theirs were the hands that struck whilst their leaders planned--they were the screech-owls who for more than twenty years terrorised the western provinces of France and, in the name of God and their King, committed every crime that could besmirch the Cause which they professed to uphold."" They are as much an enigma as the one man who has succeeded in bringing some of these fugitives to justice, a mysterious figure known only as “The Man in Grey”, who is a secret agent for the Government."
1544,Castle Rackrent,history," The novel is set prior to the Constitution of 1782 and tells the story of four generations of Rackrent heirs through their steward, Thady Quirk. The heirs are: the dissipated spendthrift Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, the litigious Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the cruel husband and gambling absentee Sir Kit Stopgap, and the generous but improvident Sir Condy Rackrent. Their sequential mismanagement of the estate is resolved through the machinations - and to the benefit - of the narrator's astute son, Jason Quirk."
1545,The Teahouse Fire,history," Set in late nineteenth century Japan, The Teahouse Fire is the story of Aurelia, a young French-American girl who, after the death of her mother and her missionary uncle, finds herself lost and alone and in need of a new family. Knowing only a few words of Japanese she hides in a Japanese tea house and is adopted by the family who own it: gradually falling in love with both the Japanese tea ceremony and with her young mistress, Yukako. As Aurelia grows up she devotes herself to the family and its failing fortunes in the face of civil war and western intervention, and to Yukako's love affairs and subsequent marriage. But her feelings for mistress seem doomed never to be reciprocated and, as tensions mount in the household, Aurelia begins to realise that to the world around her she will never be anything but an outsider."
1546,A Bride of the Plains,history," The story is set in Hungary and the scene is laid in a village close to the Maros. The sharp, cracked sound of the Elevation bell breaks the silence of the summer morning. The good Pater Bonifacius is saying Mass: he, at any rate, is astir and busy with his day’s work and obligations. Surely it is strange that at so late an hour in mid-September, with the maize waiting to be gathered in, the population of Marosfalva should be still absent from the fields! Hej ! But, stranger, what would you ? Such a day is-this Fourteenth of September. What ? You did not know it? The Fourteenth of September, the ugliest, blackest, most God forsaken day in the whole year! What kind of a stranger are you if you do not know that On this hideous day all the finest lads in the village are taken away to be made into soldiers by the abominable Government? Three years! Why, the lad is a mere child when he goes-one-and-twenty on his last birthday, bless him! still wanting a mother’s care of his stomach, and a father’s heavy stick across his back from time to time to keep him from too much love-making. Three years ! When he comes brick he is a man and has notions of his own. Three years! What are the chances he comes back at all? Bosnia! Where in the world is that? My God, how they hate it! They must go through with it, though they hate it all-every moment. They hate to be packed into railway carriages like so many dried heads of maize in a barn... and the rude alien sergeant with his 'Vorwarts!' and 'Marsch!' and 'Rechts!' and 'Links!' I ask you in the name of the Holy Virgin what kind of gibberish is that? On this particular fourteenth of September it is Andor&#39;s turn due to go. On the eve preceding it, at the village merrymaking, as the whole population spends its last happy hours trying to forget the hideous evets that will occur in the morning, he tokens himself to Elsa the village beauty. It is Elsa and Andor that everyone is watching. He is tall and broad-shouldered with the supple limbs of a young stag, and the mad irresponsible movements of a young colt. The young couple dread the next day, which comes all too soon. They are at the station now, the last bell has sounded. For each lad only one girl, and there she is at the foot of the carriage steps, a corner of her ribbon, or handkerchief or cotton petticoat stuffed into her mouth to prevent herself from bursting into sobs. The pain and loss of conscription. It is some time since Andor was conscripted but there has been no news of him so Elsa is forced to betroth herself to the wealthy and sinister Béla, after being placed in the terrible alternative of either being faithless to Andor or disobedient to her mother. It is characteristic of Hungarian society at the time that of the two options available the latter seemed by far the more heinous. On the eve of Elsa&#39;s wedding Andor suddenly reappears, and is indirectly concerned in the assassination of Béla which takes place the same night. The story begins and ends with festival mingled with tragedy."
1547,Andersonville,history," The novel interweaves the stories of real and fictional characters. It is told from many points of view, including that of Henry Wirz, the camp commandant, who was later executed. It also features William Collins, a Union soldier and one of the leaders of the ""Raiders"". The ""Raiders"" are a gang of thugs, mainly bounty jumpers who steal from their fellow prisoners and lead comfortable lives while other prisoners die of starvation and disease. Other characters include numerous ordinary prisoners of war, the camp physician/doctor, a nearby plantation owner, guards and Confederate civilians in the area near the prison. Andersonville is clearly based on prisoner memoirs, most notably Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons by John McElroy. Henry Wirz, who received an injury earlier in the war and never recovered properly, is portrayed not as an inhuman fiend but as a sick man struggling with a job beyond his capacities. Kantor's novel was not the basis for a 1996 John Frankenheimer film Andersonville. Although Kantor did sell the motion picture rights of his novel to one of the major Hollywood studios in the 1950s, it was never produced. Kantor's novel and the movie of the same name are two separate properties."
1548,The Forest,history," Set in the New Forest of southern England, this novel covers the lives of number of families tracing their history from the Saxons and Normans in 1099 through to ""Jane Austen"" style world of the early 19th century. Story and characters combine to reveal and decorate the narrative in an important region in England not often used by writers."
1549,Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man,history," Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is told in diary writings starting in 1952 when the protagonist, Daisy Fay Harper, is 11 years old. She lives with her mother and her father in Jackson, Mississippi. Daisy Fay received her name from a vase of flowers that her mother had in her hospital room. Her father involves her in many of his ill-working schemes to make money or build inventions. He alienates his family members but makes great friends when he drinks. Her mother lives in a constant state of embarrassment, and tries to do what she can to make Daisy Fay into a lady, which consists of making her fetch endless cups of coffee in the cafeteria, and buying matching mother-daughter outfits. Her mother, Daisy's Grandma Pettibone, believes she married beneath her. (Despite both sets of Grandparents not speaking to Daisy's father, they absolutely dote on Daisy) The diary reveals Daisy Fay has an expansive imagination and a detailed memory as a long list of endearing and strange characters are described and the story is told in humorous vignettes. Soon after the beginning of the diary, Daisy Fay and her parents move to Shell Beach, Mississippi, after her father buys half a share of a malt shop on the beach with $500 her mother won at a Bingo game. Her father's plan is to become a taxidermist during the off season, and to use the malt shop's freezer to store the dead animals before stuffing them. The biggest town nearby Shell Beach is Magnolia Springs, where the school and a movie theater is. Her parents' relationship becomes more tempestuous as her father drinks too much and hangs around a vindinctive crop duster named Jimmy Snow, and they manage to get into impossible situations. When the fall starts, Daisy Fay starts the 6th grade and meets her classmates, which include the very snobby and spoiled Kay Bob Benson, who serves as a nemesis for Daisy Fay throughout the rest of the book. Daisy's other friend is Michael Romeo, a Catholic, and the only other child, aside from Daisy and Kay Bob, who lives in Shell Beach full-time. She also makes friends with classmates, Patsy Ruth Coggins and Amy Jo Snipes, among others, and is good friends with an African-American mortician/bar owner named Peachy Wigham and her co-hort, an albino named Ula Sour. Peachy, the owner of the Elite Nightspot bar, had a secret on the white Sheriff's daughter, (she had had an abortion) which was why she wasn't ever arrested. Also, she meets Mrs. Dudley Dot, a journalist (she writes the Dashes from Dot column for the local paper) and the leader of the Junior Debutantes, a pre-teen group which meets in the bait shop over the summer. Mrs. Dot is idolized by Daisy, and is eventually institutionalized after trying to kill her hateful husband. The taxidermy doesn't seem to work out well, as the bobcat had a smile on its face and the flamingo's neck was crooked. Added to that is the fact that Daisy Fay's father didn't add bread to the hamburgers, and his drinking increased. After the malt shop burns down in a suspicious fire (the insurance money wasn't enough anyway), Daisy Fay's mother, finally having had enough of Daisy Fay's father, leaves him to go live with her sister in Virginia. With her mother gone, her father devises a three-day scheme with a scheming local preacher named Billy Bundy to use Daisy Fay as a ""glory getter"" to bring her back from the dead and bilk the faithful religious out of their donations. The plan falls apart of course, when Daisy is asked to heal a handicapped girl named Betty Caldwell, the girl walked, and the crowd went berserk. Her father and she had to escape quickly in Jimmy Snow's cropduster to Florida, and the diary takes a hiatus for four years. Her mother finds out about what happened, and she is furious (allegedly Daisy's mother hears the news from Kay Bob Benson's equally snobby mother). She pulls Daisy Fay from her father and puts her in a Catholic Boarding School in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. When the diary resumes, the year is 1956, Daisy is 16, and she has returned to Shell Beach from living in the Catholic boarding school. Her father still drinks - maybe even more - and her mother has died from cancer. Daisy Fay enters Magnolia Springs high school to find Kay Bob snobbier than ever, but now has a best friend, Pickle Watkins, to endure the trials of high school. She meets Pickle after she comes to Daisy's aid by helping her beat up another local girl, Dixie Nash, who had insulted her because of her living in a Catholic school, while Daisy called Dixie, a Baptist baboon. Along with Pickle, Daisy Fay meets her friend's siblings, older brother Lemuel and younger sister, Judy (aka Baby Sister), who also become her friends. Pickle is obsessed with being accepted by the popular seniors and gets them into situations where they must better themselves socially. Daisy Fay lives in various apartments, hotels, and porches with her father and Jimmy Snow. Pickle gets pregnant by her father, a member of the White Citizens Council, and drops out of school. So does Daisy Fay soon after and becomes involved in a community theater in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she and her father and Jimmy Snow had moved to. She manages the spotlight, then becomes an actor in the various plays and musicals they put on. Her closest friend at this point in her life, is a gay man named Mr. Cecil, a well known hat designer who owns a millinery shop in Hattiesburg. Mr. Cecil is the costume designer for the theater and he is often seen with his ten male cohorts called the ""Cecilettes"". Other friends at this point in her life included Professor Teasley, the head director of the theater; his wealthy and often eccentric mother Nanny Teasley; Tootie, Helen, and Dolores, three secretaries at the theater, J.R. Phillips, the theater's stage manager, who was supposedly also gay; Hubert Jamison, a fellow (and somewhat vain) actor; and a woman named Paris Knights, an artist who is a friend of Mr. Cecil's. At this point, she is engaged and almost married, but was jilted by her fiance, Ray Layne, when he returns to his former fiancee, named of Ann, and eventually marries her. Seeing her only break to be a professional actress, Daisy Fay, with Mr. Cecil's help, enters the Miss Mississippi pageant in Tupelo, Mississippi, once more meeting up with her perennial antagonist, Kay Bob Benson, who is also a competitor. However, she makes friends with four other girls, Darcy Lewis, Mary Cudsworth, Jo Ellen Feely and Penny Raymond (Darcy met Daisy Fay after overhearing her insult Kay Bob); and has to contend with how the Pageant was rigged by the Pageant's head, a Mrs. Lulie Harde McClay, who had promised the title to a Margaret Poole, who was supposedly sweet and kind, but was very much a hypocrite. Margaret drank, smoked and had many boyfriends. During one of her smoke breaks, while the pageant hopefuls were at the Tupelo Country Club, she tried to get Daisy Fay framed for smoking, and in trouble with Mrs. McClay. Mrs. McClay, spitefully, left Daisy Fay out of the Country Club talent show. However, Darcy and the others, possibly to get revenge on Mrs. McClay for what she and Margaret tried to do to Daisy, and having waited three years to do so, sang an extremely objectionable song which stuns the well-heeled audience, and gets them left backstage at the State Theater, during the final judging of the pageant. After that song, however, Daisy was again set to perform at the theater, with Mrs. McClay thinking that what Darcy and her friends did by singing such an objectionable song was far worse than Daisy smoking a cigarette, which she was innocent of. The talent portion of the show at the theater degenerated into a comedy of errors, as every other contestant's talent entries, excepting Daisy Fay's and a few others, were sabotaged in one way or another by the stagehands union, of which her paternal grandfather was president of (the theater's microphones malfunctioning; the house organ was unplugged; a dummy's mouth which was glued shut, Kay Bob Benson throwing her batons all over because her hands were covered with axle grease, etc.). They carried on like troupers, but afterwards, the sabotaged contestants would either react in abject rage or out of fear. Either way, they whose talent had been sabotaged ended up making fools out of themselves. It was shown that during the final vote, the judges got into a knock down drag out fight over the results. Only the snobbish Mrs. McClay and her ally, Mrs. Peggy Buchanan, the head of the Mississippi Junior League, were on Margaret Poole's side, while the other judges were rooting for Daisy Fay. However Margaret Poole herself had not wanted the title because she was secretly married to an African-American and was pregnant. Whether this was truth, or another scheme, wasn't revealed. This angered Mrs. McClay all the more, and she screamed that she was being sabotaged. She thought of Daisy Fay as white trash, and wasn't refined enough or enough of a Southern lady to be Miss Mississippi. The other judges, though, had their good names and reputations in the community to consider, and they didn't want to run the risk of the news about Margaret Poole being true, hence how they voted. With a lot of help from a lot of people (some of it not quite legitimate), she unexpectedly wins the pageant, to Mrs. McClay's disgust and outrage (because of this, she quits running the Miss Mississippi pageant for good because she felt betrayed) and is off to Atlantic City. After she won, she also discovers, to her shock and joy, that her maternal grandfather, who everyone had thought had died, was in fact alive and well and working as a cab driver in Tupelo. In fact, it was he who had driven his granddaughter to the pageant events. He had kept in touch with her Daddy over the years, despite their not speaking. Before she leaves for the Miss America pageant, however, she gets word that Jimmy Snow, who had been kind of a surrogate uncle to her, had been in a plane crash, and had died of a broken neck. She mourned him, as did her father, and her loyal friend, Mr. Cecil. Her father revealed to her that she was the only person that Jimmy really loved, which surprised Daisy. After that, she achieves her ends and gets out of Mississippi. At the book's end, she states that ""I promise that I won't come back until I'm somebody. And I won't."""
1550,Thirteen Moons,history," Near the end of his life, frontiersman Will Cooper reflects on his formative experiences from the unfamiliar comfort of his twentieth-century house. A call, which could be from Claire, the love of his past with whom he has lost contact, plunges him into memory, the recollection of which comprises, save for this prologue and a brief epilogue, the novel's entirety. Will, as a twelve-year-old boy, is sold into indentured servitude, and in this capacity he travels alone to the edges of a growing United States of America and of the Cherokee Nation in order to manage a trading post. On the way to the trading post he suffers many misadventures and ends up losing his horse which is his only means of transportation. In tracking down his beloved horse ""Waverley"" he happens upon the formidable Featherstone, (A renowned horse thief) who Will beats at a game of chance which amounts to a large sum of money. Featherstone demands that Will give him a final chance to recoup all the money in a final hand against a girl that Featherstone claims to have many of. Will wins the girl and when he meets Claire, then aged 11, he instantly falls in love with her; however Featherstone is a bad loser and sends him running for his life into the wilderness. After some days of wandering Will stumbles upon the trading post. There, Will demonstrates, along with optimistic fatalism, an aptitude for entrepreneurship. He quickly learns to speak Cherokee, the language of many of his customers, he manages to communicate and trade with them. When he is sixteen the owner of the trading post dies and his son sells the business to Will. His financial success allows him to build a small library there. He has been befriended by the local Cherokee chief named Bear who adopts him as a son and he is adopted into the tribe as well. Will meets Claire for the second time at a party Bear hosts when she is 16. He comes across Cranshaw, where Claire is part of Featherstone's household, presumably his daughter. We learn that Featherstone brazened out his sentence of forfeiture which should have taken place after he murdered a member of another tribal group. He returns frequently to visit Claire and borrow books from Featherstone, who still has extra aces up his sleeves, but grudgingly accepts and eventually also adopts him. As the years go by, Will grows more and more attached to Claire and they consummate their affection after a long process of courtship, spending two romantic summers together. However, Will finds out that Claire is Featherstone's wife, not daughter, as she had been thrown into the deal when he married her older sister. Coupled with the fact that a white man can not legally marry a mixed blood in the state and Claire's insistence on 'all or nothing' they never become fully wed. He has also had a duel with Featherstone, who never seems able to leave Will's horse alone. Will and his 'father' Bear have been conspiring to legally buy the land occupied by the Cherokee Nation. Will takes up their cause and lobbies at the nation's capitol, arguing for the tribe's legal land rights and for a while is partly successful at keeping a large portion of the land for his tribes exclusive use. He had somewhat become drugged by his legal reading into over-complexity in the transactions and the portion gets drastically reduced. Eventually, however, the army comes in, displaces almost the whole of the Cherokee nation and forces them to the plains beyond their traditional home in the coves cut from the mountains; Claire is forced to move away. He visits her sometime later, but she is unenthused at his visit and has since had a child with Featherstone. Featherstone tells Will that he died and came back to life, and is determined to make his second death one of much more phenomenal proportions. Devastated by the loss of his love on top of the miseries his friends have suffered along the Trail of Tears, some self-conscious attempts to find another partner and finally the traumas he himself witnessed while fighting in the American Civil War, Will departs his only home and wanders the nation aimlessly. Will's final encounter with Claire takes place at the Warm Springs Hotel, when both are in their fifties. Will hears talk of a Woman in Black who keeps herself aloof from the other hotel residents and remains in the mourning black from the death of her husband long past any necessary period. He comes across her one afternoon after being knife-cut by the collectors of someone to whom he owes money. She informs him that Featherstone's final death was hardly more dramatic than the first, and that her child has died as well. The pair spends another summer together, during which time Claire rejects a marriage proposal from Will and decides to leave him again. After more years, Will retires to a lonely home following a deal with the railroad built on a tract of land which he had owned. The novel ends in elegy for lost opportunities, the frontier spirit, and the memory of a native people."
1551,The Yellow Admiral,history," The novel opens with Jack Aubrey home at Woolcombe in Dorset on parliamentary leave. Once again, Jack’s fortune has come under threat — this time due to a number of legal disputes concerning captured slaving-ships. It appears that Sophie will have to sell Ashgrove Cottage to keep the family solvent. Stephen Maturin has returned from Spain with his family, but impoverished, Spanish authorities having seized his gold after his pro-independence revolutionary activities in Peru. Effectively penniless, Stephen and his retinue stay at Jack's manor. Stephen and Jack spend time exploring Jack's estate, and Jack explains to Stephen the process of enclosing commons, something which Jack opposes. Many of Jack's wealthy neighbours plan to enclose the common land of Simmon's Lea, thus preventing the villagers from grazing their animals and increasing their dependency on paid employment. Jack becomes the villagers' champion, while Jack's neighbour, Captain Griffiths, fronts the wealthy land-owners. One day at a pub Barrett Bonden accepts a challenge to a boxing-match in the Dripping Pan with Griffith's gamekeeper, which he subsequently loses. A message arrives for Jack recalling him to the squadron blockading Brest. Diana, understanding that Admiral Stranraer wants Jack to miss the parliamentary vote on enclosing Simmon's Lea, contrives for Jack to leave immediately for London without receiving his orders so that duty will not compel him to miss the vote. Jack prevents the enclosure of Simmon's Lea and returns to Woolcombe. Receiving his orders, he returns to the fleet blockading Brest. Lord Stranraer, who had been a driving force behind his nephew Griffiths' attempts at enclosing Simmon's Lea, was very displeased with Jack for voting against the enclosure and so punishes Jack by sending him to the inshore blockading-squadron. At the same time the Admiral consults Stephen for an ailment that Stephen treats. Before Stephen leaves the flagship he receives a covert mission involving landing on the French coast near Brest. On the dark of the moon, Jack has Stephen rowed ashore for his covert mission with a Catalan informer, Inigo Bernard. Apparently at the same time, two French ships slip through the blockading squadron in the sector that Jack's ship, Bellona, should have patrolled. The Admiral rebukes Jack and has him return to the offshore squadron. During this time Jack receives a letter from Sophie, in which she, having seen a letter from Amanda Smith (Jack's lover in The Surgeon's Mate), accuses him of adultery and announces her intention of leaving him. During manoeuvres in foggy weather the Bellona spots a French privateer chasing a merchantman and Jack decides to give chase (despite a lookout possibly making out a flagship-signal to Tack all together). The Bellona captures the privateer, Les Deux Frères (a rich prize which had captured two Guineamen), but not before a storm sets in, battering the Bellona to the point of needing repairs, and the ship heads for the docks in Cornwall. Jack returns to Woolcombe while waiting on repairs for the Bellona, and unexpectedly find his family still there. He asks Sophie for forgiveness, but she rebuffs him (Sophie having been exposed only to her mother's point of view, and that repeatedly). The Ringle leaves to report the situation to the Admiral and to retrieve Stephen from France. With the Bellona repaired, Jack returns to the squadron, but finds that the Ringle has been ordered to retrieve Stephen early and has taken him to England. Stephen sets off for London, where he tells Sir Joseph Blaine about a plot by an outwardly laughable but potentially dangerous Spanish intelligence officer to burgle Blaine’s house. He also brings information about a Chilean plan for independence. Blaine sets a trap and, with the assistance of the invaluable Mr Pratt, captures the Spanish agent red-handed. Stephen presents a proposal to an Admiralty committee for an expedition to help Chilean independence with Jack in command, partly as a means of keeping Jack from getting yellowed. The proposal receives approval. Reference is made to Stephen's restored fortune, the inference being that it was returned to him during Spanish negotiations regarding the spy. Stephen stops at Woolcombe to see his family and learns about Sophie and Jack’s problems. He also finds that Clarissa and Diana have enlightened Sophie as to the possibility of enjoying sex, and have suggested that she avoid feeling morally superior, perhaps by having her own affair. As Stephen departs to return to the fleet, Sophie writes a letter of reconciliation to Jack. Once Stephen returns to the fleet he once again treats Admiral Stranraer. The Bellona hears distant broadsides and rushes to find the inner squadron fighting two French ships. Upon seeing the Bellona and another British ship, the two seventy-fours turn and run for their harbour. In the following months the Bellona endlessly sweeps the bay, blockading Brest. During this time Stephen tells Jack of his plan for Chile, which Jack agrees to. After a few more months, the flagship, the Queen Charlotte, comes to visit the inner squadron. The Admiral comes to the Bellona to thank Stephen for his treatment and also invites Jack to dinner with all the captains on the flagship. At the dinner the Admiral informs the captains of progress in the war on land and predicts Napoleon's imminent surrender. This soon comes to pass, and the Bellona returns to port and into ordinary storage. Jack and Stephen spend time catching up on world-events at Black's and then meet the three men from the Chilean independence-movement at The Grapes in the Liberties of the Savoy. With the Chileans approving of Jack, he goes through the steps of getting suspended from the Navy List so that he can initiate the covert mission to Chile. Stephen finances the fitting-out of the Surprise, and Jack and Stephen set off with their families for Madeira, at which they will part company. The novel ends as they tour the island in company with the Chileans: a message arrives from Lord Keith, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, telling Jack that Napoleon has escaped from Elba. He appoints Jack a commodore and tells him to take command of the Royal Navy ships in the harbour of Madeira to blockade the Straits of Gibraltar."
1552,The Fair Maid of Perth,history," The armourer, Henry Gow, had excited the jealousy of the apprentice Conachar by spending the evening with the glover and his daughter and was returning to their house at dawn, that he might be the first person she saw on St Valentine's morning, when he encountered a party of courtiers in the act of placing a ladder against her window. Having cut off the hand of one, and seized another, who, however, managed to escape, he left the neighbours to pursue the rest, and was saluted by Catharine as her lover. The citizens waited on the provost, who, having heard their grievance, issued a challenge of defiance to the offenders. Meanwhile the King, who occupied apartments in the convent, having confessed to the prior, was consulting with his brother, when the Earl of March arrived to intimate his withdrawal to the English Border, followed into the courtyard by Louise, and afterwards by the Duke of Rothsay, whose dalliance with the maiden was interrupted by the Earl of Douglas ordering his followers to seize and scourge her. Henry Gow, however, was at hand, and the prince, having committed her to his protection, attended his father's council, at which it was determined that the hostile Clans Chattan and Quhele (""Kay"") should be invited to settle their feud by a combat between an equal number of their bravest men in the royal presence, and a commission was issued for the suppression of heresy. The old monarch, having learnt that his son was one of those who had attempted to force their way into the glover's house, insisted that he should dismiss his Master of the Horse, who encouraged all his follies; and while Catharine, who had listened to the Lollard teaching of Father Clement, was being urged by him to favour the secret suit of the Prince, her other lover, Conachar, who had rejoined his clan, appeared to carry off her councillor from arrest as an apostate reformer. The armourer had maimed the Prince's Master of the Horse, Sir John Ramorny, whose desire for revenge was encouraged by the apothecary, Dwining. An assassin named Bonthron undertook to waylay and murder Henry Gow. On Shrovetide evening old Simon was visited by a party of morrice-dancers, headed by Proudfute, who lingered behind to confirm a rumour that Henry Gow had been seen escorting a merry maiden to his house, and then proceeded thither to apologise for having divulged the secret. On his way home in the armourer's coat and cap, as a protection against other revellers, he received a blow from behind and fell dead on the spot. About the same time Sir John was roused from the effects of a narcotic by the arrival of the Prince, who made light of his sufferings, and whom he horrified by suggesting that he should cause the death of his uncle, and seize his father's throne. The fate of Proudfute, whose body was at first mistaken for that of the armourer, excited general commotion in the city; while Catharine, on hearing the news, rushed to her lover's house and was folded in his arms. Her father then accompanied him to the town council, where he was chosen as the widow's champion, and the Provost repaired to the King's presence to demand a full inquiry. At a council held the following day, trial by ordeal of bier-right, or by combat, was ordered; and suspicion having fallen on Ramorny's household, each of his servants was required to pass before the corpse, in the belief that the wounds would bleed afresh as the culprit approached. Bonthron, however, chose the alternative of combat, and, having been struck down by Gow, was led away to be hanged. But Dwining had arranged that he should merely be suspended so that he could breathe and during the night he and Sir John's page Eviot cut him down and carried him off. Catharine had learnt that she and her father were both suspected by the commission; and the Provost having offered to place her under the care of The Douglas's daughter, the deserted wife of the Prince, the old glover sought the protection of his former apprentice, who was now the chieftain of his clan. Having returned from his father's funeral, Conachar pleaded for the hand of Catharine, without which he felt he should disgrace himself in the approaching combat with the Clan Chattan. Simon, however, reminded him that she was betrothed to the armourer, and his foster father promised to screen him in the conflict. At the instigation of his uncle, the Prince had been committed to the custody of the Earl of Errol; but, with the Duke's connivance, he was enticed by Ramorny and the apothecary to escape to the castle of Falkland, and, with the help of Bonthron, was starved to death there. Catharine and Louise, however, discovered his fate, and communicated with The Douglas, who overpowered the garrison, and hanged the murderers. The meeting of the hostile champions had been arranged with great pomp, and Henry Gow, having consented to supply Eachin (Conachar) with a suit of armour, volunteered to take the place of one of the Clan Chattan who failed to appear, A terrible conflict ensued, during which Torquil and his eight sons all fell defending their chief, who at last fled from the battle-ground unwounded and dishonoured. On hearing of Rothsay's death, Robert III resigned his sceptre to his wily and ambitious brother, and later died broken-hearted when his younger son James was captured by the English king. Albany transferred the regency to his son; but, nineteen years afterwards, the rightful heir returned, and the usurper expiated his own and his father's guilt on the scaffold. The warrants against Simon and his daughter, and Father Clement, were cancelled by the intervention of the Earl of Douglas, and the Church was conciliated with Dwining's ill-gotten wealth. Conachar either became a hermit, or, legend has it, was spirited away by the fairies. Scotland boasts of many distinguished descendants from Henry Gow and his spouse the Fair Maid of Perth."
1553,The Vesuvius Club,history," Joshua Reynolds, of the British Secret Service, briefs Lucifer Box to pick up the threads of an investigation started by the recently murdered Jocelyn Utterson Poop of the Diplomatic Service. The only surviving clues were the names of two scientists who died within a day of each other. The investigation leads to the ""Superior Funerals"" undertakers run by Tom Bowler. Mr Bowler seems more interested in shipping boxes to and from Naples than burying the dead. An attempt on Box's life soon follows. A painter and friend of Box supplies a new lead into the deaths of the scientist, which leads to the curious Mrs. Midsomer Knight, who has been replaced by a soon to be murdered maidservant. Lucifer's friend, Christopher Miracle, is implicated in the murder. In Naples Lucifer interviews one of the survivors of the ""Cambridge four"" group of scientists and fears for his life. Soon after he meets Charlie Jackpot, who invites him to a house of ill-repute and offers a way into the Vesuvius Club. There, Lucifer meets the alluring Venus, who is not who she seems, and falls victim to sleeping gas. At that point, we learn that Lucifer is bisexual, as Charlie is gay, and has sex with him. Or rather, would have, had the sleeping gas not knocked them both out. Lucifer awakens in a cell and learns from a fellow prisoner that relics are being sold from excavation sites to finance a larger operation and that the ""Superior Funerals"" undertakers are part of a smuggling racket. Lucifer escapes and discovers Charlie in a death trap, from which Box rescues him before being discovered. Lucifer and Charlie escape via the sewer system. The following morning, Lucifer discovers that the professor he interviewed has disappeared. Examining the scene, Lucifer discovers a detailed schematic of Mount Vesuvius. Box's investigation then leads him to an opium den, then to a supposedly haunted house where he discovers the three supposed dead professors and Mrs. Knight in a drugged stupor. The house leads to a passageway into the ancient ruin of Pompeii and the villain's base. Box confronts Venus and Unman, a traitor who has been assisting the enemy. Box attempts to do a deal for testimony against Victor. Unfortunately Venus turns out to in fact be Victor. Victor seeks revenge against those who wronged his father. Victor has completed the work of his father, as scientist who was driven mad and died some time ago. His intent is to trigger a massive volcanic eruption, which will spark a chain reaction that will ultimately destroy Italy. Lucifer's companions are imprisoned in the volcano. The intent is for them to be incinerated in the eruption. Lucifer himself is taken to a volcanic vent and to be steamed to death but escapes and manages to rescue his companions after capturing Bowler. Venus/Victor has no intention of anybody leaving the volcano before the eruption. When Box reveals this to Bowler, Bowler turns against Venus/Victor and attempts to prevent the device being detonated. This fails and the device is released. The device is only stopped when Bowler uses the steam vent to prevent the bomb being delivered to the right part of the volcano, but the detonation triggers a minor eruption and everyone must flee for their lives. Unman tries to prevent the heroes escaping, killing Bowler and wounding Lucifer, before he himself is killed. Lucifer and the others escape and the remaining unclear points of the mystery are cleared up while Lucifer convalesces under the care of Charlie. Lucifer's heterosexual love interest, Bella, appears and reveals she is the daughter of a man he killed in the early chapters of the book as part of a routine assignment. Charlie intercedes at the last moment to save Lucifer and Bella is killed."
1554,The Fort at River's Bend,history," The Party of Merlyn and Arthur arrive at Ravenglass and are welcomed by King Derek. Upon their arrival they find out that the commander of the Sons of Condran's navy, Liam, is also in the port. The crews are both unarmed, because Derek maintains the port of Ravenglass as a neutral, weapons-free zone, but Liam has hostile intentions for his visit. After Merlyn arrives, Liam attempts to capture Ravenglass in order to turn it into his own kingdom. Shelagh, however, is able to kill Liam before his crew captures the king. They slaughter the crews of the ships in port but find out that the rest of his fleet is supposed to land to help take the city. Merlyn and his party arrange the defenses of Ravenglass and, along with the help of the local people, are able to repel and intimidate the fleet into flight. Merlyn had originally approached Ravenglass in order to find a place to safely raise Arthur away from enemies at home. Originally Derek had refused Merlyn sanctuary. However, since they helped in the defense of his kingdom, he agrees for Merlyn to move his people to a Roman fort Mediabogdum, a Roman fort on the edge of Ravenglass's lands. The party moves to the fort and Dedalus is able to rebuild the baths, while the rest of the party works on rebuilding several of the barracks. The Party remains at Mediobogdum for several years after. While there Merlyn commissions duplicates of the sword cast by Publius Varrus from the Lady of the Lake statue. They are used, along with a method developed using wooden Roman practice swords, to train Arthur and his friends how to fight. Before the end of this book, a raiding party from the Sons of Chondran try to attack the city but are cast upon the shore by a violent storm. Merlyn uses this event to teach Arthur of the value of human lives. By the end of the chapter, Merlyn has become romantically involved with a woman from Ravenglass who, along with forty others from the town, have been brought to settle in the fort to help maintain its productivity. On a previous visit Merlyn and Ambrosius had decided that a garrison should support Merlyn's party, and that expedition arrives at the beginning of the book. The party continues to live at Mediobogdum, and Arthur shows his prowess as a leader, deciding to begin training some of his other friends from Ravenglass in the combat style that Merlyn designed for him. A winter has many negative events: Lucanus dies, Rufio, one of Merlyn warrior companions, is attacked by a bear and loses the use of his right arm and news of Ironhair causing political problems in Cambria reaches Merlyn via a letter from Ambrosius. Because of the letter, Merlyn decides that it would be best to return to Camulod to assist in the military campaign soon to ensue."
1555,The Minister's Wooing,history," The story is set in New England in a town called Newport. Dr. Hopkins is a 40-year-old minister. Mary is the daughter of his hostess in town, and Hopkins soon falls in love with Mary. Mary is unable to return his affections because she is still in love with James Marvyn, a sailor presumed lost at sea. Mary is a very religious and saintly girl, so after a period of mourning, she decides that she will marry Dr. Hopkins. Mary has other suitors, including Aaron Burr, but she sees that even though he is the grandson of Jonathan Edwards and has been raised in Calvinism, he is mired in evil. James eventually returns from sea and Dr. Hopkins knows that he cannot compete with Mary's love for James. Hopkins calls off the marriage, and Mary and James are free to marry and live happily."
1556,Ragtime,history," The novel centers on a wealthy white family group living in New Rochelle, New York, simply called ""Father,"" ""Mother,"" ""Mother's Younger Brother,"" and ""Grandfather."" Their young son is not named at all. The family business is the manufacture of flags and fireworks, evidently an easy source of wealth due to the national enthusiasm for patriotic displays. Father joins the first expedition to the North Pole, and his return sees a change in the sexual politics of his relationship with his wife. Younger Brother is an insecure, unhappy character who chases after love and excitement. Into this secure setup comes first an abandoned black child, then her severely depressed mother Sarah. Coalhouse Walker, apparently the child's father, visits regularly until he wins back Sarah's affections. A professional musician, well dressed and well spoken, gains the family's respect and overcomes their racial prejudice initially by his skill playing ragtime music on their badly-tuned piano. Things go well until he is humiliated by a racist fire chief, and his inflexible pride brings him to seek restitution, violent revenge eventually, rather than pursue the course of love and happiness. Mother unofficially adopts the neglected child after Sarah dies as result of police brutality. Younger Brother becomes drawn into the escalating conflict, as a protagonist, and so does Father as a mediator. In the slums of New York city, unhappy Jewish single father Tateh struggles to support himself and his daughter, Little Girl. The girl's beauty attracts the attention of rich socialite Evelyn Nesbit, who provides support but ultimately drives him to take his daughter away from the city. He appears later in the story, having progressed from the unprofitable business of cutting paper silhouettes on the street, becoming a wealthy pioneer of the moving picture industry. By the end of the novel, surviving members of the three family groups have merged into one in an allegorical representation of the American melting pot, leaving Father financially successful but abandoned and unhappy."
1557,The Bastard,history," The story begins in November 1770 in Auvergne, France, near Chavaniac. Philippe Charboneau, a seventeen-year old boy, is living with his mother, Marie, in an inn inherited from her deceased father. The young Philippe never knew his father. Having kept it a secret from him for years, she finally told him his father was James Amberly, the 6th Duke of Kent. The Duke began a love affair with Marie when she was performing on stage in Paris, but he never married her, making Philippe illegitimate. Their affair was brief and when he returned to England, Amberly married and had a legitimate son, Roger; however, he continued to support Marie and intended for Philippe to inherit half of his fortune. When Philippe and Marie received word that the Duke had taken ill they immediately made plans to travel to Kent, England and stake their claim to his inheritance. Once at Kent, the Duke’s wife, Lady Jane Amberly, and Roger, her son, refused to recognize Philippe as the son of the Duke. Marie insisted otherwise and was determined not to leave Kent until her son inherited what she felt was rightly his, half of the Amberlys' wealth. Philippe and his mother stayed months at an inn in hopes that Lady Jane would reconsider, but she never did. The situation became even more tense when Philippe began a sexual relationship with Roger’s fiancée, Alicia Parkhurst. When Philippe and Marie were informed that the Duke had died they returned to his home, but they were not allowed to see the body. Instead Philippe and Roger brawled, and Roger’s hand was badly wounded. Philippe escaped with his life, though he remained in danger. Alicia warned him to leave Kent because Roger was bent on killing him for injuring his hand. Lacking the funds to return to France, they fled to London and hoped to remain hidden there until the situation cooled. Not knowing their way around the city of London, they made for St. Paul’s Church, hoping to find sanctuary there. What they found instead were violent beggars who tried to rob Philippe and his mother. They were saved by Esau and Hosea Sholto, the sons of Solomon Sholto, a deeply religious man who believed in charity and compassion. Philippe and his mother were allowed to stay with the Sholtos and Solomon offered to train Philippe as his apprentice. The Sholto family owned and operated a printing company and a lending library. Convinced that his claim to Kentland would never be validated, Philippe decided to take Solomon’s advice and learn the trade. When Philippe confided his desire to emigrate to America, Solomon introduced him to Benjamin Franklin, who was at that time an American trade representative to England. To convince Philippe that America was the place he should be, Franklin praised his native country for its boundless opportunities, but also warned that trouble between the British and the colonies was brewing. Marie was adamantly opposed to leaving England without settling the claim for her son, but then Philippe was attacked by an agent hired by Roger, who had never given up on trying to eliminate his rival claimant. London was no longer safe for Marie and her son and they fled again, this time to the port city of Bristol, to find passage to America. During that trans-Atlantic journey, Marie, heartbroken over the destruction of her dream, died of dysentery and was buried at sea, and Philippe decided to adopt an Anglicized version of his name, Philip Kent. Philip arrived at Boston, Massachusetts penniless and for several days he was homeless and starving. Having been in Boston not long he angered a British soldier by accidentally splashing mud on him. He was saved from a beating by William Molineux. Through his connection with Molineux, Philip was introduced to Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. More importantly he was introduced to Benjamin Edes, the editor of the Boston Gazette, who gave Philip a job at his publishing firm. It was through this job that Philip met Abraham Ware, who often contributed articles to the paper, and his daughter Anne, whom Philip began courting. Philip participated in the Boston Tea Party, and then joined the Boston Grenadier Company under Henry Knox. A number of measures were enacted after the Tea Party to punish the citizens of Boston. One of these acts, the Quartering Act, particularly angered Abraham Ware, because he was required to house a British soldier in his home. George Lumden, the sergeant who was assigned to the Wares' house, fell in love with Daisy O’Brian, the Wares' cook, and decided to desert the British army. Philip, who wanted Lumden’s musket, encouraged the sergeant to do so and even employed a local boy to assist with that task. But the boy found it more profitable to betray Philip and inform on Lumden to the commander of his unit. That commander was none other than Roger Amberly. Roger went to the Wares' house in search of Lumden, but found only Anne. When Philip arrived, Roger attacked him, but Philip stabbed his half-brother in the belly with a bayonet. Thinking him dead, Philip fled the city with Lumden and went to stay on Daisy’s father’s farm, near Concord, Massachusetts. Anne and Daisy joined them at the farm some time later and they informed him that Roger had not died. He was taken to Philadelphia to be treated privately and that Alicia Parkhurst was with him. Anne gave Philip a letter that Alicia had written to him and he left Concord to see her in Philadelphia. Roger died before Philip reached that city. Philip met with Alicia, who made her intentions known to him; she wanted to marry him. Philip was torn, because, though he continued to have feelings for Alicia, he also had feelings for Anne. In a chance reunion with Benjamin Franklin, Franklin gave Philip some information that Philip used to make his decision. Franklin told him that James Amberly was still alive and Philip realized that Alicia only wanted to marry him now because he remained the Duke’s only heir. Philip confronted Alicia and informed her that he no longer loved her and had decided to give up any claim to his inheritance, believing that the immense wealth would corrupt him as it had corrupted the Kent family. On his return from Philadelphia to Concord to be reunited with Anne, he ran into Paul Revere, with William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, on their famous “midnight ride” to warn the patriots that the British army was coming. Philip tried to see Anne, but her father would not allow him to, telling him Anne was too distraught when he left her. Then Philip returned to O’Brian’s farm to get Lumden’s musket. Once there, he told Daisy to tell Anne that he loved her. Philip participated in the Battle of Concord and after the battle he was finally reunited with Anne. He told her that he planned to marry her, then left her to continue the fight against the British."
1558,A Struggle for Rome,history," After the death of Theodoric the Great his successors try to maintain his legacy: an independent Ostrogothic Kingdom. They are opposed by the Byzantine Empire, ruled by emperor Justinian I. It is he who tries to restore the Roman Empire to its state before the Migration Period from his residence in Constantinople, which requires the capture of the Italian Peninsula and specifically Rome. The Ostrogoths Witiges, Totila and Teia succeed Theodoric the Great as king of the Ostrogoths, in that order and theirs is the task to defend their empire. They are assisted by Theodoric's faithful armourer Hildebrand. The names of the chapters in the book follow the chronology of the Gothic kings. Meanwhile, a (fictional) Roman prefect of the Cethegus clan, has his own agenda to rebuild the empire. He represents the majority of the population as a former citizen of the Western Roman Empire. He too tries to get rid of the Goths but is at the same time determined to keep the Byzantines out of ""his Italy"". In the end, the Byzantines outlast both the Ostrogoths and Cethegus and reclaim Italy. Cethegus dies in a duel with the (at that time) king Teia. The struggle for Rome ends in the battle of Mons Lactarius near Mount Vesuvius, where the Ostrogoths make their last stand defending a narrow pass (a scene reminiscent of the battle of Thermopylae) and, once defeated, are led back north to the island of Thule where their roots lie by a kindred Northern European people. The book recounts the struggle of the Ostrogoth state in Italy with the Byzantine Empire and describes their doom. The main motif of the book is stated in the poem at its end: Make way, you people, for our stride. | We are the last of the Goths. | We do not carry a crown with us, | We carry but a corpse. [ ... ]. This corpse belongs to their late and last king Teia who, throughout the story, symbolises the tragedy of his people's downfall from the moment of Theodoric the Great's death. During the reign of German emperor William II the book was interpreted as criticism on decadence and after World War I it was interpreted, in retrospect, as a prediction for the fall of the German Empire. Besides a plot that is both colourful and rich of intrigue, the novel focuses on the actual struggle for control over Ancient Rome and specifically on the acts of heroism and heroic deaths therein. For this fact it was quickly considered a novel for boys in the in 1871 newly founded German Empire; the book was continuously handed over from the previous generation of adolescents to the next until the 1940s. Dahn, being a historian, incorporated many historical details into the story. However, he was also able to create new characters if he felt the need for them (e.g. Cethegus). The following groups are essential to the story. The beginning of the story focusses on Theodoric the Great's envisioned heir, his grandson Athalaric. Being underage, his mother Amalasuntha reigns in his stead. When Athalaric dies prematurely, hope for a great leader à la Theodoric is lost. Amalasuntha envisions a merger with the Byzantine Empire, much to the dismay of the Ostrogothic people, who consider her as a traitor (an important motif throughout the book). Theodoric's old but hardy armourer Hildebrand arranges an alliance to be made between him, Vitiges, Totila and Teia to save their kingdom. Vitiges is a wise, mature man, who has to sacrifice his happy marriage with Rauthgundis to marry Amalasuntha's daughter Matasuntha. Totila is portrayed as a charismatic young man, who (like Theodoric) wishes to combine Roman civilisation with Gothic strength. This is symbolised in his relationship with the Italian Valeria. Teia is a dark, dejected man, who envisions the demise of the kingdom. Even though he knows this demise to be predestined, he adopts the Germanic philosophy to face fate with courage, in order to be well remembered. The reason for his pessimistic view lies also in a tragedy that cost the life of his fiancée. The nature of this tragedy is kept a secret throughout most of the book. As the story unravels each of these three men become king against their will, in their unsuccessful struggle to save the kingdom. Not so much the Emperor Justinian I and his scheming wife Theodora, but his marshals Belisarius and Narses shape the campaigns for the reconquest of the Italian Peninsula. Belisarius has already conquered the Vandals and is determined to bestow the same fate upon the Ostrogoths but fails to do so. Whereupon Narses, a shrewd strategist, does not waste the opportunity to subdue the Ostrogoths. Throughout the military campaigns, historian Procopius is present to record the progression. He is in fact the main source of the Gothic War (535–552) and thus the main source for Felix Dahn to write this novel. Procopius' work Secret History is loosely interwoven as a subplot about Theodora scheming and cheating on Justinian I. The most interesting Roman character is the firm and cunning narcissist Cethegus. He, as opposed to most characters, is not a historical figure, but the patrician family to which he belongs is historical. He opposes both the Ostrogoths and the imperial Byzantines and strives to rebuild the Western Roman Empire, but never reveals his true motives to others, while plotting to achieve his goal and corrupting the relationship between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, except for his fellow conspirators. The conspirators are mainly members of patrician families that lost their influence under Gothic rule. Accordingly, they have names like Scavola and Albinus. Another person of lesser importance is Pope Silverius, who is also involved in the conspiracy. This book has been turned into two films, produced by Robert Siodmak, starring (amongst others) Orson Welles: * Kampf um Rom I (1968) * Kampf um Rom II - Der Verrat (1969) * Internet Movie Database * * Ein Kampf um Rom in the context of conservative nationalistic literature (in German) * The German text at the German Gutenberg project * The German text at buecherquelle.com * * * * Ein Kampf um Rom (PDF; reprint of the 1888 edition in the Arno-Schmidt-Referenz library of GASL)"
1559,The Ionian Mission,history," The book opens with Captain Jack Aubrey and his lieutenants Pullings and Mowett aboard , waiting for Jack's friend, and the ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin to embark. Stephen is late because his wife, Diana, had thrown a party. He drives to the coast to meet his ship, but the carriage, driven by his friend Jagiello, has an accident. Finally Stephen arrives in time and they set sail for the Mediterranean. Worcester joins the blockade off Toulon under the command of Admiral Thornton. The ship soon settles into the blockade routine, with some of the crew improvising a choir and the midshipmen's berth acting out Hamlet. Jack's relationship with his aristocratic third lieutenant Somers deteriorates during the long blockade, culminating in a confrontation when a drunken Somers causes the ship to miss stays. Somers is transferred to another ship. In the meantime Stephen befriends Mr Martin, an impoverished parson and fellow bird lover, before he joins . Stephen, after consulting with Admiral Thornton, is set ashore in Spain and spends his time there setting up a meeting with French royalists. While Admiral Thornton is in Malta, Admiral Harte, Thornton's second-in-command, sends Jack and William Babbington, the latter commanding the brig HMS Dryad, to take presents to the Pasha of Barka and deliver a new envoy, Mr Consul Hamilton. Upon discovering two French ships in Medina (now part of the city of Tunis), Jack and Babbington both enter the port, hoping to fight the French. However, as the port is a neutral location, the French are required to fire first and this they refuse to do. Despite tempting the French several times, the British have to leave and Jack's reputation as a fighting captain is dented. Upon returning to the fleet Jack is summoned by Admiral Thornton and severely reprimanded, stating it was the British intention to have Dryad captured so that the British could have sent a squadron to oppose the Bey. Admiral Harte claims that he had explained this, but Jack had asked him write his orders which stated that 'scrupulous respect will be paid to the laws of neutrality' so is in the clear. Worcester is ordered to Mahon to pick up Stephen. At Mahon Jack runs into his old lover Mercedes at the Crown, but before he can do anything Stephen enters and tells him he must set sail immediately. The crew, thinking that Jack is after a prize, are excited but eventually realize it is not to be: their mission is a more covert one in which they will land Stephen in France. Stephen is to meet with the royalists in a duck blind in an uninhabited coastal marsh. But the plan goes awry as another British agent has set up a meeting in the same area. The two groups stumble into each other and, in the confusion, exchange sporadic fire. While Stephen is hiding in the sand dunes waiting for Worcesters launch, he captures the other British agent, the same Professor Graham that Worcester brought to Mahon earlier in the book. Upon returning to the fleet Stephen hands him over to the Captain of the Fleet to act as his Turkish translator. During a strong storm the French fleet leaves port, hoping to evade the British and enter the Atlantic. The British fleet gives chase, and although they catch them, the wind changes direction and the French men-of-war return to Toulon. The fastest British ships attempt to cut off their rear and Worcester exchanges a few shots with the slowest ship - the 80-gun Robuste - before giving up the chase. Admiral Thornton is too worn down by disappointment to continue and leaves the station. Admiral Harte, overcome by the political complexity of his temporary position as Commander-in-Chief, appoints Jack and his officers to command - Worcester having been sent to Gibraltar for repairs and Captain Lambert, Surprises former commander, and his first lieutenant having been killed by the same cannon ball. Also, in a show of false goodwill, he allows Jack to hand-pick his crew. Harte then sends Surprise and Babbington’s Dryad on a mission to the Ionian Sea to put one of three Turkish Beys in control of Kutali and remove the French from Marga. After talking to all three claimants to the city Jack promises British support to Sciahan Bey, the present occupier of the island. The crew spends several days rigging out their cables to bring the expected cannons up to the city's citadel. However, Mustapha, one of the claimants that Jack didn’t back, rebels against the Ottomans and captures the British transport ships. Professor Graham returns from a mission into Turkey and hastily informs Jack about what has happened. Aubrey immediately sets sail and overtakes Mustapha’s two ships - the 32-gun Torgud with two thirty-six pounders on board, and the 20-gun Kitabi. After a long engagement Surprises crew board and take the Kitabi and Torgud, leaving the Torgud sinking and the Kitabi a prisoner. Lieutenant Pullings is injured but Mowett informs Jack that he has survived."
1560,The Assassins of Rome,history," The story begins on Jonathan ben Mordecai 11th birthday. He is gloomy, saying that something bad always happens on his birthday. He opens the presents and is not satisfied with any except a jar of lemon oil. He breaks the jar of lemon oil, and the scent reminds him of his mother, who died in the Siege of Jerusalem. Officials turns up to warn Jonathan's father that an assassin, ben Jonah, has been asking for him. Jonathan wonders why his mother did not escape with them, which leads him to hear his father talking with a stranger. The stranger mentions that his mother didn't escape with them 'because of Jonathan'. The stranger turns out to be ben Jonah. Jonathan head butts him and tells his father to knock him cold before he gets up. Jonathan's Father, ben Ezra, tells him ben Jonah is the brother of Jonathan's mother, Susannah. Jonathan thinks about the conversation before, and thinks that ben Ezra must hate him for making Susannah not leave. That night, he dreams that his mother is sat at her loom in the Cyclops cave and tells him that she is still alive. The next day, he and ben Jonah have disappeared, with a message: Gone to Rome. The official returns and arrests ben Ezra for hiding ben Jonah. His friends Flavia and Nubia set of after Jonathan. This chapter is mainly about the trip that Flavia and Nubia (her real name is Shepenwepet) took to Rome with their bodyguard, Caudex and cart driver, Feles. Meanwhile, ben Jonah decides to take Jonathan with him to Rome, where he admits to his nephew that he a messenger to the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespanius. Flavia's mother Myrtilla has a sister who is the wife of the great senator Aulus Caecilius Cornix, so they go to his house to find it empty except for his secretary Sisyphus. In the rental room of ben Jonah, he shows Jonathan that he is a very talented musician by playing the bass lyre to him. Meanwhile, Flavia tells Sisyphus why they had come. ben Ezra's other friends go to ask the official, Bato, why ben Ezra has been arrested. Bato tells them that ben Jonah had been involved in a plot to kill the emperor. If ben Ezra helped him, it was treason. They visit ben Ezra in the prison. ben Ezra tells them that ben Jonah really was an assassin, but had changed his ways years before. In Rome, Flavia is surprised when Sisyphus tells her he will help them. Jonathan's friends Miriam, Aristo and Lykos (Lupus) find a message from Jonathan: Susannah is alive and at the Golden House. Meanwhile, ben Jonah tells Jonathan that he has been the first in 3 hired to kill the Emperor. ben Jonah asks Jonathan if he wants to go with him to the palace disguised as musicians, and help him kill the Emperor. Jonathan agrees, since it would provide a chance to see his mother. Aristo and Lupus go to Rome to tell Flavia and Nubia the news and help them. At the palace, ben Jonah is allowed in to perform because of his exceptional musical talent. While he is playing he is recognized. In Rome, Flavia meets up with Aristo and Lupus. In the palace, ben Jonah and Jonathan are arrested. Jonathan is branded as a slave and sent to work at the Golden House. Jonathan meets the eight year old Ripzah, who knows all the passages, or 'cryptoporticuses', of the Golden House. Sisyphus went to see the races and sees Celer, designer of the Golden House. Ripzah tells Jonathan that there is a woman called Susannah here. Susannah turns out to be Jonathan's mother. Discovering that she is visited by the Emperor he at first thinks she is his mistress. Ripzah tells Jonathan that it was woman called Berenice had hired ben Jonah and other assassins, but the target was Susannah, not the emperor Titus Flavius Vespanius. Jonathan tells Ripzah abut his mother in the Golden house. At the same time, Flavia tricks the Golden House's guard into telling them that the second assassin (after ben Jonah) has been arrested and crucified. The group of Sisyphus and Aristo are hired to perform music for Titus at the Golden House's Octagonal Room because they are 'talented musicians'. Jonathan hides behind a bush and sees Susannah visited by the Emperor again. Susannah finds Jonathan and realizes that he is a slave here. She tells him that ben Jonah is okay and that the emperor is sorry that he sieged Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the 'Musicians' start performing. Lupus spots the assassin Porcius and chases him. Susannah tells Jonathan that she stayed because her lover was in the city. His name was Jonathan. Jonathan realizes that that Jonathan was what ben Jonah was speaking of. Porcius escapes and climbs up to the roof, and Flavia throws a tambourine at him. He goes through the glass roof, falls and dies. Meanwhile, Susannah says she could not go back because Titus needs him. Titus gives all the slaves and women of the Golden House an option. They could stay or leave. Susannah, Ripzah and her mother Rachel stays, the others leave. Susannah explains why she stays: She could persuade Titus to rethink evil ideas because he is not so bad that he could not repent. ben Jonah becomes the steward to the Golden House. Titus apologizes for the brand and frees him as a reward for saving his life from the assassins. He also gave him a ring with Titus' seal imprinted on it. He also thanked Sisyphus. All the characters (except Titus) are invited to a feast. At the feast, Clio shows up. Everyone is surprised that Clio survived the volcano. Felix shows up too, and Jonathan invites them to dinner as well. All is well. The End"
1561,The Drifters,history," In the first chapter, Joe is introduced as a disenfranchised twenty year old youth who is enrolled at the University of California during the Vietnam War. After Joe realizes that with his grades he is going to get drafted, he hitchhikes to Yale University, where he gets the name of a professor who may be able to get him across the border into Canada. After being referred to a woman in Boston named Gretchen, she helps him get into Canada, and he eventually goes to Torremolinos, Spain. While looking for a job and a place to stay, he takes over the ownership of a bar called The Alamo, and a man named Jean-Victor finds him a place to stay in Torremolinos. In keeping with the theme throughout the book, the second chapter is about the character Britta, an 18-year-old girl from Tromsø, Norway. After finishing school, she finds a job in an office at the docks, but eventually becomes curious about the world beyond Tromsø, and goes to vacation in Torremolinos, Spain for fifteen days. Once in Torremolinos, she loves it and finds a job as a waitress in a bar called The Alamo. Here, a man named Jean-Victor finds her a place to stay, where another newcomer to Torremolinos, Joe, is already staying. Of the main characters in the book, Monica goes through trials and tribulations as she transitions from living as royalty in a foreign country, to being forced out and finally finding her way to Torremolinos to join the rest of the cast in the book. She is introduced as living with her father in the Republic of Vwarda, where Monica becomes rebellious and begins to cause a stir in Vwarda's Royal family. She is forced out of the country and runs away with an airline pilot to Torremolinos, where she can live on her monthly allowance from her grandmother. She meets a man named Jean-Victor, who finds her a place to live with a woman from Norway and a man from the United States. The fourth character of the book is Cato; he is introduced as the son of the Reverend Claypool Jackson, a local minister in the area trying to salvage his community through his church. Cato Jackson is a sophomore at University of Pennsylvania, whom the narrator meets at a drug store where he stumbles upon a shooting of a local drug store owner. After meeting Mr. Fairbanks, he and Cato talk all night and the next day, after Cato's girlfriend is stabbed and killed. Cato then runs off to Torremolinos, where he finds shelter in an apartment with a few other runaways of his own age. In the fifth chapter of the book, the character Yigal is introduced as the son of a dean at a college in Haifa, Israel. He is struggling to identify with either his parents and their life in Israel, or with his grandfather and his American life in Detroit, Michigan in the United States, and his other grandfather in England. He is shuffled between Israel and America throughout his youth, and even fights and becomes a hero in the Six Day War, before finally enrolling in Technion University in Haifa. After a few months he moves back to England with his other grandfather and begins to engage in a lot of reading and in conversations with his grandfather. Eventually his grandfather suggests that he needs to spend some time away, and he suggests the south of Spain, and Torremolinos, as a place to go. Gretchen is introduced as a very intelligent girl from Boston who, at the age of 19, has already completed her bachelors degree, and is working for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign. After campaigning across the United States for McCarthy's nomination in Chicago at the Democratic Convention, during the riots she and the people she is with are falsely arrested. During the process she is sexually assaulted, but the policemen who did it deny it, and nothing is ever done about it. After fighting with her parents and the police over the issue of what happened, she decides to go to school in Besançon, France, where one of her professors tells her about an excellent language school. Upon enrolling at the University of Besançon and living with her peers for a little while, she decides to travel. Someone suggests Torremolinos, so she buys a yellow pop top van and begins to live out of it in Torremolinos. At the beginning of the chapter in Torremolinos, the whole set of characters are all in Torremolinos, and everyone is getting settled in with their various living conditions. Cato and Monica begin a relationship, and some of the characters begin to experiment with drugs such as LSD; they continue to smoke large amounts of marijuana and drink regularly. During this time, they go to Paxton Fell's house, a man whom a few of the characters were referenced to see in case of an emergency. Everyone, including Mr. Fairbanks who is in Torremolinos to supervise a real estate deal, end up partying with Mr. Fell and a few of his guests throughout the night. Eventually during their stay, the characters are approached by a woman, Susan Elgerton, who tries to convince Cato and Gretchen to join her in the name of starting a violent revolution back in America. As time goes on, Torremolinos begins to lose its luster; Monica is partying too much for her own good and Gretchen starts to look for something else to entertain her, and the characters leave Torremolinos in Gretchen's yellow pop top and head towards Portugal. As they drive towards the Algarve, the characters begin to notice that not everywhere in Europe is so nice as Torremolinos. They eventually find a small town by the name of Alte. Here, Yigal meets a local girl whom he kisses, upsetting the rest of the village, and Monica and Cato keep on going to the nearby town of Albufeira, to take doses of LSD with a local bar owner, where Gretchen also tries it for the first time and unfortunately has a really bad trip. Eventually the group moves on to the seaside town of Algarve. After living in Algarve for a while, Monica tries to run away to Nepal, but Joe, Yigal and Cato end up getting into a fight with the people with whom she was going to run away. She returns, and the crew heads off to Pamplona, Spain with Mr. Fairbanks. In the ninth chapter, a new character is introduced by the name of Harvey Holt. He works as a technical representative on radars in remote locations. He is an old friend of Mr. Fairbanks, and has been everywhere from Afghanistan to Sumatra to Thailand. He is a fan of old music and movies. He is very old fashioned, and in a break from the rest of the characters in the book, he isn't vehemently anti-war, as he had served in World War II. He very much disapproves of how Joe dodged the draft to travel the world. Harvey's old music tapes include the vocalist Bea Wain; her recording of ""My Reverie"", discussed in two separate chapters, serves as a symbol of the generation gap. Pamplona, Spain is known for its running of the bulls, an event characters come to see. They stay in the same hotel as Mr. Fairbanks and Harvey Holt and there is are many conversations between Mr. Holt and Joe about commitment to one's country. Here Gretchen starts to show her feelings for Clive, a recurring character throughout the book, who brings news from the outside world as well as new music from his homeland in England. For a week, everybody enjoys themselves, and Joe begins to think that he also wants to run with the bulls with Harvey at some point. During the week, Yigal's American grandfather tracks him down and tries to bring him back to Detroit with him, although he is torn because he has started a relationship with Britta, and he doesn't like America, although something in it still has him interested. In the end, he leaves to go to school at Case Western Reserve in Ohio. During the run, Harvey gets gored by a bull but survives. Joe and even Mr. Fairbanks run, and the gang decides next to leave Europe and head to Mozambique for the next leg of their journey. In Mozambique things begin to go downhill for Monica: she has moved beyond LSD, begins to use heroin regularly, starts to bring Cato down with her, and gets Joe to try heroin on occasion. Cato hangs around the local historians in the area, and begins to learn about the history of Africa, and the effect slavery has had on the continent. As quick as Cato is to point out how badly the Christians have treated the Arabs, Mr. Fairbanks and Gretchen are quick to point out how much the Arabs used slavery against their own people in the past. The group also explores some of the natural beauty of Mozambique, and starts to reconnect with that side of the world, which is something they have not explored thus far on their journey. The group then decides to head to Marrakech, Morocco, where there is a man who could help out Joe with some papers, so he could re-enter the United States at some point, and not be considered a criminal. In the final destination of the journey, the remainder of the group ends up in Marrakech, Morocco, where the marijuana trade is booming, a town where young people could get lost very easily. The group finds a place to stay at a hotel, where on the top floor there is a man who can help out Joe with his papers, and helps out people who become addicted to heroin, which makes it a good fit for Monica. Monica is becoming more addicted to heroin, and things are starting to look bad for her. Her father has all but given up hope for her, and the rest of the group is beginning to split up; Britta and Harvey fly off to Ratmalana, and Monica runs away more often than before. Eventually, Monica overdoses on heroin and dies, Britta leaves with Harvey, Cato begins his trip to Mecca hoping to return to Philadelphia, Joe goes off to Tokyo and Gretchen returns home to Boston."
1562,Sharpe's Tiger,history," Up to this time Cornwell had been going back through the period of the Napoleonic Wars to find new incidents into which to place his hero. Rather than do this, he adopts a ""prequel"" approach and uses an earlier campaign period in the history of the British Army, that of colonial India. The novel opens with Richard Sharpe serving as a private with the British army, then invading Mysore and advancing on the Tippoo Sultan's capital city of Seringapatam. Sharpe is contemplating desertion with his paramour, widow Mary Bickerstaff. His sadistic company sergeant, Obadiah Hakeswill, deliberately provokes Sharpe into attacking him, and engineers the virtual death sentence of 2,000 lashes for the private. But Sharpe is rescued by Lieutenant William Lawford after 200 lashes are inflicted, in order to effect a rescue mission behind the Tippoo's lines. Lawford and Sharpe are ordered to pose as deserters to rescue Colonel Hector McCandless, chief of the British East India Company's intelligence service. Although Lawford is nominally in command, Sharpe quickly dominates the lieutenant by force of personality and, without authorization, brings Mary on the mission. Joining the Tippoo's army, they discover that the Tippoo has set a trap for the invading British by mining the weakest (and thus most inviting) portion of Seringapatam's walls. Before Sharpe and Lawford can discover a way to transmit a warning to the British, they are betrayed by Sergeant Hakeswill. Hakeswill has been captured in battle and the Tippoo orders him made a human sacrifice for victory, but Hakeswill secures the Sultan's mercy in exchange for revealing Sharpe's and Lawford's identity as spies. Sharpe and Lawford are imprisoned as the British army prepares to assault the booby-trapped wall of the city. Mary helps Sharpe to escape, and Sharpe blows up the mine before the main British army can enter the trap. As the Tippoo tries to flee the city, Sharpe finds him in a dark tunnel, kills him, and steals his rich jewels. Sharpe throws Hakeswill to the Tippoo's tigers, but the recently fed animals ignore Hakeswill, and Sharpe's enemy survives to plague him in later adventures."
1563,Morality Play,history," The book is set in Medieval England sometime near the end of the 14th century and the events described in the book take place in an unnamed village in Northern England (north of the Humber). A priest fleeing from his diocese joins up with a group of traveling players. The players are traveling toward their liege lord's castle where they are expected to play at Christmas but, short of money, they decide to stage their plays at a village en-route. When a morality play from their usual repertoire fails to earn them enough money, Martin, the leader of the group convinces them to stage 'the play of Thomas Wells', a play based on the story of the murder of a young boy from the village. The murderer has already been found, a young woman from the village, and the play seems simple enough, however they soon find that the facts don't fit. The line between the play and reality blurs and, line-by-line, they arrive at the truth about the murder."
1564,Sharpe's Sword,history," The novel opens with Colonel Philippe Leroux and Captain Paul Delmas fleeing from the King's German Legion toward Sharpe's Light Company. Leroux has just learned the identity of El Mirador, Britain's most important spy in Spain. Leroux kills Delmas and assumes his identity as a ruse to disguise his own identity and then allows himself to be captured by Sharpe's company. Sharpe, on handling Leroux's sword, a Klingenthal sabre, covets it as a finely crafted and superbly balanced fighting sword. As Captain Delmas, Leroux gives his parole to Major Joseph Forrest. Whilst he is being escorted back to Wellington's headquarters, he kills his escort, Ensign MacDonald and escapes on horseback towards Salamanca. Sharpe attempts to shoot him but is blocked from taking the shot when Lieutenant Colonel Windham pursues Leroux on horseback. Leroux successfully defends against Windham's charge and kills Windham. He is then chased by Sharpe and the Light Company but manages to gain sanctuary in one of the three French controlled forts outside Salamanca, after Father Curtis protects him from the Salamancan populace. Sharpe confronts Curtis who explains that he is not Captain Delmas but is in fact Colonel Leroux and that he was protecting the city's population against Leroux's revenge if the city were to be recaptured by the French. Sharpe forms an instant dislike of Curtis who he thinks is sympathetic to the French. In Salamanca Sharpe is introduced to Hélène, La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba and to Captain Lord Jack Spears. Wellington's army arrives at Salamanca as part of their manoeuvring with Marshal Marmont's French army and Major Michael Hogan debriefs Sharpe on his encounter with Leroux, discovering that Leroux had a list of payments made by Hogan to his pecuniary spies, many of whom had recently been tortured and killed. Frustrated at Marmont's unwillingness to give battle, Wellington finally sends two Battalions, including the South Essex against two French Battalions in an effort to provoke Marmont to action. The set piece action that follows flows like clockwork for Sharpe and his Light Company and is watched closely by La Marquesa. Following the battle, Sharpe is called to see Wellington who confirms that he has seen Leroux and places him under Hogan's command to ensure Leroux does not escape from the French held forts. Sharpe gains Wellington's permission to use his Light Company for this task as they have also seen Leroux. The Sixth Division attempts to storm the forts by surprise and without the usual preparations. However, the French have been tipped off and defeat the attack. Sharpe has been invited to a party by La Marquesa, which had been planned to celebrate the attack’s success, but decides not to attend, nevertheless Lord Spears later persuades him to come in. As he prepares to leave the party, one of the servants takes him to a private garden for a private meeting with La Marquesa. Sharpe comes to the conclusion that she is El Mirador, which she readily confirms and begs Sharpe to protect her from Leroux of whom she claims she is afraid. They then become lovers. After several days of preparation, the forts are assaulted again and quickly surrender. Sharpe and his men search the forts several times thoroughly but can't locate Leroux. After searching the wounded, Sharpe allows them to be taken to the hospital in Salamanca. After Harper discovers a disemboweled French soldier who doesn't appear to have a full complement of intestines, Sharpe realises that Leroux has disguised himself as a French soldier with a severe stomach wound. Leaving his jacket behind (he had taken it off due to the heat), Sharpe and Harper race back to Salamanca without telling the remainder of the Company that they are going and ascertain that Leroux has probably arrived at the hospital established in the Irish College. Leroux is indeed in the hospital and is waiting to be met by a contact who will provide him with a cloak and a horse to help him escape. Whilst searching the hospital, Harper discovers Leroux and a struggle ensues. Leroux causes Harper to fire his volley gun before he has a chance to bring it to bear and Harper ends up being pushed down a staircase, knocking himself out when his head hits the steps hard. Sharpe, hearing the gunshot, comes running and engages in a sword duel with Leroux until Leroux breaks Sharpe's sabre with his Klingenthal sabre. Before Leroux has time to kill Sharpe, a sentry comes to Sharpe's aid and Leroux flees. Both the sentry with his musket and Sharpe with his rifle miss Leroux. With both men effectively disarmed, Leroux shoots Sharpe with a rifled dueling pistol. Sharpe attempts to evade but is shot in the stomach and loses consciousness as Leroux escapes. The Light Company eventually realise that Sharpe and Harper are missing and Major Hogan is alerted. A search of the hospital finds Harper still unconscious, but Sharpe cannot be found amongst the living nor the British or French dead. When his discarded trousers are found, he is believed to have been mistaken for a dead French soldier and buried in a mass grave already. His death is mourned by the entire South Essex Battalion, Major Hogan and General Wellington, however while it is not yet realised, he has actually been taken to the death ward run by Sergeant Connolley in the dank basement of the Irish College. Sharpe, unrecognised, drifts in and out of consciousness but refuses to die from a wound that is fatal in all but the most exceptional of cases. Hogan hears a story of a mad man digging up the French graves, then when on the streets of Salamanca he finds Harper held in chains by the provosts. He persuades the provosts to let Harper go and finds out that Harper has searched all the recently buried French corpses and not found Sharpe. Hogan and Harper return to the hospital to search again and Harper tells Hogan that Sharpe had not been wearing his jacket and that with his flogging scars he would most likely have been mistaken for a soldier. They realise that there is one place that has not been searched - the soldier's death ward. When they find Sharpe, he is barely alive. He is moved to his own room in the hospital officers’ ward, where he fights to stay alive against infection and fever. While the army moves on, Harper and Isabella (the peasant girl Harper rescued in the Battle of Badajoz} minister to Sharpe's needs. In the meantime, Hogan has assigned Lord Spears to protect El Mirador when he is in public. Harper realises that Sharpe has lost his French cavalry overalls (destroyed by the surgeons), his rifle (stolen) and his sword (broken) - many of the symbols of his sense of identity as a soldier and recognises that he needs to help provide something for Sharpe's spirit to cling onto. He sets about procuring another set of rifleman's trousers, a sword and a rifle. He is unsuccessful in obtaining a rifle, and the sword he obtains, a heavy cavalry sabre, is not quite suited for Sharpe to use as foot infantry. Undeterred, he sets about remaking the sabre to what he knows will be Sharpe's requirements - once finished, it is totally transformed. As he goes to present the sword and trousers to Sharpe, Isabella tells him that not only has Sharpe turned the corner and is in full recovery, but La Marquesa had visited and was taking all three of them to stay in one of her houses by the river. Sharpe is visited by Lord Spears and suggests that Lord Spears is protecting El Mirador. Sharpe's knowledge of this surprises Spears and makes him uncomfortable but he nevertheless confirms Sharpe's hunch. As Sharpe recuperates, Harper, now recovered and confident of Sharpe's progress, returns to the Light Company. A month later, Hogan sends Sharpe a letter telling him that the French will soon be returning to Salamanca and that he must pack and leave. Sharpe prepares to depart the following morning and is surprised in the evening by Father Curtis who is pointing a rifle at him. Father Curtis it turns out is returning Sharpe's own rifle that had been stolen by one of the stonemasons at the College. Curtis tells Sharpe that one of his correspondents in Paris has discovered that Leroux has a multi-lingual sister, Hélène. Curtis believes that this must be La Marquesa and relays a message from Hogan asking Sharpe to give her false information that Wellington's is intending to retreat to the Portuguese border and that he will leave one division as a rearguard to delay the French. The penny drops and Sharpe realises that Curtis is El Mirador, not Hélène. Whilst hoping that she is not a French spy, he agrees to pass on the message, doing so later that evening. Sharpe, still not fully healed, rejoins Wellington's army, riding on a horse that was a gift from La Marquesa. He watches events unfold from the Army headquarters. Marmont, suspecting already that Wellington is racing for the border, has these suspicions confirmed by a message from La Marquesa and he swings his army into pursuit, playing into Wellington's hands and the Battle of Salamanca begins. The French left is destroyed by a British cavalry charge. Marmont and his deputy are injured by case shot and play no further part in the battle instead, General Clausel assumed command. The British Fourth Division (including the South Essex) attack the French centre but are repulsed by a French counterattack using Clausel's reserves. Sharpe seeing the South Essex being pushed back and realising that they need to stay firm in order to channel the French columns into a killing ground for the Sixth Division, can't resist joining the battle. He rides to the Light Company, dismounts, assumes command from Lieutenant Price and orders Harper to shoot the next person who falls back. The Company, back under Sharpe's firm hand, respond and the French column is channelled away from the vulnerable British rear into a the Sixth Divisions killing ground. The column's advance is crushed and the French withdraw under the protection of their still undefeated right, hoping to cross the bridge at Alba de Tormes and thus escape. Wellington, believing that a Spanish garrison held the bridge at Alba de Tormes was slow to follow up, believing the French to be trapped and available for him to defeat in detail at his leisure. Unknown to him though, the Spanish garrison, believing that the British would be defeated had already fled and the French retreat was unopposed. Lord Spears conducts a solo charge against the fleeing French and is shot. Sharpe comes to his aid and they talk. Spears is dying and he wants Sharpe to tell his sister that he died honourably and he tells Sharpe that he wants to die because he has the Black Lion (syphilis) and that he prefers to die whilst he still has his sanity and reputation. He tells Sharpe that he knew that Hélène was a French spy and that he had told Hogan this some time ago. Sharpe realises that he is lying and suspects that he is the traitor in the British headquarters. He threatens to kill Spears by stabbing him in the back with his sabre (as if he were killed whilst running away) and to destroy his reputation with his sister. Spears relents and confesses that he had not escaped Leroux but had been paroled and given money for his gambling habit. He had not sold out Curtis because Leroux already knew but he did give Leroux the book in which Curtis had hidden the details of all the agents in his network. Spears had been hoping that in exchange Leroux would give him a night with his sister, instead, he gave him back his parole and promised to provide his sister with a dowry when he returned to Paris. Spears begs Sharpe to kill him swiftly and to preserve his reputation. Sharpe promises to do so and shoots him so that it looks like he was shot whilst charging the French. He reports the coded book to Hogan who quizzes him on Spears. Sharpe refuses to confirm that Spears was a traitor, but he reads between the lines and understands that while spears was the traitor that Sharpe wants Spears reputation left intact and Hogan is prepared to honour this position. Sharpe, Harper and Hogan pursue the retreating French through the night in an effort to find Leroux. In the morning, they catch up to him, but he is able to outrun them and gains the protection of a French infantry square. The infantry squares subsequently ambush a British cavalry charge against the French cavalry. Against all conventional expectations, the cavalry succeed in breaking the squares, although with heavy casualties. Sharpe wades into the defeated square in which Leroux had been seeking protection, but Leroux shoots at him, missing Sharpe but killing his horse. Dismounted, Sharpe shoots Leroux, wounding him in the leg and causing him to be thrown from his horse. Leroux refuses to fight, preferring to surrender and take his chances at escaping later. Sharpe forces him to fight threatening to kill him if he doesn't. A duel ensues in which Sharpe kills Leroux and then recovers Leroux's Klingenthal sabre and the coded book. Hélène leaves Salamanca, although as a member of the Spanish aristocracy it is not in the British interest to create a scandal by pursuing her as a French spy. She encounters Sharpe as he is leaving and seeing her brother's sword, she asks if Sharpe killed him. Sharpe confirms this and that her brother had killed her horse. Sharpe initially carries both sabres, Harper's present and the Klingenthal, but when he is questioned about this by Hogan, he throws the Klingenthal into the river."
1565,Spartan,history," Spartan is the enchanting story of two brothers born in the military city-state of Sparta. The elder brother, Brithos, was a Spartan paragon; the younger brother, Talos, was crippled and deformed at birth. Because of the cruel and strict laws in vigour at Sparta, babies that were deformed, crippled or had any health issues would not serve the city-state its purpose, which was to battle; therefore, these weaker children had to be sacrificed at Mount Taygetus. The young Talos however survives, rescued by a shepherd of the Helots, the people who served as slaves to the Spartans. This shepherd, who becomes Talos's adoptive father, raises Talos with love and recounts him the intriguing tale of Aristodemus, the last King of the Helots. The legend goes that he who wears his armour, shall be the one to free the Helots from slavery. However, the blood that runs in his veins is Spartan after all; Talos the Cripple is drawn back to his hometown and in the midst of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae. Here he faces the inhuman brutality and savagery of the Spartan soldiers and meets his brother for the first time since their separation when he crosses his brother's gaze whilst attempting to protect Antinea, the woman he loves. But destiny has got a better fate for them in store: as a war between the Persian Empire and the Greek city-states looms, the two brothers will find each other again and will fight shoulder to shoulder for the future of their country. Along the way, he discovers some thing of his [Spartan} life like his real name is Kleidemos. When his brother dies, he oversees the Helots, with the help of his friend Karas, helps the Helots have victory over his own race."
1566,Fever 1793,history," Matilda Cook lives with her hardworking mother, grandfather, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and Eliza, a freed slave who works as their cook, in the apartment on top of their family coffeehouse in Philadelphia. Matilda (""Mattie"") Cook is 14 years old with big dreams for her family's coffeehouse. When the yellow fever epidemic breaks out during the summer, people leave the city or die. Matilda realizes she has to fight for her own life and her loved ones. Her father died from a fall from a ladder. In 1793 yellow fever is spreading through Philadelphia. The people close to Matilda are dying. First, many of her neighbors are infected, then her childhood friends, including Polly, their serving girl, then Matilda's mother. She and her grandfather try to flee to a family friend's home in the country, but they are left behind because of guards patrolling the path. (They kept the sick out of other cities, and thought her grandfather ill because of his cough.) Matilda falls ill with the fever and is taken to a hospital by her grandfather. They return to their house, to discover it was robbed by thieves. The next night, men broke in while Matilda was sleeping. She had screamed, which woke her grandfather up. Grandfather tries to save Mattie, and ends up being killed when he flies back toward the stairs after shooting an old rifle at the thieves. After this, Matilda is desperate and searches for Eliza, finding Nell, another fever orphan along the way. Finding Eliza, Matilda recuperates with her family for a while. Eliza's two nephews and Nell become infected with yellow fever. Matilda and Eliza take them to the Cook Coffeehouse, but available medicines have little effect. Finally, the first frost arrives, killing the mosquitoes and ending the epidemic. Near the end of the book, Lucille, Matilda's mother, comes back with the President. She is well but needs to take naps and take care of her health. At the end of the book, Matilda decides to take up a new job, as owner of the coffeehouse with Eliza, and life returns to normal in Philadelphia."
1567,Royal Flash,history," Royal Flash is set during the Revolutions of 1848. The story features Lola Montez, and Otto von Bismarck as major characters, and fictionalizes elements of the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 1843, 1847 and 1848. It is set in the fictional Duchy of Strackenz, making it the only Flashman novel to be set in a fictitious location. Other characters include Prince Edward, Lillie Langtry, Ludwig I of Bavaria, John Gully, Nicholas Ward, Lord Conyngham, Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Oscar Wilde, Henry Irving, Karl Marx, Lord Palmerston, Viscount Peel, Jefferson Davis. The book is loosely based on the plot of The Prisoner of Zenda. Flashman explains that this is because the story was plagiarised from him by its author, Anthony Hope."
1568,Dragonfly in Amber,history," Dragonfly in Amber opens when Claire returns to Scotland with her twenty-year old daughter, Brianna, hoping to find what happened to the men of Lallybroch after the battle of Culloden. After discovering Jamie Fraser's gravestone in an abandoned churchyard, Claire ends up breaking the news of Brianna's true paternity to her and Roger Wakefield. The story then flashes back in time (literally and figuratively) to when Claire and Jamie lived in Paris after leaving the abbey at the end of Outlander. As the story develops, we learn about Claire and Jamie Fraser's fight to stop the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and the bloody battle of Culloden - and also why Claire returned to the future. At the end of Outlander, Claire convinced Jamie that they should do everything possible to stop the Jacobite Rising and the slaughter that would follow. After learning that Charles Stuart is trying to get money from the French King, Louis XV, they travel to Paris. In Paris, Jamie agrees to work with his cousin Jared, running his wine business and, since many of his French relatives are Jacobites and are well placed in society, secures meetings with Charles Edward Stuart (also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) and many well-to-do members of the French aristocracy and bourgeoisie. So, while running Jared Fraser's wine business, Jamie and Claire begin to plot against the Bonnie Prince. However, their lives are soon interrupted by the arrival of Jack Randall, who Jamie and Claire thought had died at Wentworth Prison. Jamie, despite promising Claire that he would spare Randall's life in order to spare Claire's previous husband, Frank, challenges Randall to a duel in the Bois de Boulogne. Though he doesn't kill the man, he does wound him and renders him impotent. And, after she witnesses the duel, Claire loses the child she was carrying and is taken away to l'Hôpital des Anges, where they believe she won't recover. Jamie is sent to the Bastille for the crime of dueling. After recovering from her illness, Claire manages to free Jamie from prison. A condition of his release is that they must leave France, so they sail to Scotland. (Fortunately, Jamie is pardoned for his crimes). Once in Scotland, Claire and Jamie settle in to farm life at Jamie's home at Lallybroch, with his sister, Jenny, and her family. However, Jamie receives a letter from Charles Stuart, announcing his attempt to retake the throne of Scotland. There is no escape, as Charles has had Jamie's name on the letter as one of his supporters. The Rising has begun. Seeing no option but to fight for the Stuarts, Jamie gathers the men of Lallybroch to join the Stuart army. They fight and win at the battle of Prestonpans, but the tide soon turns against the Jacobites. The Rising culminates in the disastrous battle of Culloden. Jamie, knowing that the Scots won't win at Culloden, takes Claire and heads for Craig na Dun, where he forces her to travel back to her own time, to spare her the battle's aftermath. Before she goes, however, Jamie tells Claire that he knows she is pregnant again. After sending her through the stones, Jamie returns to Culloden, intending to die. The lengthy flashback ends and the reader learns that Brianna is the child Claire was carrying through the stones. Frank asked Claire where she had been during her absence but refused to believe her, thinking she was mentally unstable. Claire told him to leave her but suspecting he was sterile and desperate for a child, he asked Claire to allow him to be father to her baby and only tell Brianna the truth after his death. Brianna refuses to believe Claire and Claire enlists Roger's help by revealing his true parentage to him as the great great grandson of Geilie Duncan and Dougal. They witness Geilie Duncan/Gillian Edgars' disappearance through the stone circle and the novel ends with Roger informing Claire that Jamie didn't die at Culloden. nl:Terugkeer naar Inverness sv:Slända i bärnsten"
1569,The Rebels,history," The story begins on June 17, 1775, at the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which Philip Kent participates. One major event, the marriage of Philip and Anne Ware, took place in the interim. In September of that year Anne gave birth to her first child, whom they named Abraham after her father. Philip then participated in Henry Knox’ mission to transport cannons from Fort Ticonderoga. Meanwhile, Judson Fletcher, a drunkard and a womanizer still pursued Peggy Ashford McLean, the wife of his friend Seth McLean, whom he had courted before her marriage. Judson lived with his father on Sermon Hill, a large tobacco plantation on the Rappahannock River in northern Virginia. During a great rebellion of slaves Peggy was raped, Seth killed; his father opposed to Judson's defense of black slaves (and his accusation of white violence that caused it) and his way of life, and put his son out of house. Judson’s brother, Donald, was a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress, but he suffered from gout and was unable to fulfill his duty, so designated Judson to act in his stead. While attending Congress in Philadelphia Judson began an affair with Alicia Parkhurst, who now called herself Alice, a former lover of Philip Kent’s. When Tobias Trumball, Alicia’s uncle, found her, he tried to take her home, which Judson prevented, after which Trumball challenged Judson to a duel and scheduled it for July 3, 1776. The day before the duel, during a debate on the Lee Resolution, Judson was dismissed from the Virginia delegation for drunkenness and therefore missed his chance to vote on the resolution. The next day, he killed Trumball in the duel and shortly afterwards, Alicia committed suicide by drowning. While Philip was camped with George Washington’s army in August 1777, he was reunited with his old friend from France, Gil, the Marquis de Lafayette. They participated in the devastating Battle of Brandywine, which left Philadelphia, then the American capital, to be captured by the British. After his expulsion from the Virginia delegation, Judson returned home, but could not move back to Sermon Hill with his father; instead, he lived with Lottie Shaw at a place once owned by her late husband. One day, in a drunken rage, he expelled her from her own property. Soon after, he visited Peggy McLean, by then a widow, and raped her; unbeknownst to him, this encounter would produce a daughter, Elizabeth. Later, when his brother told him that George Rogers Clark had returned to Virginia, Judson rode to meet him. Clark had been a childhood friend and was now recruiting men for a military expedition to the Northwest Territory. Judson enlisted with him, but when he returned home he was met by a disgruntled Lottie, who shot him and left him for dead. Though Judson, because of his wounds, missed his rendezvous, once he recovered he set off for Pittsburgh in hopes of meeting Clark. When he was reunited with Clark, Clark refused to include him in his detachment, due again to drunkenness. On returning to his boat, Clark caught a spy in the act of stealing his orders. After a scuffle the spy shot at Clark, but Judson absorbed the ball and was killed. Meanwhile, Anne Kent had taken the money she had inherited from her father, who had recently died, and invested it with privateers who were aiding the Americans on the high seas. During the time that Philip was away with the army, one of the privateers with whom Anne had invested her money, Malachi Rackham, made overtures towards her, which she rejected. In 1778, he abducted her and took her aboard his ship. After he repeatedly beat and raped her, she fought for her freedom, but in the ensuing struggle both Anne and Rackham were thrown overboard. Philip participated in the Battle of Monmouth and was wounded in the leg, after which he was mustered out of the army. He was informed of Anne’s disappearance in a letter from a member of the privateer in which Anne had invested. As the privateer had captured a British vessel, the investment provided Philip with the money he utilised to begin a publishing firm, Kent and Son. Almost a year later, Gil introduced Philip to Peggy McLean, who would become his second wife."
1570,Eaters of the Dead,history," The novel is set in the 10th century. The Caliph of Baghdad Al-Muqtadir (Arabic: المقتدر بالله) sends his ambassador, Ahmad ibn Fadlan (Arabic احمد بن فضلان), to the king of the Volga Bulgars. He never arrives but is instead captured by a group of Vikings. This group is sent on a hero's quest to the north. Ahmad ibn Fadlan is taken along, as the thirteenth member of their group, to bring good luck. There they battle with the 'mist-monsters', or 'wendol', a relict group of Neanderthals who go to battle wearing bear skins like the berserkers found in the original Beowulf story. Eaters of the Dead is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript. The narrator describes how the story told is a composite of extant commentaries and translations of the works of the original story teller. There are several references during the narration to a possible change or mistranslation of the original story by later copiers. The story is told by several different voices: the editor/narrator, the translators of the script and the original author, ibn Fadlan, as well as his descriptions of stories told by others. A sense of authenticity is supported by occasional explanatory footnotes with references to a mixture of factual and fictitious sources."
1571,Flashman on the March,history," Having fled Mexico aboard the Austrian warship carrying the Emperor Maximilian's body home for burial, Flashman is on the run, after mortally offending Admiral Tegethoff by seducing his great-niece en voyage. Flashman meets an old acquaintance, Jack Speedicut (who appears in other of the novels), who enlists him to escort a shipment of Maria Theresa thalers to General Robert Napier's forces in Abyssinia, via Suez. General Napier, overjoyed to find the noted military hero Flashman arrived in Abyssinia, immediately despatches him on a secret undercover mission to recruit Queen Masteeat and her Galla people, who are opposed to Emperor Theodore II of Ethiopia, travelling in the company of her half-sister Uliba-Wark, who is herself scheming to depose Queen Masteeat. Flashman succeeds in enlisting the assistance of Queen Masteeat, but is then captured by Emperor Theodore's forces. The second half of the novel deals with Flashman's relations with the Emperor and covers the final battle with Napier's forces and their allies, after which Theodore commits suicide. Flashman tells Napier at the conclusion that the British government could have avoided the whole sorry adventure if they had simply given Theodore the respect that a monarch deserves by properly responding to his letters."
1572,Good King Harry,history," An imagined autobiography of Henry V, King of England, from his neglected but happy youth in Wales, his tumultuous relationship with his father, who usurped the throne, through his storied victory at the Battle of Agincourt, and his troubled later years."
1573,Salammbô,history," After the First Punic War, Carthage is unable to fulfil promises made to its army of mercenaries, and finds itself under attack. The fictional title character, a priestess and the daughter of Hamilcar Barca, an aristocratic Carthaginian general, is the object of the obsessive lust of Matho, a leader of the mercenaries. With the help of the scheming freed slave, Spendius, Matho steals the sacred veil of Carthage, the Zaïmph, prompting Salammbô to enter the mercenaries' camp in an attempt to steal it back. The Zaïmph is an ornate bejewelled veil draped about the statue of the goddess Tanit in the sanctum sanctorum of her temple: the veil is the city's guardian and touching it will bring death to the perpetrator. *Chapter 1. The Feast. During a victory banquet, the mercenaries destroy Hamilcar's garden for sport in his absence. Hamilcar's daughter Salammbô tries to quell the riot. Matho falls in love with her. The slave Spendius is released, and he tries to persuade Matho to take Carthage for the mercenaries. *Chapter 2. At Sicca. The mercenaries leave the city unpaid and travel to Sicca. Later, Hanno comes and speaks to the mercenaries about delays in recompensing them, but he is driven off when Zarxas arrives and tells them of a treacherous massacre of 300 slingers who had stayed behind. *Chapter 3. Salammbô. Hamilcar's daughter prays and is instructed by Schahabarim. *Chapter 4. Beneath the Walls of Carthage. The mercenaries besiege Carthage; Matho and Spendius penetrate via the aqueduct. *Chapter 5. Tanit. Matho and Spendius steal the Zaïmph. Because Matho is caught while breaking into Salammbô's bedroom to see her again, she falls under suspicion of complicity. *Chapter 6. Hanno. The mercenaries leave Carthage and split into two groups, attacking Utica and Hippo-Zarytus. Hanno surprises Spendius at Utica, and occupies the city, but flees when Matho arrives and routs his troops. *Chapter 7. Hamilcar Barca. The hero returns and an attempt is made to blame him for Hanno's losses. He defends himself before the Council and defends the mercenaries, but turns against the barbarians when he sees the damage they have done to his property. *Chapter 8. The Battle of the Macar. Hamilcar defeats Spendius at the bridge of the Macar, three miles from Utica. *Chapter 9. In the Field. Hamilcar's troops are trapped by the mercenaries. *Chapter 10. The Serpent. Schahabarim sends Salammbô in disguise to retrieve the Zaïmph. *Chapter 11. In the Tent. Salammbô reaches Matho in his tent at the encampment. Believing each other to be divine apparitions, they make love. The mercenaries are attacked and dispersed by Hamilcar's troops. She takes away the Zaïmph, and on meeting her father, Hamilcar has her betrothed to Narr' Havas, a mercenary who has changed sides. *Chapter 12. The Aqueduct. The Carthaginians return to their city with the mercenaries in pursuit. Spendius cuts off the water supply to Carthage. *Chapter 13. Moloch. Carthaginian children are sacrificed to Moloch. Hamilcar disguises a slave-child as his son Hannibal and sends him to die in his son's place. *Chapter 14. The Defile of the Axe. The drought is broken and aid comes. Hamilcar drives the mercenaries away from their encampments. Later, thousands of mercenaries are trapped in a defile and slowly starve (the Battle of ""The Saw""). Deaths of Hanno and Spendius, both by crucifixion. *Chapter 15. Matho. Victory celebrations at Carthage. Matho is tortured before his execution; Salammbô, witnessing this, dies of shock. The Zaïmph has brought death upon those who touched it."
1574,Guardians of Ga'Hoole Book 4: The Siege,history, ==Receptio
1575,Aug-14,history," The plot primarily follows Colonel Vorotyntsev, a General Staff officer sent by the Grand Duke's (supreme commander, Russian Army) headquarters to the Russian Second Army invading East Prussia under command of General Alexander Samsonov. Vorotyntsev has been sent to find out exactly what is happening with the Second Army; a second General Staff colonel has been sent to the First Army with the same mission. Distances were so great, communications so poor, and the Russian Army so badly prepared for war, Voroyntsev was sent to find out all he could about conditions at the front and then report back to the Grand Duke. By August 26, the opening day of the 4-day Battle of Tannenberg, Vorotyntsev comes to realize that he cannot return to his headquarters in time to make any difference in the outcome of the battle, and stays with the Second Army to help out where he is able to. Numerous side plots involving other characters, both on the battlefield and elsewhere, fill out this great historical novel. The unprepared army's failures mirror those of the Tsarist regime. A famous episode in the earlier version of the novel narrates the state of mind and suicide of General Samsonov, the Russian commander."
1576,The Last of the Wine,history," The novel is narrated by Alexias, a noble Athenian youth, who becomes a noted beauty in the city and a champion runner. The novel suggests that young male Athenians were treated almost like modern debutantes and wooed by older men seeking to be their lovers; in fact, in a memorable passage, Alexias' father, Myron, himself a former beauty and champion athlete, writes to his son before leaving Athens for the Sicilian Expedition. The father imparts to the son the traits he should seek in a lover – qualities like honor, loyalty and courage. However, the father also warns the son not to become involved with women as he is much too young. (See Athenian pederasty.) The book implies that Myron had been Alcibiades' lover when the latter was a teenager, and felt that the way that Alcibiades turned out was at partly Myron's fault at least, as it was his responsibility as a lover to teach his eromenos virtue. As an Ephebe (adolescent male), Alexias falls in love with Lysis, a man in his 20s – a champion pankratiast and a student of Socrates. The novel follows their the relationship through the Peloponnesian War, the surrender of Athens, the establishment of the Thirty Tyrants rule over Athens, the democratic rebellion of Thrasybulus and shortly after. The story ends with first hints of the eventual trial of Socrates for teaching blasphemy and sowing social disorder. From the beginning of the novel, Socrates figures prominently; both Alexis and Lysis become his students in their youth. Also characterized in the novel are Plato and several figures from his Dialogues who were Socrates' students, including Xenophon. Another historical figure who figures in the story, albeit mostly off-stage, is Alcibiades, the Athenian general who flees Athens on a charge of sacrilege and functions as a military adviser to Sparta until he is recalled by a resurgent democracy in Athens. Alexis and Lysis serve under Alcibiades' command until his carelessness leads the fleet to disaster and he once again goes into exile. In the course of the novel, Lysis falls in love with and marries a woman who sees Alexias favorably and encourages the continuation of her husband's relationship with him. Not long after this, Athens is defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. Alexias' father is murdered under the Spartan-installed tyranny, and he and Lysis go into exile in Thebes joining Thrasybulus when he leads the next democratic revolt. Lysis is killed in the battle between the Long Walls running from the port of Piraeus to Athens (the Battle of Munychia). Shortly after the victory, Alexias takes Lysis' widow under his protection, marries her and continues his family line. The book ends with the postscript that this story (incomplete and long-forgotten) has been found by Alexias' grandson (also named Alexias), a commander of Athenian cavalry in the service of Alexander the Great."
1577,An Acquaintance with Darkness,history," An Acquaintance with Darkness is the story of 14-year-old Emily Pigbush, who lives with her mother in Washington, D.C., in 1865. Emily's father died during the Civil War while fighting for the Union. Now the Pigbushes' final servant, Ella May, has left because she was freed, leaving Emily to care for her mother alone. However, Emily sometimes has the help of her close friend, sixteen-year-old Annie Surratt, whose mother runs the boarding house across the street. Emily's mother is near death, and Emily hopes to go live with Annie afterward her mother dies. Emily's mother's only wish is that Emily at all costs not live with her uncle, Dr. Valentine Bransby, after her death. Soon, Emily's mother dies after hearing that the Civil War was over. But then, on April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford Theatre. Mrs. Mary Surratt, Annie's mother, comes under suspicion of the authorities, as she may have harbored Booth; Johnny Surrat is also wanted by the police for possibly being involved in the assassination. On Annie's advice, Emily reluctantly goes to live with her uncle, Dr. Valentine Bransby. Living with Uncle Valentine, Emily learns that Valentine is actually quite a talented doctor who strives for more discoveries in the medical field with the changing times. Emily meets Valentine's assistant, Marietta, his housekeeper, Maude, and Maude's dwarf husband, Merry. She also meets Robert deGraaf, Valentine's medical student. As Emily later figures out, Valentine, Marietta, Robert, and Maude are involved in ""body snatching"" (cadaver theft) in Washington. Emily is at first disgusted by Valentine's deeds. However, after helping obtain an illegal body for her uncle for medical purposes, Emily realizes that her uncle is stealing bodies with the purpose of helping advance the medical field and save more lives. Meanwhile, Mrs. Surratt, is publicly hanged along with several other accomplices, and Valentine, Robert, Annie, and Emily attend the execution. Annie sells her house and flees Washington, changing her name, and leaving Emily behind. In the end, Emily tells Robert that she would like to become a nurse one day and he replies that she can not only become a nurse, but a doctor instead."
1578,Redgauntlet,history," Darsie had been Alan Fairford's favourite schoolfellow, and, to please his son, Mr Fairford had consented that Darsie, who received an ample allowance on the understanding that he was to make no inquiries respecting his family until he completed his twenty-fifth year, should live with them. Alan was studying for the law, but his companion had started for his first country ramble, and the story commences with a long correspondence between them. As he returned from fishing in the Solway Firth, with Benjie as his instructor, Darsie was overtaken by the tide, and carried by Mr Herries, dressed as a fisherman, on horseback to a cottage, where his niece Lilias said grace at supper-time; and next morning he was placed under the guidance of Joshua Geddes. The Quaker, who was part owner of some fishing nets in the river, invited him to spend a few days at his house; and while there he heard from Alan that a young lady had called to warn him that his friend was in considerable danger, and to urge that he should at once return to Edinburgh. A letter, however, from old Mr Fairford determined him not to do so; and having made acquaintance with the blind fiddler, who told him a tale of the Redgauntlet family, Darsie went with him to a fishers' merry-making, where he danced with Lilias, who reproached him for leading an idle life, and begged him to leave the neighbourhood. Mr Fairford had arranged that Peter Peebles, an eccentric plaintiff, should be his son's first client, and Alan was pleading the cause before the Lords Ordinary when his father, by mistake, handed him a letter from Mr Crosbie, announcing that Darsie had mysteriously disappeared. Alan instantly rushed out of court, and started in search of his friend, who had accompanied the Quaker to await an attack on his fishing station, and been made prisoner by the rioters, of whom Mr Herries was the leader. After being nearly drowned, and recovering from a fever, he awoke in a strange room, to which he was confined for several days, when he was visited by his captor, and conducted by him to an interview with Squire Foxley, who, acting as a magistrate, declined to interfere with Mr Herries' guardianship. As the squire was leaving, however, Mr Peebles arrived to apply for a warrant against Alan for throwing up his brief, and startled Mr Herries by recognising him as a Redgauntlet and an unpardoned Jacobite. Darsie obtained a partial explanation from him, and was told to prepare for a journey disguised as a woman. Meanwhile, Alan had applied to the provost, and, having obtained from his wife's relation, Mr Maxwell, a letter to Herries, he started for Annan, where, under the guidance of Trumbull, he took ship for Cumberland. On landing at Crakenthorp's inn, he was transported by Nanty Ewart, and a gang of smugglers, to Fair-ladies' House, where he was nursed through a fever, and introduced to a mysterious Father Buonaventure. After being closely questioned and detained for a few days, he was allowed to return with a guide to the inn. Darsie was also travelling thither with Herries and his followers, when he discovered that Lilias, who accompanied them, was his sister, and learnt from her his own real name and rank. He was also urged by his uncle to join a rising in favour of the Pretender; and, having hesitated to do so, was detained in custody when they reached their destination, where Alan, as well as other visitors and several of the neighbouring gentry, had already arrived. He was then introduced to a conference of Charles Edward Stuart's adherents, and afterwards to the prince himself, who refused to agree to their conditions, and decided to abandon the contemplated attempt in his favour. Ewart was, accordingly, ordered to have his brig in readiness, when Nixon suggested that he should turn traitor, upon which they fought and killed each other. Sir Arthur now learned that Fairford and Geddes were in the house; but, before he was allowed to see them, they had been shown into the room where Lilias was waiting, when Alan became aware that his fair visitor at Edinburgh was his friend's sister, and heard from her lips all the particulars of her brother's history. Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Benjie, in whose pocket a paper was found indicating that Nixon had communicated with the Government; and, during the confusion which ensued, the Hanoverian General Campbell arrived, unarmed and unaccompanied, and after explaining that the Jacobites had been betrayed weeks before, announced that he was sufficiently supported with cavalry and infantry. The Rebellion was over before it could begin. His instructions, however, from King George were to allow all concerned in the plot to disperse, and he intimated that as many as wished might embark in the vessel which was in waiting. The Pretender was, accordingly, led by the Laird of Redgauntlet to the beach, and Lilias offered to accompany her uncle in his voluntary exile. This, however, he would not permit, and, after an exchange of courtesies with the general, the prince departed amidst the tears and sobs of the last supporters of his cause, and henceforward the term Jacobite ceased to be a party name. Lilias, of course, married Alan, and Herries, who had asked his nephew's pardon for attempting to make a rebel of him, threw away his sword, and became the prior of a monastery."
1579,Chesapeake,history," The storyline, like much of Michener's work, depicts a number of characters over a long time period. Each chapter begins with a voyage which provides the foundation for the chapter plot. It starts in 1583 with American Indian tribes warring, moves through English settlers throughout the 17th century, slavery and tobacco growing, pirate attacks, the American Revolution and the Civil War, Emancipation and attempted assimilation, to the final major event being the Watergate scandal. The last voyage, a funeral, is in 1978. * Voyage One: 1583 * The River * Voyage Two: 1608 * The Island * Voyage Three: 1636 * The Marsh * Voyage Four: 1661 * The Cliff * Voyage Five: 1701 * Rosalind's Revenge * Voyage Six: 1773 * Three Patriots * Voyage Seven: 1811 * The Duel * Voyage Eight: 1822 * Widow's Walk * Voyage Nine: 1832 * The Slave-Breaker * Voyage Ten: 1837 * The Railroad * Voyage Eleven: 1886 * The Watermen * Voyage Twelve: 1938 * Ordeal by Fire * Voyage Thirteen: 1976 * Refuge * Voyage Fourteen: 1978"
1580,"Sun Horse, Moon Horse",history," The story revolves around Lubrin Dhu, a younger son of the chieftain, who takes after the Little Dark People who predated the Celtic settlers of the Iceni tribe; and whose name ""Dhu"" is related to Gaelic ""Dubh"", reflecting his darker appearance. Much is made of cultural differences between the reigning Celts, who are associated with fair hair and skin, and the original Chthonic Little Dark People, who are associated with darker complexions and a closeness with the earth. This cultural contrast again comes to fore when the Iceni, being associated with the moon, are subjugated by the Attribates, who are associated with the Sun. Lubrin Dhu's upbringing allows the reader to witness the culture of his people, from a somewhat ""outside"" point of view, as he is considered different to his people, on account of his darker color, reserved personality, and attraction to art. His people are matrilineal, with leadership going to the husband of Lubrin's sister. His father's status as chieftain derives from being married to the ""woman of the tribe"", and is intertwined with his duty to lay down his life for the tribe if needed, a duty which later descends to Lubrin Dhu. After their tribe is vanquished by the Attribates and their Strong Place occupied, Lubrin Dhu finds himself nominal leader of the survivors, his father and older brothers having been killed in battle. He strikes a bargain with the conquering chieftain, who will free Lubrin's people after completion of a monumental horse carved from the hillside. This figure becomes the Uffington White Horse. The novel's title reflects how the horse connects both the Solar attributes of the Attribates and the Lunar attributes of the Iceni, being considered an invocation to Epona. Lubrin Dhu ultimately voluntarily sacrifices himself for the consecration of the horse, fulfilling his duty as a chieftain's son, and offering a depiction of possible Celtic blood sacrifice. The theme of the novel revolves around conflicting cultures, and the duties assumed and performed by individuals within those cultures. The duties of a king are shown in many of her novels, including Sword at Sunset and The Mark of the Horse Lord, and have been credited as being influenced by James Frazer's The Golden Bough."
1581,The Tangled Skein,history," In The Tangled Skein, Baroness Orczy does not paint Queen Mary nearly so black as she is usually portrayed. Indeed Mary is depicted as so passionately loving as to be almost lovable, a woman of strong emotions, invariably swayed by justice. The tangling of the skein results from Mary’s love for (the fictional) Robert d’Esclade, fifth Duke of Wessex, whom the people of England desire to become King Consort. Robert is the embodiment of all chivalry, and every virtue dear to the heart of an Englishman. He is, so far, fancy free, but beyond deep respect for, and loyalty to, his Queen, he has no other feeling, and the idea of marriage with her merely for political reasons is repulsive to him. He is at the same time half betrothed, but not bindingly, to Lady Ursula Glynde, whom he has not seen since her babyhood. Wessex is repelled by the idea of having his wife thrust upon him in any way, and purposely avoids the girl, in which he is, unknown to himself, aided and abetted by the Queen, who tries jealously to guard him against falling a victim to Ursula’s undoubted fascinations. The Lady Ursula is exceedingly beautiful, very, sprightly in manner, and a favourite wherever she goes. As soon as she realises for what purpose Mary is keeping her in the background, Ursula’s spirit is aroused to the point of self-defence. To begin with, she is in love with Wessex, the report of his nobility and goodness and the feeling that in a measure he belongs to her, have influenced her all her life; but she has also a deeper interest at stake in the fact that on her father’s death- bed she bound herself by a promise to go into a convent if she should not marry Wessex. Ursula has no fancy to take the veil, so merry, so utterly independent is she that she takes to breaking bounds in order to frustrate the Queen’s jealousy; and bring herself under the notice of her betrothed, which she achieves, and all would have gone well for the young couple but for the power of Cardinal de Moreno, and his tool Don Mignel, Marquis de Saurez. The Cardinal is in England in order to negotiate the marriage between Philip II of Spain and Mary. His only stumbling block he discovers to be Wessex, and with a view to clearing him out of the way he first tries to bring about the marriage between the Duke and Lady Ursula. But, Mary discovers the ruse, and, in a fit of rage, declares that if this comes about his Eminence may leave England immediately; she will not marry Philip, Then the Cardinal has to set to work to part the lovers, a far more difficult and intricate business than bringing them together. It costs a life, Wessex his freedom, and Lady Ursula her good name before it can be affected. The skein is more hopelessly tangled than before, and still Mary remains obdurate. To straighten the tangle it takes the forfeiting of Mary’s dignity, her love, and her will. The Cardinal’s victory is gained at the expense of his own career. The lovers themselves are left with scars they can never forget."
1582,The Knight of the Sacred Lake,history," As High King and Queen, Arthur and Guenevere reign supreme across the many kingdoms of Great Britain. Still, Guenevere secretly mourns the loss of her beloved Lancelot, who has returned to the Sacred Lake of his boyhood, hoping to restore his faith in chivalry in the place where he learned to be a knight. In a glittering Pentecost ceremony, new knights are sworn to the Round Table, including Arthur's nephews, Agravain and Gawain. After many years of strife, peace is restored to Guenevere's realm. But betrayal, jealousy, and ancient blood feuds fester unseen. Morgan le Fay, now the mother of Arthur's only son, Mordred, has become the focus of Merlin's age-old quest to ensure the survival of the house of Pendragon. From the east comes the shattering news that Guenevere may have a rival for Lancelot's love. A bleak shadow falls again across Camelot—and across the sacred isle of Avalon, where Roman priests threaten the life of the Lady herself. At the center of the storm is Guenevere, torn between her love for her husband, her people, and Sir Lancelot of the Lake."
1583,The Nutmeg of Consolation,history," The Nutmeg of Consolation opens with Aubrey and his crew shipwrecked on a remote island in the South China Sea after surviving the destruction of HMS Diane in a typhoon. A cricket match is taking place between the sailors and marines - an attempt by the Captain to keep up the crew's spirits as they build the schooner needed for reaching Batavia. Stephen Maturin is also proving his worth by killing game for the pot, particularly wild boar and babirussas. The island is visited by two seafaring Dyaks who seem very interested in everything within the sailors' encampment, especially Jack's silver that Killick deliberately rescued from the Diane. The Dyaks promise to take a message to Batavia in exchange for twenty ""joes"" (Portuguese Johanna coins), but instead return in a seagoing proa. After killing and beheading the ship's carpenter and some other crew members, they attack the encampment and burn the schooner, but are routed after a bloody conflict and their proa sunk by the last remaining ball from the captain's ""long nine"" gun. Whilst Stephen is out hunting, he chances upon four Chinese children collecting birds' nests from the surrounding cliffs, when one of the boys is injured. They inform him their junk is on its way to Batavia to fetch a cargo of ore from Ketapan in Borneo. After Stephen treats the boy, the children's father, Li Po, is persuaded to carry the remaining crew of the Diane in the empty holds of his roomy junk back to Batavia. It is intercepted by a pirate canoe, but it belongs to Wan Da, whom Stephen knows well from Prabang. Upon arriving in Batavia, Aubrey is provided by Sir Stamford Raffles with a 20-gun ship which Aubrey renames Nutmeg of Consolation after one of the titles of the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, from the previous novel, The Thirteen Gun Salute. Back at sea, Aubrey hears from a Dutch merchantman that a French frigate, the Cornelie is watering at an island, Nil Desperandum. Aubrey attempts to disguise the Nutmeg as another Dutch merchantman and, on being smoked, engages in battle with the Cornelie but then has to turn tail. With the slower Cornelie in pursuit, Jack attempts to outwit her in the Salibabu Passage but is outmanoeuvred and nearly outgunned until, at the height of the chase, Nutmeg encounters the Surprise, under the temporary command of Commander Thomas Pullings, accompanied by the Triton, a British privateer. The Surprise and Nutmeg give chase but the Cornelie soon founders and the survivors, including Dumesnil, a French officer Jack and Stephen had met previously, and a third-lieutenant, are taken on board. Resuming command of Surprise, Aubrey and Maturin continue their interrupted journey to New South Wales. On their way to Australia, Maturin rescues two young Melanesian girls, the sole survivors of an outbreak of smallpox brought by a South Seas whaler to the remote Sweeting's Island. Once in New South Wales the book contains graphic descriptions of the life in the penal colony under Governor Lachlan Macquarie shortly after the ""Rum Rebellion"" of the New South Wales Corps and its coup against Governor William Bligh. Stephen attends at formal dinner, hosted by Mrs Macquarie and the Governor's deputy, Colonel McPherson, at Government House. After hearing the name of Sir Joseph Banks insulted, and being insulted himself, he fights and wins a duel against a Captain Lowe. Stephen and Martin tour the countryside examining the local flora and fauna and collecting specimens. They make their way to the Hunter Valley to stay with Paulton, and Maturin is reunited with his former assistant Padeen Colman at Woolloo-Woolloo. The Irishman was convicted for stealing laudanum from an Edinburgh apothecary and, after being flogged with 200 lashes for absconding from the penal settlement, was transferred to Paulton's farm after Maturin bribed a local clerk. Stephen makes plans to have him transferred secretly to the Surprise but his plans are checked by Jack. Maturin also hears from an officer of the recently arrived Waverley that his wife Diana has borne him a daughter. Stephen and Martin, keen to have one more look for the elusive duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus) or 'water-mole', are taken on a final expedition in the Surprises cutter by Barret Bonden. Stephen has also secretly arranged to rendezvous with Colman at Bird Island but, as they arrive early, he and Martin search the local pools and spot two platypuses. Stephen manages to secure one - a male - in his net but his arm is pierced by its two poison-spurs. He, along with Padeen, are taken back to the frigate and to everyone's relief Stephen slowly regains consciousness once he is back on board."
1584,The Name of the Rose,history," Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk travel to a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological disputation. As they arrive, the monastery is disturbed by a suicide. As the story unfolds, several other monks die under mysterious circumstances. William is tasked by the Abbot of the monastery to investigate the deaths as fresh clues with each murder victim lead William to dead ends and new clues. The protagonists explore a labyrinthine medieval library, discuss the subversive power of laughter, and come face to face with the Inquisition. William's innate curiosity and highly-developed powers of logic and deduction provide the keys to unravelling the mysteries of the abbey."
1585,A Conspiracy of Paper: A Novel,history," The novel's story is told in the form of a first-person memoir penned by the elderly Benjamin Weaver (born Lienzo), London-born son of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish parents. After a successful career in bare-knuckle boxing, Weaver has found a new calling as a 'thief-taker'—roughly equivalent to a modern private investigator. Believing that his estranged father died in a tragic accident, Weaver is shocked when a prospective client claims that the 'accident' was, in fact, murder. Weaver's subsequent investigation involves him in the new London financial world of banks, stocks, speculation, violence and scandal leading up to the world's first stock-market crash, the South Sea Bubble. In order to solve the mystery, he must learn the inner workings of this new world of paper money. The murder investigation moves toward its conclusion in lock-step with the accelerating frenzy of the Bubble's final days. A sub-plot involves Benjamin's gradual reintegration, after years of estrangement, into his family's community and traditions. This gives the author the opportunity to introduce the Lienzo family, and their struggles to survive and prosper as Jews and foreigners in 18th century London. Benjamin finds added incentive to rejoin his family when he meets the beautiful Miriam, widow of his cousin and now living in his uncle Miguel's household."
1586,The Spook's Apprentice,history," The story begins after the arrival of the Spook, who will be taking Tom Ward, the narrator, as his apprentice. The Spook is a cloaked old man carrying a wooden staff in his left hand, who travels the county fighting troublesome creatures such as Boggarts, Ghosts/Ghasts, and Witches, for the people who need these things gone. However the religious world hates them, for they are thought to be meddling in the dark powers themselves, which is against the Christian church. Tom knows that his parents have agreed to make him the apprentice of the Spook. He will have to learn how the Spook fights ""The Dark"", as it's referred to in the book. He can use practice, reading or listening to learn about all creatures that feature in the dark. The Spook is actually a person, and looks after Tom well. He explains that most of his other apprentices have failed, due to them being cowardly, disobedient, or deceased. It is revealed that one of the deceased was Billy Bradly, who whilst fighting a particularly dangerous boggart had his finger bitten off and died from loss of blood. The Spook's staff is not what it appears. It has a retractable knife at the end of it and the wood is very uncomfortable to witches. Later on Tom Ward realizes it is very useful to defeat witches. The Spook lives in a house at Chipenden. This house is protected from unwanted visitors by a boggart, whom the Spook has made a servant of sorts. The Spook has promised the boggart that as long as the house is standing, the boggart must cook for them, do the dishes, and do their laundry. The boggart happily complies with these tasks, because this is what boggarts do best. After learning what the Spook does, Tom is sent out on an errand to pick up some food for the house. He is given a strict warning - do not talk to women wearing pointy shoes. On his way home, some boys about the same age as Tom come up and threaten to beat him unless he gives them some food. Tom refuses and the boys are about to beat him up, when suddenly a girl in pointy shoes shows up and scares them away by telling them a certain person is back. She has an ungodly amount of strength for a girl of her age. The mysterious girl's name is Alice, and she is a relative of some of the most dangerous witches in the world: Mother Malkin and Bony Lizzie. Bony Lizzie uses bone magic, a type of necromancy involving the bones of dead enemies. Mother Malkin was one of the most sinister witches, who uses blood magic, a type of witchcraft that involved draining the blood of anyone she thought could have useful features. She was called Mother Malkin for her strategy of welcoming young runaway women into a care home, and then sucking the blood of every girl there to make her more youthful. Over time she had developed a taste for children. A long time ago the Spook had bound Mother Malkin to a pit in the ground with 13 iron bars on top, so she could never escape to terrorize anyone again. Soon Tom is tricked by Alice to give Mother Malkin three cakes, one every night at midnight for three days, which (Tom doesn't know) is filled with blood. Mother Malkin becomes stronger and breaks out of her pit prison in two days. Tom then tries to find a way to deal with Mother Malkin, because the Spook is not at home. A horrible monster-like boy, who is Mother Malkin's son, as well as Bony Lizzie, try to kill Tom. Alice first tricks Tom, but as Bony Lizzie sharpens her knife to kill him, she pulls him out of the pit he was thrown in. The Spook returns home, kills Mother Malkin's son with his staff, then tests Alice to see whether she is good or evil. She passes the test, then they put Bony Lizzie into her pit. Tom returns home, to realize that Mother Malkin has followed him. She possesses the body of the pig killer of Tom's farm, using terrible dark magic, but is thrust out of his body with the help of Alice, who runs and kicks the pig killer hard when his possessed body is about to murder Tom. The three then kill Mother Malkin by having her escape into the lair of the hungry pigs, who eat her alive, including her heart. This ensures that she cannot return to the world again after death. Tom, the Spook and Alice decide that Alice should go to Staumin to escape the dark influence of her witch relatives and Tom escorts her there. Tom then returns to Chipenden to resume his training as a Spook."
1587,A Golden Age,history," The plot of the novel describes the true story of the writer's grandmother during the Bangladesh Liberation War. During the war her grandma helped the Freedom Fighters by protecting their ammunitions. Once when the army came to her house and threatened that they would take the youngest son of the family if she did not give them the information about the fighters, she somehow successfully tackled them. The person who portrays the character is named Rehana Haque. The story also covers the inner conflict of Rehana as she loses the custody of her children after her husband's death. Along with her desperate attempt to win the minds of her children, she tries to protect them as they get involved in the war."
1588,Sharpe's Escape,history," Set in 1810, the novel finds Captain Richard Sharpe threatened as commander of the South Essex Regiment Light Company by the family politics of the Regiment's Commanding Officer. While the British and their Portuguese allies see off the French assault at Bussaco, Sharpe becomes embroiled in a private feud with the criminal Ferragus, whom he pursues from the abandoned town of Coimbra back towards the massive defensive works which Wellington has ordered built at Torres Vedras."
1589,The Phoenix,history," Fact and fiction are combined to tell the stories of two fictitious people who were involved in the catastrophe; Birger Lund, a Swedish journalist and passenger on the airship, who apparently suffered horrific injuries during the crash; and Edmond Boysen, a member of the crew, who was manning the controls at the time, and seems to have got away unscathed. The book begins some years after the disaster has occurred, as Lund - now with a new identity due to a twist of fate - is searching for Boysen, who he hopes will provide him with some of the answers that might help him to come to terms with what happened, so that he can move on with his life. However, once the story has introduced Lund, it switches focus to Edmond Boysen, and much of the plot then unfolds against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, when the giant Zeppelin airships dominated the skies and their crew members enjoyed an almost celebrity-like lifestyle. Here the author spends a great deal of time describing the technical aspects of the airship, while its final journey and ultimate demise is told in intricate detail. Birger Lund eventually catches up with Boysen towards the end of the story, and the two have a lengthy discussion as to why the disaster may have happened. They consider a number of theories, including a suggestion that the airship may have been sabotaged. Following this conversation, Lund feels he is able to get some closure and feels he can now start to rebuild his life."
1590,An Elephant for Aristotle,history," The novel concerns the adventures of Leon of Atrax, a Thessalian cavalry commander who has been tasked by Alexander the Great to bring an elephant captured from the Indian ruler Porus, to Athens as a present for Alexander's old tutor, Aristotle. Leading a motley crew that includes an Indian elephantarch to care for the creature, a Persian warrior, a Syrian sutler and a Greek philosopher, Leon sets out to cross the whole of the ancient known world from the Indus River to Athens. The journey is long and adventurous, involving frequent skirmishes with bandits, unruly noblemen, Macedonian commanders with ideas of their own about who's in charge, and a runaway Persian noblewoman. It doesn't help that the goal of the whole enterprise is essentially a malicious prank concocted by Alexander on his former teacher: he gifts Aristotle with the elephant but no funds for its upkeep, while sending the funds (but no elephant) to the savant's arch-rival Xenocrates. The story is founded on the fact that Aristotle's writings include an apparently eye-witness description of an Indian elephant, though the circumstances under which he might have come into contact with such an animal are unknown."
1591,The House of Pendragon I: The Firebrand,history," King Arthur, the Pendragon, lies dead after the Battle of Camlann. Lin, his only child by his queen, Gwenhwyfar, is one of five remaining members of the Round Table. Civil strife has laid waste to the unified Britain forged during Arthur's reign. In Lin's warrior persona she suppresses her gender. Through years of habit, she presents an outward calm for the soldiers who have come to accept a woman's presence and command in the army. To be an effective fighting unit, they cannot be distracted by her gender either. Lin tells the men of her half-brother, Modred's defeat and that her father has been taken to a place of healing. Beneath her stoic facade, she is torn by grief and self-doubt. She knows a mere handful of men still live who would support her claim as Arthur's heir. In her mind, it is not enough. In her mind, she is unworthy to follow in her father's wake. She denies her birthright and does not return to Camelot. Twelve years pass in restless wandering. Nightmares of Camlann and of a past that she has kept hidden continue to plague her thoughts and dreams. She is now married to GAHERIS (RIS), her father's nephew, by whom she has borne three children; BEAR (ARTHUR), MELORA, and GERNIE, with a fourth child expected. Her children are unaware of their mother's true identity as the Pendragon's daughter. The family at last camps in the shadow of Camelot. The homecoming is at once difficult and joyous. Lin's secret gnaws at her mind constantly. The children are excited and curious, having heard countless tales of Camelot from their uncle, DAFYDD. While exploring the deserted fortress of Camelot, Bear questions his mother and forces her to realize he is ready for the truth. Yet she does not reveal this immediately. Instead, Lin relates her childhood as a slave in QUEEN MORGAUSE's holding of DUNN NA CARRAICE in the distant kingdom of Orkney, before she learned the truth of her birth and her own royalty. Once begun, the catharsis must run its course. Lin's earliest memories are of sorrow and hardship. At five years old, the only mother she knows dies, leaving Lin alone with Dafydd, the boy she believes is her true elder brother. She hides the pain of abandonment from others and establishes her lifelong pattern of self-denial and internalization. While at work, Lin often watches the royal family. She especially enjoys Orkney's princes sparring in the practice yard. Prince Modred, the youngest, gains her sympathy when she sees the cruel jokes his older brothers play on him. She even comes to the prince's aid. Modred resents anyone knowing of his weak moments. That a mere slave witnesses two of those moments is not to be tolerated or forgiven. Dafydd is proud his sister displays such compassion. He feels duty-bound to take care of Lin after his mother's death. During the next few years, he hones his skills as a story-teller. His tales of Camelot's honor ease many of the horrors of slavery which surround him and his sister. Then he receives his leather slave's collar, a coming of age ""gift"" from Queen Morgause, their mistress. Their owner. The event shatters Lin's fragile peace with her lot in life. Questions of the established order form in Lin's mind. She rejects her brother's slavery to the point of a futile attack on the overseer. She is given a small taste of the lash as a lesson. Dafydd is far more accepting of their situation than Lin. He finds it better to survive with as few scars as possible. Lin's beating breaks his heart. He tries to dissuade her rebellion while tending her wounds later that night. For two years, he seems successful. At best, Lin's calm is temporary. On Lin's twelfth birthday, she is collared like so many slave before had been. She also gains Prince Modred as her master. The prince is now seventeen. He has recently been told by his mother that his father is the celebrated Arthur Pendragon and that Lin is his half-sister, his father's legitimate child. She stands in his way to the throne. She is the same slave who helped him escape the outhouse his brothers had locked him inside of a few years ago. She heard his screams, she must know his fears. Years of competition with his older brothers and warrior training have set the pattern of violence in Modred. He has never held any sort of power in Dunn na Carraice. He has ultimate power over Lin. Lin only knows and reacts according to her instincts. The blood of kings flows through her veins. Far from subduing Lin—as Morgause hopes—slavery brings out Lin's strengths. She resists her collar, refusing to use the word ""master"" or bend her knees in subservience. For her open rebellion against the collar, Modred has Lin flogged, enjoying the sight of her pain. Afterwards, he rapes her to further prove his mastery over his possession. Again, Dafydd cares for his sister. He does not understand her defiance. He wants her to accept reality. They are slaves and can do nothing to change that fact. One thing he does know about Lin is her need for his stories about Camelot. He redoubles his efforts. To Lin, Camelot is a beacon of hope and of equality—things Dunn na Carraice and her life lack. Prince Modred treats her like a beast, branding her as his property. He embodies the inequality she despises. Each fuels the passions of the other. While outwardly continuing her resistance, the intensity of the punishments she endures take their toll on her body and her mind. Lin begins to believe in her unworthiness to be loved and to love in return. She sees herself as damaged goods no husband will ever want to touch while at the same time having no desire to ever be touched by a man again. Her sleep becomes tortured by nightmares and she does not eat, except when Dafydd presses the issue. Easily provoked by Modred, she invites the beatings in the hope the next one will bring release from her suffering through death. Lin's self-neglect grieves Dafydd, yet he admires his sister's strength of will and the courage she displays in defying Prince Modred. He has come to understand that resistance is as important to Lin as story-telling is to himself. He cannot dream of not weaving his tales. Lin's struggle reminds Dafydd, and all of Orkney's slaves, of their humanity. Dafydd becomes determined to keep his hero, his sister, alive. Obsessed with quelling his slave's spirit, Prince Modred's abuses intensify. He soon includes Dafydd in his tortures, since he knows Lin feels Dafydd's pain as her own. Lin realizes there is only one cruelty Prince Modred has left with which to break her. It is but a matter of time before he uses it. The time is brief. But through a misunderstanding in the actual order given, Lin is sent to the auction block along with her brother. She watches Dafydd displayed on the block, filled with horror and utterly defeated. Meanwhile, Modred is unaware of his moment of triumph. Lin's sale is not part of his plan. Lin loses all hope when she watches Dafydd disappear after being sold. In his memory, she goes to the block as defiant as ever and brings but a few coins for those who would profit from human flesh. She is taken to Britain's mainland in the cargo-hold of a ship laden with other souls sharing her fate. Not long after disembarking, Lin discovers that Dafydd had been on the ship also, as a cabin-boy. But the shadow of yet another auction looming in their future taints their joy of reunion. Now on foot, the slavers' destination is the northern British city of Ebrauc. Unbeknownst to the slave traders, the Pendragon is in residence in Ebrauc when they arrive on market day. King Arthur has tried to outlaw slavery in his realm, yet has been unable to stop it. Performing errands, CAI, seneschal and foster-brother to the Pendragon, passes a pavilion with an auction in progress. Curiosity leads him inside to investigate. Appalled to see children for sale, he uses his authority to halt the activity and cuts away the collars from those who have not been sold. Lin is among them. Cai notices the lean, auburn-haired girl with the bruised face and aloof stance in the midst of the others. Something about the girl draws his attention to study her more closely. Recognition sparks. She bears an uncanny resemblance to the Queen. Cai takes Lin to Arthur. Arthur also sees his wife's features in the child standing before him. After a long interview he has no doubt, the girl who says she came from Orkney is his long-missing daughter, long-believed dead. He welcomes Lin to his residence and tells her the truth of her identity.. He explains how her mother, Gwenhwyfar, did not know of the serious rift between him and his half-sister, Morgause. Gwenhwyfar only thought to send their daughter to fosterage among kin. Lin is sickened by the news that Modred is her half-brother. She tells her father of the rapes and of the child she miscarried not many days before. Furious with his half-sister and the boy he sired, Arthur wants to avenge his innocent daughter for the abuse she endured as a slave. He is willing to leave immediately for Orkney. Lin has selfish reasons for stopping her father. She views slavery as a stigma and wants it to remain secret. Public vengeance means exposure. She also realizes she cannot let her father fight her battles. When the time comes for her to confront Modred, she knows she cannot be hiding behind her father. She must face Modred alone as she has always done."
1592,Tulku,history," Thirteen-year-old Theodore lives in a remote region of China at his father's Mission. When the violence of the Boxer Rebellion finally reaches them, Theodore escapes alone from its destruction. He soon becomes one companion of a formidable Englishwoman, ""painted, blasphemous, gun-toting Mrs Jones"". She is an amateur botanist and a former actress with an entourage. The party flees bandits into Tibet and take refuge at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Theodore is briefly seen to be the Tulku, a great lama reincarnated; then the recently conceived child of Mrs Jones and her Chinese lover is identified as the one. Theodore is exposed to the ""magnetic, repugnant rituals of Buddhism"" and develops as a ""whole, willing Christian"". Mrs Jones is recruited to remain on site and the boy finally returns to England with the fruit of her botanical expedition."
1593,Assassin,history," The book begins with the story of Arabella ""Bella"" Getchel, who was taken hostage by John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of former President Abraham Lincoln, during the assassination at Ford Theatre itself. Wilkes, in the book's second chapter, mentions that he likes to be called by his last name. The book continually switches between the two stories, as Bella builds a friendship with a character named Steven and Wilkes. The friendship between Wilkes and Bella was merely a trap so he could get her to look for him in the theatre, where he locks her in a closet so she cannot stop him from assassinating the President."
1594,Sharpe's Devil,history," The last book, chronologically, in the Sharpe series is set in 1820, five years after the events of Sharpe's Waterloo. Richard Sharpe has retired to live on the farm in Normandy with his common-law wife Lucille Castineau. Patrick Harper has a bar in Dublin with Isabella and has put on a great deal of weight. The two are called out of retirement by the wife of an old friend who sends them on a mission to South America. Doña Louisa Vivar, whom Sharpe befriended in Sharpe's Rifles, visits the farm and asks the former rifleman to sail to Chile in search of her husband, Don Blas Vivar, who has disappeared while serving as Captain-General of the rebellious colony and may have fallen victim to his political rival and successor, Miguel Bautista. Along the way the two encounter the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte and the Scottish former Royal Navy officer Lord Cochrane."
1595,Birds Without Wings,history," The story is set in Eskibahçe, a small fictional village in southwestern coastal Anatolia during the 1900s, spanning World War I and the era of Turkish nationalism. The Battle of Gallipoli takes place halfway through the novel. Although fiction, the setting of Eskibahçe is based upon Kayaköy (Greek: Levissi Λεβισσι) village near Fethiye, the ruins of which still exist today. Once a thriving Greek village, this town of over one thousand houses, two churches, fourteen chapels, and two schools, was completely deserted in 1923 when the Greek inhabitants living there, along with a vast number of Greeks living throughout Turkey were deported to Greece through a massive government mandated population exchange between the two countries following the Turkish war of independence. Historically, Turks and Greeks had lived together in this region for centuries, the Turks as farmers in the Kaya valley and the Greeks living on the hillside dealing in crafts and trades. A Greek presence in this region goes back for centuries. Since then, the village of Kayakoy, as it is called in Turkish, or Karmylassos, as it was called in Greek, which had been continually inhabited since at least the 13th century, has stood empty and crumbling, with only the breeze from the mountains and mist from the sea blowing through its empty houses and streets. Attempts by the Turkish government to get Turks deported from Greece to inhabit the village failed, and eventually, in the 1950s, the roofs of all the houses were removed. Some of its characters are also present in the author's earlier novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The book includes a vivid and detailed description of the horrors of life in the trenches during World War I."
1596,A Ship of the Line,history," Hornblower has recently returned to England from the Pacific in the frigate HMS Lydia, having gained widespread fame (but no financial stability) as a result of sinking the superior ship Natividad in battle. As a reward for his exploits, he is given command of HMS Sutherland, once the Dutch ship Eendracht, and which is, in Hornblower's estimation, ""the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy List"". He is assigned to serve under Rear Admiral Leighton, Lady Barbara Wellesley's new husband. Throughout, Hornblower is torn between his love for Lady Barbara and his sense of duty and loyalty to his frumpy wife, Maria. His feelings for Maria are complicated by the previous loss of both of his children to smallpox. Hornblower's first orders are to escort a convoy of East Indiamen off the Spanish coast. He successfully fights off simultaneous attack on the convoy by two fast, manoeuvrable privateers. Since he has been forced to sail with an understrength crew, and had to make do with ""lubbers, sheepstealers, and bigamists"", he breaks Admiralty regulations and presses twenty men from each Indiaman just before they part company. With his ship now fully manned, Hornblower wreaks havoc on the French-occupied Spanish coast. He captures a French brig, the Amelie, by surprise, storms a French fort and takes several more vessels in its harbour as prizes, repeatedly fires upon several thousand Italian soldiers marching along a coastal road, and saves his Admiral's ship from certain ruin by towing it away from a French battery during a severe storm. When Hornblower encounters a squadron of four French ships of the line that have broken through the English blockade of Toulon, he attacks them despite the odds of four to one, and manages to disable or heavily damage all of them. However, with many of his men killed or wounded, including Bush, who loses a leg, and his ship dismasted, he is then forced to strike his colours and surrender. This novel ends as a cliffhanger. de:An Spaniens Küsten sv:Ett linjeskepp"
1597,Child of All Nations,history," The story continues where This Earth of Mankind leaves off, shortly after Annelies has departed by ship to the Netherlands with Panji Darman secretly in tow. Having promised to watch over Annelies, Panji discovers her room on the ship, only to be recruited by the ship's crew in taking care of the severely ailing young woman. Panji continues to accompany her after arriving in the Netherlands where she unfortunately passes away after rapidly deteriorating. He relays this information back to Nyai and Minke through multiple letters. From this point, Minke attempts to continue on with his life by writing for Maarten Nijman and the Soerabaiaasch Nieuws, however he is challenged by his good friend Jean Marais, as well as Kommer later on, to write in Javanese or Malay. They argue that in doing so, he would be helping his people in their struggle to overcome the oppression laid down by the Dutch occupying their nation. At first, Minke refuses on the grounds that it would tarnish his rising, refutable position in his influential field. His opinion quickly changes after recording an interview between Nijman and a member of the Chinese Young Generation, Khouw Ah Soe. After being a part of the unique experience, Minke feels quite proud, as well as curious of Soe's position and beliefs. Soon after, he discovers the article he wrote was completely ignored, only to be replaced by Nijman's self-report of Soe being a Chinese radical, opposing old Chinese traditions, and generally being a trouble-maker. Minke feels hurt from the encounter, and decides to take Kommer up on his offer to visit the Sidoarjo region and discover who his people really are."
1598,The Loveday Fortunes,history," When the Lovedays' banker is found dead in the river Thames, his legacy of debts and foolish investments plunges the family into financial chaos and leaves them facing ruin. As Adam struggles to face this new challenge, he falls in love with the mysterious gypsy woman Senara despite his father's censure. Meanwhile St John, encouraged by his wife Meriel, throws in his lot with a gang of smugglers in order to win the riches both of them have always dreamed of. The growing Revolution in France also has repercussions for the family."
1599,Lowell Park,history," Set in 1990, Jenny Brix lives in Iowa City. She is a history buff. She even has a Ronald Reagan picture when he was in his 20's as a lifeguard! When she goes to a meeting, a very old professor has a heart attack. Panicking, she uses CPR on him, thus saving his life. After a few stops to the hospital, he asks her which US president she likes best. She answers Ronald Reagan. So then the professor tells her that she can go back in time and meet him. She is shocked, but the professor keeps telling her it's true. She finally believes him, sort of. The professor takes her to Dixon, Illinois, Reagan's childhood home. There professor tells her she has 80 hours to stay out of the timezone, or her body will be used to the other timezones and can't come back to present day (1990). When she goes into the time machine, it actually is set on 1832, instead of 1932 (where she was going). She then meets Abraham Lincoln (who develops a little crush on her), and Chief Black Hawk during the Black Hawk War. After all of that is straightened out, she goes to 1932 with less than half the time left she started with. Once she gets there she sees a young, handsome Ronald Reagan going past her to save a person from drowning. She then gets some friends, Scooter and Betsy. They say there is a dance at Dixon's run down, old high school. There she dances with Ronald and his brother. While dancing with Ronald, she falls down the steps with him. They then get a crush on each other. Afer going on a few dates, she has to go to her original timezone. Her and Ronald have a sad exchange (Ronald doesn't know about the time traveling) when she has to leave. Jenny then takes Scooter and Betsy to Lowell Park, where she shows them the time machine. She then leaves, leaving the others dumbfounded. Wen she comes back, professor says he is Scooter, and spent the rest of his life finding things about the time machine after she left until he finally made the time machine. In the epilogue, Reagan visits Dixon the final time. He goes back to Lowell Park, where he spent 6 years as a lifeguard at. He then sees a familiar face from the past (Jenny) near a tree. He shrugs it off and goes back visiting."
1600,I Will Repay,history," The story starts before the French revolution. It's 1783 and wealthy Paul Déroulède has offended the young Vicomte de Marny by speaking disrepctfully of his latest infatuation, Adèle de Monterchéri. Déroulède had not intended to get into the quarrel but has a tendency to blunder into things -- ""no doubt a part of the inheritance bequeathed to him by his bourgeois ancestry."" Incensed at the slur on Adèle, whom he sees as a paragon of virtue, the Vicomte challenges Déroulède to a duel, a fight which Déroulède does not want—for he knows and respects the boy's father, the Duc de Marny. Swords drawn, the fight ensues in the centre of the salon but despite his noble lineage, the Vicomte de Marny is no match for Déroulède's swordplay, especially when addled with wine and rage. Déroulède disarms his opponent and having won the duel, draws back but the boy refuses to back down without complete satisfaction and demands that Déroulède get down on his knees and apologize. Finally losing his temper with the young Vicomte, Déroulède raises his sword to disarm his protagonist once more, however de Marny lunges wildly at his opponent's breast and manges to literally throw himself on Déroulède's weapon. The boy is dead and Déroulède can do nothing but leave the establishment. On hearing of the death of his only son, the Duc de Marny (by now a cripple and almost a dotard) is distraught. The Duc summons his fourteen-year-old daughter, Juliette, to his side and forces her to swear an oath to ruin Déroulede in revenge for her brother's death, telling her that her brother's soul will remain in torment until the final judgement day should she break her promise. The story picks up ten years later, and Citizen Déroulède, though no longer rich, is a lawyer popular with the people and is allowed to go his own way, for Marat has said of him ""I'll n'est pas dangereux"". He leads a quiet life, living alone with his mother and his orphaned cousin Anne Mie in the Rue Ecole de Médecine. At 6 pm on 19 August 1793, Juliette Marny walks into the Rue Ecole de Médecine and stopping just outside the house belonging to Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, suddenly starts to draw attention to herself, invoking the anger of the crowd through her proud aristocratic manner. She hammers on Déroulède's door as the crowd shout and lash out at her, but just before they can drag her away, the door opens and she is pulled inside. Having tricked her way into Déroulede's home Juliette is invited to stay for her own safety. She agrees and eventually reveals her identity, but even after hearing Déroulede's side of the story, she fails to realise that he only wishes to make amends for the death of her brother and continues to plot revenge on her host. Unaware of her intentions, Déroulede tells Juliette that he has accepted the post of Governor of the Conciergerie prison where the Queen is imprisoned. Later he is visited at home by Sir Percy Blakeney and Juliette overhears Sir Percy warning his friend off a scheme to free Marie Antoinette, for it is doomed to failure. He advises Déroulede to burn a bundle of papers relating to the plot, which if found would result in him being arrested for treason and sentenced to death. Juliette sees her chance and posts a letter denouncing her host, but realises too late that she has failed to take account of the fact that not only has Paul Déroulede fallen madly in love with her, she has also come to love the man she has vowed to destroy. When soldiers arrive to search Déroulede's home, Juliette hides the letter box, then escapes to her room where she attempts to burn it. She places the burnt remains among her belongings, and when the soldiers discover them, they arrest her. Because the search turned up nothing suspicious against Déroulede he is allowed to remain free. During her trial, Juliette keeps to the story that the burnt letterbox contained love letters. However, Déroulede defends his love and admits that the letters are his own and that he has committed treason. Both of them are sentenced to death. The Scarlet Pimpernel and his comrades manage to rescue the condemned couple on their journey from the courthouse to the prison."
1601,The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,history," Bruno is a 9-year-old boy growing up during World War II in Berlin. He lives in a huge house with his loving parents, his twelve-year-old sister Gretel (whom he refers to as a Hopeless Case) and maidservants. His father is a high-ranking SS officer who, after a visit from Adolf Hitler (referred to in the novel as ""The Fury"", Bruno's misrecognition of the word ""Führer"") and Eva Braun, is promoted to Commandant, and to Bruno's dismay, the family has to move away to a place called ""Out-With"" (which turns out to be Auschwitz). When Bruno gets there, he feels a surge of homesickness after leaving behind his grandparents and his three best friends. Unhappy with his new home, Bruno becomes lonely and has no one to talk to or play with. One day, Bruno notices a group of people all wearing the same striped pyjamas and striped hats or bald heads. He asks who these people are and his father tells him that these people are not real people at all, as they are Jews. Gretel has changed from a normal young girl into a strong Nazi with the help of her tutor, but Bruno does not seem to take the same stance as his sister. Bruno finds out he is not allowed to explore the back of the house or its surroundings. Due to the combination of curiosity and boredom, he decides to explore anyway. He spots a boy on the other side of the fence. Excited that there might be a boy his age, Bruno introduces himself and finds out the Jewish boy's name is Shmuel. Shmuel and his family were brought here, broken apart from each other and forced to work in Auschwitz. Almost every day, the two boys meet at the same spot. Soon, they become best friends, so similar, they are basically the same person in different circumstances, one a Polish Jew, the other a German. Over the course of the book, Bruno shows a great deal of naivety whilst Shmuel seems to have more knowledge, as he has felt the suffering first-hand. Bruno's mother persuades his father to take them back to Berlin (after what is presumed to be an romance between a young soldier called Lieutenant Kotler and Bruno's sister is broken up by the father) after a year at their new home, while the father stays at Auschwitz. With Bruno about to go back to Berlin with his mother and sister, as a final adventure, he agrees to dress in a set of striped pyjamas and go under the fence to help Shmuel find his father, who went missing in the camp. The boys are unable to find him, and are mixed up in a group of people going on a march. Neither boy knows where this march will lead. However, they are soon crowded into a gas chamber, which Bruno assumes is a place to keep them dry from the rain until it stops. The author leaves the story with Bruno pondering, yet unafraid, in the dark holding hands with Shmuel: ""...Despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go."" In an epilogue, the book states that Bruno's family spent several months at their home trying to find Bruno, before his mother and Gretel return to Berlin, only to discover he is not there as they had expected. A year afterwards, his father returns to the spot that the soldiers found Bruno's clothes (almost the same spot Bruno spent the last year of his life) and, after a brief inspection, discovers that the fence is not properly attached at the base and can form a gap big enough for a boy of Bruno's size to fit through. Using this information, his father eventually pieces together that they gassed Bruno to death. Bruno's father then realizes what he was really doing, and thinks about his job as Commandant. Losing Bruno makes him greatly depressed, and he stops caring about his job. Several months later, the Red Army arrives to liberate the camp and orders Bruno's father to go with them. He goes without complaint, because ""he didn't really mind what they did to him anymore""."
1602,"Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels",history," In Mid-17th century France, a young Louis XIV struggles for his throne, beggars and thieves haunt Paris and brigands roam the countryside. Fifth child of an impoverished country nobleman, Angélique de Sancé de Monteloup grows up in the Poitou marshlands. Her logical destiny would be to marry a poor country nobleman, have children and spend her life fighting for a meager subsistence. Destiny has other plans in store for her. At 17, on returning from her education in a convent, she finds herself betrothed to the rich count, Jeoffrey de Peyrac, (Jeoffrey Comte de Peyrac de Morens d'Irristru, Lord of Toulouse and Aquitaine), 12 years her senior - lame, scarred and reputed to be a wizard. For the sake of her family, Angélique reluctantly agrees to the match but refuses the advances of her husband. Peyrac respects her decision and does not pursue his claim to conjugal rights, wishing to seduce her rather than use force. With the passing of months, Angelique discovers the talents and virtues of her remarkable husband - scientist, musician, philosopher - and to her surprise falls passionately in love with him. But Peyrac's unusual way of life is threatened by the ambitions of the Archbishop of Toulouse, and soon arouses the jealousy of King Louis XIV, who, in actual historical record, disliked nobles who were too powerful and independent of the monarchy. Jeoffrey is arrested and charged with sorcery. Angélique tries to single-handedly take on the might of the royal court. She survives several murder attempts and overcomes insurmountable odds in an effort to save Jeoffrey from being burned at the stake, but to no avail. Alone and desperate, Angélique plunges into the darkness of the Paris underworld, intent on revenge and fueled by her determination to survive. Angélique realizes that her underworld existence is unfair to her sons, who belong to one of the greatest noble families in France. She works to regain her family's rightful inheritance that had been stolen from them by the monarchy. She blackmails her cousin Philippe du Plessis de Bellière, a favourite Marshal of the king, into marriage."
1603,The Prophet from Ephesus,history," The story begins in Egypt where Flavia, Nubia, Jonathan and Lupus, still wanted by the Roman authorities, are hiding in Chryses's house. They are delighted to be visited by Aristo, but he brings bad news – not only are they all accused of treason, but one of Jonathan's twin nephews has disappeared, apparently taken by the slavers who have resumed their kidnapping of Roman children. Flavia's father has pursued them, and still does not know that Flavia and the others are alive after the shipwreck. Aristo, their tutor, comes to find them. He is their guardian for most of the book and he helps them get to a great many places. Delighted to find the children alive, he is shown as being the happiest since his love Miriam's death. They embark for Halicarnassus in Roman Asia, where they encounter several old acquaintances: the slave trader Magnus and his giant bodyguard, last seen in The Colossus of Rhodes, the magistrate Bato and the poet Flaccus. Jonathan is having prophetic visions he cannot make sense of, and is still plagued with guilt over the fire in Rome in The Enemies of Jupiter. Flavia is shocked to discover that Flaccus, whose proposal she had decided to accept, is already engaged to someone else. The countryside is full of prophets who are reported to heal the sick and cure the lame, giving Lupus hope that his muteness can be cured. Nubia is still love-sick over Aristo, whose own feelings are obscure. In the end it is revealed that the ""eye-witness"" to Philadelphius' (Jonathan's nephew) and his wet-nurse's kidnapping was bribed by Lydia, the wet nurse; her child had died and she kidnapped him to compensate for her loss."
1604,Death of a Colonial,history," A nobleman, last of his line, is executed and the crown prepares to seize his property. But a claimant to the estate appears, ostensibly from the American colonies, and Sir John is asked to investigate the validity of his claim."
1605,The Elusive Pimpernel,history," It is September 1793 and French Agent and chief spy-catcher Chauvelin is determined to get his revenge for the previous humiliations dished out to him at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin travels to England as an official representative of the French government tasked with looking after the interests of French citizens, but this is only a cover and his real purpose is to trick Sir Percy Blakeney into returning to France, where he can be captured and put to the guillotine. The plot is hatched at a gala on Richmond Green, with the help of a young French actress, Désirée Candielle, whom Chauvelin has enlisted with promises of money, pardon and fame if she succeeds. Désirée is manning a tent with a model guillotine under the premise of raising money for the poor of Paris. Marguerite Blakeney enters her stall and starts talking to Désirée. On discovering her to be a fellow French actress, she is soon taken in by the young woman's sob story and before long had invited her to perform at her house in Richmond in front of the Prince of Wales. Once the offer has been made and accepted, Désirée's official chaperone is revealed as Chauvelin. Marguerite realises she's been set up, but the offer has been made and Sir Percy insists that both of them should come to his house as arranged. Juliette de Marny (whose rescue by the Scarlet Pimpernel is told in the novel I Will Repay), is staying with them at Blakeney Manor. Chauvelin has managed to get his hands on her family jewels (which were being looked after by the local priest) and has given a diamond necklace, which belonged to Juliette's mother, to Désirée Candielle. When Désirée turns up at the Blakeney's Richmond mansion wearing the jewels there is a bitter argument between the women. Désirée manages to engineer the situation so that Sir Percy must fight Chauvelin in a duel to avenge the insults levied against her—for which they must go to France, as duelling is outlawed in England. The following morning Percy leaves Marguerite behind in Richmond and heads for Boulogne. Chauvelin has no intentions of actually fighting the Englishman, but to ensure the Pimpernel cannot escape before he can be captured, Chauvelin sets a further trap for Marguerite who falls for it completely. Before long she has been arrested for attempting to enter France on a false passport, given to her by an apparently apologetic Désirée Candielle, as part of Chauvelin's plot. With Marguerite in prison and the citizens of Boulogne threatened with death if she escapes, Chauvelin appears to have an air-tight plan to secure and discredit Sir Percy that will end the meddling of the Scarlet Pimpernel for good... but as always Percy is more than a match for his arch-enemy. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge"
1606,Blue at the Mizzen,history," Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin again sail into the South Pacific on a secret mission: this time to help the Chileans secure independence from Spain. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Surprise makes her way out of Gibraltar but collides heavily with a Nordic timber ship and has to return for repairs. In the meantime, Aubrey conducts a clandestine affair with his cousin Isobel, Lord Barmouth's new young wife. Admiral Lord Barmouth hastens the repair work, having at first delayed it by giving preference to Royal Navy ships. The frigate makes her way to Madeira for more serious repairs but arrives just in time to see Coelho's famous yard at Funchal in flames. Maturin receives a coded report from Dr Amos Jacob regarding the Chilean situation and takes the Ringle to England, where Sir Joseph Blaine updates him — the Chileans have split into two factions (northern and southern), with the southerners retaining the services of Sir David Lindsay to command the Chilean navy. Whilst Stephen stays with Sophie Aubrey at Woolcombe, Jack returns the Surprise to Seppings' yard in England for a thorough re-fit and also recruits a strong competent crew out of the fictional port of Shelmerston for the long voyage ahead. In London, the Duke of Clarence asks Aubrey to accept his illegitimate son Horatio Hanson (whom the Duke refers to as a former shipmate's son, for propriety's sake) as a midshipman. Initially reluctant, Aubrey finds to his surprise and delight that the boy has the mathematical skills essential for a navigator; and he becomes a competent sailor. After leaving England, the Surprise first heads for Sierra Leone in order for Maturin to propose marriage to a young attractive widow living in Freetown. Christine Wood shares his tastes for natural philosophy and appears altogether more level-headed than his late wife Diana. Whilst she attracts him physically, so that he has erotic dreams about her, she has suffered from her previous marriage to an impotent husband. Initially unwilling to marry him, she does consent to visit the Aubreys at their home in Dorset and to meet Maturin's daughter Brigid there. After a difficult rounding of Cape Horn, the expedition reaches San Patricio in Chile, a storage post for whalers. Ringle has to go to a yard for repairs following a grounding in the Pillón passage. After a meeting between Aubrey and Maturin and Sir David Lindsay, in which the two sides agree to mutually support each other, Maturin writes a letter to Blaine describing the different juntas and the training of three republican sloops by the crew of the Surprise, who assist in capturing a moderate privateer. After meeting Dr Jacob once more, Aubrey decides to make his way with the Surprise and Ringle to Valparaiso and Maturin and Jacob ride there by mule. Here they meet General Bernardo O'Higgins (the Supreme Director), and Colonel Eduardo Valdes (a cousin of Maturin's). Learning that the Peruvian viceroy of the Spanish king plans to invade Chile, the group determine to confront the Royalist forces at Valdivia, where the viceroy will need to seek stores. After dinner aboard, the Surprise and Ringle make sail and Aubrey elaborates a plan to drop Chilean troops at Concepcion while the ships destroy the gun-emplacements at Cala Alta and then bombard the fort at Valdivia. The plan succeeds and the revolutionaries capture four chests of silver and one of gold, conveyed by the Surprise to Valparaiso and then overland to Santiago. Sir David Lindsay fights a duel with one of his officers and dies. Popular local sentiment gradually turns against the British, and Aubrey receives news that the local junta at Villanueva plans to impound his frigate. He decides on a bold action to cut out the Peruvian fifty-gun frigate Esmeralda from Callao to strengthen the Chilean navy. Assisted by the Ringle, Surprise conducts a hard-fought broadside action and eventually the British-Chilean force takes the ship, although Aubrey suffers wounds in the thigh and shoulder. Maturin and Jacob compose a coded message to Sir Joseph Blaine which the schooner takes to the Lisbon packet for delivery via Panama and a returning merchantman. The President of the Valparaiso junta, Don Miguel Carrera, gives Aubrey and his officers a lavish dinner, after which Aubrey insists on his sailors receiving their share of the prize-money and Esmeraldas value. The next day he receives a note from Don Miguel confirming the delivery of five thousand pieces of eight and use of any naval stores the Surprise requires. With a happy and fully re-equipped ship, Aubrey sets about exercising the young Chilean naval officers as his frigate continues her survey. Finally, Amos Jacob arrives on a green brig with a coded message from Sir Joseph Blaine: the Duke of Clarence requests Horatio Hanson's return to sit his lieutenant's examination (after having fought very valiantly in the cutting-out episode) but, more importantly, the Admiralty requires Aubrey to take command of the South African squadron, hoisting his flag at the River Plate, blue at the mizzen, aboard HMS Implacable."
1607,The Three Musketeers,history," The poor d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers. On the way, he encounters and alienates de Roquefort, one of the Cardinal Richelieu's spies. He also encounters Milady de Winter for the first time, who becomes relevant later. After entering Paris and speaking with Monsieur de Treville, he suffers misadventure and is challenged to a duel by each of three musketeers (Athos, Aramis and Porthos). Attacked by the Cardinal's guards, the four unite and escape. D'Artagnan and Constance Bonacieux (the wife of D'Artagnan's landlord and an aide to one of the Queen's closest advisors) help the French queen give a particular piece of jewelry to her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham. The Cardinal learns of this and coaxes the French king to hold a ball where the queen must wear the jewelry; its absence will reveal her infidelity. The four companions retrieve the jewelry from England. The Cardinal kidnaps Constance who is later rescued by the queen. D'Artagnan meets Milady de Winter and discovers she is a felon, the ex-wife of Athos and the widow of Count de Winter. The Cardinal recruits Milady to kill Buckingham, also granting her a hand-written pardon for the future killing of d'Artagnan. Athos learns of this, takes the pardon but is unable to warn Buckingham. He sends word to Lord de Winter that Milady is arriving; Lord de Winter arrests her on suspicion of killing Count de Winter, his brother. She seduces her guard, who then assassinates Lord Buckingham, and escapes to the monastery in France where the queen secreted Constance. Milady kills Constance. The four companions arrive and Athos identifies her as a multiple murderess. She is tried and beheaded. On the road, d'Artagnan is arrested. Taken before the Cardinal, d'Artagnan relates recent events and reveals the Cardinal's pardon. Impressed, the Cardinal offers him a blank musketeer officer's commission. D'Artagnan's friends refuse the commission, each retiring to a new life, telling him to take it himself, and so he takes it and later on he becomes a well known lieutenant. In 1625 d'Artagnan, a poor young nobleman, leaves his family in Gascony and travels to Paris, with the intention of joining the Musketeer of the Guard. However, en-route, at an inn in Meung-sur-Loire, d'Artagnan overhears an older man making jokes about his horse and, feeling insulted, demands to fight a duel with him. The older man's companions beat d'Artagnan unconscious with sticks and break his sword; his Letter of introduction to Monsieur de Tréville, the commander of the Musketeers, is stolen. D'Artagnan resolves to avenge himself upon the man, who is later revealed to be the Comte de Rochefort, an agent of Cardinal Richelieu, who is in Meung to pass orders from the Cardinal to Milady de Winter, another of his agents. In Paris, d'Artagnan visits de Tréville at the headquarters of the Musketeers, but the meeting is overshadowed by the loss of his letter and de Tréville refuses his application to join. From de Tréville's window, d'Artagnan sees Rochefort passing in the street below and rushes out of the building to confront him, but in doing so he separately causes offense to three of the Musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, who each demand satisfaction; D'Artagnan must duel each of them in turn that afternoon. When d'Artagnan prepares himself for the first of the three duels, he realises that his counterparts are friends. But just as he and Athos begin to fight, a number of Cardinal Richelieu's guards appear; they try to arrest the three musketeers and d'Artagnan for illegal dueling. Although outnumbered, the four men win the ensuing battle. In the course of events, d'Artagnan duels and seriously wounds Jussac, one of the Cardinal's officers and a renowned fighter. After hearing about this event, King Louis XIII appoints d'Artagnan to des Essarts' company of guards and gives him 40 pistoles (currency). D'Artagnan hires a servant, Planchet, finds lodgings, and, by decree of the King, joins Monsieur des Essart's company of Guards, a less prestigious regiment in which he must serve for two years before being considered for the Musketeers. Shortly after his landlord comes to see him to talk about his wife's kidnapping (she is released presently), he falls in love at first sight with his landlord's pretty young wife, Constance Bonacieux. She works for the Queen Consort of France, Anne of Austria, who is secretly conducting an affair with the Duke of Buckingham. The Queen has just received a gift from her husband Louis XIII and trying to console her lover she gives him the diamonds as a keepsake. Cardinal Richelieu, who tries to start a war between France and England, wants to reveal that. Quickly he organises an event and talks the King into demanding that his wife wear the diamonds at this opportunity. Constance doesn't succeed in sending her cowardly husband, who has been manipulated by Richelieu, to London, but d'Artagnan and his friends decide to help. On their mission they are frequently attacked by the cardinal's henchmen and therefore only d'Artagnan and Planchet arrive in London (although Planchet does not accompany d'Artagnan to see Buckingham). In the process of getting to England, d'Artagnan is compelled to assault and nearly kill the Comte de Wardes, a friend of the Cardinal's, cousin to de Rochefort, and Milady's lover. Although two of the diamonds have been stolen by Milady, the Duke of Buckingham is able to provide replacements while delaying the thief's return to Paris. D'Artagnan is thus able to return a complete set of jewels to Queen Anne just in time to save her façade of honour and receives from her a beautiful ring as an expression of her gratitude. Shortly afterwards, d'Artagnan attends a tryst with Madame Bonacieux, but she does not open her door. He notices signs of a struggle, and, asking about, discovers that de Rochefort and Monsieur Bonacieux, acting under the orders of the Cardinal, have assaulted and imprisoned her. D'Artagnan looks after his friends, who have just recovered from their injuries. He brings them back to Paris and meets Milady de Winter officially. He recognises her from Meung as one of the Cardinal's agents, but this does not deter him. D'Artagnan quickly develops a crush on the beautiful lady but learns from her handmaiden that she is in fact quite indifferent toward him. Later, though, after attending a tryst with her while pretending to be the Comte de Wardes (the lights are out),he also discovers a fleur-de-lis branded on Milady's shoulder, marking her as a felon. D'Artagnan eludes her attempt on his life and is ordered to the siege of La Rochelle. Milady fails continuously in killing d'Artagnan and he is informed that the Queen has managed to save Constance from the prison. In an inn the musketeers also overhear the Cardinal asking Milady to murder the Duke of Buckingham (who supports the Protestant rebels at La Rochelle). He even gives her a categorical pardon in written form, but Athos takes it from her. The next morning, Athos, in search of a quiet place to talk, makes a bet that he, d'Artagnan, Porthos and Aramis, and their servants, Grimaud, Planchet, Mosqueton, and Bazin, can hold the St. Gervais bastion (captured by des Essarts' company shortly beforehand) for an hour. They get away after an hour and a half, killing 22 Rochellese in total, and finding a way to warn Lord de Winter and the Duke of Buckingham. Milady is imprisoned on arrival in England but soon seduces her guard, Felton (a fictionalization of the real John Felton), and persuades him both to allow her escape and to kill Buckingham, which he does. On her return to France Milady hides in a convent, where she discovers Constance Bonacieux is also staying. The naive Constance clings to Milady, who sees a chance to get back at d'Artagnan who has crossed her plans with his friends more than once, and fatally poisons Constance before d'Artagnan can retrieve her. The Musketeers manage to find Milady before she can be rewarded and sheltered by Cardinal Richelieu. They come with an official executioner, put her to trial and sentence her to death. After her execution the four friends return to the siege of La Rochelle. They encounter the dodgy gentleman who has bothered d'Artagnan all the way. The Count of Rochefort arrests d'Artagnan and takes him straight to the Cardinal. When asked about Milady's fate, d'Artagnan can save himself by delivering the Cardinal's endorsement, which had been written for Milady and certifies that the deeds of the carrier are by all means approved by the Cardinal. This does not in and of itself protect him, as it only makes the Cardinal laugh. However, impressed with d'Artagnan's cheek and boldness, and secretly glad to be rid of the treacherous Milady, the Cardinal tears it up and writes a new order, giving the bearer a promotion to a lieutenant in de Treville's company of guards. The Cardinal states that anyone can take the order, but to keep in mind it was intended for d'Artagnan. He takes it to Athos, Porthos and Aramis in turn, but each refuses it, proclaiming d'Artagnan the more worthy man. The siege of La Rochelle ends in 1628, which also marks the end of the book. Aramis retires to a monastery, Porthos marries his wealthy mistress, and Athos serves in the Musketeers under D'Artagnan until 1631, when Athos retires to his mansion in the countryside. The now four Musketeers will meet again in Twenty Years After."
1608,An Instance of the Fingerpost,history," A murder in 17th-century Oxford is related from the contradictory points of view of four of the characters, all of them unreliable narrators. The setting of the novel is 1663, just after the restoration of the monarchy following the English Civil War, when the authority of King Charles II is not yet settled, and conspiracies abound. Most of the characters are historical figures. Two of the narrators are the mathematician John Wallis and the historian Anthony Wood. Other characters include the philosopher John Locke, the scientists Robert Boyle and Richard Lower, spymaster John Thurloe, and inventor Samuel Morland. The plot is at first centred on the death of Robert Grove but later takes in the conspiracies of John Mordaunt and William Compton (of Compton Wynyates), and the politics of Henry Bennet and Lord Clarendon. Furthermore, the characters that are fictional are nonetheless drawn from real events. The story of Sarah Blundy incorporates that of Anne Greene, while Jack Prestcott is involved in events based on the life of Richard Willis (of the Sealed Knot). The book is an epistolary novel. The accounts are written many years after the events they describe, after Thomas Ken gained his Bishopric but before the death of Henry Bennet. This dates them to 1685, the last year of Charles' reign. A contrast portrayed in the novel is, on one hand, a philosophy based on ancient and medieval learning, and, on the other, the scientific method that was beginning to be applied in physics, chemistry and medicine."
1609,A Sheaf of Bluebells,history," Many French aristocrats exiled during the revolution have been presenting petitions to enable them to return to France under the conditional amnesty granted to them by the newly crowned Emperor. Amongst them are a petition signed by Mme.la Marquise de Mortain and her son, Laurent (aged twenty-one years), and one signed by M. le Comte de Courson for himself and his daughter, Fernande. Fernande is Laurent’s cousin and is promised in marriage to him Napoleon, in a lenient mood, grants their return and allows them to retake possession of their chateaux and any remaining land that had not been sold by the State. Mme la Marquise, however, has an older son from a previous marriage still resident in France, Ronnay de Maurel was only four years old when his father died, but an uncle brought him up. This uncle, Gaston de Maurel is a solid republican patriot, if ever there was one, with nothing of the aristo about him at all. Gaston eats peas with his knife and wears sabots and a blouse... he even voted for the death of the king. Ronnay works in the foundries where he employs five thousand men and as a result he is now one of the richest men in France. Yet despite their fortune, he and his uncle live like peasants using only a couple of rooms in the sumptuous chateau that is now being returned to his mother. The fastidious Mme. la Marquise hates her elder son on every count. He is a follower of the loathed Bonaparte, and a bourgeois in his upbringing, manners and dress. Fernande also starts off by hating and despising Ronnay, but she soon hatches a plan to make him fall for her so she can win him over to the Royalist party. To this end she plans to bump into him in the woods and conveniently sprains her ankle just before the time she knows he will pass. ""She had only just time to arrange her gown in its most becoming folds to decide on the exact position of the sheaf of bluebells and of her outstretched arm, and to assure herself that the sunlight was indeed playing with her hair and with her toes in just the manner she desired. Then she closed her eyes and waited."" She waits until he is right in front of her before opening her eyes, gazing into his and pleading for his help. Ronnay is, as usual, dressed in blouse and rough breeches. Unused to such ploys, he gazes around in pathetic helplessness, as if expecting the dwellers of the forest to help him in his awful dilemma. But no one the around, and the lovely Fernande, whose tiny bare foot looks like an exquisite flower to him, is appealing, oh, so piteously, for help. Ronnay gives in and carries Fernande home. As per her plan he loses his heart completely on the journey, but rather unexpectedly, Fernande ends up also falling victim to the passion that she sought to arouse in Ronnay, in spite of her hatred of the cause for which he is fighting. The news that the hated Ronnay has become the lover of the woman promised to her adored younger son Laurent, only causes Mme. La Marquise to loathe him more. She plots and schemes for the undoing of her hated elder son but Fernande discovers the plot and saves Ronnay from being treacherously murdered. Laurent goes through tortures of passionate jealousy and deserts from his regiment at a great crisis in order to assure himself of Fernande’s feelings. Following which his mother furiously disowns him, accusing him of dishonour, while his father and kindred are fighting for France. Poor Laurent eventually retrieves his dishonour only to die a hero’s death, conveniently leaving Fernande free to marry Ronnay."
1610,The Whiskey Rebels,history," Despite the title, the novel's action does not include the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794; it is set mainly in the preceding years from 1788 to 1792. Two main fictional characters, Ethan Saunders and Joan Maycott, offer first-person narratives that begin separately, in alternating chapters, and gradually come together for the climactic scenes. The reader first meets Ethan Saunders in 1792 Philadelphia, the temporary capital of the newly formed United States of America. Saunders is a disgraced former spy for General Washington during The American Revolution, now a drunkard and scoundrel but still seeking redemption. Joan Maycott's autobiography begins at the age of seventeen near Albany, New York in 1781. Her life takes her to New York City and out to the frontier town of Pittsburgh, in Western Pennsylvania. After many travails, she returns to New York City and on to Philadelphia, where she eventually meets Saunders. Along the way, we learn about the duplicity of speculators like William Duer, the hardships of life in the western wilderness and the use of whiskey as a form of frontier currency. We learn why the western pioneers hated the Bank of the United States, the Whiskey tax, and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, creator of both. This hatred gives birth to an audacious secret plan to (as Joan sees it) free the new nation from the corrupting influence of the financiers and speculators of the cities, and return to the republican purity intended by the founders. The climactic events take place against the historical backdrop of Duer's attempt to take over the national bank, which led to the Panic of 1792. The fictional Ethan and Joan meet many historical characters in addition to Duer and Hamilton, including frontier champion Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Jeffersonian journalist Philip Freneau, wealthy socialite Anne Bingham, Hamilton blackmailer James Reynolds, his seductive wife Maria and Senator (at that time) Aaron Burr."
1611,Unto a Good Land,history," This novel describes the journey of the Emigrants from New York City, New York to Taylors Falls, Minnesota. They settle at the lake Ki-Chi-Saga (now Lake Chisago) in what is today Chisago County, and start building their home. Robert, Karl-Oskar's brother, takes off to California with Arvid in search for gold. sv:Nybyggarna"
1612,The Curse of the Pharaohs,history," The Emersons are at home in England, aching to return to Egypt, but finding no excuse to return until Lady Baskerville asks them to finish the excavation started by her husband, who died mysteriously just before opening a tomb in Luxor. No one else will continue as rumors of a curse on those who desecrate the tomb fly through the region. Leaving their son Ramses at home, the Emersons arrive at the Baskerville compound near the Valley of the Kings to find sick employees, over-eager reporters, and an assortment of other characters trying to either get into the tomb, or keep the Emersons out. Three recurring characters are introduced; Cyrus Vandergelt, Karl von Bork and Kevin O'Connell. Vandergelt is a wealthy amateur American Egyptologist, and over the years becomes Professor Emerson's closest friend. Bork is an expert in hieroglyphs who appears in a number of stories, usually assisting other Egyptologists. O'Connell is a reporter who eventually becomes a valuable outlet for the Emersons and their adventures."
1613,Raptor,history," Raptor is an historical novel set in the late fifth and early sixth centuries. It purports to be the memoirs of an Ostrogoth, Thorn, who has a secret: he is a hermaphrodite and takes on the name, ""Thorn the Mannamavi"", ""a being uninhibited by conscience, compassion, remorse- a being as implacably amoral as the juika-bloth and every other raptor on this earth."" Thorn discovers his sexuality rather unorthodoxly during his early teens. After he is banished from both a monastery and, later, a convent, he travels throughout the dying Roman Empire on a quest to meet his fellow Ostrogoths (even though it was never confirmed that Thorn was an Ostrogoth; he simply assumed it by reaching several logical conclusions), meeting several characters; among the most crucial to the storyline: Theodoric and the retired Roman legionary-turned-woodsman Wyrd, with whom he forms close friendships. Thorn lives his life chiefly as a man but can easily pass for a woman (he is beardless, has shoulder-length hair, and is relatively small-statured), and he uses this ambiguity for his own benefit. Throughout his life, Thorn conducts affairs with both men and women. The novel treats actual historical events, the fall of the Western Roman Empire and Theodoric's assassination of Odoacer among them. Taking place in most of western Europe (the British Isles and Spain notably excepted), the story has an international feel, heightened by the appearance of several characters from different cultures (not only Romans and Goths but also Greeks, Celts, Huns, Jews and Syrians appear). As is typical in Gary Jennings's novels, the plot is developed with historical detail (including extensive use of Gothic words, which the narrator calls ""The Old Language"") supplemented by graphic violence and bizarre sexual situations. Again typically, the story not only spans virtually the central character's entire life but also has a recurring theme: those whom Thorn loves, die."
1614,The Mauritius Command,history," When the novel begins, Aubrey is at home in his cramped Ashgrove Cottage with his wife, his twin baby girls and his shrewish mother-in-law, Mrs Williams, ashore and without a ship on half pay from the Navy. His spirits are lifted when his long time friend and colleague Stephen Maturin comes to call. Aubrey is ordered to take command, as the Commodore of a small squadron of ships in Cape Town and sails south from Portsmouth with some of the ships, to the Cape of Good Hope, with instructions to disrupt French interests in the region. Particularly he is charged with taking the islands of Mauritius and La Réunion. He is given command of the 38-gun frigate HMS Boadicea. The wife of one of his captains, Lady Clonfert, seeks passage with Aubrey to enable her to join her husband but Aubrey is not keen on this and contrives to leave early one morning without her. The long journey takes the squadron to the Cape of Good Hope. On the way Aubrey attempts to bring the crew up to his standards of efficiency, but he is only partly successful. They meet with the French ship Hébé which is escorting a captured merchant ship. After a brief chase the French are overcome and the ships captured. Hébé turns out to be HMS Hyaena captured some time before by the French. He sends the prizes to Gibraltar under the command of the Boadiceas aged First Lieutenant Akers. Aubrey uses this device to be rid of the officer and send home letters, one of which attempts to excuse his leaving early without Lady Clonfert. On arrival, Aubrey meets Admiral Bertie and also has to contend with the disparate characters of his captains. One of these is Lord Clonfert, a minor member of the Irish aristocracy who has political influence, and who served with Jack Aubrey whilst out in the West Indies. They were involved in an action together and he had some reservations at the time about Clonfert's courage. Another is Captain Corbett who is a harsh disciplinarian and drives his men almost to the point of mutiny. Barett Bonden, usually Aubrey's coxswain, and Preserved Killick request permission to join Aubrey once more, particularly as Bonden was given fifty lashes for an unpolished firing piece on his gun. During his campaign Aubrey temporarily switches his pennant to the elderly 64-gun ship of the line HMS Raisonnable, but returns to the more seaworthy HMS Boadicea with the onset of the tropical cyclone season. La Réunion is captured almost bloodlessly after a landing by British East India Company troops under the cooperative Colonel Keating, their path already softened up by Maturin's propaganda and political machinations. Mauritius proves a tougher nut to crack. As HMS Néréide is detached to chase the Iphigenia to Port South East on Mauritius, Maturin suffers a serious fall and spends much time in the company of Lord Clonfert and Mr. McAdam, Clonfert's learned but drunken surgeon. The first demonstrates himself to be a largely ineffective person, craving the fawning attentions of his officers and crew, whilst McAdam, a less convivial conversationalist, is made fun of by the young officers particularly when ""in his cups."" However, events worsen on their arrival. Keen to capitalise on the capture of the Île de la Passe fort, the small group of ships, under the command of the unadventurous but solid Captain Pym, land men and troops to consolidate the land campaign. While they are so disposed, the French appear with four ships Bellone, Minerve, Victor and Ceylon. They boldly sail past the fort into the port; the British are caught unprepared but decide to sail in to attack. They struggle to navigate the unfamiliar channel into the harbour and, with two British ships running aground, the French are able to bring all their guns to bear on the ships that eventually reach the harbour. The end result is the Néréide is taken (Clonfert is severely wounded in the neck and head by a wooden splinter), Sirius and Magiciénne are burnt to prevent their capture, and Iphigenia and the fort Île de la Passe are abandoned to be retaken by the French. Only a messenger vessel, with Maturin aboard, gets back to La Réunion to inform the commodore of the ""ill tidings"". Aubrey immediately rushes to see if Iphigenia and Île de la Passe can be saved but the British are chased off after finding both are clearly in French hands. After eventually making contact with the Emma transport and the Windham, which itself appears to be unseaworthy, Aubrey believes his fortunes have changed when HMS Africaine - now commanded by Captain Corbett - re-joins them. Sailing in chase of the French during the night, Africaine clashes with the Astrée and the renamed Iphigenia (once again the French Iphigenie). But the encounter goes badly and Corbett is killed during the fight, probably, as the ship's surgeon informs Maturin later, by his own oppressed men. The French capture the ship, but leave it dismasted when the Boadicea and Aubrey bear down on them and, much to Aubrey's joy, refuse an engagement. Joined by the Otter and Staunch, the flotilla eventually reaches harbour and Africaine's refit is the Commodore's top priority. Before repairs are complete the Pearl races towards harbour, meeting HMS Boadicea with the news that Bombay is nearby, being pounded by both the French Vénus and Victor. Outrunning the Staunch and Otter, Jack engages the pair who have captured Bombay and makes use of extra volunteer crew from the refitting HMS Africaine to board both Bombay, recapturing her, and the Venus. During the encounter the French Commodore, Hamelin, is killed by grapeshot in his heart. Now with news that Bellone and Minerve are almost certainly ""heaved down"", and Iphigenia and Néréide are likely to be of little use even if refitted, Aubrey believes the tide has turned in his favour. En-route from St. Denis to take Mauritius from the French, the squadron encounters a large British force under the command of Admiral Bertie, who proceeds to steal Aubrey and Keating's thunder by taking command of the whole invasion force and claiming the honours. However, news of the birth of his son causes Aubrey to remain ebullient even when everyone expects his mood to be downcast. The final invasion, based almost entirely on Aubrey and Keating's original plan, is almost without bloodshed. The French capitulate after being given honourable terms, and Maturin finds that Clonfert has committed suicide by removing the bandages from his wounds while captured, unable to face up to the jubilation of his rival, Jack Aubrey, in victory. A ceremonial dinner is given back in Cape Town and Admiral Bertie, under the impression that Aubrey has influential political connections, gives Aubrey the honour of taking the dispatches aboard the Boadicea and sailing for England in compensation for ""stealing"" his victory."
1615,Adam of the Road,history," Adam is an eleven-year-old who wants to become like his father, Roger, and to do so he tries to be the best minstrel in England. Beginning of the story, Adam and his friend Perkin are in St. Alban's monastery, where they go to an old lady's house to visit Adam's dog, Nick. They quickly return to their home at the monastery and go to the roadside to find Roger is coming back from his long journey as a knight's minstrel. Roger tells Adam that he is going to London to follow in the knight's train. Adam is allowed to come, but he must hurry because the knight leaves the next day. While on the road, Adam meets Margery, the daughter of the knight, in a beautiful carriage. Soon after, following a night of feasting and partying, Roger tells Adam he lost his warhorse, Bayard, in a bet with another minstrel. One night, while Roger and Adam are sleeping, Bayard trades Nick to another minstrel, Jankin. Adam worries that Jankin will mistreat Nick. When Adam and Roger discover Nick is gone, they chase Jankin across England. When Adam sees Jankin in a crowded marketplace, he pursues him and is separated from Roger. Adam makes friends and eventually finds Nick with Perkin. Roger, Adam and Nick are eventually reunited in Oxford. Adam is offered a place at Oxford college, but decides to be a minstrel, like his father."
1616,The Roving Party,history," John Batman, ruthless, singleminded; four convicts, the youngest still only a stripling; Gould, a downtrodden farmhand; two free black trackers; and powerful, educated Black Bill, brought up from childhood as a white man. This is the roving party and their purpose is massacre. With promises of freedom, land grants and money, each is willing to risk his life for the prize. Passing over many miles of tortured country, the roving party searches for Aborigines, taking few prisoners and killing freely, Batman never abandoning the visceral intensity of his hunt. And all the while, Black Bill pursues his personal quarry, the much-feared warrior, Mannalargenna."
1617,Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution,history," Andre-Louis Moreau, educated as a lawyer, lives in Brittany with his godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who refuses to disclose Moreau's parentage. Moreau considers Aline, Kercadiou's niece, as his cousin. Because he loves her as a cousin he warns her against marrying the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr; however, she is ambitious and wishes to marry high, so she ignores him. A peasant, Mabey, is shot by the gamekeeper of the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr, on the Marquis's instructions, for poaching. Moreau's closest friend, the idealistic Philippe de Vilmorin, denounces the act as murder. He is provoked to a duel with the Marquis and killed for his ""gift of eloquence"" which the Marquis fears would set the Third Estate against the privileged estates. Moreau then vows to avenge the death, and sets off from his hometown of Gavrillac for Rennes to the King's lieutenant in Brittany, to see justice done. After being brushed off by the arrogant official, who refuses to act against a man of the Marquis' status, Moreau discovers a large political gathering. Much to the surprise of his peers, he delivers convincing rhetoric, using Vilmorin's arguments. Moreau goes on to Nantes and whips up the crowds there. These events set the stage for the French Revolution, and make Moreau a wanted man. To hide from the law, Moreau joins a troupe of travelling Commedia dell'Arte actors under M. Binet. He takes on the role of Scaramouche, the scheming rogue. He discovers an aptitude for acting and writing, which propels the troupe from near-poverty to success which takes them to the Feydau theatre in Nantes. Binet, who plays Pantaloon, grows ever more resentful of Moreau and his influence in the troupe. Moreau becomes engaged to Binet's daughter, but she, disappointed to find out that Moreau is of no account, accepts a proposal from the Marquis to become his mistress. The Marquis, now notorious for brutally quelling an uprising in Rennes, is lying low in Nantes. When the Marquis attends a performance, Moreau reveals the latter's presence to the audience and sparks a riot. When Binet, furious for being ruined, attacks him, Moreau shoots in self-defence. Binet is wounded, Moreau escapes. Moreau is now forced to go into hiding. He finds a fencing academy seeking ""a young man of good address with some knowledge of swordsmanship"". Moreau bluffs his way into apprenticeship with M. des Amis, the Maître en fait d'Armes (Master at Arms). Over time, he develops his own style of fencing, based on calculations of different moves. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, M. des Amis is killed, and Moreau inherits the school. When he is established at the school, he attempts a reconciliation with his godfather. The reconciliation, however, is brief. Moreau's friends convince him to take a seat in the new congress when they find out about his swordsmanship. They face the scourge of spadassinicides, aristocratic senators who have been provoking the inexperienced republicans to duel and wounding or killing them, just as the Marquis did to Vilmorin. Andre-Louis turns the tables and succeeds in killing or disarming all who challenge him. Finally, Moreau manages to goad the Marquis to challenge him to a duel. At last he can confront the murderer of his childhood friend, Philippe de Vilmorin. Having heard of this, Mme. de Plougastel, a relative whom he has seen only twice in his life, goes with Aline to stop the duel. They do not arrive in time, finding the Marquis wounded, though not fatally. The Marquis becomes a counter-revolutionary. In 1792, Paris is up in arms and the Tuilleries are stormed by a mob. Plougastel and Aline are in grave danger. The former's husband is a counter-revolutionary. Moreau, returning from an errand in Brittany, goes to visit his Godfather. Kercadiou tells him of the plight of Aline and Plougastel in Paris. Moreau agrees to rescue Aline, but does not agree to help Plougastel, until Kercadiou reveals to Andre-Louis that Mme. de Plougastel is his mother. Moreau secures and brings travel permits to the women to leave Paris. La Tour d'Azyr, on the run, seeks shelter in the same apartment. He and Andre-Louis draw pistols on each other. Mme. de Plougastel is forced to reveal that the Marquis is Moreau's father. Because of his recent actions, Moreau knows that he can't remain in Paris, so crosses the border with the women. Once relatively safe, Andre-Louis and Aline unravel the misconceptions about their feelings for each other and declare their love."
1618,The Fallon Blood,history," In The Fallon Blood, escaping brutal English overlords, 1760s Irishman Michael Fallon becomes an indentured servant to Charleston, South Carolina merchant Thomas Carver, where his infatuation with Carver's sensual daughter Elizabeth causes life-changing complications. His father died in the Battle Of Culloden. The threat of Irish Pickets forced Michael and his mother in both hiding and poverty. His mother sacrificed her own health to keep Michael fed for three years, when she died of malnutrition. Grogan ""adopted"" Michael and abused him in child labor. Michael ran away at the age of fifteen, vowing that none of his children would suffer the tragedy of poverty. Sometime later Michael became a soldier, and was taught the sword by Timothy Cavanaugh. His time with the army was a full seven years, after which he managed to own land in Ireland. Michael's prospects seemed fruitful until the day he killed an Englishman colonel by accident. Since the punishment of killing an Englishman was death, Michael was left no choice but to flee Ireland to the American colonies, where he became an indentured servant to Thomas Carver. This was the ""most fateful moment of his life."" He fell instantly in love with Carver's daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth did not return Michael's feelings until he dueled with Justin Fourrier, scion of Fourrier family. Although Justin was of high blood, his sword skills paled next to Michael's, who won easily. This was the beginning of Justin's hatred for Michael, and in turn, Elizabeth's desire of Michael. Elizabeth's desire was not love, however. She originally wanted a flirtation with the bound man to instill jealousy in Justin. It was her hope that the jealousy would make Justin a lover, instead of a distant man who cared only for her inheritance. Elizabeth's plans culminated in a night of seduction, which hopefully would force Michael into marriage. However, Michael wanted to ""set her up as a queen, not as a destitute."" Michael's actions towards building their future left Elizabeth alone with child. Horrified of the shame of wedding with child, she manipulated Justin into raping her so that he would give her his hand in marriage. Michael buried himself in working his plantation Tir Alanin to forget Elizabeth, and dabbled in aiding American resistance for the same purpose. He became good friends with Justin's brothers Louis and Henri, who then introduced him to their sister Gabrielle. Sometimes later Fourrier leaked news of Michael's slaying of the Englishman colonel and he was quite close of rotting away in prison. Saved by Gabrielle's plan, the two married. The American Revolution separated Michael and Gabrielle for years, though the two mended the damage between them in raising their family. Twenty years pass, finding Michael with son James and daughter Catherine. On constant guard from Justin's assassinations, Michael met his son Robert Fallon (from Elizabeth). His presence tore a rift in the Fallon family, who more or less hate Robert for his status as a bastard. Gabrielle made the first step towards bridging that chasm when Fourrier assassins set the Fallon house on fire and subsequently killed both Gabrielle and James. In The Fallon Pride, Michael Fallon's son Robert Fallon survives years at sea fighting Barbary pirates and enduring the siege at Tripoli. He then returns to America with an Irish wife, Moira McConnell, and goes into business in Charleston where he raises a somewhat troublesome family. In the eve of the Revolution, the Fourrier family is forced out of the colonies because their centuries-worth of power has no place in the new nation. It is then that Elizabeth accidentally reveals Robert's true heritage. With all of his hatred on the Fallon line, Justin spent years abusing Robert just to see the look on Elizabeth's face. ""She fought for food, clothes, an education . . ."" Years of spousal abuse had grinded Elizabeth's will until she died. Her last words to Robert was the name of his real father. Robert flees to the safety of the sea. During that time he has ventured to Charleston, though forcibly avoids his father, as he does not wish to be a burden to the Fallon family. His luck runs out when his name is casually offered to Michael, who then confronts him. The two try to make amends with Michael's family, though Gabrielle is livid and refuses to give Robert the benefit of the doubt. James takes this one step further, slugging Robert and warning him not to come back. A spoiled noble, James thinks him invincible due to his ""noble"" bloodline, and is thus astonished that he is beaten by a bastard. At the end of the Fallon Blood, Robert kills Henry Tyree to save his father, and leads Michael from his grief over Gabrielle's death with a question of sizing a boat Robert wants to purchase. This attempt works, coaxing Michael out of his misery and allows Michael to move on with his life. Sometime before the Fallon Pride, Robert develops incestous feelings towards his half-sister Catherine. Like his father Robert buries himself in the arms of another woman, a French girl by the name of Louise de Chardonnay. Despite the stalker-like intents of powerful sea mogul Murad Reis, Robert takes Louise as a mistress, who eventually bears his first son James. Before they can marry, however, Robert falls victim to Murad's revenge and is shipped to North Africa. For three years Robert fights Tripoli forces under the command of a Colonel Eaten, only to find upon his return that his father is dead, and Louise marries a Thomas Martin. Drunk on both grief and alcohol, Robert succumbs to his passion and sleeps with Catherine. The incest continues for years until finally a child named Edward is born. Edward's birth snaps Robert out of his passion for Catherine. He charges his niece Charollete to protect her new brother, and retreats back to the sea. Years pass. Robert falls in love with Irish girl Moira McDonnel, and returns to America with her as his wife. Like his father before him, war looms on the horizon, drawing Robert away from his family. After the war Robert is content with the hope of both rebuilding his family's wealth and raising his family. Robert has a minor role in the third volume, the Fallon Legacy. There are two pivotal moments that involve him. First he takes another French mistress named Lucille Gautier. This only exasperates the siutation with his wife Moira, who is waging war with Robert over allowing his bastards into his household and the defense of his incestous son Edward, who has grown up a spoiled noble much like his deceased half-uncle James. Robert breaks his defense for Edward when Edward arranges the kidnapping and rape of his half-sister Elizabeth by Lucien Fourrier's son Edouard. Robert Fallon is a source of ironic circumstance. His life of survival and the dangers he has endured makes him a close parallel of his father, who possesses the same will and determination. James, on the other hand, grows up a nobleman with the blind faith of wealth through breeding. He lacks Michael's endurance, thus aligning James more towards his uncle Justin Fourrier than Michael Fallon. In The Fallon Legacy, James Fallon, the last scion of the Fallon line, strikes south and west, adventuring in New Orleans, Missouri, and finally Texas (then still part of Mexico). He loves and loses women, ranches and breeds horses, and becomes entangled in the schemes of shady men and women. Enemies made by Michael and Robert during their lifetimes converge upon James, who must find out if he has strength enough to stand against them."
1619,The Color of Death: A Sir John Fielding Mystery,history," People got attacked by aliens. Even Sir John is laid low, and young Jeremy Proctor must take a significant role in the investigation."
1620,Pimpernel and Rosemary,history," It’s 1922 and Rosemary Fowkes is the darling of London post-war society. One of those women on whom Nature seems to have showered every one of her most precious gifts. As well as being tall, graceful and beautiful, Rosemary is also highly intelligent and a talented political writer. She is the author of a series of articles on the evils of bureaucracy in the near East, which have been published in the International Review under the pseudonym “Uno”. Peter Blakeney is the great, great grandson of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and the very image of his famous ancestor. A gifted sportsman educated at Eton and Oxford, Blakeney has rowed in the varsity eights, been awarded a VC in the war and is widely regarded as one of the finest cricketers England has ever produced. Blakeney is deeply in love with Rosemary, and she with him, but owing to his foolish pride and ambition he has lost his chance to marry her. Reluctant to simply be known as the husband of a world-famous wife, he has put his career and determination to win fame and fortune in his own right, ahead of love—and has driven her into the arms of his best friend, Lord Jasper Tarkington. Tarkington, who was the correspondent for the Daily Post in Hungary in 1919, is still a young man, but rather conservative in his tastes. He worships Rosemary but whilst she sees him as gentle, impassive and wonderfully kind, he fails to arouse the same level of passion in her heart as Peter. The day their engagement is announced, Peter meets Rosemary at the Five Arts’ Ball at the Albert Hall, after dancing with her he takes her to a secluded box and reveals his true feelings for her, yet she cannot bring herself to forgive him for the snub of the previous summer and insists that in six months time she will be Jasper Tarkington’s wife. Watching the couple dance at the Ball, is the Roumanian diplomat, General Naniescu, the guest of Lady Orange. On hearing that the beautiful young woman is the author of the articles which have caused his government so much harm, he asks Lady Orange to arrange a meeting at which he proposes that Miss Fowkes should visit Translyvania and study the conditions now prevailing in the territory now occupied by Roumania at first hand. She will then publish her studies in the English and American press, without fear of censorship. Rosemary is soon taken with the idea, but although Lord Tarkington has vowed not to get in the way of her journalistic efforts, he insists that she marries him immediately, so he can go with her and protect her as only as husband can. She agrees, and they are soon on their way to Translyvania, to stay with relations of Peter’s who she knows from earlier visits she took with Peter’s Hungarian mother. On arriving in Cluj, she meets with Peter’s cousin Anna Hever, and discovers that Anna has been helping her cousin Philip Imrey to smuggle anti-government articles which he has written, out of the country and into the British press, where they have caused an outburst of sympathy for the Hungarians of Translyvania. Rosemary realises that Anna and Philip are playing a dangerous game and promises to tell no-one of their secret, yet only days after she has arrived to stay at the Imrey’s house, Philip and Anna are arrested as traitors. Rosemary meets with Naniescu to plead for the pair, but he tells her that the only way she can secure their freedom is to write articles for the British press, which put the Roumanian regime in Translyvania in a positive light, and which will undo some of the harm done by Philip’s reports. The duo will be temporarily freed for the month she has to write the articles. When they are published the duo will be allowed to leave the country but if she refuses they will be re-arrested and sentenced to death as traitors. Meanwhile, Rosemary gets news that Peter Blakeney is in the country, allegedly to organise a cricket match between the Hungarians and Roumanians in Budapest. Jasper resolves to go to meet the Roumanian King and plead for leniency for Anna and Philip, but before he goes he tells Rosemary not to reveal anything of what has happened to Peter. Rosemary is shocked that Jasper appears not to trust Blakeney, whom she has always considered the perfect English gentleman, yet when she speaks to Anna about how their activities could have been discovered, her suspicions are aroused when she finds out that the only other person Anna had told about the scheme was Peter. Eventually Rosemary writes the arictles on the behest of her husband, but having consulted with Elza Imrey, who is not willing to pay such a price for the freedom of her son and niece, has agreed to destroy them. However, before she can do so, they are stolen by Blakeney who uses them to barter with Naniescu for the title deeds to the Imrey's chateaux. Who is the mysterious ""Number 10""? Can Peter really be a spy in the employ of the Romanian government? Why is Jasper suddenly acting so strange? How can Rosemary stop the stolen articles from being published in the Times?"
1621,The Outlaw of Torn,history," The story is set in 13th century England and concerns the fictitious outlaw Norman of Torn, who purportedly harried the country during the power struggle between King Henry III and Simon de Montfort. Norman is the supposed son of the Frenchman de Vac, once the king's fencing master, who has a grudge against his former employer and raises the boy to be a simple, brutal killing machine with a hatred of all things English. His intentions are partially subverted by a priest who befriends Norman and teaches him his letters and chivalry towards women. Otherwise, all goes according to plan. By 17, Norman is the best swordsman in all of England; by the age of 18, he has a large bounty on his head, and by the age of 19, he leads the largest band of thieves in all of England. None can catch or best him. In his hatred for the king he even becomes involved in the civil war, which turns the tide in favor of de Montfort. In another guise, that of Roger de Conde, he becomes involved with de Montfort's daughter Bertrade, defending her against her and her father's enemies. She notes in him a curious resemblance to the king's son and heir Prince Edward. Finally brought to bay in a confrontation with both King Henry and de Montfort, Norman is brought down by the treachery of de Vac, who appears to kill him, though at the cost of his own life. As de Vac dies, he reveals that Norman is in fact Richard, long-lost son of King Henry and Queen Eleanor and brother to Prince Edward. The fencing master had kidnapped the prince as a child to serve as the vehicle of his vengeance against the king. Luckily, Norman/Richard turns out not to be truly dead, surviving to be reconciled to his true father and attain the hand of Bertrade."
1622,"Valperga; or The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca",history," Valperga is a historical novel which relates the adventures of the early fourteenth-century despot Castruccio Castracani, a real historical figure who became the lord of Lucca and conquered Florence. In the novel, his armies threaten the fictional fortress of Valperga, governed by Countess Euthanasia, the woman he loves. He forces her to choose between her feelings for him and political liberty. She chooses the latter and sails off to her death."
1623,The Midwife's Apprentice,history," The plot about a young girl who who was found in a dung pile, who learns to be a midwife's appentice, and then soon learns how to be a midwife herself. This book is appropriate for the age group 8 or 9 to 13 or 14."
1624,The Colossus of Rhodes,history," It is April, and the beginning of the sailing season. The book opens on the marina pier at Ostia as the newly-fitted Delphina (formerly the slave ship Vespa) prepares to sail. Passengers and crew are saying goodbye to their loved ones, making Lupus keenly feel the absence of his family. Though the purpose of the voyage is to rescue the freeborn children sold as slaves by Venalicius (the ship’s former owner), Lupus secretly intends to find his mother and not return to Ostia. Several bad omens make Captain Geminus consider postponing the trip, but Lupus, as the ship's owner, insists on sailing immediately. At the last minute, Marcus Artorius Bato joins the ship as a passenger, anxious to follow a recently-departed Greek ship connected with fresh cases of kidnapping in Ostia. Other passengers are the children’s tutor Aristo, the patrician poet Gaius Valerius Flaccus and his slave-boy, Zetes. Crew members include Atticus the cook, the good-looking Silvanus, and Zosimus, who keeps homing pigeons. During the voyage many things go wrong, and they begin to suspect there is a traitor on board. They drop Aristo off at Corinth to visit his family, and call at Symi to find Lupus's mother. He discovers she has gone to Rhodes to dedicate herself to the temple. On the way to the island, they discover that Zosimus is the traitor, who has been sending messages ahead via his pigeons. Bato and Flaccus tie Zosimus up and interrogate him about the gang’s activities, but Flaccus is shaken to learn that Zetes, his own slave boy, is one of the gang’s freeborn abductees. In Rhodes they learn about the mysterious slave overlord Magnus who has everyone dancing to his tune. Captain Geminus, Bato, and Flaccus leave the ship to investigate the slave vessel Medea. What they don’t know is that they are being lured into a trap: the Medea is brimming with Magnus's thugs, while other men of his sneak aboard the Delphina and take Flavia, Nubia and Jonathan prisoner. Over the fallen Colossus, Lupus corners Magnus, who tells him that his friends have been captured and forces him to make a terrible choice: according to Magnus, Lupus’s mother has pledged to sacrifice her life to Apollo in exchange for her son’s safety; if Lupus runs to the temple, he might be able to save her, but in the meantime, the Delphina will set sail with Flavia and the others, and all the kidnapped children aboard. Lupus remembers that, despite the vow he made to find his mother, he made another vow to always stand by his friends. He runs to the local authorities and brings the local police to the Medea in time to save Geminus and the others from the trap. They then return to the Delphina in full force, rescuing Flavia and the others. As soon as they are safe, Lupus runs to the temple, but is told he is too late. However, Magnus was lying, or at least bending the truth: Lupus’s mother, Melissa, is not dead; she has become a priestess of Apollo, as she swore to do if she received word that her son was still alive, which she did a month earlier. She has already left for another temple in Greece. Lupus is saddened, but understands that his mother, like himself, made a vow which she cannot break. The day is saved, though Magnus has managed to escape Rhodes. On the pretext of continuing his tour of Asia, Flaccus swears to hunt him down and find all the children he sold as slaves, impressing Flavia. The Delphina sets sail for her next port, laden with valuable cargoes, and carrying the four now-inseparable friends."
1625,The Iron Hand of Mars,history," In The Iron Hand of Mars, Falco is sent to Germania Liberi in the aftermath of a rebellion. He is dispatched by Vespasian to deliver a new standard, give a report on the Legio XIV Gemina, and to discover what happened to their Legate. He also searches for the rebel leader Julius Civilis and encounters the priestess Veleda"
1626,A True Woman,history," The main character in the book is Louise Harris, a plain but content young woman who leads a life of prosy luxury. Louise gets up every morning and eats a copious breakfast, she walks the dogs, hunts in the autumn and skates in the winter, just like hundreds of other well-born, well-bred English girls of average means. Loo is an altogether nice person, and so it is that Luke de Mountford, who knows a good thing when he sees it, asks her to be his wife. Luke is heir to his uncle, Lord Radcliffe and therefore deemed a satisfactory match for Louis. However, just when everything seems to be going well, another nephew with a claim to his uncle’s fortune turns up unexpectedly. Luke is forced to reveal to Louise that their financial future may not be as guaranteed as he had hoped. Faced with this seemingly unavoidable situation, Luke is considering setting up an Ostrich farm in Africa as a way of making a living, but he can’t bring himself to inflict such an existence on his darling Loo, who is always so perfectly dressed, so absolutely modern and dainty. When the intruder, Philip de Mountford, is discovered stabbed in a cab, suspicion naturally falls on Luke who certainly has a motive for murder. The head of the Criminal Investigation Department, who happens to be Louisa’s uncle, reveals his evidence before the ensuing trial and allows Colonel Harris to conceal himself in his office while a witness for the prosecution details the points of the evidence he will give at the trial. He also reveals that he intends to allow Luke time to escape should the verdict at the inquest be against him. But Luke is, notwithstanding, tried for his life, and before his arrest he faces Louise once again. ""It was a supreme farewell, and she knew it. She felt it in the quiver of agony which went through him as he pressed her so close that her breath nearly left her body, and her heart seemed to stand still. She felt it in the sweet sad pain of the burning kisses with which he covered her face, her eyes, her hair, her mouth. His face was just a mask, marble-like and impassive, jealously guarding the secrets of the soul within.Just a good-looking, well-bred young Englishman, in fact, who looked in his elegant attire ready to start off on some social function."""
1627,Duty and Desire,history," In relation to Pride and Prejudice, on which the novel is based, Duty and Desire takes place between Darcy's initial leaving of Hertfordshire and his reappearance in Prides narrative at Rosings Park. Following on from the events of An Assembly Such as This, the novel opens with Fitzwilliam Darcy preparing for the Christmas season with his extended family. Several events have conspired to trouble him, however; as well as his ongoing self-examination of his romantic feelings towards Elizabeth Bennet (who does not appear in the novel, but remains a significant background presence throughout), his sister Georgiana is swiftly recovering from her ill-treatment at the hands of George Wickham by embracing an interest in religion, something encouraged by her new governess Mrs. Annesley but which bemuses and troubles Darcy. Furthermore, Darcy's well-meaning attempts to dissuade his friend Charles Bingley from what Darcy sees as his ill-fated and unrequited romance with Elizabeth's sister Jane are forcing Darcy to resort to underhanded and deceitful tactics that Darcy considers unworthy of himself. Darcy finally decides that he needs a wife, and resolves to find a woman like Elizabeth Bennet from within his own social sphere, thus banishing any lingering feelings he has for her. To that end, he accepts the invitation of Lord Sayre, an old university friend for a week's stay at Sayre's family estate, Norwycke Castle, hoping to find a suitable wife amongst the party gathered there. Accompanied by his loyal valet Fletcher, he soon discovers that the members of the party he is joining are scheming, unscrupulous and not entirely what they seem, and that Sayre himself is a gambling addict who has almost gambled away his entire family estate. Despite this, he finds himself almost drawn with unusual passion to Sayre's disliked half-sister, Lady Sylvanie, who appears to share many of Elizabeth Bennet's charms and characteristics. During Darcy's stay at Norwycke, however, numerous unusual and increasingly sinister events begin to occur; many of Darcy's possessions are stolen or interfered with within his room, the ritualistically slain body of a baby pig is found at a nearby collection of stones imbued with great supernatural and superstitious importance by the locals, and a local child is kidnapped. Darcy and Fletcher, investigating the unusual circumstances, discover that Sayre (who is almost bankrupt) is desperate to have Lady Sylvanie married to Darcy to inherit the estate of his hated and now-deceased stepmother, and Sylvanie herself - who believes herself able to use charms and spells to direct men to follow her will - is herself eager to gain revenge on Sayre, who ruined her and her mother. Darcy manages to untangle himself from their various schemes and uncovers the culprit behind the recent goings-on - Sayre's stepmother, the former Lady Sayre, who was alive all the time and has been manipulating her daughter in an attempt to destroy her stepson. Revealed, Lady Sayre kills herself, but not before forcing Darcy to face his own darker nature and his deeply-hidden desires for revenge on George Wickham. Even more unsettled than when he started, Darcy swears off trying to find a wife within his own sphere, leaving him once more alone with his complicated feelings for Elizabeth."
1628,The Wild Geese,history," Suezo, a moneylender, is tired of life with his nagging wife, so he decides to take a mistress. Otama, the only child of a widower merchant, wishing to provide for her aging father, is forced by poverty to become the moneylender's mistress. When Otama learns the truth about Suezo, she feels betrayed, and hopes to find a hero to rescue her. Otama meets Okada, a medical student, who becomes both the object of her desire and the symbol of her rescue."
1629,"The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: The Pox Party",history," The greater part of the story is told by a boy named Octavian, who grew up with his mother Cassiopeia, an African princess, in a house full of philosophers and scientists in colonial Boston. Under the watchful eyes of Mr. Gitney, also known as 03-01, Octavian has received a classical education as well as a musical education which has made him into an extremely skilled violinist. Octavian eventually comes to understand the price of his powdered wigs and education: he is not only the ""property"" of Mr. Gitney, but he is also being used as an experiment to test whether the African race is inferior to the European race. In time, Cassiopeia angers the scientists' benefactor and the Society loses its monetary support. The two are forced to go under the new watchful eye of Richard Sharpe, who cuts Octavian off from his books. It is later revealed that Richard Sharpe works for a group of colonial businessmen, who now fund the house where Octavian is held. These businessmen own slaves, and it is strongly implied that Sharpe is attempting to bias the experiment with Octavian in order to prove that Africans are inferior. He does this by stopping most of Octavian's education and making him work in the house. When the political unrest that would later spur the American Revolution begins to seep into the Gitney household, Gitney decides to move into the countryside outside of Boston, and then hold a Pox Party. Each attendee is infected with the pox, with the hope that under this controlled circumstance they will have only benign cases. Gitney also wants to both weaken and quarantine his slaves when he begins to hear talk of a slave revolt. Cassiopeia, however, is killed by the pox, and after her death is dissected by the scientists in the house. Octavian discovers what the scientists are doing and in his anger flees the house, and ends up in the Colonial Army. Octavian's military adventures are narrated mostly in epistolary form by Private Evidence Goring in letters to his sister Fruition. Octavian is eventually recaptured, and back at the Gitney house he is kept chained and completely alone. When Sharpe and Gitney, as well as his former classics teacher Dr. Trefusis, eventually decide to speak with him, Octavian is furious to discover that, with many of their funds coming from plantation owners in Virginia, they are counting on Octavian to fail, and to prove the ""inferiority"" of the African race."
1630,Flashman and the Dragon,history," In Hong Kong, Flashman is convinced by Phoebe Carpenter, a lovely minister's wife, to take a shipment of opium into Canton, with the promise of a later, more pleasant meeting. On the way he discovers that instead of opium he is carrying guns to the Taiping rebels. In Canton, Flashman manages to convince Harry Smith Parkes that he was trying to stop the shipment. However, instead of being able to head for home as he originally intended, he is put on the intelligence staff in Shanghai. From Shanghai he travels to Nanking and meets the leaders of the Taiping rebels, in order to convince them not to march on Shanghai. Flashman then proceeds to the mouth of the Peiho to join Lord Elgin's staff for his march to Pekin. After being captured by the Imperials, he meets Xianfeng Emperor and becomes the prisoner and lover of Yehonala, the imperial concubine. When the British army arrives at Pekin, he witnesses the destruction of the imperial Summer Palace. But after that event, while heading for home, he is drugged and apparently kidnapped while attempting to fulfill his promise with Pheobe Carpenter. There the story ends, and it is never revealed in any subsequent volume what then became of him."
1631,The Diamond of Drury Lane,history," An orphaned 13-year-old girl named Catherine ‘Cat’ Royal lives in the Theatre Royal, after the owner, Mr. Sheridan, who named her after the theatre, found her as a baby. She knows well the Theatre and its surroundings, later 18th century England. Cat befriends an African boy violinist, Pedro, who arrives to be the musician’s apprentice. Cat also meets the aristocratic Avon family, and the children, Lord Francis and Lady Elizabeth, who are not as arrogant as other wealthy people. She meets Johnny, the new prompt with a rather unmistakable talent for art, specifically controversial political cartoons, and a mysterious past. She learns that Johnny is the “Captain Sparkler” accused of treason for the cartoons against the king. Johnny had had a romantic past with Lady Elizabeth. One night Cat overhears Mr. Sheridan and his colleague Marchmont, discussing a valuable diamond hidden in the theatre. Cat is intrigued, but she promises to protect it for Mr. Sheridan. Cat learns that the diamond is not a real diamond, but it is actually Johnny, the prompter. He is of value, because of the reward for his capture. However, a street gang led by Cat’s enemy Billy “Boil” Shepherd, learns about the diamond, and assumes it is a real diamond. He breaks into the Theatre to steal it. Cat and Pedro manage to evade him, but Cat is arrested for having money that was supposed to be for smuggling Johnny out of England where he will be safe. Boil is also arrested for stealing the money, although 2 of his gang member actually stole the money. Johnny eventually gets out of England, and Cat is reunited with her Theatre and everyone in it. In the end, Mr. Sheridan tells her that there was no real diamond, nor Johnny, as a metaphorical diamond. Cat is the true diamond of the Theatre Royal, and the Theatre would be nothing without its ""Cat."""
1632,The Crisis,history," Set in the author's home town of St. Louis, Missouri, the site of pivotal events in the western theater of the Civil War, with historically prominent citizens having both Northern and Southern sympathies. St. Louis was also the pre-war home of both Ulysses Grant and William T. Sherman, each of whom is depicted in the book. Romantic tension develops between the four main characters: one, Virginia Carvel, the fashionable daughter of Comyn Carvel, a southern gentleman of the old school; another, Clarence Maxwell Colfax, her n'er-do-well cousin who becomes a stalwart cavalier in the Southern cause in an effort to win Ginny's approval; the third, Stephen A. Brice, an earnest young lawyer from Boston who antagonizes Virginia by his zeal for Abraham Lincoln's cause; and the fourth, Eliphalet Hopper, a hard-working clerk with ambitions to advance himself both financially and socially. The crisis of the title is provoked by Abraham Lincoln's opposition to the extension of slavery, and the power of his personal integrity to win people to his cause, including the young lawyer Brice, who becomes a devoted admirer and proponent following a personal interview on the eve of the Freeport debate between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. This meeting depicts Lincoln's determination to advance the cause of freedom through the possible (and likely) sacrifice of his own political ambitions, and is related with a very believable combination of rustic humor and political acumen on Lincoln's part. The events prior to Lincoln’s nomination and his eventual election to the Presidency elicit different reactions among the citizens of St. Louis, from the determined antipathy of the Southern sympathizers, to the equally determined patriotism of the population of German immigrants who have fled from their homeland and whose devotion to liberty has caused them to transfer their allegiance to the ideal of American democracy. One of them is Stephen's fellow lawyer, Karl Richter, who bears the scar of a duel fought with broadswords between himself and an arrogant German noble; a duel based on an actual incident in Berlin. Although the personal rivalries follow an almost soap opera style formula, the overall events of the war from the perspective of St. Louis and the Western theater of war are dramatically depicted with well-researched authenticity, and both Grant and Sherman are depicted as having a personal involvement in the lives of the main characters. A pivotal moment in the heroine's life is presented through her transformation from being self-centered and self-absorbed to becoming self-sacrificing and dedicated to easing the suffering of those around her. This is represented as a Christian metaphor for the way that God uses challenges to mould a person's character. In the end, Virgina and the young lawyer find themselves meeting Lincoln together to try to save her cousin's life after Clarence is condemned as a Southern spy, and together they experience Lincoln's power to bring about a reconciliation between them, just before the national reconciliation which Lincoln proposed between the North and the South would be aborted by John Wilkes Booth's bullet. This novel is a story about Abraham Lincoln in the same sense that the novel Ben Hur is ""a tale of the Christ,"" in that Lincoln only appears twice, for a total of about two dozen pages, but his philosophy is a dynamic presence throughout the story. The author portrays Lincoln as being the sacrifice America had to pay to redeem it from the sin of slavery. In his post-script, the author offers this justification for supporting Lincoln's point of view, ""Lincoln loved both the South and the North""."
1633,Over the Wine Dark Sea,history," The plot of the book centers around the cousins voyaging around the Greek parts of the Mediterranean Sea. They trade a great many things on their ship, the Aphrodite, including, much to the chagrin of many on board, peacocks. During their voyage they encounter pirates, other traders and get caught up in conflicts between some of Alexander's former generals, including Antigonos."
1634,The King Must Die,history," The story is told by Theseus, looking back on his life from his vantage point as an adult. The novel opens with Theseus as a six-year-old child in the household of his grandfather, King Pittheus of Troizen. His mother is a priestess; his father's identity is unknown. Theseus recounts an early experience that made a great impact upon him and which contains some of the key themes running throughout the book. He recalls the rite of the Horse sacrifice; he is shocked and saddened when he sees the ""King Horse"", whom he considers a noble beast and his friend, killed in front of him as a sacrifice to the gods. However, this leads to a conversation with his grandfather the King who tells him how the King used to be sacrificed with the Horse and how even now a true king of the Hellene people, whose duty is to look after his people, may need to make the ultimate sacrifice. His grandfather discusses the role of ""moira"" or fate in their lives but also emphasizes that in order for a king to lead his people, he must consent to the risk of sacrifice, in order that ""he can walk with the god"". This becomes a recurrent theme in the story as, time and time again, Theseus is faced with the choice of choosing a safe course of action over one where he places his faith in the ""god"" and his skill and where he consents to what he sees as the will of the god. It is during the horse sacrifice that he first hears a surging sea-sound in his ears that he identifies as the voice of his god. After the horse sacrifice, he serves at Poseidon's temple for the next three years. While there as a boy, he dares to jump into the Palace bull's pen and play a risky game of evading the bull before it can harm him. He leads other boys into the game; when one of these boys, Dexios, slips and falls into the pen, Theseus feels that he is responsible and risks his life to save the boy by jumping onto the head of the bull. This incident foreshadows his future sojourn in Crete as a bull dancer. While serving at Poseidon's temple one day, he senses that something is wrong and tells Simo, a shallow and vulgar boy who has been dedicated as a slave to the temple, to be silent. He tells the boy to get out and at that moment an earthquake shakes the temple. Simo believes that Theseus is indeed Poseidon's son and Theseus is told by his grandfather that his ability to sense earthquakes is a warning sent to him by the god so that he can protect the people. As Theseus ages, he becomes frustrated because he is shorter and lighter than most Hellenes his age. As a result, he fails at the traditional wrestling style that relies just on weight and strength, though he is an excellent archer, javelin-thrower, and runner. One night, frustrated by this, he swims out to sea and almost drowns, but then hears the sea-surge sound in his ears which he believes to be the sign from the god; he returns to the shore of a village having a feast and is greeted as ""Kouros of Poseidon"" by the village beauty, who later that night becomes his first lover. When Theseus is fourteen, his older friend Diokles is killed by cattle raiders; Theseus avenges his friend by killing the raider. Soon after this, the Cretan ships come to Troizen to take away young boys and girls as tribute to Minos for the bull dancing in Crete. Theseus asks his grandfather why he doesn't fight the Cretans. His grandfather tells him that the Cretans control the essential sea trade routes and that they could bring 5,000 men to Troizen in a day. He sends Theseus into the hills so that he is not chosen for the bulldance. As time goes on, Theseus figures out how to compensate for his lighter build by learning to defeat his wrestling opponents through agility, using special holds and throws, some taught to him by two Egyptian boys and others formulated by his own ingenuity. When Theseus turns seventeen, his mother takes him to the sacred Grove of Zeus in the hills and explains that his father made her swear an oath not to tell him who his father was unless he could pry up a certain heavy stone. Theseus tries again and again to lift up the stone, but fails. His failure haunts him for 2 weeks or more but, after listening to a harper tell of the mechanisms used to hoist stones for a great temple and after praying to Apollo, he realizes that he can use a lever to raise the great stone. He recovers a man's sword and sandals from beneath it. At first, Theseus is bitter that his lineage is not godly, but his irritation vanishes when his grandfather explains that Theseus is the only son and heir of King Aigeus of Athens. Theseus is to travel to Athens and join his father at once. After being affronted by way that Cretan merchants, whose ships control the sea route to Athens, treat the people of Troizen, Theseus decides to go to Athens via the bandit-infested land route: the Isthmus of Corinth. At the time, this seems like a foolhardy thing to do but it later turns out to be the beginning of his many victories over adversity and Theseus later reflects on how the Cretan merchants thus unknowingly set in motion a momentous series of events. On the way through the Isthmus, his sole companion, Dexios, is killed by the bandit Skiron. Theseus avenges him, which is considered the first of his great feats. In Eleusis, a matriarchical and non-Hellene society focused on worship of the Earth mother goddess (in contrast to the patriarchical Hellene society that places higher value on worship of male gods), it is the custom to kill their king each year, as a sacrifice to the Earth mother goddess. As Theseus enters Eleusis, he is halted on the road by the 27-year-old Eleusinian Queen, who is the priestess for the mother goddess and whose sacred name is Persephone. She tells him he must wrestle her husband, Kerkyon, the year-king, in single combat, since this is the ""day when the King must die"". Theseus is not sure that he wants to fight Kerkyon since his goal is to reach Athens; in addition, the tradition of his Hellene society is that the king may need to sacrifice himself for his people for some particular goal or reason but that a true king knows when he is being called to do so and does so willingly. Here he is dismayed at the fact that Kerkyon has not consented to this sacrifice. Nevertheless, he believes that the Eleusinians may kill him if he refuses or the priestess may curse him and in any event he decides that fate has set this battle in his path and that he must trust in the gods. Before they fight, Kerkyon asks Theseus ""Whose son are you?"" and Theseus, not wanting to reveal the identity of Aigeus, tells them that his birth came about through his mother's sacrifice to the earth goddess. This makes an impression upon the Eleusinians since they believe that the earth goddess may have sent Theseus but Kerkyon laughs for some reason known only to himself and Persephone, his wife and Queen, and then says that she won't know whom to root for. It is suggested later in the book that a prophecy had been made about such a man overthrowing the traditions in Eleusis. For now, however, Theseus begins to wrestle Kerkyon; it turns out that Kerkyon is, like Theseus, a good wrestler and is also older and stronger than Theseus. Theseus begins to fear that he will lose. However, the Queen as priestess begins to beat upon a loud gong while the women of Eleusis chant in order to diminish the spirit of Kerkyon and help Theseus win. This is illustrative of a repeated theme in this book where an action or event occurs that is interpreted by some or all of the characters as having a supernatural element but can also be read as having a naturalistic explanation, e.g., purely as the natural consequence of the beliefs of the people. Theseus pins Kerkyon to the ground but, before he kills him, makes sure he is ready to die and asks Kerkyon to discharge Theseus of his death. Once he kills Kerkyon, he becomes the year-king and husband of the Queen in his stead. In their first night in bed, he is shocked by the Eleusinian custom of allowing the people to watch the King and the Queen have sex together; however, his anger dissipates when he and the Queen are truly alone. He says that he learned more in that one night with her than in the three prior years with the girls of Troizen. But he soon learns that the Queen rules in Eleusis and the King has no real power. The people shower love and gifts on the King but that is because he is expected to die in one year's time. Therefore, everyone treats him like a child of no account. Since Theseus has a strong sense of destiny and belief in the importance of kingship, he soon becomes restless and frustrated after he tries to participate in governing with his Queen and is rebuffed. Therefore, he begins to plan to build a base of support amongst the Eleusinian youths who accompany him around Eleusis. He begins to take them away on hunts to build some sense of independence and comraderie amongst them. His shows his strategic gifts by giving thought to how he can build an alliance with neighboring Megara since he does not wish to die at the end of his one year reign. With his companions, he hunts the great she-boar Phaia. As she charges his men, for whom he feels responsible, he risks his life alone against the boar and, with his agility and quick thinking, uses the boar's strength against it to impale and kill the beast. Pylas, prince of Megara, is impressed by this feat and Theseus, never one to let an opportunity pass, then shows his political skills by persuading Pylas to ask the Queen's brother to undertake a joint war to eliminate the bandits that infest the Isthmus of Corinth. However, killing the she-boar is sacrilege in Eleusis; on his return, Persephone locks him from their room. He climbs to the roof and jumps down onto the terrace leading to their room. The Queen angrily tells him to get out and he refuses, sending her servants out and re-locking the door. Because she berated him in front of her women, which he believes is beneath his status as king, he becomes enraged and threatens to beat her if she does not modify her behavior. They tussle together, she tries to call her guards, but he puts his hand over her mouth and she tries to bite him. They fall to the floor and the Queen's towel falls aways, which leads Theseus to think ""For once in this room, it will be a man who says when"". At that moment, she stabs him, aiming for his heart but misses. As he is bleeding and she is thinking of calling her guards, he tells her that ""if you send me below before my time, by Zeus you shall come with me"", and then he releases her. When she bursts into tears he softens, showing that he is still young and impressionable. He shows concern for her at this point even though he is bleeding. He then picks her up from the debris on the floor and carrys her to bed. He naively imagines that they have made things up. Xanthos, the brother of the Queen, agrees to go to war with Megara and further even agrees to let Theseus lead, given his experience in the Isthmus. Theseus is surprised that Xanthos did not argue the point, but, due to his youthful innocence and pride, thinks that he has won him over. He does not suspect that his wife and lover, the Queen, has asked Xanthos to take this opportunity to have Theseus killed. Persephone correctly anticipates that Theseus is trying to overthrow the established order and change the custom that the King must die. The cleansing of the Isthmus of bandits is a complete success and the two attempts by Xanthos to kill Theseus through the covert efforts of others fail. Theseus learns of the treachery of Xanthos and confronts him, challenging him to fight Theseus directly rather than seek his death through others. As they fight with spears, Theseus throws his spear and misses; Xanthos then has the advantage with a spear against the sword of Theseus. As Xanthos begins to press his advantage, Theseus sees that several Eleusinian men have throw their spears near him, showing that the men feel more loyalty to Theseus than Xanthos; Theseus he picks one up and strikes Xanthos with a mortal blow. As Xanthos dies, he is unable to understand this display of loyalty to Theseus. Theseus retires to bed that night with his new won slave girl, Philona, who dresses his wounds. She asks him to promise to never separate her from his household. He keeps this promse and later in life, he has two sons by her, Itheus the shipmaster and Engenes, commander of the Palace Guard. With the excuse of wanting to be purified of Xanthos's blood at the Athenian shrine of Apollo, Theseus finally goes to Athens. But his aged father Aigeus, who fears the powerful young king (whom he quite fails to recognise as his son), would have poisoned Theseus on the urging of his lover Medea, who wants the Athenian throne for her sons. But Aigeus recognises Theseus's sword just in time, and knocks the poisoned goblet from his son's hand. Medea escapes; no one knows how. Aigeus proclaims Theseus his son and heir. When Theseus returns to Eleusis, he finds that Queen Persephone has raised the army against him. When Theseus's oration persuades the army to support him, Persephone stages a suicide attempt by letting one of her sacred snakes (used in the mother-goddess rituals she presides over as priestess-queen) bite her. After Theseus gives her leave to go to a shrine to die, one of the court's women reveals to him that she is functionally immune to the snake-bites (immunity being necessary to ensure survival of priestesses) by way of calculated doses of diluted venom - and will not die, but is using the effects of the bite as a ruse to facilitate her flight from Theseus' justice. When a Cretan ship comes to collect a yearly tribute of seven boys and seven girls from Athens, Theseus offers himself in one boy's place. He insists, despite his father's pleas, claiming that it is what his patron god Poseidon has asked him to do. Theseus becomes a Cretan slave. The boat makes for Crete, and Theseus is content with the idea that he is to be sacrificed to Poseidon. When a fight occurs between an Eleusinian and Athenian boy, Theseus stops it and realizes he must do something. He becomes king of the victims, and makes them swear an oath that they will be together, not Minyans or Hellenes, but one group. They call themselves the Cranes. One of the girls, Helike, is a tumbler, and can dance very well. Bull dancers train for three months in Knossos Palace before they go and get their bull. Then the bull has to catch them; they are not sacrificed to him. The bull-dance began as a sacrifice to Poseidon, whom they believe lives beneath the Palace and causes earthquakes when he is angry. Over the ages the bull-dance developed into an art form, and those who survive the dance teach their art to the newer ones. They go in teams in front of the bull and sometimes, with a good team, the bull tires before someone is killed. In older days noble Cretan youths did it themselves for honor, but those days are gone, and they bring in slaves now. They learn that teams of fourteen dance, but are not usually kept together. To show that they are a team, they perform the Crane dance when they come into port. A crowd of Cretans is there, and larger, fairer people who are from the Palace. The court of King Minos is of Hellene descent and speaks Greek. Among the courtiers are a large man who is greatly respected, so that one of the Cranes speculates that he might be the King, but Theseus says that he isn't kingly before realizing that they'll understand what he says. The large man slaps Theseus, and then slaps him again after receiving a curt answer to a question. The man throws a gold ring in the water and tells him to find it if he is Poseidon's son. Theseus prays to Poseidon, finds the ring, and comes up with it. The man asks for it back, but then Theseus says it was offered to Poseidon and throws it back in. The man is Asterion, son of Minos. They see Knossos Palace, the hugely impressive House of the Axe. The walls of Crete are the seas that the King's ships control. The Cretans call the palace the Labyrinth, and the Cranes see the King in a brief ceremony. In a room with a huge statue of the Mother, a priestess accepts tokens from the nobles, who point to members of the group. She is ""Ariadne the Holy One, the Goddess-on-Earth."" She cleanses Theseus, because he has shed the blood of kinsmen. Theseus desires her and has to keep himself calm. A man named Aktor comes to take them into the bull court and is told to train them as a team. One boy, clearly the leader of them all, called the Corinthian, sizes up the Cranes and talks to them. They learn that they are the first team to be kept together and that only the King had ever dedicated an entire team before Asterion did it. The bull-dancers all live and eat together. The boys are allowed to roam the Palace at night, while the girls are kept securely in a separate dorm. Although he never sleeps with the girls of the Bull Court, Theseus learns it is not hard for a bull-dancer to get a woman. Other dancers are in homosexual relationships with each other. They practice using the Bull of Daedalus, named after its original designer. The bronze horns were supposedly his own handiwork. The bull-leapers are respected athletes, for they grasp the bull's horns and fly off them when his head rears and are caught by other dancers when they land. Each member of the team is critical to the life of everyone else. The Cretan bulls have been bred for the dance, and the intelligent and quick ones are used for sacrifice. The ones in the dance are slower, but still dangerous. But they cannot be harmed, for the god lives inside them. At the bull dance performance, everyone addresses Ariadne as the Goddess, saying ""We salute you, we who are going to die."" The Corinthian tries to help another dancer who is disliked by her own team. They would not help her, but the Corinthian does and is killed for it. Theseus makes the Cranes swear a new oath to hold the life of each as precious as their own. A boy gives him a bracelet that the Corinthian wanted him to have. They go get their bull in the pasture, and name him Herakles. They learn that Asterion is not really the King's son but the Queen's, by a bull-leaper, and the King has treated him poorly so there is no love between them. Theseus becomes consumed by the bull dance, feeling that being a bull-leaper is all one could ever ask for in life. The team survives for three months without a single member dying, which is unheard of. Theseus receives a summons to a party given by Asterion, where he is patronized and treated like a prize horse instead of a person. Asterion makes even Theseus' honor an object of amusement. The other lords are kinder to him. They no longer think much of the gods and their honor does not mean much to them. Adultery means little to them, and they hold no grudges. The Cretan nobles are weary of life the way it is, because things have been so easy for them. Another sign that Crete is falling into decadence is their art. Cretans are the best potters in the world, but they have gotten bored with the beauty of their pottery and begin constructing crude things, simply because they are new. One day he is taken to meet ten-year-old Phaedra, the King's daughter, who says she is in love with him. He tells her that if he lives he will be a king, and says she can marry him then. (This is an unconscious prophecy as it actually will happen later in their lives.) Theseus dreams of conquering Crete and knows that the native Cretans would help him. Helike's brother shows up as a traveling performer, whose secret purpose in coming is to make offerings for his sister in the next life. Theseus explains that she is still alive and tells the boy to give a message to Aigeus, saying that Crete is ripe for the plucking. With the Cranes he begins to plan an uprising. Theseus is taken by an old woman to a trapdoor in the Labyrinth. Underneath he finds a passageway, and she instructs him to follow a thread that is tied to a column. Theseus walks along, with jars of grain all around him, and eventually sees a store of old weapons. He notes the spot and continues to follow the thread. He comes out underneath the large statue of the Goddess. There he meets Ariadne, who has perceived his kingly qualities starting with the incident at the harbor, and is in love with him. He sleeps with her and returns to the Bull Court before morning. They spend their nights together, and she tells him that her father, Minos, is sick with leprosy and that Asterion is responsible. Asterion has been gathering power while the king wastes away so that none will dare oppose him when Minos dies. Many are loyal to Asterion, and he rules already as king in everything but name. This state of affairs horrifies Theseus, because a ruler needs to be dedicated to the gods in order to properly lead the people. Cretan tradition requires a new Minos to throw a ring into the sea, ""marrying"" it. Asterion tried to do so, but Theseus unknowingly thwarted him and then threw the ring himself. Theseus tells the Cranes what he knows, without mentioning Ariadne, and he begins moving the old weapons to an easily accessible spot. The Cranes have been together for three seasons, and they do their best to keep fresh and ready all the time. Ariadne takes Theseus to speak with King Minos, following threads through the underground maze. Minos wishes him to marry Ariadne, and Theseus agrees. Minos does not believe in the gods. He warns that Asterion wants to marry Ariadne in order to keep his power, for the Cretans respect the Goddess. Theseus tells the King of his plan to get help from his father, although in his heart, Theseus does not think ships will come. He tells Minos that Poseidon will send a sign. Ariadne makes up ahead of time what she will prophesy in her oracles; she can no longer hear the voices of the gods. With a trustworthy noble and other bull dancers, Theseus plans a revolt. They begin to bring arms into the Bull Court. Spring comes, and soon the winds from the south begin to blow, and they know that this means there will be no help from any foreign ships. Perimos' son, Alektryon, plans on picking a fight with a member of Asterion's guard because the household would all attend the funeral and they could attack then. The next day, Alektryon comes to get Theseus in the Bull Court, and tells him to go see the King. Minos wants Theseus to kill him, with the ax Labrys, the ancient guardian of the house. Theseus sacrifices the King, after promising to care for Ariadne, and then returns to the Bull Court and sleeps. Theseus tells Amyntor that the King is dying, but he is surprised that no noise has been made about the dead king yet. When they have their bull dance that day, Herakles has seemingly gone mad and almost kills Theseus before falling dead. With the King dead, Asterion needed more money to buy troops to take power, so he drugged the bull and bet on Theseus to die, at great odds. They swear they will have vengeance. Theseus feels strange before falling asleep, later finding out that he slept right through an earthquake. Theseus feels strange again the next day, and when another earthquake occurs, people around him realize he can sense them. The Cretans believe the poisoning of the bull offended Poseidon. Theseus feels so sick he knows there is going to be an immense earthquake soon. Poseidon is angrier than any of them could imagine. He says they must break out because the house will collapse around them. He yells out that Poseidon is coming and that the House of the Axe will fall. The revolt begins, and the dancers nearly panic before Theseus rallies them. They break out of the bull court using Daedalus' model. As the earthquake strikes and the palace crumbles, Theseus saves Ariadne, and is cheered by the bull-dancers and the native Cretans, who heard his warning and fled the palace in time. Asterion is already taking part in the ritual to make himself the new Minos. They charge at the guards while a fire rages through the ruined Labyrinth. While the others fight, Theseus goes with the Cranes through a secret passageway, and they find Asterion wearing only the bull mask of Minos. Theseus charges him, interrupting the rite, and after a battle he stabs Asterion with his dagger. Seeing that Asterion had already been anointed with oil, Theseus puts on the mask, raises Labrys, and sacrifices the King. Nearly all the bull-dancers, plus Ariadne, whom Theseus intends to marry, take a ship and sail for Greece. They land on the island of Dia, whose capital city is Naxos. The people there, who worship the Mother, are amazed by Ariadne, and carry her in a litter to the Palace. The Queen welcomes them, and Theseus looks at the King, who seems distracted, and then realizes that he will be killed the next day at the feast of Dionysos. The Queen invites them to stay for the feast, and Ariadne accepts, although Theseus wishes that she had not. The next day the king is brought in a ship onto the sacred island, and goes up into the hills. Everyone is drunk, and all of the women go along to the island. Everyone begins going off into the hills. Theseus waits for Ariadne but she does not return. He learns that she is with the Queen in the front. Theseus runs up into the hills, and looks for her. Some of the women begin dropping away from the carriage and finding men, and Theseus drinks more and searches for Ariadne. He soon sleeps with a girl. He sees another girl watching them, and the three of them stay together for a while. The day goes by, and people begin returning from the hills. Theseus waits for Ariadne, and finally the procession passes by, looking tired and stained with blood from the sacrifice. He waits until the chariot goes by, and then turns to go back, but he sees Ariadne inside. He runs up to the chariot, which is pushed by two priests. She has passed out, and Theseus thinks that the older priest slept with her on the mountain. Ariadne is unharmed, but there is blood all around her, and when she opens the hand that lay on her breast Theseus sees something that causes him to be sick. The older priest talks to Theseus and tells him he cannot understand some things, but Theseus feels that he cannot bring her back to Athens after what he has seen. Theseus makes sure that Ariadne will be honored there and then tells the priest to explain to the Queen why they leave that night. Theseus feels sad to have left Ariadne, but that he cannot do otherwise. After gathering his companions, they set sail that night. They reach Delos the next morning, and rejoice to be so close to home. They bathe in a sacred lake, and Theseus asks a priest about the harper whom he has heard at Troizen. He learns that the harper was killed in his native Thrace, and the stories and songs about him are many after his death. Some stories are recognizable as the basis of legends about Orpheus. They sail on the next day, and see a fire burning far in the distance. Theseus knows it is the beacon his father had put up, and he remembers Aigeus's request that he paint his sail with white. But Theseus is conflicted, because he cannot be sure what his father meant. Aigeus had said that the god would have a message for him with the painted sail, and Theseus thinks that if he paints it then his father will read it as a sign to sacrifice himself to the god. Theseus wades into the water and asks Poseidon for a sign. The god responds, and Theseus knows that he should not paint the sails. He says that he never anticipated that his father would die. He is sure the god did not lead him incorrectly. He believes that perhaps, since his father jumped from a balcony high up, he was called by the god; otherwise he could have fallen on his sword or taken poison. Theseus becomes King and we have hints of what is to come in later years."
1635,The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters,history," The book follows three main characters, Miss Celeste Temple, Cardinal Chang, and Dr. Abelard Svenson, as they attempt to thwart the mysterious plot of a sinister cabal. There are ten chapters in the book, and each is from the point of view of one of the main characters. Chang and Svenson get three chapters each and Miss Temple gets four (the novel both starts and ends from her point of view)."
1636,Forgive us our Sins,history," Imagine staging the end of the world and observing the effects of this apocalypse on an isolated, rural village… imagine a group of powerful Vatican clerics coldly orchestrating such an experiment in search of scientific and theological “truth”… 1284 Heurteloup is a village tucked away in the marshlands of South West France. It has been cut off from the rest of the world for forty years and - so it seems - ignored by everyone including the local diocese and the state. Neighbouring townsfolk do not dare venture anywhere near Heurteloup - it is a place that inspires terror, a name that conjures up evil spirits, darkness and savagery. Not so long ago, the remains of corpses were found floating in a river, dragged by the current straight from the banks of the cursed town. One man decides to set off to try to save the “soul” of Heurteloup: his name is Father Henno Gui. A newly ordained priest, Gui is driven purely by faith and his sense of vocation. He is accompanied by two loyal companions: a young boy, Floris, and a giant-like man, Mardi Gras, whose disproportionate size and disfigured face terrify onlookers. Having walked for days, fighting their way through thick forests, Gui and his companions arrive at Heurteloup. The village is deserted and there is not a soul in sight. The Church is in ruins and the dwellings appear uninhabited. But when Gui looks carefully, he notices traces of recent human activity, and he can sense that their every move is being watched. He has no idea where the villagers are hiding. Most importantly, he can tell from effigies and statuettes of women that these hidden villagers worship ‘Gods’ of a very unorthodox kind… So begins this violent story of power and corruption, where magic and superstition coexist alongside Catholicism and the stranglehold of the Vatican. Romain Sardou recreates the period as he weaves philosophical and religious questions through a chilling tale of murder and betrayal. * Pope Martin IV"
1637,Mohana Silai,history," The story begins with Idhayakumaran entering the city of Vanchi, the second capital of Cheras. He is stopped at the entrance by the guards who does not allow him to enter after knowing that he is from Chola country. But Idhayakumaran gallops in his horse into the city. He finds a beautiful ivory statue of a dancing female in the woods within the city. Just as he took the statue in his hand he hears the Chera princess Ranjani ordering her guards to arrest him for steeling the statue. Idhayakumaran escapes from the situation by taking the princess as his hostage. He later releases her and informs her that the secret of her birth will be revealed today in the place of the royal jeweler. The princess meets a stranger along with Achuthaperaiyar, the royal jeweler. Idhayakumaran meets them there along with the statue. Achuthaperaiyar introduces the stranger as Vijayalayan and he is her father. Vijayalayan calls her Kannazhagi. Vijayalayan also mentions that he has just captured Vanchi. He explains that the statue was made by Ilamcetcenni, the legendary Chola king. He also reveals that Achuthaperaiyar as his Chief Minister, and explains that her mother's name is Bhoodevi and he had married her when he was the king of the then tiny Chola country ruling the region around Uraiyur. Once when Vijayalayan was in Pandyan country with Achuthaperaiyar for a week, the Mutharayars of Kalabhras clan raided Uraiyur and tried to abduct Bhoodevi. But she stabbed and killed herself with a dagger. The raiders took with them the three year old Kannazhagi. When Vijayalaya Chola returned he vowed to destroy the clan of the raiders. A week later the Chola king went to Kanchi and met the Pallava king and made Cholas a feudal kingdom of the Pallavas. The Pallava king made him the Commander of Pallava army. Vijayalaya led many successful invasion into the Kalabhras country and started to look for you. When she was found (after fifteen years) in Vanchi, Vijayalayan sent Achuthaperaiyar there - which resulted in Vanchi being captured by the Cholas. Later Aditya and Idhakumaran infiltrates the Mutharayar strong hold Chandraleka (Senthalai), where they meet the king Perumpidugu Mutharayar, his son Maran Parameshwaran Mutharayar and daughter Devi (with whom Aditya falls in love). They then devise the plan for Chola invasion of Tanjore and Senthalai. The story ends with Cholas under Vijayala capturing Senthalai and Tanjore and Vijayalaya changing his capital from Uraiyur to Tanjore."
1638,Treason's Harbour,history," Jack and Stephen are at Malta waiting on the repair of the much-battered , Jack's command. Both men befriend a young pretty lieutenant's wife, Mrs Fielding, whose husband is a prisoner-of-war in France. French intelligence agents use Lieutenant Fielding's plight to persuade Mrs Fielding to spy for them. They eventually assign her to find out information from Stephen by making amorous advances towards him. Jack, who is taking Italian lessons from her, rescues her Illyrian mastiff, Ponto, one evening out of a well, but himself falls in. This leads to the rumour that he is sleeping with her. Maturin and Aubrey also meet Andrew Wray again - Second Secretary to the Admiralty, who has been sent to Malta to sort out dockyard corruption. Jack had an unpleasant previous meeting with him at a gambling house in Portsmouth when he indirectly accused Wray of cheating. As Jack formally introduces Captain Pullings to him, Wray tells Pullings he had insisted on Captain Aubrey's recommendation, adding: ' ... at one time Captain Aubrey seemed to do me an injustice, and by promoting his lieutenant I could, as the sea-phrase goes, the better wipe his eye.' Jack and the Surprises are dispatched on a secret mission by the new Commander-in-Chief, the highly competent Admiral Ives, to take the Dromedary and capture a Turkish galley laden with French silver in the Red Sea. Unfortunately, the mission has been talked about for many months. The Surprise's crew has to traverse the Sinai Peninsula and eventually meet the HEI ship Niobe in Suez. Jack takes command and sails her down the Red Sea with a troop of Turkish troops to intercept the galley. They eventually spot it and give chase but Jack notices that the galley is playing a trick on him, using a drag sail to artificially slow their speed, and orders his gunner to sink it. Stephen, who at the beginning of the novel bought a diving bell, is persuaded by moral pressure from the crew and officers to Jack to recover the treasure. After he and Mr Martin bring up the first sealed chest, they find it only contains heavy lead bars and a rude note, Merde a celui qui le lit. They meet a fishing boat and find out that the galley had been rowing up and down the sea for a month, waiting to lure them under the French fortification's cannon. Their mission a failure, they return on the Niobe to Suez and offload the bitterly disappointed Turkish troops. They have to retrace their steps across the desert but this time their camels are stolen by Bedouin horsemen and they reach Tina almost dead from thirst. Fortunately, the Dromedaries are there to revive them and they return to Malta. Here Jack learns from Admiral Ives that the Surprise is to return to England and be scrapped. Stephen, meanwhile, renews his acquaintance with Mrs Fielding and plants some false information for her to give Leuseur and also thrashes Wray at piquet for high stakes. Jack is given a mission with the re-fitted Surprise to take the Adriatic convoy up the Ionian. While there he meets an old friend, Captain Cotton of the Nymphe, who has just rescued an escaped French prisoner-of-war, Lieutenant Charles Fielding. Fielding, having heard the rumour of Jack's liaison with his wife, not only refuses his offer to return him to Malta but also requests a ""meeting"" (a duel). On the return journey Captain Dundas, commanding the massive seventy-four gun Edinburgh, tells Jack of a small French privateer that Jack eventually captures. Unfortunately the chase brings the Surprise in late to port behind Babbington’s sloop, the Dryad, and the news of Lt. Fielding’s escape has already circulated. Stephen overhears a conversation at Mrs Fielding's house between Lesueur and Boulay, placed high up in the Governor's staff, to assassinate her but manages to take her aboard the Surprise. Sir Francis Ives instructs Aubrey to sail for Zambra to threaten the Dey of Mascara into not attacking British ships, accompanied by the Pollux returning Admiral Harte back to England (Zambra and Mascara are a fictitious city and state on the Barbary Coast). While the Pollux is exiting the Bay of Zambra, a French squadron consisting of a two-decker eighty gun man-of-war and two frigates with French colours fire on her. The old sixty-four gun Pollux eventually blows up but damages the French newly-built third rate. The two frigates chase the Surprise deep into the bay and nearly cut her off until the heavier frigate runs aground on a reef called The Brothers. Her smaller consort deserts the fight and Jack, on the political advice of Maturin, sets sail for Gibraltar."
1639,The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters,history," The novel alternates between Jaimie describing his journey by wagon train to California with commentary by his father, a Scottish doctor with an effervescent personality whose judgment is often clouded by his weakness for gambling and strong drink. The novel contains, in graphic detail, some intense Native American customs, especially rite of passage."
1640,To Serve Them All My Days,history," The protagonist is David Powlett-Jones, a coal miner's son from South Wales, who has risen from the ranks and been commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in World War I. In 1918, after being injured and shell-shocked, he is employed to teach history at Bamfylde School, a fictional public school in North Devon, in the south-west of England. He swiftly earns the respect of many of his colleagues, with the notable exception of Carter, an ambitious science master and Commanding Officer of the school's Cadet Corps OTC, whose military bearing compensates for the embarrassing fact that he was released from military service for medical reasons. Carter makes no secret of his outrage at the content of David's history lessons, which include recollections of life at the front - David has rejected wartime propaganda and grown to respect German soldiers - and honest analyses, verging on Socialism, of the war's political background and potential consequences. Following the Armistice, the two men disagree on whether or not the school should erect a war memorial; David loses the argument but wins the respect of Brigadier Cooper, one of the governors. Under the tutelage of Headmaster Algy Herries, who views him as a possible successor, David discovers a vocation in teaching. He also forms a close friendship with the curmudgeonly English master, Ian Howarth, and with several students of unique personality and talents, including Chad Boyer, who will himself become a teacher at Bamfylde. He also acquires two nicknames, ""P.J."" and ""Pow-Wow,"" the latter owing to his propensity for discussion and debate. David meets a young nurse, Beth Marwood, and in 1919 they marry; shortly afterwards, they have twin daughters, Joan (named after Joan of Arc, canonised in 1919) and Grace. Five years later (one year in the television adaptation), Beth and Joan are killed in a road accident. The surviving daughter, Grace, is badly injured and requires many months of rehabilitation before she can return home. (In the television adaptation, both children die: Andrew Davies, who adapted the series, infamously claimed that the thought of Grace clumping her way through the rest of the series filled him with horror.) It takes encouragement from one of the schoolboys to persuade David to contemplate life without his wife, but he carries on for the sake of Grace. His feud with Carter increasingly revolves around the men's diametrically-opposed political beliefs and culminates in a violent confrontation, at which point Herries is forced to mediate an uneasy truce between them. David remains concerned about life in Wales, particularly among the miners, and is politically affected by the General Strike of 1926, which receives play in this and other Delderfield novels. By the mid 1920s, he has also returned to a scholarly writing project, an historical study called ""The Royal Tigress"", a biography of Margaret of Anjou, which he had put to one side after Beth's death. Whilst researching the book in London, he once again meets Julia Darbyshire, a teacher who had worked briefly at Bamfylde, and strikes up a romance with her. She is now running a business for an American entrepreneur and is determined not to return to Bamfylde which she found suffocating. By 1927, Bamfylde is looking for a replacement for the aging Herries, and the Board of Governors interviews Carter, David, and two external candidates, including a South African named Alcock, for the headmastership. Although David receives much support, the Governors decide to award the position to Alcock, recognising that if either of the internal candidates was elected, the other would feel forced to resign, and the school would lose a valuable teacher. Alcock's authoritarian management of the school brings him into conflict with the staff, with some of the students, and eventually with David. During this period, Carter and David discover that they have a common adversary in Alcock and resolve their differences, which for a time distances David from Howarth. After a couple of terms under Alcock, Carter and a number of other masters resign. By this time, Alcock has become highly unpopular among the teaching staff and regards David as the ringleader of the opposition. In 1931, Alcock brings a formal complaint before the Board of Governors in order to seek David's dismissal. After hearing that the Board has backed David, though before this becomes common knowledge, Alcock dies of a heart attack while writing out his resignation. David is appointed as his successor. David's relationship with Julia ends when she travels to the U.S. with her boss, whom she marries. However, David becomes romantically involved with Christine Forster, an aspiring Labour politician and cousin of an ex-student. She is determined to build a political career but is unable to break into this male-dominated world and eventually accepts a travelling fellowship in Canada and Europe, much to David's disappointment, though her experiences in Germany give him a good sense of the rise of National Socialism, Anti-Semitism, and the likelihood of coming war. When Christine returns to Britain in the mid 1930s, the couple marry. After a difficult period of adjusting to life at Bamfylde, Christine accepts a teaching position at the school and they have a son. It also transpires that Julia Darbyshire had borne David a son soon after moving to America. The son becomes a pupil at Bamfylde, and David does not learn of his paternity until the end of the book, when Julia informs him of it in a letter, shortly before her death from breast cancer in the U.S. As Headmaster, David moves the school forward. As the book ends, World War II has begun, and he is facing the prospect of losing many of his former students in yet another war."
1641,The Secrets of Vesuvius,history," The story begins as Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus are playing in the Tyrrhenian sea, Flavia sets out to find Vulcan, who told Pliny of the riddle pointing to great treasure. Eventually, she and her friends solve the riddle, making out the word Asine, Latin for 'jackass'. She tried to find Vulcan from a local blacksmith, and used the codeword 'Asine', but to little avail. Meanwhile, Aristo gives Miriam a sparrow, the traditional symbol of love. Soon, Flavia finds Vulcan, and tried calling him a jackass while he was drinking water. She finds out Vulcan is a clubfoot orphan, and feels horrible. Vulcan gives Miriam, who is in love, a bracelet. At the forum, a Christian warns everyone of doom and desolation. The children find out that Clio, a girl, had been following them. Her parents, Tascius and Rectina, had adopted her and many other girls, after losing their own son. They all go to the Vulcanalia, but everything goes wrong, and Flavia fails to tell Clio's parents that Vulcan may be their lost son. Flavia finds out that 'Asine' is really a codeword for their illegal faith, Christianity. Tascius thinks Vulcan is really Pliny's son. Soon, the sparrow dies and birds rain from the air. Everyone finds out that Miriam is in love with Flavia's uncle, Gaius. Everyone is surprised except Nubia, who figured it out earlier. Jonathan's father, Mordecai, fears that his son's dreams of Jerusalem, the strange events, and everything going wrong, all point to the fact that the Christian was right, him being one also. They figure that a volcano is going to erupt, and they figure it is Vesuvius. They call over Pliny for a meal, and Flavia figures that Vulcan is really Tascius' son. Pliny did not know that Vesuvius was a volcano. Mordecai proposes that everyone leave, but his daughter Miriam objects. They warn everyone of the volcano. While Rectina and Clio are in Herculaneum, and everyone else is in Stabia, it erupts. Miriam's hair is set on fire by the ashes from the volcano, but Mordecai puts it out. They find Gaius half-dead buried under ash, but Ferox, a wolf, saves him. Meanwhile, Moredecai, a doctor, tries to save everyone. Pliny sets out to save Rectina, but fails. Tascius confesses how he had abandoned Vulcan. Lupus warns Pliny of Vulcan in a boat. Pliny dies near Pompeii due to sulphur. Water is scarce, and pyroclastic flows bury cities, but the children survive the volcano."
1642,Iceland's Bell,history," The first part tells the story of Jón Hreggviðsson, a farmer, and his battle with the Icelandic authorities. Jón is sentenced to death for the murder of an executioner, an official of the King of Denmark, but manages to flee from Iceland to Denmark, where he hopes to get an interview with the King to persuade him to grant a pardon. Snæfríður Íslandssól (literally, ""Beautiful as Snow, Sun of Iceland"") is the main protagonist in the second part. She is in love with a collector of manuscripts named Arnas Arnaeus but is married to a drunkard. The third part is about Arnas Arnaeus the manuscript-collector and the fate of his collection in Copenhagen. In the end, Arnas does not marry the woman of his heart, Snæfríður, but stays with his rich Danish wife who financed his life's work."
1643,Prague: A Novel,history," Prague opens on the afternoon of May 25, 1990 with five North American expatriates living in the city of Budapest. The expatriates are, for the most part, optimistic about their prospects in the Central European city. John Price seeks a reconciliation with his older brother, Scott, who has come to Budapest to separate himself from his earlier life in the United States. Emily Oliver, an idealistic worker at the American Embassy, hopes to begin a distinguished diplomatic career. Mark Payton, a Canadian researching a history of nostalgia, relishes the chance to be immersed in a place with interesting history. Only Charles Gábor, a Hungarian-American venture capitalist who resents his co-workers and has contempt for his fellow Magyars, displays any pessimism at the story's outset. The five young expatriates enjoy the nightlife and new opportunities in the historic city. John is instantly attracted to Emily, and plots to win her love, but she ignores him. He finds a job as a columnist for an English-language newspaper, BudapesToday. Still a virgin at the age of 24, he is initiated by his co-worker Karen, but finds the experience to be quite anticlimactic. He later commits ""fradultery"" with his brother's future wife, Mária. Part II presents the complex history of the Horváth Kiadó (Horvath Press), a family-run publishing company – which also serves as a history of Budapest from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Presently, the head of the publishing house is Imre Horváth, who until recently had been exiled in Vienna. During the Communist regime, the Horváth Kiadó was a state-owned business; after the fall of communism, it is due to be privatized. Imre seeks an investment from Charles' venture capital firm in order to buy the press's assets and restart it in Budapest. John frequently fraternizes with an elderly jazz bar pianist named Nádja. He is entranced by the romantic stories she tells of her past, but his friends are less than convinced of their veracity. In particular, John is dismayed by Emily's dismissal of Nádja as an ""amazing liar"". He is also dismayed that Emily pulls away when he tries to kiss her. John becomes involved with Nicky, a photographer and artist who wants a physical, but not an emotional, relationship. Charles' firm rejects his proposal to fund the Horváth Kiadó. With the help of John, who writes supportive newspaper columns and serves as Charles' aide, Charles secures independent funding for this venture. He resigns from his firm and becomes a partner in the new Horváth Kiadó. Mark Payton's research into nostalgia becomes a personal obsession. He takes an inordinate interest in gramophone music and riding in a funicular carriage. He later becomes preoccupied with the contemporary Gulf War and its continuous coverage on CNN. In September 1990, Mark leaves Budapest suddenly, due to his declining mental health. In autumn 1990, Scott marries Mária and moves to Romania with her, telling John that he never wants to see him again. John continues to desire Emily and be jealous of other men she talks to. Charles and John learn that other parties may want to bid for the Horváth Kiadó assets. In January 1991, Imre Horváth suffers a stroke and goes into a coma. Charles Gábor effectively becomes sole head of the publishing company. He accepts a takeover bid by a multinational media corporation, headed by the Australian billionaire Hubert Melchior (a parody of Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation). Horváth recovers, but not in time to prevent his historic publishing firm from being absorbed into the multinational publishing empire. In March, John says that he loves Emily, even though he knows she is a ""spy."" The next day, John is fired from his job for having accused an embassy employee of being a spy. Emily, who was having a lesbian relationship with Nicky, leaves the city to escape the accusation. Charles returns to America. Finally, John leaves Budapest as well, traveling by train to the more promising city of Prague."
1644,The Cat and the King,history," Mixing fact and fiction, the Duc de Saint-Simon recounts three episodes in which he and his wife involve themselves in the notorious schemings of King Louis XIV's Versailles. Throughout, the famous courtier's attitudes toward the King and court shift. In the first story, the young Duc, appalled at the King's calculating matches of his illegitimate offspring with prominent aristocrats, works to subvert the wedding of one of Louis' nephews, but is thwarted when his adversaries threaten an exposé of the homosexuality of both the King's brother and the narrator's patron, the Prince de Conti. In the second, Saint-Simon is maneuvered into acting as messenger between Conti (who is briefly King of Poland in 1697) and Conti's mistress, Madame la Duchesse. In this the Duc is subverted by his own wife's schemings. Finally, in later years, rumors of incest are deployed by both sides in a struggle to determine which of two ill-pedigreed ""princesses"" will be matched with one of the King's legitimate grandsons. The high-minded Saint-Simon emerges from these intrigues disillusioned (""We had all...been made part of the Versailles system""), but resolves (after the King's death) to record the monarch's ""great style"" and quest for glory."
1645,The Eagle's Conquest,history," The book opens immediately after the events of Under the Eagle, with the troops relaxing and watching prisoners of war fight to the death in a makeshift arena. Cato is bequeathed an ivory-hilted sword by the chief centurion, who was mortally wounded in the ambush and respected Cato for his tenacity. Meanwhile, the legate of the legion, Vespasian, worries about his wife Flavia back in Rome; she has connections to a group of revolutionaries called ‘The Liberators’, who want the feeble-minded Emperor Claudius out of power. Soon afterwards the Second Legion moves off again, heading to the River Meadway (present-day Medway river, in Kent). As the Britons under Caratacus have heavily fortified the opposite bank, Macro and Cato are ordered to scout ahead, to see if there is a ford upstream. Cato finds one, and the next day the attack goes in. The Ninth Legion, supported by artillery fire from triremes on the river, crosses and assault the enemy ramparts. After sustaining heavy losses, the attack falters, and only the Second Legion’s intervention saves the day. Using the ford upstream, the legionaries are able to surprise the Britons and attack them from behind, overrunning their encampment; Cato is badly burned when he accidentally spills a cauldron of boiling water over himself. While recuperating, he strikes up a friendship with the North African surgeon, a Carthaginian called Nisus. They discover that the slingshot the British have been using comes from the Legionary stores, and is linked to the Liberators. There is a traitor high up in the army’s chain of command. Over the next few days, the British are pushed back to the North Kent marshes, on the banks of the Tamesis (or Thames). Vespasian’s legion is ordered to clear the southern bank in preparation for a crossing, but as twilight approaches, the Second Legion is scattered and lost in the marshes. Macro’s unit, with Cato in tow, are ambushed by a warband; Macro holds the Britons at bay while Cato and a handful of men escape by boat. When the roll-call is held, Macro is declared missing, presumed dead. Cato, in a fit of anguish, volunteers to be in the first wave of the troops crossing the river. It is a suicide mission, and he does not expect to live, but he is able to survive long enough for the second wave of Romans to reach him. Macro reappears, having survived his ordeal in the marshes; he chastises Cato for being a fool. Cato renews his friendship with Nisus the surgeon, who lets slip some of his bitterness at being a Carthaginian in the Roman army. Meanwhile, the army has received orders to halt on the far side of the Thames so that Emperor Claudius can arrive and take command in person for the final assault in the British capital at Camulodunum; this is intended to boost his popularity with the mob in Rome. While waiting for the Emperor to arrive, Vitellius, the evil tribune, is plotting to assassinate him. He enlists Nisus, playing on his Carthaginian patriotism, and uses him as a liaison with the British tribes who resist Rome. Unfortunately, while crossing the lines one night, Nisus is accidentally killed by a sentry, and Cato, who is present, takes a bandage from his body; it is covered in strange markings and Cato thinks these are worth investigating. All thought of it is put out of his mind, however, when Claudius arrives, escorted by the Praetorian Guard and elephants to overawe the Britons. He insists on taking charge in the coming battle; despite the Emperor’s buffoonery, the final battle is won and the legions march into Camulodunum. To celebrate ‘his’ victory, Claudius orders a lavish banquet to be held in his honour. Legate Vespasian finally gets to spend some time with his wife, and Cato renews his relationship with the slave girl Lavinia. Unfortunately, she is allied to Vitellius, having consorted with him previously whilst in the ownership of Tribune Plinius. She agrees to smuggle an ornate dagger into the banquet hall, believing it to be a gift for the Emperor. Before she does this, she decides to break up with Cato, who is aware that she is cheating on him with Vitellius. While she does this, Cato is fiddling with the late Nisus’s bandage, which he has in his pocket. When it is rolled up in a certain way, the markings become a coded message; Cato is only able to discover that it concerns a plot to kill the emperor before he is knocked out by Lavinia, who read on ahead and saw Vitellius’ name. When he is woken by Macro, Lavinia has disappeared. The only hope of saving the emperor is to warn Vespasian, who is at the feast, and hope he believes them. They get there in time to see Vitellius and Lavinia being presented to the emperor; while Claudius is distracted by Lavinia’s charms, a supposedly loyal Briton leaps at the emperor with a dagger. Thanks to Cato’s intervention, the German bodyguards are able to catch the assassin and mortally wound him. Vitellius finishes him off before he can talk, and discretely murders Lavinia as he leaves. A distraught Cato is taken away by Macro before he is recognised as the emperor’s saviour, and Vitellius, as in the last book, gets all the credit. He is given a position on the Emperor’s staff, and leaves with Claudius for Rome, leaving the legions to pacify the last remnants of resistance. Vespasian is tasked with an independent command for the coming months; clearing the south bank of the Thames of resistance. As for Cato, he is distracted by Macro, who promises to introduce him to his latest conquest - a young Briton called Boudicca…"
1646,The Deerslayer,history," This novel introduces Natty Bumppo as ""Deerslayer"", a young frontiersman in early 18th-century New York. He is contrasted to other frontiersmen and settlers in the novel who have no compunctions in taking scalps in that his natural philosophy is that every living thing should follow ""the gifts"" of its nature—which would keep European Americans from taking scalps. Two such characters in the work who actually seek to take scalps are Henry March (""Hurry Harry"") and floating Tom Hutter. In the dead of night Hutter and March sneak into the camp of the besieging members of the Huron tribe in order to kill and scalp as many as they can. Their plan fails, and Tom Hutter and March are captured. They are later ransomed by Bumppo, his lifelong friend Chingachgook, and Hutter's daughters, Judith and Hetty. Bumppo and Chingachgook come up with a plan to rescue Chingachgook's kidnapped betrothed Wah-ta!-Wah from the Hurons; but, in rescuing her, Bumppo is captured. In his absence, the Hurons invade Hutter's home, and Hutter is mortally wounded and scalped. After the death of Hutter his supposed daughters find out that they were not his natural daughters and he had been a notorious pirate. Bumppo's remaining allies and friends plan how to aid his escape from his Huron captors."
1647,The Happy Return,history," In June 1808, Hornblower is in command of the 36-gun frigate HMS Lydia, with orders to sail to the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and supply a local landowner, Don Julian Alvarado, with muskets and powder. Don Julian is ready to revolt against the Spanish (at this point allied with Napoleon). Upon meeting Don Julian, however, Hornblower discovers he is an insane megalomaniac calling himself El Supremo (""the Almighty"") who views himself as a deity, and who has been killing (by tying to a stake and leaving until death by thirst) all those who are ""unenlightened"" (that is to say, all those who do not recognise El Supremo's ""godhead""). El Supremo claims to be a descendant of Moctezuma the holy god-made-man of the Aztecs and also of the Alvarado who invaded Mexico. While Hornblower replenishes his supplies, the 50-gun Spanish ship Natividad is sighted off the coast heading his way. Unwilling to risk fighting the much more powerful ship in a sea battle, Hornblower hides nearby until it anchors and then captures it in a daring, surprise nighttime boarding. El Supremo demands that it be turned over to him so that he may have a navy. After hiding the captured Spanish officers to save them from being murdered by El Supremo, Hornblower, needing his ally's cooperation, has no choice but to accede. After offloading the war supplies for El Supremo, Hornblower sails south. Off the coast of Panama, he encounters a Spanish lugger; an envoy, taking passage on the lugger, informs him of a new alliance between Spain and England against Napoleon. Another passenger on the lugger, the young Englishwoman Lady Barbara Wellesley, the (fictional) sister of Marquess Wellesley and Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), comes aboard. The packet ship she was on in the Caribbean had been captured some time ago. Freed by Spain's changing sides and fleeing a yellow fever epidemic ashore, she requests passage back to England. Hornblower reluctantly agrees, and takes Lady Barbara and her maid Hebe aboard, warning her that he must first hunt and destroy the Natividad before El Supremo can ravage the entire coast of Central America. In the subsequent battle, Hornblower uses masterful tactics to sink the Natividad, though the Lydia herself is heavily damaged. Limping back to Panama to effect repairs, Hornblower (now that there is no further threat from the Natividad) is curtly informed that he is not welcome in any Spanish-American port. He manages to find a natural harbour on the island of Coiba, where he refits. After completing repairs, Hornblower encounters the haughty Spanish official once more, on the same lugger. He is invited aboard the lugger for some interesting news. There he finds El Supremo, a wretched, and still insane, captive chained to the deck, on his way to his execution. Hornblower sets sail for England. On the long voyage home, he and Lady Barbara become strongly attracted to each other. Nearing the end of their trip, she makes the first overt advances, and they embrace passionately. Although he is also strongly attracted to her and initially responds strongly, Barbara's maid Hebe walking in on them brings Hornblower to the realisation that he as captain is about to indulge in sexual dalliance with a passenger. He uses as an excuse to Barbara the fact that he is married to withdraw from the situation. Also, as a man of humble social standing, he is horribly aware that he cannot afford to risk offending the influential Wellesley clan by dallying with her. After her rejection, the embarrassed Lady Barbara avoids him as best she can. Fortunately, an English convoy is sighted soon afterwards and she transfers to a more spacious ship. They make stilted, formal good-byes. de:Der Kapitän sv:Order och kontraorder"
1648,Patience and Sarah,history," The story is told in switching first-person narratives between Patience and Sarah. The first part is told by Patience White, a woman of considerable means compared to others in her town. Her father died and left her enough money that she would not have to marry to be cared for. She lives with her brother and his wife and children, in a room she has to herself, something her sister-in-law Martha considers an unnatural privilege. Patience paints Biblical scenes as a pastime, and helps Martha with the children sometimes. They do not get along well. Patience has known of Sarah Dowling for a while since Sarah is a scandalous character to some, wearing pants and doing men's work. Sarah has a family of sisters and her father trained her to do men's work since he had no sons. Intrigued one day when Sarah delivers firewood to the White household, and to flout Martha, Patience invites Sarah into her part of the house and socializes with her. Sarah divulges that she plans to set out by herself and go west and buy her own farm. Not having the heart to tell her that she will not have the opportunity to do it, Patience indulges Sarah and tells her she wants to come along. In the midst of planning the trip west, Sarah admits she feels for Patience, and although too aware of the danger, Patience also admits her attraction for Sarah. Sarah returns to her much poorer home, where she lives with her large family in a one-room cabin. She tells her sister Rachel that she's going west with Patience as her mate, and Rachel, upset by being replaced to go west by Patience, tells their father who beats Sarah, then drags her to Patience's home to demand to know the nature of their relationship. Faced with having to admit their acts in front of witnesses, Patience denies she feels anything for Sarah and that it was all a game. The narrative switches to Sarah's perspective as she cuts off all her hair, renames herself ""Sam"", takes an axe and walks west alone, healing from the beatings her father gave her (no harm meant, he says). After a few experiences that demonstrate the risks of freedom, Sam takes up with a traveling Parson who goes town to town selling books in a horse-drawn rig he sleeps in. He teaches Sam to defend himself against boys in towns, to cook, teaches him about the Bible and other cultures, but most importantly, teaches him to read. In time, Parson admits he's attracted to Sam and when he tries to seduce Sam, Sarah admits her true identity. Away about six months, Sarah heads home again as Parson heads towards New York, his home. Patience arrives the next day to casually invite her to Sunday dinner. Sarah accepts, and their relationship starts again after Patience admits she lost her courage. They carry on their relationship, Sarah visiting Patience on Sundays, sometimes bringing a sister or her mother, but when they are caught embracing with their bodices open by Martha, Patience's brother tells them it's time for them to go. They head to New York City with brother Edward's blessing. Thinking Sarah is lower-class, a man on the ship assaults her, but Patience rescues her and teaches her the necessary points of being a lady. They lodge with the captain and in their first locked room alone, consummate their relationship. They meet up with the Parson again and decide that upstate New York in Greene County will be their destination, where land is cheap and they can live in peace. They arrive in Greene County and they negotiate the purchase of a small farm, plant their crop and begin their life together."
1649,A Ride into Morning,history," In the midst of the American Revolution, fourteen-year-old Mary Cooper moves in with her twenty-two-year-old cousin, Tempe Wick, and Tempe's elderly mother, Mary Wick, after Mary's Tory family discovered that she was participating in the Patriot cause. Her brother, Abraham is also a Patriot soldier. Mary's cousin lives near where the American soldiers have camped for the winter. Two of Mary's young friends, David Hamilton Morris and Jeremiah Levering, are stationed here too. Mary has fallen in love with General Anthony Wayne. The Patriot soldiers and all those who live on farms near the magazine are now facing an incredibly cold winter. A mutiny is imminent. Tempe befriends Billy Bowzar, a Patriot soldier and probably leader of the mutiny. Tempe lends Bowzar her beloved white horse. Mary learns of Bowzar's plans and discovers that Tempe is growing hesitant as well. The cousins stop fighting so they can keep Aunt Mary safe, a plan that involves keeping Tempe's horse, Colonel, in the house overnight. The mutiny is unsuccessful and Mary realizes that her love for General Wayne was a silly little crush. Lieutenant Enos Reeves, a colleague of Wayne's that Mary suspected of being in love with Tempe, was actually in love with her, and Mary discovers she feels the same way."
1650,Beau Brocade,history," After their recent defeat, the hamlets and villages of Derbyshire are no longer ringing with the wild shouts of Bonny Prince Charlie's Highland Brigade; instead troops loyal to King George are looking for those accused of high treason and are offering a reward of twenty guineas for the death of any traitor or rebel. Philip James Gascoyne, eleventh Earl of Stretton, is in hiding, in fear for his life after being wrongly accused by Sir Humphrey Challoner of being a traitor to the King. For months Philip has been a fugitive, disguised in rough clothes and hiding in odd places, trusting no-one, but now he has been given shelter and a cover by honest John Stitch, the local blacksmith, and is pretending to be his nephew while trying to get a note to his sister, the beautiful Lady Patience Gascoyne. John Stich is also friends with the notorious Beau Brocade, a masked highway man who roams the moors holding up coaches so he can steal from the rich and give to the poor. Beau Brocade is actually Captain Jack Bathurst of His Majesty's White Dragoons, a handsome but tragic figure on whose head the Government has put the price of a hundred guineas. The blacksmith gets Beau Brocade to deliver a letter from Philip to his sister and a couple of days later she turns up at his forge in her coach. Reunited with his beloved sister, Philip gives Patience a packet of letters which prove his innocence and asks her to take them to London and clear his name. Just as they are discussing when she can leave, they spot Sir Humphrey's coach in the distance, Philip goes back into hiding while Patience heads towards the inn in Aldwark village to get a couple of hours rest for herself and the horses before starting the journey to London."
1651,Lord Hornblower,history," Hornblower alters the appearance of his own vessel, the Porta Coeli, so it can masquerade as the mutinous vessel. As dusk falls, he follows a valuable blockade runner into port, pretending to be the Flame. Then, once the two vessels are moored, he captures it and takes it out to sea. He then pursues the Flame, which retreats to the French port. Believing the mutineers responsible, the French send four gunboats to take her. Hornblower manages to exploit the fighting to capture both the Flame and a gunboat. Among the French prisoners is Lebrun, the young and ambitious assistant to the mayor of Le Havre. Lebrun asks to speak with Hornblower privately; he proposes to surrender Le Havre to the English fleet. Hornblower and Lebrun arrange a plan: Lebrun's role is to undermine those parties who would resist a British seizure of the city. Overcoming some tense moments with audacity, Hornblower is able to capture the city with a half battalion of Royal Marines and finds himself its military governor. Hornblower finds his new duties different from that of commanding a naval vessel or squadron. He finds his role demanding, in part because he is such a demanding perfectionist. The Duke of Angoulême, one of the heirs to the Bourbon dynasty, is sent to assume control of the civil leadership. Hornblower hears that Napoleon has been able to amass a strong force, to be transported by barge down the Seine to retake Le Havre. He sends a force, borne by half a dozen large ship's boats, to try to blow up the barges and ammunition. He puts his best friend, Captain William Bush, in command. The raid is a success and the French force is stopped, but an unexpected explosion kills most of the British, including Bush. Hornblower is raised to the peerage, possibly in part to provide him with more dignity, gravitas, when dealing with the French heir's entourage, as well to reward him for his accomplishments. During the following peace, Hornblower's wife Barbara accompanies her brother, the Duke of Wellington, to the Congress of Vienna, leaving Hornblower at loose ends. He decides to visit the Comte de Gracay, where he resumes his relationship with the Comte's widowed daughter-in-law, Marie. When Napoleon escapes from Elba and raises a new army, Hornblower, the Comte and Marie lead a guerrilla fight against the Imperial forces. They are eventually defeated, and Marie dies from a leg wound. Hornblower and the Comte are captured and condemned to death, but news of the Emperor's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo arrives just in time to save their lives. sv:Lord Hornblower"
1652,Crispin: The Cross of Lead,history," In 1377 England, a 13-year-old boy, known only as Asta's Son, lives as a peasant in a small village. His village is part of the territory of the feudal Lord Furnival. As the lord has been away for years fighting in a war in France, the village has long been under the direct control of the steward, John Aycliffe. When his mother dies, Asta's Son is left alone as he has no other known relatives. Shortly afterwards, John Aycliffe falsely accuses him of theft, and declares him a Wolf's Head, one who may be killed on sight. Asta's Son turns to the village priest, his only friend, who gives to him a lead cross that belonged to his mother, and reveals that his true name is Crispin. The priest promises to reveal to Crispin the truth of who his father was, but before he can, Aycliffe's men murder him, forcing Crispin to flee the village by himself, pursued by the steward. Having lived his whole life as a poor peasant, Crispin has no knowledge of the outside world, and no useful skills. He is saved from starvation by a traveling jester named Bear, who forces Crispin to swear an oath to become his servant. Realizing that Crispin is still being hunted by Aycliffe, Bear asks to view the writing on the lead cross that Crispin still carries. Bear refuses to tell the illiterate Crispin what the words say, although Crispin realizes that it is very important. Bear jerkey with Crispin, criticizing his lack of knowledge and his subservient personality. Crispin is likewise initially put off by Bear's seemingly treasonous and blasphemous attitudes about freedom for the common man from both noble and religious control. During their travels together, however, Bear begins to teach Crispin various skills and Crispin slowly begins to gain confidence in himself. A true bond of friendship begins to develop, and Bear eventually releases Crispin from his oath of servitude. Instead, he asks if Crispin will become his apprentice, which he happily agrees to. Posing as a father and son, the two travel towards the city of Great Wexly. Although it is the capital city of Lord Furnival's lands, Bear insists that he has important business to complete there."
1653,Middle Passage,history," The protagonist is Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave, who flees from New Orleans on a ship called the Republic to escape being blackmailed into marriage by Isadora Bailey, a schoolteacher who convinces Calhoun's creditor to whom he owes large sum of money, Papa Zeringue, to demand Calhoun pays him all he owes if he will not consent to marry Isadora. After meeting the drunken cook of the Republic while drinking to forget his troubles, Calhoun stows away aboard the ship (and is later found after the voyage begins). The ship travels to Africa to capture members of the Allmuseri tribe to take back to America to sell as slaves. Although an educated man, Rutherford is at first self-absorbed and thus initially unable to grasp the hardships of slave life. During the voyage, Rutherford becomes humbled, learning lessons that teach him to value and respect humanity which includes identification with his own country, America. The ship eventually sinks due to various factors, including the sailing inexperience of the ship's passengers, following the Allmuseri take over. There are many survivors, and a nearby ship named the Juno rescues them. Rutherford discovers that Isadora is aboard the Juno and is about to marry Papa Zeringue, who has partial ownership of the Republic. Papa learns that Rutherford has the ship's log, documenting Papa Zeringue's immoral and illegal dealings,and he bargains with Rutherford to get possession of it. Rutherford brings up the fact that the ship was illegally dealing in slave trade and uses his Santos', Papa's black servant, ties to the Allmuseri to get what he wants, namely Isadora in marriage. Isadora, who is knitting booties for her cats and dogs whom Papa is making her give up, leaves Papa and marries Rutherford."
1654,Bellarion the Fortunate,history," The narrative is presented as the author's compilation of various histories of Bellarion's life, in particular that of one Fra Serafino of Imola. Bellarion, abandoned as a child and raised in an abbey, departs as a young man with a letter of introduction from the respected abbot, intending to study in Pavia. He meets and travels with a Franciscan friar, but discovers that someone has robbed him of his money and letter. Upon arriving in Casale, the capital of Montferrat, he finds himself pursued by the authorities, who suspect him of complicity with the false friar, actually a well-known scoundrel named Lorenzaccio da Trino. He flees until he reaches a palace and enters by a garden door which he is surprised to find unlocked. A beautiful lady admits him, bolts the door, and takes pains to hide him from his pursuers. They arrive, and Bellarion listens to her rebuff them, discovering that she is the Princess Valeria of Montferrat. When the Guard depart, Valeria quizzes Bellarion, mistaking him for a messenger she had been expecting, asking after Giufreddo and Lord Barbaresco. He corrects her misapprehension, but, sensing an intrigue and anxious to impress her, offers in return for her kindness to carry a message to Lord Barbaresco. She distrusts him, but charges him simply to ask what has become of Giufreddo, who Bellarion assumes is the previous messenger, and how Barbaresco's plan is progressing. He discovers that Barbaresco and a group of friends, including Valeria's trusted confidante Enzo Spigno, are plotting the murder of Theodore, Valeria's uncle, who is serving Regent of Montferrat until Valeria's brother, the rightful Marquis, reaches majority. Theodore is plotting to keep the throne for himself, and is doing so by corrupting his nephew and rendering him unable to rule. Bellarion continues to investigate the matter, despite Valeria's wishing that he would leave her alone; he discovers that Spigno is a traitor to the group and is in the employ of Theodore, and consequently stabs him. As he escapes, the Guard captures him, and its captain recognizes him as the same companion of da Trino who had escaped a week before. He goes before the local high court, over which the Podestà presides, for the murder of Spigno. He tells the court that Spigno was murdered in a fight in the house at which Bellarion was not present, and claims to be the adoptive son of Facino Cane, a condottiere in Milan, as a delaying tactic. The Podestà holds the case for the time being, intending to contact Facino to verify whether Bellarion is truly his adoptive son; meanwhile, Theodore enters his prison cell, believing that he was a traitor to Valeria and loyal to himself, and affords him means to escape, unaware that he did in fact murder Spigno. Bellarion travels thence to Milan. Upon nearing Milan, he is attacked by dogs commanded by Gian Maria Visconti, the despotic and cruel Duke of Milan and the son of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. He kills one, becoming soaked in dog's blood, and the rest become pacified, unwilling to attack someone who smells like one of them. Gian Maria believes this is some manner of witchcraft and takes Bellarion to Milan to interrogate him, whereupon Facino Cane, who has heard that his supposed adoptive son has arrived, takes possession of him. Bellarion explains his past to Facino, who thinks it highly amusing, and shortly sets about formalizing the adoption. The story continues to follow the career of Bellarion, who becomes a true and loyal son to Facino Cane, then pledges loyalty to Cane's widow after Facino dies. There are numerous twists and turns to the plot as Bellarion rises in rank to become an important mercenary captain. He serves Valeria in many ways, and that story takes over the plot."
1655,This Earth of Mankind,history," This Earth of Mankind tells the story of Minke, a Javanese minor royal who studies at a Hogere Burger School (HBS) in an era when only the descendants of the European colonizers can expect to attain this level of education. Minke is a talented young writer whose works are published in several Dutch-language journals and are widely admired. But as a ""native"", Minke is disliked by many of his fellow-students, who all claim some European descent. He is portrayed as being bold in opposing the injustices imposed upon his fellow Javanese as well as challenging aspects of his own culture. Minke is introduced to an extremely unusual Indonesian woman, Nyai Ontosoroh, who is the concubine of a Dutch man called Herman Mellema. Minke falls in love with their daughter, Annelies, whom he eventually marries in an Islamic wedding in accordance with ""native"" customs, but which, according to Dutch law, has no legal validity because it was conducted without the consent of the under-aged Annelies' legal, Dutch, guardians. In that period, it was common for women to become the concubines of Dutch men living in the East Indies. They were considered to have low morals because of their status as concubines, even if, as in Nyai Ontosoro's case, they had no choice in the matter. Their children had uncertain legal status - either considered illegitimate ""natives"" with a corresponding lack of legal rights, unless legally acknowledged by their father, in which case they were considered ""Indos"", and their mother lost all rights over them in favor of the father. As a concubine, Nyai Ontosoro suffers because of her low status and lack of rights, but, significantly, is aware of the injustice of her suffering and believes education is the route by which her basic humanity can be acknowledged. She believes that learning is the key to opposing indignity, stupidity, and poverty. However, the decision to have the children of their relationship legally acknowledged as Herman Mellema's children has catastrophic consequences by the end of the book. For Pramoedya, education is the key to changing one's fate. For instance, Nyai Ontosoro, who had no formal schooling and who was educated by her experiences, from books, and from her daily life, was a far more inspiring educator than Minke's high school teachers. However, This Earth of Mankind also powerfully portrays the reality of Dutch colonial government in Indonesia through the lives of the characters, where Minke's education and Nyai Ontosoro's success in business count for little when ranged against the unyielding Dutch colonial law."
1656,An Infamous Army,history," In the early summer of 1815, while the Battle of Waterloo is just a threat, Brussels is the most exciting city in Europe and many of the British aristocracy have rented homes there. The novel opens in the home of Lord and Lady Worth, where several of their friends are discussing the precarious situation in Belgium. Everyone is anxious for the Duke of Wellington to arrive from Vienna. When the other guests leave, Lady Worth's brother, Sir Peregrine Taverner, (Perry) expresses his fears about remaining in Brussels, especially since his wife, Harriet is expecting their third child. In the end he decides that if his brother-in-law deems it safe to stay, then it must be safe enough. After he goes, Judith tells her husband about her hopes that Worth's brother, Colonel the Hon. Charles Audley (who is a member of Wellington's staff and is still in Vienna) will fall in love with her new friend, Miss Lucy Devenish. This leads her husband to accuse her of trying to play match maker and remark ""I perceive that life in Brussels is going to be even more interesting than I had expected."" Amongst the fashionable ton partying in the metropolis, Lady Barbara Childe (the granddaughter of Dominic, Duke of Avon) is making her mark. Lady Barbara, or Bab as she is called my her family and friends, is a young widow of great beauty and charm who can make any man fall in love with her. Her elder brother, the Marquis of Vidal highly disapproves of his sister's flirtations and is annoyed that she has made herself the talk of fashionable society. Furthermore, Bab has taken up with the notorious Belgian Comte de Lavisse. It is the general consensus that Bab is heartless. Bab has another two brothers besides the Marquis, Lord George Alistair, who was said to look and act exactly like his grandfather did in his younger days and Lord Harry Alistair, aged eighteen. Both are serving in the army. After a ball, (where Bab had scandalized Brussels by appearing with painted toenails) her sister-in-law, Lady Vidal, warned Bab that if she or any of her brothers cause a scandal, the Marquis will insist on them all returning to England. To which Lady Barbara responding that she would simply stay in Brussels alone. A few days later, Judith is surprised to walk into her parlour one morning and find that Charles had arrived. The Duke and his staff were finally in Brussels. Later that evening, at another party, Charles sees Barbara for the first time and is enchanted. This dismays Judith as she wanted Charles to fall in love with Lucy and as such she refuses to introduce Charles to her. As a result Charles asks his friend, the young Prince of Orange to make his introduction. Against the advice of their other friends, the Prince agrees, but not before warning Charles that ""it is the road to ruin."" Charles and Bab dance together twice, leading nearly the whole assembly to whisper about how Bab had seized upon the nicest man in Brussels. A little while later, Charles meets Lucy Devenish looking quite disheveled and upset. He doesn't ask her for any explanation and after he helped her fix herself up, the two become friendly. At the end of the party, Judith is at ease because Charles had admired Lucy and had not said anything about Bab. Worth however feels that Charles is already head over heels in love with Bab. The next day, Charles meets Bab with her notorious Belgian suitor, the Count de Lavisse. Needless to say, the men did not get along. However, Charles seemed to have made an impression on Bab for she confessed to Lady Vidal that she had lost her heart to a younger son. Sometime later, Charles asks Bab to marry him and she accepts, but not before warning him that she would make a terrible wife and that she might change her mind in a week. Charles only laughs and says that he is willing to risk it. Judith is dismayed and cannot understand what Charles sees in the girl. Charles is adamant that Judith will like Barbara once she gets to know her. Meanwhile, Bab is worried that she will change her mind, so she asks Charles to marry her soon. He refuses because he wants her to be certain that she loves him before she marries him. This leads Bab to say that Charles is a much better person then she is. Meanwhile, Barbara's brother George arrives in Brussels. He shows up uninvited to a party given by Lord and Lady Worth, in search of his various siblings. He makes his excuses to Judith and is about to go off in search of Bab, when Judith is surprised to see him staring at Lucy Devenish. Her surprise increases when Lord George excuses himself, saying, ""I have seen a lady I know. I must go pay my respects."" He promptly goes to Lucy's side and looks teasingly at her downcast face. When Judith questions the two, George explains that they had met several times and that he was worried that Lucy had forgotten him. Lucy looks at him with reproach and says that she did not forget. She then walks away to find her aunt and George goes off to look for Bab. Judith seeks out Lucy to ask her about the strange meeting. Lucy brushes her off and says that she doesn't wish to speak of Lord George Alistair. After the party, George and Bab discuss her engagement, revealing the depth of her feelings for Charles as well as her reasons for being so callous a flirt. She had been married at eighteen to a much older man named Jasper Childe whom she grew to hate, and she swore from then on that no man would possess her ever again. And now, even though she loves Charles, she cannot help rebelling against him. Lady Barbara is determined to make sure that Charles knows how awful she is. He endures much of her flirtations. At one point, it becomes too much. Harriet Tavener, Judith's brother's wife, had snubbed Bab, leading Bab to charm Perry as punishment. Lady Tavener is devastated and Charles takes the matter into his own hands. In a way that reminds Perry unpleasantly of Worth, Charles tells him that he must leave for England at once and be done with such nonsense. Perry agrees with him and immediately makes arrangements to go home, but not before making peace with his wife. This leads to a violent quarrel between Barbara and Charles and their engagement is terminated. After the quarrel, Charles meets Lucy who is extremely upset about something. Charles convinces Lucy to confide in him and she does so. All of Charles friends are distressed at his unhappiness. He had a new hard look and he rarely smiled. He and Lucy have become very close and Bab goes around creating bigger scandals every day. Then, at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball, comes the news that Napoleon is marching towards the Belgian border. The city soon empties of officers including Charles, George, Harry and nearly every other young man at the ball. The next day, Barbara goes in search of Charles, desperate to make peace with him before the battle, only to learn from Judith Worth that he has gone. When Worth discovers that Barbara's brother, the Marquis of Vidal, has gone back to England, Worth takes Barbara in. Lady Barbara is convinced that Charles has fallen in love with Lucy, until Lucy goes to see Barbara to ask her if she heard anything from her brother George. Lucy then confesses that she and George have been married for nearly a year. The marriage had been kept secret because neither the Duke of Avon (George's grandfather) nor Lucy's uncle Mr. Fisher would have approved of the match. Until now she had confided in no one but Charles who promised to look out for George. By now the wounded are starting to arrive in Brussels from the first skirmishes and Judith and Barbara help to nurse the wounded in the street. As the situation becomes more and more desperate, the two woman become very close, Barbara is finally showing her true inner strength and courage. At the end of the whole thing Judith admits to her husband that she had misjudged both Barbara and Lucy from the start. The entire second half of the book is devoted to a historically accurate, almost minute by minute account of the Battle of Waterloo, one of the most pivotal and bloodiest battles in history. All the historic events are recounted in detail, including the magnificent charge of the Scots Greys and the final turning point where Wellington himself tells the final line of defence, the British First Foot Guards, to ""Up Guards and at'em"". The Guards rise from behind the slope of a hill and from their extended line pour such a devastating fire upon the attacking French column that the French withdraw in disarray. Seeing this, Colonel Sir John Colborne leads his regiment, the Fighting 52nd, across the battlefield from the right flank and Wellington calls for a general advance of Peregrine Maitland's Grenadier Guards, completing the French rout. During the battle, Charles comes upon Lord Harry Alistair, who is obviously dying. Charles reflects on how he has lost so many friends in one day. While trying to deliver a message from Wellington, Charles is hit by cannon fire. Badly wounded, he is ironically carried off the field by none other than his old rival Lavisse, whose regiment has fled in disarray. Lavisse tells him he will see to the delivery of the message but admits that the honours of the day go to Audley. The Duke and Duchess of Avon arrive in Brussels having heard of all the scandals that their grandchildren have been making. While they are at the Worth's, Charles's servant comes to tell the Earl about his master's condition. Worth goes to find him and bring him to Brussels and he promises Bab that he will bring Charles back safely. When Worth brings Charles back, he is in danger of his life and has had his left arm amputated. The surgeons say that they might have to cut off his leg, but Worth steps in and stops them from doing it. Charles regains lucidity, aided by the ministrations of the Duchess of Avon. Although he is not the carefree young man he once was, Charles proposes once more to Bab, telling her to take out the ring that she had given back to him, ""there it stays until I give you another in its place"". Bab accepts, promising that she will make him a terrible wife, but she doesn't care. {| class=""wikitable"" |- !Devil’s Cub !An Infamous Army |- |Dominic Alastair, Marquis of Vidal |Dominic Alastair, Duke of Avon |- |Miss Mary Challoner |Mary (Challoner) Alastair, Duchess of Avon |} {| class=""wikitable"" |- !Regency Buck !An Infamous Army |- |Julian St John Audley, Earl of Worth |Julian St John Audley, Earl of Worth |- |Miss Judith Taverner |Judith (Taverner) Audley, Countess of Worth |- |Captain the Hon. Charles Audley |Colonel the Hon. Charles Audley |- |Sir Peregrine (""Perry"") Taverner |Sir Peregrine (""Perry"") Taverner |- |Miss Harriet Fairford |Harriet (Fairford), Lady Taverner |}"
1657,People of the Wolf,history," The plot concerns a man and woman consummating to have a child. Then a band of Siberian hunters pursues game across Beringia during the last Ice Age. Spurred by a vision he had while on a hunt, a young tribesman named Runs in Light, later called Wolf Dreamer, leads a handful of tribespeople, in rebellion against the tribal shaman, south down the Yukon River valley into what is now Canada and the Pacific Northwest."
1658,The Confusion,history," Though the first publication of the Series in 3 volumes combined the two novels Bonanza and The Juncto, here the plots will be dealt with as separate entities, true to the author's original intention. The beginning of Bonanza finds Jack Shaftoe awakened from a syphilitic blackout of nearly three years. During this time he was a pirate galley slave. The other members of his bench, a motley crew who call themselves ""The Cabal"" from Africa, the Far East and Europe, create a plot to capture silver illegally shipped from Central America by a Spanish Viceroy; they convince the Pasha of Algiers and their owner to sponsor this endeavor for their freedom and a cut in the profit. They capture the ship, but upon boarding it, they find it full, not of silver as they had expected, but of gold. Fleeing the Spanish they are followed by a frigate in the employ of the duc d'Arcachon, an investor in their plan and a man who wishes to kill Jack for ruining a party in The King of the Vagabonds. Believing the Duke plans to cheat the Cabal in the investment, they sail to Egypt and transport the gold over land to Cairo. In Cairo the Cabal negotiates with d'Arcachon's men for a meeting with the duc himself; as an inducement for this meeting they offer to hand over Jack. Jack cuts off the head of the duc to avenge Eliza, whom the duc had enslaved over a decade earlier. Fighting ensues between the Cabal and d'Arcachon's musketeers. The Cabal manages to escape (short several of its members and a good portion of the gold), fleeing toward Mocha. Realizing that they are no longer welcome in any European port, they carry the gold to India, where they are captured by a pirate queen who takes the gold. The Cabal is left penniless and its members are dispersed. Some are recruited in the army of a local king. Jack ends up working in an animal hospital in Ahmedabad. A year later, Jack reunites with a few members of the Cabal and conceives a plan to carry goods through a route that no traders can use because it is controlled by armies of plunderers. Jack shows the Cabal how to produce phosphorus from urine, and they use it to fight their way through. For this role in opening up the trade route, Jack is rewarded with a temporary, three-year kingship over an impoverished part of India. During his reign, Jack directs the construction of a ship made of durable teak wood, using funds invested by the pirate queen who had seized the Cabal's gold, and Sophie, Electress of Hanover. The ship is christened Minerva. The Cabal carries watered steel and other valuable items from India to Japan, and trades them for mercury. Mercury fetches a high price in the Americas, which need it for use in silver mines. A Spanish Galleon secretly agrees to show Minerva the way across the Pacific and help them establish trade in the Americas. The Galleon sinks, and Minerva takes on the two sole survivors, one of whom is Edmund de Ath. Jack, another member of the Cabal, and de Ath are imprisoned and tortured by the Spanish Inquisition but are able to buy their way out with silver that they got in trade for mercury. Jack receives a letter from Eliza urging him to meet her in Qwghlm. Laden with precious metals, Minerva sails there only to find that the invitation was a trap; the French capture them and seize their gold and silver. The letter had been faked by Edmund de Ath, actually Édouard de Gex in disguise, who had been working with Vrej, one of the Cabal members, who believed his family had been wronged by Jack. Minerva and her crew are allowed to leave sans cargo, but Jack is imprisoned by the duc d'Arcachon, son of the man whose head Jack cut off in Cairo, and husband of Eliza. Upon discovering the deceit, Vrej kills the duc d'Arcachon, before committing suicide to prevent retaliation upon his family. The duc had planned to imprison Jack for the rest of his life, but the King of France Louis XIV frees him in order to enlist his help in sacking the Tower of London, England's mint, in order to cripple the enemy country's economy. The book opens explaining how Bob Shaftoe had come into possession of the correspondence of d'Avaux, the French diplomat whom Eliza had fooled as a double agent for William of Orange in Quicksilver. Eliza has been captured by Jean Bart in an attempt to escape to England, and is confined to a house in Dunkerque. There both her lover Rossignol, the King's cryptographer, and d'Avaux rush to her. Under blackmail by d'Avaux, Eliza concedes in indefinitely loaning the vast fortune she has earned through trade in Amsterdam to fund the King's war efforts. Her loss of fortune forces Eliza to return to court life, where she learns that the duc d'Arcachon was the man who had enslaved her and her mother from the isle of Qwghlm. Eliza soon begins plotting to kill him. However, before she can do so, she learns of d'Arcachon's death at the hands of Jack. Jack had pronounced over the body of d'Arcachon that he killed him for a lover. Upon the return of his head to France, d'Avaux realizes who the lover of Jack is. Before Eliza's relationship with Jack can be revealed, Eliza marries Étienne, the son of the duc and becomes Duchess d'Arcachon. After the marriage, however, Eliza's illegitimate child with Rossignol is kidnapped under the orders of Lothar von Hacklheber in order to maintain leverage over her. To exact her revenge, Eliza engages in a series of financial maneuvers involving the French preparations to invade England. The invasion is ultimately called off in the aftermath of the Battles of Barfleur and La Hogue, but Eliza's manipulations succeed at making her wealthier than ever, while bringing the house of Hacklheber to its knees. The story refocuses on Bob Shaftoe, as he and the Black Torrent Guard participate in William III's campaign against James II in Ireland. The second half of the book follows the lives of Eliza, Leibniz, Newton, Waterhouse, and Sophia Charlotte over the next 10 years. Waterhouse confronts Newton over his increasingly unstable behavior and his fruitless attempts to derive a ""theory of everything"" under the enabling influence of Newton's close friend Fatio. Several characters from the Royal Society form ""the Juncto"", a society that aims to reignite the British commerce through a monetary reform. The Juncto creates the Bank of England and offers Newton a job as the director of the Mint. Eliza is infected with smallpox, but survives. She meets her old friend Princess Eleanor, who was exiled to a dower-house by her second husband, John George IV; she pays him back by infecting him with smallpox as well, and he turns out not to be as lucky. Princess Eleanor dies, and her daughter, Caroline, is adopted by Sophia Charlotte. Caroline turns out to be a bright girl with an interest in natural sciences and she soon forms a friendship with Leibniz. The story ends in 1702 with Eliza a wealthy duchess of Arcachon and Qwghlm and a widow, Newton at the head of the London Mint, Waterhouse having made the decision to move to Massachusetts and to work on his Logic Mill away from European distractions, Sophia Charlotte the queen of the newly-formed Kingdom of Prussia, and Leibniz the president of Prussian Academy of Sciences."
1659,Woodstock,history," At a thanksgiving service in Woodstock church for the victory at Worcester (3 September 1651), the Rev. Nehemiah Holdenough was compelled to cede the pulpit, which he had usurped from the late rector (Dr Rochecliffe), to Joseph Tomkins, who, in military attire, declaimed against monarchy and prelacy, and announced the sequestration of the royal lodge and park by Cromwell and his followers. Proceeding thither, he encountered Sir Henry Lee, accompanied by his daughter Alice, prepared to surrender his charge, and was conducted through the principal apartments by the forester Joliffe, who managed to send his sweetheart Phoebe and dog Bevis with some provisions to his hut, in which the knight and his daughter had arranged to sleep. On arriving there they found Colonel Everard, a Roundhead who had come to offer them his own and his father's protection; but Sir Henry abused and spurned his nephew as a rebel, and at Alice's entreaty he bade them farewell, as he feared, for ever. On his way to the lodge he met his Royalist friend, Captain Wildrake, whom he was sheltering in spite of his politics, and determined to send him with an appeal to Cromwell to reinstate his uncle at Woodstock. On reaching Windsor, the captain, disguised as a Roundhead, obtained an interview with General Harrison, and a compliance with Everard's request, on condition that he would aid in securing the murdered king's son, in the event of his seeking refuge with the Lees. Armed with the warrant of ejectment, the colonel and Wildrake, accompanied by the mayor and the minister, visited the Commissioners during their evening carouse, and took part in endeavouring to ascertain the cause of some startling occurrences by which they had been disturbed. Everard made his way alone to a dark gallery, in which he fancied he heard his cousin's voice, and suddenly felt a sword at his throat. Meeting Wildrake as he regained the hall, they hurried off to the hut where they found Dr Rochecliffe reading the Church service to Sir Henry and his daughter; and, after a reconciliation between uncle and nephew, the cousins were allowed a private interview, during which Alice warned her lover against betraying the king. Returning to the lodge they were told of other unaccountable events; and during the night Everard was ordered by an apparition to change his quarters. The sentinels also declared that they had heard strange sounds, and the Commissioners decided to retire to the village inn. Master Holdenough, too, confessed that he had been terribly shocked by the reflection in a mirror of the figure of a college friend whom he had seen drowned. The following day Sir Henry Lee was induced to resume his post, and his son Albert arrived with one ""Louis Kerneguy"", whom he introduced as his Scotch page. Sir Henry having no suspicion who his guest really was treated him without ceremony; and while Dr Rochecliffe and the colonel were planning for his escape to Holland, the disguised Charles amused himself by endeavouring to gain Alice's love; but, in spite of a declaration of his rank, she made him ashamed of his suit. A quarrel, however, having arisen between him and Everard, she evinced her loyalty by preventing a duel they had arranged, at the risk of her reputation and the loss of her cousin's affection. A similar attempt by Tomkins to trifle with Phoebe was punished by a death-blow from Joliffe. The next evening Everard and his friend, and Holdenough, were unexpectedly made prisoners by Cromwell, who, having received intelligence of their knowledge of the king's sojourn at Woodstock, had brought a large force to secure him. Wildrake, however, managed to send his page Spitfire to the lodge to warn them, and while Alice acted as Charles's guide, Albert, in his dress, concealed himself in Rosamond's tower. Cromwell and his soldiers arrived soon afterwards with Dr Rochecliffe and Joliffe, whom they had seized as they were burying Tomkins, and, having searched all the rooms and passages in vain, they proceeded to blow up the tower. Albert, however, leapt from it just before the explosion, and Cromwell was furious when he discovered the deception. In his rage he ordered the execution of the old knight and all his abettors, including his dog; but afterwards released them, with the exception of Albert, who was imprisoned, and subsequently fell in the battle of Dunkirk (1658). Alice returned in safety, with the news that the king had effected his escape, and a letter from him to Sir Henry, approving of her marriage with Everard, whose political opinions had been considerably influenced by recent events. Eight years later Wildrake arrived at Brussels with a message for Charles that his restoration had been voted by Parliament; and in his progress to London, escorted by a brilliant retinue, amidst shouts of welcome from his assembled subjects, he dismounted to salute a family group in which the central figure was the old knight of Ditchley, whose venerable features expressed his appreciation of the happiness of once more pressing his sovereign's hand, and whose contented death almost immediately followed the realisation of his anxious and long-cherished hopes."
1660,Northwest Passage,history," Langdon Towne is a young Congregationalist resident of Kittery, Maine, in love with Elizabeth Browne, the youngest daughter of Anglican minister Rev. Arthur Browne of nearby Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Towne wants to become an artist, a goal which he has kept secret from even Elizabeth. He is admitted to Harvard College, but an ill-timed visit from his friends Saved from Captivity ('Cap') Huff and Hunking ('Hunk') Marriner results in his expulsion in 1759, although it does allow him to meet the young artist John Singleton Copley. Upon his return to Portsmouth, he incautiously insults Benning Wentworth, the governor of the Province of New Hampshire, and he and Hunk flee arrest and head to Crown Point to join the volunteers fighting the French and Indian War. On their way, they meet a sergeant named McNott, who is a member of Rogers' Rangers. Both Towne and Hunk decide to join Rogers' Rangers themselves. After arriving at Crown Point, Towne impresses Major Robert Rogers with a discussion about the Northwest Passage and is chosen as one of Rogers' aides. Setting out with a force of Rangers, Stockbridge Indians and Mohawk Indians, the troops are not told their destination. The Mohawks, who are closely allied with Sir William Johnson, are jealous of Rogers' preference for the Stockbridge Indians and decide to leave. Hunk and McNott, among others, are critically injured when the Mohawks detonate gunpowder after failing to steal it. The rest of the Rangers are then informed that their destination is the Abenaki town of Saint Francis, a center for hostile native raiding parties into New England. In a predawn attack, the Rangers annihilate the town and kill about a quarter of the population. However, to prevent capture, the Rangers choose to return across Quebec and northern Vermont. The harrowing journey creates dissension, and some Rangers who choose to separate from the main body are massacred by pursuing French and Indian troops. The starving troops eventually make it safely to the planned meeting point, Fort Wentworth on the Connecticut River, where reinforcements and supplies were supposed to be waiting for them. However, the reinforcements withdrew with the food shortly before their arrival, apparently afraid that Rogers' men were enemy troops. A group of four men, including Rogers and Towne, make the arduous raft trip down the Connecticut to the Fort at Number 4 to get food for the rest of the company. They barely make it, but they succeed in saving the company. As a result, Towne is promoted to ensign, and he returns to Portsmouth a hero, just in time for Hunk's death from his wounds. Towne now openly works at painting, and Copley helps get him a small commission and points him toward a trip to England to study art. Towne, however, wants to stay in Portsmouth, paint natives and the West, and marry Elizabeth. When Rogers comes to town in the summer of 1761, he greets Towne as a long-lost friend ... and asks Towne to be his best man, as he has proposed to Elizabeth, whom he met through fellow Mason Rev. Browne, and she has accepted. Instead, a crushed Towne decides to go to England. In London, Towne learns that no one can achieve success except through ""preferment"", usually through a sponsor. His search for sponsorship leads him to Benjamin Franklin, who arranges for him to get a commission for a panel of Jeffrey Amherst at Vauxhall Gardens that brings him other work, more than enough to prevent him from having to return home broke. In early 1765, Towne, now 26, finds out that Rogers (minus Elizabeth) has arrived in London. With Rogers' help, Towne gets a major commission from a wealthy nobleman to paint a series of pictures of the Saint Francis raid. Rogers has decided to mount an expedition to find the Northwest Passage and has come to England both to collect his back pay and to win appointment as the royal governor of Fort Michilimackinac, the farthest west of the British forts on the Great Lakes, and he offers to include Towne in the expedition. Rogers has a personal secretary named Natty Potter, who helps him write two books and a play while in London. Potter recruits Towne to find his daughter Ann. Towne finds that Ann, now about 14, was left nine years ago with a family that trained children to act as crippled beggars, and he ends up paying £15 to take her away from there. To his surprise, Towne learns that Potter only wanted to blackmail Ann's mother, a member of a wealthy family with whom he'd had a Fleet Marriage, and is unwilling to provide for Ann (or even to reimburse Towne) after the blackmail is paid, so Ann ends up as Towne's responsibility. Ann proves to be a gifted mimic and quickly picks up ""proper"" behavior from the tutor Towne hires for her. With the help of Charles Townshend, Rogers is appointed governor of Michilimackinac over the objections of General Thomas Gage and Sir William Johnson, who had monopolized trade with the natives. When Towne finishes his series of paintings, he and Ann return with Rogers and Potter to Portsmouth in 1766. Rogers has arranged for several of his former Rangers to join the journey, including McNott (who lost a leg from the gunpowder explosion), Jonathan Carver, and James Tute; Elizabeth, Potter and Ann also accompany the group to Michilimackinac. Rogers expects to receive orders that permit him to appoint a deputy governor so that he can lead the search for the Northwest Passage himself, but such orders are not included with the authorization for the expedition, so the group leaves without Rogers (or Elizabeth, Potter and Ann), with Tute and a trader named Stanley Goddard in command. Because Towne has paid his own way to join the expedition, he is not under Tute's command, and he and McNott winter separately among the Yankton Dakota. In the spring, when they reunite with Tute, Goddard and Carver, they find that the rest of the group is out of supplies. Towne and McNott then learn that the other three have used their supplies to purchase a large parcel of land from the Dakota (which the Yankton Dakota inform McNott that the Dakota do not actually own, because it is contested by the Chippewa) and have abandoned their mission. McNott and Towne travel up the Missouri River on the route to the Northwest Passage without them, but a serious injury to McNott forces them to head back to Michilimackinac. When they arrive, in the spring of 1768, they learn that Charles Townshend has died, that Rogers has been arrested by Gage and Johnson for exceeding his authority, and that Ann has returned to England after Rogers tried to take improper liberties with her. When the ice on the Great Lakes breaks, Towne, who realizes that he has fallen in love with Ann, returns to England himself, where he finds and marries Ann, who has just opened a one-woman play about life on the frontier. She has taken some of his sketches to a royal society that commissions him to paint a series of pictures based on native mythology. Rogers later returns to England after being acquitted at court-martial but is ill from his imprisonment and is soon placed in debtors' prison. At the end, Towne and Ann decide to return to America and side with the American Revolution, although they know Rogers has sided with the British."
1661,Catriona,history," The book begins precisely where Kidnapped ends, at 2 PM on 25 August 1751 outside the British Linen Company in Edinburgh, Scotland. The first part of the book recounts the attempts of the hero, David Balfour, to gain justice for James Stewart (James of the Glens), who has been arrested and charged with complicity in the Appin Murder. David makes a statement to a lawyer and goes on to meet Lord Prestongrange, the Lord Advocate, to press the case for James' innocence. However, his attempts fail as he is once again kidnapped and confined on the Bass Rock, an island in the Firth of Forth, until the trial is over, and James condemned to death. David also meets and falls in love with Catriona MacGregor Drummond, the daughter of James MacGregor Drummond, known as James More, also held in prison, whose escape she engineers. He also receives some education in the manners and morals of polite society from Barbara Grant, the daughter of Prestongrange. In the second part, David and Catriona travel to Holland, where David studies law at the University of Leyden. David takes Catriona under his protection (she having no money) until her father finds them. James More eventually arrives and proves something of a disappointment, drinking a great deal and showing no compunction against living off of David's largesse. At this time, David learns of the death of his uncle Ebenezer, and thus gains knowledge that he has come into his full, substantial inheritance. David and Catriona, fast friends at this point, begin a series of misunderstandings that eventually drive her and James More away, though with David sending payment to James in return for news of Catriona's welfare. James and Catriona find their way to Dunkirk in northern France. Meanwhile, Alan Breck joins David in Leyden, and he berates David for not understanding women. It’s this way about a man and a woman, ye see, Davie: The weemenfolk have got no kind of reason to them. Either they like the man, and then a’ goes fine; or else they just detest him, and ye may spare your breath - ye can do naething. There’s just the two sets of them - them that would sell their coats for ye, and them that never look the road ye’re on. That’s a’ that there is to women; and you seem to be such a gomeral that ye cannae tell the tane frae the tither. Prodded thus, and at an invitation from James More, David and Alan journey to Dunkirk to visit with James and Catriona. They all meet one evening at a remote inn, and discover the following day that James has betrayed Alan (falsely convicted of the Appin murder) into the hands of a British warship anchored near the shore. The British attempt to capture Alan, who flees with David and Catriona, now reconciled and shamed by James More&#39;s ignominy. The three flee to Paris where David and Catriona are married before eventually returning to Scotland to raise a family."
1662,"Bud, Not Buddy",history," ""Bud, and Not Buddy"" is the story of ten-year old Bud Caldwell, an orphan living in Flint, Michigan in 1936 during the Great Depression. Since the death of his mother, years earlier, Bud has been living in an orphanage, as well as short stints in several foster homes. All he has of his mother are a bag of rocks and a photograph of his momma as a child and fliers that show Herman E. Calloway and his jazz band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. The story opens with Bud being placed with a new foster family, the Amoses, where Bud soon meets Todd Amos, their tormenting twelve year old son. After a fight with Todd, Bud is forced to spend the night in the garden shed, and in the morning they would bring him back to the orphanage.In the shed he is stung by hornets. This happens by cutting the hornets' nest after thinking it was a vampire bat and hitting it with a rake. After extricating himself from the shed, Bud takes revenge on Todd by causing him to wet the bed, and with his friend Bugs from the orphanage, finds the Flint Hooverville. Their stay does not last beyond the next morning, when the men and boys attempt to board a freight train heading west and in their absence Hooverville is torched. After this fiasco, Bud determines to seek out Herman E. Calloway, believing the man is his father. With suitcase in hand, Bud starts walking the 120 miles to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along the way, he is picked up by Lefty Lewis from Grand Rapids, on his way to Flint. Bud tells him that he was running away from his home in Grand Rapids, and Lewis agrees to drive him back to Grand Rapids the following day. Bud stays the night in Lewis' daughter's house and the next morning has breakfast with Lefty, his daughter and her two children. Lefty drives Bud to the club where the Dusky Devastators are currently performing, and Bud manages to convince the band to allow him to stay at their home, despite Calloway's reluctance to acknowledge Bud as his son. The band takes Bud under their collective wing, and he comes with them on tour. After their first concert together, he notices Calloway picking up a rock and writing the date and location of the concert on it. When Bud shows Calloway the rocks that Bud's mother kept, Calloway accuses him of stealing them from his house. The other band members intervene, and upon further questioning, the adults realize that Bud's mother is Calloway's estranged daughter, making Bud his long-lost grandson."
1663,A Fine Balance,history," The book exposes the changes in Indian society from independence in 1947 to the Emergency called by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Mistry is generally critical of Gandhi in the book. Gandhi, however, is never referred to by name by any of the characters, and is instead called simply ""the Prime Minister"". The characters, from diverse backgrounds, are brought together by economic forces changing India. Ishvar and Omprakash's family is part of the Chamaar caste, who traditionally cured leather and were considered untouchable. In an attempt to break away from the restrictive caste system, Ishvar's father apprentices his sons Ishvar and Narayan to a Muslim tailor, Ashraf Chacha, in a nearby town, and so they became tailors. As a result of their skills, which are also passed on to Narayan's son Omprakash (Om), Ishvar and Om move to Mumbai to get work, by then unavailable in the town near their village because a pre-made clothing shop has opened. A powerful upper-caste village thug, Thakur Dharamsi, later has his henchmen murder Narayan and his family for having the temerity to ask for a ballot. Ishvar and Omprakash are the only two who escapes the killing as they lodged with Ashraf in the nearby town. At the beginning of the book, the two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash, are on their way to the flat of widow Dina Dalal via a train. While on the train, they meet a college student named Maneck Kohlah, who coincidentally is also on his way to the flat of Dina Dalal to be a boarder. Maneck, from a small mountain village in northern India, moves to the city to acquire a college certificate ""as a back-up"" in case his father's soft drink business is no longer able to compete after the building of a highway near their village. Maneck and the two tailors become friends and go to Dina's flat together. Dina hires Ishvar and Om for piecework, and is happy to let Maneck stay with her. Dina, from a traditionally wealthy Parsi family, maintains tenuous independence from her brother by living in the flat of her deceased husband, who was a chemist. Dina grew up in a wealthy family. Her father was a medical doctor who died when she was twelve. Her mother was withdrawn and unable to take care of Dina after her father's death, so the job fell to Nusswan, Dina's elder brother. Nusswan was rather abusive to Dina, sticking her with all the housework, forcing her to do all the cooking, cleaning, and drop out of school, hitting her when she misbehaved. Dina rebelled against Nusswan and his prospective suitors for her when she became of age, and found her own husband, Rustom Dalal, a chemist, at a concert hall. Nusswan and his wife Ruby were happy to let her marry Rustom and move to his flat. Dina and Rustom lived happily for three years until Rustom died on their third wedding anniversary, after being hit by a bus while on his bicycle. Dina became a tailor under the guidance of Rustom's surrogate parents to avoid having to move in with Nusswan. After twenty years her eyesight gave out from complicated embroidery and she was once again jobless. She eventually met a lady from a company called Au Revoir Exports (Mrs Gupta), who would buy ready-made dresses in patterns. She agrees to let Dina sew the patterns. But since Dina has very poor eyesight, she decides to hire tailors. She also decides to have a paying guest to generate more income for her rent. The tailors rent their own sewing machines, and come to Dina's flat each day for nearly two weeks before the first round of dresses is completed. The three get along fairly well, but Dina and Omprakash don't see eye to eye all the time. Omprakash is angry that Dina is a middle-person and he wants to sew for Au Revoir directly. Maneck was born in a mountain town to loving parents, Mr and Mrs Kohlah. His father owned a grocery store that had been in the family for generations. The store sold household necessities and manufactured the locally popular soda, Kohlah Cola. Maneck spent his days going to school, helping at the store, and going on walks with his father. When he was in the fourth standard, Maneck was sent to boarding school to help his education, much to his dismay. After this, his relationship with his parents deteriorates because he does not wish to be separated from them and feels betrayed. His parents sent him to a college and picked his major, refrigeration and air-conditioning. Maneck goes to college and stays at the student hostel. Maneck becomes friends with his neighbor, Avinash, who is also the student president and who teaches him how to get rid of vermins in his room. Avinash also teaches Maneck chess and they play together often. Avinash later becomes involved in political events, for which Maneck has little interest, and their friendship is no longer a priority for Avinash. They start seeing each other quite infrequently. But when the Emergency is declared in India, political activists had to go into hiding in order to be safe, Avinash included. Maneck, after a humiliating ragging session by fellow hostel students, has his mother arrange a different living situation for him, and he moves in with Dina Dalal. Dina and the tailors' business runs fairly smoothly for almost a year, but effects of the Emergency bother them often. The shantytown where the tailors live is knocked down in a government ""beautification"" program, and the residents are uncompensated and forced to move into the streets. Later Ishvar and Om are rounded up by a police beggar raid and are sold to a labor camp. After two months in the camp, they bribe their way out with the help of the Beggarmaster, a kind of pimp for beggars. Ishvar and Om are lucky and Dina decides to let them stay with her. The tailors and Dina find trouble from the landlord, because she is not supposed to be running a business from her flat. She pretends that Ishvar is her husband and Om their son and also get protection from the Beggarmaster. Ishvar and Om return to their village to find a wife for Omprakash, who is now eighteen. Maneck returns home, finished with his first year in college (he has received a certificate but not a degree), but has stiff relations with his family and finds that his father's business is failing due to the invasion of cheap commercial sodas. He takes a lucrative job in Middle Eastern Dubai to escape the conditions. Dina being alone now, and her protector the Beggarmaster having been murdered, has no protection from the landlord who wants to break her apartment's rent control and charge more rent, so she is evicted. Dina is forced to again live with her brother, Nusswan. Omprakash and Ishvar return to their old town to find that Ashraf Chacha is an elderly man whose wife died and daughters were all married off. He gives them a place to stay while they search for marriage prospects for Om. While they walk around the village, they run into the upper-caste Thakur Dharamsi. Omprakash recognizes him and spits in his direction. Thakur in turn recognizes Om, and decides to somehow pay Om back for his disrespect of an upper caste member. When Ashraf Chacha Ishvar, and Om are in the village, they run into herders from the Family Planning Centre. As the Centre in this city did not fill its quota, they took random people from the street and forced them into a truck that drove them to the Family Planning Centre. All three are beaten into the truck and since Ashraf Chacha is so old, he is gravely injured and later dies on the street. Ishvar and Omprakash beg to escape the forced sterilization, but the vasectomy takes place. As they lie in an outside tent recovering, Thakur Dharamsi comes by and coerced the doctor to give Om a castration. Ishvar's legs become infected due to the vasectomy and must be amputated. However, Ishvar and Om have nowhere to go now that Ashraf Chacha has died. His son-in-law sells his house and they are forced to leave town. Eight years later, Maneck returns home for the first time from Dubai for his father's funeral. Maneck is repulsed by the violence that follows after the Prime Minister's assassination, for which Sikhs are killed. He returns home and attends the funeral, but cannot bring himself to truly miss his father, only the father of his young childhood. While at home he reads old newspapers and learns that Avinash's three sisters have hanged themselves, unable to bear their parents' humiliation at not being able to provide dowries for their marriages. Shocked and shaken, he decides to visit Dina in Mumbai for better news. He learns from Dina the horrific lives that Ishvar and Om – one disabled and the other castrated – have led as beggars after their village visit. As Maneck leaves, he encounters Om and Ishvar on the street. The two former tailors are nearly unrecognizable because of their filth, and don't appear to recall him. They say ""Salaam"" to him, but he doesn't know what to say and walks on. Maneck goes to the train station, his world shattered. He walks out on the tracks as an express train approaches the station and commits suicide by letting the train run over him. It turns out that Om and Ishvar were on their way to visit Dina. They are still friends, and she gives them meals and money when the house is empty. Dina and the beggars discuss their lives and how Maneck has changed from a pleasant and friendly college student to a distant refrigeration specialist. Om and Ishvar leave, promising to visit after the weekend. Dina washes up their plates, and returns the plates to the cupboard, where they are to be used later by Nusswan and Ruby."
1664,Azincourt,history," Nicholas Hook, a forester and archer, feuds with Tom and Robert Perrill and their biological father, the priest Father Martin. He is compelled to participate in the hanging and burning of a community of Lollard heretics. One of them, an archer himself, asks Hook to protect his granddaughter after he (the condemned man) is gone. But Father Martin decides to take the girl for himself, and in an unsuccessful attempt to shield her, Hook attacks the priest. Hook is then held for trial and anticipated execution. Father Martin and Tom Perrill rape and murder the girl, and Hook's guilt at failing to save her haunts him throughout the story. Hook escapes and joins an expedition to Soissons, in Burgundy, as a mercenary archer. Burgundy and France are in bitter conflict and the French attack, win easily, sack the town, and torture and kill the English archers as well as the loyal French citizens which shocks Europe. Hook manages to conceal himself in a house and save a local nun, Melisande, from rape. Hook believes he is guided in their escape by the voices of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, the patron saints of Soissons. Melisande becomes Hook's companion and lover. Later, he discovers she is the bastard child of the powerful French Lord Ghillebert, seigneur de Lanferelle (called the ""Lord of Hell""). By returning alive from Soissons, and reporting the treachery of the English knight Sir Roger Pallaire, who conspired with the French and sacrificed his own archers, Hook earns good stead with his new lord, Sir John Cornewaille, and with King Henry V. Hook returns to France serving under Cornewaille with the royal army to win Henry the crown of France. The campaign starts horrendously with the siege of the port of Harfleur. The town's capture takes too many weeks, and disease decimates Henry's army. During a failed attack, Hook kills Robert Perrill by thrusting a crossbow bolt through the man's eye. During the siege Hook meets the seigneur de Lanferelle, who disapproves of Hook's relationship with his daughter, Melisande and claiming that he does indeed care for his illegitimate child vows to kill Hook and return Melisande to the nunnery. Sometime later Hook and Melisande are formally married. Henry, against the advice of his vassal lords, then decides to march his ragged army to Calais along the coast of France as a demonstration of his sovereignty (and an insult to the French king). The Hook - Perrill feud reignites during the march as Tom Perrill frames Hook's brother Michael for stealing a religious pyx. Henry hangs Michael in public for the crime. To reach Calais, the English army must cross the River Somme. But the far larger French army blocks the fords and the two opposing armies meet at Agincourt, on the day of St's. Crispin and Crispinian. Torrential rain soaks the newly ploughed land, turning it into a treacherous morass, especially for the French knights in full plate armour. There are natural obstacles on both sides that narrow down towards the English. The battle (like Crècy) takes place on a slope going to the English. Before the battle Henry under the guise of 'John Swan' speaks with the men, Hook realises that it is indeed the king after noticing his distinctive scar and tells 'John Swan' that the king claims to be a religious man but is sinner for killing an innocent man, Michael. 'John Swan' seems deeply affected by this and tells Hook the king will pray for Michael every day, which comforts Hook. The French foolishly allow the English to advance within range of the English longbows. The English are ordered by Henry to hammer sharpened stakes into the ground, forming an impenetrable wall to repel the cavalry, Hook and Tom Perrill agree to end their feud until the battle is over believing they will both be killed by the French anyway. The archers launch volleys as the French begin a difficult advance toward the English. The first attack is driven back by the English as they step back, behind the stakes and the French horses either bolt in terror or are impaled upon the deadly spikes. During the mayhem, Father Martin attempts to rape Melisande. Melisande kills Martin using her crossbow. The battle is also portrayed from the opposite side via the seigneur de Lanferelle who hopes to capture valuable prisoners including his rival and Hook's lord Cornwaille. The English repel the second attack through a combination of their remaining arrows and the surprising skill of the archers in hand-to-hand combat. The French decline to launch a third attack and retire, leaving thousands of French dead, and many French lords in captivity. Hook takes Lanferelle prisoner, and Lanferelle kills Tom Perrill as Hook had vowed to his friend and mentor Father Christopher that he wouldn't kill Perrill. The English claim a famous victory, and Hook returns to England with Melisande and his prisoner the seigneur de Lanferelle who now accepts and approves of Hook. Hook now a wealthy man after being promoted to command Cornwaille's archers as well the ransom from his prisoner, pays a priest to say prayers for the girl he couldn't save."
1665,The Man Within,history," The story begins with Andrews fleeing his fellow smugglers after a battle with the customs officials that ended with one of the customs officials dead. He stumbles upon an isolated cottage which is the home of Elizabeth. The man whom she lived with has recently died. Andrews helps protect Elizabeth from the neighbors who consider her to be a woman of loose moral character (the novel is silent about whether their view is justified or not). After encountering Carlyon, the head of the smugglers, in the fog, Andrews returns to the cottage where Elizabeth persuades him that he should testify at the trial of the smugglers at the Assizes in Lewes. Andrews travels to Lewes and gives his testimony in court despite being scorned by the other witnesses for the prosecution as a Judas figure. The trial ends with the smugglers being acquitted and their pledging to revenge themselves on Andrews by hurting Elizabeth. Andrews returns to Elizabeth's cottage, tells her of the danger. She sends him to the well to fetch water, and while he is gone, he discovers that one of the smugglers has come to the cottage. He runs to get help, but when he returns, he discovers that Elizabeth has been killed by one of his fellow smugglers and Carlyon is sitting waiting for him. After realizing that the only way to betray his father is to hurt himself, Andrews tells Carlyon to leave and that he will take the blame for Elizabeth's death."
1666,The Gates of Rome,history," It tells of the harsh realities of life in the Ancient Rome, not only for the nobilitas but also for the slave population, who revolt and kill Gaius' father during a siege on their villa. As the two boys begin their careers (Gaius as a senator and Marcus as a legionary), a political war is being played out in the senate, between two powerful Generals: Cornelius Sulla and Gaius' uncle Gaius Marius."
1667,The Girl at the Lion D'or,history," A wet and dark winter night sees young and beautiful Anne Louvert arrive in Janvilliers from Paris to take up a lowly position at the village inn, 'The Lion d'Or'. She gets to know the staff- the formidable Madame Concierge, the drunken Cook, the sex-starved Porter- and to meet the mysterious Patron. Then there are the customers: the evil Mattlin and the sensitive Hartmann most prominent among them. A generation older than she, the cultured, rich and married Hartmann begins an affair with Anne. She reveals her secrets, her fears and her hopes to him trusting in their mutual love. His wife, Christine, knows him better and in the end its no real contest for her to keep her husband and see off her latest rival. Although Faulks writes the love story with commitment, the nature of the novel determines that it can only end badly for Anne. An historical novel in which history is treated seriously, The Girl at the Lion d'Or is tragic drama and its real subject is France herself. A happy fairy-tale ending would be incongruous: it did not happen for the French Third Republic; therefore, it could not happen for Anne. Anne's childhood has been blighted by the First World War. Her father was shot on a charge of mutiny while serving in the trenches at Verdun, and her mother, harassed and victimised because of his fate, driven to suicide. Anne endured a wandering, hand-to-mouth existence with her uncle Louvert, whose name she adopts. Louvert, vainglorious and empty dispenser of fine sounding phrases- 'Courage is the only thing that counts'-, joined a right wing revolutionary organisation with the aim of 'making France great again' but deserted both Anne and France for a new life in America. Anne later invests her emotions in Hartmann and although devastated by his rejection, she does not allow it to destroy her. She intuitively turns away from suicide and the last line of the novel leads us to believe that she will, though there will be dark days ahead, overcome her situation. The battle of Verdun and the French army mutinies a year later were momentous events for the French nation. That the battle and a charge of mutiny played such a major part in Anne's personal history suggests a metaphorical link between her and France. The fact that the prologue to the narrative dedicates the story to Anne, 'an unknown girl' rather than the 'important public' figures of the time also indicates that the character represents something larger than an individual. The use of the adjective 'unknown', in the context of this novel, is loaded with meaning, as it evokes the Unknown Soldier. By making Anne a homeless, friendless, orphaned young woman, Faulks is pushing the limits of melodrama in his wish to create a character who is the opposite of those in the male-dominated world of political power. She is the victim of political decisions and human spite but does not embrace victimhood. Instead she embodies most of the virtues and a certain defiance. More importantly she is vital: she makes decisions and acts on them. The polemic thrust of the book, backed-up by references to newspaper stories of political crises and scandal at home and mounting threat of war from abroad, is that the period's political leaders were, at best, inert. The setting of the story is also much removed from the centre of power and influence in the political sense if not geographically. In fact the author is shy of saying where in France the town of Janvilliers is. The descriptions of the seasons in the book and that Hartmann walks on a beach near his house from which 'the sea has disappeared' puts it somewhere on the north coast. Imprecise as this is, it rules out the real Janvilliers being the location though its name may have been used because of that town's proximity to Verdun. Geographical imprecision serves the function of making the fictional Janvilliers a French ""everytown"" where the attitudes and experiences of its inhabitants typify those of towns throughout France of the period. Choosing 'Lion d'Or', a common and therefore typical name for French inns, as the name of the town hotel is meant to strengthen the idea of this representational aspect of Janvilliers. A war monument in the town centre commemorating the dead of the First World War could be found in any town in the country. Similarly, 'M. Bouin', a woman bereaved of her menfolk by the war and finding solace in religion, would be a familiar character in 1930's France. 'M. le Patron' typifies the defeatist mindset among many of the time while the odious 'Mattlin' is the town's future fifth columnist and collaborator. 'Hartmann' is the ineffectual liberal. His failure to confront 'Mattlin', whose slanders are undermining 'Hartmann's' reputation just as surely as the builder hired to renovate his house undermines its foundations, can be read as a metaphor of the centre-left government's failure to confront fascism either at home or abroad."
1668,Prince Serebrenni,history," Knyaz (Prince) Nikita Serebryanni is on his way to Moscow. In Medvedevka village his small armed unit of servants clashes with the oprichnik Khomyak’s gang. There and then the Prince learns that bloodshed and lawlessness here were inspired by Tsar Ioann's new policies, known as oprichnina. Another plotline involves Yelena Morozova, the wife of Medvedevka landlord whom the Prince helped out; she turns out to be his own loved one of the old times, who had to marry the old man in order to thwart another vile oprichnik, Vyazemsky, with his unwanted passes. Further on his way, Serebrenni helps out the outlaw named Persten (the latter would repay the Prince later by leading him out of Grozny’s jail) and encounters the terrible Tsar himself. Appalled by Godunov's cynicism (who suggests that the two should join forces in the anti-Grozny alliance) and torn apart between his righteous hatred towards the Tsar with his corrupt oprichnicks, and his own oath of allegiance, Serebrenni, all kinds of adventures behind, chooses to go to war, to fight for his country (not its amoral ruler), and die the death of a noble man."
1669,Goodnight Mister Tom,history," In September 1939, as Britain stands on the edge of World War II, many young children from the cities are sent into the countryside to escape the German bombardment. William ""Willie"" Beech, a boy from London who is physically and emotionally abused by his mother, arrives at the home of Mr. Thomas Oakley, a widower in his sixties who lives in the village of Little Weirwold. The boy is thinly clad, underfed and covered with painful bruises, and believing he is full of sin, a result of his upbringing by his mother. ""Mister Tom"", as Willie christens his new guardian, is reclusive and bad-tempered, and as such is avoided by the community. Willie lives with him as his Mother wants him to live with someone who is either very religious or lives next to a Church. Though initially distant, he is touched after discovering William's home-life and treats him with kindness and understanding, helping to educate him. Under his care, William begins to progress, forming a small circle of friends at school among his classmates including fellow-evacuee Zach. He also becomes proficient in drawing and dramatics. As William is changed by Tom, so is Tom transformed by William's presence in his home. It is revealed that Tom lost his wife and baby son to scarletina some 40 years previously, and he has become reclusive because of this. The growing bond between William and Tom is threatened when William's mother requests that the boy return to her in the city, telling him she is sick. At first, William thinks this will be a good thing, as he can be helpful to his mother. However his mother is not pleased to learn the details of his time with Tom, feeling that he has not been disciplined properly. While William has been away, she has become pregnant and had a girl, but is neglecting the baby. After a bad reunion, where his mother becomes furious upon learning the details of her son's life with Tom, abhorring his association with the Jewish Zach among other things, she throws William against a bookcase, knocking him out. She then ties and gags him and locks him, with the baby, in a cupboard under the stairs. Back in Little Weirwold, Tom has a premonition that something is not right with William. Although he has never travelled beyond his immediate locality, he ventures into London and eventually locates William's neighbourhood of Deptford and his home. He persuades a local policeman to break down the door of the apparently empty home, and finds William in the closet holding his dead half-sister. William is malnourished and badly bruised as he had been locked under the stairs for a number of days. William is hospitalised, but whilst there suffers horrific nightmares and is drugged simply to prevent his screams from disturbing the other children. Tom is warned that it is likely that William will be taken to a children's home, and, unable to observe William's distress any longer, kidnaps him from the hospital and takes him back to Little Weirwold. Back with Mister Tom, William is much damaged by his ordeal, blaming himself for the death of his sister as he had not been able to provide enough milk to feed her whilst locked away, and becomes very depressed. Later, when his favourite teacher Annie Hartridge has a baby, William is shocked to learn from Zach that a woman cannot conceive a child on her own, and realises that his mother was having a relationship with a man, even though she had previously told him that it was wrong for unmarried couples to live together or have children together. Tom is traced by the authorities, who have come to tell William that his mother has committed suicide and offer him a place in a children's home, as they've been unable to trace any other relatives who may have been able to take care of him. Luckily the authorities realise that William has already found a good home and allow Tom to adopt him. Tom, William and Zach enjoy a holiday at the seaside village of Salmouth, where they stay in the house of a widow whose sons have been sent out to war. Zach then receives news that his father has been injured by a Luftwaffe bomb in London and he hurries home on the next train saying farewell to all his friends. This is the last time they hear from him. William later learns that Zach has been killed and is grief-stricken for some time. Eventually, Doctor Little, the village doctor, who was Zach's guardian while he was evacuated, gives William Zach's bike. Through learning to ride it, William realises that Zach lives on inside him. In the ending scene William finally learns to ride Zach's bike down a steep hill and sees Mr. Tom waiting for him. They both embrace and William, happily, calls him Dad."
1670,Post Captain,history," The book begins in 1802 with the conclusion of the French Revolutionary Wars and the start of the Peace of Amiens. Commander Jack Aubrey returns to England to take up the life of a country squire. He meets the Williams family, and their cousin Diana Villiers. Aubrey courts Sophie Williams (the eldest daughter), but is also attracted to Diana, with whom he commences an affair. Aubrey plans to marry Sophie Williams, but his fortune soon disappears when he is forced to repay the prize money for a merchant ship which has been deemed an unlawful capture and his prize-agent absconds with much of the rest. Aubrey flees the country to avoid going to debtors' prison. While in France, war with England breaks out again, and French authorities begin rounding up all English subjects. Tipped off by Jean-Anne Christy de la Pallière, the French captain who had captured him in Master and Commander, Stephen smuggles Jack out of the country dressed in a bear costume. Finally making it to Gibraltar, Jack and Stephen take passage aboard a British East India Company ship. The ship is captured by the privateer Bellone, but a British squadron overtakes them and rescues Jack and Stephen. Returning to England at the outbreak of war in 1803, Jack is offered a letter of marque by a Mr. Canning. Jack turns Canning down and is soon given command of , an odd ship that was designed to launch a secret weapon. The ship is structurally unsound and sails poorly, and its first lieutenant is very free with punishment. Placed under the command of Admiral Harte, with whose wife Jack had an affair, Jack is given a free hand in the hope that his lucky streak of capturing prizes will continue. Jack's luck does not prevail, only managing to drive the privateer Bellone aground outside a Spanish port, but with no other prizes. Disappointing Admiral Harte, Jack is assigned to escort convoys up and down the English Channel. During this time, he gets a reputation for lingering in port as he carries on an affair with Diana. Meanwhile, Stephen is sent on an intelligence gathering mission in Spain. Upon returning, Stephen is advised by Heneage Dundas, a close friend of Jack's, to warn him about visiting Diana. When Stephen does so, Jack is angry and accuses Stephen of lying to him as to where he had been during his absence. Soon they challenge each other to a duel. While in port, Jack calls on Diana, but finds her with Canning. Prior to the date of the duel, Jack is ordered to raid the French port of Chaulieu to sink the assembled French troopships and gunboats and to destroy the corvette Fanciulla. On the way, the crew plans to mutiny because of the treatment they receive from Lieutenant Parker. Stephen overhears their plans and goes to Jack - the first time they have spoken since the challenge. Forewarned, Jack quashes the mutiny by separating the instigators and some loyal crew in a ship's boat. During an engagement in Chaulieu, the Polychrest runs aground. Jack leads three of the ship's boats to board the Fanciulla. After a short battle, the Polychrests capture the ship and pull off the Polychrest from where it is stranded on a sand bar. However, after hours of pounding by the shore batteries, the Polychrest founders and sinks soon after leaving Chaulieu. After the battle, their duel is forgotten by both Stephen and Jack. Jack returns to England in the Fanciulla and is promoted to Post-captain. Jack is offered a ship that is currently being built but will not be ready to sail for six months. Afraid of being seized by his creditors, he declines the wait and asks for any command. He is temporarily assigned to HMS Lively whose Captain, Hamond, has taken leave to exercise his seat in Parliament. Stephen is again sent to Spain to gather more intelligence. This time, he returns with news that the Spanish will declare war as soon as four ships full of bullion from Montevideo are safely in port. While Stephen is gone, Sophie, at Stephen's urging, asks Jack to transport her and Cecilia to the Downs. While on board, Sophie and Jack come to an agreement not to marry anyone else; Jack is currently too poor to propose a satisfactory marriage settlement to Mrs. Williams. Stephen, while attending an opera, also becomes aware of Diana's affair with Mr. Canning. Fearing that a change in parliamentary leadership will leave Jack without a command, Stephen asks that the Lively be included in the squadron sent to intercept the Spanish. The Admiralty grants this request, assigns Stephen the title of captain pro tem so he will receive a generous share of the prize money, and tasks him to negotiate the treasure fleet's surrender. Because of Stephen's temporary rank and his now-obvious connection to the Admiralty, Jack realizes that Stephen has long been involved in intelligence work for Britain, which highlights Stephens previous travel and apparent unwillingness to explain himself. The Spanish convoy refuses to surrender and a quick battle breaks out. One Spanish frigate explodes and the other three surrender."
1671,The Walking Drum,history," Forced to flee his birthplace on the windswept coast of Brittany to escape the Baron de Tournemine, who killed his mother, and to seek his lost father, Kerbouchard looks for passage on a ship and, although forced to serve as a galley slave initially, travels the coast and attains the position of pilot, frees a captured Moorish girl, Aziza, and her companion, then frees his fellow slaves and with their help sells his captors into slavery and escapes to Cádiz in Moorish Spain, where he looks for news of his father. Hearing that his father is dead, Mathurin goes inland and poses as a scholar in Córdoba, but his scholarship is interrupted when he becomes involved in political intrigue surrounding Aziza and is imprisoned by Prince Ahmed. Scheduled to be executed, Mathurin escapes eastward to the hills outside the city, but before he leaves soldiers arrive and ransack and burn the place where he is staying, leaving him for dead. Mathurin returns to Córdoba and, aided by a woman he chances upon named Safia, he takes a job as a translator. However, the intrigue in which she is involved threatens their lives, and they must flee the city. Safia, through connections of her own, has gathered news of Mathurin's father, and tells him that his father may be alive but was sold as a slave in the east. Leaving Spain, they take up with a merchant caravan and travel by land across Europe, stopping along the way at various places to trade or to fight off thieves. Reaching Brittany, the caravan tempts a raid from the Baron de Tournemine, but they are ready for his attack and, routing his forces, press on, joined by another caravan, to sack the baron's castle. Mathurin personally kills his enemy, avenging his mother, and, leaving the caravan, takes Tournamine's body and throws it into a fabled swamp rumored to be a gate to Purgatory. Riding eastward, Mathurin befriends a group of oppressed peasants before rejoining the caravan as it approaches Paris. Safia has learned that Mathurin's father is at Alamut, the fortress of the Old Man of the Mountain (Assassin), but warns that going there is dangerous. She leaves the caravan and remains in Paris, but Mathurin must go on and seek his father. Both caravans will travel eastward and cross the Russian steppes together. In Paris, Mathurin talks with a group of students but offends a teacher and must flee again for his life. Chancing upon the fleeing Comtesse de Malcrais, he assists her in escaping from Count Robert. They meet up with the caravans again at Provins, where they are joined by a company of acrobats (including Khatib) and additional caravans from Italy, Armenia, the Baltic, Venice, and the Netherlands. The caravans join together and travel to Kiev to trade their woolen cloaks and other goods for furs. Denied passage down the Dnieper by boat, the caravans head southward from Kiev. Crossing the Southern Bug and approaching the Chicheklaya, they encounter hostile Petchenegs. Stalling for time as the caravan drives south toward the Black Sea, Kerbouchard exchanges pleasantries with the Khan, fights a duel with Prince Yury, and receives a drink, but as he leaves the camp the Khan warns him that the Petchenegs will attack the caravan in the morning. Kerbouchard returns to the caravan, which has nearly reached the Black Sea, and assists as they contrive rudimentary fortifications, hoping to hold their ground against the Petchenegs until boats arrive to take them to Constantinople. A protracted battle ensues, by the end of which most of the caravan merchants are killed, but Suzanne may have escaped in a small boat, and Mathurin, wounded, hides in the brush and nurses himself gradually back to health, barely surviving to emerge, reclaim his horse, and ride to Byzantium by land, clothed in rags. Casting out Abdullah, a fat storyteller, and taking his place in the market in Constantinople, Mathurin makes a couple of gold coins and an enemy named Bardas. Leaving the market with a man named Phillip, he spends the coins on clothing. In a wine shop, he meets Andronicus Comnenus and captures his interest. Perceiving that rare books are valuable in the city, Mathurin then takes to copying from memory books that he copied in Córdoba. Contacting Safia's informant, he learns that his father is indeed at Alamut, but that he attempted to escape and may be dead. Nevertheless, he is determined to go and find out. Going to an armorer who maintains a room for exercising with weapons, he meets some of the Emperor's guard and drops hints to one of them of the books he is copying, so that the emperor will hear of him. Invited to meet the emperor, Mathurin offers him advice and a book and tells the Emperor of his desire to rescue his father from Alamut. Two weeks later, the emperor supplies Mathurin with a sword, three horses he had lost when the caravan was taken, and gold. Invited to dinner with Andronicus, Mathurin learns from him that Suzanne has returned safely to her castle and strengthened its defenses with survivors from the caravan. Bardas makes trouble, and Mathurin and Phillip must leave the party, but Mathurin has a vision and foretells Andronicus' death. Mathurin advises Phillip to leave the city and go to Saône, and he himself receives a warning note from Safia, telling him not to go to Alamut. Leaving Constantinople, Mathurin travels by boat across the Black Sea to Trebizond and adopts the identity of ibn-Ibrahim, a Muslim physician and scholar, travelling over land to Tabriz, where he finds Khatib, who tells him rumors that his father is being treated terribly by a powerful newcomer to Alamut named al-Zawila. Invited to visit the Emir Ma'sud Kahn, Mathurin presents a picture of himself in his identity as ibn-Ibrahim, physician, scholar, and alchemist, and, learning that ibn-Haram is in the city, decides to pass on from Tabriz toward Jundi Shapur, the medical school that provides his pretense for travelling through the area. Leaving Tabriz, Mathurin and Khatib travel alongside a caravan as far as Qazvin, where ibn-Ibrahim receives gifts and an invitation to visit Alamut. Before he leaves for Alamut, Mathurin makes the acquaintance of the princess Sundari, from Anhilwara, and, learning that she is being forced to marry a friend of the king of Kannauj, promises, if he escapes Alamut alive, to come to Hind and rescue her from this fate. Traveling with Khatib to a valley outside Alamut, where they arrange to meet again afterward, Mathurin packs rope, nitre crystals, and other ingredients from a Chinese recipe he had seen in a book in Córdoba, and gathers also various medicinal herbs, before riding up to the gates of Alamut. He is admitted but immediately taken captive and brought before Mahmoud, who reveals that he ran into trouble with Prince Ahmed, and that the prince and Aziza are both dead. According to Mahmoud, Sinan does not know that Mathurin has been brought to Alamut. Locked in his quarters, Kerbouchard finds the rope has been removed from his pack. Unable to escape, he speaks out his window to a guard, hoping that Sinan's spies will report his presence, and that Sinan will want to meet with an alchemist and physician such as himself. The next morning, after mixing the saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur from his saddlebags, repacking the resulting powder, and mixing several preparations from the herbs, he is confronted by Mahmoud and provokes him. Brought before Sinan, Mathurin reveals to him some of the details of his past that Mahmoud had kept secret and broaches the subject of alchemy, hoping to be kept around a little longer. Promising to see him later, Sinan sends him back to his quarters and also sends a copy of a book he had requested of Ma'sud Kahn in Tabriz. Mathurin does get to see Sinan for most of a day, performing alchemy experiments and exchanging ideas. Afterward, Mahmoud comes for him with armed guards and escorts him (along with his bags, which contain his surgery equipment) to a surgical room, telling him that he has been brought to Alamut on an errand of mercy to save a slave's life, by making him a eunuch. The slave is his father. Pretending to cooperate, Mathurin covertly cuts his father's bonds with a scalpel then, spilling boiling water on some of the guards, draws his sword and engages the remaining guards. Other soldiers, presumably those of Sinan, break into the room, and Mathurin and his father escape down the corridor and through an aqueduct into the hidden valley. In the garden among some spare pipes, Mathurin packs his prepared powder into pipes, plugs the ends, and fashions wicks from fat-soaked string, and they hide there until the middle of the next day. Meeting a young girl in the rain, Mathurin trusts her with the gist of his situation and asks if there is any way out. She tells of a gate whereby the gardener, closely guarded, takes out the leaves he rakes up, and, eager to escape, she agrees to meet them near the gate. Soldiers searching the garden pass by their hiding place, and that evening they rush the gate and, assisted by a handful of slaves who are present, slay the guards, but the gate is closed on them. Placing his prepared pipe bombs, Mathurin lights the fuses and, as soldiers approach, tells everyone to stand back. With the gate destroyed and the soldiers stunned by his blast, they escape out and down the side of the mountain. Slaying another dozen soldiers, Mathurin and his father, with the girl in tow, meet Khatib with the horses and ride off. Reaching the city where Khatib had been hiding, they are confronted by Mahmoud and another dozen soldiers. Mathurin fights a quick duel with Mahmoud and kills him. At the end of the book, the girl from the valley, whose home was near the gulf, rides toward Basra with Mathurin's father, who will seek the sea again. Mathurin rides toward Hind, to fulfill his promise to Sundari."
1672,"Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West",history," Three epigraphs open the book: quotations from French writer Paul Valéry, from German Christian mystic Jacob Boehme, and a 1982 news clipping from the Yuma Sun reporting the claim of members of an Ethiopian archeological excavation that a fossilized skull three hundred millennia old seemed to have been scalped. The novel tells the story of an adolescent runaway from home with a proclivity for violence, known only as ""the kid,"" who was born in Tennessee during the famous Leonids meteor shower of 1833. He first meets an enormous and completely hairless character, Judge Holden, at a religious revival in Nacogdoches, Texas. There, Holden accuses a preacher of raping both an eleven-year-old girl and a goat, inciting those attending the revival to attack and kill the preacher. (The Judge later indicates that he fabricated this story merely for sadistic personal pleasure.) Carrying on his journey alone on his mule through the plains of eastern Texas, the kid spends a night in the shelter of a recluse before arriving in ""Bexar"" (modern-day San Antonio). After a violent encounter with a bartender which establishes the kid as a formidable fighter, he joins a party of ill-armed U.S. Army irregulars on a filibustering mission led by a Captain White. Shortly after entering Mexico, they are attacked, and many killed, by a band of Comanche warriors. Arrested as a filibuster in Chihuahua, the kid is set free when his cell neighbor, the earless Toadvine, tells the authorities that the two of them would make useful recruits for the state's newly hired scalphunting operation, led by the strategic Glanton. Toadvine and the kid consequently join Glanton's gang. The bulk of the novel is devoted to the detailing of their depraved activities and conversations. The gang encounters a travelling carnival, and, in untranslated Spanish, each of their fortunes is told with Tarot cards. The gang originally contracts with various regional leaders to exterminate Apaches and are given a bounty for each scalp they recover. Before long, however, they murder any in their path, including peaceful agrarian Indians, unprotected Mexican villagers, and even Mexican national guardsmen. Judge Holden, who re-enters the story as a fellow scalphunter, is presented as a profoundly mysterious and awe-inspiring figure; the others seem to regard him as not quite human. He (like the historical Holden of Chamberlain's autobiography) is a child-killer, though almost no one in the gang expresses much distress about this. According to the kid's new companion, an ex-priest named Ben Tobin, the Glanton gang first met the judge while fleeing from the onslaught of a much larger group of Apaches. In the middle of the desert, the gang found Holden sitting on an enormous boulder, where he seemed to be waiting for them all. He took them to an extinct volcano and improvised gunpowder from natural materials, enough to give them the advantage against their Apache pursuers. When the kid remembers seeing Holden in Nacogdoches, Tobin explains that each man in the gang claims to have met the judge at some point before joining Glanton's gang—though he ends his tale by stating that he first met with the judge in the desert with the others. This suggests a potentially disingenuous quality to the refrain ""the priest doesn't lie"" uttered by several characters throughout the course of the novel, particularly when spoken by the judge. After months of marauding, the gang crosses into U.S. territory, where they set up a systematic and brutal robbery operation at a ferry on the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona. Local Yuma (Quechan) Indians are approached to help the gang wrest control of the ferry from its original owner, but Glanton's gang betrays the natives, using their presence and previously coordinated attack on the ferry as an excuse to seize the ferry's munitions and slaughter the Yuma. Because of the new operators' brutal ways, a group of U.S. Army soldiers sets up a second ferry at a ford upriver to cross&mdash;which the Yuma briefly appropriate until their ferryman Callahan is decapitated and thrown in the river. Eventually, after the gang had amassed a fortune by robbing the settlers using the ferry, the Yumas suddenly attack and kill most of them, including Glanton. The kid, Toadvine, and Tobin are among the survivors who flee into the desert, though the kid takes an arrow in the leg. Heading west together, the kid and Tobin again encounter Judge Holden, who first negotiates, then threatens them for their weaponry and possessions. Holden fires a non-lethal shot to Tobin's neck and Tobin and the kid hide among bones near a desert creek. The judge delivers a speech advising the kid to reveal himself. Tobin and the kid continue their travels independently, passing each other along the way. Although the kid has several opportunities to shoot the judge, as advised by Tobin, he only attempts so once and fails. Both parties end up in San Diego, but the kid gets separated from Tobin when he is caught by local authorities and imprisoned. Holden visits him in jail, stating that he told the jailers ""the truth"": that the kid alone was responsible for the end of the Glanton gang. The kid declares that the judge was responsible for the gang's evils, but the judge denies it. After reaching through the cell bars to try to grab the kid, Holden leaves the kid alone, stating that he ""has errands."" After the kid tells the authorities where the Glanton gang's fortune can be found, he is released and seeks a doctor to treat his wound. Under the influence of medicinal ether, he hallucinates that the judge is visiting him, along with a curious man who forges coins. The kid recovers and seeks out Tobin, with no luck. He makes his way to Los Angeles, where he witnesses Toadvine and another surviving member of the Glanton gang, David Brown, being hanged for unspecified crimes. The kid again wanders across the American West, and decades are compressed into a few pages. In 1878 he makes his way to Fort Griffin, Texas, and is now referred to by the author as ""the man."" The lawless city is a center for processing the remains of the American bison, which have been hunted nearly to extinction. At a saloon the man yet again meets the judge. Holden calls the man ""the last of the true,"" and the pair talk on equal terms. Holden describes the man as a disappointment, stating that he held in his heart ""clemency for the heathen."" Holden declares prophetically that the man has arrived at the saloon for ""the dance""&mdash;in other words, the dance of violence, war, and bloodshed that the judge so often praised. The man seems to deny all of these ideas, telling the judge, ""You aint nothin"" and, noting a trained bear at the saloon that is performing a dance, states, ""even a dumb animal can dance."" The man hires a prostitute, then afterwards goes to an outhouse under another meteor shower. In the outhouse, he is surprised by the judge, naked, who ""gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh."" This is the last mention of the man, though in the next scene, two men come from the saloon and encounter a third man urinating near the outhouse. The third man advises the pair not to go into the outhouse. They ignore his suggestion, open the door, and can only gaze in awed horror at what they see, stating only, ""Good God almighty."" The last paragraph finds the judge back in the saloon, dancing in the nude and playing fiddle wildly among the drunkards and whores, claiming that he will never die. The end of the narrative is followed by a brief epilogue, featuring an unspecified person auguring a line of holes across the prairie, apparently in the construction of an extended fence. This cordoning off of territories into plots of land suggests the domestication of the ""Old West"" and the end of the frontier that came shortly after the events of the novel. The worker sparks a fire in each of the holes while an assortment of wanderers lingers in the distance. These travelers are bizarrely described as moving with passionless, clockwork-like motions and ""cross[ing] in their progress one by one that track of holes"" which seems representative of ""a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie."" The images of the epilogue seem to serve as a harbinger of the more ordered and settled civilization which will soon replace the war-torn chaos of the West, with its own rituals and codes very unlike those portrayed in the novel's setting."
1673,Anne of Geierstein,history," As the merchant John Philipson and his son Arthur were travelling towards Basel they were overtaken by a storm, and found themselves at the edge of a precipice caused by a recent earthquake. Arthur was making his way towards a tower indicated by their guide Antonio, when he was rescued from imminent danger by Anne, who conducted him to her uncle Bierderman's mountain home. His father had already been brought there to safety by Biederman and his sons. During their evening games Rudolph, who had joined in them, became jealous of the young Englishman's skill with the bow, and challenged him; but they were overheard by Anne, and the duel was interrupted. The travellers were invited to continue their journey in company with a deputation of Switzers, commissioned to remonstrate with Charles the Bold respecting the exactions of Hagenbach; and the magistrates of Basel having declined to let them enter the city, they took shelter in the ruins of a castle. During his share in the night watches, Arthur fancied that he saw an apparition of Anne, and was encouraged in his belief by Rudolph, who narrated her family history, which implied that her ancestors had dealings with supernatural beings. Hoping to prevent a conflict on his account between the Swiss and the duke's steward, the merchant arranged that he and his son should precede them; but on reaching the Burgundian citadel they were imprisoned by the governor in separate dungeons. Arthur, however, was released by Anne with the assistance of a priest, and his father by Biederman, a body of Swiss youths having entered the town and incited the citizens to execute Hagenbach, just as he was intending to slaughter the deputation, whom he had treacherously admitted. A valuable necklace which had been taken from the merchant was restored to him by Sigismund, and the deputies having decided to persist in seeking an interview with the duke, the Englishman undertook to represent their cause favourably to him. On their way to Charles's headquarters father and son were overtaken by Anne disguised as a lady of rank, and, acting on her whispered advice to Arthur, they continued their journey by different roads. The elder fell in with a mysterious priest who provided him with a guide to the ""Golden Fleece,"" where he was lowered from his bedroom to appear before a meeting of the Vehmic court or holy tribunal, and warned against speaking of their secret powers. The younger was met and conducted by Annette to a castle, where he spent the evening with his lady-love, and travelled with her the next day to rejoin his father at Strassburg. In the cathedral there they met Margaret of Anjou, who recognised Philipson as John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, a faithful adherent of the house of Lancaster, and planned with him an appeal to the duke for aid against the Yorkists. On reaching Charles's camp the earl was welcomed as an old companion in arms, and obtained a promise of the help he sought, on condition that Provence was ceded to Burgundy. Arthur was despatched to Aix-en-Provence to urge Margaret to persuade her father accordingly, while the earl accompanied his host to an interview with his burghers and the Swiss deputies. King René of Anjou's preference for the society of troubadours and frivolous amusements had driven his daughter to take refuge in a convent. On hearing from Arthur, however, the result of the earl's mission to the duke, she returned to the palace, and had induced her father to sign away his kingdom, when his grandson Ferrand arrived with the news of the rout of the Burgundian army at Neuchâtel, and Arthur learned from his squire, Sigismund, that he had not seen Anne's spectre but herself during his night-watch, and that the priest he had met more than once was her father, the Count Albert of Geierstein. The same evening Queen Margaret died in her chair of state; and all the earl's prospects for England being thwarted, he occupied himself in arranging a treaty between her father and the King of France. He was still in Provence when he was summoned to rouse the duke from a fit of melancholy, caused by the Switzers having again defeated him. After raising fresh troops, Charles decided to wrest Nancy from the young Duke of Lorraine, and during the siege Arthur received another challenge from Rudolph. The rivals met, and, having killed the Bernese, the young Englishman obtained Count Albert's consent to his marriage with Anne, with strict injunctions to warn the duke that the Secret Tribunal had decreed his death. By the treachery of the Italians the Swiss were enabled the same night to gain another victory, Charles was slain, and their independence was established. Being still an exile, the earl accepted the patriot Biederman's invitation to reside with his countess at Geierstein, until the battle of Bosworth placed Henry VII on the throne, when Arthur and his wife attracted as much admiration at the English Court as they had gained among their Swiss neighbours."
1674,Between Shades of Gray,history," Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and filthy train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously-and at great risk-documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives."
1675,Kydd,history," The story: The year is 1793. Europe is ablaze with war. The Prime Minister, Pitt, is under pressure to make an active move at sea, and despatches a squadron to appear off the French coast. To man the ships, ordinary people must be press-ganged. Thomas Paine Kydd, a young wig-maker from Guildford, is seized, taken across the country to Sheerness and the great fleet anchorage of the Nore to be part of the crew of the fictional 98-gun line-of-battle ship Duke William. The ship sails immediately and Kydd quickly has to learn the harsh realities of shipboard life fast; but despite all that he goes through in danger of tempest and battle he comes to admire the skills and courage of the seamen &mdash; taking up the challenge himself to become a true sailor."
1676,Sharpe's Fury,history," The action takes place during the winter of 1811; the Peninsular War appears to have been won&mdash;by the French. Cádiz is the only major Spanish town still holding out. From their overwintering strongholds in Portugal, the British sally forth to the River Guadiana with a small force seeking to break a key bridge across the river. The mission is commanded by the young Brigadier General Moon, a man with no love for the upstart rifleman, and meets disaster when Sharpe and the men with him encounter a brutal opponent in the French Colonel Henri Vandal, commander of the 8th Regiment of the Line. Running from this first encounter, Sharpe and his small band of survivors are driven by Vandal into the fortress city of Cádiz, which is already besieged by a French army led by Marshal Victor. In Cadiz Sharpe finds himself in the employment of ambassador Henry Wellesley, younger brother to the Duke of Wellington, who is struggling to keep the various faction in Cadiz united against the French. To remedy this Sharpe finds himself drawn into a deadly game of intrigue between the British spymaster Lord Pumphrey and a shadowy murderous faction that is threatening to break the fragile alliance between Spain and Britain apart. The tensions that have grown up between the British and Spanish allies are heightened by the threat to the city and the only chance seems to be a lifting of the siege. The joint army, led by the British General Thomas Graham and Spanish Aristocrat General Lapena seeks to take the battle to the French; however the Spanish refuse to fight, leaving the British isolated. It also means Richard Sharpe will meet Colonel Vandal for a second time at the Battle of Barrosa."
1677,The Book of Negroes,history," Aminata Diallo, an 11-year-old child, is taken from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle — a string of slaves. Eventually, she arrives in South Carolina where she begins a new life as a slave. Due to circumstantial events in her life, Aminata develops certain advantages other slaves do not: she possesses the skills of a midwife and learns how to read and write. Years later, she finds freedom, serving the British in the American Revolutionary War and having her name entered in the historic ""Book of Negroes."" This book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia, only to discover that this new place becomes one that is also oppressive and unyielding. Aminata eventually returns to Sierra Leone, passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America, but eventually finds herself crossing the ocean one more time to England to present the account of her life so that it may abolish the slave trade."
1678,The Lords of the North,history," 878 - 881: Uhtred of Bebbanburg makes his way back to his native Northumbria seeking revenge against his uncle Ælfric and childhood enemies Sven the One-Eyed and Kjartan the Cruel. He travels by ship with his friend and lover, Hild. They make landfall near Eoferwic (York) to find the region in disarray. Lord Ivarr Ivarsson and his army are engaged with the Scots in the north. The formerly Danish-held Eoferwic has been conquered by Saxons. The central lands of Dunholm are ravaged by Kjartan and Sven, and Bebbanburg remains under the control of Ælfric. Uhtred is hired to escort a Danish merchant's family north, through Dunholm, to safety. As they travel and attempt to avoid the Dunholm fortress and Kjartan's troops, they are unsuccessful and are led into a slave trading camp led by Sven. Uhtred disguises himself as Thorguild the Leper, Dark Swordsman of Niffelheim, and convinces Sven he is sent from the dead to haunt him. He frees Danish King Guthred of Cumbraland from the slave pens. In Cumbraland, Uhtred becomes the commander of Guthred's household troops and adviser. He trains a band of thirty new warriors and stops an attempt by Kjartan to capture him and Guthred. Uhtred supports Guthred's bid for power against the rival factions of Northumbria, including his uncle Ælfric who now rules Bebbanburg. He falls in love with Gisela, Guthred's sister, before being betrayed by Guhtred and cast into slavery. During two years spent chained to the oar of a Danish trading ship, Uhtred befriends Finan the Agile, a former warrior. Uhtred is rescued by Steapa and Ragnar who pursued the trading ship in their Red Ship on the orders of King Alfred. Uhtred returns to Wessex to learn that it was Hild who convinced Alfred to send Steapa and Ragnar to his rescue. Hild had promised to Alfred that she would use Uhtred's hoard of silver to build an abbey and recommit herself to Christ, and in return Alfred agreed to rescue Uhtred. Uhtred, Father Beocca, Steappa and Ragnar are sent on embassy to Guthred with a message to make peace in Northumbria. They arrive in Guthred's court to find that Gisela was married to Ælfric via proxy in return for support against Kjartan. Uhtred is certain his uncle will send no men to support Guthred. He chases off Ælfric's men without allowing them to take Gisela, kills Ælfric's monk Jænberht and leads Guthred's men against Dunholm himself. Uhtred's plan to take Dunholm is to once again become a sceadugengan. In the darkness, he along with eleven of his best men climb the hill upon which Dunholm sits and sneak into the fort through a gate used to fetch well water. Although they are discovered, they are assisted by Ragnar's sister Thyra, who has been held by Sven and Kjartan since the events of ""The Last Kingdom"". Her assistance allows Uhtred to open the gate for Ragnar with the main forces of Guthred's army to enter the stronghold. Kjartan and Sven are killed and Guthred transfers control of Dunholm to Ragnar. Guthred's claim to the throne of Northumbria is not complete yet. Guthred's army meets Ivarr's stronger force in the field. Uhtred provokes Ivarr into single combat and the novel ends with Uhtred winning the duel against Ivarr."
1679,Cathedral of the sea,history," The book is set in Barcelona and its main character is Arnau Estanyol, the son of a fugitive serf who obtains freedom and eventually achieves a high status."
1680,Funeral Games,history," The chapters of the book have the years of the events for their titles: *323 BC. Alexander the Great dies in Babylon. Perdikkas seeks to be appointed as Regent for the king's yet-unborn heir. Meleager wants Arrhidaios acclaimed as king. The dispute threatens to become a civil war. Roxane murders the daughters of Darius and their unborn children. Perdikkas becomes Regent, with both Phillip Arrhidaios and Alexander IV (son of Roxane) as nominal joint kings. Ptolemy and Bagoas reach an agreement. The Greeks revolt; Antipatros crushes them. *322 BC. Perdikkas crushes the Isaurians. Bagoas visits Ptolemy in Alexandria, and together they advance their plans for relocating the mummy of Alexander to that city. The daring plan is carried out, and the Mummy and golden bier of Alexander are relocated to Alexandria. Kynna and Eurydike receive news of the death of Alexander and decide it is imperative that Eurydike marry Phillip Arrhidaios (as pre-arranged) and so advance her claim to the throne. Alketas murders Kynna, but Eurydike survives, and marries Arrhidaios (the marriage is celebrated but not consummated). *321 BC. Eumenes defeats and kills Krateros (more commonly known as Craterus.) Perdikkas marches towards Egypt, seeking to depose Ptolemy, but the invasion is a total disaster. Perdikkas is assassinated by his own lieutenants. Eurydike seeks to become Queen on her own right, but she is frustrated by the inconvenient arrival of her menstrual period. Peithon and Arridaios/Arybbas become the new co-regents. *320 BC. Under the leadership of Ptolemy, Alexandria becomes the largest city in the world, surpassing Babylon. Egypt propspers greatly. *319 BC. In the spring, Antigonos One-Eye defeats Eumenes and drives him eastward. In the summer, the aged regent Antipatros passes away. He passes over his own son Kassandros (whom he knows to be cruel and much too ambitious, likely to seize the throne for himself) and appoints his elderly colleague Polyperchon as his successor as regent of Macedon. *318 BC. Olympias appeals for help from Eumenes. Eumenes dedicates a royal tent to the spirit of great Alexander, complete with golden throne, golden crown, and golden scepter. *317 BC. In the spring, with an army and navy supplied by Antigonos, Kassandros (Cassander) crosses the sea and takes Athens unopposed. Polyperchon, with king Arrhidaios in tow, marches against him. Roxane, with her son, flees to join Olympias in Dodona in Molossia. Eurydike, infuriated at being left behind from the southern war, seizes the Regency for herself, with the help of Kassandros, his brother Nikanor, and their whole clan. Polyperchon sends Arrhidaios back to Eurydike. Olympias invades Macedon. The Macedonians refuse to fight against Alexander's mother. Olympias deposes, imprisons and tortures Eurydike and Arrhidaios. On hearing this, Kassandros delays and slows down his march to Macedon. Olympias murders Arrhidaios and forces Eurydike to commit suicide. *316 BC. Olympias is executed, in a Biblical-style stoning, by the relatives of her victims. *315 BC. Kassandros visits the Lyceum in Athens and tells them monstrous slanders against Alexander. *310 BC. Kassandros murders Roxane and Alexander IV. *297 BC. Kassandros dies a horrible death from disease. *286 BC. Pharaoh Ptolemy completes writing a book to refute the evil lies of Kassandros. sh:Funeral Games (roman)"
1681,Adam Bede,history," According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1967), : ""the plot is founded on a story told to George Eliot by her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris of the novel, of a confession of child-murder, made to her by a girl in prison."" The story's plot follows four characters' rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope&mdash;a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love ""rectangle"" between beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor, and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher. (The real village where Adam Bede was set is Ellastone on the Staffordshire / Derbyshire border, a few miles from Uttoxeter and Ashbourne, and near to Alton Towers. Eliot's father lived in the village as a carpenter in a substantial house now known as Adam Bede's Cottage). Adam is a local carpenter much admired for his integrity and intelligence, in love with Hetty. She is attracted to Arthur, the charming local squire's grandson and heir, and falls in love with him. When Adam interrupts a tryst between them, Adam and Arthur fight. Arthur agrees to give up Hetty and leaves Hayslope to return to his militia. After he leaves, Hetty Sorrel agrees to marry Adam but shortly before their marriage, discovers she is pregnant.In desperation, she leaves in search of Arthur. She cannot find him; unwilling to return to the village on account of the shame and ostracism she would have to endure, she delivers her baby with the assistance of a friendly woman she encounters. Later, the child is killed when she abandons it in a field. Not being able to bear the child's cries she tries to come back but she is too late when she finds out that it dies of exposure. Hetty is caught and tried for child murder. She is found guilty and sentenced to hang. Dinah enters the prison and pledges to stay with Hetty until the end. Her compassion brings about Hetty's contrite confession. When Arthur Donnithorne, on leave from the militia for his grandfather's funeral, hears of her impending execution, he races to the court and has the sentence commuted to transportation. Ultimately, Adam and Dinah, who gradually become aware of their mutual love, marry and live peacefully with his family."
1682,Professor Martens' Departure,history," Friedrich Fromhold Martens, born in Pärnu, Estonia on 27 August 1845, was a renowned expert in international law. He attended the University of St. Petersburg where he later became a professor. He was a polyglot, jurist, arbitrator, and a member of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He represented the Russian Government at many international conferences including the Hague Peace Conference in 1899. He was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1902 and was mistakenly reported by some as the winner. During a train journey from his home town of Pärnu to St. Petersburg he recalls many events of his life. He remembers meeting his wife Kati for the first time at her father's house. He describes the discovery of his ""double"", Georg Friedrich Martens, a man who lived an almost parallel life to Friedrich eighty-nine years previously. Georg was born in Hamburg, Germany, attended the University of Göttingen and also became a professor of international law. Some of the recollected events, for example the Great Flood of Hamburg in 1770 and a fire in a wooden suburb of Göttingen actually took place during Georg's life and not his own. He describes the arrest of his nephew, Johannes. He remembers his meeting with the Imperial Chancellor, Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov, to discuss the publication of a compendium of treaties between Russia and other nations. He formulates his theory of ""comparativist psychology"". With some embarrassment he relates the story of his candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize and the mistaken reports that he was the winner. He outlines his ""doctrine of respect for human rights"". He describes his affair with an art student, Yvette Arlon, a woman that later bore his child, married and fled to the Congo. Friedrich discusses politics with a fellow train passenger, an Estonian lady and socialist, Hella Wuolijoki. He wonders how differently he would have lived his life if given another chance. He recalls the embarrassing episode of the Treaty of Portsmouth; Friedrich was a member of the Russian delegation but his name was mistakenly omitted from the initial list of delegates and so the Japanese did not allow him to participate in most of the talks. He remembers Mr. Saebelmann, the son of the man who was rumored to have ousted Friedrich's father from the parish clerk's cottage. Mr. Saebelmann became a composer of some note but later died in Poltava. He describes the death of his double, Georg, in Frankfurt am Main, just before meeting his own demise at the stop-off at Valga."
1683,The Sign of the Chrysanthemum,history," Muna has never seen his father, and only knows that he is a samurai with a chrysanthemum tattoo on his shoulder. He meets a likable ronin named Takanobu on a ship which Muna was hiding on. Later on, after Muna and Takanobu have gotten off the ship, they are in the city and go exploring. Muna loses track of where Takanobu goes, and eventually gets lost. At night, Muna still isn't able to find Takanobu and is wandering around when a girl finds him and invites Muna in for supper. Later on Muna learns that the girl's name is Akiko and is the daughter of a sandal-maker. After supper, Muna stays the night. Finally, Muna finds Takanobu asleep next to a fence. As Takanobu takes care of Muna, he finds him a job cleaning stables. But one New Years a fire occurs at the Red Dog where Takanobu met Muna and sent him to do an errand. On the errand, he is told by someone that a man named ""Plum Face"" is dead, who was a person Muna knew. He is also told that Takanobu is ""dead."" Muna faints from the noxious fumes of the fire and is badly burnt, unable to wake up. Later on, Muna is found by a man named Fukuji, who is the master swordsmith of the capital. Muna stays with Fukuji, doing house chores and other ""women's work"". One day when Muna was outside, he saw a man dressed as a monk who seemed to be following exactly what he did. When Muna pulls a trick on the man, he finds out that he is Takanobu. Takanobu is happy to see Muna again, and asks him to do one favor. Takanobu wants Muna to steal a sword from Fukuji and give it to him. He convinces Muna to give him the sword by saying that he is Muna's father. But when Muna brings the sword to Takanobu, he says he wouldn't give it to Takanobu unless he said he was Muna's father. When Takanobu didn't answer, Muna attacked. Muna runs away to the woods, and eventually buries the sword in front of a neglected shrine. At the same time, Fukuji, who woke up, wonders where Muna has gone. Suddenly, a visitor comes to Fukuji and tells him that he is Muna's father. Fukuji realizes that the visitor is Takanobu. When Takanobu who never died claims that he is Muna's father, Muna must choose between fulfilling his ""father's"" wishes or proving his loyalty to Fukuji."
1684,Westward Ho!,history," Set initially in Bideford in North Devon during the reign of Elizabeth I, Westward Ho! follows the adventures of Amyas Leigh, an unruly child who as a young man follows Francis Drake to sea. Amyas loves local beauty Rose Salterne, as does nearly everyone else. Much of the novel involves the kidnap of Rose by a Spaniard. Amyas spends time in the Caribbean seeking gold, and eventually returns to England at the time of the Spanish Armada, finding his true love, the beautiful Indian maiden Ayacanora, in the process; yet fate had blundered and brought misfortune into Amyas's life, for not only had he been blinded by a freak bolt of lightning at sea, but he also loses his brother Frank Leigh and Rose Salterne, who were caught by the Spaniards and burnt at the stake by the Inquisition."
1685,Red Midnight,history," 12-year-old Santiago Cruz, a Kekchi campesinos indigenos, escapes from his destroyed village, Dos Vías, Guatemala, on May 18, 1981 with his four-year-old sister, Angelina, at midnight, after his mother pushes her into his arms and wakes him up. His entire family has been killed by soldiers, and he runs as far away as he can. His Uncle Ramos gives him a map and compass and instructs him to sail away in his cayuco to the United States, to escape the civil war and hopefully find a better life. The boy and his sister (Angelina) find a horse, and ride it into the nearby village of Los Santos, where everyone has also been killed and burned. They continue into a city and sneak a ride in a maíze truck. They then sneak a ride on the back of a manure truck that a drunk rebel soldier is driving. To keep the truck from crashing because of the intoxicated driver, they put horse dung into the gas tank and escape when the truck breaks down. They then walk down to Lake Izabal and sleep at their Uncle Ramos's house. In the morning, Enrique, a friend of Ramos, finds the children. They tell him what has happened, and Enrique and his wife, Silvia, give them food for the journey. Enrique tells them everything he knows about the dangerous journey, and ride in the cayuco with them until they reach the opening to the sea. At the entrance to El Golfete, they sneak beside the shore past a military boat. Enrique leaves and Santiago and his sister sail into the ocean. They have little food, and soon go hungry and thirsty, with itches and blisters all over their bodies. They encounter tourists, pirates, many violent storms, and a shark. They encounter a river of garbage, which Santiago uses to make an amateur windshield among other spare parts to fix his cayuco, and finds Angelina a broken plastic doll. They once nearly sailed into an inland bay on the border of Belize and Mexico, and then sailed into the open Gulf. Santiago makes notches in his cayuco every dawn with his machete, as it should only take twenty to make it. They attempt to catch fish, but often fail or have to steal fish from fishing nets from a ship. They encounter a large storm, which causes the mast to fall directly on Santiago's head, and makes them lose the water pail. They experience diarrhea and sores, and almost lose hope of making the journey. They had expected to arrive in twenty days, but several more pass with no land in sight. One day, a tropical storm's eye passes over them, and they lose everything except the cayuco. As the storm passes, they land in a large city in Florida, and are taken to a hospital. They tell a nurse who can speak Spanish about their journey. They are bandaged, Angelina's doll is fixed, and they are shown on television and are fed food. They are told they will not be deported because they are child refugees and have lost everything."
1686,Flashman at the Charge,history," Flashman meets Queen Victoria's cousin, William of Celle, incognito in a billiards hall and befriends him, before getting him drunk and leaving him in an alley with bootblack on his buttocks for the police to find. However, his reputation as a valiant and down-to-earth soldier leads to Prince Albert assigning Flashman as the boy's mentor. Despite every attempt to avoid it, he finds himself in the Crimea showing William what soldiering is all about. The boy's unfortunate death does not allow Flashman to avoid involvement in the most notable actions of the Crimean War, including The Thin Red Line, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade under James Yorke Scarlett, and the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. Powered by fear and flatulence, he reaches the Russian guns in front of the other surviving members of the charge and promptly surrenders. He is taken into Russia (now Ukraine) and placed in the custody of Count Pencherjevsky. Here he reunites with Scud East, his old schoolmate, and meets Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev, a vicious Russian Captain. Flashman and East overhear plans by senior Russian officers to invade India and end the British Raj. The two men escape from the Count's estate (thanks to a peasant uprising), but Flashman is recaptured by the Russians. Ignatiev takes Flashman with him across central Asia as part of his plans to conquer India. Flashman is rescued from prison by cohorts of Yakub Beg, led by his Chinese paramour. Then the Tajik and Uzbek warriors attack and destroy the Russian fleet with the aid of Flashman (who is drugged with hashish and utterly fearless as a result, for the only time in his life)."
1687,The Clan of the Cave Bear,history," A five-year old Cro-Magnon girl is orphaned and left homeless by an earthquake that destroys her family's camp. She wanders aimlessly, naked and unable to feed herself, for several days. Having been attacked and nearly killed by a cave lion and suffering from starvation, exhaustion, and infection of her wounds, she collapses, on the verge of death. The narrative switches to a group of Neanderthal people, the ""Clan"", whose cave was destroyed in the earthquake and who are searching for a new home. The medicine woman of the group, Iza, discovers the girl and asks permission from Brun, the head of the Clan, to help the ailing child, despite the child being clearly a member of ""the Others"", the distrusted antagonists of the Clan. The child is adopted by Iza and her brother Creb. Creb is this group's ""Mog-ur"" or shaman, despite being deformed as a result of the difficult birth resulting from his abnormally large head and the later loss of an arm and leg after being attacked by a cave bear. The clan call her Ayla, because they can't pronounce her name. Immediately after Iza begins to help her, the clan discovers a huge, beautiful cave; many of the people begin to regard Ayla as lucky, especially since good fortune continues to come their way as she lives among them. In Auel's books, the Neanderthal possess only limited vocal apparatus and rarely speak, but have a highly-developed sign language. They do not laugh or even smile, and they do not cry; when Ayla weeps, Iza thinks she has an eye disease. Ayla's different thought processes lead her to break important Clan customs, particularly the taboo against females handling weapons. She is self-willed and spirited, but tries hard to fit in with the Neanderthals, although she has to learn everything first-hand; she does not possess the ancestral memories of the Clan which enable them to do certain tasks after being shown only once. Her main antagonist is Broud, son of the leader, an egomaniac who feels that she takes credit and attention away from him. As the two mature, the hatred between them festers. When they are young adults, Broud rapes Ayla, but she becomes pregnant, and rejoices in the birth of a son. The book ends with Creb's death, Broud's succession to the leadership, and his banishment of Ayla, who sets off to find other people of her own kind. She is not allowed to take her son with her. The separation haunts her with guilt and grief for the rest of the series."
1688,Gravity's Rainbow,history," The plot of the novel is complex, containing over 400 characters and involving many different threads of narrative which intersect and weave around one another. The recurring themes throughout the plot are the V-2 rocket, interplay between free will and Calvinistic predestination, breaking the cycle of nature, behavioral psychology, sexuality, paranoia and conspiracy theories such as the Phoebus cartel and the Illuminati. Gravity's Rainbow also draws heavily on themes that Pynchon had probably encountered at his work as a technical writer for Boeing, where he edited a support newsletter for the Bomarc Missile Program support unit. The Boeing archives are known to house a vast library of historical V-2 rocket documents, which were probably accessible to Pynchon. The novel is narrated by many distinct voices, a technique further developed in Pynchon's much later novel Against the Day. The style and tone of the voices vary widely: Some narrate the plot in a highly informal tone, some are more self-referential, and some might even break the fourth wall. Some voices narrate in drastically different formats, ranging from movie-script format to stream of consciousness prose. The narrative contains numerous descriptions of illicit sexual encounters and drug use by the main characters and supporting cast, sandwiched between dense dialogues or reveries on historic, artistic, scientific, or philosophical subjects, interspersed with whimsical nonsense-poems and allusions to obscure facets of 1940s pop culture. Many of the recurring themes will be familiar to experienced Pynchon readers, including the singing of silly songs, recurring appearances of kazoos, and extensive discussion of paranoia. According to Richard Locke, megalomaniac paranoia is the ""operative emotion"" behind the novel, and an increasingly central motivator for the many main characters. In many cases, this paranoia proves to be vindicated, as the many plots of the novel become increasingly interconnected, revolving around the identity and purpose of the elusive 00000 Rocket and Schwarzgerät. The novel becomes increasingly preoccupied with themes of Tarot, Paranoia, and Sacrifice. All three themes culminate in the novel's ending, and the epilogue of the many characters. The novel also features the character Pig Bodine, of Pynchon's novel V.. Pig Bodine would later become a recurring avatar of Pynchon's complex and interconnected fictional universe, making an appearance in nearly all of Pynchon's novels thereafter. The novel also shares many themes with Pynchon's much later Against the Day; Against The Day becomes increasingly dark as the plot approaches World War I, and Gravity's Rainbow takes these sentiments to their extreme in its highly pessimistic culmination of World War II. The opening pages of the novel follow Pirate Prentice, first in his dreams, and later around his house in wartime London. Pirate then goes to work at ACHTUNG, a top-secret military branch, with Roger Mexico and Pointsman, who both worked there at the time. It is here the reader is introduced to the possibly promiscuous US Army lieutenant named Tyrone Slothrop (at certain points in the book, Pynchon leads the reader to doubt the very existence of the women Slothrop claims to sleep with), whose erratic story becomes the main plot throughout most of the novel. In ""Beyond The Zero"", some of the other characters and organizations in the book note that each of Slothrop's sexual encounters in London precedes a V-2 rocket hit in the same place by several days. Both Slothrop's encounters and the rocket sites match the Poisson Distributions calculated by Roger Mexico, leading into reflections on topics as broad as Determinism, the reverse flow of time, and the sexuality of the rocket itself. Slothrop meets a woman named Katje, and they fall in love, maintaining a relationship until Slothrop's sudden removal to Germany in part three. Many characters not significant until later are introduced in ""Beyond the Zero"", including Franz and Leni Pökler, Roger Mexico and Jessica, and Thomas Gwenhidwy, some of whom don't appear until the closing pages of the novel. Many characters are introduced into the plot and then don't appear again at all. Indeed, most of the four hundred named characters only make singular appearances, serving merely to demonstrate the sheer scope of Pynchon's universe. Slothrop is also submitted to various psychological tests, many involving the drug Sodium Amytal. Pavlovian conditioning is a recurring topic, mostly explored through the character of Pavlovian researcher Pointsman. One of the more bizarre Pavlovian episodes involves the conditioning of octopus Grigori to respond to the girl Katje. Early in part two, the octopus attacks Katje on the beach, and Slothrop is ""conveniently"" at hand to rescue her. Their romance begins here, extending into Part Three and the events that follow. In part two, ""Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering"", Slothrop is studied covertly and sent away by superiors in mysterious circumstances to the Hermann Göring casino in recently liberated France, in which almost the entirety of Part Two takes place. There he learns of a rocket, with the irregular serial number 00000 (Slothrop comments that the numbering system doesn't allow for four zeroes in one serial, let alone five), and a component called the S-Gerät (short for Schwarzgerät, which translates to black device) which is made out of the hitherto unknown plastic Imipolex G. Several companions suddenly disappear or re-appear after extended amounts of time, including the two guards watching Slothrop and Katje. It is hinted at that Slothrop's prescience of rocket hits is due to being conditioned as an infant by the creator of Imipolex G, Laszlo Jamf. Later, the reality of this story is called into question in a similar fashion as the existence of Slothrop's original sexual exploits were. After getting this information, Slothrop escapes from the casino into the coalescing post-war wasteland of Europe, ""The Zone"", searching for the 00000 and S-Gerät. In the closing of Part Two, Katje is revealed to be safe in England, enjoying a day at the beach with Roger Mexico and Jessica, as well as Pointsman, who is in charge of Slothrop's furtive supervision. While unable to contact Slothrop (or prohibited from contacting him), Katje continues to follow his actions through Pointsman. Slothrop's quest continues for some time ""In The Zone"" as he is chased by other characters. Many of these characters are referred to as ""shadows,"" and are only partially glimpsed by the protagonist. Much of the plot takes place on ""The Anubis"", a ferry on which many different characters travel at various times. Slothrop meets and has an extended relationship with Margherita Erdman, a pornographic film actress and masochist. Originally meeting her in an abandoned studio in The Zone, it is she who leads him on to the Anubis. Here, Slothrop later also has extended encounters with her twelve-year-old daughter Bianca, though it is unclear whether or not he has stopped his casual relationship with Margherita by this time. Margherita is later shown to know a great deal more about the 00000, S-Gerät, and Imipolex G than she lets on, even having spent many days in a mysterious and ambiguously described factory and being clothed in an outfit made from the ""erotic"" plastic. Towards the end of this section, several characters not seen since early in the novel make a return, including Pirate Prentice, in his first appearance since the novel's very start, as well as Roger Mexico. ""In The Zone"" also contains the longest episode of the book, a lengthy tale of Franz Pökler, a rocket engineer unwittingly set to assist on the S-Gerät's production. The story details Pökler's annual meetings with his daughter Ilse, and his growing paranoia that Ilse is really a series of impostors sent each year to mollify him. Through this story, we find out sparse details about the S-Gerät, including that it has an approximate weight of forty-five kilograms. The story ultimately reveals that the 00000 was fired in the spring of 1945, close to the end of the war. Slothrop spends much of the time as his invented alter-ego Rocketman, wearing an operatic Viking costume with the horns removed from the helmet, making it look like a rocket nose-cone. Rocketman completes various tasks for his own and others' purposes, including retrieving a large stash of hashish from the centre of the Potsdam Conference. This continues until he leaves the region for northern Germany, continuing his quest for the 00000, as well as answers to his past. It becomes steadily apparent that Slothrop is somehow connected to Dr. Laszlo Jamf, and a series of experiments performed on him as a child. Slothrop later returns to the Anubis to find Bianca dead, a possible trigger for his impending decline. He continues his pilgrimage through northern Germany, at various stages donning the identities of a Russian colonel and mythical Pig Hero in turn, in search of more information on his childhood and the 00000. Unfortunately, he is repeatedly sidetracked until his persona fragments totally in part four, despite the efforts of some to save him. Throughout ""The Counterforce"", there are several brief, hallucinatory stories, of superheroes, silly Kamikaze pilots, and immortal sentient lightbulbs. These are presumed to be the product of Slothrop's finally collapsed mind. The final identification of him of any certainty is his picture on the cover of an album by obscure English band ""The Fool"" (another allusion to Tarot, which becomes increasingly significant), where he is credited as playing the Harmonica and Kazoo. At the same time, other characters' narratives begin to collapse as well, with some characters taking a bizarre trip through Hell, and others flying into nothingness on Zeppelins. A variety of interpretations of this fact exist, including theories that all of the involved characters have a shared consciousness, or even that the other characters are part of Slothrop's mind, and thus disintegrate along with it. Slothrop's narrative ends a surprisingly long time before the novel's end, which focuses more on the 00000, and the people associated with its construction and launch (namely Blicero, Enzian, and Gottfried, amongst others). At this point, the novel also concludes many characters' stories, including those of Mexico, Pointsman, and Pirate, leaving only the 00000. As the novel closes, many topics are discussed by the various protagonists around the world, ranging from Tarot cards to Death itself. Towards the end of ""The Counterforce"", it transpires that the S-Gerät is actually a capsule crafted by Blicero to contain a human. The story of the 00000's launch is largely told in flashbacks by the narrator, while in the present Enzian is constructing and preparing its successor, the 00001 (which isn't fired within the scope of the novel), though it is unknown who is intended to be sacrificed in this model. In the flashbacks, the maniacal Captain Blicero prepares to assemble and fire the 00000, and asks Gottfried to sacrifice himself inside the rocket. He launches the rocket in a pseudo sexual act of sacrifice with his bound adolescent sex slave Gottfried captive within its S-Gerät. At the end of a final episode, told partially in second person, the rocket descends upon Britain. The text halts, in the middle of a song composed by Slothrop's ancestor, with a complete obliteration of narrative as the 00000 lands (or is about to land) on a cinema. Thus the novel opens and closes in wartime Britain, and opens and closes with the landing of a V-2 rocket. Many facts in the novel are based on technical documents relating to the V-2 rockets. Equations featured in the text are correct. References to the works of Pavlov, Ouspensky, and Jung are based on Pynchon's research. The firing command sequence in German that is recited at the end of the novel is also correct and is probably copied verbatim from the technical report produced by Operation Backfire. In reality, a V-2 rocket hit the Rex Cinema in Antwerp, where some 1200&nbsp;people were watching the movie The Plainsman, on December 16, 1944, killing 567&nbsp;people, the most killed by a single rocket during the entire war. The secret military organizations practicing occult warfare have an historical backdrop in the Ahnenerbe and other Nazi mysticism, whereas the allied counterparts were limited to certain individuals such as Louis de Wohls work for MI5. Additionally, the novel uses many actual events and locations as backdrops to establish chronological order and setting within the complex structure of the book. Examples include the appearance of a photograph of Wernher Von Braun in which his arm is in a cast. Historical documents indicate the time and place of an accident which broke Von Braun's arm, thereby providing crucial structural details around which the reader can reconstruct Slothrop's journey. Another example is the inclusion of a BBC Radio broadcast of a Benny Goodman performance, the contents of which, according to historical record, were broadcast only once during the period of the novel and by which the events immediately surrounding its mention are fixed. Further historical events, such as Allied bombing raids on Peenemünde and the city of Nordhausen (close to the V-2 producing concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora) also appear in the novel and help to establish the relation of the work's events to each other."
1689,HMS Surprise,history," After the capture of the Spanish gold shipment (in Post Captain), the Admiralty is debating on how to reward the captains responsible, including Jack Aubrey. As Spain was not at war the captured ships are not considered prizes, and as a result of the decision the captains end up with much smaller bounties than they hoped. The new First Lord of the Admiralty also mentions Stephen Maturin's name during the proceedings, despite the information being classified, possibly exposing him to a large audience as an intelligence agent. Stephen willingly goes on a mission to Spain anyway, and is to be picked up by Jack on the on its return to English waters. Jack arrives at the rendezvous point to learn from a Catalan revolutionary that Stephen has been captured and is being tortured by French intelligence. Jack decides to lead a rescue mission, saving Stephen and killing the French interrogators. Upon returning to England Jack finds that the fortune he had expected from the Spanish gold fleet was not as large as he had hoped and he is still in debt. Jack is taken by bailiffs and is held in a sponging-house. Stephen returns to Sir Joseph and tells of his capture and Jack’s predicament. Jack's arrest for debt also puts his would-be marriage to Sophie Williams into doubt, as her mother has stipulated that her husband should be financially stable. Stephen uses his influence to get Jack an advance on his grant of money (far smaller than the prize would have been) which clears some of his debt so he is released. Stephen meets with Sophie and convinces her to see Jack secretly before he takes command of his new ship HMS Surprise. Jack and Sophie meet in a coach in the middle of the night, and promise to marry no one else. Stephen and Jack leave in the Surprise to ferry an ambassador to the East Indies. He is also interested in tracking down a French squadron commanded by Admiral Linois, as the waters of the Indian Ocean are otherwise devoid of prizes. On their journey, Surprise gets caught in the doldrums north of the equator, and the crew, especially those who had recently come from long service aboard another ship, begin to show signs of severe scurvy. The ship makes an emergency stop along the coast of Brazil for fresh fruit and supplies. As the journey continues the Surprise goes wide around the Cape of Good Hope, held by the Dutch who are at war with England. To avoid encounters, Surprise ventures into the waters of the Antarctic Ocean, where they are forced to endure a severe storm. The ambassador at this time becomes very ill. The Surprise puts into India to refit from the storm and to rest the ambassador. While ashore Stephen meets a local street-wise child, a girl named Dil, who eagerly shows him around the city. Stephen is watching a parade with Dil when he sees Diana Villiers, who has returned to India ahead of her companion, the wealthy merchant Richard Canning, Stephen's rival for her affection. They agree to visit, and spend several days together, at the end of which Stephen asks her to marry him. She does not respond immediately, but promises to at a later date, and Stephen departs. Meanwhile Dil is killed when she is robbed of silver bracelets that Stephen had given her. The ambassador dies east of India and the Surprise turns around, setting sail for Britain. They soon encounter the East India Company's China Fleet, returning to England, unescorted. A day after leaving the China Fleet the Surprise spots Linois's squadron cruising the Indian Ocean. Surprise engages the smallest ship of the squadron, the corvette Berceau, shredding her rigging, then turns and makes speed back to the China Fleet to warn them and organize a defence. Choosing the largest ships of the China Fleet, Jack dresses them as men-of-war and sends some of his officers to help them fight. The French squadron closes on the Surprise and the large Indiamen. The Surprise turns and engages the largest French warship, the 74-gun ship of the line Marengo, and exchanges broadsides with the heavier ship, but is outgunned and in peril when one of the Indiamen engages the French ship from the other side, forcing her to disengage. The damage from the action forces the entire French squadron to flee to refit. Upon entering Calcutta, Jack receives an enthusiastic welcome from the merchants, including Canning, who are happy to refit the Surprise and allow him to transport jewels as freight, which will gain him a percentage of their value on his arrival in England. During the refit, Canning confronts Stephen and they challenge each other to a duel. During the duel Canning shoots Stephen in the ribs, but Stephen is able to gather himself and then shoots Canning in the heart, killing him. Stephen convinces Diana to return to England, though on a merchant ship instead of Surprise; Jack will hear nothing of it. Meanwhile, Stephen is running a high fever because the bullet is still lodged in his ribs. With the help of Jack and the ambassador’s surgeon, Stephen operates on himself, removing the bullet. As the Surprise sails home they stop at Madeira, and there Stephen finds that Diana has left him for a Mr. Johnstone from America (called ""Mr. Johnson"" in later books). Jack, on the other hand, had sent ahead for Sophie so that he may marry her now that he is out of debt, but she is not on the island. Within a day’s sailing, Jack overtakes an English frigate in the night and finds that Sophie is aboard. She refuses to marry him then but promises that once they return to England, she will."
1690,Black Rain,history," The book alternates between Shizuma Shigematsu's journal entries and other characters from August 6–15, 1945, Hiroshima, and the present, several years later, when he and his wife Shigeko become the guardians of their niece, Yasuko, and thus obligated to find a suitable husband for her. At the start of the novel, three earlier attempts to arrange a match have already failed due to health concerns over her having been exposed to the ""Black Rain"" fallout of the atomic bomb. The radiation sickness is one of the main causes of concern throughout the story. Shigematsu's journal entries attempt to disprove her sickness, but in the end it turns out that Yasuko was indeed affected by the ""Black Rain""."
1691,The Sweetheart of the Templar From the Valley of Rephaim,history," The novel's plot takes place in Jerusalem in the days of World War II and focuses on the love story of Tamar-Henrietta Landver, a Jewish girl from Vienna who managed to flee from the Nazis to the region of Palestine prior to the war, to Wolfgang Shvarte, a German Templar who was born in the region of Palestine and raised in the German Templar Colony in Jerusalem. The story begins in the present (1995) with the death of Tamar and then return back to the past, and describes Tamar and Wolfgang's meeting and how they eventually were separated due to heavy social pressure, months before the war began. Although Wolfgang returned to Germany before the outbreak of World War II, the plot thickens when the two meet by chance in 1942 in the region of Palestine as the Nazi military forces were approaching the region of Palestine and preparing an attack The Jewish communities in the region."
1692,A Boy at War,history," In the beginning, Adam has to move to Honolulu because his father is relocated to Pearl Harbor as a military officer. It is really hard just like any kid moving and having to go to a different high school, but it is especially hard for Adam because in the book it mentions how people at Honolulu High School hate military kids. The book never really explained why. But Adam did manage to make two friends. Their names are Davi Mori and Martin Kahahawai. Davi is a Japanese American, while Martin is a Hawaiian. One day the boys decide to go fishing early in the morning. As they are fishing on the land at Pearl Harbor, they find a rowboat and decide to take it out into the water. As they are fishing, they hear airplanes flying overhead. Davi cheers because he thinks these are American planes, but Adam realizes that they are Japanese planes and thinks that Davi is a spy signaling the airplanes. They then see the Japanese bomber planes bomb the naval ships at Pearl Harbor. When the first bombs are dropped, part of their rowboat explodes, and a piece of wood flies into Martin’s chest. He is wounded, but doesn’t die. Adam watches as his father's ship, the Arizona, goes down. Once the Japanese leave the harbor in the morning, Adam runs home with a rifle and makes sure his Mom and sister, Bea, are okay. They let Adam in the house, and he tells them what happened and that he doesn’t know if his Dad, Lt. Emory Pelko, is dead or alive. About a week after Adam arrives back home, the family gets a telegram saying the Lt. Emory Pelko is missing. So the family then moves back to the mainland of America."
1693,Blood Feud,history," The story is told in the first-person by Jestyn the Englishman as he recounts his life and how he ended up in Constantinople. After being orphaned, he is captured by Viking raiders and sold into slavery in Dublin. His owner Thormond frees him for good service, and Jestyn joins the crew of Thormond's ship when they leave Dublin to return to Denmark. Upon return, Thormond finds his father killed by childhood friends, and swears the blood feud after which the novel is named. Jestyn and Thormond swear blood brotherhood and set off to pursue the killers. The journey takes them across the Baltic, up the Dvina and down the Dnieper to Kiev, where they enlist in the service of Khan Vladimir who has agreed to fight for Basil II in return for the hand in marriage of Basil's sister Anna. The fighting is resolved, and both Thormond and Jestyn join the newly formed Varangian Guard. The feud is ultimately resolved, but with many twists and turns, and Jestyn finally settles to live in Constantinople. The theme of the novel revolves around Jestyn's struggle to find belonging, as he is caught between conflicting values, conflicting cultures, and conflicting religions. The historical background depicts the Christianization of Kievan Rus', and Jestyn's mixed feelings as he carries an original Christian value system of his youth alongside the commitment of blood feud and blood brotherhood of Norse paganism."
1694,The Hundred Days,history," The Commodore's squadron leaves Gibraltar to defend a convoy of East Indiamen from the Moorish xebecs and galleys. Although they are successful, Hugh Pomfret—unable to bear the guilt of having killed so many Christian slaves in the galleys—commits suicide. Aubrey is then instructed to proceed to the Adriatic, stopping off in Mahón along the way. The Surprise encounters Captain Christy-Palliere - Captain of the Royalist Caroline - who informs Jack about the French situation in the Adriatic before sailing onto Mahon. The Surprise and Pomone then sail to Ragusa Vecchia where a newly-refitted French frigate is based under the command of Charles de La Tour, an ardent Buonapartist, and sink it. They then proceed to the Porte di Spalato where they meet another French frigate - Drs Stephen and Jacob are sent aboard and an agreement is reached to fight a mock battle after which the French will accompany the English ships back to Malta. They also lay out a considerable amount of gold to have the new French ships burnt in the dockyards along the coast by disgruntled unpaid dockworkers - e.g. Papadopoulos', Pavelic's, Simon Macchabe's and seven off Durazzo itself (Somers likens the destruction 'to buying one's salmon off a fishmonger's slab than catching it with a well-directed fly'). On reaching Algiers, and after meeting the Consul, Sir Peter Clifford, and his wife, Maturin and Jacob attend an interview with the Dey's Vizier at Kasbah, the Dey's palace. Stephen presents the Vizier with a beautiful blue stone and they are instructed to travel onwards to the Dey, Omar Pasha, at his hunting-lodge at Shatt el Khadna. The Dey invites Stephen to go lion hunting with him and the Dey kills a large lion, Mahmud, and Stephen its lioness, which attempts to kill the Dey. For this deed, Omar Pasha swears that no assistance will be given to the Muslim plot. Jacob then discovers the Vizier's message to the Sheikh of Azgar, Ibn Hazm, to have the gold carried by a fast-sailing xebec from Arzila (just SW of Tangiers), captained by an Algerian corsair via the Strait of Gibraltar straight to Durazzo. On their return to Algiers, the Doctors learn that Omar Pasha has been assassinated by the Vizier, who privately admires Buonaparte. The doctors are taken aboard the Ringle, along with two Irish children - Kevin and Mona Fitzpatrick - whom Stephen buys from a slaver, and join Aubrey back in Port Mahon. They then proceed to Gibraltar to update Lord Barmouth on the situation, encountering Hamadryad and Heneage Dundas along the way. Aubrey is disliked by the new Commander-in-Chief for having discreetly turned away his son on an earlier commission, and Jack feels his plan may be given to another frigate. However, Barmouth's politico, Matthew Arden, is highly influential in Whitehall and a close friend of Lord Keith and Maturin assures Jack he will not be ill-used. Jack is also a cousin of Barmouth's new young wife, Isobel Carrington, and the Admiral's attitude becomes more friendly once she makes him aware of this. Dr Jacob finds out the corsair has hired two galleys to act as decoys - one on the African side and one mid-channel - whilst he lies under Tarifa before running through the Straits. The Surprise lies in wait in the Straits and, on spotting the xebec, gives chase. Murad Reis, its captain, fires on the frigate and destroys the second gun of her starboard broadside, killing Bonden, its captain and Hallam, a midshipman. After a long pursuit, the galley finally holes up at Cranc (Crab) island but finally surrenders after McLeod, a crags man from St Kilda, climbs a steep cliff and a nine-pounder gun is hauled up. The corsair's men of war, seeing the situation is hopeless, behead Murad and surrender, along with several English prisoners. After returning victorious to Gibraltar, there is some dispute over the prize money but Ali Bey is deposed and the new Dey, Hassan, renounces his claim to the gold (given that the Surprise was fired on first) in return for the xebec and a £250,000 loan to consolidate his position in Algiers. The Commander-in-Chief, on the advice of Lord Keith, gives his assent and the Algerine delegation is given a handsome send-off. The end of the book coincides with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and thus the effective end of the Napoleonic wars. Aubrey and Maturin set sail for Chile in the Surprise to try and undermine the Spanish colonial rule there - a continuation of the theme of The Wine-Dark Sea."
1695,Crocodile on the Sandbank,history," Amelia Peabody is left a wealthy orphan after the death of her studious father, who has left her everything in his will because she is the only one of his children who shared his interests, namely history and archaeology. The inheritance enables her to travel abroad in order to follow her enthusiasm for antiquities. Amelia, a determined and unorthodox English female, supports women's suffrage and believes she will never marry. (She's convinced she is unattractive and will neither submit to a man nor rule one.) In Rome she meets the destitute Evelyn Forbes, whose titled family have cast her off after she eloped with, then was abandoned by, an Italian art teacher. Amelia takes Evelyn under her wing and employs her as a companion. They travel together to Egypt, where they encounter the Emerson brothers, Radcliffe and Walter, archaeologist and philologist respectively, and where Amelia falls in love with pyramids. Amelia and Evelyn decide to travel up the Nile, stopping at various sites along the way. When they reach Amarna, they discover the Emersons excavating the city which for a while was the capital of Egypt under the mysterious Akhenaten. Amelia and Radcliffe Emerson loathe one another on sight, but after he is taken ill and she helps to keep his excavation going, they grudgingly begin to respect one another. Evelyn is attracted to Walter, but is convinced she will never marry because of her soiled reputation. Things get complicated when Evelyn's cousin Lucas shows up at the remote site with a story about her grandfather's death, his (Lucas') inheritance, and a proposal of marriage. Amidst the romantic entanglements and attempts to continue the excavation, Emerson and Amelia must also deal with the nocturnal visitations of a mummy that walks moaning through the desert. Once the mystery is solved, Amelia plans to stay in Egypt and conduct her own archaeological expeditions, with Emerson at her side...as her advisor and as her husband. The tone of the novel (as well as the rest of the series) is humorous to the point of parody and pokes fun at many of the period's mores and stereotypes, as well as the sensationalist novels popular at the time."
1696,Ivanhoe,history," Wilfred of Ivanhoe is disinherited by his father Cedric of Rotherwood for supporting the Norman King Richard and for falling in love with the Lady Rowena, Cedric's ward and a descendant of the Saxon Kings of England. Cedric had planned to marry her to the powerful Lord Aethelstane, pretender to the Crown of England through his descent from the last Saxon King, Harold Godwinson, thus cementing a Saxon political alliance between two rivals for the same claim. Ivanhoe accompanies King Richard on the Crusades, where he is said to have played a notable role in the Siege of Acre. The book opens with a scene of Norman knights and prelates seeking the hospitality of Cedric. They are guided there by a palmer, who has recently returned from the Holy Land. The same night, seeking refuge from inclement weather and bandits, Isaac of York, a Jewish moneylender, arrives at Rotherwood. Following the night's meal, the palmer observes one of the Normans, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, issue orders to his Saracen soldiers to follow Isaac of York after he leaves Rotherwood in the morning and relieve him of his possessions. The palmer then warns the moneylender of his peril and assists in his escape from Rotherwood. The swineherd Gurth refuses to open the gates until the palmer whispers a few words in his ear, which turns Gurth as helpful as he was recalcitrant earlier. This is but one of the many mysterious incidents that occur throughout the book. Isaac of York offers to repay his debt to the palmer by offering him a suit of armour and a war horse to participate in the tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where he was bound. His offer is made on the surmise that the palmer was in reality a knight, York having observed his knight's chain and spurs (a fact that he mentions to the palmer). The palmer is taken by surprise but accepts the offer. The story then moves to the scene of the tournament, which is presided over by Prince John, King Richard's younger brother. Other characters in attendance are Cedric, Aethelstane, Lady Rowena, Isaac of York, his daughter Rebecca, Robin of Locksley and his men, Prince John's advisor Waldemar Fitzurse, and numerous Norman knights. On the first day of the tournament, a bout of individual jousting, a mysterious masked knight, identifying himself only as ""Desdichado"" (which is described in the book as Spanish for the ""Disinherited One"", though actually meaning ""Unfortunate""), makes his appearance and manages to defeat some of the best Norman lances, including Bois-Guilbert, Maurice de Bracy, a leader of a group of ""Free Companions"" (mercenary knights), and the baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf. The masked knight declines to reveal himself despite Prince John's request, but is nevertheless declared the champion of the day and is permitted to choose the Queen of the Tournament. He bestows this honour upon the Lady Rowena. On the second day, which is a melée, Desdichado is chosen to be leader of one party. Most of the leading knights of the realm, however, flock to the opposite standard under which Desdichado's vanquished opponents fought. Desdichado's side is soon hard pressed and he himself beset by multiple foes, when a knight who had until then taken no part in the battle, thus earning the sobriquet Le Noir Faineant (or the Black Sluggard), rides to Desdichado's rescue. The rescuing knight, having evened the odds by his action, then slips away. Though Desdichado was instrumental in the victory, Prince John, being displeased with his behaviour of the previous day, wishes to bestow his accolades on the vanished Black Knight. Since the latter has departed, he is forced to declare Desdichado the champion. At this point, being forced to unmask himself to receive his coronet, Desdichado is revealed to be Wilfred of Ivanhoe himself, returned from the Crusades. This causes much consternation to Prince John and his court who now fear the imminent return of King Richard. Because he is severely wounded in the competition and because Cedric refuses to have anything to do with him, Ivanhoe is taken into the care of Rebecca, the beautiful daughter of Isaac, who is a skilled healer. She convinces her father to take him with them to York, where he may be best treated. The story then goes over the conclusion of the tournament including feats of archery by Locksley. Meanwhile, de Bracy finds himself infatuated with the Lady Rowena and, with his companions-in-arms, makes plans to abduct her. In the forests between Ashby and York, the Lady Rowena, Cedric, and Aethelstane encounter Isaac, Rebecca, and the wounded Ivanhoe, who had been abandoned by their servants for fear of bandits. The Lady Rowena, in response to the requests of Isaac and Rebecca, urges Cedric to take the group under his protection to York. Cedric, unaware that the wounded man is Ivanhoe, agrees. En route, the party is captured by de Bracy and his companions and taken to Torquilstone, the castle of Front-de-Boeuf. However, the swineherd Gurth, who had run away from Rotherwood to serve Ivanhoe as squire at the tournament and who was recaptured by Cedric when Ivanhoe was identified, manages to escape. The Black Knight, having taken refuge for the night in the hut of a local friar, the Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, volunteers his assistance on learning about the captives from Robin of Locksley, who had come to rouse the friar for an attempt to free them. They then besiege the Castle of Torquilstone with Robin's own men, including the friar and assorted Saxon yeomen whom they had manage to raise due to the hatred of Front-de-Boeuf and his neighbour, Philip de Malvoisin. At Torquilstone, de Bracy expresses his love for the Lady Rowena, but is refused. In the meantime, de Bois-Guilbert, who had accompanied de Bracy on the raid, takes Rebecca for his captive, and tries to force his attentions on her, which are rebuffed. Front-de-Boeuf, in the meantime, tries to wring a hefty ransom, by torture, from Isaac of York. However, Isaac refuses to pay a farthing unless his daughter is freed from her Templar captor. When the besiegers deliver a note to yield up the captives, their Norman captors retort with a message for a priest to administer the Final Sacrament to the captives. It is then that Cedric's jester Wamba slips in disguised as a priest, and takes the place of Cedric, who then escapes and brings important information to the besiegers on the strength of the garrison and its layout. Then follows an account of the storming of the castle. Front-de-Boeuf is killed while de Bracy surrenders to the Black Knight, who identifies himself as King Richard. Showing mercy, he releases de Bracy. De Bois-Guilbert escapes with Rebecca while Isaac is released from his underground dungeon by the Clerk of Copmanhurst. The Lady Rowena is saved by Cedric, while the still-wounded Ivanhoe is rescued from the burning castle by King Richard. In the fighting, Aethelstane is wounded while attempting to rescue Rebecca, whom he mistakes for Rowena. Following the battle, Locksley plays host to King Richard. Word is also conveyed by de Bracy to Prince John of the King's return and the fall of Torquilstone. In the meantime, de Bois-Guilbert rushes with his captive to the nearest Templar Preceptory, which is under his friend Albert de Malvoisin, expecting to be able to flee the country. However, Lucas de Beaumanoir, the Grand-Master of the Templars is unexpectedly present there. He takes umbrage at de Bois-Guilbert's sinful passion, which is in violation of his Templar vows; and decides to subject Rebecca, who he thinks has cast a spell on de Bois-Guilbert, to a trial for witchcraft. She is found guilty through a flawed trial, but claims the right to trial by combat. Bois-Guilbert, who had hoped to fight as her champion incognito, is devastated when the Grand-Master orders him to fight against Rebecca's champion. Rebecca then writes to her father to procure a champion for her. Meanwhile Cedric organises Aethelstane's funeral at Coningsburgh, in the midst of which the Black Knight arrives with a companion. Cedric, who had not been present at Locksley's carousal, is ill-disposed towards the knight upon learning his true identity. However, King Richard calms Cedric and reconciles him with his son, convincing him to agree to the marriage of Ivanhoe and Rowena. Shortly after, Aethelstane emerges – not dead, but having been laid in his coffin alive by avaricious monks desirous of the funeral money. Over Cedric's renewed protests, Aethelstane pledges his homage to the Norman King Richard and urges Cedric to marry Rowena to Ivanhoe; to which Cedric finally agrees. Soon after this reconciliation, Ivanhoe receives word from Isaac beseeching him to fight on Rebecca's behalf. Upon arriving at the scene of the witch-burning, Ivanhoe forces de Bois-Guilbert from his saddle, but does not kill him. However, the Templar dies ""a victim to the violence of his own contending passions,"" which is pronounced by the Grand Master as the judgment of God and proof of Rebecca's innocence. King Richard, who had left Kyningestun soon after Ivanhoe's departure, arrives at the Templar Preceptory, banishes the Templars and declares that the Malvoisins' lives are forfeit for having aided in the plots against him. Fearing further persecution, Rebecca and her father leave England for Granada. Before leaving, Rebecca comes to bid Rowena a fond farewell. Finally, Ivanhoe and Rowena marry and live a long and happy life together, though the final paragraphs of the book note that Ivanhoe's long service ended with the death of King Richard."
1697,Cast Two Shadows,history," It is 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, in Camden, South Carolina, and fourteen-year-old Caroline Whitaker, her step mother Sarah,and her bratty older sister Georgia Ann are confined to one small room of their spacious Southern plantation home. British soldiers, led by Colonel Rawdon are occupying the place. The Colonel is also courting Georgia Ann. Caroline and her Negro caretaker, Miz Melindy, travel to get her 'almost' brother Johnny. It turns out he is an American patriot, which causes conflicting emotions in Caroline. Her emotions over Kit's death are still a sore wound throughout the novel."
1698,Priestess of Avalon,history," As a young woman, the British priestess Eilan, known to the Romans as Helena, falls in love with the charismatic Roman Constantius. The Roman noble takes her away from Avalon as she is banished for this forbidden love and, before long, Helen bears him a son, who will become Constantine the Great. Helen's position in Roman society now gives her the freedom to travel about in the empire. When her son Constantine becomes Emperor, she slowly discovers brand-new roles. She faces the spread of the new Christian religion and seeks to understand the old knowledge of the goddess in light of the new religion. As Empress-Mother, Helena travels on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to find the answers to questions that arise between the old religion and the new."
1699,Simon,history," The story begins on the eve of the English Civil War in 1642. Simon Carey is the school age son of John and Anne Carey, of Lovacott Farm, near Great Torrington in Devon. He has a sister, christened Marjory, whom he always calls ""Mouse"". One day he is the house of his best friend Amias Hannaford with whom he does his schoolwork, when Amias's father Doctor Hannaford announces that the king has raised his standard at Nottingham, and calls for a toast to the king. Simon refuses, because he and his family support Parliament. This leads to a falling out between the families. Simon's father goes off to fight for Parliament but orders Simon to finish school first. One day while Simon is getting his horse Scarlet reshoed in town, a rider falls down in front of him after being pursued and almost run over by the following horses. He and the smith rescue the young rider. Through his knowledge of the area and the introduction of the rescued man Barnaby Colbourne, a Parliament man, he manages to lead retreating Parliament troops under Colonel Ireton past a Royalist stronghold to safety. A few months later, after finishing his education, Simon goes to Windsor to join the New Model Army. He is fortunate to fall in again with Lieutenant Colebourne who recommends him to General Thomas Fairfax. Simon is commissioned as cornet to Colbourne in the Fairfax Horse. One of his subordinates is the devout Corporal, former Ironside 'Zeal-for-the-Lord' Relf. He first sees action in the decisive Battle of Naseby. After the battle Corporal Relf deserts, having learned that his neighbour has stolen all his money from him. He is recaptured and sentenced to the Pioneer regiment, one of the harshest of units, but escapes. Simon's troop heads west and is ordered to capture a house at Okeham Paine, near Exeter, which is held by the Royalists. When they break through he finds himself fighting Amias, who is with the Royalists. Simon is knocked unconscious by a musket butt and is tended by the formidable lady of the house, Mistress Killigrew. He meets and falls in love with her daughter Susanna. After his recovery he is ordered to go to Lovacott to act as a go-between for messages from Parliament spies in the area under Royalist control. One turns out to be Corporal Relf, now called Ishmael Watts, who is hiding with another spy, Podbury, in the tower of Torrington Church above the powder store. While Simon is at home, a Royalist search party led by Amias turns the house upside down, Simon's sister describes him ""not quite 'zactly"", i.e., not quite right after his head injury, and Amias chooses to believe this to stop further enquiry from his subordinates. It is then that Simon realises their friendship is still alive. When he hears the Parliament army is in Torrington, he rejoins them for the battle there. The Royalists are defeated and 200 prisoners are put in the church. When a huge explosion blows up the church, suspicion falls upon a red-headed man whom Simon recognizes as Amias, because he used a phrase they used as children. He finds him outside the town and brings his doctor father to him. Amias said it wasn't he who blew up the church. Simon is unaware he is being followed by Cornet Wainwright, who has disliked him since Simon took his coveted position as cornet. He and Amias are arrested. Amias is cleared when the dying Ishmael Watts (Corporal Relf) tells the chaplain Joshua Sprigg and General Fairfax that the explosion was an accident. The General forgives Simon, comparing his actions to those of the Biblical Jonathan who protected his friend David. The story ends four years later at Lovacott in April 1649. Simon resigned from the army at the same time as General Fairfax, because both disagreed with the decision to execute the king, although they otherwise approve of the Commonwealth. A ghost from the past, Podbury, reappears and the mystery of the blast that killed 200 Royalists seems to be solved. Simon and Amias are fast friends again and look set to marry Susanna Killigrew and 'Mouse' respectively."
1700,The Great Indian Novel,history," The organization of the sections and chapters of the novel mirrors the organization of the Mahabharata and the themes and events addressed in each allude to themes and events of the mirrored sections of the epic. The novel has 18 ""books,"" just as the Mahabharata has 18 books and the Battle of Kurukshetra lasted for 18 days. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Beginning."" In this section, Ved Vyas (""V.V.""), the narrator, recounts his personal history; the seduction of Satyavati by the Brahmin Parashar and his own birth; the origin of Ganga Datta from the union of Shantanu and the now absent Maharanee (whom he met on the banks of the Ganga (Ganges) and who had had seven suspicious miscarriages); the marriage of Shantanu and Satyavati and Ganga Datta's vow of chastity; the birth of Chitrangada and Vichitravirya and the latter's marriage; Ved Vyas's insemination of Ambika and Ambalika; the vow of revenge against Ganga Datta taken by Amba; the birth of Dhritarashtra and Pandu; and the assignment of Ganapathi by Brahm's Apsara Agency to transcribe Ved Vyas's memoir, which V.V. describes as the ""Song of Modern India."" Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Assembly Hall."" The title of this section alludes to Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown. Ved Vyas also compares his memoir to The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad Chaudhuri. The British resident's equerry is named ""Heaslop,"" an allusion to a character in A Passage to India. Introduced is the character of Sir Richard, the British resident at Hastinapur, who is complaining about the increasing radicalization of Ganga Datta, who is still serving as regent of Hastinapur. Ved Vyas discusses the upbringing of Dhritarashtra, Pandu, and Vidur Dharmaputra under the care of the regent, Ganga Datta. Discovering the suffering of the people of Motihari, Ganga Datta embarks on his first protest campaign. Gangaji is arrested and he pleads guilty to defying a police order, but his action results in a victory for the peasants of Motihari. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Forest."" The title of this section alludes to Louis Bromfield's The Rains Came. Sir Richard is furious about the events of Motihari and Heaslop notes that Gangaji had never formally resigned from the regency of Hastinapur. The regent having committed sedition, Hastinapur can now be annexed by British India. Dhritarashtra and Gandhari’s marriage is off to a good start. The devoted young bride has resolved to forever covering her eyes with a blindfold so that she is deprived of whatever her husband is deprived of. Pandu is also enjoying his two sexually expert wives. While enjoying sexual congress with both at once, he suffers a ""massive coronary thrombosis"" and is prohibited from ever again engaging in sexual intercourse. Pandu joins Gangaji’s movement and instructs his wives to seek other sexual partners so that they may still bear him heirs. Kunti reveals that in her youth she bore Hyperion Helios’s child but sent the baby boy down the river in a basket. Gandhari the Grim gives birth not to a hundred sons, but to one daughter, Priya Duryodhani, who is to be the equivalent of a thousand sons. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of Virata."" The title of this section alludes to Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. Hastinapur is annexed to the British Presidency of Marabar (an allusion to the ""Marabar Hills,"" which figure prominently in A Passage to India). The people of Hastinapur are milling in the streets, threatening revolt. There is a rumour that Gangaji will address a rally at the Bibighar Gardens (an allusion to the ""Bibighar,"" which figures prominently in A Jewel in the Crown). Heaslop counsels Sir Richard to let passions dissipate on their own, but Sir Richard instead calls in Colonel Rudyard and the Fifth Baluch, which starts firing on the unarmed gathering in the Bibighar Gardens. Almost 400 people are killed and more than a thousand are injured. After the Bibighar Gardens Massacre, Colonel Rudyard is retired with a half-million pound pension. An unnamed Nobel Prize-winning poet (an allusion to Rabindranath Tagore) returns his knighthood. Gangaji kicks off the Quit India Movement (an allusion to the Quit India Movement started by Mahatma Gandhi). Bungling assassins kill a Professor Kipling instead of Colonel Rudyard. This Professor Kipling was the racist teacher whom a young Pandu had struck, resulting in the end of Pandu’s formal education. Vidur resigns from the civil service but Gangaji and Dhritarashtra order him to rescind his resignation. Dhritarashtra becomes head of the Kaurava Party and Pandu becomes the party’s chief organizer. Kunti bears the sons of Dharma (a young magistrate), Major Vayu of the palace guard, and Devendra Yogi: Yudhistir, Bhim the Brave, and Arjun. Exhausted, Kunti calls a halt to the cuckolding and Madri begs to be permitted to take up the torch. She has an affair with the twins Ashvin and Ashwin and bears the twin sons Nakul and Sahadev. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of War Preparations."" The title of this section alludes to Paul Scott's The Towers of Silence. During an epidemic, a Sarah Moore persuades her brother, the manager of a jute mill in Budge Budge, near Calcutta, to offer the mill workers a bonus. After the epidemic, the workers refuse to give up the bonus and are locked out. Sarahbehn enlists Gangaji's aid and Gangaji embarks on his first protest fast. The British Raj directs the Mill Owners' Association to give in. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of Bhishma."" A rift begins to develop between Dhritarashtra and Pandu, both working within the Kaurava Party to further the cause of Indian independence, with Pandu advocating a harder line than that pursued by Gangaji and Dhritarashtra. Gangaji attends the Round Table Conference hosted by the British government. Mahadeva Menon, a Kaurava Party official from Palghat, persuades Gangaji to do something about the tax on mangoes. Gangaji kicks off the Great Mango March, which prompts Pandu to leave the Kaurava Party. In Chaurasta, a Kaurava protest turns violent and Gangaji calls off the mango agitation. Gangaji is called for a meeting with the viceroy and entertains an uncomfortable Sir Richard with the tale of why he drinks goat's milk instead of cow's milk. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of Drona."" The title of this section alludes to Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Ved Vyas describes the divisions in Indian society engendered by British policy and the formation of the Muslim Group under the figurehead leadership of the Gaga Shah, an ""overweight sybarite."" The arrogant and (literally) brilliant Mohammed Ali Karna, the son of Kunti and Hyperion Helios, educated by the generosity of Indra Deva, the employer of Karna's adoptive father, rises to prominence as a lawyer and as a member of the Kaurava Party. Dhritarashtra insults Karna upon discovering that his (adoptive) father is a chauffeur. Kunti sees Karna and realizes that he is her firstborn son. The story is told of how Indra Deva gave him the surname ""Karna,"" the ""Hacker-Off,"" after Karna circumcised himself with a knife. Karna leaves the movement and goes to England, but the Gaga Shah invites Karna back to India to lead the Muslim Group. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of Karna."" The title of this section alludes to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. The five Pandavas and Priya Duryodhani grow up, each revealing their characters. Priya tries and fails to poison and drown her cousin Bhim. While playing cricket, the Pandavas meet the sage Jayaprakash Drona who tells the tale of his son, Ashwathaman, and his insult at the hands of Ronald Heaslop, which led him to his mission of educating young Indians in order to facilitate the overthrow of the British. The Pandavas choose Drona to be their tutor. Pandu decides to seek the presidency of the Kaurava Party and Dhritarashtra fears that there is a good chance he will lose the election to Pandu. Gangaji persuades Dhritarashtra to step down in favor of a less prominent figure, and untouchable. Thus, if Pandu wins the election, then Gangaji and Dhritarashtra will not be seen as having suffered a defeat. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of Shalya."" The title of this section alludes to Rudyard Kipling's Kim and to M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions. Pandu is elected president of the Kaurava Party and a struggle begins between him and Gangaji for control over the direction of the party. Gangaji outmanoeuvres Pandu, who loses a vote of confidence and resigns. Ved Vyas switches to verse to tell Pandu's story. Pandu forms the Onward Organisation (an allusion to the All India Forward Bloc), the OO. Pandu allies himself with the Nazis and the Japanese against the British and forms the Swatantra Sena (an allusion to the Indian National Army formed by Subhash Chandra Bose) to fight against British forces on the Burmese front. Pandu sends for Madri to join him and the sight of her wearing a military uniform begins to break down his control over his carnal desires. While fleeing from defeat in Singapore by air, Pandu and Madri succumb to their passion. Pandu dies of a heart attack and the plane is shot down, killing Madri as well. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Sleeping Warriors."" - title may be an allusion to Arthur Koestler's ""Darkness at Noon"" Ashwathaman joins the Pandavas as the students of Drona in the military, terroristic, and nationalistic arts. When Arjun has to share an academic prize with Ekalavya, the son of a maidservant, Ekalavya admits that he has been sharing in the Pandavas' lessons while standing outside the door. In exchange for payment for his tuition, Drona demands that Ekalavya cut off his own right thumb and give it to Drona. Unlike in the original Mahabharata, Tharoor's Ekalavya refuses and flees in horror. Drona has a good laugh. Karna considers his options after the Muslim Group's candidates are bested by Muslim members of the Kaurava Party in the elections. Karna proposes a coalition government in the legislative assembly of the Northern Province. Vidur urges Dhritarashtra to accept Karna's proposal, even though the Kaurava Party controls enough seats in the Northern Province to rule without a coalition. Mohammed Rafi, a Muslim Kauravaman, urges rejection of Karna's offer and Dhritarashtra and Gangaji concede. Karna is resolved to find other means of gaining power. The viceroy and Sir Richard consider what to do in reaction to the initiation of the Second World War. Sir Richard relates the story of Sir Francis Younghusband, who inadvertently annexed Tibet. (""He'd really intended just to see the tourist spots and to get a few good pictures of the Potala Palace, but one of his rifles went off accidentally and when he then saw all the notables on their knees cowering he couldn't really disappoint them by not conquering them."") Sir Richard persuades the viceroy to declare war on Germany without consulting the elected governments of the provinces. Kaurava Party legislators react to the declaration of war by resigning en masse. The absence of the Kaurava Party in the administration benefits the Muslim Group, which takes over the government in three provinces. Gangaji initiates the Quit India Movement and the leaders of the Kaurava Party are imprisoned. The emboldened Muslim Group begins calling for a separate Muslim state, to be called Karnistan (the ""Hacked-Off Land""). Amba, planning her revenge on Gangaji, goes to a plastic surgeon for a sex-change operation. Following the end of the war, the Kaurava Party does well in the election, but the Muslim Group's strength is not diminished. The British government charges with treason the soldiers who joined Pandu's Swatantra Sena. Viscount Bertie Drewpad is appointed viceroy. His wife, Georgina, is excited at the prospect of dallying with lusty Indian men. While Dhritarashtra plans to meet the new viceroy, his wife, Gandhari the Grim, lies dying, calling Priya Duryodhani her ""son."" Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Women."" Lord Drewpad announces the British intent to withdraw from India on Aug, 15, 1947, to Dhritarashtra, Mohammed Rafi, Ved Vyas, Sardar Khushkismat Singh, and Karna. Dhritarashtra and the Kaurava Party agree to the Partition of India. A Mr. Nichols is assigned to draw the border between the two new countries, to the derision of an experienced administrator named Basham. Vidur assists the viceroy in making decisions related to the transfer of power. Gangaji initiates an experiment in eliminating sexual desire by inviting Sarah-behn to sleep in his bed. While violence tears India apart, Dhritarashtra initiates an affair with Lady Drewpad. While India celebrates independence, Amba, now Shikhandin the Godless, assassinates Gangaji. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of Peace."" The title of this section alludes to Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. Ved Vyas refers to ""Children being born at inconvenient times of the night who would go on to label a generation and rejuvenate a literature,"" which alludes to Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Drona's secretary is called Sir Beverley Twitty, K.C.M.G. Jayaprakash Drona, now serving as Minister of State for Administrative Reform, gets his opportunity for revenge against Ronald Heaslop, who has lost everything in the rioting. Drona, instead of answering Heaslop's long-ago refusal to help him with co-ordinate cruelty, he offers Heaslop a job. Georgina Drewpad's affair with Dhritarashtra (now prime minister of India) continues. On 26 January 1950, the day India becomes a republic, she gives birth to a daughter, who is given up for adoption and given the name Draupadi Mokrasi. Vyabhichar Singh (""Mr. Z""), the maharaja of Manimir, tries to avoid acceeding either to India or Karnistan. Mohammed Rafi urges Dhritarashtra to ensure that Manimir remains part of India. Vidur, now Principal Secretary for Integration, counsels patience, hoping that Sheikh Azharuddin, a Kaurava ally, might be able to overthrow Mr. Z. Dhritarashtra decides to let Karna, now governor-general of Karnistan, make the first move, which he does, leaving the Indian government the perfect excuse to send in Khushkismat Singh, the Minister of Defence, with Indian troops. Vidur goes to Devpur to get Vyabhichar Singh to sign the instrument of accession, and persuades Colonel Bewakuf Jan to disturb the maharaja from his sporting with a Frenchwoman. Vidur states his case while the maharaja is fellated under an ""enormous silk razai."" The maharaja is finally persuaded to sign by his companion, ""a steatopygous blonde wearing nothing but a look of panic."" Vidur helps the maharaja flee to Marmu, his winter capital. The Pathans invading Manimir get drunk and the Indian Army parachutes into Devpur. Dhritarashtra snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by halting the Indian Army's advance and calling in the United Nations. Professor Jennings delivers a critique of his student, D. Mokrasi. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of Bhishma's Final Instructions."" The title of this section alludes to E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. Drona decides to resign from government and do ""constructive work"" in rural areas, taking Ashwathaman with him. The five Pandavas they also want to go along and break the news to Kunti, their chain-smoking and still glamorous mother. In order to secure her blessing, Yudhishtir promises never to disobey his mother. Dhritarashtra consults V. Kanika Menon, India's high commissioner in London, regarding what he should do about the increasing popularity of Drona and the Pandavas. Kanika counsels Dhritarashtra not to allow the Pandavas to attain too much political power, but Dhritarashtra is too idealistic to take the advice. Priya Duryodhani, however, is listening and she takes Kanika's advice seriously. Vidur, now Secretary of the Home Ministry and head of the Central Bureau of Intelligence, goes to a Drona land reform rally to warn the Pandavas that Priya Duryodhani is plotting against them. Vidur arranges for the Pandavas to hide out in Varanavata with Kunti. Karna, who has not been well, dies when he tries to pull a car out of the mud with his bare hands. Kunti, hearing the news, repeats her firtborn son's final gesture—by shaking her fist at the sun. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Horse Sacrifice."" The title of this section alludes to the Hindu sacred work the Rig Veda. Purochan Lal, the owner of the hotel where Kunti is staying, is an agent of Priya Duryodhani. Vidur intercepts the cables and sends a coded message explaining that the house is coated with lac and will be set fire. The building is burnt, but Vidur arranges their escape while letting the world believe they have perished in the fire. Vidur tells Dhritarashtra about a joke by Winston Churchill botched by Khushkismat Singh. After discussing the Manimir situation, Dhritarashtra appoints Kanika to replace Singh as Minister of Defence. The Pandavas wander India sticking up for the rights of the downtrodden. The refuse to take sides between two corrupt landlords, Pinaka and Saranga (whose men attacked a man named Hangari Das). Dhritarashtra and Kanika start the ""non-aligned"" movement. They decide to annex the Portuguese colony of Comea. Bhim saves a beautiful girl from her abusive brother, Hidimba (""a large man with a small goatee""), and weds. The Chairman of the People's Republic of Chakra, watching the annexation of Comea by India, orders the Chakar People's Liberation Army to cross the Big Mac Line and annex the nation of Tibia, on the Indian border. In order to enter Tibia from the province of Drowniang, however, Chakar troops must cross into territory claimed by India. Bhim has a baby son, Ghatotkach, who is born in the town of Ekachakra. Sahadev challenges the champion wrestler Bakasura and is trounced. Kunti is annoyed with her other sons for allowing Sahadev to go through with it. The Chakars annex a piece of Indian territory and the humiliation breaks Dhritarashtra's heart and he dies. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Hermitage."" Dhritarashtra leaves nothing in his will to Draupadi Mokrasi and her adoptive father worries that he will not be able to find her a suitable husband. The Kaurava Party's Working Committee appoints the ""honest but limited"" Shishu Pal to replace Dhritarashtra as prime minister. Ved Vyas convenes a training camp where the Pandavas are captivated by Draupadi. Priya Duryodhani is annoyed that Draupadi is drawing the attention away from her lectures and orders Ved Vyas to get Draupadi married. In Ved Vyas's mind, only Arjun is good enough for Draupadi, but he realises that Arjun will not be faithful to her. Priya Duryodhani decides to match her up with Ekalavya, of whom Drona had demanded his right thumb, and, apparently with whom Priya Duryodhani had had a youthful fling. Draupadi chooses Arjun, but through a misunderstanding, Kunti instructs the Pandavas to share equally the ""surprise"" they have brought home. All five Pandavas marry Draupadi, Ved Vyas using his father's magic to ensure that she is a virgin for each of the five successive wedding nights. Bhim's wife leaves him. Perceiving India as weak following its defeat at the hands of the Chakars, Karnistan invades Manimir again. Shishu Pal directs a successful counterattack. Shishu Pal dies of a heart attack after signing a cease fire. Unable to find a successor that is universally unobjectionable, the Working Committee is persuaded by Ved Vyas to appoint Priya Duryodhani. The Pandavas work out a strict schedule to share Draupadi's bed. Arjun violates the rule when he goes to retrieve the manuscript of a speech while Yudhishtir and Draupadi are together. Under the rules, Arjun is banned from his conjugal rights for a year. Arjun decides to spend the year as a ""roving correspondent"" for a newspaper and, in addition to witnesses the condition of the people, he finds a new sexual companion in every locale he visits. Arjun ends up in Gokarnam where he meets Dwarakaveetile Krishnankutty Parthasarathi Menon (known as ""Krishna""), the local Kaurava Party secretary who has recently unseated the local political machine boss, Kamsa. When Arjun first sees Krishna, he is using a traditional dance form, Ottamthullal, as a medium for social satire. Arjun and Krishna become close friends and Arjun falls for Krishna's sister, Subhadra. Krishna advises Arjun to woo her through abduction. In the dark, a confused Arjun mistakenly abducts Kameswari. A second attempt is more successful and the two are married. Arjun cables Draupadi, telling her that he is bringing home a new maid, making their eventual meeting rather uncomfortable. However, by the time Draupadi and Subhadra give birth to their sons, Prativindhya and Abhimanyu, they are as close as sisters. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Maces."" The title of this section alludes to Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. The Kaurava Party is dealt a blow in state and local elections, although still holding a majority in the national Parliament. Yudhishtir suggests that new leadership is needed. Priya Duryodhani agrees to a national election. Yudhishtir is named deputy prime minister, but is shut out of the Cabinet by Priya Duryodhani and Yudhishtir resigns. Ashwathaman, Drona' son and the leader of a socialist splinter party, is invited by Priya Duryodhani to join the Kaurava Party Working Committee. Priya Duryodhani takes Ashwathaman's side in advocating the elimination of the privy purses of India's former princes. Yudhishtir resigns from the Working Committee. Priya Duroydhani and Ashwathaman then champion a bill to nationalise the banks. Dr. Mehrban Imandar, the president of India, dies. The Kaurava Old Guard thwarts Priya Duryodhani by nominating Ved Vyas as the Kaurava Praty's candidate for president. Priya Duryodhani backs Ekalavya as an independent candidate. The Working Committee expels Ekalavya from the Kaurava Party for opposing the party's official candidate. Before the Working Committee can act to expel Priya Duryodhani, Ekalavya narrowly wins the election. Priya Duryodhani splits the Kaurava Party, forming the Kaurava Party (R) (""R"" for ""real"") to oppose the Kaurava Party (O) (""O"" for ""official"" or ""old guard""). Priya Duryodhani wins with the support of the Left. Jarasandha Khan, the military dictator ruling Karnistan, decides to call elections. The Gelabin People's Party, representing the Gelabi people of East Karnistan, wins a majority in the Karnistani Parliament. Zaleel Shah Jhoota persuades Jarashanda Khan to declare the election results null and void and declare martial law in East Karnistan. Priya Duryodhani enters the conflict on the side of the Gelabins and the Gelabi Desh War results in the creation of a new nation-state. The success against Karnistan boosts Priya Duryodhani's popularity, but her rule grows increasingly oppressive. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Great Journey."" Drona leads the opposition to Priya Duryodhani's rule. Priya Duryodhani is convicted of electoral misconduct. Shakuni Shankar Dey, a Bengali lawyer and president of the Kaurava (R) Party, counsels her to declare a Siege and seize dictatorial powers. President Ekalavya concedes to the seizure of emergency powers. Priya Duryodhani orders the arrest of her political opponents. Counterpart to the Mahabharata's ""Book of the Ascent to Heaven."" Ved Vyas refers to the Kama Sutra as the ""Great Indian Novelty."" Priya Duryodhani calls elections. Ved Vyas chooses Krishna to lead the opposition campaign. Priya Duryodhani thus gets Krishna's experienced Kaurava Party grassroots electoral machine. At a critical moment, Krishna persuades Arjun that he should criticise Priya Duryodhani's administration instead of remaining a disinterested reporter. Bhim, Nakul, and Sahadev stay out of the campaign, refaining from endorsing either party. The People's Front defeats the Kaurava (R) Party. Drona and Ved Vyas consult with the parties of the People's Front coalition to choose the new prime minister. Their ultimately erroneous choice is Yudhishtir. Ashwathaman is appointed head of the party organisation. The People's Front leadership gathers at the Taj Mahal for a ceremonial oath. The return of Krishna to local politics marks the beginning of the failure of the People's Front. Yudhishtir proves to be ""as stiff and straight-backed and humourless as his critics had always portrayed him, and his colossal self-righteousness was not helped by his completely inability to judge the impression he made on others."" Yudhishtir becomes a target of fun in the national and international press when he admits to drinking his own urine. The ""strongmen"" of Yudhishtir's cabinet are locked in squabbles and Yudhishtir ""remained tightly self-obsessed, seemingly unaware that half of those who sat on the executive branch with him were busily engaged in sawing it off."" Priya Duryodhani, labeling the faltering government as the ""Backward Front,"" begins to gain political strength again. As Zaleel Shah Jhoota is toppled in another Karnistani military coup, Priya Duryodhani runs rings around her prosecutors while being tried for subverting the constitution. Yudhishtir suffers another publicity blow when he attends a speech by a holy man who uses the word ""Untouchables"" instead of ""Harijans."" Ashwathaman criticises Yudhishtir and the party organisation awaits word from an ailing Drona that it is time for Yudhishtir to go. Yudhishtir dispatches Sahadev to tell Drona that Ashwathaman's plane has crashed. When asked Yudhishtir confirms that ""Ashwathaman is dead"" and Drona dies without throwing support to Yudhishtir's opponents in the People's Front. When Ved Vyas confronts Yudhishtir regarding his lie about Ashwathaman, Yudhishtir says that early that day he had caught a cockroach, named it Ashwathaman, and killed it; thus, his statement to Drona was not a lie. Ved Vyas refuses to accept Yudhishtir's explanation and abandons him. In any case, Yudhishtir's deception is ultimately pointless. The government falls and Priya Duryodhani is victorious in the next election. Ved Vyas sees a vision in which the Pandavas, Draupadi, and Krishna hike up a mountain. One by one they are killed, except for Yudhishtir, who reaches the top. When Kalaam, the god of time, offers to bear Yudhishtir to the court of history, Yudhishtir refuses to leave his faithful dog behind. The dog reveals himself to be Dharma, Yudhishtir's father, and the three board Kalaam's chariot together. In the court of history, Yudhishtir is stunned to find a place of honour given to Priya Duryodhani."
1701,Jacob Have I Loved,history," ==Characters== *Sara Louise Bradshaw Louise helps her father through the crabbing season. As she grows older, she becomes frustrated with the unceasing attention Caroline receives and attempts to become more feminine — to no avail. After growing up in the oppressive situation of playing second-fiddle to her golden-haired sister, Sara Louise eventually leaves the island to move to a small town in the mountains called Truitt. *Caroline Bradshaw Caroline is perfect. Caroline is considered the ""miracle child"" because she was near death during birth. She is an amazing singer and pianist, and she is considered more intelligent and feminine than her sister. She tends to tease her sister, and she made up ""Wheeze,"" a nickname Louise despises. She went to a music school when she graduated high school on her home island she then goes to Juilliard in New York. She marries McCall Purnell, Louise's longtime friend. *McCall Purnell McCall, or ""Call"" to his peers, is Louise's longtime friend. He married Caroline in the end of the story. *Hiram Wallace Also known as ""The Captain"", is an 80 year old man that used to live on the island as a boy but moved away. He comes back and befriends Call and Louise. Louise falls in love with him as if he was her grandpa. *Susan Bradshaw Susan is the mother of Sara and Caroline. She is married to Truitt Bradshaw. She is an educated woman who used to be a teacher. *Grandmother Bradshaw A very religious woman, Grandma can be strict and hard to get along with. She loves the Lord, but hates the water. She believes The Captain is a heathen. *Truitt Bradshaw Truitt is the father of Louise and Caroline, and the husband of Susan Bradshaw. He is a waterman. He is also a war veteran."
1702,Burger's Daughter,history," The novel is set mostly in Johannesburg in the early- to mid-1970s during Apartheid. Rosa is the daughter of Lionel Burger, a white Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist, who is standing trial for treason. The court finds him guilty and sentences him to life in prison. Rosa visits him regularly, just as she visited her mother, Cathy Burger when she was imprisoned some ten years previously. Cathy died when Rosa was still at school. Rosa grew up in a family that actively supported the overthrow of the apartheid government, and the house they lived in opened its doors to anyone supporting the struggle, regardless of colour. Living with them was ""Baasie"", a black boy Rosa's age the Burgers had ""adopted"" when his father had died in prison. Bassie and Rosa grew up as brother and sister. Both Rosa's parents were members of the outlawed South African Communist Party (SACP), and she was told from an early age that they could be detained by the authorities at any time. When Rosa was nine, both her parents were arrested and she was sent to stay with her father's family in a rural farming community. Baasie was sent elsewhere because, she was told, he would not be accepted there. It was here that Rosa experienced apartheid for the first time and the way black people were mistreated. In 1974, after three years in prison, Lionel succumbs to ill-health and dies. At 26, Rosa sells the Burger's house and moves in with Conrad, a post-graduate student who had befriended her during her father's trial. Rosa is not in love with Conrad, but their relationship is convenient during this difficult time. Conrad questions her role in the Burger family and the fact that she always did what she was told. He questions whether she has her own identity, because everyone sees her as Burger's daughter, not Rosa. Later Rosa leaves Conrad and moves into a flat on her own and works as a physiotherapist at a hospital. While some of Lionel's former associates are banned or under house arrest, Rosa is ""named"", meaning that she is labelled a Communist and is under surveillance. In 1975, despite her restrictions, she attends a party of a friend in Soweto, and it is there that she hears a black university student dismissing all whites' help as irrelevant, saying that whites cannot know what blacks want, and that blacks will liberate themselves. Realising she needs to be somewhere else, Rosa manages to get a passport, and flies to Nice in France to stay with Katya, her father's first wife. Rosa spends several months there and is able to be herself for the first time in her life. She meets Bernard Chabalier, a visiting academic from Paris, and they become lovers. He persuades her to return with him to Paris, where he says the French Anti-Apartheid Movement will be only too happy to organize a flat for Lionel Burger's daughter. Before joining Bernard in Paris, Rosa stays in a flat in London for several weeks. Now that she has no intention of honouring the agreement of her passport, which was to return to South Africa within a year, she openly introduces herself to others as Burger's daughter. This attracts the attention of the media and she attends several political events. At one such event, Rosa sees Baasie, but he is reluctant to talk to her. She gives him her phone number, and he later contacts her and starts criticizing her for not knowing his real name (Zwelinzima Vulindlela). He says that there is nothing special about her father having died in prison as many black fathers have also died there, and says he does not need her help. Rosa is devastated by her childhood friend's hurtful remarks, and overcome with guilt, she abandons her plans of going into exile in France and returns to South Africa. Back home she resumes her job as a physiotherapist in Soweto. Then in June 1976 Soweto school children start protesting about their inferior education and being taught in Afrikaans. They go on the rampage, which includes killing white welfare workers in Soweto. The police brutally put down the uprising, resulting in hundreds of deaths. In October 1977, many organizations and people critical of the white government are banned, and in November 1977 Rosa Burger is detained. Her lawyer, who also represented her father, expects charges to be brought against her of furthering the aims of the banned SACP and ANC, and of aiding and abetting the students' revolt. *Lionel Burger – a white Afrikaner born 1905 in the Northern Transvaal; a medical doctor, anti-apartheid activist and a member of the banned South African Communist Party (SACP) *Cathy Burger (née Jansen) – Lionel's second wife, a trade unionist and later a member of the SACP; married Lionel in August 1946 during the African Mine Workers' Strike while they were out on bail after having been arrested on a charge of orchestrating the strike *Rosemarie Burger (Rosa) – Lionel and Cathy's daughter, born May 1948; her name was derived from Rosa Luxemburg (a Polish Marxist) and Marie Burger (Lionel's mother); a physiotherapist by profession *Zwelinzima Vulindlela (""Baasie"") – a black student, taken in and ""adopted"" by the Burger family when he was a child after his father had died in prison; the same age as Rosa, she treated him like her brother, but never knew his real name as the family simply called him ""Baasie"" (little boss) *Colette Burger/Bagnelli (née Swan) (Katya) – Lionel's first wife, married in London and returned to South Africa with Lionel in 1930; divorced in the 1940s; moved to France where she married a captain in the French navy, Ugo Bagnelli; widowed after Bagnelli died *Conrad – a post-graduate student and Rosa's first live-in companion; he is her conscience who questions her identity and role *Bernard Chabalier – a French academic in Paris working on his doctoral thesis; married with two children; Rosa's first lover"
1703,The Gods of War,history," Having crossed the Rubicon (the southern border of one of the provinces he controlled, Cisalpine Gaul) Julius Caesar leads his veterans of the Gallic Wars toward Rome, aware that the dictator Pompey has declared him an enemy of the state and his actions will likely end in Civil War. During the journey, his army encounters mild resistance; however, the legions are no match for veterans of Gaul, and Caesar forces the surrender without a single man being killed. He then pardons the legion - the first of many acts of propaganda in the coming war. The speed of his journey south catches Pompey by surprise, who consequently flees to Greece along with the majority of the Roman Senate. This leaves Rome free for Caesar to enter. He installs Mark Anthony as governor of Rome - much to the disgust of Caesar's lifelong friend Marcus Brutus. Brutus' anger forces him to betray his friend and defect to Pompey, a move which stuns Caesar. Caesar eventually takes his army to Greece to face an increasingly ill Pompey, who has a much larger force with reinforced supply lines and defended towns. As Pompey's illness takes hold, he begins to make mistakes - including missing the chance to rout Caesar's forces following a failed night-raid on a fort, fearing it to be a trap. Eventually the armies meet at the Battle of Pharsalus, with Caesar emerging victor from the jaws of defeat. Caesar finds the injured Brutus and forgives his lifelong friend for his betrayal - much to the anger of his general and nephew Octavian. Pompey flees the field, forcing Caesar to chase him; first to Asia Minor and finally to Alexandria in Egypt. It is here that Caesar is presented with the head of Pompey by representatives of boy-king Ptolemy XIII, much to his anger. While in Egypt, Caesar is introduced to Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and sister of the king. She asks him for help in returning her to the throne after Ptolemy's advisors had her banished. Caesar raids the royal palace and captures the king, returning him to a defended house. He then engages in a romance with his ally Cleopatra. They then make a number of demands in return for the release of her brother. When Ptolemy is released he immediately unleashes his army on the house, besieging Caesar's army. Caesar breaks the siege, by starting a fire in Alexandria port as a distraction, and Ptolemy and his advisors are killed. Cleopatra and Caesar have a son together, Ptolemy Caesarion. Caesar takes them back to Rome, and begins to announce his plans to create an Empire and rule the world as king. This does not sit well with the Roman public, who were promised a reintroduction of the Roman Republic after the years of dictatorship following Cornelius Sulla and Pompey. Most unhappy with this change in heart is Brutus, who joins a plot to have the Rex(They were afraid he would be another rex) killed. At this time, Caesar had been planning a campaign in Parthia in an attempt to expand the Roman lands and in a small way to possibly avenge the death of the old Consul Crassus, who had been a possible friend and a major character in The Death of Kings and The Field of Swords. Crassus had died whilst commanding a legion Caesar and Pompey had trained for him. On the Ides of March Caesar is led to the Theatre of Pompey, and is assassinated by many of the Senators and Marcus Brutus. The date had been prophesized as his death by his companion Cabera in The Field of Swords shortly before he died."
1704,Royal Escape,history," Two years after the execution of his father (Charles I), 21-year-old Charles II and his men fail miserably to free his kingdom from the tyrannical rule of Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester. The King would rather die trying to restore the monarchy, than sit by and watch the power of the English Commonwealth grown under its corrupt leaders. He decides to disguise himself as a peasant and leave England for France so he can free his realm when the right time comes."
1705,The Winter King,history," The Kingdom of Dumnonia is in chaos. The forces of Dumnonia led by the Edling (Crown Prince) Mordred and Arthur (the King's bastard) have defeated the Saxons at a battle beneath the hill of the white horse, but at a terrible price. Prince Mordred was slain, leaving the Kingdom without an heir. Dumnonia's only hope is for Mordred's pregnant wife, Norwenna, to give birth to a son. High King Uther Pendragon blames his son's death on Arthur and exiles him to Armorica. Norwenna is in labor, and there are fears that she and the child may die. Norwenna, a Christian, has insisted that only Christian midwives be present. High King Uther, a pagan, finally loses patience with the midwives of the Christian God and summons Merlin's priestess Morgan to deliver the child. The pagan magic seems to work and a male child is born. It would seem the kingdom is saved. However, the child is born with a crippled foot, which is seen as a very bad omen. The High King dismisses the sign and declares that the son will be named after his father: Mordred. Mordred and his mother are brought to Merlin's hall at Ynys Wydryn (Glastonbury), where she and the child are placed under the care of Merlin's priestesses, Morgan (Arthur's sister) and Nimue (Merlin's lover). Merlin himself has not been seen in Britain for many years. Derfel is one of the orphans at Ynys Wydryn adopted by Merlin, and is in love with Nimue. Nimue binds Derfel to her by scarring both of their hands and making Derfel swear that while he carries the scar, their lives are bound and he must obey her. High King Uther summons a high council of the Kings of Britain at Glevum (Gloucester). Morgan is summoned to represent the still absent Merlin and Nimue joins her, accompanied by Derfel. The tension between the British kingdoms is made clear as King Gorfyddyd of Powys does not attend and King Gundleus of Siluria is tardy. Uther makes it clear that no man, other than his grandson Mordred, will sit on the throne of Dumnonia. Since Mordred is only a baby, he appoints three guardians (King Tewdric of Gwent; Owain, Champion of Dumnonia; and Merlin) and also a foster father to Mordred, who will marry the Princess Norwenna. Agricola, champion of Gwent, chooses Arthur, but the High King disowns Arthur as his son. King Gundleus is then appointed as Mordred's Guardian and marries Norwenna. After King Tewdric and Owain give their oaths as guardians, Uther asks Morgan if Merlin will give an oath. Morgan insists that Merlin will only take the oath if Arthur is appointed as a guardian. After Uther dies Mordred, still only a baby, is pronounced King of Dumnonia. He is not High King because that title can only be given to a King accepted as Higher than the other British Kings. Nor is he the Pendragon, as that title is only given to a High King who wins his rank in battle. Following Uther's death, King Gorfyddyd attacks Gwent. Dumnonia and Siluria rush to the aid of Gwent. Shortly afterward, King Gundleus sends news of victory and announces he is coming to Ynys Wydryn to be with his wife. Morgan and Nimue tell Norwenna that Gundleus lied and that the war is not over. Norwenna does not believe them and makes ready for Gundleus's arrival. When Gundleus arrives, he kills Norwenna and Mordred. Then, in retribution for Nimue's curse, he rapes her and plucks out an eye. Derfel rescues Nimue and while escaping runs into Morgan, who has the baby Mordred with her. She explains that the baby that Gundleus killed was the baby of the child king's wetnurse. The group flee with Gundleus in pursuit. As they reach the capital Caer Cadarn, Derfel joins Owain's army and prepares to join the battle against the Silurian army. Arthur appears with his horseman during the battle and defeats Gundleus. In the aftermath of the battle Arthur imprisons Gundleus but treats him with respect as he is a King. Arthur is very observant of the customs of the nobility. Then, much to Derfel's displeasure, Arthur gives Derfel to Owain to train, explaining that he only employs horsemen. Under Owain's leadership, Derfel learns the realities of war. Owain is dishonest and seeks war for profit. While Derfel is with him he enters into an agreement with Prince Cadwy of Isca (Exeter) to massacre the tin miners of Kernow (Cornwall) who had been working in Dumnonia at Uther's invitation. Derfel is traumatised by the unwarranted slaughter, and as a result loses faith in Owain as a leader. When Prince Tristan, Edling of Kernow, arrives in Dumnonia and demands recompense for the massacre, Owain blames an Irish raiding party. Arthur suspects Owain is lying and after speaking with Derfel, challenges Owain to resolve the matter in a court of swords, a battle to the death where the gods are called on to give victory to the truth. Arthur defeats Owain and assumes complete power in Dumnonia, he then takes Derfel into his service to spare him the vengeance of Owain's supporters. Arthur wishes to end the civil war and unite the British Kingdoms against the Sais (Saxons). To do this, he enters into a peace treaty with Powys. He will return Gundleus to the throne of Siluria and then marry Ceinwyn, the daughter of Gorfyddyd. He travels north to Powys, where he is formally betrothed to Ceinwyn. However, when Guinevere enters the feasting hall, Arthur falls in love with her. He abandons Ceinwyn and marries Guinevere, destroying any hope of allegiance and plunging Britain back into civil war. In the years following Arthur's marriage to Guinevere, Derfel grows into a great warrior and is given a second name, ""Cadarn"", which means ""the mighty."" Sagramor, Arthur's Numidian commander, initiates Derfel into the religious cult of Mithras, a Roman deity popular with soldiers. It is also at this time that Arthur receives a summons from the Armorican Kingdom of Benoic, to which he swore an oath to be the kingdom's champion. Unable to go himself, he sends Derfel with 60 men. Derfel is to join forces with Arthur's cousin Culhwch and to write to Arthur if more men are necessary. Before he leaves, Sagramor warns Derfel of the Edling of Benoic, Lancelot, saying he can be treacherous. Upon arriving, Derfel is taken to Ynys Trebes (Mont Saint-Michel, France), the island capital of Benoic. There he meets King Ban. The King is upset when he learns that Arthur is not coming, but is delighted upon learning that Derfel is a literate warrior. King Ban shows Derfel the library of Ynys Trebes, which is overseen by Father Celwin, a foul-tempered priest investigating the wingspan of angels. Later, at dinner, Derfel meets Lancelot and the two take an instant dislike to each other. Derfel is only prevented from beating Lancelot senseless by the intervention of Galahad, Lancelot's half-brother. Galahad explains in private that Lancelot will not take defeat lightly and suggests that Derfel leave Ynys Trebes immediately. Derfel takes Galahad's advice and returns to shore accompanied by Galahad, who wishes to fight alongside him. Derfel spends three years in Benoic and learns quickly that Lancelot's fearsome reputation has nothing to do with his prowess in battle and everything to do with paying poets to sing his praises. Derfel and his men begin a campaign to slow the Frankish advance. In this they succeed and become feared by the Franks. They start to call Derfel and his warriors ""wolves"" and Derfel and his men adopt this as their nickname and wear wolf-tail plumes on their helmets. However, their attacks on the Franks become like ""a wasp attempting to sting a bull to death"", and they are pushed back to Ynys Trebes where Lancelot has taken charge of defending the city. After a council of war, where Lancelot insists that the Kingdom can survive within the city's wall as the city is self sufficient, Derfel speaks to Father Celwin, who is forever irritable and has little time for small talk. Derfel explains his duty to defend the lives of the people in the city. Father Celwin responds: ""Then I place my life in your hands."" After several months under siege, the city falls. Lancelot is among the first to flee. As Derfel begins to escape the city he remembers the words of Father Celwin and returns to the palace, where they find King Ban resigned to his fate and refusing to leave the city. They find Father Celwin in the library frantically searching for a particular scroll and refusing to leave. As the Franks storm the palace, Derfel finally loses patience with him, screaming: ""Come on you old fool!"" To which Father Celwin replies: ""Old, yes, Derfel, but a fool never!"" as he reveals himself to be Merlin in disguise. Merlin finds the scroll he was looking for, saying that it contains the knowledge of Britain. He then leads Derfel and Galahad out of the city, as he has already planned his escape. As they arrive in Dumnonia, Merlin promptly disappears again. Meanwhile, Derfel learns that Nimue has been declared dangerously mad and has been banished to the isle of the dead (Portland Bill). Derfel assumes that this is why Merlin has disappeared. Believing Derfel and his men to be dead, Lancelot has told Arthur and the Men of Dumnonia that despite his best efforts, Ynys Trebes fell and it was the fault of Derfel. Derfel arrives in time to hear this slander, declaring Lancelot a liar and challenging him to back up his story with his sword. Arthur calms the situation, claiming that in battle men are often mistaken. Derfel is rewarded for his service to Arthur and is declared a lord, but shortly after learns that Merlin has gone north, leaving Nimue on the Isle of the Dead. With the scar on his hand reminding Derfel of his duty to Nimue, he travels south to rescue her himself. When he arrives at the Isle he is warned by the guards that he is free to enter, but once inside he can never be released. He enters nonetheless and finds Nimue at the southern tip of the isle. She initially attacks him, but he clasps their scarred hands together and Nimue's wits return. As he returns to the entrance, he finds that Galahad and his men have followed him south to ensure that he could leave the isle. In the months following this adventure, Derfel and Nimue become lovers. Nimue considers leaving Merlin and the path of the Gods, but realizes that life with Derfel is an impossible dream. She ends their relationship, only to find out that she is pregnant with Derfel's baby. She refrains from telling Derfel about this, instead claiming that the baby is Merlin's. Arthur meanwhile, is contemplating a final assault on Powys to end the war. To do that, he must ensure that the Sais, led by Aelle who calls himself the Bretwalda (Ruler of Britain), remain at peace, and only money can achieve that. On the advice of Nimue he makes enforced loans from all Christian and pagan shrines, an act which the Christians resent him for. Meeting with Aelle, Arthur negotiates three months of peace for the gold and information on how to capture the Powysian Stronghold of Ratae (Leicester). With the Eastern border secure, Arthur marches his army north into Gwent where at Glevum he holds a council of war. At the council, Tewdric suggests letting the Powysians besiege Glevum, whereas Arthur wants to attack Powys at Lugg Vale. Meurig, the Edling of Gwent, then asks Arthur why they fight at all, since Gwent's only responsibility is to ensure Mordred gets the throne - not to protect Arthur. Galahad volunteers to travel north as an emissary to King Gorfyddyd to ascertain Gorfyddyd's intentions toward Mordred. Derfel accompanies him, although his presence in Gorfyddyd's hall provokes anger, since he is sworn to Arthur. Merlin then arrives and declares that Derfel is not to be harmed. Gorfyddyd fears Merlin and obeys. Gorfyddyd tells Galahad that he would adopt Mordred himself until he was old enough to serve as King. In private Merlin tells them that Gorfyddyd is lying and comments: ""He has the brains of an ox, and not a very clever ox at that."" Merlin says that Gorfyddyd will kill Mordred in order to fulfill his ambition of becoming High King. During his time in Powys, Derfel meets Ceinwyn and falls in love with her. She has been betrothed to Gundleus in return for Siluria's assistance. Derfel tells her of Arthur's wish to marry to Lancelot. Ceinwyn tells Derfel that she is tired of hearing of Arthur's weird flings and dishonorable unions. Derfel makes a declaration of love, to which she makes no reaction (save a comment to her aunt that she took great pleasure in all she heard, though apparently speaking of the harpist). Derfel then swears an oath to protect her, which she accepts. Returning to Glevum, Tewdric refuses to commit his troops to the war as he accepts Gorfyddyd's assurance that Mordred is safe. Arthur, however, believes Merlin, and tries to persuade Tewdric to change his mind. Eventually Arthur gives up on Tewdric and marches north to confront Gorfyddyd alone. Derfel and his men undergo a night march to reach and capture Lugg Vale at dawn, ready to hold the position for when Gorfyddyd's main army arrives. The main army is led by Nimue, who has an uncanny ability to find her way in the dark. They succeed in taking the Vale and await Arthur there. Arthur arrives in time to destroy the vanguard of Gorfyddyd's army. He sends Galahad south in the hope that the men of Gwent will come and fight now that they know battle has begun. He then offers Derfel his unique armour so that Gorfyddyd's soldiers will think Derfel is Arthur, which will give Arthur the opportunity to spring a trap on the rear of Gorfyddyd's army and hopefully drive them into panic. Derfel accepts and Arthur rides off into position to spring his trap. Derfel is first confronted by Valerin, who was betrothed to Guinevere before she ran off with Arthur. Valerin screams at Derfel, believing him to be Arthur, that Guinevere was a whore. Derfel cannot control his temper and fights Valerin. After killing him, Derfel finds a lovers' ring on his corpse with Guinevere's symbol on it, which he throws away. The battle then begins with Derfel's troops being forced further uphill, until Morfans, another of Arthur's Commanders, gives the signal for Arthur to attack. Arthur's charge destroys almost a third of Gorfyddyd's army but the king sees the danger in time to defend against it. Arthur's trap has failed. During a lull in the fighting, Galahad returns with the bad news that no-one from Gwent is coming except for perhaps a few volunteers. However, a handful of men from Kernow led by Prince Tristan do come. Tristan wishes to repay Arthur for fighting against Owain. As fighting resumes, Derfel and his men are beaten further back. Then battle stops once again as Cuneglas, Edling of Powys, offers them the chance to surrender. They refuse. Before battle can recommence Merlin arrives. Being a druid, he can walk in safety anywhere. He commands both armies to cease hostilities because he needs all Britons to help him in his Quest for the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. Gorfyddyd is furious that Merlin might destroy his chance of becoming High King. He refuses Merlin's requests and readies his troops again for battle. Merlin, turning to Derfel, informs him that the Black Shield Irishmen currently allied to Gorfyddyd would switch sides and give Arthur victory. Sure enough, as battle resumes, the Black Shields attack Gorfyddyd and give the victory to Arthur. In the aftermath, Gorfyddyd is fatally wounded but uses his last breath to curse Arthur and declare Guinevere a whore. Arthur loses his temper and calls Gorfyddyd a liar and a thing of filth, challenging any man from Powys to defend their dead King's honour with their sword. None do. Cuneglas apologizes to Arthur for his father and swears an alliance will exist between Dumnonia and Powys against the Sais, bringing the civil war to an end. Derfel and Nimue continue into the Powysian encampment and find Gundleus barricaded in a hut, protected by Tanaburs. Tanaburs threatens to unleash his most terrible curses on Derfel and tells him that he can show him his mother, but Derfel resists the druid's power and cuts him in half. Nimue then slowly tortures Gundleus to death, attaining vengeance for her rape and lost eye."
1706,The Winthrop Woman,history," The Winthrop Woman begins with young Elizabeth Fones and her family travelling to visit their family at their grandfather's countryside estate. Elizabeth's uncle, John Winthrop, is especially pious and strict about Protestantism; and he chides his sister for not taking proper care of her children, Elizabeth in particular, who is hot-headed and capricious. Elizabeth is caught blaspheming and is beaten, resulting in her becoming areligious and instilling in her a hatred for her uncle. Years later, Elizabeth Fones has become a beautiful young woman working in her ailing father's apothecary. Though she is in love with her cousin John (""Jack"") Winthrop, Jr., it is Jack's friend Edward Howes who seeks to marry her. Just as she becomes engaged to Howes, her cousin Henry Winthrop (or ""Harry""), Jack's younger brother, returns from his adventures in Barbados. Unlike his father and brother, Harry is wild and carefree, reckless to the point that he has depleted all his money and nearly brought his family to financial ruin. Unwilling to return to his father, Harry instead stays at Thomas Fones's house and spends his time frolicking with his equally profligate friends. One night, Harry and Elizabeth spend an especially long night out, their lust overcomes them, and they sleep together in a garden. In yet another reckless act, Harry declares that he is in love with Elizabeth and demands her hand in marriage. The couple are wed, much to the dismay of both fathers (John Winthrop both believes that his son could do better than a Fones and is not fond of Elizabeth; Thomas Fones is dismayed because his daughter was already engaged to marry Edward Howes). Elizabeth and Harry move to the Winthrop estate in the countryside (John Winthrop is no longer resides there as he has taken a position elsewhere). For a while, the couple live a happy life. However, it soon comes obvious just how profligate Harry is as he neglects his wife and family to have his own fun. In the meantime, Jack returns. It is apparent that he and Elizabeth still have strong feelings for each other; but, while attempting to cover his feelings for his brother's wife, Jack accidentally kisses Martha, Elizabeth's younger sister, and soon the two are wed. Finally, in an attempt to control his son, John Winthrop forces Harry to come to New England with him. In a final act of recklessness, Harry drowns when he attempts to jump in and swim. Elizabeth is left a pregnant widow. After she gives birth to her daughter (Martha, she, Jack, Martha, and John Winthrop's wife, Margaret, all depart for Massachusetts. In the strict colony in the New World, Elizabeth runs into more trouble than ever. On her uncle's suggestion, Elizabeth marries Robert Feake, a weak-willed and strangely disturbed man who often has nightmares and commits odd deeds in his sleep. She also attempts to befriend Anne Hutchinson and chooses a tainted squaw, Telaka, for her maid. Eventually, Elizabeth and Robert are driven out of their house in Watertown because the other colonists believe Telaka to be a witch. The Feakes then settle in Greenwich in the colony of New Haven. After run-ins with Indians, Elizabeth and the other leader of the town, Daniel Patrick, join Greenwich to the Dutch colony of New Netherland. After Daniel Patrick is murdered by an old enemy, Elizabeth's husband, Robert, becomes completely mad and attempts to return to England. Meanwhile, Joan marries Thomas Lyons, who turns out to be a prospective gold-digger. When William Hallett, a previous acquaintance of Elizabeth's, begins courting her and gains more and more control over the Feake household, Lyons grows jealous. Finally, Elizabeth and her lover are accused of adultery after not having married properly under English law, and all their lands are confiscated. Elizabeth and William Hallett hide under the protection of Jack Winthrop, who is now an important member of another town in Connecticut. After Jack does all he can for his cousin and ex-lover, Elizabeth and William Hallett are once more free to move back to Greenwich, where Indians then set their house afire. Elizabeth and William Hallett have no choice but to start anew once more, their hearts heavy but their wills strengthened."
1707,Blind Justice,history," Young Jeremy Proctor, recently orphaned, is taken in as ward by blind Sir John Fielding, Magistrate of the Bow Street court and organizer of London's first police force. When Sir John investigates the apparent suicide of Lord Goodhope, it is Jeremy's eyes which note the crucial clue."
1708,Knight Crusader,history," The novel is divided into three parts: the first part leads up to the Battle of Hattin; the second part, set four years later, shows Philip d'Aubigny's escape from captivity at the time of the Third Crusade, and the final part deals with Philip's reclaiming his ancestral lands in the Welsh Marches. At the beginning of the novel, Outremer has been in existence for nearly one hundred years since the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. However, the Emir Saladin is uniting the Islamic forces against the Crusader states. The great military orders of the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller are eager for the fray, but others are concerned that there are not enough Christian knights in Outremer to form a field army while continuing to garrison the castles that protect the Kingdom. Saladin invades Outremer and besieges Tiberias. The weak-willed King of Jerusalem is swayed by advisers to march to the relief of the besieged city across a waterless plain at the height of summer. Debilitated by the desert conditions before the battle even begins, the Christian army suffers a devastating defeat at Hattin. Most of the Christian held fortresses of Outremer fall to Saladin and Jerusalem falls to the Muslim armies. These events are shown through the experiences of Philip d'Aubigny, a young English nobleman who was born in Outremer. He befriends a Turk, Jusuf, whom he rescues from robbers, and later impresses the king by his superior swordsmanship in a duel, gaining his knighthood. Philip overhears much discussion about the political and military situation. He suffers on the desert march, sees his father die in battle and is taken prisoner. Philip has a relatively easy captivity in the household of Jusuf's father Usamah in Damascus, but chafes to be free. With Hospitaller help he and his friend Gilbert escape over the walls. They make their way to Krak, the great Hospitaller fortress, after an encounter with the Assassins. Philip commits himself to the service of Richard of England and during the campaigns of the Third Crusade becomes one of the most celebrated knights of Christendom. In the final chapters of the novel, Philip and his company of Crusaders arrive in Britain, where he takes part in a jousting tournament at Cardiff Castle. He learns from his squire's father that his family's castle at Llanstephan has been taken by an ally of Prince John's and leads a raiding party to win it back. A notable aspect of the book is the bringing into contrast of the refinements of the medieval Islamic civilization, which had been adopted by the Outremer noblemen, with the comparatively stark and crude European living conditions of the time, and the suggestion that the returning Crusaders brought Eastern standards of culture to the West."
1709,Death to the French,history," The hero is Matthew Dodd, a rifleman in the 95th Regiment of Foot of the British Army. The novel takes place in Portugal early in the Peninsular War. The British had sent a small force of about 10,000 men to the aid of her ally, Portugal. Rather than face the overwhelming numbers of the opposing French forces under Marshal André Masséna, the British commander, Lord Wellington, secretly constructed the Lines of Torres Vedras and withdrew behind them, leaving the French force no options but to lay siege to the lines, or retreat. For three months the French encamped outside the lines, waiting for reinforcements from the other side of the Tagus River, but in the end hunger and disease forced them to retreat. During the course of the British withdrawal, Dodd becomes separated from his regiment and is cut off from the British forces, with the entire French army between him and the lines at Torres Vedras. In an attempt to get around the French, he heads for the Tagus River, hoping to follow it to Lisbon. However, the French are there ahead of him and he has no option but to live off the land and try to survive. He joins a group of Portuguese guerrillas and spends two months with them, harassing the encamped French army, killing sentries and laying ambushes for scouting parties and supply animals. After two months of guerrilla fighting, Dodd hears artillery fire from about ten miles away. He can tell by the sound that it is neither a battle nor a siege. He knows that anyone exchanging artillery fire with the French is an ally of his, so he takes his friend Bernardino and sets out to see what is happening. They meet another Portuguese guerrilla, whose name they never learn, who leads them to the site of the firing. There he sees British soldiers on the other side of the Tagus firing rockets at the town of Santarém, and the French returning cannon-fire to stop them. Dodd deduces that there must be something in the town that the British want to set on fire; furthermore it must be something near the river. From this he can guess what the target must be: the French are trying to construct a pontoon bridge across the Tagus, and the British are firing the rockets to try to burn the pontoon boats, rope, timber, and paint that are warehoused by the river. Unable to dislodge the British rocketeers from their entrenchments on the far side of the river, the French gather up all the bridge-building supplies and move them farther up the river, to a position where the British can neither see them nor fire on them. Dodd determines to destroy the bridge materiel himself. He, Bernardino, and the unnamed guerrilla return to their band's headquarters, only to find that while they were gone the French had discovered and destroyed the whole band, hanging the men on trees and taking away the women and the food. The three have nothing to eat so the unnamed guerrilla visits the French encampment that night, kills a sentry and steals a pack mule. They slaughter the mule and smoke the meat, giving them enough food in their packs for several weeks. Then they set out to find the new bridge-building headquarters. Before they find it they are surprised by a French patrol; they run for cover, but Dodd's two friends fall and are captured. From the safety of the rocks Dodd looks back to see his friends hanged. He resolutely goes on alone, and finds the French encampment. He patiently hides in the rocks watching the business of the camp for several days. Finally he goes in by night, kills two sentries, and spreads highly flammable grease and oil (kept in cauldrons by the French for tarring rope, greasing cordage, and waterproofing their boats) over the pontoons and timber and rope, and sets it all on fire. From his hideout in the rocks he sees the whole encampment burn, and is pleased with his success; he never learns that orders had arrived only that day for the French to burn the encampment themselves, since Masséna had ordered a retreat. Dodd avoids the retreating French army and happily rejoins his regiment, unacknowledged, unthanked and unconcerned about his months of demanding effort."
1710,Waiting for Anya,history," In the French Lescun during the Second World War, Jo Lalande is a young shepherd who is enjoying his childhood, but when his father goes to fight in the war, Jo has to become the man of the house. After an incident with a bear, Jo meets a mysterious man in the forest. He follows the man to his home and learns his secret - he is a Jew named Benjamin that is responsible for smuggling Jewish children across the border into Spain, and safety, with the help of his mother-in-law (Widow Horcada). Jo starts helping them, and proving that he is one person who can be trusted. When German soldiers move into town, things becomes much more difficult. Although most of the town's inhabitants come to accept the German occupation, the task of getting the Jewish children across the border becomes more dangerous. Jo, his grandfather[Henri], Benjamin and Widow Horcada devise a plan to get the children across. The plan requires the whole town help the children escape, and relies on the German soldiers not noticing what is happening. But if they are caught, their lives will not be worth living... There is only one question left un answered. Where is Anya?"
1711,The Unquiet Earth,history," The Unquiet Earth is a novel written from the perspective of multiple narrators. The three main narrators are Dillon, Rachel, and Jackie who are all family. Dillon is Rachel's younger cousin, and Jackie is most likely their child. The story begins prior to the birth of Jackie and is narrated by Dillon and Rachel, children living on their family land, the Homeplace. From the beginning, Dillon makes claims that he loves Rachel partially because she is the only one who has memories of his father. They both narrate parts of their childhood and the beginning of the novel mainly depicts how their relationship grows and how their love for one another begins. They are first cousins - therefore, their mothers are sisters. The first instance in which their love is really shown is when Rachel falls into a river and Dillon is forcibly restrained by his mother from diving in to save her because of her fear of losing him as well. He is forced to watch Rachel suffer and nearly be swept away by the current, but luckily she was dragged out by the mule she was riding. They rush her home, and Dillon watches through a window as his mother helps a cold and naked Rachel recover. The story continues as they grow older and continue to fight for love. Rachel ends up leaving the Homeplace to attend a nursing school, where she spends several subsequent years. Dillon then, in what everyone believes is out of anger of Rachel leaving him, enlists in the British army to fight against Hitler. Upon Rachel's graduation from nursing school, she and her friend Tommie Justice enlist as nurses in the war as well. Rachel returns to find out that the Homeplace is no longer their land as Dillon had forewarned her many times. They are reunited at the number thirteen mine in Justice County where the remainder of the story takes place. Rachel continues working there as a county nurse, and Dillon works for the mine while avidly fighting for the union against the American Coal Company and Arthur Lee, who owns it. Arthur Lee is already an acquaintance of Rachel's because he dated her friend Tommie previously and introduced her to his friend Tony. Rachel and Dillon continue to fight and disagree about their love for one another. Rachel is scared that they would be deemed illegitimate by society and tries to deny her love for her cousin. This offends and angers Dillon, who is against the social norms and wishes to love Rachel even if society believes it is the wrong thing to do. He wants to marry Rachel, but it is illegal to marry a first cousin. When the trouble with the coal company gets worse, Dillon asks that Rachel leave her job for the county, and help him in the fight against the coal companies as the other wives were doing. However, Dillon and Rachel were raised differently, and the words of her dying mother echoed in her head. She was raised by her mother to believe that men want a prim and proper lady, certainly not one who has sex before marriage. It would be wrong for kin to sleep with kin, and even more wrong for two first cousins to marry one another. Standing strong in these beliefs, Rachel ends up marrying Tony, an Italian man that Tommie and Arthur Lee set her up with. She has trouble having kids with Tony and continues to stay close to Dillon. Eventually, she gives into the fact that she loves Dillon and they make love in the secluded area of Trace Mountain where they conceive their daughter, Jackie. However, throughout the rest of the novel this escape to the mountain is kept quiet and Jackie believes until the very end that Tony is her father. After Rachel and Tony finally divorce due to an unhappy marriage and his escapes to the bar, Tony gets remarried and has trouble again having babies. Rachel fears that this will cause him suspicion of Jackie being his and that he will try to take her away. Dillon's prior paranoia is justified at the end of the novel. The book closes with the breaking of the dawn above the towns, and eventually shows once again that the mining company's guarantee of safety was untrue. Jackie is left alone after the deaths of Tom and Dillon in the flood and moves away. The story closes with Jackie wanting to forget the place she called home. The book does a good job of creating a scene of mountain utopia that was slowly eroded away by the mining to an area that was undesirable and almost uninhabitable."
1712,The Heart of Midlothian,history," The title of the book refers to the Old Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the time in the heart of the Scottish county of Midlothian. The historical backdrop was the event known as the Porteous Riots. In 1736, a riot broke out in Edinburgh over the execution of two smugglers. The Captain of the City Guards, Captain John Porteous, ordered the soldiers to fire into the crowd, killing several people. Porteous was later killed by a lynch mob who stormed the Old Tolbooth. The second, and main element of the novel was based on a story Scott claimed to have received in an unsigned letter. It was about a certain Helen Walker who had travelled all the way to London by foot, in order to receive a royal pardon for her sister, who was unjustly charged with infanticide. Scott put Jeanie Deans in the place of Walker, a young woman from a family of highly devout Presbyterians. Jeanie goes to London, partly by foot, hoping to achieve an audience with the Queen through the influence of the Duke of Argyll. Jeanie Deans' role in the novel is described in more detail in Jeanie Deans (fictional character). Jeanie Deans is the first woman among Scott's protagonists, and also the first to come from the lower classes. While the heroine is idealized for her religious devotion and her moral rectitude, Scott nevertheless ridicules the moral certitude represented by the branch of Presbyterianism known as Cameronians, represented in the novel by Jeanie’s father David. Also central to the novel is the early-18th century Jacobitism, a theme found in so many of Scott’s novels. Scott’s sympathies can be seen in the ideal figure of the Duke of Argyll, a moderate on these issues. The Heart of Midlothian has been adapted for the screen once, in 1914, and for television once, in 1966. Two operas have also been based upon the novel - La Prigione di Edimburgo (Imprisoned in Edinburgh) by the Italian composer Federico Ricci (1809–1877) and Jeanie Deans by the Scottish classical composer, Hamish MacCunn (1868–1916)."
1713,Baudolino,history," In the year of 1204, Baudolino of Alessandria enters Constantinople, unaware of the Fourth Crusade that has thrown the city into chaos. In the confusion, he meets Niketas Choniates and saves his life. Niketas is amazed by his language genius, speaking many languages he has never heard, and on the question: if he is not part of the crusade, who is he? Baudolino begins to recount his life story to Niketas. His story begins in 1155, when Baudolino is sold to and adopted by the emperor Frederick I. At court and on the battlefield, he is educated in reading and writing Latin and learns about the power struggles and battles of northern Italy at the time. He is sent to Paris to become a scholar. In Paris, he gains friends (such as the Archpoet, Abdul, Robert de Boron and Kyot, the purported source of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival) and learns about the legendary kingdom of Prester John. From this event onward, Baudolino dreams of reaching this fabled land. After the death of Frederick, Baudolino and his friends set off on a long journey, encompassing 15 years, to find the Kingdom of Prester John. Baudolino meets eunuchs, unicorns, Blemmyes, skiapods and pygmies. At one point, he falls in love with a female satyr-like creature who recounts to him the full Gnostic creation myth; Gnosticism is a pervasive presence in another of Eco's novels, Foucault's Pendulum. Philosophical debates are mixed with comedy, epic adventure and creatures drawn from the strangest medieval bestiaries. {| class=""wikitable"" align=""right"" width=""250"" | | |- | | |- | colspan=""2"" | Various strange characters figuring in the novel as rendered in the Nuremberg Chronicles. These creatures and many others were all described and named by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historiæ from 77 AD: A monopod and a satyr (top); a blemmyae and a panotti (above). |} ;Invented by Eco *Baudolino — young man of Alessandria, protagonist, apparently a reference to the patron saint. *The monopod Gavagai, a reference to Quine's example of indeterminacy of translation. *The putative successors of Hypatia of Alexandria *Deacon John, leprous sub-ruler of Pndapetzim ;Other fictional or legendary beings *Kyot *Gagliaudo Aulari, legendary saviour of Alessandria, and his wife, who are Baudolino's biological parents *Prester John *Satyrs *Blemmyes *Panotti ;Historical *Frederick Barbarossa *Niketas Choniates *Robert de Boron *Rainald of Dassel *The Old Man of the Mountain *Pope Alexander III *Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy *The Archpoet (unknown except through his poetry) *Otto of Freising *A member of the ancient Artsruni noble clan *Andronicus I Comnenus *Stephen Hagiochristophorites *The Venerable Bede"
1714,The moon riders,history," This story is about the Moon Riders, known historically as the Amazons. The main character is Myrina, who joins the Amazons in her teenage years and becomes one of the very prestigious moon dancers. Myrina joins the Moon Riders when she is 14. She becomes friend and confidante to Cassandra the prophetic princess of Troy. As the 'Snake Lady' she acquires a gang of four young orphans who travel with her, until all but one have been killed."
1715,The Skystone,history," ;Invasion: The book begins with Publius Varrus laying its framework: he is retelling his history and the history of the Roman withdrawal from Britain. He then begins by talking about an ambush by Celts where he and Caius Britannicus are injured. While thinking about his time spent with Britannicus recovering from these injuries, his thoughts lead to their meeting: Britannicus had been a captive of Berbers and Varrus freed him from them. After this encounter Varrus recalls how he and Britannicus traveled together to Britain to become primus pilus and legate, respectively, of Legion XX Valeria Victrix's Second Millarian Cohort. While they are in command of this unit, Hadrian's wall is overcome by a horde of Picts and other Celtic Tribes. The unit spends a year and a half fighting their way back to Roman Controlled Britain. Outside of Londinium they encounter a legion from the army of Theodosius. ;Colchester: After Varrus recovers from his injuries, he returns to Colchester, the location of his birth. When he returns he finds that his boyhood friend, and his grandfather's helper, Equus had ensured that his Grandfather's smithy was not devoid of tools. Varrus begins to run the business again, striking deals with Cuno, Equus's brother in law. Verrus also gains several contracts with the local legion, because his swords use a higher quality of iron than the other local suppliers. Britannicus visits the Colchester legion and finds Varrus. While they are attending a military party, Britannicus proposes that he may create a colony similar to the Bagaudae's colonies in Gaul. After a visit when Varrus explains his grandfather's use of skystone metal to create the hardest sword and dagger in existence, Varrus and Plautus discover a conspiracy by family enemies of Britannicus, the Senecas. Another encounter with the Senecas follows several years later as Varrus and Plautus interfere with the youngest of the Seneca brothers. There encounters ends with Varrus beating the brother up and carving a V into his chest. The attack leads to a massive manhunt by the military because the youngest Seneca had connections with the emperor and the military hierarchy. Because of the persistent nature of this search and a conviction that the eldest brother, Primus, would eventually figure out who his brother's attacker was, Varrus flees Colchester. First heading to Verulamium, he beds Equus's sister, Pheobe who had previously bedded him for the first time since his injury. From there he leaves for Aquae Sulis, where Britannicus owns a villa. ;Westering: On the road to Aquae Sulis, Varrus encounters several bandits who attempt to murder him. He later, after another assassination attempt, finds out that these men had been hired by the Senecas. He finally arrives in Aquae Sulis and encounters Britannicus's brother-in-law Quintus Varo. Varo invites Varrus to his villa. At the villa, Varrus meets Caius Britannicus's sister Luceiia. Also while at the villa Varrus encounters a Welsh hunchback Cymric. Varrus demonstrates the African bow which his grandfather had left in his collection of weapons. Luceiia and Varrus return to the Britannicus villa. While there Luceiia introduces him to a druid who has knowledge of meteor shower that coincides with when Varrus the Elder discovered his skystone. The local people had called this the return of dragons, a local myth that had revolved around covert smelting and metal working by the Pendragons, a local tribe. The druid leads Luceiia and Varrus to the location where a number of cattle had been killed during that same night. There they find impact craters and a lake unknown to the druid. On a return trip from the site, the party gets caught in the dark during a downpour. The druid leads them to a hamlet where they take shelter in a cottage. While there Luceiia and Varrus express a growing interest in each other and agree to marry each other. ;The Dragon's Nest: Varrus finds seven sky stones in the valley, all marked by donut-shaped impact craters. He digs all of them up but they are all small, and Varrus does not think that these are large enough for the cataclysm that happened to the cattle. Meanwhile Caius Britannicus returns to the villa. Upon his arrival he expresses his approval of Varrus and Luceiia's wedding, invitations are sent out and a number of individual soon begin arriving, among which is Equus with Varrus's smithing materials from Colchester. Also among the arrivals is Bishop Alric who, along with a military friend Atonious Cicero, tell Varrus of Pheobe's death by the hands of Caesarius Seneca, the youngest Seneca. The wedding is a jolly event despite Varrus' grief over Pheobe. A large group of friends stay at the villa for several weeks. Soon after the wedding Britannicus's friends, Tera and Firma, bring news that they lost their trading fleet to pirates. This news shakes the men of the group and they spend a long night discussing Brittanicus's proposition of a military colony. They all agree to begin recruiting in the colony and invest their livelihoods in the purchase of the villas surrounding Caius's and Varo's. Varrus is also able to discover the main part of the meteor, which is buried under the bed of a lake in the valley. By employing a handful of military engineers, Varrus drains the lake and retrieves the stone. ;The Dragon's Breath: While visiting Aquae Sulis Varrus encounters Quinctilius Nesca, a cousin of the Senecas. Varrus escapes with the help of a trader who had been hoodwinked by Nesca and by killing two of Nesca's guards. The man mysteriously dies during Varrus's escape. While he escapes, Varrus also learns that Seneca had returned to Britain. Varrus places him under surveillance and soon hatches a plot which he carries through to kill Seneca. Meanwhile, agents of a the King of the Pendragon clan, Ullic, approaches Britannicus and entreats him for a meeting between the two leaders. They meet and after some vocal sparring the two agree to a protective alliance between the two regional powers as Britons. Soon after Bishop Alaric passes through the region again, telling the Colonists, they now called themselves such, that Frankish cavalry was now running rampant in parts of the empire, and that the political tensions were rising. Also Alaric brings news of Caius's son Picus, who was now aligned with the Roman emperor in Constantinople and the a new military commander Stilicho who favored the use of heavy cavalry. In the final chapter, Varrus reveals that he was able to smelt his skystone and casts a statue of the Celtic goddess Coventina who Varrus names The Lady of the Lake."
1716,Lord John and the Hellfire Club,history," While at the Beefsteak Club, Lord John Grey is introduced to Robert Gerald, a cousin by marriage to Grey's friend and colleague, Harry Quarry. Gerald asks Grey to meet him in secret that night, hinting at intrigue. Before the meeting, however, Gerald is killed in front of Grey and Quarry, and the two men begin to search for clues pertaining to Gerald's murder. A few days later, during a high-society party, Grey is invited to a Hellfire Club meeting by one of its members, George Everett (one of Grey's former lovers). When Grey attends the meeting at the club's hideout, Medmenham Abbey, he soon discovers that his life might be in danger as well!"
1717,The Teutonic Knights,history," Krzyżacy tells the story of a young nobleman, Zbyszko of Bogdaniec, who together with his uncle Maćko of Bogdaniec returns from the war against the Order (Knights of the Cross) in nearby Lithuania. In a tavern inn Zbyszko falls in love with the lovely Danusia, who is traveling with the court of the Duchess Anna. He swears to her his knight's oath and promises to bring her ""three trophies"" from the Teutonic Knights. On his way to the royal city of Kraków (Cracow), Zbyszko attacks Kuno von Liechtenstein, who is an official diplomatic delegate of the Teutonic Knights. The penalty is death. Yet, on the gallows, Danusia saves him from execution when she jumps onto the platform in full view of the crowd, and promises to marry him, covering his head with her handkerchief (an old Polish tradition that carries with it a stay of execution if the couple wed). Zbyszko and Maćko return home to their estate, where they rebuild their mansion. After some time Zbyszek returns to Danuśka and marries her. However, she is soon treacherously kidnapped by four Teutonic Knights who want revenge – her father Jurand fought against the Germans. Jurand himself is soon captured by them, imprisoned and cruelly tortured and maimed. Zbyszko's quest to find and save his kidnapped Danusia continues until, at long last, he rescues her. However, it is too late already. Danuta has been driven insane because of her treatment at the hands of her captors, and eventually dies. The long awaited war begins. The combined forces of Poland and Lithuania under the command of Polish King Ladislaus Jagiello destroy the Teutonic Order in the monumental 1410 Battle of Grunwald. This battle signals the true terminal decline of the Teutonic Order."
1718,Whirlwind,history," Gavallan, based in Scotland, runs S-G Helicopter company operating in Iran during the Shah's reign. When Khomeini comes to power, Gavallan must get his pilots and their families, and his valuable helicopters, and the spare parts for the helicopters (of equal or greater value of the aircraft) out of the riot-torn country. Complicating matters is his power struggle with his company's secret owner, the Noble House of Hong Kong. The pilots' escape efforts form the basic story and the action sweeps across many lives: lovers, spies, fanatics, revolutionaries, friends and betrayers. British, Finnish, American, and Iranian are all caught up in a deadly religious and political upheaval, portraying the chilling and bewildering encounters when Westernized lifestyle clashes with harsh ancient traditions. Aircraft used by S-G Helicopters throughout the story include Bell 212, Bell 206, Aérospatiale Alouette III and British Aerospace BAe 125. The settings for the story are the western and southwestern parts of Iran, as well as neighboring Persian Gulf states, Turkey to Lake Van, and the environs of Aberdeen, Scotland. Actual locations within Iran include Teheran (including Qasr Prison, Evin Prison, Galeg Morghi, and Doshan Tappeh Air Base), Tabriz, Qazvin, Mount Sabalan, the Zagros Mountains, Lengeh, Bandar Delam, Siri, the Dez Dam and Kharg island. Fictional locations include the city of Kowiss, Yazdek village and the safe haven emirate of Al-Shargaz, meaning protector."
1719,Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,history," The novel opens in autumn 1806 in northern England with The Learned Society of York Magicians, made up of ""theoretical magicians"" who believe that magic died out several hundred years earlier. The group is stunned to learn of a ""practising magician"", Mr Gilbert Norrell, who owns a large collection of ""books of magic"" he has spent years purchasing to keep out of the hands of others. Norrell proves his skill as a practical magician by making the statues in York Cathedral speak. John Childermass, Mr Norrell's long-time servant, convinces a member of the group, John Segundus, to write about the event for the London newspapers. Segundus's article generates considerable interest in Mr Norrell, who moves to London to revive practical English magic. He enters society with the help of two gentlemen about town and meets a Cabinet minister, Sir Walter Pole. To ingratiate himself, Mr Norrell attempts to recall Sir Walter's fiancée, Emma Wintertowne, from the dead. He summons a fairy—""the gentleman with thistle-down hair""—who strikes a bargain with Mr Norrell to restore Emma: half of her life will be spent with the fairy. After news spreads of Emma's resurrection and happy marriage to Sir Walter, magic becomes respectable and Mr Norrell performs various feats to aid the government in their ongoing war against Napoleon. While living in London, Mr Norrell encounters Vinculus, a street-magician, who relates a prophecy about a nameless slave and two magicians in England, but Norrell dismisses it. While travelling, Vinculus later meets Jonathan Strange, a young gentleman of property from Shropshire, and recites the same prophecy, prompting Strange to become a magician. Meanwhile, the gentleman with thistle-down hair takes a liking to Stephen Black, Sir Walter's capable black butler, and promises to make him a king. Emma (now Lady Pole) lapses into lassitude. She rarely speaks, and her attempts to communicate her situation are confounded by magic. No doctor can cure her, and Mr Norrell claims that her problems cannot be solved by magic. Without the knowledge of the other characters, each evening she and Stephen are forced to attend balls held by the gentleman with thistle-down hair in the Faerie kingdom of Lost-Hope, where they dance all night long. Volume II opens in Summer 1809 with Strange learning of Mr Norrell and travelling to London to meet him. They immediately clash over the importance of John Uskglass (the legendary Raven King) to English magic. Strange argues that ""without the Raven King there would be no magic and no magicians"" while Norrell retorts that the Raven King made war upon England and should be forgotten. Despite their differing opinions and temperaments, Strange becomes Norrell's pupil. Norrell, however, deliberately keeps some knowledge from Strange. Lady Pole and Strange's wife, Arabella, become friends; several times Lady Pole attempts to tell Arabella about her forced nights of dancing at the fairy's castle in Lost-Hope, but each time she tells an unrelated story. Arabella also meets the gentleman with thistle-down hair at the Poles', but she assumes he is simply a resident. Without her husband's knowledge, the fairy plots to enchant her, although Stephen Black continually attempts to dissuade him. The Stranges become a popular couple in London. The Cabinet ministers find Strange easier to deal with than Norrell, and they send him to assist the Duke of Wellington on his Peninsular Campaign. For over a year, Strange helps the army: he creates roads, moves towns, and makes dead men speak. After he returns, he fails to cure George III's madness, although Strange manages to save the king from becoming enchanted by the gentleman with thistle-down hair, who is determined to make Stephen a king. Strange then helps defeat Napoleon at the horrific Battle of Waterloo. Frustrated with being Norrell's pupil, Strange pens a scathing review of a book outlining Norrell's theories on modern magic; in particular, Strange challenges Norrell's views of the Raven King. The English public splits into ""Norrellites"" and ""Strangites""; Norrell and Strange part company, although not without regret. Strange returns home and works on his own book, The History and Practice of English Magic. Arabella goes missing, then suddenly reappears, sick and weak. Three days later she dies. Volume III opens in January 1816 with Childermass experiencing strong magic that is not produced by either Norrell or Strange. At the same time, Lady Pole attempts to shoot Mr Norrell as he is returning home. Childermass takes the bullet himself but is not killed. Afterwards, Lady Pole is cared for in the country by John Segundus, who has an inkling of the magic surrounding her. During travels in the north, Stephen meets Vinculus, who recites his prophecy: ""the nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country&nbsp;...&nbsp;"" Stephen believes it applies to him, but the gentleman with thistle-down hair argues that it applies to the Raven King. Strange settles in Venice and meets Flora Greysteel. They become fond of each other and Strange's friends believe he may marry again. However, after experimenting with dangerous magic that threatens his sanity in order to gain access to Faerie, he discovers that Arabella is alive and being held captive. Immediately after he discovers this, the gentleman with the thistledown hair curses him with Eternal Night, an eerie darkness that engulfs him and follows him wherever he goes. Thereafter, Strange's strenuous efforts to rescue her take their toll, and his letters to friends begin to appear crazed. On Strange's orders, Flora moves with her family to Padua and secludes herself inside her home, along with a mirror given to her by Strange. In England, the return of John Uskglass sparks a magical renaissance, but Norrell fails to grasp its significance. Strange returns and gives Childermass instructions which allow him to free Lady Pole from the fairy's enchantment. Strange, bringing ""Eternal Night"" with him, asks Norrell to help him undo Arabella's enchantment by summoning John Uskglass. Although they initially believe that they have succeeded, they later come to believe that their contact with John Uskglass was accidental. As a result of the imprecision of the fairy's curse, which was placed on ""the English magician,"" Norrell is trapped along with Strange in the ""Eternal Night,"" and they cannot move more than a certain distance from each other. They do succeed in sending Arabella to the mirror in Padua, where Flora is waiting for her. After the spells of the gentleman with thistle-down hair are broken, Stephen destroys him, and becomes the new king of Lost-Hope. Later Strange has a conversation with Arabella, making it unclear if he and Norrell are working to undo the eternal darkness they are both trapped in, and a vague hope that one day he will return to her. The final scene depicts the coming of age of English magic, in which a bar is filled with arguing Norrellites and Strangites."
1720,Sharpe's Triumph,history," The tale begins with Sharpe witnessing a massacre of British troops in a fort by the traitor Major Dodd, for which he blames himself. After being hired by Colonel McCandless, whom Sharpe had befriended a couple of years earlier (Sharpe's Tiger), Sharpe travels to Wellesley's army, where he witnesses its siege of the city of Ahmednuggur, whose garrison is commanded by Dodd. Throughout these events, Sharpe is unknowingly pursued by Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, who has framed him for attacking a British officer and been given the authority to arrest him. During the battle at Ahmednuggur, Sharpe and McCandless attempt to find and capture Dodd, who manages to escape. During the search, Sharpe rescues the wife of a French officer in Dodd's service, named Simone Joubert. McCandless decides to use Joubert for a prisoner exchange, and a chance to view Scindia's army, commanded by Anthony Pohlmann. While in the enemy camp, McCandless' horse is stolen, and he is wounded attempting to save it. He and Sharpe later leave and attempt to inform Wellesley of the enemy army's decision to march to Borkardan. Pohlmann, however, decides to lay a trap for the British army at Assaye. After returning to Wellesley's army, Hakeswill confronts Sharpe and McCandless, who prevents Sharpe from being arrested. Obadiah then begins planning his next move. As the British army marches toward Borkardan, Wellesley discovers the trap Pohlmann has laid for him, and decides to attack his army head on, despite being vastly outnumbered. In the early stages of the fight, Wellesley's aide is killed, and Sharpe takes his place. Dodd is also present at the battle, commanding his regiment, the Cobras. The battle is hard fought, but Wellesley's troops carry the day. At the climax of the fight, Wellesley is unhorsed and surrounded by enemies whom Sharpe fights off alone, thus saving the general's life. Pohlmann's army retreats into Assaye itself, and McCandless orders Sharpe to follow him into the city to once again attempt to capture Dodd. Dodd however, makes his escape along with much of Pohlmann's gold. While in the city, McCandless encounters Obadiah, who kills him. Following the battle, Sharpe speaks to Wellesley, who promotes him to the rank of Ensign. Obadiah is now unable to arrest Sharpe because of his rank. Sharpe then throws Obadiah out a window and leaves him under the foot of one of Pohlmann's elephants. The British army then marches off to pursue Scindia's retreating army, the events of which are detailed in the next book, Sharpe's Fortress."
1721,The Settlers,history, The book tells about the group's new life in America where most of them now have started to feel at home. It also follows Robert and Arvid's journey on the California Trail.
1722,Spangle,history," Spangle is a historical novel written by Gary Jennings (1928–1999). Published in 1987, it follows a circus troupe known as ""Florian's Flourishing Florilegium of Wonders"" from the Confederate surrender at Appomattox to Europe, ending in France during the Franco-Prussian War. The book chronicles the rise of the troupe from a small ""mud show"" with few acts to the glittering toast of Paris, while delving into the evolving personal lives of its performers. The book is also an examination of the social structures of both post-Civil War America and Europe during a period in which the ancient system of monarchy was toppling. The main protagonist, other than the circus itself, is Zachary Edge, a former Confederate colonel embittered by war who accepts a position as the Florilegium's equestrian director. Edge's trials, both professional and personal, form the core of the plot, which details Edge's rise in the ranks of the circus in parallel to the rise of the Florilegium."
1723,The Line of Beauty,history," Set in Britain in the early to mid-1980s, the story surrounds the young gay protagonist, Nick Guest, who has come down from Oxford with a first in English and is to begin graduate studies at University College London. The novel begins in the summer of 1983, shortly after Thatcher's landslide victory in the Parliamentary election of that year. Nick moves into the luxurious London home of the wealthy Fedden family. The son of the house, Toby, is his Oxford University classmate and best friend, and Nick's stay is meant to last for a short time while Toby and his parents - Rachel, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family, and Gerald, a successful businessman and just-elected Tory MP - are on holiday in France. Left at home with Nick is the Feddens' daughter, Cat, who is bipolar and whom the Feddens are reluctant to leave on her own. Nick helps Cat through a minor crisis, and when her parents return they suggest he stay on indefinitely, since Cat has become attached to him and Toby is getting a place of his own. As a permanent member of the Feddens' household, Nick experiences for the first time the world of the British upper class, observing them from his own middle-class background. Nick remains a guest in the Fedden home until he is expelled at the end of the novel. Nick has his first romance with a black council worker, Leo, but a later relationship with Wani, the son of a rich Lebanese businessman, illuminates the materialism and ruthlessness of 1980s Thatcherite Britain. The book explores the tension between Nick's intimate relationship with the Feddens, in whose parties and holidays he participates, and the realities of his sexuality and gay life, which the Feddens accept only to the extent of never mentioning it. It explores themes of hypocrisy, homosexuality, madness and wealth, with the emerging AIDS crisis forming a backdrop to the book's conclusion."
1724,Romance of the Three Kingdoms,history," One of the greatest achievements of Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the extreme complexity of its stories and characters. The novel contains numerous secondary stories. The following consists of a summary of the central plot, and well-known highlights in the story. In the final years of the Han Dynasty, incompetent eunuchs deceive the emperor and persecute good officials, and the government becomes extremely corrupt on all levels, leading to widespread deterioration of the empire. During the reign of the penultimate Han sovereign, Emperor Ling, the Yellow Turban Rebellion breaks out under the leadership of Zhang Jue (a.k.a. Zhang Jiao). The rebellion is barely suppressed by troops under the command of He Jin, General-in-Chief of the imperial armies. Fearing his growing power, the eunuchs led by Zhang Rang lure He Jin into the palace and murder him. He Jin's stunned guards, led by Yuan Shao, respond by charging into the palace to kill all eunuchs for revenge, which turns into indiscriminate slaughter. In the ensuing chaos, the child Emperor Shao and the Prince of Chenliu disappear from the palace. The missing emperor and prince are found later by soldiers of the warlord Dong Zhuo, who proceeds to seize control of the imperial capital Luoyang under the pretext of protecting the emperor. Dong later deposes Emperor Shao and replaces him with the Prince of Chenliu, who becomes known as Emperor Xian. Dong usurps state power and starts a reign of terror in which innocents are persecuted and the common people suffer. Wu Fu and Cao Cao attempt to assassinate Dong Zhuo but both fail. Cao Cao manages to escape and issues an imperial edict in the emperor's name to all regional warlords and governors, calling them to rise up against Dong Zhuo. Under Yuan Shao's leadership, eighteen warlords form a coalition force in a campaign against Dong Zhuo, but undermined by poor leadership and conflict of interest, they only manage to drive Dong from Luoyang to Chang'an. Dong Zhuo is eventually betrayed and killed by his foster son Lü Bu in a dispute over the beautiful maiden Diaochan. In the meantime, the empire is already disintegrating into civil war. Sun Jian finds the Imperial Seal and keeps it secretly for himself, further weakening royal authority. Without a strong central government, warlords begin to rise and fight each other for land, plunging China into a state of anarchy. In the north, Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan are at war, and in the south, Sun Jian and Liu Biao. Many others, even those without title or land, such as Cao Cao and Liu Bei, are also starting to build up power. Cao Cao rescues Emperor Xian from Dong Zhuo's followers and establishes the new imperial court in Xuchang. Cao Cao proceeds to defeat his rivals such as Lü Bu, Yuan Shu and Zhang Xiu before scoring a tactical victory over Yuan Shao in the Battle of Guandu despite being vastly outnumbered. Through his conquests, Cao unites the Central Plains and northern China under his rule, and the lands he controlled would serve as the foundation for the state of Cao Wei in the future. Meanwhile, an ambush had violently concluded Sun Jian's life in a war with Liu Biao, fulfilling Sun's own rash oath to heaven. His eldest son Sun Ce delivers the Imperial Seal as a tribute to the rising royal pretender, Yuan Shu of Huainan, in exchange for reinforcements. Sun secures himself a state in the rich riverlands of Jiangdong, on which the state of Eastern Wu will eventually be founded. Tragically, Sun Ce also dies at the pinnacle of his career from illness under stress of his terrifying encounter with the ghost of Yu Ji, a venerable magician whom he had falsely accused and executed in jealousy. However, his younger brother Sun Quan, who succeeds him, proves to be a capable and charismatic ruler. Sun, assisted by skilled advisors Zhou Yu and Zhang Zhao, inspires hidden talents such as Lu Su to join his service, and builds up a strong military force. Liu Bei, along with his sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, swear allegiance to the Han Dynasty in the famous Oath of the Peach Garden and pledge to do their best for the country. However, their goals and ambitions are not realized until the later part of the novel. Liu is not recognized for his efforts in quelling the Yellow Turban Rebellion and is merely appointed as a junior magistrate. They join Gongsun Zan and participate in the campaign against Dong Zhuo. Liu Bei becomes the governor of Xu Province after Tao Qian passes on the post to him. Liu loses the province when Lü Bu seizes control of it with the help of a defector and he joins Cao Cao in defeating Lü at the Battle of Xiapi. While Cao Cao subtly reveals his intention to usurp state power, Liu Bei is officially recognised by Emperor Xian as the Imperial Uncle and seen as a saviour to help the emperor deal with Cao Cao. Liu Bei leaves Cao Cao eventually and seizes Xu Province from Cao Cao's newly appointed governor Che Zhou. In retaliation, Cao Cao attacks Xu Province and defeats Liu, forcing Liu to seek refuge under Yuan Shao for a brief period of time. Liu finds a new base in Runan after leaving Yuan but is defeated by Cao Cao's forces once again. He retreats to Jing Province to join Liu Biao and is placed in charge of Xinye. At Xinye, Liu recruits the genius strategist Zhuge Liang personally and builds up his forces. Cao Cao declares himself chancellor and leads his troops to attack southern China after uniting the north. He is defeated twice at Xinye by Liu Bei's forces but Liu loses the city as well. Liu leads his men and the civilians of Xinye on an exodus southwards and they arrive at Jiangxia (present-day Yunmeng County, Hubei) where Liu establishes a foothold against Cao Cao. To resist Cao Cao, Liu Bei sends Zhuge Liang to persuade Sun Quan to form an alliance. Zhuge succeeds in his diplomatic mission and remains in Jiangdong as a temporary advisor to Sun Quan. Sun places Zhou Yu in command of the armies of Jiangdong (Eastern Wu) in preparation for an upcoming war with Cao Cao. Zhou feels that Zhuge will become a future threat to Eastern Wu and he tries to kill Zhuge on a few occasions but he fails and decides to co-operate with Zhuge for the time being. Cao Cao is defeated at the Battle of Red Cliffs by the allied forces of Sun Quan and Liu Bei and he is forced to retreat north. Sun Quan and Liu Bei begin vying for control of Jing Province after their victory and Liu seizes the province from Cao Cao after following Zhuge Liang's strategy. Sun Quan is unhappy and sends emissaries to ask Liu Bei for Jing Province, but Liu dismisses the envoys each time with different excuses. Sun uses some strategies proposed by Zhou Yu to take the land, of which the most famous is the ""Beauty Scheme."" Sun intends to lure Liu Bei to Jiangdong to marry his sister Lady Sun and hold Liu hostage to exchange his freedom for Jing Province, but the plot fails and the newlywed couple return home safely. Zhou Yu tries to take Jing Province repeatedly but his plans are foiled three times by Zhuge Liang. After Zhou Yu's death, relations between Liu Bei and Sun Quan gradually deteriorate but not to the point of open conflict. In accordance with Zhuge Liang's Longzhong Plan, Liu Bei leads his troops into Yi Province in the west and takes over the land from the incompetent noble Liu Zhang. By then, Liu Bei rules a vast area of land from Jing Province to Yi Province in the west, which will serve as the foundation for the future state of Shu Han. He proclaims himself ""King of Hanzhong"" after his victory over Cao Cao in the Hanzhong Campaign. At the same time, Cao has also been granted the title of ""King of Wei"" by the emperor and Sun Quan became known as the ""Duke of Wu"". In the east, Sun Quan and Cao Cao's forces clash at the Battle of Ruxukou and Battle of Xiaoyao Ford with victories and defeats for both sides. The situation among the three major powers reaches a stalemate after this until Cao Cao's death. Meanwhile, Sun Quan plots to take Jing Province after tiring of Liu Bei's repeated refusals to hand the land over. He makes peace with Cao Cao and becomes a vassal of Cao with the title of ""King of Wu"". Guan Yu, who is in charge of Jing Province, leads his troops to attack Cao Ren in the Battle of Fancheng. Sun Quan sends Lü Meng to lead his troops to seize Jing Province while Guan is away, as part of his secret agreement with Cao Cao. Guan is caught off guard and loses Jing Province before he realizes it. He retreats to Maicheng, where he is heavily surrounded by Sun Quan's forces, while his army gradually shrinks in size as many of his troops desert or surrender to the enemy. In desperation, Guan attempts to break out of the siege but fails and is captured in an ambush. He is executed on Sun Quan's orders after refusing to renounce his loyalty to Liu Bei. Shortly after Guan Yu's death, Cao Cao dies of a brain tumor and his son Cao Pi usurps the throne, effectively ending the Han Dynasty and Cao renames his new dynasty ""Cao Wei"". In response, Liu Bei proclaims himself emperor, to carry on the bloodline of the Han Dynasty. While Liu Bei is planning to avenge Guan Yu, his other sworn brother Zhang Fei is assassinated in his sleep by his subordinates, who have defected to Sun Quan. As Liu Bei leads a large army to attack Sun Quan to avenge Guan Yu, Sun attempts to appease Liu by offering him the return of Jing Province. Liu's advisers, including Zhuge Liang, urge him to accept Sun's tokens of peace, but Liu persists in vengeance. After initial victories, a series of strategic mistakes due to the impetuosity of Liu leads to the cataclysmic defeat of Shu Han in the Battle of Xiaoting. Lu Xun, the commander of Sun Quan's forces, refrains from pursuing the retreating Shu Han troops after encountering Zhuge Liang's Stone Sentinel Maze. Liu Bei dies in Baidicheng from illness shortly after his defeat. In a moving final conversation between Liu on his deathbed and Zhuge Liang, Liu grants Zhuge the authority to take the throne if his successor Liu Shan proves to be an inept ruler. Zhuge refuses and swears that he will remain faithful to the trust Liu Bei had placed in him. After Liu Bei's death, as advised by Sima Yi, Cao Pi induces several forces, including Sun Quan, turncoat Shu general Meng Da, Meng Huo of the Nanman and the Qiang tribes, to attack Shu Han, in coordination with a Cao Wei army. Zhuge Liang manages to send the five armies retreating without any bloodshed. An envoy from Shu Han named Deng Zhi subsequently persuades Sun Quan to renew the former alliance with Shu Han. Zhuge Liang personally leads a southern campaign against the Nanman barbarian king Meng Huo. Meng is defeated and captured seven times, but Zhuge releases him each time and allows him to come back for another battle, in order to win Meng over. The seventh time, Meng refuses to leave and decides to swear allegiance to Shu Han forever. After pacifying the south, Zhuge Liang leads the Shu Han army on five military expeditions to attack Cao Wei in order to restore the Han Dynasty. However, Zhuge's days are numbered as he had been suffering from chronic tuberculosis all along, and his condition worsens under stress from the campaigns. His last significant victory over Cao Wei is probably the defection of Jiang Wei, a promising young general who is well-versed in military strategy. Zhuge Liang dies of illness at the Battle of Wuzhang Plains while leading a stalemate battle against his nemesis, the Cao Wei commander Sima Yi. Before his death, Zhuge orders his trusted generals to build a statue of himself and use it to scare away the enemy in order to buy time for the Shu Han army to retreat safely. The long years of battle between Shu Han and Cao Wei sees many changes in the ruling Cao family in Cao Wei. The influence of the Caos weakens after the death of Cao Rui and the state power of Cao Wei eventually falls into the hands of the Sima clan, headed by Sima Yi's sons Sima Shi and Sima Zhao. In Shu Han, Jiang Wei inherits Zhuge Liang's legacy and continues to lead another nine campaigns against Cao Wei for a bitter three decades, but he fails to achieve any significant success. Moreover, the ruler of Shu Han, Liu Shan, is incompetent and places faith in treacherous officials, further leading to the decline of the kingdom. Shu Han is eventually conquered by Cao Wei. Jiang Wei attempts to restore Shu Han with the help of Zhong Hui but their plans are exposed and both of them are killed by Sima Zhao's troops. After the fall of Shu Han in 263, Sima Zhao's son Sima Yan forces the last Wei ruler, Cao Huan, to abdicate his throne in 265, officially ending the Cao Wei dynasty. Sima Yan, having already been proclaimed the Prince of Jin in the previous year, then formally establishes the Jin Dynasty. In Eastern Wu, there has been internal conflict among the nobles ever since the death of Sun Quan, with Zhuge Ke and Sun Lin making attempts to usurp state power. Although stability is restored temporarily, the last Wu ruler Sun Hao appears to be a tyrant who does not make any efforts to strengthen his kingdom. Eastern Wu, the last of the Three Kingdoms, is finally conquered by Jin after a long period of struggle in the year 280, thus marking the end of the near century-long era of civil strife known as the Three Kingdoms period."
1725,The Pale Horseman,history," 876 - 878: Uhtred, bored with the peace between Alfred and the Danish king Guthrum, goes off raiding into Cornwall. He comes across a settlement ruled by the British king Peredur, who hires Uhtred and his men to fight an invading Danish force led by Svein of the White Horse. Uhtred and Svein however ally to kill Peredur and pillage his settlement, and Uhtred carries off Peredur's wife, the shadow queen Iseult. A monk named Asser who was at Peredur's court witnesses the betrayal and escapes to Dyfed in Wales. Uhtred and Svein then sail up the coast to Land's End where they part ways. Svein goes to Cynuit, where Ubba was killed previously, and Uhtred to the coast of Wales where he raids a ship laden with treasure. He returns to his estate and pious wife Mildrith, using his hoard of treasure to build a great hall and relieve his debt to the church. The Witan summons Uhtred to an audience with King Alfred in Cippanhamm, where he is accused of using the king's ship to raid the Britons with whom Wessex is at peace based on the testimony of Asser, who has made his way to Alfred's court, and wrongfully accused of attacking the Cynuit abbey on the false testimony of the warrior Steapa Snotor, who is loyal to Uhtred's enemy Odda the Younger. To settle the dispute, a fight to the death is ordered between Uhtred and Steapa. During the duel, Uhtred carries only his sword, Serpent-Breath, whereas Steapa is fully armoured. The duel is cut short when Guthrum's Danes attack and the crowd is scattered. Uhtred, Leofric, and Iseult hide in the fields until nightfall when they enter Cippanhamm and free their friend Eanflæd at the Tornake Tavern. The four of them wander for a few weeks until they reach the swamps of Athelney. As they enter the marsh, Guthrum himself attacks Uhtred. Uhtred makes a fighting escape onto a boat that carries him, Leofric, and another passenger to an island within the swamp. The passenger insists that Uhtred should have left a Danish warrior alive, and turns out to be King Alfred himself. Uthred becomes Alfred's bodyguard and for a few months they hide in the swamp until enough men have joined Alfred's army. They then fight at the Battle of Ethandun and Alfred takes back Wessex, with Uhtred being instrumental in the death of Svein of the White Horse. However, during the battle, Leofric and Iseult are both killed."
1726,"Inside, Outside",history," The story alternates between Goodkind telling his family history and early years (specifically, his first 26 years (1915-1941)) and his account of current events in 1973, leading up to the Yom Kippur War. The tales of Goodkind's early years describe his family - his mother and father, his sister, his mother's father and father's mother, his mother's half sister, and a tribe of more distant uncles, aunts and cousins (the 'Mishpokha', Yiddish for 'family'). After college, Goodkind works for Harry Goldhandler, a gagwriter for radio comedies (very loosely based on David Freedman), and has a romance with showgirl Bobby Webb. The tales of his present day in 1973 are centered on his wife, his daughter, their friends, and Peter Quat, a college friend who also worked for Goldhandler, and who had become a famous novelist for his sexually explicit characters and unflattering depictions of American Jewish life. Quat's books seem similar to the work of Philip Roth, but Roth did not attend Columbia nor work for Freedman. As a young man, Goodkind becomes less observant, but his adult self has returned to the Orthodox practices of his father and grandfather. Goodkind as a child and young man is embarrassed by his first name ""Israel"", mockingly shortened by several other characters to ""Izzy"". In the last scene of the novel when Goodkind returns to the U.S. after the Yom Kippur war, he tells an El Al flight attendant to call him Israel."
1727,The Physician,history," It is the year 1020. Rob Cole is the eldest of many children. His father is a Joiner in the Guild of Carpenters in London. His mother,Agnes Cole, is his father's wife. Robert has a particular Gift: he can sense when someone is going to die.When his mother and father both die, the Cole household is parceled out to various neighbors and friends. The Cole children are parceled out likewise. Rob is taken by the only one who wants him: a traveling barber-surgeon who goes only by the name of Barber. He is a fleshy man with fleshy appetites and a very great zest for life. Over the next years, he takes Rob as his apprentice. He teaches the boy how to juggle, to draw caricatures, to tell stories, to entertain a crowd, to sell the patent nostrum on which they make their living. He also teaches the boy all he knows of medicine - which is little. When Barber dies, Rob takes over his traveling medicine show. But he is restless, desiring to know more about the ways of medicine. He meets a Jewish physician in Malmesbury who tells him of schools in Córdoba, Toledo, even in far-away Persia, where the medical and scientific learning of the Muslim is taught. Unfortunately, besides being worlds away, the schools do not admit Christians - and even if they did, no country in Christendom would allow a person with such heathen learning to return. In a moment of epiphany, Rob decides that he shall take on the guise of a Jewish student, so that he can travel to Persia and study at the feet of Avicenna. Rob travels, as a Christian, from London throughout Europe to Constantinople. Here he becomes Jewish in appearance, and travels eastwards with a group of Jewish merchants, learning their ways as best he can. Rob arrives in Persia and tries to enter into the school of physicians there. He is not allowed access. He struggles to find a place in the city while searching for a way to enter the school. A chance encounter with the Shah of Persia opens for Rob the door to the school of physicians. Here he begins the study of medicine - the first formal study he has ever had in his life. At the same time he immerses himself in the life of a Persian Jew. Comparable to a surgical residency or similar term of practicum, Rob goes to a war-torn (and plague-torn) land to practice his medical knowledge. His journeys with the Shah's armies take him as far as India, where he encounters elephants, spices, and Wootz steel. He makes friends among the Muslim students of the school. Upon his return he encounters a woman he had met on his travels across Europe, a Scottish woman journeying with her father in search of superior Turkish sheep. Though she is Christian, they form a liaison, and are secretly wed. He is passed as a physician and helps to instruct new physicians in the school. Soon afterwards, Avicenna dies, and Isfahan is conquered by a rival king. Rob and his wife flee the rape and pillage and make their laborious way back to England, delivering her of children as they go. Rob struggles to locate his lost brothers and sisters, likewise to make his place amongst the terribly ignorant physicians of London. Despairing, he returns with his wife and family to Scotland, where he acts as physician to his wife's people high in the hills."
1728,Child of a Dream,history," The story starts before the birth of Alexander at Pella, when her mother Queen Olympias dreams of a snake slithering inside her bed and thrusting its seed inside her; when she recounts her dream to the priests of the Oracle of Dodona, they tell her that her child shall be the offspring of Zeus and a man, just like his hero Achilles. During his childhood, Alexander and his friends Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Leonnatus, Lysimachus, Craterus, Perdiccas and Philotas, are firstly educated by Leonidas. He teaches them the values of courage and pride, but also magnanimity; this would prove very important to Alexander during his campaigns. When Alexander is 13 years old, his father decides to send him (and his friends with him) to Mieza, a nearby town, for him to be tutored by Aristotle. The great philosopher teaches Alexander and his friends all the latest notions of science, philosophy and literature. Leptine, a girl that Alexander himself had saved from slavery, also joins the boys in Mieza; she will also stay very close to Alexander until his death. When back into his hometown Pella, Alexander manages to tame a wild war horse at his first attempt. He calls his horse Bucephalus and he grows very fond of him. So much so that the two share an almost human friendship. Finally, Alexander is old enough to go to war with his father's army in Cheronea, where they are victorious. Alexander greatly admires his father and his military achievements. He is also very close to his sister, Cleopatra, and to his mother. However, when Philip marries Eurydice Alexander grows harsher towards his father but much closer to his mother, jealous and unhappy about the polygamy of Philip. Things go out of hand during the banquet of the wedding, when Alexander, after Attalus offends his mother Olympias, insults Attalus and his father and is obliged to leave the palace, taking refuge to his uncle's palace. Thanks to the help of Eumenes, the court secretary, he becomes reconciled with his father and comes back to the Royal Palace just in time for Cleopatra's marriage. However, Philip is murdered during the ceremony, which causes great sorrow to the young prince. The sorrow is then replaced by the anger towards the murderer and the desire to catch the responsible. He then decidedly steps up to the throne. Many people are not convinced by the new King Alexander, however, mostly due to its young age and lack of experience. Shortly after Alexander becomes king, Eurydice's children and Attalus are killed and Eurydice herself takes her own life shortly after due to the unbearable sorrow. Alexander immediately decides to undertake a campaign in Greece and Asia to affirm Macedonia's position amongst the Pan-Hellenic League and expand its frontiers, just like his father wished to do when alive. His expedition first leads them to Thessaly and his army, now featuring many of his boyhood friends but still a few veterans from Philip's army, records the first of a long sequence of victories."
1729,Carrie's War,history," Carrie Willow and her brother Nick are evacuated to Wales during the Second World War. They stay with the bullying Mr. Evans, and his gentle but weak sister, whom they call ""Auntie Lou."" The children befriend another young evacuee, Albert Sandwich, who is staying with Mr. Evans' other sister, the dying Mrs Gotobed and her helper Hepzibah who Mr Evans thinks is a witch. They also befriend Mrs. Gotobed's distant cousin Mr. Johnny Gotobed who has cerebral palsy, and her housekeeper, Hepzibah Green. The housekeeper tells the children about a curse on the family which concerns a skull kept in the library. According to the tale, the curse would activate if the skull is removed from the house. Later in the book, Carrie, in a fit of anger, throws the skull out of the window into the outside pond. The next day as they depart on a train, she sees the house burning, and this leads her to believe that she caused it by throwing the skull out of the window. Later their mother comes to visit them but nothing is said about Mr Evans. Carrie's birthday arrives and Albert kisses her on the cheek for a present and she is overjoyed by this. Mrs Gotobed passes away after this. The children believe Mr Evans has stolen her will so that Hepzibah and Mr Johnny are out of his deceased sister's house. Auntie Lou meets an American soldier called Major Cass Harper and becomes very friendly with him (keeping this secret from her brother who would not approve). Mrs Willow sends a letter saying to come home and so they try to reveal the truth of the stolen will. Auntie Lou departs to marry Major Cass Harper at this point. Thirty years later, Carrie's children return and discover that Hepzibah, Mr Johnny and Albert are still alive and that the fire was from Mr Johnny playing with matches. Mr Evans was revealed dead after a few weeks of grief; loneliness and of his sister's departure to America, many years earlier."
1730,Alaska,history," A sweeping description of the formation of the North American continent. The reader follows the development of the Alaskan terrain over millennia. The city of Los Angeles is now some twenty-four hundred miles south of central Alaska, and since it is moving slowly northward as the San Andreas fault slides irresistibly along, the city is destined eventually to become part of Alaska. If the movement is two inches a year, which it often is, we can expect Los Angeles to arrive off Anchorage in about seventy-six million years. The plot of this chapter follows the mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths as they make their way into Alaska via the land bridge. First, the animals are discussed in general terms. Then, in the second half of the chapter, the reader learns about a specific mammoth named Mastadon, and another named Matriarch. The plot follows Matriarch and her family, as they encounter man for the first time. The reader meets some of the early Eskimos, particularly a man named Oogruk and his family. The chapter details the hunting of a whale as well as the beginning of hunting sea otters for fur by the Russians. This chapter tells of the early exploration of Alaska along with Russia's first encounters with the native peoples, including the brutal slaughter of many native people and sea otters. The duel referred to in the chapter's title is the one between the shamanism of the native people and the Christianity of the Russian settlers. After the men from one tribe are taken away to aid in hunting, the women and babies are left to fend for themselves. They learn to pilot kayaks, something that had been forbidden to them, and ultimately harpoon a small whale to ensure their survival. After the Russians return, a girl named Cidaq is ""purchased"" and taken to Kodiak Island, but not before she is brutally abused by one sailor in particular. On Kodiak, she consults with a shaman and his mummy and decides to seek revenge upon this man by converting to Christianity to marry him when he returns to Kodiak, believing that she can humiliate him by refusing to marry him at the last moment. However, she goes through with the wedding and becomes a battered wife. A priest on Kodiak falls in love with her, and after her husband is killed by a great tidal wave, Cidaq (rechristened Sofia) marries the priest, who changes his relationship with the church to become the kind of priest who can marry. At the end of the chapter, Michener states that Christianity won over shamanism, but in the process, the population of native people dwindled from more than 18,000 to fewer than 1,200. This chapter further details the clashes between the Native people and the Russians, most specifically the Battle of Sitka. The events are shown through the eyes of a Native named Raven-heart and an Arkady Voronov, the son of Father Vornov and Sofia Kuchovskaya (formerly Cidaq). Arkady Voronov marries a Russian woman who moves to Alaska, and together they navigate the Yukon River. The chapter also explains the death of Alexander Baranov and ends with the purchase of Alaska by the United States of America. This chapter shows the clash between two rival ship captains, Captains Schransky and Michael Healy. Meanwhile, Reverend Sheldon Jackson, a missionary, travels to Alaska to further establish it as a state, with the help of Senator Benjamin Harrison. He sets about establishing Christian missions of various denominations to further spread Christianity to the native people of Alaska. The eighth chapter tells of the chaos surrounding the Alaskan gold rush using the fictitious Venn family and a prospector named John Klope. It mentions the real character of Soapy Smith and his fatal duel with Frank Reid. It also details the hardships of crossing the Chilkoot Pass. Gold is discovered in Nome, and Tom Venn and his stepmother Missy pick up their stakes and move there. Tom is appointed manager of a branch of Ross and Raglan, a store that sells food and outdoor supplies. Missy's boyfriend Matt Murphy joins Tom and Missy in Nome, arriving there via bicycle. Although these characters are fictitious, the bike trip is based on the real bike trek of Max Hirshberg in 1900, and the troubles of gold mine thieving with judicial collusion is based upon the politician Alexander McKenzie and Judge Arthur H. Noyes. This chapter describes the formation and operation of a fictional company's cannery (an Alaskan first) on the Taku Inlet when Ross and Raglan appoint Tom Venn to be in charge of the cannery, the fishing and the Chinese laborers. Along the way, the company clashes with local members of the Tlingit tribe, whose fishing rights are being encroached upon. Tom begins on-and-off romances with two girls; one is Lydia Ross, the daughter of the owner of Ross and Raglan, and the other is Nancy Bigears, the daughter of a local Tlingit of whom Tom is very fond. At the end of the chapter, the reader learns that Tom marries Lydia, and that Nancy marries Ah Ting, a Chinese man who was once employed as a foreman at the salmon cannery before striking out on his own. In 1919, a government official arrives in a small town of Minnesota made up of immigrants of Swedish and Finnish descent, as well as those who have been in the United States for several generations. He recruits a group of families to move to Alaska and settle in the Matanuska Valley, where they will be provided with land that they will not begin to pay on for at least three years, as long as they promise to farm. This chapter follows the Flatch family closely, especially the children. LeRoy Flatch grows up to become a bush pilot and Flossie is an animal lover who falls in love with a local ""half-breed"" man of white and Eskimo descent. In a typical James Michener fashion, the final chapter is an interaction between various characters in preceding chapter or their descendants. Alaska is in the process of applying for statehood. Missy remains on the side advocating for statehood, while Tom Venn petitioned to keep Alaska a territory and under Seattle business control. In the end President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act, making Alaska the 49th state of the Union."
1731,The Abbot,history," Ten years had passed since the final events of The Monastery, during which Halbert had been knighted for his services to the regent, and Lady Avenel had adopted Roland, whom her dog had saved from drowning. The boy grew up petted by his mistress, but disliked by her chaplain and servants; and at length, having threatened to dirk the falconer, he was dismissed to seek his fortune. He had been secretly taught the Romish faith by Father Ambrose, and led by his grandmother to believe that he was of gentle birth. She now introduced him to Catherine Seyton, and then accompanied him to the abbey, where the revels of some masqueraders were interrupted by the arrival of Sir Halbert on his way to Edinburgh, who attached the youth to his train. On reaching the capital he aided Lord Seyton in a street fray, and was introduced to the Earl of Murray, who desired him to be ready to travel at short notice. In company with Adam Woodcock he adjourned to an inn, and was entrusted by Henry Seyton (whom he believed to be Catherine in male attire) with a sword, which he was not to unsheath until commanded by his rightful sovereign. He then learnt that he was to be attached to the household of Queen Mary, and accompanied Lord Lindesay to the castle of Lochleven, situated on an island, where he found Catherine in attendance on her, and was present when, in compliance with a note contained in his sword-sheath, she signed her abdication at the behest of the Secret Council. After a lapse of several months, during which Henderson attempted to convert him, Roland learnt from Catherine that Father Ambrose had been evicted from his monastery, and he pledged himself, for her sake, to assist the imprisoned queen in recovering her freedom. A plan of escape arranged by George Douglas having failed through the vigilance of the Lady of Lochleven, Roland undertook to forge a false set of keys, and the abbot arrived disguised as a man-at-arms sent by Sir William to take part in guarding the castle. As soon as the curfew had tolled, a preconcerted signal was made from the shore, and Roland contrived to substitute his forged keys for the real ones. At midnight the garden gate was unlocked, a boat was in waiting, Henry Seyton came forward, and the queen, with all her adherents, was safely afloat, when the alarm was given. Roland, however, had run back, ere they started, to turn the locks on their jailers, and, until they were out of reach of musketry, George Douglas protected Mary by placing himself before her. On landing, horses were in readiness, and before daybreak they reached Lord Seyton's castle in West Lothian, which was strongly garrisoned. The next morning, as the queen was endeavouring to make peace between Roland and Henry Seyton, who treated the page as a churl, his grandmother emerged from a recess and declared him to be the son of Julian Avenel, who was killed in the battle with Sir John Foster; Lord Seyton also recognised him, and insisted that his son should shake hands with him. Supported by a considerable number of adherents in battle array, and accompanied by the abbot, the royal party moved onwards for Dumbarton, where help from France was expected. They were, however, intercepted by the regent's forces, and a desperate battle ensued. The queen stood near a yew tree, guarded by her devoted admirer George Douglas in close armour, while her page pushed forward to watch the conflict. It had lasted nearly an hour, when Sir Halbert attacked the flank of Mary's supporters, and they were completely routed, Henry Seyton was killed, and Douglas, who was mortally wounded, expired without withdrawing his eyes from her face. Hopeless of further aid, the queen adopted the fatal resolution of trusting to Elizabeth's mercy, and, having bid adieu to her followers, took ship for England. Roland soon afterwards succeeded in obtaining proofs of his claim as the heir of Avenel, and was married to Catherine on her return from two years residence with her unhappy mistress."
1732,Lords of the Bow,history," Under the name Genghis, the protagonist unites the Mongol tribes, finally defeating the last alliance against his rule. After the killing of the Khan of the alliance, the defeated shaman decides to tie his fate to that of the new Mongol nation. Genghis orders all of the tribes to assemble the following summer in the pastures around the Black Mountain. The following summer sees the tribes gathered, waiting for Genghis to lead them where he will. They are anxious to be off, but he is determined to wait for the Khan of the Uighur to show up with the five thousand soldiers he wishes to have. While stuck in one place, the new Nation becomes impatient and tempers flare. In one incident, Genghis' brother Hasar is forced to defend his honour against the sons of a lesser Khan. He is helped by the young Tsubodai, who is rewarded later in the book. When his brother, Temuge, tries to intervene, he is forced to his knees. Genghis shows up on the scene, and tries to sort out the situation. Almost everyone has their honour satisfied, except for Temuge, who complains that he was made to kneel. Genghis uses his sword to cut the Khan's thighs, so he cannot stand in return. Close to the end of the summer, the Uighurs arrive. Their Khan submits privately to Genghis, which is taken as even more binding than the public oaths the entire Mongol nation takes under a ceremony presided over by the shaman. As the price for this support, Genghis promises the Khan of the Uighars that he will march against the Xia, and the Uighars will receive the assorted libraries of the conquered people. As well as military support, Genghis negotiates that his shaman and his brother Temuge be taught to read and write. The entire Mongol nation then begins to march southwards, to take the kingdom of the Xia. Facing them is the arduous crossing of the Gobi desert. Having crossed the desert the Mongol hordes attempt to take the kingdom of Xi Xia, the Mongols inexperience in siege craft shows when they are held at bay by the walls of Xi Xia, the division between the kingdom of Xi Xia and the Chin empire is also highlighted at this time. Eventually the Xia kingdom capitulates and Genghis wins a princess of the city as his bride as well as many other spoils of war. From this point on there is tension between Borte (Genghis' first wife) and Genghis' second wife. Also highlighted in this book is Genghis' estrangement from his eldest son Jochi (who's legitimacy Genghis doubts) and the strife within Genghis' family that this estrangement causes. Khasar and Temuge are also featured greatly in this book as they take a trip with a captured Xi Xia officer down the Yellow River to a Chin city to find masons to help them break city walls. On their adventures they come across the leader of the Blue Tong (a criminal fraternity) who helps Ghengis' brothers in exchange for a promise that he will be leader of his city after it is conquered by the Mongols. Another character of note is introduced in this book Kokchu a shaman who smells of blood and is very self-serving, he gains Genghis' trust and starts to teach Temuge the ways of a Shaman, during the course of Temuge's lessons he becomes addicted to Opium which Kokchu provides for him."
1733,Praetorian,history," The book starts with Macro and Cato spending their days at an inn in Rome awaiting further orders from the emperor's secretary, Narcissus. Narcissus finally arrives and orders the duo to go undercover in the Praetorian guard to uncover a plot to assassinate the emperor. Macro and Cato then join the Praetorian guard under different names and try to uncover the plot. During their operation they face their old foe, Vittelius. They succeed in saving the emperor on more than one occasion. In the climax it's hinted that they will go back to Britain to help in the invasion there."
1734,Centurion,history," During the reign of Emperor Claudius in the 1st century AD, the powers of the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire are jockeying for influence over the Kingdom of Palmyra, which buffers the two empires and keeps an uneasy peace. Fearing a Parthian invasion of the Roman province of Syria, the Romans send an Auxiliary cohort to build a hill fort on the banks of the Euphrates. In response, the Parthians ambush the fort, slaughtering the garrison. Meanwhile, the Tenth legion, Third legion and the Sixth legion are drilling for war against the Parthians. Prefect Macro and Centurion Cato are drilling the Second Illyrian auxiliary cohort, attached to the Tenth legion for the war. Cato and Macro were sent east by Claudius' personal secretary, Narcissus, to gather proof that the Roman governor of Syria, Longinus is planning to use the Syrian legions in a bid for the imperial throne, however, thus far they failed to prove his treachery. During their time in Antioch, Crispus, a Roman legionary murders an auxiliary during an argument, leading to Crispus being put to death, causing a rift between the auxiliaries and legionaries on the base. A Parthian convoy arrives, delivering the head of Centurion Castor, the soldier who led the auxiliaries to build the Roman hillfort, and warns of Parthian intervention, should Rome continue to meddle in Palmyra's affairs. Shortly thereafter, a Roman soldier guarding a Roman diplomat, Lucius Sempronius, arrives from Palmyra, announcing that Palmyra has descended into civil war. Prince Artaxes, an ambitious heir to the Palmyran throne leads an army against his father, King Vabathus, blockading them in the Palmyran Citadel. Fearing the Parthians will arrive before the Romans can, Longinus sends the Second Illyrian, and a cohort of the Tenth legion to reinforce the Palmyran loyalists until the Roman army can arrive in force. Along the way, the Roman column under Prefect Macro are aided by the mysterious Prince Balthus, who covets the Palmyran throne, despite not being Vabathus' first born. The Roman column manages to fight their way through the city and into the citadel, where they realise the gravity of the situation. Vabathus' first born is Prince Artaxes, a Parthian sympathiser, whilst Balthus, despite being a skilled soldier squanders his time in trivial pursuits. Prince Amethus is easily persuaded, and is often used to further the ambitions of Krathos, an ambitious Palmyran noble. Following a banquet to celebrate the successful defence of a rebel attack, Amethus is found murdered, with Balthus being the prime suspect. Meanwhile, Cato meets Sempronius' daughter, Julia, and the two fall in love. Following a rebel bombardment of the citadel, the food stores are destroyed, with only two days of supplies left. However, Longinus arrives with the Tenth legion, Third Legion and several auxiliary cohorts, lifting the siege. Longinus later reveals to Macro and Cato that they were never meant to reach Palmyra, and were meant to die in the desert, thus removing the two spies that had frustrated his plans. Against the advice of Cato, Longinus leads the army out into the desert, determined to destroy Artaxes' army and his Parthian allies. During a night attack, Longinus panics, orders a retreat and leaves the army at the mercy of the Parthian horsemen. On the suggestions of Cato, the army manages to defeat the rebels and the Parthians in a pitched battle, leading to the death of Prince Artaxes on the order of Balthus. Back in Palmyra, it is revealed that Balthus had ordered his slave, Carpex, to murder Amethus, and he is arrested, to be put to death. Sempronius reveals that the Empire is to annex Palmyra, and absorb it into the province of Syria, as there are no heirs that Rome can work with. Macro and Cato are released from Narcissus' employment, ending their posting in the East, and Sempronius gives his consent for Cato to marry Julia."
1735,The Bride of Newgate,history," Miss Caroline Ross, in order to inherit a fortune, must be married but, in the London of 1815, such a marriage would turn control of the funds over to her husband. She therefore marries Dick Darwent, a convicted murderer who is to be hanged in Newgate Prison the next day, who agrees to the marriage so that Caroline will settle money upon his mistress, the actress Dolly Spencer. However, when it is learned that Dick has succeeded to the title of the Marquis of Darwent, his trial is invalidated; a peer must be tried by the House of Lords. The commutation of his sentence means that he has made a deadly enemy in the form of Sir John Buckstone, a brutal dandy who is one of Caroline's suitors. Darwent has been framed for murder by a mysterious figure known only as ""the coachman"". He must sort out his domestic arrangements, which include his wife and mistress under one roof, prove himself innocent of the murder of which he was convicted, and reveal the identity of the evil figure behind his problems."
1736,Sir Percy Leads the Band,history," The book starts with a description of the events of January 1793, with the arrest, trial and execution of Louis XVI, King of France (now just known as Louis Capet). The Baron de Batz (a real life figure who also features in the Pimpernel novels Eldorado and The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel) has hatched another impossible plan to rescue the King on his way to the guillotine. De Batz is trying to persuade a Professor (who is actually the Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise) to take him to the Abbé Edgeworth, an Irish priest who remains loyal to the King. He plans to substitute the Priest for the one chosen by the convention to accompany the King to the guillotine and thus spare His Majesty the distress of being with an apostate priest when he will need all of his courage. Disguised as the Professor, Sir Percy refuses to take part in the scheme as he knows that the 500 royalists that De Batz claims to have ready to rush the carriage on the way to the Place de la Revolution and drag the King out, will never get past the 80,000 armed men that will be guarding the route. Monsieur le Professor tells the Baron that he will not drag the Abbé Edgeworth into a scheme which will only lead to his death. It soon become apparent that although the Baron's scheme is doomed to failure he has managed to involve the Abbé Edgeworth anyway. In the chaos after the inevitable royal execution, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel manage to rescue the priest before he can be arrested and condemned to death. Sir Percy, once more disguised as the Professor takes the priest to the Levet's house. M. Levet's daughter Blanche, is popular with the local young men, but she only has eyes for Doctor Simon Pradel, who has been tending to her ill mother. Blanche in turn is being pursued by Louis Maurin, a young lawyer who is pro the revolution. He is incensed with jealousy over Blanche and is determined to gain her affections by impressing her with his connections. Maurin plots to get the Levet family arrested on a false charge and then take the credit for getting them freed. With this end in mind he reports to the local commission that a stranger, who may be the missing Priest, is staying at the Levet's house and tries to get the professor to back up his story. The Levets are indeed arrested although a thorough search of their house turns up nothing expect the body of Madam Levet who has died following the news of the King's execution. The priest meanwhile has been taken to relative safety in the château de la Rodière where the young Marquis, his mother and sister Cécile are still living with their two loyal servants, even though it has long since been looted by the mob. The Abbé Edgeworth falls ill and Doctor Pradel is called to the château. Although he should report the priest to the police, the doctor is in love with Cécile and so promises to keep the secret. After a difficult night looking after the priest he meets Cécile in the gardens as he is leaving but her brother, the Marquis, sees them talking and infuriated by the doctor's obvious affection towards his sister, beats him about the head with a riding crop. One of the league, Lord St John de Devinne is nearby but does nothing to help the doctor, for he is also in love with Cécile de la Rodière and wants nothing more than to be rid of the Doctor. The news of the attack on the Pradel, who is popular in town, soon gets around and with both Lord St John de Devinne and Louis Maurin out to get him, the plotting starts in earnest. The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel disguise themselves as a group of shabby second-rate musicians, so they can keep track of what is going on. However, Devinne is eaten up by jealously and can no longer be trusted to do what Percy asks of him. To make matters worse Citizen Chauvelin is soon hot on their heels having realised that the plight of the Marquis de la Rodière and his family, is just the sort of situation to attract the attention of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Can the Pimpernel save the innocent Rodière family? What will happen to Doctor Pradel Will the treachery of Lord St John de Devinne be the final undoing of the Pimpernel? Will Chauvelin have his revenge at last? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge"
1737,Listening for Lions,history," Rachel Sheridan is the only child of British missionaries working among the Kikuyu and Maasai tribes of British East Africa (present-day Kenya). They work on a hospital in addition to church-work and teaching. Life goes haywire as influenza strikes when Rachel is 13, in 1919. The sickness is the cause of many deaths, and soon after her own mother dies, the dreaded Pritchards, planters in the area come with their daughter Valerie, who looks very much like Rachel. Valerie dies within hours, and later Rachel's father. Left an orphan, she is lured to the Pritchards' home and forced to impersonate their daughter, who was going to visit her dying grandfather in England, being told it would ""save his life"". Rachel considers telling people of the Pritchards' lies on the ship, but she soon arrives in England and begins to develop a close relationship with her ""grandfather"", who, like her, is very fond of birds. Just as things begin to get better, the Pritchards unveil their new plot, to take the grandfather's property when he dies. In scorn of his son, the Grandfather sends them away, but his trusty solicitor, Mr. Grumbloch, gives Rachel his address and tells her to come in an emergency. Rachel comes within the day, and he returns her to her grandfather, telling him the truth, which they have already suspected. There is an epilogue at the end of the novel, in which Rachel becomes his adopted daughter and attends school, later returning to her parent's hospital as a doctor."
1738,The Last Letter Home,history," This novel tells about Karl-Oskar and Kristina in their late life and eventual death. The novel has a slightly more reflective perspective than the other three, and it follows events such as The American Civil War and the Sioux Outbreak of 1862 through the perspective of the settlers."
1739,Parthiban Kanavu,history," This novel deals with the attempts of the son of (fictional) Chola king Parthiban, Vikraman, to attain independence from the Pallava ruler, Narasimhavarman. The Cholas remain vassals of the Pallavas. Parthiban conveys his dream of the Chola dynasty regaining its glory - which he believes is lost since they are no longer the independent rulers of their land - to his young son Vikraman. Parthiban refuses to pay the taxes to the Pallavas and this triggers the Pallavas to wage war against the Cholas. In the resulting war Parthiban is killed and in the battlefield an enigmatic monk promises to Parthiban that he will make sure that Vikraman fulfills Parthiban's dream. Vikraman grows up and plans his retaliation against Narasimhavarman. But his uncle, Marappa Bhupathi, betrays him and Vikraman is arrested and banished from India by Narasimhavarman. The narrative moves on to describe how Vikraman comes back longing to meet his mother and the mysterious beauty whom he saw before being deported. To his woe he later discovers that his mother has disappeared and has in fact been kidnapped by the savage Kapalikas - a tribe which believes in human sacrifice. He also comes to know that the beauty he has fallen for, Kundhavi, is none other than the daughter of his sworn enemy, Narasimhavarman. The novel climaxes with the identity of the monk being finally being revealed as pallava king, Narasimhavarman and establishment of the independent Chola kingdom under Vikraman in Uraiyur. Vikraman also marries kundhavi in the final chapter."
1740,Ireland: Awakening,history," This sequel to Dublin: Foundation also set in Ireland follows the clans or families of the O'Byrnes, Walshes, MacGowans etc. In addition to the previous novel other families appear on the scene and together they live through the Cromwellian period, the Protestant Ascendancy and the Famine."
1741,The Summer Garden,history," Four years have gone by since World War II has ended; and Tatiana and her lover, her husband, her Shura, her Alexander - are married and living a life together with their son, Anthony. Yet they are strangers to each other. Having been separated from each other for years, they do not know each other anymore. They live a satisfactory life, with Alexander working as a lobster-man - coming home each day smelling of fish. Tatiana is now known to outsiders as 'Tania'. They move from place to place. After Alexander confesses to why he was so cold to her, they reconcile and move houses. Finally living in a place that they've dreamed of, Tatiana's friend Vikki phones her to say that the USA government is looking for Alexander. Fearing for her husband's safety, she does not tell him. Finding out himself somehow, he goes to Washington to make everything right - also finding out that his supposedly executed mother ""is still alive"" in a concentration camp. Realising though, that he has been tricked by an enemy, he does not go to search for her. He meets Tom Richter - a lieutenant colonel - and earns himself a job in Yuma as a captain of the Military Intelligence arm of the U.S. Army. Time passes by, and the family moves to Phoenix. Alexander gets a job as a builder/architect in Balkman's company and Tatiana (after persuading Alexander) gets a job as a nurse in the ER terminal care ward in the Phoenix Memorial Hospital. Making friends with Balkman's son, Steve, Alexander has finally found the peace that he has always wanted. Here Phoenix, they can forget who they once were, and nobody would know about them. Steve, when they first meet, talks about a girl that he has met at the hospital when he broke his hand; saying that he's ""never met anyone like her"". Tatiana when she comes home, is tight-lipped when she hears about Steve. She is initially cold to Steve and never warms up to him. Alexander later figures that his wife was the ""not like anyone else"" girl that Steve was talking about. After a time, Steve introduces a man named Dudley to Alexander. But Dudley sees the tattoos - the SchutzStaffel Eagle, the blue numbers, the hammer and sickle, the swastika. To make matters worse, he storms into Alexander's house: threatening to rape Tatiana and then kill both of them. With no choice, Alexander shoots Dudley in the head. After revealing what had happened to the police, the doctor, the coroner and the media; Alexander starts his own company and Balkman and Steve were ruined (Dudley had turned out to be an escaped murderer - it was illegal to hire escaped convicts). After years of trying for a second baby (with Anthony once accidentally seeing them trying without knowing about sex - he thinks his mother is getting hurt in the process: ""Dad, I don't think Mom wants to have anymore children. Didn't you hear her?""), things have cooled off. Caught cheating on his wife, it is then revealed that Tatiana is pregnant. Tearfully forgiving him, they have a son - Charles Gordon Pasha Barrington. Following Charles are two more children, Harry, about two years later, and Janie. Almost eight years have past and Anthony has made his job choice: he is going to Vietnam to fight. With his parents initially protesting, he goes. Sunday evening, July 20, 1969 - while the family (Tatiana, Alexander, their children - Pasha, Harry and Janie) are watching the man on the moon, a call comes from Richter. Anthony has been reported missing for three days. Weeks go by, and Vikki visits. Tatiana and Alexander find out that Vikki and Anthony have had a romantic relationship since he was eighteen. She shows them a letter Anthony sent her - he is married to a Vietnamese girl called Moon Lai and she is pregnant. Alexander travels all the way to Vietnam to find his son. Using their heads, Anthony's comrades, his father and Richter realise that Moon Lai is a North Vietnam communist who is just a bait for Anthony. Alexander and a group of six (twelve?) people go to rescue him. They first capture Moon Lai who tells them everything. Despite being a trap, she actually loves Anthony. She then tries and sort of fails to stab Alexander and Ha Si (a member of the group), aiming for Alexander's thigh and Ha Si's face. In self defense, they slit her throat. Alexander rescues Anthony (who has had his right arm amputated by the North Vietnamese) losing Richter, Ha Si and others on the way. The novel then skips ahead thirty years to Thanksgiving 1999, Alexander and Tatiana's children are all grown and have children of their own. A very large family. Alexander and Tatiana seem content with their lot. The novel ends one hot day in near their home in Scottsdale, Arizona, Tatiana sitting on the bench eating ice cream, Alexander stands across the street, returning from buying a drink, staring at her, a bus passes and he comes around it, reminiscent of the first time they met all those years ago on 22 June 1941 in Leningrad."
1742,The Emperor's Candlesticks,history," When a group of Russian anarchists kidnap a Russian prince in Vienna there are repercussions. On learning that the Cardinal d'Orsay has agreed to convey some hollow candlesticks from the Emperor to the Princess Marionoff in St Petersburg, two spies both see the possibility of using them to convey messages safely into Russia. One is an eager young idealist involved in the plot against the prince, the other is Madame Demidoff, a beautiful agent of the Tsar. When the candlesticks go missing at the border, the two engage in a race to get them back, both realizing that their very lives could depend on the retrieval."
1743,Man of Nazareth,history, Man of Nazareth is a fictionalized historic account recalling the story of Jesus from his life to his death.
1744,The Farming of Bones,history," Set in the Dominican Republic in the 1930s, The Farming of Bones tells the story of a young Haitian girl named Amabelle Desir. Orphaned by the age of 8, Amabelle works for Don Ignacio and his daughter. Although Don Ignacio and his daughter are important figures in Amabelle’s life, it is evident that Amabelle’s life revolves around her lover, Sebastien Onius. After the accidental death of one of Sebastien’s fellow cane workers, the Haitian’s distrust of the Dominican government grows, but this distrust is warranted. With news of the Generalissimo’s intentions to “cleanse the country,” Haitian workers attempt to return to their home country. When complications separate Amabelle and Sebastien during their attempt to flee, Amabelle is desperate to find what has become of Sebastien. Accompanied by Sebastien’s friend, Yves, Amabelle makes her journey with the help of fellow survivors she encounters along the way. While escaping, the group must divide for their own safety. Upon reaching the town of Dajabon, Amabelle is disappointed to find that Sebastien is not there. While in Dajabon, Dominicans beat and torture Amabelle, Yves, and a fellow Haitian, Tibon, after recognizing their inability to pronounce “perejil” correctly, one of the most prevalent ways that the Dominicans determine the segregation of Haitians. On the verge of death, two remaining members of their group rescue Amabelle and Yves and bring them to the river that they must cross. Unfortunately only Amabelle and Yves survive the dangerous crossing, where they are met at the other side by nuns who nurse them back to health. During the recovery process, Amabelle learns of the other survivors’ story of “kout kouto,” what the Haitians call the massacre. Once Amabelle and Yves have healed, Yves offers to take Amabelle to his home. Upon arrival of the city, Amabelle and Yves settle in his home and try to rebuild their lives. While Yves finds solace in working in his father’s fields and becomes a successful landowner, Amabelle continues her search for Sebastien. After finding Sebastien’s mother and learning of the truth about Sebastien’s fate, Amabelle returns to her life with Yves. Although Yves and Amabelle try to find comfort in one another, they are unable to fulfill each other’s needs. Twenty years after her escape from Alegria, Amabelle decides to search for a connection to Sebastien by reliving old memories in places of the past. Despite reuniting with Senora Valencia, Amabelle is dissatisfied with the results of her search. Unable to find further reason to live, Amabelle succumbs to the Massacre River, looking for a new beginning."
1745,Heat and Dust,history," The initial stages of the novel are told in the first person, from the narrative voice of a woman who travels to India, to find out more about her step-grandmother, Olivia. She has various letters written by Olivia, and through studying these, and learning from her own experiences in India, she uncovers the truth about Olivia and her life during the British Raj in the 1920's. Through the use of analepses the reader experiences the story from Olivia's point of view. We discover that Olivia, although at first glance seems simply to be a proper english woman, is actually smothered by British social restrictions, and longs for excitement. She meets the Nawab, who instantly charms her, and gradually lets her in to his life bit by bit. Olivia is drawn to the charm and charisma of the Nawab, whereas he slowly gains control over her, as he does with other characters such as Harry. Harry, is portrayed as weak, due to his homosexuality and inability to withstand the Indian climate and food. Olivia eventually falls pregnant with the Nawab's baby, and out of fear decides to abort the child. This causes scandal in the town of Satipur. She then resides in an unnamed town (""Town X"") for her remaining years. The novel ends with the present-day narrator (whose name we do not find out) also falling pregnant, deciding to spend her years in Town X, just as Olivia did."
1746,New York,history," The novel chronicles the birth and growth of New York City, from the arrival of the first European colonists in the 17th century right up to the summer of 2009. As in previous Rutherfurd historical novels, the reader experiences the history of the place through the histories of fictional families who live there. In New York, these families represent the successive waves of immigrants who gave the city its multicultural character. The early Dutch founders of New Amsterdam are typified by the Van Dyck family, who prosper in trade with the Native Americans; both the local Algonquian tribes and the Mohawk who lived farther up the Hudson Valley. The Van Dycks soon unite with the English Master family. The Van Dyck-Masters remain in New York through the entire saga, providing one of the unifying narrative strands. We also meet Quash, an African slave and unwilling immigrant to New Amsterdam, whose descendants also become part of the New York cultural mix. As the history progresses through the years, we meet more fictional families: the Irish O'Donnells, the German Kellers, the Italian Carusos, the Jewish Adlers, the Puerto Rican Campos's. Their intertwining stories, which include looks at the family cultural traditions of the various groups and intercultural relations, play out against the historical backdrop of the great city. Because the main characters in New York are members of the fictional families, the story lines sometimes take the reader away from the city. One chapter takes place in Georgian London. Another follows Washington's army through Valley Forge to Yorktown. But most of the wanderers return home in the end. Rutherfurd breaks the narrative into sections by date, twenty-seven in all. Most dates comprise one chapter; a few dates continue through two or three chapters. A set of three well-drawn maps of Manhattan Island helps the reader follow the action as the city grows and evolves. A fourth map, of the New York City region, provides a larger geographical context."
1747,Lady in Waiting,history," The story is primarily about the life and exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh, albeit with the bulk of the narration revolving around the impact of his life on Elizabeth Throckmorton, who is referred to as 'Bess.' It begins with Raleigh's (this is the spelling used in the novel) childhood in Budleigh, and quickly shows his close relationship with half-brother Humphrey Gilbert. Glibert is attributed as sharing and inspiring Raleigh's lifelong passion of wanting explore the New World, beginning with a plan to seek the fabled Northwest Passage. Much of the rest of Raleigh's life is explained as being primarily motivated by this passion. Bess is brought into the novel when Raleigh is seeking favor at Queen Elizabeth's court at the Palace of Westminster. She is 12 years of age, and Raleigh makes a strong impression on her during a chance meeting in a garden. He is whistling the tune of Greensleeves, which is used throughout the novel, and shares his frustration of being stymied in his goals of exploration. Bess grows up at court in proximity to Mary Sidney, eventually becoming a Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen. She is immersed in court culture, early on being connected with Philip Sidney, Robert Devereux, and Robin Cecil. They are all shown as children growing up in the shadows of their elders, Lord Essex and Lord Burghley, respectively; and the court intrigues of the times. The two 'Robins' are connected with Raleigh in what is described as a Triumvirate, around which both her life and the fate of England are shown as revolving. The first half of the novel takes place during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, charting the ups and downs of Raleigh's career from the 1590s onward; including his position as Captain of the Queen's Guard, his fall from favor after a clandestine marriage to Bess, their life at Durham House and Sherborne, his return to favor and involvement with the capture of Cadiz, the rise of Robin Cecil to become Secretary of State, the fall and execution of Robin Devereux, Raleigh's exploration of what is now Guyana, and attempt to promote the legend of El Dorado as motivation to gain further favor for future explorations. The second half of the novel takes place during the reign of King James, showing his decline under the machinations of Robin Cecil, 13 year imprisonment in the Tower of London after being impugned of involvement in the Main Plot by way of Lord Cobham, eventual restoration and resumption of exploration of the Orinoco, the death of his son Walter while on the exploration, Raleigh's downfall after the failure of the exploration, and eventual execution. Bess's life is shown as revolving around 'waiting' for Raleigh to 'remember her,' and being faithful to support him despite his overarching drive for exploration. Her anxieties are explored in depth, and their relationship is portrayed as being very strong, even in the face of extremity. Raleigh's life is shown as a complex tapestry of events that only make sense in the light of his lifelong dream of exploration. His execution is shown as the passing of the 'last of Elizabeth's Round Table,' with a sense of nostalgia for the adventurers in service to Queen Elizabeth and the Golden Age which she created."
1748,Riz noir,history," The novel takes place during the Vietnam War and tells of two sisters aged 15 and 14, who have been arrested, tortured and finally put into Poulo Condor prison. Throughout their sad adventure, the young girls recall important events in which they were involved, such as the Tet offensive. However, their recollections center more on the countryside, the colors and the scents and smells of their childhood. fr:Riz noir (roman)"
1749,Bones of the Hills,history," Genghis Khan, powerful leader of a nation united from the tribes, is victorious in the long war against the Chin, the Mongolians' ancient foe. Now trouble arises from another direction: his embassies to the west are rebuffed, his ambassadors murdered. The nation must embark on its greatest journey, through present day Iran and Iraq, to the edges of India. They face enemies as powerful and ancient as any they have known and the Khan's path will lead them either to victory or utter destruction. Genghis has proved himself as a warrior and a leader. He must now face the challenges of civilisation, what it will mean for his people and those who come after him. His sons have become generals. He must choose between them before they destroy all he has built. sv:Bergens väktare"
1750,The Athenian Murders,history," The novel interweaves two apparently disparate storylines: the first being an ancient Greek novel published in Athens just after the Peloponnesian War and the second contained within a modern-day scholar's notes on his translation. In the ancient novel (which is itself called The Athenian Murders) a young ephebe named Tramachus is discovered on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus, apparently attacked by wolves. His tutor at the Academy, Diagoras, enlists the help of a ""Decipherer of Enigmas"" (a detective named Heracles Pontor) to learn more about Tramachus's death. As Diagoras and Heracles investigate, more youths from the Academy are discovered brutally murdered. Their investigation takes them all over Athens, from mystery cult worship services to a symposium hosted by Plato. Meanwhile, the translator (who is never named) provides frequent commentary on the work, especially as it appears to him to be an example of a (fictional) ancient literary device called eidesis. ""Eidesis"" is supposedly the practice of repeating words or phrases so as to evoke a particular image or idea in the reader's mind, as it were a kind of literary steganography. As the translator works on the novel, he soon deduces that the ""eidetic"" secret concealed within the novel is The Twelve Labors of Heracles, one labor for each of the twelve chapters of the novel. The translator becomes obsessed with the imagery, going so far as to see himself depicted within the ancient work. Partway through the novel, the translator is kidnapped and forced to continue the translation in a cell. His captor turns out to be the scholar Montalo, whose edition of The Athenian Murders is the only surviving copy of the work. Montalo himself had obsessed over the novel, hoping to find in it a proof of Plato's Theory of Forms. He felt that should an eidetic text, such as this novel, evoke the same ideas in each reader it would then prove that ideas have a separate, independent reality. However, Montalo finished the translation only to discover that the book proved the opposite—that the book proved his (and the translator's) reality did not exist. The translator finishes the work only to have the same realization: that they themselves are characters in The Athenian Murders, which was written by a colleague of Plato named Philotextus as a way to incorporate Plato's theory of knowledge while criticizing the philosophical lifestyle."
1751,Flashman and the Mountain of Light,history," At the end of events in Flashman's Lady, Flashman is sent to India when the English are anticipating conflict with the Sikh Army, the Khalsa. He is dispatched by Major George Broadfoot to the Punjab, masquerading as a solicitor attempting to settle the Soochet legacy. Flashman becomes entangled in the intrigues of the Punjabi court before being forced to flee at the outbreak of war, then becomes involved in plans by the Punjabi nobility to curb the power of the Khalsa. Returning to the relative safety of the British forces, Flashman arrives just in time to become an unwilling participant in the attack on Ferozeshah. Injured, he attempts to avoid the rest of the war in a sick bed, but is called personally by the Maharani of the Punjab to attend to an urgent mission: smuggling her son Daleep Singh and the Koh-i-Noor diamond out of the country."
1752,The World at Night,history," The story takes place in and around Paris between May 1940 and June 1941. Jean Casson is a French motion-picture producer who specializes in gangster films and who possesses no political views to speak of. When the Germans defeat and conquer his country, Casson at first tries to continue his life and career as if nothing had happened. But that proves impossible; when the Germans arrest a few of his friends and associates Casson finds himself helping others to hide or escape. He is seen talking to questionable people, and before long his line is tapped and his movements followed. Eventually Casson must choose between a life of resistance or no life at all."
1753,The Beggar of Volubilis,history," Flavia takes a vow to the goddess Diana to renounce men, and almost immediately her vow is tested by a proposal of marriage from Flaccus. Her father is furious at her refusal and orders Flavia and Nubia to stay inside the house while he goes to Alexandria. Defying her father's orders, Flavia takes on a mission from the emperor Titus to find a lost gem, an unusual emerald which is the subject of a prophecy. She is particularly keen to do so because the emperor wants them to start looking in North Africa, which is where she believes her uncle Gaius has gone, despite the general opinion that he has committed suicide by drowning. She and her three companions take a boat to Sabratha, but there lose all their money and possessions. Narcissus, a pantomime performer, hires them as musicians and they join a caravan to cross the Sahara desert. In the weeks of travel they become accomplished performers, learn to handle camels and discover the dangers as well as the beauties of the desert. In Volubilis they find both Gaius and the emerald, but it is not as easy to take them back to Italy as they had supposed. During the adventure, they meet a woman who claims to be descended from Cleopatra and a man who could be the late emperor Nero."
1754,Young Bloods,history," The book begins with the birth of both men in 1769 - Arthur as a weak and puny baby, a third son, to a wealthy Anglo-Irish Protestant couple; Naboleone as a healthy second son to a Corsican couple fighting the French for independence. The story continues with the training of both youths as cadet officers, both encountering social and other difficulties thanks to their birth outside the mainland. Arthur's innate conservatism forms as a result of the Gordon riots and his realization that his Anglo-Irish Protestant lifestyle is dependent on maintaining the status quo. Naboleone, on the other hand, is even more of an outsider, a Corsican among Frenchmen, a quasi-noble among pre-revolutionary noblemen, and an impoverished young cadet among those with money to burn. The story ends approximately in 1796, with Arthur having been turned down by the family of his inamorata Kitty Pakenham because of his lack of prospects, and Naboleone, now called Napoleon Bonaparte, mounting a successful attack on Toulon."
1755,The Bride of Lammermoor,history," The story recounts the tragic love of Lucy Ashton, and Edgar, Master of Ravenswood. Edgar's father was stripped of the title for supporting the deposed King James II. Lucy's ambitious father, Sir William Ashton(fiction = Dalrymple) then bought the Ravenswood estate (fiction = Rutherford estate). Edgar hates Sir William for this usurpation of his family's heritage, but on meeting Lucy, falls in love with her, and renounces his plans for vengeance. Sir William's haughty and manipulative wife, Lady Ashton, is the villainess of the story. She is determined to end the initial happy engagement of Edgar and Lucy, and force Lucy into a politically advantageous arranged marriage. Lady Ashton intercepts Edgar's letters to Lucy and persuades Lucy that Edgar has forgotten her. Edgar leaves Scotland for France, to continue his political activities. While he is away, Lady Ashton continues her campaign. She gets Captain Westenho, a wandering soldier of fortune, to tell everyone that Edgar is about to get married in France. She even recruits ""wise woman"" Ailsie Gourlay (a witch in all but name) to show Lucy omens and tokens of Edgar's unfaithfulness. Lucy still clings to her troth, asking for word from Edgar that he has broken off with her; she writes to him. Lady Ashton suppresses Lucy's letter, and brings the Reverend Bide-the-bent to apply religious persuasion to Lucy. However, Bide-the-bent instead helps Lucy send a new letter. But there is no answer. Lady Ashton finally bullies Lucy into marrying Francis, Laird of Bucklaw. But on the day before the wedding, Edgar returns. Seeing that Lucy has signed the betrothal papers with Bucklaw, he repudiates Lucy, who can barely speak. The wedding takes place the next day, followed by a celebration at Ravenswood. While the guests are dancing, Lucy stabs Bucklaw in the bridal chamber, severely wounding him. She descends quickly into insanity and dies. Bucklaw recovers, but refuses to say what had happened. Edgar reappears at Lucy's funeral. Lucy's older brother, blaming him for her death, insists that they meet in a duel. Edgar, in despair, reluctantly agrees. But on the way to the meeting, Edgar falls into quicksand and dies. In the story, Caleb Balderstone, an eccentric old Ravenswood family retainer, provides some comic relief."
1756,English Passengers,history," In 1857, after their attempts to smuggle contraband goods land them with a heavy fine from the British Customs, Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his crew of Manx sailors are forced to offer their ship for charter. The vessel is quickly hired by a party of Englishmen headed by an eccentric Vicar, the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, who believes that the Garden of Eden is located in Tasmania and wants to mount an expedition there to find it. However, unbeknownst to the clergyman, one of his fellow travellers has an entirely different reason for journeying to the island. Dr Thomas Potter is a renowned surgeon who is developing a thesis on the races of man and hopes to find some interesting specimens there. Running parallel with this story, but starting some 30 or so years earlier, are the recollections of Peevay, one of Tasmania's natives, who describes the devastating impact the white settlers had on his people, and the aborigines' struggle to adapt to the cultural changes which were forced on them. Many of the chapters alternate between the two different time periods, but when the Manx ship eventually docks in Tasmania, both strands of the story are brought together for the book's conclusion."
1757,Flashman and the Redskins,history," In his haste to leave New Orleans and the threat of imprisonment, Flashman agrees to shepherd Susie Willinck and her company of prostitutes to Sacramento, where she intends to set up shop and make a bundle from goldminers. As wagon captain, Flashman is nominally in charge of his and Susie's (now his wife) collection of women, supplies, sex toys and the other forty-niners and invalids looking for a better life but he depends on the guidance of Richens Lacey Wootton to see them through. Unfortunately, Wootton becomes stricken with cholera. Flashman is left to get everyone to Bent's Fort in safety, which Comanches make difficult for him. Eventually, they reach Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Flashman absconds with two thousand dollars made from selling one of the prostitutes, Cleonie, to Navajos. For safety in the wilderness, Flashman falls in with a group of travelers but he discovers them to be scalp-hunters, when they attack a band of Apaches. Flashman joins in but refuses to take any scalps or rape captive women, which saves him when the scalp-hunters are killed by the rest of the tribe on their return. He ends up marrying Sonsee-Array, the daughter of chief, Mangas Coloradas, and becoming friends with Geronimo. Eventually, he escapes and is saved by Kit Carson on the Jornada del Muerto. In 1875, Flashman returns to America with his wife, Elspeth. He meets George Armstrong Custer and Mrs. Arthur B. Candy, the former slave Cleonie, both of whom lead him into disaster. He travels to Bismarck, North Dakota, to meet with Mrs. Candy and pursue a carnal relationship but at her connivance, he is kidnapped by Sioux and kept captive at Greasy Grass. He escapes just in time to see the defeat and death of Custer and to be partly scalped himself by his own illegitimate son from Cleonie, Frank Grouard, who by choice has been living as an Indian. Thus, the book ends with Flashman discovering that he left more behind in America in 1850 than two jilted wives."
1758,The Code of Romulus,history," The story begins with Flavia Gemina, the protagonist of the book, arguing with her tutor, Aristo. Flavia insists that she is a detective, though Aristo doubts there is such a word. Aristo says that if Flavia can solve the mystery of who has been stealing rolls from Pistor the Baker, then they will not do maths for a month, just read stories. However, if Flavia fails, she can never mention the word ""detective"" again. Flavia and her friends realise that the theft must be an inside job, and decide to find out more about the baker's household. They make friends with the baker's younger son, Porcius, who shows them around the bakery and introduces them to his family and the slaves who work there. He also shows them his ""Circus Minimus"", where he races mice. Nubia is especially interested in the donkeys who turn the millstone. The next day they split up to follow the different suspects. Lupus follows Porcius and his brother to school, Nubia follows his sister to the temple, and Jonathan follows the slave Teneme to the granary, while Flavia talks to the slave Tertius, the bakery accountant. He shows her the magic square puzzle, the Sator square, which eventually leads her to the solution of the mystery. Flavia and Nubia attend a secret pre-dawn gathering of Christians and unmask the well-meaning thief, but promise not to tell on condition the stealing stops."
1759,Zorro,history," Allende's story is split into six parts, each part dealing with one stage of Diego's life, with the last part serving as the epilogue. The novel chronicles Diego's formation as well as his origins as Zorro. He goes to America to find his dream. Captain Alejandro de la Vega, a seasoned Spanish soldier, is sent to the San Gabriel mission run by Padre Mendoza, an experienced Franciscan priest, due to a series of savage attacks at other missions. Led by a warrior chief named Chief Gray Wolf, the Indians have set their sights on the San Gabriel mission, the most successful mission in Alta California. Alejandro, aided by Padre Mendoza and a few Indian converts, defeat the Indians, and are successful in hurting Chief Gray Wolf. However, as they contemplate the chief's fate, they find out she is a woman. She is Toypurnia, a young Indian woman. She recuperates in the mission with Alejandro's help. Alejandro then goes to Pedro Fages, the governor of California. Here he decides to allow Toypurnia to be a lady - in - waiting to Eulalia de Callis, Fages' rich and stubborn wife. After three years, Alejandro meets Toypurnia, who was renamed Regina, at a lavish party to celebrate the arrival of Pedro Fages, who has earlier resigned from his post and was on his way to Mexico with Eulalia. He proposes marriage to Regina and she accepts. The two are wed by Padre Mendoza, and Fages then bequeaths a large acreage of land to Alejandro. He then retires from the military and becomes a hacienda owner, and later an alcalde. Regina befriends Ana, a young convert who is assigned to care for Regina. Ana's birthing was smooth, Regina was not, as the baby was crosswise in her womb. The pregnancy was so complicated that she spent fifty hours in labor, and required Padre Mendoza to deliver the baby, whom Regina names Diego, and who is baptized on the spot. Diego and Bernardo, Ana's son, become close friends. Since Ana breastfed Diego while his mother was convalescing from her pregnancy, as well as Bernardo, the boys became milk brothers. The rest of the chapter deals with significant events in Diego and Bernardo's life, and the early formation into what they are today. At an early age, Diego and Bernardo share an unusual childhood. They capture a live bear using the sleeping potion of White Owl, once used to amputate a wounded priest, and a frightened, bullied, obese boy named Garcia. Together, Diego and Bernardo undergo Indian training, while Alejandro teaches fencing to Diego, who passes it on to Bernardo. When the de la Vega hacienda is attacked by pirates, the boys have their own traumatizing experiences: Diego and his mother attempt to defend the house, but are defeated, and Bernardo, hidden in the servants' room, is forced to watch his mother be brutally raped and murdered by the pirates. This causes Bernardo to be mute, as a sign of mourning. Bernardo is sent to the Indian tribe of Regina to recover, and soon strikes a friendship with Night Lightning, which blossoms into a romance, and Diego is forced to remain at home to recover after suffering a few broken ribs during the attack. Diego and Bernardo then undergo a test to prove their maturity and to find their spirit guide, a totemic animal which would guide the boys' future. Bernardo's spirit guide is a horse, in the form of Tornado, a motherless colt which Bernardo encounters and cares for. Diego's is a fox or 'zorro' in the form of a fox who saves his life. After the events in the forest, Alejandro, oblivious to the Indian training Diego has been receiving, receives a letter from Tomas de Romeu, an old friend of Alejandro and currently residing in France - occupied Spain. He invites Alejandro to let Diego go to Barcelona, to receive a more formal schooling, and to learn fencing under the famed maestro Manuel Escalante. Alejandro reluctanly allows Diego to go, and Diego takes Bernardo with him. They leave after their fifteenth birthday, where Regina surprisingly organizes an extravagant party, given her own aversion to parties, and Bernardo has an intimate moment with Light-in-the-Night Diego and Bernando travel to Spain but first sail to Panama City where they learn to be sailors, magic and also acrobatics by swinging through the ships's rigging. Upon leaving Panama City, Diego meets a sea captain, Santiago de Leon, who opens his eyes to new ways of thinking and questions his views on religion, patriotism and justice. Diego spies a golden medallion which the captain wears around his neck but is reluctant to acknowledge to Diego. Upon arriving in Barcelona, Diego and Bernardo live with Don Tomas de Romeu. De Romeu is a French sympathizer who has two young daughters, the beautiful Juliana and the tomboyish Isabel. Diego is immediately struck by Juliana and decides to pursue her romantically. He also begins to study fencing with Maestro Manuel Escalante. Diego's main adversary for the affections of Juliana is Rafael Moncada, the nephew of Dona Eulalia. Moncada utilizes trickery to gain Juliana's favor which Diego and Bernardo investigate. The rivalry escalates upon Moncada's abuse of Bernardo which Diego takes exception and issues a challenge to a duel. Moncada and Diego arrange to have the duel with pistols and Moncada is allowed to take the first shot which hits Diego in the arm. Diego then fires into the ground with his shot. Diego is satisfied with the result having humiliated Moncada. Bernardo and Diego befriend a group of gypsies in Barcelona and Diego begins an affair with a gypsy woman named Amalia. Both boys also perform in a circus act with the gypsies where Diego begins to assemble a costume to disguise himself from the high society people in attendance. After one of Diego's fencing lessons with Escalante, he learns the secret of La Justicia, a secret organization devoted to justice. Members of La Justicia are identified by the gold medallions which they wear around their necks. Diego recognizes Escalante's medallion as being the same as that of de Leon's. Escalante invites Diego to join La Justicia and they begin to train for his initiation test where Diego is tested physically in his fighting against members of La Justicia. Diego passes the test and joins La Justicia and takes the name Zorro meaning 'fox'. Diego learns that Amalia has been arrested and is being held prisoner. Diego, dressed as Zorro, sneaks into the palace to convince Le Chavalier Duchamp, Napoleon's emissary to Spain, to release the hostages which he does under threat of his daughter's life. Moncada and Diego continue their pursuit of Juliana with neither gaining ground. One night, Juliana and Isabel are attacked on the street when Moncada appears and defends them so that they can escape. Everyone is relieved and grateful except for Isabel who recognizes the attackers as being employed by Moncada. Diego confirms this when he visits the gypsies. In an effort to expose Moncada, Diego convinces Amalia to reveal Moncada's scheme to Juliana. Sometime later, Diego warns the gypsies that they are in danger of arrest and they flee the city. The political landscape changes as Napoleon is exiled and Duchamp leaves Spain. Arrests are made including Maestro Escalante who is held in a local barracks. Diego convinces La Justicia to stage a rescue. Diego spikes liquor with his sleeping draught and then gifts it to the soldiers of the barracks. After they have had a chance to drink the drug, Zorro and the other members of La Justicia enter the barracks and rescue Escalante. After which the members scatter and disband. Don de Romeu is also arrested as a French sympathizer and is held in the more secure La Ciudadela. Juliana goes to Moncada and asks him to use his influence to release her father. He agrees on the condition that she marry him and she agrees. Several days later Moncada returns and informs Juliana that he was unable to secure a release. Isabel and Diego approach Eulalia and ask her to intervene. She declines but offers to buy de Romeu's property before it is seized to allow the girls an opportunity to leave the country and also Eulalia will arrange for a visit to their father. Juliana agrees to the terms. The girls then visit their father who signs the papers and comes to peace with his impending execution. He also reveals that Moncada was the one who denounced him and is responsible for his arrest. Following the execution, Moncada visits Juliana who agrees to meet him. Moncada offers protection to Juliana in the hope that she will either marry him or become his mistress. She demands that he provide compensation for the loss of her father. He instead attacks Juliana before Diego sees this and begins to fight him. The two men fight until Moncada is subdued and left in a secret closet with de Romeu kept his contraband materials. The girls and Diego decide to leave the city and head for the Americas. The money from Eulalia, converted to gems, is sewn into their clothing and they leave their home to journey to California. Diego and the girls decide to leave Barcelona and travel on foot dressed as pilgrims. They decide to leave from an Atlantic port as they will be less likely to be recognized there. During their travels they rely upon the kindness of the local people to provide shelter and food. The journey takes many months. After several months of travel, Diego meets up with the gypsies who agree to let Diego travel with them to the port. The gypsies require that the girls live in the way of the gypsies which requires strict separation from the men. Diego, who had viewed the trek as an opportunity to become more intimate with Juliana was discourage by these restrictions but abided them anyway. They reached the port where Diego met his old shipmates and was reintroduced to Captain de Leon who agreed to take them on board. It is when the ship reaches Cuba that the ship is attacked by a pirate crew lead by Jean Lafitte. The ship is taken and Diego and the girls are taken hostage. Lafitte takes them to his home in Louisiana where they await a ransom from Alejandro de la Vega to arrive. During this time, Juliana becomes smitten with Lafitte until she learns that he is married to a Creole woman named Catherine who she never sees. Diego begins gambling in New Orleans in an attempt to win enough money to buy their freedom. The girls, however, use their jewels and gems to buy the freedom of slaves Lafitte is selling at auction. Lafitte tells her that the jewels are more than enough for the slaves and would also buy their freedom, which he grants. Then he returns the jewels back to her, an indication of his love for her. Catherine's mother sees this and takes her to Catherine who is revealed to have died five weeks earlier, unbeknownst to Lafitte. Catherine's mother tells Juliana that Catherine has chosen Juliana to marry Lafitte and raise her child, Pierre. Juliana agrees to marry Lafitte and Diego and Isabel are freed. ===Part Six, Epilogue (Alta California, 1840)==="
1760,Julian,history," Julian was the last direct relative of Constantine the Great to assume the purple, his father being Constantine's half-brother, and attempted to destroy the influence of the Christian church, bringing back the worship of the old Roman pantheon, as well as other religions including his attempted restoration of the Jewish Temple, and Mithraism, a mystery religion that had been popular among Roman soldiers. The book takes the form of the correspondence between two Hellenistic pagans, Libanius, who is considering writing a biography of Julian, and Priscus, who possesses Julian's personal memoir. Christianity has, by this stage, become the official religion of the Roman Empire (as decreed by the emperor Theodosius), with rioting and inquisition causing extreme violence between traditionalists and Christians, and even between Christian sects. Only thirty years after the novel took place, the city of Rome would be sacked by the Goths. The memoir relates Julian's life from the time so many members of his family were purged by his cousin, the emperor Constantius II (whom he succeeded on the throne), his ""exile"" to libraries as a child, and his subsequent negative childhood experiences with Christian hypocrisy and conflict over dogma (see Arianism). As he matures, a rift forms between Julian and his disturbed half-brother Gallus, who is made Caesar (heir to the purple) by Constantius II; Julian claims, for his safety, to have no interest but philosophy, so he undertakes a journey to Athens to study under the city's greatest teachers. Here, he first sees Libanius, the book's narrator, and has an affair with a female philosopher, Macrina. He also comes to know some of the early Church Fathers in their formative years, including the agreeable Basil of Caesarea and the abrasive and dishonest Gregory of Nazianzus. Julian is eventually made Caesar in place of Gallus, who was executed by Constantius II for cruelty, debauchery, and to satisfy Constantius's legendary insecurity and paranoia. This leaves Julian the successor to Constantius II, and he is given (at first nominal) command of Gaul, under attack by the Alamanni. Subsequently, Julian seizes hands-on military and administrative control from his 'advisors,' and, against expectations, experiences overwhelming military success over the Germans at Strasbourg. Upon the death of Helena, Julian's wife and Constantius's sister, and in the face of Constantius's ever-increasing manic paranoia, Julian undertakes a short rebellion against Constantius, which ends bloodlessly, with Constantius's natural death during the journey to confront Julian, and Julian's accession to the title of Augustus. Julian's early reign is successful, with the removal from office of court eunuchs, whose true role Julian sees as being to drag on the state coffers and to isolate the emperors from real-world concerns. He also undertakes attempts to prevent the spread of Christianity; referring to the religion throughout the novel as 'back-country' and a 'death-cult' (and churches as 'charnel-houses,' for their reverence of relics), Julian sees the best means to do this as to block Christians from teaching classical literature, thusly relegating their religion to non-intellectual audiences and thwarting attempts by Christians to develop the sophisticated rhetoric and intellectualism of traditional Roman and Hellenistic religions. Here, Julian's headstrong nature begins to affect his ability to know his own capabilities, evident in several clashes with the Trinitarian clergy and with advisors. Nonetheless, Julian takes the opportunity to outline his arguments against Christianity, and to lay out his vision for reforming and restoring Roman civic life. His reforms are under way when, in spite of his own faith in prophecy, Julian undertakes an ill-omened campaign to reclaim Roman Mesopotamia from the Sassanid Empire. This marks a significant turning-point in the novel, as it is the end of Julian's memoir. The rest of the novel consists of field dispatches and diary entries detailing Julian's campaign, with commentary by Priscus and Libanius's reflections. Initially, Julian is extremely successful (in spite of his relying on Xenophon's dated Anabasis for geographic details of the region), reaching Ctesiphon and defeating the Persian emperor in several decisive battles. However, after Persian scorched-earth tactics leave Julian's army with no food or water, it becomes apparent that the Christian officers' loyalty is in question, and that a plot may be afoot to kill Julian. Priscus recounts a short conversation with another non-Christian advisor during the campaign, in which he is told simply, 'we're not safe.' Indeed, Julian's dispatches begin to show delusion on the part of the emperor, and in spite of his steadily eroding grasp of reality and his own limitations, he presses on until a near mutiny of his soldiers. Not long after, during the return to Roman territory, Julian rushes to fight off a Persian attack on the line, eschewing his armor, which his aide Callistus claimed had broken straps. Julian returns to camp mortally wounded, and in spite of the efforts of his physician and friend Oribasius, he dies without picking a successor. Here, Vidal's narrative departs slightly from the known story of Julian, as it becomes apparent in the novel that Julian was wounded by a Roman spear. Upon the removal of Julian's body, Priscus secretly rifles through Julian's belongings, taking Julian's memoir and diary for himself and saving them from censorship. The Christian officers win the debate over whom to elevate to the title of Augustus, settling on the simple-minded and drunken Jovian. The campaign ends in disaster, and Jovian cedes significant portions of Rome's eastern territory to the Sassanid Empire. The rest of the novel consists of the continuing correspondence of Libanius and Priscus; Libanius asks Priscus what he knows about Julian's death, himself suspecting that there was always a plot among the Christian officers to kill Julian. Priscus responds (with the assurance that his role as the source of such information would be kept anonymous) that, upon visiting Callistus years later, Priscus asked whether Callistus, who rode into battle with Julian on the day of his death, saw who killed the emperor. Callistus's originally one-dimensional and vague tale began to take on more detail, and when Priscus again asked whether Callistus knows the killer's identity, Callistus responded that he did, of course: 'it was I who killed the Emperor Julian.' Callistus recounted breaking the straps on Julian's armor before the fatal engagement, and personally stabbing Julian with his spear. Priscus asked how Callistus could have hated Julian, his benefactor. The Christian Callistus responded, chillingly, that he did not hate Julian, but admired him, and that 'every day [Callistus] pray[s]' for Julian's soul. Priscus closes the anecdote by begging Libanius to keep his name out of any published account of Julian's death, citing Callistus's powerful co-conspirators from the army and Theodosius's well-documented brutality, and Libanius's worst fears about Julian's death are confirmed. The novel ends with Libanius's sending a letter to the emperor Theodosius seeking permission to publish Julian's memoir; it is denied. Lamenting his ill health, Theodosius's politically motivated proscription of traditional religion, and the end of intellectual culture and its replacement by widespread religious violence and intolerance, Libanius meets John Chrysostom, his former best student, giving a sermon at a Christian church. Libanius finally realizes that traditional religion is defeated, seeing as even the best and brightest of his students had abandoned the traditionalists. Irritated by John's solemn triumph, Libanius calls Christianity a death-cult, and in response, John Chrysostom morbidly implies that Christianity embraces the coming death of the classical world. By extension, though somewhat more vaguely, John claims that he awaits the coming apocalypse. In closing, Libanius writes, prophetically, that he hopes the coming collapse of reason and the Roman world will be only temporary, likening the dying of the Empire to that of his oil lamp, and expresses the hope that reason and 'man's love of light' would one day bring back the prosperity, stability, and intellectualism of the pre-Christian empire."
1761,The Fortunes of Nigel,history," David Ramsay, a watchmaker, lives with his daughter Margaret on Fleet Street. He has two apprentices, Mr Vincent and Mr Tunstall. The two apprentices had run off to join in a street fray, and the goldsmith George Heriot was gossiping with Ramsay, when they brought in a fellow named Richie Moniplies with a broken head and very tattered garments. His wound having been dressed, he explained that he had come to London with his master Nigel Olifaunt to obtain payment of a debt owing to him by the king, and had been set upon as a stranger. Next morning Nigel received a visit, at his lodging with the chandler and his wife, from the goldsmith, who had known his father, and, having warned him that his estate was in danger, lent him money to appear in proper attire in Court. Heriot proceeded to Whitehall, and, having presented the young lord's petition, King James authorised him to advance part of the sum due, and promised to interest himself in his affairs. Dining with him the same day at the goldsmith's, in company with her father and Sir Mungo, Margaret lost her heart to Nigel, and employed Dame Ursula, the barber's wife, to ascertain all particulars respecting him. On being presented at Court by Lord Huntinglen he obtained an order for payment of his claim, and was introduced to the Duke of Buckingham, who announced himself as his enemy, and to the Duke's son, Lord Dalgarno, by whom he was initiated in all the vices of the aristocracy of that period, although warned by Richie, and by an anonymous letter. Meeting the Prince of Wales, later Charles I, in St. James's Park, attended by several courtiers, Nigel learnt from their manner, as well as from Sir Mungo, that he had been ill spoken of to Charles, upon which he challenged Dalgarno in the precincts of the Court, and was compelled to take refuge in Whitefriars to avoid arrest. Here he renewed his acquaintance with the barrister Lowestoffe, whom he had met at Beaujeu's tavern, and was assigned to the care of old Trapbois the lodging-house keeper and his daughter. On hearing of Nigel's trouble Margaret sought an interview with Lady Hermione, who occupied a suite of apartments in Heriot's mansion, and, having revealed her secret, was supplied with money to help him, being told at the same time by her confidant of the ill usage she had suffered from Lord Dalgarno. Vincent, who was in love with his master's daughter, and had been encouraged by Dame Ursula in extravagant habits, was now engaged by her to act as his rival's guide in effecting his escape from London. The same night old Trapbois was murdered by two ruffians who came to rob him; and, just as he had rescued the daughter, whom the bailiff Hildebrod had advised him to marry, Nigel was accosted by the apprentice, dressed as a waterman, from whom he learnt that a warrant had been issued for his apprehension, and that a boat was in readiness for him to give the king's officers the slip. Martha begged that she might accompany him, and, having secured her father's treasure, they were conducted by Vincent to the Temple Stairs. Having landed his companion at Paul's Wharf, where she was taken charge of by Moniplies, Nigel insisted on disembarking at Greenwich, instead of joining a Scotch vessel which was waiting for him at Gravesend; and having made his way to the park, he attended the king while he killed a deer, when he was recognised and consigned to the Tower. Presently Margaret, dressed as a boy, was shown into the same room; then the chandler came to claim his wife, whom he accused Nigel of having carried off; and, after he had dined, his friend Heriot arrived to reproach him with the position in which he had placed himself. He had also lost the king's warrant for his debt, and when his companion's disguise was detected, she saved him from further embarrassment by a full confession. One of her acts had been to present a petition to the king from Lady Hermione, on reading which he had commanded that Lord Dalgarno should instantly marry her; and another to offer such explanations respecting Nigel as induced his Majesty to pardon him. One hour only, however, remained within which to redeem his estates, when Moniplies appeared with the money, and Lord Dalgarno, who hoped to have secured them, was deprived of his revenge. The next day he was shot in Enfield Chase, where Captain Colepepper had planned to waylay him, as he was waiting, in company with Dame Nelly, and a page in charge of the treasure, to fight a duel with Nigel. Vincent and Lowestoffe, however, arrived in time to put two of the robbers to flight, while Moniplies killed the captain, who was suspected of having murdered Trapbois, and Christie recovered his wife. Nigel and Margaret were soon afterwards married; and as King James was honouring the feast with his presence, Richie presented Martha as his bride, who, at the same time, handed to the preserver of her life the deeds of the Glenvarloch estates, which she had freed from all liabilities, and the royal sign-manual which had been found among her father's papers."
1762,Calico Captive,history," In August 1754 Miriam Willard, along with her older sister Susanna, her sister's husband James Johnson, and their three children; two-year-old Polly, four-year-old Susanna, and six-year-old Sylvanus, are kidnapped from Number Four, a fort in Charlestown. Miriam and her family are forced to march north by their Indian captors, never knowing whether they will be killed or taken into slavery. Throughout the journey Miriam finds she cannot keep her mind off Phineas Whitney, her sweetheart planning to attend Harvard College. On the way north Susanna gives birth to a girl and names the infant Captive. The rugged trail is made far more difficult for Miriam by the miserable crying of Captive, the damp cold and hunger, and the sight of her exhausted sister. Fortunately, a horse named Scoggins is captured for Susanna so that she does not have to walk and carry the infant. Eventually the group reaches the Indian village where, upon surviving a half-hearted gauntlet while being forced to dance and sing, they are adopted into the tribe. After many months the Indian tribe’s Sachem decides to sell his English captives to the French in Montréal, Quebec. However, Susanna's master forces her to stay behind and Sylvanus, who has taken a liking to the Indian culture, willingly chooses to go on a hunting trip with the Indians. Upon arriving in Montréal Miriam finds to her horror that they are all to be privately purchased off to separate owners and held on ransom. James is thrown in jail for a short time but is finally forced to retrieve money from the English governor to pay for his family’s release. Polly captures the interest of the mayor's wife, who is unable to have a child of her own, while little Susanna is sold to another French household and Miriam meets the prominent Du Quesne family. Although working as a servant, Miriam quickly finds herself living a life she has never imagined. She meets an amiable French girl named Hortense and the two quickly become friends. One day Miriam is asked by Madame Du Quesne to teach her daughter, Felicité, to read and write proper English. Miriam finds she is intrigued by Felicité’s friendliness and wealthy lifestyle. Meanwhile, James makes a petition to the French governor and is allowed to return to English territory and ask for money and a passport. Susanna is eventually released by her Indian captors and joins Miriam. Meanwhile James goes to Boston to get money in order to buy the liberty of the rest of his family. The two sisters are invited by Felicité to join her at a ball wherein Miriam unintentionally draws the attention of Pierre Laroche, a grandson of a wealthy nobleman. Miriam dances with the young man, which angers and embarrasses Felicité, who had her heart set on marrying Pierre. The Du Quesne family, feeling disgraced and insulted and because they believe James broke his bond and escaped from captivity, throws out Miriam and Susanna. After several hours in the snowy streets Hortense finds the two and informs them they can stay with her family. Miriam realizes that the Hortense family cannot support three more occupants and conjures a plan to make some money. She decides to use her talent for dressmaking to craft a fashionable dress for Madame Du Quesne and Felicité. The plan works, although she is told to keep her services a secret. However, the governor’s wife, Marquise De Vaundreuil, finds out Miriam had designed the Du Quesne dresses and hires her. When James finally returns the French governor has been replaced. The new authority refuses to recognize the agreement. Worse yet, Polly, who was unable to adjust to her new family, runs away and is eventually allowed to stay with her mother. Instead of earning their freedom Susanna, James, Polly and Captive are thrown in jail. Miriam, as a dressmaker for a notable family, is spared jail time. Miriam eventually succeeds in gathering her courage and asks Marquise De Vaundreuil about her relatives. Marquise De Vaundreuil promises she will talk with her husband. Meanwhile, Pierre asks Miriam to marry him although, after much consideration, she realizes she truly does not love him. Marquise De Vaundreuil keeps her promise to speak with her husband and eventually Miriam, Susanna, James, Polly and Captive are released from prison. They board a small sailing vessel to cross the Atlantic to Plymouth, England and from there they sail back to America, finally as free people. Two years later Sylvanus is brought home by a redeemed Indian captive. Another redeemed prisoner from Montréal brings home little Susanna. Phineas Whitney, after graduating from Harvard, marries Miriam."
1763,Phantom,history," The Phantom is born as Erik in Boscherville, a small town not far from Rouen, in the summer of 1831. His father is a well-known stonemason and dies in a construction accident a few months before his son is born. His mother is the beautiful and talented daughter of an English woman and a French architect. A spoiled and vain woman, she scorns her deformed child from birth and cannot bring herself to name him. Instead, she instructs the elderly priest who baptises him to name the child after himself. Due to his mother's shame but also for his own safety, Erik is forced to spend his childhood locked in his home lest he or his mother become a target for the violent attentions of the very superstitious villagers of Boscherville. Much of the verbal and physical abuse Erik suffers from his mother is chronicled in the opening chapters of the novel. One such event occurs on his fifth birthday when he refused to wear the cloth mask to the dinner table. His mother drags him before the only mirror in the house in retaliation and upon seeing his visage, Erik mistakes his reflection for that of a horrible monster. He shatters the mirror, lacerating his hands and wrists, and his mother is unable to bring herself to tend to his wounds. A family friend, Marie Perrault, bandages the wounds and saves his life, but Erik is left forever physically and emotionally scarred from this event. After this, Erik becomes morbidly fascinated with mirrors and believes that they are capable of performing magic. This fascination turns into an obsession and Erik quickly becomes a master of illusion, able to make people see only what he wants them to see. Says Erik of his abilities, ""I can make anything disappear, if I really want to. Anything except my face."" From a young age, Erik exhibited a strong interest in architecture and was privately tutored by a well-respected professor. However, his strongest abilities lie in the subject of music and he is an incredibly talented composer and performer. However, his mother does not encourage his pursuit of singing, claiming that his supernaturally beautiful voice cannot be one created by God. When he was nine years old, Erik's mother begins to receive the attentions of the handsome, new town physician. This doctor makes it clear that he believes that a child such as Erik belongs in an institution for the mentally insane, and Erik begins to desperately try to win his mother's affections. He uses his rapidly developing skills of ventriloquism to create the illusion of a perfect home and family. His mother begins to surrender her links on sanity but is forced to awaken when an attack on her home by a superstitious mob of villagers leaves the family dog, Sasha, dead and Erik seriously injured. The doctor comes to Erik's aid and saves his life, but begs his mother to marry him and send her child to an institution. Experiencing a sudden change of heart and pangs of remorse, Erik's mother cannot bring herself to abandon her child and refuses the proposal. She resolves to make amends for her treatment of her child, but discovers the next morning that Erik had run away. It is not until much later in the novel that it is revealed that Erik left believing that she had accepted the proposal of the doctor and had hoped to free her so that she may live happily. After a week or so without food and still healing from the attack, Erik stumbles upon a Gypsy camp in the woods. He is discovered as a thief and is unmasked. Upon seeing his severely deformed face, a freak show showman named Javert decides to exhibit him as the ""Living Corpse"" and Erik is forced to spend the next several weeks locked in a cage. Eventually, he gains some personal freedoms such as his own tent as he develops his show to include the illusions that he had begun to master as a child in Boscherville. He travels around Europe with the Gypsies and masters their languages as well as their herbal remedies. His quick mind and inhuman abilities garner him the fear of many of the Gypsy tribe. He remains with the tribe until he is about 12 years old, leaving only after he is forced to murder his master in order to evade rape. Erik continues to join up with travelling fairs and while performing at a fair in Rome meets Giovanni, a master mason who would take the boy on as his apprentice. Erik quickly masters the aspects of the design and construction of buildings and stays with Giovanni until age 15. He spends a few happy years under the man's tutelage, but is forced to leave when he is inadvertently involved in the death of Luciana, Giovanni's youngest and favorite daughter. Erik's whereabouts are unknown for several years after this event, but it is assumed that he continued to travel throughout Europe and into Asia, occasionally performing with travelling fairs. Four years later, Erik is sought out by the Daroga of Mazanderan Court and becomes a court assassin, magician, and personal engineer to the Persian Shah. He becomes responsible for the entertainment of the Khanum, the Shah's mother, and builds sophisticated traps and torture devices for her amusement. In addition he is involved in the design and construction of a palace for the Shah, throughout that time becoming involved in political affairs which make him a target for a poisioning attempt from which he nearly dies. Much of these years are a personal hell for Erik, and he soon becomes an opium addict. Erik eventually stops using opium due to his fear that it will damage his voice and switches to morphine. After construction on the palace is finished, the Shah fears that Erik knows too many of his personal secrets and, with the influence of the Khanum, arranges to have him arrested and put to death. Nadir, the Daroga who has befriended him, helps him to escape the guards, and Erik eventually makes his way back to France. Since early childhood, Erik has wished to eventually become the designer for a Paris Opera House. Unfortunately for him, the contest for the position is over by the time he learns of it in his perusal of his mother's old newspapers after her death. He approaches the winner, Charles Garnier, and makes a deal with him wherein he may help design and build the Palais Garnier Opera House. Below the Opera House, an artificial lake is created during its construction using eight hydraulic pumps because of problems with the ground water level that keep rising. Without the knowledge of the other workers, Erik builds a maze of tunnels and corridors in the lower levels. Past the underground lake, he builds a lair for himself, where he may live protected from the public. Ensconced here, he rides out the strife and misery of the 1871 Paris Commune. Besides being a brilliant inventor and engineer, Erik is also a musical genius, and he is frequently involved in the affairs the opera house in order to listen to operas and interfere with the manager's bad taste. Because he cannot show his distorted face in public, he takes the disguise of a ghost, using violence in order to blackmail the opera managers and bind them to his will, exploiting the employees' superstitions to maintain his power and his knowledge about the building's secret passages for access to every part of the building without notice. With increasing amorality, he threatens those who refused his demands via letters and even kills some employees as warnings. However, he treats those who were loyal to him and obey his command, such as Madame Giry, very kindly. The rest of the book is largely based around the original Phantom of the Opera novel - though it differs on several points - following the relationship between Erik and the object of his desire, Christine Daae, and switching back and forth between their points of view. Christine, timid and frail, is frightened of Erik - it is revealed that she is indeed in love with him, but she is frightened of her feelings, and is unable to come completely to terms with his appearance. Because of this, she pursues a relationship with Raoul de Chagny, a young nobleman, while still frequently visiting Erik in his underground home. When Erik offers her a proposal of marriage, stating that it would be a temporary state of affairs (as he himself, owing to the prior poisoning attempt on his life in Persia, has begun to suffer extreme ill health and believes that he has roughly six months to live), Christine becomes agitated and returns to the world above. Considering his request to return to his home and give him an answer, whether it be ""yes"" or ""no,"" Christine cannot bear the thought of hurting Erik by refusing him. She ultimately decides to flee with Raoul after her next performance, using it as her symbolic goodbye. Erik, however, has become aware of her plans and has been driven into a jealous, hurt frenzy; he kidnaps her during the performance and takes her to his home, while Nadir, who has been following Erik's activities, leads Raoul to the house underground in an attempt to free Christine. When Nadir and Raoul fall into Erik's torture chamber, a device created specifically to drive its occupants insane and ultimately suicidal, it is revealed that Erik plans to blow up the entire Opera House if Christine does not agree to marry him. Christine finally agrees, and an underground chamber stocked with gunpowder begins to fill with water in order to douse the danger; the water begins to fill up the torture chamber as well, threatening Nadir and Raoul with imminent death by drowning. Christine, who has at last fully realized her feelings for Erik, kisses him passionately on the mouth (a change from the original Leroux novel, in which she merely bestows a chaste kiss on his forehead); this act changes Erik, making him realize the futility of further violence. He stops the water in the chamber, and rescues Nadir and Raoul from their fates, allowing Raoul to leave with Christine and stating his wish for the two young people to marry; his only stipulation is that he would like for Christine to visit him one more time before his death. Raoul agrees in order to placate him, even though he has no intention of allowing such a thing; once their wedding-day draws near, however, Christine backlashes against Raoul's insistence that she never see Erik again and goes herself to visit him. When Raoul - who tells the remainder of the novel from his point of view - learns of Christine's return to Erik, he descends himself into the underground home to fetch her, but is detained by Nadir, who refuses to let him enter the room where Erik is dying. Christine emerges from this room some time later after Erik has died, and returns to the upper world with Raoul. They marry, and a few months later, Christine reveals that she is pregnant. Though both are overjoyed at the news, the pregnancy is very difficult for Christine, and she almost dies in childbirth. The doctor is forced to perform a Cesarean section in order to save her life and that of the child - Raoul is initially opposed to this, as he believes that the baby is premature and cannot possibly survive outside of its mother's womb - making the procedure an unnecessary risk on Christine's life - but the doctor assures him that the baby is full-term. This causes Raoul to realize, due to timing, that the child cannot possibly be his, and is in fact Erik's. Despite this, Raoul raises the child as his own, never mentioning to Christine that he knows about the child's parentage. The boy, named Charles, has escaped his father's fate and is physically perfect. Christine dies when Charles is sixteen, and Raoul goes on to raise him. The last line of the novel is ""The cuckoo is a very beautiful bird!"" which carries the implication of cuckolding, and refers to the cuckoo bird's habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests, but also of the beauty of adoption and acceptance."
1764,Leo Africanus,history," The book is divided into four sections, each organized year by year to describe a key period of Leo Africanus's life, and each named after the city that played the major role in his life at the time: Granada, Fez, Cairo, and Rome. While filled with biographical hypotheses and historical unlikelihoods, the book offers a vivid description of the Renaissance world, with the decline of the traditional Muslim kingdoms and the hope inspired by the Ottoman Empire, as it grew to threaten Europe and restore Muslim unity. The book is based on true life experiences which took Leo Africanus almost everywhere in the Islamic Mediterranean, from southern Morocco to Arabia, and across the Sahara."
1765,Noble House: The Epic Novel of Modern Hong Kong,history," Noble House is set in 1963. The tai-pan, Ian Dunross, struggles to rescue Struan's from the precarious financial position left over from his predecessor. To do this, he seeks partnership with an American millionaire, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent this. And nobody, it seems, can get anything done without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes. In Noble House, Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan's is desperately overextended. He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6. The novel follows Dunross' attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan's, the Noble House."
1766,Russka,history," The narrative spans 1,800 years of Russian history. The families that provide the focus for the story are the Bobrovs, Romanovs, Karpenkos, Suvorins and Popovs. Between them these five families span the main ethnic groups and social levels of the society in this northern empire. Historical characters encountered through the narrative include Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible and his secret police, the westernizing Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and the Bolsheviks of the twentieth century. The stories of different characters in those families use real known stories of different Russian families. For example, the peasant family turned nobility thanks to their business is based on the Stroganovs. The noble who was a friend of Ivan IV of Russia and asked his territory to be part of the Oprichnina was also based on a member of the Stroganovs, but at a different period."
1767,The Secret Magdalene,history," The story begins in the voice of the Jewess Mariamne as a child living a privileged life in her widowed father Josephus’ home in Jerusalem. Also living with them is her father’s ward, Salome, an Egyptian, the daughter of a deceased fellow merchant. Both girls are overseen by a body servant named Tata. Mariamne has only just recovered from a life-threatening illness during which it seems she might have experienced altered states of consciousness. When she revives, she is gifted (or cursed) with unexpected voiced divination. Raised like sisters and indulged by a fond father with books and lessons usually only accorded boys, Mariamne and Salome possess a thirst for knowledge, both secular and magical, that is forbidden to females. Through their devoted personal slave, they also learn worldly experience far beyond anything Josephus, a member of the elite Jewish Sanhedrin, would approve of them knowing. When Mariamne unwittingly exposes her gift of prophesy in front of her father and his houseguest, a merchant named Ananias, Josephus immediately sends Mariamne to her room, but Ananias is intrigued. That moment of exposure changes not only the life of Mariamne, but the lives of all involved. Within months, Josephus, misunderstanding an exchange he sees between Salome and his houseguest, banishes Salome and the houseguest from his home, and then, only hours later, Tata and Mariamne. His daughter is to go into her uncle’s strict Jewish household, where there are no books. Unable to bear the loss of Salome and then of her books, Mariamne takes her life into her own hands, as well as that of her slave Tata. She follows Salome into true banishment. Mariamne is only eleven years old, Salome is twelve. With Mariamne's choice, her quest begins. For both protection and ease of travel, Mariamne and Salome are disguised as boys, not unusual for the times, especially for girls who sought learning. Dressed as males, they are given male names. Salome is Simon. Mariamne is John. As John and Simon, they are taken by Ananias and his friends to the “Wilderness,” a hidden settlement on the northwest edge of the Dead Sea. Here they meet a man who will become Mariamne's mentor, the young philosopher Seth of Damascus, also a seeker of divine knowledge. They also meet John the Baptist, hiding with other zealots in the wilds of the Judean deserts. In the ""Wilderness,"" they see a world they could not have imagined in the home of a rich Jew of the Law: the complex struggle for Jewish freedom from Rome, and the even more complex struggle for the Temple where Roman-backed priests practice rites of animal sacrifice that enrage zealots. They also see there is no one brand of zealotry, but many, and none agree with the others, though all await a Messiah to lead them. Salome comes quickly to believe John the Baptist is that Messiah in the form of an actual King of the Jews. Mariamne does not agree. Thus begins the rift between Mariamne and Salome, one that only grows wider when Mariamne meets John's cousin, a Galilean called Yeshua. In time it seems wise to send the young prophets away from the hotbed that is Roman-occupied Israel. With Seth, they travel to Alexandria, Egypt where Mariamne and Salome live in the Great Library, becoming learned in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and, under the tutelage of Philo of Alexandria, the Egyptian mysteries, specifically the ancient Passion of the man-god Osiris. After seven years, Mariamne reluctantly returns to the Wilderness, but Salome is eager to go back in order to see John of the River again. Having lived as males, they remain males. Through John of the River, Mariamne (now called John the Less) meets his cousin, Yeshua of Galilee and his twin brother, Jude the Sicarii. Immediately sensing they are somehow important to each other, John the Less shares with Yeshua the knowledge she learned during her studies in Egypt. Deeply confused and disturbed by the violent actions of all those around him, and their expectations of a “King” prophesied to save them, Yeshua retreats deeper in the true wilderness of the Dead Sea region to undergo his own revelation, returning to share it with his increasingly beloved friend, John the Less. Mariamne, who had undergone her own experience of gnosis years earlier as a child close to death, would keep such knowledge to herself, but Yeshua is filled with a messianic fervor to have all others know what he “knows” and what his beloved companion knows - that all are divine, and no one needs ""saving"" if only they would awaken from the sleep of illusion. Aware of where such enthusiasm might lead (it has led John of the River to a terrible death at the hands of Herod Antipas and Salome/Simon to an even more terrible survival), still Mariamne (now John the Beloved Disciple) follows Yeshua as he teaches and heals, spreading his message of love and forgiveness to his followers, whose numbers continue to grow as his reputation as Messiah grows. Eventually, Yeshua’s resolute conviction leads him to the cross, and Mariamne to a cave in what is now the south of France, but was then called the Gallia Narbonensis by its Roman conquerors, where, dying, she tells her story to Seth of Damascus, her lifelong friend, who writes it all down for her."
1768,The Master Puppeteer,history," The Master Puppeteer is set in Osaka, Japan, during a period of famine in the 18th century. A young boy named Jiro takes a job at a theater run by the puppeteer Yoshida, who proves to be a demanding employer. However, Jiro discovers there is a connection between the theater and a local thief who has been stealing rice from the municipal authorities and merchants and giving it away to the starving poor."
1769,The Betrothed,history," Renzo and Lucia, a couple in an unnamed Lombard village near Lake Como, are planning to wed on 8 November 1628. The parish priest, Don Abbondio, is walking home on the eve of the wedding when he is accosted by two ""bravoes"" (thugs) who warn him not to perform the marriage, because the local baron (Don Rodrigo) has forbidden it. When he presents himself for the wedding ceremony, Renzo is amazed to hear that the marriage is to be postponed (the priest didn't have the courage to tell the truth). An argument ensues and Renzo succeeds in extracting from the priest the name of Don Rodrigo. It turns out that Don Rodrigo has his eye on Lucia. Lucia's mother, Agnese, advises Renzo to ask the advice of ""Dr. Azzeccagarbugli"" (Dr Quibbleweaver, in Colquhoun's translation), a lawyer in the town of Lecco. Dr Azzeccagarbugli is at first sympathetic, showing Renzo a recent edict on the subject of priests who refuse to marry, but when he hears the name of Don Rodrigo he panics and drives Renzo away. Lucia sends a message to ""Fra Cristoforo"" (Friar Christopher), a respected Capuchin friar at the monastery of Pescarenico, asking him to come as soon as he can. When Fra Cristoforo comes to Lucia's cottage and hears the story, he immediately goes to Don Rodrigo's mansion, where he finds the baron at a meal with his cousin Count Attilio, along with four guests, including the mayor and Dr Azzeccagarbugli. When Don Rodrigo is taken aside by the friar, he explodes with anger at his presumption and sends him away, but not before an old servant has a chance to offer him help. Meanwhile, Agnese comes up with a plan. In those days, it was possible for two people to marry by declaring themselves married before a priest and in the presence of two amenable witnesses. Renzo runs to his friend Tonio and offers him 25 lire if he agrees to help. When Fra Cristoforo returns with the bad news, they decide to put their plan into action. The next morning, Lucia and Agnese are visited by beggars, Don Rodrigo's men in disguise. They examine the house in order to plan an assault. Late at night, Agnese distracts Don Abbondio's servant Perpetua while Tonio and his brother Gervaso enter Don Abbondio's study, ostensibly to pay a debt. They are followed indoors secretly by Lucia and Renzo. When they try to carry out their plan, the priest throws the tablecloth in Lucia's face and drops the lamp. They struggle in the darkness. In the meantime, Don Rodrigo's men invade Lucia's house, but nobody is there. A boy named Menico arrives with a message of warning from Fra Cristoforo and they seize him. When they hear the alarm being raised by the sacristan, who is calling for help on the part of Don Abbondio who raised the alarm of invaders in his home, they assume they have been betrayed and flee in confusion. Menico sees Agnese, Lucia and Renzo in the street and warns them not to return home. They go to the monastery, where Fra Cristoforo gives Renzo a letter of introduction to a certain friar at Milan, and another letter to the two women, to organise a refuge at a convent in the nearby city of Monza. Lucia is entrusted to the nun Gertrude, a strange and unpredictable noblewoman whose story is told in these chapters. A child of the most important family of the area, her father decided to send her to the cloisters for no other reason than to simplify his affairs: he wished to keep his properties united for his first-born, heir to the family's title and riches. As she grew up, she sensed that she was being forced by her parents into a life which would comport but little with her personality. However, fear of scandal, as well as manoeuvres and menaces from her father, induced Gertrude to lie to her interviewers in order to enter the convent of Monza, where she was received as la Signora (""the lady""). Later, she fell under the spell of a young man of no scruples, associated with the worst baron of that time, the Innominato (the Unnamed). Renzo arrives in famine-stricken Milan and goes to the monastery, but the friar he is seeking is absent and so he wanders further into the city. A bakery in the Corsia de' Servi, El prestin di scansc (""Bakery of the Crutches""), is destroyed by a mob, who then go to the house of the Commissioner of Supply in order to lynch him. He is saved in the nick of time by Ferrer, the Grand Chancellor, who arrives in a coach and announces he is taking the Commissioner to prison. Renzo becomes prominent as he helps Ferrer make his way through the crowd. After witnessing these scenes, Renzo joins in a lively discussion and reveals views which attract the notice of a police agent in search of a scapegoat. The agent tries to lead Renzo directly to ""the best inn"" (i.e. prison) but Renzo is tired and stops at one nearby where, after being plied with drink, he reveals his full name and address. The next morning, he is awakened by a notary and two bailiffs, who handcuff him and start to take him away. In the street Renzo announces loudly that he is being punished for his heroism the day before and, with the aid of sympathetic onlookers, he effects his escape. Leaving the city by the same gate through which he entered, he sets off for Bergamo, knowing that his cousin Bortolo lives in a village nearby. Once there, he will be beyond the reach of the authorities of Milan (under Spanish domination), as Bergamo is territory of the Most Serene Republic of Venice. At an inn in Gorgonzola, he overhears a conversation which makes it clear to him how much trouble he is in and so he walks all night until he reaches the River Adda. After a short sleep in a hut, he crosses the river at dawn in the boat of a fisherman and makes his way to his cousin's house, where he is welcomed as a silk-weaver under the pseudonym of Antonio Rivolta. The same day, orders for Renzo's arrest reach the town of Lecco, to the delight of Don Rodrigo. News of Renzo's disgrace comes to the convent, but later Lucia is informed that Renzo is safe with his cousin. Their reassurance is short-lived: when they receive no word from Fra Cristoforo for a long time, Agnese travels to Pescarenico, where she learns that he has been ordered by a superior to the town of Rimini. In fact, this has been engineered by Don Rodrigo and Count Attilio, who have leaned on a mutual uncle of the Secret Council, who has leaned on the Father Provincial. Meanwhile, Don Rodrigo has organised a plot to kidnap Lucia from the convent. This involves a great robber baron whose name has not been recorded, and who hence is called l'Innominato, the Unnamed. Gertrude, blackmailed by Egidio, a male neighbour (and acquaintance of l'Innominato) whose attentions she has returned, persuades Lucia to run an errand which will take her outside the convent for a short while. In the street Lucia is seized and bundled into a coach. After a nightmarish journey, Lucia arrives at the castle of the Unnamed, where she is locked in a chamber. The Unnamed is troubled by the sight of her, and spends a horrible night in which memories of his past and the uncertainty of his future almost drive him to suicide. Meanwhile, Lucia spends a similarly restless night, during which she vows to take the veil if she is delivered from her predicament. Towards the morning, on looking out of his window, the Unnamed sees throngs of people walking past. They are going to listen to the famous Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. On impulse, the Unnamed leaves his castle in order to meet this man. This meeting prompts a ""miraculous"" conversion which marks the turning-point of the novel. The Unnamed announces to his men that his reign of terror is over. He decides to take Lucia back to her native land under his own protection, and with the help of the archbishop the deed is done. The astonishing course of events leads to an atmosphere in which Don Rodrigo can be defied openly and his fortunes take a turn for the worse. Don Abbondio is reprimanded by the archbishop. Lucia, miserable about her vow to renounce Renzo, still frets about him. He is now the subject of diplomatic conflict between Milan and Bergamo. Her life is not improved when a wealthy busybody, Donna Prassede, insists on taking her into her household and admonishing her for getting mixed up with a good-for-nothing like Renzo. The government of Milan is unable to keep bread prices down by decree and the city is swamped by beggars. The lazzaretto is filled with the hungry and sick. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War brings more calamities. In September 1629, German armies under Count Rambaldo di Collalto descend on Italy, looting and destroying. Agnese, Don Abbondio and Perpetua take refuge in the well-defended territory of the Unnamed. In their absence, their village is wrecked by the mercenaries. These chapters are occupied with an account of the plague of 1630, largely based on Giuseppe Ripamonti's De peste quae fuit anno 1630 (published in 1640). Manzoni's full version of this, Storia della Colonna Infame, was finished in 1829, but was not published until it was included as an appendix to the revised edition of 1842. The end of August 1630 sees the death in Milan of the original villains of the story. Renzo, troubled by Agnese's letters and recovering from plague, returns to his native village to find that many of the inhabitants are dead and that his house and vineyard have been destroyed. The warrant, and Don Rodrigo, are forgotten. Tonio tells him that Lucia is in Milan. On his arrival in Milan, Renzo is astonished at the state of the city. His highland clothes invite suspicion that he is an ""anointer""; that is, a foreign agent deliberately spreading plague in some way. He learns that Lucia is now languishing at the lazzaretto, along with 16,000 other victims of the plague. But in fact, Lucia is already recuperating. Renzo and Lucia are reunited by Fra Cristoforo, but only after Renzo first visits and forgives the dying Don Rodrigo. The friar absolves her of her vow of celibacy. Renzo walks through a rainstorm to see Agnese at the village of Pasturo. When they all return to their native village, Lucia and Renzo are finally married by Don Abbondio and the couple make a fresh start at a silk-mill at the gates of Bergamo."
1770,The Nest of the Sparrowhawk,history," Set in puritan Kent in 1657, the story focuses on the intrigues of Sir Marmaduke de Chevasse ""as stiff a roundhead as ever upheld my Lord Protector and his Puritantic government"" who is determined to secure the vast fortunes of his lovely ward, Lady Sue, for himself. Sue presents a girlish figure; she is young, alert and vigorous. The charm of her own youth and freshness even means she looks dainty and graceful in clothes that disfigure her elders. She enjoys the adulation which her appearance guarantees, laughing and chattering with the women and teasing the men. She does of course have plenty of admirers, including young Richard Lambert who worships her with protective reverence. Sir Marmaduke who has plans to woo and win Lady Sue disguised as the exiled French Prince of Orléans, resents this faithful espionage and lays a plot to lure young Lambert to a gaming-house in London. Richard knows that gambling is an illicit pastime and that he is breaking the law, but is compelled to take his seat at the table by his employer. Richard is then duped into taking part in a brawl and is summarily arrested leaving the way open for Marmaduke to carry out his cowardly deception and he soon tricks Sue into marrying him. Sir Marmaduke persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long lost sons and finds the other murdered by the villain. Though set in a completely different kind of background, the plot has some resemblance with the Sherlock Holmes story ""A Case of Identity""."
1771,A Tale of Two Cities,history," Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Lucie Manette travel to Saint Antoine, a suburb of Paris, and meet Monsieur Defarge and Madame Defarge. The Defarges operate a wine shop they use to lead a clandestine band of revolutionaries; they refer to each other by the codename ""Jacques,"" which Charles Dickens drew from the Jacobins, an actual French revolutionary group. Monsieur Defarge was Doctor Manette's servant before his incarceration, and now takes care of him, so he takes them to see the doctor. Because of his long imprisonment, Doctor Manette entered a form of psychosis and has become obsessed with making shoes, a trade he had learned while in prison. At first, he does not recognise his daughter; but he eventually compares her long golden hair with her mother's, a strand of which he found on his sleeve when he was incarcerated and kept, and notices their identical blue eye colour. Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette then take him back to England. Five years later, two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, are trying to frame French émigré Charles Darnay for their own gain; and Darnay is on trial for treason at the Old Bailey. They claim, falsely, that Darnay gave information about British troops in North America to the French. Darnay is acquitted, however, when a witness who claims he would be able to recognise Darnay anywhere is unable to tell Darnay apart from a barrister present in court, Sydney Carton, who looks almost identical to him. In Paris, a wheel on the despised Marquis St. Evrémonde's carriage hits and kills the baby of a peasant, Gaspard. The Marquis throws a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss. Defarge, a witness to the incident, comforts Gaspard. As the Marquis's coach drives off, the coin thrown to Gaspard is thrown back into the coach by an unknown hand, probably that of Madame Defarge, enraging the Marquis. Arriving at his château, the Marquis meets with his nephew and heir, Darnay. (Out of disgust with his family, Darnay shed his real surname and adopted an Anglicised version of his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais.) The following scene demonstrates the differences between Darnay's personality and his uncle's: Darnay has sympathy for the peasantry, while the Marquis is cruel and heartless: ""Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,"" observed the Marquis, ""will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,"" looking up to it, ""shuts out the sky."" That night, Gaspard, who followed the Marquis to his château by riding on the underside of the carriage, stabs and kills the Marquis in his sleep. He leaves a note on the knife saying, &#34;Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES.&#34; After nine months on the run, he is caught, and hanged above the village&#39;s fountain, poisoning its water, which angers the peasants greatly. In London, Darnay gets Dr. Manette&#39;s permission to wed Lucie; but Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she will not love him in return, Carton promises to &#34;embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you&#34;. On the morning of the marriage, Darnay reveals his real name and who his family is, a detail which Dr. Manette had asked him to withhold until then. This unhinges Dr. Manette, who reverts to his obsessive shoemaking. His sanity is restored before Lucie returns from her honeymoon and the whole incident kept secret from her. To prevent a further relapse, Lorry and Miss Pross destroy the shoemaking bench and tools, which Dr. Manette had brought with him from Paris. It is 14 July 1789. The Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille. Defarge enters Dr. Manette&#39;s former cell, &#34;One Hundred and Five, North Tower&#34;. The reader does not know what Monsieur Defarge is searching for until Book 3, Chapter 9. It is a statement in which Dr. Manette explains why he was imprisoned. As time passes in England, Lucie and Charles begin to raise a family, a son (who dies in childhood) and a daughter, little Lucie. The perennial bachelor Lorry, who believes that such things are beyond &#34;a man of business&#34;, finds a second home and a sort of family with the Darnays. Stryver, who once had intentions to marry Lucie, marries a rich widow with three children and becomes even more insufferable as his ambitions begin to be realised. Carton, even though he seldom visits, is accepted as a close friend of the family and becomes a special favourite of little Lucie. Darnay, being called by a former servant who has been unjustly imprisoned, decides to come back to France to free him. But shortly after his arrival, he is denounced for being an emigrated aristocrat from France and imprisoned in La Force Prison in Paris. Dr. Manette and Lucie—along with Miss Pross, Jerry Cruncher, and &#34;Little Lucie&#34;, the daughter of Charles and Lucie Darnay—come to Paris and meet Mr. Lorry to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass, and Darnay is finally tried. Dr. Manette, who is seen as a hero for his imprisonment in the hated Bastille, is able to have him released; but, that same evening, Darnay is again arrested. He is put on trial again the following day, under new charges brought by the Defarges and one &#34;unnamed other&#34;. We soon discover that this &#34;other&#34; is Dr. Manette, through his own account of his imprisonment. Manette did not know that his statement had been found and is horrified when his words are used to condemn Darnay. On an errand, Miss Pross is amazed to see her long-lost brother, Solomon Pross; but Solomon does not want to be recognised. Sydney Carton suddenly steps forward from the shadows much as he had done after Darnay&#39;s first trial in London and identifies Solomon Pross as John Barsad, one of the men who tried to frame Darnay for treason at the Old Bailey trial. Carton threatens to reveal Solomon&#39;s identity as a Briton and an opportunist who spies for the French or the British as it suits him. If this were revealed, Solomon would surely be executed, so Carton&#39;s hand is strong. Darnay is confronted at the tribunal by Monsieur Defarge, who identifies Darnay as the Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads the letter Dr. Manette had hidden in his cell in the Bastille. Defarge can identify Darnay as Evrémonde because Barsad told him Darnay&#39;s identity when Barsad was fishing for information at the Defarges&#39; wine shop in Book 2, Chapter 16. The letter describes how Dr. Manette was locked away in the Bastille by Darnay&#39;s father and his uncle for trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. Darnay&#39;s uncle had become infatuated with a girl, whom he had kidnapped and raped. Despite Dr. Manette&#39;s attempts to save her, she died. The uncle then killed her husband by working him to death. Before he died defending the family honour, the brother of the raped peasant had hidden the last member of the family, his younger sister. The letter also reveals that Dr. Manette was imprisoned because the Evrémonde brothers discovered that they could not bribe him to keep quiet. The paper concludes by condemning the Evrémondes, &#34;them and their descendants, to the last of their race&#34;. Dr. Manette is horrified, but his protests are ignored—he is not allowed to take back his condemnation. Darnay is sent to the Conciergerie and sentenced to be guillotined the next day. Carton wanders into the Defarges&#39; wine shop, where he overhears Madame Defarge talking about her plans to have the rest of Darnay&#39;s family (Lucie and &#34;Little Lucie&#34;) condemned. Carton discovers that Madame Defarge was the surviving sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes. The only plot detail that might give one any sympathy for Madame Defarge is the loss of her family and that she has no (family) name. Defarge is her married name, and Dr. Manette does not know her family name, though he asked her dying sister for it. At night, when Dr. Manette returns shattered after spending the day in many failed attempts to save Charles&#39; life, he has reverted to his obsessive search for his shoemaking implements. Carton urges Lorry to flee Paris with Lucie, her father, and Little Lucie, &#34;as soon as his, i.e Carton&#39;s place in the coach is filled&#34;. That same morning, Carton visits Darnay in prison. Carton drugs Darnay, and Barsad (whom Carton is blackmailing) has Darnay carried out of the prison. Carton has decided to pretend to be Darnay and to be executed in his place. He does this out of love for Lucie, recalling his earlier promise to her. Following Carton&#39;s earlier instructions, Darnay&#39;s family and Lorry flee Paris and France. In their coach is an unconscious man who carries Carton&#39;s identification papers, but is actually Darnay. Meanwhile, Madame Defarge, armed with a pistol, goes to the residence of Lucie&#39;s family, hoping to catch them mourning for Darnay, since it was illegal to mourn an enemy of the Republic; however, Lucie and Little Lucie, Dr. Manette, and Mr. Lorry are already gone. To give them time to escape, Miss Pross confronts Madame Defarge and they struggle. Pross speaks only English and Defarge speaks only French, so neither can understand what the other is saying but each instinctively understands the other&#39;s intentions. In the struggle, Madame Defarge&#39;s pistol goes off, killing her; the noise of the shot and the shock of Madame Defarge&#39;s death cause Miss Pross to go permanently deaf. The novel concludes with the guillotining of Sydney Carton. As he is waiting to board the tumbril, he is approached by a seamstress, also condemned to death, who mistakes him for Darnay but, upon getting close, realises the truth. Awed by his unselfish courage and sacrifice, she asks to stay close to him and he agrees. Upon their arrival at the guillotine, she and Carton are the last two and Carton comforts her, telling her that their ends will be quick but that there is no Time or Trouble &#34;in the better land where ... [they] will be mercifully sheltered&#34;, and she is able to meet her death in peace. Carton&#39;s unspoken last thoughts are prophetic: ""I see Barsad, ... Defarge, The Vengeance [a lieutenant of Madame Defarge], ... long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. &#34;I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man [Mr. Lorry], so long their friend, in ten years&#39; time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. ""I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both. &#34;I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day&#39;s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice. ""It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."" Lucie and Darnay have a first son earlier in the book who is born and dies within a single paragraph; it seems likely that this first son appears in the novel so that their later son, named after Carton, can represent another way in which Carton restores Lucie and Darnay through his sacrifice."
1772,Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas,history, ~Plot outline description~ --> <!--
1773,Scandal At High Chimneys,history," Clive Strickland, lawyer and author, was to discover a bewildering and terrifying slice of Victorian life when his friend Victor Damon asked him to visit the family estate. The Damon family home, a huge and formidable mansion, plays host to a multitude of characters. Strange things happen at the Damons': a ghost like figure threatens; Matthew Damon gets murdered under impossible circumstances and it take the brilliance of Jonathan Whicher to solve the tangled puzzle."
1774,The Birthday Boys,history," Five first-person narratives give different perspectives on the voyage: Petty Officer Taff Evans; the ship's scholar, medic, and biologist Dr. Edward Wilson; Robert Falcon Scott; Lieutenant Henry Bowers; and Captain Lawrence Oates each give their account of the hardships, the problems, and finally the failure of their endeavour: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen beats them to the South Pole by a month."
1775,The Golden Age,history," The action centers around President Roosevelt's maneuvers to get the United States into World War II while keeping his 1940 campaign pledge to America voters that ""No sons of yours will ever fight in a foreign war, unless attacked."" Vidal makes the case that 1) the U.S had backed Japan into a corner with the oil and trade embargo, as well as massive aid to China and unconditional demands Japan could never accept; 2) the U.S. provoked Japan into attacking; and 3) the U.S. had broken Japan's military codes and knew of Japan's pending attack, but intentionally withheld warning Pearl Harbor. This was to arouse the U.S. populace and bring the United States into the war, so the U.S could take its place as the post-war dominant superpower. The novel also covers some of the American artistic and cultural scene after the war, with attention given to John La Touche, Dawn Powell, Tennessee Williams, and postwar Hollywood."
1776,Tomb of the Golden Bird,history," Howard Carter returns as a featured character, as the Emersons are privy to his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamon."
1777,The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,history," The novel opens with a brief prologue set in 1957 in which the narrator, an Italian Jew, describes a visit to the Ferrara cemetery where the Finzi-Contini family mausoleum stands, empty in all but two slots: a young child, Guido, who died of illness before the narrator was born; and Alberto, the son of the Finzi-Continis and a friend of the narrator's, who died of lymphogranulomatosis (Hodgkin’s disease) before the mass deportation that sent the remainder of the family to a concentration camp in Germany. At this point, the narrator reveals that none of the Finzi-Continis survived. The first part of the book covers the narrator's childhood experiences, describing the various social circles of the local Jewish population and the mystery around the Finzi-Contini children, Alberto and Micòl, who were schooled separately from the other Jewish children and who only appeared at the main school for the annual exams. The narrator fails his math test in this particular year, the first time he has failed any of the annual exams required for promotion, and he takes off on his bike out of fear of his father's reaction. He ends up outside the walls of the Finzi-Continis' mansion, where he has a conversation with Micòl, the Finzi-Continis' pretty daughter. The narrator is invited by Micòl to enter the garden. He excuses himself out of concern for the safety of his bicycle. She then comes over the wall to show him a safe hiding place, but while hiding his bike he dallies in contemplation of Micòl - and loses his chance to see the garden until years later. The next two parts of the book cover the years when the children are all in or just out of college. The racial laws have restricted their ability to socialize with the Ferrarese Christians, and so the narrator, Alberto, Micòl, and Giampi Malnate (an older Christian friend with socialist views) form an informal tennis club of their own, playing several times a week at the court in the Finzi-Continis' garden. During these visits, the narrator declares, shyly at first but more and more forcefully, his love for Micòl. However, her attitude towards the narrator remains one of friendship so that the relationship slowly peters out. The final section of the book covers the slow fading of the narrator's involvement in the tennis club, his futile attempts to restart the romance with Micòl, and his growing friendship with Malnate whom he suspects at the end of the book of having an affair with Micòl."
1778,Flashman and the Angel of the Lord,history," At the start of the novel, Flashman leaves Calcutta before the wrath of a cuckolded husband can find him. He proceeds to South Africa, where by a chance meeting he reunites with John Charity Spring (whom he had worked for as a slaver in Flash for Freedom! and seen shanghaied in Flashman and the Redskins). Spring uses his daughter, Miranda, and her feminine wiles to have Flashman drugged and sent to the United States, where charges against his old aliases still exist. Flashman manages to avoid the authorities, but Crixus (one of the chiefs of the Underground Railroad from Flash for Freedom!) finds him and tries to convince him to join John Brown's attempt to start a slave rebellion. One of Crixus' followers, a black man named Joe Simmons, actually works for the Kuklos, a possible forerunner of the Ku Klux Klan. They also want Flashman to help Brown, but in order to start a civil war. One last doublecross exists: the wife of the leader of the Kuklos works for Allan Pinkerton, who brings Flashman to meet William H. Seward. Seward, considered by many at that time to be the next President of the United States, also wants Flashman to join with Brown, but to slow him down and prevent the raid into the South from ever happening, and therefore prevent civil war. Of course Flashman fails at this, and he becomes an eyewitness to the whole event."
1779,The Black Dwarf,history," As Hobbie Elliot was returning over a wild moor from a day's sport, thinking of the legends he had heard of its supernatural occupants after nightfall, he was overtaken by Patrick Earnscliff, whose father had been killed in a quarrel with the laird of Ellislaw, Richard Vere. The moon suddenly revealed the figure of a human dwarf, who, on being spoken to, refused their offers of assistance, and bid them begone. Having invited Earnscliff to sup with his womenfolks, and pass the night at his farm, Hobbie accompanied him next morning to confront the strange being by daylight; and having assisted him in collecting stones for constructing a hut, they supplied him with food and other necessaries. In a short time he had completed his dwelling, and became known to the neighbours, for whose ailments he prescribed, as Elshender the Recluse. Being visited by Isabel Vere and two of her friends, he told their fortunes, and he gave her a rose, with strict injunctions to bring it to him in her hour of adversity. As they rode homewards, their conversation implied that she loved young Patrick Earnscliff, but that Mr Vere intended her to marry Sir Frederick Langley. Another of the dwarf's visitors was Willie Graeme of Westburnflat, on his way to avenge an affront he had received from Hobbie Elliot, whose dog the next day killed one of the dwarf's goats, for which he warned him that retribution was at hand. Shortly afterwards, Willie Graeme brought word that he and his companions had fired Hobbie's farm, and carried off his sweetheart, Grace Armstrong, and some cattle. On hearing this Elshie despatched him with an order for some money, and insisted that Grace should be given up uninjured. Having dispersed his neighbours in search of her, Hobbie Elliot went to consult Elshie, who handed him a bag of gold, which he declined, and intimated that he must seek her whom he had lost ""in the west."" Earnscliff and his party had tracked the cattle as far as the English border, but on finding a large Jacobite force assembling there they returned, and it was decided to attack Westburnflat's stronghold. On approaching it, a female hand, which her lover swore was Grace's, waved a signal to them from a turret, and as they were preparing a bonfire to force the door, Graeme agreed to release his prisoner, who proved to be Isabel Vere. On reaching home, however, Elliot found that Grace had been brought back, and at dawn he started off to accept the money which the dwarf had offered him to repair his homestead. Isabel had been seized by ruffians while walking with her father, who appeared overcome with grief, and under the impression that Earnscliff was the offender; whereas Mr Ratcliffe, who managed his affairs, suggested that Sir Frederick had stronger motives for placing her under restraint. Mr Vere's suspicion seemed justified by their meeting his daughter returning under her lover's care; but she confirmed his version of the circumstances under which he had intervened, to the evident discomfiture of his rival and her father. At a large gathering, the same day, of the Pretender's adherents in the hall of Ellieslaw Castle, Ralph Mareschal produced a letter which dissipated all their hopes, and Sir Frederick insisted that his marriage with Isabel should take place before midnight. She had consented, on her father's representation that his life would be forfeited if she refused, when Mr Ratcliffe persuaded her to make use of the token which Elshie had given her, and escorted her to his dwelling. He promised that at the foot of the altar he would redeem her; and, just as the ceremony was commencing in the chapel, a voice, which seemed to proceed from her mother's tomb, uttered the word ""Forbear."" The dwarf's real name and rank were then revealed, as well as the circumstances under which he had acquired the power of thus interfering on Isabel's behalf, while Hobbie and his friends supported Mr Ratcliffe in dispersing the would-be rebels. Sir Edward at the same time disappeared from the neighbourhood, and Mr Vere retired, with an ample allowance, to the Continent, all the Ellieslaw property, as well as the baronet's, being settled on Earnscliff and his bride Isabel. Sir Frederick Langley was a few years afterwards executed at Preston, and Westburnflat earned a commission in Marlborough's army by his services in providing cattle for the commissariat."
1780,The Devil's Arithmetic,history," Hannah Stern is a young jewish girl living in the present day. She is bored by her relative's stories about the past and not looking forward to the Passover Seder and is tired of her religion while at it She says she is tired of remembering. When Hannah symbolically opens the door for the prophet Elijah, she is transported back in time to 1941 in Poland of World War II. At that time and place, the people believe she is Chaya Abramowicz, who is recovering from cholera, the fever that killed Chaya's parents a few months ago. The strange remarks Hannah/Chaya makes about the future and her inability to recognize her ""aunt"" Gitl and ""uncle"" Shmuel are blamed on the fever. At her uncle's wedding, the Nazis come to transport the entire population of the village to a concentration camp near Donavin, and only Hannah knows all the terrors that they will face: starvation, mistreatment, forced labor, and finally execution. She struggles to survive at the camp, with the help of a girl named Rivka. At the concentration camp, Aunt Gitl, Hannah, Uncle Shmuel, and some other men try to escape. The men are caught and are shot in front of the inmates, except for Gitl and Hannah who return to their barracks and Yitzchak who escapes. Fayge, Shmuel's girlfriend, is also killed because she runs to Shmuel when he is about to be shot. Later, when Hannah and the girls from Viosk are talking, while waiting for water, they are caught by a new Nazi soldier, who sends Esther, Shifre, and Rivka to the gas ovens. As Rivka is about to leave, Hannah takes Rivka's place and tells her to run, since the guard doesn't know their faces. Then, after she walks into ""Lilith's Cave"" to be gassed, she is transported back to her family's Seder. She notices Aunt Eva's number was the same as Rivka's, and while recounting her experience to her aunt, the aunt reveals that when she was in the concentration camps, she was called Rivka (and her brother was called Wolfe, which was Grandpa Will) and was saved by a girl named Chaya Abramowicz while in a consentration camp."
1781,China Sky,history," Dr. Gray Thomison grew up the only son of a wealthy American family and chose to build a hospital in Chen-li, where he is the resident doctor in charge. Dr. Sara Durand is a 28-year-old American from rural Kansas in charge of the women's ward. She was brought to the hospital two years before the novel begins. Sara and Gray both speak Chinese and English. They are very committed to helping their patients, and they admire the Chinese people and their culture. Sara and Gray have worked closely together; Sara is in love with Gray but she has not told him. The story opens during an air raid. Sara and Siu-mei, a young Chinese intern, evacuate patients and babies from the women's hospital. Sara is in charge of the hospital while Gray is away fund-raising in America. Sara stays in the women's ward with the terminal patients and those who cannot be moved, while Dr. Chung, a young Chinese doctor just out of American medical school, tends patients in the men's ward. A cable from Gray tells Sara that he is bringing his new wife to Chen-li. Sara fixes up the bungalow near the hospital for the couple. Before they arrive, Chen-ta, the leader of the local guerrillas, brings Yasuda, an injured Japanese prisoner, to the hospital. He does not trust the Chinese to keep him alive. He asks Sara to operate on him and care for him. Dr. Chung assists and gives blood for Yasuda. There is an air raid the night that Gray's wife, Louise, arrives. Gray takes her to safety in the caves, then returns to the hospital to tend the male patients. She is angry and terrified. Dr Chung and Yasuda both speak to her in English. Louise is in love with Gray, but petulant and angry to be living amidst Chinese people and Japanese bombing. She does not speak Chinese and does not like the Chinese people. She wishes to return to America with Gray. Gray's cook-boy, Siao Fah, does not respect Louise and spies on her. Louise makes friends with some English-speaking men from nearby Treaty Port, including Harry Delafield, an English businessman. Dr. Chung believes the Japanese will win the war, so he makes friends with Yasuda. Yasuda promises to make Chung governor of the province after the Japanese victory. Chung enlists his younger brother, Chung Third, to join Chen-ta's guerrillas to gather information for the Japanese. Chung convinces Louise to assist him in helping Yasuda send messages to the Japanese by writing letters in English to a man named Delafield. These messages stop the hospital from being bombed. Chung gives Yasuda a poison to make him appear sick and unable to be released back to Chen-ta. Siu-mei and Dr. Chung begin courting. He is attracted mainly by her wealthy family, but she falls in love. Chung brings letters to Louise for her to sign and mail. Siao Fah intercepts one letter, gives it to Sara, who gives it to Gray. Gray and Sara question whether Louise is being faithful to Gray, but nobody mentions the letter itself to Louise. Chen-ta's guerrillas begin losing battles. The citizens of Chen-li stop coming to the hospital because it is not suffering the same fate as the rest of the town. Sara and Gray are committed to helping the people and do not know what is going wrong. Siu-mei's father and five other elders from Chen-li visit Chen-ta in his hide-out. With the guerrillas losing, the elders are worried for the safety of Chen-li. Chen-ta begins to suspect Chung Third of spying, and he also lets Siu-mei's father know that he is interested in his daughter. One night, Sara discovers Dr. Chung and Yasuda discussing a map. Yasuda appears healthy. That same night, Ya-ching, a nurse in love with Chung, is spurned by him when she becomes pregnant by him. Ya-ching plans her revenge when she discovers that Chung is keeping the Japanese prisoner in the hospital by administering poison pills. She intercepts a message from Chung Third to Dr. Chung, but she does not tell anyone. She makes harmless substitute pills and gives them to Yasuda one night, then tells Siu-mei that Chung was poisoning Yasuda and using Chung Third to gather information about the guerrillas. Ya-ching witnesses Yasuda murder Dr. Chung, then drowns while returning to her own village. Nobody learns that Yasuda murdered Chung; Yasuda threw the body out a window to make it look like suicide. Louise discovers Chung's body. Gray and Siu-mei see a healthy Yasuda. Gray learns from Yasuda that Dr. Chung and Louise are passing information to the enemy. Yasuda promises Gray Japanese support in exchange for safety. Siu-mei and her father travel to tell Chen-ta about Dr. Chung's treachery. Chen-ta has Chung Third killed, then he goes to the hospital to collect his prisoner. Gray sends Louise back to America and goes on working with Sara, whom he now knows he loves. The Japanese resume bombing the hospital."
1782,A Legend of Montrose,history," The story takes place during the Earl of Montrose's 1644-5 Highland campaign on behalf of King Charles I against the Covenanters who had sided with the English Parliament in the English Civil War. The main plot concerns a love triangle between Allan M'Aulay, his friend the Earl of Menteith, and Annot Lyle. Annot is a young woman who has been brought up by the M'Aulays since being captured as a girl during a blood feud against the MacEagh clan (also known as the Children of the Mist). M'Aulay and Menteith are both members of Montrose's army. Annot eventually marries Menteith after it is discovered that she has aristocratic blood, and was kidnapped by the MacEaghs as a baby. This leads to the jealous M'Aulay stabbing Menteith and then fleeing Montrose's army. Menteith survives whilst M'Aulay disappears and is rumoured to have been killed by the MacEaghs. Much of the novel is taken up with a subplot involving an expedition into enemy territory by Dugald Dalgetty, an experienced mercenary fighting for Montrose. Dalgetty does not fight out of political or religious conviction, but purely for the love of carnage. However, he is very professional, and remains loyal to an employer to the end of his contract. He gained his experience fighting for various armies during the Thirty Years' War, then still raging in Germany. Note: He did not fight all thirty years. Dalgetty is regarded as one of Scott's finest comic characters, however he dominates so much of the story that the main plot is not really developed in detail."
1783,Den mörka sanningen,history," Scene of the novel is Norway in year 1911. Nineteen-year-old shopkeepersdaughter Cornelia Weding has lived with a terrifying and inexplicable memory since the age of five. She has tried to deny it, but it comes back recurrently into her mind in the shape of feelings, words and nightmares. In the memory fragments she wambers as a child alone in the hard of night-time and dark forest and searching for something or the enormous and frightening figures in the black capes stays round her baby bed and threaten to kill her if she would remember. As her missfortune her loved childhood friend will get married to her beautiful and evil cousin. When she takes a trip to their weddings her stepmother's childhood home, she realizes that she has returned to the place where the dark mystery happened fourteen years ago... :Characters: * Cornelia Weding, the principal character. Nineteen-year-old shopkeepersdaughter, who lives with her traumatic memory. Has light strawberry red hair, childish face and surprise of the all world in her wise eyes. * Anna Weding, 24 years old, Cornelia's elder sister. Has the darker hair and skin than Cornelia. Brave, straightforward and outspoken. Her and a lieutenant Sofus Hallgren are seeing each other. * Pontus Weding, 26 years old, Cornelia's and Anna's elder brother. Pontus has grew up the lamppost, very long and inflexible man. He studies. * Jon, 29 years old, a neighbour boy from childhood of Cornelia and her secret love, who will get married to Cornelia's cousin Missy. Studies farming far away from home. * Lars, 26 years old, Jon's younger brother. Silent, interested in cars and has one. * Mari-Lise, called ""Missy"", 26 years old, a cat woman, the Cornelia's and Anna's and Pontus' cousin. However, she's not a relative of theirs, because she is the niece of brother's and sister's stepmother. Beautiful and evil seduceress; has thick and copper red hair. She hates Cornelia. * Sofus Hallgren, lieutenant, Anna's dearly loved. Visits often in the shore owned by Cornelia's father. * Christoffer Weding, shopkeeper and Cornelia's, Anna's, Pontus' and two little children's father. The sensible and understanding man. * Matilda Weding is his wife, but three eldest siblings of the committee of five children flock isn't her, because their mother died when Cornelia was born. Matilda is a nagging, silly and vain woman, who favours just her own relatives (especially her niece Missy). She thinks that her family is the better people complete to Wedings because of their noble birth (her grandmother was a noblewoman). * Hans and Grethe, Matilda's and Christoffer's two little children. Don't play great role in the novel; they are only sweet and laborious, final turns in the family. * Agnes, Matilda's sister and Missy's mother who has cold, ice blue eyes. She is married with the rich and imposing Knut Jörgen. Agnes' personality is quite similar to her sister's. * Knut Jörgen, the rich and imposing, authority figure in the family, who get married with Agnes after that her former husband went missing. Even though he looks externally a firm and decisive man, he yields without difficulty to his wife's complaining and spoils too much his vain half daughter. * Grandmother, who hasn't a proper noun in the novel. She wears an old-fashioned black dress, haughty and dignifieldly behaving old lady who doesn't consider her daughter's husband candidates by fair means if they don't come from enough noble estate. However, she has a heart under her hard exterior and has more sense than her silly daughters has altogether. * Alfred Pettersen, the Agnes' former husband and Missy's father. The grandmother didn't like him. A pretty rascal, and no-one has ever heard about him since he escaped with circus ballerina many years ago. sv:Den mörka sanningen"
1784,Schindler's Ark,history," This novel tells the story of Oskar Schindler, self-made entrepreneur and bon viveur who almost by default found himself saving Polish Jews from the Nazi death machine. Based on numerous eyewitness accounts, Keneally's story is unbearably moving but never melodramatic, a testament to the almost unimaginable horrors of Hitler's attempts to make Europe judenfrei, or free of Jews. What distinguishes Schindler in Keneally's version is not, superficially, kindness or idealism, but a certain gusto. He is a flawed hero; he is not ""without sin"". He is a drinker, a womaniser and, at first, a profiteer. After the war, he is commemorated as Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, but he is never seen as a conventionally virtuous character. The story is not only Schindler's. It is the story of Kraków's dying ghetto and the forced labor camp outside of town, at Plaszów. It is the story of Amon Goeth, Plaszów's commandant. His wife Emilie remarked in a German TV interview that Schindler did nothing remarkable before the war and nothing after it. ""He was fortunate therefore that in the short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who had summoned forth his deeper talents."" After the war, his business ventures fail, he separates from his wife, and he ends up living a shabby life in a small flat in Frankfurt. Eventually he arranged to live part of the year in Israel, supported by his Jewish friends, and part of the year as a sort of internal émigré in Frankfurt, where he was often hissed at in the streets as a traitor to his ""race"". After 29 unexceptional postwar years he died in 1974. He was buried in Jerusalem as he wished with the help of his old friend Pfefferberg."
1785,Sharpe's Fortress,history," It is 1803 and Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army is closing on the retreating Mahrattas in western India. Marching with the British is Ensign Richard Sharpe, newly made into an officer and wishing he had stayed a sergeant. Spurned by his new regiment, he is sent to the army’s baggage train and there finds corruption, romance, treason and enemies old and new. Sergeant Hakeswill wants Sharpe dead, and Hakeswill has powerful friends while Sharpe has only an orphaned Arab boy as his ally. And waiting with the cornered Mahrattas is another enemy, the renegade Englishman, William Dodd, who does not envisage defeat, but only a glorious triumph. For the Mahrattas have taken refuge in Gawilghur, the greatest stronghold of India, perched high on its cliffs above the Deccan Plain. Who rules in Gawilghur, it is said, rules India, and Dodd knows that the fortress is impregnable. There, behind its double walls, in the towering twin forts, Sharpe must face his enemies in what will prove to be Wellesley’s last battle on Indian soil."
1786,Deeds of the Disturber,history," Immediately after their adventure in Lion in the Valley, the Emersons return home to England for the summer of 1896, as is their custom. Upon their arrival, Amelia finds that her despised brother James wants to dump his two children, Percy and Violet, on the Emersons for the summer. Amelia accepts, if only to instill some higher principles in the obviously spoiled children. Kevin O'Connell enters the story as he reports on a supposed curse on a mummy in the British Museum. He's competing against a fellow journalist, M. Minton, who always seems to ""scoop"" him, and he pesters the Emersons for their knowledge and expertise on Egyptology and detection. Imagine Amelia's surprise when M. Minton turns out to be a young woman! Meanwhile, Ramses and Percy hate each other on sight, Violet turns out to be an empty-headed doll who overeats and throws temper tantrums, and Ramses' belongings keep mysteriously ending up in Percy's possession. The mummy ""mystery"" begins to take on more sinister portent as a masked figure stalks the Museum, a woman from Emerson's past turns up as the owner of an opium den, and the Emersons (including Ramses) are subjected to the usual attempts at injury and kidnapping. Eventually, Amelia, Emerson, and Inspector Cuff of Scotland Yard find themselves trapped in a cellar which is about to be flooded, with no backup and only Amelia's corset to save them..."
1787,Warrior Scarlet,history," In Britain during the Bronze Age (about 900 BC) a young boy, Drem by name, dreams of becoming a warrior. He has first to overcome the fact he has a crippled arm and pass the tribe's test of manhood. This test is killing a wolf, on his own. Should he fail, he will be doomed to farm sheep for the rest of his life. When his friend and blood brother, named Vortrix watches him nearly die on his wolf slaying attempt, he cannot help himself but intervene. He attacks the wolf, meaning that the kill is void, as Vortrix has had a hand in the killing. Although Drem is badly injured by the wolf, he survives. Apparently Drem will never be a warrior, nor wear the scarlet cloth reserved only for warriors. He contemplates suicide, rather than face the shame of telling his family that he has failed. However, he goes to the sheep, and lives for a year with his friend Doli, a farmer. However the next winter, he kills his first wolf as it attacks the sheep flock. It bites him in the same place, removing his old scars, so removing the record of the old failed slaying. As the mark of his first attempt is still visible on the wolf, it is accepted as a legitimate kill. He is allowed to become a warrior, and passed through the terrifying initiation ceremony, which apparently involves all the candidates being knocked out."
1788,The Witch of Blackbird Pond,history," In April 1687, 16-year-old Katherine Tyler (known throughout the story as Kit Tyler) leaves her home in Barbados after her grandfather's death and goes to Wethersfield, Connecticut to live with her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matthew in their Puritan community. On the way to her new home, there is a brief stop in Saybrook, a small town just down river from Wethersfield, and four new passengers board the Dolphin, the ship on which Kit is traveling. As the small rowboat returns to the ship, a small girl named Prudence accidentally drops her doll in the water and begs her mother to get it back for her. Her mother, Goodwife Cruff, harshly strikes Prudence and tells her not to be foolish. Impulsively, Kit jumps into the water and retrieves the doll. When she returns to the rowboat, she is met with astonished suspicion as few people in Connecticut could swim so well. Goodwife Cruff is the most cynical of them all, believing Kit is a witch, saying, ""No respectable woman could stay afloat like that."" But Kit knew how to swim because she lived in the islands. On the slow trip upriver, Kit befriends John Holbrook, another passenger coming to Wethersfield to study with Reverend Gershom Bulkeley. After the Dolphin reaches Wethersfield, Kit admits to the captain of the ship that neither her aunt nor uncle know she is coming. She says that they would welcome her because she is family. When she arrives in Wethersfield, Kit finds Connecticut very different from Barbados. In her previous home, she had servants but here is expected to work along with the rest of the family. There is none of the luxury to which she was accustomed, and even the weather is miserably cold. She has two cousins, Mercy and Judith. She is required to attend meeting (church) services twice each Sunday, which she finds long and dull. She meets the rich, 19-year old William Ashby, who begins courting her, though she does not care for him; originally, herchurch, Kit cousin Judith had hoped to marry William, but soon sets her sights on John Holbrook, a divinity student studying with local minister Gershom Bulkeley. Kit's life improves when she and Mercy begin teaching the 'dame school' for the young children of Wethersfield who are preparing for the traditional school. Everything goes well until one day, bored with the normal lessons, Kit decides the children will act out a part from the Bible--the tale of the Good Samaritan. Mr. Eleazer Kimberly, the head of the school, enters the house just as things get out of hand. He is outraged at Kit for having the audacity to act out something from the Bible and shuts down the school. Heartbroken, Kit flees to the meadows where she meets and befriends the kind, elderly woman named Hannah Tupper, who was outlawed from the Massachusetts colony because she is a Quaker, and does not attend Meeting. As outcasts, Kit and Hannah develop a deep relationship, and even after her uncle forbids Kit to continue the friendship, Kit keeps visiting Hannah. During one of her visits, she once again meets the handsome Nathaniel ""Nat"" Eaton, son of the captain of the Dolphin. Without realizing it, she falls in love with him, and though he doesn't say so, Nat loves her as well. Unfortunately, Nat is banished from Wethersfield after setting lighted jack-o-lanterns in the windows of William Ashby's unfinished home with two of his shipmates-he will get 30 lashes if he returns to Wethersfield. Kit also begins secretly teaching Prudence to read and write; Goodwife Cruff claims the child is a halfwit and refuses to allow her to attend the dame school. When a deadly illness sweeps through Wethersfield, a mob gathers to kill Hannah by burning her house, since everyone believes she is a witch who has cursed the town. Kit risks her life to warn Hannah, and the two women escape to the river just as the Dolphin appears from the early morning mist. Kit flags it down, and she explains to Nat the events of the night. Hannah refuses to leave without her cat, so Nat bravely gets it for her. After taking Hannah aboard, he then invites Kit to come with them. She refuses, explaining how Mercy is gravely ill, though Nat believes Kit fears risking her engagement to William Ashby. After the Dolphin sails away, Kit returns home to find that Mercy's fever has broken. In the middle of the same night, the townspeople come for Kit — Adam Cruff, Goodwife Cruff's husband, had accused Kit of being a witch. The next day, after a night in a freezing shed, she is asked to explain the presence of her hornbook in Hannah's house and a copybook with Prudence's name written throughout, as the townspeople fear that she and Hannah had been casting a spell over the girl. Kit refuses to explain that it is Prudence herself who wrote her name in the book, as she does not wish Prudence to get in trouble with her parents. Then, just as the case seemed to be decided, Nat appears with Prudence who testifies that she herself wrote her own name in the hornbook, not Kit. To demonstrate her literacy, Prudence reads a Bible passage and writes her name, thus convincing her father both that she is intelligent and that no witchcraft could be involved, as he points out the devil would be foolish to allow a child to be taught to use the Bible against himself. Judith becomes engaged to William Ashby, who had been courting Kit, and Mercy to John Holbrook, and Kit decides to return to Barbados. However, she soon realizes that she is in love with Nat, and she waits for him to return. Nat returns to Wethersfield with his own ship, the Witch, named for Kit. Nat asks her to come on board the Witch ""for keeps""."
1789,The Loveday Honour,history," Japhet Loveday has been convicted of highway robbery and sent to prison, where he faces deportation to the penal colony of Botany Bay. His wife Gwendolyn races to prove his innocence, but powerful men are working to ensure she will be too late. Meanwhile, Edward Loveday's marriage is stretched to breaking point as he struggles to hold together the shipyard and family estate despite his deteriorating health. He is fighting a losing battle however, and finally dies from the effects of a gunshot wound that never fully healed. St John returns from America on hearing of his father's death. But there are further shocks for him - Meriel, his estranged wife, has returned from London after being discarded by her wealthy lover. Bankrupt and desperately ill from tuberculosis, she seeks to reinstate herself into the Loveday family and become mistress of Trevowan, the family estate."
1790,The Loveday Pride,history," With the death of his father, St John Loveday is finally master of Trevowan. But his success is blighted by the presence of his treacherous wife Meriel who, despite being riddled with pox and consumption, manages to cling on to life long enough to thwart his plans to marry a rich widow from America. Embittered by his failure, St John soon turns to drink and gambling while his hatred towards his brother continues to fester. Adam meanwhile has been putting all his energy into rebuilding the ruined estate of Boscabel, which he intends to create as a rival to Trevowan itself. And on the far side of the world, Gwendolyn races to reach her estranged lover Japhet and give him his pardon. But Japhet has sworn to live an Honorable life, and to return to England with pride. He has made a promise, and pride will not allow him to abandon his obligations. The girl on the front cover is performance artist, Abi Lake."
1791,He Shall Thunder in the Sky,history," The novel takes place in 1914, as Ramses Emerson works undercover to gather intelligence for the British military, Nefret returns from studying medicine in Switzerland, and Percy Peabody returns to wreak revenge on the Emerson family for past events. The Emerson have acquired the firman for part of the Giza concession, but of course are distracted by the criminal element, and eventually by a startling revelation from the Master Criminal, Sethos himself."
1792,The Root Cellar,history," Twelve-year-old Rose Larkin is an orphan whose parents have died when she was only three years old. Rose originally lived with her grandmother. After her grandmother dies, she is sent off to live with relatives in Ontario, Canada. After being miserable about the way her cousins treat her, she flees down into a root cellar. There, Rose is transported back in in time to the 1860's and the American Civil War."
1793,Richard Carvel,history," Foreword The novel opens with a fictitious foreword, a brief note dated 1876, in which the purported editor of the memoirs, Daniel Clapsaddle Carvel, claims that they are just as his grandfather, Richard Carvel, wrote them, all the more realistic for their imperfections. Volume One The first volume concerns Richard Carvel's boyhood and schooldays. Orphaned at an early age, Richard is raised by his grandfather, Lionel Carvel of Carvel Hall, a wealthy loyalist respected by all sections of the community. Richard describes their way of life, his growing love for his neighbor, Dorothy Manners, and the hostility of his uncle, Grafton Carvel. Richard witnesses a demonstration against a tax collector in Annapolis as a result of the Stamp Act 1765 and grieves his grandfather by his adoption of revolutionary political views. Volume Two Mr Allen, Richard's new tutor, tricks him into deceiving his ailing grandfather. Richard is tormented by the coquettishness of Dorothy. At Richard's eighteenth birthday party, he learns that she is to go to England. Volume Three With the third volume, the main action of the novel begins. Through the scheming of Grafton Carvel and Mr Allen, Richard fights a duel with Lord Comyn. He is wounded, but becomes fast friends with the lord. His grandfather learns that his political opinions are unchanged but forgives him, partly through the intercession of Colonel Washington. After his recovery, Richard is attacked on the road and kidnapped. He is taken aboard a pirate ship, the Black Moll. There is a fight with a brigantine, in which the pirate ship sinks. Volume Four In the fourth volume, the protagonist continues to meet with sudden reversals of fortune. Richard is rescued and befriended by the captain of the brigantine, John Paul, who is sailing to Solway. In Scotland, John Paul is shunned, and vows to turn his back on his country. They take a post chaise to London, and in Windsor meet Horace Walpole. In London they are imprisoned in a sponging-house, from where they are rescued by Lord Comyn and Dorothy. Volume Five Volumes five and six are set in London, where the glamor and corruption of fashionable society forms a contrast with the plain and honest values of the emerging republic, embodied in the protagonist. Richard is introduced to London society, where Dorothy is an admired beauty. He makes friends with Charles James Fox and incurs the enmity of the Duke of Chartersea. Richard declares his love to Dorothy but is rejected. Volume Six Richard risks his life in a wager but survives against the odds. He visits the House of Commons, and hears Edmund Burke and Fox speak. At Vauxhall Gardens he is tricked into a duel with the Duke, while Lord Comyn is injured saving him from a second assailant. Later he hears that his grandfather has died, and that his uncle Grafton has inherited the estate, leaving him penniless. Volume Seven Richard returns to America, where he learns his grandfather had believed him dead. Rejecting Grafton's overtures, he accepts a place as Mr Swain's factor, and for the next few years faithfully tends the Swain estate, Gordon's Pride. In 1774, the discontent among the colonists begins to escalate. Volume Eight The final volume sees the dual, interlinked fruition of the two principal aspects of the novel: the political and the romantic. With the coming of war, Richard sets out to fight for his country. He meets John Paul, now calling himself John Paul Jones, and plans to join the nascent American navy. The early years of the war are represented by a summary by Daniel Clapsaddle Carvel, and Richard's narrative resumes at the start of the North Sea action between the Bonhomme Richard, captained by Jones, and the Serapis. Richard is severely wounded, and Jones arranges for him to be nursed by Dorothy. The end of the book sees Richard back in Maryland as master of Carvel Hall, married to his childhood sweetheart."
1794,King Rat,history," The novel opens in early 1945. Peter Marlowe, a young British RAF Flight Lieutenant, has been a P.O.W. since 1942. Marlowe comes to the attention of the ""King"", an American corporal who has become the most successful trader and black marketeer in Changi, when the King sees him conversing in Malay. Marlowe's language skill, intelligence, honesty, and winning personality cause the King to befriend him and attempt to involve him in black market deals. This, in turn, brings Marlowe to the attention of Robin Grey, a British officer and Provost Marshal of the camp, who has developed a Javert-like obsession with the King and hopes to arrest him for violating camp regulations. Grey is attempting to maintain strict military discipline among the prisoners and sees the King as the antithesis of everything he believes. Despite being only an enlisted man and without distinction in civilian life, the King has become a major power in the enclosed society of the P.O.W. camp through his charisma and intelligence. Trading with Korean guards, local Malay villagers, and other prisoners for food, clothing, information, and what few luxuries are available, the King keeps himself and his fellow American prisoners alive. Even senior officers come to him for help in selling their valuables to buy extra food, and other officers are secretly on his payroll. Grey, the son of a working-class family, follows the rules for their own sake using his position as Provost Marshal to gain a status otherwise unavailable to him in British society. Marlowe is initially put off by the King's perspective and behavior, which are at odds with the British upper class ideals he has been taught. He turns down a lucrative business partnership with the King because ""Marlowes aren't tradesmen. It just isn't done, old boy."" But Marlowe soon understands that the King is not the thief and con artist that Grey would have him believe. Rather, the King asks for the best of each man and rewards him accordingly, irrespective of class or position. Through the experiences of Marlowe, the King and other characters, the novel offers a vivid, often disturbing portrayal of men brought to the edge of survival by a brutal environment. The P.O.W.'s are given nothing by the Japanese other than filthy huts to live in and the bare minimum of food needed to prevent starvation. Officers from various parts of Britain's Asian empire, accustomed to having native servants provide them with freshly laundered uniforms daily, are reduced to wearing rags and homemade shoes. For most, the chief concern is obtaining enough food to stay alive from day to day and avoiding disease or injury, since almost no medical care is available. Some are degraded and come close to losing their humanity, while others display courage and compassion beyond anything one would expect. Some literally steal food out the mouths of their comrades, while others give away what they have or take terrible risks to help their friends."
1795,The Silver Branch,history," The story is set in 3rd-century Roman Britain, when Carausius, the military commander, has rebelled against Rome and named himself the emperor of Britain and northern Gaul. After a series of naval victories, he is temporarily recognized by Rome's ruler Maximian. Justin, a shy young army surgeon, is posted to Britain for the first time although his family has been connected with the isle for years. He meets his cousin Flavius there and both become fast friends. Upon overhearing a plot against Carausius by his finance minister Allectus, they try to warn the emperor but are instead reposted to the Northern Wall in disgrace. By luck, they meet Evicatos of the Spear who convinces them that the danger is real. They attempt to race back to warn Carausius but it is already too late by then. Faced with the prospect of capital punishment for desertion, the two cousins go into hiding with the help of a rebel leader. When he is betrayed, the two young men must take over the banner of rebellion and continue his work of protecting and smuggling away people who are disenchanted with Allectus or are in danger from his cruel edicts. Finally, Constantius and his aide Asclepiodotus sail to Britain to attempt to put an end to Allectus' misrule. Flavius and Justin assemble a ragtag group of people prepared to fight on their behalf but are much derided for their shabby appearance. When they are hiding at their Grand-Aunt Honoria's place, they discover the lost eagle standard that was buried by their ancestor, Aquila, and which entitles them to call themselves a Roman legion. Despite their looks, the new 'legion' helps the main Roman force find their way and defends the helpless inhabitants of Calleva from the fighting. In recognition of their help, the cousins are pardoned by Constantius and praised for their efforts. The motifs of the lost eagle standard and dolphin signet ring reoccur in this book."
1796,Creation,history," The story follows the adventures of a fictional ""Cyrus Spitama"", an Achaemenid Persian diplomat of the 5th century BCE who travels the known world comparing the political and religious beliefs of various nation states of the time. Over the course of his life, he meets many influential philosophical figures of his time, including Zoroaster, Socrates, the Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tsu, and Confucius. Cyrus, who is the grandson of Zoroaster and who survives his murder, grows up at the Achaemenid court as a quasi-noble, and becomes a close friend of his schoolmate Xerxes. Because of Cyrus' talent for languages, the Achaemenid King, Darius I, sends him as an ambassador to certain kingdoms in India, but Cyrus is more interested in the many religious theories he encounters there than in establishing profitable trade relations for Darius. After coming to power, Cyrus' former schoolmate, now King Xerxes I, sends Cyrus to China, where he spends several years as a captive and ""honored guest"" in one of the warring states of the Middle Kingdom, and spends a great deal of time with Confucius. Upon returning home, Cyrus witnesses the defeat of Xerxes and the end of the Greco-Persian wars. Cyrus then goes into retirement, but is called upon by Xerxes' successor, Artaxerxes I, to serve as ambassador to Athens and witness to the secret peace treaty between Pericles and himself. The story is related in the first person as recalled to his Greek great-nephew Democritus. Cyrus's recollection is said to be motivated in part by his desire to set the record straight following the publication by Herodotus of an account of the Greco-Persian wars."
1797,Pharaoh,history," Pharaoh begins with one of the more memorable openings in a novel — an opening written in the style of an ancient chronicle: Pharaoh combines features of several literary genres: the historical novel, the political novel, the Bildungsroman, the utopian novel, the sensation novel. It also comprises a number of interbraided strands — including the plot line, Egypt's cycle of seasons, the country's geography and monuments, and ancient Egyptian practices (e.g. mummification rituals and techniques) — each of which rises to prominence at appropriate moments. Much as in an ancient Greek tragedy, the fate of the novel's protagonist, the future ""Ramses XIII,"" is known from the beginning. Prus closes his introduction with the statement that the narrative ""relates to the eleventh century before Christ, when the Twentieth Dynasty fell and when, after the demise of the Son of the Sun the eternally living Ramses XIII, the throne was seized by, and the uraeus came to adorn the brow of, the eternally living Son of the Sun Sem-amen-Herhor, High Priest of Amon."" What the novel will subsequently reveal is the elements that lead to this denouement—the character traits of the principals, the social forces in play. Ancient Egypt at the end of its New Kingdom period is experiencing adversities. The deserts are eroding Egypt's arable land. The country's population has declined from eight to six million. Foreign peoples are entering Egypt in ever-growing numbers, undermining its unity. The chasm between the peasants and craftsmen on one hand, and the ruling classes on the other, is growing, exacerbated by the ruling elites' fondness for luxury and idleness. The country is becoming ever more deeply indebted to Phoenician merchants, as imported goods destroy native industries. The Egyptian priesthood, backbone of the bureaucracy and virtual monopolists of knowledge, have grown immensely wealthy at the expense of the pharaoh and the country. At the same time, Egypt is facing prospective peril at the hands of rising powers to the north — Assyria and Persia. The 22-year-old Egyptian crown prince and viceroy Ramses, having made a careful study of his country and of the challenges that it faces, evolves a strategy that he hopes will arrest the decline of his own political power and of Egypt's internal viability and international standing. Ramses plans to win over or subordinate the priesthood, especially the High Priest of Amon, Herhor; obtain for the country's use the treasures that lie stored in the Labyrinth; and, emulating Ramses the Great's military exploits, wage war on Assyria. Ramses proves himself a brilliant military commander in a victorious lightning war against the invading Libyans. On succeeding to the throne, he encounters the adamant opposition of the priestly hierarchy to his planned reforms. The Egyptian populace is instinctively drawn to Ramses, but he must still win over or crush the priesthood and their adherents. In the course of the political intrigue, Ramses' private life becomes hostage to the conflicting interests of the Phoenicians and the Egyptian high priests. Ramses' ultimate downfall is caused by his underestimation of his opponents and by his impatience with priestly obscurantism. Along with the chaff of the priests' myths and rituals, he has inadvertently discarded a crucial piece of scientific knowledge. Ramses is succeeded to the throne by his arch-enemy Herhor, who paradoxically ends up raising treasure from the Labyrinth to finance the very social reforms that had been planned by Ramses, and whose implementation Herhor and his allies had blocked. But it is too late to arrest the decline of the Egyptian polity and to avert the eventual fall of the Egyptian civilization. The novel closes with a poetic epilogue that reflects Prus' own path through life. The priest Pentuer, who had declined to betray the priesthood and aid Ramses' campaign to reform the Egyptian polity, mourns Ramses, who like the teenage Prus had risked all to save his country. As Pentuer and his mentor, the sage priest Menes, listen to the song of a mendicant priest, Pentuer says:"
1798,Castle Dangerous,history," During the struggle for the Scottish crown between Edward I and Robert Bruce, the stronghold of his adherent Sir James Douglas, known as Castle Dangerous, had been taken by the English, and Lady Augusta had promised her hand and fortune to its new governor, Sir John de Walton, on condition that he held it for a year and a day. Anxious to curtail this period, she determined to make her way thither, accompanied by her father's minstrel, Bertram, disguised as his son, and they were within three miles of their destination, when fatigue compelled them to seek shelter at Tom Dickson's farm. Two English archers, who were quartered there, insisted that the youth (Lady Augusta in disguise) should be left at the neighbouring convent of St Bride's, until Bertram satisfied Sir John as to the object of their journey, and this arrangement was approved of by Sir Aymer de Valance, the deputy governor, who arrived to visit the outpost. As they proceeded together towards the castle, the minstrel entertained the young knight with some curious legends respecting it, including the supernatural preservation of an ancient lay relating to the house of Douglas, and the future fate of the British kingdom generally. De Valance would at once have passed the stranger into the stronghold as a visitor; but the old archer Gilbert Greenleaf detained him in the guard room until the arrival of the governor, who, in the hearing of Fabian, Sir Aymer's squire, expressed his disapproval of his deputy's imprudence, and thus the seeds of disagreement were sown between them. Sir John, however, wished to be indulgent to his young officers, and accordingly arranged a hunting party, in which the Scottish vassals in the neighbourhood were invited to join; but, at the mid-day repast, a forester named Turnbull behaved so rudely to the governor that he ordered him to be secured, when he suddenly plunged into a ravine and disappeared. The young knight took fresh offence at being ordered to withdraw the archers from the sport to reinforce the garrison, and appealed to his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, who, instead of taking his part, wrote him a sharp reproof. He then opposed the governor's wish that the minstrel should terminate his visit, which induced Sir John to threaten Bertram with torture unless he instantly revealed his purpose in coming to the castle. The minstrel declined to do so without his son's permission; and, the Abbot having pleaded for delay on account of the boy's delicate health, Sir Aymer was ordered to meet a detachment at an outpost, and then to bring him to the castle to be examined. As he passed through the town he encountered a mounted warrior in full armour, whom neither the inhabitants nor his followers would admit having seen. The old sexton, however, declared that the spirits of the deceased knights of Douglas could not rest in their graves while the English were at enmity with their descendants. On reaching the convent, De Valence roused Father Jerome, and insisted that the youth (Lady Augusta) should at once accompany him. He was, however, allowed to return to his bed till daybreak, and upon the door of his room being then forced open, it was empty. During the night, Sister Ursula, who had hidden in the room, elicited Lady Augusta's secret, which she had already guessed, and, having narrated the circumstances under which she had entered the convent without taking the vows, they escaped through a concealed postern and found a guide with horses waiting for them. A scroll which his lady-love had left behind her explained matters to Sir John, who, in his despair, was comforted by the sympathy of his lieutenant; and the faithful minstrel, having been admitted to their confidence, steps were at once taken to track the fugitives. Having reached a thicket, Sister Ursula (whose original name was Lady Margaret) disappeared to join her friends, and Lady Augusta was escorted, first by the celebrated Douglas, and then by Turnbull, to a spot where they met Sir John, to whom the forester delivered a message with which he refused to comply, and mortally wounded the man when he attempted to lead the lady away. But Sir James was at hand, and the two knights fought until summoned by the church bells to Palm Sunday service, at which the old bishop officiated in the presence of an excited assemblage of armed English and Scotch warriors eager to attack each other. Bertram met Lady Augusta in the churchyard, and was arranging for her safety, when De Walton and The Douglas renewed their combat, and an encounter also took place between De Valence and Sir Malcolm Fleming, Lady Margaret's lover. The life of the Sir Malcolm was saved by the intercession of Lady Margaret, and Sir John surrendered his sword and governorship on the arrival of a messenger with the intelligence that an English force, commanded by the Earl of Pembroke, which was advancing to prevent an anticipated attack on the castle, had been utterly defeated by Bruce and his followers. He and his troops, however, were allowed to retire with their arms, Sir James Douglas having chivalrously transferred his claim upon her lover to the Lady Augusta of Berkely, who, in return for his courtesy, decorated the brave Scotchman with a chain of brilliants which had been won in battle by her ancestor."
1799,The Shield Ring,history," The story revolves around Frytha and Bjorn, a girl and a boy who have both been orphaned by the Norman conquest, and have sought refuge and been taken in by Jarl Buthar in his hidden Lakeland settlement by Buthar's Mere . The group is portrayed as Northmen settlers who have long established themselves in the area, and are resisting Norman advances into their country. They describe themselves as forming their shield ring up in the fells of Lakeland, as a form of Last Stand against the Norman invasion. The theme of this Shield Ring is developed throughout the story, an ultimately portrayed as an ethic of loyalty to one's group, even unto death. Bjorn is fostered to a Harp player, an old man who originally fought the Normans at Hastings, who refers to being part of that Shield Wall resisting William the Conqueror. The instrument becomes a key feature of the narrative, being a symbolic link to the indigenous Welsh and British peoples with whom the Norse of Lakeland have intermingled. Bjorn is seen as having the musical gift from his maternal Celtic forebears, and learns to play as he grows up. This links him back to the family of the emerald seal ring with the dolphin insignia, which he is given when he comes of age. Frytha is shown as being very close to Bjorn, as she adapts from her original Saxon upbringing to be part of the Norse settlement. The story develops with a paralleling to the epic of Beowulf, with Frytha making connections between events in their life and in the epic. The Northmen successfully fend off a series of Norman attempts to overrun Lakeland, but the story comes to its crux when Ranulf le Meschin leads the largest and seemingly final attack, coming down from Cockermouth. Bjorn is sent as a spy, under the guise of a traveling harper, to reconnoiter the enemy camp, and Frytha sneaks off to accompany him, referencing how even Beowulf had Wiglaf come to his aid when Beowulf faced his doom. They succeed in infiltrating the enemy camp, and gather much information, but are ultimately discovered when the emerald seal ring is recognized by a Norman knight who had previously had a life-and-death struggle with Bjorn. Bjorn is subjected to torture by fire, paralleling Beowulf's downfall to a firedrake, and successfully resists. The whole concept of the Shield Wall being a spirit of resistance and unity within the band is brought into direct focus during his ordeal. Bjorn and Frytha soon escape, and return to bring the needed news to their people. With this information, the Northmen mislead the Norman host into an annihilating ambush in Rannerdale. Although her own inimitable take on the story of Jarl Buthar's guerilla campaign and a final battle at Rannerdale between the Normans and the Anglo-Scandinavian Cumbrians led by the Jarl, Sutcliff's novel was clearly inspired by the dramatized history written by Lakeland historian Nicholas Size, called ""The Secret Valley: The Real Romance of Unconquered Lakeland"" (pub. 1930) Being the second novel written in the series of eight novels about the evolution of a British bloodline throughout the ages, it is the last in chronological order. It closes with the characters facing a world of change and persevering in their loyalty to their culture and to each other."
1800,Sharpe's Eagle,history," The following is a description of the key plot elements of the novel of Sharpe's Eagle. Although much of the novel's complexity is omitted in the TV version, the major plot elements are the same. For a summary of the TV movie, see the link listed above. Prior to the Battle of Talavera, Richard Sharpe and his small group of thirty Riflemen are attached to the newly arrived South Essex Regiment. Commanded by the cowardly and bullying Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Simmerson, the South Essex is a raw, inexperienced unit that has been drilled mercilessly with frequent use of the lash. More suited for ceremonial parades than genuine combat against the veteran armies of France, Sharpe takes it upon himself to shape the inexperienced and poorly-trained redcoats into full-fledged soldiers. His real problem turns out to be the officers, most of whom appear to be in the lap of Simmerson, including his nephew, the arrogant Lieutenant Christian Gibbons, and his best friend, Lieutenant Berry. The situation is further complicated by the rivalry that emerges between Sharpe and Gibbons for the affections of Josefina Lacosta, a Portuguese noblewoman abandoned by her husband after he fled to Brazil. Only two appear to have any real experience: Captain Lennox, a veteran of the Battle of Assaye, where Sharpe himself won his commission; and Captain Leroy, an American Loyalist who fled with his merchant family to England during the American War of Independence. Making his way to the town of Talavera, General Wellesley dispatches the South Essex, alongside Sharpe's Riflemen and the engineers of Major Hogan, to blow up the bridge at Valdelcasa, so as to protect the army's flank as they march. Assisted by a Spanish regiment of equal number, the Regimento de la Santa Maria, the seemingly straightforward mission becomes a disaster when both Simmerson and the Spanish cross the bridge to engage four squadrons of French dragoons. A combination of arrogance, poor training, flawed leadership and elementary tactical errors results in the two regiments being routed by the French, with hundreds of men killed and wounded, Lennox brought down by the enemy, and the loss of the King's Colour. As a dying request, Lennox asks Sharpe to take a French Eagle, 'touched by the hand of Napoleon' himself, so as to erase the shame of losing their own standard. Distinguishing himself during the skirmish after rallying several broken companies of the South Essex against the French and capturing one of their cannon, Sharpe finds himself gazetted Captain. However, he still must do much to confirm this rank in the company of an officer corps still largely drawn from the aristocracy and the ranks of English gentlemen who look down on Sharpe's low birth. Even worse, Sir Henry has made Sharpe the scapegoat of his follies, and intends on ruining Sharpe's career via his political connections at Horse Guards. Only by capturing an Eagle can Sharpe stay in the army, let alone keep his promotion. The Rifleman also makes an enemy of Gibbons and Berry when he takes Josefina under his protection, and the two begin a relationship. Later in the novel, when Josefina is raped by Gibbons and Berry, Sharpe swears vengeance, murdering Berry in a nighttime skirmish against the French. At the height of the Battle of Talavera, Sharpe must decide whether to fulfill Lennox's request or avoid this insane task. In true heroic form Richard Sharpe rises to the challenge and avenge the loss of the colour with the capture of a French Imperial Eagle during the height of the battle. Leading the Light Company and his Rifles into the fray, Sharpe and Harper manage to break a French regiment and take an Eagle, while Simmerson is replaced on the field by Sharpe's old friend William Lawford as Commander of the South Essex. Slaying Gibbons in the aftermath (who had attempted to murder Sharpe for his prize), Sharpe parts with Josefina as she returns to Lisbon, while he officially takes his place as Captain of the Light Company of the South Essex, the regiment's honour restored."
1801,Picture This,history," Like in Heller's version of King David's story, God Knows, the author changes little in the storyline of the original – he execrates narrative, and denies historical counterpoints, both explicit, some implicit. Incomprehension may have contributed to a critical redemption of this book, along with less weight for humour and a sobering conclusion."
1802,Quicksilver,history," The first book is a series of flashbacks from 1713 to the earlier life of Daniel Waterhouse. It begins as Enoch Root arrives in Boston in October 1713 to deliver a letter to Daniel Waterhouse containing a summons from Princess Caroline. She wants Daniel to return to England and attempt to repair the feud between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. While following Daniel's decision to return to England and board a Dutch ship (the Minerva) to cross the Atlantic, the book flashes back to when Enoch and Daniel each first met Newton. During the flashbacks, the book refocuses on Daniel's life between 1661 and 1673. While attending school at Trinity College, Cambridge, Daniel becomes Newton's companion, ensuring that Newton does not harm his health and assisting in his experiments. However, the plague of 1665 forces them apart: Newton returns to his family manor and Daniel to the outskirts of London. Daniel quickly tires of the radical Puritan rhetoric of his father, Drake Waterhouse, and decides to join Reverend John Wilkins and Robert Hooke at John Comstock's Epsom estate. There Daniel takes part in a number of experiments, including the exploration of the diminishing effects of gravity with changes in elevation, the transfusion of blood between dogs and Wilkins' attempts to create a philosophical language. Daniel soon becomes disgusted and visits Newton during his experiments with color and white light. They attempt to return to Cambridge, but again plague expels the students. Daniel returns to his father; however, his arrival on the outskirts of London coincides with the second day of the Fire of London. Drake, taken by religious fervour, dies atop his house as the King blows it up to create a fire break to prevent further spread of the fire. Soon after Drake's death, Newton and Daniel then return to Cambridge and begin lecturing. A flashforward occurs in the narration, to find Daniel's ship under attack by the fleet of Edward Teach (Blackbeard) in 1713. Then the story returns to the past as Daniel and Newton return to London: Newton is under the patronage of Louis Anglesey, the Earl of Upnor, and Daniel becomes secretary of the Royal Society when Henry Oldenburg is detained by the King for his active foreign correspondence. During his stint in London, Daniel encounters a number of important actors from the period. Daniel remains one of the more prominent actors in the Royal Society, close to Royal Society members involved in court life and politics. By 1672 both Daniel and Newton become fellows at Trinity College where they build an extensive alchemical laboratory which attracts other significant alchemists including John Locke and Robert Boyle. Daniel convinces Newton to present his work on calculus to the Royal Society. In 1673, Daniel meets Leibniz in England and acts as his escort, leading him to meetings with important members of British society. Soon, Daniel gains the patronage of Roger Comstock as his architect. While under Roger's patronage, the actress Tess becomes Daniel's mistress both at court and in bed. Finally the book returns to 1713, where Daniel's ship fends off several of Teach's pirate ships. Soon they find out that Teach is after Daniel alone; however, with the application of trigonometry, the ship is able to escape the bay and the pirate band. The King of Vagabonds focuses on the travels of ""Half-Cocked"" Jack Shaftoe. It begins by recounting Jack's childhood in the slums outside of London where he pursued many disreputable jobs, including hanging from the legs of hanged men to speed their demise. The book then jumps to 1683, when Jack travels to the Battle of Vienna to participate in the European expulsion of the Turks. While attacking the camp, Jack encounters Eliza, a European slave in the sultan's harem, about to be killed by janissaries. He kills the janissaries and loots the area, taking ostrich feathers and acquiring a Turkish warhorse which he calls Turk. The two depart from the camp of the victorious European army and travel through Bohemia into the Palatinate. In order to sell the ostrich feathers at a high price, they decide to wait until the spring fair in Leipzig. Jack and Eliza spend the winter near a cave warmed by a hot water spring. In the springtime, they travel to the fair dressed as a noblewoman and her bodyguard where they meet Doctor Leibniz. They quickly sell their goods with the help of Leibniz, and agree to accompany him to his silver mine in the Harz Mountains. Once they arrive at the mine, Jack wanders into the local town where he has a brief encounter with Enoch Root in an apothecary's shop. Jack leaves town but gets lost in the woods, encountering pagan worshippers and witch hunters. He successfully escapes them by finding safe passage through a mine connecting to Leibniz's. Eliza and Jack move on to Amsterdam, where Eliza quickly becomes embroiled in the trade of commodities. Jack goes to Paris to sell the ostrich feathers and Turk, leaving Eliza behind. When he arrives in Paris, he meets and befriends St. George, a professional rat-killer and tamer, who helps him find lodging. While there, he becomes a messenger for bankers between Paris and Marseilles. However, during an attempt to sell Turk Jack is captured by nobles. Luckily, the presence of Jack's former employer, John Churchill, ensures that he is not immediately killed. With Churchill's help, Jack escapes from the barn where he has been held prisoner. During the escape, he rides Turk into a masquerade at the Hotel d'Arcachon in a costume similar to that of King Louis. With the aid of St. George's rats he escapes without injury but destroys the ballroom and removes the hand of Etienne d'Arcachon. Meanwhile, Eliza becomes heavily involved in the politics of Amsterdam, helping Knott Bolstrood and the Duke of Monmouth manipulate the trade of VOC stock. This causes a panic from which they profit. Afterwards, the French Ambassador in Amsterdam persuades Eliza to go to Versailles and supply him information about the French court. Eliza agrees after a brief encounter and falling-out with Jack. William of Orange learns of Eliza's mission and intercepts her, forcing her to become a double agent for his benefit and to give him oral sex. Meanwhile, Jack, with an injury caused by his encounter with Eliza, departs on the slaving trip, the ship filled with cowry shells which he and his accomplices, a Russian fur trader and an English pub owner. The ship is captured by Barbary pirates, and the end of the book has Jack as a captured galley-slave. This book returns to Daniel Waterhouse, who in 1685, has become a courtier to Charles&nbsp;II because of his role as Secretary of the Royal Society. He warns James&nbsp;II, still Duke of York, of his brother Charles' impending death, following which, Daniel quickly becomes an advisor to James&nbsp;II. He continues to be deeply involved with the English court, ensuring the passage of several bills which reduce restrictions on non-conformists despite his detraction from the Francophile court. Meanwhile, Eliza becomes the governess of a widowers' two children in Versailles. She catches the eye of the king and becomes the broker of the French nobility. With her help, the French court, supported by King Louis, creates several market trends from which they profit extensively. Her active involvement in the French court gains her a title of nobility: Countess of Zeur. Daniel and Eliza finally meet during a visit to the Netherlands where Daniel acts as an intermediary between William of Orange and the detracting English nobility. Daniel realizes Eliza's importance during a meeting at the house of Christiaan Huygens. Eliza woos Daniel and uses this connection to gain entrance into the English court and the Royal Society. Daniel also meets Nicholas Fatio while in Amsterdam. Soon after this meeting, Fatio and Eliza prevent the attempted kidnapping of William of Orange by an ambitious French courtier. Upon his return, Daniel is arrested by the notorious judge George Jeffreys, and later imprisoned in the Tower of London. Daniel escapes with the help of Jack Shaftoe's brother Bob, whose infantry unit is stationed there. After a brief return to Versailles, Eliza joins Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate at her estate before the invasion of the Palatinate in her name. Eliza informs William of Orange of the troop movements caused by the French invasion which frees his forces along the border of the Spanish Netherlands, a region of stalemate between France and the Dutch Republic. During her flight from the Electorate of the Palatinate, Eliza becomes pregnant by Louis's cryptographer, though popular knowledge suggested it was the French nobleman Etienne D'Arcachon's child. Meanwhile, William takes the free troops from the border on the Spanish Netherlands to England, precipitating the Glorious Revolution, including the expulsion of James&nbsp;II. James flees London and Daniel Waterhouse soon encounters him in a bar. Convinced that the Stuart monarchy has collapsed, Daniel returns to London and takes revenge on Jeffreys by inciting a crowd to capture him for trial and later execution. Though he plans to depart for Massachusetts, Daniel's case of bladder stones increasingly worsens during this period. The Royal Society and other family friends are very aware of this and force Daniel to get the stone removed by Robert Hooke at Bedlam."
1803,Passage,history," Abducted by conquistadors in the year 1500, the merchant’s ward Pablito (alias White Water Bird, alias Paul Zarraté, alias Paul Straight, alias “the World’s Greatest Living Wonder”) passes through five books and five ages of man, as he travels from the primordial forests of the Amazon to the Incan empire of Tahuantin-Suyu, to the slave-plantations of colonial Pernambuco, via antebellum New Orleans, to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, before witnessing the birth of Hollywood and the explosion of an atomic bomb."
1804,Purge,history," The plot begins in 1992 with an elderly woman, Aliide Truu, who lives in a remote portion of Estonia. The woman had isolated herself from the surrounding society and watches the youth of her nation, including her daughter, leaving the countryside for the more urban regions and Finland. One day while looking out the kitchen window, she discovers Zara, the granddaughter of her sister Ingel. Zara had been forced to partake in the sex trade by the Russian Mafia but escaped them. The only guide she had to help her find help, was a photograph from her grandmother with Aliide's name on it. The story then continues with a series of flashbacks which develops the relationship of Aliide and her sister, which hinged upon their competition for the love of Hans Pekk during World War II. The story ends as Aliide begins to reconcile herself with her jealousy of her sister and Zara's redemption from her disenchantment with the world caused by her sexual subjugation. The plot of Purge focuses on two main females, both of whom reviewers have commented on as complex and are integral to understanding the themes of the book. The novel begins with Aliide Truu, an elderly woman who has survived many of the horrors of the Soviet occupation of Estonia. The Aliide who the reader first meets has alienated herself from the local people, though strongly self-reliant. Though cloaked in a rough exterior, she represents a woman who has weathered considerable hardship. She has hardly anything in the way of motherly instinct, especially in regards to the other main character, Zara. Zara is the grandniece of Aliide and at the beginning of the book she is subjected to sex trafficking by the Russian mafia. Her interaction with her great-aunt eventually forces Aliide to reconstruct and confront the history of her past. Ultimately, Aliide is responsible for delivering Zara from the torments caused by the sexual violence persecuted against her."
1805,Amaya o los vascos en el siglo VIII,history," Mixing history and legend, it presents a situation in which pagan and Christianized Basques unite under the first king of Navarre and ally with Pelayo, the first king of Asturias to defend Catholic Iberia against the invading hordes of Islam. Amaya is a Christian noblewoman, daughter of a Basque woman and Ranimiro, the ruthless Visigoth general. She is a niece to pagan leader Amagoya, who prefers her other pagan niece as heiress to the secrets of Aitor, the Basque ancestral patriarch. Pacomio is a machinating Jew conspirating in disguise among Muslims, Visigoths and Basques. Eudes, duke of Cantabria, is Pacomio's son, but, by hiding his Jewish origin, has reached a high post in the Visigoth kingdom and aspires to power beyond what his allies and his father would allow. At the end, the secret of Aitor is revealed, to recommend Christianity, the pagan Basques (except for Amagoya) convert, and Amaya marries the Basque resistance leader, García, becoming the first monarchs of Navarre. The legends of Teodosio de Goñi and San Miguel de Aralar, the Caba Rumía, the Table of Solomon in Toledo, and others are also mentioned in the plot."
1806,True History of the Kelly Gang,history," Ned Kelly begins his autobiography with a description of his father, John ""Red"" Kelly, an Irishman transported to Van Diemen's Land and eventually settling in the colony of Victoria, Australia. After marrying Ned's eventual mother Ellen (née Quinn), the Kellys settle in Avenel, a rural area northeast of Melbourne. Red Kelly is shown to have numerous brushes with the colonial police forces, resulting in his imprisonment and eventual death when his son Ned was twelve years of age. After the rest of the family resettles in northeast Victoria under the Land Grant Act, Ned's mother attempts to provide for her children by running a shebeen and taking on a series of lovers, including the notorious bushranger Harry Power. Power agrees to take on the young Ned as an apprentice, and provides Ned with knowledge of the land, hideouts, and strategies for bushranging. Kelly eventually leaves Power and returns to his family's settlement, where he is shown making dogged attempts to live an honest lifestyle. Kelly is arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for reception of a stolen horse (although Kelly claims that a friend, ""Wild"" Wright, knowingly sold him the stolen horse without Kelly's knowledge - Kelly later extracts revenge on Wright in a bare-knuckle boxing match). After two years of working as a sawmill hand, he is drawn back to bushranging when a herd of his horses is appropriated by a rival squatter. His descent back into crime is precipitated by a visit from a local police officer, Constable Alex Fitzpatrick. The policeman woos Ned's younger sister Kate, prompting Ned to reveal that Fitzpatrick has multiple mistresses in other towns and has no intention of marrying Kate. After his mother Ellen threatens the constable with violence, Fitzpatrick pulls his revolver on the family and Ned shoots him in the hand in self-defense. Although he dresses the wound and Fitzpatrick leaves while promising that no action will be taken, warrants for the arrest of Ned and his younger brother Dan are issued the next day. Ned Kelly and his brother Dan hide out in the hills of northeast Victoria, eventually being joined by their friends Steve Hart and Joe Byrne (later becoming known as the Kelly Gang). Kelly's mother is eventually arrested along with her baby daughter and imprisoned in Melbourne as enticement for Kelly to give himself up. A detachment of four policemen is eventually sent to kill the quartet after efforts to arrest them prove unsuccessful; the Kelly Gang ambushes them at Stringybark Creek, where Ned kills three of the policemen. This adds to the growing folklore surrounding the Kelly Gang, which they fuel by robbing banks and giving parts of the money to the lower-class settlers in Victoria who help to shelter the gang. During the gang's raids, Ned Kelly meets a young Irish girl named Mary Hearn, who already has a young son by Kelly's stepfather, George King. Kelly falls in love with Mary and makes plans to escape the colony with her after she becomes pregnant with his child. Crucially, it is Mary who motivates Kelly to begin writing the story of his life as a legacy for his future child, who she fears will never know its father. Following two successful bank robberies, Mary uses the money to emigrate to San Francisco with her son and Kelly's unborn daughter; Kelly remains behind, however, unwilling to leave Australia until his mother is released from jail. The gang is eventually cornered by a large squad of dozens of policemen (versus just four in the Kelly Gang) in the town of Glenrowan where the gang has taken numerous hostages and constructed several suits of plate-steel armor for protection. One of the hostages is the crippled local schoolmaster, Thomas Curnow, who encourages Kelly to relate the story of his entire life after seeing samples of his writing. Curnow betrays the gang by warning the incoming police train that the gang has sabotaged the tracks, feeling that history will view him as a ""hero"". The policemen surround the town and engage in a furious shootout with the armor-clad gang, seriously wounding Ned Kelly and killing the other three members of the gang. Kelly's narrative stops abruptly just before the shootout itself; a secondary narrator, identified as ""S.C"", relates the tale of the gunfight and Kelly's eventual death by hanging. Since Curnow is shown to have escaped Glenrowan with Kelly's manuscripts, it is assumed that this narrator is a relative of Curnow's. Kelly dies a hero to the people of northeastern Victoria, with the legend of his life left to grow over time."
1807,Conqueror,history," A warrior who would rule a fifth of the world with strength and wisdom. A scholar who conquered an empire larger than those of Alexander or Caesar. A brother who betrayed his own to protect a nation. From a wise scholar to one of history's most powerful warriors, Conqueror tells the story of Kublai Khan - an extraordinary man who should be remembered alongside Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. It should have been a golden age, with an empire to dwarf the lands won by the mighty Genghis Khan. Instead, the vast Mongol nation is slowly losing ground, swallowed whole by their most ancient enemy. A new generation has arisen, yet the long shadow of the Great Khan still hangs over them all … Kublai dreams of an empire stretching from sea to sea. But to see it built, this scholar must first learn the art of war. He must take his nation’s warriors to the ends of the known world. And when he is weary, when he is wounded, he must face his own brothers in bloody civil war."
1808,Fire From Heaven,history," The novel, whose memorable opening line is ""The child was wakened by the knotting of the snake's coils about his waist,"" portrays Alexander's complicated relationship with his father, Philip of Macedon, and his mother Olympias; his education under the philosopher Aristotle, whose later opposition to Alexander is foreshadowed; and his devotion to his lifelong companion Hephaistion, depicted as both a lover and an intimate friend. The novel contains a controversial portrait of the Athenian orator Demosthenes, portraying him as arrogant, cowardly and vindictive. The novel ends with the assassination of Philip, with Alexander, his heir, poised to begin his career of conquests."
1809,Guy Mannering,history," Guy Mannering, after leaving Oxford, had been Mr Godfrey Bertram's guest on the night of his son's birth, when he made acquaintance with Dominie Sampson, and with Meg Merrilies, who came to tell the infant's fortune. The young student, however, offered to do this from the stars, and predicted that three periods of the boy's life would be very hazardous. Five years afterwards he was kidnapped while riding with Kennedy, whose dead body was found on the beach; and the same night, after giving birth to a daughter, Mrs Bertram left her husband a widower. Sixteen more years had elapsed when Colonel Mannering returned from India just in time to be present at his friend's death, and Glossin, who had been concerned in Harry's abduction, became the possessor of the Ellangowan estate. Lucy and the dominie accepted the hospitality of Mr and Mrs MacMorlan; but the colonel, having learnt from Mr Mervyn, at whose house his daughter was staying, that she had a lover, who afterwards proved to be Brown, hired a house in the neighbourhood of Kippletringan, and invited Miss Bertram to be Julia's companion, and the tutor his librarian. As he was following Miss Mannering to Scotland, the smuggler Brown, whom the colonel believed he had shot in a duel in India, dined with the farmer Dinmont at an inn, where he also met Meg Merrilies, who recognised him; and, having rescued the farmer from some robbers, he spent a few days at his house. Proceeding on his journey, he came to a ruined hut, in which the gipsy was tending a dying man; and, hidden by her, he saw a gang of ruffians divide the contents of his portmanteau, and bury their comrade. When they had gone she pointed out his road, and gave him a purse, exacting at the same time a promise that he would come with her whenever she called for him. Writing to a friend, Julia made great fun of the dominie's peculiarities, and mentioned Lucy's discouragement of young Hazlewood because she had no fortune. In her next letter she described an attack upon their house at Woodbourne by smugglers; and in another the sudden appearance of Brown, who had wounded Hazlewood and escaped. The attorney Glossin, now a justice of the peace, was indefatigable in endeavouring to trace him, and heard with pleasure that MacGuffog had a man in custody. He, however, was Hatteraick, in whose smuggling ventures the attorney had largely shared, and who told him that Harry Bertram was in the neighbourhood. Having connived at his escape from custody, Glossin met him in a cave, and learnt that the young heir had been carried to Holland, where he was adopted by a merchant named Vanbeest, who afterwards sent him to India. The attorney then called at Woodbourne to announce that Miss Bertram had left her fortune to Lucy, and the colonel at once started with the dominie to Edinburgh, to place the matter in the advocate Mr Pleydell's hands. Harry had retreated to Cumberland, but he managed to correspond with Julia; and, having returned to Ellangowan, he was wandering among the ruins when he encountered Glossin, who had him arrested for shooting at Hazlewood, and lodged in the bridewell (small prison) adjoining the custom-house at Portanferry. Here he was visited by Dinmont, who had heard from Gabriel of his being in trouble, and was allowed to pass the night with him. Meanwhile Meg Merrilies had sent a paper to the colonel by the dominie, and urged young Hazlewood to cause the soldiers who had been withdrawn from Portanferry to be sent back there instantly. During the night the custom-house was fired by a gang of ruffians; but one of them helped Bertram and his friend to escape, and led them to a carriage, which conveyed them to Woodbourne, where Mr Pleydell had previously arrived. Having been recognised by the colonel as Brown, and questioned by the lawyer, his identity as the heir of Ellangowan was established, and he was hugged by the dominie as his little Harry. The next morning Lucy embraced her long-lost brother, and Julia acknowledged him as her lover. As he was walking with them, Meg Merrilies sent Dinmont to claim Bertram's compliance with his promise to her; and, followed also by Hazlewood, she led the way to a room where she armed them, and thence to the smugglers' cave, where, after a struggle, in which the gipsy was mortally wounded, they seized Hatteraick and handed him over to the village constables. Meg's dying revelations furnished sufficient evidence for arresting Glossin, who, by bribing the jailer, obtained access to the smuggler's cell, where he was found strangled, and his accomplice in crime committed suicide. Having recovered the property of his ancestors, Harry Bertram was able to discharge all his father's debts, and, with the help of Julia's dowry, to erect a new mansion, which contained a snug chamber called ""Mr Sampson's apartment."" His aunt's estate also reverted to him, but he resigned it to his sister on her marriage with Hazlewood."
1810,The Wreck of the Zanzibar,history," Taken from the book's blurb, ""Life on the Scilly Isles in 1907 is bleak and full of hardship. Laura's twin brother, Billy, disappears, and then a storm devastates everything. It seems there's little hope... that is until the Zanzibar is wrecked on the island's rocks and everything changes."" The book is presented as a diary written by a young girl on a small island off the coast of Cornwall, where the Atlantic meets the English Channel. The area is subjected to severe storms, one of which destroys the island's buildings and kills the livestock; many families are left hungry and plan to leave the island. However, the residents rescue the crew of the ship Zanzibar when it runs aground, and this is the catalyst that brings new life to the island. A major subplot is the sea turtle that the girl (Laura) nurses back to health and returns to the sea.In the end Michael closes the diary and is sad but,he decides to tell everybody about the diary(The Wreck Of The Zanzibar) and in the end the girl says to Zanzibar ""Come on Marzipan"" and Michael says ""His name is Zanzibar"" and she says ""That is what I said"". simple:The Wreck of the Zanzibar"
1811,No Promises in the Wind,history," Josh's main talent lies in the piano, having been taught by his mother. He and his friend Howie were praised by their teacher, Miss Crowne. However, while living with the continuous ridiculing and temper of his father, he sets upon the decision to leave Chicago and find a living on his own. His mother, Mary, supports his decision against her will, realizing that Josh's conflicts with his dad, Stefan, and their entire family's lack of food would eventually lead to deeper problems. Despite Josh's reluctance to accept Joey, Howie convinces Josh to bring him along, which later turns out to be a good decision. With the hope that their musical talents could earn them a living, they set out. Howie brought his banjo, and Joey was a great singer. On the first day, Joey's singing combined with Howie's talented playing allowed the trio to gain 78 cents. Josh realizes Joey's importance and no longer regrets bringing him along. However, while trying to get to Nebraska by riding on a freight train, a tragedy fell upon the trio. Howie, while running alongside a train which the brothers had already boarded, was struck by a train coming from the opposite direction. Though quite grieved, Josh and Joey continued, even declining the hospitality of a kind man. The two managed to survive by begging, despite Josh's humiliation at doing such a thing. Finally, in a stroke of luck, the two received the warmth of a woman who persuades Joey to write home to their mother. They also become acquainted with Lon Bromer a.k.a. Lonnie, a truck driver. Lonnie lost a child named David who would be as old as Josh, if he were alive. Lonnie brought the brothers to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There, Josh and Joey received a job at a carnival run by Pete Harris. Lon leaves the two with his address and they promise that they would write to him. At the carnival, Josh befriends a dwarf named Edward C., who helps Josh by introducing him to the other carnival people. Josh took a special interest in a clown named Emily. Josh finds Emily extremely attractive despite the differences in their ages; he was 15 years old and she was 30. Josh felt certain desires towards her, and accompanied her whenever possible. When he discovered that Emily was engaged to Pete Harris, he almost completely throws away any relations with her. They later reconcile. Unfortunately, the carnival burns down, so Josh and Joey leave Baton Rouge with $18 Josh saved up and $2 that Pete Harris gives them. The pair ends up traveling with a bootlegger named Charley, who is transporting beer in his car. Charley gives Josh a $20 bill in exchange for his smaller bills. Josh passes a store that sells shoes and he goes in, planning to buy some overshoes for Joey. He tries to pay for the $1.50 shoes with the twenty dollar bill, but the shopkeeper takes all of it, instead of giving him the change. Once the money is gone the two then resorted to begging again. One of the women they meet at first refuses to help them, but then changes her mind out of guilt and invites the two to have soup. Joey repays her the next day by offering her half of a loaf of bread he had gained while begging. Furious at Joey for giving away their hard-earned food, and hampered by his own sickness of pneumonia, Josh strikes Joey. Joey vows to leave him, and indeed does leave, taking along Howie's banjo. When Josh is unable to find him, he falls unconscious from the cold and sickness. He is discovered with Lonnie's contact information in his wallet. When Josh wakes up, he finds himself at Lonnie's home in Omaha, Nebraska. Josh discovers that Joey has not been found, and describes to Lonnie what happened. Josh also meets Janey, Lonnie's niece. The two soon become fond of each other and fall in love. Josh finds renewed hope in the new President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lonnie, worried about Joey and sends postcards to Mary and Emily. When Mary responded, Josh was surprised that Stefan is having sleepless nights over Josh and Joey. Joey is found after being described in a radio announcement and a happy reunion occurs. They find a new job working at a restaurant as a pianist and singer, and immediately become popular, despite Joey's occasional offtune singing. Josh and Janey part ways, leaving sorrow in their hearts. Josh and Joey return to Chicago and back to their father, who, surprisingly, comes to meet them at the train station and breaks down into tears, after which Josh notices he and his dad share many things in common."
1812,A Spectacle of Corruption,history," This tale picks up a few months after the conclusion of David Liss' first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper. It's late in the year 1721 and Benjamin Weaver is hired by a clergyman to investigate a death threat against him. His quest doesn't go according to plan, however, and Weaver soon finds himself falsely accused of murder, sentenced to hang and confined in the infamous Newgate Prison. He must somehow escape this fate, clear his name, and find those responsible. Weaver's personal and occupational struggles play out against the backdrop of the upcoming general election. Several of the other fictional characters are carry-overs from A Conspiracy of Paper. As in the first installment of his ""memoir"", Weaver is aided by his uncle Miguel and his best friend, the surgeon Elias Gordon. His cousin's widow Miriam, now married to a Tory candidate for Parliament, once again tugs on Weaver's heart strings."
1813,Memoirs of a Geisha,history," At the age of nine, Chiyo Sakamoto is taken from her poverty-stricken fishing village of Yoroido on the coast of the Sea of Japan with her older sister Satsu and sold to an okiya (geisha boarding house) in Gion, the most prominent geisha district in Kyoto. Satsu is not sold into the okiya with her and is instead forced into becoming a prostitute in Kyoto's pleasure district. Chiyo lives in the okiya alongside another young girl named Pumpkin, elderly and grumbling Granny, money-obsessed Mother and Auntie, a failed geisha. Also living in the okiya is the famous ill-mannered geisha Hatsumomo who promptly takes to disliking Chiyo, who she sees as a possible rival. Despite Pumpkin and Auntie's warnings, Chiyo plans to leave the okiya and escape the city with Satsu, but is caught when she falls off the roof and breaks her arm. Enraged at her for dishonoring the okiya, Mother stops investing in Chiyo and makes her pay off her increasing debts as a slave. Several years later, a downtrodden Chiyo is given money and a handkerchief in the street by a strange but kind man known at this point only as the Chairman. She donates the money to the Yasaka Shrine in Gion, praying to become a geisha in the hopes of seeing him again, keeping the handkerchief as a memento. Chiyo is envious of Pumpkin, who is on her way to becoming a geisha under Hatsumomo's tutelage, but soon after visiting the shrine, she is taken in as a protégé by Mameha, a rival of Hatsumomo and the owner of a kimono she previously made Chiyo ruin. Mameha persuades Mother to reinvest into Chiyo's training, and Chiyo adopts the new name of Sayuri, with Mameha acting as her ""older sister"" and mentor. Mameha mentions that despite Hatsumomo's popularity, she was in fact a failure due to once angering the mistress of her principal teahouse. As a result, she could never obtain a danna to sponsor her independence, which is why she has stayed in the okiya under Mother. Hatsumomo goes out of her way to destroy Sayuri by tarnishing her reputation in Gion, forcing Mameha and Sayuri to devise a plan to push Hatsumomo out of the Nitta okiya lest Sayuri's career ultimately die, and so arranges for her mizuage (portrayed as a deflowering ""ceremony"" for maiko as a step to becoming full-fledged geisha) to be bidden upon by several influential men, namely mentor Nobu Toshikazu, the president of Iwamura Electric; and reputed mizuage specialist ""Dr. Crab"", dubbed so by Sayuri due to his appearance. Unfortunately, Hatsumomo learns of the plan and tells Dr. Crab that Sayuri has already been deflowered. However, after gaining back the respect of Dr. Crab by convincing him that Hatsumomo is a known liar, he ultimately wins the bid for Sayuri's mizuage and she uses his payment to cover all of her fees. This leads Mother, who had already been considering adopting Pumpkin as her heiress, to adopt Sayuri instead, which ultimately destroys the two girls' friendship. This change enrages both Pumpkin and Hatsumomo for different reasons: Pumpkin was looking forward to the adoption so that she could have some kind of security in her old age, while Hatsumomo was looking forward to Pumpkin's adoption so she could secure her own position as head geisha. Hatsumomo's behaviour begins to worsen and she is eventually thrown out of the okiya, with Pumpkin leaving soon after. As it turns out, Dr. Crab was actually bidding against the Baron, Mameha's danna, for Sayuri's mizuage. The Baron had previously undressed Sayuri against her will at a party, which Mameha had warned against. Nobu instead bids to become Sayuri's danna, but loses out to General Tottori. At this time, Japan is on the brink of entering World War II and many Geisha are evacuated to other cities to work in factories, which require hard labor and are primary bomb targets. The General is demoted and is unable to use any influence to send Sayuri somewhere safer but Nobu, despite losing respect for Sayuri, is able to send her far north to live with Arashino, a kimono maker. At the end of the war, Nobu visits Sayuri and asks that she return to Gion to help entertain the new Deputy Minister Sato, whose aid can be instrumental in rebuilding Iwamura Electric, the company which the Chairman and Nobu run. Sayuri, Mameha and Pumpkin entertain the Minister together regularly and within time, Nobu formally begins proposals to become Sayuri's danna. Sayuri still maintains strong feelings for the Chairman and doesn't want Nobu to become her danna, so on a weekend trip to the Amami Islands with Iwamura Electric, she plans to seduce the Minister and be caught in humiliation by Nobu. She asks Pumpkin to bring Nobu to a theater while she is with the Minister. Pumpkin still harbors resentment towards Sayuri for being adopted by Mother and noticing her feelings towards the Chairman, purposely brings him to the theater instead. Nobu finds out about Sayuri and the Minister in any case and decides not to become her danna. Sayuri eventually meets the Chairman again and reveals that her acts in Amami were for personal reasons. He reveals to Sayuri that he had always had feelings towards her, despite her thinking he didn't, but explains that he felt it disrespectful to take away the woman his friend had showed so much interest in, especially considering Nobu had once saved the Chairman's life. Sayuri and the Chairman kiss, which she feels is her first kiss expressing true love. Sayuri eventually retires from being a geisha and the Chairman becomes her danna. It is revealed that they have an illegitimate son together. Foreseeing the consequences this could have regarding the inheritance of Iwamura Electric, she relocates to New York City in later life. Here she opens her own small teahouse for entertaining Japanese men on business in the United States, which Mother takes a financial interest in, but Sayuri severs her links to the Nitta okiya and in effect, Japan. The Chairman remains her danna until his death and the story concludes with a reflection on her life."
1814,Watery Grave,history," When the captain of a British warship falls overboard and drowns, a Naval court martial is convened to investigate a charge of murder. Sir John is petitioned by an old friend to aid in the investigation."
1815,The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey,history," The story begins with Surprise in the Strait of Magellan, caught up in foul weather. Hanson first spots Cape Pilar at the very opening of the Strait, and soon Surprise moors and conducts some trade with the inhospitable locals for meat and vegetables. Having re-provisioned, she and Ringle sail northwards in fine weather until they enter the River Plate and moor close to the island functioning as the main administrative centre. A quarantine officer comes aboard, a Dr Quental, and gives the frigate a clean bill of health. Wantage informs Maturin of a rumpus in the town: a fight between Protestant mariners from a Boston barque clash with the Catholic locals over the right of polygamy. Further signs of local resentment emerge when a large scow dumps the town's filth next to the frigate and the Portuguese sailors shout abuse at the Surprises. Aubrey spots a black Legate and recognises him as his own natural son, Sam. The Most Reverend Doctor Samuel Mputa, the Papal Nuncio to the Republic of Argentina, has recently saved the government from an open rebellion. The South African squadron, under its Commander-in-Chief Admiral Lord Leyton, finally makes its appearance and the crew of Surprise bring their ship up to a high state of perfection. Jack makes his appearance on board HMS Suffolk and sees his rear-admiral's blue flag hoisted on the flagship. He then has an interview with the somewhat cantankerous Admiral, who instructs him to ask Stephen if two of his officers can sail on Surprise (now a private vessel once more) back to England. While the fleet re-provisions, Ringle sails off under the steady and capable Lieutenant Harding, and later returns with Sophie Aubrey, Christine Wood, her brother Edward and the three children (Brigid Maturin and Fanny and Charlotte Aubrey) who will sail on with Jack and Stephen to South Africa. The final chapters end with an Admiral's dinner before which Stephen and Jack meet Captain Miller, Leyton's nephew and Jack's neighbour at Caxley. Miller, who has a reputation as a ladies' man and as an excellent shot — nicknamed Hair-Trigger Miller — has been paying court to Christine Wood. The Admiral asks Aubrey if he can take Miller on board with him to take up a new position in Cape Town. In the last few handwritten pages that follow the end of the typescript, as the South Africa squadron makes its way to St Helena, Mrs Wood asks Stephen to prevent Randolph Miller's unwanted attentions. In doing so, Stephen also calls Miller out for naming him a liar. Miller insists on pistols but Maturin insists on his right, as the aggrieved party, to name the weapons; thus they fight with swords, which puts Miller at a disadvantage. The duel takes place: after three or four thrusts Stephen disarms Miller and demands an apology, which Miller gives him."
1816,The Fortune of War,history," After almost losing the Leopard to the ocean, Aubrey and his much reduced crew limp into harbour in the Dutch East Indies. He reports to the Admiral on station, Admiral Drury, who he has known for twenty years. Aubrey relinquishes the much diminished Leopard, now only suitable as a transport ship, and prepares to return to Portsmouth. He argues vigorously with the Admiral for the privilege of taking the prime officers and men with him - a naval custom that the Admiral himself has followed - and eventually prevails. Meanwhile Maturin meets up with fellow agent of the crown, Mr. Wallis, who apprises Stephen of the news from Britain and the successful progress of the intrigues involving Louisa Wogan. Before leaving, Leopard's crew take on the crew of at a game of cricket in which Dr. Maturin unwittingly (and hilariously) reverts to the similar Irish sport of hurling. They ship in HMS La Flèche for the voyage back, commanded by Captain Yorke. Travelling with an extensive library in his cabin, Yorke is clearly a well-read man and Maturin warms to him immediately. News reaches La Flèche of war between Britain and America. Aubrey spends his time during the voyage teaching the young midshipmen while Maturin is engrossed in dissections of collection of specimens from Desolation Island and New Holland with McLean, the ship's Scottish surgeon and a brilliant anatomical naturalist. One night a fire breaks out on board and the crew and its Leopard passengers have to abandon ship in the South Atlantic. A few weeks later they are picked up by , already laden with passengers headed for Bombay and commanded by Captain Henry Lambert. They rendezvous with Lambert's prize, the William off the coast of Brazil, and soon the watch aloft hails a ship hull up on the horizon, the , which they immediately pursue. Jack and his Leopards man two guns but the ensuing fight goes badly when the Javas foremast gives way. The American commander makes few mistakes and eventually the Java is forced to strike its colours. Constitution has to return to Boston to refit and during the voyage Maturin strikes up conversation with a French passenger, Pontet-Canet, and Mr. Evans, the amiable ship's surgeon. Hopes are high for the wounded Captain Lambert's survival but he dies of his wounds and grief after arriving ashore. Aubrey, who was shot in one arm, manages against expectations to survive. Once in Boston, Aubrey convalesces from his wounds in Dr. Choate's hospital for lunatics, waiting for the next prisoner exchange. He is caught unawares when, amidst this type of unhinged patient, a Jahleel Brenton of the Navy Department starts to quiz him about the behaviour of the Leopard and its dealings with the US merchantman, the Alice B. Sawyer. Maturin meanwhile is reacquainted with both Louisa Wogan and Michael Herapath and the latter's father - a wealthy merchant and former Loyalist - who still feels sympathy towards the British. Maturin meets Diana Villiers once again, now the mistress of an American spymaster, Harry Johnson. Johnson visits Aubrey who, unawares, makes free with his comments about Maturin, only to realise his folly later in a bedside conversation with Stephen. Aubrey is frustrated by his enforced inactivity whilst Maturin meets trouble at the hands of the French in the persons of Pontet-Canet and Dubreuil. During a second attempt at abduction, Maturin escapes to Diana Villiers' rooms in the Franchon hotel and kills both Frenchmen when they come searching for him. Stephen also discovers that Johnson had secretly opened a letter from Diana stating her love and regard for him. Now at risk from both the French and Johnson, their need to escape becomes paramount. Enlisting the help of the older Mr. Herapath and a small ugly slab-sided fishing boat from one of his trading vessels, Aubrey, Maturin and Diana escape to sea. They rendezvous with the thirty-eight gun frigate, , entering the outer harbour on blockade duty and are taken on board. As his water supplies aboard the Shannon are coming to an end, Captain Philip Broke - a cousin and childhood friend of Jack's - writes to Captain Lawrence, the commander of the thirty-eight gun lying in harbour, challenging him to come out and fight. The Chesapeake, already in the process of weighing anchor, comes out in apparent pursuit of Aubrey and engages the Shannon. The Shannons crew has had long years of practice at her great guns, aptly demonstrated to Jack Aubrey in practice, and the resultant clash brings about the Royal Navy's first victory in the war (having already lost three frigates)."
1817,Year of Wonders,history," At the opening of the novel, everyone is desolate, and Anna Frith, the narrator and the housekeeper of the rectory of Eyam, reflects on her marriage at age fifteen during the Puritan years, and her widowhood of two years due to a mining accident after three years of marriage and two sons born. When she next reports to work, she is greeted by the daughter of the local landed gentry of the village, Elizabeth Bradford. Miss Bradford tells Anna that her mother is dying and seeks the Rector Mr. Michael Mompellion's counsel, but the rector directs Anna to tell Miss Bradford to go to Hell. Eventually, he himself confronts Miss Bradford and tells her that he will not see her, or any member of her family, due to their refusal to offer support to the village during their self-imposed quarantine. When he returns to his quarters, Miss Bradford collapses in tears in the rectory's kitchen and is comforted by Anna, who is told that her mother is grievously ill with what was suspected to be a tumour but is now known to not be, but she does not elaborate upon this. She presently leaves and Anna returns to the rector, to read him the 103d Psalm, who is impressed by her literacy as taught by the rectoress, Elinor, before her death. He then asks why she did not choose one he finds more ironic – the 128th Psalm. He then desecrates the Bible by dropping it to the floor, an action which shocks her. She leaves the rectory and the plot then fully begins. The novel reverts to a year and a half before, when Anna Frith, then a widow of less than a season, is offered the opportunity to take a boarder, George Viccars, from Peakrill near Kinder Scout, a journeyman tailor who had apprenticed in Plymouth and worked in London, York, and most recently, Canterbury. He quickly ingratiates himself with the Widow Frith's sons, and by the summertime, when he receives a box of fabric from London, he is fully a part of the household. A few days later, Anna comes home to find a woolen dress of green trimmed with Genoese lace. She models the gown, her first since leaving Puritan Sadd colours, for Mr. Viccars and comes to him in an embrace, but immediately sends him to rest as he is fevered. The next day, she mulls on the possibility of marrying Mr. Viccars and the ethics of accepting such a fine gown during her morning's work at the rectory, but completely forgets Mr. Viccars' suggestion that she discuss the matter with her rector or possibly the rectoress. She returns home to find Mr. Viccars abed with acute bubonic plague, and immediately offers him water and fresh bedding, and dismisses his pleadings that she flee for the sake of herself and her sons. He begs her to burn all he brought with him to stop the spread of contagion. She refuses this, thinking him delirious and instead brings the rectors, the Mompellions, to ease Mr. Viccars' illness through prayer. As Mr. Viccars dies, she washes and shrouds him and turns him over to the sexton for burial. The rector recommends that she do as he asked and burn his belongings, but as news of the death spreads, Mr. Viccars' clients come to pick up their work and disregard the warning. The Widow Frith has a few weeks' respite, and then her next door neighbour, Mr. Viccars' employer, falls ill with the plague as well. Within a day, her infant son Tom is ill and dies in less than 24 hours, for which her stepmother, Aphra, rebukes her for her folly in naming and loving a child before it was old enough to walk, whereas the rectoress Elinor Mompellion reads to her of Jesus' love of little children. Within a week, her 3 year old son Jamie dies as well, despite a large variety of remedies being tried. People all over the village begin to fall ill. The spate of deaths is blamed on a widow, Mem Gowdie, and her niece, Anys Gowdie, who are the village's herbalists and midwives. To test Widow Gowdie for being a witch, they throw her into a flooded mine shaft. Once she drowns, they immediately begin to repent and call themselves murderers. Her niece is summoned from the village, and being more practical and skilled in physick understands the situation, and immediately begins to perform insufflation. After three breaths, Mem awakens, and Anys, having raised the dead, is dragged away and asked to confess to her consort with the devil, and in attempting to distract the mob, she confesses and accuses the questioners of having themselves cuckolded by the devil. Her ploy causes great confusion and furthers their hysteria, but does not work – she is lynched moments before Rector Mompellion appears. Anna comments at the time that this incident (as Mem Gowdie dies of pneumonia five days later) led the village into a time of great illness and no one skilled in physick to help them, nor midwife their women through their confinements. The rector consults with the former priest displaced after the fall of the Puritans for advice and formulates a plan, which he shares in the parish on Sunday. He proposes a quarantine, with the town being provisioned in full by the earl of Chatsworth House. The village, with the exception of the Bradfords, its landed gentry, choose to self-quarantine to avoid spreading ""Plague seeds"" further north. Word of the plague in the village had spread and when a few not held by the Oath (who had been working that Sunday and were not part of the decision) attempt to go to relatives at Bakewell, they are pelted by rocks and rotten fruit from the town market to drive them out of the village. They return to Eyam with this report. They are in turn sheltered by the poor of the town, who house them in their already crowded quarters. During the course of the novel, not only do Anna and the rectoress Elinor Mompellion attempt to learn the uses of the contents of the Gowdies' physick garden, with the help of the works of Avicenna, they also take on the duties of the Gowdies in midwifing births. At one point, a Quaker orphan child is dependent upon them to bring out enough lead to allow her to keep her claim upon her family's mine, her only source of income. These problems bring them closer, with an unspoken agreement that Mrs. Mompellion and Anna should take care of the needs of the living, and Mr. Mompellion should take care of the spiritual needs of the dying. In token of that understanding, Mrs. Mompellion directs Anna to stop addressing her as a superior but instead by her Christian name, and tells her of her own girlhood in Derbyshire after her mother's death, where she was given an excellent education by a governess which included study of Latin, Greek, history, music, art and natural philosophy, but at the age of fourteen, she was courted by the heir to a duchy, with whom she eloped to the Fleet in London to marry without licence. But once they arrived in London, her suitor suggested entertainments and excursions and delayed the consecration of their marriage while not delaying the consummation. He abandoned her after two weeks and she sent to her father for aid. Her father and brother, who had been searching desperately for her, brought her home, forgave her and agreed to not tell anyone of what had happened. Upon discovering that she was with child, she, ""desperate and deranged"", ""violated her own body with a fire iron."" She survived the incident but was left barren due to the extensive scarring in her womb. She concludes this story by explaining that it was Mr. Mompellion who ministered to her spirit and introduced her to the lives of others less fortunate, and helped her to repent her own sins, and married her in full knowledge of her barrenness. After the sexton dies of heart failure from digging so many graves, Anna persuades her father, Josiah Bont, to take up the work of gravedigging, but this is an error of judgment. She knew her father to be a physically abusive drunkard who had placed her mother in branks for small offences, and her stepmother, Aphra, to be a selfish, superstitious woman, but she was not prepared for the scope of her father's greed, as he helps himself to most of the contents of the homes for each grave to be dug. Eventually, he attempts to murder a man so as to dig his grave and help himself to the goods of the house, and this final insult leads the villagers to hold a Barmote Court, where he is taken to the victims' mine and impaled there by a dagger through the hands and left unguarded so that his wife may free him – a painful punishment but not fatal. However, Aphra blames him for the plague that has fallen down upon her household that day and does not free him; Anna mistakenly thinks she would comply with the local custom and do so to avoid the horrors of a death by impalement and exposure. Three days later, they find him still impaled at the mine, long dead, and partially consumed by wild animals. Anna offers to help Aphra bury him in the churchyard – however, Aphra argues that he should be buried where he died, and thus they build a cairn, over which Aphra pronounces a curse as Anna recites the Lord's Prayer. Aphra quickly descends into complete madness upon the death of all of her children from plague and is only brought into the community once it is found that she has been selling charms and spells against the plague for extortionate prices. Mr. Mompellion bade her be kept overnight by those that found her – in their anger, they cast her into a disused well that now serves as a manure pit, in which she nearly drowns. She is completely incoherent and in a catatonic state by the time she is brought out in the morning, and the rector postpones dealing with her until the plague is over. The rector suggests that a cleansing fire should happen, particularly of bedstraw and other small things that might carry ""Plague seeds"". The villagers, who had already sacrificed much, now sacrifice all of their worldly possessions to a great bonfire, and this ceases the plague. During a celebration that the plague has ended, Aphra reappears with the skeleton of her youngest child (which she had demanded be left unburied) and murders Elinor, whom Anna had come to view as a surrogate mother, by stabbing her, after which Aphra commits suicide. Mr. Mompellion dictates two letters to the neighbours in the next town. One is to thank the earl of Chatsworth House, inform him of the end of the plague and ask that the road be opened. The other is to inform his father-in-law of Elinor Mompellion's death. After that, he leaves his rooms no more. It is at this point that we entered the novel, where Anna is trying to get the rector to leave his rooms occasionally and cope with his parish. The encounter with Elizabeth Bradford did reawaken his mind and he and Anna seize on each other and fornicate, which they do for the next day and night. In quiet pillow talk, she asks if he is greatly reminded of Elinor. And he answers no, as he had never slept with her. Anna is shocked but asks why. Micheal Mompellion reminds her that Elinor was guilty of the sin of fornication with another man, and he wanted to assure that not only had she been punished for her sin but that she had fully atoned for it so that he would be assured of meeting her in Heaven. Horrified at his selfishness and her own disloyalty to Elinor – as Anna views herself as having taken away the consummation of her marriage, she flees to the church where she again meets Elizabeth Bradford. Elizabeth confesses that her own mother is close to death, and now reveals the reason why – she is in labour with an adulterine bastard. Anna offers her assistance, as during the Plague quarantine she midwived a number of births. Once she arrives at the family seat, she at first does not understand why the woman was to die – the birth is a simple breech. She quickly realises, however, that the doctor sent by Elizabeth's father was told to be as incompetent as possible. Anna delivers the baby, a little girl, and leaves for her own cottage, only to see Elizabeth attempting to drown the baby. She rescues the little girl and asks why Elizabeth would do such a thing – Elizabeth said that there is no satisfactory way the child can live. The child was born from another man other than Elizabeth's father. The father had ordered Elizabeth to drown the newborn baby without his wife knowing. Anna, in seeing a way out of the village that had been her prison for the previous year, offers to take the child away from the village, ""and you and your mother can say whatever you choose."" Elizabeth's mother cries with joy on knowing that her newborn daughter, despite the circumstances of her birth, will be able to live. She gives Anna some emerald jewellery for her and Elizabeth gives her a heavy purse of gold to aid in her flight. Once she leaves Bradford Hall with the baby, jewellery and purse of money, she meets Rector Mompellion. She asks that her sheep flock and croft be given to the Quaker girl she helped in the mines, but says she no longer wants to see him. He accepts this but informs her that she absolutely must flee – for they will eventually realise that to allow Anna and the baby to live is an unacceptable risk, and that killing her would keep her from testifying to Elizabeth Bradford's attempted infanticide. He offers her a letter of introduction to his wife's family and his own horse so that she may go to them. She accepts them and waves goodbye. In the epilogue, she briefly narrates the three years since she left Eyam. Once on the road, she tears up the letter of introduction, wishing to be completely estranged from her previous life and all its connections. When she reaches the port of Plymouth, she stays at an inn for several days and hires a wetnurse for the Bradford baby. Several days after her arrival, the innkeeper tells her that the Bradford son, Elizabeth's brother, is in town and looking for her, accusing her of thievery, and particularly keen on finding ""her"" baby. The innkeeper has no knowledge of the circumstances, but informs her of the Bradford son looking for her and he wisely advises her to leave on the next ship regardless for which port it is bound. She boards a carrack fittingly carrying Peak-mines pigs, which is destined for the ports of Oran and Venezia for the production of Venetian glass. Throughout the sea voyage, she does not name the Bradfords' baby girl, taking heed of her stepmother's words about her mourning her infant son, as she fears a possible shipwreck and wishes to avoid that omen until she is assured of her and the child's survival. Upon arrival in Oran, she decides to disembark and seek out one of the Muslim doctors whose writings she and Elinor studied, as she found physick and midwifery to be her vocation. He agrees to take her in, due to his despair at Sex segregation in Islam keeping women and their husbands from seeking his aid during medical emergencies and labour. To satisfy the customs of the Al-Andalus Arabs, he takes her as one of his wives in name only so that she may continue her study and work with him freely. She is especially pleased with the custom of Kunya which leads her to be addressed not as Anna Frith or the Widow Frith, but by the name of her firstborn and now four years' dead son — umm Jam-ee (mother of Jamie). The book closes with her taking her two daughters by the hand before going into the city – the Bradford child, who is now named A'isha, for the sustainment she gave Anna during their sea voyage to Oran, and her birth daughter, conceived with Michael Mompellion – Elinor."
1818,Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,history," Biblical references: Matt. 2:1-12, Luke 2:1-20 Three Magi have come from the East. Balthasar sets up a tent in the desert, where he is joined by Melchior, a Hindu, and Gaspar from Athens. They discover they have been brought together by their common goal. They see a bright star shining over the region, and take it as a sign to leave, following it through the desert toward the province of Judaea. At the Joppa Gate in Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph pass through on their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. They stop at the inn at the entrance to the city, but there is no room. Mary is pregnant and, as labor begins, they head to a cave on a nearby hillside, where Jesus is born. In the pastures outside the city, a group of seven shepherds watch their flocks. Angels announce the Christ's birth. The shepherds hurry towards the city and enter the cave on the hillside to worship the Christ. They spread the news of the Christ's birth and many come to see him. The Magi arrive in Jerusalem and inquire for news of the Christ. Herod the Great is angry to hear of another king challenging his rule and asks the Sanhedrin to find information for him. The Sanhedrin deliver a prophecy written by Micah, telling of a ruler to come from Bethlehem Ephrathah, which they interpret to signify the Christ's birthplace. Biblical references: Luke 2:51-52 Judah Ben-Hur is a prince descended from a royal family of Judaea. Messala, his closest childhood friend and the son of a Roman tax-collector, leaves home for five years of education in Rome. He returns as a proud Roman. He mocks Judah and his religion and the two become enemies. Judah decides to go to Rome for military training in order to use his acquired skills to fight the Roman Empire. Valerius Gratus, the fourth Roman prefect of Judaea, passes by Judah's house. As Judah watches the procession, a roof tile happens to fall and hit the governor. Messala betrays Judah, who is arrested. There is no trial; Judah's family is secretly imprisoned in the Antonia Fortress and all the family property is seized. Judah vows vengeance against the Romans. He is sent as a slave to work aboard a Roman warship. On the way to the ship he meets Jesus, who offers him water, which deeply moves Judah. In Italy, Greek pirate-ships have been looting Roman vessels in the Aegean Sea. The prefect Sejanus orders the Roman Quintus Arrius to take warships to combat the pirates. Chained on one of the warships, Judah has survived three hard years as a Roman slave, kept alive by his passion for vengeance. Arrius is impressed by Judah and finds out more about his life and his story. When the ship is attacked by pirates, it starts to sink. Arrius unlocks Judah's chains so he has a chance to survive, and Judah ends up saving the Roman from drowning. They share a plank as a raft until being rescued by a Roman ship. They return to Misenum, where Arrius adopts Judah, making him a freedman and a Roman citizen. Judah Ben-Hur trained in wrestling for five years in the Palaestra in Rome before becoming the heir of Arrius after his death. While traveling to Antioch on state business, Judah learns that his real father's chief servant, the slave Simonides, lives in a house in this city, and has the trust of Judah's father's possessions. Judah visits Simonides, who listens to his story but demands more proof of his identity. Ben-Hur says he has no proof, but asks if Simonides knows of the fate of Judah's mother and sister. He says he knows nothing and Judah leaves the house. Simonides hires his servant Malluch to spy on Judah to see if his story is true and to learn more about him. Malluch meets and befriends Judah in the Grove of Daphne, and they go to the games stadium together. There, Ben-Hur finds his old rival Messala racing one of the chariots, preparing for a tournament. The Sheik Ilderim announces that he is looking for a chariot driver to race his team in the coming tournament. Judah, wanting revenge, offers to drive the sheik's chariot, as he intends to defeat Messala. Balthasar and his daughter Iras are sitting at a fountain in the stadium. Messala's chariot nearly hits them but Judah intervenes. Balthasar thanks Ben-Hur and presents him with a gift. Judah heads to Sheik Ilderim's tent. The servant Malluch accompanies him, and they talk about the Christ; Malluch relates Balthasar's story of the Magi. They realize that Judah saved the man who saw the Christ soon after his birth. Esther, Simonides and Malluch talk together, and conclude that Ben-Hur is who he claims to be, and that he is on their side in the fight against Rome. Messala realizes that Judah Ben-Hur has been adopted into a Roman home and his honor has been restored. He threatens to take revenge. Meanwhile, Balthasar and his daughter Iras arrive at the Sheik's tent. With Judah they discuss how the Christ, approaching the age of thirty, is ready to enter public leadership. Judah takes increasing interest in the beautiful Iras. Messala sends a letter to Valerius Gratus about his discovery of Judah, but Sheik Ilderim intercepts the letter and shares it with Judah. He discovers that his mother and sister were imprisoned in a cell at the Antonia Fortress, and Messala has been spying on him. Ilderim is deeply impressed with Judah's skills with his racing horses as his charioteer. Simonides comes to Judah and offers him the accumulated fortune of the Hur family business, of which the merchant has been steward. Judah Ben-Hur accepts only the money, leaving property and the rest to the loyal merchant. They each agree to do their part to fight for the Christ, whom they believe to be a political savior from Roman authority. A day before the race, Ilderim prepared his horses. Judah appoints Malluch to organize his support campaign for him. Meanwhile, Messala organizes his own huge campaign, revealing Judah Ben-Hur's former identity to the community as an outcast and convict. Malluch challenges Messala and his cronies to a large wager, which, if the Roman loses, would bankrupt him. The day of the race comes. During the race Messala and Judah become the clear leaders. Judah deliberately scrapes his chariot wheel against Messala's and Messala's chariot breaks apart. Judah is crowned winner and showered with prizes, claiming his first strike against Rome. After the race, Judah Ben-Hur receives a letter from Iras asking him to go to the Roman palace of Idernee. When he arrives, he sees that he has been tricked. Thord, a Saxon, hired by Messala, comes to kill Judah. They duel, and Ben-Hur offers Thord four thousand sestercii to let him live. Thord returns to Messala claiming to have killed Judah, so collects money from them both. Supposedly dead, Judah Ben-Hur goes to the desert with Ilderim to plan a secret campaign. For Ben-Hur, Simonides bribes Sejanus to remove the prefect Valerius Gratus from his post, who is succeeded by Pontius Pilate. Ben-Hur sets out for Jerusalem to find his mother and sister. Pilate's review of the prison records reveals great injustice, and he notes Gratus concealed a walled-up cell. Pilate's troops reopen the cell to find two women suffering from leprosy. Pilate releases them, and they go to the old Hur house, which is vacant. Finding Judah asleep on the steps, they give thanks but don't wake him. As lepers, they are to be banished, and they leave. Amrah, the Egyptian maid who once served the Hur house, discovers Ben-Hur and wakes him. She reveals having stayed in the Hur house for all these years. Keeping touch with Simonides, she discouraged many potential buyers of the house by acting as a ghost. They pledge to find out more about the lost family. Judah discovers an official Roman report about the release of two leprous women. Amrah hears rumors of the mother and sister's fate. Romans make plans to use funds from the corban treasury, of the Temple in Jerusalem, to build a new aqueduct. The Jewish people petition Pilate to veto the plan. Pilate sends his soldiers in disguise to mingle with the crowd, who at an appointed time, massacre the protesters. Judah kills a Roman guard in a duel, and becomes a hero in the eyes of a group of Galilean protesters. Biblical references: John 1:29-34 At a meeting in Bethany, Ben-Hur and his Galileans organize a resistance force to revolt against Rome. Gaining help from Simonides and Ilderim, he sets up a training base in Ilderim's territory in the desert. After some time, Malluch writes announcing the appearance of a prophet believed to be a herald for the Christ. Judah journeys to the Jordan to see the Prophet, meeting Balthasar and Iras traveling for the same purpose. They reach Bethabara, where a group has gathered to watch John the Baptist. A man walks up to John, and asks to be baptized. Judah recognizes him as the man who gave him water at the well in Nazareth many years before. Balthasar worships the Christ. Biblical references: Matthew 27:48-51, Mark 11:9-11, 14:51-52, Luke 23:26-46, John 12:12-18, 18:2-19:30 During the next three years, Jesus preaches his gospel around Galilee, and Ben-Hur becomes one of his followers. He notices that Jesus chooses fishermen, farmers, and similar people, considered ""lowly"", as apostles. Judah has seen Jesus perform miracles, and is convinced that the Christ really had come. During this time, Malluch has bought the old Hur house and renovated it. He invites Simonides and Balthasar, with their daughters, to live in the house with him. Judah Ben-Hur seldom visits, but the day before Jesus plans to enter Jerusalem and proclaim himself, Judah returns. He tells all in the house of what he has learned while following Jesus. Amrah realizes that Judah's mother and sister could be healed, and brings them from a cave where they are living. The next day, the three await Jesus and seek his healing for the women. Amidst the celebration of his Triumphal Entry, Jesus heals the women. When they are cured, they reunite with Judah. Several days later, Iras talks with Judah, saying he has trusted in a false hope, for Jesus had not started the expected revolution. She says that it is all over between them, saying she loves Messala. Ben-Hur remembers the ""invitation of Iras"" that led to the incident with Thord, and accuses Iras of betraying him. That night, he resolves to go to Esther. While lost in thought, he notices a parade in the street and falls in with it. He notices that Judas Iscariot is leading the parade, and many of the temple priests and Roman soldiers are marching together. They go to the olive grove of Gethsemane, and he sees Jesus walking out to meet the crowd. Understanding the betrayal, Ben-Hur is spotted by a priest who tries to take him into custody; he breaks away and flees. When morning comes, Ben-Hur learns that the Jewish priests have tried Jesus before Pilate. Although originally acquitted, the leader has been sentenced to crucifixion at the crowd's demand. Ben-Hur is shocked at how his supporters have deserted Christ in his time of need. They head to Calvary, and Ben-Hur resigns himself to watch the crucifixion of Jesus. The sky darkens. Ben-Hur offers Jesus wine vinegar to return Jesus' favor to him. Jesus utters his last cry. Ben-Hur and his friends commit their lives to Jesus, realizing he was not an earthly king, but a heavenly king and a savior of mankind. Five years after the crucifixion, Ben-Hur and Esther have married and had children. The family lives in Misenum. Iras visits Esther and tells her she has killed Messala, discovering that the Romans were brutes. After Esther tells Ben-Hur of the visit, he tries unsuccessfully to find Iras. In the tenth year of Emperor Nero's reign, Ben-Hur is staying with Simonides, whose business has been successful. With Ben-Hur, the two men have given most of the fortunes to the church of Antioch. Now, as an old man, Simonides has sold all his ships but one, and that one has returned for probably its final voyage. Learning that the Christians in Rome are suffering at the hands of Emperor Nero, Ben-Hur and his friends decide to help. Ben-Hur, Esther, and Malluch sail to Rome, where they decided to build an underground church. It will survive through the ages and comes to be known as the Catacomb of San Calixto."
1819,A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal,history," The book begins with a letter from the 82-year-old owner of the journal, now Catherine Hall Onesti, to her great-granddaughter, Catherine. The writer tells the recipient about the journal she is sending her, of her own life at age fourteen. Then the journal begins. Catherine introduces herself as 'aged 13 years, 6 months, 29 days, of Meredith in the state of New Hampshire'. She then goes on the give an almost day-to-day report of the happenings that occur. At various intervals, she also includes quotes from her speller or her school textbook."
1820,Mannan Magal,history," The plot is about Karikalan who set his journey to find his identity was goes to vengi kingdom & meets Niranchana devi accidentally where on finding the political clutches around her & her first younger brother Rajaraja Narendra by her step-maternal uncle Jayasimha II for her second younger brother Vishnuvarshan. Where Jayasimha II wanted to make Vengi throne to his nephew Vishnuvarshan, makes Rajaraja Narendra very weak politically & physically. Karikalan decides to work for her to save. On his journey to save Niranchana DDevi & to get his own identity he was put into positions to manage & tackle by-the-times most dangerous & intillegent men like Brammaraayar, Jayasimha II, Araiyan Rajarajan."
1821,Fire and Sword,history," The book covers the time period between December 1804 and April 1809. At the start of the novel, Napoleon has recently been crowned Emperor of France, while Arthur has returned from his successful campaigns in India. The plot of the novel revolves around Napoleon's wars in central Europe, and plans for the invasion of England, foiled by the Battle of Trafalgar. Running parallel to this story, Arthur Wesley is making a name for himself in the armies of Britain, commanding a unit of the army sent to deprive Napoleon of the Danish navy, and in the first expeditionary force sent to liberate Portugal from French rule. At the end of the novel, Napoleon's position is becoming more tenuous, with plots being hatched against him, while Arthur has begun to inflict the first defeats on the armies of Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsula."
1822,Gods and Generals,history," Copying his father's approach of focusing on the most important officers of the two armies (General Robert E. Lee, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. ""Stonewall"" Jackson, and Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain), Shaara depicted the emotional drama of soldiers fighting old friends while accurately detailing historical details including troop movements, strategies, and tactical combat situations. General Hancock, for instance, spends much of the novel dreading the day he will have to fire on his friend in the Confederate Army, Lewis ""Lo"" Armistead. The novel also deals with General Lee's disillusionment with the Confederate bureaucracy and General Jackson's religious fervor. In addition to covering events leading up to the war, the book details the events of First Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. The film version provides only cursory coverage of immediate pre-war events, focusing primarily on Lee and the secession of Virginia, and omits the Battle of Antietam."
1823,The Light Bearer,history," The fictional protagonists are a proto-Germanic tribeswoman, Auriane, daughter of a Chattian war leader; and Marcus Arrius Julianus, a Roman senator and imperial advisor whose character and circumstances are loosely based on the Roman philosopher Seneca, as well as another contemporary in the reign of Nero, Stoic philosopher and statesman Helvidius Priscus, a man much praised by his contemporaries for his outspokenness in public life. Rome’s interference in tribal affairs compel Auriane to take the warrior’s oath and lead her father’s retinue after his untimely death. In Rome, Stoic humanist Marcus Julianus reaches the highest pinnacles of government, where he is taken into the confidence of the Emperor Domitian. Through political maneuvering, he strives to check the murderous whims of the increasingly corrupt Emperor Domitian. Auriane is captured in Domitian's Chattian War and taken to Rome. As Domitian's reign of terror begins, Julianus orchestrates a plot to assassinate the Emperor; here the author has inserted a fictional character into a gap left by history. The Emperor Domitian, who according to Suetonius, was fond of pitting women against dwarfs in the arena, condemns Auriane to a gladiatorial school. Here Auriane discovers the tribesman who betrayed her people in war. As Julianus’ assassination plot rushes to its conclusion, Auriane must carry out the tribal rite of vengeance in the Colosseum."
1824,The Last Kingdom,history," 866 - 876: Osbert is 10 years old and the second son of Ealdorman Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg in Northumbria. Danes raid Bebbanburg and Ealdorman Uhtred's first son, also called Uhtred, is killed and his body desecrated after he is sent out to scout the raiders. Osbert is now the oldest son of Ealdorman Uhtred and is re-baptised Uhtred. Ealdorman Uhtred seeks to avenge his son's death. He is killed during the failed attack on Eoferwic (York) and Uhtred is captured by Earl Ragnar the Fearless of the Danes during the battle. Ragnar, intrigued and amused by the boy's attempted attack during the battle, retains him in his household. Uhtred's uncle, Ælfric, takes Bebbanburg and the title of Ealdorman for himself although Uhtred is the rightful heir. Uhtred describes his life among the Danes, moving to the country with Ragnar and his men, working like a slave and fighting with other boys, slaves and Danes alike. Uhtred befriends Ragnar's son Rorik and has many clashes with one boy in particular, Sven, son of Kjartan, a shipmaster in Ragnar's small fleet. One day, Ragnar's daughter, Thyra, is kidnapped by Sven out in the woods, and he tries to convince her to touch him sexually. Uhtred charges Sven from hiding, taking Sven's sword and chopping into his thigh. He then slashes at Sven's side. Uhtred, Rorik, and Thyra make an escape back to Ragnar's hall where they each recount the tale to Ragnar. He is offended and deeply angry. He proceeds to Kjartan, and crushes one of Sven's eyes with the hilt of his sword. Uhtred then goes Viking across East Anglia, and participates in the conquering of Mercia, East Anglia, and the invasion of Wessex. He is kidnapped by a priest, Beocca, a family friend. He then escapes from Wessex and joins Ragnar again. Uhtred enjoys life with the Danes but flees after Kjartan kills Ragnar in a hall-burning. Uhtred hopes to escape the assassins of Kjartan by sending out the lie that he died. Uhtred then joins King Alfred in Wessex. There he learns to read and write, and sails with Alfred's fleet of 12 ships against the Danes. After a battle with the Danes he again meets Ragnar the younger, son of Earl Ragnar, the man who adopted him and tells him how his father died. They part but there remains friendship between them. Seeking to take command of the fleet, he gains it on the condition that he marry the orphaned Wessex girl Mildrith. After doing so, he takes part in a siege against Guthrum, and is among a group of hostages exchanged when the Danes and Saxons agree on peace. Staying with the Danes in the city over winter he again meets Ragnar. When Guthrum breaks the peace and murders the Saxon hostages, Uhtred is saved by Ragnar. He then escapes to find his wife. She was taken by Odda the Younger, another Wessex ealdorman (earl or noble), to the north. There he fights in the battle at Cynwit, where Uhtred finds himself fighting against Ubba Lothbrokson's Danes. The book ends with Uhtred fighting in a shield-wall and killing Ubba."
1825,"Judas, My Brother",history," Written from the viewpoint of Nathan ('the Thirteenth Disciple'), the heavily footnoted book presents an adventure and romance storyline against the backdrop of the 1st century Roman Empire. Nathan's travels lead him to Rome to fight as a retiarius, and on his return to Palestine to become involved with the Apostles, the Zealots and the Essenes. He loves Shelomith (the disciple Salome, depicted in the novel as a prostitute), who does not return his affections due to her unrequited love for Yeshua (Jesus)."
1826,The Ramsay Scallop,history," The Ramsay Scallop has two main characters, Thomas of Thornham and Elenor of Ramsay. They were betrothed to each other when they were young. When Thomas returns broken and disillusioned from the Crusades, he finds the idea of marriage and lordship overwhelming. Elenor dreads the idea of marriage to Thomas, both because she barely knows him and because she is afraid of bearing children, as she is too small to give birth easily. Father Gregory sends both of them on a religious pilgrimage to Santiago, Spain, to put the record of Ramsay's sins on the shrine of Saint James. Both of them are relieved because the pilgrimage means the delay of their marriage and a last chance for adventure. On their special pilgrimage, they meet different people, and discover the glorious possibilities of the world around them and within each other. *Elenor of Ramsay *Thomas of Thornham *Father Gregory *Etienne *Marthe *Friar Paul *Carla *Guilliamette *Pipeau *Martin"
1827,Austerlitz,history," Jacques Austerlitz, the main character in the book, is an architectural historian who encounters and befriends the solitary narrator in Antwerp during the 1960s. Gradually we come to understand his life history. He arrived in Britain during the summer of 1939 as an infant refugee on a kindertransport from a Czechoslovakia threatened by Hitler's Nazis. He was adopted by an elderly Welsh Calvinist preacher and his sickly wife, and spent his childhood in Mid Wales before attending a minor public school. His foster parents died, and Austerlitz learned something of his background. After school he attended university and became an academic who is drawn to, and began his research in, the study of European architecture. After a nervous breakdown, Austerlitz visited Prague where he met a close friend of his lost parents. The elderly lady tells him the fate of his mother, an actress and opera singer who was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. From Prague, Austerlitz traveled to Theriesenstadt. Here readers learn about the disappearance of European Jewry during the Holocaust. The novel shifts to contemporary Paris as Austerlitz seeks out any remaining evidence about the fate of his father. Sebald explores the ways in which collections of records, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France or National Library of France, entomb memories. During the novel the reader is taken on a guided tour of a lost European civilization: a world of fortresses, railway stations, concentration camps and libraries."
1828,Ancestors of Avalon,history," 2500 years BC, Tiriki, Priestess of Light and of the Earth-goddess Ni-Terat, and her husband Micail, Priest of Light and Prince of the Atlantean state Atharrath, have to save themselves from the destruction of Atlantis and are forced to board different ships to the Isles of Tin (Britain). When they finally reach the British coast, they are far away from each other and they both believe that the other one is dead. Tiriki and other Atlanteans who came with her, settle down in the swamplands surrounding the Holy Mountain (which is later going to be called the Isle of Avalon). She realizes that the cult of the Great Goddess is much stronger here than it was in Atlantis, so she and her companions start living with the indigenous people and build up a new religion, where the Atlantean knowledge and the Old Faith of the British people merge. Micail and Tjalan, Prince of Alkonath, on the other hand, try to rebuild the lost glory of Atlantis and start building a huge stone circle -which will later be known as Stonehenge - in order to turn the people of Britain to slaves by using its tremendous powers. When Tiriki and her followers finally come in contact with the other Atlantean settlement, conflicts arise immediately. de:Die Ahnen von Avalon fr:Les Ancêtres d'Avalon it:L'alba di Avalon pt:Os Ancestrais de Avalon"
1829,The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,history," The book describes an alternate history to the life of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible. It begins with Jesus's conception, in the spiritual presence of God. Jesus' birth is heralded by a mysterious character, who claims to be an angel. Later, at Bethlehem, Jesus is born in a cave, and three shepherds - including the ""angel"" - arrive to bring him presents. As described in the Gospel of Matthew, Herod the Great receives a premonition of the birth of the ""King of the Jews"" (in the biblical account of Matthew, he is informed by the Magi; in the book, however, he is visited in his dreams by the prophet Micah). He orders the Massacre of the Innocents. Jesus survives, but his father, Joseph, who has learned of the plan, neglects to warn the other families in the village, ensuring that his son is safe first, and is plagued by nightmares for the rest of his life. Later, when Jesus turns thirteen, Joseph is crucified by the Romans who mistakenly think him to be a Zealot fighter. From the night of his father's death, Jesus inherits his nightmare. He learns about the massacre from his mother, and grows aloof from his family, amongst whom he can no longer live peacefully. He leaves the family and Nazareth and makes his way to Jerusalem, where he visits the Temple, thence to Bethlehem. He works as an apprentice to a shepherd (called The Shepherd who is understood to be the Devil and the mysterious ""angel"" mentioned earlier). The Shepherd instructs Jesus in the ways of hedonism, and at one point tries to convince Jesus to use the sheep for sexual release. Eventually, he meets God in the desert. God forces Jesus to sacrifice his favourite sheep, and says he has a design for him. Upon hearing of this, the Shepherd tells him to leave immediately. Jesus makes his way back home through the Sea of Galilee where he discovers an amazing talent to catch myriads of fish, and Magdala where he meets and falls in love with Mary Magdalene, then continues back home to Nazareth. Jesus is not believed by his family, and so he leaves them once again, meets Mary Magdalene (without marrying her) and goes to work helping the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. One day out on the Sea by himself, he is visited by God and the Devil. God tells Jesus of his plan for Jesus to institute Christianity, because God is annoyed at being only the God of one race, and that other gods seem to get all the glory. Jesus is initially against what he sees as a selfish plan bound to lead to great suffering of many, but is made to see that he actually has no choice in the matter. Jesus becomes a prophet of God, continuing to work miracles but also preaching. He gets himself arrested, repeatedly calling himself King of the Jews. Having heard news of John the Baptist, who was put to death not for preaching the coming of the Messiah but allegedly for disapproving of King Herod's incestuous marriage, Jesus decides that his own death could likewise obscure his divine nature and thus thwart God's plan. The novel ends with Jesus' realisation that God's plan, and the ensuing centuries of torture, slaughter, and misery that Christianity will bring, will proceed despite his efforts. His last words from the cross, in referring to God, are ""Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done."" <!--"
1830,The Scarlet Pimpernel,history," The Scarlet Pimpernel is set in 1792, during the early stages of the French Revolution. Marguerite St. Just, a beautiful French actress, is the wife of wealthy English fop Sir Percy Blakeney, a baronet. Before their marriage, Marguerite took revenge upon the Marquis de St. Cyr, who had ordered her brother to be beaten for his romantic interest in the Marquis' daughter, with the unintended consequence of the Marquis and his sons being sent to the guillotine. When Percy found out, he became estranged from his wife. Marguerite, for her part, became disillusioned with Percy's shallow, dandyish lifestyle. Meanwhile, the ""League of the Scarlet Pimpernel"", a secret society of twenty English aristocrats, ""one to command, and nineteen to obey"", is engaged in rescuing their French counterparts from the daily executions (see Reign of Terror). Their leader, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, takes his nickname from the drawing of a small red flower with which he signs his messages. Despite being the talk of London society, only his followers and possibly the Prince of Wales know the Pimpernel's true identity. Like many others, Marguerite is entranced by the Pimpernel's daring exploits. At a ball attended by the Blakeneys, a verse by Percy about the ""elusive Pimpernel"" makes the rounds and amuses the other guests. Meanwhile, Marguerite is blackmailed by the wily new French envoy to England, Citizen Chauvelin. Chauvelin's agents have stolen a letter incriminating her beloved brother Armand, proving that he is in league with the Pimpernel. Chauvelin offers to trade Armand's life for her help against the Pimpernel. Contemptuous of her seemingly witless and unloving husband, Marguerite does not go to him for help or advice. Instead, she passes along information which enables Chauvelin to learn the Pimpernel's true identity. Later that night, Marguerite finally tells her husband of the terrible danger threatening her brother and pleads for his assistance. Percy promises to save him. After Percy unexpectedly leaves for France, Marguerite discovers to her horror that he is the Pimpernel. He had hidden behind the persona of a dull, slow-witted fop in order to deceive the world. He had not told Marguerite because of his worry that she might betray him, as she had the Marquis de St. Cyr. Desperate to save her husband, she decides to pursue Percy to France to warn him that Chauvelin knows his identity and his purpose. She persuades Sir Andrew Ffoulkes to accompany her, but because of the tide and the weather, neither they nor Chavelin can leave immediately. At Calais, Percy openly approaches Chauvelin in a decrepit inn (the Chat gris), whose owner is in Percy's pay. Despite Chauvelin's best efforts, the Englishman manages to escape by throwing pepper in Chavelin's face. Through a bold plan executed right under Chauvelin's nose, Percy rescues Marguerite's brother Armand and the Comte de Tournay, the father of a schoolfriend of Marguerite's. Marguerite pursues Percy right to the very end, resolute that she must either warn him or share his fate. Percy, heavily disguised, is captured by Chauvelin, but he does not recognise him, and he is enabled to escape. With Marguerite's love and courage amply proven, Percy's ardour is rekindled. Safely back on board their schooner, the Day Dream, the happily reconciled couple returns to England. Sir Andrew marries the Count's daughter, Suzanne."
1831,Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra,history," Ankhesenamun has never been safe in all her short life – not even with her beloved husband and half brother Tutankhamun. Daughter of Pharaoh Akhenaten and the fabled Nefertiti, and married at one time to her father, she is forced to marry Tutankhamun by the powerful General Horemheb at a time of bitter political and religious division. Ankhesenamun is the delicate link between scheming factions. Left vulnerable by the failure of her plans for the sacred egg of Ra and the death of her young husband, Ankhesenamun is forced into making one last extraordinary and desperate bid for life and happiness..."
1832,The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina,history," The novel is set three months after The Dolphins of Laurentum and six months after the children solved their first mystery. The Geminus household is still suffering financially from the loss of the Myrtilla. It is winter AD 79 during the five-day festival of the Saturnalia, a time when the status quo is upset. Ostia is further excited by the escape of some exotic wild animals, possible man-eaters. The children narrowly escape an alarming-looking bird. Flavia is disturbed when her father Marcus starts talking about her betrothal and insisting that she should stop running around Ostia playing detective with her unconventional friends. She blames her father's change of attitude on his new ladylove, Cartilia Poplicola, and is determined to prove that the widow is a fortune-hunter, a witch, or even a murderess. Several signs, including a dream, make Flavia believe that following a trail guided by the twelve labours of Hercules will lead her to the truth. These are generally places in Ostia, such as the Hydra fountain and the Atlas tavern, but also events like the capture of the escaped lion or people such as the gladiator nicknamed the Cretan Bull. Flavia and the others pick up scraps of news and gossip about Cartilia and her family which they try to piece together. The detectives meet Cartilia's sister Diana and eventually discover her secret love for Aristo, which explains some strange events and clears Cartilia of wrongdoing. However, uncovering another secret destroys Marcus's trust in Cartilia, and Flavia is unexpectedly unhappy about it. A fever sweeps through Ostia and many fall sick, including Flavia and Marcus. The first wave of sickness, however, is just the precursor of a more deadly plague which will be important in the seventh book, The Enemies of Jupiter."
1833,The Matchlock Gun,history," The book is set in the year 1756 during the French and Indian War in Guilderland, New York. Ten-year-old Edward Van Alstyne (throughout the book, he is called ""Ateoord"", which is his name in Dutch) and his mother Gertrude are determined to protect their home and family with an ancient (and much too heavy) Spanish matchlock gun that Edward's great-grandfather had brought from Bergom Op Zoom in Holland while his father Teunis is away from home with the local militia fighting the enemy (using, to Edward's disappointment, a musket instead of the matchlock). Gertrude, Edward, and his younger sister Trudy go about their everyday chores, but news arrives that the French-Indian forces have been attacking and burning nearby settlements and that Teunis and his militia company have been sent to intercept them. Later that day, while she and the children are out herding the cows, Gertrude spots a column of smoke in the distance and realizes that raiders are getting closer. Rather than take herself and the children over to her mother-in-law's brick house as Teunis had previously suggested, since raiders would be more likely to attack it rather than their house, she devises a plan for a possible Indian attack. Returning home, she loads the matchlock gun, fixes it in position to fire and instructs Edward how and when to fire it. She then goes outside to keep a watch for any approaching raiders. At the book's climax, Gertrude sees flames in the distance and realizes that her mother-in-law's house has indeed been attacked. Moments later, she spots five Indians approaching in the darkness, bent on burning the house. Barely able to outrun them, she reaches the front porch and manages to shout a pre-arranged warning to Edward, but is wounded in the shoulder by a thrown tomahawk, and the boy fires the gun through the front window, killing three raiders and driving off the remaining two (one of them, apparently wounded, is later killed by the returning militia). As their house burns, Edward and Trudy manage to drag their unconscious mother to safety. Edward goes back into the burning house to save the Spanish gun, and later he, Trudy and their mother are found by their father and the other militiamen. The book's forward states that this is a true story handed down from Trudy's descendants (Trudy became widely known as an expert spinner, having been taught by her mother who, because of her crippled shoulder, could no longer perform the task)."
1834,The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War,history," Beginning with the famous section about Longstreet's spy Harrison gathering information about the movements and positions of the Federals, each day is told primarily from the perspectives of commanders of the two armies, including Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet for the Confederacy, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Buford for the Union. Most chapters describe the emotion-laden decisions of these officers as they went into battle. Maps depicting the positioning of the troops as they went to battle, as they advanced, add to the sense of authenticity as decisions are made to advance and retreat with the armies. The author also uses the story of Gettysburg, one of the largest battles in the history of North America, to relate the causes of the Civil War and the motivations that led old friends to face each other on the battlefield. The novel is sometimes compared to Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage for its depiction of the war, but Shaara emphasizes the decisions, motivations, and actions of generals and colonels in the battle more than the common soldiers. Shaara explained that he was aiming to produce an epic military study modeled after William Shakespeare's Henry V. His choice for a specific subject was inspired by a family vacation that Shaara took to the site of the battle in 1966. Shaara's son Jeffrey Shaara expanded the story by adding a prequel, Gods and Generals and a sequel, The Last Full Measure."
1835,The Last Camel Died at Noon,history," A relatively quiet evening at home in 1897 for the Emersons is disturbed by the appearance of Reggie Forthright and his grandfather, Viscount Blacktower. The two visitors have information about Blacktower's older son, Willoughby Forth, who disappeared fourteen years ago in the desert west of the Nile in the Sudan. They tell the story of a lost civilization in the midst of the desert. Lord Blacktower's story would have been discounted, except the map he produced was on the back of a page from Emerson's own notebook, drawn by Willie Forth himself. Blacktower wants the Emersons to lead an expedition to find the missing heir, but the Emersons decline. Surprisingly, Radcliffe, Amelia and Ramses do travel to the Sudan, to excavate at Gebel Barkal and Napata, the first Nubian capital. The sudden appearance of Reggie Forthright causes them to alter their plans. Reggie is set on seeking his long-lost uncle, and when he disappears in the western wastes, the Emersons have no recourse but to go after him. But the rescuers need rescue themselves when all but one of their men desert them, and their camels die off one by one. Finally, the last faithful servant takes a chance, and looks for a promised oasis ahead. Nearly dead from heat and thirst, they suddenly find themselves in a world 3,000 years out of place. Amelia suffers the worst of it, taking weeks to fully recover. She is spurred on because they find themselves in a place where ancient Egypt is still alive and functioning. And they find that their servant was in fact one of two brothers struggling for power in the ancient land. They soon learn that anyone who thought life in ancient Egypt was simple would have been grossly mistaken. The intrigues, politics, and social mores push and prod the Emersons in ways they never expected, and they still need to discover what happened to Willie Forth, his wife, and his nephew. Dinner with princes and a queen, clandestine meetings with priestesses, and plans to escape all jumble together until the god Aminreh appears to make his decision, and all three Emersons are in the midst of the action when Aminreh makes the choice no one expected... Nefret Forth is introduced, and the source of her later wealth is established. So too is the devotion the family has to a young woman they did not know the existence of just a short while before."
1836,The Czar's Madman,history," The story is written in diary form, describing the impact of revolutionary thinking on the part of a family member. Aristocrat Timotheus von Bock (the diarist's brother in law) writes a letter to the Czar criticising the way in which the Czar's family runs the country. He justifies this act by an oath made to the Czar to give an honest appraisal of the situation. Von Bock is imprisoned as a traitor (although the reason for his imprisonment is kept secret, as is the letter) for 9 years before being released into house arrest on the basis that he is 'mad'. Is he mad? Was it madness to offer criticism which inevitably led to imprisonment? Is he mad not to flee his house arrest when the opportunity arises? These are some of the issues raised and discussed in this novel."
1837,The Sign of the Beaver,history," The Sign of the Beaver tells the story of a 13-year-old boy, Matthew Hallowell, and his father, who, as early settlers, together build a wooden cabin in Maine in 1768. However, Matt's father must head back to Quincy, Massachusetts, to get Matt's mother, sister, and newborn baby, who were all left behind so Matt and his father could build shelter, plant crops and stock supplies. Matt's father promises to return in seven weeks. Before Matt's father leaves, he gives him his watch to tell time and a hunting rifle to guard the crops and the newly built cabin. Unfortunately, Matt finds himself enduring many hardships for which he is unprepared. His hunting rifle is stolen by a stranger named Ben, his crops are eaten by the wildlife, and his food supplies are pillaged by a bear. Wanting to sweeten his bland diet, Matt raids a honeybee hive for honey and is attacked by the furious bees. Attempting to escape the swarm, he jumps into a creek, losing a shoe and hurting his ankle in the process. Luckily, Matt's foolhardy adventure has not gone unnoticed and he is pulled from the water. Ironically, the native Indians he has learned to fear through tales of kidnapping have saved his life. His numerous stings are treated by the elderly Penobscot Indian chief named Saknis. After recovering, the thankful Matt offers his only book, Robinson Crusoe, as a gift to Saknis, and his grandson Attean. However they cannot read English. Saknis instead commands that Matt teach Attean to read, in return they will provide him with food. Uncertain of how to teach anyone, especially the unwilling boy, Matt accepts the task out of gratitude and courtesy, as he owes his life to the man. Matt does not immediately befriend Attean, although the two young boys eventually form a strong friendship as they help each other through difficult circumstances. Attean goes off to find his manitou, which is a sign of becoming a man. Attean is afraid because he fears it will take him a very long time. Although Matt longs for Attean to stay he is happy for his friend. Matt asks the question: ""What if Attean's manitou doesn't come?"" Although this offends Attean because in his culture without it he cannot become a man, he answers ""Even if I have to wait many winters I get manitou to become a man"". When Attean returns from searching for his manitou, he invites Matt, whose family has not yet returned after many months, to join his tribe, who are moving north to new hunting grounds. Although Matt is good friends with Attean and enjoys Indian culture, he has not forgotten his family. Matt has to decide whether to join the Indian tribe, or return to his cabin and continue to wait for his family to return. He decides to wait, although parting from his new friend, Attean, is difficult. The two boys trade gifts; Matt gives Attean his treasured watch that his father gave him before he left, and Attean leaves his dog behind with Matt. Attean's grandmother gives Matt some maple sugar, and Saknis gives Matt a pair of snowshoes. After he cut the last notch on the last stick, Matt waits for his family, using the survival skills he had learned with Attean. In the winter, Matt's family finally returns, though Matt's little sister (who he hadn't met) died. Matt decides he would tell them about Attean and the whole Indian tribe. *1983 Josette Frank Award (won) *1984 Christopher Award (won) *1984 A Booklist Editors' Choice (won) *1984 Horn Book Fanfare (won) *1984 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction (won) *1984 An American Library Association Notable Children's Book citation *1984 An American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (won) *1983–1984 Young Hoosier Book Award (nominee) *The New York Times Best Book of the Year"
1838,The Thirteen-Gun Salute,history," Immediately following The Letter of Marque, the narrative picks up with Jack Aubrey getting the Surprise underway for a mission to South America. Upon reaching Lisbon, however, Dr Maturin is intercepted by Sir Joseph Blaine and told that he and Aubrey will be required to first go on a mission to the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, a (fictictious) piratical Malay state in the South China Sea. They are to transport Fox, the envoy who will lead the mission to persuade the Sultan to become an English rather than French ally. The French are being openly assisted by the same English traitors - Wray and Ledward - who were responsible for Aubrey's former disgrace. With the Surprise now commanded by Captain Pullings, they return with Blaine to England where Jack Aubrey is reinstated with his former seniority as a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy by Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty. He is also given command of the recently captured French ship Diane for the mission ahead. Fatefully, the Diane is the very ship Jack Aubrey had just captured from the French and which had secured his reinstatement, along with appointment to Parliament as member from Milport. Captain Aubrey's orders to the Diane are mentioned as occurring in the ""fifty-third year"" of the reign of King George III, thus fixing the year at around 1813 which, due to the mental illness of the king, was the third year of the Regency. A recurring sub-plot is the hostility between the Regent (later George IV) and his brother, the Duke of Clarence (later William IV), a patient and ally of Stephen Maturin. This hostility was, in part, responsible for the delay in re-instating Captain Aubrey to the Navy List and it was appointment to Parliament that tipped the scales. Stephen's work keeps him undercover as a naturalist as he engages in a political duel for influence at the Sultan's court. Although his activities are to go unknown, they prove to be invaluable in both undermining the French efforts and finally exacting his revenge on his enemies, the French agents, Ledward and Wray. Ledward is caught in bed with Abdul, a boy who is the Sultan's cupbearer and catamite, the Sultan having pederast tendencies, though married and fathering a son by his queen. Abdul is gruesomely executed in a bizarre sanctioned execution via ""peppering,"" in which a bag of pepper is placed over the head. The executioners, often the victim's family, then beat the bag, resulting in inhalation of the pepper and painful asphyxiation. Wray and Ledward are banished from the court for their indiscretions, effectively ending the French mission. Wray tries to change sides in exchange for protection but he and Ledward are later assassinated. Maturin dissects their bodies with a fellow natural philosopher and intelligence agent, the Dutchman van Buren. After a long drunken feast, at which Fox and his retinue behave grossly, the Diane makes for Batavia and to rendezvous with the Surprise off the False Natunas. Fox behaves with increasing arrogance during the return voyage, the success of the treaty having gone to his head. Jack has words with him, Stephen turns against him for his incivility, and the rest of crew of the Diane loathe him. One night the frigate strikes a hidden reef and her captain and crew are shipwrecked on a desert island. Fox and his colleagues decide to sail for Batavia in Dianes pinnace, but are caught in a typhoon and presumed killed. During the same typhoon, the marooned Diane is destroyed but Aubrey's crew are able to begin to build a fair-sized schooner from what remains of the frigate - her starboard bow and hull. The title refers to the honour, a thirteen-gun salute, that is due to Fox as an official envoy and representative of the King."
1839,When the Eagle Hunts,history," It is the winter of AD 44 and after a series of bloody battles, Camulodunum (modern-day Colchester) has fallen to the invading Roman army. As General Vespasian, legate (Legatus legionis) of the Second Legion, helps plan their next campaign, General Plautius's wife and children are shipwrecked in a storm. They fall into the hands of a dark sect of Druids who now demand the return of their brotherhood taken prisoner by the Romans. Durotrigan tribesmen raid several towns near Camulodunum and the legion is sent to repel them. They stumble upon a village pillaged with its population massacred. Loot is found as then raiding party intend to return. Hence the legion ambushes the returning raiders. The local merchant laison Diomedes secretly executes the survivors of the ambush and sets off to a vendetta to avenge his lost family. After the attack Macro and Cato are summoned to General Plautius' tent. Two soldiers (Centurion Macro and Optio Cato) volunteer from the Second Legion of Legate Vespasian to venture deep into hostile territory in an attempt to rescue the prisoners before they are sacrificed to the Druid's dark gods. Cato and Macro are sent to locate the General's missing family with only the help of two British guides; Boudica and her cousin Prasutagus. It is revealed that Prasutagus was once a druid and with his help Macro and Cato infiltrate a village holding prisoners, but Plautius' family is nowhere to be found. The group then raids a druid lodge site, but find only a Greek merchant liaison impaled on a spit. The merchant informs the group of a druid headquarters in his dying moments. The group then heads over to the headquarters and encounters a prisoner transfer revealed to have Plautius' family aboard. In a daring ambush Macro is injured and they are unable to rescue the prisoners. The Roman army arrive soon enough as they continue their campaign against the Durotrigans. Cato is dressed up like a woad in nude and is sent to investigate a secret entry point. After returning Cato leads a small ban of Romans to infiltrate the stronghold and rescue the General's family whilst it is under siege. The attack goes without a hitch and there is desperate fighting to save the General's family. The book ends with Cato taking a serious sickle wound after taking out the Head Druid and saving the general's family from a funeral pyre."
1840,Lieutenant Hornblower,history," William Bush, who becomes Hornblower's faithful companion and best friend, is introduced boarding HMS Renown as the Third Lieutenant. Hornblower is the Fifth and junior Lieutenant. It is quickly apparent that Captain James Sawyer suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, constantly suspecting plots to undermine his authority and inflicting irrational and arbitrary punishments upon Hornblower and other officers. A young volunteer named Wellard suffers particularly badly. Four of the Lieutenants meet in secret in the lower decks to discuss what can be done, but are interrupted when Wellard warns them that the Captain is on his way to arrest ""mutineers"". The officers scatter and attempt to appear as if nothing had happened, and in the confusion, they learn that the Captain has somehow fallen head-first into the hold. When the Captain regains consciousness, he has entirely lost his reason as a result of the fall, and is incapable of resuming command. The First Lieutenant, Buckland, takes charge; but having appeared to be steady enough at the start of the book, he is overwhelmed by the responsibility. Ordered to capture an anchorage from which Spanish privateers are operating, he makes a clumsy frontal attack which is repulsed. Hornblower brilliantly retrieves the situation, when he suggests a surprise attack at night. Bush leads the successful attack, but it is Hornblower who is instrumental in negotiating the unconditional surrender of the remaining Spanish forces. The Spanish base at Samaná is destroyed, a Spanish privateer and some small craft are captured and Buckland's promotion seems assured. Unfortunately for him, the Spanish prisoners take control of the Renown during the night, taking Buckland prisoner asleep in his cot. Hornblower alertly retakes the ship, but in the desperate fighting, Bush is severely wounded and the helpless Sawyer is killed. Upon their return to port, there is an awkward Court of Enquiry. Hornblower repeatedly denies any knowledge of how Captain Sawyer came to fall into the hold. After enquiries end indecisively, Buckland is passed over; instead, Hornblower is promoted to Commander. Unfortunately, the Peace of Amiens (1802) is signed before Hornblower's promotion can be confirmed, and he is demoted once again to a lieutenant. Moreover, the demotion is retroactive, and he is forced to repay the additional money he had received as commander. Reduced to poverty, he ekes out a living by playing whist for money. He resides in a lodging house, where he meets his future first wife Maria (née Mason), the daughter of the landlady. Bush meets him several times, and notes in a newspaper that Midshipman Wellard, who (apart from Hornblower) might be the only witness to Captain Sawyer's fall into the hold, has drowned in an accident. The Peace of Amiens comes to an end in 1803. War has not yet begun, but is imminent, as evinced by a press gang Hornblower and Bush encounter. Hornblower's promotion is confirmed (by a Lord of the Admiralty he impresses with his exceptional cardplaying skills) and he is appointed commander of a sloop of war."
1841,Quarantine,history," Set in the Judean desert, 2000 years ago. It features 7 main characters: * Musa: a greedy trader, believed by the Galilean to be a manifestation of Satan * Miri: Musa's pregnant wife * Marta: fasting between dawn and dusk in an attempt to turn her barren womb fertile * Shim: a young traveller * Aphas: fasting between dawn and dusk in an attempt to remove the cancer from his abdomen * Badu: believed to be deaf and mute; good at catching animals * The Galilean/Gally/Jesus: aiming to fast for 40 days and nights with divine help; plagued by religious/spiritual hallucinations/visions. Dies in the novel only to be seen during the end, risen."
1842,Memoirs of Hadrian,history," The novel is told in the first person by Hadrian and is framed as a letter to Marcus Aurelius in the first chapter, Animula Vagula Blandula. The other chapters form a loose chronological narrative which he often breaks with various insights and recollections. He directly addresses Marcus again only in the penultimate chapter, Disciplina Augusta. The story begins with Hadrian, who is around sixty years of age, describing his incurable illness. He therefore wishes to recount important events in his life before his death. His earliest memories are his boyhood years in Italica. He also talks of his early interest in astrology and his lifelong passion for the arts, culture, and philosophy of Greece; themes which he revisits throughout the book. He visits Athens to study, travels to Rome for the first time, and witnesses the accession of Trajan. He eventually joins the army and participates in the Dacian campaign. Hadrian, who is around thirty years old at the end of the war, describes his successes in the army and his relationship with Trajan who is initially cold towards him. He slowly gains Trajan’s favor and secures his position for the throne with the help of Plotina, the emperor’s wife, and also by marrying Sabina, Trajan's grandniece. During his military service, the outcome of the Sarmatian wars strongly affects him due to the appalling bloodshed and atrocities committed. He also begins to question the value of Trajan’s policy of military expansion. Trajan, in old age, begins an unsuccessful military campaign in Parthia after his successes over Dacia and Sarmatia. After a major defeat, Trajan hastily names Hadrian as his successor in a will shortly before his death. Following the death of Trajan, he hesitantly has his rivals executed and makes peace with Parthia. He travels frequently throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire while undertaking numerous economic and military reforms, promoting in his words: “humanitas, libertas, felicitas.” During a visit to Britain, he describes the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, which represents part of his vision of curbing the military expansion of his predecessor and promoting peace. Hadrian’s administration is a time of peace and happiness which he regards as his “Age of Gold.” He attributes this happiness to his love for Antinous, a beautiful Bithynian youth he meets in Nicomedia. He also feels genuinely loved by Antinous compared to the fleeting passions of his youth and the loveless relationship with his wife Sabina. While visiting Egypt, he despairs over the sudden and mysterious death of Antinous who drowns in the Nile. He ultimately believes that Antinous sacrificed himself in order to alter the outcome of troubling portents that both had witnessed earlier. In his grief, he devises the cult of Antinous and makes future plans to dedicate a new city to him in an effort to eternalize his memory. Hadrian begins reflecting upon his advancing age and his change in temperament, recalling one incident where he accidentally blinds his secretary out of rage. Further troubling him is the outbreak of rebellion in Judea, which forces him to travel and take command of the troops. During an important siege, he despairs over the unraveling of his plans for peace, his ailing heart condition, and later over the rampant destruction in Judea. He states, “Natura deficit, fortuna mutatur, deus omnia cernit. Nature fails us, fortune changes, a god beholds all things from on high…"" During his final years in Rome and at his villa in Tibur, he ponders his succession and his thoughts turn to a memory of Marcus Aurelius as a virtuous and kind-hearted boy. Hadrian, now in advanced age and very poor health, begins to fear death and contemplates suicide through various means. He finally accepts his fate with resignation, or patientia, while reflecting on his newfound divine status throughout the Empire. Near death, he contemplates what the future may hold for the world, Rome, and for his soul."
1843,The Praise Singer,history," The book follows the life of Simonides from the point of view of his older self. As a boy, silent and lacking confidence due to his extreme ugliness, he is brought up with strict discipline by his father, Leoprepes. He finds comfort in the love of his handsome older brother Theasides, and in music. When a travelling singer, Kleobis, visits Keos to perform at a wedding, Simonides begs to be taken on as an apprentice. This, Kleobis does, and they leave together on their travels. Under Kleobis' tutelage Simonides becomes a talented composer and performer, but remains physically ugly. This proves a severe disadvantage when, after the fall of Kleobis' native city of Ephesos to the Persians, Kleobis and Simonides attempt to find a patron at the court of Polycrates of Samos. Polycrates is a conoisseur of beauty, in boys as much as in music or art, and Simonides' appearance is not a recommendation. Kleobis and Simonides find themselves out of fashion at court, and scrabbling for work. Simonides travels back to Keos to enter a music contest, leaving Kleobis behind in Samos nursing a slight illness. He wins the contest, but discovers, on returning, that Kleobis has died. Simonides now finds a patron in Pisistratos, the tyrant of Athens. He becomes a successful musician in that city, and after Pisistratos' death, his sons Hippias and Hipparchos continue the family's patronage. Through Hipparchos, Simonides is introduced to the hetaira Lyra, whose lover he becomes. Hipparchos himself is sexually oriented to boys, not women, and Simonides witnesses his eventual downfall, when Hipparchos uses his political power to punish the family of a young boy who rejects his advances, and the boy and his lover retaliate by murdering him. Here Renault draws on the tale of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, also known as the Tyrannicides (τυραννοκτόνους), whose attack against the Peisistratid tyranny made them the iconic personages of the Athenian democracy."
1844,Picnic at Hanging Rock,history," Picnic at Hanging Rock centers around a trip by a party of girls from Appleyard College, a fictitious upper class private boarding school, who travel to Hanging Rock in the Mount Macedon area, Victoria, for a picnic on Valentine's Day 1900. The excursion ends in tragedy when three of the girls, and later one of their teachers, mysteriously vanish while climbing the rock. No reason for their disappearance is ever given, and one of the missing girls who is later found has no memory of what has happened to her companions. A fourth girl who also climbed the rock with the group is of little help in solving the mystery, having returned in hysterics for reasons she cannot explain. The disappearances provoke much local concern and international sensation with sexual molestation, abduction and murder being high on the list of possible outcomes. Several organized searches of the picnic grounds and the area surrounding the rock itself turn up nothing. Meanwhile the students, teachers and staff of the college, as well as members of the community, grapple with the riddle-like events. A young man on a private search locates one of the missing girls, but is himself found in an unexplained daze – yet another victim of the rock. Concerned parents begin withdrawing their daughters from the formerly prestigious college and several of the staff, including the headmistress, either resign or meet with tragic ends. We are told that both the College, and the Woodend Police Station where records of the investigation were kept, are destroyed by fire shortly afterwards. The unsolvable mystery of the disappearances was arguably the key to the success of both the book and the subsequent film. This aroused enough lasting public interest that in 1980 a book of hypothetical solutions (by Yvonne Rousseau) was published, called The Murders at Hanging Rock. In fact, Lindsay's original draft included a final chapter in which the mystery was resolved. At her editor's suggestion, Lindsay removed it prior to publication. Chapter Eighteen, as it is known, was published posthumously in 1987 as The Secret of Hanging Rock by Angus & Robertson Publishing. The novel is written in the form of a true story, and even begins and ends with a pseudo-historical prologue and epilogue, adding to the overall feeling of mystery. However, while the geological feature, Hanging Rock, and the several towns mentioned are actual places near Mount Macedon, the story is not completely true. Lindsay had done little to dispel the myth that the story is based on truth, in many interviews either refusing to confirm it was entirely fiction, or hinting that parts of the book were fictitious, and others were not. Valentine's Day, 14 February 1900 was a Wednesday, not a Saturday as depicted in the story. All attempts by enthusiastic readers to find historical evidence of the event, characters, or even Appleyard College, have proved fruitless. Appleyard College was to some extent based on Clyde Girls' Grammar School at East St Kilda, Melbourne, which Joan Lindsay attended as a day-girl while in her teens. Incidentally, in 1919 this school was transferred to the town of Woodend, Victoria, about 8&nbsp;km southwest of Hanging Rock. The book suggests that the fictional site of Appleyard College, given its eastward view of Mount Macedon on the Bendigo-Melbourne Road, might have been on the western side of Calder Highway/Black Forest Drive (C792), about 2–4&nbsp;km south of Woodend. A far more detailed synopsis of the story is given in the main entry for the film version."
1845,The Blithedale Romance,history," The novel takes place in the utopian community of Blithedale, presumably in the mid-1800s. The main character, Miles Coverdale, embarks on a quest for betterment of the world through the agrarian lifestyle and community of the Blithedale Farm. The story begins with Coverdale's chat with a character named Old Moodie, who reappears throughout the story. The legend of the mysterious Veiled Lady is introduced; she is a popular clairvoyant who disappears unannounced from the social scene. Coverdale then makes the voyage to Blithedale, where he is introduced to such characters as Zenobia and Mr. and Mrs. Silas Foster. At their first community dinner they are interrupted by the arrival of Hollingsworth, a previous acquaintance of Coverdale's, who is carrying a frail, pale girl. Though Hollingsworth believes the girl (whose age is never clarified) is an expected guest, none of the Blithedale citizens recognize her. She immediately develops a strong attachment to Zenobia, and reveals her name to be Priscilla. Soon after, Coverdale becomes severely ill and is bedridden. Hollingsworth takes care of him, as does Zenobia, and he returns to health shortly. However, during his sickness, he believes he is on the brink of death and develops a closeness with Hollingsworth due to their anxiety-ridden situation and discussion of worldly ideals. As he recovers and spring comes, the residents of the community begin to work the land successfully and prove to their neighbors the plausibility of their cause. Priscilla starts to open up, and relationships between the other characters develop as well. Tension in the friendship between Coverdale and Hollingsworth intensifies as their philosophical disagreements continue. Meanwhile, Zenobia and Hollingsworth become close and rumor flies they might build a house together. Mr. Moodie makes a reappearance and asks about Priscilla and Zenobia for reasons to be revealed later. Coverdale then meets a stranger who turns out to be a Professor Westervelt. Westervelt asks also about Zenobia and Hollingsworth. Coverdale does not like the Professor, and when he is retreating in a tree he overhears the Professor talking to Zenobia implying that they have a prior relationship. At this point, the story switches narrators when it becomes Zenobia telling a tale entitled “The Silvery Veil.” She describes the Veiled Lady and her background, though it is never revealed whether or not her version of the story is reality or fiction. After switching narration back to Coverdale, the story proceeds to Eliot's Pulpit, a place of rest and discourse for the four main characters Coverdale, Hollingsworth, Priscilla, and Zenobia. There they discuss women's rights, and Zenobia and Hollingsworth agree, against Coverdale, on a more misogynistic point of view. Their disagreements intensify the next day when Hollingsworth and Coverdale discuss their hopes for the future of Blithedale. They disagree so thoroughly that Coverdale renounces Hollingsworth and effectively ends their friendship. A turning point in the novel, the drama culminates with Coverdale's leaving the farm and returning to the city. He there shows a sort of voyeurism in peeping through hotel windows at a young man and another family. Whilst peeping, he spies Zenobia and Westervelt in another window. They notice, and, embarrassed and curious, Coverdale visits them and gets chastised by Zenobia. She also reveals that Priscilla is staying with them, then all three leave Coverdale for an unnamed appointment. Motivated once more by curiosity, he seeks out Old Moodie, who when drunk tells him the story of Fauntleroy Zenobia, and Priscilla. It turns out that Old Moodie is Fauntleroy, who was a once wealthy man and the father of Zenobia. He fell from grace, but remarried later and had another child, Priscilla, making the two women half sisters. Coverdale is extremely shocked and proceeds to a show of the Veiled Lady, where he recognizes Westervelt as the magician controlling the clairvoyant and Hollingsworth in the audience. He asks the whereabouts of Priscilla, and it is shortly revealed when Hollingsworth removes the veil that Priscilla is indeed the Veiled Lady. All of the main characters then return and meet up at Eliot's Pulpit, where Zenobia accosts Hollingsworth for his love for Priscilla, expresses her depression, and acknowledges her sisterhood with Priscilla. However, Priscilla chooses Hollingsworth over her and the three go their separate ways. When Zenobia recognizes that Coverdale witnessed this scene, she asks him to tell Hollingsworth that he has “murdered” her and tells him that when they next meet it will be behind the “black veil,” representing death. She leaves, and does not return. Hollingsworth, Coverdale, and Silas Foster form a search party and find Zenobia's body in the river. She is buried at Blithedale and given a simple funeral, at which Westervelt makes a last cryptic appearance and declares her suicide foolish. Hollingsworth is severely affected by the death, and it seems as she promised that Zenobia is haunting him. Priscilla is less affected due to her attachment solely to Hollingsworth, and the rest of the characters part and move on with their lives. The last chapter reflects on the wisdom and ideals of Coverdale, now cynical about his purpose in life. The last sentence reveals cause for his bleak, apathetic outlook—he was in love with Priscilla."
1846,Georges,history," The novel concerns the life of Georges, the son of a wealthy mulatto plantation owner named Munier, in the Isle de France (now Mauritius). While part-black, Georges appears to be very light-skinned, if not white. As a child, Georges witnesses an attempt by the British to gain control of the island. Because George's father is a mulatto, the other plantation owners refuse to fight alongside him. Instead, George's father leads the blacks and delivers a crushing blow against the invading forces. Refusing to acknowledge that a man of colour saved them, M. Malmedie and the other white plantation owners ignore the accomplishment. M. Malmedie's son Henry mocks Georges because of this, resulting in a fight between the two. Afterward, worried about any retaliation on the behalf of the plantation owner's father, George's father sends Georges and his old brother to Europe to become educated. In Europe, the brothers become separated when the older brother gets a job on a sailing ship. Georges becomes cultured, deeply educated and popular in Parisian circles. Through numerous tests of will Georges overcomes his weaknesses and becomes skilled in a variety of fields ranging from hunting to the art of seducing women. Upon his return, Georges has found that the plantation owners have forgotten who he is. In little time he becomes the toast of society, and a beautiful woman falls in love with him. He also discovers that his brother has become the captain of a slave-ship. However, Georges can't tolerate the injustice of slavery, so he conspires to lead a slave revolt. When this revolt fails, he becomes incarcerated and condemned to die. While he is brought to be executed, he is saved by a gang of pirates led by his brother."
1847,The Tokaido Road,history," :So lonely am I :My soul is a floating weed :Severed at the roots This is how Lady Asano has felt since the forced suicide of her father. Adrift in a dangerous world, she vows to avenge her father’s death and restore his name to honor. To do so, she will have to travel the Tokaido Road. As the novel opens, Lady Asano has transformed herself into Cat, a high-ranking courtesan, to support her widowed mother. Yet Cat’s career is temporary; the powerful Lord Kira’s campaign against her family is continuing and she must find Oishi, leader of the samurai of the Asano clan, weapons master, philosopher, and Cat’s teacher. Cat believes he is three hundred miles to the southwest in the imperial city of Kyoto. Disguising her loveliness in the humble garments of a traveling priest, Cat begins her quest. All she has is her samurai training—in Haiku and Tanka poetry, in the use of the deadly six-foot weapon, the naginata, and in Japanese Zen thought. And she will need them all, for a ronin, a lordless samurai—Tosa no Hanshiro, has been hired to trail her."
1848,Flashman's Lady,history," Flashman meets Tom Brown at a tavern and is convinced to play cricket at Lord's for a team made up of Rugby Old Boys. His impressive play (performing possibly the first ever hat-trick) leads to more matches, and an encounter with Daedalus Tighe, a notorious bookie. He also meets Don Solomon Haslam, a businessman from the East Indies, who has a lot of money, prestige, and a fascination for Elspeth, Flashman's wife. Due to a wager with Haslam, blackmail from Tighe, and threats from a Duke arising from an affair with the Duke's lover, Flashman is forced to accompany Haslam, Elspeth, and Morrison (his father-in-law) on a trip to Singapore. There Haslam reveals his true identity and kidnaps Elspeth. Flashman must reluctantly chase after them, with the help of James Brooke. This chase takes him to the jungles of Borneo, the nests of pirates, and finally to Madagascar, where he is enslaved and becomes military advisor and lover to Queen Ranavalona I. Escape from the island seems impossible, and with his wife's help he has to overcome his cowardice to evade their pursuers."
1849,The Devil's Company,history," This third memoir installment begins in November of 1722, eight months after the 1722 General Election that provided the historical setting for A Spectacle of Corruption. This time, Weaver finds himself involved in puzzling and dangerous events surrounding the all-powerful East India Company. Victimized, along with family and friends, by an elaborate extortion scheme, Weaver is forced to spy and steal for the enigmatic Jerome Cobb. Under Cobb's direction, Weaver infiltrates the Company and attempts to learn its secrets before the upcoming meeting of the board of directors (called the Court of Proprietors). Trouble is, Cobb won't (or can't) say exactly what he's looking for, or why. As is typical in this genre, the truth is not revealed until the final pages. Along the way, Weaver meets a colorful assortment of characters, including a betel-nut chewing Company director, an obsessive-compulsive clerk, a bi-sexual bigamist inventor, the London silk-weavers' guild master and several varieties of international spy."
1850,Men Against the Sea,history," Men Against the Sea follows the journey of Lieutenant William Bligh and the eighteen men set adrift in an open boat by the mutineers of the Bounty. The story is told from the perspective of Thomas Ledward, the Bounty's acting surgeon, who went into the ship's launch with Bligh. It begins after the main events described in the novel and then moves into a flashback, finishing at the starting point. This true story is considered the greatest open-boat voyage of all time."
1851,Laura Blundy,history," After her mother has died in childbirth, Laura Blundy is brought up by her loving and caring father, a merchant and shopowner who also pays for her schooling. One day, on her way to her ailing aunt, she is given a lift by a young man in a carriage who rapes her and then throws her out of the carriage again. She becomes pregnant, and when both her father and her aunt die she is left penniless. Unable to care for her baby son, she manages to have him raised in an institution. She occasionally goes there to inquire after him, but one day she is told that he has died and that he has been buried in an unmarked grave. The feeling of loss she experiences never leaves her again. Laura Blundy spends the following 18 years of her life in the streets of London. When another woman's baby dies in her care she is charged with murder and has to go to prison. Years later she is set free again but almost immediately after her release she is run over by a carriage (whose driver does not stop). She is brought to hospital, where her leg is amputated. However, she falls in love with her surgeon. They get married, but Laura is attracted more by his cleanliness and moderate wealth than by his character or potency. When, in mid-winter, Laura decides to commit suicide by drowning in the river Thames, she is rescued by Billy, a young worker employed in the building of the Victoria Embankment and London's sewage system. Although Billy has a wife and children, they start a love affair. Some time later Laura beats her husband to death in his own home, making Billy an accomplice after the fact. Laura cuts up her husband's body, and then she and Billy carry the body in several bags to the river. As the surgeon's head keeps bobbing up and being washed ashore they eventually have to burn it. At this point in her life Laura, already in her late thirties, may be pregnant once again. The lovers have plans of escaping to France."
1852,Blitzcat,history," Blitzcat is told through the point of view of a domestic cat as she travels across England during the Blitz in search of her owner, who is serving with the RAF. The story includes a detailed depiction of the bombing of Coventry."
1853,My Bonny Light Horseman,history," The story starts with Jacky back on sea after visiting her dear friend, Amy Trevelyne, after her adventures throughout the U.S. frontier. She sails her ship the ""Nancy B. Alsop"" while waiting for Jaimy to come back from the Orient to marry her. Soon though, a British warship, the HMS Dauntless has come to imprison Jacky and her crew but after an intense confrontation with Bliffil (an old nemesis of Jacky's) and British soldiers, Jacky surrenders, asking that the British spare her crew. Much to their dismay, Higgins and the Nancy B. Alsop accept this change and sail away. Despite Jacky's skeptic attitude once being aboard. She is realized as nothing but a young, innocent girl that was wrongly labeled a rogue by King George, despite Bliffil's slanderous accusation of her being known as ""Tuppence a lay"" on the HMS Dolphin and a threat to every man board. She soon meets up with two acquaintances, David ""Davy"" Jones and Joseph Jared and she befriends the Dr. Sebastian and Captain Hudson of the Dauntless. Bliffil nags and nags on Jacky, libeling her name like dirt until the crew can't take it no more. Bliffil is met with several threats if he ever insults Jacky but they do not come, especially from Jared. Jacky gains freedom of the ship at will for being such a good captive. She takes up with Dr. Sebastian and paints him a much-acclaimed portrait and portfolio. He shows her a rare Mexican dung beetle and she meets his other assistant. Once Captain Hudson hears and sees of her talent, he has her paint him a portrait of his own. Later, Hudson and Sebastian meet in private discussing how they feel about Jacky being a ""rogue"" and a ""pirate"" by the King himself and how Sebastian has even taken up the idea of adopting her. Jacky loves the thought of it, smirking. They sail to British waters but after the senior crew is struck with food poisoning, Jacky persuades Hudson to allow her to take command. While Hudson and the rest of the crew that ate the fish are ill, the Dauntless is attacked by the French and Dutch. Jacky is forced to strike colours, but not before she's had the ill officers brought to their stations on stretchers, to preserve their honor. The crew is taken to the French prison of Cherbourg. Jared takes to sleeping in the same bed as Jacky, to still her continuing nightmares. Hudson is soon paroled, and Jared assaults Bliffil as he continues to insult Jacky (Now claiming to be male Midshipman ""Jack Kemp"", a play on ""Jack Hemp""). The Dauntless prisoners are joined by the captured crew of the HMS Mercury, and Jaimy has been severely wounded. Bliffil had passed a note to a guard, and Jacky is exposed as the pirate La Belle Jeune Fille sans Merci, ""The Beautiful Young Girl Without Mercy"". A lawyer by the name of Jardineaux comes for Jacky to take her to the guillotine. Jared once again attempts to kill Bliffil, but is beaten down by the guards. She is sent to be executed, but en route to the site of the execution, she is switched with another girl. She is sent back to London to meet with First Lord Thomas Grenville and Mr. Peel of Naval Intelligence, with Bliffil attending. Upon her arrival, she attacks the three and attempts to garrote Bliffil. Grenville and Peel smooth things over and she releases Bliffil from near-death. Grenville leaves Mr. Peel to give Jacky the mission and he informs her of the cover-up. British Intelligence wants the French to believe that Jacky Faber is dead in order to send her back across the channel as a spy. Jacky is to train as a ballerina, performing in a Parisian nightclub frequented by French officers, who often vie to ""escort"" the young girls home. She is told that if she refuses the mission, British Intelligence intends to ""hurt"" the ones she loves. Jacky cannot bear to lose her orphanage, but bargains to have Dr. Sebastian, Jaimy, Jared and Davey released. Jacky spends the next two weeks training in Ballet, shopping for new clothing and gear, and visiting both St Paul's Cathedral and the Fletcher household, family of her betrothed. Jaimy's father and brother both receive her much more warmly than his mother had (in Under the Jolly Roger), and grimly bear the news of Jaimy's injuries. The last night Jacky is in England is the first night Jaimy is at home, and the two share a tender moment before she has to leave for her mission. The British escort Jacky to France where they place her in Paris. She establishes herself in an apartment, and learns that Jardineaux is her ""Control"". She acquaints herself with her Royalist Handler by the name of Jean-Paul de Valdon and they establish a fast friendship, guiding her through the Notre Dame de Paris, The Louvre (notably, a painting of one of his relations, Charlotte Corday the assassin of Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat Jacky joins the troupe ""Le Petit Gamine"" under the name Jacqueline Bouvier, and she is approached by her first target, one Field Marshal de Groote, nicknamed ""The Goat"" by the other girls. Jacky offers to meet him the following Tuesday evening, and then arranges for his wife to catch him ""in the act"". He arrives on the night of the sting dressed in a wolf mask, earlier having referred to her as ""Little Red Riding Hood"". After plying de Groote with Cognac laced with Paregoric and prying Napoleon's troop movements out of him, his wife arrives brandishing pistols. The ensuing altercation injures de Groote, disabling him and attracting the attention of the police. Jardineaux proposes to next have Jacky serve as a camp follower, trailing Napoleon's men. Jacky, offended, decides to dress as a man once again, this time joining Napoleon's messengers, granting her ready access to military documents. She assumes the name Jacques Bouvier a West Point Cadet. Upon arrival, she is given the duties of training a unit of inexperienced, untrained soldiers. She runs afoul of a Major Levesque but also makes friends amongst the officers and soldiers under her command. She and her soldiers, nicknamed the ""Clod Hoppers"" due to their rough, country origins meet Napoleon, presenting him with a captured Prussian flag. Soon afterwards, Jacky is reunited with Jean Paul and Randall Trebvelyne. They see action in the Battle of Jena and Napoleon releases her from the Army, awarding her a Legion of Honour. After war, she gives Mathilde to her assistant-in-war Denis Dufour. Meanwhile, Jaimy is fully awaken from his concussion and tries to find what happened to Jacky after the stint at the French prison. They find out she was working in Paris so they set sail aboard the Nancy B. Jacky's days of war are over and she reports back to Paris. She meets Jardineaux there, where things turn fierce. Jardineaux tells Jacky his disappointment in her for not killing Napoleon and brands her a traitor. He holds her at gunpoint and has her ride with him to the docks where he would kill her. Once there, Jean Paul appears to reveal more of what Jardineaux had plotted for Napoleon and just as soon as Jardineaux is about to kill Jacky. Jean Paul impales him with Jacky's shiv (which he had taken prior to her being taken to the dock), saving Jacky. Before this, however, Jardineaux showed Jacky that her ship, the Nancy B. Alsop was coming into dock. So she leaves Jean Paul at the dock to be picked up by Jaimy, Higgins and the rest of the crew, saying, ""I have come home."""
1854,The Ends of the Earth,history," When the Oracle of Ammon tells Alexander that he is the son of Zeus, the young Macedonian king finds even more inner strength and will to conquer new lands and rule the biggest Empire ever known. His army then crosses the Tigris and the Euphrates to reach Babylon, which is then raged by the Macedonians. The palace of Persepolis, the most beautiful palace in the world, is burnt to ashes by Alexander himself. This marks the end of Darius III's Persian Empire and the beginning of Alexander's. The Macedonian King, Pharaoh of Egypt and Great King of Persia is now also nomined Great Leader by the Pan-Hellenic League and he aims for India and Arabia to expand his Empire even further. His army seems unstoppable and unbeatable, driven forward by a man that defies human capabilities. Yet, when he tries to make his dream of a great unite Empire between Macedonians and Persians reality, his army starts to doubt his ideals and to critique his way of adapting to Persian customs at court. As his companions slowly yet gradually wonder about their king's choices, Alexander's life gets a sorrowful turn. He loses his wife Barsine, his loved horse Bucephalus, his best friend Hephaestion and his tutor Leonidas in the most brutal of ways. Even his own life is now in danger, with some of his warriors planning to kill him twice. He has to execute the warriors who planned for his assassination as well as a friend of his that had heard of the plan but did not inform him. This torments him, but he knows he does not have choice. He finds refuge in the Iliad and other poems, where in the past he found sources of inspiration for battle tactics. He stops eating food and falls ill, and the only thing that gives him strength to go on and chase his immense dream is love. He meets and falls in love with Queen Roxane, who also gives the great gift of becoming father of a son. He is also named Alexander. He then tries to push forward towards India, as conquering it would mean that the whole of Asia would be in his hands, but his warriors' homesickness gets too much to bear. He then has to march backwards towards the now far Macedonia and, during this very last part of his journey, he falls ill again. His friends get really worried about his deteriorating conditions and it seems nothing can save the man whom pushed the boundaries of human capability. During the last few days of his life, unable to walk, he lets every one of his warriors walk into his tent and by its bed for a last farewell. And it also gives the opportunity to the sorrowful Macedonian soldiers to pay their tribute to their epic and heroic king."
1855,Yavana Rani,history," The story starts in Poompuhar, a port city that was an important harbour for the Cholas during a time of trade between the seafaring nations and Tamil Nadu. Ilanchezhiyan is the commander in chief of the eastern regiment of Cholas. The army includes both Yavanas (Romans) and Tamils. When walking across the beach sands of Poompuhar, Ilanchezhiyan finds a beautiful Yavana woman gasping for breath on the bank of the Kaveri River. He takes her to his palace and gets assistance from Hippalaas, one of the many Greek soldiers in the Chola army, in rescuing the woman. Hippalaas is scared to go near the woman, and instead salutes her. Ilanchezhiyan learns from Hippalaas that the woman is of royal origin after seeing the royal emblem of a swan on her golden bracelet. Meanwhile, the Yavana chief of the fort hears of the queen's presence in Poompuhar. He sets out to capture Ilanchezhiyan and Hippalaas for taking the queen. Ilanchezhiyan escapes the Yavana soldiers, using the queen as a hostage. With his sword on her back, he rides away into the thick forest on his white Arabic horse. Tiberius, a great naval commander of the time, who had arrived with the Greek queen to the shores of Poompuhar, chases Ilanchezhiyan in an attempt to rescue the queen. The queen falls in love with Ilanchezhiyan, however, and helps him escape from Tiberius. Illanchezhiyan flees with the queen and Hippalaas. Brahmananda, a monk and politician, helps them escape through a secret tunnel into a temple. They disguise themselves as monks performing bhajans, and emerge from the temple's sanctum sanctorum. Ilanchezhiyan learns from Brahmananda of the murder of Ilanchetchenni, the emperor of the Chola kingdom, by his enemies. He agrees to spy for Brahmananda in Uraiyur, the capital of the ancient Cholas. During the mission, Ilanchezhiyan is captured and imprisoned in a cave by Irungovel, the slayer of the king. Ilanchezhiyan escapes to see a palace burning on the other side of Amaravathi river. He rescues a handsome teenage youth (except for his charred legs) from seven armed soldiers. Ilanchezhiyan helps the youth to a palace, where his lover, Poovazhagi, was imprisoned. It is revealed that the youth is the prince of the Chola kingdom. With the help of Ilanchezhiyan, the prince escapes into the forest. Ilanchezhiyan and the Yavana queen run in the opposite direction, straight into Tiberius. Tiberius poisons Illanchezhiyan and crowns the Yavana as the Queen of Poompuhar on the day of Venus festival. The queen knows the ancient Venus festival occurs on the date of Indrathiruvizha of Poompuhar. Meanwhile, Ilanchezhiyan finds himself in a ship en route to Greece and learns that he was drugged and will be thrown to the lions. Hippalaas rescues him from the ship by throwing him into sea. They survive a shark attack, and a powerful wave takes them to shore. When Ilanchezhiyan opens his eyes, he finds himself being sold as a slave along with Hippalaas. Ilanchezhiyan and Hippalaas return to sea as slaves to be sold in Greece. The slave ship is then attacked and captured by pirates of Erythraean sea. The pirate captain is persuaded by Illanchezhiyan to invade Ghana (present day Yemen or Oman). The pirates are taken as prisoners by Iliasu, referred to in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as Eleazus, the King of Ghana. The king forces Ilanchezhiyan to become a disciple of the head priest. Ilanchezhiyan lures the priest on board the slave ship for a religious debate. With the help of Alima, the adopted daughter of the lady commander Iliyasu, and his slave friends, Ilanchezhiyan travels back to Tamil Nadu. The political situation becomes tense when Illanchezhiyan arrives. Tiberius builds a fortress impregnable to anyone from sea or land. The fort has two mechanical towers which can throw spears for several miles. Illanchezhiyan is in the dense forest of Guna Nadu, when he sees a huge army disguised as farmers. The army destroys tanks, ponds, farmlands and buildings under the orders of Illanchezhiyan. Irungovel, the assassin of the emperor, wages war with them but is defeated. Illanchezhiyan and the army enter the fortress of Poompuhar on the day of the Venus festival, and capture the signposts and mechanical towers. The key to the mechanical towers is given to Illanchezhiyan by the queen. Tiberius, his dreams of a Greek empire in Tamil Nadu shattered and now surrounded by the enemy army, stabs her before Illanchezhiyan can run to her rescue. Illanchezhiyan's spear throwing expert commander kills Tiberius, but a second too late. Illanchezhiyan cries for his beloved dead queen. The novel ends with the rightful ownership of the Chola Empire being given to the prince (whom Illanchezhiyan had saved earlier) known later as the legendary Karikala Chola. Illanchezhiyan marries his lover Poovazhagi and then assumes his post as the commander for the Chola Empire. ta:யவன ராணி (புதினம்)"
1856,Sharpe's Prey,history," The year is 1807, and Richard Sharpe is back in England, where his army career is at an end. Without love, destitute, and relegated to the job of quartermaster, Sharpe is on the streets of London, trying to contemplate a new life away from the army. Then an old friend quite unexpectedly invites him to undertake a secret mission to the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Denmark is officially neutral, but Napoleon is threatening an invasion in order to capture the powerful Danish fleet, which could replace the ships France lost in its defeat at Trafalgar. The British, fearing such enhancement of French power, threaten their own preemptive invasion. Sharpe, whose errand seemed so simple, is trapped by the treachery that will end only when the city, which thought itself safe, is subjected to a brutal and merciless bombardment."
1857,The Last of the Mohicans,history," The action takes place around Glens Falls in upstate New York. Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of Lieutenant Colonel Munro, are traveling with a column of reinforcements from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry, where Munro is commanding an army. In the party are David Gamut the singing teacher, and Major Duncan Heyward, the group's military leader. Magua, the treacherous Huron scout, offers to take the Munro party to Fort William Henry, but leads them into an ambush instead. Natty Bumppo (also known as Hawkeye) and his two Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, rescue them just in time. Knowing that Magua (also known as Le Renard Subtil, the cunning fox) will soon return with reinforcements, Hawkeye and the Mohicans lead their new companions to a nearby cave. A group of Hurons sent by Magua chase them into the cave. After a fierce struggle, Hawkeye and his friends decide to split up for safety, with Hawkeye and the Mohicans hiding in a nearby stream, while Heyward, Gamut, and the Munro sisters retreat back into the cavern. Magua returns with more Hurons and captures Cora, Alice and the two men in the cave. The Hurons take their captives to a stream with mineral water, where they rest briefly while watchful of the others. The Hurons interrogate Heyward, who tells them that Hawkeye and the Mohicans have escaped and learns from them that Uncas's nickname is the Bounding Elk and that Hawkeye is referred to as the Long Rifle or La Longue Carabine. When Cora demands why the Hurons were so eager to capture them, Magua tells his captives that Colonel Munro and other white officers came to the Huron village one day and introduced him to fire-water (whiskey) and his drunken misbeavior caused the Hurons to expel him from the tribe. He subsequently allied himself with the Mohawks (allies of the British) and went to war with them against the French and their Huron allies. Magua continued to drink the fire-water during the fighting and after one act of disorder, Munro ordered him tied to a post and whipped, wounding him both physically and spiritually. He has since gone back to the Hurons and is seeking revenge against Munro. He offers to spare the others in return for Cora following him to the Huron village as his wife, but Cora flatly refuses. Hawkeye, Uncas, and Chingachgook surprise the Hurons and kill most of them with Heyward's assistance, but Magua escapes once more. Hawkeye tells the former hostages that they had been secretly trailing the Hurons after their capture. After a short chase they decided to take action after the Hurons threatened to kill the captives. Heyward and Hawkeye lead the Munro women to Fort William Henry, which is by now surrounded by the French. Munro sends Hawkeye to Fort Edward to request reinforcements but, bearing General Webb's reply, he is captured by the French, who deliver him to Fort William Henry without the letter. Heyward attempts to parley with the French, but learns nothing. He then returns to Colonel Munro and announces his love for Alice. Munro reveals Cora's heritage—the Colonel's first wife was of mixed race—then gives his permission for Heyward to pay court to Alice. The French general, Montcalm, invites Munro to a parley. He shows him Webb's letter: the English general has refused to send further reinforcements. Realizing that his cause is lost, Munro reluctantly agrees to Montcalm's terms. The British soldiers, together with their wounded, and women and children, are allowed to leave the fort and withdraw. Outside the fort, the column is set upon by 2000 French allied Indian warriors. In the chaos of the massacre, Magua finds Cora and Alice, and leads them away towards the Huron village. David Gamut follows at a distance. Three days later, Hawkeye and the Mohicans, Heyward and Colonel Munro enter the ruins of Fort William Henry, where they plan their next move by the council fire. The next morning they set off for Lake George on canoes where they encounter a group of Hurons and escape after a brief but intense chase. Upon reaching shore they hide the canoe and follow Magua's trail. Outside the Huron village, they come across David Gamut, teaching beavers to sing psalms. The Huron have not killed him as they will not harm a madman. Gamut tells them that Alice is in the village, Cora is in another village belonging to the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) tribe, and Magua has gone moose hunting. Heyward disguises himself as a French medicine man and enters the village with Gamut, intending to rescue Alice. Hawkeye and Uncas set out to rescue Cora. Chingachgook remains with Colonel Munro, who has become somewhat deranged as a result of events. Heyward's disguise is successful, but before he can find Alice, Uncas is led into the village, having been captured by the Hurons. Magua returns, and demands that Uncas be put to death, but does not recognise Heyward in his guise as a medicine man. Hawkeye steals a bearskin from a village shaman and uses it to disguise himself while he follows Heyward. They rescue Alice after finding her in a cave, taking her out of the village by wrapping her in cloth and convincing the Hurons she is a sick woman Heyward, as a French medicine man, had been asked to heal of an evil spirit. As Heyward carries Alice towards the Lenni Lenape village, David Gamut and Hawkeye (still disguised in bear skin of the village shamen) return to the village to rescue Uncas. Uncas's guards recognize the bear suit and allow the two to pass, believing Gamut will perform some magic to torture Uncas. Once reunited, Uncas dons the bear skin while Hawkeye dresses as Gamut and begins to sing. Gamut stays behind while Uncus and Hawkeye pass the guards, who did not notice a different white man exited than had entered. The pair flee to the Delaware village. The Hurons discover Gamut and realize that Uncas has escaped. When they enter the cave, they find Magua, who had been left bound and gagged by Heyward and Hawkeye as they rescued Alice. Magua tells them everything about Hawkeye's and Heyward's deception, enraging the other Hurons, who vow revenge against Hawkeye and his companions and quickly reaffirm Magua as their chief. Magua then makes his way to the Delaware village, demands the return of his prisoners, warning that one of the white captives is La Longue Carabine, the infamous killer of natives. At the council of chiefs, the venerable sage Tamenund is called on to make the final judgement. He asks which of the prisoners is La Longue Carabine. Hawkeye initially remains silent, since he does not claim the title for himself (His weapon is a smoothbore), so Heyward, mistaking Hawkeye wishes to be undiscovered, claims he is the man in question. Hawkeye then also claims the title, explaining the delay. To resolve the issue a shooting match is organised, at which Hawkeye outshoots the Major. Tamenund grants Magua's wish to keep his prisoners, but as she is being taken away Cora falls at the great sage's feet and begs him to reconsider. Unable to convince him to free either her sister or herself, she eventually begs him to hear her side of the story from a Delaware warrior, referring to Uncas. The tribe did not realize Uncas's heritage, and so he is summoned to speak. Upon arrival, Uncas offends the Delaware, who tear off his clothing in preparation to beat him. They stop upon discovering a turtle tattoo on his chest, identifying his people. At this point, Tamenund accedes to all Uncas asks and frees the prisoners, except he cannot free Cora as it was Magua who brought her to the village. Magua reluctantly also agrees to Uncas's demands but announces his intention to keep Cora as his wife, spurning Hawkeye's offer to allow Magua to take him prisoner instead in exchange for releasing Cora. Uncas and Heyward both vow to hunt down and kill Magua and rescue Cora as the Huron chief leaves with his captive. According to custom, Tamenund has agreed to give Magua a three-hour head start before permitting the Delaware to pursue in attempt to rescue Cora. As the Delawares use this time to prepare for battle and equip themselves with tomahawks and rifles, David Gamut finds his way to the Delaware village, and tells the group that he saw Magua and Cora return to the Huron village, where he sent Cora into the same cave where Heyward rescued Alice before ordering the Huron warriors into battle. With this in mind, the Delawares led by Uncas march into the forest to confront the Hurons. A battle breaks out between the Hurons and the Delaware, who are in three parties: one led by Hawkeye and Heyward, one by Uncas, and one by Chingachgook and Munro. During the course of battle the Hurons are forced back to their village with heavy losses and ultimately are defeated when the Delaware capture the village. Magua escapes with Cora and two of his warriors with Uncas, Hawkeye, and Heyward in pursuit, and they seek to flee by a mountain path which has a precipitous drop on one side, but Cora stops on a rocky ledge and refuses to go further. Uncas attacks the Huron, but both he and Cora are killed in the fight. Hawkeye arrives too late, and shoots Magua, who then falls to his death from a nearby cliff. The novel concludes with a lengthy account of the funerals of Uncas and Cora. The Lenni Lenape sing that Uncas and Cora will marry in the afterlife. Hawkeye does not believe this, but he renews his friendship with Chingachgook. Tamenund foresees that ""The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again...."""
1858,The Gryphon's Skull,history," The book centers around the discovery of an apparent gryphon skull (in reality a skull from a dinosaur), and the efforts of Sostratos to get the skull back to scholars for study."
1859,Rules of Engagement: A Sir John Fielding Mystery,history, Sir John and Jeremy are confronted with a series of bizarre deaths (including an unmotivated suicide) on the streets of Georgian London in a mystery that tests even Sir John's legendary skills of deduction. This book ends the series.
1860,Caesar,history," The novel opens in 54 BC, with Caesar in the middle of his epochal Gallic campaigns, having just invaded Britannia. The first half of the novel deals broadly with the conclusion of his conquests in Gaul, and the second half narrates the growing sense of unease in Rome concerning Caesar's intentions, the antagonism of the conservative 'boni' faction towards him, his crossing of the Rubicon, his invasion of Italy and his victory in the Civil War. Some of the pivotal moments include Caesar's return from Britannia; his narrow escape during the battle of Gergovia; his great victory at Alesia, which involved the complete circumvallation of the citadel, the repulse of a relief force, and the acceptance of the surrender of Vercingetorix; his final destruction of the Gallic resistance at Uxellodunum; the death of Julia and Marcus Licinius Crassus; his falling out with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and the final collapse of the First Triumvirate system; his failed negotiations concerning his re-election as consul; the opening of the Civil War; the Battle of Dyrrhachium and the Battle of Pharsalus; the flight of Pompey to Ptolemaic Egypt and his assassination there; and the scattering of the 'boni' leadership."
1861,My Lord John,history, John of Lancaster is the son of Henry IV and the favourite brother of Henry V. This book chronicles his life from 1393 through until 1413. Although incomplete (the book is finished where Heyer left it) the Historical Note at the end fills in the gaps. Uses a lot of Middle English language but includes a Glossary for easier reading in the back. Simon the Coldheart (1925) covers much the same period (1400–1418). Kings Henry IV and Henry V also appear in it.
1862,A Company of Swans,history," Harriet Morton lives in Cambridge with her widowed father, the intolerant Merlin Professor of Classics at the University, and her frugal Aunt Louisa, who wishes her to marry an uninteresting entomology professor named Edward Finch-Dutton. After her father bans her from attending school, believing women should not be highly educated, the only freedom allowed to her are ballet lessons at Madame Lavarre's school. One day, a lesson is visited by Sasha Dubrov, a famous ballet master who asks Harriet to join his company for a tour of South America, which will begin in Manaus. Although she wants to accept, her father refuses to let her join the tour, and instead bans her from ballet lessons when she suggests the idea. Shortly after this incident, Harriet joins Edward Finch-Dutton, Aunt Lousia and the rest of the Trumpington Tea Circle on a tour of Stavely, an old stately home which is beginning to fall into disrepair. While there, she leaves the group to explore the maze in the grounds, within which she meets Henry St. John Verney-Brandon, the son of the estate's owner, reading a book entitled ""Amazon Adventure"". Henry tells Harriet about his own desire to travel to the Amazon, and about the book's owner - an unnamed Boy who lived in the estate many years ago, and whom Henry, hearing the tales of the nurse the two shared, idolizes. Harriet, who has decided to run away to join the ballet company, promises Henry that she will search for the boy in Manaus, where he is thought to live. Harriet then runs away by pretending to visit her friend Miss Betsy Fairfield, cancelling the visit at the last minute without her aunt's knowledge. She joins the Company and they practice for a week in Century Theatre before leaving for Manaus, where they will perform Giselle, Swan Lake, Fille Mal Gardee, and Casse Noisette (The Nutcracker). On the first night in Manaus, Harriet's performance attracts the attention of Rom Verney, a wealthy Englishman who Harriet soon correctly suspects is The Boy Henry mentioned. The pair meet at a party Rom throws in his capacity as chairman of the Opera House trustees, and are instantly attracted to each other. The next day, Harriet confirms that Rom used to live at Stavely, and asks him to help out there ""for Henry's sake"", which angers Rom - who recalls his past as the youngest son of Stavely's former owner, who, upon his father's death, was ousted by his half-brother Henry, and left by his fiancee Isobel who then married Henry. Meanwhile, in England, the elder Henry Brandon is dead, having committed suicide after bankrupting the estate, leaving Isobel widowed and penniless. She then recalls Rom, and decides to travel to Manaus to enlist his help. She is joined on the steamer by Edward Finch-Dutton, sent by Harriet's father, who has discovered her deception, to bring her back to England. Isobel is delayed when Henry develops measles and the pair are forced to stop while he recovers. Edward travels on to Manaus to find Harriet; however, the ballet company form a plan to stop him. With Rom's help, they convince Edward that ballet is a perfectly respectable career, and he should convince Harriet's father to let her continue on the tour. However, Edward is then outraged when he sees Harriet dancing at a gentleman's club - which she does only to save her friend Marie-Claude from being seen at the club by her fiancee's cousin. Edward decides to kidnap Harriet and take her back to England, but she escapes with the help of Rom - who has realized the misunderstanding after seeing the elder Henry Brandon's obituary. Forced to abandon the ballet to avoid Edward, Harriet takes refuge in Rom's house, where, at her request, they become lovers. While Harriet believes that Rom will shortly leave her, Rom intends to propose to Harriet, but is disturbed by her occasionally distant attitude, which he believes is distress at being forced to abandon her promising ballet career. Harriet returns to Manaus to say goodbye to the ballet company as they leave for the next stop on the tour, and returns to Rom's house to find Henry waiting for her there, who informs her that his mother plans to marry Rom. She leaves without saying goodbye to Rom, and returns with the ballet company to England, intending to travel on to Russia and perform. However, she is captured by her father and locked in the house as punishment for many months. After Harriet has given up all hope, Rom finally tracks her down, having been searching since the day she disappeared. He pretends to be a doctor in order to smuggle her from her aunt's custody, and then tells her that he intends to marry her and make her the mistress of Stavely, which he has now purchased. He forces her father to give his permission, intimidating him in front of his students, who then rebel against their most boring teacher. In the epilogue, the pair are happily married with three children, and Henry, who has inherited part of the estate from Rom, intends to return to the Amazon and fulfill his dream of becoming an explorer."
1863,The Talisman,history," During a truce between the Christian armies taking part in the third Crusade, and the infidel forces under Sultan Saladin, Sir Kenneth, on his way to Syria, encountered a Saracen Emir, whom he unhorsed, and they then rode together, discoursing on love and necromancy, towards the cave of the hermit Theodoric of Engaddi. This hermit was in correspondence with the pope, and the knight was charged to communicate secret information. Having provided the travellers with refreshment, the anchorite, as soon as the Saracen slept, conducted his companion to a chapel, where he witnessed a procession, and was recognised by the Lady Edith, to whom he had devoted his heart and sword. He was then startled by the sudden appearance of the dwarfs, and, having reached his couch again, watched the hermit scourging himself until he fell asleep. About the same time Richard Coeur de Lion had succumbed to an attack of fever, and as he lay in his gorgeous tent at Ascalon, Sir Kenneth arrived accompanied by a Moorish physician, who had cured his squire, and who offered to restore the king to health. After a long consultation, and eliciting from Sir Kenneth his visit to the chapel, the physician was admitted to the royal presence; and, having swallowed a draught which he prepared from a silken bag or talisman, Richard sank back on his cushions. While he slept Conrade of Montserrat secretly avowed to the wily Grand-master of the Templars his ambition to be King of Jerusalem; and, with the object of injuring Richard's reputation, incited Leopold of Austria to plant his banner by the side of that of England in the centre of the camp. When the king woke the fever had left him, and Conrade entered to announce what the archduke had done. Springing from his couch, Richard rushed to the spot and defiantly tore down and trampled on the Teuton pennon. Philip of France at length persuaded him to refer the matter to the council, and Sir Kenneth was charged to watch the English standard until daybreak, with a favourite hound as his only companion. Soon after midnight, however, the dwarf Necbatanus approached him with Lady Edith's ring, as a token that his attendance was required to decide a wager she had with the queen; and during his absence from his post the banner was carried off, and his dog severely wounded. Overcome with shame and grief, he was accosted by the physician, who dressed the animal's wound, and, having entrusted Sir Kenneth with Saladin's desire to marry the Lady Edith, proposed that he should seek the Saracen ruler's protection against the wrath of Richard. The valiant Scot, however, resolved to confront the king and reveal the Sultan's purpose; but it availed him not, and he was sentenced to death, in spite of the intercessions of the queen and his lady-love; when the hermit, and then the physician, arrived, and Richard having yielded to their entreaties, Sir Kenneth was simply forbidden to appear before him again. Having, by a bold speech, revived the drooping hopes of his brother Crusaders, and reproved the queen and his kinswoman for tampering with the Scot, Richard received him, disguised as a Nubian slave, as a present from Saladin, with whom he had been induced to spend several days. Shortly afterwards, as the king was reposing in his pavilion, the ""slave"" saved his life from the dagger of an assassin secretly employed by the grand-master, and intimated that he could discover the purloiner of the standard. A procession of the Christian armies and their leaders had already been arranged in token of amity to Richard; and as they marched past him, seated on horseback, with the slave holding the hound among his attendants, the dog suddenly sprang at the Marquis Conrade, who was thus convicted of having injured the animal, and betrayed his guilt by exclaiming, ""I never touched the banner."" Not being permitted to fight the Teuton himself, the king undertook to provide a champion, and Saladin to make all needful preparations for the combat. Accompanied by Queen Berengaria and Lady Edith, Richard was met by the Saracen with a brilliant retinue, and discovered, in the person of his entertainer, the physician who had cured his fever, and saved Sir Kenneth, whom he found prepared to do battle for him on the morrow, with the hermit as his confessor. The encounter took place soon after sunrise, in the presence of the assembled hosts, and Conrade, who was wounded and unhorsed, was tended by the Sultan in the grand-master's tent, while the victorious knight was unarmed by the royal ladies, and made known by Richard as the Prince Royal of Scotland. At noon the Sultan welcomed his guests to a banquet, but, as the grand-master was raising a goblet to his lips, Necbatanus uttered the words accipe hoc, and Saladin decapitated the templar with his sabre; on which the dwarf explained that, hidden behind a curtain, he had seen him stab his accomplice the Marquis of Montserrat, obviously to prevent him from revealing their infamous plots, while he answered his appeal for mercy in the words he had repeated. The next day the young prince was married to Lady Edith, and presented by the Sultan with his talisman, the Crusade was abandoned, and Richard, on his way homewards, was imprisoned by the Austrians in the Tyrol."
1864,Bog Child,history," The novel is set in the 1980s. Fergus McCann and Uncle Tally find a bog body of a small girl near the Ireland-UK border. At the same time, Fergus is studying for his A-Level physics. He makes friends with Owain, one of the border guards, during one of his morning runs across the border. He opens many coversations with Owain. When he goes back to the site of the bog child, Fergus meets Cora and Felicity O'Brien, a girl his age and her archaeologist mother. Fergus named the bog body ""Mel"". He goes to Long Kesh prison with his mother to meet his brother, Joe, who has been incarcerated as a political prisoner because of his involvement with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He has joined his friends on a hunger strike in protest to free Ireland from The Troubles. After lifting Mel's body from the site, the excavation team, including Fergus and Cora, find that Mel has a noose around her neck. A flashback shows Mel and her family struggling to meet loan repayments. Fergus was asked by Michael Rafters to ferry packets across the border in an attempt to end his brother's hunger strike. Fergus and Cora share their accidental first kiss but begin dating afterwards. After his final A-level exam, physics, Fergus and his family visit his brother in prison to find him gaunt-looking. He gets drunk and dreams about Mel talking to Rur, her love interest. When he wakes up, Cora informs him that Mel was a dwarf. Fergus allows Cora and her mother to stay over at his place due to an appointment with a professor about Mel. Radiocarbon dating reveals that Mel lived around AD 80. After a bombing is shown on the news, Fergus begins to suspect the packets he has been ferrying. He opens them in front of Owain to see condoms and contraceptive pills. Joe falls into a coma after 50 days of fasting. After a heated argument between Fergus and his parents they agree to put him on the drip. Through a series of dreams, Fergus sees the events leading to Mel's death with Rur stabbing her at her request because she did not want to ""feel the noose"" around her neck. It is also found out at the end that Fergus' Uncle Tally actually is a local bomb-maker, nicknamed Deus, meaning god."
1865,Rob Roy,history," The story takes place just before the 1715 Jacobite Rising, with much of Scotland in turmoil. Frank Osbaldistone, the narrator, quarrels with his father and is sent to stay with an uncle, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, in Northumberland. Frank falls in love with Diana Vernon, Sir Hildebrand's niece, whose father has been forced to go into hiding because of his Jacobite sympathies. Frank's cousin, Rashleigh, steals important documents vital to the honour and economic solvency of Frank's father, William, and Frank pursues Rashleigh to Scotland. Several times his path crosses the mysterious and powerful figure Robert Roy MacGregor, known as Rob Roy, an associate of Sir Hildebrand. There is much confusion as the action shifts to the beautiful mountains and valleys around Loch Lomond. A British army detachment is ambushed and there is bloodshed. All of Sir Hildebrand's sons but Rashleigh are killed in the Jacobite Rising, and Rashleigh, too meets a bloody end. Following this, Frank inherits Sir Hildebrand's property and marries Diana. Robert Louis Stevenson loved the novel from childhood, regarding it as the best novel of the greatest of all novelists. The novel is a brutally realistic depiction of the social conditions in Highland and Lowland Scotland in the early 18th century. Some of the dialogue is in broad Scottish, and the novel includes a glossary of Scottish words."
1866,The Mark of the Horse Lord,history," The story revolves around slave-gladiator Red Phaedrus, a red haired half Roman, half Celt. He receives his wooden-foil, i.e. his freedom after winning a fight-to-the-death in the Corstopitum arena. He is soon after approached by representatives of the Dal Riada, who ask him to impersonate their king in an effort to win back tribal leadership from a usurper queen. Phaedrus is persuaded, accepts the role of Midir, the original prince who's eyes were put-out by the queen, preventing him from ruling, and receives a signifying tattoo on his forehead, the eponymous Mark of the Horse Lord. The stage is then set for a struggle between King and Queen, between Dal Riada and Caledones, between the Sun God and the Great Mother; a theme used in many Sutcliff novels. Phaedrus spends time in a town on the Northern Wall, learning his role from the original prince Midir and the culture of the Celts. Several historical subjects are discussed, including Lollius Urbicus and the laying-waste of Valentia after subjugation, the Pax Romana and its effects, Calgacus's battles against General Agricola, and the viewpoints of Tacitus on all of this. A revolt ensues against the Queen, and the Dal Riada capital of Dun Monaidh is retaken, but the queen escapes to her kin amongst the Caledones. Phaedrus is crowned king in a ceremony where he places one foot on the carved footprint of previous kings. He lives among the Dal Riada, developing trust and understanding with some who recognize him for an impostor, most who do not. A war ensues between the Dal Riada and the Caledones, who are portrayed as Picts. The fighting occurs across the countryside around Cruachan (described as the Shield Boss of the World), as the Dal Riada struggle to defend their frontier. Other geographical features encountered include Loch Abha, Loch Fhiona, the Cluta, the Firth of the War Boats, and Glen Croe. The Dal Riada eventually win, the Caledones are dispersed, but the Queen flees and finds refuge in a Roman frontier fort. An attempt to assassinate the Queen is made with the help of the true Midir, in which both die, and Phaedrus is captured by the Romans. He is offered freedom at a great cost to the Dal Riada, referencing back to the discussions of Pax Romana and Roman treatment of the native tribes. Phaedrus instead opts to sacrifice himself for the survival of his adopted people, punctuating the concept of responsibility and the sacrificial king developed throughout the novel. The theme of the novel is built around an individual struggling to find identify and belonging, similar to Sutcliff novels such as Outcast and Dawn Wind, revolving around conflicting cultures, and the duties assumed and performed by individuals within those cultures. The duties of a king are shown in many of her novels, including Sword at Sunset and Sun Horse, Moon Horse, and have been credited as being influenced by James Frazer's The Golden Bough."
1867,The Thieves of Ostia,history," June AD 79: The story begins in the home of Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain. Flavia is sitting in the garden reading one of her favourite scrolls, when she hears her father call for her. Flavia enters her father's study to find him in a panic for he has lost hisCastor and Pollux signet ring which Flavia's late mother gave to him. Flavia promises to find it, and the search leads her to a magpie's nest in the necropolis outside the city wall, where she finds a gathering of jewels that the magpie has stolen. Suddenly a pack of dogs chase Flavia and she is rescued by Jonathan ben Mordecai. He takes her back to his house next door to her own where she meets his father Mordecai ben Ezra, a doctor, and his sister Miriam. Marcus takes Flavia to the harbor to sell the jewellery she found, and on the way she is moved to pity when she sees some recently-disembarked slaves on the way to the market. When she is given six hundred sesterces by the jeweller, she immediately decides to buy the young girl she saw with the slaves, to save her from a life of misery. Flavia treats the young slave-girl, who is called Nubia, very kindly, giving her dates to eat and beginning to teach her Latin. Later in the day she has a birthday party with her father, Nubia and the Mordecai family. A few days later, after seeing Marcus off on a voyage, they are shocked to find that someone has killed Jonathan's dog Bobas and taken away his head. Flavia decides this is another mystery to solve, and her friends agree. Following a lead from Cordius's freedman Libertus, they suspect a sailor called Avitus who hates dogs because his daughter died of rabies after being bitten. A young boy, treed by the wild pack, is rescued by Mordecai, who has to kill two of the dogs in the process. He looks after the boy when he falls from the tree and offers him a place to stay. He realises that the boy's tongue has been cut out and he cannot speak. Flavia recognizes him as the beggar boy from the forum and Nubia finds out that his name is Lupus. Lupus is the Latin word for wolf. Lupus agrees to help them solve the mystery. They cannot find any evidence against Avitus, so Lupus offers to follow him around town, as nobody notices a beggar boy. Although he finds out that Avitus just goes from tavern to tavern getting drunk, at one tavern Lupus overhears a conversation between gamblers about treasure at Marcus Geminus's house. Later he sees the grief-stricken Avitus commit suicide by throwing himself from the top of the lighthouse. When Lupus returns to find that Cordius's dog has been beheaded that afternoon, he is able to clear Avitus of the crime. He asks to stay at Flavia's house that night, but in the middle of the night is caught stealing gold coins from the storeroom - Cordius's money, secretly entrusted to Marcus. Flavia is shocked, but instantly realises that this sheds light on the mystery. Someone is after the treasure, but very few people know about it. Lupus confirms the identity of one of the gamblers he overheard. Next morning, they find a horrible sight in the street, a trident with three dogs' heads stuck on it, obviously intended to frighten them away. Flavia decides to lay a trap for the dog-killing thief, which the guilty Libertus falls into. The team is successful. Mordecai persuades Flavia and Jonathan to forgive Lupus, reminding them of his difficult life, and of their own imperfections, and they invite him to the celebration party. Cordius is grateful to the detectives and gives them all a reward of a gold coin, as Flavia explains the clues which led to the solving of the mystery. Nubia brings two puppies and gives one to Jonathan; they will be called Nipur and Tigris. Marcus promises them next time he goes away on a voyage, they will all go to his brother Gaius's farm in Pompeii, where they will be safe."
1868,The Pirate,history," Mr Mertoun and his son had arrived as strangers, and resided for several years in the remaining rooms of the old mansion of the Earls of Orkney, the father leading a very secluded life, while the son Mordaunt became a general favourite with the inhabitants, and especially with the udaller, Magnus Troil, and his daughters. On his way home from a visit to them, he and the pedlar Snailsfoot sought shelter from a storm at the Yellowleys' farmhouse, where they were amused with their penurious ways, and encountered Norna, a relative of Magnus Troil who was supposed to be in league with the fairies, and to possess supernatural powers. The next day a ship was wrecked on the rocky coast, and, at the risk of his life, Mordaunt rescued the captain, Cleveland, as he was cast on the beach clinging to a plank, while Norna prevented his sea-chest from being pillaged. Cleveland was in fact a pirate, but they did not know this. The captain promised his preserver a trip in a consort ship which he expected would arrive shortly, and went to seek the udaller's help in recovering some of his other property that had been washed ashore. After the lapse of several weeks, however, during which the Troils had discontinued their friendly communications with him, Mordaunt heard that the stranger was still their guest, and that they were arranging an entertainment for St John's Eve, to which he had not been bidden. As he was brooding over this slight, Norna touched his shoulder, and, assuring him of her goodwill, advised him to join the party uninvited. Warned by his father against falling in love, and with some misgivings as to his reception, he called at Harfra on his way, and accompanied Yellowley and his sister to the feast. Minna and Brenda Troil replied to their discarded companion's greeting with cold civility, and he felt convinced that Captain Cleveland had supplanted him in their esteem. The bard, Claud Halcro, endeavoured to cheer him with his poetry and reminiscences of John Dryden; and, in the course of the evening, Brenda, disguised as a masquer, told him they had heard that he had spoken unkindly of them, but that she did not believe he had done so. She also expressed her fear that the stranger had won Minna's love, and begged Mordaunt to discover all he could respecting him. During an attempt to capture a whale the following day, Cleveland saved Mordaunt from drowning, and, being thus released from his obligation to him, intimated that henceforth they were rivals. The same evening the pedlar brought tidings that a strange ship had arrived at Kirkwall, and Cleveland talked of a trip thither to ascertain whether it was the consort he had been so long expecting. After the sisters had retired to bed, Norna appeared in their room, and narrated a startling tale of her early life, which led Minna to confess her attachment to the captain, and to elicit Brenda's partiality for Mordaunt. At a secret interview the next morning, Cleveland admitted to Minna that he was a pirate, upon which she declared that she could only still love him as a penitent, and not as the hero she had hitherto imagined him to be. He announced, in the presence of her father and sister, his intention of starting at once for Kirkwall; but at night he serenaded her, and then, after hearing a struggle and a groan, she saw the shadow of a figure disappearing with another on his shoulders. Overcome with grief and suspense, she was seized with a fit of melancholy, for the cure of which the udaller consulted Norna in her secluded dwelling; and, after a mystic ceremony, she predicted that the cause would cease when ""crimson foot met crimson hand"" in the Martyr's Aisle in Orkney land, whither she commanded her kinsman to proceed with his daughters. Mordaunt had been stabbed by the pirate, but had been carried away by Norna to Hoy, where she told him she was his mother, and, after curing his wound, conveyed him to Kirkwall. Here Cleveland had joined his companions, and, having been chosen captain of the consort ship, he obtained leave from the provost for her to take in stores at Stromness and quit the islands, on condition that he remained as a hostage for the crew's behaviour. On their way they captured the brig containing the Troils, but Minna and Brenda were sent safely ashore by John Bunce, Cleveland's lieutenant, and escorted by old Halcro to visit a relative. The lovers met in the cathedral of St Magnus, whence, with Norna's aid, Cleveland escaped to his ship, and the sisters were transferred to the residence of the bard's cousin, where their father joined them, and found Mordaunt in charge of a party of dependents for their protection. When all was ready for sailing, the captain resolved to see Minna once more, and having sent a note begging her to meet him at the Standing Stones of Stenness at daybreak, he made his way thither. Brenda persuaded Mordaunt to allow her sister to keep the appointment, and as the lovers were taking their last farewell, they and Brenda were seized by Bunce and his crew from the boat, and would have been carried off, had not Mordaunt hastened to the rescue, and made prisoners of the pirate and his lieutenant. Norna had warned Cleveland against delaying his departure, and his last hopes were quenched when, from the window of the room in which he and Bunce were confined, they witnessed the arrival of the Halcyon, whose captain she had communicated with, and the capture, after a desperate resistance, of their ship. The elder Mertoun now sought Norna's aid to save their son, who, he declared, was not Mordaunt, as she imagined, but Cleveland, whom he had trained as a pirate under his own real name of Vaughan, her former lover; and having lost trace of him till now, had come to Jarlshof, with his child by a Spanish wife, to atone for the misdeeds of his youth. On inquiry it appeared that Cleveland and Bunce had earned their pardon by acts of mercy in their piratical career, and were allowed to enter the king's service. Minna was further consoled by a penitent letter from her lover; Brenda became Mordaunt's wife; and the aberration of mind, occasioned by remorse at having caused her father's death, having died, Norna abandoned her supernatural pretensions and peculiar habits, and resumed her family name."
1869,Katherine,history," Katherine tells the true story of Katherine de Roet, born the daughter of a minor Flemish herald, later knight. Katherine has no obvious prospects, except that her sister is a waiting-woman to Queen Philippa, wife of King Edward III, and the fiancée of Geoffrey Chaucer, then a minor court official. By virtue of this connection, Katherine meets and marries Sir Hugh Swynford of Lincolnshire and gives birth to a daughter, Blanchette, and a son, Thomas. After Hugh's death, Katherine becomes the mistress of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and bears him four children out of wedlock. She is also appointed official governess to the Duke's two daughters by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, and helps raise his son by Blanche, the future King Henry IV. The Duke and Katherine separate for a number of years, immediately following Wat Tyler's Peasants' Revolt in 1381, when the rioting peasants sacked and burnt the Duke's Savoy Palace to the ground. The novel's explanation for their separation is Katherine's shock over revelations concerning the death of her husband. However, the couple eventually reconcile and marry after the death of the Duke's second wife and after their children are grown."
1870,The Death of Kings,history," Exiled from Rome by the new Dictator, Sulla, Gaius Julius Caesar is serving with a naval legion. After playing a crucial part in liberating a Roman fort in Mytilene under the command of rebels, Julius receives the honour wreath and increases his standing among his men yet further. Despite this success, his war galley is attacked and captured by pirates, with Julius himself receiving a serious head injury. His household fares no better with its head serving at sea: Cornelia, Julius' wife is assaulted by Sulla despite being heavily pregnant. Julius and Cornelia's daughter is born and named Julia in honour of her father. Marcus Brutus meanwhile has finished his term with a legion in Macedon and is causing trouble with the locals on his return journey to Rome. He and Renius manage to meet jealous husbands and vindictive fathers before returning to the city. In the city itself, Julius' estate manager Tubruk swears revenge on Sulla and schemes to sell himself back into slavery in order to enter Sulla's household. Tubruk then successfully poisons Sulla before managing to escape the city before he can be traced. Antonidus, Sulla's right-hand, promises to track down Sulla's killer and tears Rome apart in his search. As Julius and the survivors of his galley gradually recover while detained on the pirates' ship, their captors demand a ransom. While the men attempt to negotiate lower ransom prices, Julius demands a much high price than the one proposed, defying the pirates and declaring that he will re-claim whatever is paid anyway. Eventually the survivors are left on the north African coast when the ransoms are paid. After returning to Rome and the estate where he and Julius grew up, Brutus asks Tubruk for the whereabouts of his mother, Servilia. After visiting her home, he gradually comes to know the woman who abandoned him as a child, as well as forming a reluctant acceptance of her life. In delight of her new-found relationship with her son, Servilia uses her influence with Crassus, one of the richest men in the Senate, to re-form the legion of Marius (Primigenia) under Brutus' command. Antonidus believes he has narrowed down the list of culprits for Sulla's murder to three: Cinna, father of Cornelia; Crassus; or Pompey, a renowned general and rising star in the Senate. With the backing of Cato, one of the most powerful men in the Senate, Antonidus hires an assassin to kill a loved one of each of the three. Pompey is the first to suffer Antonidus' misplaced vengeance, with his daughter murdered in Pompey's garden. Marching across north Africa, Julius calls for volunteers and, where necessary, presses young men into service to assist in the finding and destruction of the pirates. Risking the wrath of the Roman authorities with Ciro, one of Julius' recruits, accidentally killing a soldier and then Julius and his men stealing a ship, the small force sets out to find the survivors and recover their ransom money. Eventually the pirates are found and destroyed, with a huge hoard found on the pirate's ship, and Julius resolves to land in Greece and return to Rome. Upon landing in Greece, Julius discovers several Roman forts lying destroyed with their inhabitants killed, and learns not only of the return of Mithridates, but also of the death of Sulla. While Cato and the supporters of Sulla delay the Senate's decision to appoint a leader to confront Mithridates, Julius decides to confront Mithridates himself, and recruits many surviving veterans to fight alongside him, calling them the Wolves of Rome. Conducting several major hit-and-run attacks on Mithridates' forces, the Wolves eventually defeat the forces of Mithridates before the forces sent by the Senate even arrive in Greece. After delivering Mithridates' body to the approaching legions, Julius leads the Wolves to Rome and finally returned home. While home at his estate Julius meets his daughter Julia for the first time and learns of Sulla's assault on his wife. In his fury he comes close to killing Tubruk, one of his oldest friends, before learning Tubruk was Sulla's killer. Swearing revenge on Sulla's associates and followers, Julius publicly allies himself with Crassus and Pompey, who publicly denounces Cato as responsible for his daughters death. Tension also flares briefly between Julius and Brutus when Julius demands Brutus hand over Primigenia to him, until Brutus acquiesces and puts his friendship above his pride. Julius' marriage also suffers, with Cornelia feeling increasingly ignored by Julius. When Cato's son is forcibly signed up to Primigenia and is forbidden to withdraw from his service, Julius gathers another opponent. Crisis strikes Rome again when a gladiator known as Spartacus leads a slave revolt and destroys two legions in the north. Infighting in the Senate leads to indecision as to who will lead the legions north leads to Crassus being given command, despite his perceived lack of skill as a general. Knowing this, Crassus makes Pompey his second in command and Pompey responds by summoning Julius and Primigenia. Primigenia marches north and performs admirably, though it is forcibly merged with another legion. Julius remains in command of the newly formed legion, and names it the Tenth. Tragedy strikes Julius before he can see the end of the campaign. Cornelia is murdered on Cato's orders, with Tubruk dying trying to protect her. Julius returns to his estate with Pompey and Brutus, and Pompey discovers Cato's involvement in the murders of Cornelia and his daughter. Cato however commits suicide before he can be executed. A grief-stricken Julius returns to his troops in time to see Spartacus and the slave revolt crushed. Pompey however begins to see Julius as a threat and arranges for him to take up a position in Spain."
1871,The Wake of the Lorelei Lee,history," In the previous book, Rapture of the Deep, Jacky is forced by British Naval Intelligence to recover Spanish gold from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. She used a diving bell to recover the gold, which she still has in her possession. Jacky kept some of this gold and bought a ship, the Lorelei Lee. The Lorelei Lee has four large cabins, 24 regular-sized cabins, and three levels of open hammock spaces. Jacky plans to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. Before the voyage to London, Jacky and her dear friend, Amy, travel to Amy's family farm, Dovecote. While on the farm Jacky sees her friend and Amy's brother Randall. She finds out that Randall has joined the United States Marine Corps and is going to sea. They attend a religious revival at the farm, where Jacky sees her old associates Mr. Fennel and Mr. Bean, who are stage performers. They are putting on the show with a girl that Jacky discovers to be Polly Von, a former member of Jacky's gang in Cheapside. When Jacky sails into London she is taken to Newgate Prison by her old enemies, Bliffil and Flashby. Jacky goes before the court and is sentenced to life at the penal colony in Australia. To make matters worse, the Lorelei Lee is confiscated and used to transport Jacky and 250 other female convicts, to become ""breeders"" to populate Australia. Jacky had decked out the Lorelei Lee to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean, so it was equipped for the voyage to Australia. The Lorelei has three levels of open hammock spaces and Jacky, knowing which level is best, claims the top level of hammocks for her and her new crew of girls. Four groups form on the ship, the Lizzies, the Judies, and the Tartans, named after their leaders, and Jacky's group, called the Newgaters Crew, which includes Mary Wade and Esther Abrahams. Captain Laughton tells the girls that after they reach Gibraltar the different hammock levels will be auctioned off. The other three crews, being prostitutes, plan on making their money that way. The Newgaters Crew, consisting of twelve girls, including Jacky, plan on doing the ship's laundry in an attempt to make money. Captain Laughton also tells the girls and the crew that they are welcome to mingle and get together. The Captain gets more money if, when they arrive in Australia, any girls are pregnant or have had a child, so they are welcome to it, and they will get a shilling in return. Meanwhile, the book switches to letters from Jaimy to Jacky. The letters do not reach Jacky, but it tells the reader what has happened to Jaimy. Jaimy has been convicted of defrauding the king and sentenced to seven years in the penal colony of Australia. Jaimy has been told by the prison guards that Jacky has not been hanged and has been sent to Australia. The father and brother confirm this and Jaimy is put on the ship to Australia. On the ship, Jaimy finds Ian McConnaughey and Arthur McBride, from Jacky's former ship the Emerald, as well as other members of the former crew. The Lorelei Lee arrives in Gibraltar. They ship is to be there for three days and the other crews go on with their profession to make money to be able to buy the good levels of hammocks. The next day, Jacky goes onto the dock in her swim suit. She invites people to throw coins into the water, which she will retrieve. She works the docks all day, though not making nearly as much as the other crews. Later Jacky sees that the ship is taking on a few more girls and that one of them is Mairead. Mairead has been sentenced to life in Australia as well. Mairead tells her of her arrest and the fact that she is pregnant. As Jacky continues to dive for coins she sees some old seamates from the ship Wolverine. She also sees Gully MacFarland, her old partner in Boston, who Jacky put upon a British Navy ship after he got drunk and hit her. He tells her he is now sober and she is the reason, which he is thankful for. After the Lorelei Lee leaves Gibraltar the Captain auctions off the hammock spaces to the four different crews. The three other crews outbid Jacky and her crew for the best hammock spaces. However, this was Jacky's plan all along. Jacky and her crew make the laundry room their home. Jacky, being the former owner of the Lorelei Lee, knows where the extra mattresses are, and with some help from the carpenter, they make bunk beds for the crew. As the ship sails on, the Captain begins to have dinner parties in his cabin, with the officers attending. Jacky is there too, being the entertainment. During these parties Major George Johnston, an officer, has been attending with a girl from Jacky's crew, Esther Abrahams. At one of the dinners they announce their engagement and the next day they are married. After the wedding the Captain pushes Higgins to take a girl for himself. Higgins takes this opportunity to protect himself as well as Jacky by taking her as his wife. The first mate Mr. Ruger has been coming on to Jacky and by marrying Higgins, she can somewhat ward off his advances. Jacky on the other hand, uses their marriage to tease Higgins to no end by asking him to carry her across the threshold of their cabin and calling him ""Dear Husband John"" and such. That night, as Jacky and Higgins jump on the bed and make noises to make their marriage look, if not sound, real, she jokingly slides her hands down his waist and asks him if he would want her to, being legally married and all. They both have a laugh over this and fall asleep. The ship then makes it to India. Jacky and Mairead go out to explore India with Higgins and Captain Laughton. Jacky and Mairead get separated from the others. A small boy named Ravi offers to be their tour guide. Ravi is part of the untouchable caste and is an orphan after his mother died. Ravi shows them around, exchanges their money. The girls are sticking out so Ravi uses their money to buy them Indian clothing. He shows them the different Indian gods, including the Goddess Kali and the God Ganesh. After the girls eat some Indian food they are able to ride an elephant. Riding the elephant, Jacky and Mairead go on to be part of a procession through town, where at the end, in the Governor's box, sit Captain Laughton and Higgins. Jacky decides to joke around. While on the elephant, Jacky stands in front of Mairead and puts her arms out, imitating the Goddess Kali. This outrages the Kali followers, and they chase Jacky and Mairead. They run, led by Ravi. He gets them to the ship so they will be safe. Jacky knows if Ravi is left behind the Kali followers will kill him for helping her, so she grabs him and puts Ravi on the ship. The Captain is outraged when the ship is asked to leave the port immediately. The book then switches to a letter from Jaimy to Jacky. The letter is not written down, but rather in his head. Jaimy and the others are on the ship Cerberus. Every day, the convicts are allowed on deck for some exercise and fresh air. Jaimy plans a riot. Ian and Arthur create a diversion by singing a song about some of the guards. The two guards, Corporal Vance and Sergeant Napper, are enraged and begin beating some of the convicts. This diversion allows Jaimy to grab a belaying pin from the deck and tuck it under his clothes. The weeks go by on the Lorelei Lee. One day a fight breaks out between two girls, Violetta Atkins and Jane Wheelden. They were fighting over a man. Jacky tries to break up the fight and ends up in the middle of it. Fighting is forbidden on the ship and is punishable by whipping. However, this time Mr. Ruger decides to punish the girls by rigging up the dunking stool, where the girls will be dunked into the sea for ten seconds. Jacky knows the other two girls would not be able to take the punishment and takes it for them, meaning she would be underwater for 30 seconds. As Jacky is dunked underwater she counts the seconds. She soon realizes that she is being kept longer than she should. Jacky soon passes out and wakes up on the deck. Higgins tells her that something was caught in the winch to reel up the rope. Higgins thinks it was a knitting needle. Mrs. Barnsley, Mrs. MacDonald, and Mrs. Berry are the leaders of the other crews, and don't like Jacky very much. However, they come to Higgins and tell them that even though they haven't gotten along with Jacky, they did not try to harm her. Just then Ravi comes in to inform Jacky of an arriving ship. All the women come on deck to see the ship Cerberus. While the Captains exchange news and try to trade passengers, Jacky spots her old Irish crew on the ship. Jacky continues to spot more of her old crew, including Mairead's husband, Ian. Mairead yells to Ian and the crew yells back. McBride, seeing Jacky yells, ""Fletcher, it's your Jacky."" The two girls are at the edge of the ship, and are being held back from jumping off. The Captain tells them they are inflicting punishment to rioting prisoners, and Jacky and Mairead, seeing that their Jaimy and Ian are being hurt, manage to jump on board the Cerberus to save/comfort their men. The guards force Jacky to watch as Jaimy is beaten, doing the same for Mairead and Ian. But afterwards as Jacky is kissing Jaimy (who is nearing unconsciousness), she slyly puts her shiv in his boot. The Captain throws the girls over and sails off. Back on the Lorelei Lee, the girls continue to travel, all while First Mate Ruger continues to eye Jacky and Mairead. One day, while partying on the deck the Captain, obviously drunk, yells for more everything and just dies, his last word being, ""More."" With Ruger as Captain, everyone stays below as much as possible. He drinks himself into a frenzy and brutally abuses anyone in his way. He continues to pursue Jacky and Mairead. All the gangs decide to form a truce with each other as well as the other ship officers to keep everyone safe from Ruger. Meanwhile the boys plan to hijack the Cerberus, sail to the nearest port, supply themselves, and sail to Australia to save their girls. Their opportunity arrives when the crew is drunk during the Captain's birthday and their escort ship is off to escort a more important ship. They manage to steal a club and considerable amount of rope and plot to start their take over the next night. When the guards walk by, McBride starts telling a rather nasty joke involving Jacky, himself, and Jaimy. Jaimy, pissed off, tells Arthur the two will settle scores later. The next night, Padric and Ian tease Weisling, their guard, about how he got beat up by Jacky on the Wolverine. They make up a song to an Irish drinking tune about his embarrassment, and soon the Weasel unlocks the door to beat them, but Duggan puts out the Weasel with their stolen belaying pin. They unchain themselves with the Weasel's keys and wait for the other two guards to come out. The other two guards walk by and young Daniel Connolly begs them for protection from his bigger and meaner cell mates. They guards decide to unlock him to have some fun with him themselves (they mean to rape him), when Jaimy and McBride kill both of them. The men steal the guards' uniforms, raid the ship's weaponry, and go out killing and injuring most of the other guards, throwing them overboard in a life raft. They gain full control of the ship and set sail for Batavia (Jakarta). Jaimy and McBride see this as a perfect time to settle their scores and get into a fight. Jaimy wins, claims captain and appoints his officers. Ian as first mate, Padric as second, and McBride as third. Meanwhile, Ruger finally decides that he has waited long enough and orders Jacky to his room. She refuses, telling him that she is married, and if he forces her, it will be rape. Ruger tells her he knows of her sham marriage and this time orders both Jacky and Mairead to his room. Mairead tells him to back away and that she has a baby. Jacky tries to save her by telling Ruger he can have her, and leave Mairead alone, but he does not. Ruger, angered, punches Mairead in her stomach, killing her baby. He goes back into his cabin while the other women help Mairead recover. Jacky, angered, shoots Ruger with an arrow, but misses as he ducks and runs away. To keep the officers from killing Jacky for attempted murder, most of the women barricade themselves below the ship, and only will let officers pass for supplies if they agree to keep to their terms of truce. Under deck, Jacky and Higgins make themselves a makeshift room for the two and discuss matters with Ravi and their monkey Josephine, who they picked up from India. Higgins tells her it is unlikely that Ruger will be convicted of anything, while she might be hanged for attempted murder. Jacky dimly sees that her only hope is if Jaimy helps her, which is unlikely. Just then, a ship has been spotted and Jacky runs up to see if it is Jaimy. The ship turns out to be a pirate's Chinese junk and attacks them by throwing phosphorus rockets at them from a long distance. Deciding that she must fight fire with fire, and that no one should hurt the ship she paid for, she takes a few of her own arrows, as well as some flaming pitch, and drops down in a life boat with Ravi to defend her Lorelei Lee. She manages to set fire to the junk's sails, which burn quickly as they are made of straw-like material. But, as she finishes off their sails, the Chinese shoot their arrows at her and manage to take her and Ravi captive. On board, a woman stops her execution, and her words are translated to Jacky by an Italian monk. The woman, whose name is Cheng Shih, is obviously the boss, asks the monk to record Jacky's entire life. The monk and Jacky talk and eventually she learns that Cheng Shih is the most dreaded pirate in these lands and commanded hundred of ships. The monk mocks her, as she was proud only a minute ago by having command of two ships in her days as a pirate. The monk, Brother Arcangelo Rossetti, tells Jacky that Cheng Shih is intrigued by her and wants to keep her. When meeting Cheng Shih in her cabin, she tells Jacky that she does not believe her story. Jacky, miffed at this, shows her how she can dive for coins. She takes all her clothes off and jumps into the water, quickly getting the coin, but staying down long enough to think her drowned. She swims around the ship, jumps on deck, surprising Cheng Shih. Impressed by Jacky's ability, the pirate takes Jacky under her wing, dressing her in all the latest Chinese fashions, and treating her as a pet. The book goes back to Jaimy who is stuck in the middle of the ocean and cannot go anywhere as the wind will not blow. He is fearful of Chinese pirates that scout out his ship daily. Later in Cheng Shih's cabin, Jacky learns of how she always keeps a Buddha statue near her to remind herself of a debt unpaid. It turns out while raiding the monastery there, Cheng Shih also tried to take their giant golden Buddha statue, but it sank under water. Seeing all the monks dive after it and drowning, she vowed to bring it back up. But no amount of tugging would do the job. She marked the water there and left, failing in her task. Hearing this, Jacky thinks of how her diving bell managed to help her pull up the bow of a sunken Spanish ship, and the next morning proposes to bring the statue back up, if she, Jaimy, and the passengers of the Lorelei Lee (as well as the ship) are all freed. Cheng Shih is angry and whips Jacky for even thinking of asking for freedom, but agrees to let everyone go except Jacky. To show Jacky that she is under the ownership and protection of her, Cheng Shih orders her assistant to tattoo on her neck a golden dragon, this being Shih's mark. They immediately change course and sail toward the Cerberus, their plan to take over the ship and sail to the Lorelei Lee. It is unknown to them that Jaimy has managed to take command of the vessel. They come closer to the unarmed ship, and are about to fire when Jacky sees that management has changed. She climbs aboard, stopping the slaughter, and tells Jaimy to throw down his sword. When he does, she tells him about her plan, and together the two ships sail toward the Lorelei Lee. While together, Jacky and Jaimy spend a lot of time with each other, much to the displeasure of Cheng Shih. One such occasion includes a very saucy time in a bathtub. There, Jaimy realizes that Jacky is a sort of slave to the pirate and is angered. He demands Jacky to sneak off with him, as he is afraid she will be used as a prostitute. Jacky comforts him, and quickly changes the subject and asks Jaimy what his plan is for the prisoners. He tells her that he will pose as the now-dead captain of the ship, collect the money for delivering the prisoners and sail back with her. She tells him that it is a great plan, but does not mention that she cannot leave. Jaimy asks about her marriage to Higgins, and Jacky starts to tell him it is a sham, but Jaimy stops her saying that he could never be jealous of their good friend Higgins. Jacky is sure he thinks she is no longer a maiden and wants to tell him that she is, but says nothing to make sure he would still love her any way she was. When they reach the Lorelei Lee, they board the ship and Ian kills Captain Ruger for killing his unborn son, and laying his hands on Mairead. Everyone has a happy reunion and they all sail towards the sunken Buddha. Higgins and Jacky have a talk about their marriage, and agree to get a divorce. Higgins can see that Jacky is anxious to be back with Jaimy, so the two get divorced in the quick Muslim way, since they are close to Muslim waters. The crew sets up the diving bell, and Jacky, donning her swimsuit, dives for the statue. She brings it up in no time and the Chinese fix it to its original place. But in the process Chi-Chi (Cheng Shih's assistant) falls into the water. Jacky saves him, making him her assistant. As they sail back, Jaimy and Jacky have to say goodbye. Jaimy is outraged and wants to fight the pirates, as he cannot believe that they are keeping his Jacky as a slave. Jacky tells him that she is treated well, like a pet, and he should not worry, as she will have lots of adventures around Asia, and that adventure was why she got on the Dolphin years ago. She tells him to go back to Australia, continue with his plan and to start a life elsewhere without her. Jacky begins to cry, and when Jaimy tries to hug her she tells him not to, as Shih is watching and will kill them both. Jaimy protests saying that he will fight them all for her freedom, but she tells him to leave. She asks Cheng Shih if she can kiss Jaimy one last time, but the pirate says no. Jacky's heart breaks at how she will never be able to feel Jaimy again and sobs into her hands. The monk quickly explains that Cheng Shih meant that she would not allow Jacky to stay, and that she wants Jacky to leave with her fiance as she would hate her Golden Child to feel so sad. Not wanting to wait as Cheng Shih might change her mind, the two run off the ship, quickly climb their ships and set sail to Australia. On route to Australia, Jacky and Jaimy are mostly on separate ships, and she makes no move to invite him over, telling him she is busy. In reality, she just wanted to distance herself from him, as she did not feel ready for sex. She had known that would be on Jaimy's mind, as Mairead and Ian had been ""busy making another Irish baby"" and McBride had given him a hard time about her easy ways. At Australia, Jaimy and Higgins act as the captains of the two ships, collect the money, leave the prisoners, and sail a good distance away to talk matters through. Jaimy and Jacky, now finally alone, begin talking. She tells him to sail to Singapore and spend every cent of his money to arm his ship. Jaimy is confused as he thought that this would be the perfect time for him and Jacky to make up for lost time in their relationship, but he goes, with only a few kisses from his fiance. She later has a talk with Higgins, just like the one on the Nancy B., but this time she agrees with Higgins, admitting that getting married and having children could wait until she was older and more successful. Higgins smiles quietly, and it is obvious he knew she would say this. A few days after the ships separate, the Dart (the Cerberus 's companion ship) returns from its different duty to find and sail with it back to England. The Captain climbs aboard the Lorelei and Jacky sees that it is Joseph Jared, one of the men she had a relationship with on the Wolverine, as since then. He tells her that he has finally met her after what seemed like forever. He technically has authority over her, as she is an escaped prisoner, and he wants her in bed. She says no politely and persists, but Jared pulls her onto the bed anyway. Just then the Cerberus pulls up, with Jaimy jumping aboard and Jacky smiles and asks Jared, ""Now who exactly is the prisoner of whom?"" The three captains discuss what to do with their illegal profits, the ships, and where to stay, as both Jacky and Jaimy are wanted. Jared insists that it is his duty to turn in Jacky and Jaimy (he is still angry from Jacky's refusal, and the fact that Jaimy is actually present this time to stop him from getting his way with Jacky), but seeing the others' expressions and their armed guards, he quickly agrees that he is open for discussion. Together, they agree to let the Dart sail with them to England, where the Cerberus and it will stay, and where Jaimy will go with his lawyer to plead his innocence in court. Jared, now a captain, will vouch for him with his influence. Jacky, along with the Irish crew and Higgins, would go to Boston, and continue with Faber Shipping, as all chances of her acquittal is lost. The three shake hands and are about to continue with the matter of the money, when Chi-Chi yells, warning them of a typhoon. The book ends with Jacky panicking about the fast approaching storm."
1872,The Cat of Bubastes,history," After his father, the king of the Rebu, is killed in battle with the Egyptian army and the Rebu nation is conquered by the Egyptians, the young prince Amuba is carried away as a captive to Egypt, along with his faithful charioteer, Jethro. In Thebes, Amuba becomes the servant and companion to Chebron, the son of Ameres, high priest of Osiris. The lads become involved in a mystery as they begin to uncover evidence of a murderous conspiracy within the ranks of the priesthood. However, before they are able to prevent it, they are forced to flee for their lives when they accidentally cause the death of the successor to the Cat of Bubastes, one of the most sacred animals in Egypt. With Jethro as their guide and protector, the boys make plans to escape from Egyptian territory and return to Amuba's homeland."
1873,Outcast,history," The story is about a boy named Beric, who is raised amongst the Dumnonii. After coming of age, his status within their culture comes under pressure, shown in a conflict between the acceptance of the village Bard and the condemnation on religious grounds by the village Druid. After a bad harvest is linked to his presence, the superstitious views of the Druid win-out, and Beric is exiled from the tribe. He journeys to Isca Dumnoniorum, where he falls afoul of a Greek slave trader, who tricks Beric and takes him as a slave. He us ultimately purchased by Publius Pio, a Roman Magistrate, and becomes part of Pio's patrician household on the Viminal Hill. Beric antagonizes Glaucus, son of Publius Pio, embarrassing Glaucus at a dinner celebrating Pio's election to the office of Aedile. This scene is witnessed by Centurion Justinius, and results in Beric being condemned to work in the salt mines, a certain slow and painful death. Beric makes his escape from Pio's household, hiding in a disused temple of Sylvan Pan, and making his way north on the Via Flaminia, hoping to walk back to Britain. He is caught in the Roman countryside, condemned as a bandit, and sentenced to live out his life as a galley slave. He works in the Rhenus Fleet, stationed in Colonia Agrippina, living many years on the galley 'Alcestis'. His galley is eventually sent to Britain, surviving a great storm, during which Beric is thrown overboard for dead. Beric washes ashore for the second time in his life, this time to be rescued by the Roman British household of the centurion Justinius, who had returned to his duty station after his leave in Rome. Beric now joins in the work on the Rhee Wall of Romney Marsh, where the Romans led by Justinius are working reclaim land from the sea. The progress of the Rhee Wall and the lives of the workers are threatened by a great storm, during which Beric bonds with his new comrades, and after which he concludes that he has finally found a place and a people where he belongs. Like in many Sutcliff novels, the theme of Outcast revolves around Beric's struggle to find belonging as he is caught in various degrees of acceptance and descrimination by the various societies through which he travels. Also like in many Sutcliff novels, Outcast strongly features the celtic native hound, with Beric's progress being paralleled by renouncing his native dog in the beginning of the novel, later adopting a mixed-breed dog near the Roman camp by the Rhee wall, and ultimately having his break-through moment of feeling accepted when the second dog drops her newborn pup on his feet. Richard Kennedy's cover art is in color, while the illustrations within the novel are black and white charcoal drawings."
1874,Lady of Avalon,history," Lady of Avalon is the sequel to The Forest House and the prequel to The Mists of Avalon. It is divided into 3 parts. The first part shows us Caillean and Gawen (Eilan's son), who we know from the prequel, The Forest House. Caillean assumes the role of High Priestess of Avalon and somewhat a foster mother to Gawen. Gawen is raised as a druid, but from time to time, the Fairy Queen takes him with her to teach him. She also has a daughter, Sianna. The Fairy Queen and Caillean agree that Sianna will be given the teachings of the priestesses of Avalon. Spending their childhood together, Sianna and Gawen have a special bond. By the end of this first part of the book, Gawen and Sianna have become more than just friends. Sianna will bear Gawen's child, though Gawen himself will not live to see his daughter, as he is killed when he tries to protect Avalon from the Christians and a Roman patrol. After these unfortunate events, Caillean calls upon the mists so that Avalon will be inaccessible to anyone who cannot handle the magic to lift the mist. When Caillean grows too old, Sianna assumes the position of High Priestess and her daughter after her, thus starting a lineage of High Priestesses. The second part tells us about High Priestess Dierna. She takes in a new novice of royal blood, named Teleri. When she gets a vision about the new Protector of Britannia, a Roman admiral named Carausius, she forces Teleri, a foreign princess who hoped to become a great priestess, to be wed to the man to keep Dierna in power. Some years later, Carausius gets more and more opposition from all sides. Teleri will flee from her husband and give support to one of his former trustees to become the new High King. Eventually, Dierna and Carausius will find each other and betray Teleri. The High King hunts down Carausius who tries to reach the safety of Avalon and Dierna, but fails to reach it, dying of his wounds at the edge of the lake of Avalon. Some time later, Teleri falls back into the abusive relationship and finds her way back to Avalon, where she is reunited with Dierna and becomes her successor. The third part focuses on Avalon High Priestess Ana and her third daughter, Viviane. Viviane was fostered on a farm, but when she is 14 her mother sends Taliesin the Druid bard to escort her to Avalon. There she completes her training as a priestess, but Ana won't let her go through her initiation, so Viviane continues to remain a novice. This allows her to be the first maiden in centuries to be able to handle the Holy Grail, which is kept by Taliesin's order of Druids. Viviane's temperament takes after Ana's, so their characters often clash. Finally, Viviane is initiated when she becomes Vortimer's lover but returns to Avalon when he dies, where she bears his daughter. Sadly, her child dies three months later. Ana is also pregnant, but birth proves to be difficult at her age. At last Ana and Viviane find forgiveness for each other, but Ana does not survive the birth of her last daughter, Morgause. Luckily, Viviane can nurse Ana's daughter, since her body is still accustomed to breastfeeding her own child. This last part leads us to the storyline of The Mists of Avalon."
1875,Master Georgie,history," The novel is told in six chapters, starting in Liverpool in 1846 and ending outside Sevastopol in 1854. George Hardy, an attractive English surgeon, amateur photographer and bisexual, leaves his affluent lifestyle in Liverpool, where he is heir to a fortune, to go to war at Inkerman in the Crimea. He believes ""that the war would at last provide him with the prop he needed."" His story is told by three other characters: Myrtle, a lovestruck foundling who bears Hardy's children, Dr. Potter, an intellectual and geologist and Pompey Jones, a one-time street performer who learns photography from Hardy. United by a sudden death in a Liverpool brothel in 1846, the four characters are undeniably linked by love, class, war and fate."
1876,The Dark Frigate,history," The book opens in (Stuart London 17th century London). Philip Marsham, a nineteen year old sailor, has just been orphaned when his father's ship was lost at sea. An accident with a gun causes him to flee London, leaving behind the small inheritance left by his father. He decides to journey across England on foot, heading towards Bideford. During his travels, he encounters Sir John Bristol, a local Lord who greatly impresses the young man. He also encounters two men, Tom Jordan and Martin Barwick, who claim to be fellow sailors. Tom, who is more commonly known as the Old One, soon parts company with them, however Martin becomes Phil's traveling companion. When they reach Bideford, Martin leads the way to the house of Mother Taylor, an old woman who works as the go-between for numerous illegal activities. She informs them that the Old One has already gone ahead on a ship without them, but arranges positions for Martin and Phil on a frigate, known as the Rose of Devon. Once aboard the frigate, Phil quickly impresses the captain with his skills. When the (boatswain) is killed in an accident, Phil is promoted to replace him. After a violent storm, the crew of the Rose of Devon encounters a wrecked ship. While rescuing the survivors, Phil is surprised to see that they are coincidentally led by the Old One. Although the Old One and his followers initially put on a mask of friendliness, they soon reveal their true nature as (pirates), killing the Rose's captain and seizing control of the ship. Tempted by the promise of vast riches, the majority of the Rose's former crew willingly join the Old One. Only Phil and Will Canty, a fellow sailor of the same age, show reluctance to become pirates. Having taken an immediate liking to Phil, the Old One allows him to keep his position as Boatswain, hoping to convince him to join them willingly. The newly formed band of pirates attempt several raids against other ships, but none of them go well, and they end up gaining very little. During an attempted attack against a small island town, Will Cantry takes the opportunity to escape in attempt to find help. Unfortunately, he is soon recaptured by the pirates, who torture and kill him. Seeing his friend murdered is the last straw for Phil, who shortly afterwards attempts his own escape. Fleeing to a nearby island, he sees another ship anchored nearby. When he swims out to it to investigate, he discovers that it is a British warship, but is captured by its crew. He manages to convince them of the nearby pirate ship, and thus forewarned, they are able to easily defeat the Old One and his crew, and capture the Rose of Devon. Unfortunately, the British captain is unconvinced of Phil's innocence, believing instead that he was a pirate spy who, once captured, sold out his friends in an attempt to gain his freedom. Phil is arrested with the rest of the pirate crew, and taken back to England for trial. During the trial, it seems certain that the entire crew, including Phil, will be found guilty and hanged. When he is called to the stand to defend himself, Phil insists again that he was an unwilling participant in the pirates' activities. However, when he is asked to testify against the rest of the Rose's crew, he refuses on the grounds that even if it was forced upon him, they were still his companions. Impressed by Phil's courage and honor, the Old One testifies on his behalf, declaring to the court that Phil is indeed innocent of the charges against him. At the conclusion of the trial, Phil alone is acquitted. The pirate crew is executed shortly after, with only the Old One retaining his bold face until the end. After regaining his freedom, Phil journeys back to the lands of Sir John Bristol, and asks the lord to be let into his service. Phil becomes one of Sir John's closest companions for several years, and serves under him during the English Civil War on the side of the Royalists. Although Phil rises through the ranks during the war, the forces of Oliver Cromwell eventually emerge victorious, and Sir John is killed in battle. Growing weary of England, Phil decides to leave the country, and once again travels to the docks at Bideford. He is shocked to find the Rose of Devon among the ships there, and after speaking with her new captain, books passage to the colonies in Barbados."
1877,Restoration,history," The novel tells the story of Robert Merivel, a physician. After supervising the recovery of one of the dogs of King Charles II, he is appointed surgeon to all of the king's dogs. He then joins in all of the debauchery of King Charles' court. The king then arranges a marriage of convenience between Merivel and one of his mistresses, Celia Clemence. This is done purely to fool the king's other mistress Barbara Castlemaine. Merivel is given an estate named Bidnold in Norfolk, and Celia is installed in a house in Kew where the king can visit her secretly. In Norfolk, Merivel abandons the practice of medicine, and lives a dissipated life in which he tries to take up painting with the help of an ambitious painter named Elias Finn. Things start to change when Celia is sent to Bidnold by the king after displeasing him. One night he drunkenly makes advances to her, and is promptly reported to the king by Elias Finn. The result is that the king confiscates the Bidnold estate from Merivel. Merivel then joins his old student friend John Pearce at the New Bedlam hospital, also in Norfolk. (New Bedlam is fictitious and should not be confused with the real Bedlam in London). This is a hospital for the mentally ill, run by Quakers, of whom Pearce is a member. In earlier parts of the novel, Pearce has condemned the sinfulness of Merivel's lifestyle, and Merivel now joins the hospital with the best of intentions, and hoping to rediscover his medical vocation. However, things go wrong when he has an affair with a patient named Katharine and makes her pregnant. This coincides with the death of Pearce. He is expelled from the hospital, and travels with Katharine to be with her mother in London. In London, which is then experiencing the Great Plague, Merivel continues practising medicine. Katharine has a baby girl, but dies in childbirth. During the Great Fire of London in 1666, he rescues an elderly woman from a burning house. It is this which regains him the king's favour, and at the end the king allows him to live at Bidnold with his daughter. The title of the novel refers both to the Restoration period during which it occurs, and to the novel's ending when Merivel returns to Bidnold and the king's favour."
1878,Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun,history," Ancient Egypt 3500 years ago - a land ruled by the all-powerful female king, Hatshepsut. Ambitious, ruthless and worldly: a woman who established Amun as the chief god of Egypt, bestowing his Priesthood with unprecedented riches and power. Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun is part of Moyra Caldecott’s Egyptian sequence, which also includes Akhenaten: Son of the Sun and Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra. Chronologically, Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun takes place first."
1879,The Rose in Splendour: a Story of the Wars of Lancaster and York,history," The novel is set in England over a period of eighteen months in the years 1460-61. It tells the tale of a young boy's early life, leaving his family’s farm first to an apprenticeship in York and later getting caught up in the bloody and decisive victory for the Yorkists at the Battle of Towton (29 March (Palm Sunday) 1461)."
1880,The Lions of Al-Rassan,history," Like most of Kay's novels, this contains a large amount of political intrigue and religious strife. At the opening of the novel, the peninsula of Al-Rassan (formerly known as Esperaňa when under Jaddite control) is split between three Jaddite kingdoms in the north (Valledo, Ruenda and Jaloña) and Asharite kingdoms in the south, of which Cartada and Ragosa figure most prominently in the story. After centuries of being dominated by the Asharites, the Jaddite kingdoms are regaining their strength, while the once-powerful khalifate of Al-Rassan is divided and vulnerable. In Fezana, a city in the north of Al-Rassan close to the borderlands with Valledo, Jehane unwittingly prevents one of her patients, a merchant named Husari ibn Musa, from being executed by Almalik of Cartada during a purge of Fezana's leading citizens. By giving the Husari shelter when the danger is revealed, Jehane puts her own life in danger. As a result, she flees Cartada at the same time that the Jaddite commander Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo and his company have come to Al-Rassan for their parias gold - regular tribute given to the Jaddite kingdoms. Some of the Valledans brutally attack a village outside the walls of Fezana and Rodrigo steps in to halt the slaughter of the villagers, incurring the wrath of one of the participants in the slaughter, Garcia de Rada, the brother of the powerful constable of Valledo. As a result of his punishment of de Rada, Rodrigo is exiled by King Ramiro. Rodrigo and Jehane make their way to Ragosa, to the court of King Badir. When Asharite King Almalik of Cartada betrays Ammar ibn Khairan, Ammar joins forces with the king's heir (also called Almalik) and assassinates the father. The new king Almalik II then exiles Ammar from Cartada and Ammar also travels to Ragosa. Rodrigo, Ammar and Jehane are brought together in the court of King Badir, where Ammar and Rodrigo are hired as mercenaries, and where Jehane is hired as a physician. They form a close connection which forms the heart of the story. Jehane becomes the focus of the attentions of the two men, with a love triangle of sorts forming and becoming more convoluted by the fact that Rodrigo Belmonte is already happily married with two sons, Fernan and Diego. The admiration of the two men for each other is obvious, as they are the 'best' each nation has to offer. However the shelter and stability they find in the wealthy and worldly city of Ragosa is threatened by events occurring far beyond the city walls. The Jaddites begin a holy war against the Asharite kingdoms of Soriyya and Ammuz, in a rough parallel to the Crusades. Clerics from Ferrieres urge the kings of the Jaddite kingdoms of Esperaňa to launch their own wars of reconquest against their Asharite neighbours. To the south of Al-Rassan, in the Majriti Desert lands, the Muwardis, who practice a stricter version of the Asharite religion, are impelled to intervene in the affairs of Al-Rassan, as much to repel the Jaddites as to cleanse the Asharite lands of their luxury-loving leaders. Both the Jaddites and the Asharites also exhibit violent outbreaks against the Kindath. Jehane's father, the famed physician Ishak ben Yonannon and her mother, Eliane, are rescued by Rodrigo just as a violent mob in Fezana storm the Kindath quarter with the intent of massacring its residents. Ishak then performs an astonishing operation on Diego, the young son of Rodrigo, who has been savagely assaulted by the Muwardi. The deep loyalties of Rodrigo Belmonte and Ammar ibn Khairan to Valledo and Cartada respectively mean that their eventual conflict becomes inevitable. The two finally meet on the battlefield, each at the head of opposing armies. The two commanders duel and one is killed. The story concludes with an afterword set some years in the future, which reveals firstly that the Jaddite kingdoms have recaptured Al-Rassan (mirroring the Reconquista) and eventually the identity of the victor of the duel."
1881,El Corazón de Piedra Verde,history," The book is a work of historical fiction set in the late pre-Columbian age in Mexico City and depicts the daily life of the ancient Aztec people, both the commoners (servants, traders and warriors) and the upper classes (priests, nobles, and government officials). The ""Mexican"" section contains a great deal of Mexican symbolism, geographical, political and religious references and historical data took from various authors like Bernal Díaz del Castillo and his book Verdadera Historia de la Conquista de la Nueva España (in English, ""True History of the Conquest of New Spain""). The novel also recounts the history and development of the Manriques, a family of Spanish nobles, and details aspects of life in 15th century Spain. The Manrique family lives through major historical events, such as the reconquest of Spain by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the reception of Christopher Columbus twice at Torremala (the Family Settlement), news of the discovery of the Americas and the relationship between the family of Hernán Cortés and the Manriques. The two stories eventually merge with the meeting of the two main characters, Alonso Manrique and Xuchitl (the daughter of King Nezahualpilli of Texcoco, one of the three allied kingdoms that Cortés found at the time of his arrival). The Mexican set of characters struggles with love, pain, pride and hate with the Spanish group of characters during the conquest of Mexico (1519-1521) by Hernán Cortés, the fall and complete destruction of Tenochtitlan and its satellite kingdoms, and the emergence of a new nation, New Spain (now modern Mexico) out of the meeting of two great cultures: the Spanish heritage (with old Visigoth, Jewish, Moorish and Catholic roots) and the ancient native Mexican traditions (like the Olmecs, Mayans, and Toltecs). The novel deals with the ""conflict between two worlds"": Christian Europe and Aztec America. Both civilizations are represented by equally-committed proponents: Alonso Manrique (Europe) and Itzcauatzin (America). Both characters are soldiers and priests (symbolizing nationalism and faith). Alonso started as a priest and later became a warrior; Itzcauatzin entered an academy (Calmecac) that prepared him for both. Caught in between is Xuchitl, the Aztec princess. Whoever wins her wins the future of the Aztec civilization. Xuchitl identifies the winner by giving him the Aztec talisman known as ""el corazon de piedra verde"" (""the green stone heart""). This talisman was worn by her father and represents the mystic powers of the Aztec religion. Alonso won, signifying the beginning of the Christianization of Mexico. Itzcauatzin gives his life as a human sacrifice vainly trying to add enough power to the traditional religion to overcome the Europeans. In the end, Alonso and Xuchitl have a son and return to Mexico from Spain. They bring the jade heart with them, but with the Virgin Mary etched on it to counteract the stone's original powers. The novel was the first of an intended five novels —each covering a century (XVI-XX)— tracking the creation of modern Mexico through the descendants of Alonso and Xuchitl. However, only four novels were finished before Salvador de Madariaga died. no:Det magiske hjertet es:El_coraz%C3%B3n_de_piedra_verde"
1882,Gentlemen of the Road,history," The story centers on two world-traveling Jewish bandits who style themselves with the euphemism ""gentlemen of the road."" Amram is a hulking Abyssinian (African) who is equally proficient with an axe as a game of shatranj; he is haunted by the disappearance of his daughter many years ago. His companion is Zelikman, a Frankish (German) physician who uses an over-sized bloodletting lance as a rapier. Zelikman has a morbid personality due to the trauma of watching his family slaughtered in an anti-Jewish pogrom. The two bandits begin in the Kingdom of Arran, where they con the customers of an inn with a staged duel. Before they can collect their winnings, a mahout attempts to hire them to safeguard his charge, Filaq, a fugitive Khazar prince. Filaq's family was murdered by the usurping bek, Buljan. Before the pair can give their answer, Buljan's assassins kill the mahout, and the two gentlemen escape with Filaq, intent on collecting a reward from his wealthy relatives. Filaq, on the other hand, is committed to escaping and taking vengeance on Buljan. The group arrives at the hometown of Filaq's relatives and discovers that everyone has been slaughtered by Kievan Rus'. An army of Arsiyah arrives too late to save the town. Filaq attempts to rally the troops to rescue his kidnapped brother Alp, but the army decides to place Filaq on the bek's throne instead. The army travels to the bek's palace, but a ruse by Buljan leaves the Arsiyah army obliterated. Filaq is captured and exposed to all as a girl. Amram is also captured while trying to rescue her. In disguise as a Radanite, Zelikman meets with Buljan and manages to rescue Amram. Beaten and raped, Filaq is sold to a brothel where Zelikman and Amram take refuge. They treat her injuries and then plan to see the kagan, the spiritual ruler of Khazaria. Zelikman uses his physician's skills to anesthetize the kagan's guards and gain an audience. The kagan agrees to help, as long as Zelikman helps him fake his own death to escape from his life of comfortable imprisonment. Filaq meets with tarkhan of the Khazar army in disguise as her brother Alp, who died in captivity. The tarkhan supports her claim to the bek throne. While paying off a band of Kievan Rus' for their pillaging services, Buljan is overthrown by the Khazar army and killed by a war elephant. After the battle, Filaq and Zelikman make love for the first, and probably last, time in each of their lives. Filaq begins her life as Alp, both bek and kagan of Khazaria, while Zelikman and Amram leave to pursue their fortunes elsewhere."
1883,Light a Distant Fire,history," Osceola had no illusions that the struggle would be an easy one. But after years of humbly acquiescing to the white men's demands, he was ready to fight no matter what the cost. The young men would have the chance to earn war honors. Their women would have reason to be proud of them again. When ""Old Man"" Jackson declared war on the Seminole, he never envisioned battling a people who would become symbols of courage, loyalty, and patriotism. Led by the mighty warrior Osceola and witnessed by his beloved daughter Little Warrior, they were men and women fighting an unjust war of greed and aggression—and the bonds of love and rebellion that united them would thrust them into the heart of a conflict that would change the world and their lives forever."
1884,The Eagle of the Ninth,history," Discharged because of a battle wound, a young Roman officer Marcus Flavius Aquila tries to discover the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion in northern Britain. Disguised as a Greek oculist and travelling beyond Hadrian's Wall with his freed ex-slave, Esca, Marcus finds that a demoralised and mutinous Ninth Legion was annihilated by a great rising of the northern tribes. In part, this disgrace was redeemed through a heroic last stand by a small remnant (including Marcus's father) around the legion's eagle standard. Marcus's hope of seeing the lost legion re-established is dashed, but he is able to bring back the bronze eagle so that it can no longer serve as a symbol of Roman defeat — and thus will no longer be a danger to the frontier's security."
1885,The Bronze God of Rhodes,history," The novel is written in first person, purporting to be the memoirs of Chares of Lindos, the sculptor of the Colossus of Rhodes, and concerns his return to Rhodes, his attempts to set up as a sculptor, his struggles with his family's wishes that he enter their bronze foundry, his experience as a catapult artilleryman during the Siege of Rhodes, and his complicated and somewhat hilarious adventures in Ptolemaic Egypt."
1886,The Good Muslim,history," The central characters of the novel is Maya and Sohail. While A Golden Age tells their story before and during the liberation war of Bangladesh, the Good Muslim tells their story a decade after the war. Separated during the war, Maya met her brother, Sohail a decade after the war. Meantime, Sohail became a charismatic religious leader whereas Maya was trying to peruse her revolutionary ideals. When Sohail decided to send his son to a madrasa, a conflict grew between brother and sister and the conflict leads the story to a devastating climax."
1887,Master and Commander,history," The story starts out on April 18, 1800, in Port Mahon, Minorca, a base of the Royal Navy at that time. A shipless lieutenant wasting away in port, Jack Aubrey, meets Stephen Maturin, a poor half-Irish and half-Catalan physician and natural philosopher, at an evening concert at the Governor’s Mansion. The two of them do not quite get along during this first encounter. A duel almost occurs when Jack Aubrey gets elbowed by Maturin to stop beating the time while the string quartet is playing. Later that evening, on his way back to his living quarters, Jack Aubrey finds out that he has been promoted to the rank of Commander and has been given command of the brig Sophie. His joy overcomes his animosity towards Stephen Maturin and they quickly become good friends in part due to their shared love of music. The ship's surgeon having left with the previous captain, Maturin is asked by Aubrey to sign on in that post. Although Maturin is a physician, not just a mere surgeon, he agrees, since he is currently unemployed. Also introduced into the story are Master's Mates Thomas Pullings, William Mowett, midshipman William Babbington, and James Dillon, the Sophies first lieutenant. Dillon and Stephen both have secret backgrounds as members of the United Irishmen. Aubrey improves Sophies sailing qualities by adding a longer yard which allows him to spread a larger mainsail. She then is sent to accompany a small convoy of merchant ships. During their journey east, the new captain, Aubrey, takes the opportunity to get to know his sailors and work them into a fighting unit. As he does this, he and the crew explain many naval matters to Maturin (and to the reader) since the doctor has never served aboard a man-of-war. After the convoy duties, Lord Keith allows Aubrey to cruise independently, looking for French merchants. After a number of prizes are taken, they meet and defeat the Cacafuego, a Spanish frigate, losing a number of crew, including Dillon, in the bloody action and gaining the respect of other naval officers. However, Captain Harte, the commandant at Mahon, has a grudge against Aubrey, who has been having an affair with his wife. Harte's malevolence ensures that the victory brings Aubrey and his crew no official recognition, promotion, or significant prize money, although Aubrey gains a reputation among members of the British Navy as one of its great, young fighting captains. On her following escort duty, Sophie is captured by a squadron of four large French warships after a pursuit and a brave but hopeless resistance. The Battle of Algeciras begins, and after a short period as prisoners of war, they are exchanged, missing the fighting. Back at Gibraltar, Aubrey must undergo a court-martial over the loss of his ship, but he is cleared of the charges."
1888,The Eagle in the Sand,history," Trouble is brewing on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. The troops are in deplorable state, while the corrupt behaviour of their senior officers threatens to undermine the army's control of the region. To restore the competence of the men defending a vital fort, two experienced centurions are dispatched to Judea from Rome. On their arrival Macro and Cato discover that there is an even more serious problem to deal with. Bannus, a local tribesman, is brewing up rebellion amongst the followers of Jehoshua, who was crucified in Jerusalem some seventeen years earlier. Now Bannus is pushing the faction towards violent opposition to Rome. As the local revolt grows in scale, Rome's long-standing enemy Parthia is poised to invade. Macro and Cato must stamp out corruption in the cohort and restore it to fighting fitness to quash Bannus - before the eastern provinces are lost to the Empire for ever..."
1889,Zulu Hart,history," George Hart is the bastard son of a pillar of the British military establishment and a half Irish, half Zulu actress. He is bullied at school for his dark looks, an experience which teaches him how to fight. When he is eighteen he learns that his mysterious father has promised him a vast inheritance if he can accede to a suitable rank in the British Army. He proceeds to the military academy, and is once more the source of animosity over the colour of his skin. Set up by a group of officers he is forced to leave the army, whereby he travels to South Africa. Conflict is brewing between the British authorities and the Zulus, and he is quickly enlisted to fight for the army under the command of Lord Chelmsford. Hart witnesses a massacre, and returns to London to be debriefed by the Duke of Cambridge himself."
1890,Come Rack! Come Rope!,history," Robin Audrey and Marjorie Manners, both aged seventeen, are secretly engaged. They both come from recusant Catholic families in Derbyshire, but she is the more devout of the two. Robin's mother died when he was about seven, and his father has continued to practise the Catholic faith, despite having to pay heavy fines for refusing to attend services in the established Church of England. The two families meet several times a year, when Mass is being secretly offered by a priest. The story begins when Robin visits his fiancée and tells her that his father has announced that he can no longer tolerate the persecution and fines, that he will take the bread and wine in the Anglican church at Easter, and that Robin must do the same. Marjorie advises her lover to leave the area for Easter, so that his father will have time to accept that his son will not follow him. She gives him a rosary which belonged to the recently-executed priest Cuthbert Mayne, kisses him for the first time, and urges him to trust in God. When he arrives home, Robin finds his friend Anthony Babington waiting for him. Anthony is also a Catholic, fanatically devoted to the imprisoned, Catholic Queen of Scots. Robin tells Anthony of his troubles. Later, the two men are out riding, and pass three other men. One of them, Mr. Garlick, recognises Anthony, having heard Mass in his house, and on being assured that Robin is also a Catholic, introduces the newly-ordained Mr. Simpson and his travelling companion Mr. Ludlam to the two friends, telling them that Mr. Simpson will say Mass the following Sunday. Robin realises, as he goes home, that he must not mention this to his father. Robin's troubles at home increase, as he has to cope with his father's anger and sneers. Meanwhile, Marjorie is tormented by unexpected but persistent ideas that perhaps God is calling Robin to the priesthood, to atone for his father's sin. She feels that if a love higher than hers is calling, she must not stand in the way, but is unsure whether such thoughts come from God or from her own imagination. She talks to Mr. Simpson, but he is unable to advise her. She is afraid to mention it to Robin, in case she has merely imagined this to be God's will, yet feels she should at least sow a seed in his mind. She prays for guidance, thinking that ""a broken heart and God's will done would be better than that God's will should be avoided and her own satisfied."" On Easter Sunday, after the two lovers have met secretly for Mass with other Catholics at Padley, home to the FitzHerbert family, Marjorie tells Robin her thoughts, promising that she will marry him if he wishes, but saying that if it is God's will that Robin should be a priest, she will not hold him for a day. Horrified, Robin accuses Marjorie of wanting to be rid of him. On seeing how hurt she is, he kisses her and begs her forgiveness, but tells her that he cannot make that sacrifice. Later that day, Mr. Simpson, looking pale and speaking with a trembling voice, reads out to the group of Catholics a letter he has received, telling of the execution of a priest Mr. Nelson, and of a layman Mr. Sherwood, and how bravely they both faced martyrdom. Both were hanged, drawn and quartered for their faith; Mr. Sherwood had also been racked several times. The host, Mr. FitzHerbert, announces that the letter is from Mr. Ludlam, who has decided to go to Douai and study for the priesthood. There have also been rumours that Mr. Garlick will go too. The following week, Robin returns home, full of doubts and fears, and worried about his financial situation, as he has no money of his own, and his father has made it clear that he will not pay fines for Robin's refusal to attend church. On his way home, he meets Anthony, who hints at some enterprise to restore the Catholic Faith to England, and urges Robin to join him and his friends. Robin's doubts increase: unsure of what Anthony's secret enterprise involves, hopeful that it may offer him a way out of his dilemma and enable him to marry Marjorie, yet unclear as to the morality of the enterprise, he tells Anthony he cannot decide immediately. When he goes back into the house, he faces his father, who angrily demands to know his intentions. Robin begs his father not to pressurise him, but to give him time; and his father gives him until Pentecost. That night, after several failed attempts to sleep, Robin hears the noise of horses, is seized with curiosity, and goes out to see who is riding at that hour. Hiding behind a wall, he sees Mr. Simpson setting out on one of his perilous journeys with two other men. The sight of the priest risking his life to serve God and bring consolation to souls inspires Robin to make the decision against which he has been fighting. He goes to his father's room, wakes the old man, and says he is ready to give his answer: ""It is that I must go to Rheims and be a priest."" A few days later, Robin comes to Marjorie, to say goodbye before setting out for Rheims. They agree that he must always remember that he is to be a priest, and that if he comes to her house, it must just be as to any Catholic neighbour. More than two years have passed. Robin is studying for the priesthood at Rheims, and Marjorie is living with her mother, her father having died. Marjorie's home is sometimes used to harbour priests. Anthony Babington visits her and tells her of some business he is involved with in London. He has to go there to meet a priest called Ballard, but there will be many priests travelling together. He urges Marjorie to come to London with him and his sister Alice to meet these priests, so that she may be in a better position to recognise and assist them if every they come to Derbyshire. He mentions also that Robin will be coming. Although Robin will not be a priest for another five years, such students are sometimes sent back to England temporarily as servants, to learn how to avoid the Queen's men. Some of Anthony's business he does not mention to Marjorie. He has become increasingly impatient with the thought of using prayer alone to combat the persecution of Catholics, and is involved in some conspiracy with Ballard and others; but most of his friends whom he has attempted to influence have drawn back and a priest has even told him he is on dangerous ground. Marjorie agrees to come. In London, Marjorie meets Father Campion, one of the most hunted priests in the kingdom, famous for his preaching. Campion explains his position of mixing boldly with the crowd to avoid suspicion, rather than hiding behind locked doors. He arranges to go with the others to see the sights of London the next day, and they see the Tower of London, and the notorious priest-hunter and torturer Richard Topcliffe. They also catch a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth, of whom Campion speaks with gentleness and loyalty. Marjorie overhears some disagreement between Campion and Ballard, which seems to be on political matters. When Robin arrives, Marjorie is careful to address him as ""Mr. Audrey"". She asks him for prayers and advice, saying that she thinks of him as a priest already, and that although her duty is clearly to remain with her mother at present, she has wondered if she should leave the country to serve God as a nun, in the event of her mother's death. Robin promises to pray for her, but reminds her that he is not yet a priest, and gives her no advice. A year later, Marjorie is in her home with her sick mother, thinking of Father Campion and of the numerous escapes that he is reported to have had. Anthony Babington arrives, and furiously tells Marjorie that Campion, Sherwine and Brian were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn three days previously, that they had been racked continuously, and that they all died praying for the Queen. The next day, Marjorie realises that her mother is dying, and sends some men to find a priest. In the evening, her mother's condition worsens. Marjorie tells her mother that there is no priest, says that God will accept her sorrow, and urges her to make an Act of Contrition. Her mother cries out for a priest, and Marjorie reminds her that priests are forbidden in the kingdom. She says that three priests have just been executed for being priests, and tells her mother to say, ""Edmund Campion, pray for me."" Marjorie has a sudden, strong sensation that Campion is in the room; her mother smiles, looks around with no fear, and dies. Mr. Simpson arrives two hours later. Marjorie, calm and controlled, tells him that it is all over. She tells him of the martyrdom of Father Campion and his two companions. Mr. Simpson is seized with a fear that shames and disgusts him, but is unable to overcome it. Marjorie tells him that she will invite Alice Babington to come and live with her, and hints that she will now be able to do more to assist fugitive priests. The following summer, Marjorie meets a young Catholic carpenter called Hugh Owen. He is building a special hiding place for priests at Padley, and comes to Marjorie's house to do the same. He tells her of how much he was inspired by Campion, and that he thinks he will die for his faith some day. Some time later, Marjorie falls from a horse near Robin's old home, twisting her foot. Robin's father takes her into the house, and insists that she must dine there. In a private conversation, he asks when Robin will be ordained, and she tells him that if Robin has not told him that, she cannot. He understands, but tells her that he is now a magistrate, and that Robin will have no mercy from him. He warns her that the authorities are aware of some of the movements of Catholics such as the FitzHerberts. When she asks why he is telling her this, he says that he was friend to the FitzHerberts before he was a magistrate. He becomes angry when she mentions Robin, telling the old man that it is not too late, and that his duty to God is higher than his duty as a magistrate. Robin is now a priest, and has returned to England, under the name Mr. Alban. He meets Anthony Babington again; the latter confides to him, as to a priest, the details of the enterprise at which he had only hinted some years before. Anthony and a number of others, including Ballard, intend to kill the Queen and to set the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne. He tells how they have been helped by Gilbert Gifford, and how they send messages to Queen Mary, in code. Robin begs him to give up the plot, saying that it is against God's law. He is uneasy at the plan for practical reasons, too, saying that too much hangs on Mr. Gifford, who may not be as trustworthy as Anthony thinks. Robin tells Anthony that he cannot give him absolution as long as Anthony intends to kill Queen Elizabeth. He says that as Anthony was speaking to him as a priest, he will regard the conversation as under the seal of confession, but warns Anthony not to come to him the next day as if he knows it as a man, as it would be his duty to inform the authorities. A few days later, Robin receives a letter from Anthony, saying that he has been betrayed and is being watched at every point, and that Mr. Gifford has been a traitor all along. A letter to Queen Mary is enclosed, and Anthony begs Robin to deliver it to her, or if that proves impossible, to memorise the contents and deliver it orally. Robin destroys the letter. Anthony and his companions are arrested soon after. Robin makes his way to Chartley Hall, where Queen Mary is held captive. He speaks to her apothecary, a Catholic called Mr. Bourgoign, and tells him that he is a priest, and has a message for the Queen. Suspicious at first, Mr. Bourgoign is finally convinced when Robin offers to confide the message to him and ride away again. He urges Robin to stay and to find some way to have a private interview with the Queen, who longs to make her confession, knowing that she will soon be executed. They decide that Robin, who has some skill as a herbalist, will be presented to Sir Amyas Paulet, the Queen's jailer, as one who may be able to help the Queen's health. Sir Amyas reluctantly allows Robin to see the Queen alone for a few minutes, and Robin hears her confession and gives her Holy Communion. The Queen declares herself to be completely innocent of the plot against Elizabeth. Some months have passed. Anthony Babington and his companions have been executed. Robin returns to Derbyshire, and is received by Marjorie. He hears confessions and says Mass at her house. Marjorie knows that Mr. Bourgoign is likely to send for Robin again to hear Queen Mary's confession before her execution, and that the message will be sent through her. Knowing that there can hardly be a greater danger for a priest than to risk arrest near the Queen of Scots, she realises that she will face temptation to suppress the message if and when it comes. The months pass by, and finally the message comes. Marjorie plans to send the messenger away and say nothing to Robin. However, the messenger tells her of the Queen's distress, and she suddenly remembers how her own mother, when dying, cried out for a priest. Though her religion has taught her that God will save and forgive without a priest, she thinks of the guilt and heartlessness of one who would keep the priest away from a person near death. She calls Robin, tells him that she nearly destroyed the letter, and prays that God will keep him safe. Robin goes to Fotheringay, where the Queen is to be executed. Sir Amyas refuses to allow him to see her, but he hopes to be present at the execution, and to be in close enough proximity to give her absolution. When he arrives at the hall of execution, he sees that this will be impossible. He is present as she is beheaded. A year later, Robin and a group of Catholics gather in Marjorie's parlour to discuss the latest news. Mr. Simpson has been captured and is awaiting trial. To the dismay of Catholics, he is beginning to falter, and there is real fear that he will agree to go to an Anglican service to avoid execution. Marjorie hopes to visit him to encourage him to remain firm, but her friends urge her not to, as her work in harbouring priests is so valuable, and could be compromised if she draws attention on herself. A month later, Robin is at Padley with Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Garlick, who have also been ordained. They each say Mass, and when the third Mass is over, they hear men coming to surround the house. They hide in the priest holes previously built by Hugh Owen. Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Garlick are discovered and arrested. Robin is in a different priest hole, and is not found. When he feels it is safe to do so, he leaves the house and makes his way to Marjorie's home. She arranges that he will ride away at one in the morning, to a place she has marked on a map. There he will find a shepherd's hut, and will hide there for at least two weeks. Food and drink will be brought to him, and Marjorie will also send him news about the priests who were taken at Padley. Robin, in his hiding place, receives an unsigned letter from Marjorie, telling him that the authorities had put Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Garlick in gaol with Mr. Simpson, perhaps hoping that Mr. Simpson, having agreed to go to church so that his life might be spared, would convince them to do the same; but that the two other priests had managed to persuade Mr. Simpson to confess himself openly a Catholic again. The three men had been tried, condemned, and executed. At the trial, and at the gallows, Mr. Simpson had shown as much courage as his two companions. Nearly a week later, Robin becomes aware that he is being watched. He leaves the shepherd's hut, and makes his way back to Marjorie's house. As he tells her how he felt he was being followed, they hear horses. He plans to escape to the hills, but she urges him to hide in the place that Hugh Owen built some years before. He slips into the hiding place, just as the magistrate, old Mr. Audrey arrives with his men. Mr. Audrey is extremely uncomfortable with his commission, especially as he was once friendly with the Manners family. The thought that the priest, if there is a priest hiding there, might be his own son does not occur to him, but he hopes to do as little damage to the house as possible. Marjorie whispers to him urgently that he must leave at once, but faints before she can say more. Embarrassed, Mr. Audrey tries to end the search as soon as possible, and is secretly relieved that nothing has been found. His men, however, mention one more wall they want to test. To his dismay, the men find a young bearded man behind the wall. The old man turns sick and rushes forward, screaming, as he realises that he has just arrested his own son. Robin is in prison, and it is reported that Lord Shrewsbury has given orders that the prisoner must be dealt with sternly. It is believed that Mr. Alban has a great deal more against him than the mere fact of being a priest. It is thought that he was involved in the Babington plot, and that he had on at least one occasion had access to the Queen of Scots. It is soon reported that Mr. Topcliffe, the torturer, has arrived in Derby on a special mission. Marjorie has the task of reporting this to her former lover, and breaks down, crying under the strain. He gently tells her that God's grace is strong enough, reminds her that it was she who turned him to the priesthood, and says that she had surely known what this meant. He thanks her, tells her he is at peace, and asks her to pray for him. Robin is severely tortured for three days, spending several hours in the rack-house each day, while being interrogated by Topcliffe. He prays throughout the ordeal, and betrays nothing. He is then tried and is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He is offered his life if he will conform and go to church, but refuses. He has one final interview with Marjorie, in which he urges her not to leave the country to become a nun, but rather to serve God by remaining in England and continuing her work at assisting priests. A large crowd gathers for the execution, as the exciting story of the young priest, taken by his own father in the house of his former fiancée, draws far more interest than an ordinary hanging. Old Mr. Audrey is believed to be still ill, not having fully recovered from his fit, and there are rumours that Marjorie will be present at the execution. Robin is drawn on a cart to the gallows, and a rope is passed around his neck, causing a moment of terror. He makes a final speech, proclaiming his innocence of treason, and praying for Queen Elizabeth. He then looks down from the ladder and sees a man in bare feet, writhing and embracing the rungs. He looks beyond for some explanation, and sees a girl in a hooded cloak, who raises her eyes to his. Looking down at the man again, he sees a face ""distorted with speechless entreaty"", and recognises his father. He smiles, leans forward, and speaks the words of absolution: :""Te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Fillii et Spiritus Sancti . . ."""
1891,Crispin: At the Edge of the World,history," At the conclusion of the Newbery Award–winning Crispin: The Cross of Lead, Bear and Crispin are free to follow new lives. Though Crispin’s endurance, courage, faith, and honor have been continually tested, he has learned many lessons from his mentor, Bear. But Bear has been both wounded and weakened by his ordeals, and is tended to by an elderly wise woman, Aude, and her apprentice, Troth. Crispin learns to trust these strangers in spite of their allegiance to unfamiliar gods. When Aude is killed by a fearful, ignorant mob, Crispin rescues Troth, and the three set off for a safer land. They come upon the coastal town of Rye just one week after a brutal attack by the French and Castilians. While working in Rye, Bear continues to regain a measure of his former strength, until he is again hunted by his former friends, members of Ball’s brotherhood. Bear’s makeshift family consisting of Crispin and Troth—set sail for Flanders, only to be shipwrecked on the French coast. A “free” company of English soldiers, whose loyalty is only to their own gain, usurps the bedraggled threesome. Their leader, Richard Dudley, has his eye on treasure and inflicts the same atrocities on a French town that his countrymen are still reeling from in Rye. In order to loot the treasures of the local church, Dudley enlists the diminutive Troth to gain entrance through a drain, and Bear is held hostage. They rescue bear and set off for iceland."
1892,Angel and Apostle,history," The story begins with Hester and Pearl in their cabin in the woods. The reader learns that Hester has little discipline for her child, and Pearl runs wild and free most of the time doing as little work as possible. Pearl frequently visits a blind boy named Simon who lives in a house close to her own. They become friends, and Hester lets Pearl help out Liza, the caretaker of Simon’s sickly mother, with the chores around Simon’s house. However, Pearl has been stigmatized as the child of ""the temptress,"" and this reputation follows her everywhere. She isn’t fazed by this until Simon begins repeating things that his older brother told him about Hester. This makes Pearl feel horrible, and she runs away to the graveyard to visit the grave of Simon’s mother who died shortly after Pearl started helping out around the house. She talks to the minister who always has his hand over his heart until Doctor Devlin comes. Pearl runs back to her mother, and Hester tells her that the doctor is a ""devil."" One night Governor Winthrop lay dying, and Hester was called upon to tend to him. Pearl ran away from the Governor’s mansion, and she found Devlin standing on the scaffold. He invites Pearl up until the minister, Arthur, comes and takes Devlin away. Pearl continues to strengthen her relationship with Simon, and at one point Nehemiah, Simon’s only brother, gives his blessing to the friendship when he lets Pearl take Simon to the beach. However, Pearl soon learns that Simon and his family are moving back to London, and Hester and she are moving to Holland to be with her mother’s relatives. Pearl was supposed to leave the night of Election Day, but instead Arthur the minister collapses and eventually dies. Hester is blamed for this and put in the stocks thus preventing any escape by sea. Doctor Devlin comes to taunt Hester for what she has done. He even asks her if the minister fathered the child because of her reaction to his death. Hester remains defiant and doesn’t give in to him. However, Hester gets extremely depressed when she arrives home, and Pearl is forced to bring Simon’s dad, Mr. Milton and Doctor Devlin to help Hester. Hester agrees to travel on Milton’s boat to England, and she also agrees to a seven year work contract with Milton’s sister. Hester and Pearl work with Milton’s sister until Pearl turns eighteen. Pearl receives the news that Devlin gave her property in England and New England. She sells the English property and purchases a home in the English countryside where Nehemiah and she get married. Pearl and Nehemiah argue about Simon’s welfare, and Pearl takes it upon herself to improve Simon’s quality of life. In the meantime Caleb Milton, the father, and Liza both die so Pearl is in charge of running the household now. Simon reveals his lust for Pearl, and the two of them have sex while Nehemiah is away. Pearl becomes pregnant, and at first she claims the child to be Nehemiah’s, but he soon learns the truth. Nehemiah indirectly killed Simon for doing this because he caused Simon to commit suicide. This was covered up, and Pearl grieved for a long time. Her child, Abigail, was sent to live with Mag, her servant, in London with Nehemiah. The plague that ravaged London was over soon, and both Nehemiah and Pearl moved back to London with Abigail who refuses to speak to love Pearl or call her ""mother."" While in London Pearl learns that Nehemiah has cheated on her many times with Mag while drunk. He later goes on to have an affair with the widow of a general in the English army. Pearl doesn’t know how to feel about this until Doctor Devlin comes. He explains the entire story of her conception to Pearl, and he gives her the scarlet “A” that her mother wore. Soon afterward London has a great fire and burns all of Nehemiah’s trading goods. Pearl lets Nehemiah leave her for someone with fewer traumas which he does. Pearl and Devlin leave with Abigail for New England to make a new life."
1893,Becoming Madame Mao,history," Madame Mao was born to a very poor family around 1910 (early enough to have had her feet bound although due to a severe infection the bindings were taken off). She had an abusive father who kicked her and her concubine mother out of the house at an early age. Her mother ended up as a concubine and servant and the young 'Madame Mao' ran away to grandparent's. Anchee Min, the author, seems to attribute a lot of Madame Mao's later actions to her childhood - and that a lot of her incessant claims to power actually came from a need to be desired and to feel close to Mao rather than a deep need for power herself. Madame Mao's dream was to become an actress but she has only achieved mediocre success. She spent a few years in Shandong province (where she becomes a Communist due to a lover of hers) and then Shanghai. In Shanghai she had some success in playing Nora from Doll's House - and author clearly parallels Nora's strength and inability to be controlled with Lan Ping's strong personality and need to be in control and the center of attention. The play is closed down since it is perceived to be too subversive by the authorities. She even ends up in prison for a short time but is released after signing a document denouncing Communism. After what seems like strings of rejections as well as a few serious lovers and two husbands, she travels to Yenan which is Mao's revolutionary base to become part of his movement. The book does not offer much explanation for the switch from actress to countryside revolutionary except that she certainly was involved in revolutionary elements (anti-Japanese plays, etc.) and that with the absence of work as an actress she did not have many options and joining the Communist revolution seemed to be a common choice for young discontented students and others in their 20s. In Yenan, she soon met Mao as the leading actress in patriotic plays. They meet frequently and finally become lovers. He is already married to his second wife (his first died as a revolutionary) but his second wife is in Russia and mentally unstable - by the time she returns to China the two have married and she is put in a mental hospital. The Communist Party is very much against Mao's affair with Lan Ping, in large part because they have worked hard to build up the image of his second wife as a martyr for the cause and do not want Mao's image to be tarnished in any way as an adulterer. The Party is supposed to emphasize discipline and unity. The affair continues despite (or perhaps is enhanced because of) these odds and the disapproval of many Communists. Finally, Lin becomes pregnant and Mao is allowed to divorce his current wife and marry her under the condition that she stay out of the public eye and is not involved in politics at all. Her name is changed to Jiang Qing and she will go down in history as Comrade Jiang Qing. During the years before Communists gain full control of mainland China, the relationship seems to go well, although the passion is reduced. Jiang follows Mao everywhere, even to the field, and becomes his secretary when he is sick. However, things change once the Communists triumph. They move to the Forbidden City in Beijing and live in separate quarters. Mao begins to lead a totally separate life with lots of traveling and entertaining. As she is not allowed by the party to be in the public eye she is not a part of all of this. She becomes very lonely and depressed. Mao has many affairs, especially bringing young virgins in from the countryside for his pleasure. Things last in this way for 17 years with the majority of Chinese people not even able to name the wife of the great Chairman. However, Jiang Ching has never lost her ambition to be powerful and loved and noticed. She sees a glimmer of opportunity at Mao's low point - 2 years after the launch of the Great Leap Forward which proved so disastrous. She begins slowly to reemerge from the shadows and spends some time in Shanghai building up a network of actors and producers (her great passion is still opera and theater). Finally, she approaches Mao to reveal that a current popular play is actually subversive against the emperor. She feeds on his paranoia that those closest to him are actually plotting against him. He gives her some permission to carry on her activities and develop some propagandist plays that exalt him. Slowly she builds up her own friends and aides who can be trusted. Finally, in 1966 she is actually allowed to make an important speech and helps Mao develop the concepts behind the Cultural Revolution. Eventually, Mao puts her in charge of the 'ideology side of the business' and she wields an enormous amount of power. Madame Mao, as she is now called, organizes festivals for revolutionary plays and begins to work closely with the student movements which have always been so important in China. She organizes and speaks to rallies of thousands of people to help launch the Cultural Revolution. Finally, Mao and Jiang decide to launch a student-led army called the Red Guards that she would be in charge of. These Red Guards ended up having more power than the official military for a number of years and wreaked chaos and havoc throughout the country. Her relationship with Mao is no longer romantic in the least but is mutually beneficial: 'For him, it is the security of his empire that she aids and for her, the role of a heroine. In retrospect she not only has broken the Party's restriction, she runs the nation's psyche. She is gripped by the vision that she might eventually carry on Mao's business and rule China after his death.' As Madame Mao's power grows, so does her worry about Mao and his constantly changing allegiances and worries about betrayals. He emphasizes that the public only trusts her because he is backing her. His dementia and paranoia grows as he ages. At one point Mao invites a bunch of the 'old boy's over for a meeting without inviting her. She says: ' I should have known that my husband was doing the two-faced trick. I should have understood that although Mao had been promoting me, my new power unnerves him and he needs to have another force to balance the game.' In Mao's final months, Madame Mao is desperate for him to name her as his successor or at the very least to give a definitive statement that she represents him. She desperately wants his power after his death but if that's not possible at the very least she needs protection from all the party members who are ready to attack her. She sends investigators to extract forced confessions from her enemies and becomes increasingly paranoid and power-obsessed herself. She forms a power circle called the 'Gang of Four' with herself as the leader, Chun-quiao (whom she found in Shanghai and gave him lots of power), Wang Hong-wen (whom she found as a student and Mao promoted to vice Chairman of the Communist party) and another disciple, Yiao. In September 1976, Mao died at the age of 83. When Mao's will was eventually found, he named Hua Guofeng as his successor, a provincial governor from his home province. Madame Mao quickly sensed that her enemies would triumph - at Mao's funeral she was barely acknowledged. Soon, even her Gang of Four deserted her and a few weeks after Mao's death she was arrested. Madame Mao remained in prison from 1976 to 1991. Her daughter, Nah, picked up what Madame Mao disliked and dropped what her mother liked or wanted her to do. Madame Mao had ""saved enough handkerchiefs and socks to make a rope."". She committed suicide by hanging herself on May 14, 1991. She was on Death Row the whole time, although she was not executed since her captors would have preferred to extract a confession of repentance from her."
1894,Sharpe's Revenge,history," As the novel begins, in 1814 Richard Sharpe and his second wife Jane are on bad terms over Sharpe's imminent duel with Captain Bampfylde, resulting from the latter's cowardice in the previous novel, Sharpe's Siege. As duelling is illegal, Jane fears that Sharpe may lose either his life or his military career. She is keenly looking forward to the end of the war, and retirement to England, and to assuage her fears, Sharpe grants her power of attorney over the considerable sum of money he has lodged with his prize agent in London. Sharpe fights the duel, wounding Bampfylde in the buttocks, and sends Jane to England with instructions to purchase a country home in Dorset. Sharpe takes part in the Battle of Toulouse, under the command of General Nairn who is killed in action, at which point Sharpe takes command, winning the battle. Shortly afterwards he learns that the war is finally over and Napoleon is defeated. Sharpe, with Harper and Frederickson, takes his men to Bordeaux to await transport to England. There he learns that Jane has closed out his account, withdrawing almost £18,000. Sharpe and Frederickson are arrested by military authorities in Bordeaux, accused of stealing Napoleon's treasury, which has been concealed at Teste de Buch, the fortress they had captured in the previous novel. A witness statement by Napoleon's spymaster, Pierre Ducos, an old anatgonist of Sharpe's, reveals the source of the false allegation. Sharpe and Frederickson realize that only the evidence of the fort's French commander, Henri Lassan, will exonerate them, and with help from Harper and Captain Peter d'Alembord, the two men escape and set out to find Lassan. In London, ignoring Sharpe's instructions at the urging of a friend, Lady Spindacre, Jane has taken a large and expensive town house in fashionable Cork Street. On hearing of her husband's arrest, she contacts Sharpe's former ally, Lord John Rossendale as directed in case of emergency. The two become lovers. Sharpe and Frederickson make their way first to Teste de Buch, then to Lassan's ancestral home in Normandy, to which he has retired. They arrive shortly after Lassan's murder, by assassins instructed by Ducos, disguised as British riflemen. Lassan's widowed sister, Lucille Castineau, a witness to the murder, mistakenly identifies Sharpe as the killer, and on Sharpe's arrival at the farm, shoots and injures him. Learning of her mistake from Frederickson, Lucille takes the two fugitives in, and nurses Sharpe. Harper and d'Alembord return to England to contact Jane and collect money. Jane refuses to receive them, and has Harper horsewhipped. In Normandy Frederickson grows attached to Lucille, and proposes to her, but is refused. He leaves for Paris to track down Ducos, leaving Sharpe to recover from his injuries. In his absence Sharpe and Lucille become lovers. Harper returns from London to confirm Sharpe's suspicions about Jane's loyalty, just as Frederickson sends word that Ducos has taken Napoleon's stolen treasure to Naples in Italy. The three men travel to Italy to confront Ducos, while Lucille, now pregnant, writes to the French prosecutor to exonerate Sharpe. Her letter is passed to Napoleon, in exile on Elba, who dispatches General Calvet, who faced Sharpe at Toulouse, to Naples in pursuit. In Naples, Ducos has assumed the identity of a Polish count, bought the protection of the local Cardinal, and assembled a small personal force of former French officers and locals mercenaries to guard the treasure. Calvet contacts the Cardinal, hoping prevent the English from reaching the treasure before him, but the Cardinal makes arrangements to confiscate the gold himself. Sharpe, Harper and Frederickson are intercepted by Calvet, and the former adversaries form an alliance; Sharpe will help to retrieve the gold for Napoleon in return for clearing his name. The combined force successfully infiltrate Ducos's villa, capturing the gold and Ducos himself, but before they can leave the Cardinal's forces surround the villa, cutting off access to the sea where Calvet's boats wait. Sharpe loads a small cannon with gold coins and fires it among the Neapolitans troops. The ill disciplined men break ranks to collect the coins, and allow the besieged company to escape by sea, taking the Ducos and the remaining treasure with them. Ducos is tried for the murder of Henri Lassan and executed by firing squad. Sharpe and Frederickson are cleared of all charges, but fall out when Frederickson learns of Sharpe's relationship with Lucille, and part on bad terms. Harper, discharged from the army, now also leaves Sharpe to return to Ireland. Sharpe returns to Normandy, to Lucille, and to a new life - no profession, no command, no troops, no friends, no money, and no wife."
1895,The Fugitive from Corinth,history," Flavia and her friends have been travelling the Greek islands with other passengers aboard Lupus's ship, the Delphina, captained by Flavia's father. They have rescued kidnapped children in The Colossus of Rhodes and now they relax for a while in her tutor Aristo's home city of Corinth. But on the night before their departure, Aristo stabs Flavia's father in bed; feverish and suffering from amnesia, he falls into a deep coma. Helen witnessed Aristo's murder but has run off. Believing him guilty, Flavia, along with her friends and the sailor Atticus, sets off to catch him. They save a young beggar boy, Nikos, and he provides information and, when everyone they ask describes Aristo in two different ways, he says that Aristo's brother Dion could be trying to catch him too. They find out that Nikos is actually a girl who lives beside Aristo's house in Corinth. She loves Dion. After asking a Pythia's advice about how to catch Aristo, which Flavia believes to be useless, Lupus sneaks into the temple to ask which temple his mother is in but is surprised to find out that the Pythia is his mother. He decides to leave her to help his friends. Nubia finds Aristo, and she believes his innocence. They arrive in Athens and chase up the Acropolis in which they lose him. They meet a beggar boy called Socrates and Flavia discovers Nubia is trying to stop them from catching Aristo. Jonathan storms off, Atticus is nowhere to be seen, and the 'two Aristos' (Dion and Aristo) descend into the Cave of The Kindly Ones (Furies). Nubia and Flavia follow, and Flavia locks them in. As they are dying they forgive each other, then Jonathan, Lupus and a priest let them out. Flavia eventually forgives Dion and they go back to Corinth to find that her father is still in a coma. Flavia has already asked the Pythia how to wake him up but she does not understand and ends up crying over his body. He wakes up, cured of his amnesia, and they realise that the Pythia's prophecy had come true."
1896,The Wool-Pack,history," Set in the Cotswolds near Burford, Oxfordshire, The Wool-Pack begins in 1493 when Nicholas Fetterlock, the twelve-year-old son of a rich wool merchant, learns from his father that he is betrothed to Cecily Bradshaw, the daughter of a rich cloth merchant. Nicholas learns villainy within the guild that may ruin the trade or his father's business."
1897,Peveril of the Peak,history," Sir Geoffrey Peveril and Major Bridgenorth had been boys together; and although they adopted different views in religion and politics, the major's influence had saved the Royalist's life after the battle of Bolton-le-Moor, and Lady Peveril had brought up his motherless girl, Alice, with her own son. After the Restoration, the Countess of Derby, who, through treachery, had suffered a long imprisonment by the Roundheads, sought protection at Martindale Castle, where Bridgenorth would have arrested her for having caused his brother-in-law, William Christian, to be shot as a traitor, had not the knight interfered by tearing up the warrant, and escorting her through Cheshire on her return to the Isle of Man. Alice was of course withdrawn from his wife's care, and it was supposed the major had emigrated to New England. Several years afterwards Sir Geoffrey's son Julian became the companion of the young earl, and, with the nurse Deborah's connivance, renewed his intimacy with his foster sister, who was under the care of her widowed aunt, Dame Christian. At one of the secret interviews between them, they were surprised by the entrance of her father, who related some of his religious experiences, and vaguely hinted that his consent to their marriage was not impossible. The next night, having undertaken to proceed to London, to clear the countess and her son from the suspicion of being concerned in Titus Oates's pretended Popish plot, Julian was conducted to a sloop by Fenella, his patron's deaf and dumb dwarf, and, as she was being taken ashore against her will while he was asleep, he dreamt that he heard Alice's voice calling for his help. At Liverpool he met Topham with a warrant against Sir Geoffrey, and on his way to the Peak to warn him, he travelled with Edward Christian, passing as Ganlesse, a priest, who led him to an inn, where they supped with Chiffinch, a servant of Charles II. On reaching Martindale Castle, he found his father and mother in the custody of Roundheads, and he was taken by Bridgenorth as a prisoner to Moultrassie Hall, where Alice received them, and he recognised Ganlesse among a number of Puritan visitors. During the night the Hall was attacked by the dependents and miners of the Peveril estate, and, having regained his liberty, Julian started, with Lance as his servant, in search of his parents, who he ascertained were on their way to London in charge of Topham. At an inn where they halted, Julian overheard Chiffinch revealing to a courtier a plot against Alice, and that he had been robbed of the papers entrusted to him by the countess, which, however, he managed to recover the next morning. Meanwhile, Christian, under whose care Bridgenorth had placed his daughter, communicated to the Duke of Buckingham a design he had formed of introducing her to Charles II, and, at an interview with her father, endeavoured to persuade him to abandon the idea of marrying her to young Peveril. Having reached London, Julian met Fenella, who led him into St. James's Park, where she attracted the notice of the king by dancing, and he sent them both to await his return at Chiffinch's apartments. Alice was already under the care of Mistress Chiffinch, and escaped from an interview with the duke to find herself in the presence of Charles and her lover, with whom, after he had placed the countess's papers in the king's hands, she was allowed to depart. Julian, however, lost her in a street fray, and having been committed to Newgate for wounding his assailant, he was placed in the same cell with the queen's dwarf, and conversed with an invisible speaker. After startling Christian with the news that his niece had disappeared, the duke bribed Colonel Blood to intercept his movements, so that he might not discover where she was, and was then himself astonished at finding Fenella instead of Alice, who had been captured by his servants in his house, and at her equally unexpected defiance of and escape from him. A few days afterwards, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, his son and the dwarf were tried for aiding and abetting Oates's Plot, and were all acquitted. In order, however, to avoid the mob, they took refuge in a room, where they encountered Bridgenorth, who convinced Julian that they were in his power, and allowed Christian to propose to the Duke of Buckingham that several hundred Fifth-Monarchy men, led by Colonel Blood, should seize the king, and proclaim his Grace Lord-Lieutenant of the kingdom. The same afternoon Charles had just granted an audience to the Countess of Derby, when the dwarf emerged from a violoncello case and revealed the conspiracy which Fenella had enabled him to overhear. It then transpired that Bridgenorth had released the Peverils, and that Christian had trained his daughter Fenella, whose real name was Zarah, to feign being deaf and dumb, in order that she might act as his spy; but that her secret love for Julian had frustrated the execution of his vengeance against the countess. He was allowed to leave the country, and the major, who. on recovering Alice by Fenella's aid, had placed her under Lady Peveril's care, having offered to restore some of Sir Geoffrey's domains which had passed into his hands as her dowry, the king's recommendation secured the old knight's consent to the marriage which within a few weeks united the Martindale-Moultrassie families and estates."
1898,The Monastery,history," In the many conflicts between England and Scotland the property of the Church had hitherto always been respected; but her temporal possessions, as well as her spiritual influence, were now in serious danger from the spread of the doctrines of the Reformation, and the occupants of the monasteries were dependent on the military services of their tenants and vassals for protection against the forays of Protestant barons and other heretical marauders. Dame Elspeth's husband Simon had fallen in the battle of Pinkie (1547), and the hospitality of her lonely tower had been sought by the widow of the Baron of Avenel and her daughter Mary, whose mansion had been seized and plundered by invaders, and subsequently taken possession of by her brother-in-law Julian. While confessing the baroness on her death-bed, Father Philip discovered that she possessed a Bible, and as he was carrying it to the Lord Abbot, it was, he declared, taken from him by a spectral White Lady. Disbelieving the sacristan's tale, the sub-prior visited the tower, where he met Christie of the Clinthill, a freebooter, charged with an insolent message from Julian Avenel, and learnt that the Bible had been mysteriously returned to its owner. Having exchanged it for a missal, he was unhorsed on his return by the apparition; and, on reaching the monastery, the book had disappeared from his bosom, and he found the freebooter detained in custody on suspicion of having killed him. The White Lady was next seen by Elspeth's son Halbert, who was conducted by her to a fairy grotto, where he was allowed to snatch the Bible from a flaming altar. During his absence from the tower, Happer the miller and his daughter Mysie arrived on a visit, and soon afterwards came Sir Piercie Shafton, as a refugee from the English Court. The next day the abbot came to dine with them, and offered Halbert, who had quarrelled with the knight for his attentions to Mary, the office of ranger of the Church forests. He, however, refused it, and startled his rival with a token he had obtained from the mysterious spectre. The following morning they fought in a glen, and Halbert fled to the Baron of Avenel, leaving Sir Piercie apparently mortally wounded. His companion thither was Henry Warden, who offended the laird, and assisted Halbert in his determination to escape from the castle, rather than serve under his host's standard. The knight, however, had miraculously recovered, and on making his way back to the tower, was accused by Edward of having murdered his missing brother, in spite of his assurance that the youth was alive and uninjured. With the sub-prior's approval he was treated as a prisoner; but during the night Mysie assisted him to escape, and accompanied him northwards, dressed as his page. Mary Avenel, meanwhile, in the midst of her grief at the supposed death of her lover, was visited by the White Lady, who comforted her by disclosing the place where he had hidden the Bible, which she had secretly read with her mother. The rest of the family were astounded by the arrival of Christie, who confirmed Sir Piercie's assertion, and announced that he had brought Henry Warden to be dealt with as a heretic by the lord abbot. But the preacher and Father Eustace had been intimate friends at college, and the sub-prior was urging him to save his life by returning to the bosom of the Church, when Edward interrupted them to confess his jealousy of his brother, and his resolution to become a monk, in obedience to the White Lady who had appeared to him. Father Eustace then decided to leave his prisoner at the tower, under promise to surrender when summoned to the monastery; and, having learnt from the freebooter that Julian Avenel would fight for the Church, despatched him in search of Sir Piercie and the miller's daughter. That same night the lord abbot, alarmed by intelligence that English and Scottish soldiers were advancing with hostile intentions against the monastery, resigned his office to the sub-prior. Having taken the road to Edinburgh, Halbert had joined a squadron commanded by the Earl of Murray, who sent him forward to prevent an engagement between the English, under Sir John Forster, and the supporters of the Church, under the Baron of Avenel. He arrived too late, but the earl induced Sir John, who had won the battle, to withdraw, and marched his troops to St Mary's. Here the new abbot had assembled his brotherhood in the village, in anticipation of the destruction of their home. The regent and his followers formed up facing them, and the first matter settled was the marriage of Halbert with the heiress of Avenel. Father Eustace was then summoned to produce Sir Piercie, who surrendered voluntarily, and a flaw in his pedigree having been proved, Mysie was declared a fitting wife for him, and they were shipped off to Flanders. The monks, at the intercession of Henry Warden, were allowed to retain their monastery and lands on condition of being laid under contribution; while Edward, who had sought another interview with the White Spirit, was told that the knot of fate was tied, and impressed with the belief that the marriage of his brother with Mary Avenel might prove fatal to both of them."
1899,The Good Shepherd,history," The hero of The Good Shepherd is Commander Krause, the captain of a US Navy destroyer in World War II. Krause is in overall command of an escort force protecting an Atlantic convoy in the Battle of the Atlantic. He finds himself in a difficult position. The voyage in question occurs early in 1942, shortly after America's entry into the war. Although he is an experienced officer, with many years of seniority, this is Krause's first wartime mission. The captains of the other escort vessels are junior to him, and much younger, but they have been at war for over two years. His relative inexperience troubles him. The hero broods over his career; his wife left him partly because of his strict devotion to duty. He is troubled when the press of duty forces him to neglect his prayers. (Unlike most of Forester's other heroes, Krause is devout.) And he is troubled by recollections that the Navy review board had twice passed him over for promotion, returning a judgement of fitted and retained. His promotion to Commander only came when the United States entered the war, leading him to fear that he may be unsuited to his command. The book illustrates the difficulties of the Atlantic war: the struggle against the sea, the enemy, and the exhaustion brought on by constant vigilance. It also details the problems of the early radar and ASDIC equipment available and the poor communications between the fleet and Admiralty."
1900,The Master of Go,history," It is a semi-fictional chronicle of the lengthy 1938 ""retirement game"" of Go by the respected master Honinbo Shūsai, against the up-and-coming player Minoru Kitani (although the latter's name is changed to Otaké in the book). It was the last game of the master Shūsai's career, a lengthy struggle which took almost six months to complete; he narrowly lost to his younger challenger, to die a little over a year thereafter."
1901,Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur,history," The novel begins shortly after the end of Enemy of God. Arthur has taken full control of Dumnonia, Guinevere is imprisoned, Mordred who, while still king, has had his power taken away from him. Lancelot has joined with the Saxons and Derfel is trying to deal with both his daughter's death and his service to Arthur. Merlin is preparing for Mai Dun, a pagan ceremony that is said will bring the old gods back to Britain. Before the ceremony though Derfel must go and try to make his father Aelle turn against his ally Cerdic. Upon arrival Cerdic demands Derfel's death but Aelle says his son must fight a Saxon in single combat and if he wins he will be allowed to live. Derfel wins and stays the night but is unable to get his father to stop his attack on Britain. It is finally the time of Mai Dun the ceremony is not completed though due to Arthur realising that Nimue intends to sacrifice his son to bring the gods forth. Finally the Saxons invade, Derfel, who along with Ceinwyn and Guinevere, leads a group of survivors who are trapped at Mount Baddon. Derfel is impressed by Guinevere's efforts in the battle. Eventually, Arthur arrives along with Saragmor and Cuneglas and manage to win a victory over the Saxons. Derfel eventually finds Aelle and kill him. Lancelot is caught and hanged. Cuneglas is killed in battle and thus Arthur loses one of his greatest allies, also the price Arthur has to pay for Gwent's help is giving up his power. After gives up his power he leaves Derfel and Saragmor in charge of Dumnonia's army while Mordred is given back his power. At the same time Mordred goes on war raids later a messenger says he is dying while also being besieged. Derfel trying to avoid a succession issue goes to Arthur. He learns that Arthur does not want to be king but Arthurs son does. Pleased returns to Dumnonia to find Mordred still alive and learns that he faked his injuries and plans to take revenge on both Derfel and Arthur. Derfel manages to escape with the help of Taliesin. Derfel returns to find Ceinwyn is deathly sick, he tries everything to save her, but nothing works. He is taken to meet Nimue who says that she caused Ceinwyn's sickness and will only remove it if Derfel gives her Arthur's sword and Arthur's son. Derfel, having no were else to turn, goes to Morgan who offers to remove the fever if Derfel will agree to convert to Christianity and serve her husband, Sansum. To complete the spell, Derfel's hand is cut off. Mordred comes for Arthur and faces him at Camlan where Mordred is killed and Arthur is wounded. Derfel stops Nimue by throwing Arthur's sword into the sea (The English Channel) and watches as his friend and his lord sails away with Guinevere back to Armorica."
1902,Cold Sassy Tree,history," On July 5, 1906, Enoch Rucker Blakeslee announces that he intends to marry Miss Love Simpson, a milliner at his store who is years younger than he. This news shocks his family, since his wife Mattie Lou died only three weeks earlier. Rucker’s daughters, Mary Willis and Loma, worry about what the gossips of Cold Sassy will think of their father’s impropriety. Will Tweedy, Rucker’s 14-year-old grandson and the narrator of the novel, supports his grandfather’s marriage. Will thinks Miss Love is nice and pretty, even though she comes from Baltimore and therefore is practically a Yankee. Will thinks that Rucker needs someone to look after him now that Mattie Lou is gone. On the afternoon Rucker announces his engagement, Will sneaks off to go fishing in the country despite the fact that he is supposed to be in mourning for his grandmother. He walks across a high, narrow train trestle and nearly dies when a train speeds toward him. He survives by lying flat between the tracks so the train passes just overhead without touching him. Will becomes a sensation after his near-death experience, and the whole town comes to his house to ask him about the incident. Rucker shocks everyone by arriving with his new bride, Miss Love. The people of Cold Sassy disapprove of Rucker’s hasty marriage, and rumors spread quickly in the small town. Will, however, spends a great deal of time at the Blakeslee house and becomes friends with Miss Love. Will likes her because of her candid opinions and open personality. He also has a little crush on her, often spying on her. Will soon learns that the marriage is one of convenience and that Rucker and Miss Love sleep in separate rooms. Miss Love tells Will that she married Rucker only because he promised to deed her the house and furniture. For his part, Rucker married Miss Love to save on the cost of a housekeeper. One day, Clayton McAllister, Miss Love’s former fiancé from Texas, shows up and tries to persuade Miss Love to leave with him. He kisses her, but Miss Love sends him away contemptuously after kissing him. Will and some of his friends make a trip into the country to pick up a horse for Miss Love, camping in the mountains along the way. When they return, Will and his father, Hoyt, try to convince Will’s mother, Mary Willis, to go on a trip to New York. Rucker has bought the tickets to New York so that Hoyt, who works for Rucker, can go to purchase new goods for the store. At first Mary Willis refuses to go because she is in mourning, but Will and Hoyt convince her that the trip will do her good. Right after Mary Willis changes her mind, Rucker decides to use the tickets himself to go to New York with Miss Love. Mary Willis is crushed, and her hatred of Miss Love increases. To take his and Mary Willis’ mind off the disappointment, Hoyt buys a brand new Cadillac and becomes the first owner of a car in Cold Sassy. Rucker and Miss Love return from New York. They are now flirtatious and affectionate with each other, and Will wonders whether their marriage is becoming more legitimate. Rucker announces that he too has bought a car and intends to begin selling cars in Cold Sassy. Lightfoot McLendon is a classmate of Will’s who lives in the impoverished section of Cold Sassy known as Mill Town. One day Will takes Lightfoot on a car ride to the cemetery, where he kisses her. A nosy neighbor sees the kiss and tells Will’s parents. Outraged at Will’s association with common people, Will’s parents forbid him to drive the Cadillac for two months. Will gets around his punishment by driving Rucker’s car. One Sunday, Will, Rucker, and Miss Love take a day trip into the country, where Will gives them driving lessons. On the way back to Cold Sassy, as he tries to avoid a collision with a Ford wrecked in the middle of the road, Will crashes the car into a creek bed and damages the radiator. While they wait for a repair team to arrive, they stay with a family that lives nearby. That night, Will overhears Rucker tell Miss Love that he loves her and wants their marriage to be real. Miss Love declares that she cannot and that no man would want her if he knew her terrible secret. When she finally tells him what her secret is &ndash; that her father raped her when she was a child &ndash; he tells her he doesn't care, and affirms his love for her. Eventually, Miss Love and Rucker fall deeply in love. Will’s uncle, Camp Williams, commits suicide, which begins a dark period in Cold Sassy. Rucker hires Will’s worst enemy, Hosie Roach, to work at the store in Camp’s place. Because of his new income, Hosie can marry Will’s beloved Lightfoot. A pair of thieves rob and beat Rucker. Although he recovers from his injuries, Rucker catches pneumonia. As Rucker lies sick in bed, Will overhears him tell Miss Love that God provides strength and comfort to the faithful in times of trouble. Miss Love tells Will that although Rucker does not know it, she is pregnant with Rucker’s child. Rucker dies shortly after he falls ill, but his message of faith in God gives Will strength to cope. Though the town and Will’s family do not accept Miss Love, she knows that they will all accept her child, and plans on staying in Cold Sassy."
1903,Green Darkness,history," In the 1960s, young Celia Marsdon is a rich American heiress who, upon her marriage to English aristocrat Richard Marsdon, goes to live at an ancestral manor in Sussex, England. Shortly afterward, strange things begin to occur &mdash; Richard begins acting out of character, and Celia starts to have strange fits and visions. Celia's mother, Lily Taylor, has befriended a Hindu guru, Dr. Akananda, and it is he who discovers what's wrong with the young couple. The troubles of the present time can only be solved by revisiting a tragedy from the past. The book then moves back in time to the reign of Edward VI, as lovely young Celia de Bohun and her guardian aunt take up residence with the noble, Catholic family of Anthony Browne as ""poor relations."" Celia is a fascinating and believable character, full of contradictions and human failings. She is headstrong and impulsive; innocent but coquettish; and can easily attract male attention. She creates a scandal when she becomes infatuated with the family chaplain, Stephen Marsdon, who in turn desires Celia but does not want to break his vow of chastity. They are forced to part, but never forget each other. Time passes; King Edward dies and his persecution of Catholics ends, only to follow by his successor, Queen Mary I's persecution of Protestants; the Browne family fortunes prosper under the Marian reign; and sympathetic characters harden into detestable ones. When Celia and Stephen finally meet again, nothing can stop the passion between them. It ends tragically. The Tudor story and the narrative returns to the 1960s to find resolution in the present and lay to rest the tormented souls of Stephen and Celia so that Richard and his wife can live together happily without visions of their past lives coming between them."
1904,Bloody Jack,history," Mary Faber is an orphan in a gang on the streets of Cheapside, London, during the late 18th century. After the death of the gang's leader, she dons boy's clothing and goes to the docks, where she attempts to obtain a position as one of six ship's boys on the British warship H.M.S. Dolphin. Her endeavor is successful due to her ability to read, and she is signed under the alias Jack ""Jacky"" Faber. After boarding the ship, she meets the other ship's boys, named Tink, Willy, Benjy, Davy, and Jaimy. Jacky and the other ship's boys gain their sea legs and begin their duties on the ship. Jacky meets a seaman, Liam Delaney, who becomes her sea dad. Liam teaches her the ways of the ship and how to play the pennywhistle. After some time on the ship, Jacky finds that she's grown, and needing some new clothes, she makes her own. Jacky's new outfit catches the Captain's eye and is asked to sew up more for the others. As the plot develops, a pirate ship is spotted and a battle begins. The crew boards the enemy ship, and Jacky acquires a pistol from a dead pirate. She sees another pirate preparing to kill one of the ships boys, Jaimy, whom Jacky is starting to have feelings for. Then she shoots the pirate, who is carrying a chest of money, and thus gets the nickname ""Bloody Jack"". It is in this battle that Benjy, a ship's boy in The Brotherhood, (what Jacky and the other ship's boys call themselves), is killed. The ship heads for Palma to get there ship repaired after the battle. At about this time, Jacky first menstruates, and her upbringing having left her unaware of the details of female physical maturation, she believes that she is ill and about to die. After the ship lands at Palma, the ship's boys go to get a tattoo to show their brotherhood. Jacky then goes to a brothel to find a woman to ask 'for a friend' why she had bled before, where the madam quickly sees through her disguise and informs Jacky of the details of female bodies. The rest of the ship's boys consider Jack a rake after this, as they only know one nominal reason for a visit to a brothel. Then the ship heads for the Caribbean Sea. While Jacky is in the schoolroom, a sailor aboard the ship called Midshipman Bliffil starts to beat Jacky up, and only stops when the teacher yells at him. Jacky is put in the sick ward for her injuries. She convinces Midshipman Jenkins to stand up to Bliffil and teaches him some fighting moves. A crew member Bill Sloat threatens Jacky and her sea dad Liam Delaney tries to protect her, which causes some problems. When Bliffil attacks Jacky again, Jenkins stands up to him. Jacky begins to sleep in the rope locker because The Brotherhood's friendship is strained after recent events, and this is when Sloat tries to sexually assault her. Jacky tries to protect herself by stabbing him with her shiv, but she injures him more than she had meant to, and ends up stabbing him in the stomach and he stumbles overboard. Liam is put on trial for the murder and he is going to be hanged. Jacky intervenes and confesses to stabbing Sloat. She is put in confinement and thinks that she will be hanged instead, but she is set free because she had acted in self-defense. After that she is welcomed back by into the Brotherhood but the feeling is still weird. Jaimy admits to her that he has strange feelings for her, and that is when Jacky asks him to hold up a dress so she can mark it, and Jaimy learns that she is really a girl and that she has feelings for him. Soon after they arrive in Kingston, Jamaica. Jacky and Jaimy go out on the streets, and Jacky wears a dress that she bought. They eat at a café, and Davy and Tink see them. Davy and Tink do not know that the girl Jaimy is eating with is Jacky, and she leaves and changes back into her ship boy clothing. The group then finds a piercing shop, where they all get a gold hoop earring. Jacky and Jaimy exchange rings. Then they set sail again to hunt for the pirates. They soon encounter the pirate LeFievre (""The Fever"") at sea. There is a battle, but LeFievre gets away, and the Dolphin is damaged and in the process of sinking. Men are at the bilge pumps trying to keep the ship afloat when land is sighted, and the ship and crew stop for rest and repairs. Davy learns of Jacky's true identity when he discovers her and Jaimy curled up in a hammock together. Soon after, Mr. Tilden the teacher wants to put Jacky on a kite and fly her up so she can see more land, but the winds were blowing so hard that the tree she is tied to is ripped out of the ground and after many hours of flying she lands on an unknown island. She stays there for a few days and uses smoke signals to try to get the attention of HMS Dolphin. A boat crew from the Dolphin comes to rescue her and she finds out that LeFievre and his pirates are on the island with her and waiting to ambush the rescue crew. She tries to lead the rescue crew away but the pirates catch her and hold her for hanging and money. She is hanged, but is so scrawny and skinny that she just hangs there choking. The HMS Dolphin rescue crew lands, Jaimy quickly cuts the rope around her neck, and Jacky survives. Jacky is finally discovered to be a girl. She is guarded by someone everywhere she goes. She is confined from almost everyone on board, including her old mates, but they secretly sneak over to the grating above her room to talk to her. She is told by the captain that she will be enrolled in Lawson Peabody's School for Girls in Boston, and then the book concludes with her stepping off the ship."
1905,Slave Girl,history," The story focuses on a 12-year-old girl called Hekja. Hekja lives with her mother in simple village by the sea. Her two brothers and father have all died. At the beginning of the book, she comes to the aid of a small puppy who was attacked by a seagull on the beach. Hekja takes the puppy to the village's witch, Tikka, for her to help heal the puppy. Hekja is told that the puppy was one of the chief's litter, and she had already given it the True Name of Riki Snarfari (Mighty Rover). The puppy was considered the useless one of the litter and apparently had no value, so the chief had shown little interest in him and gives him away to hekja but later becomes jealous of how strong the pup is. Tikka shows Hekja how to look after Snarf, as he becomes known affectionately by Hekja. Eventually, Snarf becomes a lot better, and hardly limps at all from this wounded leg. The time comes for Hekja to spend the summer up the mountain with the other girls of the village. It is a tradition of the village for girls to stay on the mountain when they become of age, and the girls look after the cows and produce cheese whilst up the mountain, with the women bringing supplies ""twice every full moon"". The other girls are mean or indifferent to Hekja and abuse Snarf execept for one girl who is Hekja's best friend, Branna. One foggy day up in the mountain, the day was going by like every other day except, the girls up in the mountain heard a howl. Hekja goes to investigate and Snarf follows her. Hekja finds out it's a wolf and was planning to kill it or else it would have eaten one of the sheep. The girls hid back in cover and tried to persuade Hekja to come back and let the wolf take a sheep, but Hekja was stubborn, and wherever Hekja went, Snarf went, even to the jaws of death. The wolf finally appeared and Snarf bites it around the neck while the wolf is biting Snarf's leg. 5 seconds or so later the wolf dies from the first bite Snarf had dished out, at its windpipe. Snarf is considered a hero and is treated with respect and Hekja too because Snarf was her dog. Hekja became friends with all the other girls and they soon found out she had a wonderful voice for singing. they were all jealous about her making a song up all about Snarf so they pleaded Hekja to make a song about them. One day, whilst still up the mountain, Hekja sees strange ships approaching from the distance. At the protests of the other girls, she runs back down to the village, only to see the Viking raiders murdering the village people - Hekja's mother and the boy she used to love, Bran, but much later finds he is not dead but marries Branna, included. Hekja tries to outrun the invaders, but is captured, by a woman called Freydis, who is Erik the Reds daughter, and consequently is taken away as a slave. Hekja hates the Norse and will not share her beautiful gift of singing with them, even if it does mean that she would not have to mind the cows as a thrall, if they were to hear her sing. She had told one of the Norsemen when he heard her sing -the Norseman is named Snorri- that she didn't want anybody to know that she can sing because everything has been taken away from her and that if they heard her sing they would take that away from her too. Hekja's spirit and sheer determination means that she soon finds herself joining her mistress Freydis' expedition to Vinland. Hekja befriends Freydis' brother's thrall, Hikki, and he is the only one she will sing to. They develop a firm friendship. Upon arriving at Vinland, they find the place beautiful and welcoming. Vinland winters are so mild that the cattle can be left out all year round. Freydis and several other women in the colony are pregnant. Hikki proposes to Hekja in due course. Hekja is taken aback, but tells him to wait until she has finished serving her mistress in two years time even though she doesn't love him herself. Freydis also adopts Hekja and is now Hekjas mother. There is another who is also after Hekja's heart however; the mysterious Snorri the Skald. He seems to like Hekja, but refrains from letting on. Hikki dies in the Viking's Skraeling raid while Snorri was wounded, and after about two months, Hekja marries Snorri the Skald and they are very happy together."
1906,The Unknown Shore,history," In the early part of the novel, set in London, other members of the expedition are featured. They appear in more detail in The Golden Ocean, another O'Brian novel about the Anson expedition. The expedition is beset by storms while rounding of Cape Horn, the Wager is shipwrecked off the coast of Chile as their position could not be determined. The crew reject the authority of their officers, once the ship was wrecked and leave the captain, some officers and some other crew on the island when they sail away in a boat built from the wreck. The marooned officers make their way to a Spanish settlement with the help of the native people. The novel is based on the accounts of the survivors. Survivors from the lower deck made their way back to Britain long before the officers. The novel describes the crew members asserting that the officers had no authority over them, once their ship was wrecked."
1907,The Family,history," Pope Alexander VI (formerly Rodrigo Borgia) believes God will ultimately forgive his many sins simply because, as Pope, he is infallible and divine. The Family focuses on this cunning, ambitious despot and his children—the ruthless Cesare and the beautiful but wicked Lucrezia. A passionate love story runs through the novel, but it is a sinful one. Lucrezia lost her virginity to her brother Cesare when she was only thirteen, and the two have loved only each other ever since. Alexander marries Lucrezia off for political reasons. She remains submissive to her father, if not to her many husbands and lovers. Pope Alexander aims to unify Italy’s feudal states under papal rule. Cesare, who exchanges his cardinal’s miter for a warrior’s helmet to become commander-in-chief of his father’s armies, carries out conquest after conquest to fulfill Alexander’s grandiose ambitions. As in Puzo’s The Godfather, the lovemaking, the opulent festivities, the sub rosa plotting, and the complex double-dealing are interspersed with outbursts of violence, including one memorable scene in which the reformist priest Girolamo Savonarola is torn apart on the Rack. cs:Rodina (kniha) es:Los Borgia (novela) pl:Rodzina Borgiów (powieść) pt:Os Bórgias"
1908,"Weep Not, Child",history," The book is divided into two parts and eighteen chapters. Part one deals mostly with the education of Njoroge, while part two deals with the rising revolutionary, anti-colonist turmoil in Kenya. Njoroge, a young boy, is urged to attend school by his mother. He is the first one out of his family who is able to go to school. His family lives on the land of Jacobo, an African made rich by his dealings with white settlers, namely Mr. Howlands, the most powerful land owner in the area. Njoroge's brother Kamau works as an apprentice to a carpenter while Boro, the eldest living son, is troubled by his experiences while in forced service during World War II, one of which was witnessing the death of his elder brother. Ngotho, Njoroge's father and a respected man in the surrounding area, tends Mr. Howlands' crops more to preserve and keep an eye on his ancestral land, than for any compensation or loyalty. One day, a strike is called for higher wages for the black workers. Ngotho does not know if he should participate at first, because he would likely lose his job. Finally, however, he decides to go to the gathering, although his two wives do not agree. At the demonstration, there are calls for higher wages. Suddenly Jacobo, the father of Mwihaki, appears with the white police inspector. He tries to put an end to the strike (the police brought him there to pacify the native people). Ngotho attacks Jacobo. The result is a big tumult with two people being killed. Nevertheless, Jacobo survives and swears revenge. Njoroge’s family is forced to move and Ngotho loses his job. Njoroge’s education is thereafter funded by his brothers who seem to lose respect for their father. Mwihaki then goes to a girls' only boarding school, leaving Njoroge relatively alone. He reflects upon her leaving, and realizes that he was embarrassed by his father's actions towards Jacobo. For this reason, Njoroge is not upset by her exit and their separation. Njoroge stays close to home where he switches to another school. For a time, everyone's attention is focused on the upcoming trial of Jomo Kenyatta - a revered leader of the movement. Many blacks think that he is going to bring forth Kenya’s independence. But Jomo loses the trial and is imprisoned. This results in further protests and greater suppression of the black population. Jacobo and a white landowner, Mr. Howlands, fight against the rising activities of the Mau Mau, an organization striving for Kenyan economic, political, and cultural independence. Jacobo accuses Ngotho of being the leader of the Mau Mau and tries to imprison the whole family. Meanwhile, the situation in the country is deteriorating. Six black men are taken out of their houses and executed in the woods. One day Njoroge meets Mwihaki again, who returned from boarding school. Although Njoroge thought he had needed to avoid her, their friendship is not affected by the situation between their fathers. Then Njoroge passes a very important exam that allows him to advance to High School. The whole village is proud of him. They collect enough money so that Njoroge is able to attend High School. After a few months, Jacobo is killed. He is murdered in his office by a member of the Mau Mau. Mr. Howlands has Njoroge removed from school for questioning. Both father and son are brutally beaten before release and Ngotho is left barely alive. Although there doesn't seem to be a connection between Njoroge's family and the murder, it is eventually revealed that Njoroge's brothers are behind the assassination. Boro, the real leader of the Mau Mau. Ngotho soon dies from his injuries and Njoroge finds out that his father was protecting his brothers. Kamau has also been imprisoned for life. Only Njoroge and his two mothers remain free with Njoroge left as the sole provider to his two mothers. With no hope of making ends meet, Njoroge gives up all hope of going further in school and loses faith in God. Njoroge now hopes for Mwihaki's support, but she is angry because of her father’s death. When he finally pledges his love to her, she refuses to leave with him, realizing her obligation to Kenya and her mother. He finally decides to leave town and makes an attempt to take his own life; however, he fails at even this because his mothers find him before he is able to hang himself . The novel closes with Njoroge's utter sense of hopelessness and his own feelings of cowardice."
1909,The Silver Chalice,history," The Silver Chalice takes place in Israel and other parts of the Roman Empire shortly after the death of Jesus. A young man, Basil, is adopted by a rich man, but loses his fortune when his father dies and his uncle defrauds him claiming he was purchased as a slave and sells him. As a slave he survives by working as an artist and silversmith. He gains his freedom, becomes a Christian and is commissioned to create an outer covering for the cup Jesus drank from at The Last Supper. The plot of The Silver Chalice centers on the Grail—the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. Tired of “all the Arthurian tripe about the Holy Grail,” Costain imagined his own version of the story. Joseph of Arimathea hires Basil of Antioch, a lowborn artisan, to fashion a beautiful silver casing to hold the plain original cup that Jesus used. The casing is to be decorated with the faces of Jesus and the twelve apostles. To fulfill the commission, Basil travels throughout the ancient Mediterranean world to meet these men and those who knew them intimately."
1910,The Prairie: A Tale,history," The story opens with Ishmael, his family, Ellen and Abiram slowly making their way across the virgin prairies of the Midwest looking for a homestead, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase, and during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They meet the trapper (Natty Bumppo), who has left his home in New York state to find a place where he cannot hear the sound of people cutting down the forests. In the years between his other adventures and this novel, he tells us only that he has walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean and seen all the land between the coasts (a heroic feat, considering Lewis and Clark hadn’t yet completed the same trek). That night, a band of Teton warriors steal all of Ishmael’s animals, stranding the immigrants. The doctor returns the next morning along with his donkey. The trapper helps the family relocate their wagons, including one with mysterious contents, to a nearby butte where they will be safer when the Tetons return. Middleton joins the group when he stumbles upon the trapper and Paul. Before they return to the butte, Ishmael and his family go looking for his eldest son, Asa, whom they find murdered. The trapper, Paul, and Middleton return to camp, find Inez whom Abiram and Ishmael had been keeping captive, and flee with her and Ellen. Ishmael chases them until the Tetons capture the Trapper and his crew. They escape the Tetons, and then Ishmael forms an alliance with the Indians. The Indians attempt to recapture the trapper by surrounding them with a prairie fire, but the trapper lights a backfire and saves everyone. They meet up with Hard-heart, a Pawnee Indian who survived the fire wrapped in a buffalo skin, and attempt to escape to his village. The Tetons capture them. Ishmael demands the trapper, Inez, and Ellen for helping the Tetons but is denied and turned away. Mahtoree intends to take Inez and Ellen for his new wives. Le Balafre attempts to spare Hard-heart’s life by making Hard-heart his son. Hard-heart refuses, kills Weucha, and flees the village. When Hard-heart’s Pawnee warriors attack the Teton village, the trapper and his friends escape, only to be captured by Ishmael. The trapper is accused of Asa’s death until Abiram’s guilt is discovered. Abiram is executed, and Ishmael’s family returns east without Inez, Ellen, or the doctor. Middleton, Inez, Paul and Ellen travel back to Louisiana and Kentucky, respectively, while the trapper joins a Pawnee village located on a tributary of the Missouri River. Middleton and Paul return just in time to witness the trapper's noble death and bury him."
1911,Balthasar's Odyssey,history," Before the dawn of the apocalyptic 'Year of the Beast' in 1666, Balthasar Embriaco, a Levantine merchant, sets out on an adventure that will take him across the breadth of the civilised world from Constantinople, through the Mediterranean, to London, shortly before the Great Fire. Balthazar's urgent quest is to track down a copy of one of the rarest and most coveted books ever printed, a volume called The Hundredth Name; its contents are thought to be of vital importance to the future of the world. There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, and merely to know this most secret hundredth name will, Balthasar believes, ensure his salvation. ar:رحلة بالداسار es:El viaje de Baldassare gl:A viaxe de Baldassare tr:Yüzüncü Ad: Baldassare'nin Yolculuğu"
1912,Bull Run,history," The novel is a collection of monologues by sixteen fictional characters and one real one, eight Northern and eight Southern, black and white, male and female, describing their personal experiences in the First Battle of Bull Run of the American Civil War in 1861. Issues such as race, gender, and economic, social, and regional tensions are depicted throughout the novel. This book gives a clear vision of what went on in the civil war from medical tents to bodies on the battlefield."
1913,The Towers of Silence,history," The novel begins with the story of Barbie Batchelor, an old missionary schoolteacher, who, after years of service to the church, decides to take her pension and retire. She finds a place as a paying guest with Mabel Layton, a member of the aristocracy of the English in India, at Rose Cottage in Pankot. Barbie and Mabel become close. Late one night, Mabel tells Barbie that she will only go to Ranpur when she's buried, which Barbie interprets to mean that she wants to be buried in Ranpur, next to the grave of her late husband, James Layton. Barbie is proud of her working class background and her simple Christianity, but she does her best to behave in a manner that makes upper-class Pankot comfortable. Unfortunately, they will never accept her as one of their own, treating her as a peculiar and unwanted intruder. In 1942, Pankot society hears about the attacks on two English women in and near Mayapore (events that took place in the first novel of the series). Daphne Manners was gang raped by a mob and Edwina Crane was witness to the murder of her Indian colleague. Miss Crane, another missionary schoolteacher, was a good friend of Barbie's, and she is haunted by the attack and by Edwina's subsequent suicide by fire. Pankot society does not know what to make of Barbie and her insistence on sharing a picture, ""The Jewel in the Crown"" of the title, that Edwina gave her. Pankot also rejects a theory, proposed by an officer passing through from Mayapore to Muzzafirabad, that the relationship between Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar, who has been arrested for the rape, was not a case of an innocent, inexperienced white girl being mesmerized by a crafty Indian, but rather that Daphne and Hari simply were in love, like any two young people. Just as Daphne Manners dies while giving birth to the child conceived on the night of the rape, the Laytons announce the engagement of Susan Layton and Teddie Bingham. Just then, Teddie gets a new posting and is reassigned to Mirat. In Mirat he meets his new quarters-mate, Ronald Merrick. Merrick, who is serving in army intelligence, briefs Teddie and his unit regarding the ""Jiffs"" or the Indians who are fighting on the side of the Japanese as part of the Indian National Army. Teddie and the other more traditional officers of the Indian Army can hardly believe their ears. They and their forebears have grown up with generations of these Indian soldiers, knowing intimately their villages and families, and they cannot believe that such disloyalty is possible. Returning to his quarters, Teddie comes across a woman's bicycle, old and battered, accompanied by a symbol made of chalk marked on the veranda, like those made in connection with Hindu religious rites. Before he can ask Merrick about it, the bike has disappeared. However, Merrick suspects that it is the work of his old nemesis, Pandit Baba, who was present in Mayapore when Daphne Manners was attacked. Merrick was the police commissioner there and took brutal action against Hari Kumar and a group of his acquaintances. The bicycle belonged to Daphne and might have served as evidence had any charges been brought in the case. Merrick informs Teddie that if he means to get married, then he had better do it quickly, because he would soon be sent to do battle against the Japanese. Teddie panics, not knowing what to do. Merrick solves his problem by arranging the loan of the sumptuous guest house belonging to the Nawab of Mirat and suggesting he then go on honeymoon nearby in the Nanoora Hills. Teddie's best friend, Tony Bishop, is down with jaundice, Merrick helps out again by being best man. The honeymoon is disappointing for Susan, who is let down by Teddie's sexual inexperience. While these arrangements are being made, the Laytons are vacationing in Kashmir, where they encounter Lady Manners and Daphne's child Parvati. Sarah without her family's knowledge defies her family by going to visit their houseboat. But Lady Manners actually proves helpful when she suggests that by way of thanks for the loan of the guest house, a volume of the poems of Mohammed Gaffur would make a nice gift for the Nawab of Mirat, since the nawab is a descendant of the Urdu poet. The Laytons return to Pankot to make preparations. Mildred disturbed by the fact that this step is being taken while her husband, Lt. Col. John Layton, is held prisoner in Germany. Barbie and Pankot society are also disappointed that such an important society wedding will be in Mirat and not Pankot. But they are consoled with the gossip of the momentous events: (1) Teddie's injury resulting from a stone being thrown at his car, (2) Susan's instinct to show obeisance to the Nawab, thus saving all from embarrassment at his being detained at the entrance, and (3) the appearance of Shalini Gupta Sen at the railway station when the couple are being seen off on their honeymoon and the scene she creates with her entreaties to Merrick which are later revealed to regard Hari's imprisonment. Barbie, wanting to show her affection for Susan with a nice wedding-cum-21st birthday gift, buys a set of silver Apostle spoons and gives them to Sarah to pass on. Mabel, while going through some old clothes, comes upon a piece of cloth that remained from a christening gown. The fabric is embedded with woven butterflies, symbolically imprisoned in the material. She gives the piece to Barbie, who is quite taken with its fragility. In order to make up for having the wedding out of town, Mildred throws a buffet luncheon at the Pankot Rifles officers' mess for Pankot society. Mabel and Barbie go together, but are efficiently separated from each other under Mildred's instructions. Barbie is puzzled that her gift of spoons is not displayed with the other wedding gifts. Susan's pregnancy is announced and, several months later, news of Teddie's death arrives. While Sarah is in Calcutta visiting Merrick, who witnessed Teddie's death and was himself injured, Mabel Layton has a stroke and dies. Susan is witness to the old lady's death and the shock drives her into premature labor. Worried about the state of Mabel's soul, Barbie worms her way into the morgue at the hospital and thinks she sees the anguish of eternal torment on the face of her dead friend. She is then shocked to learn that Mabel will be buried in Pankot and not in Ranpur, as she had wished. She barges in on Mildred to plead for her friend's last wish, but Mildred rebukes her harshly for interfering and offers a vicious evaluation of her character. Mildred gives Barbie until the end of the month to vacate Rose Cottage. Susan survives the difficult childbirth and so does her prematurely delivered son. Sarah returns from Calcutta and gives the report of Merrick's heroism in trying to save Teddie. Barbie moves in with the vicar and his wife, Arthur and Clarissa Peplow. Barbie tries hard to get back into the missionary service, but finds a position difficult to secure. She learns through Sarah that Mabel has left her an annuity in her will. Barbie is embarrassed by the gesture and predicts that Mildred will cause trouble over it. Meanwhile, Susan's behavior is troubling. She seems not to be relating to her child in a maternal way. She seems often distracted and distant. One evening, remembering a fable about scorpions committing suicide when surrounded by fire told her by Barbie, Susan pours kerosene in a ring on the grass, puts her baby in the center and lights the fluid. The baby is quickly saved by a servant. However, it is now clear that there is something seriously wrong with Susan, and she is put under the care of a psychiatrist. Mildred blames Barbie for planting the idea in her mind and returns the Apostle spoons through Clarissa. Barbie, deeply hurt by the insult, sends notes to Colonel Trehearne and Captain Coley saying that she intends to make a gift of silver to the 1st Pankot Rifles. She then sets off in search of Coley to deliver the goods. Arriving at Coley's bungalow in a rainstorm, Barbie gets no answer at the door. Finding it unlocked, she goes in to leave the gift inside. But hearing an odd sound, she investigates and comes upon the sight of Coley and Mildred Layton rutting furiously. Undetected by the lovers, she flees from the bungalow, but is caught in the rainstorm and falls seriously ill, coming down with bronchopneumonia. Fenny is visiting from Calcutta and is gossiping with the Pankot women about recent events, Susan's recovery in the hospital, and the state of the household. Fenny suggests to Mildred that Sarah is under too much stress and should be allowed a vacation. Mildred turns viciously on Fenny, telling her that she cannot believe that she could try to fool her. Fenny does not know what Mildred is talking about until Mildred informs her that for the past two months, Sarah has not been using her sanitary napkins. Fenny realizes that Sarah is pregnant and that Jimmy Clark must have been responsible for it. Mildred assumed that Fenny already knew what the situation was. Fenny agrees to take Sarah away surreptitiously for a ""D&C,"" their euphemism for an abortion. With Sarah gone and Susan in hospital, Mildred decides to close Rose Cottage and move into Flagstaff House. Susan seems to be recovering under the care of psychiatrist Captain Samuels, the ""Jew-boy trick-cyclist"". Barbie, recovering from pneumonia but unable to speak above a whisper, finally donates the spoons to the regiment. She gets a letter from Calcutta, offering her a position as a teacher in Dibrapur, the site of Edwina Crane's horror. Captain Coley informs Barbie that a trunk full of her things has been found stored in a shed at Rose Cottage and it had better be removed before Mildred finds out. Knowing that she will soon be leaving the Peplows and will have enough space of her own, she goes up to the vacant cottage to retrieve her trunk. There she encounters Ronald Merrick, who is in town for treatment at the local military hospital and has come in search of the Laytons; however, no one is currently in residence. Barbie is excited to finally meet Merrick and asks him about Mayapore. She opens her trunk and presents him with her copy of the painting, ""The Jewel in the Crown"". Merrick recognizes it as one he saw among Edwina Crane's things and accepts it gratefully. Barbie has the tonga-wallah load the large trunk onto the tonga she is travelling in. Merrick worries that the load is too heavy, especially on such a steep road down from Rose Cottage. Barbie sets off anyway as it begins to rain. The dirt road becomes slick and the tonga-wallah loses control, dumping Barbie and the trunk in a ditch. Barbie is physically and mentally injured in the accident and ends up at a sanitarium in Ranpur. Her view is of the Parsees' towers of silence of the title. Sarah visits her, but she cannot seem to get through. Barbie dies just as the atomic bomb is exploded over Hiroshima in August 1945."
1914,The Price of Murder,history," Sir John and Jeremy are drawn deep into the notorious Seven Dials area of London, where they must contend with the most sordid inclinations of both the working class and the aristocracy. When the body of a young girl is pulled from the Thames, the search for the girl's mother takes Jeremy to the races."
1915,Barabbas,history," Jesus is crucified on Mount Golgotha. To the side of the crowd stands Barabbas. Being a violent man, a brigand and a rebel, he cannot muster much respect for the resignation of the man who died in his place. He is skeptical about the holiness of Jesus too. Yet, he is also fascinated by the sacrifice and he seeks out the different followers of Jesus trying to understand, but finds that their exalted views of Jesus do not match his down to earth observation of the man. More importantly, since Barabbas had not ever been the recipient of love (the cornerstone of the Christian faith), he finds that he is unable to understand love and hence Barabbas is unable to understand the Christian faith. Barabbas says that he ""Wants to believe,"" but for Barabbas, understanding is a prerequisite for belief, so he is unable. After many trials and tribulations he ends up in Rome where he mistakes the Great Fire of Rome as the start of the new Kingdom of Heaven and enthusiastically helps spread the conflagration. Consequently, he is arrested and crucified along with other Christians as a martyr for a faith he does not understand."
1916,A Northern Light,history," A Northern Lights feisty sixteen-year-old narrator Mathilda ""Mattie"" Gokey has strong morals and is highly intelligent. She lives in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York—the ""North Woods"" in her words—during 1906. Mattie dreams of going to Barnard College in New York City. While she is smart enough to go, she is not allowed. Her mother died and her brother Lawton left home because of a fight with their father. Later in the story the reader discovers that Lawton thinks his father killed their mother by working her too hard, giving her cancer. There is no one to work on the farm except Mattie and her three younger sisters, Abby, Lou, and Beth. Her family struggles with money, so they can't send a girl with two good working hands to college. Mattie's passion is reading and writing. Every day, she looks up a new word in her dictionary so that she can educate herself and become more articulate. Her best friend, Weaver Smith, is also intelligent and has large aspirations. Weaver is African-American and is as strong in math as Mattie is in literature. Weaver is the one who shows Mattie's writings to their teacher, Mrs. Wilcox, which prompts her to send an application to Barnard for Mattie. The application yields a ""full scholarship"" to Barnard but when she does the math she knows she can't afford to buy the books and a train ticket, or to leave her father with her three young sisters to run the farm. Mattie soon finds out that Mrs. Wilcox clandestinely writes feminist poetry, which is unwelcome in the world of literature. She writes about the lack of rights for women, which is a sensitive subject at the turn of the century. Many people think poorly of her but she keeps writing, encouraging Mattie to do the same. Mattie doesn't give up completely on going to college. Mother had made her promise to pursue knowledge, and Mattie intends to. She cleans her rich and nosy Aunt Josie's house every week and tries to ask her for money, but Aunt Josie tells Mattie she is being selfish to try and leave the farm and the family, like her brother Lawton. Aunt Josie refuses to give Mattie money. Mattie, a romantic, is jealous of her friend, Minnie's, loving relationship with her husband Jim. Later on in the novel, Mattie helps Minnie give birth to her twins. The novel is written in alternating chapters from the past and present. In the past, Mattie is explains her life on the farm; in the present she works at The Glenmore, a hotel on Big Moose Lake, to earn money during the summer. The body of Grace Brown is found in the lake near the hotel. Earlier that day, Grace had asked Mattie to burn a pack of letters. Mattie didn't have to time to burn them. She is drawn in by the mystery of what they might say, and she begins to read them. They reveal some shocking information about Grace's lover, Chester Gillette, who checked into the hotel as Carl Grahm. Grace was pregnant with Chester's child at the time, so he killed her. Royal Loomis is also a major part of this story. He has recently developed a crush on Mattie, but she can't figure out why. She thinks she is plain, bookish, and too smart for her own good. Even though Mattie knows she likes Royal, she continues to push him away because she doesn't think he likes her for the right reasons. Despite the rejection, it draws Royal even closer. Still young and naive, Royal's continuous advances make Mattie nervous, but she can't resist. She compares Royal to the characters in books she reads, and makes herself think that he is as heroic as the literary characters. He tries to connect with her by giving her a book. Unfortunately he chooses to give her a cookbook, which is a backhanded gift that shows he wants her to be just like other girls. Mattie is more confused than ever with Royal's insincere advances. Unfortunately, all of the mixed feelings that she has for Royal end up being pointless because in the end, he only likes her because he wanted to get a part of her land. Emmie Hubbard is Mattie's lonely, poor, and depressed neighbor who has seven children. Emmie is having an affair with a married man, Mr. Loomis (Royal's father). Royal resents the Hubbards. He thinks that his father treats them better than his own family. After Weaver's house was set on fire by the same people that murdered his father -taking all of his saved money with it- Emmie steps up and invites Weaver's mother to stay with her in her home. Now Emmie has a good, strong-willed woman to clean her up and help her with a business to make money. Weaver's mother has a place to stay where she is needed. In the end, Mattie makes the incredibly difficult choice to leave the North Woods and go to school in New York City. She leaves in the morning, and the only person she tells is Weaver. She writes three letters, one to her father, one to Royal, and one to Weaver's mother. To her father, she leaves two dollars and a promise that she will keep in touch. To Royal she leaves the ring that he gave to her when he proposed. Finally, to Weaver's mother she leaves just enough money to pay off Emmie's taxes. She also gives Weaver money for a train ticket to college. As her closest friend, Weaver does not want her to leave but he understands that she is going to make a better life for herself. Though she feels incredibly guilty for leaving, she can't help but also feel excited, scared, and willing. She has made her peace with Grace because she decided to show the letters to the world so now every one can see the true, tragic story of Grace Brown. She is now ready to leave it behind, and keep her life in the North Woods as a memory."
1917,The Golden Wind,history," The novel concerns the adventures of Eudoxus of Cyzicus and Hippalus on the first voyages by sea from Egypt to India. Following these, it deals with Eudoxus' efforts to circumvent the newly established Egyptian monopoly on trade with India by pioneering a new route around the west coast of Africa, which are ultimately defeated by misadventure and the sheer extent of the continent."
1918,Rifles for Watie,history," Jeff marches off to Fort Leavenworth from Linn County, Kansas in 1861, on his way to join the Union volunteers. He's off to fight for the North; his zeal having been fueled by reaction to the guerilla war of ""bushwhackers"" that was taking place in eastern Kansas. However, Stand Watie is on the side of the South. We meet many soldiers and civilians on both sides of the war, including Watie's raiding parties, itinerant printer Noah Babbitt and, in Tahlequah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) the beautiful Cherokee girl, Lucy Washbourne. Jeff's story is notable as he eventually winds up fighting for both the North and the South at different times during the conflict while making new friends on each side. It is also notable for the detailed depiction of contemporary Cherokee life in Indian Territory, including various tribal political factions. Keith portrays how Jeff Bussey, in the midst of huge conflicts, had to choose one side or another at various times and how this was not always as simple as it may seem in historical hindsight."
1919,Hornblower in the West Indies,history," Hornblower raises his flag in the schooner HMS Crab and pays a courtesy call at New Orleans. There, he learns of a plot by Napoleon's most loyal followers to liberate him from his exile on the isolated island of St Helena. Hornblower intercepts their ship, the Daring, but is powerless to stop them by force; with no other choice, he lies to their leader, Count Cambronne, telling him that Napoleon has died. When he returns to port, he learns to his astonishment and relief that his lie was the truth. While attempting to suppress the slave trade HMS Clorinda, the vessel carrying Hornblower's flag, follows a faster slave ship, the Estrella del Sur, into a Puerto Rican port. Hornblower figures out a way to disable the slave ship, so that when it leaves port, the Clorinda will be able to catch it. Hornblower, characteristically, outsmarts his subordinate, the dim-witted, pompous Captain Fell of the Clorinda to the point he thinks the sabotage plan was his idea. Pirates kidnap Hornblower and his young secretary Spendlove and take them to their hideout near Montego Bay. Hornblower escapes, and makes use of mortars again to reduce their hideout. Forester takes artistic license with the geography of Jamaica. Hornblower is visited by a rich young wool merchant, named Ramsbottom, one of the very first millionaires. The young man is on a tour of the Caribbean in his yacht, a converted ex-Royal Navy brig-sloop, the Bride of Abydos. Hornblower tours Ramsbottom's yacht during a dinner party on board. Ramsbottom explains his interest in Latin America by saying that he has a Venezuelan mother. He is cautioned to stay away from the South American coast, which is in a state of rebellion against Spain. It turns out, however, that Ramsbottom, far from being a tourist, is dedicated to helping Spain's South American colonies to achieve their independence. While Hornblower and his squadron are conveniently away on manoeuvres, Ramsbottom, by pretending that his yacht is the Desperate, a Royal Navy brig enforcing a (bogus) blockade, captures the Helmond, an unsuspecting Dutch transport, and secures the Spanish artillery train forming its cargo. Hornblower hears the news on his return from manoeuvres and goes to investigate. He finds Ramsbottom's ship, empty, accompanied by the Helmond, anchored off the coast of Venezuela. The captured cannons have been instrumental in the defeat of the Spanish forces. Hornblower secures Bride of Abydos just before the arrival of a Spanish and a Dutch frigate, from where Spanish and Dutch naval officers swiftly arrive to demand its surrender. Hornblower by verbal trickery manages to avoid both surrendering the Bride of Abydos and starting a war. Hornblower's wife Barbara comes out to Jamaica for Hornblower's final days as Commander in Chief, and to accompany him home. On the voyage back, they endure a hurricane and shipwreck. In the middle of the hurricane, Barbara drops her final wall of reserve as she assures him she has never loved another man. sv:Hornblower i Västindien"
1920,The Great Train Robbery,history," In 1854, Edward Pierce, a charismatic and affluent ""cracksman"" or master thief, makes plans to steal a shipment of gold worth more than twelve thousand pounds being transported monthly from London to the Crimean War front. He faces enormous obstacles as the bank has taken strict precautions, including locking the gold in two heavy safes, each of which has two locks, thus requiring a total of four keys to open. He recruits Robert Agar, a ""screwsman"" or specialist in copying keys, as an accomplice. To ensure the success of his bold plan, Pierce spends more than a year in preparation; his first steps are fairly easy as he uses his wealth and social contacts to procure information on the security measures and locations of the keys: the bank's executives Mr. Henry Fowler and Mr. Edgar Trent each possess a key; the other two are locked in a cabinet at the offices of the South Eastern Railway at the London Bridge train station. Pierce's first target is the key held by Edgar Trent. The attempt to take Mr. Trent's key is difficult, as Pierce has no clues or prior information on his habits. Through painstaking surveillance, conversations with bank employees and a deliberately bungled pickpocketing attempt, Pierce deduces that Mr. Trent's key is kept at his mansion but is still unable to learn the exact location. After learning that Trent is keen on ratting (a blood sport involving the betting on dogs killing rats), Pierce succeeds in becoming acquainted with the man and while visiting the Trent mansion feigns romantic interest in Elizabeth Trent, Mr. Trent's twenty-nine year old daughter, who has had few suitors. Edward begins to court Elizabeth and manages to learn that the key is most likely located in the basement wine cellar. With the assistance of his mistress Miriam and cab driver Barlow, Pierce and Agar successfully break into Mr. Trent's home at night and make a wax copy of the key after a painstaking search. Henry Fowler develops syphilis and, being unwilling to seek medical attention out of embarrassment, decides to seek a remedy by sleeping with a virgin (similar to superstitions about HIV) and asks Pierce for assistance. After charging Fowler the exorbitant price of one hundred guineas for a night of pleasure with a twelve-year-old (twelve being the legal age of consent), Pierce and Agar take advantage of the opportunity to make a copy of Fowler's key (which he always carries with him around his neck but takes off and leaves on the bedside table during the assignation). The most difficult keys to copy are the two keys at the train station which Pierce plans to procure and copy by night; the presence of ""crushers"" (policemen) forces him to recruit a ""snakesman"" (a burglar able to slip inside buildings through small and cramped spaces) nicknamed Clean Willy, who is currently incarcerated in the high-security Newgate Prison. He sends a message through Willy's former mistress and assists him in escaping from Newgate while the public is distracted by a public execution outside the prison. After nursing Willy back to health from injuries received during the escape, the criminals succeed in making wax copies of the two keys at the railway station, completing the task with only seconds to spare before detection. Now possessing all four copies of the necessary keys, Pierce loses no time in bribing Burgess, the poorly-paid guard on the train who rides in the baggage van containing the safes. Agar is then able to perform a dry run of the theft on February 17, 1855, making sure that the copied keys work perfectly. Everything appears to be moving along smoothly; the actual theft is planned for May 22nd when the would-be thieves find themselves seriously compromised: Clean Willy turns informant to the police. Pierce manages to have Willy murdered before he can reveal the most crucial information, although their plans are now in danger of discovery by law enforcement agents who correctly fear that a major robbery is at hand. Through careful manipulation of a ""nose"" (informant), the criminals manage to divert the police's attention to an alleged robbery in Greenwich, leaving them free and clear to finally strike. On the eve of the Great Train Robbery, another unexpected development occurs as a new railway policy requires the train doors to be locked from the outside. Unwilling to further delay their plans, Pierce manages to smuggle Agar into the baggage van inside a coffin and then risks his life by climbing across the roof of the train during their journey and unlocking the door from the outside, thus allowing them to drop off the gold at a pre-arranged point. By the next day, much of England is in an uproar upon the discovery of the robbery with every organization involved in the gold shipment blaming each other, with few leads as to the true culprits, who have largely vanished from the public eye. Although their daring plan appears to have succeeded, Pierce, Agar and Burgess are ultimately apprehended after Agar's mistress, who has been arrested for robbing a drunk, becomes a police informant to escape imprisonment, and Agar confesses after being threatened by the police with transportation to Australia. Pierce and Burgess are arrested at a prize-fighting event in Manchester, and all three are convicted. Pierce is sentenced to a long prison term but manages to successfully escape while being transported from the court and disappears, though reports indicate he, Miriam and Barlow spend much of the rest of their lives living in luxury in various foreign cities such as New York and Paris. The train guard Burgess dies of cholera during his short prison term, while Agar is indeed transported to Australia but manages to prosper, and passes away a wealthy man. Edgar Trent dies from a chest ailment in 1857, while Henry Fowler dies from ""unknown causes"" (presumably from the syphilis he had contracted) in 1858. The gold from the Great Train Robbery is never recovered."
1921,Flashman,history," Flashman's expulsion from Rugby for drunkenness leads him to join the Army for what he hopes will be a sinecure. He joins the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons commanded by Lord Cardigan whom he toadies in his best style. After an affair with a fellow officer's lover, he is forced to fight a duel but wins after promising a large sum of money to the pistol loader to give his opponent a blank load in his gun. He does not kill his opponent but instead delopes and accidentally shoots the top off a bottle thirty yards away, an action that gives him instant fame and the respect of the Duke of Wellington. However, once it was found out what they were fighting over, Flashman is stationed in Scotland. He is quartered with the Morrison family, and soon enough he takes advantage of one of the daughters, Elspeth. After a forced marriage, Flashman is required to resign the Hussars due to marrying below his station. He is given another option, to make his reputation in India. By showing off his language and riding skills in India, Flashman is assigned to the worst frontier of the British Empire at that time, Afghanistan. His adventures include the retreat from Kabul, Last Stand at Gandamak and the Siege of Jalalabad, in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Despite being captured, tortured, and escaping death numerous times, and hiding and shirking his duty as much as possible, he comes through it all alive and with a hero's reputation&nbsp;... although his triumph is tempered when he realises his wife might have been unfaithful while he was away."
1922,My Theodosia,history," The story begins on Theodosia's seventeenth birthday in the year 1800, where her father Aaron Burr introduces Theodosia to her soon to be husband Joseph Alston. Theodosia is not keen on her father's choice for a husband, for she does not realise that her father hopes the marriage will increase his political support in the southern states, as well as lead to financial gain. During Theodosia and Joseph's official courtship, by chance Theodosia meets Meriwether Lewis, and the two are instantly attracted to each other. However Aaron Burr spots the two together, and stops any chance of a romance before it begins. Reluctantly but dutifully, Theodosia capitulates to her father's wishes and marries Joseph Alston in February 1801. The couple then settle in Joseph's home state of South Carolina, and Theodosia soon gives birth to her first and only child. However Theodosia is never happy in the South and constantly longs for the company of her father (and a reunification with Meriwether Lewis). The story moves on through Aaron Burr's time as Vice President: his controversial actions dueling Alexander Hamilton; his working to take over Mexico, naming himself as king; and his subsequent trial. Theodosia is always behind her father, even if it is at the cost of her marriage to Joseph, and her romance with Meriwether."
1923,Sir Percy Hits Back,history," Fleurette is a beautiful, innocent country girl who has been protected by her indulgent, wealthy father from the worst horrors of the revolution. Her father Citizen Armand, whom she calls Bibi, is frequently away from home because of his exalted position in the government, but he dotes on her and showers her with gifts and affection during his infrequent visits to their house at Lou Mas, in Dauphiné near Larangne. As Fleurette's mother is dead, she is looked after by Old Louise the housekeeper when Bibi is away. She also spends much time at the Frontenac family farm and is in love with her childhood sweetheart Amédé, the son of the local épicier M'sieu' Colombe. Amédé is now twenty and will soon be leaving the village to become a soldier and fight the English. On Fleurette's 18th birthday, Bibi comes home to visit and all seems perfect in Fleurette's world. Yet, although the horrors of the Revolution appear far away, in reality they are nearby, for a group of soldiers has arrived in the village to arrest the Frontenac family at their chateau. When the soldiers arrive at the farm they discover that Madame de Frontenac and her crippled daughter Rose have disappeared. Only Charles de Frontenac, farmer and descendant of a long line of aristocrats, is at the house. They turn the house over looking for his wife and daughter with no success for the Scarlet Pimpernel has beaten them to it. Meanwhile, oblivious to what is happening at the farm, Fleurette hears a mysterious voice that tells her ""Papers and valuables are behind the panel in Madame's room"" She realises that &#39;Madame&#39; is Madame de Frontenac and rushes excitedly to the chateau, thinking that the message is from St. Antoine, and that perhaps Madame has mislaid some papers. She arrives at the farm to discover the soldiers have trashed the place. Remembering a secret cupboard that Madame had shown her and Rose, Fleurette takes a wallet, a money-bag and a small casket and hides them in her pockets and under her shawl. She is just about to leave for home when she runs into her father standing by the stables with a tricolour sash around his waist. She gets away without him discovering what she has been doing and gives the items to her lover Amédé to hide in his father&#39;s tool shed. The next day, a group of soldiers arrive to search the Colombe&#39;s premises, having been tipped off that the items are there. They find the items and march off with Amédé, M. de Frontenac, and the soldiers who were there before. It&#39;s not long before Fleurette hears that Amédé has been accused of theft and, determined to clear his name, she takes old Louise and searches for her father to explain what really happened in the hope that he can intervene. She eventually finds him down in Orange at the Commission, for her father is none other than Citizen Armand Chauvelin, the arch-enemy of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin may be ruthless and merciless, but it appears that he can also be gentle and caring where Fleurette is concerned. It turns out that the soldiers who took Amédé, M. de Frontenac were actually the &#39;English spies&#39; and he is terrified of what might happen to Fleurette after he hears her story. It is not long before Chauvelin&#39;s fears come true as Lieutenant Godot, whom Chauvelin has threatened to denounce for losing the prisoners to the Scarlet Pimpernel, brings Fleurette in front of the Committee on a charge of treason. To make matters worse there is a witness: Old Louise&#39;s daughter Adele who has always resented Fleurette&#39;s wealthy lifestyle. With his daughter apparently trapped by laws that he had helped to create, Chauvelin is determined to save her, thinking even now that if only he can capture the Scarlet Pimpernel, perhaps he would be able to trade the Englishman for his daughter&#39;s life. Despite his best efforts to forestall the inevitable process of trial and guillotine from happening to his beloved daughter the day arrives when Fleurette must face condemnation from her own father. After suffering intense mental anguish for weeks it finally occurs to Chauvelin that he may have to turn to his bitter enemy for help; for surely the Scarlet Pimpernel is the only person who can save Fleurette - but will Sir Percy be willing to help his enemy&#39;s child considering Chauvelin&#39;s previous treatment of Lady Blakeney? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge"
1924,Walk in My Soul,history," Walk in My Soul is the story of Tiana Rogers of the Cherokee, the young Sam Houston, and the Trail of Tears. Tiana grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of the Cherokee. In a tribe that revered the life force that was female, she became a beloved woman—priestess, healer, and teacher. Known as the ""father of Texas"", the young Sam Houston ran away on a lark from his family's general store in Maryville, Tennessee, to live among the Cherokee. He hunted and played ritual games with the men and was adopted as a headman's son and was known as ""Raven"". Houston falls in love with Tiana, but due to their differing racial and cultural backgrounds, conflict ensues."
1925,"Blood Red, Snow White",history," The novel is in three parts. The first part, ""A Russian Fairy Tale"", deliberately evokes the atmosphere of Arthur Ransome's Old Peter's Russian Tales. It is a fairy-tale account of the circumstances leading to the Russian Revolution, featuring the poor woodcutter, the orphaned children, the romantic but oblivious Royal family, the mad monk, the sleeping bear and the two conspirators in the wood. The novel continues by presenting history from the perspective of an individual, an outsider. The English writer Arthur Ransome, in Russia to collect folktales, stays to observe events, becoming a correspondent for the Daily News. In the second part of the novel, ""One Night in Moscow"", Ransome is haunted by the scenes he has witnessed. They appear as a scatter of flashbacks, reflecting the confusion in his mind. He has experienced the pull of Bolshevik idealism, and has fallen in love with Trotsky's secretary, Evgenia. On the other hand he is appalled by the brutality of some revolutionaries and considers helping his friend Robert Lockhart of the British Embassy. He finally decides that he has no business interfering with the destiny of Russia, one way or the other, and leaves Moscow for Stockholm. The final part, ""A Fairy Tale, Ending"", focuses on Ransome's private life, and shifts into first person narration. Ransome's supposed Bolshevist sympathies bring him under suspicion when the Red Terror begins, but he redeems himself by helping to free Lockhart from the Kremlin. Ransome is happy with Evgenia in Stockholm and when she has to return to Russia, he chooses to go with her. To ease his return, he reconsiders the offer from the SIS, and becomes agent S76. Lenin welcomes him back to Russia, dismissing Trotsky's fears that he might be a spy. On what is intended to be a brief visit to England, he meets unexpected difficulties, being questioned by the authorities and losing his job with the Daily News. It is some months before he regains his journalist status, and meanwhile there is civil war in Russia. As the Tsarist White Army makes advances against the Bolshevik Red Army, he becomes worried for Evgenia's safety. He takes considerable risks to return to Russia, and eventually succeeds in bringing her back west with him."
1926,The Commodore,history," The Commodore opens with Jack winning the Ringle, a Baltimore Clipper, from his friend Captain Dundas, the having accompanied the Berenice back from Chile. Aubrey and Maturin have returned to England, (after adventures in the South Pacific and South America) where the latter finds that his young daughter Brigid appears to be an ""idiot"" or ""natural"" (to use the language of the time) and unable to speak, and that his wife Diana has fled the situation, leaving Brigid in the care of the newly-widowed Clarissa Oakes. When Stephen meets Sir Joseph Blaine at Black's, their club, he is told that Clarissa's information led to the Duke of Habachtsthal being supposed the third conspirator in the Ledward-Wray conspiracy. Unfortunately, the Duke is too highly placed for Blaine's investigation to do much good and in fact does even more harm to Stephen and his friends. Blaine tells Stephen that the Duke's influence has delayed the pardons of both Clarissa and Padeen as well as instigated an investigation into Stephen's role in the Irish revolt. After hearing this information, Stephen asks Jack for the Ringle and sets off to cash out his bank accounts and then proceeds to have Clarissa, Padeen and Brigid taken to live at the Benedictine house in Ávila, Spain out of the clutches of the Duke. Blaine hires Pratt, whom Stephen had employed in The Reverse of the Medal, to gather information on the Duke. Once the squadron is formed, Aubrey and Maturin are very publicly instructed to disrupt the African slave trade, now illegal, but the true mission of the squadron is to intercept a French invasion force which expects a sympathetic welcome in Maturin's native Ireland. The squadron begins on a difficult note, when the Admiralty reassigns the powerful frigate Pyramus, replacing her with the smaller frigate Thames instead. Also, the Stately is commanded by Duff, a paederast, who destroys discipline by taking young lovers among his forecastlemen. Another of the captains is a tyrant, Captain Thomas who, unlike Aubrey, values spit and polish more than efficiency in battle, and indiscriminately flogs his crewmen. These two captains and their crews soon find themselves at odds, threatening the squadron's efficiency. The Ringle makes it safely to Corunna in Galicia where Stephen sees off his wards and deposits his considerable amounts of gold. The Ringle rendezvouses with the at the Berlings off Cape Finisterre, and they make their way to the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, with the crews practising hard at lowering down boats. Stephen survives a near fatal bout of Yellow Fever contracted while traipsing around the swamplands of West Africa in his usual search for rare birds and animals, a quest in which he is ably assisted in Freetown by the British colonial governor's wife, Christine Wood (née Hatherleigh), herself an esteemed naturalist and sister of one of Stephen's fellow members of the Royal Society. The squadron successfully disrupts the slave trade, saving over 5,000 slaves and having eight slaving ships condemned. Aubrey then hastens to meet the French squadron, commanded by the wily Commodore Esprit-Tranquil Maistral, south and east of the point the French are expected to reach (West Cork). Jack informs his captains of his plan of attack and the Bellona attacks the French pennant-ship, with the Thames and Stately attacking the other French two-decker. The first strikes on a rocky shelf and surrenders; the second badly mauls the Stately (Duff loses a leg) and flees eastwards. The four French troop carriers and one frigate are also captured (one frigate also escapes), aided by the Royal Oak and Warwick, who join the scene of battle. Maturin finds as the novel closes that the Duke of Habachtsthal has committed suicide. This is possibly due to the threat of trial for treason after being identified by Clarissa Oakes and following extensive investigation carried out by Pratt, a former Bow Street Runner employed by Maturin and Sir Joseph Blaine. Stephen is also happily reunited once more with Diana, who happens to be living near that part of the Irish coast with one of her first husband's uncles."
1927,The Letter of Marque,history," In The Letter of Marque, Jack Aubrey, now a civilian, prepares the Surprise to sail as a privateer. The term ""Letter of Marque"" comes from the legal letters given to captains of private vessels allowing them to wage war in the name of the King against the King's enemies. While Jack often associated ""privateers"" with legalised pirates, he agrees to sail the Surprise, but always refers to the ship under the more respectable term ""Letter of Marque."" Jack is bitter and low-spirited about his dismissal from the Navy List, and dreads affronts and disrespectful treatment from any Royal Navy vessels and their officers. However, he is strongly supported by his crew - notably a group of smugglers and Sethian religious fanatics recruited at the little port of Shelmerston (fictional) in south-west England. The downfall of the traitors Wray and Ledward in the previous book has restored order in British intelligence circles, and Maturin - now the secret owner of Surprise - plans to use her privateering as cover for a covert anti-Spanish mission to South America. The ship is therefore under official protection to an extent and Aubrey's innocence is known privately to many, though the spies are still at large and politics will make his rehabilitation impossible without extraordinary deeds on his part. They depart on a cruise, during which Maturin's servant Padeen becomes a secret laudanum addict after painful dental surgery, diluting Maturin's own supplies with brandy in order to conceal his theft. Maturin is thus unknowingly weaned off his own addiction (though he later substitutes it with the practice of chewing Coca leaves). The Surprise captures an American privateer's consort, the Merlin, and then boards the privateer Spartan itself, retrieving its valuable cargo of quicksilver, looted from the Spanish barque Azul, as well as tricking her five prizes out of Horta harbour. These, together with his success in the cutting-out of the frigate Diane from the French port of Saint Martin-de-Rey despite serious wounds, make Aubrey both wealthy again and a popular hero. He is offered the opportunity to seek a free pardon, but angrily declines on the grounds that he is innocent and his friends fear that he has missed his chance of redemption. However, Aubrey's embarrassing father, a fugitive since his part in the stock-jobbing affair, is found dead in a ditch, and Aubrey is offered a Parliamentary seat by his cousin, Edward Norton, who owns the borough of Milport. This extra influence is enough for him to receive private assurances from Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, that he will indeed be restored to the Navy List as soon as the time is right. Maturin, in possession once more of Diana's magnificent Blue Peter diamond, decides to take it to her in Sweden. He sails part of the way on the old Leopard, now sadly reduced to a lowly transport ship, before re-joining the Surprise. He meets his wife Diana in Stockholm and is unsurprised to learn that the letter he sent to her from Gibraltar via Wray, accounting for his supposed infidelity, was never delivered. She also tells him she has not been unfaithful with Jagiello, and has been supporting herself by ascending - whilst mounted on a small Arab horse - in a hot-air balloon before an audience. Maturin is seriously injured in a fall after taking his usual dose of laudanum to soothe himself after their initial meeting, unaware that his tolerance has been reduced by Padeen's actions. Diana nurses him back to health and they become reconciled once more. When the Surprise returns from a trip to Riga to buy poldavy, Maturin hears from Martin about Padeen's laudanum addiction, discovered after he was caught siphoning laudanum from one of the carboys and replacing the tincture with brandy. Stephen is well enough to be finally transported back to the ship, accompanied by Colonel Jagiello's escort, and Diana embarks with him and Jack for home."
1928,Lord John and the Succubus,history," Briefly stationed at Gundwitz with a group of English and Hanoverian soldiers, Grey was at first sceptical when he received reports of a local succubus. Joining the search at the town's graveyard for the strange creature only to placate the townspeople, he soon discovered that reality was a lot more complicated than he thought. pl:Lord John i sukub"
1929,The Scribes from Alexandria,history," The story starts with Nubia struggling in the sea and Flavia waking up on a beach. On the way home to Ostia from Volubilis, they have suffered shipwreck. Flavia soon finds Lupus and Jonathan alive, but Nubia and Flavia's uncle Gaius are missing. Nubia has been seen in the company of one of the scribes from the Library, but the scribe, a eunuch called Chryses, cannot be found. The Head Scholar assigns another young scribe, a devout Jew called Seth ben Aaron, to go with the children to find Chryses and Nubia. Starting in Chryses's sleeping quarters they find a trail of riddles and anagrams leading to different places in Alexandria, and then to the Great Pyramid. Their search is complicated by the fact that they are being pursued by Roman soldiers. Seth's cousin Nathan, a smuggler, takes them up the Nile on his sailing boat, hoping to find treasure. They find more clues leading far up-river and realise that Nubia is returning to her native land. They follow, but wonder if Nubia will want to go back to Ostia with them. Some of the chapters describe Nubia's journey with Chryses, by donkey-cart and camel, and her meeting with other members of the Leopard clan on Elephantine, an island in the Nile on the southern Egyptian border."
1930,The Marrow of Tradition,history," Set in the fictional town of Wellington, The Marrow of Tradition features several interweaving plots that encompass the poles of the racially segregated society of the American South at the turn of the century. One plot follows Major Carteret, the white owner of the major Wellington newspaper, as he colludes with several other powerful white men to take political control of the town. They are outraged about a provocative editorial published in a black paper that questioned white justifications for lynchings. As the town’s unrest intensifies, Carteret faces domestic pressures; his only child Dodie and wife Olivia are both unwell. Carteret’s niece Clara, recently introduced to society, is courted by the young Tom Delamere, a handsome and conniving aristocrat who spends most evenings nurturing his penchant for drink and cards. His habits are contrasted with those of Lee Ellis, a rival for Clara, and William Miller, a young black physician who with his wife has returned to his hometown of Wellington to practice medicine. He gained his medical education in Paris and Vienna. Though jarred by segregation and Jim Crow racism, Miller sets up his practice and starts his life. Josh Green as a boy witnessed the murder of his father at the hands of a white man—a character named Captain McBane—and is intent on exacting revenge. All these subplots are forced to a crisis through two events: the beginning of the riot and the murder of a white woman, Polly Ochiltree, for which a black servant, Sandy Campbell, is arrested. Tom Delamere is the real culprit. In this web of plotlines, Josh Green, whom Miller is unable to persuade to pursue racial equality along peaceable lines, ends up walking into the face of attackers to try to satisfy vengeance and kill McBane. Miller goes to the aid of Sandy Campbell to stave off a lynching. He is asked to give medical care to Carteret’s baby boy, although the publisher had helped foment the riot. A stray bullet has killed Miller's infant son. The novel ends with Miller, setting aside his own losses, agreeing to go to Carteret’s home to aid his dying son."
1931,Abba Abba,history," In Part One, the poet has various adventures, meeting the Roman (dialectal) poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli in the Sistine Chapel, and Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, in the Pincio. Part Two consists of about seventy (from a total of 2,279) amusingly blasphemous sonnets by Belli, purportedly translated by one ""Joseph Joachim Wilson"", a descendant of the Roman man-of-letters Giovanni Gulielmi (a character in Part One). An elaborate passage describes how the Italian Gulielmis were transformed into English Wilsons ""during a wave of anti-Italian feeling occasioned by alleged ice-cream poisoning in the 1890s in the Lancashire coastal resorts of Blackpool, Cleveleys, Bispham and Fleetwood"". ""J. J. Wilson"" is a thinly veiled ""John Anthony Burgess Wilson""."
1932,The Reluctant Queen: The Story of Anne of York,history," The novel begins in with a prologue, in the year 1485. Anne, the narrator, knows she is dying and has decided to write her memoirs before death slowly takes her. She worries about the fate of her family including that of her husband Richard, the King of England. Richard is severely maligned by his people, and Anne fears that his power and position would be greatly jeopardized after her death. This leads to her reminiscing on happier days. She recalls growing up in the English countryside with her noble family: her father Richard, her mother Anne, and sister Isabel. At the age of five she meets her future husband, eight-year-old Richard Plantagenet who is studying under the tutelage of her father. Richard's brother Edward has recently been proclaimed King by the English people, usurping the throne from mentally unstable King Henry VI and his aloof consort, Margaret of Anjou. Richard enthralls young Anne with tales of his brother and the Wars of the Roses. Anne's father as the Earl of Warwick has played a crucial part in placing Edward on the English Throne, and plans to marry him to French noblewoman, Bona of Savoy, much to his daughter Isabel's chagrin as she secretly wants to be Queen Consort. Soon all of England is shocked to discover that Edward has secretly married a young widowed mother, Elizabeth Woodville Grey who is five years older than he is, and is considered by many to be a ""commoner"". The Earl is disgusted with Edward's choice of a bride, as is Edward's mother Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who out of spite informs her son that she had him illegitimately. He does not believe her and refuses to have the marriage annulled, something which will have calamitous results in the future. Isabel, dismayed that the King did not choose her for a bride, sets her sights on his younger brother George, Duke of Clarence. George and Isabel marry just as Warwick severs ties with King Edward and joins the Lancastrian side of the War of the Roses. A pregnant Isabel is so distressed by the sudden move that she gives birth to a stillborn daughter. Warwick proposes that Anne marry Edward, Prince of Wales Henry and Margaret's son. Anne is terrified that Queen Margaret will be her mother-in-law until she gets to know her better. Anne's parents, along with Isabel and George, head back to England, while Anne remains with her future in-laws. Soon Anne marries and travels back to England with her husband and mother-in-law as Princess of Wales. She is horrified to discover that her father has died in the dreaded Battle of Barnet. Prince Edward also dies in battle, much to the grief of Queen Margaret. Soon she and Anne are taken prisoner by the Yorkist soldiers. The King releases Anne, believing her the victim of her father's ambition. Queen Margaret is imprisoned and Anne is sent under the watchful eye of George and Isabel, as her mother in fear of her life is living in sanctuary in a abbey. Anne and Richard meet again after a long years absence and soon fall in love. Richard proposes marriage to her and she accepts, much to George's horror. George, wanting the inheritance of Warwick only for himself, drugs Anne and arranges for her to be spirited away to be taken in by servants and force her to believe that she is a disillusioned scullery maid. Anne manages to see through the facade and asks for one of the deposed servant girls for help. The girl alerts Richard who rescues Anne. The entire court as well as Isabel believed Anne to have run away after her marriage was refused by her guardian's. Despite several setbacks, Anne marries Richard and becomes Duchess of Gloucester. With her relatives restored to favor, Anne's mother is reunited with her children, and is delighted to learn that Isabel is pregnant again. Isabel gives birth to a daughter Margaret Plantagenet. Anne wants to give Richard a child and is dismayed to learn that he had had a mistress before the marriage, and shares two children with her. Anne is shocked and hurt but soon forgives Richard, and they eventually have a son christened Edward after the King. Isabel becomes pregnant again twice, but dies along with her last infant son. Richard's one-time mistress also dies leaving Anne as stepmother to her two young children. George, distraught over his wife's death, confronts the King and dies mysteriously. After several years, King Edward dies suddenly, leaving his young son as heir. It is soon discovered that the late King had betrothed marriage to another, making his marriage to Queen Elizabeth invalid, and barring her children from the throne. Richard, and a reluctant Anne assume rule as King and Queen. Anne worries about the health of her young son, and her own imbalances of illness which leads her to believe that Richard is attracted to his niece Elizabeth of York. When Edward dies, Anne's health takes a turn for the worse. Rumors envelop the countryside after Richard's nephews vanish without a trace. Richard invites his widowed sister-in-law and her daughter's back to court, despite Anne's paranoia about Elizabeth. Anne realizes her mistake too late. With the last ounce of her strength she writes her memoirs, then silently dies on the night of an eclipse. Unmentioned in the novel are Richard's eventual downfall and death at the battle of Bosworth and Elizabeth's rise as consort of the new king, and mother of a new dynasty, and the fate of Isabel's children Edward and Margaret who were executed in 1499 and 1541 respectively."
1933,Gaston de Blondeville,history," Set in the 13th century court of England's King Henry III the novel centers around the wedding of the title character. The wedding is interrupted by a merchant who claims to have been wronged by Gaston, in that Gaston murdered his kinsman. Henry is forced to hold a trial to determine the validity of the claims. The plot is further complicated by the machinations of an abbot who tries to suppress the truth, and by ghosts who want to expose the truth."
1934,Sharpe's Gold,history," Major Michael Hogan orders Sharpe to find out what happened to Claud Hardy, one of his exploring officers, who was sent to locate the gold thought to be in the fictional hamlet of Castejeda. Sharpe sets off with the men of his small company as his sole military support and links up with Major Kearsey, another of Hogan's exploring officers. It becomes clear to Sharpe that Kearsey believes that the gold belongs to the Spanish and should only be returned to them, and that that is the purpose of the mission they are on. However Sharpe has secret orders that the gold must be taken to British lines and begins to doubt Kearsey is aware of them. We meet the local partisan commander El Catolico, who is engaged in a bitter struggle with local French cavalry. Kearsey is captured by the French and Sharpe decides to go into the town and liberate him and ascertain the location of the gold. They succeed though suffer some losses in personnel but succeed in freeing not only Kearsey but also Teresa Moreno and her brother Ramon who were to be tortured by the French. The Spanish guerillas soon enter the town. El Catolico is intensely suspicious of Sharpe being so far behind the French lines and suspects the British desire the gold so they can take it when they leave Portugal. We see Sharpe develop an attraction to Teresa who is betrothed to El Catolico. Her father is his second-in-command. Kearsey appears in awe of El Catolico and the Spanish generally. Sharpe decides to leave him out of future decisions. El Catolico claims there is no gold and that the French took it. Having been escorted from the town by partisans Sharpe and the men double back later that night to undergo a further search of the town. Sharpe is captured by El Catolico but is freed by Patrick Harper who discovered the gold hidden in a manure patch. Sharpe's men surround the Spanish and they take Teresa as a hostage. Kearsey is utterly disapproving of what Sharpe has done but follows the other British soldiers. It seems Hardy was murdered by El Catolico. They head for the fortress of Almeida and are harried by both the partisans and by French troops en route to the siege. Sharpe and Teresa consummate their relationship and fall in love. Sharpe and the men are saved from the French by a unit of German cavalry under Captain Lossow who was sent by Hogan to locate them and take them to Almeida. The officers meet with the commander of the fortress, the English Brigadier Cox. Cox has had no orders from General Wellington to let them pass unheeded and is suspicious of the lack of orders. Kearsey gives no help and it transpires that El Catolico and his men entered the fortress on the same night and lodged a claim on behalf of the Spanish government to take back the gold. Efforts to contact Wellington are in vain as the telegraph is blown up. Cox orders the gold be returned and that Sharpe and his men enlist in the garrison to resist the siege. That night we have a showdown between Sharpe and El Catolico on the roof above Sharpe's bedroom window. Sharpe is victorious, but, realising that his opponent was superior, impaled his leg on the Spaniard's sword so he could render the coup de grace. Demonstrating his ruthlessness, Sharpe ignites an explosion in the magazine of the fortress, which causes a great deal of casualties and considerable damage to the fortress walls. It becomes clear that the fortress will fall much sooner than expected and Sharpe and Lossow are allowed take their men away. Teresa returns to the partisans, taking the name La Aguja (the Needle). It transpires that the gold was needed to develop the enormous defensive Lines of Torres Vedras which held up the French invasion of Marshal André Masséna. Sharpe takes the opportunity of some leave to renew his acquaintance with Josefina, his love interest from Sharpe's Eagle, prompting the reader to speculate on the degree of attraction between himself and Teresa. The lines of Torres Vedras are better described in Sharpe's Escape."
1935,Waverley,history," The eponymous English protagonist, Edward Waverley, has been brought up in the family home by his uncle, Sir Everard Waverley, who maintains the family Tory and Jacobite sympathies, while Edward's Whig father works for the Hanoverian government in nearby London. Edward Waverley is given a commission in the Hanoverian army and is posted to Dundee, then promptly takes leave to visit Baron Bradwardine, a Jacobite friend of his uncle, and meets the Baron's lovely daughter Rose. When wild Highlanders visit the Baron's castle Waverley is intrigued and goes to the mountain lair of Clan Mac-Ivor, meeting the Chieftain Fergus and his sister Flora who turn out to be active Jacobites preparing for the '45 Rising. Waverley has overstayed his leave and is accused of desertion and treason, then arrested. Highlanders rescue him from his escort and take him to the Jacobite stronghold at Doune castle then on to Holyrood Palace where he meets Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. Encouraged by the beautiful Flora Mac-Ivor, Waverley goes over to the Jacobites and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans, where he saves the life of a colonel who turns out to be a close friend of his uncle. Thus he escapes retribution and marries the Baron's daughter, Rose Bradwardine."
1936,Ramage and the Drumbeat,history," The book follows Lt. Nicholas Lord Ramage and his experiences commanding the cutter HMS Kathleen. Dispatched by Commodore Horatio Nelson to carry messages to Gibraltar while transporting the Italians refugees rescued in Ramage. During the voyage, the Marchesa and Ramage exchange rings through a faked shooting competition. Soon the Kathleen encounters the crippled Spanish frigate, La Sabina. Deciding that it would be imprudent to leave the hulk drifting at sea, he forces the ship to surrender to his far inferior armed ship by a faked attempt at blowing the stern off the ship. He takes La Sabina in tow. Soon after, two British frigates encounter the Kathleen and remove the prisoners from the hulk in tow. The Captain of one of the ships also takes charge of the Marchesa, to the great reluctance of Ramage and herself. Soon after, Ramage and the hulk drift into a Spanish fleet returning to the port of Cartagena. Though the Kathleen is captured, Ramage, with the help of Jackson, passes himself off as an American sailor pressed by the British, and receives liberty from the Spanish. While in Cartegena (with other foreign and non-foreign refugees from the Kathleen who had fake protections) Ramage spies on the Spanish admiral José de Córdoba, stealing several official documents from his house. From these Ramage learns that the Spanish fleet will soon sail for the Atlantic. Realizing the danger of the situation, he steals a xebec and returns to Gibraltar, where he finds the recaptured Kathleen. The Commissioner of the port then sends Ramage to find Sir John Jervis and warn him of the battle. After a squall, he encounters the fleet, which quickly proceeds to Cape St. Vincent where they fight the Spanish fleet on 14 February 1797, the Kathleen acting as a support ship for Lord Nelson. Entangled in the battle, Ramage and the Kathleen become integral in the fouling of the San Nicholas aboard the San Jose, allowing Nelson in the to come into battle. The British fleet is victorious, capturing 4 ships, and Ramage nearly dies from a wound which knocks him into the sea. However, he is rescued by several of his sailors, but gains no credit for his role in the battle."
1937,The Help,history," The Help is set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and told primarily from the first-person perspectives of three women: Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. Aibileen is an African-American maid who cleans houses and cares for the young children of various white families. Her first job since her own 24-year-old son, Treelore, died from an accident on his job is tending the Leefolt household and caring for their toddler, Mae Mobley. Minny is Aibileen's confrontational friend who frequently tells her employers what she thinks of them, resulting in having been fired from nineteen jobs. Minny's most recent employer was Mrs. Walters, mother of Hilly Holbrook. Hilly is the social leader of the community, and head of the Junior League. She is the nemesis of all three main characters. Eugenia ""Skeeter"" Phelan is the daughter of a prominent white family whose cotton farm employs many African-Americans in the fields, as well as in the household. Skeeter has just finished college and comes home with dreams of becoming a writer. Her mother's dream is for Skeeter to get married. Skeeter frequently wonders about the sudden disappearance of Constantine, the maid who raised her. She had been writing to Skeeter while she was away at college and her last letter promised a surprise upon her homecoming. Skeeter's family tells her that Constantine abruptly quit, then went to live with relatives in Chicago. Skeeter does not believe that Constantine would just leave and continually pursues anyone she thinks has information about her to come forth, but no one will discuss the former maid. The life that Constantine led while being the help to the Phelan family leads Skeeter to the realization that her friends' maids are treated very differently from how the white employees are treated. She decides (with the assistance of a publisher) that she wants to reveal the truth about being a colored maid in Mississippi. Skeeter struggles to communicate with the maids and gain their trust. The dangers of undertaking writing a book about African-Americans speaking out in the South during the early '60s hover constantly over the three women. Racial issues of overcoming long-standing barriers in customs and laws are experienced by all of the characters. The lives and morals of Southern socialites are also explored."
1938,The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate,history," The novel concerns the quest of Bessas of Zarispa, a young officer of the 'Immortals' regiment, for the ingredients of a potion that the King has been told will give him immortality; the blood of a dragon and the ear of a king. Unbeknownst to Bessas, the third ingredient is the heart of a hero, and therefore Bessas' own. Relying on information given him by the priests of Marduk in Babylon that a reptile depicted in reliefs on their temple, the sirrush, is a real dragon and lives at the headwaters of the Nile, Bessas sets out for the source of the Nile, accompanied by his former tutor, Myron of Miletos, who is bored of teaching and wants to make a name for himself in the field of philosophy."
1939,Sword Song,history," Uhtred is serving Alfred, King of Wessex, by building one of the fortified towns that will make up Alfred's system of defense against attacks by the Danes when he learns that two powerful Norse leaders have occupied nearby London, giving them the ability to interfere with traffic on the Thames to and from Wessex. He is contacted by his former friend, Danish chieftain Haesten, who invites him to a meeting across the Thames in Mercia. Haesten takes Uhtred to a graveyard, where a corpse appears to rise from the earth to tell Uhtred that the Fates have decreed he is to be King of Mercia. Torn between his oath to Alfred, whom he dislikes, and the temptation to become a king in his own right, he follows Haesten to London, where he meets the Norse leaders Sigefrid and his brother Erik. Haesten and the Norse brothers have a proposition for Uhtred: if Uhtred convinces his foster-brother Lord Ragnar of Northumbria to bring Ragnar's men to join them in attacking East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex, then Uhtred will be given the throne of Mercia while the others rule East Anglia and Wessex. Uhtred ponders this offer while Sigefrid invites him to watch the crucifixion of some Christian prisoners. Among the prisoners Uhtred recognizes his old comrade at arms, the Welshman Father Pyrlig. Uhtred decides to save Pyrlig (and lose his chance to join Sigefrid's plot). Knowing Pyrlig to be an experienced fighter, Uhtred tricks Sigefrid into promising the prisoners can go free if Pyrlig beats him in single combat - which he promptly does. Uhtred, Pyrlig and the prisoners leave London. Returning to Wessex with Pyrlig, Uhtred is summoned by Alfred and ordered to plan an attack on London to dislodge the Norse brothers and turn the city over to Alfred's son-in-law and ally Earl Aethelred of Mercia. By stealth Uhtred's seaborne assault works and the defenders of London are caught out in the open as they sally forth to confront Aethelred larger attacking army. Wedged between what was their safe London refuge and the Saxons in front of them and Uhtred force behind, the Norse are defeated. A particularly cruel blow is struck by Osferth (King Alfred's illegitimate son) who leaps from the walls onto Sigefrid and injures him, leaving him crippled. Sigefrid, Erik, and Haesten retire to East Anglia and fortune smiles on them again when Aethelred mounts a seaborne raid on their hurt forces. However they stay too long amongst their enemies after initial success and in the process, Aethelred manages to lose his wife, Aethelflaed. Alfred is distraught at the threat to his daughter and is willing the ransom her from his foes. Uhtred is sent to negotiate the price and terms with Sigefrid. Whilst in their camp he learns that Erik and Aethelflaed have fallen in love, whereupon Erik and he plot to spirit her away from her captors; all without either of their leaders knowing what they plan. The battle in the mouth for the inlet where the Vikings have holed up is as desperate as they come, with it often being none too clear who is fighting for whom. This climax to the narrative is fought over marshland, waterside, on ship and across ships. Erik is killed by Sigefrid, but Uhtred and his crew quickly gain victory over Sigefrid's own warriors, and Sigefrid himself is killed by Osferth. Aethelflaed is rescued and the story ends with Uhtred taking her back to her father."
1940,Arthur & George,history," Set at the turn of the 20th century, the story follows the separate but intersecting lives of two very different British men: a half-Indian solicitor and son of a Vicar George Edalji, and the world-famous author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Roughly one-third of the book traces the story of Edalji's trial, conviction, and imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. About one-third of the book traces the story of Doyle's life and his relationships with his first wife Louisa Hawkins and his platonic lover Jean Leckie. Roughly one-third of the book concerns Doyle's attempt to clear the name of Edalji and uncover the true culprit of the crime. Julian Barnes called it ' a contemporary novel set in the past' and the book does not aim to stick closely to the historical record at every point."
1941,Nightjohn,history," The novel is set on a plantation in the Southern United States in the 1850s. The narrator and protagonist of the story is a young African-American slave named Sarny, who is taught to read and write by another slave, Nightjohn, also known as John. John escaped to the free north but returned to the south in order to teach slaves to read and write. It was followed by a sequel"
1942,Seeing a Large Cat,history," The book opens at Amelia's favorite hotel, Shepheard's in Cairo, where her family reunites after a summer in various locations. The Emersons' son Ramses (now aged sixteen) and their adopted son David have been living in Egypt for six months, and their ward Nefret has been studying anatomy with Louisa Aldrich-Blake at the London School of Medicine for Women. The Emersons receive a dire warning about staying away from an undiscovered tomb, which of course inspires them to hunt all the harder for it. Meanwhile, a silly American debutante insists she needs protection from a stalker (selecting Ramses for the job), and a mummy swathed in modern clothing begins to lend verisimilitude to her otherwise unconvincing narrative. The characters of Donald and Enid Fraser from Lion in the Valley reappear in this novel. They are in Cairo, accompanied by a woman who claims to have communicated with an ancient Egyptian princess and unwittingly triggered Donald's obsession with finding the princess's tomb. The American Cyrus Vandergelt is another character who reappears from an earlier novel. This volume marks the death of the cat Bastet and the first whiskey Ramses is permitted to imbibe (although the two events are not directly related). The device of ""Manuscript H"" is used for the first time in this book to give a voice to Ramses, through whom the romantic and adventurous elements of the series are able to continue as his parents begin to age. In the course of the mystery, Amelia discovers that her old admirer and adversary, Sethos (the ""master criminal"") is not dead, as was thought to be the case earlier in the series."
1943,World's End,history," Lanny Budd is a teenage student at a private school in Germany for music and dance. Budd, born in Switzerland, is the grandson of the president of Budd Gunmakers in New England. His parents are American born: his father is the European sales representative, and his mother, his father's former mistress, is supported in grand style on the French Riviera. The story follows Lanny Budd, his English schoolmate Rick, and his German friend Kurt through World War I. In the aftermath, Budd joins the staff of the U.S. delegation for the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles. The plot and characters are developed to reveal historical facts as well as the ideological tensions at the time. Budd was troubled by knowing his two closest friends were involved on opposite sides of the major war. Later he was disturbed by what he considered the failure of the negotiations at Versailles to get past the bitterness of the French and British people against Germany."
1944,The Bronze Eagle,history," Crystal, the only daughter of the old, long-exiled haughty royalist, the Comte de Cambray, is on the eve of betrothal to de Marmont, (secretly an ardent Bonapartist). Bobby Clyffurde, the Englishman, who is in love with Crystal, confronts Victor de Marmont about why he is pretending to be a royalist. De Marmont replies that he has never led the Comte to suppose anything, the Comte has merely taken de Marmont’s political convictions for granted. As if two potential suitors weren’t enough, Crystal has yet another admirer, Maurice de St. Genis, whose impecunious state (her father sees him as a penniless, out-at-elbows, good for nothing) has precluded him from obtaining her hand in marriage. Howeve at the moment of Crystal’s betrothal to de Marmont, Maurice finally gets his revenge upon his rival. Once the guests have assembled for the ceremony, there is a disturbance from the end of the corridor and St. Genis enters the room, his rough clothes and muddy boots providing a contrast to the immaculate get-up of the Comte’s guests. Looking flushed and clutching his cane he announces that he has only come to avert the awful catastrophe that is about to fall on the Comte and his family. At the young man’s ominous words, M. le Comte goes pale and demands to know what catastrophe could be worse than twenty years of exile? ""An alliance with a traitor, M. le Comte"" he replies. St. Genis goes on to accuse his rival of pinning Napoleon’s proclamation on the walls of Grenoble. Yet, rather than deny the accusation de Marmont defends his actions with fervor, pulling a copy of the declaration from his pocket and waving it at the assembled group while shouting “Vive l’Empereur”. Despite the sudden rupture of her engagement, Crystal‘s heart is by no means broken, but it is not St. Genis who in the end wins her love, for we are left with the understanding that it is Clyffurde, the English merchant who eventually overrides the prejudices of the old French count. Clyffurde laughingly asks Crystal’s aunt, Mme. la Duchesse “Do you think that if I promise never to buy or sell gloves again, but in future to try and live like a gentleman-he will consent?”"
1945,The Wine-Dark Sea,history," The narrative opens with the close pursuit of an American privateer, the Franklin, by Aubrey and Maturin's Surprise, a fictionalised version of the original HMS Surprise in the South Pacific, interrupted by an submarine volcanic eruption which completely disables the former and severely damages the latter. The Franklin is easily taken as most of its crew are either dead, severely wounded or drunk, and Monsieur Dutourd, its French owner, is taken on board. A wealthy philanthropist, he intended to colonise a South Pacific island, Moahu, and establish a paradise of equality, justice, and little labour, after first enriching himself by committing piracy on assorted British whalers and merchantmen, and then wiping out the island's hostile native population. Maturin recognises Dutourd from earlier days in the high society salons of Paris, and takes pains to hide his identity from the Frenchman. Aubrey, meanwhile, finds that not only does Dutourd not know the basic courtesies of life at sea, but does not have a letter of marque permitting him to operate the Franklin as a privateer. The Franklin having taken several British ships as prizes, Dutourd's legal status is that of a pirate, liable to be hanged. An American whaler is taken by the Surprise and the Franklin, and a British sailor on the whaler tells Aubrey of a French ship — the Alastor — turned a true pirate, unlike the Franklin, flying the black flag and demanding immediate surrender or death of its victims. The Franklin encounters the Alastor first and is outmatched, but the Surprise overcomes the pirates, with Aubrey receiving severe wounds to his eye from wadding and his thigh from a pike thrust. The story now turns to Maturin's secret mission to Peru. He is put ashore to incite revolution against the Spanish colonial government and makes valuable contact among local military and government officials sympathetic to Peruvian independence. He is also aided by Aubrey's illegitimate son, Sam Panda, a prominent official in the Roman Catholic Church and close to becoming a prelate. Stephen also meets Dr Geary from the Three Graces and is able to secure a passage home for Mr Martin who has been severely laid low by what he presumed was the Sydney pox, but in fact which turned out to be simply bad salt sores. His task as an intelligence agent is suddenly made harder owing to Dutourd's escape and arrival in Callao (aided by the Surprises Knipperdolling crewmembers). He raises a hue and cry, denouncing Maturin on the eve of the carefully engineered revolution, as an English spy. Aubrey, meanwhile, sails in a small boat with a few crewmen from the Franklin to San Lorenzo to warn Maturin of Dutourd's escape. After many days of hard sailing against the wind in appalling weather conditions, they finally reach the harbour and are taken on board the Surprise by Captain Pullings. Once he has recovered, he receives a welcome visit from his illegitimate son and Sam updates him on the local political situation. Stephen, after a secret meeting with Gayongos, a wealthy merchant and revolutionary sympathiser, has departed on a mule into the mountains, to meet with the Vicar-General, Father Bernardo O'Higgins, and to view the mountainous flora and fauna accompanied by Eduardo, his highly knowledgeable and amicable Peruvian Indian guide. The doctor sees numerous condors, flowering bromeliads, guanacos and vicuña. After leaving a Capuchin monastery, Eduardo receives a message that the revolution has failed due to Dutourd's premature exposure and Maturin has to flee for his life. Trekking over the Andes mountains, Maturin and Eduardo are caught in a viento blanco (blizzard) and Stephen has to amputate two of his own frostbitten toes with a chisel - but being the indefatigable naturalist that he is, he is able to collect a considerable number of plant and animal specimens. Having eventually made his way from Lima to Arica, and then taken ship from Valparaíso, Aubrey eventually picks Maturin up in Chile. Stephen informs him of three American China ships sailing from Boston. The Surprise sails to intercept them off Cape Horn but, as she prepares to engage them, is herself fired upon by a thirty-eight gun US frigate. After avoiding an iceberg, the Surprise is chased until her pursuer sails down a lane in the ice field that is a dead-end. The Surprise escapes but then loses her main mast and rudder after being struck by lightning. Jury-rigged, her crew spot a ship hull-down on the horizon and fear that it is the more powerful American frigate back in pursuit. However, the ship turns out to be the Berenice, a sixty-four-gun ship of the line commanded by Aubrey's old friend Heneage Dundas, accompanied by an American clipper they have taken and are using as a tender. Dundas provisions them with spars, cordage, storage and a Pakenham substitute rudder (and the much-needed pepper that Maturin needs to preserve his specimens from a moth) and as the book ends the Surprise is homeward bound."
1946,Castle Dor,history," Castle Dor began life as the unfinished last novel by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, the celebrated 'Q', and was passed by his daughter to Daphne du Maurier. The story is based around the legend of Tristan and Iseult, but set in 19th century Cornwall. The main characters are a Breton onion seller, called Amyot Trestane, and the newly-wed Linnet Lewarne."
1947,Across Five Aprils,history," From Jasper County, Illinois, Jethro Creightonn lives on a farm just before the Civil War. The youngest child, he is busily helping tend his family's farm. However, when his schoolmaster and good friend, Shadrach Yale, returns from Newton with the news that the war has begun, Jethro’s world is turned upside-down. Jethro has three brothers, Bill, John and Tom, and his cousin Eb, most of them eager to join the fight. Jethro must struggle with the split between them, as three join the Union Army but Bill joins the Confederacy. Later on, Jethro's good friend and sister Jenny's boyfriend, Shad also joins the Union Army. John's wife Nancy and their two young sons live with the Creighton's during the war. Jenny is in love with Shad, but her father will not approve of the marriage because he thinks she is too young. As the war heats up, so do the tensions among the townspeople around Jethro. A gang of men led by Guy Wortman are angered by the fact that one of Jethro’s brothers, Bill, joined the Confederate cause. Eventually, Jethro's father suffers from a heart attack, leaving Jethro with the task of becoming the head of the house. The spotlight is set on the hardships of war on a family. One day Jethro travels to Newton, and, while shopping, overhears the men talking about how evil his brother is. While Jethro is riding back; however, he is warned that the men are up to no good. Dave Burdow, father of the young man responsible for Jethro's sister Mary's death prior to the events of the story, ends up saving Jethro's life and driving the troublemakers off. However, the trouble is far from over. After a few months, the men are at it again. They sabotage the family’s property by burning down the family's barn and contaminating the water in the well. Jethro is given little time to concentrate on this when he finds out that his brother Tom was killed and that cousin Eb left the Union Army. He now must face the hard decision of whether or not he should help his deserter cousin. He writes a letter to President Lincoln for help and begins to look up to him as a father during the crisis. President Lincoln replies, telling him that he is already working on a program to accept all willing deserters back into the Union with little punishment. Soon after, the family learns that Shad has been wounded and is staying in a hospital, being taken care of by his aunt. Jenny goes to take care of him, and after finally receiving her father's blessing, she and Shad get married. Shad gets better, the war ends, and he, Jenny, John, and Eb return to the Mossing farm. However, at the end of the war, just when the family is reunited safely, Jethro learns that the president has been shot. He runs off but is found by Shad who tells him that he and Jenny are going to college, and that they will take Jethro with them. It is in these turbulent times that Jethro has grown from an innocent boy into a young man."
1948,The Borgia Bride,history," The book starts off with Princess Sancha remembering the thirtieth anniversary of her grandfather's ascension to the Neapolitan throne. Because Naples needed a blessing after many wars and natural disasters, the royal family was to beseech San Gennaro to witness a miracle. Inside a reliquary was believed to be ancient blood of the royals and if the blood became liquid once again, it is a good omen for the king. After the ""miracle"" is performed, the royal procession makes its way back to Castel Nuovo in Naples. A feast celebrating the anniversary of the king was held later that night, and out of boredom, seeks the chamber of the dead of her grandfather, King Ferrante. It is said here that the King had brought his enemies that he had killed, preserved and on occasion visited the dead. She quickly finds the legend of the chamber to be true, and meets her grandfather there. After discussing several matters with her grandfather, Sancha is told by her grandfather to watch over her brother, for he is considered by Ferrante to be ""weak"". As the pair return to the party, the Duke of Calabria, Sancha's father, sees them and discovers that she was in the chamber of the dead, and had not been invited. He tells her that he will speak to her later. Sancha then leaves to be comforted by her brother. Duke Alfonso returns later to tell Donna Trusia (Sancha's mother) that she will not be allowed to go on a picnic with the other children. He speaks to her in the study and denies her contact with her brother (also named Alfonso) for two weeks for her incorrigible behaviour, since that is the one thing she loves above all else. After two weeks pass, Sancha and Alfonso are reunited and Sancha swears that she would never give her father cause to punish her. Although a little more less than three years had passed, little had changed in the royal household. Sancha and Alfonso are still close, although they do not share a nursery any longer. A new pope was elected that year, one by the name of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. In the beginning of this chapter, Sancha is summoned to the King's chambers. There, she finds that she is betrothed to the Count Onorato Caetani. His manner towards the royal family is described as jovial. The courtship between the count and the princess preceded rapidly. As a whim, Sancha went to see a strega (witch). When she reached the strega's house, she was surprised to find herself required to enter alone. Immediately, Sancha realizes that the news has a hint of foreboding. After spreading the tarot cards, Sancha chooses the card of a ""heart, impaled by two blades, which together made a great silver X"". The strega warns Sancha that if she does not resort to evil, she will ""condemn to death those whom you most love"". She also says that the princess will not marry the Count, but the son of the most powerful man in Italy, and that she will not love him, nor have any children by him. She ends by saying ""Take great care, Sancha, or your heart will destroy all that you love."
1949,Soldier's Heart,history," (Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution) Charley Goddard is a fifteen-year-old boy growing up in the farming community of Winona, Minnesota, in 1861, just prior to what will become the Civil War. He lives with his single mother and little brother, Orren. Charley's father was killed when a swarm of bees landed on a horse, scaring it into kicking Charley's father in the face, killing him. The whole area is talking about what they think will be a ""shooting war."" The atmosphere at the town meetings discussing the possibility is festive, with flags and drums and patriotic speeches. As a volunteer army is beginning to form, Charley decides he wants to be part of it after a brief argument with his mother. Everyone assumes that it will be an easy, victorious battle, most likely over in a month or two if it happens at all. Charley lies about his age and joins the volunteers in what he thinks will be a fun experience that will make him a man. They pay is eleven dollars a month, much more than he makes working on the farms. Charley trains and learns to be a soldier. In his letters, Charley describes the experience as something much different than he had imagined. Upon leaving the camp, the men are treated as heroes even before they leave town, accompanied by much cheering and flag waving. On the train ride to their new camping location, Charley meets a slave, who quickly blesses him and gives him bread for what he is doing for the southern slaves. However, a slave owner soon finds the woman and drags her back inside her house as the train departs again. Charley feels great, and spirits are high. However, not long after, he finds himself in his first battle. The Union soldiers lose badly. He is caught in the middle of violent suffering and death, and he cannot believe what is happening so suddenly all around him. When the battle is over, hundreds of his comrades have been killed, and Charley and the other survivors are stunned. It was named The Battle of Manassas Junction by some newspapers but was quickly called the battle of Bull Run by some of the men, for the creek that ran nearby. A camp is created near Washington and eventually reaches ninety thousand men. Charley becomes part of the day-to-day routine of the camp. He and the others forage the farms in the area for food and eventually build log houses to live in during the approaching winter. However, many men get diseases such as dysentery and die in the camp. During the time here, Charley participates in one nearby battle against the Rebel soldiers. The Union wins, but not without losing many men. One of them is a man whom Charley befriended only hours before. His name is Nelson, and he is shot in the stomach. Nelson knows the surgeons do not have the skills or time to mend his wound and that he will be left to die. As a result, he kills himself on the battlefield as the other soldiers leave for the return march to the camp. Charley takes part in a battle near Richmond, Virginia where the Confederate Army uses its mounted cavalry to charge Charley and the Union soldiers. Nearly one hundred men on horseback charge the six hundred foot soldiers. Charley and the others are told to shoot the horses in order to defeat the cavalry, and they do so, killing every horse and man. He then fights a large army of confederate soldiers. After all the fighting is over he is told he has been shot in the shoulder, but when he arrives at the temporary hospital he is told that the blood on his uniform is not his and he is not really shot. Next, Charley participates in the Battle of Gettysburg. Here he has the protection of rocks and logs and a large force of artillery behind him. Most of the charging Rebel soldiers are killed in the lines as they attack, but some eventually get close. The Officers realize this danger, and send the only unit still in relative shelter, The First Minnesota Volunteers. They rush at the soldiers, killing them as they go hacking and shooting each other. Charley eventually succumbs to the hits of the Rebels, got spun and then knocked out. He saw a red veil come down his eyes and claims that at last he died. Charley is 21 now. Charley claims he had become so old at heart, and waited death, for it was his only escape. He knows too much and the violent killings numbed him. He says that he should be studying marriage and raising young ones, but it wouldn't be that way for him. He's tired and broken, walking with a cane and passing blood, knowing it would be near over for him. In some ways it made him sad and he was near glad of it. There was so much men that he knew that was there already, and knew it was only a matter of time. He wants to go see them to get rid of this constant pain and sounds he could not stop hearing. He limped to have a picnic near the river, and took out roast beef a jug of cold coffee, that he's used to drinking coffee that made his stomach knot. The army taught him to thrive on coffee. He can still sit to a small meal and not feel starved at all. He then admires a Confederate's pistol. Everybody wanted one, and asked Charley to get them some, he imagines committing suicide with it. He takes out cheese and bread and admires the river, thinking of all the pretty things. Later in the author's note, it is noted that in the Battle of Gettysburg only forty-seven men were left standing of the original thousand soldiers in Minnesota's First Volunteers. Charley was not one of them. He was hit severely, and got patched up as best they can. He fought at later actions, but his wounds did not heal properly, nor his mental anguish. The war finished and he tried to hold jobs, but he couldn't. He went running for county clerk based on his war record. He was elected, but before he could serve, his wounds and the stress took him and he died in December 1868; he was only twenty-three years old. ..."
1950,The Pirates of Pompeii,history," Flavia and Nubia look over the devastation of Mount Vesuvius. Their friend Jonathan ben Mordecai is in a coma, and Nubia and Flavia search for a flower that his father who is a doctor needs for medicine. Scuto, Flavia's dog finds the precious flower, as well as a little girl, Julia who says that her big brother Rufus was kidnapped by some “scary men” and told her to hide in the cave while he drew them off. Returning to the refugee camp, Flavia and Nubia help to medicine Jonathan, who awakes from his coma. While he is recovering, Nubia meets a runaway slave named Kuanto, from the same region of Africa as she. He asks her to run away and be free with him, but she hesitates. The four friends learn that children are disappearing everywhere, and Flavia guesses that some kind of organized kidnapping racket is going on. Hearing one of the refugees mutter “Felix just got luckier” with news of another disappearance, Flavia suspects the powerful local landlord Publius Pollius Felix, who happens to be her uncle Gaius’s patron. Felix is in the refugee camp, ostensibly helping the Emperor organize supplies for the refugees. By playing up Jonathan’s infirmity, Flavia contrives to have herself and the three friends invited to Felix’s villa to recover while the refugees are being sorted out. There they meet his beautiful but spoiled daughter Pulchra, his wife Polla, and his two younger daughters. Pulchra takes an instant liking to Jonathan. The four friends live at Felix’s house for a while, slowly being taken in by its luxuries and Felix’s charisma. Flavia is initially appalled at seeing how Pulchra treats her own slave girl, Leda (including flogging her with a birch stick and making her stay huddled in a locked chest as punishment), but before long, she begins treating Nubia almost as poorly – Flavia does not abuse Nubia, but, in an effort to fit in with the way things are done at the house, begins ordering her around like a servant and then ignoring her like a piece of furniture. Spying on various parts of the house, they notice suspicious signs; shortly after one of Felix’s clients comes begging the patron to help find his missing daughter, Lupus sees two men near the villa conferring on how to return her. On the night of a sumptuous dinner party, Flavia tries to be a good guest by ordering Nubia to play her flute. The next day, she sees that Nubia has run away, after Pulchra beat her, stole her puppy, and broke her lotuswood flute. Flavia goes running to Felix to ask for his help, but Felix refuses, saying that, if Nubia were caught, the law would require her to be crucified as a runaway. Sickened at how she and the others have been taken in by the house and its seductive ways, Flavia is determined to find Nubia herself. She, Jonathan, and Lupus retrace her steps to a small shrine on a hilltop where they had a picnic, and find signs that Nubia has run away with Kuanto, who has followed her to the villa. Flavia then catches Pulchra and Leda, who have followed them, and the two girls begin fighting. Just then, all the children are seized by the kidnapping gang, who call themselves “The Pirates of Pompeii.” Lupus manages to get away without being seen. Flavia, Jonathan, Pulchra, and Leda are taken to a seaside grotto, where they join a band of almost fifty kidnapped children. All of them receive a severe beating to keep them subdued, but Jonathan and Flavia tell the children jokes to keep their spirits up. Lupus runs back to the house, but Felix is nowhere to be found. His wife, Polla, does not seem to comprehend Lupus’s urgent appeals for help. Polla tells Lupus that Felix is away at Rome, and Lupus runs back to the grotto to free the children himself. When he communicates this, Pulchra confides shamefully that her mother has spells of mental illness, and her father rarely leaves the house for that reason. Lupus cuts the children free, but just as they are about to escape, the pirates find them and seize Flavia, threatening to kill her if they don’t stand still. Lupus manages to get away again, and runs back to the villa, praying that Felix is there. The pirates pour cold sea water all over Flavia as punishment for trying to escape. Flavia and Jonathan are then forced to lye on their backs on the floor of the grotto, and are tied up so that they cannot sit up. Meanwhile, Nubia has joined Kuanto and several other runaway slaves, all of whom are fleeing abusive masters. Kuanto says he has hired a ship to take them to Alexandria. But as soon as they board the ship, the crew are revealed to be the kidnappers, in league with Kuanto. The runaway slaves are taken prisoner and put with the children, except for Nubia, whom Kuanto says is with him. Acting as though she does not recognize Flavia - she and Jonathan have been untied so that they would be able to walk to the ship and are now bound upright to the mast - and the others, she talks with Kuanto, who explains that he is a freedman of Felix’s whose job for the patron was leading posses to track down runaway slaves. Kuanto had the idea of selling the slaves instead of turning them into the law, and one of the other “pirates” suggested expanding into kidnapping after the volcano erupted, since there would be so many runaway slaves and lost children in the chaos. Felix doesn’t know anything about it; the pirates just use his name to intimidate the locals into doing what they want. Playing along, Nubia serves the pirates cups of wine, drugged with a packet of sleeping powder that Jonathan brought with him. The next morning, when the ship is at sea, on its way to meet a buyer for the slaves, the pirates begin sorting the children, picking out those with families who can pay a ransom for them. But then Kuanto recognizes Pulchra, and panics, knowing that Felix will hunt every last one of them down. Torn between selling the entire group of children as slaves, or throwing them overboard, the pirates suddenly begin to hallucinate. Seeing terrible visions, they lose control of the boat and the children manage to overpower them. Jonathan ruefully realizes that he took the wrong powder from his father’s stores. Two of the pirates are badly injured by their hallucinations – one of them jumps from the crow’s nest to the deck, believing he has wings – and two jump overboard and drown. As the children try to gain control of the boat, they spot the pirate ship Vespa coming, and on it the children's hated enemy, the slave-dealer Venalicius. The children and runaway slaves hatch a plan, and the slaves pretend to be the pirates trading the children. When the slave traders board the ship, the children spill chickpeas onto the deck, causing them to slip and fall, while Jonathan and Nubia use gold coins as sling stones to knock them unconscious. When Venalicius tries to seize Nubia, Pulchra saves her by plowing her head into his stomach. A short time later, Felix arrives in his racing yacht, accompanied by Lucius and a gang of his bodyguards. They take the pirates and slave traders into custody, but Lupus shocks them all by trying to stab Venalicius to death with a knife. Felix stops him, and Lupus bursts into tears. At the villa, Felix thanks Flavia and her friends for rescuing his daughter. He has arranged to return all the stolen children to their families, and has given the runaway slaves a place on his estate. To Nubia, Pulchra gives back her dog and a brand-new flute. Flavia decides to free Nubia. At first Nubia is afraid that being free means she will have to leave her friends; when she is assured otherwise, she accepts. Just then, the first rainstorm since the volcanic eruption begins, and the rain washes away the layer of ash covering everything."
1951,Let the Circle Be Unbroken,history," The Logan family goes through hard times, trying to raise their children the correct way. T.J. Avery, Stacey's friend, is accused of murdering a white man, Jim Lee Barnett. Although he is innocent, he is tried by an all-white jury and convicted. Stacey does everything in his power to help his friend, but in the end, T.J. is sentenced to death. A man tries to start a union to join blacks and whites together so the cotton will be sold for fair prices. The union does not succeed and the man who wanted to start it is beaten. Some people are told that they need to pull up the acres that were already planted because they planted too much. The plantation owners lied, claiming the government ordered it, but the plantation owners did it in order to receive money that was supposed to go to the sharecroppers. Mama's cousin Bud's daughter Suzella, who has a black father and a white mother, lives with the Logans. Suzella is exonerated for being attractive and mixed, making her seem like a prize to all the males in the town because she is technically black and therefore accessible, but still has the lighter skin, hair and eyes; she can be assumed as white. Suzella struggles with identity issues that put a strain on her relationships with others. She catches the eye of Stuart Walker, a white boy who flirts with pretty colored girls to start trouble. When Stuart approaches her he genuinely respects her, assuming she is white. This takes a great toll on Stacey; he believes he must take care of his family before they lose their land. He and his best friend Moe run away to a sugarcane field to work. With the help of Mr. Jamison, a white lawyer who is kind and fair to black people, Mama, Papa and Caroline Logan (Big Ma) contact police stations in the next couple of towns. They address the letters in his name so that when the sheriffs receive the letters they will respond. Mr. Jamison says that if they see a black family name on the letters they probably will not respond. Seven months later, they find Stacey several hours away, jailed in a small town in Louisiana. Stacey and Moe were accused of stealing which put them in jail, where they became ill. While Stacey was at the cane field a poll rolled over his foot and broke it. Before they drive home, they stop by the house of a lady who took care of Stacey and Moe while they were in jail and thank her. They stay the night there and the next morning return home."
1952,Fall of Giants,history," The novel begins with the thirteen-year-old Billy Williams, nicknamed Billy Twice, going to work his first day in the coal mine underneath the fictional Welsh town of Aberowen in 1911. Three years later, the main story begins. Earl Teddy ""Fitz"" Fitzherbert, who maintains a country estate in Aberowen, and licenses the land on which the coal mine is built, hosts a party for many powerful people around the world. His guests include: * Maud Fitzherbert, Fitz's sister, who is far more liberal than her conservative brother. * Walter von Ulrich, a German nobleman and a former schoolmate of Fitz's. He and Maud begin at the party to act on the mutual attraction they have felt for years. * Graf (Count) Robert von Ulrich, Walter's Austrian homosexual cousin. * Gus Dewar, a highly-educated American who is also a close adviser to President Woodrow Wilson. * Bea Fitzherbert, Fitz's wife, a Russian Princess. * King George V, King of the British Empire. *Mary of Teck, wife of King George V. Major characters introduced after the party include Grigori and Lev Peshkov, two Russian orphans who work in a locomotive factory, and have personal reasons to hold a grudge against Princess Bea and the rest of the Russian royal family. Grigori and Lev's father was executed by Bea's aristocratic family for alleged improper grazing of cattle on Bea's family's land. The overall theme of the novel revolves around common people trying, and many times succeeding, in throwing off the yokes so often placed on them by a society (largely focused on Britain and Russia) dominated by the landed aristocracy. The characters and their extended families find their fortunes changing for the better and for the worse due to both their interactions with each other and the effects of the First World War."
1953,The Charioteer of Delphi,history," September, A.D. 80: Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus are celebrating Nubia's birthday with their families and their friend Porcius, when a teenaged boy named Scopas arrives from Delphi with a message from Lupus’s mother, Melissa. She sends her love to her son, and asks, as a favor, that he help Scopas find a job with one of the chariot racing factions in Rome. He has already won races in Greece, despite being barely 13 years old. Though Scopas is awkward and strange in his manner, Flavia agrees to help him, and sends him to Rome with a letter asking her uncle and avid racing fan, Senator Cornix, to arrange an introduction. A few weeks later, Scopas sends a letter to Ostia, saying that he has been taken on by the Green faction at the Circus Maximus, which is facing a crisis: their prize racing horse, Sagitta, has disappeared, and the Greens are offering a 100,000 sestercii reward for his safe return before the start of the next games. Flavia and the others arrange a trip to Rome when Flavia's father has to commission some repair work on their home, and leave on another voyage. Arriving in Rome with Aristo, they are taken to the Greens’ stables to meet Scopas, who works as a groom. The lead trainer, Urbanus, says Scopas is the best groom he has ever known, but the other grooms despise him for his strange behavior (and possibly out of jealousy). Among the Greens' recently acquired horses, Nubia recognizes a stallion named Pegasus, who was previously owned by Publius Pollius Felix (in The Sirens of Surrentum). Nubia confides that she has been having nightmares about being trapped in a burning tent; showing a surprising empathy with the horses, she believes that both she and Pegasus have terrible memories of losing family members to fire when they were very young. As the children leave the stables to begin looking for Sagitta, a one-legged beggar says he knows exactly where to find the horse. Flavia is skeptical, but Nubia gives him a coin, and to everyone's amazement, the horse is indeed waiting right where the beggar said he would be. The horse is healthy, though there are signs that his legs have been burned. They lead the horse back to the stables in triumph, earning the reward, free entry permits to the stables, and a complimentary ride in the team's chariots during one of their practice runs. When Flavia and Co. attend the first day of the races with Senator Cornix and his family, things begin to go wrong for the Greens. Inexplicably, the horses being driven by the most prestigious charioteers go berserk on the track, throwing their riders and causing terrible, often fatal, crashes. In the stables, the four friends find other examples of sabotage, including stealing the charioteers' personal votive statuettes, and replacing the pins of the chariots with wax replicas. Flavia theorizes that someone has a grudge against the Greens, or else is trying to fix the race to win at gambling. She suspects Urbanus, who is strangely ambivalent about their success in exposing several of the sabotage tricks. But her theory seems to fail when two charioteers from the Red faction are also put out of action. Lupus scouts out the track during the next race, and sees a boy, disguised as one of the Greens’ stable boys, hiding near the track with a bone whistle. Flavia realizes that several of the Greens' star horses have been abducted, and then returned, after being tortured with fire and conditioned to fear burning when they hear a high-pitched sound. Urbanus is skeptical, until Nubia blows a note on her flute and Sagitta goes berserk inside his stall. Urbanus panics, realizing that without Sagitta, he does not have a team ready to run in the next day’s race. Scopas steps forward, volunteering to drive a team with Pegasus in Sagitta's place. Urbanus grudgingly agrees. Flavia realizes that all of the targeted charioteers were drivers for the Greens in the previous year, including the two who now race for the Reds. The only one left is a man named Hierax, who they are told retired after being maimed in a crash a year ago. The friends return to their seats with Senator Cornix, to watch the remainder of the races. But when they get up to leave, Flavia realizes that Nubia and Lupus are gone. Running back to the stables, they see that Pegasus is also gone. It turns out that the one-legged beggar who helped them before has convinced Nubia to lead Pegasus away from the stables, rather than risk him being hurt in the races. Nubia has come to love the horse, and seizes on the chance to take him to a better place. The beggar leads them to a supposedly abandoned house in Rome, which has a stable outfitted to receive Pegasus. But Nubia realizes that the house isn't abandoned at all, it belongs to the “beggar” who reveals himself to her at the same time Flavia and the others learn his true identity: he is Hierax, the former charioteer. After losing his celebrity and his leg after the chariot accident, he has become bitter and vengeful; in his paranoia, he now believes that the crash and everything that came after was a conspiracy by Urbanus and the Greens to get rid of him. He has arranged the whole series of accidents to get his revenge on the Greens. But as he steps forward to tie Nubia up, Pegasus rears and knocks over a lamp, setting the stable on fire. Lupus has followed Nubia as far as the house, and runs back to the Circus to fetch reinforcements. Urbanus, Flavia, Jonathan, and Senator Cornix rush to the house as it begins to burn. Inside, Nubia douses herself and Pegasus with water and then mounts him, whispering that the only way to save their lives is for Pegasus to brave his fears and jump through the flames. He does so, and they escape the house. But Urbanus has already run inside to see if there are any others, and is trapped by falling debris. Remembering the other victims of the great fire in Rome, that he blames on himself, Jonathan rushes inside and drags Urbanus to safety, suffering a near-fatal asthma attack as a result of smoke inhalation. Everyone recovers, and Hierax and his accomplices are caught. The next day, Scopas convinces Nubia that, although chariot racing may be very dangerous, both he and Pegasus truly love it. Nubia senses through her bond with Pegasus that this is true. She gives Pegasus her blessing before he runs his first race. To everyone's great amazement, Scopas wins the race, something unheard of for a novice charioteer in his first run. The children's friend, Senator Cornix's slave Sisyphus, wins his freedom on a bet from Senator Cornix, and makes a small fortune betting his savings on Scopas. Scopas receives his victory crown from the Emperor himself, and as he takes his triumphal ride around the track, he invites Nubia to join him, calling it her victory as well as his. Senator Cornix's two young children, yelling Scopas’s name, say “Scorpus” by mistake, and the crowd takes up the chant with enthusiasm. Scopus says he doesn't mind. “It can be my new name for my new life.”"
1954,Hornblower and the Crisis,history," Hornblower has just finished his tour blockading Brest in command of the Royal Navy sloop Hotspur. As he travels back to England for his next assignment, he is asked to participate in the court martial of Hotspur's new captain and officers. Hotspur ran aground and was lost the day after Hornblower turned over command. Following the court martial, the officers travel back to England with Hornblower. On their way, they are pursued by a French brig, which they engage and disable. During the battle, Hornblower boards the brig and finds important papers in the French captain's quarters. Back in England, he travels to the Admiralty with the documents. He arrives at the same time as the disappointing news that the French fleet under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve has escaped into Ferrol, Spain after an indecisive engagement. Hornblower presents a daring plan to the Secretary of the Navy, to send false orders to Villeneuve, made possible because the papers brought by Hornblower include an example of Napoleon Bonaparte's new signature. The orders are to draw Villeneuve out of a safe harbour and into a decisive engagement with Admiral Nelson. The unfinished book stops at the point where Hornblower is persuaded to attempt the mission himself. Notes left by CS Forster indicate that Hornblower would carry out the mission accompanied by South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda, with Hornblower posing as his servant. They deliver the false orders to Villeneuve without arousing suspicion, prompting him to take his fleet to sea; this ultimately leads the destruction of the Franco–Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. This book also includes two short-stories, ""Hornblower and the Widow McCool""(a.k.a. ""Hornblower’s Temptation""), set early in Hornblower's career, and ""The Last Encounter"", set at the very end. sv:Hornblower och hans samvete"
1955,Flashman and the Tiger,history," ""The Road to Charing Cross"" begins with Flashman going to Berlin with Henri Blowitz to help him get a copy of the Treaty of Berlin and publish it before anyone else has it. He also meets Caprice, a beautiful member of the French secret service. Five years later, Flashman is looking for an excuse to leave London and avoid being sent to Sudan with Charles George Gordon. Luckily, a letter from Blowitz arrives inviting him to Paris. He rides the maiden voyage of the Orient Express and makes the acquaintance of a princess, Kralta, supposedly so that she can sleep with him. This turns out to be a ruse on the part of the princess and Otto von Bismarck, and Flashman is forced to join with Rupert Willem von Starnberg, son of the villain from Royal Flash, and save Emperor Franz Josef from assassination by Magyar nationalists. It turns out that Starnberg has plans of his own, and Flashman must save both the Emperor and himself. ""The Subtleties of Baccarat"" has Flashman at the home of Sir Arthur Wilson with the Prince of Wales, just when the Royal Baccarat Scandal is unfolding. Unlike in most Flashman stories, he is mainly an observer of the event, simply giving bad advice when asked to. However, in a twist, someone he has known for years unexpectedly turns out to be the most important player in the story. At the beginning of ""Flashman and the Tiger"", Flashman is in South Africa fleeing from the Battle of Isandlwana in a wagon. After his escape, he meets Tiger Jack Moran about ten miles (16&nbsp;km) away, and both head to Rorke's Drift and the nightmare that awaits them. Later, at the mention of Flashman's name, Moran says ""if I'd only known."" Years later, in 1894, Flashman finds out what he meant when Moran blackmails his granddaughter in order to sleep with her, revealing to Flashman that he was a cabin boy on Captain John Charity Spring's ship, the Balliol College (see Flash for Freedom!), who was traded to King Gezo as a white slave and has spent much of his adult life avenging himself on the ship's former crew. In an attempt to save her, Flashman finds himself in a scene from ""The Adventure of the Empty House"", and has to endure the humiliation of Sherlock Holmes analyzing him while he is pretending to be a drunken tramp (Fraser, perhaps to tweak the sensibilities of Holmes' legion of admirers, has Holmes get it all wrong)."
1956,The Seekers,history," The story begins in 1794, just prior to the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in the Northwest Territory. Abraham Kent, the son of Philip Kent and Anne Ware, had enlisted in the Legion of the United States to help neutralize the threat of American Indians against expanding white settlements. He led a cavalry charge in the battle, but let a chance to kill Tecumseh slip away. Philip Kent, his father, had grown affluent as the proprietor of the publishing firm, Kent and Son in Boston, and would have preferred to have Abraham follow him into the family business; however, Abraham was not interested in that trade and was uncertain what he wanted to do in life. Politically, father and son also had diverging views. Philip supported the Federalists, a party more friendly to urban industrialists, but Abraham did not. Abraham fell in love with Elizabeth Fletcher, his stepsister, the daughter of Judson Fletcher and Peggy McLean Kent. Philip had married Peggy after the death of his first wife, but never adopted Elizabeth as his own daughter. Elizabeth resented him for this and did not want to live by his conservative rules. Sharing a common desire to leave Boston and Philip, Abraham and Elizabeth married and planned to start a new life in the Northwest Territory. They purchased a tract of land on the Great Miami River, near Fort Hamilton, though Abraham feared that his young wife was too frail to make the journey. Along the way Elizabeth revealed that she was pregnant, but she lost the baby when their riverboat crashed in the Ohio River. Once reaching their tract of land, Abraham took advice once given him by Thomas Jefferson and began farming corn. There, a son, Jared Adam, was born to Abraham and Elizabeth. Having lived there two years had not made Elizabeth any more content then she was when she was living under Philip’s roof in Boston. Not wanting to see her in such distress, Abraham decided to sell his farm and move to a more populated settlement. This news seemed to raise her spirits, but just before the move, two Shawnee Indians wandered onto Abraham’s farm looking for whiskey. In attempting to expel them, Abraham killed one of the men, but the other one killed Elizabeth. Afterwards, Abraham, distraught, sold the farm, then made his way back to Boston with Jared to learn that Philip had recently died. Gilbert Kent, the son of Philip and his second wife Peggy McLean, inherited control of Kent and Son after his father’s passing. He gave Abraham a job there. Gilbert tried to arrange for Abraham to participate in the Lewis and Clark expedition, but Abraham informed him that he could not participate because he had caught a disease from a prostitute. When Gilbert expelled him from his house, Abraham tried to take his son with him, but Gilbert’s wife, Harriet, would not allow it. Abraham pushed her down the stairs and she went into premature labor. After a violent scuffle, Abraham left without Jared, and Harriet gave birth to a daughter, Amanda. Jared Kent never saw his father after that. He was raised by Gilbert and Harriet, though Harriet detested him and treated him cruelly. After the War of 1812 was declared, Jared enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served aboard the USS Constitution. He participated in the battle with HMS Guerriere that took place on August 19, 1812. During the battle Jared contributed to the maiming of Hamilton Stovall, a superior officer who had earlier demanded sex from Jared, but was denied. Later that year Gilbert Kent, had a seizure and died, and Harriet quickly remarried. Her second husband, Andrew Piggott, appeared to be a suitable mate before they were married; however, this was to prove illusory. He was a compulsive gambler and womaniser and would lose the entire Kent and Son publishing firm to Stovall in a game of craps, which proved a setup as retribution for Jared's having rejected Stovall's advances. In his rage upon hearing this news, Jared set fire to the firm and attempted to kill Stovall, instead shooting an associate of his. Thinking the man he shot was dead, Jared fled the city with his cousin Amanda. Earlier that day, Harriet had been hit by a carriage and died, leaving Amanda an orphan. Having no specific destination in mind, they traveled to Pittsburgh. Once there, Jared made the decision to settle in New Orleans, but he was sidetracked along the way. While in Tennessee, near Nashville, Amanda was raped and abducted by William Blackthorn. Having been beaten by Blackthorn, Jared was required to recover for a time at The Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson. Jackson made inquiries as to Blackthorn’s destination, which he discovered him was St. Louis. Jared followed him there, discovered him in a brothel and shot him dead. With his dying breath, Blackthorn told Jared he had sold Amanda to fur traders going up the Missouri River. Jared was jailed for ninety days for disturbing the peace; while in jail, he was visited by Elijah Weatherby. Weatherby, a fur trader, had witnessed Blackthorn’s murder and he was impressed by young Jared. He told Jared he was going to Indian country to trade and that he needed a partner. Weatherby offered to aid Jared in his search for Amanda along the way. After some consideration, Jared decided to accept the offer. The story ends without Jared and Amanda being reunited, but the reader learns that Amanda is alive and was sold by fur traders to an American Indian."
1957,The Covenant,history," The novel is set in South Africa, home to five distinct populations: Bantu (native Black tribes), Coloured (the result of generations of miscegenation between persons of European descent and the indigenous occupants of South Africa along with slaves brought in from Angola, Indonesia, India, Madagascar and the east Coast of Africa), English, Afrikaner, and Indian, Chinese, and other foreign workers. The novel traces the history, interaction, and conflicts between these populations, from prehistoric times up to the 1970s. Michener writes largely from the point of view of the Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers and French Huguenot immigrants who traveled to South Africa to practice freedom of worship in the Calvinist tradition, and other European groups (such as the Germans), all of whom were absorbed by the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch Reformed Church. The Afrikaners, whose Dutch ancestors first established a trading and refueling stop at Cape Town in the 17th century to service ships moving between Holland and Java, and whose ranks were augmented by Huguenot and other northern European immigrants, considered themselves the ""New Israelites"". They found in the Old Testament verification for their belief that God favored their conquest of the new land. Their strict, fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible supported them through the Great Trek of the 19th century; battles against Zulu and other Bantu tribes, who also laid claim to lands to the north; the Anglo-Boer War (when small guerrilla bands of a few hundred Afrikaner farmers were able to hold off tens of thousands of British regulars); and their institution of Apartheid in the 20th century, when they insisted on racial purity, separatism, and white supremacy, per the moral expectations of the God of Israel in the Old Testament and their own determination to keep political power in the hands of Whites of European descent. Michener suggests that the Afrikaner oppression of Blacks was partly due to Dutch animosity towards the English, who assumed political and financial control of southern Africa in 1795 and fought against the traditional way of life, including slavery, pursued by Afrikaner farmers, or Boers. As one Bantu character observes, ""no matter whether the English or the Dutch win, the Blacks always lose."" Both historical and fictional characters appear throughout the novel. The experiences of the fictional van Doorn family illustrate the Dutch and Huguenot heritage of South Africa, and in the 1970s also illustrate the differences between liberal and conservative Afrikaners. The fictional Saltwood family represents the English settlement of the area. The Nxumalo family illustrates the area's black heritage and culture. African Zulu leader Shaka appears in the novel, during the chapter on the Mfecane."
1958,The Immigrants,history," Born on the voyage to America to his Italian father and French-born mother, Daniel Lavette grows up helping his father on a fishing boat. Tragedy strikes early one morning, however, when Dan wakes early to prepare the boat. The great San Francisco earthquake destroys vast swathes of the city including the small apartment where his parents where sleeping. Following a traumatic three days spent ferrying passengers across the bay to Oakland, he is taken in by friends of his father. The two immigrant families of Italian and Jewish origin use the money earned from the ferrying to start a financial empire and a bank, the Bank of Sonoma. Although Dan Lavette becomes quite rich, he does not stop. He wants to become multimillionaire and has many ideas in mind. He is an entrepreneur and seeks to find his place among the rich businessmen on Nob Hill. He asks for a loan from the larger Seldon Bank in San Francisco, but the owner declines it. During that meeting, Dan meets Jean, the exquisitely beautiful daughter of the owner, and both are smitten with each other. Soon after, they are married, against the will of Jean's mother, who is very segregationist and looks down on immigrants and those of poor pedigree. Dan Lavette grows increasingly wealthy, but his happiness is short-lived. After they have two children, Jean ceases to love him and grows cold to his advances. Dan hired a Chinese bookkeeper, Feng Wo, to assist him at the start of his business dealings, but only receives an invitation for dinner at Wo’s house after several years. Because Jean shares her mother’s distaste for other ethnicities, Dan attends alone. At the dinner, Dan enjoys the company of Wo’s daughter, May Ling, laughing and feeling more at ease than he had since his first days with Jean. After visiting her a few times at the library where she works, Dan falls in love with May Ling. They engage in an affair and they have a child together. So that she may have all of his energies to herself, May Ling wants him to divorce Jean. Dan broaches the idea to Jean, but is flatly declined as divorce is not something the Seldon family participates in. Even after she discovers the affair and has trysts of her own, she will not divorce him and holds onto the marriage as a ploy for leverage. The empire Dan started with his friend, Mark Levy, of the his fishing boats and Levy’s goods store, continues to grow. The Levy and Lavette Company (later L&L Shipping) get into the business of shipping bulk cargo and profit from assisting the Allied cause during the shipping explosion needed during World War I. Sensing the end of the war, Dan convinces Mark to sell the cargo ships. Doing so before the cargo market collapses, the company greatly profits and uses the money to start to a classy department store. Adding to this, the pair diversify by adding luxury cruise liners and building a hotel on Waikiki Beach. They also begin one of the first airlines of the west coast. Impressed with the raging stock market of the late 1920s, the duo issue shares to list their company on the exchange and begin playing the market on margin. This fiscal bubble soon bursts in the crash of 1929 that begins the Great Depression. Many banks close, including The Bank of Sonoma, started by his lifelong Italian friend with the proceeds of the earthquake ferry service. Unable to honor his deposits due to the bank run, his friend dies a heart attack. His Jewish compatriot and business partner, Levy, also dies soon after hearing of his daughters death. Following this tragic news, Dan grows sullen. When May Ling gives him an ultimatum to divorce Jean or lose her and his son, Dan cannot act and May Ling moves to Los Angeles. As the heir to and subsequent chairwoman of the Seldon Bank, Jean calls the loans that are keep Levy and Lavette afloat. Although Jean offers him a position as head of the remnant of the company, Dan cannot accept her handout and refuses. Jean grants his request for a divorce and he signs away his share of their communal assets. Bereft of all his money and torn inside by the emotional destruction of his world, Dan wanders the streets as a vagabond in search of work and even spends three months in prison after fighting off some muggers. When a former employee and boat owner gives him a meal and a job, Dan returns to his first love as a fisherman. Having finally grown up, Dan rises from the depths of his humiliation to seek out May Ling. Venturing to Los Angeles, he meets May Ling and they are finally married. At the close of the story, Dan and Jean’s daughter visits and begins rekindling a relationship with her father."
1959,The Salt Roads,history," The Salt Roads is a novel that tells the story of the Ginen fertility god, Lasirén. As she moves through the bodies of female characters, inhabiting them for short and long periods of time, Lasirén helps women find their place in the world and give them the confidence to make decisions that they otherwise would not possess. The novel intertwines the stories of three major characters while illustrating the mysterious ways of Lasirén and her healing, life-giving powers. The novel begins by introducing the character of Mer, who is a healer in the slave community of a Caribbean plantation. In the beginning scene, she is seen delivering a mixed baby that is stillborn. As she, her helper and lover, Tipingee, and the baby's mother, Georgine, go to bury the baby at the river's edge, their mixed prayers to three different deities delivers Lasirén into being, launching her into the lives of the three main characters. She appears to Mer, subsequently, to inform her that it is her duty to pave the sea roads clear. And as her story progresses, her duty becomes clear. As the slaves around her are rallied by the demagogue, Makandal, to rebel against their white slave owners, or backra, Mer must watch as they risk their lives to pursue a dream that one iconoclastic human being is misleadingly placing in their minds. The slaves working in the homes of plantations across San Domingue are encouraged to inject poison into the food and water of their white owners. As Makandal incites more people, Mer's story comes to a climax as he orchestrates the arson of the home of Seigneur Simenon, the plantation owner. Her body finally inhabited by Lasirén's presence, Mer attempts to save the white folk and in essence the wrath they will ensue on her fellow slaves. However, Makandal and the slaves pin her down and cut off her tongue. As turmoil dies down with the burning of Makandal and his absence, the slaves return to their old ways. And Mer, given the chance to escape and be free of her enslavement, declines, knowing that her place is with the slaves on the plantation, healing those in pain and paving the roads clean for Lasirén. Another story that Hopkinson weaves into the story is that of Jeanne Duval. She is an actress and singer in Paris, France, that becomes the mistress of the author and poet, Charles Baudelaire. As he sets her up in her own apartment with her mother, Baudelaire eventually gets his inheritance taken away from him to be managed by a finance manager. As his wealth dwindles, so does the balance of power in his relationship with Jeanne. Scraping by, both Jeanne and Baudelaire must find ways of obtaining their needs. Baudelaire needs to support his mistress and Jeanne needs to help her ailing mother. However, Jeanne's mother dies and soon thereafter, Jeanne becomes infected with syphilis, and suffers a stroke that leaves her right side paralyzed. As she moves from her apartment to the sanatorium and back again, she is visited by her stepbrother, Joël, who ultimately causes a falling-out between her and Baudelaire and later, the selling of her furniture while she is away at the sanatorium. Alone and at an utter loss at her abandonment, Jeanne is confronted by, Moustique, her brother's friend. He takes her in, and in her sadness and loss of beauty and youth, Jeanne finally comes to find herself loved and content. The third character that Lasirén inhabits is Thais, a Nubian prostitute living in Alexandria, Egypt. Thais' journey begins when she and her slave friend, Judah, gather their scarce belongings and even scarcer money and escape their enslavement to Aelia Capitolina, or present-day Jerusalem. However, finally reaching their destination, they find themselves in a foreign place with no money, but what their bodies can offer. As they approach the famous Christian church that Thais desired to see, she finds that she has been carrying a baby, but miscarries it in the church's courtyard. Soon after, she finds herself wandering the desert for months, on little water and barely any food. As she contemplates her surroundings and finds herself trying to listen deeply and intently to nature, her thoughts, and even the thoughts of others, she comes to a revelation. Speaking with Lasirén and learning about the goddess' origins and place in the world."
1960,Ramage,history," Nicholas Lord Ramage is the third lieutenant on His Majesty's ship Sibella, but assumes command when the Captain, and the First and Second Lieutenants are killed by fire from a French ship. The French ship had fatally crippled the Sibella and had killed over half of her crew, including the surgeon and surgeon's mate. As the new Captain, Ramage decides to abandon the sinking ship. He leaves the injured on the deck to be taken prisoner by the French and hopefully treated by their surgeon. Before he abandons the ship, Ramage retrieves some documents and the late Captain's last orders. The remaining crew then loads into the four lifeboats and rows away. As they are rowing away, the crew of the French ship set the Sibella on fire after taking the injured off. Ramage opens Sir John Jervis's orders to the late Captain and finds that the Sibella was on a rescue mission to extricate the Marchesa di Volterri along with five other nobles including the Marchesa's two cousins. Ramage decides to go through with the rescue. He takes the captain's gig with several topmen and the former Captain's coxswain, Jackson, with him and sends the other surviving sailors to Bastia. Ramage and his men then land upon Monte Argentario and find the Marchesa with the help of a local charcoal maker. Half of the nobles decide not to risk trying to escape in a small boat, but Ramage rescues the Marchesa and one of her cousins, Count Pisano, although the other cousin, Count Pitti, is apparently killed by Napoleon's cavalry during the escape. The refugees are eventually picked up by the Lively frigate under the command of Captain Probus. That night Pisano accuses Ramage of cowardice in connection with the death of Count Pitti, submitting a formal accusation to Probus. During their time together, the Marchesa and Ramage develop a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque relationship, with the conniving of her family and the demands of discretion upon them. After the Marchesa is safe, Ramage is sent to trial according to the Articles of War for his loss of the Sibella. Captain Croucher, a political enemy of Ramage's father, brings the accusation of cowardice into the trial. Ramage's trial is interrupted by Lord Nelson's arrival, effectively ending the trial. Nelson gives him the command of the cutter Kathleen sending him to rescue the crew of the frigate HMS Belette which had run aground and was under fire from Napoleon's troops. Ramage saves the stranded crew and returns to Nelson. Upon his return, he learns that Count Pitti, who he had been unable to rescue had not been killed, but instead had hidden and later escaped. The book ends as Ramage considers his orders to carry the Marchesa and Count Pitti to Gibraltar."
1961,Sharpe's Honour,history," This book tells the story of Major Richard Sharpe, during the Vitoria Campaign of the Peninsula War in 1813. Framed for murder, Sharpe must find a way to clear his name to preserve the fragile alliance between Britain and Spain."
1962,"Fearless, A Novel of Sarah Bowman",history," In 1845, Mexico would not relinquish its claim to Texas, and the U.S. prepared for war. Under the command of General Zachary ""Old Rough and Ready"" Taylor, Sarah signed on as a laundress and cook and bivouacked with Taylor's army in Corpus Christi, preparing for an attack by Mexico. Before the war even began, though, her husband was killed. But going home was out of the question. She considered the army her home and its soldiers her family. Nowhere else would her courage and compassion be so much needed and appreciated. While the battle raged around her, Sarah became a familiar figure through the haze of sulfurous blue smoke and the stench of exploding gunpowder, riding among the flames to retrieve the wounded. Through the long years of bitter battle, she would find love in the arms of a sergeant with eyes as golden as a flame, and friendship in the company of Cruz, a Mexican woman whose personal history encompassed the war in all its passions and horrors."
1963,I Am a Barbarian,history," The story is pitched as a free translation of the memoirs of Britannicus, 25 years the slave of Caligula, emperor of Rome from AD 37 to 41 who is historically known for being insane."
1964,Eldorado,history," It is 1794 and Paris, ""despite the horrors that had stained her walls - has remained a city of pleasure, and the knife of the guillotine did scarce descend more often than did the drop-scenes on the stage."" The plot begins when Sir Percy, the Scarlet Pimpernel, reluctantly agrees to take Armand St. Just, brother of his wife, Marguerite, with him to France as part of a plan to rescue the young Dauphin. Percy warns Armand not to renew any friendships while in Paris, but it doesn't take long before Armand has ignored his warnings and renewed a friendship with the scheming Baron de Batz (in the pay of the Austrian government), who wants to free the Dauphin himself and despises the Scarlet Pimpernel and all he represents. Whilst attending the opera with De Batz, Armand foolishly tells him that he is in the league of the Scarlet Pimpernel. While there, he falls in love with a young actress named Citizeness Jeanne L'Ange. De Batz introduces the couple backstage at the theatre and once they have fallen for each other, De Batz tells Citizen Heron of the general committee of Public Safety where and when they have arranged to meet. After covering for Armand at her house, L'Ange is arrested and thrown into jail. Learning of her peril and in the throes of passion, Armand fails to trust Sir Percy who has told him that he will rescue Jeanne, and forgets his promise to his leader. Armand, desperate to share Jeanne's fate, runs to the gate of the Temple prison and screams, ""Long Live the King."" There he's intercepted by none other than Percy's arch enemy, Chauvelin. Faced with the death of his love, Armand betrays Percy, unaware that The Pimpernel has already secured Jeanne's freedom. Sir Percy is then captured and imprisoned by Chauvelin and Heron in the cell that was home to Marie Antoinette in her last days. Chauvelin insists that Percy is to be deprived of sleep in the hope that he will be weakened and disclose where young Capet, the uncrowned King of France, is being held following his rescue. After 17 days in prison, Percy is sure that the dauphin has been transported safely into Holland. He then contrives, by pretending to crack and confess the dauphin's whereabouts, to make his escape. He tells Chauvelin and Heron that the dauphin is being held in an area in the north, near the coast of France, but that he has to show them, rather than tell them, because the paths are nameless and too small for them to find without him. Chauvelin and Heron, skeptical, bring along Armand and Marguerite as hostages. Once in the north, Percy takes advantage of a chance when Chauvelin and Heron are separated, and darkness, to subdue Heron, bind and truss him, put on his clothes, and direct the guileless French soldiers (who think that the bound Heron is Percy) to put him in the gated yard of a church. Percy, still thought to be Heron, drives a carriage with Marguerite and Armand inside to the coast, where his ship is waiting for them. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge"
1965,Murder in Grub Street,history," A printer and his household are horrifically slaughtered, and a mad poet is caught red-handed at the scene. But Sir John doubts that the real culprit has been found."
1966,Twenty Years After,history," The action begins under Queen Anne of Austria regency and Cardinal Mazarin ruling. D'Artagnan, who seemed to have a promising career ahead of him at the end of The Three Musketeers, has for twenty years remained a lieutenant in the Musketeers, and seems unlikely to progress, despite his ambition and the debt the queen owes him. By chance, however, he is summoned by Mazarin, who requires an escort, as the French people detest Mazarin, and are on the brink of rebellion (La Fronde). D'Artagnan is sent to the Bastille to retrieve a prisoner, who turns out to be his former adversary, the Comte de Rochefort. After renewing his acquaintance with d'Artagnan and making a promise to aid his advancement, Rochefort is brought to his audience with Mazarin, where he learns that the cause for his imprisonment was his refusal to serve Mazarin at an earlier stage. He does, however, remember his promise, and though he offers his own service to Mazarin, he refuses to watch over the Duc de Beaufort, who is imprisoned at the time, and soon learns that, in consequence, he is to be returned to the Bastille, though this does not deter him from speaking highly of the achievements of d'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers. Having determined that d'Artagnan was the man he sought, Mazarin enters the chambers of the Queen to let her know that he has enlisted the man who had served her so well twenty years earlier. The Queen, feeling guilty for having forgotten d'Artagnan's service, gives Mazarin a diamond ring which she had previously given d'Artagnan to be returned to him, which d'Artagnan had sold in her service. The avaricious Mazarin, however, merely uses the diamond to show d'Artagnan that he is once again to enter the Queen's service. He commissions d'Artagnan to go in search of his friends. D'Artagnan is at a loss; he has completely lost touch with his friends, who have resumed their real names. Athos, the Comte de la Fère, had returned to his estate near Blois; Porthos, Monsieur du Vallon, had married a lawyer's widow; and Aramis became a priest, the Abbé d'Herblay. Fortune intervenes, however, when Planchet, his old servant, enters d'Artagnan's chambers, attempting to escape arrest for aiding the escape of Rochefort. Through Planchet, he locates Bazin, Aramis' old servant, now beadle at Notre Dame. Though Bazin is unwilling to help, d'Artagnan is able to find out, through an altar boy, that Bazin makes frequent visits to Noisy. D'Artagnan and Planchet go there, where they are set upon by a group who think them Frondeurs while outside the house of Madame de Longueville. When this group is satisfied that d'Artagnan is not the man they seek, Aramis surprises Planchet by dropping onto his horse from the tree in which he had been hiding. Though d'Artagnan finds, through the decoration of Aramis' chambre, that the former musketeer who had thought of little other than being a priest is now a priest who thinks of little other than being a soldier, Aramis is not willing to enter into Mazarin's service. When the time for departure comes, d'Artagnan waits in hiding, suspecting that Aramis is the Frondeur who had been sought earlier, and is the lover of Madame de Longueville; a suspicion which is confirmed. The visit to Aramis was not fruitless, as it yielded the address of Porthos. When d'Artagnan arrives at Porthos' estate he finds Mousqueton, who is overjoyed to meet d'Artagnan and Planchet. He finds that Porthos, despite his wealth and life spent in pursuit of amusement, is not happy. Porthos desires to become a baron, and with this bait d'Artagnan lures him into Mazarin's service. D'Artagnan then continues on his search, seeking Athos, whom he finds almost completely changed, to be an example to his ward, Raoul. Though Athos will not be enlisted into Mazarin's service, and indeed reveals that his sympathies lie against Mazarin, the two arrange to meet again in Paris; Athos wishes to bring Raoul there to help him to become a gentleman, and also to separate him from Louise de Vallière, who Raoul is in love and obsessed with. In Paris, Athos visits Madame de Chevreuse, the former mistress of Aramis, with whom, under the name Marie Michon, Aramis had much communication in The Three Musketeers. Athos reveals, discreetly, that Raoul is the son born of a chance encounter he had with her, and through her gets a letter of recommendation for Raoul to join the army. The scene then changes, to focus on the Duc de Beaufort, Mazarin's prisoner at Vincennes, who finds a new jailer, Athos' servant, the silent Grimaud. Grimaud instantly makes himself disagreeable to the Duc, as part of an escape plot. Using messages passed to Rochefort using tennis balls, they arrange to have a meal on Whitsuntide, to which La Ramée, second in command of the prison, is invited. The escape is successful, but d'Artagnan and Porthos are in pursuit. After a race against time, and having defeated several adversaries along the way, Porthos and d'Artagnan find themselves in the dark, surrounded, with swords crossed against adversaries equal to them, who are revealed to be Athos and Aramis. The four arrange to meet in Paris at the Place Royale; both parties, now finding themselves enemies, enter fearing a duel, but they reconcile and renew their vows of friendship. As this is going on, Raoul is travelling to join the army. Along the road he sees a gentleman of around the same age, and tries to make haste to join him. The other gentleman reaches the ferry before him, but has fallen into the river. Raoul, who is used to fording rivers, saves the gentleman, the Comte de Guiche, and the two become friends. Further along the road, the debt is repaid when the Comte saves Raoul when they are attacked by Spanish soldiers. After the fight, they find a man who is close to death, who requests the last rites. They help him to a nearby inn, and find a travelling monk. This monk is unpleasant to them, and does not seem inclined to perform this service, so they force him to go to the inn. Once there, the monk hears the confession. The dying man reveals that he was the executioner of Béthune, and confesses his part in the execution of Milady de Winter. The monk reveals himself as her son, John Francis de Winter, who calls himself Mordaunt after Charles I stripped him of all his titles. Mordaunt stabs the executioner. Grimaud, who is to join Raoul, comes upon the inn just as this is taking place, though too late to prevent it, or to detain the monk. After hearing what happened from the dying man, making his excuses to Raoul, he departs to warn Athos about the son of Milady. After his departure, Raoul and Guiche are forced to retreat when the Spanish come upon the town. After joining the army of the Prince de Condé, Raoul provides assistance in interrogating the prisoner brought by Guiche and him, when the prisoner feigns to misunderstand them in several languages. Once they have learned the location of the Spanish army, they set out for battle, Raoul accompanying the Prince. Meanwhile, d´Artagnan and Porthos help Queen Anne of Austria, the young Louis XIV and Mazarin escape Paris after its citizens finally start a rebellion. The champion of the French populace and parliament, Pierre Broussel, is arrested, but then released when it becomes clear that his imprisonment has only served to stir the crowd up worse. D´Artagnan meets the young king and watches over him as some Frondeurs - including Planchet, under a false name - who wanted to make sure that the king and queen were not about to escape, enter the king's bedroom demanding to see him: immediately after this, he contrives for all of the royal household to escape from Paris anyway, bluffing his way past Planchet at the gates (the two men retain their friendship despite their differing allegiances in this conflict). After that, Mazarin sends d'Artagnan and Porthos to England with a message for Cromwell and orders them to stay there for some time under Cromwell's command. At the same time, Queen Henrietta of England meets the Musketeers' old English friend, Lord de Winter - a Royalist come to ask for French assistance for King Charles I of England, her husband, in the English Civil War, and sends Athos and Aramis to England as well. So once again the two pairs of Musketeers find themselves on opposite sides: but Athos and Aramis, on the occasion of departing, are recognised by Mordaunt, who has been following Lord de Winter in the hope of finding his friends. Milady's son, Mordaunt, reprises his role as one of the chief antagonists, and sets about avenging his mother's death. He seeks not only Lord de Winter, but the other four unknown conspirators who took part in his mother's clandestine ""trial"" and execution. He murders his uncle, Lord de Winter, who was Milady's brother-in-law, during the same battle in which king Charles I is captured. Athos and Aramis are captured by d'Artagnan and Porthos, who are fighting alongside Mordaunt and Cromwell's troops. As soon as they can have a conversation, Athos talks d'Artagnan and Porthos into helping save Charles I. D'Artagnan and Porthos free their friends and start making plans in order to try to save the king. In the end, all their plans fail, and Mordaunt executes King Charles I after d'Artagnan and the three former Musketeers have kidnapped the real executioner in order to prevent this. D'Artagnan and his friends later confront Mordaunt at Cromwell's London residence, but in the course of a duel with d'Artagnan he escapes through a secret passage. The Frenchmen and their menservants leave England by ship, but Mordaunt gets aboard and blows it up. Unfortunately for him, the Musketeers' servants discover the explosives on board, rouse their masters, and contrive to steal the only lifeboat before the ship can blow up, leaving Mordaunt aboard. Somehow, Mordaunt escapes the blast, and pleads with the Musketeers to let him into their boat. With the exception of Athos, they contemptuously reject his appeals. Athos insists on saving him however, but as he helps him into the boat, Mordaunt deliberately drags him back into the water where they struggle and Mordaunt is killed. Athos rejoins the others claiming that ""I have a son... and I wished to live"". They assume - correctly - that Athos means Raoul de Bragelonne, officially his ward and adopted son (in fact Raoul is Athos's natural illegitimate son, product of a one-night stand, as we have learned earlier in the novel: this is the first time that the other Musketeers are actually told that Athos is indeed Raoul's real father, although D'Artagnan may have suspected it earlier.) Athos further states that ""It was not me who killed him... It was fate."" Once back in France, the four friends go separate ways. D'Artagnan and Porthos head to Paris through a different route from the other two, knowing that Mazarin will not forgive their disobedience. Aramis and Athos reach Paris only to find out that their friends haven't. After looking for them, they find out about their imprisonment by Mazarin in Rueil. Athos tries to persuade Queen Anne to free his friends, but is imprisoned as well. After this, d'Artagnan manages to escape with Porthos and capture Mazarin. Mazarin is taken to one of Porthos's castles and he gives some concessions to the four friends in exchange for his freedom, among them, making Porthos a baron and making d'Artagnan captain of musketeers. Athos asks for nothing: Aramis asks for concessions towards himself and his friends in the Fronde. These concessions are later accepted by Queen Anne, who finally realizes she has been rather ungrateful to d'Artagnan and his friends. At the end of the novel, the first Fronde comes to an end, and Mazarin, Queen Anne and Louis XIV enter Paris. A riot takes place during which d'Artagnan accidentally kills Rochefort and Porthos kills Bonacieux (who in the earlier novel was d'Artagnan's landlord and an agent of Richelieu, and is now a beggar and Frondist). At the end the four friends go their separate ways again. D'Artagnan stays in Paris with Mazarin and Queen Anne, Athos returns to la Fère, Aramis returns to his abbey in Noisy le Sec, and Porthos to his barony and castle."
1967,Wolf of the Plains,history," The narrative follows the early life of Temujin, the second son of Yesugei, the khan of the Mongol ""Wolf"" is father soon dies from his injuries. Yesugei's first bondsman, Eeluk assumes control of the tribe. Fearing the sons of the former khan may contest his leadership when they reach adulthood, Eeluk banishes Temujin's family from the tribe, leaving them to fend for themselves on the harsh Steppes. The expectation was that Temujin's family would perish in the unforgiving winter, but Temujin, along with his mother Hoelun, his four brothers Behter, Hasar, Hachiun, Temüge, and his baby sister Temulen, survived against all the odds, albeit in poverty. In an argument over food, Temujin kills his older brother Bekter, much to his mother's anguish. After a few years of trading with other wandering families, the family establish a small home. But the Wolf tribe return to the area, and advanced riders, sent by Eeluk to ensure the family had perished, capture Temujin. He is taken back to the tribe where he is tortured, and kept in a pit, in preparation for a ritual murder. He is freed by Arslan and Jelme, father and son wanderers who joined the Wolves after looking for Yesugei, whom Arslan owed a debt. They join Temujin and his family and begin a new tribe, accepting other wandering families into their protection. Temujin assumes the role of khan. Temujin returns to the Olkhunut to claim his wife Borte. Shortly after, Borte is captured by a Tartar raiding party. Temujin and his brothers chase down the captors and murder them, recovering Borte. The small army retailiates with repeated raids on Tartar camps. The Tartars respond by sending armies to crush the new menace. It is then that a Chin emissary approaches Temujin with an offer from Toghrul, Khan of the Kerait. Temujin joins his small fledgling tribe with Toghrul's, and leads a joint army to advance on the Tartars. It is in the following battle that Temujin begins to show outstanding tactical abilities, as the Mongols ease to victory. Upon interrogating a Tartar prisoner, Temujin learns that the leader of the Olkhunut conspired with the Chin to lead the Tartar assassins to his father. He also learns that a massive Tartar army is advancing into Mongol lands. Temujin returns to the Kerait, then travels to the Olkhunut tribe, where he murders the khan in his ger and assumes leadership of the tribe, and takes them back to join the Kerait. The Mongol alliance prepares for battle, when they are joined by the Wolves. Temujin and Eeluk agree to settle their feud upon victory over the Tartars. Under Temujin's faultless leadership and strategy, the Tartar army is crushed. As the battle ends, Temujin and Eeluk fight, with Temujin emerging victorious. He claims leadership of the Wolves and takes the warriors back to the Kerait. Fearing an inevitable challenge to his leadership, Toghrul sends assassins to Temujin's ger. The attempt is unsuccessful, and Toghrul is banished out of the unified tribe. Temujin proclaims himself khan of all Mongol tribes and bestows the name Genghis upon himself."
1968,Mr American,history," Mark Franklin arrives on the Mauretania at Liverpool in 1909 with a copy of Shakespeare's works, an old Mexican charro saddle and two Remington pistols in his battered luggage. A tall and softly-spoken American prospector, who made his fortune in a silver strike in Nevada, he is visiting the 'old country' to see his roots. He goes to London where he meets and has a one-night stand with 'Pip' Delys, a music hall performer. She gives him the name which forms the title of the book. He then buys a house in Castle Lancing, the Norfolk village his ancestors came from in the 17th century. A chance event during a fox hunt, when the fox hides in Franklin's picnic basket, leads to an acquaintance with King Edward VII, and the beginning of an enmity with a neighbour (Frank, Lord Lacy) which lasts throughout the book. Through playing bridge with Edward and his mistress Alice Keppel, Franklin elevates himself greatly in the king's estimation through his easy manners. When the king invites him to Sandringham, Franklin meets Winston Churchill, Jackie Fisher, and Ernest Cassel. This allows Fraser to depict some of the historical background of the build-up to the First World War. He also meets General Flashman, from Fraser's well-known historical fiction series. Flashman is in his late 80s at the start of the book (as he says, ""I'm eighty-eight next May, and I attribute my longevity to an almost total abstinence from tea""), and an important sub-plot involves his grand-niece, Lady Helen Cessford, a suffragette. An old partner in crime, Kid Curry, tracks him down and demands half of all his wealth. Franklin refuses, and the stage is set for a midnight gunfight, which Franklin wins with the assistance of his manservant Samson. They bury the body in a field. He falls in love with, and marries, another neighbour, Peggy Clayton. Her brother is an officer in the British Army and is involved in running guns to Ireland during the Curragh Mutiny, using Franklin's money obtained by Peggy from him by deception. Over the years Franklin gradually grows apart from his young wife, at first due to the breach of trust over the money, and then when he discovers her sexual infidelity. The novel ends with the outbreak of war in 1914, and Franklin deciding to return to the U.S., leaving the bulk of his fortune in England for his wife and her family. At the last moment he changes his mind, and the reader is left unsure whether he intends to return to his unfaithful wife, to possibly accompany Samson who plans to serve in the Legion of Frontiersmen under Frederick Selous, or something else entirely."
1969,The Black Tulip,history," The story begins with a historical event — the 1672 lynching of the Dutch Grand Pensionary (roughly equivalent to a modern Prime Minister) Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis, by a wild mob of their own countrymen — considered by many as one of the most painful episodes in Dutch history, described by Dumas with a dramatic intensity. The main plot line, involving fictional characters, takes place in the following eighteen months; only gradually does the reader understand its connection with the killing of the de Witt brothers. The city of Haarlem, Netherlands has set a prize of 100,000 guilders to the person who can grow a black tulip, sparking competition between the country's best gardeners to win the money, honour and fame. The young and bourgeois Cornelius van Baerle has almost succeeded, but is suddenly thrown into the Loevestein prison. There he meets the prison guard's beautiful daughter Rosa, who will be his comfort and help, and at last his rescuer. The novel was originally published in three volumes in 1850 as La Tulipe Noire by Baudry (Paris)."
1970,The Antiquary,history," At the opening of the story, Lovel meets Oldbuck while taking a coach from Edinburgh. Oldbuck, interested as he is in antiquities, has with him Gordon's Itinerarium, a book about Roman ruins. The book interests Lovel, to the surprise of Oldbuck and by their shared interest the two become friends. Oldbuck invites Lovel to come to Monkbarns and takes the opportunity of a willing listener to divulge his ancient knowledge. In the process of which, Oldbuck shows Lovel a plot of land he purchased at great personal cost which bears the inscription ""A.D.L.L"", which Oldbuck takes to mean ""Agricola Dicavit Libens Lubens"". Edie Ochiltree shows up to dispute the antiquary's history, in one of the more amusing scenes of the story (see image at left). Oldbuck decides to introduce Lovel to his good friend, Sir Arthur Wardour. When Sir Arthur arrives, Lovel meets Arthur's daughter, Isabella and the two realize they have seen each other before. Because Lovel is illegitimate, she knows her father would not approve of a marriage between them. When she sees Lovel standing in the road waiting to talk to her, she convinces her father to take the long way home, walking down to the beach. Luckily, Edie Ochiltree, having the insight that someone may be trapped on the beach not knowing that the tide was coming in, finds the Wardours and helps them escape the rising waters. Then, Lovel appears and gets them to relative safety, huddling on the side of a rocky cliff. Finally, Oldbuck arranges a team with a lift system to pull the four up over the cliff to safety. A while later, Oldbuck takes Lovel, the Wardours, his niece and nephew, Douster-swivel and a priest to the ancient ruins of Saint Ruth on Sir Arthur's property. While exploring the property, they discuss an ancient treasure that they believe to be buried at the ruins. Captain M'Intyre dominates Isabella's attention, which she leaves in favor of Lovel's to the dismay of M'Intyre. M'Intyre, angered at this slight, discovers that Lovel is in the military, but realizes he knows of no one named Lovel in his division and calls him out upon the topic. They agree to a duel and return to the scene to fight for their individual honor. Lovel's bullet strikes best and leaves M'Intyre bleeding on the ground, when Lovel flees with Edie to avoid a potential arrest. In their hiding, Edie and Lovel see Douster-swivel and Sir Arthur return to the ruins, looking for treasure. They see Douster-swivel attempting to convince Sir Arthur of his magical abilities to find gold and he does conveniently find a small bag under a stone. After they leave, Lovel boards a military ship and departs. Oldbuck, understanding Douster-swivel's knavery, confronts him about his cons and takes Sir Arthur back to the ruins to look for treasure without Douster-swivel's magical intervention. Digging further under the same stone under which Douster-swivel had previously found treasure, they discover a chest full of silver, which Sir Arthur promptly takes back home. Edie hangs behind and whispers for Douster-swivel to join him. Then, showing the con artist the lid to the chest, with the phrase ""Search 1"" written on it. Edie convinces the German mage that this phrase means there is a second chest nearby, this time full of gold. They return at night and dig, but cannot find another chest. Just as Douster-swivel is starting to realize that Edie is mocking him, Steenie Mucklebackit jumps from the shadows and knocks Douster-swivel unconscious. Steenie and Edie flee to Steenie's house, where Steenie shows him Douster-swivel's pocketbook, accidentally picked up during the excitement. Edie makes him promise to return the pocketbook and then leaves. Alas, Steenie is not long for this world and dies in a fishing accident the next day. As the family is in mourning, Elspeth, Steenie's grandmother, comes out of a long senility to tell Edie to take a ring and a message to Lord Glenallan. Oldbuck, whose land the Mucklebackits occupy, comes to help carry the casket and pay his respects, to the awe and thanks of the family. Edie meets Lord Glenallan and gives him the ring and tells him to go visit Elspeth. Glenallan does and learns from her his own history. He had married a woman named Eveline Neville, who his mother helped convince was his sister after she had already become pregnant. Eveline attempts to commit suicide by jumping into the sea. She is taken from the water barely alive and dies after giving birth. The child is taken by another maid named Theresa and is raised by Glenallen's younger brother as his own illegitimate son. Glenallen does not know this. Glenallan never recovers from believing that he committed a violation of nature. Elspeth tells him that Eveline was not his sister and that his marriage with her was perfectly legitimate. It relieves his mind and he desires to find his son. Meanwhile, Edie is arrested for attacking Douster-swivel. Oldbuck proves that Douster-swivel is merely a thief and frees Edie, who immediately goes upon a mission. Oldbuck then receives word that Sir Arthur, who has been heavily in debt, is under arrest and has the valuables of his home being taken. Edie returns with money sent by Wardour's son and an order to stop the arrest. Finally, a mistake causes the national warning system—a series of towers with fires that can be lit to warn of invasion—to be lit and everyone believes the French are invading. Oldbuck dons his sword and travels to town to help with defence along with his nephew, who promptly assumes the role of a commander. As they prepare for the defence, Lord Glenallan comes in with his highland troops. Finally, Lovel and Captain Wardour arrive to take command of the defence and it is revealed that Lovel is actually Major Neville. Further, Oldbuck realizes that Major Neville is Glenallan's son and the two are reunited. Major Neville becomes the next Lord Glenallen and is now free to marry Isabella Wardour."
1971,Crossing the River,history," The novel’s opening is mostly the perspective of Nash, Martha, and Travis’ “father” mixed with the thoughts of the English slave trader James Hamilton, which are expressed in italics. The narrator explains that he had to sell his three children to slavery because his crops failed and he had no money. Nash’s story as an adult is first revealed through the perspective of his white master Edward Williams, who freed Nash so that he could go to Africa with the American Colonization Society to teach black natives. Edward, however, receives a letter saying that Nash had disappeared from the African village where he had been teaching. Edward immediately boards a ship to take him to Africa, and after many days of searching, a former slave of Edward’s informs him that Nash had died from fever. Edward is horribly upset, and his grief is further drawn out when he realizes that his beloved Nash was not the holy Christian he thought him to be. He finds plenty that points out Nash’s negative behavior, such as his large collection of native wives. The chapter ends with Edward gaping at the hovel that was once Nash’s residence while natives stare on, trying to understand the apparent momentary insanity of the shocked and aggrieved stranger. The story then switches to Martha, an old woman who, after losing her husband and daughter at a slave auction, decides to run away from her owners in Kansas and seek freedom in California. She only makes it to Colorado, however, where the group she is traveling with leaves her because she is slowing down the party. A white woman offers Martha a place to room for the night out of the bitter cold, but it is not enough. When the woman returns to Martha the next day, Martha is dead. The white woman decides that she is going to have to “choose a name for her if she was going to receive a Christian burial” (p.&nbsp;94), which is ironic since Martha hated receiving a new name each time she was passed to a different owner and because Martha didn’t believe in God. The final section is told through the eyes of Joyce, a white Englishwoman who falls in love with Travis, who is the “brother” of Nash and Martha. Since Travis’ story occurs during World War II (about a century after his supposed brother Nash's), it can be assumed that Travis is a sort of reincarnation of Nash and Martha’s brother from more than a century before. In that case, it can be implied that the ancestor narrator is not the children’s true father; rather he is some sort of all-knowing ancestor who has “listened” to his “children” for the last “two hundred and fifty years” (p.&nbsp;1). Joyce meets Travis at her husband’s store. Joyce’s husband habitually beats her, and when her husband is taken to prison for selling items on the black market, Joyce and Travis have an affair. Joyce has Travis’ baby but has to give it up after Travis dies in the war because it would be unacceptable for her to raise a black baby on her own. The chapter ends with a visit from Greer when he is twenty years old, who meets his mother for the first time after being raised in an orphanage. The book ends with the ancestor narrator once more, who provides an optimistic view even after all his children have died, saying that though he “sold his beloved children … they arrived on the far bank of the river, loved” (p.&nbsp;237)."
1972,Child of the Northern Spring,history," The novel begins on the night before Guinevere's departure from her home, the kingdom of Rheged to Logres, in order to marry King Arthur. Along the journey, Guinevere recalls scenes from her childhood. Later, Bedivere retells the story of Arthur's ascension as High King, focusing on the events that surround Arthur meeting his father Uther, his investiture of Excalibur by Vivien the Lady of the Lake (and her subsequent death at the hands of Sir Balin) and the subsequent war with King Lot of Lothian. Afterwards, Guinevere retells how the war with Lot affected Guinevere's people directly. The book continues to show episodes of her youth and several proposed offers of marriage, including, among others, Gawain, Uwain, her cousin Maelgwn (who was willing to put aside his own wife in order to marry her), Gildas and King Mark of Cornwall (made on his behalf by his nephew Tristan). Arthur and Guinevere's marriage is a hasty affair, due to an invasion that was timed to coincide with the wedding celebrations, an act attempt at catching Arthur unaware. During this time Guinevere is left with Igraine and Morgan le Fey, the latter leaves when Guinevere discovers her and her paramour Accolon. Following Arthur's return there is the first meeting of the Round Table, which is a suggestion of Guinevere's."
1973,Sharpe's Havoc,history," Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, leading his men of the 95th Rifles in retreat from the French victory at Oporto, are unexpectedly saved by a small detachment of Portuguese soldiers led by Lt. Jorge Vincente, a law student who joined his country's army out of patriotism. Despite his bitter hatred of lawyers, Sharpe gradually comes to respect Jorge's bravery in combat. While the British Army is in retreat, Sharpe and his men are ordered to help retrieve a young Englishwoman, Kate Savage, the daughter of a prominent port merchant, recently deceased. For unknown reasons, she decided not to flee the city with her mother. In going to retrieve Kate, Sharpe and his men are caught up in the scheming of ""Colonel"" Christopher, a turncoat spy for the British Foreign Office. Initially sent to Portugal to investigate the possibility that Marshall Soult might decide to declare himself King of Portugal (and thus cut himself off from Napoleon), Christopher has instead decided to use the situation to his own enrichment. On the one hand, he acts as agent provacateur, encouraging rebellious officers of the French Army to conspire against ""King Nicolas,"" and then, when the time is right, offers to expose all of them to Soult, demanding a monopoly on the port trade in return (Christopher confidently expects the French to win the war, and thus to be the permanent rulers of Portugal). On the other hand, he has seduced Kate and married her in a sham ceremony, for both her youthful beauty and her father's fortune. Seen openly collaborating with the French, he assures Sharpe that he is simply on a secret mission for Britain. Sharpe is temporarily duped, but realizes the truth when he and his men are ambushed by a French detachment. The Riflemen escape and rejoin the main British force, while Christopher makes his way to the French lines, and Kate, against her better judgment, goes with him. Acting as scouts for the Army, Sharpe spots a small group of boats overlooked by the French that can be used to cross the river at the one weak point in the French's defenses. A division crosses in secret and, by the afternoon, have entrenched themselves and sparked the French in a desperate attempt to push them out again. In the aftermath of the British victory and the desperate French retreat, Sharpe confers with General Wellesley and Foreign Office dignitary Lord Pumphrey, who says that Christopher has done no lasting harm, but is a traitor nonetheless and should be disposed of. Sharpe, Jorge, and their men accompany the British pursuit of the fleeing French forces, who have managed to force their way through the Portuguese barricade at a narrow bridge. Catching up with them during the retreat, Jorge rescues Kate and Sharpe kills Christopher."
1974,Sharpe's Trafalgar,history," The year is 1805, and Richard Sharpe is heading from India to England aboard the cargo ship Calliope. Also on board is the lovely Lady Grace Hale, whose presence promises to provide intrigue and distraction to an otherwise uneventful voyage home. Uneventful the voyage is not, for the Calliope is captured by a formidable French warship, the Revenant. The French warship is headed to its own fleet, carrying a stolen treaty that, if delivered, could provoke Indians into a new war against the British. The arrival of Admiral Horatio Nelson's well-led fleet results in a breathtaking retelling of one of the most ferocious and one-sided sea battles in European history, in which Nelson, and Sharpe, vanquish the combined naval might of France and Spain at Trafalgar."
1975,Jubilee,history," Jubilee is a semi-fictional account of ""Vyry Brown,"" based on the life of author Margaret Walker's grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown. Vyry Brown is a mixed-race slave—the unacknowledged daughter of her master—who is born onto the Dutton plantation in Georgia. The novel follows her experiences from early childhood to adult life. The story of Vyry's life in the novel spans three major periods of American history: Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction."
1976,Flash for Freedom!,history," From Dahomey to the slave state of Mississippi, Flashman has cause to regret a game of pontoon with Benjamin Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. From his ambition for a seat in the House of Commons, he has to settle instead for a role in the West African slave trade, under the command of Captain John Charity Spring, a Latin-spouting madman. Captured by the United States Navy, Flashman has to talk his way out of prison by assuming the first of his many false identities in America. After a visit to Washington D.C. and an unsettling meeting with Abraham Lincoln (still a junior congressman at the time), he escapes his Navy protectors in New Orleans and holes up at a whorehouse run by an amorous madame, Susie Willinck. He is again taken into custody, this time by members of the Underground Railroad. Traveling up the Mississippi River with a fugitive slave ends badly once again, and the rest of the story has Flashman as a slave driver on a plantation, a potential slave himself, and a slave stealer fleeing from vigilantes. Eventually he ends up back in New Orleans at the mercy of Spring. This story is continued in Flashman and the Redskins. At the end of the novel, the editor (Fraser) claims that the escape of Cassy and Flashman across the Ohio River was the inspiration for the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, with the names altered and the story focusing on the slave Cassy rather than Flashman. This is similar to a claim made by Flashman that his experiences in Royal Flash were the basis for The Prisoner of Zenda."
1977,Clarissa Oakes,history," Clarissa Oakes opens with the Surprise on her way back to England from Port Jackson in New South Wales. Jack Aubrey is in an ill-humour as a result of the frigate's visit to the penal settlement - firstly, because Stephen Maturin fought a duel with an army officer, consequently antagonizing the local administration, and secondly because Padeen Colman, Stephen's servant and an absconder, was secreted aboard the ship against Jack's express wishes. Jack also observes a certain ribaldry amongst his crew and remains puzzled until he and Captain Pullings stumble across a young female convict, Clarissa Harvill, during a ship's inspection. Jack learns that she was smuggled aboard the frigate in Sydney by Midshipman Oakes and is at first determined to leave them both on Norfolk Island but has a change of heart after being dosed with laudanum by Maturin and allows the couple to stay aboard until they can be put off at a hospitable port. As the Surprise leaves, they spot a cutter, the Eclair. Believing her Captain to be after stowaways, Clarissa and Oakes are hastily married by Martin, the ship's assistant surgeon and a clergyman, and Jack orders Bonden to hide Padeen Colman. It turns out, however, that the cutter is simply bearing Sydney dispatches and mail for Aubrey, the former instructing him to settle a local dispute on Moahu, a British island to the south of the Sandwich group. A gun room feast, hosted by Tom Pullings, is held in honour of the newlyweds. Despite the delicious food (a swordfish caught by Davies earlier), it proves to be a dismal affair given the level of animosity existing amongst some of the gun room members, particularly West and Davidge. The cause is jealousy over Clarissa, who (it turns out later) has had sexual liaisons with several of the ship's officers. This ill-will spreads to the crew, who divide in pro-and anti-Clarissa factions. The ship spots a whaler and lands on the South Sea island of Annamooka. Wainright, the Daisys captain, comes aboard and fills Jack in on the situation on Moahu - there is a war between Kalahua in the north and Puolani in the south, with the northern chief being supported by a French-owned twenty-two gun privateer, the Franklin, sailing under the American flag. The privateer has also captured the Truelove, a Whitby-built British whaler. While the Surprise reprovisions, Clarissa, who has received a black eye from Oakes, also confesses to Maturin on their botanizing walk together about her being sexually abused as a young girl and later working as a bookkeeper and occasional prostitute at a brothel in Picadilly. These experiences formed her sexual outlook, a combination of indifference and complete nonchalance. When she mentions that an aristocratic acquaintance of Ledward's and Wray's had visited the brothel, Stephen realises that this is the highly-placed traitor they are seeking. Aubrey drives his frigate's crew hard on the trip to Moahu to quell the dissension aboard. On reaching land, they pick up the Truelove, a Nootka fur-trader, and a column is sent to intercept the fleeing French - the skirmish is won but Davidge is killed. The Surprise then sails to the south of the island to defend Queen Puolani against the main body of French and Kalahua's tribesmen. Aubrey sets up carronades in a cleft and there is a terrific slaughter of the enemy the following day. The Truelove departs, commanded by Oakes and with Clarissa on board bearing Stephen's coded letter to intelligence official Sir Joseph Blaine, describing the highly-placed informant. The Franklin puts her nose in but sails away immediately, with the Surprise giving chase. Clarissa Oakes was published in the U.S. as The Truelove, which is the name of a ship in the novel."
1978,Here Be Dragons,history," Here Be Dragons (1985) is the first of Penman's trilogy about the medieval princes of Gwynedd and the monarchs of England. England's King John uses his out-of-wedlock daughter Joanna as a negotiating tool by marrying her to the Welsh king Llewelyn to avoid war between England and Wales. Joanna and Llewelyn's marriage is marred by resentment from Llewelyn's illegitimate son, Gruffydd. Joanna gives birth to two legitimate children, Elen and Davydd. Growing animosity between the English and Welsh results in Joanna having to act as a diplomatic intermediary between her husband and her father, and the situation deteriorates when Gruffydd is taken hostage by John and narrowly escapes execution. Joanna becomes determined that her own son, Dafydd, will be his father's heir as ruler of Gwynedd, disregarding the Welsh law that all sons should receive equal shares of their father's inheritance. Family disagreements lead Joanna into an affair with William de Braose, whom she has met earlier in the story when he was a hostage in Llewelyn's household. Their affair is discovered and William is executed. Joanna is placed in secluded captivity, but at the end of the book Llewelyn comes to find her and offers her forgiveness."
1979,Dawn Wind,history," The story follows him, and the dog he finds after the battle, into the border country with Wales to the ruins of Viroconium (Wroxeter). There he meets a street urchin named Regina, the only person left in the city. They learn to trust each other and form a bond. When they leave the city and are later separated, Owain becomes a thrall to a Saxon lord in the swamps near the Isle of Wight, where he spends a number of years. In the end, Owain and Regina are finally reunited and return to the Celtic lands beyond the Welsh border. The story takes place at a turning point in the evolution of relations among the Saxons, invaders from the European mainland, and the indigenous Celts. As Owain lives and fights with the Saxons, he sees them beginning to reach accommodation and common cause with the Celts. The Dawn Wind of the title is a reference to the arrival of St Augustine, who brought Christianity to the Saxons. This change also later brought the Saxons and the already-Christian Celts closer together."
1980,Guardian of the Horizon,history," The story begins in summer, 1907, ten years after the Emersons' expedition into the Nubian desert in The Last Camel Died at Noon, when the Emersons were lured to a Lost Oasis where the remains of a Meroitic - Ancient Egyptian civilization that had avoided the outside world for centuries still survived. It was during that journey that the Emersons brought back Nefret Forth to live with them in England. A messenger from the Lost Oasis now appears at their home in Kent, pleading for help for their friend, King Tarek, and they have no choice but to go to his aid, though they mistrust the young man who claims to be Tarek's younger half-brother. This time it is Ramses who experiences the feeling of foreboding that normally assails Amelia, as they head off to the Sudan and into the desert to help their friend. Unlike their first trip, they bring a far larger force, in full awareness that the Lost Oasis will no longer be a secret no matter what the outcome of this expedition. It soon becomes apparent that the Emersons are not the only ones interested in the Lost Oasis. They run into too many people who are interested in their travel plans, and ultimately bring some unexpected guests with them. These include a British adventurer who has in his company a mysterious young woman. The girl unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Ramses, but he remains strangely attracted to her, although he is really in love with Nefret. Upon their arrival, the family finds things have indeed become desperate for King Tarek, who has been deposed by the father of the duplicitous messenger who brought them to the oasis. The usurper's plan is to obtain the endorsement of the Emerson family in order to neutralise any popular resistance this regime. Nefret, who up until now has seemed to miss her old life, is taken from the group and made to resume her position as high priestess. When Amelia catches an intruder in their quarters, she is relieved to find that it is her old enemy and admirer Sethos, and he promises to help rescue Nefret. Amelia is up to her usual plotting and lists, Emerson is as bombastic as ever, Ramses plays the part of the action hero, and the assistance of Selim and Daoud becomes essential to the Father of Curses and the Sitt Hakim. Chronologically, this book covers the time period immediately after The Ape Who Guards the Balance, although it was published some years later than the books that follow it chronologically."
1981,Justinian,history," The book centers around Byzantine Emperor Justinian II and is told through the ideas of a fictional soldier named Myakes. The book follows Justinian's time before and after taking the throne, as well as his overthrow, mutilation and exile in the Crimea, his subsequent return to power (following a possibly apocryphal nose-job), his insane quest for revenge, and his finally being unseated a second time and executed."
1982,"The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog",history," After returning from their adventure at the Lost Oasis, the Emersons try to get Nefret, their new ward, integrated into English country life. She has difficulty with the immaturity and meanness of girls her age, but is determined to learn the ways of her newly adopted culture. Nefret decides she will stay in England to study while the Emersons return to Egypt as usual in the fall, and Walter and Evelyn Emerson glady take her in. Ramses also decides to stay in England, as his crush on Nefret becomes more obvious to his mother (but no one else). So Amelia and the Professor sail east, to begin a new season with a new project - the complete clearing of an entire archaeological site. Despite Amelia's hopes that this will be a second honeymoon for them, Emerson is kidnapped—but no ransom demand or explanation is forthcoming. Amelia, Abdullah, and their circle of friends scour Luxor for any sign of Emerson, with the help of Cyrus Vandergelt, who appears on the scene just when Amelia needs him most. When Adbullah finally finds Emerson, imprisoned in a backyard shed, Amelia finds out that his captor wants information about their previous year's travels and the possibility of a lost Meroitic civilization (complete with artifacts and treasures to exploit). Unfortunately for the kidnapper, Emerson is the victim of amnesia and doesn't know anything about the Lost Oasis. Unfortunately for Amelia, it turns out Emerson doesn't remember her either—and is just as annoyed by her as when they first met. (See Crocodile on the Sandbank.) Back in England, Ramses and Nefret also seem targeted for abduction, and Ramses' harrowing letters do not add to Amelia's peace of mind. Meanwhile, Cyrus is beginning to look at Amelia with more affection than she expected, but she's not going to give Emerson up without a fight."
1983,The Dolphins of Laurentum,history," October, AD 79: Flavia Gemina and her friends Nubia, Jonathan, and Lupus, are enjoying dinner together at Flavia’s home, when a bedraggled stranger stumbles through the front door. To Flavia’s horror, the man is her own father, Geminus, who has been shipwrecked and severely injured. With the aid of Jonathan’s father, Dr. Mordecai, Marcus makes a gradual recovery. But more bad news arrives: not only has her father’s ship been lost with all hands and its cargo, Marcus’s bank announces that it is calling in the loan on the ship immediately, or else they will seize his house and property. Flavia’s uncle Gaius convinces the bank to give them one extra week, but no longer. Everyone is suddenly in need of money: Gaius doesn’t feel able to marry Jonathan’s sister, Miriam, after his farm was lost in the eruption of Vesuvius; Nubia is shocked to recognize her elder brother, Tarhaqo, among a group of slaves being sold in the market; Lupus is enraged to learn that his hated enemy, the slave dealer Venalicius, has bribed his way out of prison. Lupus wants to hire an assassin, but the man names an impossible price for his services. The family’s dismal mood is lifted by the arrival of a young stranger: Pliny the Younger, the nephew of Admiral Pliny, who has just inherited his uncle’s property. Remembering their friendship with his uncle before his death, and keen to hear their accounts of his last days, Pliny invites Marcus to his villa in Laurentum to recuperate, including the children, Miriam, and the children’s teacher Aristo. Mordecai endorses the suggestion gratefully, while Gaius remains behind in Ostia to sort out the financial mess. When the family arrives at Laurentum, they are delighted to meet Phrixus, Admiral Pliny’s slave, who has just received his freedom. Over dinner, the family play music and tell stories to entertain each other, and Marcus, with coaxing, tells of how he was shipwrecked. As he regrets the loss of his cargo, Pliny muses about the treasures lost under the sea, mentioning that there is a shipwreck visible under the water, just off the coast from the villa. It was rumored to be carrying a cargo of gold, but it is sunk too deep for any of the local fisherman to reach it. Elated, Lupus reveals to the others that he is Greek in origin, born on the island of Symi, and, like his father before him, is a trained diver. With his instruction, the others equip a boat to take to the wreck site. During his first dive, he manages to reach the wreck, something no other local has managed to do, though he considers himself out of practice. Pliny insists on having a celebratory feast on the beach. That night, the four friends are enchanted to see phosphorescent plankton lighting up the beach, and when they all jump into the ocean, find themselves swimming with dolphins. Aristo is cajoled to tell several Greek myths having to do with dolphins during their lessons, including the stories of Arion and Delphinus, and of Poseidon and Amphitrite. With practice, Lupus makes several dives of increasing duration, managing to reach the wreck several times, but unable to retrieve any of the amphorae he finds inside. With Aristo’s help, Jonathan designs a float rope to attach to the vessels, but everyone becomes alarmed when Lupus begins showing signs of pressure sickness. Aristo orders him to rest before his next dive, but Lupus becomes sullen and obsessed with retrieving the treasure, even snubbing his friends when they want to play music or go swimming with the dolphins again. On his last dive, Lupus is attacked by an octopus inside the wreck, losing his lifeline. He fights off the octopus, but loses consciousness underwater. A friendly dolphin nudges him to the surface, and Jonathan is able to revive him with artificial respiration. When they return to the villa, Aristo misconstrues an exchange between Miriam and Pliny, and the two men begin fighting over her. Furious, Miriam tells them to stop and runs off by herself. Then Gaius arrives at the farm with grave news: the “assassin” that Lupus tried to hire was in fact an agent of the local magistrate, Bato, who deliberately named an impossible sum to prevent Lupus from trying to hire him. Gaius is now worried that Lupus is obsessed with finding enough money to have Venalicius killed, so much that he will injure or kill himself diving to the wreck. When Flavia and the others wonder why Lupus hates Venalicius so much, Gaius has a startling document to show them: last month, Mordecai was in jail on a wrongful charge (during The Assassins of Rome). Venalicius was his cellmate, and narrated a confession that Mordecai wrote down: Venalicius’s real name is Phillippos, Lupus’s uncle. When he was a boy on Symi, he was abused and laughed at because of his ugliness, except by one girl, Melissa. Because he was a good diver, Phillippos wanted to find a pearl for Melissa being so nice to him, but ended up rupturing one of his eyes from pressure sickness. Now even uglier, he was even more abused by his father, who later sold him as a slave. Years later, Phillippos returned to the island, now free, and a rich and ruthless slave dealer. He was enraged to find that his handsome younger brother had married Melissa, and killed him. Melissa’s son yelled that he would tell on his uncle, and Phillippos grabbed the boy and cut his tongue out, telling Melissa that the boy would die if anyone followed him. He then sailed away, and the boy escaped when the ship reached Ostia. Lupus has overheard Gaius’s reading, and adds one detail: Venalicius had told him that his mother was also dead; now knowing that this isn’t true, Lupus realizes she may be alive somewhere. Now more determined than ever to retrieve the treasure, Lupus sneaks out of the villa and hires one of the fishermen to take him to the wreck. When he gets there, he is shocked to see Dr. Mordecai and Venalicius together. Venalicius dives into the water, and Mordecai yells at Lupus to stop, Venalicius is trying to help them. Ignoring this, Lupus dives and races his uncle to the wreck. Once there, Lupus sees the octopus attacking his uncle. Somewhat to his own surprise, Lupus stabs the octopus and drives it away. When Venalicius is brought up, he begins to suffer terrible pains, as he has made many more dives that day than is safe. Lupus realizes his uncle is dying; before he does, he begs his nephew to forgive him. Lupus does, reluctantly, and agrees to perform the last rites. The treasure is never recovered, but the family’s problems are still solved: Flavia secretly sells her most prized possession, a kylix she received from Publius Pollius Felix (in ""The Pirates of Pompeii"") to Pliny in exchange for enough money to anonymously pay off her father’s loan; Pliny makes Gaius tenant on one of his farms, so he can afford to marry Miriam; and Mordecai informs Lupus that, before he died, Venalicius accepted Christian baptism and willed all of his money and possessions to his nephew, including his ship. Lupus makes Marcus the new captain of his ship (re-christened the Delphina), and agrees to carry out his uncle’s dying wish of rescuing all the children he abducted and sold into slavery. The only one saddened is Nubia, who learns that her brother was sold to a gladiator school in Capua. The next morning, Flavia, Jonathan, and Nubia read a note left by Lupus telling what little he remembers from that terrible night: after his uncle’s ship left Symi, some of the other sailors had to stop the bleeding in his mouth by cauterizing the stub of his tongue: ""I opened my mouth because I thought that it couldn’t hurt any worse than it already did. But I was wrong.” They look up and are heartened to see Lupus out at sea, lifted of the burden of his hate, and taking a carefree ride on a dolphin."
1984,The Stronghold,history," The novel opens on the day when over seven hundred Men of the Boar from many islands gather together, summoned by the chief Nectan. Nectan puts forth the proposal that the warriors should no longer fight the Roman raiders, but retreat when they approach, as the tribe's very existence is threatened by their losses. The Chief Druid strongly opposes the idea, saying they must continue to fight; he declares it a matter of faith, and therefore his domain, directly challenging Nectan's leadership. Coll is convinced that his idea of a high circular drystone stronghold, designed to be impregnable, is a third way. He has been developing the idea, drawing plans and building models, since he was five, when a Roman raider killed his father, abducted his mother and shattered Coll's leg, crippling him. However, none of the elders will listen to him. Taran arrives, introducing himself as a member of the tribe who was seized for a slave when he was twelve, and recently escaped by killing his master. He is welcomed, but it soon appears that he has a desire for power, seeking first to ingratiate himself with the chief's daughter, and then plotting with the Druids and the chiefs of the Raven and the Deer. Coll's brother Bran, who lives with the Druids, is torn between the two camps. The struggle between Nectan and Domnall for mastery of the tribe culminates in Domnall choosing Nectan's daughter Fand for a human sacrifice. Coll, who loves Fand, takes the advice of Bran on how to stop the sacrifice, believing that he will die in her place. In fact it is Bran who dies, fulfilling the prophecy made about him when he was a baby, and devastating Domnall who loved him like a son. In the wake of these events, Coll is given leave to build his Stronghold. The whole tribe works long and hard to build the 8-storey structure, and it is ready just before the first raid of the summer. The warriors prepare to defend it while the other tribespeople go into hiding. The first assault is repulsed, though Domnall is downed while shouting curses in Latin at the Romans. Taran, who also knows Latin, takes his place, but though pretending to curse, actually advises the Romans to make a second attack overland. When Taran's treachery is exposed, Coll devises a plan to trap the Romans which is extremely successful. His Stronghold is vindicated and plans are made to build more, all over the islands."
1985,"Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country",history," Raised in the tranquil beauty of the Summer Country, Princess Guenevere has had a charmed and contented life until the sudden, violent death of her mother, Queen Maire, leaves the Summer Country teetering on the brink of anarchy. Only the miraculous arrival of Arthur, heir to the Pendragon dynasty, allows Guenevere to claim her mother's throne. Smitten by the bold, sensuous princess, Arthur offers to marry her and unite their territories, while still allowing her to rule in her own right. Their love match creates the largest and most powerful kingdom in the isles. Arthur's glorious rule begins to crumble, however, when he is reunited with his mother and his long-lost half-sisters, Morgause and Morgan. Before Arthur's birth, his father - the savage and unscrupulous King Uther - banished his wife's young daughters, selling Morgause into a cruel marriage and imprisoning Morgan in a far-off convent. Both daughters have reason to avenge their suffering, but only one will strike the deadliest blows against the King and Queen, using her evil enchantments to destroy all Guenevere holds dear. When the Queen flees to Avalon, even her marriage with Arthur comes under threat. In the chaos that follows, a new young knight comes to Arthur's court to offer his services to the Queen. Her loyalty to Arthur betrayed, Guenevere falls in love with Lancelot, a love that may spell ruin for Camelot."
1986,The Sands of Ammon,history," After the victory in Thessaly which ended the first book of the trilogy, Child of a Dream, Alexander and his army march towards the East. The first step of the expedition is to free the Greek cities from the Persian domination in order to establish a strong and unite Pan-Hellenic League. Once that is achieved, the target is the Persian Empire itself and its immense Asian territory. During his military campaign the Macedonian army records numerous victories, including those against the city of Tyre, the Towers of Giza and the legendary Halicarnassus. And it is in the midst of this campaign that Alexander meets the only opponent he believes worthy of his utmost respect: Memnon of Rhodes, the commander of the Greek mercenaries of the Persian army. He struggles in the attempt to defeat Memnon fair and square on the field, but the two end up stalemating each other with strategic cunning. Alexander's friends then suggest to end the confrontation between the two men by ordering to poison the mercenary; Alexander is however disgusted by this outrageous idea as he reckons his opponent is worthy of being defeated with respect and the only way for that to be possible is for Alexander to beat him on the battle field. However, Alexander's friends do carry out the order without Alexander's approval or knowing and Memnon is poisoned within a few weeks. The mercenary's death represents an anti-climactic end to the fantastic strategic battle between the two. After Memnon's death, Alexander claims his former wife: the beautiful Barsine. The two grow close, which makes Leptine jealous of their relationship. After the Macedonian army finally defeats Darius, thank to a tactically perfect charge, Alexander becomes the sovereign of the greatest Empire ever existed. But the young king is certainly not satisfied: he heads towards Egypt and, after defeating the Tyrian naval force that was attempting to block his way into the country, he finally makes it to the land of the Pharaohs. Here, he is proclaimed Pharaoh and he founds the first of his cities: Alexandria. Finally, he crosses the Libyan desert and after a long and hard journey, he reaches the Oasis of Siwa, where the Oracle of Ammon lies. This tells him that he is not a mere human, but the son of Zeus himself."
1987,The Custom of the Army,history," In 1759, the morning after a duel in which the other participant is killed, Lord John Grey is presented with a series of letters accusing him of murder, a demand for satisfaction for compromising the honor of the lady over whom the duel was fought, a plea from the lady herself to do 'something', a promotion to Lt. Colonel as a result of events that occurred in Brotherhood of the Blade, and a summons to represent a companion officer who is being court martialled in Canada. Considering the latter to be the least of the evils he has been presented with before breakfast, Grey departs for North America. In Louisbourg, he joins General Wolfe's forces during their three month siege of Quebec, but the General is currently not available. During his stay Lord John discovers his cousin by marriage, Malcolm Stubbs, in questionable living arrangements, with an illegitimate child; however, he is unable to confront Capt. Stubbs who is currently on a scouting mission. Meanwhile, his friend and former lover Charlie is under house arrest and in failing health, awaiting the court martial that has not yet been scheduled due to the ongoing siege of Quebec. Grey passes the time he must wait on a fishing trip with Manoke, an Indian guide. Upon his return in September, Grey finds both Wolfe and Stubbs have both returned as well. Grey violently objects to Stubbs dishonorable behavior, and briefly considers, but refrains from, killing him. Wolfe invites Grey, an artillery officer with experience with Highlanders, to participate in the daring night-time landing of cannon along the St. Lawrence River, through French sentries, and up the steep cliffs. After scaling the cliffs with the cannon crews, Grey is with the 78th Fraser Highlanders during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham which takes place hours later. Capt. Stubbs is critically injured in the battle, and Grey with the assistance of an other officer carries him back to the medics, which saves his life, but not his leg. After the battle, Stubbs is shipped back to England on disability and Grey returns to find both his friend Charlie and the mother of Stubbs' illegitimate son dead of smallpox. The infant's grandmother sells the child to Grey. He takes the baby to a Catholic orphanage, leaving him with an annual stipend and naming him 'John Cinnamon'."
1988,The Persian Boy,history," Like much of Renault's fiction, the book, published in 1972, provides a sympathetic portrait of homosexual love. The Persian Boy is notable for its depiction of the tradition of pederasty in ancient Greece, where relationships between adult men and adolescent boys were celebrated. In the novel, Bagoas is 15 years old when he begins his relationship with Alexander (then about 26). Renault depicts the attachment as lasting until Alexander's death, when Bagoas would have been about 22. She movingly explores the tensions in the triangular relationship between Alexander and his two lovers, Hephaistion and Bagoas, and suggests that Alexander went mad with grief over Hephaistion's untimely death."
1989,Badenheim 1939,history," Badenheim is a primarily Jewish resort town in Austria that hosts a yearly arts festival, organized by Dr. Pappenheim. Slowly, the Nazi regime, represented by the ""Sanitation Department"", begins shutting down the town and preparing to move its residents to Eastern Europe. The citizens begin blaming each other and losing their minds. Despite impending doom, others remain optimistic and refuse to see the coming Holocaust."
1990,The Exeter Blitz,history," The novel opens in Colin Lockwood's school during a history lesson, the night after an air raid. Colin has fallen asleep, provoking sarcasm from the teacher, Mr Kitchen. At home, Colin irritates his mother and older sister Mary, and so decides to go to see his father, who is working at Exeter Cathedral. At the cathedral Colin notes down an inscription carved by one of his ancestors, for his history homework. As Mr Lockwood has to check on the fire-fighting arrangements, Colin climbs to the top of the south tower for the first time, and is impressed by the extensive view of the city. He accidentally leaves his jacket up there, with his homework in the pocket. When Colin gets home, his mother recruits him to hand out sherry and snacks at the fashion show in Nimrod's that evening. Colin finds he quite enjoys his duties, and he is surprised when Mr Kitchen and his wife join the party. He gets a fit of giggles when he listens to the speaker, Mrs Wimbleball, describing the new collection in glowing terms, and is sent out by his mother. He decides to retrieve his jacket from the cathedral tower, and climbs to the roof. At this point the sirens start, and the planes arrive unusually soon afterwards. Colin sees the bombing start and is thrilled and fascinated until he realizes his danger. During a lull in the bombardment, he runs down the steps to an air raid shelter. On the way he narrowly escapes being hit by machine-gun fire. Mr Lockwood and his younger daughter June are at home where they shelter under the stairs. A bomb falls on the house, destroying half of it. When the all-clear sounds they are able to crawl through the rubble to the street. At Nimrod's, some people are trapped in the lift when the power station is hit. When a bomb hits the shop, Mrs Lockwood is injured, Mrs Wimbleball is paralyzed and the Kitchens are killed outright. Mary and her boyfriend Lars are at the cinema, and leave immediately for the nearest shelter. Mary, a nurse, badly wants to get to the hospital, but Lars makes her wait until the all clear sounds. Later at the hospital, Mary sees her mother brought in unconscious. Colin meets his Cockney schoolmate Terry at the shelter, and although they have been at odds before, the common experience brings them closer. As their fish shop has been destroyed, Colin invites Terry back to his house to sleep, not knowing it has also been bombed. Instead, they camp out in the fields. The next day, it is clear that despite devastating damage to the city centre, the cathedral has been largely spared, raising morale. Colin and Terry decide to use some of the no-longer frozen fish from the shop to provide free food for their neighbours. They cook all day and win praise for their efforts. It is the beginning of a new phase of life for Colin, more independent and adult. The other family members do not fare so well, although they find a new home. Mr Lockwood is overwhelmed at work, Mrs Lockwood recovers, but misses her home, Mary is depressed and haunted by the injuries she has seen, and June mourns for all her beloved books and toys."
1991,The Writing on the Hearth,history," Stephen, whose father was bodyguard to his Lord of Suffolk, is under taken into the Lord's household when his stepfather remarries and his sister enters a convent. Stephen is keen to learn and to enter the University at Oxford under the patronage of his Lordship's chaplain, but he becomes embroiled in some mild political intrigue when he believes he has let a copy of an indiscreet letter fall into the hands of his Lordship's enemies."
1992,Miracle in Seville,history," The story draws on religious themes, interweaving gypsy traditions, belief in the intervening power of The Virgin Mary, and the hope of God's forgiveness and redemption, into the Spanish tradition of bullfighting. The action occurs during Holy Week in Spain, and Michener competently captures the religious processions. He provides meticulous detail of bull fights (although some reviewers have taken umbrage at supposedly erroneous details in his narrative). The tale involves a Gypsy matador (Lazaro Lopez), his sister (Magdalena López) who reads fortunes, a cross-eyed Virgin Mary (La Bizca), the American writer (Shenstone), the Spanish bull breeder (Don Cayetano Mota) who is struggling to revive his once-famed herd, and of course the many bulls in Mota's herd. Despite his initial skepticism, the American is drawn into Mota's efforts, which involve fervent prayers to The Virgin and Herculean acts undertaken during Holy Week to prove his devotion and piety. He knows that his prayers will eventually be rewarded, and this knowledge allows him to live with the often-humiliating performance of his bulls in the arena vis-a-vis the arrogant Gómez. We learn that Lazaro Lopez is also being aided by a powerful female, his sister, who may have the ability to curse the bulls that her brother must face. She is determined that her brother must prevail."
1993,The Afghan Campaign,history," Young Matthias from Macedonia follows his two older brothers’ example and enrolls in Alexander’s cavalry together with his close friend Lygaios/Lucas (Λυγαίος in Greek). This special convoy departs from Tripoli, Lebanon and after 125 days of marching meets the rear of Alexander's army. The hero takes part into his first battle and gets shocked by the atrocities of his adversaries and his own people as well. Noteworthy is the fact that the enemy, apart from its guerilla methods, recruits women and children to fight for their freedom. While marching, Matthias meets Shinar, an Afghan woman who, having abandoned her own people, offers her services as carrier of the Greek army’s supplies. Nanguali is the barbarian warrior’s code; its three elements are: honour, revenge and hospitality. Their women’s honour, if blackened, could be redeemed (turn back into white) only by death. Matthias stands up to Baz, Shinar’s brother, but fails to reach a compromise and is deceived by Baz, who in the end kills his sister and her baby. At the end of the story, Matthias is left with nothing – he has lost his family, friends, health and hope. Instead of returning home (his wife and son having been killed) as initially planned and having nothing to lose, he decides to follow the Greek army in its way to India. The absurdity of the war is revealed in all its grandeur."
1994,The Furies,history," The story begins in March 1836, during the Battle of the Alamo, twenty-two years after the event depicted at the end of The Seekers, book three of the series. Amanda Kent, daughter of Gilbert Kent and Harriet Lebow, was among the women and children who survived the ensuing massacre. After the massacre, she was taken before Santa Anna, who led the Mexican forces against the Texans, and he was willing to grant her clemency, an offer she declined, putting her life in danger. She was saved by Major Luis Cordoba, one of Santa Anna’s officers, who did not fully support him. Cordoba put Amanda to work as his servant and they eventually fell in love. She remained a camp follower with the Mexican army until April 21, when she witnessed the Battle of San Jacinto, during which Cordoba was killed. Amanda gave birth to his son in January 1837, and named him Louis in his honor. After the Texas rebellion, Amanda left Texas and settled in San Francisco, which at the time was called Yerba Buena. There she founded a small, but profitable tavern. She fell in love with Barton McGill, a sea captain, who made regular trips from California to New York, and through him she discovered that a publishing firm called Kent and Son still operated. The firm was once owned by her father, but had been lost in a game of craps by her stepfather to Hamilton Stovall. McGill told her that Stovall still owned it and from that moment on, Amanda became obsessed with buying it back from him. The California Gold Rush, in part, provided her the means. When the Gold Rush began, Amanda expanded her tavern into a hotel and because so many came seeking gold, the establishment made her a great deal of money. Jared Kent, Amanda’s cousin, was one of many men who came to California in search of gold. With two partners he found a profitable gold claim. Amanda had not seen her cousin in thirty-four years, but they were unexpectedly reunited for a brief time. Men who were opposed to American immigrants attempted to kill her because she employed foreigners to work in her establishment. They missed Amanda and killed Jared instead. Amanda replaced Jared as the third partner to his gold claim and with that financial backing, she returned to Boston to reclaim the Kent and Son publishing firm. On returning, she discovered that, unbeknownst to her mother, her father had invested in a textile company late in his life. This investment made her a millionaire and, with this money, she attempted to buy Kent and Son. Amanda used her married name, de la Gura, because of Stovall’s rivalry with the Kent family, but when she incautiously made it known that she wanted to publish more liberal leaning literature Stovall rescinded the offer. This did not deter her from her goal. She proceeded to buy stocks in Kent and Son in an attempt to become the majority shareholder. Jared had had one son, Jephtha. He would have preferred his son to stay with him in the west, but Jephtha moved to Lexington, Virginia and became a Methodist minister. Though he lived in a southern state, Jephtha became morally opposed to slavery and he became a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He mailed a female slave belonging to his father-in-law in a wooden box to Amanda in New York, where she was now living, and she inadvertently also became a conductor. While she was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act, she had previously believed it should be obeyed simply because it was the law of the land, but she aided her cousin. When Jephtha’s father-in-law came to Amanda’s house in search of his slave, Amanda kept her hidden. Then, after he left, she sneaked the runaway out of her house disguised as another woman, who was visiting Amanda. This event was published in the newspapers and it inadvertently revealed Amanda as Jephtha’s cousin. When Stovall read the article, he blocked Amanda from ever gaining a majority of the stocks in Kent and Son, then called on her and threatened to ruin her life and the life of her son. During their conversation, an Irish gang vandalized Amanda’s home (in retaliation for Louis' raping an Irish maid in Amanda's employ). As Stovall fled, he knocked Louis unconscious with his cane. Thinking her son was dead, she shot Stovall to death, immediately after which one of the gang members shot Amanda. She lived seventeen days afterwards, long enough to discover that Stovall’s heirs were willing to sell Kent and Son to the Kent family."
1995,The Remains of the Day,history," The Remains of the Day tells, in first person, the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (mentioned in increasing detail in flashbacks). The novel begins with Stevens receiving a letter from a former colleague, Miss Kenton, describing her married life, which he believes hints at an unhappy marriage. The receipt of the letter coincides with Stevens having the opportunity to revisit this once-cherished relationship, if only under the guise of investigating the possibility of re-employment. Stevens's new employer, a wealthy American named Mr Farraday, encourages Stevens to borrow his car to take a well-earned break, a ""motoring trip"". As he sets out, Stevens has the opportunity to reflect on his immutable loyalty to Lord Darlington, on the meaning of the term ""dignity"", and even on his relationship with his own late father. Ultimately Stevens is forced to ponder the true nature of his relationship with Miss Kenton. As the book progresses, increasing evidence of Miss Kenton's one-time love for Stevens, and of his for her, is revealed. Working together during the years leading up to the Second World War, Stevens and Miss Kenton fail to admit their true feelings towards each other. All of their recollected conversations show a professional friendship which at times came close to crossing the line into romance, but never dared to do so. Miss Kenton, it later emerges, has been married for over 20 years and therefore is no longer Miss Kenton but has become Mrs Benn. She admits to wondering occasionally what a life with Stevens might have been like, but she has come to love her husband and is looking forward to the birth of their first grandchild. Stevens muses over lost opportunities, both with Miss Kenton and with his long-time employer, Lord Darlington. At the end of the novel, Stevens instead focuses on the ""remains of [his] day"", referring to his future service with Mr Farraday."
1996,A Sea So Far,history," After the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906, two girls' lives become connected. Kate Keely is the orphaned daughter of a newspaper reporter father and an Irish immigrant mother, living close to poverty with an aunt until their home was destroyed by the earthquake. They move to a boardinghouse the aunt purchases with a friend, and there Kate learns of an opportunity to go to work as the companion to Jolie Logan. Jolie's father is a wealthy physician and her mother died in the earthquake. Suffering from a history of scarlet fever and the loss of her mother, Jolie is sickly and depressed and her father thinks a companion would lift her spirits and that together they could travel. Kate sees this position as an easy source of income and, more importantly, a chance to visit her mother's fabled Ireland. Together the girls do travel across country and then to Ireland, and become more than friends, and learn more of life than they expected."
1997,The Gladiators from Capua,history," The novel follows on from events in The Enemies of Jupiter, at the end of which Jonathan goes missing and is believed to have died in the fire in Rome. Unknown to the other characters, he accidentally started the fire and out of guilt signed up as a child gladiator for the games at the new amphitheatre. He is also tortured by the supposed death of his mother. The short story ""Jonathan vs Ira"" in Trimalchio's Feast and other mini-mysteries gives an account of his troubled state of mind during training. The Gladiators from Capua opens with a brief scene set some years earlier – a slave in training as a gladiator refuses to kill his beaten opponent, turning his back on a promising career. The themes of combat, bloodshed and mercy are thus established from the start. The story proper starts the month after the fire. Flavia and Nubia are holding a memorial for Jonathan when Lupus arrives full of a rumour he has heard: a boy with dark curly hair who is believed to have started the fire is hiding on Potsherd Mountain in Rome. Jonathan could be alive! Flavia finagles an invitation from her uncle the senator to visit Rome for the Inaugural Games at the new Flavian Amphitheatre. Flavia, Nubia and Lupus travel to Rome with Jonathan's dog Tigris and the doorkeeper Caudex as their bodyguard. They discover that the curly-haired boy has been taken from Potsherd Mountain to the amphitheatre and is to be ""thrown to the beasts"". At the amphitheatre, they split up to look for Jonathan. Nubia meets an old friend, Mnason the animal trainer. Tigris spots Jonathan among the gladiators, but the others fail to interpret his barking correctly. The next three days are the start of the hundred days of games decreed by Titus to celebrate the new amphitheatre – and to take people's minds off the disastrous events of his reign thus far. For each day a programme of events is given: beginning with acrobats or dancers, then exotic beasts and the fancifully-staged execution of criminals, and in the afternoon the popular gladiatorial contests. The first day, the children are stuck on the top tier with the senator's family watching the displays at a distance, alternately fascinated and horrified at the drama, the ferocity and the bloodshed. On the second day, with the relations safely out of town, they resume their search for Jonathan. Flavia poses as an orphan to get taken on as a ""nymph"" – only to discover that she is part of a water pageant intended to end in the killing of all the nymphs by hippos and crocodiles. Only Nubia's quick thinking and the intervention of the emperor's brother Domitian saves her. The two girls are invited to join him in the Imperial Box to watch the rest of the show. They recognize Jonathan among the child gladiators, but unfortunately when Titus finds out, he orders Jonathan's arrest, believing him guilty of causing the fire. On the third day, Jonathan's execution is averted by Mnason, Nubia and Caudex who arrange a spectacular escape which wins the crowd's approval. Titus is glad to spare the boy, especially when he learns the truth about the fire, but he insists the children return home to Ostia, out of harm's way."
1998,Eyes of the Emperor,history," The story starts in Honolulu in 1941, where a Japanese boy, Eddy, lives. He has a brother, Herbie, and numerous friends. His friends are in the army, and Eddy, who is 16 years old, joins the US army by illegally altering his birth certificate to appear 18 years old. They enlist in Camp McCoy. Eddy's father strongly opposes this as he feels that Eddy is betraying Japan, but soon Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Eddy and his Japanese company must do manual labor, such as digging trenches, while the soldiers of other nationalities go on with regular army training. He then is mobilized by Lieutenant Sweet to Cat Island, Mississippi, along with his comrades. They then embark on a secret mission commissioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which is for training dogs: Dogs are trained to smell the Japanese people, and this is training them so that when they are released in the Pacific theater, the dogs would track and kill the Japanese soldiers. This severely demoralizes the soldiers. Later, when they commute from the island to the mainland, their boat motor stalls. When they call for assistance, the US Coast Guard comes and shoots the boat, suspecting that they were the enemy. Accidental attacks continue, and the treatment of the Japanese-American soldiers becomes worse as the war worsens. Eddy is nearly killed once when his dog's trainer, Smith, calls the dog back slightly late. The soldiers are forced to treat the dogs harshly, which is against their will. After a few weeks of grueling treatment of the Japanese, the government observes and evaluates this project. It is deemed unsuccessful, and Eddy now is assigned to combat in the European theater."
1999,The Alienist,history," Narrated from the first-person perspective of John Moore, a crime reporter for The New York Times, the novel begins on January 8, 1919, the day that Theodore Roosevelt is buried. Moore has dinner with Laszlo Kreizler, the famous alienist. Kreizler is surrounded by those he has rescued, including his black servant, Cyrus Montrose, his housekeeper, Mary Palmer, and a boy named Stevie ""Stevepipe"" Taggert. Together, they reminisce about their times with Roosevelt, but they focus on one moment: the spring of 1896 and their efforts to catch a serial killer on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The novel is narrated in retrospect, with Moore commenting on the events and how they impacted later history. At 2 am on March 3, 1896, Moore is awakened by one of Kreizler's servants banging incessantly on his door. Stevie, a young boy whom Kreizler had saved from being institutionalized and who is dedicated to Kreizler, brings Moore to the scene of a crime that Kreizler wants Moore to see. Roosevelt, the police commissioner, is already at the scene. When Moore sees the nature of the brutal murder, he is appalled. The victim, Georgio ""Gloria"" Santorelli, is a 13-year-old boy who prostituted himself by dressing up as a girl; the boy's wrists are tied behind his back and he is kneeling, with his face pressed on the steel walkway where he was found. Though makeup paint and powder on his face are still intact, his eyes are gouged out, his right hand is chopped off, his genitals are cut off and stuffed between his jaws, he has huge gashes across his entire body, his throat has been slashed, and his buttocks are ""shorn off."" The policeman at the scene, Detective Sergeant Connor, makes it clear that murders of such victims are usually ignored. At Roosevelt's request, Moore, Kreizler, and he meet the following morning in Roosevelt's office to discuss the case. Kreizler has examined the body and disagrees with the official coroner's report. He connects the Santorelli killing to that of a second case he knows of in which two children, Benjamin and Sofia Zweig, were killed and also had their eyes gouged out. Roosevelt announces that he knows of two more murders that match the pattern. Roosevelt decides to investigate, but because Kreizler has such a dubious reputation as an alienist and because the investigation will become politically difficult, he establishes a base of operations for them outside the police precinct. Politically, Roosevelt cannot afford to be associated with the investigation and is not involved with the day-to-day operations. Kreizler asks for some young detectives, who are open to new methods, and receives the help of Sara Howard, the first woman to be hired by the police department, and Marcus and Lucius Isaacson, two Jewish brothers who were hired when Roosevelt began removing corrupt police officers from the force. The Isaacsons bring sophisticated methods such as the Bertillon system and fingerprinting to the investigation, although these were not popular in New York City police departments at the time nor accepted in courts of law. The group begins to investigate the victims, hoping to understand the mind of the murderer by understanding his victims. They interview Georgio Santorelli's mother and discover, for example, that there was discord in his family. Georgio's parents had learned of him being manipulated into performing sex for older boys in school, and the father's response was to try to beat it out of the boy. Georgio eventually left home, and lived on the streets as a male-for-male prostitute. They also read the emerging science of psychology, such as the works of William James. Another body is discovered and the evidence suggests that the victim knew his attacker. They also deduce that the killer's agility on roofs suggests that he is familiar with mountain or rock climbing. Kreizler, Roosevelt, Moore, and Howard must deal with various interest groups during their investigation who wish to maintain society's status quo, including a corrupt police force which takes bribes from owners of the brothels whose prostitutes include poor immigrants; the Catholic Church, which is wary of the potential power of an organized immigrant population; the Episcopal Church; and J.P. Morgan."
2000,The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,horror," In London, Gabriel John Utterson, a prosecutor, is on his weekly walk with his relative Richard Enfield, who proceeds to tell him of an encounter he had seen some months ago while coming home late at night from Cavendish Place. The tale describes a sinister figure named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and re-emerges to pay off her relatives with 10 pounds in gold and a cheque signed by respectable gentleman Dr. Henry Jekyll (a client and friend of Utterson's) for 90 pounds. Jekyll having recently and suddenly changed his will to make Hyde beneficiary, Utterson is disturbed and concerned about this development, and makes an effort to seek out Hyde. This is instilled by Utterson's fear that Hyde is blackmailing Dr. Henry Jekyll for his money. Upon finally managing to encounter Hyde, Utterson is amazed by how ugly the man seems, as if deformed; though Utterson cannot say why exactly how this is so or why it is, Hyde seems to provoke an instinctive feeling of revulsion in him. Much to Utterson's surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. After one of Jekyll's dinner parties, Utterson stays behind to discuss the matter of Hyde with Jekyll. Utterson notices Jekyll turning pale, yet he assures Utterson that everything involving Hyde is in order and to be left alone. A year passes uneventfully. One night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde beat a man to death with a heavy cane. The man is MP Sir Danvers Carew who was also a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, who suspects Hyde of the murder. He leads the officers to Hyde's apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather (the morning is dark and wreathed in fog). When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, but they find half of the cane (described as being made of a strong wood but broken due to the beating) left behind a door. It is revealed to have been given to Jekyll by Utterson. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde. Jekyll shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson's clerk points out that Hyde's handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll's own. For a few months, Jekyll reverts to his former friendly and sociable manner, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Later, Jekyll suddenly begins to refuse visitors, and Dr Hastie Lanyon, a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, dies suddenly of shock after receiving information relating to Jekyll. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll's death or disappearance. Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory; the three men begin to converse, but a look of horror suddenly comes over Jekyll's face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll's butler Mr. Poole visits Utterson in a state of desperation and explains that Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll's house through empty, windswept, sinister streets; once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. They go to see the laboratory where they hear that the voice coming from inside is not the voice of Jekyll and the footsteps are light not the heavy footsteps of the Doctor. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll's laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide. They find also a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyon’s letter and then Jekyll's. The first reveals that Lanyon’s deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde drink a serum, or potion, and as a result of doing so, metamorphose into Dr Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a creature free of conscience, this being Mr Hyde. The transformation was incomplete, however, in that it created a second, evil identity, but did not make the first identity purely good. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful by engaging in philanthropic work. At a park, he considers how good a person he has become as a result of his deeds (in comparison to others), believing himself redeemed. However, before he completes his line of thought, he looks down at his hands and realizes that he has suddenly once again become Mr Hyde. This was the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened in waking hours. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyon's help to get his potions and become Jekyll again; when he undertook the transformation in Lanyon's presence, the shock of the sight instigated Lanyon's deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse themselves. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the stock of ingredients from which Jekyll has been preparing the potion ran low, and subsequent batches prepared by Jekyll from renewed stocks of the ingredients failed to produce the transformation effected by the original potion. Jekyll speculates that the one essential ingredient that made the original potion work must have been a trace contaminant that was absent from the ingredients he had subsequently purchased. He assumes that subsequent supplies all lacked the essential ingredient that made the potion successful for his experiments. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll has slowly vanished in consequence. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in either case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr Jekyll. He ends the letter saying ""I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end"". With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close."
2001,The Invisible Man,horror," A mysterious stranger, Griffin, arrives at the local inn of the English village of Iping, West Sussex, during a snowstorm. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat and gloves, his face hidden entirely by bandages except for a fake pink nose, large goggles and a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irascible, and unfriendly. He demands to be left alone and spends most of his time in his rooms working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. While staying at the inn, hundreds of strange glass bottles arrive that Griffin calls his luggage. Many local townspeople believe this to be very strange. He becomes the talk of the village (one of the novel's most charming aspects is its portrayal of small-town life in southern England, which the author knew from first-hand experience). Meanwhile, a mysterious burglary occurs in the village. Griffin has run out of money and is trying to find a way to pay for his board and lodging. When his landlady demands he pay his bill and quit the premises, he reveals part of his invisibility to her in a fit of pique. An attempt to apprehend the stranger is frustrated when he undresses to take advantage of his invisibility, fights off his would-be captors, and flees to the downs. There Griffin coerces a tramp, Thomas Marvel, into becoming his assistant. With Marvel, he returns to the village to recover three notebooks that contain his records of his experiments. When Marvel soon attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, Griffin chases him to the seaside town of Port Burdock, threatening to kill him. Marvel escapes to a local inn, and is saved by the people at the inn, but Griffin escapes. Marvel later goes to the police and tells them of this ""invisible man,"" then requests to be locked up in a high security jail cell. His furious attempt to avenge his betrayal leads to his being shot. Griffin takes shelter in a nearby house that turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, a former acquaintance from medical school. To Kemp, he reveals his true identity: the Invisible Man is Griffin, a former medical student who left medicine to devote himself to optics. Griffin recounts how he invented medicine capable of rendering bodies invisible and, on an impulse, performed the procedure on himself. Griffin tells Kemp of his story of how he turned invisible. He tells of how he tries the invisibility on a cat, then himself. Griffin burns down the boarding house he is staying in along with all his equipment he used to turn invisible to cover his tracks, but soon realizes he is ill-equipped to survive in the open. He attempts to steal food and clothes from a large store, but eventually he steals some clothing from a theatrical supply shop and heads to Iping to attempt to reverse the effect. But now that he imagines he can make Kemp his secret confederate, describing his plan to begin a ""Reign of Terror"" by using his invisibility to terrorize the nation. Kemp has already denounced Griffin to the local authorities and is on the watch for help to arrive as he listens to this wild proposal. When the authorities arrive at Kemp's house, Griffin fights his way out and the next day leaves a note announcing that Kemp himself will be the first man to be killed in the ""Reign of Terror"". Kemp, a cool-headed character, tries to organize a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but a note he sends is stolen from his servant by Griffin. Griffin shoots and kills a local policeman who comes to Kemp's aid, then breaks into Kemp's house. Kemp bolts for the town, where the local citizenry comes to his aid. Griffin is seized, assaulted, and killed by a mob. The Invisible Man's naked, battered body gradually becomes visible as he dies. A local policeman shouts to cover his face with a sheet, then the book concludes. In the final chapter, it is revealed that Marvel has secretly kept Griffin's notes. Griffin's name is not known by anyone (including the reader) until he meets Kemp whom he reveals his identity to. Until then, he is referred to as the stranger or the Invisible Man."
2002,Misery,horror," Paul Sheldon, the author of a best-selling series of Victorian-era romance novels surrounding the heroine character Misery Chastain, has just finished the manuscript of his new crime novel, Fast Cars, while staying at the Hotel Boulderado; since 1974, he has completed the first draft of every one of his novels in the same hotel room. With his latest project finished, he has an alcohol-induced impulse to drive to Los Angeles rather than back home to New York City. However, a snowstorm hits while he is driving through the mountains. Sheldon drives off a cliff and crashes upside down into a snowbank. Paul is rescued from the car wreck by Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who lives in nearby Sidewinder. She takes him to her own home rather than a hospital, putting him in the guest bedroom. Using her nursing skills and stockpiled food and medical supplies, including an illicit stash of codeine-based painkillers, Annie slowly nurses Paul back to health. She proclaims herself as Paul's ""number one fan,"" being an avid reader of the Misery Chastain series. However, when she reads the manuscript for Fast Cars, Annie argues with Paul on its violent content and profanity, causing her to spill his soup. Saying that the accident was ""his"" fault, she punishes him by withholding his medication, then forcing him to wash it down with soap water. Paul, who has done extensive research into mental disorders, suspects that Annie is dangerously disturbed. When Sheldon's latest novel, Misery's Child, hits the shelves, Annie buys her reserved copy. She doesn't know, however, that Paul has killed her off at the end, intending to end the Misery series and re-establish himself as a mainstream writer. Upon learning of the main character's demise, Annie rages at Paul before leaving him alone in her house for over two days lest she do something ""unwise"". During this time, Paul suffers from extreme pain and withdrawal from the painkillers; by the time Annie returns, he is close to death. Annie forces him to burn the Fast Cars manuscript&mdash;the book he hoped would launch his post-Misery career&mdash;and presents him with an antique Royal typewriter, for the purpose of writing a new Misery Chastain novel that will bring the character back from the dead. Paul bides his time and writes the book as Annie wants, believing her fully capable of killing him. He manages to escape his room while Annie is on an errand, touring the house in search of more painkillers. He is almost caught by Annie, but manages to return to his room before she enters the house. On another occasion when Annie is absent, Paul escapes his room again and steals a knife from her kitchen, intending to kill her. On the way back to his room, he finds a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings from Annie's life, suggesting that she is a serial killer who murdered her own father, her college roommate, and numerous patients in several states&mdash;thirty-nine people in all. She was arrested and charged with killing several babies at a Boulder hospital, but was acquitted. He also finds a magazine clipping about his status as a missing person. Annie eventually reveals that she knows about Paul's excursions from his room, and punishes him by cutting off his foot with an axe, cauterizing the wound with a blowtorch. Later, when Paul complains about a missing letter on the typewriter, she punishes him by slicing off his thumb with an electric knife. A Colorado state trooper eventually arrives at Annie’s house in search of Paul. Realizing a chance for escape, Paul alerts the officer by throwing an ashtray through the window. However, Annie surprises the trooper, stabs him repeatedly with a sharpened wooden cross, then finally rides over him with her lawnmower. She temporarily hides Paul in the basement while she departs, meaning to dispose of the trooper's body and his police cruiser. Paul finally finishes the book, Misery's Return. As a celebration, he asks Annie for a cigarette and a match, as per his normal practice after finishing a novel, but uses them to seemingly light his manuscript on fire in front of her. While Annie frantically tries to put out the flames, Paul throws the typewriter at her. The two engage in a violent struggle, with Paul stuffing Annie's mouth full of the burning pages. Annie breaks free and runs to find a weapon, but trips on the typewriter, causing her to crack her skull on the mantelpiece. Paul then crawls out of the room, closes the door, and locks the bolt that Annie had installed. After slumping down in front of the door, Paul feels Annie's fingers tugging his shirt from under it. Horrified at the question of how she is still alive, he pounds at her fingers then makes his way to the bathroom for more Novril. He finds and swallows some and sleeps against the door. Awakening, Paul musters up the courage to leave the bathroom in an attempt to escape, uncertain if Annie is either alive or dead. After slowly crawling a short distance, he sees headlights pour through a window. It's the police again. He finds Annie's Penguin and throws it through the window to get their attention. When they find him, Paul warns them about Annie still being alive and her being locked in the guest bedroom. They leave him to investigate. When they return, they tell Paul that they had not found anything but a shattered bottle of champagne and the room burned. Paul screams until he faints. Later it is revealed that Annie had escaped through the window and gone out to the barn in order to get a chainsaw. However, she had died in the barn due to her skull fracture, one hand grasping the handle of the chainsaw. Returning home to New York, Paul submits Misery's Return to his publisher; it is revealed that he burned a decoy of the manuscript instead of the book itself. Paul's publisher tells him that the book will become his greatest bestseller. However, the ordeal is far from over for Paul: he suffers nightmares about Annie and continues to have withdrawals from painkillers. He has also become an alcoholic with writer's block. Eventually, after a random encounter with a child in the street, he has the same spark that inspired him to write Fast Cars. He begins typing about this boy and the skunk he had with him in a shopping cart."
2003,"The Boats of the ""Glen Carrig""",horror," The novel The Boats of the ""Glen Carrig"" starts in the middle of an adventure. The subtitle reads: Being an account of their Adventures in the Strange places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship Glen Carrig through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward. As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his Son James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed very properly and legibly to manuscript. We learn nothing else from the text about what happened to the &#34;Glen Carrig,&#34; its captain, or any of the other people aboard the ship. The text begins: Now we had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no discovering of land. Then upon the morning of the sixth day came there a cry from the bo'sun, who had the command of the lifeboat, that there was something which might be land afar upon our larboard bow; but it was very low lying, and none could tell whether it was land or but a morning cloud. Yet, because there was the beginning of hope within our hearts, we pulled wearily towards it, and thus, in about an hour, discovered it to be indeed the coast of some flat country. The narrator calls this dismal, muddy place the &#34;land of lonesomeness.&#34; The men paddle the two lifeboats up a creek. The air is filled with strange cries and growls. They come across an abandoned ship, and climbing aboard, discover food. The ship appears to have been evacuated in haste, with coins and clothing left behind. While spending the night aboard the ship, the survivors are attacked by a strange tentacled creature. They find troubling notes left by a female passenger aboard the ship, one of which makes reference to a nearby spring. The men locate the spring, but after filling their water containers, they discover horrifying plants that have taken on human shapes, and which produce blood-curdling cries. The survivors quickly flee and head back out to sea. Floating on the open sea, the survivors confront a tremendous storm. The second boat becomes separated from the first, although the narrator reveals that those aboard will eventually make it back to London. The story now concentrates entirely on the survivors in the first boat. The men set up a canvas covering to shield the boat from breaking waves and a &#34;sea anchor&#34; which keeps the boat perpendicular to the waves. The storm is a long ordeal, but the boat and the men come through unscathed. After surviving the storm, the men encounter giant, floating masses of seaweed, and enormous crabs. They pass a number of lost, ancient vessels in this Sargasso Sea, which the narrator calls the &#34;cemetery of the oceans.&#34; After encountering giant crabs and a weird humanoid creature they locate a habitable island. While the men explore, young seaman Job remains in the boat, and is attacked by a giant &#34;devil-fish&#34; (an enormous octopus). Job is struck with an oar and gravely injured. The bo&#39;sun bravely risks his life to bring Job ashore, but Job remains unconscious. The narrator discovers that the boat is badly damaged, and it must be repaired before it can be used again. Things become difficult for the men on the island. The narrator is attacked in his sleep by some kind of tentacled creature, which leaves marks on his throat. The unconscious Job is discovered missing, and a frantic search is carried out. His dead body is discovered in the valley, drained of blood. The men, filled with rage, burn down the island&#39;s forest of giant toadstools, the flames lasting through the night. In the morning, they bury Job on the beach. The bo&#39;sun grimly starts making his repairs to the boat, using wood recovered from another wrecked ship. Ascending to the highest point of the island, the men find that they are quite near to a ship embedded in the weed, and while keeping watch they see a light aboard the ship. Those aboard the ship have built a protective superstructure, which can be closed to resist attacks by the creatures that inhabit the &#34;weed-continent.&#34; The men manage to establish contact with the crew using words written on large pieces of canvas, and begin planning strategies to rescue the people aboard. The evenings on the island get progressively worse. The men are attacked repeatedly by hideous, foul-smelling, tentacled humanoid creatures that swarm over the island in the dark; these can only be kept at bay with huge bonfires. The narrator and several other men are injured in an attack. A seaman named Tomkins goes missing, and Job&#39;s body disappears from his grave, evidently removed by the ghoulish &#34;weed-men.&#34; Although in dire straits themselves, the men on the island retain a strong desire to aid those aboard the ship trapped in the seaweed. Coastal life-saving operations historically could use a small mortar (later known as a &#34;Lyle gun&#34;) to fire a projectile carrying a light rope, which was carefully pre-coiled in a basket to avoid fouling. This would be used to haul a stronger rope, which could be pulled taut and used to accommodate a breeches buoy that could be slid along a rope hawser. This possibility is discussed. The men on the island ask the people aboard the trapped ship if they have a mortar aboard. They reply by holding up a large piece of canvas upon which is written &#34;NO.&#34; The narrator advocates the construction of a giant crossbow to fire a line over to the trapped ship. The bo&#39;sun assents, and the men build the elaborate crossbow, composed of a number of smaller bows that can be fired together to propel a single arrow. The bow can easily launch an arrow past the vessel, but unfortunately when even a light line is attached, the arrows fall far short. All is not lost, though, because another crew member manages to build a large box kite which succeeds in carrying a line to the ship on the first attempt. The men manage to use the light line to pull across successively stronger lines, until they have a heavy rope stretched between the island and the ship. The bo&#39;sun attaches this to a conveniently located boulder, while, the crew of the ship attaches the line to the stump of a mast and uses a capstan to gradually winch the ship closer to the island. Two groups exchange letters by pulling an oilskin bag along the connecting rope. We learn that the ship, which was attacked by a devil-fish, has been stuck in the weed for seven years, and the captain and more than half of the crew are dead. Fortunately the ship carried a great deal of food, and so those aboard have not gone hungry. Indeed, the ship is even able to supply the men on the island with fresh bread, wine, ham, cheese, and tobacco. When the ship is close enough, and the rope high enough above the weed to ensure a safe passage, the narrator rides a breeches buoy to the ship, where he receives a hero&#39;s welcome. He discovers that there are several women aboard: the captain&#39;s wife, who is mad; the &#34;buxom woman&#34; who is now the cook, and the young and eligible Mistress Madison. The narrator and Mistress Madison develop a romance and Mistress Madison, who was only twelve years old when the ship was trapped in the weed, looks forward to re-joining the wider world as a young woman of nineteen. But they are not out of the weeds yet: the bo&#39;sun sends a note indicating that he has doubts about the state of the rope, which has frayed slightly, and insists that it is too dangerous for the narrator to return the way he came. The weed is still a dangerous place, and the ship is attacked again by the devil-fish and by the weed-men. But the crew of the ship works through the night to winch the ship closer to the island, and it is finally freed from the weed altogether. The rest of the men from the island tow the ship around to the far side of the island using the now-repaired lifeboat. At this point in the narrative, the story begins to significantly compress time: Now, the time that it took us to rig the ship, and fit her out, was seven weeks, saving one day. During this time the combined crew disassembles the superstructure, repairs the masts, and installs sails. They try to avoid the floating masses of weed, but brush against one accidentally and are again boarded and attacked by weed-men. Victory against the weed-men is overshadowed by sorrow when it is discovered that the captain&#39;s wife has disappeared during the attack. The bulk of the return journey is condensed into a single sentence: And so, after a voyage which lasted for nine and seventy days since getting under weigh, we came to the Port of London, having refused all offers of assistance on the way. In the concluding sentences of the book we learn that the narrator is a man of some wealth. He marries Mistress Madison, gives gifts to the crew members, and provides a place for the bo&#39;sun, who is now his close friend, to live upon his estate. In the closing of the story the narrator describes how he and the bo&#39;sun often talk about their adventures, although they change the subject when the narrator&#39;s children are around, because &#34;the little ones love not terror.&#34;"
2004,The Keep,horror," German soldiers and SS Einsatzkommandos alike are being slowly killed off in a mysterious castle (the ""Keep"" of the title) high in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania in April 1941. A Jewish History Professor living in Bucharest, Theodore Cuza, and his daughter Magda, are collected and delivered to the keep in a desperate effort by SS Sturmbannfuhrer Eric Kaempffer to find out what it is that is murdering the men and put a stop to it by any means necessary. The professor is useful in translating a mysterious message that has been written in blood on a wall of the keep in a forgotten dialect of Old Romanian or Old Slavonic. He is also tasked with finding a method of defeating the unknown evil that is wreaking havoc. This evil entity, which calls itself ""Molasar"", sees a certain usefulness in Professor Cuza and procures his services through deception and false promises. Molasar is later revealed to be Rasalom, an ancient sorcerer from the ""First Age"" of humans. Shortly, a reluctant champion of the ancient Forces of Light appears; an immortal man calling himself ""Glenn"", but whose real name is Glaeken. He built the Keep as a prison for Rasalom out of the reluctance to kill him outright. The two beings are mystically linked in a way that binds their destinies together, even though Rasalom's supernatural abilities vastly outmatch Glenn's innate abilities. Magda and Glenn meet and develop a relationship which quickly becomes romantic as Professor Cuza manipulates the German SS into arresting Glenn and bringing him into the Keep where he will be vulnerable to Rasalom's ever-increasing power. The scheme fails when Magda rescues Glenn from dying by bringing him his healing power-sword after he is riddled with bullets. Professor Cuza, meanwhile, is excitedly carrying Glenn's Talisman through the lower levels of Rasalom's 500-year-old prison and upwards toward the surface where the Professor plans to re-bury it according to Rasalom's instructions. Magda leaves Glenn to recuperate while intervening with her misguided father to keep him from crossing the perimeter of the fortress area, giving Glenn just enough time to arrive on scene where, after joining the Talisman to his power-sword, he is able to drive Rasalom backwards into the depths of the keep. Rasalom then uses his telekinetic abilities to launch an overwhelming assault against Glenn. Finally, Glenn prevails as Rasalom rashly launches himself bodily at his age-old enemy and is reduced to ashes by a single stroke from Glenn's sword. Glenn himself plummets onto the craggy rocks below as Rasalom's body decays into nothingness. However he reawakens to discover that he is now mortal, having vanquished his long-time foe, and he and Magda are reunited."
2005,The Amityville Curse,horror, The plot is entirely fictional and tells that the house at 112 Ocean Ave. was once a rectory and that one of the priests died there and the house became haunted.
2006,Cycle of the Werewolf,horror," The story is set in the fictional town of Tarker's Mills, Maine. A werewolf is viciously killing people and animals and strange incidents take place at each full moon. The otherwise normal town is living in fear. The protagonist of the story is Marty Coslaw, an eleven-year-old boy in a wheelchair. The story goes back and forth from the terrifying incidents to Marty's youthful day-to-day life and how the horror affects him. The first victim is Arnie Westrum, who is murdered in a tool-shack during a blizzard when the full moon comes in January, shortly after midnight on New Year's Day. Although the police admit that they are looking for a serial killer later on in the novel, and the killer is dubbed ""The Full Moon Killer"", Arnie Westrum immediately identifies the killer in his mind as being ""the biggest wolf he has ever seen."" The next victim is Stella Randolph, a depressed, unmarried, and impoverished seamstress, who is killed on St. Valentine's Day in February, after she has sent several Valentine's Day cards to herself from 1980s hearthrobs such as John Travolta and Ace Frehley. Believing she is dreaming, Stella sees the wolf watching her, delusively convinces herself that it is a man, and lets it into her house through the window. Stella is the only victim who seems to accept her fate, failing to so much as ward off the beast. The next victim is an unknown homeless drifter killed in March. During an intense blizzard, virtually the entire town loses its power. While several members of the town are unable to sleep during the power outage, they hear a wolf howling. Several prominent members of the story hear the howling, including Marty and Town Constable Lander Neary. Although no one can say exactly where the howling originated from, it is at this point that the rumors of a werewolf begin to spread through the town. The drifter is found by an employee of the electric and gas company sent to repair the power lines. Wolf prints are found frozen in the snow around the body. This is the first discovered evidence of a non-human killer. As April arrives, so does Spring, and while children celebrate the warmer weather as normal, the presence of a killer has engulfed the town in terror. On April Fool's Day, 11-year-old Brady Kincaid is flying a new kite given to him as a birthday present. Having realized that he has stayed out too late, he starts to prepare to leave. Upon doing this, Brady tells himself he has to hurry home in order to avoid a beating from his father, but in reality he is afraid of seeing the werewolf. Before he can leave, his fears are realized. He is found the next day in the park by a volunteer search party, only feet away from where other children had reported him playing, decapitated and disemboweled. The May full moon comes on Tarker's Mills' Homecoming weekend. The chapter begins with Baptist Reverend Lester Lowe awaking from a dream and half-expecting to see a werewolf outside of his church. Lowe had dreamed that he was giving his sermon in front of a packed congregation, not unusual on Homecoming Sunday according to Lowe, and he was preaching the sermon of his life, in contrast to his usually drab homilies. As Lowe continued to preach, speaking about the presence of the Beast, the congregation began to transform, although Lowe did not cease preaching. Eventually, Lowe began to transform himself. At this point, he realizes that he has been dreaming. The next day, Sunday, Lowe finds Clyde Corliss, a janitor at the church, gutted on the pulpit, and realizes, to his horror, that he really is the werewolf. In June, Alfie Knopfler, owner of the Chat n' Chew, a diner, is considering closing early, as it is near high school graduation, and he has no customers, when a customer enters and orders coffee. The customer is left unidentified, except to say that he is a regular, only out late. As Alfie surmises that he looks sick and probably will not stay long, the customer transforms before his eyes. Alfie compares it to the transformation scenes in The Incredible Hulk television series, and can hear change rattling in clothes pockets when the werewolf moves around, as his clothes have not been completely removed. Alfie, a Navy veteran, puts up somewhat of a struggle, but is killed relatively easily. Dying while looking at the moonlight through the window. In July, the town's Independence Day fireworks have been canceled. This is very upsetting to Marty, who has been looking forward to them all year. Because he feels bad for him, Marty's Uncle Al brings him fireworks, warning Marty to set them off really late so that his mother will not find out. While Marty is outside enjoying his own private Independence Day celebration, the werewolf attacks the boy, who manages to put out the monster's left eye with a package of black cat firecrackers. The werewolf escapes and Marty's parents call the police. In August, Constable Neary is getting his hair cut at the barber shop and is discussing the killer with the other patrons of the barber shop. It is revealed here that Marty has described the killer as a werewolf, not a person, and that he had been sent to live with relatives in Stowe, Vermont for the remainder of the summer, as the Maine State Police are fearful that the killer may return to kill Marty, and that Marty will recover better from the shock if he is away from Tarker's Mills. It is because of this ""shock"" that both Neary and the State Police have surmised that Marty, who had seen the killer, is suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, and having heard the stories of a werewolf at school, had juxtaposed the image of a wolf and the human killer together. The police also ignore the fact that Marty claims the killer is now missing his left eye. While one of the patrons of the barber shop suggests that the killer wears a costume, Neary dismisses it, saying the killer is purely human, and may be completely insane, possibly not even aware that he has committed the murders. Later that night, Neary is attacked in his truck by the werewolf. Remembering the discussion about a werewolf costume, Neary attempts to pull a mask off of the killer, realizing too late that no mask exists. The werewolf then kills him in a rather playful manner (pulling off the skin of his face, as though it were a mask) and feeds upon his remains. In September, Elmer Zinneman hears his entire pen of pigs being attacked. While initially planning to shoot at a natural predator, Elmer abandons these plans when he hears a wolf howl. Later on Elmer goes outside to see something huge and black running into the woods. Elmer's brother Pete comes over later that day and the men discuss how much of the loss will be covered by insurance. Pete mentions the wolf track evident in the mud, and notes that even he knows that those tracks belong to a werewolf, and he lives two counties away. Later on, both Elmer and Pete discuss going hunting for the werewolf, but not until November, saying that until then, people will have to be careful during the light of the full moon. October comes and so does Halloween. To celebrate, Marty goes trick-or-treating, but although he is ostensibly just trick-or-treating, he is also looking for a man or a woman missing his or her left eye. While out, he sees the Reverend Lowe wearing an eyepatch (Lowe and Marty had not seen each other since their encounter on the Fourth of July, as Marty and his family are devout Catholics, and do not attend the Baptist church where Reverend Lowe presides). In November, Elmer and Pete Zinneman, along with dozens of others, begin going into the woods everyday, waiting to shoot the werewolf. Although the hunters do not carry silver bullets, and hunt on days when the moon is not full, it is suggested that they are not looking for a mythological creature, but rather some sort of cryptid. Also, it is acknowledged that most of the hunters are hunting for fun, in order to be away from their wives, urinate outdoors, and tell jokes which include racial and ethnic slurs. Reverend Lowe, realizing he may kill another innocent victim, or be discovered himself, has been receiving anonymous letters from Marty, and plans to listen to gossip, for the first time in his life, so that he may kill the person attacked in July (Marty). However, in order to avoid the hunters, Lowe decides to travel to Portland, Maine and check into a hotel. At this point, Lowe, who had at first been reluctant about his curse, which he has no idea how he contracted, has more or less gone insane, and though not actually embracing his curse, acknowledged that all things serve the will of God. Ironically, after traveling to Portland, Lowe kills Milt Sturmfuller, a resident of Tarker's Mills, who is known as a notorious wife-batterer. Sturmfuller has been systematically traveling to Portland to cheat on his wife. After one night in Portland, he contracts genital herpes, when he returns home, maritally rapes his wife, and passes the disease onto her. While walking from his hotel room, which is the room adjacent to the one that Lowe has purchased, Sturmfuller is decapitated by the werewolf. By December, the town of Tarker's Mills is beginning to return to normal, as there has not been a known murder by the Full Moon Killer since Neary in August. However, some residents, such as Elmer Zinneman, point out that his pigs, and the four deer found slaughtered in the woods in October, could have been killed by the werewolf (Sturmfuller's death goes virtually unnoticed as he is far from a model citizen, and he is not linked to the Tarker's Mills murders as he is murdered in Portland). Marty continues to send Lowe anonymous letters asking why he does not kill himself and end the terror. In December, he sends the last letter - signed with his name. Unbeknownst to Reverend Lowe, Marty has convinced his somewhat reluctant uncle to have two silver bullets made and to come spend New Year's Eve (which falls on the full moon) with him. Right before midnight, the werewolf breaks into the house to kill Marty, who shoots him twice with the silver bullets, managing to completely blind and finally kill him. The Cycle of the Werewolf ends almost exactly a year after it began."
2007,Hawkes Harbor,horror," Orphaned and illegitimate, Jamie Sommers grows up believing he has ""no hope of heaven"", that he is doomed to a dreadful existence. A Catholic, he is deeply depressed by the ideas of being conceived in adultery and born in sin. The impressionable Jamie is repeatedly told by mean nuns in the Bronx, that he is destined to repeat the sins of his parents and he proves them right. Taking to the sea, Jamie seeks out danger and adventure in exotic ports all over the world as a smuggler, gun runner – and murderer. Life became a constant struggle in his search for excitement and fulfillment. Also Jamie believed he didn't deserve a better life than has, so he chooses to worsen himself. Tough enough to handle anything, he survives foreign prisons, pirates and a shark attack. But in a quiet seaside town in Delaware, Jamie discovers something that pushes him over the edge mentally and changes his life forever. After being taken out of the Mental Institution life gets harder. Trying to deal with the townspeople who want him hurt and taking his medicine, all the while having to deal with his master. He starts to find himself when he switches medicines and Grenville takes him on a cruise. S.E. Hinton takes you on a journey through one life that couldnt be harder. Jamie fights through his late life being scared of everything."
2008,Prime Evil,horror," Crystal Gregory is a beautiful new teacher at Sunnydale High, who also happens to give Buffy panic fits whenever she's in the same room as her. Buffy can't sense anything unusual about the teacher and begins to wonder if she's losing her mind. But lately, Anya and Michael seem to be getting awfully close to Crystal and would appear to do anything for her. While out for her usual patrol at night, Buffy has two strange encounters; one, a man is completely incinerated by red and lighting and the other being a girl from school who has a burn mark on her neck in the shape of the symbol for infinity. As soon as Giles gets cracking on his books, he finds out that Crystal is in fact Shugra, a powerful primal witch which is trying to activate the source. She needs a coven of 13 willing people to participate in order to draw the proper energy, unfortunately, it seems that Willow is one of those people. Cordelia is nervous about her father's tax position but does not tell the others. This foreshadows later events. Giles and Joyce are nervous in each other's company Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Anya, Cordelia, Willow, and Oz"
2009,Here Be Monsters,horror," After Buffy kills twin teenage vampires, their vampire mother steps in to seek revenge for the death of her sons. The mother summons the goddess of Balance and Buffy is faced with a trial in order to save her life as well as her mother's. In this trial, Buffy discovers what she fears most and her love for her mom must triumph over the vampire mother's love for her dead sons."
2010,The Cleansing,horror," The book tells the story of an American Indian wolf god, Wanata, who comes to earth to hold humanity accountable for its abuse of nature. In Alaska, freelance journalist Savannah Channing investigates the story of a rampaging wolf pack that is systematically destroying villages. She arrives to find that the problem is worse than she expected and that the military and a brutal bounty hunter have been employed. Wanata is changed into mortal human form by an Indian Shaman's magic and is forced to interact with those he was sent to punish. The paths of Wanata and Channing cross in a spine-chilling conclusion."
2011,The Waste Lands,horror," The story begins five weeks after the end of The Drawing of the Three. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie have moved east from the shore of the Western Sea, and into the woods of Out-World. After an encounter with a gigantic cyborg bear named Shardik, they discover one of the six mystical Beams that hold the world together. The three gunslingers follow the Path of the Beam inland to Mid-World. Roland now reveals to his ka-tet that his mind has become divided by the paradox of having let Jake Chambers die under the mountain after finding him at the Way Station in the desert, and yet also, after having subsequently prevented Jake's earlier death in New York City, having an alternate memory of traveling through the desert and mountains alone. Meanwhile, in 1977 New York, Jake Chambers is experiencing exactly the same crippling mental divide, which is causing alarm at his private school, and angering Jake's cocaine abusing father. Roland burns Walter's jawbone and the key to his and Jake's dilemma is revealed—but to Eddie Dean, not Roland. Eddie must carve a key that will open the door to New York in 1977. Jake, in a schizophrenic panic, abruptly leaves school. After purchasing a children's book called Charlie the Choo-Choo at a used book shop, Jake finds a key in a littered vacant lot where grows a single red rose. Jake is able to pass into Roland's world using the key to open a door in an abandoned haunted house on Dutch Hill in his place and time. This portal ends in a 'speaking ring' in Roland's world. During this crossing over, Susannah has sex with the demon of the speaking ring to keep it from attacking Eddie. Once the group is reunited, Jake's and Roland's mental anguish ends. Following the path of the beam again, the ka-tet befriends an unusually intelligent billy-bumbler (which looks like a combination of badger, raccoon and dog with parrot-like speaking ability, long neck, curly tail, retractable claws and a high degree of animal intelligence) named Oy, who joins them on their quest. In a small, almost deserted town called River Crossing, Roland is given a silver cross and a courtly tribute by the town's last, ancient citizens. The ka-tet continue on the Path of the Beam to Lud. Before arriving at Lud, the ka-tet hear the drum beat from the song Velcro Fly, by ZZ Top, playing from the city, although Eddie at first can't remember where it is he has heard these drums before. Later the drums are revealed as ""War Drums"" which Lud's citizens fight to. The ancient, high-tech city has been ravaged by decades of war, and one of the surviving fighters, Gasher, kidnaps Jake by taking advantage of the near-accident the team faced while crossing a decaying bridge that looks like the George Washington Bridge of NYC. Roland and Oy must then trace them through a man-made labyrinth in the city and then into the sewers in order to rescue the boy from Gasher and his leader, the Tick-Tock Man. Jake manages to shoot the Tick-Tock Man, leaving him for dead. The ka-tet is eventually reunited at the Cradle of Lud, a train station which houses a monorail that the travelers use to escape Lud before its final destruction brought about by the monorail's artificial intelligence known as Blaine the Mono. The ""Ageless Stranger"" (an enemy whom the Man in Black warned Roland that he must slay) arrives to recruit the badly-injured Tick-Tock Man as his servant. Once aboard Blaine, a highly intelligent, computerized train which is insane due to system degradation, it announces its intention to derail itself with them aboard unless they can defeat it in a riddle contest. The novel ends with Blaine and Roland's ka-tet speeding through the Waste Lands, a radioactive land of mutated animals and ancient ruins created by something that is claimed to have been far worse than a nuclear war, on the way to Topeka -the end of the line."
2012,A Knight of the Word,horror," John Ross, having failed on a mission from the Word in which fourteen school children were killed in San Sobel, California, tries to leave his life as a Knight of the Word behind him. He returns to the Fairy Glen in Wales to tender his resignation to the Lady, but she refuses to appear to him; instead, he meets the ghost of his ancestor, Owain Glyndŵr, who tells him that the decision to give up being a Knight is not his to make. Frustrated, John returns to America, where in Boston he meets and instantly falls in love with the beautiful Stefanie, who seems to amply reciprocate his feelings. Deliriously happy, he embarks together with her on a long trek across the United States, culminating with both of them finding work at a homeless center in Seattle. Feeling that he has found a very satisfactory new life, with a loving woman at his side and a demanding job helping an important social cause in cooperation with idealistic, sympathetic activists, he increasingly feels that his time as a Knight of the Word can be relegated to the past. He ignores the infrequent dreams of a demon-haunted future, including one in which he kills his much-beloved boss, Simon Lawrence. Lawrence is known locally as ""the Wizard of Oz"" because of his successful charity ventures in Seattle (AKA the Emerald City); by energetic campaigning, and building up a reputation as an idealistic, dedicated activist, Lawrence succeeded in pushing many politicians to support the homeless - though this is not a very popular cause and with little electoral benefit accruing. However, Lawrence's sterling reputation is threatened when he is being investigated for alleged financial impropriety, by a famous reporter named Andrew Wren who is (without his own knowledge) - influenced and manipulated by a demon. This demon is a changeling - during the day it works to subvert, and at night morphs into a giant hyena-like creature to feed on the homeless living in the ruins under modern Seattle. Nest Freemark, now a 19-year-old college student, has returned to Hopewell, Illinois for the weekend before Halloween. She muses on events over the last five years, including her grandfather's death in the spring, Wraith's disappearance when she turned 18, and the fact that she is no longer in touch with most of her childhood friends (or John Ross). She has not used her magic in years and is unsure if she has it any longer. She travels with her twiggy sylvan companion, Pick, through the park and has an encounter with the tatterdemalion Ariel, a ghost-like messenger of the Word formed from the memories of dead children. Nest learns that John Ross is in need of her help and reluctantly agrees to fly to Seattle to talk to him. She is disturbed to learn that John is now especially vulnerable to falling to the side of the Void, and the Word has dispatched someone to kill him if this happens. This resounds with Nest, as she recalls that John admitting that he would have killed her five years ago if she had been turned to the Void. Arriving in Seattle, Nest takes a walk at night with Ariel; they hear the demon hunting and killing people in the underground city, but Ariel will not let her pursue it. She meets with John the next day, but cannot convince him to return to his duties as a Knight; however, she does cause changes in his dreams - now John also dreams about killing her. Nest also runs into O'olish Amaneh, the Word-serving Native American that she met five years before, and finds that he is the one sent to kill John if he should turn to the Void. That night, Ariel informs Nest that Boot, a sylvan in a local park, has seen the demon. Just as they're getting crucial information from Boot, the demon attacks them in its hyena form and kills Boot, his owl Audrey, and Ariel. It chases Nest through a nearby residential area, but she narrowly escapes on a bus. Later that same night, the demon sets fire to the homeless shelter and John and Stefanie rescue many tenants, but one of their coworkers is killed in the fire. John was exceedingly groggy and foggy-headed when Stefanie tried to wake him to help deal with the fire, and he's troubled by this. The next day, Halloween, John and Nest meet. They share information and decide that Nest should leave town. Andrew Wren, in possession of (demon-provided) evidence that John and Simon are embezzling from the shelter, meets with John and leaves him with the suspicion that Simon is the demon. His suspicions are reinforced when Stefanie tells him that Simon has fired him, to distance himself from the scandal. John heads to a fund-raising event at the art museum and confronts Simon, who reveals himself as a demon, nearly kills John, and leaves him on the floor. John repents for faltering in his service to the Word and is once again infused with magic to heal and strengthen him. He searches for Simon with the intent to kill him, but just as he finds him, Nest intervenes. On the way out of town, she realized that Stefanie is actually the demon, because of parallels between Stefanie's actions and those of Nest's father (also a demon), not to mention the timing issues and other evidence that lead her to this truth. John realizes that he's been subtly led toward the Void ever since Stefanie came into his life, after San Sobel; as a shape-shifting demon, Stefanie forged documents to support the embezzlement accusations, attacked Nest and her friends in the park, set fire to the shelter to explain the wounds she'd sustained trying to kill Nest, lied about John being fired, and morphed into Simon at the museum so John would be tricked into killing the real, innocent Simon and completing his turn to the Void. Finally, John confronts Stefanie at his apartment. She does not deny being a demon, but tells John that even so he is still in love with her (which he feels to be true) and that she could continue to make him happy. When he rejects the offer, the demon-Stefanie, afraid of his now-returned magic, leaps out a window. Faced with the demon's onslaught when it crashes to the street below, the waiting Nest finds that Wraith has not left her- he lives within her and Nest can assume his form in response to threatening dark magic. Together, she and John destroy Stefanie - or, in fact, they destroy the shape-changing demon who had taken her form as well as various other forms, human and non-human, male and female. (Though the term is not explicitly used, Stefanie in fact fits well with the traditional depiction of a succubus - a female demon who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men.) Nest returns to Hopewell, and John resumes his service as a Knight of the Word, once again using his dreams of the future to change things in the present and keep the Void at bay."
2013,Cujo,horror," We first meet the middle-class Trentons, who are recent arrivals in town: Vic, an advertisement designer, his wife, Donna, and their four-year-old son Tad. Vic has discovered that his wife had been involved in an affair. In the midst of this household tension, Vic's fledgling advertising agency is failing, and he is forced to leave on a business trip to Boston and New York. We are then introduced to the blue-collar Cambers, longtime town residents: Joe, a shade-tree mechanic, Charity, his wife, and their ten-year-old son Brett. Charity is frustrated with her domineering and occasionally abusive husband, and is worried about Joe's negative influence on Brett. Charity wins the state lottery, and uses the proceeds to inveigle Joe into allowing her to take Brett on a trip to visit Charity's sister, Holly, in Connecticut. Joe secretly plans to use the time to take a pleasure trip to Boston with his neighbor, Gary Pervier. Cujo, a St. Bernard, belongs to Joe Camber and his family. Although Joe is fond of Cujo, he never bothers to get the dog vaccinated against rabies. While chasing a rabbit in the fields around the Cambers' house, Cujo gets his head temporarily stuck in the entrance to a small limestone cave and is bitten on the nose by a bat and infected with rabies. Soon after Charity and Brett leave, Cujo attacks and kills Gary Pervier. Joe goes to the Pervier home to check on Gary, only to find him dead. Before Joe is able to call authorities for help, Cujo attacks and kills him as well. Donna, home alone with Tad, takes their failing Ford Pinto to the Cambers' for repairs. The car breaks down in Camber's dooryard and as Donna attempts to find Joe, Cujo appears and is ready to pounce. She climbs back in the car and Cujo starts to attack. Donna and Tad become trapped in their vehicle, whose interior is becoming increasingly hot in the glaring sunlight. During one escape attempt, Donna is bitten in the stomach and leg, but manages to survive and escape back into the car. She considers running for the Cambers' home but is afraid the door will be locked and she will be subsequently killed by Cujo, leaving her son all alone, and abandons the idea. Vic returns to Castle Rock after several failed attempts to contact her. He also learns from the police that Steve Kemp, the man with whom Donna was having an affair, is suspected of ransacking his home and possibly kidnapping Donna and Tad. However, in an effort to explore all leads, the state police send local Castle Rock Sheriff George Bannerman out to the Cambers' house. When George gets there, Cujo attacks and kills him. Following this, Donna realizes that Tad is dying and she must act. She faces Cujo down with a bat, breaking it over his head and fatally stabbing him in the eye with the broken end. Vic arrives immediately afterwards only to discover Tad died of dehydration. The book ends with both the Trentons and the Cambers trying to go on with their lives — Donna is cured for Rabies and Cujo is cremated. The book ends by saying that Charity gave Brett a new, vaccinated puppy named Willie."
2014,Dreamer,horror," Awake, Greg Donner falls in love with the beautiful red-headed Ginny Winters, a woman with a mysterious past. Asleep, Greg dreams of pursuing Ginny through a terrifyingly deserted Chicago. Awake, Richard Iles is confined to a sanatorium in Kentucky and trapped in a loveless marriage to Ginny Winters. Asleep, Richard dreams he is Greg Donner. And when he next wakes up, he IS Greg Donner. But Ginny has gone."
2015,The Black Wolf,horror, The novel is a Lovecraftian story of werewolves.
2016,Something Wicked This Way Comes,horror," The novel opens on an overcast October 23. Two friends, William ""Will"" Halloway and Jim Nightshade, both on the verge of their fourteenth birthdays, encounter a strange lightning rod salesman who claims that a storm is coming their way. Throughout that same night, Will and Jim meet up with townsfolk who also sense something in the air; the barber says that the air smells of cotton candy. Among the townspeople is Will's 54-year-old father, Charles Halloway (who works in the local library, and who broods philosophically about his position in life, including on how he misses being young like his son). Both Charles Halloway and the boys learn about the carnival that is to start the next day. Will's father sees a sign in a store window that advertises Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, while Jim and Will find a similar handbill in the street. The boys are excited that a carnival has come so late in the year, but Charles Halloway has a bad feeling about it. The boys run out to watch the carnival arrive at three in the morning, and they run home after seeing the tents get set up mysteriously. Mr. Halloway talks about this time of night as ""soul's midnight"", when men are closest to death, locked in the depths of despair. The boys go the next day to explore the carnival and they help their seventh grade teacher, Miss Foley, who is dazed after visiting the Mirror Maze. Later in the day, Jim goes into the maze and Will has to pull him out. Jim insists on coming back that night, and Will agrees, but when they bump into the lightning-rod salesman's bag, they realize that they must stay to learn what has happened to the man. Finally, after searching all of the rides, they go up to a carousel that is supposedly broken. A huge man grabs Will and Jim and tells them that the merry-go-round is broken. Another man tells him to put them down, introduces himself as Mr. Dark and tells them the huge man's name is Mr. Cooger. Mr. Dark is the Illustrated Man, covered in tattoos, and he pays attention only to Jim, who is enthralled by what he sees. Mr. Dark tells them to come back the next day and the boys run off but then hide and wait. What they see is unbelievable. Mr. Cooger rides backwards on the carousel (while the music plays backwards), and when he steps off he is twelve years old. They follow Mr. Cooger to Miss Foley's house, where he pretends to be her nephew who got lost earlier at the carnival. Jim tries to meet up with Mr. Cooger because he wants to ride the carousel, but Will stops him briefly before Jim takes off toward the carnival. When Will reaches the carnival Mr. Cooger is on the carousel, growing older, and Jim is about to join him. Will knocks the switch on the carousel and it flies out of control, spinning rapidly forward. Mr. Cooger ages over 100 years before the carousel stops, and Jim and Will take off. They return with the police, but Mr. Cooger is nowhere to be found. Inside the tents he is set up as a new act, Mr. Electrico, a man they run electricity through. Mr. Dark tells the boys to come back to the carnival the next day. Will tries to keep his father out of the situation, promising him that he will tell all soon. That night, the Dust Witch comes in her balloon to find Jim and Will, but Will outsmarts her and destroys her balloon. They later both dream of a bizarre funeral for the balloon, featuring a giant, misshapen coffin. The next day the boys see a young girl crying and realize after talking to her that she is Miss Foley. They go to her house but when they come back their path is blocked by a parade. The carnival is out searching the streets for them. They hide and the little girl is gone. Will's father sees them hiding under an iron grille in the sidewalk and the boys convince him to keep quiet because the Illustrated Man comes to talk to him. Will's father pretends not to know the two boys whose faces are tattooed on the man's hand, and then when the Witch comes and begins to sense the boys' presence he blows cigar smoke at her, choking her and forcing her to leave. Mr. Dark asks Charles Halloway for his name, and Will's father tells him where he works and who he is. Later that night Will and Jim meet Mr. Halloway at the library, where he has done research and found out some things about the carnival. He tells them that their best weapon is love, but they are not sure how to fight. Then Mr. Dark shows up and the boys hide. He finds them and crushes Charles Halloway's hand when the man tries to fight him. The Dust Witch casts spells on the boys to make them easy to handle and goes to stop Mr. Halloway's heart. Just before he is about to die, Charles Halloway looks at the Witch and begins to laugh hysterically, and his laughter wounds her deeply and drives her away. He goes to the carnival to get the boys. At the carnival Charles Halloway outsmarts Mr. Dark, finds his son, kills the Witch, and destroys the Mirror Maze in a matter of minutes, all through the use of laughter and happiness. Then he and Will search for Jim. Mr. Cooger turns to dust and blows away before he can be saved at the carousel, and Jim moves towards the merry-go-round. Jim starts to ride and Will tries to stop him. They both end up going for a ride before Will jumps off and rips Jim away from the machine. Jim falls into a stupor, close to death. A child comes begging them to help him, but Mr. Halloway recognizes the boy as Mr. Dark. He holds the boy tight and kills him with affection, because Mr. Dark cannot survive in such close contact with someone good. The carnival falls apart as Will tries to revive Jim. They save Jim by singing and dancing and laughing; their happiness bringing him back from the edge of death."
2017,Compulsion,horror," A gang of teenage youngsters is running riot on the streets. Responsible for a number of burglaries and car thefts, the police are at their wits' end trying to put a stop to the gang's activities. Terror and hatred have become part of everyday life for local residents and, just when it seems things cannot get any worse, the gang targets Shelby House - an old people's home. Supervisor Veronica Porter, her two staff and the nine elderly residents become the gang's most vulnerable victims yet as the thugs conduct a hate campaign against them, sending abusive mail, daubing graffiti on walls and shattering windows. The intimidation escalates until Veronica's own father is dragged into the scene of terror when, disturbing some of the gang members burgling his house he is put into a coma. But enough is enough. The senior citizens of Shelby House decide to take the law into their own hands and fight back."
2018,Close to the Ground,horror," After saving a young woman from her rogue bodyguards, Angel is hired by a big Hollywood studio head, Jack Willitts, to guard the girl in question; his daughter, Karinna. Angel is persuaded when his co-workers point out there is rent to deal with, and Cordelia even convinces Jack to give her a job (Unfortunately, it is as a tour guide rather than an actress). Angel takes Karinna to several popular nightspots, writing her off as a spoiled brat. Cordy believes Angel is getting too close to the case, but the situation soon worsens. Karinna gets into trouble while Angel and company are being tracked by an unknown creature, trying to destroy anything getting in its way. Angel eventually finds himself trapped in a supernatural struggle for power and immortality, as an Irish magician, Mordractus, reveals that he has been tracking Angel. Mordractus is attempting to summon a powerful demon, but the spells are draining his life energy, and he will soon die unless a way of surviving is found. Knowing that Angel is immortal, yet retaining a soul, Mordractus attempts to steal Angel's 'essence' to allow him to duplicate that feat, but Angel escapes and Mordractus is banished to Hell."
2019,Power of Persuasion,horror," When dead guys start turning up as soon as the Moon family appears in Sunnydale Buffy knows that something is wrong. Mo, the mother, and her two daughters, Calli and Polly, all go to Sunnydale High. Within several days Calli and Polly have attracted a huge crowd of females. The Moons are trying to create a ""Womyn Power"" group at the school that basically detests guys for even living. Willow gets pulled into the group and Buffy resolves to stop the Moons before they brainwash all the girls and turn all the guys into blithering idiots."
2020,Impressions,horror," It seems a quiet day at Angel Investigations until a desperate man arrives, chased by a demon. The gang kills the monster, which decomposes as soon as it dies. The man seems to have fallen victim to a stolen identity scam; he's been approached by a false Angel and is now distrustful of the real thing, so does not want to give up the ancient stone he's found. Angel's worried by the notion of an impersonator, but Cordy's just curious why he didn't impersonate more worthy celebrities. Meanwhile Lorne reports some bad mojo from Caritas, and needs help. Something is getting under local demons' skins, and even bothering Angel, heightening the aggression of normally rather pacifistic demons. As their research continues, Cordelia and Fred learn that the Angel-impersonator- a photography student called David who saw Angel in action during his early days in Los Angeles- is impersonating Angel for no reason other than the power trip he gets when defeating demons, and doesn't truly understand the reasons why Angel does what he does. The stone that David's client possesses is later revealed to be the burial stone of a race of demons whose nature causes them to disintegrate upon death caused them to start using the stones as a memorial, the stones 'recording' their feelings at the moment of death. The stone the client possesses contains the rage and hostility of an honoured warrior who recently died in battle; in their home dimension, the stone's 'emissions' would normally be controlled by various spells, but without those spells the emotions are spilling out and 'infecting' every demon in the area. In the final confrontation, as Angel and his associates attempt to aid the stone's owners in acquiring the stone while holding off a mass of demons, Angel nearly surrenders to his rage, but David's act of sacrifice during the battle, giving his life to save Angel's, gets through Angel's rage and allows him to focus long enough to allow the stone to be destroyed, thus ending the wave of hostility."
2021,Mr. Murder,horror," This story has two intervening plots occurring throughout. One of an assassin, who is a clone. Bestselling mystery writer Marty Stillwater was recording himself one day when he realized that he was saying ""I need..."" repeatedly. When he went back to see what he had been saying before he found out he had been saying ""I need"" for over 7 minutes. Marty was tense that whole day, when he put the kids to bed though he calmed down considerably and was finally consoled. Meanwhile, the Killer was roaming the streets before his job, when he went into a bar and went with a prostitute to a motel and slept with her but soon after became angry because he felt dirty, and murdered her. Then proceeded to his job. He kills his targets and goes to the hotel he is staying. That night, being restless, he leaves his itenary and goes towards Topeka. Suddenly, he starts saying: The Killer was attracted like a magnet by some force he didn't understand to the Stillwater residence. On his way he killed several people, an old couple for a set of clothes and a gas station clerk for food and to save money. When he breaks into the house he sees a picture of Marty and notices he looks exactly like him. He sees the pictures of the daughters Emily and Charlotte and Marty's wife Paige, he then decides he wants to be the father and husband. He goes to the computer to write a book, but since he can't he destroys the computer. Marty was quite upset about his fugues (a break in one's memory) and so went to see a doctor. The doctor said it was just stress. When Marty comes home he found things misplaced and his computer smashed. The Other than comes and Marty shoots him twice in the chest, but he gets away. Then they fight and the Other gets away. Marty's wife then comes home, and Marty sends them to their neighbour's house. Soon after, the police arrive. Cyrus Lowbock, the detective, interrogates Marty and doesn't believe him, so Marty sends him away. The Killer was hurt so he needed food, so he went to McDonald's and ate enough for six. Then he went to get the women that he thought were his from who he thought was an impostor. He went to the neighbour's house and got the daughters, but as he was leaving Marty came out and the girls escaped to him. The Killer fled again. Drew Oslett and Karl Clocker were going to where The Killer (whom they referred to as ""Alfie"") had killed two seniors and taken out his tracking device. When they arrived and saw he wasn't there they left and found a picture of Marty in a People magazine and saw he looked exactly like Alfie. They then went to see a contact that might help them find Alfie. After discussing they decided the Stillwaters had to be terminated to look like a murder/suicide and Alfie had to be brought in. Meanwhile the Stillwaters fled to a cabin in Mammoth Lakes and set up to get attacked by The Other. Paige hid under a rock to ambush The Other, but impredictably he ran his car through the cabin. The Stillwaters then fled to an abandoned church. Here Marty is shot and Paige and the girls leave. As The Other comes Drew and Karl track him and enter. Drew kills The Other and is then killed by Karl who rescues the Stillwaters provides them with new identities, a new home and evidence to bring the company down. After a few months Marty mails the evidence to the authorities from an anonymous name thus ending the story."
2022,Berenice,horror," The narrator, Egaeus, is a studious young man who grows up in a large gloomy mansion with his cousin Berenice. He suffers from a type of obsessive disorder, a monomania that makes him fixate on objects. She, originally beautiful, suffers from some unspecified degenerative illness, with periods of catalepsy a particular symptom, which he refers to as a trance. Nevertheless, they are due to be married. One afternoon, Egaeus sees Berenice as he sits in the library. When she smiles, he focuses on her teeth. His obsession grips him, and for days he drifts in and out of awareness, constantly thinking about the teeth. He imagines himself holding the teeth and turning them over to examine them from all angles. At one point a servant tells him that Berenice has died and shall be buried. When he next becomes aware, with an inexplicable terror, he finds a lamp and a small box in front of him. Another servant enters, reporting that a grave has been violated, and a shrouded disfigured body found, still alive. Egaeus finds his clothes are covered in mud and blood, and opens the box to find it contains dental instruments and ""thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances"" – Berenice's teeth. The Latin epigraph, ""Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas,"" at the head of the text may be translated as: ""My companion said to me, if I would visit the grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries."" This quote is also seen by Egaeus in an open book towards the end of the story."
2023,The Vampire Lestat,horror," Set in the late 18th century to the late 1980s, the story follows the 200-year-long life of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, and his rise from humble beginnings as an impoverished aristocrat in the countryside of France to the city of Paris to become a vain and arrogant vampire. After escaping his family and running off to Paris with his friend and confidante Nicolas de Lenfent (nicknamed Nicki by Lestat), Lestat is kidnapped and bitten by the rogue elder vampire Magnus, who orphans him on the night he is made. Later, his dying mother, Gabrielle, arrives to say goodbye to him. In order to save her, Lestat bites her, transforming her into his first companion. Lestat abandons Nicki for fear of causing him harm and shuns contact with his loved ones. He later turns Nicki into a vampire after Armand kidnaps him and they begin to grow apart because of Nicki's sullenness; he later commits suicide by ""going into the fire,"" from severe depression. Armand ""shows"" Lestat the history of how he was made by Marius. Compelled by the idea of Marius, Lestat leaves markings carved into rock in numerous places while traveling with Gabrielle, hoping that one day, Marius will see them and find Lestat. Whilst in Egypt, abandoned by Gabrielle, Lestat sleeps in the ground after being burned by the sun,and is recovered by Marius who takes him to his Mediterranean island. Then, Marius shares his past with him, and shows him Those Who Must Be Kept, Akasha and Enkil. Once Marius has given his warning to Lestat not to go see them again and leaves on a short outing, Lestat takes Nicolas's old violin and plays for the King and Queen, awakening them. Akasha feeds from Lestat as Lestat feeds from her. Then, Enkil, furious as ever, nearly kills Lestat, who is saved by Marius, and sent away. The book ends on a cliffhanger after Lestat's debut concert in San Francisco, and leads directly into the third volume, the Queen of the Damned."
2024,Undead and Unwelcome,horror," Betsy Taylor has problems that only a vampire queen/suburban wife could possibly understand. Such as taking the body of her werewolf friend Antonia—who died in her service—to Cape Cod, where she's not sure if the Wyndham werewolves will welcome her with fangs or friendship. Meanwhile, her posse back in St. Paul is sending frantic e-mails alerting Betsy to her half-sister's increasingly erratic behavior. Looks like the devil's daughter is coming into her own—and raising hell."
2025,The Bad Seed,horror," Eight-year-old Rhoda is the only child of Kenneth and Christine Penmark. Kenneth Penmark goes away on business, leaving Christine and Rhoda at home. Christine begins to notice that Rhoda is acting strangely after one of her classmates mysteriously drowns, and eventually makes a horrible discovery: Rhoda killed the boy, and will almost certainly kill again."
2026,The Cask of Amontillado,horror," Montresor tells the story of the day that he took his revenge on Fortunato, a fellow nobleman, to an unspecified person who knows him very well. Angry over some unspecified insult, he plots to murder his friend during Carnival when the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley. He baits Fortunato by telling him he has obtained what he believes to be a pipe (about 130 gallons, 492 litres) of a rare vintage of Amontillado. He claims he wants his friend's expert opinion on the subject. Fortunato goes with Montresor to the wine cellars of the latter's palazzo, where they wander in the catacombs. Montresor offers wine (first Medoc, then De Grave) to Fortunato. At one point, Fortunato makes an elaborate, grotesque gesture with an upraised wine bottle. When Montresor appears not to recognize the gesture, Fortunato asks, ""You are not of the masons?"" Montresor says he is, and when Fortunato, disbelieving, requests a sign, Montresor displays a trowel he had been hiding. Montresor warns Fortunato, who has a bad cough, of the damp, and suggests they go back; Fortunato insists on continuing, claiming that ""[he] shall not die of a cough."" During their walk, Montresor mentions his family coat of arms: a golden foot in a blue background crushing a snake whose fangs are embedded in the foot's heel, with the motto Nemo me impune lacessit (""No one insults me with impunity""). When they come to a niche, Montresor tells his victim that the Amontillado is within. Fortunato enters and, drunk and unsuspecting, does not resist as Montresor quickly chains him to the wall. Montresor then declares that, since Fortunato won't go back, he must ""positively leave [him]"". Montresor walls up the niche, entombing his friend alive. At first, Fortunato, who sobers up faster than Montresor anticipated he would, shakes the chains, trying to escape. Fortunato then screams for help, but Montresor mocks his cries, knowing nobody can hear them. Fortunato laughs weakly and tries to pretend that he is the subject of a joke and that people will be waiting for him (including the Lady Fortunato). As the murderer finishes the topmost row of stones, Fortunato wails, ""For the love of God, Montresor!"" Montresor replies, ""Yes, for the love of God!"" He listens for a reply but hears only the jester's bells ringing. Before placing the last stone, he drops a burning torch through the gap. He claims that he feels sick at heart, but dismisses this reaction as an effect of the dampness of the catacombs. In the last few sentences, Montresor reveals that in the 50 years since that night, he has never been caught, and Fortunato's body still hangs from its chains in the niche where he left it. The murderer concludes: Requiescat In Pace! (""May he rest in peace!"")."
2027,Mortal Fear,horror," Something new has swept into the lives of the Scooby Gang, but all through different sources as they try to find acceptance with other people outside their tight knit slayage group; Xander with his co-workers, Willow with her professor at university and Dawn with a new group of not so straight-laced friends. Meanwhile, Buffy is being sent on random missions by a man that goes by the name of Simon. He wants her to retrieve parts of a mystical sword and put them together, but he refuses to say why or who he even is. When her friends suddenly start to turn against her, Buffy has to figure out how the sword and Simon ties into all the odd goings-on in Sunnydale."
2028,Demon Apocalypse,horror," Picking up where Blood Beast left off, Grubbs on a plane in a dire situation face-to-face with Lord Loss and Juni Swan who has just been revealed to be one of his higher ranked familiars. Just when it seems like Grubbs will be killed, Beranabus (the homeless man from the previous book that had been following him around Carcery Vale, and a powerful magician who the Disciples follow) appears, and the two jump from the plane, and fly to his cave. Once there, Beranabus and Kernel take Grubbs with them to fight a demon in one of the Demonata worlds. Grubbs chickens out and is stuck in Beranabus' home for seven weeks. Once Beranabus and Kernel return from demon hunting, they all discover that the tunnel that Bec had sealed 1600 years ago has been opened, and hell has been brought to Earth. Enlisting the help of the Disciples, Grubbs, Kernel, and Beranabus set out to reseal the tunnel and remove the Demonata from Earth at the same time. After arriving at the tunnel, Kernel gets his eyes gouged out by Spine (one of Lord Loss's familiars) and Grubbs sees all his friend's and Dervish's heads carried by demons (Not Bill-E's). The spirit of Bec appears again and tells Beranabus that sealing the tunnel will not remove the demons like it did last time. In the chaos, the Kah-Gash (the weapon powerful enough to destroy universes) awakes in Grubbs, Kernel and Bec and turns back time to a point just before the tunnel was opened, providing Grubbs, Kernel, and Beranabus a way to prevent mankind's extinction. During the cave battle between Beranabus' group and Lord Loss', it is revealed that Bill-E must be killed to prevent the opening of the tunnel, since he unwittingly sacrificed Loch to open the tunnel. Because Dervish is unable to kill his nephew, Grubbs is forced to painlessly kill Bill-E. This seals the tunnel, and also forces the retreat of a shadowy creature unlike any demon Grubbs has seen before. Bec, her essence trapped within Grubbs, fills Bill-E's body and changes the body to resemble hers. It is revealed that Bec's spirit has been trapped inside the cave for the past 1600 years, believed by Beranabus to be because she is part of the Kah-Gash, along with Grubbs and Kernel. Now knowing what is at stake, Grubbs leaves Dervish in the care of Bec and joins Beranabus and Kernel on their never ending quest to prevent more tunnels from opening and to learn more about the creature known as the Shadow."
2029,Dead Sea,horror," The story follows Lamar Reed, a young black gay man living in Baltimore. One day in New York rats come up from the city, not just rats but dead and rotting rats. Any person who is bitten or gets any blood or saliva into an open wound or orifice dies very shortly after and rises from the dead craving human flesh. The media refers to it as Hamelin's Revenge after the town from the Pied Piper myth. Lamar is flushed from his house as Baltimore is slowly burning to the ground. He encounters several other survivors and the fight their way to the harbor where they are rescued by the USS Sprattling. From there they set sail out to sea realizing that the land now belongs to the dead."
2030,Chosen,horror," The book opens on December 24th, Zoey's birthday. The school's been shaken by drama teacher Patricia Nolan's death. She's been crucified and next to her there was a quote from the bible which leads Zoey to believe that the People of Faith are responsible and Neferet must strengthen school security. Set to clear out her romantic life, Zoey sneaks out of the House of Night, resolved to break up with Heath - without success. On the way back she meets Stevie Rae and, with Aphrodite, brings her to Aphrodite's parents' house, and keeps her there while trying to find a solution for her problem. Back at the House of Night, Zoey realizes that, as a leader of the Dark Daughters, she has to choose someone else to fill the position of Earth in her circle. Much to everyone else's displeasure, she chooses Aphrodite, when she manifests a new affinity for the Earth. Zoey also feels more and more estranged from Erik, because of the lies she tells to hide her relationship with Loren. During the night Erik finishes the Change, she loses her virginity to Loren and Imprints with him, breaking her previous one with Heath. Erik walks in on them and angrily breaks up with Zoey. She pulls herself together and leaves to gather her friends, planning to tell them about Stevie Rae, to cast a circle and heal her. On the way, Zoey chances upon Loren and Neferet and hears him confess that Neferet had made him seduce Zoey, for her to become alienated from her closest, and that he actually loves Neferet. Heartbroken, Zoey leaves to get Damien, the Twins and Aphrodite. She had planned to use the occasion to cure Stevie Rae and introduce her to her friends. Because of Loren's meddling, Stevie Rae arrives before Zoey has the chance to explain her to her friends and they feel betrayed, but agree to finish the ritual. When Zoey is about to invoke Earth, Stevie Rae attacks Aphrodite in a fit of jealousy and drinks from her and Changes into the first red adult vampyre. Aphrodite is terrified to discover that her own mark has disappeared and runs away through the secret exit with Stevie Rae after her, leaving Zoey alone with the rest of her friends. Zoey does her best to explain and she manages to get them to listen until Erik shows up and reveals her infidelity and her relationship with Loren. This shatters Damien and the Twins' last bit of faith in her. On the way back she is seized by a series of spasms, and founds out much later that they came from her Imprint with Loren breaking as he died. Acting from apparent grief at his loss, Neferet declares war on all humans. Zoey realizes that Neferet is lost to sense, pulls herself together and faces Neferet down after the Council."
2031,Annihilation,horror," This book focuses on two rather large and epic events. First the wizard duel between Gromph and the Lichdrow Lord Dyrr. Gromph Baenre, after being transported by Dyrr to ""Halfling Heaven"" returns and is near victory over the lichdrow when Nimor Imphraezl interferes. The spell duel continues until Dyrr polymorphs himself into a Gigant and petrifies Gromph. Only with Triel's help does Gromph continue the fight and finally destroy the Lichdrow's physical body by breaking his staff, releasing a devastating magical discharge. Nimor flees from the battle after he is warned that Lloth is awakening. The second major event in the book is the duel between Jeggred Baenre and Ryld Argith. Danifae sends Jeggred to kill Ryld using of a portal. The battle takes place in a large swamp where Jeggred doggedly pursues Ryld even after being interrupted by many local beasts. The duo finally crash into a human logging camp where events become rather chaotic. Jeggred slaughters most of the loggers and uses their leader's enchanted axe to break Splitter. Ryld is killed moments later and a victorious Jeggred eats his heart in triumph. The group consisting of Quenthel Baenre, Pharaun Mizzrym, Danifae, and Valas Hune make very little progress in their quest to travel to the Abyss. They spend most of their time on the ship of chaos feeding it and making it ready for their journey. But, they finally do begin their journey with the help of Aliisza. Halisstra Melarn it seems has fully turned from the worship of Lloth and moves forward with her intentions of destroying the deity with Eilistraee's sword."
2032,Bloodline,horror," The novel begins a bit after Gia and Vicky recover from the accident brought by the yenceri. Gia, as always persuades Jack to do some fix-its, on the condition that he does not risk too much. The persuasion was followed when a middle-aged woman named Christy Pickering asks for Jack's help. Jack finds that Christy has been having a problem with her daughter Dawn, she is dating a man Jerry Bethlehem, about twice her age (or as Christy puts it: ""Old enough to be her father""). The problem is actually with her PI who has just disappeared. Along the way of looking into Bethlehem life, Jack begins to realize a connection between Bethlehem and the leader(Hank Thompson) of a new movement called the Kickers. It seems that both Hank and Jerry went to the same criminal institute known to take extremely violent criminals, the Creighton Institute. Further investigation leads Jack to finding the detective murdered in ways of a water torture. Jack later finds that not only are Hank and Jerry related by Creighton but also by the newfound mysterious oDNA found there. It comes to Jack that the 'o' stands for the wrong side of his life, the Other. He also finds that Jerry is not his real name, it is actually Jeremy Bolton, a sociopath who was captured for a crime far down in Atlanta, GA: the Atlanta Abortion Murders. After getting Dawn pregnant he starts acting differently, showing his true self to her. Upon finding out of her daughters pregnancy, Christy is found dead, presumed suicide by slashing her wrists. Before her death, Jack investigates on the whereabouts of Dawn's father who has never been mentioned by Christy, only to be enlightened with the truth that Dawn is a rape-baby. Further investigation in the oDNA it is realized that Hank, Moonglow(Christy), and Jeremy are all the children of the mysterious oDNA filled Jonah Stevens. As all the pieces come together Jack finds the final piece revealing a dark secret, Jeremy is Dawn's father."
2033,Halloween,horror," ""The horror started on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy vale in northern Ireland, at the dawn of the Celtic race. And once started, it trod the earth forevermore, wreaking its savagery suddenly, swiftly, and with incredible ferocity"". The prologue of the novel takes place at the dawn of the Celtic race in Ireland and tells the story of a young 15-year-old disfigured boy named Enda who is passionately in love with the King Gwynwyll&#39;s daughter, Deirdre. After being severely humiliated for attempting to win her love Enda attacks and brutally slays Deirdre and her fiancé at a community ritual event on Halloween. Enda is immediately killed by the other members of the village and his soul cursed to wander the Earth forever, re-creating the events of that night. In Chapter 1 we flash forward to 1963 and witness several eerie interactions between little Michael Myers and his grandmother. The grandmother is concerned as her daughter, Edith, tells her that Michael has been admitting to hearing voices and having visions and nightmares (which are about the events that happened in the prologue with Enda and Deirdre). When Edith tells the grandmother that she had asked Michael about the voices, he replied, &#34; They tell me to say I hate people&#34;. There is also discussion between the grandmother and Michael&#39;s mother about Michael&#39;s great-grandfather who apparently committed some sort of undescribed violent act. &#34;I think there are enough similarities,&#34; says the concerned grandmother. Chapter 2 details Michael&#39;s experiences further. It is Halloween night 1963 and Michael, dressed in the infamous clown costume, is trick-or-treating with some neighborhood children. At some point during his trick-or-treating, he and the other children knock on the Myers home door hoping to receive some goodies. His sister Judy, opens the door and asks &#34;what are you going to do if I don&#39;t give you anything?&#34; to which Michael replies &#34;we&#39;re going to kill you&#34;. Shocked, Judy responds &#34;who said that? Michael Myers--was that you?&#34;. Michael replies &#34;I&#39;m not Michael Myers. I&#39;m a clown&#34;, already hinting at the transformation that has taken place. In Chapter 3, we get a look inside Michael&#39;s head. ""It was the voice. the voice stirred up the hatred. It had done so in his dreams and now it was doing it in real life. It had begun with the strange pictures in his head at night, pictures of people he had never seen--oh, maybe in comic books or on television, but never in real life. People in strange costumes, animal skins, armor, leather, drinking and dancing wildly around a fire. One couple in particular. They looked like Judy and Danny, madly in love with each other, dancing in a circle around a huge bonfire while he, Michael, stood in the crowd hating them, burning up with jealousy"". Chapter 4 details Michael&#39;s trial and sentencing. Details of Michael&#39;s experiences at the Smith&#39;s Grove &#34;Sanitarium&#34; are given. A conversation between Michael and Loomis gives further insight into Michael&#39;s personality. Additionally, strange &#34;occurrences&#34; take place which intrigue Dr. Loomis who gradually becomes aware of what he is dealing with: ""Every time Michael was slighted, or fancied he was, by a staff member or other inmate, some awful vengeance was visited upon the offending person. It might be a day, a week, a month later, but Michael got even. The problem for Loomis was that no one ever observed the boy doing it directly...a nurse who quarreled with Michael fell down the stairs two days later, fracturing her pelvis. A boy who borrowed a game from Michael and forgot to return it suffered a vicious rash that hospitalized him for a month"". Michael eventually commands the ward as neither the staff nor the other inmates dare to challenge or defy Michael for fear of retribution. Fifteen years later on Halloween 1978, Laurie Strode&#39;s realestate father asks her to place a key under the mat at the old Myers house so that he can show it to some prospective buyers. When Laurie places the key under the mat, unbeknownst to her, Michael is looking through a door window and sees Laurie for the first time. At that point, the reader learns that Michael targets Laurie because she reminds him of Judith. ""And as she turned her back on the house, a figure inside it, dark, shadowy, sidled up to the front door and pushed the tattered curtain aside with a knuckle. He watched the slim blonde toss her head and laugh as she raised her hands like a bogeyman to frighten her young companion. He breathed heavily, raspingly, as he watched the girl, and a memory entered his mind, the memory of another girl, another blonde, willowy and pretty. He remembered the trapped and frightened look in her eyes, and the futile, pathetic way she had raised her hands to protect herself. He followed the girl and boy with his gaze until they disappeared from view. Then he walked up the creaky stairs to the second floor and peered into the room where it had all happened..."
2034,I Am Legend,horror," The main character is Robert Neville, apparently the sole survivor of a pandemic whose symptoms resemble vampirism. It is implied that the pandemic was caused by a war, and that it was spread by dust storms in the cities and an explosion in the mosquito population. The narrative details Neville's daily life in Los Angeles as he attempts to comprehend, research, and possibly cure the disease, to which he is immune. Neville's past is revealed through flashbacks. The vampires only come out at night and become comatose by day, though they also sometimes come out earlier during cloudy weather. Neville survives by barricading himself by sunset inside his house, further protected by garlic, mirrors, and crosses. Swarms of vampires would regularly surround his house, trying to find ways to get inside. During the day, he scavenges for supplies and methodically searches out the inactive vampires, driving stakes into their hearts to kill them. After bouts of depression and alcoholism, Neville decides to find out the scientific cause of the pandemic. He obtains books and other research materials from a library, and through painstaking research discovers the root of the vampiric disease in a strain of bacteria capable of infecting both deceased and living hosts. He also discovers that much of the efficacy of the garlic, mirrors, and crosses were actually ""hysterical blindess"", the result of previous psychological conditioning of the infected (particularly the religious) who believed that they were effective against vampires. Driven to insanity by the disease, the vampires now reacted as they believed they should react when confronted with these items. Even then, it was constrained to the beliefs of the particular person, such that a vampire who was Christian would fear the cross, but a vampire who was Jewish would not. Neville also discovers more efficient means of killing the infected, other than just driving a stake into their hearts. This included exposing them to direct sunlight (which killed the bacteria) or inflicting deep wounds on their bodies so that the bacteria switch from being anaerobic symbionts to aerobic parasites, rapidly consuming their hosts when exposed to air. He is now killing such large numbers of vampires in his daily forays that his nightly visitors have diminished significantly. After three years, Neville sees an apparently uninfected woman, Ruth, abroad in the daylight, and captures her. After some convincing, Ruth tells him her story of how she and her husband survived the pandemic (though her husband was killed two weeks earlier). Neville is puzzled by the fact that she is upset when he speaks of killing vampires, on grounds that if her story of survival was true, she would have become hardened to the act. One night Neville is startled awake and finds Ruth about to leave. Suspicious, he questions her motives, but relates the trauma of his past, whereupon they comfort each other. Ruth reluctantly allows him a blood sample but knocks him senseless when he realizes she is infected. When he wakes, Neville discovers a note from Ruth confessing that she is actually infected and that Neville was responsible for her husband's death. Ruth admits that she was sent to spy on him. The infected have slowly overcome their disease until they can spend short periods of time in sunlight and are attempting to rebuild society; but they fear and hate Neville who has destroyed some of their people along with the true vampires (dead bodies animated by the germ) during his daytime excursions against the latter. Ruth warns Neville that her people will attempt to capture him, and that he should leave his house and escape; but Neville disregards Ruth's warning and is captured. Neville wakes in a prison where he is visited by Ruth, who informs him that she is a ranking member of the new society but, unlike the others, does not resent him. She acknowledges the need for Neville's execution, and gives him pills, claiming they will ""make it easier"". Badly injured, Neville accepts his fate and asks Ruth not to let this society become heartless. Ruth kisses him and leaves. Neville goes to his prison window and sees all the infected waiting for his execution. Judging by their reactions to the sight of him, he now recognizes their point of view. Having hitherto seen the destruction of the infected survivors as a moral imperative to be pursued for his own and mankind's survival, he failed to realize that the infected have come to view him in fear and awe. To them, he was an invisible killer who moved by day, killing their loved ones as they hibernated. He realizes that even as vampires were legend in pre-infection times, he, a remnant of old humanity, is now a legend to the new race born of the infection. He therefore remarks to himself as he dies: ""[I am] a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend""."
2035,Blue Moon,horror," Blue Moon takes place in the apparently fictional town of Myerton, Tennessee. Richard, still recovering from Anita's rejection in The Killing Dance, has been in Myerton for some time, studying a local group of trolls as part of the requirements for his masters degree, and auditioning the women of the local werewolf tribe as possible lupas. The plot begins when Anita receives a call from Richard's brother Daniel. Daniel explains that Richard has been arrested for an alleged rape, and is refusing to hire a lawyer. Anita leaves for Myerton, over the objection of the local Master of the City, with Asher, Damian, and most of the wereleopards as backup. Once there, Anita must simultaneously attempt to uncover why local police have framed Richard and deal with Colin, the local Master of the City, who views her arrival as an act of war. Ultimately, Anita destroys most of Colin's vampires by activating the lupanar of the local werewolf clan, rendering it holy ground, and kills Colin herself by shooting Colin's human servant, Nikki. In the course of her various rituals, Anita ends up having sex with Richard, and they agree that Anita will begin dating both Richard and Jean-Claude. Anita also learns that Richard had discussed her with Jean-Claude and had obliquely asked Jean-Claude whether he would accept Anita taking Richard as a lover. Anita meets Marianne, a Wiccan practitioner who works with Verne's pack. Marianne advises Anita on building the wereleopards into a coherent group. Anita also has a long talk with Damien, and discovers that Jean-Claude gains power from lust and sex. Not only can he feed on the patrons of his strip club Guilty Pleasures, but on sex with Anita, or Anita having sex with Richard. She and Richard discover that the rape charges were an effort by art collector Frank Niley to drive Richard's study project from the area, allowing them to acquire some contested land and complete Niley's search for the Spear of Destiny. In desperation, Niley kidnaps and brutalizes Richard's mother and brother, causing Anita to cross another moral line, torturing Niley's messenger and killing everyone responsible."
2036,Swallowing Darkness,horror," Swallowing Darkness follows the further adventures of Princess Meredith ""Merry Gentry"" NicEssus. Merry has finally succeeded in getting pregnant. Having done so before her cousin Cel could impregnate one of his women, she will be able to claim the Unseelie throne from her aunt Andais as long as she successfully carries her twin babies to term and gives birth. This news makes her a target for many of the fae who are unhappy with the idea of Merry gaining the throne, forcing Merry's royal guard to become more cautious about her security. Meanwhile Merry is still reeling from the sexual attack from her uncle Taranis, King of the Seelie court, as well as with the loss of her lover Frost. To make matters worse, Taranis claims that he was the one who impregnated Merry."
2037,Undead and Unreturnable,horror," It's Christmastime in the Kingdom of the dead (Minneapolis), which is complicated as it sounds. Betsy Taylor isn't going to let a little thing like death and blood-drinking stop her from enjoying the holidays or planning her upcoming spring wedding to drop-dead gorgeous vamp Eric Sinclair. But all is not merry and bright-Betsy is plagued by ghosts who demand her help in rectifying their past mistakes, and a serial killer is on the loose. With his victims all being, blond women. Besty fits the profile exactly... The book starts out with the knowledge that Betsy is technically dead, however everyone but close family and friends think that she is still alive. In Betsy's life she has a stepmother, Antonia (the Ant) who gives birth to a younger brother, Jon, and her best friend, rich Jessica, and Laura, is technically her half-sister but also the devil's daughter after Satan possessed her stepmother (The Ant who gave her up to adoption to, ironically, the Goodman's) and produced a daughter. She also receives attention from a human boy who is a past member of a gang of vampie slayers. She also has a gay human friend called Marc, a doctor she saved in the first novel from suicide and a human policemen who is a former flame called Nick Berry. Aside from all of this she has vampire servants who work for her and a hostage wild vampire dubbed George the Fiend. George is a wild vampire created by a 500 year old vampire Betsy killed. She feeds him with her blood to make him stronger and Jessica teaches him different things such as crocheting. Laura later attacks George the Fiend thinking her mother (Satan) is using him to annoy her and meddle in her life. After Betsy tries to break up the fight Laura stabs her with a sword forged by Hellfire that kills magical creatures, however it doesn't kill her. After this Laura is sent to feed him. Eric and Betsy fight after she reveals she can hear his thoughts during sex. Eric is hurt she doesn't tell him earlier and goes back to his room which causes Betsy to point out that he hasn't fully committed to their relationship. Also, in an attempt to connect with her people Betsy starts an advice column intended for new vampires which others deem as stupid. Also, the human boy, with the decidedly shady past as an ex-vampire slayer, decides to write her life story as a fiction story and publish it through his university course, however Sinclair and his best friend Tina wipe his memory of it to save Betsy from exposure. After a serial killer known as the ""Driveway Killer"" kills her stepmother's next door neighbor a ghost starts plaguing Betsy. Laura and her set out to find him and discover him in a rundown house with a hostage. Laura kills him and the two set the hostage free. Betsy finds herself somewhat frightend of Laura doing the fight scene in which the overtake the serial killer and set the hostage free. In this novel it seems that Antonia knows that Laura is her daughter."
2038,Betrayed,horror," At her first parent visitation, Zoey is reunited with her family for the first time in a month. She joyously welcomes her grandmother, but is saddened to notice the stiffness of her parents, which contrasts strongly with the loving and friendly behavior of Stevie Rae's mother. Neferet comes upon their meeting and is almost immediately engaged in a religious dispute by Zoey's stepfather. In the ensuing argument, Zoey's parents vow never to come to the House of Night again, and Neferet kicks them out. The same night, Zoey witnesses Aphrodite being verbally abused at by her parents and starts developing sympathy for her enemy. Later on, she chances upon Neferet scolding Aphrodite and is shocked by this new side of her mentor. That day, Neferet invites Zoey for a private dinner. Upon hearing that Zoey saw her and Aphrodite, she informs her that the latter's visions were no longer valid, as Nyx had withdrawn her gift, and advises Zoey to keep her distance. Later on, while watching TV, Zoey learns of the death of one of the high school football players whom she knew and goes on a walk to clear her head. She chances upon a crying Aphrodite who claims to have had another vision, that included Zoey's grandmother. She asks for a favor for her help and asks Zoey to take an oath. Unwilling to risk her grandmother's life, she accepts and learns that Aphrodite has seen her grandmother in a car, stuck on a collapsing local bridge, at a precise time. Zoey calls her grandmother to tell her to stay at home and then she and her friends make a call to the police about a bomb on the bridge, to keep other people away from it, around the time it was set to fall. Aphrodite's vision turns out to be true, making Zoey begin to doubt Neferet. When two of her ex-boyfriend's friends disappear and are found murdered, she begins to suspect Neferet has something to do with it, especially after witnessing her discussing the murders with ""undead"", supposedly deceased students in a dream. Meanwhile, Zoey must make decisions regarding her love life, as she is drawn to her ex-boyfriend Heath due to their Imprint, maintains a relationship with fledgling peer Erik Night and captures the interest of Poet Laureate and teacher Loren Blake. Zoey reorganizes the Dark Daughters, now that she is in charge of them, but Neferet takes credit for most of her new ideas at the first new Dark Daughters ritual. Shortly after the ritual, her best friend Stevie Rae rejects the Change and dies. As Zoey grieves over Stevie Rae, she learns that Heath too has disappeared, following the two other murders. Using her Imprint, a connection formed when vampyres consume a person's blood, she is able to locate him and takes off to retrieve him. She finds out that Heath is being held captive by ""undead"" fledglings. Using her elemental affinities, Zoey frees Heath, but also finds out that it was Neferet who changed the dying fledglings into the ""undead"" creatures- one of which is Stevie Rae. The fledglings had lost their humanity and reverted to an almost feral state. She runs away with Heath, vowing to return. At the school, Neferet attempts to erase Zoey's memory, but Zoey recovers her memory and starts hatching a plan to help her former best friend."
2039,The Burning Court,horror," Edward Stevens, an editor at Herald and Son's publishing house, is on the train home, recounting the story of the death of the uncle of his boss, Mark Despard. Mark's uncle, Miles, had died recently of gastroenteritis, which had caused him to be bedridden for days. Although Miles' death was considered death by natural causes, two strange things were reported surrounding the death. A housemaid reported spying into Despard's room, through the shade of one of the glass doors leading in, and reported that a woman had left, through a door that had been bricked up for years. After Despard died, under his pillow was found a strange piece of string, tied in nine knots. Stevens shrugs both events off as nothing. Instead, he opens the book he is bringing home to edit. The book is a book on true crime, by famous true crime writer Gauden Cross. Cross's book is on murder trials, and the book begins with the trial and execution of Marie D'Aubray, in 1861. There is a picture of Marie D'Aubray attached to the section, which causes Stevens to jump. The picture of Marie D'Aubray, is a picture of his wife, Marie Stevens. Stevens gets home, and confronts his wife, who tries to convince him that the picture means nothing. Stevens goes up to wash his hands, and when he returns, the picture is gone. Before Stevens can figure it out, the doorbell rings. It is Mark Despard and a doctor named Partington. Mark Despard explains he believes his uncle was murdered, and that he, Partington, and Stevens, are going to dig up the body, and do an autopsy. Miles Despard is buried in a crypt, sealed with cement. Mark, Partington, and Stevens begin the long process of breaking up the cement. After they do, they climb down the long steps, to retrieve the body. They find Miles' coffin, open it, and reveal nothing. A quick search confirms that the body has disappeared from the sealed crypt."
2040,The Oblivion Society,horror," Vivian Gray is stuck in a dead-end job with a horrible boss in a town full of aging seniors in Florida. She supports her unemployed brother, Bobby and his geek friend Erik in a small apartment in town. Just when it seems that she has a shot to get out of town, and start a career in modeling, the end of the world happens. Vivian and a rag-tag band of survivors must survive attacks from mutant creatures to make it to a distant sanctuary, that may or may not exist."
2041,The Summoned,horror," Doyle's at the supermarket when his latest vision comes. He sees images of fear, fire, death, and an ornately engraved old amulet. The Powers That Be are not being too specific. When Doyle awakens an anxious young woman named Terri Miller is helping him. Terri is a shy woman from a small town, and new to L.A.. Soon after meeting Doyle, who disappears without saying thank-you, a charismatic man invites her to meet him at a club to which he belongs. Meanwhile, Angel and his team are investigating a murderer who seems to be burning his victims beyond recognition. Several of the dead are connected to Terri's newfound friends, and Cordy suddenly finds herself with an amulet that seems very familiar."
2042,Colony,horror," Mayor Richard Wilkins III invites a woman named Belakane to speak at the local Sunnydale High School. She has a program, ""Be the Ultimate You!"". It aims to build self-esteem in teenagers. However she is a demon ant-like queen and her so-called self-esteem program is actually a test to find workers to build her colony, and to find mates to expand her populace. She soon reduces students to single trait beings, for example Buffy is reduced to 'aggressive slayer'."
2043,Storm Front,horror," A woman named Monica makes an appointment with Dresden to discuss a missing persons case later in the day. Dresden also gets a call from Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, director of Special Investigations (SI) Unit of the Chicago Police Department. Murphy's partner shows him the bodies of two gruesomely murdered people with their hearts ripped out. Later that day, he is hired to find the husband of Monica Sells, Victor, a beginning magician who was acting oddly. Eventually, Dresden, despite encounters with vampires, the warlock, and Warden Morgan, learns that the affair centers around the drug ""ThirdEye,"" which allows normal humans to temporarily use The Sight, which can drive them insane. Victor Sells manufactured ThirdEye to hedge out Johnny Marcone. Using the power of thunder storms and the orgies held at his home, he powered the spells to remove his enemies, namely Marcone's men and people threatening his operation, in order to gradually bring down Marcone. Interrupting Victor's last spell, Dresden attacks Victor, eventually burning down Victor's house while Victor is still inside grappling with monster-sized scorpions and a demon he summoned to kill Dresden. Dresden wins, but finds himself trapped on the balcony of the burning house until Morgan steps in to rescue him. Morgan witnessed the fight with Victor and, knowing now that Dresden is innocent, reluctantly testifies on Dresden's behalf to the White Council."
2044,A Winter Haunting,horror," Dale Stewart, a character from Summer of Night, has ruined his life. A fifty-one year old college professor and writer, he left his spouse for a young co-ed and the co-ed has left him. He returns to Elm Haven, Illinois, where the events of Summer of Night took place. Dale is remembering these events as more pleasant than what actually happened. He will soon recall the truth and also must deal with current-day Neo-Nazis."
2045,House,horror," Jack and Stephanie Singleton, a married couple struggling through the death of their daughter and on the verge of a divorce, are driving to a counseling session when they find themselves lost on a deserted road in Alabama. Taking the advice of a highway patrolman, they head down a long dirt road, where they run over spikes, flattening all of their tires and stranding them. Fortunately, they are near an old Victorian house in the backwoods of Alabama, occupied by a family of three and being used as an inn. They check in and have a strangely mysterious dinner with them, as well as another dating couple, Randy and Leslie. Things begin to go bitter, however. One of the family, Pete, begins staring down Leslie, stating that he wants her as his ""wife."" Betty, another one of the family members, keeps hounding Stephanie to get her more ice. Then, to make matters worse, the lights turn off, and a serial killer named Barsidious White locks them inside of the House. He throws a soup can down through the chimney with a message scrawled on it. The message states that he has killed God and will murder all seven of them unless they kill one of their own by dawn. All the people frantically move through the house, but just get trapped in each new room while trying to avoid the man in the mask."
2046,Monster Island,horror," Monster Island takes place in Manhattan one month after New York City has been completely overrun by the undead. A former UN employee named Dekalb, whose daughter is being held by a warlord in Somalia, enters the zombie-infested island with a band of East African child soldiers in order to retrieve precious AIDS medication. After surviving numerous zombie attacks, the group encounters Gary Fleck, an undead medical student who has managed to retain a high level of consciousness and self-control unlike other zombies."
2047,The Great God Pan,horror," Mary, a young woman in Wales, has her mind destroyed by Dr Raymond's attempt to enable her to see the god of nature, Pan. Years later the beautiful but sinister-looking Helen Vaughan arrives on the London social scene, disturbing many young men and causing some of them to commit suicide. It transpires that she is the monstrous offspring of the god Pan and the woman in Raymond's experiment."
2048,Broken,horror," In this story the half-demon Xavier calls in a favour - steal Jack the Ripper's From Hell letter away from a Toronto collector who had himself stolen it from the British police files. It seems simple, but in the process Elena accidentally triggers a spell placed on the letter which opens a portal into the nether regions of Victorian London. With thieving vampires, killer rats and unstoppable zombies on the loose, Elena and the Pack must find a way to close the portal before it is too late. To add to the confusion, Elena herself is pregnant with Clay's child (actually twins). The story begins with Elena worrying about her current pregnancy. She has concerns about what effect her werewolf nature will have on the unborn child, something with no recorded precedent in Pack knowledge. Clay and Jeremy, also concerned, have imposed a number of restrictions on her actions too, which Elena accepts but is also frustrated by. She is, therefore, not entirely displeased to hear from Xavier Reese who offers her a deal: he will hand over information about a rogue mutt the Pack have been seeking in exchange for the Pack's help in stealing an artefact from a sorcerer - the From Hell letter. The deal is agreed to and, after the mutt has been dealt with, Jeremy steals the letter. As they leave, however, Clay squashes a mosquito and smears Elena's blood on the document. This activates an inter-dimensional portal, which releases individuals previously entrapped there during the Victorian era. Now zombies, these track Elena, putting her and her unborn offspring at risk. Attempting to rescue her, the Pack kill these zombies, but to their shock they keep returning. In addition, cholera has infected the Toronto water-supply and the city's rats have become diseased and aggressive. Modern individuals disappear through the portal by accident, whilst murders take place that lead them to suspect that they have released Jack the Ripper himself upon an unsuspecting public."
2049,Diary,horror," Diary takes the form of a ""coma diary"" telling the story of Misty Marie Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. The story is not exactly told by Misty but through a third-person perspective instead. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom, but now, after marrying her husband Peter while they were both still at school and then giving birth to their daughter shortly after, she is eventually brought back to Waytansea Island, a place that was once-quaint but is now tourist-overrun. Misty has been reduced to the lowly condition of a mere waitress within a common resort hotel. Peter, before falling into his coma, was building hidden rooms within the houses he was remodeling and scrawling vile messages all over the walls; this is an old habit of builders but it's been dramatically overdone in Peter's case. Angry homeowners are suing Misty left and right and her dreams of artistic greatness have been ruined. But then, as if she was possessed by the spirit of the fabled Waytansea artist Maura Kincaid, Misty begins painting again, excessively and compulsively. Misty discovers that the islanders, including her father-in-law (previously thought to be dead) are involved in a conspiracy which repeats every four generations. A young artist (in this case Misty) is lured to the island by an old piece of jewelry, she becomes pregnant and has her child within the community. It is implied that this old jewelry works to lure and entrap Misty because it was hers in a past life, during which these same events played out before. During middle age, her husband dies, followed by all her children, resulting in a wave of great artistic creativity, the product of which is mesmerizing to the observing audience. The islanders create an exhibition of Misty's art work at the local hotel where a fire is started by Misty's daughter, who is revealed to be alive after a previous point in the book when she was thought to have drowned, and all the hotel's occupants are burned to death due to their being mesmerized by her painting. The result is a huge insurance claim which leaves the remaining island citizens wealthy enough to support their luxuriant lifestyles for the next four generations, at which point a new young artist will be found to repeat the cycle. Peter, Misty's husband, attempted to warn her of this plot using his hidden writing and it is revealed that his suicide attempt was in fact a murder attempt. It is never revealed in the end whether Peter recovered from his coma, but from Misty's descriptions of his state of health, he more than likely died."
2050,Lord of the Shadows,horror," Along with the Cirque Du Freak, Darren Shan returns to his home town, the place where it all began. He was still having nightmares about the Lord of the shadows. While the Cirque Du Freak rests at an old abandoned football stadium, Darren walks through his old home. After spotting his sister, Annie Leopard, living a happy life with her son at their old house, Darren decides not to disturb them. One night before the freak show starts a boy shows up hoping to get a ticket to attend the freak show. The boy, Darius, asks many questions and acts strangely, leaving Harkat and Darren curious. The freak show starts, Darren and Harkat wait for Darius but he doesn't attend, instead, he sees his old friend Tommy Jones. Jekkus Flangs, a performer of Cirque Du Freak, introduces him to Tommy Jones who is now a famous footballer. Tommy is shocked that Darren was alive after he was proclaimed dead eighteen years ago when he became a vampire assistant, Darren tells him that he had a rare disease that prevented him from aging normally and they had to fake his death to leave home and travel with a physician so he could be helped. Tommy gives Darren a ticket to the semi final. After the soccer match ends, Darren witnesses RV and Morgan James kill Tommy. Thus, he goes on a hunt for them. He finds them in an old dark-end ally and edges out to the road where Gannen Harst and Steve Leonard had been waiting for him too. Darren also finds out that Darius is Steve's son and that Steve has blooded him. Trained by Steve, Darius shoots Darren using his father's arrow-gun where it strikes him high in his right shoulder. By luck, Darren manages to flee to safety even though he is badly hurt. Later, he is found by two hobos that take him to their leaders who turn out to be Debbie and Alice, recruiting for the vampire version of the Vampets called Vampirites. Reuniting with Vancha March, Debbie, Evra, and Alice, the group go ahead on their final hunt for the Vampaneze Lord, Steve Leonard. Darren finds Steve at the abandoned cinema theatre. They plan to make a trade between Shancus,Evra's son, who Steve had captured earlier and Darius. However, before the trading proceeds, Steve breaks Shancus' neck, killing him, and challenging Darren to do the same with Darius. Darren thinks it over and accepts the challenge, but it doesn't end there. Darren was going to stab Darius in the heart but Steve told him that he didn't know who he was killing. Sensing something dark and secret in Steve's tone, Darren hesitates. When Steve asks Darius to tell Darren his mother's name, Darius gawps at his father. Infuriated, Steve asks him to say his mother's name again. He tells him: Annie Leopard, Darren's younger sister, is the mother of Darius. But the Sons of Destiny has more to give... cs:Pán Stínů fa:ارباب سایه‌ها"
2051,Wisdom of War,horror," Two strange breeds of sea creatures are beginning to appear in Sunnydale, and none of them appear to be all too friendly. The Moruach and the Aegeirie are their names, the latter being followers of the immense sea beast Aegir who was once captured by the Moruach but later set free. As soon as Buffy is beginning to discover these creatures, the Watcher's Council steps in with a team with Quentin Travers leading the way. When Buffy does not agree to slay all the demons until she knows more about them and what they're doing in Sunnydale, Travers has Faith released from jail in Los Angeles for a temporary time in order to eradicate the demons in Sunnydale. Buffy begins to question her decision as well as her actions when innocent humans, including some of her friends, begin to transform into Aegir followers."
2052,The Night Watch,horror," The book comprises three stories, each one seemingly independent at the first glance, but they are in fact connected. A reluctant mage recently reassigned to field work, Anton Gorodetsky tracks vampires by drinking blood and channeling them. As he follows a young boy (Egor), who has been called by two vampires through the Metro, he notices a young woman, Svetlana, who has a huge vortex of damnation above her. Anton finds the vampires who have been calling Egor with their power and, as they don't have a special license, kills one of them, while the other (a female) gets away. He returns to the Night Watch headquarters, where his boss, Boris Ignatievich, informs him that he could be in danger as Zabulon (head of the Day Watch) might want revenge for his actions in killing Dark Others and gives him a stuffed owl called Olga (who later transforms into a woman), for his protection. Anton initially rejects the offer, then finds Olga in his apartment and reluctantly agrees. The next day he illegally uses his powers for good (by changing a person's morality, a spell called ""remoralization"") and clashes with a Dark Other from the Day Watch, Alisa Donnikova. They agree that Alisa can use her power to do a minor evil act as an exchange for her silence about this matter. He then discovers that Olga can speak and is a sorceress trapped in an owl's body as a punishment. Anton goes to Egor's apartment to protect him from the vampire, then nearly loses him as Egor inadvertently slips in the Twilight for the first time. Surprisingly, he remains unaffiliated both to Light or to Dark. Meanwhile, Boris Ignatievich sends an incubus, Ignat, to the cursed woman, Svetlana Nazarova, to help her relax and say who could have cursed her, but to no avail. Finally, Anton is reassigned to visit Svetlana, and in the meantime, the vampiress calls to Egor and he joins her on the roof. Anton manages to find out that Svetlana is a powerful Other who inadvertently cursed herself with her guilt (for what she did to her mother). Anton then gets back to Egor's roof to find the vampiress and Egor, as well as many other Light and Dark operatives, including Anton's neighbour, Kostya Saushkin, who is a vampire. Zabulon joins them and attacks Anton. But when he does, one of the Light Mages, Ilya, reveals himself to be Boris Ignatievich, who'd swapped their bodies. While Zabulon's plans seem compromised, and Egor considering his choice for Light, in a last shot, Alisa uses her agreement with Anton to make him tell Egor everything. Anton reveals to Egor that he was a pawn used by Boris Ignatievich and Zabulon in their intrigues. Angered, Anton leaves the roof, feeling misused. A Dark Other, Galina Rogova, is killed by Maxim, a mysterious murderer using an enchanted wooden dagger, referring to himself as ""The Judge"". The next day, Boris Ignatievich announces that the Day Watch suspects one of the Night Watch operatives. Everyone seems to have an alibi, except Anton. Boris Ignatievich thinks that Anton has been set up by the Day Watch, and uses his powers to swap Anton and Olga's bodies (Olga being now temporarily weaker). In Olga's body, Anton then goes with Svetlana to her apartment to hide, and, after he gets there, reveals that he is in fact Anton, making Svetlana furious as she just told ""Olga"" she loved Anton. They go to a restaurant later in the evening where they spot an inoffensive Dark Other with his family. The Dark Other goes to the toilet, where Maxim was waiting and kills him. Anton, curious why the Dark Other had not returned from the toilet, briefly leaves Svetlana and discovers the body. Boris Ignatievich then reveals himelf and asks Svetlana to give him anything that could help to recognize the killer, and Svetlana telepathically sends him the image of Maxim's wife's aura. Zabulon then comes over and recognises Anton in Olga's body, charging him with the murder. Anton flees while Zabulon tries to hit him with an effective destructive power, and manages to hitch a car. What he doesn't know is that the couple in the car are Maxim and his wife. Walking home, Anton calls Olga and asks to switch bodies back. Waiting in the subway for Olga, Anton stumbles upon Egor and has a brief conversation with him. Olga arrives and Anton and Olga switch their bodies back using an incantation that reveals Boris Ignatievich's real name as Gesar. While talking to Olga, Anton realises that the Day Watch is only chasing him in order to make Svetlana mad and use her powers illegally, which would allow them to dispose of her, or at least incapacitate her. Anton then takes a ride in the metro and when he goes off at a station, chased by a dark Other, a twilight figure, a departed mage, indicates that Anton should go to the Ostankino Tower. He kills the Dark mage chasing him and uses his appearance to mask himself. He arrives at the tower to find that the Day Watch has established their temporary headquarters in the Tower. Secretly penetrating inside, he sees Tiger Cub as an inspector from the Light and a bunch of incompetent Dark mages directing his search. Leaving the Tower, Anton goes by Egor's house and thinks Zabulon is taking revenge on him by setting him up. Meanwhile, Maxim feels the presence of a Dark being and goes on a hunt. He finally finds the Dark being and is astonished when he discovers it is young Egor. Anton spots them and talks with Maxim, explaining the Treaty between Light and Dark, but Maxim doesn't comply, pointing out that Egor will grow up to be a dark mage, and it's better to kill him now. Anton intervenes when Maxim tries to kill Egor, and they fight in the twilight. Anton realizes that killing Maxim would mean that all witnesses showing his innocence would be dead, and is stabbed by Maxim. Gesar then comes over, suggests that Maxim should become a member of the Inquisition, and when Anton brags about how he outwitted Zabulon again, Gesar reveals that Zabulon has nothing to do with it and that all that was planned by the Night Watch to raise Svetlana's magical level. An old man arrives from Uzbekistan and is intercepted by a team of Dark Others led by Alisa, who attacks him thinking he possesses a coveted artifact. As they fight, his son slips away unnoticed with the artifact. All of the Night Watch operatives go to Tiger Cub's house to relax, but Anton doesn't manage to have fun, as he is concerned with Svetlana's growing powers influencing their relationship and the reason Gesar sent them off. He finally leaves and when he comes back to his apartment, he discovers Zabulon calmly reading a newspaper and waiting for him. Zabulon reveals that Alisher, the young man from Uzbekistan, brought with him an artifact, a piece of chalk. Anton's research suggests that the Chalk of Fate and that it could be used by the Light to rewrite destiny, allowing someone to change the world to establish a new world order. Discussions with Olga and later Gesar reveal that Svetlana in fact is to use the Chalk to rewrite a destiny. Walking outside, Anton drains the Light power from all of the passers-by he sees, taking their joy away. Anton joins Gesar, Svetlana, Zabulon, Egor, and Maxim on a rooftop where Svetlana prepares to rewrite a destiny, while a storm is gathering around them. Svetlana then opens the book of destiny. Gesar supposes Anton could use all the energy he has drained to stop the storm, but Anton uses it instead on himself via a simple remoralization spell. Astonished, Svetlana stops rewriting Egor's destiny and asks Anton for advice, but Anton says that she must decide what to write herself. The Book disappears, and Gesar notices she didn't write anything, she only erased things. Egor reverts from a potential Dark Other back to an unaffiliated state. Zabulon notices that their planned operation failed because of Svetlana's indecisiveness and, triumphant, leaves. Anton then notices the Chalk Svetlana used is not whole. Gesar reveals that Svetlana rewriting Egor's destiny was just a distraction, and in the mean time, Olga rewrote the destiny of someone later revealed. Gesar reveals the true nature of this plan was to save his love of Olga. Without her full powers, their love was doomed."
2053,The Terror,horror," The novel begins in the present tense at a point approximately midway into the novel's subsequent narrative. From the point of view of Captain Francis Crozier, the opening chapter deals with the Captain's attempts to force a seaman, who is too scared to venture into the lower decks, to follow orders. Crozier muses on the fate of the expedition and how HMS Terror and HMS Erebus have been trapped in sea ice, about 28 miles North-northwest of King William Island, for over a year. The weather has been much colder than normal, the tinned provisions are dwindling and often putrid and the sea ice and landmasses are mysteriously devoid of any wildlife that can be hunted. In addition to the natural dangers of the intense cold, disease and impending starvation, the crews face the horror of being randomly attacked by a monster on the ice. Resembling a huge Polar Bear, the creature is later revealed as a mythological Eskimo demon called the ‘Tuunbaq’. The writer, perhaps on purpose, only hints at the supernatural qualities of the beast. Simmons’ narrative frequently switches between past and present tense, to points in the story ranging from several years before the expedition to several years after, and the alternating point of view of different characters in each chapter. The fictional diary of Dr Harry Goodsir is a literary device that is also used by the writer. For instance, a diary entry describes how Sir John Franklin orders a number of exploration parties to set out in various directions across the ice. These are all doomed to failure. However, Goodsir’s party finds a mysterious Eskimo girl (they accidentally shoot and kill her aged companion). On their return to the ships, Crozier names the girl ‘Lady Silence’ as her tongue has been ripped out in the past. Following the death of Sir John Franklin at the hands of the monster on the ice, Captain Francis Crozier becomes the expedition commander with Captain James Fitzjames as his 2nd in command. The two men attempt to deal with the threats of the monster, disease and starvation. The friendship of the two officers, from very different social backgrounds, is touchingly described by the writer. Simmons goes into great detail describing an ill-fated ‘morale boosting’ New Year's Eve carnivale masque, during which a large number of the expedition, including three of the four Surgeons, are killed by the Tuunbaq and Royal Marine friendly fire. Crozier lays the blame for this disaster on Caulker’s Mate Cornelius Hickey and two other men. They are punished with 50 lashes of the cat each. The narrative makes it clear that their existing mutinous feelings are exacerbated by this treatment, setting the scene for the later troubles that the expedition leadership have with Hickey and his compatriots. The novel changes from a ship bound tale when HMS Erebus is eventually crushed by the ice and its crew decamp to HMS Terror for a short time until all of the expedition survivors are forced to move to what is named ‘Terror Camp’—a tented refuge that they create on King William Island. It is here that Crozier and Fitzjames decide that they will attempt to escape by hauling the small boats of both ships south to the Canadian mainland and then down Back's River to an outpost on Great Slave Lake, an arduous journey of many hundreds of miles. Sealing the doom of the crew by removing any possibility of help from the native population, Simmons describes the brutal murder of Lt Irving by Cornelius Hickey. The murder is blamed on a band of Eskimo hunters that Irving had, in fact, befriended. The Eskimo are massacred in a later revenge attack by men of the expedition. From this point on in the novel the native population is feared and avoided by the crew rather than sought. The narrative now goes into highly descriptive detail of the men’s painful efforts to haul the boats across the sea ice and frozen gravel of King William Island. Many men die from disease, including Captain Fitzjames whose demise is described by Simmons in horrifying detail. There are rumblings of mutiny from Cornelius Hickey and his growing entourage and the Tuunbaq appears with deadly frequency. The survivors eventually reach a position on the southern shore of King William Island that they name ‘Rescue Camp’. The novel concludes with mutiny, double cross, cannibalism, and the splitting of the survivors into several groups—all of which meet grisly ends. Captain Francis Crozier is the only survivor of the expedition and the last chapters of the novel describe how he becomes the lover of Lady Silence and joins her in her mystical role connected to the Tuunbaq."
2054,El Príncipe de la Niebla,horror," Max Carver, son of a watchmaker, has moved with his family from the city in order to get away from the war. Max's new house was formerly owned by Richard Fleischman, his wife and son. Max experiences mysterious events which have to do with Jacob Fleischman, the son of Richard Fleishman, who had drowned. Over time, Max discovers a sculpture garden near his house, where strange things happen. Max finally makes a friend, Roland. Roland is older than Max, around the age of his sister, Alicia, who is 15. After diving near the wreck, the Orpheus, Max has more and more questions, which will be answered by Victor Kray, grandfather of Roland. Detailed Summary Chapter 1 The story opens in 1943 in an unnamed city. It is mid-June, the day of our protagonist, Max Carver’s, thirteenth birthday. Maximilian Carver, Max’s father, and an eccentric watchmaker, tells Max and his family that they are leaving their lives in the city, which is suffering a war, to live in a town on the coast. We meet the family: Andrea Carver, Max’s mother, and Max’s sisters: Alicia, the elder, and Irina the younger. They reluctantly accept their fate, although Alicia is especially unhappy about having to leave her friends in the city. Before retiring to bed, Mr. Carver gives Max his birthday present: a watch made by his father, with an engraving on the back that says, Max’s time machine. They arrive at the train station, and Max sees that the station clock is slow. His father jokes that he has work already. Mr. Carver finds, and then employs two men, Robin and Philip, to help the family carry and transport their luggage. Max feels someone watching him, and turns to see a large cat with luminous yellow eyes watching him. The cat befriends Irina, who takes an immediate liking to the creature; she begs her parents to let her bring it with them, and they eventually concede. Before they leave the station, Max notices that the clock is even further behind than he had thought, but as he watches it for a moment, he realizes it is actually turning backwards. Chapter 2 As they drive through the town, the family begins to warm up to the sights, noticeably calmed by tranquil coastal setting. Maximilian Carver is delighted by his family’s reactions, and visibly enthused about their new lives on the coast. Max gazes at the ocean, which is covered by a light mist, and thinks he sees the silhouette of a ship sailing on the horizon. But it quickly disappears. On the way to their new home, Mr. Carver tells them the history of the house. It was built in 1923 by Dr. Richard Fleischmann, and he lived there with his wife, Eva. They had a son, Jacob, on June 23, 1925. The family lived happily until the tragedy of 1932, when Jacob drowned playing on the beach near his home. After that, Dr. Fleischmann’s health deteriorated, and after he had died, his widow, Eva, left the house to her lawyers to sell, and fled elsewhere. When they arrive, the porters leave quickly, and before they have even taken their first steps into the house, the cat leaps from Irina’s arms, letting out a satisfied meow as it is the first to touch down in the foyer. The home is musty and dusty, so the family sets out cleaning it up. The girls are horrified to find huge spiders in their rooms, so Max is charged with disposing of them. Before he can terminate a terrible-looking one, the cat aggressively devours it. Max looks out the window, and beyond the yard, and can vaguely make out a small clearing enclosed by a wall of stone. Inside, there appears to be an overgrown garden, with a circle of stone figures – statues. The wall enclosure is secured with spearhead points along its edge, each embossed with a symbol of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle. Chapter 3 Max awakes with a start from a bad dream the next morning. Outside, dawn is breaking, and the air is clouded with a hazy mist. No one else is awake, and he decides to go outside and explore the mysterious garden he had observed through the window the night before. He must break a lock to access the garden, and he is overcome with a foreboding feeling as he enters. Inside, he discovers the statues depict ominous-looking circus characters, including a lion tamer, a contortionist, a fakir, a strong man, and some other ghostly characters, all are arranged in a star pattern around one central figure on a pedestal: a terrible clown, with arms outstretched and hands in a fist. At the clown’s feat, Max sees another small paving stone with the same six-pointed star inside of a circle inscribed on its surface. Max looks up again, and sees the hand of the clown is now open to the sky. Afraid, he flees back to the house, not looking back. Finding his family now awake and preparing breakfast, Max decides not to tell them what he has seen because he knows they will be sceptical, and he doesn’t want to crush his father’s excitement about their new home. Maximilian Carver eagerly tells the family about his own discovery in the shed outside: an old projector and a box of old films, as well as two bicycles. Chapter 4 Max helps his father restore the old bicycles and they discover they have barely been used. He asks his father casually about the garden out back, but his father doesn’t give much of a response. Max takes his bike for a ride, and begins to explore the town. Soon, he meets a boy a few years older than he is, named Roland, who is also out riding his bike. Roland offers to show him around, and Max takes him up on the offer. The two pedal around town for hours, and Max is barely able to keep up with the older boy, but enjoys the tour nonetheless. They rest, and Roland tells him about a ship that sunk off the coast in 1918; the wreckage remains underwater. The sole survivor of the shipwreck was an engineer who, as a way of thanking providence for saving his life, settled in the town and built a lighthouse on the cliffs overlooking where the ship had sunk. That man is Roland’s adoptive grandfather, Victor Kray; Roland’s own parents were killed in a car accident when he was a baby, and they had entrusted Roland to Victor’s care in their will. Before the boys part ways, Roland invites Max to go diving with him and explore the shipwreck the next day. Max accepts the offer, and Roland promises to pick him up the next morning. At home, Max finds a note from his mother and a plate of sandwiches awaiting him. His parents have gone into town with Irina, and Alicia is nowhere in sight. Outside, rain begins to fall, and Max retires to his room for a nap. Chapter 5 Max awakes to the sound of his family downstairs, and he goes down to join them for dinner. He tells them about the friend he’d made that day, and even invites his older sister, Alicia, to join he and Roland in their dive the next day. To his surprise, Alicia accepts the invitation. After dinner, Maximilian sets up the old projector he had salvaged that morning, and the family settles in to watch one of the unmarked films from the box. As the movie begins, they see it is a homemade movie, and the scene begins in a forest. The scene takes them through the trees, and a silhouette begins to appear, as the camera approaches an enclosed garden – the very garden Max had visited that morning. The camera operator enters the garden, revealing the mysterious statues, which look new, unlike the weathered state Max had observed them in. When the scene moves to the clown, Max feels something is different from the way he had observed it that morning, but he can’t decide what it is, and the film ends suddenly. Disappointed with their cinematic experience, the family retires to bed. Max decides to stay up and watch another film. Alicia waits for the rest of the family to leave, and she looks distraught. She tells Max she has seen the clown from the movie before – which she dreamed of that exact clown the night before they had moved to their new home. Max assures her she is probably just imagining the similarity and encourages her to forget about it. Alicia agrees he is probably right, and she goes to bed. Feeling unsettled by what Alicia told him, Max suddenly feels a presence behind him. He turns suddenly, and sees Irina’s cat looking at him with its yellow eyes. He shoos it away, but before leaving, it seems to smile at him. Max decides to put the projector and films back into the box and then go to bed. Chapter 6 Alicia wakes before sunrise with two golden feline eyes staring at her. She ignores the animal and thinks about her friends in the city, as she gets dressed. Max knocks on the door to tell her Roland has arrived. She joins the boys outside and there is an instant connection between Roland and Alicia, who are the same age. Knowing there is an extra bike in the garage, Max enjoys the flirtatious scene, and tells Alicia she will have to balance on Roland’s handlebars down to the beach. At the beach, Roland shows them his shack, where he sleeps during the summers. The inside is filled with trinkets and treasures that Roland has recovered from his dives down to the shipwreck just off shore. The boys prepare for their dive and Alicia waits on shore. Max is mesmerized by the experience of the cool water, and the serene silence beneath the surface of the ocean, but he leaves the deep diving to his friend. Roland discovers some new treasures, while Max observes from a distance, noticing the ship’s name inscribed on the bow, the Orpheus. Through the water, he dimly sees an old, tattered flag ebbing with the current. As it unfurls, horror seizes Max as he recognizes the symbol he had seen in the garden of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle. He immediately swims back to the beach. When Roland joins the Carver children on the beach, Alicia begins collecting seashells, and once she is out of earshot, Max tells Roland about the symbol and the circus figures. Alicia returns to the boys and begins to ask Roland about his grandfather and the ship. Roland invites them into the cabin and promises to tell them the full story there. Meanwhile, back at the Carver home, we learn that Irina has been hearing voices in the house, and now hears them in her room, much like a whisper in the walls. It seems to be coming from her wardrobe, and as she approaches it, she sees there is a key in the lock. She hurriedly turns it to the locked position, and steps back. The sound continues, and hearing her mother calling her, Irina turns to run from the room. An icy breeze sweeps past her and slams the door shut, and she struggles with the handle, looking over her shoulder. She sees the key slowly turning; the voices become louder, and she hears laughter… Back in Roland’s shack, Roland tells Alicia and Max more about the Orpheus, retelling all that his grandfather, Victor Kray, has told him about the accident, and the events leading up to it. The Orpheus began as a cargo ship with a bad reputation, operated by a corrupt Dutchman who rented the ship out to anyone who would pay, including smugglers and criminals. The Dutchman was also a gambler, and he had accumulated a lot of debt, which made him desperate to gamble more. He lost a big card game to a man named Mr. Cain, who owned a travelling circus, known for employing shady criminals. Knowing the police were closing in on he and his group’s criminal activities, Mr. Cain charged The Dutchman with transporting his evil posse across the Channel on his ship, and the man agreed. Roland’s grandfather had the misfortune of knowing Mr. Cain for some time, and had unfinished business of some sort with him. He did not want Mr. Cain to leave the town without settling things with Victor first, so hearing of his plot to escape the town, he boarded the Orpheus as a stowaway, not even sure what he would do when he confronted Mr. Cain. He wouldn’t have to, as it turned out, as the ship crashed, and Mr. Cain and all of the other passengers on the ship were killed, save Victor, who was spared thanks to the hiding place he had chosen – a lifeboat. But they never found any bodies. Max and Alicia point out that something seemed to be missing from Victor Kray’s story, and Roland agrees… Back at the Carver house, Irina feels her hands go numb, and she continues to fumble with the door, and she watches in horror as the key turns in the lock, finally stops moving, and is then pushed out of the keyhole, falling to the floor. The wardrobe begins to creak open, and Irina tries to scream as a shape emerges from the wardrobe – the cat. She kneels to pick it up, but then notices something behind the cat, deeper in the wardrobe. The cat opens its jaws and hisses at her, then retreats back into the wardrobe, and a giant smile filled with light appears in the darkness with two glowing golden eyes, and all of the voices she has been hearing say “Irina” in unison. Irina screams and throws herself against the bedroom door, which gives away, and she stumbles into the hallway, and hurls herself down the stairs. Downstairs, Andrea Carver has heard her daughter’s scream, and runs to the base of the stairs just in time to see her child tumbling down to the bottom, a tear of blood escaping from her forehead. Mrs. Carver feels her pulse, and finding it is weak, calls the doctor. Holding her unconscious child, she looks up the stairs to see the cat watching her coldly. Chapter 7 When they return to the house, Max and Alicia see an unfamiliar car in the driveway, which Roland recognizes as the car of the town Doctor, Dr. Roberts. Their father tells them about Irina’s accident, and explains that he and Mrs. Carver will go with Irina to the hospital. Max and Alicia assure him that they will be fine. The three friends eat a simple dinner on the porch, and then Alicia and Roland decide to go swimming. Max sits on the porch, and thinks about the bond between his sister and new friend. He recalls Roland telling him that he may be sent to the war at the end of the summer, and he fears the effect that will have on his sister. After the swim, Alicia and Roland and Max build a bonfire on the beach, and discuss the strange occurrences and discoveries of the past few days, and Max reveals a final mystery: the Fleischmann film of the statues revealed the figures situated in different positions than Max had seen in the present day. Roland reveals a secret too: he has dreamed about the clown figure every summer since he was five. They all agree they will speak with Victor Kray the next day to learn more about the shipwreck. Chapter 8 The teens stay up until daybreak, and then Roland rides his bike home, while Max and Alicia retire to bed. The scene moves to Victor Kray returning from the lighthouse. He enters his home quietly, and finds his grandson waiting for him in an armchair. They make breakfast together, and Roland begins to tell him about his new friends that live in the Fleischmann’s’ old house, and the strange happenings. His grandfather listens and tells him to find his friends and bring them to the lighthouse. Chapter 9 Back at the Carver’s house, Maximilian has phoned his children to tell them Irina is in a coma, but is expected to wake up. Roland appears on the scene and asks Max and Alicia to come to his grandfather’s home. Victor Kray recounts for them a story very similar to the one Roland told about the shipwreck, but he also reveals some new facts. He explains the “unfinished business” between him and the wickedness Mr. Cain. They had met when they were boys, when the villain went simply by the name Cain. He was a notorious cheat at dice and cards in the town where Victor grew up, and the neighbourhood boys referred to him as the Prince of Mist because, rumour had it, he appeared out of a haze in dark alleyways at night and disappeared again before dawn. He had a reputation for making young boys’ wishes come true in exchange for their undying “loyalty.” Victor never succumbed to the temptation of expressing his wishes to Cain, but Victor’s best friend, Angus, did. Angus’ father had lost his job, and he asked Cain to restore the family’s only source of income. Inexplicably, his father was rehired the next day. Two weeks later, Victor and Angus were walking on the train tracks at night when they ran into Cain. Cain told them Angus would have to burn down the local grocery store. Victor and Angus ran home, but Victor knew Angus would not fulfill the request. But the next morning when Victor went to Angus’ house, he was not there, and no one could find him. Victor searched the city, and then returned to the train tracks where they’d run into Cain. There, he found the frozen corpse of his friend’s body – transforming into smoky blue ice, and melting into the tracks. Around his neck was a chain with a symbol of a six-pointed star in a circle. That same night, the grocery store Cain had demanded that Angus burn down was destroyed by a fire. Victor never told anyone what he knew, and his family moved south a few weeks later. Chapter 10 Victor continues to tell of his knowledge of Cain, recounting another encounter that took place a few months later, when his father took Victor to an amusement park. Waiting for the Ferris Wheel, Victor became aware of a tent being touted as the den of “Dr. Cain – fortune-teller, magician and clairvoyant.” Reluctantly, Victor gave into his curiosity and entered the tent, where Dr. Cain immediately recognized him and called him by name. He asked him his wish, but Victor wouldn’t tell him. He spoke boldly to Cain, and accused him of killing his friend. Cain denied the incident, describing it as an “unfortunate accident.” When Victor left the tent, he resolved never to see the man again. For many years, he didn’t. He went to college, and befriended a man named Richard Fleischmann and a woman named Eva Gray. Both Victor and Richard were in love with Eva, but the three remained friends. One night, Richard and Victor went out drinking and ended up at a fair. They stumbled upon a fortuneteller’s tent, and Richard wanted to go in and ask whether Eva would eventually choose one of the men for her husband. Despite his drunken stupor, Victor refused to go inside, knowing it would be the evil Dr. Cain, but his friend rushed in. Victor fell asleep outside on a bench. When he woke up, it was daylight, the fair was being cleaned up, and Richard was asleep on the bench next to him. The two had a terrible hangover, and barely remembered the night before. Richard told Victor that he dreamt he went into a magician’s tent and was asked what his greatest wish was. He said he wanted to marry Eva Gray. Two months later, Eva Gray and Richard Fleischmann were married. They didn’t invite Victor to the wedding, and Victor didn’t see them for twenty years. Decades later, Victor noticed someone suspicious following him home. It turned out to be Richard, his old friend. Richard looked terrible, and began to cry as he recounted his memories from the night at the fair, finally revealing what he had promised the magician in exchange for his wish for Eva’s love: his first-born son. Richard described to Victor how he’d been trying desperately to keep Eva from becoming pregnant, but that she wanted a child so badly that their lack of one was driving her into depression. Victor agrees to help Richard by tracking down Cain. He finds Cain with a circus troupe, now in a clown façade, just as they are preparing to escape on the Dutchman’s ship. Victor climbed aboard and hid himself in a lifeboat. Fierce winds picked up, and the storm soon took over. As Roland had told his friends the day before, Victor was the only known survivor of the shipwreck, and the other bodies were never found. Hearing that Victor had constructed and moved into a lighthouse on the cliffs, Richard visited him one day, and Victor told him what had happened. Overcome with relief, Richard stopped preventing Eva from having a child, and began building a home for them on the beach. A few years later, their baby boy, Jacob, was born. The couple enjoyed the best years of their lives with their child, until he drowned. When Victor heard, he knew the Prince of Mist had never really left their lives, and he has feared his return ever since. Chapter 11 When Victor finishes his story, a storm is closing in. Max still thinks some facts are missing from Victor’s story, but can’t determine where the holes are. Alicia and Roland seem sceptical of the whole story Victor has told, questioning whether the old man has begun to lose his mind. That night, Max and Alicia have a quiet supper together, their parents still at the hospital. Alicia goes to bed, and Max decides to watch another of the Fleischmann films. The film shows the face of a clock turning backwards, hanging from a chain. The camera zooms out, and we see the pocket watch is being held by a statue in the walled garden. The scene scans the faces of the statues, landing finally on the Prince of Mist – the clown. The camera pans down and reveals the motionless statue of a cat at its feet, its claw poised in the air. Max remembers that cat wasn’t there when he’d visited the garden, and notices the likeness between the statue and Irina’s cat. The camera goes back to the clown’s stone face, and it slowly smiles, revealing wolf-like fangs. Chapter 12 The next morning, Max wakes at noon and Alicia has left a note, saying that she is at the beach with Roland. He rides his bike to town and eats at a bakery, and then rides to where Roland’s Shack sits on the beach. He sees Roland and Alicia kissing, and feels silly approaching them, so he rides his bike back into town. He goes the library, finds a map of the town, and locates the graveyard. He rides his bike there to visit the tomb of Jacob Fleischmann. The cemetery is big and quiet. He finds a dark mausoleum devoted to Jacob Fleischmann, and enters the tomb. Under Jacob’s name, he finds the six-pointed star symbol engraved. He feels eerie in the tomb, and suddenly senses he is not alone in the darkness; he sees a stone angel walking on the ceiling above him, and it points at him slowly and then gives an evil smile, transforming into the face of the evil clown, Dr. Cain. Max saw burning hatred in its eyes, and filled with fear, ran from the tomb. Afterwards, he realized he had dropped the watch his father had given him, but he was too afraid to go back and retrieve it. He rides to Victor’s lighthouse, and tells him what happened. Then he accuses the man of keeping some of the truth from Max and his friends, but Victor Kray denies it, and tells Max to forget the whole thing. Victor looks pained to shut him out, but asks Max to leave. Chapter 13 The next morning, Max gets up before dawn and rides to the town bakery to get breakfast for he and Alicia. Later, they meet Roland at the beach, and he shows them a small rowboat he has restored. They go out in the boat, and Roland and Alicia prepare to dive down. Alicia enjoys being beneath the water with Roland, but then Roland spots a giant black shadow approaching them, and begins rushing Alicia back to the boat. A gigantic eel-like figure rapidly follows them, but Roland gets Alicia to the boat before the figure snatches him with jagged teeth and drags him into the sea. Seeing his sister is safe, Max impulsively dives in after his friend, and is able to rescue him from the frightening creature, even as it transforms into the face of an evil clown. Roland wakes up in the boat, choking, and knows Max has saved his life. Back on shore, the three friends are exhausted and they fall asleep in Roland’s shack. Chapter 14 The scene opens with Victor Kray sneaking through the Carvers’ yard, toward the garden enclosure. He has a rifle with him, and when he enters the garden, the statues are gone. He hears the rumble of a storm, a flash of lightning splits the sky, and Victor suddenly understands what will happen. Max wakes up in Roland’s shack, and realizes he needs to be proactive about predicting Cain’s next move. He rides his bike back home and begins watching another film. This movie begins in the living room where Max sits, but with different furniture, and everything looking new. The camera moves up the stairs, and into the room that Irina had occupied before her accident. The door opens, the camera enters the room, focusing on the wardrobe. Dr. Cain emerges from the wardrobe with an evil smile, and reveals a pocket watch, with its hands spinning backwards. Max recognizes it as the watch his father gave him for his birthday, and the one he had dropped in Jacob’s tomb earlier that day. The hands move faster and faster until they start to smoke and spark, and soon the whole face of the clock is ablaze. The camera moves away from the clock and films a mirror, revealing the camera operator as a small boy. Max looks at the boy’s childish grin, and realizes he looks familiar: it’s Roland as a child. A flash of lightning catches Max’s eye outside and when he looks out the window, he sees a dark figure there: Victor Kray. Chapter 15 Max lets Victor in and makes a cup of tea to warm him. Victor is shaking as he tells Max the statues are gone, and asks where Roland is. Max tells Victor his suspicion that Roland is Jacob Fleischmann, and Victor tells him he doesn’t understand what’s happening, but Max insists Victor tell him the truth. The old man explains that when Richard had thought Cain had drowned and built the house on the beach, things had been fine for a long time, until Jacob went missing one day when he was five. When night fell, Richard searched the forest, remembering an old stone enclosure that had been there when he was building the house. He searched the enclosure, and found Jacob. He was playing amongst the ominous statues that Richard was certain weren’t there when he built the home. Richard never told his wife about this or his encounter with the magician so many years before. One night, Victor was manning the lighthouse, as usual, when he had a sudden premonition that Jacob was in danger. He ran to the Fleischmann house, and to the beach. He saw Jacob wading into the water, as if entranced by a mysterious water monster that was dimly visible in the mist off shore. He looked to the house, and saw some of the circus statues were holding Mr. and Mrs. Fleischmann, who were desperately fighting to save their son. The creature began dragging the boy into the sea, but Victor chased it, and rescued Jacob from its clenches, taking him back to the surface. He tried to revive him, but he was gone. The statues disappeared the moment the Victor realized the boy was dead. Fleischmann was beside himself with grief, and ran into the ocean shouting to Cain, offering his own life in exchange for the life of his son. Then, inexplicably, Jacob sputtered back to life. He was in shock and did not remember his own name. Eva took him inside, and Victor followed, while Richard remained outside. Eva asked Victor to take the boy, hoping that his life would be out of danger if he had a different identity. They let the townspeople think that Jacob had drowned, and the body was never found. A year later, Richard passed away from a deadly infection he caught from being bitten by a wild dog. Victor explains that the tomb at the local cemetery was built by Cain, who is reserving it for the day he recovers Jacob’s body… Meanwhile, Alicia and Roland wake at the beach shack to find a thick mist creeping under the door and filling the shack. It becomes a tentacle and begins pulling on Roland. An evil clown appears in the mist, and says “Hello, Jacob.” The mist grabs Alicia and begins to pull her toward the sea. Both she and Roland try to fight the mist, but to no avail. Roland stands helplessly on the beach, watching as the Orpheus begins to rise from the water, and float upright. Roland hears maniacal laughter, and sees Dr. Cain standing on the ship, grinning as the tentacle of mist drops Alicia at his feet. Chapter 16 Max joins Roland on the beach and begins screaming at Cain; Roland dives into the waves and swims towards the Orpheus. Cain drags Alicia to a cabin and locks her in, where she finds the corpse of the former captain of the ship, The Dutchman. Max makes climbs on some nearby rocks to get closer to the ship, and is able to jump on board, while Roland struggled to grab hold of the helm and steer the vessel away from the rocks. Meanwhile, Victor arrives at Roland’s hut, and something strikes him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. Max encounters Cain, who brags to him of his exploits, and Max attempts to indulge him, hoping to give Roland time to find Alicia. But they hear Roland calling Alicia’s name, and Cain realizes what Max was trying to do. Cain flings Max into the sea, and he is able to scramble onto some rocks. Chapter 17 Cain and Alicia have another encounter, and he tries to convince her to promise him her first-born child in exchange for Roland’s life. She tells him to go to Hell, and he say, “my dear girl, that’s exactly where I’ve come from,” (200.) The ship is sinking, and Roland is still searching for Alicia when he encounters Cain, who keeps calling him Jacob. Roland still has not made the connection, since he cannot remember his life before his parents died, but he plays along, asking Cain what he has to do to save Alicia’s life. Cain says, “I hope you’ll carry out the part of the agreement your father was unable to fulfill… Nothing more. And nothing less” (203.) Tears in his eyes, Roland agrees. Cain tells Roland where Alicia is, and explains that it’s already underwater and she won’t be able to breathe by the time he reaches her. He finds the room, takes a deep breath, and searches her out in the darkness. He waits for the ship to touch the bottom of the sea so that the pressure will not pull them back down; when the impact came, the ceiling above began collapsing on top of them, and Roland’s leg was pinned beneath the woody debris. Alicia was struggling to hold her breath, so Roland pulled her to him, and though she tried to resist, he breathed the last of his air into her mouth and then pushed her away towards the surface. Max helps Alicia out of the water; Victor wakes up on the beach and helps the two of them ashore, asking, “Where’s my Roland?” (207.) Roland never returned. Chapter 18 The day after the storm, Maximilian and Andrea Carver returned to the beach house with young Irina, who had fully recovered. It was clear to the parents that Max and Alicia had been through a great ordeal, but they didn’t ask, and the teens didn’t tell. Max accompanies Victor Kray to the train station, and Victor tells him he won’t be returning to the town. Before he leaves, he gives Max a small box. Max waits until Victor is gone before he opens it, and inside, he finds the keys to the lighthouse. Epilogue In the last weeks of summer, the war is nearing its end. Maximilian’s watch making business is booming, and Max cycles to the lighthouse every day to ensure the lantern is lit to help guide ships safely to shore. He often sees Alicia alone near Roland’s shack on the beach, gazing into the sea. Max remembers Roland’s words about worrying that this would be his last summer in the town, and comforts himself with the thought that the memories Roland, Max and Alicia shared, will bind them forever."
2055,The Eternal Champion,horror," The Eternal Champion is narrated by John Daker, an inhabitant of 20th century Earth. At the beginning of the novel, his sleep is disturbed by dreams of other worlds and a repeated name: Erekosë. After many nights he understands that he is Erekosë and he finds the strength to answer the call. He arrives in a world that is strange to John Daker but somehow familiar to Erekosë (the narrator struggles to reconcile these two viewpoints throughout the book). He is welcomed by the aging King Rigenos of Necranal and his daughter Iolinda, and receives Erekosë's legendary sword Kanajana. The sword emits a deadly radiance that quickly kills anyone who receives even a minor wound from it. (Readers familiar with Elric will immediately recognize Kanajana as an Avatar of Stormbringer by virtue of its dark color and magical lethality.) Rigenos explains to Erekosë that all of humanity is united in a desperate fight against the inhuman Eldren, who have claimed the southern continent Mernadin and are said to be seeking to expand their empire. (The Eldren have some resemblance to elves as depicted in the works of Tolkien and others, but the term is not used). Privately John Daker harbors doubts, but decides that his allegiance must be to his own kind even if the Eldren are not as demonic as Rigenos claims. During this time and throughout the book, the narrator continues to have dreams in which he takes on the identity of many heroes engaged in constant, unending struggle. After secretly betrothing himself to Iolinda, he leads an expedition against the Eldren seaport Paphanaal. The human fleet destroys an Eldren fleet in a naval battle, then takes Paphanaal easily as the only remaining inhabitants are women and children. Erekosë is sickened by the actions of his human allies during the battle and the sack of the city. The only surviving Eldren is Ermizhad, sister of Prince Arjavh the Eldren commander; she is put in Erekosë's keeping during the return to Necranal. After the fleet returns, Erekosë and Iolinda announce their betrothal. Soon a large Eldren force lands near Necranal; it is Arjavh come to rescue his sister. Among the troops is a large contingent of halflings, relatives of Eldren from the Ghost Worlds who have the power to teleport themselves. The Eldren defeat the humans in battle and Erekosë is captured. He tells Arjavh, ""Trade me for Ermizhad."" During his captivity, Arjavh tells him about the history of his world, which was originally inhabited only by Eldren. After the arrival of humans, fearsome weapons during a war between the races nearly destroyed the planet. The Eldren hid away their weapons and vowed never to use such weapons again - not even to save themselves from total extinction, which would become a very real possibility in the later course of the book. The humans simply forgot how to build such weapons. Erekosë is released with the understanding that Ermizhad will be released in turn, but when he reaches Necranal he finds that she is still a prisoner. She tells him not to worry, then summons the halflings to help her escape. Jealous, Iolinda accuses him (rightly) of sympathizing with the Eldren. Erekosë makes a rash vow in a desperate attempt to prove his love for her: :""I swear I shall kill all the Eldren."" :""All?"" :""Every single Eldren life."" :""You will spare none?"" :""None! None! I want it to be over. And the only way I can finish it is to kill them all. Then it will be over--only then!"" :""Including Prince Arjavh and his sister?"" :""Including them!"" :""You swear this? You swear it?"" :""I swear it. And when the last Eldren dies, when the whole world is ours, then I will bring it to you and we shall be married."" In the course of a year-long campaign to destroy the Eldren, Rigenos is killed, Iolanda becomes queen, and the human army is exhausted. The last Eldren stronghold is Loos Ptokai. Before the siege begins, Arjavh invites Erekosë into the city to rest and see Ermizhad one last time. Erekosë regrets the need to kill these civilized people but feels bound by his vow. He had managed to suppress his dreams during the campaign, but when he falls asleep in Loos Ptokai, they return. This time, however, he dreams that not only the Champion, but all of humanity is trapped in eternal struggle. When he awakes, he decides to make one last attempt at peace. He returns with his army to Necranal, but Iolinda realizes that he has fallen in love with Ermizhad and commands that he be taken prisoner. He escapes and returns to Loos Ptokai. Too soon, the humans mount a new attack against the Eldren city. The Eldren are determined to fight bravely but hopelessly with medieval weapons, even though they have the ancient fearsome weapons available. However, when it is clear that the battle will soon be lost, Erekosë convinces Arjavh to allow him to unearth the ancient machines of destruction if it would preserve the Eldren. After destroying the human army, he proceeds to kill every human being on the planet. Then he returns to Loos Ptokai, marries Ermizhad, and knows peace, at least for a time. There is a very abrupt transition from Erekosë saving the Eldren at the very last moment - where he has the reader's complete symapthy - and his proceeding to destroy the human cites and villages and kill all their inhabitants, even when there is clearly no further threat to the Eldren, even hunting down and killing a few survivors hiding in caves. In effect, he has fulfilled the earlier-mentioned vow (""I will spare none! None! I want it to be over. And the only way I can finish it is to kill them all"") - only that it is now directed against the humans instead of the Eldren. The story clearly implies that Erekosë was foredoomed by some higher power to commit genocide, that his only choice was whether he would exterminate the Eldren or the humans, and that once the choice was made he was helpless to stop himself from carrying it through. The nature of that higher power and its motivations remain, however, unclear. The book's ending with this inevitable genocide might be a major reason for its relative lack of popularity."
2056,Darkfall,horror," Jack Dawson is a New York Detective dealing with a variety of situations in his life. His wife Linda has recently died, and that leaves him the sole caretaker for his two children Penny and Davey. Aside from missing his wife very much; he is confronted by an especially brutal string of murders of Mafia criminals. These murders are both grisly and unearthly, seemingly done by animals, although forensics cannot determine any living creature that would simply tear a victim to pieces without actually eating anything. Finally, his partner Rebecca is a woman that does not share his approach to this crimewave. Dawson believes that there may be supernatural or magical factors in the killings, while Rebecca believes this to be absurd. Dawson's instincts are seldom wrong; and although he can't deny the initial absurdity of some kind of magic, alternative explanations are disappearing quickly. In truth these denizens are called forth from hell by a bocor(an evil sorcerer of voodoo). Because of their small size Carver Hampton came to the conclusion that this were just minor devils and the hole to hell is not yet big enough to grant access to greater demons. Though these denizens have different appearance they have similar characteristics such as a number of very sharp claws and teeth and the eyes the color of hot silver. At the end of the novel where Jack is about to arrest Lavelle, he was surprised to see that the pit where this demons pass through has gone so big that it has engulfed the shed where it is concealed. Numerous tentacles have sprouted from the pit and dragged Lavelle to hell. When Jack sees this he comes to the conclusion that this was just a mere finger of a greater evil that was about to come. When holy water doesn't stop the pit from growing, Jack uses his blood from the wound inflicted by a tentacle to stop the pit. He fears that if he fails, he will be forced to sacrifice himself into the pit. The novel ends with all the denizens turning to mud and Jack hearing Rebecca say ""I love you Jack"" in thin air."
2057,Sanctuary,horror," Angel and Co. are enjoying some downtime at the karaoke bar Caritas when a loud explosion occurs. The gang and the rest of the bar are attracted outside. A building nearby is on fire. It seems that it may have been a diversionary tactic to distract from a drive-by shooting. When the smoke clears, Fred has gone missing. It seems Fred has been kidnapped, so Team Angel questions everyone nearby. Around a dozen demons were direct eyewitnesses, but each one has a different story. Whether it was gangs, monsters, or a runaway Fred, the team soon realize demons do not make the most reliable eyewitnesses."
2058,Duma Key,horror," Edgar Freemantle, a St. Paul, MN contractor, barely survives a horrific on-site accident where his truck was crushed by a crane. Freemantle's right arm is amputated, and severe injuries to his head cause Edgar to have problems with speech, vision, and memory. As a result, Edgar also has violent mood swings and thoughts of suicide. During one of those mood swings, he attacks his wife, who later claims that as a main reason why she divorced him. On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar takes ""a geographical"" - a year long vacation meant for rest and further recovery. He decides to rent a beach house on Duma Key, a small island off the west coast of Florida, after reading about it in a travel brochure. Edgar's beach house is located on a part of the island called Salmon Point; Edgar nicknames the house ""Big Pink,"" because of its rich pink color. On the advice of Dr. Kamen, Edgar revives his old hobby of sketching after he moves into Big Pink. He settles in with the help of Jack Cantori, a local college student. Edgar becomes obsessively involved in his art, painting with a furious energy and in a daze. Edgar brings up psychic images in his paintings; he learns that his younger daughter, Ilse, is engaged to a choir singer and that his ex-wife is having an affair with his former accountant by painting these situations. While exploring the island with a visiting Ilse, Edgar drives past an elderly woman, Elizabeth Eastlake. Ilse becomes violently ill as they drive into an overgrown part of the island. Elizabeth later calls Edgar, warning him that Duma Key ""has never been a lucky place for daughters"". Edgar initially disregards the message, since Eastlake has Alzheimer's disease. Edgar slowly recuperates helped in part by taking longer and longer walks along the beach. He slowly approaches and eventually meets and befriends a man in his late 40's whom Freemantle had seen sitting under an umbrella off in the distance. This character, Jerome Wireman, to whom Edgar becomes quite close, is a hired companion for Eastlake. As it turns out during the conversation, Miss Eastlake is very wealthy and owns half of the island, while the other half is a subject of dispute. The way Edgar paints becomes systematic: he gets a phantom-limb sensation and he paints a psychic image. He eventually compiles a large catalog of artwork and is convinced by his friends to try to sell it to an art gallery; he does and the gallery plans to exhibit his work. While the exhibition is being planned, Edgar gradually begins to understand that his paintings have a paranormal power that allow him to manipulate events, places and people. But nobody outside of Edgar's close family and friends will ever know this. It is evidenced when one of his paintings removes a bullet that was lodged in Wireman's brain from a previous suicide attempt, and another causes Candy Brown, a man accused of raping and murdering a young girl in a highly publicized case, to die suddenly in his prison cell. Elizabeth advises Edgar that due to the power they possess his paintings should be removed from the Island after the exhibition. Elizabeth makes a surprise appearance at the exhibition, and after seeing the paintings herself for the first time becomes distressed and tells Edgar a number of things, including that the ""table is leaking"". Elizabeth suffers a violent seizure as she is trying to tell Edgar this and dies in the hospital soon after. Edgar suspects that the entity, Perse, silenced Elizabeth. When Edgar returns to Duma the next day he discovers that Big Pink was broken into and finds a canvas with ""Where our sister?"" sprawled on it, left in the house along with the footprints of an adult and two children. He soon discovers that those in possession of his paintings either die, or become possessed by ""Perse"" and carry out her deeds, which mainly include killing people close to Edgar. Most notably, Mary Ire, who had purchased one of a series of ""Girl and Ship"" paintings, breaks into Ilse's apartment and kills her by drowning her in her bathtub (just minutes after Ilse burns ""The End of The Game"" at Edgar's request). Mary Ire commits suicide almost instantly thereafter. Edgar begins to realize that his paintings are connected to tragic events in Miss Eastlake's childhood. Edgar discovers, through both his paintings and the drawings done by a young Elizabeth after she had suffered a head injury and began drawing herself, that Elizabeth had inadvertently used her paintings to discover a figurine off of the coast of Duma Key. This figurine, of a red-cowled woman, used the young Elizabeth to begin changing the reality around her. Elizabeth tried to use her power to destroy the figurine by drawing it and then erasing it. This only enraged the entity Persephone, which then killed Elizabeth's twin sisters by leading them into the surf and drowning them. A young Elizabeth, with the help of her Nanny, eventually discovered that the entity could be neutralized by drowning her in freshwater, and Elizabeth was able to do this by placing the figurine in a cask that is sealed in a cistern under the original house on Duma Key. Intent on putting a stop to Perse following the death of his beloved daughter, Edgar, along with Wireman and Jack, travels to the house Elizabeth lived in as a child, which is now overgrown by thick, unnatural vegetation. They manage to find the figurine, and are able to contain it in freshwater inside one of their flashlights. Later, Edgar takes the flashlight back to Big Pink, where his daughter Ilse begins to form out of the sand and seashells under the house. The entity offers Edgar immortality and forgetfulness in exchange for the flashlight. Edgar, however, has a different flashlight and tricks the entity masquerading as his daughter to get close enough to him that he can destroy it. Later, Edgar drops the figurine into one of the freshwater lakes of Minnesota. The book ends with Edgar starting his final painting; a storm destroying Duma Key. A number of Edgar's paintings play significant roles in the novel and are described in great detail, both in their creation and how they look, beginning with his very first extensive drawing upon arrival at Big Pink, a ghostly picture of a ship on the sunset titled Hello. He quickly experiments with a number of sunsets, which all fail to match up to ""Hello"". Although moving slowly at first, he rapidly increases in talent and figures out how to replicate the surrealism of his first drawing by adding objects hovering in the background of the sunsets, beginning with his Sunset with Conch. As he finds out from one of the novel characters, he lives in the house where Salvador Dalí stayed in the latter part of his life, having an affair with Elizabeth Eastlake. The novel contains an expansive cast of minor characters while maintaining a rather small circle of central players. *Edgar Freemantle: is the central character in the book, which focuses on his struggles and he eventually takes the lead in the climatic fight against Perse. *Jerome Wireman: is a former lawyer from Omaha who moved down to Florida after losing his wife and daughter, surviving a suicide attempt, and being fired from his law firm. *Elizabeth Eastlake: a wealthy heiress and former art patron suffering from Alzheimers, she plays a major role in background of the story and in leading the protagonists to stopping the evil force present on the island. *Pam Freemantle: Edgar's wife who divorces him at the beginning of the novel. During the novel she has several affairs, but gradually reconciles with him until the events of the climax begin. *Ilse Freemantle: Edgar's younger daughter who remains the only person from his ""past life"" to stay close to him and who is the person he loves most in the world. *Jack Cantori: local college student who serves as Edgar's chauffer and handyman, keeping the house stocked with groceries and picking up whatever odds and ends he needs. It is his quick thinking that allows them to trap Perse at the end of the novel. *Perse: the evil force manifested on Duma Key, she first reached out through young Elizabeth Eastlake to get back to the surface from the ocean before being trapped in freshwater (she is left powerless by it), until the present day. She commands a ship of damned souls, and while not human is said to have something distinctly feminine about her, and she is manifest in an old china doll with a red cloak. She is again put back to sleep at the end of the novel though the characters fear she will eventually escape again. Her full name, Persephone and her description and place are all generally influenced and taken from the Greek Goddess Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld (although, like many of King's entities, she is also decidedly Lovecraftian). Perse's ghost ship (The Persephone) resembles the Caleuche, a ghost ship from Chilote legends. There are a large number of minor characters in the book who have only passing significance to the main characters or to the plot of the book, including large numbers of friends and family from Edgar's ""other life"" as well as Wireman's family and boss, a number of characters with loose association to the two, and the various people who rent houses on Duma Key during the tourism season."
2059,The Vision,horror," A woman is haunted by visions of the man who tortured her in her childhood, and who also vowed that one day he'll return for her."
2060,Danse Macabre,horror," Danse Macabre appears to take place a few weeks after the events of Incubus Dreams and almost immediately after the events of Micah, assuming that the series of serial killings that Anita's friend Ronnie refers to as occurring two weeks earlier are the killings Anita investigates in Incubus Dreams. Unlike the previous thirteen novels, neither Anita's role as a Federal Marshal nor her job as a zombie animator plays any part in this novel. Instead, Anita must juggle a series of problems arising from her own increasing power, Jean-Claude's vampire politics, and her own personal life, complicated in this case by Anita's apparent pregnancy. * First, Anita believes that she may be pregnant. This forces her to confront the difficult choice of whether to bring the child to term, as well as whether to inform the various potential fathers. (Richard, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, and Damian). ** Richard and Nathaniel are the most likely candidates for fatherhood; Micah had a lycanthrope vasectomy (silver clamps on the vas deferens); vampires in this world are capable of fathering a child, either via sperm created prior to their death for the newly dead, or if their body temperature is kept elevated for a long enough period of time to create new sperm, but the likelihood goes down with age. A vampire over the age of 100 is not a likely candidate. ** Micah and Nathaniel are willing to rearrange their lives to take on the primary parenting responsibilities. By contrast, Richard proposes monogamous marriage and expects that Anita will stop being a vampire executioner and federal marshal. ** A child of Anita's would have a significant risk of birth defects. Previous books have mentioned ""Vlad Syndrome"", occurring in children of vampires, which in severe cases results in death of both the child and the mother. Anita is also at risk of ""Mowgli Syndrome"", which can occur when a shapeshifter has intercourse in animal (or part-animal) form. Not all details are discussed, but it is noted that the fetus can develop at the rate of the beast instead of human &mdash; which could put Anita past the legal abortion threshold in only a few weeks or months, depending on the animal. * Second, Anita's increasing powers continue to lead to new problems. In particular, Anita is attempting to select a pomme de sang from a variety of candidates, leading to a series of conflicts between various persons who wish to join her harem of lovers. In addition, she discovers that her ardeur has been shaping both her own and her lovers' feelings and personalities, making Anita question whether her love for Micah and Nathaniel is real. Finally, Anita discovers that she may be a pan-were, and that in addition to being the dominant female of the local wolf and leopard pack, she may also become Regina, or Queen, of the local werelion pack, leading to a conflict between the lions eager to become her Rex, or lion king. * Third, Anita is involved in a variety of conflicts relating to vampire politics, largely relating to Jean-Claude's decision to invite a vampire ballet and several master vampires to St. Louis. ** Augustine, the master of Chicago, Illinois, attempts to force Anita to love him, and hopes to control the local were-lion pack by introducing a dominant were-lion of his choosing. ** Thea—who is not only the wife of the master of Cape Cod but a siren—wishes Anita to sleep with one or all of her three sons, in the hope that Anita can bring them into their power. ** Merlin, head of the vampire ballet, attempts to mentally dominate all of the master vampires and lycanthropes present at the performance, for reasons he will not reveal. ** Meng Die is becoming increasingly jealous of Anita's irresistibility to the men in their circle, to the point where she attempts to kill Requiem ** Both Belle Morte and The Mother of Darkness continue their attempts to dominate Anita. Ultimately, Anita resolves most of these conflicts: * After reluctantly deciding to have the baby, Anita ultimately learns that she is not pregnant, and that her positive test result was caused by her unique body chemistry. * Anita learns to accept that her love may be manufactured in part by the ardeur, particularly in the cases of Nathaniel and Micah, both of whom have had their personalities shaped by the ardeur to meet Anita's needs (and vice versa). She accepts that she possesses several metaphysical ""beasts,"" and rejects Haven, a dominant were-lion that Augustine hoped to use to dominate the St. Louis pack. * Anita is also able to navigate most of the challenges raised by vampire politics. ** Using the ardeur, Anita and Jean-Claude bind Augustine, increasing their own power. They also turn the tables on him by feeding not only on him, but on his entourage. (Although Anita now loves Augustine, she is sufficiently stubborn that this love does not gain him an advantage). ** Anita promises to sleep with Thea's oldest son to see if she can raise his powers through the ardeur. ** Anita defeats Merlin's attempt to dominate the assembled vampires and shape-shifters, and questions him for information about the Mother of Darkness. ** The combined threat of Anita, Jean-Claude, and all of their vampires is enough to make Meng Die agree not to kill anyone for the night. ** Anita is able to evade Belle Morte and the Mother of Darkness's attempts to control her, although she continues to fear them."
2061,Cirque Du Freak,horror," Young Darren Shan has been fascinated by spiders from an early age. His best friend, Steve ""Leopard"" Leonard has grown up reading horror comics and stories about werewolves and vampires. Steve, Darren, and their friends find out about a freak show called Cirque du Freak and plan on buying tickets. Their teacher finds out about the freak show and tries to shut it down by ripping up the address . Steve memorizes the address and is there, but when he finds no one he gets ready to leave when Mr. Tall, arrives from nowhere, the ring master, hands him two tickets. Darren gets the other ticket. After viewing the ""Cirque du Freak"" Darren and Steve are mesmerized by the fantastic and disturbing show, especially by the act of the mysterious Mr. Crepsley and his giant, deadly, poisonous spider, Madam Octa. When the show ends, Steve goes back to talk to Mr. Crepsley about turning him into a vampire. He takes a taste of his blood and says that Steve's blood is bad. In horror, Steve flees the theater and tells Mr. Crepsley he will get him back for this. Darren, also horrified, turns away and decides to tell Steve that he got lost on his way back to the house, and decided to go home, which Steve half-believes. Darren steals Madam Octa, and plays with her. Steve comes over and lets her crawl around him. Annie, Darrens younger sister, walks in and screams. Darren gets distracted, and Madam Octa bites Steve paralyzing him. Darren convinces Annie to keep it secret that Darren caused Steve to get bitten. They send Steve to the hospital, the doctors have no idea what caused it and how to cure it. Darren decides the only person with a cure is most likely Mr. Crepsley. Darren goes home and observes Madam Octa. He becomes enraged and pitches her out the window. Darren then sees Mr. Crepsley taking her back. Darren goes to meet Mr. Crepsley at the theater and gives Darren a cure. But in exchange, Darren must become half vampire and give up his entire life as a human."
2062,Necroscope IV: Deadspeak,horror," Several years after his return to earth Harry Sr. is troubled by nightmares of resurgent Vampires. These nightmares are messages from the dead who he is unable to communicate with when awake due to the actions of Harry Jr. Separately E-Branch is investigating drug smuggling in the Mediterranean when two of its agents are assaulted. One is vampirized and the other rendered insane. Harry Sr's new girlfriend, Sandra, herself secretly a member of E-Branch plays a pivotal role in bringing Harry into the mix. She had been assigned to watch him and if possible restore his powers and reports to the head of E-Branch on his status. Unknown to everyone the E-branch head is a sleeper agent for the Russian E-Branch/KGB community. Afraid that Harry may be recovering his old powers, or perhaps developing new ones, the Russians choose to eliminate him. The plot fails due to the intervention of the dead, and in the process Sandras status as an agent is revealed, as is the fact that Ken and Trevor are in trouble, and that the dead want Harry in the Mediterranean. Together Harry, Sandra, and Darcy, go out to check on the situation. During the course of the investigation they learn that the drug smuggler is a resurrected Janos Ferenczy, using the alias Jianni Lazarides. Sandra and Ken Layard are kidnapped and vampirized, and Janos uses his telepathy to force Trevor Jordan to kill himself. Despite being virtually powerless Harry moves to engage Janos on his home ground in Romania, but not before spending the night (what would later be revealed to be a very fateful night) in the ruins of Faethers house in Ploesti. When he awoke the next morning Harry discovered he was surrounded by odd black mushrooms that exploded at the slightest touch releasing their spores into the air which he breathed. Overnight Faether had restored his Deadspeak, and had untangled most of Harry's mental troubles. However not being a mathematician he was unable to restore the command of numbers and access to the Mobius Continuum. With his deadspeak restored Harry sought out and again spoke to Mobius himself, who recruited other mathematicians to help with the problem as Harry approached Janos lair slowly. Harry began showing signs of developing telepathy and possibly other powers in his own right. A fact he initially put down to his mind compensating for the long lack of his other abilities. During the final confrontation against Janos and his vampire thralls a group of Thracians raised from their ashes by Janos to help him instead took Harry's side and assisted him. This along with the timely restoration of his teleportation abilities through the Mobius Continuum allowed Harry to defeat Janos. The book closes shortly after Harry and the last Thracian stake and behead the vampirized Sandra."
2063,Necroscope V: Deadspawn,horror," Harry Keogh discovers that he is being transformed into a member of the Wamphyri by the spores of the mushrooms he inhaled at the ruins of Faethors house in Ploesti. Additionally he experiments with Janos Ferenczy's ""resurrection"" necromancy to restore some people - notably Trevor Jordan and Penny Sanderson - to life. E branch begins to suspect Harry may have been infected, but Darcy calls Harry in anyway on a serial killer case. Resolved to do one last favor for humanity, both the living and the dead, Harry hunts down and deals with the necromancer/serial killer/rapist Johnny Found. Shortly after this Harry and Penny, who slept with him while he was literally asleep and thus infected herself, are driven from England by E branch, who cannot risk Harry being allowed to live as a vampire. Eventually Harry and Penny flee for starside, but in the process Penny is killed. Arriving back in the Vampire world Harry finds Lady Karen alive, after he had thought her dead from an attempted cure. The two out of loneliness become lovers for a time. But the vampire lord Shaithis, banished after battle with Harry and Harry Jr to the icelands is returning at the head of a small but vicious army, along side his ancestor from time immemorial, the most feared Wamphyri of all time, Shaitan himself. Unfortunately Harry Jr, has now mostly devolved into a wolf similar to the one who transmitted its egg to him. Gone are most of his powers, leaving his father and Karen to face Shaitan and Shaithis almost alone. Harry and Karen are, after a brief battle, crucified at the gate. However in a last act Karen commits suicide to take Shaithis with her and Harry and Harry Jr, combine their powers one last time to send a plea for help to earth which results in the dead in the Russian complex sending a nuclear armed exorcet through the gate, destroying Harry, Harry Jr, and Shaithis in a nuclear explosion."
2064,Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel,horror," Aging rock star Judas Coyne spends his retirement collecting morbid memorabillia such as a witch's confession, a real snuff film and, after being sent an e-mail directly about the item online, a dead man's suit. He is told, by the daughter(whom he does not know at the time), that the old man's spirit is attached to this funeral suit. The ghost will go wherever it does and so buying this suit would effectively be buying a poltergeist; Judas cannot pass up this opportunity. The suit soon arrives in a heart-shaped box. Various odd occurrences alert Judas to the fact that the ghost is dangerous and is out to kill him and those around him. His assistant, Danny Wooten realizes that the ghost of the suit will try to kill everyone round Jude. He leaves Jude's service, but not before contacting the woman who sent the suit. Jude finds out that the ghost was the father of a groupie, Florida (it is later revealed that her real name is Anna), whom he dated for a few months and who had later committed suicide. The ghost wanted revenge on Jude for causing Anna's death, as he saw it. His current girlfriend, Georgia (whose name is actually Marybeth), refuses to leave and together they run from the house with the ghost chasing them. The ghost's intention is to keep Jude away from his two dogs, Angus and Bon, as it turns out that dogs, as familiars, can protect their owners from the dead. But Georgia insists on taking the dogs with them. The animals save the couple several times, but the ghost eventually manages to kill both dogs. Jude and Georgia investigate and find out the true story about Florida. She did not commit suicide because of the breakup between her and Jude. Florida had many emotional problems and Jude had tried to help her but, in the end, he gave up. The reason she was so unstable was that she was being hypnotized and molested by her stepfather, the now dead and ghostly, Craddock McDermott. When Florida left Jude she had nowhere to go but back to her twisted family, but eventually she threatened to contact Jude to have him help her escape the incestuous relationship and file charges against Craddock and her elder sister, Jessica. They drove her to suicide to prevent her from doing so. At a later point, Craddock, a man knowledgeable in the dark arts, realized he was dying and planned with Jessica to get revenge on Judas. They believed that Judas had ""ruined"" Florida by making her reject her family and their incest. Craddock hexed the suit; once he was dead, Jessica set the plan in motion. After a series of gory battles between Judas Coyne and Craddock McDermott, Georgia finds the way to bring Florida back from the grave and help Jude fight her stepfather. In the end, the evil Craddock is vanquished, freeing Jude and Georgia from his cruel curse. The two make it through the horrendous event and happily marry."
2065,Danse Macabre,horror," Despite using King's college teaching notes as the backbone of the text, Danse Macabre has a casual, non-linear writing style. In the introduction, titled ""October 4, 1957, and an Invitation to Dance"", King begins by explaining why he wrote the book, and then describes the event itself: the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, intended as his personal introduction to what he calls ""real horror."" This is followed by the chapter ""Tales of the Hook,"" specifically the urban legend of the escaped criminal who left his hook on the door handle of the car where lovers had parked. The author uses this for his contention that horror in general ""offers no characterization, no theme, no particular artifice; it does not aspire to symbolic beauty."" In the following chapter, he creates a template for descriptions of his macabre subject. Entitled “Tales of the Tarot,"" the chapter has nothing to do with the familiar tarot card deck. Rather, King borrows the term to describe his observations about major archetypal characters of the horror genre, which he posits come from two British novels and one Irish: the vampire (from Dracula), the werewolf (from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and the ""Thing Without a Name"" (from Frankenstein). King sees deeply sexual undertones—in light of its Victorian Era publication—in Dracula. Frankenstein is reviewed as ""a Shakespearean tragedy"", and he argues that ""its classical unity is broken only by the author's uncertainty as to where the fatal flaw lies—is it in Victor's hubris (usurping a power that belongs only to God) or in his failure to take responsibility for his creation after endowing it with the life-spark?"" King does not mistake Mr. Hyde for a ""traditional"" werewolf, but rather sees the character as the origin of the modern archetype defined by werewolves. The evil-werewolf archetype, argues King, stems from the base and violent side of humanity. These major archetypes are then reviewed in their historical context, ranging from their original appearances to their modern-day equivalents, up to and including cartoon breakfast cereal characters such as Frankenberry and Count Chocula. The chapter ""An Annoying Autobiographical Pause"" begins with King's explanation for why he included the section: ""I cannot divorce myself from a field in which I am mortally involved."" He then offers a brief family history, discussing his abandonment by his father at the age of two, his childhood in rural eastern Maine, and then explains his childhood fixation with the imagery of terror and horror, making an interesting comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of the H.P. Lovecraft collection The Lurker in the Shadows, which had belonged to his long-since-departed father. The cover art—an illustration of a monster hiding within the recesses of a hell-like cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which ""that interior dowsing rod responded to."" King then resumes his discussion of the horror genre by making detailed commentary of horror in all forms of media, beginning with radio, then proceeding to a highly critical review of television horror, two separate chapters on horror in the motion pictures, and finally concluding with an examination of horror fiction. His critique on the radio examines such American programs as Suspense, Inner Sanctum, and Boris Karloff, and praises Arch Oboler's Lights Out. King ultimately concludes that, as a medium for horror, radio is superior to television and films, since radio's nature requires a more active use of imagination. King then turns to two separate chapters of horror in the motion pictures. In ""The Modern American Horror Movie—Text and Subtext,"" the ""subtext"" he refers to consists of unspoken social commentary he sees in the films. The 1951 film The Thing from Another World implies commentary on the threat of communism, ""the quick, no-nonsense destruction of their favorite geopolitical villain, the dastardly Russians,"" King writes. The popular 1973 film The Exorcist was aptly suited in the wake of the youth upheavals of the late 1960s and early '70s. 1975's The Stepford Wives, King says, ""has some witty things to say about Women's Liberation ... and the American male's response to it."" In The Amityville Horror, King sees ""economic unease"" and maintains that the film's 1979 release ""could not have come along at a more opportune moment."" He also calls The China Syndrome, released the same year, a horror movie that ""synthesizes technological fears ... fears of the machinery gone out of control, run wild."" In the following chapter, ""The Horror Movie as Junk Food"" King begins by making the statement: “I am no apologist for bad filmmaking, but once you've spent twenty years or so going to horror movies, searching for diamonds in the dreck of the B-pics … you begin to seek the patterns and appreciate them when you find them, you begin to get a taste for really shitty movies.” He makes the point that his agent Kirby McCauley had selected the obscure 1977 film Rituals as his favorite, while King himself chose 1979's Tourist Trap as one that “wields an eerie spooky power. Wax figures begin to move and come to life in a ruined, out-of-the-way tourist resort.” He continues a reviews of such films as Prophecy (1979), I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), The Horror of Party Beach (1964), and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), among others; concluding: “Bad films may sometimes be amusing, sometimes even successful, but their only real usefulness is to form that basis of comparison: to define positive values in terms of their own negative charm. They show us what to look for because it is missing in themselves.” King then turns his most weighty criticism toward television, borrowing Harlan Ellison's description of television as ""the glass teat"", and subtitling the chapter, ""This Monster Is Brought to You by Gainesburgers."" He reviews horror anthology programs such as The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows, and Night Gallery, ultimately concluding that television is severely limited in its ability to illustrate horror because it is enslaved to the demands of network Standards and Practices censorship and the appeasement of advertising executives that provide the financial means necessary for television to continue its free access. In the ""Horror Fiction"" chapter, King describes and reviews a number of horror novels written within a few decades of Danse Macabre, including Peter Straub's Ghost Story, Anne Rivers Siddons's The House Next Door, Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and several others. His primary context is defining what impact they have had on the horror genre, and how significantly they have contributed to the popular culture. Specifically pointing out allegories in his review, King notes: The final chapter, ""The Last Waltz"", is a brief analysis of how the medium or horror fiction in all its forms has inspired real-life acts of violence. He describes an incident in which a woman was brutally murdered by youths who confessed to imitating a scene from a TV movie, then objectively includes an example of violence perpetrated by a woman who had been reading his novel The Stand at the time she committed the crime. ""If it had not been shown"", he writes, ""stupidity and lack of imagination might well have reduced them to murdering ... in some more mundane way."" In an analysis of why people read and watch horror, he concludes, ""Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not."" Additionally, King classifies the genre into three well-defined, descending levels; 1) terror, 2) horror, and 3) revulsion. He describes terror as “the finest element” of the three, and the one he strives hardest to maintain in his own writing. Citing many examples, he defines “terror” as the suspenseful moment in horror before the actual monster is revealed. ""Horror"", King writes, is that moment at which one sees the creature/aberration that causes the terror or suspense, a ""shock value."" King finally compares “revulsion” with the gag-reflex: a bottom-level, cheap gimmick which he admits he often resorts to in his own fiction if necessary, confessing:"
2066,Cell,horror," Clayton Riddell, a struggling artist from Maine, has just landed a graphic novel deal in Boston when ""The Pulse,"" a signal sent out over the global cell phone network, suddenly turns every cellphone user into a mindless zombie-like killer. Clay is standing in Boston Common when the Pulse hits, causing chaos to erupt around him. Civilization crumbles as the ""phoners"" attack each other and any unaltered people in view. Amidst the chaos, Clay is thrown together with middle-aged Tom McCourt and teenager Alice Maxwell; the trio escapes to Tom's suburban home as Boston burns. The next day, they learn that the ""phoners"" have begun foraging for food and banding together in flocks. Clay is still determined to return to Maine and reunite with his young son, Johnny. Having no better alternatives, Tom and Alice come with him. They trek north by night across a devastated New England, having fleeting encounters with other survivors and catching disturbing hints about the activities of the phone crazies, who still attack non-phoners on sight. Crossing into New Hampshire, they arrive at the Gaiten Academy, a prep school with one remaining teacher, Charles Ardai, and one surviving pupil, Jordan. The pair show the newcomers where the local phoner flock goes at night: they pack themselves into the Academy's soccer field, and ""switch off"" until morning. It is clear the phoners have become a hive mind and are developing psychic abilities. The five of them decide that they must destroy the flock and, using two propane tankers, they succeed in doing so. Clay tries to get everyone to flee the scene, but the others refuse to abandon the elderly Ardai. That night, all of the survivors share the same horrific dream: each dreamer sees himself in a stadium, surrounded by phoners, as a disheveled man wearing a Harvard University hooded sweatshirt approaches, bringing their death. Waking, the heroes share their frightening dream experiences and dub him ""The Raggedy Man"". A new flock surrounds their residence, and the ""normies"" face the flock's metaphorical spokesman: the man wearing the Harvard hoodie. The flock commits bloody reprisal on other normals, and orders the protagonists to head north to a spot in Maine called ""Kashwak"". To preempt one objection, the flock psychically compels Ardai to commit suicide. Clay and the others bury him and travel north, as Clay is still determined to go home. En route, they learn that as ""flock-killers"" they have been psychically marked as untouchables, to be shunned by other normies. Following a petty squabble on the road, Alice is killed by a loutish pair of normals. The group buries her and arrives in Clay's hometown of Kent Pond, where they discover notes from Johnny which tell them that Clay's estranged wife Sharon was turned into a phoner, but that their son survived for several days, before he and the other normies were prompted by the phoners to head to the supposedly cellphone-free Kashwak. Clay has another nightmare which reveals that once there, the normie refugees were all exposed to the Pulse. He remains intent on finding his son, but after meeting another group of flock-killers, Tom and Jordan decide to avoid the ceremonial executions the phoners have planned. Before separating, the group discovers that Alice's murderers were psychically compelled into a gruesome suicide act for touching an untouchable. Clay sets off alone, but the others soon reappear driving a small school bus; the phoners have used their ever-increasing psychic powers to force them to rejoin him. One of the flock-killers, a construction worker named Ray, surreptitiously gives Clay a cell phone and a phone number, telling him cryptically to use them when the time is right; Ray then commits suicide. The group arrives at Kashwak, the site of a half-assembled county fair, where increasing numbers of phoners are beginning to behave erratically and break out of the flock. Jordan theorizes that a computer program caused the Pulse, and while it is still broadcasting into the battery-powered cellphone network, it has become corrupted with a computer worm that has infected the newer phoners with a mutated Pulse. Nevertheless, an entire army of phoners is waiting for them. The phoners lock the group in the fair's exhibition hall for the night; tomorrow is the ceremonial execution to be psychically broadcast to all phoners and remaining normals in the world. As Clay awaits their morning execution, he visualizes Ray's unspoken plan: Ray had filled the rear of the bus with explosives, wired a phone-triggered detonator to them, and killed himself to prevent the phoners from telepathically discovering his plan. The group breaks a window for Jordan to squeeze through, and he drives the vehicle into the midst of the inert phoners. Thanks to a jerry-rigged cellphone patch set up by the pre-Pulse fair workers, Clay is able to detonate the bomb and wipe out the Raggedy Man's flock. The majority of the group heads into Canada, to let the approaching winter wipe out the region's unprotected and leaderless phoners. Clay heads south, seeking his son. He finds Johnny, who received a ""corrupted"" Pulse; he wandered away from Kashwak and seems to almost recognize his father. However, Johnny is an erratic shadow of his former self, and so, following another theory of Jordan's, Clay decides to give Johnny another blast from the Pulse, hoping that the increasingly corrupted signal will cancel itself out and reset his son's brain. The book ends with Clay dialing and placing the cell-phone to Johnny's ear."
2067,Dark Mirror,horror," A series of perfect clones of members at Angel Investigations are lurking in the city, planning to kill the originals. Team Angel must find out where the replicas are coming from and why, before the murder spree hits the whole city. Thanks to Wesley's research, the gang realise that they are facing the 'Seven Sinners', dimension-jumping demons who travel to other worlds, steal the negative aspects of the souls of some of the greatest heroes of that world, and subsequently gain power by killing the originals and absorbing their souls into their power source. Once they have been copied, only the original can kill 'their' Sinner, with other attempts simply incapacitating the Sinners until they can regenerate. The Sinners have targeted Angel Investigations with the intention of duplicating Angel, as they feel that only Angelus would possess the necessary skills to lead them in their destruction of this world. However, the final seven clones- consisting of Angelus, Lorne, Wesley, Connor, Fred, Gunn, and Lilah- are all killed by their templates, Angel subsequently destroying their power source."
2068,The Surgeon,horror," A terrifying new serial killer begins stalking the streets of Boston, using his vast medical knowledge to systematically torture and kill vulnerable women, a modus operandi which has earned him the nickname ""the Surgeon"". As Jane Rizzoli, accompanied by detective Thomas Moore, works the case, she comes across trauma doctor Catherine Cordell, who almost died in the same fashion at the hands of another psychopath several years before, but killed him before he could kill her. Rizzoli soon establishes a connection between the two cases, concluding that she may be on the trail of a deranged copycat. The story opens up with the death of Elena Ortiz at the hands of the Surgeon, and Thomas Moore is sent to investigate. The murder is tied to another murder by the Surgeon, Diana Sterling, a year previous. Rizzoli and Moore note that both had no contact or connection whatsoever, and are perplexed by these two murders. Meanwhile, the Surgeon begins targeting his third victim, Nina Peyton, while Cordell continues to save lives, starting with Herman Gwadowski."
2069,Tunnels of Blood,horror," This story introduces Gavner Purl, a full vampire and an old friend of Mr. Crepsley. Gavner Purl is a Vampire General. Gavner Purl is shocked to discover Darren a half-vampire. Mr. Crepsley wants to talk to Gavner Purl alone in secrecy. After the meeting, Gavner walks with Darren for a while, revealing to him that Mr. Crepsley was a Vampire General and was about to be invested as a Vampire Prince, who is a leader of the Vampire Clan. He also lets slip that Mr. Crepsley is going to leave the Cirque and finally binds Darren to secrecy regarding all these facts. A day or so later, Mr. Crepsley does inform Darren that he must leave and Darren has to accompany him to some place. He suggests that Evra can come with Darren as if on a ""vacation"" and to help him keep Darren out of mischief as Mr. Crepsley pointed out incidents regarding Madam Octa and Sam Grest. They go to the city and get a disguise made for Evra and in the night while Mr. Crepsley goes out on mysterious excursions, in the day, Darren and Evra enjoy themselves. When looking for a Christmas gift for Evra, Darren comes across Debbie, a girl from the Square, where they were staying. The two begin dating and like each other very much. After a date and a ""kiss"" with Debbie, when one night Darren reaches back to the hotel, he and Evra are disturbed by a news report saying that human bodies were found in a basement, drained of blood. Darren and Evra fear that it may be Mr. Crepsley, and decide to track him at night to see where he goes. When Darren thinks that he is about to go and kill a man, Darren attempts to face Mr. Crepsley and tries to stop him, but discovers that it was actually a work of a mad vampaneze named Murlough. Murlough runs away, managing to kidnap Evra with him. Mr. Crepsley tells Darren about the Vampaneze and Murlough. Mr. Crepsley and Darren discover Evra kidnapped when they come out of the abattoir where the man Murlough intending to kill was. Mr. Crepsley declares that Evra has been or would be killed by Murlough. Darren takes the loss of Evra pretty badly. Darren goes over to Debbie to seek some comfort. He gets invited over to her house for Christmas Eve. Debbie almost cries when she realizes that Darren might have to leave suddenly and gives him a hug. Murlough spots Darren with Debbie and sneers him about, demanding for Mr. Crepsley and a release for Evra. Darren refuses. On returning, Darren tells Mr. Crepsley about Debbie, his talk with Murlough and his refusal to sell Mr. Crepsley for Evra. Mr. Crepsley is highly impressed and they begin making plans to save Evra before 25 December, the day when Murlough has promised to kill Evra. The two venture down the sewers and Darren gets caught by the vampaneze. Darren gives Murlough a piece of his mind by telling him about the vampire laws. He then decides to trade Debbie's life for Evra's. They reach Debbie's home and room where Mr. Crepsley slays Murlough, who is tricked into killing a goat, according to Darren's plan. The dying vampaneze whispers to Darren, 'Cluh-cluh-clever buh-buh-buh boy, hmmm?'. Afterwards, Darren decorates Debbie's Christmas tree and kisses Debbie on her forehead and wishes, 'Merry Christmas, Debbie'."
2070,At the Mountains of Madness,horror," The story is told in first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor at Miskatonic University. He writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition there, scholars from Miskatonic University led by Dyer discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains higher than the Himalayas. A smaller advance group led by Professor Lake discovered and crossed the mountains and found the remains of 14 ancient life forms, completely unknown to science and unidentifiable as either plants or animals. Six of the specimens are badly damaged and the others uncannily pristine. Their highly evolved features are problematic: their stratum location puts them at a point on the geologic time scale much too early for such features to have naturally evolved yet. When the main expedition loses contact with Lake's party, Dyer and the rest of his colleagues travel to their last known location to investigate. Lake's camp is devastated, and both the men and the dogs slaughtered, while a man named Gedney and another dog are unaccounted for. Near the camp they find six star-shaped snow mounds, and one specimen buried under each. They discover that the better preserved life forms have vanished, and that some form of dissection experiment has been done on an unnamed man and a dog. Dyer elects to close off the area from which they took their samples. Dyer and a graduate student named Danforth fly an airplane over the mountains, which they soon realize are the outer wall of a huge, abandoned stone city of cubes and cones, utterly alien compared with any human architecture. Because of their resemblance to creatures of myth mentioned in the Necronomicon, the builders of this lost civilization are dubbed the ""Elder Things"". By exploring these fantastic structures, the men are able to learn the history of the Elder Things by interpreting their magnificent hieroglyphic murals: The Elder Things first came to Earth shortly after the Moon was pulled loose from the planet and were the creators of life. They built their cities with the help of ""Shoggoths"", biological entities created to perform any task, assume any form, and reflect any thought. As more buildings are explored, a fantastic vista opens of the history of races beyond the scope of man's understanding, including the Elder Things' conflicts with the Star-spawn of Cthulhu and the Mi-go who arrived on Earth some time after the Elder Things themselves. The images also reflect a degradation in the order of this civilization, as the Shoggoths gain independence. As more resources are applied to maintaining order, the etchings become haphazard and primitive. The murals also allude to some unnamed evil in an even larger mountain range just past their city which even they fear greatly. Eventually, as Antarctica became uninhabitable even for the Elder Things, they migrated into a large, subterranean ocean. Dyer and Danforth eventually realize they are not alone in the city. The Elder Things missing from the advance party's camp had somehow returned to life and, after slaughtering the explorers, returned to the city of their origin. Dyer and Danforth discover traces of the Elder Things' earlier exploration, as well as sledges containing the corpses of Gedney and the dog missing from the camp. As the two progress further into the city, they are ultimately drawn to a massive, ominous entrance which is the opening of a tunnel which they believe leads into the subterranean region described in the murals. Compulsively they are drawn in, finding further horrors: evidence of dead Elder Things killed in a brutal struggle, and blind six-foot-tall penguins wandering around placidly, apparently as livestock for the unknown forms of life which lurked inside the subterranean abyss. They are then confronted with an immense, ululating horror in the form of a black, bubbling mass, which after a brief glimpse they identify as a Shoggoth. Danforth and Dyer escape with their lives using luck and diversion. On the plane high above the plateau, Danforth looks back and sees something that causes him to lose his sanity. He refuses to tell anyone (even Dyer) what he saw, though it is implied that it has something to do with what lies beyond the larger mountain range that even the Elder Things feared. Professor Dyer concludes that the Elder Things and their civilization were eventually destroyed by the Shoggoths they created and that this entity has sustained itself on the enormous penguins since eons past. He begs the planners of the next proposed Antarctic expedition to stay away from things that should not be loosed on this Earth."
2071,Unnatural Selection,horror," Willow is baby-sitting one night when suddenly the baby she's taking care of changes into an evil faerie and tells her that she needs to work harder to save Weatherly Park from being converted into an amusement park. The faerie then attacks Willow before vanishing. After some research, Giles discovers that the fairy is a Russian variety called the domovoi, apparently hiding out beneath Weatherly Park. The faeries also have plans for Willow; they need the blood of a witch in order to resurrect the Homestone which will renew the faeries' strength. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel, Cordelia, Willow, and Oz. First original Buffy novel not to feature Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover."
2072,Hideaway,horror," Following a traffic accident that left him clinically dead for more than 80 minutes, a Southern California antique dealer named Hatch Harrison begins experiencing strange dreams and visions that connect him to a psychopathic killer, a young man who calls himself ""Vassago"". Vassago believes that he is the human incarnation of one of the demon princes of Hell, and that if he murders enough innocent human beings and offers them up in sacrifice to his Master, he will be allowed to return to the afterlife and rule at Satan's right hand. He also has a strange condition that enables him to see in the dark, but also causes his eyes to be extremely sensitive to light. Meanwhile, the accident gives Hatch and his wife Lindsey, an artist, a new lease on life as they struggle to rebuild their marriage in the wake of their son's death from cancer five years before. As the couple set about trying to adopt a young girl named Regina, Hatch continues to be tormented by visions, in some cases even seeing through the monstrous killer's eyes. Making matters worse, Vassago slowly gains information about Hatch and his family in the same fashion, putting both Lindsay and Regina in danger. It is eventually revealed that Vassago's real name is Jeremy Nyebern; as a teenager, he brutally murdered his mother and sister, then attempted to kill himself. His life was saved by the same doctor who miraculously resuscitated Hatch, Dr. Jonas Nyebern, Jeremy's father (thus facilitating the seemingly supernatural bond between the two characters). Like Hatch, Jeremy was clinically dead for more than 30 minutes, and during that time, believes that he went to hell and was later returned to do Satan's bidding. At the book's climax, Vassago's visions lead him to kidnap Regina and take her to his ""hideaway"" (an abandoned amusement park, where, as a boy, Jeremy committed his first murder). There, he is confronted by Hatch, who bludgeons Vassago to death with a crucifix attached to a flashlight, thus saving Regina and Lindsay. During the closing moments of this confrontation, Hatch inexplicably begins speaking in another voice and calls himself ""Uriel"" (whom Hatch later learns is an archangel mentioned in the Bible), thus implying that Vassago's beliefs about his demonic heritage and short-lived journey to the afterlife may not have been entirely delusional after all. Uriel/Hatch tells Vassago/Jeremy that instead of returning to hell as a prince, he will be returned as a slave."
2073,Resurrecting Ravana,horror," It's midterm exam time at Sunnydale High School and tensions are rising high in the usual group. Particularly between Buffy and Willow who seem to have some sort of unspoken dislike of the other. Meanwhile, horrible murders have been occurring throughout Sunnydale; two close friends end up dead, one kills the other and then the murderer ends up as a pile of bones. The murders also coincide with the arrival of a large group of demons called the Rakshasa who seem to have a sort of wicked control over their victims. As Buffy and Willow become more and more violent towards each other, Giles does some research which indicates that the Rakshasa are in town to help with the resurrection on an ancient Hindu demon called Ravana. And when Giles spots Ethan Rayne in town, he knows that something chaotic is at hand. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel, Cordelia, Willow, Oz, and Ethan Rayne. Cordelia's web page in the book is www.shrew.com"
2074,Vampire Academy,horror," Guardian in training Rosemarie ""Rose"" Hathaway and Moroi princess Vasilisa ""Lissa"" Dragomir are brought back to their school, St. Vladimir's Academy, after running away two years previously. On returning, Guardian Dimitri Belikov, who was the leader of the team of guardians sent to retrieve the two, is assigned to be Lissa's guardian. He offers to mentor Rose in her guardian training as he feels she has potential and with training can make up for the years she has lost. He also believes Rose can be an excellent guardian to Lissa due to the presence of a rare one-sided psychic bond to Lissa which allows her to know the latter's emotions, thoughts, and whereabouts. Rose agrees, knowing this is the only way she will be allowed to remain, and on graduation be Lissa's guardian. Though they soon fall into the academy life, they find that Lissa has lost her social standing among the other Moroi royals owing to her running away. They decide to keep company with Lissa's ""cousin"" Natalie Dashkov, who is the daughter of sick and dying Victor Dashkov. On the very first day back they find that another Moroi student, Mia Rinaldi, who is dating Lissa's ex-boyfriend Aaron, holds a grudge against Lissa (and by default Rose). Mia finds every opportunity to insult Lissa and is in turn insulted and threatened by Rose. Lissa finds a friend, Christian Ozera, much to the ire of the ever protective Rose. Christian's parents had turned Strigoi (undead vampires) of their own will for immortality and had been killed by guardians. Rose mistrusts Christian because of his family history. It is also implied that she is jealous of Lissa's interest in him. Rose, in turn, starts falling for Dimitri. Things start getting worse when Lissa finds dead animals in her room along with threatening letters. Lissa starts going into depression and engages in self mutilation. It is revealed that though she has not specialized in any elemental magic (Air, Water, Fire, and Earth), she has a miraculous ability to heal, which was witnessed by Rose and their teacher Ms. Karp two years back. Rose finds out that this gift is shared by Ms. Karp, who is then taken to a mental institution. They find out that Lissa has affinity for Spirit, that might just be dangerous for her and Rose. This incident along with her increasing depression was what had caused Rose to run away with Lissa. While attending Sunday service, Rose hears that the Moroi saint St. Vladimir could heal people, and suffered from some form of depression. Also, he was protected by his loyal companion the ""shadow kissed"" Anna with whom he shared a bond. On returning from a shopping trip with Lissa, Victor, and Natalie, Rose has an accident and on waking up deduces from what Dimitri tells her (that she had a miraculous recovery) that Lissa had healed her. She reaches into her bond and finds that Lissa is lying on the attic of the Church bleeding from self-inflicted cuts. Her reporting this incident causes a slight break in their friendship. Somehow discovering this, Mia insults Lissa, calling her unstable, causing Rose to punch Mia and break her nose. Detained by teachers and guardians, Rose is unable to follow Lissa; she reaches through her bond while confined to her room and finds that Lissa is being kidnapped by some guardians who assault Christian when he tries to save her. Rose tries to go and warn Dimitri and instead ends up nearly having sex with him. They stop when Dimitri unclasps a locket gifted by Victor from her neck and he manages to throw it away. It is later revealed that Victor had charmed the locket with a lust charm which causes people to act on already existing attraction, letting go of inhibitions. Through the bond Rose finds out that Victor is the one who kidnapped Lissa and plans to use her to heal his genetic disease. He reveals that Natalie was the one who left the animals in Lissa's room to see her heal them after accidentally catching her doing so. He also reveals that Lissa had specialized in the rare fifth element Spirit, and that her bringing back Rose from the dead after the accident was what caused them to have a bond. Using Spirit is what was causing Lissa's depression. Though Lissa heals Victor for the time being, the school guardians are able to reach the place and rescue her. On returning, Victor convinces Natalie to turn Strigoi by killing while feeding and gets her to break him free. She injures Rose who was visiting Victor, but is killed by Dimitri. Dimitri reveals that he too feels for Rose but cannot have a relationship with her because of their age difference and because he won't be able to guard Lissa wholeheartedly if she is near him."
2075,Red Dragon,horror," In 1980, a serial killer, popularly nicknamed the Tooth Fairy, stalks and murders seemingly random families during sequential full moons. He first kills the Jacobi family in Birmingham, Alabama, then the Leeds family in Atlanta, Georgia. Two days after the Leeds murders, FBI agent Jack Crawford seeks out his protégé, Will Graham, a brilliant profiler who captured the serial killer Hannibal Lecter three years earlier, but retired after Lecter almost killed him. Crawford goes to Graham's Sugarloaf Key residence and pleads for his assistance; Graham reluctantly agrees. After visiting over the crime scenes with only minimal insight, he realizes that he must visit Lecter and seek his help in capturing the Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy is revealed to be a St. Louis film processing technician named Francis Dolarhyde. He is a disturbed individual who is obsessed with the William Blake painting ""The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun"". Dolarhyde is unable to control his violent, sexual urges, and believes that murdering people&mdash;or ""changing"" them, as he calls it&mdash;allows him to more fully ""become"" an alternate personality he calls the ""Great Red Dragon,"" after the dominant character in Blake's painting. Flashbacks reveal that his pathology is born from the systematic abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of both his sadistic grandmother and his stepfamily. As Graham investigates the case, he is continuously hounded by Freddy Lounds, a sleazy tabloid reporter. Meanwhile, Lecter's de facto jailer, Frederick Chilton, discovers a secret correspondence between Lecter and Dolarhyde, in which Lecter provides the killer with Graham's home address. Graham's wife and stepson are evacuated to a remote farm belonging to Crawford's brother. Graham tries to intercept the secret communication without Lecter's knowledge, but the doctor quickly realizes the ruse and humiliates the authorities by upping the stakes: in return for his help in capturing the Tooth Fairy, he requests a first-class meal in his cell and having his library privileges returned. Lounds becomes aware of the correspondence and tries to trick Graham into revealing details of the investigation by posing as the Tooth Fairy, but is found out. Hoping to lure the Tooth Fairy into a trap, Graham gives Lounds an interview in which he blatantly mischaracterizes the killer as an impotent homosexual. This infuriates Dolarhyde, who kidnaps Lounds, forces him to recant the allegations, bites off his lips and sets him on fire, leaving his maimed body outside his newspaper's offices; Lounds eventually dies. At about the same time, Dolarhyde falls in love with a blind co-worker named Reba McClane, which conflicts with his homicidal urges. In beginning a relationship with Reba, Dolarhyde starts to consciously resist the Dragon's ""possession"" of him; he goes to the Brooklyn Museum, beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolor of The Red Dragon. Graham eventually realizes that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home movies, which he could only have seen if he worked for the film processing lab that developed them. Dolarhyde's job gives him access to all home movies that pass through the company. When he sees Graham interviewing his boss, Dolarhyde realizes that they are on to him and goes to see Reba one last time. He finds her talking to a co-worker, Ralph Mandy, a man whom she actually dislikes. Believing that Reba is being unfaithful, Dolarhyde kills Mandy, kidnaps Reba and, having taken her to his house, sets the place on fire. He intends to kill her and then himself, but finds himself unable to shoot her. After Dolarhyde shoots himself, Reba escapes. Graham later comforts her, telling her that there is nothing wrong with her, and that the kindness and affection she showed Dolarhyde probably saved lives. However, it turns out Dolarhyde did not in fact shoot himself but left behind the body of Arnold Lang, a gas station attendant, in order to stage his own death. Dolarhyde attacks Graham at his Florida home, stabbing him in the face and permanently disfiguring him. Graham's wife, Molly, then fatally shoots Dolarhyde. While recovering, Graham receives a letter from Lecter, which bids him well and hopes that he isn't ""very ugly"". However, Crawford intercepts the letter and destroys it."
2076,Psycho II,horror," Norman Bates (disguised as a nun) escapes from the mental asylum where he was committed to at the end of the first novel. The police believe that Bates did not survive his escape attempt because of a fire. However, a growing body count causes his doctor to suspect that Bates is headed to Hollywood where a movie based upon his real-life murders is being filmed."
2077,Ghosts of Eden,horror," Ghosts of Eden set in 1947 is the story of a young woman who returns to her childhood home in Bar Harbor after spending several years in a mental ward. Ghosts of Eden introduces us to Saxon Faraday, a heroine struggling with a tragic past who unlocks the mystery surrounding her home, Roquefort Manor. Is she strong enough to battle the evil ancient entity she discovers there, or will she succumb as a victim of the Great Fire of 1947?"
2078,Apocalypse Memories,horror," Willow has arrived back in Sunnydale after spending time with Giles in England. She is terrified of using her magic powers again for fear of a return to dark magic consuming her. However, suddenly Sunnydale once again becomes a center of the weirdness when an angel named Michael brings on signs of the Apocalypse. The angel insists that this is not an artificial one, the type Buffy had stopped before, this is the natural and long-established end of the world. Willow must find a way to overcome her fear of magic in order to perform one of the most dangerous spells known to mankind; the Belial Siphon, which has not been performed before. Meanwhile, Buffy is trying to stop an Apocalypse of her own accord, yet Buffy cannot seem to fight what is thrown at her."
2079,The Howling,horror," When middle-class Karyn Beatty is attacked and raped in her Los Angeles home, she suffers a miscarriage and a nervous breakdown. She and her husband, Roy, leave the city and go to stay in the secluded Californian mountain village of Drago whilst Karyn recuperates. Although the town offers Karyn a quiet lifestyle and the locals are friendly, Karyn is disturbed when she continues to hear a strange howling sound at night coming from the woods outside of their new home. This puts further strain on her marriage as Roy believes she is becoming more and more unstable, but Karyn is adamant that there is something in the woods. As tension between the couple mounts, Roy begins an affair with one of the local women, a shopkeeper named Marcia Lura. However, on his way home, Roy is attacked in the woods by a large black wolf. Though the wolf only bites him, Roy becomes ill for several days. He was bitten by a werewolf, and has now become one himself. Karyn eventually discovers that the town's entire population are all in fact werewolves, and becomes trapped in Drago. She contacts her husband's best friend, Chris Halloran, who comes up from Los Angeles to rescue her. Chris arrives with some silver bullets which he had made at her insistence. That night, the two of them fend off a group of werewolves (one of which is Karyn's husband, Roy) and Karyn is forced to shoot the black werewolf (revealed to be Marcia Lura) in the head. In the commotion, a fire breaks out at Karyn's woodland house which sweeps through the woods and the entire town of Drago is engulfed in flames as Karyn and Chris escape from its cursed inhabitants. However, as they flee, they can still hear the howling in the distance. nl:The Howling"
2080,Pet Sematary,horror," Louis Creed, a doctor from Chicago, moves to a house near the small town of Ludlow, Maine with his family: wife Rachel; their two young children, Ellen (""Ellie"") and Gage; and Ellie's cat, Winston Churchill (""Church""). Their neighbor, an elderly man named Jud Crandall, warns Louis and Rachel about the highway that runs past their house; it is used by trucks from a nearby chemical plant that often pass by at high speeds. Jud and Louis become friends. Since Louis's father died when he was three, his relationship with Jud takes on a father-son dimension. A few weeks after the Creeds move in, Jud takes the family on a walk in the woods behind their home. A well-tended path leads to a pet cemetery (misspelled ""sematary"") where the children of the town bury their deceased animals, most of them dogs and cats killed by the trucks on the road. A heated argument erupts between Louis and Rachel the next day. Rachel disapproves of discussing death and she worries about how Ellie may be affected by what she saw at the cemetery. It is later explained that Rachel was traumatized by the early death of her sister, Zelda, from spinal meningitis. Louis has a traumatic experience as director of the University of Maine's campus health service when Victor Pascow, a student who is fatally injured after being struck by an automobile, addresses his dying words personally to Louis even though they have never met. On the night following Pascow's death, Louis is visited by the student's walking, conscious corpse, which leads him to the cemetery and refers specifically to the ""deadfall"", a dangerous pile of tree and bush limbs that form a barrier at the back. Pascow warns Louis not to ""go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to."" Louis wakes up in bed the next morning convinced it was a dream, but discovers his feet and the bedsheets covered with dirt and pine needles. Louis dismisses the episode as a result of stress caused by Pascow's death coupled with his wife's anxieties about death. He accepts the situation as a bout of sleep walking. Louis is forced to confront death at Halloween, when Jud's wife, Norma, suffers a near-fatal heart attack. Thanks to Louis's immediate attention, Norma recovers. Jud is grateful for Louis's help, and decides to repay him after Church is run over by a truck at Thanksgiving. Rachel and the children are visiting her parents in Chicago, and Louis frets over breaking the news to Ellie. Jud takes him to the pet cemetery, supposedly to bury Church. Instead, Jud leads Louis beyond the deadfall to ""the real cemetery"": an ancient burial ground that was once used by the Micmacs, a Native American tribe. Following Jud's instructions, Louis buries the cat and constructs a cairn. The next afternoon, the cat returns home. However, while he used to be vibrant and lively, he now acts strangely and ""a little dead,"" in Louis's words. Church hunts for mice and birds much more often, but rips them apart without eating them. The cat also gives off an unpleasant odor. Louis is disturbed by Church's resurrection and begins to regret his decision. Jud tells Louis about his dog Spot, who was brought back to life in the same manner when Jud was twelve. Louis asks if a person was ever buried in the Micmac grounds, to which Jud answers vehemently no. Several months later, Gage, who had just learned to walk, is run over by a speeding truck. At Gage's wake, Rachel's father, Irwin, who never respected Louis or his daughter's decision to marry him, berates Louis harshly, blaming Louis for the boy's death. The two fight in the funeral home's viewing room and upset the casket; Rachel witnesses the fight and becomes hysterical. Overcome with grief and despair, Louis considers bringing his son back to life with the power of the burial ground. Jud, guessing what Louis is planning, attempts to dissuade him by telling him the story of Timmy Baterman, a young man from Ludlow who was killed charging a machine gun nest on the road to Rome during World War II. His father, Bill, put Timmy's body in the burial ground, where he came back to life, and was seen by terrified townsfolk soon thereafter. Jud and three of his friends went to the Baterman house to confront the pair, but Timmy confronted each of them with indiscretions they had committed, indiscretions he had no way of knowing, thus giving the impression that the resurrected Timmy was actually some sort of demon who had possessed Timmy's body. Jud and his friends fled the house horrified, and Bill shot his son and burned his house to the ground, killing himself. Jud concludes that Gage died because he showed Louis the burial ground. There are hints that at some point the burial ground was used for victims of cannibalism and that it became the haunt of the Wendigo, a terrible creature of the forest, whose mere presence gives men a taste for the flesh of their own kind. In Jud's words the ""ground had gone sour"" and now corrupts any animal or person buried there. Despite Jud's warning and his own reservations, Louis's grief and guilt spur him to carry out his plan. Louis has Rachel and Ellie visit her parents in Chicago again, not telling them his intentions, intending to bury Gage and then spend a couple of days with him in private to 'diagnose' his son and determine if what happened to Timmy has happened to him. Louis exhumes his son's body and takes him to the burial site. Along the trail, the Wendigo nearly frightens him away but Louis's determination, combined with the power of the burial site, keeps him moving. Ellie has a nightmare featuring Victor Pascow on the flight to Chicago. Because of Ellie's near hysteria, and an agreement between Rachel and her daughter as to Louis's behavior, Rachel attempts to fly back to Maine, but misses her connecting flight at Boston and decides to drive the rest of the distance. Louis buries Gage at the burial ground. Gage returns as a demonic shadow of his former self, able to talk like an adult. He breaks into Jud's house and taunts Jud about his wife's implied infidelity, then kills Jud with one of Louis' scalpels. When Rachel arrives at Jud's house, Gage kills her also (and, it is implied, partially eats her corpse). This event pushes Louis's mind into its final stage of insanity. Louis kills Church and Gage with a fatal dose of morphine, and then grieves for his son by sitting in the corner of the hallway. Louis, now completely insane and having prematurely aged with shockingly white hair, burns down Jud's house, then carries Rachel's body to the burial ground, saying that he ""waited too long"" with Gage but is confident that Rachel will come back the same as before. After being interrogated by investigators about the fire, Louis waits until nightfall for Rachel to return. Playing solitaire, he hears his resurrected wife walk into the house, and the novel ends with Rachel speaking ""Darling"", her mouth sounding as if it is full of dirt."
2081,There Shall Be No Darkness,horror," The story takes place on a manor in the Scottish countryside. A wealthy man named Tom Newcliffe has invited a group of artists and friends together for a weekend gathering. Of particular importance to the story is Jan Jarmoskowski, a Polish concert pianist. Paul Foote, a painter, detects hints that Jan may in fact be a werewolf, and he is proven right. The musician transforms under the light of the full moon, and the guests at first prepare some makeshift silver bullets and attempt to track him, but this results in nothing more than a dead hunting dog and some wasted ammunition. Following this, the group fortifies itself inside the mansion to wait for their quarry to return, at which point they hope to be able to defeat him."
2082,Blood and Fog,horror," Spike and the current Slayer of 1888 form an alliance to battle the Jack the Ripper, a prostitute-murdering madman. It is learned Jack is not at all human. The alliance fails and Jack survives to come to Sunnydale in the modern day. He has plans, and using a mystical fog, he desires to kill more of the human race, which he hates. Soon, the fog does arise, which is used as cover as a demon army rampages through the streets of Sunnydale. The threat is neutralized; unfortunately there are heavy citizen casualties."
2083,Procession of the Dead,horror," The story begins with Capac Raimi getting off a train to begin his new life as a gangster in a city controlled by a man known simply as 'the Cardinal'. Leaving the train station, Capac hailed a taxi and headed to his uncle's home. His uncle Theo was a gangster who lost his wife during the birth of their child, who died shortly afterwards. Because of this Theo became severely depressed and his power in the city slipped. Capac joined him as his heir and learnt the tricks of the trade. Soon they got a deal that would aid them massively in the gangster business. Capac, Theo and three guards went to meet the gangster. Before anything was arranged, Theo and the guards were shot dead by gangsters and Capac was taken to the 'Party Central' to face the Cardinal, head of all gangsters and the most powerful man in the city. As Capac worked under the Cardinal, he eventually discovered his real identity, the secrets behind his past and a group of individuals known as 'the Ayuamarcans'."
2084,The Ravenous,horror," The Ravenous introduces us to Eddie Spears, a teenager who is into video games and hanging out with his best friend, Jess Brown. Eddie has a problem: he can hear distant whispers and this causes severe headaches. When he discovers the true cause for his town's prosperity: a sacrificial pseudo-Druid cult, Eddie comes to realize he has a special gift—but can he use it in time to save his sister's life?"
2085,Summer Knight,horror," It's two years after the events in Storm Front. Dresden, struggling with curing Susan of her vampirism infection, is approached by Mab, the Winter Queen. Mab purchased Dresden’s debt from his fairy godmother, Leanansidhe. Queen Mab tells Dresden he can pay off his debt by doing three favors. The first favor is for him to find the murderer of the Summer Knight Ronald Reuel and recover his stolen mantle, declaring Dresden her chosen Emissary. Dresden refuses her request, but is forced by the White Council to accept as his Trial, else be stripped of his title of wizard and handed over to the Red Court vampires as a peace offering. Dresden finds Elaine, his former fellow apprentice and lover, who is the Emissary of the Summer Court and heavily indebted to Aurora, the Summer Lady. Dresden goes to Reuel’s funeral, looking for a group of teenage half-human/half-Fae changelings who were Reuel's friends, but they flee and attack, believing him to be in service to Winter. Dresden gets information and a guide to the Winter and Summer Ladies. Dresden’s interview with the sadistic Winter Lady, Maeve, convinces him that she did not kill the Summer Knight. Approached by the changelings to find their friend Lily, after Dresden tells Meryl and Fix that he will look for Lily. Dresden discovers Elaine in the back seat of his car, dying of multiple stab wounds. He follows Elaine’s delirious advice to take her to the Summer Lady, Aurora. Aurora heals Elaine, and briefly comforts Dresden. She is not forthcoming with any details on Reuel’s murder or Lily’s disappearance. Instead, she explains that the death of the Summer Knight and the theft of his mantle of power shifted the power balance in favor of Winter. Summer must now attack Winter at Midsummer to maintain control over their remaining power. Dresden heads north to an isolated spot on Lake Michigan and summons his fairy godmother, Leanansidhe. Dresden tells his godmother that he needs to see the Fae Queens and Mothers. Leanansidhe instead takes him transported to an ethereal Chicago-over-Chicago and a great Stone Table. This sacrificial stone that maintains the balance between the Winter and Summer Sidhe. The power of blood spilled upon that table will change the balance of power between the Courts. Leanansidhe says she can do no more for him and disappears. Dresden still needs to speak with the Mothers of both Courts. He tracks Elaine to O'Hare International Airport and persuades her to call in some favors so he can get an invitation to see the Mothers. Rather than provide him with answers, they goad him into answering his own questions, that Aurora is the only Queen capable of stealing the Summer Knight's mantle, and therefore one of his killers. Lily captured the mantle, being the closest Summer fae at the time of his death, and was turned to stone by Aurora, which is why no one could find either Lily or the mantle. As a reward for his correct deductions, they give him a Cloth of Unraveling and their blessings. Victorious at last, Dresden returns to Elaine and is ambushed. When Dresden regains consciousness, he is the prisoner of Aurora, the Winter Knight Lloyd Slate--and Elaine, who has been coerced into helping with the plot. Aurora explains that she plans to sacrifice Lily on the Table to give Winter the power of the Summer Knight, permanently destroying the balance and freeing humanity from the constant collateral damage of the eternal Faerie War. Elaine then binds Dresden and leaves him to drown. Recognizing the spell he and Elaine invented, Dresden easily escapes. Collecting his friends, they fight their way to the Stone Table and the Winter Queen, telling her of Aurora's plan. Dresden confronts Aurora and unleashes an army of pixies armed with steel-bladed box cutters--cold iron, which is deadly to the Fae. After the pixies kill Aurora, Queen Mab congratulates Dresden on his success, and offers Dresden the mantle of the Winter Knight, which he refuses. Queen Mab grants safe passage to the White Council. Having passed his Trial, he retains his wizard accolades, and protection from the Red Court. The new Summer Lady, Lily, and her new Knight, Fix, pay Dresden a visit and grant him a favor of Summer in thanks for his services."
2086,Taltos,horror," As the trilogy continues, the reader is introduced to Ashlar, founder of a multi-million dollar toy corporation based in New York City -- and a Taltos, possibly the last of his kind on earth. He is quietly reflecting back on his long life when he gets a call from a friend named Samuel. A male Taltos has been seen in the glen of Donnelaith, and there is someone with information about the male. Ashlar is shocked, as he hasn't seen one of his kind in centuries, and immediately flies to London to meet with his friend. As for Rowan Mayfair, after burying her daughter, the Taltos Emaleth, she goes into a semi-catatonic state. She walks, she bathes, she eats, but she does not speak, and does not respond to those around her. Her husband Michael Curry and adopted designess Mona are worried for her, and plead with her to speak. A visiting cousin by the name of Mary Jane takes one look at Rowan and declares that she is still there, and that she will speak again in her own time. And so she does that same afternoon when we discover that her beloved friend, Aaron Lightner, an excommunicated Talamasca scholar who recently married into the family, has been deliberately run over by a car. She immediately goes to the morgue, taking Mona with her. After saying her good-bye to him, she makes plans with Michael to go to London and seek revenge on the Talamasca, whom she believes to be responsible for her friend's death. Mona discovers that she is pregnant by Michael, and after Rowan gives her blessing, she ecstatically shares the news with the family. Michael and Rowan leave for London to meet up with Yuri Stefano, a pupil and friend of Aaron who has also been excommunicated by the Talamasca. Through Yuri they meet the Taltos Ashlar and his friend Samuel, who is one of the Little People of Donnelaith (Dwarf-like creatures which are Taltos who never fed on their mother's milk—becoming stunted). Ashlar has by then killed the Superior General of the Talamasca, Anton Marcus, for his part in Aaron's death. They kidnap Stuart Gordon, an elderly member who has also had a hand in the death and the mysterious goings-on of late. Through him we discover that he and two of his pupils have hatched a scheme to unite Lasher with a female Taltos they have possession of so that they may witness the birth of a Taltos. To make sure that Aaron and Yuri didn't catch on, the pupils, Marklin and Tommy, sent fake communications to them that they believed came from the Elders, the governing force behind the Talamasca. When Aaron and Yuri continued to interfere, the Elders ""excommunicated"" the pair. Stuart is forced to take the group into the countryside, where he keeps the female Taltos. Ashlar comes face to face with this female, exciting Stuart, who demands that they give birth to a child. Ashlar embraces the female, named Tessa, and informs Stuart that she is unable to bear any children. He points out that every strand of her hair is white, indicating her great age and her inability to conceive. This breaks Stuart's heart. And after finally knowing what has been going on, Ashlar decides to kill Stuart for all the trouble he has caused: killing people to achieve his goals. But Rowan beats him to the punch, using her strong telepathic abilities to cause a stroke. Yuri takes Tessa to the Talamasca, who now know what has been going on. They welcome Tessa with open arms, and punish Marklin and Tommy for their treachery by burying them alive. Meanwhile, Mona has discovered that the child she carries is a Taltos, a female named Morrigan. She runs off with Mary Jane to Fontevrault, an old plantation sunken into the marsh that has been owned by a separate branch of the Mayfair family for generations. There Mary Jane's grandmother, Dolly Jean, helps deliver the new Taltos, who is a spitting image, if taller version, of her mother. Mona then and there names Morrigan the Designee of the Mayfair Legacy, and she and Mary Jane make plans for the future in case Rowan and Michael try to kill Morrigan. Ashlar takes Rowan and Michael with him to New York, and tells them the story of his long life; how the Taltos once thrived on a tropical island north of the British Isles that apparently was a semi-active volcano. They had been there since ""The Time Before the Moon"" (briefly mentioned by the vampire Maharet in The Queen of the Damned, the third installment in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles), and lived innocently and peacefully until the land began to shift under their feet. The water became too hot, and the animals died. The tribe escapes in time and flees south to the bitter cold of Scotland. From there they can see the island as it sinks into the sea. They make do in their new home, becoming hunter-gatherers, and occasionally spotting the early humans, whom they kept as pets once in while. They break off into different tribes and the largest of them, led by Ashlar, goes south to Somerset where they settle. Their peace is often disrupted by the Celtic raids on the land. To adapt and live peacefully among humans, they become the Picts, and Ashlar their king. When Christianity comes to them in the form of St Columba, Ashlar converts with more than half his tribe. But there is a conflict between the Christians and non-Christians, and war ensues. Soon only five Taltos males left, and they all become priests, including Ashlar. Several years later, he attempts to tell his story to a fellow priest, but he only laughs and says that the story is blasphemy. Ashlar is disillusioned, and goes on a pilgrimage, leaving Donnelaith forever. So ends his story. Rowan and Michael return to New Orleans, where Michael is introduced to his daughter, Morrigan. He and Rowan accepts Mona's decision to make Morrigan the Designee, and Morrigan settles in until Ashlar sends gifts to his new friends. When he doesn't hear from them, he goes to the First Street house to see them. There he sees this young female Taltos, who is in a frenzy. She can smell Ashlar on the gifts, and demands to know where she can find him. She catches his scent on the wind, and sees him standing outside. She breaks through a window and runs into his arms, and they run away together. fr:Taltos it:Taltos, il ritorno nl:Taltos ru:Талтос"
2087,The House of the Seven Gables,horror," The novel is set in the mid-19th century, with glimpses into the history of the house, which was built in the late 17th century. The primary interest of this book is in the subtle and involved descriptions of character and motive. The house of the title is a gloomy New England mansion, haunted from its foundation by fraudulent dealings, accusations of witchcraft, and sudden death. The current resident, the dignified but desperately poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, opens a shop in a side room to support her brother Clifford, who is about to leave prison after serving thirty years for murder. She refuses all assistance from her unpleasant wealthy cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. A distant relative, the lively and pretty young Phoebe, turns up and quickly becomes invaluable, charming customers and rousing Clifford from depression. A delicate romance grows between Phoebe and the mysterious attic lodger Holgrave, who is writing a history of the Pyncheon family. Phoebe takes leave of the family to return to her country home for a brief visit, but will return soon. Unfortunately, before she leaves, Clifford stands at the large arched window above the stairs and has a sudden urge to jump upon viewing the mass of humanity passing before him and his recollection of his youth lost to prison. That instance, coupled with Phoebe's departure — she was the only happy and beautiful thing in the home for the depressed Clifford to dwell on — sends Clifford into a bed-ridden state. Judge Pyncheon arrives at the house one day, and threatens to have Clifford committed to an insane asylum if he does not disclose information regarding mystical ""eastern lands"" of Maine that the family is rumored to own. The deed however has been lost. Before Clifford can be brought before the Judge (which, it is implied, will completely destroy Clifford's sanity), the Judge mysteriously dies in the same chair as the historical Pyncheon who stole the land on which the house was later built from a settler named Maule. Hepzibah and Clifford escape on a train (then a very new form of transport) after the Judge dies. The townsfolk murmur about their sudden disappearance, and, upon Phoebe's return, the Judge's body is discovered. Hepzibah and Clifford return shortly, to Phoebe's relief. Events from past and present throw light on the circumstances which sent Clifford to prison, proving his innocence. Holgrave is discovered to be a descendant of Maule but bears the Pyncheon family no ill will, mostly due to his feelings for Phoebe. The romance ends with the characters leaving the old house to start a new life, free of the burdens of the past."
2088,Bitten,horror," The main character of ""Bitten"" is Elena Michaels, an ordinary woman - who also happens to be a werewolf. She lives in Toronto, Canada and writes for a popular newspaper. Elena is also the only known female werewolf in the world. This gives her a very special place in the werewolf world, and especially with the werewolf pack. She struggles to deal with her other-ness and to assimilate to the human world. She also contends with her terrible childhood, and with the man who bit her and turned her into a werewolf. Elena has managed to settle into a somewhat normal existence, living with her ad-exec boyfriend and ignoring her wolf side as much as possible. However, she learns that her Pack (the governing body of werewolves) is in trouble, and comes to their aid, flying to Stonehaven, the country estate of the pack Alpha. It is in Bear Valley, a fictional city in up-state New York. When Elena arrives, she is greeted by her ex-lover, Clayton Danvers, who is also the man who bit her and made her a werewolf (without her consent). Clayton is also the bodyguard and foster-son to Jeremy Danvers, the pack Alpha (leader). Elena learns that a local woman was found murdered on Stonehaven's land, and that she had been savaged by what authorities thought to be a dog. However, the Pack has determined that she was murdered by a Mutt, a rogue werewolf. They track the mutt and find out he is a recently escaped killer, who has even more recently been turned by a bite into a werewolf. Clay and Elena chase him into a rave and after several of the partyers are killed, the police shoot him in wolf form. Soon, the rest of the Pack arrives on the scene to help with the problem: Antonio Sorrentino, his son Nicholas Sorrentino, Logan Jonsen, and Peter Myers. The werewolf Pack are the self-appointed governing body of the werewolf world, and they kill to keep the existence of werewolves a secret. This means if they feel any non Pack wolves(whom they term ""Mutts"") become noticeable to humans, they kill them. They kill humans too, but not as often. First, Logan and Peter are killed. This greatly saddens Elena, and she starts sleeping(cheating) with Clay again, without telling her boyfriend, Phillip. As Logan and Peter are not the best fighters, the Pack wonders why that would happen. They also wonder why any Mutt would dare to go near the Pack. Most are terrified of being noticed by them. Then Jeremy, the Alpha is attacked. Finally, the pack figures out that the ""mutts"", tired of being brutalized by the Pack, are trying to free themselves from their rule. To do this one mutt in particular, Daniel, who has reason to hate Clay from childhood, has started turning human killers and other escaped convicts into werewolves to fight the pack."
2089,The Phantom of the Opera,horror," The novel opens with a prologue in which Gaston Leroux claims that Erik, the ""Phantom of the Opera"", was a real person. We are then introduced to Christine Daaé who with her father, a famous fiddler, travelled all over Europe playing folk and religious music. Her father was known to be the best wedding-fiddler in the land. When Christine is six, her mother dies and her father is brought to rural France by a patron, Professor Valerius. During Christine's childhood (which is described retrospectively in the early chapters of the book), her father tells her many stories featuring an ""Angel of Music"", who, like a muse, is the personification of musical inspiration. Christine meets and befriends the young Raoul, Viscount of Chagny, who also enjoys her father's many stories. One of Christine and Raoul's favourite stories is one of Little Lotte, a girl with golden hair and blue eyes who is visited by the Angel of Music and possesses a heavenly voice. On his deathbed, Christine's father tells her that he will send the Angel of Music to her from Heaven. Christine now lives with Mamma Valerius, the elderly widow of her father's benefactor. Christine is eventually given a position in the chorus at the Paris Opera House (Palais Garnier). Not long after she arrives there, she begins hearing a beautiful, unearthly voice which sings to her and speaks to her. She believes this must be the Angel of Music and asks him if he is. The Voice agrees and offers to teach her ""a little bit of heaven's music"". The Voice, however, belongs to Erik, a physically-deformed and mentally-disturbed charismatic genius who was one of the architects who took part in the construction of the opera and who secretly built a home for himself in the cellars. He has been extorting money from the Opera's management for many years. Unknown to Christine, at least at first, he falls in love with her. With the help of the Voice, Christine triumphs at the gala on the night of the old managers' retirement. Her old childhood friend Raoul hears her and remembers his love for her. A time after the gala, the Paris Opera performs Faust, with the prima donna Carlotta playing the lead. In response to a refused surrender of Box Five to the Opera Ghost, Carlotta loses her voice and the Opera's grand chandelier plummets into the audience. After the chandelier accident, Erik kidnaps Christine to his home in the cellars and reveals his true identity. He plans to keep her there only a few days, hoping she will come to love him, and Christine begins to find herself attracted to her abductor. But she causes Erik to change his plans when she unmasks him and, to the horror of both, beholds his face, which according to the book, resembles the face of a rotting corpse. Erik goes into a frenzy, stating she probably thinks his face is another mask, and whilst digging her fingers in to show it was really his face he shouts, ""I am Don Juan Triumphant!"" before crawling away, crying. Fearing that she will leave him, he decides to keep her with him forever, but when Christine requests release after two weeks, he agrees on condition that she wear his ring and be faithful to him. Up on the roof of the Opera, Christine tells Raoul of Erik taking her to the cellars. Raoul promises to take Christine away where Erik can never find her and to take her even if she resists. Raoul tells Christine he shall act on his promise the following day, to which Christine agrees, but she pities Erik and will not go until she has sung for him one last time. Christine then realizes the ring has slipped off her finger and fallen into the streets somewhere, and begins to panic. The two leave. But neither is aware that Erik has been listening to their conversation or that it has driven him to jealous frenzy. During the week and that night, Erik has been terrorising anyone who stood in his way or in that of Christine's career, including the managers. The following night, Erik kidnaps Christine during a production of Faust (by drugging the gas men and switching the lights off, he spirits Christine off the stage before anyone turned the lights on). Back in the cellars, Erik tries to force Christine into marriage. If she refuses he threatens to destroy the entire Opera using explosives he has planted in the cellars, killing them and everyone in the floors above. Christine continues to refuse, until she realizes that Raoul and an old acquaintance of Erik's known only as ""The Persian"", in an attempt to rescue her, have been trapped in Erik's hot torture chamber. To save them and the people above, Christine agrees to marry Erik. At first, Erik tries to drown Raoul and the Persian in the water used to douse the explosives, stating that Christine doesn't need another. But Christine begs and offers to be his ""living bride"", promising him not to kill herself after becoming his bride, as she had both contemplated and attempted earlier in the novel. Erik rescues the Persian and the young Raoul from his torture chamber thereafter. When Erik is alone with Christine, he lifts his mask a little to kiss her on the forehead, and Christine allows him to do this. Erik, who admits that he has never before in his life received or been allowed to give a kiss – not even from his own mother – is overcome with emotion. Christine gives him a kiss back. He lets Christine go and tells her ""Go and marry the boy whenever you wish,"" explaining, ""I know you love him"". She leaves on the condition that when he dies she will come back and bury him. Being an old acquaintance, The Persian is told of all these secrets by Erik himself, and upon his express request, the Persian advertises Erik's death in the newspaper about three weeks later. The cause of death is revealed to be a broken heart, and as promised, Christine returns to bury Erik and give his ring back to him."
2090,Mary Reilly,horror," The novel is about a young girl working at the home of Dr. Henry Jekyll who falls in love with her master. Jekyll's assistant, Edward Hyde, is generally considered her nemesis. This however is often debated amongst readers."
2091,Lunar Park,horror," The novel begins with an inflated and parodic but reasonably accurate portrayal of Ellis' early fame. It details incidents of his wild drug use and his publicly humiliating book tours to promote Glamorama. The novel dissolves into fiction as Ellis describes a liaison with an actress named Jayne Dennis, whom he later marries, and with whom he conceives an (initially) illegitimate child. From this point the fictional Ellis' life reflects the real Ellis' only in some descriptions of the past and possibly in his general sentiments. Ellis and Jayne move to fictional Midland, an affluent suburban town outside New York City, which they no longer consider safe due to pervasive terrorist acts in a post-9/11 America. Fictional incidents include suicide bombings in Wal-Marts and a dirty bomb detonated in Florida. Strange incidents start happening on a Halloween night, some involving Sarah's (Ellis' fictional stepdaughter) Terby doll. As the novel progresses, the haunting of Ellis' McMansion and questions over the death of his father become increasingly prominent. With his history of drug use and alcoholism, his wife, children, and housekeeper are understandably skeptical of his claims that the house is haunted."
2092,Carrie,horror," The book uses false documents to frame the story of one of the worst disasters in American history--the destruction of the town of Chamberlain, Maine by high school student Carietta ""Carrie"" White. For years, Carrie has been abused at home by her unstable Christian fundamentalist mother, Margaret White. She does not fare much better at Thomas Ewen High School; she has been a social outcast since first grade, and has been the focus of bullying due to her religious beliefs, her outdated clothing and her plain appearance. At the beginning of the novel, Carrie has her first period while showering after gym class. Carrie is terrified, having no concept of menstruation; her mother never spoke to her about it, and she believes that she is bleeding to death. Instead of sympathizing with the frightened Carrie, her classmates throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. As Carrie is aided by her gym teacher, Rita Desjardin, a light bulb in the shower burns out. The next day, Miss Desjardin viciously berates the girls involved in the shower incident and orders them to serve a week's detention in the gym. One of the girls, Chris Hargensen, refuses to attend and is suspended for three days, and is also banned from Ewen High's prom. Meanwhile, Sue Snell, one of the girls who joined in taunting Carrie, feels remorse for her prior actions and offers to become her friend. Meanwhile, Carrie gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, trying to keep them under control. With prom fast approaching, Sue sets Carrie up with her handsome boyfriend, Tommy Ross. Carrie's mother tries to force her not to go, but Carrie uses her powers to help stand up for herself. Chris and her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, hatch a plan to humiliate Carrie in front of the entire school. Chris has Billy fill two buckets with pig blood, and rigs them over the stage on a rafter hidden out of sight. On prom night, Carrie is tormented by her mother begging for her not to leave the house. Carrie leaves anyway and arrives with Tommy. Carrie is nervous at first, but everyone begins treating her equally. Soon Carrie begins enjoying herself and Tommy begins to become attracted to her. Meanwhile, Sue continually worries about what's happening at the prom—and at the same time worries if she's pregnant. Carrie and Tommy are elected prom king and queen after Chris's henchwoman, Tina Blake, exchanges fake ballots for the real ones. Once on stage, Chris drenches Carrie and Tommy with the pig blood. Everyone begins pointing and laughing. One of the buckets falls on Tommy's head, mortally wounding him. Carrie runs off the stage. She is tripped, gets back up, and rushes outside. Contemplating her life in solitary confinement, she remembers her power and goes back to exact revenge on everyone who tormented her. She locks the doors and turns on the sprinkler system. But after viewing two kids die of electrocution, her mind finally snaps; she decides to set fire to the gym. She leaves the prom-goers and chaperones to die in the fire, including Tommy. Miss Desjardin and a few other students manage to survive the destruction by fleeing through the fire escape. Carrie decides to take out her pent-up anger on Chamberlain. She blows up a gas station and sets her entire neighborhood on fire. She also destroys the town's fire hydrants, preventing any attempt at putting out the fires. Notably, Carrie goes to a church and prays, all the while manipulating a series of power lines outside, killing several civilians surveying the event. Sue rushes to the school and watches it explode, which destroys a portion of the town. Carrie makes her way home and confronts her mother, who has now gone completely mad, and tells Carrie of the night she was raped and conceived Carrie. Carrie's mother then stabs her in the shoulder with a carving knife. In retaliation, Carrie kills her mother by stopping her heart. Mortally wounded, Carrie then makes her way to the local roadhouse where her father got drunk and raped her mother the night she was conceived. Chris and Billy, who happened to be making love inside, receive word from Billy's friend of what has happened to Chamberlain, and Billy plans on leaving town with Chris. They exit the roadhouse just as Carrie arrives, and attempt to run her down with Billy's car, but Carrie telekinetically sends the car crashing into the roadhouse, killing Chris and Billy. Carrie then collapses in the parking lot from blood loss. Sue then goes to the roadhouse where she finds Carrie in the parking lot. Carrie talks telepathically with Sue and blames her for the prank, but after scanning Sue's brain, she finds out that Sue had no idea of the prank and that she had set her up with Tommy to apologize for the gym shower incident. Carrie does not forgive Sue, but believes her and then cries out for her mother before dying from the stab wound in her shoulder. Terror-stricken, Sue runs away from the roadhouse and after distancing herself from it, she collapses and has her period, meaning that she miscarried if pregnant. Four months later, Chamberlain has become a ghost town. By then, 440 people have been confirmed dead--including more than half of Ewen High's senior class--and 18 are still missing. The 'Black Prom' incident hits the nation harder than the assassination of John F. Kennedy. After interviewing the survivors of the prom, science begins to take telekinesis seriously plus many schools across the country start to crack down more on bullying. Miss Desjardin and school principal Henry Grayle both resign, consumed with guilt over not reaching out to Carrie sooner. In 1986, Sue writes a memoir of her experience entitled My Name is Susan Snell, which warns the reader not to forget about the events that took place in Chamberlain, otherwise something like it may happen again. The book closes with a letter written by a woman in Tennessee whose niece is developing telekinetic powers."
2093,Mister B. Gone,horror," The story begins by immediately breaking the fourth wall, telling the reader to ""Burn this book!"" It is revealed that the narrator is some sort of presence trapped within the novel. The presence understands that the reader isn't going to burn the book without hearing some sort of story, and so it begins to tell its tale. The narrator reveals himself as a lesser demon named Jakabok Botch, who lived a traumatized childhood in Hell, especially due to his brutish, physically abusive demon of a father. To prevent himself from losing his mind, Jakabok decides to write violent, hate-filled papers in which he commits torture and patricide. Eventually, his mother comes across these papers, and confronts Jakabok, telling him that she wishes he was never born. She commands that he burn the papers immediately, and Jakabok reluctantly obeys. While watching the papers burn, Jakabok passes out and lands face down in the fire. His father either fails to notice or simply ignores his son's anguish, choosing to beat his mother instead. Jakabok is later dragged from the flames by his father, severely burnt and disfigured. Fearing further abuse, Jakabok seizes a knife and flees, eventually coming across a peculiar sight: raw steak and beer, hanging as though it is on a fishing wire. The sight causes Jakabok's pursuing father to forget about inflicting pain on his son, approaching the free meal. It is revealed that the steak and beer is hanging from fishing wire, and Jakabok and his father are caught in the trap. They are ""reeled"" out of Hell. While ascending, Jakabok's father threatens and curses his son as Jakabok starts cutting away at his father's net, attempting to make it so his father, Pappy Gatmuss, will fall to his death (for if Gatmuss and Jakabok is brought to wherever it is they are being dragged, Gatmuss will kill Jakabok for sure.) Seeing Jakabok attempt to kill him, Gatmuss tries to play for sympathy, lying about his love for his son in order to gain pity. As they breach the first circle of hell, they see the crack they are being dragged into, which causes Gatmuss to panic and become hysteric (he seems to fear the light.) He struggles in his nets, which causes the already weakened ropes to snap, and Jakabok's father fatally falls back into Hell while Jakabok is dragged into the realm of the living. Emerging, Jakabok finds himself in the 14th century, under the captivity of a corrupt priest and his partners. They begin to ""judge Jakabok's worth"", when he decides to run off into the forest. He approaches a young girl - one of the partners' daughters - in the midst of unholy ground, which is covered in demonic gore. He instantly falls in love, and asks if she would like to run off with him. She defies him, and so he smacks her face into the burning cauldron which she is working by. The priests' partners, who had been chasing him, see the girl and are distracted as Jakabok runs off. Jakabok then encounters a couple in the grass. Jakabok is forced to kill the hostile male counterpart, taking his clothes. He wanders into a crowd trying to blend in as a peasant, but his inhuman feet give his disguise away. As the crowd approaches to massacre him, a pair of soldiers decide to take him away to be judged by an Archbishop. While being escorted away, one of the men kills the other. After horrendously slaughtering the crowd, the man reveals himself to Jakabok - now referred to as ""Mister B."" - as a powerful demon known as Quitoon. Quitoon and Mister B. head off, and for the next one hundred years cause a great deal of calamity in the countryside. Eventually, the two find themselves in disagreement of each other, and separate after Quitoon threatens Jakabok. Jakabok takes refuge in the German town of Mainz, where he believes Quitoon has headed to, in order to reconcile his differences. He stumbles across Johannes Gutenberg and his company - including the Archbishop and Quitoon - who claims to possess a secret so powerful that it could rock the foundations of even Heaven and Hell. The secret turns out to be the first printing press, over which a large battle soon erupts between the celestial and the infernal. Gutenberg's wife is revealed to be an angel. Jakabok is wounded and passes out. When he comes to, he discovers the conflict has ended. Jakabok enters a room in which he sees the angels and demons conversing over the secret, where the Archbishop reveals himself to be a demon. They spot Jakabok, and argue over how to keep him silent about the secret. Instead of destroying him, they turn his very essence into words, and embed him onto paper. At this point, Jakabok - after several persuading attempts throughout the story - threatens the reader one final time to burn the book and set him free. After realizing that the reader is heartless and cold, he gives up on asking. He decides to stop telling the story, and instead chooses to wait for another person to open the book and obey his demands to set the book ablaze. After all, he concludes, ""words know how to wait."""
2094,Ghost Story,horror," The novel opens with a man named Donald Wanderley traveling with a young girl whom he has apparently kidnapped. Eventually Donald and the girl arrive in Panama City, Florida, at which point the novel jumps back in time to the events of the previous winter. Living in the small New York town of Milburn are four elderly men who are members of a group called the Chowder Society. John Jaffrey, a doctor; Lewis Benedikt, a retired entrepreneur; Sears James, an attorney; and Ricky Hawthorne, an attorney and James' partner. For the past fifty years these best friends have gathered together and told each other stories and have been great companions. Once upon a time, however, their group consisted of five members. One year earlier Jaffrey had thrown a party at his house in honor of a visiting actress, and their fifth member, Edward Wanderly, had died in an upstairs bedroom during the festivities. When his body was found there was a look of absolute horror on his face, as if he had been frightened to death. Ever since that night the friends have been plagued with horrible nightmares, and have taken to telling each other ghost stories. At one of their meetings, Sears tells them a The Turn of the Screw-like ghost story about when he was a young man. Before deciding to attend law school James had taken a teaching position in a rural community. He developed a fascination with one of his students, a young boy named Fenny Bate. Fenny and his sister were ostracized by the community, and upon making some inquiries he finds out why. The two children once had an older brother named Gregory, and it was generally believed that Gregory sexually molested his young brother. The parents of the siblings were dead, and Gregory was their guardian. One day while repairing a roof Gregory fell off the ladder and was killed, and someone thought they saw the two young Bate children running away from the scene. Sears tells his friends that in time he began to see a threatening young man hanging around the school, and he eventually comes to believe it to be the spirit of Gregory Bate. Sears attempted to save Fenny from the clutches of his dead brother, but to no avail. Fenny died, and Sears was legally obligated to finish out the school year and then he left the small community. The next morning after telling his story Sears and Ricky are called out to the farm of one of their clients, who has found some mutilated livestock in his field. Later in the car Sears reveals to Ricky that the previous night's story was not fictitious, but had actually happened to him in his youth. Sears also admits that he is scared, as are all the members of the Chowder Society. They decide to write to Edward's nephew Donald Wanderly, as Donald had written an occult novel and they think that his research abilities might be employed to good use on their behalf. Before Donald can arrive, however, Jaffrey dies in an apparent suicide by jumping off of a bridge. Donald arrives just as the funeral is coming to a close. The three remaining members of the Society tell him that they want him to investigate any possible avenues that he might deem appropriate. Several years previously Donald's twin brother David had died under mysterious circumstances, and it led him to write his horror novel. Donald tells them the story of what he thinks actually happened. Several years previously he had landed a teaching position at Berkeley on the strength of his first novel. While there he began seeing a beautiful grad student named Alma Mobley. At first he was inseparable from her, and there was talk of marriage. But over time he began to notice strange things about her. He described it as more of a sensation, but he felt that there was something unnatural about Alma. He stopped seeing her as much, his work suffered, and one day Alma simply vanished. Upon investigating he found out that a great many things that Alma had told him about her past were fabrications. A few months later David called him and told him that he and Alma were engaged, and that he wanted things to be right between Donald and his fiance. Donald tried to warn David, but to no avail. And soon thereafter David was dead. Not long after this Lewis Benedikt dies in the forest, and Sears and Ricky decide that is time to tell Donald the most terrible story that the Chowder Society knows...and it is a true tale. 50 years previously a young woman named Eva Galli had moved to the town. She was in her early twenties and all five of the young men fell head over heels for her. One night in 1929—not long after Black Monday—Eva came to see them, but she was not acting like herself. She made sexual advances and belittled them. There was a struggle, and Eva fell and hit her head. Believing her to be dead, they conspired to hide the body by putting it in a car and driving it into a deep pond. But at the last moment Eva's body disappeared from the inside of the car, and there was a lynx looking at them from the other bank. Donald begins his research and quickly comes to the conclusion that what they are dealing with is a manitou, or some other kind of shape-shifting creature. He also believes that Alma Mobley is actually Eva Galli. Donald theorizes that since these creatures live much longer than humans Eva waited fifty years before returning for her revenge. Donald, Ricky, and Sears are joined in their struggle by Peter Barnes, a young man whose mother was killed by these creatures. Sears is ambushed and killed in his car, and the survivors now realize that Gregory and a reanimated Fenny are helping Eva in her endeavors. Gregory tells them that a woman named Florence de Peyser helped resurrect him, and it seems that Eva is also subservient to the de Peyser woman. Gregory and Fenny attack Peter, Don, and Ricky in a movie theater, but they are both killed in the ensuing struggle, leaving Donald to realize that though they have other-worldly powers, the creatures are not truly immortal. The survivors track Eva down and defeat her, but she escapes. Exhausted, Ricky leaves Milburn for an extended vacation with his wife, and Peter prepares for college. Donald keeps watch to see what form Eva will next appear in, and believes it to be the little girl in the opening part of the book. While in Florida, Eva emerges from the form of the little girl and attempts to twist Donald's mind. He is able to resist and kills her after she tries to take the form of a wasp to escape. Donald then prepares to go to San Francisco to hunt down the de Peyser woman."
2095,They Thirst,horror," The prologue starts in Hungary as young Andy is waiting for his father to come home after a hunting trip. His father comes in late but is different. Andy comes to his father when told to and finds he is pale and cold. Andy's mother suspecting that he is a creature he was hunting for shoots him. His face is blown apart but continues to come after the two. They then run away into the cold blizzard. His father shouts ""I'LL FIND YOU"" as they run away. Andy and his mother finally go to a house away from their town. Later Andy is now a detective trying find the Roach who rapes, murders, and then puts cockroaches in the mouth of the women. Andy works leaves him stressed from days and days of work. Meanwhile an albino sociopath killer is making his way to Los Angeles by the calls of someone and visions. At a bar in Texas he kills everyone with a Mauser and makes his way to Los Angeles. Gayle Clark is a reporter and while going to work with her boyfriend they find the Hollywood Cemetery is ransacked. The people who did this left the bodies in a road and stole the coffins. Andy is told this and goes to the watchman to tell him what to do if the men did it again to just stay in the house and close the binds. At the same time Rico, a Chicano gangster, gets his girl and finds she is pregnant. But the girl runs away after asking whether it's his. The girl runs while Rico tries to find her. But she is overtaken by the vampires in a dark street. That same night Wes Richer is having a large party after his successful comedy show. But his wife is a medium and she decides to have a vision with a Ouija board with a non-believer. She is told by a spirit that there's evil and when asked what is this evil it replies, ""THEY THIRST"" Before dawn the Prince Vampire is in Disneyland and sees the Headmaster. The Headmaster tells him that endless possibilities will be possible once he conquers Los Angeles. When seen after talking to him by a watchman he turns into a large bat and flies away. es:Sed de sangre"
2096,The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death,horror," The story is told from the viewpoint of Walter Galt, a teenager on the verge of dying from boredom at Genghis Khan High School, until he meets Winston Bongo, another suffering student and the self-proclaimed inventor of ""snarking out"" (which involves sneaking out of your house late at night, going to the movie theater, hanging out, and sneaking back home without getting caught). They usually go to an all-night movie theater, The Snark. While snarking out, they meet the usual assortment of oddballs, such as Ms. Bentley Saunders Harrison Matthews, a.k.a. Rat, and places, from Blueberry Park to Lower North Aufzoo Street to Beanbender's Beer Garden. Along the way, they help foil the scheme of the world's greatest criminal genius and his gang of trained orangutans."
2097,Heat,horror," Buffy and Angel both battle the same ancient evil, a Possessor who was once Qin, First Emperor of China. As a Possessor, Qin's body loses its temperature fast and he is forced to jump from body to body through the ages, rendering him immortal. In present day Sunnydale and Los Angeles, Qin is attempting to usher in the Year of the Hot Devil and drive humans out of his dimension by resurrecting an ancient dragon frozen in ice from centuries before."
2098,Intensity,horror," Chyna Shepard is a college student visiting the family of her friend, Laura Templeton, for a long weekend. Chyna, who was abused and neglected by her mother as a child, finds the Templeton house provides something she has yearned: acceptance. This comes to a violent end when Edgler Vess, a serial killer, breaks into the house in the night and methodically kills all of the occupants except Laura and Chyna. Chyna hides from him under her bed and waits until he goes downstairs. She searches the house and finds Laura's father shot and tied to a toilet seat, and the mother stabbed to death in the shower. Chyna encounters Vess on the stairs eating a spider before she sneaks into Laura's room. She finds Laura tied up and raped. Chyna sneaks away, promising to return. Before she can intervene, Vess kills Laura and takes her to his motor home. Chyna hears Laura screaming and runs upstairs intending to attack Vess with a knife. Unaware Laura is dead, Chyna sneaks aboard the motor home and finds her friend's corpse. Before she can escape, Vess drives away. Chyna hides in a back room, planning to escape at the earliest opportunity. When he stops at a gas station, she sneaks out of the motor home, and heads inside the gas station to find a phone. Chyna surreptitiously watches Vess boast to the gas station clerks that he is holding a young girl, Ariel, prisoner in his basement, before he kills them and drives away. Chyna feels compelled to follow Vess and help free the girl. She takes an attendant's car, and follows Vess. Chyna passes Vess while traveling through a state park and crashes her car into a redwood tree. While Vess gets out to investigate, Chyna sneaks on board the motor home. By the time Vess reaches his house, he has discovered that Chyna is on board. Fascinated, he decides not to kill her immediately to see what she will do. Chyna breaks into his house and goes into the basement to find Ariel, locked in a room and catatonic. Before she can free Ariel, Vess attacks Chyna in the kitchen, punching her unconscious before binding her with a chain in the kitchen. He taunts her for a while, revealing details about his past and past crimes. Obsessed with the ""intensity"" of any particular experience, sensory and existential, Vess styles himself as a ""homicidal adventurer"", and has killed continually since childhood. He offers to allow Chyna to live if she aids him in mentally torturing Ariel out of her catatonia. Then, Vess leaves for work. Chyna escapes from her chains by breaking away from the table to which she is chained and slamming her chair into a wall. She releases Ariel from her prison. Vess has trained a pack of deadly Dobermann pinschers to guard his property and kill anyone attempting to get in or out. Chyna dresses in Vess's dog-training clothing and sprays ammonia on the dogs to get through the dogs and into the motor home. She and Ariel exit the house, and take a vehicle. Chyna sees a police car on the road, so she pulls over to signal it, only to discover that the driver is Vess, the local ""county sheriff"". In the ensuing showdown, she rams his police car, soaking him and the highway with gasoline, though this fails to kill him as he escapes his car and uses a shotgun to disable the motor home, causing it to tip over. Chyna and Ariel escape the crippled wreck but Vess catches up to them and knocks Chyna to the ground but Ariel continues on, distracting Vess long enough for Chyna to get a lighter she'd grabbed at the gas station. She uses it to ignite the gas covering Vess and the highway before rolling to safety. She catches up to Ariel and watches as Vess meets his end in the flames. They are then rescued by a passing motorist. A few months later Chyna adopts Ariel, who has begun to speak in small phrases and meets a man who she falls in love with."
2099,False Memory,horror," Martie Rhodes helps her friend Susan Jagger, who suffers from agoraphobia, attend visits to psychologist Dr. Ahriman. Martie's husband, Dusty Rhodes, tries to help his brother Skeet, by providing employment in his roofing business. Skeet was in rehab for drug use, and when he first appears in the story, he is high and tries to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. Dusty decides to take him back to rehab due to drug overdose. Martie suddenly develops a mysterious case of autophobia, fear of oneself, and returns home to find herself frightened by her own reflection. Later, her condition worsens, and soon she becomes afraid of pointed objects, although she is actually afraid of the harm she might cause with them. When Dusty leaves Skeet at the rehab center, he notices a shadow lurking in his brother's room window. From this point on, strange things begin happening to both Dusty and Martie, involving Skeet, Martie's autophobia, and hypnotism. The couple eventually discovers that they've both been progressively brainwashed and programmed to obey Dr. Ahriman, a sexual psychopath who drugs and indoctrinates his patients, then either repeatedly rapes them or orders them to commit murders or suicide for his amusement. Dr. Ahriman orders Susan to commit suicide by slitting her wrists after discovering that she videotaped him raping her. The doctor has also programmed Skeet, which explains his inability to fully recover from drug use and distorted thinking. Dr. Ahriman establishes control, sending patients almost instantly into a detached state of consciousness by stating a name and then reading them a short haiku. He tries to justify this by stating that, by ordering certain patients to commit horrific crimes—mass murders, bombings, random shootings—he can force legislation in order to make the world a ""better place."" Dr. Ahriman is eventually killed by another patient, who had a fear of Keanu Reeves, based on his character in The Matrix. The woman believes that Dr. Ahriman is one of the Machine agents trying to control her. Dusty and Martie, receiving a substantial inheritance from Martie's friend Susan, slowly begin to restore their shattered lives."
2100,Gonna Roll the Bones,horror," The story centers on Joe Slattermill, a poor miner whose home life is a never-ending source of frustration. His wife works at home as a baker to supplement the family's income, while his elderly mother lives with them and regularly voices her disapproval of his lifestyle. His only outlet comes in the form of occasional visits to the local gambling parlors, where he routinely loses all his money, gets drunk, and has sex with prostitutes; he then returns home, beats his wife, and winds up spending the night in jail. On his latest trip, though, he finds that a new club has opened--""The Boneyard""--and decides to try it out. Joe possesses a remarkable skill for precision throwing and can make dice show whatever number he wants when he rolls them. Joining a high-stakes game of craps, he uses this talent to win several thousand dollars before confronting the table's ""Big Gambler,"" a pale figure hidden beneath a dark hat and long coat. This man bankrupts all the other players with his own brand of precision throwing, and Joe loses all his money upon accidentally rolling a double-six. Instead of ending the game at this point, however, the Big Gambler offers to bet all his winnings, plus the world and everything in it, against Joe's life and soul. By now, Joe has come to believe that he is facing off against Death incarnate. Joe rolls the dice and gets snake eyes, losing the bet. He prepares to kill himself by diving into the table, having learned that it is an entrance to some kind of deep shaft filled with intense heat, but instead leaps across and tackles the Big Gambler. The latter's body crumbles on impact and Joe is thrown out of the club, though he manages to steal a handful of casino chips before this happens. Out on the sidewalk, he finds that he has held onto a piece of the Big Gambler's skull, which looks suspiciously like a piece of pastry. Tasting it, he realizes that it is in fact made of bread—the same bread his wife was putting in to bake when he left the house that night. The table he jumped across was connected to her oven as a channel for its heat, and she had created the Big Gambler as a means of humiliating him. The stolen chips prove to be communion wafers, as evidenced by the cross imprinted on each one. Now free of his wife's influence and with a pocketful of food, he goes home ""the long way, around the world."" Oddly, the story was adapted as a children's book, written by Sarah L. Thomson, illustrated by David Wiesner, and published in 2004 by Milk and Cookies Press."
2101,Undead and Uneasy,horror," In the days leading up the The Big Day, Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor seems to have a full house - and the wedding guests have yet to arrive. Along with her human buddies, there's a ghost, a werewolf, and a Fiend crashing at her place. And though her fiance, Vampire King Eric Sinclair, conveniently disappears when the conversation turns to seating charts and flower arrangements, he does manage to make his oh-so-sexy presence known at other moments. Betsy knows the next few weeks won't be smooth sailing - but she never expects just what's in store for her. Cold feet are no surprise, especially with an undead groom. But when Sinclair truly goes missing - and not just to avoid wedding preparations - along with most of her friends and loved ones, Betsy is frantic. Alone and afraid for the fate of everyone she loves, Betsy can't trust anyone as she tries to find them and whoever is behind all the disappearances. And what happens next will shake the foundation of the vampire world forever in the bestselling series that ""breath(es) new life into conventional vampire lore.""*"
2102,Odd Thomas,horror," In the beginning of the book, Odd Thomas is silently approached by the ghost of a young girl brutally raped and murdered, and through his unique ability to understand the dead, is psychically led to her killer, a former schoolmate named Harlo Landerson. With this opening, we are introduced to Odd's world. Koontz soon discloses how Odd was named and begins, layer by layer, to show how Odd's dysfunctional upbringing has shaped his life, and as those details are uncovered, his supernatural abilities begin to make more sense. We see Odd at work as a short order cook in a California desert town, and in a fateful 24-hour period, he meets a suspicious-looking man in the diner followed by bodachs, shadowy spirit creatures who appear only during times of death and disaster. This man, who Odd nicknames ""Fungus Man"" (due to his waxy complexion and blonde hair that resembles mold), has an unusually large swarm of bodachs following him, and Odd is convinced that this man is connected to some terrible catastrophe that is about to occur. To gather more information about him, Odd uses his gift of supernatural intuition, which his soulmate Bronwen (a.k.a. Stormy) Llewellyn calls ""psychic magnetism,"" to track him down. Odd's sixth sense leads him to Fungus Man's home, and Odd begins to uncover more details about the man and a mysterious other-worldly link to the dark forces about to be unleashed on the town of Pico Mundo. Accompanied sometimes by the ghost of Elvis Presley and encountering other memorable spirits, including a murdered prostitute, Odd is soon deeply involved in an attempt to prevent the disastrous bloodshed he knows will happen the next day."
2103,Mistral's Kiss,horror," Meredith wakes up from a dream where she is given a horn cup from the Consort. The horn is a lost relic belonging to Abeloec, one of her guards, and the former god of wine. Abeloec and Merry drink from the horn, and some of his former god powers are restored. The other guards receive tattoos, symbols of their former god-powers that link the guards to Meredith in a mysterious way. They are magically transported to the heart of the Unseelie sithen, the dead gardens, where sex with Meredith, Abeloec and Mistral causes the gardens to come alive again. Rain begins to fall inside the garden. Through the sex magic, Galen, Nicca and Aisling disappear into the earth, air and trees, apparently as sacrifices to bring the magic back. Merry discovers that the Sithen responds to her desires, like adjusting how much rain falls in the garden. Merry learns that Abeloec’s cup was once used to make queens and goddesses, and the group speculate as to whether Merry is now immortal. Meredith asks the sithen to create a door to return to the Unseelie sithen. When they go through it, they find that they have accidentally passed into the Sluagh sithen, and they end up in the dead garden of the Sluagh. Before they can escape, they are confronted by Sholto, King of the Sluagh, and Lord of That Which Passes Between, and his two night hags, Agnes and Segna. Meredith discovers that Sholto’s tentacles have been shaved off by a member of the Seelie who tricked him. The hags believe that Meredith is part of the conspiracy. Segna attacks Meredith, but before she can reach her, Sholto strikes her and throws her into the dead lake, where is she is speared by the enchanted bones of the dead. Segna is mortally wounded, but alive. Sholto and Meredith wade into the lake to euthanize Segna. In a last-ditch attempt to kill Meredith, Segna pulls her under the water. Meredith uses her Hand of Blood to finish Segna. Sholto and Meredith magically appear on the Island of Bones in the middle of the lake. Sholto carries a dagger and a spear of bone, signs of kingship among the sluagh that had been lost. The Goddess appears and gives Sholto the chance to restore magic to the Sluagh. He is given the choice to either bring the magic back with blood by killing Meredith, or by sex. If he chooses death, the black heart of the sluagh will be restored. But if he chooses sex and life, it will change the sluagh sithen to a more Seelie-like place. Sholto chooses sex and life, and together they restore magic to the Sluagh garden. In a blast of power, they are returned to the Sluagh garden which is now filled with herbs, plants and flowers. Drunk with his new power, Sholto calls the Wild Hunt to chase the sidhe. Meredith and her guards flee. Meredith conjures a protective covering of four-leaf clover and discovers a “thin place” that allow them to escape the Sluagh sithen. Now more sidhe than ever, Sholto is attacked by the very Wild Hunt that he called up, and he is forced to flee as well. Now in the real world, Meredith calls on a group of Red Caps (cousins of the goblins), led by Jonty, to fight the Wild Hunt with them. The Wild Hunt is defeated and through the remaining magic, faerie animals including dogs appear. After the battle, they are rejoined by Galen, Aisling and Nicca who, having disappeared from the garden, reappeared in the Hall of Mortality. Galen’s wild magic causes flowers and water to appear in the Hall, and he accidentally causes all prisoners to be freed, including Cel, the Queen’s son, who wants Meredith dead. A furious Andais confronts Meredith and tells her that she must take her guards and go back to Los Angeles tonight, because she has ruined her sithen and Andais cannot keep her safe from Cel."
2104,Haunted,horror," ""Guts"" begins with the narrator telling the reader to hold their breath for the duration of the story. The narrator then describes several unnerving incidents involving adolescent boys masturbating. First, he describes a boy inserting a lubricated carrot into his rectum to stimulate his prostate while masturbating, and then hiding the carrot in a pile of laundry. His mother later takes the laundry away and presumably discovers the lubricated carrot, but never mentions it to him. Next, the narrator describes a young boy inserting a thin stick of candle wax into his urethra to stimulate it while masturbating. The wax slips back into the boy's bladder, which causes his urine flow to be stopped almost entirely and blood to seep from his penis. It requires expensive surgery to remove it, which the parents pay for using all the money from the boy's college savings. The narrator then refers, in passing, to numerous boys of about the same age accidentally asphyxiating themselves while masturbating, a fad to which a spike in teenage suicide rates is attributed. Finally, the narrator describes an incident in which he sat on the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool while masturbating in a process he refers to as ""Pearl diving"". The suction causes his rectum and lower intestines to prolapse and become tangled in the filter, forcing the narrator to gnaw through his own innards to free himself and avoid drowning. The narrator's sister later becomes impregnated by semen deposited by the narrator in the pool, which results in her having an abortion. In the case of the three core incidents, although the parents of the boys involved knew about the incident, they never discussed it afterwards, causing all three to figuratively ""hold their breath"" while they waited for the reaction that never came. It is also called the boys' ""invisible carrot"" in a reference to the first story where the boys mother discovers the carrot he had placed in his anus to achieve a more pleasurable orgasm. Purportedly all three of these incidents are based on true stories. According to Palahniuk, the first two tales came from his friends' experiences and the third he heard while shadowing sexual addiction support groups as research for Choke. In one of these groups, he met an extremely thin man. When Palahniuk asked him how he stayed so thin, he told him ""I had a massive bowel resectioning."" When Palahniuk asked what he meant, he told him the story which was the basis for the third episode in ""Guts""."
2105,The Feasting Dead,horror," The story is about a young English boy, Denis, who, while in France falls under the influence of a vampiric being, from the folklore of Auvergne and the misfortune that befalls him."
2106,Beneath the Moors,horror," Professor Ewart Masters convalesces at the home of his nephew, after an automobile accident. There he discovers the existence of an ancient Cimmerian city beneath the Yorkshire moors. He proceeds to have dream adventures in the realms of the Great Old Ones."
2107,Shadow Fires,horror," The protagonist of the story is a woman who is in the process of divorcing her abusive husband Eric, an intense scientist at a bio-research company, when he is killed in a traffic accident. As it turns out, the husband was doing research into immortality, due to an obsession with cheating death stemming from sexual abuse he suffered as a child and the fear that his abuser is waiting for him in Hell. In fact, he experimented on himself using an untested serum designed to grant incredible regenerative abilities. The husband wakes up in the morgue, but his ""immortality"" turns out to be flawed; it cannot properly repair brain damage, as the ""mind"" is made of electrical signals and not just flesh and protein. The trauma from the traffic accident has resulted in him suffering constant pain and a lack of mental clarity. The husband, now an unstoppable killing machine, proceeds to stalk his wife across the country while slowly descending into madness and the return from death causing him to mutate at a rapid pace. Rachael and her boyfriend Ben Shadway track the reanimated Eric to his secret country hideaway in the hope of killing him before he can regenerate to a level where he would be able to find and kill Rachael. However, Eric outwits them and manages to hide in the trunk of Rachael's car after overhearing her and Ben in conversation discussing their plan to split up and meet in Las Vegas. As Rachael Leben unwittingly transports Eric toward Las Vegas, she stops off along the way and witnesses Eric emerge from the trunk of her car, now hideously transformed into some kind of indescribable mutant and rapidly mutating. A chase ensues into the desert, but Rachael manages to escape from Eric's clutches while he's feeding on a den of rattlesnakes and finds her way back to her car, setting off again toward Vegas. Some time later Eric kills and eats the driver of a car then rapes, kills, and devours the female passenger before he too sets off to Vegas. Ben Shadway is also being chased by federal agent Anson Sharp, who harbours a 20 year old grudge against Shadway after the two served in Vietnam together and Shadway exposed Sharp's corruption and illegal smuggling activities, culminating in Sharp being dishonourably discharged from the US army. Partners in Eric Leben's bio-research company are also on the tail of Shadway and Rachael Leben to try to prevent them from exposing the top-secret project that the company was working on to the media but are stopped by Sharp's forces. Sharp seeks to kill them both, to keep Project Wildcard secret and get revenge on Ben. After a lengthy pursuit across Nevada to Las Vegas, the couple have their final confrontation with Eric at Ben's hotel. Eric's mutation finally stabilizes into a seemingly unstoppable and unreconizable insectoid form incapable of being slain by the firearms they have. Thinking quickly they pour gasoline on Eric and set him on fire. Consumed by fire, the accelerated metabolism in Eric's mutated body devours itself in an attempt to regenerate and mutate further, reducing his body to ooze and finally killing the genetic abomination but not before Eric's shattered consciousness finally accepts death. Sharp attempts to kill them but one of his own men who realizes how insane Sharp had become shoots Sharp in the head and kills him. With both their enemies dead, Rachael and Ben finally prepare to get married as well as break the story to the press."
2108,The Howling III: Echoes,horror," A year after the Californian mountain village of Drago was destroyed by fire, sinister murders begin to occur in the neighboring town of Pinyon. A teenage boy named Malcolm is found living in the woods, and is one of the survivors of the Drago fire. Also surviving the fire is Derak, the former leader of the Drago community and a werewolf, responsible for the recent deaths. Derak wants to bring Malcolm back to his people, the other survivors of Drago, so that he can learn about his true heritage; Malcolm is also a werewolf. Malcolm is hospitalized and placed under the care of resident psychiatric specialist Dr Holly Lang, who becomes Malcolm's friend. However, an ambitious and unscrupulous doctor, Wayne Pastory, abducts Malcolm so that he can experiment on him and learn more about werewolves. At a secret clinic, Malcolm is tortured as Pastory conducts cruel experiments on him, but as he is so young, Malcolm is only partially able to transform into a werewolf. Holly discovers the whereabouts of the clinic and tries to rescue Malcolm but she is attacked by Pastory's henchman. Just as he is about to rape her, Derak - in werewolf form - bursts in and kills the henchman. Malcolm is freed by Holly, who is subsequently rescued herself by the Pinyon sheriff, Gavin Ramsay. However, Malcolm runs away before they (or Derak) can take him back to Pinyon. Over the course of the next year, Malcolm lives as a drifter, wandering throughout California. He eventually meets a man named Bateman Styles who works for a travelling carnival. Seeing that Malcolm has certain abilities (he continues to partially transform into a werewolf), Styles offers him a job working in the carnival freak show as ""Grolo - The Animal Boy"". Malcolm, without money or a place to live, accepts and the show becomes a minor success. However, publicity leads to Malcolm's picture being published in the press, which is seen by Holly and she travels to see him. She offers Malcolm the choice of returning to Pinyon with her, which Malcolm accepts. However, the publicity has also attracted the attention of Dr Wayne Pastory, who has been dismissed from the Pinyon Hospital over his dubious activities, but is still keen to resume his experiments. He travels to the carnival and tries to make a deal with Styles, who refuses. Pastory tries to strangle Styles, who then has a heart attack and dies. Malcolm, who is hiding nearby, transforms partially into a werewolf and kills Pastory. However, he is surprised to find that Derak has also tracked him down and still wants him to join their people. In order to persuade him, Derak has kidnapped Holly. This prompts Sheriff Ramsay from Pinyon to travel to the carnival to find her. He learns from a female Drago survivor named Lupe that Derak is holding Holly hostage in the mountains until Malcolm joins them. Ramsay makes Lupe take him to where they are hiding, though she begins to transform into a werewolf on the way and Ramsay shoots her with a silver bullet. In the mountain lair, Malcolm arrives and fights with Derak (who reveals himself to be Malcolm's father) for Holly. The two change into werewolves, but end up killing each other just as Ramsay arrives and rescues Holly and the other members of Derak's group from Drago head off into the forest, now without their leader."
2109,The Witching Hour,horror," In this book we meet some of the trilogy's leading characters: Dr. Rowan Mayfair, a brilliant neurosurgeon who is ignorant of her family history; Michael Curry, a contractor who specializes in the restoration of old homes while dreaming of his childhood in New Orleans and yearning to return there; Aaron Lightner, a psychic scholar and member of the Talamasca; Lasher, a spirit with wicked motives; and the Mayfair Witches, an old Southern family with a taste for poetry and incest. They have a talent for secretiveness and successful business ventures. The majority of the Mayfair Witches are female (with the exception of Julien), and the family line matriarchal in lineage; i.e. families pass down the maiden name ""Mayfair"" instead of adopting the respective husband's last name. Rowan and Michael fall in love after she saves him from drowning, and when he decides to return to New Orleans, she follows him to learn the secrets of her past against the wishes of her adoptive mother. Aaron has studied the Mayfairs and Lasher from afar for years. He tracks down Michael to share with him the history of the family and the spirit, whom Michael has seen since he was a boy. (He was also interested in Michael because of the psychometric power he purportedly developed since waking from a near drowning experience.) What follows is a gruesome story filled with murder, incest, and betrayal. There are, however, many gaps which can only be filled in by Lasher himself. Rowan and Michael marry despite all this, and Rowan takes on the responsibilities of the Designee of the Mayfair Legacy. She dreams of a medical center where anyone, regardless of age, race, or financial status, can be treated and healed. She conceives, and it seems as if she and Michael may escape the curse of the Legacy. This is not to be, however, as Lasher finally reveals himself to Rowan, and explains his wish: to be made flesh so that he may walk the earth again and sets about slowly seducing Rowan through many intense intimate encounters. Secretly thinking that she can outwit this spirit, she agrees to send Michael away from the house on Christmas Day so that Lasher can fulfil his centuries-old ambition. Her plan (to bind Lasher to 'weak matter' which can be destroyed by her mental killing abilities) backfires as Lasher enters her womb, and makes himself at home in the fetus. Rowan immediately goes into labor, which is violent and bloody, and Lasher is born. Michael returns to the house then, and seeing what has become of the child that he had desperately wished for, he throws himself at the creature, thinking to kill him. Lasher is much too strong, though, and attempts to drown Michael in the pool. Upon this second near death experience Michael loses the power in his hands. Terrified for Michael's life, Rowan drags the creature away, and they run off together. Throughout the novel there are mentions of the ""Thirteen Witches"" and the Thirteenth being the ""Doorway"". This is in reference to Lasher selectively manipulating the Mayfair bloodline so that the thirteenth witch, Rowan, would be more powerful than all the others. Lasher required a witch as powerful as Rowan because she possessed the ability to make him live again. Lasher had possessed dead bodies with the help of Mary Beth and Julien Mayfair (two of the most powerful witches in the family), but due to limits in medical knowledge at the time, he could not reanimate the corpse and was unable to transform the bodies into Taltos form. When Lasher possesses Rowan's baby, the child effectively dies and as Lasher exchanges the cells, Rowan's diagnostic/healing abilities, along with her medical knowledge, are required to keep Lasher from dying. es:La hora de las brujas fr:Le Lien maléfique it:L'ora delle streghe ru:Час ведьмовства"
2110,The One Tree,horror," This book differs from the others in the First and Second Chronicles, in that the story takes place outside of the Land, although still in the same world. Following the vision he received from the Clave at Revelstone, Thomas Covenant has resolved to find a solution to the problem of the destruction of the Staff of Law, the result of which has been the corruption of the Land's natural beauty by the curse of the Sunbane. He is accompanied on his quest by Linden Avery, a physician from his own ""real"" world, and four Haruchai bodyguards. Their means of travel from the Land is a ship crewed by the Giants, a benevolent, seafaring people from a distant region of the Earth. The journey is made more difficult by Covenant's continuing relapses into sickness caused by the venomous bite of a Sunbane-spawned monster: the venom leaves Covenant prone to uncontrollable outbursts of power-madness, the wild magic unleashed by his white gold ring posing an imminent danger to those around him. Linden, who in this world is endowed with a kind of clairvoyance, is frustrated by her inability to help him. From the Land, the Giant-ship sails to the home of the Elohim, a race of beings who are known to possess supreme wisdom. Linden perceives that the Elohim are in fact the embodiment of Earthpower, the mysterious energy which is the source of the beauty and magic found in this world. Despite their seeming omnipotence, the Elohim are bound by a strange code of behavior, and provide no direct help to the quest, other than showing the Giants the location of the One Tree, from which the Staff of Law was fashioned. This knowledge was hidden in Covenant's mind by the Forestal Caer-Caveral (Hile Troy), but Covenant lacked the means to reveal it. In the course of rendering this service, the Elohim cause Covenant to go into a catatonic state - ""don't touch me"" is all he can say. Sailing the course which has been charted for them, the travelers find that one of the Elohim, named Findail, has joined them aboard the Giants' ship, for purposes which he declines to reveal. The questors are not pleased at this uninvited companion but are powerless to make him leave. After suffering severe damage in a storm, in which Findail refuses to help, the ship arrives at the port city of the Bhrathair, a militaristic - but also wealthy and civilized - people living at the edge of a great desert. The Bhrathair are ruled by the gaddhi, Rant Absolain, who rather coldly receives the quest's shore party, and it is discovered that the true ruler is the gaddhis chief adviser, a wizard named Kasreyn of the Gyre. Kasreyn initially appears to be kindly disposed to the quest but is revealed to have ulterior motives. The ship is repaired, but two of the Haruchai guards lose their lives - one at the hands of a Sandgorgon, a monster indigenous to the desert, and one killed by a hustin, a semi-human creature of the gaddhis guard. Kasreyn abducts Covenant, who is still in a catatonic state, and attempts to use his powers to compel Covenant to give up his ring. The remainder of the shore party is imprisoned in the gaddhis dungeon. Using her power to invade Covenant's consciousness - which she had been loath to use because she abhors the idea of ""possession"" - Linden breaks Covenant's catatonia and thwarts Kasreyn's efforts to seize the ring. Covenant and the Haruchai fight their way to Kasreyn's laboratory, but discover that Kasreyn has a parasitic being, a croyel, living on his back and providing him with extended longevity, as well as immunity to physical attack. Findail destroys this croyel, killing Kasreyn and setting off a palace coup that leaves the port in a state of chaos. The ship narrowly escapes, and further travel eventually brings the quest to the island where the One Tree is located. Brinn, Covenant's Haruchai bodyguard, sacrifices himself in a duel with the Tree's Guardian ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol (himself a figure from Haruchai mythology who represents their idea of the perfect warrior), and is then regenerated as the new Guardian and leads the party to the Tree itself. When Covenant attempts to take a piece of the Tree using his power of wild magic, he is stopped by Cable Seadreamer, the mute giant. When Seadreamer makes the attempt himself, he is killed: he has disturbed the Worm of the World's End, which sleeps beneath the Tree and whose ""aura"" serves as a defense mechanism. This aura triggers Covenant's power to an exponential degree. As Covenant attempts to overwhelm the Worm with his power, Findail warns Linden that the Arch of Time cannot contain the struggle between the two powers and that the world will be destroyed if it continues. Linden, much against her will, mentally reaches out to Covenant. Sharing his thoughts, she sees him open a passage back to the ""real"" world and attempts to return her to it. She senses, however, that in the ""real"" world Covenant's body is very weak (from the stab wound inflicted just before the summoning) and will die if he does not himself return. Unwilling to do this, Covenant draws Linden back through the rift between the worlds. With her help, he is able to contain his power, but at the price of the Isle of the One Tree sinking beneath the ocean as the earth heaves with the movements of the Worm of the World's End settling back from disturbance into slumber. Thus, the quest ends in failure."
2111,Under the Dome,horror," Shortly before noon on Saturday October 21 of an unspecified year after 2012 (evident by mention of a faded bumper sticker for Barack Obama's successful 2012 re-election campaign), the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is abruptly and gruesomely separated from the outside world by an invisible, semipermeable barrier of unknown origin. The immediate appearance of the barrier causes a number of injuries and fatalities, and traps former Army Captain Dale ""Barbie"" Barbara—who is trying to leave Chester's Mill—inside the town. Police Chief Howard ""Duke"" Perkins is soon killed when his pacemaker explodes after getting too close to the barrier. This removes the last significant opposition to James ""Big Jim"" Rennie, used car salesman and the town's Second Selectman. Big Jim exerts significant influence within Chester's Mill, and seizes the opportunity to use the barrier as part of a power play to take over the town. Big Jim appoints one of his cronies, the incompetent Peter Randolph, as the new Police Chief. He also begins expanding the ranks of the Chester's Mill Police with questionable candidates, including his son, Junior Rennie, and his friends. Junior has frequent migraines caused by an as-yet undiscovered brain tumor which has also begun affecting his mental state; unbeknownst to Big Jim, Junior was in the process of beating and strangling a girl to death when the barrier appeared, and has killed another girl by the time Rennie places him on the police force. Elsewhere in Chester's Mill, Julia Shumway, the editor of the local newspaper, is phoned by Colonel James O. Cox, who has her carry a message to Barbie to contact him. When he does, Cox requests that Barbie act as the government's liaison in an effort to bring down the Dome, as it has come to be known. Because of Barbie's talents as a former bomb factory hunter, Cox gives him the task of locating the source, which is believed to be inside the Dome. Cox is also able to foresee the small town political ramifications of such a situation. By virtue of a Presidential order, Barbie is reinstated in the US Military and promoted to full Colonel. Barbie is also presented with a decree granting him authority over the township. However, smalltown politics being what they are, this action is not well received by Big Jim and his misguided band of renegade police officers. As Big Jim covertly encourages and orchestrates unease and panic among the town to build up his grab for power, Barbie, Julia and a number of other townspeople attempt to stop things from spiraling out of control. After crossing Rennie's path on several occasions, Barbie is framed and arrested for 4 murders. He is accused of killing Reverend Lester Coggins, who laundered money for Rennie's large-scale methamphetamine operation, and Duke's widow Brenda Perkins, who were both murdered by Big Jim. While Barbie is in jail other residents track the source of the Dome to an abandoned farm, and the device is strongly indicated to be extraterrestrial in origin. The restrictions issued by Rennie become more severe and the police force grows more abusive, galvanizing the town and eventually leading some residents to break Barbie out of jail, killing Junior seconds before he can murder Barbie. The semi-organized resistance flees to the abandoned farm, where multiple people touch the strange object and experience visions. They not only conclude that the device was put in place by extraterrestrial ""leatherheads"" (so named for their appearance), but that specifically they are juveniles who have set up the Dome as a cruel form of entertainment, a sort of ant farm used to capture sentient beings and allow their captors to view everything that happens inside. On an organized ""Visitors Day""—when people outside the Dome can meet at its edge with people within—Big Jim sends Randolph and a detachment of police to take back control of his former meth operation from Phil ""Chef"" Bushey, who is stopping Rennie from covering up the operation as well as hoarding the more than four-hundred tanks of propane stored there. Many are killed in the ensuing gunfight and Chef, who is mortally wounded, detonates a plastic explosive device he has placed in the meth production facility. The ensuing explosion, combined with the propane and meth-making chemicals, unleashes a toxic firestorm. More than a thousand of the town's residents are quickly incinerated on national television, leaving alive only the twenty-six survivors at the abandoned barn, an orphaned farm boy hiding in a potato cellar, and Big Jim and his informal aide-de-camp, Carter Thibodeau, in the town's fallout shelter. Big Jim and Thibodeau eventually turn on each other; Big Jim stabs and disembowels Thibodeau, only to die several hours later when hallucinations of the dead send him fleeing into the now-toxic environment outside. The survivors at the barn begin to slowly asphyxiate, despite efforts by the Army to force clean air through the walls of the Dome. Barbie and Julia go to the control device to beg their captors to release them. Julia is able to make contact with a single female leatherhead, no longer accompanied by her friends and thus not caught up in their peer pressure. After repeatedly expressing that they are real sentient beings with real ""little lives"", and by sharing a painful childhood incident with the adolescent alien, Julia convinces the leatherhead to have pity on them. The Dome raises up slowly and vanishes, allowing the toxic air to dissipate and finally freeing the town of Chester's Mill."
2112,Solitary Man,horror," The widow Mildred Finster has been a fan of ""cozy"" mystery novels for years. At the age of seventy-one she decides she would like to become a real private detective. She finds a business card for Angel Investigations and likes the name. Team Angel is busy with its own personal problems, and has little time to deal with Mildred offering her services. Later a truckload of valuable antiquities is stolen and they assume a simple theft. The arrival of ruthless killers from afar soon gets the attention of the gang. They must cope with being followed everywhere by a well-meaning old lady, fight off poltergeists, and try to set aside their personal differences (at least temporarily) so that they can overcome the supernatural foe which is responsible for a centuries-old mystery."
2113,Blaze,horror," * The story concerns Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. (known as ""Blaze"" for short, thus the title), a mentally challenged small-time con artist who kidnaps a wealthy gentleman's baby son, in the hopes of fulfilling the dreams of George Thomas Rackley, Blaze's deceased best friend and partner in crime. The chapters alternate between Blaze's past — which covers his childhood (including how he came to be brain damaged) and his entry into a life of crime despite an otherwise sweet demeanor — and his current caper, in which he imagines that he is still constantly advised by his friend George. Despite the helpfulness of (the imaginary) George's advice, Blaze's world begins to crumble during his kidnapping venture, especially as he bonds with baby Joey. In the end, Blaze runs from his inevitable destiny back to the horrors of his old orphanage, the Hetton House. After the cops storm it, he rushes to a cave, where Joey is nearly killed, and Blaze ends up killing two policemen. He is killed by a police officer, and is buried only a few miles away from where his father lived."
2114,Day Watch,horror," Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are The Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to The Dark - the Day Watch - or The Light - the Night Watch. (this story is told from the point of view of Alisa Donnikova) In the prologue, a woman named Natasha goes to a witch to have her cast a spell to make her husband fall back in love with her. After she strikes a deal with the witch, members of the Night Watch suddenly arrive and arrest the witch while Natasha looks on, confused. The story shifts to Alisa Donnikova, a young but powerful Dark Other, who leaves her house to attend a meeting with her comrades in the Day Watch. The team is on a mission to apprehend and recruit an uninitiated Other, the practicing Dark witch from the prologue who has so far eluded the bureaus responsible for finding and initiating unlicensed practitioners of magic. It seems a routine operation. But when they arrive, the Night Watch team has already made the arrest. A fierce battle ensues, during which Alisa almost dies. Drained of her powers, she is sent to recuperate at a youth camp near the Black Sea. There she meets Igor. The chemistry between them is instant and irresistible, and Alisa finds herself falling in love. But then comes a shattering revelation: Igor is a Light Magician. Alisa remembers him as one of those involved in the battle that left her crippled. Had they known what they were, they would have not entered their relationship. But now that they know, Igor (who reacts with rage, feeling he was tricked) challenges Alisa (who reacts with a more depressed note of sadness) to a duel. Alisa allows Igor to choose the site of the battle: off-shore, in the sea. Alisa chooses not to fight back, allowing Igor to magically push her under the water and drown her. She calls Zabulon for help but is shocked to find out Zabulon has planned her death all along. While this is going on, Makar, a boy that had become infatuated with Alisa, swims out to rescue her and also drowns. Note: The first scene of this story forms the basis for the opening of the film Night Watch. In the movie, it is Anton (not Natasha) who goes to the same witch to have her kill what he thinks is his wife's child with her adulterous lover (it turns out to actually be his own child). Both scenes play out in much the same way from there, but the arrival of the Day Watch and subsequent battle does not occur in the movie. (this story is told from the point of view of Vitaly Rogoza) A man named Vitaly Rogoza awakens while walking through a park late at night with no memory of his past or who he is. Following an internal instinct, he is able to protect himself from a werewolf and board a train to Moscow. Once in Moscow, still following instinct, he registers his presence as a Dark Other with the Day Watch and proceeds to stumble into a series of seemingly accidental encounters with the Night Watch, often resulting in a Night Watch member dying. He kills Tiger Cub in self-defense as she seeks revenge for him setting a trap that (legally) kills a Night Watch investigator trespassing in his hotel room. While this is taking place, a Day Watch splinter group named the ""Regin Brothers"" stages an attack on the Inquisition to steal a powerful artifact named ""Fafnir's Talon"". Only four Regin Brothers survive and they head to Moscow. Members of the Night Watch and the Day Watch both learn that the Regin Brothers will be landing in a plane at Moscow International Airport. At the airport, both groups set up camps; the Night Watch tries to delay the plane's landing while the Day Watch seeks to assist it. Vitaly wanders away from the main group of Day Watch agents and inadvertently stumbles upon the Regin Brothers and two powerful Night Watch members, Gesar and Svetlana. Gesar kills one of the Regin Brothers who attempts to flee, but Vitaly accidentally winds up in possession of the talon. He steals power from Svetlana and creates a portal that allows him to escape to a forest outside Moscow. After meeting up with some youths camping in the forest, Vitaly returns to Moscow. Instead of returning to the Day Watch offices with the talon, however, his instincts lead him to Maxim from the first novel, who is now a member of the Inquisition. At Maxim's behest, Vitaly relinquishes the talon. Soon thereafter, the Inquisition calls a meeting to determine what is going on and who, if anyone, should be held responsible. Anton is called to attend but Zabulon encourages him to commit a small act of ""betrayal"" by not going, with the promise that he will be able to live freely with Svetlana and avoid bloodshed. After Vitaly and Anton have a car accident (deliberately staged by Anton) on the way to the meeting, Svetlana concludes that Anton and Vitaly are engaged in a duel that will result in Anton's death. When Vitaly arrives before Anton at the meeting alone, she assumes the worst and strikes him with all of her considerable power, leaving her dangerously drained (like Alisa above). Vitaly absorbs Svetlana's power, although his clothes and MiniDisc player are destroyed. Anton then appears and gives Vitaly his own MiniDisc player as a replacement. The Inquisition concludes that Vitaly is a mirror and not an Other in the ordinary sense; thus he does not come under the terms of the Treaty and is free to pursue his own destiny. Vitaly was able to neutralize Svetlana by his presence and restore the balance between the Night Watch and Day Watch. Svetlana is sufficiently reduced in power that she and Anton are now theoretically able to live as equals, as Zabulon promised. Vitaly leaves the courthouse, listening to music, and dissipates into the Twilight, his purpose fulfilled. (this story is told in third-person, though the action continually switches its focus between the first novel's narrator, Anton, and a second-level Dark Other, Edgar) The third story revolves around a trial by the Inquisition to investigate the events of the first two stories. The first part of the story deals with various involved parties travelling to Prague (where the trial will be held), the second part involves the characters meeting in a number of different configurations and talking, the third part involves the trial itself. All of the surviving major characters of the first two stories are on their way to Prague, which is the new location of the Inquisition after the Regin Brothers destroyed the old one. Edgar, a medium high level operative, is going to plead the Day Watch's case. Edgar assures the 3 remaining Regin Brothers that the Day Watch will protect them. Anton is going as a prosecutor for the Night Watch. Igor is already there being put up (but not held in custody) by the Inquisition. In Prague, Anton meets an American Air Force pilot who is also a Light Mage. The pilot is proud of his work (bombing Kosovo). Anton is appalled that anyone can perform such evil acts and still align themselves with good. Anton and Edgar meet over beer and discuss dark vs. light philosophy. Edgar is clearly not a terribly enthusiastic Dark Other, but he's doing his job nevertheless. Anton then goes to visit Igor while Edgar, left to his own devices, uncovers a lot of evidence to indicate that Zabulon is setting him up to be killed in order to facilitate the resurrection of Fafnir. He's understandably frightened and angered. Meanwhile, Anton, eager to distract the suicidal Igor, gets him roaring drunk on Vodka and attempts to draw him into a strategy session to try to figure out what the Day Watch is up to, with some success. They wonder whose destiny it was that Olga changed at the end of Night Watch and here it is revealed that, though Svetlana's child—foretold by Gesar to be a girl—would always have been a powerful light Other, the changes mean that her birth has been timed to make her daughter a Light Messiah. Gesar arrives and pleads with Igor to stick around for at least another 20 years. Igor is non-committal. The next day, the trial begins. The Regin Brothers are tried first and are found guilty only of lesser crimes: though they transported Fafnir's Talon, they didn't participate in the theft. They are stripped of all but the very smallest of their magical powers and sent on their way. The focus of the trial then shifts the events of the novel's first story. A number of minor charges against Gesar and Zabulon are dismissed under technicalities. Anton accuses Zabulon of indirectly arranging the duel between Igor and Alisa and blames Zabulon for the death of Makar, the young boy who drowned trying to save Alisa. Edgar and Zabulon challenge the Night Watch operatives to present proof, but neither Anton nor Igor can do so. In order to get to the bottom of the case, the Inquisition temporarily resurrects Alisa, who implicates Zabulon in her demise, stating that Igor was not responsible for her death. Igor is cleared of all charges. However, when Alisa is sent back to the Twilight, Igor follows her, dying himself. Zabulon is ecstatic, admitting that he had indeed planned to sacrifice Alisa in order to remove Igor, saying that Igor was the only one that could have trained the upcoming Light Messiah. Since Zabulon's plan involved an even trade—Alisa for Igor—he has not violated the treaty, and the Inquisition clears him of charges. As Svetlana leaves, she tells Zabulon, ""May no one ever love you."" Gesar sends Anton to find her, while the rest of the individuals at the trial depart the scene. Edgar approaches a member of the Inquisition, Witezslav, who invites Edgar to ""try on"" an Inquisitor's robe. Edgar reluctantly takes the robe from Witezslav while mentioning that Svetlana's ""curse"" is pointless because Zabulon doesn't need anyone to love him anyway. Note: This story is the only one in the pentalogy without a first-person narrator."
2115,Murder in Amityville,horror," The plot tries to explain why Ronald Defeo Jr. killed his family at 112 Ocean Ave. It revolves around Ronald Jr. as he experiences strange events in the house up until he kills his entire family on November 13, 1974. It goes on to explain that he was possessed and that he did not want to kill his family. It introduces controversial events. It is also based on Defeo's explanation of why he says he killed his family."
2116,Guilty Pleasures,horror," In Guilty Pleasures, Anita is blackmailed by Nikolaos, the vampire master of the city, into investigating a series of vampire murders. During the course of this investigation, Anita begins her relationship with Jean-Claude, another master vampire, and receives two of the four marks necessary to make her Jean-Claude's ""human servant."" Ultimately, Anita identifies the murderer, but by that point has sufficiently antagonized Nikolaos and her underlings that she is forced to confront them. Ultimately, with help from Jean-Claude and Edward, a human associate who specializes in assassinating supernatural targets, Anita kills Nikolaos and many of her followers, making Jean-Claude master of the city."
2117,Keepers,horror," The main character is a shy, lonely, middle-aged man named Gil Stewart. He lives a relatively clean, good, quiet life in Cedar Hill, Ohio, where he owns and runs an antique novelty and collectibles store and also helps to take care of his institutionalized nephew Carson (in a group home), who has Down's Syndrome. One evening, while returning home from work, he finds an elderly man on the side of the road wearing a bowler hat. The man's hat gets blown away, and as he runs after it, he gets hit by a car. While that is happening, Gil notices two black mastiffs that seemed to be chasing the man and later witnessing the accident. Gil tries to help him, but the man dies. What disturbed Gil were three things: *The man, an apparent stranger, knew Gil by name *Not only did the two mastiffs look like they knew what they were doing, but they also seemed satisfied at the old man's death. *The man-in-the-bowler-hat says the final words ""The Keepers are coming"" When he finally arrives home, he encounters an old, wounded and mangy dog lying in his front lawn, which subsequently crawls under his house. As he is deciding what to do with the dog (between taking it to a local shelter, the vet, or simply letting it die in peace where it is), he unexpectedly receives a package delivered by an obscure shipping company. To his surprise, the package was apparently sent from Beth, a woman he loved long ago but who mysteriously disappeared and was presumed dead. Gil soon receives a phone call from Carson's group home: Carson is missing. Gil now is bothered by the following mysteries: *Who sent that package? Was it from Beth? If so, where was she all these years? *Where did Carson go? *Where did that dying dog come from? *How and why did the dying man know Gil's name? *Why are those mastiffs roaming around town? Those questions are answered after going through a bizarre and slightly surreal experience. He is forced to remember many of his repressed experiences of his childhood and young adult years, which, in a convoluted way, are linked to the mysterious incidents involving the old man on the road, the mastiffs, Carson's disappearance, and the mysterious dying stray dog. The feel of the book is very dark and somber. The majority of the book is composed of flashbacks, with the climax occurring during the present day, when he met the old man and the strange dogs. Even though the novel borders on fantasy, real-life issues are dealt with, namely animal abuse, lost pets, aging, and loneliness. note: the names of Gil's immediate relatives are never provided *Gil Stewart - the protagonist of the story. Introduced as a mild mannered bachelor, which the reader later discovers he was also a shy, ""nerdy"" teen. Seems to have a special bond with animals, ever since he was a boy. *Beth - Gil's close friend and first love. Was Gil's first ""girlfriend"". Even after their relationship ended, they continued to be friends, and he never gave up his feelings for her. Along with her aunt Mabel, owned several dogs. Mysteriously disappears one night after a tearful and emotional conversation with Gil. *Gil's Father - a depressed, angry, and alcoholic World War II veteran. An avid movie buff. Dies in a work-related accident while Gil is still in his late teens. *Gil's Mother - Emotionally distant from Gil. An opera fan. Dies a couple of years after Gil's father passes away, in what Gil speculated was suicide. *Gil's Sister - was never very close to Gil until she became pregnant with Carson. Eventually dies of a latent heart condition, after which Gil becomes Carson's legal guardian. *Mabel - Beth's aunt. Works as a nurse at an assisted living facility. Raised Beth as her own child after Beth's mother relocates to London. Is described by Gil as ""sad looking."" *Marty ""Whitey"" Weis - a resident at Mabel's workplace. Uses a wheelchair due to diabetes complications. Develops a close friendship with Gil. His wit and mild cynicism adds a humorous touch to the gloomy feel of the novel. Misses his daughter, an aspiring actress based in Los Angeles who rarely calls him. *Cheryl - one of Gil's employees at his novelty store. Has a deep appreciation for her boss and is mystified by his loneliness. *The Bowlers - Led by an individual which Gil refers to as ""The Magritte Man"", a group of mysterious men in derby hats chasing Gil around town. *The Twin Mastiffs - roam throughout town and appear to stalk Gil, and are apparently owned by ""The Bowlers"". *Long-Lost - a bizarre-looking character from one of Carson's comic books. What Gil finds disturbing is that Carson claims he can speak to him."
2118,Nor Crystal Tears,horror," The story follows a Thranx, Ryozenzuzex (i.e. Ryo, of Family Zen, clan Zu, Hive Zex) who came from an odd numbered hatching (thranx offspring almost always come in multiples of two) immediately making him somewhat different from his brethren. Setting himself aside as different Ryo decides that he has to know what is the secret of the new space faring race that supposedly wear ""their skeletons inside"". To accomplish this un-thranxlike task Ryo travels from his home planet, Willow-Wane, to the ice caps of the Thranx home world, Hivehom with the aid of the wealthy Wuuzelansem, a poet in-search of inspiration. Once on Hivehom he is confronted with the ""monsters"" and comes to the conclusion that they must set them free, believing that an alliance between Thranx and these so-called ""humans"" is the only way to stop the aggressive advances of the AAnn Empire. Thranx military and scientists, by studying the contained humans tendency to fight amongst each other came to the conclusion that the entire species could be insane and would destroy Thranx society if they were to attempt any further contact. Ryo, after spending a good amount of time with the humans decides to aid in their escape from Hivehom. Once they escape they return to a human research station where the reaction to Ryo is worse than anticipated. When the scientists there decide to kill and dissect Ryo the crew he rescued from Hivehom returns the favor and helps him escape his death sentence. It is at this point Ryo and the crew come to the conclusion that they must start a long term program in order to properly integrate human and thranx society. With the scientists he befriended on Hivehom, Ryo brings a group of human children and researchers to interact with a group of Thranx larvae on his home of Willow-Wane in an attempt to build lasting race relations. The larvae and human children seem to get along well and the compatibility between the two races is confirmed. When an AAnn raiding party attacks Ryo's hive the militant humans take action which results in a formal first contact between both human and Thranx governments. By his risky actions, Ryo plants the seeds of what would become the Humanx Commonwealth."
2119,Bloodstained Oz,horror," 1930s dust bowl Kansas natives and an alternate version of the Wonderful Land of Oz collide during a huge dust storm. The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion may or may not help them on this adventure because the other inhabitants of Oz include vampire flying monkeys, emerald eyed demonic creatures, and other horrors beyond imagination. Down home farm girl Gayle Franklin and her family, escaped convict Hank Burnside, and Roma gypsies Elisa and Stefan along with their infant son Jeremiah, all find themselves face to face with the unbelievable terrors from Oz. The creatures have taken over Oz and now they are threatening to take over Earth too."
2120,The Tale of the Body Thief,horror," At the beginning of the story, Lestat grows depressed and becomes remorseful because of his vampiric nature. Although he tries to limit his victims to murderers, serial killers and other criminals, he nonetheless caves into temptation once in a while and kills an ""innocent"" or someone who he feels does not necessarily deserve to die. Lestat also suffers from constant nightmares concerning his late ""daughter,"" Claudia, for whose death he blames himself. The ""coven"" of vampires formed at the end of The Queen of the Damned has long since broken up, and Lestat has become extremely lonely. Among his only remaining friends is the mortal head of the Talamasca Caste, David Talbot, who is seventy-four years old. Although Lestat has repeatedly offered David the Dark Gift, David has always refused to become a vampire and keep Lestat company through eternity. Lonely and depressed, Lestat goes to the Gobi desert at dawn in a half-hearted suicide attempt. When he does not die, he goes to David's home in England to heal. A mysterious figure, Raglan James - the eponymous ""Body Thief"" of the story - approaches Lestat with what seems to be a cure for his ennui and depression. James sends Lestat several messages hinting that he has the ability to switch bodies. Eventually, he proposes to Lestat that the two of them trade bodies for a day. Against the advice of other vampires and David Talbot, Lestat jumps at the opportunity. Unfortunately, James has no intention of ever switching back, and Lestat is forced to scheme to regain his body. Lestat nearly dies after becoming human again - his new body is wracked by pneumonia, which he ignores during a tour of Washington D.C. in the middle of winter. He is saved by the care of a nun named Gretchen. He enjoys a short love affair with Gretchen before she returns to South America, where she works in a convent, and Lestat sets out in search of his body. Lestat seeks help from other vampires but is completely ostracized by them. Marius is extremely angry at him for leaving such a powerful body to a thief and refuses to help him. Likewise Louis turns him away when he asks Louis to make his new body into a vampire, arguing that Lestat ought to be happy to be human again and also calls him out on his previous writings, accusing him of altering his actual past in favor of one that portrays him heroically. Lestat's only ally is David Talbot. Drawing from the Talamasca's resources on the supernatural, Talbot reveals that James was a gifted psychic who once joined the order, but was kicked out for constant theft. He is a kleptomaniac who enjoys stealing for the thrill of it &mdash; it is revealed that every single thing he owns, from his house to his body, was stolen or schemed for. However, he also has major psychological problems, and his life is a series of cycles &mdash; he gets rich by theft, then often ends up in prison. Dying of cancer several years before, James tricked the inmate of a mental institution into switching bodies with him, allowing him a type of immortality. It is James' lack of imagination and petty thievery that allow Talbot and Lestat to track him down. Despite his newfound wealth and powerful new body, James continues to steal jewelry from people. He also makes a conspicuous show of his wealth, boarding the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, and draining victims of their blood along the ship's path. The pattern allows his pursuers to easily find him. On the cruise ship, Lestat manages to regain his body with David's help, but the sun is rising as he performs the switch and he must immediately flee to a safe place in which to spend the day. When he awakes in the evening he finds that both James and Talbot have disappeared. Lestat finds David in Florida and is surprised to find that his friend, despite his earlier protestations, now wants to become a vampire. However, while taking his blood, Lestat discovers a final trick &mdash; when forced out of Lestat's body, James took over Talbot's body instead of returning to his own. Lestat angrily attacks James, crushing his skull. The blow proves fatal - the injury damages James' brain and prevents him from leaving the dying body or trying to switch bodies before his current one dies. At this point, Tale of the Body Thief reaches a false ending. Raglan James is dead. David has begun to enjoy life in his new, young body. Lestat returns to New Orleans, reunites with Louis, and begins to renovate his old house in the French Quarter. Above all, Lestat claims that he has finally come to accept his vampiric nature. However, Lestat then warns readers not to continue if they are happy with this ending. Lestat then resumes the narrative, claiming that he has regained his ""evil"" nature, and decides to make Talbot into a vampire against his wishes, and despite the role Talbot played in saving his life when everyone else abandoned him. After having immortality forced upon him, David again disappears. Lestat looks for him for a while, but upon having no luck he gives up and returns to New Orleans &mdash; where to his surprise he finds that David has already contacted Louis. David explains to Lestat that, in secret, this is what he always truly wanted. He tells Lestat that he is no longer angry with him, although he does usurp Lestat's position of leadership, despite the latters' protests. Having gotten rid of his old age, and now being immortal, David plans to visit Rio de Janeiro with Louis, and asks Lestat to join him. At the end, Lestat also realizes that, despite all that happened, he is still alone, has failed to regain his ""humanity,"" and has thrown away his only chance to make amends for his past misdeeds."
2121,Fear,horror," University professor James Lowry is a disbeliever in spirits or witches, or demons, so much so that he publishes an article in a newspaper denying the existence of them. He is warned of the possible repercussions by his friend Tommy Williams. That same spring evening his hat disappears. Lowry discovers that four hours of his life have gone missing. Lowry is pursued by an omnipotent evil force that is turning his whole world against him while it whispers a warning from the shadows: ""...if you find your hat you'll find your four hours. If you find your four hours then you will die..."" Lowry is suspicious that Tommy may be having an affair with his wife, Mary, even in his dreams of demons. Lowry goes about his day-to-day life, but increasingly begins seeing demons, ghouls and odd things about him. He wakes up in the middle of the night to shadows that are leading him out of his bedroom and out into his garden which has transformed into a vast creepy slope. At this point, he is led down a long winding staircase in the middle of his lawn that seems to disappear. He goes out looking for the four hours of his life that he has lost and his hat (which he seems to have lost at the same time). He finds both the hat and realizes what he has done in the four hours in a final twist of the book, where the reader comes to realize that he had a psychotic break early on (the missing 4 hours) and most everything that you've read never even happened. It's chilling to discover the truth of what happened during those four hours, as the reader has been led to like the protagonist, when he has been the antagonist all along."
2122,Among the Missing,horror," The novel takes place in Sierra County, California, primarily around the Silver Lake area. The story begins with a man and woman visiting a section of the Silver River referred to as 'the Bend', apparently with the intention of engaging in a romantic tryst. The next day, the woman's decapitated body is discovered by a young couple, Bass and his girlfriend Faye. Sheriff Rusty Hodges and his daughter-in-law, Deputy Mary ""Pac"" Hodges, are called in to investigate. The pursuit of the killer leads to a complicated series of events involving Merton (a homosexual drug dealer who was seen running from the scene of the crime), the dead woman's husband, and a revenge scheme involving two of the main characters."
2123,The House of Thunder,horror," The novel revolves around a woman named Susan Thorton, who wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of her past or how she got there. Her physician, Dr. McGee, helps Susan recover some of her memory, including that of an anti-Semitic hate crime she witnessed years earlier that led to the death of her fiance, but she can't seem to recall anything related to the company where she works or her recent past. Phone calls from her colleagues do nothing to jog Susan's memory. In the meantime, Susan begins having dreams and vivid hallucinations connected to her fiance's murder. The men responsible for the crime show up at the hospital, although they claim not to recognize her and none of them appear to have aged at all, despite the fact that over a decade has passed. The men begin tormenting Susan, who must decide whether or not she can trust Dr. McGee as she tries to discover if the men are ghosts, doppelgangers, or if these horrific experiences only exist in her mind."
2124,How I Survived My Summer Vacation,horror," :Written by Michelle Sagara West Buffy continually sees the death of everyone she touches while she heads out to LA to spend summer vacation with her dad. She must come to terms with her own death before the deaths of others will disappear from her mind. :Written by Nancy Holder Absalom tries to obtain the Master's bones from Giles, who has them kept in his house. :Written by Cameron Dokey A shapeshifter comes to town. Giles, Angel and Jenny must deal with it before it gets to the Slayer. :Written by Cameron Dokey While shopping in LA, Buffy runs into a fortune-teller who tells her that she's the warrior sent to free the spirit of her dead child. Buffy must solve the mystery of the daughter's death and why her spirit isn't free. :Written by Yvonne Navarro A newly risen vampire raises the war veteran General Sam from the grave. General Sam, crazy and still sure that World War II rages on, decides to seize Sunnydale since he believes it has been infiltrated by the enemy. Giles, Jenny and Angel must stop the General and his legion of zombie followers. :Written by Paul Ruditis Willow and Xander are running a play at the local theater. Little do they know that the stage crew are all vampires who have a love for Shakespeare. After several deaths in a Shakespearian fashion, Giles, Jenny and Angel decide to remove the vampire threat on the night of the play."
2125,Song of Susannah,horror," Taking place mainly in our world (New York City and East Stoneham, Maine), this book picks up where Wolves of the Calla left off, with the ka-tet employing the help of the Manni to open the magic door inside Doorway Cave. The ka-tet are split up by the magic door, or perhaps ka, and sent to different 'wheres' and 'whens' in order to accomplish several essential goals pertaining to their quest towards the mysterious Dark Tower. Susannah Dean is partially trapped in her own mind by Mia, the former demon and now very-pregnant mortal woman who had taken control of her body shortly after the final battle in Wolves of the Calla. Susannah and Mia, with their shared body mostly under the control of Mia, escape to New York of 1999 via the magic door in Doorway Cave with the help of Black Thirteen. Mia tells Susannah she has made a Faustian deal with the Man in Black, also known as Walter, to surrender her demonic immortality in exchange for being able to produce a child. Technically speaking, however, this child is the biological descendant of Susannah Dean and the gunslinger, Roland. The Gunslinger's 'seed' was passed to Susannah through an Elemental who had sex with both. The technical parentage of her child matters little to Mia, though, because The Crimson King has further promised her that she will have sole charge of raising the child, Mordred, for the first part of his life - the time before the critical destiny the Crimson King foresees for the child comes to pass. All Mia must do now is bring Susannah to the Dixie Pig restaurant to give birth to the child under the care of the Crimson King's men. Jake, Oy, and Father Callahan follow Susannah to the New York City of 1999 in order to save Susannah from the danger Mia has put her in by delivering her into the custody of the Crimson King's henchmen. In addition, the ka-tet fear the danger posed to Susannah by the child itself; still unaware of the biological origins of this child, the ka-tet believe that it may be demonic in some way and may have the ability to turn on and harm its mother or mothers. While in New York, Jake and Callahan also hide Black Thirteen in a locker in the World Trade Center. It is implied in the text that Black Thirteen will be destroyed when the towers fall in the September 11, 2001 attacks. While Susannah, Jake, and Callahan are in New York, Roland and Eddie Dean are sent by the magic doorway to Maine in 1977, with the goal of securing the ownership of a vacant lot in New York from its current owner, a man named Calvin Tower (who first appears in The Waste Lands as the proprietor of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, where he sells Jake a copy of Charlie the Choo-Choo, a book that has turned out to be important to the ka-tet's quest). The gunslingers have seen and felt the power of a rose that is located in the vacant lot and suspect it to be some sort of secondary hub to the universe, or possibly even a representation of the Dark Tower itself. The ka-tet believe that the Tower itself is linked to the rose and will be harmed (or fall) if the rose is harmed, the reason for this being the Dark Tower and the Rose are somehow connected, the two images very similar in the series. Calvin Tower is in hiding in Maine from Enrico Balazar's men (see The Drawing of the Three), who have almost succeeded in strong-arming him into selling them the lot. Tower has so far resisted, with the help of Eddie Dean (see Wolves of the Calla). Upon their arrival in Maine, the gunslingers find themselves thrown into an ambush by these same men, headed by Jack Andolini. Balazar's men were tipped off on Roland and Eddie's potential whereabouts by Mia, who hoped that they would dispose of the people she perceived as threats to her child. Roland and Eddie escape this onslaught with the help of a crafty local man, John Cullum, who they deem to be a savior put in their path through the machinations of ka. After accomplishing their primary goal, the deeding of the vacant lot to the Tet Corporation, Roland and Eddie learn of the nearby location of Stephen King's home. They are familiar with the author's name after coming into possession of a copy of his novel 'Salem's Lot in the Calla, and they decide to pay him a visit. King's presence, and his relationship to the Dark Tower, cause the very reality surrounding his Maine town to become ""thin."" Strange creatures called ""walk-ins"" begin emerging and plaguing the community. The author is unaware of this and has never seen one, though most of the walk-ins have been appearing on his own street. During their visit to him, the Gunslinger hypnotizes King and finds out that King is not a god, but rather a medium for the story of the Dark Tower to transmit itself through. Roland also implants in King the suggestion to restart his efforts in writing the Dark Tower series, which he has abandoned of late, claiming that there are major forces involved that are trying to prevent him from finishing it. The ka-tet are convinced that the success of their quest itself depends somehow on King's writing about it through the story. Meanwhile, in New York, Jake and Father Callahan prepare to launch an assault on the Dixie Pig, where Susannah is being held by the soldiers of The Crimson King. Their discovery of the scrimshaw turtle that Susannah has left behind for them gives them a faint hope that they might succeed, though Jake is filled with a strong sense of dread and neither Jake nor Callahan particularly expects to leave the place alive. The book ends with Jake and Callahan entering with weapons raised and Susannah and Mia about to give birth in Fedic, a town in Thunderclap. As a postscriptum, the reader becomes familiar with the diary of Stephen King the character which encompasses the period from 1977 to 1999. The diary details King's writing of the first five books of the Dark Tower story. It is said that the character, Stephen King, dies on June 19, 1999."
2126,Industrial Magic,horror," The story starts with the attack upon Dana MacArthur, daughter of a Cabal employee. Dismayed by her inability to persuade other witches to form a new coven because of their disapproval of her relationship with Lucas Cortez, Paige Winterbourne is not entirely happy to find his father - Benicio Cortez - on her doorstep with news of the new case. Lucas and Paige decide to travel to Miami to visit his father and introduce Paige to the family, as well as to hear further details about the attack. They discover that Dana's is only one of a series of similar attacks upon the children of Cabal employees. That night another child, the son of Benicio's bodyguard is killed. The father, Griffin, asks Paige and Lucas to investigate. Concerned about Savannah, they arrange for her to stay with the werewolf Pack. They then arrange to meet up with Jaime Vegas, a necromancer. Jaime manages to contact Dana, who is believed to be in a coma, getting what details she can from her about the attack. In the process she discovers the girl is dead. Investigation leads them to the home of Everett Weber. They are unable to find him, but do find a lot of encrypted computer files. Paige breaks the code to reveal a list of the children of Cabal employees. They track down Weber, but before they can persuade him to come with him peacefully, a Cabal SWAT team cause a hostage situation. Paige is injured and Everett taken into custody. The trial results in Weber's swift execution, but almost immediately another child is killed - the grandson of Thomas Nast. Jaime, Lucas and Paige go out to the swamp where Weber would be buried to contact him. They meet Esus. He gives them details about the man who hired Weber. When they continue to investigate, they start to be plagued by a ghost, but Jaime struggles to contact it. Eventually, they discover that the ghost is that of a vampire. Their search leads them to the home of Edward and Natasha, two immortality-quester vampires. Natasha has been killed, she is the ghost, and Edward is looking for revenge. They set a trap, but it backfires. Lucas is shot, and both he and Paige find themselves in the land of the dead. There Paige meets Savannah's mother, Eve, who guides her. The Fates offer them a choice, and their decision returns them to the land of the living, where they find the werewolves have begun to search for them. A trap is set for Edward at a charity ball, but it goes wrong. Jaime is kidnapped and Benicio ignores the plan in order to save his son. Jeremy, Savannah and Paige help to save everyone. Benicio executes Edward."
2127,Carnosaur,horror," Set in a rural village in Cambridgeshire, England, the novel opens in a chicken farm which is attacked one night by a mysterious creature, leaving the farmer and his wife dead. A story circulates that the killer was a Siberian Tiger which had escaped the private zoo of an eccentric lord named Darren Penward. A reporter named David Pascal investigates the carnage and notices that the blood stained room where the attack has taken place has been thoroughly cleansed in a seeming attempt at covering the killer's footprints. A few days later, the creature attacks a stable, killing a horse, the keeper and her daughter, leaving one survivor, an 8 year old boy. Pascal arrives at the scene, only to find Penward's men already there, towing a concealed animal with a helicopter. Pascal interviews the boy who reveals that the killer was not a tiger, but a dinosaur. After unsuccessfully trying to interview Penward's men, Pascal moves on to begin a sexual relationship with Penward's nymphomaniac wife, who eventually takes him to her private quarters. From there, Pascal enters the zoo, only to discover that it is filled with dinosaurs. He is captured and given a tour of the establishment. He sees a variety of different species, mostly carnivorous, including the dinosaur that had escaped earlier which is identified as a Deinonychus, a sexually frustrated Megalosaurus and a Tarbosaurus. Penward explains that he recreated the dinosaurs by studying the DNA fragments found in dinosaur fossils, then using them as a basis for restructuring the DNA of chickens. He goes as far as saying that he intends to let his dinosaurs loose in remote areas of the world where they could flourish and eventually spread after what he considers an inevitable Third World War. Pascal is imprisoned, only to be rescued by Lady Penward, but only after promising that he permanently commit to her. As they make their escape, Pascal notices that his ex-girlfriend Jenny Stamper, a reporter herself, has been caught in the act of infiltrating Penwards zoo. Enraged at his insistence on helping her, Lady Penward releases the dinosaurs and other animals present in the zoo. Sir Penward is seriously wounded by an escaped bull and captures his maddened wife. Pascal and Jenny escape to the authorities, but are not believed until reports begin flooding in on mysterious deaths. A pleasure boat is attacked by a Plesiosaurus, a Dilophosaurus kills a Member of Parliament, the Megalosaurus gets run over by a lorry, an Altispinax attacks a herd of cows, a Scolosaurus confronts a FV101 Scorpion, and the Tarbosaurus destroys a pub before invading people's gardens. The British Army is called, and soon many dinosaurs are killed. The next day, Pascal goes to visit Jenny at her home, only to find her badly injured, and her family dead; killed by a Deinonychus which Pascal kills with a pitchfork. Meanwhile, the dying Sir Penward imprisons his wife in a farmhouse, where she is devoured alive by two newly hatched Tyrannosauruses. At the conclusion of the story, aside from the baby Tyrannosaurs, the only other dinosaur left alive is a baby Brachiosaurus."
2128,Loop,horror," The story revolves around a medical student named Kaoru Futami whose father has contracted a deadly disease called Metastatic Human Cancer(MHC), a cancer involving both animals and plants. Kaoru knew that his father was involved with a massive supercomputer project named LOOP. The LOOP was a computer simulation of the emergence of life but still unable to simulate such a thing. It is known that everyone who was involved in the LOOP has died of the same cancer. In the course of events, he meets a woman named Reiko and falls in love with her. Reiko becomes pregnant with Kaoru's child, which makes Reiko vulnerable to MHC. Kaoru continues his investigations which lead him to a man (and the last surviving person involved in the LOOP) named Amano. Amano revealed to him that LOOP was a project involving a hundred supercomputers strung together with the aim to recreate life. Amano tells Kaoru of a lab in New Mexico where another scientist might be alive. Kaoru venturs there only to find the scientist dead. He enters the lab and finds a pair of virtual reality goggles and gloves. He tries them and minutes later, he is in the LOOP. In the loop, he sees everything but one event intrigued him, the emergence of the Ring Virus. There in the LOOP, he sees complete details of the events in the previous novels from different angles. After some discussion with Amano, he knows that the LOOP's creator wanted to recreate Ryuji's death and by doing that, he could clone him and insert him into a woman's womb. But what they made was a cloned Ryuji with the Ring Virus in him. When Ryuji was born, the virus escaped and mutated. Desperate to find a cure for MHC, he ventures only to encounter a storm leaving him on the verge of death. Then, he was saved by an old man. After telling the old man the truth, it turned out that Kaoru was Ryuji's clone. Because of that, Kaoru has an exceptional gift, immunity to MHC. In order to know what made Kaoru immune, he had to be analyzed. An analysis machine was created. The bad side though is that the analyzed object must be molecularized, meaning that Kaoru could die. As a hero, he agreed. After that, the old man transferred Kaoru's analyzed molecules in the LOOP. He promised that his wife could see him through the VR Goggles and Reiko won't be alone. In the LOOP, Kaoru is sitting watching the stars, thinking that Reiko is watching over him."
2129,The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,horror," Randolph Carter dreams three times of a majestic sunset city, but each time he is abruptly snatched away before he can see it up close. When he prays to the gods of dream to reveal the whereabouts of the phantasmal city, they do not answer, and his dreams of the city stop altogether. Undaunted, Carter resolves to go to Kadath, where the gods live, to beseech them in person. However, no one has ever been to Kadath and none even knows how to get there. In dream, Randolph Carter descends ""the seventy steps to the cavern of flame"" and speaks of his plan to the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose temple borders the Dreamlands. The priests warn Carter of the great danger of his quest and suggest that the gods withdrew his vision of the city on purpose. Carter enters the Enchanted Wood and meets the zoogs, a race of predatory and sentient rodents. For a novice, such an encounter could prove calamitous, but Carter is an experienced dreamer and so is knowledgeable of their language and customs. When Carter asks the zoogs about Kadath, they don't know where it is; instead, they suggest that Carter go the town of Ulthar and find a wizened priest named Atal who is learned in the ways of the gods. In the cat-laden city of Ulthar, Carter visits Atal, who mentions a huge carving wrought on Ngranek's hidden side that shows the features of the gods. Carter realizes that if he can go to Ngranek, examine the carving, and then find a place where mortals share those features and are thus related to the gods, he must be near Kadath. Carter goes to Dylath-Leen to secure passage to Oriab. Dylath-Leen is infamous for the black galleys that frequent its harbors. These galleys are steered by oarsmen who are never seen and crewed by turbaned men that trade curious-looking rubies for slaves and gold. Randolph Carter's quest is interrupted when he is captured by the turbaned men and flown to the moon on one of their notorious black galleys. Once there, he learns that the turbaned men are slaves to the terrifying moon-beasts. A procession of moon-beasts and their slaves escort Carter across the moon to deliver him to the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep (one of the Other Gods who rule space, in contrast to the Great Ones, the gods of earth). He is saved by the cats of Ulthar, who slay his captors and return Carter to earth's Dreamlands in the port of Dylath-Leen. Carter boards a ship sailing to Baharna, a great seaport on the isle of Oriab. On the way to Oriab and while he travels across the island riding a zebra, Carter hears dark whispers about the night-gaunts, though they are never properly described. Carter makes a treacherous climb across Ngranek and discovers the gigantic carving of the gods on its far side. He is surprised to see that the features match those of sailors who trade at the port of Celephaïs, but before he can act on this knowledge, he is snatched away by the night-gaunts and left to die in the Vale of Pnath in the underworld. Carter is rescued by friendly ghouls, amongst them Richard Pickman, a friend of Carter's, the protagonist of another of Lovecraft's stories, Pickman's Model and who is now also a ghoul, who agree to return him to the upper Dreamlands. They make their way to the terrible city of the gugs to reach the Tower of Koth, wherein a winding stairway leads to the surface. Finding the city asleep, Carter and the ghouls attempt to sneak past the snoring gugs. The ghasts, the gugs' traditional enemies, begin an attack, but the group manages to ascend the stairway and open the great trapdoor to the Enchanted Wood. Here Carter comes upon a gathering of zoogs and finds that they plan to make war on the cats of Ulthar. Not wanting to see his friends harmed, Carter warns the cats, enabling them to launch a surprise attack on the zoogs. After a brief skirmish, the zoogs are defeated. To abate further hostilities, the zoogs agree to a new treaty with the cats of Ulthar. Carter reaches the city of Thran and buys passage on a galleon to Celephaïs. While en route, Carter asks the sailors about the men who trade in Celephaïs&mdash;the ones he believes to be kin to the gods. He learns that they are from the cold, dark land of Inquanok or Inganok and that few people dare to travel there. Even more ominous, there are no cats there. The plateau of Leng with its inhuman treacheries is too near. In Celephaïs, Carter meets his old friend Kuranes, the king of the city. Kuranes is an old dreamer whom Carter knew in the waking world, but when he died, he became a permanent resident of the Dreamlands. Longing for home, he has dreamed parts of his kingdom to resemble his native Cornwall. Kuranes knows the pitfalls of the Dreamlands all too well and tries to dissuade Carter from his dangerous quest. Carter, however, will not be deterred. Under the pretense of wishing to work in its quarries, Carter boards a ship bound for Inganok, a nation built of onyx. The trip to Inganok takes three weeks, but as they draw near, Carter spots a strange granite island. When he inquires about the mysterious isle, the captain explains that it is the nameless rock, and it is best to not speak of it. That night, Carter hears strange howls from the nameless island. When Carter arrives at Inganok, he purchases a yak and heads northward, in the hope that past the onyx quarries he will find Kadath. Carter ascends a steep ridge beyond which nothing is visible but sky. At the summit, he looks out and gets a breathtaking view of a gargantuan quarry. Carter sets off toward this quarry, but his yak, spooked, abandons him. Carter is captured by a slant-eyed man, whom he has met before among the merchants of Dylath-Leen. The slant-eyed man summons a shantak-bird, which both ride over the Plateau of Leng, a vast tableland populated by Pan-like beings. Arriving at a monastery wherein dwells the dreaded High Priest Not to Be Described, Carter now suspects that the slant-eyed man is yet another conspirator of the forces that seek to thwart his quest. The slant-eyed man leads Carter through the monastery to a domed room with a circular well, which Carter speculates leads to the Vaults of Zin in the underworld. Herein, the high-priest, wearing a silken robe and a mask, is waiting. Carter learns that the Men of Leng are the same beings that conceal their horns under turbans and trade in Dylath-Leen. He also learns that the night-gaunts do not serve Nyarlathotep as is commonly supposed, but Nodens, and that even Earth's Gods are afraid of them. It is never revealed to the reader who the high-priest in the silken mask is, but Carter recoils from him in such horror that it is possible that he is Nyarlathotep. (The text suggests that the High-Priest is one of the Moon-Beasts.) When the slant-eyed man is momentarily distracted, Carter pushes him into the well and escapes through the maze-like corridors. In pitch-black darkness, Carter wanders through the monastery, fearing he is being pursued by the High Priest Not to Be Described. At last reaching the outside, Carter realizes that he is in the ruins of ancient Sarkomand, which lies near the coast. Soon he encounters the ghouls that helped him earlier once more. The Men of Leng have taken them hostage on their ship, and they are to be taken to the nameless rock, revealed to be a moon-beast outpost. Carter summons the rest of the ghouls from the underworld and they take control of the galley. After releasing their kin, they sail on to the nameless rock and fight a pitched battle against the moon-beasts. Emerging victorious, and fearing the arrival of reinforcements, Carter and the ghouls return to Sarkomand. Once there, Carter obtains the services of a flock of night-gaunts to transport himself and the ghouls to the gods' castle on Kadath. After an exhilarating flight, Carter arrives at last at the abode of the gods, but finds it empty. Finally a great procession arrives with much fanfare, led by a pharaoh-like man who explains to Carter that the gods of earth have seen the city of Carter's dreams and decided to make it their home, and have thus abandoned Kadath. The gods walk no more in the ways of gods, and have become instead mere denizens of the jewelled city Carter had glimpsed in his dreams. The pharaoh commands Carter to find this city, so that the natural order might be restored. ""It is not over unknown seas,"" he says, ""but back over well-known years that your quest must go; back to the bright strange things of infancy and the quick sun-drenched glimpses of magic that old scenes brought to wide young eyes. For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth.... These things you saw, Randolph Carter, when your nurse first wheeled you out in the springtime, and they will be the last things you will ever see with eyes of memory and of love."" This mysterious man then reveals his identity&mdash;he is Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, the emissary of the Other Gods who dwell in the blackness of space. Nyarlathotep sends Carter on a great Inganok shantak-bird through space to the sunset city. Unfortunately, Carter realizes too late that the mocking Nyarlathotep has tricked him, and that instead he is being taken to the court of Azathoth at the center of the universe. At first believing he is doomed, Carter suddenly remembers that he is in a dream and saves himself by leaping from the great bird. As he falls, his thoughts turn toward New England, and he wakes to find that he is at last in his marvelous sunset city; no longer in the Dreamlands but in his own room in the waking world of Boston, looking out upon its architectural graces, suffused in a splendid sunrise. The final lines of the story find Nyarlathotep brooding over his defeat within the halls of Kadath, mocking in anger the ""mild gods of earth"" whom he has snatched back from the sunset city."
2130,Divine Misdemeanors,horror," Divine Misdemeanors follows the character of Meredith NicEssus, princess of faerie, also known as Merry Gentry. Having succeeded in her goal to become pregnant before her cousin Cel, Merry has declined the Unseelie throne and is attempting to live peacefully with her men and court while dealing with continued court intrigue and the paparazzi. This is made more difficult when a series of brutal murders rips through the area, with the Grey Detective Agency being asked to take part in the investigations and to send Merry in particular. Meanwhile Merry is having to deal with the stress of leading a large group of fey outside of the Seelie and Unseelie courts."
2131,Boy in Darkness,horror," Boy in Darkness is an episode in the Gormenghast series when Titus Groan, referred to mostly as ""the Boy"" in the story, is a young teenager – placing it during the period covered by the second novel in the series, Gormenghast. Yearning for freedom from his ceaseless duties as 77th Earl of Gormenghast, he escapes the ancient castle and encounters the nightmare world outside."
2132,Prayers to Broken Stones,horror," The actual story is classic Simmons in its literary allusions, with epigraphs from Ezra Pound's Cantos; the protagonist's father is a Pound scholar with an especial interest in the Cantos (reading from it to his children), and the premise can be seen as deriving from a line in the Cantos as well. The mother of the family has died of some unspecified illness. Stricken by grief, the father bargains (heedless of the prospect of financial ruin) with the ""Resurrectionists"" to have his wife's corpse technologically revived. The resurrection is a hollow one, as all higher cognitive functions are irreparably damaged, although it does function somewhat autonomously. Their family is stigmatized, and the father slowly breaks down and his classes become less and less popular until he takes a sabbatical to write his long-planned work on the Cantos. He spends most of it drunk. Simon, the protagonist's brother, eventually commits suicide. A few years later, while the protagonist is at university (sponsored by the Resurrectionists, whom he has joined) the father commits suicide as well. He graduates and begins working for them and helping to spread the living dead. He does little but work, spending his free time with his resurrected family."
2133,Ethan Frome,horror," Ethan Frome is set in a fictional New England town named Starkfield, where an unnamed narrator tells the story of his encounter with Ethan Frome, a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events. The narrator tells the story based on an account from observations at Frome's house when he had to stay there during a winter storm. The novel is framed by the literary device of an extended flashback. The first chapter opens with an unnamed narrator who, while spending a winter in Starkfield, sets out to learn about the life of a mysterious local figure named Ethan Frome, a man who had been injured in a horrific “smash-up” twenty-four years before. Frome is described as “the most striking figure in Starkfield”, “the ruin of a man” with a “careless powerful look…in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain”. The narrator fails to get many details from the townspeople. However, the narrator hires Frome as his driver for a week. A severe snowstorm forces Frome to take the narrator to his home one night for shelter. Just as the two are entering Frome's house, the first chapter ends. The second chapter flashes back twenty-four years; the narration switches from the first-person narrator of the first chapter to a limited third-person narrator. Ethan is waiting outside a church dance for Mattie, his wife’s cousin, who lives with Ethan and his wife Zeena (Zenobia) to help around the house since Zeena is sickly. Mattie is given the occasional night off to entertain herself in town as partial recompense for taking care of the Frome family without pay, and Ethan has fallen into the habit of walking her home. It is made clear that Ethan has deep feelings for Mattie, and it is equally clear that Zeena suspects these feelings and does not approve. When Zeena leaves for a two-day visit to seek treatment for her illness in a neighboring town, Ethan is excited to have an evening alone with Mattie. However, the two never verbalize or show their passion for each other throughout their evening together. The Fromes' cat breaks Zeena’s favorite pickle dish which Mattie had set on the table. Ethan sets the dish's pieces neatly in the cupboard with plans to fix it soon. He represses the impulse to demonstrate his passion and affection for Mattie. In the morning Ethan’s plans to reveal his love for Mattie are foiled by the presence of his hired man; he runs into town to pick up some glue for the broken pickle dish, and upon his return finds that Zeena has returned. Zeena informs him that she plans to send Mattie away and hire a more efficient girl to replace her, as her health is failing even more rapidly. Ethan’s passions are inflamed by the thought of losing Mattie, he finds her in the kitchen after Zeena’s pronouncement. He tells her of Zeena’s plans to dismiss her, but their moment is interrupted by Zeena herself. Zeena discovers the broken pickle dish and is angered, furthering her determination to get rid of Mattie. Ethan considers running away with Mattie, but he does not possess the financial wherewithal to do so. The next morning, Zeena announces the plans to hire a new girl and send Mattie on her way. Ethan rushes into town on an errand to seek out an advance from a customer for a load of lumber, so as to give him the money to run away with Mattie. His plan is unhinged by guilt, however, when his customer’s wife compliments him on his patience and dedication in caring for Zeena through her sickness. Ethan returns to the farm, picking up Mattie to go to the train station. They stop at a hill upon which they had once proposed to go sledding, and they decide to go through with the sledding despite the dangers of the trees. After their first run, Mattie suggests a suicide pact; that they run themselves into a tree so they may spend their last moments together. Ethan resists the notion, but then finally agrees, and they take the ride down together. On the way down, a vision of Zeena's face makes Ethan try to turn aside at the last moment, but he recovers and hits the elm tree. Instead of both of them being killed, Ethan regains consciousness after the accident and, dazed and confused, finds Mattie lying beside him moaning in pain. Additionally, Ethan is partially paralyzed, finding movement to be difficult. This was the so-called ""smash-up"" introduced at the beginning of the novel. The final chapter switches back to the first-person narrator point of view of the first chapter, as Frome and the narrator walk into the Frome household two decades later. Mattie still lives with Frome, but she is paralyzed from the accident. Her personality has ""soured"" and Zeena now must care for her and Ethan."
2134,Haunted,horror," Cordy's finally getting a big break—she will be a contestant on some ""reality programming"". She must spend five days and four nights in an apparently haunted house. Living with a ghost and catching demons for a living, she sees this as an easy challenge. However, there is more going on than Cordy knows. In a vision on her first night, she sees one of the applicants who didn't make it to the show. She secretly communicates the scenario to Angel and Co., who are instantly on the case. Angel, Wesley and Gunn search for the missing actress as supernatural activity at the house increases. Soon, Wolfram and Hart also get involved and Cordelia is forced to consider her priorities."
2135,Move Under Ground,horror," Jack Kerouac witnesses the rising of R'lyeh off the California coast. With Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs, Jack takes to the road, crossing America to save the world from a Lovecraftian cult."
2136,Cowboys for Christ,horror," Beth is a successful pop music singer and a devout Protestant Christian from Texas, USA. She and her boyfriend Steve both belong to a group known as the ""Cowboys for Christ"", who travel to ""heathen areas"" of the world to preach Christianity. They travel to Glasgow, Scotland, hoping to save some souls once there. However, they are shocked when they receive a very negative reception, Beth even being set upon by a large dog. After performing a concert at a local cathedral, the duo are approached by Lord Lachlan and his wife Delia, aristocrats from the small village of Tressock in the Scottish lowlands. They invite Beth and Steve to come back with them to Tressock in order to preach. Meanwhile, detective Orlando is sent to Tressock, posing as the local police officer, in order to secretly investigate reports of a pagan cult. Beth and Steve decide that they shall begin their preaching at the May Day celebrations in the village. Meanwhile Orlando discovers that the people of the village worship the ancient Celt goddess Sulis. In an attempt to impress the locals, Steve and Beth agree to becoming the local Queen of the May and the Laddie for the festival. In this role, they must split up for the day, and it is during this that the Laddie is devoured by the locals on an island in the middle of the river Sulis. Beth discovers this, and tries to escape, but is captured and embalmed."
2137,The Mysteries of Udolpho,horror," Emily St. Aubert is the only child of a landed rural family whose fortunes are now in decline. Emily and her father share an especially close bond, due to their shared appreciation for nature. After her mother's death from a serious illness, Emily and her father grow even closer. She accompanies him on a journey from their native Gascony, through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast of Roussillon, over many mountainous landscapes. During the journey, they encounter Valancourt, a handsome man who also feels an almost mystical kinship with the natural world. Emily and Valancourt quickly fall in love. Emily's father succumbs to a long illness. Emily, now orphaned, is forced by his wishes to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron, who shares none of Emily's interests and shows little affection to her. Her aunt marries Montoni, a dubious nobleman from Italy. He wants his friend Count Morano to become Emily′s husband, and tries to force her to marry him. After discovering that Morano is nearly ruined he brings Emily and his wife to his remote castle of Udolpho. Emily fears to have lost Valancourt forever. Morano searches for Emily and tries to carry her off secretly from Udolpho. Emily refuses to join him because her heart still belongs to Valancourt. Morano′s attempt to escape is discovered by Montoni, who wounds the Count and chases him away. In the following months Montoni threatens his wife with violence to force her to sign over her properties in Toulouse, which upon her death would otherwise go to Emily. Without resigning her estate Madame Cheron dies of a severe illness caused by her husband′s harshness. Many frightening but coincidental events happen within the castle, but Emily is able to flee from it with the help of her secret admirer Du Pont, who was a prisoner at Udolpho, and the servants Annette and Ludovico. Returning to the estate of her aunt, Emily learns that Valancourt went to Paris and lost his wealth. In the end she takes control of the property and is reunited with Valancourt."
2138,Hero in the Shadows,horror," Waylander, the assassin anti-hero of Waylander and Waylander II, is now a rich old man looking for a world that will give him peace and atonement for his crimes. However, his relatively quiet peace is broken by the appearance of old demons from the past, and enemies from the present. Faced with enemies he cannot easily fight, even a magical sorcerer working for an unknown cause, he is forced to take up his crossbow and sabre to once again become Waylander. Aided by an idealistic warrior, a braggart with a stolen sword, a girl with a special talent, and a mysterious priestess and her followers, he seeks to close the chapter of his life by destroying the evil he has created by his own hand."
2139,Something Upstairs,horror," Something Upstairs is about a twelve year old boy, Kenny Huldorf, who tells a story to Avi who had visited the school on a book tour. He moves from Los Angeles to Providence, Rhode Island. He lives in a house of past events, built in 1789. Kenny's room is in the attic. One night Kenny wakes to a scraping noise in the old slave room. When he looks inside, he sees a ghost that tries to get out from a stain on the floor. It moves a box full of books out of the way. Once it is out, the ghost feels the attic walls, in search of something. Kenny and the ghost see each other; the ghost does not speak, and flinches away and disappears when Kenny raises a shoe in defense. Kenny tells his father there is something upstairs, but his father interprets that as a metaphor for “something you don’t want anyone to know about. Secrets.” Kenny visits the local library, where he meets an old historian, Pardon Willinghast, who is also curious about the property. Kenny tries to talk with the ghost boy, who mutters the word “slave.” He asks Willinghast if any former owners had slaves, but he doesn’t get a candid answer. After getting a sample of the floor analyzed by a chemist, Kenny talks with the slave boy, whose name is Caleb, who affirms that’s his blood, and that he was murdered in his sleep. He wants Kenny to help him find who did it. Kenny doesn’t think that’s possible, but as he leaves, he finds his room changed. Kenny finds himself in an earlier time period. He follows a man who was staring at his window. Another man sees Kenny and asks him to pass a message, which he does, but he also reads it, noting it concerns a meeting aboard The Gaspee. Kenny runs back to his house and returns to his own time. Kenny asks Caleb why he can’t leave. Caleb says his death was unnatural, so he’s a memory fixed in time and space. Caleb affirms the men were slave traders, and gives Kenny the approximate day he was killed. Kenny confirms in the news articles that Caleb was found dead in the locked attic room in an apparent suicide. Caleb denies the suicide, but Kenny agrees to help him. They go back in time and listen in on the conversation aboard The Gaspee, which also includes Pardon Willinghast! The men talk about how they can preserve their slave trade, by motivating the slave trade workers outside to go to Olney Lane to silence the blacks who live there. Caleb disappears. Kenny tries to leave but is stopped by Willinghast, who tells Kenny that he is a memory as well, and that Caleb’s running and the men leaving are all going according to plan. He takes Kenny’s keychain and states that Kenny could be stuck in this time period forever as a ghost because of altered events. Kenny goes to Olney Lane and finds Caleb who has a musket. Then the angry drunken mob approaches, but Caleb confronts them, and gets hit in the face with a rock before Kenny pulls him back. The mob sets fire to one of the nearby houses. Caleb is furious that he shoots and kills one of the mob. The mob tries to go after Caleb and Kenny, but they escape in the rain. Kenny and Caleb retreat to their house. After figuring a way to lock the room from the inside, Kenny goes out to seek help, but is stopped by Pardon Willinghast, who has a proposal for Kenny. In order to return to the present time, Kenny will have to kill Caleb in the locked room to fulfill the suicide scenario. Willinghast also reveals that he originally killed Caleb, and that others were given a similar situation and had killed Caleb. He gives Kenny a double-barreled pistol. Kenny returns to Caleb and says that he was the murderer, but it was Willinghast who blackmailed him. The boys think of a way to change the situation. They fake Caleb’s death using the blood from his cheek, and lure Willinghast into the room. Willinghast arrives and checks Caleb’s body but finds he is still alive. He orders Kenny to shoot Caleb and dangles the keychain. Kenny shoots. Kenny wakes up in the present time and sees there is no stain on the floor. The library article now reads that Willinghast committed suicide and the slave boy is missing. Kenny wonders if Caleb is truly free or whether he will be stuck in another house as a memory."
2140,Shakedown,horror," Doyle has a vision of a seismic shift, and everyone's guard goes up. After investigation, Angel is led to a group of Serpentine demons who live locally in a wealthy and private community. Despite close associations with telemarketing, this group of 'monsters' seems harmless and has no enemies, yet it has become the target of a clan of underground quake demons. The quake demons can reduce living things to a crushed mess. Cordy and Doyle are dubious of their new clients, but Angel soon finds out he has much in common with this community."
2141,The Revenge of Dracula,horror, The novel concerns the story of Count Dracula in England and is set before the events in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.
2142,Winter Moon,horror, The story begins with a thirty-two-year-old Los Angeles police officer named Jack McGarvey.
2143,Sins of the Father,horror," Buffy's old boyfriend from Hemery High in LA, Pike, makes a surprise appearance in Sunnydale, much to the everyone's shock, particularly Buffy's. Only Pike hasn't come to catch up with Buffy; he's being pursued by a rock demon known as Grayhewn. Pike had originally killed the demon's mate after it had killed his friend and now the demon wants Pike dead in the most painful way possible. As soon as Pike makes his appearance though, Buffy struggles to deal with her old feelings for Pike as well as her love for Angel, creating nothing but confusion within herself. Meanwhile, Giles appears to be dating a new teacher named Miss Blaisdell. But since Giles has been seeing her, he seems to waver in and out of consciousness and doesn't appear to care at all about Buffy or her struggles. Miss Blaisdell, as it turns out, is working for a man from Giles' past, a man from his very personal past, who wants nothing more than to painfully torture the Watcher and make him suffer."
2144,Ruby,horror," Ruby is a young teenager who has lived her entire life with her grandmother Catherine, a traiteur (a Cajun folk healer) because her mother had died giving birth to her. They live in Houma, a small swamp village in Louisiana. Ruby is an artist and has already sold some of her paintings to a gallery in New Orleans from their roadside stand for tourists. Her grandfather Jack lives in a separate shack, having been thrown out by her grandmother when Ruby was just a baby. Ruby begins a relationship with Paul Tate, who belongs to one of Houma's richer families. Paul's parents don’t approve of the relationship and Ruby thinks that it is because she is poor. Only after Grandmere Catherine sees that the relationship is getting serious does she tell Ruby the truth - that Paul is her half brother. Ruby's mother, Gabrielle, was raped by Paul's father, Octavius, just before she graduated. In 1950s Louisiana, Gabrielle could not abort the baby legally but her father Jack blackmailed Paul's father, Octavious to take the child in order to keep it secret from the town and was forced to give it up to Gladys Tate, Octavius's wife, while her father was paid to stay silent. Sad and angry at this, Ruby does what is right and breaks up with Paul, with whom she was falling in love. Soon after, Ruby's grandmother gets sick and passes away. After her death Ruby admits the truth of their shared maternal parentage to Paul, explaining that to be the reason that she ended their budding romantic relationship. Shortly before Grandmere Catherine's death, she tells Ruby the truth about her parents: Ruby's mother become pregnant as a result of an affair with a rich Creole man named Pierre Dumas. Pierre was married, so he and Gabrielle agreed that the child would stay and live with Gabrielle in the bayou. But Grandpere Jack made a secret deal with Pierre's father to sell the child to the Dumas family for a large amount of money, while Pierre's barren wife, Daphne, would pretend to be pregnant. Grandmere Catherine knew that it was going to be twins, but she never told Jack or Gabrielle. When the time came, she gave the first baby to Grandpere Jack and kept the second baby, Ruby. When Jack saw Ruby he wanted to sell her, too, yelling that they could get twice the amount of money for two babies. At this, Catherine threw him out and told him to never come back. Exhausted by giving birth to two babies, Gabrielle survived long enough to see Ruby and name her, then died. Grandmere Catherine's only wish was for Ruby to find her real father. She had been selling Ruby's paintings in the hope that Pierre Dumas would see the signature and become curious. After Catherine's death, Ruby has no one left in the bayou now except Grandpere Jack. She overhears him making a deal with his drinking buddy Buster Trahaw that she can be his common-law wife. Terrified, Ruby runs away to New Orleans to find her father, knowing only that he lives in the Garden District. With the help of a woman she meets on the bus, Ruby finds her father's address and goes to his house. Standing at the door she meets Beau Andreas. He takes her into the house, mistaking her for her twin sister Giselle, who has grown up in the lap of luxury. Although Beau and Daphne are both taken in by the resemblance, Pierre immediately recognises that Ruby is not Giselle. After Ruby explains what has happened, he agrees that she can come and live with them. Ruby is accepted immediately by her father but not by her twin sister or stepmother, Daphne. The Dumases concoct a story that Ruby was kidnapped as a baby from the hospital. Ruby is thus brought into Creole society. Giselle, threatened by Ruby's intelligence and similarity, is extremely cruel to her and deliberately gets her in trouble, which does not improve Daphne's opinion of her. Beau Andreas is Giselle's boyfriend, but Ruby and Beau become romantically close, eventually sleeping together when Ruby sketches Beau's portrait. This drives a further wedge between Ruby and her sister. All the while Daphne is doing anything she can to get rid of Ruby because she is a constant reminder to her of Pierre's affair. Giselle gets a new boyfriend, Martin Fowler. They get into a car accident, which cripples Giselle and kills Martin. This sends Pierre into a depression. He starts drinking heavily and locks himself away in his study, gazing at a picture of Jean, his younger brother, who was brain damaged after an accident. Discovering Ruby's naked sketch of Beau, Daphne has Ruby imprisoned in a mental hospital as a nymphomaniac, but Ruby escapes with the help of an inmate, after meeting her uncle Jean. She manages to tell her father what Daphne did to her. She reassures him that Jean is not a hopeless case, but the family must stop lying. She wants to be able to tell the truth about where she came from, and tell Giselle about their real mother. Pierre agrees that they must all be more truthful with each other, but decides that it is best for the twins to go away for school in Baton Rouge in order to let the dust settle."
2145,Hell Island,horror," Hell Island is a remote Pacific Island currently used by the American government for scientific experiments. It was originally used as a Japanese airfield during World War II but was captured with a force of more than 500 Marines, including Schofield's grandfather. The book opens with Schofield's ten-man Marine Recon team parachuting onto the deck of the soon-to-be-decommissioned aircraft carrier, USS Nimitz CVN-68, along with three other special forces squads - a Delta Force team, a squad of SEALs and a force from the 82nd Airborne Division. The Delta team make landfall on the island while the other three teams investigate the aircraft carrier. It quickly becomes clear that the island was the testing ground for an elite force of supersoldier, as the Airborne and SEAL teams are quickly slaughtered. A DARPA scientist, whom Schofield's team stumble across, explain that the enemy is a group of genetically and electronically enhanced gorillas, armed with modified M-4 Colt Commandos and extremely deadly in melee combat. The few remaining Marines dispatch significant numbers of the gorillas in a large battle on board the carrier, eventually departing to investigate the island. Schofield comments that the island is home to an extensive tunnel network dating from World War II, which features an uncommon self-destruct mechanism: sea doors which can flood the lower parts of the tunnel system in the event of an enemy force capturing the base. Schofield then realises the gorillas are somehow controlled by Captain William Buck ""Buccaneer"" Broyles, the former leader of what was acknowledged to be the best Marines Unit, due to the similar tactics his Marines and the gorillas employed. They set a trap to lock the remaining force in an old ammunition storage bunker before detonating the munitions, but the Delta team's entrance with the rest of the DARPA team (who deactivate the gorillas' neural chips) changes the situation. What is controlling (or at least, calming the apes down) is a silver disc, which are on the men testing Captain Schofield and his group, including the Delta force. Dr Knox, the scientist in charge of the project, tells Schofield that they are the sole survivors of a field test for the apes, which has so far killed five hundred Marines and two special forces squads. He congratulates Schofield on his success, before instructing the Delta team leader to execute them. However, Mother jams the radio signals controlling the apes (remember the silver discs...) releasing them to murder their creators, the scientists. The Delta team is distracted and Schofield's team fires upon them and kills them, leaving only Broyles. Schofield opens a sea door, flooding the tunnels and drowning the gorillas along with the ""Buccaneer"". They leave on a C-17 which was sent to pick up the DARPA and Delta teams along with the apes."
2146,Mōryō no Hako,horror," Police detective Kiba finds himself investigating a very strange case involving a girl hit by a train, her actress sister, and a sinister hospital shaped like a box. As the girl's friend's mother becomes obsessed with Mōryō, the police begin finding young girls' limbs strewn around the countryside in boxes."
2147,I Know What You Did Last Summer,horror," In an unnamed town, high school senior Julie James receives a sinister note from an elusive stalker telling her, ""I Know What You Did Last Summer"", referring to the previous year when Julie, her boyfriend Ray Bronson, Ray's best friend Barry Cox and Barry's girlfriend, Helen Rivers, accidentally killed a young boy named David Gregg after driving home from a party in the mountains to celebrate Ray and Barry's high school graduation. The four made a vow to never mention it to anyone, and drifted apart, Barry going to the local college, Helen dropping out of school, Ray taking off for California and Julie continuing to attend school. Fearful, Julie visits Helen, and informs her about the note. Barry is called but he assures the girls it is a prank and nothing more, as if anyone did know about their crime, they would inform the authorities and not write notes. The girls buy it, and Ray returns home to Julie, but is disheartened when she reveals she is now dating a man named Bud, and no longer wants to continue their relationship. It is revealed that shortly after the night of the incident, Helen was chosen via a beauty contest to be the Channel Five Golden Girl, meaning she would be the studio's new television personality, much to the fury of Elsa, her sullen, envious and unattractive elder sister. At the Four Seasons, a luxury apartment complex where she lives, Helen is suntanning when she meets a boy, Collingsworth ""Collie"" Wilson, just out of the army. After she is done talking to Collie, she goes to her apartment and finds a magazine cut out of a boy riding a bicycle taped to the door. Meanwhile, Ray is at his house and finds that he has been sent a newspaper clipping though the mail about the boy he, Barry, Helen, and Julie had killed last summer, David Gregg. In the article, it is revealed that his parents are Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gregg. Afterwords, the book takes the reader into a memory of Ray's, in which his father commented on his life; about having a popular football friend (Barry) and a cheerleader girlfriend (Julie) and Ray's father first meeting Barry. Ray then painfully remembers about the day it in which they ran over David Gregg and then called for help from a phone booth. On Memorial Day, Barry receives a call. After he hangs up, he walks out of the University frat house where he leaves to meet the person who had called him. As it is dark, he does not see too well and is shot. When Ray finds out, he calls St. Joseph's Hospital to ask how Barry is doing. He is told that Barry is in surgery. Helen finds out about Barry being shot when she is in the TV studio. When Collie finds out about Barry he immediately goes to the studio to pick up Helen and take her to the hospital. When they reach the hospital, Helen and Collie are sent away by Barry's mother, who accuses Helen of calling Barry and getting him shot. After Julie finds out, she receives a phone call from Ray asking if they could discuss what has been happening. She agrees to go with him. During the discussion the only thing the agree on is the shooter is not Helen. Then Julie suggests going to the Gregg's house to see if it is one of David's family members who is coming after them. After a little debating, Ray agrees to go. When Ray and Julie get to the house, they use the excuse they had car trouble to get in the house. Megan Gregg lets them in. Ray goes to her kitchen and fakes making a call while Julie talks to Megan. While Julie and Megan talk, it is revealed that Megan is David Gregg's sister. Megan also says that her mother broke down after David's death and was sent to a hospital in Las Lunas. Her father moved to be close to her mother. To comfort her, Julie reveals she had lost her father at a young age. After Ray is done making his fake call, Ray and Julie leave. When they get back to the car, Julie confirms it obviously wasn't the Gregg family after them and tells Ray what she found out. They decide to go to Helen's apartment and tell her what they had learned from Megan. Elsa is at the apartment, tormenting Helen about the attack on Barry and reluctantly leaves after Julie and Ray arrive. Julie suggests it may be Elsa responsible for the threats and the shooting, as she has always resented Helen, and may have learned about it by accident, as Helen used to share a room with her. Ray calls the Cox family at the hospital. He finds out that since Barry was shot in the spine, he has paralysis and it may be permanent. Ray then goes to the hospital and sneaks in to see Barry. While there, Ray tries to talk Barry into dissolving the pact of keeping the accident a secret. After Barry says no and lies that the shooting was a robbery and nothing to do with the accident, Ray leaves the hospital. Barry, however, thinks back to the night of the shooting, where he was lured out by an anonymous caller that supposedly had photographic evidence of the accident and would give the photos to Barry in exchange for money. Barry fell for it, agreed to meet the anonymous person at the University athletic field, and was shot. On the way out of the hospital, Ray sees Bud and they decide to go have coffee together. While they talk over coffee, Ray says that he will get Julie back. Bud challenges him then says Julie will not go to Smith because of him. Later, Helen unexpectedly meets Collie in her apartment, who solemnly reveals himself to be David's older brother. He, darkly remembering, tells Helen that he was the one that shot Barry and is the one that left the picture on her door. He then tells her that he is going to kill her and the girl he is going out with later tonight. Panicking, she immediately runs to the bathroom and locks the door. When Collie begins to take the door off the hinges so that he can get in, Helen breaks the glass of the bathroom window and desperately escapes. Julie prepares to go on a date with Bud, but then decides not to when her mother says she is worried and would like her to stay home. When she tells Bud, he convinces her to at least walk him to his car so they can talk. To Julie, Buds seems impatient and she realizes that she has never seen him act so angry. She remembers the first moment she saw Ray, after he came back from California, and realizes she doesn't want to date Bud anymore because she will always have feelings for Ray. When they get to Bud's car, he reveals that his name is really Collingsworth Wilson and that he was David Gregg's half brother. He tells Julie that he found out who had run down his little brother by asking a man who sold Julie the flowers she sent to David's funeral. He then starts to choke her. Julie is to the point of passing out when Ray saves her by beating Bud (Collie) with a flashlight. When the paramedics show up, they tell Julie and Ray about Helen's accident. Helen sent them to Julie's house, saying there would be someone trying to kill her. Julie then asks Ray how he knew of Bud intending to kill her and he tells her that Barry called him earlier and released him from the pact. After the phone call, he realized who Bud was. Then Julie asks Ray why Bud never tried to hurt him. Ray answers, ""He did, tonight. He knew the worst thing for me would be to stay alive in a world without you."""
2148,Blood Beast,horror," Written by Darren Shan Blood Beast is the fifth book in a series called the Demonta. Blood Beast is set about a year after Slawter. It begins back at Dervish's house where Grubbs begins to feel alarming symptoms in connection with the full moon. He is having dreadful nightmares full of Demons and his sister, Gret, who keeps coming close to killing him. Also, in these dreams he has changed to a werewolf, but Grubbs attempts to convince himself that these nightmares are only normal. On top of this, his magician's prowess is growing all the time. He makes water change direction as it goes down the plughole (defying gravity) and claims to have woken from his nightmares levitating. Grubbs has got back to life as usual, and has got a crowd of friends, including a new best friend, Loch Gossel, who constantly bullies Grubbs' half brother, Bill-E. Grubbs also shows his usual like for Reni Gossel, Loch's sister. After Dervish has to go away for the weekend to say goodbye to Meera Flame, Grubbs throws a big house party. Reni, Loch, Bill-E and a few more stay for the night. They play spin the bottle and Grubbs kisses with Reni for the first time. He gets so into the kiss, that he doesn't realize when his powers have gotten the better of him and starts levitating the bottle. Soon after, the bottle explodes. He freezes the bottle in time and turns the shards into butterflies and flower petals. Half way through the night, Grubbs wakes up to a howling noise. He finds himself in the bathroom. He then realizes the howling noise is coming from himself. He looks in the mirror to find that he has become a werewolf, but somehow changes himself back to normal. The next morning, Bill-E and Loch decide to go and look for Lord Sheftree's treasure, but Grubbs isn't feeling well and protests greatly, but eventually gives in. The three set about digging and just as Loch is about to go home, they find a spot that Grubbs remembers Dervish being before. They start digging, but there are big rocks in the way which are hard to move. The boys go home but make a pact to come back after school every day until they find the treasure. Dervish returns home, but was drunk the previous night and fell into a deep sleep, so Grubbs couldn't tell him about the nightmares and fear of lycanthropy. Grubbs goes to sleep, but later wakes up and finds himself at the hole moving the heavy rocks, by himself. He runs back to the house and goes back to sleep. When Bill-E and Loch see the hole the next day, they are amazed and believe that Lord Sheftree planted bombs to kill those that tried to get his treasure, but they simply were old and detonated late. As they are digging, they begin to get very angry at each other and bicker, even try to kill each other. Grubbs feels magic in the air, and feels that it may be affecting the three, but tells the other two that it must be chemicals in the soil. Loch and Grubbs climb out of the hole and start to talk to each other when they hear a scream. The floor has given way and Bill-E is hanging on for his life. They hoist him up, and look down. The rocks gave way to a deep tunnel, but one that might be able to climb down. After a debate, the three decide to go down. At the bottom, they find a cave full of stalactites and stalagmites with a large waterfall. They start looking for the treasure but find none. Bill-E and Loch decide to climb a wall of the cave. At this point, Grubbs begins to feel very ill (possibly because of the full moon) and looks to the floor of the cavern. He sees a girls face in the rock similar to his sister's, yet it's the face of Bec, trapped in the rock; whispering in a strange language, but then she suddenly goes silent. Grubbs hears a scream from behind him and a thud. He turns around to find Loch's lifeless body lying on the floor, blood seeping out of his head. Grubbs attempts to heal the wounds while Bill-E leaves to get help. While Bill-E is gone, Grubbs needs to resuscitate Loch several times. The first two times it works, but then on the third, Loch stops breathing, his heart stops beating, and he dies. The whispering starts again and Grubbs starts to freak out. When he calms down he looks at Loch, and lifts up his head and notices something odd - all the blood is gone. Eventually Dervish and Bill-E turn up at the cave, however there is nothing that can be done to save Loch's life and Grubbs soon realises that there is no ambulance. Dervish says that they cannot let an ambulance come to the cave. The boys protest, but he says that he will explain to them later. The three of them move the body of Loch to a nearby quarry and throw it over a cliff edge. Dervish explains later to Grubbs why this is necessary - the cave is one where demons can create a strong doorway into the human world (presumably the same cave from Bec). Dervish has been given the duty to protect the cave and make sure nobody else can unleash the Demonata. Although hard to accept at first, Grubbs and Bill-E play along after being investigated by the police. One week later Grubbs returns to school. The psychologist has left the school, and a new one has come as a replacement. Grubbs is sent to meet her and finds out it is Juni Swan, a psychologist that Grubbs and Dervish met on the set of Slawter were she helped them get through their troubles and fight with the demons. Juni helps Grubbs, Bill-E, and their friends to cope with Loch's death, and soon everyone seems to be dealing fine. However tensions increase as Juni meets up with Dervish and both become romantically involved, eventually moving in with Dervish. Juni tells Grubbs and Dervish that since Slawter, her magic has advanced tremendously. This encourages Dervish, and he teaches her more spells and continues to see her more and more. In the following days Grubbs becomes more aware of the impending doom of his curse. Not only that, but he begins to notice a tramp coincidentally appearing around Carcery Vale. The tramp has an appearance nearly identical to Beranabus from Demon Thief, and is in fact, him. This is supported by the fact that Dervish attempts to contact Beranabus slightly before the tramp appears. On one of his late night jogs, Grubbs notices the tramp near the cave, the tramp tells him, ""It won't be long."" This immediately leads to Grubbs suspecting that Dervish called the Lambs. Grubbs gets Juni to ask Dervish about this for him, and she claims that Dervish did call them, but also goes on to tell him that she'll do whatever it takes to stop Grubbs from being killed, and that she sees him as her own son. For several nights around the time of the full moon, Grubbs has what he describes as a battle between his human and werewolf sides. During these times, he is in extreme pain while Juni and Dervish need to hold him down. Grubbs suggests that they put him in a cage that Dervish owns for the next night. During that evening, while in the cage, Juni suggests that Dervish leaves while she performs a dangerous spell to help Grubbs. Once Dervish is gone, she frees Grubbs from the cage, then passionately makes out with Grubbs when he shows his desire to die at the hands of the Lambs, claiming that she will not let him be killed while there may be hope. She says that they should go to meet up at the cave. he then breaks out of the cage, and battles 3 of what he believes are Lambs, dispatching them easily. It is not known whether Dervish did actually call the Lambs or if the people Grubbs attacks while escaping the cellar are actually Lambs, as Juni may very likely have lied to Grubbs about Dervish's call. Grubbs runs to the cave, where he loses control again and turns into a werewolf. When he returns to his normal state, Grubbs finds that he has killed Ma & Pa Spleen, Bill-E's grandparents and legal guardians. Not wanting to kill again, Juni says that the two of them need to run away from Dervish and the Lambs to protect Grubbs, both from his own death and the deaths of others. The two of them go to an airport, and board a plane, all of which is very distant to Grubbs. He falls asleep while on the plane. When he awakes, the plane is shaking, apparently due to turbulence. However, soon the cockpit opens and demons appear on the plane, Artery first and then the scorpion like creature from the front of the book. They both begin killing the passengers on the plane along with another rabbit-like demon. Finally, Lord Loss appears in the plane, stunning the passengers. Juni appears next to him and reveals that she summoned him and is actually a familiar of Lord Loss. The book ends with her declaring, ""He's all yours now- master."" The book then ends on a to be continued, with the words ""Hell is revealed"" underneath the title Book Six..."
2149,Cerulean Sins,horror," * Cerulean Sins apparently takes place some time after the events of the previous novel, Narcissus in Chains. Anita is happily living with Micah and Nathaniel and dating Micah and Jean-Claude. However, as usual, Anita is confronted by a series of simultaneous problems. ** First, she appears to be attracting the attention of a number of spies, including ""Leo Harlan"", a professional assassin who claims to want Anita to reanimate one of his ancestors to assist in genealogical research and two mercenaries who Anita arrests via her Federal Marshal status after noticing them following her. ** Second, Jean-Claude is unpleasantly surprised by an early visit from Musette and her entourage, all of whom are representatives of the founder of Jean-Claude's bloodline, Belle Morte and represent an attempt by Belle Morte to test and possibly punish or capture Jean-Claude and his followers. ** Third, Anita learns of a series of shockingly brutal rapes and murders, apparently committed by a shapeshifter serial killer. However, because of her deteriorating relationship with Dolph, Anita is unable to get cooperation from the police in solving the crimes. * As usual, Anita resolves each of these conflicts with a combination of ruthlessness, magical power, and the loyalty of her friends and lovers. ** Anita ultimately learns that the mercenaries have been spying on her to consider recruiting her for a secret mission overseas. (As Agent Bradford warned Anita in Obsidian Butterfly, Anita has come to the attention of one or more secret agencies within the US government). Luckily for Anita, at her mentor Marianne's insistence, Anita had stopped using animal sacrifices to raise zombies. Without the additional power granted by an animal sacrifice, Anita's zombies were sufficiently ""zombie-looking"" to convince the mercenaries that she would not be able to perform the job, arguably validating Marianne's belief that the animal sacrifices would result in bad karma. ** Anita confronts, outmaneuvers, or defeats Belle Morte several times. First, she and Jean-Claude take Asher to their (cerulean) bed in a menage a trois, making Asher their lover and therefore immune to most of Belle Morte's advances. Second, Anita, with help from Richard, Jean-Claude, and her wereleopards, is able to block Belle Morte's attempts to make Anita her human servant. Third, Anita is ultimately able to trap Musette in their game of courtly politics, proving that Belle Morte and her proxy Musette has violated the terms of her invitation and forcing Musette and her people to leave. ** More alarmingly, Anita begins to believe that Belle Morte is planning a war against the Mother of Darkness, the oldest and most powerful of the world's vampires. Although Anita and Jean-Claude do their best to avoid that conflict, the Mother of Darkness is beginning to awaken from a millennia-long sleep, and seems interested in Anita. ** Finally, Anita helps Zerbrowski track down the shapeshifting serial killer, who turns out to be a werewolf member of the mercenary team sent to observe Anita herself. After a confrontation in which several police officers are killed, Anita tracks down the werewolf a second time and executes him. * In the epilogue, Anita explains that she is continuing to date Micah and Jean-Claude, and that she has also added Asher to her list of lovers. She and Richard are still broken up, but Richard appears to be overcoming his death wish. Two of Belle Morte's vampires have received permission to remain in St. Louis, both to repair the damage done by their visit and to attempt to stay out of the way of any conflict between Belle Morte and the Mother of Darkness."
2150,Trials of Death,horror," Darren Shan, is about to take the Trials of Initiation, a series of tests that vampires were forced to take part in, in years gone by, to prove himself to the Princes. Currently, it is only used for vampires who want to become a general, or for those who wish to demonstrate their strength. However, Darren Shan is required to endure the trials to earn the respect of the entire vampire race for his mentor Mr Crepsley's 'impulsive' decision to turn him. Darren is mostly trained by the games master of the Mountain, Vanez Blaze For The first trial He must escape from a maze that is filling with water whilst dragging a stone weighing half of his body weight. The second trial Darren must complete is The Path of Needles, a barefoot journey through one of the mountains many caverns littered with stalagmites and stalactites, all of which are razor sharp and could fall at any second. Luck is on Darren's side as the Festival of the Undead takes place right after his second trial. During this three day period no official business can take place meaning he gets a five day rest before his next trial. Suffering from a lot of cuts, notably on his hands and back, he finds it hard to enjoy the festival. A veteran vampire and also Larten Crepsely's mentor, Seba Nile, tells him to meet him later as he had a cure for his discomfort. They go to a cavern deep inside the mountain which is covered in spider webs and Darren soon realizes that it is full of hundreds of thousands of spiders. Seba breaks up the cobwebs and applies them to Darren's cuts which he says helped immediately. After the Festival of the Undead, Darren must choose his third trial which is The Hall of Flames, a metal room with various jets that emit flames periodically. Darren must remain in the room for approximately fifteen minutes, trying not to be 'toasted' by the scorching hot flames. This is reveled by many to be one of the hardest trials he could have picked, and barely survives it. The fourth trial is The Blooded Boars, a trial which is generally considered quite easy for full vampires. As Darren is only a half vampire and still nursing bad wounds from the previous trial, he struggles. The aim is to kill two wild boars which have been injected with vampire blood making them more aggressive than usual. Darren kills the first boar but it lands on top of him, his lack of strength means he is unable to move the boar as the second closes in. It charges at him, certain to kill him when Harkat Mulds, the Little Person who accompanies Darren in his journey to the Mountain steps in and kills the boar. This causes uproar as failure to complete the trials leads to death. Mr. Crepsley and Kurda, a soon to be Vampire Prince, argue that Harkat is not a vampire and cannot be expected to behave by their rules, and it was not that Darren would've died if he'd not been interrupted by Harkat. However, it is decided for Darren to be executed for not completing the Trials. Kurda finds Darren in his room facing imminent death and encourages him to escape the mountain. Regretfully Darren follows Kurda as they make for one of the mountains many exits. Soon they are tracked down by Gavner Purl who tries to convince them to go back but eventually ends up following them. They come across a cavern full of the Vampaneze. Kurda tells Darren to go on and him and Gavner would stay and fight the Vampaneze. Darren heads off but decides to come back and fight. He comes back and witnesses Kurda stabbing Gavner in the stomach and it is revealed he is an ally of the Vampaneze. Darren runs and ends up in the Hall of Final Voyage, where dead vampires were tossed into the strong current and washed out of the mountain. He realizes he is on the wrong side of the stream and attempts to jump over it. He falls short and manages to grab on to a rock as Kurda and the Vampaneze enter the cave. Kurda offers his hand to help pull him back to safety but Darren brands him a traitor and pushes himself out into the current. He is swept out of sight into the darkness beyond. fa:آزمون‌های مرگ no:Dødsprøvene fi:Kuoleman koetukset zh:死亡審判"
2151,Immortal,horror," Veronique is an immortal vampire that continues to return in the body of a newly dead person every time she has been staked. However, she wants to become truly immortal by summoning an ancient demon called the Triumvirate. And of course her choice spot to do so would be in Sunnydale, especially with the extra magical vibes emanating from the Hellmouth. Unfortunately, while Buffy is trying to keep Veronique's vampire henchmen at bay, she also has to deal with the fact that her mother is sick in the hospital. There's a chance that she has cancer, but they won't know for sure until they've performed surgery on her. Buffy has to decide where she's needed most: with her mother, or to stop the end of the world. Buffy and her friends battle Veronique and the Trumverate with help from Lucy Hanover and other spirits who possess them as the Triumverate need to drain the life-force of nearby souls. Without being able to do so, they revert into their hatchling forms and are killed. With them dead, Veronique loses her immortality and is killed by the last of the hatchlings before it dies."
2152,From a Buick 8,horror," The novel is a series of recollections by the members of Troop D, a state police barracks in Western Pennsylvania. After Curtis Wilcox, a well-liked member of Troop D, is killed by a drunk driver, his son Ned begins to visit Troop D. The cops, the dispatcher and the custodian quickly take a liking to him, and soon begin telling him about the ""Buick 8"" of the title. It is in some sense a ghost story in the way that the novel is about a group of people telling an old but unsettling tale. And while the Buick 8 is not a traditional ghost, it is indeed not of their world. The Buick 8 resembles a vintage 1953 Buick Roadmaster, and was left at a gas station by a mysterious man dressed in black, who disappeared soon after leaving the car to be refueled. The car is later held by the Troop D police of rural Pennsylvania in storage shed B. The car, they discover, is not a car at all. It appears to be a Buick Roadmaster, but the steering wheel is immobile, the dashboard instruments are useless props, the engine has no moving parts and ignition wires that go nowhere, the car heals itself when scratched or dented, and all dirt and debris are repelled by it. Sandy Dearborn, now Sergeant Commanding of Troop D, is the main narrator of the book, and tells the story to Ned, discussing various things that have happened with the car, and his father's fascination with it. The car will frequently give off what they dub ""lightquakes,"" or large flashes of purple light over an extended period of time, and will occasionally ""give birth"" to strange plants and creatures that aren't anything like what they've seen in their world. Two people have disappeared in the vicinity of the car—Curtis Wilcox's former partner Ennis Rafferty, and an escaped lowlife named Brian Lippy they picked up for drunk driving and being under the influence of angel dust. It is later suggested in the book that perhaps the Buick was a portal, between our world and another. After hearing the story of the Buick and how it has been kept secret by Troop D for so long, Ned becomes convinced that the car was somehow related to the death of his father in a seemingly random road accident. After all, the gas station attendant who first reported the Buick sitting in front of the station was the same man who, years later, would kill his father. Ned is determined to destroy the Buick, but before he can Sandy Dearborn realizes that the Buick, in fact, wants to take Ned into the world it connects to ours. Sandy returns to the shed to find Ned sitting in it, Ned having poured gasoline under the car and holding a pistol and a match. Just as Sandy pulls Ned out, the Buick transforms into a portal, trying to draw both Ned and Sandy inside of it. The rest of the staff arrive on the feeling something bad may happen, all of them helping recall the story of the Buick's origin at their station, and manage to pull Ned and Sandy free, but not before Sandy glimpses into the world on the other side of the Buick. He sees Lippy's Swastika necklace and cowboy boot, along with Ennis's Stetson and Ruger. The book closes with Ned joining the police force after dropping out of college, and he pulls Sandy over to shed B. The Buick's window is cracked, and remains cracked without healing itself. Ned believes that the Buick will one day fall apart, having expended the last of its energy in that final attempt to draw him over to the other universe."
2153,Frost at Christmas,horror," As Christmas approaches Detective Inspector Jack Frost is on the trail of a sensitive case with limited time to solve it. Tracy Uphill, an eight year old child, goes missing after attending Sunday school. It turns out her mother is a prostitute who couldn’t meet her because she was with a client. There are many suspects and characters to trouble DI Frost’s mind including; the mother’s client with a false alibi, the vicar with a penchant for pornography and a local psychic who claims she knows where to find the body of the young girl. At the same time other cases also need to be solved as Frost has to investigate attempted break-ins at a local bank and a 30-year-old skeleton with a severed arm. Detective Constable Clive Barnard, the nephew of the Chief Constable, is another problem Frost faces. While many believe that DC Barnard has only got into CID through his family connections and his all-knowing attitude does not help to improve his image, Frost seems to be the only person understanding the young cop and becomes his mentor."
2154,The Longest Night,horror," It's December 21, and hour by hour Angel and his crew must survive the longest night of the year. * Written by: Pierce Askegren * Setting: December 21, 2002, 6pm–7pm A quest for a missing child taken by his father leads Angel to a house where the father has made a pact. In return for a human sacrifice each winter solstice, both father and son could live forever. * Written by: Jeff Mariotte * Setting: December 21, 2002, 7pm–8pm A group is killing Santas and replacing them with their own people so that the sound of their bells can open a rift in space-time and allow a demon to eat the Earth. * Written by: Christopher Golden * Setting: December 21, 2002, 8pm–9pm Angel needs help from Cordelia - 4 days before Christmas and he still hasn't done his shopping. But he really is planning a surprise gift for her. They must deal with demonic chaos. !-- This section is linked from Wesley Wyndam-Pryce --> * Written by: Scott Ciencin and Denise Ciencin * Setting: December 21, 2002, 9pm–10pm Wesley meets two ghosts from the early Hollywood era who lead him to a better understanding of his life. * Written by: Emily Oz * Setting: December 21, 2002, 10pm–11pm Cordelia is invited to become a model, but there is a catch. * Written by: Nancy Holder * Setting: December 21, 2002, 11pm–12pm The title is a pun on Have Gun — Will Travel, a popular Western TV series which ran in the 1950s and 1960s. The entourage of the prince of a small middle eastern country-who turns out to be a demon in disguise- is worried for his safety. They ask Gunn to impersonate him for an important gathering. Naturally, things don't go as planned. * Written by: Yvonne Navarro * Setting: December 21, 2002, midnight–1am Having Lilah Morgan send presents was a good idea. Lilah sends Christmas presents to all, but of course she is not playing nice - it's a ploy to test their resolve. * Written by: Nancy Holder * Setting: December 22, 2002, 1am–2am A group of wannabe Druids builds a stone circle to sacrifice a virgin. Time-traveling adventures ensue. * Written by: Doranna Durgin * Setting: December 22, 2002, 2am–3am Something is killing the down-and-outs, and Angel and Co. go undercover to save the day (or night in this case). * Written by: Yvonne Navarro * Setting: December 22, 2002, 3am–4am An ice demon shows up in the hotel and plays with people's memories. * Written by: Doranna Durgin * Setting: December 22, 2002, 4am–5am Christmas carolers are being taken as hosts for a demon race. After freeing the singers and defeating the demons, Angel feels like singing - and does. * Written by: Christie Golden * Setting: December 22, 2002, 5am–6am The creatures of the night are trying to prevent the new day from starting, and only Angel can ensure the new dawn."
2155,The Trench,horror," It is four years after the events described in the first novel. Jonas Taylor, now married to Terry Tanaka, is working at the Tanaka Institute. Angel, the young shark from the last book, has reached adulthood and is being held at the institute, which is now under the control of energy mogul Benedict Singer and his loyal assistant Celeste after being forced bankrupt by lawsuits resulting from Angel's mother's rampage at the end of the first novel. However, Angel manages to escape after killing three teenage boys who decided to sneak into a walk area surrounding Angel's tank. They harass her, and in return, she kills them by smashing the Plexiglas barrier, killing two immediately, and soon eating the third one. Jonas, with the help of his friend Mac, jumps into Angel's tank, where he discovers it is damaged and full of great white males hoping to impregnate her. Jonas realizes Angel is attracting the males by giving off a scent that is usually emitted during estrus, which she is going into. One of the males attacks and nearly kills Jonas. Mac hauls him out of the water, patches up the bite wound, and fires a transmitter dart into Angel's hide right before she bursts through the gates and escapes. Jonas is rushed to the hospital, afterwards realizing he nearly died. Masao Tanaka, Terry's father and former owner of the institute, is not coping Angel's escape and knowing she's tasted human blood. Angel begins to look for the Trench through instinct, wreaking havoc in her path, including killing several people and whales, including a whale released into the sea by Sea World named Tootie, who later becomes Angel's lunch. Jonas pursues along with Celeste and an egotistical scientist named Michael Maren, who is secretly working with Celeste. Celeste attempts repeatedly to seduce Jonas into revealing the location of an area in the Pacific's Mariana Trench called the Devil's Purgatory, where he did top secret dives with the navy and first encountered fearsome Megalodon but she fails. After many attempts to recapture Angel, which all end in failure and at least one death, they manage to track her path and conclude she is heading for the Pacific Ring of Fire, and then she will enter the Trench. Meanwhile Terry is tricked into boarding Singer's gigantic deep sea research station, the Benthos, to check sonar records of the mysterious implosion of one of Benedict's research subs, the Proteus, which was exploring the trench. While there she finds herself at the mercy of Singer and his sadistic Russian crewman Sergei. Once in the Trench, they find a prehistoric monster called Kronosaurus that has evolved to hunt in packs and has evolved gills. Terry manages to kill Sergei in the airlock after he attempts to rape and kill her. Afterwards, his body is eaten by the Kronosaurs, along with the remains of Captain Hoppe, a captain who planned to meet with Terry to discuss stealing a sub, called the Epimethius, and heading to the surface to exploit the suspicion of Singer's real mission, which was falsely believed to be the distribution of UNIS robots. She boards the Epimethius on its next expedition, but it is ripped apart by Kronosaurs. Meanwhile, Jonas is nearly killed on a mission to find Angel, where he attempts to find Angel in a Zodiac, but he is nearly murdered out of caution by the ship's mate, Harry Moon, and Angel after attempting to sedate her with seal carcasses filled with anesthetic. Jonas, who had nightmares about dying in the Trench, was rushed to the hospital, where he nearly died. He vows to stop his obsession with Megs and live a regular life. However, Celeste manages to use a drug to get the location of the Devil's Purgatory and heads to the Benthos where Terry has stumbled upon an undersea operation led by Benedict Singer to exploit rocks containing the rare gas Helium-3 to create fusion, located in the Devil's Purgatory. Jonas follows, along with Angel, who has made it to the Trench. Jonas goes into the Trench within an Abyss Glider submersible while Celeste paralyzes Singer, leaving him to die at the maw of a Kronosaur as revenge for killing her mother. However, he tells her her father couldn't impregnate women, so he impregnated Celeste's mother for him, thus revealing Celeste is Singers daughter. This does not stop her, however, and Singer last words are, ""I'll see you in Hell."" The walls of the room Singer is in are destroyed, killing him and the Kronosaur. However, this ends up destabilizing the Benthos in the process. Jonas lures Angel into killing Celeste as she tries to escape on board one of Singer's subs, the Prometheus, with the rest of the crew and rescues Terry, who was nearly killed by Celeste in the air lock like Sergei was. She survived by unlatching a barrel containing a UNIS robot with the corpse of Heath Williams, a paleo-biologist who assisted Terry with avoiding Sergei's assaults. She seals herself in the UNIS and nearly suffocates, but Jonas frees her, also killing a Kronosaur via pressure changing in the environment it was in and causing its head to implode. On their way up to the surface, the last Kronosaur attacks Jonas and Terry, but they are saved by Angel who kills the prehistoric marine reptile. The book ends with Angel giving birth to two pups, which flee into the Trench. Interestingly, Osama Bin Laden is also mentioned as one of the financial bankers of Benedict Singer, the main antagonist. Michael Maren returns in Primal Waters as the main villain, seeking revenge on Jonas for killing Celeste. Angel's two pups also return, one being used as a weapon by Michael, who has dubbed this Meg Scarface due to vicious scars gained in a territory dispute with another Megalodon."
2156,The Flesh in the Furnace,horror," A puppet master has his hands full when his puppets - living puppets - convince his half-witted assistant to kill him and set them free. When freed from the puppet master, who they had once thought of as cruel and thoughtless, they find themselves in what may be an even worse situation. The half-witted assistant now has their lives in his hands, and they are not so competent hands after all. They strive to free themselves once again, and find that their perfect life they'd thought they had created has turned against them."
2157,Monster Island,horror," Doyle's pureblood Brachen demon father Axtius is the General for the Coalition of Purity which believes that all half-blood demons should be banished, leaving only the purebloods on Earth. Both Angel and Buffy are dealing with this threat in their respective cities when Buffy's team learns that General Axtius plans to attack a half-blood demon safe haven island near Los Angeles. Uprooting the Scooby Gang, Buffy and the rest of them travel quickly to Los Angeles to help Angel deal with the increasing problem. Unfortunately, the demons on the island who are in need of saving seem to be sceptical about having vampires as well as the Slayer on their island and they must be convinced that it's for their benefit before General Axtius and his troops launch a full-fledged attack on the island. In their final confrontation on the island, Angel defeats Axtius when unarmed despite Axtius wielding a powerful mystical weapon, taunting the Brachen by saying that he would have been ashamed of Doyle's very human act of sacrifice and redemption. Having been defeated by Angel, Axtius is subsequently incinerated by his former second-in-command for his failure to destroy the island."
2158,Cursed,horror," Various demons have battled Spike since he was given a chip preventing him from hurting humans. Now a more organised and united effort is being made to put him out of the picture. In Los Angeles, Angel is searching for a mystical object that is linked to his days as the evil Angelus. Spike arrives. Each holds a grudge against each other yet they must reluctantly work together and deal with their shared evil pasts."
2159,Pearl in the Mist,horror," Ruby's school life immediately gets off to a bad start when the school's headmistress, Mrs. Ironwood, informs her that Daphne has made her aware of her Cajun background (implying that she is badly brought up and a troublemaker) and that she will be keeping an eye on her. Giselle quickly ingratiates herself to the small clique of girls she and Ruby first meet when arriving at Greenwood, using them to amuse herself. Despite her problems with her sister, Ruby manages to make friends with the blind piano player Louis Turnbull, who is the school founder's only grandson; the art teacher, Miss Stevens; and a fellow student, Abby, who shares Ruby's intellectual ambitions. She even rekindles her relationship with Beau Andreas. As time goes on however, Giselle becomes jealous of Ruby's friendship with Abby. She exposes Abby as a quadroon at the school's Halloween dance, a secret Abby had been keeping in order to study at Greenwood. Abby leaves the dance in the middle of a violent storm, but returns the next morning to formally withdraw, as Mrs Ironwood will not permit her to stay with her ethnic background. Disgusted by Giselle's behavior, Ruby is poised to leave as well, but Abby urges her to stay and continue in her artistic endeavors. Miss Stevens comforts Ruby later, telling her that she will always have her help and guidance if she needs it. Days later, Ruby discovers to her horror that Pierre has died of a heart attack. After the funeral, Mrs Ironwood threatens to expel Ruby, saying she has eyewitness accounts of her having sexual liaisons with the school caretaker. Fortunately, Louis and Miss Stevens come to her aid, testifying that Ruby could not have been in those places at that time, as she was with Louis. Miss Stevens vouches for Ruby's character and Ruby is exonerated, though the mystery remains. During the Christmas vacation, Ruby walks in on Giselle standing up without the aid of a stick. She forces her sister to confess that she was the one who met the school caretaker, but Giselle dismisses what happened, since Ruby was not expelled. Although walking is still difficult, she says her legs are getting stronger. Ruby threatens to tell Daphne that Giselle is using her paralysis to make people run and fetch for her, but Giselle merely retorts that she will tell Daphne about Ruby resuming her relationship with Beau. After this less than merry Christmas, Ruby and Giselle return to Greenwood, where Ruby discovers that Miss Stevens has resigned over a scandal where she was accused of seducing a female student. Ruby knows this to be a lie, but is powerless to do anything to help Miss Stevens. Her troubles are further compounded when she learns that she has become pregnant with Beau's child after they had unprotected sex during a visit to the campus. Ruby leaves Greenwood and returns to New Orleans, where Daphne informs her that Beau's parents have sent him away to attend school in France after learning about the pregnancy. She then arranges for Ruby to have an illegal abortion. Ruby feels so depressed and alone that she does not object, but after seeing the dilapidated state of the clinic Daphne sends her to, she runs back to her home town of Houma. On her way there, she tries to get in touch with Beau, but discovers that he has already left for France. Despondent, Ruby contacts her half-brother, Paul Tate, instead. He is glad to hear from her, but warns her that Grandperè Jack is in a terrible state, having gone semi-mad after she left. They find him near the old shack she shared with Grandmere Catherine, but after a brief altercation with Paul, Jack runs off and drowns in the swamps. Later Paul offers her a home for her and her baby in a newly built mansion named Cypress Woods, but Ruby is very reluctant to accept the offer, as she knows people will assume that the child is Paul's if she accepts his help. She also suspects that he is still in love with her and does not want to encourage his feelings. At the climax, Ruby gives birth to her daughter, Pearl, in a hurricane which blows away many (if not most) of the surrounding homes. This is later described as one of the worst storms in decades. At the end of the story, Ruby is uplifted by the birth of her baby and believes her future is bright and hopeful."
2160,Let the Right One In,horror," In 1982 Blackberg, Stockholm, Oskar is a 12-year old boy who resides with his mother and occasionally visits his father in the countryside. He lives with his mother, who is loving and with whom he initially seems to have a close connection. His father is an alcoholic who lives out in the countryside. Because he is the victim of merciless bullying, Oskar has gained morbid interests, which include crime and forensics, and keeps a scrapbook filled with newspaper articles about murders. One day, he befriends Eli, a child of about the same age, who just moved in next door. Eli lives with an older man named Håkan, a former teacher who was fired when caught with possession of child pornography and has since become a vagrant. Eli is revealed to be a vampire who was turned as a child and therefore stuck forever in a young body. Oskar and Eli develop a close relationship, and Eli helps Oskar fight back against his tormentors. Throughout the book their relationship gradually becomes closer, and they reveal more of themselves and in particular fragments of Eli's human life. Among the details revealed is that Eli is a boy who was castrated when he was turned into a vampire over 200 years ago. However, Eli dresses in female clothing and is perceived by outsiders as a young girl. Håkan serves Eli, whom he loves, by procuring blood from the living, fighting against his conscience and choosing victims whom he can physically trap, but who are not too young. Eli gives him money for doing this, though Håkan makes it clear he would do it for nothing if Eli allowed them to be physically intimate. Håkan offers to go out one last time under the condition that he spend a night with Eli after he gets the blood, but with the caveat that he may only touch Eli. Håkan's last attempt to get blood fails and he is caught. Just before capture, however, he intentionally disfigures himself with acid so that the police will not be able to trace Eli through him. When Eli finds him in the hospital, Håkan offers his blood and is drunk dry while sitting on the window ledge, but a guard interrupts them and Eli fails to kill him. So that he will not end up becoming a vampire also, Håkan throws himself out of the window to the ground below. Despite this, he soon reanimates as a mindless vampire driven only by his desire for Eli. Then relentlessly pursuing him, Håkan manages to trap Eli in a basement, but Eli fights him off and escapes. Later, the wounded Håkan is destroyed by a youth from the neighborhood who accidentally gets locked in the basement with him. Meanwhile, the Blackeberg local Lacke suspects a child is responsible for the murder of his best friend, Jocke (whom Eli has killed for blood). Later, Lacke witnesses Eli attack his sometime-girlfriend, Virginia. He attempts to drink her blood, but is fought off by Lacke. Virginia survives, but starts turning into a vampire. She does not realize her ""infection"" until she tries to prolong her life by drinking her own blood, and finds that exposure to the sun causes boils on her skin. Upon being hospitalized, Virgina realizes what she has turned into and kills herself in her bed by deliberately exposing herself to daylight. Oskar eventually fights back and injures his tormentor, Jonny, for which the boy's older brother Jimmy hunts down and attempts to hurt Oskar in retaliation. Oskar further incurs their wrath when he sets fire to their desks, destroying a treasured photo album belonging to their father. They corner Oskar at night at the local swimming pool and attempt to drown him, however Eli rescues Oskar and kills two of the other boys, and together they flee the city with Eli's money and possessions."
2161,Amityville: The Horror Returns,horror," A regular fine and dry day in southern California. George Lutz works on his new home while Kathy's sons Greg and Matt cause trouble inside. Kathy Lutz yells at them but it takes two parents to get them outside. George sits down to eat breakfast. A house fly comes out of nowhere and lands on his food. He goes to kill it but finds himself unable to move or speak. George then realizes the presence has found the Lutzes yet again. A fire monster is then led by the fly towards George Lutz after he manages to break free. Kathy wakes him up and he finds out he was dreaming, but he won't let it go. Kathy starts to cry. Her daughter Amy is about to comfort her mother when she hears a noise in the living room. She goes into the living room. She gets very happy and says ""Jodie, you came back!"". Still unaware of the presence in the house. George and Kathy go on a business trip to Portland, Oregon leaving the kids at home with the sitter, Nancy. George and Kathy are stalked by the presence to Oregon where they encounter a little girl on a golf course. Things are much worse at home though. George and Kathy while on their way home are attacked by the presence on the plane. When George and Kathy reach the airport the presence does everything it can to prevent them from reaching the house where the kids and the sitter are. When they find the car they race onto the Los Angeles freeway, where their car is wrecked (similar to Father Mancuso's car in The Amityville Horror). The cars on the freeway disappear and George loses control of the car. George and Kathy jump out just before the car runs off a cliff and becomes a piece of twisted metal. An Indian finds them and gives them his truck. George and Kathy take the truck and race towards the house. The Indian man walks over to the Lutzes destroyed car and destroys the evil cloud which took control of the car. The Car then disappears. George and Kathy turn onto their street and rush up to the end of the street to find their house is gone. In its place: A -story Dutch colonial house. Better known as 112 Ocean Ave. (or as it is called in the book The Amityville House.) George and Kathy stunned that their old house is in front of them and their children inside try not to panic. As they get out of the car the house ""greets"" them. The lights start going on and off in one room at a time and slowly. Then they go off at the same time and even faster. Until every light goes out for a moment. Then very slowly an orange light illuminates the eye windows. The street then turns into Ocean Ave. George tells Kathy that they must go in together and save the children and sitter. Shawna races to the house and sees George and Kathy entering the house. She races faster and slams into an invisible force field. George hears the crash but it sounds far away to him. George realizes the boat house is missing and is replaced by moving shadows. George goes to open the door to the house but finds it is locked. He tries using his key but it does not open. The door then opens. Inside is a demonic figure welcoming them into the house. Shawna, becomes able to escape her wrecked vehicle however she then realizes the house is gone. The Lutz family's regular house is back. She realizes it's artificial though and realizes she can't get to the house. Inside, the house (which is now a living thing) begins to talk to them. Using doors, windows, boilers it speaks to them. The house is in the condition it was in when they left it; Christmas decorations are still up, gifts are lying around. George, who is now filled with anger, decides to fight back. He starts banging the wall hard with his fist. The activity stops for a few moments. George tells Kathy to go find the kids and Nancy. Kathy runs up the stairs looking for the kids. She finds them. The house which has now ""upgraded"" the items the Lutz family left in the house. Kathy enters Amy's old room. Greg and Matt are sitting on the bed. Kathy tries to communicate with them but they give her no response. Kathy realizes Amy is dancing to music that is coming from nowhere. She then realizes Jodie is dancing with Amy. Every time Amy dances into a cabinet it moves, only she is not strong enough to move it. George downstairs is still fighting the creature. He then demands to know where Nancy is. The creature stops. Then says ""Nan-cy?"". George realizes the creature is Nancy. The creature then melts. Kathy upstairs is trying to find a way to make Jodie release the children without harming them. The dancing starts getting wilder and violent. Shawna who still has not gotten into the house is outside. Using Indian powers she breaks the invisible wall. Exposing the Amityville house. In the living room the creature reforms. It is now pure white with no face. It grabs the ""upgraded"" shot gun, which shoots supernatural powers instead of bullets. George then demands the house to tell him where everyone is. It responds by telling him in the basement. He starts moving towards the basement. Then he realizes that's where the red room is. He turns around and unexpectedly attacks the demonic figure. Upstairs Kathy yells at Jodie which makes matters worse. She then yells at Amy to stop dancing. Amy drops to the ground. Greg and Matt then begin clapping. Shawna who is now walking up to the house just dodges rifle fire from inside the house. George is still fighting for the gun in the living room. It then gets worse when the figure gains the upper hand. Shawna bursts in the house to draw the attention to her. Leaving a knocked out George on the floor. Kathy who now has to push the kids to walk gets them to the stairs when she hears a creaking noise. She sees the rocking chair moving. Amy then asks if Jodie could go with them. Kathy denies and the trio works the way down the stairs. In the dining room Shawna is being burnt alive by demonic powers. She manages to use some Indian powers to counter but continues to fail. Kathy realizes what is happening downstairs and goes to get the kids out of the house and come back."
2162,The Killing Dance,horror," The Killing Dance takes place in May, about a month and a half after Bloody Bones and like the previous novels, The Killing Dance begins with a potential job for Anita in her role as an Animators, Inc. employee. In this case, Anita and Jean-Claude are in Anita's office meeting with Sabin, a master vampire, and with Dominic Dumare, Sabin's human servant. Sabin and Dumare explain that Sabin, in order to please a mortal lover, promised to abstain from feeding on the blood of live humans. As a result, he has developed a condition in which his body is irreversibly rotting away, and is beginning to lose control of his powers. Dumare, a necromancer, believes that if he and Anita join their abilities and his experience, they may be able to cure Sabin, and Anita agrees to help if possible. Jean-Claude and Anita ponder the parallels between Sabin's relationship with his unnamed mortal love and their own romantic relationship, and Anita leaves for a date with her other boyfriend, Richard. (Although Jean-Claude, a vampire, is in the process of consolidating his leadership of the city, Richard is locked in an ongoing struggle for leadership of the werewolves of the city with their current Ulfric, Marcus, primarily because Richard, unlike Jean-Claude, is not willing to kill in order to assume or maintain power.) Anita and Richard go to a dinner party at Anita's friend Catherine's house. There, they meet one of Jean-Claude's vampires, Robert, and his wife, Monica. Monica announces that she is pregnant, which Anita had previously thought impossible for a vampire of Robert's age. Monica is also very friendly with Anita, notwithstanding her assistance in the plot to hyponize Catherine and blackmail Anita in Guilty Pleasures. Anita wonders if Jean-Claude deliberately planned for Robert to attend the party to spy on her and Richard. She and Richard are forced to leave the party early after she receives a call from Edward. Edward, one of the world's premier assassins and a sort of friend of Anita's, tells Anita that he has received a proposed contract to kill Anita. He has refused, but wants her to get home and begin making plans to protect herself while he investigates the identity of the person putting out the contract on her life. Anita and Richard arrive at her house and meet Mrs. Pringle. Anita suspects that someone is in her apartment, and, while Richard helps Mrs. Pringle move a television, she engages in a gun battle through her closed front door, ultimately killing Jimmy Dugan, a local thug known as ""Jimmy the Shotgun"". Anita is taken to police headquarters and questioned for quite some time by Detective Branswell, who eventually lets her go. Anita and Richard argue about her decision to confront Jimmy the Shotgun without asking Richard to back her up, and Anita agrees to move into Richard's house for the time being in order to protect her neighbors from any potential collateral damage. Edward contacts Anita at Richard's house and tells her that the contract on her life has been increased to $500,000 if the murder is performed within 24 hours. Edward suggests that Anita try to deduce the identity of the person offering the contract by figuring out who would need her dead that quickly, but she doesn't have any ideas. Richard then receives a call from Stephen. Stephen is being forced to participate in one of Raina's pornographic movies, and is desperate for Richard's protection. Richard and Anita leave to rescue him. At the farmhouse where Raina shoots her movies, Richard and Anita confront several werewolves and various crew members. Richard reassures Heidi, a non-dominant werewolf trapped in the middle of the conflict between Marcus and himself. One of the werewolves, Sebastian challenges Richard, but Richard easily subdues him with the raw power of his beast. Approximately 30 werewolves gang up on Richard, including Sebastian and Jamil, and Anita realizes that the situation was a trap to kill him. She goes to rescue Stephen while Richard holds off the wolves. Anita follows the sounds of Stephen's screams and finds a room where Stephen is being tortured on film by his brother Gregory while being restrained by Raina and Gabriel. Anita removes Stephen and finds Richard fighting off the twenty werewolves outside the filming room. She and Richard confront the wolves, and Anita realizes that because the wolves do not believe Richard is willing to kill, they are not afraid of him. She threatens to kill Raina if anyone uses Stephen in a film again, setting herself up as a challenger for Raina's position as the pack's lupa. After returning to Richard's home, Richard stays awake as guard while Stephen sleeps in Anita's bed for protection. Later morning, Anita wakes to find Jason, Sylvie and Lillian at Richard's house. Lillian tends wounds while Jason and Sylvie attempt to convince Richard that he must be willing to kill to lead the pack. Anita and Richard go to a separate room to argue and come close to having sex, only to be interrupted by the weres on the other side of the door. Anita worries that her relationship with Richard makes her vulnerable, because unlike Jean-Claude, Anita can't count on Richard to make the hard decisions necessary to survive. Anita leaves the bedroom to find that several more shapeshifters have arrived—Rafael, Christine, and about fifteen others. She learns that Jean-Claude and many of the city's shapeshifters support Richard's attempt to dethrone Marcus as Ulfric, but that as long as Richard is not willing to kill, his claim is weakened. Richard ultimately declares Anita as his lupa and declares himself willing to kill Marcus if necessary to assume control of the pack. In order to assume a dominant role within the pack, Anita is forced to fight Neal, one of the werewolves present until first blood is drawn. She maneuvers him into a position where she can judo throw him through a window, drawing blood. As Neal cleans himself off, Edward arrives. Edward thinks that whichever assassin accepted the contract will try to kill Anita during her date with Jean-Claude at the opening of Dance Macabre, Jean-Claude's new club. Over Richard's objections, he and Anita make plans to use Anita as bait to draw out the assassin. Jean-Claude and Anita arrive at the club and are mobbed by reporters, ""outing"" Anita as the vampire's girlfriend. Under pressure from Jean-Claude, Anita admits that she wanted to keep their relationship secret and that her desire to do so was unfair to Jean-Claude. Anita meets Liv and Damian, two new and powerful vampires in Jean-Claude's retinue, as well as Cassandra, a new addition to the Thronos Rokke clan of werewolves. During the floorshow, Anita is forced to intervene to stop Damian from permanently hypnotizing one of the guests. Anita helps the guest into the women's bathroom with the help of another patron, Anabelle Smith. Smith draws a gun on Anita, but is distracted when some women enter, allowing Anita enough time to draw a knife and kill her. The police arrive and arrest Anita for the second time in two days. Detective Greeley does his best to get Anita to talk, but Dolph ultimately convinces Greeley to turn Anita over to Dolph by telling Greeley that Anita is a suspect in other crime. Dolph takes Anita to a suburban home in Creve Coeur, and shows Anita the crime scene—one of Jean-Claude's vampire's, Robert has been staked out inside a magic circle and ritually killed. Anita, as a necromancer, is unable to cross the circle, which was designed to block the magic of the dead. She hypothesizes that the circle was used to prevent Jean-Claude from learning of Roberts' death, and meets Tammy Reynolds, a new member of RPIT. Anita guesses that the crime must have been performed by at least two supernatural beings with enough strength to restrain Robert, in addition to someone with sufficiently detailed knowledge of necromancy to perform the ritual. Because even John Burke and Anita herself lack the expertise to perform the ritual, Anita tells Dolph that Dominic Dumare is the only suspect she can identify. Anita and Dolph clash over what she can tell Jean-Claude about Robert's death and about whether her loyalties now lie with Jean-Claude or with RPIT. After some more investigation, Anita accompanies Robert's widow, Monica to the hospital. While at the hospital, Anita speaks to Edward, who tells her that the contract on her life has been extended another twenty-four hours and convinces her to take cover in the Circus of the Damned while he attempts to identify who is behind the hit. At the Circus, Anita tells Jean-Claude about Robert's death and learns for the first time about Jean-Claude's past with Asher and Julianna. Jean-Claude tells Anita that Asher has petitioned the Vampire Council for permission to kill Anita as revenge for Julianna's death. Later, Jean-Claude and Anita discuss their relationship, both with each other and with Richard. Jean-Claude tells Anita that he loves her, and promises not to stand in her way if she chooses Richard, but demands that she see Richard change into a wolf before committing. They kiss, and Richard enters. With Richard's control weakened by the approaching full moon, Jean-Claude baits Richard and Richard knocks Anita down in the course of attacking Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude leaves to prepare for the approaching dawn, and Richard and Anita discuss their relationship. Jason arrives, severely beaten as a result of his attempt to prevent Richard from entering earlier, and acknowledges Richard as his master. Richard feeds from Jason's blood and feeds Jason some of his own blood and power. Shaken by Richard's display of inhuman behavior, Anita worries that perhaps Richard is right that killing Marcus will mean surrendering too much of his human identity. After some hesitation, Anita proposes that Richard sleep with her that morning, and that they marry as soon as possible. Richard refuses, promising to sleep with Anita and to marry her, but only after she sees him as a werewolf. Anita is awakened by Cassandra leaning over her bed in darkness. Cassandra apologizes for the fright and explains that Richard and Jean-Claude have a plan. The men explain that they wish to experiment calling the power that the three of them summoned accidentally in The Lunatic Cafe. Richard sees the power as a way to force Marcus to back down without a death, and Jean-Claude sees it as a means to secure his control of the city and his safety. Anita reluctantly agrees to the experiment after forcing Jean-Claude to promise that he will not mark either of the others as his servant. As the three engage in the initial stages of a ménage à trois, Anita is first uncomfortable, but soon overcome by a combination of lust and magical power. Acting on instinct, Anita demands blood to complete the ritual, and Jean-Claude bites Richard even as the two men continue seducing Anita. Anita is flooded with power, and instinctively raises the dead, much as she did when flooded with power by inadvertent human sacrifices in The Laughing Corpse and Bloody Bones. As Anita makes plans to investigate what she has raised from the dead and where, Richard and Jean-Claude sense an emergency and race her to the location of an old cemetery within the Circus. Anita learns that she has raised scores of zombies, as well as the resting forms of three vampires: Damian, Liv, and Willie. The three discuss their relationship some more—Jean-Claude and Richard are threatened by Anita's power and need for dominance, while Anita and Richard are threatened by Jean-Claude's ongoing seduction of them both. (On the other hand, Cassandra, a post graduate student of magical theory as well as a werewolf, is more clinically interested in the magic than in their relationship). Unsure whether, after raising them as zombies, Anita will be able to return the vampires to death in a way that allows them to rise as vampires with the setting sun, the group decides to call Dominic Dumare for assistance. (Anita reveals that a woman alibied Dumare, eliminating him as a suspect in Robert's killing.) Dominic and Cassandra are both intellectually fascinated by Anita's power to raise vampires, and, at Dominic's request, Anita experiments with the power, learning that she can heal vampires that she raises during daylight. Dominic helps her develop a ritual to combine her powers with Jean-Claude's and Richards and lay the vampires and zombies to rest, and they agree to try to use the technique to heal Sabin the next day. Jean-Claude, Richard, and Anita discuss their mutual relationship some more. Richard has agreed to accept Jean-Claude's marks as his animal servant, but will not accept a subordinate position to either Jean-Claude or Anita, and threatens to kill Jean-Claude if he attempts to assume control. Anita, for her part, will not even accept the marks. Jean-Claude claims to be threatened by Anita's new power and by the prospect of a three way battle for dominance ""for all eternity,"" but he is intrigued by the amount of power the three of them can raise. Edward arrives, with an assistant, the psycopathic mercenary Harley. Edward explains that he has learned that Marcus was behind the contract on Anita's life, and Jean-Claude hypothesizes that Marcus wanted to distract Richard from concentrating on that night's battle of succession. Anita and Richard dress for the battle and leave, with Edward and Harley as backup. Using Jean-Claude's mark, Anita and Richard unite their three powers once more, this time magnifying Richard's power. Holding Anita's hand, Richard helps her ""ride"" his power, allowing the two of them to run through the forest like wolves. At the wolves' sacred clearing, Richard and Marcus face off. Sebastian stabs Richard in the back in order to help Marcus, but is killed by Edward, who has taken up a sniper's position nearby. Without further intereference, Richard tears out Marcus's heart, killing him. In order to prevent her from killing Raina, Richard grabs Anita. He holds her down bodily as he changes to his wolf-man state. He invites Anita to share his power again, but she flees in horror, just as the pack begins eating Marcus. Anita runs back to the Circus and Jean-Claude. Distraught, Anita finally gives in to Jean-Claude's ongoing seduction, in the first of the many detailed scenes of erotica that Hamilton has since introduced into the series. The next morning, Richard arrives, and is devastated by the combination Anita's rejection of him the previous night and discovering that she has had sex with Jean-Claude. After an emotional fight, Richard declares that he will always love Anita and leaves. Cassandra arrives to help Anita clean up but then, to Anita's surprise, knocks Anita unconscious and delivers her to Raina and Gabriel. With Anita safely bound on the set of Raina's porn films, Cassandra explains that she, Dominic and Sabin are a triumvirate. Cassandra was the lover who convinced Sabin to give up feeding on humans, causing him to develop his degenerative condition. Dominic believed that by sacrificing Jean-Claude's triumvirate, they could heal Sabin, and the three of them came to St. Louis to do so. Discovering that Anita was not marked by Jean-Claude, they are going to try the sacrifice with just Jean-Claude and Richard. Anita attempts to reason with Cassandra, and promises to heal Sabin by raising him during daylight the next day. Cassandra refuses, stating that they do not have even one more day before Sabin loses his mind permanently, and leaves Anita to be raped and killed in Raina's snuff film. Gabriel, a psychotic sadomasochist, has been fantasizing about arming Anita with silver knives and raping her while she tries to kill him. Anita talks Gabriel into trying out his fantasy and gives her the knives. Unknown to Gabriel, Anita accepts the first and second vampire marks from Richard and Jean-Claude while waiting for the scene to begin; with her weapons and the extra power from the marks, she is able to kill both Gabriel and Raina. Together with Edward and Harley, Anita races to the sacrifice site to save Jean-Claude and Richard. At the site, Dominic has prepared another circle of power against the dead, which Anita, a necromancer, is unable to enter. Edward crosses the circle and kills Dominic to stop his spell but is knocked unconscious by Sabin. Harley shoots Cassandra. Anita kills Sabin and is then forced to kill Harley, who has lost control without Edward to anchor him to reality. She rushes to Richard and Jean-Claude and finds Richard dying, his heart pierced by Dominic's blade. Jean-Claude explains that he is shielding Anita from Richard's pain, and that he and Richard will probably die. Anita is unable to cope with losing both men and agrees to accept the third mark, giving blood to Jean-Claude and saving Richard and Jean-Claude's lives. In the epilogue, Anita explains that Monica's baby is doing well, and that she and Jean-Claude remain lovers, but that Richard has frozen them both out of his life, rendering the triumvirate useless. Even more ominously, Edward has declared that because Anita killed Harley, she now owes him one favor, which he will collect when he sees fit."
2163,Book of the Dead,horror," Wes has loved books since childhood. When a former colleague, Adrian O'Flaherty, arrives in town and invites him to a secret auction of rare occult books, Wes immediately agrees. However Adrian wants more than dusty old books at the auction. He wants revenge. Before the Watchers' Council was blown up (seen in 'Never Leave Me'), Rutherford Sirk took a number of rare books from the Council's libraries and killed the librarian who was Adrian's father. Wes buys a number of old books at the auction including one of the most famous books of magick, The Red Compendium, which is infamous for absorbing those who read it. Wes has always been a sucker for literature and soon finds he can't put it down even if he wants to."
2164,The Mask,horror," An amnesic blonde girl appears in the middle of traffic on a busy day. Carol and Paul, a married couple, are drawn to her, seeing her as the child they never had, they take her in. Then the hauntings begin- ghastly noises in the dead of night, a bloody face in the mirror,and the razor sharp ax. Where has Jane come from? Is she just an orphan in need of love? Or is she hiding something more sinister? Who is the girl behind the mask?"
2165,Vampirates: Tide of Terror,horror," The incredible adventures of twins Grace and Connor Tempest continue in the second Vampirates novel, Tide of Terror Connor may only be fourteen but he’s taken to the life of a pirate like a duck to water. But his loyalties are divided between his shipmates and his sister. Meanwhile Grace isn’t finding pirate life so appealing. She cannot shake the feeling that all is not well on the Vampirate ship she has left behind. Dare she try to return to it? New experiences await them both, including a journey to the fabled Pirate Academy.The book is a really good manufacturing according to the discriptives."
2166,Ratman's Notebooks,horror," The book is set as a series of journal entries, where the unnamed narrator goes back and forth between his life with the rats and his work, in a low-level job at a company that his father used to own. In these entries, the young man dwells on the hatred he feels for his boss, the stresses of caring for his aging mother, a nameless girl he becomes fond of and above all the families of rats which he has befriended and which he uses them for company and companionship. Eventually, the young man trains the rats to do things for him. His favorite is a white rodent, which he calls ""Socrates"". A rival to Socrates is ""Ben"", a large rat that the narrator grows to despise when it refuses to listen to him. The young man uses the rats to wreak revenge upon his boss, and havoc amongst the local shop owners and home owners, who he has robbed with the aide of his rat pack. His ""ratman"" robberies become a newspaper sensation in the area, and the man makes quite a stash of money for himself, and for the girl who he is courting at work. After his mother dies, the young man inherits the house. Socrates is killed at the young man's work place, by his boss Mr. Martin, and the young man is forced to now use Ben in his criminal escapades. He devises a plan to have the rats kill Mr. Martin, avenging Socrates death. He then abandons all the rats at the scene of the crime, ridding himself of that part of his life. Eventually, as his relationship with the office girl moves towards marriage, Ben and his pack return, chasing the girl out of the house, and trapping the young man in the attic. The book ends with the young man madly scribbling about the rats chewing away at the door."
2167,Wieland,horror," Set sometime between the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War, Wieland details the horrible events that befall Clara Wieland and her brother Theodore's family. Clara and Theodore's father was a German immigrant who founded his own religion; he came to America just before the American Revolution with the conviction to spread his religion to the indigenous people. When he fails at this task, he believes he has also failed his deity. One night, as he worships in his bare, reclusive temple, he seems to spontaneously combust, after which his health rapidly deteriorates and he dies. His children inherit his property, which is divided equally between them. Theodore marries their childhood friend, Catharine Pleyel, and they have four children. Soon, Theodore begins to hear voices and Catharine's brother, Henry Pleyel, begins to hear them, too. Though at first doubtful of the voices that the men claim to hear, Clara also begins to hear a strange voice. The mysterious Carwin appears on the scene, and suggests that the voices may be caused by human mimicry. Clara is secretly in love with Pleyel, and makes a plan to tell him so; however, her chance is ruined. When she returns home, she finds Carwin hiding in her closet. He admits he had been planning to rape Clara, but believing her to be under the protection of a supernatural force, leaves her. The next morning, Pleyel accuses Clara of having an affair with Carwin. He leaves quickly, without giving Clara enough time to defend herself. She decides to go to see Pleyel, to tell him he is mistaken, but he does not seem to believe her. On her way home, Clara stops to visit her friend Mrs. Baynton, where Clara finds a letter from Carwin waiting for her, which requests an audience with her. At Theodore's house, Clara finds that everyone seems to be asleep, so she continues on to her own home, where she is to meet with Carwin. When she arrives, there are strange noises and lights, and she sees a glimpse of Carwin's face. In her room, she finds a strange letter from Carwin, and Catharine in her bed – dead. Shocked, she sits in her room until Theodore arrives and threatens Clara. When he hears voices outside, he leaves Clara unharmed. Clara learns that Theodore’s children have also been killed. Clara falls ill; later, she is able to read the murderer's testimony. The killer is her brother, Theodore. He claims to have been acting under divine orders. Clara is sure that Carwin is the source of Theodore's madness. Carwin reveals to Clara that he is a biloquist. He was the cause of most of the voices, but he claims that he did not tell Theodore to commit the murders. Wieland, having escaped from prison, arrives at Clara's house and tries to kill her. Carwin uses his ability to tell Theodore to stop. He says that Theodore should not have listened to the voices, and Theodore suddenly comes to his senses. He kills himself, full of remorse for what he has done. Clara refuses to leave her house, until it burns down one day. She then goes to Europe with her uncle, and eventually marries Pleyel. Clara feels she has finally recovered from the tragic events, enough to write them down. As for Carwin, he has become a farmer in the countryside. Apparently the novel was based on the true story of murders which took place at Tomhannock, New York (a hamlet near Pittstown) in 1781. Mirroring the incidents of the later novel, one James Yates, under the influence of a religious delusion, killed his wife and four children, then attempted to kill his sister, and expressed no remorse for his conduct in court later. Brown gave his tragic hero a pedigree related to that of the actual German author Christoph Martin Wieland, who is mentioned obliquely in the text: My ancestor may be considered as the founder of the German Theatre. The modern poet of the same name is sprung from the same family, and, perhaps, surpasses but little, in the fruitfulness of his invention, or the soundness of his taste, the elder Wieland. This and others of Charles Brockden Brown&#39;s novels were very influential in the later development of the Gothic genre by such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, and most especially, George Lippard."
2168,Interview with the Vampire,horror," A vampire named Louis tells his 200-year-long life story to reporter Daniel Molloy (who is only referred to as ""the boy"" in the novel). In 1791, Louis was a young indigo plantation owner living south of New Orleans, Louisiana. Distraught with the death of his pious brother, he seeks death in any way possible. Louis is approached by a vampire named Lestat, who desires Louis' company. Lestat turns Louis into a vampire (although initially Louis begs to be killed) and the two become immortal companions. Lestat spends some time feeding off the local plantation slaves while Louis, who finds it morally impossible for him to murder humans to survive, feeds from animals. Louis and Lestat are forced to leave when Louis' slaves begin to fear the monsters with which they live and instigate an uprising. Louis sets his own plantation aflame; he and Lestat exterminate the plantation slaves to keep word from spreading about vampires living in Louisiana. Gradually, Louis bends under Lestat's influence and begins feeding from humans. He slowly comes to terms with his vampire nature but also becomes increasingly repulsed by what he perceives as Lestat's total lack of compassion for the humans he preys upon. Escaping to New Orleans proper, Louis feeds off a plague-ridden young girl one night, who is six years old, whom he finds next to the corpse of her mother. Louis begins to think of leaving Lestat and going his own way. Fearing this, Lestat then turns the girl into a vampire ""daughter"" for them, to give Louis a reason to stay. She is then given the name ""Claudia"". Louis is initially horrified that Lestat has turned a child into a vampire, but soon begins to care for Claudia tenderly and dotingly. Claudia takes to killing people easily, but over time, she grows tired of her eternal childhood and begins to realize she can never grow up; her mind matures into that of an intelligent, assertive woman, but her body remains that of a five-year-old girl. Claudia blames Lestat for her condition and, after 60 years of living together, she hatches a plot to destroy Lestat by poisoning him and cutting his throat. Claudia and Louis then dump his body into a nearby swamp. After realizing that they seem to now be the only vampires living in America, Claudia desires to travel to Europe with Louis and seek out ""Old World"" vampires. As Louis and Claudia prepare to flee to Europe, Lestat appears, having survived and recovered from Claudia's attack, and attacks them in turn. Louis sets fire to their home and barely escapes with Claudia, leaving a furious Lestat to be consumed by the flames. Arriving in Europe, Louis and Claudia seek out more of their kind. They travel throughout eastern Europe first and do indeed encounter vampires, but these vampires appear to be nothing more than animated corpses, mindless and unintelligible. It is only when they reach Paris that they encounter vampires like themselves - specifically, the 400-year-old vampire Armand and his coven, the Théâtre des Vampires. Inhabiting an ancient theater, Armand and his vampire coven disguise themselves as humans and feed on live, terrified humans in mock-plays before a live human audience (who think the killings are merely a very realistic performance). Claudia is repulsed by these vampires and what she considers to be their cheap theatrics, but Louis and Armand are drawn to each other. Santiago, a prominent figure among the vampire coven, suspects Claudia and Louis of killing their maker. One rule among the vampires is death to any vampire who kills their own kind. Convinced that Louis will leave her for Armand, Claudia demands that Louis turn a human Parisian doll maker, Madeleine, into a vampire to serve as both a mother figure and a replacement companion. Louis at first refuses but eventually gives in and makes Madeleine into a vampire. Louis, Madeleine and Claudia live together for a brief time, but all three are abducted one night by the Theatre vampires. Lestat has arrived - having survived the fire and attempted murder in New Orleans. His accusations against Louis and Claudia result in Louis being locked in a coffin to starve, while Claudia and Madeleine are locked in an open courtyard. Armand arrives and releases Louis from the coffin, but Madeleine and Claudia are burned to death by the rising sun. Louis finds the ashen remains of Claudia and Madeleine and is devastated. He later returns to the Theatre late the following night, burning it to the ground as the sun rises and killing all the vampires inside, and leaves with Armand. Louis and Armand then travel across Europe together for several years, but Louis never fully recovers from Claudia's death and the emotional connection between himself and Armand quickly dissolves. Tired of the Old World, Louis eventually returns to America and New Orleans in the early 20th century, living as a loner; he feeds off any humans that cross his path but lives in the shadows and never creates another companion for himself. Telling the boy of one last encounter with Lestat in New Orleans, Louis ends his tale; after 200 years, he is weary of immortality as a vampire and all the pain and suffering to which he has had to bear witness. The boy, however, seeing only the great powers granted to a vampire, begs to be made into a vampire himself. Infuriated that his interviewer learned nothing from his story, Louis refuses, and attacks the boy and then vanishes without a trace. Recovering from the attack, the boy leaves the place in his car."
2169,Gerald's Game,horror," The story begins with Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald in the bedroom of their secluded cabin in western Maine, where they have gone for an off-beat romantic weekend. Gerald, a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality, has been able to reinvigorate the couple's sex life by handcuffing Jessie to the bed. Jessie has been into the game before, but suddenly balks. As Gerald starts to crawl on top of her, knowing her protests are real but ignoring them anyway, she kicks him in the stomach and in the groin, and he then has a heart attack, falls from the bed to the floor, cracks his head, and dies. Jessie is alone in the cabin and unable to move or summon help. The only things that show up are a hungry stray dog named Prince that starts feeding on Gerald's body and a terrifying, deformed apparition that may or may not be real, whom Jessie first mistakes for the ghost of her long dead father but dismisses it later. Jessie begins to think of this bizarre visitor as ""The Space Cowboy"" (after a line from a Steve Miller song, ""The Joker""). A combination of panic and thirst eventually causes Jessie to hallucinate. She hears voices in her head, each one ostensibly the voice of a person in her life, primarily ""The Goodwife"" or ""Goody Burlingame"" (a somewhat Puritanical version of Jessie), Ruth Neary (an old college friend), and Nora Callighan (her ex-psychiatrist), both of whom Jessie hasn't spoken to in decades. These voices represent different parts of her personality which help her extract a painful childhood memory she has kept suppressed for many years. She was sexually abused by her father at age ten during a solar eclipse that occurred in her Maine hometown. She also begins to realize how unhappy her marriage was, and that she sacrificed the life she wanted for the security of Gerald's paycheck by being a trophy wife without children. This internal dialogue is mixed with descriptions of Jessie's more and more desperate attempts to get out of the handcuffs, first by trying to break the headboard she was cuffed to then by trying to slip off the bed and push the bed to the bureau where the keys were placed. Finally she does escape after one of the voices in her head tells her that if she stays another night, The Space Cowboy, who she dreamed of as a manifestation of Death, will more than likely take a part of her to add to its trophy ""fishing creel"" filled with jewelry and human bones, killing her in the process. Jessie escapes the handcuffs by slicing her arm open all the way around on a broken glass and giving herself a degloving injury in order to lubricate her skin enough for the cuffs, which were made for men and not women and thus almost loose enough for her to slip out normally, to slide off her right hand. She is then able to move behind the bed, push it over to the bureau and use one of the keys to unlock her left handcuff. However, she has lost a lot of blood and passes out shortly after. When she awakens, it is now nighttime, and the Space Cowboy has made his way back into the house. Jessie confronts him and throws her wedding ring at his box of jewelry and bones, thinking that is what he wanted all along, then turns and runs out of the house. She is able to make it into her car and finally escape the house, but is terrified to discover the Space Cowboy sitting in the backseat of the car. Jessie crashes out of fear and is knocked unconscious, and it is later revealed that she only imagined the Space Cowboy in the backseat. The story cuts to months later with Jessie recuperating from the incident and being looked after by a nurse. An ambitious associate attorney at Gerald's law firm assists her in covering up the real incident to protect her and the law firm from scandal, as well as assisting her in her recuperation. At the end, we get to read the letter that Jessie writes to Ruth Neary, detailing what happened after the incident and her recuperation process, which is slow but very meaningful. One of the passages in the letter revolves around a serial necrophiliac and murderer named Raymond Andrew Joubert making his way through Maine; it turns out he was the Space Cowboy, confirmed when Jessie confronted him in a court hearing and Joubert mimicked Jessie's arm positions while she was in the handcuffs. He also repeated her frightened exclamations that Joubert was ""not anyone,"" and that he was only ""made of moonlight."" Jessie also mentions what became of Prince who gnawed on Gerald. He is shot and killed. Initially, his owner had abandoned him in Maine and driven back to Massachusetts, simply because he didn't want to pay for the dog's license. The only true supernatural event in the story occurs as described during one of Jessie's flashbacks, when, during a particularly stressful incident at the time of childhood, she has a waking dream. In King's subsequent novel, Dolores Claiborne, it is revealed that the title main character shared a telepathic connection with Jessie Burlingame on two occasions, first during the solar eclipse when Jessie was assaulted by her father, and later when she is handcuffed to the bed. The two novels were initially conceived to be part of a single volume titled In the Path of the Eclipse. Later editions of Dolores Claiborne have a foreword that explains the connection between the two. Sheriff Alan Pangborn and Deputy Norris Ridgewick are mentioned near the end of Gerald's Game. Both characters appeared previously in The Dark Half and Needful Things, set in the fictional town of Castle Rock. In the later King novel Lisey's Story, Lisey often refers to the unbalanced fans her husband's horror novels have created as ""Space Cowboys."""
2170,The Bad Place,horror," Frank Pollard wakes up in an alley at night, filled with confusion and fear. He knows nothing but his name, and that he must escape fast, or else he will be killed. Pursued by a mysterious assailant, Frank barely escapes with his life. Every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up to find evidence of bizarre nighttime travels which he cannot remember. Afraid of his own actions, Frank enlists the help of husband-wife security team, Bobby and Julie Dakota. At first, the case merely seems absurd, but as they track deeper into the life and past of the mysterious Frank Pollard, the Dakotas uncover an increasingly bizarre and dangerous world threatened by a madman who thirsts for blood. It is ultimately revealed that Frank Pollard is the brother to the mysterious madman as well as twin sisters. They were born from a mother who was the product of an incestuous relationship. Her father was a hallucinogenic drug-abuser and her mother was his sister. She is a hermaphrodite and impregnated herself with her own seed. As a result of this compounded inbreeding, Frank and his siblings developed unusual psychic abilities. Frank, wanting a normal life, tries to escape from his family while being pursued by his brother who seeks to either bring him back or kill him, and nothing will stand in his way. After a message from Julie's younger brother, who has Down Syndrome and possesses minor psychic ability himself, Bobby, Julie, Frank and his family begin speeding into a final confrontation."
2171,Strangers,horror," It is about a group of people who are brought together by their different and equally strange maladies. These people gather to meet in the middle of the Nevada 'high-desert' to try to figure out what was done to them, and who could have done it, while at same time being watched by the people who have done this. Altogether they realize that a UFO landed near the Tranquility Motel."
2172,Angel Fire East,horror," John Ross has a vision of the future where a crucified Knight of the Word (one that resembles himself) tells him that a ""Gypsy morph"" is about to be created in the present. The creation of a Gypsy morph is a rare event - it is a convergence of magic that can become a powerful tool for either the Void or the Word depending on who unlocks its secret. The morph, however, will dissipate within a month if the secret remains hidden and the magic will be lost. John manages to catch the morph in the Pacific Northwest and escape his demon pursuers. The morph changes from creature to creature before settling on the appearance of a four-year-old boy. The only word the boy says is ""Nest"", prompting John to head back to Hopewell, Illinois to find out if Nest Freemark, whom he has not seen in ten years, can help him. However a resourceful demon named Findo Gask has been tracking John. He has recruited three other demons - Penny Dreadful (a young goth-type girl with crazy red hair and a penchant for self-destruction), Twitch (a half-crazed hulking albino man), and an ur'droch (a lethal demon who remains in its dark, shadowy form instead of taking on a human guise). Findo has heard the Gypsy morph's words in the ether and knows where to go to intercept John Ross. He and the three other demons arrive in town before him. Nest, now a 29-year-old divorcee, had won several Olympic track gold medals, but had to retire from running because she nearly turned into the ghost-wolf Wraith during an event. She still lives in her house near the park and tends to the area with the sylvan, Pick. Four days before Christmas, she is visited by Findo Gask and immediately recognizes him as a demon. He threatens her but does not harm her. She also meets Penny at church, but does not realize she is a demon. Later that day, Bennett Scott, whom Nest saved from falling off a cliff when Bennett was a preschooler fifteen years earlier, appears on her doorstep. Bennett is now a single mother of a young girl, Harper, and trying to get clean from a drug addiction. Nest naturally invites her to stay with her. That night, while Christmas caroling, Nest and her church group are attacked by Twitch. Nest nearly has to call on Wraith when Penny appears, calls him off and pretends that he is a mentally disabled relative, and no one is seriously hurt. Later that night, John Ross arrives with the Gypsy morph boy, whom they decide to call ""Little John"". The next morning Nest and John fill each other in on recent events. Bennett and Harper go for a walk in the park where they meet Penny. Penny offers Bennett drugs, but before she can accept, O'olish Amaneh appears and takes them home. Nest then goes for a walk in the park with O'olish, whom she also has not seen in ten years, who suggests that if Nest spends some time attempting to communicate with Little John instead of waiting for him to open up to her it may help unlock his secrets. He also tells her that soon he may never see her again as he plans to return to his ancestors. He then mysteriously disappears, as usual. Nest takes his advice and tries to talk to Little John, but no progress is made. Later that day the group does some tobogganing and narrowly avoids an assassination attempt by Findo Gask, thanks to Pick's last-minute warning. Instead, Findo Gask kills the park worker Ray Childress that night with the trap he intended for Nest and her guests. The next evening O'olish Amaneh again appears to Nest, and encourages her to persevere with Little John. After he leaves her, he is pursued by Findo Gask and his demon minions. Surrounded, he disappears in a whirlwind of snow. That night, Nest, Bennett, and the kids go to a neighborhood Christmas party while John spends some time with his old flame, Josie Jackson. Bennett abandons her child at the party, leaving Nest a note explaining how she intends to leave for a while. She meets up with Penny who gives her drugs, then Penny and Findo Gask trick her into falling off the cliff in the park that nearly claimed her fifteen years ago. Nest returns home with Harper and Little John and is attacked by the ur'droch. Wraith comes forth from her to successfully repel him. Before Wraith reenters Nest, Little John calls her ""Mama"" and runs into her arms, but refuses to do so after Wraith returns to Nest, foreshadowing what is to come. The next day, Christmas Eve, Bennett's body is found and Nest has to tell Harper that her mother has died, and that now she will be Harper's family. That evening, however, Harper and Little John are kidnapped by Findo Gask. Nest knows from previous interactions with Findo Gask that he doesn't know that Little John is the Gypsy morph. She also realizes that Penny is in league with Findo Gask and they are likely hiding out at the house where she was attacked by Twitch. She and John head over to the house for a preemptive strike, but before doing so, Nest knows she needs to check to see if the demons have booby-trapped or otherwise warded the house with invisible magic. She needs Pick to find this out for her, so she sends out Wraith to find Pick in the park. Wraith bounds forth and runs from within her, this time severing their magical tie. Nest realizes neither one of them was happy with Wraith being trapped within her, and knows it is for the best that he remain separate but near to her, still remaining her protector. Nest, Wraith and John Ross are successful in destroying Findo Gask's three demonic henchmen (Penny, Twitch, and the ur'droch) and rescuing the children, but John is mortally poisoned. Finally, when Little John sees that Wraith has left Nest permanently, the Gypsy morph is able to become what it was meant to be: an unborn child of destiny within Nest's womb. Findo Gask, thinking that the Gypsy morph's time ran out and its magic had dissipated, leaves town. Nest, perceiving her magical conception, decides to name the child John Ross Freemark, and heads back for home to start a new life with Harper and her future child. John Ross, weak and poisoned, lays down by the river in the park. As he passes into death, he sees the Lady, the voice of the Word, reaching out to him and calling him home. As John takes her hand his body disappears and his staff falls to the ground. O'olish Amaneh appears from the shadows, picks up the staff and surveys the horizon in contemplation of the continuous struggle between the Word and the Void."
2173,Oz: Into the Wild,horror," Determined to find a solution to his lycanthropic problem, Oz sets out to discover the beast within himself, as well as the rest of the world. His journey takes him to LA, Fiji, Australia, China and finally to Tibet in his quest for peace. Oz finds himself running from Gib Cain, the werewolf hunter who wants his skin, battling vampires and all around, just running for his life. His journey takes him to China where he meets a young woman named Jinan, who is something more than human, and the two of them travel to Tibet in search of answers. A monk can guide Oz through his journey, but he can only take him so far into his own self-discovery. During the meantime, Muztag, an evil demon who has been the monk's lifelong enemy, is gathering forces in an attempt to take over a particular valley in Tibet and he must be stopped before he kills the monk, or Oz's hopes for hiding the beast within him will be totally lost."
2174,The Shining,horror," In 1976, Jack Torrance is an aspiring writer who is attempting to rebuild his marriage and career, both of which have been nearly ruined by two traits inherited from his late father: alcoholism and an explosive temper. During one occasion while drinking, Jack broke his son's arm. This incident shocked him into sobriety, but Jack's temper continued to plague him: he lost his teaching position at a Vermont prep school after assaulting a student. Jack eagerly accepts a job as a winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, an isolated resort in the Colorado Rockies. Jack hopes that the seclusion will help him reconnect with his family and give him inspiration and the peace and quiet to help him write a new play. Jack, his wife Wendy, and their five-year-old son, Danny&mdash;who has telepathic abilities unknown to his parents&mdash;move into the Overlook. Danny's abilities make him immediately sensitive to supernatural forces within the hotel. Shortly after the family's arrival at the Overlook, Danny and the hotel's chef, Dick Hallorann, talk privately to discuss Danny's talent and the hotel's sinister nature. Dick informs Danny that he shares Danny's abilities (though to a lesser degree), as did Dick's grandmother, who called it ""shining"". Dick warns Danny to avoid Room 217, but assures him that the things he may see are merely pictures which cannot harm him. Dick urges Danny to contact him through the shining should trouble arise. As the Torrances settle in at the Overlook, Danny sees frightening ghosts and visions. Although Danny is close to Jack, he does not tell either of his parents about his visions because he senses that the caretaking job is important to his father and the family's future. Wendy considers leaving Jack at the Overlook to finish the job on his own; Danny refuses, thinking his father will be happier if they stay. However Danny soon realizes his presence in the hotel makes the supernatural activity more powerful enabling it to make what Hallorann described as 'pictures' dangerous. Apparitions take form and the garden's topiary animals come to life. Objects, such as a party hat in the elevator, mysteriously appear . The Overlook has difficulty possessing Danny, so it begins to possess Jack, frustrating his need and desire to work. Jack becomes susceptible to cabin fever, and the sinister ghosts of the hotel gradually begin to overtake him, making him increasingly unstable. One day, after a fight with Wendy, Jack finds the hotel's bar fully stocked with alcohol despite being previously empty. As he gets drunk, the hotel urges Jack to kill his wife and son. Wendy and Danny get the better of Jack, locking him into the walk-in pantry, but the ghost of Delbert Grady, a former caretaker who murdered his family and then committed suicide, releases him. Wendy discovers that they are completely isolated at the Overlook, as Jack has sabotaged the hotel's snowcat and smashed the CB radio in the office. Jack strikes Wendy with one of the hotel's mallets, breaking two ribs, a kneecap, and one vertebra in her back. Wendy stabs Jack in the small of his back with a large butcher knife, then crawls away to the caretaker's suite and locks herself in the bathroom, with Jack in pursuit. Jack tries to break the door with the mallet, but before he unlocks the door she keeps him back by cutting him with some razor blades. Hallorann, working at a winter resort in Florida, has heard Danny's psychic call for help and rushes back to the Overlook. Jack leaves Wendy in the bathroom and ambushes Hallorann, shattering his jaw and giving him a concussion with the mallet, before setting off after Danny. Danny distracts Jack by saying ""You're not my daddy,"" having realized that the Overlook has completely taken over Jack by playing on his alcoholism. Jack temporarily regains control of himself and tells Danny, ""Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you"". Soon after, Jack is quickly possessed by the hotel again. He violently bashes his own face and skull in with his mallet so Danny can no longer recognize him as his father. Danny, realizing that his father is now gone forever, tells Jack that the unstable boiler is going to explode. In response, Jack rushes to the basement. Danny and Wendy reunite in the lobby, and they flee the Overlook with Hallorann. Though Jack tries to relieve the boiler pressure, it explodes, destroying the hotel. The building's spirit makes one last desperate attempt to possess Hallorann and make him kill Danny and Wendy, but he shakes it off and brings them to safety. The novel ends with Danny and Wendy summering at a resort in Maine where Hallorann, the head chef, talks with Danny and comforts him over the loss of his father."
2175,Dragonfly,horror," Ten-year-old Bridget Ann (nicknamed ""Dragonfly"") lives in her Uncle Henry's funeral parlor. Uncle Henry summons Mothkin, a hunter, to investigate strange things happening in the basement as Hallowe'en approaches. In the basement, Dragonfly and Mothkin discover a doorway to a spooky underground world, known as Harvest Moon, which is ruled by an evil despot, Samuel Hain. Dragonfly is separated from Mothkin and meets up with a werewolf named Sylva who protects her from Hain. Eventually, she reunites with Mothkin for a final battle with Hain."
2176,If You Could See Me Now,horror," The novel tells the story of Miles Teagarden, a widowed English professor struggling to complete his dissertation in the summer of 1975. Twenty years earlier – on the night of June 21, 1955 – Miles made a vow with his beautiful cousin Alison Greening that they would meet again at the family farm in Arden, Wisconsin in twenty years. Shortly after swearing this vow, Alison drowned under mysterious circumstances while she and Miles were swimming in the quarry not far from the family farm. The main action of the book follows Miles as he returns to Arden ostensibly in search of peace and quiet in which he can complete his dissertation. Very quickly the work on the dissertation falls away as Miles becomes obsessed with memories of his cousin and the circumstances of her death. Several young girls have been murdered in the area and the suspicions of the small town fall on Miles, who soon comes to believe that Alison's vengeful spirit may be responsible for the deaths."
2177,Insomnia,horror," Ralph Roberts, a retired widower, begins to suffer from insomnia. As his condition worsens, Ralph begins to see things that are invisible and intangible to others: colorful manifestations of life-force surrounding people (auras), and diminutive white-coated beings he calls ""little bald doctors"", based on their appearance. Roberts perceives other planes of reality and their influence upon the ""real"" world. He finds that his sweetheart, Lois Chasse, is also a sufferer. They eventually discover that their insomnia has been induced by the two little bald doctors to help them defeat agents of the Crimson King. Ralph and Lois name the two ""good"" doctors Clotho and Lachesis, while the third ""bad"" doctor is called Atropos; they are all named after the Moirai of mythology. Ralph overcomes Atropos and forces him to promise to stay out of their business, the doctors all being bound by their word. However, Atropos has his revenge by showing Ralph a glimpse of the not-too-distant future in which he claims the life of the innocent Natalie Deepneau. Ralph is able to counterbalance this however, by striking a deal with Clotho and Lachesis whereby he trades his own life for Natalie's. Meanwhile, Ed Deepneau, Natalie's father and Ralph's neighbor, falls under the control of the Crimson King. Deepneau attempts to crash a light plane containing explosives into the Derry Civic Center during a heavily-attended rally. Ralph and Lois realize that the Crimson King is using Deepneau to kill a small boy named Patrick Danville, the focus of a prophecy concerning the salvation of The Dark Tower. Danville cannot, for undisclosed reasons, be killed directly by anyone born under either the Random or the Purpose. However, from time to time a being is born who is ""undesignated"". An undesignated person is described as being like a blank card, and is up for grabs by either side. Deepneau is one such person, in fact the only person on earth at that time of undesignated status. Ralph defeats the King and forces the light plane to crash into the parking lot; killing Deepneau and sparing Danville's life, allowing him to fulfill his destiny and setting the path for the Dark Tower series. The story ends on a tragic note as Ralph, to uphold his bargain with Clotho and Lachesis, is hit and killed by a car to prevent Natalie Deepneau from being killed in his place. The story closes on the remark that Ralph is finally able to rest."
2178,Final Watch,horror," Anton Gorodetsky is learning to use his new power when Gesar sends him to assist the Scottish Night Watch in Edinburgh in a murder investigation. A young Russian man has been murdered in a ""Vampire Castle"", a tourist attraction; the evidence shows that he was apparently killed by a vampire. The mystery is greater than it seemed. Someone tries to attack Anton using remote controlled guns. Finally the head of Scottish Night Watch, Thomas Lermont, reveals that someone stole an artifact from Merlin's grave and is apparently trying to use this artifact to open Merlin's secret storage. In that mysterious place Merlin apparently hid the ""Crown of All Things"" (nobody knows what it is). After the Night Watch is attacked by ordinary humans equipped with magical amulets and bullets, Thomas and Anton follow someone to the Twilight. They get as far as the sixth level (first time for Anton), but all they find out is that there are three people behind this - a Light Other, a Dark Other and an Inquisitor. Thomas also tells Anton that the seventh level of the Twilight is the Others' paradise, where they can exist in peace together (upon death, Others just vanish into the Twilight). Merlin has hidden the Crown of All Things in the seventh level of the Twilight. All Others are very worried about these happenings. Gesar sends Anton to Uzbekistan, to look up Rustam, a contemporary and friend of Merlin, and a former friend - later an enemy - of Gesar. He might know something about where the Crown is hidden and what it is. When Anton is visiting the Night Watch in Uzbekistan, they are once again attacked by humans with amulets and magical weapons. Various clues begin to point to Anton's friend, Kostya Saushkin, as one of the perpetrators, even though he is certainly dead. Anton manages to find Rustam. He tells him that the Crown of All Things is a spell which will destroy the barriers dividing individual levels of the Twilight, as well as the barrier between the Twilight and reality. It might cause the end of the world, strip all Others of their powers or maybe kill them - Rustam doesn't know, nor does he care. They are attacked again and Anton learns that his one-time friend, the Inquisitor Edgar, is one of the mysterious trio of Others. Back in Moscow, Anton figures out who is the Dark Other in the mysterious trio - it is Gennady Saushkin, Kostya's father. They can't identify the Light Other. Both Watches assign operatives to protect Anton's and Svetlana's five-year-old daughter, Nadya, the only zero-level Other in the world (she does not produce any magical energy, she can only absorb, therefore her power is practically unlimited; Merlin was also a zero-level Other). Only zero-level Others may get to the seventh level of the Twilight. Edgar and Gennady kidnap Anton (they can't get to Nadya) and take him to Edinburgh, so that he can help them figure out a way to get to the Crown. They tell Anton that Nadya is dead due to them planting a nuclear explosive near his apartment building. A nuclear bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying matter on all Twilight levels. Edgar found some information in the archives of the Inquisition saying that the Crown of All Things will give all the Others who departed into the Twilight the thing they want most. In Edgar's interpretation it will bring them back to life, and he wants to reunite with his wife who was killed. Gennady wants to get his son and wife back. They meet the third part of the trio, or as they call themselves, the Final Watch - the witch Arina, who managed to change her affiliation to Light. She also reveals that she sabotaged the nuclear bomb not to go off, as her new Light affiliation forbids the destruction of so many innocents. Anton does figure out Merlin's secret, but he knows the Final Watch will not like it and he manages to lie to them. They take him to the fifth level of the Twilight, where they encounter Merlin's guardian. While the Final Watch is busy fighting it, Anton gets to the sixth level. There he meets Merlin as well as Tiger Cub, Igor, Alice and all his Other friends who departed into the Twilight, including Kostya (who tells Anton that he does not blame Anton for killing him). They are all hoping he will activate the Crown. However, he cannot go back, because the Final Watch is there and he cannot go forward to the seventh level, because he doesn't have enough power. At this point Nadya appears - Svetlana just initiated her and sent her to get her father. Traveling through all levels of the Twilight is not a problem for Nadya. She takes Anton forward - back to the real world. The Twilight goes in a circle. The seventh level is the one we all live in. Anton goes to activate the Crown of All Things, which is indeed hidden in the seventh level. Merlin put the spell in the ancient stones of the Edinburgh Castle. The Final Watch appears, but Anton will not be bothered with them. Edgar got things wrong; the thing the Others in the Twilight want most is not resurrection, but death. There is no paradise there, they are stuck forever in a world where everything is just a pale copy, trapped in an imitation of life. They want it to end, because once they fully die, they can be reborn. Merlin has foreseen this and created his spell (its Twilight-destroying effect is temporary). However, the lost Others asked Anton to forgive, so he allows Gennady and Edgar to die, so that they can join their loved ones before it is too late. Arina chooses to live. Then Anton activates the Crown,and all Others in the Twilight die, including the incapitated Dark Others in the Plain of Demons. The final words of the book spoken by Anton could be interpreted as a possible hint at new episodes in the series, where Anton says to his daughter ""You didn't think this was the last watch, did you?"""
2179,Running with the Demon,horror," Nest Freemark is a fourteen-year-old girl of Hopewell, Illinois, who is gifted with magical powers bequeathed to her from her mother's lineage. She lives with her grandmother Evelyn and grandfather Bob, as her mother apparently committed suicide at a young age. She is one of a rare few in the world who can see the spiritual warfare underlying the events in the real world. She can see ""feeders"" - small shadowy creatures that feed on human emotion, influence thoughts, and ultimately attempt to ""devour"" people, causing their real world demise. Nest is enlisted to guard the nearby park and wilderness, a regional feeding ground for feeders, as many generations of Freemark women before her. She is aided in this task by a six-inch tree-like sylvan named Pick, an insightful barn owl named Daniel, and an ethereal wolfen creature named Wraith, who appears at opportune moments to protect Nest, but whose origins are initially unknown. On July first, Nest is awakened by Pick and informed that a young local girl, Bennett Scott, has run away from home (and her mother's abusive boyfriend) into the park and is at risk of being attacked by feeders. She rescues the girl and is almost overrun by feeders when Wraith appears to fend them off and help her escape. Meanwhile, a demon of the Void has come to the town of Hopewell. Once a human, this demon now possesses magical powers including the ability to blend in easily among other people and influence their thoughts. He befriends Derry Howe, a less intelligent resident of Hopewell, and places in his mind the idea of setting a bomb during the fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Since the display is sponsored by the company that owns the factory, Derry is fooled into believing that the company will have to end a town-crippling strike in apology for the injuries at the show. The following morning, Nest meets up with her friends, including Bennett's older brother Jared, upon whom she has a crush. They run into a teen bully named Danny Abbot, and Nest uses magic to knock him to the ground to protect her friends. Later that day, an alarmed Pick leads Nest deep into the park forest and shows her a great oak tree with crevasses in its trunk. The tree is actually a prison for a maentwrog - a powerful magic beast known for devouring multitudes of people. The demon has weakened the tree and the maentwrog is threatening to break free, but Nest and Pick do a patch job to strengthen the tree's integrity. At dinner, Nest is introduced by her grandfather to a traveler named John Ross, who has recently come to town. He claims to have known Nest's mother, but his true purpose for being in Hopewell is to track and defeat the demon. John is a ""Knight of the Word"", charged with helping preserve the balance between the Word (the representation of goodness and light in the world) and the Void (the summation of evil and darkness). After his post-graduate work, John traveled to Wales and happened upon a glade called Fairy Glen in the country around Betws-y-Coed. He is met by the Lady (the voice of the Word) and learns that he is the descendant of Owain Glyndŵr, a great Welsh ""patriot and warrior"" who served the Word. John was then charged by the Lady to embrace the Word and fight against the Void whenever he is called on. After returning to America, he is visited by a Native American named O'olish Amaneh, who reminds him of his oath and hands him a rune-engraved staff of great magic. Upon taking the staff, John's leg is crippled as a reminder that he is dependent upon the staff, and through it, the Word. John fights the Void in both the present, and an apocalyptic future where demons are beginning to enslave humanity. When John sleeps, he has unavoidable dreams in which he experiences his life in this horrific time. In these visions he finds clues concerning his new mission, as well as the consequences if he should fail. During these visions, he is a skilled warrior of magic, free of his limp, fighting valiantly to free slaves and thwart the demons. However, if John uses his magic in the present, he finds himself without that magic for the duration of his next dream. He is reduced to a vulnerable fugitive who has to scurry and hide to avoid the demon armies. John has found through his dreams that the demon is Nest's father, and if John does not stop him, Nest will be converted to serving the Void and will be a great leader of the demons in the future. That evening, Nest sneaks out after dark to meet with O'olish Amaneh, whom she fatefully ran into earlier that day. O'olish Amaneh is the last of the Sinnissippi tribe that used to live in the area, and invites her to dance with the spirits of the Sinnissippi. At midnight, he summons the spirits of his tribe and dance among them. Nest sees a vision of her grandmother as a young lady, running with feeders and interacting with the demon. O'olish leaves Hopewell that night contemplating his own visions, while Nest struggles with the meaning of hers. The next day, July 3, John attends church with the Freemark family when they find the feeders crawling all over, invisible to the congregation, but Wraith appears and scares them off. The feeders have never entered the church before, and Nest realizes that the demon must be nearby. The demon confronts her in a wing of the church, threatens her, and demonstrates his power by killing a church member. That night, the demon influences Danny Abbot to tie up Nest and leave her in a cave. The demon comes to Nest and taunts her, telling her he can do anything he wants to and she is powerless. While the demon is away, Nest is rescued by her friends and grandfather. In addition, while John Ross is spending a romantic evening with his new love interest Josie, the local cafe owner, the demon influences a group of townspeople to attack him. John is incapacitated and forced to use magic to escape. While everyone is otherwise engaged, the demon confronts Nest's grandmother, Evelyn, at the Freemark house and is surprised to find that she no longer has magic of her own. She assaults him in futility with a shotgun, and he kills her. However, anticipating her death, Evelyn had left Nest a secret note telling her to trust in her magic and in Wraith. Finally, on July 4, Jared Scott is beaten by his mother's boyfriend and slips into a coma. The feeders, however, drive the boyfriend into a craze and he ends up accidentally killing himself. Pick is captured by the demon, and Nest and John confront him at the site of the maentwrog tree. While Nest's grandfather stops Derry Howe from injuring anyone at the fireworks show, the demon manages to release the maentwrog. Through extensive magic use, John is able to defeat the creature, but passes out. The demon takes advantage of this to confront Nest's grandmother, and kills her. The demon confronts Nest alone and teaches her of her past. She learns that her grandmother once became friends with the demon and would ""run with him"" instead of fighting against him. At this time, she thought him simply another person, not a demon. The demon tried to seduce her grandmother, but she resisted, and turned to the side of the Word. In revenge, the demon seduced her daughter, Nest's mother, and she bore him a daughter, Nest. When Nest's mother found out after Nest was born that he was a demon, she apparently lost her mind and committed suicide. Now the demon is back for Nest, and by touching her, he can convince her to join the Void. Wraith appears, but the demon reveals that Wraith is actually a gift from the demon, sent to protect Nest until he could come back and claim her. Nest holds the demon at bay for a time, but when he is about to lay his hand on her, Wraith turns on the demon and tears him to pieces. Nest learns from Pick that even though Wraith was created by the demon, her grandmother long ago expended all of her magic to convince Wraith to defend Nest against the demon as well. The next day, Nest and her grandfather decide to be foster parents for Bennett Scott, as the kids have been legally removed from their home situation. Nest visits the hospital and uses her magic to bring Jared out of his coma, while John Ross leaves Hopewell on a bus, knowing his life cannot afford him the luxury of staying with Josie. He falls asleep, anticipating a new mission from the Word."
2180,Blood Noir,horror," Blood Noir appears to take place a short time after The Harlequin; however it is not noted exactly how much time has elapsed. There are a few main themes in the novel, which are mostly resolved by the end. * In Jason's hometown, one of his ancestors had more than his fair share of offspring. Hence, Jason's features are repeated in various cousins and other relatives. During high school Jason was always confused with two of his cousins who happen to be twins. Keith Summerland used the confusion to his benefit a few times, tricking people to believe he was Jason or letting Jason get the beating for Keith's deeds. ** As soon as Jean-Claude's private jet lands in North Carolina, Jason is confused for Keith. The local and national media is interested in Keith Summerland because he is getting married and his father, who is currently a governor, is thinking of running for the Presidency. Meanwhile, Jason's father has been given only weeks to live, so time is of the essence. In addition, Jason has rented a hotel room in the same location that Keith is supposed to stay in and where the bridal party is taking place. ** Keith Summerland is in trouble again, he's fallen for a vampire and would rather marry her than the girl his father wants to marry him to. However, the vampire is already married and her husband does not take kindly to Keith trying to take his bride. * In The Harlequin Anita was given a charm that is supposed to keep Marmee Noir away. When Anita meets a tiger that calls to one of the tigers inside her, the charm fails or perhaps the Mother of Darkness overpowers it. Previous books have had Anita give her beast to someone else since she cannot shift with a fair amount of success, however Jason would only be able to help Anita if her inner wolf was giving her trouble. Marmee Noir uses Anita to send out a call to every unattached tiger in the nation. ** Specifically, two tigers in the area come to Anita, and Jason, instantly and are essentially raped by her for two days. One is Crispin from Las Vegas (who broaches the rape issue), a stripper and the other is Alexander Pinn, who is a closeted reporter. Crispin is from a white tiger clan, while Alex is from a red tiger clan. ** Once again, Anita could be pregnant. Jason tells the possible-daddies-to-be tigers that the would-be baby is probably his and they then allow her to get a morning-after pill. Otherwise, either tiger would have happily married and taken Anita back to his clan. Crispin appears to have been rolled by Anita and is rather heartbroken when she sends him away, while Alex had a harder time fighting Anita's call. ** Marmee Noir may be thousands of miles physically from Anita, but she can still reach out and touch the necromancer. When Anita loses consciousness, Marmee Noir wakes her and slashes her shirt open despite being so far away. However, she does not reveal why she is so interested in Anita. It could be that she wants Anita for her own human servant, as other Masters of the City may as well. When the link between Anita and Jean-Claude is broken, they believe that Anita may have been marked by Marmee Noir, but once Anita reclaims her anger from Richard the link is back. Marmee Noir cannot understand Anita's rage because it belongs to Anita and was not passed down from her to any of Marmee Noir's vampire descendants. * The last theme is the desire to be ""normal"", which most of the main characters admit to wanting. Normal as in what society says most humans want: find a true love, meet the family, get married, have kids, live happily ever after. Unfortunately for Anita, her life is anything but normal, but she's the only one who appears to accept that. When Jason takes Anita home to meet his family, Jean-Claude and Micah both express the desire to do that as well. ** Jean-Claude is jealous because while he would want Anita to meet his family, they have all died so long ago that no one knows him from when he was human is left. Anita tells him that she has in a sense met his mother, she's in some sense met Belle Morte and he replies that she is not 'his people.' Belle Morte may be the head of Jean-Claude's bloodline but she is not the matriarch of his family. ** Micah broke his ties with his family to keep them safe. When Chimera was alive, he would use family against the members of his pard. With Chimera dead, Micah expresses the desire to introduce Anita to his family. However, Nathaniel is also a part of Anita's and Micah's life which leaves Micah uncertain if all three of them should visit. Nathaniel's role in their life is not so clear and simple nor ""normal"" as the roles of 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend.' ** Richard also wants his life to be normal, he wants Anita to be his wife and to live essentially behind a white picket fence. They have quarreled about this many times in many books. When he finds Anita has gained two more lovers to her list or bed post, Richard is distressed. Once Anita takes away her rage from him, he gains a new talent. The talent is the ardor and unfortunately, there is a learning curve to it and at first he tries to use it against her until Jason calls him on it and then Richard simply leaves Anita alone. ** Jason's desire to be normal shows in trying to appease his father one last time. To try to convince him that Anita is his girlfriend is the least he can do, while he still has time left to say goodbye to his father. A media frenzy of poor timing and rumors will not stop him in visiting his abusive father in the hopes for that one perfect moment of acceptance that he never had when he was growing up. Jason had no desire for athletics and his choice of theater was not what his father wanted for him. In fact, nearly everything Jason has tried to do to please his father has failed. It is not until the end of the book, when Jason is nearly taken away from his family that Franklin Schuyler realizes exactly how much Jason means to him."
2181,Demon in My View,horror," The book is set in the non fictional town of Ramsa, New York, and centers around teenager Jessica Ashley Allodola. Jessica is gorgeous and has a perfect body, but the people in her town avoid her. At Ramsa High, many students are afraid of her and some think she's a witch. Instead of trying to bond to people, Jessica writes books about vampires and witches. She has just published her first book, ""Tiger, Tiger"", under the pen name Ash Night. As her senior year starts, there are two new students, Caryn Rashida and Alex Remington. Jessica is instantly stunned by the fact that Alex looks exactly like Aubrey, a character in ""Tiger, Tiger."" However, since Jessica believes vampires aren't real, she convinces herself that he's not Aubrey. Both Caryn and Alex show an interest in Jessica. Jessica finds Alex fascinating but considers Caryn a nuisance. After a few clues, Jessica finds out that the books she has been writing are completely true. That Alex is actually the vampire Aubrey and Caryn is a Smoke witch. Many of the vampires wish to kill her for exposing their secrets. Aubrey had initially planned to kill her, but after meeting her, he's uncertain of what to do. After Jessica is attacked by Fala, another vampire, Aubrey changes Jessica into a vampire. Throughout the story, Jessica pieces together clues regarding her birth. Her mother was Jazlyn and had been offered immortality numerous times by Siete, the creator of the vampires. After her husband's death, the pregnant Jazlyn accepted the offer in a moment of desperation and Siete changed her. However, after years of life as a vampire, her regret became too strong. A Smoke witch, Monica, offered to give her back her humanity. Monica died in the process, but she succeeded. A few months later, Jazlyn's child was born. However, the child, Jessica, held no resemblance to either of her biological parents. Instead, after almost two decades in an undead womb, she resembled Siete. Her green eyes, black hair, pale skin, and vampiric traces in her aura were all from him and Jazlyn could not look at her. So Jazlyn gave Jessica up for adoption."
2182,The Collector,horror," The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of view. Clegg is obsessed with Miranda Grey, a middle-class art student at the Slade School of Fine Art. He admires her from a distance, but is unable to make any contact with her because of his nonexistent social skills. One day, he wins a large prize in the football pools. This makes it possible for him to stop working and buy an isolated house in the countryside. He feels lonely, however, and wants to be with Miranda. Unable to make any normal contact, Clegg decides to add her to his ""collection"" of pretty, petrified objects, in the hope that if he keeps her captive long enough, she will grow to love him. After careful preparations, he kidnaps Miranda by drugging her with chloroform and locks her up in the cellar of his house. He is convinced that Miranda will start to love him after some time. However, when she wakes up, she confronts him with his actions. Clegg is embarrassed, and promises to let her go after a month. He promises to show her ""every respect"", pledging not to sexually molest her and to shower her with gifts and the comforts of home, on one condition: she can't leave the cellar. Clegg rationalizes every step of his plan in cold, emotionless language; he seems truly incapable of relating to other human beings and sharing real intimacy with them. He takes great pains to appear normal, however, and is greatly offended at the suggestion that his motives are anything but reasonable and genuine. The second part of the novel is narrated by Miranda in the form of fragments from a diary that she keeps during her captivity. Clegg scares her, and she does not understand him in the beginning. Miranda reminisces over her previous life throughout this section of the novel, and many of her diary entries are written either to her sister, or to a man named G.P., whom she respected and admired as an artist. Miranda reveals that G.P. ultimately fell in love with her, and subsequently severed all contact with her. Through Miranda's confined reflections, Fowles discusses a number of philosophical issues, such as the nature of art, humanity and God. At first, Miranda thinks that Clegg has sexual motives for abducting her, but as his true character begins to be revealed, she realises that this is not true. She starts to have some pity for her captor, comparing him to Caliban in Shakespeare's play The Tempest because of his hopeless obsession with her. Clegg tells Miranda that his first name is Ferdinand (eventual winner of Miranda's affections in The Tempest). Miranda tries to escape several times, but Clegg is always able to stop her. She also tries to seduce him in order to convince him to let her go. The only result is that he becomes confused and angry. When Clegg keeps refusing to let her go, she starts to fantasize about killing him. After a failed attempt at doing so, Miranda passes through a phase of self-loathing, and decides that to kill Clegg would lower her to his level. As such, she then refrains from any further attempts to do so. Before she can try to escape again, she becomes seriously ill and dies. The third part of the novel is again narrated by Clegg. At first, he wants to commit suicide after he learns of Miranda's death, but after he reads in her diary that she never loved him, he decides that he is not responsible and is better off without her. The books ends with his announcement he plans to kidnap another girl."
2183,Demon Theory,horror," The following description of the novel is found on the author's official website: On Halloween night, following an unnerving phone call from his diabetic mother, Hale and six of his med school classmates return to the house where his sister disappeared years ago. While there is no sign of his mother, something is waiting for them there, and has been waiting a long time. Written as a literary film treatment littered with footnotes and experimental nuances, Demon Theory is even parts camp and terror, combining glib dialogue, fascinating pop culture references, and an intricate subtext as it pursues the events of a haunting movie trilogy too real to dismiss. There are books about movies and movies about books, and then there’s Demon Theory – a refreshing and occasionally shocking addition to the increasingly popular “intelligent horror” genre."
2184,The Stress of Her Regard,horror," The story begins shortly before the wedding of Michael Crawford, a doctor. The night before he marries Julia, he inadvertently places his wedding ring in the hand of a statue in a garden. When he goes to retrieve it, he discovers the statue has mysteriously vanished. Despite this mysterious event, the wedding proceeds. Julia's disturbed twin sister Josephine serves as the maid of honor. The next morning, Crawford awakes to discover Julia's horribly mutilated corpse next to him in the bed. Knowing he will be suspected of murdering his bride, Crawford flees to London and passes himself off as a medical student. He meets John Keats, who is also studying medicine. One day while visiting the wards they encounter the grief-stricken Josephine, who attempts to shoot Crawford to avenge her sister. A mysterious apparition saves him. Keats does his best to help Crawford understand what has happened. By placing the wedding ring on the statue Crawford unwittingly attracted the attention of one of the nephilim, who now considers herself Crawford's true wife. The nephilim killed Julia so she could have Crawford for herself. Keats, who has some experience with the nephilim, recommends that Crawford visit the Alps. There is a place high in the mountains where he may be able to free himself from ""the stress of her regard"". While traveling on the Continent, Crawford is called upon to assist another Englishman who is suffering from a seizure. The man is Percy Shelley, and is accompanied by Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clarmont. Byron and Shelley are also connected to the nephilim, which they see as both a blessing and a curse. The nephilim can prolong the lives of humans and serve as muses who help to inspire great works of creativity, but they are extremely jealous and will destroy anyone they see as a rival. Crawford and the two poets make their way up the Jungfrau, where it is said one might be able to break the bond with a nephilim. After answering a version of the Riddle of the Sphinx Crawford manages to free himself from his ""wife"". In doing so he also learns more about the nature of the nephilim. Yet the danger is not over for Crawford, the poets, and their loved ones. The nephilim are still active, and developments in Venice may threaten all humanity. Crawford, Josephine, Shelley, and Byron, all haunted by personal tragedy, must find a way to save themselves and the rest of the world from the nephilim."
2185,The Dark Other,horror," The novel concerns Patricia Lane who is in love with Nicholas Devine, a quiet and gentle writer. Devine undergoes sudden changes becoming cold and calculating. Frightened by this, Lane consults psychologist Dr. Carl Horker who rescues her from Devine while under the influence of one of his spells. Devine again attacks Horker, and overcomes him. He is then shot by Lane and rushed to a hospital where a second brain is discovered and removed."
2186,Life's Lottery,horror," Life's Lottery opens speculating on the question of free will and predestination. The reader is invited to decide for themselves which philosophy to follow in reading the book and then is presented with Keith's birth in England on October 4, 1959. Keith is raised in England by a successful banker and has, as the author points out, ""been dealt a better hand than many"". The boy is spoiled by his parents and enters primary school shy and timid. The book offers its first choice on the first day, when Keith is confronted and teased by a gang. The consequences of the choice - ""Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin?"" - set Keith on a path that determines his lifelong friends, enemies, and opportunities. Following this key point, the plot paths diverge wildly, and range from Keith winning the lottery, becoming a distinguished novelist, making a bomb threat, having an incestuous affair, committing a murder, and making a deal with the Devil. Should the reader decide to disregard the novel's interactive nature and read through it as any other book, he is presented with both immediate outcomes of the first decision and perspective then switches to the two doctors who are observing Keith; one confirms that this is Keith Marion, ""of Marion syndrome"", and the other remarks that although he is in a coma, he looks ""quite ordinary"", considering his symptoms. The rest of the novel includes every possible scenario that the reader could encounter, all of them playing out in Keith's mind. The stream of thought is occasionally interrupted by another scene with the doctors, each of which slowly leaks information to the reader, who eventually learns that he is not assuming the role of a man named Keith Marion. Rather, the protagonist is a woman named Marion Keith, who, in her coma, spends her time speculating on what her life might be like had she been born a man. Eventually, she settles on an outcome in which she is a man laboring for a living in Tibet."
2187,Dearly Devoted Dexter,horror," Sergeant Doakes, a detective in Homicide, has grown suspicious of Dexter and begun tailing him in his free time, making it impossible for Dexter to investigate (and perhaps kill) someone he suspects of complicity in the abduction, pornographic molestation and murder of a series of young boys. When an unknown man is found bizarrely mutilated, Doakes recognizes the work of a torturer nicknamed ""Doctor Danco"" (after a brand of knives), who served with Doakes during the Salvadoran Civil War and has come to Miami to take revenge on his former comrades. Danco drugs his victims with painkillers and psychotropics and, over a period of several days, surgically removes their limbs, genitalia, lips, tongue and eyelids, before leaving them to contemplate themselves in a carefully placed mirror. Dexter is drawn into the case when Danco abducts his sister Deborah's new boyfriend, detective Kyle Chutsky. Amidst all the chaos, Dexter finds himself accidentally engaged to his girlfriend Rita. He perceives a ""dark passenger"" similar to his own in Rita's children Astor and Cody, and looks forward to teaching them as his foster-father had taught him. At the climax of the story, Dexter learns that Danco's murder ritual includes a word game resembling hangman. Each victim is asked to guess a word chosen for them by Danco, each wrong answer – or unintelligible answer, after removal of the tongue – resulting in the amputation of a body part. cs:Drasticky dojemný Dexter es:Querido Dexter fr:Le Passager noir it:Il nostro caro Dexter lt:Dearly Devoted Dexter pl:Dekalog dobrego Dextera pt:Dearly Devoted Dexter ru:Добрый друг Декстер simple:Dearly Devoted Dexter fi:Dexterin kolkko kutsumus"
2188,American Psycho,horror," Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, in his late 20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite of New York to his forays into murder by nightfall. Through present tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, Bateman describes his daily life, ranging from a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues — where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette — to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother and senile mother. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s Pop music artists. The novel maintains a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions that introduce the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator. Characters are consistently introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. Whether any of the crimes depicted in the novel actually happened or whether they were simply the fantasies of a delusional psychotic is deliberately left open. After killing Paul Owen, one of his colleagues, Bateman appropriates his apartment as a place to kill and store more victims. Bateman's control over his violent urges deteriorates. His murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from simple stabbings to drawn out sequences of torture, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and the separation between his two lives begins to blur. He introduces stories about serial killers into casual conversations and on several occasions openly confesses his murderous activities to his coworkers, who never take him seriously, do not hear what he says, or misunderstand him completely—for example, hearing the words ""murders and executions"" as ""mergers and acquisitions."" Bateman begins to experience bizarre hallucinations such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a talk show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench, and finding a bone in his Dove Bar. These incidents culminate in a shooting spree during which he kills several random people in the street, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched in a helicopter. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, and confesses all his crimes to the answering machine. Later, Bateman confronts Carnes about the message only to find Carnes is amused at what he considers to be a good joke. Carnes tells Bateman that he is too much of a coward to have committed such acts and claims that he had dinner in London with Paul Owen a few days before. Bateman revisits Paul Owen's apartment, where he had killed and mutilated two prostitutes. Bateman enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment, which shows no trace of decomposing bodies but is filled with strong-smelling flowers, as though meant to hide a bad odor. He runs into a real estate agent showing the apartment to prospective buyers; the real-estate agent appears suspicious of Bateman. The book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues in a club on a Friday night, engaging in banal conversation."
2189,The Haunted Bookshop,horror," The narrative begins with a young advertising man, Aubrey Gilbert, stopping by a bookstore named ""The Haunted Bookshop"" in the hopes of finding a new client. Gilbert meets the proprietor, Roger Mifflin. Gilbert does not succeed in selling advertising copy, but is intrigued by Mifflin and his conviction concerning the value books and booksellers have to the world. Additionally, Gilbert is intrigued by the fact that his firm's biggest client, Mr. Chapman, is a friend of Mifflin and has asked Mifflin to undertake the education of his daughter, Titania Chapman, by hiring her on as an assistant. Gilbert returns to the book store, meets Titania, and falls in love with her. Meanwhile mysterious things begin happening: a copy of Thomas Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell disappears and reappears, Gilbert is attacked as he travels home, and a pharmacist neighbor of Mifflin is observed skulking in the alley behind the bookstore at night speaking to someone in German, an assistant chef at the Octagon Hotel has posted an ad in the New York Times promising a reward for a lost copy of Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Gilbert starts to sense that something nefarious is afoot and suspects that the gregarious Mifflin is involved in a plot to kidnap Titania, and he assigns himself the job of protecting her. Meanwhile, Mifflin begins to train Titania in the booksellers' trade. His focus is so centered on books and their content that he fails to note the unusual things that are occurring. Gilbert takes a room across from the bookstore in order to keep eye on things, and believes his suspicions confirmed when he sees the pharmacist let himself into the bookshop with his own key late at night. Gilbert breaks into the bookshop in an effort to find evidence to prove his suspicions, but only manages to frighten and anger Titania. Gilbert learns that Mifflin is to take a day trip to Philadelphia, and follows him in the belief that the trip is a part of the ""kidnapping"" plot. In Philadelphia Gilbert confronts Mifflin with his suspicions, telling him of all the things that have occurred. The two realize that a third party had lured Mifflin away from the shop. They call the bookshop and learn that the pharmacist has left a suitcase of books there for someone else to pick up. Mifflin tells Titania to hold onto the case until he returns. Mifflin and Gilbert return to the bookshop and find it locked. Inside, the pharmacist and an associate of his have tied up Mrs. Mifflin and are menacing Titania with a gun. A fight ensues, part of the bookstore is destroyed by a bomb, and the pharmacist escapes. The only casualties of the bomb are the pharmacist's partner and Mifflin's dog, Bock. Mifflin even affects to be pleased as the blast knocked down books he'd forgotten he had. In the final chapter of the book Gilbert and Mifflin learn what the true plot was: The pharmacist was a German spy who had been using the bookshop as a drop-off point. He was a specialist in making bombs, and had hidden a bomb in one of President Woodrow Wilson's favorite books. The pharmacist's co-conspirator was the assistant chef at the Octagon Hotel. He was to be part the crew on the ship Wilson was to travel on to peace talks in Europe, and was to plant the bomb in Wilson's cabin in an assassination plot. The pharmacist was captured by police, and killed himself."
2190,Seize the Night,horror," Seize the Night begins a few months after Fear Nothing. It starts with Chris and his dog Orson happening upon Chris's ex-girlfriend, Lilly Wing, whose son Jimmy has just disappeared. Chris swears to Lilly he'll find Jimmy, and departs with Orson to begin the search. The trail leads them to Fort Wyvern, the abandoned military base Chris likes to explore. They search the base, but soon become separated, and Orson goes missing. Fearing for his dog's well-being, along with that of Jimmy, Chris calls his best friend Bobby Halloway to join him in the search and then sends his girlfriend Sasha Goodall to Lilly's house to console her. Soon after calling them, Chris sees about thirty or so of the rhesus monkeys encountered towards the end of Fear Nothing and takes refuge from them in a nearby bungalow. The monkeys follow him in, and he is saved from being found by Bobby's arrival. Bobby and Chris search the base, but find nothing except a few strange devices and rooms. After leaving, they stop by Lilly's house. Sasha and Chris head to their place, while Bobby heads off to Lilly's mother-in-law Jenna, to bring her back to Lilly's. The next day, Chris calls Manuel Ramirez, the acting chief of police, to give him information about Jimmy Wing's kidnapper's vehicle. Getting no answer, he leaves a message for Manuel to call him after noon. Bobby stops by a bit later to say that Jimmy is not the only child missing. Later, Manuel tells Chris in no uncertain terms to back off, while confiscating his and Bobby's guns and trashing his house. After he leaves, Roosevelt Frost arrives with his cat, Mungojerrie. They all leave and head out to an old road a few miles away where Sasha's coworker at the radio station, Doogie, meets up with them. They then head back to Fort Wyvern to continue the search for the children and Orson. Chris and company head into the base, where Bobby is critically wounded in an ambush. He sends everyone else on to find the kids and Orson, and when they return with them in tow, Bobby dies. Chris, refusing to leave Bobby's body behind, demands it be taken with them on the way out. On the elevator ride back up, they actually encounter themselves at the top of the shaft, and Chris is able to stop Bobby's past self from being shot. With the past now altered, Bobby's body disappears from the elevator, and Chris takes the live Bobby with him out of the base to return Jimmy and the other kids to their parents."
2191,Keep Me In Mind,horror, Ethan Rayne comes back to Sunnydale and releases an evil sorcerer from Bavaria who had been imprisoned since the Middle Ages. At the same time Buffy seems to be finding herself up against a number of old adversaries out for revenge.
2192,The Pit and the Pendulum,horror," The story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition. At the beginning of the story an unnamed narrator is brought to trial before various sinister judges. Poe provides no explanation of why he is there or for what he has been arrested. Before him are seven tall white candles on a table, and, as they melt, his hopes of survival also diminish. He is condemned to death and finds himself in a pitch black compartment. At first the prisoner thinks that he is locked in a tomb, but he discovers that he is in a cell. He decides to explore the cell by placing a hem from his robe against a wall so he can count the paces around the room; however, he faints before being able to measure the whole perimeter. When the prisoner awakens he discovers food and water nearby. He gets back up and tries to measure the prison again, finding that the perimeter measures one hundred steps. While crossing the room he slips on the hem of his robe. He discovers that if he had not tripped he would have walked into a deep pit with water at the bottom in the center of the cell. After losing consciousness again the narrator discovers that the prison is slightly illuminated and that he is bound to a wooden board by ropes. He looks up in horror to see a painted picture of Father Time on the ceiling; hanging from the figure is a gigantic scythe-like pendulum swinging slowly back and forth. The pendulum is inexorably sliding downwards and will eventually kill him. However the condemned man is able to attract rats to his bonds with meat left for him to eat and they start chewing through the ropes. As the pendulum reaches a point inches above his heart, the prisoner breaks free of the ropes and watches as the pendulum is drawn back to the ceiling. He then sees that the walls have become red-hot and begun moving inwards, driving him into the center of the room and towards the brink of the pit. As he gazes into the pit, he decides that no fate could be worse than falling into it. It is implied by the text that the narrator fears what he sees at the bottom of the pit, or perhaps is frightened by its depth. The exact cause of his fear is not clearly stated. However, as the narrator moves back from the pit, he sees that the red-hot walls are leaving him with no foothold. As the prisoner begins to fall into the pit, he hears human voices. The walls rush back and an arm catches him. The French Army has taken Toledo and the Inquisition is in the hands of its enemies."
2193,No Dominion,horror," No Dominion Is the second book in the Joe Pitt Casebooks series written by Charlie Huston. Vampyre Joe Pitt is down on his luck, behind on rent and low on blood. With nowhere else to turn he finds himself asking his former boss Terry Bird head of the vampyre clan the Society. Bird tosses Joe a job, tracking down the source of a new drug on the streets, a drug powerful enough to cause those infected with the Vampyre Vyrus to freak out. For this one Joe has to cross Coalition turf and head down to Harlem, home of the vampyre clan known as the Hood."
2194,The Evil That Men Do,horror," After a vicious shooting spree by Brian Dellasandro, a straight A student, the town of Sunnydale goes into a state of shock, though not one everyone would expect; they turn on each other and become nasty. At the same time, Helen, an ancient vicious vampire over 1500 years old, has come to Sunnydale. She has hunted and killed every single Slayer she has ever met in her life, and Buffy is next on her list. Helen and her lover, Julian, have come to Sunnydale to raise Meter, a goddess of destruction, and to do that they need the heart of the Slayer and the ashes of the Emperor Caligula from way back when in 47 A.D. The urn, containing his ashes, has arrived in Joyce's gallery, and is later stolen. After a run-in with Helen, Buffy learns that Angelus and Helen used to be paramours in the 19th century, but that it ended when he regained his soul. Angel explains to her about Helen's past and how she came to hunt down Slayers. Buffy and her friends are captured and suited up on the night of Meter's ascension. They are led onto a battleground where Buffy must stay alive against dozens of opponents as well as her friends who have been infected by the Potion of Madness in order to prevent Meter from rising. Buffy novels, such as this one are not considered by most fans as part of canon. They are usually not considered as official Buffyverse reality, but are novels from the authors' imaginations. However unlike fanfic, 'overviews' summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise."
2195,Carnival of Souls,horror," A traveling carnival arrives in Sunnydale. It seems the carnival might be another victim of Sunnydale's weirdness. Nobody seems to be able to remember it arriving despite the many old-style wagons, the numerous performers, and horse-drawn carts. The creepy calliope music seems almost to beckon out to people. Also nobody who goes into Hall of Mirrors comes out exactly the same as they were to start with. Inspired by a pair of once-homely twins now parading around the school like divas, the Scoobs decide to investigate the carnival. It's soon clear that entering comes at a cost above the price of admission. Willow becomes consumed by envy, Cordelia gets greedy, and Xander finds himself overtaken with gluttony. Angel is revealing a dangerous new persona, whilst anger rises in Rupert Giles. More serious still, Buffy's pride starts to threaten those she cares about."
2196,Grave Peril,horror," Set a year after the events of Fool Moon, the story begins with Harry Dresden hunting a ghost with Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross and wielder of the holy sword called Amoracchius. They drive the spirit into the Nevernever before destroying her, and Harry discovers the ghost was under a spell of torment that caused the ghost to go on a rampage. At that moment, the faerie Leanansidhe and her Hellhounds encircle them. She greets Dresden as her godson and reminds him of a long-ago pact he made to serve her. Dresden lies his way out of the situation and returns to the real world, only to be arrested by the Chicago police. Michael's pregnant wife Charity bails Michael out of jail, and Susan appears to bail out Dresden. Back at his apartment, a pair of vampires deliver an invitation to a party celebrating the promotion of Madame Bianca, the head of the Red Court vampires in Chicago. Dresden is required to attend as the representative of the White Council of Wizards; to turn down the invitation could provoke war. Susan, not understanding the danger, can hardly wait to go to a vampire party, but Dresden insists that she not attend. The next morning, Michael and Dresden visit Father Forthill at St. Mary of the Angels Church. Lydia had hidden there, but panicked and fled when attacked by another spirit. Dresden consults a local ectomancer, Mortimer Lindquist, who explains that the barrier between the real world and the spirit realm is getting thinner, which makes it easier for things to cross over, and which also makes new ghosts much more powerful. . Later, Murphy calls Dresden for a personal favor, to try to help one of Murphy's fellow officers, who is trapped in the same icy torment spell that had affected the ghost in the hospital. Finally having time to track down Lydia, he finds her and is attacked by vampires who abduct with Lydia. Affected by the narcotic vampire venom, Harry falls asleep and dreams that he is attacked by the demon which he battled during a previous case involving the aforementioned sorcerer, Leonid Kravos. He is wakened by his assistant, a spirit of knowledge called Bob, who helps him to discover that he really was attacked and that this Nightmare-demon drained a significant portion of his magical power. Dresden realizes that the Nightmare's targets are those who foiled Kravos' schemes, and that sleep makes the victims susceptible in spite of other protective measures. He rushes to help Murphy, the next likely target, but the Nightmare has gotten there before him, disguised as Dresden himself, and Dresden is only able to chase him away and try to minimize the damage. Now only he and Michael are left from the group who had defeated Kravos, and it seems the demon knows that the best way to hurt Michael is to threaten his family. Still disguised as Dresden, the Nightmare kidnaps Charity. Dresden tracks the Nightmare a cemetery and attacks, when Leanansidhe appears as Dresden is beaten down. In exchange for a pledge of service, his godmother points out the water streams around the cemetery, and Dresden tackles the Nightmare into one, causing it to melt into ectoplasm. Dresden picks up Amoracchius, intending to use it against his faerie godmother, but the sword wrenches out of his hands and lands at the faerie's feet. Since Dresden defiled the holy blade by attempting to use it in an act of treachery, Leanansidhe is able to pick it up and steal it. Dresden calls on assistance from a friend in Chicago PD to get Kravos's journal from the evidence lockers in order to learn the name of the demon. Since Dresden cannot determine which of his enemies is controlling the Nightmare, he casts a spell that binds the Nightmare to focus its attention only on him. When Dresden bound the Nightmare to him, he felt the presence of the sorcerer that was controlling it. He and Michael go to Bianca's party reasoning that it's unlikely to be a coincidence, and that they may be able to identify the person there. At the entrance, they meet Thomas Raith, the representative of the White Court vampires, and his human date Justine. Thomas facilitates Dresden's introduction to the vampires, who poison him with narcotic vampire venom. Michael keeps Dresden on his feet so they can find the sorcerer. Then, Susan arrives with a forged invitation; due to this breach of hospitality, the vampires are free to kill her. To make matters worse, Leanansidhe is present and her proximity further weakens Dresden due to his broken promise to her. Susan bargains with her to cure Dresden in return for a year of Susan's memory, but not specifying what form that would take. The faerie seals the bargain and leaves Susan with no memory at all of Dresden - the year taken was not contiguous, but rather consisted of every moment Susan had spent in Harry's presence. As Harry and Michael attempt to get Susan out of the party, they encounter an old foe of Michael's, Mavra of the Black Court vampires. Dresden senses that she is the sorcerer manipulating the Nightmare. Leanansidhe reappears to gift Amoracchius to Madame Bianca. As part of the evening's entertainment, Mavra intends to unmake the sword with the blood of an innocent person, Lydia. It's an obvious trap; Dresden and Michael will have to violate the rules of hospitality and the Unseelie Accords -- potentially triggering war between wizards and vampires -- in order to save Lydia and the sword. As the Red Court vampires surround them, Thomas explains that he and Justine are also marked for death and offers to help Harry in return for protection. Bianca captures Justine and holds her ransom with the price of Thomas betraying Dresden. Thomas agrees and pushes Susan into the mob of vampires. Bianca double-crosses him and keeps Justine, ordering Thomas' death. He flees while Susan is dragged away screaming. Burning with rage, Dresden incinerates everything in the immediate vicinity and collapses, exhausted. Michael carries Lydia and Dresden out of the inferno. Dresden regains consciousness a day later. He's slightly burned but Lydia is safe and asleep. Michael has been guarding them in spite of his own wounds and the poor health of his wife and newborn child. Thomas arrives to propose that they work together to rescue Susan and Justine. As an offer of good faith, Thomas returns Amoracchius. Lydia awakens, possessed by the Nightmare, and attacks them. Thomas subdues her using his vampiric powers and Dresden exorcises the spirit. His attempts to control it using the demon's name fail, and he realizes the culprit is not the demon at all; it's actually the ghost of Leonid Kravos himself, using the demon's shape to distract Harry. Mavra used the torment spell to stir up the spirits, which in turn weakened the barrier between the real world and the Nevernever, thus allowing Kravos to become a more powerful ghost when he committed ritual suicide in his jail cell. Mavra had also been teaching Bianca sorcery, making her a more powerful adversary. The group decide to journey through the Nevernever to sneak into Bianca's house, but en route, Leanansidhe attacks and captures Dresden. He strikes yet another bargain with her, extracting a promise that she will not bother him for a year and a day. Bound by it, she releases him. However, as Michael and Thomas made no such bargain, she attacks them instead. They urge Dresden to go ahead without them and rescue Susan and Justine while they hold off the faerie and her Hellhounds. Dresden returns to the real world inside Bianca's house, which turns out to be a trap. Dresden is captured by Bianca and locked in a room with Justine and Susan. Susan has been partially turned into a vampire, a process that will be completed if she kills a human through vampiric feeding. Dresden manages to restore her memory with magic, and he reinforces Susan's self-control and defuses her thirst by finally admitting his love for her. Together, they seduce Kravos to kill Harry. But due to the weakened barrier, Harry's ghost forms and together they defeat Kravos. Dresden consumes the Nightmare, taking back his and Kravos' power as well. They try to escape, but are stopped by Bianca, who offers a compromise: Dresden gets Justine, his magical items, and safe passage; in exchange, Bianca gets Susan. If Dresden refuses and tries to rescue Susan, there will be war between the vampires of the Red Court and the White Council. Dresden fights back with a powerful spell that exploits the thinned barrier with the Nevernever to rouse the spirits of all the vampires' victims against them. The wrath of the empowered spirits destroys the mansion and the vampires, while Dresden, Susan, and the others escape. After the battle, Susan disappears; her apartment is up for rent and she's not at her job. Dresden tracks her down to a secluded cottage and proposes marriage, but Susan refuses, leaving him a love note as she flees the country. The final note of the book is the White Council will be visiting Chicago as a war has broken out between vampires and the Council."
2197,Bloodline,horror," Bloodline takes place during World War I. John Shaw, a nineteen-year-old, joins the British Army and is sent to the front lines, in the trenches. He works as a communications officer who listens to German radio feeds and translates what he hears. His regiment commander is a man named Quincey Harker, who is the son of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray from the original Dracula novel. Harker is famous for going on raids in the enemy trenches alone at night, and shows several feats of superhuman strength that seem impossible. He is also shown to be cruel to his men. One night a soldier named Private Smith falls asleep on his watch, and Germans invade the trench. As punishment, Harker orders him to be tied to a wagon wheel on no man's land. Private Smith does not die from being shot or shelled, but appears to die of fear. One night Harker takes John on a night raid to destroy a nest of snipers. However, John gets stabbed in the shoulder with a bayonet. As he passes out, he thinks he sees Harker closely inspecting a large gash in an enemy soldier's throat. Harker carries him back to the trench, which saves his life. John soon becomes very sick with trench fever and believes he is having hallucinations of horrible things involving a hound and beheaded enemy soldiers in no man's land. He is rushed back to England for care. John is cared for by Mary Seward, the daughter of Dr. John Seward, in the old sanitorium owned by Dr. Seward, which was being used as a hospital during the war. Mary remembers seeing John at a garden party several years before, and wants to help him. She reads his journal that he brought with him to the hospital, and learns about the strange and seemingly impossible feats Harker had done. Meanwhile, John is still delirious from the fever, thinking he is still in the trenches instead of back in England. Soon, however, his fever breaks and he becomes lucid. Quincey Harker comes to England, and Lily Shaw, John's sister, invites him to stay at Carfax Hall, John and Lily's house, as thanks for saving John's life. However, Harker begins to seduce Lily, which worries John, as he's seen Harker's cruelty in the trenches. At the same time, Mary and John begin to fall in love, as Mary is John's main nurse at the hospital and they see each other for most of the day. Soon, John is recovered and discharged from the hospital. Harker leaves for London to do some work, and when he returns he tells John that his services are needed there for a few days. While he's gone, he proposes to Mary in a letter. When John returns, he goes to Mary's house with a note left for him saying that Lily and Harker have eloped and gone to Transylvania. Dr. Seward learns of Harker's mysterious nature, and realizes that he is a vampire. With Van Helsing's bag of vampire slaying tools, John and Mary follow Harker to Transylvania. They also read the collection of journals that is the original ' 'Dracula' ' book. John and Mary reach Castle Dracula several days after Harker and Lily. Once there, they learn that Mina, Quincey Harker's mother, is married to Count Tepes, son of Dracula, and that Quincey is Dracula's grandson. It is also revealed that John Shaw is Quincey's half-brother and Lily is John's half-sister, not his full sister as he always thought, who from birth was chosen to marry Quincey. John and Lily's mother, Rosemary Shaw, who was believed to be dead, is also found living at the castle as a vampire. It is all part of a master plan thought up by Tepes to raise the House of Dracul back to power with John and Quincey both united by Lily. Lily is shocked to learn that Quincey is a vampire, but is still determined to marry him, as she still loves him. The day before their marriage, however, she kills herself by jumping out the castle window onto sharp rocks below because she was afraid of becoming a vampire, which was part of the master plan, and knew she would never stop loving Quincey, which would make it impossible to leave him. Meanwhile, Mina turns John into a vampire after convincing him that it is his destiny. A baby is also taken to the castle for Tepes to feed on so he will be strong enough to go to Quincey and Lily's wedding. Once Mary learns of John's transformation, she asks Rosemary Shaw for help escaping, as Rosemary never liked living as a vampire. Rosemary tells Mary where the baby is being kept and about a secret exit from the castle. Then, Rosemary asks to be destroyed because she doesn't want to live with her daughter dead and her son as a vampire. Mary kills her by pounding a stake through her heart. She takes the baby and runs to the courtyard, where the secret exit is. However, she doesn't have the strength to lift the stone lid of the trap door. Surprisingly, Quincey helps her escape by lifting it for her. After Mary's escapes, Quincey goes back to his room. He hears John shouting his name from outside, and looks out the window to see his mother Mina tied to a tree, as Private Smith was once tied to a wagon wheel. The sun comes up and Mina burns to death. John does this because he thinks Quincey killed his mother, Rosemary, when in fact Mary was the one who did it. Quincey then goes to tell his father that he is leaving Castle Dracula forever, but Tepes tries to stop him by attempting to kill him with the sharp end of a wooden chair leg. However, Quincey grabs if out of his hand and stabs it through his father's heart. The book ends with John remaining at Castle Dracula, Quincey going off to live somewhere else, and Mary and the baby, who she names Grace, escaping back to England."
2198,Desperation,horror," Desperation is a story about several people who, while traveling along the desolated Highway 50 in Nevada, get abducted by Collie Entragian, the deputy of the fictional mining town of Desperation. Entragian uses various pretexts for the abductions, from an arrest for drug possession to ""rescuing"" a family from a nonexistent gunman. It becomes clear to the captives that Entragian has been possessed by an evil being named Tak, who has control over the surrounding desert wildlife and must change hosts to keep itself alive. They begin to fight for their freedom, sanity and lives before realizing that if they are ever to escape Desperation, they must trap Tak in the place from where he came."
2199,Paleo,horror," A student named Kevin Sanderson transfers to Sunnydale High and he's extremely lonely until a lecture is given to his class by a man named Daniel that works for Sunnydale's Museum of Natural History. Kevin immediately considers Daniel to be his mentor as they both thoroughly enjoy palaeontology. Unfortunately Daniel's goal is not at all the same as Kevin's who is just trying to fit in. Daniel has found some manuscripts which will help him resurrect dinosaur eggs, and Kevin seems to be the only person with the appropriate eggs. Meanwhile Oz is getting an offer from a woman name Alysa Bardrick to help run their band. She wants to be their manager but the band members of Dingoes Ate My Baby are still unsure as to her intentions. Daniel and Keven's ritual goes very badly and prehistoric dangers literally stalk the halls of Sunnydale High."
2200,Thinner,horror," Billy Halleck, an arrogant, obese lawyer in Connecticut, has recently fought an agonizing court case in which he was charged with vehicular manslaughter. While he had been driving across town, his wife Heidi distracted him by giving him a handjob, causing him to run over an old woman who was part of a group of traveling Gypsies. Billy is acquitted thanks to the judge, who is a close friend of his. However, as Billy leaves the courthouse, the old woman's ancient father, Taduz Lemke, strokes Billy's cheek and whispers one word to him: ""Thinner."" The word, and the old man's behavior, startle Billy. From this point on, Billy quickly loses weight; the loss becomes more and more rapid and he realizes that Lemke has cursed him. He also learns that the judge who gave the unfair verdict was also cursed by the old man — scales start growing on his skin. The town police chief who helped soft-pedal the charges against Billy is cursed with a horrifyingly extreme case of acne. Both men eventually commit suicide. With the help of his friend Richie ""The Hammer"" Ginelli, a former client and Mafia figure, an emaciated and desperate Billy tracks the Gypsy band north along the seacoast of New England to Maine, where the stage is set for a confrontation between himself and Lemke, resolving the issue of the curse and the blood-debt owed by Billy. After Richie terrorizes the Gypsy camp, Lemke agrees to meet with Billy. Lemke has brought a pie with him and adds blood from Billy's wounded hand to it, saying that the curse can be transferred to someone else but not destroyed. The weight loss will stop for a short time and then resume unless another person eats the pie, which will strike him/her with the curse and allow Billy to regain his health. Lemke begs Billy to eat it himself and die with dignity, but Billy instead takes it home, discovering along the way that Richie has been murdered by the Gypsies. He intends to give the pie to Heidi, whom he has come to blame for his predicament; the next morning, though, he finds that both she and his daughter Linda have eaten from the pie. Realizing that both of them are now doomed, he cuts a slice for himself so that he can join them in death."
2201,The Lunatic Cafe,horror," The Lunatic Cafe occurs shortly after the events of Circus of the Damned. (That novel ended on Halloween, and the events of The Lunatic Cafe take place before Christmas of that same year.) Similar to the previous novels, The Lunatic Cafe opens with Anita interviewing a potential client. George Smitz tells Anita that his wife, Peggy, has disappeared. Anita explains that she is not trained as an investigator, and suggests that George contact the police, but he will not. Peggy is a werewolf, and George is afraid to contact the police because she owns and operates a butcher shop, and if her condition were made public, she would lose her customers. Anita ultimately refers George to Ronnie, who agrees to look into it. That night, Anita meets Richard Zeeman for a date at a performance of Guys and Dolls. Anita is charmed that Richard likes musicals, but offput when she notices him watching theater patrons as if they were prey. Anita's discomfort with Richard's werewolf status increases when Jean-Claude arrives and reveals, during the course of a confrontation with Richard, that Richard is an alpha werewolf involved in a lengthy and possibly deadly battle for control of the local werewolf pack. Anita is upset that Richard has been concealing information from her, but ultimately leaves to answer a page from Dolph. As usual, Dolph wants Anita to inspect a crime scene, and Anita leaves. As Anita travels to her car, she is confronted by Gretchen, an older, but not yet master, vampire in love with Jean-Claude. Gretchen demands that Anita surrender her claim to Jean-Claude and refuses to believe that Anita wishes to be rid of his interest. Jean-Claude then arrives and confronts Gretchen in a rage. After the two vampires fly off, Anita drives to the crime scene, located in a rural nature center. At the nature center, Anita is confronted by Deputy Aikensen, who tries to prevent her from investigating. She learns that there is a vigorous dispute between Aikensen's sheriff, Sheriff Titus, and Dolph over whether the person found was a victim of a bear attack or a possible crime. Titus and Aikensen argue that they have already identified the incident as a bear attack, and that no supernatural investigation is therefore necessary, while Dolph, Clive Perry and local police chief Chief Garroway want access to the crime scene. With the help of local caretaker and naturalist Sam Williams, Anita is able to convince Titus to grant her access to the scene. She determines that the attack was not a bear, and, after excluding the possibility of a flying attacker such as a gargoyle or dragon, deduces that the murder victim was killed by a shapeshifter who laid in wait on an overhead branch, then dropped onto his victim. She asks to have the claw prints and other clues sent to Washington University for inspection, knowing that Louie Fane will be likely to identify the species of shapeshifter. When she arrives home, Anita finds Irving Griswold waiting for her. Irving explains that Richard has been in a succession conflict with local pack leader Marcus. Richard has actually beaten Marcus in a fight, but was unwilling to kill him and therefore failed to gain control of the pack. Marcus ordered Irving to contact Anita and ask her to meet with him, but Richard ordered Irving not to. Trapped between conflicting demands from two dominant werewolves, Irving asks for Anita's protection, and Anita agrees to go with him to meet Marcus. Irving leads Anita to ""The Lunatic Cafe,"" a restaurant with a largely lycanthrope clientele. Anita meets Raina and Alfred, two werewolves allied with Marcus, and is led into a back room, where she meets several more shapeshifters, including Gabriel, Elizabeth, Rafael, Kaspar, and Christine. Although Marcus leads the largest group of shapeshifters in St. Louis, the non-wolf shifters dispute his authority. Before Marcus can explain the problem, he and Anita argue over whether he is dominant to her that ends with Anita drawing a gun. Egged on by Gabriel and Raina, Marcus orders Alfred to take the gun away from her, forcing Anita to shoot and kill Alfred. The blood excites the lycanthopes, who begin to have trouble maintaining human appearances or behavior. Anita attempts to leave, but is grabbed by Jason, a new werewolf who appears to be losing control of his humanity. Rafael saves Anita from the choice of whether to shoot Jason, distracting Jason with his own blood. Anita escapes, aided by Kaspar, who does not shift into a predator and is therefore not under any danger of losing control when exposed to blood. While the back room devolves into a lycanthrope feeding frenzy, Kaspar gives Anita a folder of information Marcus would otherwise have given her himself. On her way out of the cafe, Anita sees Edward seated in the front room. At home, Anita reviews the folder and learns that in addition to Peggy Smitz, seven other lycanthropes have disappeared recently. Anita contacts Edward to learn if he has had anything to do with the disappearances, and agrees to meet with him later. Unable to reveal the missing lycanthropes to the police, Anita discusses the disappearances with Ronnie, and they consider whether Peggy's disappearance might be part of a larger pattern. Later, at work, Anita receives two potential clients. The first, Elvira Drew, explains that she is an author writing a book on shapeshifters and asks Anita to put her in touch with a wererat for a potential interview. Anita explains that most lycanthropes hide their identity to prevent discrimination, but promises to ask around. The second client is Kaspar, who has told Bert that he is interested in raising an ancestor in an effort to lift a family curse. Once alone with Anita, Kaspar reveals that he has been sent by Marcus, who has asked Kaspar to apologize for the previous night and ask for Anita's help in solving the shapeshifter disappearance. Kaspar reveals that although he is in fact cursed to transform into a swan, he was personally cursed by a witch, centuries ago, and has walked the Earth ever since. Anita arrives home and meets up with Richard for dinner. Richard has trouble accepting the ease with which Anita killed Alfred, his friend, and believes that Anita may be unwilling to have a relationship with him because he is a werewolf. Anita and Richard reconcile and Richard proposes marriage. Anita impulsively accepts. Later, Anita meets Edward at his hotel room. Edward shows Anita a snuff film in which Alfred and a masked wereleopard have sex with a human woman in both human and animal forms. Near the end of the film, Alfred, then in a wolfman form, kills the woman. Edward explains that the woman's father has hired him to kill everyone involved with the movie, and Anita agrees to help him. Anita explains that she has already killed Alfred, and calls Richard to see if he can identify the wereleopard. Richard arrives and watches the movie. Although he is very upset by it, his inner ""beast"" is excited by both the sex and violence, and Anita's second thoughts about their engagement increase. Richard tells Anita that Raina does make pornographic films, but that he does not believe that she has made any snuff films. Richard agrees to speak to Marcus to see if he knows anything about the films. The next evening, Anita meets with Louis Fane, who is able to identify the murder victim's wounds as having been caused by a lycanthrope. Anita asks Louis whether he knows any wererats who would be willing to participate in an interview with Elvira, and Louis offers to ask around. Louis and Anita discuss whether Anita is emotionally capable of having a relationship with a werewolf, and Anita leaves. On her way out, Anita is confronted by Gretchen, who threatens to kill her. Louis, in his ratman form, attacks Gretchen, but is outclassed and quickly beaten. Gretchen bites Louis and uses his body as a shield against Anita's gun, creating a stalemate. Ultimately, Anita resolves the conflict by telling Gretchen that she has become engaged to Richard. Gretchen agrees to leave, on the condition that Anita tell Jean-Claude about the engagement that night. Suffering from an apparent concussion, Anita is able to drag the unconscious and injured Louis to her car and drive a few blocks, in order to prevent police from identifying him as a wererat. She calls Richard for help. He and Stephen arrive and take Louis and Anita to see Lillian, a wererat doctor. After being checked out, Anita goes to see Jean-Claude. After a confrontation with Robert, Anita and Gretchen go to see Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude is outraged that Anita has become engaged to Richard, but is able to sense both that Anita is having doubts about the engagement and that Anita also has feelings for him. He offers not to kill Richard if Anita agrees to date both Richard and Jean-Claude for at least a few months, and Anita reluctantly agrees. Jean-Claude then punishes Gretchen for attacking Anita, reducing her to a feeble skeleton and locking her in a coffin for an indefinite period. Jean-Claude and Anita are then interrupted by Raina, Gabriel, and Kaspar, who have forced their way past Robert to confront Jean-Claude. Gabriel attacks Anita, forcing her to stab him with a silver knife, but he forces the knife deeper, apparently out of a severe form of masochism. Anita also learns that Jean-Claude is still having difficulty maintaining control over the city, and is dependent on an alliance with Marcus, Raina, and the local werewolf pack. In order to maintain this alliance, Raina demands that Jean-Claude supply a vampire for her pornography operation, and Jean-Claude orders Robert to do so, both to mollify Raina and as punishment for allowing her to force her way in. As Anita leaves, Raina and Gabriel begin forcing Kaspar to demonstrate his shapeshift to Jean-Claude. That night, a phone call from Dolph wakes Anita. Because she is still unable to drive, Zerbrowski picks her up. Zerbrowski teases Anita about Richard and offers her relationship advice while he drives her to the scene, a giant snakeskin hooked on a river rock near the scene of the earlier murder. Anita and Deputy Aikensen enter the river to inspect the skin, and are surprised to find a skinned human body, still alive, in the river. Anita concludes that the victim was a naga, an immortal creature able to assume human or snake forms, and the naga is taken to the hospital for treatment. Anita arrives home to find both Richard and Jean-Claude waiting for her. The men are close to blows over Richard's presence in her apartment and Jean-Claude's insistence that Anita date him as well as Richard. When Anita tries to separate them, she feels their magical energy combine in her, creating a great deal of magical power. She is threatened by the reaction, but Jean-Claude and Richard, each of whom are involved in power struggles, are intrigued by the possibilities. Ultimately, Anita asks Richard to leave and revokes her invitation to Jean-Claude, forcing him from her apartment. The next day, Anita gets a call from Ronnie, who tells Anita that she has found evidence that George Smitz is having an affair. Anita and Ronnie consider whether George may have killed his wife and the other missing shapeshifters. Shortly later, Richard calls, and tells Anita that Jason is missing. Anita asks Richard to get her backup for a confrontation with George. Richard is unable to accompany her personally and sends Raina and Gabriel, and Ronnie, Anita, and the weres drive out to speak to George. On the drive, Anita recognizes Gabriel's eyes as those of the masked participant in the snuff video. When they arrive, Anita and Ronnie confront George but are unsuccessful in making him confess. Raina intervenes and intimidates him into admitting that he killed Peggy in order to inherit her butcher's shop. (Presumably, he hired Anita in order to provide some alibi if the police realized that Peggy was missing). However, George insists that he does not know anything about the remaining shapeshifter disappearances. George agrees to confess to the police in order to avoid being eaten by Raina and the pack. Anita then goes to the hospital and questions the naga with Dolph. The naga is not fully coherent, but is able to tell them that he was attacked by witches, and that one of them had eyes the color of an ocean. Anita realizes that Elvira Drew must be hunting shapeshifters. She contacts her office and learns that Bert had put Elvira in contact with Louie Fane, who is now also missing. Anita, Dolph, Zerbrowski, and several officers go to Elvira's house, but Elvira will not let them in. Anita breaks into the back porch and basement and is confronted by Elvira, but screams for help, allowing the police to enter. At that point, the police are attacked by two other witches, each of whom has used the skin of one of the missing lycanthropes to shapeshift. During the fight, Zerbrowski is gutted and is taken to the hospital. All of the witches but Elvira are killed. The police find Louie in the house and agree to attempt to preserve his secret, but do not find Jason. Anita realizes that the witches were responsible for some of the shapeshifter disappearances, but that there are still some unaccounted for disappearances, including Jason. Later, Anita gets a call from Sam Williams, the caretaker of the nature preserve where the murder victim was found. Williams has been listening to his tapes of nighttime wildlife and heard the call of a hyena. He and Anita deduce that there must have been a werehyena in the park, but before they can finish the call, Williams explains that police officers are at the door. Anita tries to tell him not to open the door, but he does and is attacked. Anita races to the nature preserve, accompanied by Richard and Edward for backup. They find Williams shot dead, together with two of the local police who were present at the original crime scene. Anita gets a page from Kaspar, who asks her to come to his house. When Anita, Richard and Edward arrive at Kaspar's house, they are captured by Titus, Aikensen, and three hunters. Anita learns that Kaspar was once a European prince and hunter who was cursed to transform into a swan in order to learn kindness. However, Kaspar just became more and more resentful at being cursed to transform into prey, and formed a scheme with Titus to capture shapeshifters and offer them for expensive and illegal hunts. The initial murder victim had been a hunter whose hunt had gone wrong, and Titus and Aikensen had tried to cover up the crime. However, Titus realizes that the other police now know too much, and he and Aikensen plan to flee after one last hunt. They lock Edward and Richard in one cage, and Anita in a second cage, together with Jason, reasoning that with the approaching full moon, Jason will not be able to resist transforming into a wolf and eating Anita, at which point they will be able to hunt him. Initially, Richard is able to restrain Jason as a dominant alpha werewolf. At that point, the hunters cut open one of Anita's wounds, anticipating that the blood will force Jason to lose control. As they do so, Anita is able to get hold of one of the hunters' guns and shoots him. In the confusion, Edward and Richard are able to grab and kill a second hunter, and Edward uses the hunter's rifle to kill Titus and the third hunter. Anita stabs Aikensen, and she and Edward leave, allowing Richard to take the now transformed Jason out to hunt, just as the police begin to arrive. The police accept Anita and Edward's story, as well as Edward's identification and claimed identity. In the epilogue, Anita explains that she is continuing to date Richard and Jean-Claude and has exchanged Christmas presents with each of them. Raina and Gabriel have claimed that they had no idea Alfred was planning to kill the woman in the snuff film, and Anita has accepted their explanation for now. A few months after the events of the main novel, Edward sent Anita a swan skin with a note, explaining that Marcus had hired him to kill Kaspar, and that Edward had eventually tracked down the fugitive and hired a witch to lift his curse, allowing Edward to kill him. Anita has the skin framed and mounted on her wall, to Richard's displeasure."
2202,Hannibal,horror," Seven years after rescuing Jame Gumb's last victim, Clarice Starling witnesses her career crumble around her when a drug raid goes wrong and she kills an armed meth dealer named Evelda Drumgo, who was carrying her child at the time, in self-defense. Hannibal Lecter, who has been living in Florence, Italy, under an assumed name since escaping custody, sends her a letter of condolence and requests more information about her personal life. Desperate to catch Lecter, the FBI finds a use for Starling once again. She meets with Barney Matthews, former orderly of Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He tells her what Lecter said about her and that he said he would never go after him if he escaped. Meanwhile, Mason Verger, a wealthy, sadistic pedophile who was left horribly disfigured after a ""therapy session"" with Lecter, plans to get revenge by feeding Lecter to wild boars, using Starling as bait. He is aided by corrupt Justice Department agent Paul Krendler, Starling's personal nemesis. A disgraced Florentine detective, Rinaldo Pazzi, also pursues Lecter in the interests of collecting Verger's bounty on him. However, Lecter kills one of Pazzi's men and hangs Pazzi where his ancestor, Francesco de Pazzi, was hanged in 1478. Lecter waves at a camera, the footage of which is later seen by Verger. Lecter kills one of Verger's men and escapes to the United States, where he begins pursuing Starling. The novel briefly touches upon Lecter's childhood, specifically the death of his beloved younger sister, Mischa. The two were orphaned during World War II, and a group of German deserters found them on their family estate and took them prisoner. Lecter watched, helpless, as the deserters killed and ate Mischa. Barney briefly works for Verger, and gets acquainted with Verger's sister and bodyguard Margot, a lesbian bodybuilder whom Verger molested and raped as a child. Their friendship is briefly strained when he makes a pass at her, but they eventually reconcile, and Margot tells him that she stays in her hated brother's employment because she needs Mason's sperm to have a child with her partner, Judy. Lecter is captured by Verger's men, and Starling pursues them, determined to bring Lecter in herself. One of Verger's men is able to shoot her full of tranquilizer as she releases Lecter. The wild boars break through the barricade separating them from Lecter, but they lose interest in their intended prey when they smell no fear on him, instead going after Verger's men. In the confusion, Lecter carries the unconscious Starling to safety, and escapes with her. At the same time, Margot forcibly obtains Mason's sperm by sodomizing him with a cattle prod, and then kills him by shoving his pet Moray eel down his throat. Lecter, who had briefly treated Margot after her brother abused her, has urged her to blame the murder on him, which she does by leaving one of his hairs at the scene. Using a regimen of psychotropic drugs and behavioral therapy, Lecter attempts to brainwash Starling, hoping to make her believe she is Mischa, returned to life. She ultimately proves too strong, however, and tells him that Mischa will have to live on within him. Lecter kidnaps Krendler and lobotomizes him, and he and Starling dine on his still-living brain before killing him. The two then become lovers, and disappear together. Three years later, on July 9, 2000, Barney and his girlfriend go to Buenos Aires to see a Vermeer painting. At the opera, Barney spots Lecter and Starling; terrified, he flees with his girlfriend, reasoning that ""we can only see so much and live."""
2203,Coma,horror," Susan Wheeler is the protagonist of the novel. She is an attractive 23-year-old third-year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital. Susan, along with four other students—George, Harvey, Geoffrey, and Paul—takes rounds in surgery rooms and ICUs for making post-treatment notations on the health of patients. Mark Bellows, a surgery resident in the hospital, is the instructor and supervisor of this group. The book is a journey into the inner workings of a hospital. As these students complete their three-month surgical rotation, the dilemmas and problems faced by a woman in a so-called ""man's"" profession are also highlighted. There are two patients, Nancy Greenly and Sean Berman, who mysteriously went into comas immediately after their operations. These incidents were attributed to complications within their surgeries due to anesthesia. Nancy Greenly became comatose when her brain did not receive sufficient oxygen during surgery. Similarly, Sean Berman, a young man in his 30s in good physical condition, underwent a scheduled knee operation. Despite the operation's success, Sean failed to regain consciousness. Medically, the odds for such occurrences are one in 100,000; however, such odds seemed resolutely higher at the Boston Memorial Hospital. Baffled by the comas of these two patients, Susan decides to investigate the mystery behind these peculiar events and of other recent coma victims. Susan discovers the oxygen line to Operating Room 8 has been tampered with to cause the patients carbon monoxide poisoning during surgery and, hence, brain death. At the same time Susan develops a brief, but intimate, relationship with Bellows and discusses her findings with him. After unraveling further details, and evading pursuit by a man hired to kill her, Susan is led to the Jefferson Institute. The institute is hailed as an intensive care facility designed to cut down on heavy medical costs. All patients who are declared brain dead or ""vegetables"" are referred to the institute. Here, she finds that patients are suspended from the ceiling by wires in rooms walled by glass and are moved from room to room with little human involvement. The ""samples"" are kept alive and healthy until a call for an organ comes in. The organ of choice is removed surgically (and without consent) and then sold on the black market. At the end of the story Howard Stark, chief of the Department of Surgery at Boston Memorial, is revealed as the main antagonist. Stark confronts Susan over her findings and then drugs her, intending to put Susan in a coma under the pretext of an appendix operation. However, Bellows manages to disable to the oxygen line during the operation, thereby preventing a full dose of carbon monoxide poisoning. Stark is arrested but Susan's fate is left in doubt."
2204,The Haunted Mask,horror," Carly Beth Caldwell is an 11-year-old girl who is a target for pranks and practical jokes, some of which are played by Chuck Greene and Steve Boswell, two of her friends at Walnut Avenue Middle School. Before Halloween, she is humiliated after the two boys trick her into eating a sandwich that contains a living worm. Disgusted, she flees home and discovers her mother has made a plaster of Paris model of Carly Beth's head. On Halloween day, after frowning at the duck costume her mother gave to her, she goes to a party store and discovers a room filled with hideous masks. The store owner unwillingly sells her one of the masks and Carly Beth goes home. Later that day, after she takes the mold of her head that her mother made, she puts on the mask and goes in search of Chuck and Steve, determined to avenge herself against them. She starts acting differently: she chokes her best friend, Sabrina Mason, throws apples at a house and steals a bag of candy from a boy. While at Sabrina's house, Carly Beth is shocked to find she is physically unable to remove the mask and that the mask has, in fact, become her face. She returns to the store and finds the owner waiting for her. The store owner tells her that the mask is a real face and it can only be removed by a ""symbol of love"", but if it attaches itself to her or another person again, it will be forever. Carly Beth screams in horror, and the other masks begin to pursue her. While running away from the masks, she realizes that the mold her mother made is a symbol of love. Carly Beth finds the mold and uses it to deter the masks and remove the mask from her face. She returns home to her mother, tossing the mask away. Noah, Carly Beth's kid brother, later bursts in and asks her, ""How do I look in your mask?"""
2205,The Visitation,horror," Centered around the life of Travis Jordan, The Visitation begins when miracles, ranging from a healing, weeping crucifix to sights of Jesus in the clouds, start occurring, giving way to the arrival of a man who calls himself Brandon Nichols. Nichols begins healing people; giving a man who lost the use of his legs in the Vietnam War the ability to walk, and performing various other ""healings"". Most of the townspeople — who are portrayed as disillusioned, post-Pentecostal farmers — begin to believe in Nichols as a Messiah. Brandon Nichols begins to hold ""revival meetings"" on a large ranch outside of town every Sunday, and many churchgoers in town stop going to Sunday morning mass/services and instead listen to Brandon talk and watch him ""heal"". It is at this point that Nichols arouses the ire of one of the local ministers, Kyle Sherman. Enlisting the help of Travis Jordan, he seeks to prove that the so-called Brandon Nichols is not in fact a ""better"" Christian Messiah, but a puffed-up egomaniac using occult powers. In the end, the team (along with the help of a few others) uncover a host of pseudonyms and a hefty helping of deception surrounding Nichols' past. Startling parallels are revealed with the life story of Travis Jordan, all of which come to light as the story progresses."
2206,Narcissus in Chains,horror," * Narcissus in Chains takes place shortly after the events of Obsidian Butterfly, and approximately one year after the events of Blue Moon. At the beginning of the novel, Anita Blake has been out of contact with Jean-Claude, Richard, and the vampires and werewolves that follow her two lovers. After the events in the last novel, Anita is determined to renew her connections to Jean-Claude, Richard, and their followers, but she encounters several new problems as a result of ""marrying the marks"" that Jean-Claude has placed on Richard and herself. ** First, Jean-Claude feeds his ardeur, a rare power seen only in vampires of Jean-Claude's bloodline, through Anita. Shortly afterward, Anita develops the power herself. Although this power allows Anita to draw energy from lust, it also requires her to ""feed"" on this sexual energy every day, sometimes multiple times a day. ** Second, in Anita's absence, Damian, a vampire linked to her after she raised him from true death, has become a feral killing machine and has been locked away by Jean-Claude, and Richard has attempted to substitute democracy for the strictly hierarchical nature of the local werewolf pack, threatening to destroy the pack. A new werewolf in town, Jacob seeks to take advantage of this chaos to raise to third in the pack; to become Ulfric, he would need to first take out second-in-command Sylvie, and then Richard himself. ** Third, a new alpha wereleopard, Micah has arrived with his pard of wereleopards, and seeks to merge groups with Anita and consequently becomes her Nimir-Raj and mate. ** Fourth, a new group of shapeshifters has arrived in town, and attempts to capture Nathaniel and several swanmanes. In the fight against those shapeshifters, Gregory accidentally claws Anita, potentially infecting her with wereleopard lycanthropy. ** Fifth, Anita eventually learns that several of the weaker werespecies in town have had their alpha weres mysteriously disappear. * Ultimately, Anita resolves each of these issues with help from her various allies. ** Anita helps Damian to regain his sanity, assuming her position as Damian's master and rendering him the first ""vampire servant"" in centuries. She becomes the bolverk for the werewolves, performing the acts too evil for Richard to do them himself, and inspires Richard to reorganize the werewolves' power structure by showing him how close the wereleopard pard has become under her own dominance. ** Anita learns that the conflict in the shapeshifter world is due to the arrival of Chimera, a panwere who seeks to dominate shapeshifters by finding weak groups and eliminating their alphas. Both Jacob and Micah arrived in town as agents of Chimera, intended to deliver the local werewolves and wereleopards to his control. Micah, however, switched his loyalty to Anita and was nearly killed as a result. In order to save Richard and Micah's lives, Anita uses her powers to draw the life from Chimera and share that energy with them, killing Chimera and making allies of Narcissus and his werehyenas. The ease with which Chimera played the various species against one another inspires Anita to begin forming a coalition of all the shapeshifter species in St. Louis headed by herself, at least for the moment. ** Anita comes close to reconciling with Richard, but Richard ultimately leaves her after she uses the ardeur to feed on him, declaring that, like Anita herself, he will not allow himself to be used as food. Anita accepts Micah as her lover and Nimir-Raj. Micah, who appears willing to accommodate any desire of Anita's, becomes part of a menage a trois with Jean-Claude, allowing Jean-Claude to feed on him. * In the epilogue, Anita mourns Richard, but explains that she believes that their romantic relationship is finally over. She is no longer the lupa of the Thronos Rokke clan, but has become its bolverk. She is not herself a wereleopard, but her affinity with the leopards apparently means that they are her animal to call as if she were herself a master vampire. Anita and Micah are happily leading their wereleopards, and she, Micah and Jean-Claude are a happy threesome, but, being Anita, she doubts that happiness can last long."
2207,Thirsty,horror," The story is set in the town of, and in the areas surrounding, Bradley, Massachusetts. A Vampire Lord, Tch'muchgar, is magically imprisoned in isolation at the bottom of the town reservoir. The townsfolk performs rituals at the annual The Sad Festival] of Vampires to maintain the bonds holding Tch'muchgar prisoner. Early in the book the young hero, Chris, witnesses a vampiress being lynched]. Soon after, he starts to feel a strange sensation — a growing thirst for blood. Chris later notices that his friend Tom is casting a reflection on the water of the reservoir but Chris himself has no reflection. He realizes that he must be suffering from vampirism. Chris is afraid to tell anyone, even his friends, because vampires are killed immediately upon being discovered. Chris is soon confronted by a mysterious person dressed in black, who introduces himself as Chet the Celestial Being. Chet says that he serves the Forces of Light, and that he can cure Chris of his vampirism. But first Chet must place a holy object, The Arm of Moriator, with Tch'muchgar. Once activated, the Arm cannot be moved or deactivated by evil beings. Chet explains that if Tch'muchgar tries to escape from his prison, the Arm will cause him to become trapped between worlds, just like ""opening an elevator between floors"". Chet leaves for two weeks to retrieve the Arm. Meanwhile, Chris's vampirism grows at a steady rate. He starts sleeping during the day and staying awake at night. He drinks warm water to simulate drinking blood, and even considers his family as potential ""beverages"". Chris also begins receiving letters through mail from vampires living underground in the community. One of these letters is from a female vampire named Lolli, who appears to be Chris's age and behaves like a popular adolescent girl. Chris starts to notice he is being stalked by a creepy humanoid figure he describes as ""The Thing with the One-Piece Hair"", or simply The Thing. The Thing corners Chris in the woods, but Chet appears and ""kills"" The Thing. He warns Chris that The Thing is not really dead and will rematerialize within a few minutes. So Chet places a mark on Chris' wrist, which he said will protect him from the Thing. Chet gives Chris the Arm and bring him to a congregation of vampires in an abandoned church. Chris is accepted as a vampire by the others and learns that they plan to summon Tch'muchgar. He takes this opportunity to enter the realm of Tch'muchgar and drops the Arm. Chris returns to his ""normal"" life and waits for Chet to return with further instruction. His vampiric symptoms continue to grow. Crazed with thirst, Chris almost bites his friend's dog. He resorts to going hunting for raccoons to drink from. After he cuts himself shaving for the first time, Chris begins drinking his own blood. He eventually resorts to biting himself in the arm. One evening, his mother tells him a story about how Chris nearly died as a newborn, but that a strange nurse took him away for a few minutes. When she brought him back, he was fine. His mother believes that the woman was an angel. Chris fears that the nurse must have been a vampire who infected him with vampirism to save his life. At the Sad Festival of Vampires, Chris is talked into going to a party with Lolli and another young vampire called Bat. They tell him that to become initiated into the vampire community he must make his first kill that night and smear his blood on his cheeks. Chris shies away from the challenge, saying that he couldn't find anyone yet, but Lolli quickly calls his bluff. Chris escapes from the party and finds his crush, Rebecca Schwartz, in the area. He tells her that he needs to talk, but his teeth start to grow in bloodlust. Chris flees back to the vampire party, only to find that everyone save one high student has left. The student tells Chris that Lolli killed a student. Afterwards, she was hit by a car and broke her back. The authorities arrived and took her to be killed. Chris hears Bat coming, and runs outside. He meets Chet, who confirms the story about Lolli's death. Bat hears this and attacks Chet, but Chet makes Bat vanish with a wave of his hand, presumably killing him. At the climax of the story, Tch'muchgar attempts to leave his prison but is shoved out of the dimension and into nonexistence by the Arm of Moriator. Chet reveals that he was actually working for Tch'muchgar, who had realized that he would never escape his prison and was looking for a way to end his miserable life. He also taunts that he was lying about being able to help Chris, because vampirism is incurable. Chet gleefully points out to Chris that he is now doomed. If he kills mortals for blood, they will eventually hunt him down and execute him. If he refuses to drink blood, he will die. If he seeks help from the Forces of Light, they will torment him in place of the vampire lord. If he tries to get help from other vampires, they will kill him themselves for destroying their god. At the end of the story, in Chris's home, his mother is suspicious, and wants him to be tested for vampirism. His brother treats this with derision, but Chris wonders how his mother would react. He has a flashback to when he was young, that a mother bird would not take in her own child if it had been touched by a human; it would rather bash its skull in. The flashback ends with some older boys throwing stones at a hatchling, yelling ""This is mercy!"" with other children joining in. As the book ends, Chris's fate is uncertain, leaving the main plot of the book unresolved though Chris is certainly doomed either way. In the end, Chris realizes that he needs to feed, but he cannot feed. The story ends with the words, in this order: Oh God I am So Thirsty"
2208,The Werewolf of Fever Swamp,horror," Grady Tucker and his sixteen year-old sister Emily have both moved to a new house with their scientist parents. Their father, Dr. Tucker, studied deer in Vermont until he came into possession of six Swamp Deer from South America. Because of this, Dad had to move with his scientist wife and the two kids to Florida so he could test his hypothesis: Deer can live in Florida. Though he keeps them in a pen in the backyard for now, Dr. Tucker intends to release the deer with tracking collars into the wild. Grady and Emily go exploring in search of a bird. Emily learned all about forests and swamps in school so she fills Grady in on all the scientific details. Emily and Grady suddenly find themselves lost in the swamp. They wander around, eventually finding a small shack. A crazed white-haired man exits the shack and chases the two children, who run around until finally they find the door to their house. Once inside, they tell their parents about the wild man. Dad coolly tells the kids that he's just a swamp hermit. Then he says that the guys at the hardware store said the swamp hermit was completely harmless. Later that night, Grady is just kicking it in the backyard when another twelve year-old boy, one of his new neighbors, introduces himself as Will. Will is a big kid and tells Grady that the only other kid their age on the block is a weird girl. Will walks over to the deer pen, picks something up and utters ""Yuck. Deer Slime."" Will tells a story about how Fever Swamp got named. A hundred years ago, everyone in town caught something from the swamp that started with a fever and most died and those who didn't die went crazy. Late that night Grady comes down with a fever. Woken from a fever dream, Grady hears howls coming from outside. He goes down to the kitchen to investigate and hears scratching on the exterior door. Emily wakes up too and the two siblings sit in the kitchen, listening to the howls and scratching at the door. Grady bravely opens the door but sees no one outside, and since it's midnight, doesn't go outside to investigate further. The two siblings listen to the sounds some more and then their Dad wakes up and insists on taking both of their temperatures. The next morning, no sooner does Grady leave the house than he is attacked by a lovable but huge, 100&nbsp;lb dog. The dog starts licking Grady's face and Emily comes out and pets the dog, figuring this is the source of the scratching from the previous night. After some discussion the parents decide that a dog would be fine to let into their house. Will shows up to go investigate the swamp with Grady, and suggests to the family that the dog might be part-wolf. So they name the dog Wolf. The two boys leave the dog at the house and are not in the swamp for more than a few minutes before Wolf shows up and accompanies them into the thicket of foliage. They fool around the swamp for a while and then Wolf starts growling as he spots the Swamp Hermit. Will thinks the Swamp Hermit, whose shirt is covered in blood, might be dangerous. They remain still as the Swamp Hermit quietly leaves their line of sight. As soon as the coast is clear, the boys continue exploring and come across a bloody mauled heron. The bird has been ripped apart and there are paw prints around the body. Grady guesses a dog did it but then Will tells Grady that dogs don't rip apart birds. Will goes back home and Grady enters his house. Dr. Tucker tells Grady that the swamp is filled with scary stuff and that another bird probably killed the heron. The entire family is awoken in the middle of the night by crashing from downstairs. They all huddle together and make their way down to investigate. The noise was caused by Wolf, who has run around the living room, smashing into the furniture in a desperate attempt to get out of the house. Dad gets especially dismayed when he discovers the dog had broken the lamp.The dog starts ramming its body into the plate glass sliding door until finally Dad opens the door and Wolf leaps out of the house into the swamp. The family goes back to their rooms, but before long, Grady hears howling coming from the swamp again. In the light of the full moon, Grady can make out a four-legged creature in the shadows below his window. The creature leaves something resembling a rag at the foot of the deer pen and leaves. Grady goes down to get a closer look and sees a chewed up rabbit. The next morning, after breakfast, Grady takes his father to see the dead rabbit. Wolf shows up and gently licks the kid's face. Emily is convinced that Wolf killed the rabbit and begs their father to get rid of the dog. Grady tells her she has no proof that the dog killed the bunny. Emily says there's no proof he didn't either. Will shows up and tells Grady that a neighbor, Mr. Warner, has gone missing. Apparently Mr. Warner left early the day before to go turkey hunting in the swamp and never returned. A voice from behind them suggests that a werewolf did it. That voice belongs to a redhead named Cassie, the weird girl Will mentioned. Will tells her to shut up, that what she's saying is stupid. Cassie presses the issue and tries to convince Grady that the howls can only be made by a werewolf that has made a fresh kill. Cassie freaks out when she sees the Swamp Hermit in the distance, yells and points at him. The Swamp Hermit has a wild turkey slung over his shoulder, leading the kids to wonder if he swiped it from the missing Mr. Warner. The Swamp Hermit is close enough to hear these accusations and runs out of the swamp towards the kids, yelling ""I'm the werewolf! I'm the werewolf!"" over and over, cackling all the way. The other kids flee as the hermit grabs Grady's ankle, keeping him in place. The old man just cackles and waves at him with his free hand and tells Grady he was only playing. Wolf trots up and barely acknowledges the hermit, who lets Grady loose from his grip. The Swamp Hermit tells Grady to be careful about his dog and heads back to his shack. Then Grady gets bitten by a snake. Wolf leads Grady back to safety and he tells Will and Cassie, who've regrouped on his lawn, to get his parents. Cassie tells Grady's mom that he was bitten by a werewolf. Grady's mom puts an ice pack on Grady's ankle and jokingly tells him that his father is a werewolf and that she shaves his back every day so he'll look normal. Grady persists that a werewolf could be responsible for the events in the swamp, like the howls. The mother replies that a lot of things howl in the swamp, even Grady when he got bitten. Dr. Tucker tells Grady that since the moon will only be full for two more days, they'll know after that whether or not the howls came from a werewolf. Then he too starts laughing, as he said it to mock his son. The mom picks up a newspaper and shows her black newsprint hands to Grady and tells him it's hair that's grown on her palms. Emily suggests that the dog is the werewolf. Cassie and Will come over that night to eat and after dinner Grady sits with the two as they trade barbs about just who in this book is the werewolf. This quickly turns into the two just calling each other names while Grady watches. Then each accuses the other of being the werewolf. Lying in bed, trying to sleep, Grady hears the howls from outside again. Then he hears a commotion below his window again. This time when he goes to investigate, he finds that something has broken into the deer pen and killed one of the six ""swamp deer"", the other five deer huddled together in their pen, away from the gaping hole in the metal. Grady calls his dad down from the lawn to see the corpse. Dr. Tucker patches the pen with a piece of cardboard. After dragging the dead deer to his workshop, Dr. Tucker tells his son that clearly his dog is a killer. Grady's father tells him that tomorrow morning, he's taking the dog to the pound to be killed. The next morning, Grady's dad tries to take Wolf to the pound but Grady tells his dog to run away and it does. Grady's dad tells him that was dumb, because the dog is bound to come back, and when it does, he's going to take it to be killed. Wolf manages to stay out of sight all day and it isn't until late that night that Grady spots him from his bedroom window, lingering at the swamp clearing. Grady goes down to greet his dog and runs into Will. Will claims to have heard the howls and was trying to investigate when he ran into Grady. The two boys spot Wolf, who has edged back into the swamp. Grady runs after him, losing Will in the process. Following his dog, Grady ends up at the Swamp Hermit's hut. He hears the horrible howling coming from near the shack and he realizes the hermit was the werewolf. But soon discovers Will is the Werewolf, not the hermit, after seeing Will slowly transform into a wolf under the full moon. Will attacks Grady, Luckily, Wolf comes and fights off Will driving him away and saving Grady's life. But, Grady eventually passes out. When he comes to, he finds himself safely inside his own home. Grady's dad tells him that the Swamp Hermit found him and carried him home, and that he also saw Wolf fight off a large creature to save Grady's life. Grady's dad submits that they can keep the dog. After listening to Grady's werewolf story, Dr. Tucker figures he might as well try to see if his son could be telling the truth, so he goes to visit Will's house. He finds the house is empty, abandoned, as though no one had lived there for months. Grady is so happy that he got to keep Wolf around because the dog makes for an excellent companion on nights when the full moon is out as Grady becomes a werewolf as he roams around the Fever Swamp area with Wolf. It also suggests that the cap of forest service that Will wears is the cap of the officers that may have come to the swamp and were killed by Will."
2209,Servant of the Bones,horror," Azriel is telling the story of his transformation into and subsequent existence as an immortal genii who is forced to obey the Master who calls him. Over centuries, Azriel becomes less obedient to the Masters and a warning is placed on the casket of his bones that he is not to be summoned lest his evil be loosed upon the undeserving world. After many centuries of rest, Azriel finds himself awake and in New York City, a dazed witness to the murder of a young woman, Esther Belkin. He becomes inexplicably obsessed with the desire to avenge her death and to find out who called him into the physical world in time to see Esther die but not in time to save her. This quest leads him to the girl's stepfather, Gregory Belkin, who would pay any price to fulfill his messianic dream via his immense worldwide religious organization, the Temple of the Mind of God. As his quest approaches its climax, he risks his supernatural powers to forestall an attempt to destroy the world thus redeeming what was denied him for so long: his own eternal human soul."
2210,Little Things,horror," Ever since her mother's death, Buffy has been having problems keeping herself and Dawn living together peacefully, and the lack of money is affecting both of them. When Buffy suddenly develops an acute toothache, with no dental insurance, she can't afford to have it fixed. She must bear through the pain and keep it a secret from her friends while the town of Sunnydale becomes terrorized by miniature vampires. The miniature vampire fairies are led by Queen Mab who has come to Sunnydale with her troop in order to hunt down Anyanka. Back in the day, Anyanka was accidentally involved in turning these fairies into vampires and Queen Mab wants revenge on this act. Unfortunately, Buffy has to figure out how to kill vampires that are smaller than her palm."
2211,The Dead Zone,horror," The prologue introduces the two main characters. In 1953, a young boy named Johnny Smith is knocked unconscious while ice-skating; while recovering he mumbles a strange message — ""Don't jump it no more"" — to an adult on the scene. The knot on Johnny's head fades after a few days, and he thinks no more of it. A few months later, the adult is seriously injured while jump starting a car battery. Two years later, in an unconnected incident in Iowa, a young door to door Bible salesman named Greg Stillson, suffering emotional issues and dreaming of greatness, vindictively kicks an aggressive dog to death. By 1970, Johnny is now a high school teacher in eastern Maine. After visiting a county fair with his girlfriend Sarah, and eerily winning repeatedly at the wheel of fortune, Johnny is involved in a car accident on his way home that lands him in a coma for five years. On waking, Johnny finds that he has suffered neural injury, but on touching people and objects he is able to tell them things they did not know - in this way he knows a nurse's son would have successful surgery, states that his doctor's mother, long believed dead, is living in Carmel, California, tells his Sarah that her lost wedding ring was in her suitcase pocket, and later recounts the story behind a St. Christopher medallion owned by a skeptical reporter. Johnny shrugs off local media reports of his supposed psychic talents and accepts an offer to resume teaching, but begins to suffer from severe headaches. A reporter for a national tabloid maliciously prints a story denouncing his clairvoyance as phony, but this brings Johnny relief and the hope he can resume a normal life - a hope broken when he is contacted by a local sheriff desperate to solve a series of murders, including that of a child. Johnny's extra sense provides enough detail to identify the killer, who commits suicide and leaves a confession. Stillson, now a successful businessman and elected mayor of Ridgeway, N.H., still suffers from his emotional problems. Asked to ""straighten out"" a friend's teenaged nephew for wearing an obscene t-shirt, he sets the shirt on fire and terrorizes the youth with a broken bottle, threatening to kill him if he tells anyone. In 1976 he decides to run an independent campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives, blackmailing a local businessman into raising funds for him. Johnny's offer to return to his teaching job is rescinded due to his being ""too controversial to be effective as a teacher"". He moves to New Hampshire and takes a job as tutor for a wealthy young man named Chuck. He also takes up an interest in politics, and becomes concerned when he watches a rally for Stillson. Later on, Johnny meets presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and shakes his hand. Having another clairvoyant incident, he tells Carter that he is going to be president. Johnny then makes a hobby out of meeting politicians to see their futures. Johnny attends a rally for Stillson and on touching his hand has a horrific vision of an older Stillson as President causing a massive, worldwide nuclear conflict. Johnny's health starts to worsen. He contemplates how he might prevent Stillson's presidency and compares the matter to the question whether one would kill Hitler in 1932 if time travel were possible. Eventually, he concludes that the only certain way to avoid the terrible future he has seen is to assassinate Stillson, but procrastinates, rationalizing his inaction because of doubt in the vision he has seen, abhorrence of murder, and belief there is no urgent need to act at the moment. As Johnny continues to contemplate the matter, he has another vision and warns Chuck not to go to his high school graduation party because the facility is going to be struck by lightning and burn down. Chuck's father agrees to host an alternative party for Chuck and other students, but their party at home is interrupted by news of a lighting strike and many deaths at the original venue. Johnny also learns that the FBI agent investigating Stillson has been murdered with a car bomb. Johnny moves to Phoenix, where he takes a job as a road maintenance technician for the local Public Works Department. He learns that his headaches and blackouts are due to a brain tumor and that without treatment he only has a few months left to live (although we do not learn this until the epilogue). Johnny takes the fire at the party as a warning, that he knew the fire would happen but had not taken it seriously enough and as a result people had died. Realizing that he won't live much longer whatever he decides, Johnny refuses surgery and buys a rifle to shoot Stillson at the next rally. At the rally, Stillson begins his speech and Johnny attempts to shoot Stillson, but misses and is wounded by Stillson's bodyguards. Before he can fire again Stillson grabs a young child and holds him up as a human shield. Johnny pauses, unable to shoot, and is shot twice by the bodyguards, falling off the balcony and fatally injuring himself. A bystander photographs Stillson in the act of using the child as a shield, a picture that it is implied destroys Stillson's political future when published. Dying, Johnny touches Stillson a final time but feels only dwindling impressions and knows that the terrible future Stillson would bring around as President has been prevented. An epilogue, ""Notes from the Dead Zone"", intersperses excerpts from letters from Johnny to his loves ones, a ""Q & A"" transcript of a purported Senate committee (chaired by real-life Maine Senator William Cohen) investigation of Johnny's attempt to assassinate Stillson, and a narrative of Sarah's visit to Johnny's grave. Sarah feels a brief moment of psychic contact with Johnny's spirit and drives away comforted."
2212,Relic,horror," In and around a fictionalized version of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, a few select characters must solve a string of brutal murders that take place inside the museum during the days preceding the opening of ""Superstition"", a spectacular blockbuster exhibition. Evidence begins to point suspiciously to a doomed expedition undertaken by the museum several years earlier to the Brazilian rainforest in search of the lost Kothoga tribe. It becomes apparent that behind the murders is Mbwun (translation: ""He Who Walks On All Fours"")—the Kothoga's crazed lizard god, whose father happens to be a demon analogous to Satan, according to Kothoga legend. A relic depicting Mbwun is to be shown for the first time at the upcoming exhibition. It also appears that several museum leaders had known about previous murders on the museum's premises and that they had conspired to keep these murders a secret so as not to damage the reputation of the museum."
2213,Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror,horror," Jonas Taylor (1956-) is a deep sea diver working for the United States Navy on a top-secret dive in the Mariana Trench. He sees a megalodon, the ""Meg"" of the title, a massive ancient predator that is believed to be extinct. Because he is the only survivor he is disbelieved. He becomes a paleontologist and tries to prove that the megalodon is real, but is still considered a crackpot. An old friend, Masao Tanaka, asks him to go back and help recover a UNIS (Unmanned Nautical Informational Submersible), which helps predict earthquakes, from the Mariana Trench. Again, they encounter a megalodon in the depths: the species has indeed survived, but is trapped in the Mariana Trench due to the 'cold water barrier' (the bottom of the Trench is heated by geothermal ducts, keeping the water warm, but that warmth has limited range and the far colder water above it keeps the sharks trapped there as the cold water would apparently have highly negative effects on the giant sharks unless traversed properly). A male megalodon attacks them and kills Tanaka's son before being entangled in the metal ropes connecting the submarine to the ship, which start dragging the shark up. However, the male shark's vulnerable state prompts an even larger female megalodon to emerge and attack it, and as the female rips it apart, she is bathed in the shark's warm blood as she follows the entangled male upwards, the warm flood of liquid keeping the female protected from the cold water long enough for it to reach the warmer surface waters of the ocean, hence unleashing the megalodon anew on the ocean's ecosystem. It doesn't take long for the shark to pick up where it left off after it reaches the surface, as it starts killing and eating whales, and sometimes people, including Jonas's estranged wife, Maggie. To make matters worse, the female is pregnant and gives birth. Both are tracked, as Taylor and Tanaka wish to capture the creature. They manage to get the mother, but it breaks free and starts attacking boats in the area where it was captured. Taylor manages to kill the mother in the carnage by ramming a submersible down its throat, slicing his way through its inner body, and eventually cutting through its heart before escaping. Jonas also manages to capture the offspring of the meg, ending the novel."
2214,Floating Dragon,horror," Set during the spring and summer of 1980, the novel deals with events that befall the affluent suburb of Hampstead, Connecticut. An adulterous housewife named Stony Friedgood is brutally murdered by a man she picks up in a bar; at the same time, her husband, Leo, is involved in a cover-up at a chemical plant conducting research for the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, the descendants of the town's original founders have returned to Hampstead for the first time in over a hundred years: Richard Allbee, an architect and former child actor with a wife and a baby on the way; Graham Williams, a screenwriter and amateur local historian whose career was derailed by the McCarthy hearings; Patsy McCloud, an abused housewife with supernatural powers; and Tabby Smithfield, an extraordinary young boy with similar abilities. Drawn together by fate, the four find themselves struggling against a cycle of evil that plagues the town every thirty years."
2215,48,horror," The story follows an American pilot, Hoke, who lives alone in the streets, constantly hidden and on the run from a gang of diseased and terminal Blackshirts, afflicted with the 'Slow Death', who attempt to capture him to use his blood to save their leader, Lord Hubble, via a blood transfusion. Desperate to capture Hoke as his life draws nearer to its end, Hubble sends his entire force out to capture the American pilot. Hoke escapes thanks to the aid of three fellow 'ABneg' survivors - two women and a German navigator, shot down over Britain long ago. Hoke, being used to three years alone, detests his saviours and, corrupted by propaganda, is almost unable to contain himself in the presence of the German even though the war has long since ended - this forces the reader to question Hoke's sanity, and to sympathise with the 'enemy' and wonder if Hoke will accept his friend, or do something terrible to him."
2216,The Gunslinger,horror," It tells the story of the gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, and his quest to catch the man in black, the first of many steps towards his ultimate destination - the Dark Tower. The main story takes place in a world that is somewhat similar to the Old West but exists in an alternate time frame or parallel universe to ours. Roland exists in a place where ""the world has moved on."" This world has a few things in common with our own, however, including memories of the song ""Hey Jude"" and the child's rhyme that begins ""Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit"". Vestiges of forgotten or skewed versions of real-world technology also appear, such as a reference to a gas pump that is worshipped as a god named ""Amoco"", and an abandoned way station with a water pump which is powered by an ""atomic slug"". As Roland travels across the desert with his mule in search of the man in black, he encounters Brown, a farmer, and Zoltan, his crow, who graciously offers to put him up for the night. While he is there, we learn of his time spent in Tull through a flashback. Tull was a small town which Roland came to not too long before the start of the novel. The man in black had passed through the town previously; he brought a dead man back to life, and left a trap for Roland: the town itself. After Roland spends some time there, the leader of the local church reveals to him that the man in black has impregnated her, and has turned her against Roland. She turns the entire town on Roland; men, women, and children. In order to escape with his life, Roland is forced to kill every resident of the town, including his lover, Allie. Telling this story seems cathartic for Roland. When he awakes the next day, his mule is dead, forcing him to proceed on foot. Before Roland leaves, Brown asks his permission to eat the mule. At the way station Roland first encounters Jake Chambers, who died in his own universe (presumably our own) when he was pushed in front of a car while walking to school in Manhattan. Roland is nearly dead when he makes it to the way station, and Jake brings him water and jerky while he is recovering. Jake does not know how long he has been at the way station, nor does he know exactly how he got there. He hid when the man in black passed by the way station. Roland hypnotizes him to determine the details of his death, but makes him forget before he awakes (since Jake's death was extremely violent and painful). Before they leave the way station they encounter a demon in the cellar while looking for food. After their palaver, Roland snatches the jawbone from the skeleton in the hole, from which the demon speaks. After leaving the way station, Jake and Roland eventually make their way out of the desert into more welcoming lands. Roland rescues Jake from an encounter with an oracle, and then couples with the oracle himself in order to learn more about his fate and path to the Dark Tower. Roland gives Jake the jawbone from the way station to focus on while he is gone. After Roland returns, Jake discards the jawbone. As Jake and Roland make their way closer to the mountain, Jake begins to fear what will become of him. In a flashback, we learn about Roland's chance encounter in a kitchen which leads to the hanging of Hax, the cook. The apprentice gunslingers are allowed to witness the hanging with their fathers' permission. Roland reveals how he was tricked into calling out his teacher Cort early, through the treachery of Marten. He succeeded in defeating Cort in battle through his ingenious weapon selection - his hawk, David. Jake and Roland make their way into the twisting tunnels below the mountain, propelled along by an ancient mine cart. During the journey, they are attacked by the ""Slow Mutants"", monstrous subterranean creatures. Roland fights the Slow Mutants off and they proceed. Eventually they find the Man in Black, and as Jake dangles precariously from the tracks, Roland comes to a pivotal choice; save Jake or pursue the Man in Black. Roland chooses to follow the Man in Black. Jake tells Roland, whilst hanging: ""Go then, there are other worlds than these."" He lets go of the edge and falls without screaming. After sacrificing Jake in the mountain, Roland makes his way down to speak to the man in black. The man in black reads Roland's fate from a pack of cards, including ""the sailor"" (Jake), ""the prisoner"" (Eddie Dean) ""the lady of shadows"" (Odetta Holmes), ""death"" (but not for Roland), and the Tower itself, as the center of everything. The man in black states that he is merely a pawn of Roland's true enemy, the one who now controls the Dark Tower itself. The man in black creates a representation of the universe, attempting to frighten Roland by showing him how truly insignificant he is in the grand scheme of things, and asks him to give up his quest. Roland refuses, and is made to fall asleep by the man in black. When he wakes up, ten years have passed and there is a skeleton next to him — what he assumes to be the man in black. Roland then sits on the edge of the Western Sea, contemplating the three people he now is charged with bringing into All-World - the Prisoner, the Lady of Shadows, and the Pusher."
2217,Prophet,horror," The main character in ""Prophet"" is John Barrett, a television news anchor. Upon his pro-life father's accidental death, he is encouraged to investigate and report on problems at an abortion clinic. This only comes about after John catches his producer attempting to fabricate a story. Soon his colleagues are begging to stop him from finding out more, and he begins to hear mysterious and scary ""voices"". As John Barrett goes through the abortion investigation with Leslie Albright, he soon finds God and Truth, along the way."
2218,Ghost Circles,horror," At the besieged fortress of Old Man's Cave, the Headmaster of the Veni Yan summons Wendell, the village tinsmith and explains how he believes the current unrest is not due to the Bones. He shows a medallion bearing the Harvestar family crest; a crown with a star above it. Thorn, he explains, may in fact be the ""one who bears the star"" The Hooded One has been seeking. Just then, the mountain erupts as the Lord of the Locusts stirs beneath it. The armies massed outside the fortress begin their attack. At this moment, the Lord of the Locust resurrects his servant Briar, and sends her off to ""seek out our missing powers and return them to us"". The Bones, Thorn and Gran'ma Ben flee the collapsing mountain. Fone Bone and Smiley lead them to the tunnel they used to escape from Roque Ja. As they descend through the tunnel, Fone warns everyone that they will probably start hallucinating again, just as they did the last time they passed through there. Sure enough, Fone and Phoney become Ishmael and Captain Ahab from Fone's favorite book, Moby-Dick. They stagger on to the tunnel exit and find the valley on the other side turned into a wasteland, covered in ash and every tree flattened. The Bones, Thorn and Gran'ma Ben make their way across the devastated valley. Thorn leads them as she is the only one who can see and avoid the Ghost Circles, invisible pockets of unreality where nothing can live, and that separate the true, intact valley from the illusory wasteland. She and Fone brush the periphery of one, and are momentarily transported back into the forest as it stood before the devastation of the valley. Thorn explains that she can survive it, and maybe even undo the spell, because she tore off a piece of the Lord of the Locust's soul when it tried to possess her, thus inheriting some of its power. Thorn and Gran'ma Ben remain undecided whether to return to Old Man's Cave or press on to the old capital, Atheia. A troop of Rat Creatures makes that decision for them, blocking the route to Old Man's Cave. A scout party of Rat Creatures discovers their camp and Thorn and Fone get separated from the others. As Ben fights off some of the Rat Creatures, Bartleby, the Rat Creature cub, returns. Meanwhile Thorn and Fone discover Briar is the one leading the Rat Creatures to them. She reveals to Fone Bone that he too has a piece of the Lord of the Locusts' soul inside him (a result of his and Thorn's stumbling into a Ghost Circle). Briar is about to kill Thorn, who is no longer necessary to her plans, when Smiley and Bartleby come charging to the rescue. With the piece of the Locust inside her, Thorn grows weaker by the minute. With Fone and Gran'ma Ben carrying Thorn, the party makes its way gingerly through the Dragon burial grounds of Tanen Gard, ever wary of rousing the Dragons. A bottomless pit crossed only by a steep and narrow rock bridge lies ahead. As they clamber to safety, Thorn begins to revive, the purity of the sacred ground healing her. They soon reach the ridge and find the valley beyond clear of the devastation of the Ghost Circles. The presence of Prayer Stones, idols left by Atheians for the Dragons, shows that the Old Kingdom is still alive. As they make their way towards the city of Atheia, a small, lone Locust is seen resting on one of the prayer stones. At Old Man's Cave the villagers demand of the Veni Yan that they release Lucius, planning to head for the Old Kingdom themselves. The Veni Yan initially try to stop them, but a heartfelt speech from Lucius convinces them to accompany his party. It is at this time the veni-yan take off their hoods, indicating that they too want the old kingdom back, hence they do not need to go into hiding, or underground."
2219,Cry to Heaven,horror," Set in eighteenth-century Italy, Cry to Heaven focuses on two characters: peasant-born Guido Maffeo, who is castrated at the age of six to preserve his soprano voice, and fifteen-year-old Tonio Treschi, the last son of a noble family from the Republic of Venice, whose father, Andrea, is a member of the Serenissima's Council of Three. Although Guido becomes a star of the opera as a teenager, he loses his voice at eighteen, like many castrati. After a failed suicide attempt, he becomes a music teacher in the Naples conservatorio. Tonio, on the other hand, learns that his older brother, Carlo, was exiled for embarrassing the family. While Andrea attempts to cut Carlo out of the family, after his death, Carlo returns and plots to regain his original position. Revealing that Tonio is actually his illegitmate son, he has Tonio castrated, and sends him off with Guido to study in Naples. However, although everyone in Venice is inclined to believe that Carlo was behind his castration, Tonio cannot accuse him of the crime because doing so would result in the ""extinction"" of the Treschi family. After some soul-searching, he decides to remain in Naples and study under Guido, holding off on revenge until after Carlo and his mother (also Carlo's lover and later wife) have children to ensure the family line. Because of Tonio's almost unhuman soprano voice, Guido is roused from his depression, and takes him as a star student. Tonio progresses in his lessons extremely quickly. Guido also has Tonio perform some of his original compositions, which begin to impress audiences at the conservatorio. Tonio, for his part, struggles to come to terms with his castrato status - in his own mind, he is ""less than a man."" At first, he finds it difficult to even associate with his fellow castrati. As time goes on, he has a love affair with another castrati boy, Domenico, and after Domenico leaves, with Guido himself. He comes to dominate the conservatorio - in addition to being a star student, he soon befriends all the boys his age and becomes something of a leader and confidant. Also, Tonio continues his studies in fencing and firearms, which, in Guido's words, make him into a ""hero"" to his fellow students, especially after he kills (in self-defense) a student who vowed to kill him. Because he was raised to be a gentleman, and because he was castrated relatively later in life, he continues to act like a man, unlike the more effeminate poses of castrati boys. Despite the fact he's a castrato, even local noblemen come to respect him both as a sparring partner and a friend. However, Guido and others need to scheme to finally get Tonio out of the conservatorio and onto the stage. After his debut, Guido and Tonio travel to Rome for his premiere opera, where he gains the patronage of a powerful cardinal, Calvino, and befriends a powerful count from Florence, di Stefano. Although he is almost booed off the stage for upstaging the operatic star Bettichino, he proves a great success, and both he and Guido have a bright future in front of him. He even becomes lovers with an English noblewoman and widow, Christina, which seems to restore him to his former status. However, Tonio is unable to break free of the desire for revenge against Carlo. After having two children by Carlo, Tonio's mother, Marianna, dies. Soon afterwards—and before his Fat Tuesday opera performance—hitmen sent by Carlo try to kill him. Against the wishes of all his friends, Tonio vows to return in time for an Easter opera, then disappears. In Venice, Carlo has become a pathetic alcoholic wreck. Disguised as a woman (a trick he learned for the opera), Tonio succeeds in ""seducing"" his father and capturing him. Intoxicated, Carlo curses ever coming back to Venice, and even wanting to take Tonio's place, finding the city decadent and confining. Although he promises never to try and hurt Tonio again, he attempts to kill him the second he has the opportunity. In response, Tonio finally kills Carlo. He then returns to his friends, finally able to fully pursue his life."
2220,House of Leaves,horror," House of Leaves begins with a first-person narrative by Johnny Truant, a Los Angeles tattoo parlor employee and professed unreliable narrator. Truant is searching for a new apartment when his friend Lude tells him about the apartment of the recently deceased Zampanò, a blind, elderly man who lived in Lude's building. In Zampanò's apartment, Truant discovers a manuscript written by Zampanò that turns out to be an academic study of a documentary film called The Navidson Record, though Truant says he can find no evidence that the film ever existed. The rest of the novel incorporates several narratives, including Zampanò's report on the fictional film; Truant's autobiographical interjections; a small transcript of part of the film from Navidson's brother, Tom; a small transcript of interviews of many people regarding The Navidson Record by Navidson's wife, Karen; and occasional brief notes by unidentified editors, all woven together by a mass of footnotes. There is also another narrator, Truant's mother, whose voice is presented through a self-contained set of letters titled The Whalestoe Letters. Each narrator's text is printed in a distinct font, making it easier for the reader to follow the occasionally challenging format of the novel (Truant in Courier New in the footnotes, and the main narrative in Times New Roman in the American version). Zampanò's narrative deals primarily with the Navidson family: Will Navidson, a photojournalist (partly based on Kevin Carter), his partner, Karen Green, an attractive former fashion model, and their two children, Chad and Daisy. Navidson's brother, Tom, and several other characters also play a role later in the story. The Navidson family has recently moved into a new home in Virginia. Upon returning from a trip to Seattle, the Navidson family discovers a change in their home. A closet-like space shut behind an undecorated door appears inexplicably where previously there was only a blank wall. A second door appears at the end of the closet, leading to the children's room. As Navidson investigates this phenomenon, he finds that the internal measurements of the house are somehow larger than external measurements. Initially there is less than an inch of difference, but as time passes the interior of the house is found to be seemingly expanding, while maintaining the same exterior proportions. A third change asserts itself: a dark, cold hallway in their living room wall that, physically, should extend out into their yard, but does not. Navidson films this strange place, looping around the outside of the house to show where the space should be and clearly is not. The filming of this anomaly comes to be referred to as ""The Five and a Half Minute Hallway"". This hallway leads to a maze-like complex, starting with a large room (the ""Anteroom""), which in turn leads to a truly enormous space (the ""Great Hall""), a room primarily distinguished by an enormous spiral staircase which appears, when viewed from the landing, to spiral down without end. There is also a multitude of corridors and rooms leading off from each passage. All of these rooms and hallways are completely unlit and featureless, consisting of smooth ash-gray walls, floors, and ceilings. The only sound disturbing the perfect silence of the hallways is a periodic low growl, the source of which is never fully explained, although an academic source ""quoted"" in the book hypothesizes that the growl is created by the frequent re-shaping of the house. There is some discrepancy as to where ""The Five and a Half Minute Hallway"" appears. It is quoted by different characters at different times to have been located in each of the cardinal directions. This first happens when Zampanò writes that the hallway is in the western wall (House of Leaves 57), directly contradicting an earlier page where the hallway is mentioned to be in the northern wall (House of Leaves 4). Johnny's footnotes point out the contradiction. Navidson, along with his brother Tom and some colleagues, feel compelled to explore, photograph, and videotape the house's seemingly endless series of passages, eventually driving various characters to insanity, murder, and death. Ultimately, Will releases what has been recorded and edited as The Navidson Record. Will and Karen purchased the house because their relationship was becoming strained with Will's work-related absences. While Karen was always adamantly against marriage (claiming that she valued her freedom above anything else), she always found herself missing and needing Will when he was gone: ""And yet even though Karen keeps Chad from overfilling the mold or Daisy from cutting herself with the scissors, she still cannot resist looking out the window every couple of minutes. The sound of a passing truck causes her to glance away"" (House of Leaves 11–12). Zampanò's narrative is littered with all manner of references, some quite obscure, others indicating that the Navidsons' story achieved international notoriety. Luminaries such as Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Douglas Hofstadter, Ken Burns, Harold Bloom, Camille Paglia, Hunter Thompson, Anne Rice, and Jacques Derrida were apparently interviewed as to their opinions about the film. However, when Truant investigates, he finds no history of the house, no evidence of the events experienced by the Navidsons, and nothing else to establish that the house or film ever existed anywhere other than in Zampanò's text. Many of the references in Zampanò's footnotes, however, are real—existing both within his world and our world outside the novel. For example, several times Zampanò cites an actual Time-Life book, Planet Earth: Underground Worlds (House of Leaves 125). An adjacent story line develops in Johnny's footnotes, detailing what is progressing in Johnny's life as he is assembling the narrative. It remains unclear if Johnny's obsession with the writings of Zampanò and subsequent delusions, paranoia, etc. are the result of drug use, insanity, or the effects of Zampanò's writing itself. Johnny recounts tales of his various sexual encounters, his lust for a tattooed stripper he calls Thumper, and his bar-hopping with Lude throughout various footnotes. The reader also slowly learns more about Johnny's childhood living with an abusive foster father, engaging in violent fights at school, and of the origin of Johnny's mysterious scars (House of Leaves, p.&nbsp;505). More information about Johnny can be gleaned from the Whalestoe Letters, letters his mother Pelafina wrote from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institution. Though Pelafina's letters and Johnny's footnotes contain similar accounts of their past, their memories also differ greatly at times, due to both Pelafina's and Johnny's questionable mental states. Pelafina was placed in the mental institution after supposedly attempting to strangle Johnny, only to be stopped by her husband. She remained there after Johnny's father's death. Johnny claims that his mother meant him no harm and claimed to strangle him only to protect him from missing her, etc. It is unclear, however, if Johnny's statements about the incident—or any of his other statements, for that matter—are factual. This story is included in an appendix near the end of the book, as well as in its own, self-contained book (with additional content included in the self-contained version). It consists of Johnny's mother's letters to him from a psychiatric hospital. The letters start off fairly normal but Pelafina quickly descends into paranoia and the letters become more and more incoherent. There are also secret messages in the letters which can be decoded by combining the first letters of consecutive words."
2221,The Devil in Amber,horror," Lucifer Box is feeling his age as he goes about the business of a Royal Academy assassin in 1920s New York. Box has been assigned to kill a fence and cocaine dealer named Hubbard by the Royal Academy (which is a front for the British Secret Service in the Box novels). The assassination does not go smoothly and Box only survives due to the timely intervention of Percy Flarge, a younger agent of the same type as Box. After Flarge leaves, Box discovers a cloth with curious ancient writing hidden on Hubbard's corpse. His superior, Joshua Reynolds feels that it is time for Box to retire and allow Flarge to take his place but assigns Box to investigate the Fascist Anglo-United States Tribune (FAUST), and its sinister leader, Olympus Mons. At a costume party Box meets Professor Reiss-Mueller and Sal Volatile, a defector who wishes to leave FAUST, hints that the organisation constitutes a grave threat to the world and arranges for Box to attend a meeting of FAUST, where Box discovers that his sister, Pandora Box, has become a fascist convert and is second in command of the organisation. Later that night Reiss-Mueller meets with Box and identifies the writing on the cloth Box retrieved from Hubbard. The writing is part of an occult invocation intended to summon the devil. Back at his hotel, Box has a meeting with Christopher Miracle, who informs Box that Olympus Mons has been carrying out an archaeology dig at a castle on the border between Switzerland and France. The castle is known to Box, having been the location of an undisclosed espionage adventure during World War I, which led to the death of Box's lover and valet, Charlie Jackpot, and left Christopher Miracle a broken man. At their next meeting Sal Volatile confides to Box that FAUST has an interest in the occult and is actively seeking the ""Lamb of God"", which Sal claims to have found. The meeting is interrupted when Sal Volatile is murdered and Box knocked senseless. On waking, Box discovers that he has been framed for murdering Sal during a lover's quarrel. Percy Flarge informs him that the Royal Academy has ordered that Box is to be given no assistance by their organisation and that Box is to be charged (and presumably executed) for the murder of Sal Volatile. With the assistance of Rex, a gay bellhop who Box initiated during the early chapters, Box boards the Stiffkey, an old tramp freighter commanded by Captain Corpusty, who proves to be a fan of Box's paintings and commissions a portrait by Box on the journey to England. While on board, Box discovers the ship is transporting cocaine disguised as communion wafers and seduces the cabin-girl Aggie, whose real name turns out to be Agnes Dei (""Lamb of God""). While in an intimate embrace with her Box has a vision of a ram's head with glowing eyes. Box then discovers that Captain Corpusty intends to betray him to the police and he escapes, taking Aggie with him. Aggie is wounded, but Box remains free. He witnesses the spectre of the ram's head again and meets Mrs Croup who has an intense and unhealthy interest in famous murderers. Mrs Croup assists him in reaching St Beads nunnery, where Aggie was raised. There Box discovers that Olympus Mons and his amber shirted thugs have arrived first and witnesses them murder several nuns while seeking Aggie. Box is discovered and taken prisoner. Mons and Pandora Box reveal that Aggie is descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene and from a long line of descendants who have been raised to be perfect sacrifices. Mons conducts a séance to discover Aggie's whereabouts and gains a riddle in return. Box escapes with the aid of Mrs Croup who uses dynamite for fishing. Box finds his way to Aggie only to find Percy Flarge has laid a trap for him. Box is again captured and is put on a train to be transported to London with Aggie. During the journey, Box accuses Flarge of betraying his country in favor of FAUST but Flarge appears to know nothing. The journey is interrupted by Box's domestic, Delilah, who Box passed a coded message to during his one phone call. Box is forced to kill Flarge's domestic ""Twice"" Daley in an escape attempt but ends up being chloroformed by Professor Reiss-Mueller. The action transfers to the border of France and Switzerland. Professor Reiss-Mueller explains that the Metropolitan Museum serves as a similar front for the United States Secret Service as the Royal Academy does for the British Secret Service. He tells of an old legend about the Devil being entombed at this site and states that Olympus Mons intends to release the Devil to assist him in conquering the world. Box quickly realizes that he is Reiss-Mueller's prisoner. He slips away and visits the grave of his old friend, Charlie Jackpot where he meets Percy Flarge. Flarge confesses that he has been compromised by dabbling in the occult but denies betraying his country. Together they decide to raid the castle. On their way there they discover the dead body of Reiss-Mueller and the unconscious Delilah. On awaking Delilah relates how the Professor intended to perform the ritual himself and reap the reward, but was killed by a goat headed specter. The party of three enter caves below the castle and discover Mons, Pandora and the FAUST fraternity preparing to sacrifice Aggie. The Satanists are met by a number of cloaked and robed VIP's including Joshua Reynolds, the head of the Royal Academy and the boss of Box and Flarge. When the ritual begins Box intervenes and succeeds in rescuing Aggie and banishing the Devil but only at the cost of the life of his sister, Pandora. Mons attempts to undo the damage Box has done but only succeeds in destroying himself and bringing down the roof of the cave system. The heroes escape but so does Reynolds who attempts a getaway by cable car. Box intervenes and Reynolds is killed when the cable car crashes. The book closes on Box finally being reunited with Aggie and him promising her an adventurous future."
2222,The Beast Within,horror," A lonely wife cheats. A brutal husband gets revenge. A not-so-innocent stranger hears a cellar door scrape shut and begins twenty years of indescribable horror, chained in total darkness, feeding on live rats and human flesh, becoming himself the nightmare creature that lurks within us all."
2223,Into the Out Of,horror," The Maasai people become aware that a global crisis is approaching. Malevolent, unearthly creatures called shetani, which inhabit another dimension the Maasai know as the “Out Of” (because all things, such as humans, animals and plants, originally came ""out of"" it), are finding their way into the world. They are fomenting trouble between the superpowers, intent on causing mischief up to and including war. If not prevented, the barriers between the two dimensions will be breached and uncountable hordes of shetani will overrun the world, destroying all life. Olkeloki, a Maasai elder, comes to Washington DC to warn the US President and seek help. He encounters Joshua Oak, a disenchanted FBI agent, and Merry Sharrow, a shy and unfulfilled call centre worker. He is convinced that they are the key people he has been seeking, and his persuasion, coupled with several dangerous encounters with shetani, convince them to return with him to Africa, where they join in Maasai attempts to hold back the shetani. Eventually Olkeloki takes Merry and Oak into the Out Of, where, with their help, he performs a ritual which seals the breach between dimensions, sacrificing his own supernatural powers in the process. All three return to this world, where the shetani’s tricks have ended and the diplomatic crisis is receding, and Oak and Merry realise they have found what they have been looking for in each other."
2224,Undead and Unappreciated,horror," The novel has two prologues. The first prologue relates how the devil, out of boredom, possessed a ""not very nice"" woman and gave birth to a daughter; however, the devil soon returned to Hell, since she preferred it to living with a newborn. The devil's daughter, Laura, was given up for adoption by her biological mother, Antonia, for whom the possession was like a fugue state. Ironically, Laura is adopted by a Presbyterian minister and his wife, the Goodmans. The second prologue introduces the recently turned vampire Betsy Taylor, the heroine of the Undead series of paranormal romance novels, as she crashes a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, where she hopes to learn techniques to control her thirst for blood. The two prologues are related because Laura is Betsy's half-sister, sharing the same father; the not-very-nice Antonia is Betsy's stepmother. This third novel of the series has thirty-five chapters and, as usual, is told from the point of view of Betsy (first-person narrative). The early chapters introduce Betsy, who has become the Queen of the Vampires through odd circumstances, and her circle of friends/roommates. Her best friend is the very cool and very wealthy Jessica, whom she's known since the seventh grade; Jessica is patient with Betsy and supportive. Another close friend and confidante is Marc Spangler, an emergency-ward physician. Other major human characters include Betsy's father and stepmother Antonia (""the Ant""), who are expecting a baby, Betsy's professor mom Elise (a Civil War historian) and a policeman, Nick Berry. On the vampire side, Betsy is betrothed to the earnest Eric Sinclair, now King of the Vampires; although Eric is smitten with her, Betsy is not enthusiastic. The novel is framed by a minor story, a wedding between a vampire and a human, Andrea Mercer and Daniel Harris, who are friends with Betsy. Such marriages are almost unheard-of because vampires had traditionally viewed human beings as ""sheep"", that is, as food rather than romantic partners. In an early chapter, Betsy is asked to preside at the wedding; she does so in the final chapter, quoting from Romeo and Juliet: ""what love can do, that dares love attempt"". Throughout the novel, Betsy reminds herself that she needs to prepare for the wedding; Betsy's distractions are also highlighted by noting when she forgets about the upcoming wedding. The plot begins in earnest when Betsy receives a non-invitation to her stepmother's baby shower; the shower is scheduled for daylight hours, making it impossible for vampires to attend. To reinforce the snub, Betsy's weak-willed father visits Betsy at home to ask her to stay away, where he lets slip that the new baby is Antonia's second child. Betsy and her friends confirm this revelation from Antonia herself, who describes unwillingly how she woke up with no memories of the preceding ten months, and dropped the baby girl, Laura, off at the hospital. Much of the novel revolves around the search for Laura and getting to know her. Laura turns out to be a beautiful but bashful girl just beginning college, and eager to do the right thing for everyone. She's very sweet-natured and wholesome, always seeking peaceful solutions, and making friends with everyone, even people with difficult tempers. Getting to know Laura, Betsy likes her (although she envies her beauty) and can't bring herself to tell her about her sordid vampiric life or that Laura herself is the ""spawn of Satan"" and destined to conquer the world. Before finding Laura, Betsy is frustrated by not knowing enough and resolves to read the Book of the Dead, a holy relic for vampires analogous to the Bible. The Book was written by an insane vampire who could see the future; unfortunately, it also drives anyone reading it insane. Throwing caution to the wind, Betsy reads the Book for several hours. The Book describes Betsy's ascension to Queen of the Vampires and her marriage to Eric, and also predicts that her half-sister Laura is fated to take over the world. Unfortunately, the book drives Betsy insane or, rather, changes her into a traditionally thinking vampire, as shown by the novel's first-person perspective. In that state, she attacks her human friends Jessica and Marc, indulges unbridled passions with her consort Eric, and tries to kill his vampire assistant Tina, who defeats her handily. She wakes up with a bruised head, a recovered sanity and much remorse – and also a new power, to awaken before sunset, which she uses to take Laura to Antonia's baby shower, so that Laura can meet her birth mother. Throughout the remainder of the novel, she tries to recover her friends' trust, particularly Jessica's, and also make amends with Eric. The novel's climax occurs in a nightclub, Scratch. Betsy inherited the club, but the vampire staff are unhappy with her non-traditional changes, including not allowing them to drink blood from humans or kill them. The staff form a union and strike to demand better ""working conditions"". As their bargaining chip, the staff kidnap Betsy's half-sister Laura, mistaking her for an ordinary human girl. Unfortunately for them, they handle her too roughly and, despite her dislike of violence, Laura begins killing them with weapons formed from hellfire. Eric joins them and the three together win the fight with the vampires. Laura reveals that she'd known all along about Betsy and about herself, but she was waiting for Betsy to trust her enough. Laura is convinced that she can overcome her demonic heritage and be a good person, although she also displays a touch of temper. Later, Betsy meets the Devil herself—resembling a wonderfully dressed Lena Olin—who reveals that Laura will indeed take over the world. The novel is also marked by several minor stories that contribute to characterizing Betsy and her friends. It opens with a semi-serious discussion between Marc and Betsy about his recovery from alcoholism. Also near the beginning, Eric and his long-time assistant Tina return from a trip to Europe; Eric gives Betsy a little shoe necklace, playing on Betsy's well-known weakness for shoes and characterizing how much he cares for her. Betsy's compassion is highlighted by her treatment of ""George"", one of the Fiends she inherited from another vampire vanquished in an earlier novel. Fiends are vampires that have been driven insane, unable to speak or reason, by denying them blood. Most of the Fiends are being tended to by Betsy's vampire friend Alice, but George continually escapes and makes his way to Betsy's house. Betsy begins to feed him her own blood, and George begins to recover his sanity by learning to crochet."
2225,Nemesis,horror," One of Fred's old friends from graduate school contacts her for help at a big scientific facility. Fred has conflicted feelings about her past, and the life she might be able to lead independent of demons. However on the night they are supposed to meet, her friend is shot down, a seemingly innocent victim of a misdirected hit. Angel and the others wish they could help Fred, but are needed to investigate a series of murders among a group of wizards. The wizards are the only ones standing against an apocalyptic breach; they are literally holding the walls of reality together from more-deadly worlds. Fred leaves the investigation and takes the place of her friend as researcher to try to uncover her murder. Soon the supernatural and the scientific research collide, and Fred realizes she might be the only one who can stop the coming end-time."
2226,Soul Trade,horror," Angel, better than most, understands the importance and meaning of the soul. Angel's soul have driven him on his journey of redemption. Now Angel discovers those who would pay for a soul. Doyle, Cordelia, and Angel find a girl whose soul has been taken away from her. It seems a soul trade is developing its own black market; the soul is an item of wealth to gamblers, junkies, and others in L.A.'s vast underworld. The soul of an innocent girl is a desirable item... until Angel appears on the scene, with a soul that is- literally- one-of-a-kind."
2227,Rage,horror," Charlie Decker, a Maine high school senior, is called to meeting with his principal over a previous incident in which Decker attacked his chemistry teacher with a heavy wrench. For unknown reasons, Charlie subjects the principal to a series of insulting remarks, resulting in his expulsion. Charlie storms out of the office and retrieves a pistol from his locker, setting its contents on fire. He then returns to his classroom and fatally shoots his Algebra teacher. The fire triggers an alarm, but Charlie forces his classmates to stay in the classroom, killing another teacher when he enters. As the students and teachers evacuate the school, police and media arrive at the scene. In the following four hours, Charlie toys with various authority figures who attempt to negotiate with him, including the principal, the school psychologist, and the local police chief. Charlie gives them certain commands, threatening to kill students if they do not comply. Charlie also admits to his hostages that he does not know what has compelled him to commit his deeds, believing he will regret them when the situation is over. As his fellow students start identifying with Charlie, he unwittingly turns his class into a sort of psychotherapy group, causing his schoolmates to semi-voluntarily tell embarrassing secrets regarding themselves and each other. Interspersed throughout are narrative flashbacks to Charlie's troubled childhood, particularly his tumultuous relationship with his abusive father. Several notable incidents include a violent disagreement between two female students, and a SWAT team sniper shooting Charlie in the chest. However, Charlie survives due to the bullet striking his locker's padlock, which he had earlier placed in his shirt pocket. Charlie finally comes to the realization that one student is really being held there against his will: a seeming ""big man on campus"" named Ted Jones, who is harboring his own secrets. Ted realizes this and attempts to escape the classroom, but the other students brutally assault him, driving him into a battered catatonic state. At 1:00 PM, Charlie releases the students. When the police chief enters the classroom, he shoots the now-unarmed Charlie when he attempts suicide by cop. Charlie survives and is found not guilty by reason of insanity, committed to a psychiatric hospital in Augusta until he is no longer a threat to society. The story ends with Charlie addressing the reader, ""I have to turn off the light now. Good night."""
2228,Island,horror," The novel is structured as a series of journal entries made by Rupert, a young man who finds himself stranded on an island in the Bahamas (along with six other people) when their yacht mysteriously explodes. After an ax-wielding maniac claims the lives of two of the castaways, Rupert and the other survivors are forced to try and outwit the mysterious killer in order to save their lives. Since the concept of the novel is that Rupert is making his journal entries as events happen (with no knowledge as to how future developments in the ""plot"" will unfold), the reader is left uncertain as to whether any of the book's characters, including Rupert himself, will survive (unlike most first-person narratives, where the survival of the narrator, at least, tends to be a foregone conclusion). The novel plays with these expectations at several points, with Rupert's life constantly being in danger right alongside those of his compatriots."
2229,Chase,horror," Chase is the story about Benjamin Chase. ""Bejamin Chase is a retired war hero living in an attic apartment. He is struggling with a drinking habit. One night he rescues a young woman from an obsessed killer. As a result, the killer has changed his target to Chase. He begins phoning Chase and warning that he is out for revenge. The killer, simply named ""The Judge"" is threatening to kill Chase but the police don't believe him as he has a history of alcohol-related incidents. Chase is forced to take matters into his own hands and attempts to unmask The Judge himself and end the threat of a vengeful lunatic."""
2230,The Mummy,horror," Henry murders his uncle Lawrence with a poison found in the mummy's tomb. When Henry tries to poison Julie in the same manner, Ramses comes to life in attempt to kill Henry, but succeeds only in scaring him away. After his awakening, Julie and Ramses are instantly attracted to each other. Ramses quickly adopts a pseudonym, ""Reginald Ramsey,"" and claims to be an Egyptologist to throw off the accusation made by the frightened Henry that a ""bloody mummy"" rose from the crypt to harm him. With superhuman intelligence and the ability to learn quickly, Ramses quickly learns the English language and, with the help of an eager Julie, is given a tour of modern London and new technology that had arisen during the past two thousand years. While Henry's accusations are passed off as the rantings of a drunkard, the elderly and ailing Elliott Savarell suspects that it may be the truth. He trails Ramses and comes to believe that he is who Henry claims him to be. During Ramses's reign as pharaoh, he had learned from a Hittite priestess the formula for an elixir that grants eternal life. The potion not only made him immortal, but also allows his body to regenerate from damage that would kill a normal human, such as multiple bullet wounds. He requires neither food nor drink nor sleep, and only the sun's rays to maintain his life. However, he still craves food and certain other physical pleasures, like sex, smoking, and alcohol. Ramses nurses a deep secret. Prior to the Roman conquest of Egypt, he had served as an immortal advisor to its kings and queens, and the last person to awake him for consultation had been Cleopatra, the last ruler of Egypt. Although he served as Cleopatra's counsel (and encouraged her to romance Julius Caesar in a bid to keep the country independent), he had also fallen in love with her, and had revealed to her the secrets of the elixir. Having fallen in love with Mark Antony in defiance of Ramses's advice, Cleopatra refuses the elixir and chooses suicide upon Antony's death. In his depression, Ramses had given himself the name ""Ramses the Damned"", and had Egyptian priests seal him away underground. With Julie's encouragement, Ramses begins to recover. While Henry is convinced that Ramses is an evil monster ready to kill the entire family, Elliott reads Lawrence's notes and chases after Ramses to learn the secret of the elixir of immortality. Eventually, Ramses and Julie decide to visit Egypt one last time so that Ramses can say good-bye to his past. Although Ramses appears to be coming to terms with his past, upon visiting the Cairo Museum, he unexpectedly recognizes an unidentified mummy as being that of Cleopatra. Breaking into the museum later at night simply to see her, he impulsively pours some of the elixir onto the dead body. Cleopatra is revived, but by Ramses not pouring the entire vial of elixir on her, the restoration is incomplete; she is a half-formed monstrosity, awake and conscious yet with parts of her face, hands, and torso still gone. Her incomplete brain restoration leaves her not totally coherent; though Ramses later repairs her body with more of the potion, she appears to be insane and kills a number of people, including Henry. Cleopatra unexpectedly falls in love with Elliot's son Alex though realizes a life with him cannot last because of his mortality and his innocence. Because Ramses would not give her long-ago love Mark Antony the elixir to save his life, Cleopatra holds a passionate hatred for him and seeks to even the score by killing his current love: Julie Stratford. Cleopatra ultimately falters before killing Julie, realizing that the girl should not be punished for Ramses's actions. She also comes to regret the other murders she has committed. In an attempt to escape Ramses, Cleopatra ""dies"" when her car is hit by a train and is consumed by a fiery explosion so hot that it ""could kill even an immortal."" Ramses later gives the elixir to Julie after she attempts suicide in her grief for her loss of him, and he promises to stay with her for eternity. To thank him for his help in covering up all the unusual events, Ramses also gives the elixir to a dying Elliott, who drinks it after serious consideration of the consequences: dying miserably, or living eternally even when wishing for nothing but oblivion. Cleopatra has secretly survived the crash, and awakens under the care of a British doctor in Sudan. She vows to find Ramses again someday for revenge."
2231,Thirteen Bullets,horror," Thirteen Bullets takes place in Pennsylvania in the year 2003, in a setting similar to the real world, but where vampires and other supernatural forces are rare but accepted phenomena. It is widely believed that vampires were all but wiped out twenty years ago by Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley. The last vampire still in existence, Justinia Malvern, long imprisoned in a nearly abandoned sanitarium, has somehow managed to bestow her vampiric curse to the outside world and is working to free herself of human confinment. Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton is assigned to assist Arkeley hunt down the vampires running loose in rural Pennsylvania."
2232,Blooded,horror," Chirayoju, an ancient Chinese vampire, and Sanno, a Japanese Mountain King, have been fighting for years. Their spirits were imprisoned in a sword by a curse. The sword arrives in Sunnydale and while viewing the Japanese exhibit at the museum Willow becomes possessed by the spirit of Chirayoju and Xander, later on, becomes possessed by the spirit of Sanno. Buffy must figure out a way to stop the two spirits without killing her own friends. During the final battle, when the fight takes an ugly turn, Buffy must also keep her own spirit alive."
2233,The Chosen,horror," This book begins with an introduction to the central protagonist, Rashel Jordan. Newly turned 5 Rashel is introduced to the Night World with the murders of her mother and her brother Timmy who she was ""a whole month older than"" by an unknown vampire, who is later revealed to be Hunter Redfern, a respected lamia elder. This traumatizing event is offered as the motivation behind Rashel's decision as a 17 year old to hunt and kill vampires. In the opening chapters the reader is offered an insight into her mind as she goes about her business after dark in Boston. Rashel's eventual love interest is also introduced at an early stage in the book. John Quinn, or 'Quinn' as he is known, is described in a melancholy state, reminiscing on his rebirth as a vampire and his early love, Dove Redfern. Similar to Rashel's inset hatred of vampires, Quinn is presented as hating humans due to the murder of Dove at the hands of his father. In this manner, the two central protagonists are provided with motivation to hate each other, though we suspect this hatred will be short lived. Quinn is discovered and captured by a group of vampire hunters and imprisoned in a cellar. Rashel, who numbers among the group, takes pity on him, and encourages her fellow vampire hunters to continue the hunt while she stands guard over the prisoner. She suspects that the others means to torture him, and intends to kill him honorably. Before Rashel can do this, Quinn engages her in conversation. Rashel finds herself attracted to the vampire and allows him to break free of his constraints. The two fight, however upon touching they find themselves drawn to each other and seem to see into each other's souls . Before Quinn can remove the ninja-type mask that Rashel wears, the other vampire hunters return and the couple are broken up as Quinn is forced to flee. When Rashel returns to the cellar area to search for vampires, she is just in time to rescue a human girl, Daphne, who has been captured by vampires and just managed to escape. With Daphne's help, Rashel goes to a club where vampires, including Quinn, are capturing human girls for the slave trade. Her plan is to be captured herself so she can infiltrate a vampire enclave; the plan works, but on the island enclave, Rashel learns that the girls are not to be normal slaves, but will be drained dry in a Bloodfeast; something illegal in the Night World. Escaping with the girls to the Warf, Rashel, masquerading as a girl called Shelly, is saved from an angry werewolf guard by Quinn, who does not know her true identity as the girl in the cellar first, but later connects the two instances after Rashel fights him and defeats him. Choosing not to kill him, Rashel knocks Quinn out and returns to the house to kill the vampires who were going to participate in the Bloodfeast. Quinn recovers quickly and captures Rashel. Always a stickler to the rules, Quinn tells Rashel he is going to make her a vampire so that they can be together without breaking the Night World law that states a Night Worlder can not fall in love with a human. Despite Rashel proclaiming that she would stake herself as soon as she woke up as a vampire, he bites her anyways, sure that she'll change her mind once he turns her. However, when he drinks from her the Soulmate Principle takes over and their minds merge. Quinn is then able to see that Rashel hates vampires because of the one that killed her mother. Now understanding what drives her, he decides to accept her the way she is and tries to help her stop the Bloodfeast. When they confront the other vampires, they learn that Hunter Redfern is the one who staged the Bloodfeast, and Rashel recognizes him as the one who killed her mother. Cruel as ever, Hunter taunts Rashel by revealing her childhood friend: Timmy, still exactly the same as he was the last time Rashel saw him, a four year old child, now a made vampire, turned presumably by Hunter. Quinn and Rashel face off against Hunter and the vampires from the Bloodfeast. As they prepare to fight, Nyala, a fellow vampire hunter who has gone a bit insane due to the death of her sister and discovering about the Night World, appears with a burning gasoline bottle. Because the house is wood, it is a death trap for vampires, and they flee as Nyala sets the house on fire. Quinn and Rashel escape with Timmy, whom she refuses to leave behind. As soon as they get out, Rashel wants to go back and rescue Nyala who is still in the burning house. Quinn goes instead to Rashel's dismay, but returns alive with Nyala in tow but passed out. While she was waiting for Quinn, Timmy crankily asks her why she saved him, and with tears in her eyes she replies, ""Because my mom told me to take care of you."" Her mother had asked that of her at the beginning of the book. After Quinn comes out, they leave on Hunter's yacht, the other girls already having left. Rashel knows the place for them now is Circle Daybreak with the ""damned Daybreakers,"" a group consisting of Night People and humans who are trying to work together to make peace among the Night World and the human world."
2234,The Howling II,horror," Three years after the events of The Howling, Karyn Beatty has now remarried and lives in Seattle. Although content with her new life with her husband, David Richter, and her young stepson Joey, she is still haunted by the memories of her terrifying ordeal in the Californian mountain village of Drago with its werewolf inhabitants. Karyn regularly sees a therapist to help work through her problems, but after a spate of sinister occurrences that culminate in the horrific killing of the family's housekeeper, Karyn is convinced that the surviving werewolves of Drago have tracked her down. Fearing for the lives of her new family, Karyn leaves town hoping she will lead the evil creatures away from her loved ones. Karyn's fears were well founded as she had indeed been tracked down by none other than her ex-husband Roy (now a werewolf) and Marcia Lura, the evil Drago werewolf who first bit him. Both Roy and Marcia survived the fire in Drago, but Marcia is now partially scarred and incapacitated due to being shot in the head with a silver bullet by Karyn at the end of the first novel. Though the bullet did not kill her as expected, it left a streak of silver through her black hair and rendered her unable to fully transform into a werewolf as before. Now, when the moon is full, she becomes a grotesque half-woman/half-wolf creature, and wants revenge for what Karyn did to her. In Mexico, Karyn tracks down Chris Halloran, the family friend who helped her during her first ordeal in Drago. She tells him that the werewolves of Drago have come for her and she needs his help once more. However, Chris's new girlfriend, Audrey, is jealous of his prior relationship with Karyn and does everything she can to undermine their friendship. When Roy and Marcia finally track Karyn down to Mexico, they set a trap for her at a mountainside cabin with Audrey's help, and close in for the kill. Again, Chris comes to Karyn's rescue and fights with Roy (who takes the form of a wolf). Chris eventually manages to kill Roy with a silver knife, but in the nearby mountainside cabin, Marcia is holding Karyn hostage and is about to torture her using a set of red hot pliers. However, as the full moon rises, Marcia abruptly begins her agonizing change into the half-wolf creature. She drops the pliers which then cause a fire to break out in the cabin, allowing Karyn to escape. Outside, Karyn is reunited with Chris while Marcia (or the creature she has become) burns to death as the cabin goes up in flames."
2235,Felidae,horror," The novel begins with Francis, a tomcat, moving to a new neighborhood with his owner. Francis soon finds the corpse of Sascha. Bluebeard, a deformed local cat, is convinced that humans are responsible for the death and other recent murders. Francis disagrees with this assessment, convinced that the slash on Sascha's neck was caused by teeth. The discovery of the body marks the start of terrible nightmares that inflict Francis and intertwine him with the murders. Tomcat Deeply Purple is the next victim; while visiting the body, Francis notices that he, like Sascha, was sexually aroused before death. That night, Francis hears yowling from the uninhabited upper floors of his house. He finds a strange religious meeting taking place, in which a cat named Joker preaches about a cat known as Claudandus, who allegedly sacrificed himself and ascended to Heaven. Meanwhile, cats jump into frayed wires and electrocute themselves. Francis accidentally alerts Joker to his presence and is chased by the cult members. He escapes and falls through a skylight. He then meets Felicity, a blind Turkish Angora who has heard the murderer and his victims shortly before their death. Additionally, Felicity says that she sees images in her mind alongside feelings of fear and pain. Francis believes that the images are actually memories retained from childhood. After leaving Felicity's home, Bluebeard takes Francis to Pascal, an intelligent Havana Brown who has learned to use his owner's computer. With it, he has compiled a list of the local cats. Francis learns from Pascal that Felicity has been reportedly murdered. Francis experiences another nightmare that night, inspired by Pascal's words that Felidae deserve admiration and the large portrait of Gregor Mendel in Pascal's house. Unnerved, Francis hunts for rats and finds the journal of Julius Preterius, a scientist who used the house as a laboratory years prior. Francis learns that Preterius was attempting to create a flesh-binding glue with assistants Ziebold and Gray. The glue is unsuccessful, and, desperate, Preterius uses the glue on a stray cat. Due to a genetic abnormality, the glue seals the wounds on the cat. Preterius names the cat Claudandus (one who must or should be sealed) and plans to breed him and replicate the mutation. Preterius descends into madness, but continues with his project long after funding ceases. The journal's last entry reveals that Preterius had heard Claudandus speak to him and was planning to free the cat. Francis later encounters the strange Persian Jesaja, who alludes to escaping from Preterius' lab and proclaims to be the Guardian of the Dead. He lives in ancient catacombs, keeping a tomb housing hundreds of cat skeletons. Jesaja says that he serves ""the Prophet"" (Claudandus), who delivers corpses for him to guard. That night, Francis experiences another dream, this time involving a white cat who states he is Felidae. He is surrounded by hundreds of others, many of whom Francis recognizes. The white cat invites Francis to join them on a journey to Africa. Francis wakes and answers the call of a female in heat. He inquires about her breed, but she states that her breed has no name and is both old and new. He mates with her and learns from Bluebeard that her race is more wild than standard cats. Francis, Pascal, and Bluebeard continue to research the murders. Their new data suggests that the murderer has been active since the demise of Preterius and has killed approximately 450 cats. Joker has gone missing and cannot be located. The three present this information to the local cats and Pascal presents a logical explanation that places the blame on Joker. The crowd is placated, but Francis is not; he visits Joker's home. He finds the cat dead among porcelain statues. Unlike previous murders, there appears to have been no struggle. Francis returns home and reads an encyclopedia entry on genetics, which mentions Mendel as the founder of modern genetics through his experiments on plant hybridization. He realizes that the new-old cats are being specifically bred to bear attributes of their ancient Egyptian ancestors. Francis immediately begins to connect his dreams to the murders, and makes sense of Felicity's past comments: a cat had been attempting to keep standard males from breeding with the special females, and killed them after they failed to comply. He also recalls that Pascal's owner idolizes Mendel, that Pascal offhandedly mentioned his owner's name being Ziebold, and that Pascal spoke of Felidae with yearning. Francis concludes that Pascal is Claudandus, and goes to confront him. He finds a program on the computer that catalogs the new breed's genetics and breeding, as well as the cats killed to keep from contaminating the lines. Pascal reveals himself, explaining that he harbors a deep hatred of humanity due to the suffering inflicted upon him by Preterius. He had killed Preterius and set free the other cats before being rescued by Ziebold. Pascal had wanted Francis to take over the program, hoping that the cats would eventually overthrow the human race. Francis and Pascal begin to battle, with Pascal destroying the computer and setting the house afire in the process. Pascal dies after Francis slits his throat. In the epilogue, Francis states that he never told any others the true identity of the murderer and that Joker's name was eventually cleared. Jesaja was coaxed out of the catacombs and found a home with a bartender. Francis muses that Pascal had succumbed to hatred and lost his innocence and, in the process, became human. He states that all animals have the ability to lose their innocence and humans, who descended from animals, still carry a hint of innocence. The novel ends with Francis urging the reader to never cease believing in a world where animals and humans coexist, including those ""more sublime and intelligent than the latter--for example, Felidae."""
2236,Nightmare Abbey,horror," Nightmare Abbey is a Gothic topical satire in which the author pokes light-hearted fun at the romantic movement in contemporary English literature, in particular its obsession with morbid subjects, misanthropy and transcendental philosophical systems. Most of the characters in the novel are based on historical figures whom Peacock wishes to pillory. Insofar as Nightmare Abbey may be said to have a plot, it follows the fortunes of Christopher Glowry, Esquire, a morose widower who lives with his only son Scythrop in his semi-dilapidated family mansion Nightmare Abbey, which is situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens in Lincolnshire. Mr Glowry is a melancholy gentleman who likes to surround himself with servants with long faces or dismal names such as Raven, Graves or Deathshead. The few visitors he welcomes to his home are mostly of a similar cast of mind: Mr Flosky, a transcendental philosopher; Mr Toobad, a Manichaean Millenarian; Mr Listless, Scythrop's languid and world-weary college friend; and Mr Cypress, a misanthropic poet. The only exception is the sanguine Mr Hilary, who, as Mr Glowry's brother-in-law, is obliged to visit the abbey from family interests. The Reverend Mr Larynx, the vicar of nearby Claydyke, readily adapts himself to whatever company he is in. Scythrop is recovering from a love affair which ended badly when Mr Glowry and the young woman's father quarrelled over terms and broke off the proposed match. To distract himself Scythrop takes up the study of German romantic literature and transcendental metaphysics. With a penchant for melancholy, gothic mystery and abstruse Kantian metaphysics, Scythrop throws himself into a quixotic mission of reforming the world and regenerating the human species, and dreams up various schemes to achieve these ends. Most of these involve secret societies of Illuminati. He writes a suitably impenetrable treatise on the subject, which only sells seven copies. But Scythrop is not despondent. Seven is a mystical number and he determines to seek out his readers and make of them seven golden candlesticks with which to illuminate the world. He has a hidden chamber constructed in his gloomy tower as a secret retreat from the enemies of mankind, who will no doubt seek to thwart his attempts at social regeneration. Meanwhile, however, he is constantly distracted from these projects by his dalliance with two women &ndash; the worldly and flirtatious Marionetta and the mysterious and intellectual Stella &ndash; and by the constant stream of visitors to the abbey. Things become interesting when Mr and Mrs Hilary arrive with their niece, the beautiful Marionetta Celestina O'Carroll. She flirts with Scythrop, who quickly falls in love; but when she plays hard to get, he retreats to his tower to nurse his wounded heart. Mr Glowry tries to dissuade Scythrop from setting his mind on a woman who not only has no fortune but is insufferably merry-hearted into the bargain. When this fails he turns to Mrs Hilary, who decides in the interests of propriety to take Marionetta away. But Scythrop threatens to drink poison unless his father drops the matter and allows the young woman to stay. Mr Glowry agrees. Unknown to Scythrop, Mr Glowry and Mr Toobad have already come to a secret arrangement to marry Scythrop to Mr Toobad's daughter Celinda; but when Mr Toobad breaks the news to his daughter in London, she goes into hiding. Back at Nightmare Abbey Marionetta, now sure of Scythrop's heart, torments him for her own pleasure. The other guests pass the time dining, playing billiards and discussing contemporary literature and philosophy, in which discussions Mr Flosky usually takes the lead. A new visitor arrives at the Abbey, Mr Asterias the ichthyologist, who is accompanied by his son Aquarius. The guests discuss Mr Asterias's theory on the existence of mermaids and tritons. It transpires that a report of a mermaid on the sea-coast of Lincolnshire is the immediate reason for Mr Asterias's visit. A few nights later he glimpses a mysterious figure on the shore near the Abbey and is convinced that it is his mermaid, but a subsequent search fails to discover anything of note. Over the next few days Marionetta notices a remarkable change in Scythrop's deportment, for which she cannot account. Failing to draw the secret out of him, she turns to Mr Flosky for advice, but finds his comments incomprehensible. Scythrop grows every day more distrait, and Marionetta fears that he no longer loves her. She confronts him and threatens to leave him forever. He renews his undying love for her and assures her that his mysterious reserve was merely the result of his profound meditation on a scheme for the regeneration of society. A complete reconciliation is accomplished; even Mr Glowry agrees to the match, as there is still no news of Miss Toobad. It is only now that we learn the reason for the change in Scythrop's manner. The night on which Mr Asterias spots his mermaid, Scythrop returns to his tower only to find a mysterious young woman there. She calls herself Stella and explains how she is one of the seven people who read his treatise. Fleeing from some ""atrocious persecution"", she had no friend to turn to until she read Scythrop's treatise and realized that here was a kindred mind who would surely not fail to assist her in her time of need. Scythrop secretes her in his hidden chamber. After several days he finds that his heart is torn between the flirtatious Marionetta and the intellectual Stella, the one worldly and sparkling, the other spiritual and mysterious. Unable to choose between them, Scythrop decides to enjoy both, but is terrified of what might happen should either of his loves learn of the other's existence. There is a brief and rather inconsequential interruption to the proceedings when Mr Cypress, a misanthropic poet, pays a visit to the Abbey before going into exile. After dinner there is the usual intellectual discussion, after which Mr Cypress sings a tragical ballad, while Mr Hilary and Reverend Larynx enjoy a catch. After the departure of the poet there are reports of a ghost stalking the Abbey, and the appearance of a ghastly figure in the library throws the guests into consternation. The upshot of the matter is that Mr Toobad ends up in the moat. Inevitably Scythrop's secret comes out. Mr Glowry, who has become suspicious of his son's behaviour, is the immediate cause of it. Confronting Scythrop in his tower, he mentions Marionetta, ""whom you profess to love"". Hearing this, Stella comes out of the hidden chamber and demands an explanation. The ensuing row comes to the attention of the other guests, who pile into Scythrop's gloomy tower. Marionetta is distraught to discover that she has a rival and faints. But her shock is nothing to that of Mr Toobad, who recognizes in Stella none other than his runaway daughter Celinda. Celinda and Marionetta both renounce their love for Scythrop and leave the Abbey forthwith, determined never to set eyes on him again. The other guests leave (even after the ghost is revealed to have been Mr Glowry's somnambulant steward Crow) and Scythrop becomes depressed. He contemplates suicide like Werther in the Goethe novel, and asks his servant Raven to bring him ""a pint of port and a pistol"", though he changes his mind and opts instead for ""boiled fowl and Madeira"". When he renews his determination to make his exit from the world, his father begs him to give him a chance to convince one of the young women to forgive him and return to the Abbey. Scythrop promises to give him one week and not a minute more. When the week is up and there is still no sign of Mr Glowry, Scythrop temporizes, convincing himself that his watch is fast. Finally Mr Glowry arrives. He is alone, but he has two letters from Celinda and Marionetta. Celinda wishes Scythrop happiness with Miss O'Carroll and announces her forthcoming marriage to Mr Flosky. Marionetta wishes Scythrop happiness with Miss Toobad and announces her forthcoming marriage to Mr Listless. Scythrop tears the letters to shreds and consoles himself with the thought that his recent experiences ""qualify me take a very advanced degree in misanthropy; and there is, therefore, good hope that I may make a figure in the world."" He asks Raven to bring him ""some Madeira""."
2237,The Conqueror Worms,horror," Teddy Garnett tells this story of a global flood that has left humanity in tatters. Holed up in his mountain home, Teddy and his buddy Carl Seaton struggle through daily life, puzzling over things even stranger than a 40-day rainstorm, including the giant slime-coated holes that keep showing up in Teddy's yard. Before long, Teddy and Carl are fending off man-eating earthworms the size of buses. A helicopter crash nearby brings Kevin and Sarah, the last two survivors of an outpost in Baltimore, into Teddy's story; their tale makes up the even more bizarre second part of the book that explores, graphically, the insanity doom can inspire. It all leads to a slam-bang showdown back at Teddy's house with a creature so monstrous it scares even the killer annelids."
2238,Bracebridge Hall,horror," As this is a series of character sketches, the most effective way currently to describe this book is to list the contents. # The Author # The Hall # The Busy Man # Family Servants # The Widow # The Lovers # Family Reliques # An Old Soldier # The Widow's Retinue # Ready Money Jack # Bachelors # Wives # Story Telling # The Stout Gentleman # Forest Trees # A Literary Antiquary # The Farm-House # Horsemanship # Love-Symptoms # Falconry # Hawking # St. Mark's Eve # Gentility # Fortune Telling # Love-Charms # The Library # The Student of Salmanaca # English Country Gentleman # A Bachelor's Confessions # English Gravity # Gipsies # May-Day Customs # Village Worthies # The Schoolmaster # The School # A Village Politician # The Rookery # May-Day # The Manuscript # Annette Delarbre # Travelling # Popular Superstitions # The Culprit # Family Misfortunes # Lovers' Troubles # The Historian # The Haunted House # Dolph Heyliger # The Storm-Ship # The Wedding # The Author's Farewell"
2239,Love and Death,horror," Huge numbers of demon-killers are descending upon L.A., provoked by outspoken radio host Mac Lindley. They plan to rid the city of demons as rapidly and violently as possible. Angel Investigations is finding these angry mobs more of a hindrance than a help. Cordy knows bits and pieces but Angel Investigations is focusing on solving a case of a family who came to L.A. from Iowa; they were murdered together as Angel raced to try to save them. Soon Lorne is attacked and Connor goes missing. Angel realizes that the demon-hunters cannot tell the difference between a good demon and a bad one. None of them are safe from the crazy pack of do-gooders."
2240,The Other Wind,horror," It is about fifteen years since the events described in Tehanu, and eight after those in Dragonfly. King Lebannen has his share of problems. The dragons want the return of the lands men have stolen from them in the distant past, the Kargs want to marry him to their princess and thus cement a diplomatic relation between the two countries, and the dead seek release from the perpetual twilight of the afterlife. Accompanied by three wizards, two dragons in human form, and a Kargad princess, he sails to Roke where, together with the Masters of that island, they are able to right an ancient wrong and restore the balance."
2241,Endangered Species,horror," Cordelia has become used to being shaken by visions of horror, thanks to the Powers That Be. However, she is especially disturbed to see a vision of Faith being hunted in prison by the supernatural. Chaz Escobar, a game hunter, soon arrives at Angel Investigations looking for his wife Marianna, a vampire. He had hoped to cure her vampirism on a distant small island, but she escaped. He thinks she might be the monster harassing Faith. When Faith's out of jail it seems she may fall into Marianna's claws, but Angel's team and Chaz are off to the island to save her. Chaz's goal is to rid the world of all vampires, and Angel realises this may be a chance to right all his wrongs. This novel features a flashback to shortly after Angel fled from Darla when she attempted to make him feed on an innocent baby to prove himself. Making contact with a sorcerer, Darla attempted to have him remove Angel's soul, but the man refused, sensing that Angel's soul didn't want to be separated from his body, and noting that he had the potential to become a good person despite his vampire status."
2242,Wizard and Glass,horror," The novel begins where The Waste Lands ended. After Jake, Eddie, Susannah and Roland fruitlessly riddle Blaine the Mono for several hours, Eddie defeats the mad computer by telling childish jokes. Blaine is unable to handle Eddie's ""illogical"" riddles, and short-circuits. The four gunslingers and Oy the billy-bumbler disembark at the Topeka railway station, which to their surprise is located in the Topeka, Kansas, of the 1980s. The city is deserted, as this version of the world has been depopulated by the influenza of King's novel The Stand. Links between these books also include the following reference to The Walkin' Dude from The Stand on page 95, ""Someone had spray-painted over both signs marking the ramp's ascending curve. On the one reading St. Louis 215, someone had slashed watch out for the walking dude.""(King, 2003, pg 95) among others. The world also has some other minor differences with the one (or more) known to Eddie, Jake and Susannah, for instance, the Kansas City baseball team is the Monarchs (as opposed to the Royals), and Nozz-A-La is a popular soft drink. The ka-tet leaves the city via the Kansas Turnpike, and as they camp one night next to an eerie dimensional hole which Roland calls a ""thinny,"" the gunslinger tells his apprentices of his past, and his first encounter with a thinny. At the beginning of the story-within-the-story, Roland (age fourteen) earns his guns—an episode retold in the inaugural issue of The Gunslinger Born —and becomes the youngest gunslinger in memory. He did it because he discovered his father's trusted counsellor, the sorcerer Marten Broadcloak, having an affair with his mother, Gabrielle Deschain. In anger, Roland challenges his mentor, Cort, to a duel to earn his guns. Roland bests his teacher, and his father sends him east, away from Gilead, for his own protection. Roland leaves with two companions, Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns. Soon after their arrival in the distant Barony of Mejis, Roland falls in love with Susan Delgado, the promised ""gilly"" of Thorin—the mayor. His love for Susan Delgado clouds his reasoning for a time and nearly results in a permanent split between him and his previously inseparable friend Cuthbert. He and his ka-tet also discover a plot between the Barony's elite and ""The Good Man"" John Farson, leader of a rebel faction, to fuel Farson's war machines with Mejis oil. After being seized by the authorities on trumped-up charges of murdering the Barony's Mayor and Chancellor, Roland's ka-tet manages to escape jail with Susan's help, destroy the oil and the detachment Farson sent to transport it, as well as the Mejis traitors. The battle ends at Eyebolt Canyon, where Farson's troops are maneuvered into charging to their deaths into a thinny. The ka-tet also captures the pink-colored Wizard's Glass, a mystical, malevolent orb or crystal ball from the town witch, Rhea of the Cöos. The globe had entranced Rhea so much that she was starving herself and her pets to death because she spent every free moment watching the visions in the orb. The glass then shows Roland a vision of his future, and also of Susan's death (she is burned as a harvest sacrifice for colluding with Roland). The visions send him into a stupor, from which he eventually recovers—at which point the glass torments him with other visions, this time of events that he was not present for but nonetheless shaped his fate and Susan's, such is the nature of the Wizard's Glass. Thus Roland's sad tale comes to a close. In the morning, Roland's new ka-tet comes to a suspiciously familiar Emerald City. The Wizard of Oz parallels continue inside, where the Wizard is revealed to be Marten Broadcloak, also known as Randall Flagg, who flees when Roland attempts to kill him with Jake's Ruger and narrowly misses (Flagg has bewitched Roland's own guns, saying, ""Only misfires against me, Roland, old fellow""). In his place he leaves Maerlyn's Grapefruit, which shows the ka-tet the day Roland accidentally killed his own mother. Roland, it has been explained time and again, tends to be very bad medicine for his friends and loved ones. Nonetheless, when given the choice, Eddie, Susannah and Jake all refuse to swear off the quest; and as the novel closes, the ka-tet once more sets off for The Dark Tower, following the Path of the Beam."
2243,Summer of Night,horror," Set in Elm Haven, Illinois, in 1960, Summer of Night recounts its five pre-teen protagonists’ discovery that eerie, terrifying events are unfolding in the Old Central School. Operatives, including a dead soldier; giant worms with rows of sharp, serrated teeth; the animated corpse of a deceased teacher; schoolyard bullies; the driver of a rendering truck; their school teacher, and the principal of the school, serve a centuries-old evil that seeks to be reborn in their time—and in their town. It is only by banding together that the pre-teens can hope to defeat the monstrosity before it destroys them, their friends, their families—and, possibly, the world. The sequel to Summer of Night is called A Winter Haunting, in which Dale Stewart, now grown, returns to Elm Haven. Another sequel is Children of the Night, which features Mike O'Rourke, now a Roman Catholic priest, who is sent on a mission to investigate bizarre events in a European city. Another Summer of Night character, Dale's younger brother, Lawrence Stewart, appears as a minor character in Simmons' thriller Darwin's Blade while the adult Cordie Cooke appears in Fires of Eden."
2244,The House on the Borderland,horror," Two good friends, Tonnison and Berreggnog, travel to the remote village of Kraighten in rural Ireland. On the third day of their trip, they stumble upon the ruins of a strangely-shaped house bordering a large lake. They discover the mouldering journal of the Recluse, an unidentified man who recorded his last days in the house before its destruction. The Recluse begins his journal with descriptions of how he acquired the house, along with his daily life with his sister and his faithful dog, Pepper. He confides that he is starting the diary to record the strange experiences and horrors that were occurring in and around the house. The Recluse relates a vision in which he travels to a remote and vast arena, ""the plain of silence,"" surrounded by mountains with representations of mythological beast-gods, demons, and other ""bestial horrors"" on their slopes. In the center of the plain stands a house almost identical to his own, save that the house in the arena is much larger and appears to be made of a green jade-like substance. Along the way, he sees a huge, menacing humanoid swine-thing. After his vision of the ""arena,"" he becomes fascinated with the pit adjacent to his house (Ireland), and begins to explore it. Shortly after this he is attacked by humanoid pig-like creatures that he names ""the swine-things"" which appear to have their origin from somewhere in the depths of a great chasm found under the house (accessed through a pit on the other side of the gardens) . The struggle with these creatures lasts for several nights of greater and greater ferocity, yet in the end, the man kills several of the swine things, and apparently drives them off. As he searches for the origin of the Swine-things, the man explores a pit in the gardens were the river ends and flows underground. There he finds a tunnel leading to a great chasm under the house. When rock slides dam the water in the pit, trapping the man, his dog Pepper rescues him. By the time that the two men find the journal, the obstructed water has overflowed the pit to create the lake. The house transports him inter-dimensionally to an unknown place called 'the sea of sleep' where he briefly reunites with his lost love. A short time later, the man notices that day and night have begun to speed up, eventually blurring into a never-ending dusk. As he watches, his surroundings decay and collapse to dust. The dead world slowly grinds to a halt as the sun goes out after several million millennia. Once the world ends, the man floats through space, seeing angelic, human, and demonic forms passing before his eyes. Later, he finds himself back in his own study on Earth, with everything apparently returned to normalcy—with the one exception of Pepper, who is dead. To make matters worse, the malicious swine-beast from his earlier journeys to the 'arena' has managed to follow him back to his own dimension. The creature infects the man's new dog with a luminous fungal disease. Although the man shoots the suffering animal, he also contracts the disease. The manuscript ends with the man locked (from the outside only) in his study as the creature comes through a trap door in the basement, that opened directly over the chasm under the house. Tonnison and Berreggnog search for information on the man and his circumstances. They find that the only knowledge of the house was that it was a place long of evil repute and had mysteriously fallen into the chasm. They leave Kraighten and never return."
2245,Sunnydale High Yearbook,horror," The Scooby Gang are coming to the end of their Senior year at High School, Buffy Summers is busy making battle plans. Willow has time to pick up the High School Yearbook for her. Once the gang could relax knowing that high school truly was over, Xander, Oz, Cordelia, Giles, Angel and others scrawled notes in Buffy's yearbook to make it special. It is now full of notes, photos and in-jokes only the Scoobies understand and appreciate, having fought on the Hellmouth for three years and survived High School. This book was an oddity in the release of Buffy publications by Pocket Books, it was neither a novelization of an episode, nor an original novel, but instead a fictional school yearbook. It featured ""inscriptions"" from characters on the front inside cover; Willow, Xander, Oz, Giles, Cordelia, Angel, Anya, Wesley, Snyder, Joyce, Jonathan, Harmony, Larry, and Devon. It also included inscriptions from the crew-folk on the back inside cover. In the ""In Memoriam"" section Willow mentions Harmony's absence but she doesn't know Harmony is dead until ""The Harsh Light of Day""."
2246,Sati,horror," Michael is a trucker who picks up a blonde, blue-eyed, young female hitchhiker named Sati in the Arizona desert. Sati claims that she is God, to Michael's disbelief, and sets out to prove this by spreading this message through organized meetings, and convinces many people of her divinity. She is challenged numerous times, once by a fundamentalist preacher, but emerges unscathed in his claims. Meanwhile, Michael sets out to find out where this ""Sati"" came from, only to find nothing. The book opens as such: ""I once knew this girl who thought she was God. She didn't give sight to the blind or raise the dead. She didn't even teach anything, not really, and she never told me anything I probably didn't already know. On the other hand, she didn't expect to be worshiped, nor did she ask for money. Given her high opinion of herself, some might call that a miracle. I don't know, maybe she was God. Her name was Sati, and she had blonde hair and blue eyes."""
2247,My Sweet Audrina,horror," Audrina Adare lives with her father Damian,who has a strange past, mother Lucietta, aunt Ellsbeth and cousin Vera. Nine years before Audrina was born, her elder sister—who was also named Audrina—was raped and murdered in the woods. Damian convinces the younger Audrina that, by a process of self-hypnosis, she can gain all of the First Audrina's memories and become just as beloved and special as her dead sister, which is what Audrina wants more than anything else in the world. Audrina is haunted by dreams of her dead sister's rape and is terrified of sex and men. When she is eight, she meets Arden Lowe and his mother Billie, an amputee. Meanwhile, Lucietta is pregnant yet again. On Audrina's ninth birthday, Lucietta goes into early labor and dies in childbirth; the baby, a girl, is named Sylvia. More than three years after her birth, Sylvia finally comes home from the hospital and turns out to be mentally challenged. A few years later, Audrina discovers the affair between Lamar and Vera and that Vera is pregnant. In the ensuing confrontation, Vera has a miscarriage. The next day, she leaves town with Lamar. She leaves a note stating that she is Audrina's paternal half-sister, due to an affair that Ellsbeth had with Damian before he met Lucietta. Shortly after she turns eighteen, Audrina discovers that Damian and Ellsbeth are lovers again; however, tragedy strikes again when Ellsbeth threatens to leave Damian because he will not let her help Vera, who is alone after Lamar committed suicide. The next morning, she is found dead from a mysterious fall down the stairs. Audrina elopes with Arden, hoping to escape her controlling father, and takes Sylvia with her. However, she is still not prepared for sexual intimacy, and her wedding night goes terribly wrong. When the newlyweds return from their disastrous honeymoon, they find that Damian has won over Arden's mother. He also offers Arden a job at his company. Audrina is upset but goes along with it for the sake of peace. Vera returns suddenly one day and, against Damian's wishes, stays for a while. It is not long before Vera attempts to seduce Arden. Tragedy strikes again when Billie ""falls"" down the same steps and dies. Depressed, Audrina pulls away from Arden and Sylvia—Vera and Arden begin an affair. But when Audrina's love and sexuality finally awakens, she tells Arden that she doesn't want to lose him and they spend the first happy night of their marriage together. One night, she is pushed down the stairs and falls into a coma. With Sylvia's help, she awakens and escapes, realizing that she cannot die without learning the secret of First Audrina. Audrina confronts her father and he confesses that the First and Best Audrina never existed. It was Audrina herself who was gang-raped in the woods. The rape left her so traumatized that she attempted suicide. In an attempt to save Audrina from herself, Damian subjected her to electro-convulsive therapy, trying to erase the memory of the rape. Following Damian's lead, the family conspired to convince Audrina that the rape didn't happen to her but to an older sister who died before she was born. Eventually the repetition of this story worked. Since the family deliberately changed the clocks in the house and also ripped off calendar days, her sense of time was also altered. Audrina realizes that Arden had been present and witnessed the rape but ran away in fear. She also realizes that Vera was the only other person who knew she would be coming home through the woods that day. However, Vera denies being involved, though her reaction suggests she is in fact guilty. When Vera turns to run, she falls down the stairs, later dying of her numerous injuries. Heartbroken, Audrina decides to take herself and Sylvia away but Sylvia refuses to leave. Audrina realizes that where there is love, there can be forgiveness and the promise of a fresh start. She decides to stay, finally feeling like the loving ""First"" Audrina she has always strived to be."
2248,Seduced by Moonlight,horror," Seduced by Moonlight begins shortly after the events of A Caress of Twilight. Kurag, Goblin King, is insisting upon proof that Kitto has become sidhe following sex with Merry. She offers an extra month of their alliance for every goblin hybrid she can bring into sidhe magic. During the discussions, Siun, Kitto's nightmarish, spidery former mistress, appears and he is terrified. It is revealed that Rhys also swore blood price on her, as it was she that took his eye when he failed to ""glow"" for her during sex. In his fear, Kitto accidentally uses the Hand of Reaching to open a portal through the mirror. Siun falls through and is trapped half-way, and after some negotiation, Kurag allows the Ravens to do what they like. Kitto viciously wounds her, and Rhys kills her with a sword. It is revealed that Meredith is a vessel for the Goddess Danu when she inadvertently brings the pregnant Maeve Reed back into her god-head, and gives Frost newfound god status (which he is not comfortable with). The cup or cauldron also reappears after Merry has a dream about it, an effect that has significant impact upon the sidhe who believed it lost forever. During sex with Merry many of her lovers suffer unexpected side-effects: * Rhys is brought back into his god-head * Frost is brought into his god-head * Sage is turned into a full-sized sidhe * Nicca is possessed by Dian Cecht * Doyle regains his shape-shifting abilities (turning into a dog and a horse), plus ones he never had previously (an eagle). Merry and her lovers return to the Courts. Upon the flight back, Merry is presented with the Queen's ring by Rhys. This is not only a symbol of her status as heir, but also a potent artifact in its own right. It was known as the happy ever after ring as it permitted sidhe to find their perfect mates. When they arrive at the airport they are greeted by several of the Queen's Ravens as well as human policemen. The Queen has insisted that Merry take to her bed any of the sidhe that the ring recognises. A short while after their arrival, they attend a press conference. A policeman is bewitched and shooting breaks out. Merry is saved by Frost and others of the Ravens. Yet more Ravens await Merry at the sithen. The Queen insists that Merry beds two out of the four before she appears before her. The result is the appearance of a spring, from which Merry fills a cup. Andais, apparently insane with bloodlust, is attacking her men. The Ravens attempt to intervene and protect one another. Merry uses her Hand of Blood to draw wounds upon her aunt. The Green Man then gives Merry the ability to heal all those in the room. It is discovered that a spell was used to incite the Queen to murder. The plot was hatched by those amongst the court who feared that a mortal Queen, Merry, would result in the sidhe ceasing to exist. Merry is challenged by one, Miniver, and they duel before the court. Meredith is declared the winner."
2249,The Talisman,horror," Jack Sawyer, twelve years old, sets out from Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire in a bid to save his mother, who is dying from cancer, by finding a crystal called ""the Talisman."" Jack's journey takes him simultaneously through the American heartland and ""the Territories"", a strange fantasy land which is set in a universe parallel to that of Jack's America. Individuals in the Territories have ""twinners,"" or parallel individuals, in our world. Twinners' births, deaths, and (it is intimated) other major life events are usually paralleled. Twinners can also ""flip"" or migrate to the other world, but only share the body of their alternate universe's analogue. In rare instances (such as Jack's), a person may die in one world but not the other, making the survivor ""single-natured"" with the ability to switch back and forth, body and mind, between the two worlds. Jack is taught how to flip by a mysterious figure known as Speedy Parker, who is the twinner of a gunslinger named Parkus in the Territories. In Parkus's world, the beloved Queen Laura DeLoessian, the twinner of Jack's mother (a movie actress known as the ""Queen of the B Movies"") is also dying. Various people help or hinder Jack in his quest. Of particular importance are the werewolves, known simply as Wolfs, who inhabit the Territories. These are not the savage killers of tradition: they serve as royal herdsmen or bodyguards, and can sometimes under stress voluntarily change to wolf form. A sixteen-year-old Wolf, simply named Wolf, is accidentally pulled into America by Jack Sawyer and adopts Jack as his herd, serving as his companion. Wolf is extremely likeable, kind, loyal and friendly, much like a dog, though his wolf nature shows through on occasion. On the other hand, some Wolfs have joined the malevolent faction which is trying to stop Jack. As the story goes back and forth between the Territories and the familiar United States, or ""American Territories"" as Jack comes to call them, Jack escapes from one life-threatening situation after another. Accompanied by Wolf and later by his childhood friend Richard, Jack must retrieve the Talisman before it falls into the hands of evil schemer Morgan Sloat, Richard's father, who, we later learn, was Jack's father's business partner before arranging to have the latter murdered. He wants to seize their business from Jack's mother. Morgan Sloat's twinner, Morgan of Orris, also plans to seize the Territories in the event of Queen Laura's death."
2250,Untamed,horror," Zoey is hiding in the stables with her horse, Persephone. After an internal debate she finally decides to talk with her friends. On the way to the cafeteria she feels the presence of Darkness and rushes inside. She tries to blend in and act normally but her friends ignore her and the situation degenerates with the appearance of a newly re-Marked Aphrodite, who chooses to sit with the 'nerd herd'. A confrontation is postponed by the arrival of new fledgling and famous archer James Stark. After lunch, Zoey meets Aphrodite and Stevie Rae in her room. She finds out that Stevie Rae is mostly normal now and the only differences she experiences is an intense aversion to sunlight, and that Aphrodite's Mark is fake- she has mostly reverted to a human teenager, except for her visions. Aphrodite tells Zoey that she had a vision of a world full of violence, hatred, and darkness, which was triggered by Zoey's death. When Zoey asks, Aphrodite reveals she saw Zoey die two ways: The first way was drowning near a European palace and the second way was decapitation by a strange blackness - in both visions, Zoey was alone as Neferet planned. After Stevie Rae's departure, the two are about to leave Zoey's room but meet Damien, the Twins, and Jack on the threshold. Aphrodite explains to them that Zoey confided in her because she was the only other one who could block her mind from adult vampyres and that her visions show Zoey dying alone. They make up with Zoey. After they leave, Aphrodite asks Zoey to cast a circle to see if she still has her Earth affinity. When the green candle ""zaps"" her, Aphrodite is convinced that the goddess has taken back her gift because she was disappointed in her. Zoey casts the circle and asks for guidance. Nyx appears to tell them that she still loves Aphrodite, that she was only safekeeping the Earth affinity for Stevie Rae, and that she reverted back to human because her own humanity was too strong. After the goddess' disappearance, they rush to a Council meeting. They find out that the Priestess of all vampyres, Shekinah, has come to the House of Night to reject Neferet's declaration of war on humans. She follows Zoey's advice to put Detective Marx on the case instead. Erik Night returns to the school and takes over Professor Nolan's drama class, much to Zoey's dismay. On her way back Zoey meets Stark and watches him practice. He confesses to her that he has a gift for archery- that he never misses a target- and it was discovered when he killed his mentor by mistake. Because he fears his power, he asks Zoey to use her powers to protect the others from him. When she starts to leave, his body rejects the Change and he dies in her arms. Zoey tells him, before he dies, that he might be revived as a red fledgling. Zoey, Darius and Aphrodite go to Street Cats, a local cat shelter, as Zoey has been searching for a community activity for the Dark Daughters. The organization is led by nuns from the Benedictine Abbey. Their leader, Sister Mary Angela, astounds Zoey with the contrast between her beliefs and John Heffer's. At the shelter, Aphrodite is chosen by a cat, to her delight, and names her Maleficent. On the way back they stop to eat at one of Zoey's favorite restaurants where they have a run-in with Heath, who is with one of Zoey's old friends. He tells Zoey that he's given her up as loving her hurt too much. At school she's late for drama class and Erik, the new teacher, makes her play Desdemona to his Othello in a Shakespeare improvisation. She's initially mad, but uses this as an opportunity to explain her feelings for him and kisses him just before the bell rings, but he storms off. Outside, she meets Darius who brings her to Aphrodite, revealing a gift for speed. Aphrodite has been having a vision of Sylvia Redbird's house and copies out a poem in her writing. Zoey calls her grandmother and together they uncover that the poem is a warning about an ancient Cherokee legend. The poem warns that Kalona, a fallen angel, will rise again throughout the help of the Tsi Sgili queen, a dark witch that uses pain. Her grandmother also warns her to beware the Raven Mockers, half-raven half-human offspring of Kalona. Zoey asks her to come to the House of Night to be safe. Zoey then goes to Shekinah, and is attacked by a Raven Mocker on the way. She escapes Aphrodite's second vision of death by calling for Damien, who sends Air to banish the creature. Outside the Council chambers she happens to eavesdrop on a discussion between Neferet and Shekinah. She incredulously hears how Neferet manages to twist all the problems she's faced since the beginning of her change and make it seem as if they were Zoey's fault. After Neferet leaves, Zoey tells Shekinah about Street Cats and asks for lodging for her grandmother. On the doorstep she bumps into Erik and explains to him about Loren. Her grandmother arrives and she moves into Zoey and Stevie Rae's room. In the middle of their discussion they discover a Raven Mocker listening at their window. The next day, Zoey is woken up by Shekinah, who announces that her grandmother was hurt in a car crash. She and Aphrodite rush to the hospital. To be sure her grandmother is guarded from Raven Mockers, who she suspects of causing the crash, she asks the hospital if a medicine man could sit at her grandmother's bedside. When the Catholic hospital refuses, she asks Sister Mary Angela instead. Back at school, Zoey begins a cleansing ritual at Shekinah's request. Zoey tries to introduce the red fledglings and Stevie Rae makes an appearance, but is interrupted by Neferet who brings an undead Stark and tries to frame Zoey. In the ensuing commotion, Neferet makes Stark shoot Stevie Rae, fulfilling another line of Aphrodite's poem. Her blood frees Kalona. Neferet reveals herself as the Tsi Sgili queen from the poem, and then kills Shekinah with her thoughts to prove it. As the Raven Mockers explode into their physical form and start a feeding frenzy, Zoey and her friends blend in with the night and together they escape to the Tulsa Depot tunnels."
2251,People Might Hear You,horror," Don't ever let them know you're here. 'Our religion is for every day we live, every living moment. You mustn't ever raise your voice or call out... people outside might hear you... Clement had a good life until her aunt marries Mr Tyrell. Francis is pushed into a sinister mansion enclosed by unclimbable walls. At first she trustingly accepts her aunt's new life, and tries to be a 'worthy member of the temple'. But as she uncovers its sinister secrets she realises she has to escape ....."
2252,Ghoul,horror," Timmy Graco and his best friends Barry Smetzler and Doug Keiser are looking forward to a summer they will never forget; they have made the perfect secret underground clubhouse in the local cemetery known as ""the dugout."" The book opens with two high school seniors having sex in the cemetery. As they finish the boy realizes a figure has been watching them. The ghoul lashes out with rage, repeatedly smashes the boy's head against a tombstone until he dies; the chapter ends as he approaches the helpless girl. Another figure comes before sunrise and cleans up the mess. Timmy's grandfather (Dane Graco) dies the next day, the first Saturday of the summer. His family buries him in the local cemetery; the same one that also houses Timmy's secret hideout and the ghoul. Timmy sees his longtime crush Katie Moore whose older sister has gone missing. While walking through the cemetery with Katie and her father, the local pastor, they find a broken sigil stone and Pastor Moore tells Timmie and Katie the legend of the ghoul that once terrorized the area. He was said to be bound by a Sigil Stone under the ruins of the old church. They all notice that the cemetery grounds are dilapidated as headstones are falling over and sinking into the ground. Barry's father is the caretaker of the cemetery and after the funeral he and Barry bury Dane Graco. It is then revealed that Barry's father Clark is in cahoots with the ghoul acting as his familiar. Clark even kidnaps a local woman as a mate for the ghoul. The ghoul believing himself to be the last of his kind is mating with this woman and the older Moore sister. At the same time you learn that as a commandment from ""Him"" that the ghouls may not taste fresh meat. Anyone he kills he must let fester for several days. The town becomes very suspicious with six missing people in less than a week and the boys' families will no longer let them play in the cemetery woods. The boys begin to notice sinkholes forming all over the graveyard. Barry's father has told him he believes there is a cave under ground responsible for all the damage to the grounds. The boys find a hole large enough to enter but do not have time to explore it just then. The boys' local rivals see them discover the entrance and assume it is the dugout. That night they go into the graveyard under the cover of a storm and enter the cave hoping to trash the dugout. The ghoul kills two of the boys underground as the ringleader attempts to escape. Clark stumbles across him fighting his way out of the ghoul's grasp halfway in the entrance to his warren. Clark recognizes him from a scuffle between him and his own son. He steps on his hand causing him to fall into the hole where the ghoul violently kills him. That night Doug spends the night at the Graco house and tells Timmy about how his mother sexually abuses him on a nightly basis. Comparing his stories to the obvious physical abuse Barry receives from his father he decides that adults are the real monsters. Clark then bans Doug and Timmy from the graveyard and will only allow Barry to work there in daylight. He catches the kids trying to sneak into the shed where the other boys entered the cave and attacks them both physically and mentally. They then take a long walk into the woods beyond the graveyard and find the remains of Katie's older sister's boyfriend in his car, squashing the rumor they ran away together. Doug badly wants to spend the night at Timmy's house to avoid the advances of his mother. Timmy's mom will not allow him to so he goes home and locks himself in his room only to be woken up by his mother who has snuck in through the window and is attempting to molest him. At the same time Barry's father beats him nearly to death (at this point Barry notices Dane Graco's Freemason ring on his father's hand.) Timmy tells his dad he believes there is a ghoul on the loose in the cemetery and he believes that it has eaten his father's corpse. His father becomes very angry and take Timmy and his prize comic book collection into the basement and forces him to watch him rip them apart one by one. Doug leaves his house to go to Timmy's but sees all the lights off and decides to sleep in the dugout. Upon entering the cemetery he sees Clark and the ghoul arguing loudly. Doug flees but his bike's kickstand rattles and the ghoul begins to chase him but he escapes. The ghoul goes back and attempts to kill Clark by slashing him across his neck and face with his claws. He smells Doug returning and goes to meet him at the dugout. Doug begins editing a map of the forest and eating a Kit Kat when the ghoul bursts through the bottom of the dugout and Doug falls into the grasp of the ghoul who decides to forgo the commandment not to eat fresh meat. Barry decides to run away from home to escape the abuse of his father, he goes to say goodbye to Doug who is not home and then to Timmy who tells him his suspicions of the ghoul and what his father did. The two form a plan and go to the dugout which they find collapsed into the ghoul's warren. Timmy ventures in and finds Doug's map freshly smeared with Kit-Kat and realizes the ghoul has taken him. He instructs Barry to go start the cemetery's backhoe and start digging the cave up. Barry finds his father mortally wounded bleeding and unconscious as a result of the Ghoul's attack and uses bungee cord to tie him to a stump. He retrieves the backhoe and begins digging. Timmy finds Karen Moore and the kidnapped woman bound to the walls inside the cave. He frees Karen but the other captive's mind is gone from the trauma of the Ghoul kidnapping and raping her. The ghoul appears holding Doug's head. Timmy and Karen are able to escape and run blindly through the tunnels. Above ground Clark regains consciousness and frees himself and climbs onto the backhoe. As he and Barry struggle the backhoe collapses though the top of the cave and crushes Clark beneath it. Timmy and Karen escape through the hole made by the backhoe and the ghoul follows them out into the sunlight where he melts. The book then goes to an epilogue twenty years later where Timmy's father is being buried in the cemetery and Barry is now the caretaker. His son has bruises consistent with abuse and Timmy realizes ghoul was not the only monster in the cemetery."
2253,Black House,horror," A series of murders has begun to plague the town of French Landing, Wisconsin. The murderer is dubbed ""The Fisherman"", due to a conscious effort by the killer to emulate the methods of serial killer Albert Fish. Like Fish, French Landing's killer targets children and indulges in cannibalism of the bodies. Two victims have already been discovered as the story opens, with a third awaiting discovery. The nature of the crimes, and the local police's inability to capture the killer, have led people all over the region to become more anxious with each passing day, and certain elements of the local media exacerbate the situation with inflammatory and provocative coverage. After the events of The Talisman, Jack Sawyer has repressed the memories of his adventures in The Territories and his hunt for the Talisman as a twelve year-old boy, though the residue of these events has served to subtly affect his life even after he has forgotten them. Jack grew up to become a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department, where his professionalism and uncanny talent have helped him establish a nearly-legendary reputation. When a series of murders in Los Angeles are traced to a farm insurance salesman from French Landing, Wisconsin, Jack cooperates with the French Landing Police to capture the killer. While in Wisconsin, Jack is irresistibly enraptured by the natural beauty of the Coulee Country, echoing his reaction to The Territories as a child. When he later intrudes upon a homicide investigation in Santa Monica, certain aspects of the crime scene threaten to revive his repressed memories. He subsequently resigns from the LAPD, and he moves to French Landing to enjoy his early retirement. When the Fisherman begins to terrorize French Landing, the police all but beg ""Hollywood"" Jack Sawyer for his assistance and are surprised when he flatly refuses. Memories of the Santa Monica event threaten to overwhelm Jack, and he fears that involving himself in the investigation may break his sanity. When a fourth child is taken by the Fisherman, events no longer allow Jack to remain aloof. It quickly becomes apparent to him that the Fisherman is much more than a simple pedophile/killer. In fact, he is an agent of the Crimson King, and his task is to find children with the potential to serve as Breakers. The fourth victim, Tyler Marshall, is one of the most powerful Breakers there has ever been, and he may be all the Crimson King needs to break the remaining beams of the Dark Tower and bring an end to all worlds. As the Fisherman also proves capable of ""flipping"" into The Territories, Jack Sawyer is the only hope of not just French Landing, but all existence."
2254,Exquisite Corpse,horror," The novel unfolds in alternating chapters from the points of view of the four main characters. Andrew Compton, a convicted serial killer (based on real life serial killer Dennis Nilsen), leaves his prison cell as a dead man in a self-induced cataleptic trance and rises again to build a new life. His journey takes him to New Orleans' French Quarter-- to the decadent bars and frivolous boys that haunt the luscious dark corners of a town brought up on Voodoo and the dark arts. Anticipating a willing victim, he finds an equal in Jay Byrne, a decadent artist (based on real life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer), who shares the same dangerous desires--torture, murder and cannibalism. They fixate on Tran, a young Vietnamese runaway, as their perfect victim. As Tran's long-standing attraction to Jay threatens to lead him straight to his demise, Tran's estranged older gay lover, Lucas Ransom (pirate talk radio personality ""Lush Rimbaud""), seeks to find and reunite with him. The four collide in a horrific climax."
2255,Ligeia,horror," The unnamed narrator describes the qualities of Ligeia, a beautiful, passionate and intellectual woman, raven-haired and dark-eyed, that he thinks he remembers meeting ""in some large, old decaying city near the Rhine."" He is unable to recall anything about the history of Ligeia, including her family's name, but remembers her beautiful appearance. Her beauty, however, is not conventional. He describes her as emaciated, with some ""strangeness."" He describes her face in detail, from her ""faultless"" forehead to the ""divine orbs"" of her eyes. They marry, and Ligeia impresses her husband with her immense knowledge of physical and mathematical science, and her proficiency in classical languages. She begins to show her husband her knowledge of metaphysical and ""forbidden"" wisdom. After an unspecified length of time Ligeia becomes ill, struggles internally with human mortality, and ultimately dies. The narrator, grief-stricken, buys and refurbishes an abbey in England. He soon enters into a loveless marriage with ""the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine."" In the second month of the marriage, Rowena begins to suffer from worsening fever and anxiety. One night, when she is about to faint, the narrator pours her a goblet of wine. Drugged with opium, he sees (or thinks he sees) drops of ""a brilliant and ruby colored fluid"" fall into the goblet. Her condition rapidly worsens, and a few days later she dies and her body is wrapped for burial. As the narrator keeps vigil overnight, he notices a brief return of color to Rowena's cheeks. She repeatedly shows signs of reviving, before relapsing into apparent death. As he attempts resuscitation, the revivals become progressively stronger, but the relapses more final. As dawn breaks, and the narrator is sitting emotionally exhausted from the night's struggle, the shrouded body revives once more, stands and walks into the middle of the room. When he touches the figure, its head bandages fall away to reveal masses of raven hair and dark eyes: Rowena has transformed into Ligeia."
2256,Phantoms,horror," Jenny and Lisa Paige, two sisters, return to Jenny's hometown of Snowfield, California, a small ski resort village nestled in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains where Jenny works as a doctor, and finds no one alive. The few bodies they find are either mutilated, or reveal some strange form of death. Finally, after growing more alarmed by the town's mysterious and alarming situation Jenny manages to call police in a neighboring town to come help. Together, the girls and the police are able to request help from the military Biological Investigations Unit. The police managed to find only one clue as to what was causing the town's disappearances and deaths. A victim of whatever was trying to kill him managed to write the name Timothy Flyte, on a mirror moments before he was killed. Flyte is a British academic and author of a book, The Ancient Enemy. His book catalogs and describes various mass vanishings of people in different parts of the world over the centuries. It is discovered that the town was built over the hibernating place of this creature, an amoeboid shapeshifter. The Ancient Enemy rarely feeds, but when it does, the effects are devastating. It was theorized that the Enemy either caused or aided in the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as many of the great mysterious mass vanishings: Mayan civilization, Roanoke, ghost ships, etc. The creature consumes other life forms to increase its mass and is able to perfectly mimic other creatures. It can create small ""probes"" or ""phantoms"" imitating consumed life forms to go forth and hunt more prey, obeying the orders of its ""hive mind;"" in addition the creature absorbs the mental capacity of those it consumes. Its only vital organ is a nucleus located in the center of its main body. The creature's cells are similar in molecular structure to fossil fuels; upon discovering this the scientists use oil-eating bacteria to destroy the Enemy's core or brain. (The genetically-modified bacteria are the real-life creations of Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty)"
2257,For Love of Mother-Not,horror," The story of Flinx is begun in this novel, exploring his early years growing up with Mother Mastiff on the planet Moth. Young Philip Lynx is purchased in a slave auction by Mother Mastiff for one hundred credits. After years of raising the boy, whose full origins are unknown to his adoptive mother, she suddenly disappears. Flinx pursues her across the rainy world of Moth and discovers she has been kidnapped by the mysterious Meliorare Society, a group known to have experimented with eugenics and might very well be the source of Flinx’s unusual talents. Flinx is gifted with empathic powers and able to project emotions and read the emotions of others. Mother Mastiff also realizes later on that it was not her desire to buy the boy but his desire to be bought that was intentionally pushed on to her by Flinx ."
2258,Queen of the Slayers,horror," Following the Hellmouth's closure, hundreds of potential slayers have been awakened. Buffy Summers hoped that overturning the Slayer's self-sacrifice would result in her earning some relaxation following seven years of fighting. However, the victory is short-lived. Dark forces are arising to fill the gap left by the First. Willow's magical spell which sent slayer essence across the world has resulted in girls everywhere discovering a new power. The Scoobies travel to Europe. In London, Giles races to reorganize the remnants of the Watchers Council, hoping to overcome the shortcomings of its previous incarnation. Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn, and Dawn's new best friend, a young slayer named Belle travel to Rome to train new Slayers that are drawn to the infamous Immortal, Buffy is attracted to the Immortal, an ambiguous yet charismatic character, who she does not fully trust during the whole novel. They soon hear of an unknown ""Queen of the Slayers"" who is getting a number of the fresh slayers to form a mystical army. This likely evil seems determined to claim the slayer essence for herself, and viciously and cruelly murders any Slayers that don't cooperate with her and betray Buffy. Faith and Robin Wood take a group of Slayers to the Hellmouth in Cleveland, which has gone supernova with evil, to stabilize the hell there. They face many casualties, and experience strange projections of The Legion of Three, three deadly Hellgods. There are three factions of evils, two of them just want to defeat Buffy after she closed the Hellmouth, who want to kill Buffy, The so-called Queen of the Slayers who wants to destroy Buffy, along with her lover, Antonia Borgia (a sorcerer under the employ of The Immortal) and convinces newbie slayers that Buffy is just using them to gain power, and Two Vampire Sorcerers who live in the Borgia Hell Dimension, and The Legion of Three. Xander goes to Africa hoping to find more about the origins of the slayer essence. He discovers instead that the good in the world is not enough to fight the bad, and that the deciding confrontation is drawing far too near. It will be slayer against slayer, as an ultimate battle of champions approaches. Dawn goes into a coma, because she was The Key, and has a link to the Earth, which is crumbling because of the supernova Hellmouth in Cleveland, and the Hellgods who are breaking through the barrier. Willow also seems to go into a coma, but is somehow woken up by a kiss from her lover, Kennedy when she, Faith and Robin are called back to Rome, because of the non-ending battle in deserted Cleveland. Buffy, Willow, Kennedy, Belle, Vi, and Rona head to Brazil (under the orders of an angelic, Tara), to get The Death Orchid which has healing abilities, and they are attacked by The Queen of the Slayers. They are saved from poison darts by one of the rogue slayers, Haley, who realizes what she has done and gives them the antidote. They then go to Tibet, to meet with the infamous sorcerer, The Golden One, and re-meet Oz who is one of the werewolves that protect The Golden One. After the Golden One is killed, Oz and his wolf-pack decide to head to Rome, to help Buffy and her Slayers against the upcoming battle. After healing Dawn, Buffy goes on patrol along with Faith who meet a rogue Slayer who they believe is leading them into a trap, and their belief comes reality when she leads the Slayer sisters right into the hands of Ornella, the Queen of the Slayers and her demons. Buffy and Faith waste the demons easily and escape back to The Immortal's castle, where he betrays them, for power, knocks them out, and ties them up. Buffy, unconscious is visited by the good demon, Whistler. The Powers that Be, have sent him to The Slayer for her to see the battle going on in L.A. that has Angel, a resurrected Spike, and their team fighting against the hell that Wolfram & Hart has sent upon them, Buffy cries tears of horror as she believes that both the vampires who loved her will die again. She is then joined by both Angel and Spike's souls, and together they create an angelic daughter with all of their features, who gives Buffy the strength she needs to wake up, gather her friends, her team, her Slayers, and defeat The Legion of Three. Buffy wakes up the morning after the battle, to find her friends building her funeral pyre believing her to be dead again. She finds her friends safe and sound, though Faith was forced to kill Slayers who wouldn't surrender. Buffy has a confidential conversation with Willow who reveals that she also saw Buffy's future daughter, Buffy looks into the sunset, declares her love for all of her friends (including Andrew), healing after the battle, and vows to see Angel, and Spike again."
2259,Marked,horror," Sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird lives in a world where vampires have always existed. One day, during school, Zoey is marked by a Tracker to become a fledgling vampyre at the Tulsa House of Night, a boarding school where she will be trained to become an adult vampyre. She faints, only to find herself deserted by almost everyone and hurries home. Her mother, Linda Heffer, blames her for the Mark and, together with her ultra-religious husband (Zoey's stepfather/step-loser), she tries to keep Zoey at home, to be presented to the Elders of the People of Faith, an anti-vampyre group. As fledglings need to be constantly in the presence of an adult vampyre so that their bodies won't reject the Change, Zoey flees to her grandmother Sylvia, a Cherokee Wise Woman. On the way she passes out and has a vision with the vampyre goddess, Nyx, who announces to Zoey that she will be her ""eyes and ears"" at the House of Night. The goddess leaves Zoey with the words ""Darkness does not always equate to evil, Light does not always bring good"" which becomes a very frequent and important message throughout the series. Zoey wakes up at the school in the presence of her grandmother and the vampyre headmaster- her future mentor, Neferet. She finds out that her Mark is all filled in, unusually for fledglings, but follows her intuition and doesn't mention the vision to Neferet. As a fledgling vampyre, Zoey has the opportunity to change her name and does so, taking her grandmother's surname, Redbird, before parting with her. Aphrodite another fledgling then takes her to her room, where she meets Stevie Rae, her new roommate and future best friend. Through Stevie Rae, Zoey meets and befriends Damien, Erin, and Shaunee. She also meets the snobby, beautiful leader of the Dark Daughters and Sons, Aphrodite, a fledgling with the power to see the future. To humiliate Zoey she invites her to join the Dark Daughters, who are an elitist group. Her new friends counsel her to accept, so that they can get insight into Aphrodite's doings. During the ritual, Aphrodite feeds her fledgling blood and Zoey discovers a new craving, unusual for her age. Embarrassed, she flees- but finds Heath, her ex-boyfriend, and Kayla, her ex-best friend, who have come to the school in an attempt to bust Zoey out. A confrontation ensues and Zoey loses control. She bites Heath, creating an Imprint with him. Kayla freaks out and runs away; Zoey eventually persuades Heath to leave too. When they have gone, Zoey discovers that Erik Night, a handsome fifth former and Dark Son whom she met earlier, has seen the whole scene. He comforts her and escorts her back to the dorm. That night she is chosen by a cat, whom she names Nala. The following day, she meets Neferet, who explains to her that an Imprint is a link that takes place between a adult vampyre and his or her human Consort. As it is very unusual that Zoey could create an Imprint in her first month of being a vampyre, she places Zoey into a senior vampyre sociology course. Zoey discovers that she has affinities for the five elements of air, fire, earth, water, and spirit- something that has never happened before in vampyre history. Stevie Rae, Damien, Shaunee, and Erin each gain an affinity for one element as well. Zoey is (spitefully) invited back to the Dark Daughters and Sons' Samhain celebration, where they honor the spirits with some blood. Everything goes fine until a drunk Heath stumbles upon the scene and tries to bring Zoey back with him. Aphrodite accidentally summons evil spirits which try to take Heath’s fresh human blood. Zoey steps in; she and her friends use their newfound abilities to stop the spirits. Neferet, who happens to witness everything, takes Aphrodite's status as leader of the Dark Daughters and Sons and gives it to Zoey instead. As they go home, Aphrodite angrily informs Zoey that ""it's not over yet- you don't understand."""
2260,Psycho House,horror," Ten years after Norman Bates' death, a local entrepreneur has rebuilt the Bates Motel in Fairvale as a tourist attraction. Amy Haines travels to the infamous ""Psycho House"" to write a book about Bates when mysterious murders begin to occur. Haines faces resistance from the community when she enlists the help of a group to investigate the murders."
2261,The Long Walk,horror," One hundred teenage boys participate in an annual walking contest called ""The Long Walk"", which is the ""national sport"". Each Walker must maintain a speed of at least four miles per hour; if he drops below that speed for 30 seconds, he receives a verbal warning (which can be erased by walking for one hour without being warned). If a Walker with three warnings slows down again, he is ""ticketed"". The meaning of this term is intentionally kept vague at first, but it soon becomes clear that ""buying a ticket"" means to be shot dead by soldiers riding in half-tracks along the roadside. Walkers may be shot immediately for certain serious violations, such as trying to leave the road or attacking the half-track. The soldiers use electronic equipment to precisely determine a Walker's speed. The event is run by a character known as ""The Major"", who is implied to have much power, stemming from a possible military or fascist state system. The Major appears at the beginning of the Walk to encourage the boys and start them on their way, and then occasionally thereafter. While the Walkers initially greet him with awe and respect, they eventually realize their admiration is misplaced and ridicule him in later appearances. The Walk begins at the Maine/Canada border and travels the east coast of the United States until the winner is determined. There are no stops, rest periods, or established finish line, and the Walk does not pause for any reason (including bad weather or darkness); it ends only when one Walker is left alive. According to the rules, the Walkers can obtain aid only from the soldiers, who distribute canteens of water and belts packed with food concentrates (apparently similar to the ones developed by NASA's space program) just before the Walk begins. They may request a fresh canteen at any time, and new food supplies are distributed at 9:00 every morning. Walkers may bring anything they can carry, including food or additional footwear, but cannot receive aid from bystanders. They are allowed to have bodily contact with onlookers as long as they stay on the road. While they cannot physically interfere with one another to detrimental effect, they can help each other, provided they stay above four miles per hour. The winner receives ""The Prize"": anything he wants for the rest of his life. It is implied that many past winners have died soon after the Walk, due to its hazardous mental and physical challenges. The Long Walk is not only a physical trial, but a psychological one, as the Walkers are continually pressed against the idea of death and their mortality. Contestants have actually tried to crawl at 4&nbsp;mph to survive after their legs gave out. The story has several characters who suffer mental breakdown, one of whom kills himself by tearing out his throat, and most characters experience some mental degeneration from the stress and lack of sleep. The protagonist of the novel is Raymond Davis Garraty, a 16-year-old boy from the town of Pownal in Androscoggin County, Maine. Early on, Ray falls in with several other boys—including Peter McVries, Arthur Baker, Hank Olson, Collie Parker, Pearson, Harkness, and Abraham—who refer to themselves as ""The Musketeers"". Another Walker—Gary Barkovitch—quickly establishes himself as an external antagonist, as he quickly angers his fellow walkers with multiple taunts of ""dancing on their graves"". This results in the death of a fellow walker, Rank, who is ticketed while trying to injure Barkovitch. Lastly, the most alluring and mysterious Walker is a boy named Stebbins. Throughout the Walk, Stebbins establishes himself as a loner, observing the ground beneath him as he listens to fellow Walkers' complaints, seemingly unaffected by the mental and physical strains. The only character Stebbins truly interacts with is Ray Garraty. In one conversation, Garraty alludes to Alice in Wonderland, likening Stebbins to the Caterpillar. Stebbins, however, corrects him: he believes himself to be more of a White Rabbit type. Along the road, the Walkers learn that one of their number, a kid named Scramm — who is initially the heavy odds-on favorite to win the Walk — is married. When Scramm gets pneumonia, the remaining Walkers agree that the winner will use some of the Prize to take care of his pregnant widow, Cathy. Members of the public interfering with the Walkers can receive an ""interference"" ticket. This nearly occurs when the mother of a Walker named Percy tries, on several occasions, to get onto the road and find her son (at her last attempt, he has already been killed for attempting to sneak away). Only the intervention of the local police keeps her from being executed. The second instance is when a spectator's dog runs across the road in front of the Walkers and is shot. However, one man is able to throw the Walkers watermelon slices before being hauled away by the police rather than the soldiers; several Walkers receive third warnings after taking the watermelon, but none of them are shot. Garraty becomes closest to Peter McVries, a boy with a prominent facial scar who speculates that his own reason for joining the Walk is a subconscious death wish. When Garraty suffers a charley horse and comes within two seconds of being killed, McVries keeps him talking and distracted long enough to drop a warning, saving his life. After five days and hundreds of miles, the Walk eventually comes down to Garraty and Stebbins, who revealed to Garraty and McVries earlier that day, that he is the illegitimate son of the Major. Stebbins states he used to think the Major was unaware of his existence, but it turns out that the Major has numerous illegitimate children nationwide. Four years earlier the Major took Stebbins to the finish of a Long Walk and now Stebbins feels that the Major has set him up to be ""the rabbit"", motivating other runners to walk farther to prolong the race, just as rabbits are used in dog races. Stebbins's plan, upon winning the Walk, is to ask that his prize be to be ""taken into [his] father's house"". At the end of the book, having gone farther than any Long Walk in history - the Long Walkers reached Massachusetts for the first time in seventeen years - Garraty decides to give up after realizing that Stebbins has shown almost no weaknesses over the duration of the Walk. Garraty catches up with Stebbins to tell him this, but before he can speak Stebbins collapses and dies; thus Garraty is declared the winner. Unaware of the celebration going on around him, Garraty gets up from Stebbins's side and keeps on walking, believing the race to still continue, as he hallucinates of a dark figure not far ahead that he thinks is another runner. He ignores a jeep coming towards him in which the Major comes to award him the victory, thinking it's a trespassing vehicle. When a hand, likely the Major's, tries to hold his shoulder Garraty somehow finds the strength to run."
2262,Night of the Living Rerun,horror," In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, the Despised One was raised from the Otherworld and Samantha Kane, that generation's Slayer, died while defeating it. Now in 1997, the Master is trying to have history repeat itself with a different ending. The spirits of the people responsible for the rise of the Despised One in 1692 are now inhabiting the bodies of Buffy and her friends. Buffy must stop the ritual from happening or the Master will rise from his prison below Sunnydale."
2263,Blackout,horror," It is 1977, the summer of a brutal blackout, the time of the Son of Sam murders, and a period of brutal fiscal disaster for New York. The slayer Nikki Wood fights against the forces of darkness and also tries to protect her son, Robin. Meanwhile Spike and Drusilla arrive in the city hoping to hunt down a slayer, not without the local vampire community soon discovering of their arrival."
2264,Twilight Eyes,horror," The book begins with Slim sneaking up on, and killing, a ""goblin or beast"" on the fair grounds of a local carnival. Goblins are monsters which can shape shift between human and bestial forms, genetically engineered super-predators which desire bloodshed and human misery. Created in an ancient, technologically superior era of human civilization, they exist to torment and ultimately murder humans. They can only be seen by a few people, including Slim himself, Rya Raines (his wife), and Joel Tuck (Slim's friend and fellow carnie). These goblins are superhuman and extremely dangerous and genocidal, at least as intelligent as us, and can mimic human behavior. While they appear and act as a normal person would, they experience only a negative emotions like fear and hate. Their only pleasure is in torturing and murdering humans. Slim's claim to fame is his ""Twilight Eyes"", which give him the ability to receive psychic, or prophetic, premonitions of the future. They also allow him to see through the human seeming disguise of the goblins. These eyes are named what they are because they are colored purple like the skyline at dusk. After this encounter, Slim proceeds to join the carnival (one of many he has drifted from) as a way to support himself while killing goblins and hiding from his murderous past (in which he killed an uncle by marriage that was a goblin responsible for the deaths of several family members). One of the prominent members of the ""carnies"" is a young woman named Rya Raines, who quickly becomes his lover and confidant. As their relationship matures, Slim has several more run-ins with the goblins which leads to the revelation that his friend Joel, and even Rya herself, can see the goblins too, and that each of them in their own way has suffered terribly from the goblins actions in their past. It is soon revealed that Rya had long before made a pact with the goblins to report to them whenever she found someone who could see through their disguise in exchange for safety from their predations. She wants him to make the same pact with them, but he refuses. This reality creates a gulf between her and Slim that almost comes to bloodshed between them. She regrets this later and after reconciling with Slim she becomes his wife. They decide to go on a mission to destroy any and all of the creatures they possibly can. Together they set out on a personal mission to wage a secret war against the monsters in a small mining town named Yontsdown, Pennsylvania, the seeming center of their cruel and brutal version of civilization. There they would discover and face the ultimate, diabolical plans the goblins had for the world and all of mankind."
2265,John Dies at the End,horror," The main characters, John and Dave, are friends from an undisclosed town in the Midwestern United States. The story opens as Dave is discussing the unusual events he has experienced with a reporter named Arnie. The first story opens as Dave goes to help John's band play at a local party, just outside of town at a lake. At the party, Dave finds Molly, the dog, and meets a strange ""Jamaican"" dealing a drug called ""Soy Sauce."" After taking the drug, John begins to see things. Thinking John is having a bad trip, Dave decides to take John to the hospital but, after Dave receives an impossible phone call, they end up at the home of ""Big Jim"" Sullivan and his sister Amy, trying to return Molly to its owner. Amy tells Dave that she's afraid that Jim is dead, and he didn't come home after the party. Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to put the whole episode behind them, the two go to work at the local video store. At work, Dave accidentally cuts himself on the syringe that contained John's dose of the Soy Sauce and begins having unusual experiences as well. Dave and John are brought down to the police station for questioning regarding others who have taken the drug, and are now missing or dead. While they are being questioned, John mysteriously collapses and is taken to the hospital. Dave receives another strange phone call, telling him to go to the pseudo-Jamaican's trailer. Dave finds the fake Jamaican's stash of 'Soy Sauce', but is interrupted by the police, getting shot in the process. However, due to a miraculous occurrence, he survives relatively unharmed. Molly rescues him from the burning trailer and leads him to John's comatose body, which has been kidnapped by an evil force on its way to Las Vegas. That evil leads them to the Luxor Hotel, where Dr. Albert Marconi is having a conference on the paranormal. The conference descends into chaos as the evil attacks, and Dr. Marconi helps send it back to where it came from. The second major incident Dave explains to Arnie happened a year later. Dave and John are called in to help investigate a strange death apparently caused by Molly. It turns out that the evil is on the loose again in Undisclosed in the form of a sports reporter, Danny Wexler, who has been possessed by a shadowy entity, likely after taking Soy Sauce. With the help of Wexler's girlfriend, Krissy, John and Dave have a car chase with a man made of cockroaches, and are led on a video-game inspired chase through the abandoned mall, where they have a stand off with the entity that has taken Wexler. There the evil possesses Dave, but it is ultimately defeated. The third story starts the next summer as Dave notices that someone is watching him through his television set. The feeling continues until one winter night he has an episode of missing time just as Amy disappears. While they investigate Amy's disappearance, Dave begins to feel that he may have killed her, and peeking into his tool shed and seeing what appears to be a dead body, he is sure of it. When Amy reappears, however, the mystery deepens. As the darkness descends on them, Dave has to come to terms with how his paranormal encounters have irreversibly affected him."
2266,Superstitious,horror," Sara Morgan, a graduate student who has left an abusive relationship with Chip, starts a new relationship with a handsome professor named Liam O'Connor. Liam is extremely superstitious and lives with his sister Margaret, to whom he is very close. Sara does not mind these quirks and marries Liam. Shortly, people start dying in grisly ways, and it turns out the professor knew all of them. Sara begins to wonder if her husband might be the killer, while Liam's superstitious behavior increases. One day, after Sara discovers Margaret and Liam in bed together naked, she smashes the mirror out of protest and runs out of the house. She returns later to retrieve her keys only to find Margaret dead; she leaves afterwards in search of her boss' house. There, she spots her boss dead and Liam glaring at her. He explains to her that Margaret was his wife and that he needs Sara to bear their child so that the demons of superstition living inside of him can pass to the child. He went on to explain that when the demons slip away, they kill someone he knows; when Sara broke the mirror, the demons slipped out, murdering Margaret. Sara, in an attempt to show Liam that there are no demons, shatters one of the mirrors in the house. The demons slip outside of him and kill him; knocking Sara out afterwards. Sara awakens in the hospital to find out she is going to have a baby."
2267,These Our Actors,horror," Even though Buffy decided to drop drama class to concentrate on her slaying and taking care of Dawn, Willow still decided keep the class on her course list. She becomes engrossed in it, especially when the teacher, Professor Addams, begins discussing rituals and chants involved in old dramatic works. Unfortunately, the professor, realizing that Willow has some power of her own, decides to use her for his own ends. He needs to locate a particularly powerful book used to summon the Fates, which he believes is located somewhere in Sunnydale. Spike and Willow realise that the professor is actually the father of Spike's mortal love interest, Cecily, who is attempting to use the power of the fates to resurrect his daughter after he accidentally killed her due to Spike's actions in his early days as a vampire."
2268,The Spiraling Worm,horror," The book is introduced by C. J. Henderson with an After Word by the authors. The plot summaries of the seven stories are: Made of Meat: In the Cambodian jungles, Major Harrison Peel of the Australian Army’s military intelligence and MI6 spy James Figgs, are involved in covert operations fighting a losing war against Tcho-Tcho terrorists. The Tcho-Tcho are able to predict Peel’s and Figgs’ every move, efficiently eliminating the foreigner’s agents under their very noses. Peel seeks the aid of a Vietnam War veteran who provides him with the intelligence he requires to bring the Tcho-Tchos’ reign to an end. To What Green Altar: In Siberia, Middle Eastern cultists slaughter every single employee at a remote Russian mine. In London, James Figgs calls NSA agent Jack Dixon to aid in the investigation of this attack, and together they uncover its connection to the 1908 Tunguska event. A trail leads to the Vatican City, where the summoning of a Cthulhu Mythos deity almost forces a global religious war between Muslims and Christians. Impossible Object: The ancient city of Pnakotus in Australia's Great Sandy Desert, a city that was once home to the Great Race of Yith, has been unearthed by the Australian government. Their secret investigation of its ruins found nothing of value except for a strange artifact, the Impossible Object, which no one can describe or classify. Harrison Peel, now head of security at the city, tries to understand its purpose before more scientific researchers die, or are erased from existence altogether by the Object’s unpredictable properties. False Containment: Harrison Peel travels from Australia to Thailand, to Los Angeles and then into the deserts of Nevada, spurred on by a strange encounter with himself from the future with disturbing news of a wormhole leading to a monstrous god called the Many-Thing that devours worlds. Toxic and nuclear waste is materializing all over the world, and Peel becomes convinced its source is a new waste treatment plant in Nevada, utilizing technology of great interest to the Pentagon, and derived from knowledge offered by the Impossible Object. Resurgence: Shoggoths from Antarctica are waking. Discovering that there is nothing to feed their hunger in the icy wastelands, and freed from their incarceration as slaves to the ancient alien race of the Elder Things, they advance northwards. In Argentina, Jack Dixon’s expertise is called upon to defeat a bold shoggoth, which he destroys with a nuclear weapon. Facing a similar foe in Australia, Harrison Peel is not able to deploy weapons of mass destruction because no one in the Australian or United States government will provide him with one, fearful of the political ramifications if a nuclear bomb is detonated on Australian soil. Weapon Grade: After suffering severe radiation poisoning from his encounter with a shoggoth in Sydney, Peel is dying. He hopes to go quietly, but Dixon calls upon Peel’s expertise, taking him to Utah, Antarctica and finally another universe, to secret US bases where Dixon’s government has long been studying the properties of shoggoths. Meanwhile, an Israeli spy plans to steal a tissue sample of a shoggoth, only to be defeated by Peel as they pass between dimensions. The effects of higher-dimensional time flow, cures Peel of his radiation poisoning. The Spiraling Worm: In the jungle of the Eastern Congo Basin the cult of the Spiraling Worm is building an army, whose primary goal is to restore the powers of the Outer Gods. A team of British and American Special Forces, led by Peel, Dixon and Figgs, are sent into Africa to stop the army."
2269,Zombie,horror," The protagonist, Quentin P, seeks to create a ""zombie"" out of an unsuspecting young man. He intends to find a perfect young male companion and re-wire his brain, thereby turning the victim into a mindless sex slave. His several attempts at creating a zombie all end in failure, however, as the men he abducts, rapes and tortures all die at his hands. By the end of the novel, he has begun to enjoy killing for its own sake, and experiments with cannibalism and necrophilia. Adding to his frustrations is his increasingly suspicious family, particularly his father."
2270,For Love of Audrey Rose,horror," In 1964, a fiery car crash claimed the lives of Audrey Rose Hoover and her mother. Eleven years later, Elliot Hoover, her father, believes he has found Audrey's reincarnated soul in the body of 10-year-old Ivy Templeton. When Ivy dies during a terrible hypnotic reenactment of Audrey's death throes, the Templetons are devastated and Elliot disappears. However, the question remains: If Audrey Rose returned as Ivy Templeton, who died in 1975—then, where is she now? Janice Templeton is determined to find the answer."
2271,The Graveyard Book,horror," The story begins as Jack (usually referred to in the novel as 'the man Jack') has murdered all the members of a family except for the toddler upstairs. Unknown to him, the toddler has climbed out of his crib to explore. The toddler crawls out of the house and up a hill to a graveyard where the ghosts find him. They discuss whether to keep him until the Lady on the Grey (implied to be the Angel of Death) appears and suggests that the baby should be kept (""The dead should have charity""). The ghosts accept and Mrs. Owens (the ghost who first discovered the baby) and her husband, Mr. Owens, become the foster parents. The baby is named Nobody Owens (as Mrs. Owens declares ""He looks like nobody except himself"") and is granted the Freedom of the Graveyard. The caretaker Silas accepts the duty of providing for Nobody. The man Jack is persuaded that the toddler has crawled down the hill, and he eventually loses the trail. The bulk of the book is about Nobody's (often called Bod) adventures in and out of the graveyard as he grows up. As a boy, he befriends a girl called Scarlett Perkins and she is eventually convinced by her mother that he is her imaginary friend. It is with her that Bod discovers a creature called the Sleer, who has been waiting for thousands of years for his ""Master"" to come and reclaim him. Scarlett's parents believe she has gone missing during this adventure, and when she returns consequently decide to move the family to Scotland. Nobody is once captured by the Ghouls and then rescued by his tutor Miss Lupescu, discovering she is a Hound of God (i.e. a werewolf). Bod befriends Elizabeth Hempstock, the ghost of an unjustly-executed witch, and, through a short adventure that includes being kidnapped by a greedy pawnshop owner, finds a gravestone for her. Once, he tries to attend regular primary school with other human children but it ends in a disaster as two bullies make it impossible for him to maintain a low profile. Throughout his adventures, Bod learns supernatural abilities such as Fading, Haunting, and Dream Walking, taught by his loving graveyard parents, his ghost teacher Mr Pennyworth, and Silas. Years pass by, and it is revealed that Jack has still been searching for the toddler that he had failed to kill. He must complete his assignment or his secret society, the Jacks of All Trades, will be destroyed by the surviving boy. On Bod's 14th year at the graveyard, Silas and Miss Lupescu both leave to attend some business. Meanwhile, Scarlett and her mother come back to the town as her parents have divorced and she and Bod reunite. Scarlett has also made friends with a historian called Mr. Jay Frost who is living in a house not too far from the graveyard. Researching the murder of Bod's family, Scarlett learns that the historian lives in the house that Bod once lived in. Bod visits the house, in an effort to learn more about his family. When showing Bod the room he lived in as a baby, Mr Frost reveals that he actually is the man Jack; Jack Frost is his full, true name. Bod is attacked by the man Jack and four other members of the Order. Bod and Scarlett escape to the graveyard where Bod is able to defeat each Jack separately, except for Jack Frost. Jack Frost takes Scarlett captive in the chamber of the Sleer but is then tricked by Bod into claiming himself as the Sleer's master. The Sleer engulfs Jack Frost in an ""embrace"" and they disappear into the wall. Silas returns and it is revealed that he and Miss Lupescu are members of the Honor Guard, devoted to protecting ""the borders between things"". With two other supernatural beings (the ifrit Haroun and the winged mummy Kandar), they have fought the Jacks of All Trades throughout the novel (explaining earlier references made by the Jacks to setbacks in various cities around the world). Though they succeed in destroying the society, Miss Lupescu is killed in battle, to Silas and Bod's great sorrow. Scarlett is shocked and appalled by the events of the night and Bod's questionable actions in the course of killing Jack Frost. Silas suggests the best course is to remove most of her memories of Bod and what happened that night. Bod disagrees with Silas, but Scarlett ends up with her memories taken anyway. Silas uses his power of suggestion to convince Scarlett and her mother to return to Glasgow. In the final chapter of the book, a now-grown Bod is losing the Freedom of the Graveyard and even his ability to see ghosts. At the end of the book, Silas gives Bod money and a passport with the name, says his good-byes to his family and friends, and leaves the graveyard to embark on a new life."
2272,Firestarter,horror," Andy and Charlene ""Charlie"" McGee are a father-daughter pair on the run from a government agency known as The Shop, located in the fictional D.C. suburb of Longmont, Virginia. During his college years, Andy had participated in a Shop experiment dealing with ""Lot 6"", a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD. The drug gave his future wife, Victoria Tomlinson, minor telepathic abilities, and him an autohypnotic mind domination ability he refers to as ""the push"". Both his and Vicky's powers are physiologically limited; in his case, overuse of the Push gives him crippling migraine headaches and minute brain hemorrhages, but their daughter Charlie developed a frightening pyrokinetic ability, with the full extent of her power unknown. The novel begins in medias res with Charlie and Andy on the run from Shop agents in New York City. We learn through a combination of flashbacks and current narration that this is the latest in a series of attempts by the Shop to capture Andy and Charlie following an initial disastrous raid on the McGee family's quiet life in suburban Ohio. After years of Shop surveillance, a botched operation to take Charlie leaves her mother dead; Andy, receiving a psychic flash while having lunch with work colleagues, rushes home to discover his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped. He then uses his push ability to track the slightly-cold trail of Charlie and the Shop agents, catching up to them at a rest stop on the Interstate. He uses the push to incapacitate the Shop agents, leaving one blind and the other comatose. Charlie and Andy flee and begin a life of running and hiding, using assumed identities. They move several times to avoid discovery before the Shop catches up to them in New York. Using a combination of the push, Charlie's power, and hitchhiking, the pair escape through Albany, New York and are taken in by a farmer named Irv Manders near Hastings, New York; however, they are tracked down by Shop agents, who attempt to kill Andy and take Charlie at the Manders farm. At Andy's instruction, Charlie unleashes her power, incinerating the entire farm and fending off the agents, killing a few of them. With nowhere else to turn, the pair flees to Vermont and take refuge in a cabin that had once belonged to Andy's grandfather. With the Manders farm operation disastrously botched, the director of the Shop, Captain James Hollister, or ""Cap"", calls in a Shop hitman named John Rainbird to capture the fugitives. Rainbird, a Cherokee and Vietnam veteran, is intrigued by Charlie's power and eventually becomes obsessed with her, determined to befriend her and eventually kill her. This time the operation is successful, and both Andy and Charlie are taken by the Shop. The pair is separated and imprisoned at the Shop headquarters. With his spirit broken, Andy becomes an overweight drug addict and seemingly loses his power, and is eventually deemed useless by the Shop. Charlie, however, defiantly refuses to cooperate with the Shop, and does not demonstrate her power for them. Six months pass until a power failure provides a turning point for the two: Andy, sick with fear and self-pity, somehow regains the push - subconsciously pushing himself to overcome his addiction - and Rainbird, masquerading as a simple janitor, befriends Charlie and gains her trust. By pretending to still be powerless and addicted, Andy manages to gain crucial information by pushing his psychiatrist. Under Rainbird's guidance, Charlie begins to demonstrate her power, which has grown to fearsome levels. After the suicide of his psychiatrist, Andy is able to meet and push Cap, using him to plan his and Charlie's escape from the facility, as well as finally communicating with Charlie. Rainbird discovers Andy's plan, however, and decides to use it to his advantage. Andy's plan succeeds, and he and Charlie are reunited for the first time in six months. Rainbird then interrupts the meeting at a barn, planning to kill them both. A crucial distraction is provided by Cap, who is losing his mind from a side effect of being pushed. Andy pushes Rainbird into leaping from the upper level of the barn, breaking his leg. Rainbird then shoots Andy in the head. Rainbird then fires another shot at Charlie, but she uses her power to melt the bullet in midair and then sets Rainbird and Cap on fire. A mortally wounded Andy then instructs Charlie to take revenge with her power and inform the public, to make sure the government cannot do anything like this ever again, and dies. A grief-stricken and furious Charlie then sets the barn on fire. She exits the barn and people start going after her. She uses her pyrokinesis to kill the employees and blow up their getaway vehicles. People try to flee and some do. Military men are called, but Charlie blows up their vehicles and when they fire at her she melts their bullets. Charlie blows up the building, shooting it sky-high. She leaves the Longmont facility burning, with almost all of its workers dead. The event is covered up by the government, and released to the papers as a terrorist firebomb attack. The Shop quickly reforms, under new leadership, and begins a manhunt for Charlie, who has returned to the Manders farm. After some deliberation, she comes up with a plan and leaves the Manders', just ahead of Shop operatives, and heads to New York City. She decides on Rolling Stone magazine as an unbiased, honest media source with no ties to the government, and the book ends as she arrives to tell them her story."
2273,The Dark Cry of the Moon,horror," The novel concerns werewolves in the Connecticut town of Oxrun Station, a suburb of New York."
2274,Hawksong,horror," The book centers on two different kinds of shapeshifters: the avians and the serpiente. The avians have birds for second forms and their royal line consists of golden-eyed hawks. Their leader is the Tuuli Thea, or queen. The queen's pair bond is called her alistair. Avian culture is uptight and strict, and it centers on, ""avian reserve,"" the ability to keep complete control of one's emotions at all times. Avians do not lose their temper and they do not cry, no matter what the situation. The serpiente have the second form of a snake. Their royal line is the Cobriana, cobra shapeshifters descended from Kiesha, and their king is called the Diente. Their queen is the Naga. Serpiente wear sensual oufits and are free with their emotions, even in situations where some control might be appropriate. They are passionate and sometimes violent, the complete opposite of the avians. The two groups have been at war beyond living memory, so that nobody even remembers how the fighting started. The reason behind the war starting is given in Falcondance. All they know is that they hate each other and they will keep fighting until one of them is destroyed. The book takes place in roughly 705 BCE and is the romantic story of Danica Shardae, the heir to the Tuuli Thea. The novel opens with Danica walking the latest bloody battlefield and her discovery of the fallen Gregory Cobriana, who is the younger brother of the current Arami (Prince, soon to be Diente/King), Zane Cobriana. Despite her guards’ warnings, Danica stays by Gregory’s side, holding him, and singing the Hawksong, a lullaby, until the young prince passes. After Zane learns what Danica did for his brother, he sends his sister to the avians: the serpiente want peace. After a trip to the wise tiger shapeshifters, the Mistari, Zane and Danica secretly agree to marry despite their families’ objections over the Mistari idea as well as their own hesitations. Danica has feelings for Andreios (Rei), her best friend, a crow and the leader of the Royal Flight and the highest commander in the avian army. Zane also has a relationship with the head of his palace guard, a white viper named Adelina. But over the course of the novel Zane and Danica grow fond of each other and eventually fall in love, but not before Adelina joins up with Karl, a member of the Royal Flight, to end the union between Zane and Danica. Adelina accidentally kills Zane’s mother and while attempting to assassinate Danica, who is critically wounded. However, she survives while Zane stays at her side. Their love continues from Zane's view, in Snakecharm."
2275,The House with a Clock in Its Walls,horror," The book begins when the recently orphaned Lewis Barnavelt moves to the (fictional) town of New Zebedee, Michigan, to live with his mysterious uncle Jonathan Barnavelt. Jonathan turns out to be a mediocre, though well-intentioned, wizard, while his next-door neighbor and good friend, Florence Zimmermann, is a far more powerful good witch. Jonathan's house was previously owned by Isaac and Selenna Izard, a sinister couple who had dedicated their lives to evil magic, and plotted to bring about the end of the world. Before dying, Isaac constructed the titular clock that he hid somewhere inside the walls of the house, where it eternally ticks, still attempting to pull the world into the magical alignment, which would permit him to destroy it. Lewis manages to befriend a local boy named Tarby, who is everything he is not—popular, athletic, thin, and so on—but the two soon begin to drift apart. Lewis tries to win Tarby back by demonstrating how to raise the dead in the local cemetery on Halloween but only succeeds in releasing Selenna from her tomb. An escalating series of encounters with the sorceress' ghost builds to a final confrontation in the basement of Jonathan's house, where Lewis must summon up his courage and prevent her from finishing her husband's work and bringing on Doomsday. As the story ends, Lewis announces that he has found a new friend, a girl named Rose Rita Pottinger."
2276,Twilight Watch,horror," Among us live the Others. They are humans who can enter the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists alongside our real world, and gain unnatural powers from it. As long as they are in the Twilight, Others are drained of their life essence and may be consumed if they remain in it for too long. Others are made up of two distinct groups- the Light Others and Dark Others. A long time ago, the Light and Dark others fought a fierce battle in which neither side could win. In the end, both sides signed a Great Treaty- a set of laws which would govern them and the use of powers. Light Others created Night Watch, to ensure that the Dark Others wouldn't break the Treaty while Dark Others created Day Watch, to watch the Light Others as well. Both sides answer to the Inquisition&mdash;an organisation which ensures that neither of the two sides become too powerful. The book is separated into three novellas: Anton Gorodetsky is assigned by Gesser to investigate mysterious warning letters sent to both the Watches and the Inquisition. In the letters, a powerful Great Light Other promises a human that they will turn him into an 'Other', which the human deeply desires. However, as far as the Others are concerned this is impossible and as such, the Light Other is in danger because refusal to fulfill this human's request means that he or she will dematerialise in the Twilight. Anton is assigned the case and goes to the Assol, a rich district in Moscow where the letters came from. Vampire Kostya Saushkin from the Day Watch has also been assigned to the case, along with Edgar and Vitezislav from the Inquisition. Anton discovers that the human is a 60-year old businessman, the son of Gesser. The four confront Gesser about making the promise to turn his son into an Other but Gesser denies even knowing his son was alive. It is then revealed that his son is a potential Other for whom Gesser claims the right to initiate. It is revealed later in the book that the witch, Arina, used the book of Fuaran to transform Gesser's son into an Other. Anton joins his wife Svetlana (who left the Night Watch), her mother, and their daughter (Nadya) on a vacation in a remote area. Whilst there, he learns an incident where werewolves tried attacked two human children but who were saved by a mysterious woman living in the forest. Anton magically reads the older girl's memory, and notices that she saw a book titled ""Fuaran"" on the shelf. Anton can hardly believe it, as Fuaran is a legendary and extremely powerful artifact, believed to be lost ages ago or maybe never to have existed at all. According to stories, the book, written by an ancient witch (named Fuaran) contains a spell able to turn an ordinary human into an Other. Anton finds the witch's cottage and the witch, Arina, who turns out to be level 1 or higher, but not Fuaran. Instead, all Anton finds is a book about the legend of Fuaran which is co-authored by Arina. The book explains how Fauran discovered how to raise the power of an Other, and grant a human the powers of an Other. According to the book, the average magical temperature of the world was 97 degrees, while humans had a magical temperature of 97 or higher. Their warmth is fed into their surroundings, while the Others have a magical temperature under 97, and thus soak up the 'warmth' that surrounded them. The lower an Others magical temperature, the more they soaked up. Seventh level Others had a magical temperature of about 90, while Others without Classification where in the 40s. The rarest type of other is one who had no magical temperature at all, a Zero Other, who's power was near limitless due to the fact they only absorbed magic. After a talk with Svetlana, Anton discovers Nadya is an absolute Zero Other. Later, as Anton is relaxing in a hammock, he opens his eyes to find Edgar (an Inquisitor) standing over him. Edgar explains to Anton that Arina was wanted for questioning. In turns out the witch played a major role in a joint Watch experiment to create the perfect socialist state in the 20s. Arina was meant to put a potion in the bread that, over time, would cause whoever ate it to fully believe in newly arising government. Instead, all the subjects were turned quickly to the cause, which lead to the downfall of the government and the death of nearly all the subjects, supposedly due to the Arina's intentional sabotage. Confronted by Anton and Edgar, Arina dives into the fourth level of the twilight, where it takes time before the pair manage to follow her, only to find that she had escaped. Edgar and Anton return to the real world and decide that it would not be smart to search a Higher Others house, as Arina had proven herself to be. Having lost their target, the duo split ways, Edgar to get backup in order to find the witch and Anton to return to his family. Once back home Sveta and Anton learn that while Sveta's mother was out in the forest with their daughter, her 'old friend' took their daughter for a walk. Sveta and Anton knew instantly it was Arina, and through magical means contacted her. The Inquisition had erected a dome to stop the witch from escaping, and she was holding Nadya hostage with demands that they find her a means to escape. After Sveta sends out magical means to search for Nadya, which nearly blew Anton away, and discovers nothing, the werewolves, who had felt Sveta's power and were afraid she would come after them, showed up. It turned out to be a man in his twenties with three children. They admitted having seen where Arina took Nadya and agreed that as long as they were pardoned for hunting those children, they would help track down and fight Arina. In the end, after a battle between Arina and a very angry Sveta, Nadya is saved, and with no deaths. Sveta, who traveled to Arina via the fifth level of the twilight, seemed changed, as though she had a new understanding on life. After forcing Arina to agree not to hurt any human or other unless in self-defense, Sveta agreed to help her find a means to leave. Anton later traveled to Moscow in order to talk to Gesar, at which point Gesar received a phone call, asking him to go to the witches hut, where Anton had only just been. After traveling there with Anton through magical means, they meet Kostya, Edgar, Zabulon and Svetlana. Vitezoslav's ashes have been found in a hidden room with no indication of who could have killed him, except that it would have to be someone powerful, as Vitezoslav was a Higher Vampire. At first, they suspect Arina. However, it soon turns out that the Other who killed Vitezoslav and took the book is Kostya, who himself became a Higher Vampire after drinking a blood cocktail made from donors in order to raise a vampire to this max potential (a mix of blood from 12 donors). Originally, Vitezoslav found the book and phoned Edgar, who didn't believe the vampire had found the actual book of Fuaran. But Kostya wasn't convinced the book was a fake and join Vitezoslav at the hut. The Inquisitor wanted to see if the book actually worked and tried it on Kostya, using his cocktail of a blood mixture made from 12 donors, increasing his powers exponentially, after which Kostya challenged Vitezoslav to a vampire duel. The loser of such a duel is ashed. His ultimate goal is to travel to the International Space Station and read the book while looking at the Earth from orbit (the spell of Fuaran works on everyone in the caster's range of sight), turning all humans into Others, so at last he will not be different from the rest. All but Kostya realize that this will be a disaster - ""you step on someone's foot in a tram, he curses at you; now he can incinerate you."" Also, what most Others do not realize is that it is, in fact, humans who emit magical energy. The Others absorb it more than they emit, allowing them to use it. The magic level of an Other depends on the absorb/emit ratio. There were several ""zero"" Others in history: Jesus (Yehoshua), Merlin, and Anton and Svetlana's daughter. Their power is nearly unlimited as all they do is absorb magic. If Kostya manages to turn all humans into Others, the amount of magic energy available will drastically decrease. To demonstrate the effectiveness of ""Fuaran"" to Anton, he uses it on a human, turning him into a low-level Other. What neither Kostya nor Anton realized at the moment was that Anton was affected too - as he was standing right in front of Kostya - turning him into a mage without classification (Gesser/Zabulon/Sveta's level).Kostya makes it to the Baikonur Cosmodrome and mind-controls the humans there to suit him up for the rocket launch. Anton catches up and confronts him, with Gesar, Zabulon, and Edgar all linked to his mind, and feeding him energy from everyone they have the right to leach it from. Each is telling him to use a different destructive spell on the vampire. They realize that Kostya is not planning to steal a rocket, as not even the Higher Vampire is capable of launching a rocket into orbit by himself. He is instead planning to open a portal to the space station. As a precaution, he is still putting on a spacesuit. However, when Kostya was about to open the portal, Anton took all the energy channeled into him by Gesar, Zabulon, and Edgar and spent it to create a shield around himself in order to shield his thoughts from Kostya. What Anton did not want the vampire to realize was that because Kostya was an Other, an Other without classification to boot, he would not be able to perform any magic in the vast emptiness of space. There would be no energy there from which he could draw on, in space he was separated from the source of all Others energy. Kostya, assuming the shield was put up because Anton was afraid and wanted to protect himself from harm, expressed his surprise at such an act of cowardice and opened the portal. Only when the vampire stepped through it did Anton relax - the threat was over. It takes thousands of calculations to put a rocket into orbit. He knew that Kostya could not possibly calculate the exact position of the station. The portal deposited Kostya into orbit, leaving him to float in his spacesuit, unable to perform any magic. He could not make a corrective teleport into the space station, he could not open a portal back to the planet. He could only remain in orbit as that orbit decayed and he ended up burning up in the atmosphere upon re-entry, along with the book. With the death of Kostya and others in the recent past, The Day Watch in Moscow is down to one Higher Level Magician (Zavulon) while The Night watch in Moscow has four (Gesar/Olga/Sveta/Anton)."
2277,Parasite Eve,horror," Mitochondria are the ""energy factories"" of biological cells. It is thought that they were originally separate organisms, and a symbiotic relationship between them and early cellular life has evolved into their present position as cell organelles with no independent existence (see endosymbiotic theory). The novel's plot supposes that mitochondria, which are inherited through the female line of descent, form the dispersed body of an intelligent conscious life-form, dubbed Eve, which has been waiting throughout history and evolution for the right conditions when mitochondrial life can achieve its true potential and take over from eukaryotic life-forms (i.e. humans and similar life) by causing a child to be born that can control its own genetic code. Eve is able to control people's minds and bodies by signaling to the mitochondria in their bodies. She can cause certain thoughts to occur to them and also make them undergo spontaneous combustion. The conditions Eve has waited for have arrived; she has found the perfect host in the body of Kiyomi Nagishima. At the start of the book, Eve is the mitochondria in Kiyomi's body. She causes Kiyomi to crash her car; Kiyomi survives but is brain dead. Kiyomi's husband is Toshiaki, a research assistant teaching and researching biological science. Eve influences Toshiaki and a doctor to ensure that one of Kiyomi's kidneys is transplanted into the teenage girl Mariko Anzai as an organ donation. As part of Kiyomi's body, the kidney is also a part of Eve; this prepares Mariko to be a suitable host for giving birth to mitochondrial life, as her immune system would otherwise rebel. Eve influences Toshiaki to grow some of Kiyomi's liver cells in his lab in sufficient quantities to provide Eve with an independent body, he thinks that he is doing this as an experiment using different cultures of the liver cells. Forming some of the cells into a body, Eve possesses Toshiaki's assistant Sachiko Asakura and intermittently takes control of Asakura to work upon the cultures. Eventually, she takes control of Asakura during a conference presentation speech and announces her presence. Leaving Asakura's body, she returns to the lab. Toshiaki pursues her, and she rapes him in the form of Kiyomi to capture some of his sperm, which she uses to fertilize an egg of her own production. Moving to the hospital, she implants this egg in Mariko's womb. The egg develops into a child that is born almost immediately. Eve anticipates that her child will be able to consciously change its genetic code, thus being an infinitely adaptable ""perfect life form"" capable of replacing humanity and similar life-forms. Mariko's body will be host to a new race of these life-forms. The experiment fails, since Toshiaki's sperm carry a separate line of ""male"" mitochondria (inherited through sperm) that will be wiped out in the new order; these resist the change by fighting for control of the child's body, causing it to switch between male and female forms. The child dies; Toshiaki also dies, merging his body with the child's to control the bursts of psychokinetic-like power it gives out in its death throes that threaten to kill many people. In the novel's epilogue, it is revealed that some samples of the Eve cells in Toshiaki's lab survived. Fortunately, they are destroyed shortly after being found."
2278,Room 13,horror," Fliss Morgan has a nightmare on the night before her school trip to Whitby, and upon arriving in the seaside town a series of strange events begin to occur. At midnight each night, a Room 13 appears in the Crow's Nest Hotel. And one of Fliss's classmates, Ellie-May, starts acting very strangely. Fliss, Lisa, Gary and David decide to join forces to stop a nightmare thats come true."
2279,Reliquary,horror," The story picks up where the epilogue of Relic left off. Two headless skeletons are found in the Humboldt Kill. When further decapitated bodies follow, there is suspicion of a second Mbwun monster. Major characters from the original book team up with new ones to solve the puzzle. The mystery soon leads underground to the Mole people, and even deeper towards enigmatic beings called the Wrinklers. Soon, they realize that the Wrinklers are led by Frock, who has taken a modified version of the Mbwun plant to regain the use of his legs. He also gave the drug to the people who were to become the Wrinklers. After going underground, the group kills them with an explosion, vitamin D infused water and a flood."
2280,The Silence of the Lambs,horror," The novel takes place in February 1983. Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that draws up psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is to present a questionnaire to brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic sociopath, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of brutal murders. Crawford's real intention, however, is to try and solicit Lecter's assistance in the hunt for a serial killer dubbed ""Buffalo Bill"", whose modus operandi involves kidnapping overweight women, starving them for about three or four days, and then killing and skinning them, before dumping the bodies in nearby rivers. The nickname was started by Kansas City Homicide, as a joke that ""he likes to skin his humps."" Throughout the investigation, Starling periodically returns to Lecter in search of information, and the two form a strange relationship in which he offers her cryptic clues in return for information about her unhappy childhood as an orphan. When Bill's sixth victim is found in West Virginia, Starling helps Crawford perform the autopsy. Starling finds a moth pupa in the throat of the victim, and just as Lecter predicted, she has been scalped. Triangular patches of skin have also been taken from her shoulders. Furthermore, autopsy reports indicate that Bill killed her within four days of her capture, much faster than his earlier victims. On the basis of Lecter's prediction, Starling believes that he knows who Buffalo Bill really is. She also asks why she was sent to fish for information on Buffalo Bill without being told she was doing so; Crawford explains that if she had had an agenda, Lecter would never have spoken up. Starling takes the pupa to the Smithsonian, where it is eventually identified as the Black Witch Moth, which would not naturally occur where the victim was found. In Tennessee, Catherine Baker Martin, daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, is kidnapped. Within six hours, her blouse is found on the roadside, slit up the back: Buffalo Bill's calling card. Crawford is advised that no less than the President of the United States has expressed ""intense interest"" in the case, and that a successful rescue is preferable. Crawford estimates they have three days before Catherine is killed. Starling is sent to Lecter with the offer of a deal: if he assists in Catherine's rescue and Buffalo Bill's capture, he will be transferred out of the asylum, something he was continually longed for. However, Lecter expresses skepticism at the genuineness of the offer. After Starling leaves, Lecter reminisces on the past, recalling a conversation with Benjamin Raspail, a former patient whom he later murdered. Raspail, during that therapy session, explained the death of a sailor named Klaus at the hands of Raspail's jealous former lover, Jame Gumb, who then used Klaus' skin to make an apron. Raspail also revealed that Gumb had an epiphany upon watching a moth hatch. Lecter's ruminations are interrupted when Dr. Frederick Chilton - the asylum's administrator and Lecter's nemesis - steps in. A listening device allowed him to record Starling's offer, and Chilton has found out that Crawford's deal is a lie. He offers one of his own: If Lecter reveals Buffalo Bill's identity, he will indeed get a transfer to another asylum, but only if Chilton gets credit for getting the information from him. Lecter insists that he'll only give the information to Senator Martin in person, in Tennessee. Chilton agrees. Unknown to Chilton, Lecter has previously hidden under his tongue a paperclip and some parts of a pen, both of which were mistakenly given to him by untrained orderlies over his many years at the asylum. He fashions the pen pieces and paperclip into an improvised lockpick, which he later uses to pick his handcuff locks. In Tennessee, Lecter toys with Senator Martin briefly, enjoying the woman's anguish, but eventually gives her some information about Buffalo Bill: his name is William ""Billy"" Rubin, and he has suffered from elephant ivory anthrax, a knifemaker's disease. He also provides an accurate physical description. The name, however, is a red herring: bilirubin is a pigment in human bile and a chief coloring agent in human feces, which the forensic lab compares to the color of Chilton's hair. Starling tries one last time to get information from Lecter as he is about to be transferred. He offers a final clue - ""we covet what we see everyday"" - and demands to hear her worst memory. Starling reveals that, after her father's death, she was sent to live with a cousin on a sheep ranch. One night, she discovered the farmer slaughtering the spring lambs, and fled in terror. The farmer caught and sent her to an orphanage, where she spent the rest of her childhood. Lecter thanks her, and the two share a brief moment of connection before Chilton forces her to leave. Later on, she deduces from Lecter's clue that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim. Shortly after this, Lecter escapes by killing and eviscerating his guards, using one of their faces as a mask to fool paramedics. Starling continues her search for Buffalo Bill, eventually tracking him down and killing him and rescuing Catherine. She is made a full-fledged FBI agent, and receives a congratulatory telegram from Lecter, who hopes that ""the lambs have stopped screaming""."
2281,Hornblower and the Atropos,horror," On a December day in 1805, Hornblower travels with his very pregnant wife and their son to London on a canal boat via the Thames and Severn Canal and the Thames. He is excited about getting his new orders and obtaining his first command as a post-captain. On the canal, the assistant boatman becomes incapacitated through drink, thus allowing Hornblower the opportunity to learn much of canal boat operation when he volunteers to take the man's place at the boat's helm. Upon their arrival in London, Hornblower assumes command of the Atropos. His first assignment is a unique one: to organise Admiral Nelson's funeral. The Battle of Trafalgar had just taken place, in which Nelson was shot by a musket and killed. The whole nation is in mourning and all eyes are on the funeral. The funeral consists of a procession on the Thames between Greenwich Pier and Whitehall Steps, during which the ceremonial barge conveying Nelson's coffin springs a leak and the crew, after frantic bailing, barely managing to unload the coffin before sinking. Once Hornblower finishes with the funeral, he is presented to his King at Court. He is informed that the king's nephew, a German prince driven out of his principality by Napoleon, is to be one of his midshipmen on the Atropos. Hornblower's treatment of the prince is a continuing sub-plot. Hornblower is then sent to collect from Gibraltar three Sinhalese pearl divers and their quarrelsome salvage master to recover treasure from a sunken British ship, the Speedwell, which went down in Marmorice Bay in Turkey carrying a fortune in silver and gold - the pay chests of the British Army in Egypt. Hornblower is given the salvage operation. The Turks are already aware of the presence of the gold, and in the weeks Atropos is present in Marmorice become aware of the supposedly secret recovery operation. They bring a Turkish warship into the bay, and man a previously deserted fort, trapping Atropos. When the Turks demand all the money Hornblower has so far recovered, he puts them off until the following morning. In the middle of the night, he makes a daring escape by an extremely perilous route, avoiding both ship and fort, and outsmarting the Turks. Following Hornblower's delivery of the treasure at Gibraltar, he helps capture a Spanish ship, the Castilla, and makes his way into a Sicilian port for repairs. He does such a fine job that his ship attracts the notice of the King of The Two Sicilies. The British government transfers the vessel to the Sicilian navy in return for the King's allegiance. Hornblower makes his way back to England, only to find both of his children mortally ill with smallpox. *Other books in the series refer to Hornblower capturing the Castilla as a lieutenant, but he is a captain in this book, which actually describes the battle. Confusingly, the obscure short story ""The Hand of Destiny"" (1940) also describes an entirely different action featuring Lt. Hornblower capturing Castilla. Forester, apparently, would retcon Hornblower's history, overwriting the events of his short stories in subsequent novel-length works. ""The fact that he discouraged the re-publication of the short stories is an indicator that he gave the novels' events preference."" sv:Hornblower på Atropos"
2282,The Green Mile,horror," A first-person narrative told by Paul Edgecombe, the novel switches between Paul as an old man in the Georgia Pines nursing home sharing his story with fellow resident Elaine Connelly in 1996, and his time in 1932 as the block supervisor of the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, nicknamed ""The Green Mile"" for the color of the floor's linoleum. This year marks the arrival of John Coffey, a 6'8"" powerfully built black man who has been convicted of raping and murdering two small white girls. During his time on the Mile, John interacts with fellow prisoners Eduard ""Del"" Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist, rapist, and murderer, and William Wharton (""Billy the Kid"" to himself, ""Wild Bill"" to the guards), a wild-acting and dangerous multiple murderer who is determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. Other inhabitants include Arlen Bitterbuck, a Native American convicted of killing a man in a fight over a pair of boots (also the first character to die in the electric chair); Arthur Flanders, a real estate executive who killed his father to perpetrate insurance fraud, and whose sentence is eventually commuted to life imprisonment; and Mr. Jingles, a mouse, whom Del teaches various tricks. Paul and the other guards are antagonized throughout the book by Percy Wetmore, a sadistic guard who enjoys irritating the prisoners. The other guards have to be civil to him despite their dislike of him because he is the nephew of the Governor's wife. When Percy is offered a position at the nearby Briar Ridge psychiatric hospital as a secretary, Paul thinks they are finally rid of him. However, Percy refuses to leave until he is allowed to supervise an execution, so Paul hesitantly allows him to run Del's. Percy deliberately avoids soaking a sponge in brine that is supposed to be tucked inside the electrode cap to ensure a quick death in the electric chair. When the switch is thrown, the current causes Del to catch fire in the chair and suffer a prolonged, agonizing demise. Over time, Paul realizes that John possesses inexplicable healing abilities, which he uses to cure Paul's urinary tract infection and revive Mr. Jingles after Percy stamps on him. Simple-minded and shy, John is very empathic and sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others around him. One night, the guards drug Wharton, then put a straitjacket on Percy and lock him in the padded restraint room so that they can smuggle John out of the prison and take him to the home of Warden Hal Moores. Hal's wife Melinda has a deadly brain tumor, which John cures. When they return to the Mile, John passes the ""disease"" from Melinda into Percy, causing him to go mad and shoot Wharton to death before falling into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. Percy is committed to Briar Ridge. Paul's long-simmering suspicions that John is innocent are proven right when he discovers that it was actually William Wharton who raped and killed the twin sisters and that John was trying to revive them. Later John tells Paul what he saw when Wharton grabbed his arm one time, how Wharton had coerced the sisters to be silent using their love for each other. Paul is unsure how to help John, but John tells him not to worry, as he is ready to die anyway, wanting to escape the cruelty of the world. John's execution is the last one in which Paul participates. He introduces Mr. Jingles to Elaine just before the mouse dies, having lived 64 years past these events, and explains that those healed by John gained an unnaturally long lifespan. Elaine dies shortly after, never learning how Paul's wife died in his arms immediately after they suffered a bus accident, and that he then saw John Coffey's ghost watching him from an overpass. Paul seems to be all alone, now 104 years old, and wondering how much longer he will live."
2283,Death's Shadow,horror," The book starts about six months after the events of Demon Apocalypse concluded, and is narrated by Bec, who is living staying with Dervish. This novel reveals more information about Beranabus, Kernel, Grubbs, and Bec, as well as the continuing search for information on using the on the great mystical weapon, Kah-Gash of which is sealed inside Grubbs, Kernel and Bec. More information on the mysterious foe known as 'the Shadow' (seen at the climax of Demon Apocalypse) is also discovered."
2284,American Gods,horror," The central premise of the novel is that gods and mythological creatures exist because people believe in them. Immigrants to the United States brought with them dwarves, elves, leprechauns, and other spirits and gods. However, the power of these mythological beings has diminished as people's beliefs wane. New gods have arisen, reflecting America's obsessions with media, celebrity, technology, and drugs, among others. The book follows the adventures of ex-convict Shadow, who is released from prison a few days earlier than planned due to the death of his wife, Laura, in a car accident. He discovers at the funeral that the car crashed because Laura was performing oral sex on Shadow's late friend Robbie, who was driving. Even before learning of the death of Robbie, who was to give Shadow a job, Shadow has been repeatedly offered work as a bodyguard by a conman called Mr. Wednesday. Shadow accepts Mr. Wednesday's offer and they both travel across America visiting Wednesday's unusual colleagues and acquaintances. Gradually, it is revealed that Wednesday is an incarnation of Odin the All-Father (the name Wednesday is derived from ""Odin's--Wōden's--day""), who in his current guise is recruiting American manifestations of the Old Gods of ancient mythology, whose powers have waned as their believers have decreased in number, to participate in an epic battle against the New American Gods, manifestations of modern life and technology (for example, the Internet, media, and modern means of transport), who are controlling a Black hat Secret Services organization (according to the goddess Eostre, these Men in Black exist because ""everyone knows they must exist""). Shadow's wife Laura comes back in the form of a sapient animated corpse due to a special golden coin Shadow had acquired and placed on her coffin at her burial, not knowing the effect it would have. Mythological characters prominently featured in the book include Mr Wednesday (Odin), Low-Key Lyesmith (Loki Lie-Smith), Mad Sweeney (Suibhne), Czernobog, the Zorya, the Norns, Mr Nancy (Anansi), Easter (Eostre), Mama Ji (Kali), Whiskey Jack (Wisakedjak) Mr Ibis (Thoth), Mr Jacquel (Anubis), Horus, and Bast. In addition to the numerous figures from real-world myths, a few characters from The Sandman and its spinoffs make brief cameos in the book. Other mythological characters featured in the novel are not divine, but are legendary or folk heroes, such as Johnny Appleseed and djinns. Shadow himself is implied to be the Norse god Baldr, which is confirmed in the follow-up novella, ""Monarch of the Glen"". In the Author's preferred text edition, Loki tells Shadow's wife Laura that when it was all over, he was going to sharpen a stick of mistletoe, go down to the ash tree and ram it between his eyes – implying that Shadow was indeed Baldr, as mistletoe was the only thing that could harm Baldr. During a live interview and spoken word session held at UCLA on Thursday, February 4, 2010, Gaiman revealed Shadow's identity as ""Baldur Moon"", in response to a fan question. The story features, in its most erotic chapter, a succubus-like re-invention of the Queen of Sheba, who while posing as a prostitute literally swallows a man through her sexual organs. ""Bilquis"", as she is called here, is later killed by one of the New Gods. Sexuality as a rule plays a part in the plot and subplots; Mr. Wednesday uses his magical powers to bed several young virgins on the journey across America (""And I need her, not as an end in herself, but to wake me up a little. Even King David knew that there is one easy prescription to get warm blood flowing through an old frame: take one virgin, call me in the morning."") while Shadow is seduced in his dreams by a humanoid version of Bast, Egyptian goddess of fertility. When the New Gods murder Wednesday – thus galvanizing the Old Gods into action – Shadow obeys Wednesday's order by holding his vigil. This is accomplished by re-enacting the act performed by Odin of hanging from a ""World Tree"" while pierced by a spear. Shadow eventually dies and visits the land of the dead, where he is guided by Thoth and judged by Anubis. Eostre later brings him back to life, obeying orders that she does not fully understand. During the period between life and death, Shadow learns that he is Wednesday's son, conceived as part of the deity's plans. He realises that Odin and Loki have been working a ""two-man con."" They orchestrated Shadow's birth, his meeting of Loki in disguise as his prison cellmate ""Low Key Lyesmith"" (Loki Liesmith) and Laura's death. Loki, secretly ""Mr. World"", the leader of the New Gods, orders Odin's murder so that the battle caused between the New and Old Gods will serve as a sacrifice to Odin, restoring his power, while Loki would feed on the chaos of the battle. Shadow arrives at Rock City, site of the climactic battle, just after the battle had started but in time to stop it, explaining that both sides had nothing to gain and everything to lose, with Odin and Loki the only winners. America is a ""bad place for Gods"", Shadow tells them, and recommends they go home and make the best of what they can get. The Gods depart, Odin's ghost fades, and Loki is impaled on a branch of the World Tree by Laura, who finally dies after Shadow takes the magical coin from her. In an extensive subplot, Shadow follows a clue given to him by the Hindu god Ganesha to discover that a man called Hinzelmann, who had been Shadow's neighbor for a time, is a kobold who annually sacrifices children to empower himself and prevent the small town of Lakeside from succumbing to the economic decay that has claimed many similar towns. Shadow confronts Hinzelmann, who is then shot by a local policeman whose father Hinzelmann had previously killed to keep his secret. After this, Shadow attempts to reconnect with Sam Black Crow, a girl of Native-American descent whom he had met several times in the past. Unnoticed by her and her girlfriend, he slips a bouquet into Sam's hand and leaves. It is not clear why the two lovers don't see him, though it is possible that Shadow is inadvertently ""backstage"", a state of existence only Gods can enter. Following the final confrontation between the gods, Shadow visits Iceland, where he meets another incarnation of Odin who was created by the belief of the original settlers of Iceland, and is therefore much closer to the Odin of mythology than Wednesday is. Shadow accuses Odin of Wednesday's actions, whereupon Odin replies that ""He was me, yes. But I am not him."" After a short talk, Shadow gives Odin Wednesday's glass eye, which Odin places in a leather bag as a keepsake. Shadow performs a simple sleight-of-hand coin trick, which delights Odin enough that he asks for a repeat performance. Shadow then flips the golden coin towards the sun and, without waiting to see if it ever lands, walks down the hill and away."
2285,After the Hole,horror," At an English public school, five students - Liz (the narrator of many flash backs), Mike (the protagonist of most of the student's time in the titular ""hole""), Alex, Frankie and Geoff - are lured into an abandoned cellar by a malevolent prankster named Martyn. All is well for the three days, in which they socialise and get to know each other better; but when three days pass and Martyn is nowhere to be seen, the group must face the possibility that they are trapped indefinitely. Flash forwards of a ""dream summer"" section punctuate the story, narrated by Liz, reveal that most of them got out of the hole (Liz interacts awkwardly with Alex at one point) and Mike and Liz are now living together while Liz writes a book based on everything that happened within the Hole. Liz also keeps tapes of interviews with a girl named ""Lisa"" who talks of her romantic relationship with Martyn. In the Hole, they become increasingly desperate for food, beginning to face up to the fact that Martyn's experiment was really to play God with all of them. Mike and Liz meet at night in the small bathroom section and talk a lot. At one point Mike believes he sees the keyhole of the trapdoor locking them in the Hole ""winking"" at him, but dismisses this on grounds that he is hallucinating, or so he thinks. The water supplies go off. Mike tells Liz his experience with the ""winking"" keyhole and from this she decides that Martyn must have bugged the main room but not the bathroom area where Mike and Liz have been talking. Liz formulates a plan to test their theory, by saying how lucky they are to have light, and see if Martyn turns off the electricity. They then sleep together. Liz follows through with it, and everything goes to plan. The electricity goes off. Liz tells the others that a friend of hers knows about the prank and if she doesn't return he will come and rescue them. Everyone rejoices, but Mike is suspicious. Lisa's story goes on in parallel to this, via the tapes Liz has made of ""interviews"" she had with Lisa. On the same day Liz plots this, Lisa goes over to Martyn's house and tries to break up with him. Martyn barely listens and, in anger, rapes Lisa. After this, he walks out and supposedly never returns. Lisa goes into his office, searching for him, and sees the tapes of The Hole. She realises everything that has gone on and goes to the Hole, rescuing everyone. At this point, Liz's narrative ends and there is an extremely ambiguous epilogue written by Dr. Phillippa Horwood, who casts the whole of Liz's testimony in doubt by saying that Michael (""Mike"") Rollins died on the sixteenth day in the Hole, that Liz was the ""sole survivor"" and that no records of the infamous Martyn exist, heavily implying that Liz created Martyn in order to place blame on someone other than herself. It is also heavily implied - but never actually decided - that Liz and Lisa are the same person."
2286,The Vampire's Assistant,horror," The story begins with the main protagonist of the last adventure, Darren Shan, and his guardian Larten Crepsley moving in for a drink of blood from an ex-scout. Darren is beginning to cope with life as a vampire's assistant though he still refuses to drink human blood and hates his companion, Mr. Crepsley, for turning him into a half vampire which has led him to faking his own death. Although he is far stronger than any human and is still finding it hard to adjust to his new life. His unchallenged strength causes him to be alone, as he can not make any human friends without harming them. Larten teaches Darren all about vampirism and sometimes is shown to regret blooding Darren and decides to take him to the Cirque du Freak. He makes good friends with Evra Von, the snake boy. When they meet a young boy called Sam Grest who loves pickled onions, things begin to look up...and down. A local ecological preserver hippie known as Reggie Veggie (RV) befriends the trio of boys, but soon begins to learn about the animals that the Little People are feeding on animals stolen from farmers. Darren soon begins to worry Reggie, so he goes to tell Mr. Tall but becomes preoccupied on his way because Truska, the bearded lady, put together a new set of clothes for Darren. Darren must then do Evra's chores as he is tending to his sick snake, and forgets about telling Mr. Tall about Reggie that day. A night of performance comes, as Mr. Tall finally gets wind of Reggie from Darren, but doubts that he can do any damage. But the Cirque did move along from that place, because of Reggie's threatening to call the police. Darren, who still refuses to drink human blood, decides not to perform and sets off. He hears a sound coming from the wolfman's cage, and decides to investigate. It was Reggie Veggie who was trying to free the wolf-man, but has no idea how violent the wolf man can be. After biting off Reggie's arms, the wolf-man sets off after a figure behind Darren, who has dropped a bag of clothes and onions which belong to Sam. Darren learns he was going to smuggle himself away with the circus. Eventually Sam is killed by the wolf man. While standing over Sam's corpse, Mr. Crepsley convinces Darren to drink Sam's blood, therefore ""preserving"" some of Sam's soul, including his love for pickled onions, as decided from a discussion of vampirism between Crepsley and Darren. fa:دستیار یک شبح hu:A vámpír inasa no:Vampyrens assistent fi:Vampyyrin oppipoika zh:鬼不理的助手"
2287,Blood and Gold,horror," The book begins with an ancient vampire of Nordic descent awaking after being frozen in a block of ice for hundreds of years. The vampire, Thorne, meets Marius de Romanus and inquires about Marius' past. Marius then provides his life story. As a young Roman patrician, Marius was abducted by druids who were trying to find a replacement for their ""god of the grove"" - a vampire, kept locked inside a chamber underneath a tree, who took on the role of a god in a druidic religion. Marius does not want to receive the powers of the dying god, but is given them nonetheless. Unable to face a life imprisoned in a tree, Marius escapes from the druids (one of whom is Mael). He embarks on a trip to Egypt, where he learns of Akasha and Enkil, the Mother and Father or Those Who Must Be Kept - the progenitors of all vampire-kind. He takes them back to Rome with him after learning that if they die then every other vampire in the world will suffer the same fate. He falls in love with a mortal woman, Pandora, and turns her into a vampire. They live together happily for a long time, although they argue frequently. One day, their house is attacked by a group of vampires who want to know the secrets of Those Who Must Be Kept. Though they destroy these vampires, the attack leads to an argument between the two and Marius, filled with anger, leaves Pandora. Marius then returns to Rome, where he creates a life for himself as a socialite, fraternizing with mortals and practicing painting. It is here that he meets Mael and Avicus, the latter of which is a former god of the grove - a vampire older than Marius, but who does not seem to know his own power. There is still much enmity between Mael and Marius, and Marius asks them to leave. They do so, but remain in the city of Rome. Marius does not mind this, as they keep the city free from other blood-drinkers who may pry the secrets of Those Who Must Be Kept from his mind. Marius continues to live this way even as the Roman Empire splits, with its capital city moving to Constantinople. Eventually, Marius, Mael, and Avicus leave Rome when it is sacked by barbarians. They travel to Constantinople, taking with them the Mother and Father. There they meet a powerful vampire named Eudoxia, who wants Marius to put Those Who Must Be Kept into her care. After praying to Those Who Must Be Kept for an answer, he relents just far enough to allow Eudoxia to see them. After a series of violent conflicts, Marius angrily drags Eudoxia back down into the shrine and casts her at Akasha, who suddenly awakens to destroy her. Realizing that he cannot live with other vampires due to his custody of the Divine Parents, Marius elects to return to Italy. He becomes disheartened by the horrors of the Black Death and sleeps for hundreds of years. He awakes again during the Renaissance and travels all around Italy, visiting Venice and Florence, admiring the art and culture. In Rome he meets the vampire Santino, who claims that Marius is living in sin by not serving Satan. Marius threatens him and tells Santino to never come near him again. Marius decides to make his home in Venice, and he establishes himself as an amateur painter. His house is set up as a place where young boys can come and improve themselves, preparing to go to university or to become craftsmen. During this time, he also falls in love with the works of Botticelli, whom he briefly considers turning into a vampire. It is in Venice that Marius meets Amadeo (Armand), whom he discovers in a filthy cellar, waiting to become a prostitute in the city's brothels. He purchases the boy from the slave traders and takes him back to his house, where he bathes him and promises him a better life. As the years pass Marius happily continues his life, disappearing occasionally to attend to the Divine Parents. Amadeo grows up, and the two often share a bed. Marius is sorely tempted to give Amadeo the Dark Gift, making him into a vampire, but he stops himself from doing so. When Marius is away looking after the Divine Parents, his house is attacked by the Englishman Lord Harlech who became obsessed with Amadeo after sleeping with him. Amadeo manages to kill Harlech, but sustains several wounds from Harlech's poisoned blade. He slips into a fever. Marius arrives and is told that Amadeo will die as the poison is too strong. Marius turns Amadeo into a vampire in order to prevent the boy from dying. He teaches him to prey only on evildoers in order to save his conscience. Some time after Amadeo becomes a vampire, the house is attacked by a large mob of Satan-worshiping vampires under the leadership of Santino. Marius is burnt and almost killed, but manages to save his own life by jumping into a canal. Nonetheless, he is severely wounded and believes that Amadeo will be killed. He calls a woman named Bianca to his aid. The two have known each other for a number of years and have a close relationship. Marius is too weak to hunt, so he transforms Bianca into a vampire in order to have her help him to recover his strength. The two move to the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept and live there for over a century, where Marius gradually recovers his strength by drinking from Akasha. After Amadeo had transformed, Marius had met with Raymond Gallant, a man from the Talamasca, a group of scholars who found out information about supernatural things, just for information. He hears from him that Pandora is being kept hostage by another vampire and moved around Europe and Russia; so Marius decides to move to Dresden to try meeting with Pandora, whom he still loves. He does not tell Bianca of this. Marius does indeed find Pandora there, but discovers that she does not want to live with him and Bianca and wants to stay with her traveling companion, who was not holding her hostage after all. Marius offers to leave Bianca for Pandora, but Pandora refuses this offer. When Marius sees Bianca the next day, she declares that she is leaving him because she overheard what he said to Pandora. 50 years later, as he is shifting to America, Marius discovers a letter from Pandora offering to live with him if he comes to collect her at a certain place, but it is too late and she is gone. Marius then shelters a young vampire named Lestat, who when playing a song for Akasha on his violin, wakes her up. She comes to him and they drink each other's blood. Enkil is furious and almost crushes Lestat when a shocked Marius saves him. Marius sends Lestat away, thinking that he can pose a danger, but is sad that it is the fourth time he is losing a love. Years later, Marius brings a television into Those Who Must Be Kept's Chapel, for their entertainment. On this they see news, songs, etc. and also The Vampire Lestat's rock guitar music. This, Marius feels, corrupts their minds, and Akasha awakens from her slumber with the evil idea of taking over the world. She destroys Enkil and buries Marius in the ruins of his house, where he lies, injured. Marius lies there trapped, for weeks, but with the Mind Gift informs Lestat that he is in danger, and also asks for help. He is soon found by Pandora, and Santino - whom he tries to kill, but realises that all force would be needed to stop Akasha from her evil deed of taking over the world, killing all males and having a female dominated world with her as the leader. A council is formed and the vampires try to convince Akasha, but she does not listen. Finally, Maharet's (who created Thorne) mute sister Mekare fights with Akasha and destroys her. That is the end of Marius's story through time. The story then moves back to the present day, where Marius and Thorne are at a jungle hideaway with other old and powerful vampires - Amadeo (now going by the name Armand), Santino, Maharet, Mekare, and Pandora. Marius wants justice against Santino for taking Armand away from him, but Maharet refuses to let Marius kill Santino, who is weak. Thorne does not want to accept her decision and so kills Santino himself with the Fire Gift. In penance for his deed, he gives over his eyes to Maharet. de:Blut und Gold es:Sangre y oro fr:Le Sang et l'Or it:Il vampiro Marius pl:Krew i złoto pt:Blood and Gold"
2288,Dolores Claiborne,horror," As the story begins, Dolores Claiborne is in a police interrogation and wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill her wealthy employer, an elderly woman named Vera Donovan whom she has looked after for years. She does, however, confess to the murder of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years before, after finding out that he sexually molested their fourteen year old daughter, Selena. Dolores's ""confession"" develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage, and her relationship with her employer. Unlike many other works by King, there is little focus on the supernatural; the only such event in the book are two telepathic visions, which form a link to King's novel Gerald's Game; although reviewer Sean Piccoli observed the novel otherwise contained ""vintage bone-yard King: the tiny town, the secret lives. Murder and mayhem lurk reliably behind the tranquil veneer."""
2289,Vampire of the Mists,horror," The story concerns Jander Sunstar, an elf vampire who, despite his affliction, attempts to remain as good as possible. On at trip to Waterdeep to drink the blood of patients of a mental hospital there, Jander falls in love with an inmate who introduces herself as Anna. For about one hundred years the immortal vampire visits Anna regularly, and Anna seems to be similarly ageless. Anna begins to become ill, and Jander, afraid of losing her, tries to turn her into a vampire. Anna refuses. In her last moments of life, when Jander asks her what ruined her mind, she answers ""Barovia."" In a rage, Jander kills every last occupant of the asylum, and is transported to the Demiplane of Dread. There, he has his fortune told by a Vistani gypsy before befriending Count Strahd Von Zarovich. The predictions made by the fortune-teller all prove to be true later in the book, sometimes in multiple ways. After a very long period of time spent in Barovia, Jander discovers that the woman he knew as Anna was in truth Tatyana, wife of Strahd's Brother, Sergei, and the woman who drove Strahd to murder his own family. She escaped the castle as it entered the demiplane, but lost her mind in the process. Shocked, Jander bands together with a local cleric and a young thief, to the end of killing Strahd. They fail, though the severe damage they inflict on him forces him to into an extended healing cycle thereby limiting the speed with which he increased in power as a spell-caster. To that end, Jander somewhat succeeded, at least for the time being, and more so prevented Strahd further access to any more of his own knowledge when he walks into the sunlight for his final death."
2290,The Amityville Horror Part II,horror," The Lutz family barely escapes 112 Ocean Ave. While fleeing Amityville, they are attacked, but got away. They arrive at Kathy's mother's house, where they think they are safe. Soon after, George is awoken by a supernatural force. George and Kathy realize that they are being followed. Over the next few days, Kathy and her mother spot Missy playing with Jodie. Events plague the family. They get The Amityville Horror published and have to deal not only with the supernatural, but skeptics and a never ending line of press."
2291,The Cellar,horror," Donna, the book's protagonist, goes on the run with her daughter Sandy when she learns that her ex-husband, who molested Sandy for years, has been released from prison. After a car accident leaves them stranded in the small California coastal town of Malcasa Point, Donna and Sandy cross paths with Judge, a mercenary hired to track down and kill the murderous creature that supposedly haunts a local tourist attraction, the Beast House. Judge's employer, Larry, is an elderly man who had a traumatic encounter with the Beast as a child. Meanwhile, Donna's ex-husband, Roy, follows Donna to Malcasa Point after killing Donna's sister and brother-in-law. Along the way, he also abducts and repeatedly rapes a nine-year-old girl and murders the girl's parents. In the end, Roy, Larry and Judge fall victim to the carnivorous Beasts, several of which roam the underground tunnels beneath the Beast House at night, and Donna and Sandy become prisoners of the murderous Kutch family, the owners of Beast House."
2292,Memnoch the Devil,horror," After stalking and killing Roger, a ruthless but enthrallingly passionate mobster, Lestat is approached by Roger's ghost. Roger's ghost asks him to take care of his daughter Dora, a devout and popular television evangelist, whom he wants to spare from embarrassment. At the same time, Lestat has become increasingly paranoid that he's being stalked by a powerful force. Eventually, Lestat meets the Devil, who calls himself Memnoch. He takes Lestat on a whirlwind tour of Heaven, Hell and retells of the entirety of history from his own point of view in an effort to convince Lestat to join him as God's adversary. In his journey, Memnoch claims he is not evil, but merely working for God by ushering lost souls into Heaven. Lestat is left in confusion, unable to decide whether or not to cast his lot with the Devil. After the tour, Lestat believes himself to have had a major revelation. Among other things, he believes that he has seen Christ's crucifixion and that he has received Saint Veronica's Veil. He has also lost an eye in Hell. He tells his story to Armand, David Talbot and Dora, who have joined him in New York. Dora and Armand are deeply moved upon seeing the veil. Dora takes it and reveals it to the world, triggering a religious movement. Armand goes into the sunlight and immolates himself in order to convince people that a miracle has occurred. At the end of the novel, Lestat and David go to New Orleans. There, Maharet returns Lestat's eye to him, along with a note from Memnoch that reveals Memnoch may have been manipulating Lestat to serve his own agenda. Lestat then loses control of himself and Maharet is forced to chain him in the basement of the St. Elizabeth's convent, which is owned by the vampires, so that he will not hurt himself or others. Although the novel fits into the storyline of The Vampire Chronicles, the vast majority of it consists of Memnoch's account of cosmology and theology. The novel follows up on claims made by David Talbot in The Tale of the Body Thief that God and the Devil are on better terms than most Christians believe. It also reinterprets biblical stories to create a complete history of Earth, Heaven and Hell that fit neatly with the history of vampires given in The Queen of the Damned."
2293,Lasher,horror," The novel begins shortly after the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Rowan Mayfair, recently married to contractor Michael Curry. Michael, feeling betrayed by Rowan, has sunk into a depression helped along by the useless drugs prescribed to him after his close encounter with death. Along comes the sexually adventurous Mona Mayfair, a precocious teenager and powerful witch and Rowan's cousin sharing lines of descent from Julien. She seduces Michael, causing him to snap out of his stupor and renew his vow to find his wife at all costs. He is now convinced that she hasn't gone willingly. And though it was she who spirited her mutant child Lasher away from the house, she is now a prisoner of the monster she has spawned. His first two attempts at impregnating her are failures ending in miscarriage, but he is successful the third time around. As he accompanies her throughout Europe, Rowan manages to send off DNA samples to colleagues in San Francisco. They discover that Lasher is a completely different species, and that Rowan herself has a genetic abnormality, polyploidy, or 92 chromosomes, which was probably what made Lasher's quasi-supernatural birth at all possible in the first place. The dyad returns to America where Lasher sets out to impregnate other female members of the Mayfair family. All attempts are unsuccessful as the women immediately miscarry and hemorrhage to death. Rowan manages to escape Lasher, and after hitchhiking to Louisiana, she collapses in a field and gives birth to Emaleth, a female Taltos. Rowan's last words to Emaleth are to find Michael, which she sets out to do, thinking that Rowan has died. Rowan is found and is rushed to a nearby hospital where she is diagnosed as being in a state of toxic shock. An emergency hysterectomy is performed to save her life, eliminating all chances of her ever giving birth again. She is taken home to Michael where she remains in a deep coma. Much of the book is set into four sections of ""Julien's Story"" which delineates the life of Julien Mayfair and what he has discovered of the entity known as Lasher. Lasher returns to the house to tell Michael and Aaron his story of his past life. Born to Queen Anne of England, the second wife of Henry VIII, and a man from Donnelaith, Lasher is believed to be a saint known as Ashlar, and is quickly taken away by his father to Donnelaith. His father is the son of the Earl of Donnelaith, and from there he is sent to Italy to become a priest. He returns to Scotland after Elizabeth I takes the throne, and is killed there while performing Christmas Mass by followers of the Protestant reformer John Knox. He knows nothing again until Suzanne calls him back into existence. Michael patiently hears Lasher out, and when his story is complete, Michael wastes no time in killing him and burying him under the great oak in the yard. Soon after, he discovers Emaleth in Rowan's room, feeding her the highly nutritious milk from her breasts. This resuscitates Rowan, but upon seeing Emaleth before her, she panics and screams at Michael to kill her. Michael refuses to, so Rowan grabs a gun and shoots her daughter in the head. Rowan immediately realizes what she's done, and crying for her daughter, insists that she be the one to bury her alongside Lasher under the oak tree there. fr:L'Heure des sorcières it:Il demone incarnato nl:Het Heksenkind ru:Лэшер (роман)"
2294,Slawter,horror," The book is set about a year after Lord Loss takes place. When the story takes place Dervish, who has just returned from his battle with Lord Loss, a horror movie producer named Davida Haym offers Dervish a chance to work on the set of her new movie, ""Slawter"". Grubbs soon finds out that Davida has made a deal with Lord Loss that if she gets Dervish and Grubbs to work on the movie, she can film them live giving her the movie of her life. But when Dervish, Grubbs, Bill-E and a psychologist named Juni Swan try to escape, they encounter a barrier which sends them into a dream world. In this dream world, Bill-E has been captured by the Lambs so they can learn the secrets of how his Lycanthropy was cured. Dervish and Grubbs invades the Lambs complex and demand the return of Bill-E Spleen. The Lambs refuse so they invade the complex and rescue Bill-E. Grubbs then realizes there are too many coincidences, the fact that the complex was an exact replica of Hannibal Lecter's cell,for instance. He wakes up and finds himself in a small room in one of buildings that make up the town Slawter. Dervish and Bill-E are also in the room with him and he uses special magic to wake them up. The three of them then run into the town trying to warn people to get away by saying there is a gas leak and the town will explode soon. No one heeds their warnings and Davida sets the Demons upon the unwilling cast and crew, but Lord Loss then betrays her and kills her. Most of the actors don't fight back&nbsp;— thinking this is a plot change&nbsp;— but soon realize it's not and are killed. The three of them run and try to lure a demon closer to the invisible force field that surrounds the town so they can try to kill it on the barrier to cause it to crack for a while so they can escape and bring as many people with them as possible. To do this they leave Bill-E in an alley to attract a weak demon. Finally, one does come, after a girl named Bo Kooniart (who they previously disliked and whose father was in on Davida Haym's plot), a girl called Karin and three boys see them and run to them while being chased by a giant bee-like demon. Dervish and Grubbs subdue it but suddenly Juni reappears and kills it. To get another, Grubbs, Bo, Karin and a boy all lure a demon into chasing them, but are unlucky when Lord Loss finds them. Artery and a new cockroach-demon called Gregor are with him and the children run. Karin is soon killed off by Lord Loss's literal kiss of death. Grubs and Bo eventually find the edge but Dervish is not there. Suddenly Dervish and Juni appear from under an invisibility shield and distract Lord Loss so Grubbs can move Gregor to the barrier. Juni is about to kill the demon before she is struck by Gregor's leg. Grubbs manages to open a window by killing Gregor but has to battle Lord Loss and Artery. Dervish attacks Lord Loss with the people he helped get through. Bill-E pulls a merely unconscious Juni through. Grubbs then sees that Demons can get through so he creates another barrier that only humans can get through. Grubbs then has to battle multiple demons to buy time for the people here. He realises he has power that he never knew he had, even the power to injure Lord Loss so Dervish can get out. Grubbs then runs out after Dervish and the window closes. An unlucky few are still trapped inside and Lord Loss then slaughters them brutally.He promises to get his revenge on Dervish, Grubbs and Bill-E. They realise that Bo did not make it out of the bubble surrounding Slawter as she went to try to save her father. They then see Davida's assistant director Chuda sitting there and Grubbs almost kills him but Bill-E stops him. Then Juni kills him with magic she never knew she had until fighting in the bubble. Later, they find that Juni has gone, and left a note saying that she had to be alone for a while after what she had done, and didn't want to be contacted. Back at Dervish's house, Dervish tells Grubbs about what his future would be if he did have magic. This causes Grubbs subconscious to hide his magic, even though Dervish said it was impossible. When Dervish scans Grubbs for magic powers he thinks he has none, but in truth, Grubbs had hid them without knowing. Later he decides to check if he did have powers, and managed to switch the light on and off without using the switch and make his reflection disappear. To have the power to conceal his powers from Dervish and to use magic in the real world away from any demons can only mean one thing— Grubbs is a magician."
2295,Aura,horror," Felipe Montero, a young historian, accepts a live-in position editing the memoirs of General Llorente, which the elderly widow (Consuelo) wants published before her own death. Intoxicated by the airless atmosphere of the house, Felipe begins dreaming of having sex and escaping with Consuelo's young beautiful niece, Aura. As he reads the General's writings, he makes some discoveries surrounding Consuelo's infertility, her fantasy of having a child, and her obsession with youth only to realize that Aura is actually a projection of the 109-year-old widow. One night, while he embraces her, Aura turns into the old woman. Felipe then takes on the role of the General, coupled with Consuelo, to give birth to 'Aura', who epitomizes youth and the illusion of life."
2296,Bag of Bones,horror," The narrator, Mike Noonan, a bestselling novelist, suffers severe writer's block after his pregnant wife Jo suddenly dies in an accident. Four years later, Mike, still grieving, is plagued by nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90, Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to the lakeside house, known as Sara Laughs. On his first day, he meets Kyra, a 3-year-old girl and her young widowed mother, 21-year-old Mattie Devore. Mattie's father-in-law is Max Devore, an elderly rich man who will do anything to gain custody of his granddaughter, Kyra. Drawn to Kyra and Mattie, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie, and things start looking up. Mike begins to write again, and realizes that Jo's ghost is helping him to solve the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose ghost haunts the house. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him. Mike begins having recurring, disturbing dreams and visions, and realizes he shares a psychic connection with Kyra. Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, try to drown Mike but he survives with the help of his wife's spirit. Max unexpectedly commits suicide that same night. Mike sees a pattern when he sees that local inhabitants have names that begin with ""K"" or ""C"" and learns how relatives of townspeople have drowned in childhood. While Storrow and the private detective he hired are celebrating the end of the custody battle, Mattie attempts to seduce Mike. As they are embracing, Mattie's trailer is subjected to a drive-by shooting, injuring Storrow and the detective and killing Mattie. The detective is able to kill the driver and incapacitate the shooter with Mike's help. Mike then grabs Kyra and drives back to his home. The shooter's buddies try to stop them, but refuse to follow him to Sara Laughs. Under the influence of Sara's ghost, Mike is tormented to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself. Jo's ghost prevents him and calls his attention to the novel he has begun to write. In the pages there are clues that lead Mike to discover documents Jo had hidden, among them a genealogy showing Mike's blood relationship to one of the town families. Several families whose origin lay within the town had firstborn children with ""K"" names who were all murdered—Kyra, as a descendant of Max Devore, is scheduled to be the next to die. The genealogy also shows that Mike and Jo's child would have been the next firstborn child with a ""K"" name in the family line. Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell's curse for something that had been done to her. He leaves and searches for Sara's grave, stopped by the ghosts of several members of the old families. He learns in a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake; all the ""K"" children who died were descendants of those men. Mike reaches Sara's grave and succeeds in destroying her bones, ending the curse. Upon returning to the house, Mike discovers that Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. He follows them to the lake, where Mattie's ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the water. Rogette tries to pull Mike in with her, but is impaled by wreckage from the dock. Mattie's ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra. The novel ends with an epilogue, revealing that Mike has retired from writing and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than anticipated. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end, but the reader is given hope that it will be positive."
2297,Sweet Sixteen,horror," Buffy has a run-in with a couple demons at store while a gangly blonde girl watches on. Afterwards Buffy tries to talk to her but she runs off, faster than Buffy can catch her. Meanwhile Dawn has befriended a girl named Arianna at her school. Arianna has no friends and an abusive mother and has always longed to become a heroine. After it becomes clear that Arianna is the exceptionally strong girl that Buffy ran into, the gang tries to find out where Arianna's powers are coming from. Meanwhile, a demon called Aurek is searching for his daughter Arianna who is to become the Reaver, a being used for mass destruction of the dimensions. He finally locates her and tries to convince her that all humans are against demons. Just as Arianna starts to befriend Buffy, she then begins to pull away. Fearing that Buffy will just kill her in the end. Arianna has to make a decision on whether or not to keep her humanity."
2298,Portal Through Time,horror," An artifact has been forged which enables time-travelling spells while it remains in Sunnydale. A group of vampire-assassins are travelling into the past in an attempt to kill previous Slayers, and disrupt the Slayer lineage. They are led by the spellcaster Lucien, whose aim is to ensure that Buffy does not interfere with the ascension of the Master. When they discover that killing Buffy in the past merely changes the way in which the Master is killed. Frustrated, they decide to go further back. When Buffy becomes aware of their plans, the vampires have already left and she is forced to follow them into the past. With Giles, Willow and Xander, she travels to first-century Anglesey in Wales where a Druidic stronghold is being invaded by Romans. Next they travel to Uruk in ancient Sumer where they encounter Gilgamesh. Xander inadvertently arouses a plague god, and Willow accidentally summons a snake-demon while trying to banish the god. Then they return to the American Civil War period, where they find themselves in the middle of the Battle of Shiloh. They destroy many vampires feeding on the soldiers. Finally they head for Paris during the French Revolution where they witness executions on the guillotine and meet Angelus and Darla."
2299,Vampirates: Blood Captain,horror," With a cast of unforgettable characters and a pace that never lets up the third Vampirates adventure is Grace and Connor’s most spectacular voyage so far. For Connor these are testing times aboard the Diablo and he finds himself crossing a line from which there is no return. Grace also faces danger as she travels with Lorcan to Sanctuary, a place of healing presided over by Vampirate guru, Mosh Zu."
2300,Frritt-Flacc,horror," Frritt expresses the sounds of a roaring hurricane and flacc the sound of falling streams of water during a rainstorm. Trifulgas, a physician, lives in unnamed coastal area. He is rich and works only for the rich. One night, during a storm, a girl knocks at the door. Her father, a poor fisherman, is dying. Since she has no money Trifulgas goes back to sleep. Soon someone knocks again. It is a woman whose husband is dying. She has some money but not enough so the doctor goes back to sleep. The storm becomes worse when another one knocks. The mother of a fisherman with heart attack has enough money—their house was sold shortly ago. The doctor follows her. A look on the dying man horrifies Trifulgas—it is he who lies in the bed. In spite of all effort, Trifulgas dies under his own hands."
2301,Vittorio the Vampire,horror," In the twentieth century, from his castle in the northern part of Tuscany, Vittorio writes the tragic tale of his life. In 1450, Vittorio di Raniari is a sixteen-year old Italian nobleman, when his family is murdered by a powerful and ancient coven of vampires. The image of his siblings' severed heads with eyes staring fixedly at him strikes him permanently. Vittorio, however, escapes such a dreadful ending because of a vampire's intervention. After taking care of his family's burial, Vittorio gathers what riches he can and prepares himself for adventure as he flees towards Florence, away from the perilous crowd of vampires, under the sun's protecting wing. By nightfall, Vittorio arrives at the most strange of villages, for there are no beggars at the street, no elderly, no sick or dying. Yet his mournful spirit prevents him from taking notice of it. He soon realizes that someone is stalking him, and, worried enough, he seeks shelter at an inn. Ursula, the vampire who prevented the other members of her coven from killing Vittorio, lurks behind his room's window. She continues to seduce him, all while draining blood from him, and giving him some of her own. Vittorio is led by Ursula to the coven's lair, as she attempts to make him part of their gatherings. It is an ancient castle, where he discovers its many gardens filled with old people and sick children; he suddenly realizes that some of these people he had met at the village. Vittorio then witnesses an important feast that is carried on as a ritual by the leader of the vampires' group. In it, some people who were selected from the gardens are sacrificed to satisfy their thirst for blood. After refusing the dark gift, the vampires do not kill him (thanks to Ursula), but rather leave him in a village. As he is walking, he sees two Angels arguing in a doorway, Ramiel and Setheus. The angels are just as surprised as he that Vittorio can see them (he later learns that they are the guiding angels of his idol, Fra Filippo Lippi). With their help, the help of his own angels, and a very powerful armor wearing angel, Mastema, Vittorio plots his revenge against the vampires, who are invading the lands and killing innocents (incidentally, Vittorio's own guiding angels do not play much of a part; whilst they are often present, they are insubstantial and shadowy, and we do not know their names). The attack takes place in the day and involves decapitating the vampires as they sleep. The heads are then thrown into the sunlight where they wither and die. When it comes time to behead Ursula, Vittorio finds that he cannot do this even as the angels urge him on. Instead, he frees Ursula in the hopes of saving her soul. Within minutes, Vittorio is tricked into becoming a vampire and a yearning for blood conquers everything he knows. In the closing pages we find Ursula and Vittorio performing as an age old Bonnie and Clyde, killing and drinking until they had their fill. These two lovers stay with each other for many years to come. Vittorio is unique in two ways: he can see angels and departing human souls. At the end of the book, he is left with the ""gift"" to see human souls, which appear from every person as an intense shining light. Mastema tells him that he will never be able to rid himself of this, and that every time he takes a human life he will bear witness to the extinguishing of the soul. es:Vittorio el vampiro fr:Vittorio le vampire pl:Wampir Vittorio ro:Vampirul Vittorio"
2302,Koyasan,horror," The book is about a young girl called Koyasan, who fears the graveyard in her town where the spirits live. Her younger sister enters the graveyard after dark and her soul is captured. In order to find and retrieve her sister's stolen soul she must battle three spirits and return the soul to her sister's empty body before dawn."
2303,The Tommyknockers,horror," While walking in the woods near the small town of Haven, Maine; Roberta (Bobbi) Anderson, a writer of Wild West-themed fiction, stumbles upon a metal object which turns out to be a protrusion of a long-buried alien spacecraft. Once exposed, the spacecraft begins releasing an invisible, odorless gas into the atmosphere which gradually transforms people into beings similar to the aliens who populated the spacecraft. The transformation, or ""becoming,"" provides them with a limited form of genius which makes them very inventive, but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight. Instead, it provokes psychotic violence (on the part of people like Becka Paulson, who kills her adulterous husband by fatally rewiring their TV, killing herself in the process) and the disappearance of a young boy, David Brown, whose older brother Hilly teleports him to another planet, referred to as Altair 4 by the Havenites. The book's central protagonist is a poet and friend of Bobbi Anderson, named James Eric Gardner, who goes by the nickname ""Gard"". He is a fundamentally decent person with left-leaning, liberal sensibilities who is apparently immune to the ship's effects because of a steel plate in his head, a souvenir of a teenage skiing accident. Unfortunately, Gard is also an alcoholic, prone to binges which result in violent outbursts followed by lengthy blackouts. His relationship with Bobbi deteriorates as the novel progresses. She is almost totally overcome by the euphoria of ""becoming"" one with the spacecraft, but Gard increasingly sees her health worsen and her sanity disappear. The novel is filled with metaphors for the stranglehold of substance abuse, which King himself was experiencing at the time, as well as for the dangers of nuclear power and radioactive fallout (as evidenced by the physical transformations of the townspeople, which resemble the effects of radiation exposure), of unchecked technological advancement, and of the corrupting influence of power. Government agencies are uniformly portrayed as corrupt and totalitarian throughout the book, and Bobbi and Gard themselves are led into thinking that they can use the ship's ""power"" as a weapon to thwart the authorities' nefarious designs. Seeing the transformation of the townspeople worsen, the torture and manipulation of Bobbi's dog Peter, and people being killed or worse when they pry too deeply into the strange events, Gardner eventually manipulates Bobbi into allowing him into the ship. After he sees that Bobbi is not entirely his old friend and lover, he gives her one more chance before deciding to kill her with the same gun that state trooper ""Monster"" Dugan had almost killed her with in her back field previously. However, Bobbi was able to read Gardner's mind after loading him up with Valium, and sent out a telepathic APB when she sensed he had a gun. As a result, her death sends all the townspeople swarming to her place intent on killing Gardner. Meanwhile, Gard accidentally (by dropping the gun) shoots himself in the ankle. Ev Hillman, David and Hilly's grandfather, helps Gardner escape into the woods (which soon catches fire from one of the Tommyknockers' ""toys"") in exchange for using the ""new and improved"" computers and what little ""becoming"" he underwent to save David Brown. Gardner enters the ship, activates it, and with the last of his life telepathically launches it into space, resulting in the eventual deaths of nearly all of the changed townspeople but preventing the possibly disastrous consequences of the ship's influence spreading to the outside world. Very shortly after (in the epilogue) members from the FBI, CIA, and ""The Shop"" invade Haven and take as many of the Havenites as possible (they kill nearly a quarter of the survivors) and a few of the devices created by the altered people of Haven. In the last pages, David Brown is discovered in Hilly Brown's hospital room, safe and sound. The book takes its title from an old children's rhyme: King himself wrote the second verse; and claims to have heard the first verse when he was a child."
2304,Deep Water,horror," After an oil spill on a nearby Sunnydale beach, Willow discovers a 'selkie'; that is, a girl that can turn into a seal with her sealskin. The selkie, dubbed Ariel by the gang, cannot return to the ocean because her sealskin was damaged by the oil spill. Willow's trying to find a spell to clean it. At the same time, mermaid-like creatures called merrows have come ashore in search of food and the vampire population gets territorial and try to kill the merrows. Buffy and the gang get stuck in the middle of a turf war while trying to save Ariel."
2305,City Of The Dead,horror," Jim finds Danny alive as the book opens but the living dead soon converge on their location. Frankie and Martin join Jim in the house and they are soon trapped in the attic. As they see Danny's neighbor in his panic room across the way the zombies set fire to the house. They rig a ladder between the two houses and everyone but Frankie makes it across, Frankie however has a two story fall into a swimming pool below. Meanwhile: Don, Martin, Jim, and Danny regroup and make a run for Don's Ford explorer. Upon escaping the garage they find Frankie fighting zombies in the front yard badly hurt from the fall and shot several times. They rescue her as she goes into shock. Back in Hellertown Ob has taken Baker's body and is instructing his minions to make a motor pool from all the abandoned vehicles. Ob is distressed that Jim is alive and escaping him, he begins to fantasize killing Martin and Jim. Here he divulges that the Sissquim can see the life auras coming from the living. Ob is then killed by some hiding guardsmen who he discovers. Their escape is short lived as Frankie left the keys in the Humvee and the zombies are in hot pursuit. They use the Humvee to force the car into an accident. Jim regains consciousness as zombies are trying to pull Danny from the wreckage and biting his arm. Jim loses it and violently kills the zombie, punctuating each blow with the words ""I told you to leave my son alone."" Martin has been thrown from the car and his head had turned a full 180 degrees around. Jim smashes his head in with a rock as he reanimates proclaiming ""There is no God"". Jim leads the zombies away distracting them from his party including a very badly injured Frankie making plans to meet them in what looks like an abandoned parking structure. There is a legless zombie hiding in a car who alerts more zombies to the groups presence. Jim races back to the structure as the group races for the roof. Almost simultaneously a helicopter shows up using a powerful sonic device that kills all the zombie birds and almost kills Jim. They rescue Jim and take him to Ramsey towers. Ob Reanimates in a new body that is in great shape. His host died of a heart attack while masturbating. His old host had knowledge of secret armories for the NYPD as well as the National Guard. He uses this knowledge to help arm his army as he sends for his forces in Hellertown as well as across the country. He also learns that all human life in Europe and Asia has been eliminated. Ob then lays siege to last remaining humans holed up in Ramsey towers, using heavy artillery he is able to breach the supposedly impenetrable building. With the approaching forces the remaining humans are falling apart as the zombies storm the towers and eradicate them. Jim, Frankie, and a few others escape into the sewers only to be followed by Ob and his forces. Three of the company is killed by Zombie rats, one of a gunshot wound, one eaten by a zombie crocodile, and one having his throat slit by another zombie. Ob personally confronts Jim telling him he is glad to be the one ending his incredible journey; Jim then uses a flame thrower on a gas line killing Ob and the surrounding zombies. Frankie and Danny are eventually killed by zombie rats in their sleep. Sometime before the final act however, Frankie has a dream in which the spirit of Martin talks to her, laying out the complex plan set up by Ob and his minions. The plan shows her that surviving the zombies would have been just the first ordeal. The undead were merely the first wave,, with the purpose of eliminating all human and animal life. Once that task is accomplished, other obots would begin the assimilation of the plants and insects. It is also revealed that Jim, Danny and the rest of the characters from the books are reunited in some sort of afterlife and are happy."
2306,The Woods Are Dark,horror," The plot concerns two groups of people, a family and a pair of college students, who are kidnapped after stopping in a small California town and taken into the forest to be sacrificed to a group of mysterious creatures, called ""Krulls,"" who roam the surrounding wilderness. The identity of the Krulls, and their relationship to the town of Barlow, are revealed gradually over the course of the novel."
2307,Frostbite,horror," Frostbite takes place in the remote wilderness of Alberta. The setting is similar to the real world, but where werewolves (and possibly other supernatural phenomena) are rare but known phenomena. The novel opens with Cheyenne ""Chey"" Clarke parachuting into the wilds of Alberta, provisioned with extensive hiking supplies, most of which are immediately lost. Chey is soon attacked by a werewolf (it is indicated to the reader that the creature is obviously not a normal wolf), but survives with only a scratch, which is enough to curse her with lycanthropy. In wandering the wilderness, she meets the enigmatic Dzo, who introduces her to Monty Powell, a werewolf (presumably the one who attacked Chey). After their meeting, it is revealed that Chey has secretly come looking for the werewolf, and is working with outside parties who want him removed. After a failed attempt to kill Powell, Chey is left in the care of her backers, and used as bait to lure Powell while her own future at their hands remains questionable."
2308,The Hellbound Heart,horror," Frank is a hedonist who has spent his life in a selfish, single-minded pursuit of the ultimate sensual experience. Having lived a life of world travel, engaging in countless crimes and every sexual experience known to mankind, Frank is now a nihilist, his pursuits having left him feeling unfulfilled and still wanting more extreme experiences. Jaded to the point that conventional sexual activity now leaves him completely unstimulated, Frank hears rumors of Lament Configuration, an artifact he learned about on his travels, a puzzle box that is said to act as a portal to an extradimensional realm of unfathomable carnal pleasure. Locating the owner in Düsseldorf, Frank obtains the box by performing ""small favors"" and returns with it to his deceased grandmother's home in England. Frank prepares a shrine consisting of bonbons, flowers, severed doves heads, and a massive jug of his own urine, offerings for the box's inhabitants: The Cenobites, members of a religious order dedicated to extreme sensual experiences. Opening the box, Frank is confused and horrified when the Cenobites, rather than beautiful women, turn out to be horribly scarified creatures whose bodies have been modified to the point that they are apparently sexless. Nonetheless, when they offer Frank experiences like he has never known before, Frank readily agrees, despite the Cenobites' repeated warnings that it may not be what he expects and that he cannot renege on an agreement to return to their realm with them. With Frank as their newest ""experiment,"" the Cenobites subject Frank to a total sensory overload, at which point he realizes that the Cenobites are so extreme in their devotion to sadomasochism that they no longer differentiate between extreme pain and extreme pleasure. Frank is sucked into the Cenobite realm, where he realizes that he will be subjected to an eternity of torture. Sometime later, Frank's brother, Rory, and his wife, Julia, move into the home. Unknown to Rory, Julia had an affair with Frank a week before their wedding; she has spent the entirety of her marriage obsessing over and lusting after Frank, and has only stayed married to Rory for financial support. While moving in, Rory accidentally cuts his hand and bleeds on the spot where Frank was taken by the Cenobites. This serves to open another dimensional schism, through which Frank is able to escape, his body now reduced to a desiccated corpse by the Cenobites' experiments. Julia finds him and promises to restore his body so that they can renew their affair. While Rory is at work, Julia begins seducing men at bars and bringing them back to the attic, where she murders them and feeds their bodies to Frank, whose own body begins to slowly regenerate. Kirsty, a friend of Rory's who is secretly in love with him, suspects that Julia is having an affair and attempts to catch her in the act; instead she encounters Frank, who attempts to kill her; Kirsty steals the puzzle box and flees the house, collapsing from exhaustion on the street. She is taken to a hospital, where she solves the puzzle box and inadvertently summons the Cenobites. The Cenobites initially attempt to take Kirsty back with them, until she tells them about Frank; skeptical that one of their experiments could have escaped, the Cenobites agree to leave Kirsty alone in exchange for Frank's return. Kirsty leads the Cenobites to Frank, now wearing recently slain Rory's skin. Another altercation ensues, during which an unrepentant Frank inadvertently kills Julia. Assured of Frank's identity, the Cenobites appear and ensnare Frank with a multitude of hooks and return with him to their realm. Leaving the house, Kirsty encounters the heretofore unseen leader of the Cenobites, the Engineer, who entrusts her to watch over the box until another degenerate seeks it out. Looking at the lacquered surface, Kirsty imagines that she sees Julia and Frank's faces reflected in the lacquered surface, but not Rory's. She wonders if there are other puzzles, that might find a way to where Rory resides by unlocking the doors to paradise."
2309,Not Forgotten,horror," Los Angeles is being struck by a crime wave. There seems to be no link between the victims and their cause of death - burning from the inside out. Supernatural powers seem to be involved. Angel investigates the deaths, and Cordelia tries to find a band of child thieves. Both searches lead in the same direction - a rich slumlord who is imprisoning the children's immigrant parents. Angel, Doyle, and Cordelia all have difficulties in L.A., but they realize it's much harder for these immigrants. Angel hopes to help before it is too late."
2310,Circus of the Damned,horror," Circus of the Damned continues the adventures of Anita Blake. Anita simultaneously attempts to solve a series of murders by an unknown vampire pack, fend off the advances of her would be vampire master, Jean-Claude and deal with various people and creatures who wish her to reveal Jean-Claude's identity and location. As with its predecessors, Circus of the Damned blends elements of supernatural, hardboiled detective, and police procedural fiction. Within the novel, the ""Circus of the Damned"" is the name of a supernatural circus that operated by Jean-Claude and serves as one of the main locations within the book. Hamilton employed the practice of titling the novels after a location within each novel for most of the books in the series."
2311,Child of the Hunt,horror," Lately Sunnydale has been missing kids, some of them have run away while others seem to have been kidnapped. There have also been attacks by little vicious creatures that completely mutilate their victims by simply biting through their prey. Also in town is a Renaissance Faire and the gang decides to pay it a visit. One visit is enough though because something is slightly off about the faire, everything seems evil and this one boy named Roland is continuously picked on, and not for fun either. After some research and a couple of run-ins with some small attackers, Angel and Giles discover that a group of mystical beings called the Wild Hunt are in town to claim the souls of humans. Angel warns Buffy not to look at them as if she does they will steal her soul and she will be forced to ride with the Hunt. Buffy hides Roland out in her basement to save him from the nasty Faire people. The next night Buffy comes home to find Roland stolen away by the Wild Hunt. Giles informs Buffy that the Wild Hunt is run by the Erl King, lord of the Wild Hunt, and that Roland is his son and the heir to the Erl King title even though Roland is disgusted by the Hunt. Buffy and the gang rush in to rescue Roland but it's of no use. To free her friend Buffy agrees to be bound by the oath of the Erl King in which she loses all willpower to fight against him. On the night of the final Hunt in Sunnydale, the gang (without Buffy) assemble and begin an attack on the Wild Hunt before they can clear their magical forest to attack the town. Buffy is ordered to kill Roland by the Erl King and she must learn to fight against her magickal oath in order to save her life, Roland's and the lives of her friends as well."
2312,Yellow Fog,horror, The novel concerns the vampire Don Sebastian in Victorian England.
2313,The Passage,horror," The novel is broken into 11 parts of varying lengths. The story itself is broken into two sections: The first and shorter section covers the origins of the virus and its outbreak, while the second is set 93 years after the infections, primarily following a colony of survivors living in California. Several narrative devices are used, including email, journal entries, newspaper reports, and other documents. Occasional use is made of reference material from 1,000 years after the outbreak, coming from ""The Journal of Sara Fisher"", sourced from a future ""University of New South Wales, Indo-Australian Republic"". The U.S. government is conducting a top secret experiment referred to as ""Project Noah,"" which involves acquiring and transporting death row inmates to a secret military compound in Colorado for the purposes of modifying them into super-soldiers for the U.S. Army. These genetic experiments originate from patient zero Fanning - one of two surviving members of an expedition investigating a Bolivian bat-carried virus. The virus, while eventually causing hemorrhagic fever and death in initial subjects, is being refined to accentuate its other properties - boosting of the immune system, enhanced strength and agility. The FBI agents responsible for recruiting the prisoners are ordered to collect 6 year old Amy Bellafonte from a convent, and, although conflicted, deliver her to Dr. Lear, the head of the project. At Noah she is exposed to a refined version of the serum administered to ""The Twelve""—the original inmates. Lear theorizes that as Amy's immune system has not had chance to mature it will form a symbiosis with the virus and live with her sympathetically, instead of the violent forms it has taken with the other twelve. Of the inmates, the first and last recruited are depicted as being different from the others: Babcock, the original test subject, is stronger and appears to have developed psychic abilities, occasionally influencing his guards and cleaners; and Carter is in fact innocent, but was convicted of first-degree murder nonetheless. Zero (AKA Fanning) and the other twelve inmates mentally take control of their guards and escape their quarantine cells, rapidly killing all who stand in their way. Amy is rescued by Brad Wolgast (the FBI agent who brought her to Noah) and Sister Lacey (a nun who was looking after Amy when she was recruited). Lacey is taken by Carter, as Wolgast and Amy escape to a mountain retreat where they live for several months, occasionally picking up news of the contagion spread throughout America. The rest of the world's fate is not stated, but it is mentioned that most of Europe has imposed quarantine over travel. Despite living reasonably comfortably in the mountain site, Wolgast eventually succumbs to radiation sickness when a nuclear device is detonated relatively nearby - he assumes that the government is attempting to sterilize infected areas of the country - and Amy is left to fend for herself. The novel shifts forward in time approximately 93 years (with occasional reference retrospectively 1,000 years in the future), and the narrative is taken up around a self-sufficient and isolationist colony established by the military (specifically FEMA) not long after the initial outbreak. The colony is in slow decline, although only one character (a technician called Michael) seems to recognize this; he is trying to establish clandestine contact with the outside world to obtain spares for their failing equipment - specifically their batteries which power the high-wattage lights which protect the colony from the virals, who in traditional vampiric style are highly light-sensitive. During a nighttime attack, Amy arrives at the gates of the camp, having previously met Peter Jaxon (one of the colony's senior figures) during a foraging expedition. Amy's arrival also results in a break-in from the virals leading to the death of ""Teacher"" - the person responsible for the upbringing of all the children under eight in the colony. Amy now appears to be a fifteen year old girl, and upon her arrival is grievously wounded by a crossbow, but her own recuperative powers soon heal her and within days she is as healthy as she was before being injured. Amy's arrival, her healing abilities, Teacher's death and inner-colony friction (caused by Babcock's mental influence over several Colony figures) force several of the colony dwellers to abscond with Amy and seek out another military site in Colorado - from where Michael has been receiving faint radio signals. Amy demonstrates a psychic bond with the virals, and manages to keep the group of travelers relatively safe during their journey. They come across another settlement established in a Las Vegas prison, known as the Haven, which, while initially welcoming, is in fact Babcock's lair. The Haven ""feeds"" Babcock blood sacrifices in exchange for being left alone by the horde of virals at his disposal, referred to as ""The Many"" (as opposed to The Twelve). During a botched attempt to kill Babcock during one of the blood sacrifice rituals, sympathizers at the Haven enable the group to escape via railroad, and they meet up with a Texan military group, who assist them in finding the Colorado outpost. Once at the outpost, they discover that it is the same compound where the outbreak started, and still serves as home to Sister Lacey. Lacey, like Amy, was treated by Lear with a modified form of the serum, providing her with longer life and a psychic bond with not only Amy and the virals, but Babcock as well. It is decided to lure Babcock into the outpost - Amy and Lacey confirm that he is headed towards them in any case - where they will detonate a nuclear device originally designed to sterilize the compound, but never used. The group theorize that the virals are like a hive mind and once Babcock is dead his hold over the virals created exponentially by him will cease and they will no longer be a threat. While waiting for Babcock to arrive, the group is attacked, resulting in Alicia (""Lish"") becoming infected, and treated by Sara the medic with modified serum. Lacey hands over files on The Twelve, revealing their hometowns, to which she suggests The Twelve will have returned. Upon Babcock's arrival, Lacey lures him to a chamber where she detonates the bomb, destroying herself, Babcock, and much of the outpost. The attacking virals all collapse and die again, in most cases leaving behind nothing but dust, proving the hive theory correct. Lish adapts to the virus in a similar manner to Amy and Lacey before her, yet with differences - she has limited psychic abilities, but has the strength and endurance of a viral. Greer, one of the Texan soldiers traveling with them, comments that she would be a formidable soldier - suggesting that Lish has become the first true ""super soldier"" that the government was trying to develop 93 years ago. Part of the group - primarily Amy, Peter, and Lish - return to the First Colony only to find it deserted, with no sign of what happened or where the colonists may have gone. There are two bodies, a victim of a suicide and that of Auntie, who seemingly died of old age. They decide to hunt down the remaining Twelve using Lear's files to determine their locations, and Lish as their primary weapon. That night Amy meets the infected Wolgast, outside the Colony. The other group stays with the Texan Expeditionary force, and their remaining story is related through parts of Sara's diary - her last entry is at Roswell Base, and among comments about her own pregnancy she states that she can hear gunshots, and is going to investigate. This entry is presented as part of the future reference material, and is stated to have come from the site of ""The Roswell Massacre"". The novel ends ambiguously for all surviving characters."
2314,Killers of the Dawn,horror," Mr. Crepsley, Darren, and Harkat go into the tunnels, where they find Vancha. They arm themselves with weapons carelessly discarded by the Vampaneze and seek out Steve. Steve calls the rest of the Vampaneze. There is a battle between the two sides vampaneze and vampires, and soon they face the Vampaneze Lord. The Vampaneze Lord says that he and Mr. Crepsley must fight one another alone with no help from anyone. The Vampaneze and Vampires stop their fighting. At last Mr. Crepsley kills the Vampaneze Lord, but Steve jumps onto his back and causes him to fall over the cliff, where he is hanging over the pit of flaming stakes with Steve. Since he believes the Vampaneze Lord is dead, he agrees to kill himself and stop holding on to Steve in exchange for rest. Mr. Crepsley lets go of Steve and falls into the pit below, giving Darren a smile as they've succeeded in ending the war. Or so he thinks. After he is dead and everyone has safely departed, Steve reveals himself to Darren as the Vampaneze Lord: the one whom Darren or Vancha must destroy for the sake of the world. Mr. Crepsley's death had been in vain, which leaves Darren devastated and feeling empty, so much so he can't even cry. This is a perfect ending leading smoothly onto the 10th book where it goes straight into a recap of Killers of the Dawn."
2315,Cold Skin,horror, The novel chronicles the stay of an unnamed weather official on a remote island in the south Atlantic close to the Antarctic Circle.
2316,The Enemy,horror," The book begins a year after a worldwide sickness has infected all the adults, turning them into zombie-like creatures. The surviving children have formed a number of groups throughout London in order to better combat the threat posed by the adults and to increase their odds of survival. A young survivor named Small Sam is kidnapped by infected adults and taken away. He and several other children have made a base within the confines of a Waitrose supermarket. The other children led by a boy named Arran and his second-in-command, Maxie, have increasingly grown tired of the children being killed one-by-one. The adults are becoming smarter and as a consequence the children are being picked off more frequently. A scavenger party, composed of Arran and several other boys Achilleus, Ollie, Freak and Deke, explore a building with a swimming pool and they find a vending machine, but it turns out to be a trap. During the battle, Deke is killed and Arran is bitten by an adult woman. He becomes sick from the bite, and they only just manage to escape. Later that night a boy in a patchwork coat named Jester arrives at the gates of the building and asks for the group's help. He tells the group he has come from Buckingham Palace, where a group of kids are based in a safe environment. He claims that if they travel there, they will all be safe as well. The majority of the group like the idea and soon set off through Camden to the palace, along with another group of kids from a Morrisons supermarket who share the same feeling. A loner named Callum decides to stay behind on his own, afraid to leave to confines of his base. Meanwhile, Small Sam awakes in a grown-up base made at Arsenal Stadium. He escapes and heads back to Waitrose to find only Callum, as the other children have left. Callum explains that the other children are headed for Buckingham Palace, and Sam sets off to catch up with them. Sam is unable to catch up with the other kids and is chased by adults into the London Underground and gets as far as King's Cross when an older, uninfected man named Nick appears with a sawed-off shotgun and saves him. Nick has been living in the tunnels inside a train with his wife, Rachael. The couple aids Sam, but appear to have sinister motives behind it. Later Sam discovers he is chained up with 3 other children whom the couple have found, and it seems the couple are cannibals. With the help of a young boy known only as ""the Kid"" Sam escapes. However, Nick chases them outside but then gets infected and dies. Sam and the Kid go on, eventually making it to safety at the Tower of London, where another group of kids have taken shelter. As the Waitrose and Morrison's group travels to Buckingham Palace they are attacked by a pack of grown-ups, led by one wearing a St. George's Cross shirt. The children win the fight, but Arran has gone out of control because of his bite wound, and gets carried away with killing the adults. As a result he is mistaken for an adult and becomes fatally wounded by an arrow, which was shot by a girl named Sophie from another surviving group of kids. Maxie comes to Arran's aid but he dies in her arms. The group teams up with Sophie's group and after a few more skirmishes they eventually manage to find Buckingham Palace. The group of kids meet David King, the leader of the kids at Buckingham Palace who seems to have things well worked-out, but turns out to be hiding the truth of his plans. The Waitrose and Morrison's group are pressured into going to a park opposite the palace to peacefully talk with a group of kids, called the ""squatters,"" about joining them at Buckingham Palace. However, after their leader, Just John, refuses, fight breaks out. After a tough fight in which Freak dies, they capture John and take him back to the palace. John and David come to an agreement: Achilleus and Just John fight to the death over the territorial ownership of the park. They fight, and Achilleus wins and spares Just John's life. Callum becomes overly upset at his loneliness, despite having stashed things like a music player which he hid from other kids, and becomes upset when he remembers having to kill his own mother after the epidemic. He loses hope slowly as adults led by the Saint George zombie break into the store and kill him Maxie and Ollie find that they don't trust David because of how he acts, and his obsession with taking over London. Maxie expresses her concerns to the rest of the group and they decide to escape. David and Jester attempt to stop them, but they all manage to escape, with a girl named Brooke, who leads them to the British Museum, where there is another group of kids. Meanwhile, the Saint George zombie continues to grow smarter and to lead his army of adults through London, searching out more kids. He craves more power and destruction, and wants to kill and eat every last child he can find..."
2317,The Keep,horror," The Keep had stood empty in the Transylvanian Alps for some 500 years. No one knew who built it, or why. But on the eve of World War II, German soldiers moved in and awoke something—something hungry… something more merciless than the SS einsatzkommandos accompanying them."
2318,Eye for Eye,horror," Mick Winger has an unusual gift and with it has accidentally killed several people. When Mick gets angry at people, his power manifests itself by launching an attack upon them by giving them cancer, leukemia or related terminal illnesses. If made angry enough, his anger can outright kill the victim. Mick was raised in an orphanage and along his journey to manhood unintentionally killed several people who mistreated him, as well as nearly everyone he loved, though nearly every occurrence was accidental. The only intentional murder he describes while growing up is being nearly molested in a Denny's bathroom. This is when he discovers the intensity of the attacks are greatly heightened when he's touching a target. When fifteen, he fled child custody and set out on his own. When Mick becomes angry, he gets, as he describes it, ""sparkly."" He can see sparks surrounding and enveloping him and then those sparks lashing out on the object of his anger. Unavoidably, those attacked by his ""sparks"" end up with terminal illnesses and soon die. The effect of his attack is much more pronounced if he is touching the victim. Until he was a young man, Mick had no idea he was different from other children. He discovered he was different when describing ""sparkiness"" with other children, who had no idea what he was talking about. Soon after setting out on his own, he encounters a young woman who not only knows about his gift, but who even seems to possess the same gift, although to a lesser extent. She however possesses the ability to ""call,"" to influence Mick so that he unintentionally heads straight for her, as well as intense sexual attraction, which she describes as simple pheromones that all people have, except that people like Mick, due to a different biochemical makeup (though Mick doesn't understand this when it is first explained to him), is far more susceptible to these pheromones than a normal human being. Eventually he is led back to his birth parents, who are members of a mysterious, secluded colony. Talking to his parents, who also possess his ability, he learns he is far more powerful than they or probably anyone else at the colony. Mick learns that what he sees as ""sparks"" his family only sees as dust; he even begins to realize that he can see when people are lying. After being brought to the villages Patriarch, Papa Lem, Mick learns the intent of the colony and how they operate. Mick then refuses to ""spread his seed"" with the daughter of Papa Lem and returns to his parents' house for the night. During the night, Mick is attacked by an agent of Papa Lem and others from the village. Mick ends up killing his father and setting fire to the village while at the same time learning new extents to his abilities. After fleeing the village on foot, Mick runs into the girl he met when he first set out on his own. The assailants from the village quickly catch up with the duo and start firing at them. The woman, unbeknown to Mick, is shot in the back of the head just as they reach their allies. Mick pulls the girl from her wrecked car and puts all his ""sparkiness"" into her just before passing out. Mick awakes in the lair of his new allies. Upon questioning, Mick learns that the girl is alive and that he had somehow healed her from the bullet wound. Mick is on his way to officially meet the young lady when the story abruptly ends."
2319,The Kiss of Death,horror," Death comes in many forms, but in Venice death comes by water... It&#39;s the perfect place to hoard secrets. Here the Shadow Queen has her lair, and here she&#39;ll gather her forces for a final battle. Marko and Sorrel are unwitting players in her Last Act as they search for his father, and try to stop the madness claiming hers. In the dark alleyways, on silvery waterways slivers the light lance of the lagoon mist."
2320,Undead and Unpopular,horror," Betsy Taylor, Queen of Vampires, is celebrating her 31st birthday and her 1st anniversary of being dead (or perhaps that should be undead.) She has told her friends that she doesn’t want a party but she is sure that they are planning a surprise party for her. She is trying to plan her summer wedding to Sinclair but it doesn’t help that he is avoiding having anything to do with it and deciding to give up drinking blood in honour of her birthday is just making her cranky. And nobody likes a cranky vampire. Jessica her best friend since childhood has been diagnosed with cancer and this leads Betsy to think that maybe converting her friend to become a vampire might be a good idea. With a delegation of European vampires arriving to pay their respects to her, a baby brother to baby sit, unexpected guests dropping by and a phone that just won’t stop ringing she has plenty to keep her occupied. And that’s before she deals with the zombie in the attic…."
2321,Twilight,horror," Isabella ""Bella"" Swan moves from sunny Phoenix, Arizona to rainy Forks, Washington to live with her father, Charlie, while her mother, Renée, travels with her new husband, Phil Dwyer, a minor league baseball player. Bella attracts much attention at her new school and is quickly befriended by several students. Much to her dismay, several boys compete for shy Bella's attention. When Bella is seated next to Edward Cullen in class on her first day of school, Edward seems utterly repulsed by her. He disappears for a few days, but warms up to Bella upon his return; their newfound relationship reaches a climax when Bella is nearly crushed by a classmate's van in the school parking lot. Edward saves Bella when he instantaneously appears next to her and stops the van with his bare hands. Bella becomes determined to discover how Edward saved her life, and constantly pesters him with questions. After a family friend, Jacob Black, tells her the local tribal legends, Bella concludes that Edward and his family are vampires who drink animal blood rather than human. Edward confesses that he initially avoided Bella because the scent of her blood was too desirable to him. Over time, Edward and Bella fall in love. Their relationship is affected when a nomadic vampire coven arrives in Forks. James, a tracker vampire who is intrigued by the Cullens' relationship with a human, wants to hunt Bella for sport. The Cullens attempt to distract James by separating Bella and Edward, and send Bella to hide in a hotel in Phoenix. There, Bella receives a phone call from James, who claims to be holding her mother captive. When Bella surrenders herself, James attacks her. Before James can kill her, Edward, along with the other Cullens, rescues her and destroy James, but not before James bites Bella's hand. Edward successfully sucks the poison from her bloodstream and prevents her from becoming a vampire, after which she is taken to a hospital. Upon returning to Forks, Bella and Edward attend their school prom, and Bella expresses her desire to become a vampire, but Edward refuses."
2322,One Door Away from Heaven,horror," A shapechanging alien has come to Earth with others of his kind to save us from ourselves. After witnessing the slaughter of his entire family by evil aliens bent on stopping him, he takes off on a cross-country race to save himself. He stops at a farmhouse in the middle of the night to ""borrow"" some money and clothes, and comes across a sleeping boy about his age. Using a drop of blood from an old bandage, he is able to ""become"" Curtis Hammond, the exact duplicate of the boy. Seconds after leaving the house, the evil aliens arrive and murder the family, leaving only the dog alive. Curtis and the dog escape, and eventually end up at the location of an alien sighting. UFO buffs Castoria and Polluxia Spelkenfelter, twins, recognize Curtis from the news reports of his murder and decide to help him. Eventually he reveals to them his true nature, and they pledge to assist him in the mission he has come to Earth to complete. Together, twins, boy, and dog set off for Nun's Lake, Idaho, the next stop on the twins' itinerary while they decide what to do next. Michelina Bellsong just got out of prison. She has moved in with her Aunt Geneva in order to make a new start, but things aren't going her way. She feels adrift and without direction, just wanting to get through the day. While sunning in the backyard, she is approached by a precocious but disabled little girl. Leilani Klonk has a deformed hand and a deformed leg, which requires a brace. She is more intelligent and articulate than the average nine year old, and disarms Mickey with her wit. Mickey and Geneva get to know the girl, and find out that her mother is an insane drug addict, and her step-father is a murderer. He killed her older brother Lukipela, and Leilani is next. Leilani believes that no one can help her, as Preston Maddoc is highly thought of by the academic community. Preston and Sinsemilla, Leilani's mother, bounce across the country looking for UFOs and Leilani knows it's only a matter of time before they bounce back to Montana, which is where she last saw her brother. Mickey and Geneva vow to find a way to help Leilani, but Preston finds out and takes off with the family in the dead of night. Mickey discovers them gone and sets out after them, determined to save Leilani. Leilani has mentioned that they are headed to Nun's Lake, Idaho to the site of a supposed close encounter and Mickey races to reach the town and find the girl. Mickey arrives and goes to speak to the man who was ""healed"" by aliens, and finds out that Leilani's step-father hasn't been there yet. She stakes out the house, wanting to find Preston and follow him to Leilani. Preston is alerted to her presence by the man who was healed, who he then murders. He sneaks out of the house and creeps up on Mickey, knocking her unconscious. He carries her into the dead man's house and ties her up, leaving her there and racing back to the campground. Curtis encounters Leilani at the campground in Nun's Lake and knows she's in trouble. He and the twins approach her while Preston's out and convince her to come with them. As they are running for the twins' RV, Leilani is snatched by her step-father and taken to the house he has hidden Mickey in. His plan is to make Leilani watch him kill Mickey, then torture and kill Leilani. When he gets back to the house, he discovers that Mickey has gotten free of her restraints. He dumps Leilani, takes her brace, and starts searching for Mickey in the maze of old magazines and newspapers. Leilani heads into the maze looking for a way out, and she and Mickey find each other. Preston traps them in a corner and lights the newspapers in front of them on fire, planning to listen as they burn to death. Curtis and the twins, now aided by a disillusioned ex-PI sent by Aunt Gen, arrive at the house. Noah Farrell, the PI, shoots Preston Maddoc as he races through the maze searching for Mickey and Leilani. Preston stumbles away, getting weaker and weaker from blood loss and smoke inhalation. Noah and Cass find Mickey and Leilani and the four of them search for an exit. Curtis, in his natural form, comes to their rescue, and they all escape the house. Preston Maddoc is buried under a pile of burning trash and dies. Leilani, Mickey, Aunt Gen, and Noah join Cass and Polly in their quest to help Curtis fulfill the mission he's been sent here for."
2323,Peeps,horror," Two days after arriving in New York for college, Cal loses his virginity to a girl who picks him up. From this encounter Cal picks up an STD, but this is an unusual one: it turns its victims into ""peeps"" -- parasite positives—raving cannibalistic monsters with unusual strength, night vision, heightened senses, and an affinity with rats. Cal himself turns out to be immune, but he's a carrier—he gets the strength and senses without the nasty side effects. But before he knows it he has infected others. Cal is recruited by the Night Watch, a secret government organization that has existed for centuries to contain the disease and its victims. His first assignment is to capture all the girls he's infected. But soon Cal realizes that there is more going on than he has been told: the disease is changing in response to mysterious forces from under the earth that are waking up after centuries of slumber."
2324,A Fate Totally Worse than Death,horror," is a parody of young adult horror fiction. It is about three high school girls, Danielle, Brooke and Tiffany, popular, privileged and malicious. They are known as the Huns of Cliffside High. A beautiful foreign exchange student from Norway named Helga steals their spotlight and grabs the attention of the school stud Drew. They become insanely jealous and accuse Helga of being a ghost because of her pale skin and light hair. Determined to win their popularity back, the girls conjure up numerous ways to torture Helga. However, every time the girls try to ""mess up"" Helga in some way, a strong force holds them back. For example, when she tries to cut off Helga's hair, Brooke becomes completely paralyzed and limp. The paralysis does go away, but they soon begin to notice other changes. Tiffany complains of severe pain in her knuckles and also develops a bladder problem, forcing her to wear diapers, and Danielle is slowly losing all of her teeth while Brooke is losing her hair. The girls also complain of getting liver spots on their skin. Eventually they realize that although they are only in high school, they are aging rapidly and suffering complaints typical of septuagenarians. The horrified girls believe Helga is doing this to them. They think that if they kill Drew, he will become a ghost just like Helga, making her happy enough to grant them mercy. They arrange for Drew and Helga to meet at the park the next night. However, in their attempt to shoot Drew, the girls accidentally shoot Helga instead. Danielle winds up in a hospital bed, plugged into many tubes and practically dying. Mrs. Witt, an elderly woman that she used to visit, talks to her for a while, and then reveals the reason for the girls' problems. Mrs. Witt tells her that Charity Chase, a girl killed by Danielle, Brooke and Tiffany not too long ago because Drew was interested in her, was her granddaughter. She says her friend's husband injected a potion into the girls, making it so the faster their hearts beat, the older they became, as punishment for killing her wonderful granddaughter. Mrs. Witt taunts Danielle for not being able to move, and finally does the same thing Danielle did in the nursing home when she thought Mrs. Witt was asleep—eats all of her cherry truffles."
2325,Fearless,horror," The characters of Angel Investigations are shocked to find themselves euphoric after a long night they cannot remember. Their clothes are bloody and torn, their bodies bruised, but their memories of the previous evening are hazy. They soon determine that they've been affected by demon pixie dust. Angel, however, finds his superhuman healing failing him, and seems to be recovering at the rate of an average human. Unable to confide in his friends, Angel finds himself keeping secrets and collaborating with demons. If his friends go looking for another high in a battle of fearlessness, Angel is unsure if he can protect them. Characters include: Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn, Fred, and Lorne"
2326,The Book of Fours,horror," Taking place during Buffys third season, Faith and Buffy are the current Slayers. When mayhem caused by tidal waves and burning forests begin to erupt in Sunnydale as well as vicious attackers appearing with ceremonial axes, the gang knows that something is up. A woman named Cecile Lafitte has sent her Servants to kill the Slayers with special axes, Faith being the Slayer of Fire and Buffy being the Slayer of Air. Each Slayer has a special axe made to destroy the Slayer of that particular element. There are four axes in total; air, fire, water and earth. Should Faith and Buffy both be killed then it's believed that the line of Slayers would die out forever. Cecile wants to bring forth the Gatherer, and the only way to do so is to have the Slayers killed, which would feed the demon enough power to bring him forth into the world. Meanwhile, Willow ends up in the hospital with major brain trauma while Giles figures they need answers from the Watcher of the Slayer that preceded Buffy, India Cohen. During the final confrontation with the Gatherer, Willow and Cordelia briefly serve as hosts for India and Kendra respectively. Eventually with the help of the spirits of the former Slayers, Lucy Hanover and the spirits that live in the woods where the battle takes place, the group defeats the Gatherer and destroys it by each absorbing parts of its soul. Buffy also decapitates Cecile with the axes."
2327,Undead and Unwed,horror," Betsy Taylor—former model, newly unemployed secretary, 30, and still single—wakes up after being flattened by a Aztek Pontiac in a tacky coffin wearing cheap knock-off shoes. Her mother is glad she is back, albeit as a vampire, but her stepmother is enraged that Betsy has reclaimed her designer-shoe collection. With a wealthy best friend and a newly acquired doctor pal who is not susceptible to her formidable allure, she sets out to right wrongs but is abducted by Nostro, a tacky 500-year-old vampire who rules the undead roost. It seems that Betsy is an anomaly: a vampire who doesn't burn in sunlight, can fight the urge to feed, and is not repulsed by religious articles, all of which may make her the prophesied Queen of the Vampires. Teaming up with gorgeous vampire Eric Sinclair, who is in her opinion a major pervert, she takes on Nostro and his minions."
2328,Fangland,horror," The story begins with Evangeline Harker, an associate producer of the television news program, The Hour, and the daughter of a rich Texan magnate, is engaged to her boyfriend Robert, looking forward to their honeymoon. When she is given an assignment to investigate the Eastern European crime lord Ion Torgu in Romania, she worries about it. However, she accepts anyway. Arriving at Romania, she meets a young companion named Clementine Spence. Together, they travel to a disclosed location. There, Evangeline disappears after meeting with Torgu. She is then infected with vamparism; she then kills Clemmie by slicing her throat and drinking her blood; she disappears. The staff at The Hour is filled with guilt and dismay. Mysterious tapes appear, infecting the entire audio system with a weird noise. Two months later, Evangeline is found. Her memories are scrubbed, but slowly return. However, their terror only drives her insane. She is forced to attack anyone. Robert, meanwhile gets attacked by Torgu. However, Evangeline defeats Torgu in the final battle."
2329,The Rats,horror," The novel opens introducing the reader to an alcoholic vagrant, resting in an abandoned and forgotten lock-keeper's house by a canal. As he is ruminating over the injustices inflicted upon him in his life, he is suddenly set upon by a pack of dog-sized rats and is devoured alive. Harris, a young, east London art teacher notices that one of his students has a bloodied bandage around his hand. When he enquires as to what caused the damage, the student answers that he was attacked by a rat. Meanwhile, a baby girl and her dog are killed by the giant rats, now aided by packs of smaller black rats. The girl's mother rescues her daughter's mutilated body, but not before sustaining bites as well. Harris takes the student to the hospital and sees the grieving mother with her dead child. According to the doctor, the number of seemingly unprovoked rat attacks have strangely increased. The next rat attack occurs at the remains of a bombsite, where a group of squabbling vagrants are slaughtered. Harris is visited at work by the Minister of Health, Mr Foskins, who reveals that the bitten student, and all the other surviving victims of rat attacks, died of a mysterious disease 24 hours after being bitten. Foskins asks Harris to keep the existence of the disease a secret and lead an exterminator to the area where the student had been bitten. Accompanied by the exterminator, Harris goes to the canal described by the student and sights a group of giant rats. Harris attempts to contact the police while the exterminator follows the rats who then attack and kill the exterminator. The rat attacks become increasingly more daring, as more and more public places are attacked. A tube station is assaulted, leaving few survivors. Next, Harris’ own school is attacked, resulting in the death of the headmaster. With the existence of the rats' disease now becoming public knowledge, a meeting is held, in which a young researcher by the name of Stephen Howard comes up with the idea of using a virus to infect the rats. The virus is injected into several puppies which are left in areas of the attacks. This results in the deaths of thousands of rats, which crawl to the surface to die. A few weeks later however, the rats adapt to the virus, yet at the same time, losing the toxicity of their bites. The rats brutally attack a cinema and overrun the London Zoo. Based on the fact that rats communicate with each other using ultrasound, a plan is formulated to use ultrasonic machines to lure the rats into gas chambers. Foskins is dismissed as Health Minister and reveals to Harris that he’s been investigating possible clues as to the rats origins and comes to the conclusion that they were smuggled from the tropics by a Zoologist living near a canal. Pursuing the disgraced health minister past waves of entranced rats; Harris finds the abandoned house and enters it. He goes into the cellar and finds Foskins' corpse being devoured by rats of unusually great size. He kills them after a bloody battle and discovers the rats' leader hidden in the shadows; a white, hairless and obese rat with two heads. Harris kills the creature and leaves. The epilogue indicates that one rat survived the purge by being trapped in the basement of a grocery shop. There, it gives birth to a new litter, including a new white rat."
2330,Hunters of the Dusk,horror," In the seventh book of this series, not long into his years as a Prince, Darren is once again visited by Desmond Tiny (the creator of vampires and Little People). He explains that the three hunters must find and hunt down the Vampaneze Lord if they have any hopes to win the war. He announces that two of them are Darren and Mr. Crepsley, but the third one they must find on their way. The hunters are told by Mr. Tiny that they will cross paths with the Lord of the Vampaneze four times throughout their quest, and have only those four chances to destroy him. They leave and go to Lady Evanna for help as they were instructed by Mr.Tiny. On the way they meet with Vancha March, another Vampire Prince and the last hunter. Vancha's skin is a dark shade of red, due to his constant battle with the sun (he thinks that the sun, like any other enemy of the creatures of the night, can be defeated) and does not like to use weapons, using his bare hands instead. Though, he does use the shurikens that are strapped to his belt when necessary. He prefers to wear only clothes made from animals, and doesn't care for having many manners. He claims to be a ladies man, though Darren perceives him as someone whom all women dislike. The three get to Evanna's house, and she lets them stay with her for a few days so they can discuss what Mr.Tiny said and where they should go next. Leaving Lady Evanna's house, they set their sites back towards the Cirque Du Freak, following Darren's gut feeling as a Vampire Prince and the main hunter. While they are staying there, Darren notices Lady Evanna leaving the Cirque one night and follows her to a nearby forest. He witnesses Lady Evanna meeting with a group of Vampaneze and fears the worst. Darren gets the others, and they prepare an attack. After launching what seemed to be a successful strike on the group of Vampaneze, two of them get away. One being Vancha's brother, and the other being a servant of the Vampaneze. Vancha lets them get away after realizing that one is his brother. However, little to their knowledge, the servant was actually a disguise and it turned out to be the Lord of the Vampaneze! After a few more nights at the Cirque to once again come up with a strategy, they set off to once more try to encounter the Lord and destroy him to end the War of the Scars. Preview the Book. fa:شکارچیان غروب"
2331,Wolf Island,horror," The book starts with Grubbs fighting a demon alongside Beranabus and Kernel in the Demonata universe. After subduing and torturing the demon they are fighting, they question it about the Shadow, but learn nothing. Later, they meet up with Shark, Meera, Bec and Dervish. They discover that the Lambs were responsible for the attack on the Grady's home in Carcery Vale and it is decided that Grubbs should go after them to find out more. Shark assembles a team of soldiers he names the ""Dirty Dozen"". One of them is Timas Brauss, a computer expert, who finds the Lamb's Headquarters. Upon their arrival, they find a man named Antoine Horwitzer in charge, in place of the missing Prae Athim. Antoine explains that Prae stole around six to seven hundred werewolves from their breeding facility. They learn, through Timas' efforts, that Prae took all the werewolves to ""Wolf Island"" and Antoine accompanies them there. On the island, they find Prae a prisoner. It emerges that Antoine and Juni Swan were behind the assault. Juni Swan arrives shortly after and they are attacked. They manage to flee and attempt to escape on the helicopter they arrived in but it is destroyed. They try to escape the released werewolves through a window but are attacked before they can open one. Shark is left behind in the subsequent fight. Grubbs, Meera, Prae and Timas try to escape by sea since the werewolves cannot swim but ultimately find themselves surrounded. Grubbs becomes a werewolf and kills the leader of the pack, replacing him and assuming control of the werewolves. He makes the wolves go back to attack Juni. Grubbs fights Juni but is eventually overpowered. Just as he is about to be killed, Juni has a vision. She says that Grubbs is tapping into great magic and that the world is being destroyed, informing him ""the demons will not destroy the world, Grubbs Grady - you will."" With that, she leaves. Grubbs later finds Antoine trying to escape by boat. Grubbs agrees not to kill Antoine if he calls his Lambs off their attack and has them escort Bec and Dervish to safety. Once this is done, Antoine asks Grubbs to keep his end of the bargain. Grubbs confirms he would not kill Antoine, ""but that doesn't mean the pack won't"". Antoine is savagely killed. On the way back to the docks, they see a man lying on his back in a boat, this is revealed to be a severely injured Shark, who fought and killed the werewolves he was left to fight with. When Grubbs gets back home, he finds Dervish has decided to stay and die instead of going to the Demonata world. A window opens and Grubbs, Bec, Dervish, and Kirilli prepare to fight."
2332,Blue Light,horror," In 1965, a mysterious beam of blue light came down from space and overlooked Northern California. This light had extraterrestrial powers that caused whomever the beam touched to die, go mad, or acquire a special unique power. This power is defined as full actualization of humankind, with strengths, understandings and communication abilities that exceed our normal capabilities. The people touched by the light in the novel were soon referred to as ""Blues"" and were segregated from society because of their new and improved super human powers. Soon after this discovery, they came together to try and find their purpose in the universe. As they look for their calling in life, an evil force emerges which sets the stage for a battle later on in the novel between good and evil. The evil represents the ""Gray Man""l which is Horace LaFontaine, a character in the novel who is struck by the light at the moment of death and revived as a demon sent to kill all of the ""blues"". Once the ""blues"" discover this nemesis, they take refuge in the forest outside of Northern California. Soon the Gray Man finds out where they are hiding from inside sources and the ""blues"" come to a consensus in which they are going to confront their enemy and declare war with the Gray Man. This epic battle takes place at the ending of the novel and has an extraordinary finish. The ""blues"" all use their powers that they were given to destroy the Gray Man. They soon reside in the small cities of Northern California and live normal lives with the people of California."
2333,Leaving Poppy,horror," Leaving Poppy is split into three parts. The story starts with a girl, the main protagonist 'Amber' arriving at a house on Merral Road. She's unsure that it's the right house, as many others she tried weren't right. After entering the house that she begins to think back about her mother and half-sister Poppy, she thinks back to various previous events such as Amber's birthday which Poppy ruined. Amber had told her mother that she was going on holiday, but she found the house (17 Merral Road) on a flat sharing website, intending to stay there, telling her mother later by phone. Poppy is obviously a disturbed and emotionally unstable child from the beginning, she ""crys all the time...refusing to eat"". Amber saw her moving as abandoning them. She meets Rory, who helps her with her case, which she promptly unpacks. Later she meets the rest of her housemates: Ben, Chrissie and Kaz. After eating the meal Ben had prepared that night, she asks about finding a job, determined she'll find one tomorrow. Amber had lied to them all, she wasn't ever on a gap year and never had a broken relationship. Upstairs Amber sees 'dust shapes', but thinks nothing of it. Amber has recounts more of Poppy's previous actions and her bizarre relationship with her mother. Poppy acts violently hurting another girl, then runs into her mother's bed bot Poppy and their mother crying. Their mother refuses that anything is Poppy's fault. The next day Amber looks for a job in many cafes and bars but can't find one. She eventually finds a cafe she loves and keeps asking for a job. She makes an apple crumble as a trial and eventually gets the job. The owner of the cafe (The Albatross) is Bert and the other cook is Marty. That night Amber wakes many times, because of the window rattling. After a day at work, Amber decides to get fit. On the way to number 17 she bumps into an old woman from 11 Merral Road, talking to her about whereabouts in the house she lives mentioning the attic. She leaves Amber asking her why the last person left the house. Amber, thinking she's crazy quickly goes into the house. When heading up the stairs Amber thinks she sees the dust shadow again in the large ornate Edwardian mirror on the landing. She heads up to the attics, to find 2/3 of them full of junk. As she enters the last attic, Amber begins to notice things such as the iron bed and the wooden rocking chair,seem to falter and fade, so she eaves the attic quickly. Amber asks about the previous housemate left and got the answer that she just wanted a change. She asks Ben if old things can have an 'atmosphere' but doesn't tell him what happened in the attic. That night when she goes to bed she keeps telling herself not to go crazy. She dreams one of her 'guilt dreams' where she leaves Poppy. The next day Amber leaves work and tells her housemates that she'll cook the next meal. Amber forgot to phone her mother once again like she promised, upon doing so it appeared that her mother had called the police and they'd laughed at her. The conversation ends with Amber saying sorry. ""...she'd said she felt sorry so many times that the word had lost all meaning."" Amber had 2 days off work, she spent the first drunk and slept happily, and the second hanging around with Kaz talking. Sunday night she is awoken by the 'fixed' window rattling again. She scavenges a rug, radio and other items from the first 2 attics, not going near the 3rd. Her room ""didn't feel quite right..."" Amber gets into the routine of going to the phone box every day after work to call her mother. Her mother kept her updated about Poppy, she'd only managed 2 days of college since Amber left and is deeply depressed. Amber scavenges some raw fish from Bert and cooks a meal that goes down well with everyone. Amber phones her mother finally telling her she's not coming back, her mother sees this as abandoning her saying she cares for no-one but themselves. She notices her throat becoming sore, she reveals her mother doesn't trust doctors and she gets tonsillitis twice a year. Kaz says she'll make the next meal, obviously attracted to Rory playfully flirting. Amber goes to bed the darkness upstairs doesn't seem right and she keeps telling herself not to get ill. The next day at work, Bert reveals that Marty is involved with a girl he met in the summer, Amber's heart sinks. On the way home she meets the old women again, who seems to warn her not to go into the house, not to sleep in her room. She enters no. 17 asks Ben to fix her window then sleeps on her bed. Amber woke up sure Poppy was in the room with her, sitting on the bed, like she does, she could feel the pressure on the bed. The shape disappears and Amber tries to get back to sleep. She hears a high pitch complaining like Poppy but different, then she hears an eerie noise, wood on wood. The old rocking chair in the attic. Next morning Amber tries to convince herself it was a dream. Looking in the mirror again she sees the dust shape, only thinner this time, also her reflection seems to waver and move. After Kaz's meal, Kaz and Rory have a playfight with one of the old cushions. In the scuffle it's torn apart and everyone recoils in horror. Fingers of hair poked out the pillow, melted together with pins. Inside are 3 small teeth, from a child. Amber hears that Kaz had seen and heard exactly what she had seen and heard but she says nothing. Kaz wedged the rocking chair with books, haunted by the noises at night. Part 1 ends with ""everything going dark"" leaving the reader uncertain of what happens next."
2334,The Exorcist,horror," An elderly Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin is leading an archaeological dig in northern Iraq and is studying ancient relics. Following the discovery of a small statue of the demon Pazuzu (an actual ancient Assyrian demigod) and a modern-day St. Joseph medal curiously juxtaposed together at the site, a series of omens alerts him to a pending confrontation with a powerful evil, which, unknown to the reader at this point, he has battled before in an exorcism in Africa. Meanwhile, in Georgetown, a young girl named Regan MacNeil living with her famous mother, actress Chris MacNeil, becomes inexplicably ill. After a gradual series of poltergeist-like disturbances, she undergoes disturbing psychological and physical changes, appearing to become ""possessed"" by a demonic spirit. After several unsuccessful psychiatric and medical treatments, Regan's mother turns to a local Jesuit priest. Father Damien Karras, who is currently going through a crisis of faith coupled with the loss of his mother, agrees to see Regan as a psychiatrist, but initially resists the notion that it is an actual demonic possession. After a few meetings with the child, now completely inhabited by a diabolical personality, he turns to the local bishop for permission to perform an exorcism on the child. The bishop with whom he consults does not believe Karras is qualified to perform the rites, and appoints the experienced Merrin, who has recently returned to the United States, to perform the exorcism; although he does allow the doubt-ridden Karras to assist him. The lengthy exorcism tests the priests both physically and spiritually. When Merrin, who had previously suffered cardiac arrhythmia, dies during the process, completion of the exorcism ultimately falls upon Father Karras. When he demands that the demonic spirit inhabit him instead of the innocent Regan, the demon seizes the opportunity to possess the priest. Karras surrenders his own life in exchange for Regan's by jumping out of her bedroom window."
2335,No Humans Involved,horror," Necromancer Jaime Vegas is hired by a television show, along with other celebrity spiritualists (i.e. frauds) to raise Marilyn Monroe's spirit for a little chat on the anniversary of her death. Filming begins with Jaime and the other celebrity necromancers raising the spirits of other dead celebrities as stock footage for the show. In addition, she's asked Pack Alpha Jeremy Danvers to join her as a guest/escort... and Jaime hopes a little more. During filming, Jaime experiences something that should never happen, a ghost that she can not see but can feel touching her. Frightened that she, like other necromancers before her, is going crazy, she reaches out to other supernaturals on the Interracial Council for help. Going to Portland to visit the head of the Council, Paige Winterbourne, her husband/business partner Lucas Cortez and their teenage ward Savannah Levine, Jamie is nearly killed by a woman whom Savannah believes can help. Rescued by the teenager, Savannah leaves Jamie in the care of Jeremey who accompanies back to LA. Together Jaime and Jeremey along with the Angel Eve (Savannah's mother) and Ghost Kristof (Savannah's father and once head of the Nast Cabal), discover the ghosts are those of children killed by humans trying to learn the art of witchcraft! this requires additional information"
2336,Doomsday Deck,horror," Joyce Summers is running a local art show for people from around the United States. A girl named Justine shows up the first day to sign in and Xander is immediately attracted to her. She offers to do a Tarot reading for him which he agrees to. Once Xander has touched her magickal deck he comes under her control and has no will of his own. Justine is building a powerful deck of Tarot cards which will allow her to control the fate of the world with the help of the goddess Kali, who, in return, wants ultimate peace on Earth. Only Justine doesn't realize what ultimate peace is and she's come to Sunnydale to collect the last four people she needs to complete her deck of cards. Once her deck has been completed the four people remaining needed for the deck will die like the other eighteen she's used to make the deck. Buffy must figure out how her friends are being controlled and find a way to fight herself out of the power of Justine's Tarot cards. Buffy novels such as this one are not usually considered by fans as canonical. Some fans consider them stories from the imaginations of authors and artists, while other fans consider them as taking place in an alternative fictional reality. However unlike fan fiction, overviews summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Joss Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise."
2337,The Rising,horror," The story starts off in the aftermath of a secret particle accelerator experiment. Somehow the experiment has opened some sort of interdimensional rift allowing demons to possess the dead. As the dead come back to life, a zombie plague results. The story's protagonist is Jim Thurmond, a construction worker living in West Virginia. Hiding away in a bomb shelter, which was previously constructed because of a fear of the aftermath of Y2K, Thurmond holds off packs of roving zombies, many of which were his neighbors and one of which is his recently deceased second wife who was pregnant. A distraught Jim laments his situation and worries about his son, Danny, who is living with Jim's first wife in upstate New Jersey. Jim considers suicide when unexpectedly Jim's cellphone rings with a message from his son, Danny. Danny whispers into the phone that while their situation is equally morbid they are, for the present moment, safe hiding away from the zombies. Jim's suicidal thoughts turn around into a new purpose - to rescue Danny. Jim packs some supplies from the shelter and heads out into an apocalyptic United States overrun with gruesome sights. Jim fights his way out of the shelter by killing his undead neighbors and even his undead second wife, who taunts him with his unborn daughter. The moment he leaves the shelter, Jim is on the run discovering that the undead possess the ability to think, drive cars, use weapons, and set traps for the living. Meanwhile, a scientist named Baker, who was working on the covert project involving cosmic black holes is trapped within the confines of his underground workspace. With the undead epidemic having swept the world for which Baker is directly responsible he begins to feel an overwhelming sense of guilt. An old colleague is trapped inside a room, a member of the undead who refers to himself as Ob. He hints that he comes from somewhere called The Void, the connotation of which appears to be like ""Hell"" on Earth. He learns that the zombies are not occupied by their original selves but instead a different evil entity with the possession of the host body's memories and personalities. Baker eventually escapes and finds his life being saved by Worm, a deaf young man whom grateful Baker takes under his wing. Jim eventually meets Martin, a wise elderly black minister. The two join forces to find Danny and soon run into many life-threatening situations such as packs of roving zombies, backwood cannibals seeking extra food and undead wildlife. Among one of their exploits, they run into a father and son in hiding, who help them along the way until tragedy strikes in a double suicide for the two. At the same time, Frankie, a heroin user and prostitute who is trying to hide from a vengeful pimp, narrowly escapes disaster in the Baltimore Zoo begins a trek out of the cities and into the country. Somewhere within Pennsylvania, the National Guard is present which has literally become psychotic with Colonel Schow, a sociopathic official leading a crew of horny, violent soldiers who abuse their authority by violently drafting people into their army and turning women into sexual slaves to satisfy the soldiers. With utter disregard the army uses living humans as zombie bait. Amongst all this chaos a lone private named Skip, who is disgusted with his comrades' behavior, looks to escape. Frankie eventually meets up with Jim and Martin. Together they help Jim reach his destination, New Jersey. Meanwhile, Professor Baker, the scientist responsible for creating the zombie outbreak, finds that Ob is possessing his assistant who had decided to kill himself. Ob is the leader of the demons that are infesting the world and taking over the dead and he demands to be released from the room that Professor Baker has trapped him in. The story also keeps tabs on one of the other scientists in charge of the particle accelerator as he too seeks his destiny in a world full of the undead. In the final chapter all the main characters meet which results in a scene of extreme violence providing a cliffhanger conclusion that raises more questions than answers."
2338,The Ragwitch,horror," Julia and her brother, Paul, are spending a day by the beach when they discover a midden heap. They climb to the top, where Julia discovers a rag doll in a ball of feathers hidden in a nest. It turns out to be a powerful and evil witch, and it possesses Julia and spirits her away through a pyramid of fire. Paul manages to follow them and he finds himself in a strange country desperately unprepared for the return of the Ragwitch. At first, he meets the May Dancers, who after questioning him, lead him to the edge of the forest and set him free. The people of the land aid him as he searches for a way to free his sister, action following at every turn, as both Paul and Julia battle the Ragwitch; Julia from within Her, and Paul from outside. Paul collects several mystical objects from the powerful Elementals, before meeting with the Patchwork King, who forges for him a needle spear in order to kill the Ragwitch. There are no strong fighters to help Paul, no saviors for him and he must find his own way. Because Paul is no hero, his war is one of bravery and brains, not brawn. Julia tells her own story from the mind of the Ragwitch. Although she is much more courageous than Paul, her war is one of the mind, resisting the power of the Ragwitch from within the witch's body."
2339,Bec,horror," When a ""simple child"" named Bran who can run incredibly fast comes to Bec's demon-besieged rath, she and a small consignment of warriors go with him, including the chief's son, Connla, who is ""largely untested"" in battle; Goll, an old warrior; Lorcan and Ronan, two teenage twins; Fiachna the blacksmith; and Orna, a female warrior. During the journey, the group is attacked by demons, but luckily manage to hide near some ancient lodestones which protects them with powerful Old Magic. Eventually, Bran leads them to a crannóg, where everyone is dead except a druid, Drust. The druid tells them about a tunnel to the demons' world, and how he aims to destroy it. They go with him. During their journey, they encounter many demons, including the terrifying Lord Loss, with whom Bec engages in a battle. She appears to absorb power from him, and after the encounter begins to learn magic at a phenomenal rate. Drust gets worried, and asks her for permission to go into her mind (like Dervish Grady asks Grubbs in Slawter). He discovers that Lord Loss had given Bec part of his power,(later revealed to the power given by Lord loss is the power of the kah gash.) opening up her magical side, though no one knows for what purpose. Eventually they arrive at a village, where Bec learns about her heritage and that she is part of a clan prone to lycanthropy (this is a link to the Garadexes, Grubbs' ancestors). After a long journey, they arrive at the cliffs. Lord Loss appears, intrigued by a chessboard Drust got from the Elders. He is then thrown out magically, and places a geis (a demon curse) on them. Although dismissing it as untrue, the group are immediately affected by the geis; Orna is killed by her undead children. They arrive at the coast, where they share a small battle with some demons, and, according to Connla, Ronan is forced over into the sea and Fiachna is fatally infected with demon poison. That night Bec and Drust use magic to go down into an underwater cave, and they meet the mystical Old Creatures, who tell them where the tunnel is and how to destroy it. It emerges that a druid or priestess must be sacrificed, which reveals why Drust needs Bec. Back on dry land, while Bec and Drust are talking about the sacrifice, Bran overhears. The group find some horses which help them reach their destination in time, but Fiachna is soon abandoned after his wound becomes life-threatening. When they arrive at the demon-guarded tunnel, they find Drust's brother Brude trapped and part of the entrance. Brude opened the tunnel and let the entire demon race loose on the Earth to prevent all of Ireland converting to Christianity. It transpires that Drust was motivated because he knew his brother had unleashed the demons. Connla betrays the group, revealing he was working for Lord Loss all along and it was he who caused all the deaths of the others of their party. Bec pushes him under a waterfall, breaking his protective spell of demonic blood and allowing the demons to slaughter him. Lorcan and Goll are also attacked and die in battle. When Bec is about to be sacrificed, Drust is knifed in the back by Bran and Bec realizes Bran wouldn't let her die. Drust tells her to use him as the sacrifice, as he is about to die anyway. When the tunnel is destroyed, Brude's mouth starts to close. Bec manages to force Bran through the closing tunnel at the last moment with the last of her magic, but is trapped as a result. Soon after, Lord Loss appears and tells Bec that when she appeared to absorb power from him several days earlier, Lord Loss had actually intended for that to happen so that she could close the tunnel. This is because Lord Loss is unique among demons, in that instead of wishing to slaughter all the humans in the world as quickly as possible, he actually prefers to prolong the suffering for as long as possible. If the tunnel had remained open, countless other demons would have passed through and destroyed all of mankind within a matter of weeks, which would have ruined Lord Loss' ""sport"". After telling Bec this, Lord Loss reminds her that of the geis that he had placed on her, and that he is bound by his word to kill her. Lord Loss sets his familiars upon Bec, and without any magic to defend herself with, she is utterly defenceless. This book has the same first and last words ""Screams in the Dark."""
2340,Return to Chaos,horror," When four Druids arrive in town everyone knows that something is going on. Three of the Druids are brothers and the other is their uncle. They're in town to try a spell on a certain night to close the gateway in the Hellmouth so that demons would not be allowed to pass through. They'd done it a year before with their father but the spell was not completed and the brothers lost their father in the midst of the spell. Giles is a little put off by the uncle and feels that he's not being told everything that he should know. Also gathering is a large community of vampires run by Eric and his apprentice Naomi, who has been playing nasty tricks with Cordelia's mind by hypnotizing her. Things start to go wrong; magic appears everywhere and the brothers turn against their uncle. On the night of the spell Buffy must manage to fix the spell or deter the uncle from his task as well as figure out what is going on with Eric and his gang. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Cordelia, Willow, Oz and Angel. Drusilla is found to be a user of a spell that would explain her ease in killing Kendra."
2341,Hell House,horror," The story concerns four people - Dr. Lionel Barrett, a physicist with an interest in parapsychology, his wife Edith, and two mediums (Florence Tanner, a Spiritualist and mental medium, and Benjamin Franklin Fischer, a physical medium) - who are hired by dying millionaire William Reinhardt Deutsch to investigate the possibility of life after death. To do so, they must enter the infamous Belasco House in Maine, regarded as the most haunted house in the world. The house is called ""Hell House"" due to the horrible acts of blasphemy and perversion that occurred there under the silent influence and supervision of Emeric Belasco. Fischer is the only survivor of a failed investigation attempt thirty years earlier. The novel combines supernatural horror with mystery as the researchers attempt to investigate the haunting of the house while their sanity is subtly undermined by its sinister supernatural influence. During the investigation, various influences begin to affect each character's personal weaknesses: Florence through her belief in Spiritualism and her over-eagerness to rid the house of its evil; Dr. Barrett through his almost-arrogant disbelief in/disregard for Spiritualism, his belief in science, and his debilitated physical condition (having suffered from polio when young); Edith through her personal fears, insecurities and pent-up desires; and Fischer through his deliberate inaction (which he calls ""caution""). Hell House's potency comes from its apparent ability to corrupt those who enter its walls, before bringing about their destruction, both mental and physical."
2342,The Drawing of the Three,horror," The book begins less than seven hours after the end of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger after The Man in Black has described The Gunslinger's fate using tarot cards. Roland wakes up on a beach, where he is suddenly attacked by a strange, lobster-like creature, which he dubs a ""lobstrosity."" He kills the creature but not before losing the index and middle finger of his right hand, and most of his right big toe; his untreated wounds soon become infected. Feverish and losing strength, Roland continues to trek north along the beach, where he eventually encounters three doors. Each door opens onto New York City at different periods in time (1987, 1964 and 1977, respectively) and, as Roland passes through these doors, he brings back the companions who will join him on his quest to the Dark Tower. The first door (labeled ""The Prisoner"") brings Eddie Dean, a heroin addict who is in the process of smuggling cocaine for the drug lord Enrico Balazar. Since Eddie was headed deeper into addiction (at the hands of his brother Henry) or prison (at the hands of the government), or worse (at the hands of his drug lord), he decides to throw his lot in with Roland, although with deep misgivings that he occasionally gives vent to in the form of angry outbursts. The second door (labeled ""The Lady of Shadows,"" so called for her multiple personalities and metaphorically, multiple shadows) reveals Odetta Holmes, a black woman who is active in the civil rights movement. She is wealthy and missing her legs below the knees after being pushed in front of a subway car. Odetta is completely unaware that she has an alternate personality, a violent, predatory woman named Detta. Roland and Eddie are forced to contend with both of these personalities when Odetta's body is forcibly abducted into their world. Instead of revealing a new companion, the third door (labeled ""The Pusher"") instead reveals a new adversary for Roland: Jack Mort, a sociopath who takes sadistic pleasure in injuring and killing random strangers &mdash; and the man responsible for the head trauma that created Odetta Holmes's alternate personality, the loss of Odetta/Detta's legs, and the death of Jake Chambers. Mort's murder of Jake led to Jake's appearance in The Gunslinger. Roland's decisions while dealing with Mort are crucial to later events in the series. The encounter results in the death of Jack Mort and the fusing of the personalities of Odetta and Detta to form a third woman, who will thenceforth be called Susannah. Although the Gunslinger does not bring ""The Pusher"" with him into his own world (as might be guessed based upon what has happened regarding the previous two doors), his quest for the Dark Tower is not lost, because Roland does draw his third. His third is Susannah; the result of Odetta and Detta's fusion of minds. Through his actions both in his world, and in Eddie, Susannah, and Jack Mort's world, Roland saves Eddie and Susannah. He saves Eddie by curing him of his addiction and bringing Susannah, whom Eddie loves. He saves Susannah by helping her fuse her former personalities, Odetta Holmes and Detta Walker, into a stronger single personality, Susannah Dean. Both owe their lives to Roland, and Roland is acutely aware that he may need to sacrifice them to reach the Tower. Each of these people is essential for Roland to continue his quest. They are all part of a ka-tet, defined as ""one made from many"" and ""sharing the same destiny."""
2343,The Servants of Twilight,horror," Single parent Christine Scavello and her young son Joey are confronted in a mall parking lot by a madwoman who claims that Joey is the Antichrist. After a distressing attack on the family home results in her dog being decapitated, Christine enlists the help of private detective Charlie Harrison. Harrison traces a van that is following Christine back to one Grace Spivey—a charismatic elderly woman who is the leader of a fanatical religious cult called The Servants Of Twilight. Christine is provided with bodyguards for her protection; however, it is not long before one of them is killed in an attack by cult members. Christine, Charlie, Joey, and the new dog Chewbacca begin a tiresome cross country journey to escape the deluded members of ""The Twilight"". It seems that no matter how far they travel or where they go, Spivey's people find them. It is revealed that this is due to Spivey being a psychic who can see into the future, a gift that also plagues her with many sleepless nights. After several more attacks (including a car bomb and an arson attack) the group tries to escape the growing threat of The Twilight by retreating to Charlie's lodge in the mountains. Here, Charlie finds himself falling love in with Christine, and the two end up sleeping together. Spivey is certain that Joey is the Antichrist, and continually has visions of the apocalypse where the child is the cause. Rather than considering herself insane or unjust, Spivey sees her need to kill the boy (as well as anyone that may get in her way) as a service to mankind. Her faith is so strong that she is able to enlist the following of many key members of the community, including police officers and a man named Kyle Barlow - a sociopath Spivey had saved from a life of crime. The Servants of Twilight eventually track the group to Charlie's mountain lodge. After a chase and more gun fights with heavily armed cult members in a treacherous blizzard, the family finds themselves in a cave in the side of a mountain. They are exhausted, Charlie has suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder and Joey develops a serious illness, including hives to the face and a very pale complexion, both caused by exposure to the extreme cold. Kyle Barlow knows he must finish the job, but finds he does not have the ability to kill a child, even if Grace believed him to be the Antichrist. The story reaches it climax inside the cave when Spivey and her last standing helper, Kyle Barlow, begin their descent to kill the child and stop the supposed rise of the Antichrist. Christine has no energy left to fight, and Charlie is barely conscious from his gunshot wound. It all looks very bleak as Grace Spivey raises a gun to Joey's head. Just before she pulls the trigger, however, Spivey is attacked by a barrage of bats who attack her and leave her for dead. The strange behavior of the bats causes Christine to wonder if her son could have caused the attack. The book closes with the end of the ordeal and with Christine and Charlie in a stable relationship. Charlie’s curiosity about Joey grows, as the boy's illness cleared up very quickly and mysteriously. The story ends with Charlie trying to find evidence in the buried remains of the family's original dog. The grave does not hold the remains of Christine's dog but a dog of a different breed, which Charlie finds humorous and concludes that Joey could not be the Antichrist."
2344,Invaders from the Dark,horror," The story is set in Brooklyn, New York in the mid-1920s and deals with the widow of an Occultist, Portia Differdale, and Princess Tchernova, a wealthy and beautiful Russian werewolf. Both women desire the same man, Owen Edwardes."
2345,Halloween Rain,horror," Xander and Willow warn Buffy not to go out on Halloween if it's raining. According to the premise of the book, the rain in Sunnydale is magical on Halloween, and if it lands on a scarecrow it will animate and hunt down the Slayer. While at a Halloween party at the Bronze, Buffy is forced to go to the cemetery to fight vampires. She eventually encounters the reanimated scarecrow."
2346,Spiral,horror," The events in the story occur a day after the events of the first book. It introduces us to Ando Mitsuo who is assigned to do the autopsy of Ryuji. He and his colleague, Miyashita, find a benign tumor in Ryuji's throat which is believed to be his cause of death. They are puzzled because the tumor they found appeared much like a tumor with smallpox, which was eradicated 30 years prior to the story. Ando, with his colleague, Miyashita, find out that an organism called ""Ring Virus"" caused this tumor. The virus is transferred to the body via the tape and begins to grow a tumor in the viewer's throat. When the charm is not performed, the tumor grows to block the airways and kills the person. To stop this, the tape must be copied and shown to another person. They also found a cryptic message inside his stomach with the word RING and a series of other cryptic messages. This discovery further perplexes Ando. In search for the message's meaning he came to meet Ryuji's assistant and lover, Mai Takano. Mai seems to know something about the videotape and tells Ando the curse, but does not know how Ryuji died. As a scientist, Ando laughed at Mai's explanation. He also went to talk to Kazuyuki, but found that he and his family were involved in a car accident. It is discovered that Kazuyuki's wife and child were dead before the crash. Kazuyuki is in critical condition and unable to talk, and at the accident's site lies a crushed videotape. When Mai was suddenly lost which further motivates Ando to investigate until he stumbles upon Kazuyuki's files with the title THE RING. He is uncertain because it contains supernatural events and contradicts scientific explanations. After reading the report, Ando and Miyashita visited the well where Sadako died. They discovered that the virus has mutated and now uses the report as a medium. Ando also found out that Kazuyuki's older brother, Junichiro Asakawa is planning to publish his brother's report as his own horror novel. Days after Mai's disappearance, he met a beautiful woman named Masako who introduced herself as Mai's older sister. He fell in love with her. They made love one night. The day after that he discovers Masako and Sadako are one and the same. Later he receives a parchment from Sadako/Masako explaining how Mai Takano gave birth to her as well as warning Ando not to interfere with the publication of Kazuyuki's files, which now contain the deadly virus. In exchange for his co-operation, Sadako offered to resurrect Ando's son, whose death through drowning two years previously cast a shadow over his life. Ando realized that Ryuji was the master-mind behind the resurrection of Sadako as he lured Mai Takano into watching the video tape, as well as giving out clues to Ando, hoping he would discover the Ring Report and therefore distribute the virus. Ryuji is then brought back to life by Sadako. The epilogue shows Ando playing with his son on the beach, planning to reintroduce him to his wife. Unlike the first book where the focus was mainly on the supernatural and revealing more about the past of the origins of the virus, here we see the virus less as a supernatural event and more as a scientifically explainable one."
2347,The Taking,horror," In the midst of an oddly sudden rain storm, author Molly Sloan awakens in the middle of the night. Unable to return to sleep, she leaves her husband Neil slumbering in bed and goes downstairs to work on a manuscript in progress. Dark shapes huddle on her porch - coyotes from the nearby forest. She wonders what could have frightened such animals into leaving the sanctuary of the deep woods to brave the proximity of human beings. Disturbed, she steps outside, to stand among the wild beasts, and is frightened herself - not by the animals, but by the strange, oddly luminiscent rain. On an instinctual level, she realizes that there is something unclean about the rain. Upon further thought, she recognizes that the odd, but familiar smell of the rain, is the smell of semen. Once she comes back to the house, Molly and her husband Neil search for information in the news. They are only able to gather that the same phenomena is taking place all over the world, before all communications are lost. They decide to flee their isolated home, gathering with the residents of the nearby small mountain town, in order to prepare a resistance, though they are not even sure against what they will be fighting. After 10 hours of downpour, the rain stops. In its place, a thick, ominous fog obscures everything, reducing trees and buildings to looming shadows. By then, Molly and Neil are in the town's tavern, where around 60 people have gathered with dogs and children. It is implied that the phenomena is the product of an alien invasion. Unfamiliar noises are heard and strange lights are seen. Peculiar fungi appear in the restroom of a local tavern, and a frightening fungus grows upon trees, lawns, houses, and people alike. From time to time, huge objects drift above the terrified populace, and people feel as if they are known, completely, by whatever or whoever occupies these aerial craft - if the silent, drifting objects are crafts of some kind. Molly and Neil, accompany a stray dog named Virgil, set off on a mission to rescue the town’s children, many of whom are trapped in their homes. Meanwhile the people at the tavern split into warring factions, struggle against the mysterious threat that has seized their town. Oddly, Virgil seems to be able to supernaturally sense when and where certain children are endangered. It is revealed, later, that other animals are also leading rescue efforts to save other children. As they search for answers, the townspeople conclude that they are under siege by extraterrestrial invaders who have come as an advance party to reverse-terraform the Earth so that its altered atmosphere will support their alien physiological needs, although, in doing so, they will poison the planet for its human residents, who must die so that the invaders may live. At all times, while they encounter the most horrible and twisted creatures during their journey Molly senses that the invaders are of the most malignant kind, and that they want nothing but destruction. After going through different horrors, Molly and Neil are able to save 13 children total, with the help of Virgil and other dogs. Molly is convinced that the aliens have allowed them to rescue the children to harvest them for some more terrible end; however, a chain of events leads her to believe that there is still hope, and that the children have been spared for a special reason. After 36 hours of rain, mist, and darkness, a new rain comes, but to the delight of the characters, the new rain is clean, and washes all the monsters, fungus, and diseased alien presences in the world. At least a year later, Molly, Neil, and 8 of the children they rescued are living together in a house. Society has began a slow path towards reconstruction; most of the survivors are the children, and those who rescued them, plus dogs and cats that helped in the rescues. Molly is now a teacher, and Neil has gone back to work in the church. Most people do not talk about what happened, and the reasons behind the departure of the aliens is never discussed by them. However, while the identity or the origin of the invaders is never explicitly explained, at the end of the book Molly realizes that the invaders were not aliens at all; but that they had actually lived through the biblical apocalypse, and that the monsters where demons, sent to earth to annihilate humanity. Only a few would be spared, as in the ark of Noah, to rebuild a cleaner world. Several facts through the novel support her belief. The book ends on a light note, with Molly deciding to write a book again, not to publish it, but for her son or daughter, soon to be born. When Neil asks her what the book will be about, she answers ""Hope""."
2348,Already Dead,horror," Already Dead follows the adventures of a vampyre named Joe Pitt as he tries to figure out a mysterious zombie epidemic stemming around New York. He has connections in Manhattan Underworld which makes him a valuable item for clans. Joe is then asked to find the gothic daughter of a rich man, and is pressured to do the work. Meanwhile, a disease is spreading zombie like symptoms around the town, causing whoever is bitten (or infected) by this disease into ""Shamblers"", and it's up to Joe to find the mysterious carrier of this sickness. Aside from his line of work, Joe has a girlfriend named Evie, a human that is HIV positive, is currently terrified of any sexual contact since she's afraid of infecting him with the sickness. Joe knows how to cure her HIV, but fears the side effects; so he tries his best to keep his vampyrism a secret from her."
2349,Needful Things,horror," A new shop named ""Needful Things"" opens in the town of Castle Rock, Maine, sparking the curiosity of its citizens. The proprietor, Leland Gaunt, is a charming elderly gentleman who always seems to have an item in stock that is perfectly suited to any customer who comes through his door. The prices are surprisingly low, considering the merchandise - such as a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card, a carnival glass lampshade, and a fragment of wood believed to be from Noah's Ark - but he expects each customer to also play a little prank on someone else in Castle Rock. Gaunt knows about the long-standing private grudges, arguments, and feuds between the various townspeople, and the pranks are his means of forcing them to escalate until the whole town is eventually caught up in madness and violence. The novel ends as it begins, with a first-person narrative indicating that a new and mysterious shop is about to open in a small Iowa town - an implication that Gaunt is ready to begin his business cycle all over again."
2350,Koko,horror," Shortly after the end of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the newspaper Stars and Stripes publishes an article chronicling a series of brutal, ritualistic murders in Far East Asia. All of the victims have had their eyes and ears removed, and each was found with a playing card slipped into his or her mouth with the word ""KOKO"" written on it. Shortly thereafter, a reunion of Vietnam War veterans is held at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC. Four survivors of a doomed platoon—Michael Poole (a pediatrician plagued by grief over the death of his young son from cancer and ambivalence about his marriage), Tina Pumo (owner of a Vietnamese restaurant), Conor Linklater (a journeyman construction worker) and Harry Beevers (an opportunistic lawyer)-- gather to discuss the Koko killings. Because the word ""Koko"" holds special significance to the members of their platoon, and because the killings recall the events in a series of books he wrote, the men believe that the killer is Tim Underhill, another member of their platoon who disappeared years earlier in southeast Asia. Beevers convinces the men to help him track down Underhill, hoping that later they can sell the story of their adventure to the news media and become millionaires. While Pumo remains in New York to finish work on his soon-to-be-reopened restaurant, Beevers, Poole, and Linklater travel to Asia in search of Underhill, while the killer travels to America to continue his killing spree, which is meant to atone for an atrocity committed by Beevers and other members of the platoon years earlier, during the war. Much of the plot is interspersed with flashbacks to the four friends' time in Vietnam. Harry Beevers, the lieutenant of the group, was forceful and merciless. Tina, Conor, and Michael were soldiers in his platoon, along with several other men, most notably Victor Spitalny, a foul-tempered and arrogant young man, and M.O. Dengler, a philosophical and thoughtful man from a small town. After Vietnam, it was said that, while Dengler and Spitalny were traveling together in Bangkok, Dengler was brutally murdered in an alleyway while Spitalny fled the scene. Spitalny has not been accounted for since then (fifteen years before the platoon's trip to Singapore). Michael, Conor, and Harry fail to find Underhill in Singapore, but are given several leads while milling around sketchy clubs in the heart of the city that lead Michael and Conor to Bangkok and Harry to Taipei. While Conor searches the darker side of Bangkok, Michael wanders the flower market and residential areas of Bangkok. Before he does so, he visits the scene of Dengler's death, among other landmarks, but his search turns up fruitless. However, while wandering aimlessly around the city, thinking of his wife Judy and the strained relationship between the two of them, he sees an elephant, which delights him, and very soon afterwards finds Underhill at a small neighborhood fair. Upon meeting him, Michael realizes that Underhill couldn't possibly be Koko. His personality and state of mind are far too stable for vicious homicides. Michael convinces Underhill to return to America and help them find Koko. It is agreed that Underhill will accompany Michael and Conor on the flight to San Francisco where they meet with Harry and return to New York together. Meanwhile, back in America, Tina Pumo is murdered by Koko in his apartment. Tina's girlfriend, an attractive young Chinese woman named Maggie Lah, comes to visit him shortly there-after. Maggie realises something is wrong on arriving at Tina's apartment, as the front door has been left open, and enters the apartment trying not to attracting notice. Koko realises she has entered but is not sure of her whereabouts. Koko attempts to lure Maggie into exposing herself to him & gives his position away in the process. Maggie smashes an empty plant pot on Koko's head and knocks him briefly to the floor. This gains Maggie the few precious seconds she needs to escape, and she runs off. She is pursued, but the small lead she has is enough, and she makes it to safety. Michael, Conor, Beevers, Underhill, and Maggie mourn Tina's death, though Maggie does not attend the funeral, as she's worried about what Tina's relatives will say about her position in his life. The five get together and deduce that the murderer is, in fact, Victor Spitalny, having seen such horrors in the war that he has snapped and gone on a murderous rampage. Michael and Maggie begin a relationship. Underhill and Beevers stay at Beevers' house and man the phones in case Koko calls. Michael, Maggie, and Underhill travel to Milwaukee, where Spitalny's parents live, and speak with the two of them. They do not trust the father, George Spitalny, and Maggie develops a hatred towards him. Conor returns home and develops a relationship with the cousin of a man he works with, a woman named Ellen Woyzak. Beevers posts many fliers around town, each of them displaying a coded message only understandable by Koko, telling him to meet Beevers at a park in the center of town a few days later. In Milwaukee, the trio find out that Dengler and Spitalny went to the same school together, and speak to several of Spitalny's old classmates. None have anything particularly odd to say about Spitalny, though Michael agrees to meet one of them for lunch the next day and another for drinks that evening. Out of curiosity, Michael, Underhill, and Maggie go to see Dengler's mother. She turns out to be a religious maniac who taught M.O. Dengler a twisted version of Christianity, along with her husband, who is now deceased. When Michael meets Dengler's classmate for drinks, the man tells him that Dengler's parents had violently abused him several times to correct any errors he might have made. Furthermore, Dengler's father had been arrested and put in prison (and gruesomely murdered two years later by another prisoner) for sexually assaulting Dengler, beginning when he was five or six. Underhill learns the same information at the library, as well as the fact the Karl Dengler is Manny Dengler's real father (where Mrs. Dengler is not his real mother). Michael is shocked by the news and returns with Maggie and Underhill to New York. Conor and Ellen are waiting fervently for them at the airport, where Underhill is arrested because Harry Beevers had made an anonymous call to police so he could get Michael and Underhill out of the way and capture Koko alone. It is revealed that Koko has been telling people that his name is Underhill, thus framing Underhill for any murders he may have committed. Michael explains this to Murphy, the policeman who arrested Underhill, and reveals that Koko is not Spitalny as they had thought, but M.O. Dengler, their beloved comrade. Dengler killed Spitalny, switched dog-tags, and had a mob destroy his face and body. Murphy scolds the group for not telling the police of their findings before letting them go. Meanwhile, Harry Beevers decides to trap Koko in a killing box and hides in an arcade in Chinatown. He moves down a flight of stairs, a knife in one pocket and a pair of handcuffs in the opposite pocket. He hears something in the darkness and reaches for his knife. Beevers then remembers, belatedly, that the knife had fallen through a hole in his coat pocket earlier on that day, and he transferred it to the same pocket as the handcuffs, to make it easier to find. Koko seizes him and draws him into the darkness beneath the stairs. Michael, Maggie, Underhill, Conor, and Ellen travel quickly to where they think Beevers met Koko--a cave-like arcade in Chinatown. Murphy and his squad of police trail them. They are unaware of the policemen's presence until Underhill alerts Michael to the sight of them. Michael and the group flee in different directions down a deserted street by the arcade. Underhill and Maggie alert Michael after finding a bloody knife on a lower level of a tenement building that they were hiding in. Michael, Conor, and Underhill find Beevers tied up, gagged, and injured. Koko/Dengler is nearby, and smashes a lightbulb, throwing the group into darkness. The policemen catch up with them and negotiate with Koko to release the four men . Koko/Dengler stabs Michael in the side and does the same to Underhill, however he gags Underhill and steals his jacket so that he could be easily mistaken for Underhill himself in the dim light. After Michael alerts the police that the small man in the coat is not Underhill, Koko/Dengler murders one of the officers and escapes. In the aftermath, Koko/Dengler travels to the Honduras and is never heard from again. Michael, Underhill, Maggie, Conor, and Ellen all survive, however Beevers commits suicide six months after the scene in the basement, having no purpose in his life and no more illusions of grandeur to hold onto. Two years later, Michael and Maggie are together and live in a loft above Tina Pumo's old loft, where Underhill lives with Vinh and his daughter. Underhill narrates the end of the story, and imagines Koko's first few days in Honduras and the constant anxiety that would come with them."
2351,Monster Nation,horror," The Colorado National Guard is called in to investigate a strange epidemic at ADX Florence. Its officers struggle to contain the disease before it overruns the United States, and search for a mysterious woman who may be vital to the solution. The novel begins with a mysterious woman in California being bitten on the street by a random man who walks up to her. She runs into the nearest establishment, an oxygen bar and proceeds to get high while waiting for the police to show up. The police arrive and take her to he hospital where a zombie outbreak is occurring. Although restrained, she manages to convince a nurse to let her go, a nurse who is then consumed by zombies. While this is occurring, we are also introduced to two additional characters, Captain Bannerman Clark and Dick Walters. Captain Bannerman Clark is in the Colorado Army National Guard and is the Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection Officer in Charge, making him the always ready first man on the scene of any major disaster, trained to get the best intelligence on the situation and report to others who will take over. He is called away from enjoying a steak dinner alone to investigate an outbreak of what is believed to be a biological weapon at a prison in Colorado which spread from the prisoners to the guards, causing them to become perceived cannibals. The warden of the prison had travelled to California and had succumbed to the biological agent there, biting and infecting a young woman. Clark then goes to California to assess the damage. Dick Walters is travelling in the rural areas of Colorado to check on an outbreak of an infectious agent in sheep. When he arrives at the farm, the woman he is there to visit greets him with a gun and surmises quickly he is not, ""One of them."" She takes him to an abandoned mine shaft where several zombies are trapped, zombies which ate her husband and young son. The pair spend the night on the roof of her cabin, waiting for the walkers to come. Clark and the woman meet for the first time when she walks out of the hospital he arrives at, a hospital besieged by zombies. She is thought to be one of them and is to be executed in front of him when she disappears, removing her own aura. The girls then decides, after seeing a vision of a man, to head east towards Colorado. She is picked up by two delinquents along the way and runs amok with them for a bit, seeing a disturbing scene in a small town where the village kills a zombie. They eventually bunker down for the night in a small, abandoned inn. The woman, calling herself Nilla after Nilla Wafers, is approached for sex by the man of the group, but he runs when he sees she is covered in mold. She runs into the forrest nearby and kills a bear when attacked, turning the bear into one of the undead. The next morning the trio depart. Clark is determined to find Nilla after seeing her disappear, but his superiors force him to go to Washington to meet with and work for a civilian. The civilian likes Clark and intends on using him to figure all this out. Clark returns to Colorado to work on the cause of the disease and later transfers to Las Vegas for a short time as the West Coast is eventually overrun by zombies. Dick and his companion eventually come off the roof and go exploring in the night. The woman is attacked atop a hill and he runs, tripping on a rock and falling down the hill. He has a concussion and is attacked, first by the woman's dead sheep, slaughtered to control the disease and then the woman herself. When he is reanimated without arms, this time as a ghoul, a lifeless zombie without intelligence, he is drawn towards the source, an area nearby which exudes life force. He is eventually recruited by a voice coming from the source to go on a mission. The voice guides him along the way. Nilla and her two friends leave the inn and go on, eventually stopping by a truck with two men in the back. The man goes and checks on the two and is bitten when it is revealed it is a zombie feasting on a corpse. The zombie is Dick and he is then tasked with following Nilla after she is abandoned by the woman and her dying boyfriend. Nilla continues on, psychically drawn to a house where she is met by a handicapped man who tells her she is the only one who can stop the source."
2352,Frankenstein,horror," Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame. During the voyage the crew spots a dog sled mastered by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same over-ambitiousness and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born into a wealthy family in Geneva, he is encouraged to seek a greater understanding of the world around him through science. He grows up in a safe environment, surrounded by loving family and friends. When he is around 4 years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza, an orphan whose mother has just died (she is Victor's biological cousin in the first edition, but an adopted child with no blood relation in the 1831 edition). Victor has a possessive infatuation with Elizabeth. He has two younger brothers: Ernest and William. As a young boy, Victor is obsessed with studying outdated theories of science that focus on achieving natural wonders. He plans to attend the University of Ingolstadt in Germany. Weeks before his planned departure, his mother dies of scarlet fever. At university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, and develops a secret technique to imbue inanimate bodies with life. The details of the monster's construction are left ambiguous, but Frankenstein finds himself forced to make the creature roughly eight feet tall because of the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body. His creation, which he has hoped would be beautiful, is instead hideous, with dull yellow eyes, and a withered, translucent, yellowish skin that barely conceals the muscular system and blood vessels. After bringing his creation to life, Victor is repulsed by his work: he flees the room, and the monster disappears. Victor becomes ill from the experience. He is nursed back to health by his childhood friend, Henry Clerval. After a four-month recovery, he determines that he should return home when his brother William is found murdered. Upon arriving in Geneva, he sees the monster near the site of the murder, and becomes certain it is the killer. William's nanny, Justine, is hanged for the murder based on the discovery of William's locket in her pocket. Victor, though certain the monster is responsible, doubts anyone would believe him, and does not intervene. Ravaged by his grief and self-reproach, Victor retreats into the mountains to find peace. The monster approaches him, ignoring his threats and pleading with Victor to hear its tale. Intelligent and articulate, it tells Victor of its encounters with people, and how it had become afraid of them and spent a year living near a cottage, observing the DeLacey family living there and growing fond of them. Through observing the De Lacey family, the monster became educated and self-aware. It also discovered a lost satchel of books and learned to read. Seeing its reflection in a pool, it realized that its physical appearance is hideous compared to the humans it watches. Though it eventually approached the family with hope of becoming their fellow, they were frightened by its appearance and drove it off, and then left the residence permanently. The creature, in a fit of rage, burned the cottage and left. In its travels some time later, the monster saw a young girl tumble into a stream and rescued her from drowning. A man, seeing it with the child in its arms, pursued it and fired a gun, wounding it. Traveling to Geneva, it met a little boy — Victor's brother William - in the woods outside the town of Plainpalais. The monster hoped the boy was too young to fear deformity, but upon its approach, William cried out, threatening the monster with the weight of his family - the Frankensteins. The creature grabbed the boy by the throat to silence him, and strangled him. It is unclear from the text whether this was an accident on the monster's part or a deliberate murder, but in either case, the monster took this as its first act of vengeance against its creator. It removed a locket from the boy's body and placed it in the folds of the dress of a young woman — William's nanny, Justine — who had been sleeping in a barn nearby, assuming she would be accused of the murder. The monster concludes its story with a demand that Frankenstein create for it a female companion like itself. It argues that as a living thing, it has a right to happiness and that Victor, as its creator, has a duty to obey it, with the chilling words, ""You are my creator, but I am your master. Obey!"" It promises that if Victor grants its request, it and its mate will vanish into the wilderness of South America uninhabited by man, never to reappear. Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees and travels to England to do his work. He is accompanied by Clerval, but they separate in Scotland. Through their travels, Victor suspects that the monster is following him. Working on a second being on the Orkney Islands, he is plagued by premonitions of what his work might wreak, particularly as creating a mate for the creature might lead to the breeding of an entire race of monsters that could plague mankind. He destroys the unfinished example after he sees the monster looking through the window. The monster witnesses this and, confronting Victor, vows to be with Victor on his upcoming wedding night. The monster murders Clerval and leaves the corpse on an Irish beach, where Victor lands upon leaving the island. Victor is imprisoned for the murder of Clerval, and becomes seriously ill, suffering another mental breakdown in prison. After being acquitted, and with his health renewed, he returns home with his father. Once home, Victor marries his cousin Elizabeth and prepares for a fight to the death with the monster. Wrongly believing the monster's vowed revenge was for his own life, he asks Elizabeth to retire to her room for the night while he goes looking for the fiend. He searches the house and grounds, but the creature murders the secluded Elizabeth instead. Victor sees the monster at the window pointing at the corpse. Grief-stricken by the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, and now Elizabeth, Victor's father dies. Victor vows to pursue the monster until one of them annihilates the other. After months of pursuit, the two end up in the Arctic Circle, near the North Pole. At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story. A few days after the vanishing of the creature, the ship becomes entombed in ice and Walton's crew insists on returning south once they are freed. In spite of a passionate speech from Frankenstein, encouraging the crew to push further north, Walton realizes that he must relent to his men's demands and agrees to head for home. Frankenstein dies shortly thereafter, not before imploring Captain Walton to carry his mission of vengeance to its completion. ""The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to take up my unfinished work; and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue."" Walton discovers the monster on his ship, mourning over Frankenstein's body. Walton hears the monster's adamant justification for its vengeance as well as expressions of remorse. Frankenstein's death has not brought it peace. Rather, its crimes have increased its misery and alienation; it has found only its own emotional ruin in the destruction of its creator. It vows to exterminate itself on its own funeral pyre so that no others will ever know of its existence. Walton watches as it drifts away on an ice raft that is soon lost in darkness."
2353,The Face of Fear,horror," Graham Harris was once one of the world's foremost mountain climbers, until a fall five years earlier left him with a lame leg, a fear of heights...and a frightening psychic ability in which he can see murders as they are happening. Harris lives in New York City, where a murderous madman known as the Butcher has been mutilating young women. While he is giving an interview on live television one night, Graham senses the Butcher claiming another victim. When the madman realizes that Graham poses a threat to him he formulates a plan to kill the clairvoyant. While working late one night in his office building, Graham senses that the Butcher is coming to his floor aboard an elevator. With his girlfriend Connie at his side, Graham begins a long night of playing hide and seek to try to avoid the psychopath's grip."
2354,Swan Song,horror," The president of the United States and his advisers are discussing how the Soviets are building up their forces for a nuclear strike. The relationship between the Soviet and American governments has deteriorated badly. Several months earlier, the war in Afghanistan ended with the Soviets launching mustard gas and other nerve agents at Kabul. India and Pakistan destroy each other in a nuclear war, Iran launches Soviet-supplied nuclear weapons on Iraq, and Soviet and American ships play cat and mouse in the Atlantic. With increased reports of submarines off the west coast of the United States, every base switches to DEFCON 1. In New York City, Sister Creep, a homeless woman suffering from depression ever since her daughter died in a car crash, wanders the subway system. While she is below ground in a tunnel, the bombs begin to fall. She narrowly escapes with her life. A wrestler named Josh Hutchins, popularly dubbed ""Black Frankenstein"", is traveling to a match in Garden City, Kansas, when his vehicle breaks down at a gas station called PawPaw's. Josh meets a nine-year-old girl named Sue Wanda (Swan) and her mother. Swan's mother ran away with Swan when her husband used the family's money to buy beer. The cornfields around the station catch fire as missiles begin to fall, and Josh realizes that a war has begun. They take shelter in PawPaw's basement. Roland Croninger is a thirteen year old boy who likes to call himself a ""King's Knight"", a role in a game that he invented himself. His parents take him to Blue Dome Mountain in Idaho, a civilian fallout shelter. Colonel James ""Jimbo"" Macklin, meanwhile, a Vietnam veteran, controls the Blue Dome. When the missiles begin falling, they begin to damage Blue Dome Mountain. Macklin falls into a deep hole and, while trapped, is reminded of his experiences in Vietnam. In New York City, Sister Creep begins to walk around the remains of a New York ravaged by radioactive thunderstorms and tornadoes. While walking around, she finds a glass ring with jewels encased in the glass. Seeing it, she picks it up, believing it is important. She is surprised to see an undamaged building. Entering, she meets ""The Man With The Scarlet Eye"". She runs away and the building collapses. Sister is soon met by other survivors. They make their way through the hazardous Holland Tunnel, eventually scrabbling their way to New Jersey. In Blue Dome Mountain, Roland awakens in the cafeteria and is unable to find his mother and father. He is then picked up by one of Macklin's men who leads Roland to Macklin. Macklin is at the bottom of a deep hole. Roland, with a butcher knife and lighter, begins to climb down to Macklin and finds that his arm is stuck in a wall. He is forced to amputate the arm and cauterize it with a smoldering portion of desk found in the room. After Macklin's rescue, the pair must figure out how to break through the area where the food is stored. They find that the entrance to the food stores is blocked by rubble. Macklin oversees as the survivors remove the rubble, which soon collapses on top of the laborers. Simultaneously, Roland is searching through the cafeteria for scraps of food. He is then challenged by one of Colonel Macklin's former men, Schorr. Schorr has gone insane and taken up arms against Macklin, who he believes knew that this would happen and should have prevented it by ensuring the quality of the fallout shelter. Roland slices Schorr's left cheek and murders his two followers. In Kansas, Swan's mother dies, as does PawPaw. Josh discovers a gopher hole and starts to dig their way out. He notices that there was grass growing where Swan slept. He starts to realize that she has special powers. After that they reach the surface. Sister Creep and her party start to head for Pittsburgh, but are interrupted by a man named Doyle Halland. He says he was a priest who prayed for the dying and the dead. Doyle keeps looking at Sister's bag, and she shows him the glass ring. While Sister goes on a short excursion with another survivor, Doyle brutally murders all the other survivors. Sister and her companion return to find Doyle and the corpses. Doyle then says that he had known her all along and had been following her from New York; he was ""The Man With the Scarlet Eye."" Sister injures Doyle and escapes. Back in the Blue Dome, Colonel Macklin, Roland, and Warner sleep in the gym. Soon Schorr's men start to pound the door while yelling that they need food but Macklin refuses to help. They start throwing Molotov cocktails and begin to break the door open. As they charge for the food, Roland begins to shoot them and one of them grabs his neck. Unknown to Roland the man was his father, and Roland blows off his entire head. A woman steals Roland's gun, but Macklin finds a vent to the outside world. While climbing through the vents, Roland realizes that the woman who stole his weapon was his mother, but he continues on. They reach the surface and begin to walk. Meanwhile, Josh and Swan reach a town called Sullivan, where they meet Leona Skelton. Her husband, Davy, is on his deathbed, sick from radiation poisoning. Leona tells the future with globes and tarot cards, and after Josh falls asleep, she reads Swan's cards. She predicts she is going to face the Devil. When Davy dies, Josh digs a grave for him. Afterwards, they make their way to Matheson, a small town away from Sullivan. On their way they stop at the Jaspin farm. Josh discovers that the people in there were brutally murdered. Meanwhile, Swan goes into the cornfield and finds a horse, which she brings with them. Sister and her last survivor, Artie, begin making their way west. But on the way they are attacked by wolves and are saved by Paul, a mountain man. They follow Paul into the woods to his cabin, where there are more survivors. A few hours in, they keep saying that they should ""do it"". It turns out that they want to go on the radio, searching for a voice. Sister is shocked and slaps Paul saying that he gets a sick pleasure from it, but he says it keeps them from going crazy. They then decide to leave in Paul's truck. Near Salt Lake, Utah, Colonel Macklin and Roland find Shelia Fontana. She has no burn marks on her. Roland has sex with her, and they make their way toward the Fat Man. In Salt Lake, there are two kinds of people: Dirtwarts and Regulars. Dirtwarts country is where Roland and Colonel Macklin live and the Regulars are people with guns, food, water, and other resources. The Fat Man leads them. They go into Regular country and there they meet the Fat Man at his trailer. They have a deal where they get a place and they give him some drugs found in Shelia's bag. The Fat Man's men come to get the couple out. But one of the men kills the couple's baby when they refuse to go. Soon after this, Macklin soaks his arm in the Salt Lake for it to heal. At the same time, the Fat Man calls Roland to his trailer. But the Fat Man puts the drugs into the soda that Roland drank and attempts to rape him. Roland kills the Fat Man when he burns his face with a kerosene lamp. Soon after, Macklin, Roland, and Shiela take control of the camp. Josh and Swan make it to Matheson and find a supermarket with all the lights on and stocked with food. It turns out to be a trap for the insane people from a nearby asylum. There, Josh must play a game where he must fight through the market to Swan and Leona. He manages to get through to them, but the insane leader decides to kill Swan. Just then, a terrier that was following them attacks him and they escape, but Leona sacrifices herself to allow time for Josh and Swan to escape. Josh and Swan, Mule, and the Terrier (now named Killer) find an abandoned circus train and befriend Rusty, a ex-rodeo rider and clown. Seven years later, people are surviving in small settlements and wandering groups. Some people have been afflicted by tumor-like growths which appear only on the head and grow, merging into a fleshy helmet that limits breathing, speaking, and sight. This is commonly called “Job’s Mask”. A nuclear winter has made America a wasteland; the sun has not come out in years, and there is still radiation in the rain. The ground is poisoned by toxic rain and no plants grow. Macklin and Roland Croninger have forged their people into the “Army of Excellence”. Their goal is to purge the countryside of the disfigured, lead the country in rebuilding and getting revenge on the Russians. The Army of Excellence, or AOE, is over 4,000 strong and is pushing east, capturing and destroying settlements and seizing stockpiles of food, water, and ammunition. Both Macklin and Croninger have Job’s Mask and hide it under bandages. They hear about another army and decimate it. They torture a man named Brother Timothy and find out that the other army was heading to Warwick Mountain in West Virginia. Brother Timothy claims that God sheltered him for a few days on a mountaintop there and he had a silver key, a phrase, and a black box that could destroy the world. While they do not know precisely what that means, the AOE decide to head to West Virginia. Initially devoted to Macklin, Croninger eventually gains dominance over Macklin, calling himself the real “King”, while Macklin is just a figurehead. Sheila Fontaine is still with the AOE as an RL or “Recreation Lady” providing sexual companionship to the upper echelons of the AOE, including Macklin and Croninger. She is tormented by guilt in the deaths of Rudy and the baby that was killed to provide space for her. Sister and Paul are still together and have been crisscrossing the midwest, following her visions. Sister has Job’s Mask. They have dodged the Man with the Scarlet Eye several times and wander, trading for food and supplies. They meet up with a group of boys from an orphanage, led by a 17-year-old boy named Robin Oakes. A doctor uses one of the spikes from the glass ring to successfully operate on Robin’s younger brother. The ring eventually leads the group to a town called Mary’s Rest. Swan, Josh, and Rusty are traveling entertainers. Rusty performs magic and music while Josh wrestles as the “Masked Mephisto” and performs feats of strength. Swan usually hides in the wagon or in a barn when they come to settlements because her Job’s Mask is so extensive that she is blind and uses Crybaby as a walking stick to feel her way around. Josh has Job’s Mask too, but he hides it under his wrestling mask. They stop at a house in the middle of a stripped orchard. All the trees for a distance around are cut down, but one lone tree is left standing. The couple in the house explain that the one tree was a special apple tree that they just didn’t have the heart to cut down. Swan wanders out to the tree, places her hands on it and is shocked to feel life still in the tree. It calls to her unique ability with plants, which has been neglected due to the lack of living plants in the world. She responds and ‘wakes’ the tree up. The next morning, the tree is covered with blossoms. Everyone is amazed. Swan, Josh, and Rusty decide to continue on to the close-by settlement of Mary’s Rest. The Man with the Scarlet Eye has been searching for Sister and her magical glass ring all this time. He finds out about Swan and decides that she is a threat to him. He hears that she is heading to a place called Mary’s Rest and decides to meet her there. At Mary’s Rest, Swan finds the body of a child who was scrabbling in the dirt when he died. Swan finds the corn that the child was trying to plant and decides to honor the child’s memory by finishing what the child started; she starts planting the corn using her special ability to encourage the ground to be fertile and the seeds to grow. She hurts her hands digging in the frozen ground and passes out. Josh finds her and carries her back to the house they are staying in. While she is unconscious, the Man with the Scarlet Eye finds her and almost kills her. Rusty interferes and saves her but is fatally burned. Paul and Sister arrive in town. Sister realizes that the ring has been leading her to Swan. When Swan touches the ring, it blazes with light. She envisions a land covered with plants, orchards, fruit, and flowers, and knows this is her life’s goal. She loses consciousness again, but this time she is very fevered. Swan’s hands heal almost immediately and her Job’s Mask breaks up and falls off, revealing a beautiful woman with fiery red hair. Other people’s Job’s Masks begin falling off, too, and what lies beneath reflects their true souls – most beautiful and strong, but there are some monsters, too. Josh develops a close relationship with a local woman, Glory, and her son Aaron. Despite a prickly start, Swan and Robin begin to fall in love. Aaron figures out how to use the dowsing rod Crybaby and it indicates a source of fresh untainted water. The man with the apple tree drives into town with a truckload of ripe apples and tosses them to a happy crowd. Swan and the residents of Mary’s Rest decide to plant an apple orchard to go along with the cornfield, which sprung up almost overnight and is growing vigorously. The Man with the Scarlet Eye introduces himself as “Friend” to the Army of Excellence and diverts them to Mary’s Rest with promises of clean water and Swan’s ability to grow food. They attack the town. Many residents, including Paul, are killed, and the AOE take Josh, Sister, Swan, Robin, and others captive. Swan and Sister are brought to Macklin, whose Mask has fallen off to reveal a hideous death’s head. Friend attempts to get the location of the glass ring from Sister, but is unable to get past her mental guards. Even under threat of the torture of her friends, Swan refuses to do anything for the AOE. She and Sister are thrown in with Sheila. Robin and Josh are kept as leverage on Swan and the AOE continues towards Warwick Mountain. Several weeks later, the AOE runs out of supplies and a much reduced army arrives at Warwick Mountain. Croninger’s Job’s Mask reveals a twisted horror which he continues to hide under bandages. He shifts his allegiance to Friend. Brother Timothy guides Sister, Swan, Friend, Macklin and Croninger to “God’s” bunker. Sister notices God’s cufflinks and recognizes him as the president, who crashed close by and was brought to the bunker by people who have since died. He has since gone insane. The bunker is revealed to be a location to launch a global final strike of nuclear missiles from satellite platforms. It is powered by hydro-electricity. The president has been waiting for any indication that the world is going to good or evil. Friend sees this as an opportunity to destroy the world and convinces the president to begin the launch sequence. Friend then kills the president, gloats about the situation, reveals his true face, tells Roland ""I have always walked alone"" and leaves, presumably to find a place to watch the destruction. Sister fights with Croninger, who shoots her and almost shoots Swan before being attacked by a conscience-stricken Macklin. They take each other down. Swan figures out the deactivation sequence and disarms the launch computer. She and Sister are rescued by Josh and Robin, who broke out of captivity shortly after the AOE arrived at Warwick Mountain. They leave the bunker, locking it behind them and throwing away the key. Mortally wounded, Sister notices her shadow and begs to be taken where she can see the sun. Josh, Swan, and Robin take her to a clearing where they watch the end of the nuclear winter as the clouds break up and the sun comes out. Sister tells Swan to work fast to wake up the earth. She then dies. Swan, Josh, and Robin bury her and climb down the mountain. They find the AOE in chaos and they leave in a truck with Sheila and some other people. They come across a farmer and his family planting seeds who offers them hospitality. Josh tells Swan that she needs to start her work here, but he is going ahead to Mary’s Rest. He arrives to the welcoming arms of Glory and Aaron. The story ends with humanity struggling back toward civilization, building settlements, and restoring order. The armies of violence become disarrayed and dissolve away. Swan’s ability to wake up the earth is the stuff of legends. She and Robin eventually make it to Mary’s Rest and have twins named Joshua and Sister. Swan continues her work healing the land, fostering cooperation, and bringing hope to humankind."
2355,The Oath,horror," The novel opens with an excerpt from a diary entry from 1882 during the founding of Hyde River. Twenty-seven people died that I know of, and I can only guess that the others fled with whatever they could carry away. I could hear the screams and the shooting all night long, and I dared not venture out. The Reverend DuBois was left hanging in Hyde Hall until this afternoon. I informed Ben that I would not attend the signing of the Charter until the body was removed, so Ben ordered him cut down, taken out, and buried with the others. By late afternoon, the men who remained in Hyde River were back in the mines as if nothing had happened, and I also attended my business. After nightfall, we gathered in Hyde Hall under the cover of darkness and signed the Charter. With the signing of our names, we took the oath of silence, so I cannot speak of these things, but only write them secretly. The trouble is over, but I am no happier. I am afraid of what we have done. I am afraid of tomorrow. There are several other archived letters, diary entries, and writings from the townsfolk scattered throughout the book, each of them relating to accounts of numerous mysterious deaths and disappearances in Hyde River and of residents being beaten by a group of hooded figures for breaking the &#34;Oath&#34;. Many of the stones of these clues are overturned by the protagonists later on in the novel. The book&#39;s plot begins after a nature photographer, Cliff Benson, is confirmed to have been killed in the woods, with his head and torso missing. His wife, Evelyn, is found covered with blood and half-crazed on a logging road and taken to a hospital, where she only has vague recollections of the events that transpired. Sheriff Les Collins is quick to close to case and pin the blame on a rogue bear. However, Cliff&#39;s brother, Steve, quickly finds holes in the theory and refuses to drop the matter. Joining him in his investigation is Sheriff&#39;s Deputy Tracy Ellis, who has seen enough cases swept under the rug by authority to know that something is amiss. Meanwhile, Harold Bly, owner of the mining company that keeps the struggling town afloat and looked on as the head authority of the town, kicks his wife, Maggie, onto the streets. As a black, oozing rash grows on the skin above her heart, she takes refuge in the home of Levi Cobb, a Christian mechanic who is looked down upon by the rest of the townspeople. As Steve questions her, he learns that she and Cliff had an affair. After a couple days, Maggie becomes strangely unaware of her rash and makes her way through the town to Old Town, an abandoned town near Hyde River. There she disappears, leaving only a blood-stained purse as evidence of what happened to her. Steve learns from Tracy that it is believed by the townspeople that a giant dragon is responsible for the deaths, and that Harold Bly has the ability to control it. As another victim of the rash, Vic Moore, stumbles into old town, Steve follows. He, too, disappears without a trace. Steve learns that the old town was the original location of Hyde River, and that Hyde Hall is a cursed building where the dragon supposedly snatches up its victims. His and Tracy&#39;s initial disbelief fades after they spend a night in Old Town, chasing the dragon in an attempt to hunt it. In a plot device reminiscent of the final episode of M.A.N.T.I.S. (aired the year before the book&#39;s publication date), the dragon&#39;s impermeable scales are able to mimic the background scenery, rendering it virtually invisible. Charlie Mack, owner of the local bar/restaurant urges Steve to kill the dragon after he sees with horror the rash on his own chest. A couple days later, his car is found on the side of the highway, bashed up with the entire roof peeled off. Harold Bly is perplexed by Charlie&#39;s death at the hands of the dragon, as he apparently never commanded it, but seizes the opportunity to take control of the tavern and mercantile, consolidating his ownership of the town. Steve, meanwhile, confronts the dragon in its supposed lair. His shotgun and rifle prove to be ineffective at killing the dragon, and he barely makes it out with his life when the dragon abandons its attempts to kill him, apparently with the desire to finish him off at its own timing. Shaken from his experience, Steve decides to listen to Levi Cobb, who gives him copies of old letters and diaries from the town&#39;s forefathers. He learns that the town was purged of Christianity in the late 19th century, and any Christians taking residence in the town were either martyred or driven out of town. Those remaining in the town moved from Old Town and reestablished Hyde River after signing a charter. The sordid bargain of the town charter, &#34;If this be Sin, let Sin be served,&#34; gave the dragon reign of the town. It began at an unthreateningly small size but grew over a century to a length of forty-five feet. The town&#39;s founder, Benjamin Hyde, was believed to have control over the dragon, and was the ancestor of Harold Bly. Steve tells Tracy everything that he has learned, and, despite the fact that she is married, the two make love that night. Both of them awake with the foreboding black rash on their chests the next morning. Meanwhile, Harold Bly is upset with the fact that the dragon has been killing people he wanted to remain alive, while ignoring his instructions to kill others. After noticing the rash on his own chest, he decides that the dragon wants Tracy and Steve removed from the town. He arranges for Sheriff Collins to murder Tracy, but she kills him in self-defense. Steve arranges to meet Harold that night at the bar to make peace. There, he learns that Harold Bly and all of his henchmen have the mark and that Harold never did control the dragon at all, but that the dragon is actually just embodied sin. Steve is told that his beer has been drugged, then passes out and awakens tied to a ritualistic stone table in Hyde Hall to await being sacrificed to the dragon. He is freed by a bleeding Levi Cobb, who has been shot by Harold Bly. As Harold and his followers purge the town of Christianity as their ancestors did years ago, Levi tells Steve that he must have Jesus on his side to have a hope of defeating the dragon before taking his turn in death. Tracy convinces Steve to flee the town, but, on their way out during the night, and despite Steve&#39;s efforts, Tracy embraces the unrepentant apathy that all of the previous victims did before their death and is eaten by the dragon. Filled with grief, Steve vows to destroy the dragon and returns to town after injuring it with mining explosives (destroying its wings in the process). Steve attempts to distance himself from growing accustomed to the rash and entering the final phase of the horrible deaths. On his way into town, he stops at the church and prays for forgiveness. He then puts one of Levi&#39;s plans into action and confronts the dragon using a makeshift spear that Levi had constructed in his garage. As Harold Bly and his followers watch in awe, the dragon attacks Steve with its fiery breath, but Steve does not suffer any burns. Frightened by the power of God, the dragon backs into the spear until it slides between its scales and into its heart. As the dragon&#39;s dying act, it bites Harold Bly in half. Instead of dying, the dragon just dematerializes in a bright flash. The other townsfolk, upset with Steve, swear that they will get revenge on him for killing their dragon. Steve corrects them, pointing to their hearts, and tells them that they still have their dragon inside of them."
2356,Avatar,horror," Cordelia suggests beginning a Web site for their detective agency, but Angel is hesitant—as Doyle points out, ""people in trouble want to interface with a face."" Meanwhile the police discover a trail of corpses across the city. The only connection between these victims (apart from the cause of death) is their hobby of online chatting. It seems a techno-savvy demon must be on the prowl, hoping to complete a ritual going even beyond a World Wide Web."
2357,A Kiss of Shadows,horror," The story begins in Los Angeles, California, in a world where magical creatures are ""out of the closet"" and, in some cases, even legal. Princess Meredith NicEssus is working for the Grey Detective Agency under the assumed name of Meredith 'Merry' Gentry. When two women come to the agency with a story about fey-wannabes and rituals involving fey women, Merry goes undercover to investigate. However, she and her colleagues get more than they bargained for when it is discovered that the culprit is using Branwyn's Tears, an illegal oil that can make a human appear as a sidhe (pronounced 'shee') lover for a night, and turn even a sidhe or a sidhe-descendant into his sexual slave. In the process of solving the case, Merry's secret is revealed, and she is hunted by the demonic Sluagh. Brought to see their King, Sholto, he offers Meredith a deal. Himself disapproved of by Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, because of his mixed blood, he proposes an alliance between the two of them. Jealous at the idea of Merry becoming his lover, Sholto's harem of nighthags attack Merry. During the fight Merry's gift, theHand of Flesh, is revealed when one of them, Nerys, becomes turned into a ball of flesh. Shocked, Merry tries to flee, but is trapped. Doyle, Captain of the Queen's Raven Guard, appears. He announces that the Queen never sent the Sluagh, and that in fact the Queen meant her no harm. As proof of this he produces the Queen's sword Mortal Dread, as well as the Queen's mark, which he transfers to Merry in a kiss. Merry returns with Doyle to the Court. The Queen claims that she wants her bloodline to continue upon the throne. She is willing to take as her heir whichever of Meredith or her cousin, Cel, can first produce an heir. She lifts the geiss of celibacy upon her Ravens for Meredith alone, insisting that she choose at least three in order to increase the chance of pregnancy. While this offer would permit Merry to end her self-imposed exile and return home, it also brings dangers. Cel, previously the sole heir, makes several attempts upon her life. Merry makes alliances with others such as Kurag, the Goblin King. However, Cel was behind the Branwyn's Tears incident in LA. In punishment, he is to be confined for six months after being coated with the oil himself, something akin to torture."
2358,The Stupidest Angel,horror," An angel named Raziel (previously in Moore's novel Lamb) is sent to Earth to grant the wish of a child; he decides to help a boy who has witnessed the death of a man dressed as Santa Claus. Meanwhile, the town is preparing to have a community dinner-gathering at the local church, where the cemetery is located. In his inept attempt to bring the ""Santa"" back to life, the angel causes the townspeople to be put under siege by brain-hungry zombies who arise from their burial spots."
2359,Stolen,horror," The story begins with Elena travelling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to follow up a lead the Pack have come across on believe.com which purports to be able to prove the existence of werewolves. However, when she meets her contact, a young witch named Paige Winterbourne, she has information that Elena finds extremely disturbing. Not only does she claim to know about werewolves, but more specifically about her. It is clear that the posting on the website was a lure designed to bring Elena to Pittsburgh because of problems other supernaturals have been having with a group headed by Tyrone Winsloe. Elena is skeptical, having given no credence up to this point that other supernatural beings such as witches and vampires could exist. The claims of Paige and her mother, Ruth, sound like conspiracy theories that Elena finds hard to believe. Unable to sleep, she goes out that night for a run, but is followed by a stalker with military training. Elena evades him only to discover that he has colleagues and that they are trying to capture not only herself, but also the Winterbournes. In the fight, Elena kills one of the men, Mark, and the three women find themselves confronting a half-demon able to teleport whom Elena nicknames 'Houdini', who works for Tyrone Winsloe. Ruth casts a spell which traps him temporarily and the three women make their escape. Elena calls Jeremy and, the next morning, the two of them attend a meeting of the Inter-racial Council. There they are told about a shaman who had been kidnapped and taken away from his home in Virginia to a compound run by Tyrone Winsloe and Lawrence Matasumi. With his abilities of Astral projection, the shaman is able to not only determine that he is not the only captive, but also to contact the shaman on the Inter-racial Council, Kenneth. Following the discussion about how to handle matters, Jeremy declines to return to the meeting after dinner. His priority is first and foremost to the Pack and its safety. Whilst he is prepared to join forces with the Council if necessary, it is only a temporary measure as the Pack has always fought its own battles. That night Clay arrives. The three werewolves are attacked by men working for Winsloe, but they are all killed. The Pack are suspicious because the only people who knew they were in the area where the members of the Council. So, the following day, when they arrive at the meeting, they do so with the head of one of the men in a bag. They decline any offer to align themselves with the Council and leave. On the way back, Elena is kidnapped and taken to the compound. There she becomes involved with many of the other residents, being 'befriended' by Leah and Sondra, as well as helping Doctor Carmichael in the infirmary. She discovers Ruth has also been kidnapped. The witch is particularly interested in another prisoner, Savannah Levine. However, 'poltergeist activity', that many of those in the compound associate with Savannah, plays a role in the death of Ruth. Sondra Bauer becomes obsessed with turning herself into a werewolf and injects herself with some of Elena's saliva. Her body reacts as if she has been bitten, and she is taken to the infirmary. While there, Bauer kills Carmichael and Elena is forced to sedate her. Bauer is transferred to the cell beside Elena's. Tyrone Winsloe takes an interest in Elena, wanting her to wear skimpy clothing as well as watch, and participate in, his 'hunts'. Prisoners such as Patrick Lake and Armen Haig are killed during these and it becomes clear that Elena is next. Winsloe brings her photographs that he claims are of Clay and that Clay is now dead. An apparent system malfunction provides the opportunity for Elena, Sondra, Leah and Savannah to attempt escape. Bauer loses control and is killed by the guards. Leah and Savannah get left behind when an elevator door closes on Elena. She makes a run for it, Changing into a wolf, and is chased by dogs. Clay finds her and takes her back to Jeremy and the others who are in New Brunswick, Canada. After telling her story, the group devise a plan to free the others from the compound and to put a stop to Ty Winsloe and his associates. Clay, Paige, Adam and Elena enter the compound first. They kill the dogs and disable the vehicles before entering the building itself. Tucker and the guards are killed or disabled before they enter the cell block. There they find Savannah. Curtis Zaid is revealed to be Isaac Katzen when he attacks Paige and the others. Katzen is killed. Leah is shown to be the one really responsible for the poltergeist activity. She attempts to snatch Savannah, but is prevented and escapes. Clay and Elena track Winsloe and kill him."
2360,Coldheart Canyon,horror," The story begins in Romania during the 1920s, where poverty and disease run rampant. American talent agent Willem Zeffer and the Romanian-born actress he represents, Katya Lupi, have travelled there in order to visit Katya's relatives. Zeffer visits an old medieval castle which has been turned into a monastery and decides to buy a unique work of art, a series of sculpted and painted tiles depicting, in a grotesque and obscene manner, the local legend of a Count who was cursed to haunt the nearby wilderness for all eternity. The second part of the story begins in the year 2000, with failing movie star Todd Pickett deciding to undergo plastic surgery in order to make himself look younger and engineer a comeback. Something goes wrong during the surgery, and Todd, now disfigured, is forced to go into hiding during his recovery. His agent selects Katya Lupi's former home, an abandoned house in Coldheart Canyon, a secluded area outside Hollywood, where Todd soon discovers that Katya and her ""subjects"" still hold court."
2361,The Werewolf of Paris,horror," Like much Gothic fiction, The Werewolf of Paris opens with a frame story in which the author explains his struggle with the fantastic elements of his tale. Here the narrator, an anonymous American working on his doctoral research in Paris, discovers a manuscript in the hands of some trash-pickers. He describes it as ""the Galliez report: thirty four sheets of closely written French, an unsolicited defense of Sergeant Bertrand Caillet at the latter's court-martial in 1871."" A descendant of the cursed Pitamont clan, which destroyed itself in a long feud with the neighboring Pitavals, Bertrand is born one Christmas Eve to an adolescent girl who had been raped by a priest, Father Pitamont. Bertrand grows up with strange sadistic and sexual desires which are usually expressed as dreams. Sometimes the dreams are memories of actual experiences in which he had transformed into a wolf. His step-uncle, Aymar Galliez, who raises the boy (along with his mother Josephine and a servant Françoise), soon learns of Bertrand's affliction. Bertrand flees to Paris after his assault on a prostitute, his incestuous union with his mother, and his murder of a friend in their home village. Aymar tries to find Bertrand by studying the details of local crimes, such as the mutilation of corpses and various murders. Bertrand joins the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, doing little fighting and finding love from a girl who volunteers at a canteen, the beautiful and wealthy Mlle. Sophie de Blumenberg. Masochistic and obsessed with death, Sophie helps Bertrand avoid the violent effects of his transformation by allowing him to cut into her flesh in order to suck her blood. Aymar finds Bertrand in Paris during the Paris Commune, but thinking that love has cured Bertrand, he decides not to take action. Fearing that he'll accidentally kill Sophie, Bertrand goes out one night to feed on someone else. He is caught attacking a fellow soldier and arrested. Aymar supports burning Bertrand at the stake, and provides the court with a summary of Bertrand's crimes, but the court sentences him to treatment at the infirmary of La Santé prison. Aymar transfers Bertrand to an asylum after the reactionary Versaillists have retaken Paris, with great loss of life among the Communards, who are executed en masse. Unbeknownst to Aymar, Bertrand suffers in a small cell, drugged when he is visited by his uncle. Bertrand eventually commits suicide by jumping from the building with another inmate whom he delusionally believes is Sophie. Their deaths are similar to a suicide fantasy that Bertrand and Sophie enjoyed; the real Sophie had previously committed suicide on her own, unable to deal with her separation from Bertrand. The narrative proper is followed by a grisly appendix citing a municipal report on the cemeteries of Paris. The report indicates that the grave of one ""Sieur C ... (Bertrand)"" contained the body ""of a dog, which despite 8 years in the ground was still incompletely destroyed."""
2362,Undead and Unemployed,horror," Nothing can make Betsy Taylor give up her shoe fetish- even dying and rising as the new Queen of Vampires. Only being royally undead doesn't mean that there aren't credit card bills to be paid. Luckily, Betsy lands her dream job selling designer shoes at Macy's Department Store. But then there's a string of vampire murders in town and Betsy has to enlist the help of the one vamp who makes her blood boil: the oh-so-sexy Eric Sinclair. Only the last time she ran into Sinclair she accidentally fulfilled an ancient prophesy- and ended up married to him..."
2363,The Haunting of Hill House,horror," Hill House is an eighty-year-old mansion built by a man named Hugh Crain. The story concerns four main characters: Dr. John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural; Eleanor Vance, a shy young woman who resents having lived as a recluse caring for her demanding invalid mother; Theodora, a flamboyant, bohemian, possibly lesbian artist; and Luke Sanderson, the young heir to Hill House, who is host to the others. Dr. Montague hopes to find scientific evidence of the existence of the supernatural. He rents Hill House for a summer and invites as his guests several people whom he has chosen because of their past experience with paranormal events. Of these, only Eleanor and Theodora accept. Eleanor travels to the house, where she and Theodora will live in isolation with Montague and Luke. Hill House has two caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, who refuse to stay near the house at night. The blunt and single-minded Mrs. Dudley is a source of some comic relief. The four overnight visitors begin to form friendships as Dr. Montague explains the building’s history, which encompasses suicide and other violent deaths. All four of the inhabitants begin to experience strange events while in the house, including sounds and unseen spirits roaming the halls at night, strange writing on the walls and other unexplained events. Eleanor tends to experience phenomena to which the others are oblivious. At the same time, Eleanor may be losing touch with reality, and the narrative implies that at least some of what Eleanor witnesses may be products of her imagination. Another implied possibility is that Eleanor possesses a subconscious telekinetic ability which is itself the cause of many of the disturbances experienced by her and other members of the investigative team (which might indicate there is no ghost in the house at all). This possibility is suggested especially by references early in the novel to Eleanor's childhood memories about episodes of poltergeist-like phenomena that seemed to involve mainly her. Later in the novel, the bossy and arrogant Mrs. Montague and her companion Arthur Parker, the headmaster of a boys’ school, arrive to spend a weekend at Hill House and to help investigate it. They, too, are interested in the supernatural, including séances and spirit writing. Ironically, and unlike the other four characters, they don't experience anything supernatural, although some of Mrs. Montague’s alleged spirit writings seem to communicate with Eleanor. Mrs. Montague's lack of social skills provides another source of comic relief in the novel. Many of the hauntings that occur throughout the book are described only vaguely, or else are partly hidden from the characters themselves. Eleanor and Theodora are in a bedroom with an unseen force trying the door, and Eleanor believes after the fact that the hand she was holding in the darkness was not Theodora’s. In one episode, as Theodora and Eleanor walk outside Hill House at night, Theodora looks behind them and screams in fear for Eleanor to run, though the book never explains what Theodora sees. By this point in the book it is becoming clear to the characters that the house is beginning to possess Eleanor. Fearing for her safety, Dr. Montague declares that she must leave. However, Eleanor regards the house as her home, and resists. The others have to practically force her into her car, but she is then killed when her car crashes into a large oak tree on the property. The reader is left uncertain whether Eleanor was simply an emotionally disturbed woman who has committed suicide, or whether her death at Hill House has a supernatural significance."
2364,The Monstrumologist,horror," Folio one The Monstrumologist begins when Erasmus Gray pulls his horse and cart up to Dr. Warthrop's house in the middle of the night. He reveals the body of a young woman and an Anthropophagi, ""one wrapped around the other in an obscene embrace."" The girl has ""half her face"" missing, and her throat is torn out. Dr. Warthrop dissects both the girl and the monster, and finds an Anthropophagi fetus in the dead girl's womb. Warthrop explains to Will Henry, who is taking notes on the procedure, that Anthropophagi require a host to grow their young in. They poison the baby and continue examining the bodies. Dr. Warthrop theorizes that because Anthropophagi are indigenous to Africa and have never been seen in the Americas before, there could only be one or two more in the area at most. The next night, Warthrop, Gray, and Will Henry go to the cemetery to return the girl's body to her grave. While Gray and Will Henry re-dig the grave, Warthrop tries to discover how the Anthropophagi accessed her body in the first place. They are all interrupted when Gray's horse is spooked by something in the surrounding woods. Suddenly, an Anthropophagus bursts up from under the dirt in the hole Will Henry and Gray were digging. It seizes Gray by the legs and starts dragging him down. Will Henry grabs Gray's wrists and tries to pull him back, but is not nearly as strong as the monster, and starts being pulled in himself. He tries to release Gray, but Gray hangs on to him and refuses to let go. Dr. Warthrop shoots Gray and pulls Will Henry back, while Gray's body is pulled all the way into the hole. Warthrop and Will Henry run for their lives as more Anthropophagi ""poured out of Eliza's grave, dozens of them, scores, sprinting with arms outstretched and mouths agape, their colorless skin radiant in the starlight, as if every tomb and sepulchre had vomited forth their foul contents."" They jump on the back of Gray's horse and ride off, narrowly evading the approaching swarm. Back at Warthrop's house, he and Will Henry begin searching through old newspapers for suspicious deaths over the past thirty years. Warthrop marks possible Anthropophagi attacks on a map, and from it estimates that there are around twenty five or thirty Anthropophagi in the area. The map also shows that the Anthropophagi have been steadily making their way from the coast to New Jerusalem (where Warthrop lives) over the last couple of decades. Warthrop then composes a letter to John Kearns asking him to come and use his ""inestimable services"" to help with the infestation, dictating with ""a hint of distaste."" Will Henry finds a key among the old papers as well, and puts it in his pocket to show to Warthrop later. Will Henry also realizes that he has lost his hat, the last object in his possession from his home before his parents died. Warthrop and Will Henry leave that night for Dedham, where they find the Motley Hill Sanatorium. Warthrop knocks, and after a long wait, a ""withered woman in black"", Mrs. Bratton, answers. At first she refuses to let them in, until Warthrop mentions he's the son of Dr. Alistair Warthrop, at which point Mrs. Bratton slams the door and goes to get Dr. Starr. Starr lets them in and, after discussing Warthrop's father for a while, reveals that Warthrop's father had a keen interest in one of Starr's patients, Captain Varner. Warthrop asks to see Varner. Starr ""cast an eye toward the parlor door"" and stalls for several minutes, until finally Warthrop bribes him and Starr calls for Mrs. Bratton to take them to Varner. Bratton leads Warthrop and Will Henry upstairs. As they pass doors, they hear patients crying and calling out, and (in one case) laughing frantically. They're also surrounded by the smell of ""unwashed flesh, old urine, and human feces."" Varner is lying on a bed under multiple layers of sheets. Warthrop then tries to get Varner to speak, but without any success at first, as Varner stairs up mindlessly at the ceiling. It's not until the name Warthrop is mentioned that he really responds. He was paid a large amount of money to pick up three Anthropophagi, an adult of each gender and a cub, and sail them back to the New World. Varner and his crew were instructed to lock up the Anthropophagi in the bottom of the ship and throw down a cow, goat or chimpanzee to them every couple of weeks. However, the Anthropophagi refused to eat them. The crew makes a sport of tormenting them, particularly the first mate. Drunk one day, the first mate takes a piece of cow meat and swings down a rope in the top of the Anthropophagi's holding area below deck to give it to them. The female Anthropophagi grabs him and eats him. Captain Varner posts guards to ensure nothing like it happens again, but one day a huge storm hit the ship and the crew can see almost nothing. The Anthropophagi climb through the porthole and up the side of the ship onto the deck, where they proceed to slaughter the crew When only Varner is left, he runs for the lifeboats, stabbing one of the female Anthropophagi's eyes on the way out. When he returns home, he is sent to the sanatorium. Warthrop pulls back Varner's bedding to reveal that Varner's flesh is being eaten away by maggots, thus the flies. Warthrop diagnoses that whatever infection Varner has already spread to his bones: Varner will live no more than a day. Warthrop spends the night at Varner's bedside until Varner dies the next morning. It is understood by the reader that his death is the direct result of neglect from Starr and Bratton. He then confronts Mrs. Bratton, informing her that he is going to inform the police that they are mistreating their patients. ""She responded stiffly, 'I've no idea what you mean, Dr. Warthrop."" ""'Regrettably that very well might be so,' acknowledged the doctor icily. 'And all the more appalling if it is! To view your shameful neglect as altogether fitting and humane is beyond deplorable - it is inhuman. You may inform your master that I am not finished here. I am not finished, but Motley Hill is."" Folio Two Early the next morning, Constable Morgan knocks on the door asking for Warthrop. He tells Warthrop that something has happened ""totally outside the range of my experience."" On the carriage ride to the crime scene, Warthrop questions Morgan. Warthrop discovers that ""the crime"" was reported ""shortly after dawn"" Only one person survived (Malachi). Morgan explains he called on Warthrop because ""no human being is capable of so foul a crime."" They arrive at the town rectory. (224) Five have been found dead; the rector, his wife, and three of their children. Various chunks of them have been torn off, and blood and carnage are everywhere. Warthrop estimates it to be the work of at least eight to ten Anthropophagi. Morgan observes that the odds of these monsters appearing in the town where ""the country's - if not the worlds - preeminent expert in these matters resides"" by chance are very small. Warthrop, Morgan and Will Henry go to the sanctuary, where Malachi is waiting. He is visibly disturbed. ""His full lips moved soundlessly, as he stared, like some Eastern mystic, at a space beyond our mortal sphere, looking without but seeing within."" Malachi does not respond much to anyone except Will Henry, after discovering Will Henry's family is also dead, and that Will Henry ran from the scene. Malachi asks, ""Do you think God will forgive us, Will Henry?"" Malachi explains what happened before he ran. The Anthorpophagi came through the windows of the house while they slept. One of his sisters came to hide in his room with him. They listened to their families screams and the sounds of the monsters tearing them and the house apart. Malachi breaks open his bedroom window so he and his sister can escape. The Anthropophagi hear the sound of breaking glass, and his sister faints. Malachi jumped through the window and rode to Morgan. Warthrop and Will Henry return home. Morgan arrives shortly. He brings Malachi and his assistant with him. (253) He tells the doctor he has been at the cemetery, and that he found Will Henry's hat. Morgan deduces that Warthrop knew the Anthropophagi were there, which Warthrop confirms. Malachi blames Warthrop for his family's death. He whispers, ""he took everything from me, Will!"" Will Henry convinces him to let go of the gun by answering ""and you would take everything from me."" Will Henry takes Malachi to one of the spare bedrooms and puts him to bed, sitting with him for awhile. Someone starts banging on the front door, and Warthrop calls for Will Henry to answer. Kearns arrives, ""looking for the house of a very dear friend of mine."" Warthrop comes in, and ""froze upon seeing the tall Englishman in the entryway."" Kearns, upon seeing Warthrop, says ""'My dear Pellinore,' purred Kearns warmly, brushing past me to seize the doctors hand. He pumped it vigorously."" When Will Henry returns with tea, the three men are looking at Warthrop's map where he plotted the various Anthropophagi attacks. Kearns suggests Warthrop's father paid to have the Anthropophagi shipped over, and Warthrop slaps him. As the night goes on, Kearns continues to tease Warthrop about his relationship with his father. Folio Three The next day, Warthrop, Kearns, Will Henry, Malachi, Morgan, and six of Morgan's men meet to prepare a trap for the Anthropophagi. Kearns is in a notably good mood. When Morgan asks Warthrop why Kearns is so cheerful at the prospect of slaughtering or possibly being slaughtered, Warthrop explains ""it's the joy of a man perfectly suited for his work."" Kearns directs the men in setting up the 'slaughter ring in the cemetery.' Morgan becomes steadily more and more disgusted with Kearns. When Kearns states that ""there is no morality save the morality of the moment,"" Morgan retorts ""I begin to see why you delight in hunting them. You've so much in common."" Once the men have finished setting up the 'slaughter ring,' Kearns pulls out the bait he brought with them: a woman's motionless body, ""reposed as a corpse."" Morgan protests that using the woman's body is immoral. Kearns justifies that ""it's a woman of the streets, Morgan. A common tramp with which the gutters of Baltimore are choked to overflowing."" As evening comes, everyone gets into position in the trees around the slaughter ring, guns and grenades in hand. Smiling, Kearns comments ""the bloody hour has come."" Kearns has the woman's body chained in the middle of the slaughter ring. He goes over to her, bending over her in such a way that no one can see what he's doing. Suddenly she starts kicking and screaming, and the other men realize she is alive. Morgan curses Kearns, but thinks there's no time to help the woman as the Anthropophagi start to come up from underground. Kearns shoot the first one to injure, not to kill, in the hopes that it's suffering will draw out the rest. The woman is still screaming on the ground. Warthrop runs out to her, ignoring the injured Anthropophagi, carries the woman under the trees and starts binding up her wounds. At the sound of more Anthropophagi quickly approaching, Warthrop returns to the trees to shoot, leaving Will Henry and Malachi to tend to the woman. As the adults in the trees deal with the largest faction of Anthropophagi, a juvenile comes upon Will Henry and Malachi. Malachi shoots it, but not in an area that does lasting damage. Malachi doesn't have time to reload, so he jams the butt of the gun into the Anthropophagi's mouth. Will Henry pulls out Warthrop's revolver, but the Anthropophagi smacks it out of his hand and grabs him. (328) Will Henry pulls out a knife from his belt. He stabs each of the Anthropophagi's eyes, and then its brain, killing it. The battle ends shortly. Warthrop has Morgan's assistant take the wounded woman to a doctor. Upon examining the Anthropophagi bodies, they cannot find the leader, who they expect to recognize by her missing eye (as she was stabbed by Varner earlier on). Surmising she is still underground with her young, they decide they must go into the Anthropophagi warren and look for her in order to ensure that all of the monsters are killed. Kearns suggests that the ""front door"" of the Anthropophagi's underground home must be in the Warthrop mausoleum, in keeping with his theory that Warthrop's father had them brought over in the first place. Inside it, Kearns finds a hidden clock, ""hands frozen at twelve."" Warthrop, finally accepting that Kearn's theory must be true, suggests they try moving the hand to three o'clock because the witching hour was important to his father. They do so, and a hidden door opens. They find a locked trapdoor. Will Henry remembers the key he found earlier (still in his pocket), and tries it out: The trapdoor opens. They lower themselves into what appears to be the main pit where the Anthropophagi live and eat; the floor is covered in bones. They search the tunnels leading away from it until Kearns and Warthrop discover a small tunnel that only Will Henry can get through. He finds another juvenile Anthropophagi, sleeping. One of its forearms is missing, and it appears to be in considerable pain. Wanting to put it out of its misery, Will Henry comes up close to it to shoot it. The Anthropophagi suddenly jerks awake and grabs Will Henry. In the struggle, Will Henry's arm is bitten. Will Henry eventually manages to kill it with a large stone found on the ground. Will Henry wanders around in the tunnels until Kearns finds him. Will Henry explains what happened to him, and Kearns then instructs him to take the 'bandage' (Will's shirt, which he has wrapped around his arm) off of his bite wound, because ""we don't want to risk an infection."" Kearns then instructs Will Henry to follow the path Kearns has marked, which Kearns says will take Will Henry back to Warthrop. Will Henry continues, until he smells Anthropophagi ahead and stops. Kearns appears behind him and asks him why he stopped; Will Henry explains that this can't be the way back. ""'I had hoped to avoid it,' was his cryptic response. 'The smell of blood should have drawn her out; I'm at a loss, frankly ,why she didn't come... I am so sorry, Mr. Henry, but there really is no choice. It is the morality of the moment.' And with those parting words John Kearns shoved me as hard as he could."" Warthrop comes running over to Will Henry, who explains what Kearns did. When Kearns tries to justify his actions, Warthrop threatens to shoot him. Suddenly, the floor bursts from under them as the leader pushes up and grabs Malachi. Malachi tells Will Henry to grab a grenade from Kearn's bag; Will Henry tosses it at Malachi and the matriarch, and they are both buried in dirt, mud and rock. The matriarch rises out of the dust, leaping towards Will Henry, who knows he only has one shot left in his gun. He aims for her brain and shoots: she dies. In the final chapter, we learn that Warthrop, Kearns and Will Henry visit Starr afterward; Kearns kills him, then disappears. Six months later, Warthrop and Will Henry find a newspaper headline: Ripper Strikes Again/Whitechapel Killer Claims Fourth Victim. Finally, Warthrop gives Will Henry a new hat: after holding his old hat in one hand and his new one in the other, Will Henry tosses his old hat in the fire."
2365,Eclipse,horror," The story opens with the revelation that Seattle, Washington is being plagued by a string of murders, which Edward suspects is caused by a new vampire that is unable to control its thirst for human blood. As Edward and Bella apply to colleges, Bella explains to Edward her desire to see her friend, Jacob Black, a werewolf. Although Edward fears for her safety, Bella insists that neither Jacob nor his wolf pack would ever harm her, and she begins visiting him occasionally. On one of these visits, Jacob tells Bella that he is in love with her, and wants her to choose him instead of Edward, but Bella says she just sees him as a friend. Meanwhile, Alice Cullen has a vision that Victoria, a vampire who is hunting Bella for revenge, has returned to Forks. A few days later, Edward proposes to Bella and, despite harboring an aversion to marriage, she accepts. Bella and the Cullens soon realize that the Seattle murders are being committed by an ""army"" of newborn vampires, controlled by Victoria. The Cullens join forces with the wolf pack to combat this threat. As everyone else prepares for battle, Edward, Bella and Jacob camp in the mountains, hidden during the battle, where they are later joined by Seth Clearwater, a young wolf pack member, to wait out the fight. In the morning, Jacob becomes upset when he overhears Edward and Bella discussing their engagement and threatens to join the fight and get himself killed. Bella stops Jacob by kissing him, and she comes to realize that she is in love with him as well. During the battle, Victoria tracks Edward's scent to Bella's forest hiding place, and Edward is forced to fight. Edward manages to kill Victoria and her vampire army is destroyed. Afterwards, Bella explains to Jacob that while she loves him, her love for Edward is greater."
2366,Hollywood Noir,horror," A decayed corpse at a Hollywood construction site appears to be a harbinger of more supernatural evil. Meanwhile, Doyle has a vision which leads him to a strange address. He, Angel and Cordelia start tracking a cigarette girl, Betty McCoy. Mike Slade, a new P.I. in town, is also tracking this girl. He dresses and acts behind the times, yet his agenda is modern, and he opposes local officials. Angel and his team soon find their research leads them to Slade. They must piece together a story involving the cigarette girl, a water commissioner, and a host of disappearing demons."
2367,The Laughing Corpse,horror," The Laughing Corpse takes place a month after the events of Guilty Pleasures and begins with Anita and her manager Bert visiting Harold Gaynor, a local millionaire that wants Anita to animate a 300 year old vampire. He informs Anita that he'd be willing to pay millions of dollars for her to do this, even supplying a willing ""white goat"" that would be needed for an animation of that level. Anita immediately refuses the offer, with Bert agreeing not to take on the case after discovering that the ""white goat"" was a euphemism for a human sacrifice. Anita is later called in to a murder scene by Dolph, the head of the area's supernatural crimes unit. A family was discovered to be torn apart, with a child missing and possibly still alive. Anita theorizes that it would likely be a flesh-eating zombie as there was too much blood left at the scene and that only two people could raise and control a zombie of that power: herself and vaundun priestess Dominga Salvador. The only other person capable of this feat, Peter Burke, recently died. Anita sets up a meeting with Salvador through her mentor Manny Rodriguez, where she discovers that Salvador is both very evil and very powerful. Salvador demonstrates her technique for capturing the souls of the dead and installing them in zombies, preventing the zombies from degrading and allowing further punishment of the dead. She invites Anita to become her partner and help create ensouled zombies for profit, to which Anita refuses and is chased out of the house by an unseen creature. At the funeral for Peter Burke, Anita meets the deceased's brother John Burke, who is also a powerful vaudun priest and capable of committing the zombie murders. Later that day Anita also meets up with Irving Griswold, who supplies her with information on Gaynor, including the name of one of Gaynor's former lovers, Wheelchair Wanda. Irving then tries to get Anita to reveal who the current Master of the City is, only for Irving to discover that it is Jean-Claude after he appears in an attempt to persuade Anita to accept her position as his human servant. That evening Anita investigates a cemetery where remains of one of the murdered family members was discovered and through her powers discovers that a grave has been recently disturbed, with another being empty. The tombstone for the empty grave has been smashed, with Anita discovering a charm bracelet nearby. Anita brings these to an associate that is a touch clairvoyant, who reluctantly tells her that the charm bracelet belonged to a woman recently sacrificed to raise a zombie. Anita is later attacked several times, once by zombies in her apartment and again later by thugs who attempt to kidnap her and her friend Ronnie. The two manage to foil the kidnapping attempt and discover that the thugs were working for Gaynor. Anita eventually visits the town's red light district with Jean-Claude, who helps her intimidate Wheelchair Wanda into talking about Gaynor and divulging that he is obsessed with the idea of finding a historic family treasure and getting revenge. Anita is called to another crime scene so recent that she believes that the zombie might be still hiding in the neighborhood. Dolph begins a search of the neighborhood as well as authorizing Anita to show John his brother's possessions in an attempt to discover any involvement in the murders. Through this she discovers that Peter possessed a gris-gris that contained a portion of the power of a powerful vaundun practitioner that would increase the power of any animator who possessed it. With John, Anita and the police confront Salvador with the gris-gris, which is revealed to be hers. Her grandson Antonio then confesses that he was supposed to remove the charm after Peter's death and now fears what punishment he might receive for this failure. The police discover a video of the events relating to the charm, and with the confession they then arrest Salvador. Anita then returns to the latest crime scene, where she is attacked by the zombie and lays it to rest. Upon returning home Anita is kidnapped by Gaynor's bodyguards and taken to his home, where Anita finds that Salvador has used her influence to gain bail. Gaynor informs Anita that he and Salvador are going to force Anita to raise a relative of Gaynors using his ex-lover Wheelchair Wanda, who has also been kidnapped. Anita refuses, which prompts Salvador to go to another room to begin a spell that would compel Anita to obey her. Anita manages to kill the bodyguards holding them captive and tries to escape with Wanda, only for the compulsion spell to force her to return to the cemetery near Gaynor's home. At the cemetery Salvador informs Anita that she gave Peter a gris-gris to raise his power enough to raise Gaynor's ancestor, as she was unwilling to perform a human sacrifice in front of witnesses. However, because Gaynor's ancestor was an animator, he rose as an uncontrollable flesh-eating zombie and Burke was murdered to keep the animation a secret. Salvador orders Anita to ""perform human sacrifice"", but due to a loophole in the spell Anita only has to perform the command literally and kills the guards holding Wanda. The resulting power from their sacrifice allows Anita to raise and control every corpse in the cemetery and she commands them to kill both Salvador and Gaynor. Anita then lays the zombies to rest. In the epilogue Anita explains that the ""disappearances"" of Salvador and Gaynor have never been solved, that she continues to refuse Jean-Claude, and that she is now considering the extent and implications of the power she now realizes she has."
2368,Bones of the Moon,horror," Living in New York, Cullen James's best wishes were being fulfilled. Her best friend marries her; she travels in Europe; she has a baby daughter. But strange dreams begin to intrude. By night, in dreams, she begins to visit a strange land called Rondua, where the sea is full of fish with mysterious names, where she and a huge, behatted dog escort a young boy named Pepsi across places such as the Northern Stroke, the Mountains of Coin and Brick, the Plain of Forgotten Machines. As her days become more disjointed and episodic, her dreams grow in intensity, and she learns more about the adversary she and her dream friends race against, searching for the last of the Bones of the Moon. Bit by bit, the events in Rondua start affecting her life on earth, intersecting in unpleasant, then frightening ways."
2369,Dead to the World,horror," This novel opens on New Year's Eve, three weeks after the events of Club Dead. Sookie Stackhouse finds Eric running down the road close to her home, but he seems to have lost his memory. Sookie, initially reluctant to get involved in vampire matters once again, takes Eric in. Eric's second in command, Pam, is relieved at Sookie finding Eric, and explains a coven of villainous witches, some of them also werewolves, has arrived in Shreveport, set on extorting money from Eric and taking over the local power he has. Hence, Pam believes the witches to be responsible for Eric's erased memory. After Sookie's brother Jason bargains on a financial settlement, Sookie agrees to keep Eric in her house and care for him, as the witches are on the lookout for Eric and might harm him. The next day, Jason is missing. Sookie oversees the slowly progressing police investigation of her brother's disappereance, but personally fears the witch coven might've gotten hold of him. Later on, Sookie informs werewolf Alcide Herveaux of the witch coven being in town. Alcide and his pack master fear that one of their pack members might have defected to the witches' side, but Sookie and Alcide then discover this particular woman's murdered body. Back in Bon Temps, Sookie's workplace is paid a visit to by the leaders of the witch coven, Marnie ""Hallow"" and Mark Stonebrook. Meanwhile, Sookie and Eric give in to their sexual interest in each other, while Sookie realizes she wouldn't have done so if Eric still had his memory. Pam suggests Alcide's werewolf pack, her area vampires and some local Wiccans unite to fight off the witch coven. They do so and with Sookie's assistance, brutally attack the witches' main gathering place, wiping out everyone present but Hallow, whom Pam captures and forces to lift Eric's amnesia. Sookie returns home dismayed at the loss of her ""relationship"" with the memory-free Eric, and finally retrieves Jason with Sam's help in Hotshot, a local were-panther community. In Hotshot, Felton Norris, romantically interested in Jason's one-time fling Crystal, also a werepanther, had contained Jason and purposefully bit him to change him into a werepanther, so that Crystal would lose her interest in Jason. This novel marked the death of three previously introduced characters; Fangtasia's human waitress Ginger was killed by a witch curse, Fangtasia's replacement bartender Chow was staked in the climactic battle, and Alcide Herveaux's jealous, shapeshifter ex-girlfriend Debbie Pelt was shot to death by Sookie after invading Sookie's house intending to kill her."
2370,Hunted,horror," Zoey and her friends help Stevie Rae heal after the events at the end of Untamed - the arrow did not kill her, but took most of her lifeblood, so Kalona could be freed from the earth. Zoey and Stevie Rae reconcile, and the latter introduces Zoey's group to some of the red vampyre fledglings. Aphrodite lets Stevie Rae feed on her to heal, which forms an Imprint between them. When Erik follows Zoey on her way to her room they kiss, but then Erik gets too rough and scares her. Erik and Zoey get back together, though Zoey's not entirely sure due to Erik's possessiveness. Kalona starts getting into Zoey's dreams to seduce her, and calls her A-ya. Kramisha, a red fledgling, is revealed to also express prophecies through her poetry, and Zoey gives her the title of Poet Laureate. This is how they find their first clue. One of Kramisha's poems states that Kalona and Neferet will be banished when Night, Humanity, Blood, Spirit and Earth come together, but Zoey doesn't know who will represent these elements. Heath arrives at the tunnels, and Zoey goes outside to talk to him, much to Erik's anger. Heath tries to reconcile with her, but to no avail. A Raven Mocker attacks them and critically wounds Zoey. She drinks from Heath to heal and they Imprint again, but she is still weakened. Kramisha gets exited and loses her control a little when she sees Heath (a human), leading Zoey to realize that the red fledglings may still have problems with their self-control. Darius finally declares that Zoey needs exposure to more adult vampyres to survive, and she is forced to return to the House of Night, much to Neferet's pleasure. She finds out that Kalona's presence has caused the fledglings and the vampyres to turn their backs on Nyx. Kalona's favorite son, Rephaim, and Darius get into a fight. Kalona intercedes and gives Darius a huge scar which upsets Aphrodite. Zoey successfully persuades Stark to turn back to the good side. He becomes the second red vampyre when he pledges his Warrior's Oath to Zoey and she accepts. Zoey discusses the situation with Lenobia and, upon analyzing Kramisha's poem again, finds out that she is Night, Blood is Stevie Rae, Humanity is Aphrodite, Sister Mary Angela is Spirit, and Grandma Redbird is Earth. Zoey and her friends set fire to the school as a diversion and escape on horseback to the Benedictine Abbey. Zoey and the other people mentioned in the poem open a circle and send everyone else inside. Neferet, Kalona and Stark arrive quickly afterwards in an SUV, followed by the Raven Mockers. Neferet and Kalona take turns at threatening and cajoling Zoey but she finally accepts the truth: that although A-ya is a part of her, she will choose her own destiny. She rejects Kalona. Neferet orders Stark to shoot Zoey but he says that Zoey is his heart and aims at her while thinking of himself. Realizing what will happen, Zoey uses the elements to stop the arrow and knocks him out in the process. Night, Humanity, Blood, Spirit, and Earth complete the spell and banish Neferet and Kalona. Zoey's Mark spreads to across her scar. She is deeply in pain because she had to say goodbye to Kalona, and knows that the fight isn't over yet."
2371,Allies of the Night,horror," *Darren Shan *The Saga of Darren Shan Darren, Harkat, and Mr. Crepsley (Vancha going back to Vampire Mountain to inform the other Princes and Generals of their encounter with the Vampaneze Lord) go to Mr. Crepsley's hometown once again to investigate if Vampaneze had set up territories there. But soon after their arrival Darren is discovered by the police and forced to attend school. He has trouble with most of his subjects as he only has a middle school education, but luckily (or perhaps unluckily?) his English teacher is Debbie, his old girlfriend from his first visit to this city. Mr. Crepsley has to go back to Vampire Mountain again for Paris Skyle's funeral, leaving Darren and Harkat to continue the investigations alone. One night on his way back to the hotel room the three are staying in, Darren encounters a Vampaneze with hooks for hands and a mask wrapped around his face. The Vampaneze attacks, but Darren is saved by his old friend Steve. Steve joins Darren for the hunt of the Vampaneze, claiming he's changed his ways and now understands who the real enemy is and dropped his desire for vengeance against Darren and Mr.Crepsley long ago. Darren later reveals himself as a vampire to Debbie, and after a long explanation and a day's contemplating she joins Darren and Steve for the fight. Mr. Crepsley comes back and helps Darren pursue the Vampaneze, but understandably doesn't trust Steve. Darren does convince him, however, that Steve will be a big help for them and lets him come with them. Vancha also joins them again a few days later. They chase the hooked Vampaneze to the sewers at night, but the Vampaneze led them to a trap. Darren and his team are soon surrounded and the Vampaneze Lord make his second appearance. Darren tries to kill him, but is stopped by Steve, who shows his true side as being a half-vampaneze and betraying Darren and his friends. The hooked Vampaneze is also revealed to be RV (Previously known as Reggie Veggie, but now claims it stands for Righteous Vampaneze). A fight begins between the Hunters and the Vampaneze. Vancha charges through the Vampets, scattering them and Mr. Crepsley follows, slicing with his nails to bring down many Vampaneze. Darren soon beats Steve and is about to finish him off, but RV uses Debbie as a hostage. RV, Gannen Harst, and the Lord soon leave with the threat that they will kill Debbie if they are followed. Darren and Vancha take a Vampet and Steve as their hostage and are given a warning by Gannen to leave the tunnels immediately or he'll send Vampaneze to finish them off."
2372,The Sentinel,horror," Alison Parker, a beautiful but troubled fashion model moves into a gorgeous New York City brownstone house that has been divided into apartments. The house is inhabited on the top floor by Father Francis Matthew Halloran, a reclusive blind Catholic priest who spends all of his time sitting at his open window. Alison is romantically involved with Michael Farmer, a private lawyer and former prosecutor. It soon becomes apparent that Alison's life is beset for a number of reasons. She had a horrible relationship with her recently deceased father, and has narrowly survived at least one suicide attempt. Michael himself is under suspicion in the death of his former wife. A determined New York City Police Department detective named Gatz is sure that Michael murdered his wife, and soon comes to suspect Alison as well. Hoping to leave her problems behind her, Alison finds that they've worsened. She suffers sleep loss, horrible nightmares involving her father and soon begins to find herself suffering blinding headaches. Looking for some distraction, she tries to ingratiate herself with the building's other occupants - but finds that they are bizarrely eccentric and obnoxious. Alison complains about her neighbors to the building's real estate agent. The agent is confused, telling a shocked Alison that there are no neighbors - besides for herself and Fr. Halloran, no one else lives there. Looking for answers, Michael breaks into a records archive of the Catholic Church. Researching the past of Fr. Halloran, Michael learns that the man has none. Rather Halloran's life ""began"", to the day, that another man's life apparently came to an end, leading Michael to believe that the two men are one and the same. He also finds similar records for a woman, a nun named Sister Therese who is to reside in Alison's building. Michael soon concludes that Sister Therese is actually the woman that Alison is meant to become. Rushing to Alison's building, he confronts the blind priest, only to be killed. Returning to the building, her headaches returned and her skin beginning to desiccate, Alison finds Michael seemingly unhurt. He reveals that he is actually dead and also damned for killing his wife. He also explains that the house is actually positioned over the gateway between our world and Hell and that there must be gatekeeper to protect the world from the denizens of the underworld. Until now, that gatekeeper, or sentinel, had been Father Halloran, but Alison is now expected to succeed him. Her troubled past, especially her suicide attempt, make her the appropriate choice. The inhabitants of Hell are actually her fellow ""neighbors"", and they know that they have one chance to escape the abyss - pressuring Alison to complete her suicide. At the last minute, Father Halloran appears and saves Alison, driving the ""neighbors"" back to hell. The book ends with Alison becoming the new sentinel. A sequel titled The Guardian followed."
2373,Sunshine,horror," The story is set in an alternate universe, taking place after the “Voodoo Wars”, a conflict between humans and the “Others”. The Others mainly consist of vampires, werewolves, and demons, though the main conflict occurs between humans and vampires. As a result of this war, “bad spots”, or places where black magic thrives, have appeared more frequently. Rae ""Sunshine"" Seddon, the pastry-making heroine of the novel, has the misfortune of being caught off-guard at her family's old lake side cabin and is abducted by a gang of vampires. She is confined to the ballroom of an abandoned mansion with Constantine, a vampire shackled there by vampires of a rival gang, led by Constantine’s enemy Bo. Bo’s intention is to allow Constantine to slowly die of hunger and exposure to sunlight. Rae is brought as bait for him, and the vampires cut her upper chest as temptation. However, Rae not only manages to defy the supposed power that any vampire has over a human, but also uses her all-but-forgotten magical powers of transmutation, taught to her by her grandmother, to effect an escape. Rae realizes that the magical lineage she has ignored allows her to draw power from the sunlight, ergo transferring her ability through touch to Constantine and allowing him to be under the light of day, so long as contact is maintained. Through this symbiotic relationship, the two of them make an escape. Despite her best efforts, all does not return to normalcy once Rae is back home. Her friends and family are shocked by her survival of an encounter with vampires, and over time she both starts to become more affected by the trauma and refuses to tell anyone the circumstances leading to her alliance with a vampire. As it becomes clear that the conflict with Bo and his gang is only beginning, Sunshine begins to embrace her magical ability, is coerced into working with the ""Special Other Forces"", wonders what kind of tentative partnership can exist between two individuals whose races are bitter enemies, and, finally, works with Constantine to overthrow Bo for good."
2374,Uncle Silas,horror," The novel is a first person narrative told from the point of view of the teenaged Maud Ruthyn, an heiress living with her sombre, reclusive father Austyn Ruthyn in their mansion at Knowl. She gradually becomes aware of the existence of Silas Ruthyn, a black sheep uncle whom she has never met, who was once an infamous rake and gambler but is now apparently a fervently reformed Christian. Silas's past holds a dark mystery, which she gradually learns from her father and from her worldly, cheerful cousin Lady Monica: the suspicious suicide of a man to whom Silas owed an enormous gambling debt, which took place within a locked, apparently impenetrable room in Silas's mansion at Bartram-Haugh. Austyn is firmly convinced of his brother's innocence; Maud's attitude to Uncle Silas (whom we do not meet for the first 200 pages of the book) wavers repeatedly between trusting in her father's judgment, and growing fear and uncertainty. In the first part of the novel, Maud's father hires a French governess, Madame de la Rougierre, as a companion for her. Madame de la Rougierre, however, turns out to be a sinister figure who has designs on Maud. (In a cutaway scene that breaks the first-person narrative, we learn that she is in league with Uncle Silas's good-for-nothing son Dudley.) She is eventually discovered by Maud in the act of burgling her father's desk; this is enough to ensure that she is dismissed. Austyn Ruthyn obscurely asks Maud if she is willing to undergo some kind of ""ordeal"" to clear his brother Silas's and the family's name. She assents, and shortly thereafter her father dies. It turns out that he has added a codicil to his will: Maud is to stay with Uncle Silas until she comes of age. If she dies while in her minority, the estate will go to Silas. Despite the advice of her friends Lady Monica and Austyn's executor and fellow Swedenborgian, Dr. Bryerly, Maud consents to spend the next three and a half years of her life at Bartram-Haugh. Life at Bartram-Haugh is initially strange but not unpleasant, despite ominous signs such as the uniformly unfriendly servants and a malevolent factotum of Silas's, the one-legged Dickon Hawkes. Silas himself is a sinister, soft-spoken old man who is openly contemptuous of his two children, the loutish Dudley and the untutored but friendly Milly (her rustic manners initially amaze Maud, but they become best friends). Silas is subject to mysterious catatonic fits which are attributed by his doctor to his massive opium consumption. Gradually, however, the trap closes around Maud: it is clear that Silas is attempting to coax or force her to marry Dudley. When that tactic fails, and as the time-limit of three-and-a-half years begins to shrink, a yet more sinister plot is hatched to ensure that Silas gains control of the Ruthyn estate. Milly is sent away to a boarding school in France, and arrangements are made for Maud to join her after a period of three months. In the meantime, Madame de la Rougierre reappears in Silas's employ, over Maud's protests, and it is she who is charged with accompanying Maud first to London, and then on to Dover and across the channel. However, unbeknownst to Maud, who is asleep in the carriage for most of the journey, she has in fact been taken on a round trip to London and back. She is returned to Bartram-Haugh under cover of darkness, and although she soon discovers the trick, her demands for an explanation are ignored and she is locked into one of the mansion's many bedrooms. Madame de la Rougierre, however, having been kept ignorant of Silas' true intentions, unwittingly partakes of the drugged claret that was intended for Maud, and promptly falls asleep on the latter's bed. Late that night, Dudley scales the building and enters the unlit room through the window, which is set upon concealed hinges that allow it to be opened only from the outside. Maud, crouched and hidden in a corner, watches on in terror as Dudley takes a spiked hammer from his pocket and savagely attacks the figure lying on the bed. Madame de la Rougierre screams briefly and convulses, then lies still. Uncle Silas, who has been waiting outside the door, enters the room, allowing Maud to slip out undetected. With the help of Dickon Hawkes' daughter, whom Maud had befriended during her stay, she is swiftly conveyed by carriage to Lady Monica's estate, and away from Bartram-Haugh forever. Silas is discovered in the morning lying dead of an opium overdose, while Dudley becomes a fugitive and is thought to be hiding in Australia. Maud is happily married to the charming and handsome Lord Ilbury and ends her recollections on a philosophical note:"
2375,"Darkness, Tell Us",horror," While attending a party thrown by one of their English professors, six college students use a Ouija board to contact a spirit that identifies itself only as 'Butler'. Butler promises the six a treasure if they will go to a remote mountain location called Calamity Peak. The professor, who knows from experience that messing around with the supernatural can be dangerous, attempts to dissuade them, but the kids steal the board and set off for the mountain anyway. Once they arrive they are menaced be a machete-wielding killer, and soon begin to wonder if Butler might be trying to harm them. After discovering that the Ouija board is missing, the professor, along with her lover, sets out to rescue her students. Unlike many of Laymon's novels, the book contains frankly supernatural elements, alongside the more realistic horrors common to Laymon's work (including homicidal maniacs, rape, and childhood sexual abuse)."
2376,The Purple Cloud,horror," The story, a recording of a medium's meditation over the future writing of the text, details the narrator's (Adam Jeffson's) expedition to the North Pole during the 20th century on board the Boreal. Jeffson's fiancée, the Countess Clodagh, poisons her own cousin in order to secure a place on the ship for Jeffson, because the expedition was known to be one of the best ever planned. A millionaire, who died some years previously, had ordered in his will that he would pay 175,000,000 dollars to the first person standing at the North Pole. Before Jeffson leaves, he hears a sermon by a Scottish priest named Mackay, speaking against Polar research, calling the failure of all previous expeditions the will of God, and prophesying a terrible fate for those who attempt to go against God's will in this. The narrator at the same time remembers his meeting with a man who claimed that the universe is a place of strife between vague ""powers"", ""The White"" and ""The Black"", for dominance. Throughout the events of the polar journey, the narrator gradually discovers that his course has been, for many years, guided by these forces, all the way up to the point where he reaches the pole first. He finds a huge, clear lake of spinning water with a rock island inlaid with inscriptions. Upon seeing this, Jeffson falls into a faint. When he returns to his camp he, along with his dogs, feels nauseous after having smelled a peculiar peach-like odour. He also notices a moving purple cloud, spreading in the far heavens. During the progress of his journey, he discovers dead animals, all without the slightest sign of injury, and he gradually learns of the death of his entire crew on board the Boreal. The ship being fairly easy to operate, he sets out by himself. First he travels towards northern islands, but upon seeing dead of all various races from around the world there (the result of an exodus, escaping the death-bringing cloud) and meeting ships crowded with corpses, he comes instead to the dead continent, walking through London, searching for news of the cloud. Later, he looks for any survivors in shut land mines, but finds all barricades broken through by mad crowds. He travels the country by locomotive wherever possible, using cars for further progress. Later, he goes to the house of Arthur Machen (an actual close friend of Shiel's), whom he finds dead, having been writing a poem until the very end. There, he finds the notebook into which he writes his whole narrative. The later parts of the book describe Jeffson's descent into mad pompousness: adopting Turkish attire, declaring himself monarch and burning down cities (including Paris, Bordeaux, London and San Francisco) for pleasure. He then willingly puts his life into one task, the construction of a huge and colossal golden palace on the isle of Imbros, which he means to dedicate as an altar to God and a palace to himself. He spends seventeen years on the palace, several times abandoning the work, until its completion, when he recognizes the vanity of it. Later, while going through Constantinople, which he also burns down, he stumbles upon a twenty-year-old naked woman who is without the slightest knowledge of anything in the world. She keeps on following him, however he shuns and mistreats her, going as far as throwing her into a locked chamber with her leg bleeding, while he himself goes to sleep on cushions in another part of the house, and many times meditates on killing her. Gradually, he accepts her, but forces her to wear a veil over her mouth. But her speed at learning astonishes him. So he teaches her to speak, read, cook, fish and dress. The girl (who is unable to pronounce ""r"",instead saying ""l"") reveals that she had been living her whole previous life in a cellar below the royal palace of Turkey, and that she knew nothing of the world until she was freed when Jeffson burned down Constantinople. She becomes absorbed in the Bible and declares the humans who sought for riches as ""spoiled"". Jeffson struggles mightily against his growing affection towards the girl, wishing to end the human race. At the very end, when he leaves to go to England, she telephones him about the re-appearance of the Purple Cloud over France. He rushes to her, embracing her as his wife. He concludes his writing by saying that he has accepted his role and that after three weeks have passed no purple cloud has appeared."
2377,Unseen,horror," Salma de la Navidad, a friend of Willow's, is having problems: her brother Nicky has disappeared and is believed to be joining a local Sunnydale gang called the Latin Cobras. Salma's also got a black shadowy nothingness that Buffy can sense but can barely fight. Meanwhile in LA, Angel is tied down by a case where his client is wrongfully accused of murder by crooked cops while Cordelia discovers a pack of pre-teens who revere vampires and have been promised eternal life by a vampire. Buffy's work takes her to LA along with Willow to the de la Navidad household where the same black shadow continues to attack Salma. When Salma suddenly disappears as does Kayley (one of the vampire lovers) everyone knows that something is up. After an explosion of oil fields, caused by Nicky, in Sunnydale, Riley rushes to LA where himself, Buffy and Angel have to work together to solve the disappearances and to calm down the gang warfare going on in LA."
2378,Tempted Champions,horror," A young, vicious and beautiful woman named Celina comes to Sunnydale and there's nothing but an uproar caused by her appearance. She's a deadly fighter that is willing to kill both humans and vampires alike. Upon her arrival in Sunnydale, she scares Anya, demanding to know where the Slayer is. As Buffy becomes involved in a short battle with Celina at sunrise, she realizes that she's in way over her head as Celina's method of fighting is far superior to her own. Meanwhile, Anya wrestles with her humanity and realizes that a lot of pain can come from being human and no longer immortal. D'Hoffryn offers her back her demonhood and she must decide which path is right for her. Buffy, after her encounter with the violent Celina, has Giles research who this mysterious woman is to better prepare her for the next time they meet. Unfortunately, the news of what Celina actually IS, is a lot more shocking than Buffy had expected."
2379,Dragon Tears,horror," Harry Lyon is a cop who embraces tradition and order. His partner, Connie Gulliver, is Harry's exact opposite. Harry doesn't like the messiness of her desk, her lack of social polish or her sometimes casual attitude towards the law. Connie often urges him to surrender to the chaos of life that is the 1990s. ""Look, Harry, it's the Age of Chaos,"" she tells him. ""Get with the times."" And when Harry and Connie have to take out a hopped-up gunman in a restaurant, the chase and shootout swiftly degenerate into a surreal nightmare that seems to justify Connie's view of the modern world. Shortly after, Harry encounters a filthy, rag-clad denizen of the streets, who says ominously, ""Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours."" Struggling to regain the orderly life he cherishes, Harry is trapped in an undertow of terror and violence. For reasons he does not understand, someone is after him, Connie Gulliver and the people he loves."
2380,Monster Blood Tattoo Book One: Foundling,horror," Rossamünd Bookchild, a foundling from the city of Boschenburg, has lived his entire life at Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society For Foundling Boys And Girls, learning the ways of life upon the sea so one day he can begin a career as a vinegaroon (sailor) in the Empire's service. Rossamünd's only friends are the dormitory masters Fransitart and Craumpalin, and the parlour-maid Verline of the Marine Society - the other foundlings only bully him for his feminine name. Much to Rossamünd's surprise, instead of a sailing life he is summoned to begin life as a lamplighter in the coastal city of High Vesting, far away to the south. After being prepared for his journey by his masters, he receives his instructions from a leer (a spy who has a special box with organs in it to enhance his sense of smell) and sets off on a river voyage on the Hogshead, a ram captained by an intimidating man named Poundinch. However he soon learns that he has been tricked onto the wrong ship, and is now slave to a band of criminals. He learns little of their trade other than that they are smuggling some kind of terrible contraband. Rossamünd only narrowly escapes fate as a captive cabin boy when, unwilling to reveal their cargo to river gatekeepers, the criminals are attacked by rams of the navy. Rossamünd, having escaped the river battle, reaches the riverbank and struggles through the wilderness on his own. He comes close to death before being found by Miss Europe, a fulgar (a type of lahzar, or monster hunter) who can fire lightning from her hands. Her powers are demonstrated to Rossamünd as they come across the Misbegotten Schrewd, an ettin (a very large monster). It shows some level of intelligence and no outward hostility, and so Rossamünd cannot help but sympathise with it as it is slain by Miss Europe. Their party is attacked soon after by grinnlings (also known as nimbleschrewds, a small and particularly nasty breed of monster) and the creepy leer Licurius, Miss Europe's personal servant, is killed. Rossamünd drags the badly-wounded and unconscious fulgar to Harefoot Dig, a wayhouse on the road to High Vesting, where she is healed and rested. While staying at the Dig, Rossamünd becomes privy to Miss Europe's reputation and hears her referred to as the Branden Rose, a name with infamy attached to it. Miss Europe also begins to refer to Rossamünd as her factotum (a servantile position previously held by Licurius). Rossamünd is torn between his predestined career of lamplighting, and this new prospect. To replace the deceased Licurius in the short term however, Rossamünd is charged with hiring a new carriage driver in the nearby town of Silvernook. There he finds the postman Fouracres, a friendly man who is all too willing to help, who seems to be a monster-sympathiser. The party now leave the wayhouse and after uneventful travel they reach High Vesting - Rossamünd's original destination. Two weeks having passed since Rossamünd left the Marine Society, he is eager to get to his new place of employment but Miss Europe has business to attend to. Rossamünd is left to explore the city. He comes across the Hogshead docked in the harbour, and is confronted by Poundinch. The captain, assuming Rossamünd to be snooping into his mysterious, live, and probably-illegal cargo, ties Rossamünd to one of the crates in the hold and leaves him there. Rossamünd gives up hope of being rescued until whatever is inside the crate begins talking to him. It turns out to be a glamgorn (a friendly, little, human-like bogle) named Freckle. The other crates do not contain such friendly creatures however, and Rossamünd realises Poundinch's trade: smuggling deceased human bodyparts to be put together into new, horrible creatures like those in the other crates. The captain soon returns and removes Rossamünd from the hold, but not before Freckle hints at some hidden significance to the foundling's name. Poundinch leads Rossamünd to one of his other ships, but Rossamünd escapes the captain and flees - right to the safety of Fouracres and Miss Europe. Miss Europe takes the captain out with one electric shock, and Poundinch falls into the caustic water of the harbour. Rossamünd insists that the three of them go back to the Hogshead to rescue Freckle, and they do just that (Freckle immediately disappearing into the sea), but the subsequent realisation that Freckle is a bogle sparks momentary hostility between Miss Europe and the foundling. However, they continue on to find Rossamünd's employers. On the way, Miss Europe reveals that she is suffering from an undetermined illness, and must travel far away to where she was altered into a lahzar so she can be treated. She promises to return after a while to see how Rossamünd is faring in his lamplighting career, and to again offer him the position of her factotum. Accepting this, he bids Miss Europe and Fouracres farewell. Rossamünd discovers that Mister Germanicus, whom he was supposed to report to in High Vesting, had given up waiting for the foundling and had moved on north to Winstermill. He sets off in a coach, accompanied now only by parting gifts from Miss Europe: food, more gold than Rossamünd had ever seen in his life, and a note revealing the lahzar's true identity - Europa, a duchess-in-waiting, set to one day rule over the rich city of Naimes. Soon enough Rossamünd reaches Winstermill, and is signed into service by two registrars, friendly Inkwill and nasty Witherscrawl. He is also given a letter, written five days ago by Verline from the Marine Society. This letter reveals that Master Fransitart will soon be on his way to see Rossamünd, and is bearing some kind of distressing news. Completely confused, Rossamünd goes to bed. He will begin his career as a lamplighter at the dawn."
2381,Revenant,horror," A Chinese gang arrives in Sunnydale and suddenly they're committing criminal acts all over the town. Immediately racial tension begin to increase and one of Willow's friends, Jia Li, is feeling the effects more than anyone else. She's discovered that her brother Lok is delving into the occult in order to learn more about their great grandfather's death in Sunnydale many years ago. Coinciding with these events, a man named Zhiyong is trying to raise the men that died in a cave many years ago in order to raise Sharmma, a demon that would give him power in return. A beautiful warrior called Shing arrives on the scene at the same time and she's just as strong as Buffy. Xander feels an immediate attraction for her but there's something about her that he doesn't know."
2382,Bad Bargain,horror," Having sealed the Hellmouth, the Scooby Gang do not realise that anything is odd when things to be sold at the first annual band fund-raising rummage sale are stored in the school basement, which is directly above the Hellmouth. The rummage sale begins, and the items on sale seem to be having an unexpected effect on those that buy them. Even Xander and Willow are soon affected. The situation gets more serious resulting in the school being quarantined leaving Buffy and Giles to sort things out before the items get sold elsewhere."
2383,Drawing Blood,horror," The novel concerns Trevor McGee, a comic book artist and sole survivor of a family murder-suicide, and Zachary Bosch, a bisexual hacker, and their arrival at McGee's old family home in Missing Mile, North Carolina, a fictional town featured in Brite's previous novel, Lost Souls. Something of a haunted house tale, Drawing Blood was originally entitled Birdland but the publisher retitled it to make a thin connection to Brite's first novel Lost Souls, a vampire tale. The characters Trevor and Zachary reappear in Brite's short story ""Vine of the Soul"", published in 1998 in Disco 2000, edited by Sarah Champion."
2384,Shadowland,horror," The story concerns two young boys, Tom Flanagan and Del Nightingale, who spend a summer with Del's uncle Coleman, who is one of the foremost magicians in the world. As time passes, however, Tom begins to suspect that what Coleman is teaching is not a series of harmless tricks, but is in fact real sorcery."
2385,Judgement of Tears,horror," In 1959, several of the world's notable vampires gather in Rome for the wedding of Count Dracula. Nefarious schemes are afoot and being investigated by British Intelligence, the Diogenes Club, and several others, including a British spy on the trail of a sinister madman with a white cat."
2386,Sons of Destiny,horror," After Darren was told by Steve that Darius is also Darren's nephew, Darren couldn't bear to kill him. He was later shown taking Darius back to his house and there he also revealed his true identity to Annie, his sister. Darren also told Annie that Darius was blooded by Steve as a Vampaneze and he would kill everyone he feeds from. Annie was told about the life and history of Darren. Darren blooded Darius so he wouldn't have to kill as a Vampaneze and becomes a vampire instead. Darren, Alice Burgess, and Vancha would have to prepare for a break in at the stadium to save their friends and the Cirque performers. Darren and Vancha, as the prophecy goes, tailed Gannen Harst and Steve from the stadium and were ready for a final battle. The battle is brief. Vancha first fights both Gannen and Steve using only his hands. He then is wounded by Gannen, making him incapable to fight. Gannen was knocked out cold by R.V., who at the same time was killed by Steve after that moment (because Steve stabbed him in the neck), leaving Darren and Steve to worry about each other only. As Darren predicted, he must face Steve alone. As Darren and Steve are fighting next to a riverbank, Darren eventually almost kills Steve. Mr. Tiny then approaches Steve and Darren, telling them that Darren and Steve are actually half-brothers and that Mr. Tiny is their real, biological father. He planned this whole thing as to see which son was worthy enough to become the ruler of the shadows with him. Darren feels as though he would rather destroy himself than wipe out all of humanity, so Darren taunts Steve before he dies, saying, ""You were right. I did plot with Mr Crepsley to take your place as his assistant. We made a fool of you, and I'm glad. You're a nobody. A nothing. This is what you deserve. If Mr Crepsley was alive, he'd be laughing at you now, just like the rest of us are."" Steve, full of rage, stabs Darren several times in the gut. Darren pulls Steve into the river while getting himself caught in the current, drowning both and avoiding the prophecy. Darren's soul then goes to the Lake of Souls, where his soul is caught by Evanna, his half-sister. Evanna had made a deal with her father, Mr. Tiny, agreeing to make Darren a little person so he could go to Paradise. The only exception was that Darren could be spared if Evanna became pregnant by either Vancha or Gannen, hoping that the child will destroy the human race themselves. However, Evanna had taken the DNA of both Vancha and Gannen, and let the child become twins. She says that the twins will be part Vampire,part Vampaneze and part Evanna, so the twins will know both sides very well and convince the two clans to become equal. Annoyed by seeing Darren again, Mr. Tiny is at first reluctant to help Darren. But, Evanna reminds him of their deal, so, he agrees, much to his dislike. Mr. Tiny changes Darren into a Little Person, but avoids adding a tongue so that he can't speak. Mr. Tiny sends Darren into the past not knowing that Evanna has given Darren his diaries. He is sent back to the first day that he set eyes on the Cirque Du Freak. Darren then sees himself and Steve when they went to go visit the show. Darren then scares himself away so he wouldn't become a vampire in the future, knowing from a conversation with Evanna that someone else will take his place in history and hoping that whoever it is will be able to pass on peacefully after fulfilling his destiny. He also gives his diaries to Mr. Tall to be given to Darren when he's older so everyone will know the truth of what happened, intending to release them after the time of his 'death' in future so that the present cannot be altered. Darren then dies on top of the theater where he goes to wherever the judgement of the vampire gods will bring him. It is implied, though not directly confirmed, that he passes on to paradise, a book that ends in epic tragedy. fa:پسران سرنوشت"
2387,The Fall of the House of Usher,horror," The legend opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's pathagens can be described according to its terminology. They include a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings ""The Haunted Palace"", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it. Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in a vault (family tomb) in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning. The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Tryst, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds hanging on the wall a shield of shining brass on which is written a legend: that the one who slays the dragon wins the shield. With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed and that Roderick Usher knew that she was alive. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn."
2388,Violin,horror," The book is set in numerous places, including Vienna, New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. The novel tells the story of three people: a middle aged woman yearning to become a musician, a ghostly violinist, and the ghost of Beethoven. The story begins with Triana, who apparently becomes insane due to the death of her second husband, Karl, who had AIDS. Her first husband was Lev, with whom Triana had a daughter. Stefan, the ghost, appears the day Karl dies and plays his Stradivarius (s long Strad) (apparently also a ghost). Triana secludes herself in her house for several days without informing anyone of Karl's death. Through the course of the book we learn the story of both Triana and Stefan. Stefan takes Triana in a travel through time, visiting scenes from his life and his afterlife in an attempt to reclaim his violin, which had been taken by Triana. Stefan had many mentors including Beethoven and Paganini, but it is Beethoven whom Stefan cherished the most. After Stefan's story is ""told"" Triana returns to her rightful time but not to New Orleans where the story began but to Vienna, and now seemingly possessing a talent to improvise in the violin. We see the ghost of this great musician about two times in the novel, the first one in a scene where Stefan's house in Vienna is burning, and the second one almost at the end where Beethoven appears in modern Vienna in the hotel room where Triana was staying. With Triana still in possession of the strad, Stefan continues his attempts to reclaim the violin but to no avail, until finally, after achieving success with her improvisations it is in Brazil that Triana returns the violin to his rightful owner and Stefan finally crosses over."
2389,Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row,horror," It is 1940 and for Drusilla's vampiric birthday, Spike decides he will acquire Freyja's Strand for her. The strand, a necklace, has the ability to allow Drusilla to view her reflection. After a dangerous trek, Spike and Drusilla strike a deal with the ice demon Skrymir: should Spike and Drusilla destroy all the current Slayers-in-waiting as well as the current Slayer, he will fork over the necklace. Up to the challenge, Spike and Drusilla acquire a list of the Slayers-in-waiting from the Watcher's Council in London and ravage the Earth, killing girls hideously as they go. Meanwhile the current Slayer, Sophie, is alerted to the situation and sent off with her watcher, Yanna, to rescue the remaining Slayers-in-waiting. Unfortunately Yanna has developed an unhealthy obsession with Spike and cannot fight against him when there is a run-in between the two groups. But Sophie rescues a decent numbers of the girls and has them brought to the council headquarters. Sophie leaves to retrieve the last girl and runs into Spike and Drusilla in Denmark who capture her Watcher. While Sophie hunts down the duo, Skrymir has grown impatient and manifests himself inside the Council headquarters where he wreaks havoc on the inhabitants. The Council must find a way to stop Skrymir from killing all the Slayers-in-waiting (which was thought to end the line of Slayers) while the Slayer herself tries to track down her Watcher who may already be dead."
2390,Whispers,horror," Hilary Thomas, a screenwriter living in Los Angeles, is attacked in her home by Bruno Frye, a mentally disturbed man whose vineyard in Napa Valley she recently visited. Frye tries to rape her, but she forces him to leave at gunpoint and calls the police. Detective Tony Clemenza tells her that Frye has an airtight alibi... The police called his home and he answered, proving that he couldn't have been anywhere near Los Angeles that night. The next day Frye returns and attacks Hilary again, this time receiving several stab wounds before escaping. She calls the police and once again meets with Clemenza, who tell her that Frye's body has been found and take her to the morgue to identify it. Afterward, Clemenza asks Hilary out, and the two begin a romantic relationship. Hilary is once again attacked by a man who appears to be Frye. ""Frye"" escapes just before Clemenza arrives, and Hilary tells him what happened. After some investigations, Frye's psychologist, lets them listen to a tape recording of one of Frye's sessions. Frye talks about identical twins being born with cauls on their faces, and says he read somewhere that this was a mark of a demon. Frye has been killing women he believes are possessed by the spirit of his dead mother, who abused him and said she would come back from the dead. He believes that Hilary is his mother's latest ""host"". Hilary and Tony meet a retired madam who tells them that Leo, Frye's grandfather, brought his daughter, Katherine, there to be cared for after he got her pregnant. Shortly after Leo's death, Katherine gave birth to identical twin boys. The twins were born with cauls on their faces, leading the mentally unstable Katherine to believe they were demons. She raised her sons as if they were one person. They were both called Bruno, and both were rewarded or punished for anything either one of them did. Finally, Hilary and Clemenza return to Frye's home, where he once again attacks them, before being killed during a struggle with Clemenza."
2391,’Salem's Lot,horror," Ben Mears, a successful writer who grew up in the town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, has returned home after twenty-five years. He quickly becomes friends with high school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate. Ben starts writing a book about the Marsten House, an abandoned mansion where he had a bad experience as a child. Mears learns that the Marsten House—the former home of Depression-era hitman Hubert ""Hubie"" Marsten—has been purchased by Kurt Barlow, an Austrian immigrant who has arrived in the Lot ostensibly to open an antique store. Barlow is an apparent recluse; only his business partner, Richard Straker, is seen in public. The duo's arrival coincides with the disappearance of a young boy, Ralphie Glick, and the death of his brother Danny, who becomes the town's first vampire, infecting such locals as Mike Ryerson, Randy McDougall, Jack Griffen, and Danny's own mother, Marjorie Glick. Danny fails, however, to infect Mark Petrie, who resists him successfully. Over the course of several weeks almost all of the townspeople are infected. Ben Mears and Susan are joined by Matt Burke and his doctor, Jimmy Cody, along with young Mark Petrie and the local priest, Father Callahan, in an effort to fight the spread of the vampires, whose numbers increase as the new vampires infect their own families and others. Susan is captured by Barlow before Mark has a chance to rescue her. Susan becomes a vampire, and is eventually staked through the heart by Mears, the man who loved her. Father Callahan is caught by Barlow at the Petrie house after Barlow kills Mark's parents, but does not infect them, so they are later given a clean burial. Barlow holds Mark hostage, but Father Callahan has the upper hand, securing Mark's release, agreeing to Barlow's demand that he toss aside his cross and face him on equal terms. However he delays throwing the cross aside and the once powerful religious symbol loses its strength until Barlow can not only approach Callahan but break the cross, now nothing more than two small pieces of plaster, into bits. Barlow says ""Sad to see a man's faith fail him"", then forces the helpless Callahan to drink blood from Barlow's neck. Callahan resists but cannot hold out forever and is forced to drink, leaving him trapped in a netherworld, as Barlow has left his mark. When Callahan tries to re-enter his church he receives an electric shock, preventing him from going inside. Callahan disappears forever from ""the Lot"". Jimmy Cody is killed when he falls from a rigged staircase and is impaled by knives by the one-time denizens of Eva Miller's boarding house, Mears' one-time residence, who have now all become vampires. Matt Burke dies from a heart attack in the town hospital. Ben Mears and Mark Petrie succeed in destroying the master vampire Barlow, but are lucky to escape with their lives and are forced to leave the town to the now leaderless vampires. The novel's prologue, which is set shortly after the end of the story proper, describes the men's flight across the country to a seaside town in Mexico, where they stop to recover from their ordeal. Mark Petrie is received into the Catholic Church by a friendly local priest. The epilogue has the two returning to the town a year later, intending to renew the battle. Ben, knowing that there are too many hiding places for the town's vampires, sets the town on fire with the intent of destroying it and the Marsten House once and for all."
2392,Dracula,horror," The novel is told in epistolary format, as a series of letters, diary entries, ships' log entries, and so forth. The main writers of these items are also the novel's protagonists. The story is occasionally supplemented with newspaper clippings that relate events not directly witnessed by the story's characters. The tale begins with Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, journeying by train and carriage from England to Count Dracula's crumbling, remote castle (situated in the Carpathian Mountains on the border of Transylvania, Bukovina and Moldavia). The purpose of his mission is to provide legal support to Dracula for a real estate transaction overseen by Harker's employer, Peter Hawkins, of Exeter in England. At first enticed by Dracula's gracious manner, Harker soon discovers that he has become a prisoner in the castle. He also begins to see disquieting facets of Dracula's nocturnal life. One night while searching for a way out of the castle, and against Dracula's strict admonition not to venture outside his room at night, Harker falls under the spell of three wanton female vampires, ""the Sisters."" He is saved at the last second by the Count, because he wants to keep Harker alive just long enough to obtain needed legal advice and teachings about England and London (Dracula's planned travel destination was to be among the ""teeming millions""). Harker barely escapes from the castle with his life. Not long afterward, a Russian ship, the Demeter, having weighed anchor at Varna, runs aground on the shores of Whitby, England, during a fierce tempest. All of the crew are missing and presumed dead, and only one body is found, that of the captain tied to the ship's helm. The captain's log is recovered and tells of strange events that had taken place during the ship's journey. These events led to the gradual disappearance of the entire crew apparently owing to a malevolent presence on board the ill-fated ship. An animal described as a large dog is seen on the ship leaping ashore. The ship's cargo is described as silver sand and boxes of ""mould"", or earth, from Transylvania. Soon Dracula is tracking Harker's devoted fiancée, Wilhelmina ""Mina"" Murray, and her friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy receives three marriage proposals in one day, from Dr. John Seward; Quincey Morris; and the Hon. Arthur Holmwood (later Lord Godalming). Lucy accepts Holmwood's proposal while turning down Seward and Morris, but all remain friends. There is a notable encounter between Dracula and Seward's patient Renfield, an insane man who means to consume insects, spiders, birds, and other creatures &mdash; in ascending order of size &mdash; in order to absorb their ""life force"". Renfield acts as a motion sensor, detecting Dracula's proximity and supplying clues accordingly. Lucy begins to waste away suspiciously. All of her suitors fret, and Seward calls in his old teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing from Amsterdam. Van Helsing immediately determines the cause of Lucy's condition but refuses to disclose it, knowing that Seward's faith in him will be shaken if he starts to speak of vampires. Van Helsing tries multiple blood transfusions, but they are clearly losing ground. On a night when Van Helsing must return to Amsterdam (and his message to Seward asking him to watch the Westenra household is delayed), Lucy and her mother are attacked by a wolf. Mrs. Westenra, who has a heart condition, dies of fright, and Lucy apparently dies soon after. Lucy is buried, but soon afterward the newspapers report children being stalked in the night by a ""bloofer lady"" (as they describe it), i.e. ""beautiful lady"". Van Helsing, knowing that this means Lucy has become a vampire, confides in Seward, Lord Godalming and Morris. The suitors and Van Helsing track her down, and after a disturbing confrontation between her vampiric self and Arthur, they stake her heart, behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic. Around the same time, Jonathan Harker arrives home from recuperation in Budapest (where Mina joined and married him after his escape from the castle); he and Mina also join the coalition, who turn their attentions to dealing with Dracula. After Dracula learns of Van Helsing's and the others' plot against him, he takes revenge by visiting – and feeding from – Mina at least three times. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, creating a spiritual bond between them to control her. The only way to forestall this is to kill Dracula first. Mina slowly succumbs to the blood of the vampire that flows through her veins, switching back and forth from a state of consciousness to a state of semi-trance during which she is telepathically connected with Dracula. This telepathic connection is established to be two-way, in that the Count can influence Mina, but in doing so betrays to her awareness of his surroundings. After the group sterilizes all of his lairs in London by putting pieces of consecrated host in each box of earth, Dracula flees back to his castle in Transylvania, transported in a box with transfer and portage instructions forwarded, pursued by Van Helsing's group, who themselves are aided by Van Helsing hypnotizing Mina and questioning her about the Count. The group splits in three directions. Van Helsing goes to the Count's castle and kills his trio of brides, and shortly afterwards all converge on the Count just at sundown under the shadow of the castle. Harker and Quincey rush to Dracula's box, which is being transported by Gypsies. Harker shears Dracula through the throat with a Kukri while the mortally wounded Quincey, slashed by one of the crew, stabs the Count in the heart with a Bowie knife. Dracula crumbles to dust, and Mina is freed from his curse. The book closes with a note about Mina's and Jonathan's married life and the birth of their first-born son, whom they name after all four members of the party, but refer to only as Quincey in remembrance of their American friend."
2393,The Vampyre,horror," Aubrey, a young Englishman, meets Lord Ruthven, a man of mysterious origins who has entered London society. Aubrey accompanies Ruthven to Rome, but leaves him after Ruthven seduces the daughter of a mutual acquaintance. Aubrey travels to Greece, where he becomes attracted to Ianthe, an innkeeper's daughter. Ianthe tells Aubrey about the legends of the vampire. Ruthven arrives at the scene and shortly thereafter Ianthe is killed by a vampire. Aubrey does not connect Ruthven with the murder and rejoins him in his travels. The pair is attacked by bandits and Ruthven is mortally wounded. Before he dies, Ruthven makes Aubrey swear an oath that he will not mention his death or anything else he knows about Ruthven for a year and a day. Looking back, Aubrey realizes that everyone whom Ruthven met ended up suffering. Aubrey returns to London and is amazed when Ruthven appears shortly thereafter, alive and well. Ruthven reminds Aubrey of his oath to keep his death a secret. Ruthven then begins to seduce Aubrey's sister while Aubrey, helpless to protect his sister, has a nervous breakdown. Ruthven and Aubrey's sister are engaged to marry on the day the oath ends. Just before he dies, Aubrey writes a letter to his sister revealing Ruthven's history, but it does not arrive in time. Ruthven marries Aubrey's sister. On the wedding night, she is discovered dead, drained of her blood — and Ruthven has vanished."
2394,Touch Not the Cat,horror," The heroine, Bryony, has the gift of telepathy, and is able to communicate subliminally with a man she regards as her lover, but whose identity she is unsure of. She knows that he is a blood relative, and assumes him to be one of her three male cousins, twins Emory and James, and the younger Francis. Bryony returns to the UK having received a telepathic message and discovers that her father has been hit by a car, and has died after speaking some mysterious phrases. She remains puzzled about the identity of her telepathic contact. Her initial preference is for James, but she gradually realises that the twins are plotting to steal her inheritance, and that her secret lover is a long-standing friend to whom she had not known she was related. Bryony gradually solves her father's puzzles, some of which include a maze depicted on the family's arms, the motto being ""Touch not the cat"". In the book's climax, the twins attempt to murder Bryony and flood the family gardens, so they can sell them for redevelopment. They are stopped by Bryony's lover."
2395,Blackwood Farm,horror," The main character is Tarquin ""Quinn"" Blackwood, a child of the Blackwood clan, which is a powerful and old family in New Orleans. Tarquin is haunted by a mysterious spirit named Goblin, who is attached to him spiritually. He realizes that he is unable to defeat this creature alone. Risking his life, Quinn embarks upon a quest to enlist the aid of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat, after a fashion, agrees to help Quinn. The novel develops as Tarquin recounts tales of his growing up, his youth, his family, and even his forced conversion and acceptance of the Dark Gift by the hermaphrodite Petronia. His stories allow Lestat to better understand the reach and power of Goblin, who continues to haunt Tarquin. Lestat also discovers that Tarquin is connected to the Mayfair clan of witches, which also makes New Orleans its home. This information, combined with his failure to defeat Goblin, forces Lestat to request aid from Merrick. Merrick, a powerful Mayfair witch-turned-vampire, agrees to help. It is revealed that the now-bloodthirsty Goblin, who looks exactly like Tarquin, is in fact a baby boy's spirit &mdash; the spirit of Tarquin's twin brother, who died only days after being born. The child did not leave this world; he is bound to Tarquin and is relentlessly jealous to experience what Tarquin does. Merrick fashions a ritual, using the corpse of the dead twin, to exorcise Goblin. During the ceremony, Merrick joins herself with the flame and the corpse. She carries her spirit and that of the child to the Light and perishes. Lestat is bereft of Merrick, whom he adored; but he now has Quinn, a new vampire to cherish. de:Blackwood Farm es:El santuario fr:Le Domaine Blackwood it:Il vampiro di Blackwood pl:Posiadłość Blackwood pt:A Fazenda Blackwood ru:Чёрная камея"
2396,The Queen of the Damned,horror," Part One follows several different people over the same period of several days. Several of the characters appear in the two previous books, including Armand, Daniel (the ""boy reporter"" of Interview with the Vampire), Marius, Louis, Gabrielle and Santino. Each of the six chapters in Part One tells a different story about a different person or group of people. Two things unify these chapters: a series of dreams about red-haired twin sisters, and the fact that a powerful being is killing vampires around the world by means of spontaneous combustion. Pandora and Santino rescue Marius, having answered his telepathic call for help. Marius informs his rescuers that Akasha has been awakened by Lestat, or rather his rock music, for he has joined a rock band of mortals whose names are Alex, Larry and Tough Cookie. Having been awakened by Lestat's rebellious music, Akasha destroys her husband Enkil and plots to rule the world. Akasha is also revealed as the source of the attacks on other vampires. Part Two takes place at Lestat's concert. Jesse, a member of the secret Talamasca and relative of Maharet, is mortally injured while attending the concert, and is taken to Maharet's Sonoma compound where she is made into a vampire. The vampires from Part One later congregate in the Sonoma compound. The only vampires not present are Akasha and Lestat. Akasha has abducted Lestat and takes him as an unwilling consort to various locations in the world, inciting women to rise up and kill the men who have oppressed them. Part Three takes place at Maharet's home in a Sonoma forest. There Maharet tells the story of Akasha and the red-haired twins (who are, in fact, Maharet and her sister, Mekare) to Pandora, Jesse, Marius, Santino, Eric, Armand, Daniel, Louis and Gabrielle. Also present are Mael and Khayman, who already know the story. In Part Four, Akasha confronts the gathered vampires at Maharet's compound. There she explains her plans and offers the vampires a chance to be her ""angels"" in her New World Order. Akasha plans to kill 90 percent of the world's human men, and to establish a new Eden in which women will worship Akasha as a goddess. If the assembled vampires refuse to follow her, she will destroy them. The vampires refuse, but before Akasha can destroy them, Mekare enters. Mekare kills Akasha by severing her head. Mekare then consumes Akasha's brain and heart, thereby saving the lives of the remaining vampires and becoming the new Queen of the Damned. In Part Five, the vampires leave Maharet's compound and assemble at Armand's resort, the Night Island, (according to Anne Rice, inspired by Fire Island) in Florida to recover. They eventually go their separate ways (as told in The Tale of the Body Thief). Lestat takes Louis to see David Talbot in London. After their brief visit with Talbot they depart into the night, an incensed Louis and his angry words filling Lestat with glee. The Queen of the Damned, deals with the origins of vampires themselves. The mother of all vampires, Akasha, begins as a pre-Egyptian queen, in a land called Kemet (which will become Egypt), many thousands of years ago. During this time two powerful witches (Maharet and Mekare) live in the mountains of an unnamed region. The witches are able to communicate with invisible spirits and gain simple favors from them. During this period there is a bloodthirsty, invisible spirit known as Amel who continually asks the two witches if they need his assistance, although they prudently decline the offer. The witches' village is destroyed and they are incarcerated by the king and queen, who desire their knowledge. When the witches offend Akasha, the Queen condemns the twins. Enkil then orders his chief steward (who is Khayman as a mortal man) to rape the twins in his stead, which would prove their lack of power, before the eyes of the court. Afterward the witches are cast out into the desert. While making her way back home with a pregnant Maharet, Mekare curses the king and queen secretly with the bloodthirsty spirit. Eventually this spirit inflicts such torment on Akasha and Enkil that they again demand advice and help from the two witches. Conspirators, unhappy with the young king's policies, assassinate the royal couple in Khayman's house whilst they were attempting to exorcise Amel, who had been tormenting Khayman. While the king and queen lie dying, the evil spirit sees its chance to ensnare the soul of the dying queen and pulls it back into her body. The spirit combines itself with the flesh and blood of the queen, transforming her into a vampire. Akasha allows the king to drink her blood, which saves his life. They then order Khayman to find the witches and bring them back to Egypt so that they could use their knowledge of spirits to help them, as they feel guilty because of their thirst for blood. However, when the witches admit that they cannot help the monarchs, Akasha orders the mutilation of the witches: Maharet loses her eyes and Mekare her tongue. Afterward, Khayman, who had been turned into a vampire by Akasha, comes to the witches' cell and turns them too. The three flee together, but are caught by Akasha's soldiers. Khayman escapes, but Maharet and Mekare are further punished. The witches are put into two separate coffins which are then set afloat on two separate bodies of water. They are only reunited near the end of the novel Queen of the Damned. In Mekare's absence, Maharet returns to watch over her daughter and her descendants. Maharet's descendants become what she calls the Great Family. A maternal line, the Great Family includes every culture, religion, ethnicity, and race. The Great Family represents all humanity and shows the vampires what Akasha would destroy with the creation of her New World Order. As the source of all vampires, Akasha is connected to all vampires by the blood and spirit they collectively share. In an experiment by the first Keeper, Akasha and Enkil are exposed to sunlight when they are several thousand years old. This merely darkens their skin. However, the result on all other vampires is extreme, and many of the weakest vampires die, thus confirming the legend that anything that harms Akasha will also directly affect all of her progeny."
2397,Magic,horror," The novel concerns a man named Corky Withers, a shy, odd-tempered and alcoholic magician, whose lackluster performances start to turn around when he adds a ventriloquist's dummy, Fats, to the show. It chronicles Corky's childhood and adolescence, and his deep love for a high-school crush named Peggy Ann Snow. After seeing the increasingly disturbing connection to Fats, many people begin to worry about Corky. Although Corky thinks Fats is alive, and can not bear to be apart from Fats for a long period of time, his friends know that Fats is actually an outlet for a hidden homicidal trait in Corky's personality, and that he has multiple personality disorder. Soon, ""Fats"" begins to tell Corky to murder anyone that threatens their relationship. All these factors combine and quickly reach a shattering climax during a weekend at Peggy's home in the Catskills. The novel is written kaleidoscopically, changing time period, location, and point of view swiftly and leaving certain aspects of important events unknown for extended periods of time, especially concerning the identity of Fats the dummy for the early portion of the novel."
2398,This Perfect Day,horror," Li RM35M4419, nicknamed ""Chip"" (as in ""chip off the old block"") by his nonconformist grandfather Jan, is a typical child Member who, through a mistake in genetic programming, has one green eye. Through his grandfather's encouragement, he learns how to play a game of ""wanting things,"" including imagining what career he might pick if he had the choice. Chip is told by his adviser that ""picking"" and ""choice"" are manifestations of selfishness, and he tries to forget his dreams. As Chip grows up and begins his career, he is mostly a good citizen, but commits minor subversive acts, such as procuring art materials for another ""nonconformist"" member who was denied them. His occasional oddities attract the attention of a secret group of Members who, like Chip, are also nonconformists. There he meets King, a Medicenter chief who obtains members records for potential future recruitment to the group, King's beautiful girlfriend Lilac, a strong-willed and inquisitive woman with unusually dark skin, and Snowflake, a rare albino member. These members teach Chip how to get his treatments reduced so that he can feel more and stronger emotions. Chip begins an affair with Snowflake, but is really attracted to Lilac. Chip and Lilac begin to search through old museum maps and soon discover islands around the world that have disappeared from their modern map. They begin to wonder if perhaps other ""incurable"" members like themselves have escaped to these islands. King tells them that the idea is nonsense, but Chip soon learns that King has already interacted with some ""incurables"" and that they are indeed real. Before he can tell Lilac, Chip's ruse is discovered by his adviser. He and all the other members of the group are captured and treated back into docility. Some years later, Chip's regular treatment is delayed by an earthquake. In the meanwhile, he begins to ""wake up"" again and remembers Lilac and the islands. He is able to shield his arm from the treatment nozzle and becomes fully awake for the first time. He locates Lilac again and kidnaps her. At first she fights him, but as she too becomes more ""awake,"" she remembers the islands and comes willingly. Finding a convenient abandoned boat on the beach, they head for the nearest island of incurables, Majorca. There they learn that UniComp, as a last resort, has planted failsafes that eventually lead all incurables to these islands, where they will be trapped forever away from the treated population. Chip conceives of a plan—destroy the computer, UniComp, by blowing up its refrigeration system. He recruits other incurables to join him, and they make their way to the mainland. Just as they reach UniComp, one of the incurables leads them to a secret luxurious underground city beneath UniComp, where they are met by Wei, one of the original planners of the Unification. Wei and the other ""programmers"" who live in UniComp have arranged this test so that the most daring and resourceful incurables will make their way to UniComp, where they, too, will live in luxury as programmers. Chip is initially wary, but after a time, he seems to settle into the programmers' society. But when a new group of incurables arrive, Chip steals their explosives and completes his mission to blow up UniComp, killing Wei in the process. Before he returns to Majorca, signs of a new life have already begun: rain begins to fall in the daytime, and members who were scheduled to die do not."
2399,Rosemary's Baby,horror," The book centers on Rosemary Woodhouse, a young woman who has just moved into the Bramford, an old Gothic Revival style New York City apartment building with her husband, Guy, a struggling actor. The pair is warned that the Bramford has a disturbing history involving witchcraft and murder, but they choose to overlook this. Rosemary has wanted children for some time, but Guy wants to wait until he is more established. Rosemary and Guy are quickly welcomed by Minnie and Roman Castevet, an eccentric elderly couple. Rosemary finds them meddlesome and absurd, but Guy begins paying them frequent visits. After a theatrical rival suddenly goes blind, Guy is given an important part in a stage play. Immediately following this event, Guy unexpectedly agrees with Rosemary that it is time to conceive their first child. Guy is noticed and cast in other, increasingly important roles, and he begins to talk about a career in Hollywood. After receiving a warning from a friend, who also becomes mysteriously ill, Rosemary investigates and confirms that her neighbors are the leaders of a Satanic coven, and she suspects they are after her child to use it as a sacrifice to the Devil. However, she is unable to convince anyone else to believe or help her and soon becomes certain that there is no one actually on her side, not even her own husband. In the end, Rosemary discovers she is wrong about the coven's reason for wanting the baby, but the truth is even more horrific than she could ever imagine. They plan to use Rosemary as a vessel to carry a child spawned from Satan himself."
2400,The Book of Renfield,horror," The Book of Renfield works mainly as a companion piece to Stoker's original novel. In some cases, excerpts from the actual book are used but are modified and expanded under the pretense that Dracula is nonfiction and that Seward's entries were ""edited, and in some instances, rewritten by John L. Seward before he provided them for the use of Mr. Bram Stoker, at the request of Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Harker"". As such, whenever the text from Dracula is used, it is bolded to differentiate the changes. The book starts with a man discovered outside the ruins of Carfax Abbey, feasting on a rat, whose only form of identification is a handkerchief that reads ""R.M. Renfield"". He is taken in to Seward's asylum, where his sessions with the doctor reveal fragments of his tragic past and how he came to be Count Dracula's pawn."
2401,Carpathian Castle,horror," In the village of Werst in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania (then part of Austria-Hungary), some mysterious things are occurring and the villagers believe that Chort (the devil) occupies the castle. A visitor of the region, Count Franz de Télek, is intrigued by the stories and decides to go to the castle and investigate and finds that the owner of the castle is Baron Rodolphe de Gortz, one of his acquaintances, as years ago, they were rivals for the affections of the celebrated Italian prima donna La Stilla. The Count thought that La Stilla was dead, but he sees her image and voice coming from the castle, but we later on find that it was only a holographic image."
2402,Vengeance,horror," L.A. is divided between the haves and the have-nots. Those in luck seem to have tanned good looks, toned bodies, riches and more. Some have-nots are beginning to grow tired of it. Lily Pierce is a motivational speaker who founded New Life Foundation, an organization sweeping across the country. Its mantra is: ""Erase doubt. Erase fear. Become pure of purpose. Perfect in execution. Attain your dreams."" Cordy's not impressed with Lily's message, but she doesn't suspect Lily is holding a secret of epic proportions. Wolfram and Hart puzzlingly soon want Angel's help to stop the insanity, but is Lily's hope of a perfect world tempting to Angel?"
2403,Dreamcatcher,horror," Dreamcatcher is set near the fictional town of Derry, Maine. It is the story of four lifelong friends: Gary Ambrose ""Jonesy"" Jones, Pete Moore, Joe ""Beaver"" Clarendon and Henry Devlin, who save Douglas ""Duddits"" Cavell, a young teen with Down syndrome, from a group of sadistic bullies. The four friends grow up and away from Duddits, but maintain close bonds with each other, sharing memories of Duddits and their good times together. Each has his own troubles: Beaver is terrible in relationships, Pete is an alcoholic, Henry is suicidal (unknown to his friends), and Jonesy almost died from a severe car accident from when he walked into open traffic, having seen a vision of Duddits calling to him. The four go on a hunting trip together each year, and plan to visit Duddits on their return from this year's trip to the Hole-in-the-Wall (a cabin in the woods). While on the trip, Jonesy finds a disoriented and delirious stranger wandering in the woods during a blizzard, and talking about lights in the sky. The man exhibits dyspepsia and extremely foul flatulence but claims that these are the result of eating berries and lichen while he was lost; he has a reddish discoloration on his face, which he dismisses as an allergic rash. Beaver and Jonesy notice large numbers of animals, all with a similar reddish discoloration, migrating. Henry and Pete, driving back to the cabin, lose control of the car and crash when avoiding a woman sitting in the road. Pete's knee is badly injured while Henry only suffers minor injuries. They approach the woman, who mumbles about lights, mentions the man found by Jonesy, and displays the same foul flatulence and burps. Henry and Pete drag her to a safe clearing; Henry goes to find help and tells Pete to stay with the woman and not to go back to the car for the beer. Beaver attracts the attention of rescuers in helicopters, and is told that the entire area has been put under quarantine. The army quarantine is headed by Colonel Abraham Kurtz. On returning to the cabin, Beaver and Jonesey find the man dead on the toilet, and the floor covered with his blood. They hear the toilet water splashing; Beaver sits on the toilet lid, trapping something inside it. Jonesy rushes to the garage to find duct tape to seal off the toilet while Beaver holds the lid down with his body weight; the creature trapped inside keeps trying to escape. Beaver has a nervous habit of chewing on toothpicks; as he tries to take one from his pocket, the creature hits the seat, and Beaver spills all the toothpicks on the blood-covered floor. One toothpick lands on a clean tile, and Beaver bends down to retrieve it. The trapped creature hits the lid from inside the toilet; Beaver loses his balance and falls to the floor, freeing the creature, which then attacks him. The lost man, his hunting companion the woman, and the stampeding animals all have similar symptoms caused by infection with an extraterrestrial macro virus. Army scientists named this The Ripley, after the protagonist of the Alien series, partly because of its extreme resilience to destruction. The friends discover that eating or inhaling the red mold causes large worm-like aliens, called byrum (derived from the name of the alien mold, byrus) to infest the host. Byrum are red, lamprey-like creatures with multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth; a second form of byrus grows on open wounds and mucous membranes. When an infestation is sufficiently established, the host develops a form of telepathy with other infested individuals. The friends name the byrum ""shit weasel"" because it exits the body through the anus, killing the host. Byrum are highly aggressive and, although small are more than capable of killing a human. The byrum matures into a form called a Gray; in their normal environment they would maintain a symbiotic relationship with their host, but the cold environment causes them to react badly and kill their earthly hosts. Once outside the host they die quickly in the cold, as does the byrus fungus. Colonel Kurtz states that the Grays have tried several times over the past century to attack and gain control of earth, but have failed. This time the Grays are outside a crashed spacecraft, sending radio messages stating that they come in peace and are helpless, to try to fool the Army. Several helicopters are sent to wipe out the Grays; they mainly succeed, but many of the soldiers are exposed to the byrus in the attack. Meanwhile, all people in the area who have been affected by the byrus fungus are rounded up by the Army, with the intention that they will later be executed. Jonesy returns to the bathroom, to discover Beaver being killed by the byrum. Beaver uses the last of his strength to hold onto the byrum to prevent it attacking Jonesy, who closes and bolts the door. The byrum begins to break through the door, and one of the escaped Grays appears behind Jonesy, takes over his body and controls itwith difficulty as the human body is so different to its own. Back in Derry, their childhood friend, Duddits, cries and screams to his mother, ""Beaver's Dead! Beaver's dead!"" Pete, who had returned to the car for the beer, makes his way back to the woman but finds her dead; the shit weasel has made its escape from her body and attacks Pete, who defeats it by throwing it into a fire they had built for warmth. His battle with the byrum exposes him to the byrus fungus, which begins to cover his body. Henry, meanwhile, gets to Hole-in-the-Wall, and discovers Jonesy taken over by the alien, Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray uses Jonesy's body to leave on a snowmobile. Inside the house, Henry finds Beaver's dead body and the shit weasel that killed him in the bedroom. The byrum is weak from the cold; Henry shoots it and burns a clutch of eggs which it had laid. Henry leaves to seek help, but is captured by the army and placed in quarantine. Flashbacks to their childhood reveal that each man gained a certain degree of telepathy from being in contact with Duddits, who has special powers. Through their friendship and Duddits' powers they find a missing girl, trapped from falling down a hole. Jonesy battles Mr. Gray in his mind, stealing and locking away his memories of Derry and Duddits from Mr. Gray. While Mr. Gray is in control, Jonesy can see everything happening, but can do nothing. Pete finds Jonesy/Mr. Gray who forces him to direct and accompany him to Derry, after which Mr. Gray makes Byrus fungus constrict and kill Pete. Henry convinces Army officer Owen Underhill to help him, revealing deep memories of the man through the telepathy gained from Duddits. Henry tells Underhill about Jonesy, that he thinks the alien is planning to infect the town's water supply with byrus, and that cold is fatal to the byrus, therefore infected people do not need to be executed. They form a plan. Henry communicates telepathically with the byrus-infected captives, showing them that the Army intends to execute them. They panic and riot; many are killed attempting to escape, but most flee into the woods. Kurtz discovers the plan formulated by Henry and Underhill; he gathers a few of his men, and an officer infected with a byrum, and pursues Henry and the ""rogue"" officer Underhill. Mr. Gray loses his way in the town, following old memories in place of the new ones stolen by Jonesy. Mr. Gray eventually becomes weak from hunger, not recognising what it is; Jonesy guides him to a diner to buy time. Henry and Underhill make their way to Duddits, as Henry believes he is the only hope to defeat Mr. Gray; they find Duddits already packed up and ready to go as he knew they were coming. Duddits is very sick with leukemia; his mother is reluctant to let him go, but she accepts that Duddits needs to help his friends, and that he would be much happier dying in their company than dying alone in his room. Mr. Gray eventually gets to the water supply for several cities in the area; Henry and Duddits confront him. Duddits uses his powers to force Henry and Jonesy into a place in which Mr. Gray, inside of Jonesy, will be vulnerable; he and Henry kill Mr. Gray. As Henry and Jonesy make their way back to their original bodies they find that Duddits has died from the combination of overusing his powers and leukemia. Outside, Kurtz finds Underhill and they are both killed. The byrum from the infected officer escapes but dies in the fire. The last of the alien byrus on earth dies."
2404,Lair of the White Worm,horror," The plot focuses on Adam Salton, originally from Australia, who is contacted by his great-uncle, Richard Salton, in 1860 Derbyshire for the purpose of establishing a relationship between these last two members of the family. His great-uncle wants to make Adam his heir. Adam travels to Richard Salton's house in Mercia, Lesser Hill, and quickly finds himself at the centre of mysterious and inexplicable occurrences. The new heir to the Caswall estate, known as Castra Regis, the Royal Camp, Edgar Caswall, appears to be making some sort of a mesmeric assault on a local girl, Lilla Watford, while a local lady, Arabella March, seems to be running a game of her own, perhaps angling to become Mrs. Caswall. Adam Salton discovers black snakes on the property and buys a mongoose to hunt them down. He then discovers a child who has been bitten on the neck. The child barely survives. He learns that another child was killed earlier while animals were also killed in the region. The mongoose attacks Arabella who shoots it to death. Arabella tears another mongoose apart with her hands. Arabella then murders Oolanga, the African servant, by dragging him down into a pit or hole. Adam witnesses the murder which he cannot prove. Adam then suspects Arabella of the other crimes. Adam and Sir Nathaniel de Salis, who is a friend of Richard Salton's, then plot to stop Arabella by whatever means necessary. They suspect that she wants to murder Mimi Watford, whom Adam later marries. Nathaniel is an Abraham Van Helsing type of character who wants to hunt down Arabella. The White Worm is a large snake-like creature that dwells in the hole or pit in Arabella's house located in Diana's Grove. The White Worm has green glowing eyes and feeds on whatever is thrown to it in the pit. The White Worm ascends from the pit and seeks to attack Adam and Mimi Watford in a forest. Adam plans to pour sand into the pit and to use dynamite to kill the giant White Worm while it is inside the pit. Edgar Caswall is a slightly pathological eccentric who has Mesmer's chest which he keeps at the Castra Regis Tower. Caswall wants to recreate mesmerism, associated with Anton Mesmer, which was a precursor to hypnotism. He has a giant kite in the shape of a hawk to scare away pigeons which have gone berserk and have attacked his fields. In the final scene, Adam Salton, Mimi Watford, and Nathaniel de Salis confront Arabella and Edgar Caswall. A thunderstorm and lightning destroy Diana's Grove by igniting the dynamite."
2405,Perfume,horror," Grenouille (French for ""frog"") was born in Paris, France, July 17 of 1738. His mother gives birth to him while working at a fish stall. She has had given birth four times previously while working, which were all either stillbirths or near-dead, so she cuts his umbilical cord and leaves him to die. However, Grenouille cries out from inside the pile of fish heads and guts, and his mother is caught, tried for multiple infanticide, found guilty and is decapitated. As a child, Grenouille is passed along different wet nurses, who give him away due to him being too greedy, and then is given to a parish church, which gives him to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie. She returns to the parish priest a few months later, saying that the child is possessed by the devil, as he drinks her dry and has no scent. The priest does not believe her, saying that there was no way that the child could be possessed by the devil. He sends the wet nurse away and cuddles Grenouille for a while. Curious, the priest, Terrier, leans in to take a smell. He expects to smell at least a little bit of scent, but he does not. Grenouille wakes up then and starts sniffing at the air, and Terrier feels as if the baby is sniffing at his soul, looking at his deepest secrets. Recoiling, he finds himself thinking of the baby as a devil. He runs out of the parish and across town, and gives the child to a orphanage on the outskirts of the city. Grenouille has an extraordinary power to discern odors. He navigates the orphanage using only his nose, and barely uses his sight. The other children do not hate him, but they did try to suffocate him several times without knowing precisely why. Grenouille grew up cold and unfeeling; he was unafraid of anything and took punishment easily. When the owner of the orphanage discovers that Grenouille can locate hidden money with his sense of scent, she became afraid and later got rid of him by apprenticing him to a tanner. Later in life, the orphanage owner loses all her money and dies in a disgraceful way that she was afraid of. Grenouille explores the city during his free time, and memorizes all the smells of Paris. He has no bias or preferences against scent and seeks out every smell and every variation of every smell that he can find. He seeks scents for the sake of knowing, and he had no purpose in gathering all the scents but to satisfy his greed for smells. One day, on a day when he had memorized nearly all the smells of the city, he smells a scent that he has never smelled before. Entranced, he traces it with his nose, and finds that the source of this scent is a young, virginal girl just passing puberty (14-15 years old), who is slicing plums. Grenouille's heart starts beating; it is the start of a passion, but Grenouille, who has never felt anything like love or affection before, does not know what it is. Unnoticed, he gets closer to her, to get a better smell of her scent. The girl feels that something is not right and turns, sees Grenouille, and freezes in terror. Grenouille clamps his hand over her mouth. Scared, the girl does not fight back. Grenouille smothers her, with his eyes closed and concerned only with her scent. When she dies, he strips her, lays her down on the ground and smells her scent until it disappears from her body due to death. He does his best to remember every bit of her scent. This is the first time he felt a smell as being ""good"". In a happy daze, Grenouille returns to the tanner's shop where he sleeps. He decides that he must become a creator of scents, the greatest perfumer in the world, in order to create scents like the scent of the girl. He starts organizing the millions of scents he had gathered in his mental library into thousands of categories, such as fine, coarse, good, bad, fetid, and ambrosial. In his quest to isolate and preserve scents, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumer, Baldini, and proves himself a talented pupil. His superior power to discern and dissect scents helps create wondrous perfumes and makes Baldini the most popular perfumer in Paris. However, Grenouille's ambitions are unmatched by technology: he cannot isolate the scent of inorganic materials, such as glass and iron, with the alembic that they use. At this shock, Grenouille falls ill with smallpox, presumably psychosomatically as a reaction to his body giving up on life as his quest can never be fulfilled. Yet Baldini has grown to cherish Grenouille for his skills and on his deathbed Baldini reveals to him that there are techniques other than distillation that can be used to preserve such odours. At this news, Grenouille miraculously recovers and resolves to journey to the city of Grasse, the home of the greatest perfumers, to continue his quest. After Grenouille leaves, great misfortune falls upon Baldini and his shop is destroyed, while he dies. On his way to Grasse, Grenouille travels the countryside and discovers that he is disgusted with the scent of humanity. As he travels, he first avoids a city, then towns, then starts avoiding people that he can smell that are miles away. He reaches the Massif Central, and finds a haven where he is liberated from the smell of humans. In the morning he laps at a thin stream of water for a couple hours and eat whatever he can get, including moss. After that, he crawls into a long, deep shaft in the ground, as far as he can get, where he is shielded from all scent except for dirt, rock, and water. There he wedges himself against the stone and falls into a sort of meditation, first imagining himself as the creator of his world—Grenouille the Great—, ""seeding"" the world with seeds of scent. Later, tired from the act of creation, he retreats into a purple palace with a vast and grand library of scents inside his mind, served by scentless spectres who bring him ""vials"" of his favourite scents while reading a book of all the scents he had ever smelled. And every day before he falls asleep he is brought the scent memory vial of the plum-slicing girl, and gets drunk with its splendor before sleeping. One day he wakes up from a nightmare, dreaming of being suffocated by a white fog. He knows that the white fog is his own odor, but he can't smell it. To shake off the confusion he examines his own scent for the first time. Going layer by layer from his surroundings and through his (now tattered) clothes and down to the grime and dirt he is covered in, he soon realizes that he has no scent at all. He is calm at this revelation, and squats in the dirt, simply nodding to himself. After a while, he dons his tattered clothing and leaves the mountain, after seven years of live there. Grenouille journeys to Montpellier with a fabricated story about being kidnapped, kept in a cave, fed by a basket on a rope, and released after 7 years without having any contact with anyone at all during that time. He catches the eye of the amateur scientist, the Marquis de La Taillade-Espinasse, who uses Grenouille to test his thesis of the ""so-called fluidum letale"". It was a basic theory that the ground and objects from the ground release a slow poison that causes aging, and that being away from the ground and in high altitudes would counteract that poison. The Marquis combines a treatment of decontamination and revitalization for Grenouille, and subsequently Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. However, Grenouille understands after the treatment, when he looks into a mirror, that the fluidum letale has no merit to it, and that his appearance has power. Grenouille in turn tricks his way into the laboratory of a perfumier. There he creates a body odour for himself from ingredients including ""cat shit"", ""cheese"", and ""vinegar"", which imitates human odor. Previously, nobody would notice Grenouille due to his lack of scent, but his new ""disguise"" tricks people into thinking that it is the scent of a human, and he is accepted by society. This event tells Grenouille how foolish the other humans were, since they were fooled by a simple perfume that he had made, and turns his hate for them into contempt. He decides that he wants to become the God of the world by controlling the world with his perfume, as he had been God in the dreams in the mountain. Grenouille runs away from Montpellier, whereas the Marquis wanted to keep Grenouille for his experiments and lectures. The Marquis later disappears after he climbed a tall mountain without gear and clothes in a blizzard to prove his theory of fluidum letale. Finally moving to Grasse, Grenouille once again becomes intoxicated by the scent of a young girl transitioning through puberty to womanhood: Laure. He believes her scent to be greater than that of the plum-slicing girl, but he also believes that she is not quite mature and plans to wait two more years until he can capture her scent at its peak, when she is sexually mature and her scent is at its purest. From a perfumier's widow and a working journeyman in Grasse, Grenouille learns how to trap scent in oil, not just in water as he did with an alembic, and experiments with animals. He discovers that he has to kill the animals to get a scent that is not polluted with fear and feces. While contemplating the scent of Laure, he is struck by the thought that whatever perfume that he could make would eventually run out. He shakes in fear, then realizes that he has to mix Laure's scent with those of others to make the ultimate perfume; one which will polish the scent into a even greater perfume make him be worshipped as a god. He starts a chain of murders; silently killing 24 beautiful virgin girls that have just reached sexual maturity. The victims were always naked, shaved, and had their virginity intact, which scared the villagers. Eventually, after two years of murders have passed, Laure's father pieces together the pattern of murders and realises that Laure, the most beautiful and beloved young woman in the city and just going through puberty, is most likely to be the next victim. He flees with Laure to hide and protect her, but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent. Grenouille is apprehended soon after completing his perfume and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution, the intoxicating scent of Laure combined with the backdrop essences of the 24 virgins he murdered overwhelms all present, and instead of an execution the whole town is overwhelmed by a mix of divine reverence and carnal passion, erupting into a massive orgy. The journeyman that Grenouille worked under is accused instead, and he is executed. Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, blessed and revered, and Laure's father even wants to adopt him. Grenouille agrees, but has no desire to uphold his agreement. He had lived life in solitude, and found it unbearable. Likewise, he could not live among people. His only desire by then is to go to Paris to die. In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low-life people—thieves, murderers, whores, etc. He is not wearing any scent, so they do not notice him. When they do notice Grenouille, it is when he sprinkles some of his perfume on himself. Overcome with a sudden carnal passion and love, even more so than the people of Grasse, they jump on him with the desire to keep him to themselves. fighting for Grenouille, they draw knives and butcher him, consuming his body. After the passion wears off, the people look around and feel slightly disgusted and embarrassed for having just eaten a human being, but they have an overwhelming internal sense of happiness. They are ""uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love."" (quote)"
2406,It,horror," In October 1957, an evil shape-shifting being, known only as ""It"", awakens in the town of Derry, Maine. Taking the form of a clown named Pennywise, It lives in the sewers under the town and comes up through places connected to the sewer system. It preys on children and takes the form which they are most scared of once they have been tempted to him with balloons. Because most children think a monster would eat them, It takes away one of their body parts and hides it in the sewers. When six year old George Denbrough's paper boat is swept into a storm drain, It tempts the boy by conjuring up a circus in the drain and murders him. The following June, a new resident arrives in Derry. Ben Hanscom is overweight, has no friends and is bullied by Henry Bowers, Belch Huggins and Victor Criss. On the last day of school he hides from his tormentors in the Barrens, where he meets and befriends Eddie Kaspbrak, whose mother has convinced him he has asthma, and Bill Denbrough, George's elder brother who has a terrible stutter. The three boys later befriend Richie Tozier, a smart alec; Stan Uris, who is an outcast because he's Jewish; Beverly Marsh, who is beaten by her father; and Mike Hanlon, who is an outcast because he's black. The children establish their circle as the ""Losers Club"". Gradually, they realize they have all encountered It in various forms (Ben as a mummy, Eddie as a leper, Bill as George, Richie as a werewolf, Stan as Its victims, Beverly as voices from the sink and Mike as a flesh eating bird) and link it with a series of child murders which began with George. Ben has read a book about American Indians using smokeholes to have visions, so he makes a makeshift smokehole out of the Loser's clubhouse. By use of this, the Losers discover how It came to Derry. Bill then discovers an American Indian ritual - The Ritual Of Chüd - which he hopes will kill It. A few days later, Eddie is hospitalized after being attacked by a gang of bullies led by Henry Bowers. Beverly stumbles across the Bowers gang in the landfill. While hiding, Beverly witnesses one of the bullies, Patrick Hockstetter, being attacked and kidnapped by It. When the Losers return to the landfill, they discover a message from It written in Patrick's blood, warning them to stop. After Eddie is released from the hospital, Ben makes two slugs out of silver, believing that It can be killed by silver bullets. The Losers return to the House on Neibolt street, where Eddie was attacked by the leper and Richie and Bill were chased away by Richie's werewolf, and It plays games with the interior to try to scare them. It attacks the Losers in werewolf form, primarily focusing on Bill. The Losers, however, are able to chase It away with Beverly's slingshot. It manipulates the mind of Henry Bowers, making him kill his father and providing him with a switchblade to kill the Losers with. Henry recruits the two other bullies, Victor Criss and Reginald ""Belch"" Huggins, and follow the Losers into the sewers. Under Derry, It attacks the Bowers gang in the form of Frankenstein's monster, killing Victor and Belch. Henry escapes and is arrested by the police, having been framed by It for the child murders. The Losers confront It. Bill enters the monster's mind through the Ritual of Chüd and comes to a darkness beyond the universe, where It's true form resides: a mass of floating orange light (or ""deadlights""). Bill defeats It, forcing the monster to retreat. The Losers decide that It has been destroyed. In order to keep their bond, before escaping from the sewers, Beverly has sexual intercourse with each of the boys. The seven make a blood oath to return to Derry if It ever resurfaces. In July 1984, three youths throw a gay man, Adrian Mellon, off a bridge. They are arrested for murder when Mellon's mutilated corpse is found, though they didn't mutilate him. One of the murderers claims that he saw a clown kill him underneath the bridge. When a string of violent child-killings hits Derry, Mike—now the town’s librarian and the only one of the Losers’ Club to remain in Derry—calls up his six friends and reminds them of their childhood promise to return. Bill is now a successful horror writer living in England with his wife, Audra. Beverly is a fashion designer in Chicago, who has married an abusive man named Tom and is regularly beaten. Eddie has moved to New York City, where he runs a limousine rental company. Richie lives in Los Angeles and is a professional disc jockey using his talent for voice imitation. Ben is now thin and a successful architect, living in Nebraska. Stan is a wealthy accountant residing in Atlanta, Georgia. An account of each person's reception to the phone call is given. Stan kills himself out of fear of It (although he could have been killed by It, as It later says he has killed one of the gang and because Stan died in the bath). Tom refuses to let Beverly go and tries to beat her, so she lashes out at him before fleeing to her friends. The other's receptions are fairly uneventful. Five of them return to Derry with only the dimmest awareness of why they are doing so, having almost completely blocked out virtually every aspect of their childhood. The remaining Losers meet for lunch, where Mike enlightens them to the apparent nature of It: It awakens once roughly every twenty-seven years for twelve-to-sixteen months at a time, feeding on children before going into slumber again. The group decides to kill It once and for all. Later, many of them witness manifestations of It. Three other people are also converging on the town: Audra, who wants to help Bill; Tom, who plans to kill Beverly; and Henry Bowers, who has escaped a mental institution with help from It. Mike and Henry have a violent confrontation, but Henry escapes. Henry, with the guidance of It, is transported to a hotel to attack Eddie. In the ensuing fight, Henry is killed. It appears to Tom and orders him to capture Audra. Tom brings Audra to It's lair. Upon seeing It's true form (the dead lights), Audra becomes catatonic and Tom drops dead in shock. Audra is left alive in It's lair. Bill, Ben, Beverly, Richie, and Eddie, find out that Mike is near death and realize that they are being forced into another confrontation with It. They descend into the sewers. While in the sewers, the remaining Losers use their strength as a group to ""send energy"" to a hospitalized Mike, who fights off a nurse that is under the control of It. It appears as George but Bill overcomes the illusion. They reach It's lair and Bill and Richie engage It in the Ritual of Chüd again. Richie rescues Bill from the deadlights and manages to injure It. Eddie saves them, but is killed in the process. Beverly stays with Eddie and the traumatized Audra, who is found alive. Bill, Richie, and Ben follow It when It retreats due to injury. They discover that It has laid eggs, and they are about to hatch, which are all destroyed by Ben while Bill and Richie hunt down It. Bill crushes It's heart between his hands, finally killing It. At the same time, the worst storm in Maine's history sweeps through Derry and the downtown area collapses. Mike concludes that Derry is finally dying. The novel ends with the Losers returning home and forgetting about It, Derry and each other. As a sign that It really is dead, Mike’s memory of the events of that summer also begin to fade, much to his relief. Ben and Beverly leave together. Bill is the last to leave Derry. Before he goes, he takes Audra, still catatonic, for a ride on his bicycle Silver, hoping that they can beat her catatonia. They succeed, and the story ends."
2407,Psycho,horror," Norman Bates is a middle-aged bachelor who is dominated by his mother, a mean-tempered, puritanical old woman who forbids him to have a life away from her. They run a small motel together in the town of Fairvale but business has floundered since the state relocated the highway. In the middle of a heated argument between them, a customer arrives, a young woman named Mary Crane. Mary is on the run after impulsively stealing $40,000 from a client of the real estate company where she works. She stole the money so her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, could pay off his debts and they could get married. Mary arrives at the Bates Motel after accidentally turning off the main highway. Exhausted, she accepts Bates' invitation to have dinner with him at his house—an invitation that sends Mrs. Bates into a rage; she screams, ""I'll kill the bitch!"", which Mary overhears. During dinner, Mary gently prods Bates about his lack of a social life and suggests that he put his mother in a mental institution, but he vehemently denies that there is anything wrong with her; ""We all go a little crazy sometimes"", he states. Mary says goodnight and returns to her room, resolving to return the money so she will not end up like Bates. Moments later in the shower, however, a figure resembling an old woman surprises her with a butcher knife, and beheads her. Bates, who had passed out drunk after dinner, returns to the motel and finds Mary's corpse. He is instantly convinced his mother is the murderer. He briefly considers letting her go to prison, but changes his mind after having a nightmare in which she sinks in quicksand, only to turn into him as she goes under. His mother comes to comfort him, and he decides to dispose of Mary's body and go on with life as usual. Meanwhile, Mary's sister, Lila, comes to Fairvale to tell Sam of her sister's disappearance. They are soon joined by Milton Arbogast, a private investigator hired by Mary's boss to retrieve the money. Sam and Lila agree to let Arbogast lead the search for Mary. Arbogast eventually meets up with Bates, who says that Mary had left after one night; when he asks to talk with his mother, Bates refuses. This arouses Arbogast's suspicion, and he calls Lila and tells her that he is going to try to talk to Mrs. Bates. When he enters the house, the same mysterious figure who killed Mary ambushes him and kills him with a razor. Sam and Lila go to Fairvale to look for Arbogast, and meet with the town sheriff, who tells them that Mrs. Bates has been dead for years, having committed suicide by poisoning her lover and herself. The young Norman had a nervous breakdown after finding them and was sent for a time to a mental institution. Sam and Lila go the motel to investigate. Sam distracts Bates while Lila goes to get the sheriff—but she actually proceeds up to the house to investigate on her own. During a conversation with Sam, Bates says that his mother had only pretended to be dead, and had communicated with him while he was in the institution, Bates then tells Sam that Lila tricked him and went up to the house and that his mother was waiting for her. Bates then knocks Sam unconscious with a bottle. At the house, Lila is horrified to discover Mrs. Bates' mummified corpse in the fruit cellar. As she screams, a figure rushes into the room with a knife—Norman Bates, dressed in his mother's clothes. Sam enters the room and subdues him before he can harm Lila. At the police station, Sam talks to a psychiatrist who had examined Bates, and learns that, years before, Bates had murdered his mother and her lover. Bates and his mother had lived together in a state of total codependence ever since his father's death. When his mother took a lover, Bates went over the edge with jealousy and poisoned them both, forging a suicide note in his mother's handwriting. To suppress the guilt of matricide, he developed a split personality in which his mother became an alternate self, which abused and dominated him as Mrs. Bates had done in life. He stole her corpse and preserved it and, whenever the illusion was threatened, would dress in her clothes and speak to himself in her voice. The ""Mother"" personality killed Mary because ""she"" was jealous of Norman feeling affection for another woman. Bates is found insane, and put in a mental institution for life. Days later, the ""Mother"" personality completely takes over Bates' mind; he literally becomes his mother."
2408,The Dark Tower,horror," Beginning where book six left off, Jake Chambers and Father Callahan battle the evil infestation within the Dixie Pig, a vampire lounge in New York City featuring roast human flesh and doors to other worlds. After fighting off and destroying numerous ""Low-Men"" and Type One Vampires, Callahan sacrifices himself to let Jake survive. In the other world, in Fedic, Mia, her body now physically separated from Susannah Dean, gives birth to Mordred Deschain, the biological son of Roland Deschain and Susannah. The Crimson King is also a ""co-father"" of this prophetic child somehow, so it is not surprising when ""baby"" Mordred's first act is to shapeshift into a spider-creature and feast on his birth-mother. Susannah grabs a gun, wounds but fails to kill Mordred, eliminates other agents of the Crimson King, and escapes to meet up with Jake. Maturing at an accelerated rate, Mordred later stalks Roland and the other gunslingers throughout this adventure, shifting from human to spider as the need arises, seething with an instinctive rage toward Roland, his ""white daddy."" In Maine, Roland and Eddie recruit John Cullum, and then make their way back to Fedic, where the ka-tet is now reunited. Walter (known in other stories as Randall Flagg) has dreams of grandeur in which he plans to slay Mordred and use the birthmark on Mordred's heel to gain access to the Tower, but he is easily slain by the infant when Mordred sees through his lies. Roland and his ka-tet travel to Thunderclap, then to the nearby Devar-Toi, to stop a group of psychics known as Breakers who are allowing their telepathic abilities to be used to break away at the beams that support the Tower. Ted Brautigan and Dinky Earnshaw assist the gunslingers with information and weapons, and reunite Roland with his old friend Sheemie Ruiz from Mejis. The Gunslingers free the Breakers from their captors, but Eddie is mortally wounded after the battle and dies a short while later. Roland and Jake pause to mourn and then jump to Maine of 1999 along with Oy, in order to save the life of Stephen King (who he writes to be an omniscient secondary character in the book); the ka-tet have come to believe that for some unexplained reason, the success of their quest depends on King's surviving to write about it through his books. They discover King about to be hit by a van. Jake pushes King out of the way but is killed in the process. Roland, heartbroken with the loss of the person he considers his true son, buries Jake and returns to Susannah in Fedic with Oy, where they are first chased relentlessly through the depths of Castle Discordia by an otherworldly monster, then depart and travel for weeks across freezing badlands toward the Tower. Along the way they find Patrick Danville, a young man imprisoned by someone who calls himself Joe Collins but is really a psychic vampire named Dandelo. Dandelo feeds off the emotions of his victims, and starts to feed off of Roland and Susannah by telling them jokes. Roland and Susannah are alerted to the danger by Stephen King, who drops clues directly into the book, enabling them to defeat the vampire. They discover Patrick in the basement, and find that Dandelo had removed his tongue. Patrick is freed and soon his special talent becomes evident: his drawings and paintings have the strange tendency to become reality. As their travels bring them nearer to the Dark Tower, Susannah comes to the conclusion that Roland needs to complete his journey without her. After discovering Patrick's magical abilities in his drawings, Susannah asks Patrick to draw a door she has seen in her dreams, which lead her out of this world. He does so and once it appears, Susannah says goodbye to Roland and crosses over to another world. Mordred finally reaches and attacks Roland. Oy viciously defends his dinh, providing Roland the extra seconds needed to exterminate the were-spider. Unfortunately, Oy is impaled on a tree branch and dies. Roland continues on to his ultimate goal and reaches the Tower, only to find it occupied by the Crimson King. They remain in a stalemate for a few hours, till Roland uses Patrick's special abilities to draw a picture of the Crimson King and then erase it, thus wiping him out of existence. Roland gains entry into the Tower while Patrick turns back home. The last scene is that of Roland crying out the names of his loved ones and fallen comrades as he had vowed to do. The door of the Dark Tower closes shut as Patrick watches from a distance. The story then shifts to Susannah coming through the magic door to an alternate 1980s New York, where Gary Hart is president. Susannah throws away Roland's gun (which does not function on this side of the door), rejecting the life of a gunslinger, and starts a new life with alternate versions of Eddie and Jake, who in this world are brothers with the surname Toren. They have only very vague memories of their previous journey with Susannah, whose own memories of Mid-World are already beginning to fade. It is implied that an alternate version of Oy, a dog with a long neck whose barks sometimes sound like words, will also join them. Stephen King inserts an ""afterword"" which warns readers to close the book at this point, consider the story finished with a happy ending, and not venture inside the Tower with Roland. For those who do not heed the warning, the story resumes with Roland stepping into the Dark Tower. He realizes that the Tower is not really made of stone, but a kind of flesh: it is Gan's physical body. As he climbs the steps, Roland encounters various rooms containing siguls or signs of his past life. When he reaches the top of the Tower, he finds a door marked ""ROLAND"", and opens it. Roland instantly realizes, to his horror, that he has reached the Tower countless times before. He is forced through the door by the hands of Gan, only to be transported back in time to the Mohaine desert, with no memories of what has just occurred, ending the series where it began in the first line of book one: ""The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."" The only difference is that, this time, Roland possesses the Horn of Eld, which in the previous incarnation he had left lying on the ground after the Battle of Jericho Hill. Roland hears the voice of Gan, whispering that, if he reaches the Tower again, perhaps this time the result will be different; there may yet be rest."
2409,99 Coffins,horror," After having faced down vampires in the previous novel, Laura Caxton is more than happy to continue her career as a trooper in the Pennsylvania State Police. Her life is upended again when Special Agent United States Federal Marshal Jameson Arkeley contacts her to help investigate the discovery of a cache of Civil War-era coffins underneath the grounds of the Gettysburg Battlefield. There are one hundred coffins in the underground crypt along with ninety-nine hearts removed from the moldering vampire bodies, but one coffin is smashed and the vampire body is missing. Hobbled by his crippled hand, Arkeley presses Caxton into service as his field operative to hunt down the missing vampire body before another horrific outbreak of vampirism infects the local population. In a series of flashbacks told through letters, journals, and military reports it is revealed that the 150 year old vampires are the remains of a Union Army vampire corps that was used to turn the tide against the South at Gettysburg. Promised to be revived as human once a cure for vampirism was found, the soldiers were imprisoned in their tomb and were almost immediately forgotten by their commanders. The archeologist who discovers the tomb uses the vampires in a plot for his own personal gain."
2410,The Eyes of Darkness,horror, ==Character
2411,The Hill of Dreams,horror," The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Later it describes Lucian's attempts to make a living as an author in London, enduring poverty and suffering in the pursuit of art."
2412,World War Z,horror," Through a series of oral interviews, Brooks, as an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, describes the history of 'World War Z'. Although the origin of the zombie pandemic is unknown, the story begins in China after a young boy is bitten; he becomes the pandemic's 'patient zero'. The Chinese government attempts to contain the infection and concocts a crisis involving Taiwan to mask their activities. The infection is spread to other countries by the black market organ trade and by refugees, before an outbreak in South Africa finally brings the plague to public attention. As the infection spreads, the State of Israel is the only country to take the reports of zombies seriously, initiating a nationwide quarantine and closing its borders to everybody except uninfected Jews and Palestinians. Pakistan and Iran destroy each other in a nuclear war after the Iranian government attempts to stem the flow of Pakistani refugees. The United States of America does little to prepare; although special forces teams are used to contain initial outbreaks, a widespread effort never starts as the nation is sapped of political will by several ""brushfire wars"", and a placebo fraudulently marketed as a vaccine has created a false sense of security. When the world recognizes the true scope of the problem, a period known as the ""Great Panic"" begins. Following the fall of New York City, the United States Army sets up a high-profile defense at Yonkers, New York to restore American morale. The U.S. military uses obsolete Cold War tactics on the zombies, including anti-tank weapons and demoralization through wounding. These have no effect on the zombies, which ""can't be shocked and awed"", have no self-preservation instincts, and can only be stopped if shot in the head and killed. The soldiers are routed on live television, while other countries suffer similarly disastrous defeats, and human civilization teeters on the brink of collapse. In South Africa, the government adopts a plan drafted by ex-apartheid government official Paul Redeker, which calls for the establishment of small ""safe zones"", areas surrounded by natural boundaries and cleared of zombies. Large groups of refugees are abandoned, but kept alive outside the safe zones to distract the hordes of undead, allowing those within time to regroup and recuperate. Governments worldwide adopt their own versions of the ""Redeker Plan"", or relocate the populace to safer foreign territory, such as the complete evacuation of the Japanese Home Islands. As zombies freeze solid in the cold, many civilians in North America flee to the wildernesses of northern Canada and the Arctic, where some 11 million people, unprepared to deal with the cold Canadian winter, die from starvation and exposure. Seven years after the start of the zombie pandemic, a conference is held off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii, on aboard the , where most of the world's leaders indicate they want to wait out the zombie plague, but the U.S. President successfully argues that the only way to survive physically and psychologically is to go on the offensive. Determined to lead by example, the U.S. military reinvents itself to meet the specific challenges involved in fighting the living dead: automatic weapons and mobility are replaced by semi-automatic rifles and formation firing, troops are retrained to focus on head shots and slow, steady rates of fire, and a multipurpose hand tool, the ""Lobotomizer"" or ""Lobo"", is designed to destroy zombie heads close up. In two north–south lines stretching across North America, the U.S. military leaves its safe zone west of the Rocky Mountains and crosses the continent in a three-year campaign, systematically destroying the zombies and reclaiming outposts of survivors (whether they want to be reclaimed or not). Ten years after the ""official"" end of the zombie war, millions of zombies are still active and the geopolitical landscape of the Earth has been forever transformed. A democratic Cuba has become the world's most thriving economy and the international banking capital. China has also become a democracy, following a civil war sparked by the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam and ending after a mutinying Chinese Navy submarine destroys the Communist leadership with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Tibet, freed from Chinese rule, hosts the world's most populated city. Following a religious revolution, Russia is now an expansionist theocracy. North Korea is completely empty, with the entire population presumed to have disappeared into underground bunkers; it is unknown if they survived or have become zombies. Iceland has been completely depopulated, and is the world's most heavily infested country. The United Nations fields a large military force to eliminate the remaining zombies from overrun areas, defeat hordes that surface from the ocean floor, and kill frozen zombies before they thaw. Overall, there is a drastic reduction in the human population, which is alluded to have been brought to the brink of extinction, and many environments and animal species have been devastated, as much by desperate humans as by marauding zombies."
2413,Lord Loss,horror," Grubitsch ""Grubbs"" Grady, the younger child of chess-obsessed parents, grows increasingly uneasy with the recent strange, nervous behaviour of his parents and sister. One night, he finds the mutilated bodies of his family and encounters Lord Loss,a gruesome human-like demon who sets his two familiars, Vein and Artery, on Grubbs. Although Grubbs manages to escape, he is deeply traumatised and is placed in a mental institute. He refuses to respond to treatment until he is visited by his father's younger brother, Dervish Grady, who tells Grubbs that he knows demons exist and convinces Grubbs to finally accept help. After Grubbs recovers, he lives with the rather eccentric Dervish in his mansion near the village of Carcery Vale. Dervish explains to Grubbs that using magic is possible as Grubbs himself used magic to flee from Lord Loss and his minions, members of an otherworldly race known as the Demonata. As Grubbs begins to settle down, he meets and befriends Bill-E Spleen, an orphan who visits Dervish often to learn magic. Fearing for Grubbs’ safety, Bill-E eventually shares his theory that Dervish is a werewolf, as many Gradys were prone to lycanthropy, which manifests itself at puberty. However, Bill-E is later revealed to be the real werewolf, though he doesn't know it himself. Dervish later explains that Bill-E is Grubbs' half-brother from one of his father's affairs. The only way to cure him is by winning three out of five simultaneous chess games with the powerfully magical demon master Lord Loss while another person battles his familiars. Neither one is permitted to fail. This is also revealed to be the reason his family was killed, when his sister Gret also succumbed to the family curse. Meera Flame, a friend of Dervish, who is knocked out while trying to restrain a transformed Bill-E, was supposed to help battle the demons. Dervish convinces an extremely reluctant Grubbs, who is still haunted by nightmares, to take her place. While confronting Lord Loss, Dervish is constantly distracted from his chess match as Grubbs is unable to fight off the two familiars. Dervish finally uses magic to save Grubbs, but Lord Loss sees this as breaking the rules of the game and is about to let his familiars kill Dervish, Grubbs, and Bill-E. However, Dervish is able to convince Lord Loss to let Grubbs finish the chess game, while he battles the familiars. A terrified Grubbs then makes a bad game worse. Then Grubbs realizes that Lord Loss is feeding on his despair and then decides to play with an aloof attitude. This throws Lord Loss' concentration, allowing Grubbs to win the game. Lord Loss then cures Bill-E, but someone must battle him in his realm. Grubbs offers to go, but Dervish refuses to let Grubbs fight and goes instead. Dervish leaves to the Demonata universe, leaving Grubbs behind with Bill-E. Grubbs lies to Bill-E, telling him that Dervish used a calming spell to try to cure his lycanthropy. Grubbs figures that it's better for Bill-E to believe that Dervish is his father, since his real father is dead. Fourteen months later Grubbs has been caring for Dervish in his zombie-like state, also dealing with the fear that he'll turn into a werewolf. One morning, Grubbs wakes up to find blood under his nails and hair in his teeth. Thinking that he has turned, he prepares to call the mysterious Lambs Dervish told him about, to kill him before he does any harm. As Grubbs reaches for the phone he hears someone call his name. Turning to look he sees Dervish, with his senses regained, holding a tin of paint and a woollen scarf. The book ends with Dervish saying, ""The look on your face!"""
2414,Watchers,horror," The story begins in Santa Barbara, California. Travis Cornell, a former Delta Force operative, feels that his life has grown pointless, and is exploring a canyon near his home when he encounters two genetically engineered creatures that have escaped from a top-secret government lab. One, a golden retriever with extraordinarily enhanced intelligence, befriends Travis; the other, a terrifying creature known as the Outsider, appears to be trying to kill the dog. After eluding the Outsider, Travis takes the dog home and names him Einstein. Meanwhile, Nora Devon, an introverted young woman, whose abusive aunt recently has died, is attacked in her home by a man who attempts to rape her. Travis and Einstein intervene and the three quickly form a tight bond. Travis, Nora, and Einstein soon find themselves on the run not only from the Outsider, but from federal agents determined to track down the lab escapees, and Vince Nasco, a ruthless professional assassin, hired to kill the creatures and eliminate any witnesses he may encounter along the way."
2415,Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean,horror," The year is 2505. The oceans have risen. A new era of piracy is dawning. A vicious storm separates twins Connor and Grace Tempest, destroying their boat and leaving them fighting for their lives in the cruel, cold water. Picked up one of the more notorious pirate ships, Connor soon finds himself wielding a cutlass. But does he have the stomach to be a pirate? Grace finds herself aboard a more mysterious ship of vampire pirates"
2416,Wolves of the Calla,horror," After escaping the alternate Topeka and the evil wizard Randall Flagg, Roland's ka-tet travel to the farming village of Calla Bryn Sturgis where they meet the townsfolk, as well as Father Callahan, who was originally introduced in 'Salem's Lot. He and the townsfolk request the ka-tet's assistance in battling against the Wolves of Thunderclap, who come once a generation to take one child from each pair of the town's twins. After a few months of being away, the children are then returned ""roont"" (ruined) - mentally handicapped and destined to grow to enormous size and die young. The Wolves are due to come in about a month's time. Father Callahan also tells the gunslingers his remarkable story of how he left Maine following his battle with the vampire Kurt Barlow in the novel Salem's Lot. Since that encounter he has gained the ability to identify Type-3 vampires with a blue aura. After some time he begins killing these minor vampires as he finds them; however, this makes him a wanted man amongst the ""low men"" and so Callahan must go into exile. Eventually he is lured into a trap and dies, allowing him to enter Mid-World in 1983, much as Jake did when killed in The Gunslinger. He appears near the Calla with an evil magic ball called Black Thirteen, and is found by the Manni people in a place called The Doorway Cave. Not only do Roland of Gilead and his ka-tet have to protect the Calla-folken from the Wolves, they must also protect a single red rose that grows in a vacant lot on Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street in mid-town Manhattan of 1977. If it is destroyed, then the Tower (which is the rose in another form) will fall. In order to get back to New York to prevent this they must use the sinister Black Thirteen. To add to that, Roland and Jake have noticed bizarre changes in Susannah's behavior, which are linked to the event recounted in The Waste Lands when Susannah couples with the demon in the stone circle. Roland informs Eddie that Susannah has been impregnated by the demon, and though he fears for her safety he remains surprisingly calm. They promise to keep the fact that they know a secret from Susannah, but later Susannah reveals to the ka-tet that she herself has come to grips with it, and knowledge of a second personality living in Susannah named Mia ""daughter of none"" is shared. Jake finds out that his new friend Benny Slightman's father is a traitor by following him to a military outpost between the Calla and Thunderclap known as ""The Dogan"" (which is also featured in The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home). Jake tells Roland, who shows mercy by not killing Slightman, instead leaving him alive for his son and Jake's sake. The wolves attack, using weapons resembling the snitches found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (which are actually stamped 'Harry Potter Model') and lightsabers found in George Lucas' Star Wars, and are revealed to be robots and to have Doctor Doom-like visages. The gunslingers, along with some help from a few plate-throwing women in the Calla, defeat the wolves, all the while with the children safely hidden in a rice patch nearby. Mia takes over the body of Susannah and flees to the doorway cave, where she uses Black Thirteen to transport herself to New York."
2417,Some of Your Blood,horror," The book opens with a prologue addressed directly to ""The Reader,"" informing the reader of the fictional basis of the novel. The novel presents as a case file of Dr. Philip Outerbridge and attempts to ""falsely"" emphasize the fictional basis of the novel. The novel takes place in the middle of an unnamed war. The novel focuses on George Smith, an American soldier, transferred to the military psychiatric clinic, where Outerbridge works. Smith was brought to the clinic due to a confrontation with a superior officer. Smith was labeled psychotic and told to recount his story in the third person. Smith's autobiography takes up about half of the book, describing his childhood as the son of the town drunk. Smith is imprisoned for shoplifting, and eventually joins the army as a means of escaping an uncomfortable situation with his lover, Anna. The rest of the book consists of documents relating to Outerbridge's treatment of Smith,therapy sessions and correspondence between Outerbridge and his superior, the increasingly impatient Colonel Williams. Outerbridge believes Smith to be the most dangerous man in the hospital and deduces Smith to be a non-supernatural vampire who drinks blood at times of emotional crisis. The novel ends with an explanation of various potential and unrealized outcomes."
2418,The Picture of Dorian Gray,horror," The novel begins on a beautiful summer day with Lord Henry Wotton, a strongly-opinionated man, observing the sensitive artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome young man named Dorian Gray, who is Basil's ultimate muse. After hearing Lord Henry's world view, Dorian begins to think beauty is the only worthwhile aspect of life. He wishes that the portrait Basil painted would grow old in his place. Under the influence of Lord Henry (who relishes the hedonic lifestyle and is a major exponent thereof), Dorian begins to explore his senses. He discovers amazing actress Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare plays in a dingy theatre. Dorian approaches her and soon proposes marriage. Sibyl, who refers to him as ""Prince Charming"", swoons with happiness, but her protective brother James tells her that if ""Prince Charming"" harms her, he will certainly kill him. Dorian invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in Romeo and Juliet. Sibyl, whose only knowledge of love was love of theatre, casts aside her acting abilities through the experience of true love with Dorian. Disheartened, Dorian rejects her, saying her beauty was in her acting, and he is no longer interested in her. When he returns home, he notices that his portrait has changed. Dorian realizes his wish has come true – the portrait now bears a subtle sneer and will age with each sin he commits, while his own appearance remains unchanged. He decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but Lord Henry later informs him that she has killed herself by swallowing prussic acid. Dorian realizes that lust and looks are where his life is headed and he needs nothing else. Over the next 18 years, he experiments with every vice, mostly under the influence of a ""poisonous"" French decadence novel, a present from Lord Henry. The title is never revealed in the novel, but at Oscar Wilde's trial he admitted that he had 'had in mind' Joris-Karl Huysmans's À Rebours ('Against Nature'). One night, before he leaves for Paris, Basil arrives to question Dorian about rumours of his indulgences. Dorian does not deny his debauchery. He takes Basil to the portrait, which is as hideous as Dorian's sins. In anger, Dorian blames Basil for his fate and stabs Basil to death. He then blackmails an old friend named Alan Campbell, a chemist, into destroying Basil's body. Wishing to escape the guilt of his crime, Dorian travels to an opium den. James Vane is present there and attempts to shoot Dorian after he hears someone refer to Dorian as ""Prince Charming"". However, he is deceived when Dorian fools James into thinking he is too young to have been involved with Sibyl 18 years earlier. James releases Dorian but is approached by a woman from the opium den who chastises him for not killing Dorian, revealing Dorian has not aged for 18 years. James attempts to run after him, only to find Dorian long gone. While at dinner, Dorian sees James stalking the grounds and fears for his life. However, during a game-shooting party a few days later, a lurking James is accidentally shot and killed by one of the hunters during this game-shooting party Dorian develops feelings for Lord Henry. After returning to London, Dorian tells Lord Henry that he will be good from now on, and has started by not breaking the heart of his latest innocent conquest named Hetty Merton. Dorian wonders if the portrait has begun to change back, now that he has given up his immoral ways. He unveils the portrait to find it has become worse. Seeing this, he realizes that the motives behind his ""self-sacrifice"" were merely vanity, curiosity, and the quest for new emotional experiences. Deciding that only full confession will absolve him, he decides to destroy the last vestige of his conscience. In a rage, he picks up the knife that killed Basil Hallward and plunges it into the painting. His servants wake hearing a cry from inside the locked room, and passers by on the street fetch the police. The servants find Dorian's body, stabbed in the heart and suddenly aged, withered and horrible. It is only through the rings on his hand that the corpse can be identified. Beside him, however, the portrait has reverted to its original form."
2419,A Stroke of Midnight,horror," Following on almost immediately from the events of Seduced by Moonlight, A Stroke of Midnight begins with Merry and the Ravens attending a press conference in the sithen. This is highly unusual as the home of the sidhe is usually off-limits to the human press. However, it is felt that it is more secure than holding the conference elsewhere. This opinion is challenged almost immediately by the deaths of Beatrice, one of the lesser fae, and a human reporter. Merry, assigned to solve the murders by her aunt, Queen Andais, opts to bring in human forensics in the hope that science might be able to succeed where magic has so far failed - and bring a murderer to justice. The entire novel takes place within approximately one day."
2420,Image,horror," Cordelia Chase has a vision of a child being attacked by a squidlike demon. Meanwhile, Gunn is trying to rescue a young artist; the artist's studio is being attacked by vampires. Cordelia goes to investigate the mansion from her vision. She soon finds herself surrounded by baby products, portraits, and chased by a tentacled monster. When Angel arrives on the scene, he is surprised to discover that he recognizes some of the portraits. He holds distant memories of him and Darla spending a night with storytellers and artists. Angel reveals that he and Darla were present at the party where Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein; indeed, they witnessed the event that gave Mary the initial idea. An old evil is trying to use a painting to preserve the life of its body, which, in the terms of the story, inspired the novel The Picture of Dorian Grey. In their efforts to save a child the villain is focused on, Team Angel will learn not to judge everything by its image."
2421,The Bloody Red Baron,horror," The book takes place during World War I, and centers around the Diogenes Club's efforts to investigate Germany's attempt to make powerful, undead fliers. Heading up the German operations are the likes of Rotwang, Doctor Caligari and Doctor Mabuse. One of their more successful efforts is an undead flier known as the Red Baron. The story also features Edgar Allan Poe as a vampire writer assigned to ghost write the Red Baron's autobiography."
2422,The Wolf's Hour,horror," It is 1944. A message from Paris warns Allied Intelligence of something big in the works---which might have serious implications for Operation Overlord. The only way to get more information from the agent in Paris---now closely watched by the Gestapo---is to send in a personal courier. Russian émigré Michael Gallatin is picked for the job. In retirement as a secret agent since a grisly episode in North Africa, Gallatin is parachuted into occupied France, on a mission which will take him to the festering heart of the Third Reich on the scent of doomsday. As a master spy, Gallatin has proved he can take on formidable foes---and kill them. As a passionate lover, he attracts beautiful women. But there is one extra factor which makes Michael Gallatin a unique special agent---he is a werewolf, able to change form at will, able to assume the body of a wolf and its capacity to kill with savage, snarling fury. In the madness of war, Gallatin hunts his prey---ready to outthink his opponents with his finely tuned brain. Or tear their throats out with his finely honed teeth. The novel flashes back to when his parents and sister were brutally murdered and before and after Michael is bitten by a Werewolf. Once bitten, he becomes a werewolf and lives in isolation with a wolf clan in Russian forests. Michael Gallatin is a British emigrant that is a top spy for Britain during World War II. In 1942, he overtakes Rommel in North Africa and foils the Nazis plan to control the Suez Canal. This vital waterway would ensure that Nazi Germany could choke off Allied shipping and continue their march east into Russia. In 1944, the war still rages on and the Nazis are forced toward Berlin by the Soviets, but Western Europe is still in Hitler’s grip. Gallatin, in seclusion since 1942, is called back for a vital mission: The first part of the mission has him parachuting into Nazi-occupied France to retrieve vital information from an informant named Adam. Adam is in Paris under tight Gestapo security (the Nazi’s official secret police). Gallatin contacts Adam through a Nazi deserter called “Mouse”. He slips a note in Adams pocket that informs Adam to go to an opera at the third act, so Gallatin can receive the information. Unfortunately, the Gestapo had followed Adam and shoot him in the head just after the information was disclosed to Michael. Michael escapes by faking suicide using cyanide; he doesn’t swallow the pill. This fake-out allots him time to turn into a werewolf and he kills the fleeing Gestapo. Gallatin and Mouse must make their way east to Berlin, the heart of the Nazis lair, in an attempt to foil a top-secret Nazi plan, “Iron Fist”."
2423,Blood Canticle,horror," Centered in New Orleans, Blood Canticle is narrated by Lestat. The protagonist is a young Mayfair witch named Mona. At the beginning of the novel Mona is wasting away, victim to a mysterious disease brought on by the birth of her daughter, a so-called Walking Baby. As the novel plays out, Mona and her guardian, Rowan Mayfair, the current designee of the Mayfair legacy, reveal more and more about the powerful genetic plague that has haunted the Mayfairs for generations: the Taltos. In what she believes to be her dying hour, Mona - highly romantic in nature - buys quantities of roses and takes them to the house of her lover, Tarquin ""Quinn"" Blackwood, who is a vampire and a dear companion to Lestat. She lays the roses on his bed, intending to spend her final moments here. So that she does not die from the massive decline that her body has undergone, Lestat makes her into a vampire. He does this largely to satisfy Quinn, who could never again hear the thoughts of Mona if he were to do it himself. When trying to prevent Mona's family from discovering her transformation, Lestat falls in love with Rowan Mayfair. Secretly, she pines for him as well. Lestat's blood is powerful; Mona learns this quickly and discovers that she can easily dispatch inferior vampires with the powerful gifts that Lestat's potent blood has bestowed upon her. Now her renewed vigor and her anger about her situation with Rowan and their shared secret of the Taltos causes her to lash out verbally at Rowan and Rowan's husband Michael. As she struggles with herself, Lestat and Quinn, she learns her place in her new world. As she learns, Lestat pledges to find her Taltos child if it still lives. For this, Lestat enlists the help of Maharet. In a very short time, Maharet provides critical information for their search. The story comes to a dramatic conclusion as Mona, journeying with Quinn and Lestat, comes to the remote island where the Taltos live. But instead of finding a secluded paradise, the three vampires learn about years of intrigue and civil war among this isolated race of beings. In the end, the remaining Taltos join the Mayfair clan at the medical center in New Orleans, where they can be safe, learn, and be together as a family. Mona and Quinn are taken by Khayman to go and live with Maharet and Mekare to go and be instructed properly in the ways of vampirism, leaving Lestat alone. Rowan Mayfair seeks out Lestat, half in love with him but still in love with Michael and exhausted by her life, requesting that he gives her the Dark Gift. Lestat declines, pained as he is, because she is a guiding force for the Mayfair family and he cannot take her away from it."
2424,The Vampire Armand,horror," With Lestat still in slumber after his adventures in Memnoch the Devil, the vampire coven is united around the ""brat prince"" (a nickname for Lestat given by Marius), and the vampire David Talbot takes the opportunity to request that Armand tell David his life story. Armand, who first appeared in Interview with the Vampire, agrees to tell his tale. Born somewhere in the eastern European state of Kiev in the late 15th century, Armand (at this time called Andrei) becomes an icon painter in a monastery. He is forcefully taken out of this life of prayer and devotion by slave traders, who take him to Constantinople and then to Venice, where he is destined to work in a brothel. Soon after his arrival in Venice he is purchased by the vampire Marius de Romanus (whose life story is told in Blood and Gold), who names him Amadeo. In Venice, Marius lives the extravagant life of a respected Renaissance painter, and mentors many boys who serve as his apprentices. Marius provides his apprentices with education, shelter, food, and he assists them in finding respectable positions once they are grown. Life in Marius' villa is a stark contrast to the poverty, hunger and disease described elsewhere in the city. Over time, Amadeo's relationship to Marius develops and they become much closer than Marius is with any of the other boys. In addition to developing a sexual relationship, Amadeo sleeps in Marius' bed, is privy to special privileges, and becomes something of a 'head boy' in the household. Still, Marius maintains strict control over Amadeo, and expects industriousness from him in all things. When Amadeo comes of age (the book is not specific, but he is most likely 15 or 16 at this point), Marius begins Amadeo's education in sexuality and coupling. He takes Amadeo to a brothel, where Amadeo remains for several days. Amadeo later visits a male brothel for several days, and while there makes several observations about the difference in sexual activities with the different genders. There is a distinct bisexuality to Amadeo's nature, as he enjoys activity with either sex. He later has a brief affair with an Englishman called Lord Harlech. Harlech becomes obsessed with Amadeo, but his love is not returned. During this period, Amadeo also befriends Bianca Solderini, a wealthy debutante and courtesan whose primary role in life seems to be to throw nightly parties. Amadeo ultimately seduces the willing Bianca. Marius eventually divulges his vampire nature to Amadeo, who almost immediately begins asking to be made a vampire. Marius shows Amadeo some of what it means to be immortal, and allows him to join him in the hunt on several occasions. He tells Amadeo that they must always focus on killing evildoers. They assist Bianca by murdering her kinsmen who force her to poison those they have borrowed money from. Eventually, on a night when Marius is out of the country, Lord Harlech breaks into Marius's palazzo and attacks Amadeo, murdering two apprentices in the process. Amadeo kills Harlech, but not before the Englishman wounds him with a poisoned sword. Amadeo falls critically ill, and over several days falls into fever and delusions. Upon returning and finding Amadeo on his deathbed, Marius heals Amadeo's external wounds, cleans and grooms him, then gives him the Dark Gift, turning him into a vampire. Marius sets out to train Amadeo, and sets up a coffin in a secret basement with his own. Marius retains high expectations of Amadeo, and forces him to continue his education in the arts. Amadeo's transition to vampire is relatively easy for him, although the Dark Gift brings about nightmares of his childhood. Marius and Amadeo return to Russia, where Amadeo visits his old school and home. He finds his elderly mother and father there, reveals that he is alive, and says farewell to them, leaving them with all the money and jewels he has with him. This is generally a happy reunion, as Amadeo is able to let go of his mortal background and his parents are able to see that their beloved son is alive (so to speak) and thriving. Though this reunion allows Amadeo to let go of his mortal background, discovering that his father is alive (Amadeo believed he was dead) and a drunkard hurts him deeply. Shortly after returning to Venice, the vampire Santino and his coven (the ""Children of Darkness"") attack Marius' home, kidnap Amadeo and the apprentices, and burn the villa. Marius is burned and thought to be destroyed; his boys are taken to a bonfire that the coven has created and thrown in one by one as Amadeo watches. Santino spares Amadeo and educates him in the laws of the Coven. Amadeo later goes to Paris, changes his name to Armand, and creates his own coven under the Cimetière des Innocents, which Lestat would years later drastically impact thus resulting in the creation of the Théâtre des Vampires (featured in the earlier novel Interview with the Vampire). Armand also shares with David his version of some of the events recounted by Louis de Pointe du Lac in Interview with the Vampire: the end of the Théâtre des Vampires and the time that Armand and Louis shared together. The book also chronicles Armand's feelings about several of the major vampire characters from the previous books. It is also revealed that Armand thinks he saw Bianca in Paris in the 18th century, and has wondered ever since if Marius made her a vampire. In the final segment of the book, Armand explains what occurred to him after the final chapters of Memnoch the Devil. At the end of Memnoch the Devil, Armand rushes into the open daylight and appears to be destroyed in a conflagration. Armand explains to David that by some means beyond his understanding he survived, and ended up on a rooftop in a stairwell protected from further exposure to the sun. However, he is badly burned and unable to move or fully function. While in this delirious state, he makes a mental connection to two children in a nearby apartment - Sybelle and Benji. The connection is forged through Sybelle's constant piano playing. Eventually, Armand is able to reach out to the children and lead them to him. They believe he is an angel, but are moderately unsurprised when Armand divulges his true nature to them. Armand cannot hunt, so the two agree to trick a drug dealer up to the apartment so that Armand may feed on him. The plan works, and ultimately Armand is fully healed. He becomes friends with Sybelle and Benji and ultimately falls in love with them, showing to a certain degree a lolita complex. He shares his wealth with them without limit, mirroring the relationship Marius had with him to a certain degree. Armand brings them to see Lestat, which he has some concerns about since vampires are traditionally not safe for mortals to be around. After trying to wake Lestat from his catatonic state, Armand returns to Marius's house to discover that Marius has given Benji and Sybelle the Dark Gift. Armand is at first furious at Marius because he wanted Sybelle and Benji to have full, mortal lives. The fact that Benji is ecstatic about the prospect of eternal life, only serves to fuel his anger. Marius explains to Armand that he did it since Armand never could without the two coming to hate him for it. Marius is willing to take the burden of Sybelle and Benji's eventual anger."
2425,Bruja,horror," L.A. is shocked when a woman attacks a priest. The woman had just confessed to the priest that she had murdered her own son. Meanwhile, Angel and Co. get reports of a woman fighting with teens across L.A. The woman appears to be everywhere, a 'bruja' - a witch. She may be an embodiment of ""La Llorona,"" known in Spanish lore as the ""Weeping Woman."" The priest soon goes into a coma, but Angel Investigations is busy with other matters: Doyle has a vision of a young mother and her son in danger at the docks. Meanwhile, Cordelia's looking for a big-shot producer's missing wife. Angel must find the connections between the missing wife and recent events."
2426,Amityville: The Final Chapter,horror," It started in Amityville. It followed them 3000 miles. Now for the Lutz family, the forces of 112 Ocean Ave. have followed them around the world. Now it doesn't matter where they go, it will be there and the Lutzes must find a way to escape."
2427,Trilby,horror," Trilby is tone-deaf: ""Svengali would test her ear, as he called it, and strike the C in the middle and then the F just above, and ask which was higher; and she would declare they were both exactly the same."" Svengali hypnotizes her and transforms her into a diva, la Svengali. Under his spell, Trilby becomes a talented singer, performing always in an amnesiac trance. At a performance in London, Svengali is stricken with a heart attack and is unable to induce the trance. Trilby is unable to sing in tune and is subjected to ""laughter, hoots, hisses, cat-calls, cock-crows."" Not having been hypnotized, she is baffled and though she can remember living and traveling with Svengali, she cannot remember anything of her singing career."
2428,The Mind Parasites,horror," The story is about Professor Gilbert Austin's conflict with the Tsathogguans, invisible mind parasites that menace the most brilliant people on earth."
2429,The Regulators,horror," The story takes place in the fictional town of Wentworth, Ohio, a typical suburban community. On Poplar Street, an autistic boy named Seth has gained the power to control reality through the help of a being known as Tak. Soon, Poplar Street begins to change shape, transforming from a quiet suburb into a wild west caricature based on what Seth has seen on his television. Meanwhile, the other residents of the street are being attacked by the many beings that Seth's imagination is creating, due to Tak's control over them. These residents are forced to work together to stop Seth and Tak from completely transforming the world around them and stop Tak before he kills anyone else. Seth's imagination is heavily influenced by a western called The Regulators and a cartoon called MotoKops 2200. The novel contains excerpts from scripts for both."
2430,Visitors,horror," Lately, while patrolling, Buffy's been getting the distinct impression that she's being stalked by a demon that emits a high pitched giggle. After discussion and research with Giles, they discover that Buffy's being stalked by a 'korred'; a nasty hairy beast that feeds on peoples life forces by making them dance to his magical song until they die. The korred is particularly attracted to Buffy because of her Slayer aura. Buffy must stop to korred before he makes her dance to her death."
2431,The Horror from the Hills,horror, The novel concerns the elephantine Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn.
2432,The Harlequin,horror," The events of The Harlequin take place one week after the events of Danse Macabre The Harlequin shows Anita and Jean Claude coping with a threat from Vampire Council enforcers. Desperate, Anita calls Edward for assistance. Edward arrives the same day, bringing Olaf and Peter (now 16), who we last saw in Obsidian Butterfly. The Harlequin exists to police and punish vampire leaders who violate various rules, such as Malcolm's resistance to the blood oath. It was formed by the Mother of All Darkness, modeled in style on the Commedia dell'arte and by action on the wild hunt. It is composed of very old and powerful vampires who are capable of not just manipulating the behaviors and emotions of humans or younger vampires and lycanthropes, but of Jean-Claude, Anita, and Richard. Under this influence, Richard and Jean-Claude nearly kill each other, and Anita must also be repeatedly resuscitated. Anita keeps them alive by feeding on first Rafael (and through him, all the wererats in the city); Belle Morte; and later, all the swanmanes in the United States via the swan king, Donovan Reece. Anita's second triumvirate also comes through, with Nathaniel and Damien ""eating for five"" so as to provide healing energy to Anita — and the others through her. However, the Harlequin appears not to be following its own rules, so by vampire law Jean Claude's people can strike back. Edward doesn't actually kill a Harlequin, Anita does through a psychic link that she accidentally creates while trying to remove a sort of vampire spell that one of the Harlequin has put on her in order to keep track of her and Jean Claude's etc. movements. They subsequently end up killing the human servant of that vampire after Anita has fed on Donovan the king of the swan manes. They recover in time to face off with the remaining members in Malcolm's Church of Eternal Life. They not only succeed, but determine that the Harlequin members were planning to take over Jean-Claude's territory and not operating on official Council orders. Anita almost allows the Mother of Darkness to become a full flesh being by allowing her anger to fester. Anita also leaves her former allies, the werelions, to potential death. At a point where Anita and many of her other allies are injured, sex is demanded from the werelion Rex Joseph so that Anita could gain the power to heal. The rex refuses because he is married and values being faithful to his wife. In a scene reminiscent of The Godfather series, Anita decides that this is a betrayal of their alliance and decides to abandon Joseph."
2433,Resident Evil: Underworld,horror," Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Rebecca Chambers, and the survivors of the Caliban Cove incident, John Andrews and David Trapp, are en route to Europe to rendezvous with the other surviving STARS members for further operations against the evil Umbrella Corporation. While in the air, their plane is redirected by the mysterious Trent, an enigmatic figure who has been guiding and manipulating events throughout the entire series of novels. Trent informs the group of an Umbrella facility in Utah, used to test and train the company's experimental biological weapons. The facility's overseer, a man named Reston, is one of three people in the world in possession of a codebook which would allow access to all of Umbrella's most secret documents. Trent wants the group to infiltrate the facility, steal the codebook, and take down Umbrella once and for all. The group reluctantly agree to Trent's plan and make their way into the Umbrella facility, but soon after arriving, Leon and John are separated from the others and find themselves trapped within the facility's testing area. The two of them are forced to trek across four massive, artificial environments while evading Umbrella's deadliest new monsters. All the while, David, Claire, and Rebecca fight to avoid detection and possible capture by armed Umbrella guards. Leon and John are helped by Henry Cole, an innocent electrician drawn into the fight against his will. The heroes must deal with Jay Reston, the head of this Umbrella facility, which is called the Planet. In the end, most of the B.O.W.'s (bio-organic weapons) are destroyed and Reston is killed after Leon and John release a monstrous B.O.W. called ""Fossil"", shortly before the facility is destroyed. Unbeknown to the group as they fly away to safety, Rebecca successfully managed to steal Reston's codebook from him, giving them access to Umbrella's security systems. In addition Trent's motivations are finally revealed to be revenge on Umbrella for the murder of his father and mother, who were the original creators of the T-Virus which was developed to cure cancer and other diseases before being stolen by Umbrella to be used as a weapon."
2434,Reborn,horror," Almost immediately after being slain by Glaeken in a castle keep in Romania in the Spring of 1941 Rasalom has opportunistically entered the body of a clone that grows within a woman hired by the scientist in charge of a project seeking to create a genetically enhanced super-soldier for the U.S. Army. The boy comes to term, is born and grows into an unusually strong and aggressive specimen but has a personality of his own which prevents the johnny-come-lately Rasalom from doing anything but secretly encouraging his host whenever possible to indulge his inclination to violence. This all changes when the host dies a seemingly untimely death in his late 20s and the fetus conceived by his wife becomes the newest, un-co-opted vessel for evil. The wife Carol acquires one chief protector in the form of a lifelong sociopath and occasional murdering psychopath known as Jonah Stevens. He stops at nothing to ensure the baby's survival and guarantees that Rasalom will have more than a fighting chance to take over the Earth after attaining early adulthood. The ancient being known as Glaeken is content to take a back seat to all of this as he feels he has earned his permanent retirement from the battle between the forces of Darkness and Light. He realizes that a major confrontation is inevitable but placidly aspires to count himself and his wife Magda among the dearly departed before that dark day descends with a deafening thud upon humanity's collective cranium."
2435,The Soft Whisper of the Dead,horror," The novel concerns vampires in the Connecticut town of Oxrun Station, a suburb of New York."
2436,Anno Dracula,horror," In this world, Count Dracula has killed Van Helsing- an injury sustained to Doctor John Seward's hand during a fight with Renfield resulted in the group lacking the men to drive Dracula away from Mina Harker, resulting in Dracula killing Quincey Morris and Jonathan Harker before escaping with Mina-, and has married Queen Victoria, ushering in a period of increasing British vampire domination. Dracula is well-advanced in imposing a police state on Great Britain, where dissenters may be jailed or impaled without trial. Dieudonné has come down in the world, attending sick vampires in a clinic run by a doctor with a shady past. When a prostitute is murdered, Scotland Yard turns to them for an opinion. In the meantime Beauregard's social marriage preparations are interrupted by a summons to the mysterious Diogenes Club, which represents the crown in matters that cannot be made public. There, he is charged with finding Jack the Ripper. At the inquest for the recently destroyed vampire prostitute, Dieudonné and Beauregard appear, with Lestrade from Scotland Yard, and Dr. Jekyll. Each sets out independently, with differing agendas. Beauregard is abducted by an old enemy, a Tong leader who calls a truce on the understanding that Beauregard will collaborate in finding the killer. This precludes the Ripper being a member of organized crime, and periodically gives Beauregard inside information. Dieudonné stops at a pub, where she encounters the elite of Carpathian riff-raff which Dracula brought to London to control the locals. She confronts one bully, and, being the elder vampire, soundly bests him. Jack Seward, the physician at Dieudonné's clinic, recalls the early days of Dracula in London, before the signs of vampirism were recognized. As the demands of the Diogenes Club have first priority, a rift opens between Beauregard and his fiancee. Her fascination with social climbing is revealed: ""Only vampires get anywhere, Charles."" The intimates of Dracula discuss their continued takeover of the government, and set their own man to find Jack the Ripper: The destruction of the vampire prostitutes is drawing unwanted support for an anti-vampire Christian group. Seward becomes lustfully entangled with a ""new born"" vampire. Jack the Ripper strikes twice, failing to destroy one, who is brought to the clinic. The prostitute is a vampire of Dracula's line&nbsp;— a contaminated bloodline, from Dieudonné's perspective. It imperfectly changes shape, leaping at Seward as it dies. Trusting their associates, the implication is lost on Dieudonné and Beauregard. Seward notes the growing public hysteria, and reflects ""I meant to destroy a monster, not become one."" Beauregard and Dieudonné, having similar ideas, become closer, while his fiancée is increasingly annoyed at his lack of attention. Reporting to the Diogenes, Beauregard is puzzled that his meager progress is satisfactory. Leaving, he becomes entangled in an anti-vampire riot, however he is saved by one of the few vampires at the club, Sergeant Dravot. Beauregard's impatient fiancée becomes a vampire by one of Dracula's men. In her arrogance, the conversion does not go well, and she is barely able to reach the safety of her house. Beauregard and Dieudonné take her in care, Dieudonné observing, without being complimentary, that she may eventually become a strong vampire. Riots escalate, symbols of rebellion are being painted throughout London. An anti-vampire leader is shot, and one of Dracula's henchmen is destroyed, both perhaps by the same mysterious vampire. The ruling vampires react decisively. A large number of prominent people are to be imprisoned and treated ruthlessly, including George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, and W. S. Gilbert. Seward becomes increasingly infatuated with his vampire lover, having trouble distinguishing her now from the murdered Lucy. In Dravot, Dracula's henchmen Godalming believes he has found Jack the Ripper; he is pursuing him when he is destroyed by an old friend who he betrayed by becoming a vampire: Seward. Beauregard and Dieudonné finally realize that Seward is Jack the Ripper. They race to him, finding he has destroyed his vampire lover. As they leave with him in custody, they encounter Dravot, and the destroyed body of Godalming. Seward is murdered, but then Dravot produces a fabricated story about what happened: that there were two Rippers. Bemused, Beauregard realizes that he has been used as a tool of the Diogenes Club. However he and Dieudonné, by now having become lovers, are to be recognized by the queen for their work. The story concludes with a confrontation between Beauregard, Dieudonné, the queen, and Dracula, where Beauregard tosses a silver knife to Queen Victoria; knowing that he cannot kill Dracula in direct combat, Beauregard provides Victoria with a means of killing herself, thus depriving Dracula of the right to legally rule Britain and forcing him to flee the country."
2437,Ghoul Trouble,horror," A new vampire arrives in town who walks outside during the day and yet does not seem to be affected by the sun's rays. The vampire, called Solitaire, is here to challenge the Slayer. He wants to reassure himself that he can beat a Slayer in physical combat. He is an old vampire and Giles struggles with his research. At the same time a band called Vyxn arrives at the Bronze and plays for four nights straight. Vyxn is made up of four girls who appear to be not quite human, especially when they seem to be turning all the males at the Bronze into slobbering idiots and bending them to their will. Xander is especially taken by them and would do anything to help them out. Buffy and the gang need to figure out what Vyxn is in town for, and why Solitaire can walk in the sun. It is later discovered that Vyxn are a group of ghouls that can seduce men (and it is hinted vampires) at will through their voice. Giles and the others rescue Xander from them just prior to Buffy's final fight with Solitaire. Solitaire it is discovered is immune to sunlight because he is not actually a vampire, he is a full-blooded demon, that can shift forms between human and demon, and the halfway mark looks remarkably like a vampire. Buffy decapitates him with an axe."
2438,The Long Night of the Grave,horror," The novel concerns mummies in the Connecticut town of Oxrun Station, a suburb of New York."
2439,Micah,horror," Micah apparently takes place approximately one month after the events of Incubus Dreams. (Tammy Reynolds, one of the characters in the series, is four months pregnant in Incubus Dreams and five months pregnant in Micah). As usual, Anita must juggle several problems simultaneously. * First, in her role as an animator, Anita must travel to Philadelphia on short notice to substitute for Larry Kirkland, who must remain in St. Louis because of complications in his wife Tammy's pregnancy. Although the assignment—reanimating a recently deceased federal witness in order to testify in an organized crime investigation—initially seems routine, Anita quickly begins to suspect that there is more to the case than she and Larry have been told. * Second, Anita continues to deal with her various personal problems, in this case her relationship with Micah, who accompanies her on the trip. Anita must come to terms with Micah's decision to reserve a nice hotel room for the two of them without telling her, and must help Micah get over two of the defining problems in his life: first, the trauma narrowly surviving a wereleopard attack that left several members of his family dead; and second, the trauma of accidentally harming a previous girlfriend during sex, due to his unusually large penis. * Third, Anita continues wrestle with her recent increase in power, first attempting to deal with the ardeur, a metaphysical effect that causes Anita to need to have sex every few hours, and second, wrestling with the vast increase in her own powers as a necromancer, which are now so powerful that her attempt to raise a single person threatens to raise every corpse in the cemetery. As usual, Anita is able largely to resolve each of these problems by the end of the novella. * The initial plot point—the animation—is not resolved until the very end of the novella. Although Anita initially wrestles with her increase in power, she is ultimately able to confine her power to a single corpse, raising only the witness, Emmett Leroy Rose. However, Anita then learns that although Rose technically died of a heart attack, the heart attack itself occurred after the defense lawyer in the investigation, Arthur Salvia, framed Rose for murder. Rose therefore considers Salvia his murderer and will not rest until he has killed Salvia. In the ensuing fracas, Anita is knocked unconscious, and Salvia is killed. * With regard to Anita's personal problems, she and Micah make some progress. Anita decides to accept that Micah surprised her with the romantic hotel, and listens to him share the traumas of almost being eaten alive by a wereleopard and of being rejected by various women. Anita sympathizes with Micah's survivor's guilt, and, in a conversation very similar to her conversation with Richard in Incubus Dreams, explains to Micah that some women don't like well-endowed men, but other women, such as Anita, do."
2440,The Last Days,horror," The narrative focuses around Moz, Zahler, Pearl, Alana Ray and Minerva, in an apocalyptic New York. Odd occurrences are taking place, the sewers are gushing black water, the earth shakes, and people are inexplicably going mad. In the midst of it all, two friends begin to see their dreams realized. Moz and Zahler have been friends for six years, playing their guitars without any clear direction. They have always dreamed of forming a band, but have never managed to quite get it done. Moz meets Pearl, a mysterious girl with a knack for music, who he teams up with to save a guitar that a crazy woman throws out of her window. When they begins learning more about one another, the image of a band becomes clear. With Pearl at their head, the band begins to recruit new members and take form. As the band becomes more and more real, new members join. Alana Ray, a skilled drummer and street performer with a mysterious condition that is never quite made clear (although is most likely to be some advanced form of synesthesia), joins them under the condition that Moz pays her. However, Moz keeps this deal secret from Pearl to gain something resembling control over the band. Alana Ray has the ability to see colored lights, which she considers to be hallucinations at times, and realistic at others. She often mentions that she is able to ""see"" the music they play. Pearl also convinces Minerva, her long-term friend, to join the band as their lead singer. Minerva was in a band with Pearl previously, but they broke up when Minerva contracted the parasite causing the madness in the city and begins to hate all the people she once loved, and she begins to hate her boyfriend, another member of the band, causing her to break up with him, thus breaking up the band. Minerva's parents have hired a woman, Luz, who believes in natural means to fight the parasite instead of the artificial means of modern doctors. Minerva uses these traditional methods such as garlic and rosemary to keep off the worst effects of the parasite, taught to her by Luz. Zahler eventually changes over from his position as lead guitarist to playing the bass, due to the fact he normally plays lower parts regardless and his fingers are suited for the larger instrument. Initially, he is unhappy that Pearl and Moz had devised this plan without his consent. However, he soon grows used to the bass. Meanwhile, Moz and Minerva begin to date in secret, causing the parasite to be passed on from Minerva to Moz. The band soon receives a recording contract with Astor Michaels, a man who is a carrier, who is known for having discovered a new type of music called ""New Sound"". He has been searching for a new type of music which involves a member of the band being infected, creating quite a unique effect. Because of Minerva, and soon the newly infected Moz, Astor Michaels soon believes to have discovered the perfect band. The five are still struggling to agree on a name for their band, but otherwise their band seems to be making its way quickly to fame. Moz begins playing in the subway to help raise money for the band, until things turn strange one night. A giant worm lurks in the nearby tunnels, and Moz is instinctively drawn to it, all of his instincts screaming to kill it. Before he gets the chance to attack it, the ""Angels"", seemingly defenders of the city against the people who have lost their minds, jump down to fight the worm. They soon reveal themselves to actually be carriers of the parasite from the New Watch (featured in Peeps), including Cal and Lace from Peeps. They attempt to bring Moz to New Jersey to treat his parasite, but he runs away, fearing letting down the band by missing their first gig. The band plays for its first time in a club at night, but it does not go perfectly as planned. Zahler freezes up in the beginning, although he eventually overcomes his stage fright and starts the song. But Minerva's song causes another giant worm to break through the ground, killing many people in the process. The New Watch comes to defeat the worm, and rounds up the whole band to take them to the New Jersey lab, but not before Moz smashes his beloved guitar because of the parasite. Moz receives treatment for the parasite in New Jersey, and when he has almost completely recovered, he and the rest of the band members visit the Shrink, a character included in Peeps. The Shrink believes that Minerva's singing has called up the worm, and that she can use this ability to help defeat them. Even the Nightmayor, centuries old, can barely remember this ancient talent as it was used in the previous resurfacing of the worms. None of the previous bands employed by Astor Michaels were able to achieve this same result because one member was infected, but not the lead singer. The New Watch recruits the band to sing to cause the worms to surface all around the country, thus allowing the New Watch to fight them on their own terms. The band goes on tour, travelling wherever they are needed, and Pearl finally comes up with the perfect name for the band: The Last Days. They become heroes of sorts, and finally achieve their dreams of fame, although not in the way that they originally planned. In the end, the worm attacks have ended, and civilization is rebuilding itself. Moz and Minerva are revealed to still be together, although they have broken up and gotten back together numerous times. Pearl has turned into a politician and is running for mayor of New York ""again"", leaving the fate of the rest of the characters unknown."
2441,Resident Evil: Caliban Cove,horror," The novel takes place between the events of the Umbrella Conspiracy (Resident Evil 1) and City of the Dead (Resident Evil 2) & Nemesis (Resident Evil 3) and centers around Rebecca Chambers. After a call from Barry about the Umbrella investigation, she heads to his house where she meets David Trapp, strategist and captain of the STARS Exeter branch. David informs Rebecca that another incident has occurred at another Umbrella facility, in Caliban Cove, Maine. Just when Chris and Jill come in, David continues his briefing, which includes a list of people involved in or with the Caliban Cove facility. One of the names Rebecca knows as Nicholas Griffith, a former biochemist who had disappeared after being fired from a university. Umbrella forces, led by STARS members, attack Barry's house. Rebecca takes one out; some others are suspected to be dead. The team takes refuge in Brad ""Chickenheart"" Vicker's home. After a little talk, Rebecca and David set out and leave on a plane for Exeter. At Caliban Cove, Dr. Griffith stands atop a lighthouse, musing on his latest and greatest accomplishment: a virus that robs humans of their ability to make decisions, while keeping their intellect; they become efficient servants to whoever orders them. Griffith has already used his new virus on three other scientists at the Cove facility, and none of them can make any decisions outside of what Griffith tells them. Griffith muses that once he gives his ""gift"" to the wind everyone will be free. At Exeter, in the home of STARS forensics officer Karen Driver, David briefs his own team, composed of himself, Rebecca, Steve Lopez, John Andrews, and Karen. They set out, collect the equipment they need, and begin the Caliban Cove mission with no STARS backup. After a botched insertion in which giant bottom-feeders called ""Leviathans"" attack the squad and force them ashore, the team manages to make its way through the base's grounds, solving riddles that let them progress through the area as well as dealing with Umbrella's newest creation, called ""Trisquads,"" which are essentially zombies who have retained enough intelligence and motor capabilities to use automatic weapons. When Karen Driver is accidentally infected with the T-virus after touching contaminated blood, the others rush through the many caves and underground tunnels searching for the bases' lab, fending off more of Umbrella's biological monstrosities. Steve takes Karen and manages to find the labs, but the two are then taken captive by Griffith. Karen turns into a zombie and kills one of Griffith's servant zombies while Griffith injects a stunned Steve with the T-virus. Under Griffith's orders, Steve lures Rebecca, David, and John into a trap in which John is severely wounded. Griffith then orders Steve to lock Rebecca and David in an airlock chamber and flood it. He then orders Steve to kill himself, which he does. As the chamber floods, Rebecca notices Karen's body and remembers that she carried a WWII ""pineapple"" fragmentation grenade with her as a good luck charm from her father. David pries the pin out of the ancient explosive and jams it in between the screen door and inside door of the chamber. The resulting explosion forces the outside door to open, allowing Rebecca and David to swim to the surface and to safety. The explosion forces the inside door to blow off its hinges, killing Griffith instantly. On the surface, David and Rebecca are picked up by STARS personnel that Barry Burton has managed to get into contact with. While divers are retrieving the canisters of T-virus in the flooded labs, rescue workers also manage to find John, who, despite his wounds, has survived the explosion and was sucked out through the airlock when the grenade went off. The book ends with John transported to a hospital and Rebecca and David asleep in the light of the coming day."
2442,The Vampire Prince,horror," The book carries on from when Darren Shan was falling down a roaring river in Trials of Death, and he must make his way back to Vampire Mountain, while avoiding Kurda Smahlt and his accomplices. The river, which used to carry the dead bodies of vampires away, goes right through the Vampire Mountain. He was washed down the river, emerging from it alive-a feat that nobody achieved before this- but bruised, battered, and exhausted. He was naked, cold, and barely had energy for walking, and soon collapses. By luck he bumped into two wolves, Streak and Rudi - the ""wolf friends"" he knew from an earlier encounter. These wolves help him make his way back to Vampire Mountain safely. He must find a way to inform the Vampire Princes (the leaders of the vampires) of Kurda's treachery before they crown him a fellow Prince. Kurda's treason includes hiding Vampaneze inside the mountain, preparing to murder the Princes and attempting to gain control of the Stone of Blood (a powerful stone that can be used to locate any vampire who has touched it) with which he would force the vampires to join the Vampaneze and become a single clan once more. However, with Seba Nile's help, Darren reveals Kurda to the Princes in the nick of time. The Vampaneze are found and savagely murdered. Arra Sails is badly wounded during the fight with the Vampaneze and dies. Vanez Blane loses his other eye, and Darren kills two Vampaneze, but is sickened by his own battle lust. Even though Kurda's intentions were pure, the Princes give him the most terrible punishment possible: execution by impalement of stakes in the Hall of Death in the manner of a traitor and shameful cremation, so that he may not reach Paradise. During his trial, Kurda explains his plans to the vampires, and they see that he wasn't selfish, so they no longer hate him. Darren is supposed to be executed for fleeing the Prince's judgment, but the Princes, wanting to hold true to traditions and spare Darren, decide that he must be made a Prince, thereby putting him above the laws which demand his execution. Mr. Crepsley however is hurt by the loss of his friend and former mate, Arra Sails."
2443,Nightworld,horror," Rasalom returns in reincarnated form to transform the Earth into unrelenting hell. Rasalom is shortening the daylight hours and letting loose a plague of ever-more-fearsome flesh-eating monsters that prey on the world's populace during the ever-lengthening nights. Whole communities turn on one another; riots break out over food; gangs wage war on the public; and Rasalom grows ever stronger as he feeds on the ever-increasing chaos, violence and terror. The only one who can possibly stop the horror is Glaeken, an enfeebled old warrior who has battled the Adversary across the millennia. Too weak to fight alone, Glaeken gathers together a select band of people to assist him, among them a young boy with mysterious powers, a 150-year-old Hawaiian woman with magical necklaces, a semi-catatonic scientist with a mystical connection to Rasalom, and an all-too-human vigilante named Repairman Jack. So supremely confident is Rasalom of his eventual victory that he spares Glaeken for an especially gruesome fate and allows him to pursue his desperate plan to save the Earth so that Glaeken's ultimate failure will become both Rasalom's greatest victory as well as Glaeken's - and humankind's - most tragic final defeat. Glaeken's only hope in defeating Rasalom and reversing the planet's descent into madness is to forge another power-sword out of the widely scattered materials that remain of his first two mystical weapons of Light. To do this he sends a two-man team to Romania to collect as many fragments of the second sword as possible. Another two-man team is dispatched to Maui to collect two very special necklaces containing material from the first power-sword ever to be created many millennia ago before Glaeken himself became the only surviving, reluctant torchbearer for the Legions of Light on this planet. The raw materials are finally gathered together and then forged into a new power-sword by a peculiar collection of specialists hiding out in a shack on the northeastern shore of Long Island in the little hamlet of Monroe. What remains now is for the weapon to be imbued with the ancient, sentient power that resides in the young boy Jeffy and then, finally, for the power-sword itself to choose a new champion whom it deems worthy of engaging the Powers of Darkness as embodied in the evil Rasalom. The manner in which the new hero or heroine is to be chosen is very strongly reminiscent of the way in which Arthur was chosen by Excalibur to be a worthy successor to his father, Uther Pendragon. The choice ultimately comes as a great surprise to many readers because of the shrewdly roundabout way in which the author lets the little drama play out. The warrior who is finally selected engages Rasalom in his deep, dark lair where he lies waiting for the completion of his transformation into the reigning creature of terror on Earth. For the second time in a mere 50 years the champion for the Legions of Light gets into a serious bind and only prevails in the end because of major assistance from the throngs of mere mortal humans anxiously awaiting the outcome on the surface."
2444,Fool Moon,horror," After the events in Storm Front. Kim Delaney, who Dresden helped to control her magical talents, asks Dresden how to create a set of three magical circles, which could be used to contain powerful entities. Dresden withholds the information, because such circles are generally used to contain demigods and archangels. Lt. Karrin Murphy asks Dresden to consult on a homicide. A henchman of Johnnie Marcone's was found near a group of wolfish paw prints. Dresden follows a lead that takes him into a confrontation with a gang of teenage werewolves and their pack leader, Tera West. At the police station, he gets a tip from FBI Agent Harris that the Streetwolves biker gang might know something about the murder, learning The Streetwolves and their packleader Parker are lycanthropes. They do not change shape, but become bestial in their minds. Dresden escapes unscathed, but now the Streetwolves want him dead. Marcone shows up in Dresden's office. He offers to hire Dresden as his security adviser, for protection. Dresden refuses. On his way out the door, Marcone says that these killings are connected to Harley MacFinn and his Northwest Passage Project. Dresden summons the demon Chaunzaggoroth in order to get information, exchanging one more part of his name for information about Harley MacFinn. Before Dresden can check on Harley MacFinn, Lt. Murphy arrests him. Kim Delaney's shredded body is found in MacFinn's apartment next to a summoning circle. Tera West sneaks in and frees Dresden. Tera tells Dresden that he must draw the containment circle around her fiancé Harley MacFinn before the moon rises, or innocent people will die. MacFinn is a loup-garou, an incredibly powerful werewolf that can only be killed with inherited silver. Dresden is shot during his escape from police custody, and is rescued by Tera. Desperate, he calls Susan and bums a ride in exchange for an exclusive on the wolf murders. Ignoring Dresden's warnings, Murphy arrests and jails MacFinn in his human form. Dresden races to the station to get to MacFinn, but the moon rises, and MacFinn changes, slaughtering the suspects in the holding cells, the desk sergeant, and Murphy's staff. Dresden drives off MacFinn and goes in search of Marcone. While searching for MacFinn, Dresden is attacked by the Streetwolves, and learns the FBI agents are hexenwolves behind the murders after capturing one of them. At moonrise, they pile into a rented van and head to Marcone's estate to save him from MacFinn. Dresden and his allies are captured by the FBI hexenwolves and are thrown into a pit Marcone had prepared to capture the transformed MacFinn, but Marcone frees them. Dresden and Murphy kill the FBI hexenwolves and MacFinn. Dresden and Murphy burn the hexenwolves' belts before Chicago PD arrives—so they can never be used again. Susan evacuates the Alphas, and Chicago PD arrests Marcone on general principle. Tera West, revealed to be a wolf that can change into a human, returns to her family in the Northwest. One major question is left unsolved, though-where did the FBI agents get their belts?"
2445,The Dark Half,horror," Thad Beaumont is an author and recovering alcoholic who lives in the town of Ludlow, Maine. Thad's own books – cerebral literary fiction – are not very successful. However, under the pen name ""George Stark"", he writes highly successful crime novels about a violent killer named Alexis Machine. When Thad's authorship of Stark's novels becomes public knowledge, Thad and his wife, Elizabeth, decide to stage a mock burial for his alter ego at the local cemetery, which is featured in a People magazine article. Stark's epitaph says it all: ""Not A Very Nice Guy"". Stark, however, emerges from the mock grave as a physical entity and goes on a killing spree, gruesomely murdering everyone he perceives responsible for his ""death"" – Thad's editor, agent, and the People interviewer, among others. Thad, meanwhile, is plagued by surreal nightmares. Stark's murders are investigated by Alan Pangborn, the sheriff of the neighboring town of Castle Rock, who finds Thad's voice and fingerprints at the crime scenes. This evidence, and Thad's unwillingness to answer his questions, causes Pangborn to believe that Thad – despite having alibis – is responsible for the murders. Thad eventually discovers that he and Stark share a mental bond, and begins to find notes from Stark written in his own handwriting. The notes tell Thad what activity Stark has been engaging in. Observing his son and daughter, Thad notes that twins share a unique bond. They can feel each other's pain and at times appear to read the other's mind. Using this as a keystone to his own situation, he begins to discover the even deeper meaning behind himself and Stark. Pangborn eventually learns that Thad had a twin. The unborn brother was absorbed into Thad in utero and later removed from his brain when the author was a child. He had suffered from severe headaches and it was originally thought to be a tumor causing them. The neurosurgeon who removed it found the following inside: part of a nostril, some fingernails, some teeth, and a malformed human eye. This leads to questions about the true nature of Stark, whether he is a malevolent spirit with its own existence, or Thad himself, manifesting an alternate personality. Thad eventually vanquishes Stark, but the book ends on an unhappy note with Thad's wife having serious doubts about the future of their relationship: she is appalled that Thad not only created Stark (if unintentionally), but that a part of him liked Stark. Sheriff Alan Pangborn goes on to appear two times more in the Castle Rock series. It is revealed that ever since the events of The Dark Half, he is plagued by nightmares and the memory of Thad Beaumont. We are also told of the subsequent death of Pangborn's wife and son, and his own depression, in Needful Things. In the short story The Sun Dog it had mentioned in passing that Liz left Thad, taking the twins with her. It is then revealed in Bag of Bones that Thad committed suicide. This ties up the novel's ambiguous ending regarding Thad's relationship with Liz. Stark is also mentioned in the ""Notes"" section of King's collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes under the story ""The Fifth Quarter"". It states only ""Bachman again. Or maybe George Stark."""
2446,Who Made Stevie Crye?,horror," The story concerns Mary Stevenson Crye, a newly widowed housewife, who turns to freelance writing to provide for her family. Her typewriter, which is demonically possessed, involves her in a series of occult experiences, including with her dead husband, among other things."
2447,Spark and Burn,horror," Spike was born in the nineteenth century as a gentle, intellectual boy named William. As a young adult, he meets a woman called Drusilla, a mysterious vampire. William eventually becomes Spike. He travels Europe with a band of vicious vampires, Dru, Darla, and Angelus. They show him his new existence, and from them he finds out about that most serious of enemies to vampires, one girl in all the world chosen to fight the vampires and the forces of darkness, the Slayer. Having found a soul in Africa in the twenty-first century, Spike is tormented by the first evil and the guilt of his vampiric evils. He recalls many of the events that would lead him to the madness in the hell-influenced basement of the new Sunnydale High School."
2448,Bloody Bones,horror," Bloody Bones begins on Saint Patrick's Day, shortly after the events of the previous Anita Blake novel, The Lunatic Cafe. Like the previous novels, the novel opens with Anita considering a possible job. This time, her manager, Bert, is calculating a possible bid for a mass zombie raising in Branson, Missouri. Bert explains that a law firm is soliciting bids to raise an entire graveyard in order to determine who owns a piece of land needed for a resort complex. The graves are unmarked and may contain corpses at least 100 years old, Anita finds out later there are some that are much older than that, which will make the raising very difficult. In Anita's opinion, she is the only person in the world who might be able to raise that many ancient unmarked graves without a human sacrifice. She agrees to take the job, and takes Larry along to boost her powers, and as a training experience. (She and Bert agree that although John Burke also has the power to make a good second, his pride is such that it's best that he not even learn that Anita took a job that he was not strong enough to take on his own). Arriving in Branson, Anita meets Raymond Stirling, the lawyer in charge of the development project and his assistants, Lionel Bayard, Ms Harrison and Beau, and learns that Stirling is in a dispute with Magnus and Dorcas Bouvier, two siblings who claim to own the land at issue and refuse to sell. If the corpses on the land confirm that it belongs to the Bouviers, Stirling's project will be unable to continue. After reviewing the site and making plans to explore the site further that evening, Anita receives a call from Dolph. Dolph asks Anita for advice on a crime scene back in St. Louis and also asks her to assist the local police with a nearby crime scene. Anita and Larry drive to the scene and meet Sergeant Freemont, who appears to want to crack the case herself and resents their intrusion. Anita inspects the murder victims—three teen-aged or younger boys cut apart with a blade. Each of the boys' faces have been disfigured or removed, and Freemont reveals that a teenaged boy and girl were murdered earlier, with similar wounds. Anita warns Freemont that in her opinion, the boys were cut apart by a sword wielded by something as fast and strong as a vampire, with enough mental power to hold two of the boys motionless while killing the third. Larry is seriously shaken by viewing his first murder scene. Anita and Larry then go to the Bouviers' restaurant, named ""Bloody Bones,"" to investigate the land dispute and to get dinner. There, they meet Magnus and Dorrie, each of whom is part-fey. Magnus is using glamour to host a date night. By touching the restaurant patrons, he makes them irresistibly attractive for one night, in return for drawing some power for himself. After trying unsuccessfully to seduce Anita, Magnus is coy about why the Bouviers refuse to sell their land. Magnus also admits to destroying several trees outside the restaurant while in a drunken rage, causing Anita to consider him as a suspect for the recent killings. During dinner, Dolph pages Anita again, and asks her to assist on another possible local vampire crime. Anita tells Dolph that Magnus is part-fey and a potential suspect, then Anita and Larry drive to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Quinlan. There, they meet Sheriff David St. John, his wife Beth, Deputy Zack Coltraine, Mr. and Mrs. Quinlan, and their son Jeff. Jeff's older sister, Ellie is lying in her bed, dead of a vampire bite. Anita and Larry eventually deduce that her death was probably voluntary, and learn that Ellie's boyfriend Andy recently disappeared. They guess that Ellie's boyfriend has recently been raised as a vampire and turned her as well, but Mr. Quinlan refuses to believe them and demands that Anita stake Ellie to prevent her from rising. Anita asks him to wait twenty-four hours to ""cool off"" and promises to stake Ellie if her father demands it after that time. After instructing the Quinlans to place the Host at each doorway to prevent any vampires from reentering the home, Anita explains that the vampire that turned Ellie probably has a resting place nearby, and that they may catch it if they attempt a nighttime hunt. She heads out into the woods after it, together with Larry, Sheriff St. John, Deputy Coltraine, and two other police officers, Wallace and Granger. During the hunt, Anita learns that Wallace was a survivor of a vampire attack and shows him her own scars in an effort to put him at ease. During the hunt, Anita and the others are ambushed by a pack of vampires. In the fight, Anita kills two vampires, but Granger is bitten, Wallace's arm is broken, and Xavier kills Coltrain with a sword. While the hunters regroup, Granger, now under vampire control, attempts to shoot Larry, and Anita is forced to kill him. The group then hears screams from the Quinlan home, and St. John and Anita run for the house, leaving Larry and Wallace to bring up the rear. When Anita gets to the house, Beth St. John is dead and Jeff has been taken. (Apparently, Xavier was able to shapeshift and fit through a pet door). Sheriff St. John kills a brown haired, female vampire. Anita shoots at Xavier, but he's too fast to hit. Later, Sergeant Freemont arrives at the scene. She explains that after Dolph told her that Magnus was part fey, she went to arrest him. Mangus used glamour to escape, and is now wanted for using magic on police officers during the course of his escape. FBI agents Elwood and Bradford arrive and speak to Anita, who agrees to attempt to identify and contact the Master of the City. Anita calls Jean-Claude for information. Jean-Claude explains that he thinks he knows the vampire Anita saw, and that it is an ""exotic"" vampire of a sort concealed from humans. Among other things, it is a pedophile. Jean-Claude offers to come to Branson to set up a meeting with the Master of the City. With Jeff Quinlan in the hands of a monster, Anita is forced to accept Jean-Claude's help. With no way to pursue the Quinlan case, Anita and Larry return to the graveyard to ""walk the graveyard"" and attempt to sense the location and identities of the corpses in preparation for a later attempt to raise the dead. Anita and Larry experiment with combining powers, and are surprised at the degree to which they are able to magnify each other's abilities. However, their powers attract Magnus, who appears and insists that they not raise the dead in that graveyard. Stirling orders Beau to shoot Magnus for trespassing, but Anita, realizing that Stirling intended the evening as a trap for Magnus, draws her own gun and buys Magnus time to escape. Anita and Larry return to their hotel suite to find Jean-Claude and Jason. Jean-Claude has flown in on his private jet, but it is now too late in the night to track down the Master before dawn. Jean-Claude informs Anita of Xavier's name, then retires for the morning in her bed. Jason visits with Anita and Larry, and challenges Anita for dominance. Anita wins, of course, and figures out that Jean-Claude has ordered Jason to show his lycanthrope side in an effort to dissuade Anita from marrying Richard. Jason acknowledges Anita as dominant and goes to bed. Later that morning, Dorcas Bouvier bursts into Anita's hotel suite and demands to see Magnus. After Dorcas bursts into the bedroom and sees Jean-Claude and Jason, she accepts that Anita has not fallen victim to Magnus's charms and explains why the Bouviers refuse to sell their land. Centuries ago their ancestor, a member of the fey, emigrated to colonial North America with a more powerful fey, Rawhead and Bloody Bones trapped in a magic box. While Rawhead was trapped, Bouvier was able to create a potion from its blood and increase his own powers, but eventually, Rawhead escaped and went on a murderous rampage. After a pitched battle, Rawhead was sealed beneath the ground, and the Bouvier family has remained in Branson in order to prevent Rawhead from escaping. Anita convinces Dorcas to take her to see the mound where Rawhead is trapped, and they agree to go to the mound the following day. That evening, Jean-Claude prepares the group to meet Seraphina, the master of Branson. He explains that his visit raises issues of vampire politics. Although vampires' interactions with one another are somewhat constrained by the laws of the Vampire Council, conflicts are still possible, and he has negotiated a delicate truce with Seraphina. Although the group must be prepared to fight, they may not strike the first blow. Jean-Claude and Anita, accompanied by Larry and Jason, visit an apparently ruined and abandoned home, cloaked in magical shadow, and meet Ivy, Bruce, Kissa, Janos, Pallas and Bettina. The Branson vampires engage in a calculated plan to force Jean-Claude's party to break the truce. Without offering violence to his group, they threaten to torture two young women, then sexually harass Jason. Jean-Claude is forced to challenge Janos to a contest of power, which he begins to lose. Ultimately, Anita escapes the trap by baiting Ivy into attacking her, allowing the group to use violence in their own defense. In the ensuing battle, Larry kills Bruce, and Pallas and Bettina are first shot, then torn apart. (However, because they are rotting vampires, they are almost impossible to kill.) Anita is forced to give blood to save Jean-Claude's life. Once Jean-Claude is stabilized, Magnus appears and offers to convey the group to see Seraphina under a flag of truce. Seraphina toys with the group, but ultimately agrees that a murderous pedophile master vampire in her territory is a threat, and agrees to track down Xavier. Jean-Claude is astounded that Seraphina has somehow become powerful enough to assert mastery over vampires as formidable as Janos. The group returns to the hotel to clean up. Anita learns more about Jean-Claude's history and momentarily surrenders to her lust and kisses Jean-Claude, but stops when he draws blood (though he claims it was by accident). She stays with Jean-Claude as dawn comes and he ""dies"" for the day and is surprised at her growing sympathy towards him. Anita then falls asleep herself and is visited in her dream by Seraphina, who promises to reunite Anita with her deceased mother if Anita agrees to serve Seraphina. Anita wakes, and begins planning to kill Seraphina. Anita and Larry meet up with Dorcas Bouvier, who takes them to the mound where Bloody Bones is imprisoned. When they arrive, they surprise Magnus in the act of drinking Bloody Bones's blood, and Dorcas realizes that Magnus has been using Bloody Bones to boost his power for years. Anita proposes that instead of raising the entire Bouvier graveyard, she raise just enough zombies to confirm the Bouviers' claim to the land and prevent Stirling from digging up the graveyard and freeing Bloody Bones. That evening, accompanied by Stirling, Bayard, and Harrison, Anita and Larry combine their powers to animate a few of the ancient corpses in the Bouvier graveyard. Just before Anita completes the circle of blood needed to activate their power, she feels Bloody Bones stir and realizes that raising even a few zombies will free the monster. She stops, but Ivy flies from the darkness and attacks. Anita kills Ivy in self-defense, but Ivy's blood falls on the remaining span of the circle, closing the loop and activating her power. Similar to Anita's inadvertent human sacrifices in The Laughing Corpse, Ivy's death supercharges Anita's power, forcing her to animate every corpse in the graveyard. At that point, Stirling and Harrison draw guns, and Stirling shoots Bayard. Apparently, Seraphina and Bloody Bones promised Stirling the land in return for Bloody Bones's freedom, and Stirling had planned on killing Anita once she raised the Bouviers and freed the fey. Anita orders the zombies to attack Stirling and Harrison and incapacitates them both. While she considers whether to kill them, Janos arrives with a newly risen Ellie, accompanied by Bettina, Pallas, Kissa, Xavier and their hostage, Jeff Quinlan. The vampires feed on and kill Stirling and Harrison, and inform Anita that Xavier has been serving Seraphina since her arrival in Branson. Seraphina's vampires fly away, and Anita goes to confront them and attempt rescue Jeff, with the help of Jean-Claude, Larry, and Jason. Bloody Bones arrives and demands its freedom, but Seraphina breaks her word to the fey and announces her intent to continue drinking its power forever. With her oath broken, Larry and Anita are able to break her spell over Bloody Bones, and it draws a sword and impales Seraphina. Bloody Bones admits to Anita that it has been able to manifest its form as a result of Magnus's interference, and that it killed the teenagers for being bad children. Realizing that Bloody Bones is mortal as long as it continues to share power with Magnus, Anita shoots the boggle, slowing it down long enough for Xavier to kill it with a greatsword forged of cold iron. Anita infers that Xavier is a fey raised as a vampire, although Xavier denies it. Seraphina regains control, and decides that Anita's blood might make an acceptable second choice for Bloody Bones's. In return for Anita surrendering herself, Seraphina agrees to let the others go. The next morning, Anita wakes up next to Seraphina in her coffin. She forces her way out and learns that the coffins of Seraphina's vampires have been moved to the Bloody Bones bar and grill. (Ellie does not have a coffin and is sleeping on the floor.) Anita tries to escape, but Magnus stops her. In the course of the fight, Anita drips some of her blood on Ellie and realizes that she can raise Ellie as if she were a zombie. She does so and orders Ellie to hold Magnus while she makes her escape. With Ellie clinging to his waist, Magnus chases Anita outside and is burned to death when Ellie burns in the sunlight. Anita contacts Agent Bradford and tells him where the vampires are resting. With Anita, Larry and the local authorities, Bradford douses the Bloody Bones restaurant with gasoline and prepares to set it on fire. Anita feels Seraphina in her mind and forces the agents to handcuff her and lock her in a car so that Seraphina cannot use her control over Anita to interfere. As the fire consumes all of the vampires inside, including the now-dead Jeff Quinlan, Seraphina forces Anita to relive the death of her own mother, renewing her earlier trauma. In the epilogue, Anita explains that Dorcas, now free of the family curse, sold the Bouvier land and left Branson with her children, that the Quinlans are suing Animators, Inc. because of Anita's refusal to stake Ellie when asked, and that Anita herself is continuing her life in St. Louis, notwithstanding the fresh emotional wounds."
2449,The Stand,horror," The novel is divided into three parts, or books. The first is titled ""Captain Trips"" and takes place over nineteen days, with the escape and spread of a human-made superflu (influenza) virus known formally as ""Project Blue"", but most commonly as ""Captain Trips"". The virus is developed at a U.S. Army base, where it is accidentally released. While the base tries to shut down before any infected person can escape, a security malfunction allows a guard and his family to sneak out. Unfortunately, they are already infected, and set off a pandemic that kills an estimated 99.4% of the world's human population, as well as that of domesticated animals, such as horses and dogs. Through the perspectives of the multiple principal characters, and also from an omniscient third-party perspective, the narrative outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence, the failure of martial law to contain the outbreak, and eventually the death of virtually the entire population. The emotional toll is also dealt with, as the few survivors must care for their families and friends, dealing with confusion and grief as their loved ones succumb to the flu. The expanded edition opens with a prologue titled ""The Circle Opens"" that offers greater detail into the circumstances surrounding the development of the virus and the security breach that allowed its escape from the secret laboratory compound where it was created. Intertwining cross-country odysseys are undertaken by a small number of survivors in three parties, which are drawn together by both circumstances and their shared dreams of a 108-year-old woman from Hemingford Home, Nebraska, whom they see as a refuge and a representation of good in the struggle of good versus evil. This woman, Abagail Freemantle, or ""Mother Abagail"", becomes the spiritual leader for the survivors. Mother Abagail directs them to Boulder, Colorado, where they struggle to re-establish a democratic society. Meanwhile, another group of survivors are drawn to Las Vegas, Nevada by Randall Flagg, an evil being with supernatural powers who represents the Enemy, or the Adversary. Flagg’s governance is brutally tyrannical, using crucifixion, dismemberment and other forms of torture to quell dissent. Flagg's group is able to quickly reorganize its society, restore power to Las Vegas, and rebuild the city with the many technical professionals who have migrated there. Flagg's group launches a weapons program, searching the country for suitable arms. In Boulder, the democratic society of the ""Free Zone"" is beset with problems: Mother Abagail, feeling that she has become prideful due to her pleasure at being a public figure, disappears into the wilderness on a journey of spiritual reconciliation. The Free Zone leadership committee, consisting of seven men and women -- Frannie Goldsmith, Stu Redman, Nick Andros, Larry Underwood, Ralph Brenter, Glen Bateman, and Susan Stern -- decide to secretly send three people to Randall Flagg's territory to act as spies. Meanwhile, one of the survivors, Harold Lauder, builds a dynamite bomb in response to feelings of disconnection and revenge for his unrequited love for Fran Goldsmith, who had fallen for Stu Redman; another survivor, Nadine Cross, seduced despite herself by Flagg's dark attraction which first manifested itself to her years earlier via a ouija board, plants the bomb where it will effectively destroy the Free Zone's leadership. The explosion kills Nick and Susan and several other Free Zone inhabitants, but the other members of the leadership committee manage to avoid the explosion due to Mother Abagail's timely return. However, her body is ravaged with malnutrition, and she is dying. The stage is now set for the final confrontation as the two camps become aware of one another, and each recognizes the other as a threat to its survival, leading to the ""stand"" of good against evil. There is no pitched battle, however. Instead, at Mother Abagail's dying behest, four of the five surviving members of the Boulder governing committee -- Glen Bateman, Stu Redman, Ralph Brentner and Larry Underwood -- accompanied by the dog Kojak set off on foot towards Las Vegas on an expedition to confront Randall Flagg. Stu breaks his leg en route and convinces the others to go on without him as they promised, telling them that God will provide for him if that's what's meant to happen. The remaining three soon encounter Flagg's men, who take them prisoner. When Glen Bateman rejects an opportunity to be spared if he kneels and begs Flagg for his life, he is shot and killed on Flagg's orders by Lloyd Henreid, Flagg's right hand man. Flagg gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of the two prisoners, but just as it is about to take place the Trashcan Man, an insane follower of Flagg who is somehow able to search out weapons of death, arrives with a nuclear warhead. Flagg's magical attempt to silence a dissenter is transformed into a giant glowing hand — ""The Hand of God"" — which detonates the bomb, destroying Las Vegas and all of Flagg's followers, along with Larry and Ralph. The inhabitants of Boulder anxiously anticipate the birth of Frances Goldsmith's baby, aware of the implications to the human race if the baby lacks immunity to the superflu and dies. Soon after she gives birth to a live baby, Stu Redman returns to Boulder along with Kojak and Tom Cullen, one of the spies sent earlier by the Free Zone, who had rescued Stu while returning to the Free Zone. Although the baby, Peter, falls ill with the superflu, he is able to fight it off. The original edition of the novel ends with Fran and Stu questioning whether the human race can learn from its mistakes. The answer, given in the last line, is ambiguous: ""I don’t know."" The expanded edition follows this with a brief coda called ""The Circle Closes"", which leaves a darker impression and fits in with King’s ongoing ""wheel of ka"" theme. Randall Flagg, using the alias ""Russell Faraday"", wakes up on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific, having escaped the atomic blast in Vegas by using his dark magic (although Flagg does not remember how he got to the beach or what his real name is, and it is suggested that he does not even remember the events in America). There he begins recruiting adherents among a preliterate, dark-skinned people, who worship him as some sort of god."
2450,Stone Cold,horror," A young homeless boy, using the name of Link, recounts how he became homeless after his dad had left him and his mother. Subsequently, Link's mother began seeing Vince, a largely abusive man with a grudge against Link and his sister, Carole. After an argument, Carole moves out to live with her boyfriend. Despite the tension at home, Link performs well at school, successfully getting 5 GCSEs. But he fails to get a job and he sets his mind on leaving home like his sister. Link, however, has nowhere else to go, and is forced onto the streets, facing further hardships due to the close-knit nature of his community. He decides to travel to London instead, with £150 of savings and a sleeping bag on his back. After arriving in London, Link decides on a fresh start, finding a room and a job being top of his priorities. A local newsagent advertises a bedsit with negotiable rent, but due to the landlord's nature, Link is bullied into taking the room at a hefty cost; a fortnight's rent costs him two-thirds of his money. The scruffy, un-ironed clothes work little to Link's favour during job interviews, and Link is left unemployed and depressed after just 2 weeks. With only £9 left, Link is thrown out of the bedsit by the landlord and onto the streets. Facing the dangers of London's streets, Link is mugged for his watch, verbally abused and left without anywhere to sleep on a cold winter's night. Finding a small doorway, Link meets another homeless boy, the streetwise Ginger. Their relationship grows, and Ginger teaches Link how to survive on the streets. Meanwhile, a man nicknamed Shelter starts a spree of murders, targeting the homeless of London. Shelter, a discharged army veteran, served for twenty-nine years, being discharged on mental health grounds. He chooses to ""clean up"" the streets by luring homeless people into his home before killing them and hiding the bodies under his floorboards. Shelter plans very meticulously. He starts small and tries not to create a pattern in his killings so he cannot be tracked down. By buying a flat and a cat (because ""owning a cat is unthreatening"") he manages to lure many of the homeless to their deaths with promises of a warm shower and something to eat. While begging on the streets of London, Link and Ginger meet Shelter when they ask him for any spare change. Shelter replies in his usual manner; ""Change! I'd change you if I had you in khaki for 6 weeks!"". As they walk away he hears them laugh (although this is not mentioned by Link), greatly angering Shelter in the process. Due to these events, the pair become his targets – Laughing Boy One (Ginger) and Laughing Boy Two (Link). Ginger streetwise decides to meet up with some friends, but upon returning, Shelter persuades him to come to his flat, saying that Link is there lying on the floor after an accident. Once there, Shelter kills the hysterical Ginger. After some time, Link believes Ginger has gone off with his ""real friends"" and that he is on his own again. Shortly after this, Link meets a young girl, Gail, commenting that she is the best-looking ""dosser"" he has ever seen. He finds himself falling hopelessly in love with her. Link instinctively notices something ""off"" about Gail, but he does not act upon it, hoping not to lose another friend. After a series of events involving the family of Shelter's victims searching for their missing children, the same story is always given; an old man was seen matching the description of Shelter walking away with the victim. Link believes Ginger has met the same fate, and chooses to spy on Shelter. After an argument with Gail, Link observes Shelter alone, allowing Shelter to lure Link into the flat. In the ensuing struggle, Link manages to smash Shelter's window, which Gail notices, and informs the police; Shelter is caught in the act of attempted murder, and given life imprisonment. Gail tells Link that she does love him but reveals her true identity; she is in fact, an undercover reporter. Gail leaves Link with a handful of banknotes, and Link is left homeless and alone once again with an uncertain future."
2451,The Ruins,horror," Four American tourists&mdash;Eric, his girlfriend Stacy, her best friend Amy, and Amy's boyfriend Jeff, a medical student&mdash;are vacationing in Mexico. They befriend a German tourist named Mathias and a trio of hard-drinking Greeks who go by the Spanish nicknames Pablo, Juan, and Don Quixote. Mathias convinces Pablo and the Americans to accompany him as he joins up with his brother Heinrich who had followed a girl he'd met to an archeological dig. The six of them head down to the rural Yucatan in search of Heinrich. Near a Mayan village, they discover a disguised trail which leads to a large hill covered in vines and surrounded by bare earth. The group approach the hill, ignoring the warnings of a young boy who had followed them to the village. The boy soon returns with armed adults who force the group to stay on the vine-covered hill. Among the underbrush, they discover the body of Heinrich, already overgrown with vines. They realize that the vines contain an acidic sap that burns their hands after they pulled the vines away from Heinrich's body. At the top of the hill is a camp with tents, a campfire and windlass and rope which leads down a mine shaft. Much of the camp is overgrown with the same acidic vines. Hearing the ring of a cell phone from the bottom of the shaft, they use the rope to lower Pablo down in an attempt to retrieve it. However, the acid from the vines has weakened the rope which snaps, sending Pablo falling down the shaft. His back is broken and the group raises him on a makeshift backboard. Jeff, who quickly emerges as the most level-headed and action-oriented of the group, explores the hill and discovers that the Mayans have formed a perimeter around the entire hill, not approaching, but always watching him and ready to shoot them dead with bow and arrow. He also discovers a warning sign made by someone else, which has been pulled into the underbrush of vines. That night, Eric, who had received a wound on his leg while rescuing Pablo, awakes to find one of the vines curled around his leg and inserting itself in his wound. Jeff surmises that the Mayans are afraid of the vines. They salted the earth around the hill to prevent their spread and are now intent on killing anyone who strays onto the hill. Already, spores from the vines have embedded themselves in the group's clothes. He also realizes that they will die soon without any food or water. Jeff and Amy return to the mine shaft to find the cell phone. After almost falling into a pit, Jeff realizes that the cell phone noise is being made by the vines. The plants can imitate sounds made on the hill. As they climb back up, they hear the plants laughing at them. Eric becomes convinced that the vines have infested his body and attempts to cut himself to get them out. That night, he, Amy, and Stacey get drunk and nastily criticize everyone. Later, the vines repeat their criticisms, especially those of Jeff. Amy and Jeff fight and Amy leaves the tent drunkenly. Jeff ignores the sound of her vomiting, and calling his name. The next morning they discover that Amy is dead; the sounds they heard were of the vine suffocating her. They seal Amy's body in a sleeping bag, intending to bury her, but that night they hear her calling Jeff's name. Seeing the bag moving, they open it to discover it full of writhing vines which have eaten Amy's body. Jeff, taking advantage of a torrential rainstorm, heads down the hill and attempts to escape but is shot by the Mayans. The vines pull his body back into the underbrush. The next morning, Stacey and Matthias go to check on Jeff. Increasingly disturbed, Eric begins cutting himself in an effort to remove the vines which he believes have infested his body. Hearing the vines telling them that Eric is dead, Matthias and Stacey run back up the hill to find him bloody, but alive. Eric angrily confronts Matthias, and accidentally stabs the other man with his knife. He then asks Stacey to kill him which, after much pleading, she does. Alone, Stacey heads to the bottom of the hill and seats herself on the path leading to the top. She then calmly slits her wrists and waits to die so that her body will be a warning to anyone else who comes. As she loses consciousness, the vines reach out and pull her off the path into the underbrush. A few days later, the other two Greeks, with some Brazilian tourists in tow, find the trail. A little girl&mdash;who's acting as a sentinel, as the little boy on the bike was&mdash;runs back to the village, but the new tourists are already halfway up the hill, calling for Pablo, before the men on horseback arrive."
2452,A Good and Happy Child,horror," Thirty-year-old George Davies can’t bring himself to hold his newborn son. After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees. As he delves into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he hasn’t thought of in twenty years. Events, people, and strange situations come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father’s death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him secrets he didn’t want to know. How no one believed this new friend was real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were happening. Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what really happened in the months following his father’s death. Were his ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken child’s overactive imagination (a perfectly natural reaction to the trauma of loss, as his mother insisted)? Or were his father’s colleagues, who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the supernatural as a means to end George’s suffering? Twenty years later, George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed, remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himself–and his young family."
2453,The Fury,horror," Gillian Bellaver is a teenage girl who has psychic powers such as telepathy and telekinesis. But though she is trying to reject the fact that she is clairvoyant, she soon finds out that a boy her age, Robin Sandza, is kidnapped. With her powers, she helps Robin's father Peter Sandza find Robin. But though Robin was psychic like Gillian, they come to realize death has entered their boundaries. Gillian and Peter find Robin, but both father and son get killed. Gillian wakes up to find she is kidnapped, a victim herself, when the kidnapper, Childermass, has her in a room. She grabs a winter coat and drowns him mercilessly."
2454,Brown Girl in the Ring,horror," The story takes place in the city core of Metropolitan Toronto (Downtown Toronto) after the economic collapse, which saw investors, commerce and government flee to the suburbs. After the police left, the city erupted in chaos and the Riots occurred. As a consequence of the Riots, Toronto is isolated from other satellite cities in the surrounding Greater Toronto Area (North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke) by roadblocks and Lake Ontario has become a mudhole. In the twelve years since the Riots, the city is now ruled by a criminal mastermind named Rudy Sheldon. Rudy is commissioned to find a heart for the Premier of Ontario, who needs a heart transplant. Normally, the Porcine Organ Harvest Program is used, but Premier Uttley deems the program ""immoral"" and prefers a human donor instead. Ti-Jeanne is the heroine of the story. She's a new mother who gets visions of people's deaths, and her grandmother, Gros-Jeanne, is a well-respected apothecary and spiritualist who runs an herbal and medicine shop. Ti-Jeanne left her former lover, Tony, but, after Tony defies Rudy, whom he works for by refusing to kill someone for their heart, he arrives on her grandmother's doorsteps asking for protection. Ti-Jeanne decides to help him with the aid of her grandmother. Later in the novel, Rudy is revealed to be Ti-Jeanne's grandfather, Gros-Jeanne's husband. It turns out that Rudy was an abusive husband and Gros-Jeanne kicked him out and found a new lover, named Dunston, and since Rudy has been vengeful. Meanwhile, Rudy summons the Calabash Duppy spirit and commands the duppy to kill Gros-jeanne, Ti-Jeanne and Tony, who was sent to kill Gros-Jeanne and take her heart for Primier Uttley). It's revealed that the duppy is Mi-Jeanne (Ti-Jeanne's mom). In the CN Tower, Rudy sets the Calabash spirit on Ti-Jeanne who has come to confront him after Tony killed Gros-Jeanne. Ti-Jeanne is trapped and injected with Buff, a drug that paralyzes her. While in a state of paralysis, Ti-Jeanne slips into an ""astral"" state or spirit state, and she calls upon the ancestor spirits to help her. They kill Rudy by allowing the ""weight of every murder he had done fell on him."" Meanwhile, Premier Uttley's new heart (Gros-Jeanne's heart) attacks her body. Eventually, it takes over her spirit and when she wakes up from the surgery, she has a change of mind about human heart donorship and declares that she will make an attempt to help Toronto return to a rule of law by funding small business owners. On Gros-Jeanne's Nine Night event, all her friends arrive to help out, and so does Tony. Ti-Jeanne has trouble forgiving him for killing Gros-Jeanne, but Jenny tells her ""he wants to do penance."" She lets him into the event to say goodbye to Gros-Jeanne and is surprised that Baby doesn't cry around him anymore. It ends with Ti-Jeanne sitting on her steps, thinking of what she'll name Baby, who is possessed with the spirit of Dunston, Gros-Jeanne's former lover."
2455,Go Ask Malice,horror," Faith has always been a loner. Growing up in a broken home in South Boston, shuffled from relative to relative, her only companion was an imaginary friend named Alex, who helped her escape into a fantasy world of monsters and the supernatural, far from the real-life horrors of the waking world. Now, taken away from her mother by Social Services and shipped off to a foster home, Faith learns that some nightmares are all too real, that the inventions of her childhood really do haunt the night, hungry for blood. Enter Diana Dormer, a Harvard professor and representative of the Watchers' Council who has come to tell Faith of her destiny, to train her, to prepare her for what is to come: Faith is the Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. But she's not alone. When Alex, her childhood companion, returns in her dreams, she warns Faith that someone else is coming for her, a force so deadly and unforgiving that it has inspired fear in the underworld for a thousand generations. Its name is Malice. As memory and fantasy begin to merge, Faith's two worlds collide, with cataclysmic results. A violent battle for the soul of the Slayer is staged, winner take all."
2456,Ring,horror," After four teenagers mysteriously die simultaneously in Tokyo, Kazuyuki Asakawa, a reporter and uncle to one of the deceased, decides to launch his own personal investigation. His search leads him to ""Hakone Pacific Land"", a holiday resort where the youths were last seen together exactly one week before their deaths. Once there he happens upon a mysterious unmarked videotape. Watching the tape he witnesses a strange sequence of abstract and realistic footage that ends with the warning ""You, who watched this tape, are going to die in one week from now. There's only one way to survive. And that is—"" but the end of the tape has been overwritten by an advertisement. The tape has a horrible mental effect on Asakawa, and he doesn't doubt for a second that its warning is true. The only problem is he has no idea how to avert his fate. Returning to Tokyo, he enlists the help of his curious friend Ryūji Takayama, a self-professed rapist who apparently (most likely due to some psychotic defect) has no fear, and who admits he would see the end of the world if he could, out of curiosity. As soon as Asakawa explains the story, Takayama believes him and wants nothing more than to see the tape. Asakawa shows it to him and although Takayama remains cool and nonchalant, he agrees there is a powerful aura around it and asks Asakawa to make him a copy to study at home, which Asakawa does. Now, both men share the seven day deadline and must fight against the clock to unravel the mystery of the tape, Sadako Yamamura, and the potentially life-saving riddle."
2457,Vampire Plagues:London 1850,horror," The book takes place in 1850 partially in Mexico but the main setting is London. This story starts of with Jack Harkett, a street urchin living on the docks of London. One night Jack sees a merchant ship sailing into port. He finds this an opportunity to make some money. But Jack feels strange as the ship stops and a number of bats suddenly fly out of the back of the ship. Then Jack watches a man, with proper clothes, walk down from the ship. Jack gets an eerie feeling as the man brushes past him, Jack also got a slight glimpse of a young boy on the ship, who had started to walk down from the ship. He runs after the boy and finally catches him. The boy told Jack his name was Benedict Cole and that he just returned from an ill-fated trip from Mexico. Benedict or Ben tells Jack how he, his father (Harisson Cole), Ben's godfather (Edwin Sherwood), Sir Donald (the man who brushed past Jack) had a very interesting voyage to Mexico and also tells Jack about Sir Donald becoming possessed by the Mayan bat-god Camazotz. During the voyage, Sir Donald killed, one by one, some tribe people helping them and got hold of some bats which are Vampires as well as Harisson Cole and Edwin Sherwood. Jack joins Ben in helping him to destroy Sir Donald, which they later realize is Camatotz, a fearsome vampire God banished over a thousand years ago during the Mayan Empire. There is a sequel to this book called Vampire Plagues Paris, Vampire Plagues Mexico, Vampire Plagues Outbreak, The Bitch Vampire, Vampire Plagues Epidemic, and Vampire Plagues Extermination."
2458,Cabal,horror," The story concerns a young man named Boone, who is suffering from an unspecified mental illness. Although it is not serious enough to institutionalize him, he is nonetheless seeing a psychiatrist named Decker. To his horror, during a session he is informed by Decker that he is responsible for the brutal mutilation murders of eleven people, murders that have been committed by a serial killer and have terrorized the city (Calgary, Alberta, in Canada) recently. Boone does not recall these actions, apparently because his mind has blanked them from his consciousness. He initially tries to kill himself, but when he fails he begins to believe he can save himself in a place known as Midian, a semi-mythical city, which has appeared in his dreams as a place that offers sanctuary to monsters – both the human kind and otherwise -, known as the Nightbreed. He hurriedly begins to seek Midian, unaware of the truth behind the insidious events that set him on this course. Boone eventually finds Midian, but discovers that the town is deserted. Travelling to the cemetery nearby he discovers that Midian in fact lies beneath the cemetery. Two of the Nightbreed appear and attack him. One of them bites him, but he is able to escape. Boone returns to the abandoned town where he is confronted by Decker. Decker reveals that Boone is innocent of the killings, and that Decker is the one who actually committed the murders, intending to use Boone as a scapegoat. Soon after Boone is shot to death by Decker and the police, who was following his trail. However, soon after this his body vanishes from the morgue. After Boone's apparent death, his lover, Lori, travels to Midian after hearing of his corpse's disappearance. Along the way she makes friends with Sheryl, another woman who decides to accompany Lori. When they arrive at Midian Lori encounters two of the Nightbreed, Babette, a small child, and Rachel, her mother. Lori is refused entrance to the underground by Lylesburg, another member of the Nightbreed. Lori and Sheryl depart Midian and return to a nearby inn. Sheryl brings Lori out to a restaurant with her to meet her new boyfriend, who ends up being Decker. Decker, who possesses a button faced mask that houses his murderous personality, kills Sheryl, and Lori narrowly escapes. She returns to Midian, where Decker pursues her. She is saved by Boone, who goes above ground and reveals himself, being banished for doing so. Before he leaves, Boone sees Midian's creator, Baphomet, who appears as a dismembered body in a large fire. Boone and Lori depart Midian as demanded and return to the hotel where Lori had stayed with Sheryl. They soon discover that Decker was at the hotel, and has killed many inside. The police arrive and Lori is able to flee, while Boone degenerated to an animalistic state and is quickly arrested. Decker goes to the police himself, and is able to convince them to go to Midian and capture or kill everyone living there. Lori meets up with Narcisse, a former human who like Boone traveled to Midian and became part of the Nightbreed. They enter the jail where Boone is being held and break him out. They return to Midian, which is overrun by the police, who have killed or captured many of the Nightbreed, forcing them out from the underground by setting it aflame. Boone and the others engage in the fight and he has his final confrontation with Decker, killing him. The remaining policemen are all either killed or chased off, but Midian is completely destroyed. Those who remain of the Nightbreed bind up the parts of Baphomet and leave, in search of a new home."
2459,A Caress of Twilight,horror," A Caress of Twilight begins a few months after the events of A Kiss of Shadows. It is December, and Merry and the Sidhe warriors she has chosen as her lovers have returned to Los Angeles, California. Merry has resumed working for the Grey Detective Agency and several of the Sidhe have also joined the payroll. Merry is approached by Maeve Reed, previously known as Conchenn before her exile from the Seelie Court and now a famous Hollywood actress. Maeve asks Merry to perform a fertility rite that will permit her to have a child by her dying human husband. In return, she tells the princess that the reason for her exile was that she had refused to become the wife of Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, because she believed he was sterile. Galen, badly injured by the demi-fey during A Kiss of Shadows, has yet to heal, despite the usually phenomenal healing abilities of a sidhe warrior. Merry approaches the Queen of the Demi-Fey, Niceven, regarding a cure. The price of the cure and an alliance is a weekly drink of Merry's blood by a surrogate to be chosen by Niceven. During Merry's first night in bed with Doyle, they are interrupted by Andais who reveals that the Nameless has been freed. The worst of both courts, the Nameless was the last great spell that Seelie and Unseelie had cooperated upon. They had stripped themselves of everything too awful for them to be permitted to stay in the United States, and from it had been formed the Nameless. A strange murder brings members of the Grey Agency, including Merry, to the scene. However, their presence is challenged by others of the police force and they are thrown off site. However, this is not before they have a chance to suspect that supernatural forces are at work. It is suspected that the lives had been sucked from the murder victims by the ghosts of dead gods. Nothing is said to the police, however, as the only known person to work such a spell was a sidhe and, if it were discovered, that fact could result in all sidhe being banished from the country. Healed from his injuries by Niceven's representative, Sage, Galen acts the part of the Green Man in the fertility ritual with Merry which results in Maeve Reed becoming pregnant. It begins to become clear that Taranis is also planning something as various social secretaries insist upon Merry attending first the Yule Ball and then a feast in her honour. This culminates in a conversation between Merry and Taranis himself. Finally, the Nameless attacks Maeve Reed's home. It is finally defeated by Merry and her companions, Merry herself showing for the first time her second Hand of Power - the Hand of Blood. The result of the destruction of the Nameless is the release of the magics which formed it; these magics transfer themselves to the victors, who begin to exhibit unforeseen side effects."
2460,Treasure Box,horror," The plot details a middle-aged man, Quentin Fears (pronounced ""fierce""), who marries a woman who turns out to be a succubus. The story unfolds as Quentin tries to stop her and the witch who controls her from unleashing a great evil upon the world."
2461,The Descent,horror," A group of new-age trekkers in Nepal are trapped in a cave by a snowstorm and stumble across a mutilated, mummified corpse, covered with cryptic tattoos in both English and undecipherable symbols; the party interprets the former to mean that the body was that of a RAF pilot who had crashed on the other side of the Himalayas in the 1940s. How the pilot had made it across the mountains is a mystery, but a diagram among the tattoos suggests that the cave the party is trapped may be part of a larger network, one that might have an outlet elsewhere. As the blizzard shows no signs of letting up, the party pushes deeper into the network, discovering the remains of a slaughtered ancient army, displayed almost trophy-like, and a trail of gold coins. Becoming separated, the members are relentlessly killed by an unseen enemy, until only the mountain guides, Ike and Kora, remain. Several years later, at a UN military base in Bosnia, multinational soldiers are guarding a forensic team excavating a huge mass grave, which satellite imagery shows being disturbed every night. The soldiers first assume that Serb soldiers are trying to destroy the evidence of their atrocities; a US Army Aviation officer named Elias Branch leads a reconnaissance-helicopter flight to gather evidence. After a crash, he finds his navigator brutally assaulted, is menaced by an unseen enemy, and is himself badly injured by his unit's supporting fire. Found scarred and half-mad, he raves about being attacked by ""demons;"" during his recuperation, he begins to exhibit dramatic physical changes, and begins taking an interest in local cave systems. Near the edge of the Kalahari, a young nun Ali van Schade is about to leave a leper encampment at which she had been working. To her horror, she discovers that the lepers had saved her life by trading one of their own to be (in her place) mutilated and enslaved by an unknown presence, servants of a god they call ""Older-Than-Old."" A few years later, Branch, monstrously deformed, is leading the world's armies in exploring a vast network of caves that he has been instrumental in discovering, underlying the whole of the Earth's surface. The ""Descent"" of the title refers not only to the literal act of descending, but is also the term the narrative applies to a large-scale military-led colonization of the planet's interior that begins at this point. Referred to as the ""sub-planet,"" the labyrinth contains an entire separately-evolved ecosystem, and offers rare fleeting glimpses of elusive albino humanoids. Scientists theorize these are trogloxenic hominids descended from Homo erectus; classified as Homo hadalis (as in Hades), they are commonly referred to as ""hadals,"" or, pejoratively, ""Haddie."" While presently degenerate and brutal, the archaeological evidence suggests the ""hadals"" had once possessed a high level of civilization, having reached the Iron Age as far back as 20,000 years ago. The beings had apparently occasionally emerged throughout human history, and had (rather viciously) mentored human civilization, thereby giving rise to the human concepts of Hell and demons. After melting invisibly away from human encroachment for several months, the hadals spring a trap: a massive, coordinated worldwide ambush of the armies exploring and occupying the sub-planet. The attack is enormously successful; world casualties number a full quarter-million. Though an enormous initial shock, the dismay wears off quickly and humanity is essentially undeterred; the Descent recommences, in even greater force. Cities are built in the upper crust, three miles deep, while social instability grows and interest in space exploration diminishes. Meanwhile, a mysterious Jesuit priest, Father Thomas, is assembling the Beowulf Circle, an informal group of scholars dedicated to the study of the sub-planet, with the eventual aim of discovering whether ""Satan"" (by which they do not necessarily mean a literal person, but some kind of long-term unified authority directing the activities of the hadal race) might actually exist. A member of the Circle persuades Ali to join the group; she is attached to an expedition funded by the Helios corporation, an unprecedentedly deep trek through a newly-discovered fissure which traverses the floor of the entire Pacific Ocean basin. During their increasingly bloody journey through the cave system, the expedition scientists are guarded by untrustworthy Helios mercenaries and guided by Ike, the Himalayan tour guide from the first chapter, who had spent a decade as a slave of the hadals before being recovered by Branch's soldiers. On the way, the expedition uncovers the decaying evidence of a once-great hadal civilization, which may correspond to lost civilizations from human folklore, such as Atlantis or Mu. Meanwhile, on the surface, a plot emerges within Helios to sterilize the sub-planet with a potent bioweapon and thereby open it to human settlement and exploitation. At the same time, the Jesuit's scholarly organization discovers that the hadals may have a mysterious method of transferring human consciousness from body to body, allowing for effective immortality for a select few; after the members of the Beowulf Circle begin to be brutally murdered one-by-one, the two storylines gradually converge."
2462,Incubus Dreams,horror," Incubus Dreams apparently takes place a few weeks after the events of Cerulean Sins. As usual, Anita must juggle several problems simultaneously. * First, in her job as an animator, Anita must respond to the request of Barbara and Steve Brown that Anita raise their dead son, Stevie Brown, a high school student murdered three years earlier, probably by an acquaintance. Anita explains that it is not possible to raise a murder victim and question them, because that kind of zombie has only one purpose (to kill the murderer), but agrees to assist the police in investigating the murder. * Second, Anita continues to wrestle with the metaphysical problems raised by her recent increase in power. She, Jean-Claude, Richard, and Damian are all experiencing unexpected increases in their magical power, with unpredictable results. * Third, Anita continues to assist Jean-Claude with vampire politics, as Jean-Claude confronts a challenge from The Dragon and her offspring, Primo and as Anita and Jean-Claude realize that the vampires in town that follow Malcolm rather than Jean-Claude have not been bound by blood oath, leaving them as essentially unrestrained predators. * Fourth, Anita's personal life becomes increasingly complex, both as a result of Anita's increasing ardeur and as a result of the personal problems of the various people involved. In particular, Nathaniel has decided that his relationship with Anita should advance to a sexual relationship, Damian continues to struggle with his role as Anita's vampire servant, and Anita's love/hate relationship with Richard remains as powerful as ever. Anita also must deal with jealousy from Jessica Arnett, a RPIT detective with a crush on Nathaniel, and with increasing distrust by various police officers as a result of her close relationship with the city's vampires and shapeshifters and as a result of her increasingly sexually-based abilities. * Fifth, Anita attempts to assist the police in solving a series of vampire serial killings, apparently focusing on area strip club workers or patrons. Unlike previous novels, although Anita resolves some of these issues by the end of the book, many remain unresolved. * With regard to the Stevie Brown murder, although Anita agrees to investigate, she is unable to make progress on the investigation during this novel, and notes in the epilogue that she intends to review Brown's personal effects with Evans soon. (Evans is a very powerful psychometrist). * With regard to Anita's metaphysical problems, she makes considerable progress. Anita learns that she can partially control the ardeur by drawing power from others' lust and by ensuring that her other desires, such as physical hunger, do not go unfulfilled. Richard realizes that a great deal of his unstable behavior in recent novels is a result of his acquiring Anita's rage through their spiritual link, and Jean-Claude begins to stabilize his own power after Anita gives him permission to feed on the lust of his club patrons. * Anita also makes progress on resolving the vampire politics issues that arise in this novel. Using her own powers and her link to Jean-Claude, she binds Primo to Jean-Claude's service, and, with her challenge defeated, The Dragon expresses interest in negotiating with Jean-Claude. Anita also accepts Wicked and Truth, two other warrior vampires, into Jean-Claude's service, greatly increasing Jean-Claude's ability to resist physical challenges. However, the issue of Malcolm's vampires remains unresolved, as both Anita and Jean-Claude believe that without a blood oath, some of the vampires of the Church of Eternal Life will eventually revert to predators. * Anita's personal life also resolves in a number of ways. She accepts Nathaniel as the fourth of her concurrent lovers, and she and Richard also agree to renew their relationship. (Although Nathaniel and Micah appear to accept or want Anita as their only lover, Anita reluctantly agrees to accept Richard's decision to date other people, and allows Jean-Claude to begin feeding his lust from others, at least spiritually). The major unresolved issues in Anita's personal life appear to be her relationship with Damian, who she attempts to offer more independence but who also wants to be one of her lovers, and her role as a law enforcement officer, which is becoming more and more difficult as she continues to identify with the ""monsters."" * Anita is unable to resolve the serial killer investigation fully. Although she and the police kill several of the lesser vampires responsible for the murders, the more powerful vampires escape to kill in another city, particularly their leader, Vittorio. Anita promises herself that she will track Vittorio and his remaining followers down. In the epilogue, Anita explains that she has bought gifts for her various lovers (except for Richard), and that she is committed to continuing her life as a vampire executioner, and to resolving the remaining open plotlines discussed above."
2463,The House of the Wolf,horror," The story, a Victorian thriller, involves Professor John Coleridge, who is a guest at Castle Homolky, situated above the tiny Hungarian village of Lugos. While staying at the castle, a huge black wolf is discovered with preternatural powers. When the beast is at last killed with silver bullets, it is found to be part man and part wolf."
2464,Veniss Underground,horror," Veniss Underground alludes in several places to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Like Orpheus, Shadrach descends into the underworld to retrieve his love, Nicola, but here from a cyborg hell, where genetic engineering and DNA splicing create fantastic and horrific creatures. Parallels also exist with Dante's Inferno. Throughout the novel the idea of heaven and hell come into play. Nick looks into the chaotic world in which he tries to find purpose through what is called living art. Nick journeys into the underworld and makes a deal with the ""devil"", also known as Quin. As the story progresses, the reader takes on the second person perspective of Nicola and is introduced to a meerkat whom Nicola names Salvador. Salvador (an assassin meerkat sent by Quin) attacks Nicola but she incapacitates him. Nick arrives at Nicola's door and chokes her till she is near death and sent to an organ bank in the underworld. Shadrach comes into play in the third person point of view and takes the initiative of finding his lost love Nicola in the underworld. He finds Salvador injured at Nicola's apartment and cuts off the meerkat's head and attaches it to a plate and renames him John the Baptist. After, with the help of Dr. Fergusen, he finds a partially mutilated Nicola in an organ bank under a pile of miscellaneous body parts guarded by a naked troll. He carries Nicola through the underground tunnels back to his childhood home and finds a creation of Quin named Candle. Candle leads Nick to the Psyche witch named Rafter. After Rafter decides to try to salvage Nicola, Shadrach takes the action of venturing deeper into the underworld to kill Quin. He finds Nick, now transformed into a piece of living art, being attacked by some in the garbage re-cycling facility. Nick takes Shadrach lower and tells him how to get to Quin by jumping off a moving train with a parachute. Nick pushes Shadrach out of the train only to be shot by Shadrach as he falls. Shadrach manages to open his chute yet he hits the ground hard. Later, he wakes by a beach and an ocean and kicks over a skull where he finds another creation of Quin's called the Gollux. The Gollux tells him the truth while John the Baptist lies, the Gollux leads Shadrach to a ray-like creature named the saylber which Shadrach rides across the ocean and into Quin's world which is actually a very large minnow named the leviathan. He kills Quin and the remote and the whole place explodes. Shadrach climbs up the cliffs back to the subway level. Shadrach retrieves Nicola and takes her to the surface where they are both on a bridge staring at the city which is called Veniss."
2465,Lisey's Story,horror," Lisey's Story is the story of Lisey Landon, the widow of a famous and wildly successful novelist, Scott Landon. The book tells two stories—Lisey's story in the present, and the story of her dead husband's life, as remembered by Lisey during the course of the novel. It has been two years since her husband's death, and Lisey is in the process of cleaning out her dead husband's writing area. A series of events occurs that causes Lisey to begin facing certain realities about her husband that she had repressed and forgotten. As Lisey is stalked, terrorized, and then mutilated by an insane fan of her husband's, Lisey begins recalling her husband's past—how he came from a family with a history of horrible mental illness that manifested as either an uncontrollable homicidal mania or as a deep catatonia, how he had a special gift, an ability to transport himself to another world, called by Scott Landon ""Boo'ya Moon"", how Scott Landon's brother was murdered by his father when his brother manifested an incurable insanity, and finally how Scott Landon murdered his father to save his father from the madness that had finally taken him over. As the novel progresses, we see the complexity of Lisey's marriage to Scott, and their deep and abiding love for each other. The novel takes place over a very short period of time—a matter of days—but the real story is told in Lisey's remembrances of her husband, her ability to harness his special power to save herself (and her sister), and finally to find the gift that her dead husband had left for her in Boo'ya Moon—a story just for Lisey. Lisey's story."
2466,Stranger to the Sun,horror," Wesley opens a strange package that arrives by special delivery, which instantly sends him into a slumber. It seems likely he is the victim of a spell. Angel leaves with Gunn to investigate. They discover that other people who might be able to assist, such as magick-shop owners, have also fallen victim exactly like Wesley. Meanwhile Cordy is struggling to research without Wes available. She soon begins to uncover a plot to plunge Earth into eternal darkness, so that vampires might rule over humans. Wesley is in the midst of a horrifying nightmare. If he cannot awaken, humankind may be in for a struggle."
2467,Death Match: A Novel,horror," Every once in a rare while, the most perfect of 'perfect' matches ('supercouples, of 100% compatibility) is located. Then tragedy suddenly strikes. One of the ""supercouples"" is found dead in their Arizona home, an ""unquestionable"" double suicide. Child's analysis of the topic proves a useful tool to opine on the topics of psychology, relationships, cutting-edge computer technology and artificial intelligence."
2468,Donovan's Brain,horror," The novel is written in the form of diary entries by Dr. Patrick Cory, a middle-aged physician whose experiments at keeping a brain alive are subsidized by Cory's wealthy wife. Under investigation for tax evasion and criminal financial activities, millionaire megalomaniac W.H. Donovan crashes his private plane in the desert near the home of Dr. Cory. The physician is unable to save Donovan's life, but removes his brain on the chance that it might survive, placing the gray matter in an electrically charged, oxygenated saline solution within a glass tank. The brainwaves indicate that thought&mdash;and life&mdash;continue. Cory makes several futile attempts to communicate with it. Finally, one night Cory receives unconscious commands, jotting down a list of names in a handwriting not his own—it is Donovan's. Cory successfully attempts telepathic contact with Donovan's brain, much to the concern of Cory's occasional assistant, Dr. Schratt, an elderly alcoholic. Gradually, the malignant intelligence takes over Cory's personality, leaving him in an amnesiac fugue state when he awakes. The brain uses Cory to do his bidding, signing checks in Donovan's name, and continuing the magnate's illicit financial schemes. Cory becomes increasingly like the paranoid Donovan himself, his physique and manner morphing into the limping image of the departed criminal. Donovan's bidding culminates in an attempt to have Cory kill a young girl who stands in the way of his plans. Realizing he will soon have no control over his own body and mind, Cory devises a plan to destroy the brain during its quiescent period. Cory resists the brain's hypnotic power by repeating the rhyme ""He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts."" With Dr. Schratt's help, he destroys the housing tank with an ax and leaves the brain of Donovan to die, thus ending his reign of madness."
2469,Black Creek Crossing,horror," Angel Sullivan has always been the outcast, suffering the taunts of cruel schoolmates and the wild fits of an alcoholic father. Things for Angel's family have hit rock bottom until a call from her aunt has them moving to a new town and making a fresh start. In the town of Roundtree, Massachusetts a beautiful home awaits, a home that is selling at a steal of a price, there is only one problem...the house at Black Creek Crossing holds a murderous secret. Seth Baker lives in Roundtree and, much the same as Angel, he too is the outcast of his schoolmates, as well the victim of a psychically abusive father. Seth does his best to deal with his father, but finds sanctuary in photograph taking, until he meets Angel. As Seth and Angel become better friends, Seth tells her of the deadly legacy surrounding her home and the rumors of supernatural possession that still dwells there. Angel, desperate for the truth about Black Creek Crossing, uncovers a centuries-old horror that lies within her home's walls. Now, that Angel and Seth have uncovered the dark secrets buried in Roundtree, they find themselves trapped in a maelstrom of desire and violence that will erupt in unspeakable tragedy. `Black Creek Crossing' is a chilling page-turner that begs to be read in one sitting. From the shocking opening to the explosive climax the plot speeds along with unstoppable force. Vivid gothic descriptions and likable characters combined with creepy scares will hold readers breathless until the final page has been turned."
2470,The Historian,horror," The Historian interweaves the history and folklore of Vlad Ţepeş, a 15th-century prince of Wallachia known as ""Vlad the Impaler"", and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula together with the story of Paul, a professor; his 16-year-old daughter; and their quest for Vlad's tomb. The novel ties together three separate narratives using letters and oral accounts: that of Paul's mentor in the 1930s, that of Paul in the 1950s, and that of the narrator herself in the 1970s. The tale is told primarily from the perspective of Paul's daughter, who is never named. Part I opens in 1972 Amsterdam. The narrator finds an old vellum-bound book with a woodcut of a dragon in the center associated with Dracula. When she asks her father Paul about it, he tells her how he found the handmade book in his study carrel when he was a graduate student in the 1950s. Paul took the book to his mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, and was shocked to find that Rossi had found a similar handmade book when he was a graduate student in the 1930s. As a result, Rossi researched Ţepeş, the Dracula myth surrounding him, and the mysterious book. Rossi traveled as far as Istanbul; however, the appearance of curious characters and unexplained events caused him to drop his investigation and return to his graduate work. Rossi gives Paul his research notes and informs him that he believes Dracula is still alive. The bulk of the novel focuses on the 1950s timeline, which follows Paul's adventures. After meeting with Paul, Rossi disappears; smears of blood on his desk and the ceiling of his office are the only traces that remain. Certain that something unfortunate has befallen his advisor, Paul begins to investigate Dracula. While in the university library he meets a young, dark-haired woman reading a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. She is Helen Rossi, the daughter of Bartholomew Rossi, and she has become an expert on Dracula. Paul attempts to convince her that one of the librarians is trying to prevent their research into Dracula, but she is unpersuaded. Later, the librarian attacks and bites Helen. Paul intervenes and overpowers him, but he wriggles free. The librarian is then run over by a car in front of the library and apparently killed. Upon hearing her father's story, the narrator becomes interested in the mystery and begins researching Dracula as she and her father travel across Europe during the 1970s. Although he eventually sends her home, she does not remain there. After finding letters addressed to her that reveal he has left on a quest to find her mother (previously believed to be dead), she sets out to find him. As is slowly made clear in the novel, Helen is the narrator's mother. The letters continue the story her father has been telling her. The narrator decides to travel to a monastery where she believes her father might be. Part II begins as the narrator reads descriptions of her father and Helen's travels through Eastern Europe during the 1950s. While on their travels, Helen and Paul conclude that Rossi might have been taken by Dracula to his tomb. They travel to Istanbul to find the archives of Sultan Mehmed&nbsp;II, which Paul believes contain information regarding the location of the tomb. They fortuitously meet Professor Turgut Bora from Istanbul University, who has also discovered a book similar to Paul's and Rossi's. He has access to Mehmed's archive, and together they unearth several important documents. They also see the librarian who was supposedly killed in the United States&nbsp;– he has survived because he is a vampire and he has continued following Helen and Paul. Helen shoots the vampire librarian but misses his heart and consequently, he does not die. From Istanbul, Paul and Helen travel to Budapest, Hungary, to further investigate the location of Dracula's tomb and to meet with Helen's mother, who they believe may have knowledge of Rossi&nbsp;– the two had met during his travels to Romania in the 1930s. For the first time Helen hears of her mother and Rossi's torrid love affair. Paul and Helen learn much, for example that Helen's mother, and therefore Helen herself and the narrator, are descendants of Vlad Ţepeş. Part III begins with a revelation by Turgut Bora that leads the search for Dracula's tomb to Bulgaria. He also reveals that he is part of an organization formed by Sultan Mehmed&nbsp;II from the elite of the Janissaries to fight the Order of the Dragon, an evil consortium later associated with Dracula. In Bulgaria, Helen and Paul seek the assistance of a scholar named Anton Stoichev. Through information gained from Stoichev, Helen and Paul discover that Dracula is most likely buried in the Bulgarian monastery of Sveti Georgi. After many difficulties Paul and Helen discover the whereabouts of Sveti Georgi. Upon reaching the monastery they find Rossi's interred body in the crypt and are forced to drive a silver dagger through his heart to prevent his full transformation into a vampire. Before he dies, he reveals that Dracula is a scholar and has a secret library. Rossi has written an account of his imprisonment in this library and hidden it there. Paul and Helen are pursued to the monastery by political officials and by the vampire librarian&nbsp;– all of them are seeking Dracula's tomb, but it is empty when they arrive. Paul and Helen move to the United States, marry, and Helen gives birth to the narrator. However, she becomes depressed a few months afterwards. She later confesses that she feared the taint of the vampiric bite that she acquired earlier would infect her child. The family travels to Europe in an attempt to cheer her up. When they visit the monastery Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, Helen feels Dracula's presence and is compelled to jump off a cliff. Landing on grass, she survives and decides to hunt him down and kill him in order to rid herself of his threat and her fears. When the narrator arrives at Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, she finds her father. Individuals mentioned throughout the 1970s timeline converge in a final attempt to defeat Dracula. He is seemingly killed by a silver bullet fired into his heart by Helen. In the epilogue, which takes place in 2008, the narrator attends a conference of medievalists in Philadelphia, and stops at a library with an extensive collection of material related to Dracula. She accidentally leaves her notes and the attendant rushes out and returns them to her, as well as a book with a dragon printed in the center, revealing that either Dracula is still alive or one of his minions is imitating the master."
2471,The Lake of Souls,horror," The Lake of Souls takes place right after Killers of the Dawn. Darren cannot cry. He feels numb, but with the help of the bearded Lady, Truska, he eventually does so. Mr. Tiny then appears and tells Harkat that if he wants his nightmares (which have returned) to stop, he must walk through a portal that Mr. Tiny makes. Harkat refuses to let Darren go with him. Debbie Hemlock and Police Chief Alice Burgess want to start an army to combat the Vampets, but have to get the approval of the Vampire Princes first, so they are only mentioned briefly. Darren later decides that he should go with Harkat, much to Harkat's dismay. Darren and Harkat then walk through the mysterious portal, and are thrown into a strange, gray world. Darren and Harkat are forced to complete many diffucult tasks. They first hunt down a black panther and collect a map inside it. Darren finds that the panther's teeth have been marked with letters. They start rearranging the teeth, with Harkat using up all the teeth to get SLAM DARK HUT, and then again to find it reads HARKAT MULDS. Harkat dismisses it as an utter waste of time, as Mr. Tiny loves to meddle with time. Harkat keeps the teeth, saying that they might be useful as they are sharp. Next they have to steal 'gelatinous globes' from the world's biggest toad. They arrive to see the toad standing in the middle of a lake surrounded by crocodiles. Darren and Harkat zip through the lake, grab a few globes, then run off. Darren and Harkat eventually meet up with Lady Evanna. Her appearance is completely unexpected, and she does not wish to tell the two how or why she is there. She helps them get across the lake where they meet a man who calls himself Spits Abrams. Spits is a former pirate and heavy drinker, and although Darren and Harkat do not trust him very much, they decide that Mr. Tiny put him in that world for a reason, and decide to take him with them. They soon reach a small area filled with 'people' called Kulashkas (since they are chanting ""kulashka"" more than any other word.) They are required to steal vials of 'holy liquid'. Darren and Harkat enter the village, Spits being afraid, to find the 'holy liquid' to be the venom from the fangs of a huge creature called the Grotesque. The Grotesque is apparently the Kulashkas' god. Darren and Harkat rush to two vials containing the venom and are attacked by the Grotesque. Harkat raises the vial as the Grotesque attempts to kill him, and the Grotesque backs off. The Kulashkas arrive, pointing spears at Darren and Harkat, trying to drive them back. They are driven closer to the Grotesque and Darren drives them back with his vial. The chief of the Kulashkas starts trying to speak to them in a non-understandable language, with Darren saying that he can't understand them. The chief starts gesturing that they are free to leave, but must return the vials to the altar which carried them. Darren starts to do so, but a drunken Spits arrives,and cuts the kulashkas with his knife as Darren throws one vial at the Grotesque, which explodes, hurting the Grotesque and those nearby it, revealing the liquid to be highly explosive. Harkat sees floorboards underneath them and starts stomping on them. Darren joins in, with Spits saying, ""What in the devil's name are ye..."" before crashing through the floorboards. They end up in a tunnel, following it until they reach a room. There is a fridge, which Spits asks about, as he did not have fridges in his time. There are also postcards, signed by Mr. Tiny. Harkat is bothered by the postcards, but does not explain why. They then leave the room, Spits taking a few extra bottles of whiskey. They soon reach the Lake. It is seen to be covered with dragons and Darren and Harkat figure out that they should make bombs, filling the 'gelatinous globes' with the Grotesque venom and throwing it at the dragons. They finally get up close to the Lake and Spits says that when Mr. Tiny brought him here, he told him that there was a spell on the Lake forbidding dragons to be closer than eight metres to the Lake unless a living person fell into the Lake. Then Spits quotes on how many people are in the Lake of Souls. He starts talking about how the crew on the Prince o' Pariah, the ship he used to serve, loved his meals, revealing that he is a cannibal. Spits says that he plans to stay by the Lake of Souls, feeding off the people who lived there. He is persistently told not to feed on the souls and is accidentally knocked away from the eight metre zone. A dragon soon breathes fire at him and he is seen burning, running around not able to see, and then falls into the lake, breaking the spell. While being ruthlessly attacked by a dragon, Harkat pulls up his former identity, revealed to be Kurda Smahlt. The world freezes and Mr. Tiny appears to congratulate him, explaining that Harkat was created to help protect Darren for Mr. Tiny's own reasons, Mr. Tiny selecting Kurda to become Harkat because he wanted someone who was Darren's friend while he was alive to give the resulting Little Person that extra edge. He also tells them, since Kurda and Harkat are of the same soul, only one could survive. It is decided that Harkat will remain alive, since Harkat would then possess the memories of both him and Kurda while Kurda remaining would remove Harkat's memories. Back at the Cirque du Freak, Harkat removes the panther's teeth and starts juggling the letters around, and just when he reaches HARKAT, he stops, apparently shocked, then rearranges it to find it reads KURDA SMAHLT. Darren then realizes that Harkat's name is an anagram and that the answer was in front of them all along, saying that if they spent more time on the teeth they might not have had to go through all the tasks. Harkat also takes out the postcards, pointing the time and date it was sent, noting that it was all dated twelve, twenty, thirty, and fifty years later. Harkat then reveals his theory: that the barren land they had visited was the future. It is also told by Lady Evanna that no matter who wins the War of the Scars, either Darren or Steve would become the Lord of the Shadows who is a ruthless ruler of the night."
2472,Obsidian Butterfly,horror," In Obsidian Butterfly, Anita travels to New Mexico to repay the favor that she promised Edward at the end of The Killing Dance. Edward wants Anita to assist in a set of apparently supernatural attacks that have left numerous victims dead, and has skinned alive many survivors. In the course of the investigation, Anita learns more about Edward's personal life than she ever has before. She meets Donna, Edward's fiancee (in his civilian identity of legal bounty hunter ""Ted Forrester"") and Donna's children, Peter and Becca. She and Edward also come into conflict with a number of mercenaries who work for Edward's former boss, ""Van Cleef,"" allowing Anita to learn a few clues about Edward's former life. Anita also comes into contact with a number of possible suspects and sources for information: the Aztec vampire and purported goddess Itzpapalotl; her priest and human servant Pinotl; local Ulfric, Roland, and Roland's necromancer/vargamor and local tough guy Nicky Baco. Ultimately, Anita learns that a second Aztec vampire/god, Red Woman's Husband, is awakening in New Mexico. After sleeping for centuries, Red Woman's Husband began awakening when Riker, (Harold's boss) raided his tomb, stealing several jade idols. In order to finish his awakening, Red Woman's Husband's priest and his animal servant have been skinning and killing the people who bought the idols stolen from his tomb, animating the skinned corpses as servants. Riker takes Becca and Peter hostage in an attempt to force Anita to protect him from Red Woman's Husband, but Anita, Edward, and Edward's associates Bernardo and Olaf rescue Edward's family and kill everyone involved with their kidnapping. Anita is captured by Red Woman's Husband, who plans to consume her life energy to complete his awakening, but with Itzpapalotl's help, she is able to kill the vampire instead. Realizing that Edward loves his soon-to-be family in some way, Anita leaves them without interfering and returns to St. Louis to begin work on her own romantic relationships."
2473,Sheep,horror," A young family moves to rural Wales to renovate a farmhouse and recover from the drowning death of their daughter, Ruthie. While there, the family witnesses a series of terrible mutilations of sheep by an unknown perpetrator."
2474,After Image,horror," Sunnydale Drive-In reopens with a dusk-to-dawn festival of classic B movies. Xander has free tickets after working there as a gopher for the construction crew, but as Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia show little interest, he ends up going with Jonathan. Jonathan, like many of the patrons of the drive-in, falls asleep during the night and cannot be re-awakened. Meanwhile Buffy and Angel fight off attacks from a wolf-man and a gang of chain-wielding bikers who seem solid one minute and fade into thin air the next. Other vanishing figures are seen around town, leading Giles and Willow to research ectoplasm. Xander recognizes a picture in one of Giles' old books as the man behind the re-opening of the drive-in: Mr Balsamo, otherwise known as the eighteenth-century occultist Cagliostro. When Giles is kidnapped, Buffy, Angel and Willow head to the drive-in to confront the villain, while Xander and Cordelia stay at the hospital with his victims."
2475,A Lick of Frost,horror," A Lick of Frost begins one month after the events of Mistral's Kiss. The opening chapters show Merry and her guards Rhys, Galen, Doyle, Frost, and Abeloec in a conference room, being questioned about the charges of rape against Rhys, Galen, and Abeloec. King Taranis has brought the charges on behalf of the woman allegedly raped by the aforementioned fey. The meeting ends badly, with Taranis losing what little control he had on his sanity, and one of the officers of Taranis' guard, Sir Hugh, telling Merry that he is going to force a vote among the nobles of the Seelie court to choose a new king, and he wants Merry to take Taranis' place. When Merry and her guards get home after taking a trip to the hospital (as Doyle and Abe got badly hurt from Taranis' attack), they call Aunt Andais to tell her of all that has happened- specifically the offer to rule the Seelie Court. Andais believes Merry already agreed to rule and abuses one of her guards (Crystall) in a sadistic rage. Eventually, Merry and her men convince Andais otherwise, but she still continues to abuse the guard in reaction to many of them leaving to join Merry. The series of mirror-calls end, and Merry finalises the coming together of her, Ash, and Holly for later that night. Night comes and Holly and Ash arrive, along with all of the Red Caps in tow. Jonty, a Red Cap that helped Merry fight in Mistral's Kiss, sheds a tear as Merry tells him she would bring the Red Caps into their power. She catches the tear on her finger and consumes it. This brings on the remaking of Maeve Reed's house into a sithen. Those of faerie who stand in that room with no faerie dog to keep them grounded, crumple to the floor. Some of the crumpled men are revived by one of the dogs, but Frost stays down. The creation of the sithen (faerie land) allows the ring of fertility on her finger to flare to life and Merry realises that she is pregnant with twins. Each twin has three fathers like in the story of Ceridwen. A phantom image of Merry's children appear by their respective fathers, Rhys, Frost, Galen, Doyle, Mistral, and Sholto. There is also a dimmer phantom image of a 3rd child (that has the potential to be born after the twins). Frost turns out to be the sacrificial king for the creation of the new sithen. Merry prays for him not to die, and he turns into a white stag and runs off. Merry runs to one of the gardens of her sithen to be alone and grieve the loss of Frost. While out there, Taranis (using illusion to appear as one of her guards) knocks her out and takes her to his bedroom back at the Seelie Court. It is assumed that he rapes her, and then believes he fathers her children. Hugh, some others at the Seelie Court, and Doyle (in dog form) sneak her out of the bedroom and into a press conference where she tells the press that Taranis made the Seelie woman (Lady Catarin) believe that it was Rhys, Galen, and Abe who raped her. However, it was all just an illusion of Taranis' making and the woman was in fact raped by other Seelie nobles working with him. Merry also tells them that she is pregnant, and that Taranis kidnapped and raped her. The book ends with Merry in an ambulance with Doyle, continuing to mourn Frost and her current situation. She is on her way to the hospital to treat the concussion she received from Taranis and to take a rape test."
2476,Raven's Gate,horror," Written by: Kalvin Meyer Matt Freeman is a fourteen year old boy who lives in Ipswich with his aunt, Gwenda Davis, who turns out to be an antagonist in Evil Star . He lives with her because his parents died in a car crash when he was eight years old. While living with his aunt, he breaks into a warehouse filled with electronic equipment with his friend, Kelvin Johnson. After they get caught, Matt is sent to Yorkshire on the L.E.A.F. (Liberty and Education Achieved through Fostering) Project, which involves sending troubled children into the countryside to get away from city temptations. Matt's foster parent is a woman named Jayne Deverill, who lives on a farm with a strange farmhand named Noah, who doesn't talk much. When Matt goes down to the nearby village of Lesser Malling on an errand for Mrs. Deverill he receives a warning from a strange man. The man warns him to get away from Lesser Malling before it is too late. So Matt tries to escape, and while trying to find some money he goes into Mrs. Deverill's bedroom and finds a copy of the police report detailing his parents' deaths and his clairvoyant powers. Matt tries to escape Hive Hall by stealing the bike of Mrs. Deverill's missing husband. He tries to ride away, but finds it impossible to escape, because which ever way he goes, he always ends up back at the same intersection in the forest he started at. He hears strange whispers and sees a light in the trees. After a while, He discovers Omega One, an abandoned nuclear power station, in the woods and meets the man from Lesser Malling again. The man introduces himself as Tom Burgess, gives Matt a charm that prevents him from going in circles like before, and tells Matt to meet him at his house. Matt visits his house the next day and finds Tom Burgess murdered, with the words ""Raven's Gate"" painted on the wall in green. Matt runs away as fast as possible, then finds the police and tells them what he saw. They go back to the house where a woman named Miss Creevy says that Tom Burgess has gone to tend to his sheep and visit someone far away. He shows the police officers the scene where he saw Tom Burgess's body, but finds nothing. The words painted on the wall have been painted over. To get information about Raven's Gate, he finds a book by someone called Elizabeth Ashwood, but the chapter on Raven's Gate is ripped out. When he searches on the Internet, an instant-mail box appears, and a man called Professor Sanjay Dravid talks to him, asking Matt who he is. Matt tells him his name, then the pop-up window disappears. The librarian tells Matt to go to the Greater Malling Gazette to find articles on Raven's Gate, and there he meets Richard Cole, a young journalist working there. Matt tells his story to him, but Cole doesn't believe him. And oddly, when he leaves the Gazette he finds Mrs. Deverill waiting for him with Noah. They forcefully take Matt back to Hive Hall. Later that night, Matt wakes up to see another light coming from Omega One, even though he found out from the gazette that it hadn't been used in 20 years. Matt knows something is going on and explores the woods. Near the power station he finds an old witchcraft ceremony going on with all the inhabitants of Lesser Malling involved. The power station lights are coming on and men are carrying materials into the building. Matt is noticed and Mrs Deverill summons some gruesome hounds from a fire to kill Matt. While Matt is being chased, he accidentally falls into a bog and begins to sink. Richard Cole arrives and rescues him, as Matt had used his power to call for help. The dogs arrive and Richard kills them by getting a can of gasoline stuffed with a handkerchief, lights it on fire, then throws it at the dogs setting them on fire. They then go back to Richard's house in York. Richard now believes Matt's story because he remembers Omega One and says there were sections of the story he ""couldn't get out of his head"". Since Matt suspects that there is something odd about Omega One, they meet with the engineer who designed and built it, Sir Michael Marsh, but find out nothing except for how a nuclear power plant works. Matt and Richard then go to visit Elizabeth Ashwood, the author of the book in the library. Elizabeth Ashwood is revealed to have died, but her daughter Susan is there. She advises them to go meet Professor Sanjay Dravid in London after Matt demands to know about Raven's Gate. She also tells them that she and Dravid are part of an organization known as the Nexus. Richard and Matt travel to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Dravid tells Matt about the Old Ones. They were dark creatures who survived on human misery many years ago, and once wanted to rule the world, but were transported to another dimension by five children with supernatural powers. The Five, or the Gatekeepers, as they are also known, then built Raven's Gate to hold the evil creatures away. According to Dravid, Mrs Deverill and the villagers of Lesser Malling are part of a group of witches who seek the return of the Old Ones by opening Raven's Gate using witchcraft. Dravid tells Matt that he is a part of one of the five children who defeated the Old Ones, and has inherited their powers while Mrs Deverill and the citizens of Lesser Malling, who are all descendants of witches and warlocks, want to sacrifice him on the night of Roodmas, the day black magic is most powerful. Richard doesn't believe Dravid and begins to leave with Matt. But as Professor Dravid returns to his office to contact the Nexus and get his keys, he is attacked and walks out of his office with a cut in his neck and dies. Richard quickly takes his keys, but then is also attacked by dinosaur skeletons in the museum and at that moment dozens of skeleton dinosaurs turn to life and attempt to kill Matt and Richard. Richard is trapped by a diplodocus's rib cage and then crushed by a girder. Matt is recaptured by Mrs Deverill, who animated the dinosaurs to kill them. Matt wakes in the barn at Hive Hall, and to escape he slowly removes the floorboards in his room with a makeshift chisel. When Noah enters the room to take Matt to Mrs. Deverill, he falls through the hole made by Matt, which was covered by a rug, and dies because he fell on his sickle. Matt runs away to the road, and a car comes towards him. It is the nuclear scientist who built Omega One, Sir Michael Marsh. But then Matt realises that Sir Michael is a traitor, working with the inhabitants of Lesser Malling, and Sir Michael explains that he was the one who bought the power station's uranium in the first place. Matt is taken inside Omega One, and realizes that it was built where Raven's Gate once stood. Richard Cole survived the ordeal at the museum and has been recaptured by the witches. They are taken to the inner sanctum, where Matt and the villagers are held in a magical protective circle, but Richard is left outside it to die in the heat. Sir Michael Marsh reveals that he needs Matt's blood to complete the black magic ritual that will open Raven's Gate. Marsh is about to stab the knife into Matt when Matt focuses on his powers and surprisingly stops the knife. He defeats Marsh and frees himself and Richard. They escape to the lower levels of the power station but are followed by Mrs Deverill. She knocks out Richard and is about to kill Matt when Richard recovers and shoves Deverill into a pool of radioactive acid. Then they escape from Omega One by jumping into an underground river under the building. Back in the inner sanctum, the station's levels are at critical mass. The villagers panic and run out of the protective circle, killing them all and leaving Sir Michael Marsh alone. Marsh then realises there is a tiny drop of Matt's blood on the knife and stabs down with the knife, causing Raven's Gate to break and explode open. The King of the Old Ones climbs out of the portal and crushes Sir Michael to death. The power station then overloads and explodes, but all the heat and radiation is sucked into the gate, taking the Old Ones with it. The portal and the Gate are sealed and the Old Ones are once again trapped in their separate dimension. Matt ends up living with Richard in York. They get a visit from Fabian, a member of The Nexus, who has come to talk to him about a second gate in Peru. Richard doesn't want to go through all this again, but Matt explains he has no choice because he is a Gatekeeper and, as the Old Ones will break out again, it is his destiny to stop them."
2477,Auriol,horror," Prologue (1599): Auriol Darcy is surprised attempting to remove the heads of two traitors from the Southwark Gateway of Old London Bridge. He is injured by the warder, Baldred, and carried to the house of Dr Lamb, an alchemist and Auriol Darcy's grandfather, who is assisted by his faithful dwarf Flapdragon. Lamb, on the point of discovering the elixir of life, has a seizure and dies as his ungrateful grandson consumes the draught. Book the first 'Ebba' (1830): Two varmints, Tinker and Sandman, waylay a gentleman in a fantastical ruined house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road in London, but they are surprised and he is carried unconscious to the house of Mr Thorneycroft, a scrap-iron dealer. While he convalesces and falls in love with Ebba, the iron-dealer's daughter, Tinker and Sandman and their associate Ginger (a 'dog-fancier' who steals dogs and resells them) discover in the gentleman's pocket-book the private diary of a man who has lived for over two hundred years, and has committed nameless crimes. Auriol (for it is he) seeks to dissuade Ebba from her love, for he bears an awful doom. A tall sinister stranger has Auriol in his power, and employs a dwarf (who is Flapdragon) to recover the pocket-book. The stranger confronts Auriol and informs his that Ebba must be surrendered to him according to their contract. Auriol refuses, but Ebba is snatched from him, and he is imprisoned, during a nocturnal assignation at a picturesque ruin near Millbank Street. Tinker, Sandman and Ginger offer their services to Mr Thorneycroft to attempt her rescue. Ebba is conveyed to a mysterious darkened chamber where the stranger demands that she sign a scroll surrendering herself body and soul to him. She calls to heaven for protection: in the darkness a tomb is revealed and opened by menacing cowled figures, and Auriol is brought forth. Ebba hurls herself into the tomb to precede him and save him, but then re-emerges silent and cowled to sign the scroll. Intermean (1800): Cyprian Rougemont visits a deserted mansion at Stepney Green, where he finds the portrait of his ancestor (of the same name), a Rosicrucian brother of the 16th century, one of the Illuminati. Satan has appeared to him in a dream and promised him an ancestral treasure, the price for which is his own soul, or that of Auriol Darcy. Cyprian strikes the portrait and a plaque falls away, revealing the access to the ancestral tomb. There in a seven-sided vault lit by the ever-burning lamp and painted with kabbalistic symbols he finds the uncorrupt body with a book of mysteries, a vial of infernal potion, and a series of chests filled with gold, silver and jewels. With use of the potion, he lures Auriol into a compact whereby he is given a magnificent mansion in St James's Square and £120,000, in exchange for a female victim whenever Rougemont requires one from him. Thus Auriol can win the woman he loves, Elizabeth Talbot; but Rougemont, once the contract is signed, demands Elizabeth Talbot as his first victim, in a week's time. Auriol seeks to defy him and to marry her within the week, but he is thwarted and Elizabeth is abducted on the seventh night. Book the Second, 'Cyprian Rougemont' (1830): Thorneycroft, Sandman and Tinker (with Ginger) continue their pursuit led by another, who is the brother of Rougemont's second victim, Clara Paston. They enter a mysterious mansion, and becoming trapped in a chamber and locked into enchanted or mechanically-contrived chairs three of them are muffled by bell-masks which descend from the ceiling, and then plunged through traps in the floor. Flapdragon appears and attempts to help them find Ebba, while Paston, Ginger and Thorneycroft find Rougemont and confront him with pistols, but Rougemont is impervious to the bullets. Thorneycroft, Tinker and Sandman are trapped in a pit over which an iron roof closes by a giant mechanical contrivance, and Ebba is never found again. Auriol, meanwhile, awakes to find himself in Elizabethan costume, chained in a vaulted dungeon. The voice of Rougemont addresses him, telling him that he has been mad, but that he has given him a potion to heal him, and is his keeper. James I is now the King of England. Old Dr Lamb is still living, and his dwarf Flapdragon, and Auriol is taken to him, where they begin to hope that Auriol's cure has been effected. He becomes convinced that he has lived centuries in a few nights and has awakened from a delusion... but even in the last sentence, addressing Dr Lamb, the author relates what he says to his supposed grandsire."
2478,The Suicide King,horror," A number of student suicides has been taking place at Sunnydale High, shaking the community. Then the new grief counselor ends up killing himself, the Scoobies suspect that there is something supernatural to blame. Soon one of them shows suicidal signs and Buffy must race against time to defeat the ancient 'Suicide King'."
2479,Lullaby,horror," Lullaby is the story of Carl Streator, a newspaper reporter who has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome, from which his own child had died. Streator discovers that his wife and child had died immediately after he read them a ""culling song"", or African chant, from a book entitled Poems and Rhymes Around the World. As Streator learns, the culling song has the power to kill anyone it is spoken to. Because of the stress of his life, it became unusually powerful, allowing him to kill by only thinking the poem. During his investigations into other SIDS cases for his article, he finds that a copy of the book was at the scene of each death. In every case, the book was open to a page that contained the ""culling song"". Streator unintentionally memorizes the deadly poem and he semi-voluntarily becomes a serial killer (killing, for example, annoying radio hosts and people who elbow into an elevator when he is late for work). He then turns to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who has also found the culling song in the same book and knows of its destructive power. While she is unable to help him stop using the culling song, she is willing to help him stop anyone else from being able to use it again. The two of them decide to go on a road trip across the country to find all remaining copies of the book and remove and destroy the page containing the song. They are joined by Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, and Mona's boyfriend, an eco-terrorist named Oyster. Streator now must not only deal with the dangers of the culling song, but with the risk of it falling into the hands of Oyster, who may want to use it for sinister purposes. In addition to tracking down and destroying any copy of Poems and Rhymes Around the World, the foursome hope to find a ""grimoire"", a hypothesized spellbook that is the source of the culling spell. Streator wants to destroy it while the others in his group want to learn what other spells it contains—partly in the hope that there is a spell to resurrect the dead. Mona eventually figures out that the datebook Helen had been carrying throughout the trip is the grimoire they had been looking for, written in invisible ink. Helen had acquired it years earlier in the estate of the publisher of Poems and Rhymes Around the World whom she had killed with the culling spell. In the end, the grimoire is used and misused until Helen's body ends up dead with her mind in a police sergeant's body. This connection is made in the final chapters and concludes with the present; Streator and Helen (in the police sergeant's body) are together, searching for Mona and Oyster who have the entirety of the grimoire with the exception of the ""culling song""."
2480,Merrick,horror," We again meet Louis, Lestat, and David. They are followed by the beautiful witch Merrick Mayfair, an offshoot of the Mayfair clan, with Julien Mayfair as one of her ancestors. She knew David when he was a mortal man working as a member of the Talamasca and it is through David that Louis seeks Merrick's help in resurrecting the spirit of Claudia. This novel is a major turning point for Louis, after talking with the spirit of Claudia, called upon by Merrick, and receiving harsh words from the spirit that only confirm what the diary found in the French Quarter flat, the one Louis, Lestat, and Claudia once shared, by Jesse as narrated in Queen of the Damned (the diary was kept in the vaults of Talamasca and retrieved by Merrick), he attempts to commit suicide by allowing himself to bake in the sun, but he doesn't burn completely. The other vampires, including Merrick, David and Lestat, find him and restore him by showering him with their preternatural blood. Most of the novel is a rather long flashback detailing David and Merrick's adventures. Readers meet Merrick's malevolent sister, Honey Isabella or Honey in the Sunshine; Merrick's mother, Cold Sandra; and the Great Nananne, a powerful witch whose very presence is enough to frighten and instill respect in Talbot. One notable adventure involves a journey to Central America, which Merrick is compelled to undertake by dreams of Oncle Vervain (or so she thinks). Merrick and David find the cave where Matthew had contracted a fatal disease. David is surprised at the malevolence of the spirits in the cave and conjectures that they are protecting some great treasure. Merrick leaps forward and finds the treasure: a beautiful jade mask. By looking through this mask, one can see ethereal spirits as if they were corporeal. The two Talamascans see a mysterious spirit who resembles a priest. David then falls deathly sick, though Merrick does not. The two escape the treacherous cave, with David growing weaker by the moment; he is shuffled from hospital to hospital and is eventually cured of the disease. At the very end of the book, Merrick reveals her grand scheme. It was she who, from the very beginning, had used her potent magic to draw David and Louis inexorably towards her so that she would receive the Dark Gift of vampirism. Because Lestat (along with Louis) has given Merrick their blood, the Talamasca Elders threaten to wage war on the vampires. David Talbot tries to placate them with a final letter, warning that Lestat's enmity is more than the Watcher society could handle. He writes, ""You have made yourselves an interesting adversary to one who loves challenges, and it will require all of my considerable influence to protect you individually and collectively from the avid lust you have so foolishly aroused."" This novel builds upon a statement by David in Pandora that vampire powers have recently evolved to include the psychic powers of the human from which they were created. Previously, it was stated that a witch's powers are lost upon his or her transformation into a vampire (stemming from Maharet's recounting of her and her sister's history in Queen of the Damned, wherein she states that while they can no longer see the spirits, they do sometimes still see ghosts). However, Merrick's human supernatural powers remain intact in her vampire form. de:Merrick oder die Schuld des Vampirs es:Merrick (novela) fr:Merrick (roman) it:Merrick la strega nl:De Mayfair Heks pl:Merrick (powieść) pt:Merrick (livro) ru:Меррик (роман)"
2481,Midnight's Lair,horror," The novel concerns a group of tourists who become trapped in an underground cavern after a fire destroys the exits. Darcy, one of the tour guides, takes a small group to try to escape by breaking into a portion of the cave that had been walled up years before. But when they attempt to breach the wall they accidentally release a family of cannibalistic savages that has been secretly living in the cave for over half a century."
2482,The Turn of the Screw,horror," An unnamed narrator listens to a male friend reading a manuscript written by a former governess whom the friend claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the death of their parents. He lives mainly in London and is not interested in raising the children himself. The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school, while his younger sister, Flora, is living at a country estate in Essex. She is currently being cared for by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. The governess's new employer, the uncle of Miles and Flora, gives her full charge of the children and explicitly states that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to her new employer's country house and begins her duties. Miles soon returns from school for the summer just after a letter arrives from the headmaster stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears that there is some horrid secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the adorable young boy to want to press the issue. Soon thereafter, the governess begins to see around the grounds of the estate the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. These figures come and go at will without ever being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that her predecessor, Miss Jessel, and another employee, Peter Quint, had a sexual relationship with each other and have both died. It is also implied that Quint sexually molested Miles and the other members of the household. Prior to their deaths, they spent much of their time with Flora and Miles, and this fact has grim significance for the governess when she becomes convinced that the two children are secretly aware of the presence of the ghosts. Later, Flora leaves the house while Miles plays music for the governess. They notice Flora's absence and go to look for her. The governess and Mrs. Grose find her in a clearing in the wood, and the governess is convinced that she has been talking to Miss Jessel. When she finally confronts Flora, Flora denies seeing Miss Jessel, and demands never to see the governess again. Mrs. Grose takes Flora away to her uncle, leaving the governess with Miles. That night, they are finally talking of Miles' expulsion when the ghost of Quint appears to the governess at the window. The governess shields Miles, who attempts to see the ghost. The governess tells him that he is no longer controlled by the ghost, and then finds that Miles has died in her arms."
2483,The Third Grave,horror," The novel is the story of a young Egyptologist, Thomas Ashley, who, while on an archeological expedition, discovers ancient Egyptian secrets of resurrection and immortality. Accompanied by the beautiful Arabella Cunningaham, the two are menaced by a horror spawned by an ancient curse."
2484,Dark Congress,horror," Golden has revealed some things about the plotline in an interview with Slayerlit: :""Once upon a time, all of the demonic and monstrous races, and the old gods, would choose ambassadors to send to the Dark Congress, which would take place under a general truce once every hundred years. The world is populated by demons from dark dimensions and many other supernatural beings and breeds, and they all have different attitudes toward humanity and the world. Some want to leave to return to their home dimensions, some to conquer this one; some want to live in peace with human beings, and others want to eat them."" The story takes place after the seventh season of Buffy. The Congress has not met for 500 years, having failed to come to an agreement. The story starts as Micaela, a Watcher, unknowingly releases the demon, Kandida, one of the leaders of the Dark Congress. Then, we find Buffy, and Xander in Providence, Rhode Island, trekking to the location of the city's own Hellmouth. There, they meet Trabajo the Sand demon, from whom they nearly escape. Meanwhile, in Greece, Willow is living happily with Kennedy, until she returns to their apartment to find Kennedy has cheated on her with a newbie Slayer. Completely broken-hearted, Willow immediately leaves and heads to Athens to clear her mind, there she meets a very ancient witch named Catherine, who promises Willow her heart's desire if she will be her apprentice. She gives Willow a very powerful scroll and her witch's familiar, a ginger cat. With a very ancient spell Willow is able to resurrect her former lover Tara Maclay, with whom the familiar shares a body. Willow and Tara have an emotional reunion. Elsewhere, former Scooby, Oz, is approached by an elder werewolf, who tells him that he is needed in Providence. Faith, who is now in San Francisco, finishes off vamps in the city, gets a message from a vamp who is a minion of an ancient vampiress named Harmann and decides to head back to New England, to Rhode Island, to meet up with Buffy. She arrives there and is attacked by The Gentlemen (of the Buffy Season 4 episode, ""Hush""). She defeats them and remeets Xander, and has a sisterly reunion with ""B"". Giles, in England, has heard of all of the supernatural activity centered around Providence and he and Micaela travel to Rhode Island. Willow decides to bring Tara to meet Buffy and Xander, and Oz also heeds the older wolf's orders and goes to Providence. The Scoobies have a very happy reunion, especially with the resurrection of Tara (of which both Buffy and Giles are highly skeptical). They learn of the Dark Congress which is in session above the once active hellmouth in Providence, and the court of Demons want Buffy to be their arbiter. The Sand demon Trabajo is reunited with his lover, Kandida, but the two have a short reunion when Kandida's heart is ripped out. Trabajo is about to accuse a few of the members of the Congress and attack them, which would send the Congress in chaos and start an inevitable apocalypse. Buffy must keep that from happening by finding Kandida's killers and bringing them before the Council before Trabajo has a chance at them. The suspects are; Haarmann, the ancient vampiress; Willow's new suspicious and very intimidating teacher, Catherine; and Malik a rogue ""Champion"" for The Powers that Be, and his group of warriors who will kill anything connected to demons, including demons who aren't harmful, and even Slayers. Buffy is horrified and disgusted to be included. After all she is not a demon...is she? She knows so little about her powers that she can't say for certain where they truly spring from. How can she spend so much time wallowing in the darkness without becoming part of it? Can she possibly agree to a truce with all the horrors of the world, and allow them to come to Providence without any attempt to stop them? Does she have a choice? Meanwhile, can Willow and Tara come to terms with their denial that Tara's resurrection is anything but unnatural?"
2485,Created By,horror, ~Plot outline description
2486,Legion,horror," The story opens with the discovery of a twelve-year-old boy who has been murdered and crucified on a pair of rowing oars. Kinderman already sees that the boy is mutilated in a way identical to the victims of a serial killer known as the Gemini Killer, who was apparently shot to death by police twelve years previously while climbing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A priest is later murdered in a confessional, once again bearing the mutilations distinctive of the apparently deceased killer. The fingerprints at the two crime scenes differ, however. Further victims soon follow, including one of Kinderman's friends, another priest, who is slain in a hospital, his body drained of blood before being decapitated. Yet again the Gemini Killer's mutilations are present. Investigations lead Kinderman to the psychiatric wing of the hospital where his friend was slain. Here he finds a number of suspects: * Dr. Freeman Temple - a psychiatrist who has a dismissive and even contemptuous attitude towards his patients. * Dr. Vincent Amfortas - another doctor at the hospital. He is very mysterious and not very talkative, and is seemingly apathetic towards everything since the recent death of his wife. * Patients - there are a number of elderly people at the hospital suffering from senile dementia. The fingerprints of different senile patients are found at murder scenes, but interviews with the patients make it clear they are seemingly incapable of carrying out the elaborate killings and mutilations. * Tommy Sunlight - a mysterious patient, found wandering aimlessly eleven years ago dressed as a priest, who brags of being the Gemini Killer reincarnated and who claims to have carried out the recent murders, even though he logically could not have done so, being secured in a locked cell in a straitjacket. At one point he claims the doctors and nurses let him out to kill. He also looks identical to Damien Karras, a priest who supposedly died in The Exorcist by falling down a flight of stairs. * James Vennamun - the actual Gemini Killer himself. His body was never found, suggesting he may have survived and is resuming his crimes. In the end, the implication is that the Gemini Killer possessed the body of Damien Karras and spent many years trying to gain control of the body, during which time Karras was held in a mental hospital. He lacked any identification and was nicknamed Sunlight because he sat in the sun's rays as it passed through the window of his cell. Upon finally gaining control of Karras' body, the Gemini occasionally left it to possess the bodies of the patients suffering from senile dementia, and as they were in an open ward with access to the outside world, he could use them to go forth and commit murders. This is why the fingerprints of several senility patients were found at the crime scenes; their bodies carried out the murders but the Gemini Killer was in control of them. The Gemini's motive originally was to shame his father, a preacher, whom he hated. When his father dies of natural causes the Gemini Killer feels his mission is over and he has no reason to remain in possession of Karras' body. Feeling compelled to explain everything to Kinderman, he summons the detective, explains all of this, successfully demands that Kinderman tells him he believes that he (Sunlight) really is the Gemini Killer, and then effectively wills himself to die from heart failure. Dr. Temple suffers a stroke and ends up mentally disabled. Dr. Amfortas dies in an accident (although he was terminally ill anyway, suffering from a disease he refused to treat so he could join his deceased wife). The final chapter of the novel, an epilogue, has Kinderman at a burger-bar with his faithful partner, Atkins. Kinderman explains to Atkins his thoughts and musings of the whole case and how it relates to his problem of the concept of evil. Kinderman ends by concluding that he believes the Big Bang was Lucifer falling from heaven, and that the entire Universe, including humanity, are the broken parts of Lucifer, and that evolution is the process of Lucifer putting himself together back into an angel."
2487,Christine,horror," In 1978, while riding home from work with his friend Dennis, nerdy teen Arnold ""Arnie"" Cunningham spots a dilapidated red and white Plymouth Fury parked in front of a house. Arnie makes Dennis stop so he can examine the car, despite Dennis's attempts to talk Arnie out of it. The car's owner, Roland D. LeBay, an elderly gentleman wearing a back supporter, sells the car—named ""Christine""—to Arnie for $250. While waiting for Arnie to finish the paperwork, Dennis sits inside Christine. He has a vision of the car and the surroundings as they were in 1958, when the car was new. Frightened, Dennis gets out of Christine, deciding he does not like Arnie's new car. Arnie brings Christine to a do-it-yourself auto repair facility run by Will Darnell, who is suspected of using the garage as a front for illicit operations. As Arnie restores the automobile he becomes withdrawn, humorless and cynical, yet more confident and self-assured. Dennis is puzzled by the changes in both his friend and Christine; the repair work proceeds haphazardly, and the more extensive repairs do not appear to be done by Arnie. Arnie's appearance improves in tandem with Christine's. When LeBay dies, Dennis meets his younger brother, George, who reveals Roland's history of violent behavior. George also reveals that LeBay's small daughter choked to death on a hamburger in the back seat of the car, and that LeBay's wife was so traumatized that she apparently committed suicide in its front seat by carbon monoxide poisoning. As time passes, Dennis observes that Arnie is taking on many of LeBay's personality traits. Dennis also notices that Arnie has become close to Darnell, even acting as a courier in Darnell's contraband smuggling operations. When Arnie is almost finished restoring Christine, an attractive girl named Leigh Cabot transfers to his high school. She is regarded as the school beauty, and her decision to go out with Arnie puzzles everyone. While on a date with Arnie, she nearly chokes to death on a hamburger and is saved only by the intervention of a hitchhiker who uses the Heimlich maneuver. Leigh notices that Christine's dashboard lights seemed to become glaring green eyes, watching her during the incident, and that Arnie tried to save her by ineffectually pounding her on the back. She realizes that she and Christine are competing for Arnie's affection, and she vows to never get into that car again. Arnie's mother refuses to let him keep Christine at home. After several arguments, Arnie's father convinces him to purchase a 30 day pass for the airport parking lot, helping to restore peace in the family. Soon afterward, Buddy Repperton, a bully who frequently targeted Arnie before being expelled from high school, and his gang of thugs vandalize the car. As Arnie pushes Christine through Darnell's garage/junkyard, the car repairs itself. Arnie strains his back in the process and begins wearing a brace all the time, as LeBay did. His relationship with Leigh declines. A number of inexplicable car-related deaths occur around town, starting with Buddy and all but one of his accomplices in the vandalism and ending with Will Darnell. The police find evidence linking Christine to the scene of each death, although none is found on the car itself. A police detective named Rudy Junkins becomes suspicious of Arnie, and his suspicions are not allayed even though Arnie is able to produce an airtight alibi for each death. It is revealed that Christine, possessed by LeBay's vengeful spirit, is committing these murders independently and repairing herself after each one. Arnie becomes obsessed with Christine, forgetting Leigh entirely, and Leigh and Dennis begin their own relationship, unearthing details of Christine's and LeBay's past. One evening, Arnie stumbles upon Leigh and Dennis intimately close in Dennis's car, sending him into a rage. Junkins also falls victim to a gruesome death. Knowing they are now at the top of LeBay and Christine's hit list, Dennis and Leigh devise a plan to destroy the car and, hopefully, save Arnie. While Arnie is out of town, they lure Christine to Darnell's garage and batter her to pieces using a septic tanker truck. The remains are put through a car crusher, and Dennis learns that Arnie and his mother were both killed in a highway accident, while Christine killed Arnie's father earlier. Witness accounts lead Dennis to believe that LeBay's spirit, tied to Arnie through Christine, tore itself away and caused the wreck. Four years later, Dennis reflects on these events. He and Leigh parted after attending college together, and he is now a junior high school teacher. He learns about a freak car accident in Los Angeles, in which a movie theater employee - possibly the last surviving member of Buddy's gang - was struck and killed by a car that smashed in through the theater wall. Dennis speculates that Christine may have rebuilt herself and set out to kill everyone who stood against her, saving him for last."
2488,Beasts,horror," Set in an apparently idyllic New England college town in the 1970s, Beasts is the story of Gillian Brauer, a talented young student obsessed with her charismatic anti-establishment English professor Andre Harrow. Knowing that other girls preceded her does not deter Gillian from being drawn into the decadent world of Professor Harrow and his wife, Dorcas, the outrageous sculptress of primal totems. Gillian soon tumbles into a nightmare of carnal desire and corrupted sexual innocence."
2489,The Book of Skulls,horror," The plot concerns four college students who discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, dealing with an order of monks living in a monastery in the Arizona desert, whose members have the power to bestow immortality on those who complete their bizarre initiation rite. The boys travel to the monastery, where they are accepted as a ""Receptacle,"" and told that for each group of four who agree to undergo the ritual, two must die in order for the others to succeed - one must sacrifice himself, and the other must be sacrificed. The narrative switches back and forth between the viewpoints of the four students as each confronts his personal demons on the way to completing the ritual. Ned, who is openly homosexual, must face his guilt over the tragic aftermath of one of his affairs; Eli, the gifted (but socially inept) young man who discovered the manuscript, makes a confession that could destroy his academic career; Timothy, star athlete and prodigal son of a wealthy family, confronts a terrible sin from his past involving his younger sister; and Oliver, the farm kid from the wrong side of the tracks, comes face to face with his own true innermost nature. The Book of Skulls has been republished as part of the series SF Masterworks."
2490,Fevre Dream,horror," Abner Marsh, a remarkably unattractive but highly skilled steamboat captain, is grappling with a financial crisis in 1857 when he is contacted by Joshua York, a rich, soft-spoken gentleman. They become unlikely business partners, with Joshua winning Abner over by promising to finance the construction of a magnificent new steamboat that will be larger, faster, and more opulent than any other riverboat ever constructed: the pride of the Mississippi River. When finally completed, she is everything Abner has ever dreamed of piloting. The large white, blue, and silver paddle steamer is christened Fevre Dream, for Abner's previously-failing company, the Fevre River Packet Company; Joshua and Abner co-captain the new vessel, with Abner being solely responsible for her actual command and navigation. Many questions are soon raised by both the crew and passengers about Joshua York and his circle of unusual friends, who hardly ever venture out of their cabins during daylight hours. Abner's own suspicions about his mysterious partner begin to grow when he finds scrapbooks in Joshua's cabin containing newspaper clippings detailing many mysterious, unexplained deaths. He confronts Joshua, who reveals that he and his friends are vampire hunters; they are using the Fevre Dream as their base of operations to investigate a trail of unusual deaths and disappearances along the mighty river. In time, however, Joshua finally reveals the whole truth: he and his friends are themselves vampires, very humanlike living beings specialized to and recurrently dependent upon hunting humans, characterized by Joshua as ""... a different race."" Many of Joshua's kind consider him the ""Pale King"" lord (or ""bloodmaster"") to all vampires, and all of his traveling companions have submitted to him as such. Joshua has developed a potion, using ancient alchemy and the rudiments of the chemistry of the day, which controls the blood-fever of all vampires; he is on a personal crusade to free his people of their need to feed on the warm, living blood of humanity. The evil and amoral Damon Julian, a rival bloodmaster, formerly of New Orleans, soon learns of Joshua's efforts; he boards the Fevre Dream with his own entourage of vampire followers and manages to overpower and depose Joshua, becoming the new Pale King of all vampires aboard the riverboat. Damon forces Abner out and begins to use the Fevre Dream for his own nefarious purposes, eventually disappearing down the river, never to be seen or heard from again. Abner becomes obsessed with his lost, now demonic ship, and spends his remaining fortune searching up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries, until he is finally forced to give up the search. Marsh later serves as a naval officer during the American Civil War, all the while being haunted by the memory of his lost riverboat. Some years later, after receiving a surprising letter from Joshua, a much older Abner Marsh returns and vows to help Joshua finally depose of the evil bloodmaster who has ruined both of their dreams. But this proves to be a very difficult task; the vampires eventually square-off, and with Abner's aid, Joshua finally overpowers Damon and becomes the Pale King once again. In the process, Marsh finally discovers the horrible fate that has befallen his beloved Fevre Dream. The novel closes many decades later by suggesting that all vampires, though still effectively immortal, were eventually freed from their blood addiction by Joshua's potion and Abner's brave efforts on their behalf; they make nighttime pilgrimages to Abner's grave overlooking the Mississippi, continuing to honor his heroic contribution to their cause of freedom."
2491,The Sand Dwellers,horror, The novel is set in the Superstition Mountains where the commander of a secret military installation is affected by strange forces that take over his mind.
2492,Midnight Robber,horror," The novel is set in the far future, where interplanetary and alternate-dimension travel is possible. In addition, an Internet-like information system, known as “Granny Nanny”, dominates daily life, with each person being injected with nanomites that allow mental access to Granny Nanny at birth. This access takes the form of an eshu, a mental voice within the head that provides information upon request and operates as a sort of sixth sense. The use of Granny Nanny is so widespread that the word has somewhat of a religious overtone (characters will often swear to Granny Nanny, for example). The story is eventually revealed to be narrated by Granny Nanny, speaking to Tan Tan’s child as he is being born. Its protagonist is Tan Tan Habib, a seven-year-old girl living in Cockpit County on the Carib-colonized planet of Toussaint, with her father Antonio and mother Ione. The story begins during Carnival season, of which the highlight for Tan Tan is the Robber Kings: performers who dress up as the mythical figure of the Robber King and tell exaggerated, boastful tales of their adventures. Antonio (an adulterer himself) discovers that Ione has been having an affair. After driving out the lover and separating from Ione and Tan Tan (who becomes distraught over the incident, blaming herself for Antonio’s abandonment), he then challenges his wife’s lover to a duel for her honor during Jour Ouvert. During the duel Antonio ends up killing the lover with a poisoned machete blade, causing him to escape Toussaint with Tan Tan. The two take a shift portal to New Halfway Tree, an alternate universe version of Toussaint that serves as a place of exile for convicts. They are met by Chichibud, a douen (one of several alien species on New Halfway Tree), who takes them to the nearest human settlement, Junjuh Village, run harshly by One Eye the sheriff and his deputy Claude through a system of punishment (being locked in a tin box for several hours at a time) and death (hanging). Tan Tan eventually adjusts to life in New Halfway Tree, growing familiar with the other locals of the town such as, Michael and Gladys the local blacksmiths, and Janisette her father’s new wife. She even befriends the local boy Melonhead, and together the two plan to move to Sweet Pone together, a better settlement on New Halfway Tree. As Tan Tan grows older, her father slowly slides into alcoholism and depression, until he takes to raping Tan Tan on a regular basis. On her sixteenth birthday, Tan Tan kills him in self-defense and, pregnant with his child, flees into the forbidding bush that surrounds their small settlement with the help of Chichibud, who takes her to live among the Douen in his village tree. The Douen, concerned about letting a human into their home tree and learning their secrets, reluctantly allow her to live with them. Tan Tan struggles and fails to adopt to the Douen lifestyle, although she does end up likewise befriending Abitefa, Chichibud’s daughter. She eventually hears of and visits a human village, looking for a doctor to abort her baby. While there, she defends a man being abused by his mother, assuming the persona of the Robber Queen as she does so. Over time, she returns to the village night after night in the persona of the Robber Queen, seeking to right wrongs and make up for the guilt she feels over killing her father. She is finally found by Janisette who, with a car and rifle built by Michael and Gladys, has been looking for her and seeking vengeance for Antonio’s death. In the process of running away she inadvertently leads Janisette and the other two to the Douen tree, forcing them to destroy it and move on to other trees. Tan Tan and Abetifa are left behind, to fend for themselves. The two take to wandering through the bush, looking for a town for Tan Tan to live in, still being hunted by Janisette. Tan Tan visits the villages they pass in the night, under the guise of the Robber Queen, seeking to do good for others. As the two travel on she hears stories being told about her exploits, both real and imagined. After some traveling she arrives in Sweet Pone. She runs into Melonhead, who is now the local tailor, and the two strike up their friendship once again. Tan Tan becomes torn between her desire to stay with Melonhead and her fears of Janisette, all the while still feeling guilt over her father's death and disgust at her still-unborn child. She ultimately stays for Sweet Pone’s carnival, dressing up in the Robber Queen costume Melonhead made for her, until Janisette arrives in a tank, demanding Tan Tan’s return to Junjuh village and her revenge. Tan Tan finally confronts her face to face, accusing her of knowing that Antoine was raping her all those years and admitting to both herself and to Janisette that she killed Antoine out of self defense. Janisette, ashamed, leaves while Tan Tan, relieved from her guilt and sensing the oncoming delivery, returns to the bush. There, accompanied by Melonhead and Abitefa, she gives birth, accepting her son as her own and naming him Tubman."
2493,The Stepford Wives,horror," The premise involves the married men of the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut, and their fawning, submissive, impossibly beautiful wives. The protagonist is Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer newly arrived from New York City with her husband and children, eager to start a new life. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the zombie-like, submissive Stepford wives, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends&nbsp;&ndash; fellow new arrivals to Stepford&nbsp;&ndash; turn into mindless, docile housewives overnight. Her husband, who seems to be spending more and more time at meetings of the local men's association, mocks her fears. As the story progresses, Joanna becomes convinced that the wives of Stepford are being poisoned or brainwashed into submission by the men's club. She visits the library and reads up on the pasts of Stepford's wives, finding out that some of the women were once feminist activists and very successful professionals, while the leader of the men's club is a former Disney engineer and others are artists and scientists, capable of creating lifelike robots. Her friend Bobbie helps her investigate, going so far as to write to the EPA to inquire about possible environmental toxins in Stepford. However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife and has no interest in her previous activities. At the end of the novel, Joanna decides to flee Stepford, but when she gets home she finds that her children have been taken. She asks her husband to let her leave, but he takes her car keys. She manages to escape from the house on foot, and several of the men's club members track her down. They corner her in the woods and she accuses them of creating robots out of the town's women. The men deny the accusation, and ask Joanna if she would believe them if she saw one of the other women bleed. Joanna agrees to this, and they take her to Bobbie's house. Bobbie's husband and son are upstairs, with loud rock music playing&nbsp;&ndash; as if to cover screams. The scene ends as Bobbie brandishes a knife at her former friend. In the story's epilogue, Joanna has become another Stepford wife gliding through the local supermarket, and has given up her career as a photographer, while Ruthanne (a new resident in Stepford) appears poised to become the conspiracy's next victim."
2494,Monster Planet,horror," Monster Planet takes place twelve years after the events in Monster Island. Sarah, Dekalb's now 20-year-old daughter, fights alongside Ayaan and her squad of female Somali warriors to defend their last remaining settlements from the encroaching undead forces. Meanwhile, a powerful lich from Russia who calls himself ""The Tsarevich"" leads his army west on an unknown expedition."
2495,Crossings,horror," While at the theater for a Star Trek marathon with Anya, Xander recognizes a friend of his, from the arcade, enter the theater and begin threatening and beating humans in a very demonic way. Upon further inspection, Xander learns that his friend, Robby, was involved in total immersion VR video game beta testing. But the testing was a little too secretive, according to Robby's girlfriend. Meanwhile, Buffy and Dawn are having issues with one another, and Buffy doesn't know how to deal with being Dawn's new ""mom"" after the recent death of their own mother. After much research concerning the bizarre video game tests, and the appearance of a man named Bobby Lee Tooker, the group discovers that the video game isn't so much a video game, as much as it is another dimensional portal while the human bodies are being taken over by demons. Buffy needs to find a way to get these beta testers (including a very reluctant Xander) back into the real world and destroy the evil demon who's using the testers to conjure a powerful being."
2496,Blood Games,horror," The novel centers on a group of young women, best friends since college, who go on an annual vacation together, each year to a different location of one member of the group's choosing. This year's trip takes them to the Totem Pole Lodge, an abandoned resort that was allegedly the site of a gruesome mass murder ten years earlier. When one of the women, Helen, mysteriously disappears, her friends begin a search of the resort and the surrounding wilderness in an effort to discover what happened to her. The novel employs a flashback structure alternating between present-day events at the resort and the group's experiences together in college, beginning when the girls met during their freshman year and proceeding through their graduation and three previous reunions. The story is told from the point of view of one of the women, Abilene, but focuses mainly on her four friends: tough, confrontational Cora, tomboyish Finley (the practical joker), fashion model Vivian, and timid, insecure Helen, whose disappearance and eventual fate are foreshadowed by a frightening experience in a dormitory restroom during her freshman year."
2497,The Beast House,horror," Teenager Janice Crogan finds a diary belonging to a previous owner of Beast House, a local tourist attraction in the girl's hometown of Malcasa Point, where numerous gruesome murders have allegedly taken place. The journal features lurid sex scenes between the beast and its author, the house's prior owner. Janice sends an excerpt from the book to famed (fictitious) author Gorman Hardy, who decides to travel to Malcasa Point, along with an accomplice named Brian Blake, in order to steal the book and publish it himself. Meanwhile, Tyler and Nora, two young women on vacation together, decide to track down an old flame of Tyler's, Dan Jenson, who is now a patrolman living in Malcasa Point. On the way there, they run into Jack and Abe, two ex-Marines who save them from a crazed driver with a serious case of road rage. Back in town, Gorman agrees to Janice's proposal that she get half the profits from Gorman's proposed book based on the journal, then sends her off with Blake to take photos of Beast House so that he can break into Janice's room at the local inn (run by her parents) and steal the contract entitling her to half the money. While Gorman commits his act of attempted burglary, Blake and Janice are in the woods behind Beast House having sex, but then the beast attacks, kills Blake, and kidnaps Janice. A bit later, Janice's parents confront Gorman and demand to know their daughter's whereabouts. The three set out for Beast House, eventually discovering Blake's mutilated body, and Janice's father attacks Gorman, who murders both him and Janice's mother, hoping their deaths will also be attributed to the beast. Meanwhile, Tyler and Nora are told by a neighbor that Dan Jenson can be found at Beast House. They encounter Gorman Hardy while on the Beast House tour, where Tyler is horrified to discover that Dan is one of the beast's previous victims. No longer hindered, she starts a relationship with Abe. Back at the inn, Gorman offers Jack and Abe a thousand dollars to explore Beast House and get photographs. Breaking into the house, Abe and Jack eventually discover a tunnel connecting Beast House to the home of Maggie Kutch, the tourist trap's current owner, the woman who runs the tours of Beast House. Janice awakens and realizes she's been raped by the beast, and encounters Sandy and Donna, the mother and daughter survivors from The Cellar, who've been subjected to similar treatment. Jack and Abe kill one of the beasts, and another one kills Gorman, who came to the house with Tyler and Nora. Maggie Kutch is killed and Janice and Donna are rescued, but Sandy disappears. Some time later, Tyler and Abe are apparently married, with a child, and living at a hotel owned by Abe's father. Janice Crogan has written a bestselling book about her experiences at Beast House. Sandy's whereabouts are still unknown."
2498,Harvest Home,horror," Harvest Home is narrated in the first person by Ned Constantine, and describes events surrounding himself, his wife Beth, and their daughter Kate. Fed up with life in New York City, the family relocates to the country, where Ned can pursue an artistic career. After months of intermittent searching for a suitable new home, they discover a geographically isolated village in Connecticut named Cornwall Coombe. The village seems an idyllic farming community that offers all that Ned and Beth have been seeking. They express interest in an abandoned three hundred year old house, and they are contacted some weeks later by the Dodds, who live next door to the house, and who tell them that it is for sale. The Constantines buy and renovate the house and move to Cornwall Coombe. The opening chapters describe several matters in innocent detail, including the past marital difficulties of Ned and Beth, now apparently resolved; the moody Kate's serious, potentially life-threatening asthma, in part a psychosomatic reaction to those marital troubles; and, most importantly, the eccentricities of life in Cornwall Coombe. The villagers adhere stubbornly to what they call ""the old ways"", eschewing modern agricultural methods and limiting contact with the outside world. The villagers celebrate a number of festivals that revolve around the cultivation of corn, which is their chief product. The most important rite is Harvest Home, which takes place at the conclusion of the crop growing year. While the villagers are ostensibly Christian, Ned gradually becomes aware of the paganism that underlies life in Cornwall Coombe, particularly its rituals. The Constantines befriend the Dodds. Maggie Dodd, an educated woman who left Cornwall Coombe but later returned with her husband, Robert, an outsider. Maggie is the church organist. Robert Dodd, totally blind, is a retired college professor. Other prominent villagers who become friends with the newcomers are Worthy Pettinger, a young man who disdains the old ways and wants to go to agricultural college; Justin Hooke, who serves as the current year's ceremonial ""Harvest Lord"", and his wife Sophie, whom Justin has chosen to be his ""Corn Maiden"" in the approaching ""Corn Play""; Jack Stump, a local itinerant peddler, only recently arrived; and Mary Fortune, a widowed herbalist and midwife, and the town's most influential resident. During a late summer festival, known as Agnes Fair, Ned first begins to sense something sinister. After most of the festivities are over, Ned hears a horrible cry and beholds a strange spectacle: Missy Penrose, a young girl regarded by the farmers as an oracle, stands over a newly-slaughtered sheep and touches her blood-drenched hands to Worthy's face. Ned learns that this means Worthy has been chosen to be the ""Young Lord"", who will succeed Justin as Harvest Lord when Justin's seven-year term ends later that year. Worthy is the only one unhappy at this development. Jack Stump reports that he has seen a ghost in Soakes's Lonesome, a local forest named for the family of moonshiners who live within. Ned sees a strange apparition one night, and later finds a skeleton hidden deep within the woods. Worthy decides secretly to leave the village with Ned's help rather than become Harvest Lord. Jack disappears. Ned grows preoccupied with the mysterious death of Grace Everdeen fourteen years earlier: she is buried in unhallowed ground, and the locals still occasionally say harsh but unspecific things about her. Ned finds a primitive corn dolly in Justin's fields. The Widow Fortune succeeds in resuscitating Kate and saving her from certain death during an asthma attack; her herbal remedies apparently cure Kate of her asthma. Ned, under the influence of the Widow's mead, believes he sees the Harvest Lord and Corn Maiden trysting in a neighboring cornfield. During a harvest service in church, Worthy loudly curses the corn and ""the Mother"" and then flees. The community is scandalized. Worthy's parents are ostracized by the villagers. Jack Stump is found mutilated, having had his tongue cut out and mouth sewn shut in apparent retribution for trespassing into Soakes's Lonesome. Ned becomes more intent to unravel the village's secrets while his personal life goes awry. Tamar Penrose, the postmistress, seduces Ned, whose resistance weakens as he tries to learn more about Missy and her abilities. Ned learns that the women of Cornwall Coombe practice pagan fertility rites connected to the earth mother. Tamar reveals that she served as Corn Maiden fourteen years ago, and that Missy was conceived as a result. Grace Everdeen, originally slated to be Corn Maiden for her fiancé Roger Penrose, had developed a disfiguring disease. When she was replaced by Tamar, Grace cursed the corn. Drought followed, for which Grace was blamed. At the end of the harvest, the villagers come together for a Husking Bee, a riotous party marking the conclusion of the growing season. Ned and other male villagers drink heavily as part of the festivities. During the Husking Bee, the villagers put on the Corn Play, a symbolic fertility rite that foreshadows what will happen at Harvest Home a few nights later. Ned watches stuporously as the women perform a barefoot pagan dance. When the women draw Kate into their circle, Ned furiously breaks into the dance to pull her back out but the villagers cast him into the street and pelt him with corn cobs for interfering in the ritual. The Constantines' marriage has begun to unravel again. Beth had hoped to have another child, but Ned learns that he is sterile. Beth, aware of Tamar's designs on him, grows distrustful of Ned. Ned dislikes and distrusts the rapacious Tamar, but finally has sex with her in which she dominates him, symbolizing the ancient homage that men are forced to pay to the earth goddess. Robert Dodd explains to Ned the matriarchal pagan fertility religions of antiquity, and advises Ned to steer clear of Harvest Home at all costs: previous discovery of the secrets of these rites by any man has always resulted in dire consequences, which Dodd has suffered himself. Dodd removes his dark glasses showing that his blindness is the result of his eyes having been gouged out in retaliation for observing the sacred ritual, but Ned disregards his warnings. Ned's rage at Tamar is further fueled by the discovery that Tamar was involved in the mutilation of Jack Stump. The villagers wanted to prevent him revealing that the skeleton in the woods — the same skeleton that Ned later discovered — belonged to Grace Everdeen, who had resisted the pairing of her fiancé with Tamar at Harvest Home fourteen years earlier, and was killed after arriving and disrupting the rites. The villagers, having learned Worthy's location from a letter he sent to Ned, which was steamed open by Tamar, the postmistress, send a posse to find him. He is returned home and killed. They initially hang his corpse in a field as a scarecrow, and later fling it into a massive bonfire on Kindling Night. On the day of Harvest Home, Justin's wife Sophie Hooke, the new Corn Maiden, hangs herself. She is denied burial in consecrated ground on the orders of the Widow Fortune. Ned denounces the villagers at the church and the widow, a revered high priestess, declares him an outcast. Missy instructs the gathered villagers to confine Ned. Ned escapes from the building in which he is imprisoned via a secret passageway to the church. There, the village women have chosen the new Corn Maiden who is heavily veiled; Ned believes she is Tamar. She departs with the other women and Justin for the Harvest Home ritual. Ned races to the forest clearing ahead of them, determined despite Dodd's advice to discover what happens there. He watches the women play out the rites, which includes the copulation of the Harvest Lord with the Corn Maiden to symbolically ensure the fertility of the Mother. To Ned's horror, the new Corn Maiden is not Tamar, it is Beth. Ned cries out, alerting the women to his presence. He is forced to watch while Justin and Beth complete their intercourse, finally learning why Worthy had tried to escape and why Sophie killed herself: Tamar cuts Justin's throat with a sickle as he climaxes, spilling his blood onto the ground throughout the clearing. The villagers allowed his family to settle here in order to bring new blood, Beth's and Kate's, into Cornwall Coombe. Ned tries to escape but the women surround him and render him blind and mute. Months later, the blind, dependent Ned learns both that Beth is pregnant and that Kate is destined to be the next Corn Maiden."
2499,New Moon,horror," On Isabella ""Bella"" Swan's 18th birthday, Edward Cullen, the vampire she loves, and his family throw her a birthday party. While unwrapping a gift, she gets a paper cut, which causes Edward's adopted brother, Jasper, to be overwhelmed by her blood's scent and attempt to kill Bella. To protect her, Edward tells Bella that he does not love her and the Cullens move away from Forks. This leaves Bella heartbroken and depressed. In the months that follow, Bella learns that thrill-seeking activities, such as motorcycle riding, allow her to ""hear"" Edward's voice in her head. She also seeks comfort in her deepening friendship with Jacob Black, a cheerful companion who eases her pain over losing Edward. Bella later discovers that Jacob and other tribe members are werewolves. Jacob and his pack protect Bella from the vampire Laurent and also Victoria, who seeks revenge for her dead mate, James, whom the Cullens killed in Twilight. Meanwhile, a series of miscommunications leads Edward to believe that Bella has killed herself. Distraught over her supposed suicide, Edward flees to Volterra, Italy to provoke the Volturi, vampire royalty who are capable of killing him. Alice and Bella rush to Italy to save Edward, arriving just in time to stop him. Before leaving Italy, the Volturi tell Edward that Bella, a human who knows that vampires exist, must either be killed or transformed into a vampire. When they return to Forks, Edward tells Bella that he has always loved her and only left Forks to protect her. She forgives him, and the Cullens vote in favor of Bella being transformed into a vampire, to Edward's dismay. However, Jacob reminds Edward about an important piece in the treaty: if the Cullens bite a human, the treaty is over."
2500,Violets are Blue,thriller," The book begins where Roses are Red ended, with Dr. Alex Cross at the home of murdered FBI Agent Betsey Cavalierre. Alex is in his room when his cellphone rings. Alex answers and the Mastermind is on the line. He tells Alex that he killed Cavalierre to toy with Alex. He's going to kill his grandmother and his children, and John Sampson, Cross' best friend and partner, who was watching over Nana Mama, Damon and Janelle, cannot stop him. Alex hangs up and calls Sampson, telling him what happened. Sampson tells Alex that the Mastermind can try but will not succeed. Alex is rushing home when the Mastermind calls him back and tells Cross that his family is safe for the moment. He warns Alex that he's next. Elsewhere, in San Francisco, California, a man and a woman jog through a Golden Gate Park. As they jog, the woman, Martha Wiatt, hears some kind of growling behind them. As they both run faster, she gains some distance between her and her boyfriend, Davis O'Hara. Then, she hears her boyfriend screaming behind her, and runs for help. She sees a van driving by, flags it down, and two people get out. They tell her that she and her boyfriend were chosen. The last thing she sees before dying are vampires. Later, Kyle Craig calls Alex about a similarity between two murders in San Francisco and a murder in Washington DC that they’d worked on a few months before. The case involved a runaway girl that was found hung from a light fixture in a hotel room. The FBI requests that he go to San Francisco to meet Inspector Jamilla Hughes. First, Alex takes Jannie and Ali to school but tells them he'll be back for Damon's choir concert. Kyle Craig calls him to make sure he received the information he had faxed. On the flight, he reviews the details of the murders, which include being hung with the blood drained, and remembers that the little runaway girl in DC had died in exactly the same way. Jamilla picks Cross up at the airport. She takes him to the morgue to see the bodies. A friend of hers, Dr. Allan Pang (a dental expert)is examining the bites on the victims. After reviewing the bites, he deduces that the man was bitten and mauled by a tiger and the girl was bitten by humans. The two brothers went hunting again at Mill Valley, California. They are given a mission from a person called The Sire. The Sire instructed them not to bring the cat when they go to kill the couple living inside the house. Inside, the couple were making dinner when Michael and William walked through the unlocked front door. The brothers bite the couple savagely, sucking on their blood. Before killing the woman, Michael whispers to her that they’re vampires. Jamilla and Alex are working out of her office when the Mastermind calls Alex. The Mastermind tells Alex that he knows about San Francisco and Jamilla. Later that evening, Cross is on the phone with Kyle Craig, who will be working with Cross on the case. Jamilla interrupts and tells Alex that they have to go to San Luis Obispo where they’re going to exhume the body of a girl whose murder could be related to the San Francisco murders. The girl had also been hung, her blood drained. The next day Alex arrives at the SFPD precinct where Jamilla works. Cross admires her work ethic. Jamilla was reading an e mail sent by the FBI and there had been eight murders similar in California and Nevada. Because of the murder in Washington DC, the FBI is now searching for similar murders on the east coast. That afternoon, Jamilla tells Alex that her friend Tim Bradley, from the San Francisco Examiner, has a few leads for her. Then, they are informed that the killers had struck again. At the crime scene, Alex discovers that, again, the bodies had been drained of blood and were hanging from the ceiling by a light fixture. William and Michael watch the story unfold on TV. They were on a mission and the publicity was part of the plan. William tells Michael that he has a plan for that night. The two brothers break into a funeral home and feast on a dead woman who had not yet been embalmed. Cross is still impressed by Jamilla’s work ethic. Alex is working on trying to find a lead on the tiger. He’s checking with zoos, veterinarians, and animal trainers. Jamilla calls Alex early the next morning regarding a lead from a reporter friend. They drive to Los Angeles to meet with a woman who had gotten away after an attack by two men, but she had been bitten several times. The attacks had happened over a year ago. The woman, Gloria Dos Santos, claims the attackers were in their 40’s, but she isn't certain. They’d bitten her multiple times and were going to hang her from a tree. Gloria believed the men were vampires. Luckily, she had managed to get away when she fell down the side of a hill and rolled all the way down. Gloria claims that earlier that night, she had been at a ‘fang’ club with others in the vampire culture. Gloria tells them she was into the Goth scene at that time. A patrolman interrupts the session. There was a murder in Sunset Blvd. The person was bitten and hanged. When they arrive at the murder scene, Kyle Craig is waiting for them. The body was discovered at Chateau Marmont. The man was a record company executive. While Alex looks through the crime scene, the Mastermind called Alex. The Mastermind knew that Alex was in LA. After a week, it looked like Alex would not be returning in time for Damon’s choir concert and so he calls home. Jamilla returns to San Francisco, but leaves her notes with Alex and Kyle. She believes that although the murders are similar, the patterns are different, and may have been committed by different people. Alex concurs. Jamilla tells Alex about the break-in at the funeral home. As Alex and Kyle leave the precinct, they are followed by Michael and William. William tells Michael that he senses one of them is extremely dangerous. Alex is going to Santa Barbara to meet with Peter Westin, a self-professed vampire and vampire expert. Westin dressed the part of a vampire, even to long fingernails but his teeth are normal and had no fangs. He tells Alex that there are several chapters in the US for people that consider themselves vampires. Westin tells Alex that a vampire is a person born with an extraordinary gift. They have the capacity to transform, channel, absorb and manipulate pranic energy. He tells Cross that blood is the highest form of pranic energy. The next day Alex drives to Fresno to see John Berreiro, who does tattoos and custom teeth for so-called vampires. William and Michael travel to Las Vegas, and they attend a magic show performed by two magicians named Daniel Erickson and Charles DeFoe. After the show, they seduce an actor and actress couple whom they had met at the show. They kill them in their own room at the Bellagio. Alex and Kyle examine the bodies after the murders are discovered. They have been drained of blood and dumped in the bathtub. Cross notes that there was nowhere for the bodies to be hanged. Jamilla calls Alex and confirms that there are at least four killers, based on dental evidence. The murders seem to stop and the trail go cold, so after being in the West coast for fourteen days, Alex returns home. Alex spends the whole day with his children and Nana Mama at the Smithsonian without any phone calls. The Mastermind had actually been following Cross and his family all day. After a few days of being with his friends and family, Alex gets word that the killers had struck in Charleston, South Carolina. Kyle is waiting for Alex down in Charleston. He informs Alex that there are dozens of unsolved murders related to the Vampire killing, dating back eleven years. Michael and William are in Savannah, Georgia and they kill again. The next day Cross and Kyle head there to investigate the murder. As Kyle and Alex examine the body of the young college student, laid inside a gothic church, they’re told of a murder in Charlotte, North Carolina. A young boy had killed his parents by bludgeoning them to death. A claw hammer was found on the scene. He had also bitten them. The boy had fled to an abandoned house nearby that was frequented by other runaways. Kyle and Alex, together with a squad of agents, observe the abandoned house for several hours. They are told to proceed carefully due to all the minors in the house. Kyle finds the boy and the agents rush him. The boy, Irwin Snyder, was pale, unhealthy looking, dirty and smelly. He growled and hissed at the agents. Surprisingly, he knew Cross’ name. He tells Cross he killed his parents to free himself and that he follows the tiger. Irwin rushes Cross with a knife. As Cross wrestles him, Irwin bites Cross’ hand and shoulder. The FBI agents pull him away as Irwin yells “Now you’re one of us” to Cross. Cross questioned Snyder, but got few answers. Cross asked Snyder how he heard about him. Snyder tells him to ask the tiger when they meet again. The next day, instead of going to hospital to address the wounds in his hand and shoulder, Cross returns to Washington. When he gets into the house, the phone rings and the Mastermind welcomes him back. Cross invites him to come and get him. The next day Cross' hand is even more swollen and painful. He finally gets his wounds checked. When he arrives at the hospital, he has a high fever. Alex had cellulitis in his hand, caused by bacteria that can be found in the mouth. The doctor gives Alex a prescription for the infection and sends him home. At home he goes to sleep but wakes up because he felt someone in the room with him. It was Janelle, and she talks with her dad and stays with him after he falls asleep. The Mastermind is inside the Cross’ house and was ready to kill him and his family, but on seeing him bandaged up, The Mastermind decides he's not a worthy opponent at that time and he leaves. Alex works from home for the next few days and tries to find a connection between the cities that the murders took place. After doing some research, he discovers that all the murders occurred whenever the magicians, Daniel and Charles, were in town. He called Kyle Craig and told him New Orleans, Louisiana should be next, based on their schedule. In New Orleans, the FBI put the magicians under surveillance and sees that they use white tigers in their show. At the end of the performance, Daniel and Charles go home in a limousine, which the FBI follows to their home. When the driver opens the door, two white tigers jump out but Daniel and Charles had disappeared. The magicians appear at a small private club in Abita Springs, LA.The men are taken to the basement where a teenage boy has been chained for their pleasure. Daniel was the Sire. After receiving clearance from the doctor to return to work, Alex meets up with Jamilla in New Orleans. They attend two performances by the magicians and are convinced they’re involved in the murders. Jamilla and Alex are on stakeout for a few days trying to catch the magicians. Daniel owns a large house in New Orleans that he’d inherited from his father. Through the surveillance, it is discovered that there will be a Gothic party on the grounds. Jamilla and Alex go to a local restaurant to talk, not knowing that they’re being watched by the Mastermind. He watches them leave the restaurant, sees Jamilla get in a taxi, and then follows Cross. He decides he’s going to kill Alex now, but at the last moment decides against it. The street Alex turned down was too dark, and he wants to see Alex’s eyes when he dies. The next morning, Kyle Craig is handing out the day’s assignments. Jamilla asks about her assignment, but Kyle tells her to see Cross. She tells Kyle she’s worked as hard as everyone else and would like an assignment. Kyle tells her that he doesn't care. Alex was surprised at Kyle’s behavior. In private, Jamilla tells Alex that Kyle is a control freak and that he may have serious issues with women. William and Michael have arrived at New Orleans. For several days, Charles and Daniel are under surveillance, but they hardly leave the house. When they do, they go to a restaurant or go shopping. Cross and Jamilla now think they are not the killers. William watches the police surveillance on Charles and Daniel. He wonders how long Charles and Daniel can go without killing. A few blocks down, William talks to a young teenage girl and then kills her after taking shots of her nude body. The next morning, Cross and Jamilla find out about the girl. They tell Kyle their plan to crash the party and Kyle approves. Alex and Jamilla wear costumes to the party. When they get to the main floor, they see that most of the people there have fangs. A deep voice announces that the Sire has arrived. Daniel and Charles come down the stairs, led by a white tiger. Daniel addresses the crowd and tells everyone he’s the Sire. They are there to anoint two new vampire princes. Suddenly, the lights go out. When the lights come back, Charles and Daniel lie dead. Their throats had been slashed and there were fang marks. The next day Jamilla is headed back to San Francisco. Alex takes her to the airport. They promise to keep in touch. Cross returns to Daniel’s house. He thinks the police have missed something. In the closet of the master bedroom, two dolls with the magicians' likeness were on the floor with scratch marks on their chest, necks, and face. Someone had been there after the police had sealed off the area. Alex goes through the tunnels in the basement where he is attacked by a man and a woman. The woman bites him. He manages to fight them off and then arrests them. At the station, Cross questions the two vampires. They are teenagers and both are runaways. The questioning proved fruitless and was interrupted when an officer informed him that a detective has been found dead and hung in her apartment. Cross rushes to the crime scene. The bites were different - superficial. Alex believed someone else had killed her. She was not drained of her blood. Alex’s cellphone rings. It was the Mastermind, and he asks Alex if he found the body yet, and asks what he thought. Alex hangs up and he notices that Kyle is watching him closely. Jamilla calls Alex to tell him that her reporter friend found some leads in Santa Cruz, California. There had been numerous disappearances there, and she was going to check them out. Cross told her to be careful and to always have someone with her. In Santa Cruz, Jamilla speaks with the local police. She decides to check the foothills outside of town. She believes several people are living there as part of a commune. When she arrives and parks her car, two handsome men approach her. It was Michael and William and they attack her but they don’t injure her. They throw her in the back of a pickup truck and gag her. They are taking her to see the Sire, and tell her they will kill her afterwards. Cross returns home and spends the whole day with the kids. When he returns home, Jamilla’s friend from the Examiner, Tim Bradley, had left a message for Alex. Alex calls him back and is told that Jamilla has gone missing. Alex calls the SCPD and is told that she went to the foothills. Alex calls Kyle Craig. and then he returns to California. In San Francisco, Alex is met by FBI agents who take him to the foothills. Once there, one of the agents tells Alex that the area used to be a preserve for wild animals, and the owners would train lions and tigers there. When they arrive near the ranch, Kyle is waiting with several agents. Kyle tells him that there are dozens of vampires inside led by the new Sire. There is no sign of Jamilla. That night, Alex watches Michael and William take the tiger out to play. Alex noticed Kyle was acting like a detached observer. Cross theorizes that the magicians, Daniel and Charles, had always been careful. They had killed for dozens of years without getting caught. The brothers, Michael and William, on the other hand were careless in their murders, and they were under orders to frame Daniel and Charles for their killings. Cross believes the brothers were finally given the order to kill the magicians in New Orleans. After a few hours of observation, the FBI is ready to go. They are surprised when the front doors of the ranch suddenly open, and several people come out dressed in dark clothes. They get on vehicles and park them closer to the building. Through the doors then come people in hooded robes, all with guns pointed at each other. They move towards the waiting vehicles. Alex is trying to spot Jamilla, but can’t see her because of the hoods. One of them suddenly drops to the ground. Alex knows it was Jamilla, and the FBI now moves in full force. Alex goes to Jamilla and they rush into the ranch. Inside, they find two dead bodies, bitten and drained of blood. There is a hole in the ground and Alex follows it down into a tunnel. Jamilla and Kyle join Alex and they proceed down the dark tunnel. The tiger is there and it rushes at Alex, who is forced to shoot and kill it. When they exit the tunnel, a vehicle approaches them at high speed. Alex sees the brothers inside, and he fires several shots before the truck flips onto its side. Michael gets out, bloodied, and rushes at Cross. William is dead. Cross is ready to tackle Michael when Kyle kills Michael. A voice comes from the truck. Cross was surprised when he saw the injured and bloody Sire, Peter Westin, inside. Peter Westin had met the magicians when they were performing in Los Angeles. Westin had his followers, but feigned allegiance until he felt he was strong enough to emerge as the Sire. He had dispatched the brothers to kill in the cities where the magicians were performing. At the airport, Alex gets a gut feeling about the Mastermind and Jamilla. He cancels his flight, rents a car and parks it a few blocks away from Jamilla's house. He waits and watches. He did not intend to have a third dead partner. Patsy Hampton had been murdered by Geoffrey Shafer and Betsey Cavalierre by the Mastermind. Cross recalls Cavalierre’s murder and how she had been knifed and mutilated, even between the legs. The Mastermind calls Alex and threatens his family. Cross calls Sampson, tells him what's going on, and gets him to move the family to a safe place. Jamilla arrives back home later that afternoon. After she gets inside her apartment, Alex calls her and explains to her that she might be in danger. Night arrives, and Cross suddenly sees the Mastermind. Everything had just made sense to him - his friend, Kyle Craig, was the Mastermind. Cross calls Jamilla and reveals the suspected identity of the Mastermind. She confirms to him that it made sense for Kyle to be the Mastermind. Alex tells her that he’s outside. Jamilla tells Cross to come in and join her through the back way into the house. Kyle had actually seen Cross and had decided to make an unexpected move. Kyle knew the FBI was also becoming suspicious of him. Kyle had killed Cavalierre because she was beginning to get suspicious of him. Inside, Alex and Jamilla wait for Kyle to come. The door opens, a man comes in, and Cross and Jamilla attack him. The man was not Kyle Craig, but an FBI Agent sent by Kyle to break into Jamilla's home. Ronald Burns, Director of the FBI calls Alex. Alex demands to know everything. Burns tells Cross that he believes that Kyle murdered LA Times reporter Beth Lieberman during Kiss the Girls case. She had made a connection between Kyle and the Gentleman Caller. Burns confirms that the FBI suspected Kyle was involved in Betsey Cavalierre’s death but they had no solid proof. Cross leaves for Washington DC to protect his family. Once home, Alex starts to contact those of his friends who might be next on Kyle's list of potential victims. Kyle calls Alex and tells him that he had just murdered the Taylors, who were good friends of Alex. The next day, Alex interviews several of Kyle’s family. Kyle’s older brother, Martin, had long suspected that Kyle killed his own middle brother, Blake. Alex decides he’s quitting the force as soon as he solves this case. Cross goes to North Carolina to speak with Kyle’s parents and younger brother. Then, he thinks about Kyle's next victim, and he decides it could be his old friend, Kate McTiernan from Kiss The Girls. After calling Kate and warning her to get out of town for her own safety, Alex rushes to her home. Alex goes inside to wait. Kyle calls him on the phone but it was a distraction ploy as Kyle was already in the house. Kyle jumps down to attack him from behind and they fight. Cross eventually hits Kyle in the head with a bottle. Then, Alex makes a call and waits for Kyle to awaken. They have a talk. Cross gets Kyle to tell him everything he had done, and at the end, Kyle boasts that Alex won't be able to prove anything. Alex takes out his phone and tells him the entire conversation was recorded on voicemail. Kyle jumps up to attack Alex but Alex punches him in the face."
2501,A Prisoner of Birth,thriller," After proposing to his childhood sweetheart Beth Wilson, Danny Cartwright takes her brother Bernie and her to celebrate at a nearby pub. In the pub, they are accosted by four people. Danny, Beth and Bernie attempt to leave the pub without getting involved in a fracas, but Spencer Craig, one of the four that confronted them, follows them out of the pub along with his friends. A fight breaks out; Bernie is stabbed and dies. Danny is blamed for his murder in a well-orchestrated plot by Spencer and his friends: a popular actor, an aristocrat, and a young estate agent. Danny is arrested and convicted. Sentenced to 22 years in Belmarsh prison, the highest security jail in South-east London, United Kingdom, he encounters two prisoners, Albert Crann, known as ""Big Al,"" and Sir Nicholas Moncrieff. Meanwhile, outside the prison, Beth is pregnant with Danny's daughter. Sir Nicholas slowly teaches Danny to read and to write. Their friendship grows closer, and Danny decides to dress like his friend in the hope that it will help his upcoming appeal. Danny begins to gather evidence for his appeal with the help of a young lawyer, Alex Redmayne, but unable to present the new evidence, Danny's appeal is denied, and he must serve his complete sentence in Belmarsh prison. Nicholas is murdered by a fellow inmate and his death is made to be seen as a suicide but he was thought to be Danny himself. The timely intervention of Big Al leads to the subsequent escape of Danny. On the outside of the prison, Danny pretends to be Nicholas. He finds that he must sort out his friend's family affairs before pursuing his goals of clearing his name and taking revenge upon the four individuals who framed him for Bernie's murder. A lengthy legal battle between himself and Nicholas' hated uncle Hugo leaves Danny Cartwright in the possession of over 50 million dollars (20 million pounds) with which he plans to expose Spencer Craig and clear his name, so that he will be able to live with Beth and his daughter. Dann is caught out by Nick's friends and is held in custody, while his counsel begins Danny's bid for freedom the Barrister (QC), Actor and friend are all brought to justice. Alex's father (ex Barrister QC and Judge at the High Court) gains Danny's freedom and his name is cleared. Danny has another child (male) and it's called Nick in honour of his friend and Alex his Barrister is given title of Godfather for all his hard work in freeing Danny."
2502,Step on a Crack,thriller," When a beloved former First Lady dies, an elaborate funeral is held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Many famous people, including actors and politicians, attend. During the service, gunmen seal the cathedral and take all of the celebrities inside hostage. Knowing that each of their captives is enormously wealthy, they demand a ransom from each captive personally. While the lawyers, families, and talent agents of each of the famous captives assembles their ransom, the gunmen periodically kill and toss out hostages, including the current Mayor of New York City. NYPD Detective Michael Bennett is the lead negotiator with the gunmen. Through the course of his involvement, he consults with the FBI, goes on a botched raid of the cathedral in which an FBI agent and an NYPD officer die, and deals with the death of his cancer-stricken wife. When the gunmen receive their ransom, they demand a fleet of identical-looking sedans be brought to the cathedral. The NYPD provides the sedans with the intent of using snipers to kill each gunman as he exits the cathedral. Unfortunately, everyone emerges from the cathedral dressed identically in hoods and robes—it is impossible to differentiate gunman from hostage. The hostages and gunmen pile into each of the sedans and drive off. Bennett and the NYPD and FBI follow from helicopters as the sedans travel a route that the gunmen had demanded be blocked off. From the helicopter, Bennett struggles to figure out where the sedans are going. Eventually the sedans break off in to two groups—one headed east and one west. Neither group of sedans stops and both eventually end up careening into the Hudson and East rivers. Once submerged, the gunmen escape with the help of SCUBA equipment they stashed in the rivers earlier. The hostages all surface and are rescued. One sedan, however, did not make it to a river, having instead been hijacked by the hostages inside. The sedan crashes into a car dealership where the gunman inside dies after being impaled on a motorcycle's handlebars. Even though the dead gunman has gone to great lengths to hide his identity (by burning his fingerprints off, for example), the NYPD and FBI are able to determine his identity and that he was a corrections officer at the infamous Sing Sing prison. Bennett and other officers travel to Sing Sing and determine that a group of corrections officers staged a sick out on the morning of the cathedral incident. The lead gunman then reveals himself as one of the officers escorting Bennett around the prison and proceeds to beat Bennett up. The beating ends when Bennett throws the gunman up against a cell and the prisoner inside, seeking retribution against the gunman's cruelty as a prison guard, puts the gunman in a chokehold. Bennett manages to free the lead gunman and the story ends with Bennett driving him back to face charges in New York City."
2503,The Appeal,thriller," Mississippi attorneys Wes and Mary Grace Payton have battled New York City-based Krane Chemical in an effort to seek justice for their client Jeannette Baker, who lost her husband and young son to cancer likely caused by carcinogenic pollutants the company knowingly and negligently allowed to seep into the town of Bowmore's water supply. When the jury awards the plaintiff $3 million in wrongful death damages and $38 million in punitive damages, billionaire CEO Carl Trudeau vows to do whatever is necessary to overturn their decision and save his company's stocks. Since Mississippi Supreme Court justices are elected rather than appointed, Trudeau plots with Barry Rinehart of Troy-Hogan, a Boca Raton firm that specializes in elections and does secret deals off shore, to select a candidate who can defeat Sheila McCarthy, known for her tendency to side with the underdog. Their choice is Ron Fisk, a lawyer with no prior political experience or ambitions. He is naive enough to be impressed by all the attention shown him by his backers and not question the source of the considerable funds pouring into his coffers or the underhanded tactics used by his campaign team. Also thrown into the ring by Rinehart is heavy-drinking gambler Clete Coley, a clownish rogue third candidate designed to make McCarthy think her campaign will be easy, draw support away from her, and then cede it to Fisk when he eventually withdraws from the race. Fisk defeats McCarthy and immediately adopts the position expected of him. He votes against upholding several large settlements in cases brought before the court on appeal, and the Paytons expect he will do the same when their case comes up for review. What they don't anticipate is Fisk unexpectedly being forced to rethink his stand when his son is seriously injured by the impact of a defective product and left permanently impaired by a medical error. The issue of corporate responsibility affects him and his family on a personal level. However, even though Fisk feels that he has been used and tricked, he makes no move to do what is right, and has come to relish his new-found wealth and power. He sides with the big corporation and does not take any action for what happened to his son because he would ""look silly."""
2504,The Five Greatest Warriors,thriller," The story starts with Jack's fall from the Vertex under Table Mountain with the suicidal Marine Switchblade, and his escape with the aid of Switchblade's Maghook, a staple of many of Reilly's works. He quickly reunites with the rest of his team at Little McDonald Island. The dates for the placement of the six pillars sees a three-month window between the second and third placements. Jack and Zoe use the interim period to help Pooh Bear in the rescue of Stretch from the Israeli Mossad. In a Roman ruin located under Israel's most secret facility, they find Stretch subjected to a hellish treatment: kept alive in a tank of formaldehyde by General Muniz, a Mossad spymaster. Stretch was to be the latest addition in Muniz's private collection of ""living trophies"", a practice pioneered by a former KGB operative. Stretch is subsequently liberated and the party makes their escape. Jack learns of The Five Greatest Warriors from Diane Cassidy, five key members of history who would influence the sacred stones and their whereabouts. They set about locating the third pillar and its matching Vertex. Following a connection to Genghis Khan, the party sets out for Mongolia. They locate the Khan's tomb under a false mound that covered a meteor crater. In the bowels of the fortress, they find a petrified dinosaur egg painted with images of the six temples that house the Verticies. The Japanese Blood Brotherhood attempt to stop Jack and Wolf from finding the next temple by destroying the egg, and Wizard is killed by Wolf in their escape. Realising that Genghis's shield also carries the images carved on the egg, Jack and his team race to the northern tip of Hokkaido. Japan attempts to stop them from entering the temple - which can only be done so in the middle of a tsunami - but Jack and his father form an uneasy truce and agree to place the third pillar together. Negotiating a maze set above a lake of lava, they successfully place the pillar. Several Japanese snipers very nearly kill them, and in the firefight, Jack and his father receive a vision of Jack's death from the pillar: what appears to be a fiery accident involving a falling aircraft. Wolf decides to let Jack go free after Jack saves his life. Unfortunately, all involved are captured by a group of Russians. At the same time, Jack's friends are picked up from their various assignments around the world. Everyone is taken to a dam in far eastern Siberia, where they meet Carnivore, General Muniz's friend and the creator of the ""living tombs"". Carnivore is the last of the House of Romanov, and the leader of the coalition of royal houses in Europe. Diane Cassidy is also revealed to be one of his agents. After forcing Jack to fight his half-brother to the death, the Carnivore subjects Jack's friends to his hellish prison cells to encourage him to place the fourth and fifth pillars. Without a choice, Jack agrees. The Carnivore makes a similar arrangement with Mao Gongli, Scimitar and Vulture, holding their loved ones hostage and sending them out to find the sixth and final pillar. The fourth and fifth pillars must be placed simultaneously. Jack, Lily and Iolanthe make for Diego Garcia while Pooh Bear, Stretch and the Adamson twins go to Lundy Island. Shortly after they place their pillars, Carnivore and Cassidy abandon their Siberian base and their victims, leaving them to die. Wolf escapes and gives pursuit, heading for Easter Island. Meanwhile, Jack, Lily and Iolanthe return to Israel, where they locate the (occupied) Tomb of Jesus Christ, the bearer of the sixth and final pillar, in a salt mine near Ein Aradhim. After Pooh Bear is forced to kill Scimitar and Vulture, Jack himself makes for Easter Island aboard a heavily damaged Halicarnassus. Meanwhile, the Dark Sun enters the edge of the solar system and planet earth is subjected to extreme weather conditions. Unable to land his plane, Jack crash-lands in the entrance to the Easter Island shrine. Unable to catch either Wolf or the Carnivore in the ten minutes remaining until the final pillar must be placed, Jack uses the remains of the Halicarnassus to cover the ground between himself and Carnivore. Jack kills the former KGB operative with the plane's sole remaining gun, which literally blasts him to nothingness. Lily, the only person Jack trusts - not least of all because she is the only one who can read the Word of Thoth - carries out the final placement. The reward for the sixth pillar is power, the ability to make one's thoughts a reality. Imbued with the power of the pillar, Lily goes on a murderous rampage, killing Cassidy and Mao Gongli in a grotesque fashion before Jack is able to stop her. As the Great Machine activates and the world is saved from the Dark Sun, Jack kicks the pillar into the void beneath the Vertex. Wolf gives chase, but the Halicarnassus causes the balcony overlooking the void to collapse, and he falls to his death as he chases the pillar. We learn that because it was Wolf's blood and not Jack's on the third pillar in Hokkaido, it was a vision of Wolf's death that Jack saw. Jack and Lily leave Easter Island, returning to Siberia in time to free their friends and the Carnivore's victims from the fomaldehyde tanks. The epilogue sees Jack and Zoe married and living in Australia with Lily. The five surviving pillars remain hidden, with Jack reporting that they had been lost or destroyed over the course of their mission. Zoe discerns that the fifth Greatest Warrior - whose identity had gone unknown because of his role to play in the potential apocalypse - was actually Jack, and the story ends."
2505,Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon,thriller," In the first novelization of the Ghost Recon franchise by Ubisoft/Tom Clancy, the Ghosts infiltrate China's eastern coast to seek and destroy the Spring Tiger Group. The small band of renegade Chinese military leaders is poised to execute Operation Pouncing Dragon, a plot to seize Taiwan and trigger a battle for dominance in the Pacific. Led by Captain Scott Mitchell, the Ghosts wage war from the Southern Philippines, Northwest Waziristan, and Xiamen, China, coping with the impact of unforeseen tragedy, remembering lessons-learned, and treasuring camaraderie. But during Operation War Wrath in Xiamen, China, a decade-old tragedy resurfaces endangering the mission and the team. The Spring Tiger Group is aided by an old nemesis and for Mitchell; this war gets very personal."
2506,Brotherhood of the Rose,thriller," It tells the story of Saul and Chris, two orphans who are adopted by a top espionage agent and trained to be assassins. When their adopted father tries to have them killed, their training, determination and loyalty are put to the test. The brothers find out that the conspiracy is even larger than they expected spanning security agencies of different nations, Each of the brotherhood member is 4th in ranking in the respective organizations and have loyal assassins trained from tender age. Chris died during a duel with one of the loyal assassins of another brotherhood member and the story became that of revenge. Their adopted father Elliot ran into a sort of national safe house for security agents which is where the later part of the book concentrated on. Saul being a Jew later went back to his native land and married his love interest Erica from their training days, who is a Mossad Agent. The other novels in this loose trilogy are The Fraternity of the Stone and The League of Night and Fog."
2507,Brain,thriller," The story starts with a girl Kathereine Collins going to a private GYN clinic, located in Manhattan, New York, where she is undergoing treatment for some Gynac ailments. Simultaneously she has started having seizures where in she smells a repulsive and oddly familiar odor and then loses consciousness. She wants to withdraw her records from this clinic and move onto her hometown to her family doctor. While on her way back, she faints at the elevators. The next scene shows her parents visiting her apartment and the cops searching the room as she has been missing for some days now. The story revolves around the protagonist Dr. Martin Philips from then on, who is a doctor in neuroradiology at the NYC medical center. Dr. Martin Philips, a 41 year old neuroradiologist is involved in creating a self-diagonstic x-ray machine, along with Michaels, who is a researcher graduating from MIT and also head of the department of artificial intelligence. Dr. Philips's girlfriend and colleague Dr. Denise Sanger (28 years old) is also involved in the same hospital. The story proceeds with the hospital working being shown where Dr. Mannerheim, a stubborn neurosurgeon, is to operate on a girl named Lisa Marino who is a seizure patient. She is set to undergo a brain operation to remove damaged brain cells which her doctors say are causing her seizures. The symptoms are described in another female patient, Kathereine Collins, only stronger. However, when Dr. Phillips starts to discover a conspiracy involving usage of human test subjects, he is drawn into a world that is deceiving and dangerous. After the reveal, Dr. Phillips asks to be put in an asylum."
2508,Man on Fire,thriller," In Italy, wealthy families often hire bodyguards to protect family members from the threat of kidnapping. When Rika Balletto urges her husband Ettore, a wealthy textiles producer living in Milan, to hire a bodyguard for their daughter Pinta, he is doubtful but agrees. After some searching, he finally settles for an American named Creasy. Creasy, once purposeful and lethal, has become a burnt-out alcoholic. To keep him occupied, his companion Guido suggests that Creasy should get a job, and offers him to set him up as a bodyguard; thus he is being hired by the Ballettos, where he meets his charge, Pinta. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. They become friends and he replaces her parents in their absences, giving her advice, guidance and help with her competition running; he is even spurred to give up his drinking and return to his former physical prowess. But Creasy's life is shattered when Pinta is kidnapped by the Mafia, despite his efforts to protect her. Creasy is wounded during the kidnapping, and as he lies in a hospital bed Guido keeps him informed of the goings on. Soon enough, Guido returns with the news that the exchange went bad, and Pinta was found dead in a car, suffocated on her own vomit. She had also been raped by her captors. Out of hospital, Creasy returns to Guido's pensione, and outlines his plans for revenge against the men who took away the girl who convinced him it was all right to live again; anyone who was involved, or profited from it, all the way to the top of the Mafia. Told by Guido he can stay with in-laws on the island of Gozo in Malta, Creasy accepts the offer, in order to train for his new mission. While on Gozo, Creasy trains for several months, getting into shape and re-familiarizing himself with weaponry. But, to his surprise, he also discovers he has another reason to live after his suicidal mission against the Mafia; he finds himself accepted by and admiring the Gozitans, and falls in love with Nadia, the daughter of his host. Soon enough, he is fit and leaves for Marseille where he stocks up on supplies, weapons and ammunition; from there he travels back to Italy, and then the war between Creasy and the Mafia begins. From low-level enforcers to the capos in Milan and Rome, and all the way to the head Don in Sicily, Creasy cuts through their organization, murdering anyone who had something even remotely to do with Pinta's kidnapping. After Creasy reveals to Rika that Ettore allowed her to be kidnapped for the insurance money, Ettore commits suicide. Finally, after killing the Don, a severely wounded Creasy is taken to hospital, but pronounced dead; a funeral is held and Creasy is thought to be gone. But, unknown to all, Creasy was in fact alive, and makes it back to Gozo where he is reunited with Nadia."
2509,Beastly,thriller," Kyle Kingsbury has good looks. He truly has it all. He is very arrogant and rude. One day in class, a witch, Kendra, who has ugly features, appears and challenges his royal status. At the dance, Kyle uses a chance to humiliate Kendra in front of schoolmates. Kendra reveals herself to be a witch and punishes him for his cruelty by condemning him to live as a beast. However, because of his one act of kindness (he gave a rose to the girl who was working the ticket booth) she gives him two years to find somebody who he loves and who loves him back, and when he does, the girl must prove her love with a kiss. She gives to him a mirror with which he can see whomever he'd like, then vanishes. Kyle's shallow father, a famous news reporter, is ashamed of his son's new appearance (He is said to look like a dog and a bear, with fur all over). He purchases Kyle his own apartment where he proceeds to live with their housekeeper, Magda. His father also sends Kyle a blind tutor, Will. The two later become friends. Will and Magda suggest that he takes up gardening, and Kyle builds a greenhouse where he plants many roses that become dear to him. After one year has gone by, he decides to change his name from 'Kyle', which means handsome, to 'Adrian', which means 'the dark one'. When he is about to lose all hope of ever returning to his human form, a drug addict stumbles upon his green house rose garden. Angered, Adrian hollowly threatens to drop him out the window. Desperate for his life, the cruel man offers his daughter - Lindy - to take his place. They make a deal and Adrian prepares Lindy a room filled with books and new clothing. Despite his efforts, Lindy (who is the girl that had been working the ticket booth at the dance) is still very upset that she is to be forced to live in the house, calling Adrian 'Kidnapper' and 'Jailer'. Hearing her call him this Adrian gets upset. After several days of solitude, Lindy finally comes out of her bedroom in the middle of the night and bumps into Adrian. Adrian explains how he is her age, and that he was just lonely and offers to let Will tutor her. One night there is a thunderstorm, which she is terrified of, and they stay up and watch The Princess Bride and eat popcorn. In doing so, he showed his tenderness and things begin to change between them. They begin studying together under Will's supervision, and spending more time with each other. Adrian makes a deal with Kendra that if he is able to get Lindy to kiss him before the last year is up, she will also return Will's sight to him and allow Magda to go home to her family (Her family does not live in the U.S due to not having green cards). Adrian then invites Lindy up to a cabin he has during Christmas break, with Will and Magda along. They have enormous fun with snowball fights and sledding. But Lindy misses her father and realizes he is in trouble when she sees him through the magic mirror. Understanding her feelings, Adrian allows her to go, because of his love he can't have her captive. Lindy leaves. Adrian is heartbroken when she doesn't return to him and misses her incredibly. He soon realizes that Lindy was again sold for drugs and soon would be raped. Adrian rushes to her aid, even revealing his beastly looks on a subway train. He breaks down the door and is injured by the-would-be rapist, who is terrified by his appearance. He scatters away and Lindy rushes to Adrian's side. Adrian professes his love for her as she does in return. He is mortally wounded and asks for a kiss from Lindy. Lindy does so. Adrian then transforms back to his original self. Confused, Lindy tries to find Adrian for she didn't see his transformation. Kyle then tells her of their memories together to assure her he is Adrian. Lindy is overjoyed and hugs and kisses him. Will gets his vision back and gets a job as an English teacher at Kyle's and Lindy's school. He also goes back to college in order to become a university English professor. As for Magda, she is revealed to actually be Kendra in disguise and that because of the spells she cast when she was younger, she was told she must stay and care for Kyle for the rest of her life. It was Kyle's wish for her to be reunited with her family that frees her from her obligation. Kyle returns to school with Lindy and they date. People are confused by his new personality and his dating Lindy, who has red hair and crooked teeth. But Kyle reassures Lindy that he loves her despite what everyone says. Lindy and Kyle go to prom together, and they live happily ever after."
2510,Henderson's Boys: The Escape,thriller," Big textBig textBig textBig text In France, 1940, Hitler's Nazi armies are invading and forcing civilians to flee. Meanwhile, German agents are tracking two British children, Paul and Rosie Clarke. Charles Henderson, a British spy, finds himself trying to reach them before the Germans can. However, he finds himself enlisting the help of Marc Kilgour, a French orphan, in order to save the pair. He soon realises that children will be essential recruits if the British are to win the war. Meanwhile, Paul and Rosie find a six-year old called Hugo, who is later accidentally killed"
2511,Vixen 03,thriller," In January 1954 a United States Air Force Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter codenamed Vixen 03 takes off from the Buckley Naval Air Station in Colorado on a late-night flight transporting a top-secret cargo from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to testing grounds near the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The plane never arrives in the Pacific, and, despite a massive four-month search by the Navy and Coast Guard, no trace of Vixen 03 is discovered. The story then jumps forward 34 years, where Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, is vacationing with Colorado Congresswoman Loren Smith at her father’s cabin in the Sawatch Mountains. Pitt discovers some aircraft parts in the cabin garage and follows this lead until he intuits that there is an aircraft crash site in the local lake, Table Lake. Calling for his friend and Assistant Special Projects Director Al Giordino to fly in specialized NUMA equipment, they survey the lake and quickly find the wreck of Vixen 03. Discovering clues found on the wreck, Pitt follows the evidence to retired Admiral Walter Bass, United States Navy, who was the commander who ordered Vixen 03 on its top-secret mission. Bass first denies any knowledge of the plane, but after Pitt convinces him that he really has found the wreck, the Admiral reveals that the plane was carrying a cargo of 16-inch battleship shells loaded with a deadly biological doomsday organism. The organism, nicknamed QD for quick death, is a virulent bacterial weapon that causes nearly instant death. The strain is described as being so deadly that just five ounces air-dropped over Manhattan Island would kill 98% of all human life, and, because the strain actually grows stronger over time, would render the island uninhabitable for up to 300 years. Determined that this doomsday organism that he hoped was lost forever must never fall into the hands of the government that someday may decide to use it, Admiral Bass convinces Pitt, Admiral Sandecker and the rest of the NUMA team that they must secretly raise Vixen 03 and destroy the deadly cargo. The team raises the wreck and discovers that eight of the 36 shells are missing, apparently salvaged by local divers and sold to the Phalanx Arms Company. Pitt follows the trail and is able to recover six of the eight shells, but discovers that the last two were mistakenly sold as part of a large shipment to the African Army of Revolution. The African Army of Revolution is an organization of black African militants led by expatriate American Hiram Lusana with the stated goal of overthrowing the minority white government of the Republic of South Africa using international public opinion and force against military targets. Pieter de Vaal, Minister of the South African Defense Force, is determined to stop the AAR and develops a plan to both rid himself of the AAR and topple the existing government and put himself in power. The plan, code-named Operation Wild Rose, is a plot to use black mercenaries in a terrorist attack on the United States to discredit the AAR and win sympathy for the white minority government in South Africa. De Vaal recruits Captain Patrick McKenzie Fawkes, late of the Royal Navy, who believes his family was slaughtered by the AAR, to lead the plan. The audacious plan calls for Fawkes to take control of the former U.S. battleship Iowa, which was sold for scrap and purchased by an AAR holding company, to undergo a major gutting, raising her draft and allowing her to ride much higher in the water. Raising the draft enables Fawkes to sail the ship up the Potomac River and proceed with the plan for a terrorist attack by shelling Washington D.C.. With the help of Dale Jarvis, Director of the National Security Agency, Pitt discovers the plot to shell Washington with 16-inch battleship shells and, unbeknownst to anyone but Pitt and a few others, unleash the deadly QD organism on the nation’s capitol by accident. While the President and the Joint Chiefs launch a plan to take the ship and capture the shells intact, Pitt hopes to keep his promise to Admiral Bass and launches a daring mission of his own to destroy the QD warheads before they can be used, by the terrorists or the government."
2512,Deep Storm,thriller," Former naval doctor Peter Crane is sent to investigate a mysterious illness that has broken out on a North Atlantic oil rig. He meets his superior officer, Dr. Asher who hints at a fantastic secret being discovered. Government officials transport him to an amazing undersea habitat run by the United States military. He receives a confidential envelope that says that the military has found some evidence of Atlantis. As he is brought down into the ""facility"" codenamed Deep Storm, he discovers that nearly a quarter of the staff have been acting strangely. Working alongside the psychological doctor, Dr.Corbett and the chief military doctor Michele Bishop, Crane is witness to one of these incidents, one of the workers suddenly grabs a hostage and after screaming about ""voices"" he stabs himself in the neck with a screwdriver. After interviewing some of the patients there, Crane realizes that there must be some kind of unifying basis to them, that they should all have something in common."
2513,The Devil's Alternative,thriller," The story opens with the discovery of a castaway in the Black Sea. Recovering in hospital in Turkey, the man is visited by Andrew Drake, an Anglo-Ukrainian. The castaway, Miroslav Kaminsky, is a Ukrainian nationalist who escaped after he was betrayed to the KGB. Drake convinces Kaminsky that they should strike a blow against the Soviet Union. Kaminsky tells Drake about Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff, two Ukrainian nationalists who may be able to help him. Meanwhile, a chain of failures at the Soviet Union's plant that makes fungicide for wheat has led to the inadvertent poisoning of the wheat crop. The United States is aware of this crisis and plans to sell its food to the Soviets in exchange for political and military concessions. Hardliners in the Politburo come up with a different strategy: to take the food from the West by invading Western Europe. The Politburo, led by Chairman Maxim Rudin, narrowly votes down the war plan; however, Rudin is dying of cancer and it is only a matter of time before the faction in favor of war gains supremacy. The news of the war plan comes to British intelligence agent Adam Munro through a Russian woman, who works in the Kremlin offices and has access to the records of Politburo debates. The information shakes both the British and U.S. political leadership. Mishkin and Lazareff, with the help of Drake, complicate the situation for Rudin by killing his ally in The Politburo, the chief of KGB. Mishkin and Lazareff hijack a Russian airliner to escape from Ukraine. They are arrested in West Berlin after one of the pilots is shot dead during landing. Drake wants to help them because only they can reveal truth about the death of the KGB chief. Drake and other Westerners of Ukrainian origin hijack an oil supertanker and request freedom for Mishkin and Lazareff. The coastal countries threatened by ecological catastrophe support the release of the prisoners. US president Matthews receives information from the British that the USSR will stop negotiations regarding grain and military concessions if the prisoners are released. So there appear to be only two options: an ecological catastrophe, or a war that the USSR will start against western Europe. This is the 'Devil's Alternative' of the title. Munro devizes a third option which enables the prisoners to be released (thus ending the oiltanker hijack) without them being able to reveal that they have killed the KGB chief."
2514,Nightmare Academy,thriller," Twin siblings and Veritas Project members Elijah and Elisha Springfield are sent to investigate the Knight-Moore Academy when a missing boy mysteriously reappears with his mind wiped clean of almost all of his memories. The only two things he can say are ""I don't know"" and ""Nightmare Academy"". When the young man dies mysteriously, the Springfield family is tasked with the investigation of what happened to the boy and what exactly the Nightmare Academy is. Elijah and Elisha are sent to Knight-Moore and discover that sinister happenings abound on the campus, such as campus raids and frequent fights. During the course of the investigation the teens lose contact with their parents and Elijah is taken to a mysterious mountain after someone starts a fight with him. Elijah's sister has to find a way to save her brother without help from her parents before he is murdered or loses all of his memories."
2515,Black,thriller," This book is about a man named Thomas Hunter in Denver, Colorado, 2010, who, after being knocked unconscious from a bullet wound to the head, wakes up to find himself in a strange world full of black, twisted trees. After being attacked by strange, bat-like beings called Shataiki and led out of the Black Forest by a white bat, he is rendered unconscious again due to blood loss. He wakes up to find himself back in Denver. Startled at the sudden change, he can’t figure out which world is real. He soon discovers that every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in the other world, until he falls asleep there. Outside of the Black Forest is the Colored Forest, a paradise inhabited by a civilization of immortal-yet innocent-humans beings who are watched over by Elyon, a God-like being, along with white, bat-like Roush, who are opposites of the Shataiki and act as servants of Elyon. Thomas eventually finds out that this other world is our own thousands of years in the future, and that a virus, mutated from a vaccine, would wipe out his present-day Earth later that year. Thomas is forced to fight evil in both worlds, a difficult prospect, for while evil is portrayed differently in each reality, it is equally as potent, and Thomas quickly finds that putting a stop to an event of apocalyptic proportions is no easy task."
2516,Landslide,thriller," This story revolves around the protagonist, Bob Boyd, who is a geologist and works in British Columbia timber country. He has no memory of his past following a terrible auto accident. At the start of the novel he arrives in a small town - Fort Farrell, located in the northeastern British Columbia to perform a small job for the Matterson Corporation. By chance he happens to see the name of the square in the town – Trinavant Square, which brings back some memories to him. After consulting the town newspaper he confirms that this is the place where John Trinavant used to live. He learns from a local reporter, McDougall (Mac) that John Trinavant used to be a big businessman in Fort Farrell about ten years ago with the elder Matterson – ‘Bull’ Matterson. However at that time John Trinavant had died in an auto crash along with his son (Frank) and wife. There was a fourth person found in the car driven by the Trinavants – Robert B. Grant who has presumed to be a hitchhiker travelling with them. After meeting with the head of the Matterson Corporation, Howard Matterson (son of Bull Matterson), Bob plans to start a survey of the land owned by the Matterson Corporation in the nearby forest where the Mattersons were planning to build a dam and wanted to get their land surveyed for any precious minerals. Bob starts the survey and comes across a Miss Clare Trinavant who insists that he stays out of her land. After completing the survey he reports back to Howard that nothing of value lied below their land, and collects his pay-check and leaves. But before he leaves he is confronted by Mac to reveal his interest in the Trinavants. Although he refuses to tell Mac anything he is forced to reconsider his decision. Bob thinks about his past. It is revealed that Bob Boyd is indeed none other than Robert Grant who was riding with the Trinavants when the car crashed and the other 3 occupants died. Although he survived the crash his body was badly burned and as a result he lost his memory. He is told by the doctor and the psychiatrist (Susskind) that he is Robert Grant and survived the crash. Susskind urges him to forget about his past and focus on the future. But Bob insists on knowing about his past and so Susskind tells him that he used to be a college student and had a broken family and criminal history. He had no family now and was sought by police for drug and other charges. Susskind tells him that he must forget all that and study and complete his university exams because he was a new person now. Susskind helps him get a new face by plastic surgery and they decide to give him a new name – Bob Boyd. After a little time Bob is able to go back to normal life and works in the northern Canadian territories as a prospector. Back in the present time, Bob Boyd receives news that Susskind had died and feels that he has lost all touch with his past except for Fort Farrell and decided to go back there and investigate. He goes back and meets Mac and tells him everything about his past after which Mac feels sorry for having reprimanded him previously. They decide that to stick together and investigate the Mattersons interest and involvement in Trinavant property especially since after the death of the Trinavant family the Mattersons had gained a lot of wealth. They also decide to contact Clare Trinavant, who is a distant niece of John Trinavant and inform her about Bob’s past. At this time Mac asks Bob how he knows he is Robert Grant, in other words couldn’t he also be Frank Trinavant. Mac reveals to Bob that both Bob and John were boys of same age and a mistake could have been made. If Bob were actually Frank Trinavant he would stand to gain a lot of wealth and this would upset the Mattersons a lot. After hearing this Bob starts to spread the word in Fort Farrell that he is the survivor of the crash in which the Trinavant family died to see the reaction of the Mattersons. Immediately he is called by the elder Matterson (Bull) and accused of blackmail. Bull inform him that he knows Bob is actually Robert Grant and could get him thrown in jail because of his past criminal record. Bull warns Bob to leave town immediately and not create any trouble, but Bob ignores him and tells him he can do nothing. Meanwhile Bob asks Clare her if he can survey her share of the land adjoining the Matterson’s dam because it would be flooded soon. They both go there together and survey the land. While camping together they develop a romantic interest and decide to get married sometime in the future. When they return back from the survey Bob decides to create some more panic for the Mattersons. He decides to visit the dam they are building and starts to poke around in order to provoke them. He also collects some soil samples near the dam and finds they contain quick clay. He tries to warn the Mattersons to stop building the dam lest it gets toppled due to the quick clay; instead, the Mattersons threaten him. Eventually he confronts Bull Matterson and tells him that he could also be John Trinavant. Bull is unable to hear this shocking news and gets a heart-attack. His son, Howard, spreads the rumor that Bob had hit Bull, and gets all his employees to hunt down Bob. Bob quickly learns of Howard’s plan and escapes in the woods. They all follow him in the woods and Howard also captures Clare and Mac and locks them in his cellar. Bob knows that he must quickly escape his hunters and try to free Clare and Mac. He tries several maneuvers in the forest and on one occasion tells one of Howard’s men that he did not hit Bull Matterson. Eventually, Bob is able to escape and reach the Matterson home where Bull is recuperating from his heart attack. Bull tells Bob that five years ago his son and daughter had taken his car and run down John Trinavant’s car with the intent to kill him and his family. They did not want to see the more successful Frank be the successor of the Matterson-Trinavant business. A little time later Bob learns from the police that Howard is killed by police gunshots in the forest after he had killed one of the police officers. They also are able to free Clare and Mac from the cellar. Bob races towards the Matterson dam and orders everyone to evacuate due to the danger of quick clay. In the ensuing evacuation the dam collapses and a few people die, but most of them are able to escape. At the end Bob and Clare get together and look forward to a new life together. After all, he could capture me and take ne back to Fort Farrell, and then the whole story would blow up in his face. He had to get rid of me and the only way was by another killing. I shivered slightly. I had led a pretty tough life but I had never been pursued with deadly intention before. This was quite a new experience and likely to be my last. Of course, it was still possible for me to quit. I could head further west and then southwest to the coast, hitting it at Stewart or Prince Rupert; I could then get lost and never see Fort Farrell again. Bit I knew I would not do that because of Mac and Clare - especially Clare. I dug a blanket from my pack and wrapped it round me. I was dead beat and in no fit condition to make important decisions. It would be time enough in daylight to worry about what to do next. I dropped to sleep with Mac's words echoing in my ears: Keep fighting; give them another slug whole they're off balance. - from back cover of 1967 edition"
2517,Cat and Mouse,thriller," The book begins with Gary Soneji breaking into Alex Cross' home in Washington DC and contemplating the murders of Cross and his family. In London the killer dubbed Mr. Smith by the press is conducting a live autopsy. Mr. Smith explains to his victim what he will be feeling and that he envies his victim. At union station, Soneji opens fire on the crowd with a rifle. Cross and Sampson receive a call from Soneji letting him know where he is. Cross was expecting Kyle Craig, who had faxed Cross a letter asking for help with the Mr. Smith case. When Sampson and Cross get there, four people have already been killed. Cross and Sampson find the rifle and discover that it had been set up on a timer to randomly shoot downward. Soneji was actually on a train headed to New York City. Soneji is at Penn Station in New York City. There, he stabs a man in the back with a big hunting knife he used to kill Roger Graham in Along Came a Spider. Soneji then escapes in a subway. Cross is driving by the school and stops when he sees his girlfriend Christine’s car. When she gets home, they go for a walk, and Christine confesses that she worries about him getting hurt or killed in the line of duty. The two begin to kiss passionately, but are interrupted by Cross' pager. Cross has been called by an NYPD detective, Manning Goldman, who is investigating the Penn Station murder. Goldman is sure that Soneji behind it. Once in New York City, Cross meets with Goldman at Penn Station. A total of three people have been stabbed with a knife laced with poison. The next day Cross takes his cat, Rosie, to Quantico to be examined by the FBI. Cross is afraid that Soneji did something to the cat before giving her to him. He also meets with Kyle, who wants Cross involved in the Mr. Smith case but Alex refuses. Cross agrees to see Agent Thomas Pierce, whose own girlfriend was one of Mr. Smith's victims. Afterwards, Alex checks on Rosie, who had nothing wrong with her. In London, Mr. Smith calls the police a few blocks down telling them where to find Inspector Drew Cabot's body. Thomas Pierce is in London. He works on the Mr. Smith case almost exclusively. He’s trying to figure out the message Mr. Smith is trying to send. Sampson and Cross are in Wilmington, Delaware. They are going to visit Soneji’s wife and daughter. Cross smells decay and sees flies. They find the decapitated body of a Labrador Retriever. They discover that Soneji had decapitated his wife, but spared their daughter. Later, Cross goes to Lorton prison, where Soneji had been kept during Along Came a Spider. Cross was there to meet with a prisoner named Jamal Autry who told Cross that Soneji was raped in prison and contracted AIDS. Cross now understands that Soneji is planning one final rampage before he dies. In New York City, Soneji quietly breaks into Manning Goldman’s house at night, and hits him over the head with a lead pipe. Kyle Craig lends Alex use of the FBI helicopter to make his way to NYC. Cross meets with Goldman’s partner. They make their way to Goldman’s home in Riverdale. In the bedroom there is blood everywhere. The blood was splattered on the bed, the walls, and the floor. This was a brutal attack. Elsewhere in a bar, Soneji pick up a woman and goes with her to her apartment. Alex and the NYPD think Soneji is going after the man that raped him in prison, Shareef Thomas. They find Shareef in Brooklyn inside a crack house. A struggle ensues as they try to arrest Thomas, and Cross shoots and kills him. In Paris, Mr. Smith attacks and kills a young doctor who had just left his girlfriends house. At Bellevue Hospital, Soneji goes to find Thomas, who he believes is in intensive care. Soneji is dressed as a male nurse and wearing another disguise. Soneji goes into the room, only to find Cross and Detective Groza, Goldman’s partner, waiting for him in the room. Soneji is impressed, but prepared, as he throws a small Incendiary bomb at the detectives. Cross and Groza pull the bed on them to shelter themselves from the brunt of the bomb. Soneji makes his way out of the hospital and escapes in a city bus. Cross is afraid that Soneji plans on blowing up the bus. Cross thinks Soneji is trying to reach Grand Central Station, which proves to be correct, when Soneji makes his way out of the bus and runs toward it carrying a baby in his arm. Groza and Cross follow Soneji. They corner Soneji who swears that Cross will pay for everything. Soneji gets away by throwing the baby. The baby is caught but while everyone looks at the baby on the air Soneji makes a run for the tunnels. Groza and Cross pursue Soneji again. Soneji attacks Groza from behind. Alex and Soneji fight. Soneji swears that he'll go after Cross, even if he dies. Cross shoots Soneji in the jaw. The madman falls to the ground, accidentally detonating the other bomb in his pocket, burning him. A few days later, Cross returns home. He spends the entire day with his family. Kyle Craig calls Cross and again asks for help on the Mr. Smith case. Cross says no. Alex's family throws him a party. That night, an unknown assailant attacks Cross and his family, beating them and shooting him; Cross believes that it was Soneji. Agent Thomas Pierce examines the scene and wonders why the kids were left to live. He deduces they were beaten to make a statement but killing them was not the plan. Pierce concludes that Soneji is innocent of the attacks. Pierce examines the room and notices all the blood in the room. Soon he is told Cross has gone into cardiac arrest due to loss of blood. Kyle and Thomas head to St. Anthony’s Hospital. Thomas reminisces about his days in medical school and his girlfriend, Isabella, who was murdered by Mr. Smith. Traumatized, Pierce had given up medicine. Back in Paris, Inspector Rene Faulk investigates the young surgeon's disappearance. After looking and analyzing evidence at Cross's home, Pierce is sure that Soneji was not Cross' attacker. Pierce finds Cross' shield, burned and charred. Sampson and Pierce head to Princeton, New Jersey to examine the area where Soneji was raised. They went to talk with Soneji’s grandfather, Walter Murphy. They dig in the back and find human and animal bones, which had apparently been Soneji's first victims. At the hotel, Pierce gets an e mail from Mr. Smith that he took a young surgeon in Pierce’s honor. Mr. Smith has been contacting Pierce before he commits a murder and challenges Pierce to stop him. Pierce needs to go. Sampson is not happy with it. Mr. Smith named himself after Valentine Michael Smith from the book Stranger in a Strange Land. Mr. Smith does another live autopsy on Abel Sante. On the way to Paris, Pierce reviews notes and tries to determine what kind of a person Mr. Smith really is. Upon reaching Paris and checking into a hotel, Pierce reads his e mail from Mr. Smith and tells him where to find the doctor’s body. Pierce is accompanied by an Interpol agent named Sandy Greenberg. In the email, Mr. Smith tells Pierce not to trust her. Pierce recovers Dr. Sante’s body. His head had been separated from the body and the head had been cut in half. Pierce is at the Cross house. He’s examining Cross' room and is convinced that Soneji had a partner. Pierce takes Sampson with him to Princeton and to meet a childhood friend of Soneji’s, Simon Conklin. Pierce thinks he’s the one that tried to kill Cross, but Conklin has an alibi. After interviewing Conklin, Pierce is not only convinced Conklin did it, but that Soneji had been taking orders from him. Pierce breaks in to Conklin’s house. Pierce can’t find evidence that Conklin tried to kill Alex but after viewing the house is now sure Conklin is the killer. The book resumes going to Alex’s point of view. He is addressing a group of FBI agents at Quantico. It is revealed that the attack had been a hoax, orchestrated by Craig in order to manipulate Pierce, who is none other than Mr. Smith. Pierce had actually killed his girlfriend when he caught her cheating on him with another doctor. The resulting trauma created in Pierce a split personality, with the ""Mr. Smith"" becoming more and more dominant. The authorities only have circumstantial evidence. The FBI is hoping that being involved in this case will let Pierce go after Conklin and let the FBI catch him in the act. Sara Greenberg tells the agent that Pierce was spotted at all the recent murders. Agents are outside Conklin’s house. Inside, Pierce begins a live autopsy on Conklin, but first is trying to get a confession from Conklin for attacking Dr. Cross. The agents go in, but it’s too late. Conklin is dead and Mr. Smith has escaped. Before dying, Conklin had confessed to trying to kill Cross. Cross offers to go to Boston, Massachusetts to look at Pierce’s apartment. The apartment is full of pictures of Pierce’s dead girlfriend. Cross receives a voicemail from Pierce telling Cross where to find Smith’s next victim. The victim is found but all the organs were removed. Mr. Smith later kills a prostitute. Cross returns home and tries to find a connection. He writes the name of the victim in order and finds the connection. It was in the names. It spelled i-m-u-r-d-e-r-e-d-i-s-a-b-e-l-l-a-c-a-l-a-i-s. (I murdered Isabella Calais). The s in Calais had not been completed. Alex knew the last victim would be Dr. Straw, the man Isabella was having the affair with. The FBI set up another stakeout. Pierce shows up but keeps going in his car. Cross goes after Pierce and go on a high speed chase. The cars eventually go on a side road. Pierce loses Cross for a few minutes. When Cross and Sampson find Pierce’s car, Pierce is gone. Alex knows he wants to complete the puzzle. The S for Smith. Cross returns to Boston. At the apartment Smith had done a self autopsy. Alex tries to stop Pierce from killing himself and the two end up fighting. Sampson shoots Pierce, pointblank. it:Gatto & topo"
2518,The Bourne Betrayal,thriller," At the beginning of the book, Bourne is in Doctor Sunderland's office. Sunderland, recommended by Lindros, is a specialist in memory restoration and miniaturization. Unfortunately for Bourne, he doesn't know that this man posing as Sunderland is actually Costin Veintrop, hired by Fadi to mess with Bourne's brain by creating new memories. These new memories can be evoked by new smells or even hearing things. As Bourne exits the office two things happen: Veintrop calls Fadi and tells him the work is done, and Bourne receives a call that Martin is missing. He then catches a cab and heads back to the CIA headquarters to talk to the Old Man. Back at the CIA Bourne is introduced to a number of new people: Matthew Lerner (the Deputy Director until Lindros gets back), Soraya Moore (a senior case officer), Hiram Cevik (a prisoner, actually Fadi in disguise), and Tim Hytner (who is framed as a traitor to the CIA organization). Tim is working on cracking a cipher created by Fadi. Unwittingly Bourne brings Cevik out of his prison cage to take a walk with him in an attempt to extract more information about Fadi. Then Cevik escapes under the cover of a gun battle in which Hytner is killed. Bourne then steals a motorcycle from the back of a truck to follow the Hummer, which he thinks Cevik is still trying to escape in. Once the Hummer is stopped up the street, CIA officers surround the car, waiting for the prisoners to step out. Bourne then realizes the car is rigged to explode. He grabs Soraya and they make their way to safety just before detonation. Later, Jakob and Lev Silver (Fadi and Muta ibn Aziz in disguise) arrive at the Hotel Constitution, located on the northeast corner of 20th and F Streets. They have a hotel worker named Omar bring them some champagne; the room service was merely a ruse to kill the innocent man and use his likeness to disguise Fadi in an elaborate diversion to easily get Fadi out of the country. Fadi kills Omar, uses makeup and props to disguise his own face with Omar's features, sprays the room with Carbon Disulfide and sets fire to the suite. The room burns, and turns Omar's body into unrecognizable ash as Fadi slips away. Bourne boards a plane intent on finding Fadi. While on board he looks at some of the pictures that Deron has given him on Fadi. Bourne ends up going from London to Addis Ababa; Ababa to Djibouti. In Djibouti, he takes a CIA helicopter to Ras Dejen to look for Fadi and check the area. He finds a body suspiciously drained of all its natural fluids; he suspects radiation is the key. While there, in the wreck of Skorpion One, Bourne sees a boy, Alem. Alem leads him into town and to his father. After being chased by terrorists, he goes and sees the victims of Skorpion One inside a church. There the pilot, Jaime Cowell, tells him that Fadi was torturing Lindros. Meanwhile, Martin Lindros is being tortured by Fadi and his men, and they are all on the move. They relocate Martin to places that are safe for Fadi and his people; and sufficiently away from Bourne. In this case they move him to a Dujja hiding place in a cave. When Bourne arrives in Ras Dejen, he is able to rescue Lindros (actually an impostor named Karim al-Jamil) and brings him back to the CIA, where Karim sends him to Munich to meet with Yevgeny Feyodovich, a man that does business with Dujja. Karim gets word from his source that Bourne will be landing tomorrow, and gives orders for him to be executed. Upon arriving and starting what he believes to be his mission, Bourne discovers Edor Vladovich Lemontov (a fictitious drug lord that Bourne was to meet with) is not a real person, and ends up in a chase with the terrorists. The chase culminates with Bourne ending up on a beach face to face with Fadi. Fadi says ""I've waited a long time for this moment,"" referring to the time that Bourne killed his sister (which we later learn is untrue). Fadi and Bourne fight, with Fadi stabbing Bourne with a knife. During the struggle, a dog attacks Fadi and bites him in the face, knocking him off his guard. The dog (a boxer named Oleksandr) is with Soraya and she is there in Odessa to help Bourne, unaware that she was sent by the impostor Lindros to be killed as well. Bourne and Soraya escape and end up in Istanbul, Turkey, where they find a tracking device planted on him. This happened the day that they took Hiram Cevik out of his prison cage. Bourne figures out that the prisoner was actually Fadi in disguise. They also discover the truth behind a lot of the other deceptions being played out, including the fact that Soraya's friend, Anne Held was Karim (The Fake Lindros)'s Mistress, and the true mole in the CIA. They find out that Veintrop was hired by Fadi to do the surgery. They find out that Sunderland's office wasn't even open on Tuesday. Bourne sends Soraya back to the CIA to find the mole inside. Bourne goes to Nesim Hatun's house to ask him about some things. There he starts following Fadi's messenger back to Buyukada, where he poses as the pilot of Muta's airplane. They end up crashing, and Bourne finds out that he didn't actually kill Fadi's sister Sarah; Muta and his brother Abbud did because she was having a secret love affair. Bourne and his friend Feyd al-Sould find the underground opening to the Dujja facility in Miran Shah. Feyd al-Sould and his cadre go and blow up the water pipes, flooding the underground facility. Bourne then finds Lindros, being held hostage by Fadi, and kills Fadi. Fadi however, had managed to shoot a bullet through Lindros' jaw and eye socket, giving the injured CIA deputy director very little time to live. Katya Veintrop, Costin's wife, is also killed. Costin then deactivates the detonator bomb. Jason makes his way back to the CIA to kill Karim al-Jamil. Meanwhile, Soraya and Tyrone are on the run from supremacists and terrorists. They end up finding the Old Man being embalmed in a mortuary, as they set out for the CIA headquarters. They get shot at by terrorists in the Old Man's limousine, thinking that they can get into the headquarters by showing them the DCI's face, redone by another one of Fadi's men. Bourne kills Karim al-Jamil at the IVT facility by using the same trademark as his nemesis Carlos the Jackal, a bullet to the throat . He then realizes that there is a second timer on the bomb. However after thinking about it he realizes that the second timer was put in there by Veintrop, who, to get back at Fadi and Karim's men for hurting and torturing his wife, didn't connect it to the bomb. fa:بورن، خیانت fr:La Trahison dans la peau pl:Zdrada Bourne'a"
2519,Without Remorse,thriller," The book starts off with John Kelly and two other UDT men performing a maritime demolition of an oil-rig irreparably damaged by Hurricane Camille. While driving to pick him up after the job, Kelly's pregnant wife Patricia (Tish) is killed in a car accident caused by damaged brakes in a large truck. Next to be introduced is Colonel Robin Zacharias, a United States Air Force F-105 pilot, shot down along with his back-seater John Tait during a Wild Weasel strike over North Vietnam (Zacharias is also the father of a B-2 bomber pilot who makes a brief appearance in Debt of Honor). Tait is killed but Robin is captured and reported killed in action, then transferred to a secret POW camp established by the Vietnamese communists to elicit aid from the Soviet Union. Among the prisoners are some who possess highly-classified knowledge, beyond the scope of the Vietnam War. Zacharias, for example, had helped develop SAC War Plans, choosing targets, routes, and methods. He is interrogated by Colonel Nikolai Yevgenievich Grishanov, who asks the prisoners to call him by his nickname Kolya. Grishanov manages to get more information out of the prisoners with kindness and a little vodka than the Vietnamese camp commander Major Vinh had gotten with privation and abuse. Eventually, someone up the chain of command of the NVA decides that the prisoners are not worth keeping and that they can be quietly killed, with plausible deniability. Grishanov then starts to make urgent requests to his superiors that the POWs be brought to the Soviet Union to live out the rest of their lives. While Zacharias is being moved to his cell, a U.S. Buffalo Hunter pilotless drone photographs him, and Admiral Dutch Maxwell recognizes his face. Maxwell, along with two other admirals, develops a special-operation plan entitled Operation BOXWOOD GREEN that will send Marines into North Vietnam to rescue the prisoners. Six months after his wife's death, Kelly meets a girl named Pamela Madden, who has escaped from prostitution and serving as a ""mule"" in a drug-smuggling ring run by Henry Tucker. Kelly picks Pam up off the highway and becomes romantically involved with her. The day after he meets Pam, Kelly befriends two doctors, Sam and Sarah Rosen, who are both professors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Sam of neurosurgery and Sarah of pharmacology, when they have trouble with their new motorboat. (He had neglected to replace the zinc anodes that normally protect exposed metal from corrosion, and his crumbly propellers have been scraped off by a sandbar, which is not on his outdated charts. Kelly orders new ""screws"" and charts, and Sam owes him.) Kelly discovers, by accident, that Pam is addicted to barbiturates. With the help of Sam and Sarah, Kelly helps Pam recover from her addiction. While bringing her into the city for treatment and to speak with the police, Kelly becomes curious about Pam's old life and attempts to reconnoiter her previous chapters. Unfortunately, Pam is recognized by Billy Grayson, her old pimp, and they are attacked. A car chase ensues, in which Kelly's Scout is at a disadvantage to Billy's Plymouth Roadrunner. At one point, Kelly lures Billy into a vacant lot and gets him stuck in deep mud. However, Kelly makes the mistake of slowing down and stopping; he is shot twice with a shotgun and Pam is kidnapped. A press photographer later finds Pam's dead body displayed in a fountain. Kelly recovers in a hospital with the help of Sam Rosen. At this point, Nurse Sandy O'Toole is asked to take a special interest in Kelly. When Kelly is shown a picture of Pam's body and is informed of her abuse during and after death (she was raped by several men, then strangled) he decides to take revenge and vows to take down the people responsible. Kelly starts a rigorous exercise regime to help heal his body so that he can prepare for his private war with Henry Tucker's drug ring. When Kelly returns to his home he is approached by Admiral Maxwell, who recruits him to spearhead a covert operation to free the dozens of secretly held POWs. Kelly is recruited because he is the only person they know of that has ever spent time in the area of the camp. (Kelly had gone behind enemy lines in the vicinity of the camp [before it was built], to rescue Maxwell's son. Political considerations prevented him from receiving the Medal of Honor for saving an admiral's son, but he received a Navy Cross and a promotion as well as excellent references.) Kelly next sets up a safe house in Baltimore, and goes incognito as a wino to perform recon on the drug pushers. He first kills Pam's first pimp in New Orleans, then several minor drug dealers and eventually learns the location of Billy, a subaltern in the drug ring and one of those who had killed Pam. He captures Billy and rescues Doris Brown, who is a ""mule"" as Pam was. Tucker had ordered all the girls who were his couriers to be killed since they were security risks. Kelly takes Billy to his island and interrogates him in his recompression chamber to get further information about the drug ring. Kelly leaves Doris with Sandy because he must leave to lead the mission to rescue the POWs. The plan fails, as the Soviets catch wind of it courtesy of a loose-mouthed anti-American White House intern who told his prep-school friend, a senate aide who is a mole for the KGB. Kelly does manage to kill the escaping Major Vinh and captures Grishanov, who the U.S. use to negotiate the transfer of the prisoners to the Hanoi Hilton, where they will be confirmed as alive and eventually returned. The presence of mind Kelly shows in capturing, rather than killing, Grishanov impresses the CIA officers involved in the operation, particularly since it ultimately leads to the survival of Zacharias and the other POWs. He then visits Sandy and discovers that Doris has been murdered thanks to a corrupt policeman on Tucker's payroll. Kelly determines the location of the drug ring's first lab, used for ""cutting"" heroin, in a derelict ship near his own island home. It is abandoned after Kelly raids it, executing the men who murdered Doris and releasing Xantha Matthews, another of the ""mules"" whom Tucker had ordered to be killed. Kelly deduces from the formaldehyde smell of the bags containing the heroin, and from the country of origin, that it is being smuggled into the US hidden inside corpses of American soldiers. Kelly is then brought into a meeting with Admiral James Greer and high-ranking CIA official Robert Ritter, who want Kelly to join the agency. Kelly states that there is one major problem, and points to the newspaper that has a front-page story of the raid on the derelict ship. The CIA then begins to plan Kelly's fake death by first switching his prints with the captured Kolya's, while allowing him to finish what he started. The first job given to Kelly by the CIA is to remove the mole. Kelly gives the mole a choice, either commit suicide with the heroin he's collected or Kelly will kill him with his knife. Kelly next tracks the new drug lab to a warehouse in a sleepy industrial district, which the smugglers plan to use as long as their source (and the war) holds out. He sets up a sniper post in a nearby building and lays siege to the warehouse, killing two Mafia hoods. Charon shows up at the scene and, upon learning of the situation outside, attempts to murder Piaggi and Tucker, only to be fatally shot by Piaggi. Moments later, Kelly enters the room where the two drug dealers are holed up and kills them both. Emmet Ryan figures out who the undercover wino was and tracks Kelly to his boat. However, he allows Kelly a one hour head start before he alerts the Coast Guard. Kelly then gets into a boat chase and then purposely capsizes his boat in order to fake his own death and kill off his John Kelly identity. He then uses the diving gear he prepared on his boat to swim under the Coast Guard vessel and onto Admiral Maxwell's sailboat, where the Admiral picks him up. (The Coast Guard officer who'd tried to pursue and arrest him, and who believed him to be dead in the ""accident,"" would unexpectedly meet up with Clark many years later—in the chronology of the ""Ryanverse""—within the pages of Debt of Honor). Now known as John Clark, he has married Sandy (who is pregnant), and the book ends with the release of the POWs after the end of the war."
2520,Still Life with Crows,thriller," Agent Pendergast visits Medicine Creek, Kansas after a gruesome murder occurs. With the help of local teenaged misfit Corrie Swanson, he continues to investigate as more citizens are killed. Pendergast is soon led to believe that the murderer must be a member of the community. He soon discovers that the murders are connected to an old curse."
2521,The Bourne Deception,thriller," The Bourne Deception picks up where The Bourne Sanction left off. Jason Bourne's nemesis, Arkadin, is still hot on his trail and the two continue their struggle, reversing roles of hunter and hunted. When Bourne is ambushed and badly wounded, he fakes his death and goes into hiding. In safety, he takes on a new identity, and begins a mission to find out who tried to assassinate him. Jason begins to question who he really is, how much of him is tied up in the Bourne identity, and what he would become if that was suddenly taken away from him. Shortly after, an American passenger airliner is shot down over Egypt by an Iranian missile. A global investigative team, led by Soraya Moore, is assembled to get at the truth of the situation before it can escalate into an international scandal. The trail to Bourne's leads him to Seville. On the way there, he meets Tracy Atherton, who tells him that she is going to Seville to buy the 14th Black Painting. In Seville, Bourne is attacked in a bullfighting arena by a killer named The Torturer. Later on, search for the man who shot him intersects with the search for the people that brought down the airliner, leading Bourne into one of the most deadly and challenging situations he has ever encountered. With the threat of a new world war brewing, Bourne finds himself in a race against time to uncover the truth and find the person behind his assault, all the while stalked by his unknown nemesis."
2522,The Girl Next Door,thriller," The story takes place in 1960s suburban United States, and is told in flashback form by the narrator, David. After giving the reader a quick tour of his neighborhood and childhood friends, David introduces Ruth, a single mother and alcoholic, amongst other things. Ruth has, over time, gained the trust of the neighborhood children by allowing them to come freely into her home, play as rough as they wish, and even drink an occasional beer with her. Fast forward to Meg and Susan, Ruth's nieces, who come to live with their aunt after the death of their parents. All seems well at first: the girls make friends with the other children and David begins to develop feelings for the sweet and innocent Meg. However, Ruth's mental state has been deteriorating over time, and the burden of having two more children to care for seems to accelerate her descent into madness. Ruth begins verbally, then physically, abusing the two girls, often while the other neighborhood children are watching. Then she allows the other children to abuse them, making them feel that because they have the permission of an adult, their actions are okay and will not be punished. Finally both Meg (who is severely injured and near death) and Susan find themselves locked up in the bomb shelter in Ruth's basement, and David realizes that he must do something before time runs out and he loses the first girl he ever loved. However, despite his efforts, his plan to rescue the girls is foiled by Ruth and the neighborhood children under her control. Ruth allows the neighborhood boys to toy with her. Ruth then feels that no man should ever have her and she should never have any man so she decides to end her desires. David decides to create a plan to get Meg, Susan, and himself out of the house alive. He lights some fireworks so the smoke will travel up the stairs. One of Ruth's sons warns her and as she heads downstairs, David beats her with Susan's crutches. The police then show up and David tells them what had happened so he does not get prosecuted. As he grows up he tracks the whereabouts of the other children who helped to torture Meg, discovering that they have either died young as a result of reckless lifestyles or have gone on to lives of poverty and crime. After reading of a brutal crime spree perpetuated by one of the now grown children, David is left to wonder what has become of the children he was unable to track."
2523,61 Hours,thriller," Set in the town of Bolton, South Dakota, Reacher begins his latest adventure on a wrecked senior citizen tour bus after a near-miss with another motorist leaves the bus spinning on the icy road and trapped in a snowy bank. Immersed in a snowy, frozen landscape, Reacher works with local law enforcement to help the fragile victims. Hours later, Reacher learns Bolton is not like most towns. Beside its freezing, snowy climate, the town plays host to one of the largest prisons in the U.S., making the town and its law enforcement subject to the needs and demands of the gigantic correctional facility. At the same time, a band of outlaw bikers, settled outside the town, are on edge after their leader is arrested on drug charges. As the biker awaits trial, protecting Janet Salter, the only witness to the biker's drug transaction, becomes a top priority, and Reacher agrees to aid local law enforcement to help protect the elderly Salter. Throughout the story, brutal enemies, both foreign and domestic, are encountered. The foreign criminal from Mexico is named Plato, and the bad cop in Bolton is Chief Holland, who murders his deputy chief, Andrew Peterson; a crooked lawyer; and the witness Salter. Reacher finds help from one of his successors, Susan Turner, the current leader of the elite 110th Special Investigations Unit (Reacher's old command), while interesting new details of his past come to light, such as how a dent appeared in his desk (from injuring a corrupt general), and of how Reacher caught the attention of military command because of his childhood behavior patterns. The ending leaves the reader guessing as to the conclusion. We do not learn how Reacher manages to escape an underground facility filled with fuel by Plato's henchmen before it ignites. A brief description of how he survives the conflagration appears in the next Reacher novel, Worth Dying For."
2524,Fear,thriller, Miles Kendrick suffers from Post-traumatic stress disorder and is in a witness protection program. When his psychiatrist is targeted and killed he feels somehow responsible and sets about trying to find out why she was killed and avenge her death. A constant companion is his best friend who he killed some time in the past.
2525,The Thirty-nine Steps,thriller," Richard Hannay, the protagonist and narrator, an expatriate Scot, returns from a long stay in southern Africa to his new home, a flat in London. One night he is buttonholed by a stranger, a well-travelled American, who claims to be in fear for his life. The man appears to know of an anarchist plot to destabilise Europe, beginning with a plan to assassinate the Greek Premier, Karolides, during his forthcoming visit to London. He reveals his name to be Franklin P. Scudder and remarks that he is dead, which holds Hannay's attention. Scudder explains that he has faked his own death in order to avert suspicion. Hannay lets Scudder hide in his flat, and sure enough the next day another man is discovered having apparently committed suicide in the same building. Four days later Hannay returns home to find Scudder dead with a knife through his heart. Hannay fears that the murderers will come for him next, but cannot ask the police for help because he is the most likely suspect for the murders. Not only does he want to avoid imprisonment, but he also feels a duty to take up Scudder's cause and save Karolides from the assassination, planned in three weeks' time. He decides to go into hiding in Scotland and then to contact the authorities at the last minute. In order to escape from his flat unseen, he bribes the milkman to lend him his uniform and exits wearing it. Carrying Scudder's pocket-book, he catches an Anglo-Scottish express train leaving from London St. Pancras station. Hannay fixes upon Galloway, in south-west Scotland, as a suitably remote place in which to make his escape and remembers somehow the town of Newton-Stewart, which he names as his destination when he buys his ticket from the guard. Arriving at a remote station somewhere in Galloway (apparently not Newton Stewart itself), Hannay lodges in a shepherd's cottage. The next morning he reads in a newspaper that the police are looking for him in Scotland. Reasoning that the police would expect him to head for a port on the West Coast, he doubles back and boards a local train heading east, but jumps off between stations. He is seen but escapes, finding an inn where he stays the night. He tells the innkeeper a modified version of his story, and the man is persuaded to shelter him. While staying at the inn, Hannay cracks the substitution cipher used in Scudder's pocket-book. The next day two men arrive at the inn looking for Hannay, but the innkeeper sends them away. When they return later, Hannay steals their car and escapes. On his way, Hannay reflects on what he has learnt from Scudder's notes. They contradict the story that Scudder first told to him, and mention an enemy group called the Black Stone and the mysterious Thirty-nine Steps. The United Kingdom appears to be in danger of an invasion by Germany and its allies. By this time, Hannay is being pursued by an aeroplane, and a policeman in a remote village has tried to stop him. Trying to avoid an oncoming car, Hannay crashes his own, but the other driver offers to take him home. The man is Sir Harry, a local landowner and prospective politician, although politically very naive. When he learns of Hannay's experience of South Africa, he invites him to address an election meeting that afternoon. Hannay's speech impresses Sir Harry, and Hannay feels able to trust him with his story. Sir Harry writes an introductory letter about Hannay to a relation in the Foreign Office. Hannay leaves Sir Harry and tries to hide in the countryside, but is spotted by the aeroplane. Soon he spots a group of men on the ground searching for him. Miraculously, he meets a road mender out on the moor, and swaps places with him, sending the workman home. His disguise fools his pursuers, who pass him by. On the same road he meets a rich motorist, whom he recognises from London, and whom he forces to exchange clothes with him and drive him off the moor. The next day, Hannay manages to stay ahead of the pursuers, and hides in a cottage occupied by an elderly man. Unfortunately, the man turns out to be one of the enemy, and with his accomplices he imprisons Hannay. Fortunately, the room in which Hannay is locked is full of bomb-making materials, which he uses to break out of the cottage, injuring himself in the process. A day later, Hannay retrieves his possessions from the helpful roadmender and stays for a few days to recover from the explosion. He dines at a Public House in Moffat before walking to the junction at Beattock to catch a southbound train to England, changing at Crewe, Birmingham New Street and Reading, to meet Sir Harry's relative at the Foreign Office, Sir Walter Bullivant, at his country home in Berkshire. As they discuss Scudder's notes, Sir Walter receives a phone call to tell him that Karolides has been assassinated. Sir Walter, now at his house in London, lets Hannay in on some military secrets before releasing him to go home. Hannay is unable to shake off his sense of involvement in important events, and returns to Sir Walter's house where a high-level meeting is in progress. He is just in time to see a man, whom he recognises as one of his former pursuers in Scotland, leaving the house. Hannay warns Sir Walter that the man, ostensibly the First Sea Lord, is about to return to Europe with the information he has obtained from their meeting. At that point, Hannay realises that the phrase ""the thirty-nine steps"" could refer to the landing-point in England from which the spy is about to set sail. Throughout the night Hannay and the United Kingdom's military leaders try to work out the meaning of the mysterious phrase. After some reasoning worthy of Sherlock Holmes, and with the help of a knowledgeable coastguard, the group decide on a coastal town in Kent. They find a path down from the cliff that has thirty-nine steps. Just offshore they see a yacht. Posing as fishermen, some of the party visit the yacht, the Ariadne, and find that at least one of the crew appears to be German. The only people onshore are playing tennis by a villa and appear to be English, but they match Scudder's description of the conspirators, The Black Stone. Hannay, alone, confronts the men at the villa. After a struggle, two of the men are captured while the third flees to the yacht, which meanwhile has been seized by the British authorities. The plot is thwarted, and the United Kingdom enters the First World War having kept its military secrets from the enemy. On the outbreak of war, Hannay joins the army with a captain's rank."
2526,The Brethren,thriller," Three former judges (known as ""The Brethren"") incarcerated at Trumble, a fictional, federal minimum security prison located in northern Florida, develop a scam to blackmail wealthy closeted gay men. With the help of their lawyer, Trevor Carson, they transfer their ill-gotten money to a secret Bahamian bank account. Meanwhile, Teddy Maynard, the ruthless and soon-to-retire director of the CIA, is orchestrating a scheme to control the United States presidential election. Aaron Lake, a strongly pro-defense expenditure candidate has been identified and Maynard is determined to control him - and then get him elected. Unknowingly, the Brethren hook Teddy's candidate for President. The CIA scrambles to stop them from finding out what they've done. But, a leak has sprung. It takes all of Teddy's experience with illegal maneuvering to save his candidate from being exposed. The Brethren lose their trust in Trevor and fire him; he is later killed by CIA agents in the Caribbean. The CIA plant a man inside Trumble, who tells the judges that he knows they have been involved in the scam. A deal is worked out, money changes hands and the judges are pardoned by the out-going President at Maynard's insistence. The judges leave the country and travel in Europe. Later, they re-start the scam."
2527,Four Blind Mice,thriller," The novel features Washington D.C. Metro Police homicide detectives Alex Cross and John Sampson as protagonists. While investigating the wrongful conviction and execution of US Army Sergeant Ellis Cooper. Their investigation uncovers a series of Army personnel wrongfully convicted and executed for murdering countless civilians. In each instance, the murderer's modus operandi involved painting the corpse blue. In the course of the investigation, Cross and Sampson discover that three Army Rangers had committed similar crimes during the Vietnam war. The three Rangers, nicknamed ""The Three Blind Mice,"" had performed a series of unauthorized killings of unarmed villagers and subsequently painted the bodies red, white, and blue. Cross and Sampson track down the killers, but all three are killed in the resulting gunfight. Cross determines that the mastermind behind the murders is General Mark Hutchinson, Commandant of West Point. Hutchinson had been ordering The Three Blind Mice to frame Army personnel who had committed atrocities while serving in Vietnam. Another victim, Colonel Handler, had discovered the plot and was killed so as to not jeopardize Hutchinson's candidacy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hutchinson captures Cross, but before he can murder him, Hutchinson is killed by members of a Vietnamese street gang in retaliation for his sanctioning of and involvement in Vietnam War atrocities."
2528,Juggernaut,thriller," American narrator Neil Mannix is the corporate troubleshooter for multinational British Electric. Nyala, a former British colony newly rich with oil, hopes to prop up its shaky democracy and economy with a new power station near its oil fields. The Nyalans insist that British Electric must dispatch a 300-ton transformer for display to the populace, and Mannix is sent to supervise the travels of ""the rig"" on a huge flatbed. Civil war breaks out, and Mannix is bullied by a local doctor and an Irish nun into using the rig as a traveling hospital. He must deal with opposing armies, possibly unsafe roads and bridges, some untrustworthy crew members and Nyalans who trek after the machinery, which has taken on symbolic, even mythic meaning."
2529,A stranger came ashore,thriller," One night on Black Ness, the Hendersons are sitting at home in their but-and-benhouse. There is a heavy storm outside. Then a figure bursts through the door, soaking wet. He is tall, lean and handsome, and calls himself Finn Learson, and he claims to be the only survivor of a shipwreck. The Hendersons trust and help him, except the youngest child, Robbie, his Old Da (grandfather), and his dog Tam, who are suspicious of Finn. Old Da takes an instant dislike to Finn, and Robbie also senses the man is not what he seems. Later that night, when the family have retired to bed, Robbie cannot sleep and hears peculiar noises coming from the main room, where Finn Learson and the dog, Tam, are sleeping. Robbie ventures to peek around the door, and is horrified to see that Tam is crouched low to attack Learson, but Learson gazes deep into the dog's eyes... sending Tam into a calm sleep. Robbie is appalled but hides what he has seen. Old Da mysteriously dies not long after, but before he does he warns Robbie not to trust Finn. He reminds Robbie of stories of selkies, sea spirits which are seals in the water, but are able to shed their seal skin on dry land, and appear as beautiful seductive humans. Robbie remembers stories about the Great Selkie, the malign ruler of the selkies, who dwells in his sea-palace and seduces golden-haired girls away with him to his home under the sea. Every so often, the Great Selkie returns to find another human bride, as each bride he abducts dies whenever she tries to escape his clutches; he then uses their golden hair to roof his palace. Robbie begins to fear for his elder sister, Elspeth, who is golden-haired, very beautiful and entranced by Finn Learson. Robbie becomes convinced that Finn is the Great Selkie, but his family does not believe him. Elspeth states that she will choose one man, Finn or Nicol,(Nicol, who was her man before Finn Learson came ashore) to marry her on the celebration night of Up Helly Aa. Robbie goes to the schoolmaster, Yarl Corbie, for help. Yarl has been accused of being a wizard. Yarl reveals that Finn is indeed the Great Selkie, that he knew all along, and that Finn will try to tempt Elspeth to join him under the sea, as he did with Yarl's fiancee many years before. They trap Finn and fight. Yarl uses his magic to morph into a raven, pulling out one of Finn's eyes. Finn, revealed as the Great Selkie, flees back into the sea in his seal form. He can still hunt fish with his remaining eye, but he can no longer return ashore to tempt girls away with him, as without an eye, he is no longer handsome."
2530,The Confidential Agent,thriller," ""D"", a patriot from a country suffering a civil war is in England to secure a contract with coal magnate Lord Benditch that will greatly assist the faltering loyalist cause. The country is kept nameless and the details of its history, geography and current politics remain vague; still, there could be little doubt - and Greene himself admitted as much - that the Spanish Civil War was the main inspiration for the book's depiction of a left-leaning, popular revolutionary republic, internally embroiled in bitter factional fights while having to fight a brutal civil war and faced with a land-owning aristocracy determined to destroy the republic so as to regain its centuries-old privileged position. (In the final part, moreover, it is specifically noted that a ship travelling from England to the country in question must sail westward in the Channel and then cross the Bay of Biscay.)"
2531,Cemetery Dance,thriller," Pendergast returns to NYC in New York Times bestselling authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's newest novel featuring the enigmatic FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. After celebrating their first anniversary, William Smithback, a NY Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archeologist, return home from a romantic dinner. Kelly slips out to pick up a pastry from the local shop, but upon her return to their apartment in the Upper West side of Manhattan, she finds the door ajar, Smithback dead, and is attacked as she approaches. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, the attacker seen leaving the building was an individual who lived in the apartment building along with Smithback and Kelly. The twist: the man that witnesses believe is Smithback's murderer was pulled from the river dead, after committing suicide, two weeks before the attack. D'Agosta, a homicide detective, leads the official investigation, while FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast's and Kelly's involvement leads to a less traditional quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them into a part of Manhattan they never imagined could exists: a secretive and deadly hotbed of Obeah, the West Indian Zombi cult of sorcery and magic. It is here they find their true peril is just beginning. it:Il sotterraneo dei vivi"
2532,The President Vanishes,thriller," The book concerns the mysterious disappearance of the President of the United States, who was facing a serious political crisis, perhaps even impeachment, over his handling of a foreign situation, namely the impending war (what we would now call World War II). The disappearance of the president seems like a kidnapping, but no ransom is demanded. Although not revealed in detail until near the end, it is fairly apparent from an early stage that the president has staged his own disappearance to counter an impending military coup staged by an upstart army of fascist ""grey shirts"" allied with a small coterie of industrialists (similar to the Business Plot). The aim of all this is to involve the United States in a European war when none of the combatants has attacked American territory."
2533,The Constant Gardener,thriller," Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Nairobi, Kenya, is told that his activist wife, Tessa, was killed while travelling with a doctor friend in a desolate region of Africa. Investigating on his own, Quayle discovers that her murder, reportedly done by her friend, may have had more sinister roots. Justin learns that Tessa had uncovered a corporate scandal involving medical experimentation in Africa. KVH (Karel Vita Hudson), a large pharmaceutical company working under the cover of AIDS tests and treatments, is testing a tuberculosis drug that has severe side effects. Rather than help the trial subjects and begin again with a new drug, KVH covered up the side effects and improved the drug only in anticipation of a massive multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis outbreak. Justin travels the world, often under assumed identities, to reconstruct the circumstances leading to Tessa's murder. As he begins to piece together Tessa's final report on the fraudulent drug tests, he learns that the roots of the conspiracy stretch further than he could have imagined; to a German pharmawatch NGO, an African aid station, and, most disturbingly to him, corrupt politicians in the British Foreign Office. John le Carré writes in the book's afterword: 'by comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard'. The book is dedicated to Yvette Pierpaoli, a French activist who died during the course of her aid work."
2534,The Fist of God,thriller," Dr. Gerald Bull designs a supergun codenamed Project Babylon for Iraq. He believes that it is for launching Arab satellites into space and that it could serve no military purpose since it could only fire once and then would be located, targeted and destroyed. He realizes the true reason shortly before being assassinated by his Iraqi paymasters. Iraq then invades Kuwait and the British and Americans need top level intelligence on the ground. Major Mike Martin of the Special Air Service is seconded to SIS to work with the Kuwaiti resistance. Not only does Major Martin speak fluent Arabic, but with his jet black hair and dark complexion, he can actually pass for an Arab. His brother, Terry, an expert in Arab military studies, is asked to advise the Medusa Committee, a joint Anglo-American panel on possible Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The CIA does not have any assets in the Iraqi government, so they ask the Israelis; Mossad deny they have any active assets in Iraq. This is not strictly true as they did have an asset, codenamed Jericho, but he remained anonymous and they were never able to identify him. They have paid $2 million into his Viennese bank account for information about Iraq's military strength, but he has gone to ground since the invasion. However, one of the team who helped run him, a man who feels the truth is most important, tells the Americans, and Israel is forced to admit the truth or face repercussions in Washington. As Israel is forced to stay out of this war—for political reasons, so as not to alienate the Arab nations taking part—they agree to let the Americans run Jericho—if they can find him. Mike Martin is recalled from Kuwait and sent into Iraq to run Jericho through a series of dead drops. His cover is as house gardener to the Soviet embassy in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Mossad Director is furious over the American actions regarding Jericho, but quickly comes up with a plan called ""Operation Joshua"" to be staged in Vienna that will resolve Jericho's situation from his end in the Mossad's favor. The Medusa committee concludes that Iraq's biological weapons capability is not a threat and, though it has a plentiful supply of yellowcake, it has not had enough time with its limited underground centrifuges to spin it out into weapons grade uranium to make an atomic bomb. They decide that gas is the real threat, so the Americans make an unequivocal threat to the Iraqi government to nuke Baghdad if gas is used. However, an overeager American F-15E pilot, angry at an aborted bombing run, drops his bomb on a building not on his target list and reconnaissance photographs reveal strange large metal discs underneath the roof. Terry Martin takes the photographs to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to see if they can identify the discs. It is a retired veteran of the Manhattan Project who is able to tell him - they are Calutrons, California Cyclotrons, a low-tech solution to refining uranium, but ideal for Third World nations wanting to develop their own nuclear capability. If used in conjunction with Iraq's existing centrifuges, Iraq would already have made a nuclear bomb. Jericho reveals the location of the factory where the atomic bomb was put together and it is attacked. But he later reveals that the bomb had been moved hours earlier to its new site. Despite the $5 million already paid to him, Major Martin offers him $3 million more to reveal the bomb's new location. The Americans believe Jericho is bluffing. One problem is delivery—such a bomb would be too heavy to attach to a Scud missile and the USAF will destroy any fighter plane that tries to sneak past their air supremacy. The solution is a supergun, hidden in the desert. It will fire, just once, a single atomic weapon—“The Fist of God”—into Saudi Arabia the moment the Americans invade Iraq. Approximately 100,000 soldiers will die and the radioactive fallout will be carried into Iran. Jericho reveals the location of the supergun and Major Martin volunteers to HALO jump into Iraq to destroy it. The Americans agree to delay the invasion by two days, citing weather conditions as the reason. Martin and his SAS team lase the target and a single F-15 destroys the Supergun in a bombing run. General Norman Schwarzkopf is told the mission has been successful and orders the land invasion of Iraq. In ""Operation Joshua"", a Mossad agent seduces the secretary to the Viennese banker who handles Jericho's account; she reveals how he keeps details of the accounts in a secret compartment of his desk. The Mossad break into the bank and secretly photocopy the account details. They then transfer the entire $10 million out of his account into one owned by the Mossad, known as the ""Fun Fund"". Edith Hardenburg, the secretary, commits suicide when she realized that her ""lover"" has used her to obtain the information. Jericho - who turns out to be Brigadier Omar Khatib (called ""The Tormentor""), the head of the AMAM - is picked up by Mossad agents pretending to be American intelligence. He is flown out of Iraq, drugged, and his body thrown into the sea from 10,000 feet."
2535,By the Light of the Moon,thriller," An amoral doctor forever changes the lives of Dylan O'Conner, his autistic brother Shepherd, and a comedienne named Jillian Jackson, and instigates a new force for good from his evil acts."
2536,A Case of Need,thriller," Dr. John Berry, the protagonist, is a pathologist working in Boston during the 1960s, a time when abortion was illegal in the United States. The story opens with an introduction of the various requirements and challenges of the medical profession during the era. Subsequently, Dr. Berry is notified that his friend, an obstetrician named Arthur Lee, has been accused of performing an illegal abortion that led to the death of Karen Randall, a prominent member of an established medical dynasty. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Lee is already well known amongst the medical community as an abortion provider and that Berry has in the past helped Lee disguise medical samples to hide the fact that Lee's dilation and curettage patients were pregnant. After visiting his friend in a jail cell, Berry sets out to prove Lee's innocence. Subsequently he investigates the personal life of the dead woman, creating an accurate portrait of her past, psychology, and character. During his search, which lasts several days vandals attack Lee's home. The protagonist's knowledge of medicine and law are helpful in overcoming various barriers in his search including a hostile police captain and bribes from the scion of the Randall family itself: Karen's father, a well-established (though mediocre) doctor. Eventually, with the aid of an unscrupulous African-American lawyer, Wilson, Berry is able to obtain solid evidence showing Karen Randall's uncle (who had already performed three previous abortions for her) to be the culprit. Nonetheless, Berry is troubled by this conclusion and is persuaded to continue his investigation despite Wilson's displeasure. Eventually, he discovers that Karen's drug dealing friends had performed the botched abortion, but Berry is attacked and sent to the hospital before he can reveal his discovery. Subsequently, Berry's attacker, Karen's African American boyfriend is also brought in an ambulance, dead after a fatal fall. The actual abortionist attempts to commit suicide. She is forced to confess in the hospital after being threatened with what she believes is an excruciatingly painful dose of Nalorphine (but is actually water). Berry continues to be suspicious about Karen's boyfriend's death, and ultimately forces one of his old friends and colleagues (the uncle of the woman who did Karen's abortion) to admit to his involvement before turning him in to the police. However, despite being proven innocent, Lee's reputation has been ruined, and he decides to move to California. Crichton then ends the novel with a postscript discussing the problems in the medical profession, including abortion. fr:Extrême Urgence it:In caso di necessità nl:A Case of Need ja:緊急の場合は ru:Экстренный случай tr:A Case of Need"
2537,In the Heat of the Night,thriller," Virgil Tibbs is an experienced Pasadena homicide investigator passing through Wells, a small town in South Carolina. When local police officer Sam Wood chances upon him waiting for a connecting train, he swiftly takes him into custody where Tibbs is questioned about a murder solely because he is black. This, in the first two chapters of the novel, sets the mood for the story: about the struggle and the prejudice that even the educated Tibbs experiences in the South. Despite these obstacles, Tibbs reluctantly agrees to help the local police force, commanded by Chief Bill Gillespie, in their murder investigation. Tibbs constantly shoots down any murder accusations brought forth by Gillespie and is eventually accepted by Wood and Gillespie as he solves the murder case."
2538,The Chancellor Manuscript,thriller," In the story, Peter Chancellor, who found unlikely success as an author of political thrillers after his ambitions to become a historian were frustrated, writes a work of fiction that comes close enough to the scenario described that the people who controlled those files, a group called Inver Brass in the novel, decide that someone else may also know too much. This sets the stage for the international intrigue that follows. In the end Ludlum left the reader wondering if it was he himself, not Peter Chancellor, the protagonist of his story, who knew of the conspiracy."
2539,Wings of the Falcon,thriller," Set during Italian Risorgimento of 1860, Francesca Fairbourn arrives in Italy after she becomes an orphan to live with her mother's family. Her aristocratic Italian mother and English father had eloped which resulted in her getting deisowned by her family. Francesca's mother died during her birth which left Franseca's father to raise her all alone. When she left school at 18 she lost her father and was in desperate situation until her dashing young cousin Andrea del Tarconti rescues her and sends her to Italy to the aristocratic home of Tarconti Castle. Once there Francesca finds herself intertwined in web of political intrigue as a local disguised hero named Il Falcone is helping peasants fight against tyrant rulers. Francesca realizes that the 'Il Falcone' is closer to her family than she thinks."
2540,Skeleton Key,thriller," The book opens with two men, Marc and Carlo, flying to meet with General Alexei Sarov in Cayo Esqueleto (Spanish for ""Skeleton Key""), an island just off of Cuba to exchange a kilogram of uranium for money the general has promised them. However, when Sarov reveals he needs to raise it, the two threaten to call the American Intelligence if the money isn't received in three days. Taking this as a threat, Sarov turns the runway lights when the two go to leave, and their plane lands in a mangrove. Sarov watches with pleasure as the two men and the pilot are devoured by the inhabiting crocodiles, he then loads the uranium in the Jeep he came in and leaves. Meanwhile, it is revealed Alex had survived the fight with his clone and is visited by John Crawley at school. Crawley offers him tickets to Wimbledon , but Alex learns he must go undercover as a ball boy following suspicion of a break in. There, he befriends a ball girl called Sabina Pleasure. Alex notices a suspicious looking guard who happens to be Chinese and decides to investigate, but the guard lures him and attempts to kill him. Alex survives the attack and learns that the man was a member of the Chinese Triad gang ""Big Circle"" and was attempting match fixing. Alex is targeted by the triad gang as another member makes an attempt on his life while surfing on vacation with Sabina in Cornwall, he comes close to drowning but Sabina manages to save his life, as she is an excellent swimmer and knows CPR. For his safety, both MI6 and the CIA arrange to send him with CIA agents Tom Turner and Belinda Troy to Skeleton Key to investigate General Sarov. The two CIA agents would pass off as his parents. The CIA is concerned about the actions of Sarov since he intends to meet the Russian president, Boris Kiriyenko. En route to Skeleton Key, the 'family' of Alex, Tom and Belinda stop in Miami. The two CIA agents are not happy about bringing Alex and they attempt to keep as much information from Alex as possible, clearly discrediting him, much to Alex's frustration. Tom meets a salesman on a boat called the 'Mayfair Lady', suspecting that the salesman was involved in a deal with Sarov. The salesman however ties Tom up, knowing that he works for CIA. Alex manages to board the boat and set fire to it, causing a distraction. A firefight ensues, where Alex escapes with Tom and the boat later explodes, killing everyone on board. Despite his life being saved, Tom is frustrated at Alex for causing the explosion, although Alex is not convinced. It is later revealed that Conrad, Sarov's henchman, planted an explosive on the boat due to the fact the Salesman may contact American Intelligence. Just after arriving in Skeleton Key, Alex notices a Geiger counter in a Game Boy console he was given by the 'parents' that is designed to pick up nuclear radiation. Alex learns that Turner and Troy were sent to the island to search for a nuclear bomb. The two CIA agents reveal to Alex that the salesman had sold weapons grade uranium to Sarov and they explain to Alex their plan to infiltrate the residence of Sarov - the Casa de Oro. They intend to scuba dive into a cave and then climb up to the surface. Alex goes with them but stays on the boat whilst Turner and Troy go underwater. When they do not return, Alex dives in alone and after a close encounter with a shark, discovers a mechanical spear trap that impaled Turner and Troy. When he resurfaces, the boat driver has been killed and Alex is captured by Conrad, who puts a sack over his head and injects him with a drug giving him the inability to move. When the sack is taken off, Alex finds himself in a sugar factory lying down on the conveyor belt where Conrad interrogates him. Alex lies to him but Conrad knows and activates the belt, causing alex to head toward a pair of crushers. Despite finally telling him the truth about the bomb, Conrad decides to kill him anyway, however, General Sarov stops the machine. Alex, overwhelmed that he was inches near death, passes out. Alex wakes up in the Casa de Oro and demands to know what Sarov wants with him who tells Alex he will tell him in time. The next day, Sarov tells him how he had a son named Vladamir who he encouraged to go to war in Afghanistan. However, he was killed in action by a sniper. The General tells Alex how he wishes to adopt him as he shares many traits with Vladmair due to their similar physical appearance and common traits. He then has Alex moved to the slave house. Alex attempts to escape the mansion by hiding in the boot of a limousine following a lunch meeting between Sarov and Kiriyenko. He is however caught by Sarov thanks to a sensor that can detects circulation, who spares Alex's life yet again but punishes him through mental torture, with Conrad pointing a pistol at Alex, Sarov holds the device in front of him so Alex can hear his own heartbeat, Conrad holds the gun against Alex's heart. The whole time, Sarov talks to Alex as if he really is going to have Conrad shoot him. As his heartbeat gets faster, Conrad then puts pressure on the trigger, and Sarov suddenly turns off the device, having Alex fall under the impression he'd been shot, Sarov then tells Conrad to take him back to the slave house. At dinner later that evening, Sarov drugs Kiriyenko and his guests, making them all unconscious and has them moved to the slave house. He then has the nuclear bomb transported onto the island. On the flight to Russia, Sarov tells Alex that they are heading to Murmansk, which contains a shipyard of nuclear submarines, he wants to drop the nuclear bomb their, which is powered by the uranium, and is activated by a key card which Sarov shows him, the bomb will cause a massive explosion, Russia will be blamed and they will turn to their president, Sarov will then release edited footage from an interview exposing Kiriyenko as a lazy drunk idiot who says he can't deal with the issue, this will force him out of power and he will eventually be found dead due to heart faliure, Russia will go back to communism, and Sarov will be taking over. The plane makes a fuel stop in Edinburgh. Alex uses a stun grenade (courtesy of Smithers at MI6) to escape the plane whilst it had landed, incapacitating Sarov and Conrad temporarily. Alex runs to one of the terminal buildings and attempts to call the police but is stopped by a security guard named George Prescott. Despite Alex's efforts to convince Prescott of the situation, Sarov recaptures Alex and Prescott is killed by Conrad. They continue their flight to Murmansk. At Murmansk, Conrad plants the bomb on a submarine using a magnetic crane. One of Sarov's men handcuffs Alex to a handrail close to the submarines, Sarov approaches him and bids him farewell before leaving. Alex sets himself free by using bubble gum that can be turned into a reactive substance when chewed for a certain period of time(again supplied by Smithers). Conrad immediately notices and lowers himself out of the crane to engage Alex. During their fight, the Russian army arrives and starts fighting Sarov's men. Despite Alex's efforts to fend Conrad off, Conrad easily overpowers him and attempts to strangle him to death. However, Conrad (who has numerous pieces of metal inside his body) is grabbed by the magnetic crane. Alex takes over the crane controls himself, dropping Conrad into the sea and grabbing the nuclear bomb from the submarine. He then removes the detonation card from the bomb, only to be told to put it back by a reappearing Sarov. When Alex tells Sarov that he would rather die than become Sarov's son, Sarov commits suicide. In the final chapter of the novel, it is revealed that when Alex explained his predicament to John Prescott, his office heard their conversation through Prescott's radio transmitter. Initially, they didn't believe Alex, but when they discovered Prescott's death, they immediately notified MI6, who then warned the Russians. Alex is depressed after everything he has been through, but Sabina approaches Alex and invites him on holiday with her family in France for a couple of weeks, cheering Alex up."
2541,"I, Alex Cross",thriller," Detective Alex Cross is enjoying a birthday party with his family when he receives a call from his bosses informing him that Caroline, the 24-year old only daughter of his late brother Blake, has been found murdered in Virginia. Cross and his girlfriend Briana Stone rush to Richmond, Virginia, and are shocked to discover that Caroline's body was found dismembered (most likely by a wood chipper) in the trunk of a car driven by someone with connections to organized crime. Cross takes the case and one of his first stops is Caroline's apartment. Cross is shocked to discover she only lived a few miles from him and yet never contacted him. He is further shocked to discover that based on the apartment's locale and the extensive lingerie wardrobe inside, Caroline was a high-end escort. Further investigation reveals that several other young people with connections to high-end prostitution have also either been murdered or disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Further investigation reveals that Caroline's escorting activities took her to a secretive club in Culpeper, Virginia, called Blacksmith Farms where she may have met an ultrasecretive character named Zeus who wears a mask at all times. During the course of his investigation, Cross is thwarted by various people in Washington, D.C.—including the Secret Service and the President of the United States—who all want Cross to hand over his investigation to them. Cross refuses and is almost forced to give up his investigative efforts when his old FBI friend Ned Mahoney recommends Cross follow up on a lead provided by a country farmer. The lead turns out to be an escort who met Zeus and saw him without his mask on. All escorts—like Cross' niece Caroline—who saw Zeus without his mask were quickly killed and their bodies dismembered. This escort, however, managed to escape, but not before being shot in the back. The farmer just happened to come upon the escort and managed to nurse her back to health. The escort reveals that Zeus is actually Theodore Vance, husband to current US President Maggie Vance. Theodore Vance has a compulsion for young escorts and is able to indulge his compulsion with the help of various people (like his Secret Service detail) who want to keep it quiet to protect the current Presidential administration. Cross goes to a party at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. to question Theodore Vance about his connection to Zeus. Sensing that President Vance's administration is about to be brought down by Theodore Vance's arrest, Thedore Vance's personal Secret Service agent (Dan Cormorant), in a final act of loyalty to his country, shoots and kills Theodore Vance. Cormorant is immediately killed by other Secret Service agents. By killing Vance, Cormorant has allowed the Vance presidential administration to survive and spared the country the embarrassment of a sex scandal. Instead, Theodore Vance will be remembered as a Presidential spouse who was tragically and inexplicably killed by a rogue Secret Service agent."
2542,The Chelsea Murders,thriller," Someone is killing residents of the hip bohemian London neighborhood of Chelsea, home to literary giants of the past like Virginia Woolf. What thread connects them in someone's mad mind? The only clue is a fragment of film, which accidentally caught images of the murderer, dressed in an outlandish costume and mask."
2543,The Righteous Men,thriller," Will Monroe's normal life is disrupted when his wife is kidnapped while he is reporting on a story of a militia man found dead in his isolated log cabin. Further investigation into the death brings Monroe to the conclusion that the dead militia man shared an attribute with a New York City pimp, also recently murdered. They were both described as being 'righteous'. As more murders of 'righteous men' happen across the globe, time seems to be running out for Will and the old and current friends he has enlisted. With a series of clues from a mysterious source, absurd twists and religious factors Will soon finds himself in the middle of a plot to bring about nothing less than Judgement Day. The book focuses on the fact that several people have been murdered in what can only be described as a humane way. What these victims have in common is that they have been described by folk who knew them as ""righteous"" (hence the title) although they led some mundane or unethical existence (i.e. pimps, drug barons or even call centre employees). Nothing seems to fit to connect the murders together. A rookie NY Times reporter is sent on a murder case (the pimp) and is then sent of to do a story in Seattle where he finds another victim here whilst trying to report on freak weather conditions. While he's away, his wife gets kidnapped by what turns out to be the Hassidic community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. What these ""Righteous Men"" turn out to be are based on Jewish folklore: that the world rests on 36 men who perform righteous acts to others. They themselves may not know that they are one of 36 and will always lead a life so far removed from what they are about. But without these men - the world will not be spared by God. So while the killing of the real 36 continues, the world (according to this story) is in grave danger. The killings seem to be done in the name of God; but as it is a Jewish story, why would they want this to happen? It turns out that the killings are being done by a faction of the Christian Church (The Church of the Reborn Jesus) who hold the notion that the Jews have forfeited their role as the chosen people (replacement theology) and by killing the 36 should bring about the Second Coming (something the Jews do not believe)."
2544,Evil Star,thriller," After the events of Raven's Gate, Matt goes to a new school which the Nexus are paying for, but is left friendless because of a bully named Gavin Taylor, causing Matt to injure Taylor by using his powers. Susan Ashwood and Fabian, members of the Nexus, ask him to help them acquire an old diary which could enable them to stop a second gate being opened. He refuses. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn, his aunt, has fallen under the influence of dark forces. She kills her spouse Brian, steals a petrol tanker, and drives it into Matt's new school in a desperate attempt to kill him. Fortunately, he uses his clairvoyance powers and manages to evacuate the whole school before it happens. Matt realizes that he must stop the gate from being opened and agrees to meet the bookseller, Morton, at St Meredithe's Church after a meeting with the Nexus. Morton affirms him to be one of the Five, but he is killed in the process and the diary is stolen by Diego Salamanda, another bidder who wants to use the diary to open the second gate. The Nexus persuade Matt and his carer, Richard Cole, to fly to Peru, find the second gate, and stay at a house belonging to Fabian. However, on their way to the planned rendezvous, the Hotel Europa, the car is ambushed and Richard is kidnapped but Matt manages to escape. With the help of a local Peruvian, Pedro, Matt manages to get to the meeting place but is captured by the Peruvian police at the hotel, led by the sadistic Captain Rodriguez, and brutally beaten. Pedro saves him. Then, they escape to the Poison Town, where Pedro lives. Strangely, while all the town is affected by diseases, the street where Pedro lives on seems unaffected. Here, they meet the man Sebastian (who can speak English, unlike Pedro), who agrees to help Matt. As night passes, Matt meets Pedro in a dream, revealing that he is one of the Five. Matt finds the markings of his previous beatings have all gone. Thinking Salamanda had Richard kidnapped, Matt and Pedro travel to his hacienda in Inca, but they are discovered. Salamanda reveals that he does not have Richard. An Inca, Micos, one of Richard's kidnappers, helps them escape, and he is killed in the process. He tells them to travel to Cuzco before he dies, and there, Matt manages to contact Fabian and the Nexus on their whereabouts. However, Rodriguez and the police arrive but Matt and Pedro escape with the help of several Incas, led by Atoc, Micos' brother. Then they are taken to the Mountain of the Sleeping God Mandingo. From there, they descend into the town of the last Incas, Vilcabamba, where Richard, having been staying there after being separated, is waiting for them. There, Richard reveals that the kidnapping was conducted to prevent Matt from reaching the Hotel Europa. Based on the Salamanda's knowledge of their movements, Matt and Richard deduce that there is a traitor in the Nexus tipping him off. At the village, it is learned that the gate is located somewhere in the Nazca Desert. They travel to the Nazca Desert with Professor Chambers, an expert on everything Peruvian, and Matt realizes that the Nazca lines are the second gate. The gate will only open once all the stars align with each of the drawings, however, the gate has been constructed such that the stars will never all align at once, and in this case, the star Cygnus is not in its proper position. However, Salamanda has sent a satellite as a substitute star, an evil star, to open the gate. Matt and Pedro break into Salamanda's headquarters with some help of the Incas in an attempt to stop his plan by destroying the radio mast controlling the satellite. At the control center, it is revealed that Fabian is the traitor in the Nexus, having believed it was pointless to try and stop the opening of the gate. Rodriguez then bursts into the room and shoots Fabian when he tries to stop Matt and Richard from being killed. The radio mast is destroyed and falls into the building, flattening Rodriguez. In his dying moments, Fabian reveals that Salamanda had taken control of the satellite once it was in range, using a different satellite dish out in the desert. Atoc takes Matt and Pedro on a helicopter to the dish, but the helicopter crashes, killing Atoc and breaking Pedro's ankle. Matt has no choice but to stop the gate from being opened alone. He manages to trigger his power, destroying the dish and trailer Salamanda is using, and kills Salamanda when he shoots at Matt by deflecting two bullets back to him. However, the satellite is revealed to still be continuing on its trajectory, opening the gate. The Nazca lines crack open and an army of demons arise, before the King of the Old Ones himself appears, and challenges Matt. Matt uses his powers to wound them but he over-exerts himself and falls into a coma. The Old Ones, biding their time, temporarily hide from the world. Matt is taken to Professor Chambers' house and a doctor examines Matt but does not think he will survive. But Pedro comes back from hospital early and insists on being alone with Matt. At this point, Pedro's power is revealed to be the power to heal. This explains the reason why the street Pedro lived in was the only place in in Poison Town that was unaffected by disease. Matt awakes from his coma thanks to Pedro and decides that the only way they can defeat the Old Ones is to find the other three Gatekeepers."
2545,The Scarlatti Inheritance,thriller," In Washington during World War II, word is received that an elite member of the Nazi High Command is willing to defect and divulge information that will shorten the war. But his defection entails the release of the ultra-top-secret file on the Scarlatti Inheritance— a file whose contents will destroy many of the Western world's greatest and most illustrious reputations if they are made known. From there, the book takes itself back a few decades, and tells the story of a corrupt American soldier, his billionaire mother, and an agent working for one of the smallest secret service departments in the world."
2546,Windmills of the Gods,thriller," Mary Ashley, a professor at Kansas State University, is offered an ambassadorship by Paul Ellison, the US president. She rejects the offer because her husband, Dr. Edward Ashley, does not want to leave his medical practice, and she is not willing to be separated from him. She also feels that it is harder to find a good doctor for a small Kansas town than an ambassador to a foreign country. When her husband suddenly dies in a suspicious traffic accident, Ashley accepts the President's offer in order to fill the void in her life. She is sent to Romania, behind the Iron Curtain, where she finds that everyone is conspiring against her. She's on the glinting edge of East-West confrontation, a beautiful and accomplished scholar who has suddenly become the new US ambassador to an Iron Curtain country, a woman who is about to dramatically change the course of world events – if she lives. For Mary Ashley has been marked for death by the world's most proficient and mysterious assassin, and plunged into a nightmare of espionage, kidnapping and terror."
2547,CHERUB: Class A,thriller," At campus, Kerry, Nicole, Kyle, and James are sent on a mission to infiltrate a drug gang called KMG, led by Keith Moore. On the mission, James has to work to befriend Keith's youngest son, Junior. He and Kerry get involved in a drug dealing delivery that ends with them stealing a car and burning it. This nearly unveils their CHERUB training but luckily they find their way out of it. The four agents are exposed to drugs and on the mission Nicole snorts a large amount of cocaine. She gets expelled because agents are not allowed to take drugs, especially Class A drugs. James gets invited to Miami by Junior and his dad Keith Moore. He also gets his 2nd girlfriend, April Moore, although he dumps her in favour of Kerry. Whilst in Miami, they are attacked, causing James to shoot and kill a man. Keith eventually is incarcerated and the agents return to campus."
2548,The Bourne Supremacy,thriller," In the first book, The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne suffered amnesia. Over the course of the book he regained his memory with the help of a Canadian economist, Marie, and later found that he was previously an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency in an elite project in Southeast Asia and Vietnam codenamed Medusa. Following the American forces withdrawal from Vietnam he joined Project Treadstone 71, where he was used as bait for the infamous European assassin, Carlos the Jackal. Bourne took credit for various kills in China and the rest of Asia, acting as a rival to the Jackal, in order to draw him out of hiding. At the beginning of The Bourne Supremacy, Bourne has recovered from most mental and all physical injuries and is teaching Asian studies at a university in Maine under his real name of David Webb. He is also living happily on campus with Marie and is getting regular psychological tests from his doctor, Morris Panov. Meanwhile, high-ranking U.S. officials discuss an increasingly alarming situation in the People's Republic of China, where a popular Communist official is planning a hostile takeover of the country, using a Bourne imitator to eliminate his political rivals. The officials decide to use Webb to kill the Chinese official, but know of his mistrust of the U.S. government. Aware of Webb's deep-seated emotional instability due to the loss of his first wife and children in Vietnam, they hatch a plan to abduct Marie and throw Webb back into the default state under which he operated for Medusa. It is then that a representative of the U.S. Government arrives and informs Webb of an imitator in Asia, someone who is killing under the name of Jason Bourne, a name feared in Asia because of the accredited kills during his work with Treadstone 71. Webb is told he requires a more visible security force because there is evidence someone wants him dead. Soon thereafter, Marie is abducted by unknown men while Webb is at the University. Webb returns to the house, finds clues to her abduction, and immediately phones government officials, threatening to leak information about Treadstone and Medusa in an attempt to get assistance. He finds out information has been manipulated in order to make him seem crazy and delusional, and that his only course of action is to follow the instructions left for him by the kidnappers. He turns to the only person he thinks will be able to help him, Alexander Conklin. Conklin is convinced there is government involvement but that they have lost control of the situation and the hired guns holding Marie are no longer in their control. Webb who now has transformed back into his hated persona of Jason Bourne now has no choice but to go to Hong Kong and play out the scenario to get Marie back. There he meets with a wealthy Tai-Pan who wants Bourne to bring back the imposter Jason Bourne because the imposter killed his wife. Marie, held captive in a British hospital, fakes an illness and escapes, taking refuge with Catherine Staples, a former colleague employed at the Canadian consulate in Hong Kong. She is later contacted by Conklin, who confronts Under-Secretary MacAllister and Ambassador Havland, the orchestrators of the plan to manipulate Webb. Webb, tracing the impostor Bourne through Kowloon and Macau, tracks him to mainland China, where he encounters Echo, another former Medusa operative, who is also tracking down the impostor Bourne, who he personally trained. They track Bourne to a meeting in a bird sanctuary, where Echo is captured, and executed by Sheng Jo Yang, the Chinese nationalist leader that Havland has been desperately trying to eliminate. Webb captures the impostor Bourne, but in attempting to swap the impostor for Marie, is misled by MacAllister, as Marie is still held in secret by Conklin. Without Marie, Webb has stated clearly he will kill the impostor, whom Havland and MacAllister need to track down Yang. Thinking Marie has been killed, Bourne assaults Havland's ""sterile house"" estate, where the impostor is killed and Bourne nearly as well, saved only by the timely arrival of Marie and Conklin. Bourne is then told of the whole plan and why Havland had to abduct Marie. Since Bourne has seen what Sheng is capable of, he says that he must go back into the fray and kill Sheng. McAllister goes with Bourne, and during their search for Sheng, McAllister explains that he must be the one to kill Sheng, that was his plan from the start. The meeting between Sheng and Bourne and McAllister takes place on the Chinese border, and during the meeting McAllister is shot before he can make the kill, so Bourne has to kill Sheng instead. They escape with Sheng's helicopter. The story is set during the British negotiated handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China on the expiration of its ninety-nine-year lease on the New Territories."
2549,The Asti Spumante Code,thriller," Due to the detailed nature of the overall story within the novel, the plot has been divided into Backstory and Modern Day respectively in order to provide a more coherent timeline for the events depicted in the novel. In the 13th century, there once existed a circle of authors and playwrights known as the Order of Psion (a parody of the Knights Templar), most of whom were females writing under male pseudonyms, who once predicted the coming of ""the ultimate book"" that would render publishers obsolete. The formula for the making of the ultimate book - known as the Asti Spumante Code - is contained within the Mure de Paume (French: ""The Blackberry of the Palm""), otherwise known as ""the legendary keystone"". Fearing the consequences of the ultimate book, a group of publishers named The English Book Guild was established in Stevenage, England to try to counteract the progresses made by the Order. The book itself focuses on American Prof. James Crack - a professor of ""Paraliteral Metasymbolist studies"" - and Belgian Emily Raquin, a ""bibliotechnical cryptologist"", as they discover a set of clues left by the deceased Grand Master of the Order of Psion that will ultimately lead to the discovery of the Asti Spumante Code. However, the two are hindered by the efforts of Uxbridge Road Group, a fanatical off-shoot of the English Book Guild situated in Brussels, whose members encourage Sadomasochism and segregate works of fiction by gender stereotyping (e.g.: men read only adventure fiction, women read only romance novels), who wish to destroy the Asti Spumante Code before it can be put to use by anyone."
2550,The Golden Keel,thriller," Peter Halloran, a migrant to South Africa after the end of World War II has established himself as a successful and profitable designer and builder of yachts and small watercraft. Life is good – business is good, and he has a beautiful wife and daughter. One day, in the local yacht club bar, he meets Walker, an alcoholic ex-soldier, who tells him an improbable tale of a hidden treasure. When Walker was a prisoner of war in Fascist Italy, he managed to escape with a small band of Allied prisoners, including an Afrikaner named Coertze and some Italian partisans, and waged a guerilla campaign for several months in the hills of Liguria against the Nazi Germans. Towards the end of the war, their band ambushed a truck convoy, which contained a massive treasure in gold bars, jewels and even the State Crown of Ethiopia. Rather than turn the treasure over to the authorities, they hid the trucks in an abandoned mine and sealed the entrance. Now that the war is over, the treasure is for the claiming, provided that they can think of some way to smuggle it past Italian customs. Halloran thinks little of the tale until several years later, when life has turned sour. His wife having been killed in a traffic accident, he finds that he needs a change in life. A chance re-encounter with Walker leads to a meeting with Coertze, and with the three men agreeing to a partnership to recover the treasure. Walker and Coertze know where it is, and Halloran has the perfect solution to getting it out of the country. But questions start to worry Halloran – such as why only Walker and Coertze survived out of the much larger group of guerillas, and why Walker is so terrified of Coertze? The mystery deepens as the men travel to Tangiers, and from thence to ports around the Mediterranean and find their steps dogged by unsavory characters. It is soon clear that they are not the only ones after the treasure."
2551,The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel,thriller," Dürrenmatt uses a first-person narrative to insert himself into a frame story as a writer of detective fiction. However, the primary narrator is actually a character named Dr. H., a retired police chief who takes on the role of explaining to Dürrenmatt's first-person character the flaws of the detective literature genre. To do so, Dr. H. relates the story of one of his former inspectors, Matthäi, who, on his last day with the department, found himself called into an investigation of child murder. A suspect soon confessed to the crime, but knowing that the confession came only after the man was browbeaten in a relentless, 20-hour interrogation, Matthäi's keen police instincts told him that the man was not the real murderer. Matthäi felt that there was a serial killer at work, with the girl's murder being related to other child murders that had occurred in the area. However, he was alone in that assessment and the police closed the case. Having made a solemn promise to the parents of the murdered girl that he would find the culprit, Matthäi abandoned his previous plans and continued investigating the case as a private citizen. He was warned by a psychiatrist that the murderer he sought likely did not exist, and thus he might drive himself mad with his obsession in finding the man. Matthäi, however, was undeterred. Through shrewd detective work, and driven by a growing and near maniacal obsession with the case, Matthäi was able to construct a detailed profile of the likely killer, down to the very road the murderer would probably travel to and from his evil deeds. Matthäi purchased a gas station along the route, and then hired a housekeeper with a daughter named Annemarie, who matched the profile of the murdered girls. With Annemarie in place, living along the road as bait for the killer, Matthäi waited for the villain to come to him. Matthäi's plan seemed to come to fruition, as one day the girl reported having encountered a man matching the profile Matthäi had constructed of the killer. She even included details that tied the man's behavior to that of a man the original murdered girl had reported seeing prior to her death. Matthäi planned to apprehend the killer the next day, having the police surround the area where Annemarie said she was to meet the man again. They had lain in wait for him, but no one ever arrived. The failure proved to be utterly devastating for Matthäi. The police and all other outsiders were finally convinced that no other killer existed and that Matthäi's quest had been borne solely of his own madness. His relationship with Annemarie and her mother was destroyed through their discovery that despite the genuine love they had developed for him, he had seen Annemarie merely as bait for his trap. Unable to fathom how his intricate and detailed detective work had not resulted in a triumphant resolution to the case, Matthäi sank finally into insanity and alcoholism. Only years later, far too late to be of any use to Matthäi, was the truth revealed that his instincts and detective work actually had been entirely correct. The murderer had not arrived for his meeting with Annemarie on the fateful day simply because he had been killed in a car accident while on his way to the rendezvous. In the original film Es geschah am hellichten Tag, the story was directly that of the Matthäi character, rather than being framed through its retelling by Dr. H., as in Das Versprechen. At the end of the movie, Matthäi had demonstrated his concern for Annemarie by sending her and her mother away to safety before attempting to spring his final trap upon the murderer. The murderer arrived and was killed, thus vindicating Matthäi's persistence in pursuing the case and leading to a happy reunion with Annemarie at the story's conclusion. At the story's end, Dürrenmatt offers to the reader an implicit acknowledgment of the existence of the Es geschah am hellichten Tag version of Matthäi's story, by having Dr. H. explicitly mention that the tale of Matthäi would make a perfectly suitable entry into the genre of detective fiction, if only the ending were changed such that the killer arrived for his appointment with Annemarie and fell into Matthäi's trap. However, Dr. H.'s point in relating the tale is to demonstrate to the first-person narrator the folly of such fiction. The first of Dr. H.'s two main complaints about typical detective fiction is the idea that the criminal is always caught. He regards this as a relatively minor transgression, however, as even the most naive of readers would be aware that in real life, sometimes a crime is not solved. But the greater problem, to Dr. H.'s way of thinking, is the manner in which the solving of a crime is depicted in detective fiction. In such literature, the task of solving a crime is presented in a way that makes it akin to that of solving a mathematical equation. A properly formed equation can always be solved if enough of its variables can be computed and if the mathematician possesses enough skill to handle the equation's complexity. Detective fiction often depicts crime-solving in a similar light. Thus, a naive reader of such fiction might well conclude that, even in real life, if a detective fails to solve a crime, it is either because the perpetrator executed the crime well enough to avoid leaving the necessary clues &mdash; like an equation for which not enough variables could be computed &mdash; or because the detective was not clever enough to properly locate, assemble and analyze those clues to determine what had occurred &mdash; like a mathematician who lacks the skill to handle the complexity of the equation with which he is presented. In mentioning the idea of an alternate ending to Matthäi's story, Dr. H. is noting that with such an ending, the story would (and, in Es geschach am hellicten Tag, did) follow precisely the mathematical equation presentation typical of standard detective fiction. However, given the actual ending as related by Dr. H., Matthäi's failure to solve the crime arose solely because of an automobile accident &mdash; a completely random twist of fate that had nothing to do with either how the perpetrator committed the crime or any lack of competence on the part of Matthäi as an investigator. In fact, Dr. H. describes Matthäi as having been an investigative genius at a level unmatched even by fictional detectives. According to Dr. H., the sad story of Matthäi demonstrates that contrary to the mathematical precision usually presented in a detective novel, the outcome of true police detective work finds itself far more subject to random chance, coincidence and events entirely outside of the control of either the criminal or the investigator."
2552,Machine Man,thriller," The novel first begins with Charles rummaging around looking for his phone. As he gets more and more frustrated being unable to find it, he decides to arrive at work. During an operation involving 'The Clamp', a giant steel plated holding device, Charles notices his phone in the background and -while not paying attention- crushes his leg with it."
2553,The Ambler Warning,thriller," Hal Ambler, a former Consular Operations agent in the Political Stabilization Unit, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched in a psychiatric facility just off the US coast. However, Ambler is unique amongst the other patients in the Parrish Island psychiatric facility, because he is perfectly sane. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Ambler manages to clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and stage a daring escape off the island. Although he is desperate to discover who put him on Parrish Island and why, the world he returns appears to have conveniently forgotten him. Friends and associates no longer recognize him, no official records of his existence are to be found, and the face he sees in the mirror is not his own. After contacting several old associates who do not recognize him or even have any recollection of his existence, Ambler goes to a cabin in certain part of country which had always been his lone solace even during his days as a field agent. He arrives to find no cabin, and the landscape looked such that there hadn't been any before. A tranquillizer dart armed with carfetanyl then strikes him, but does not affect his thought processes severely . He tracks down the sniper and forces the sniper, a freelance operative, to give him authorisation codes. However, before the operative can be milked for more information, he is killed by a sniper whose single bullet also grazed Ambler's neck. He then contacts the agency that is tracking him down. Ambler comes in contact with agents from his past in the Political Stabilization Unit. Among those is Osiris, a blind operative who had an uncanny linguistic ability and has also regarded Ambler as his close friend. His friend is subsequently shot and killed by a Chinese intelligence officer independent of the organization Ambler is being hired by, who believes Ambler wants to assassinate the Chinese head of state. He uncovers a conspiracy involving a State Department official to kill the Chinese President, in order to hinder the shift in power and to restore the old world order of Pax Americana, in accordance with her university lecturer, Ashton Palmer's fanatical ideals. Ambler manages to unravel the conspiracy, while at the same time discovering that the nurse who had freed him and supposedly helped him on his endeavours to find out more about himself was in league with the ""Palmerites"", or so those who conform to Palmer's ideals are called. Ambler's ability to determine others' emotions and pick up even the slightest of change in facial expression is foiled, for the nurse was trained in Method acting. At the end of the book, Ambler is seen to be lounging with a CIA officer, albeit a desk-jockey, who had assisted him in self-discovery and the foiling of the conspiracy. fr:L'Alerte Ambler pl:Kryptonim Ambler"
2554,Black Light,thriller," There are two interconnected plots that unfold simultaneously in this novel; one is set in the present, and deals with Bob Lee Swagger and Russ Pewtie, while the other is set in 1955, and deals with Bob Lee's father, Earl, and the events leading up to his death. This book catches the reader up with Bob Lee about five years after the events in Point of Impact. He now has a daughter who is four years old, named Nikki, and he has married Julie Fenn, the widow of his fallen spotter, Donnie Fenn. He is living happily, if not humbly, in Arizona, trying to avoid the notoriety he gained during the events in Point of Impact. A young man approaches him with a proposition. This young man's name is Russ Pewtie, the grown son of Bud Pewtie, who as described in Dirty White Boys was responsible for the death of Lamar Pye. Russ is a writer, and wants to write a book about Bob Lee's father, who was gunned down one night in 1955, near Bob's home town of Blue Eye, Arkansas, by Lamar's father, Jimmy. As Russ and Bob Lee probe into the details surrounding Earl's death, there are some startling revelations, including a conspiracy to keep these details hidden, which give deeper insight into the history of Bob Lee. The plot involves several of Hunter's signature interconnecting characters (who appear in various roles in more than one of his novels). These include Sam Vincent, the former Polk County prosecutor who appears in Point of Impact, and Frenchy Short, the CIA agent and Earl Swagger protégé who appears in The Second Saladin, and also in the later Earl Swagger novels Hot Springs and Havana. Part of the connection between the novel's two time periods is the role of Sam Vincent in the prosecution of the murderer of a young black girl in 1955, and the re-investigation of that case in the present. Vincent's feelings about race relations in the two periods, the contrasts between them, and his struggle to reconcile the two, are very well drawn."
2555,Greenmantle,thriller," The book opens in November 1915, with Hannay and his friend Sandy convalescing from wounds received at the Battle of Loos. Hannay is summoned to the Foreign Office by Sir Walter Bullivant, a senior intelligence man, who Hannay met and assisted in The Thirty-Nine Steps. Bullivant gives Hannay an outline of the political situation in the Middle East, and hints that the Germans and their Turkish allies are plotting to cause a great uprising throughout the Muslim world, that will throw the whole of the Middle East, India and North Africa into turmoil; Bullivant proposes that Hannay takes on the task of investigating rumours. The only clue he is given is a slip of paper left by a spy, Bullivant's own son, recently killed in the region, bearing the words Kasredin, cancer and v.I. Despite his misgivings and feelings of inadequacy for the task, Hannay accepts the challenge, and picks Sandy to help him. Bullivant tells him that an American, John Blenkiron, will also be useful to him. The three meet up, ponder their clues, and plan to head to Constantinople. They start on November 17, and plan to meet up in a rough hostelry there exactly two months later, going each by his own route - Blenkiron, as a neutral, travelling through Germany as an observer, Sandy using his contacts in the Arab world to make the journey through Asia Minor, and Hannay, taking on the identity of Boer ""Cornelis Brandt"", entering enemy territory via Lisbon. Arriving there, he meets by chance his old comrade from adventurous times in Africa, Boer Peter Pienaar, and together the two enter Germany via the Netherlands, posing as anti-British exiles itching to fight for the German side. They meet the powerful and sinister Colonel Ulric von Stumm, and persuade him they can help stir up the Muslim peoples to join the German side. The two are separated, and Hannay is introduced to a Herr Gaudian, famed mining engineer (who would later reappear after the war in The Three Hostages), hears of the mysterious Hilda von Einem, and has a brief meeting with the Kaiser. Finding Stumm plans to send him to Egypt via London, Hannay flees into the snowbound countryside, tracked by the vengeful Colonel. He falls ill with malaria and is sheltered over Christmas by a poor woman in a lonely cottage. On his sickbed, he realises that the clue ""v.I"" on the piece of paper may refer to the name he overheard, von Einem. Recuperated, he carries on, travelling by barge carrying armaments down the Danube, picking up with Peter Pienaar, who has escaped from a German prison, along the way. They pass through Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade, and as they travel, Hannay connects the phrase ""der grüne Mantel"" with something else he overheard earlier. They reach Rustchuk on January 10, with a week to go before the rendezvous in Constantinople. On arrival there, Hannay has a run-in with Rasta Bey, an important Young Turk, and intercepts a telegram showing his trail has been picked up. They carry on by train, fending off an attempt to stop them by the angry Rasta Bey, and reach Constantinople with half a day to spare. They seek out the meeting place, and are attacked by Bey and an angry mob, but rescued by a band of mysterious, wild dancing men, who they then antagonise. Next day they return to the rendezvous, an illicit dance-room, where they find the main entertainment is none other than the wild men of the previous day. At the climax of the performance, Enver's soldiers arrive and drag Hannay and Peter away, apparently to prison, but they are instead delivered to a cosy room containing Blenkiron and the leader of the dancers - none other than the miraculous Sandy Arbuthnot. They pool their news - Sandy has identified Kasredin from the their clue sheet, as the title of an ancient Turkish allegorical story, the hero of which is a religious leader called Greenmantle, and has also heard much of a prophet known as ""the Emerald"", associated with the play. Blenkiron has met and been impressed by Hilda von Einem, who is in Constantinople and owns the house in which they are staying. Blenkiron provides Hannay with a new identity, an American engineer named Hannau, and they attend a dinner party where they meet Herr Gaudian again, and Enver himself. Lost out riding, Hannay encounters von Einem, and is fascinated by her; later, he is recognised by Rasta Bey, and has just knocked him out and hidden him in a cupboard when von Einem arrives. Hannay impresses her, and hears she plans to take him East with her. Sandy visits, agrees to deal with the captive Turk and provides news of his own - the clue Cancer means the prophet Greenmantle has the disease and is on his deathbed. Blenkiron joins them, and tells them that fighting has hotted up between the Russians and the Turks, and they deduce that they will be taken towards Erzerum to help with its defence. On the long road to Erzerum, they crash their car, and spend the night in a barn, where Hannay has a vivid dream of a hill with a saucepan-like indent in the top. They carry on on worn-out horses, but seeing a new car by the roadside, they steal it, only to find it belongs to Rasta Bey. They make good speed onward, but on arrival in Erzerum, they are delivered straight to Stumm, who recognises Hannay and has them locked up. They are rescued by one of Sandy's men, steal some plans from Stumm, and escape across the rooftops. With the battle of Erzurum booming in the background, they realise the importance of the stolen plans, and Peter Pienaar volunteers to sneak through the battle lines and deliver them to the Russians. Sandy appears, magnificently dressed, and reveals that Greenmantle is dead and that he himself has been chosen to impersonate him. They form a plan to flee around the side of the battle lines, and while Sandy's helper searches for horses, Pienaar sets off on his dangerous mission. Pienaar has an eventful and terrifying journey across the battlefield, while Hannay and Blenkiron hide out in a cellar. On the third day, they break out, and make for safety in a wild horse ride, closely pursued by their enemies. On the verge of capture, they find the hill of Hannay's dream, and entrench there, holding the enemy at bay. Hilda von Einem comes in, and appeals to them to give up, but they refuse; she is shocked to learn Sandy is a British officer, and as she leaves, she is slain by a stray Russian shell. Stumm arrives with artillery, and their position looks sure to be destroyed and overrun, but Stumm waits till dawn to savour his revenge. Just in time, the Russians, helped by the plans delivered by Pienaar, break through the defences and sweep towards the town. Stumm's men flee, Stumm is killed, and Hannay and Sandy meet up with Pienaar to ride into the city and victory."
2556,Surrender,thriller," Seven-year-old Anwell lives in a prestigious but coldly distant family with a mother who is always sick and a father who punishes him with physical abuse. Anwell has no friends and is on a very tight leash. He is sitting in the back yard one day when he meets wild boy his age named Finnigan, his alter-ego or second personality. Anwell now named Gabriel is never to be angry and never to fight. Finnigan is to always be angry and to always fight. If Gabriel (Anwell) wants revenge or anything bad done, he asks Finnigan to do it for him. Finnigan becomes Anwell's only friend, and Anwell confides in him what he has never told anyone else, of how he accidentally killed his handicapped older brother Vernon. His brother, though he was three years older than Anwell, ""was never the elder of us"". His parents, disgraced and humiliated by Vernon, refuse to take care of him, leaving Anwell to do the job at the young age of seven. Enjoying his task, Anwell routinely feeds, washes, and entertains his brother. One Sunday, while his father is out to church and his mother is sleeping due to a migraine, Anwell is again taking care of Vernon. When Anwell is trying to feed Vernon, he refuses, would not stop crying, and scratches Anwell on his cheek, drawing blood. Out of frustration, and anxiety their mother will wake up and be irate, Anwell puts fabric in Vernon's mouth to quiet him and throws his brother in a refrigerator. Finnigan becomes the town arsonist, lighting the town aflame piece by piece in an act of revenge for Gabriel, but Finnigan is soon out of control and the only way for Gabriel to stop Finnigan is for Gabriel to kill himself at the young, ""martyr's age"" of twenty by condemning himself to a mentally caused illness."
2557,The Manchurian Candidate,thriller," Major Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are kidnapped during the Korean War in 1952. They are taken to Manchuria, and are brainwashed to believe that Shaw saved their lives in combat — for which Congress awards him the Medal of Honor. Years after the war, Marco, now back in the United States working as an intelligence officer, begins suffering the recurring nightmare of Shaw murdering two of his comrades, all while clinically observed by Chinese and Soviet intelligence officials. When Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon also has been suffering the same nightmare, he sets to uncovering the mystery and its meaning. It is revealed that the Communists have been using Shaw as a sleeper agent, a guiltless assassin subconsciously activated by seeing the “Queen of Diamonds” playing card while playing solitaire. Provoked by the appearance of the card, he obeys orders which he then forgets. Shaw’s KGB handler is his domineering mother Eleanor, a ruthless power broker working with the Communists to execute a ""palace coup d’état"" to quietly overthrow the U.S. government, with her husband, McCarthy-esque Senator Johnny Iselin, as a puppet dictator."
2558,The Human Factor,thriller," Maurice Castle is an aging bureaucrat in the British secret service MI6. Married to a black African woman with whom he fell in love during his previous stint in apartheid South Africa, he now lives a quiet life in the suburbs and looks forward to retirement. As the book begins, however, a leak has been traced to the African section in London where he works and threatens to disrupt this precarious tranquility. Castle and younger colleague Davis make light of the resulting inquiry, but when Davis is accused on circumstantial evidence and quietly ""disposed of"", Castle begins to wrestle with questions of loyalty, morality and conscience. On the one hand, Castle undertakes his day-to-day job professionally, and is willing to do what is more than required for both Davis and Daintry, his boss. On the other hand, Castle is grateful to Carson, who, as a Communist, has helped Castle's wife escape South Africa. In return, Castle decides to help the Communists and believes that by helping them, he is helping his wife's people—not knowing that Moscow has all along been using him for entirely different purposes. Rather than action or high politics, the novel builds its suspense by focusing on the psychological burdens of the pawns in the game: doubt and paranoia bred by a culture of secrecy, the sophisticated amorality of the men at the top, and above all, loyalties (to whom and what and at what cost?) Greene's characters are complete psychological portraits located within the context of the Cold War and the impact of international affairs on the complicated lives of individuals and vice versa. The interplay of international politics on the individual level is a trademark of this author."
2559,The Detective,thriller," Joe Leland, a private detective, begins investigating a case for the recently widowed Norma MacIver. Norma requests that Leland find out everything he can about her deceased husband. Norma requests Leland personally because her husband had mentioned knowing him in the past. It turns out that Leland and Colin MacIver served in the same military unit during World War II, but at different times. Leland interviews Colin's first wife, his mother and the security guards at the track where Colin supposedly killed himself. Norma introduces Leland to her neighbor and former therapist, Dr. Wendell Roberts. During their conversation Wendell reveals that he knew Leland's wife. It turns out Wendell was friends with the man with whom Karen Leland had had an affair. As Leland's investigation deepens he uncovers evidence of corruption and murder. Eventually, Leland discovers that Colin was connected to a homicide during Leland's earlier life with the police department as a detective. During the investigation of Teddy Leikman's death a confession was obtained from Felix Tesla, Leikman's roommate. Tesla was subsequently executed by electric chair. It turned out that Colin MacIver was the true murderer. Joe's partner, Mike Petrakis, managed to decipher Colin's coded notes and reveal a paper trail of corruption."
2560,Collision,thriller, Ben Forsberg is an independent contractor who has buried himself in his work after the death of his wife. Everything changes when two government agents turn up on his door to question him for a murder involving a notorious assassin.
2561,Play to the End,thriller," Middle-aged actor Toby Flood is touring the South of England with a recently discovered play by Joe Orton called Lodger in the Throat. When the company arrive in Brighton for a one-week run at the Theatre Royal, Flood is confident that he will be able to use his stay to get in touch with his estranged wife Jenny, who has filed for divorce and is now living with Roger Colborn, a local businessman, on the outskirts of the city. Flood is surprised to find that it is Jenny who contacts him first: She tells him she is being stalked and, as she believes that her husband is to blame for it, asks him to do something about it. This is how Flood meets Derek Oswin, the alleged stalker, an eccentric man his own age who, just like his deceased father and grandfather before him, worked for the Colborns' family business until its liquidation in 1989. It turns out Oswin has written a history of the company but so far has not found a publisher. Talking to Oswin and to other people he meets, either by chance or by design, Flood more and more gets the impression that Roger Colborn is a dangerous man who has something to hide, and that Jenny must be saved from the clutches of the Colborn family before it is too late. Thus, Flood's interest in the affairs of a now defunct company is fuelled by his desire to win back Jenny, so much so that his professional life is affected. Trying to dig up dirt on the Colborns, he is drawn into a quagmire of events he cannot make head or tail of and eventually misses an evening's performance without giving any notice. When, however, on the following day he finds his understudy&mdash;the man who saved his neck the previous night&mdash;dead in the streets of Brighton he realizes the seriousness of the situation. In the course of one week homes are broken into, evidence is stolen, several people die, family secrets are uncovered, and an inheritance is reclaimed. Justice triumphs in the end."
2562,Crisis,thriller," When Dr. Craig Bowman is served with a summons for medical malpractice, he's shocked, enraged, and more than a little humiliated. A devoted physician who works continuously in the service of others, he endured grueling years of training and is now a partner in an exclusive concierge medical practice. No longer forced to see more and more patients while spending less and less time with each one just to keep his office door open, he now provides the kind of medical care he is trained to do, lavishing twenty-four-hour availability and personalized attention on his handpicked patients. And at last, he is earning a significant income, no longer burdened by falling reimbursements from insurance companies. But this idyllic practice comes to a grinding halt one sunny afternoon—and gets much, much worse. Enter Dr. Jack Stapleton, a medical examiner in New York City and Bowman's brother-in-law: Jack's sister Alexis—now Craig's estranged wife—tearfully begs for his help as her husband's trial drags on. Jack agrees to travel to Boston to offer his forensic services and expert witness experience to Craig's beleaguered defense attorney. But when Jack's irreverent suggestion to exhume the corpse to disprove the alleged malpractice is taken seriously, he opens a Pandora's box of trouble. As Craig Bowman's life and career are put on the line, Jack is on the verge of making a most unwelcome discovery of tremendous legal and medical significance—and there are people who will do anything to keep him from learning the truth."
2563,Gone Tomorrow,thriller," It's 2am, and Jack Reacher is travelling on the New York underground. He notices a suspicious looking passenger, who begins to tick off a majority of entries on his mental list for finding suicide bombers. When he approaches her, he says he can help but she commits suicide by shooting herself. NYPD are eager to close the file without investigating the night's events, but Reacher has other ideas. He wants to know what happened that night, and more importantly why. Is everyone as honest as they claim to be? And if so, then why are there so many questions asked, or avoided? Reacher is advised to walk away, but of course this is not an option. He's fallen down the rabbit hole, but the question is: whose hole is it? And where does it land?"
2564,Transfer of Power,thriller," The reader first meets Rapp while he is doing a covert operation in Iran and he discovers a possible terrorist attack planned for the nations capital to happen in the near future. Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., Anna Reilly is starting her first day as a White House correspondent for NBC. It also so happens to be the day where the terrorist, using the a secret entrance and take over the White House and hold it hostage. The president, who barley escaped the hostage situation remains trapped in the unfinished bomb shelter. With the vice president using this opportunity as commander in chief to glorify his political career being lenient towards the terrorist demands, Rapp must find a way to fight the terrorist from the inside of the White House. It is here where he saves Anna Reilly from being raped by one of the terrorist and their relationship, which will be seen throughout the later books begins. It comes time that several Navy SEAL's who sneak into the White House and eliminate the terrorist, save the hostages and the president. The leader of the terrorist group manages to escape the White House while detonating the strategically placed explosives. He is later found in South America only to be killed by Rapp."
2565,Storming Heaven,thriller," After Admiral Hardcastle warns the world about America's lack of guards against terrorism, the horrors begin. Henri Cazaux, a psychopathic terrorist, attacks the heartland and then the San Francisco airport with explosives. The country is terrorized. The US authorities are overwhelmed. A single-engine Cessna, loaded with explosives, attacks the White House. Soon after publication, when Frank Eugene Corder flew in a Cessna at low altitude to the White House and crashed on the grounds, newspapers noted similarities. No explosives were found in the wreckage of the plane Corder flew."
2566,No Country for Old Men,thriller," The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh, and Ed Tom Bell), set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the Mexican-American border in southwest Texas, in Terrell County. While Llewelyn Moss is hunting antelope, he stumbles across the aftermath of a drug-deal gone bad, which has left everyone dead but a single badly wounded Mexican who pleads with Moss for water. Moss responds that he doesn't have any and searches the rest of the vehicles, finding a truck full of heroin. He searches for the ""last man standing"" and finds him dead some ways off under a tree, with a satchel containing $2.4 million in cash. He takes the money and returns back home. Later, however, he feels remorse for leaving the wounded man and returns to the scene with a jug of water, only to find that he has been shot and killed since he left him. When Moss looks back to his truck parked on the ridge overlooking the valley, another truck is there. As soon as he tries to run, he is seen, which sparks a tense chase by gunmen in the other truck. This is only the beginning of a hunt for Moss that stretches for most of the remaining novel. After escaping from the gunmen at the scene of the drug deal massacre, Llewelyn sends his wife, Carla Jean Moss, to her mother in Odessa while he leaves his home with the money. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell investigates the drug crime while trying to protect Moss and his young wife, with the aid of other law enforcement. The sheriff is haunted by his actions in World War II, leaving his unit to die, for which he received a Bronze Star. Now in his late 50s, Bell has spent most of his life attempting to make up for the incident when he was a 21-year-old soldier. He makes it his quest to resolve the case and save Moss. Complicating things is the arrival of Anton Chigurh, a hitman hired to recover the money. Chigurh uses a captive bolt pistol (called a ""stungun"" in the text) to kill many of his victims (and to destroy several cylinder locks to open doors), as well as a silenced shotgun. Carson Wells, a rival hitman and ex-Special Forces officer who is familiar with Chigurh, is also on the trail of the stolen money. After a brutal shootout that spills across the Mexican border and leaves both Moss and Chigurh wounded, Moss recovers at a Mexican hospital while Chigurh patches himself up in a hotel room with stolen supplies. While recuperating, Moss is approached by Wells, who offers to give him protection in exchange for the satchel and tells him his current location and phone number, instructing him to call when he has ""had enough."" After recovering and leaving the hotel room, Chigurh finds Wells and murders him just as Moss calls to negotiate the exchange of money. After answering Wells's phone, Chigurh tells Moss that he will kill Carla Jean unless he hands over the satchel. Moss remains defiant and soon after, calls Carla Jean and tells her that he will meet up with her at a motel in El Paso. After much deliberation, Carla Jean decides to inform Sheriff Bell about the meeting and its location. Unfortunately for her and her husband, this call is traced and provides Moss's location to some of his hunters. At the motel, Sheriff Bell arrives to find Moss murdered by a band of Mexicans, who also were after the drug deal cash. Later that night Chigurh arrives at the scene and retrieves the satchel from the airduct in Moss's room. He returns it to its owner and later travels to Carla Jean's house and shoots her after flipping a coin to decide her fate. Soon after, he is hit by a car, which leaves him severely injured but still alive. After bribing a pair of teenagers to remain silent about the car accident, he limps off down the road. After a long investigation that fails to locate Chigurh, Bell decides to retire and drives away from the local courthouse feeling overmatched and defeated. For the rest of the book, Bell describes two dreams that he had the previous night. In one, he met his father in town and borrowed some money from him. In the second, Bell was riding his horse through a snow-covered pass in the mountains. As he rode, he could see his father up ahead of him carrying a moon colored horn lit with fire, and he knew that his father would ride on through the pass and fix a fire out in the dark and cold and that it would be waiting for him when he arrived. And then he woke up."
2567,Avenger,thriller," The first act of the novel introduces Calvin Dexter, the main character of the story. Dexter is described as a lawyer in his early fifties with a passion for running triathlons to keep in shape. The book digs into his past and reveals that he is a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, and that his last tour of duty was as a tunnel rat, an extremely élite and secret task force that climbed deep into the underground catacomb of Vietcong tunnels to hunt down the enemy in their own lairs. He was married and had a daughter who at the age of 16 was lured away and forced into prostitution by Latino gang members and eventually murdered. Dexter hunts down his daughter's killers in Panama and executes them, then returns home only to discover that his beloved wife couldn't deal with the death of their only child, and committed suicide during his absence. He moves away, and becomes only a small town lawyer in his public face. But when the reason and price is right, he transforms himself into the ""Avenger"" and delivers justice by 'rendering' foreign criminals to the United States (not killing them), so that they will stand trial for their crimes against Americans. Intertwined into the backstory of Calvin Dexter is the narrative of a young American volunteer from a very privileged family who was murdered while delivering aid in Bosnia during the Bosnian War. As the second act kicks into gear, the boy's grandfather, a Canadian billionaire named Stephen Edmonds, hires a tracker to discover the identity of his sole son's killer and eventually learns him to be Zoran Zilic, a sadistic hitman for Slobodan Milošević's Serbian regime. The CIA had followed the movements of Zilic during the war, but let him slip off the radar after the fall of Milošević. Edmonds then learns of the services provided by the Avenger and hires him to pursue Zilic and bring him to trial. It is then revealed that a secret section in the CIA, headed by Paul Devereaux III, a dedicated patriot, has been working with Zilic in recent months with plans to use him as bait to eliminate another terrorist threat &mdash; Osama bin Laden himself. From the CIA’s point of view, Zilic, despite his horrific crimes, had been marginalized as a result of the end of hostilities in Bosnia and could be used to eliminate a much larger threat to the American way of life. The third act details the actions of the ""Avenger"" as he tracks Zilic to his palatial and fully self-sufficient farm/compound in South America. Meanwhile, the CIA operatives work furiously to prevent the ""Avenger"" from nabbing Zilic. The Avenger is tipped off by an unknown source that the CIA is onto him and evades them at every turn. He successfully manages to transport Zilic to Key West and into police custody. Just as the story ends, the date is stated to be September 10, 2001."
2568,Killing Floor,thriller," Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, because he remembers his brother mentioning that a musician named ""Blind Blake"" died there. Much to his surprise, he's arrested in a local diner for murder. He meets an honest detective called Finlay, and tries to prove he was not there when the murder happened. After finding what seems to be a phone number in the dead man's shoe, Finlay rings and tricks a man into telling him his name, Mr. Hubble, They bring Hubble (as he likes to be called) into the police station for questioning and he soon cracks and confesses to the murder, but Reacher doesn't buy it. Both Reacher and Hubble are sent to the state prison and run into more than a little trouble. After a hellraising two days in jail, Roscoe (a female police officer for whom Reacher has begun to have feelings) proves he is innocent and that his claim to have been nowhere near the scene of the murder is true. Roscoe collects Reacher and they return to Margrave to find that all hell has broken loose. Reacher discovers the murder victim's identity and realises that he indeed knows him, as he has all his life. Hubble has disappeared and his wife is in hysterics wanting Reacher to find him. It then transpires that Chief Morrison and his wife have been found horribly murdered in their own home. It is revealed later in the story that Margrave is home to a multi-billion dollar counterfeiting operation, which Reacher and his newly formed acquaintances try to destroy."
2569,The Golden Gate,thriller," A team of criminals led by mastermind Peter Branson kidnaps the President of the United States and his two guests from the Middle East, a prince and a king, on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, in a masterfully conceived and clockwork-timed operation. Branson and his men block off both ends of the bridge, wire it with explosives, and demand half a billion dollars and (adding insult to injury) a full pardon for themselves. Any rescue attempts will result in the detonation of the explosives, which will kill the President (and his guests) and destroy the Golden Gate Bridge. However, Branson is an egomaniac, and he cannot resist attention from the media. So he invites the press to stay on the bridge and cover the story. Aware that the FBI will have placed agents among them, he takes the precaution of searching them and removing the armed ones. However, Hagenbach (the FBI's dour but extremely adept head agent) has an ace in the hole: a hand-picked special agent, Paul Revson, who was equipped with only a camera. Allowed to remain on the bridge, Revson sets out to foil Branson's plans and rescue the President. With the help of a doctor and a female journalist, Revson gets a message to his superiors, suggesting various courses of action: supplying drugged food to the terrorists, placing a submarine under the bridge, and trying to neutralize the terrorists' equipment with a laser beam. He also arranges for several carefully disguised weapons and gadgets to be smuggled to him. Working on both ends, Revson, Hagenbach, and those working with them unleash their own carefully conceived plans."
2570,The Pyramid. The Soviet Mafia,thriller," The 260 pages of the book are divided in 27 chapters. The first part describes the motives for the Soviet corruption. The second part shows how Soviet Intelligence finds out about so called Uzbek Affair. To the common Russians some names in this book became synonymous with corruption, nepotism and the Great Cotton Scandal of the late Brezhnev period. At last few episodes from life of Brezhnev's family (Galina Brezhneva and others)."
2571,Running Blind,thriller," Ex-MI-6 spy Alan Stewart is coerced by his former masters to undertake a very simple mission – to deliver a small parcel to a man in Iceland. The mission should be simple for Stewart, as he happens to be fluent in Icelandic, and has an Icelandic girlfriend. However, immediately things go very wrong, very quickly. Soon after arrival, he is forced to kill a KGB agent who tried to take the package from him. When he tries to deliver the parcel, he realizes that he has been double-crossed, and that his former boss is now a double agent. Stewart sets off on a desperate race overland across some of the world’s most rugged, desolate and dramatic scenery, pursued by the KGB, the CIA, and his own people, who now think that he has become a traitor. The secret is with the mysterious parcel – and the opposition is more than willing to kill him to prevent him from discovering what that secret is."
2572,The Roar,thriller," The story follows twins Mika and Ellie who live in England. Mika and Ellie live with their parents in the poverty stricken area behind The Wall on the first level in a fold out apartment located in Barford North. Ellie has been kidnapped and is being held by the leader of the Youth Development Foundation, Mal Gorman. Although everyone says that Ellie is dead, Mika refuses to believe that she is. Even a year after Ellie's ""death"", Mika still believes his sister is alive. His parents seek help from an old lady named Helen who always seems to know more than she says. In the beginning of the book, Ellie is flying a Pod Fighter, along with a Capuchin monkey named Puck that Mal Gorman gave to her. They are flying over the Atlantic Ocean, and she flies toward her home, Barford North. There, Mal's forces try to kill her. Soon, her Pod Fighter is shot down, and she is forced into flood-waters. Mal Gorman captures her, and in her anger she nearly kills him with her mutant powers. She was outnumbered, captured, and taken to the Lab to be examined with Puck, for they were both clearly underestimated. Back home, Mika does not believe Ellie is dead. He still grieves at her absence. He sleeps in her bed, and does not move. Eventually, his parents send him to school. At his school, he meets a new person - a boy named Kobi who came from the shadows. During the day, a nurse comes from the Youth Development Foundation. She tells all the children that they will have to drink a product called ""Fit Mix"". Mika refuses to drink it because of the fact that she reminded him of a ""tellyhead"", and is punished with a 100 credit fine and a week long suspension. During his suspension, he has strange dreams. Once, he has a dream of a dog he calls Awen, who reappears in his conscious states and acts as his guide in the book. His nightmares consist of people with televisions for heads who he calls the ""Telly Heads"". When his suspension is finished, all the kids seem to be obsessed with a new arcade game called Pod Fighter. Helen told him that she now has to leave so she said ""if you play pod fighter you will most probably find your sister Ellie"". Soon, he learns that there will be a competition with prizes of a new companion, which is a futuristic cell-phone like device that has an artificial intelligence that emulates the personality of a human, a hover car, and a new house in the Golden Turrets in London. The Golden Turrets are a set of large fancy towers that are painted gold and made up of enclosed apartments for the very wealthiest people in London. At school, the kids take ""Fit Camp"". While taking the camp, the instructor pushes them to the limit. He makes them exercise when they are out of breath, and they do unimaginable exercises until their feet bleed. But none of them know that they are being prepared for something else. Later, Mika makes his way up the Pod Fighter chart and moves to the second round after winning the first round of a Pod Fighter competition, with his faithful gunner, Audrey, a new girl with Borg eyes. Audrey also seems to be a love interest for Mika. Mika, Audrey and one hundred other kids are selected to do further training at a fake island. They are taken to the fake resort that resembles the Caribbean Islands. While their parents relax, they are given numerous physical challenges. They give the children a new challenge with harpoons; shooting Borg fish. Mika is accidentally hit but is quickly healed. Before he moves on to the next round they do strange experiments on him and teach him to move things with his mind. In his first test, he is paired up with a boy named Ruben, his arch-enemy. They both lift up a red ball with their mind, and accidentally set it on fire. While the room is being cleared out, they nearly kill each other. After some of the special children with slight mutations (including Mika and Audrey) are given extreme tests, like meeting Borg wolves, while in a cage to see how the Borg wolves will react to them, he is taken to a military base in Scotland called Cape Wrath. There he has more tests done to him. After staying for a while, they have a dinner where they announce the winners. He meets Mal Gorman, who to Mika resembles one of the Telly Heads from his dream, and the rest of the Youth Development board. Mika is announced the winner. Mr Gorman tells Mika he can have his sister. He needs to know he can trust him so he tells Mika he has to stay in his apartment and come back to Cape Wrath the next day. When Mika goes to his new home in the Golden Turrets, there is an uproar: the government has taken all the children from The Shadows for a war no one knows about. Mika and Audrey escape to get away from the horde of people in a pod fighter. They go over the wall and see that there is a forest with animals and people. They are outraged and fly back to the military to find Mal and ask him why he has been lied to. Mal tells him that 30 years ago the plague was faked by a group of people who wanted the world for themselves. Mal was trying to make an army of children to fight off the people in the southern hemispheric. And he says that he overworked the children in fit camp to prepare them for war. After he lets Mika see Ellie for the first time in a year, and they finally embrace each other. After meeting with Ellie, they fly a Pod Fighter back towards Barford North, hoping to tell their family of the good news."
2573,The White Tiger,thriller," Lu Hong, a policeman in Beijing finds himself in trouble after the death in strange circumstances of his mentor, Sun Sheng. Sheng was a friend of Hong's parents, and originally met them during the Long March with Mao Zedong from 1935 to 1948. Hong suspects that something is hidden behind his mentor's sudden death. He begins to look for the true story of what happened forty years ago, when his parents, Sheng and the Three Tigers were in the city of Yan'an with Mao Zedong. However, the silence of people who know, and subsequent deaths, impede his investigation."
2574,Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition,thriller," Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition tells in four different chapters the story behind a fictional mass suicide that takes place on the Shinjuku Station in 2002, on which 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a train. This event unleashes in Japan—and soon after, in the world—a chain of suicides that seems endless. Police officers try to stop it and understand why this is happening, and after several events they find a connection between the suicides and a website that belongs to a mysterious organization called Family Circle. Through this website, Family Circle enrolls young people and incite them to run away from home to serve the Circle ""family rentals"", a service that the organization provides to families who lost relatives to suicide. Parallel to this, alongside the police's quest, the book also follows the story of one of Family Circle's new members that witnessed the mass suicide, Noriko Shimabara, and how her own family slowly falls apart to the suicide wave, while her father tries to ""rescue"" her from the Circle. In the end, all the pieces come together as the true meaning behind the website is revealed."
2575,Mount Dragon,thriller," Dr. Guy Carson is a young scientist and cowboy-at-heart, raised on a southwestern ranch and bored with city life. That is, until the prestigious genetic engineering corporation GeneDyne offers Carson a six-month position as a lab researcher at its Mount Dragon Remote Desert Testing Facility in Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico. Carson accepts and soon finds that the Mount Dragon facility is home to testing far more promising—yet extremely dangerous—things than Carson ever expected. Scientists at the facility spend months isolated from the outside world, essentially locked in the guarded facility within a Level 5 containment lab, as they conduct medical tests and research for a seemingly common mission: to create a vaccine for the influenza virus. With the help of his feisty lab assistant, Susanna Cabeza de Vaca, Carson begins to unlock the mysteries of the spontaneously mutating influenza virus, dubbed “X-FLU,” and even the Mount Dragon facility itself. Carson and DeVaca discover that their predecessor, Dr. Franklin Burt, was literally driven mad by his time at Mount Dragon and was institutionalized. Burt’s death is not the only one caused by the facility; an emergency quarantine prompted by the contamination of the Level 5 lab by a chimp infected with the deadly X-FLU results in the death of researcher Rosalind Brandon-Smith. Soon, more human harm follows as Carson’s friend and messmate Dr. Andrew Vanderwagon spontaneously punctures his own eye with a fork and attempts to commit suicide and kill others. Through researching Burt’s descent to madness, Carson and DeVaca realize that what occurred with Vanderwagon closely resembled the behavior of Burt toward the end. In fact, everyone at the facility except for Carson and DeVaca begin to display abnormal and erratic behavior that Carson at first presumes is the result of tight quarters or contamination by X-FLU. However, Carson has an epiphany after conducting further tests on influenza and discovers that what caused the virus to mutate is Burt’s filtering system — a system that was used to filter the artificial blood product PurBlood that GeneDyne is releasing in hospitals across the nation in mere days. Burt’s journal confirms that PurBlood is in fact contaminated; Burt’s filtering system caused the contamination by mutating the cells in the artificial blood. Carson and DeVaca are the only workers at the Mount Dragon facility who did not undergo a PurBlood transfusion for beta testing, and thus are the only ones not driven to insanity by the contamination. They set off an explosion to destroy the facility and flee from its homicidal and suicidal inhabitants. Attempting to alert officials before PurBlood can be introduced across the nation, resulting in an epidemic, Carson and DeVaca set off on horseback across the arid New Mexico desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest civilization. They are chased by the security director, an eccentric Englishman named Nye whose PurBlood-induced madness has led him to believe that there is a treasure buried in the desert and that Carson and DeVaca are trying to steal it from him. After days of thirst and starvation, Carson and DeVaca find water—and the remains of the worthless “treasure” of Spanish explorer Mondragón—before engaging in a fight-to-the-death battle with Nye. Carson and DeVaca are injured, but survive, and make it to a nearby cattle ranch in time to spread the word about the dangers of PurBlood. Aside from the action-ridden plot of Carson and DeVaca, the novel highlights political and scientific battle between the CEO of GeneDyne, Brent Scopes, and his former best friend, Charles Levine, over the ethics of genetic modification. Scopes argues that genetic modification, such as that involved in the creation of PurBlood, will one day lead to a healthier human race. Levine counters that the extent of the dangers of genetically modified products is unknown, and that humans should proceed with caution in genetically altering or engineering products that could change the biological make-up of humanity. In the end, Scopes and Levine are exposed to the mutated influenza virus X-FLU and resolve their differences before dying."
2576,Are You Afraid of the Dark?,thriller," In four cities across the world, four people die violently and mysteriously. The dead share a single crucial link: each was connected to an all-powerful environmental think tank. Two of the victims' widows—accomplished artist Diane Stevens and international supermodel Kelly Harris—may hold the key to their husbands' demise. Terrified for their lives, suspicious of each other, and armed only with their own wits and guile, they must join forces in a nightmare cycle of they loved...and about an awesome conspiracy whose ultimate target is as big as the earth and as close as the air we breathe."
2577,The Killing Star,thriller," The late 21st century seems like a good time to be alive. Earth is at peace. Humans now command self-replicating machines that create engineering marvels on enormous scales. Artificial habitats dot the solar system. Anti-matter driven Valkyrie rockets carry explorers to the stars at nearly the speed of light. All seems well. Then, from the uncaring black of space come swarms of relativistic missiles. Though they are merely boulder-sized hunks of metal, they move fast enough to hit with the force of many nuclear arsenals. They are impossible to track and impossible to stop. Humanity is all but wiped out by the horrific bombardment. (To read a discussion of relativistic weapons and an excerpt of the attack, see Atomic Rockets: Relativistic Weapons). A handful of survivors desperately struggle to escape the alien mop-up fleet. They hide close to the sun, inside asteroids, beneath the crusts of moons, within ice rings, and in the fathomless depths of interstellar space. But most are hunted down and slaughtered. The last man and woman on Earth are captured as zoo specimens. In the belly of an alien starship, a squid-like being relates to them the pitiless logic behind human-kind's execution: the moment we learned to travel at relativistic speeds was the moment we had the power to do to them what they did to us first. The attack was nothing personal. Humanity was simply too dangerous a neighbor to have around."
2578,Death Wish,thriller," Paul Benjamin is a CPA in New York and lifelong liberal. However, his staid life is overturned when his daughter, Carol, and spouse, Esther, are attacked by muggers. His wife does not survive the attack, and his traumatized daughter is left in a vegetative state. Forced to reevaluate his views, Benjamin becomes paranoid and eager for vengeance. After a trip to Arizona, a friend gives him a revolver as a gift. Benjamin shoots a mugger who accosts him. Benjamin continues to take justice into his own hands, drawing would-be muggers into traps by using himself as the bait. In one case, he rents a car, pulls it over to the side of the road, and writes an ""Out of Gas"" sign on the vehicle. He then hides, waiting for someone to steal the car. When some lawbreakers do so, he shoots them. It is only within the last fifty pages of the first novel that Benjamin slays his first victim. The second novel, Death Sentence, states that Benjamin murdered seventeen people over five weeks."
2579,Battle Royale,thriller," Battle Royale takes place in 1997 in an alternate timeline—Japan is a member region of a totalitarian state known as the . Under the guise of a ""study trip"", a group of students from in the fictional town of Shiroiwa, in Kagawa Prefecture, are gassed on a bus. They awaken in the Okishima Island School on Okishima, an isolated, evacuated island southwest of Shodoshima (modeled after the island of Ogijima). They learn that they have been placed in an event called the Program. Officially a military research project, it is a means of terrorizing the population, of creating such paranoia as to make organized insurgency impossible. The first Program was held in 1947. Fifty third-year junior high school classes are selected (prior to 1950, forty-seven classes were selected) annually to participate in the Program for research purposes. The students from a single class are isolated and are required to fight the other members of their class to the death. The Program ends when only one student remains, with that student being declared the winner and receiving a government funded pension. Their movements are tracked by metal collars, which contain tracking and listening devices; if any student should attempt to escape the Program, or enter declared forbidden zones (which are randomly selected at the hours of 12 and 6, both a.m. and p.m.), a bomb will be detonated in the collar, killing the wearer. If no one dies within any 24-hour period, all collars will be detonated simultaneously and there will be no winner. After being briefed about the Program, the students are issued survival packs that include a map, compass, food and water, and a random weapon or other item, which may be anything from a gun to a paper fan. During the briefing, two students (Fumiyo Fujiyoshi and Yoshitoki Kuninobu) anger the supervisor, Kinpatsu Sakamochi, who kills both. As the students are released onto the island, they each react differently to their predicament; beautiful delinquent Mitsuko Souma murders those who stand in her way using deception, Hiroki Sugimura attempts to find his best friend and his secret love, Kazuo Kiriyama attempts to win the game by any means necessary (stemming from his lack of ability to feel human emotion due to a partial lobotomy caused by a car crash while in utero) and Shinji Mimura makes an attempt to escape with his best friend, class clown Yutaka Seto. In the end, four students remain: protagonist Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa (the crush of Shuya's best friend), Shogo Kawada—a survivor of a previous instance of the Program—and antagonist Kazuo Kiriyama. Following a car chase and shoot-out between Kazuo and the main characters, Noriko kills Kazuo by shooting him, but to absolve the quiet and naturally good-natured Noriko of any guilt, Shogo then shoots Kazuo, claims he is in fact responsible for Kazuo's death, and then takes his two partners to a hill. After telling Shuya and Noriko that he will kill them, Shogo shoots in the air twice, faking their deaths for the microphones planted on the collars. He then dismantles the collars using information he had previously hacked into the government servers to obtain. Shogo boards the winner's ship, as do Shuya and Noriko, covertly, a short while later. On the ship, Shogo kills Sakamochi and a soldier, while Shuya kills the other soldiers on board. Shogo tells Shuya how to escape, succumbs to his wound from the battle with Kiriyama and dies. The two remaining students return to the mainland and attempt to travel to find a clinic belonging to a friend of Shogo's father. From there, they make plans to escape to the U.S., facing an uncertain future as they run from the authorities who have spotted them as they try to board a train."
2580,Flood,thriller," In 1953 the East coast of England was stuck by one of the worst storms of the century. In response to this, the Thames Flood Barrier was opened in 1984, to protect London from the danger. However global warming has resulted in raising sea levels, higher waves and more frequent extreme weather. Londoners have become complacent, thinking that the flood barrier will protect them. The events will prove them wrong. The Prime Minister is out of the country, leaving Deputy Prime Minister, and Home Secretary Venita Maitland in charge. As the danger signs mount up, officials at all levels of the government are reluctant to take the necessary precautions, relying on margins of error, earlier missed predictions and fearing the consequences of an unnecessary evacuation. A storm rages over the north of Britain, a troop carrier founders in the Irish Sea, flood indicators go off the scale, the seas are mountainous and a spring tide is about to strike the East Coast. Air sea rescue and military personnel struggle to save lives all down the coast. The worse is yet to come. When the storm reaches the south the two forces of wind and tide will combine and send a huge one-in-a-thousand tidal surge up the Thames. But surely London is safe: the Thames Barrier will save the capital from disaster as it was intended to do? The river is a titanic presence by now, higher than anyone has known it, and the surge thunders towards the Barrier. Scientists begin to talk of the possibility of overtopping. Can fifty feet high gates be overwhelmed by a wave? Then there is an explosion the size of a small Hiroshima: a supertanker is ablaze in the estuary and most of the Essex petrochemical works are going up with it. The Thames catches fire and the wall of fire and water thunders towards Britain's capital. This is the story of what happens next, and the desperate attempts to save the capital from destruction. Firefighters and other first responders from all around the country, supplanted by German, French and American military bravely fight against the disaster, but they can only save a fraction of those threatened. Eventually the saviour of London proves to be the same thing that threatened it, with rain from the storm extinguishing the fire."
2581,Stamboul Train,thriller," The novel focuses on the lives of individuals aboard the train as it makes a trip from Ostend to Istanbul. Although boarding the Orient Express for different purposes, the lives of each of the central characters are bound together in a fateful interlock. Myatt is a shrewd and practical businessman. Partly out of generosity, he gives the sick Coral Musker a ticket, for which Musker feels grateful and dutifully falls in love with him. She then spends a night with him in his compartment. Dr. Czinner, an exiled socialist leader, wants to travel back to Belgrade, only to find that the socialist uprising he was anticipating has already taken place and failed. He decides to go back to Belgrade nonetheless to stand trial as a political gesture. Meanwhile, he is being followed by Mabel Warren, a lesbian journalist who is travelling with her partner, Janet Pardoe. In order to go back to Belgrade, he has to pretend to leave the train at Vienna so that Warren would not follow him. When the train arrives at Vienna, Warren, while keeping an eye on Czinner, leaves the train to make a phone call to her office. It is at this time that her bag is stolen by Josef Grünlich, who has just killed a man during a failed robbery. Grünlich then promptly boards the train with her money, while the angry Warren, left behind and worried about losing Pardoe, vows to get Czinner's story through other means. At Subotica, the train is stopped and Czinner is arrested. Also arrested are Grünlich, for keeping a revolver, and Musker, who by coincidence is with Czinner when the arrest takes place. A court martial is held and Czinner gives a rousing political speech, even though there is no real audience present. He is quickly sentenced to death. The three prisoners are kept in a waiting room for the night. They soon realize that Myatt has just come back for Musker in a car. The skilful Grünlich breaks open the door and all three try to escape and run to the car. Unfortunately, only Grünlich is able to do so -- Czinner is shot and Musker hides him in a barn. Czinner dies soon after. When Warren comes back for her story, she happily decides to take Musker back to Vienna: she has long fancied to have Musker as her new partner. But when Musker is last seen, she is having a heart attack in the back of Warren's car, and her ultimate fate is not revealed. The Orient Express finally arrives at Istanbul, and Myatt, Pardoe and Mr. Savory (a writer) get off. Myatt soon realizes that Pardoe is the niece of Stein, a rival businessman and potential business partner. The story ends with Myatt seriously considering marrying Pardoe and sealing the contract with Stein."
2582,The First Team,thriller," The book begins with a Soviet governor already securely ensconced in the White House, and a young Air Force officer who tried to resist the occupiers being summarily executed on the White House lawn - without explaining exactly how things got to that dire pass. The reader is, however, made to understand that the Soviet takeover was made possible because of widespread cultural malaise. Undermined by Hippies and anti-war protesters, corrupt military-industrial complex producers who created faulty military hardware, weak-willed US Senators, and the super-power that was the USSR's propaganda machine (not to mention the Vietnam War's hangover), the USA was unable to defend against Soviet power. The country finds itself under an iron-willed Soviet bureaucrat, backed up by a vicious Soviet Colonel. The Soviets embark on blatantly anti-Semitic policies, making no effort to reconcile them with Marxist ideology, and drive hundreds of thousands of American Jews into Israel, where they are housed in makeshift tent camps. Small-time criminals soon turn into paid informers for the new regime. An unpaid collaborator is a hitherto popular singer, who openly welcomes the occupiers and tells his audience that ""things could have been far worse"" - whereupon attendance at his performances plummets. Rather than making use of him, the Soviets just ignore him and finally he is killed ""by mistake"" by a Soviet army unit that misunderstood his wish to welcome them on American soil. Another character at whose misfortune the reader is invited to smile is an imprisoned radical Black leader, who expects to be set free by the Soviet invaders, only to find that they have no intention to loose such a trouble-maker as himself, and that in fact the new warden (a Russian woman) is far tougher than her American predecessor. American students try to voice their protest but find the Soviet occupiers' response far more brutal than anything they encountered in the years of the anti-war movement. And a trade union official in an (unnamed) East Coast port, who tries to obstruct the occupiers, is summarily shot. However, hope is not lost. The main protagonist - US White House interpreter Raleigh Hewitt, kept at his post by the invaders - comes to be recruited into a secret underground resistance organization, ""The First Team"" of the title. It turns out that the fall of the United States wasn't altogether unforeseen, and that a very resourceful band of patriots was already in place, with considerable material resources - such as a well-equipped secret control centre - prepared for them carefully in advance. There are months of careful preparatory work, secret manoeuvrings and counter-manoeuvrings, using especially the classic spying device of a small private brothel sited in a Washington. D.C. suburb - before the brave conspirators are ready to strike. This work includes the political conversion of a formerly liberal Senator, whose son had been a patriot, killed by the Soviets during a planning session. Key to ending the Soviet occupation is the USS Ramon Magsaysay, a fully armed and fueled nuclear ballistic missile submarine at a Navy yard in the San Francisco Bay. The Magsaysay is critical because all other US Navy subs had obeyed orders to put into foreign ports and be taken over by the Soviets, while the Magsaysay is readily accessible. The patriots put a team aboard during a false ""reactor emergency"" (a subplot later used in Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October) and manage to steal the sub -- without provisions aboard. The last part of the book involves the pressure of both sides not knowing whether the sub and its possibly starving skeleton crew has successfully escaped Soviet forces and reached a place where the missiles could be fired."
2583,The Sleepwalker,thriller," A plane crashes over the Atlantic and all 345 passengers are killed. Among the dead are the wife, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren of Dr. Terrence McAfferty (Mac), former CHERUB chairman. A troubled boy named Fahim Bin Hassam calls the aircrash investigation hotline and attempts to blame his father, Hassam Bin Hassam, but gives into his fear before he can relay any of the information. While James is sleeping, the instructor Kazkov pulls him out of bed, gags him with a rubber gag, handcuffs him, and takes him outside. It is revealed all the black shirts are being taken on a training exercise. They have to leave the area, with red and white shirts after them using quad bikes and night-vision goggles. Lauren hides in a ditch, and is able to steal night-vision goggles. She gets James' motorcylcled engined golf buggie which was raced at the beginning of the book and decides to rescue James, Kerry and Dana. Later she tells Zara quad bikes made it uneven, and is told next time bicycles will probably be used, it would make things more even, and prevent damage, as one of the quad bikes was sent to the bottom of a lake. CHERUB agents Lauren and Jake are sent on a mission to befriend Fahim and discover the truth. Mac becomes the acting mission controller, trying to find out if the deaths of his family were accidental or acts of terrorism. Lauren plants audio devices all over the house, but when Hassam discovers one, he thinks it was the cleaning lady and he tortures her in painful ways, before shooting her in the kneecap. Fahim feels guilty about this and admits to his father about how it was Lauren and Jake. He throws some stinging antiseptic in his father's eyes in an attempt to flee. Hassam chases him across a golf course, but when an armed tactical response team threaten to shoot him, Hassam takes his own son hostage with a knife to his throat. Jake bravely attacks Hassam from behind and saves Fahim, after which Hassam is shot dead. After all of the trouble is cleared, it is discovered that the plane crashed due to faulty parts which Hassam and his brother Asif Bin Hassam sold to the people constructing the plane. As the brothers were aware of their faults, Asif was sent to prison. Fahim was taken in to start life as a CHERUB, but when a camcorder showed that he sleepwalks every night and talks out loud about all of the things he has done, Zara Asker states that it is too dangerous to send him on missions because he might blow his cover. Instead, Fahim will live with Dr Terence McAfferty, CHERUB's former chairman. Meanwhile, James has been assigned his work experience with his former girlfriend, Kerry, at the Deluxe Chicken restaurant. They are invited to a club by a co-worker called Gemma and her boyfriend Danny. James, Dana, and Kerry go and have a good time, but James discovers Danny pushing Gemma about and fights with him. On the last day of their work experience Gemma shows up with a black eye. Outside, James meets Danny but James is not eager to have another row with him. Danny calls Gemma and pulls her hair to taunt James, but it is Kerry who attacks him, and James rushes to aid her. The police are called and James is arrested. Zara, the CHERUB chairwoman, uses her status to free James from prison. She then sentences Kerry and James punishment laps and hours of decorating service. James realises he is still attracted to Kerry, but he wants to be faithful to Dana. and suddenly rejects Kerry after they start making out."
2584,The Apocalypse Watch,thriller," The plot concerns Drew Latham, a special officer for consular operations, who must discover why his brother was killed after a covert mission. He impersonates his brother, and uncovers a web of neo-Nazi supporters with members at high levels of the U.S. government and its allies. Latham must stop the neo-Nazis plot to take over Europe through terrorism and biological warfare. A running joke concerns the French being unable to pronounce ""Latham"" correctly."
2585,The Eighth Scroll,thriller," Nineteen hundred years after the Essene Jews hid their most precious scrolls in the caves at Qumran, a Catholic priest working on the Dead Sea Scrolls Project discovers a text that describes the final edict of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but hides it in fear of the heresy it contains. When prominent archeologist Frank Tones unearths a reference to the hidden scroll, he wonders if this scroll could be the long-lost Gospel of James, or even of Jesus himself. But before he can act, those who know of the scroll’s existence become mysteriously silent or dead, leaving only a father and son team to find the scroll and tell its secrets to the world."
2586,My Laugh Comes Last,thriller," Larry Lucas is a small time worker, who is one day approached by a millionaire,Farell Brannigan, to assist him and start a new bank in town, which should be the safest in the world.Thrilled by the offer,Larry jumps for it, starts minting money and enters high class circles, only to come across a series of problems on the way,involving deception, hypocrisy, treachery, murder, blackmail.The rest of the story is about how and whether Larry is able to deal with and survive it all."
2587,Tell Me Your Dreams,thriller," The main characters of the book are Ashley Patterson, an introverted workaholic, her co-workers, Toni Prescott, an outgoing singer and dancer, and shy artist Alette Peters and Ashley's father. The three women do not get along very well, because of their dissimilar natures. Toni and Alette generally maintain a friendship, with Alette a calming influence, but Toni dislikes Ashley and criticizes her harshly. All three have issues with their mothers having told them they'd never amount to anything. Ashley fears that somebody is following her. She finds her house lights turned on when she returns from work, her personal effects in disarray, and someone has written ""You will die"" on her mirror with a lipstick. She thinks someone's broken into her house. She requests a police escort, but the next morning, the police officer assigned to this duty is found dead in her apartment. Two other murders have already taken place, with an identical pattern. All the murdered men had been castrated and were having sex before being murdered. Evidence points to the same woman being involved in all three cases. When a gift from one of the murdered men to Toni is found among Ashley's things, she is identified as the killer and arrested. At this point, it is revealed that the three women are three selves of a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder. Ashley's father persuades an attorney friend to represent Ashley. The second half of the novel deals with the trial, complete with endless squabbling between opposing psychiatrists as to whether or not MPD is real. Finally when Ashley's advocate introduces Toni, the violent alter of Ashley, the court is convinced that Ashley is innocent. Ashley is committed to an insane asylum and in the course of therapy is introduced to her two ""alters"" and relives the horrific events that shattered her mind. She was sexually abused during her childhood, and this made her to develop a strong hatred towards men. In the asylum, Ashley is treated for MPD by doctor Gilbert. He is attracted to her and during her crisis, he too feels her pain and wants to comfort her. It is revealed that her father was the one who sexually abused her, and caused her to develop Dissociative Identity Disorder and also was the cause for the creation of the alter Toni,and becomes a thing of her mother's detest. And later in her life when they are living in Italy during her teenage she is once again assaulted by her piano teacher and that leads the creation of Alette. The structuring of both the alters is very interesting, Since the first alter represents her struggle and fear as a helpless child without sexual maturity, The alter (Toni) develops into a protective one and becomes murderous when encountered with similar conditions, While the second alter (Alette)represents her feeling of shame and pain of being breached, thus this alter develops into a source of console exhibiting warmth and motherly love and has good rapport with Ashley. However, Ashley's alter (Toni) was enraged when she saw the news that her father because the woman he is about to marry has a three-year-old daughter. She was afraid that the girl would suffer the fate she had. Doctor Gilbert drains anger out of Toni by showing the news everyday therefore making Toni softer every passing day. This softer side of Toni was only a front to show Doctor Gilbert she has finally accepted everything so she and Alette (another alter) could get out of the asylum to kill her father who is staying in Hamptons for Christmas.In the end, Doctor Gilbert releases her from the asylum as he believes she is cured. In the end Ashley is shown to be traveling in a train when Toni (her violent alter) suddenly shows up and go Hamptons, where her father was staying,to kill him. Toni on the last part of the novel:"
2588,The Phantom of Manhattan,thriller," The Phantom of Manhattan tells its story from the viewpoint of several characters. On her deathbed, Madame Giry confesses to a priest of when she took her daughter Meg, then six years old, to a fair. Madame Giry felt so sorry for a young boy with a disfigured face who had been ill-treated that she crept back to the fair at night and stole him. She took the boy to her apartment where she aided and cared for him until she had grown to love him like a son. The boy, Erik, recounted that he had been sold to the circus by his abusive alcoholic father shortly after his mother had run away with her lover. For reasons of security, Madame Giry took him to the Opera house where she worked; he hid out in the catacombs, stealing books and other appliances to educate himself. Over time, as a result of missing objects, the legend of the phantom was born. Erik had fallen in love with Christine Daaé, a young chorus girl who did not return his feelings. Driven by rage, Erik abducted Christine and accidentally killed the tenor Piangi when he was trying to silence him. A mob found their way to his home but all they found was Christine and the Vicomte De Chagny, Erik having already fled to Mme. Giry's apartment on a ship bound for New York. Mme. Giry, who had paid for Erik's passage, then addresses her lawyer Armand Dufour, telling him to go to New York and find Erik; Mme. Giry gave Armand a letter she had written to give to Erik; she said it contained important and vital information for him. Erik then narrates, recounting events after he reached New York. For a short while Erik lived in among the slums of New York in a shack. He met a man named Darius, whom he used to do his bidding. Together, they made their fortune by scamming and conning people for two years. Hearing of a man named Paul Boyton who was looking to open up a theme park in New York, Erik together with Darius arranged to help Boyton build the rides and attractions that were to be included in the park. Other businessmen heard of Boyton's success, and commissioned Erik and Darius to design similar rides for them. Business was good, and through astute investments in the stock market, Erik and Darius prospered. They owned a building called E.M Tower. However, Erik's latent love for opera was never quenched, and after being rejected a private box by the Metropolitan Opera, he and a budding opera house designer Oscar Hammerstein chose collaborate on a grandiose project &ndash; an all-new opera house to rival the Metropolitan Opera. Armand Dufour, who had been looking frantically for Erik in New York with little success, was on the point of returning to France when he met a columnist named Cholly Bloom in a coffee shop. Through a translator, Cholly learns of Armand's mission to find the mysterious Erik and quickly realises that this is an opportunity to get a good story, so he accompanies Armand to E.M Towers, where he demands to see Mr Erik Mulheim. However, he is fielded by Darius, who denies him audience, but firmly insisted that he would personally hand the letter to Mr Erik himself. While waiting, Cholly notices that subject of the painting on the wall had been replaced by a rather frightening figure in a mask; when Darius returns, the painting seemingly has gone back to normal. Cholly, confused and suspicious, leaves the tower, convinced that he has just had an encounter with the mysterious Phantom of Manhattan. Darius goes to the House of Hishash in a trance-like state to see his Master, Mammon. He tells Mammon of his concern for his friend Erik since he has received a letter from Paris. Erik, he said, had become increasingly obsessed with opera; Darius is concerned at the risks of investing in the grandiose opera project. In fact, since reading the contents in the letter, Erik sent his man to Paris with a great sum of money to pay for two of the world's leading opera singers &ndash; Dame Nellie Melba and Vicomtesse Christine De Chagny &ndash; to come to New York for the new opera house's opening. He also has begun to furiously work on writing his own opera. Mammon calms Darius' fears calming that he should not worry but, rather threateningly, concludes the chapter by telling Darius that whatever obstacles that stand in the way of his claiming his inheritance from Erik must be eliminated. We then are introduced to Gaylord Spriggs gossip column, which noted that the whole operatic world was in a frenzy over the arrival of Nellie Melba and Christine De Chagny. The column reveals the vast amounts of money that were spent to induce Dame Melba to cross the Atlantic to come to New York. It also gushes about how Christine De Chagny's claim that she was coming to New York not for the money but out of her sheer admiration of the quality and desire to be a part of the newest opera `The Angel of Shiloh`, whose composer is yet unknown. Meanwhile, accompanying his mother on the boat to New York with a tutor, Fr. Joseph Kilfoyle ('Father Joe'), 12-year-old Pierre De Chagny enquires and is told about Father Joe's experiences and the circumstances which drove him from his native Ireland. As Vicomtesse De Chagny and her son arrive, they are greeted by journalists and fans alike at the quayside. As they make their way through the crowd, onlooker Bernard Smith remarks on New York's great admiration for the young singer and about the welcoming ceremony in which both Christine and the Mayor gave speeches. However, in the midst of the excitement, Smith notices a man whose face is covered by a white mask staring directly at Christine De Chagny from the roof of the warehouse opposite the docks; no one else has noticed him. The figure disappears when he notices Bernard looking at him. He then notices that a man has thrown his cloak on the ground, for Christine and her entourage to walk on, to avoid getting their feet dirty as they enter their carriage. This man turns out to be one of Bernard's own employees &ndash; a young news reporter. Cholly's act of kindness earns him an exclusive interview with the world renowned opera singer in her suite. When he arrives, he is greeted by Christine De Chagny's young son Pierre, who is busy examining the contents of a present that has just arrived for him &ndash; a certain monkey music box. As the music box begins to play ""Masquerade"", Christine De Chagny screams and says: ""He must be here!"" Cholly explains to Christine that the music box comes from Steeplechase amusement park. Christine, clearly agitated, demands to know where the park is, and then asks Cholly to accompany herself and Pierre to the park. Cholly, overjoyed with the chance of getting an exclusive from the opera singer, happily accepts. Meanwhile, Erik is still in shock at seeing Christine again. He realises that his love for her will be forever unrequited, but the letter he received gave him reason to hope: Mme. Giry, his former protector, wrote that Christine has a son and that Erik is his biological father; the young Vicomte De Chagny, Christine's future husband, was unable to have children as a result of an unfortunate set of events. Erik becomes determined to meet Christine the following day, knowing that the music box he sent will have already alerted her to the fact that he is residing in New York. Later that evening, Christine De Chagny's maid, Meg Giry, recalls how agitated her mistress was after hearing the sound of the music box. She later recalls how many years ago she had seen first hand Christine's encounter with the mysterious Phantom. She attempts to comfort Christine. The following day, Taffy Jones, master at Steeple Chase fun-fair, was catering to Christine De Chagny when the controls the hall of mirrors all began to malfunction almost as if they had been reprogrammed. The mirrors swung in a different direction to reveal a person whom Jones could not see, but whom Christine clearly recognised. Jones overhears the pair's conversation in which the stranger says he still loved Christine, and tries to convince her to go with him; she refuses. After a brief pause, he asks Christine to leave him his son. Christine, shocked by his knowledge of Pierre, promised to tell Pierre the truth of his parentage in five years time, and to give her consent for Pierre to go with him should Pierre desire. The stranger does not like this arrangement and vows silently, but within earshot of Taffy, to have the boy one way or another. At the same time Taffy notices another pale faced figure, who apparently has heard the whole conversation, run out of the hall of mirrors. Pierre's tutor, Joseph Kilfoyle, is then shown having an encounter with God in the cathedral. God tells Joseph of Erik's past and that he is not a bad person but a tormented soul who can still be saved. As for his accomplice, Darius, it is too late for him and he has sold his soul to a man made God (Mammon). The new opera opens, and Christine is critically acclaimed by Gaylord's Sprigg. During the last act of the show, the character of the lead tenor is replaced by an unknown, severely disfigured, singer &ndash; one whose voice matches the lead tenor in strength and clarity. After the show, the mysterious understudy is still nowhere to be found. Then, Cholly sees him whisper something to Pierre (who also is revealed to be an amazing singer, he is featured in the opera as well) and then pass a note to Christine. The final section of the book is narrated some years later by Cholly, a lecturer at university. He tells his class of the importance of being a reporter and reveals the one event he never printed that occurred on the last day of Christine De Chagny's visit. The Vicomte De Chagny had arrived some time after his wife, and he and Cholly had become friends. While awaiting Christine at breakfast, Cholly lets it slip that she is meeting someone called Erik in the park. Shocked by this news, the Vicompte rushes out; Cholly follows. He notices something else &ndash; a slip of paper he discovered on which Darius had written, indicating that Darius intends to kill Pierre, believing him to be the one obstacle between him and his inheritance. Fearing for Pierre's life, Cholly rushes to the park also to warn Christine. When he arrives he hides behind the bushes in time to see the mysterious Phantom and Christine meet, while Darius prepares his gun. As the Vicomte and father Joe arrive, Pierre rushes out of the carriage and embraces his mother. At that moment, Darius shoots, the bullet hits Christine and fatally injures her. The Phantom shoots and kills Darius in return. As Christine lay dying, she confesses the truth to Pierre. The Phantom is heartbroken. The Vicomte De Chagny picks up Christine's body and tells Pierre he must make a choice. Pierre removes the phantom's mask and declares that he will stay with him. The Vicomte goes back to France to bury his wife and love. The epilogue states that Raoul never married again. Pierre and the Phantom stayed in New York and when war broke out they changed their family name and alerted people to the causes of deformity and injury due to the war. The Phantom never wore the mask again. The New York Opera eventually closed down but Hammerstein's grandson wrote many famous musicals in the 1950s with Richard Rodgers. Father Joe remained in the church and taught under privileged children."
2589,Code to Zero,thriller," In America, 1958 a man wakes up in a men's room with no recollection of his past. His clothing, associates and surroundings suggest to him that he is an alcoholic derelict, however his behaviour, morals and instinct lead him to investigate and research his past. He establishes (by the simple method of going into a library and pulling books off shelves until he finds one that he understands,) that he is in fact Dr Lucas - a rocket scientist, and well known in his field. He further establishes that he is directly responsible for the design of a rocket due to be launched by America in an attempt to match the Soviet Sputnik, and bolster America's entry into what would become the Space Race. Several people from his past both help and hinder his progress, and the implication is made that he himself was a Soviet spy, and had his memory erased instead of being killed - although this theory is made suspect when his best friend reveals that he was once a soviet spy and subsequently turned (but not entirely forgiven) by Lucas. The actual spies (and saboteur) are revealed to be both his wife and another close friend, who plan on using the rocket's self-destruct mechanism to destroy the rocket as it is launched, either removing America from the Space Race, or putting their progress back so far that the Soviets will be hard to catch. The plot is foiled with seconds to spare, and his wife apparently commits suicide rather than being caught by driving her car into the sea. The second saboteur is shot and killed in a gun battle prior to Lucas' wife's suicide."
2590,Icon,thriller," The story, set between July 1999 and January 2000, revolves around Russian presidential candidate Igor Komarov, head of the right-wing Union of Patriotic Forces (UPF). A highly popular and charismatic politician, victory is all but guaranteed for Komarov and the UPF in the national elections on January 16, 2000. However, a secret document, later known as the ""Black Manifesto"", is stolen from his secretary's empty office at UPF headquarters by Leonid Zaitsev, an elderly janitor and ex-soldier who happens to skim through the document while cleaning. The document contains extremely sensitive information regarding Komarov's future policies as president, such as the restoration of slave camps, creation of a one-party state, destruction of political opponents, invasion of the former Soviet republics, and genocide of Russia's ethnic and religious minorities. Komarov's team capture and kill Zaitsev, but not before he gives the document to the British, who later translates and shows it to influential Western leaders. Sir Nigel Irvine, former head of the SIS, comes up with a plan to thwart Komarov's victory. Searching for a suitable man to carry out this plan, former CIA Deputy Director of Operations Carey Jordan recommends Jason Monk, a former recruiter and runner of Soviet agents for the CIA. In parts of the novel, there are flashbacks to earlier years, detailing Monk's background, and recruitment of several Soviets as U.S. agents. These include government figures and a physicist. However, CIA mole Aldrich Ames soon betrays these agents, along with all other CIA agents in the Soviet Union. Nearly all are rounded up by the Soviets, and are either executed or sentenced to hard labour after lengthy interrogation and torture by the ruthless Anatoli Grishin. Colonel Nikolai Ilyich Turkin, the first Soviet to be recruited by Monk, develops a close friendship with him after Monk saves his son from dying of a tropical disease. He is, however, the last CIA agent caught by the Soviets, with Grishin supervising the capture in Berlin as Monk watches close by after their last meeting. Turkin is interrogated and sent to a labour camp. There, dying of typhoid, he pens a letter to Monk detailing his interrogation and torture at the camps, and bids a final farewell. Monk, filled with anger and grief, attacks a bureaucrat known to have aided Ames, and this leads to his expulsion from the CIA. In 1999, he leads a quiet life in the Turks and Caicos Islands, taking tourists on fishing trips. Irvine visits him and talks about the plan against Komarov; Monk refuses, having sworn never to return to Russia, but agrees when he is given the chance to take revenge on Grishin, who is working as Komarov's security chief. He returns to Russia and rounds up a ring of influential figures to his cause by showing them the ""Black Manifesto"", and, with the aid of the Chechen mafia, whose leader owes Monk his life, he begins a series of schemes aimed at derailing Igor Komarov's presidential campaign."
2591,The Way to Dusty Death,thriller," The protagonist, Johnny Harlow, a world champion Formula 1 racing driver, who appears to have become an alcoholic after a devastating wreck kills his best friend and fellow driver, along with maiming his girlfriend. He realizes after being involved in yet another crash on the circuit that there have been too many accidents lately, and decides to investigate, but soon finds out that a few people will do anything to prevent him from discovering the truth."
2592,Gene,thriller," In dealing with genetic memory, Pavlou has drawn on both the nature of lineage, and the nature of self. Several characters all stem from the same source, and so as their memories become unlocked during the course of the novel, they each identify with being the same person at a distant point in history. The question of identity then becomes fundamental to the plot. If each character shares the same memories are they a reincarnation of that original person, or merely an echo? The novel is further complicated in that it is told backwards, using a Police procedural as the structure of the novel, memories are unlocked in the form of flashbacks, each flashback delving further and further back in time over the course of 3000 years. Told in alternating first person and third person, the novel is divided into a prologue and seven ""books"", the seven trials of Cyclades. The opening page begins with the first 27 lines of the Human Genome. Thereafter the prologue lays out the death of Cyclades during the Trojan War, and makes it clear that his death is merely the beginning of the journey. Told in first person, Cyclades, a Greek warrior, is mortally wounded. A Sybil forces him to have sex to continue his line, whereupon he dies for the first time in the book. Book One, shifts to third person and jumps to the year 2004. In New York City Detective James North has been called to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to deal with a mentally unstable man who has run amok amid the exhibits."
2593,The Rainbird Pattern,thriller," Elderly spinster Julia Rainbird, under sessions by medium Blanche Tyler, or ""Madame Blanche"", promises her a large sum of money to locate her illegitimate nephew Edward Shoebridge. Blanche and her boyfriend, George Lumley, begin making inquiries around their area about the Shoebridges, despite no one knowing where Edward is, or if he is alive. Meanwhile, Edward Shoebridge, alive and under the pseudonym of ""the Trader"", has been organising small kidnappings around the area, but is planning a larger score, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he will hold for a large ransom."
2594,Jack's Return Home,thriller," Jack's Return Home tells the story of an amoral, pitiless London mob enforcer named Jack Carter who returns to his home town Scunthorpe to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, with whom he had not spoken in many years. Jack's presence in the town causes unease among the local crime families, who fear that his snooping will interfere with their underworld operations. Everything from simple suggestion to brute force is employed to try to get Jack to leave, but he doggedly refuses, bullying his way through numerous attempts on his life to arrive at the truth, leading to a violent and ambiguous conclusion."
2595,A Simple Plan,thriller," Three men find an airplane crashed in a forest. The pilot is dead and the cockpit contains a gym bag with $4.4 million in one-hundred-dollar notes. They decide to keep the money, dividing it equally, but their plans go wrong when others come close to discovering their secret, resulting in multiple murders."
2596,Antispin,thriller," Eight-hundred Chinese soldiers are found dead on the Chinese-Pakistan border. No wounds, no clues, no signs of battle. An American doctor working in Venezuela discovers an entire village dead without apparent cause. Concerned about a new weapon system of mass destruction, the American Secretary of State turns to Nobel Laureate physicist, Noah Schwartz. Autopsies are forwarded to the Centers for Disease Control and then to Schwartz. Tapping his world-renowned contacts, Schwartz finds a theory that was to be released at a famous scientific conference but then inexplicably withdrawn. One of the two referees is dead while the other directs a secret research laboratory in Algeria. Other powers learn of the laboratory and move against it. As China and Pakistan edge towards war, Noah Schwartz races to grasp the secret technology and avert nuclear disaster."
2597,CHERUB: Maximum Security,thriller," James is joined on a new mission by Dave Moss and his sister Lauren Adams. The mission focuses on Jane Oxford, an international arms dealer who has been untraceable for as long as she has been on the CIA's most wanted list. But then they come across a breakthrough: Jane's 14-year-old son Curtis Oxford has been jailed for murdering three innocent people. He is being held at Arizona Maximum Security Prison. The Americans ask a favour from CHERUB, an organisation with one essential advantage: even experienced criminals do not expect kids to be spying on them. The plan is for James and Dave to be sent into the prison undercover, then to bust Curtis out, hoping that Curtis will lead them to his mother. However, after a prison fight Dave is injured and taken to hospital, leaving James alone behind bars. Soon James and Curtis escape with the help of Lauren. Later, they meet up with Jane Oxford. Jane wants James dead, so she sends her men to execute him but he beats them. Soon, the FBI arrive to arrest Jane. Lauren gets her navy shirt for her performance."
2598,The Dragon in the Sea,thriller," Set in a near-future earth, the West and the East have been at war for more than a decade, and resources are running thin. The West is stealing oil from the East with specialized nuclear submarines (""subtugs"") that sneak into the underwater oil fields of the East to secretly pump out the oil and bring it back. Each manned by a crew of four, these submarines undertake the most hazardous, stressful mission conceivable, and of late, the missions have been failing, with the last twenty submarines simply disappearing. The East has been very successful in planting sleepers in the West's military and command structures, and the suspicion is that sleepers are sabotaging the subs or revealing their positions once at sea. John Ramsey, a young psychologist from the Bureau of Psychology (BuPsych), is trained as an electronics operator and sent on the next mission, replacing the previous officer who went insane. His secret mission is to find the sleeper, or figure out why the crews are going insane."
2599,Capital Crimes,thriller," In Capital Crimes, Will Lee finds himself in the middle of a tangled web of intrigue and danger, politics and power. Now at the pinnacle of his career, serving as president of the United States, Lee is faced with a most unusual task-that of marshaling federal law enforcement agencies to catch an assassin who is picking off some of the nation's high-level politicos. When a prominent conservative politician with a shady reputation is expertly killed at his lakeside cabin, authorities can come up with no suspects and even less hard evidence. But then, within days, two other, seemingly isolated deaths-achieved by very different means-are feared linked to the same ruthless murderer. With the help of his CIA director wife, Kate Rule Lee, Will trails the most clever and professional of killers before he can strike again. From a quiet D.C. suburb to the corridors of power to a deserted island hideaway, Will, Kate, and maverick FBI agent Robert Kinney track their man and set a trap with extreme caution and care-and await the most dangerous kind of quarry, a killer with a cause to die for."
2600,Olivia Joules and The Overactive Imagination,thriller," The book delves into the world of espionage as it follows the adventures of freelance journalist-turned spy, Olivia Joules. While covering a face cream launch in Miami, Olivia meets the alluring international playboy, Pierre Feramo. Suspicious that he is an international terrorist, she follows him to Los Angeles, Honduras, and the Sudan, while he is under the impression that she is falling in love with him."
2601,Darkhouse,thriller," The novel kicks off in New York City with the abduction of a wealthy couple's young daughter. The girl's mother Elise Gray is being tailed by Detective Joe Lucchesi, his partner Danny Markey and two FBI agents. The kidnapper Donnie Riggs calls Elise and directs her to a park. He lets the girl, Hayley, out of his car and she runs to her mother. Elise discovers that Hayley is strapped with explosives as she embraces her, but she is too late as Riggs presses the detonator, killing them both. Joe pursues the kidnapper and guns him down. Two days later, in a Nevada prison, inmate Duke Rawlins is distraught to learn of the death of Donnie, his childhood friend. One year passes and Joe Lucchesi has relocated to Ireland with his interior designer wife Anna and sixteen-year-old son Shaun. Joe has taken temporary retirement from the force, Anna is renovating an old lighthouse and Shaun is dating a local girl called Katie Lawson. At first it seems that their family life is idyllic but Anna has a dark secret. She had a secret affair with local drunk John Miller, a man now embittered at his wife having moved to Australia with his children. Joe's turbulent relationship with his father, Giulio, is highlighted as he travels over to the States to attend his second marriage. Giulio clashes with Joe over his career choice and moving his family to Ireland. To make matters worse, Katie disappears from the area leaving Shaun deeply upset. Meanwhile, in a parallel subplot, Duke Rawlins has been travelling around Ireland and has reached Mountbatton. An investigation is launched in Mountbatton into Katie's mysterious disappearance. Her devastated mother Martha insists that her daughter was a happy-go-lucky teenager with many friends and a caring boyfriend; she had no reason to go missing. Shaun comes under suspicion as he was the last person to see her; Joe himself cannot help but think that his son is hiding something and even looks for some sort of clues in his bedroom. Shaun becomes indignant at his father taking on the role of investigator and suspecting him of withholding information. Joe finds himself seeing red herrings everywhere in the community. He questions Shaun's friend Robert Harrington about a scratch on his hand, much to Shaun's annoyance. He also sees John Miller as a possible suspect. Anna in the meantime has to deal with Joe asking her awkward questions about her involvement with Miller. The locals conduct a search of the surrounding area to no avail. Local Sergeant Frank Deegan, hotshot D.I. Myles O' Connor and fiery garda Richie Bates question Mae Miller, the elderly mother of John Miller and mentally challenged school caretaker Petey Grant amongst others but come no closer to the truth. Joe does his own investigating, retracing routes that Katie may have taken and asks questions, however, his theories are dismissed by Richie who tells him to stay out of the case. After a number of weeks, Katie's decomposing body is discovered in the forest near Shore's Rock, the lighthouse where the Lucchesis live. The post mortem results reveal that Katie had been strangled and beaten with a blunt instrument. With the community baffled by the brutal murder of such a popular teenager, the Lucchesi family begin to fall apart. Shaun is inconsolable over his girlfriend's death and Anna becomes increasingly paranoid about what Joe knows. She confesses to him that she had been seeing John Miller while they were engaged which makes Joe furious. Meanwhile, the authorities are told to pay particular attention to Shaun and also to Joe who had been seen removing evidence from the murder scene. The night after Katie's funeral, one of the locals has an altercation with Duke Rawlins outside the bar and finds a hawk gold pin after Duke flees. He shows it to a shocked Joe who recognises it as being the same pin that Donnie Riggs had in his hand when he shot him. Flashbacks to Donnie and Duke's childhood in Texas run concurrent to the main murder plot. They both grow up in Stinger's Creek and are inseparable. Duke is very close to his kindly Uncle Bill but has to deal with a lot of hardship in his life in the form of a drug addicted, promiscuous mother and the unwanted attentions of a paedophile. Donnie also has domestic strife as his father is a negligent alcoholic, while Duke's negative surroundings are moulding him into a deeply disturbed boy with a penchant for violence. At the age of fifteen the two boys make a chilling blood pact to remain loyal to one another until the end, a precursor to their later dastardly actions. With Joe now convinced that Duke Rawlins is after him with revenge on his mind, he once again clashes with Richie Bates when he takes Petey Grant in for questioning over the murder. However, Petey reveals that he met Katie on the night of her death and that she had had a fight with Shaun, something which Shaun had earlier disputed. When he is interrogated by Richie and Frank Deegan he admits that a failed attempt at sexual intercourse had caused Katie to become upset and run away from him. Frank is shocked to discover, in the meantime, that his phone number was the last that Katie had dialed on the fateful night. While researching Duke Rawlins, Joe discovers that Ogden Parnum, a former Police Chief from Stinger's Creek has committed suicide. Joe is intrigued to find that he was head of the unsolved Crosscut Killer investigation, an infamous serial killer who raped and murdered nine young women in Texas. Across the Atlantic, Danny Markey questions the cellmate of Duke Rawlins, who reveals that Donnie was getting the ransom money for Duke upon his release from jail. Back in Mountbatton, Joe is now convinced that Duke and Donnie are connected to the Crosscut Killer mystery and is liaising with American Detective Victor Nicotero on the theory. Anna is horrified as she discovers that Joe is planning on being reinstated with the force, while Joe clashes with his father again as he has bought Shaun a ticket to New York to stay with him. Anna is subsequently kidnapped by Duke when he poses as a replacement gardener for a photoshoot she is doing. Joe saves a desperate Shaun from a drunken suicide attempt, only to then discover that Anna is missing... Additional flashback sequences to Texas, show how Duke and Donnie embarked upon their sadistic rampage of rape and murder as they callously slayed a succession of innocent young women, proving that they were behind the Crosscut killings. State pathologist Lara McClatchie contacts Frank Deegan telling him that were no similarities in the deaths of the Crosscut victims to Katie's murder but the recent murder of a young Limerick woman bear the same hallmarks. Frank now realises that Joe's theory about Duke Rawlins being in Ireland is true. Still in under the belief that Anna has walked out on him and Shaun, Joe receives a call from Duke who is holding Anna in a remote cottage. He threatens to kill her unless Joe complies with his wishes. He discovers that Duke has a missing Tipperary woman, Siobhan Fallon, in his clutches too. As Duke taunts him on the phone about Anna, Joe turns the tables on the kidnapper by telling Duke about how his wife, Sammi, has been unfaithful to him. He informs Duke that she had been having an affair with Donnie while he was in prison and that she has gone to the police in Stinger's Creek confessing that her husband is the Crosscut Killer. The ransom money hadn't been for Duke, it was for Donnie and Sammi to have a fresh start with. While Joe is on the phone to Duke, Shaun overhears and is furious that Joe won't go to the Gardaí. Meanwhile, in Texas, Victor Nicotero visits Ogden Parnum's widow on the pretense of investigating her husband's suicide. She tells Victor that Marcy Winbaum, a DA, who worked with Ogden some years previously came to visit him shortly before his death. Parnum's widow was suspicious over a heated conversation that Marcy had with her husband. It is revealed in a flashback to 1992, that Marcy had uncovered evidence linking Duke Rawlins to the Crosscut murders. Ogden questions Duke, who blackmails his interrogator as he was the paedophile who abused him as a child. Ogden provided Duke with an alibi, which allowed him to get away with his heinous crimes. Duke brutally murders Siobhan in front of captive Anna who then tries to escape. Joe discovers Siobhan's body before finding a badly wounded Anna, who Duke had fired an arrow at. Duke then grabs Shaun and holds him over the edge of the lighthouse balcony in a precarious stand-off with Joe. With both Shaun and Anna's lives in jeopardy, Joe is issued with an ultimatum, call 999 for medical assistance for Anna or Shaun plummets to his death. Joe chooses to save Shaun and Duke escapes as an ambulance arrives at the lighthouse for Anna. Richie and Joe pursue Duke but lose him. In a fresh twist, a drug dealer reveals that Richie had murdered Katie as she had witnessed him tipping off the criminal. Richie is arrested for Katie's murder while Duke escapes the country. In the novel's epilogue, Joe and Shaun are back in New York with Giulio with a traumatised Anna recuperating in her native Paris. It seems that the Lucchesis' marriage has broken down until Shaun receives a call from Anna saying that she is coming home to them."
2602,Pale Horse Coming,thriller," Sam Vincent, an attorney in is hired by Davis Trugood, a Chicago lawyer to verify the death of the Trugood's client's manservant in Thebes, Mississippi, a desolate shantytown cut off from civilization and surrounded by swampland and seemingly impenetrable piney woods. While in Thebes, Sam is roughly arrested for challenging the legality and authority of Thebes' law enforcement and is imprisoned by the local Sheriff. Earl Swagger travels to Thebes with the intent of rescuing Sam after he fails to hear from his friend for several weeks. He succeeds in securing Sam's freedom but is himself captured and incarcerated as the only white man among the inmates of the nearby Thebes penitentiary, a former timber plantation and current forced labor camp for negro convicts and run by ruthless and inhumane white supremacists. The mysterious and unnamed warden instructs his jailers to torture Earl, suspecting him to be a federal investigator interested in the secret workings of the camp. The other inmates apply their acquired hatred of white men to Earl, who must defend himself not only from the guards, but also from his fellow prisoners. Earl escapes by faking his death with the help of an old prison trusty, promising to return and destroy the prison and the evil it represents. He assembles a group of six legendary gunmen (who are based on Elmer Keith, Jack O'Connor, Audie Murphy, Charles Askins, Bill Jordan, and Ed McGivern) with the promise of real action for a just cause and readies them for an assault on Thebes. (Counting Swagger, that brings the number of gunmen to seven, a probable allusion to both The Magnificent Seven - a classic Western film - and Aeschylus' play Seven Against Thebes.) While Earl makes his plans, the inmates at Thebes start to pass along the mysterious phrase, ""Pale Horse Coming."" Seeking to quell the inmates' stirrings and avoid a potential rebellion, the prison's tyrannical captain of the guards systematically tortures the prisoners in an effort to learn the origins of the phrase. Sam Vincent, ever reluctant to resort to force to settle any matter, including the issue of Thebes, continues to investigate the mysteries surrounding the prison and makes some horrifying discoveries. After narrowly escaping a threat against his and his family's lives, Sam contacts Earl and finally gives Earl his blessing to ""fire for effect."" It is said that Vincent is never seen without a tie. As the assault on Thebes begins, Davis Trugood, having arrived undetected in Thebes, enters the old plantation house and confronts the warden. The reader learns that Davis Trugood is the warden's estranged half-brother and that warden hates Davis for being their father's son by a black woman. Earl and his team succeed in destroying the prison, vowing to never again mention Thebes or their dealings there to each other or anyone else. They go their separate ways and Earl returns home to Arkansas and his wife and son. The fictional events of this novel allude to the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. However the copyright page of the book bears the boilerplate disclaimer that all events are fictional."
2603,The Golden Rendezvous,thriller," Aboard the cargo vessel converted into a luxury cruise ship SS Campari somewhere in the Caribbean, all is not well. For Johnny Carter, the Chief Officer, the voyage has already begun badly; but it's only when the Campari sails that evening, after a succession of delays attributable to sabotage that he realizes something is seriously wrong. A member of the crew is suddenly missing and the unsuccessful stem-to-stern search only increases tension. Then violence erupts and suddenly the whole ship is endangered by a master criminal whose intention is not a simple hijacking and ransoming of the wealthy hostages on board. Exactly what his goal is forms part of the mystery"
2604,Black Blade,thriller," In New York City, a series of murders begin. In Washington, a plot conceived at the highest levels of American government is at work to bring the nation of Japan to its knees. In Tokyo, a power struggle is nearing its final stages for control of the Black Blade Society, an ostensibly political cabal whose motives may encompass far more than politicis."
2605,Blue City,thriller," Twenty-two year old Johnny Weather has returned from the army, having served in the European Theater in the Second World War, only to find his estranged father long dead. His father was a leading factor in the corruption of the town and an important person, but the police seem more than happy to let his murder remain 'unsolved', as does everyone Johnny encounters. As he tries to dig up the murderer, he fences with a motley list of strange characters and hustlers, everyone from the astonishingly cruel man who took over his father's night club, to his father's ex-wife, who's more than willing to seduce Johnny to keep him off the subject of his father. Although the book never names the state in which the fictional town is located, many references are made to the city being located in the Mid-West, apparently within an easy drive to Chicago. The entire book is set over a very short period of time, creating a frantic pace to the novel."
2606,The Bourne Dominion,thriller," :For a more detailed background of the main character, see Jason Bourne. Jason Bourne is searching for an elusive cadre of terrorists planning to destroy America's most strategic natural resources-and needs the help of his longtime friend, General Boris Karpov. Karpov, the newly appointed head of Russia's most feared spy agency, FSB-2, is one of the most determined, honorable, and justice-hungry men that Bourne knows. But Karpov has made a deal with the devil. In order to remain the head of FSB-2, he must hunt down and kill Bourne. Now, these two trusted friends are on a deadly collision course. From the Colombian highlands to Munich, Cadiz, and Damascus, the clock is counting down to a disaster that will cripple America's economic and military future. Only Bourne and Karpov have a chance to avert the catastrophe-but if they destroy each other first, that chance will be gone forever."
2607,Lies of Silence,thriller," The plot revolves around the protagonist, Michael Dillon, and his wife, Moira Dillon, who are held hostage in their house by terrorists that are members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The men force Dillon, an apolitical hotel manager, to drive his bomb-laden car to the hotel he manages in order to kill a leading Protestant reverend, members of the Orange Order, and militant Protestants, all of whom are attending the same function. However, various aspects of female psychology are also present throughout the novel, including Dillon's extramarital affair with Canadian writer Andrea and Moira's mental breakdown following the revelation of his infidelity."
2608,See Jane Run,thriller," The book centers on Jane Whittaker, who finds herself at a grocery store in downtown Boston with no recollection of her name, her physical features, her personality, or any of the details of her life, albeit having recollection of facts such as the formula for a hypotenuse. She is further terrified to see that she is wearing a blood-stained blue dress, which contains in one of its pockets $10,000. Frightened out of her mind, she heads to a local police station, where she is later reunited with a handsome doctor claiming to be her husband. Mr. Whittaker takes Jane back to their suburban home to recover. Instead of finding rest, however, Jane begins to uncover the horrific past that her mind had forgotten. Along with Dr. Whittaker, a caretaker named Paula Marinelli is also taking care of her."
2609,Nightrise,thriller," This story begins with two men, Colton Bane and Kyle Hovey, who work for an evil corporation called Nightrise, waiting outside a theatre in Reno, Nevada. They are waiting to kidnap identical twin brothers Jamie and Scott Tyler, who are part of a magic show in the theatre. Their foster parent, Don White, sells the twins off to them, but Jamie and Scott escape and are pursued. Scott is captured but Jamie is rescued by a woman. He awakens at the woman's house, who introduces herself as Alicia and tells that her son, Daniel, was kidnapped by the same corporation after exhibiting clairvoyant powers. She takes Jamie to his foster parents' house only to realize their murders, and escape only when Jamie uses his telepathic powers. Alicia and Jamie go to Los Angeles where he reveals his backstory. He then tells her of his previous foster parents and the weird and inexplicable ""accidents"" associated with them. He tells her about the strange tattoo he has and that he thinks he is an Indian. After these incidents, he and Scott refused to read or control anyone's minds but each other's. They find a lead to one of the men that kidnapped Scott, Colton Banes, and Alicia persuades Jamie to read his mind to find out where Scott is. Jamie manages to find out where Scott is being held: Silent Creek, a juvenile Centre, where he is being tortured in order to be on Nightrise's side. Alicia decides to seek help from her boss, John Trelawny, who is running for presidency, and manages to convince him about Jamie's powers and to help him get into Silent Creek. Trelawny affirms Jamie's powers and agrees to help him. Jamie is given a false identity and crime and is put into the juvenile Centre to find his brother is there in solitary confinement and Alicia's son Daniel is there too. One night, when he demands that a supervisor named Max Koring take him to his brother, he realizes that his powers do not work in the prison, because of some magnetic field that neutralizes special powers. Koring puts him in solitary confinement for his rudeness and secretly calls Banes to tell him he has found a Gatekeeper. Jamie does not realize that the second gate was opened. In Peru, Richard and Professor Chambers find Pedro by the helicopter. Pedro tells them that Matt went by himself to stop the gate from opening. Thinking Matt is dead, Richard runs until he finds Matt. Matt ""looks like all the life was sucked out of him"" and is in a coma. After seeing he has a pulse, Richard runs back to bring get help for Matt. Feather had examined him earlier and knew about his mysterious tattoo. He explains to Jamie that the twins are two of the Five, but Scott has already left Silent Creek. They work out a convincing plan to save Daniel and escape, whilst at the same time Colton Banes is on their way to Silent Creek. A fight goes on between Feather's tribe and Banes' men, resulting in Jamie being shot in the shoulder and Banes killed by an arrow. Feather manages to break out with Daniel and Jamie, but Jamie falls unconscious when he is hit by a bullet, and a shaman is called on to bring him back. During this however, Jamie is transported back in time to the height of the war between humanity and the Old Ones ten thousand years ago in England. It becomes clear that the original Gatekeepers are exactly the same as the Gatekeepers in the present, just with different names (except for Matt, who says ""I prefer to use my name from your world""). Matt is obviously the leader, and most knowledgeable of the Gatekeepers. He tells Jamie that he sent Sapling to his death on purpose, as the King of the Old Ones would then think he had won, however, should that occur, his counterpart from the future/past would take his place, hence why Jamie was there. Jamie then participates in the battle against the Old Ones, in which the Old Ones are defeated and banished, having mistakenly thought that only four of the Five could come together and letting their guard down. At the place where the Five congregate, a gate is built at the location the Old Ones were banished to, and would be called Raven's Gate by future generations. Jamie sees an eagle which Matt explains is there to take him back. Jamie's body wakes up in the present and with Feather and Daniel travels back to Reno to reunite Daniel with Alicia, parting ways with Feather afterwards. When he is asleep that night, he is spoken to again by a grey man in the dream world of the Gatekeepers, to kill him.' He finally realized what it means, originally mistaking that Scott was telling him that he was the one going to be killed, but he realizes that Scott is the person going to kill John Trelawny. Throughout the book, Nightrise has always wanted the other candidate, Charles Baker, to become president, who will support the return of the Old Ones. However, when Trelawny became too popular, assassination seemed the only option. It becomes apparent that this will take place during his birthday parade in his home town of Auburn. Alicia, Danny and Jamie hurry to Auburn to stop the assassination. Jamie sees Scott with Susan Mortlake, a leader of Nightrise, in the crowd, and he tries to send a telepathic message to him, but it fails. Desperate, Jamie commands Warren Cornfeld, Trelawny's bodyguard and would-be assassin (being controlled by Scott), to aim the gun at Susan Mortlake. Cornfield shoots and kills Mortlake, and in chaos Jamie takes Scott and meets up with Alicia and Danny. They meet Natalie Johnson, a member of the Nexus and a friend of Trelawny, who gives them her car to escape. Policemen immediately come after them and the twins bid farewell to Alicia and Danny. Jamie and Scott use a hidden doorway in a cave at Lake Tahoe, and emerge in Cuzco, Peru at the Santo Domingo church. The twins find their way to the Nazca desert and meet with Matt and Pedro, the first and second Gatekeepers. Meanwhile, Scarlett Adams takes an airplane to Hong Kong to meet her father, who works for Nightrise. As Scarlett is about to go she finds out that John Trelawny has lost the election and that it is suspected that Nightrise has rigged the ballots."
2610,Hold Tight,thriller," The story is introduced with the characters Marianne, Nash and Pietra. Pietra tricks Marianne by drugging her which leads to Nash brutally beating Marianne to death, his last words to her being: ""Tell Cassandra I love her."" They remove her clothes then dress her to look like a prostitute and toss her body in a dumpster (skip). The action switches to Tia and Mike Baye who never imagined they'd become spying, overprotective parent. But their sixteen-year-old son, Adam Baye has been unusually distant and aloof lately, and after the recent suicide of his classmate and closed friend, Spencer Hill, who taking vodka and tablets on his school's roof in the night to death, they can't help but worry. They install a spy program on Adam's computer and within days they are jolted by a strange message to their son from a correspondent known only as CeeJay8115: ""Just stay quiet and all safe."" The detective investigating Marianne's murder, Loren Muse, realizes that Marianne is not a prostitute and that someone has gone to great lengths to try to fool the authorities. However, the face of Marianne has been so badly mutilated it is impossible for anyone to identify her. Susan and Dante Loriman meet with their son's (Lucas) doctor (Mike Baye) only to be told Lucas needs a kidney transplant urgently. Neither parent is a suitable match and with some investigating, Mike finds out that Dante is not the biological father to Lucas. Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for her son, Betsy Hill is struck by one photo in particular that appears to have been taken on the night of Spencer's death and that he wasn't alone. She thinks it's Adam Baye standing just outside the camera's range. She confronts him and asks about the photo, but he runs away. The daughter of Marianne and Guy, Yasmin is being bullied at school because her teacher (Joe Lewiston) commented on her facial hair in front of the class. Yasmin shows her only friend Jill Baye (Mike and Tia's daughter) her father's (Guy) gun, which is already loaded and hidden in a drawer in their house. She tells Jill how she dreams of getting revenge on Mr Lewiston. Worried about the safety of their son, Mike tells Adam he must attend a hockey game with Mike's friend Mo. This is a diversion to try to avoid the party referred to in an email Mike and Tia found on their son's computer a few days earlier, the party claims that there will be alcohol and drugs served. Adam is not around when his father comes to pick him up to attend the hockey game, and Mo tells Mike how to use the GPS on Adam's phone to track him. Mike ends up following him into a very bad part of the Bronx. He starts to chase after what looks to be one of Adam's friends, but is then confronted and severely beaten by an unknown group. He winds up in hospital and still hasn't found his son. Reba Cordova is Nash's next victim, and she is likewise beaten to death, for reasons still unknown to the reader. Before killing her he also told her the same thing Nash told Marianne: ""Tell Cassandra I love her."" We find out Cassandra died a few years ago due to cancer, and was deeply loved by Nash. Cassandra is the sister of Joe Lewiston, and had another brother named Curtis, who was murdered in an assumed robbery. Mike's professional partner, Ilene Goldfarb, confronts Susan to find the real father of Lucas, as he could be a potential kidney donor. Susan tells her that she was raped, and that it was impossible for her to contact him to ask if he could be tested as a potential donor. Later the readers find out that the reason that her rapist cannot be contacted is because Susan had killed her attacker. She then confides that the murder was set up to make officials think the cause of the murder was most likely a robbery, this leads the reader to believe that Curtis Lewiston is the rapist. The events start to come together by the end of the book as the connections of the murders, Adam's disappearance, Spencer's apparent suicide, and the need for a good donor for Susan's son are explained, and the origin of all of the mayhem is revealed."
2611,Watchman,thriller," The book tells the story of Miles Flint, a surveillance officer who works for MI5. After two high profile operations involving Flint are compromised with deadly consequences, he is sent to Belfast to witness what he believes is going to be the arrest of some Provisional Irish Republican Army men. However, after accompanying the security forces on their mission, he discovers that what has actually been planned is the assassination of the Irishmen - and with Flint having come along for the ride, he suddenly realises that his own life is at risk. As the killings are about to be carried out, Flint stages a daring escape with the aid of one of the Irishmen, Will Collins. Then, on the run, and playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with his own side, Flint and Collins begin to piece together a lethal conspiracy which they ultimately discover goes right to the very core of the British Government."
2612,The Rules of Survival,thriller," The book starts out with an introduction when Matthew Walsh is writing a letter to his younger sister Emmy to tell her the story of their mother's vicious abuse. The True story sister, Callie. Callie is eleven, Matthew is thirteen, and Emmy is a toddler. Callie and Matthew go to the Cumberland Farms store to get Popsicles, because there is a heat wave. They see Murdoch, who protects a kid from being openly abused. Matthew and Callie like Murdoch, and both of them want to track him down so that they can be his friend. Meanwhile, the first act of abuse that is shown in the book comes when Nikki hits Matthew with a bag of clams after Nikki finds the address of Murdoch that Callie found on the Internet. Nikki begins to date Murdoch, but eventually they break stalking him. Nikki is angry and sends a man called Rob to brutalize Murdoch. Nikki and Rob eventually end up in jail. After she gets out of jail, she recklessly drives in search of Murdoch. Instead, she finds pleasure in tormenting Julie, a friend of Murdoch. Julie loses the use of her legs, and Nikki ends up in jail again. Ben, Matthew's father (who is scared of Nikki), and Bobbie, Nikki's sister, use this . Things are fine for a while until Nikki kidnaps Emmy and gets her drunk, although she is from Emmy and she tells him where she is. Matthew rescues Emmy, only to run into Nikki who greets Matt with a joke involving which alcohol Emmy Nikki unconscious and contemplates killing her when Murdoch appears. After coming to Murdoch advises Nikki to run away and never come back. But this and the fact no one has seen her in not the end of Nikki. Letters continue to come. Some of them are normal, but some contain threatening messages like ""I will kill you"" or ""It was Murdoch's fault."" The book ends with Murdoch telling Matt that he was also abused when he was younger leading to him killing his father. Mathew thanks Murdoch for stopping him. In the end, Matt never gives the letter to Emmy stating that it wasn't really for her it was for him."
2613,The Forbidden Territory,thriller," The Duc de Richleau receives a letter that is a code from his missing friend the young American Rex Van Ryn who, while hunting for treasure lost during the Soviet takeover of Russia, is now in prison somewhere in that vast country. He shares the letter with another young friend, Simon Aron, who agrees to accompany him to search for their friend. They travel to Moscow separately, and reunite one cold winter morning. Aron had met a famous Russian soprano in London and begins an affair with her in Moscow, much to the chagrin of her watcher, a Soviet official. Eventually, she obtains through her watcher the location of Rex, who is in a prison two days to the east of Moscow, in exchange for a guarantee that Simon will leave Moscow within the day. So they book a train for a seven-day transit far to the east, but the morning after they board Simon feigns illness. The Duc, who grew up in Russia and therefore speaks Russian, befriends the porter and the next morning persuades him to allow them to leave the train secretly just before it enters a station in order to save the rapidly ailing Simon's life. They are followed off the train, but they are armed as the Duc smuggled two pistols along with fifty Hoyo de Monterrey cigars into the country through the British embassy. They kill their pursuer and hide him in an old tool shed where they hope he will not be discovered until the spring thaw. By then, the train has gone and they enter the small town. Entering a café, they discover the train that goes to the north will take them only part of the way, as the town they want is in forbidden territory. The train leaves at lunch time, so they wait until the last minute before attempting to buy tickets, which they do successfully after paying three times the official price. As they arrive in the new town, dusk is approaching. They go to a hotel and ask about hiring a carriage to take them, but there are none available. They begin traveling to the town's other hotel but encounter another carriage which an official is just getting out of. ""Please hire it to us"", asks the Duc, but when he refuses, they take it by brute force and race out of town on the road north. They keep going until midnight when they find shelter in the hovel of a man who owns the boat to cross the river. Finally the next afternoon they arrive in the town where Rex is a prisoner. Finding shelter in a synagogue, they find Rex the next day. The only security during winter is that the prisoners have no boots and none are from the local town, so with the aid of his companions, Rex escapes that night in a horse and carriage that the Duke and Simon have stolen. They keep the carriage driver prisoner, but he escapes with the carriage when they are taking a rest, and so they are stranded."
2614,The Last Frontier,thriller," Michael Reynolds, MacLean's protagonist, is a British secret agent on a wintertime mission inside Hungary at the height of the Cold War. Reynolds must rescue Professor Jennings, an elderly British scientist who is held by the communist government against his will. Reynolds is no James Bond and does not have any fancy gadgets but he is highly resourceful. His biggest advantages against the cruel and efficient Hungarian Secret Service are an ability to make commonsense on-the-spot decisions and the heroic help of friends in the Hungarian underground. Reynolds hooks up with the mysterious Jansci and his friend “the Count” and they strive to transport the professor over the border and back to England. The plot has the twists, turns, and betrayals in which MacLean specialized, and Reynolds realizes that he has only one chance to escape with Jennings before he is captured and killed by the Hungarian secret police."
2615,The Cobra Event,thriller," The book is divided into 6 sections. The first section, named ""Trial"", starts with a teenage girl named Kate Moran who violently dies one day in school. The next section, titled ""1969"", describes tests done in the sixties by the U.S. government involving weaponized viruses. The third section, ""Diagnosis"", describes the autopsy of Kate Moran and, introduces the key characters of Dr. Alice Austen, Mark Littleberry, and Will Hopkins. The book describes these three characters' journey to discover the source of the lethal virus Cobra, in the other three sections, ""Decision"", ""Reachdeep"", and ""The Operation""."
2616,Night of Error,thriller," After receiving news that his brother Mark has died in suspicious circumstances in the Pacific, marine biologist Mike Trevelyan discovers that Mark′s latest research may have discovered a lucrative source of manganese beneath the sea. With only two clues — a notebook in code and a lump of deep–sea rock — Mike's investigations trigger the start of a hazardous marine expedition and a violent confrontation far from civilisation."
2617,The Hot Kid,thriller," This fictional story is set during The Great Depression and follows the career of Carl (Carlos) Webster, a crack shot, well respected, and mannerful lawman who killed his first criminal at the ripe age of fifteen. The reader follows Carlos' career as he begins a long dance of death with Jack Belmont, an ambitious criminal who wants to become public enemy number one. The story follows other characters like Louly Brown, a woman who loves Carlos, but wants to be known as Pretty Boy Floyd's gal. There's also writer Tony Antonelli, of True Detective magazine, who wants to write like a pro, and wishes Elodie, a gal he likes, wasn't a whore. The novel is full of grade-A action and violence perpetrated through criminals, lawmen, Tommy guns, bank robberies, hot cars, all falling against the backdrop of Prohibition. Carl Webster is presented as the son of Virgil Webster, introduced in Leonard's 1998 novel ""Cuba Libre."" Both men reappear in Leonard's 2007 novel ""Up In Honey's Room."" Real life contemporary Bank robbers who make an appearance in the novel include Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson"
2618,Whiteout,thriller," When a rabbit being tested on to find a cure against a deadly virus, a more dangerous form of Ebola, is stolen from a lab in Scotland. Toni Gallo, head of security, knows that she has failed. But soon things turn out to be a lot worse when the virus itself is also stolen, with inside assistance, to be used in a terrorist attack. Through a Christmas Eve blizzard, and without much help from the local police, Toni has to chase the thieves to recover the virus and save the future of the lab as well as prevent a dangerous outbreak. Meanwhile, she's falling in love with her boss, who is having the family over for Christmas at his nearby mansion."
2619,The Dark Goddess,thriller," Archaeologist Moira Rhalles is kidnapped by the KGB while she is on a dig in France. Her historian husband and her ex-boyfriend team up to try to rescue her. The title refers to the dark earth-mother goddess, of which a paleolithic statuette was made."
2620,LaBrava,thriller," Joe LaBrava gets involved with former movie star Jean Shaw, whom he admired as a twelve year-old boy staring at a movie screen, when he discovers that she is being harassed by thug Richard Nobles and his partner Cundo Rey."
2621,Kolymsky Heights,thriller," A coded message is smuggled out of Russia, a plea for help from a supersecret laboratory deep in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The note is addressed to Johnny Porter, a Canadian Indian of the Gitxsan tribe with a genius for languages and disguises, and reluctantly he is forced to slip across the border on a rescue mission, the consequences of which he little imagines. The detailed picture of life in the Kolyma region and of the native peoples of the Russian Far East (such as the Evenks) and British Columbia (such as the Tsimshian) is impressive."
2622,Storm Warning,thriller," A German merchant ship is attempting to return to Germany from Brazil at the end of August 1944 via a crossing of the Atlantic which is full of enemy shipping and warships. With a crew of twenty-two men and five nuns as passengers, the boat makes its remarkable journey, but after being severely battered by a storm, is wrecked off the coast of Scotland on the Washington Reef in the Outer Hebrides. The conclusion may sound familiar to some as Higgins has obviously taken some ideas (especially the ones regarding the shipwreck) from an earlier novel he wrote called 'A Game For Heroes', in which German soldiers and British citizens try to rescue the crew of a ship that has foundered off the coast of the Jersey islands. Once again, the protagonists are enemies that come together to help each other in time of need."
2623,The Most Dangerous Game,thriller," Bill Cary is a bush pilot living in Lapland in northern Finland, making a precarious living flying aerial survey flights looking for nickel deposits, and occasional charter cargo flights of dubious legitimacy in his beat-up old de Havilland Beaver. Towards the end of the flying season, a wealthy American hunter hires him to fly into a prohibited part of Finland near the Soviet border in order to hunt bear. Subsequently, he is assaulted by thugs when he refuses a charter contract to search for a lost Tsarist treasure, comes under suspicion from the Finnish police for smuggling when Tsarist-era gold sovereigns start turning up, and from the Finnish secret police for espionage. However, things get more serious when the wealthy American's hunter's beautiful sister turns up to search for her brother, and his fellow bush pilots start getting killed off in a series of suspicious accidents. Cary suspects that the events he is increasingly involved in may stem from an incident in his wartime past."
2624,Vital Signs,thriller," Dr. Blumenthal finds out that she cannot conceive as her fallopian tubes are blocked due to a case of TB, which she feels is extremely rare in current times. She tries to conceive through a modern technique called in vitro fertilization from a very well known fertility clinic, but after four unsuccessful cycles she and her husband start to have differing opinions about continuing their quest for child. This starts to take a toll on their relationship, as Marissa is adamant to go on for the next cycle and her husband thinks that it would be another $10,000 down the drain. Marissa joins a counseling group for such in vitro couples, and meets up with her medical school friend Wendy, who also shares that same medical condition as her. Soon the two women discover that the specific condition is found in numerous women being treated in the clinic where they are getting treated. A suicide (suggested to be a murder) of fellow woman patient in the clinic also add to their curiosity. They break into the clinic and try to read their medical records, which are kept in a highly confidential status in the clinic. They find out that a pathologist, Dr. Tristan Williams, from a clinic with similar name in Australia, has written a paper about a condition similar to theirs. On the spur of moment, they decide to go to Australia to visit the author. When they inquire about him at the facility, they get negative responses and are made to believe that they have made a wasted trip. When Wendy is killed in an unexpected accident involving shark, Marissa feel that her death is more than an unfortunate accident. After few fruitless efforts to find Dr. Williams, Marissa meets him in his current assignment. From him she learns about a practice where pairs of Chinese citizens who were smuggled into Australia work in the clinic regularly. Tristan tells Marissa that due to the paper he wrote, the FCA has taken retaliatory steps against him, like branding him with drugs and killing his wife two years ago. He has had to be constantly on the run, which made him send his only son to live with his in-laws to keep him safe. Marissa and Tristan team up together to get to the bottom of the mystery. Tristan suggests that there had to be a drug trafficking involved since the illegal Chinese workers were transported from the Republic of China and moved into Australia through Hong Kong. They decide to visit Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, as they try to get information on how they are able to transport people from China to Hong Kong, there are two more attempts to kill them. Both the attempts fail. During one attempt, Marissa's husband, who comes to Hong Kong to take Marissa back home, is killed by mistake. Finally, they get to meet one such pair who is to be transported from China to Hong Kong in a boat for the FCA. Marissa discovers that one of the pair was a martial arts expert, and his sole duty was to protect the other. The other person was a rural doctor from China. Marissa and Tristan question the pair about the drug business, but all their answers are negative. Soon, Marissa, Tristan and the Chinese doctor get stranded due to border patrol force. Marissa discovers that the rural doctors are trained to sterilize women as mitigation by the government to control the population. This sterilization is a simple remedy that can be done without making the patient unconscious. This comes as a shocking revelation, and helps Marissa put together all the things she has gone through. She finds out that the clinic is sterilizing its women patients who are coming in for regular check up. They also fail their initial in vitro cycles by making the fertilization medium more acidic. After 5 or 6 cycles, they let the couple have children. After this discovery, the CDC and FBI get involved to close up these clinics and take legal action. In the end, Marissa marries Tristan and the couple plan to adopt a Chinese baby from Hong Kong. nl:Embryo (boek)"
2625,Six Days of the Condor,thriller," Ronald Malcolm is a CIA employee who works in a clandestine office in Washington, D.C. responsible for analyzing the plots of mystery and spy novels. One day, when he should be in the office, Malcolm slips out a basement entrance for lunch. In his absence a group of armed men gain entrance to the office and kill everyone there. Malcolm returns, realizes he is in grave danger, and telephones a phone number at CIA headquarters he has been given for emergencies. When he phones in (and remembers to give his code name ""Condor""), he is told to meet an agent named Weatherby who will ""bring him in"" for protection. Alas, Weatherby is part of a rogue group within the CIA, the same group responsible for the original assassinations. Weatherby tries to kill Malcolm, who escapes with his life. Malcolm uses his wits to elude both the rogue CIA group and the proper CIA authorities, each of which would very much like to find him first. Seeking shelter, Malcolm kidnaps a paralegal named Wendy Ross whom (he overhears) intends to spend her coming vacation days holed up in her apartment—hence he knows that nobody will notice her absence. He quickly wins her trust, and she assists him in his quest to stay alive and to find out more about the forces after him. But she is shot and seriously wounded while trying to do this. Malcom believes her to be dead, but learns later that she has survived. It turns out that the rogue group was using the section where Malcolm works to import illegal drugs from Laos. A supervisor stumbles on a discrepancy in the records resulting from clandestine drug importation, necessitating the elimination of the section."
2626,Decipher,thriller," Set in the year 2012, a series of seemingly unrelated events take place, which during the course of the story all become interconnected. In Antarctica, an oil drilling venture is taking place by fictitious oil company Rola Corp. It is an unstable time in the region because the US and China are at loggerheads over mineral and oil rights, and the geopolitical landscape is dicey. The drill ship does not strike oil, but does discover a very hard form of diamond which turns out to be Carbon 60. Not only that, but the samples they retrieve have hieroglyphic writing on them. Meanwhile, the US military has been monitoring unusually high solar flare activity and are worried about its effect on their fleet of satellites. While observing Chinese military maneuvers in Antarctica, the spy satellite picks up a highly unusual energy signal emanating from two miles beneath Antarctica's ice sheet. When the US military and Rola Corp. pool their resources it is discovered that not only is the diamond-type material reactive to the sun, but the time of the energy pulses under the ice in Antarctica, match the timing of flare activity from the Sun. A team of scientists are assembled to unravel the mystery. From Richard Scott, a linguistic Anthropologist, to Jon Hackett a Complexity Physicist. The team soon discover that the same energy signature from Antarctica is being detected by satellites from ancient monuments all over the Earth. From the Amazon jungle to Egypt and China. Inspired by stories of the ancient flood of Noah, Scott embarks on the mammoth task of deciphering the mysterious language found on the material, and comparing what it has to say with the ancient myths and legends of floods from all around the world. The myths all have similar themes. They talk about the Sun, the destructive power coming from the sky, a flood, and a mythical lost city, known more famously as Atlantis. More than that, the myths talk of the cyclical nature of this destruction and point to an event that happened 12,000 years ago that may well be happening all over again. The story climaxes with the discovery of Atlantis under the ice in Antarctica and the team's expedition to reach it and find any crumb of help that may save the Earth from the impending disaster that the Sun is about to unleash as it reaches the maximum in its cycle."
2627,Dragon Fire,thriller," This novel gives us nightmare scenarios where the world's worst fears begin on 10:00 a.m. on 3 May 2007. A SFF(Special Frontier Force) Major, Gendun Choedrak Assaults Drapchi prison with paratroopers to free Tibetan religious leaders who are being incarcerated there. Far out west, Pakistan launches an attack on the strategic outpost of Kargil, promptly raising the green crescent flag on Indian soil. China accuses India of attacking Chinese soil and declares war. It's Pakistan and China vs India now, 3 nuclear powers. Nuclear arsenals are being mobilized. Later Pakistan is devastated while India and China are threatening nuclear war. Russia says whoever is involved in this matter will have to face her first. The West's greatest nightmares are becoming true."
2628,The Bourne Imperative,thriller," :For a more detailed background of the main character, see Jason Bourne. The man Jason Bourne fishes out of the freezing sea is near death, half-drowned and bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound. He awakens with no memory of who he is or why he was shot-and Bourne is eerily reminded of his own amnesia. Then Bourne discovers that the Mossad agent named Rebeka is so determined to find this injured man that she has gone off the grid, cut her ties to her agency, and is now being stalked by Mossad's most feared killer. Do the answers to these mysteries lie back in southeast Lebanon, in a secret encampment to which Bourne and Rebeka escaped following a firefight weeks ago? The complex trail links to the mission given to Treadstone directors Peter Marks and Soraya Moore: find the semi-mythic terrorist assassin known as Nicodemo. In the course of Bourne's desperate, deadly search for a secret that will alter the future of the entire world, he will experience both triumph and loss, and his life will never be the same. Now everything turns on the amnesiac. Bourne must learn his identity and purpose before both he and Rebeka are killed. From Stockholm to Washington, D.C., from Mexico City to Beijing, the web of lies and betrayals extends into a worldwide conspiracy of monumental proportions."
2629,The Sun Chemist,thriller," Letters in the archive correspondence of Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, hint that, in his profession as a distinguished organic chemist, Weizmann had stumbled on a method for the cheap synthesis of petroleum. Now, decades later, a world buffeted by oil shocks and perpetually rising prices would welcome such a chemical miracle. But Weizmann's laboratory notebooks must be found first, and an unseen and powerful enemy will stop at nothing to keep them hidden."
2630,Fear is the Key,thriller," In the prologue, set in May 1958, Talbot, owner of ""Trans Carib Air Charter Co"" was in radio contact with one of his planes en route to Tampa, Florida, as it is being shot down by an American military plane. This resulted in the death of Talbot's family. Two years later, Talbot has apparently turned to a life of crime, for which he is now facing sentencing in a courtroom. He escapes, taking a young woman hostage. A reward is put out on his head, and he is captured by a thug who turns him in to the hostage's father. Instead of turning him over to the police, however, the father hires him for some not entirely legitimate tasks. The father, it turns out, has been consorting with some shady characters including a born killer. The story becomes straight action with car chases, gunfights, the mafia, a beautiful woman, mysterious doings aboard an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and a sunken DC-3 at the bottom of ocean with a secret treasure, as Talbot searched for answers to his long quest to find the murderers of his family. In typically MacLean style, the reader comes to find that nothing in this complicated plot is quite as it seems. In addition to a clever story, the level of tension is pitched extremely high. There is scarcely a let up from the action until reaching a gripping climax."
2631,Losing You,thriller," The story tells about Nina, a mother of two, planning to go on holidays with her new boyfriend. However, the road away from the isolated winter bleakness of Sandling Island seems to be littered with obstacles, frustrating her plans at every turn. Most pressingly of all, her fifteen-year-old daughter, Charlie, has yet to return from a night out. Minute by minute, as Nina's unease builds to worry and then panic, every mother's worst nightmare begins to occur. Has Charlie run away? Or has something more sinister happened to her? And why will nobody take her disappearance seriously? As day turns to night on the island and a series of half-buried secrets lead Nina Landry from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island for Christmas and more whether they will ever leave it again."
2632,Ashes to Ashes,thriller," A serial killer known as ""The Cremator"" is killing prostitutes in Minneapolis parks and setting their bodies on fire. When one of his victims turns out to be the daughter of a local billionaire, and a homeless teenager claims to have witnessed the burning, it brings together former FBI agent Kate Conlan (now working as a victim-witness advocate) and the Bureau's top serial-killer profiler, John Quinn. Conlan and Quinn share a painful personal history; now they have to work together against a very smart lunatic who seems to be able to read their minds."
2633,Nothing to Lose,thriller," As described by Sherryl Connelly of the New York Daily News,"
2634,A Quiet Belief In Angels,thriller," A Quiet Belief In Angels is written from the perspective of Joseph Vaughan, growing up in a rural community in early 1940s Georgia. Early in the novel, Joseph's father passes away from a fever, and Joseph likens a white feather on his pillow to his father's angel. Afterwards, a serial killer begins committing a spree of murders, abducting and brutally killing young girls. Joseph and his friends form a group known as ""the Guardians"" devoting themselves to protecting the town's girls from any further harm. The townsfolk begin to suspect a German farmer named Gunther Kruger, mainly due to rising tensions because of the Second World War, and burn down his family home, killing his youngest daughter, whom Joseph had sworn to protect when the killings began. The Kruger family leave town, and the townsfolk seem satisfied the killings will leave with them."
2635,Prester John,thriller," The setting is contemporaneous with publication: the beginning of the twentieth century. Crawfurd grows up in Kirkcaple, by the North Sea, where he first encounters the antagonist, Laputa, performing a ritual on the beach. Crawfurd's father dies, and he goes to work as a shopkeeper in a place called Blaauwildebeestefontein. Crawfurd comes into contact with a Portuguese man, Henriques, and again with Laputa, and he gradually learns of illegal diamond smuggling and of a planned rising of the native people of the region, including the Zulu people and the Swazi people, led by Laputa. Laputa's skill as a preacher allows him to inspire many tribes across the region to follow him, and he invokes the legend of Prester John and positions himself as the rightful heir and leader who can rise up against colonial rule. Crawfurd learns more about this after meeting Captain Arcoll, who leads the colonialist army and police. Using information learnt from having overheard the conversation of Laputa and Henriques, Crawfurd infiltrates the cave where the tribal leaders are gathering and witnesses Laputa commencing the rising, wearing the necklet of Prester John, which legitimises his leadership. Crawfurd is captured, but having managed to relay a message to Captain Arcoll, escapes during an ambush and steals the necklet from the hands of Henriques, who is trying to steal it for himself. After running all night, Crawfurd is climbing a ravine in the escarpment up to the plateau above the berg when he is captured again. But he manages first to hide the necklet, which is made of priceless rubies. After being taken to Laputa's new base, Crawfurd escapes immediate punishment by offering Laputa his knowledge of the location of the necklet in exchange for sparing his life. Laputa, who needs the necklet in order to convince his followers, but has not told anyone of its loss, goes alone with Crawfurd to search for the necklet. In the ravine, Crawfurd narrowly escapes once again and steals Laputa's horse to take him to Arcoll's headquarters. With Laputa separated from his army, Arcoll's forces are able to quell the leaderless uprising. Meanwhile Crawfurd returns to the cave, where he finds the treacherous Henriques dead outside, having been strangled by Laputa. Entering the cave, Crawfurd meets Laputa, who by now knows that all his plans have failed. Laputa destroys a rock bridge giving access to the cave, and then commits suicide by jumping into an underground river chasm. Crawfurd makes a daring escape by climbing a cascade up and out of the cave. He rejoins Arcoll and is instrumental in bringing about the disarmament of the native uprising and the subsequent peace. With Arcoll's help he is rewarded with a large portion of the treasure hidden in the cave and eventually returns to Scotland a rich man."
2636,Carter Beats the Devil,thriller," This novel is a fictionalised biography of Charles Joseph Carter. The main character, Carter, is followed through his career, from his first encounter with magic to his last performance. Along the way he encounters many historical figures, including fellow magicians Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston, United States President Warren G. Harding, BMW founder Max Friz, the Marx Brothers, business magnate Francis Marion ""Borax"" Smith, the inventor of electronic television Philo Farnsworth, and San Franciscan madams Tessie Wall and Jessie Hayman. Most of the novel centres on the mysterious death of President Harding, who dies shortly after taking part in Carter's stage show. President Harding apparently knew of many serious scandals that seemed likely to bring down the establishment and it seems certain that he was assassinated by persons and methods unknown. Much of Carter's past is shown in the form of flashbacks as U.S. Secret Service Agent Griffin investigates the magician as a suspect. The flashbacks chart Carter's early career including his first encounter with a magic trick, shown to him by ""the tallest man alive"", Joe Sullivan (also an actual, if obscure, historical figure) in a fairground sideshow, his first paid performance for Borax Smith, his rivalry with the magician ""Mysterioso"", his first meeting with Harry Houdini who bestows the title ""Carter the Great"" on him, and Carter's marriage to Sarah Anabelle. Unbeknownst to Agent Griffin, President Harding passed a great secret to Carter: a young inventor named Philo Farnsworth has a new invention called television. Television is wanted by both the radio industry and the military and they are hunting Carter to get it. Carter must draw on all his magic to escape kidnapping and death as he seeks out the inventor. Along the way Carter meets a young blind woman with a mysterious past and encounters a deadly rival. Finally, in a magic show to end all magic shows, Carter must truly beat the devil if he is to save Farnsworth and his magical invention."
2637,People's Republic,thriller," People's Republic begins with us being introduced to Ryan Sharma. Ryan has just completed some punishment laps and finds out that he is being wanted for a mission. Also, we learn about Fu Ning, a Chinese girl living in a Dandong boarding school and wanting to escape. The book then rotates between the two characters lives, eventually showing Ryan going to the USA to infiltrate the Aramov clan through Ethan Kitsell. Ning ends up escaping China and going on the run with her stepmum Ingrid as she is wanted for questioning over her husband Chaoxiang's involvement in sending illegal immigrants across countries. Ingrid and Ning eventually try to flee China to Britain and end up in Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, Ingrid is tortured and is being tried to hand over bank account details so they can go to Britain. In the end, the deal doesn't work, leaving Ning on her own and trying to get to Britain by herself. Meanwhile, Ryan becomes Ethan's only friend after his mum and his best friend died, leaving him as his only support after saving his life again. Ryan also saved Ethan's life when he was hit by a car this helped the part of the plot to bond with him. However, just as they were bonding, a bomb was placed at the bottom of Ethan's house leaving him and everyone else at a motel. Ethan is then taken into care by a lawyer of his called Lombardi and is about to be taken back to Kyrgyzstan. This leaves Ryan to be sent back to CHERUB campus after hitting his mission controller's head, Dr D. Ryan, after being taken back to CHERUB is punished with 400 hours of recycling duty but still has a friendship with Ethan. Ning,after being smuggled into Britain is forced to labour making sandwiches and having no way of getting out despite having no money owned to the gangsters there and not wanting to work there. The book concludes with her escaping the warehouse where she was labouring and almost being deported back to China. But, just before the plane leaves, Amy manages to meet up with her and gets her to join CHERUB as she has a boxing champion streak required for the phesique of cherub and she is also very smart required to the mental training as well as the point where she has no parents, afterall Ingrid has died being tortured and her dad is being questioned, so she is a perefect cherub candidate. As Ryan is involved with her story, he gives her a tour around campus and introduces her to everyone there. The book finishes off with Ryan being allowed to get back into touch with Ethan."
2638,The Necromancer: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel,thriller," Nicholas Flamel,Pernelle Flamel, Sophie, and Josh return to San Francisco. The Flamels go to their book store while Josh and Sophie head for their Aunt Agnes' house. When they approach they see a limousine waiting outside and a stranger talking to their Aunt. They approach with caution but in the following scuffle on the doorstep Sophie is dragged into the car by a female looking exactly like their lost friend Scathach, but who is in fact her twin, Aoife. Josh races to the book store to alert Nicholas and Perry and together, they set out to rescue Sophie who has been taken to a houseboat in Sausalito owned by Aoife's companion, the Japanese immortal, Niten. Dr. Dee has been declared utlaga (a wanted man) for his failure to capture the missing pages of the Codex by his Dark Elder masters. Not wanting to experience their wrath, he flees. He makes his way across England from Salisbury Plain to his London office with the last two legendary swords, now fused together, in his possession. Once in London he enlists the help of an old acquaintance, Virginia Dare, and after an encounter with some cucubuth bounty hunters the pair escape to Dee's home in San Francisco, where he prepares to call back the Archon Coatlicue -Mother of the Gods- to help him with his plans to conquer planet Earth and take revenge on The Dark Elders that outlawed him. Joan of Arc and Scathach are joined in their exile by William Shakespeare, Palamedes and the Comte de Saint-Germain after they seek out Lord Tammuz's help. Shortly after they are re-united they are joined by the mysterious, hooded, hook-handed man who tells them that he has a pre-destined mission for them. He takes them through Xibalba and several other shadow realms to the Earth ten thousands over years ago, when Danu Talis still existed and they have to fight in the battle that meant its downfall. Niccolò Machiavelli and Billy the Kid get off the monster filled Alcatraz Island with the help of Billy's Dark Elder Master who sends the immortal Black Hawk to retrieve them and bring them both back to his house. After a fraught meeting with Billy's master they count themselves lucky to be alive as they had failed to accomplish the missions given to them by their masters: to kill Perenelle and loose the monsters trapped on the island onto San Francisco. The pair set out to return to Alcatraz and make amends by achieving what they were tasked with doing. After their initially tense meeting, Aoife, Niten, Josh, Sophie, Nicholas, and Perenelle agree to travel to Point Reyes so that Josh can be taught the magic of fire by Prometheus, the Master of Fire. Josh is separated from the others shortly after learning the magic of fire and finds himself walking into Dee's home, Sophie wakes up and realizes that Josh is missing. After alerting the others about his disappearance they track Josh to Dee's home. Sophie, Aoife and Niten race to stop him from unwittingly helping Dee complete his plan to summon the fearsome Coatlicue who Dee plans to turn loose on the Dark Elders, while Nicholas and Perenelle stay with Prometheus, following what they do. Josh, still under enchantment, turns against his sister and escapes with Dr. Dee and Virginia Dare, while Aoife pushes Coatlicue back into the shadowrealm it came from, but leaving herself trapped with it. This leaves the end of the book on a cliff hanger. The Flamels are very weak, the twins are divided, and the Dark Elders are gathering in anticipation of the Final Summoning at Litha, when they hope to return to power and dominate the world."
2639,So Disdained,thriller," Peter L. Moran, the narrator, is agent to Lord Arner. Driving home after a dinner in Winchester, he picks up Maurice Lenden, who in 1917 had been a fellow pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. The story tells how Lenden had been flying a photographic espionage mission for the Russians, how he came to be doing that, and discusses the morality of acting as a traitor to his country. As in Marazan the book expresses respect for the Italian Fascist movement of the time. The validity, or otherwise, of that political position requires considerable historical perspective. Philip Stenning (the first person narrator of Marazan) appears again in this novel, once again portrayed as a 'rough diamond' with a debatable sense of moral justice."
2640,Carver,thriller," The central character, Samuel Carver, is an ex-assassin. The story focuses on an unknown group who are attempting to bring about a global financial crisis, after having caused the collapse of the Lehman Brothers financial institution, and Carver is hired to stop them."
2641,Assignment:Murder,thriller," Dr. James Gregory, a scientist at a secret laboratory in New Mexico, becomes a hunter's prey and his estranged wife is kidnapped."
2642,Abduction,thriller," A team of researchers in a remote region of the Atlantic become trapped inside an ancient undersea volcano when their submersible is inexplicably drawn in. They discover a technologically advanced world of genetically engineered, physically near-perfect humans living comfortably in an enclosed city within the Mohorovičić discontinuity. The researchers are told that their Moho-dwelling cousins evolved many millions of years prior to current humans and became very technologically advanced. Millions of years ago, these ""first generation"" humans discovered that Earth was about to be bombarded with hordes of meteors, effectively sterilizing the surface of the planet. Unable to find a suitable extrasolar planet to move to in time, the first generation humans decided to instead move into the Mohorovičić discontinuity, shielding themselves from extinction. The Moho-dwellers watched over the centuries as the second-generation humans evolved and developed, and reveal that they abducted these researchers to determine if the researchers had been searching for them. The researchers reveal that nobody on the surface has ever thought there were civilizations living under the Earth's crust, and that they were doing geologic exploration and research instead. Fearing for their own safety and the discovery of their civilization, the Moho-dwellers feel they cannot allow their abductees to return to the surface. The research team manages to recover its submersible and mounts an attempt to return to the surface. However, at the last moment they encounter a large Moho craft and emerge to the ocean's surface in the late 18th century. The group abruptly discovers that the craft was actually some sort of advanced Moho time machine and/or spacecraft that sent them 200 years into the past to prevent them from alerting the surface world to the presence of the Moho-dwellers."
2643,Lost City,thriller," The Story begins with a flashback to August 1914, where Jules Fauchard is flying his Morane-Saulnier N, mono-winged aircraft. Fauchard is heading to meet the pope's emissary in Switzerland but as he is coming to the border and the French Alps, a squad of six Aviatik biplanes find him. The planes attack Fauchard and though he destroys four planes he is eventually shot down and killed. His plane lands in a glacial river and Fauchard along with his helmet and strong box are buried in a glacier. Cut to the present day in the Scottish Orkney Islands. A reality television show is being filmed when that evening a group of animals attack the crew and cast. Everyone is killed except for Jodie Michaelson; the only reason she is not killed is because as she was running from the creatures she fell into a deep crevace in the rocks and the animals lost her scent. At about the same time yet another plotline is developing. This part of the story takes place in Monemvassia, The Greek Peloponnese. The storyline follows Dr. Angus MacLean, a research Chemist. MacLean is on the run. He is living in a monastery on a small island in Greece. As MacLean reminisces it becomes clear why he is running. The trouble began when he was hired to research enzymes in France. As the leader of a team of scientists doing enzyme research, the hours were long but the pay was great and MacLean had no complaints. That was until he began asking questions. The owners of the lab decided to send home the scientists, telling them ""not to worry."" MacLean headed to Turkey to see the ruins. This probably saved his life. When he came home he was greeted with an envelope full of newspaper clippings and a telephone message from one of his former colleagues that asked him if he had been watching the news and urged MacLean to call him back. When MacLean tried to call him back he was informed that the man had been killed in a hit-and-run accident. This leg of the story ends with MacLean being kidnapped by a hit team that had been hired by the company that ran the lab. The story then cuts to the French Alps where a team of scientists is studying a glacier named Le Dormeur. The scientists, Hank Thurston and Bernard LeBlanc are accompanied by Derek Rawlins, a journalist for Outside magazine. As the three scientists are giving Rawlins a tour they get a phone call saying that a body frozen in the ice had been discovered. Two hundred feet below the surface of Lac du Dormeur, Kurt Austin and a beautiful woman named Skye Labelle are inside a submersible searching for remnants of trade routes between Europeans and the Mediterranean civilizations, when Skye is recalled back to land. Skye is an expert in arms and armour. It seems that the authorities need her help to identify the helmet found with the frozen body in the glacier. When Skye arrives where the body is frozen, she sees her arch-nemesis, Renaud. Auguste Renaud is one of the higher-ups at the State Archaeological board of France. He is attracted to Skye but she is repulsed by him. Skye is puzzled by the body. The deceased is dressed in an early twentieth century flight suit but in his possession is a very old helmet. The helmet is a riddle in itself, as it is of very high quality and very distinctive yet it isn't like anything she has ever encountered. Needless to say Skye cannot identify the artifact on the spot. Much to Skye's chagrin, Renaud has called a press conference in the underground laboratory to announce the discovery to the world. During the press conference something terrible occurs. A very large and muscular bald man comes up to Renaud and demands the strongbox found with the body saying, ""Give the box to me."" Renaud responds saying with a grin, ""Not on your life!"" To this the bald man says, ""No, Not on your life!"" and with that he pulls a pistol out of his coat and brings it down on Renaud's hand. The large man then takes off with the box. A few seconds later the group hears a loud explosion as a barrier that holds back the glacial waters is destroyed, water is flowing into the laboratory. Then they are trapped in a flooding tunnel. When Kurt Austin hears the news, he sends a rescue team and the they start an operation. Then, another chopper lands on the shore. Austin had called Joe Zavala on his cellphone. Austin and Zavala got into the submersible and crack a hole in the flooding tunnel from under water. They got everyone safely to shore within the next hour."
2644,We Need to Talk About Kevin,thriller," Eva's narration takes the form of letters written after the massacre to her presumably estranged husband, Franklin Plaskett. In these letters, she details her relationship with her husband well before and leading up to their son's conception, followed by the events of Kevin's life up to the school massacre, and her thoughts concerning their relationship. She also admits to a number of events that she tried to keep secret, such as when she lashed out and broke Kevin's arm in a sudden fit of rage. The novel also shows Eva visiting Kevin in prison. These scenes portray their cold, adversarial relationship. Kevin's behavior throughout the book closely resembles that of a sociopath, although reference to this condition is sparse and left mostly up to the reader's imagination. He displays little to no affection or moral responsibility towards his family or community; indeed, Kevin seems to regard everyone with contempt and hatred, and reserves special loathing for his mother, whom he has antagonized for as long as he can remember. He engages in many acts of petty sabotage from an early age, from seemingly innocent actions like spraying ink with a squirt gun on a room his mother has painstakingly wallpapered in rare maps, to possibly encouraging a girl to gouge her eczema-affected skin. The one activity he takes any pleasure in is archery, which his father introduces him to. As Kevin's behavior worsens, Franklin becomes evermore defensive of him, convinced that his son is a healthy, normal boy and that there is a reasonable explanation for everything he does. Kevin plays the part of a loving, respectful son whenever Franklin is around, an act that Eva sees through. This creates a rift between Eva and Franklin that never really heals; shortly before the massacre, Franklin asks for a divorce. Kevin's sister Celia is conceived largely because of Eva's need to bond with another member of her family. When Celia is six years old, she is involved in a household ""accident"" in which drain cleaner causes her to lose an eye. This is closely linked to an earlier incident involving Celia's pet elephant shrew, during which Eva uses Liquid Plumr, a caustic drain cleaner, to clear a blockage in the children's sink. Two explanations are possible: that Eva left the cleaner sitting within Celia's reach, or that Kevin somehow attacked Celia with it, destroying her eye and scarring her face. Though never proven, Eva strongly believes that Kevin, who was babysitting at the time, poured the Liquid Plumr onto his sister's face, telling her he was cleaning her eye after she got something in it. When relating the story of the massacre, Eva finally reveals that Franklin and Celia are in fact dead—Kevin killed them both with his bow and arrow set before using these weapons to attack his school. Eva speculates that he did this because he overheard her and Franklin discussing a divorce; he believed Franklin would get custody of him, thus denying him final victory over his mother. The novel ends on the second ""anniversary"" of the massacre, three days before Kevin will turn 18 and be transferred to Sing Sing. Subdued and frightened, he makes a peace offering of sorts to Eva by giving her Celia's prosthetic eye to bury, and telling her that he's sorry. Eva asks Kevin for the first time why he committed the murders, and Kevin replies that he is no longer sure. They embrace, and Eva resolves that she still loves her son."
2645,Against All Enemies,thriller," CIA Special Activities Division Operation Officer Max Moore, whose physical looks resemble that of Richard Marcinko, is on a mission in Pakistan to retrieve a high-value target. When the mission goes awry and Moore's allies are killed, he is recalled to the United States to take part in a new effort against the Mexican drug cartels. Moore and his team attempt to infiltrate the cartels and play them off against each other but are met with varying degrees of success. Although they are able to bring down a major kingpin, they are unable to prevent several Muslim terrorists from entering the United States via a smuggling tunnel. The terrorists have brought a number of MANPADS surface-to-air missile launchers with them, which are used to target flights in several US cities. Although the attack is partially successful, Moore and associates are able to stop one of the terrorist teams. Moore is then deployed to Belize on a mission to capture the leader of the terrorist cell. After a boat chase, the leader is captured and sent to a black site for interrogation. The novel ends with Max, having overcome some of his personal demons, now relaxed and on a date with a fellow CIA officer."
2646,Fatherland,thriller," The story begins in Nazi Germany, the Third Reich in April 1964, in the week leading up to Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday. The plot follows detective Xavier March, an investigator working for the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), as he investigates the suspicious death of a high-ranking Nazi, Josef Buhler, in the Havel, on the outskirts of Berlin. As March uncovers more details he realises that he is caught up in a political scandal involving senior Nazi Party officials, who are apparently being systematically murdered under staged circumstances. In fact, as soon as the body is identified, the Gestapo claims jurisdiction and orders the Kripo to close its investigation. March meets with 'Charlie' Maguire, a female American journalist who is also determined to investigate the case. They both travel to Zürich to investigate the private Swiss bank account of one of the murdered officials. Ultimately, the two uncover the horrific truth behind the staged murders. The Gestapo is eliminating the remaining officials who planned the Holocaust (of which the German people are not generally aware) at the Wannsee Conference of 1942. This is being done in order to safeguard an upcoming meeting of Hitler and President Joseph P. Kennedy by ensuring that the crimes of the Nazi regime are not revealed. Maguire heads for neutral Switzerland with the evidence, hoping to expose it to the world. March, however, is denounced by his ten-year-old son and apprehended by the Gestapo. In the cellars of Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, March is tortured but does not reveal the location of Maguire. Kripo Chief Artur Nebe stages a rescue, intending to track March as he meets with Maguire at their rendezvous in Waldshut-Tiengen on the Swiss/German border. March realises what is happening and heads for Auschwitz, leading the authorities in the wrong direction. The Gestapo catches up with March at the unmarked site of Auschwitz's completely dismantled extermination camp. Knowing that Maguire has had time to cross the border into Switzerland, March searches for some sign that the death camp was real. As the Gestapo agents close in on him, March uncovers bricks in the undergrowth. Satisfied, he pulls out his gun while leaving the readers to draw their own conclusions."
2647,Ponniyin Selvan,thriller," The story revolves around Vandiyathevan, a charming,brave and a brilliant young man who sets out to the Chola land to deliver a message to the King and the Princess from the Crown Prince Aditya Karikalan. The story shuttles between Vandiyathevan's travels in Chola country and the young Prince Arulmozhivarman's travels in Sri Lanka. The narrative deals with attempts by his sister Kundavai to bring back Arulmozhi (as Raja Raja was called before his crowning) to establish political peace in a land seemingly getting besot with unrest and signs of civil war, plotted by vassals and petty chieftains. Parantaka Chola was succeeded by his second son Gandaraditya as the first son Rajaditya had died in a battle. At the time of Gandaraditya's death, his son Maduranthaka was a 2 year old child and hence Gandaraditya’s brother Arinjaya ascended the throne. After Arinjaya’s death, his son Parantaka II, (Sundara Chola) was coronated. He had two sons, Aditya Karikalan and daughter Kundavai and the younger son Arulmozhivarman,the later known Rajaraja. When the story starts, the emperor Sundara Chola is ill and bedridden. Aditya Karikalan is the general of the Northern Command and lived in Kanchi and Arulmozhivarman (who would be famous later as Raja Raja Chola I) is in Sri Lanka in battle and their sister Kundavai Piratti lived in Chola royal household at Pazhayarai. The story is set in motion, when rumor starts that there is a conspiracy against Sundara Chola and his sons. One person who gets a glimpse of the Pandya conspirators is a warrior the Vanar kula veeran Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan at the palace of his friend kandhamaaran. It is through Vandiyathevan that we meet most of the characters in the novel such as Arulmozhivarman, the prince whom all the people loved, and Periya Pazhavetturayar, the chancellor who married Nandhini,(the main conspirator) when he was sixty. During his youth, Aditya Karikalan had fallen in love with Nandhini, but she turned vengeful after Aditya Karikalan killed Veerapandyan (who was probably her lover.It was a confusion which revolves in the story,some says it was her father) and vowed to destroy the Chola dynasty. We also meet Kundavai Devi, who after hearing the news of the conspiracy sends Vandiyathevan to Sri Lanka to give a message to Arulmozhivarman to come back immediately. Besides these, there are other characters like Maduranthaka Thevar(the man whom the conspirators want to crown king), the son of Gandaraditya and Aniruddha Brahmarayar,Sundara Cholar’s Prime Minister and the man who has eyes and ears everywhere. But the most wonderful character in the book is Brahmarayar’s spy Azhwarkadiyan Nambi, a who roams around the country challenging for debates. He collects information for the Prime Minister and is always around Vandiyathevan, rescuing him during trouble. There are some lovely and adorable women too, like Vanathi,Kodumbalur princess(the woman who becomes Arulmozhi's wife later) who is in love with Arulmozhi; Poonkuzhali, the boat woman who rows the future king to Lanka; Mandakini, the deaf and dumb step mother of the original maduranthaka chola an the aunt of Poonkuzhali. Most memorable among these is Nandhini, whose beauty is said to have the power to influence any man. Manimegalai, the sister of kandhamaran(the kadamboor prince)who helps nandhini without any knowledge that she herself is the conspirator and also he turns against Vandhiyathevan, his best friend. In the meanwhile, With Poonkuzhali's help, Vandiyathevan reaches Sri Lanka, meets Arulmozhivarman, and becomes his close friend. In Lanka, Arulmozhivarman realizes that his father had spent some time in an island near Lanka and had been with a girl born deaf and dumb. He meets her and realizes from her drawing that she and his father have had two children. Who are those children and do they have the right to the throne? Later one day in Thirupurambayam forest Vandiyathevan sees Nandhini and the Pandya conspirators place a small boy on a throne and take a vow in front of him. Who is this boy and what right does he have to the throne? While coming back from Lanka, Arulmozhivarman is caught in a cyclone and goes missing. Rumor spreads that he is dead, but he survives and stays at Choodamani Viharam, a Buddhist monastery in . Then slowly the dispersed family starts assembling. The conspirators meanwhile choose one day in which both the king and both of his sons would be assassinated. Nandhini in the mean time calls Adithya Karikalan to Kadambur Palace to discuss about the future of kingdom,Though Karikalan knows that is life is in utter danger,He goes to Kadambur palace despite warning from his grand father,Adithya karikalan was then assassinated there(it was debated till about the assassin).But actually as per historians Ravidasan,The loyal guard of Pandiya king killed aditya as the revenge for Pandiya king,Later this case was tabled before Raja raja chola and punished him with ceasing his property as Ravidasan was Brahmin community by birth who were not punished to death in olden times generally. Arulmozhivarman in mean time recovers and returns to Tanjore,Where he was forced to crown and he accepts to get crown initially.Later he tricks everyone and crowns to his uncle Uthama chola,Thus gets the fifth part name as Tyaga chigaram."
2648,Tender Loving Rage,thriller," From Publishers Weekly: ""With a title more appropriate to a paperback romance and an author whose reputation was made in an entirely different genre, this posthumous thriller by one of the stellar lights of the golden age of science fiction seems unlikely to find an audience. Although Bester died in 1987, the book seems, in both style and perspective, to have been written well before that, perhaps not too far beyond its late 1950s setting. Beautiful model Julene Krebs attracts the attentions of both a high-powered advertising executive and a prominent research scientist. The two men become friendly as a result of their mutual interest in the girl, and she in turn becomes involved with each. Meanwhile, Bester offers what is presumably intended as satirical commentary on the advertising industry in general and TV commercials in particular, via a stream of embarrassingly awkward conversations and repartee in a variety of settings. There's a threatening, shadowy figure lurking about, as well as intimations of a dark secret in Julene's past, but these matters are so submerged in the plodding story that they seem unimportant&mdash;at least until a wild, violent night on Fire Island, N.Y. That's followed by a hurricane, a kidnapping and a thoroughly unbelievable bit of melodrama. In the end, after Bester skirts around an appalling view of rape and its victims, love triumphs over all&mdash;sort of."""
2649,A Matter of Honour,thriller," In 1966 disgraced British colonel bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son. The ""item in question"" that Adam's father's letter leads him to acquire from a safe deposit box in Switzerland is a precious Russian Orthodox icon made long ago for the Russian czars which by misadventure came into the possession of Hermann Göring sometime in the 1930s. Göring wanted Scott's father (one of his jailers at Nuremberg) to have it in token of his kind treatment and because Göring realized Scott's father would be unfairly blamed for his pre-execution suicide. But the icon contains something that even Göring did not dream of: the only official Russian copy of a secret codicil to the Alaska Purchase treaty by which the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. ""Seward's Folly"" turns out to have not been a true purchase at all, but a 99-year lease akin to the British hold on Hong Kong, with a right of return to Russia (now the part of the Soviet Union) if they can only retrieve their copy before the lease deadline, only days away."
2650,No place like home,thriller," The story starts with 10 year old Liza Barton accidentally shooting and killing her mother and shooting and injuring her stepfather Ted. She is acquitted of the crime and is later adopted by some distant relatives. Twenty-four years later, the story picks up with Liza determined to bury her past. She has changed her name to Celia Foster and married Alex Nolan after her first husband Larry's death. Alex, not aware of Celia's past, gifts her with a surprise birthday present—the keys to her own parents' home in a neighboring town Mendham. Alex, Celia and her 4 year old son, Jack, move into the home to find that it has been vandalized. Unsure of how Alex would react to her past, Celia decides to hide it from him for some more time. Flashes of the night her mom died come back to Celia as she sets out to find out more about what really happened that night. She discreetly tries to find information about her father's accident that led to his death a year before her mother's death. One by one, a few of the older residents of the town are murdered and some of the evidence leads to Celia being suspected. Celia finds her own life in danger, as the pursuit of the murderer's identity picks up pace."
2651,The Mona Intercept,thriller," Cuban exile Jimmy Columbus uses hijacking on the high seas, drugs, and murder to fuel his dreams of an empire."
2652,The Cobra,thriller," Paul Deveraux, who previously appeared in the Forsyth novel Avenger, is tasked by the U.S. president to end the international cocaine trade. He recruits lawyer Cal Dexter, the main character in Avenger, to help him with this task. Together they set up a joint Anglo-American task force operating from 2 converted grain carriers to intercept cocaine shipments, destroy the ships and to detain the crews on a remote island. Both teams have access to a UAV that provides them with target information and other intelligence. Dexter also recruits a Blackburn Buccaneer pilot to shoot down the cartel's cocaine-carrying airplanes. When the actions of both task forces and the pilot lead to major international cocaine shortages, Deveraux starts a misinformation campaign aimed at turning the international drug cartels against each other. Since this leads to out-of-hand gang wars with innocent bystanders getting killed, Deveraux is eventually asked by the White House to stop all operations. Dissatisfied by the White House decision, Deveraux cuts a deal with a drug lord promising him the cocaine captured by the task forces. He tells Dexter the location of the captured cocaine and tells him to destroy it. However, it turns out to be fake and Cal Dexter finds out about this and has the Buccaneer pilot destroy the cocaine-carrying ship before it reaches its destination. In the epilogue, Deveraux's assassinated body is discovered. He has been shot for not keeping his promise with Don Diego Esteban and for messing with him."
2653,Seawitch,thriller," Lord Worth, ruthless and fabulously wealthy, has made a lot of enemies in the oil business. His new offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, named Seawitch, is one of the biggest in the world, and will put his competitors out of business. To destroy it and therefore be able to inflate the price of oil at will, the competitors get together and send one man to deal with Lord Worth. The villain has a personal score to settle with Worth and kidnaps him and his daughters. Fortunately for Lord Worth, his two daughters are betrothed to the protagonists, Mitchell and Roomer, two former police detectives/now private investigators. They set trying to save Worth and his daughters from certain death, as the villain intends to leave them on Seawitch when he destroys it with a stolen nuclear weapon."
2654,Jennie,thriller," Jennie is a chimpanzee, living in the 1970s. Naturalist Dr. Hugo Archibald delivers Jennie from her dying mother in the Cameroons and brings her home to his American family. His young son, Sandy, becomes extremely attached to Jennie, but Archibald's daughter, Sarah, resents the chimp. Jennie, through her learning of ASL (American Sign Language), starts to converse and interact with the humans around her. Eventually, Jennie is released into a wildlife preserve where she simply can not function."
2655,Plague Ship,thriller," The crew has just completed a top secret mission against Iran to steal a rocket torpedo that was illegally sold to them by the Russian Federation, when they come across a cruise ship adrift at sea. The passengers and crew were killed by a hemorrhagic fever, similar to Ebola, and, as Captain Juan Cabrillo tries to determine what happened, explosions rack the length of the ship. Barely able to escape with his own life and that of the liner's sole survivor, Cabrillo finds himself plunged into a mystery as intricate—and as perilous-as any he has ever known and pitted against a cult with monstrously lethal plans for human race—plans he may already be too late to stop."
2656,Shadow Wave,thriller," Shadow Wave begins with James Adams working undercover with MI5 as a Brigands Motorcycle Club biker, trying to bring down its leader Ralph ""The Führer"" Donnington (continuing from the eleventh CHERUB book - Brigands M.C.). His girlfriend Kerry Chang is also working with him as an interpreter in a set-up weapons deal. The police surround them and the Führer tries to escape and ends up falling down a cliff and seriously damaging his leg. He is taken into police custody. James returns to CHERUB campus to a wedding between some CHERUB staff and meets a lot of his old friends, as well as, staff, including his former girlfriend Dana Smith who retired the previous year, and retired agent Kyle Blueman. Kyle finds a mission briefing for James to act as the son of David Secombe, an important figure in the British Government who is negotiating a weapons deal with Malaysian Defence Minister Tan Abdullah when he comes to the UK. Kyle tells James about how, when he was assisting in a CHERUB intensive training course in Malaysia in 2004, he met a young boy named Aizat Rakyat, who told him how Abdullah is demolishing native villages to make way for luxurious hotels. When the Boxing Day tsunami struck he used the disaster to ""evacuate"" the villagers and therefore built more hotels. James, disgusted, quits the mission and joins Kyle in a scheme to embarrass Abdullah. James' sister, Lauren Adams, and a younger agent Kevin Sumner are also going on the mission. James sneaks into Lauren's room in the early morning and installs a tracking device in her cellphone. He is then about to leave when his friend Bruce Norris (who has broken up with his girlfriend Bethany Parker) agrees to join them. Together, they go and meet Helena Bayliss, runner of charity Guilt Trips and journalist Hugh Verhoeven. Lauren and Kevin go on a shopping trip with the daughter and son of Tan Abdullah, and James, using the tracking device in Lauren's phone, invites paparazzi to their locations, embarrassing Tan Abdullah's family. Eventually, James leaves for Stanford University in California. When James returns to London to visit Kerry and Lauren, they visit Gwen Choke's grave, and clean the headstone up. The three of them leave after Kerry tells them that Gwen, if she could see them now, would be very proud of them. In the epilogue of the book it is said that Bethany Parker is expelled from CHERUB because she breached security by continuing to have a relationship with someone she met outside campus on a mission. Kerry leaves CHERUB campus and joins James in Stanford University. Even though Kerry was suspicious that James cheated on her during his first year of college, he did not. Meatball is also revealed to have become a father of three puppies. Ron died from throat cancer shortly after being released from prison and James meets his dad after seeing his name on one of his school textbooks."
2657,Thunderball,thriller," Thunderball begins with a meeting between Bond and his superior, M, during which the agent is told that his latest physical assessment is poor because of excessive drinking and smoking (up to sixty cigarettes a day). M sends Bond on a two-week treatment at the Shrublands health clinic to improve his health. At the clinic Bond encounters Count Lippe, a member of the Red Lightning Tong criminal organisation from Macau. When Bond learns of the Tong connection, Lippe tries to kill him by tampering with a spinal traction machine. Bond, however, is saved by nurse Patricia Fearing and later retaliates against Lippe by trapping him in a steam bath, resulting in the Count's second-degree burns and a week's stay in hospital. The Prime Minister receives a communiqué from SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) explaining that the organisation has hijacked a Villiers Vindicator and seized its two nuclear bombs, which it will use to destroy two major cities unless a £100,000,000 ransom is paid. This is SPECTRE's Plan Omega. SPECTRE is headed by criminal mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Count Lippe was dispatched to Shrublands to oversee Giuseppe Petacchi of the Italian Air Force, at the Boscombe Down Airfield, a bomber squadron base. Although Lippe was successful, Blofeld considered him unreliable, because of his childish clash with Bond and, as a consequence, Blofeld has Lippe killed. Acting as a NATO observer of Royal Air Force procedure, Petacchi is in SPECTRE's pay to hijack the bomber in mid-flight by killing its crew and flying it to the Bahamas. Once there, Petacchi is killed and the plane, with bombs, are taken by Emilio Largo (aka SPECTRE Number One) on board the cruiser yacht Disco Volante. The Americans and the British launch Operation Thunderball to foil SPECTRE and recover the two atomic bombs. On a hunch, M assigns Bond to the Bahamas to investigate. There, Bond meets Felix Leiter, seconded to the CIA from his usual role at Pinkertons because of the Thunderball crisis. While in Nassau, Bond meets Dominetta ""Domino"" Vitali, Largo's mistress and the sister of the dead pilot Giuseppe Petacchi. She is living on board the Disco Volante and believes Largo is on a treasure hunt, although Largo makes her stay ashore while he and his partners hunt hidden treasure. After seducing her, Bond informs her that Largo killed her brother; Bond then recruits her to spy on Largo. Domino re-boards the Disco Volante with a Geiger counter to ascertain if the yacht is where the two nuclear bombs are hidden. However, she is discovered and Largo tortures her for information. Bond and Leiter alert the Thunderball war room of their suspicions of Largo and join the crew of the American nuclear submarine Manta as the ransom deadline nears. The Manta chases the Disco Volante to capture it and recover the bombs en route to the first target. An undersea battle ensues between the crews, while Bond fights Largo. Bond, now very weak from his efforts to disable the bombs, tries to get away, but Largo corners him in an underwater cave and easily overpowers him. Before Largo can finish Bond off Domino shoots him with a spear gun. The bombs are recovered and Bond is sent to hospital with Domino."
2658,Puppet on a Chain,thriller," Paul Sherman is a veteran Interpol Narcotics Bureau agent, used to independent action and blunt force tactics. He is assisted by two attractive female agents, one an experienced operative, the other a rookie. Sherman is in the Netherlands to break up a vicious drug smuggling ring that will kill ruthlessly to protect its operation. Before Sherman can even leave Schiphol Airport he has already witnessed the gunning down of his key contact, been knocked half-unconscious by an assassin, and tangled with local authorities. ""Puppet on a Chain"" has the standard twisting plot, local atmospherics, and sardonic dialogue that were Maclean's trademarks as a story-teller. Maclean allows his protagonist to have a bantering sarcastic relationship with his assistants that provides a streak of humor as the plot unfolds. Unfortunately, Sherman's relationship with his assistants is used against him. As his investigation is undermined by betrayal, leaving him constantly a half-step behind his adversaries, Sherman must resort to increasingly violent action to turn the tables. The story culminates in a violent struggle above the streets of Amsterdam to save the life of his surviving female operative."
2659,The Blunderer,thriller," For years, mild mannered lawyer Walter Stackhouse has suffered as a result of his neurotic, unstable wife Clara, whose constant alienation of all his friends, coupled with her penchant for overly dramatic gestures, has slowly driven him to hate her. After he becomes infatuated with the sweet and sensuous music teacher Ellie Briess, Clara jealously attempts suicide via an overdose, forcing him into her arms once again. However, he eventually stands his ground and demands a divorce. When Clara subsequently turns up dead, having fallen off a cliff during a bus trip to see her dying mother, Walter finds himself blundering around in the dark as the official investigation ensues. He admits that he stalked her bus in his car, whilst daydreaming about the possibility of killing her at the first stop, just as Melchior J. Kimmel, a 40-year-old bookshop manager, murdered his own domineering partner Helen, an unsolved crime that Walter had read of in the paper and grown fascinated by. Both men soon encounter the formidable, possibly psychotic Lieutenant Lawrence Corby, a police officer with savage ambition who is convinced of their guilt and believes that they are somehow in cahoots with one another. He soon begins encroaching on his suspects' lives, sowing the seeds of doubt into the minds of those they care for and even ferociously assaulting Kimmel."
2660,Circus,thriller," Bruno Wildermann of the Wrinfield Circus is the world's greatest trapeze artist, a clairvoyant with near-supernatural powers and an implacable enemy of the East German regime that arrested his family and murdered his wife. The CIA needs such a man for an impossible raid on the impregnable Lubylan Fortress where his family is held, to remove a dangerous weapons formula from a heavily guarded laboratory under cover of a traveling circus tour, Bruno prepares to return to his homeland. But before the journey even begins a murderer strikes twice. Somewhere in the circus there is a communist agent with orders to stop Bruno at any cost."
2661,The Confessor,thriller," Gabriel Allon is tasked to investigate the murder of scholar Benjamin Stern in Munich. The lack of Stern's computer and other documents indicate that he was not killed for being a Jew — but rather for his current research. But Stern kept his research secret, so that Allon must solve a homicide with almost no clues. Meanwhile, the death of Pope John Paul II has led to a conclave at the Vatican. The new pope, Pietro Lucchesi, who calls himself Paul VII, immediately angers powerful members of the Vatican by announcing his desire to speak at the synagogue of Rome. Opponents, such as Cardinal Marco Brindisi suspect that Paul VII intends to unearth candid and potentially damaging information about the role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust. Cardinal Brindisi is also the spiritual leader of a group called Crux Vera, a secret society established to defend the reputation and power of the Catholic Church at all costs. Roberto Pucci serves as the financial executive while Carlo Cassagrande, a former general within the Carabinieri, sees to security matters. The society enjoys considerable power within the Vatican. Because of their zealous commitment to the church, they vehemently oppose any policy that could darken the church’s reputation. Allon’s independent homicide investigation further complicates this dilemma, for the clues that he seeks will connect the Crux Vera to Stern's death. As a result, the brotherhood must eliminate everyone that might inform Allon of Stern's death and of the society’s existence. The search for a motive for Stern's death leads Allon to the village of Brenzone on Lake Garda in northern Italy. There he learns that Stern had visited the local Convent of the Sacred Heart and contacts its superior, Mother Vincenza. She affirms that Stern had met with her to research places where Jews sought refuge during the Holocaust and she shows Allon a basement where Jews purportedly stayed. However, an unidentified caller warns Allon that Mother Vincenza is lying and that the truth can only be found through Sister Regina and another person by the name of Martin Luther. Upon Allon’s departure, Mother Vincenza secretly informs Crux Vera of Allon’s visit. Stern’s murderer is a professional hitman from Switzerland named Eric ‘Leopard’ Lange, from whom Cassagrande commissions yet another murder. To Achille Bartoletti of the Italian police, Cassagrande paints Allon as a would-be papal assassin. Cassagrande thus gains control not only over the Vatican police but also over its Italian counterpart. Allon meets with Rabbi Zolli in Venice and encounters his daughter Chiara Zolli for the first time. Zolli explains that to his knowledge no Jews were harboured in the Brenzone abbey. In fact, evidence seems to suggest the opposite: that the church expedited the removal of Jews and later helped Nazi leaders escape judgement. Allon then travels to Vienna to inform his colleague Eli Lavon of his findings. Eli reveals that the Martin Luther in question was the Nazi director of the German Foreign Office, which collaborated with European governments to track down and remove Jews. According to Eli, the Nazis especially wished to maintain positive relations with the Vatican, for any denunciation of the Holocaust by a pope would have certainly made the Nazis’ work more difficult. Allon and Eli conclude that there must be some connection between Nazi leader Martin Luther and the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Upon discovering that Stern consulted with British journalist Peter Malone, Allon travels to London. Malone tells Allon that his recent book about Crux Vera had raised Stern's interest. Stern also hired Malone to track down two missing priests who were presumed dead and that the Roman police detective Alessio Rossi had been forced to close his files about their cases. Malone suggests that Crux Vera orchestrated Stern’s death to keep further details about the society’s identity and secrets from being published. Shortly after Allon leaves Malone, Eric Lange arrives and kills the journalist. As Lange leaves Malone’s flat, an Israeli surveillance technician gets a picture of the elusive Leopard, who soon consults with the professional terrorist Rashid Husseini, from whom he learns Allon’s true identity. Lange anticipates that Allon will seek out detective Alessio Rossi and hires Husseini to follow Rossi until Allon surfaces. Allon contacts Rossi in Rome, who surmises that the disappearance of the two missing priests points to a cover up within the Vatican. The arrival of a special police unit at Allon's hotel cuts short their discussion. Police shoot at the two fleeing men, killing Rossi and wounding Allon. Chiara Zolli rescues Allon and reveals that she also works for the Mossad and has been monitoring Allon throughout his investigation. The investigation of Stern’s death now comes to the attention of Shimon Pazner, the Mossad's katsa in Rome, who sees no other option but to deport him to Israel. However, Zolli feels that Allon must not abandon the investigation. They board Allon’s deportation boat, navigate to the Provence to meet with Antonia Huber, the daughter of Sister Regina Carcassi. The former delivers an account of a clandestine meeting between Nazi agents and members of the Vatican on the premises of the Brenzone abbey. In this meeting, members of the Curia assured the cooperation of the Vatican with Martin Luther’s removal of the Jews. Sister Regina, who witnessed the meeting, did not share her knowledge with anyone, but instead, wrote the account. Huber confides to Allon that she also gave a copy of the letter to Stern. The letter proves that the missing priests were present at the meeting, and Huber adds that her mother was later murdered. Allon feels certain that the series of disappearances and murders relates to the pact between Nazi and Curia elements. Back in Munich, Allon finds a Nazi document that links the Holy See to Martin Luther’s removal of the Jews. Both return to Vienna to meet with Eli and Shamron, Allon's superior at the Mossad. Shamron notifies Allon of the pope’s intention to speak at the synagogue of Rome and surmises that the pope’s mission and life is in danger from the same people that killed Stern. He urges Allon to personally share the documents with the pope and to safeguard the pope. Meanwhile Crux Vera has again hired hitman Eric Lange, this time with the purpose of killing the pope at the synagogue. Through his contacts in the art restoration community, Allon secures a private audience with Pope Paul VII. The pope attests to the verity of the documents and cites his own personal testimony, for he himself, like Sister Regina, had overheard the terrible meeting at the Convent of the Sacred Heart while living as an orphan in the abbey. The pope’s determination to speak at the synagogue stems from his conviction that the Catholic Church has many offenses to confess to the Jews. Paul VII ignores Allon’s admonition to cancel the appointment at the synagogue and instead suggests that Allon personally accompany him within the pope’s security team. Surprisingly, the pope’s speech at the synagogue proves uneventful. But at the very same time Cassagrande secretly renounces his role in the pope’s assassination and instead hires Lange to kill its instigator, Marco Brindisi. Cassagrande then commits suicide. Allon arrives a few seconds late at the crime scene but manages to pursue Lange on a motorbike. But in the narrow alleys of Trastevere Lange manages to escape, while Allon crashes on the street's pavement and tumbles hard. His wounds are critical and Paul VII himself provides him with the attention of the pope’s personal medical staff. When Allon recovers, it is clear that he and Chiara have developed romantic feelings for each other. Meanwhile, details of Brindisi and Cassagrande’s plot are leaked to the press. The story links Pucci to Crux Vera and eventually destroys his financial empire. Although the pope chooses to protect the church by denying the newspaper’s findings, he seizes the opportunity to rid the Curia of members of the Crux Vera. Shamron returns to Tel Aviv and creates Team Leopard, a task force devoted to identifying and killing Eric Lange. The story ends months later when Allon personally locates and kills Lange."
2662,The Street Lawyer,thriller," A homeless man calling himself ""Mister"" enters the offices of the Washington DC law firm Drake & Sweeney and takes many of the lawyers hostage. Although he is eventually shot by a police sniper and the hostages freed, one of the hostages, an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock, is concerned by what he has learned and feels compelled to investigate further. He finds his way to the 14th Street Legal Clinic, where he meets Mordecai Green, an advocate for the homeless, who asks him to help one night at a homeless shelter. As Brock's investigation deepens, he finds that his own employer was complicit in an illegal eviction, which eventually resulted in the death of a young homeless family. He takes a confidential file, intending to copy it, but is quickly suspected of its theft. Shocked by what he has found, Brock leaves his firm to take a poorly-paid position with the 14th Street Legal Clinic, which works to protect the rights of the homeless. This leads to his wife divorcing him. He admits one of his clients, Ruby, to a therapy class for drug-addicted women, and in the process meets Megan, the Brock's love interest. As Drake & Sweeney comes after Brock with theft and malpractice allegations, the Clinic launches a lawsuit against the law firm and its business partners. Terrified of the certain bad publicity, the matter is settled by mediation and the clinic receives a large payout to be shared with the victims of the eviction. Drake & Sweeney's head partner, deeply troubled by the events, offers to make pro bono staff available to assist the work of the Clinic in fighting for the rights of homeless people. The book ends with Brock taking a short vacation with Megan and Ruby, and them reflecting on their lives."
2663,Secret Army,thriller," Back in England, CHERUB campus has been established and Marc, PT, Paul and Rosie are in the first of two teams of six recruits currently being trained. Luc and Joel two new characters and the other two members of Group A. However, Henderson is warned that unless the first group of recruits pass a difficult training course, the programme will be shut down for good. While Group A learn to parachute and undertake a mission on British soil, Henderson must win the support of his commanding officers, while placating his unstable wife Joan."
2664,Hot Springs,thriller," Right after the official ceremony of receiving the Medal of Honor in United States capital Washington, D.C., 1stSgt Earl Swagger (retired) is being approached by district attorney of Polk County Fred Becker and ex-FBI agent D. A. Parker. The two men propose him a new job in Hot Springs, Arkansas to fight against organized crime and finally end the gambling and corruption of the city. Swagger's mission is to train twelve young policemen into a ""dream team"" and instruct them during operations in city casinos. The mission is to close down all gambling places, preferably without hurting people. If violence becomes necessary, they are outfitted with custom .45 automatics, Thompson submachine guns, and Browning automatic rifles. Soon after accepting the new job, Earl finds out that his wife June is pregnant. She doesn't support Earl's idea to work in Hot Springs and is afraid of him being killed. One of the ""dream team"" members, a young policeman Frenchy Short (who also has a critical but unseen role in Black Light) is a smart young man, who feels that he can be above and better than the others in the team. Several times he tries to do something better than the others but in the end fails. That way he once killed two men during an assassination on the casino. Luckily for him, these two men were known bandits and Frenchy became sort of a hero. Next time, while supposedly on vacation, Frenchy finds the central office of the gambling network and reveals his research results to Swagger and Parker. This results in Becker firing him from the team because of illegal way of gathering evidence (as Frenchy, in fact, broke in to a telephone office to search the maps). An enraged Short promptly goes over to the other side. For a little favour, he informs the city boss Owney Maddox of everything related to the ""dream team"". On the other hand, during the holiday Short's ""dream team"" partner Carlo Henderson (later seen in Dirty White Boys) is asked by D. A. Parker to investigate Swagger's past and find out, how is Swagger so familiar with Hot Springs's landscape. Swagger has shown knowledge of the city for several times, pointing out important nuances during the operations, however claims that he's never been to Hot Springs before. Parker suggests that Swagger has the death instinct, because Swagger always tries to get into action himself, without wearing the bulletproof vest. During the investigation, Henderson finds out that Swagger's brother was beaten a lot by their father, Charles Swagger, former sheriff of Polk County. Carlo's investigation ultimately leads him to the belief that Earl was responsible for his father's death. When he finally questions him on the subject, Earl reveals that he did not kill his father, but found him dying in Hot Springs. He took him out of there and faked the robbery that supposedly got him killed to protect his father's reputation (and his own as well). Sam Vincent, who at the time is assistant of attorney in Garland, Arkansas. briefly assists Henderson with the investigation. Vincent also appears in other Hunter's novels, such as Point of Impact and Black Light. In the meanwhile, the governor of Arkansas orders Parker to confiscate all heavy weaponry and bulletproof vests from the team, leaving them only with their handguns. Several members decide to leave, leaving only seven men. Short suggests Maddox to make a trap for the ""dream team"", which results in seven of them dying, including old D. A. Parker. The sole survivors are Earl Swagger and Carlo Henderson. They are then being arrested by the police and later let go home, with no money paid and with the condition, that they never, ever return to Hot Springs. Soon after, Maddox is being arrested with the accusation of owning stolen artwork. He's freed from prison by the crew of assassins who killed his men, but Swagger finds them and kills all of them in a savage protracted gunfight, including Owney Maddox. Swagger also finds out that Owney was the actual murderer of his father. In the meantime, Earl's wife, June is in hospital giving birth to their son, which doesn't appear to be easy because of an unusual position of the baby. The local doctor can't rescue both, the mother and the child, so Earl brings another doctor with him, who is black. The locals in the town, outraged that a black doctor has entered a white hospital and is assisting a white patient, form a lynch mob and approach the hospital. Earl, carrying three loaded .45's, confronts them and warns them that if a fight occurs, a lot of them will die. The mob backs off. June survives, and successfully gives birth to their son, Bob Lee Swagger."
2665,The Testament,thriller," Troy Phelan, an eccentric elderly billionaire, commits suicide minutes after leaving his vast fortune to an illegitimate daughter, Rachel Lane, instead of his six children by three marriages. His reason is revulsion over years of fighting with, and embarrassment from, his family, as well as their greed &mdash; much of which was due to his neglect of his children and multiple affairs (both personal and business). His lawyers are now tasked with protecting Troy's wishes as well as finding the heiress. Nate O'Riley, a high-powered litigation lawyer and now recovering alcoholic, is sent to Brazil, where Rachel is believed to be living as a missionary. While Nate is trying to find Rachel, Troy's family does everything in their power to contest the new will. They argue that although Troy was examined by three of the top psychiatrists in the nation, he was lacking sanity at the time of the new will. The journey into the Pantanal of South America by way of Corumbá nearly kills Nate, but finally he and his guide locate the tribe with which Rachel Lane is living. She refuses the legacy or anything connected with it. Nate is unable to convince her otherwise, and returns to the United States after contracting dengue fever from a mosquito. In the meantime, the ex-wives, children and respective lawyers continue attempting to destroy and disprove all evidence of Troy Phelan's sanity and even the will itself. They finally decide not to contest the will in court, fearing that their testimony during the deposition will further hurt their case. They also realize that two witnesses for the plaintiff are lying and would be torn to shreds by Nate should a trial ever take place. To settle the matter, Nate agrees that the relatives of Troy Phelan will be paid fifty million dollars each (minus lawyers' fees) to stop turning the will contest into a legal quagmire. When all is over, Nate returns to the jungle in order to get Rachel to sign off on the settlement, but when he arrives he learns that Rachel has died from malaria. She has, however, left instructions that the money be put into trust for the benefit of the indigenous peoples and that Nate will have control of the trust. The end of the book shows Nate riding off in a boat into the Pantanal, not caring if it took a month to get back to civilization."
2666,Snakehead,thriller," The story picks up moments before Ark Angel ended. Alex Rider lands in the South Pacific after falling from outer space. He is picked up by the USS Kitty Hawk, a U.S. Aircraft Carrier doubling as a ""hospital at sea"", where he recovers from his trip into space. He then travels to a military base owned by the Australian SAS and goes on a barbecue with a few of the soldiers, only to find himself on a war field by accident, which he manages to escape. He later learns that the war zone he stumbled onto was in fact a test of courage and stamina orchestrated by ASIS director Ethan Brooke to prove to their agents that Alex is as tough as his reputation suggests. Meanwhile, the criminal organization Scorpia is hired to assassinate eight celebrities who are hosting a ""Make Poverty History""-type conference on Reef Island, an island off the north-west coast of Australia, using a bomb (which they do not have possession of yet), at the same time as the G8 summit. The deaths must look accidental. Scorpia board member Winston Yu, the head of a powerful Asian snakehead gang, is charged with this mission. Two days later, Scorpia agents break into a Ministry of Defence weapons research centre and steal a prototype bomb codenamed ""Royal Blue"". Ethan Brooke, head of ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service) coerces Alex into helping him about by pairing him with agent Ash, who was his godfather and one of his father's best friends, to investigate the snakehead ring. Alex travels to Bangkok where Ash explains their plan; he and Alex will take on the identities of Afghan refugees who have paid the snakehead to smuggle them into Australia. In this way they can identify important members of the snakehead and find out how they smuggle the refugees. They are given disguises and sent to an area in Chinatown to await contact from the snakehead. Alex is taken to an illegal Muay Thai boxing arena by a member of the snakehead and put up against the snakehead's toughest fighter, Sunthorn. Alex wins by spitting water on Sunthorn. The unexpected victory incites a riot, but Alex manages to escape when someone (later revealed to be Ben Daniels) cuts the lights and attacks. The snakehead is still willing to take Ash and Alex to Australia. They go on to Jakarta, Indonesia, the next step of their journey. Despite a brush with Kopassus, the Indonesian special forces, in the snakehead's toy factory, Alex and Ash make it to a port, and discover a container ship, the Liberian Star. The two of them are separated and put into separate containers, which are loaded onto the ship. While the boat is at sea, Alex escapes by using one of his coins, and explores the ship. He eventually finds Royal Blue, and sees Major Yu scanning his fingerprints into a machine that will give him sole control over the bomb. Once Yu is gone, Alex scans his own fingerprints into Royal Blue then escapes the ship using another coin. After this Ash is caught and held hostage, forcing Alex to surrender. Alex is then knocked on the head and falls into unconsciousness and is captured by Yu. When Alex wakes up he is invited to tea with Yu before Alex is sent to a hospital in the Australian rainforest where he is to be used as a donor for illegal organ transplants. Alex escapes using his final exploding coin. After kayaking down the river and being shot at Alex attempts to contact MI6. Alex discovers that there is no battery in his watch, and shorts a circuit from a battery in his trainers and is rescued by MI6. Along with Ben Daniels, Alex is sent as part of an SAS team to the oil rig where Royal Blue will be detonated. On the oil rig, Alex and Ben confront Yu and his assistant; Ben shoots the assistant, who is revealed to be Ash; he had became a double agent for Scorpia following the botched mission to kill a drug dealer. Yu escapes and triggers the sinking of Royal Blue. Alex detonates it early and it harmlessly goes off. Yu is killed in the resulting shock wave due to his fragile bone structure, known as osteoporosis. At the end of the novel, Jack Starbright, Alex's housekeeper, calls a mysterious person over for dinner. Alex is surprised to see the guest is Sabina Pleasure, his old friend who moved to San Francisco after the events of Eagle Strike."
2667,The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision,thriller," One of the characters of The Celestine Prophecy disappears while exploring a forest in the Appalachian Mountains. The book discusses ideas about other dimensions, past lives, conception and birth, the passage through death to an afterlife, hell and heaven. It also illustrates the author's vision of human destiny and the notion that fear of the future is endangering Earth's spiritual renaissance. In the story, each individual soul is part of a larger ""Soul Group"", which shares the mission of helping the evolution of the cosmos. At times, a soul from a given Group incarnates itself, choosing the conditions of its life according to its needs, while the other souls observe. Each soul creates a reality around itself, which later brings consequences upon it. These consequences take the form of life and afterlife, which vary according to the person's choices. On Earth, people speak of the prophecy written in the Book of Revelation as if it were coming true. Many fear that it will come partly true, in that a dictator (an Antichrist) will arise, but will not be thrown down. To counteract this idea, which is damaging to the spiritual renaissance, the protagonists hold their own, Utopian ""World Vision"" to the exclusion of its opposite, until it dominates the opposite at the book's climax. All of these ideas are experienced as if real by the characters."
2668,The Fourth Protocol,thriller," On New Year's Eve 1986, professional thief Jim Rawlings breaks into the apartment of a senior civil servant, and unintentionally discovers stolen top secret documents. Although one of the most notorious crooks in London, he is enough of a patriot to send the documents, anonymously, to MI5 so that they might find the traitor. In Moscow, the British traitor Kim Philby drafts a memorandum for the General Secretary (Soviet president) stating that, if the Labour Party wins the next general election in the UK (scheduled for sometime in the subsequent eighteen months), the ""hard left"" of the party will oust the moderate, populist Neil Kinnock in favour of a radical new leader who will adopt a true Marxist-Leninist manifesto, including the expulsion of all American forces from England and the country's withdrawal from and repudiation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In conjunction with a GRU general, an academic named Krilov and a master strategist, Philby devises ""Plan Aurora"" to ensure a Labour victory by exploiting the party's support for unilateral disarmament—although it is noted that Krilov has come up with most of the plan's strategy. MI5 officer John Preston, who was exploring hard left infiltration of the Labour party, investigates the stolen documents and finds that they were leaked by George Berenson, a passionate anti-communist and supporter of South Africa. Berenson passed on the documents to Jan Marais, a man he believes is a South African diplomat, but is in fact a Russian false flag agent. SIS chief Sir Nigel Irvine confronts Berenson with the truth and ""turns him"", using him to pass disinformation to the KGB. Preston is being pushed towards retirement by a his MI5 superior, but is worried about his retirement finances, wanting custody of his son. As part of Plan Aurora, Russian agent Valeri Petrofsky arrives under deep cover in England and sets up home in Ipswich. From there, he travels around the country collecting packages from various couriers who have smuggled them into the country as harmless-looking artefacts. One of the couriers, disguised as a sailor, is attacked by neds in Glasgow and taken to hospital, where he commits suicide rather than submit to questioning. Preston investigates and finds three out-of-place looking metal discs in a tobacco tin in his gunny sack. He shows the discs to a metallurgist who identifies the outer two as aluminum but the other as polonium, a key element in the initiator of an atomic bomb. Preston reports his findings to his MI5 superior, who ignores them and has Preston taken off the politically embarrassing case. Sir Nigel Irvine, however, suspects that a major intelligence operation is under way, and has Preston work unofficially for him to search for other Russian couriers. At the same time, he uses Berenson to pass a deliberate piece of disinformation to the KGB. In Moscow, the director of operations for the KGB, General Karpov, discovers Aurora's existence. He identifies that the General Secretary is responsible, and blackmails Krilov into revealing the plan; in contravention of the Fourth Protocol to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a small atomic device is to be smuggled (via its component parts) into England, and be exploded near Bentwaters Air Force Base a week before the general election. Evidence will be left that the explosion was an accidental detonation of an American weapon, leading to a wave of anti-Americanism, support for unilateral disarmament and for the only major party committed to disarmament, the Labour Party. The day after they win the election, the hard left will take over and begin to dismantle the Western alliance in Europe. Meanwhile, Preston tries in vain to uncover other couriers connected to the operation. A month into the investigation, a bumbling Czech agent under the name Franz Winkler arrives at Heathrow with a forged passport and is followed to a house in Chesterfield. Preston's patience is rewarded when Petrofsky shows up to use the radio transmitter that is located there. He trails Petrofsky to his rented house, where the bomb has been assembled. An SAS team is called in to storm the house, and manage to wound Petrofsky before he can detonate the bomb. Against Preston's express wishes, the leader of the SAS team shoots the Russian agent in the head afterwards. Before dying Petrofsky manages to say one last word: “Philby”. Preston confronts Sir Nigel Irvine with his theory that the operation was deliberately blown by Philby. Philby did not know Petrofksy's location but instead, sent Franz Winkler, with an obviously forged passport, to the location of the transmitter, and ultimately, to Petrofsky. Sir Nigel admits to sabotaging the KGB's British operation by leaking disinformation through Berenson to General Karpov, that they were closing in on their suspect. In turn, Karpov (and not Philby) sent Winkler, sabotaging Plan Aurora. By sending Winkler, Karpov is thwarting a British publicity victory as Sir Nigel understood the implication, that Petrofsky must not be taken alive or exposed in the media. At the novel's end, Preston's MI5 superior and adversary is denied a senior leadership role due to his misjudgment in the case and subsequently resigns from MI5 altogether. Preston also resigns, but through Sir Nigel Irvine, finds lucrative private-sector employment that enables him to obtain full custody of his son. Marais is taken into custody by South African intelligence and Berenson's work is left unusable to the KGB, as Sir Nigel, using his own spy network, intends to plant the suspicion that Berenson was in fact a double agent, and so his information will be considered suspect."
2669,The Body,thriller," When a female archaeologist discovers an ancient skeleton of a man and an Aramaic inscription which reads Melek Yehudayai (King of the Jews), the Israel government invite Vatican to investigate the matter, as they suspect the body could be that of Jesus Christ. When one of the renowned archaeologist-priests of Vatican committed suicide as a man of broken faith, former soldier and Catholic priest Jim Folan is assigned to continue the investigation. Father Folan arrives in Israel to work with the reluctant archaeologist Sharon Golban, the mystery deepens with danger and intrigue. Suddenly they find that the Vatican, the United States, the Soviets, the Mossad and the mafia are after the truth. it:Il corpo (Sapir)"
2670,The Three Roads,thriller," Lieutenant Bret Taylor married his wife after knowing her only over a single overnight drinking binge while on shore leave during the war. His ship is bombed out of the water and he returns home to find his wife freshly murdered in the home he bought but had never seen. The shock of the two events sends him into a mental lapse, and he's in an asylum. The woman who loves him, a successful screenwriter, calls in a specialist who jogs his memory—and his sense of duty. Taylor hits the streets of Los Angeles, digging through his wife's lies and lovers in an attempt to avenge her murder. The book is a psychological thriller, with the main action being the unraveling of the story within Taylor's mind. The reader is denied information that other major characters obviously have throughout the whole novel, and is meanwhile treated to long passages of theories from the main character. The limited number of characters keeps the possible solutions to a minimum and the book is perhaps more straightforward than what makes a good mystery. Alfred A. Knopf, Jr., who functioned as an editing publisher, asked for revisions in what he considered a slow-paced novel. Macdonald cut '10,000 good words' and concentrated the action into four days. The 1985 movie Deadly Companion (or Double Negative) was based on this novel."
2671,A Cry in the Night,thriller," Jenny MacPartland, a divorced single mother, falls in love with artist Erich Kreuger while working for a New York gallery. They marry within a month and set up home on Erich's vast Minnesota ranch. For several months they are happily married, but Jenny begins to feel uneasy around her increasingly unstable husband. Within a year, their marriage is ripped apart by scandal and Jenny plans to return to New York City until she realizes that she is pregnant and completely dependent financially on Eric. Unsure of what to do, Jenny lives in fear and hides her growing baby from her husband as long as she physically can. As Jenny's pregnancy progresses, she discovers Eric's obsession with his dead mother, Caroline—the exact image of Jenny. As the facts begin to add up, Jenny realizes that she is married to and carrying the child of his. Soon after he finds out she is planning to leave him, he starts to stalk her. Leaves without her on a trip and takes her two children. Trying to find out the truth about what he is trying to do, she also finds out more than that, more in the past and soon..."
2672,The Snow Tiger,thriller," This story revolves around the protagonist, Ian Ballard, who works as a mine manager. He is the grandson of Ben Ballard, owner of the Ballard Holdings Limited, a giant financial group based in London specialising in mining operations around the world. Ben had four sons including Ian’s father. Ian’s father and Ben had fallen apart when Ian’s father left him to settle in the town of Hukahoronui (a.k.a. Huka) located in the South Island of New Zealand in the late 1930s. Ian was born in 1939 and his father died very shortly afterwards in an avalanche there. After his father’s death Ian and his mother continued to live in Huka until he is 16 years old. During this time he develops enmity with a local boy, Charlie Peterson, who is of his age group. It is revealed later in the story that when Ian was about 12 years old Charlie’s twin brother Alec had drowned in the town river. Since Ian was present at the riverside Charlie held Ian responsible for Alec’s death, even though in reality Ian was innocent. At the start of the story Ian is about 35 years old and is injured when he gets trapped in a small avalanche while skiing in Switzerland along with his friend Mike McGill (who is an expert in the study of snow). Ian injures a leg during that accident. While recuperating in London at his mother’s home he is visited by his grandfather, Ben, who offers him the job of managing director of a gold mine located in Huka which is indirectly controlled by Ballard Holdings. Although Ian’s initial reaction is to decline the offer (due to his history at Huka with the Petersons), eventually he decides to take up the offer keeping in mind that Ben had supported him during all his education. The story from this point onwards is told in a flashback format hinged around a courtroom government inquiry into the cause of an avalanche that took place in Huka. This avalanche occurred in July of the year Ian had arrived in Huka, and the courtroom proceedings take place in December of the same year. Witnesses are called in this inquiry who recall their experience before, during and after the avalanche and the story is presented through these explanations, at the same time alternating between June/July and December. Ian arrived in Huka in June and discovers that the gold mine was barely making profit. Moreover he was confronted by the Peterson brothers (John, Eric and Charlie) who have grown up with the small town and now own a big supermarket and hotel and are quite influential in the town council. Ian noticed that Huka had changed a lot since he last visited this place – the town had grown bigger and the mountain slopes near the town were stripped of the tree cover and now lay bare covered completely with snow. Finding himself alone in this place Ian invites Mike McGill (who is planning to go to Antarctica soon) to visit him in Huka for a little time. As soon as McGill arrives in Huka he is extremely worried by several things and feels that the town is in imminent danger of being destroyed by an avalanche. However both the mine management (who distrust Ian due to his age) and the town council (which is controlled by the Peterson brothers and they too distrust Ian) refuse to believe anything that Ian and McGill tell them about the danger from an avalanche. In spite of this, McGill takes samples of snow from the nearby mountain slopes and concludes that the danger is very real and imminent. As soon as he tries to convey this to the outside (New Zealand authorities in Christchurch) the town is cut off from the outside when the road to the town is blocked by snow and the electricity and telephone wires are cut off by a very minor avalanche. After witnessing these events John and Eric Peterson begin to believe what McGill told them and start to mobilise the town resources to prepare for an avalanche. While the whole town is making preparations the avalanche hits them and about 50 people die as a result. During the government inquiry some surprising evidence is presented which shows that Charlie Peterson had actually deliberately started the avalanche by skiing very aggressively at the top of the mountain slopes. His motive was to destroy the gold mine ad extract revenge on Ian. He is immediately arrested and faces charges for the deaths of several people (including his brother John) in the avalanche. Also, during the hearings in December Ian receives the news that his grandfather (Ben) had died and had left the control of Ballard Holdings in Ian’s hand which makes him a very rich person. Also, he had been romantically linked to Liz Peterson (sister of the Petersons) and marries her at the end, once she learns of Charlie’s behaviour."
2673,The Big Bad Wolf,thriller," Dr. Alex Cross is in the middle of his training at the FBI when he is assigned to work on a kidnapping case. A federal judge's wife has been kidnapped, and Dr. Cross discovers that her kidnapping fits the pattern of other recent kidnappings. A Russian mobster known as ""The Wolf"" has been kidnapping people and selling them into sexual slavery. In addition to the judge's wife, his subordinates also kidnap a housewife, and several male college students for clients. Though Cross is able to identify The Wolf as a key player in the human trafficking ring, his true identity and whereabouts remain a mystery. The only method of contacting him is through a high-tech, secure website, and any person the FBI manages to take into custody ends up dead at the hands of a mole. Eventually, with the assistance of the New York City Police Department, Central Intelligence Agency, Secret Service, and the Russian government, the FBI is able to arrest a man by the name of Andrei Prokopev. Though the FBI believes him to be The Wolf, it is revealed at the very end of the novel that The Wolf is, in fact, still at large."
2674,Marazan,thriller," Philip Stenning is a commercial pilot, trained during the First World War. After his engine fails, he crashes and is rescued by an escaped convict, Denis Compton, who turns out to have been framed for embezzlement by his Italian half-brother, Baron Rodrigo Mattani, who is smuggling drugs into England. The story tells how Stenning plays a key role in breaking that drug ring. It involves episodes characteristic of Shute: flying, small boat sailing, and a love story. Stenning was a major character in Shute's first (unpublished) novel Stephen Morris. Stenning also crops up as a comparatively minor character in Shute's next two novels So Disdained (1928) and Lonely Road (1932)."
2675,The Night of Wenceslas,thriller," Nicolas is a 24-year-old Londoner, a witty wastrel and the novel's archetypal anti-hero. He hates his job in his late father's glass-making business, where he works under the odious Nimek in anticipation of making full partner one day. He dreams of inheriting untold riches from his Uncle Bela in Vancouver, which will put an end to his current servitude. His bossy Irish girlfriend Maura continually presses him to make something of himself. His one true love is his car, which he bought on an impulse, and its maintenance keeps him in permanent hock to the garage owner ""Ratface"" Ricketts. A note arrives from a lawyer called Stephen Cunliffe, stating that his Uncle Bela has died in Canada and left him a fortune. He goes to see Cunliffe, who forwards him a sum of £200 to tide him over until such time as he can begin to enjoy the fruits of his new estate. However, Nicolas manages to spend this allowance in a matter of days, and is soon back at Cunliffe's office to arrange a more stable income stream. However, Cunliffe now declares that Uncle Bela is very much alive, that he, Cunliffe, is in fact a moneylender, and that Nicolas owes him £200, with the MG as security. The distraught Nicolas is told that he can discharge his debt if he is willing to carry out a simple assignment in Prague. He is to bring back certain formulae for glass-making processes from a glass factory that used to belong to Pavelka, an associate of Cunliffe's who also happens to have been a wrestler in the past. After much cogitation, Nicolas travels to Prague. It is the city of his childhood, and he stays in a plush hotel on Wenceslas Square. He meets up with various bigwigs in the Czech glass-making industry, and is escorted by the statuesque Vlasta Simenova."
2676,Time to Hunt,thriller," It begins about four or five years after the events in Black Light. Bob Lee's daughter is now around 8, and he owns a horse ranch, where he cares for horses. He has been slipping into a deep depression due to his inability to properly support his family. Alienating himself from his wife and child, they leave for a morning horseback ride with a friend from another ranch. His wife is shot and nearly killed by a sniper, and the friend is killed. Bob assumes that the man was mistaken for him, and killed in an attempt to kill Bob Lee. This act plunges him back into a world of violence and intrigue. While his wife recuperates, he attempts to unravel the secrets behind the assault. This book has a dual plot, with the present plot, dealing with Bob's investigation into his wife's attempted murder. The second plot is set in the past, beginning on a Marine Corps base in the late 1960s or early 1970s. A young Donny Fenn is the squad leader of a group of Marines who perform the state funeral services for Marines killed in the Vietnam War, which is raging across the world. Donny is brought before his superiors and ordered to follow one of his men, who is suspected of sympathizing with peace demonstrators who are led by a charismatic man named Trig Carter. In turn, Trig is suspected of having ties to an extremist group. Incidentally, Donny's girlfriend, Julie, is involved with this group of war protestors. Donny discovers that his sympathies lie closer to Trig's friends, and rather than rat out his own man, Donny defies naval investigators, buying a one-way ticket to the front lines of the Vietnam war. Just before being shipped out, his commanding officer who admired Donny's courage, gives him enough money to run off with Julie and marry. Donny meets up with Bob Lee Swagger, a Marine Sniper at the top of his game, joining him as Bob Lee's new spotter. Scourge of the North Vietnamese army, there is already a sizeable bounty on Bob Lee's head, but after an exciting firefight to rescue an overwhelmed outpost, a vengeful NVA Colonel calls out the big gun: Solaratov, a Russian sniper who is the only man alive who could possibly equal Bob Lee Swagger. Donny is getting extremely short (close to going home). On Donny's last day in Vietnam, a day he should spend completing paperwork that will send him home, he makes the fateful decision to go on one last reconnaissance with Bob Lee. Solaratov's bullet ends both Bob Lee's career in the Marine Corps and Donny Fenn's life. Back in the present, Bob Lee is unravelling the tapestry of lies that have buried the past all these years and discovers that there may be more to Donny's death than he originally thought."
2677,Persuader,thriller," The book is written in the first person, only the second Jack Reacher novel to be treated in this fashion. It becomes apparent that the book is written this way to conceal from the reader the fact that the original 'kidnap' of a teenage boy is merely a setup. Jack Reacher is actually working with the DEA in order to bring down the boy's father; this is eventually accomplished after the obligatory gunfire and mayhem have taken place. Lee Child presents these well, with Reacher initially on the back foot, but gaining the upper hand due to planning, foresight and not a little luck. The penultimate climactic battle between Reacher and a steroid-enhanced giant is a masterpiece in tension, as Reacher encounters a foe who is capable of treating him as he treats most ordinary opponents."
2678,A Stranger Is Watching,thriller," The main characters in the novel are Steve Peterson, whose wife Nina was murdered two years before, his six-year-old son Neil, who witnessed the murder, and Sharon Martin, a young journalist who befriends them both. The novel opens as Steve and Sharon debate capital punishment. A young man named Ronald Thompson has been sentenced to death for Nina's murder. Sharon is against the death penalty and tries to save Thompson. Unknown to them, Thompson is actually innocent. The real killer is a psychopath named August Rommel Taggart, Arty for short. He calls himself Foxy because General Rommel was called the desert fox. He kidnaps Sharon and Neil, hiding them under New York's famed Grand Central Station. The rest of the novel describes the race against time to save the three innocent victims."
2679,The Three Hostages,thriller," It is some time after the war, and Sir Richard Hannay is living in rural tranquility, having bought Fosse Manor and married Mary Lamington (both featured in Mr Standfast); they have a small son, named Peter John. Hannay's new friend, local doctor Tom Greenslade, a well-travelled and learned man, talks ominously one night of psychology, the subconscious, thrillers and post-war society. Later, Dick reads a letter from his old boss Sir Walter Bullivant, warning him that he will soon be asked to undertake another job for the country. Next day, Julius Victor visits Hannay and tells him his daughter Adela has been kidnapped and held hostage, asking Hannay to help find her. Later that day, MacGillivray visits and tells Hannay of a sinister criminal organisation, controlling the mass of disturbed and disordered minds left over from the Great War, and tracked by the police forces of the world. Faced with capture, the leaders had taken three hostages, Victor's daughter, an aristocratic student and a young boy, sending each of their families a mysterious poem to prove the kidnappings were linked. He also explains that they have only until June to round up the gang, and that the hostages must be safe by then. Hannay is adamant that he cannot help, but his third visitor that day, Sir Arthur Warcliff, tells him about his missing son, and Hannay is drawn into the chase. That night, he lies awake pondering the lines of doggerel sent to the families, and connects them to something Greenslade had said recently. Next day he tells Greenslade all, and bids him remember where he drew his phrases, two of which, concerning a blind woman spinning and a barn in Norway, matched verses from the poem, while the third in Greenslade's speech referred to a curiosity shop run by an elderly Jew, which seems to bear no correspondence to the poem's reference to the ""Fields of Eden"". Greenslade is baffled, but Hannay recalls a hymn mentioning the Fields of Eden, which Greenslade connects with his vague memories. Another day's pondering gets them no closer, until Hannay breaks his pipe. Suddenly Greenslade remembers an evening in a country pub, where a man named Medina had broken his pipe as he hummed the tune, and at the same meeting mentioned the ideas echoed in the poem. Hannay heads to London to meet Macgillivray, and briefly runs into his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot. Macgillivray briefs him on their enemies, and soon after Hannay meets with Medina, a handsome and accomplished man who Hannay finds he likes a lot, but doesn't yet take into his confidence. He sees Sandy again, who is suspicious of Medina, and the three attend a meeting of an elite dining club, where something Medina says affects Sandy extremely - he becomes rude and angry, and tries to drag Hannay away, but Hannay refuses and walks home with Medina. They stop at Medina's house for a pipe, and there Hannay has a strange dreamlike experience of which he remembers little, only later realising that Medina attempted to hypnotise him and that he somehow resisted. He wakes next day feeling ill, and visits a Doctor Newhover, whose name was planted in his head and who refers him on to a masseuse named Madame Breda, in whose house he also sees a strange young girl. He is again hypnotised, by unseen hands and a strange voice, and again resists. He later reports his experiences to Sandy, who urges him to watch Medina closely and makes plans to investigate the house of the masseuse, and then to take his researches to Europe. For some time Hannay hangs around Medina, one day attending a secret dance-hall with his friend Archie Roylance, where he sees a beautiful girl with dead eyes led away by Medina's suspicious butler, but learns little. He visits Newhover again, and learns that he plans to head to Norway. At last, visiting Medina, he is taken to the library where he was first hypnotized, and introduced to Medina's mother, a striking, frightening, blind old woman. He is again hypnotised, and made to do demeaning tasks, until they are sure he is under their control. He hears of Medina's plans to meet with one Kharama, and learns the gang plans to break up by midsummer, before he faints from exhaustion. Hannay arranges with his friend Archie Roylance to be flown home from Norway when the time comes, and is taken to meet Kharama, an impressive but sinister Indian who discusses hypnotism with Medina. Later, he gets a note from Sandy, arranging a meeting. Telling Medina he is ill and needs a week's rest, he fixes a rendezvous with Roylance and heads home to Fosse, where he sets up a pretence of being in his sickbed. He meets Sandy and they share what they have found, and then slips onto the boat taking Dr Newhover to Norway. Arriving there, he sees Newhover head off by boat, and follows at a discreet distance. Knowing Newhover's heading, he leaves his boat at the village before, bidding the pilot to await his return, and heads overland to Merdal. There, not wishing to be seen at the inn by Newhover, he approaches some locals to find lodging, and is amazed to meet Herr Gaudian, a German engineer he met during the events of Greenmantle. Gaudian reveals he knows Newhover, in truth a former German agent, and agrees to help Hannay. Hannay takes lodgings alongside Gaudian, and learns of a farm in the hills leased to an Englishman ; next day they watch Newhover travel up there, and the man he replaces head down to the village. They spy out the place, but learn little until the second night, when Hannay, heading to the farm, sees Newhover hurrying anxiously down the hill ; he heads into the scrub to avoid being seen, and comes across someone scrambling through the bushes. The man falls into a stream, and Hannay rescues him, and recognises Lord Mercot, one of the hostages. They feed and bathe him, and hear his broken story of hypnotised abduction, but then must persuade him to return to his captors, until such time as the other hostages can be found, promising Gaudian will be keeping an eye. The brave boy heads back to his prison, and Hannay heads for his rendezvous with Archie Roylance. Despite the weather, he makes it safe back to England, and returns to London and Medina. He spends some days with Medina, including another meeting with Kharama, to little avail, but on hearing the hymn mentioned by Greenslade at the start of his quest he is inspired to investigate London for a place suggesting the ""Fields of Eden"", calling in his old boss Bullivant, an expert on old London, to help. They find mention of a pleasure-resort of that name, and Hannay travels to where it stood and finds an antique shop, clearly a front. He arranges a housebreaking expert to let him in by night, and explores, finding the shop backs on to a larger and newer house; he sees a man there he recognises from his time under hypnosis at Medina's, and following the sound of music finds himself in a room overlooking the dance club where he saw Odell, Medina's butler. To his shock, he sees his old friend Turpin there, dancing with his own wife Mary. He meets Mary later at her aunts' house, and learns she has been working for Sandy, who also knows about the Fields of Eden; they have found the missing girl, Adela Victor, disguised as one of the dancers at the club, but are no closer to finding the little boy. Hannay is invited to stay at Medina's house, but before he moves there he hears from Mary that Archie Roylance has been to the club, been upset by Odell's treatment of the girl and revealed Turpin's identity. Hannay visits Roylance in hospital, where he was recovering from having been beaten by Odell, but Turpin has disappeared - Hannay later learns he was taken, part-hypnotised by Kharama, to a strange house; there Turpin shakes off his paralysis, sees his girl in the house, and plays quiet for a time. Hannay moves in with Medina, whose cool facade has weakened somewhat, and hears that Sandy has been spotted in London. For a week he stays at the house, under close scrutiny, but learns little until he gets a telegram from Gaudian, saying Mercot and his captors have fought and Gaudian has had to lock them all up, bringing Mercot home himself. Tom Greenslade visits, with a message from Mary saying Turpin and Adela Victor are safe. Hannay discovers that Medina's plans to liquidate his gang have been brought forward, and manages to warn Mary. We learn in an aside of a dowdy but somehow elegant district visitor coming to the house of Madame Breda in Palmyra Square, befriending the maid but being warned off by her mistress. Hannay continues to cling to Medina, until at last Greenslade visits again, and instructs Hannay to come to the dance club the following night, leaving a door to Medina's unlocked, while Mercot travels home by train and Turpin, having awakened Adela from her trance, is held in the mysterious house while she sets off once more for the club, and around Britain, Europe and the world the police close in on a variety of people and places. Sandy briefly drops in on Hannay and Medina at a dinner of the Thursday Club, from where Hannay goes to the dance club and sees the staff rounded up and Turpin soundly beat Odell; Mary visits Madame Breda once more, leaving with a bundle in her arms and police swarming the house behind her; Hannay returns to Medina's house, and reveals he knows all, pleading with Medina to hand over the boy. Despite the upset to his plans, Medina is cool, but shaken somewhat when Kharama enters and reveals himself as none other than Sandy Arbuthnot, who has looked after Turpin and Adela at Medina's request, and now threatens to expose him if he refuses to heal the child. Lavater, an old friend of Sandy long lost to Medina, is discovered to be Medina's private secretary, and to hold many secrets, but still Medina holds out. Mary enters with the strange little girl from Madame Breda's house; she has become a powerful figure of wrath, and threatens to disfigure vain Medina if he does not cure the child; he gives in, restores the boy's mind, and they return him to his joyous father. Later, Hannay and Mary join Adela, Turpin, Mercot, and Gaudian in celebration. After a restful spell in the country, Sandy warns Hannay that Medina, never accused of any crimes, may be out for revenge, and advises him to head to Scotland for a spell. Soon he, Mary, their son and Doctor Greenslade are in the Scottish Highlands for the deerstalking season. Soon Archie arrives with news that Medina is at a neighbouring lodge, and Hannay prepares for a showdown. After a long and complex stalk through the crags, Hannay, with no bullets, climbs a dangerous chimney, only to have his hand shot by Medina; he struggles to the top, and Medina follows, but takes a bad turn and gets stuck. He loses his gun, and Hannay lowers a rope to him, but the exhausted Medina is too much for one-handed Hannay to raise up, and lowering him wears through the rope until it breaks, dropping Medina to his death. Hannay falls back exhausted, but is found alive and safe next day."
2680,Dead and Alive,thriller," Deucalion, the legendary monster, is a heroic figure dedicated to battling the evil that gave him life. The megalomaniacal Victor Helios has unleashed his engineered killers on modern-day New Orleans. Detectives Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison are Deucalion's all-too-human partners trying to end the reign of terror of Helios's killers."
2681,Trusted Like the Fox,thriller," The story is based in the World War II era, when Edwin Cushmann, political double crosser, changes his identity to David Ellis to escape the Allied Forces. He eventually meets a deaf girl named Grace Clark, who is trying hard to survive, whom he uses for protection, and both run to London, where Cushmann fractures his leg, and is left at the mercy of Grace, who cares for him like her own. Soon both come across a gentleman stranger by name Richard Crane, who shelters them in his house and does too many things for them, which leaves Grace highly impressed, even to the extent of believing that Crane is in love with her, but Cushmann highly suspicious. Meanwhile the police are after Cushmann, and a girl who is believed to be with him. The local inspector James gets suspicious about Cushmann being in London, and begins to investigate with his subordinate Rogers. The rest of the story is about what happens to the three main characters."
2682,Run Before the Wind,thriller," Will Lee ran from a life of Southern wealth and privilege to spend a peaceful summer on the coast of Ireland. But there is no peace in this beautiful, troubled land. Restless and dissatisfied, Will dreams of shipbuilding and sailing on crystal-blue waters. But an explosion of senseless violence is dragging the young American drifter into a lethal game of terror and revenge. For the fires of hatred rage unchecked in this place of lush, rolling hills and deadly secrets. Now Will Lee must run for his life from a bloody past that is not his own-and he will find no sanctuary on the rolling waves of the Irish sea. A breathtaking novel of suspense and high-adventure by New York Times bestselling author Stuart Woods."
2683,The Dark Crusader,thriller," Bentall, a British physicist deployed for counterespionage duties, is suddenly recalled to London from a mission in Turkey involving the theft of information about British missiles. Eight top scientists have disappeared, after responding to advertisements that have been placed in newspapers, for top level scientists in different fields of research, all offering very attractive rates of pay, but with the precondition that all applicants to be married with no children. All eight scientists disappear either in Australia, or en route there. Bentall is paired with Marie Hopeman, another agent posing as his wife. No James Bond, Bentall is much the stumbling self-deprecating fool who gets things wrong from the start, and ends up in the position that the villains want him. Bentall and Hopeman are kidnapped at an unscheduled stop in Fiji, but escape to Island Vardu a remote coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Island Vardu is currently home to Professor Witherspoon, an archaeologist of some note, but with no radio transmitter or boat scheduled to arrive for three weeks. But there is something about Dr Witherspoon that Bentall finds suspicious. Later Bentall discovers that Witherspoon is actually LeClerc, the mastermind behind a plot to steal a British missile—the Dark Crusader, for an unnamed foreign power. The plot becomes even more complicated when Bentall and Hopeman find themselves falling in love even as they try to unravel a plot to steal highly classified missile technology. However, typically for MacLean, neither the female agent, nor the situation is quite as it seems. The novel really has two endings, one in which Bentall must chose between saving Hopeman and preventing the theft of the missile, and a second in which Bentall finally unravels the last details of the plot with his boss. Although not a standard literary device, the double ending packs considerable emotional punch."
2684,The Golden Egg,thriller," Two lovers, Rex Hofman and Saskia Ehlvest, have traveled to France for a bicycling vacation. One night they have a minor argument but quickly make up, and Rex pulls over at a convenience store to refuel. He and Saskia bury coins to mark the spot, then she goes into the station to buy drinks and is never seen again. Eight years later he is still haunted by her disappearance. He is now in a relationship with another woman named Lieneke, who is both sympathetic to, and frustrated by, the hold that Saskia's disappearance has over him. Despite her misgivings, however, they become engaged. It is at this point that the reader is introduced to Raymond Lemorne, the man responsible for whatever happened to Saskia. The novella reveals that Lemorne once saved a young girl from drowning; having proven to himself that he is capable of great goodness, Raymond then begins to wonder if he is capable of an act of pure evil. He then comes up with an idea to murder someone in the most horrible fashion he can imagine. The book follows his meticulous preparations, and his long months of trying to find a suitable victim. This section of the novella ends with him abducting Saskia, but we are still not told what happens to her, though the book does provide clues. At this point the narrative switches back to Rex. His obsession with discovering what happened to Saskia has grown to such an extreme that he has taken out a large loan to post advertisements in papers throughout France, hoping that someone might be able to provide him with information. His quest has also driven a wedge into his relationship with Lieneke. One night he is approached by Lemorne, who reveals that he is the one who abducted Saskia, and in a bizarre show of sympathy he offers to satisfy Rex's determination to discover her ultimate fate, but only if Rex agrees to undergo the same ordeal that Saskia suffered. After a long discussion between the two men, Rex agrees to Lemorne's proposal, and proceeds to drink a cup of coffee laced with a sedative. He awakens sometime later to find himself buried alive, and suffocates while imagining himself finally to be reunited with Saskia. In the epilogue it is revealed that several newspapers commented upon Rex's mysterious disappearance and its eerie similarity to Saskia's. Their fates are never discovered; it is as if they vanished from the face of the earth."
2685,Rainbow Six,thriller," Central Intelligence Agency operatives John Clark and Domingo Chavez join Special Air Service (SAS) officer Alistair Stanley in forming an elite multinational counter-terrorist unit known as Rainbow, based in Hereford, England. The unit consists of a highly effective and cohesive pair of operational squads, supplemented by intelligence and technological experts from the SAS. Clark is the commanding officer, while Chavez leads one of the two squads. Not long after the establishment of Rainbow, a bank in Bern, Switzerland, becomes the site of a hostage situation, eventually determined to be led by wanted terrorist Ernst Model. In an early and desperate show of resolve, the terrorists kill one of the hostages, leading the Swiss government to seek help from Rainbow. Chavez's Team-2 is deployed to the scene and, disguised as policemen, is able to successfully breach the bank and kill the terrorists with no further loss of civilian lives. Several weeks later, Chavez is deployed to Austria, where a group of left-wing German terrorists have taken over the schloss of a wealthy Austrian businessman, Erwin Ostermann, in order to obtain imaginary ""special access codes"" to the international trading markets. Through careful planning and negotiating, the terrorists are persuaded to take their hostages out to a waiting helicopter, presumably to make their getaway. On their way to the helicopter, Rainbow's disguised shooters ambush and kill them. Soon afterward, even more terrorists take over a Spanish theme park, demanding the release of Carlos the Jackal in exchange for the thirty-five children they have taken hostage. Due to the size and scope of the operation, Rainbow deploys both of its squads. During the stand-off, Rainbow is unable to prevent the terrorists' execution of a terminally ill Dutch girl. The squads manage to eliminate the terrorists without further loss of innocent life. Clark and his colleagues become suspicious about this flurry of activity from older terrorists. Unbeknownst to them, radical eco-terrorists from a biotechnology firm called the Horizon Corporation have orchestrated the previous attacks, having hired ex-KGB officer Dimitriy Popov to foment the incidents. The increase in terror attacks helps their security firm land a contract during the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. From within the Olympic security apparatus, they plan to launch a sophisticated bioweapon attack intended to wipe out the majority of the human race. Upon learning about Rainbow, Popov directs members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to take over a local hospital in Hereford near Rainbow's base, take Clark and Chavez's wives hostage, and ambush one of Rainbow's squads. Rainbow and the SAS retake the hospital, capturing some of the terrorists. Interrogation reveals Popov's involvement in instigating the attack. Now the focus of a manhunt, Popov is kept hidden at Horizon's secret base in Kansas. Upon learning about the planned Olympic attack, an appalled Popov escapes the compound and contacts Clark. Fortunately, Chavez is present at the Olympics as a security consultant and manages to thwart the attack. Their plans destroyed, the eco-terrorists retreat to their refuge deep in the Brazilian rain forest, hoping to negotiate a deal to return to the United States. Clark, knowing that they may never be put on trial, tracks down the Brazilian hideout and deploys Rainbow to the location. After Rainbow defeats the eco-terrorists' militia force and destroys their facility and supplies, Clark has the survivors stripped naked and left to die, taunting them to ""reconnect with nature."" For his critical assistance, Popov is not charged for his role in the attacks. The Horizon Corporation continues as a legitimate pharmaceutical corporation, without their CEO and the other employees involved in the never-revealed plot."
2686,Eagle Strike,thriller," While on holiday in the South of France with his friend Sabina Pleasure, Alex Rider runs into the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, who killed Alex's uncle in the first novel Stormbreaker. When the Pleasures' holiday home explodes in a supposed gas leak, Alex suspects Yassen is involved and sneaks onto his yacht. Yassen captures him and enters him in a bullfight as punishment. After escaping, Alex calls a number he found on Yassen's mobile phone and hears pop star Damian Cray's voice. He tells MI6 about this, but Alan Blunt refuses to follow up on it as he believes it would be politically unwise if the press ever found out that MI6 was investigating Cray. Alex tells Sabina about his double life as a spy, but she does not believe him and refuses to speak with him. Alex meets a photographer named Marc Antonio (Le' Bis""Tro) in Paris; he reveals that Sabina's father was investigating Cray, and Antonio is killed shortly afterwards by an assassin. Alex goes to Cray Industries in Amsterdam, where he hears Yassen and Cray conversing about a flash drive. Cray catches Alex as he tries to sneak away and puts him in a real-life version of Feathered Serpent, a new video game developed by Cray Software Industries (the game was just a cover for getting a huge factory to develop a flash drive). Alex escapes and steals Cray's flash drive. In response, Cray kidnaps Sabina and holds her for ransom. Alex attempts to force Cray to release Sabina, but Cray outmaneuvers him and forces Alex to hand over the flash drive. Sabina is released and apoligizes to Alex for not believing him. Cray reveals his plan, code-named ""Eagle Strike"": he will board Air Force One and use its missile room to launch nuclear missiles at major drug-running countries to eradicate the drug trade. Sabina and Alex are locked in a room together, Sabina explains then when she first saw Cray when he kidnapped her, she knew Alex was right the whole time and should have believed him, Alex admits he had the stupid mistake of going after Cray which lead to Sabina's capture, the two reconcile. Yassen comes in and forces the two to put on nuclear-proof suits. After creating a diversion using a plane full of fake nerve gas, he, Yassen, Alex, and Sabina sneak aboard Air Force One at Heathrow Airport. Cray plugs in the flash drive and activates the missiles. He then orders Yassen to kill Alex and Sabina; upon Yassen's refusal, Cray shoots Yassen and then Alex, Sabina, flying into a rage, attacks him. But before she is almost killed, Alex, saved by a bulletproof jersey (given to him by Mr. Smithers), gets up and fights Cray. Eventually, the two manage to push Cray out of the plane, along with a food service cart used by Sabina. He is then sucked into the engine and shredded to pieces. The food cart getting sucked into the engine results in the engine's destruction, causing the plane to lose control. Cray's pilot Henryk attempts to abort the plane take-off, but, as the plane has already reached V1 speed, he cannot do so safely and crashes the plane off the runway, breaking his neck in the process. Alex and Sabina survive the crash and Sabina presses a self-destruct button to destroy the missiles. As he lays dying , Yassen tells Alex that Alex's Dad, worked with him as an assassin and that if he does not believe him, to go to Venice and find something called ""Scorpia"", which is later revealed in the subsequent novel as an evil intelligence company. Alex is stunned at this revelation. At the end of the novel, Sabina tells Alex that she will be moving to San Francisco and then they share a kiss underneath a bridge."
2687,CHERUB: Man Vs. Beast,thriller," The book starts with a 14 year old boy called Andy Pierce witnessing his mother getting assaulted by two masked men who are working for the Animal Freedom Militia. The book then skips to Kerry being annoyed by her boyfriend, James. James goes into his room and he is met by his sister Lauren. She asks him to help her and her best friend Bethany to sneak into the basic training compound to give Bethany's brother, Jake, and Lauren's crush, Rat, some food. James refuses but Lauren blackmails him by threatening to tell Kerry about him cheating on her during a mission a year before. James joins the girls on the mission to get the food to the trainees. All goes fine but Mac watches them on the back up CCTV and they get caught. James is not punished for being blackmailed and he, Lauren and Kyle and sent on a mission to bring down the AFM (Animal Freedom Militia). Lauren is stuck with the ex-con while he meets up with his old animal rights protest group. They get invited to rescuing dozens of dogs from the compound which were supposed to be sold onto the testing company. All goes well in the rescue, but the rescuers were overwhelmed because many more dogs were rescued than they thought. This chapter ends with Lauren saving a puppy from getting run over by Zara's car. They end up keeping the dog in the chairwoman's house. Lauren always visits the puppy, who was called Meatball (due to Lauren being a vegetarian). Together James, Lauren and Kyle succeed in their mission and return home. On the mission Lauren becomes a vegetarian and at the end James puts meat in her bag on the plane to annoy her. Zara Asker becomes chairman succeeding Dr. McAfferty who retires."
2688,Hornet Flight,thriller," By late June 1941, the United Kingdom alone stood against Nazi Germany on the Western Front. In the East, the Russian Army was feeling the full force of Operation Barbarossa. To show solidarity among the unlikely capitalist-communist Alliance, Winston Churchill and Bomber Command planned a massive aerial bombardment of German territories. Unfortunately and inexplicably, Bomber Command's planes were getting shot down in record numbers. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Danish schoolboy Harald Olufsen grows increasingly dissatisfied with his country's cooperation with the German invaders. His resentment of the Wehrmacht leads him to discover the truth about a hidden military installation, a truth known to only a select few in the Nazi organization. Running from the German authorities and an old family enemy, Copenhagen police detective Peter Flemming, Harald knows that he must get to Britain. But to do so in time to save the bombers, Harald has one option: flight."
2689,Scorpia,thriller," In a secret meeting room of criminal organization Scorpia, Julia Rothman briefs her colleagues on their latest project, codenamed ""Invisible Sword."" It is a plan to murder children aged 12 - 14 in Great Britain and destroy the friendly relations between the United States and the United Kingdom. "" Then Alex figures out his parents are not dead Alex Rider is on a trip with his friend Tom Harris in Venice in search of Scorpia, the name that Yassen Gregorovich gave Alex before dying in the prior novel. While investigating at a party being held in the house of Julia Rothman, Alex is captured by a Scorpia assassin called Nile and is left to die in a water room, but manages to escape, barely. Alex is tutored about BASE jumping from Tom's brother Jerry and infiltrates the pharmaceutical company Consanto. He runs into Nile again; however, this time Nile takes Alex to see Julia Rothman. Rothman offers Alex a job at Scorpia, which he accepts after Rothman tells him that Scorpia had hired his father John Rider as an assassin. She also tells Alex that John was killed by MI6 during a prisoner exchange at Albert Bridge. Alex's first task is to kill his former MI6 superior, Mrs Jones. Scorpia sent a letter to the Government informing them of the power of Invisible Sword. To demonstrate, they tell them that they will kill the England B national football team as they arrive at London Heathrow Airport without using any weapons. Despite increased security, the team mysteriously dies. Alex sneaks back into England amid the chaos. He then sneaks into Mrs Jones's apartment to kill her, but is unsuccessful and is arrested. Alan Blunt, the head of MI6, takes Alex to a COBRA meeting to figure out what Invisible Sword is and how to stop it. With Alex's help, they determine that Scorpia embedded gold-encased nanoshells into the football players' bloodstream. The nanoshells were hidden in vaccinations and contained cyanide, which were activated by satellite dishes, and when they were activated, the gold wore away and the cyanide was released into the bloodstream, killing every single one of the players instantly. Scorpia will then kill London's schoolchildren, including Alex (Due to Rothman's hatred for him due to his father's later-revealed double-cross,) as they had all recently been vaccinated. Alex agrees to help MI6 out and pretends to come back to Scorpia. Rothman takes him to an abandoned church; Scorpia planned to put a satellite in a hot air balloon. At a certain height, they will then activate the nanoshells. Alex activates a retainer in his mouth and the SAS invades the church. As the balloon begins to rise, Alex jumps on the balloon and damages the satellites, causing them to plunge to the ground. Rothman is killed by the falling satellite. In the final pages of the novel, Alex learns that his father was a double agent for MI6, and the bridge scene was staged. Scorpia learned that John Rider was still alive and took revenge by blowing up the plane that he and Alex's mother Helen were flying in. In the final scene, as Alex exits the MI6 headquarters, a Scorpia assassin shoots him in the chest. He collapses, sees his parents, and loses consciousness."
2690,The Bourne Identity,thriller," In the stormy Mediterranean Sea, a man is found floating in the water by a small ship. He has several bullet wounds, including a head wound which has resulted in amnesia. The doctor treating him finds a message surgically embedded in his hip which contains details of a Swiss bank account, presumably held anonymously. The patient heads to Zurich to visit the bank, where he learns his name is Jason Charles Bourne, and finds US$ 5 million in his account. He transfers the bulk of this money and takes some in cash. As he leaves, he is attacked by three men, which he thwarts in their attempt on his life. In the panic, he escapes back to his hotel and takes a hostage, a French-Canadian government economist named Marie St. Jacques. After a few incidents, Marie escapes and Bourne is caught by his pursuers but manages to escape and rescue Marie from a thug raping her who would have killed her. While doing so, he is shot several times and is taken by Marie to a hotel to recuperate. The couple head to Paris to investigate Bourne's connection with the Treadstone Corporation, the apparent source of the money in his account. Bourne and Marie learn that their attackers may be led by Carlos the Jackal, an assassin whose trademark execution is a bullet in the throat. Meanwhile in America, a secret conference is convened by the head of Treadstone and members of the Pentagon top brass, including an army officer named Gordon Webb. One of Carlos' operatives, known as ""the European"", storms the mansion in which Treadstone is based, killing everyone inside. Bourne is then framed for these murders. Alexander Conklin of the CIA and former friend of Bourne, is tasked with handling the matter. Bourne convinces French intelligence general Villiers to join his side, but realizes his wife may be a mole for Carlos. He discovers a boutique used as a drop for her intel, and is recognized by an employee named D'Anjou who claims to be a man from his past. He agrees to meet D'Anjou. He learns that they were comrades in a CIA paramilitary unit called Medusa during the Vietnam war, and that his codename was Delta. Conklin, convinced Bourne has turned, baits him into a meeting at the Rambouillet Cemetery in France. However, Bourne arrives early and incapacitates Conklin's hidden associate. Although Conklin assumes Bourne will kill him, Bourne lets him get away. Villiers' wife is killed and Bourne takes the blame in order to bait Carlos into following him to the USA. In New York, Bourne finds the Treadstone mansion, he bluffs his way in and is attacked on the top floor by a knife-wielding Carlos. Carlos then shoots Bourne and escapes. Realizing that he will bleed out soon, Bourne manages to find the strength to kill all of Carlos' men. Conklin arrives and forces Carlos to retreat. Bourne passes out. The final chapter returns to Marie and two other men who tell her about Bourne's tragic past. He was a young foreign service officer named David Webb, brother to Gordon Webb. David was the most successful paramilitary officer in the U.S. Army, training under the alias of ""Cain"", a rival assassin, in a plan to draw out Carlos the Jackal."
2691,In Odd We Trust,thriller," In Odd We Trust serves as a prequel to the first Odd Thomas novel. The ghost of a young boy appears to Odd, and he embarks on a quest to bring justice to the boy's killer so that his ghost can move on. Odd's friend, the Chief of Police Wyatt Porter, shares some details of the case, and informs him that the boy's babysitter is the one that discovered the body. The babysitter turns out to be Sherry Sheldon, a childhood friend of Odd's girlfriend and soulmate, Stormy Llewellyn. Sherry relates that a stalker has been leaving her disturbing notes for several months, and believes this stalker may be the murderer. Odd and Stormy resolve to catch the stalker before he kills again. Odd asks the ghost of the little boy to help him find his killer, and Joey leads him to a street corner, where he sees a suspicious man. The man flees when Odd tries to address him. Odd gives chase, but loses his quarry when he trips over a lawn gnome. Four neighborhood children are believed to be targets, as they have each received a note from the killer. Chief Porter assigns police escorts to each of the houses, and Odd and Stormy decide to spend the night with Sherry at the house where she is babysitting a girl named Angelica. The policeman on stakeout at the house finds an empty car containing a mutilated mannequin, and from this Odd deduces that the killer is nearby, taunting them. He throws open the doors of a nearby van, and discovers the man he chased earlier. He and Odd trade veiled threats, but when Stormy shows up with a gun, the man drives off. Chief Porter traces the van's license plates to a man named Kyle Bernshaw, and gives Odd the resulting address. Odd and Stormy break into Bernshaw's house, to find giant piles of magazines (from which his mysterious notes have been cut and glued together), and a note to Odd, revealing that this was a trap. Odd turns to find himself cornered by a vicious dog, from which he is saved at the last minute by Joey's ghost. Odd and Stormy race back to the house where they left Sherry, only to find out that Angelica's parents have fired her and she has left. Odd realizes that Sherry, not one of the four children under police protection, was the target all along. The two borrow a car and, using Odd's psychic magnetism (an ability that draws him to a person if he concentrates on them while traveling), they locate Bernshaw in an abandoned slaughterhouse. Odd fights him, with limited success, until Stormy shoots him in the leg, and Odd is able to subdue him. They free Sherry from the trunk of Bernshaw's car. The killer is taken into custody, but refuses to confess, insisting that he will be given a chance to escape, as he has made a deal with the devil and everything he wants always comes to him. He threatens to reveal Odd's identity and abilities to the world, bringing a storm of media attention, one of the very things Odd fears most. Odd lies and pretends that he, too, has sold his soul to the devil for his powers, but just as he begins to make headway with taking Bernshaw into his confidence, a guard collapses and the killer is able to grab the guard's gun. He fires, but the bullet ricochets off a chair Odd is holding. The bullet kills Bernshaw. Angelica's parents re-hire Sherry, and the story ends with Odd and Stormy musing on the happy ending they have managed."
2692,The Third Twin,thriller," Jeannie Ferrami, Psy.D., is a newly-hired associate professor at the fictional Jones Falls University in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a criminality researcher and is attempting to isolate the influence of genes in personality, as opposed to upbringing; her interest in criminal tendencies may be due to her father, a professional burglar who, at the start of the novel, is serving out a fifteen-year prison sentence. Her financial conditions have also been recently strained; as the novel opens, she checks her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother into a shabby nursing home, which is all she and her sister Patty can afford. Jeannie, a talented tennis player, is unwinding after a match in the university gym when the smell of smoke is detected. Convinced it is a full-blown fire, she and the other occupants scurry out in various states of undress; in the process, she loses track of her friend Lisa Hoxton. Diving back into the building, Jeannie finds Lisa in a back room, having been raped by a man wearing a red baseball cap bearing the word ""Security."" Lisa receives no pity from the hospital staff and police officers assigned to the situation. The next morning they are attended by Lt. Michelle Delaware of the Sex Crimes Unit, a far-more-sympathetic woman who walks Lisa through the process of creating a facial composite of the suspect. She also explains that the fire was a set-up: just a bit of smoke to cause a panic. The perpetrator was not an opportunist, but a planner and a sociopath; a serial rapist. While they do so, Jeannie heads to the university to continue her study. She meets Steven Logan, a young man who flirted with her after her tennis match. He is handsome, charming, in his first year of law school, and only 22; despite the age difference, sparks fly. However, Steve was unaware that he was a twin, which is a vindication of Jeannie's recruitment system: she designed software to isolate possible identical twins raised apart by comparing the raw binary code of ECGs, dental X-rays, fingerprints and so on. Steven is the twin of Dennis Pinker, a man who is serving a life sentence for murder. This troubles Steve: as a teenager, he was provoked to rage by damage to a newly-purchased leather jacket, and beat the offender almost to death. He has always suspected that he has murderous impulses, and the existence of his twin confirms it. While Jeannie carries out the study, she and Steve are visited by Berrington Jones, famed researcher, professor at Jones Falls, and one of three owners of Threeplex, a medical research company that also provides a great deal of JFU's funding. Berry is shocked by the sight of Steve, and immediately calls up the other two Threeplex owners, Preston Barck and United States Senator Jim Proust, to inform them of Logan's involvement. It is revealed that the firm's three founders are racist and classist, and that Threeplex has secrets to hide, evidently pertaining to Steven Logan and Dennis Pinker. Furthermore, their futures are on the line: Threeplex is being considered for purchase by international conglomerate Landsmann for the sum of $180 million, which (among other things) will finance Proust's presidential campaign. Berrington takes immediate action to prevent Jeannie from conducting further research, alerting the press to the possible (and real) ethical issues of her search engine. Shortly after, Steve is arrested by Lt. Delaware for the rape of Lisa Hoxton; Lisa later picks him out of the line-up, though Steve insists (and Jeannie believes) that he is innocent. Steven suffers a torturous 48 hours in jail but is eventually released on bail of $200,000, offering as part of his conditions to stay away from Lisa Hoxton&mdash;though there might be complications, since he doesn't actually know what she looks like. At the same time, Jeannie is surprised by her father, who has just been released (six years early) for good behavior. The next day, she and Lisa visit Dennis Pinker in jail, confirming that he is, indeed, identical to Logan, but discovering (via interviews with him and his parents) that he had no twin brother given up for adoption, was born two weeks after Steve, and in a different hospital in a different state. Steven's parents corroborate this claim. Jeannie realizes what has happened when both sets of parents confess that the fathers were in the military when the couples sought fertility treatments at the Aventine Clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From a pamphlet at the clinic, Jeannie discovers that Aventine Clinic was founded by Threeplex in 1972 as a research center for in vitro fertilization. Shortly afterwards, she is approached by someone identical to Steve and Dennis. She mistakes him for Steve, and he attempts to rape her in her car. Berrington has been busy protecting Threeplex's secrets. When Jeannie meets Dr. Maurice Obell, president of JFU, concerning the ethics of her search program, spurred by an article in the New York Times, he successfully manipulates them into arguing instead of compromising. He then convinces Obell to fire her, though she is entitled to a hearing by the college's discipline committee. Finally, he bribes two members of the committee to make sure Jeannie is fired. When Jeannie arrives at her apartment in Baltimore, Steve is waiting for her. Her initial terror is calmed when her neighbor Mr. Oliver explains that Steve has been waiting there for two hours, making it impossible that he attacked her in Philadelphia. She then calls up Dennis Pinker's jail and confirms that he is still incarcerated. She and Steve realize the existence of the novel's titular ""third twin,"" the man who attacked Jeannie in Philadelphia and, possibly, the man who raped Lisa. These cloned children were implanted, illegally, in Mrs. Logan's and Mrs. Pinker's wombs during their so-called fertility treatments. Even better, Jeannie has the means to discover how far the conspiracy goes: a friend of hers ran her search engine on the FBI's fingerprint database. Jeannie saves the data to a floppy disk, but before she can use it she is called in by Obell to be fired; by the time she returns, she has been locked out of her office. Her only hope is to win the hearing, with Steve serving as her lawyer. Unfortunately, though he does his best (and is complimented for his efforts by the lawyer representing the university), he is no match for a committee that has already made up its mind. Dr. Jean Ferrami is dismissed from her position at Jones Falls University. However, Jeannie has one more resource: her father, Pete Ferrami. The father-and-daughter duo manage to break into the JFU psychology building and then her office, and make off with not only the floppy disk (which Jeannie, in a fit of paranoia, labeled shopping.lst) but a printout of its contents. Both Steve Logan and Dennis Pinker are linked to a third name, Wayne Stattner, who turns out to be a nightclub impresario in New York City. She and Lt. Delaware fly to there to meet him. His apartment shrieks of sadism, but his alibi is airtight: he was at the Emmy Awards presentation and was seen on national television. However, like Mr. Pinker and Mr. Logan, Wayne's father was in the military at the time of his conception, and his mother sought fertility treatments at Aventine. There are four twins... At least. Conversation with Steven's father, Col. Charles Logan, reveals the motivation: a Super-Soldier program, rumored to have been initiated by Nixon. This only further shakes Steven's faith in himself: he is genetically disposed to murder and risk-taking behavior, and his biological parents might be total strangers. To further Jeannie's research, Col. Logan uploads her search program into The Pentagon's computers, and comes up with a total of eight names, which he smuggles to Steven just before he himself is arrested. Jeannie and Lisa use a nationwide CD-ROM phone book database to track down the remaining five. One, Per Erikson, is dead from a botched skiing stunt; one, Murray Claud, is in jail; one, Henry King, is still at large; George Dassault they are not able to reach at all; and the final one, Harvey Jones, they leave for last because of the number of Joneses in America. They find him in Philadelphia, and Jeannie drives down to investigate. Courtesy of a neighbor who has a spare key, Jeannie places the perpetrator due to the distinctive red ""Security"" baseball cap. The neighbor also informs her that Harvey often travels to Baltimore on Sundays... Berrington Jones has been sinking to ever-lower straits. Though he had hoped that bribing the discipline committee would be the end of it, he now finds himself following Jeannie around in his car. It is his intervention, and Proust's, that gets Col. Logan arrested, but Steve still has that damning list of eight names, and Berry quickly confirms that Jeannie has been in contact with all of them. He then confronts Harvey, his son, who raped Lisa Hoxton and assaulted Jeannie in Philadelphia (Proust's idea, carried out without Berrington's knowledge or approval). Berrington sends Harvey to Jeannie: if he pretends to be Steve, he can find out just how much she knows and what she plans. Harvey plays through the situation quite successfully until he displays a behavioral tic Jeannie has seen Berrington use (smoothing his eyebrow with his forefinger); with the timely arrival of the real Steve, as well as the neighboring Mr. Oliver, Harvey is subdued. Jeannie, Lisa and Steve decide on their course of action. Landsmann and Threeplex are holding a joint press conference tomorrow, at which they intend to announce the purchase; Jeannie will crash the party with as many twins as she can interest in tow, and tell her side of the story. (Steve makes the approaches.) Furthermore, they turn Berrington's plan back on him: they send Steve, posing as Harvey, into the enemy camp. While Jeannie, Lisa and Mr. Oliver smuggle Harvey into the hotel, Steve plays through the situation quite successfully until the next morning, when he fails to display a behavioral tic (a family in-joke); Berrington locks him in a bathroom and liberates his son. Fortunately, Jeannie's recruitment scheme succeeds, and Lisa shows up with Henry King, George Dassault and Wayne Stattner, who combined with Steve and Harvey are enough to draw the attention of the press. Steve also comes to a conclusion about himself when he turns down propositions from Berrington's maid, whom Harvey has apparently blackmailed into sexual servitude; he thanks his parents for his upbringing, and his unknown progenitors for their genes, but realizes that, ultimately, it is his choices that define him. The epilogue takes place during the next June (roughly nine months later). Jeannie and Steve are on their honeymoon, but first stop by the new rest home where Mrs. Ferrami lives for a re-cap. Berrington Jones, Preston Barck and Jim Proust have gone down in flames; Pete Ferrami has started a new and lucrative business providing security arrangements for people's homes; and Harvey Jones is serving five years for rape and arson. Jeannie has taken a lucrative position as head of genetics research for Landsmann."
2693,Santorini,thriller," While on station in the Aegean Sea under the guise of a hydrographic survey mission, the crew of Royal Navy electronic intelligence vessel HMS Ariadne witnesses two disasters at once, a mysterious strategic bomber crashing into the sea and a large pleasure yacht on fire and sinking. The plane turns out to have been loaded with nuclear weapons, and the survivors rescued from the yacht (who include a wealthy Greek tycoon) appear somehow connected with the plane's destruction. With potential saboteurs aboard, Commander Talbot and the crew of the Ariadne must raise the one activated weapon before it can explode, setting off the others by sympathetic detonation and causing the nearby volcano of Santorini to explode in a tremendous eruption which would bring on a devastating tsunami and possibly a worldwide nuclear winter. sv:Santorin"
2694,The Stars' Tennis Balls,thriller," In 1980, Ned (Edward) Maddstone, is a seventeen-year old schoolboy who appears to be the sort of person for whom everything goes right. He is head boy, talented at sports, and following in the footsteps of his father towards Oxford University and a career in politics. Things begin to go wrong for the main character when his schoolfriend Ashley Barson-Garland discovers that Maddstone has secretly read part of his diary and therefore knows his dark secret, namely that he is ashamed of his working class roots. The clever Barson-Garland plots to besmirch Maddstone's good fortune with an arrest for possession of marijuana with the help of Rufus Cade, who is jealous of Maddstone's good looks and popularity, and Gordon Fendeman, Portia's American cousin, who is also in love with her. Unfortunately, when Maddstone is arrested, an envelope in his pocket, entrusted to him by his dying sailing instructor, turns out to be a coded message from the Irish Republican Army. He is whisked away from the police station by a smooth Secret Services operative called Oliver Delft, who listens calmly to Maddstone's explanation of events until he reveals the address to which he was asked to deliver the envelope, which is of Delft's mother and would reveal his hidden ancestral relationship to a Fenian traitor. So, Delft callously decides that Maddstone must disappear. Maddstone is beaten up, pumped full of drugs, and taken away to a remote lunatic asylum on an island off the coast of Sweden. For many years, it is impressed on him by Dr. Mallo that his memories of his life as Ned Maddstone are false and merely the product of a diseased mind. Then, just when he is starting to believe this mind-programming, he is finally allowed to fraternise with the other inmates. He begins regularly playing chess with a man known simply as Babe, a highly educated and perfectly sane man who was also imprisoned by the British government, but has learned to cope with his situation by acting mad for the benefit of his captors. The two men become close friends and generally give each other hope. Babe agrees to educate Maddstone, helping him to master the game of chess and teaching him to speak multiple languages among other things. Eventually, Maddstone realises he is indeed the son of Sir Charles Maddstone and, with Babe's help, laterally determines who betrayed him and how, although he is still baffled as to why he was imprisoned on the island. When Ned mentions the name of Oliver Delft, however, Babe is able to recall a list of IRA sympathisers that he once briefly saw thanks to his photographic memory, leading Ned to learn the true nature of the conspiracy. After some time, Babe dies, having first devised a way in which Maddstone might escape to the mainland by hiding in his intended coffin. Once free, he sells some prescription drugs stolen from the asylum and, as directed by Babe, travels to Switzerland, to visit a bank and gains access to an account in which Babe had deposited large sums of stolen money (which has also accrued many years' worth of interest). Thus, by the year 2000, Maddstone has become fabulously wealthy (to the tune of £324 million). Assuming the identity of Simon Cotter, he swiftly becomes famous as a mysterious Internet entrepreneur, making huge profits by investing in high-risk ventures. He then returns to England and wreaks his revenge by cleverly driving Rufus Cade, Ashley Barson-Garland, Gordon Fendeman and Oliver Delft to their deaths. When his task is complete, he hopes to renew his relationship with Portia, but this is not to be. On discovering his identity, Portia is horrified by the change in Maddstone's personality and flees with her son Albert after the death of her husband, Gordon. The novel ends with Cotter/Maddstone tearing up the old love letters he once sent to Portia as he returns to what he now realises is his only real 'home', the hospital on the island that he now owns."
2695,The Bear and the Dragon,thriller," Sergey Nickolayevich Golovko, the chairman of the SVR and friend of President Ryan, is being chauffeured to Moscow Centre in an armoured white Mercedes when somebody shoots at an identical car with an RPG7, killing the occupants. Due to the quick actions of his driver, a former Spetsnaz soldier, Golovko survives the incident. He is left to ponder whether the RPG was meant for him or not. Meanwhile, a CNN news crew in the People's Republic of China witnesses the murders of the Papal Nuncio to Beijing, Cardinal Benato de Milo, and a Chinese Baptist minister, Yu Fa An, when the two attempt to stop Chinese authorities from performing a forced abortion on one of Yu's followers. In reaction, an international boycott is imposed on China. With its economy already struggling due to recent military expansions, China hastens its planned invasion of Siberia to access newly discovered oil and gold fields. The operation includes an attempt to assassinate the Russian president, Grushavoy, and his top-ranking advisor. President Ryan persuades NATO to admit Russia, and promises assistance against China to President Grushavoy. When the Chinese enter Siberia, the Russians repel their invasion force with help from the United States and its NATO allies, causing heavy casualties on the Chinese side. The U.S. Navy attacks the Chinese mainland's coastal defenses and destroys much of the Chinese navy's aging fleet while it lies in port. Against his advisors' opinions, President Ryan decides to broadcast CNN's coverage of the war, plus direct feeds from U.S. reconnaissance drones, over a CIA website to counter the Chinese government's propaganda about the war's status and purpose. Beijing's increasingly desperate leaders decide to ready their ICBMs for a potential launch. A joint NATO-Russian special operations team led by Rainbow operative John Clark is dispatched to destroy them. The team destroys all but two of the Chinese missiles. Of the two that launch, one is shot down by an AH-64 Apache while the second heads toward Washington, D.C.. Ryan's family is evacuated, but Ryan himself decides at the last minute to stay behind on board a docked naval ship, the USS Gettysburg, which has an experimental anti-missile system. Ryan watches as the ship destroys the ICBM at the last possible moment. Late at night, a group of Chinese students, spurred on by what they have witnessed through the CIA website, march through Tiananmen Square and invade a Politburo meeting, setting the stage for an overthrow of the government. A reformist Politburo member, Fang Gan, takes over and arrests the rest of the Communist leadership, ordering an immediate withdrawal of Chinese forces from Siberia. Fang then holds an open discussion with student leaders that starts China's transition to democracy. The novel also carries a number of subplots, including an old Russian sniper credited with the initial discovery of gold in Siberia, a Russian Army general (who led the defense of the Bright Star facility in The Cardinal of the Kremlin) seeking to fully retrain his forces in time for the Chinese invasion, and a Japanese-American CIA agent who seduces Fang Gan's secretary into installing a computer program that collects sensitive government information."
2696,The Calcutta Chromosome,thriller," The novel begins with the story of Antar, an employee of the LifeWatch organization, who recounts an encounter with L. Murugan, an employee of LifeWatch who has disappeared in Calcutta. The plot is quite complicated and its timelines are deliberately mixed up. Antar starts to track Murugan’s disappearance in Calcutta many years back. Murugan has asked to be transferred to Calcutta because of his fascination with the life of Sir Ronald Ross. The Calcutta of Ronald Ross is well separated in time from the Calcutta that Murugan visits, but the New York of Antar and the Calcutta of Murugan seem to overlap in time, though it is clearly stated in the novel that they are separated by many years. Through his research into old and lost documents and phone messages, Antar figures out that Murugan had systematically unearthed an underground scientific/mystical movement that could grant eternal life. Loosely described, the process is as follows: the disciples of this movement can transfer their chromosomes into another, and gradually become that person or take over that person. In the novel, Ronald Ross did not discover the mysteries of the malaria parasite; it was a group of underground practitioners of a different, mystical ""science,"" natives of India, who helped to guide Ross to the conclusions for which he is famous. These Indians provided Ross with clues in the belief that in the moment Ross made his discovery, the parasite would change its nature. At this point, a new variant of malaria would emerge and the group's research using the chromosome-transfer technique would advance even further."
2697,Kiss the Girls,thriller," Kiss the Girls begins in 1975 Boca Raton, Florida where the boy, Casanova, is killing his first four victims. Elsewhere in 1981 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a young Gentleman Caller kills his first two victims. Present time - Casanova takes a girl to the woods and leaves her to die. He wears a mask for death. An ongoing theme is that Casanova wears a mask to symbolize his mood. Alex Cross comes home to find his sister, grandmother, and other relatives waiting for him and is informed that his niece, Naomi ""Scootchie"" Cross - a student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina - is missing. In North Carolina Sampson and Cross meet Detectives Nic Ruskin and Davey Sikes, who tell Cross that the FBI and DEA are involved and that eight to ten women are missing, all from different states; all have received notes from someone calling himself Casanova. In Los Angeles, reporter Beth Lieberman is working on a serial killer story about “The Gentleman Caller”, who has just raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl. He threatens “bonus kills"" to her if his letters are not published. Kyle Craig meets Beth in LA. Casanova plans to kill Kate because she had broken the rules, but she fights him and gets away. Kate manages to escape, running outside into a forest and jumping off a cliff into the river below. Cross and Ruskin find out she is alive, but she is too injured to speak. In North Carolina, Cross reads about the “Gentleman Caller” in the FBI serial killer files and one of the notes published in the LA Times mentions a black 2nd year law student, Naomi C. Alex tries to call Beth, but she hangs up on him. Cross calls her editor-in-chief, who reveals that Casanova and the Gentleman Caller are communicating as coast-to-coast serial killers. Casanova calls the ""Gentleman Caller"". Cross discovers Kate was drugged with Marinol, which leads them to believe that Casanova is a doctor or pharmacist. Kyle tells Cross and Kate that Beth Lieberman was murdered by the Gentleman Caller, who cut off her fingers. In her computer was a suspect for Casanova, a Dr. William Rudolph from Los Angeles. Kate and Alex go with Kyle to LA. Kate takes one look at Rudolph and is positive he is not Casanova. Cross knows for sure that there are two killers, which means that Rudolph is the Gentleman Caller. They follow Rudolph but he gets away from the authorities. They eventually catch up with him again the next afternoon. Rudolph has taken another woman and that night after hearing her scream, authorities rushes in, but Rudolph escapes. His apartment is searched and a picture of Rudolph with Dr. Wick Sachs from Durham is found. On the back it reads ""Casanova"". Cross and Sampson discuss a theory that the girls are being held in an underground house, built in an area that may have been part of the Underground Railroad. Sachs is a professor at Duke and Dean Lowell confirms Sachs is the campus skelton, known as ""doctor dirt"". Lowell also lets Cross know that Sachs had been a suspect when two students were murdered in the early 1980s. Later Ruskin and Sikes ask Cross for help in catching Casanova, whom they believe to be Sachs. Rudolph prowls Durham, reminiscing. He met Casanova at Duke and Casanova had known Rudolph had killed the young couple and kept the woman's tongue as a souvenir. Casanova shared with Rudolph his own experiences and the two formed a bond. When they reunite, they decide to work together to take down Cross, the homicide detective who was searching for both Casanova and The Gentleman Caller. Jay heads to Kate's house, where he sees Cross and Sampson. After they leave, Kate goes to bed, and is attacked by both Casanova and the Gentleman Caller at the same time. She is seriously wounded and taken to the hospital. Cross, Sampson, and the FBI are at her house. Cross notices that this attack is different from the first one and suspects both men worked together on this. The next day Sachs is brought in for questioning. Cross attacks him, noticing that Sachs is not very physically strong and is sure that Sachs is not Casanova. Later the FBI arrests Sachs, believing he is Casanova after finding physical evidence pointing to him. Sampson and Cross head to the forest again, taking a hand-written map given to them by an Underground Railroad historian and Duke professor. On it is an area not previously searched. As they walk, they hear women screaming. Following the screams they find the underground house. Outside, Casanova and the Gentlemen have been watching Sampson and Cross. They plan to take out Sampson first and then Cross. Cross finds Naomi but hears Sampson scream. He runs out to see Casanova and the Gentleman, both wearing masks, on top of his partner. Sampson has a knife stuck in his back. Cross takes his gun and fires, hitting one in the shoulder. The two take off running and make it to a nearby bar, steal a truck and take off. Cross takes a car and goes after them. In traffic, the two run out of the car, running in opposite directions and firing their guns. Cross follows one, they exchange gunfire, and he hits him in the chest. Cross runs to the man and removes his mask. It is Rudolph. He dies, telling Cross he will never catch Casanova. In the underground house, Cross looks for clues and thinks he knows who Casanova is. He keeps the information from Kyle Craig and decides to go on his own stakeout. He follows Davey Sikes, positive that he is Casanova. He thinks Sikes is looking for a new woman to kidnap. Cross snoops outside a house where Sikes has gone in. Sikes sees him and the two get into a fight. The woman was Sikes’s mistress and the FBI had known about the affair. Later, while visiting Kate, Alex goes jogging and finds a dead FBI agent. He runs back to the house where Casanova, who is Detective Nick Ruskin, hits him with a stun gun. With Cross down, Casanova heads for Kate, but Kate fights him and takes him down. He takes out his gun to shoot Kate but Cross gets up and shoots him in self-defense."
2698,The Lost Symbol,thriller," Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to give a lecture at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degree Mason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Solomon has also asked him to bring a small, sealed package which he had entrusted to Langdon years earlier. When Langdon arrives at the Capitol, however, he learns that the invitation he received was not from Solomon, but from Solomon's kidnapper, Mal'akh, who has left Solomon's severed right hand in the middle of the Capitol Rotunda in a recreation of the Hand of Mysteries. Mal'akh then contacts Langdon, charging him with finding both the Mason's Pyramid, which Masons believe is hidden somewhere underground in Washington D.C., and the Lost Word, lest Solomon be executed. Langdon is then met by Trent Anderson, head of the Capitol police, and Inoue Sato, the head of the CIA's Office of Security. Examining Solomon's hand, they discover a clue leading them to a Solomon's Masonic altar in a room in the Capitol's sub-basement, where they find a small pyramid lacking a capstone, with an inscription carved into it. Sato then confronts Langdon with the security x-ray taken of his bag when he entered the Capitol, which reveals a smaller pyramid in the package Langdon brought in response to the request by the kidnapper posing as Solomon. Because the package had been sealed for years, Langdon was unaware of its contents, but Sato, dissatisfied with this, attempts to take Langdon into custody. Before she can arrest him, however, she and Anderson are assaulted by Warren Bellamy, the Architect of the Capitol and a Freemason, who then flees with Langdon during the melee. Mal'akh is a Freemason with tattoos covering almost his entire body. He infiltrated the organization in order to obtain an ancient source of power, which he believes Langdon can unlock for him in return for Peter Solomon's life. As Langdon deals with the events into which he has been thrust, Mal'akh destroys the Smithonsonian-sponsored laboratory of Dr. Katherine Solomon, Peter's younger sister, where she has conducted experiments in Noetic Science. Mal'akh is also being pursued by Sato in the interests of National Security. Mal'akh captures Langdon and seriously injures Katherine Solomon. He places Langdon in a tank of breathable oxygenated liquid, from where Langdon unlocks the code at the Pyramid's base for Mal'akh, who then flees with Peter Solomon to the Temple Room of the Scottish Rite's House of the Temple. Langdon and Katherine are eventually rescued by Sato and her staff who race to the House of the Temple where Mal'akh threatens to release a heavily edited video showing government officials performing secret Masonic rituals. Mal'akh, who turns out to be Peter's long-believed dead son, Zachary Solomon, forces the Word—the circumpunct—out of his father and tattoos it on his head on the last portion of unmarked skin on his body. Mal'akh then orders Peter to sacrifice him, as he believes that it is his destiny to become a demonic spirit and lead the forces of evil. Director Sato, however, arrives at the Temple in a helicopter, which smashes the Temple's overhead glass panel, the shards of which fatally impale Mal'akh. The CIA then thwart Mal'akh's plan to transmit the video to several leading media channels using an EMP blast, disabling a cell tower in the network path leading from Mal'akh's laptop computer. Peter informs Langdon that the circumpunct Zachary tattooed on his head is not the Word. Deciding to take Langdon to the true secret behind the Word, Peter leads him to the room atop the Washington Monument and tells him that the Word—a common Christian Bible, the ""Word of God""—lies in the Monument's cornerstone, buried in the ground beneath the Monument's staircase. Langdon realizes that the symbols on the pyramid's base spelled out the words Laus Deo which translate to Praise God. These words are inscribed upon the small aluminum capstone atop the Monument, which is the true Masonic Pyramid. Peter tells Langdon that the Masons believe that the Bible is an esoteric allegory written by mankind, and that, like most religious texts around the globe, it contains veiled instructions for harnessing man's natural God-like qualities—similar to Katherine's Noetic research—and is not meant to be interpreted as the commands of an all-powerful deity. This interpretation has been lost amid centuries of scientific skepticism and fundamentalist zealotry. The Masons have (metaphorically) buried it, believing that, when the time is right, its rediscovery will usher in a new era of human enlightenment."
2699,The Associate,thriller," As an idealistic law student and editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, Kyle McAvoy has the promise of a highly successful career, although after graduation, he intends to devote three years to public service before applying for employment with a prestigious firm. His plans are derailed when he is approached by two FBI agents (later proved to be bogus) who interrogate him and then pass him on to a mysterious man known only as Bennie Wright. Bennie has a videotape of a party that took place in Kyle's apartment five years earlier, when he was an undergraduate student at Duquesne University. In it, two of Kyle's fraternity brothers, Joey Bernardo and Baxter Tate, are seen having sexual relations with Elaine Keenan, a coed who later claimed she was raped while unconscious, a charge seemingly supported by Joey asking Baxter ""Is she awake?"" on the tape. At the time, the incident was investigated by local police, who determined there had been no assault and declined to take further action. With the tape now in his possession, Bennie threatens to expose Kyle's secret unless he cooperates with him and his associates. Bennie's plan is to have Kyle accept a position at New York City-based Scully & Pershing, the world's largest law firm, which is representing Trylon Aeronautics in its case against Bartin Dynamics. The two defense contractors had joined forces to design the B-10 HyperSonic Bomber for The Pentagon, and when they won the contract over Lockheed, the competitor sought support from senators and lobbyists. Legal battles ensued, and Trylon and Bartin – each laying claim to ownership of the design and technologies developed for the project – are ready to wage battle in court. Kyle will be required to infiltrate Scully & Pershing's files and deliver to Bennie crucial information the people he represents need. His first instinct is to ignore Bennie's blackmail threats and deal with whatever consequences may arise, but the thought of the shame and embarrassment his family will suffer if he is indicted for the incident in his past, not to mention the negative impact on his own future, leads him to agree to Bennie's demands. Constantly under surveillance while outdoors and living in an apartment in which he knows bugs and cameras have been hidden, Kyle slowly learns how to trick those who are trailing him into believing he is unaware of their presence. He seeks help from Joey, who has more to lose than Kyle does if the videotape is made public, and with his old friend as a somewhat unwilling accomplice, plots to outwit his blackmailer. What he doesn't anticipate is the re-emergence of Elaine, who still maintains she was raped, and Baxter, who has completed a lengthy stint in rehab and, as part of his twelve-step program, wants to make amends to the girl he raped. His admission of guilt will give Elaine the proof she needs to file charges, and with Kyle drawn into the spotlight, his position at Scully & Pershing will be jeopardized, a risk Bennie must eliminate by any means. Baxter is found shot dead, with no evidence of the murderer's identity, although Kyle is certain that Bennie ordered it. After working at the law firm's 'boot camp' for some months, as do all new associates, Kyle eventually gets drawn into the Trylon case and is granted access to the highly secure computer room where the confidential information is stored. Bennie and Nigel, a computer expert, force him to use a thumbdrive to download the files, which he does. But by this time, realizing that Bennie is nearly always one step ahead of him, Kyle has spoken to Roy Benedict, a criminal lawyer and former FBI operative. He tells Roy the whole story. Roy still has good connections within the FBI, and they set up an operation to catch Bennie as the information is being transferred. But it misfires; Bennie and his associates vanish and remain unidentified and unapprehended. Kyle admits his actions to the firm's partners, and agrees to leave their employ immediately and not practice law in New York for two years. He also voices his belief that one of the firm's partners has acted as a 'mole', passing information to Bennie. Refusing the FBI's offer of witness protection, Kyle goes home to his father, also a lawyer, who knows the whole sorry saga. He plans to became a partner in his father's law firm."
2700,The Poseidon Adventure,thriller," Formerly the RMS Atlantis, the SS Poseidon is a luxury ocean liner from the golden age of travel, which was converted to a single-class, combination cargo-cruise liner. The ship was on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic with the new company, celebrated with a monthlong Christmas voyage from Lisbon to African and South American ports. On December 26, the Poseidon is overturned when it has the misfortune of being directly above the location of an undersea earthquake. The ship capsizes as it falls into the sudden void caused by the quake displacing millions of gallons of seawater. Starting from the upper deck dining room, preacher Reverend Frank ""Buzz"" Scott leads a small group of (often unwilling) followers towards the keel of the ship, trying to avoid the rising water level and other such hazards. Those stuck within the dining saloon are unwilling to follow the Reverend, and stay behind. Those survivors choosing to follow Scott climb a Christmas tree to ascend into the galley area where they meet some stewards and kitchen crew. There is a great debate about whether to try to reach one of the propeller shafts at the stern, or to go forward to the bow. One of the stewards fears the lockers that hold the anchor chains will have flooded, and suggests that they try for the engine room. After climbing two upside-down stairways, the group comes upon ""Broadway"", a wide service corridor that runs the length of the ship and connects to the engine room. The posse breaks for a while whilst they look for supplies. Young Robin Shelby ventures off to find the bathroom while Tony ""The Beamer"" Bates and his girlfriend Pamela find the liquor closet. When the ship's emergency lighting suddenly goes out, a number of crew members panic and stampede; they are trampled, or killed by falling over stairway openings or into a large pit where a boiler tore through several decks of the upturned ship. After the panic, Scott's group goes in search of The Beamer, Pamela, and Robin, who are missing. New York Police Detective Mike Rogo finds The Beamer passed out, intoxicated, and Pamela refuses to leave him. Robin is nowhere to be found. While searching for her young brother, Susan is brutally raped by a young, terrified crew member. Susan talks with the boy, who is remorseful and ashamed, and grows to like him. But the boy, realizing the consequences of his actions, panics and runs off -falling to his death in the dark pit. Susan rejoins the group and tells them nothing of what has happened. After an intense search, they make the painful decision to move on without Robin. At this point his mother, Jane Shelby, breaks down and vents her long-held disgust and hatred for her husband. The Reverend, having found a Turkish oiler, guides the other survivors through Broadway to the stern. They find the corridor to the engine room, which is completely submerged. Belle Rosen, a former W.S.A. champion, swims through the corridor and finds the passage to get them to the other side. Upon their arrival, they find the engine room, or ""Hell"" as Mr. Martin calls it. They take time to rest and save the batteries on their recently-acquired flashlights. In the darkness Linda Rogo makes a move on the Reverend. After their rest they see the way out - five decks up, on top of a fractured steel wall they name ""Mount Poseidon"". During the difficult climb, Linda Rogo rebels and attempts to find her own way. She chooses an unstable route and falls to her death, impaled on a piece of sharp steel. An explosion rocks the ship, and Reverend Scott, in an insane rage, denounces God, offers himself as a sacrifice, and commits suicide. Mary Kinsale, an English spinster, screams in grief and claims that they were to be married. Her fellow survivors aren't quite sure what to make of this revelation. Mr. Martin takes charge of the group and they make their way into a propeller shaft where the steel hull is at its thinnest. The oxygen supply begins to give out, but after much waiting, they are finally found. Belle Rosen has a heart attack and dies before the rescue team can reach her. The rescue team cuts through and the group climb out of the upturned hull. Manny Rosen, however, refuses to leave without Belle's remains, which are lifted out after the others have left. Once outside, the survivors see another, much larger group of survivors being removed from the bow of the ship. Most are still in their dinner clothes, in contrast to Scott's group, who are stripped to their underwear and streaked with oil. En route to the rescue ships in lifeboats, they see The Beamer and Pamela, who have survived after all. Sailors from a small German ship try to put a salvage line on the Poseidon. Mike Rogo curses them because of his World War II experiences, and laughs when their efforts fail. The group goes their separate ways - Mary Kinsale and Nonnie on a ship back to England; Mike Rogo, Manny Rosen, Hubie Muller, Dick, Jane and Susan Shelby back to New York; and the Turk back to Turkey. Aboard the American ship, they watch as the Poseidon sinks. Jane Shelby, finally giving up hope, silently grieves the loss of her son. The novel ends with Susan dreaming of going to Hull in England to visit the parents of the boy who had raped her. She hopes that she might be pregnant with his child so he would have a legacy."
2701,Mutation,thriller," Victor Frank, and his wife Marsha, are unable to have a second child due to Marsha's infertility. They turn to surrogacy as an alternate method of conception. Victor, an obstetrician-gynaecologist and owner of the biochemical company Chimera Inc., injects the egg implanted in his wife with an agent called Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) into chromosome six, which causes the baby to grow more neurons than usual, as a result making them super intelligent. Their son, VJ, is born a genius. He is able to talk in six months and read in thirteen. Several years later, VJ's brother, David, and nanny, Janice, both die of an unexplainable rare form of liver cancer. At about three, VJ experiences a drop in intelligence, leading Victor to think his experiment is a failure. VJ lives a secluded life from that point, leading his psychiatrist mother to worry, to the annoyance of Victor who believes VJ is fine. When VJ turns eleven, a disastrous chain of events begins. Victor had injected two other eggs with NGF, which were given to two families who work at Chimera through the fertility clinic there. They both inexplicably die at age three because of brain edema. Victor later finds out they had been given the antibiotic Cephaloclor, which causes the nerve cell growth process to begin again. This causes their brains to grow too large for their skulls, killing them. Their parents, however, were told their children had deadly allergies to this antibiotic. Victor launches an investigation into the children's deaths, and finds no explanation for how they got the antibiotic. He also insists on VJ getting a full neurological work-up, making Marsha suspicious. Victor eventually reveals his experiment to Marsha, horrifying her. She then gives VJ a full psychological work-up as well. Nothing seems out of the ordinary in the results, but Marsha realizes the results don't seem to reflect VJ's real personality. This leads her to believe that he analyzed the tests and beat them. Victor, meanwhile, is having the DNA of the tumors that killed his older son and nanny analyzed. When the DNA in the tumors is sequenced, there is an identical strand of alien DNA in both of them. Victor then goes looking for VJ, who spends a lot of time at the lab, and sees him head under an old clock tower on the Chimera campus. Victor follows him, and is knocked out by a guard. When he wakes up he is in a laboratory built by VJ, where he has solved many of the biochemical problems Victor had been trying to solve. Victor is amazed by his son's genius, and rushes to show Marsha. Marsha reacts differently and is worried about VJ, especially about the part of the lab he didn't show them. Victor and Marsha come back the next day and insist on VJ showing them the rest of the lab. In one room, VJ is growing fetuses, the five eggs from Marsha that had not been implanted, in artificial wombs. VJ tells them that there is no fifth fetus because of a failed implantation attempt in the artificial womb, and also reveals that he has altered the babies to make them mentally retarded, so they won't be more intelligent than him. After this, he reveals that he killed the other two children who had been injected with NGF for the same reason, so he would be the only super genius. Not only did he kill the two children, he also used a method he had created for injecting cancer into someone to kill David, Janice, and a teacher who was prying into his life. VJ then leads his horrified parents into another room, where he has tanks full of E. Coli genetically altered to produce cocaine, which he sold to Colombian drug dealers to finance his lab. VJ then insists that his parents announce their intent to him. Marsha convinces VJ to leave her and Victor to talk alone, and they decide they must kill their son. NGF may have made VJ a genius, but at the cost of his conscience. Victor lies to VJ, and VJ agrees to release him on two conditions. One, that Marsha stay in the lab as a hostage, and two, that Victor must have a guard with him at all times. Victor takes the guard back to his house and drugs him. He then rushes to his lab, where he synthesizes nitroglycerin. He makes a bomb with the nitroglycerin, and plants it in a tunnel by VJ's lab. He convinces VJ to release Marsha so she can do her work, and stalls VJ until the bomb goes off, causing the gates redirecting a river under the clock tower to break. VJ rushes for the exit, but Victor stops him discovering that, ironically, despite the fact VJ's mind is beyond his years, he still has the strength of a ten-year-old. Victor holds him down until the lab floods, killing them both. One years later, a mother brings in her teenage daughter and her daughter's child to her office. Marsha surmises from the fact that the 18-month child is reading a medical journal, something VJ did, and his ice blue eyes, a trait VJ had, that this child is the ""failed"" zygote. She decides she will have to go through another VJ-like experience, ""with Joe's help and end forever the nightmare her husband had begun"". nl:Manipulatie (boek)"
2702,Last Man Standing,thriller," Web London and the FBI's super-elite Hostage Rescue Team are sent down an alley for a surprise attack on a drug dealer's lair. As they move with stealth precision towards the target, they are surprised to see a boy in the dark alley. When the kid sees them, he utters the queer words ""Damn to hell"" and cackles. Uncharacteristically, this kid unnerves Web. But he proceeds with his team, working on getting his pulse beat to sixty-four and visualizing the next moments, as the team gets in position for the signal to move to ""green."" When the Tactical Operations Center radios to give the go ahead for the final move to the front door, Web freezes. It isn't fear or runaway nerves; Web has been doing this far too long for that. And yet, even with every muscle straining all he can manage to do is to take a few faltering steps and fall down on his gun. At five seconds to impact, Web lays helpless as he watches the Charlie team proceed and then one by one fall to the ground, all dead in seconds. Ironically, Web is the only one alive. For a HRT guy, out-surviving team members is a personal hell, nothing to be grateful about. The other FBI guys are suspicious and, even worse, distrust him to go out on mission. He can't bear the silent accusations of the widows and fatherless children who'd just as soon trade him for their lost loved one. And the press is having its usual field day, only this time it is his story they are exaggerating and manipulating. In a single moment Web London goes from hero to pariah. Web needs to understand what happened in that alley, specifically who set up his team for an ambush. This job is his life; he needs to prove his innocence to gain the trust back from the guys and for himself. There is no room in his job for less than absolute perfection and bravery. A good HRT guy does not freeze and let their team be killed without them. Web begins a two-pronged investigation, one external to seek whoever set Charlie up and one internal where he signs on with psychiatrist, Claire Daniels. The key for both investigations seems to be the boy in the alley. After Charlie team was killed, Web still struggled with trying to move. When he saw the boy start to run directly into the line of fire, Web managed to yell at him to stop and slithered himself over to the boy. He gives the boy his hat and a note, warning of the ambush, for the boy to deliver to the reserve unit that TOC is sending in. But somehow, the FBI loses the boy before they have a chance to talk to him. Missing also is the undercover agent that provided the information on the drug lair. Meanwhile, a judge, a prosecutor, and a defense counsel are killed in three separate and apparent unrelated incidents. When Web sees this in the newspaper, he makes the connection between those deaths and Charlie team's ambush. He knows that it is the same group who caused half his face to be torn off during a hostage rescue mission. David Canfield was the only hostage from that mission which died mere feet from Web. Web had given this boy hope and the boy had died while looking at Web, Web carries guilt rom this operation. Web London is not the only one who's wondering about the ambush. Francis Westbrook, a giant of a man whose moniker is the apt ""Big F,"" is the leader of a small drug empire. The building that HRT was taking, is in his territory, but its not a place that he's ever used, nor does he run a business on the scale that would warrant that kind of attention. The missing boy is Westbrook's brother and he'll do anything, including giving up his entire business, to get that kid back. Notwithstanding his concern for his brother, he's alert to the fact that he's got a traitor in his top echelon. Last Man Standing is a complex psychological thriller in which the suspicions run rampant as to who set up Charlie team. At the center of this novel is a team of alpha males in which Baldacci reveals the characteristics of the type of guy that would want to do this poor paying job that boasts a motto of ""Speed, surprise and violence of action."" These are the good guys in a world with a lot of bad guys and they would just as soon be unemployed but the bad guys won't let them. And even though they might have love affairs with their weapons, they are earnest about trying not to use them. That said, they never fire warning shots. And they keep a hell of a lot of weapons on hand. These guys are heroes, and although they are part of the FBI, they keep their distance. After all, it is the FBI that makes the judgment call that sends them into action, so when there is a screw up, as there was in Waco, the blame tends to go directly to HRT. Web London as the epitome of the HRT guy is a strong, loyal friend especially to his team members and their families. He, naturally, has issues dealing with his own issues. Yet, in this instance, he is unusually motivated to continue his therapy since he's the one that really wants to know what happened. As much as Baldacci paints HRT as real American heroes, by delving into this psychological side of the story he also points out the character deficiencies that cause these men to go through the most grueling training and then to subject themselves to the greatest danger. It also fills out this multi-layered plot."
2703,The Cardinal of the Kremlin,thriller," CIA analyst Jack Ryan attends a diplomatic conference in Moscow as part of an American delegation to the Soviet Union. He learns that the CIA’s most highly-placed agent, codenamed ""CARDINAL"", is none other than Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, the personal aide to the Soviet Minister of Defense and a national war hero. Filitov was recruited by GRU colonel and British agent Oleg Penkovskiy, and offered his services to the CIA after the deaths of his wife and two sons; the latter two were killed during their service in the Red Army. As a result, Filitov has been passing political, technical, and military intelligence to the CIA for the past thirty years. The U.S. discovers through ""National Technical Means"" that the Soviets were working on an ABM defense system based at Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Emilio Ortiz, a CIA liaison, is sent to aid Mujaheddin rebels in the region. One rebel leader, a man known only as ""The Archer,"" is questioned after unwittingly witnessing a test of the Soviets' ABM system. The Archer determines that the Soviet installation is a threat to him and his people, and tasks his group with attacking and pillaging the facility. In the end, the guerrillas destroy a large amount of Soviet equipment. However, the rebels suffer horrendous losses, including the death of The Archer. Ryan travels to New Mexico to meet with a young SDI researcher, Major Alan Gregory, whom he brings to Washington, D.C., to brief the president. Gregory lives with another scientist, Candi Long, who is working on adaptive optics for use in the development of laser weaponry. A lesbian KGB agent, Bea Taussig&mdash;who has unluckily fallen in love with Long&mdash;describes Gregory and his work to her KGB handler, Tanya Bisyarina. The KGB launches a plan to kidnap and debrief Gregory. Filitov is arrested after his work for the CIA is discovered. However, Ryan concocts a plan to both secure the return of Filitov and arrange the defection of the sitting KGB chairman, Nikolay Borissovich Gerasimov. Gerasimov is angling to take over as General Secretary in the wake of Filitov's arrest, something Ryan is determined to prevent because of his unyielding anti-American ideology. Ryan schemes to go public with the prior capture of Soviet submarine Red October, banking on the political instability of the Soviet Politburo. He plans for Filitov and Gerasimov to be exfiltrated on the American delegation's aircraft, while Gerasimov's family is extracted from Estonia by John Clark onto the submarine USS Dallas. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, three KGB officers kidnap Gregory on Gerasimov's orders and hold him in a shabby desert safe house, planning to send him to Moscow for debriefing. Their plans are foiled when the FBI sends in the Hostage Rescue Team to retrieve Gregory and return him to Long. Among those killed is Bisyarina. Ryan informs Gerasimov of the failed operation, forcing the enraged chairman to accept Ryan's defection offer. The flipped Gerasimov fetches Filitov from his confinement. The three make their way to Sheremetyevo Airport, awaiting the departure of the American delegation. Unfortunately, two KGB officers, Klementi Vladimirovich Vatutin and Sergey Nikolayevch Golovko, become aware of their planned departure. As Gerasimov and Filitov escape, Ryan allows himself to be captured by Golovko, banking on his diplomatic status to protect him from harm. Golovko then escorts Ryan to the private dacha of General Secretary Narmonov, where the two men discuss the CIA's interest in his political position and the CIA's interference in their internal security. Ryan returns to the United States, where he and several others attend the funeral of Filitov, who had died of heart disease in the months following his CIA debriefing period. Filitov is buried at Camp David, within twenty miles of the Antietam battlefield. A Soviet military attaché attending the funeral questions why Filitov would be buried so close to American soldiers. Ryan, always working to keep the peace, explains to him, ""One way or another, we all fight for what we believe in. Doesn't that give us some common ground?"""
2704,The Wheel of Darkness,thriller," This novel picks up shortly following the events depicted in The Book of the Dead. Agent Pendergast and his ward, Constance Greene, are studying in Tibet with Buddhist monks; they are recuperating from the events depicted in the novel The Book of the Dead. An artifact is stolen from the monastery, and the monks ask if Pendergast can retrieve it. Pendergast pursues the thief and artifact through China, Rome, and London. He finds that the original thief was killed and the artifact stolen by someone else. He and Constance track the killer to a new luxury ocean liner, the Britannia which is headed to New York City. Aboard the ship, Pendergast quickly eliminates all but a few possible suspects. He coerces the ships' guards to help him in exchange for helping them stop cheaters at the casino on the ship. The killer is murdering random people on the ship and everyone is panicking. There also a mysterious shadow thing being sighted and causing inevitable panic. The captain refuses to go to the nearest port which creates more problems. Fearing the loss of a life over the loss of profit, the crew mutinies and puts a female commander in charge. Pendergast locates the artifact's thief. However, he actually looks at it and undergoes a mental change. It brings out his ""evil side""; where he doesn't care about anyone but himself and to think that humans are pathetic and should be cleansed. Meanwhile, the new captain has tricked the crew out of the bridge and locked it down. She aims for 'Carrion Rock', a land mass that will easily sink the ship. It is later revealed she herself had looked at the artifact and had decided to kill everyone on board as revenge for not being promoted to what she believes is her rightful position. The crew plead for mercy from the old captain; he has the codes needed to unlock the ship. He leaves them to their fate. The shadow thing is revealed to be a Tulpa or thought form, established by the mental energy from the passenger that possesses the stolen artifact. It attacks Pendergast as ordered, intended to drain from him all who he is and most of his body mass. Pendergast retreats into the carefully structured order of his own mind. Deep inside, he converses with a simulacrum of his deceased brother, Diogenes. He encourages the agent to fight back. Pendergast does so, sending the being on a course against those who had viewed the artifact. In the course of this, it burns away the evil influence it has on him. It attacks the ship's captain killing her; she manages to open the bridge door before she dies. The crew steers away from Carrion Rock saving the ship's survivors; previous maneuvers had left about two hundred dead due to damage. It is then revealed that this was an elaborate plan of the monks to find the reincarnation of the 'leader' of the temple. They reveal a prophecy that the guardian of the 'leader' will bring the artifact back to them after it has been stolen. The 'leader' turns out to be Constance's child (from when Diogenes seduced her) which she did not abort even though she had planned to."
2705,Contest,thriller," The story focuses on Dr. Stephen Swain, a radiologist, who manages to fight off two gang members despite having no combat experience. While at home, Swain and his daughter Holly are teleported into the New York City Library. A mysterious alien named Selexin explains that Swain has been chosen to represent humans in a contest called the Presidian. The rules are simple: seven different intelligent beings are teleported into a place such as the Library, and must fight to the death. The last being standing must then find the teleporter that will take them out of the labyrinth. However, an animal called the Karanadon will also be in the labyrinth. The Karanadon was teleported into the Labyrinth a day before the contestants and has already killed Ryan, a security guard at the library. Swain has been chosen to represent Earth because of his natural fighting abilities, as demonstrated in the gang fight. Selexin's species is too small to compete, so they serve as guides and witnesses to a kill. If a contestant says ""initialize"" a tiny teleporter will appear from a cap on Selexin's head, allowing officials to see what is going on. Clasped to Swain's wrist is a metal band that indicates how many contestants are in the Library, as well as whether the Karanadon is awake or not. As final a precaution in the game, the whole Library is enclosed in a powerful electrical field. If Swain were to somehow get out of the Library the band will give him fifteen minutes to get back inside, and will explode if he fails to do so. Meanwhile, two police officers named Paul Hawkins and Christine Parker are spending the night in the Library after the incident with the security guard's death. Seeing a light down in the stack, Hawkins goes to investigate, leaving Parker alone in the Lobby. Another contestant named Bellos arrives in the lobby and has some unknown creatures who kill Parker. Down in the stack, Hawkins encounters a crocodile-like alien named Reese, who hypnotizes him. Before she can kill him, Swain intervenes and Hawkins escapes. However, Selexin points out that while contestants cannot kill each other at this stage of the contest, they can follow each other. Swain, Holly, Selexin, and Hawkins rush into the parking garage to escape as the final contestant, Balthazar, arrives. In the ensuing fight, Reese injures Balthazar but Swain attacks her and drags Balthazar to an elevator. Having survived, the group tries to regroup in the lobby, but see Bellos and another contestant, called the Konda. Just as the Konda is about to kill Bellos, hunting animals called hoodayas, or hoods, attack and kill the Konda. Selexin and Balthazar's guide say that the Presidian is over: Bellos has cheated by bringing in the hoods, making him an invincible opponent and the definite winner. Before the hoods can kill the group, Reese, who has figured out how to work an elevator, appears and the group flees in the carnage, to a janitor’s closet. Unfortunately, they have stumbled upon the Karanadon's nest. The creature wakes, and kills Balthazar's guide before Swain tricks it into falling down an elevator shaft, knocking it out. Now separated, Swain, Holly, and Selexin find a door Fraser left open to the outside world. Before they can escape, Bellos attacks. Swain manages to kill two of the hoods but the door slams shut, becoming electrified, and trapping him outside, alone and with his wristband counting down. To complicate matters, the NSA has arrived, and is trying to keep people from getting near the library. Finally, Swain manages to uses a magnet in a phone to create a gap in an electrical window and gets back inside. Back in the janitor's closet, Hawkins and Balthazar are attacked by a contestant called the Codex. Balthazar and the Codex kill each other and in the process start a fire. Holly and Selexin manage to escape the stack. Bellos gives chase, and kills Hawkins and the final contestant, called the Rachnid, but one of his hoods is killed by Holly and Selexin. Down in the parking garage, Swain encounters a psychopathic NSA agent named Henry Quaid, who has managed to get into the Library. He is killed suddenly by Reese, who Swain manages to electrocute. While rummaging around, he finds a paper in Quaid's pocket showing power surges every time something is teleported into the Library. By luck, he also finds Holly and Selexin, and uses Selexin's teleporter to kill the final hood, by teleporting half its body away to watching officials. After killing Bellos by crushing him beneath an elevator, Swain's wristband tells him that, because the Presidian has been ""contaminated"", the final teleporter will not be opened and everything, including Selexin and the Karanadon, will be left behind. Swain realizes that Bellos teleported a teleportation device into the Library, so that at the end of the game he could send the hoods away, and not be discovered cheating. Selexin is teleported away, with the promise to have the escape device teleported back. The electrical field around the Library drops, and the wristband begins its countdown sequence in order to kill all contestants and dispose of the evidence. The Karanadon awakes and chases Swain out into a park near the Library. In the fighting, Swain's band gets knocked off. He clips it to the Karanadon and flees. The NSA watches as the wristbands explode, destroying all trace of the Karanadon and also destroying the Library. The novel ends with Swain and Holly going home on a subway."
2706,Floodgate,thriller," An Irish terrorist organization, known as the ""FFF"" has detonated a bomb, which bursts dykes in the Netherlands, causing massive flooding of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. Unless their demands are met (i.e. immediate withdrawal of all British military forces from Northern Ireland), they threaten to detonate more bombs, flooding Holland beneath a wall of water from the North Sea. Detective Lieutenant Peter van Effen, a man with a sardonic sense of humor and many hidden talents, and his fuzzy-minded boss, Chief of Police De Graaf, are called in. Lieutenant Van Effen is also an undercover operative with connections to a Dutch criminal gang, and sets about to sabotage the FFF terrorists, one way or another. Remarkably, in the Dutch translation of the book (Hoogwater) [1], the plot has been changed and Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport had not been flooded. In the Dutch version only a Fokker Friendship is destroyed on the runway [2]."
2707,The Warlock: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel,thriller," At the end of The Necromancer, twins Sophie and Josh Newman were separated. Sophie left with the now very weak protagonist Nicholas Flamel, his wife, Perenelle Flamel and Niten, an immortal Japanese swordsman; while Josh exited with the main antagonist Dr. John Dee and his accomplice Virginia Dare. Mars Ultor, the Avenger, sees Sophie, accompanied by Niten, seeking a way to reclaim her brother. Nicholas Flamel is unable to help her in the search as he lapsed into unconsciousness after the battle against Dr. Dee, Virginia Dare and the Archon, Coatlicue. Perenelle and Prometheus escape from Hades, Prometheus's long drawn-out punishment shadowrealm, which crumbles into nothing, because Prometheus uses most of his aura to feed the crystal skull. Meanwhile, in the Catacombs underneath Paris the previously imprisoned and very powerful Elder, Mars Ultor has a conversation with his wife, the Witch of Endor, and the Egyptian Elders: Isis and Osiris. The witch has come there to free him while Isis and Osiris are hunting down Dr. John Dee. In San Francisco, Niten leads Sophie to Tsagaglalal, She Who Watches, who is in reality Sophie's Aunt Agnes. Perenelle, Nicholas, and Prometheus join them shortly. Nicholas is set to die within the day and Perenelle two days later, but the mysterious Hook-Handed Man told Perenelle long ago that she could give her husband one more day of life in exchange for one of her own. Through a ritual that requires Tsagaglalal and Sophie's auras, Perenelle is able to keep Nicholas alive for another day as well as awaken him from his coma. In Danu Talis, Scathach, Saint Germain, Palamedes, Shakespeare, and Joan of Arc are captured and sent to a volcano prison. Marethyu is captured and taken to the ruler of Danu Talis, Aten. Aten is facing betrayal from his brother, Anubis and mother Bastet. He fears the destruction of Danu Talis but also reaches an epiphany that if Danu Talis is not brought down, future civilizations will never be created. He asks the Hook-Handed Man for advice. Marethyu advises that Aten become an oath breaker, or a warlock, and turn the city over to Marethyu. He agrees but Anubis arrives to arrest Aten. Aten allows himself to be captured to let Marethyu escape in a crystal vimana (flying saucer). In the present, Odin, Hel, Black Hawk, and Mars Ultor arrive at Tsagaglalal's home to seek her wisdom. Tsagaglalal then gives everyone emerald tablets that Abraham the Mage (who was her husband) wrote personally for them. Mars, Hel, and Odin then go to Alcatraz to kill Dee. Nicholas, Perenelle, Niten, and Prometheus go to the Embarcadero to stop The Lotan, a seven-headed sea monster released by Dee with the help of the Elder, Nereus. Sophie spends time with Tsagaglalal who teaches her the Magic of Earth. To her surprise, however, Sophie is taught that all magic is one; there is no true division, it is just pure imagination. Tsagagalal takes Sophie to reunite with Josh on Alcatraz. While spending time together on Alcatraz, Machiavelli bonds with Billy the Kid and they decide to break the oaths made to their Elder masters, becoming warlocks. This angers Dee, who nearly allows the Sphinx to kill Billy, but he is stopped by Dare, who knows Billy from years past. Under the influence of Dee and the sword Clarent, Josh helps Dee release the wild and dangerous beasts being kept in the prison as a part of Dee's newest and most desperate scheme--he not only wants to destroy the Elders and rebuild the Earth, but also claim the other shadowrealms and Danu Talis. Sophie reaches Alcatraz by leygate through her jade tablet and refuses to leave Josh."
2708,Falling Angel,thriller," In 1959, a popular crooner before and during the Second World War, entertainer Johnny Favorite, hasn't been seen or heard since he was critically wounded during a 1943 Luftwaffe raid on Allied forces in Tunisia. When private investigator Harry Angel is hired to locate him on behalf of a mysterious client who calls himself Louis Cyphre, he finds himself enmeshed in a disturbing occult milieu."
2709,Odd Hours,thriller," After leaving the monastery in the previous book, Odd found a place to stay in Magic Beach with a retired actor. While out for a walk one morning, he finds a woman whom he had been seeing in his dreams; a young, pregnant woman who calls herself Annamaria. After being assaulted and nearly killed by a large man with two henchmen in tow, Odd is separated from Annamaria, though he uses his psychic magnetism to find her. Once he finds her they decide they need to leave immediately, but while making preparations to do so they hear a car door slam. They manage to find a spot to hide until after the men who had been chasing them leave. With the men now gone, Odd and Annamaria set out walking. On their walk, they encounter a large pack of coyotes that Annamaria somehow persuades to leave. After leaving Annamaria with a trusted friend, Odd flees to a local church, where he is subsequently turned in to the sheriff of Magic Beach. The sheriff, a man who seems to have many personalities, believes Odd is a government agent who has come to spy on his operation: the delivery and shipment of multiple nuclear weapons to terrorist groups inside the US via the Magic Beach harbor. Odd manages to convince the Sheriff that he is a government experiment gone wrong and that he is willing to help the sheriff. While the sheriff is setting up a transaction to buy his loyalty Odd manages to enrage the spirit of Frank Sinatra, who began accompanying him after the departure of Elvis. The rage caused by his spirit creates a violent whirlwind, and in the confusion Odd is able to escape from the police department. He quickly makes his way down to the harbor and is able to board the craft that is carrying the nukes. Though he does not want to, he is forced to kill everyone on board. Odd manages to run the boat aground in a nearby cove and ensures that the Coast Guard, DHS, and FBI are all aware of what the boat contains. He leaves the nuclear detonators in a Salvation Army donation bin, but his intuition tells him that something else is wrong. Odd returns to the church where he left Annamaria, whom he intends to leave Magic Beach with in the Mercedes he was lent. Odd discovers that the priest and his wife were both involved with the sheriff's plan to sell nuclear weapons through Magic Beach. The priest kills his wife and is then killed by the sheriff, who is in turn killed by one of his henchmen. The henchman, identified primarily as 'Meth Mouth' talks to Odd, still believing him to be a psychic government agent. While laughing over a joke of Odd's, Odd shoots him under the table with the wife's gun. The story ends with Odd and Annamaria leaving Magic Beach. Odd is sobbing over the murder of so many people, almost all at his hands. Annamaria comforts him with the knowledge that while he may have ended a few lives, he saved millions more. She then pulls the car over and asks Odd to show her the constellation Cassiopeia. Odd and Stormy would often point out Cassiopeia together as that was Stormy's mothers name, so Annamaria's request startles him, but he points the constellation out to her."
2710,The Six Sacred Stones,thriller," This novel is a sequel to Matthew Reilly's previous novel, Seven Ancient Wonders, which ended with the Golden Capstone reassembled atop the Great Pyramid at Giza, and the ritual of power performed to grant one nation a thousand years of unchallenged power - invincibility, as shown by the end of the book, which is won, unknowingly, by Australia. The Six Sacred Stones picks up eighteen months later - 20 August 2007 - on Easter Island, the geographical opposite of the Great Pyramid, when seven men use a second Capstone to nullify the power of the Tartatus sunspot and remove Australia's invincibility. In China, Professor Max Epper (known as Wizard) is investigating the tomb of Chinese Philosopher Laozi, owner of the Philosopher's Stone. With his research partner, Yobu 'Tank' Tanaka, Wizard discovers the cryptic message referring to the Tartarus Sunspot and the use of the Sa-Benben, or Firestone, the top piece of the Capstone from the previous book. They find another message, saying that the first pillar must be laid 100 days before the Return. Wizard sends a coded message to Jack West in Australia, just before a contingent of Chinese military arrive to capture them, intended to use Wizard's knowledge to find the Six Sacred Stones. Jack West receives Wizard's message, just before the farm is attacked by the Chinese army, participating in the Talisman Sabre military exercises. West escapes to the Halicarnassus, his private plane, with Lily, whom he adopted at the end of the previous book; Alby Calvin, Lily's friend; Zoe and Sky Monster, who are visiting the farm. As they leave, Jack grabs the Firestone from its hiding place, along with Wizard's research journal, and reads it whilst travelling to Dubai. In the city the group travels to the Burj al Arab tower and call a meeting of nations. The surviving team members from Seven Ancient Wonders return, with the exception of Fuzzy from Jamaica. At the meeting, Jack informs them that the end of the world is nigh, due to a zero-point field (the 'Dark Sun') entering our solar system, which could destroy the entire world. However, in order to save the world, the 'Machine' must be rebuilt by placing six oblong diamond pillars in their respective locations around the globe. However, almost nothing is known about the Machine, but the knowledge can be found using the Six Sacred Stones - the Philosopher's Stone, the Altar Stone at Stonehenge, The Twin Tablets of Thutmosis, The Seeing Stone of Delphi, the Killing Stone of the Maya, and the Basin of Ramses II. Then Fuzzy's severed head arrives in a hatbox, and an aeroplane is sighted heading to crash into the tower. Everyone escapes the crash one way or another and the team splits at the airfield. Jack, Pooh Bear, Stretch, Astro (a US Marine), Scimitar (Pooh's brother) and Vulture (Scimitar's companion) head into China to rescue Wizard, whilst Zoe takes Lily and Alby to England. They meet up with twin Scottish Maths geniuses Lachlan and Julius Adamson, and use the Firestone in conjunction with the altar stone at Stonehenge to reveal the locations of the Six Vertices where the Pillars must be placed. However, the locations are slightly inaccurate as the continents have changed in the ages since the maps were drawn. Meanwhile, West's group rescue Wizard and Tank successfully, and retrieve the Philosopher's Stone from Laozi's trap system. Arriving in Britain, the location of the second meeting, the Americans have brought the Killing Stone of the Maya, recovered from Mexico; Vulture brings one of the pillars, from the treasury of his family, the Royal House of Saud; and a representative of the British Royal Family, Iolanthe Compton-Jones, brings the pillar kept by her family. The pillars are cloudy diamond bricks with a liquid-filled void in the centre. After being 'cleansed' by the Philosopher's Stone, the pillars become clear and the liquid silver. It is also discovered that the pillars' markings reveal Iolanthe's as the fourth, and Vulture's as the first. The Killing Stone of the Maya is united with the Firestone, and it reveals the dates by which the pillars must be laid - the first on the next day, and the second some seven days later. The Adamson twins have correlated the data from Stonehenge, and found that the first Vertex is underneath Lake Nasser in Egypt, close to Abu Simbel. The team starts out, accompanied by Astro and Iolanthe, leaving the Adamson twins with Tank to continue their calculations and find the other Vertices. At the Vertex, the first pillar is inlaid and the reward mentioned in Wizard's notes - 'Knowledge' - is revealed in the Word of Thoth on its sides (in the form of a batch of complex equations relating to the laws of physics and the universe, much of which modern scientists hadn't figured out yet). However, Iolanthe betrays them and a large number of Egyptian and American military vehicles arrive. Iolanthe, Jack, Pooh, Vulture, Scimitar, Astro and Stretch are captured by American forces, whilst the others escape in the damaged Halicarnassus. West recovers to find himself immobilized in a pit in a large underground mine somewhere in Ethiopia. The leader of the American forces is revealed to be his father, Jack West Sr - known as 'Wolf' - who leads a rogue CIEF force. He informs Jack that the ritual to counter Tartarus was the work of the Japanese Blood Brotherhood (as was the plane attack in Dubai), a group determined to avenge Japan's humiliation at the end of World War II by destroying the world. He then drops an enormous stone slab into the pit on top of Jack. Wolf's co-conspirators Vulture and Scimitar are allowed to send Stretch to the Mossad, who have put an enormous price on his head in revenge for his disobeying their orders at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (see Seven Ancient Wonders). Scimitar leaves Pooh Bear locked in a cage to be sacrificed by the Ethiopian Christians who guard the mine. It is also revealed that Iolanthe is cooperating with Wolf. Meanwhile, on the Halicarnassus Lily mentions she overheard Iolanthe telling Jack that the second pillar was guarded by the Neetha tribe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, the damaged plane will not be able to reach the DRC, so Sky Monster (the New Zealand pilot) puts it down in Rwanda, and Zoe, Wizard, Lily and Alby head out to meet with an old friend, Solomon Kol, who will take them into the Congo. After a few days, they locate the place where explorer Henry Morton Stanley claimed he located the Neetha, and are promptly captured by the lost tribe. Imprisoned in the Neetha village, a city built by the same civilisation that built the Machine, they discover that the tribe possesses the Second Pillar and the Seeing Stone of Delphi. The first pillar (which had been returned to the Halicarnassus before Jack's capture), the philsosopher's stone and Firestone are confiscated by the tribe's warlock. He uses them to cleanse the second pillar, and to use the Delphic orb to see the Dark Sun. They also encounter Dr Diane Cassidy, a long-missing anthropologist who had been enslaved by the Neetha for years, and Ono, Cassidy's student, a young but kind man who is oppressed in the tribe. Following the transponder signature of Zoe's group's helicopter, Wolf follows behind them into the valley with a large force of Congolese mercenaries and launches an attack on the Neetha tribe. Solomon is killed shortly before the attack, in which Zoe, Wizard and Lily escape with the First Pillar and the Delphic orb. However, Alby is captured by Wolf, as are the Second Pillar, the Firestone and the Philosopher's Stone. In the aftermath of the battle, the Neetha warlock reveals to Wolf that he can lead the American force to the Second Vertex. Around this time the Adamson twins locate the second Vertex as well, close to Table Mountain, South Africa, and send the message to the Halicarnassus shortly before the Japanese Blood Brotherhood arrives to take them captive. Tank is revealed to be their leader. Upon realizing that their captors' mission is to sabotage the mission and thus destroy the world, the twins manage to fool their electronic surveillance and escape the complex. Zoe, Wizard and Lily are picked up by Sky Monster in his repaired plane, but despite knowing the location of the Second Vertex, they cannot reach it due to aerial patrols sealing off South Africa (organized and funded by Wolf and his Saudi allies in order to seal off the area for their mission). It's revealed that four days earlier, Jack West escaped from the Pit in the Ethiopian mine, rescued Pooh Bear from sacrifice and freed the Jewish slave-miners. In gratitude, the miners give him the sacred stones that Wolf had been using them to dig for - the Twin Tablets of Thutmosis, which contain the final incantation to activate the Machine when all the pillars are placed. Jack and Pooh travel to their old farm in Kenya, finding Horus (Jack's falcon) and the Adamson twins waiting; they'd come to the farm because it seemed like the best isolated safe place. They share with Jack the news that the Brotherhood has a mole in Wolf's unit, a marine code-named Switchblade, who plans to sabotage Wolf's effort to place the Second Pillar. Jack and the Adamsons head to Zanzibar, where an old friend of Jack's is hiding out, making a career after deserting the US army to attack gun-runners in Africa. Pooh leaves them at the airport to go north and rescue Stretch from the Mossad's torture chambers. Before he leaves, Jack gives him a GPS locator with which to signal Jack if he needs help. Jack's old friend is J.J. Wickham, known as the 'Sea Ranger' due to his use of an old Russian submarine. After a lengthy explanation he takes Jack to the Second Vertex, arriving just as Wolf does. Switchblade attempts to sabotage the mission by dropping the Second pillar into the bottomless abyss beneath the Vertex before it is inlaid, dooming the world and depriving the Americans of its reward, 'Heat' (believed to be a limitless power-source). However, Jack swings across the pit at the last moment, catches the pillar, and manages to place it in the Vertex just before Switchblade drops himself and Jack into the abyss. Wickham and the Adamsons escape, with Horus diving into the abyss after Jack. Wolf leaves with the Second Pillar, leaving Alby, who was brought with them, alone at the Vertex. Zoe, Sky Monster, Lily and Wizard, on board the Halicarnassus on an airfield in Botswana, had been in phone contact with Jack to help him avoid the traps at the Vertex and see the whole thing happen on the videophone. The surviving team members realize they must face the placing of the last four pillars and the arrival of the Dark Sun, three months away, without Jack."
2711,Savage Night,thriller," The action is narrated by Charles Bigger, who spends most of the novel operating under the alias Carl Bigelow. Bigger has been sent by a mob boss, known simply as The Man, to the small town of Peardale, New York. His mission is to avenge the mistakes of Jake Winroy, a former member of The Man's crime establishment."
2712,Trojan Odyssey,thriller," The book opens with a fictional historical overview/flashback to events of Homer's famous Odyssey, but alters the original plot. In the present day, Dirk Pitt, his son Dirk Pitt, Jr., his daughter Summer Pitt, and friend Al Giordino are involved in the search for the source of a brownish contamination in the ocean's waters, which leads to a diabolical plot that they must unravel and ultimately topple. As this is occurring, discoveries relating to the ""true"" tale of the Odyssey are made. The villain is the mysterious Specter, a huge man who disguises his identity by wearing sunglasses, a hat, and a scarf over his face. The book also features a significant event between Dirk Pitt and Congresswoman Loren Smith. He and Al retire from their life of daredevilry and settle down. Pitt asks for the hand of Loren who also steps down. Pitt assumes the responsibility of head of NUMA as Admiral Sandecker accepts the Vice Presidency. This marks a change in Dirk Pitt Sr. series, as confirmed by his next novel, which features Dirk Pitt Jr. as the primary protagonist. As with every Dirk Pitt novel, this one features a classic car, in this case a Marmon V-16 Town Car. A custom-built 1952 Meteor DeSoto hot rod modified with a engine is briefly mentioned."
2713,Op-Center,thriller," Renegade South Korean soldiers set off a bomb in Seoul during a festival and make it look like it was done by North Korea. Op-Center must prove that North Korea had nothing to do with it before the situation gets hostile. To make matters worse, a rogue general plans to launch some nuclear missiles at Tokyo, Japan intending to start a war against North Korea."
2714,The Fear,thriller," The Fear begins 5 days before Small Sam and The Kid, having escaped from the London Underground,arrive at the tower at the end of The Dead. A prologue introduces a new being named 'The Collector' who ""collects"" ""toys"". Throughout the chapter he refers to the captured children as his ""toys"" and laments their ""breaking"". He captures 2 children after a brief struggle, and adds them to his collection. However, The Collector mainly collects newspapers and other paraphernalia which results in his house turning into a land fill. The Collector lives in a 5-story house which is piled high with rubbish, but he mainly lives in his basement. The basement is basically a maze of his own excrement as well as bloodied flesh and more junk. The focus then shifts to the settlement in the {Tower of London}, where a scouting trip is in the process of being organised. The scouts are Dognut, Courtney, Olivia - who is going to find her brother Paul, Jessica - who just went as she broke up with her boyfriend, Finn - who is looking for friends, Al - who is looking for his sister Maria, Marco and Felix who were with DogNut at the Imperial War Museum. After a quick row upriver, they end up at the Houses of Parliament where they find a girl named Nicola and her group, who operate under similar conditions to the pre-apocalyptic government, with elections and various titles. She tells them none of their friends are here but lets them know about David King at Buckingham Palace. During the journey, the group is attacked by the 'gym bunnies', a group sickos who due to their good physical condition are harder to kill, corner DogNut's crew. About to go in for the kill, they are interrupted by a brutal group of mercenaries, known as ""hunters"", led by Ryan Aherne. They guide DogNut's crew to the Palace where Al is reunited with his sister. Later, the group realises that David isn't all that he seems; through Dognut's quiet inquiries, they discover that David is extremely paranoid and wishes to imprison their group. They head to the museum at night, without Al, who stays with his sister, and Jessica, who is too scared to continue. As it is night, the sickos are out in larger numbers and the gang gets chased to a house where they think kids are living in. Instead it turns out to be the Collector's lair. The group encounters the large monster and make a run for it. Without realising, Olivia gets left behind and gets killed by the Collector. They group later arrives at the Natural History Museum where they meet Brooke, Robbie (their Head of Security), Justin (the leader) and Paul (Olivia's brother). Paul asks for Olivia but is told by Courtney that she was killed by the Collector. Meanwhile, a boy ,referred to only as Shadowman, spies on the ramshackle settlement in St James's park, noting it's feudalistic nature and the possibility that John, the leader of the group, may be insane. Back at the museum, Paul, Olivia's brother, is hysterical after being told of Olivia's death - he is determined to kill the being known as the Collector. DogNut's group, Robbie, Jackson (a friend of Robbie), Ryan's hunters and a couple of others from the museum join with Paul to kill the Collector. The large group coax the Collector out of his lair onto the road, where they savagely kill him. Upon returning, Justin gives DogNut a tour of the place. He shows DogNut the experiments that they've been carrying out to investigate the disease and to find a cure - this included taking samples from 3 sickos that they've locked up in the Tesco lorry. He explains to DogNut of the large number of sickos residing in the basement of the museum where they obtain their test subjects from. They have found out so far that UV light (sunlight) rapidly increases the speed of the disease causing a sicko to die if exposed to too much sunlight. However, they also found that sickos could also build up resistance to the sunlight by exposing them to a fixed amount of sunlight each day until they were fully able to roam about in the day time. Afterwards, Paul has lost his mind and starts to threaten and blame everyone for Olivia's death. Brooke calms him down. DogNut decides to head back to the Tower first thing next morning but is persuaded by Justin to stay longer to write his and his group's story into a book in which Chris is writing in the library. At the Palace, David and Nicola meet secretly. David proposes that the 2 groups form an alliance - a step into helping with his plan of taking over London. Nicola is reluctant, but ends up creating a deal that involves removing the 'squatters' at St James Park as they pose a threat to her group at the House of Parliament. Until then, she won't officially agree to the alliance. David accepts and immediately asks for Jester to go and recruit children who can fight. Shadowman visits Jester in Buckingham Palace who convinces him to join on an expedition to recruit more children to join them at the Palace. The small group of Jester, Shadowman, Tom, Kate and Alfie begin walking up North until they encountered a group of sickos. They run away and end up at Kings Cross Station. The group fights off some sickos before Shadowman is hit accidentally by Jester, leaving him with a slight concussion. Jester, Alfie, Tom and Kate abandon Shadowman and are then split with Jester and Alfie together and Tom and Kate being together. Shadowman passes out when a group of sickos are upon him. Jester and Alfie find refuge in a building until a group of sickos finds them. In creating a plan of escape, Jester tricks Alfie and abandons him, escaping by himself. Alfie is killed by the sickos. Jester runs and discovers the Morrison's supermarket but is denied entry. He then finds the Waitrose supermarket where he is rescued by Arran's group (described in The Enemy). Shadowman wakes up and finds himself at the Emirates Stadium. He learns that the sicko, St. George, is much smarter than the rest of the sickos as he is creating an army in the stadium. Shadowman escapes the army of sickos when a fire lights up in the stands (most likely Small Sam escaping as told in The Enemy). He takes refuge in a nearby apartment building where he discovers boxes of weapons and food. He sees this as a sign to follow St. George's army, to learn about them before returning to London city. While watching their movement, he sees Tom, Kate and Callum (a boy from The Enemy) get killed by the army. Dozing off to sleep, he is suddenly woken up by sickos that found his hiding spot - including one of St. George's right-hand men (One-Armed Bandit). Shadowman manages to kill them all and plans to kill every single of St. George's right-hand men, including St. George himself and Jester for betraying him. All the while, DogNut, Courtney, Marco and Felix who are at the museum, are preparing to head back to the Tower. Finn decides to stay while Brooke joins the group. Robbie and Jackson join the group but are only escorting them part of the way. They set off to the Tower until they are ambushed by the 'gym bunnies'. Everyone is killed except for Jackson and Robbie who manage to escape the battle and Brooke who is saved by the Holloway crew (as described in The Enemy). She is taken to Buckingham Palace with the Holloway crew and is revealed that she is the quiet and heavily bandaged girl in the sick bay. Like in 'The Enemy', she tells Maxie and Blue about the museum and that David is a liar. Meanwhile, Paul, who is still crazed, secretly leaves the museum for Buckingham Palace. He meets with David and Jester who take advantage of his mental state, and tell him a fake story that everyone was plotting against him. This causes Paul to take revenge on everyone. David convinces him to return to the museum and release all the sickos who are in the basement. Paul agrees and returns to the museum. He kills a boy named Jamie who was on duty at the lower levels of the museum. Just before his death, Paul reveals to Jamie that he was bitten by one of the sickos in the lorry."
2715,The Odessa File,thriller," In November 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Peter Miller, a German freelance crime reporter, follows an ambulance to the apartment of Salomon Tauber, a Jewish Holocaust-survivor who has committed suicide. The next day, Miller is given the dead man's diary by a friend in the police. After reading Tauber's life story and learning that Tauber had been in Riga Ghetto commanded by Eduard Roschmann, ""The Butcher of Riga"", Miller resolves to search for Roschmann. Miller's attention is especially drawn to one diary passage in which Tauber describes having seen Roschmann shoot a German Army Captain who was wearing an unusual military decoration. Miller pursues the story and visits the State Attorney General's office and other offices where he learns that no one is prepared to search for or prosecute former Nazis. But his investigations take him to the famed war-criminal investigator Simon Wiesenthal, who tells him about the society ""ODESSA"". Miller is approached by a group of Mossad agents who have vowed to search for German war criminals and kill them and have been attempting to infiltrate Odessa. Miller is asked to infiltrate ODESSA and agrees. A former SS member who is working with the team of Israeli agents trains him to pass for a former SS sergeant. Miller visits a lawyer working for ODESSA and after passing a severe scrutiny is sent to meet a passport forger who supplies those members who wish to escape. Slowly Miller unravels the entire system. But Miller's identity has been compromised, in part by his ill-advised decision to use his own car; the impoverished SS man he is impersonating would not have been able to afford a sports car, and ODESSA sets its top hit man on Miller's trail. Miller escapes one trap by sheer luck; the hit man then installs a bomb in Miller's car, but because the sports car has a very stiff suspension the bomb is not triggered while Miller is driving it. Eventually Miller confronts Roschmann at gunpoint and forces him to read from Tauber's diary. Roschmann admits to killing the German Army captain, now revealed to have been Miller's father, and attempts to justify his actions. Miller tells Roschmann that he doesn't care about Roschmann's Jewish victims; he is there to avenge the death of his father. Miller, momentarily off guard, is disarmed and knocked unconscious by another ODESSA man who leaves in Miller's car but is killed when he drives over a snow-covered pole and detonates the bomb. Roschmann manages to escape, eventually flying to Argentina. The hit man who has been sent to kill Miller is instead killed by an Israeli agent. While Miller is recovering in hospital, he is told what happened while he was unconscious. Josef, his contact, warns him not to tell anyone the story. He does disclose that with Roschmann (code-named ""Vulkan"") in Argentina, West German authorities (at the urging of the Israelis) will close Roschmann's radio factory where a rocket guidance system is being secretly developed for the Egyptian army. ODESSA's plan to obliterate the State of Israel by combining German technological know-how with Egyptian biological weapons has been thwarted. Josef, in reality Uri ben Shaul, an Israeli army officer, returns to Israel to be debriefed, and performs one final duty. He has taken Tauber's diary with him and per the last request in the diary, Uri visits Yad Vashem and says Kaddish for the soul of Salomon Tauber."
2716,An Act of Terror,thriller," The novel deals with the lead-up to, execution and consequences of, a bungled assassination attempt whose target is the unnamed State President of South Africa. The story follows the development of Thomas Landman, an Afrikaner who, bit by bit, is indoctrinated in, and comes to whole-heartedly believe, the ethos of black freedom-fighters. Abandoning his family's staid and repressive values for those of the blacks, he embarks on a course which ultimately leads to him becoming South Africa's most wanted terrorist. The story culminates in an escape from South Africa which leaves Landman badly mutilated and his lover dead. Throughout, one is exposed to the hypocrisy and self-delusion that were the necessary supports of the Apartheid regime. At times this book has touches of Wilbur Smith about it. It is mammoth in scope, and involves several long treks across the South African countryside. It is brimming with a wide and colourful set of characters. In Smithian fashion, the lead male protagonist finds capable female companions who embroider the story for a while, and then get killed. This creates the impression that development of the feelings that might surround a long-term relationship seem to be difficult for the author to handle. At other times the book has obvious literary leanings, with classical and historical references, close attention to words and their usage, and an innovative structure. Two characteristics of the structure of the novel are striking. The narrative constantly switches between first and third person. The third-person narrative continues more or less throughout the book. The first-person narrative is made up of short sections contributed by practically every character in the story. There are therefore multiple voices, and multiple points of view. However, the most unusual aspect of the book is that it includes a thirteen-generation history of the fictitious Landman family. This describes the family's move to South Africa in the 17th century, and the events and people that filled the lives of each subsequent generation. At the same time it allows for an expose of the political shaping of South Africa, and presents a context for the events of the main story. This appendix is itself almost book-sized, extending for close to 150 pages. A comparatively long glossary of Afrikaans, Xhosa and other terms completes the book."
2717,The Satan Bug,thriller," The story revolves around the theft of two germ warfare agents, botulinum toxin and the indestructible ""Satan Bug"" (a laboratory-conceived derivative of poliovirus), from the Mordon Microbiological Research Establishment (similar to Porton Down). There is no vaccine for the Satan Bug and it is so infectious that any release will rapidly destroy all human life on Earth. With these phials of unstoppable power, a mad ""environmentalist"" threatens the country's population unless Mordon is razed to the ground. Like other of MacLean's works, the plot involves layers of deception, both of the nominal antagonists and of the reader. The first-person narrator, Pierre Cavell, is initially presented as an embittered figure who has been successively fired for insubordination from the Army, the Metropolitan Police and from Mordon itself. Cavell is called in by former colleagues at Special Branch after being ""tested"" with a bribe to ensure that he is still honest. The novel gradually reveals that for the past 16 years Cavell has in fact been working for ""the General"", apparently a senior intelligence director and Cavell's father-in-law, and that these thefts are the culmination of a series of security breaches at Mordon that Cavell and the General have been investigating for at least a year. During the theft the current head of security is killed with a cyanide-laced sweet presumably given to him by an insider he trusted. A variety of scientists and support staff come under suspicion, and it emerges that several of them have been coerced by blackmail or kidnapping to help the principal villain without knowing his identity. The villain releases botulinum toxin over an evacuated area of East Anglia, killing hundreds of livestock and proving that his threat to use the Satan Bug should be taken seriously. He takes Cavell's wife Mary hostage and sets off to London to blackmail the British government by threatening to release the Satan Bug in the City of London financial district. The villain uses his hostage to capture Cavell and several police officers en route and attempts to kill them with botulinum toxin. Cavell escapes, though one constable is poisoned and dies rapidly (for dramatic purposes this is from convulsions like nerve agent or strychnine poisoning rather than the slower paralysis and respiratory failure usually associated with Botulism). Cavell uses Interpol to discover the villain's true identity and infers that the villain's London plan is really to cause the City to be evacuated, allowing a criminal gang time to break into and rob major banks and then escape by helicopter. After losing a fight on board the aircraft the villain explains his motives and jumps to his death, leaving the remaining phials of agent unbreached."
2718,Omertà,thriller," The book begins with the death of Don Zeno in Sicily. Don Zeno left his infant son, Astorre, with Don Raymonde Aprile. Don Aprile lives in New York, where he is known as a fair but merciless Mafia head. Aprile is a widower who does not want his children to follow him in illicit business. To save them, he sends them to private boarding schools and only sees them on holidays. Astorre is the favorite of his children, Aprile considering him his nephew, and Astorre is picked as the one who must protect the family after Aprile dies. Aprile decides to take Astorre, a young and bright child, to Sicily one summer. One day while the Don and Astorre are walking the streets of Sicily, a small cosca kidnaps them. The captors treat the Don and Astorre well, but they want a ransom. Aprile warns the kidnappers to let him go. ""The rest of your lives will be miserable if you do not."" The cosca does not realize how powerful Aprile is. In the middle of the night, Bianco, a friend of the Don, rescues Aprile and Astorre. Aprile wants to kill the kidnappers, but Astorre asks him not to. Aprile gives in, but makes the men his loyal servants. When Astorre turns 16, he has a romantic affair with Nicole, the Don's youngest child and only daughter. Aprile orders the boy to move to London, to attend college and stop the affair. Nicole is upset by this, but Astorre obeys his uncle without argument. Astorre stays in London for a year with Mr. Pryor, a banker friend of the Don, and then returns to Sicily, staying for ten years and serving under Don Bianco, an old friend and protector of Aprile. During his time in London, he meets a young woman named Rosie, with whom he begins a romantic relationship, which he continues during his time in Sicily, until he finds out that she has not been faithful to him. When Astorre comes back, having completed his training, Aprile decides it is time to retire from his dangerous business. He settles all his accounts and pays off all of his associates keeping only his ten international banks, which are completely legitimate. Aprile instructs Astorre that when he dies the banks should not be sold. Aprile writes in his will that Astorre owns 51% of all voting stock in the bank, with the Don's children owning the rest. The interests from the bank will go to Astorre and the children evenly. In the meanwhile, Aprile starts a macaroni importing business for Astorre. Valerius, Aprile's oldest son, invites his family to his son's communion. After the communion commences two men execute Aprile in a drive-by shooting. Without any public authorities securing the area, the killers are able to escape and, in spite of Aprile's power, there is no subsequent investigation into his death. Timmona Portella, controlling the only significant criminal organization remaining in New York, along with his international partners, tries to negotiate with the Don's children and Astorre to purchase the banks from them in order to launder drug money. However, Astorre, holding the majority share, consistently declines their offers, following the Don's instructions and claiming that he has found a love for the banking industry. At first, Aprile's children want to be as removed as possible and want to sell the banks thinking Astorre naive and innocent due to his good-natured and friendly demeanor, and while baffled that their father left him the majority share, want to protect him. As time passes, though, they come to see that their father had meant for his banks to secure their futures in their respective careers, and that they had done so thus far, with Valerius a high-ranking military officer, Marcantonio a prolific TV producer, and Nicole a successful lawyer in a prominent law firm. They also start to see that there is more to their ""cousin"" than they thought, and begin to suspect the reason why Aprile left him in charge. Drawing upon his years of training, Astorre methodically seeks each of the people responsible for the death of his uncle and had been trying to get control of his banks, consulting old friends of Aprile for advice. At times during these consultations, the friends suggest selling the banks to avoid all the trouble that Astorre is going through even to stay alive, but are impressed when he politely rejects the idea, seeing in him determination and strength that they themselves lacked. Astorre finds each of the people involved in Aprile's murder, from the hitmen to those who ordered the attack, and is able to eliminate them without detection by the authorities. Two years later, Nicole has taken over as general manager of the banks, and her brothers are working on a film for TV recounting the life of their father, with Astorre as a consultant to help them with some of the details. Astorre eventually decides to move to Sicily permanently, and there marries Rosie, They have their first child, whom they name Raymonde Zeno, after Astorre's two fathers, and they consider the day that they will bring their son back to America."
2719,The Keys to the Street,thriller," Against the will of her boyfriend, Alistair, Mary Jago volunteers to donate bone marrow. He beats her after finding out, so she breaks up with him and goes house-sitting for a rich couple in London. Leslie Bean, an old dog-walker, comes there twice a day to take the shih tzu Gushi out along with five other dogs. Mary makes an appointment with Leo Nash, the leukemia patient whose life she prolonged. Although he's secretive about his private life and doesn't want her to see his brother she starts an affair with him, much to the dislike of Alistair. Homeless people live in and around Regent's Park, including Roman Ashton, who's actually rich but prefers the street life since his wife and children died in a traffic accident. When Effie, a homeless woman, finds a corpse over the spikes of the park gate, he makes an anonymous phone call to the police. The victim is John Dominic Cahill, a homeless Irishman known as Decker. The newspaper nickname the killer 'The Impaler'. A second victim follows: James ""Pharaoh"" Clancy, a homeless man who was always wearing keys around his neck. DI William Marnock starts suspecting Bean, because he has accused the victim of beating him up and had plans to pay Hob, a drug addict, to beat up Pharaoh. In the meantime Mary starts asking questions about Leo and his mysterious brother."
2720,Tripwire,thriller," The story begins with a prologue explaining how a man named Hook Hobie had a secret to hide and had planned a careful escape route in case anyone ever got close to finding it out. Two stages, the threat and the reaction. Stage one, the threat, was the early-warning system of two particular locations, of concentric tripwires. The early warning tripwire was eleven thousand miles from home. The closer second tripwire was six thousand miles from home. Stage two, the response, was to run, to tie up loose ends, cash in, transfer assets. Over 30 years had made him feel almost safe, but sometimes he thought about the first tripwire call and sweated and planned. Then the two tripwire calls came on the same day. The second nearer tripwire came before the early warning one. Hobie abandoned his stage two response, to run, and 30 years of careful planning. The main story then begins with Jack Reacher being visited by a private detective called Costello. Costello is looking for Reacher, but Reacher lies and tells him he knows nothing of a Jack Reacher living or working in Key West—the Floridian setting for the book. Reacher manages to get out of Costello that he is looking for Reacher under orders from a client named Mrs. Jacob, although Reacher knows nobody who goes by that name. After Reacher manages to keep up the charade that he is not who he really is, Costello leaves. Later on Reacher is working his night job as a bouncer in a strip club when two men come looking for him. Once again, Reacher lies about his name and denies knowing anyone called Reacher, and after a short confrontation, the two men leave. Reacher goes to follow them but can’t find them among the winding side roads. He does, however, find a dead Costello with his fingertips cut off. Reacher gets a ride from a female co-worker with a Porsche that expertly and quickly drives him to Miami for a flight to New York to find out who this Costello was and why he was looking for Reacher. Reacher arrives in New York and begins his search for Mrs. Jacob and for more information on Costello. He manages to find the dead Costello's office, which has already been searched. Reacher gets the contact number and address from Mrs. Jacob’s office and arrives at a house on the Hudson River in upstate New York to a funeral for his old mentor and friend, Leon Garber. His daughter, Jodie Garber-Jacob is revealed to be the mysterious divorced Mrs. Jacob, a wealthy successful financial attorney, and the house where the funeral is held was Leon's, which he willed to Reacher. Together, Reacher and Jodie begin trying to uncover information on her father's last project, an investigation for the elderly Hobie parents on their missing-in-action military son, Hook Hobie. This leads to them getting attacked on several occasions by men sent out by Hobie. Reacher realizes he has to protect Jodie from these men, who also killed her investigator Costello. After one encounter, Reacher is able to take the hitmen's new SUV and everything in it. Reacher and Jodie then realize their long buried feelings for each other are romantic. The investigation takes them to the military Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, a special facility that handles forensic remains of soldiers. They discover that Hobie was drafted in the Vietnam War and was a skilled pilot who lost his hand when his helicopter went down. However, the truth that Hook Hobie is not who he says he is then found out, and it turns out that Hobie was actually a soldier named Carl Allen who stole Victor Hobie’s identity when the helicopter that Hobie was piloting was shot down; the helicopter having been sent with a crew to arrest Allen for fragging his commanding officer in the forest. Since the war, Allen has gathered a fortune as a moneylender, first as a street lender, then as a corporate ""last-resort"" lender for companies that are financially rejected by banks, a ""high-end loan shark"". His business method is the same though, whether a dark alley or corporate boardroom, terrorizing the clients with torture and killing of family if they default. The reason Allen didn't liquidate and run when his tripwires were triggered is because he has been plotting a takeover of a billion dollar company. Allen then kidnaps the owner of the company and his wife, Chester and Marilyn Stone, to speed up the process, blackmailing and torturing them to sign over all the shares. In the climax of the story, Reacher and Jodie end up in Allen's office with Chester and Marilyn. Reacher confronts Allen, leading to a gun fight between the two. Allen is killed, and Reacher sustains a bullet wound to the chest that should have killed him. A doctor explains that, due to how much exercise and physical labour he has done through his life, his pectoral muscle was so thick the bullet could only get to Reacher’s ribcage before stopping. The story ends with Reacher and Jodie visiting the real Victor Hobie’s parents and telling them how much of a good soldier he was."
2721,The Oxford Murders,thriller," In this thriller, mathematical symbols are the key to a mysterious sequence of murders. Each new death that occurs is accompanied by a different mathematical shape, starting with a circle. This pure mathematical form heralds the death of Mrs Eagleton, the landlady of a young Argentine mathematician who narrates the story. It appears that the serial killer can be stopped only if somebody can decode the next symbol in the sequence. The mathematics graduate is joined by the leading Oxford logician Arthur Seldom on the quest to solve the cryptic clues. The book explains how hard it can be to solve math in a cryptic form."
2722,Pop Goes the Weasel,thriller," The book begins by introducing the villain, Geoffrey Shafer. He is a well-dressed and wealthy man who lives in Kalorama, Washington, D.C. and drives a Jaguar XJ12. In the beginning, he rushes into oncoming traffic causing a commotion, before a police officer pulls him over and asks him for some identification. This is when the reader finds out he is a British Diplomat who has diplomatic immunity. As Geoffrey feels he is losing control, he decides to play a fantasy game called the Four Horseman, in which he takes on the character of Death. As the game begins, he drives to the red light district, picks up a prostitute and e-mails the other Horsemen."
2723,Fear Nothing,thriller," Fear Nothing, told in the first person, follows 24 hours of Christopher Snow's life, as he discovers and attempts to unravel a mysterious and seemingly endless conspiracy centered around a military compound called Fort Wyvern. The book opens with Christopher Snow going to visit his dying father at the hospital. As Snow enters, the lights are thoughtfully dimmed to protect him in his condition. As Christopher’s father is near to death he manages to say a few words, including the title advice “fear nothing”. Shortly after, Christopher's father dies. Snow discovers before leaving the hospital his father’s body has been switched with that of a drifter. Following the people taking the body to the funeral home, Christopher is nearly found out and a wild manhunt begins. Christopher is chased through to the outskirts of town and only his knowledge of the landscape of night keeps him ahead of his pursuers. When he reaches a dead-end in a deserted hollow, he encounters Mungojerrie, an extremely intelligent and very precocious cat. Later, upon returning home, Christopher finds his father's gun on his bed, and an urgent message on his answering machine to call Angela Ferryman, a nurse and lifelong family friend. Orson, the family dog, is found busy (uncharacteristically) digging holes in the garden. Christopher stops the pet and brings Orson along with him to see Angela, who reveals some of the town’s deep secrets, including a night several years ago when she encountered a strange rhesus monkey in her house, a terrifying creature which is recovered by mysterious military personnel. Before more is revealed, Angela is killed while in another room, and Chris barely escapes when unknown assailants set the house on fire. Christopher sets off on his bicycle, with Orson following, to the home of his best friend Bobby Halloway, a surfer who lives in a cottage on the edge of town, near to the sea. Upon hearing Chris’ story, Bobby urges Christopher to leave the mystery alone and continue life as normal. The friends share some food and a few beers (including the dog). Their meal is interrupted by Sasha, Christopher's girlfriend, who calls with a message from another friend of Christopher. The message sends him and Orson off on a race into the mist of the night, where they are followed by a group of mutated Rhesus monkeys which are led by a shadowy figure of a half-man, half-beast. As Christopher meets with Roosevelt Frost, an ex-football player who now focuses on a talent of communication with animals, Christopher is again warned off his investigation yet feels compelled to unravel this mystery. Frost hints at unusual, uncommonly intelligent animals escaping from the military base. He cryptically mentions that Christopher is protected by the legacy of his mother."
2724,Rage of Angels,thriller," Jennifer is an Assistant District Attorney for the State of New York, New York County. A beautiful, inexperienced, criminal defense attorney, she foils a plot by Michael Moretti, the rising star of one of the most powerful organized crime families in America. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Di Silva, believing that Jennifer is truly responsible, fires her and vows to destroy her for her part in the fiasco with Michael Moretti. Di Silva arranges for the young lawyer Adam Warner to meet Parker in an attempt to persuade him that she is truly responsible for the bribe. Upon meeting her Adam falls for Jennifer and realizes that she isn't guilty at all. With Adam's help Jennifer begins to rise again, meanwhile Moretti, inspired by her determination to succeed, decides he would like to induct her as the Family consigliere (a mafia lawyer). Adam Warner, despite being married and groomed for the United States Senate, and with the possibility of a White House destination, can not help falling in love with Jennifer. When Adam tells Jennifer that his wife has asked for a divorce, Jennifer meets with Warner's wife, Mary Beth. Being so close to the Senate election, the two women decide it is best for Adam to wait until after the election. Mary Beth however sleeps with Adam one last time, in the process tricking him into impregnating her. Adam learns that his wife is pregnant, wins the election, and tells Jennifer that he truly loves her but they must end their affair. Jennifer having previously discovered that she too is pregnant and not wanting to hurt Adam, accepts, but doesn't reveal to him that she is carrying his child. Jennifer gives birth to her son and names him Joshua Adam Parker. She keeps the birth a secret, allowing only Ken Bailey, her assistant, to become aware of her son. She then returns to her practice and soon makes headlines as a successful lawyer. Meanwhile, Michael constantly tries to spark friendship with Jennifer, which she rebuffs at every attempt, reminding him of his earlier tricks. Nevertheless, when her son is kidnapped by a criminal Jennifer is defending, she, in desperation, turns to Michael Moretti for help. After helping her, he seduces her and Jennifer becomes the Family consigliere."
2725,Deadly Perfume,thriller," David Morton is a Mossad who begins tracking the movements of several Arabs after he intercepts calls about a trade of two million U.S dollars for an unknown item. After tracking their movements into the Chinese jungle he listens to the Arabs and their Chinese contacts and discovers that it is a high probability he is dealing with agents hired by a terrorist, Raza. After killing most of the Arabs and Chinese, but allowing several to escape, Morton discovers that the deal was most likely Raza purchasing a new, highly lethal form of Anthrax; Anthrax B.C. Now Morton must stop Raza from unleashing a terrorist attack which could kill millions and could be initiated anywhere in the world. But he in not able to stop the bombings of three London Hotels including the one where is parents are staying or the accidental release of the ""Deadly Perfume"" on an entire African village."
2726,All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye,thriller," Jane Fleming, a 46-year-old housewife and grandmother, lives a quiet life in suburban East Kilbride. All that changes when her son, Ross, who works in the arms industry, is forced into hiding when his latest research attracts unwanted attention. Aided by the mysterious Bett, Jane must confront drug dealers, assassins and ruthless arms dealers in order to save her son."
2727,On Wings of Eagles,thriller," In December 1978 two EDS executives working in Tehran are arrested on suspicion of bribery. Bail was set at 12.75 million dollars. When Ross Perot, head of the Dallas-based company hears about it, he decides to get his people out no matter what. While the firm's lawyers are trying to find a way to pay the bail, he also recruits a team of volunteers from his executives, led by a retired United States Army officer, to break them out by force, if necessary. Their well-rehearsed plan to break the two out of jail fails because of a prison transfer, and the team has to figure out another way to rescue their colleagues, culminating in a harrowing overland escape to Turkey. Meanwhile, riots and violence dominate the streets of Tehran more and more each day, culminating in the Iranian Revolution led by Khomeini against the Shah, endangering the other EDS employees as well."
2728,Hostage,thriller," The story begins when three young boys rob a minimart and the salesclerk is killed. Police chase the boys and they end up taking a family hostage. The house taken hostage was owned by Sonny Benza, a man who rules over the West Coast's most powerful Mafia empire. Sonny arranges for his men to kidnap the small town's police chief, Jeff Talley's, family. Talley goes to the location where his family is being held. A man named Marion Clewes executes Benza and his associates for their failure because Marion's employer in New York feels that Benza had betrayed the trust of Marion's employer by failing to retrieve two discs that could shut down Benza's organization and put Benza away for good. The police obtain one of the discs. Rather than killing Talley and his family, Marion lets them live."
2729,The 6th Target,thriller," When a horrifying attack leaves one of the four members of the Women's Murder Club struggling for her life, the others fight to keep a madman behind bars before anyone else is hurt. And Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the San Francisco police department run flat-out to stop a series of kidnappings that has electrified the city: children are being plucked off the streets together with their nannies - but the kidnappers aren't demanding ransom. Amid uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the knowledge that one member of the club could be on the brink of death. And just when everything appears momentarily under control, the case takes a terrifying turn, putting an entire city in lethal danger. Lindsay must make a choice she never dreamed she'd face—with no certainty that either outcome has more than a prayer of success."
2730,Red Rabbit,thriller," Jack Ryan, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the British Secret Intelligence Service help with transporting a Russian defector and his family to the United States. The defector tells of a KGB plan to kill Pope John Paul II."
2731,Ticktock,thriller," The story opens with Tommy getting a new corvette. He argues with his mother, refusing her offer for dinner. In a fit of rebellion, he eats two cheeseburgers, something his mother dislikes. He meets a blond waitress there (which he will meet later in the story again). His radio quits working during one of these two trips, and in the static are eerie voices. Once home, he finds a Rag doll on his front steps, along with a note, written in Vietnamese, which he knew when he was a child, but in his quest to be a true American forgot. After taking the doll into his study, it soon bursts open to reveal an evil creature who seems intent on killing Tommy. A message is left on his computer screen saying he has until dawn, but what will happen at dawn, Tommy does not know. After fate brings a meeting with Del, a woman who appears to speak somewhat cryptically, they embark on a race to flee the creature. She believes him too quickly, and often has mixed stories for all of her abilities. (At one point she stole a car, saying one minute she hotwired it, and the next that the key was in the ignition.) The doll appears to be growing larger as their journey continues. They visit Tommy's brother, Gi, to try and translate the note. They then go to Del's apartment, where we learn she's quite rich, but is a waitress anyway. She also shows another side to her when Tommy wants to see her paintings, and she threatens to shoot him if he does. Her dog seems incredibly smart, something that unnerves Tommy. In their journey to escape the ever growing doll, Tommy's Corvette is trashed, two cars are stolen, and one large boat is trashed. They arrive at Del's mother's home, which seems utterly odd. They claim to be able to listen to live stuff from the past with their radio. Del's mother shows an uncanny sense of time when she knows exactly when the rain will stop. Gi calls and tells Tommy to go to their mother, and not to bring the blonde along. Tommy brings Del along anyway, where he then learns the doll was conjured to scare him back home by a friend of his mother. They begin a ritual that, after a few harrowing minutes, completely dispels the monster. Tommy sees Del's paintings and they're of him. She had remotely viewed him over the past 2 years because she knows he is her destiny. He and Del get married in Vegas. Then they go back to their normal town, and in a conversation with Tommy's mother, Tommy learns Del is actually an alien, implanted in her mother when her mother and father were abducted a long time ago. Del's dog is also an alien, sent to be her guide. They are supposed to find the evil extraterrestrial influence and remove it. Del states that it is very lonely, but now it won't be because she has Tommy."
2732,Fever Dream,thriller," Special Agent Pendergast teams up with Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta to reveal the mystery surrounding his wife's murder. The wife was after a painting that turned out to be highly relevant to a neurological disease. With the help of her brother, she recruited a team of pharmaceuticals to study this disease, but when the secret project began to cut corners, she tried to back out. She was then killed for trying to expose the project to the general public. Pendergast tracks down most of the members involved."
2733,The Godfather Returns,thriller," The story picks up immediately after the end of the first novel. The events of the film The Godfather Part II take place within the time frame of this novel, but are only mentioned in the background. Many of Puzo's characters are expanded upon, especially Fredo Corleone, Tom Hagen, and Johnny Fontane, and new characters like Nick Geraci, Danny Shea, and Francesca Corleone are introduced. The other half of the novel goes deeper into Michael's role as Don and his dream of legitimizing the Corleone family. The novel expands on Michael's service in World War II as well as his brother Fredo's secret life. The novel shows how Sonny, Fredo and Tom Hagen join the family business, as well as the deaths of Pete Clemenza and Sal Tessio. The Godfather Returns was followed by The Godfather's Revenge in 2006, also written by Winegardner."
2734,Montmorency,thriller," London, England, 1875. The story begins with a man falling through a glass roof while fleeing from the police, onto a grinding machine below. He would have died if not for the intervention of Doctor Robert Farcett. Farcett hopes to prove himself an accomplished doctor by working on the criminal's complex wounds, and continues to work on the thief after he is imprisoned and given the temporary name ""Prisoner 493"". He soon takes the name ""Montmorency"" because he was sentenced under the name ""Montmorency"" in the criminal record. This is due to the fact that the name ""Montmorency"" was on the bag he had with him when he fell through the glass roof. During his sentence Montmorency becomes a chief exhibit at the Scientific Society (as its name suggests, the Society was a place for medical and scientific gatherings). It is at one of these gatherings that Montmorency comes across Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who is the planner and supervisor of the ongoing London sewer project. From that moment on, this new system would make a drastic change in Montmorency's life. Montmorency realizes that the sewers are the perfect escape route for his daring robberies. However, Montmorency also has high hopes for living as a gentlemen, mainly by selling the expensive items he could steal via the sewers. Since rich people do not normally smell like sewer water or go about in ratty clothes, he finds himself in need of an accomplice—a fellow thief with knowledge, capability, and secrecy to accomplish any given tasks. He formulates a genius idea of having two different yet coequal identities—Scarper and Montmorency. That way no one will discover the true identity of the thief. Scarper, the thief, will pose as a servant to the extravagant and wealthy Montmorency. After three long years of waiting in prison, Montmorency is released from jail. It is notable at this point that all communications between Dr. Farcett and Montmorency ceases after his release from jail. Scarper accomplishes many robberies under the name 'Scarper' (including burgling Doctor Farcett), and is never caught. During this time, Scarper rents a room in the slums to stash the particularly valuable goods. The place he stays is run by Vi Evans (who later becomes one of Montmorency's close friends). Meanwhile, Montmorency rents a room out at the Marimion Hotel for his wealthier self. The robberies committed by Scarper make the papers. Eventually the police pick up a man named ""Freakshow"", a friend of Montmorency's from his prison days, and pin Scarper's thievery on him. He is hanged for Scarper's crimes, a great source of guilt for Montmorency from then on. Montmorency saves a man by the name of Fox-Selwyn from a carriage accident outside the Marimion. He and Fox-Selwyn hit it off immediately and they become friends, and after a bet forces him to put all of his criminal skills to good use breaking into the Mauramanian Embassy to spy for information - ""I bet you I could get in!"" Turning it into a gambling matter had finally gotten his companion's attention., Fox-Selwyn gives Montmorency a job as a spy for the British government. His first assignment is to break into the Mauramanian embassy and listen for information that could prevent European war, which earns him a permanent position in the British government. Eventually he frees himself from Scarper and returns all the stolen goods that remain in his possession, resolving to be an honest man."
2735,Bear Island,thriller," A converted fishing trawler, Morning Rose carries a movie-making crew across the Barents Sea to isolated Bear Island, well above the Arctic Circle, for some on-location filming, but the script is a secret known only to the producer and screenwriter. En route, members of the movie crew and ship's company begin to die under mysterious circumstances. The crew's doctor, Marlowe, finds himself enmeshed in a violent, multi-layered plot in which very few of the persons aboard are whom they claim to be. Marlowe's efforts to unravel the plot become even more complicated once the movie crew is deposited ashore on Bear Island, beyond the reach of the law or outside help. The murders continue ashore, and Marlowe, who is not what he seems to be either, discovers they may be related to some forgotten events of the Second World War."
2736,We All Fall Down,thriller," In the small town of Burnside, the Jerome family house is destroyed by teenage vandals, who defecate on the floors and push their daughter down the stairs, placing her in a coma. However, a childlike stalker calling himself 'The Avenger' witnesses the whole incident and, enraged, begins to track down each culprit."
2737,CHERUB: Divine Madness,thriller," James and Lauren Adams and Dana Smith are sent on a mission to Australia, posing as the children of an ASIS agent. They have been sent to determine whether a cult, The Survivors, is associated with Help Earth, and as such are sent to a ""recruitment hotbed"" area. The ""family"" starts going to cult meetings, and are eventually accepted into the commune. Lauren and James are accepted into an elite cult school in the Ark, the cult's headquarters. There, James befriends Rathbone ""Rat"" Regan, son of the cult's founder. After a while, Lauren develops a crush on Rat, and he uses his influence with one of his father's many wives to get her and James jobs in the offices, rather than in the stifling warehouse or laundry rooms. Dana, meanwhile, extremely depressed about her unspectacular role in the mission, is summoned to the head of the commune's office. There, she and another cult member are told that they are to participate in a Help Earth mission to blow up an oil tanker. Her attempts to warn the mission controllers fail, and she ends up having to stop the attack herself. However, ASIS now knows of the links between Help Earth and the Survivors. Having been waiting for an excuse to attack the Ark, elite troops are sent in to destroy it, despite the CHERUB agents' warnings that the cult is well-prepared for such an event. A helicopter is shot down and dozens of troops are killed in the first attack. In the lull that follows, James, Rat and Lauren attempt an escape. However, they are captured and locked in a room full of toddlers by a sadistic overseer. When they manage to overpower her, Lauren points out that they need to take the kids with them or risk them dying. James reluctantly agrees, and they drag the half-asleep toddlers with them. Rat says that the most likely way out is through the sewage system, so they go there. James is making his way through the tank when an engineer appears. A brief moment of panic is proved unfounded as Rat persuades the man that he is on a divine mission. The man then offers to help them. The now nine-strong group get out, but later hear that in another ASIS attack, several dozen children were killed when a wall collapsed on them. Rat is reported dead, but is revealed to be alive and going out with Lauren, who receives a black shirt. Dana is given her navy shirt, while all James gets is a stomach bug caught in the sewage system. Rat is recruited as a CHERUB agent and the four return to campus."
2738,Tokyo,thriller," The story is about a young woman (nicknamed 'Grey' by a fellow mental hospital patient) who is obsessed with the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking, also known as the Rape of Nanking. She travels to Japan in order to find a professor said to have rare footage of the massacre detailing an event that she could not otherwise prove occurred. The professor decides that he will only show her the tape if she was to procure an unknown ingredient of Chinese medicine from the local Yakuza group. After being recruited into a host club, Grey finds her chance."
2739,Along Came a Spider,thriller," Washington, D.C. homicide investigator and forensic psychologist Alex Cross investigates the brutal murders of two black prostitutes and an infant. Then, at an exclusive private school, math teacher Gary Soneji kidnaps Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg. Cross is pulled off the murder case to investigate the kidnapping instead. Angry because he feels everyone cares more about two rich white children than tree dead black people, he meets Jezzie Flannagan, the head of the children's Secret Service detail. At an old farmhouse, Soneji buries the children alive in specially made coffin. Angered by FBI agent Roger Graham's contemptuous comments about him on TV, Soneji later impersonates a reporter and kills Graham. Meanwhile, Cross, his partner John Sampson and the FBI search Soneji's apartment, discovering his obsession with kidnappings, particularly that of the Lindbergh baby, and his desire to become a world famous criminal. A next few months later, Michael Goldberg's corpse is discovered, and the Dunnes receive a telegram demanding $10 million. Cross, Sampson and the FBI investigate, and Cross begins an affair with Jezzie Flannagan. He is ordered to deliver the money to Walt Disney World in Orlando, wondering how Soneji knows about his involvement. A man takes him on a plane, flying to a small island and taking the money, but never delivering Maggie Rose. At the old farmhouse, police officers find the empty graves where the children were held. Soneji returns to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where it is revealed he has a wife and a daughter. In Washington DC, Soneji, dressed as a public utility employee, murders a teacher from the private school. Cross and Sampson are sent to the scene and, seeing the way he mutilated the body, quickly realize that Soneji is also behind the killings they investigated before and after the kidnapping. In the murdered prostitutes' neighborhood, an elderly woman recalls a man driving going door to door selling heating systems. They soon find out that a man named Gary Murphy works for the company, and put observation on his family home in Wilmington, but Soneji manages to escape. A day later, he walks into a McDonald's and holds several people hostage. Soneji is almost killed, but Cross saves him, as he believes Soneji knows where Maggie is. The criminal promises Cross will regret saving his life. The trial of Gary Soneji/Murphy lasts eleven months. Cross hypnotizes him several times, learning he seems to have a split personality; Gary Murphy, his everyday persona, is a gentle family man, while Gary Soneji is a vicious sociopath. Despite the defense's best effort at an insanity plea, Soneji is imprisoned. Meanwhile, Cross learns that someone was following Soneji and knew about the kidnapping. Cross suspects Mike Devine and Charley Chakely, the Secret Service agents in charge of protecting Maggie Rose and Michael when they were kidnapped. He meets with Soneji, who confirms he may have been followed. He did not make the connection until he recognized the man at his trial: Mike Devine. Cross meets with the FBI, who have believed for some time that Devine and Chakely took the ransom money, hiring and later murdering the pilot from Florida. Cross also learns that no other than Jezzie Flannagan masterminded the kidnapping using her lover, Devine, as a pawn. Around the same time, Soneji escapes from prison and goes to Washington, where he tortures Devine to find out where the ransom money is. After retrieving the money, he kills Devine. Cross takes Flannagan on a Caribbean getaway, and confronts her about her actions. She explains that Devine and Chakely noticed Soneji driving by the Goldberg house, and followed him. The ransom was her idea, and they removed Maggie Rose after Michael died accidentally. Flannagan is arrested based on a recording Sampson made of the conversation, and Maggie Rose is found with a family in South America, where she had been living for the past two years. Shortly after this, Soneji attacks Cross at his Washington home, attempting to kill his grandmother and children. Losing the fight, Soneji is hunted through the capital and eventually cornered on Pennsylvania Avenue, where he takes two children hostage. Soneji is about to shoot Cross, but Sampson shoots Soneji first, wounding him. Some time later, Charley Chakely and Jezzie Flannagan are executed for their crimes, while Soneji is locked up in a mental institution. He writes a last taunting letter to Cross and bribes a guard to leave it on Cross' windshield. Disturbed but unwilling to let the psychopath disrupt his life any further, Cross returns home to spend time with his family."
2740,Hannibal Rising,thriller," Lecter is eight years old at the beginning of the novel (1941), living in Lecter Castle in Lithuania, when Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, turns the Baltic region into a part of the bloodiest front line of World War II. Lecter, his sister Mischa, and his parents escape to the family's hunting lodge in the woods to elude the advancing German troops. After three years, the Nazis are finally driven out of the countries now occupied by the Soviet Union. During their retreat, however, a German Stuka destroys a Soviet tank that had stopped at the Lecter family's lodge looking for water. The explosion kills everyone but Lecter and Mischa. They survive in the cottage until six former Lithuanian militiamen, led by a Nazi collaborator named Vladis Grutas, storm and loot it. Finding no other food, they kill and cannibalize Mischa, while Lecter watches helplessly. He blacks out and is later found wandering and mute by a Soviet tank crew that takes him back to Lecter Castle, which is now a Soviet orphanage. Lecter is irreparably traumatized by the ordeal, and develops a savage obsession with avenging his sister's death. Lecter is removed from the orphanage by his uncle, a noted painter, and he goes to live with him in France. The happiness of their lives together is cut short with his uncle's sudden death. Most of the estate is taken for death duties. Lecter goes to live in reduced circumstances with his Japanese aunt, Lady Murasaki, and they develop a special, quasi-romantic relationship. While in France, Lecter flourishes as a medical student. He commits his first murder as a teenager, killing a local butcher who insulted Murasaki. He is suspected of the butcher's murder by Inspector Popil, a French detective who also lost his family during the war. Thanks in part to Murasaki's intervention, however, Lecter escapes responsibility for the crime. Lecter divides his time between medical school in France and hunting those who killed and cannibalized his sister. One by one, he crosses paths with Grutas' men, killing them all in the most inventively gruesome ways possible. Eventually, Popil arrests Lecter, but Lecter is freed when popular support for his dispatch of war criminals combines with a lack of hard evidence. While Lecter avoids prison, he loses his relationship with Murasaki, who tells him that there is nothing human left in him. The novel ends with Lecter going to America to begin his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland."
2741,The Wrong Side of the Sky,thriller," Jack Clay, an ex-Royal Air Force military transport makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights of dubious legitimacy around the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe in an old Douglas DC-3. His dreams of having his own aeroplane and own charter company are rapidly fading due to age and lack of money, but at least he is flying. While in Athens, Greece he has a chance encounter with an old wartime friend and rival pilot, Ken Kitson, when the latter lands in a luxurious private Piaggio P.166. Kitson is personal pilot to the immensely wealthy former-Nawab of Tungabhadra in Pakistan, who is searching the world for his family's heirloom jewels, been stolen by a British charter pilot during the Partition of India. However, the Nawab is not the only one looking for the missing jewels, and is not the only one who would cheat, steal or murder to find them first."
2742,Assassin,thriller," This novel takes place twelve years after the previous Samuel Carver novel, The Survivor, with Carver having spent the intervening years as a security consultant. The plot of the novel centres around a copycat killer attempting to implicate Carver in the assassination of America's first black president."
2743,Temple,thriller," Professor William Race is a young linguist, working for NYU. One day, he is approached by a retired Col. Frank Nash, a physicist from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to translate a manuscript written in ancient Latin. Initially, Race is reluctant because Nash only describes what is required from him on the most vaguest terms and does not appear to be interested in the alternatives Race gives him. Race is relectant to join even when he hears that his brother, Marty, was the one who suggested his name. What clinches it, is that when Nash mentions the names of the civilians who are going to be on the trip, one of the names turns out to be Race's college sweetheart, Lauren, who left him many years ago. In a sudden impulse to see what she has done with herself, Race agrees to join the team. Nash assigns Van Lewen, a Sergent in the Green Berets, as Race's bodyguard and they move to the airport to fly to Peru. En route, Nash provides Race with photocopied pages of what turns out to be a copy of the Santiago Manuscript, which describes the adventures of Alberto Santiago a Spanish missionary in Peru whilst also holding the key to the final resting place of a legendary Incan idol, allegedly made of thyrium-261, an element that, when combined with the mass destruction weapon the Supernova, would destroy a third of the Earth's mass throwing it off from the orbit and effectively killing the planet. The team lands in Peru with mission leader Frank Nash, physicist Troy Copeland, archaeologist Gaby Lopez, anthropologist Walter Chambers, five Green Berets, his personal bodyguard, and his college sweetheart. But when the manuscript leads the team to an ancient Incan temple, the hunt becomes a fight for survival when their raid of the temple is taken over by hostile German terrorists. And the situation becomes even worse for Race and the team when an army of giant ""rapa"" cats, hellbent on ripping throats, snapping spines and mauling anyone who comes near them. Can Race lead the team to the idol, or is he leading them into disaster, and violent death?"
2744,A Philosophical Investigation,thriller," In a near-future, a British neuroscientist named Professor Burgess Phelan has discovered a portion of the brain, the VMN, that is typically twice the size in men as it is in women. In certain men, however (approximately 1 in 100,000), it is the same size as a woman's, and that abnormality is an exceptionally accurate indicator of violent sociopathy. Professor Phelan developed an imaging device called L.O.M.B.R.O.S.O. (Localisation of Modullar Brain Resonations Obliging Social Orthopraxy) used to help diagnose men with the VMN deficiency. In the interests of public safety, the Lombroso institute is set up to test all the men in Britain. Males are enticed with ad campaigns to submit for testing; those who are VMN-negative are given confidential treatment, including counselling and drugs, and assigned a code name out of the Penguin book of Great Thinkers (e.g., Shakespeare, Plato, etc.). The police aren't given the names of the VMN-negative, but they are allowed to confirm whether or not a particular person is in the Lombroso Institutes system as VMN-negative. ""Wittgenstein"" is the code name of a VMN-negative who, until he was made aware of his status, was living a well-adjusted, if solitary, life, venting his sociopathic tendencies harmlessly through virtual reality entertainment systems. Upon discovering his pathology, though, he undertakes a public service of his own: after hacking into the Lombroso Institute's systems and obtaining a list of all VMN-negative men in Britain, he undertakes to kill them all. The narrative unfolds from a dual perspective: Wittgenstein's, and the female police lieutenant, Isadora ""Jake"" Jakowicz, assigned to catch him. Wittgenstein's portion is told from the first person as a diary of his assassinations and subsequent downfall; the detective's portion is told in a more traditional third-person perspective. In the novel's setting, the national government was elected partly on a platform of ""retributive justice"", rather than rehabilitative, and punitive coma has replaced the death penalty (and, to a lesser extent, incarceration) as punishment for extreme crimes. In its favour, punitive coma is safely reversed, should someone later prove innocent; as well, prison costs have plunged since the inmates are sentenced to years of sleep rather than restraint, and require much less guarding and care. Opponents of punitive coma (of whom Jake is one) argue that the state is now stealing years from people's lives, and giving the guilty no opportunity to rehabilitate themselves; thus, punitive coma is inhumane. This position is defeated, however, by proponents who observe that any long-term space travel will necessarily involve long-term medically-induced comas of the same kind, so the process itself is not inhumane; furthermore, criminals are not subject to the dangerous criminal environment of prison, so punitive coma may be considered a more, rather than less, humane punishment. An interesting portion of the narrative involves the use of a Cambridge philosophy professor to engage Wittgenstein in a debate on the morality of his actions. Since the killer comes to see his whole act through the lens of the real Wittgenstein's philosophy (including his mid-career reversal following Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), it's hoped that he will be amenable to philosophical persuasion. However, as Wittgenstein's killings continue, the government presses the Cambridge don to talk Wittgenstein into committing suicide, a position with which the philosopher agrees, much to Jake's dismay. gl:A Philosophical Investigation"
2745,The Bourne Sanction,thriller," At the beginning of the book, Bourne is at Georgetown University talking with Moira Trevor. Moira Trevor wants Bourne to be the head of security at their new liquid natural gas terminal in Long Beach, California. Meanwhile, Veronica Hart, a woman determined to get the DCI job, is on her way to the Oval Office to meet with the President of the United States, Luther LaValle (pentagon intelligence czar), and Army General Richard P. Kendall. Whilst at a restaurant with Moira, Bourne senses somebody watching him. He has Moira surruptitiously call him on his phone, leaves the restaurant and waits for his enemy to appear. That failing, Bourne goes back into the restaurant to join Moira. He gradually realizes that it is Moira who is the one being followed. Luther LaValle, Rob Batt and General Kendall are hatching a conspiracy amongst their little triumvirate to get Veronica Hart sacked. They want her out of her job as soon as possible. When Bourne and Specter meet in a library, Specter tells Bourne of Pyotr Zilber and his death. Zilber, it is revealed, was a former student of Specter's at Georgetown University. Specter reveals to Bourne that he is a terrorist hunter as well as an academic and would like Jason to go after Semion Icoupov. In Europe, Jason's investigation into the Black Legion turns into one of the deadliest and most tangled operations of his double life: the pursuit of the leader of a murderous terrorist group with roots in the darkest days of World War II. During all of this Leonid Arkadin, who is just as talented as, but even more damaged than Bourne, is getting closer by the minute. While Bourne thinks he is getting closer to Arkadin, Arkadin thinks he's getting closer to Bourne. Bourne goes to Moscow using information provided by Professor Specter. He is followed by many people sent in pursuit of him because of intercepted information. Bourne checks in to the Metrtopolya Hotel with a girl named Gala. His arrival is expected by many. The taxi driver, Yakov, is paid by a man named Harris Low to drop him off at the hotel. Yakov is a poor man with an unpleasant past who does what he must to survive. Meanwhile in the hotel, Bourne wrestles with and garottes a phony waiter (agent Anthony Prowess) after dodging his blade. As he exits the room he finds a blood trail that leads to the closet where Prowess had executed a man also sent to trail Bourne. Meanwhile, Soraya and Tyrone are meeting with Luther LaValle and General Kendall. Tyrone and Soraya are to meet with them because LaValle and Kendall believe they are getting intel on the Black Legion. Tyrone wanders off to finish what he, Soraya and a woman named Kiki are there for. He gets caught and is thrown into a cell. LaValle and Kendall leave Tyrone's life up to Soraya. She must trade Hart for Tyrone. But what LaValle did not know was that Hart was gathering intel that Rob Batt has been gathering ever since he was fired for being a mole. In Moscow, Bourne meets with Dimitri Maslow, who vaguely tells him about Arkadin's life. After the meeting Bourne calls Specter. Specter reveals that Pyotr Zilber was his son and a member of the Black Legion. Bourne knows what Arkadin is capable of doing and is going to go after Specter's last man, Kirsch. Later on when Bourne is in a museum in Munich he leaves Kirsch behind a statue. When he returns he finds him lying there with a bullet through his head. He meets Jens, one of the men Specter sent to give his apartment to Bourne. The pair leaves the building and Semion Icoupov rides up and shoots Jens point blank outside the museum. Escaping the mayhem in the State Museum in Sheremetyevo, Bourne and Petra, a security guard paid to shoot Kirsch, visit Herr Pelz, an older man that Petra knew when she was a child. He helped her in Dachau, where she grew up. ""Old"" Pelz tells Bourne more information about the Black Legion. Bourne shows Pelz a picture and asks him if he can identify the people in it. Pointing to the picture of Professor Specter he says ""Damn, I'd swear this one is Asher Sever."" He told Bourne that Sever's dad, Ibrahim, killed Semion Icoupov's father. For that Icupouv executed Ibrahim. The brothers hated each other and wanted the other one killed. After being dropped of at Kirsch's apartment by Petra, Bourne finds a tiny transmitter planted on his passport. The door bells rings and it is Semion Icoupov. A couple of minutes later Arkadin blasts through the window with Devra coming in the back way and armed as well. Icoupov shoots Devra in the chest, but she then manages to shoot him in the shoulder, and he runs out of the house escaping to a rooftop. Arkadin then catches up with Server and Icoupov in their Mercedes and executes them in cold blood with a SIG Sauer Mosquito. Bourne jumps out a helicopter onto the 'Moon of Hormuz' (the tanker), following Arkadin. Bourne and Arkadin team up (or at least Bourne thinks so) to find Sever's man on board with the Black Legion symbol. Once Moira kills the doctor---Sever's man---Bourne comes down in the lower room because the captain told him that she was down there. As he comes up Arkadin lunges at him with a knife aiming at Bourne's stomach. After a long fight, Arkadain goes overboard with a twelve story drop, plunging into the frigid water below. Back at the hospital where Asher Sever (who we find out is Dominic Specter) is on life support, Bourne meets Willard, the chef at the NSA Safe House. There Willard tells him that Arkadin was a member of Treadstone. Conklin knew Icoupov and they agreed it would be good to train Arkadin because he had the drive and nothing to lose. In the end, however, Jason Bourne was the superior asset. fr:Le Danger dans la peau"
2746,Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day,thriller," After failing to escape France, Paul and Rosie reunite with Marc and Henderson. With the help of PT Bivott, an American boy in trouble with the law, they help British bombers target ports in France that will be used to invade Britain in Operation Sealion."
2747,The Naked Face,thriller," Dr. Judd Stevens, M.D., is a caring and successful Manhattan psychoanalyst who must face a horrific prospect; someone is trying to kill him. First, John Hanson, a patient trying overcome his homosexuality, is brutally murdered, perhaps because he was mistaken for Stevens. Not long after, Carol Roberts, Stevens' secretary, is also found murdered. The police, partly due to anger with Stevens testimony in a previous case, are quick to treat Stevens as the prime suspect. To prove his innocence and track down the real killer, Stevens hires a private investigator by the name of Norman Z. Moody. Before the case is done, Stevens will have to risk life and limb, psychoanalize possible suspects and fall in love with a mysterious patient named Annie DeMarco."
2748,Mushroom in the Sand,thriller," Dr. Rostam (Ross) Shaheen, 53, is a world-renowned Iranian-American physicist holding a senior position at the Berkley Lab with extensive expertise in nuclear weapons research and design. His wife of 25 years, Oksana Pugachov, happens to be the only daughter of a high-ranking government official of the Russian Federation. Dr. Shaheen is lured to Iran by the Iranian secret service, MOIS, agents. Amir Meshkin, the head of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, brings Ross to the subterranean plant at Natanz to force him to provide the ""missing link"" for the project. To ensure Ross' cooperation, MOIS goes to extreme lengths and will stop at nothing to get what they need. With the CIA, Mossad and the Russians all in play, Ross is forced into a dangerous game of chess with deadly, and potentially catastrophic, consequences."
2749,Fail-Safe,thriller," An unknown aircraft approaches North America from Europe. American bombers of the SAC are scrambled to meet the potential threat. As a fail-safe protection, the bombers have standard orders not to proceed past a certain point without receiving a special attack code. The original ""threat"" is proven to be innocuous and recall orders are issued. However, due to a technical failure, the attack code is transmitted to Group Six, which consists of six Vindicator supersonic bombers. Colonel Grady, the head of the group, tries to contact Omaha to verify the fail-safe order (called Positive Check), but due to Soviet radio jamming, Grady cannot hear them. Concluding that the fail-safe order and the radio jamming could only mean nuclear war, Grady commands the Group Six crew towards Moscow, their intended destination. At meetings in Omaha, at the Pentagon, and in the fallout shelter of the White House, American politicians and scholars debate the implications of the attack. Professor Groteschele suggests the United States follow this accidental attack with a full-scale attack to force the Soviets to surrender. Following procedures, the military sends out six Skyscraper supersonic fighters in an attempt to shoot down the Vindicators. The attempt is to show that the Vindicator attack is an accident, not a full-scale nuclear assault. This involves turning on afterburners to increase thrust and speed. Without tanker refueling, the ""Skyscrapers"" will run out of fuel and crash, dooming the pilots to die of exposure in the Arctic Sea. The Vindicators are too far away, and all six fighters shoot their rockets and fail to hit them. The President of the United States (unnamed but apparently modeled on Kennedy) contacts Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and offers assistance in attacking the group. The Soviets decline at first; however, they soon decide to accept it. At SAC headquarters, General Bogan attempts to stop the attack. However, his executive officer, Colonel Cascio, wants the attack to continue. Cascio attempts to take over command of SAC, but is stopped by Air Police. However, precious time has been wasted. Meanwhile, the Soviet PVO Strany air defense corps has managed to shoot down two of the six planes. The Soviets accept American help and shoot down a third plane. Two bombers and a support plane remain on course to Moscow. General Bogan tells Marshal Nevsky, the Soviet commander, to ignore Plane #6 (the support plane) because it has no weapons. Nevsky, who mistrusts Bogan, instead orders his Soviet aircraft to attack all three planes. Plane 6's last feint guarantees that the two remaining bombers can successfully attack. Following the failure, Nevsky collapses. As the two planes approach Moscow, Colonel Grady opens up the radio to contact SAC to inform them that they are about to make the strike. As a last-minute measure, the Soviets fire a barrage of nuclear-tipped missiles to form a fireball in an attempt to knock the low-flying Vindicator out of the sky. The Vindicators shoot up one last decoy, which successfully leads the Soviet missiles high in the air. However, one missile explodes earlier than expected; the second bomber blows up, but Colonel Grady's plane survives. With the radio open, the President attempts to persuade Grady that there is no war. Understanding orders that such a late recall attempt must be a Soviet trick, Grady ignores them. The Vindicator's defensive systems operator fires two missiles that decoy the Soviet interceptor missiles to detonate at high altitude. Grady tells his crew that ""We're not just walking wounded, we're walking dead men,"" due to radiation from the burst. He intends to fly the aircraft over Moscow and detonate the bombs in the plane. His copilot agrees, noting ""There's nothing to go home to."" When it becomes apparent that one bomber will get through Soviet defenses and destroy Moscow, the American President states that he will order an American bomber to destroy New York City at the same time, with the Empire State Building as ground zero; his wife is in the city and would be killed. The Soviet leader is appalled but realizes that this is the only way to prevent a worldwide nuclear war which will probably destroy humanity; 'others' (presumably the Soviet military) would not accept the unilateral destruction of Moscow, and would depose him and retaliate. The bomb is dropped by a senior general within Strategic Air Command, who orders his crew to let him handle the entire bombing run by himself so as to assume all the responsibility; he then takes his own life."
2750,Windfall,thriller," This is a novel about the source of a mysterious 40 million pound legacy. The main benefactor was a small college in the remote Rift Valley in Kenya. The heirs were the South African man Dirk Hendricks and the unknown, recently discovered, descendant, Henry Hendrix from California. Max Stafford, security consultant, is suspicious of Henry being an impostor and the violent reaction to his arrival in Kenya points to a sinister and far-reaching conspiracy far beyond mere greed."
2751,Dance of Death,thriller," The book follows FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast and his sidekick, Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta. Pendergast was last seen at the end of the first novel, Brimstone, where he was buried alive behind a brick wall in Castel Fosco. His estranged brother, Diogenes, rescues him and nurses him back to health. However this is not a true act of kindness; Diogenes has a dark agenda and needs his brother alive in order to carry out his nefarious plans. Pendergast's ward Constance Greene requests Vincent D'Agosta's presence for a very important meeting. D'Agosta is shown a letter written many months previously by Pendergast about his brother Diogenes. In the letter, Pendergast writes that he does not know of Diogenes's whereabouts, but does in fact know one thing—a date, January 28. D'Agosta presumes that this will be the date of Diogenes's greatest crime. Having been hated by and hating his family, Diogenes obviously cannot be trusted."
2752,The Day of the Jackal,thriller," The book begins with the historical, failed attempt on de Gaulle's life planned by Col. Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart. After Bastien-Thiry's arrest, the French security forces wage a short but extremely vicious ""underground"" war with the terrorists of the OAS, a militant right-wing group who have labeled de Gaulle a traitor to France after his grant of independence to Algeria. The French secret service, a.k.a. Action Service, is remarkably effective in infiltrating the terrorist organization with their own informants, allowing them to kidnap and neutralize the terrorists' chief of operations, Antoine Argoud. The failure of the Petit-Clamart assassination, and a subsequent attempt at the Ecole Militaire, coupled with Bastien-Thiry's eventual execution by firing squad, likewise cripples the morale of the terrorists. Argoud's deputy, Lt. Col. Marc Rodin, carefully examines their few remaining options and determines that the only way to succeed in killing de Gaulle is to hire a professional assassin from outside the organization, someone completely unknown to either the French authorities or the OAS itself. After inquiries, he contacts an Englishman (whose name is never given), who meets with Rodin and his two principal deputies in Vienna, and agrees to assassinate de Gaulle for the sum of $500,000 (about $2.4 million in 2012). The four men agree on his code name, ""The Jackal."" The remainder of Part One describes the Jackal's exhaustive preparations for the assassination. First, he acquires a legitimate British passport under a false name, under which he plans to operate for the majority of his mission. He also steals the passports of two foreign tourists visiting London who superficially resemble the Jackal, for use in an emergency. Using his primary false passport, the Jackal travels to Belgium, where he commissions a specialized sniper rifle of great slimness and an appropriate silencer from a master gunsmith, and a set of forged French identity papers from a master forger. When picking up his fake identity papers, the master forger attempts to blackmail the Jackal but the Jackal kills him and locks the body in a large trunk inside the forger's house, where he correctly deduces it won't be found for a long time. After exhaustively researching a series of books and articles by, and about, de Gaulle, the Jackal travels to Paris to reconnoiter the most favorable spot and the most likely day for the assassination. After orchestrating a series of armed robberies in France, the OAS is able to deposit the first half of the Jackal's fee in his bank in Switzerland. At the same time, the French secret service, curious about the actions of Rodin and his subordinates, fake a letter that lures one of Rodin's bodyguards to France, where he is captured and interrogated, before dying. Interpreting his incoherent ramblings, the secret service is able to piece together Rodin's plot, but without knowing the name or the exact description of the assassin. When told about the plot, de Gaulle (who was notoriously careless of his personal safety) refuses, absolutely, to cancel his public appearances, modify his normal routines, or even allow any kind of public inquiry into the assassin's whereabouts to be made. Any inquiry, he orders, must be done in absolute secrecy. Roger Frey, the French Minister of the Interior, convenes a meeting of the heads of the French security forces. Since Rodin and his men have taken refuge at a hotel in Rome under heavy guard, they cannot be captured and interrogated. The rest of the meeting is at a loss to suggest how to proceed, except a Commissioner of the Police Judiciare, who reasons that their first and most essential step is to establish the Jackal's identity, which is a job for a detective. When asked to name the best detective in France, he volunteers his own deputy commissioner, Claude Lebel. Granted special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, Lebel does everything he can to discover the Jackal's identity. He first calls upon his ""old boy network"" of foreign intelligence and police contacts to inquire if they have any records of a top-class political assassin. Most of the inquiries are fruitless, but in the United Kingdom, the inquiry is eventually passed on to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and another veteran detective, Superintendent Bryn Thomas. A search through Special Branch's records turns up nothing, however one of Thomas's subordinates suggests that if the assassin was an Englishman, but primarily operated abroad, he'd be more likely to come to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service. Thomas makes an informal inquiry with a friend of his on the SIS's staff, who mentions hearing a rumor from an officer stationed in the Dominican Republic at the time of President Trujillo's assassination. The rumor states that a hired assassin stopped Trujillo's car with a rifle shot, allowing a gang of partisans to finish him off; and moreover, that the assassin was an Englishman, named Charles Calthrop. To his surprise, Thomas is summoned in person by the Prime Minister (unnamed, but likely intended to represent Harold Macmillan), who informs him that word of his inquiries has reached higher circles in the British government. Despite the enmity felt by much of the government against France in general and de Gaulle in particular, the Prime Minister informs Thomas that de Gaulle is his friend, and that the assassin must be identified and stopped at all costs. Thomas is handed a commission much similar to Lebel's, with temporary powers allowing him to override almost any other authority in the land. Checking out the name of Charles Calthrop, Thomas finds a match to a man living in London, said to be on holiday in Scotland. While Thomas confirms that this Calthrop was in the Dominican Republic at the time of Trujillo's death, he does not feel it is enough to inform Lebel. But then one of his junior detectives realizes that the first three letters of his Christian name and surname form the French (and Spanish) word for Jackal, Chacal. Thomas calls Lebel immediately. Unknown to any member of the council in France, the mistress of one of them (an arrogant Air Force colonel attached to de Gaulle's staff) is actually an OAS agent. Through pillow talk, the colonel unwittingly feeds the Jackal a constant stream of information as to Lebel's progress. The Jackal enters France by way of Italy, driving a rented Alfa Romeo sports car with his special gun hidden in the chassis. On receiving word from the OAS agent that the French are on the lookout for him, he decides his plan will succeed nevertheless, and forges ahead. In London, the Special Branch raids Calthrop's flat, finding his passport, and deduce that he must be travelling on a false one. When they work out the name of the Jackal's primary false identity, Lebel and the police come close to apprehending the Jackal in the south of France. But thanks to his OAS contact, the Jackal checks out of his hotel early and evades them by only an hour. With the police on the lookout for him, the Jackal takes refuge in the chateau of a woman whom he seduced while she was staying at the hotel the night before. When she goes through his things and finds the gun, he kills her and escapes again. The murder is not reported until much later that evening, allowing the Jackal to assume one of his two emergency identities and board the train for Paris. Lebel becomes suspicious of what the rest of the council label the Jackal's ""good luck,"" and has the telephones of all the members wiretapped, which leads him to discover the OAS agent. The Air Force colonel withdraws from the meeting in disgrace and later resigns from his post. When Thomas checks out and identifies reports of stolen or missing passports in London in the preceding months, he closes in on the Jackal's remaining false identities. On the evening of August 22, 1963, Lebel deduces that the Jackal has decided to target de Gaulle on Liberation Day, on 25 August, the day commemorating the liberation of Paris during World War II. It is, he realizes, the one day of the year when de Gaulle can be counted on to be in Paris, and to appear in public. Considering the inquiry all but over, the Minister orchestrates a massive, city-wide manhunt for the Jackal under his false name(s), and dismisses Lebel with hearty congratulations. However, the Jackal has eluded them yet again. By pretending to be homosexual in one of his false guises, he allows himself to be ""picked up"" by another man and taken to his apartment, where he kills the man and remains hidden for the remaining three days, thus avoiding identification through hotel registrations, which are examined by the police. On the day before the 25th, the Minister summons Lebel again and tells him that the Jackal still cannot be found. Lebel listens to the details of the President's schedule and security arrangements, and can suggest nothing more helpful than that everyone ""should keep their eyes open."" On the day of the assassination, the Jackal, disguised as a one-legged French war veteran, passes through the police checkpoints, carrying his custom rifle concealed in the sections of a crutch. He makes his way to an apartment building overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 (in front of the soon-to-be-demolished facade of the Gare Montparnasse), where de Gaulle is presenting medals to a small group of Resistance veterans. As the ceremony begins, Lebel is walking around the street on foot, questioning and re-questioning every police checkpoint. When he hears from one CRS officer about a one-legged veteran with a crutch, he realizes what the Jackal's plan is, and rushes into the apartment building, yelling for the CRS man to follow him. In his sniper's rest, the Jackal readies his rifle and takes aim at de Gaulle's head. Yet his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch, when de Gaulle unexpectedly leans forward to kiss the cheeks of the veteran he is honoring. The Jackal begins to reload. Outside the apartment, Lebel and the CRS officer arrive on the top floor in time to hear the sound of the first, silenced shot. The CRS man shoots off the lock of the door and bursts in. The Jackal turns and fires, killing the young policeman with a shot to the chest. At last, confronting each other, the assassin and the police detective — who had developed grudging, mutual respect for each other in the long chase — briefly look into each other's eyes, each recognizing the other for who he is. The Jackal scrambles to load his third and last rifle bullet, while Lebel, unarmed, snatches up the dead policeman's MAT-49 submachine-gun. Lebel is faster, and shoots the Jackal with half a magazine-load of bullets, instantly killing him. In London, the Special Branch are cleaning up Calthrop's apartment when the real Charles Calthrop storms in and demands to know what they are doing. Once it is established that Calthrop really has been on holiday in Scotland and has no connection whatsoever with the Jackal, the British are left to wonder ""If the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?"" The Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave in a Paris cemetery, officially recorded as ""an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident."" Aside from the priest, the only person attending the burial is Police Inspector Claude Lebel, who then leaves the cemetery to return home to his family."
2753,Vector,thriller," New York City cab driver Yuri Davydov is a disgruntled Russian émigré poised to lash out at the adoptive nation he believes has denied him the American Dream. A former technician in the Soviet biological weapons program in Sverdlovsk, BIOPREPARAT, Yuri possesses the knowledge and expertise to wreak havoc in the Big Apple. But before he executes his planned pièce de résistance of retribution against the wealthy Jews of Manhattan he first tests the Anthrax's efficacy on a dealer in exotic carpets as well as on his increasingly suspicious American-born wife. Dr. Jack Stapleton and Dr. Laurie Montgomery (both last seen in Chromosome 6) begin to witness some unusual cases in their capacity as forensic pathologists in the city's medical examiner's office: a young obese black woman dies of respiratory failure on the heels of a Greek immigrant's succumbing to what initially appears to be a sudden, overwhelming attack of influenza. At the same time, the pair are pressured from above to investigate the death of a prisoner from the blatantly obvious use of excessive force by police. When an unexpected breakthrough persuades Jack that the first two seemingly unrelated deaths are connected, his colleagues and superiors are skeptical. Only Laurie is somewhat convinced. The tension builds as the reader's complacent assumption of the usual happy ending is eroded away by a never-ending series of twists and turns in the action. For even if the pair of doctors succeeds in solving the puzzle, will they still be able to react in time to keep Yuri and his militant American cronies from snuffing out the lives of a million Manhattanites?"
2754,The Doomsday Conspiracy,thriller," The protagonist of the story is Robert Bellamy, a man hired by the NSA to locate the several bus passengers in Switzerland who had accidentally seen a weather balloon with some top secret equipment (later on identified as a UFO) collapsing in the woods. As Robert locates the passengers one by one, they are mysteriously killed. Each murder has been meticulously staged to appear as an accident. Robert's marriage also dissolves, as his wife, starved for attention by Robert, marries a rich business tycoon Monte Banks. As Commander Robert Bellamy of US Navy is in the verge of completion of his mission, he learns that he is being hunted by an unknown lethal force. Robert runs escaping from the attackers from Washington to Zurich, Rome and Paris. As the story unfolds to reveal Bellamy's past - why the woman he loves cannot return his love, why his most beloved friends become his deadly enemies. Bellamy finally learns that the investigation ends in the place where he had started it."
2755,Dust to Dust,thriller," Andy Fallon, Internal Affairs cop and son of police legend, ""Iron"" Mike Fallon, is found hanging nude in his bedroom, facing a mirror with the word ""sorry"" printed on it. Was it a suicide, an erotic accident, or murder? Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska, two of Minneapolis' toughest detectives are told to exploit the case, call it an accident and move on. But Kovac isn't convinced and when Iron Mike is found dead a few days later, another apparent suicide, Kovac and Liska stop listening to the brass, put their careers on the line and start their own investigation. As they begin to dig, they uncover cover ups, a connection to a twenty year old case and a killer who wants to keep the secrets of the past dead and buried."
2756,Johnny Gone Down,thriller," Nikhil Arya has fallen. Once, he was an Ivy League scholar with a promising future at NASA; now, at forty, he is broke, homeless, and minutes away from blowing his brains out in a diabolical modern day joust. It wasn’t meant to be this. An innocent vacation turned into an epic intercontinental journey that saw Nikhil become first a genocide survivor, then a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul and a deadly game fighter. Now, twenty years later, Nikhil aka Johnny is tired of running. With the Columbian mafia on his trail and his abandoned wife and son ten thousand miles away, he prepares for his final act, aware that he will have lost even if he wins."
2757,Brigands M.C.,thriller," The book begins in 2003 with the death of Dante Scott's mother, father, older sister and brother at the hands of the Brigands M.C. South Devon President, The Führer, after Dante's father refuses to go through with the plans to redevelop the Brigands' clubhouse, turning it into shops and flats. After saving his eighteen-month-old sister Holly from the burning house (the Führer attempted to burn all evidence), nine-year-old Dante escapes, is put under the wing of child psychologist Ross Johnson, and is questioned by police in an attempt to convict the Führer. On the night of the murders he was forced into a boxing fight with Martin, the Führer's eldest son, and got blood on his shirt; he lies to the police telling them that it was a 'nosebleed'. The defence solicitors could use the unreliability of his statement to clear the Führer. Much to Dante's fury, the courts decide that there is insufficient evidence to convict the Führer, and he is released. After moving in with a foster family, a member of another Brigands chapter attempts to murder him with a bomb inside a toy car on his birthday. Shaken, Dante moves in under the care of Ross again. Dante is drugged by Jennifer Mitchum (the same person that drugged James Adams in ""The Recruit"") and is sent to CHERUB where he befriends Lauren Onions (soon to be changed to Lauren Adams). 4½ years later Neil Gauche, an undercover policeman who is a part of a mission to infiltrate the Brigands M.C., tries to join them. Unfortunately, the Führer realises he is a policeman and knocks him out. Ross and Neil visit CHERUB Campus and James Adams, Dante and Lauren are assigned to a mission to infiltrate the Brigands M.C. with their last names changed to Raven. To avoid Dante’s old friends recognizing him, Dante also changes his first name to John. Dante and Lauren make friends with Joe Donnington (the Führer's younger son). Meanwhile James purchases a new bike, and is invited on a run with the Brigands. He ends up being ‘hero worshipped’ by Dirty Dave after James saves his life when a member of the Vengefuls tries to stab him with a sharpened hammer. At the same time Jake McEwen and Neil attempt to uncover a weapons deal orchestrated by the Brigands, worth £600,000 by following two friends of James: Julian and Nigel. When James gets to The Rebel Tea Party, a biker war breaks out between the Brigands and three other gangs (The Vengeful Bastards, Satan's Prodigy and the Bitch Slappers), but James manages to escape. Meanwhile Dante and Lauren end up at Joe’s house party which is invaded by sixth formers ending in police being called after windows get broken and a fight breaks out between Joe, Dante, Lauren and the party-crashers. Unfortunately, Julian later gets scared and confesses to his father, who is a judge. This leads to riot police arresting McEwen and Neil, blowing the operation and McEwen ‘nutting’ a riot officer who insulted his intelligence, resulting in McEwen being forced to six months file sorting in the basement of CHERUB’s mission building. Since the mission is ending, the agents are sent back to campus. Before Dante leaves, he sneaks into the Führer's house, intent on killing him, but can't bring himself to do it. Instead he carves a message into the Fürher's table, implying he is a member of the Vengeful Bastards, to give the Führer something to think about. Dante takes an old photograph from the Führer's study of his and the Führer's family together. James also gets invited to become a stripper at ""Dirty Dave's"" Devon Strip Joint but refuses and leaves. Lauren, Chloe Blake (the mission controller and posing as the mother of the family) and Dante get a good laugh out of this."
2758,Rabies,thriller," Set in early 1980s, during the height of Cold War, novel follows a series of parallel storylines. The situation on the Heathrow Airport is tense, due to the arrival of the Soviet delegation, led by the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Artamonov. Heathrow VIP loungue is where they and British Foreign Minister Sir Geoffrey Drummond, are to conclude the signing of the new Anglo-Soviet treaty with protocolar toasts. Whilst the tight security is being deployed by the head of the Aviation Security, Major Lawford, along with his colleagues: Colonels Donovan of the MI6 and Rasimov of the KGB, medical service, headed by Dr. Luke Komarovsky, gets informed that a nun from a convent near Lagos Nigeria, who was travelling on the Alitalia Boeing 747 en route to New York City via Heathrow, has gotten ill. Her symptoms are first diagnosed as those of hysteria caused by fear of flying, then to an epileptic seisure. Plane is given a priority landing. Dr. Komarowsky, who in past has been a scientist, was working, along with three other doctors, each of whom will make an appearance further in the book: Dr. John Hamilton, Dr. Matthew Laverick, and Dr. Coro Deveroux, in a team of the world renowned microbiologist, Dr. Frederick Lieberman. Their work, in a somewhat laboratory at Wolfenden House was and remains weiled in mystery, but their goal (four of them were called either the nucleus or evangelists of Messiah Lieberman) was the 'holy grail' of microbiology - creation, through genetical reorganisation, of general immunity to bacterial, viral and oncological diseases, which would, being based on the modifications of the very human DNA, thus also be hereditary. But the last batch of experiments, a vaccine based on a recombined Rabies virus, was done on humans who were exposed to the rabies virus in a quarantine in Britain. To be continued..."
2759,The Girl Who Played with Fire,thriller," The novel is formally divided into a prologue followed by four parts. The prologue of the book opens with a girl captured and restrained inside a dark room by an unidentified male. To cope with being captured, she mentally replays a past episode when she threw a milk carton filled with gasoline onto another man inside a car and tossed an ignited match onto him. Salander, after finishing the job on the Wennerström affair (described in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), disappeared from Sweden and traveled throughout Europe. The novel opens with Salander at the shores of the Caribbean in St. George's, the capital of Grenada. She has become interested in Fermat's Last Theorem and mathematics, an interest that resounds with the opening page of each Part in this novel. From within her room in her hotel she observes on several occasions that her neighbor, Dr. Forbes, an American tourist from Texas, physically abuses his wife next door to her room. She also befriends George Bland, an introverted sixteen year old student living in a small shack, and she begins tutoring him in mathematics. Salander finds Bland's company relaxing and enjoyable because Bland does not ask her personal questions, and the two develop a sexual relationship. Lisbeth Salander uses her connections among the hackers' network to investigate Dr. Forbes and learns that Reverend Robert Forbes was once accused of mishandling of funds in his faith-based foundation. Currently he has no assets, but his wife is the heir of a fortune worth $40 million. Due to concerns for safety, the residents at the hotel begin to enter the hotel cellar as a hurricane hits Grenada. Salander remembers Bland and braves the strong wind and rain to collect him. As the two reach the hotel entrance, Salander sees Dr. Forbes on the beach with his wife and realizes that he is attempting to kill her for her inheritance. Salander attacks Dr. Forbes with the leg of a chair, and abandons him to the elements. Salander, Bland and Mrs. Forbes retreat to the cellar and receive medical care; Dr. Forbes is later confirmed to have died during the night. Lisbeth Salander returns to Stockholm after more than a year away. Immediately before the Wennerström affair became public knowledge, Salander laundered a sum of three billion kronor into a disguised bank account. With this sum she purchases a new up-scale apartment outside of Mosebacke Torg and moves out of her old apartment in Lundagatan. Salander allows her current sex partner, Miriam Wu, to move into her old apartment, for the price of 1 krona and the condition that Wu forward all of Salander's mail. She also re-establishes contact with Dragan Armansky, her former boss at Milton Securities, and former legal guardian Holder Palmgren, who fell victim to a stroke during the events of Dragon Tattoo. Nils Bjurman, Palmgren's replacement, continues to brew a growing hatred for his ward after the events of Dragon Tattoo. His fury has caused him to diminish his practice down to a single client (Salander) and focus his attention on capturing her and destroying the CDs. He scrutinizes Salander's medical records, identifies an incident named ""All the Evil"" as well as a person from her past as his strongest ally. In the meantime, Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of Millennium magazine, has lost all contact with Salander for over a year, as she has refused to even open his letters. His only contact with her at all is a physical intervention when, while he is walking past her apartment in the vain hope of running into her, she is cornered by a man from the Svavelsjö outlaw motorcycle club with a beer gut and a ponytail. Blomkvist swings in to help, to Salander's astonishment, and between their efforts she manages to elude her attacker. Millenium are approached by Dag Svensson, a young journalist, and Mia Johanssen, a doctoral candidate. They have together written a meticulously-researched report, ironically titled ""From Russia with Love,"" about sex trafficking in Sweden and the abuse of underage girls by high-ranking figures, which will be her doctoral thesis and which Svensson now wants Millennium to publish as an exposé. While the research is mostly complete, Svensson, Johanssen and the Millenium staff are intrigued by reoccuring mentions of the name ""Zala,"" a shadowy figure who evidently runs most of Sweden's sex-trafficking industry. Salander, hacking Mikael Blomkvist's computer, is taken aback by the mention of Zala and visits Svennson and Johanssen to ask questions. Later that night, Blomkvist, who had been invited to visit the couple, finds them both shot dead in their apartment. Salander's fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Blomkvist notifies Erika Berger, the editor in chief of Millennium and his occasional lover, of the double murder. The next morning, the magazine office holds an emergency meeting to work out the logistics of postponing the publication of Svensson's book and the associated magazine special. The staff decides to backtrack Svensson's research to ensure the accuracy of the material, and to comb through it for possible murder motives, while Blomkvist is tasked with finishing Svensson's mostly-completed book. Prosecutor Richard Ekström assembles an investigation team, led by Inspector Jan Bublanski, who demands that Sonja Modig be included in the team. The team identifies Salander's fingerprints on the murder weapon. Salander's formal record establishes her as a violent, unstable, psychotic woman with a history of prostitution, but Armansky, Blomkvist and Berger all vouch for her intelligence and moral fiber; neither Mikael nor Erika were even aware of her psychiatric history. While investigating her social circle, Modig finds Bjurman shot dead in his apartment by the same revolver that slew Svennson and Johanssen; Salander remains the prime suspect. In the light of this new evidence, Ekström holds a press conference and discloses Salander's name and psychiatric history to the press, describing her as a danger to others and herself. Blomkvist enlists the help of managing editor Malin Eriksson to investigate the murders, during which he realizes that Salander has hacked into his notebook computer. He leaves her notes on his desktop, and her replies point him to ""Zala"". He confronts Gunnar Björck, a policeman on sick leave and one of the johns identified by Dag and Mia, who agrees to disclose information about Zala if Blomkvist leaves him out of Millenium's exposé. On the other hand, Milton Security becomes involved in the investigation as Armansky decides to send two of his employees, Hedström and Bohman, to aid the formal police investigation. Miriam Wu returns from a Paris trip to find herself taken to the police station and confirms Salander's intelligence and moral character. However, Hedström leaks Wu's identity into the press, and the press publishes extensively about Wu's ownership of a Gay Pride Festival; both she and Salander are sensationalized in the media as members of a ""lesbian Satanist gang."" The press also publishes about Salander's past from childhood to 11, and from 14 onward. Part 3 closes with Salander wondering why the press's inside source has not chosen to publicize ""All the Evil,"" the events which dominated the gap in her biography, as they would swing public opinion even further against her. Blomkvist is approached by Paolo Roberto, a boxing champion and Salander's former training master. Blomkvist suggests Roberto seek out Miriam Wu for conversation, as she has been avoiding all press, including Mikael himself. In the meantime, on Salander's suggestion Blomkvist focuses onto Zala as the key connection between the three murders and sex trafficking. As the police continue the investigation, Blomkvist's team also notices the three-year gap in Salander's biography. Blomkvist decides to confront Björck and trade his anonymity for information on Zala. Roberto, staking out Salander's former apartment in the hopes of catching Wu, witnesses her kidnapped into a van by a paunchy man with a ponytail (Salander's former attacker) and a blond giant. He follows the van out to a warehouse south of Nykvarn, where he attempts to rescue Wu by boxing with the blond giant. He finds his opponent unusually muscular and totally insensitive to pain, and only through applications of massive blunt trauma can he and Wu stun the giant enough to escape. The blond giant recovers and sets the warehouse on fire to remove all evidence. However, Roberto is able to direct the police to the site, where they find three buried and dismembered bodies there, presumably deposited by the blond giant. Visiting Bjurman's summer cabin, Salander finds a classified Swedish Security Service file written about ""All The Evil,"" and begins to make the connection between Bjurman and Zala. According to the information, Zala's real name is Alexander Zalachenko. By sheer coincidence, two members of Svavelsjö MC, Carl-Magnus Lundin (the paunchy ponytail man) and Sonny Niemenen, have been dispatched to burn the place down, and Salander defeats them, leaving more suspects for Bublanski to find. She returns to her apartment and, having no choice, decides to find Zalachenko and kill him. Salander learns of the blond giant's identity (""Ronald Niedermann"") and his connection to a post office box in Göteborg and goes there to find him and Zalachenko. In his apartment, Blomkvist finds Salander's old keys, which he gained during their joint fight with Lundin. He manages to find her new, up-scale apartment as well as Bjurman's DVD. Between Björck and Salander's former guardian, Holder Palmgren, Blomvkist is able to piece together the entire story: Zalachenko is a Russian defector under secret Swedish protection, whose very existence is kept classified by Säpo; Bjurman and Björck only know about him because they happened to be the junior officers on duty the day he marched into a police office and demanded political asylum. Zalachenko, a source of vital information on Russia's intelligence operations, began to traffic in sex slaves on the side, whilst simultaneously settling down with an 18-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins, one named Camilla and the other Lisbeth. He was physically and emotionally abusive to his partner, and while Camilla tended to repress all knowledge of the situation, Lisbeth attempted to defend her mother. One day, after he had beaten her into unconsciousness, Salander deliberately set his car alight with gasoline while he was in it. This is the event Salander refers to as ""All the Evil,"" as the authorities, instead of listening to her pleas on behalf of her mother, imprisoned her and declared her insane. Salander's mother was left with the first of a series of brain aneurysms which consigned her to nursing homes until her death. Salander learned that the government would never listen to her, as acknowledging Zalachenko's crimes would require admitting his existence. Zalachenko was allowed to walk away; however, he suffered serious injuries and had to have his foot amputated. Svenssen and Johanssen were killed by Niedermann on Zalachenko's orders: when Salander visited them, she asked whether Bjurman had ever showed up as one of their johns, and they called him immediately after she left; Bjurman then called Zalachenko in a panic, leading not only to their deaths but his own. Blomkvist does not share all of his findings with Bublanski, in respect for Salander's privacy, but between his testimony, that of Palmgren and Armansky on her character, and the additional accomplices piling up, the police are forced to admit that their original estimation, of Salander as a psychotic murderer, is contradicted by the evidence. Milton Security are ejected from the investigation when it becomes clear that Hedstrom is the inside source who has been leaking sensational details to the press; however, Armansky is satisfied, as his true goal in aiding the investigation—ensuring Salander is not simply condemned as a murderer out of hand—has been achieved. Finally, Blomkvist finds the same Göteborg address that Salander did, and sets off for the farm where Niedermann and Zalachenko await. He has deduced that Salander has entered what Roberto and his boxing friends called ""Terminator Mode,"" where she attacks without restraint to defend her life and those she cares about. Salander gets there first and is captured due to the motion detectors and cameras Zalachenko had installed. He tells Salander that Niedermann is her half-brother. When Salander attempts to escape, Zalachenko shoots her in the hip, shoulder and head, and Niedermann buries her corpse. Salander, still alive, digs herself out and again attempts to kill Zalachenko with an axe, noting that Zalachenko's use of a Browning .22 firearm is the only reason she survived. On his way to Göteborg, Blomkvist sees Niedermann trying to catch a ride with him. He captures Neiderman at gunpoint, tying him against a signpost by the road. The book ends as Blomkvist finds Salander and calls emergency services."
2760,Patriot Games,thriller," In London, Jack Ryan saves the Prince and Princess of Wales, along with their infant firstborn son, from an Irish terrorist group called Ulster Liberation Army (ULA) during a kidnapping attempt on the Mall. Sean Miller, a ULA terrorist captured by Ryan, is sentenced to life imprisonment for killing the royal driver. However, he is freed by ULA members while being transported to prison. The ULA later goes after Ryan and his family, partially as an act of revenge, but primarily because they seek to reduce American support for the rival Provisional Irish Republican Army. The assassin sent to kill Ryan is intercepted before he manages to complete his task, but his expectant wife, Cathy, and daughter, Sally, are injured when Miller causes their car to crash on a freeway. They are flown by helicopter to the University of Maryland Medical Center. After the attack on his family, Jack accepts an offer from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to start working as an analyst at the agency's headquarters. Later, the Prince and Princess of Wales come to visit Ryan in America. This gives the ULA another opportunity to conduct another operation—they plan to kill Ryan and his family and kidnap the Royal Family. The attack ultimately fails: after a firefight and a flight, Ryan, his friend Robby Jackson, and the Prince, with the help of Marines and sailors from the U.S. Naval Academy and local police, manage to apprehend and subdue the terrorists. The ultimate fate of the terrorists is not stated in the book. Ryan arrives at Bethesda after the final arrest to be with Cathy for the birth of their son, who will be godparented by Robby Jackson and his wife, as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales. In Clancy's later novel The Sum of All Fears, it is mentioned in passing that Miller and his colleagues were sentenced to death and executed for their crimes. Jack Ryan, Jr., the son born at the novel's close, follows his father into the CIA, and becomes a central character in Clancy's first post-President-Ryan novel, The Teeth of the Tiger."
2761,The Rozabal Line,thriller," India Today, India's most widely read weekly news magazine ranked The Rozabal Line among the top five fiction bestsellers in India According to Tehelka, The Rozabal Line is ""a thriller that inquires into the controversial claim that Jesus Christ travelled to India and was buried in Kashmir’s Roza Bal tomb"". The Hindu, one of India's National dailies, says that ""The book deals in greater depth with the issue of Christ’s union with Mary Magdalene touched upon by The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown as well as incorporating postulates of several other books including Jesus Lived in India: Life Before and After the Crucifixion by Holger Kersten and Jesus Died In Kashmir: Jesus, Moses and The Ten Lost Tribes Of Israel by Andreas Kaiser"". The book also covers ground regarding the fact that Jesus sent St. Thomas, one of the 12 apostles to Kerala to preach there The Rozabal Line kicks off with the theory that Yesu (or Jesus) may have fled Judea to study under Buddhist masters in India (the three wise men were Buddhist elders searching for a reincarnation in the manner that Dalai Lamas are searched for). It then goes one step further by building on Holger Kersten’s theory that Jesus did not die on the cross and that he was spirited away to safety by Essene monks. This foundation is used to build the storyline which goes something like this: Jesus returned to his spiritual home, India, and possibly married. Fast-forward to the present day and we find a group of thirteen jihadis who are working under the protective umbrella of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Although never stated directly, there are enough similarities between this group in the present day and Jesus and his 12 apostles two thousand years ago. One keeps wondering whether this group could possibly be the present-day descendant Jesus bloodline. While this group is working towards Armageddon, there is another group that is assisting them and, surprisingly, this is a Opus Dei inspired group called the Crux Decussata Permuta. Apparently, the two largest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, had found it easier to cooperate with one another rather than to fight each other. The logic for this is traced back to the first crusades in which Richard the Lionheart was defeated by Saladin the Great. Add to this cauldron, a Japanese assassin, America’s first woman President and a New York based Spiritual Healer, and you have the final twist in the tale, an unexpected ending that reveals the final answer at Vaishno Devi, one of the holiest shrines of the Hindus."
2762,Angels and Demons,thriller," The plot follows Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, as he tries to stop the Illuminati, a legendary secret society, from destroying Vatican City with the newly discovered power of antimatter. CERN director Maximilian Kohler discovers one of the facility's physicists, Leonardo Vetra, murdered. His chest is branded with an ambigram of the word ""Illuminati"". Kohler contacts Robert Langdon, an expert on the Illuminati, who determines that the ambigram is authentic. Kohler calls Vetra's adopted daughter Vittoria to the scene, and it is ascertained that the Illuminati have stolen a canister containing antimatter — a substance with destructive potential comparable to a small nuclear weapon. When at CERN the canister is stored in a unique electrical charger which ensures the anti-matters stability but when removed its back-up battery provides power for 24 hours after which the anti-matter will self-destruct. The canister is somewhere in Vatican City, with a security camera in front of it, as its digital clock counts down to the explosion. Langdon and Vittoria make their way to Vatican City, where the Pope has recently died. It is discovered that the four Preferiti, cardinals who are the most likely papal successor, are missing. Langdon and Vittoria search for the Preferiti in hopes that they will also find the antimatter canister. Their search is assisted by Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca (the late pope's closest aide) and the Vatican's Swiss Guard. Langdon attempts to retrace the steps of the ""Path of Illumination"", a process once used by the Illuminati as a means of inducting new members; aspirants to the order were required to follow a series of subtle clues left in various landmarks in and around Rome. The clues indicate the secret meeting place of the Illuminati. Langdon sets off on the Path of Illumination in hopes of delivering the Preferiti and recovering the antimatter canister. The Path leads Langdon to four locations in Rome, each associated with one of the primordial elements: 'Earth', 'Air', 'Fire', and 'Water'. Langdon finds one of the Preferiti murdered in a way thematically related to each location's related element. The first cardinal was branded with an Earth ambigram and had soil forced down his throat; the second was branded with an air ambigram and had his lungs punctured; the third was branded with a fire ambigram and was burned alive; and the fourth was branded with a water ambigram and was left to drown at the bottom of a fountain. After finding the bodies of the first two Preferiti, Langdon hurries to the Santa Maria della Vittoria Basilica and finds the Preferiti's abductor in the act of setting the third cardinal on fire. The kidnapper is an unnamed assassin who is working under the orders of the Illuminati master ""Janus"", whose true identity is unknown. Commander Olivetti is killed and the assassin kidnaps Vittoria. Langdon escapes and accosts the assassin at the final element's landmark (Water), but is unable to save the cardinal. Langdon must complete the Path of Illumination in order to find the assassin and rescue Vittoria. His search leads him to Castel Sant'Angelo, that hides a tunnel leading directly into the pope's chambers in the Vatican. Langdon frees Vittoria, and together they send the assassin falling several hundred feet to his death. The two hurry back to St. Peter's Basilica, where they find that Kohler has arrived to confront the camerlengo in private. Langdon and Vittoria fear that Kohler is Janus, and that he has come to murder the camerlengo. Hearing the camerlengo scream in agony from being branded with the Illuminati Diamond, the Swiss Guards burst into the room and open fire on Kohler. Just before he dies, Kohler gives Langdon a videotape that he claims will explain everything. With time running out, the Swiss Guard evacuates the Basilica. The camerlengo rushes back in, claiming that he has received a vision revealing the location of the antimatter canister. With Langdon in pursuit, the camerlengo ventures into the catacombs and finds the canister sitting atop the tomb of Saint Peter. Langdon and the camerlengo retrieve the antimatter and get in a helicopter with only minutes to spare. The camerlengo manages to parachute safely onto the roof of St. Peter's just as the canister explodes harmlessly in the sky. The crowd in St. Peter's Square look in awe as the camerlengo stands triumphantly before them. Because of this ""miracle"", the papal conclave debate whether to elect the camerlengo as the new Pope. Langdon managed to survive the explosion by using a window cover from the helicopter as a parachute, and landed in the Tiber River. After viewing Kohler's tape Langdon, Vittoria, and the cardinals confront the camerlengo; Shortly before the beginning of the novel, the Pope met with Leonardo Vetra who believed that anti-matter was capable of establishing a link between Man and God. Vetra's beliefs caused great discomfort to the camerlengo. While discussing Vetra, the pope reveals that his support is due to science having given him a son. Without waiting to hear the explanation (that the child was the result of artificial insemination), and horrified that the Pope appeared to have broken his vow of chastity, the camerlengo plots to ""rectify"" the situation. He poisoned the pope and, under the guise of an Illuminati master (Janus), he recruited the assassin, to kill Vetra, steal the antimatter, and kidnap and murder the Preferiti. The Camerlengo planted the antimatter in St. Peter's in order to be seen as the savior of Christendom. The Illuminati ""involvement"" was merely a plot engineered by the camerlengo to cover his own plans. It is revealed that Camerlengo Ventresca himself was the birth son of the late pope, conceived through artificial insemination. Overcome with guilt Ventresca soaks himself in oil and immolates himself before a crowd of onlookers in St. Peter's Square."
2763,Prayers for the Assassin,thriller," The book starts off during the second American Civil War between the Islamic States and the seceding Bible Belt, with a Muslim soldier dying in 2017 at the battle of Newark, after a bloody battle with Bible Belt paramilitaries that are attempting to capture the city. Flash forward to the Super Bowl in 2042 in Seattle, the capitol of the new Islamic Republic, the majority of whose inhabitants have converted to Islam. The nation's culture is a fusion of traditional American and Islamic: the Super Bowl is still played, but the cheerleaders are sword-wielding men and the participants break at half-time for afternoon prayers. As the story opens, the country is facing a crisis, with competing political and religious factions threatening to destroy the fragile peace that exists within the Islamic States of America. At the same time, behind the scenes, a messianic figure known as the Wise Old One contrives to seize power for himself, and fulfill the ancient prophecy of the restoration of the Caliphate. The story's protagonist is Rakkim Epps, a Fedayeen warrior who is devoted to his cause, even if he has lost his faith. Epps must risk everything to save the life of Sarah Dougan, the young historian he loves. It becomes known that it was in fact Muslim extremists who launched the attacks, including the dirty bomb in Mecca. A fourth, more powerful bomb (later found in China) was scheduled for detonation but the small group of Muslim extremists assigned the task succumbed to radiation poisoning before it could be put into play. Once the truth was exposed, the parties stepped back from the brink and sought to find a common ground from which to start a more trusting, more open-minded dialog. There is a final showdown between Darwin, the ""evil"" assassin and Rakkim in which Darwin is slain via a knife throw to the face, but the remainder of the ending sets up conditions for a possible sequel."
2764,The Sum of All Fears,thriller," The title is a reference to nuclear war, and to the plot by the novel's antagonists to reconstruct a lost nuclear weapon. The title itself comes from a quote by Winston Churchill, serving as the first of the novel's two epigraphs: In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli leadership opts for a tactical nuclear strike but changes the decision at the last minute. A Mark 12 nuclear bomb is accidentally left on an Israeli attack aircraft, which is shot down over the mountains of Syria. The nuclear weapon is lost, buried in the field of a Druze farmer. Eighteen years later, in 1991, an unarmed Palestinian protester is killed by an Israeli police official, coincidentally the brother of the downed Israeli pilot. The United States finds itself unable to diplomatically defend Israel, yet knows it cannot withdraw its support without risk of destabilizing the Middle East. A clever plan to accelerate the peace process is put into action, based on Jack Ryan's indirect contact with the Vatican. The plan is supported by the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia. To everyone's surprise, Ryan's plan seems to work. However, National Security Advisor Elizabeth Elliott has a vendetta against Ryan and attempts to discredit him, exploiting her romance with the widowed President Robert Fowler to do so. Elliott engineers a smear campaign accusing Ryan of engaging in an extramarital affair. Ryan's marriage is endangered until his friends, John Clark and Domingo Chavez, reveal the truth to Ryan's wife Cathy. Ryan is forced to resign, but not before he puts together a covert operation involving the uncovering of a deal between corrupt Japanese and Mexican government officials. Meanwhile, a small group of PFLP terrorists, enraged at the looming failure of their campaign to erase Israel's existence, come across the lost Israeli bomb and use it to construct their own weapon, using the bomb's plutonium as fissile material. The terrorists enlist the help of disenfranchised East German physicist Manfred Fromm, who agrees to the plot in order to exact revenge for his country's reunification as a capitalist democratic state. With Fromm's expertise, the terrorists are able to enhance the weapon and turn it into a thermonuclear device. The terrorists agree to detonate the weapon during the Super Bowl in Denver, Colorado, planned to coincide with a false flag attack on American forces in Berlin by East Germans disguised as Soviet soldiers. The terrorists' goal is to start a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The East Germans hope that the war will eliminate both superpowers and punish them for betraying World Socialism, while the Palestinians hope the attack will end American aid to Israel. The Palestinians kill their East German associates as soon as they are no longer needed. Due to an assembly error, the weapon fizzles. However, thousands of people at the Super Bowl are killed, including the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State. With the attacks in Berlin, the United States briefly assumes DEFCON-1 status as President Fowler and Elliott prepare a nuclear assault. The crisis is averted when Ryan, after learning of the domestic origin for the bomb's plutonium, gains access to the Hot Line and communicates directly with the Soviet president, defusing the conflict. When the terrorists are captured by Clark in Mexico City, they implicate the Iranian Ayatollah in the attack. President Fowler orders the Ayatollah's residence in the holy city of Qom to be destroyed by a nuclear strike. After Ryan averts the attack by enforcing the two-man rule, the terrorists&mdash;under torture by Clark&mdash;reveal that Iran was not involved. Their deceit was meant to discredit the United States and destroy the peace process, allowing the campaign against Israel to continue. President Fowler resigns from office after suffering a nervous breakdown. The terrorists are beheaded in Riyadh by the commander of Saudi special forces using an ancient sword owned by the Saudi royal family. Later, the sword is presented to Ryan as a gift. In the sequels, the gift inspires Ryan's Secret Service codename of ""Swordsman."" An interesting historical note is that this book was released just days before the Moscow uprising in 1991, which signaled the dissolution of the Soviet Union."
2765,Cross,thriller," Alex Cross narrates the opening section of the book in flashback from Washington, D.C. in 1993. Pregnant Maria Simpson Cross and Alex live happily together, but mob hitman Michael Sullivan aka The Butcher and his partner Jimmy ""Hats"" Galati are out to make life miserable for him. While on an errand for boss Dominic Maggione in the Baltimore/Washington area, Sullivan rapes a college teen and participates in the execution of Chinese Jiang An-lo, but is witnessed by Cross and partner John Sampson. After Sullivan pays a frightening visit to Cross at night, Alex loses his wife to gunshots the next night. The action takes in place in D.C. in 2005. Cross prepares to return to private practice, leaving the FBI over the objections of director Ron Burns. At the same time the Butcher has to do a job in Venice for the new boss, Maggione's son, who does not like Sullivan. He realizes that something is strange with his targets. It’s a trap and the couple were sent by Maggione Jr. to kill him. Because of luck and his excellent skills he survives and seeks bloody revenge. He wants to kill Maggione. Both Alex and the Butcher go to work, the former trying to solve a series of rape and murder cases in southeastern D.C., the latter trying to protect his family from the vendetta-wielding John Maggione. But he is not aware that Alex thinks he committed the rapes he's investigating-and killed his wife so many years ago. The Butcher is in Washington, still trying to fend off attacks from Maggione, but Alex is on to him. The Butcher manages to kill John Maggione in a complicated plot, but find Alex and Sampson waiting for him. A shoot-out begins in which Alex is injured and Sullivan killed. Sampson ends the story by confessing a long-kept secret."
2766,The Man Who Was Thursday,thriller," In Edwardian era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti-anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him at a party and they debate the meaning of poetry. Gregory argues that revolt is the basis of poetry. Syme demurs, insisting that the essence of poetry is not revolution, but rather law. He antagonizes Gregory by asserting that the most poetical of human creations is the timetable for the London Underground. He suggests that Gregory isn't really serious about his anarchism. This so irritates Gregory that he takes Syme to an underground anarchist meeting place, revealing that his public endorsement of anarchy is a ruse to make him seem harmless, when in fact he is an influential member of the local chapter of the European anarchist council. The central council consists of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name, and the position of Thursday is about to be elected by Gregory's local chapter. Gregory expects to win the election, but just before the election Syme reveals to Gregory after an oath of secrecy that he is a secret policeman. Fearful Syme may use his speech in evidence of a prosecution, Gregory's weakened words fail to convince the local chapter that he is sufficiently dangerous for the job. Syme makes a rousing anarchist speech and wins the vote. He is sent immediately as the chapter's delegate to the central council. In his efforts to thwart the council's intentions, however, Syme discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was employed just as mysteriously and assigned to defeat the Council. They all soon find out that they were fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of their president Sunday. In a surreal conclusion, Sunday himself is unmasked as only seeming to be terrible; in fact, he is a force of good like the detectives. However, he is unable to give an answer to the question of why he caused so much trouble and pain for the detectives. Gregory, the only real anarchist, seems to challenge the good council. His accusation is that they, as rulers, have never suffered like Gregory and their other subjects, and so their power is illegitimate. However, Syme is able to refute this accusation immediately because of the terrors inflicted by Sunday on the rest of the council. The dream ends when Sunday himself is asked if he has ever suffered. His last words, ""can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?"", is the question that Jesus asks St. James and St. John in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, vs 38–39, to challenge their commitment in becoming his disciples."
2767,Nimitz Class,thriller," The plot revolves around a nuclear torpedo attack on the fictitious Nimitz class aircraft carrier Thomas Jefferson. Two separate storylines follow. The first concerns the search for the attacking submarine, a cold war era Kilo. The second concerns how the villain both planned and performed the attack while evading the US military. The hunt for the Kilo results in the sinking of the Ayatollah of Iran's submarines, an underwater transit through the Bosporus, and an underwater battle near the Falklands. Commander Ben Adnam is a slick commander who eludes capture. He skillfully evades Bill Baldrige and the U.S. navy. it:Classe Nimitz (romanzo)"
2768,The Alexandria Link,thriller," The Library of Alexandria was the most important collection of ancient knowledge ever assembled. The building stood for six hundred years and contained more than half a million manuscripts. Then suddenly it vanished. No trace of this literary treasure has ever been unearthed. The book starts in Palestine in 1948, just as the state of Israel was being established. During Israel's War of Independence, a man is captured by Arab soldiers and taken to George Haddad who is surprised to find that this man is actually looking for his father and has some hidden truth to share. He mentions that Arabs are fighting a war that is unnecessary, against an enemy that is misinformed. Unable to learn more, the leader decides to shoot the mysterious man. In present day Copenhagen, Denmark, Cotton Malone is in trouble. His son Gary is being held hostage by unknown enemies who want to trade him for the secret of the Alexandria Link. Malone is the only living person who's aware of it. He receives an anonymous email saying that he has only 72 hours to get it and trade with them. He and his ex-wife Pam visit Malone's influential friend Henrik Thorvaldsen's mansion to get some answers. A mysterious man, Dominick Sabre, is following them all the time. Stephanie and her boss, US Attorney General Brent Green, contacts Larry Daley, the main contact in the White House who knows more than them about the Link. Green says that the Link is in fact a person named George Haddad, a Palestinian biblical soldier. Malone uses Thorvaldsen's computer to log in to his ""Magellan Billet"" secure server, which was accessible to him when he used to work for the justice department. He contacts his former boss, Stephanie Nelle, for more information. She mentions that there was some security breach and some secured files may have been exposed. Malone meets agent Durant, who works for Stephanie, but he gets killed before he learns more. Malone follows the killer and eventually rescues Gary after killing his captors. What he apparently does not realize is that that was the plan by Sabre, who had anticipated this from the start. He delivers this message to his employer, the mysterious Blue Chair, the head of ""The Chairs"", according to whom they have different interests in the Alexandria Link; while Sabre wants the link, the Chairs want it to be obliterated. Later Thorvaldsen reveals to Stephanie the whereabouts of ""The Chairs"" and that it is a recreation of the Order of the Golden Fleece) - a European economic cartel. The head of this circle is called the Blue Chair, currently Alfred Hermann, an Austrian industrialist. This circle has many controls over Europe and their highest priority is the Middle East. Malone is on his way with Pam to meet Haddad. He keeps Gary at Thorvaldsen's mansion, hoping that will keep him safe. He goes to London with Pam and meets Haddad to learn more about the Library of Alexandria and the mystery. Haddad tells them about the probable translation inaccuracies of the Old Testament and how he is working to show how it has been translated from Old Hebrew. But before he finishes explaining everything to Malone, Israeli agents arrive and kill Haddad. Stephanie meets Heather Dixon, an Israeli citizen attached to the Washington mission, who tries to kill her. Cassiopeia Vitt, Thorvaldsen's associate, appears and tranquilizes her with a dart. Brent Green helps her to learn a lot about the current situation and reveals that Pam Malone might be the conduit of Israel. Sabre meets Malone and Pam and tries to buy some information from them in exchange for decoding a word-play of Haddad. Henrik flies to Austria with Gary to attend the Order of Golden fleece's meeting, thus playing a psychological game with Hermann."
2769,Ordinary Thunderstorms,thriller," Adam Kindred is a recently divorced climatologist who has moved back to England. After attending an interview for a Senior Research Fellowship position at Imperial College, London, he goes into an Italian restaurant in Chelsea and briefly encounters Dr Philip Wang, who accidentally leaves a file behind. Adam takes it to his hotel, only to discover that Wang has been murdered with a knife in his body. Before Wang dies, he asks Adam to remove it and so Adam becomes incriminated in his murder. Deciding to take refuge, he shelters in a small patch of gardens on London's Embankment to give himself time to think. He decides to go underground, cutting up all his cards and removing anything that could identify him. He soon leads the life of a tramp, searching in rubbish bins for food and only venturing out at night. In the meantime, he decides to try and find out from the file in his possession why Wang was murdered and if there is any connection to Calenture-Deutz, the pharmaceutical company Wang was working for. Calenture-Deutz is a company set up by Ingram Fryzer who is another of the novel's protagonists. Ingram is married with three children and is about to reap large profits from the introduction of a new anti-asthma drug, Zembla-4, that is just about to be launched onto the market after its clinical trials supervised by Dr Wang. To speed up the search for the killer, the company offers a £100,000 reward. Adam decides to visit St Botolph's hospital to find out more about what Wang was working on. However, he is viciously mugged near the Shaft, a sink estate in Rotherhithe, and is helped by Mhouse, a black prostitute, who gives him the address of the Church of John Christ. He decides to visit the church to get a decent meal and meets some fellow tramps there who are in the same dire situation. Meanwhile, Ingram is having his own troubles - Alfredo Rilke is a major shareholder in his company and he wants to launch Zembla-4 against Ingram's wishes, since he considers it too early. It turns out, unbeknown to Ingram, that Rilke has paid an assassin, Jonjo, to find Adam and the missing file which is vital to Rilke since it contains evidence that is damaging to the new drug. Whilst Adam begins his life as a beggar, posing as a blind man to obtain money from sympathetic people, Jonjo is getting closer to his quarry. He enquiries lead him to the Shaft and he pays to find out where Adam is. He learns where Adam was dropped off by Mhouse and her friend, Mohammed, and waits for Adam at his Embankment hideaway. Fortunately, Adam recognises him from an earlier encounter and decides to rent a room with Mhouse and her young son, Ly-on, paying Mhouse for sex from his begging money. His life becomes more stable until, one evening whilst walking with Ly-on, he passes Jonjo who does not recognise him with his beard and holding the young boy's hand. Adam tells Mhouse he has to leave for Scotland and shacks up with Vladimir, who dies the same night from too much 'monkey'. Adam decides to take on Vlad's fake identity and his new job as a hospital porter at Bethnal & Bow, before he gets a transfer to St Botolph. Here, he is able to establish why there were problems with the Zembla-4 drug. Bad news starts to surround Zembla-4 and Rilke eventually informs Ingram that his proposed takeover of Calenture-Deutz is now off. Ingram has also been feeling strangely ill and it turns out he has a brain tumour that he has removed. Jonjo, having failed to find Kindred, is sacked from his position as a 'security consultant' and is forced to leave the country after realizing that he will be made the fall guy for Philip Wang's murder and that the killers are now after him. Ingram Fryzer realizes that there is something strange about the drug but decides to fit in with Rilke's plans, knowing that he will financially benefit from them. However, he suspects that there is a plot to unseat him and tries to sort out a plan for fighting back. In the meantime, Adam has sorted out a plan for attacking Calenture-Deutz following the death of Mhouse at the hands of Jonjo. He also meets Rita, a policewoman, whilst identifying Mhouse's body and starts to see more of her. He puts his scheme into place and, as a result, Fryzer's comfortable life starts to collapse around him, particularly after a shareholder's meeting and the sale of shares by his bankrupt brother-in-law, Ivo Lord Redcastle, who is a director on the company's Board. And Adam Kindred, happily involved with Rita and Ly-on, decides to retain his identity of Primo Belem and to discard his former life as Adam Kindred and all his negative associations with it."
2770,CHERUB: The Fall,thriller," An MI5 operation goes disastrously wrong when two agents working with James murder their prime suspect, Denis Obidin, and he is trapped within Aero City, Russia. He is not able to contact campus and when he attempts to he is beaten up badly by a group of Russian thugs. They have heard of a reward offered for James' capture, and as such they call the hotline. A short while later, a man appears, hands them their reward and bundles James into a car. Once they are driving, he reveals himself to be a CIA agent working undercover, and takes James back to his flat where he treats the boy to the best of his ability before challenging him as to why he was there, and why the suspect was killed. When James protests that their intentions were peaceful, he is shown CCTV footage of the murder. The agent lets James call CHERUB campus before he leaves, telling him not to go to sleep at any cost. Ewart appears a while later and takes James to an airfield where two British service people are to help with their escape. The Russian authorities appear, though, and they are forced to take the couple with them. On the flight, James passes out when air trapped in his broken nose expands due to air pressure changes and the pilot ends up making an emergency landing in Helsinki, Finland. Half a week later, James wakes up in hospital on CHERUB campus to the relief of Lauren and Kerry. Once he is up and about, James is made to choose between helping junior CHERUBs preparing for Basic Training or a course in socioeconomics. James chooses the PE training, and is asked to ""help"" a redshirt, Kevin Summer, who is scared of heights. Bruce Norris helps, but breaks his ankle falling from the height course. However, while this freaks James out, Kevin gains confidence and soon decides to try the height course alone. He succeeds, and James is rewarded for his work by having his history GCSE pass guaranteed. Meryl Spencer and some of James' best friends get together and organize a day out and they think he deserves it after all he went through. James has no idea what is happening until he gets a message from Meryl.He heads down to her office terrified as he doesn't know why she wants him. When he arrives he learns that all his friends have put together enough money and vouchers to go to a fancy hotel. Firstly they go motor carting and later they go a Spa Hotel where they get drunk and James pressures his girlfriend Kerry to have sex with him. She refuses and leaves in a crying state, but forgives him the next morning. After the Russia disaster, James has been suspended from all missions and after a talk with Mr. Pike, he suspects Ewart, the mission controller, of betraying him. James needs to have his history homework finished and spills coffee over Kerry's work while he was copying off it, landing in a fight. James is later heartbroken when Kerry shouts at him and accidentally mentions him screwing his mission. James later asks Kerry to help him investigate, but refuses, so James goes alone. While looking through Ewart's office, James is caught by Dana, another CHERUB agent, who decides to help. From investigating some papers they found in the office, they find out that Ewart has been lying about how much evidence he had. After, Dana admits that she fancies James and they end up kissing. Then it leads to stripping and Dana allows James to see her breasts. However, as things develop Lauren walks in and sees James with Dana's bra in his hand. James tries to wiggle out of trouble by saying it was an accident. Lauren is upset and as James tries to comfort her she says to James that he thinks humping is like eating chips. The next morning Dana and James take one of the CHERUB's pool cars and follow Ewart who meets an old reporter who used to write stories about Lord Hilton, a rival of Denis Obidin (James' mark from the Russia mission) and uncovered links that suggested that Lord Hilton was having people who endangered his son's political career and his own aeroplane business assassinated. He had arranged for Ewart to be killed but James and Dana saved his life for which Zara is very grateful. She apologises for keeping James in the dark and awards him and Dana the black shirt. By now, James had decided that he wants to date Dana. When the new couple go to dinner, Kerry (who found out about their kiss from Lauren) starts a fight with Dana. A food fight breaks out as James stands there, grinning as all hell breaks loose around him and that Dana and Kerry are fighting over him."
2771,London Bridges,thriller," A terrorist by the alias of ""The Wolf"" engages Alex Cross' old enemy, Col. Geoffrey Shafer, aka The Weasel, to assist him in a grand plan of worldwide terrorist attacks designed to get humanity's attention. After a town in the Southwestern United States is blown up, the FBI's Alex Cross is assigned to the case despite being on vacation to visit his son Alex Jr. in Seattle and his girlfriend Jamilla Hughes in San Francisco. Alex is at a crossroads in his family and personal life. What follows next is a long cat and mouse chase in which politics, communication and ego take centre-stage. The Wolf is ruthless enough to draw in even the most unwilling into his plans and never fails to make a point. His opponents are locked in deep wrangling and indecision. It is up to Alex Cross to make the connections and chase The Wolf and The Weasel across America and Europe at the risk of his life."
2772,Prince of Fire,thriller," After terrorists bomb the Israeli embassy in Rome, agents at Israel’s intelligence service—better known as the Office—struggle to determine a precise motive for the attack. The investigation uncovers a CD filled with highly sensitive information about Gabriel Allon, a legendary hit man for the Office. No longer safe outside of Israel, Gabriel returns reluctantly to his homeland with Italian girlfriend and fellow Office agent Chiara Zolli. Lev, the current director of the Office, has long resented Gabriel’s close ties to Ari Shamron, former director of the Office, as well as his recent clandestine work for Shamron. Lev demands that Gabriel officially rejoin the Office so he can benefit from the protection of other agents. However, Gabriel and Shamron also recognize that Lev seeks to control and curtail their secret operations. Lev instructs Gabriel to remain in Israel and assigns him a research team to investigate the bombing and its link to Gabriel. Thus, Yossi, Dina, Yaakov, and Rimona come under Gabriel’s direction. Dina connects a series of seemingly random terrorist attacks and attributes them to Khaled al-Khalifa, a mysterious descendant of Palestinian warlords. Indeed, Dina points out, Shamron and Gabriel each led operations against Khaled’s relatives. Though adopted by Yasser Arafat as a child, Khaled grew up abroad and never became a visible force within the PLO. Dina proposes that, hidden behind a carefully constructed European identity, Khaled has masterminded brutal attacks against Israel, including the recent embassy bombing. In fact, all of the attacks seem to commemorate the murders of Palestinians, including Khaled’s father and organizer of Black September, Sabri al-Khalifa. Dina suggests that another attack is imminent: she anticipates an act of terror to commemorate the Israeli raising of Beit Sayeed, the hometown of Khaled’s Palestinian ancestors. Only twenty-eight days remain until the fiftieth anniversary of that event. The reader learns that Khaled lives as a prosperous and renowned French archeologist under the identity of Paul Martineau. He organizes terror attacks through an Arab associate in Marseilles. The reader also discovers that the arrangements for Khaled’s next attack are underway. As Gabriel and Chiara settle into a new life in Israel, Ari recommends that Gabriel dissolve his marriage to Leah and marry Chiara. He also presses Gabriel to meet with Yasser Arafat to learn of Khaled’s whereabouts. Ari’s son Yonatan, a member of the IDF, escorts Gabriel to the Mukataa, Arafat’s compound. Although the Israeli and Palestinian traditionally work for opposing ideologies, Arafat consents to the meeting because Gabriel once saved his life. Gabriel sees through Arafat’s evasive answers and lies and concludes that Khaled did indeed plan the bombing of the Israeli embassy. Gabriel also learns that Tariq al-Hourani worked for Arafat, and the car bomb that killed his son and maimed Leah was also meant to end his own life. Yaakov later introduced Gabriel to Mahmoud Arwish, a reticent Palestinian informant. Arwish confirms that Khaled contacts Arafat regularly and uses a female collaborator to relay important phone messages. Because the most recent of such phone messages came from Cairo, Gabriel travels to Egypt. There, he meets Mimi Ferrere, a polyglot and social butterfly whose voice matches that of Khaled’s collaborator. He bugs her phone, intercepts a message from Khaled, and matches the phone number to Marseilles. Aboard the ship Fidelity, Gabriel meets with his team and Ari Shamron to plan Khaled’s murder. However, Khaled anticipates their attack and leads Gabriel into a trap: he must put himself into Khaled’s hands or Leah will die; Gabriel abandons his team to save his wife. Khaled’s instructions lead Gabriel to the Parisian Gare de Lyon, and Gabriel realizes too late that Khaled plans to bomb the train station and pin the crime on Gabriel and Israeli intelligence. With only seconds to spare, Gabriel kills two of Khaled’s three bombers and rescues Leah. They return safely to Israel, but Khaled and Mimi leak photographs of Gabriel to the press that link him to the bombing at Gare de Lyon. Although she still suffers psychiatric trauma, Leah regains a piece of herself and begins to communicate with Gabriel for the first time in thirteen years. Chiara decides to leave Gabriel and returns to Venice. Ultimately, Gabriel locates and kills Khaled at an archeological excavation in southern France. He then returns to Israel and art restoration."
2773,The Teeth of the Tiger,thriller," In Rome, a Mossad station chief is assassinated. The murder piques the interest of the Campus, an ""off-the-books"" intelligence agency situated in direct line-of-sight between the CIA and the NSA. A private military company, Hendley Associates, funds the Campus via stock market trades influenced by the captured intelligence data, thus removing federal oversight and allowing free rein in its operations. Jack Ryan Jr., the son of former president Jack Ryan Sr., soon discovers the Campus' operations. Wanting to serve his country in the post-9/11 world, he is hired by the agency as an analyst. Elsewhere, Brian Caruso, a nephew of the former president, is a U.S. Marine returning from Afghanistan to be decorated for his achievements in battle. Dominic Caruso, his brother, is an FBI agent who, while investigating a kidnapping of a little girl, finds her in a tub raped and killed. Caruso kills the suspect in self defense after the suspect threatens him with a knife. The Caruso brothers are soon recruited into a Campus strike team, chosen for their ability to kill enemies in cold blood. However, Brian is unsure of the morality of carrying out preemptive assassinations, even against terrorists. This changes when cells of Islamic fundamentalists cross the U.S.-Mexico border and attack several suburban malls. Brian and Dominic happen to be at one of the malls when the attack occurs. Although they efficiently find and dispatch all four shooters, dozens of people are killed; similar massacres occur at most of the other targeted sites. When a child dies in his arms after the attack, Brian abandons his earlier moral qualms. The Campus decides the brothers are ready and implements a ""reconnaissance-by-fire"" strategy to flush out the terrorist leaders. To carry out the assassinations, the brothers are issued a weapon utilizing succinylcholine, developed by a Columbia University professor whose brother died in the 9/11 attacks. The succinylcholine is delivered through a hypodermic needle disguised as a pen. Twisting the nib switches the tip from a normal tip to a sharp needle that delivers 7 milligrams of the substance. Only 5 milligrams are necessary for death. The substance causes complete paralysis at 30 to 50 seconds and death at 3 minutes, shutting down all the muscles within the victim (including the diaphragm), with the exception of the heart. However, it makes the murder look like a heart attack, thus raising no suspicion. Disguised as tourists, the team travels across Europe, finding and eliminating several major players in the terrorist organization. The first three hits go off fairly routinely, the brothers are able to apply the syringe and quietly escape before the targets expire. For the fourth assassination, the brothers are joined by Jack Ryan Jr. Although originally present as an observer, Jack is forced to eliminate the target himself when a random accident spills wine on the brothers' suits, spoiling their anonymous appearance. After killing the terrorist, Jack uses his hotel key to gain access to his computer, and downloads the entire contents for later analysis."
2774,Mortal Fear,thriller," Dr. Jason Howard is a resident surgeon at Massachusetts General. When a patient of his is admitted complaining of heart problems and later dies, Jason finds that, though having received a clean bill of health less than a month before, that the heart attack came totally out of left field and the patient looks decidedly older than he ought to at 56. Soon two more cases come to his attention, both healthy a month before, now dead, both looking older than their years. Alvin Hayes, a former classmate of Jason's at Harvard, asks to speak to him about his recent strange caseload. Hayes is a shifty, twitchy man whose personal life is a subject of some question who seems unduly paranoid, and Jason wonders if the resident mad scientist has gotten into something illicit. At dinner Hayes, while talking about his genetic research on aging, suddenly begins expelling blood violently. He dies a gory death right there in the restaurant. Jason begins investigating the connection between the man's sudden demise, his nervous demeanor, and the patients in his hospital who have all been admitted with what seems to be a mutant strain of progeria that killed them in mere days. nl:Doodsangst (boek) pl:Śmiertelny strach"
2775,Interface,thriller," The novel opens with the governor of Illinois, William Cozzano, suffering a stroke, and in a separate subplot, a trailer park inhabitant, unemployed African-American, Eleanor Richmond, discovering her husband dead after having committed suicide in their repossessed former home. As events progress, an underground business coalition, the Network, is arranging for Cozzano to have a biochip implanted and for him to run for President of the United States. The Network is made up of a number of large fictional companies, with parallels in real business entities. Eleanor Richmond, after publicly attacking a local cable TV Public-access television talk show personality who was running for Senate, has since found herself working in the offices of a Republican Colorado senator, and after an event where she accused the citizens of Colorado of being welfare queens, finds herself in the public eye as one of the candidates for Cozzano's running mate. The Network's ability to perceive public opinion, skewed on the night of the vice presidential debate by a twist of fate, makes them select Richmond as vice presidential candidate, and a canny act of public relations work rescues Cozzano's campaign, getting him elected as President. However, Cozzano gets shot at his inauguration by a psychotic former factory worker who has somehow figured out the Network's plans almost entirely, killing him almost instantly. Richmond ends up as the first black and first female President of the United States."
2776,Obsessed,thriller," “Obsessed” by Ted Dekker tells a story of Stephen Friedman, successful Realtor, a Jewish immigrant and an orphan who had tried to find out who his parents were for a long time and at last gave up. An unexpected letter from a friend and a newspaper article offer help: Stephen discovers that his mother was Rachel Spritzer, a woman who had been through the nightmare of World War II concentration camps, and recently died. Stephen also learns that she was quite wealthy and had some property, including a priceless historical artifact – a stone of David, one of the five stones believed to be used by David to defeat the giant Goliath. Also, it may be that she knew where the other four stones are. Stephen becomes obsessed with the idea to find the remaining stones. He heads to his mother's old house, where he believes the clues are hidden. However, the house is bought by someone else, snatched right out of Stephen's hands. The new owner is Roth Braun, a German, the son of Gerhard Braun who was the Nazi Commandant of the concentration camp, Torùn. Roth Braun knows about the stones and about Stephen plans. And he also has plans of his own. The story goes on as Stephen makes one desperate attempt to get into his mother's house after another. Braun's thugs do their best to keep him away. Another storyline takes us back in time to the WWII camp, telling about two pregnant women, Ruth and Martha (Stephen's mother) and their struggles with the ruthless commandant who kills on a whim and plays games with the prisoners by giving and taking away their hope. There is some mystery here, and, although the two storylines seem unconnected, they eventually come together."
2777,The Young Unicorns,thriller," As the story opens, the Austin family has settled in a New York City apartment after the events of The Moon by Night, and made some friends; blind young pianist Emily Gregory and Josiah ""Dave"" Davidson, who helps Emily get around. Emily is studying under the tutelage of the passionate, leonine Emmanuel Theotocopulous, better known as Mr. Theo. Canon Tallis, newly arrived at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine after the events of The Arm of the Starfish, meets the Austin children and their friends just as they encounter an anachronistic Genie in a junk shop. Tallis advises and helps to protect the children as they are drawn into a mystery involving the Genie, a street gang called the Alphabats, and the local bishop's strange behavior. Dave is skeptical of the Genie, as is Suzy Austin, but the others are not sure. Centralized, single-minded activity on the part of the criminal Alphabats excites the suspicion of Canon Tallis, who interrogates Dave and Dr. Wallace Austin. Dr. Austin has been working on the creation and perfection of a laser-based Micro-Ray, which is so unerringly precise that it may do more than simply penetrate the corporeal. Dave was once a member of the Alphabats, but has turned from their ways. He is in denial of his past, not even talking about it. Tension builds as the 'Bats try to draw Dave into their new mischief, whose mastermind is none other than the Bishop himself. The Genie appears to be the bishop's servant, and also appears to possess a Micro-Ray. It is revealed that the bishop has given up hope for the world; that he hopes to establish a state of control over humanity, whereby he may prevent anything he deems detrimental to its success. His Genie, Hythloday, uses the Micro-Ray to control the Alphabats. A concentrated beam from it stimulates the brain's pleasure center, giving the victim a feeling of flight. The Alphabats, hoping to receive more of this pleasure as a reward, carry out the bishop's demands. Eventually, Rob Austin is captured. Vicky and Emily track him to the Cathedral, where they are joined by Vicky's family, Canon Tallis, and Mr. Theotocopulous. The united group expose the bishop as his (the bishop's) own brother, actor Henry Grandcourt, in disguise; break apart his plans to seize power; and unmask Hythloday as the dishonest scientist Dr. Hyde. The Micro-Ray is seized. Dave makes his peace with both his past and future, coming eventually to look upon those who have been with him as his family."
2778,Brimstone,thriller," FBI Special Agent Aloysius X.L. Pendergast and Sergeant Vincent D'Agosta, now working for the Southampton Police Department, investigate a series of unusual deaths&mdash; deaths that appear to be the work of Lucifer in return for pacts entered in with him by his victims. Their investigation takes them from the New York City area, site of the first two deaths, to Florence, Italy where they uncover the motive and method of the killers behind the strange and gruesome deaths. During the course of unraveling the mystery, the truth behind a priceless, missing Stradivarius violin is revealed and a potentially apocalyptic riot with Messianic Christians is averted. Pendergast also reveals details of his insane brother Diogenes, whom he believes is planning something horrible."
2779,A Long Way to Shiloh,thriller," Caspar Laing is a Professor of Semitic Languages who is asked to translate an ancient parchment found in Israel. Fragmentary as the message is, it appears to give directions to the hiding place of a holy candelabrum rescued from the Jerusalem Temple before its destruction by the Romans in 70 AD. But the Jordanians have a copy of the parchment as well, and the search for the priceless menorah becomes a deadly cat and mouse hunt in the burning Negev desert. The story draws from the Copper Scroll found at Qumran in 1952, which lists buried treasure."
2780,USS Seawolf,thriller," The story begins with a United States Navy submarine, the , on a mission to spy on the new Chinese nuclear missile submarine. The mission is successful until the submarine's second-in-command, the president's son Linus Clark makes a fatal error, and the submarine collides with a sonar array from a Chinese ship that is searching for them. The crew is imprisoned and tortured while the Chinese begin to strip the captured submarine for its secrets. Desperately, Arnold Morgan, the National Security Advisor, plans a mission to get the crew back, safeguard the sub's secrets, and punish the Chinese. He sends Navy SEALs to the island where survivors are being held and an American FA-18 Hornet to destroy the USS Seawolf which is being held in Canton harbor. But after the daring mission, several high-ranking U.S. Navy personnel and several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resign when the president prevents his son from facing a court-martial for his part in the loss of the Seawolf. In an angry fit of revenge, the President uses his considerable influence to have the Seawolfs commander, court-martialed for not being on the bridge at the time of Linus' error. (The final premise of the book is in error, bordering on the absurd - as written on page 430, 1st ed. hardback, the CO of the Seawolf was convicted at court-martial for ""gross negligence...on the grounds that he had been absent from his place of duty in the face of the enemy"". But no state of war had been declared, so China was NOT an enemy of the USA. No military court would have issued such a verdict."") This causes Morgan to resign and destroys the president's credibility in the military, as well as destroying the president's ability to lead in a crisis situation. In a later novel, Robinson continues to build on the conflict between the discredited president and the military by further developing the character of Arnold Morgan. The novel identifies the Type 094 as ""Xia III-class."" The Type 094 submarine does exist, but its NATO reporting name is ""Jin-class."" And a ""Xia Class"" submarine does exist, though only a single Xia Class boat was made. It is not known if this somewhat jumbled name is an error, or simply artistic license taken by the author since the Type-094 is an improved design based on the original Xia Class submarine (Type 092), although the Type 093 submarine is an attack submarine and not a missile submarine."
2781,The Sacred Art of Stealing,thriller," The plot of The Sacred Art of Stealing tells the story of American Zal Innez, a witty and intellectual art-loving thief, who is being blackmailed by crime boss Alessandro Estabol to do one last major job for him. As a warm up to their main heist, Zal and his team of fellow failed artists rob a Glasgow bank of approaching a million pounds. During the raid they use unorthodox methods such as firing itching powder at armed police, carrying fake guns, staging plays and drawing works of art for their hostages to keep casualties to a minimum. During this robbery Zal meets and falls for a woman police officer, Angelique de Xavia, heroine of Brookmyre's previous novel, who is under-appreciated by her bosses. Both police officer and thief become painfully aware of the strong attraction between them and a relationship is formed, despite the fact that they are both fully aware that they are on opposite sides. Zal knows Angelique is after him, and even counts on this knowledge to complete his final job, while Angelique is aware that Zal is playing her, even though she does not want to contemplate what that might imply about his real feelings for her."
2782,Uncle Target,thriller," The Palestinian-dominated Royal Jordanian Army's 17th Armored Brigade has revolted with Syrian assistance, and has seized the southern part of Jordan, including the port city of Aqaba. However, the major concern for the British Army is that a prototype main battle tank on trials in the Jordanian desert has gone missing. After a terrorist attack in London fails, British military intelligence discovers that the tank is hidden in the ruins of an ancient Crusader fort near Wadi Rum. SAS-trained Major Harry Maxim, who formerly trained the Jordanian Army, is the ideal candidate to send in a commando raid to destroy the tank before it can fall into rebel (and thus Soviet) hands. However, the mission is botched when Maxim's helicopter crashes, and Maxim, an infantryman with no Armoured experience, decides that the best chance for the survival of his small team is to attempt to drive the tank across a hundred miles of rebel held desert to the presumed safety of Saudi Arabia."
2783,The Tightrope Men,thriller," Giles Denison's life is turned upside down when he awakes to find himself in a luxurious hotel in Oslo and, peering into the bathroom mirror, discovers the face of another man. He has been kidnapped from his flat in London and transformed into the likeness of a Finnish scientist, Dr Harold Feltham Meyrick. Compelled to adjust to his new persona (including meeting his daughter) and to play out the role assigned to him by his captors, the group embark on a dangerous escapade from Norway to Finland and across the border into Soviet Russia."
2784,The trials of Nikki Hill,thriller," The protagonist of this legal thriller is 33 year old, Nikki Hill. Nikki is a lead prosecutor at the District Attorney's office, and he has trusted her to help find the killer of Madeleine Gray, Hollywood's most popular TV host of a blackmail show. At first there is a hands down suspect, Jamal Deschamps, who was found at the scene of the crime. He possessed her ring and his skin was also under Maddie's thumb. After a lie detector test, it was proven that Deschamps was not the killer. It turned out, he merely found the cadaver and whilst stealing its ring, cut himself on her thumb. Nikki, another smart aleck prosecutor, and two quirky homicide detectives have a few loose strings, and bewilderment of who the real killer is. At Maddie's mansion, there was a missing rug, and a glass a ball that had Maddie's blood on it. And upstairs, where her blackmail files are, there is a busted drawer with missing contents. Nikki and the team discover that R&B singer, Diana Cooper, had a fight with Maddie the day of the murder. She quickly becomes a major suspect when Maddie's blood is also found in her trunk. The detectives come up with a scenario: Maddie threatened to give Diana's blackmail information, so she stole it and killed Maddie. This was soon proven wrong when detective Goodman's girlfriend confessed to stealing the black mail file for Diana's husband. Diana's charges were also dropped due to conflict with her alibi the time of the murder. Next, fingers were pointed towards John Willins, Diana's huband. Maddie had told Palmer, her neighbor, that she had slept with a J man. There were also logs at a private getaway club that a J. W. and M. Gray went together several times. Nikki and the team try to trace John Willin's past, and it turned up that he was from a small town. While putting together clues, they find out that John's family was killed in a fire, and that he could be taking on the identity of his deceased cousin. This leads to another question: did he murder his family with the fire? The only way to really find out was to go to the town and see if there was a grave for ""John Willins"". When they report this phenomenal news to district attorney, Joe Walden, he decides he wants to come along. And when they finally get to the town's only cemetery, they find out that Joe Walden, the district attorney, is the J.W....!"
2785,The Negotiator,thriller," Late 1989: Texan oil tycoon Cyrus V. Miller reads a report he had commissioned into dwindling oil supplies in the free world and concludes that the oil fields of the Middle East must be brought under American control. Separately, a high-ranking General in the Soviet Army comes to a similarly depressing conclusion about oil access and plans a covert mission to invade Iran and take over the massive oil supplies there. Meanwhile, the President of the United States, John Cormack, meets with his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev to draw up plans for a $100 billion arms reduction bill - the Nantucket Treaty. With the help of a disaffected Arabist, Colonel Robert Easterhouse, Miller and his shipping tycoon counterpart Melvyn Scanlon devise a plan to inspire Islamic fundamentalists to massacre the six hundred ruling members of the Saudi royal family during jamboree celebrations; after that, American forces will go into Saudi Arabia to restore the only surviving royal - a Westernized puppet named Prince Abdullah - to power and thus secure the oil for the United States - and for Miller and Scanlon's companies. However, Easterhouse warns that Cormack won't be prepared to jeopardize the Nantucket Treaty by sending troops into the Middle East; he must be ousted from power and replaced by his vice-president, Michael Odell, who opposes the treaty. Miller teams up with three disgruntled arms manufacturers who will be ruined financially by the treaty and hires a recently released from prison, hardcore sex criminal and ex-CIA-officer-turned-mercenary Irving Moss to devise a plan to destroy the President and therefore the treaty. The plan begins when the President's son, Simon, is kidnapped while spending a year studying abroad at Oxford University. Cormack puts Odell in charge of the kidnapping case. Odell wants Quinn, the world's most successful hostage negotiator, to handle the case, but he has retired to Spain and is not interested in working for the government. His old CIA friend David Weintraub coaxes him out of retirement, and Green Beret Quinn agrees to come to London if they allow him to handle the negotiations his way. He is joined, against his wishes, in his designated London flat by female FBI agent Sam Somerville and CIA officer Duncan McCrea. The leader of the kidnappers, Zack, makes contact and demands a $5 million ransom for Simon's safe return. Quinn refuses, telling the police and FBI it is dangerous to agree to a kidnapper's first demand. After two weeks of negotiation, they agree on a $2 million ransom, in diamonds. Meanwhile, a maverick FBI agent does his own investigations and leads a raid on a house where he believes the President's son is held; but it turns out that all he has done is ruin an attempt by the British police to arrest a top international drug smuggler. A fake news report that the police are closing in spooks the kidnappers; Quinn decides to steal the diamonds, evade the police and FBI and set up the ransom drop himself. He and Simon are released at different points of a deserted road. As Simon runs towards Quinn and the police, he is killed in an explosion. President Cormack is devastated when he learns of his son's death. The possibility of the president being removed under the terms of the 25th Amendment is brought up. A postmortem shows that Simon was killed by a bomb hidden in the belt given to him by his kidnappers. The bomb was set off by a miniature detonator - minidet - found, and only found, in the Soviet space programme. The Russians are blamed and the Nantucket Treaty is effectively finished. Quinn is arrested by the police but let go for lack of evidence. He decides to go after the kidnappers himself, and Sam - who has become Quinn's lover - is sent by the FBI to follow him. Quinn thinks one of the kidnappers was a Belgian mercenary, due to his ease with a gun and the smell of his Bastos cigarettes. He identifies him as “Big” Paul Marchais and finds him with a bullet in the head at a fairground in Belgium. He finds his partner, South African mercenary Jan Pretorius in bar in the Netherlands, also with a bullet in his head. Returning to London, Quinn is contacted by Zack who arranges a meeting at a cafe in Paris. He tells Quinn he was paid $500,000 to kidnap Simon - the ransom was a bonus. The man who hired him was a fat American who always stayed in darkness so he couldn't be identified. Zack brought in Marchais and Pretorius and was forced to take on a fourth man, Corsican Dominique Orsini. It was Orsini who gave Simon the belt that killed him. After that, he fled to Europe. Zack hands over the diamonds but is killed in a drive-by shooting which Quinn and Sam only narrowly escape from. Quinn sends Sam to his home in Spain while he travels to Corsica. He confronts Orsini but is forced to kill him in self-defense. He flies back to London where he is drugged and kidnapped by a Russian agent, Andrei the Cossack. He is taken to the Russian embassy where KGB chief General Kirpicenko shows Quinn photos of Miller, Scanlon and the three arms manufactures who had been identified after paying an unexpected trip to a Russian air base. It is believed they met with General Koslov, head of Soviet Southern High Command, and he gave them the minidet. Kirpicenko tells Quinn to return to Washington, D.C. to flush out the conspirators. Sam flies back to Washington and Quinn sends her a letter, knowing that the White House has her phones tapped and her mail on intercept. Quinn by then is in Vermont, after entering the U.S. via Canada with help of forged travel documents, and renting a secluded cabin in the wilderness. In the intercepted letter to Sam, the White House committee read that Quinn knows who Simon's killers were and is holed up some place safe writing it all down. One of the members of the committee, in cahoots with Miller from the start, panics. Quinn soon finds Sam and tells her to be on the lookout. Sam soon tells Quinn that David Weintraub has been in touch, and Quinn agrees to meet him. The 'David Weintraub' who appears is actually Irving Moss impersonating him. He has brought with him Duncan McCrea, who turns out to be a fellow sadist and a former protégé of Moss. Moss also has a score to settle with Quinn, who responded to one of Moss' gruesome torture interrogations in Vietnam by caving in the front of Moss' face with a single punch. It was McCrea who pushed the remote control that set off the bomb that killed Simon. Quinn and Sam are taken at gunpoint back to Quinn's cabin where Moss reads Quinn's report. He tells Quinn that he and Duncan followed Quinn and Sam across Europe, spying on them (for a time) via a bug in Sam's handbag, and killing the mercenaries before Quinn could reach them. Moss, finding out that the report is fake, takes Quinn outside to shoot him, but Andrei, who has been bivouacking in the snow for several days observing Quinn, shoots him before he could execute Quinn. Quinn then takes Moss's gun, returns to the cabin and shoots McCrea as he is about to rape/torture Sam. Searching the corpses reveals Moss's address book, which eventually yielded a coded telephone number which Quinn identifies (with Sam's help) as belonging to a very senior politician. Mimicking Moss's voice, he demands a bonus payment for all the 'unforeseen trouble' he had to deal with, and arranges a meeting with the man at the 'usual place', which turns out to be near the Vietnam War Memorial. It turns out to Hubert Reed, the Secretary of the Treasury, who publicly supported the Nantucket Treaty, but secretly opposed it as he had invested his fortune in armament companies; the trustees of his blind trust had not moved the investments. He offers Quinn the $5 million Swiss bank draft (payable to the bearer) he had brought for Moss, and Quinn hands over the report he has written. But the real report is sent to the President, who then chooses not to resign and tells the world in a special broadcast the next evening what really happened to his son and why. The conspirators are later arrested by American and Soviet authorities or commit suicide, and the President orders the FBI manhunt for Quinn to be permanently called off. By then, Quinn flies off to Spain with Sam, who has accepted his marriage proposal. A newspaper he briefly reads, made redundant earlier by the President's speech, mentions a $5 million anonymous donation to the Vietnam Veterans Paraplegic Hospital, and the “accidental” death of Treasury Secretary Reed, by drowning."
2786,Bleeding Hearts,thriller," Michael Weston is a professional assassin, but he also suffers from haemophilia. The wealthy father of a girl he killed by mistake years ago has sworn vengeance on the killer, hiring a private detective (Hoffer) to track him down. Rankin has said that he wrote this book under the influence of Martin Amis' novel Money and that Weston was influenced by that novel's protagonist John Self."
2787,CHERUB: Dark Sun,thriller," Greg ""Rat"" Rathbone is on an undercover mission to befriend the son of notorious activist, Kurt Lydon, and change the plan of his nuclear system. Rat is soon invited to a sleepover by Lydon's son George and after defeating a group of bullies in a fight earns further popularity from George and his overweight Chinese friend, Zhang. Back at campus, Lauren Adams, Jake Parker and Andy Lagan are forced to do physical training on the assault course after messing around in front of a guest speaker. Although overseen by volunteers James Adams and Bruce Norris, Andy is severely injured but still takes part in the mission, posing as Rat's Scottish cousin. At the sleepover, Rat and Andy sedate George, Zhang and Lydon's wife and begin hacking into Lydon's laptop but are interrupted by George's older sister, Sophie. She badly injures Rat by breaking a vase over his head. After a vicious struggle, the boys sedate her and finish the job. The book ends with Lydon and several other suspects being imprisoned and a new library being opened at campus on World Book Day."
2788,To Catch a Thief,thriller," In August 1951, French police come to arrest American John Robie at his villa in Vence near the Côte d'Azur. He escapes, leaping over the garden wall. In the late 1930s, Robie was a daring, supremely athletic burglar, known as Le Chat (""the cat""), who specialized in jewel thefts from hotels and villas on the French Riviera. He was caught and sent to prison in 1939. But during the German occupation of France in World War II, the Germans released a lot of convicts from French prisons, including Robie. He and many other released convicts joined the French Resistance (the Maquis), and fought against the Germans. After the war, there was an unofficial amnesty for those released convicts who had been maquisards. Their previous sentences were not remitted, but as long as they refrained from new crimes they would be left alone. Some returned to underworld occupations, but Robie retired. He had saved some of the proceeds of his thefts, and did not need to steal. He bought his villa, tended his garden, and played boules with the townsfolk, including his friends Commissaire Oriol and Count Paul. He comforted Paul during the tragic death of his wife Lisa from tuberculosis. Then in 1951, there were new jewel thefts on the Riviera, exactly in the style of Le Chat. Robie was suspected, but he assured Oriol that Le Chat was dead - killed in the Resistance. But after more thefts, Oriol's suspicion returned, and he tried to arrest Robie. After escaping, Robie contacts Bellini in Cannes. Robie wants to leave France, but Bellini asks him to help catch the new Le Chat. The police are cracking down, threatening to send all the old ex-prisoners back to prison. The thief is using Robie's methods, so Robie can help them catch the thief, and get the police off their backs. Jean-Pierre disguises Robie as a pudgy, middle-aged man. As ""Jack Burns"", vacationing American businessman, Robie scouts the Riviera, visiting nightclubs and casinos. He identifies three likely targets for the new Le Chat: Mrs. Stevens, the Souzas, and the Sanfords. He works out Le Chat-style plans for burglarizing their residences. Unfortunately, Mrs. Stevens becomes attached to ""Burns"". He stood next to her in a casino (to study her jewelry), making small, cautious bets at roulette. Mrs. Stevens copied his bets with much larger sums, and won two million francs. She used the money to buy a pin - a diamond dog with emerald eyes. She decides that ""Lucky"" Burns is her personal good-luck charm. Whenever she sees him, she joins him, buys him drinks, and copies his bets, attracting attention Robie doesn't want. So Bellini provides Robie with Danielle, a pretty girl to escort ""Burns"" in the casinos. This annoys Claude, Danielle's muscular would-be boyfriend, but keeps Mrs. Stevens away. ""Burns"" has also attracted the attention of Francie Stevens, who is suspicious of men who may want to exploit her trusting mother. The thief strikes again, and Sûreté headquarters in Paris sends senior detective Lepic and additional agents. Mr. Paige announces an offer to buy back the jewels for 20% of their value - no questions asked. Then Robie encounters Count Paul in Cannes. Paul doesn't recognize him, but Robie has to stop his scouting. He dismisses Danielle. Francie Stevens has guessed that ""Burns"" is Le Chat. She mistakenly thinks that he is the leader of a gang, which staged all the apparent feats of Le Chat. She is excited to meet a master thief, and suggests that he rob her mother, whose jewelry is insured, except the diamond dog. But she insists that the dog must not be taken - even though this would be an obvious giveaway. Bellini provides Robie with six tough ex-maquisards, including his old comrades Coco and Le Borgne. If they catch the thief and recover the jewels, they can share the reward. Robie sets Coco and two men to watch the Souzas' cottage, and Le Borgne with two men to watch the Sanfords' chateau. He himself will watch in Mrs. Stevens' hotel. He has determined that the thief must strike by night. That night, Mrs. Stevens goes out for an all-night gambling session, wearing most of her jewels. Francie (wearing the rest) has Robie take her out for the night. He complies, since there is nothing for the thief to steal. But Mrs. Stevens loses her stake quickly and comes home early. After she goes to sleep, the thief strikes. Count Paul is among the crowd attracted by the alarm over the theft, and recognizes Robie. Paul won't expose him, but he wants an introduction to Danielle. She reminds him of his beloved Lisa, and he must meet her. Robie tells him who she is, but deliberately rejects Paul's offer to help him. Francie thinks Robie's gang stole the jewels. She demands the return of the diamond dog, threatening to expose him. Robie plays for time. Robie thinks that perhaps Danielle, who is clever, and Claude, who is athletic, are behind the thefts. Bellini investigates, and clears Claude. At the Souzas' cottage, Coco dismisses one of his crew, a quarrelsome gypsy, and Robie joins him on watch. The next day, at the beach, he introduces Paul to Danielle. Later, Robie tells her about Lisa. Francie again pressures Robie for the diamond dog, and he tells her the whole story; also, how he came to be Le Chat. His parents were circus acrobats, as was he. He was orphaned when young, came to Europe, was stranded, and took to burglary. Two nights later, Robie spots a figure sneaking away from the Souza cottage. Then Detective Lepic shoots the man dead. It is the gypsy, who tried to take advantage of Robie's Le Chat-style planning. This seems to exonerate Le Chat, but the stolen jewels are still missing. Robie is certain that the gypsy was not athletic enough to be the hotel thief. The thief is still at large, and will strike again. The target will be the Sanfords. The next weekend is their gala house party, and the guests will bring fabulous jewels. Francie wangles an invitation for ""Burns"". But Count Paul is also a guest. Paul demands that Robie leave, and won't listen to his explanation. Lepic and Oriol also arrive to protect the guests' jewels. Robie abandons his disguise and lies in wait for the thief on the roof of the chateau. Late that night, he pursues the thief over the roof. The police are aroused, and Oriol demands Robie's surrender. Robie catches up with the thief, who is Danielle. Reflexively, he joins her in evading the police. They slip through the window of Paul's room. Paul hides them from Oriol, and now listens to Robie's story. Danielle too was a hungry young orphan acrobat. She deliberately mimicked the famous Le Chat, and never recognized ""Burns"" until they met on the roof. Paul, who is in love with Danielle, asks her to marry him. He can pay what is required to save her freedom. But Robie has a better idea - since she still has the stolen jewels. Danielle and Bellini take the jewels to Paige, who tells Oriol and Lepic that the jewels have been returned and ""Burns"" was his company's agent. With the jewels restored, and the dead gypsy, the case is closed. Robie can now return safely to Vence, where he has everything he wants - except, he now realizes, Francie Stevens. He finds her packing to leave for America..."
2789,Impact,thriller," Wyman Ford returns to investigate a mysterious source of gemstones and instead uncovers evidence of an unusual impact crater. Weaving seemingly separate stories of Wyman Ford's engagement by the government to investigate a meteorite's crater in Cambodia, a Mars Mission scientist's investigation into unusual gamma ray activity on that planet, and a waitress's adventurous trek into the Maine offshore islands to locate a meteor strike that others assumed hit the ocean, the author resolves the fast-moving plots steadily throughout the book, focusing the separate paths to a single conclusion that impacts the future of the entire planet. The book was reviewed on All Things Considered in February 2010."
2790,Halting State,thriller," The plot opens with a faux email addressed to Nigel MacDonald, listing a job offer. It is later learned that this email is for a work-at-home programmer position at Hayek Associates PLC. It is then learned that a cybercrime has been committed in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Avalon Four. A robbery of several thousand euros worth of ""prestige items"" occurs in the game's central bank, led by a band of orcs and a ""dragon for fire support."" It is later noticed that this seemingly simple incident has deep implications - both financial (Hayek stock price) and logistical (compromised cryptographic keys), which sets the stage for the latter half of the novel. The main story is then divided between police chapters as Sue, investigation sections as Elaine, and programmer and gamer geek sections as Jack. Initially separate storylines, the three inevitably join forces to combat a much larger conspiracy that hinges on international espionage and counterterrorism. These initial segments track the bank robbery and mystery man, Nigel MacDonald, who is revealed as a shadow identity created from Jack Reed's credentials as a programmer and gamer. Eventually, it is discovered that the entirety of the European network backbone—including its root keyservers -- has been compromised by Chinese hackers. It is more or less at this point that the wool is removed from the reader's eyes that ""it's no longer a game,"" while Jack and Elaine develop a romance between action segments. Using the game Spooks as a sock puppet for real espionage missions, Jack and Elaine are sent to uncover the identity of a mole inside Hayek Associates, which is subsequently revealed to be a front for the government. The mole is said to have leaked cryptographic keys to ""Team Red"", or Chinese interests, through a blacknet. For contrast, the European protagonists are called simply, ""Team Blue"". It is at this point that the stage is set for the final confrontation. Using Nigel's shadow identity as bait for Team Red's mole, Elaine and Jack successfully expose and capture Marcus Hackman, who is revealed to be the mole and main antagonist. It is then revealed that Hackman had staged the whole thing in order to use strategic put options to earn €26 million when his own company, Hayek Associates, took the fall for the initial robbery sequence. Jack is shot twice in the chest during this exchange, but is seen recovering in a hospital bed by the end of the book. The novel closes with an email addressed to Hackman that resembles a 419 scam from a Nigerian banker, implying that is where he hid the money."
2791,The Matarese Countdown,thriller," Like the legendary phoenix, the Materese are rising from the ashes and are regaining their former power. The new leader of the Matarese is an enigmatic figure named Jan van der Meer Matareisen, according to himself the only legitimate grandchild of Baron Guillaume de Matarese, the founder of the Matarese group. With the help of another shadowy figure known as Julian Guiderone a.k.a. ""son of the shepherd boy,"" who seems to have survived the events recounted in ""The Matarese Circle"" nearly twenty years ago, they are hatching a new and diabolical plot to plunge the civilised world into total chaos. Only one man, a CIA operative known as Brandon Scofield a.k.a. Beowulf Agate, can stop them, but he has been retired for nearly twenty years. Brandon Scofield is once again sent into the field together with a CIA case officer, Cameron Pryce, but this time the enemy is more dangerous. fr:Le Complot des Matarèse"
2792,When Eight Bells Toll,thriller," The story concerns the hijacking of five cargo ships in the Irish Sea. British Treasury secret agent Phillip Calvert is sent to investigate, and narrates the story for the reader. Calvert manages to track the latest hijacked ship - the Nantesville, carrying £8 million in gold bullion - to the Scottish Highlands and the sleepy port town of Torbay on the Island of Torbay (patterned after Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull). He boards the ship under cover of night and finds the two agents planted aboard have been murdered. Chief suspect is Cypriot shipping magnate Sir Anthony Skouros, whose luxury yacht, Shangri-La, is also anchored in Torbay. Operating out of his yacht Firecrest, Calvert is joined by Skouros's wife, Charlotte, and by his boss Sir Arthur Arnford-Jason, known as ""Uncle Arthur"". Calvert is a typical MacLean hero, world-weary and sometimes cynical, yet ultimately honorable, who must battle bureaucracy as well as the bad guys to solve the crime. Calvert's frantic search for the hijackers and for the hostages they hold takes him over the remote isles and sea lochs and forces him to make allies of some unlikely locals. As is usual with MacLean, the plot twists and turns, not all characters are as they seem to be at first introduction, and the double-crosses continue to the very last page."
2793,Goodbye California,thriller," Set in the United States, an Islamic terrorist kidnaps nuclear scientists and steals radioactive material from a California nuclear power plant. The plot focuses on the plan of the kidnappers to build their own atomic bombs which if exploded along California's earthquake fault lines could kill millions of people and destroy California's major cities. The inspiration for the plot appears to be acknowledged by Maclean himself in his preface to the 1977 edition of the book where he describes his first experience of an earthquake while in California on 9 February 1972."
2794,Taking Lives,thriller," A Dutch teenager, Martin Arkenhout, and an American college student, Seth Goodman, strike up a conversation on a bus in Florida, and on a whim they rent a car to better explore the rural area. But then the car breaks down and Goodman, trying to summon help on the roadside, is struck by a passing car and left critically injured. Arkenhout bludgeons Goodman with a rock, switches their wallets and papers, and continues Goodman's journey to college in New York. Arkenhout soon must give up the identity when Goodman's suspicious parents demand he comes home for Christmas. He has by now developed a taste for wealth and luxury, and so begins befriending and killing rich people, stealing their identities and living their comfortable lives for as long as he can before moving on. The novel soon shifts over to first narration James Costa, a museum curator who will track Arkenhout down and become his next victim. He wrestles with his troubled but passionate marriage, and is disturbed by his father's sudden decision to leave England and return to the family's former village in Portugal. When Costa and Arkenhout, still posing as Professor Hart, cross paths, Arkenhout is unaware that the real Hart had stolen rare manuscripts from a British museum. Costa, representing the museum, pursues the man he believes to be Hart as far as Portugal hoping to regain the missing manuscripts. As fate would have it, Arkenhout takes a vacation villa near the village where Costa's father had only just died. While settling family business and attempting to negotiate for the manuscripts, Costa makes increasingly unnerving discoveries about the identities of Hart and Arkenhout, and about his own father's involvement in political oppression during World War II. The book culminates with a blazing fire and an intriguing and an unanticipated plot twist."
2795,Jack & Jill,thriller," A man named Sam Harrison or Jack (not his real name) and a woman Sara Rosen or Jill set-up a United States Senator. They kill him and videotape it. On the other side of Washington D.C. a different killer kills a child named Shanelle Green using a baseball bat. Cross is awoken by his partner, John Sampson at the dead of the night and is promptly told there is a new case for them. Cross and Sampson drive to Sojourner Truth School in Southeast where the mutilated body of Shanelle Green was found. Alex then starts an investigation to find the child killer. He was informed by one of his informants of someone who would do such a thing, Emmanuel Perez, aka Chop-It-Off Chuckie. Alex and Sampson go to question the suspect and a police-suspect foot chase occurs. It ends when the suspect falls off a building after trying to evade Cross and Sampson. After the death of their suspect another child murder is committed. This proves that the ""real"" child killer is still alive and it is not the work of Chop-It-Off-Chuckie. One day the police commissioner and the Chief of Detectives Pittman visit Alex's house. They inform him that he was requested to work on the Jack and Jill case because of his famous encounters with psychopathic killers and expertise in psychology. He declines by saying that he has connection with the Truth School killer and he wishes to solve it instead. In the end he has no choice but to leave the child killer case and work on the Jack and Jill murders. later a confrontation arises between Pittman and him in which he physically abuses Pittman at a crime scene. Jack and Jill kill another two famous people. With Cross on the investigation and his obsession with the child killer case lingering, he asks for the help of a group of fellow detectives to work secretly on the Truth School Murders so that the case won't get cold. With Sampson and the other detectives solving the child murders, Alex concentrates on trying to solve the Jack and Jill case. He becomes part of a group formed in the white house to solve the Jack and Jill case. Cooperating with FBI, Secret Service and the CIA, the case begins to show signs of cracking. But still it wasn't enough to solve the case. On the other hand Jack and Jill ask for the help of another killer, Kevin Hawkins, but without Kevin Hawkins' knowledge that he was just a patsy. He was being used by Jack to elude the cops. Hawkins then kills a woman. At first the investigation team thought they made a mistake by killing a not famous person, but they soon found out that the woman is the American president's mistress. It was revealed that Jack and Jill's main target was to kill the president. Using the other murders to show that they are good at what they do, and they are really serious about it. Sampson is informed that someone was admitting to the murders of Shanelle Green and Vernon Wheatley. With Alex Cross's help Sampson and Alex went to the address that was given to them. They found out that the child killer is also a child (13 years old). Sumner Moore. 'Sumner' is on the run. He spends the day on the streets, then goes home in the middle of the night and kills his parents in a fit of rage. Alex continues to work with the Jack & Jill case. Without enough evidence and mistakes by Jack & Jill the case is still unsolvable. Alex then with the help of the general inspector of the CIA, Jeanne Sterling locates Kevin Hawkins, but Hawkins was able to escape. Sampson is called to the murder of another child. This time it is Sumner Moore; the real child killer is not him. The killer is revealed as another boy who suffers from depression and is on medication, the taking of which he has stopped. The president decids to resume schedules as normal. He goes to address the people of New York. At the Madison Square Garden, with enough security, Kevin Hawkins was waiting, dressed as an FBI woman. After a while a bomb explods and the auditorium is plunged into chaos. The president and his wife are protected by the Secret Service, and try to escape to the alternate escape route. What they don't know was that Kevin Hawkins was waiting. Hawkins was shot and died at the hospital but he successfully kills the president . Another murder is reported and Alex rushes to the scene where a woman was found dead. Sara Rosen. Later on Alex using his profiling knowledge starts to look for evidence. He finds a tape in Sara Rosen's/Jill's apartment that contains the footage of the first victim's murder, by accident the camera caught Jack as he shot the US senator. Alex thought that the tape was some kind of revenge by Sara Rosen for if Jack betrayed her. The next day Alex and Jay Grayer a CIA Agent followed 'Jack' and arrest him. It was Brett Sterling, a CIA contract killer (ghosts) and husband of CIA Inspector General Jeanne Sterling. A while later they arrested Jeanne at their home. She tried to escape but was unsuccessful as Cross stopped her. The real Jack and Jill are imprisoned in Lorton where Gary Soneji was imprisoned. A few days later the two of them are found dead due to poisoning. A flesh and blood was found in under Jeanne's fingernails, meaning that they were murdered and that they fought whoever it was. Alex theory was that they were contracted by someone with money who will benefit if the president died, but they don't know and can't find out who. All the while the real child killer takes hostage Christine Johnson, the principal of the Sojourner Truth School and kills her husband George at their home. The killer, Danny Bordreaux, a 13 year old, requests Alex Cross for negotiations. After Cross enters the house, a confrontation happens and Danny is apprehended. After all the cases were solved Alex is visited by Christine Johnson at his home and they talk. A day later while arranging the Christmas tree Gary Soneji calls and tells him he will come for him and he's the one who left Rosie the Cat at their home. Alex hangs up and goes back to do the tree. Kyle Craig continues to help Alex Cross throughout the book. it:Jack and Jill (romanzo)"
2796,Kingdom Keepers II: Disney at Dawn,thriller," The story begins with DHI (Disney Host Interactive, or Daylight Hologram Imaging) day at the Magic Kingdom. Finn and the other DHIs are riding on a float when Philby (a DHI) notices a gray balloon on the castle. Due to the growing thunderstorm, however, it disappears in the crowd. The kids also notice that Chernabog, a character supposed to be on one of the floats, has gone missing. As the parade continues, Finn sees his old friend Amanda, and her sister Jez (Jess). We learn in this book that the characters have begun to be called Kingdom Keepers because of an adopted name given from a local newspaper. Amanda is trying to warn Finn about something when Charlene notices a pair of monkey-like creatures following the float in the crowd. Jez slows, and Amanda (still trying to warn Finn) puts a green leaf to her cheek. Realizing what she means, Finn knows that Maleficent is in the castle. Together with Philby, the boys go to Escher's Keep and make it to the apartment Wayne (an old Imagineer) had shown them months before. A Dapper Dan, (who Finn immediately guesses as Security) follows the boys up the stairs, Finn trying to trick him by crossing over to his DHI state. Meanwhile the boys are trying to find out what's going on in the castle, Maybeck, Charlene, and Willa go to meet up with Amanda. Amanda realizes that Jez is a matter of fact a DHI, and doesn't know where her real sister went. Philby and Finn find Maleficent in the castle, who was moved there from the jail-cell from under Pirates of the Caribbean. Maleficent conjures her powers and breaks the bars on the window using the lightning storm, and she flies down the Tinkerbell rope from ""Wishes"" and flies off to the Animal Kingdom. Finn and Philby rescue the Tinkerbell actress and fly down the rope to Tomorrowland. That night, as they await to meet up online, Finn receives an IM from Wayne. Wayne tells him to meet him on a website, DGamer, a private place where VMK is still open (being that VMK closed in the book and in real life.) Wayne talks to Finn on a webcam, and Finn tells him about the nights events. Wayne tells Finn that the Overtakers have managed to clone one of the original, messed-up DHI servers from the first book and hide it somewhere in the Animal Kingdom. The Overtakers are using it to make DHIs out of animals as their army, and if any of the Kingdom Keepers (or Wayne) fall asleep, they will become their DHIs, controlled by the Overtakers' server, and can be put into permanent comas, similar to what happened to Maybeck in the first book. Wayne tells Finn that he and the other Kingdom Keepers must find Jez and destroy the second server in the Animal Kingdom, before they fall asleep and are at the Overtakers control, and must get to the Animal Kingdom at dawn, before opening, to get into the park. Finn warns the others, and they decide to use their Nintendo DS systems to chat using DGamer and meet up at the Animal Kingdom at dawn. Finn sneaks out of his house at 1 AM, and uses his bike to get to Amanda's house. He discovers that they live alone in an abandoned church. She tells him that she and Jez, who are not really sisters, are Fairlies, which means they are 'fairly human'. They have special powers, but Jez's powers are much more powerful, even more so than Maleficent's, which is why the Overtakers kidnapped her. Finn believes her, promises not to tell, and Amanda also shares that she and Jez grew up in the same orphanage, and both ran away, being that both of their parents died or disappeared. She also tells Finn that Jez had dreams before, about the future. She drew dreams in the diary, on a page filled with monkeys, a castle being struck by lightning, a sticker, a mountain, other drawings, and the words ""CHANGE ROB"" written over and over. Finn takes the page, being that it will help them, since the castle being struck by lightning happened the night before. While in the church, Finn and Amanda spy a large bat, suspiciously watching them. Later, at 4 in the morning, Finn sneaks back into his house and tells his mom he's going to the skate park and it is six in the morning. She believes him, and 'winning the rest of the day' tells her he will probably go to Blizzard Beach later with his friends. He and the DHIs, along with Amanda, meet up at the Animal Kingdom an hour later. They go into a type of warehouse, and discover that the Dapper Dan who chased Finn and Philby in Escher's Keep is in fact with Wayne. They change into cast members' clothing, Charlene notably dressing up as DeVine, a costumed vine character on stilts. Charlene and Willa discover a bat in the girls' room the size of a bowling pin, the same bat who was at Amanda's apartment. Maybeck catches it, and puts it in a pillowcase. The DHIs set out into the empty park, each as a different person. With Cast Member ID badges, they are free to go anywhere backstage as long as they aren't found out. In Animal Kingdom, Willa sets out into the jungle, she attempts to go to a feeding place disguised as a stump on the savanna. She is chased and nearly eaten by a dragon-type creature, but is safe once she enters the stump and zebras scare the dragon away. Willa notices that Jez is gone, and 'Change Rob' is written on the wall, just as in Jez's diary. Once the coast is clear, she goes back to the actual park to find Finn. Maybeck has orders from Finn to put the bat-hostage in the bat enclosure. However, he is attacked by thousands of birds who were stalking him all over. He isn't hurt by them, but the bat is taken away by a monkey. He desperately chases the monkey, following it into the monkey enclosure. However, Maleficent is in the enclosure and stops him and Maybeck is sent running for his life back to Finn. Philby, at the Convervation Station, has talked to Wayne on VMK and found out how to rig the cameras there and give him security camera access to all the cameras around the park. Charlene, who is posing as the DeVine character, is unseen by everyone, therefore giving her an advantage. She offers to watch the bat enclosure, because Amanda (who is at the Conservation Station) is watching all the cameras she can. Finn listens to Willa and Maybeck's stories, but all are equally puzzled. At this point, the park has opened to guests, and suddenly, the song ""Under the Sea"" (covered by Raven-Symoné) begins playing on the radios around the park. Amanda is in shock- this is Jez(Jess)'s favorite song, its on her iPod, and this song has never played anywhere in the Animal Kingdom—it's all out of area. Finn and Amanda deduce that Jez(Jess) must be playing this song from her iPod, and that this must be a clue about something. Willa and Finn each decide to check out this mystery by following the song's clue to other parks. Finn goes to Disney's Hollywood Studios and heads to the Voyage of the Little Mermaid theater show. While walking in the park, he notices a broomstick character from Fantasia is following him. Finn manages to hide in the show and watch, only to notice the broomstick character stop and study the show. Finn is confused. Meanwhile, Willa has gone to the Magic Kingdom to Ariel's Grotto, a picture station themed to The Little Mermaid. While there, she seems to cause a fuss by asking to open a fake treasure chest in the area, thinking it might contain something. It is revealed to be empty, and Willa is pushed away by a cast member, who remarks that a Captain Hook costumed character had also tried to do the same thing earlier. Willa eventually falls asleep at Mickey's Philharmagic and is taken away by the Overtakers, to be put in a hotel room with sleeping Philby. After following a clue, Finn and Amanda go to the vetrinary clinic and are confronted by Maleficent. Finn crosses over and Amanda uses her abilities to counter Maleficent's attacks. However, Finn's DHI begins to fail after seeing Maleficent show signs retreat and Amanda takes a blow. Enraged by this, Finn attacks Maleficent and demands for her to release Amanda. After she fulfills this, Finn knocks her down and he and Amanda escape. Jez is eventually found inside the Animal Kingdom's tiger enclosure, was found using the ""Under the Sea"" music clue. According to Google Earth, she was literally under the C in the ladn. Finn, Jez and Charlene have a near-death experience escaping from the tigers. The Keepers, Amanda, and Jez meet up and discover that Maleficent is going to free Chernabog at Expedition Everest, due to the fact Maleficent can only stand the cold. By the time they get to the attraction, the park has closed to guests, and the kids scale into the empty climactic end of the attraction. However, they are too late as Maleficent releases Chernabog from his trapped form as the animatronic ride Yeti. Chernabog tries to kill Finn, when Amanda saves him and the kids escape in an oncoming ride car. In the end, the Kingdom Keepers have failed to stop the Overtakers, who have reportedly hid away in Disney's Hollywood Studios in the back of an ice truck. The kids decide they must quickly find the stonecutter's quill if they want to regain leverage against the Overtakers, who have most likely been the cause of Wayne's sudden and mysterious disappearance. Amanda and Jez are now Kingdom Keepers. *Jez's real name is Jessica. It was only changed to Jez after Maleficent put a spell on her. * In the first book, it is not mentioned that Finn has a sister, but in this book, Finn tells us that his sister loves Stitch, and Amanda uses Finn's sister's DS (Username: panda) for communication with the others."
2797,The Broker,thriller," Joel Backman is ""the Broker""- a Washington power broker-lobbyist. But his life falls apart when a deal collapses involving a hacked spy satellite that nobody knows about, and Backman ends up in jail. Six years later, the political wheels in Washington have turned and other power-hungry men are eager for his blood. Bargains are made and an outgoing disgraced president grants him a full pardon at the behest of the CIA and he finds himself spirited out of the prison in the middle of the night, bundled onto a military plane and flown to Italy for a new life. He has a new name and mysterious new ""friends"" who will teach him to speak the language and to blend in with the people of the city of Bologna. But something isn't quite kosher in this new setup, and he is under constant surveillance. In fact, his own government is setting him up for professional assassins from Russia, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. The CIA intends to sit back and wait to see which one gets him first, trying to solve the biggest mystery to hit the US government in decades; seeing who built this seemingly impenetrable and most advanced satellite ever. It turns out to be China. Despite having low satellite technology, they stole the information from the U.S. Backman survives several assassination attempts and manages to establish communication with his son, Neal Backman. He escapes surveillance and returns to his home to contract a new deal with the US government. The CIA is told about the satellite, along with the taking of the program of the satellite itself."
2798,Executive Orders,thriller," Following the conclusion of Debt of Honor, Jack Ryan is sworn in as president of the United States minutes after becoming Vice President. With virtually nearly every executive, legislative, and judicial figure deceased, Ryan is left to represent the United States by himself. Ryan deals with various hardships and crises, from reconstituting the House and the Senate; to a challenge on his legitimacy by former vice president Ed Kealty; to a brewing war in the Middle East. When the president of Iraq is assassinated by an Iranian agent, the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei takes advantage of the power vacuum by launching an unopposed invasion of Iraq. The ayatollah unites the two countries into the United Islamic Republic (UIR). With Indian and Chinese assistance, the UIR makes a bid for superpower status by attacking Saudi Arabia. Following a series of Iranian-backed terrorist attacks&mdash;including the release of a genetically-enhanced Ebola strain&mdash;the UIR declares war on both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Meanwhile, China ""accidentally"" shoots down a Taiwanese airliner. As a result of the Ebola attack, Ryan declares martial law and enforces travel restrictions in an effort to contain the virus. However, the attack becomes only a limited success for the UIR, since the virus is so deadly that it cannot spread effectively. The tide soon turns against the UIR, with its forces being defeated against the combined firepower of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. President Ryan sends Ding Chavez and John Clark into the UIR to assassinate Daryaei. After showing the destruction of Daryaei's residence during a televised press conference, Ryan threatens to launch a tactical nuclear strike on Tehran unless those responsible for the attacks are extradited to the U.S. to face charges. Kealty's challenge to President Ryan's legitimacy fails in court. In the aftermath of the crisis, appreciation of the unelected president grows. Then in answering a question from a reporter in the White House press room, Ryan says he will seek election to the office of President of the United States."
2799,Doctor Glas,thriller," Doctor Glas is told in the form of a journal. The main character is Dr. Glas, a physician. The antagonist is Reverend Gregorius, a morally corrupt clergyman. Gregorius' beautiful young wife confides in Dr. Glas that her sex life is making her miserable and asks for his help. Glas, in love with her, agrees to help even though she already has another adulterous lover. He attempts to intervene, but the Reverend refuses to give up his ""marital rights""- she must have sex with him whether she likes it or not (at the time, a wife was legally the property of her husband, and subsequently had no right to say no). So, in order to make his love happy, he begins to plot her husband's murder. The novel also deals with issues such as abortion, women's rights, suicide, euthanasia, and eugenics. Not surprisingly, the book triggered a violent campaign against its author who thereafter was vilified in Swedish literary circles."
2800,Invasive Procedures,thriller," George Galen, a brilliant geneticist and Nobel laureate and part of the Human Genome Project, comes to believe that he can guide humanity to a brighter future through genetic enhancement disappears from public view. Galen takes his research underground, eventually devising a virus that can carry specific genes into human cells. This virus, which the government dubs V16, must be tailored to each patient. It can cure that patient of a genetic disorder - but it is quickly lethal to anyone else, inducing a serious rejection reaction as their body responds to its attempt to rewrite its DNA. Galen sends agents called Healers to collect DNA from possible patients. If their disorder is caused by a suitable (repairable) defect, he engineers a version of V16 which the healer administers, explaining to the patient and the patient's family how to avoid the hazards of infection. Galen has larger plans, as well. These involve kidnapping five individuals, four of them homeless and one whom he mistakes for such. These are Byron (a lawyer, not actually homeless), Dolores, Hal (a violent alcoholic), and teenagers Jonathan and Nick. They also involve a talented cardiothoracic surgeon named Monica Ownes and her son Wyatt. Galen's Healers kidnap this pair so that he can use threats against Wyatt to force Monica to do what he wants. Some weeks earlier, Frank Hartman a virologist and soldier, had received samples of a dangerous virus. Using the facilities at Fort Detrick, he devised a cure. This cure is also a virus, that can infiltrate a patient's cells and destroy V16. Upon discovering this cure, Hartman learns that his original samples came to the Defense Department from the BioHazard Agency (BHA) a branch of the government that handles biowarfare attacks. The BHA has been investigating the cult-like Healers and their work for some time. The BHA ""borrows"" Hartman and transports him to their Los Angeles facility to work on V16. Galen intends to achieve a sort of immortality by creating five copies of himself from the homeless people he kidnapped. To create these people, Monica Owens will transplant organs from Galen into their bodies. These organs have been dosed with V16, engineered to rewrite the genetic codes of the patients into Galen's code. The organs also confer a kind of healing ability that Galen engineered into himself with earlier versions of his virus; this prevents the virus from killing them as it rewrites their genetic codes. The surgeries also involve implanted electronic chips that hold Galen's memories. When the V16 has finished rewriting the genetic code, it will activate the chip which will download Galen's personality over that of the original individual. If successful, this council of five will carry Galen's work worldwide."
2801,The Good Guy,thriller," Timothy Carrier is an unassuming stonemason who, while having a beer at his regular bar, is accidentally mistaken for a hitman by a stranger who hands him an envelope containing $10,000 and a photo of the intended victim, a writer named Linda Paquette. The real killer arrives soon afterwards, and Tim manages to bluff him by pretending to be the client, saying he's had second thoughts, and is cancelling the hit while giving the killer the $10,000 as a ""no-kill fee"". Tim covertly follows the killer outside, and is shocked when the killer places a roof-mounted police light on top of his car before driving off; implying the hitman is a cop. Tim tracks down Linda and flees. He phones his old Marine buddy Pete, who's a homicide detective, and asks him to trace the plates of the killer's car. Tim and Linda barely manage to stay one step ahead of the killer, and they begin to suspect that he has almost unlimited access to cell phones, financial transactions and GPS tracking; implying that he is working for someone very powerful. As Tim manages to foil the killer again and again, Linda begins to suspect that Tim is more than just a mason. The supremely confident/psychotic killer isn't deterred, but appears to become increasingly unstable as the chase continues. Over time, Tim and Linda develop feelings for one another. Linda confesses to Tim about her haunting childhood; her parents, former preschool teachers, were unjustly accused of committing horrific sexual crimes to their students, including their daughter. Linda was separated from her parents, as both of them had to go to jail and eventually die. The killer finally tires of chasing Tim, and instead goes to Tim's house and kidnaps Tim's Mom, and then calls Tim to set up a trade for Linda. During the call Tim's Mom covertly lets Tim know they're still at her house(the hitman implied they were far away). Tim and Pete rush home to save Tim's Mom and kill the hitman. FBI agents raid the house and begin to clean up the mess. However, before they enter the house, Tim and Pete see them coming, and being suspicious, Tim calls his neighbor across the street and asks him to covertly videotape the agents. As the clean up proceeds the lead agent reveals that the hitman had actually been working for an American politician who's part of a shadowy conspiracy to take over the American government from the inside. Two and a half years earlier, an aide of that politician had lunch with a member of a terrorist organization. In that restaurant, the owner snapped several pictures of his regular customers, catching the aide and terrorist in the background. Later on, the terrorist was recognized as member of a terrorist organization, while the politician became popular and was being talked about as the next president, plus the pictures surfaced on the restaurant's website. Fearful that this relationship with a known terrorist organization would become known, the conspiracy, in the spirit of thoroughness, sent the hitman to kill the customers who were in the pictures; Linda Paquette being one of them. Before leaving, the lead agent politely apologizes for causing so much trouble, but makes it clear to Tim that if any of them ever say anything about what happened, Tim and everyone he loved would be killed, and it would be made to look like a murder/suicide because of Tim suffering from PTSD. Moments later, Pete shows Linda the story about Tim winning the Medal of Honor for saving numerous civilians during his experiences as a Marine. Tim takes the video to the current American president and explains what he knows about the shadowy group of government insiders. The story ends with Tim and Linda marrying and the conspiracy falling apart; there are multiple arrests and suicides."
2802,Judas Country,thriller," Roy Case, an ex-Royal Air Force military transport makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights around the Mediterranean in an old Beechcraft Queen Air. His dreams of having his own airplane and own charter company rapidly fading due to age and lack of money, but at least he is flying. However, conditions rapidly spiral out of control when he lands in Cyprus. Not only did his employers go bankrupt, leaving him stranded and without pay, but his plane is impounded, he is mugged by mysterious assailants on a dark back street, and is trailed by an Israeli Mossad agent. When he finds that the cases clearly marked “champagne” that he was supposed to be flying to Lebanon contain machine guns instead, he suspects that things are going to get a lot worse. When Case's friend Cavitt shows up, fresh from an Israeli prison, together with a mysterious Austrian archaeologist and his even more mysterious daughter, the plot thickens with hidden Crusader treasure, Lebanese gangsters, betrayal and murder."
2803,Strangers on a Train,thriller," Architect Guy Haines wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam, in order to marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner. While on a train to see his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, a psychopathic playboy who proposes an idea to ""exchange murders"": Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno's father; neither of them will have a motive, and the police will have no reason to suspect either of them. Guy does not take Bruno seriously, but Bruno kills Guy's wife while Guy is away in Mexico. Bruno informs Guy of his crime, but Guy hesitates to turn him in to the police. He realizes that Bruno could claim Guy's complicity in the planned exchange murders; however, the longer he remains silent, the more he implicates himself. This implicit guilt becomes stronger as in the coming months Bruno makes appearances demanding that Guy honor his part of the bargain. After Bruno starts writing anonymous letters to Guy's friends and colleagues, the pressure becomes too great, and Guy murders Bruno's father. Subsequently, Guy is consumed by guilt, whereas Bruno seeks Guy's company as if nothing had happened. He makes an uninvited appearance at Guy's wedding, causing a scene. At the same time, a private detective, who suspects Bruno of having arranged the murder of his father, establishes the connection between Bruno and Guy that began with the train ride, and suspects Bruno of Miriam's murder. Guy also becomes implicated due to his contradictions about the acquaintance with Bruno. When Bruno falls overboard during a sailing cruise, Guy identifies so strongly with Bruno that he tries to rescue him under threat to his own life. Nevertheless, Bruno drowns, and the murder investigation is closed. Guy, however, is plagued by guilt, and confesses the double murder to Miriam's former lover. This man, however, does not condemn Guy; rather, he considers the killings as appropriate punishment for the unfaithfulness. The detective who had been investigating the murders overhears Guy's confession, however, and confronts him. Guy turns himself over to the detective immediately."
2804,Brighton Rock,thriller," Charles ""Fred"" Hale comes to Brighton on assignment to anonymously distribute cards for a newspaper competition (this is a variant of ""Lobby Lud"" in which the name of the person to be spotted is ""Kolley Kibber""). The antihero of the novel, Pinkie Brown, is a teenage sociopath and up-and-coming gangster. Hale had betrayed the former leader of the gang Pinkie now controls, by writing an article in the Daily Messenger about a slot machine racket for which the gang were responsible. Ida Arnold, a plump, kind-hearted and decent woman, is drawn into the action by a chance meeting with the terrified Hale after he has been threatened by Pinkie's gang. After being chased through the streets and lanes of Brighton, Hale accidentally meets Ida again on the Palace Pier, but eventually Pinkie murders Hale. Pinkie's subsequent attempts to cover his tracks and remove evidence of Hale's Brighton visit lead to a chain of fresh crimes and to an ill-fated marriage to a waitress called Rose who unknowingly has the power to destroy his alibi. Ida decides to pursue Pinkie relentlessly, because she believes it is the right thing to do, and also to protect Rose from the deeply disturbed boy she has married. Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also a challenge to Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of sin and the basis of morality. Pinkie and Rose are Catholics, as was Greene, and their beliefs are contrasted with Ida's strong but non-religious moral sensibility. Main characters *Pinkie: The anti-hero of the story, merciless to his victims, simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by sex and human connection. He is the leader of 'the mob' despite being the youngest at 17. *Dallow: Pinkie's second in command - the only member of the mob Pinkie feels he can confide in. *Cubitt Another mob member who lives at 'Frank's' with Pinkie and Dallow. He leaves the gang when Pinkie reveals that he (Pinkie) killed Spicer. *Spicer: An aging mob member resident at Frank's . From the beginning he expresses discomfort with the gang's increasing violence. Pinkie's mistrust of him leads to him being murdered by Pinkie for fear of him being 'milky' and leaking incriminating information to Ida Arnold or the Police. *Rose: A poor, modest, and naive girl who becomes Pinkie's girlfriend and wife. She is also a Roman Catholic like Pinkie and falls in love with him despite his advances on her being purely to keep her from giving incriminating evidence. Pinkie is usually repulsed by her but later has the occasional feeling of tenderness towards her. *Ida Arnold: Ida takes up the role of the detective, hunting down Pinkie to bring justice to Hale. Although this is her original motive, when she finds out that Pinkie is marrying Rose she does so to save the girl. Ida represents the force of justice in this novel, and in contrast to Pinkie and Rose is on the side of 'Right and Wrong'. She acquires information from Cubitt once he is cast out of the gang which significantly aids her investigation."
2805,Nightwing,thriller," A disgruntled, disenfranchised Hopi shaman sets out to ""end the world"" by way of a ritual invocation of the Hopi god of death. Shortly after his mutilated corpse is discovered by a skeptical Tewa deputy the body count begins to rise as more strangely slashed and bloodied victims are found. The book has many elements: part love triangle; part Native American case study; part supernatural thriller. It was the author's own tribal ancestry which inspired the writing of this fictionalized anthropological mini-survey."
2806,Bahama Crisis,thriller," Tom Mangan is a wealthy white Bahamian, and owner/president of a company operating resort hotels, marinas and car rental companies in the Bahamas. His business is successful and growing, and he has a beautiful wife and two children. Things could not be better. One day, he is visited by an old friend from his college days at the Harvard Business School, Billy Cunningham, and his beautiful younger cousin Debbie. The Cunninghams are owners of the Cunningham Corporation, a major conglomerate based in Texas. The Cunningham Corporation wants to invest heavily in developing the tourist industry in the Bahamas, and Mangan agrees to form a partnership with them. However, soon afterwards, disaster strikes. The yacht with Mangan's wife and one of his daughters mysteriously disappears, and the body of his daughter washes up on a beach hundreds of miles from where the yacht should have been. A rash of mysterious events strike the tourist industry, ranging from an unprecedented labor dispute and riot, Legionnaire's Disease striking the hotels, baggage carousels running amok at the airport, arson at an amusement center, and an oil slick from an oil tanker where it should not have been. As Mangan attempts to track down the murderer of his wife, he discovers that these seemingly unrelated events are all connected, and that the plot involves the future of the Bahamas itself as a nation."
2807,The Road to Omaha,thriller," Several years after the events of The Road to Gandolfo, the Hawk has discovered a long-forgotten treaty between the US government and a tribe of Native Americans. This treaty granted the tribe a vast area of land that has since become Omaha, Nebraska, and includes the home of the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Base. Posing as a member of the tribe, the Hawk plans to bring suit against the United States and force it to give the land to the tribe. To further this goal, he ropes Devereaux (now retired from the military) into representing the tribe in court."
2808,The Aquitaine Progression,thriller," Joel Converse is a lawyer, having previously been a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. Because of his wartime experiences with Command Saigon, in the form of a psychopathic general named ""Mad"" Marcus Delavane, he is chosen to thwart a cabal of former generals bent on world domination."
2809,Deception Point,thriller," Intelligence Analyst Rachel Sexton works for the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). Her father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is a presidential candidate who is more popular than incumbent President of the United States Zachary Herney. The President sends her to the Arctic as part of a team of experts to confirm and authenticate findings made by NASA deep within the Milne Ice Shelf on Ellesmere Island. NASA's new Polar Orbiting Density Scanner (PODS), part of the Earth Observation System (EOS), a collection of satellites monitoring the globe for signs of large-scale change, has found an extremely dense spot in the Milne Ice Shelf. At this spot NASA discovers a very dense meteorite. In it are insect fossils very similar to, but not the same as, species on earth. NASA claims this as proof of extraterrestrial life. The find is something NASA needs in the light of recent failures. Senator Sexton uses these failures as an example of government overspending to further his campaign; he wants to abolish NASA and direct the funding toward public schools instead. In order to ensure that the discovery is not tarnished by the reputation that NASA has developed, the President sends four leading civilian scientists (Michael Tolland, a famous oceanographer and TV personality; Corky Marlinson, a brilliant but eccentric astrophysicist; Norah Mangor, a prickly glaciologist and Wailee Ming, a palaeontologist) to the Arctic to verify the meteorite's authenticity. A Delta Force team is also observing the discovery, monitoring the NASA staff for an unknown commander. Ming observes an irregularity within the pit from which the meteorite was extracted. He reaches into the water to obtain a sample and falls in due to an attack by microbots operated by the Delta Force team. He soon drowns at the bottom of the pit. When Tolland sees the irregularity, he shares it with Corky Marlinson and Rachel Sexton. They report it to Mangor, who confirms that there is sea water in what should be a closed area with only freshwater. The four go outside to scan the ice from a distance. The scan shows Ming's body in the water and a column of frozen sea ice beneath the meteorite where it was drilled up into the glacier. Upon discovering this, the four are attacked by the Delta Force team, leaving Norah Mangor dead. Sexton, Tolland and Marlinson escape and are picked up by the Navy submarine USS Charlotte. The Delta Force team believes them to be dead, leaving the scientists a chance to tell the President's advisor and Rachel's boss at the NRO about their discovery, and the subsequent attack. Rachel's boss, NRO director William Pickering, has them airlifted from the sub to a chopper which escorts them away from the meteorite discovery site. Senator Sexton's true motive for wanting to abolish NASA is revealed to be his work for the interests of private corporations from the Space Frontier Foundation, who wish to profit off of space exploration in the event that NASA is dismantled. Rachel is unaware of this, and believes that the President and NASA are part of the conspiracy to kill them. If so, their motive would be to cover up evidence that the meteorite is fake and solely designed to gain support for the incumbent President in the upcoming election. Aboard Tolland's ship off the New Jersey coast, where the Delta Force arrives via helicopter to kill them, Rachel sends a fax message to her father asking for help. Sexton, Tolland, and Marlinson work together to kill the Delta Force squad in self-defense. Rachel is surprised to see Pickering emerging from the helicopter, revealing that he is the commander of the Delta Force squad. He tells Rachel about her father's true motivations for becoming President, and that he (Pickering) masterminded the fake meteorite to hurt Senator Sexton's campaign, protecting the American people in his eyes. When the President sent the civilian team to verify the authenticity of the meteorite, Pickering realized that they would discover his plot and that they needed to be eliminated at all costs. Rachel attempts to reason with Pickering, saying that murder is not a justifiable way of solving the problem. Pickering, however, says that he is ""sacrificing a few to save many"", and that he will finish the job personally. Pickering shoots at the three with a machine gun, but they manage to get off of the ship. The helicopter slides off the ship into the sea, sinking to the bottom. The intense heat at the bottom ignites the Hellfire Missiles still on the helicopter, tearing the existent magma plume at the bottom of the sea, creating a water vortex. The ship is sucked in by the vortex, and Pickering is implied to have been killed in the wreck. Senator Sexton then reads the fax message his daughter sent him to the public, possibly incriminating the President and NASA. However, the truth eventually comes to light about Senator Sexton's ulterior motives and Pickering's meteorite plot, securing Zachary Herney a second term as President. By the end of the story, Michael and Rachel have developed a romantic relationship."
2810,The Sicilian,thriller," The novel opens in 1950 Sicily, where Michael Corleone, nearing the end of his exile in Sicily, meets with Don Croce Malo, the Capo di Capi or Boss of bosses in Sicily, his brother, Father Benjamino Malo, Stefan Andolini (redheaded cousin of Don Vito Corleone), and Sicilian Inspector Frederico Velardi. They discuss with Michael the details of his father's agreement to allow Michael to usher the bandit Salvatore ""Turi"" Guiliano out of Sicily and to America. Michael is told of a ""testament"", a set of documents Guiliano has composed that would be damning to certain political officials of the Italian government if released. Michael is taken to Guiliano's house where he meets Turi's parents and Gaspare ""Aspanu"" Pisciotta, Guiliano's second in command. Michael is informed that Turi's pregnant fiancée is heading to America first, ahead of Guiliano, and only when she sends word back that she is safe, will Turi leave for America. Michael is also told he is to be entrusted with Guiliano's testament. Maria Lombardo Guiliano gives Michael a negro statue of the Virgin Mary as a gift as he parts. The bulk of the novel focuses on the life of Salvatore Guiliano and how he rose to his legendary status as a bandit and hero to the Sicilian people. He was born in the village of Montelepre, west of Palermo. His godfather, Hector Adonis, a small man tormented his entire life for his small stature, was a professor of history and literature at the University of Palermo. He is a very close personal friend of the Guiliano family, a mentor for Turi, and a man who caters to the Friends of the Friends (the word Mafia is rarely spoken in Sicily). In September 1943, the town of Montelepre was preparing for its annual festa for its town's patron saint. Montelepre was a very poor town, and in this period, food was very scarce and often had to be purchased on the black market because of the strict rationing laws that starved the people of Sicily. In reality, all food that was given to the government storehouses was appropriated by the Mafia chiefs and sold on the black market for the citizens to buy; the people of Sicily had to break the law in order to eat. Black market laws were rarely enforced, but smuggling was another matter. On a September morning in 1943, Turi Giuilano and his best friend Aspanu Pisciotta travelled to the nearby town of Corleone to procure some food for his sister's engagement party. On the way back, they were stopped by the carabinieri, and decided to take them on, for the food was too valuable. Turi was shot, but he also managed to shoot his attacker, a police Sergeant, through the eye. Turi was carried by Aspanu to a local monastery, where he was taken care of by the monks there, helped by the Abbot Manfredi, a close friend of Aspanu. Here he was nursed back to health, and Aspanu Pisciotta developed his undying loyalty to Turi. Leaving the monastery, he and Aspanu made their way back to Guiliano's home in Montelepre, knowing he was still being sought for the murder of the Sergeant. While he was discussing his future with his parents and close family friends, Aspanu is informed that the Maresciallo of the local police force was on his way over to arrest Turi. Turi and Aspanu flee down the Via Bella of their town, and enter the church. They open fire on the jeeps pursuing them, and although it was not intended, kill some of the soldiers pursuing them. They flee to the Cammaratta Mountains. Turi and Aspanu are met by Turi's godfather Hector Adonis, who tries to dissuade them of the path they are headed on toward banditry. Though Turi deeply respects and loves his godfather, he can not be dissuaded. They decide to free the prisoners of Montelepre, unjustly jailed in the nearby Bellampo Barracks. Turi narrowly escapes death at the hands of the Corporal Canio Silvestro whose pistol fails when he points it at Turi's head. Silvestro then, at the mercy of Guiliano, is spared in an act of mercy, and Turi frees the captives, including two men named Passatempo and Terranova, who join Turi's band. Guiliano at this point, is beginning to become famous in the news throughout Italy. Not soon after daringly robbing the home of a local duke, the Corporal Canio Silvestro, disgraced by his military, asks to join Guiliano's band. Though suspecting him of being a spy, they allow him to join. They test his loyalty by asking him to execute Montelepre's Frisella, the barber, who has informed on Guiliano. Silvestro completes this task, proving his loyalty, and they attach a letter to his body that said ""So die all who betray Guiliano"". Guiliano had now solidified his domination of the entire northwest corner of the island. He was legendary throughout Sicily, and children concluded their prayers at night saying, ""...and please save Guiliano from the Carabinieri"". Guiliano next orchestrated a kidnapping of Prince Ollorto. The prince was taken, and was treated with the utmost respect and dignity, and his ransom was paid by Don Croce Malo, who had normally been paid for protection by the Prince. It was in this that Guiliano finally came into fierce opposition with Don Croce. The assassination attempts on Guiliano increased, but he evaded them all, suspicious of all who came into contact with him. One of his would-be assassins is found to be Stefan Andolini, who is spared only through Abbot Manfredi, his father, to whom Guiliano owed a favor. Andolini joins Turi's band. The book now fast-forwards back to 1950. In Trapani, Michael Corleone is met by Pete Clemenza, who is to help orchestrate Guiliano's escape. Michael meets Justina, Guiliano's fiancée, and Hector Adonis. Justina leaves for America. Hector informs Michael that Guiliano's elusive and damning Testament is hidden in the black statue of the Virgin Mary that Turi's mother gave him. Back in 1947, Don Croce Malo was strongly aligned with the Christian Democratic party, and driven to keep that party in power, and to deny power to the up and coming Socialist parties that would surely strip him, and the other Mafia chiefs, of their power in Sicily. Don Croce along with Italy's Minister of Justice Franco Trezza, draw up plans to mount a great offensive against Guiliano, but intend to use these plans to blackmail Guiliano to use his influence to swing the upcoming election for the Christian Democrats. Guiliano, who was a man of God and hated the Socialists, ultimately accepts these terms, and helps the campaign across Western Sicily. The 1948 election was a disaster for the Christian Democrats. The Socialists picked up many seats. A celebration was to take place on May Day to celebrate their victories in the Italian legislature by the people of the towns of Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato. The two towns would parade up mountain passes and converge at a plain called the Portella della Ginestra. Guiliano agreed to suppress this festival, giving his two leaders in this operation, Passatempo and Terranova, orders to ""shoot over their heads"". Passatempo's men end up shooting too low, and massacre many people, including many women and children. The massacre proved devastating for Guiliano's image in Sicily. Guiliano discovers later that Passatempo had been paid off by Don Croce to shoot the paraders. Guiliano executed him while on his honeymoon with Justina. Guiliano can now feel that his time as a bandit is coming to an end. He stages one final daring move against the aristocracy and corrupt Mafia chiefs. Six mafia chiefs had been summoned to the estate of Prince Ollorto, defending it from the local peasantry who desired to lease land from him, as a new Italian law had recently allowed them to. Guiliano and his band surrounded the estate and executed each one of these chiefs. Guiliano then snuck into Palermo, and kidnapped a Cardinal, the highest Catholic authority in Sicily. The Church instantly paid the ransom. The Minister of Justice Trezza could no longer hold back his plans to assemble a large force in Sicily to take down Guiliano. Part of the force comes to the island from the mainland, and immediately arrests Guiliano's parents and many citizens of Montelepre for conspiring with Turi. In retaliation, Turi robs the heavily armed and guarded pay truck that was responsible for paying all the Carabinieri stationed in Sicily. He is successful, and the Commander of the operation immediately calls for the rest of the reserve force to come to the mainland to combat Guiliano. The plan to escort Guiliano to America is set into motion, and Aspanu Pisciotta meets with Michael Corleone. He gives the details on precisely where to intercept him and Guiliano. The next day, Clemenza and Michael head down the road toward Palermo, and are stopped by a huge traffic jam. They learn that up ahead Turi Guiliano has been killed by the Carabinieri. They move into town and eat at a cafe, hearing the news of Guiliano's death on the lips of every person in town. They are then discovered and arrested by the Inspector Velardi. They are later released after Don Croce Malo vouches for them, and organizes their release. They return to America. Though the news is that he was killed by the Carabinieri, Guiliano's father, however swears a vendetta on Aspanu Pisciotta. Pisciotta betrayed Guiliano to Don Croce Malo and the Carabinieri because he was fearing his actions were becoming suicidal. He committed grievous offenses against the most powerful in Sicily and feared the end was near. It was Pisiciotta who had killed Guiliano, shooting his hand off in a moment of nervousness, fearing that he would discover he betrayed him. Later, in prison, Pisciotta was poisoned by a joint effort of Don Croce Malo and Hector Adonis. Right after Aspanu's death, Adonis made his way into his cell and left a letter in Pisciotta's pocket reading, ""So die all who betray Guiliano"". Michael returned home to the Corleone compound in Long Beach. He met with his father in private, and the Don told him that they would not release Guiliano's testament for fear Guiliano's parents would be harmed in retaliation by the Italian government or its Mafia supporters. In this, Don Corleone teaches his son his first lesson: it is better to remain alive and live a fruitful life, than to be dead and a hero."
2811,So Yesterday,thriller," A young man named Hunter works as a cool hunter, finding and selling new trends to his corporate sponsors. His latest find is Jen, an honest-to-goodness 'Innovator' whom he spots based on her unique shoelaces. Together they are drawn into a mystery when one of Hunter's bosses disappears after she runs a 'cool tasting' for a new brand of shoe."
2812,The Crossroads,thriller," Zack Jennings, his dad, and his new stepmother have just moved back to his father’s hometown, at Connecticut, not knowing that their new house has a dark history. Fifty years ago, a crazed killer caused an accident at the nearby crossroads that took 40 innocent lives. He died when his car hit a tree, which is in Zack's backyard. Since then, his malevolent spirit has inhabited the tree. During a huge storm, a lightning hits the tree, releasing the spirit, and the spirit began looking for the descendants of those who cost him his life, starting with Zack, whose grandfather started it all."
2813,My Dead Body,thriller," My Dead Body brings the story arc of the preceding four books of the Joe Pitt series to a close, as the rival vampyre factions of Manhattan Island face off."
2814,Black Book,thriller," Apart from the prologue and epilogue, the story is a first-person narrative told by Rachel Stein, a young Jewish woman. The novel is set at the end of World War II in the Netherlands. In September 1944, Rachel is 26 years old, and the Stein family is in hiding from the Nazi authorities. Rachel is living with a Christian family in the Biesbosch, an area of rivers and creeks, separated from the rest of her family. Here she is not allowed outside, but one day she goes sunbathing near the water. Here she meets Rob, a man about her own age, who was on the water sailing. As they enjoy themselves on his boat, a crippled British bomber flies over while dropping its payload so it can climb to escape a pursuing fighter, and one of its bombs hits Rachel's hideout. While she is staying with Rob, they are approached by a Dutch policeman named Van Gein, who offers to help them flee to liberated Belgium. She needs money for her escape, so she visits a lawyer named Smaal in The Hague. During the escape, she is reunited with her parents and brother; but their escape boat—with Rachel, Rob, the rest of the Stein family, and other Jews on board—is ambushed. Rachel hides in the water and gets a good view of the SS officer who was responsible. Everyone except Rachel is killed. Rachel is smuggled into The Hague disguised as a corpse in a coffin. There, she joins a resistance group led by Gerben Kuipers. She dyes her hair blond and takes the alias Ellis de Vries. While she and the resistance group are trying to smuggle medicine and weapons, they are intercepted by German security forces. All the Germans are killed by resistance group member Hans Akkermanns. Rachel and Hans travel by train with the contraband. In the train Rachel meets a Sicherheitsdienst (SD) officer, Ludwig Müntze, who helps her with her suitcases. Tim, Kuipers' son, and several other members of the resistance group, are later captured by the Germans when their weapons supply truck covered with vegetables crashes. The weapons are exposed when the vegetables are scattered everywhere. The rest of the group plans to have Rachel make contact with Müntze and enlist him in helping them get the prisoners released. Rachel goes to the SD headquarters to meet Müntze, bringing him Netherlands East Indies stamps for his collection. (He has been collecting stamps for every country he's been stationed in, including Poland.) He invites her to a party. At the party she spots the officer responsible for killing her parents, Günther Franken. He is playing the piano. Rachel feels sick and runs out of the room to throw up in a bathroom. After the party, she sleeps with Müntze, and he tells her how he lost his wife and children in an air raid on Hamburg. Rachel and Müntze fall in love. Rachel is offered a job at the SD and bugs the office with a British device. Franken wants to execute the captured resistance group members, but Müntze refuses to sign the order. Using the hidden mike, Rachel and the other resistance group members learn that Van Gein has been collaborating with the Germans - trapping escaping Jews, murdering them and keeping their money. The resistance decides against saving the Jews from Van Gein, weighing the lives of Jews against imprisoned Dutchmen. Others in the group decide to kidnap the traitor, but their plan fails because the chloroform they use expired in 1941. Van Gein overpowers his kidnappers, who are forced to kill him. ""Ellis"" returns to Muntze, but finds the German convinced that she is Jewish and a mole for the resistance. Rachel tells Muntze that he is correct but also how she lost her family. He does not arrest her. With Rachel's information, Müntze accuses Franken of hoarding loot stolen from murdered Jews, inviting General Kauntner to open Franken's safe. While Nazi law allows for the killing Jews, failing to turn over their property is a capital offense. Nevertheless, Franken is cleared when a search of his office safe fails to turn up the stolen loot. Realizing the danger Muntze poses, Franken has him arrested, telling Kauntner of Muntze's negotiating with the resistance, a charge Muntze wearily concedes. Angrily, Kauntner orders Muntze's execution. Later, a party is held at the SD office to celebrate Hitler's birthday. Rachel persuades the resistance group to free Müntze during an operation to rescue Tim and the other imprisoned members. During the party, Rachel helps the rescue group get into the building, but the mission proves a trap, as heavily armed German soldiers overpower the would-be rescuers, and virtually annihilate them. Franken, apparently tipped off to the resistance operations, has Rachel brought to his office. Knowing of the hidden microphone, he ""congratulates"" Rachel for her efforts, knowing that the resistance will overhear the conversation and conclude that Rachel betrayed them to the Germans. During the early morning hours, Müntze's driver rescues Rachel and Müntze, and they flee to Rob's sailboat. Rachel and Müntze talk about the war, about who could have informed on them to Franken, and what they would do after the war. On May 5, 1945, they hear Dutch nationalist songs on the radio and learn that the Netherlands has been liberated. Franken escapes Holland by sea, taking his loot with him, but his boat is sabotaged and he is murdered by Hans Akkermans. During the chaos following liberation, suspected traitors and collaborators are arrested and publicly paraded in disgrace. Rachel and Müntze suspect Smaal as the informant and visit. While they are at his house, Smaal and his wife deny the charges but are murdered. Rachel snatches a little black book of his notes from Smaal's body. Müntze chases Smaal's murderer into the liberation parades but is recognized by the Resistance and captured. Seen by the Resistance in Smaal's house, Rachel is captured as well. Imprisoned, Rachel endures horrific abuse before being liberated by Hans and a Canadian officer. Muntze proves less lucky. Returned to his old office, now being used by Canadian troops, Muntze finds the Canadian officers working with Kauntner. Far from defeated, Kauntner appears to retain significant power through the Canadians. Producing Muntze's death warrant, Kauntner persuades the Canadian officers to allow him to have Muntze executed, citing British Military law requiring a defeated enemy be permitted to discipline its own troops. Muntze is almost immediately executed by firing squad. Lauding Hans as a resistance hero, and lured by chocolate he's received from allied officers, a crowd of jubilant Dutch follows his jeep as he takes Rachel to his home. There he shows her the recovered loot, a fortune in gold, jewels and cash. Learning of Muntze's death, Rachel collapses in grief. Hans gives her something to calm her down. Too late, Rachel realizes that Akkermans has injected her with insulin, leaving her to die as he greets a joyful crowd below. Slipping into unconsciousness, Rachel grabs some of Hans's chocolate bars to prevent insulin shock. While Hans is being cheered by a joyous crowd on his balcony, Rachel appears from behind him and jumps off the balcony into the crowd. Escaping, she reaches Canadian officers who bring her to Kuipers. Using the Black Book, Rachel and a Canadian officer successfully convince a grieving Kuipers of her innocence and Akkermans's guilt. The black book - with Smaal's notes - proves all too convincing, documenting wealthy Jews seeking to escape from the Germans. Hans himself had been arrested by the Gestapo, released officially due to lack of evidence, but in fact because he had made a deal with Franken. Kuipers and Rachel figure out that Hans is trying to get away in a coffin, taking with him the riches stolen from murdered Jews. They track him down and seal the coffin suffocating him. As they wait for Hans to die, Kuipers and Rachel calmly debate what to do with Hans's stolen treasure. In the epilogue Rachel is living on a kibbutz in Israel, which was funded with the money, jewels, and other articles stolen from the Jews, where she works as a school teacher. Suddenly, shooting and the sound of jet aircraft is heard in the background - the Suez Crisis has begun.Plot summary based on a book report by teacher Kees van der Pol."
2815,The Eagle Has Flown,thriller," Following the events in the previous novel, it is revealed that Kurt Steiner did not die after attempting to kill Churchill, but was only wounded. German intelligence learns that, after recovery in an RAF hospital, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Brigadier Dougal Munro and Captain Jack Carter (recurring characters in several novels by Higgins) of Special Operations Executive, arrange for Steiner to be relocated to a special prison in a priory in Wapping, and make sure, via double agents at the Spanish Embassies in London and Berlin, that German intelligence find out about it. They hope to catch German agents, including Liam Devlin, in their net. Learning of Steiner's survival, Heinrich Himmler summons SD General Walter Schellenberg and orders him to launch an operation to rescue Steiner. Himmler hopes to present him to Hitler as a propaganda coup and also to embarrass Wilhelm Canaris, who had originally opposed Steiner's operation. Schellenberg tracks down Liam Devlin, who is working in a bar in Lisbon and again bribes him to assist in the operation. Whilst Devlin parachutes into Ireland and enters England in the guise of an army chaplain, Schellenberg recruits Asa Vaughan, a pilot in the American Free Corps, to pilot Steiner's escape flight. This is planned to be from Shaw Place, a country house in Kent, owned by Sir Max Shaw and his sister Lavinia, long-standing Nazi sympathizers and 'sleeper agents'. In London, Devlin seeks sanctuary with two IRA sympathizers, living near the priory and also buys army radio communications equipment from the Carver brothers, vicious London gangsters and black marketeers. The rescue of Steiner from the priory, meticulously planned, is successful, although they are forced to take Munroe as a hostage. They drive to Shaw Place, but as Vaughan is making his landing in thick fog, a shootout ensues in which both Carvers and Shaws are killed. Leaving Munroe behind, Vaughan and Steiner fly to France and make a dangerous landing on the coast, also badly fog-bound. About to present Steiner to Himmler and Hitler at a chateau on the French coast, Schellenberg learns that Himmler is plotting to stage a coup and to assassinate Hitler, Erwin Rommel and Canaris. Deciding that the war will end quicker with Hitler in charge than a possible successor, he and Steiner commandeer a nearby force of paratroopers and foil the plot. Himmler makes it clear that the incident must not become public knowledge – in effect, it 'never happened'. Schellenberg opts to remain in Germany, and allows Vaughan and Devlin to 'escape'. They fly to Ireland, landing in County Mayo and sinking their airplane. Their subsequent fate is not revealed. As in several of the novels by Higgins, the plot is surrounded with a prologue and epilogue. In 1975, the author, Higgins, meets an American historian in London, who gives him a photocopy of an illegally obtained secret dossier, with a one hundred-year hold, from the Public Record Office. The document purports to tell the story of Steiner's rescue. Shortly afterwards, the historian is killed in a road accident, which is investigated by a senior police officer – possibly from Special Branch. Higgins contacts Devlin, still living in Belfast, and obtains some, but not all, of the story to corroborate the contents of the dossier."
2816,Dictator,thriller," Ten years prior to this story, Carver was supposed to have assassinated Henderson Gushungo, an African dictator. The novel follows Carver's subsequent attempts to oust the dictator, and force a regime change. Amongst the locations used as settings are Switzerland, Malemba, Suffolk, England and Hong Kong."
2817,CHERUB: Mad Dogs,thriller," The plot revolves around two major drug dealing gangs in the turf war surrounding the collapse of KMG (Keith Moore's Gang) (See CHERUB: Class A). Gabrielle O'Brien and Michael Hendry are sent to infiltrate the infamous 'Slasher Boys', led by a man who calls himself Major Dee. Later on Gabrielle is stabbed badly in the stomach and back and is sent back to campus. Michael Hendry still stays. In the first part of the book it describes how James Adams15 years old, and his new girlfriend Dana 16 years old, are helping on the last few days of Basic Training as instructors. While there Mr Kazkov is accidentally knocked out when a kid Kevin throws a smoke canister at him. The seven trainees, realising it will be ages before Mr Pike and Dana get to the tents, attack James, his arms and legs are tied together, and the Kids get food and drink. Dana finds James tied up and gagged with a rag crammed into his mouth much later. Although Mr Pike says he would get in trouble if all the trainees were failed, he agrees they should be punished. James says the two ringleaders were Kevin and Ronan, they are dragged out of their tents and forced to stand to attention holding rifles until dawn, which will be in hours. James feels upset about punishing them, but Kazkov says 'A soldier is only as tough as the person who trains them.' After Gabrielle O'Brien's serious injury the Ethics Committee was thinking of calling off the mission but they decided that they would wait and see. Norman Large tries to blackmail Lauren so he can be a teacher at CHERUB again. Kyle, James, Kerry, Lauren and Bruce play a trick on Mr Large's adopted daughter, Hayley Large-Brooks, by getting James to go on a date with her. During the date, Hayley and James play footsie and Hayley get up and signals James to go with her. They cut through a play area and go out the emergancy exit, where Hayley throws herself at him, and they start to kiss, with James' hand on her breasts and Hayley's hands down his trousers. They counter-blackmail Mr. Large with these but they get caught and punished, especially Lauren. Before James leaves for his next mission they have a leaving party for Kyle who is going on a gap year and later going to study Law at Cambridge. James Adams and his friend Bruce Norris are sent to infiltrate the group known as the Mad Dogs. James uses his past relationship with Junior Moore to make infiltrating the gang easier. He is soon accepted into the gang and given a major role. An older gang member, Wheels, takes him on a hotel robbery, where they bind and gag the two room occupants, take several grand out of their bank account, and steal their car. However, James being given a high role annoys Junior, who Sasha Thompson, the Mad Dogs leader, is trying to protect. Junior then gets busted for an armed robbery and is sentenced for 6 years. He contemplated suicide when he was caught, but a policeman calmed him. Meanwhile, Sasha plans a great drug robbery on Major Dee. They get into an apartment where some gangmembers are by pretending the people need to fill in a form. They then taser the Woman who opens the door, before capturing nearly all the people inside with the use of handcuffs and rubber gags. James decides to help a young boy found inside who is not treated well, and one of the cocaine dealers is freed so he can continue dealing and avoid suspicion. However the gang have to leave not long after. James, though reluctant, loses his virginity to Sasha's daughter Lois, who suddenly meets him when he is having a bath. James tells his girlfriend Dana and Dana, although hurt, forgives him. Afterwards, James, Bruce and Michael successfully complete their mission and Bruce earns a black shirt. Mid- way in the book all the fellow members of CHERUB visit a memorial place for all the cherubs that lost their lives, there were only 4 members so far."
2818,Dark Rivers of the Heart,thriller," Spencer Grant is a man with a tainted past and a lovable dog, Rocky, who together embark on a quest to find a life in a woman named Valerie Keene, whom he meets in a nightclub. Grant and his dog come back to the club later to find out that the woman is late for work. When Grant attempts to find her at her home, a SWAT-like team bombards the place, sending Grant into confusion. Grant is now determined to find Valerie. He searches for her in Las Vegas and is pursued by a secret government agency who are also looking for Valerie. He gets caught in a storm in the Nevada desert and is injured. He is rescued by Valerie and she helps Spencer's injuries. Meanwhile Roy Miro, a high ranking official in the agency, is the main antagonist who has been looking for Valerie for months. He and the agency use a satellite to find Spencer and Valerie's location in the desert. Roy and some agents get into a helicopter and corner them into a shopping center. Spencer and Valerie take hostage a helicopter and fly out of Nevada to Colorado to visit the house Spencer had his childhood in. When Spencer was 14 years old he heard a noise in the night and went out to the barn in the backyard to investigate. Inside the barn he found his father torturing a woman and Spencer found a gun and non-fatally shot his father. His father was later sent to a mental hospital. Roy takes Spencer's father out of the hospital and flies to the Colorado house to confront Spencer and Valerie. Spencer's father shoots Roy in the barn, which only paralyzes Roy. Spencer then fatally shoots his father while he and Valerie leave the barn. They use a satellite heat beam to disable the other agents while leaving the house and starting a new life together helping a resistance group against the government agency. it:Il fiume nero dell'anima"
2819,Critical,thriller," Angela Dawson, M.D., M.B.A. appears to have it all: at the age of thirty-seven, she owns a fabulous New York City apartment, a stunning seaside house on Nantucket, and enjoys the perks of her prosperous lifestyle. But her climb to the top was rough, marked by a troubled childhood, a failed marriage, and the devastating blow of bankruptcy as a primary-care internist. Painfully aware of the role of economics in modern life, particularly in the health-care field, Angela returned to school to earn an MBA. Armed with a shiny new degree and blessed with determination, intelligence, and impeccable timing, Angela founded a start-up company, Angels Healthcare, then took it public. With her controlling interest in three busy specialty hospitals in New York City and plans for others in Miami and Los Angeles, Angela's future looked very bright. Then a surge of drug-resistant staph infections in all three hospitals devastates Angela's carefully constructed world. Not only do the infections result in patient deaths, but the fatalities also cause stock prices to tumble, leaving market analysts wondering if Angela will be able to hold her empire together. New York City medical examiners Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton are naturally intrigued by the uptick in staph-related post-procedure deaths. Aside from their own professional curiosity, there's a personal stake as well: Laurie and Jack are newly married, and Jack is facing surgery to repair a torn ligament at Angels Orthopedic Hospital. Despite Jack's protests, Laurie can't help investigating-opening a Pandora's box of corporate intrigue that threatens not just her livelihood, but her life with Jack as well."
2820,The Sorceress: The Secrets Of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel,thriller," Flamel and Palamedes take the twins to Stonehenge, where they enlist the help of Gilgamesh. While the twins are adjusting to the powers Gilgamesh has taught them, Cernunnos returns with the Wild Hunt and attacks the twins and Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is wounded by the Archon, but the twins use their newly found powers to protect the King. But what Nicholas Flamel withholds from the twins is that Gilgamesh the King is insane. Though he has no aura - and hence cannot use his powers - he can still pass on his knowledge to the awakened human twins. If Gilgamesh refuses to teach the twins, they will be unable to escape back to San Francisco using the Ley Lines and will be trapped in Dr. John Dee's city, his hometown of London, where he is at his strongest. Flamel uses Francis to enlist Palamedes, the Saracen Knight, to help them. Palamedes takes them to his home, a junkyard in London, and they manage to work together to contact Perenelle. Perenelle is trapped on Alcatraz with the friendly but untrustworthy spider elder, Areop-Enap, after narrowly escaping the Sphinx and defeating the Morrigan. Morrigan had been suppressed sufficiently by the Words of Power that resided on the island that her body was retaken by her two sisters, Macha and Badb. Perenelle also makes fleeting contact with Scathach and Joan of Arc by scrying. Areop-Enap and its spider army are then attacked by an onslaught of poisoned flies, killing most of the spiders and wounding Areop-Enap. Billy the Kid has joined forces with Machiavelli in an attempt to kill the sorceress, but Perenelle, aided by Macha and Badb, tricks the pair and steals their boat, travelling back to the mainland with her new ally, the Crow Goddess. Unfortunately, the Dark Elders have awakened an ancient being even more powerful and mysterious than them: an Archon. The Archon, named Cernunnos, is known as the Horned God and is the leader of a pack of wolf people called the Wild Hunt. Cernunnos, the Wild Hunt, and Dr Dee engage Shakespeare,the Gabriel Hounds, Palamedes, the twins, and Flamel in a vicious battle. While making their escape, Josh loses Clarent, and Dee grabs the sword, reuniting it with its twin, Excalibur. The two swords fuse together to make a new sword. They activate the ley lines at Stonehenge and are greeted by Perenelle at the other end. Meanwhile, Scathach and Joan of Arc try to get to Alcatraz to help Perenelle but are trapped in a prehistoric era by Machiavelli, who had deliberately set the trap to snare them. They do not know how to return to their time and must try to survive while they wait for Flamel and the others to find and rescue them."
2821,Topaz,thriller," The Cold War-era story concerns an alleged plot between the Soviet Union and Cuba, and a spy ring with connections to both. It also speaks about the Russian infiltrations into the French intelligence. The main characters of the book are fast friends Michael Nordstorm and Andre Devereaux of the American and French intelligence. Devereaux goes out of way to get evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He has information of Soviet links in French intelligence but is himself targeted when he reveals this to the French president. But he continues with his fight and exposes the mole ultimately seeking asylum in America with Nordstorm's help."
2822,Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness,thriller," Grace Brookstein lived a luxurious lifestyle despite the economic free fall in the US. Then suddenly her billionaire husband Lenny mysteriously disappeares in a tragic sailing accident. Along with Lenny's disappearance, Lenny's hedge fund, the Quorum, that has a $75 billion investment is also missing and everyone believes that Grace stole the money. She was convicted and imprisoned. Grace believed that she is framed. Now alone and no one to turn to, she is determined to find out who is framing her and is desperate for revenge."
2823,The Book of the Dead,thriller," Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast is the focus of this novel as his evil brother Diogenes puts several plans into effect. One plan involves targeting Aloysius's dearests friends...and casual acquaintances. Concurrently, the New York Museum of Natural History has re-opened an old tomb, closed down decades ago. Rumours abound of the tomb being cursed, but most tombs do have a curse on them as a matter of course, as a protection against grave robbers. Not much is thought of the curse until a lighting technician is found disembowled. Later, a British Egyptologist goes mad and attacks a colleague; security is forced to shoot and kill him. When a replacement Egyptian specialist turns out to be the one woman Pendergast is in love with, his friends begin to suspect something even more horrible is going on than originally suspected."
2824,Worth Dying For,thriller," On his way to Virginia to meet Susan, the CO of the 110th MP from 61 Hours, Jack Reacher stops at the Apollo Inn, a fading motel in rural Nebraska. In the motel's bar he overhears a drunken doctor refuse to treat a woman's nosebleed which won't stop. The woman, Eleanor Duncan, is married to Seth Duncan, the scion of the Duncan clan, which holds that part of Nebraska in its iron grip, keeping the population in docile silence. Reacher suspects domestic abuse, and coerces the doctor into doing the right thing. Reacher's altruism sees him become embroiled in the Duncans' family business, and the unsolved disappearance of Margaret Coe, a child from twenty-five years earlier."
2825,The Winter of Frankie Machine,thriller," Frank Machianno, a retired San Diego mafia hitman, cut his ties with the mafia many years ago. However, one day, his past catches up with him as the boss of Los Angeles family calls in for a past favor. Frank must oversee a meeting between the Detroit Combination and the Los Angeles crime family. Unfortunately, the meeting is revealed to be a ""set-up"", a scheme to kill Frankie. Someone from Frank's past wants him dead, and Frank has to find out why, how, and when. The problem is that the list of candidates is about the size of a phone book, and Frankie is rapidly running out of time."
2826,Debt of Honor,thriller," In New York City, Japanese industrialist Raizo Yamata purchases a controlling interest in an American hedge fund. He flies to Saipan&nbsp;— the site of his parents' suicide during the American invasion of the island at the close of World War II&nbsp;— to buy a large tract of land. Meanwhile, in eastern Tennessee, a car accident involving two Japanese vehicles leads to the deaths of six people. Revelations about the vehicles' fatal design flaws stir long-standing resentment against Japan's protectionist trade policies. As trade negotiations between the United States and Japan grind to a halt, Congress passes a law enabling the U.S. to mirror the trade practices of the countries from which it imports goods. The bill is immediately used to replicate Japan's non-tariff barriers, cutting off the U.S. export markets upon which the Japanese economy depends. Facing an economic crisis, Japan's ruling corporate cabal decides to take military action against the U.S. Along with China and India, Japan plots to curtail the American presence in the Pacific and re-establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the wake of these developments, Jack Ryan is recruited as National Security Advisor by President Roger Durling. Meanwhile, CIA officers John Clark and Domingo Chavez are sent to Japan to reactivate a former KGB spy network in order to gain intelligence. Japan launches the first phase of its assault, sending Self-Defense Force units to occupy the Mariana Islands, specifically Saipan and Guam. The invasion, conducted with commercial airliners and car carriers, is virtually bloodless. Meanwhile, during a joint military exercise, Japanese ships ""accidentally"" launch torpedoes at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, destroying two submarines and crippling two aircraft carriers. This drastically reduces the U.S. capability to project power into the western Pacific. An immediate retaliation is forestalled by the second phase of the Japanese offensive: an economic attack. Even as the military offensive begins, Japan engineers the collapse of the U.S. stock market by hiring a programmer in an exchange firm to insert a logic bomb into the system, which ends up deleting all trade records. The Japanese also attempt to assassinate the chairman of the Federal Reserve, but their target survives the attempt with a broken back. With a massive economic crisis and subsequent mass panic, the Japanese hope that America will be too distracted to quickly respond to Japan's military actions. Japan immediately sues for peace, offering international talks and seemingly free elections in the Marianas to delay a U.S. response. Negotiators secretly reveal to the U.S. that Japan has obtained nuclear ballistic missile capability. The Japanese oligarchs, led by Yamata, believe that offers of negotiation and the nuclear deterrent, defended by a seemingly impregnable AWACS system, will cause the U.S. to concede Japan's advantage. With two of America's twelve carriers disabled, and the rest pinned down by international crises elsewhere, Ryan has few resources with which to defend American interests. Despite his typical focus on military issues, Ryan advises President Durling to deal with the economic crisis first. Ryan also realizes that Japan's deletion of trade records could be an advantage in responding to the economic threat. He engineers a ""do-over"", where all of the transactions on the day of the mass deletion are ignored and all assets are restored to their state at the start of business that day. Accompanied by a presidential address to the nation and behind-the-scenes bullying of investment banks, the plan is a success: America's economy is restored with only minor disruption. Ryan eliminates Japan's AWACS system through a series of ""accidents"" using widely dispersed U.S. assets, allowing B-2 bombers to destroy the silos. Clark and Chavez blind incoming Japanese pilots with a laser and cause them to crash on landing and rescue Japan's moderate former prime minister. An Army special operations team is airdropped into Japan to support Comanche helicopters in attacking the other AWACS planes and kill members of Yamata's cabal. Meanwhile, Admiral Robby Jackson liberates the Marianas with little bloodshed. Cornered, Japan's current prime minister resigns, ceding power to his predecessor. Yamata is arrested, and the new Japanese government accepts America's generous offer of status quo ante. Throughout the book, President Durling faces another, less important political crisis: Vice-President Ed Kealty is forced to resign after being accused of drugging and raping a former member of his staff. With the crisis over, President Durling nominates Ryan as vice-president during a joint session of Congress. However, an embittered Japan Air Lines pilot—driven mad by the deaths of his son and brother during the previous conflict—flies his Boeing 747 directly into the U.S. Capitol. Nearly the entire presidential line of succession is eliminated; Ryan, who had just been confirmed as vice-president moments before, narrowly escapes the attack and is immediately sworn in as president."
2827,Tyrannosaur Canyon,thriller," The novel opens with a lunar find by the Apollo 17 astronauts, which is suppressed. Tom Broadbent (who first appeared in Preston's novel The Codex) is riding in the New Mexico desert when he hears gunshots coming from Tyrannosaur Canyon (a fictional canyon east of the Rio Chama Gorge, on Mesa Viejo, and north of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert). Following the sound, he comes upon an old prospector who has been shot by a sniper. He gives Tom a notebook just before he dies, and Tom rides off on his horse to find help. The murderer, Jimson Maddox, is furious that the notebook is gone by the time he reaches the body; he has been hired to retrieve it at any cost. He does, however, find an interesting rock sample. When Tom returns to Tyrannosaur Canyon with the police, the prospector's body has disappeared without a trace. The notebook is filled with numbers, some kind of code Tom is unable to decipher. He brings the book to Wyman Ford, a monk in training at a nearby monastery. Ford is a retired CIA analyst and he takes the notebook to try to decipher it. Ford discovers that the numbers are not a code but a sequence of ground-penetrating radar readings. When processed, they form the image of a fully intact Tyrannosaurus. The rock sample Maddox found turns out to be a fragment of the Tyrannosaurus. Maddox's employer, Iain Corvus, is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and he convinces a lab assistant, Melodie Crookshank, to examine the sample in secret. Corvus intends to steal her research, acquire a permit to excavate the Tyrannosaur, and thus secure tenure at the museum, as well as wealth and fame. Melodie discovers tiny particles within the sample which she calls ""Venus particles"". Upon making this discovery, Melodie calls Corvus to describe it to him, and the NSA hears the call. They initiate a black op led by J.G. Masago to cover up evidence of the particles, kill any witnesses, and retrieve the specimen. Meanwhile, Ford goes into the desert to look for the dinosaur. At the same time, desperate to recover the notebook, Maddox kidnaps Tom Broadbent's wife. He takes her to an abandoned mine to use as a bargaining chip, forcing Tom to hand over the notebook. Now that Maddox has the notebook, however, he intends to kill Sally so he can not be identified. She manages to break free, Tom rescues her, and the two of them escape into the desert on foot, pursued by Maddox and his rifle. Masago infiltrates the museum and kills Corvus, stealing the samples and his research. But Melodie, realizing previously that Corvus would try to steal the credit from her, had made copies of everything and hid them, along with more samples of the dinosaur. When she sees that he has been murdered and that his work is missing, she realizes she is the next likely target. Her only chance is to complete the research and post it to the Internet, so killing her would no longer serve the purposes of a cover-up. During her final research, she discovers that the 65-million-year-old Venus particles are still alive. They are a type of virus that destroys the cell structure of reptiles, evidently introduced to the earth by the Chicxulub meteorite. She posts her findings to the web to show the world. Back in the desert, the black ops team has tracked Ford down, and Maddox is gaining on Tom and Sally. They manage to overpower Maddox and kill him, retrieving the notebook, and Ford leads them out of the canyon in an effort to evade the government assassins. Trapped in an old Anasazi cave, they discover the partially excavated Tyrannosaurus Rex. Ford convinces Masago's team to turn on him. Masago tells them about the Venus particles, which had also been found on the moon, thus establishing convincingly their extraterrestrial origin. All leave in a helicopter. Masago breaks free and causes the helicopter to crash, killing most on board. Tom, Sally, Ford, and Masago's former right-hand man escape alive. By the time they arrive with news about the dinosaur's location, Melodie's research has spread across the Internet. All those involved are made famous, including Robbie Weathers, the old prospector's daughter. The Smithsonian Institution funds a program to research the Venus particles and the dinosaur itself and the theory is raised that the particles may have been intentionally developed by an alien race to destroy the dinosaurs and allow humans to begin their evolution."
2828,Dead Calm,thriller," A honeymooning couple, John and Rae Ingram, rescue a young man, Hughie, from a sinking boat who claims to have lost his companions to food poisoning. When John goes to inspect the sinking boat, he discovers the captain, Russ, and another woman, Mrs. Warriner, alive and begging for help. Discovering that John has left, Hughie panics, takes Rae hostage, and begins driving her boat away from the sinking ship. On board the sinking ship, John learns that Hughie and Mrs. Warriner and Russ and his wife, Mrs. Bellows, were vacationing when Hughie suffered an agoraphobic reaction while diving with Mrs. Bellows and accidentally killed her trying to climb onto her shoulders. The realization of what he'd done resulted in Hughie suffering a psychotic break. Mrs. Warriner further tells John that Hughie, though a gifted artist, has the mind of a child, his emotional growth having been stunted by his overbearing father and a codependent relationship with an inappropriately affectionate mother. On board the Ingram's boat, Rae is able to surmise this herself from Hughie's behavior and assumes the role of a caring mother figure in order to lull him into a false sense of security, while preparing to kill him with a shotgun John has stashed in their room. Ultimately, John and Russ are able to sufficiently repair their boat and rendezvous with Hughie and Rae. When everyone is reunited, Hughie suffers a flashback and sees Russ as his father and knocks him overboard. Hughie suffers a panic attack in the water and seizes up, and drags Russ below water where they both drown. John gives a sympathetic psychological analysis of Hughie as he, Rae, and Mrs. Warriner see that a new wind has come in that will take them all home."
2829,Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,thriller," The story follows the plot of Pride and Prejudice, but places the novel in an alternative universe version of Regency-era England where zombies (and indeed skunks and chipmunks) roam the English countryside. Described as the ""stricken"", ""sorry stricken"", ""undead"", ""unmentionables"", or just ""zombies"", the deceased ancestors of England are generally viewed by the characters as a troublesome, albeit deadly, nuisance. Their presence alters the original plot of the story in both subtle and significant ways: Messages between houses are sometimes lost when the couriers are captured and eaten; characters openly discuss and judge the zombie-fighting abilities of others; women weigh the pros and cons of carrying a musket (it provides safety but is considered ""unladylike""). Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters live on a countryside estate with their parents. Mr. Bennet guides his daughters in martial arts and weapons training, molding them into a fearsome zombie-fighting army; meanwhile, Mrs. Bennet endeavours to marry the girls off to wealthy suitors. When the wealthy and single Mr. Bingley purchases a nearby house, Mrs. Bennet spies an opportunity and sends the girls to the first ball where Bingley is expected to appear. The girls defend the party from a zombie attack, and attraction sparks between Mr. Bingley and the eldest daughter Jane Bennet. Elizabeth, however, clashes with Bingley's friend, the haughty monster-hunter Fitzwilliam Darcy. The Bennets are shaken when Bingley and his companions suddenly abandon his country home and return to the walled fortress city of London with little explanation. When the local militia arrives in town to exhume and destroy dead bodies, Elizabeth becomes friendly with one of the soldiers, George Wickham, who tells Elizabeth that Darcy cheated Wickham out of an inheritance. Elizabeth's dislike of Darcy turns into full-blown hatred when she learns that Darcy plotted to separate Bingley from her sister Jane. Elizabeth vows to avenge the slight to her family by killing Darcy. Later that evening, she is afforded that opportunity when he appears unannounced at the cottage where she is visiting her newlywed friend Charlotte (who has been secretly bitten by a zombie and is slowly turning into one herself). Before Elizabeth can fetch her katana and behead him, Darcy surprises her again by proposing marriage. The scene culminates in a vicious verbal and physical fight, in which Darcy is wounded. He eventually escapes with his life and writes a long letter to Elizabeth in which he explains his actions. He broke up Jane and Bingley out of fear that Jane had contracted the ""mysterious plague"" and was about to turn into a zombie. With regard to the allegedly wronged soldier Wickham, Darcy explains that Wickham had attempted to elope with Darcy's younger sister in an attempt to get his hands on her considerable fortune – this was the ""inheritance"" that Darcy had cheated the man out of. Elizabeth realizes that she has judged Darcy too harshly, and is humbled. Darcy, meanwhile, realizes that his arrogant nature encourages people to believe the rumors about him, and resolves to act more appropriately. Elizabeth embarks on a trip around the country with her aunt and uncle, fighting zombies along the way. At Pemberley she runs into Darcy, who helps her to defeat a rampaging horde of zombies. Darcy's new attitude and mannerisms impress Elizabeth and lead her to consider reconciling their relationship; unfortunately, all hopes are dashed when it is discovered that her younger sister Lydia has eloped to London with Wickham. The Bennet family fears the worst, but eventually receive word that Wickham and Lydia have married, following an ""accident"" that has rendered Wickham an incontinent quadriplegic. After visiting the Bennets, the couple adjourns to Ireland. Elizabeth discovers that it was Darcy who engineered the union, thus saving the Bennet family from ruin. Meanwhile, Mr. Collins has married the secretly-stricken Charlotte Lucas. When he finds out that she has been turned into a zombie, he kills himself, but not before allowing Lady Catherine to behead Charlotte. Darcy and Bingley return to the countryside, and Bingley resumes courting Jane. Elizabeth hopes to renew her relationship with Darcy, but his aunt, the Lady Catherine, interferes, insisting that her daughter Anne is a better match for her nephew. Lady Catherine challenges Elizabeth to a fight to the death, intent on eliminating the competition, but Elizabeth defeats Catherine and her cadre of ninjas. She spares Catherine's life. Darcy is touched by this gesture, and he returns to Elizabeth. The two cheerfully wipe out a field of zombies (their first battle as a couple) and begin a long and happy future together, insofar as the ever-present threat of zombie apocalypse permits it."
2830,Invasion,thriller," Robin Cook envisions in this book a strange contact with extraterrestrial aliens.(A deadly threat to life on earth -from the icy vastness of outer space). An alien virus arrives on earth contained in a tiny black disk. Those who pick up the disk are infected by the virus which spreads rapidly with flu like symptoms. The first human to pick up the disk and be infected is Beau Stark, an ambitious 21-year-old young man. The virus starts by giving him flu like symptoms but within a few hours he is not only free of the symptoms but also infused with new energy and power. His girlfriend Cassy notices major personality changes and an obsession with environment. The man who was all for banning big dogs in the city suddenly acquires one and proceeds to infest it. The virus apparently infects all life forms on earth. Meanwhile the first invasion & infestation having succeeded the disk sends a signal, inviting millions more disks to come. Those who handle the disks receive a sting, soon followed by flu-like symptoms and ending in what could be called ""zombie assimilation"" into an alien collective consciousness with Beau being the leader. Cassy however shares her fears of Beau’s changing personality with their mutual friend and her ex-boyfriend Pitt, who is a medical student and concerned after witnessing a sudden upsurge in deaths of people suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes. He takes Cassy to meet his senior Dr. Shiela who is also concerned about the preventable and unexplained deaths and surging number of flu cases. Cassy also tells them about personality changes reported in some people by one of her students, Jonathan. Jonathan introduces the group to his parents Nancy & Eugene, a virologist and a physicist. Jesse, a cop, also comes in contact with the group when he accompanies a colleague suffering sudden seizures to the hospital. The group finally zeros on the disks as being the carriers of the infection and deduces that this may be alien virus and decides to take the matter to CDC. Nancy, Eugene & Shiela travel to CDC HQ, but discover to their horror that the entire board is already infected. While attempting to escape, Eugene is engulfed by one of the disks that is also a powerful weapon which emits radiation and can create a black-hole. The two women make it back to the others and the group flees to a remote cabin owned by Jesse. Meanwhile, The final wave of disks infest the entire earth slowly infecting people all over the world and killing those with any genetic disease. The group contacts other hidden groups who are working on means to combat the virus. However, they soon have to make forays to the town for research supplies and food. On one such foray, Jesse is consumed by the disk just like Eugene, Nancy is infected and Cassy is carried off by the infected to Beau, who is unable to cope with the human emotions and is pining for her. Jonathan, Pitt, and Shiela abandon their hideout and go looking for a Dr. M who has made advances in isolating the virus. Cassy is taken to Beau who informs her that this invasion had been planned for a very long time as the disks only activate the virus which was planned in human DNA 3 billion years ago when life was just evolving on earth. Every million years, the virus activator protein is sent to earth to judge the suitability of its inhabitants as hosts to the virus. This time the hosts have been most suitable and are in the process of building a transporter, which would link Earth to the other planets infested by the virus and allow travel between all those planets. He shows Cassy the transporter under construction and then proceeds to infect her, telling her that he loves her and wants her to be a part of the alien consciousness. The strain makes Cassy faint and when she wakes up, she is horrified by what she would become once the virus takes control. She flees from the place with hopes of contacting her friends and informing them what they are up against. Cassy contacts the group, who has hooked up with Doctor Harlan McCay, who has a Biological Warfare Research Lab at his disposal. When the invasion started, Dr. McCay headed to the lab, which was left over from the Cold War. The lab is stocked and was at least somewhat staffed (the staff apparently left when they got infected) and although it was a secret, the local Native Americans knew about it and had at some point in time informed him of it. The lab had everything they needed to work on a cure for the virus. Dr. McCay discloses that he also was stung by the disk, but has prevented an infection by injecting himself with a monoclonal antibody that at least temporarily prevents the virus from taking hold of the host. Cassy is brought to the facility and given an infusion of the monoclonal antibody. While experimenting they discover that infecting themselves with another virus will cause the virus to expose itself and oxygen will destroy it, since it came to Earth 3 billion years ago when there was little to no oxygen so its vulnerable to it in a virile state. After testing this with infected mice (it cures all except the one infected the longest, who dies; apparently if it's in the system too long, the cure kills), they take a cold virus that has never been encountered before (it was artificially engineered, and thus will no one will have immunity) as it is mild enough to not kill the person infected but will do the job. Dr. McCay acts as the guinea pig and exposes himself to the virus in a containment unit. Beau, in the meanwhile, has discovered that Cassy has escaped and unable to overcome his human emotions, follows and discovers the facility but has to leave before he can find Cassy as the gateway is encountering problems. He leaves a few of his associates behind to deal with the humans. The group escapes the facility and storms the mansion, smashing the gateway with a car. Beau is too far gone to be cured and tells them to run as the destruction of the gateway would cause dispersion. He dies and the mansion is destroyed but they are able to spread the cure and the invasion is halted."
2831,Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls,thriller," Set five years before the events described in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the novel takes place in an alternative universe version of Regency-era England where zombies are a well-known menace spawned by an event known as The Troubles. After attending a funeral in which a zombie rises from his coffin, Mr. Bennet decides that he must finally keep an old promise to train his five daughters in the art of zombie-killing. To this end, he turns the family's greenhouse into a dojo and hires young martial-arts expert Master Hawksworth to teach the girls. Meanwhile, a scientist named Dr. Keckilpenny arrives in the area with the dream of domesticating the zombies. As the zombie plague continues to spread across England, Hawksworth and Keckilpenny vie for Elizabeth's affections while Mrs. Bennet plots to find suitably wealthy suitors for both Elizabeth and her older sister Jane. In a bid to get reinforcements against the plague, Jane becomes the bodyguard of Lord Lumpley, a fat nobleman with low moral standards. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Keckilpenny capture a zombie for further research. Eventually, Hawksworth's incompetence as a warrior becomes obvious, as he never fights any zombies. When the zombies besiege Lord Lumpley's estate, Hawksworth feigns an injured knee, leaving the fighting to everyone else present. Soon, Master Hawksworth escapes the zombies by himself (with his usual grace, and without even drawing his katana), even leaving a young officer to be ripped to shreds. Keckilpenny gets bitten by his research subject, ""Mr. Smith"", and Elizabeth is forced to behead him. In the end, Captain Cannon, Lieutenant Tindall, Dr. Keckilpenny, and Ensign Pratt are all dead, but the others are saved by the reinforcements that Hawksworth managed to summon, despite his cowardice."
2832,The Vanished Man,thriller," The story centers around a serial killer loose in New York City whose slayings are patterned after illusionist tricks. When the killer illusionist uses his tricks to baffle and evade police, forensic expert Lincoln Rhyme and his longtime partner Amelia Sachs are brought in to investigate, setting off a tense cat-and-mouse chase where nothing is as it seems. The novel's title is a specific reference to an illusionist trick where a person is made to disappear and then reappear. It also alludes to the killer in the novel, who is quite talented at disappearing soon after his crimes are committed."
2833,The Berkut,thriller," The novel begins in the final days of Nazi Germany with Hitler sheltering in his bunker. Hitler officially commits suicide along with Eva Braun. However, after Eva kills herself, a preselected double takes Hitler's place and is disposed of along with Braun in the Chancellery yard for the Russians to find. The real Hitler escapes the bunker along with Colonel Günther Brumm, a German commando officer and together with a rag tag team, escape Berlin. Stalin meanwhile has intuitively deduced that the psychological make-up of Hitler is not that of a man who would commit suicide. Hence he sets up a special team of five operatives with wide ranging powers to round up Hitler and bring him back for Stalin's personal revenge. The novel soon becomes both a thrilling chase and a ruthless game of cat and mouse. Hitler and his protectors make their way across Germany, a charred wasteland where Hitler's dreams of glory lie in ruins and ashes. Their ultimate goal is Italy (where they have been promised sanctuary) but the Russian team is in hot pursuit. Along the way, Heywood provides an unforgettable historical snapshot of the aftermath of World War II. It is worth noting that many of the German survivors are depicted as admirable, while Red Army and even United States Army personnel are shown to be either timid, short-sighted, or corrupt. In one particularly chilling sequence, US Army Major Rosemary Wilson, a rich older woman, stumbles upon Waller, the beautiful German girl who is carrying the plans for Hitler's escape. Instead of interrogating the girl or turning her over to the American MP's, Major Wilson insists on renting a room for Waller and taking her to dinner at a small, dimly lit restaurant nearby. Wholly intent upon a classic lesbian seduction, Rosemary Wilson proves no match for the highly-disciplined German girl. She drinks far too much at dinner and falls into bed in a state of blissful anticipation, only to be found dead the next morning with an SS dagger buried in her breast. The Russians ultimately catch Hitler and bring him back to Stalin. Hitler is secretly imprisoned in a hanging cage in a sub-basement of the Kremlin which is too small for Hitler to either stand or lie fully. He is fed scraps through the bars of the cage and allowed no toilet facilities. Over the years, Hitler changes to a filthy, senile beast who has his right leg amputated above the knee and his left leg amputated above the ankle as gangrene sets in. He is finally executed by Petrov when Stalin is on his death bed and the sub-basement in which Hitler was kept is walled off forever."
2834,Quiet as a Nun,thriller," The novel begins with the death of a nun, Sister Miriam, who apparently starved herself to death in a ruined tower, known as the 'Tower of Ivory', which adjoins the grounds of the Convent of the Blessed Eleanor, a nunnery and an all-girls school. The tower has specific significance to the order, as it was the original convent building. The tower and the ancient history of the order are recorded in the Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor, a manuscript which is referenced throughout the story. Though it is never stated explicitly, Blessed Eleanor is presumed to be Eleanor of Aquitaine, the once Queen of England. Television reporter Jemima Shore is an old school friend of Sister Miriam, who was also known as Rosabelle Powerstock and was heiress to ""the Powers fortune"", one of the largest fortunes in Britain. Jemima is invited back to the convent by Reverend Mother Ancilla, where she uncovers a number of mysteries, including the suggestion that Miriam, whose family owned the convent lands, may have written a second will bequeathing them away from the Order, and into the hands of another charity. The tension builds when the girls at the convent school tell Jemima that the Black Nun - a malevolent faceless spectre reputed to appear whenever a death is about to take place within the grounds - was seen just prior to Sister Miriam's death, and has been sighted again."
2835,The Poet,thriller," The book starts with Jack McEvoy, a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News (""Death is my beat""), relating how the news of his brother Sean's suicide was broken to him. Sean was a homicide detective with the Denver Police, who was found dead in his car in a remote parking lot. A one-sentence suicide note was found in the car with him, and it seemed impossible that someone else could have killed him. McEvoy, though, is reluctant to accept that his brother had succumbed to depression resulting from his investigations, even though the last one was particularly brutal: Theresa Lofton, a young college student, who was found in a park in two pieces. After much investigation on his own, including retracing his brother's investigation into the Lofton case, Jack concludes that his brother's death was simply made to look like a suicide by a serial killer. By focusing on homicide detectives who committed suicide in a similar fashion and left a one-sentence note quoting the works of Edgar Allan Poe (as Sean's did), Jack finds three clear matches to his brother's death. When the FBI finally realizes that he is on to something and attempts to block him from further access, he is able to trade his knowledge of the other deaths (one of which the FBI had not uncovered) for a role with the FBI investigative team headed by Robert Backus, the son of a famous agent within the bureau who has been overshadowed by his father's legend. Assigned the duty of handling him is agent Rachel Walling, one of Backus' main proteges, and the two of them become personally involved. The FBI nicknames the serial killer ""The Poet"" due to his use of Poe's lines with the victims. As the case focuses on an Internet network of pedophiles and one in particular (William Gladden), McEvoy is taken along on the operation to arrest Gladden, who is suspicious of the set-up and kills the FBI agent trying to arrest him, Gordon Thorson (Walling's ex-husband). McEvoy ends up killing Gladden himself while being held hostage. However, Gladden's comments about his brother's death lead McEvoy to believe that Gladden was not the killer, even though the case has been officially closed. He then finds evidence that the killings had a connection to the FBI and identifies a phone call to the FBI from Thorson's room that he links to a ""boasting"" fax sent to the bureau by The Poet. Since McEvoy knew that Walling had sent Thorson on a fake errand to buy condoms during the time the fax was sent, he suspects Walling of being The Poet and of posting to the pedophile network under the name ""Eidolon"", another Poe reference. He then learns that Walling's father, a cop, had committed suicide when she was a teenager ... and had been suspected by the investigating officers of molesting Rachel over a period of time. Since pedophiles tend to have been abused as children, McEvoy becomes worried enough to tell Backus of his suspicions. Backus tells McEvoy that they'll set a trap for Walling and then takes him to a remote location—where Backus drugs McEvoy into nonresistance. He admits that he himself is both Eidolon and The Poet, because the room mistakenly billed to Thorson was actually the one in which he stayed. He admits to all of the deaths and to his setup of Gladden as the ""fall guy"" for the murders. As Backus prepares to sodomize and then kill McEvoy, Walling (who was suspicious because of messages that she had received from both men) shows up and eventually saves McEvoy's life by knocking Backus out the window and down a long hill. Later the police find a body, however it is left open if this is Backus. Meanwhile, as the facts of the case become known, Walling's judgment is called into question due to her personal relationship with McEvoy and her professional relationship with Backus. A tabloid publishes a photo of McEvoy and Walling together. However, because McEvoy suspected her, Walling ends their relationship and takes a leave to Italy. McEvoy then takes a leave from his paper to write a book about the events, although Walling explains to him that the book will forever taint the FBI because of Backus."
2836,The Girl in a Swing,thriller," Alan Desland is a socially awkward Englishman who makes a living as a collector and dealer of fine pottery. On a business trip to Copenhagen, he falls headlong in love with a mysterious and beautiful young woman named Käthe (or in some editions, Karin), who does clerical work for him and one of his colleagues. After ten days of mutually infatuated courtship, he proposes marriage to her despite knowing nothing about her family or background. She accepts on the condition that their wedding should take place as a civil ceremony in England, and appears to have no interest in inviting any relatives or friends of her own from Europe. In the event, their marriage and honeymoon end up taking place near Gainesville, Florida in the United States, thanks to the intervention of an American acquaintance. Her playful sensuality overwhelms Alan, continuing to captivate him and their entire social circle after their return home to run his family's ceramics shop. However, Alan's psychic senses (mostly latent since adolescence) begin to warn him that something has gone wrong, building up to a catastrophic revelation of tragedy."
2837,The Island of Sheep,thriller," The action occurs some twelve years later on from the last novel, when Hannay, now in his fifties, is called by an old oath to protect the son of a man he once knew, who is also heir to the secret of a great treasure. He obtains help from Sandy Arbuthnot, now Lord Clanroyden, and Lombard. The action takes place in England, Scotland and on the Island of Sheep. This is located in what Buchan describes as 'the Norlands': clearly the Faroe Islands. There are several stereotypical villains, in particular D'Ingraville from The Courts of the Morning, and the book also focuses on Hannay's son, Peter John, now a bright but solemn teenager."
2838,The Ghost,thriller," The greater part of the action is on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, where Lang has been holed up in the holiday home of his billionaire American publisher in order to turn out his memoirs on a deadline. Other scenes are set in Notting Hill, New York and Whitehall. Lang's former press aide Mike McAra has been struggling to ghost his master's memoirs but, as the novel opens, McAra drowns when he apparently falls off the Woods Hole ferry. The fictional narrator of The Ghost, whose name is never revealed, is hired to replace him (his girlfriend walks out on him over his willingness to take the job: ""She felt personally betrayed by him; she used to be a party member.""). He soon suspects foul play and stumbles across evidence of possible motive, buried in Lang's Cambridge past. Having located what may be the lethal secret, the replacement ghostwriter begins to fear for his own safety. Meanwhile Lang, like his real-life counterpart, has been accused by his enemies of war crimes. A leaked memorandum has revealed that he secretly approved the transfer of UK citizens to Guantanamo Bay to face interrogation and possible torture. One Richard Rycart, Lang's disillusioned and renegade former foreign secretary (loosely based on Robin Cook), who before and during his early days in office made much of his wish to adopt an ""ethical"" foreign policy, is now at the UN, in a position to do his former boss serious damage. Unlike Blair, Lang thus appears in imminent threat of indictment at the International Criminal Court. The narrator tussles to reconcile his obligation to complete the ghosting job with its attendant abundant payment on the one hand and, on the other, the pressing need, as he sees it, to reveal Lang's true allegiances. The action really heats up when he contacts Rycart. The narrator comes under increasing jeopardy: romantically and politically, as well as physically."
2839,Blood Hunt,thriller," Gordon Reeve, a former SAS soldier, receives a phone call in his home in Scotland, informing him that his brother Jim has been found dead in a car in San Diego - the car being locked from the inside, and the gun still in Jim's hand. While in the USA to identify the body, Gordon realises that his brother was murdered, and that the police is more than reluctant to follow any lead. Retracing Jim's final hours, he connects Jim's death with his work as a journalist, investigating a multinational chemical corporation. Soon, Gordon finds himself under surveillance, and decides to find out more among Jim's acquaintances back in Europe. In London, he finds more hints, but no evidence for his brother's sources. After returning to his wife and son, he finds that his home has been bugged by professionals. Sending his wife and son to a relative, he determines to take on his enemy on his own. Interestingly, there are two parties after him: The multinational corporation, represented by ""Jay"", a renegade SAS member, and an international investigation corporation, somehow connected with the case. Traveling to France, in order to find out more from a journalist colleague of Jim's, they are attacked by a group of professional killers under orders from Jay, resulting in multiple deaths, and leading to Gordon becoming a police target. Gordon decides to return to the USA, where he infiltrates the investigation corporation, and learns more about the history of the case. Then he travels to San Diego, to collect more evidence, and eventually returns to England, deliberately leaving a trail for Jay. Their long enmity leads Jay to follow Gordon to Scotland, where Gordon kills him and his team in a final showdown. Gordon manages to locate Jim's hidden journalistic material, hopefully clearing Jim's and his own name."
2840,Sole Survivor,thriller," The novel centers around Joe Carpenter, a man who lost his wife and two daughters in a plane crash the year prior. Joe has never been able to fully cope with their deaths, and on the one year anniversary, meets a strange woman named Rose, claiming to be a survivor of the crash even when none were reported. Rose promises to tell Joe the truth, but just not yet. Finally acknowledging that the story of the crash never fully made sense to him, Joe begins seeking answers as to what really happened on that night, discovering that some may be interested in stopping him even if it means taking his life. There is a large number of suicides of family of the crash victims, which for a while convinces Joe that Rose is somehow getting them to kill themselves with a picture of a gravestone. This leads him to a development involving his dead daughter and a laboratory developed girl, CCY 21-21, with healing powers who looks like his daughter and who wants to live the life she was never able to. This girl can heal, and give hope to anyone she touches. The only weakness is that she cannot heal herself if she is hurt. Rose had been keeping this girl safe until her healing powers and full potential have matured, until Rose gets shot by agents who are attempting to kill her, and the girl. Another experiment, SSW-89-58, has the power to telepathically see, and know things through looking at pictures of places, also being able to control the minds of living beings in that area. The plane crash, as it turns out, was a plan to kill Rose because she had smuggled 21-21 out of the compound. 89-58 was forced to take over control of the pilot, in an attempt to kill everyone on the plane. The plane crashed but the girl and Rose escaped, and were on the run."
2841,The Twelfth Card,thriller," The story starts out in a museum where Geneva Settle, a high-school student in Harlem, is researching information for a paper about her ancestor, Charles Singleton. While she is looking at an old newspaper, Thompson Boyd, an unfeeling, professional killer, attempts to murder her. As his attempts continue, each time he leaves behind a clue which either helps or misleads Lincoln Rhyme. Amelia Sachs, Fred Dellray, Mel Cooper, and Lon Sellitto help Lincoln to solve why Boyd is after Settle. Rhyme believes initially that Geneva was the witness to a planned terrorist attack. It is eventually revealed that Boyd was hired to kill her because of her ancestor's secret. Singleton’s secret was that he owned fifteen acres of prime land in Manhattan in the 1800s. Rhyme had discovered through the investigation of the crime that Geneva's ancestor was falsely accused of murder and had his land stolen. The person who bought the land ended up creating a huge company in the modern time. As the land was not legally sold, all of Singleton's relatives were legally entitled to compensation over the course of 200 years. The chase to catch Boyd and all of his accomplices continue throughout a two day period. Throughout the story, there are also some other smaller story lines and this crime eventually leads to the solutions of other crimes. Some of the people in the novel are not who they appear to be. One of Boyd's accomplices pretends to be the guidance counselor at Settle’s high school. Also, a common vandal and criminal turns out to be Settle’s dad."
2842,Vortex,thriller," In a tense, hypothetical 1990s apartheid South Africa, the ruling National Party and its new state president prepare to end decades of racial injustice and conflict by entering into negotiations with African National Congress officials for sweeping democratic reforms. However, beneath the surface progress has been slow, with the Soviet Union and its rivals in the West attempting to play both sides and internal pressure mounting. The ANC refuses to properly disarm and cease planning terrorist operations, while for their part even white moderates refuse to permit a total system of ""one man, one vote"". To complicate matters, South African commandos conducting a clandestine raid into Zimbabwe uncover a conspiracy by ANC guerrilla fighters to assassinate the reformist government. After learning of the plot, Afrikaner Resistance Movement fanatic and Minister for Internal Security Karl Vorster seeks to manipulate the situation for his personal gain, allowing the plan to proceed despite advance knowledge of its details. Hardline elements of the regime, led by its staunchest supporters of apartheid, intend to let the ANC terrorists murder their political opponents, leaving the field clear for them to seize power. With most of South Africa's moderate cabinet dead, Vorster becomes president and declares martial law. The security forces begin brutal crackdowns on anti-apartheid organizations, and those suspected of having ties to ANC affiliates are executed or moved to isolated internment camps. Suppression, torture, and state-sponsored killings became commonplace, while the South African Defence Force is ordered to invade newly independent South West Africa (Namibia) to re-establish apartheid in that territory. Cuban military personnel, however, push south from neighbouring Angola in support of their Namibian allies, halting Vorster’s invasion short of Windhoek. As the South African blitz stalls, conditions at home begin to worsen. Armed police indiscriminately massacre hundreds of white students protesting conscription at the University of the Witwatersrand, while a minority of Afrikaners, disgusted at Vorster’s abuses in power, launch secessionist movements in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The regime is also confronted with full-fledged tribal revolts after a Zulu chieftain is denaturalised for condemning apartheid. Attempts to suppress dissension with brute force only leads to greater unrest, such as a violent uprising by Durban’s Indian population. Hoping to take direct advantage of South Africa’s internal chaos, the Cuban leadership, aided by direct military assistance from friendly African states such as Libya and Mozambique, launches an invasion of the country with logistical backing from Moscow. While Cuban tank divisions rapidly close on Pretoria, brushing aside the feeble resistance offered by reservists and local Afrikaner militias, Karl Vorster orders the deployment of nuclear weapons in a desperate attempt to save the city. His air force subsequently uses one such projectile to strafe an armoured column, eliminating three thousand Cuban and Libyan soldiers. The ensuing radiation storm goes on to contaminate much of the Transvaal, affecting combatant and civilian alike. Cuba retaliates by using chemical weapons against SADF positions, although the hundreds of innocents also killed in these indiscriminate barrages prompts the ANC to desert their communist allies. Havana goes on to authorize the use of live civilians as human shields, intending to reduce the threat posed by South Africa’s nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, anti-Vorster factions seize Cape Town, dealing a mortal blow to their nation’s economic structure. When the skyrocketing price of precious metals begins to dampen the world economy, the U.S. and Great Britain authorize direct military intervention in South Africa. Despite suffering heavy casualties, a joint American and British task force, backed by both overwhelming air and naval support, make headway and overrun the apartheid government's stockpile of nuclear weapons. With this threat removed, the race for Pretoria is narrowly concluded after rebel-backed Rangers capture the unhinged strongman and his supporters. American air strikes demoralize the battered Cuban Army and force their withdrawal; in exasperation a humiliated Soviet leadership vows never to waste another ruble on the continent. During the following months the fall of Vorster’s illegal government is completed, although ANC units and Afrikaner secessionists remain at large, hostile towards their homeland's new masters. Apartheid is formally abolished and a conglomerate of various political parties brought to the table for establishing a new, multiracial, South Africa."
2843,The Burning Wire,thriller," The sabotage of a substation of the prominent electrical energy distributor Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light Company in Queens, New York, causing a deadly arc flash leads to an investigation managed by esteemed criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and his team of investigators. The initial primary suspect, Ray Galt, a disillusioned troubleman who is an employee of Algonquin Consolidated, is believed to blame Algonquin and society's reliance on electricity as the reason he developed leukemia due to radiation from working close to power lines. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) suggests that Galt is backed by a previously unknown eco-terror group named 'Justice For'. The collected intelligence fails to specify further details of the terrorist cell, other than the name 'Rahman'. A series of demand letters are sent after the first attack, ordering Algonquin to reduce its electrical distribution, or further acts of violence involving electricity would be executed. Rhyme must also deal with a parallel investigation into a recurring antagonist in the series: the criminal known as Richard Logan, who is nicknamed 'The Watchmaker'. A joint operation is conducted between Rhyme's office and the Mexican Federal Police after Logan is located in Mexico."
2844,The Accident Man,thriller," The novel proposes a fictional account for the events surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, based on some of the conspiracy theories in subsequent circulation. The central character, Samuel Carver, is an ex-marine, now assassin, who is tricked into committing the act. The story focuses on Carver's efforts to avoid his ex-employers' attempts on his life, whilst he tries to discover the origins of the ""kill order"", and bring those involved to justice."
2845,The Three Evangelists,thriller," The ""three evangelists"": Marc Vanderloos, Matthias Dellamarre and Lucien Devernois, and Marc's uncle, the cashiered police commissioner Armand Vanderloos, make their first appearance in this book. One morning, the retired operatic soprano Sophia Siméonidis discovers, in her garden in the quiet Paris street rue Chastle, a beech tree that she has never seen before. There is nothing to indicate where it came from. Sophia is alarmed, but her husband Pierre is indifferent. Eventually she calls on her neighbours, the odd household of Marc, Matthias, Lucien, and the elder Vanderloos, and asks their help. They dig out the tree, but find nothing underneath it. Sophia disappears. Pierre remains unconcerned; he believes she has gone to visit an old lover, Stelyos. But Juliette, the evangelists' other next door neighbour, expresses concern; she is sure that Sophia, her best friend, would never have gone off without telling her, and especially not on a Thursday evening, when all the neighbours regularly meet for a convivial meal at Juliette's restaurant, Le Tonneau (The Barrel). One night Alexandra, Sophia's niece, arrives with her little boy Cyrille, running away from a failed relationship and expecting to stay with Sophia. Shortly afterward, a burned corpse is discovered in an abandoned factory, unrecognisable but with it is a small piece of basalt, which was Sophia's lucky charm. Alexandra has no alibi, she stands to inherit a third of Sophia's substantial fortune, and her habit of driving aimlessly around at night makes her a principal suspect. Already troubled by the enigma of the tree, and increasingly desperate to divert the attention of the police from Alexandra, the three evangelists and Armand Vanderloos start to investigate, exploiting Armand's continuing contacts with his former colleagues."
2846,The Secret Servant,thriller," Former SAS Major Harry Maxim is assigned to Number 10 Downing Street as a special assistant to George Harbinger, private secretary to the Prime Minister, following the suicide of his predecessor with the British Secret Service. Maxim is assigned to protect Professor John White Tyler, Britain's premier military strategist on nuclear weapons policy and famed war hero (as well as an insatiable lecher). Tyler’s many enemies, including local pacifists, leftists, and radical students, as well as the KGB will do anything, perhaps even murder, to keep Tyler from addressing a NATO summit in Luxembourg. However, are various events surrounding Tyler related? Such as a hand grenade thrown through the door to the Prime Minister's residence, or the death of a Czech defector? Assisted by MI-5 liaison officer Agnes Algar, Maxim must uncover a horrific secret from Tyler's wartime past in order to prevent a massive foreign relations disaster, as well as keeping Tyler alive."
2847,Chat Room,thriller," A young girl aged 13, Samantha, is extremely lonely after moving from Sydney to Melbourne. Both of her parents work long hours and she starts getting interested in chat rooms, where she meets new friends. While in the chat rooms she stumbles across a guy named Robin. He fakes his age as 17, even though he is really 27 and makes Sam feel special. He is charming, smart, romantic and good-looking. He tells her they have to wait for a while before he can tell her his final secret, which she does not realise is his age. Eventually he lets her know hes 27 and she freaks out, after 10 days of stressing and feeling more depressed than ever she goes online and asks to talk to him. He answers her and they confess to liking each other, then they decide to meet. she goes to meet him, hes extremelly gorgeous, and they go for a walk. During the time shes with him Erica, her babysitter, reaises Sam is missing and finds the emails from Robin. She calls the cops and they set out to find her. When they do Robin is caught and Sam is told what happened. Robin has been to court several times on child sexual abuse charges and has been let go on all charges before now because there was a lack of evidence. Now robin is taken in with the police and will be dealt with time in jail."
2848,Codex,thriller," The novel is about young banker Edward Wozny, who is sent by his firm to organize a mysterious client's library of rare books. He discovers the client may own a unique fourteenth-century codex, long thought to be a hoax by medieval scholars. As he becomes involved in the mystery of the codex, he also becomes addicted to a strange computer game that seems to have parallels to his real life."
2849,The Husband,thriller," Mitch Rafferty, owner of a small landscaping business, receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his wife Holly. The caller demands that Mitch pay two million dollars or Holly will be killed, and if he informs the police, Holly will be tortured and left to die. When Mitch protests that he doesn't have the money, the caller tells him that if he loves his wife enough, he will find a way. He is told to look across the street and witnesses a man walking his dog get shot in the head. The murder is meant to make Mitch believe that the kidnappers are serious and not individuals Mitch could disobey. Mitch also becomes aware that he is being watched and therefore cannot inform the police of Holly's kidnapping. When the police arrive to tend to the murder, Mitch is questioned by a detective named Sandy Taggart. Mitch does not tell Taggart of the kidnapping, and can sense that the detective believes he may be holding something back. However, Mitch is not arrested and leaves after Taggart officially dismisses him. On arriving home, Mitch finds his house staged to look like he had killed his wife. He finds blood smeared over his clothes in the closet and splattered on the kitchen walls. The phone rings, and the kidnapper verifies Mitch's ideas about the staging. He informs Mitch they have also planted additional evidence that would be difficult for Mitch to locate and remove, but easy for police dogs. The kidnapper then plays a recording of Mitch's session with Taggart, which confirms his earlier belief that the kidnappers have him under surveillance. Mitch is then told to have his cell phone on and remain available for further instructions later in the evening. Unsure if Taggart can be trusted, Mitch lies to the detective when he stops by, claiming Holly had come home with a migraine and was sleeping. Taggart tells Mitch that the victim has been identified as Jason Osteen, Mitch's college roommate, to whom he had not spoken for many years. After Taggart leaves, Mitch takes a lug wrench from the garage to use as a weapon. While in the garage he finds some high-tech spying equipment. Just after this discovery, he is surprised at gun point by one of Holly's captors, and is told to drop the wrench. As the gunman orders Mitch to leave, the lug wrench the captor had picked up gets caught on a stack of Halloween decorations that subsequently get knocked over upon the gunman. During the fall the gunman lands against a wheel barrow that crushes his trachea, breaks his neck, and then he inadvertently shoots himself in the chest. Mitch takes the handgun, another concealed gun from the man’s ankle holster, puts the corpse in the back of his wife's car, and decides to visit his parents. Mitch, realizing that events could worsen, arrives at his parents' house. He has no intention of revealing any information about Holly's abduction, but wishes to ease his mind with what could possibly be a final visit, and end on good terms with his parents. His relationship with his parents is not close, due to their harsh and unconventional views on raising children which includes the “learning room”, a sensory deprivation chamber. Mitch speaks briefly with his father, learns his mother is out for the evening, and comes away disappointed with the encounter. The next phone call from the kidnappers comes at 6:00 p.m. As instructed, Mitch visits his brother Anson without informing him of Holly's kidnapping. During this time, Anson receives a call from the kidnappers and becomes aware of the situation. Anson, who had helped his siblings throughout their childhood cope with their parents, offers to give Mitch the two million dollar ransom amount. Mitch is surprised that Anson is financially able to provide this. Anson tells Mitch of a friend, ex-FBI agent Julian Campbell, and drives Mitch to Julian's residence explaining that Julian may be able to provide suggestions learned throughout his FBI career. After arriving at Julian's huge estate, Anson pulls a gun on Mitch and states that he wouldn't give his money to save Mitch, let alone Holly. Mitch learns Anson has worked with the criminals behind Holly's kidnapping and shorted them on their last criminal enterprise. Now, the kidnappers mistakenly believe that Anson will do anything to help Mitch save Holly. Julian informs Mitch that he has never worked for the FBI and has obtained his wealth through the ""entertainment industry."" Julian has his two henchmen disarm Mitch and take him outside the city to be disposed of. Mitch manages to kill his executioners with the forgotten gun in the ankle holster and returns to his parents’ house where he finds them dead. Again, the scene has been set up as if Mitch had killed his parents, although this time, Mitch believes Anson to be behind the setup. Mitch confronts Anson at Anson's house, tasers him, and ties him to a chair in the laundry room. He does not reveal that he knows Anson killed his parents and promises to release Anson if he gives Mitch the two million. Anson eventually gives him the combination to a secret safe in the kitchen where he finds 1.4 million dollars in bearer bonds and cash. Mitch, remembering an earlier conversation with his brother, asks Anson how he really made so much money. Anson informs him of an illegal Internet company run by Julian Campbell that downloads untraceable adult and child pornography. Anson takes great delight in telling Mitch this, because he wants Mitch to know that Holly's ransom money is dirty and realizes Mitch will be reminded of this for the rest of his life with Holly. After hearing the story, Mitch is disgusted and leaves him in the dark laundry room instead of releasing him as promised, knowing that Anson does not like the dark and will be reminded of their parents' learning room. Meanwhile, Holly is being held captive in an attic, trying surreptitiously to pry a nail from the floorboards. The nail is something that she regards as a pathetic weapon, and at first, she works at it merely to have something to focus on. She finally pries the nail free and conceals it without really knowing how she can use such a small device effectively against trained killers. Holly has also learned that one of the kidnappers, Jimmy Null, has become suspicious of the others and killed them. He tells Holly how they had all grown dubious of each other and acted so that they would not kill him. He plans to keep all the money for himself. During this time, she also wins the remaining kidnapper's trust by listening to his stories of visions, inventing a vision of her own, and indicating she might travel with him to New Mexico where their visions take place. Jimmy Null then calls Mitch again - speaking with a different voice - and agrees to the 1.4 million in cash offered. Mitch is instructed to meet them at the Turnbridge house, an enormous mansion on which construction was halted. Before Mitch can leave, Taggart arrives with the news that Anson’s name appeared in Jason Osteen’s phone book. Taggert also points out inconsistencies in Mitch's earlier story to him. Mitch initially claims his brother is away, but finally confesses the series of events to Taggart. As they are going to see Anson in the laundry room, Mitch tasers Taggart and runs away. Before fleeing, he tells Taggart that he cannot trust anyone else to save Holly, because he loves her too much and time is running out. After buying rounds for a gun he took from one of the executioners, Mitch is chased on foot from the gun store by the police. He steals an SUV from a gas station and goes to the Turnbridge house where he confronts his enemy. The kidnapper tells Mitch that Holly's moment of decision has arrived, and Holly is able to distract the kidnapper with what he believes is proof of her visions and devotion by appearing to have stigmata. Holly's wounds are in fact secretly self-inflicted from the nail. Mitch takes advantage of the distraction and shoots the kidnapper, who is initially protected with a bullet-proof vest. Null then chases Mitch and Holly with a motorcycle but Mitch is able to eventually kill him by firing at his head. The novel ends with an epilogue. It is at the 32nd birthday of Mitch. We learn that Campbell has been murdered in prison and Anson is currently on death row. Mitch and Holly have two children and will eventually have a third, Mitch's business is booming, and Detective Taggart is now a family friend. it:Il marito (romanzo)"
2850,Children of Paranoia,thriller," Since the age of eighteen, Joseph has been assassinating people on behalf of a cause that he believes in but doesn’t fully understand. The War is ageless, hidden in the shadows, governed by a rigid set of rules, and fought by two distinct sides — one good, one evil. The only unknown is which side is which. Soldiers in the War hide in plain sight, their deeds disguised as accidents or random acts of violence amidst an unsuspecting population ignorant of the brutality that is always inches away. Killing people is the only life Joseph has ever known, and he’s one of the best at it. But when a job goes wrong and he’s sent away to complete a punishingly dangerous assignment, Joseph meets a girl named Maria, and for the first time in his life his singleminded, bloody purpose fades away. Before Maria, Joseph’s only responsibility was dealing death to the anonymous targets fingered by his superiors. Now he must run from the people who have fought by his side to save what he loves most in this world."
2851,The Footprints of God,thriller," The story revolves around a supercomputer being built in a secret government lab working on a project called Trinity. When one of the project's scientists dies, David Tennant, the ethical caretaker, discovers that he had been killed for his refusal to accept the ultimate project's aim, a merger of the human mind and the machine, in order to produce an unrivalled super computing machine. Tennant subsequently tries to piece together the truth behind the project while he and his psychiatrist Dr. Rachel Weiss are pursued around the globe. Tennant suffers from a series of regression episodes, which are considered to be seizures by his doctor, who says they are caused by overexposure to a super-MRI scan. During these episodes, he has strangely vivid dreams, in which he witnesses the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) and the history of mankind. Subsequent dreams seem to be memories of Jesus of Nazareth, something that Tennant, an atheist, finds strange and bewildering. They take a bizarre turn when he sees himself as an NSA assassin sent to kill him, and also as his dead friend, Andrew Fielding, in his last moments. In the end, it seems that someone was in fact showing him these dreams, to tell him something."
2852,The Thirteenth Tale,thriller," Vida Winter, a famous novelist in England, has evaded journalists' questions about her past, from simply refusing to answer their inquiries to spinning elaborate tales that they later discover to be false. Her entire life is a secret, and for over fifty years reporters and biographers have tried innumerable methods in an attempt to extract the truth from Winter. With her health quickly fading, Ms. Winter enlists Margaret Lea, a bookish amateur biographer, to hear her story and write her autobiography. With her own family secrets, Lea finds the process of unraveling the past for Winter bringing her to confront her own ghosts. The novel opens as Lea returns to her apartment above her father's antiquarian bookshop and finds a hand-written letter from Winter. It requests her presence at the author's residence and offers the chance to write Winter's life story before she succumbs to a terminal illness. Lea is surprised by the proposal, as she is only vaguely aware of the famous author and has not read any of the dozens of novels penned by Winter. While considering the offer, Lea's curiosity prompts her to read her father’s rare copy of Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is unexpectedly spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book contains only twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet with aging author -- if only to discuss her reasons for not accepting the position as Winter's biographer. During their meeting at Ms. Winter's home Lea attempts to politely decline the offer and leave, but is stopped at the door by the pleas of the older woman. With promises of a ghost story involving twins, Ms. Winter desperately implores the bibliophile to reconsider. By the end of the encounter, Lea finds herself increasingly drawn to the story and proposes a conditional agreement to Winter; to earn the trust of her biographer, Vida Winter must supply her with three verifiable truths. Somewhat reluctantly, the three secrets are extracted from their keeper. Afterwards, Winter and Lea begin their adventure into the past with; ""Once upon a time there two little girls..."". As Vida Winter tells her story to Lea, she shares dark family secrets which have long been kept hidden. She recalls her days at Angelfield (the estate that was her childhood home), which has since burned and been abandoned. Recording Winter’s account (the author allows no questions), Lea becomes completely immersed in the strange and troubling story. In the end, both women have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets, as well as the ghosts that haunt them both."
2853,First Blood,thriller," The book begins with Rambo, a Vietnam War veteran, hitch hiking in Madison, Kentucky. He is picked up by Sheriff Teasle and dropped off at the city limits. When Rambo repeatedly returns, Teasle finally arrests him and drives him to the station. He is charged with vagrancy and resisting arrest and is sentenced to 35 days in jail. Being trapped inside the cold, wet, small cells gives Rambo a flashback of his days as a POW in Vietnam, and he fights off the cops as they attempt to cut his hair and shave him without shaving cream, beating one man and slashing another with the straight razor. He flees, steals a motorcycle, and hides in the nearby mountains. He becomes the focus of a manhunt that results in the deaths of many police officers, civilians, and National Guardsmen. In a climactic ending in the town where his conflict with Teasle began, Rambo is finally hunted down by special forces Colonel Sam Trautman and Teasle. Teasle, using his local knowledge, manages to surprise Rambo and shoots him in the chest, but is himself wounded in the stomach by a return shot. He then tries to pursue Rambo as he makes a final attempt to escape back out of the town. Both men are essentially dying by this point, but are driven by pride and a desire to justify their actions. Rambo, having found a spot he feels comfortable in, prepares to commit suicide by detonating a stick of dynamite against his body; however, he then sees Teasle following his trail and decides that it would be more honourable to continue fighting and be killed by Teasle's return fire. Rambo fires at Teasle and, to his surprise and disappointment, hits him. For a moment he reflects on how he had missed his chance of a decent death, because he is now too weak to light the dynamite, but then suddenly feels the explosion he had expected—but in the head, not the stomach where the dynamite was placed. Rambo dies satisfied that he has come to a fitting end. Trautman returns to the dying Teasle and tells him that he has killed Rambo with his shotgun. Teasle relaxes, experiences a moment of affection for Rambo, then dies."
2854,The Sigma Protocol,thriller," Ben Hartman is vacationing in Switzerland when he meets his old school buddy Jimmy Cavanaugh - who tries to kill him. As he dodges assassins, mysterious tails, and police while searching for a safe place to hide, he finds his twin brother, Peter, who was thought to have died in an airplane crash several years earlier. Peter describes an international corporation which was formed in the last days of World War II, composed of financiers, influential members of large corporations, and Nazi brass. He gives Ben a photo of some of the leaders, only to find out that their father was a member. Soon, Peter is killed by a sniper, and Ben escapes with his life again. He later meets up with Liesel (Peter's girlfriend). Meanwhile, United States Department of Justice Agent Anna Navarro is recruited by a secretive group within the DoJ to investigate the deaths of a list of influential men around the world who have been dying mysteriously. Her probes turn up false leads, possible coverups, and dead ends, until she finds out that the men have been poisoned, using the same obscure toxin. Following the leads, she finds that the men she had been assigned to investigate are part of an international group of financiers and business moguls. She soon finds out that she has been reported ""off the reservation"", and the attempts begin on her life as well. Through their own distinct investigative means, the two protagonists discover more about the shadowy group, which is called Sigma. It is learned that Sigma has grown from a simple attempt to plunder the Nazi treasury and stabilize the industrial and financial state of the world in the wake of the war, to a political and financial machine which controls as many as 75% of the world's leading companies, and has enough covert political clout to directly influence the outcome of the likes of Presidential elections. Sigma also helped some of the Nazi war criminals, including Nazi doctor Gerhard Lenz, evade capture. Protagonists Hartman and Navarro eventually meet and form an alliance, since both are being hunted by Sigma assassins. Through their concerted efforts, they discover that Sigma is experiencing an internal struggle. The founders, who are dead or dying, believe that Sigma should disband, as it had played its role in the world; they're called the angeli rebelli, and are being hunted by the new Sigma leadership. That new leadership, an apparently philanthropic doctor named Jürgen Lenz, son of Sigma founding member Gerhard Lenz, has decided on a new direction for the group, and is determined to eliminate any internal opposition. Navarro is kidnapped by Lenz, and Hartman tracks them to an old castle in the Austrian Alps. Successfully infiltrating the castle, he discovers Sigma's new direction: age reversal. Lenz had found a way to reverse human aging based largely WW2 era experimentation on children with premature aging also known as Progeria, and he had been treating some of the world's elite to reverse their aging as well. Lenz was his own first successful experiment, for his real name is Gerhard - he is the Nazi doctor and a founding member of Sigma. After killing Lenz, Hartman and Navarro escape in a helicopter, while the castle is destroyed by an avalanche. The book is based on the Bilderberg Group and the myths and mysteries surrounding it."
2855,Relentless,thriller," One Saturday afternoon, Tom Meron, a happily married middle class man, receives a phone call from his old friend Jack Calley, a high-flying city lawyer whom he hasn't seen or heard from in years. While on the phone, Tom hears Jack being murdered on the line; his last words being the first two lines of Tom's address. Tom, terrified and confused, grabs his children and flees the house. While leaving the neighborhood, he passes a suspicious vehicle heading towards his house. He leaves his children with his mother-in-law and goes to find his wife only to be attacked in her office by a balaclava-clad man wielding an already bloody knife. He is then quickly arrested by the police on suspicion of murder. Tom is questioned about the murder of Vanessa Blake (his wife's work partner), telling him that there was evidence that he was at the crime scene. Meanwhile Mike Bolt is working in to a suicide–murder case of the chief justice and he thinks it might have something to do with Jack Calley because he was his solicitor. He finds out that the last call Jack made was to Tom Meron's landline so he goes to Tom's house to question him. Though Tom has just been released on bail, Mike orders Tom's re-arrest in order to question him. Officers attempt to apprehend Tom after he exits the station, but Tom decides to make a break for it. He manages to get a good way away but a car pulls up beside him. Thinking it is the police, he turns around (admitting defeat) when he is violently subdued by a man in a baseball cap, and subsequently forced into the back of the car. Tom quickly learns that the two men who kidnapped him mean to question Tom."
2856,A Small Town in Germany,thriller," A Small Town in Germany occurs in the late 1960s, in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. From London, Alan Turner, of the British Foreign Office, arrives to investigate the disappearance of Leo Harting, a minor British Embassy officer; moreover, secret files have disappeared with him. The embassy's security chief, Rawley Bradfield, is hostile to Turner's investigation. Despite that, he is dinner party host to Turner and Ludwig Siebkron, head of the German Interior Ministry; the latter is close to industrialist Klaus Karfeld, who is successfully building his new political party. Initially, Turner suspects Leo Harting is a spy, but comes to grasp that Harting was secretly investigating Karfeld's Nazi career — as the war-time administrator of a laboratory that poisoned 31 half-Jews. In fact, Harting is hiding from Siebkron, and might assassinate Karfeld. To Turner's chagrin, Bradfield is unsympathetic to Harting's circumstance and uninterested in protecting him, because he considers him a criminal and a political embarrassment."
2857,Empire of Lies,thriller," The book is a thriller in which the protagonist Jason Harrow, a politically conservative Christian, believes that he has discovered an Islamist terrorist plot but that it being concealed by left-wing and politically-correct media."
2858,A Painted House,thriller," The story begins to unfold as Luke and his grandfather Eli, also known as Pappy, search for migrant workers to help them with the cotton picking. They initially consider themselves lucky to hire the Spruills, a family of ""hill people,"" and a few Mexican migrant workers who annually come to the area looking for work. Aside from working long hours under the hot sun in the fields, Luke's life is fairly idyllic until he sees the overly aggressive and mentally unstable Hank Spruill attack three boys from the notorious Sisco family, one of whom is beaten so severely he dies from his wounds. Hank arrogantly identifies Luke as a friendly witness who can support his version of the event, and the fearful boy backs up his story, although the adults in his life, including local sheriff Stick Powers, suspect he's too frightened to admit the truth. When Luke sees Cowboy, one of the Mexicans, later murder Hank and toss his body into the river, Cowboy threatens to kill Luke's mother if Luke tells anyone what he saw. Cowboy and Tally, the teenage daughter of the Spruills, then run off together and are not seen again. Luke also learns that his admired Uncle Ricky, fighting in the Korean War, may have fathered a child with a daughter of the Latchers, their poverty-stricken sharecropping neighbors. Grisham surrounds these dramatic moments with descriptive passages of life in the rural South and the ordinary events that fill Luke's weekly routine. His hard work in the fields is preceded by a hearty breakfast of eggs, ham, biscuits, and the one cup of coffee his mother allows him, and at day's end he's rewarded with an evening on the front porch, where the family gathers around the radio to listen to Harry Caray announce the St. Louis games. A devoted fan, Luke is saving his hard-earned money to buy a team baseball warm-up jacket he saw advertised in the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Saturday afternoons are spent in town, where the adults share idle gossip and serious concerns and the youngsters visit the movie house, while Sunday morning is reserved for church. A visiting carnival, the annual town picnic, and Luke's introduction to television - to see a live broadcast of a World Series game - are additional bits of local color scattered throughout the tale. A flood devastates the family's cotton crop before the harvest is completed, and Luke's parents decide to travel to the city to find work in a Buick Plant, breaking a history of generations working on the land. The novel ends with Luke's mother smiling on the bus, having finally got her wish to leave cotton-farming. The book's title refers to the Chandler house, which never has been painted, a sign of their lower social status in the community. One day Luke discovers someone furtively has been painting the weatherbeaten clapboards white, and eventually he continues the job with the approval of his parents and the assistance of the Mexicans, contributing some of his own savings for the purchase of paint. The house's gradual transformation symbolizes the changes in the boy and his family as they prepare to enter a new phase in their lives."
2859,The 47th Samurai,thriller," The story begins with Bob Lee now living in Idaho. There along with his wife, former wife of his spotter Donny Fenn, he is cultivating his land by using a scythe. The story starts while Bob Lee is cutting away at his land with the scythe while an expensive car pulls up. Bob Lee is aggravated by this, since his previous encounters with such cars and men in them have led him into troublesome situations. Having this predisposition to the men within the car, Bob Lee confronts them to make them leave him and his family alone. Instead he finds a man roughly the same age as himself, looking for Bob Lee, since he is the son of the man that killed his father during the battle of Iwo Jima. Here the book changes to the situations that led to the awarding of the Medal of Honor, to Earl Swagger during a battle on Iwo Jima."
2860,Lonely Road,thriller," The book begins with a note from the solicitor for Commander Malcolm Stevenson, who, we learn, has died recently (in about 1930), and we learn that this was written by him in the months before his death. Stevenson's narration begins with a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes, of which the only one that is readily sensible occurred during World War I, leading the last survivors of a sinking decoy ship, Stevenson managed to sink a German submarine, and with the British survivors wounded and with no way of taking prisoners, killed the Germans as they attempted to surrender. That incident still haunts him. Quite wealthy, he runs a flotilla of coastal steamers in a desultory but increasingly profitable way. He awakens, after having been taken, injured, from a damaged car, on a night on which he has been drinking heavily. Still bearing the mental and physical scars of the naval encounter, he meets a dancer, Mary (Mollie) Gordon (whom he nicknames Sixpence), at a dance hall in Leeds, where she entertains lonely gentlemen by dancing with them, or sitting out a dance and talking, at sixpence a dance. He has the best evening he has had in years with Mollie. The police call in Stevenson to consult on guns they have found being smuggled into the United Kingdom, found near a burned-out lorry. Stevenson cannot identify the guns, but puts together something Mollie said, and something said by his cousin by marriage, pioneer aviator Sir Phillip Stenning, and realizes Mollie's brother may well have been the driver of the lorry. He approaches the police. Rather than risk publicity from a police interrogation, they ask Stevenson to do the initial questioning himself. They tell Stevenson they are convinced the guns are being smuggled in for an armed uprising in connection with the upcoming General Election, although they have no idea who is responsible. Stevenson returns to Leeds, and approaches Mollie at her employment. Through artful questioning, he confirms she would be able to identify her brother's lorry. Torn between the desire to help the police, and his own growing affection for Mollie, he invites her down to his home in Devon for a platonic vacation. She agrees. The morning after their arrivals, he takes her to the police station in Newton Abbot, where the police await. Stevenson watches as through gentle, but deceitful questioning, they get her to identify the lorry. They lead her to believe her brother is dead. Stevenson's sense of fair play is outraged, and he takes Mollie away to consult with his solicitor. After consultation, she tells all to the police, but knows little of help. Stevenson and Mollie track down her brother, Billy, in Leicester. Stevenson and Billy recognize each other. Stevenson is realizing that he did not crash his car that night, but that, drunk, he went for a walk on the beach and was assaulted by men there, and the car crash was faked. Billy confesses involvement, admitting that he has been paid to take packages from a ship being landed on the coast to a barn. Sometimes, he would convey people as well. He little cared what he conveyed so long as he got paid. After Billy meets with Stevenson's solicitor, he is taken to the police. He can identify the destination of the goods, but what the police want is to interrupt the landing, catching the ship and everyone involved. Sir Phillip warns that this is a dangerous enterprise, but Stevenson allows Billy and Mollie to participate, and offers the services of one of his ships to help intercept the smugglers. Billy is duly contacted by the smugglers for another run. As they prepare, Stevenson asks Mollie to marry him. She refuses him, until they have lived in the same house for a time and come to know each other better. As the police, Stevenson, and the others meet in his house, they are fired on. In seconds, Billy and one of the police are dead, and Mollie is wounded in the shoulder. Stevenson and Stenning go in pursuit of the gunmen, who try to escape by ship. Through expert ship handling and knowledge of the Channel tides, Stevenson manoeuvres the other ship into a position where she must run on to the rocks of ""The Shackles"" (probably his relocation of the genuine ""Manacles"" reef to a location off Dodman Point). Stevenson makes a token attempt to save the other vessel, but it fails (as Stevenson probably knows it would), and the ship sinks, killing the men aboard. Stevenson hurries to the hospital to see how Mollie is. Mollie's wounds have become infected, and despite Stevenson sparing no expense for her care, her condition slowly worsens. After a night in which Stevenson remains by her bedside, pouring out his heart to her and telling her of his plans for them, she dies. The gunmen's bodies are recovered, one Dutchman, one Russian (probably a Communist) and a recent Cambridge graduate. The embittered Stevenson tracks down the Cambridge man's contacts, and finds a female co-conspirator. They had smuggled guns and Communists into the country so that, at the proper moment, the plot could be exposed and blamed on the Labour Party, ensuring a Conservative victory. Stevenson, realizing that the girl was present that night he was drunk and that she persuaded the others to spare his life, tells her of the deaths that have resulted from the actions, and leaves her to her conscience; first learning who was the brains of the conspiracy: a Cambridge political science don. First taking precautions to ensure the story would survive his death, Stevenson goes to confront the don. The professor denies nothing, but attempts to defend his actions by telling his view of what must follow a Labour victory. Stevenson, realizing the don lives in an ivory tower, gives the don an ultimatum: The story will be in the press, assuring a thumping Labour victory in the election now only days away (and the professor's arrest), unless the professor kills himself by Friday, four days before the election. The professor does so, falling ""accidentally"" from a high window, and Stevenson has little sympathy when told about how the professor's sister will be devastated. Stevenson returns to his work on Monday, at least having assured that the election will not be influenced either way. He returns to his lonely road which he had shared with another for so brief a moment, and which will soon lead to his death."
2861,Crooked Little Vein,thriller," Michael McGill, a burned-out private eye is hired by a corrupt White House Chief of Staff to find a second ""secret"" United States Constitution, which had been lost in a whorehouse by Richard Nixon. What follows is a scavenger hunt across America, exposing its seedier side along the way. McGill is joined by surreal college student side-kick, Trix, who is writing a thesis on sexual fetishes. McGill has to deal with strange events sometimes unrelated to his adventures – he describes himself as a 'shit-magnet', with weird phenomena following him wherever he goes."
2862,The Conduct of Major Maxim,thriller," Former SAS Major Harry Maxim is assigned to Number 10 Downing Street, where he works under George Harbinger, private secretary to the Prime Minister. Maxim is asked by a former colleague to assist Corporal Ron Blagg, who has gone AWOL from the British Army after assisting MI6 in a botched undercover operation. However, Maxim soon discovers that both MI6 and a shadowy Sovbloc service are looking for Blagg, with deadly consequences. Maxim's efforts to assist Blagg are stymied by a web of deceit and suspicion among the various offices and agencies within the British government, until he uncovers a secret from the darkest days of World War II so threatening to the leadership of the German Democratic Republic that they will kill to preserve it. The various settings for most of the action, housing projects in South London, a small rural town in Germany, and a fading port town in Humberside, are described in rich detail."
2863,Dirty White Boys,thriller," The opening scene for Dirty White Boys sets the tone for the rest of the novel with main antagonist Lamar Pye using brutal violence to avoid being raped by a giant black inmate in the showers at McAlester State Penitentiary where he is a ""Prince"" (a ranking prisoner) among the Dirty White Boys, the white gang element of the prisoner population. Lamar is a physically powerful, charismatic, aggressive and intelligent ""alpha male"" in his late 30s. The rape was ordered in revenge for a perceived slight made by Lamar's retarded, behemoth cousin Odell against the white gang chief, Lamar having been ""sold"" to the black inmate gang. Knowing that revenge in some form is certain if he remains in the prison Lamar uses his wits and unrestrained capacity for violence to escape from ""the Mac"", taking along his cousin and their cell mate Richard Peed, a failed artist who is at once a timid victim yet imprisoned for a gruesome crime of violence against his mother. Bud Pewtie the other main protagonist is introduced as a state trooper called in to participate in the search for the escaped criminals. Pewtie at first seems to be a responsible father of two teenage boys but it quickly emerges that he is having an affair with the young wife of his partner Ted, a confused young man with unarticulated doubts about his role as a trooper. The troopers are among others briefed on the escape by the head of the search effort an embittered alcoholic Lieutenant called C. D. Henderson (Earl Swagger's subordinate from Hot Springs) who was once a star law enforcement officer. The search for the convicts leads the troopers to the remote farmhouse of an old couple where the Pye's and their passenger Richard have taken refuge and armed themselves with the man's guns. The ensuing ambush sees Pewtie perform well under fire but his partner caves under assault, Pewtie is severely wounded and watches as Lamar executes his helpless partner and is himself left for dead after being shot by Lamar. The Pyes escape but Pewtie survives having been unknowingly shot by Lamar with lightweight bird hunting shot. The Pyes flee to the remote house of a mentally ill young woman, Ruta Beth Tull, who has been writing confused letters to Richard about their ""mystic connection"". Tull it later emerges murdered her own parents as a juvenile and sees this as her link to Richard. Tull immediately takes to Lamar and the group forms into a twisted family unit as the search for them loses momentum. Pewtie returns to the house where he was ambushed to thank the owner, who also survived being kidnapped by Lamar and raised the alarm about the shootout. While at the house he is given pictures of Lions drawn by Richard, and overlooked by investigators, as Richard's value to Lamar rests on his ability to draw pictures as Lamar orders him to; Lamar being amused and intrigued by the artist's ability. Pewtie also returns to his affair with his dead partner's wife Holly and frustrations at the conflicting demands of his newfound romance and his family life continue to build. Lamar and his ""family"" carry out a bloody robbery of a restaurant in a small Texas town from which Lamar narrowly escapes with his life. The bloodshed of the robbery intensifies the manhunt for Lamar and Pewtie is one of the officers who drops by the scene of the crime. There he finds more pictures of Lions drawn by Richard at the restaurant. He is questioned by a suspicious LT Henderson about his find but does not explain it or the earlier pictures. Lamar now reveals to his family that Richard has in fact been working on the design for a tattoo and they begin a search for a top quality tattoo artist to carry out the work and finding Jimmy Ky outside a small town. After discussing the drawings with a local art teacher Bud also begins to suspect that Lamar is working on a tattoo, and obtains information about Jimmy Ky. The stage is now set for the second bloody confrontation between Bud Pewtie and Lamar. Pewtie literally stumbles in as Lamar is being tattooed and watched over by Odell. A gunfight ensues which ends with Pewtie killing Odell with the last shot in his gun (the last of three he was carrying) and blasting two fingers off Lamar's left hand. Pewtie himself is once again badly injured and Lamar escapes after the intervention of Richard and Ruta. As Bud struggles with his choices Lamar plots a terrible revenge for the death of his cousin. The stage is set for the final confrontation between Pewtie and Lamar. Pewtie fails at first to shoot Lamar with a rifle, his bullet deflected just enough by an unseen glass door to miss his intended target and wound Ruta. The firefight leads to Lamar breaking out of a window using Holly as a shield as running across the fields towards a patch of trees with Pewtie chasing. Holly breaks away from Lamar and runs back towards the house leaving Bud to face Lamar. Bud again confirms to Holly that they are through. Lamar ambushes Bud in the patch of trees but fails to shoot him with his final bullet; the two men begin a desperate hand-to-hand struggle for Bud's gun, in which the physically stronger Lamar is sure to win. As the men fight, Pewtie deperately manages to fire a shot, which hideously wounds Lamar. The fight finishes as Bud uses his back-up gun to shoot Lamar twice in the head. As the medics and SWAT teams arrive all seems to be settled, but Richard is still alive and decides he should help Lamar. He finds Bud near a creek with the just-arrived Henderson. Both of the policemen talk quietly to Richard, trying to convince him to drop his gun and telling him that they know he was not responsible for the crimes committed by the Pyes. Richard responds by firing at Bud with the gun that Lamar took from Pewtie after their first confrontation at the old couples' farmhouse. Henderson moves in front of Bud and takes the brunt of the bullet's damage, though the bullet hits Pewtie after going through Henderson. Bud is severely injured but lives as Henderson dies. The final scene is of a recovered Richard (having been shot by other policemen after firing) being transferred back to ""the Mac"" where he finds his previous fear of the prison and its brutal inmates is gone and he is a feared member of the criminal community."
2864,The Survivor,thriller," The novel opens with Samuel Carver masquerading as a maintenance man. He sabotages the executive jet of wealthy Texan businessman Waylon McCabe. The sabotage fails and McCabe begins to suspect that he was the target of an assassination as opposed to a victim of a freak accident. The novel then jumps forward to continue the story of Cain's first novel, The Accident Man. Carver is recovering in a Swiss hospital and attempting to regain memories lost during the torture by that book's villain. The story centres around McCabe's attempt to obtain a lost Russian suitcase nuke in an effort to instigate a nuclear holocaust that would bring about the rapture; Carver aims to stop him."
2865,High Citadel,thriller," A small, passenger plane is hijacked by its co-pilot over a mountain range in South America causing a crash landing in which the hijacker dies. Unbenknownst to the pilot and other passengers, among their number is Senor Aguilla, the former president of the country, and his niece, who were returning to the country under a pseudonym. Aguilla had been deposed by a military coup, and now a communist faction wants him dead since they fear he will be a problem for a communist takeover of the country. The hi-jacker′s associates soon arrive at the isolated area, but are separated from Aguilla and the other survivors of the crash by a gorge. There is a damaged bridge between the two sides, which the villains are prevented from crossing by the passengers. As the plot unfolds, the majority of the passengers remain nearby to maintain the stand-off while two set off to cross the mountain range to reach divisions of the country's air force loyal to Aguilla and bring help. The ‘citadel′ at which the siege is maintained becomes increasingly threatened as reinforcements for the villains arrive with prefabricated materials to repair the bridge and storm the position with vehicles. A medieval historian and an engineer manufacture a variety of weapons to prolong the siege as the novel reaches its gripping climax. ja:高い砦"
2866,The Kill Artist,thriller," Israel’s Prime Minister reinstates Ari Shamron as its director. Shortly thereafter, Israel’s ambassador is murdered in Paris. The crime has all of the markings of Tariq al-Hourani, a terrorist mastermind. Gabriel spearheaded a team that located and killed the operatives in the “Munich Massacre.” Seventeen years later, Tariq took vengeance upon Gabriel—family member for family member—by planting a bomb under the Allons’ car in Vienna. Gabriel witnessed his family’s horrifying destruction. His son Dani died instantly, while his wife Leah was left with a shattered mind and body. Nine years later, Gabriel has cut ties with the Office, secreted himself in Southern England, and poured himself into his other profession as an art restorer. Ari Shamron shows up on his doorstep. Shamron explains that he wants to assassinate Tariq but lacks support from the departmental directors at the Office. As a result, he urges Gabriel to spearhead a secret assassination operation. He accepts Shamron’s plan and begins surveillance of Yusef, a member of Tariq’s closely knit organization. Gabriel decides that he needs to set Yusef up with a female operative. He handpicks Jacqueline Delacroix (née Sarah Halévy), a French supermodel. Jacqueline has previously assisted three Office operations; in one of these, she worked closely with Gabriel and the two had an affair. Gabriel is careful to keep his interactions with Jacqueline to a mere professional familiarity. Jacqueline discovers that Gabriel still grieves over their affair, for its unmasking made Leah decide to accompany Gabriel on the fateful operation to Vienna. Realizing that her modeling career is declining and unfulfilling, Jacqueline accepts Gabriel’s role for her and seduces Yusef. Although this allows Gabriel to bug Yusef’s apartment, it likewise blows Jacqueline’s cover, for Yusef finds her making imprints of his keys and later sees Gabriel in his building. Gabriel is very concerned with Jacqueline’s safety and therefore tries to pull her from the operation. Shamron, however, insists that her identity as Dominique Bonard is secure and insists that Gabriel continue the plan. Meanwhile, Yusef warns Tariq that Gabriel is searching for him. Tariq designs a plan where Jacqueline must prove her professed love for Yusef by accompanying Tariq on a supposedly diplomatic mission to the United States. Indeed, Tariq recognizes Jacqueline from previous Office operations and suspects that he can use her as bait to lure Gabriel to his death. A conspiratorial relationship between Tariq and Uzi Navot, a major agent for the Office in Europe, also becomes apparent. Navot is one of the few Office operatives who knows about Shamron’s secret plot. Shortly after Jacqueline begins this ‘diplomatic’ trip, she realizes that her identity and security have been compromised. Gabriel believes that he has the upper hand in the arrangement until Tariq consistency eludes him and then disappears. Tariq smuggles Jacqueline through Québec and into New York City, where he intends to make his last stand. The new PM of Israel and Yasser Arafat are in NYC that weekend to celebrate a momentous step towards creating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Too late, Gabriel realizes that Tariq’s target is Arafat and not Israel’s PM; Gabriel hastily alerts Arafat by phone just as the disguised Tariq zones in on the kill. Arafat the diplomat calmly recounts his love for Tariq, a former associate, and urges the assassin to abandon his design. Tariq decides to let Arafat live just as Gabriel and the escaped Jacqueline arrive on the scene. Tariq shoots Gabriel in the chest, but Jacqueline pursues and kills the would-be assassin. Gabriel recovers from his wound in Israel, where Jacqueline has been forced to relocate due to media coverage of the event. One day, Gabriel spots Yusef in a local market and questions him at gunpoint. Yusef admits that he was working for Shamron as a double agent, and that Shamron had concocted the whole plot so Gabriel could finish off Tariq. When an angry Gabriel confronts Shamron, the wizened director is unapologetic and insists that it was both necessary to kill Tariq and just to have the killer be Gabriel. Once his recovery is complete, Gabriel returns to his life in southern England as an art restorer."
2867,Kill the Messenger,thriller," Bike messenger Jace Damon attempts to live under the radar in Los Angeles with his younger brother (Tyler, who has an IQ of 168). The two are raised by their mother, who does her best to remain anonymous. When she falls ill Jace takes her to the hospital, making sure that he is not associated with her. The mother dies, and her children cannot claim her body. Instead, Jace takes his brother to find a new place, deciding that the Chinese community would be the best for them; eventually an elderly Chinese businesswoman (Madame Chen) takes a liking to the pair of boys and gives Jace a part-time job and a place to stay. He also takes a job as a bike messenger, since he can be paid in cash for it. One night, Jace accepts a delivery just as he is about to go off-duty; it is a pickup from the office of one of L.A.'s sleaziest defense attorneys, Lenny Lowell. He is not happy about the late delivery since it is a wet miserable night, but the dispatcher tells him that everyone else has gone off duty, and he is the only one available. Lowell is extremely (despite his reputation) nice to Jace, giving him a good tip. When Jace approaches the delivery address, he finds an empty lot which makes him nervous, so he decides to abort the delivery. Before he can get away, a large black car comes racing towards him to run him down. He barely survives the collision and is forced to abandon his bike. On foot, he is able to elude his pursuer, but loses his delivery bag (but retains the package). Jace returns to the scene of the collision and is relieved to discover that he will only have to replace the wheel. He returns to Lowell's office, only to find it crawling with police; he learns that Lowell has been murdered. Jace does not trust police, so he leaves the scene. In a city fueled by money, celebrity and sensationalism, the slaying of a bottom-feeder like Lowell won't make headlines. So when LAPD's elite show up, homicide detective Kev Parker (assigned to Lowell's case) wants to know why. Parker begins a search for answers that will lead him to a killer--or to the end of his career. Because if there's one lesson Parker has learned over the years, it's that in a town built on fame and fantasy, delivering the truth can be murder."
2868,From the Corner of His Eye,thriller," Dean Koontz writes a tale of good and evil, and how the concepts influence people's lives. The book begins with three separate stories that eventually intertwine: a loving relationship between a mother and her genius son, a ruthless killer, and a young woman who takes it upon herself to raise her late sister's baby."
2869,The Enemy,thriller," Malcolm Jaggard is, on the surface, a marketing research consultant. However, his real job is with an unnamed government department in industrial espionage counter-intelligence. After he becomes engaged to genetics researcher Penelope Ashton, on a whim he runs a computer search on her father, the wealthy and respectable entrepreneur George Ashton. Much to his amazement, he finds that any and all information regarding George Ashton is classified at an astronomically high level, and that he is not regarded as having a “need to know”. Furthermore, the very act of researching information on George Ashton sends alarm bells ringing in multiple departments in the Whitehall hierarchy. If this was not bad enough, a mysterious attacker throws acid in the face of his fiancée’s younger sister, causing the mysterious George Ashton to flee England. Without being allowed to know more about Ashton, Jaggard is sent on a desperate search to find him, racing the KGB to the forests of Sweden, and eventually to a remote island in the Scottish Highlands, where he finds that the true enemy is much closer to home."
2870,Caravan to Vaccarès,thriller," From all over Europe, even from behind the Iron Curtain, Gypsies make an annual pilgrimage to the holy shrine of their patron saint in the Provence region of southern France. But something is different about this year's gathering, with many suspicious deaths. Cecile Dubois and Neil Bowman decide to investigate. Eavesdropping, Bowman discovers that a man named Gaiuse Strome is financing the gypsies, and his suspicions on the real identity of Strome center on a highly wealthy aristocrat, distinguished folklorist and gastronome, Le Grand Duc Charles de Croytor, whose girlfriend Lila Delafont is a friend of Cecile. As they follow the caravan, Bowman and Cecile find that their lives in danger many times in an effort to uncover the secret the gypsies are so determined to hide, and before long are running for their lives."
2871,Pig Island,thriller," The novel's protagonist is Joe Oakes - ""Oakesy"" - a journalist who makes his living exposing supernatural hoaxes. So, when a bizarre videotape recorded by a tourist catches a glimpse of a disturbing creature, half-man half-beast, wandering the beaches of a remote Scottish island, Oaksey is just the man to investigate. Pig Island is home to a mysterious religious community, the Psychogenic Healing Ministries, and its leader Pastor Malachi Dove, and they ask him to come to the island to debunk the rumours of Satanism which are the result of the videotape. Oaksey has met Pastor Dove before, and the two have a long-standing threat to make good on. However, Oaksey's visit throws up more questions than answers. Why does the wider community not want him there? Why will no one talk about the creature seen wandering the island? What lies beyond the wood and the gorge that almost splits the island in two, with a fence that has rotting pig heads atop its posts? Most importantly, what has happened to Pastor Dove, not seen on the island for years, and why will no one talk about him? Joe's visit to the island, and its horrific conclusion, is only the beginning of the legacy that Pig Island will leave on his life."
2872,Lightning,thriller," As Laura Shane is born in January 1955, during a freak lightning storm, a mysterious blond stranger (Stefan) prevents a drunken Dr. Paul Markwell from attending to the difficult and complicated delivery. Her mother dies in childbirth, though Laura is a perfectly healthy, exceptionally beautiful baby, and she is left to be raised by her father Bob Shane. When Laura is eight years old, a junkie attempts to rob her father's convenience store; however the blond stranger reappears, saving them both and instructing them on what to tell the police. In 1967, Bob Shane dies of a heart attack. At her father’s funeral Laura sees the stranger watching over her yet again and begins to think he is her guardian angel, along with an unnamed man calling for her when she tries to follow him. Laura is sent to live in the McIlroy orphanage, where she is housed with a set of twins, Thelma and Ruth, who later become her best friends. She also meets Willy Sheener, a frightening child molester who is also the maintenance man and custodian. Willy becomes infatuated with Laura due to her uncommonly good looks, haunting her wherever she goes in the orphanage. However, due to past experience the twins warn Laura that reporting Sheener, also known as ""The White Eel"" or ""Eel"" for short, will do more harm than good. Laura is eventually sent to live with a foster family that exploits her, so she purposely behaves badly and they send her back to the orphanage. After several disturbing incidents, her mysterious angel visits Sheener and brutally beats him. This scares him off for some time, until Laura is sent to live with the Dockwielers, with whom she quickly forms a bond. Sheener comes to their home one afternoon; Laura is able to fend him off and eventually kill him, but the shock of discovering the scene causes her new foster mother to suffer a fatal heart attack, sending Laura back to the orphanage. Shortly thereafter, Laura turns 13 and is moved to another orphanage for older children, and receives the devastating news that Ruth was caught in a fire in McIlroy and died. At college, Laura's creative writing brings her to the attention of Danny, a naive man who has fallen in love with her from afar. After a botched attempt at being her secret admirer they agree to date and over time, fall in love. After their marriage Laura becomes a celebrated author of several books and gives birth to a boy, Christopher Robin. The birth was difficult, making it so she will not be able to have any children in the future. Years later, Danny, Laura and Chris are saved from a horrific accident by the blond man's (revealed to be named Stefan) intervention. The unnamed man shows up moments later. Both Danny and the blond man attack but Danny dies of several gunshot wounds, before Stefan kills the man and tells Laura what to say, like years ago at the grocery store. He promises to return soon and tell more, but due to mistakes, he doesn't return until a year later, wounded, in an isolated stretch of winter woods. Laura and Chris are able to treat him at a doctor they locate in the phone book, but must battle unknown assassins shortly thereafter. The group hides out in a small motel. Stefan recovers and finally tells his story. He is from Nazi Germany in the year 1944, and is part of secret time traveling experiments, sending agents to the future to uncover ways to change the outcome of World War II. Stefan had previously arrived in an alternate version of 1984 and had seen Laura, who was a quadriplegic because of Dr. Markwell's drunken errors during her delivery. However, despite her disability, she wrote beautiful books of poetry which inspired Stefan to renounce his mission, and travel to difficult parts of her life to change them. However, his superior Kokoschka became suspicious of him and followed him, sending the assassins into the future to learn of their path. With the help of Thelma, who has become rich as an actress since her sister's death, they gain many supplies they need. Fat Jack, an arms dealer, supplies them with guns and Vexxon nerve gas. With the aid of modern computational technology, Stefan is prepared to go back to his time. He uses the nerve gas to kill the five men on duty at the time and disposes their bodies six billion years in the future. He makes a jump to see Winston Churchill and convinces him that the institute containing the time machine must be bombed; Churchill agrees. Stefan also makes a trip to Adolf Hitler, to convince the dictator of various threads that must be cleared up, in reality sabotaging the German war effort. While he is gone, Laura and Chris, in an empty patch of rain washed desert, are attacked by more Nazis, as records of a police stop have been discovered. Stefan returns to find Laura and Chris dead. He works around the time limit of the machine by sending Laura a message to save them. Despite this, Chris and Laura still have to battle all four men themselves. The second cylinder of nerve gas proves invaluable. It is Laura who eventually kills all four men pursuing them, as she protects Chris as best she can. In the long months that follow, Laura and Chris are questioned by the police. They soon believe a story of 'drug dealers' who wanted revenge. Laura backs up her story by turning over Fat Jack, something she was going to do anyway (he does not blame her, due to his personal beliefs). Stefan, who had been hiding with Thelma, comes to live with the two again. After even more time, Laura finds herself falling in love with him."
2873,World without End,thriller," The novel begins in the fictional city of Kingsbridge, England in the year 1327. Four children — Merthin, Caris, Gwenda, and Merthin's brother Ralph — head into the woods on All Hallows Day. Together the children witness two men-at-arms killed in self-defence by Sir Thomas Langley, aided by Ralph. The children then flee, with the exception of Merthin, who helps the wounded Sir Thomas bury a letter with instructions to dig up and deliver it if and when Sir Thomas should die. After this Sir Thomas flees to Kingsbridge and seeks refuge in the monastery and becomes a Benedictine monk, while the four children swear never to speak of what they saw. Ten years later Caris and Merthin are in love. When a section of the vault of the Kingsbridge Cathedral collapses Merthin, now an apprentice carpenter, shows his genius by developing a cheaper means of repair than his master. Ralph, now a squire to Earl Roland of Shiring, provokes a fight and has his nose broken by a handsome peasant from Gwenda's village named Wulfric, for whom Gwenda has a hopeless infatuation. Gwenda is sold for a cow by her father to be prostituted at an outlaws' camp. She kills one of the outlaws while he is raping her, and escapes. She is followed by her buyer, but is able to drown him when the Kingsbridge bridge collapses, a tragedy that kills many, including all of Wulfric's immediate family and Prior Anthony of Kingsbridge. In the midst of the disaster Ralph saves Earl Roland's life and is rewarded with the lordship of Gwenda's village of Wigleigh. Gwenda and Wulfric return to Wigleigh and attempt to gain Wulfric the inheritance of his father's land. The inheritance is eventually denied by Ralph because of the grudge he bears against Wulfric. Due to his poor prospects, Wulfric's beautiful wife-to-be, Annet, leaves him allowing Gwenda to marry him instead. Gwenda then tries to win Wulfric back his lands by having sex with Ralph, but Ralph does not uphold his end of the deal. Gwenda's first son, Sam, is conceived through this liaison. Meanwhile, the monastery's Sacrist, Godwyn, a nephew of Prior Anthony, outwits his opponents and wins the priory election in an overwhelming victory. Godwyn claims to be a reformer, but turns out to be even more conservative and quickly begins to clash with the townsmen on a number of issues, including the funding and building of a fabulous new bridge designed by Merthin and allowing the townspeople to full wool for a growing fabric industry. Caris, who becomes the de facto alderman, is a particular problem. Despite being her cousin, Godwyn charges Caris with witchcraft hoping to have her executed to get her out of the way. To escape execution, Caris agrees to join the Kingsbridge nunnery. With his impending marriage to Caris made impossible, Merthin leaves Kingsbridge for Florence to pursue his building career. Eight years later, when Godwyn steals money from the substantially more profitable nuns, Caris travels to France to petition the bishop, who is fighting with King Edward III in France. Along the way she witnesses the ravages of the war and acts as a field nurse during the Battle of Crecy, during which Ralph, having fled charges of rape and murder in England, saves the life of the Prince of Wales and is rewarded with his lifelong dream of knighthood. Caris's errand is fruitless, however, as the bishop of Kingsbridge as well as Earl Roland have been killed in the battle. In Florence, the city is ravaged by the Black Death. After recovering from the plague, a newly-widowed Merthin experiences an epiphany of his love for Caris and returns to Kingsbridge with his daughter Laura (Lolla). There he finds Caris unwilling to renounce her vows and the two go through a sporadic liaison. At the same time, Merthin re-establishes himself in the community by solving flaws left in the new bridge during its completion after his departure. Thousands of residents of Kingsbridge die in the outbreak of plague, and the city quickly descends into anarchy. After the prioress of the nunnery dies Caris takes control and institutes the use of masks and cleanliness which help to protect the nuns from the plague. Godwyn loses his nerve and flees with the monks to an isolated chapel where he and all the monks die except for Gwenda's brother Philemon, who fled, and Thomas Langley. After William, the new Earl of Shiring, dies from the plague along with all his male heirs, Ralph sees a chance to become Earl. After murdering his young wife Matilda (Tilly) he arranges his marriage to William's widow Lady Phillipa, whom he has long desired, and makes himself Earl. However Philippa spurns him and leaves for the Kingsbridge nunnery, where she has a relationship with Merthin and conceives his child. Afraid of Ralph's wrath, Philippa seduces Ralph to make him believe the child is his. As a result Merthin and Phillipa cannot continue their liaison. After two years, the plague dissipates and Caris renounces her vows, after finally being able to run her own independent hospital, and marries Merthin. After ten years of hardship, the people of Kingsbridge are granted a borough charter, freeing them from the lordship of the priory, and Merthin becomes alderman. Merthin also solves the long troublesome problem of why the vault of the cathedral collapsed by dismantling and rebuilding one of the towers which he redesigns to be the tallest building in England. Labour shortages resulting from the plague allow Wulfric to regain his father's land. When Sam, the secret son of Ralph, kills the local bailiff's son, Gwenda reveals his true parentage to Ralph to gain Sam's release. Armed with this knowledge, Ralph blackmails Gwenda into having sex with him again. When Sam walks in on this, there is struggle in which Sam and Gwenda kill Ralph. Davey, Gwenda's second son, negotiates a free tenancy and marries Amabel, the daughter of Wulfric's former wife-to-be, proving to Gwenda that her life has had some worth. Gwenda's conniving brother Philemon becomes Prior of Kingsbridge and even tries to become Bishop, but his ambition is ruined after Sir Thomas Langley dies of old age. Merthin keeps his promise and digs up the letter which reveals that the deposed King Edward II had secretly survived and had gone overseas. Merthin trades the letter to a member of the king's court in exchange for Philemon's departure from Kingsbridge forever. After working together with Caris and the townspeople to subdue a second, milder outbreak of the plague, Merthin completes his spire and succeeds in making Kingsbridge cathedral the tallest building in England."
2874,The Freedom Trap,thriller," An agent of the British Government is sent on a new and deadly assignment - to snare The Scarperers (a notorious gang of criminals who organise gaol-breaking for long-term prisoners) and Slade, a notorious Russian double agent whom they have recently liberated. The trail leads him to Malta, where he comes face-to-face with these ruthless killers and must outwit them to save his own life."
2875,The Sinner,thriller," The Sinner involves Detective Jane Rizzoli and a main character new to the series, first seen in ""The Apprentice"" as a minor figure, medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles. When a young novice nun about to take vows is found murdered in the abbey's summer chapel, Isles and Rizzoli are immediately called to the scene. The elderly nuns are of little help to Isles and Rizzoli but when another body is found, mutilated beyond recognition (and testing reveals the body to be that of a fortyish Indian Hansen's Disease victim), it is soon discovered that there is more to these killings than meets the eye."
2876,The Afghan,thriller," Sometime before the events of the story take place, a joint MI6/CIA/ISI raid against al Qaeda (AQ) operatives in Pakistan uncovers documents concerning a planned, but largely cryptic, terrorist attack. This raises concerns and triggers further investigations authorised at the most senior level. Mike Martin, who previously appeared in the Forsyth novel The Fist of God, is now a retired SAS officer. Educated in Iraq and physically able to pass for an Afghan (his maternal grandmother was a Bengali-Indian named Indira Bose, misspelled Bohse in the book) who contributed to his chestnut-brown complexion which allows him to look like an Arab (or later on, Afghan) Martin has a near-perfect command of Arabic and is also familiar with Afghanistan and the Pashtun language, Pashto. He is chosen (due entirely to an overheard gaffe by his brother who is a member of the expert ""Koran committee"" of academics specialising in ancient texts) to infiltrate the highest echelons of AQ, by impersonating an AQ prisoner, Izmat Khan, currently held at Guantanamo Bay. In the story it is revealed that prior to Martin's escapades in Iraq he had worked with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation where he met Osama Bin Laden and rescued a young Afghan boy, Izmat Khan, who later became a resistance leader. Khan is portrayed as an heroic Afghan freedom fighter determined to have vengeance against America and careless of his life following the bombing of his village in the Tora Bora mountains which killed his family. In a highly covert operation Martin is successful in impersonating ""The Afghan"" (under the code word ""crowbar""), a prisoner held in Guantanamo Bay for over five years. Following his re-infiltration to Afghanistan as a repatriated prisoner, and his subsequent stage-managed escape, he makes his way back to an al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan, where he is accepted as a compatriot following his security clearance by ""The Sheik"", Osama Bin Laden due to the brief encounter years before. He makes contact with AQ and volunteers to get involved in a suicidal terrorist attack which involves hijacking and re-berthing a tanker off Borneo carrying liquid petroleum gas. Another group hijack a cargo ship in the Caribbean, although this is intended to serve as a cynical decoy. Martin successfully alerts his handlers to the general nature of the threat, but is left incommunicado for several weeks as the ship steams to the US Eastern Seaboard. Izmat Khan escapes from US captivity after a US fighter jet accidentally crashes into the secret hiding place in Washington state where Izmat is incarcerated, destroying his guards and the compound wall whilst leaving him unscathed and free to walk out. He is finally shot dead trying to warn his allies using a public phone in Canada, after a long chase across the Cascades. Eventually the tanker reaches the mid-Atlantic, where a G8 summit is being held on the Queen Mary 2 liner. Martin finally learns that the terrorists intend to release and then ignite the gas on board the tanker, which could incinerate the Queen Mary 2 as it passed within range. Martin's last minute heroism, quick reflexes and self-sacrifice prevent a tragedy."
2877,Athabasca,thriller," When the operations manager of an oil company operating in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska receives a mysterious anonymous threat of sabotage, his superiors call in Jim Brady Enterprises, a firm of oilfield specialists. Dermott and Mackenzie, tough ex-field managers and now anti-sabotage specialists, arrive, but initial investigations get them nowhere. Then the operations manager is murdered and one of the pump stations in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is damaged, with further loss of life. Jim Brady himself arrives to direct operations but to no avail. Then the company's operations at the Athabasca Oil Sands in Canada are disrupted and Dermott is nearly killed. Despite assistance by the Canadian police and FBI, suspicions fall on many employees, but nothing can be proved. As bodies and equipment damage mount up, Brady and his two investigators play a hunch and finally expose the men they believe to be responsible. But even they are not the main instigators of the events, as the final chapter of the novel reveals. de:Die Hölle von Athabasca nl:Athabasca (boek)"
2878,The Testament,thriller," The book is about Braverman Shaw, whose father, Dexter Shaw, is killed by an explosion. After his death Braverman, for friends Bravo, finds out that his father was a member of the Gnostic Observant, a group of people who possess a very old secret of Jesus Christ. Bravo has to find the secret and keep it hidden from their sworn enemies, the Knights of Saint-Clemens. His father left behind a maze, which Bravo has to solve in order to find the secret. During his journey he's attacked by the Knights multiple times, and they're closer than he thinks."
2879,Mr Standfast,thriller," Dick Hannay, under forty and already a successful Brigadier-General with good prospects of advancement, is called out of uniform by his old comrade, spymaster Sir Walter Bullivant, and sent to Fosse Manor in the Cotswolds to receive further instructions. He must pose as a South African, an objector to the war, and once more takes on the name Cornelius Brand (an Anglicisation of the name he had used on his adventures in Germany in Greenmantle). He is upset by the idea of such a pose, but comforted by thoughts of his friend Peter Pienaar, briefly a successful airman and now a prisoner in Germany, and by the beauty of the Cotswold countryside. At Fosse, he meets two middle-aged spinsters, their cousin Launcelot Wake, a conscientious objector, and their niece Mary Lamington, a girl whose prettiness had struck Hannay earlier, while visiting a shell-shocked friend in the hospital where she works. It emerges that she is his contact, but she can tell him little more than that he must immerse himself in the world of pacifists and objectors, picking up ""atmosphere"". She gives him a label to paste inside his watch, an address where he will be staying, and advises him to pick up a copy of Pilgrim's Progress. Hannay heads to Biggleswick, a small town full of artists and writers. He buries himself in their pacifist community, attending meetings at a local hall, and meets Moxon Ivery, a local bigwig who seems vaguely familiar; he also sees Mary about the place. He hears of his old comrade John Blenkiron, and one day the American appears at one of the town's meetings; he passes a message to Hannay, arranging to meet in London. Blenkiron reveals that he has been hard at work for some time, around the world and undercover around England, on the track of a huge network of German spies and agents, with their head somewhere in Britain, leaking vital information to the enemy. He believes Ivery to be the spider at the centre of the web, but cannot prove it, and wants to use Ivery to feed misinformation to the Germans. He tells Hannay to try and head for Scotland and an American called Gresson, as he believes the information is being sent that way. Hannay goes to Glasgow, and contacts a trade union man named Amos, through whom he moves into Gresson's circles. He speaks at a meeting which descends into violence, and finds himself in at Gresson's side in a street fight. He saves the day, but makes an enemy of a big Fusilier named Geordie Hamilton. He later learns that Gresson makes regular boat trips up the coast, and plans to tag along. He rides the foul boat, but realises he needs a passport to go all the way north, and must follow it on shore, dodging the law. He has a hint from his contact that a mine at a place called Ranna may be what he seeks, and hears the boat stops at an iron mine, so he resolves to head that way. He leaves the boat and treks inland, but soon finds he is wanted by the law, and is caught by some soldiers. He claims to be a soldier too, and their Colonel takes him home with him, to meet his son to check his story; the son confirms all Hannay's army knowledge, and suspicions are allayed. He moves on, staying overnight with peasants, making his way onto Skye and towards Ranna. Arriving there, he meets Amos, who goes to fetch supplies, and sees the boat and Gresson, who meets a stranger on the hill. Hannay tracks the foreign-looking stranger, who Hannay describes as 'The Portuguese Jew', to a rocky bay, where the man disappears for a time before heading back. Hannay stays there overnight, and next morning fetches his provisions and searches the beach, finding the deep water of the bay ideal for submarines. He finds a hidden cave, and while preparing to lay in wait there sees Launcelot Wake climbing in. They fight and Hannay ties the other man up, but they soon realise they are on the same side. They stake out the cave, and in the night the man Hannay followed returns, meeting with a German from the sea; they exchange pass-phrases, and Hannay sees the hiding place they plan to use to pass messages. Wake identifies some of their talk as extracts from Goethe, and is sent back with messages for Amos and Bullivant, while Hannay ponders the phrases he overheard - Bommaerts, Chelius, Elfenbein ('Ivory', homophone of 'Ivery'), Wild Bird and Caged Bird. He heads for home, but Amos warns him the police are still after him, and gives him a new disguise, as a travelling bookseller. On the way south he takes up with another salesman, a man named Linklater who Amos had seen with Gresson. In a small town, Hannay is recognised by Geordie Hamilton, the big soldier he fought with in Glasgow, and flees once more with half the town, including Linklater, on his tail. He hides out in a troop train heading south; he gets off when it stops, is seen by Linklater, but at the station hooks up with his old pal Archie Roylance, a pilot who flies him on southwards. The plane breaks down, and Hannay, still pursued, flees afoot once more, upsetting a film set, stealing a bicycle and making his way into another town. On the verge of capture, his watch is stolen, and he is dragged of the streets by a man who recognises the badge he carries there; he is given a soldier's outfit and sent on his way. He arrives in London in the midst of an air raid; in a tube station he sees Ivery, the spymaster's guard down in fear, and Hannay finally recognises him as one of the ""Black Stone"" men he had tangled with in The Thirty-Nine Steps. Hurrying to tell his colleagues, he is arrested as a deserter and delayed. He eventually gets word through to Macgillivray at Scotland Yard, but his enemy has two hours start and evades capture. Hannay is encouraged by a letter from Peter Pienaar, and at a meeting with Bullivant, Blenkiron and Mary, he pushes for them to hound the man down. They discuss the clues Hannay overheard on the beach, and Ivery's fear of the bombing, and Mary reveals that Ivery has proposed to her. Hannay returns to the war in Europe for several months. He finds Geordie Hamilton, and employs him as his batman; he runs into Launcelot Wake, working as a support labourer behind the lines; he sees several adverts in English and German newspapers, which he suspects may be some kind of coded communication. Hamilton reports having seen Gresson in a party of touring visitors, and Hannay learns he had stayed behind in a small village for a time; he later hears a story of mysterious goings-on at a chateau near the same village. Flying with Archie Roylance on a reconnoitre, they get lost in fog and land near the chateau in question, where Hannay sees a mysterious old woman in a gas mask. Finding the castle is in a vital strategic spot, he returns to investigate, and learns the place is leased by a man named Bommaerts, one of the words he had overheard on the beach in Skye. Sneaking into the house at night, he finds Mary there too, and learns she has seen Ivery, now calling himself Bommaerts, who is in love with her. They find anthrax powder and a newspaper with one of the adverts deciphered, and then Ivery arrives. Confronted by Hannay, he flees, and Hannay shoots after him; the chateau burns down. A few days later, in January 1918, Hannay is withdrawn from the front for more special duties. Blenkiron gives dinner for Hannay and Mary, now engaged, where he learns that the newspaper advert scam has been broken up and its operatives, led by Gresson, arrested. Blenkiron has found a second code in the messages, used by Ivery and his masters, and has identified Ivery as the Graf von Schwabing, a former high-flyer unseated by scandal. He hears of the Wild Birds, a ruthless and deadly band of German spies, of whom Ivery is a leading member, and learns that they plan to head to Switzerland to pin Ivery down, using Mary as bait. Hannay makes his way south to Switzerland, where he poses as an injured Swiss, servant to the crippled Peter Pienaar, who has been released there. The two catch up, swap stories, and await instructions, keeping an eye on the nearby Pink Chalet, believed to be the base of the Wild Birds. Finally receiving Blenkiron's instructions, Hannay goes one night to the chalet, where he meets his contact, but is betrayed and taken prisoner by von Schwabing. The German tells Hannay he plans to capture Mary too, and send them both back to Germany to deal with at his pleasure, while the German army attacks and crushes their enemies. Von Schwabing leaves him pinned in an ancient rack, but he breaks free. He runs into the man he followed across Skye, and, using the pass-phrases he overheard there, poses as a conspirator. He is provided with a car and chases after von Schwabing, sending Peter to alert the others. After a long drive through the mountains, he crashes the car and runs the rest of the way, but arrives to find Mary already gone and Launcelot Wake waiting for him. Learning that von Schwabing is returning to the chalet the long way, they resolve to head over the mountains on foot, cutting out much of the road. Wake, an experienced mountaineer, leads a tough climb through snow and ice, exhausting himself in the process. Hannay drags him to the safety of a cottage, then continues by train and again on foot. He arrives at the house, and staggers in, to see von Schwabing gloating over Blenkiron, who appears to have walked into the same trap Hannay had the night before. However, Blenkiron was warned by Hannay's message, and has the house in his command; Geordie Hamilton and Amos emerge and take von Schwabing prisoner. At Hannay's suggestion, von Schwabing is sent to the front to see battle, while the others head to Paris, just as the Germans begin a mighty attack. As they near the front, they hear the defenses are crumbling beneath the onslaught, with Hannay's men at the heart of things. He resumes his command, and holds a thin line against the German advance, with Wake running messages for him, Blenkiron engineering the reserve trenches and Mary nursing in a nearby hospital. Amos and Hamilton guard von Schwabing, whose mind has gone strange. A long and hard battle ensues, in the course of which Wake dies heroically, von Schwabing runs into No Man's Land and is shot by his countrymen, and Blenkiron joins the fray with a party of Americans. At the last, with reinforcements due any moment, a party of German planes overflies Hannay's position, and are sure to bear news of the weak point if allowed to return; British planes fly against them, but one, flown by flying ace Lensch, evades them. Peter Pienaar, flying Archie Roylance's plane despite his bad leg, flies into him, bringing him down and killing himself in the process, but the day is saved."
2880,Point of Impact,thriller," Bob 'The Nailer' becomes involved in a plot by dirty big-government types and the story is about how he is first approached and used by them, and their subsequent attempts to end his life. Disenchanted with warfare when invalided out of the Marine Corps in the 1970s, Bob retreats to a small town in Arkansas, where he lives in a trailer and devotes himself to firearms. Here he is approached by representatives of RamDyne, a black-bag government organization whose personnel commit off-the-record atrocities as needed. The RamDyne people, masquerading as employees of Accutech, a high-end ammo manufacturer, enlist Bob's help. He detects their untruthfulness and confronts them, at which point they ""reveal"" to him their true motives: foiling an attempt on the life of the President of the United States at the hand of the same Soviet sniper who ended Bob's military career. Bob agrees to work for them but in the end, is framed into the crime of attempted assassination. He escapes the frame and finds himself friendless, pursued by every law enforcement agency in the nation, pursued by RamDyne, and suffering two nearly fatal bullet wounds. The major portion of the book details how he escapes the frame, wins absolution for the crime of which he was accused and wins the love of a woman."
2881,The General,thriller," The book starts off before Christmas with James Adams taking part in a mass riot organized by the leader of the SAG (Street Action Group), Chris Bradford. He later acts as Bradford's bodyguard during a meeting with a gun supplier and successfully plants a surveillance device, only for the police to arrive unexpectedly and arrest everyone, aborting the mission. Meanwhile his sister Lauren and some of the younger agents are sent to test the security of an air traffic control centre. They capture all the security guards and cause a lot of damage, but miss an engineer who calls in the RAF. The mission is still regarded as successful, having exposed security weaknesses. On New Year's Day a select team of CHERUB agents including James and Lauren fly to Las Vegas for a brief vacation on the way to Fort Reagan, the world's largest urban warfare training compound. They are to take part in a two-week exercise along with forty British commandos, posing as insurgents in an area controlled by an American battalion - a thousand soldiers. Weapons are restricted to paint guns and grenades. Under the leadership of the Ukrainian trainer Kazakov, who is bitterly anti-American, the 'insurgents' soon make their first move, knocking out aerial surveillance by wrecking the American spying drones. During this raid, James and the Sarge sneak into the army base to add a powerful laxative to the base's water system. Before long around nine-tenths of the American troops are disabled by violent diarrhoea. The insurgents persuade some drunken students, posing as 'civilians' in the exercise, to join them in storming the base. At this point the American military leader General Shirley is ""killed"" (killed in the exercise means that you have to get yourself washed and come back in 24 hours) by a paint grenade dropped by Kevin Sumner. The Americans are overrun and suspend the exercise, after only two days. Kazakov's tactics, though effective, are so controversial, that he and James are asked to leave before the exercise restarts. As they have some free time, Kazakov persuades James to put his mathematical skills to illegal use, playing blackjack in Las Vegas. Despite James almost being caught, they end up winning over $90,000."
2882,Cross Country,thriller," An African warlord known as the Tiger, aided by his crew of angry young men, horrifically murders author Eleanor 'Ellie' Cox and her entire family. Alex Cross and girlfriend Bree Stone go investigate, when Alex recalls Ellie had been his one time girlfriend, whom he had loved at one point. He is instantly terrified by this so much he gets no sleep, does no work for the case, and stays up late at night, sitting in his bed. He then figures out the Tiger's next murder, and arrives on time to stop the Tiger and his gang of kids, where most of the villains escape including the Tiger and most of his gang. After gaining access from the CIA he plans on going to Nigeria, where he hopes to find and stop the Tiger, using the knowledge based on the Tiger's whereabouts. After convincing a bitter Nanna and nervous Bree, he goes on a plaine trip to Nigeria, where he is annoyed by their customs. He is then kidnapped by 'cops' and put in jail, where his nose is broken, he is horribly injured, and starves as well as having to deal with no water. After nearly three days or more, he is bailed out by American Ian Flaherty who gives Cross advice to flee while he still can. He is then called by Bree who says there has been another murder by the Tiger. Instead of listening to Flaherty, Cross instead goes to Sudan, where he meets veteran, Moses, who feeds him and gives him water. Later that night, Cross, when alone by himself, is ambushed by the Tiger's gang, however, he escapes with Moses' help and buys a truck which he later gives to Moses. Father Bomata, a priest whom he met during the plaine ride to Nigeria, informs him his cousin, Addane Tansi, may be able to help Alex, who meets Addane, a reporter who had, unbeknowst to Alex, befriended Ellie, whom had gone to Nigeria some time before her death. Addane introduces Alex to her family and shares a kiss with him, which he refuses to think of because of Bree; Flaherty later reveals that the Tiger's real name is Abidemi Swonade. Alex and Addane go to a hobo camp where they are attacked by Janjaweed, ruthless men who rape, injure, and kill women and children. After barely escaping due to the 'Peacekeepers' who only do it so they gain no bad publicity, especially by Addane. After returning to Nigeria, Cross and Addane discover that Addane's family have been murdered. When trying to get closer, Cross and Addane are taken to jail by cops. Alex witnesses Addane get murdered by Tiger, after being raped, is released afterwards. Heading back to Washington, he is annoyed by all that has happened. After the course of events, many more murders have occurred. Heading home, he learns that Alex's family have been kidnapped by the Tiger, who then gives Alex coordinates to the hideout. Alex, Bree, and allie, John Sampson, go and defeat the Tiger's gang, while Alex follows Swonade (Tiger) whom nearly overpowers him, bit Alex kills the Tiger. Ian Flaherty is revealed to be working with Swonade and is arrested. Shortly afterward, his family are found; Alex instantly thinks the CIA might have worked with the Tiger. Alex calls upon Merrill Synder and Steven Millard, from the CIA, and arrests them, after discovering they and Flaherty were associated with Tiger. The book ends as Alex gets an alarming phone call from Kyle Craig, who has escaped from prison and wants revenge on Alex Cross, after the events in the previous book - and escaping from prison."
2883,Westwind,thriller," The Zephyr computer system monitors the progress of the United Kingdom's only spy satellite. When this system briefly goes offline, the book's main characters Hepton and Dreyfuss (the sole survivor of a space shuttle crash) have the only key to the enigma that must be solved if both men are to stay alive."
2884,The Man from St. Petersburg,thriller," The book is set just before the outbreak of the First World War. It is an account of how the lives of the main characters were interwoven with the success or failure of secret naval talks between Britain and Russia. In these, Britain had to win the support of Russia in order to make any headway with its navy. As a result, Czar Nicholas’s nephew Prince Alexei was sent to London for high-level bilateral talks. Lord Stephen Walden is married to a Russian aristocrat called Lydia. His wife is also related to the young visiting Prince and Walden was one of the people taking part in the talks. When Prince Alexei arrived in London, his presence aroused the interest of not only the establishment, but tragically that of Feliks, an anarchist. Feliks, also a Russian, decided to eliminate Prince Alexei so that the Anglo-Russian negotiations would collapse. Having failed once to assassinate the Russian prince, Feliks looked for alternative methods. Eventually, he learned that Lydia, his ex-lover, was married to Walden. He visited the Waldens’ home and was able to get details of the Prince’s whereabouts. But his plot was foiled when Lydia, guided by her intuition, realised that Feliks had evil designs and told her husband about Feliks’ visit. As the drama unfolded, Walden’s daughter Charlotte got to know the effervescent Feliks. It was through her that he discovered once more about the hiding place of the Russian prince. It was about this time that Charlotte learned that her true father was not Walden, but Feliks. Lydia had been pregnant for two months before marrying Walden but this fact was unknown to Walden himself. The story moved up to a crescendo with the Russian prince being hidden in the country home of the Waldens. Yet again, Feliks, the assassin, wheedled this piece information from Charlotte. With her active support, Feliks hid himself right in the Walden home while the Special Branch was combing the entire village for him. At this point, Feliks decided it was time to make his move. He set the house on fire, which forced the prince to emerge to escaspe the flames. When the prince came out, Feliks shot him dead. But he himself lost his life in his attempt to save Charlotte who was trapped in the house by the inferno. When Walden later learnt of the paternity of Charlotte, he took it in his stride. For Feliks, it was a case of poetic justice. In the final chapter, Winston Churchil - at the time First Lord of the Admiralty and having recent experience as Home Secretary - arrives on the scene and formulates a comprehensive plan for damage control: Disposing of Feliks' body, hiding that such a person ever existed and regretfully informing the Czar that his nephew died in the fire but had already signed the treaty. Thus - in common with the conventions of Secret History - the whole affair remains hidden from public scrutiny and the First World War breaks out on schedule, and goes on with its four years of mass bloodshed. bn:দ্য ম্যান ফ্রম সেন্ট পিটার্সবার্গ es:El hombre de San Petersburgo fr:L'Homme de Saint-Pétersbourg it:L'uomo di Pietroburgo"
2885,CHERUB: The Recruit,thriller," The book begins with James Choke getting sent to a children's care home called Nebraska house, after his mother dies from a alcohol related incident, where he shares a room with best friend Kyle Blueman, a CHERUB agent who recruits him. Meanwhile James' sister Lauren is taken to live with her father Ron Onions a scumbag of a step dad. James gets arrested for stealing beer. Next morning James awakes to find himself on the CHERUB campus where the chairman, Dr Terrence McAfferty - often called 'Mac' - introduces him to CHERUB and puts him through a series of entrance tests which he passes, including James changing his surname to Adams. James is admitted into CHERUB. In order to start going on missions all agents must complete Basic Training. Before this, however, he must learn to swim as he has a fear of swimming. He is taught by Amy Collins, a sixteen-year-old cherub in which he passes. During this James meets Kerry Chang, with whom he has a strong friendship. James' first mission takes place in the hippy camp Fort Harmony. James and Amy Collins must befriend the hippies at Fort Harmony and find out more about the potential attack at Petrocon 2004 by the terrorist group Help Earth. The two discover a plot to release anthrax bacteria into the air in the conference centre. James then gets the anthrax virus and is rushed to a military hospital where he is then treated. The police are called in and they raid Fort Harmony to prevent the attack from happening. Fort Harmony is burnt to the ground, and James is saved. * James Adams/Choke: The main character, a twelve year old boy whose mother dies from an alcohol overdose. He meets Kyle Blueman at Nebraska house, a children's home. He joins CHERUB and changes his name from Choke to Adams. Later he embarks on a mission to overthrow an eco-terrorist plot. * Kerry Chang: Kerry is James's basic training partner. She is one of James's closest friends and has a severe knee injury, which prevented her from completing basic training in the past. * Amy Collins: She teaches James to swim and joined him on the mission to infiltrate the Eco terrorist group known as 'Help Earth'. * Bruce Norris: Bruce is a master martial artist, but is revealed to behave like a baby. He is one of James' best friends. * Kyle Blueman: Kyle is James' best friend. He is the first person James knows at Cherub because of the fact that James shared a bedroom with Kyle at Nebraska house. Kyle is two years older than James' and meets his first girlfriend in the process."
2886,Hover Car Racer,thriller," Jason Chaser is an independent Hover Car racer, who along with his autistic little brother - known only as ""the Bug"" - are competing in regional races, with hopes of reaching the Pro circuits, but in reality have little chance of doing so. During a local derby, Scott Syracuse representing the International Race School is impressed with Jason's skill and despite damage to the ""Argonaut"" placing them last, offers him a position at the IRC for the next season. Jason accepts, and he and the Bug find themselves in Tasmania (now a privately owned training school) along with some of the best student Hover Car racers in the world. Jason is paired with independent Mech Chief Sally McDuff, who will look after their equipment and pit crew, including a robot named ""Tarantula"" which will perform most of the actual pit work - changing the magneto drives which enable the hover cars to function, the compressed gas for steering, and the coolant to prevent the magneto drives from melting. During the first few races, Jason is outclassed and bullied - both on and off the track - by the other racers who all consider him inferior - the perfect Xavier Xonora, his own team-mates Washington and Wong, and Barnaby Becker, who Jason already knew from earlier races. Even the equipment seems to be against them as they - and the only female racer Ariel Piper - suffer more than their fair share of faulty mag drives, substandard coolant, and failures on the part of Tarantula. Despite this, and due to their natural talent they begin to rise in the rankings, until it becomes apparent that they both have a chance of becoming 2 of the top 4 rated racers who will be invited to take part in the New York Masters. Ariel and Jason have forged a friendly relationship which becomes soured when Jason is critical of Ariels decision to use her body to gain advantage and keep in the good grace of Fabian, a ruthless, yet influential French Pro racer. When Fabian dismisses her after Jason beats her in a one-on-one race the two rekindle their friendship, which Jason consolidates when he later overhears LeClerq and Smythe (The Headmaster & stores chief respectively) discussing sabotaging Ariels pit robot, and at the same time admitting to having been responsible for her and Jason's earlier equipment misfortune. Jason forewarns Ariel, and the attempt to plant a virus on her pit robot backfires, instead disrupting the entire race power grid, meaning that none of the pit robots work. All racers have to perform a manual pit stop, and due to previously practising such tactics Jason and Ariel not only win the race, but Jason also ensures his place in the New York Masters. At the same time Jason attracts the attention of two individuals - Umberto Lombardi, the billionaire owner of Team Lombardi, and Dido, a beautiful Italian girl who thanks to her rich parents is able to follow Jason around the next few races. Jason agrees to trial race with Team Lombardi, and begins a tentative relationship with Dido, stilted slightly due to his age and inexperience with the opposite sex - a factor which causes Sally to tease him relentlessly. Prior to the New York Masters Jason is involved in a large and dangerous crash, completely destroying his Team Lombardi Hover racer, and with it much of his confidence, however with the aid of Sally & the Bug he regains his nerve, but not before several racers take advantage of his doubts and gain points that otherwise could have been his. Jason and Ariel get their revenge on Fabian when he challenges Jason to an exhibition race while in Italy - but Jason secretly swaps places and it is in fact Ariel who races - and beats - Fabian, thus ridiculing him for earlier comments when he stated that Ariel was ""quite frankly, a non-event"", also possibly alluding to her night with him. After again barely winning his next race Jason realises that Dido has been feeding Xavier information, including his doubts and race strategies, and he breaks off the relationship - after which Sally discovers that Dido is in fact Xavier's cousin, and the two are seen in public together. Jason and Xavier both race in New York, and as Xavier points out he is the far superior racer in every respect - something that Jason is forced to agree with. After reviewing all of Xavier's races Jason formulates a strategy based on not only Xaviers actual superiority, but how he perceives himself as well: Jason realises that Xavier celebrates victory before the race is won, and uses this to surprise him with a late charge and wins whilst Xavier is otherwise distracted already saluting the crowds whilst still on the home straight. During the rest of the New York races Jason and the Bug slowly collect points, relying on luck as much as skill, and ultimately find themselves in a last race with the world champion Alessandro Romba. After pulling a slight lead the Argonaut II suffers another bout of sabotage and literally meters from the finish line the rear stabiliser wing is destroyed by a tiny explosive charge placed by a corrupt betting agent, Ravi Gupta, who wishes to stack the odds in his favour. In a last desperate manoeuver, Jason uses his cars ejector seat to fire himself - and his steering wheel containing the Argonauts transponder - across the finish line thus winning the championship. Romba shows himself to be quite different to most of the other pro racers so far encountered, and is not only magnanimous in defeat, but genuinely pleased for Jason, and Jason himself secures a full-time racing position with Team Lombardi."
2887,Saving Faith,thriller," The botched attempt on Faith's life led to an all-out hunt for her by three parties - the FBI, the CIA and her boss, Danny Buchanan. Fleeing for her life, Faith was not sure who she can trust, including the stranger Lee Adams who saved her life and admitted being hired to watch her. While Faith was on the run, Buchanan planned on turning tables on Thornhill before it was too late, but found himself outclassed as an amateur against a professional spook. Meanwhile, the FBI began to look among their staff for a traitor, with suspicions falling to the dead agent, and Brooke Reynolds. Despite the setbacks, Thornhill began mastermind several separate moves to deal with Buchanan, Faith and the FBI."
2888,Death Sentence,thriller," Continuing six months after Death Wish left off, Paul Benjamin has moved from New York to Chicago after his catatonic daughter died in an institution, a result of the brutal attack that changed Paul Benjamin into a vigilante. Paul resumes his private violent war as he stalks criminals in the streets of Chicago. The only thing that may distract him from his crusade is a beautiful woman he starts cordially dating in his new life. And as Paul ends up having a double life, an imitating vigilante is out in the streets violently killing off criminals just like Paul. What's worse is that vigilantism soon begins to become a cry of publicity as the police have to look for their man before innocent people start dying out of injustice. Paul is not only after criminals or justice anymore, but he's also looking for a man who is as equally as dangerous as the vigilante he has become."
2889,The Magician: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel,thriller," Sophie and Josh Newman – 15 year-old twins – are in Paris with the alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel, and his friend, Scathach. They now face Niccolò Machiavelli and his colleague, but also rival, John Dee, both work for the Dark Elders. Machiavelli is plotting to capture the twins and Flamel with the missing pages of the Codex – or Book of Abraham the Mage – before Dee can arrive in France from San Francisco. The twins seek out a friend and student to Nicholas, Comte de Saint-Germain, who teaches Sophie to use the elemental magic of Fire. Saint-Germain's wife, Joan of Arc, helps Sophie to learn to control her aura and to sort out the Witch of Endor's memories from her own. Josh is given the legendary stone sword Clarent, twin blade of Excalibur, by Nicholas. Clarent is an ancient Fire Elemental sword. Josh, Joan, and Scathach encounter three Disir, more commonly referred to as Valkyries. The Disir are ancient enemies of Scathach and bring along the soul-devouring Nidhogg, a ferocious monster once trapped in the roots of Yggdrasil – the world tree. The monster was freed after Dee destroyed Yggdrasil and attacks Scathach but fails to slay her. Instead, it captures Scathach in its claws, but flees with Scathach when the ancient sword Clarent, wielded by Josh, wounds it. Meanwhile, Nicholas' wife, Perenelle Flamel, who had been captured, is taken to Alcatraz as a prisoner. While Josh is fighting Nidhogg, Joan of Arc and Sophie are busy fighting two of the Disir. After a lengthy battle, Sophie manages to freeze the two in an iceberg. They chase after Nidhogg. As Nidhogg flees, Dee, Machiavelli and Dagon (Machiavelli's assistant), who are watching, express remorse at the Disir's failure. Machiavelli then allows Dagon to chase Nidhogg and kill Scathach if the beast fails to do so. The monster escapes through the streets of Paris, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. One of the trio of Disir, as well as Josh (who is still trying to save Scathach) follow. They arrive on the banks of the Seine and, with the help of Dee, Josh manages to stall the Disir and escape. He then leaves with Dee and Machiavelli. Sophie, Joan, and Nicholas arrive, defeat the Disir and Nidhogg, and save Scathach. On Alcatraz, Perenelle is helped by the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala, a Spanish sailor. Sophie, Joan, and Nicholas are talking to Scathach when Dagon erupts out of the river and drags her back in with him. The group miss Scathach, but decide to go after Josh, and, by using Sophie's aura, they track Dee and his comrades to the catacombs of Paris. There, Josh's magical ability is awakened by Mars Ultor and he is given a special ""gift"" similar to what Sophie received from the Witch of Endor – Josh now has Mars' military knowledge. When Sophie, Josh, and the rest escape from the catacombs, Dee and Machiavelli have set a trap, making the gargoyles and statues of Paris come to life and attack. Josh, Sophie, Saint-Germain, and Joan of Arc combine powers to destroy the statues. Flamel and the twins escape via a train and head for London. Perenelle is still stuck on Alcatraz and fears recapture."
2890,A Cage of Eagles,thriller," The book centers on the battle of wits and the ambiguous relationship developing between U-boat ace Otto Kruger, leader of the captured Germans, and Ian Fleming in his real-life WWII role as an intelligence officer which would later inspire the James Bond books. It ends on December 1941, with an open-ended conclusion clearly leaving the possibility of a sequel."
2891,River of Death,thriller," Hamilton, allegedly an expert on the jungle, shows up in Brazil having apparently found a lost Indian civilization in the wilderness of the Amazon jungle. This attracts the attention of Smith, a wealthy German who appeared out of nowhere in the late 1940s with a fortune and group of ruthless cronies. Smith hires Hamilton to take him to see the lost city. Hamilton with his two trusty companions, together with Smith and his entourage set off, facing giant anacondas, giant spiders, cannibalistic natives, and so on, discovering a settlement of Nazi war criminals and their descendents, living as if the Third Reich had never ended."
2892,Long Lost,thriller," Myron Bolitar receives a phone call from an ex-lover, Terese, who asks him to come to Paris immediately. Upon arriving, Myron is informed by French police that Terese’s ex-husband, Rick, has been murdered and Terese is the prime suspect. Terese is soon cleared of the charges. At the crime scene of the murder, blood was found that matched that of Rick’s daughter. Terese informs Myron that ten years previously, her only daughter with Rick, Miriam, was killed in a car accident that led to Terese and Rick’s divorce. After nearly being kidnapped, Myron catches a glimpse of a teenage blonde girl who resembles Terese and wonders if perhaps Miriam’s death was faked. Myron sees the same girl again and follows her into a house in London. There, he is ambushed by terrorists who kill Rick’s second wife. After murdering the lead terrorist, Myron is taken to a “black site,” a secret interrogation facility maintained by the United States government to torture suspected terrorists. When his innocence is realized, he is released but does not recall anything that happened while incarcerated. Meanwhile, back in the United States, DNA samples taken from Miriam’s grave prove that she is in fact dead. Myron suspects that Terese’s frozen embryos were used illegally to create a second daughter, the elusive blonde girl he has been seeking. Myron and his accomplice Win investigate the charity “Save the Angels,” which promotes adoption over stem-cell research and is run by right-wing conservative Christians. Rick had been investigating the charity shortly before being murdered. Myron and the French detective Berleand track the teenage blonde girl to a home that was pictured on the “Save the Angels” website. There, they are ambushed by a terrorist cell and Berleand is killed. Upon entering the home, Myron discovers a group of blonde, blue-eyed children who have been raised from stolen embyos by terrorists in the hopes of training them for suicide missions. The terrorist cell is wiped out by law enforcement and the brainwashed children are taken into custody. Myron tracks down Terese to Angola, where she has been hiding with her long lost daughter since the ambush in London. It is implied at the end of the book that law enforcement failed to track down all of the terrorists: a blonde, blue-eyed teenage boy with a heavy backpack is seen stepping from a bus and walking into a crowded area of tourists."
2893,The Ice Limit,thriller," Meteorite hunter Nestor Masangkay arrives on Isla Desolación, an island near Cape Horn in Chile, tracking a possible meteorite. Using a tomographic scanner, Masangkay confirms that not only is there a meteorite present under the ground, but that it is incredibly massive. Excited, Masangkay digs down to unearth a small portion of the meteorite and is subsequently killed in a flash of light. Some months later, Masangkay's equipment is recovered by a Yaghan native and eventually makes its way to New York billionaire Palmer Lloyd, a collector of rare and exotic archeological artifacts. Wanting the meteorite for his soon-to-be-opened museum, Lloyd hires Masangkay's former partner, Sam McFarlane, to confirm the meteorite's existence and assist in its recovery. He also hires Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc., a high-priced ""problem solving"" firm, to design a plan for the unprecedented task of recovering and transporting what has been confirmed by McFarlane to be the largest meteorite ever discovered. Eli Glinn, the president of EES, puts together a comprehensive plan to effect the recovery, accounting for literally every complication he deems possible. To effect this plan he composes a team to augment Lloyd's personnel, notably including Rachel Amira, EES's brilliant yet grating mathematics expert, and Sally Britton, an out-of-work supertanker captain whose last ship crashed while she was drunk and on duty. Despite Britton's public image as a dangerous alcoholic, analysis by EES has led Glinn to peg her as professional, talented, and motivated never to fail again. After meeting her in person, Glinn finds himself becoming attracted to her. Glinn's expedition sets off for Cape Horn in a brand new oil supertanker, the Rolvaag, retrofitted with various high tech equipment but disguised to appear as worn down, barely functional ship, traveling under the guise of a failing mining company searching for iron ore. Despite possessing a legitimate mining agreement to this effect, Glinn is forced to bribe local Chilean officials for access to Isla Desolación, falsely confessing that they are searching for gold in order to allay any further suspicions. Both of these actions are witnessed by Commandante Vallenar, a locally stationed Chilean Navy officer, who objects angrily but is powerless to stop the bribes from being accepted. Once on Isla Desolación, operations start almost immediately. The body of Masangkay is recovered and analyzed by the expedition's doctor, who concludes that he was killed by a lightning strike; McFarlane attributes this to the meteorite acting as a lightning rod. Once properly examined, the meteorite is shown to be much smaller — and denser — than initially expected. However, when Glinn's crew attempts to lift the meteorite using hydraulic jacks the units fail, killing two members of the expedition. Tests McFarlane run on a sample of the meteorite reveal that the exterior of the meteorite is a single element, not an alloy, and has an approximate atomic number of 177. Though this explains why the jacks failed — the weight of the meteorite is somewhere in the area of 25,000 tons, more than double what was expected — it is also staggering scientific discovery: no known element has an atomic number anywhere near 177. McFarlane speculates that this element is part of the undiscovered elemental ""island of stability"", and further states that the meteorite could only have come from outside the solar system. During this McFarlane also becomes romantically involved with Amira. Now properly accounting for its weight, Glinn's crew is able to load the meteorite onto a massive cart which will move the meteorite to the Rolvaag. That evening, Commandante Vallenar sends a member of his crew, Timmers, to investigate Glinn's excavation. Timmers infiltrates the dig site, kills a guard, and enters the area housing the meteorite. Surprised by what he discovers, Timmers reaches out to touch the meteorite and is fatally electrocuted. Though confused at first, the expedition eventually is able to piece together what happened, concluding that the meteorite discharges electricity on contact. Plans to move the meteorite continue, albeit much more carefully. At the same time, Commandante Vallenar positions himself off the coast of Isla Desolación to prevent the Rolvaag from leaving. Glinn meets with the Commandante in an attempt to secure safe passage, admitting that the expedition is there to recover a meteorite, but is rebuffed by Vallenar. The next evening Glinn and his crew load the meteorite onto the ship under cover of fog, leaving lights and running equipment on Isla Desolación to serve as a distraction, then break for the open sea. When Commandante Vallenar fires on the Rolvaag and gives chase Glinn detonates two explosive devices surreptitiously placed on the Commandante's propellers during his visit, disabling the Chilean ship. This proves to be a temporary solution, as Vallenar's crew is able to replace one of the damaged propellers. By this time the Rolvaag is well on its way to international waters, and Glinn predicts that Vallenar will not pass the Chilean border (however, the doctrine of hot pursuit appears to allow this). When the Commandante continues pursuing them, Glinn belatedly realizes that Timmers must have been Vallenar's son; Vallenar has realized that Timmers is dead and intends to kill them out of vengeance. Captain Britton also notes that Vallenar's course has now cut them off from any chance of help. With no other choice, Glinn orders the ship to proceed south towards the Ice Limit, the border of Antarctic waters, where icebergs and even ice islands are common. During the Rolvaags flight the meteorite discharges again, though this time without anyone touching its surface. Eventually McFarlane and Amira figure out what causes the electrical discharges: contact with salt-containing liquids such as human sweat or ocean water. Meanwhile, Vallenar's ship closes on the Rolvaag over the course of several hours, getting into firing range just as the ship enters an area of icebergs. Though Captain Britton is able to avoid destruction by feigning the ship being in distress, eventually Vallenar inflicts enough damage to disable the ship completely. As his vessel closes between two ice islands to destroy the Rolvaag, a team of Glinn's men detonate explosives on one of the towering icebergs, shearing off a massive chunk of ice which capsizes and sinks the Commandante's ship. Though no longer pursued by the Chilean Commandante, the Rolvaag is now dead in the water, and the nearest rescue vessel is unable to approach for several hours due to a storm in the area. The continuing rough seas begin to take their toll on the ship; eventually Captain Britton realizes that the meteorite is severely unbalancing the ship, and must be jettisoned to prevent the Rolvaag from being snapped in half. At first both Palmer Lloyd and Sam McFarlane object vehemently to the idea, but after some argument admit that it may be the only way to save the ship and themselves. Glinn prepares to activate the jettisoning system, but abruptly stops, declaring that he is certain the ship will survive. Attempts to convince him otherwise fail, and as he is the only person with access to the system the crew has no choice but to abandon ship. Glinn moves to the meteorite holding area, attempting to secure the meteorite, only to discover that most of the securing devices have failed. Undaunted, he continues his efforts until he is interrupted by Captain Britton, who begs him to leave the ship with him in a lifeboat, confessing, ""I could love you, Eli."" Moments later the meteorite makes contact with the ocean, discharging a massive amount of electricity. McFarlane, Amira, Lloyd, and the rest of the crew watch from the lifeboats as the Rolvaag snaps in half and sinks. The lifeboats are ill-prepared for the harsh Antarctic waters, and many of the crew start to suffer from hypothermia immediately. The survivors take refuge on an ice island, where they start to slowly succumb to the extreme conditions. Amira attempts to tell McFarlane something she concluded about the meteorite, giving him a CD containing the test data they collected, but before she can finish she dies. McFarlane begins to slip away as well, but before he can the crew is rescued by a helicopter. Three days later, Palmer Lloyd and the handful of survivors are recovering inside a British Antarctic science station. Sam McFarlane arrives in Lloyd's room and begins to tell him about Amira's attempts to tell him about her discovery. Though Lloyd refuses to engage him, McFarlane continues speaking, describing a series of small ocean floor earthquakes recorded at a specific Antarctic location, and then revealing that the Rolvaag sank at the same location. He finishes by saying that he has figured out what Amira wanted to say: that what they recovered was not a meteorite, it was a seed, and that it is now sprouting."
2894,Flight of Eagles,thriller," Jack Kelso, an American ace pilot in World War 1, is shot down and nursed back to health by a German nurse, Baroness Elsa von Halder. They marry and return to America after the war. After Jack is killed in a car accident, Elsa returns to Germany with their eldest son Max, who assumes the title of Baron von Halder. Harry, his identical younger (by twenty minutes) brother, remains with his grandfather, millionaire Abe Kelso. Inspired by their father's example, both brothers become ace and much decorated pilots in opposing forces. Max joins the Luftwaffe and Harry, after fighting in Finland, returns to England, joining the Royal Air Force as a 'Finn'. The brothers rise in rank and number of 'kills', occasionally hearing of the others exploits. They actually meet again in the skies and also when Harry is shot down. Max summons an English rescue boat using his airborne radio. Elsa continues her social climbing amongst the nazi elite, although Max warns her of the potential danger. Harry becomes a special duties pilot and crashes in France whilst landing a French Resistance leader. He is imprisoned at a local chateau where he and Max finally meet face to face. Himmler, learning of the capture of one ace, arranges for the brothers to be blackmailed. Max is to assume Harry's character, 'escape' in England and assassinate General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Fearing for his Mother's life, Max is forced to agree and flies back home. Elsa tries to commit suicide, but is shot dead in the attempt. The brothers' plot fails, mainly because the brothers see themselves as flyers and honourable men, not assassins. Max returns to France, rescues Harry and flies back to England, but Max is killed when they are intercepted by an Me109. Harry returns to flying and is killed in a later mission, late in the war. The narrative is surrounded by a 'frame story', with a prologue and epilogue. In 1998, the author and his wife, an experienced pilot, are forced to ditch their airplane in the English channel and are rescued by the Cold Harbour lifeboat. They learn something of what happened in Cold Harbour during the War and later meet other surviving characters. A central character of the story is 'Tarquin', a bear wearing flying kit with both RAF and RFC insignia. He was Jack's lucky mascot, later Harry's and was lost when Harry crashed. Tarquin passed to a French family and was later bought in an English antiques shop by the author's wife, also as a flying mascot. There are a few twist reveals in the final chapter of the story, having to do with the fate of some of the earlier characters. Also when the twins are split after their father dies, they argue over who will take possession of Tarquin, they agree the bear stays in America, Max the oldest wins the toss and stays with his grandfather as ""Harry"" sending Harry to Germany as ""Max""...so when Himmler forces Max to become Harry, they are actually switching back to their original selves. The book is supposedly based on a true story. pl:Lot Orłów"
2895,Op Center: Mirror Image,thriller," The Cold War is over. And chaos is setting in. The new president of Russia is trying to create a democratic regime. But there are strong elements within the country that are trying to stop him: the ruthless Russian mafia, the right-wing nationalists, and those nefarious forces that will do whatever it takes to return Russia to the days of the Czar. Op-Center, the newly-founded but highly successful crisis management team, begins a race against the clock and against the hardliners. Their task is made even more difficult by the discovery of a Russian counterpart... but this one's controlled by those same repressive hardliners and represents everything Op-Center stands for. Two rival Op-Centers, virtual mirror images of each other."
2896,Amnesia,thriller," The book is dictated by an unknown narrator and follows Izzy Darlow, a mental hospital employee that volunteers his time in order to make amends for a robbery committed during his youth. It is there that he falls for the mute Katie, a patient at the hospital that had been subjected to extreme sexual abuse."
2897,The Boys from Brazil,thriller," Yakov Liebermann is a Nazi hunter: he runs a center in Vienna that documents crimes against humanity perpetrated during the Holocaust. The waning interest of the Western nations in tracking down Nazi criminals has forced him to move the center to his lodgings. Then, in September 1974, Liebermann receives a phone call from a young man in Brazil who claims he has just finished eavesdropping on the so-called ""Angel of Death,"" Dr. Josef Mengele, the concentration camp medical doctor who performed horrible experiments on camp victims during World War II. According to the young man, Mengele is activating the Kameradenwerk for a strange assignment: he is sending out six Nazis to kill 94 men, who share a few common traits. All men are civil servants, and all of them have to be killed on or about particular dates, spread over several years. All will be 65 years old at the time of their killing. Before the young man can finish the conversation, he is killed. Liebermann hesitates about what to do, and wonders if the call was a prank. But he investigates and discovers that the killings the young man spoke of are taking place. As he tries to determine why the seemingly unimportant men are being killed, he discovers by coincidence that the children of two of the men are identical. It eventually transpires each of the 94 targets has a son aged 13, a genetic clone of Adolf Hitler planted by Mengele. Mengele wishes to create a new Führer for the Nazi movement, and is trying to ensure that the lives of the clones follow a similar path to Hitler's. Each civil servant father is married to a woman about 23 years younger, and their killing is an attempt to mimic the death of Hitler's own father. Liebermann manages to work out who one of the intended targets is, and travels to warn him that his life may be in danger. However, Mengele reaches the man first, kills him, and then encounters Liebermann. Liebermann is shot but Mengele is killed by the targeted man's collection of dangerous dogs. The plan is halted, but 18 Hitler clones have already lost their fathers. The book ends with one of the Hitler clones developing delusions of grandeur."
2898,Trouble Follows Me,thriller," It's 1945. Ensign Sam Drake attends a party on his last night stationed in Hawaii and meets the woman of his dreams. But before the night is out, her best friend is dead in an upstairs room at the party. It appears to be suicide. The next day Sam starts his leave before receiving a new post. He returns to his home town of Detroit, and decides to check into a connection there between the dead woman and a radical group of black activists. Another death quickly follows and Sam finds himself on a cross-country adventure, haunted by dangerous characters everywhere he turns. Trouble Follows Me was reprinted by Lion Paperbacks in 1950 and 1955 under the title of Night Train, with cover art that presented it as a ""race novel"" to capitalize on the wartime Detroit riots. The book, under both titles, is currently out of print."
2899,The 5th Horseman,thriller," Somebody dies. A young mother is recuperating in a San Francisco hospital when she is suddenly gasping for breath. The call button fails to bring help in time. The hospital's doctors, some of the best in the nation, are completely mystified by her death. How did this happen? Apocalypse nears. This is not the first such case at the hospital. Just as patients are about to be released with a clean bill of health, their conditions take a devastating turn for the worse. Accompanied by the newest member of the Women's Murder Club, Yuki Castellano, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer probes deeper into the incidents. Could these cases just be appalling coincidences? Or is a maniac playing God with people's lives? When someone close to the Women's Murder Club begins to exhibit the same frightening symptoms, Lindsay fears no one is safe. The 5th horseman rides. It is a wild race against time as Lindsay's investigation reveals a hospital administration determined to shield its reputation at all costs. And while the hospital wages an explosive court battle that grips the entire nation, Lindsay and the Women's Murder Club hunt for a merciless killer among its esteemed medical staff."
2900,Witch Hunt,thriller," A fishing boat sinks in the English Channel in the middle of the night, and the evidence points to murder. Ex-Special Branch agent Dominic Elder comes out of retirement to help investigate the explosion of the boat, as it appears that his long-time obsession, a female assassin known as Witch, may be responsible. Using the boat to get to England from France, Witch left a subtle trail of clues to announce her arrival and to warn off Elder. But that is the least of Special Branch's worries, if Elder's well-honed intuition is correct. He has seen her work before and knows her to be a resourceful enemy, who always seems a step ahead of the authorities. With an imminent summit of world leaders to be held in London, Witch's target seems obvious. Young Michael Barclay's thoroughness leads him onto Witch's trail, with the help of his liaison in the French police, Dominique. Apart from her language help and guidance around Paris, Michael is sexually attracted to her. The team of detectives and MI5 agents, and the terrorist, play cat-and-mouse with each other in Scotland, England, France, and even briefly visit a former associate of Witch in prison in Germany."
2901,Killshot,thriller," Carmen and Wayne Colson live a quiet, suburban life. Carmen is a realtor while Wayne is an ironworker. Suddenly everything is violently changed when they stumble upon an extortion plot hatched by two crooks, Armand ""Blackbird"" Degas and his partner Richie Nix. While Richie is unstable and impatient, the Blackbird is calm and collected. After Wayne forces the two away with a Sleever Bar, the criminals decide to exact vengeance on the Colsons, leading to a tense climax."
2902,The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest,thriller," The book begins as Lisbeth Salander is flown to Sahlgrenska Hospital. It picks up where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off. After surgery, Salander is moved to an intensive care ward under guard, accessible only to police, doctors, nurses, and her lawyer, Annika Giannini (who is also Mikael Blomkvist's sister). Zalachenko, whom Salander injured with an axe, is two rooms away. Niedermann, thanks to botched responses from the local law enforcement, is on the run after murdering a police officer and carjacking and kidnapping a woman during his escape. Niedermann seeks help from his old friends at the outlaw Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club, kills the treasurer and steals 800,000 kronor before disappearing. These events prompt immediate action from ""the Section,"" a secret division of Swedish Security Service (Säpo) created for purposes of counterintelligence and responsible for Zalachenko's asylum and supervision. Evert Gullberg, founder and former chief of the Section, asks former Section associate Frederik Clinton to become acting head of the Section and plots to deflect attention away from the Section by silencing Salander, Blomkvist and Zalachenko. They form a working alliance with the unsuspecting prosecutor of Salander's case, Richard Ekström. Dr. Peter Teleborian, the psychiatrist who supervised Salander when she was previously institutionalized on the Section's orders, provides Ekstrom with a false psychiatric examination and recommends that she be reinstitutionalized, preferably without a trial. Gullberg, who has terminal cancer, murders Zalachenko in his hospital bed and then commits suicide. Section operatives stage a suicide for Gunnar Björck, the junior Säpo officer who had handled Zalachenko after the latter's defection, and who was Blomkvist's source of information about the Section. Other Section operatives burgle Blomkvist's apartment and mug Annika Giannini, specifically making off with copies of the classified Säpo file that contains Zalachenko's identity, and plant bugs in the homes and phones of Millennium staff. Undeterred by these events, or perhaps even motivated by the fact that they all occurred on the same day, Blomkvist continues to investigate the Section for a Millennium exposé. Blomkvist hires Dragan Armansky's Milton Security to handle countersurveillance. Armansky, on his own initiative, informs Säpo Constitutional Protection Director Torsten Edklinth about the constitutional violations. Edklinth, along with his assistant Monica Figuerola, begins a clandestine investigation into the Section. After Figuerola confirms the allegations, Edklinth contacts the Justice Minister and the Prime Minister who approve a full investigation by Constitutional Protection, and later invite Blomkvist to a confidential meeting in which they are to share information. They agree to Blomkvist's deadline—he intends to publish his findings about the state's manipulation of Salander's constitutional rights on July 15, the third day of her trial, and the government agree to arrest any identified ringleaders of the Section at the same time. Meanwhile, Figuerola and Blomkvist have an affair. Blomkvist convinces Salander's doctor, Dr. Anders Jonasson, to return her handheld computer. Blomkvist arranges to have a cellular phone placed in a duct leading to Salander's room, granting her Internet access through the resulting hotspot. Jonasson also helps her fake complications from her surgery, so that she can remain in the hospital's custody (and out of the police's). Meanwhile, Blomkvist, Armansky, Edklinth and their network of allies continue their joint counter-surveillance, feeding them a disinformation campaign and turning up nine central players in the Section. Whilst all of the above is going on, Erika Berger leaves Millennium to be editor-in-chief at Sweden's largest daily paper, the (fictional) Svenska Morgon-Posten (S.M.P.). Meanwhile, Henry Cortez, junior Millennium reporter, uncovers a story about a Swedish toilet-manufacturing company that engages child labour in Vietnam. His research reveals that the boss of said firm is Magnus Borgsjö, who is CEO and major shareholder at S.M.P. and hired Berger for her new position. Blomkvist gives a copy of the story to Berger, agreeing to delay its publication until August while she confronts Borgsjö and convinces him to resign gracefully. Berger begins receiving graphic e-mails and threats from an anonymous source, most of them calling her a ""whore;"" a junior reporter at S.M.P. also receives sexual propositions purportedly from Berger. Erika asks her staff to remain on alert, but matters escalate when the stalker breaks into Berger's home and steals scandalous private materials, such as high school love letters, a sex tape made with her husband Gregor Beckman, and her copy of Cortez's story. Berger engages Milton Security to help secure her home, and Armansky sends over former police officer Susanne Linder to provide protection, as Beckman is abroad on business. Salander, while preparing her own statements and legal defense in the safety of the hospital, discovers Berger's plight and mobilizes the ""Hacker Nation,"" an elite and international group of computer wizards, to assist. They determine that Peter Fredriksson, S.M.P. employee and former high school classmate of Berger, is the culprit. Linder steps outside the law to confront Fredriksson and recovers Berger's things. However, Fredriksson has already passed Millenium's exposé on to Borgsjö. Borgsjö orders Berger to suppress the story at Millennium or lose her job at S.M.P. Berger instead runs the story in that day's issue of S.M.P. (under Cortez's byline) and then resigns in protest. Borgsjö and Fredriksson are both forced out. Berger, meanwhile, is accepted back at Millenium with open arms. As Salander's trial approaches, the Section abruptly realize that Blomkvist's and Millenium's seeming lack of preparation are simply a cover story for their (successful, if now detected) campaign of misinformation. Clinton, having no idea what Blomkvist knows or plans to publish, arranges to plant cocaine in Blomkvist's apartment and simultaneously hire two members of the Yugoslav mafia to murder him; their intention is to frame him as a drug dealer and thus destroy his credibility. The former is easily undermined by the security cameras installed by Milton Security, which capture the plant; the latter requires the intervention of Figuerola, Andersson, Modig and several others from both Säpo and Milton. Blomkvist and Berger are spirited off to a Milton safehouse, allowing Säpo to further the misdirection by claiming that the two hitmen simply had the bad luck to stop for a meal at the same restaurant as their police officers. Berger, meanwhile, intuits Figuerola's and Blomkvist's affair, and promises Figuerola to stay clear of Blomkvist as long as they are together. The first two days of Salander's trial, on various counts of aggravated violence, proceed with relative calm. However, on the third day, Millenium's dual book-and-magazine exposé is published, the officers of the Section are arrested, Channel TV4 runs an hour-long program on the Section using (pre-recorded) interviews and material from Blomkvist, and Giannini systematically destroys Teleborian's testimony, proving: that the Section and Teleborian had conspired to commit Salander at age 12 to protect Zalachenko, that Salander's rights had been repeatedly violated, and that they were once again conspiring against her. Blomkvist and Edklinth provide evidence proving that Teleborian's recent ""psychiatric assessment"" of Salander was fabricated and that he was working with the Section to silence her. Teleborian is then arrested for possession of child pornography, which was found on his computer by Salander and her hacker friends, Plague and Trinity. Ekström, in over his head, withdraws charges against Salander, and her declaration of incompetence is rescinded. With the evidence and credibility of the prosecution shattered, the prosecutor drops all charges against Salander. Freed, Salander embarks on an overseas trip to forget the events. She spends several months at Gibraltar, among other things to pay a visit to the man managing the billions she had stolen from Hans-Erik Wennerström in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She also tracks down Miriam Wu, who is studying at a university in Paris, and apologizes for putting her life in danger. Salander soon discovers that being a ""legally responsible citizen,"" as Giannini puts it, involves its share of toil and drudgery. As Zalachenko's daughter, Salander is obliged to inherit half of his properties and wealth,; the other half goes to her twin sister Camilla, whom no one has heard from in more than a decade. (Author Stieg Larsson's notes indicate that her whereabouts were to be the subject of his next novel.) Suspicious about an abandoned factory in her father's estate, she goes there to investigate and finds two dead women and Niedermann, who had been hiding there from the police. After a brief struggle and chase, Salander outwits Niedermann by nailing his feet to the plank floor with a nail gun. She is tempted to kill him herself, but instead reports his location to the Sonny Niemenen, head of the Svavelsjö biker gang, and then reports the entire brawl to the police. She leaves before the standoff concludes, satisfied that both Niedermann and the Svavelsjö bikers have been brought to justice. (Niedermann is killed by the bikers, and Niemenen shot by the police while resisting arrest.) Back at her apartment in Stockholm, Salander receives a visit from Blomkvist. The story, as well as the Millennium trilogy, ends with the two finally reconciling."
2903,The Tenth Man,thriller," The story begins in a prison in Occupied France during World War II. It is decreed that one in every ten prisoners is to be executed; lots are drawn to decide who will die. One of the men chosen is a rich lawyer. He offers all his money to anyone who will take his place. One man agrees. Upon his release from prison the lawyer must face the consequences of his actions. The story comprises four parts. In Part I, set in prison, the occupying German guards issue a decimation order to the thirty inmates. One of the three chosen by drawing lots is a rich lawyer named Chavel. Chavel becomes hysterical and desperately offers his entire wealth to any man willing to die in his place. A young man, known as Janvier, accepts his offer and is executed. In Part II, the war is over and Chavel is alive and free, but virtually destitute. He returns to the house he sold for his life and finds it occupied by Janvier’s mother and sister, Thérèse. Assuming the false name Charlot, he becomes their servant. Part III sees the arrival of an impostor, named Carosse, who claims to be Chavel. Carosse attempts to denounce Charlot, win the favour of Thérèse and stake a claim on the property. Finally in Part IV, Charlot, having fallen in love with Thérèse, must save her from Carosse, as a means of redemption from his earlier cowardice."
2904,Double Cross,thriller," Four years ago, Kyle Craig is sent to prison after his crimes in Roses Are Red and Violets Are Blue and swears revenge upon the person who caught him - Detective Alex Cross. Now, four years later, Alex Cross is on a date with police officer, Brianna 'Bree' Stone, when they are interrupted by the news of crime-writer author, Tess Olsen's death. Upon arriving in Washington, Alex decides to help in the investigation, even though he is no longer a detective. They find a Hallmark greeting card, and find a tape featuring the killer, whom threw Olsen from a balcony in her apartment. In the video, he turns toward the camera, and says ""In your honor"". Alex, Bree, and Alex's bestfriend/co-worker, John Sampson discover the footage of the murder was used twice. After this puzzling news, the murderer goes to a play and kills Matthew Jay Walker, a male actor, later posting videos of his murders on the internet. Alex realizes that the murderer wants an audience, and therefore is nicknamed 'DCAK' (The Washington DC Audience Killer). Alex then goes to work and talks to Sandy Quinlan, a sex-crazed woman seeking therapy from Alex and later meets another patient, Anthony Demao, who is a war-veteran that killed his partner, Matthew under Matthew's orders and pleas, since 'Mat' was dying anyway. As the murders get more serious, Alex decides to once again work with the DC police department while also being a psychologist for therapy. It is then apparent that DCAK is doing a role-play as every time he kills someone, he has a different alter-ego. The killer sets up so many websites featuring footage, pictures, and messages from him or his victims. Meanwhile, in Florence, Italy, Kyle Craig is in prison when he receives a visit from his lawyer, Mason Wainwright, who is a big fan of Kyle. Wainwright puts on a human-like mask of Kyle's face and gives one with his face to Kyle, allowing Kyle to escape and Mason to stay in his place - only to die shortly afterward. Alex learns of Craig's escape and goes to Florence where he reviews footage of Olsen speaking to Kyle during an interview for her latest book; back in DC, FBI agent, Brian Kitzmiller 'Kitz' is assigned to Sampson, Bree, and Alex. An impostor of DCAK, wearing a Richard Nixon mask, kidnaps a teen couple, and kills the boy while the girl is run over. Meanwhile, Kyle visits his mother, who had, according to Craig, let his father bet Kyle when he was a kid, resulting in Kyle stealing money from his mother, then shooting and killing his mother. In Iowa, Kyle murders a woman after pretending to wish to sleep with her, he then flees. Alex goes to the office and witnesses Sandy give Anthony a hand job. He demands to speak with Sandy while Anthony waits outside, though Anthony runs off. Later that day, the two meet at a coffee shop where they kiss and then 'tongue' each other, as Sandy shouts at all in the restaurant ""it's ok, he's my brother"". Anthony then sits he received a message from Kyle announcing he wishes to see DCAK - implying they are DCAK. Alex, Sampson, and Bree go to a press conference in Baltimore, where Alex finds a message saying he is missing the ""show"" from DCAK. He learns the person who originally had this message is a female, and he is able to track her, but she escapes in her car. Alex, in pursuit of the woman, eventually looses them and goes to Washington where in National Air and Space Museum, where a married/pregnant woman named Abby Courlevais. Upon returning home, Alex learns from his kids, Alex 'Ali' Jr. and Jannie, and his grandmother, Nana, that his oldest son, Damon, has run away. Sampson is able to find Damon, who is playing basketball. Alex immediately scolds Damon, then apologizing, for missing a Crushing - a prep school in Massachusetts - meeting that would allow Damon to attend the school. Trying to find peace for a moment - Alex and Bree go to a hotel and make love. Eventually, they receive a message from DCAK who announces he has caught the impostor and uses a helicopter to throw the body of the impostor on the roof of a nearby roof. Alex and Bree use a ladder to get to the roof where they find Kitz' dead body; Bree gets back on the street where she is asked for a interview from Neil Stepehns, a 'reporter' who then punches Bree in the face, revealing himself to be DCAK, he leaves. Alex later suspects that Tyler Bell, the brother of Michael Bell - a murderer that Alex had killed - is DCAK. Kyle Craig then kills another girl, a maid, in his hotel in Paris. Kyle arrives in Washington and murders Judge Nina Wolff, who sentenced him to prison. Meanwhile, Sandy says she will be leaving to Michigan and gives Alex a kiss before leaving. Tracking down Bell's former house - a cabin in the woods, where Alex and Bree learn that Bell purchased milk many days before he was last seen, causing Alex to get suspicious. Alex then discovers DCAK has kidnapped Sampson; when returning to Washington, Alex finds a phone attached to his car. He is given directions to DCAK's hideout, where he is chased by a woman. After arriving at the designated destination, Alex and Bree are tied to chairs while DCAK reveals he has also pretended to be Anthony and Stephens; the woman is his sister, who has acted as Sandy. After angering DCAK, who reveals he is not Bell - since he killed Bell himself. Bree manages to escape her bounds, and shoot and kill Sandy. DCAK escapes with Alex in pursuit, this leads to a chase through a Mexican-food restaurant where Alex stabs DCAK, defeating - but not killing - him. However, Kyle Craig appears, revealing he is a so-called fan of DCAK and that Anthony, Sandy, and Mason are fans of Craig. Alex is nearly killed by Kyle when Bree shows up and shoots him, killing him. He then gets up and runs away, after attempting to shoot Bree, but purposely misses. At the hospital, Alex realizes DCAK and his sister are really Aaron and Sarah Dennison, Aaron then curses at Alex, vowing revenge, which Alex dissmisses. The book ends with Alex taking Damon to Massachusetts to go to Crushing, when Alex receives a message stating there has been a murder in Georgetown, setting up the events for Cross Country."
2905,Before I Go to Sleep,thriller," The novel is a psychological thriller about a woman suffering from amnesia. She wakes every day with no knowledge of who she is and the novel follows her as she tries to reconstruct her memories from a journal she has been keeping. She learns that she has been seeing a doctor who is helping her to recover her memory, that her name is Christine Lucas, that she is 47 years old and married and has a son. As her journal grows it casts doubts on the truth behind this knowledge and sets her on a terrifying journey of discovery."
2906,If Tomorrow Comes,thriller," Tracy Whitney, the protagonist of the story, is a young, beautiful,and intelligent woman working as a computer operator for a bank in Philadelphia. The story begins with a phone conversation between Tracy and her mother Doris Whitney, who lives in New Orleans and takes care of the business set up by her deceased husband. Tracy tells her mother about her planned marriage with a businessman, Charles Stanhope III. Doris commits suicide after the conversation and Tracy is notified about it by a Lieutenant of the New Orleans police department. Upon arriving at New Orleans, Tracy becomes aware of the circumstances that led to her mother's suicide. She learns that Joe Romano, the main assistant of New Orleans' mafia leader Anthony Orsatti, had framed her mother into a legal case relating to fraud—Doris didn't have the money to fight the case and decided to commit suicide. Tracy is filled with hatred for Romano, and naively decides to bring her mother's name in the clear by making Romano confess his misdeed. She purchases a gun, which she only intends to use to threaten Romano, and reaches Romano's house. Romano lets her in and offers her a drink, while she asks him to write out a confession letter. Romano refuses, snatches the gun and tries to rape Tracey. Tracy grabs the gun during the struggle and accidentally fires a shot at Romano. She is horrified, as she never intended to kill Romano. She calls for medical aid and then flees to the airport where she is arrested by two policemen. She learns that Romano was alive, only wounded by the shot. The plaintiff accuses her of attempted murder and stealing a costly painting from Romano's house. She is assigned an attorney named Perry Pope who, to her ignorance, works for the mafia. Pope convinces her to plead guilty in court before Judge Lawrence (who is also secretly a mafia man) and promises that she'll be given only a three-month prison sentence. She follows his advice, and realizes in court that it was all a setup by Orsatti and Romano to destroy her — Lawrence sentences her to 15 years of incarceration in Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. Charles doesn't give her a chance to let her explain her version of the incident, and leaves her at her fate with his unborn child in her womb. Tracy enters a life of hardship, sexual harassment and violence at the penitentiary and vows revenge against all those who harmed her and her mother. The title of the novel itself is from a melodramatic quote in the novel, where Tracy vows to take her revenge tomorrow, if tomorrow comes: Eventually, she becomes the nanny for the prison warden's young daughter, a job that leads to her release from jail. After coming out, she cunningly sets up distrust among Romano, Perry Pope and Orsatti, and frames Judge Lawrence in Russia over spying charges, thus ruining Anthony Orsatti's empire. Desperate, unable to find a job as an ex-convict, she turns to a well-known New York City jewelry store owner (and fence) who helps her make some fast money in a jewel heist. Escaping with the goods, Tracy has an encounter with Jeff Stevens, a master con man. Stevens steals the jewels from Tracy, who realizes she's been had. She then cons Jeff, taking back her prize. Not long after, Tracy travels to England and is introduced to Gunther Hartog, a world-class fence for valuable stolen property. Thus begins her life as one of the world's cleverest criminals. Tracy pursues some brilliant con schemes filled with humor and ingenuity all over Europe — such as stealing jewelry from an actress on the Orient Express, valuable painting from a museum, reselling a gem to a jeweler for much higher than its worth, etc. The Interpol issues alerts all over Europe in search of - as they perceive it - a gang of con-women. Only Daniel Cooper, a plain-looking sociopath and insurance investigator, seems capable of matching Tracy's brilliance; although he never manages to catch her red-handed. In the end, after having collected enough money to live a luxurious life, Tracy and Jeff plan to marry and live together in Brazil as law-abiding citizens. Unusually, the book presents the nominal ""villains"" – Tracy and Jeff – as sympathetic and kind-hearted, while the pursuing detective, Cooper, is presented as almost psychotic; this could be a reversal of the classic ""bloodhound detective"" chasing a smart and elusive enemy, as in The Day of the Jackal."
2907,Land of the Living,thriller," One day, Abbie Deveraux wakes up in the dark to find she has been kidnapped and tied to a chair. She can't remember how she got there, all she knows is her loved ones may be looking for her and she wants to escape this prison. She manages to escape. Going back to her friends and boyfriend she realises that her last few days with them had been strange. Ending her relationship with her boyfriend and quitting her job, she couldn't remember any of this, not even the fact that she had been seeing someone else. As well as this her friends don't believe her kidnapping and being tied up. In a fear that he knows everything about her, where she lives, where she goes, she wants to trace back her steps of what she had done the days before she had disappeared. In an attempt for him not to find her, she changes her image and style. But the mysterious incident continues to haunt her, she can't think of anything else other than getting the man who had tormented her and to find the other girls that he mentioned he had killed."
2908,"Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter",thriller," The epistolary-style book is written as a biography of Abraham Lincoln, based on ""secret diaries"" kept by the 16th President of the United States and given to the author by a vampire named Henry Sturges. When Lincoln is only eleven years old, he learns from his father, Thomas that vampires are, in fact, real. Thomas explains to his son that a vampire killed Abraham's grandfather (also named Abraham Lincoln) in 1786. Young Abraham is also shocked to learn that his beloved mother, Nancy succumbed not to milk sickness but rather to being given a ""fool's dose"" of vampire blood, the result of Thomas's failure to repay a debt. Lincoln vows in his diary to kill as many vampires as he can. A year later he lures the vampire responsible for his mother's death to the family farm and manages to kill it with a homemade stake. In 1825, Lincoln gets word of a possible vampire attack along the Ohio River and investigates, but this time he is no match for the vampire and is nearly killed. He is saved at the last moment by the intervention of the vampire Henry Sturges. Henry nurses Lincoln back to health and explains some of the nature of vampirism, emphasizing that some vampires are good and others are evil. Lincoln spends the summer with Henry sharpening his senses. Henry sends Lincoln the names and addresses of evil vampires; Abraham dutifully tracks them down and kills them. As a young adult, Lincoln and a friend travel down the Mississippi River to New Orleans on a flatboat to sell a number of goods. Here Lincoln's life is changed forever after he witnesses a slave auction. Lincoln follows a slave buyer and his new slaves back to their plantation and discovers to his horror that the buyer is a vampire - the slaves are to be used not for labor but for food. Lincoln writes in his journal his belief that vampires will continue to exist in America as long as they can easily buy their victims in this manner - to end slavery is to end the scourge of vampires. Lincoln becomes an Abolitionist. Lincoln returns to his home in New Salem and begins his business and political careers by day, continuing to track down the vampires in Henry's letters at night. His life is once again tinged by tragedy when his fiancee Ann Rutledge is attacked and murdered by her ex-fiance John McNamar, now a vampire living in New York City. With Henry's help, Lincoln catches McNamar and kills him, but he decides to give up vampire hunting and instead concentrate on his daytime pursuits. Lincoln marries Mary Todd, begins to raise a family, starts a law firm, and is elected to a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Washington, Lincoln meets his old friend Edgar Allan Poe, who also knows the truth about vampires. Poe tells Lincoln that the vampires are being chased out of their ancestral homes in Europe (in part because of a public outcry over the bloody atrocities of Elizabeth Báthory) and are flocking to America because of the slave trade. Poe warns that if the vampires are left unchecked they will eventually seek to enslave all Americans, white and black. Lincoln leaves Washington in 1849 and declines to seek re-election; Poe is found murdered that same year in Baltimore, the victim of a vampire attack. In 1857, Henry summons Lincoln to New York City. Here Lincoln and fellow vampire slayer William Seward are told that the vampires in the South intend to start a civil war so that they can conquer the north and enslave all humans of America. Lincoln runs for the U.S. Senate and debates Stephen A. Douglas in what became known as the Lincoln–Douglas debates. Although Lincoln loses to Douglas (an ally of the Southern vampires), he gains a great deal of publicity and respect, which allows him to capture the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States and then the office itself. Lincoln's 1860 presidential election triggers the secession of the southern states and the start of the American Civil War. Early battles, such as the First Battle of Bull Run go poorly for the Union troops after they are attacked by Confederate vampires. Lincoln decides that the best way to defeat the vampires is to eliminate their food source and starve them out — to that end, he announces the Emancipation Proclamation and encourages the slaves to fight back against slave owners and vampires alike. This begins to turn the tide of the war. However, the war takes a personal toll on Lincoln. A vampire assassin sneaks onto the White House lawn and kills Lincoln's son, Willy. Henry appears at the White House and offers to turn Willy into a vampire so that he will ""live"" again, but Lincoln is unwilling to allow it. Enraged, he banishes Henry and all other vampires from the White House and refuses to speak to any of them ever again. The Civil War ends with the South's defeat. Lincoln receives reports that the vampires in the South are fleeing to Asia and South America in the wake of the slave system's collapse. Happy for the first time in many years, he attends a play at Ford's Theater, only to be assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth. Booth expects the vampires to rally around Lincoln's death, but instead finds himself shunned and hiding in a Virginia barn as Union troops arrive to arrest him. Henry arrives and confronts Booth inside the burning barn; it is implied that Henry is the one who kills Booth. Lincoln's death is mourned by the nation. His body is brought by a funeral train back to Springfield, Illinois, where Henry stands guard. A century later, during Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous ""I Have a Dream"" speech at the Lincoln Memorial, both Lincoln and Henry attend and Lincoln writes about spending the previous night at the White House. Henry has used his powers to turn Lincoln into a vampire, believing that ""some men are just too interesting to die""."
2909,Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves,thriller," During a routine re-staffing of Dragon Island, an old Soviet weapons installation in the Arctic, a Russian Spetsnaz team comes under fire from an unknown enemy. Vasily Ivanov, a researcher assigned to Dragon, manages to send out a distress signal which is intercepted by an American listening station in Alaska before his plane is shot down. Dragon Island was once the cornerstone of Soviet weapons research, a place where cutting-edge weapons were designed by scientists with a blank cheque. It has been seized by an organisation calling themselves ""the Army of Thieves"", led by the enigmatic Lord of Anarchy. Self-proclaimed anarchists, the Army is made up of enforcers of the Pinochet regime, Sudanese Janjaweed militants, Islamic fundamentalists and narco-terrorists. They are planning to unleash Dragon Island's centrepiece, known as the Tesla weapon. Experiments with rocket fuel and samples of acids acquired from the atmosphere of Venus have created a compound that, when ignited, can set fire to the atmosphere. The Army of Thieves have taken control of the facility on Dragon Island and have activated the preliminary stages of the Tesla weapon. Still reeling from the events of Scarecrow, United States Marine Corps Captain Shane Schofield has been reassgined to an equipment-testing project in the Arctic, including ""Bertie"", a mutli-functional, independently-intelligent robot. Although cleared for active duty, Schofield is seen as a liability by the Corps, and has spent most of his time teaching new recruits. His situation is somewhat complicated by an outstanding bounty on his head; although members of the Majestic-12 conspiracy are dead, the French government has offered to pay the bounty as retaliation for the events of Ice Station and Scarecrow. Schofield is one of just two units close to Dragon Island; the other is a Navy SEAL team stationed on the USS Miami, a Los Angeles-class submarine. Ira Barker, the leader of this unit, warns Schofield to stay away from Dragon Island or else risk being caught in the crossfire. The SEAL insertion is a disaster, with every member of the team being killed off by the Army. With no other choice, Scofield makes for Dragon Island. Schofield and his unit locate the remains of Ivanov's downed plane, and manage to rescue him while the Army attack. However, they are interrupted by the arrival of a French submarine; the French government has sent an assassin known as Renard after Schofield. Realising the threat posed by the Army, Schofield saves Renard two members of the French commando team sent after him, Dubois and Huguenot, also known as ""The Barbarian"", or ""Baba"" and described as Mother's equal. Successfully infiltrating Dragon Island, Renard reveals herself to be Veronique Champion, cousin to Luc Champion (a French researcher killed in Ice Station). She agrees to help Schofield stop the Army, but pledges to kill him once the threat ends. They question Ivanov, who reveals that in order to fire the Tesla weapon, the Army needs to seed the atmosphere with the acid-rocket fuel mixture, before firing a battery of missiles armed with red uranium into the cloud. Schofield decides to target the red uranium and throw it into the Arctic Ocean. As Schofield and his team begin to fight their way through the installation, David Fairfax - his friend in the Defence Intelligence Agency - begins to research the Army and Dragon Island. He grows suspicious that an irregular army such as the Army of Thieves would be able to carry out a string of attacks against high-value targets to arm themselves, and his suspicions are confirmed when he finds a CIA operative named Marius Calderon was writing about Dragon Island before the Soviet Union actually built anything there. He confirms that the Lord of Anarchy is actually Calderon, the CIA's foremost expert on psychological operations and gifted with extraordinary foresight; Calderon predicted the rise of China as an economic superpower by 2010 as early as 1982. Fairfax realises that Calderon let the Soviet Union discover the plans to the Tesla weapon, and that the acid-rocket fuel mix will be distributed by the jetstream over China, India and Europe; once ignited, these regions will be decimated, but the United States will be relatively unaffected and able to preserve its position as the world's only economic superpower. Calderon succeeds in firing a missile armed with red uranium into the gas cloud, igniting it, but it is revealed that Ira Barker survived the SEAL team's assault and was able to shut down the gas diffusion process long enough to create a safe buffer, thereby limiting the ignition. However, Calderon still has several missiles at his disposal, and the larger gas cloud is well within their range. Schofield destroys the red uranium primers one by one, but most of team is captured before he can destroy the last two. He and his team are tortured by Calderon - Mother and Baba have their heads locked in wooden boxes with hungry rats - before Schofield is electrocuted and his signature sunglasses claimed as a prize by Calderon. He is revived by Bertie and finds Mother and Baba survived by biting the heads off the rats locked in with them. They then give chase to Calderon before he can either launch the final missile, or detonate a warhead on board a cargo plane. Calderon escapes by ejecting a stolen mini-submersible from his plane, but Schofield ejects the last missile from the plane before it can ignite the gas cloud. The subsequent explosion disables Calderon's submarine; he is found two weeks later by a Norwegian fishing trawler, having suffocated at the bottom of the ocean. With the threat posed by the Army finally over, the Russian government authorises a missile strike on Dragon Island. Schofield races back to the facility and gathers his unit in a nuclear bunker hidden under a laboratory. The missile destroys Dragon Island and kills the remnants of the Army. Schofield and his team are found alive and well several days later, having survived the blast. They are commended by the President for their actions, and the French government lift the bounty on Schofield's head for rescuing Veronique's team. Having finally come to terms with the death of Elizabeth Gant, Schofield starts a relationship with Veronique Champion - however, upon returning to the Marine barracks, he finds his sunglasses in his room, implying that Marius Calderon is alive."
2910,Come Clean,thriller," Justine Ziegler is taken, against her will, to 'Come Clean Drug Rehabilitation Center', the same rehabilitation center her twin brother Joshua Ziegler attended. After an interview with the program director in which most of her answers are twisted out of context to make her seem like a drug addict, Justine is admitted to Come Clean for what is supposedly a three day observation. First she is subjected to a strip search by a senior member, before being taken to the main hall, where the members of the program are ""motivating"" as part of their rehabilitation. The head of the program, Hilary Navarre, asks the group if anyone knows her, and a boy called Earl admits to taking marijuana with her. Justine denies this, until pages of her diary are read out and the twisted truth comes out. Justine's twin, Joshua, was admitted to the program because he was an addict. One night, Justine woke up, and saw Joshua sneaking out to go out with his friends. Justine asks to come along and eventually Joshua agrees. When they reach their destination, Joshua and the driver go for a walk. Justine is in the back of a car with Earl, and another boy. They are both smoking marijuana, and hand it to Justine, but before she raises it to her lips Joshua reappears and shouts at her to never do it again. After several events like this, the twins' parents admit Joshua to Come Clean. Throughout the book, there are chapters with memoirs of the twins' childhood. There are such events as just playing, and starting school. Every one of these chapters is written in a style which Justine is speaking to Joshua. The final memoir chapter documents Joshua's death. It was New Year's Eve, and Justine is home alone with Joshua. When Justine goes to answer the door, Joshua sneaks outside and jumps off a diving board into an empty pool, committing suicide. The reason for this is apparent late in the book. During Justine's imprisonment in Come Clean, she comes to the attention of a senior staff member, Dwight. It is revealed Dwight raped Joshua during his time in Come Clean and drove him to his suicide. Dwight also forces Justine to do a special pennance alone so he can also rape Justine, Which due to her being on her period, she is forced to perform fellatio on him. A new member is admitted to the program, Toby Sheridan, and he and Justine take an instant liking to each other. Toby was about to graduate from high school, but was admitted to the program. During a weekly meeting, where the families of the admitted come to discuss their progress, Toby's little sister does not believe he is an addict so enlists his football friends to help him escape. The next meeting, fireworks go off, and everyone is evacuated outside. Members of Toby's football team are causing chaos and assaulting staff members. Toby escapes, and Justine takes refuge in her parents' car, and she is forced to return inside to the program. The senior member who strip searched Justine when she was admitted, Gwen, found notes that were passed between Justine and Toby which detailed the escape. Justine is in for a severe punishment, but as it is late everybody is sent home. Justine is sent home with a senior member called Moira. During the drive home, a van crashes into Moira's car, and several people bang on the windows chanting Justine's name. Justine escapes into the van where Toby is waiting for her. Toby and Justine catch a bus to Kansas, where Justine's grandmother lives. They live happily until Justine's mother turns up on the door, having separated from Justine's father. Later that month, Justine is watching television when Dwight sneaks into the house and catches her. He and Hilary have been granted permission from Justine's father to readmit her. When Justine, her grandmother and mother, Hilary and Dwight are discussing this, Toby returns from a jog. Upon seeing Dwight, he charges him but is knocked out. Hilary took the precaution of contacting the local police before she arrived, and they arrive on the doorstep. In a last-ditch attempt to prevent re-admittance, Justine explains how Dwight raped and emotionally tortured her. Hilary listens to this and at the end, instructs the police officers to arrest Dwight."
2911,Sail,thriller," A tuna is caught in the Bahamas. Inside the tuna is a coca-cola bottle with a note inside stating the Dunnes are alive. The book flashes back to the beginning as the Dunnes are about to set off on a two month boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the stepfather, Peter, is staying behind on land. Katherine, a heart surgeon from New York City had lost her first husband, Stuart, a stock investor in a boating trip several years ago. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter Carrie plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy Mark is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Katherine, with the help of her brother-in-law Jake, is insistent on pulling everyone together, once and for all. Just when things start to take a turn for the better, disaster strikes. A storm hits the sailboat. To make matters worse the boat explodes. The boat vanishes without a trace and the family are lost, presumed dead - until now, when a message in a bottle is found. It becomes apparent that there must have been at least one survivor. Who has survived and just what happened to the boat? As it transpires there may be more sinister powers at work, the race is on to rescue the family and discover what happened aboard the luxury yacht. It turns out that Peter has hired a former CIA operative, turned private contract killer, Gerard Devoux, to kill his family. He hopes to inherit the more than 100 million USD that Katherine was worth. Also, Jake dies from wounds with the boat's explosion. Peter knows his plans to gain the Dunne fortune will be ruined if someone else finds the family. He & Devoux set out the Bahamas to find them and kill them before they are found. Peter is a licensed pilot and rents an airplane to find them. He discovers that the family washed ashore an empty island. That night he sneaks into the island, he plans to shoot Katharine first, so she doesn't have to watch her kids die. His plans are interrupted when his stepson hits him over the head, knocking him out. There is a murder trial but is eventually acquitted. He sues Katherine for defamation and she settles out of court for 16 Million USD. Peter though is betrayed by Devoux and killed. In typical Patterson style, not everything is as it appears. Throughout the story we discover that Peter was having an affair with a young law student. It turns out that she was working with Devoux and is the one that shot Peter in the gut. Devoux then kills her to ensure there are no loose ends. We discover that she was a high end prostitute from Las Vegas. Devoux gets his at the end from a rogue DEA agent he had tried to kill earlier in the book. It is also revealed that, because of an affair had by Jake and Kate, Ernie is Jake's son."
2912,The Collectors,thriller," The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and the curator of the rare books collection of the Library of Congress both are found dead. The Speaker has been killed by a sniper at a party while the head of the rare books collection dies from ""unknown circumstances."" Oliver Stone and the Camel Club become suspicious, although initially they indulge what they believe is his overactive imagination. Stone and his cohorts discover that Seagraves had been selling American intelligence secrets to terrorists in the Middle East, compromising intelligence efforts in the region. However, when they are followed and ask the Secret Service for help, the followers disappear, and the Camel Club becomes interested in their activities. Seagraves kidnaps and subsequently tortures Stone for information. Annabelle Conroy is introduced as a con artist, who after pulling off a 40 million heist against an Atlantic City Casino owner (Jerry Bagger) is on the run for her life. Bagger wants to find and kill Annabelle and her con team. Alex Ford from the previous novel reappears, and in the climax Seagraves is killed by a knife thrown at his carotid artery by Stone who turns out to be an ex-CIA killer. Alex Ford and his agents take Seagrave's remaining collaborators into custody. One of Annabelle Conroy's collaborators in the heist is tortured for information by the angry casino owner, who finds out the general area in which she is living (Washington, D.C.). The novel ends with a set-up for Stone Cold, the next novel of the Camel Club."
2913,The Statement,thriller," Now 70 years old, Brossard has spent the better part of his life in hiding, traveling among the monasteries and abbeys that offer him asylum. Though he has evaded capture for decades with the help of the French government and the Catholic Church, now a new breed of government officials is determined to break decades of silence and expose and expiate the crimes of Vichy."
2914,Angelology,thriller," The story follows a nun in New York who unwittingly reignites an ancient war between Angelologists, a group who study angels, and a race of descendants of angels and humans called the Nephilim. The story blends ancient biblical pericopes, the myth of Orpheus, and the fall of rebel angels."
2915,Night Without End,thriller," A BOAC airplane crash-lands on the Greenland ice cap far from its usual route after flying in a seemingly erratic fashion. A scientific research team based near the crash site rescues the surviving passengers and takes them to their station. The team finds one passenger and most of the flight crew are dead with one of the pilots having been shot in the back. The only means of contact with the outside world, a radio set, is destroyed in a seemingly accidental manner. With not enough food for everyone and no hope of rescue, the leader of the scientific research team, Dr Mason, decides that they must set out for the nearest settlement. Meanwhile the pilot who was shot and in a coma is found to have been suffocated. An attempt is also made on Dr Mason's life by getting him to be lost in the arctic night. The scientists' suspicion falls on stewardess but she is soon cleared. Dr Mason orders Joss to stay behind and repair the radio so that a field expedition can be contacted. The dead passenger is determined to be a military courier; soon after that the wreck goes up in flames. Dr Mason leaves with the group along with the other scientist, Jackstraw while remaining in touch with their station by means of a short range radio. Meanwhile, the field expedition returns to the station and contacts Dr Mason. They inform him that a massive military mobilization has happened to locate the crashed plane and that it carried something very important. The governments having refused to divulge anything have tried to contact Dr Mason's station. Finding the station to be non-responding, they have requested the expedition chief, Captain Hillcrest, to check out the station. Dr Mason decides to go on with the journey since any attempt to return will induce the murderers to act. He keeps this new development to himself and Jackstraw. Captain Hillcrest sets out after the group but soon finds that the petrol he picked up the station has been tampered with. Sugar has been added to the petrol causing the sugar to melt and stick to the engine parts leading him to get bogged down. A solution is found to this when one of the passengers, a chemist, suggests that the petrol be mixed with water and the top layer of the resultant mixture be siphoned off. Almost at the same time, the governments also relent and inform Dr Mason through Captain Hillcrest that the military courier carried a top secret missile guidance mechanism and that it is made to look like a tape recorder. Dr Mason realizes that one of the passengers picked up such a device at the crash site. But this precipitates the murderers into action and they take over the group. Finding that killing the entire group is not feasible, the criminals make them ride with them. But soon they abandon all of them save the stewardess, for whom Mason has developed a soft corner, and the father of a passenger who is a boxer. In the process, one of passengers left behind is killed. The group stumbles on in the arctic blizzard guided by the guard dogs with one of them dying during this trek. Soon they come across the abandoned sled that contains rocket sondes. They use it to guide Captain Hillcrest to them and set out in chase across the arctic landscape. They manage to catch up with the criminals near the shore where a trawler waits for the criminals. But the intervention of navy, on information from Captain Hillcrest, frightens off the trawler. The criminals are surrounded here and after a bitter hand to hand combat between the protagonists and the criminals, the mechanism and the hostages are rescued."
2916,Promise Me,thriller," It has been six years since entertainment agent Myron Bolitar last played superhero. In six years he hasn’t thrown a punch. He hasn’t held, much less fired, a gun. He hasn’t called his friend Win, still the scariest man he knows, to back him up or get him out of trouble. All that is about to change... because of a promise. The school year is almost over. Anxious families await word of college acceptances. In these last pressure-cooker months of high school, some kids will make the all-too-common and all-too-dangerous mistake of drinking and driving. But Myron is determined to help keep his friends’ children safe, and so he makes two neighborhood girls promise him: If they are ever in a bind but are afraid to call their parents, they must call him. Several nights later, the call comes at 2:00 am, and true to his word, Myron picks up one of the girls, Aimee Biel, in midtown Manhattan and drives her to a quiet cul-de-sac in New Jersey where she says her friend lives. The next day, the girl’s parents discover that their daughter is missing. And that Myron was the last person to see her. Desperate to fulfill a well-intentioned promise turned nightmarishly wrong, Myron races to find her before she’s gone forever. But his past will not be buried so easily - for trouble has always stalked him, and those he loves are the ones who suffer. Now Myron must decide once and for all who he is and what he will stand up for if he is to have any hope of saving a young girl’s life. Dr Edna Skylar is revealed as the source for the disappearance as Aimee was involved with her estranged son, Drew Van Dyne, a teacher at Aimee's school who gets her pregnant. She was trying to keep her from her strict father, Erik, who would have wanted a termination. The other missing girl, Katie Rochester, runs away from her father to be with her boyfriend Rufus but returns home."
2917,The Osterman Weekend,thriller," John Tanner, the host of an investigative news show, is convinced by a CIA agent that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy, called Omega, that threatens national security. But then everything John Tanner thinks he knows about his closest friends is overturned, and he is set against them. But when Omega finally reveals itself, he realises that he has been manipulated from the very start. The novel was the basis for the film of the same title. fr:Le Week-End Osterman"
2918,Breakheart Pass,thriller," The story begins with a perilous winter railroad journey through the Nevada Territory in the 1870s in the midst of a blizzard. Aboard the train are Nevada governor Fairchild and his niece Marica, along with U.S. cavalry Colonel Claremont and two carloads of troops. Joining them are U.S. Marshal Pearce, the governor's aide, and Pearce's old Army buddy Major O'Brien. Pearce, a lawman and Indian agent is transporting dangerous murderer and gunman John Deakin. Their destination is the remote Fort Humboldt deep in the Nevada mountains, whose troops have recently been decimated by a cholera epidemic. Dr. Molyneaux, a tropical disease expert, is also accompanying the group. As the journey continues we slowly learn that all is not what it seems, and that none of the characters is telling the whole truth. Maclean meticulously obliterates the lines defining exactly which characters are the good guys are and which are the bad. As the story winds down, the cunningly devious nature of the plan is finally revealed."
2919,Beyond This Place,thriller," Paul Mathry, a student about to graduate and embark upon a teaching career, finds out that his father was convicted for murder, a secret that his mother had hidden from him since his childhood. Driven by an intense desire to see his father, Paul sets out to visit him in prison, only to find out that visitors are never allowed there. From there, he meets the primary witnesses in the case that convicted his father, not all of whom are supportive to Paul's cause. He encounters several dead ends but he persists, with the help of a store girl named Lena and a news reporter. His persistent campaign finally bears fruit. Rees Mathry, Paul's father, goes on appeal and is vindicated. The novel ends with Paul's father, a hardened, cynical man, seeing a fleeting hope for self-renewal and a purposeful life."
2920,Miracle Cure,thriller," The plot concerns a clinic that treats people with AIDS. Just as the scientists working there are on the brink of a breakthrough the create a cure for the disease, one of them dies. Initially it looks like suicide but after a journalist investigates, she finds that it is murder, and there is a killer targeting the patients of the clinic as well. pl:Klinika śmierci"
2921,The Eiger Sanction,thriller," Dr. Jonathan Hemlock is an art professor, lecturer and mountaineer. He is also a collector of paintings, most of them obtained from the black market. To finance his collection he works as an assassin for a secret U.S. government agency, the CII. In order to acquire a Pissarro, Hemlock agrees to carry out a couple of ""sanctions"" (contract assassinations). The first one is easily dealt with in Montreal. For the second, he will need to join a group of climbers who are about to attempt the north face of the Eiger, a particularly difficult challenge. Hemlock goes back into training and eventually climbs the mountain with the team that he believes includes his would-be victim &mdash; whose identity he will have to deduce on the mountain itself. Poor climbing conditions disrupt the climb, and lead Hemlock to the discovery that his target is someone other than he had expected."
2922,The Family Arsenal,thriller," The Family Arsenal follows a bitter former American Consul as he blunders into a terrorist commune in search of a cause; seemingly any cause so long as it offers some way of battling evil, which here takes the guise of a heavy handed government and a gun-running criminal. Shortly after Valentine Hood joins a terrorist cell operating from a nondescript house in a once pleasant street in Deptford, South London, he commits a senselessly quixotic killing. The repercussions from this unsanctioned act ripple far and wide, eventually endangering everything and everyone he has been fighting for. Gradually Hood insinuates himself into the confidences of the suspicious, down-trodden members of his new family as they plan and execute equally pointless atrocities around London, either alone or with the assistance of a bored society hostess, an up and coming actress and a man who may or may not allow access to the IRA."
2923,Nineteen Minutes,thriller," The story begins on March 6, 2007 in the small town of Sterling, New Hampshire, tracking the lives of a number of characters on an ""ordinary day."" The characters include Alex Cormier, a superior court judge; her daughter Josie, a junior in high school; Lacy, Lewis, and Peter Houghton; Detective Patrick Ducharme; and several victims-to-be. At the local high school, Sterling High, the story follows a routine day of students in classes, at the gym, and in the cafeteria. Suddenly, a loud bang is heard from the parking lot, which turns out to be a bomb set off in Matt Royston's car. As the students are distracted by the noise, gun shots are fired. When Patrick, the only detective on the Sterling police force, arrives at Sterling High, he searches the school to seek out the gunman, who is alleged to be a student. After passing several dead and wounded victims, Patrick traps and arrests the shooter, Peter Houghton, in the locker room, where he finds two students, Josie Cormier and Matt Royston, lying on the floor surrounded in blood. While Matt is dead, having been the only victim shot twice, Josie is not seriously injured, but only shocked: she cannot remember what happened. The shooting kills ten people (nine students and one teacher) and wounds many other people. Throughout the book, time flashes back and forth between events before and after the shooting. In the past, the reader learns that Peter and Josie were once close friends. Peter was frequently the target of severe bullying at school, and Josie often stuck up for him. The friends slowly drifted apart as they got older: Josie joined the popular crowd in order to protect her own interests, seeing her relationship to Peter as embarrassing. The story pictures Peter as an outcast at home as well; Peter believes his older brother Joey is favored by their parents. Joey is a popular straight-A student and athlete, but feels it necessary to ridicule Peter to protect his reputation, even fabricating a story that Peter was adopted. When Joey is killed in a car accident in 2006, Lacy and Lewis Houghton are too upset to pay attention to their remaining son, causing a bigger rift between Peter and his parents. In their sophomore year, Josie begins dating Matt, a popular jock who leads his friends Drew Girard and John Eberhard in bullying Peter. Matt often calls Peter ""homo"" and ""fag,"" leading Peter to question his sexual orientation. The bullying intensifies once Matt begins dating Josie, in his possessive efforts to keep her away from other boys. On one occasion, Peter approaches Josie after school to try talking to her. Matt beats him up, leaving Peter humiliated in front of the school. The flashbacks also reveal several subplots: the difficult relationship between Josie and her single mother Alex, Alex's dilemma of being a judge and a mother, Peter's escape from bullying into to the world of video games, Josie's fear of falling out of the popular crowd and her suicide back-up plan when she does, Matt's abusive behavior toward Josie, Josie's pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage, as well as Lewis Houghton's hunting lessons with his son Peter. One month before the shooting, Peter realizes that he has feelings for Josie, and sends her an email expressing his love. Courtney Ignatio reads this email before Josie and has Drew forward it to the entire school. Courtney then convinces Peter that Josie likes him. Peter asks Josie to join him later during lunch, only to suffer public humiliation as Matt pulls down Peter's pants and exposes his genitals to a cafeteria full of students. Peter's psychotic break is triggered on the morning of the shooting when he turns on his computer and accidentally opens the email he wrote to Josie. After the shooting, Peter is sent to jail while the trial proceeds. The probable cause hearing is waived as Peter admits to killing ten people and wounding nineteen others. Jordan, Peter's defense attorney, uses battered person syndrome caused by severe bullying and abuse as a basis to convince the jury that Peter’s actions were justified as a result of his suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Jordan argues that he was in a dissociative state at the time of the shooting. In the final stage of the trial, Josie reveals that she was the one who shot Matt the first time after grabbing a gun that fell out of Peter's bag. Peter later fired the fatal second shot. Peter promised her he wouldn't tell anyone what she had done, and he kept this promise, happy to have Josie as his friend again. Josie shot Matt because she hated herself for loving him. Peter is convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder (manslaughter) and is sentenced to life in prison. A month afterward, Peter commits suicide by stuffing a sock into his throat. At the end of the book, one year from the date of the massacre, Josie has received a five-year sentence for accessory of manslaughter and is regularly visited in jail by her mother. Throughout the book, Josie never told the whole story, instead repeating, ""I can't remember."" When Josie admits to shooting Matt, Peter's sentence is reduced. Alex and Patrick, who are expecting their first child, walk the halls of the high school. Sterling High has been extensively remodeled after the shooting. The cafeteria, the gym and locker room where the massacre took place have been replaced by a large glass atrium with a memorial to the dead in the center, a row of ten white chairs bolted to the floor. A plaque declares the building ""A Safe Harbor."""
2924,Wyatt's Hurricane,thriller," David Wyatt is a white West Indian, originally from St Kitts by way of Grenada, and is a meteorologist working with the United States Navy's “Hurricane hunter” flights researching storms and severe weather patterns. He is based out of San Fernandez, a fictional Caribbean island nation with a history and political background strikingly similar to Haiti. Wyatt is convinced that Hurricane Mabel will strike San Fernandez head-on, with a storm surge that will flood its capital of St Pierre, potentially killing thousands. The paranoid, megalomaniacal dictator of San Fernandez, General Serrurier, will hear nothing of it. A hurricane has not struck San Fernandez in over a hundred years, and he has much more important things to worry about – such as an armed revolt against his rule. As civil war erupts, Wyatt struggles to convince his superiors, the government, and eventually the rebels that the hurricane will be their most serious problem.."
2925,The Stars Shine Down,thriller," The novel tells the story of Lara Cameron, a successful real estate developer who came from a broken family in Nova Scotia. Lara's mother dies in childbirth and her Scottish father doesn't want her. Early in life, she learns to fend for herself and how to get her own way in a male-dominated world. After her father's death, Lara makes a deal with the owner of the boarding house to secure her first building in exchange for her body. Thrilled at her success, she moves to Chicago to start her real estate empire. Even though she encounters many problems, she is able to overcome them all and become one of America's most successful businesswomen, and receives the nickname, ""Iron Butterfly."" She falls in love with a talented pianist, Philip Alder, and marries him. She is on the verge of losing everything she has achieved as well as the one man she loves, but the Iron Butterfly miraculously recovers from all her shattered dreams and gains back all her hopes and the only man whom she ever truly loved. bg:Звездите над нас es:Escrito en las estrellas ne:द स्टारस् साइन डाउन pt:The Stars Shine Down"
2926,The Crocus List,thriller," Former SAS Major Harry Maxim, reassigned from Number 10 Downing Street back to the Ministry of Defence after the demotion of his boss George Harbinger from the post of private secretary to the Prime Minister, is part of a security detail at Westminster Abbey for a state funeral. The guest list includes the Queen of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States, as well as numerous other heads of state of various NATO member nations. Political tensions with the Soviet Union are at an all time high over Berlin, and Maxim is worried that the gathering would be an all-too-tempting target. He is right. Shots are fired, and a low-ranking British civil servant standing next to the President is killed. The assassin kills himself before he can be apprehended and is found to be carrying an old Soviet sniper rifle. All fingers point to the KGB. However, Maxim is far from convinced, and his investigation into the shooting takes him from London to Washington DC, (where he is reunited with MI-5 liaison officer Agnes Algar), and from there to New York, the American Midwest and finally to East Berlin, as he unravels a conspiracy of massive proportions, which threatens to overthrow not only the British government, but all hopes for peace in Europe."
2927,Skeleton Coast,thriller," The book begins with a brief chapter detailing the traversing of a section of the Kalahari Desert by a group of four Europeans, led by the experienced guide H. A. Ryder. The text tells of how they survive the desert thanks to Ryder's skills, but are being pursued by more than one hundred of the Herero King's best men, due to the Europeans stealing their hard-won diamonds. The chapter ends with the Europeans meeting with their escape ship, the HMS Rove only to find it stranded. Simultaneously, the Herero attack the ship, killing the Europeans (presumably) while a massive sandstorm rages around them, reshaping the coastline and burying the Rove under hundreds of feet of sand, lost for eternity. The story continues with the Oregon (a high-tech modernized ship carrying heavy weaponry but usually masquerading as a dilapidated freighter) meeting with the leader of the Congolese Army of Revolution, Makombo. They 'agree' to trade 500 AK-47's, 200 RPGs, fifty RPG launchers and 50,000 rounds of Warsaw Pact 7.62mm ammunition in return for a quarter pound of rough (blood) diamonds. These weapons are then stolen by the rebels after double-crossing Cabrillo before the Oregon's crew had the chance to do the same to them. After narrowly escaping from those individuals, the Oregon begins to track the location of the weapons in the hope that they can seize them once again. In addition to this they also hear that a billionaire with a controversial product has been kidnapped. They take up the quest to free him. During this operation Juan is nearly stranded in the desert, but manages to travel by parasurfing his way back to civilization. After rescuing the billionaire, they find out that his former partner is planning to dump millions of litres of toxic crude oil into the ocean in order to enlighten the world about the environmental effects that our continued ignorance is causing. Luckily, the Oregon and crew do battle (oddly enough it's the Congo revolutionaries) with the bad guys and save the planet. Their curtain comes by giving the rightful owners billions of dollars worth of diamonds that will allow them to free Zimbabwe from the evil regime that is currently in place."
2928,The Spoilers,thriller," When film tycoon, Sir Robert Hellier, loses his daughter to heroin, he declares war on the drug peddlers. London drug treatment specialist, Nicholas Warren MD, is called in to organise an expedition to the Middle East in an attempt to track down the big-time dope runners, inveigle themselves into their confidence and make them an offer they can't refuse. No expense is spared in the plans for their capture, but with a hundred million dollars worth of heroin at stake, the 'spoilers' must use methods as ruthless as their prey."
2929,White,thriller," In White: The Great Pursuit, all those who follow Elyon through Justin's sacrifice have formed ""The Circle"". The roles have switched in the sense that the Horde has taken over the seven forests and The Circle now resides in the deserts, able to survive by the aid of Johan(formerly Martyn) who is familiar with life in the desert. They usually try to avoid the Horde but it is evident that in the 13 months since Justin gave his life The Circle has led roughly 1,000 Scabs to drown in the red pools and join The Circle. One night during a council meeting(composed of Thomas, Mikil, Jamous, William, Suzan, Johan and Justin's disciple Ronin) the new and more vicious commander of the Horde armies Woref orchestrates a massive invasion on Thomas' tribe. In an attempt to cover the tribes escape into the desert Thomas, Suzan, William and the brothers Stephen and Cain ride out towards the approaching army, leading to Thomas and the others capture. Subsequently they are imprisoned in the newly constructed Horde village in an underground dungeon. Qurong, the Horde leader takes his prisoners before his wife Patricia and daughter Chelise, whom Thomas met some time earlier in the desert when the disease had nearly overcome him, calling himself then by another name. When Qurong is presenting his 'prize' he also announces that Chelise is to be wed to the beast of a general Woref who was responsible for the capture of Thomas and the other ""Albinos"". Soon after, Thomas appeals to Qurong and Chelise's desire to learn the Books of Histories, knowing that the Horde cannot read them but members of The Circle can. Chelise pleads for Thomas to be spared his execution and instead made her servant. He is imprisoned in the library where he has access to the Books of the Histories and for a few days after spends his time searching out the blank books of history while also reading some historical stories to Chelise that effect her in ways she's never experienced - because she's hearing the truth. Unbeknownst to Thomas, he begins to fall in love with her, having not had feelings for a woman since the death of his last wife Rachelle, thirteen months before. The others in the Circle at first believe him to have gone mad but when they find out he truly does love this Scab, and Scab royalty at that, they're willing to risk themselves alongside Thomas to help. The problem is that she, being diseased, is completely forbidden from falling in love with an albino and is utterly terrified of the thought of drowning in the red pools. However, after willingly accompanying Thomas to the desert(though her family believe she's been kidnapped, while Woref remains suspicious) she begins to see Thomas' heart and realizes how deeply he loves her. Finally she embraces the notion that she does too in fact love him and they embrace the passionate moment by the campfire. She still does not decide to follow Elyon, seeing herself as incapable. Upon the groups return to their tribe, they're greeted by an angry William. Who informs them that the Horde has attacked killing 10 of their members, wounding some others and taking 24 prisoner back to the Horde village. Thomas in an attempt to free those 24, offers Qurong what he really wants: himself, Thomas of Hunter. Thomas returns to the forests with Mikil and subdue a border guard, instructing him to inform Qurong of their offer. He does and returns with a group of warriors who exchange the 24 albinos on horseback for Thomas. He is then imprisoned and beaten and ordered to renounce his love for Chelise to her face or she'll receive the same punishment that he will: death by drowning (traditional Horde execution). The thought is unbearable to Thomas, but the thought of Chelise dying before she has a chance to drown in the red pool is even more heart wrenching. He reluctantly goes through with it, utterly destroying himself in the process and nearly convincing Chelise when he knocks himself out to get away from the pain. When he reawakens he decides not to go through with it and rushes for Chelise professing his love for her as sure and true as it's ever been. At that moment as they're weeping together Woref bursts through the door (having been spying on the whole event) and in a fit of rage grabs Chelise and throws her against the wall, violently striking her in the face at the very moment that Qurong walks through the door, led in by a captive Mikil. Woref, Chelise and Thomas are all sentenced to death by drowning unless Chelise tells her father she doesn't in fact love Thomas (which Thomas tries to get her to do) but she does not. Upon Mikil's release she meets with Johan and Suzan and they begin to trace a portion of the lake that was not emptied by Ciphus when it had turned red after Justin's drowning for it was in fact a spring. They dig and eventually reach the flowing waters which they channel into the larger lake just before Thomas, Chelise and Woref are sent to the depths. As they all sink Chelise pleads with Elyon to take her, suddenly realizing that the water is turning red she drowns in the red water and experiences Elyon's sacrifice and love for her. Eventually she rises, simultaneously as Thomas does (much in the same fashion as when Thomas and Rachelle drowned at the end of Red). Qurong appears to be somewhat stunned by the turn of events, but allows Chelise, Thomas and the other albinos safe passage out of the forests to the desert, though he will not drown himself. Thomas, Chelise and the others leave the forests to the desert where their tribe is waiting. All while this is happening, events are still in motion in Ancient Earth. Thomas has successfully turned Carlos by allowing him to sleep while in contact with his blood, in which Carlos dreams of the other reality as Johan. He then believes and somewhat reluctantly decides to join up with Thomas in an effort to stop Svensson and Fortier from executing their full plans: Only releasing the antivirus to a small list of people they deemed worthy of its reception. Upon hearing this America has already turned it's naval fleet, airforce and nuclear arsenal over to the French, as a last-ditch effort to resist Thomas along with high-ranking U.S., British and Israeli officials order the USS Nimitz to fire on the fleet sinking all of it. When Thomas returns to Washington D.C. he meets with President Blair, Monique and his sister Kara at Genetrix Labs to check on the progress of the antivirus. They inform him that the only feasible cure is through his blood. Somehow it instantly eradicates the virus, and Monique and Kara believe it to be because he swam in Elyon's lake and breathed the water in effectively making his blood immune. However, since the virus is so widespread they need all twelve pints of his blood. A transfusion is out of the question because of the risk they would run of ""watering down his blood with infected blood"". Thomas agrees knowing that it's the only hope they have left of defeating the pandemic, his blood is dubbed the ""Thomas Strain"" by Monique. His only request is that he is allowed to sleep before they begin the procedure. As he does he reawakens in the other reality, the book concludes with Thomas at the oasis where his tribe stays, waiting on the top of a dune with Mikil, Jamous, Suzan and Johan (Suzan and Johan are planning their own marriage)as his bride Chelise is preparing for their wedding. A loud rumble is soon heard throughout the desert and a mass of Roshuim (white lions that were at the high lake with Elyon) begin to swarm around their oasis, lead in by a rider on a white horse - Justin. He rides straight for Chelise and dismounst, approaching her and grasping her hands. He exclaims his satisfaction to his father, Elyon, saying ""she's perfect, my bride is perfect!"". He then rides for Thomas where he lovingly embraces him and tells him ""Well done, Thomas"". He then mounts his horse and in the same fashion as when The Circle was first born, he rides around them with his sword in the sand symbolically carving a circle around them in the sand. He then proceeds to leave them, riding over the crest of the dune with the Roshuim in pursuit. It is stated in the few short days since Chelise drowned in the red water, some 5,000 Scabs followed in pursuit of Elyons gift through Justin."
2930,The Enchantress: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel,thriller," The Enchantress picks up where its predecessor, The Warlock left off. Two of its central characters, the fifteen year old twins, Sophie and Josh Newman, have been re-united after being briefly separated. The twins, along with John Dee and Virginia Dare, go back in time to the Isle of Danu Talis, where Osiris and Isis are revealed to be Dee's masters and the twins' parents. Osiris removes Dee's immortality, but Dee does not immediately die (he is later found by Marethyu, who restores his health and sight). Virginia Dare chooses to side with Osiris and Isis. Meanwhile, the Flamels, Niten, and Prometheus discover that Mars, Hel, and Odin are not faring well and that Machiavelli and Billy the Kid have joined them. The Flamels decide to join them on Alcatraz, but Billy mistakenly throws the spears with the Words of Power at her (he also used them to kill the Sphinx earlier). The Morrigan throws herself in front of Perenelle and dies instead. Odin and Hel both die slaying an army of Anpu. After finding Aerop-Enap's cocoon, the Flamels and Machiavelli attempt to awake her while Billy and Black Hawk fight a Karkinos (giant crab). Billy is mortally wounded and Black Hawk is thrown into the water, presumably eaten by the Nereids. Machiavelli heals Billy and Aerop-Enap kills the Karkinos after Mars uses his aura to lead it away from the group, which causes him to spontaneously combust. Tsagaglalal returns herself to her youthful immortal state and it is discovered that she is one of the First People that were awakened by Prometheus. After putting on an ancient suit of ceramic armour, she goes to the Golden Gate Bridge to fend off an army of Spartoi (dragon teeth sewn in the ground and watered with blood that become reptilian soldiers) that were animated by Quetzalcoatl and the present Bastet. In the center of the bridge, Niten and Prometheus defeat quite a few of the Spartoi, but both are mortally wounded. After slaying the rest of the Spartoi, Tsagaglalal finds them, but only has enough of her aura left to heal Prometheus. The dismayed Elder convinces her to use his aura to heal Niten, asking her to tell him to marry Aoife, whom Niten loves. On Danu Talis, Scathach, Joan of Arc, Saint-Germain, Palamedes, Shakespeare, and the young Prometheus crash their vimana on the original Yggdrasill and meet Hekate and Mars (then Huitzilopochtli), who plan to lead the human inhabitants of Yggdrasill to liberate the incarcerated Aten. Anubis and the younger Bastet prepare to take over Danu Talis, but Isis and Osiris have other plans. Telling Sophie and Josh to don silver and gold suits of armour, they prepare to present the twins to the council of elders as the rightful rulers of Danu Talis. Marethyu finds Virginia Dare and presents her with an emerald tablet from Abraham the Mage, persuading Dare to side with the humani. Dare meets Dee in front of the prison, later telling him that she had only wanted a world so that she could make it completely free. She leads the humani against the Elders along with Dee, who dies when allowing her to draw energy off of his aura. Scathach, Joan, Saint Germain, Shakespeare, and Palamedes fight the final battle along with the twins. Osiris and Isis admit that Sophie and Josh aren't their children (Josh was found in a Neanderthal camp shortly after the Fall of Danu Talis, and Sophie was found in Russia in the ninth or tenth century 30,000 years after) and they transform into their true forms, revealing that they aren't Elders, but Earthlords. After defeating the pair, Sophie and Josh reach an agreement and Sophie leaves with the other warriors. Josh sits on the center of the Pyramid of the Sun and begins to read the Codex, discovering that Sophie, Joan, Scathach, Dare, and Aten lead the survivors onto the new Earth and assist them for several hundred years before returning to the present time. He then combines the Four Swords of Power (Clarent, Excalibur, Durendal, and Joyeuse) to create the fifth power--- Aether. The swords form a hook, revealing that Josh becomes Marethyu. He plunges his hook into the center of the Pyramid of the Sun, speaking aloud the last words he read in the Codex (""Today I become Death, the destroyer of worlds"") and thereby destroying Danu Talis. On Alcatraz, Nicholas and Perenelle spend their last moments together. Marethyu tells Perenelle and the Alchemyst that he is Josh and takes them to Paris, where the Flamels die. In a letter to Sophie, Josh (Marethyu) reveals that he and the Flamels were present at Aoife and Niten's wedding, where Scathach was the bridesmaid."
2931,"Mary, Mary",thriller," FBI Agent Alex Cross is on vacation in Los Angeles with his family when he receives word that a Hollywood actress has been murdered. The actress was shot and her face violently slashed with a knife. An email describing the killer's mindset before and during the murder as well as allusions to the killer's motivation was sent to an entertainment reporter at the Los Angeles Times. The emails are signed ""Mary Smith"". The actress happens to be friends with the wife of the President of the United States who has asked FBI Director Ron Burns to look into the matter. Additional victims, including a movie producer and a local TV anchorwoman, turn up later as well. As the number of incidents increases so does the number of leads. One such lead is a sighting of a blue Chevrolet Suburban speeding away from one of the murder scenes. Further investigation reveals the owner of one such Suburban who's owner lives near the Internet cafe where many of the Mary Smith emails were sent. A variety of other evidence also corroborates the conclusion that the Suburban's owner is, in fact, the Mary Smith killer. Cross interviews the Suburban owner. In doing so, he discovers that she suffers from some sort of psychological disorder that either lead or caused her to kill her three children 20 years ago. To investigate the killings further, Cross travels to the Suburban owner's small hometown in Vermont and discovers that after her children were killed, she was institutionalized at a state mental hospital from which she later escaped. At the mental hospital, Cross examines the log of visitors who had come to see the Suburban owner and discovers a familiar name who then shows up and tries to silence Cross for good."
2932,The Power of the Dog,thriller," The novel begins in 1975 with the main character Art Keller watching the opium poppy fields of the Mexican state of Sinaloa burn. The burning is done in preference to the use of Agent Orange. Keller has just begun his career as a DEA agent, coming over from operative work with the CIA, and a veteran of Viet Nam's Phoenix Program. Keller tells us that though there are similarities, this isn't Operation Phoenix but Operation Condor. Keller's career looks like it might end before it begins, until he works his way into the friendship of the Barrera brothers and Miguel Angel Barrera, referred to us as Tío (meaning Uncle/Valued Elder Patron). Tío sets it up so that Don Pedro Aviles, the main drug lord of Sinaloa, is assassinated, while giving Art Keller the credit for the drug lord's death during an arrest. Tío then leads the Sinaloa heroin traffickers into the modern age as the cartel's new leader."
2933,Jackals,thriller, Locals from a small town cruise the rural back roads in order to prey on solitary drivers.
2934,Necropolis: City of the Dead,thriller," Scarlett Adams' school tutor group is taken on a trip to St Meredith's Church where she sees a vision of Matthew Freeman, who leads her to the door with the pentagram etched into it. There, she is transported to the Ukraine, inside a monastery where she is captured by monks who worship the Old Ones. She is taken to the leader of the monastery, Father Gregory, who tells Scarlett of the Gatekeepers and the Old Ones. He and his followers built the monastery around the door in order to catch any of the Five for the Old Ones should they come through. Scarlett is taken to a cell, and that night she has a dream about a dragon and a strange neon sign that says ""SIGNAL ONE"". Later, she escapes by attacking the monks and returning through the door. She returns to St Meredith's, but her eighteen-hour long disappearance has sparked a media storm. In Peru, at Professor Chambers' hacienda, Matt finds out who Scarlett is through the media storm and decides that he should go back to London with the rest of the Five and his friend Richard Cole. However, later that night, a man named Ramon brings the diary belonging to St Joseph of Cordoba, claiming that he feels remorse for helping Diego Salamanda decode the diary. The diary contains the locations of twenty-five doors around the world that serve as portals to other doors. After studying the diary using his skills of reading old maps he learnt at university, Richard says that there are doors in Tuscany, Lake Tahoe, Cuzco, London, Ukraine, Cairo, Istanbul, Delhi, Mecca, Buenos Aires, the Australian outback, Antarctica and Hong Kong. Scott Tyler confirms Ramon's truthfulness by reading his mind, but the hacienda is then attacked and set on fire by strange zombies who kill Ramon with a fence post. Although their Inca allies arrive and finish off the zombies, Professor Chambers is mortally wounded and dies. Matt decides that the Five should split up so that the Old Ones cannot capture them all in one shot, and he, Jamie and Richard go to find Scarlett while Pedro and Scott go to the hidden Inca city of Vilcabamba to stay. In London, Scarlett is trying to get back to her normal life, but can't when she notices strange men following her. She receives a strange phone call from her friend Aidan, who persuades her to go to Happy Garden, a Chinese restaurant, for a Chinese man wants to see her. However, the restaurant is destroyed by a bomb. She unwillingly goes to Hong Kong for her father, who works for Nightrise. Matt, Richard and Jamie arrive in London and nearly cross paths with Scarlett, but are held up by an accident orchestrated by the shape changers working for the Old Ones. They go to the Nexus headquarters where Matt realises Ramon's arrival at the hacienda was a trap laid by the Old Ones to stop them from getting to England before Scarlett left for China. Matt theorises that Ramon was hypnotized to give the diary back to the group to create the idea of using one of the doors to get to Hong Kong. There would be agents waiting to immediately capture them once they emerged through the Hong Kong door, so they decide to fly to Macau to seek help from one of the Nexus' contacts before taking a boat into Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Scarlett arrives in Hong Kong, being looked after by a Mrs Cheng, who claims her father is away on urgent business. Scarlett meets the sinister Chairman of Nightrise at The Nail, Nightrise's Hong Kong headquarters, who gives her an ornate jade necklace, which is in fact a tracking device. Whilst in Hong Kong, strange and ominous things start happening around her. A person trying to give her a letter disappears in a swarming crowd, and the people that she meets stare at her intently. Mrs Cheng and Karl, the chauffeur, seem robotic and lifeless, and the smog surrounding Hong Kong is thickening. Scarlett follows a trail of clues telling her to go to The Peak and over there, two agents kill Mrs Cheng, who is revealed to be a shape-changer who is one of the Old Ones in human form. Scarlett is then taken to Lohan Shang-tung, whose agents have just helped her escape the Old Ones, and when the building is attacked by Old Ones and Police, they help her to escape again. She is then disguised as a boy, and pretends to be the son of a couple who are boarding a ship departing Hong Kong to Macau, where she will meet with the other Gatekeepers. However, her father, Paul Adams, stationed at the jetty, finds her and hands her over to the chairman, who recaptures her believing that it will help her, and keeps her at Victoria Prison. A dream call by Scarlett wakes a dragon (a metaphor for a typhoon), which starts to move towards Hong Kong. Matt, Jamie and Richard had arrive in Macau where they meet Han Shang-tung, who reveals himself as ""The Master of the Mountain"", the leader of the White Lotus Society, a Triad based in Macau and Hong Kong. Shang-tung explains that Scarlett has been taken prisoner by the Old Ones who plan to turn Hong Kong into a necropolis, a city of the dead, by using poisonous gases mixed with the pollution from mainland China that will suffocate and kill the residents there. Shang-Tung believes Scarlett is a reincarnate of a goddess and has had his people watch over her all her life. He agrees to help them after affirming that Matt and Jamie are indeed part of the Five with a test: climbing a sword ladder. Later that night Richard, Matt and Jamie travel by boat to Hong Kong and come under attack by the Hong Kong police (under the control of the Old Ones) after they are betrayed by the captain. In the struggle, Matt loses Richard and Jamie, arriving in Hong Kong alone. He sees people dying in the street because of the pollution, and recognizes several of the Old Ones' servants. Matt makes his way to Wisdom Court, where Scarlett's father now resides. Once there Matt lets himself be captured by the Chairman after being betrayed by a despondent Paul Adams, attempting to barter him for Scarlett. However, Adams is killed and Matt is taken to the same cell as Scarlett in Victoria Prison where they share their experiences. Matt reveals that his being captured was in fact a plan he had made with her father. He knew that the only way to get near her was to be caught, so he had contacted Lohan and his men earlier, telling them of his plan, and then Scarlett's father had agreed to call Nightrise in order to turn in Matt, even at expense of his own life. Matt also explained that he knew the Old Ones would think it was amusing to see two of the Five briefly imprisoned in the same room, before they were imprisoned in different rooms in different sides of the world. Because their powers are strengthened when together they begin to think of escaping. The meaning of ""Signal One"" is then explained. It is part of the Hong Kong Observatory warning system on the intensity of typhoons. To the Chinese, typhoons are also known as the dragon's breath, explaining the dragon Scarlett had been dreaming of in the Gatekeeper's dream world. She has the ability not just to predict, but to control weather conditions. It is also revealed that Scarlett knew of the typhoon and the power it would bring. Richard and Jamie find Lohan and he bands together his men to rescue Scarlett and Matt under cover of the rising storm Scarlett has made and take the prison, where he followed Matt to when he was being captured. The impending storm is creeping higher up the scale. Jamie knows that Scott will be able to feel the danger Jamie is in, and that he will try and use the door that leads to the Tai Shan Temple, which will undoubtedly be guarded. The group, along with Scarlett, who diverts the storm from them while it destroys everything around them, run to the temple to kill the guards protecting it before Scott arrives, which would result in his death or capture. At The Nightrise headquarters, a wooden sampan picked up by the typhoon smashes into the Chairman's office and ironically kills him; he despises naval craft. Meanwhile, Lohan's men kill all but one of the Old Ones' agents, who is wounded but hides. Scott and Pedro travel through the door and the last Old One agent aims at Jamie, but Scott pushes him out of the way and the bullet hits Scarlett in the head, rendering her unconscious. Without Scarlett to hold the typhoon back, it unleashes its full strength on them and disintegrates the temple. Jamie and Scott, Richard and Scarlett, Pedro, and Matt and Lohan dash through the door moments before the temple is destroyed, escaping the typhoon. Then the storm finally abates, revealing Hong Kong completely destroyed (although all the pollution was swept away). All of the Five are separated all over the world with their partners, due to having no preassumed destination decided between all of them, also it is said that since the door collapsed as they were going through it, one final trick was played on them. Meanwhile, Chaos, the King of the Old Ones, prepares to commence the war to conquer the planet and wipe out humanity. *Necropolis signifies a change in the structure of the narrative of The Power of Five series, with two character's tales being told side by side. It also sees the Gatekeepers actively seeking each other for the first time. *All five children have turned fifteen between Nightrise and Necropolis but, although Matt mentions his own birthday occurred while he was in Nazca, it is not explicitly mentioned if the Five were born on the same day. *This is also the first novel in the series which prominently features a somewhat divine opposition against the Old Ones, with the introduction of the Librarian. The Librarian's role is brief and never elaborated upon, but it is made clear the Librarian has vast power. It is obvious he is there to combat the Old Ones. This makes a significant change because in the first three novels the Old Ones had seemingly invincible power and the Five had to face them themselves with no help. *The final chapter of Nightrise, which introduced modern day Scarlett, is significantly revised in this novel. Scarlett's disappearance having occurred beforehand. *Pedro, who could not speak a word of English previously in the series, has apparently learned a sufficient amount of the language for communication purposes in the four months since the events of Evil Star. Again, this is not explicitly referred to in the narrative. *In Raven's Gate, Matt claimed he never smoked when Claire Deverill came over for dinner. However, in Necropolis, when he introduces himself in his diary, he claims that he had smoked with Kelvin Johnson but withdrew after his arrest. Of course, Matt hated and feared Deverill, and so may simply have lied to her. It is unlikely he would have felt any compunction about doing so."
2935,Atlantis Found,thriller," In 7120 BC, a comet slams into North America, creating Hudson Bay, abruptly ending the last Ice Age and causing global geological and environmental upheaval. Several advanced civilizations are ended. In 1858 AD, a whaling vessel discovers a 1770s merchant ship frozen in Antarctic ice. As with most of the novels in this series, these oddly juxtaposed opening scenes become key elements to the plot as it develops. A group of U.S. scientists discover an mysterious underground chamber in Colorado and are then attacked by a group of 'tomb raiders'. The attackers leave them to drown, but luckily U.S. National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) Special Projects Director Dirk Pitt happens to be nearby and saves the scientists. The scientists were able to save an exquisitely carved skull of polished obsidian (see crystal skull). It seems unique, but curiously, another is discovered to exist&mdash;in the private collection of a descendant of the whaling sea captain from the opening scenes of the novel. Dirk and Al Giordino acquire the descendant's skull, and the two are handed over to NUMA for study and analysis. A theory develops in the organization as to whether or not they are Atlantean in origin. Al and Rudi Gunn make it to the remote island and discover another inscribed chamber that housed the second skull, and discover another larger chamber beyond it. Here, they find perfectly-mummified, pre-Hellenistic men and women, surrounded by friezes of exotic cities and strange, mythic animals. They are ambushed by 'tomb raiders' too, but manage to defeat them. Meanwhile, Pitt is aboard an icebreaker in Antarctica searching for the 1770s merchant ship. The ship is found, but Pitt narrowly escapes disaster from an attack by a German U-boat that has been missing since 1945. The U-boat is destroyed by a US nuclear submarine and Pitt recovers the body of a beautiful female officer by diving to the wreckage. At NUMA headquarters, the skulls have been examined. Inside both are geometrically exact globes. However, the continents are in different locations; Antarctica in particular is now almost temperate. Coastlines are also different, further out. The inscription symbols are fed into the computers, and translations are awaited. Pitt returns to Washington and interrupts someone stealing the latest report from the NUMA director's office. After a brief chase, Pitt overcomes the thief and discovers a beautiful twin to the U-boat officer. Blood tests of both women show not only are they genetically identical, but their systems are so resilient as to allow them a long natural lifespan. The women are relatives, but not sisters. Both women are members of the Wolf family, who in turn are descendents of Nazi escapees from Syria. The Wolfs run Destiny Enterprises, a corporation based in Argentina that is rumored to include Fourth Empire Holdings from Nazi Germany. Pitt suspects foul play. The next morning, the results are back. Apparently, the chambers are the work of a civilization calling themselves the Amenes (pronounced Ah-Meen-Eez). A nation of seafarers, traders, and wisemen, they discovered and traded with most of the world, leaving coastal towns wherever they went. However, a comet struck Earth at the end of the Pleistocene period, ending the Ice Age. This caused a world wide series of tidal waves which wiped out most of their civilization&mdash;and, thanks to the urbanization they had begun, most of their civilized contemporaries as well. The survivors were all in the uplands, and usually less advanced. However, some of the Amenes survived in isolated pockets. Banding together in a sort of priesthood, they tried to pass on their knowledge of the world, architecture, astrology, navigation, and history. However, the knowledge was transmitted inexpertly, and was twisted as a result. Depressed, the priests saved the bulk of their knowledge in a series of enclosed inland vaults, similar to the one found in Colorado, and then passed out of history. But the comet which obliterated their society had a twin. According to their impressive mathematical models, the twin would return in some 9,000 years&mdash;in other words, soon&mdash;and produce similar results. The data is passed on to an observatory for analysis. Around this time, Dirk meets Karl Wolf, the C.E.O. of Destiny Enterprises Limited, who is a direct descendant of Ulrich Wolff, Colonel of the S.S. When Dirk mentions the potential catastrophe, and the loss of life it will entail, Wolf gives and answer that seems to imply that his family may actually be planning to capitalize on the disaster. The data from the observatory comes back: the prophecy is false. The comet will actually return to Earth in another few millennia and miss the planet entirely. Pondering Wolf's comment, NUMA researchers note that Destiny is putting a lot of capital into a series of vast ships. The Wolfs have created four superships to save themselves from the cataclysm, and everything required for a future civilization. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino take a tour of one of the ships, while rescuing again one of the Colorado scientists, who was captured for her ability to decipher the Amenes inscriptions. As well as this, information linked to a nanotech research facility in Antarctica comes to light. According to some sources, the facility is built on the ruins of an Amenes city found there by Nazi archeologists before World War II. It was intended as a submarine base, but never used. The plan ultimately comes to light: the villains intend to use nanotechnology to separate the Ross Ice Shelf from the Antarctic mainland. The loss of such a large mass will destabilize the ocean currents of the southern hemisphere, and unbalance the planet (Pole shift theory). In the resulting wave of earthquakes and tsunami, the population would be decimated, and civilization would collapse. Dirk and his friends travel there immediately, but their transport breaks down. They encounter a rich eccentric named 'Dad' (Clive Cussler) who is there with a team to recover the gargantuan Antarctic Snow Cruiser left there in 1940 during Admiral Byrd's third Antarctic expedition. Using the Snow Cruiser, they are able to make it the rest of the way to the villains' base in the ancient Amenes city. There, they deactivate the nanotechnology with minutes to spare, and the authorities arrive to secure the base. Dirk forces Karl Wolf and his relatives to leave the base on foot in the middle of a blizzard, and they die of hypothermia soon afterwards."
2936,Conviction,thriller," As described by Sherryl Connelly of the New York Daily News,"
2937,Remote Control,thriller," The series follows the character of Nick Stone, an ex-military man who previously worked for the SAS, British Intelligence, and an American agency. Stone now works as a paid mercenary, willing to work in even the most difficult circumstances. The series has Stone dealing with assassination, political intrigue, as well as human rights, white slavery, and prostitution."
2938,Toxin,thriller," The book opens with a scene showing a couple of farmhands who are entrusted with disposing of a diseased cow. However they instead take it to a nearby slaughter house and sell it. The story then moves to the protagonist Dr. Kim Reggis who is going through a bad divorce. On a night out with his daughter Becky, he takes her to the nearby fast food chain, OnionRing Burgers. There she eats a rare steak burger. The beef in the burger is revealed to have come from the cow mentioned at the start of the book. The next day Becky begins having loose motions and severe body pain. Kim and his estranged wife Tracy rush her into the emergency care unit of the hospital he works in. However he is ignored there which infuriates him. The doctors confirm that she has been infected by E Coli's renegede strain O157:H7 which is resistant to most antibiotics. Becky's condition begin to deteriorate rapidly. Feeling helpless at his inability to save his daughter's life, Kim makes it his mission to trace out how she contracted the disease. He first makes a visit to the restaurant they ate at, only managing to create a ruckus there. However he learns that the beef came from Mercer Foods. He traces the slaughterhouse and manages to take a US FDA in his confidence. The next day Becky dies of multiple organ failure leaving him in sorrow and strengthening his resolve for justice. He infiltrates the slaughterhouse with the help of his ex-wife by changing his appearance to make him look like a jobless neo-Nazi. He accepts a job as a janitor. On his first day at work, he gets into the records room and finds out the truth about the diseased animal. They are attacked by an assassin. Tracy appears and kills the assassin. They then escape from the slaughterhouse and flee the country after making public the malpractices committed by the slaughterhouse."
2939,Clear and Present Danger,thriller," When U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Panache intercepts a yacht in the Caribbean Sea, the crew discovers two men cleaning up the vessel after murdering a man and his family. Through a mock execution, the Coast Guardsmen force the killers to confess to the crime. It is later learned that the murdered man was involved in a money laundering scheme for a drug cartel. Upon hearing of this atrocity, the President of the United States, who is running for re-election, feels compelled to take drastic measures against drug trafficking; his challenger, J. Robert Fowler, has rallied the public behind the administration's failures in the War on Drugs. The president initiates covert operations within Colombia and a step-up of operations against aircraft believed to be distributing narcotics. Aiding the president are U.S. National Security Advisor James Cutter, Central Intelligence Agency's Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter, and Director of Central Intelligence Arthur Moore. The plan consists of four operations: *Operation CAPER is the interception of mobile phone communications between cartel management. It is also the communications arm for SHOWBOAT and the light-fighters' only means of contact with the outside world. John Clark is dispatched with CAPER to coordinate the effort. *Operation EAGLE EYE uses F-15 Eagles to intercept drug flights. Several aircraft are destroyed and others are forced to land, where the pilots are interrogated for information regarding the cartel. *Operation SHOWBOAT involves four teams of soldiers infiltrating Colombia to stake-out airstrips used by drug-trafficking aircraft. They report departure times of aircraft, allowing the EAGLE EYE team to intercept them. Later the troops attack the airstrips and coca processing sites. The soldiers are seconded from U.S. light infantry battalions, and are all Hispanic in order to blend in with the local population. *Operation RECIPROCITY involves using ground-attack aircraft and laser-guided bombs to attack cartel locations discovered by intercepts. The bombs have a casing that will be consumed in the blast to give the impression of a car-bomb. Meanwhile, Félix Cortez, a former intelligence officer from Cuba employed by the cartel, feigns romantic interest in the aide of Emil Jacobs, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The aide unknowingly reveals information regarding the date of Jacobs' official visit to the Attorney General of Colombia. Cortez delivers this information to the cartel, which orders Jacobs' assassination as retaliation for the U.S. seizure of cartel money. During his visit, Jacobs and several other Americans in his delegation are killed. Jack Ryan suspects the CIA's involvement in the situation in Colombia. As acting Deputy Director of the Intelligence Directorate, Ryan should be privy to most operations but he realizes he is being put out of the loop. After Robby Jackson, assigned to the Pentagon, makes an inquiry into activity in the region, Ryan goes to Moore to demand an explanation. Moore is evasive, yet orders Ryan to withhold information about Colombia from a congressional oversight committee. Cortez eventually uncovers the U.S. operations. He suppresses this information, planning to engineer a war within the cartel that will leave him in a position to seize power. Cortez orders mercenaries to hunt down the U.S. troops, and blackmails Cutter into ending SHOWBOAT, promising the intra-cartel war will slow drug imports to the States. Cutter's meeting with Cortez is shadowed by Ryan and Clark. Clark is outraged at Cutter's abandonment of the troops and, with Ryan, plans a rescue operation with personnel from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Air Force. Clark makes radio contact with two of the SHOWBOAT teams, ordering them to alternate pickup points to await extraction. The other two teams encounter mercenaries and take casualties. Clark makes radio contact with some survivors of these remaining teams&mdash;which include Domingo Chavez&mdash;then flies into Colombia to retrieve them. Ryan uses an Air Force helicopter to pick up other survivors. Together, Clark and Ryan launch a raid on the cartel's command post, capturing Cortez and extracting the remaining ground team. Due to a hurricane and damage to the helicopter, they land on the deck of the Panache. Cortez is returned to Cuba, where he is a marked as a traitor. Upon being confronted by Clark with evidence of his treason, Cutter commits suicide. Ryan confronts the defiant president, informing him that despite his classifying the drug cartel as a ""clear and present danger,"" Ryan must brief U.S. Congress over the illegal operations. After Ryan briefs the committee, the president deliberately loses the election in order to hide the covert operations and protect the honor of those involved. Ryan realizes that the president has more honor and dignity than he originally thought."
2940,Point Blanc,thriller," After getting into trouble with a drug dealer and the police, Alex Rider is assigned by MI6 to investigate the deaths of billionaires, Michael J. Roscoe in New York and General Viktor Ivanov on the Black Sea. Each of them had a son attending Point Blanc, an academy in the French Alps run by a South African scientist, Dr. Hugo Grief, and both died under mysterious circumstances. This may seem like a coincidence, but Alan Blunt is suspicious, and sends Alex to investigate. Alex's cover is that of the son of a supermarket magnate, Sir David Friend. Alex initially spends a week as a member of Friend's family and is required to memorise as much detail as possible about his cover. However, during his stay with the family, he receives a hard time from David's daughter Fiona. Alex even finds himself shot at by Fiona's friends when they go out shooting, only for Fiona to claim that it was 'just a bit of fun'. The next day, when Alex and Fiona are out horse riding, Fiona falls off her horse in the middle of a railway tunnel. Alex goes back in on his horse and just about manages to retrieve Fiona and jump off a bridge into a river before they are run over by a high speed train. Which causes Fiona to apoligize for her harsh behavior. Grief's assistant Mrs. Stellenbosch, arrives at the Friend's house by helicopter. Smithers meets with Alex undercover as a farmer and provides him with some equipment and gadgets (including an electric saw disguised into a Sony Discman, an mini grenade disguised as an ear stud, a bulletproof ski suit, infrared ski goggles, and a single-shot tranquilizer gun disguised as a Harry potter book ). Stellenbosch is about to take Alex to the academy, but Fiona, due to the fact she doesn't know he's a spy but becomes suspicious, is about to expose him but is shot with the tranquilizer from Alex's book. Alex is taken to a hotel in Paris, where his dinner drink is drugged. His bed is then transported where Mrs. Stellenbosch has Alex stripped to his underpants, photographed, examined, and measured. After the examination, Alex's clothes are put back on and he is returned to his hotel room, without him ever realising what had happened. Upon arriving at Point Blanc, Alex meets the founder Dr Grief and later a student who goes by the name of James Sprintz as well as a group of other boys he gets to know through the week such as Hugo Vries, Tom McMorin, and Joe Canterbury. James thinks something is wrong with the academy because the other boys were rebellious before and then suddenly became complacent. One day, after James reveals to Alex his plan to escape the academy. After sneaking out of his room using the Discman, Alex witnesses a boy being forcibly dragged downstairs and is convinced it is James. Yet Alex later sees James unharmed in his bedroom. The following day at breakfast, James' attitude towards his plan to escape seems to have changed. Alex climbs a chimney to examine the forbidden second and third floors. He discovers that the second and third floors are accurate replicas of the ground and first floors respectively (for instance, replicas of the boys' rooms, with TV screens monitoring their behaviour downstairs). Alex signals MI6 using the CD device provided to him by Smithers. This signal is received by the MI6 office, where Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones debate whether to move in on the academy immediately. Blunt decides to prepare a unit on stand by. Following later Alex finds some boys locked in a basement jail, including James and the son of Michael J. Roscoe, Paul. Alex learns that James was indeed dragged downstairs and was replaced by a replica. Alex reveals the truth to James and Paul, his identity and the reason why he was sent to Point Blanc. Mrs. Stellenbosch is told of this after someone overhears it via a bug planted in the cell and knocks Alex unconscious, has him handcuffed to a chair, and turns him over to Dr. Grief, who then reveals his plan to take over the world, named ""Project Gemini"". In the 1980s, Grief cloned sixteen copies of himself in his home country of South Africa (where he greatly supported the apartheid regime). While the real boys are at Point Blanc, a plastic surgeon named Baxter surgically alters Grief's 14-year-old clones to resemble them. Soon, the clone and the real boy are swapped. The replica rooms are used by the clones to imitate the boys' behaviour so the parents will not notice that they have been swapped. When the parents die and pass on their inheritance, Dr. Grief will take the assets from the clones. Eventually, he will be the most powerful man in the world, and reinstate apartheid globally. Grief imprisons Alex, planning to dissect him alive the next day for a biology class. Alex uses his exploding ear-stud to escape his cage. He improvises a snowboard (using an ironing-board) to escape, but Grief sends his guards on snowmobiles with machine guns to take him down. During the pursuit, one snowmobile crashes into a tree because it could not fit through a small gap that Alex squeezed through. Another guard is knocked in the head by Alex's 'snowboard' and ultimately falls. Alex almost makes it to the bottom of the mountain but a machine gunner previously prepared by Grief is waiting for him. Just as the man is about to fire, a train approaches in the way. Alex jumps on top of it but loses his balance, falls and passes out. Alex is taken to a hospital in Grenoble, where a visiting Mrs Stellenbosch is told that Alex has died. However, it is revealed that Alex is alive, and MI6 then sends him out again with a team of SAS soldiers (among them is Wolf, an SAS soldier introduced in Stormbreaker) to help liberate the school. In the school, the SAS team take out several guards and go down to the basement to attempt to save the imprisoned boys. An on-going fire-fight ensues as the team encounter more guards. Wolf demands Alex to stay back. Alex goes into the dining room and sees Dr Grief about to escape in helicopter. However, Mrs Stellenbosch appears who is surprised and disappointed that Alex is still alive. Despite Alex's efforts to fend her off, she overpowers him and pins him against a wall. She pulls out a gun and just as she points it at Alex, Wolf appears. Wolf is shot three times by Mrs Stellenbosch but manages to shoot the woman himself with his machine gun. Mrs Stellenbosch falls out a window. Alex prevents Dr. Grief escaping by driving a snowmobile up a ramp and crashing it into Grief's helicopter, jumping off at the last second. Alex is debriefed by MI6 and Mrs Jones tells him that all fifteen clones have been arrested. Alex later goes home where Jack Starbright informs him that his school headteacher wanted to see him. Alex goes to his school and to the headteachers office and is startled to find a clone that resembles him, who avoided capture and escaped. Indeed Dr Grief earlier told Alex that he produced sixteen clones. The clone tries to shoot Alex, causing a fire in a laboratory. Alex runs up to the roof, only to be followed by the clone. The two fight ending with one of them falling into a hole following an explosion. It can be presumed that it was the clone who fell, however this is not made clear."
2941,The Last Dog on Earth,thriller," Logan Moore is a troubled 14-year-old boy living with his mother Marianne and stepfather Robert in Newburg, Oregon. Logan does not get along well with Robert or his mother, and holds a grudge against his biological father for leaving when he was young. After an incident at a barbecue, Robert decides to purchase a Labrador Retriever in order to teach Logan responsibility. Eager to rebel against his stepfather, Logan convinces his mother to adopt a dog from an animal shelter. He plans to choose an ugly dog and teach it destructive behavior. At the shelter, Logan encounters a young female mutt who immediately takes a liking to him. Logan adopts the dog and names her Jack after Robert's former dog. Meanwhile, a new prion disease named Psychotic Outburst Syndrome (or POS) is affecting dogs, causing friendly pets to become violent. Officials struggle to control the disease and immediately terminate any dogs that catch it. Humans soon begin to contract the disease. Logan quickly bonds with Jack and values her as his only friend. After getting into trouble whilst attempting to protect her, Logan is sent to boot camp while Jack remains at home. Both he and Jack manage to escape, find each other, and begin traveling together. During their journey, they encounter another dog called White Paws: Jack's brother who has become infected with POS. White Paws attacks Jack and severely wounds her before dying. Logan worries that Jack may have contracted the disease through contact with White Paws. The pair continue their journey until they reach the town of Dayville. Logan faintly remembers that his biological father lives in the town and decides to find his father and confront him. While Logan is shoplifting food, Jack is found by three men who, fearing that she may be infected, beat her. Logan is arrested and manages to find his father's address at the police station before escaping. He returns to find Jack nearly dead and carries her, attempting to find his father's house, until he faints from exhaustion. He awakens in the house of his biological father, Dr. Craig Westerly, who had found Logan unconscious by his car. Logan learns from Craig that he had not abandoned him and his mother, but that Marianne had divorced him. Logan fears for Jack's life, afraid that she is infected or will be euthanized. Craig runs tests on the dog and learns that Jack, despite having been in contact with POS, isn't infected: she is immune. Craig decides to take Jack to a doctor so that a vaccine can be created. During the meeting, Rudy Stagg, a man infected with POS who had been killing dogs in order to contain the outbreak, stumbles into their room. Rudy ignores pleas to spare Jack and shoots at her, but Logan dives in front of the dog and is shot instead. Logan suffers a collapsed lung and falls into a coma. He awakens weeks later and learns that Jack is on life support. He says a final goodbye to Jack before her life support is turned off. Jack's immunity to POS leads to the creation of a vaccine and cure, and Logan is finally able to reconcile with Robert, Craig, and Devon Wallace&mdash;a childhood enemy whose dog died due to POS. The novel's epilogue, written as a newspaper article, reveals Logan and his family hold a private ceremony to honor Jack."
2942,Sign of the Cross,thriller," Jonathon Payne and David ""D.J."" Jones are recruited to find Dr. Charles Boyd, an archeologist who recently found the Catacombs of Orvieto, the safe haven for the popes of the Middle Ages. While Boyd avoids pursuit, a series of victims turn up dead, people who were tortured and crucified like Jesus Christ on his final day. All the incidents are interconnected, but it’s up to Payne and Jones to figure out the common thread and why they were selected to solve the puzzle."
2943,Stormbreaker,thriller," After the death of Ian Rider in a ""car crash,"" Alex Rider, his nephew, becomes suspicious of events occurring afterward. First, he finds the Chairman of the bank he worked for, Alan Blunt, with a gun strapped to his side at Ian's funeral, then Ian's study is stripped clean. This leads him to an auto junkyard where he learns Ian was assasinated, as he finds bullet holes in the windshield, after nearly getting killed by the crusher and having a battle with the men at the junkyard. He goes to the bank for Ian's will, but sneaks into the office of his co-worker, John Crawley. After getting into Ian's office, he finds a bunch of mysterious files and papers, including one labeled 'Stormbreaker', John Crawley catches Alex and a guard tranqulizes him. Alex wakes up inside MI6 headquarters. He learns that Alan Blunt is actually the head of MI6, which is revealed to be the angency Ian worked for and meets Mrs Jones, second-in-command of the MI6. Alex is recruited and is sent to be trained at a SAS base. When he completes his training, he is sent to investigate the Stormbreaker computers, which his uncle was investigating and to spy on Egyptian Multimillionaire Herod Sayle, the owner of the Stormbreakers, an advanced computer he's planning to put in every school in Britain. Before he leaves, he is given a yo-yo which has a nylon string and is used for gripping things. He receives a Game Boy Color which is used for contacting, scanning; etc depending on the cartridge, and a zit cream used for burning through metal. Alex learns from MI6 that Ian Rider was killed by a Russian assassin called Yassen Gregorovich. Alex goes under the disguise of Felix Lester (another teenage boy who had earlier won a magazine competition to be the first child to use the Stormbreaker computer). He later arrives at Sayle's mansion. Sayle shows Alex around his own headquarters, which houses a large jellyfish aquarium containing a large Portuguese Man o' War jellyfish. Alex also meets Mr. Grin, a henchman who's name derives from his time as a circus performer, catching knives with his teeth. An accident left him without a tongue and two large scars which give him the appearance of constant smiling and devilish look. Initially the trip goes well, with Alex finding a cryptic diagram made by his Uncle Ian in the canopy of his bed. However, Sayle grows to dislike Alex. While investigating the base, Alex sees several of Sayle's agents unloading metal cases with great care from a nuclear submarine. When one of the agents drops a metal case, he is promptly shot dead by Gregorovich, whom Alex is warned about and would be pulled out if he ever sees him. The next day, Alex goes for a walk through fields close to Sayle's mansion (following recommendation by a German woman called Nadia Vole, an associate of Sayle). He finds himself ambushed by armed guards on two quad bikes, who try to kill Alex. However, one collides with an electric fence and the other falls from a cliff face. Alex decides to investigate the library, because he earlier learned that Ian had spent some time there. Alex finds a map in a book about tin mining which matches the diagram left by Ian. He also learns that Ian had borrowed several books about viruses, and assumes that Sayle plans to use the Stormbreaker network to release a computer virus. Alex investigates the mine and, following the path left by his uncle, discovers a large computer manufacturing facility, where the Stormbreaker computers are being filled with a strange fluid. Alex realizes that the 'viruses' being investigated by Ian were not computer viruses, but biological weapons (a potent form of Smallpox). Alex is detected and nearly escapes but is eventually caught and knocked out by Mr Grin. Alex regains consciousness and finds himself handcuffed to a radiator, two guards come in and bring him to the room with the aquarium and handcuffs him to a chair, Sayle learns of who he is and explains his plan. When Sayle attended school, he was bullied because of his accent and skin colour. The worst bully was none other than the future Prime Minister. As a result, Sayle plans to embarrass the PM by his ""April Fools Joke""; when the computers are activated by the Prime Minister, the virus will be released into every school in the country, killing the children. Sayle brags that ""a spoonful of the stuff would destroy a city!"". Alex is left handcuffed to the chair, who knows that Mr. Grin will come back and give him a slow and painful death. He is left there until Nadia Vole frees him, telling Alex that she is a fellow spy who worked with Ian Rider. However, as they head to find a mobile phone to call MI6 and inform them of Sayle's plan, she triggers a trapdoor which drops Alex into the jellyfish tank, revealing Sayle sent her back to kill him instead of Mr. Grin. Alex eventually gets free by using the acne cream gadget to damage the tank's supporting iron girders, causing it to burst. Vole is caught in the blast of water, and is killed by the jellyfish. Snatching up a harpoon gun, Alex rushes outside to find that Sayle's private helicopter has already left, leaving only a cargo plane on the tarmac. With just a little over an hour until the launch of the Stormbreaker computers, Alex realises he must board the cargo plane. Using the handle of the harpoon gun, Alex knocks out a guard, taking his jeep and pistol. As he starts the jeep, several other jeeps start to pursue him as the cargo plane starts to take off. Through some fancy driving and good fortune, Alex manages to cause the destruction of the hostile jeeps. Tying the nylon cord of the yo-yo gadget to the harpoon with the yo-yo clipped to his belt, Alex shoots the harpoon which catches on the underbelly of the airborne plane. Using the gadget, he raises himself on to the plane where he confronts the pilot, who is none other than Mr. Grin. Alex instructs Mr. Grin to fly to London by threatening him with the pistol. When they are finally over London, Alex realizes that there is not much time left before noon. He spots two parachutes and uses one to jump out of the plane. Mr. Grin turns the plane around hoping to ram into Alex. Alex pulls out the Game Boy Color and activates a smoke bomb disguised as a game called ""Bomber Boy"" inside the cargo plane. Unable to see, Mr. Grin loses control of the plane and fatally crashes into a dock land near the River Thames. Alex crashes through the roof of the Science Museum and dangles from his parachute which had caught on a beam. Alex draws the gun he took from a guard back at Sayle's mansion and fires blindly at the Stormbreaker computer, one shot hitting the Prime Minister's hand and two shots hitting Sayle. Mrs. Jones orders security not to open fire on him. MI6 immediately recalls all the computers, citing ""safety issues"". Later, after a debriefing by Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones, Alex enters a taxi. The driver is in fact Herod Sayle, who survived the bullets that Alex fired at him. He leads Alex to the top of a building where he is about to shoot Alex, but is himself shot by Yassen Gregovich, who lands in a helicopter. Alex questions Yassen about why he shot Sayle. Yassen explains that Sayle was 'embarrassing', so he had to be eliminated. Alex tells Yassen he will one day kill him, but Yassen brushes aside the comment and tells Alex to drop the spy business and become a normal schoolboy again. He then leaves in the helicopter. Just before it goes out of sight, Alex sees Yassen 'salute' him."
2944,The Gun Seller,thriller," The Gun Seller tells the story of retired Army officer Thomas Lang, who lives a somewhat hand-to-mouth existence in London, his attention focused mainly on drinking whisky and driving his motorcycle. His income stems from a variety of bodyguard, strong-arm and mercenary jobs he undertakes, utilizing the skills he learned and contacts he made during his time in the Army. After being approached in Amsterdam by a man asking him to assassinate American businessman Alexander Woolf, Lang attempts to warn the intended victim at his Belgravia flat, finding Woolf gone and instead clashing with (and incapacitating) a mercenary, then encountering Woolf's daughter Sarah. Afterward Lang finds himself under intense scrutiny from both the Ministry of Defence and the Central Intelligence Agency, who claim Woolf is an international drug smuggler currently under investigation. Intrigued by the sudden interest of two government agencies, Lang attempts to track down the man who approached him in Amsterdam, unexpectedly finding him in London, and even more unexpectedly discovering that the man is Alexander Woolf himself. Eventually Woolf and his daughter agree to meet Lang at dinner and answer his questions. The elder Woolf explains that he tried to hire Lang as a hitman to see if he was a ""good man"", and admits he is under investigation, but not for selling drugs. Rather, Woolf is of interest because of what he knows about a next-generation light attack helicopter. More disturbingly, Woolf and Sarah claim that a conspiracy is under way to stage a terrorist attack and subsequently promote the light helicopter by sending one in to eliminate the terrorists. Lang is skeptical, but begins to believe the story after he is kidnapped and interrogated about Woolf. He frees himself, finding a heavily tortured Alexander Woolf in a nearby room. Woolf is killed shortly thereafter as Lang makes his escape, killing his captors in the process. With Sarah missing and now certain the conspiracy is real, Lang attempts to determine the main conspirators, aided by a friend of Sarah's named Ronnie. After some investigating he centers on a CIA Deputy Director named Barnes, who (forcibly) takes him to meet the head conspirator: billionaire Naimh Murdah. Murdah, owner of the company that manufactures the helicopter, openly admits to the plot and plainly states that Lang will be helping to carry out the terrorist attack, backing up his declaration with an open and explicit threat on Sarah's life. To illustrate his point, Murdah casually kills a CIA agent who accompanied Lang and Barnes to his home. Lang is placed within a small terrorist group called the Sword of Justice as a Minnesotan named Ricky, officially in order to gather intelligence and minimize casualties. A Dutch politician is seemingly shot dead by Lang in Switzerland as a warm up activity by the Sword of Justice, although it was a set-up and the politician was briefed and was wearing body armour. During a brief return to London Lang encounters Sarah and confronts her regarding pictures, provided to him by his friend and handler Solomon, showing Sarah and Barnes together. Sarah admits to being a part of the conspiracy, but swears her father's death was never part of the arrangement. Lang and Sword of Justice arrive in Casablanca and successfully take control of the American embassy there, holding a number of hostages. Barnes, Murdah, Sarah, and a number of other conspirators arrive in Casablanca to direct Lang and ensure the success of the plot. Lang covertly leaves the Embassy as directed, but as Murdah is talking to him Lang pulls a gun, slipped to him by Sarah as part of a plan they made in London. Lang forces Murdah into the Embassy at gunpoint and handcuffs him to a fire escape on the roof, then orders him to call off the helicopter attack. Murdah refuses, certain the attack will not come since he is in the line of fire, but Lang contends the greed of the remaining conspirators will ensure the attack goes as planned. Just as Lang predicted, the helicopter attacks, killing one of the terrorists, but before it can make another pass Lang shoots it down with a Javelin missile he smuggled into the embassy earlier. Footage of the helicopter's attack and destruction is shown worldwide via news networks covering the siege, ruining any chance of any military investing in the helicopter. Lang releases a statement (via the terrorists) to CNN outlining the conspiracy, ensuring that the plot is thwarted. The Ministry of Defence flies a tired Lang and Solomon back to England. After landing Lang is greeted by Ronnie, who managed to force the Ministry to allow her to ride with him from the airport, and makes it quite clear she is happy to see him."
2945,Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,thriller," The story follows the plot of Sense and Sensibility, but places the novel in an alternative universe version of Regency-era England where an event known as “The Alteration” has turned the creatures of the sea against mankind. In addition, this unexplained event spawns numerous “sea monsters,” including sea serpents, giant lobsters, and man-eating jellyfish. The wealthy Henry Dashwood lives on his estate, Norland Park, with his second wife and their three daughters - Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret. Dashwood embarks on a journey to discover the source of The Alteration, but is fatally mauled by a hammerhead shark. Upon his death the estate passes not to Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters but rather to Mr. Dashwood’s son John, the child of his first wife. Before expiring from his shark wounds, the elder Dashwood asks John to take care of his stepmother and half-sisters. John initially agrees to do so but is soon swayed by his greedy wife Fanny into giving the girls nothing at all. John and Fanny move into Norland, prompting the scorned Dashwood women to seek living space elsewhere. Mrs. Dashwood’s cousin Sir John Middleton invites her to stay at a cottage situated on an archipelago off the coast of Devonshire. Although Devonshire is considered to have England’s highest concentration of sea monsters, Mrs. Dashwood accepts the offer and the four women relocate to a windswept shanty known as Barton Cottage. Here they are treated kindly by Sir John, who invites them to dine at his heavily-fortified manor house on nearby Deadwind Island. They are soon introduced to Sir John’s family and friends, including his wife (a former island princess whom Sir John kidnapped and carried back to England and makes an escape attempt every couple of weeks), her mother (also kidnapped by Sir John and now calling herself “Mrs. Jennings”), and Colonel Brandon, a quiet and reserved gentleman who is also a part-man, part-squid mutant. The move to Barton Cottage serves to separate Elinor from Fanny’s brother Edward Ferrars. The unassuming and somewhat unremarkable Edward is clearly attracted to Elinor, and she to him, but Fanny makes it clear that their wealthy mother would never tolerate a marriage between Edward and the poor Elinor, insisting instead that he be married off to a woman of high rank and great wealth. Edward visits Elinor at Norland just before the move, and his reserved behavior makes her wonder if he is truly interested in her. His subsequent failure to visit her at her new island home only reinforces this suspicion. In contrast to Elinor’s woes, Marianne soon finds two suitors. Colonel Brandon is smitten with her, but she finds his age (35) and his tentacle-covered face to be repulsive. While out for a walk, Marianne falls into a rain-swollen creek and is attacked by an octopus. She is saved by the handsome John Willoughby, a dashing adventurer and deep-sea diver who has come to the archipelago to visit his aunt. The two of them are soon inseparable and Elinor begins to suspect that the two are planning on getting engaged. Unfortunately for Marianne, Willoughby is suddenly called away to the undersea city of Sub-Marine Station Beta, leaving her heartbroken and alone. Edward Ferrars finally pays a visit to the Dashwoods at Barton Cottage, but his continued unhappiness and reserved nature lead Elinor to decide that he no longer has feelings for her. Given her mother’s sorrow at being banished to the forlorn Devonshire coast and Marianne’s sorrow at being abandoned by Willoughby, Elinor decides that she must hide her own sorrow for the good of the family. Elinor is soon dealt a double shock when Lady Middleton’s cousins, Anne and Lucy Steele, come to visit. While out rowing, Elinor and Lucy are attacked by a fearsome sea serpent known as the Devonshire Fang-Beast, and the two barely escape with their lives. In the middle of the desperate struggle, Lucy informs Elinor that she has been engaged to Edward for more than four years. Elinor again hides her true feelings and wishes Lucy the best; secretly, she believes that Edward is only engaged to Lucy out of a sense of honor and duty and hopes for the two of them to somehow break the engagement. To cheer up the two elder Dashwood sisters, Mrs. Jennings offers to take them to Sub-Marine Station Beta. (There was an earlier Sub-Marine Station Alpha located in the Irish Sea, but it was destroyed by a treacherous merman.) The Station is a massive iron and glass undersea dome housing a large city, public gardens, shops, and a research laboratory where scientists plot new ways to defeat their aquatic enemies. Here Marianne attempts to renew her courtship with Willoughby, only to find him cold and unresponsive to her advances. When Willoughby leaves Marianne to fend for herself against an attack of giant lobsters, she demands an answer from him, and gets one: she learns that he is engaged to the very wealthy Miss Grey, news which leaves Marianne devastated. She admits to Elinor that she and Willoughby were never officially engaged, but his attentions towards her led her to believe that he loved her and would eventually marry her. Meanwhile, the truth about Willoughby's real character starts to emerge; Colonel Brandon tells Elinor that Willoughby had seduced Brandon's ward, fifteen-year-old Eliza Williams, and then abandoned her in a most cruel way - playfully burying her up to her neck in sand, then leaving her. Colonel Brandon was once in love with Miss Williams' mother, a woman who resembled Marianne and whose life was destroyed by an unhappy arranged marriage to the Colonel's brother. The Steele sisters arrive at Sub-Marine Station Beta along with John and Fanny Dashwood, Edward, and Edward’s mother. Lucy is overjoyed when Edward’s mother prefers her to Elinor, but her happiness is soon ruined when Anne lets it slip that Edward and Lucy are engaged. Edward is immediately disinherited and his fortune passes to his brother; however, Elinor and her friends respect Edward’s choice of love and honor over money. Colonel Brandon offers Edward a modest income as a lighthouse keeper to help him get started on a new life. The vacation at Sub-Marine Station Beta is abruptly ended when schools of swordfish begin ramming the glass dome in the hopes of breaking it. They eventually succeed with the help of a narwhal and other sea creatures; the Dashwood sisters and their friends barely manage to escape before the dome breaks and floods. While riding an emergency ferry to the surface, Elinor encounters Edward’s brother Robert and is disheartened to see that Robert cares more for his newfound inheritance than for the fate of his brother. The sisters and Mrs. Jennings retire to the Cleveland, a houseboat owned by Mrs. Jennings’ son-in-law (and Sir John’s fellow mercenary) Mr. Palmer. Soon after arriving, a depressed Marianne is attacked by mosquitoes and develops malaria. The Palmers leave for their own safety, and only after they are gone does Elinor realize the sudden danger they are in; the area around the Cleveland is home to the bloodthirsty Pirate Dreadbeard, and Dreadbeard’s friendship with Mr. Palmer is the only thing keeping them safe. Without Palmer, the Cleveland and the Dashwood sisters are at the mercy of the pirates. As Marianne is deathly ill and unable to move, Colonel Brandon volunteers to swim to Barton Cottage and return with Mrs. Dashwood. This leaves Elinor and Mrs. Jennings to defend the Cleveland. Hearing of Marianne’s illness, Willoughby journeys to the Cleveland and helps Elinor booby-trap the vessel; he also explains that when torn between love of Marianne and the lure of Miss Grey’s wealth, he chose the latter and was deeply regretful about it. Willoughby departs just as Pirate Dreadbeard and his men arrive. Elinor and Mrs. Jennings bravely defend their ship, and Elinor summons a swarm of octopi using a special whistle that she has obtained from Willoughby. Dreadbeard’s men are soon massacred by the tentacled monsters, while the Pirate himself is killed by the returning Colonel Brandon. Marianne recovers from her malaria. Elinor passes along Willoughby’s confession, and Marianne admits that she could never have been truly happy being married to such a selfish man. She points out that the combination of her wish for death and her deadly illness was morally equivalent to attempting suicide, and resolves to model herself after Elinor. A servant reports to the Dashwoods that Mr. Ferrars has married Lucy. Elinor is overcome by pain and visions of a five-pointed star; upon reflection, she realizes that the pain and visions have been with her (and always appear most forcefully) whenever Lucy is around. Sir John surmises that Lucy must be a sea witch - a monster that seduces human men and sucks the marrow from its victim’s bones. Before Elinor can form a plan to save Edward, he arrives at Barton Cottage. The Dashwoods learn that it was Robert Ferrars, not Edward, that married Lucy. They resolve to leave Robert to his terrible fate, feeling that he deserves it. The happy occasion is literally upended when the island upon which Barton Cottage rests suddenly rises from the ocean; it turns out to be not an island at all, but rather a monstrous sea-beast known as Leviathan, awakened from a long slumber and hungry for all sorts of marine life. The characters survive their sudden upheaval from their former island home. Edward reconciles with his mother and asks Elinor to marry him; and she agrees. The couple begin a simple new life tending to the lighthouse at Delaford. Marianne resolves to become a marine engineer so that she can design a new Sub-Marine Station Gamma dome. Despite herself, she comes to fall in love with Colonel Brandon, and the two eventually marry. Willoughby, somewhat to his dismay, is forgiven by his aunt for his treatment of Eliza and reclaims his inheritance. He realizes that had he married Marianne for love instead of Miss Grey for money, he would have eventually attained both love and money. Instead he is left to ponder what might have been."
2946,Dragonfire,thriller," Parker, an American CIA agent, is captured while on a mission in Bangkok. Sawyer, a lone CIA agent is sent on the same mission, code-named “Dragonfire”, to prevent another Southeast war. Sawyer tracks the missing Parker from the deadly underworld of Bangkok’s waterfront to the forbidden hill country of the Golden Triangle. He joins forces with Suong, a beautiful Eurasian resistance fighter and Toonsang, a treacherous opium trader, who leads them to the lair of Bhun Sa, the most powerful warlord in the opium trade. Sawyer kills Bhun Sa and he and Suong escape to abandoned temple ruins in Cambodia. To convince him she has not betrayed him, Suong tells of her survival of the Khmer Rouge’s Killing Fields. Sawyer is captured by the Khmer Rouge. Suong is revealed as a war criminal, the sister of Pranh, the notorious Brother Number Two of the Killing Fields. Vietnamese forces attack the Khmer Rouge, freeing Sawyer who takes Suong captive. After a fight on the Bangkok waterfront, during which Sawyer kills Vasnasong, the billionaire businessman behind the plot, Sawyer turns Suong over to the Cambodian resistance. In an epilogue, the story of Suong’s brutal death on a ship at the hands of her former victims is revealed."
2947,The Face,thriller," The main plot of the story follows Ethan Truman, an ex-cop who now works as the head of security for the most famous actor in Hollywood, Channing Manheim, a.k.a. ""The Face."" Ethan is trying to track down the sender of several gruesome ""messages"" that were received in black boxes. Ethan now has six black boxes to figure out what the contents of the boxes mean. After chasing down leads and tracking the ""ghost"" of his dead friend Duncan ""Dunny"" Whistler (technically, Dunny is not a ghost, as he came back to life in the morgue), Ethan finally uncovers the plot and races to stop the kidnapping of Manheim's son, Aelfric."
2948,The Hunter,thriller," The plot concerns a criminal, Parker who, having been betrayed, shot, and left for dead by his partner and wife, embarks on a relentless quest to retrieve his money and wreak revenge. The novel was written as a stand-alone crime novel, but when Westlake turned it in, his editor told him that if Westlake would rewrite the ending so that Parker escaped, he would be willing to publish up to three books a year about Parker. Though Westlake wasn't able to keep up that level of productivity, he did go on to write 23 more Parker novels over the next 46 years. The Hunter was re-issued by the University of Chicago Press in August 2008."
2949,Dimiter,thriller," The novel begins in Albania, where a spy named Paul Dimiter is tortured by the authorities. Revealed as an 'Agent from hell', they try to get more from him, but before they know it, he escapes. The novel moves to Jerusalem one year later, where a half Arab-European policeman, Peter Meral, finds a murder victim who supposedly was from a mental hospital. Meral tries to find out if there is a connection between Jerusalem and Albania and the enigma of Dimiter."
2950,No Second Chance,thriller," When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter... Dr. Marc Seidman has been shot twice, his wife has been murdered, and his six-month-old daughter has been kidnapped. When he gets the ransom note-he knows he has only one chance to get this right. But there is nowhere he can turn and no one he can trust."
2951,God's Spy,thriller," From the book cover: In the days following the Pope's death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut off. Called in for the grisly case, police inspector Paola Dicanti learns that another cardinal was recently found dead; he had also been tortured. Desperate to find the killer before another victim dies, Paola's investigation is soon joined by Father Anthony Fowler &mdash; an American priest and former Army intelligence officer examining sexual abuse in the Church, who knows far more about the killer than Paola could possibly imagine."
2952,Red,thriller," In Red: The Heroic Rescue, Thomas has spent fifteen years in the ""dream world,"" having been persuaded by his wife Rachelle to eat the ""Rhambutan"" fruit which will prevent him from dreaming. Only eight hours have passed in the world of Earth, but the plague has been released in several cities. During this time Thomas is in a world torn by conflict. Followers of Elyon live in the seven forests and continue to bathe daily, as instructed. However, the deserts outside of the forests are home to the Horde, with a much larger population than the forests. Members of the Horde (individually referred to as ""Scabs"") are subject to the degenerative skin disease of the fallen world and are constantly trying to conquer and destroy the inhabitants of the forest. Moreover, they actually worship Teeleh, carrying banners with images of the Shataiki. Thomas is now referred to as ""General Thomas of Hunter"" and is commander of the Forest Guard, a legendary figure among the Forest Dwellers and the Horde alike. However as the story of Red unfolds, it is revealed that the Horde also have a legendary General emerging known as Martyn. One whose strategies are bolder and more clever, and have yet to be seen by the Forest Guard. In the forests, the people keep Elyon's seven rules but have added to them, scrupulously trying to make it as difficult as possible to violate the actual rules. The people continue to celebrate the themes of their life in the colored forest, before the Great Deception. Interpretation of the rules is vested in a priest-like figure named Ciphus, from the Southern Forest. Members of the Horde are allowed to come and bathe and become part of the forest dwellers, but this is actively discouraged as Ciphus has determined there is not enough water in the lakes to support a much larger population. This is generally not an issue, as the skin disease of the Horde makes any contact with water agonizingly painful, and the Horde view themselves as ""normal"" and the forest dwellers as ""defective."" Occasionally, however, a Horde member will be washed, as is the case with a wise village elder named Jeremiah. Also, forest dwellers who go too long without bathing in Elyon's water begin to develop the skin disease, eventually losing the ability to think rationally and becoming members of the Horde. The Forest Guard has developed extensive procedures for carrying bathing water with them while on patrol in order to try to prevent this. A new figure in the book is Justin, a former member of the Forest Guard under Thomas. When Thomas offered him the rank of second in command, Justin declined and left the Forest Guard entirely, leading to the young woman Mikil becoming Thomas' second in command. Justin begins to anger the leadership of the forest dwellers, however, by his unorthodox attitudes. He actively seeks peace with the Horde. Interestingly, as the story progresses, it is revealed that Justin always seems to be clean of the disease even when he seems to have been unable to bathe. Justin attempts to broker a peace between the Horde and the forest dwellers, on one occasion speaking with Martyn in the middle of a battle to secure the safety of the Southern Forests Guard and their leader Jamous(Who is in love with Mikil)and to encourage good will between the two cultures. However, Justin is betrayed and sentenced to death by the leadership under Ciphus. Initially he is forced into a Gladiator-style face off against Thomas of Hunter (whom the crowd and leadership are sure will be victorious). Justin does exhibit equal if not superior skills in sword and hand-to-hand combat though he never actually harms Thomas and seems to view the contest almost in a comical sense. As Justin emerges the victor he leaves the arena and greets a waiting Martyn at the crest of the arena to a shocked audience including Thomas. As Thomas signals his guard to move in on Justin and Martyn, Thomas himself confronts them face-to-face. When he draws his sword on Martyn he is horrified when Martyn reveals himself to actually be the once innocent Johan, Thomas' brother-in-law. Johan had once been part of the guard under Thomas' command and was assumed to have been killed in battle when in fact he became stranded and the disease took him. Later, it is showed that Justin is Elyon in an adult form. However, Thomas doesn't know this and makes a deal with Johan to pretend that Justin had betrayed both the Forest and the Horde, so that they can get him killed. Eventually it is known that an overwhelming Horde Army is encroaching on the Forest, and demands the right to carry out the execution as they consider Justin to have betrayed them, too. Justin is sentenced to death with the Horde's most feared form of execution: drowning in water. He is first hung over the lake and beaten until his bones are broken and he is severely disfigured. Mysteriously, during his drowning, Justin's body begins to be covered with the Horde skin disease. Upon his death, Johan in a fit of rage attacks Justin and thrusts his sword into his abdomen, his blood pours into the lake, violating Elyon's prohibition about blood entering the water. The next day, the water itself has turned to a blood red color and the forest dwellers are all completely infected with the skin disease. Yet Justin's dead body cannot be found in the depths of the lake. Rachelle remembers a command he had once given her to ""follow me"". First she, Thomas, Johan, and then others including both forest dwellers and members of the Horde, give up their lives in the red water, finding that they, too, are returned to life and completely cleansed of the skin disease. In fact, these new followers of Elyon through Justin discover that they need never be cleansed again: they are immune to the skin disease. Meanwhile, the leadership of the former forest dwellers have been corrupted by the disease and merge the religions of Elyon and Teeleh, inviting the Horde to come dwell in the forest. The sacrifice of drowning in the red water is unthinkable to those infected with the disease, and they view the cleansed people as defective ""albinos."" The ""albinos"" flee for their lives into the desert. On the way, however, Thomas’s wife Rachelle is shot with three arrows and dies. There, Justin himself meets them and excitedly proclaims his happiness over them. He proclaims the new group to be his ""Circle"" (a symbol of marriage dating back to the days of the colored forest) and to be his ""bride,"" and ecstatically thanks his father for what he calls his ""beautiful bride,"" referring to God as his ""father."" Justin reveals to the Circle that they will find more red pools hidden in the desert and that for the rest of their lives they will be his and will be charged with the mission of saving as many members of the Horde as possible by inviting them to drown in the pools. The title ""Red"" thus refers to the color of the blood shed by Justin to redeem his followers from the Fall, and to the blood-red pools in which his followers give up their lives in order to be reborn as Justin's people."
2953,Without Fail,thriller," Reacher arrives in Atlantic City, New Jersey, after hitching a ride with a couple of aging musicians. He is accosted there by Mary Ellen Froelich, a beautiful secret service agent who managed to track him down. She has a special request for him: she consults him on how he could kill the Vice-President; countering those methods would help her considerably in her job: protecting the Vice-President. He accepts the challenge, and enlists old colleague Frances Neagley to help carry out the mission. Froelich asked Reacher's assistance on this matter because of suspicious and threatening letters which had been sent to the Vice-President but instead intercepted by his protective team. Together, they attempt to find the ones responsible."
2954,Enigma,thriller," Jericho is a doctoral student of the mathematician Alan Turing at a Cambridge college. When the war starts Turing and other professors disappear, recruited as code breakers by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). Eventually Jericho is also roped in, at the invitation of Atwood who is professor of ancient history at the same college. At Bletchley the code breakers are an eclectic academic set, under pressure to break the Enigma code used by German U-boats wreaking havoc on British and American shipping in the Atlantic. The tension is magnified by internal turf rivalry between the allies over the cryptography effort, with the Americans of the opinion that the chummy common-room efforts of the British operation cannot sustain the decryption speed and volume required to win the Battle of the Atlantic. In the book Turing himself is absent from Bletchley, on a trip to Washington D.C. On a train en route to Bletchley, Jericho happens to meet the attractive Claire Romilly who works as a clerk at one of the huts, temporary buildings on the park grounds housing the growing code breaking effort. Jericho helps Claire finish the Times crossword with ease and the two strike up a friendship. Claire's upper-crust manner reflects what Baxter (a code breaker with leftist views) terms as the organization of Bletchley Park along British class lines. Society debutantes are chosen to handle sensitive transcription whereas the more mundane tasks are delegated to young women from working-class backgrounds. As Jericho gets closer to Claire, he also discovers a back door to breaking the U-boat Enigma code which establishes his reputation among the code breakers. One night Jericho is stunned to see intercepted (but still encoded) signal transcription forms in Claire's bedroom, a serious violation of security procedure. Confronted with the forms Claire reacts in an emotionally wounded manner, which also signals the end of Jericho's romance with her. However Jericho does not report the incident or the security breach. In the following days Jericho desperately attempts to meet Claire once again, and slowly tips himself over the edge of a nervous breakdown. He is sent back to his college to recover. When the Germans change the Enigma naval code book, the Bletchley Park code breakers lose their back door and are forced to bring Jericho back. This is in fact how the book begins. Thereafter the plot unravels to answer a series of questions: What are the papers in Claire's bedroom? Is she a spy? How much can Jericho trust Kramer, an American naval officer and one of Claire's many lovers? What is the role of the supercilious upper-crust investigator Wigram? How much does Claire's room mate Hester Wallace know? Are Jericho's hut colleagues Atwood, Pinker, Puck, Baxter ... jealous of him? Will Jericho break the code for a second time as one of the largest convoys steams across the Atlantic pursued by U-boat wolf packs? Apart from the plot, the book is notable for its grim descriptions of winter in a war-torn Britain. The book, though fiction, is criticised by people who were at Bletchley Park as bearing little resemblance to the real wartime Bletchley Park."
2955,The Bourne Ultimatum,thriller," The novel follows David Webb, alias Jason Bourne, as he works to find his old enemy, Carlos the Jackal, who is trying to kill him. As the Jackal enters old age and his infamy fades, he decides that he will do two things before he dies: kill Webb/Bourne, and destroy the KGB facility of Novgorod, where the Jackal was trained and was turned away for being a maniac. Carlos the Jackal uses a diverse collective of aged men devoted to his handiwork known as ""The Old Men of Paris."" The old men, who are mostly criminals, work for the Jackal in return for their family's comfort. Webb sends his wife and children to live with his wife's brother, John St. Jacques, in the Caribbean for protection while Webb himself works with old friend and CIA agent Alexander Conklin, and to a limited degree, the CIA, to hunt down and kill the Jackal first. While in the Caribbean, the St. Jacques Family faces a number of complications. A ""War Hero"" arrives, who is actually an ""Old Man of Paris"" is supposed to assassinate the St. Jacques and spray paint ""JASON BOURNE"" on the wall. At the same time, a former judge, Brendan P. Prefontaine, arrives. The Jackal thinks that Prefontaine was going to foil his murder plan, and bribes a nurse on the island to kill him. However, his plans are foiled when the ""war hero"" finds out that when he is done with the murder, he is to be assassinated as well. He turns sides and shoots the nurse with his Luger P08 and saves Brendan P. Prefontaine. Upon the close murder, Webb returns to the Caribbean. At the time of his visit, the Jackal himself comes to try to kill Webb, at the same time killing three security guards, the Crown Governor of the island, the ""Old Man of Paris"" that changed side (strapped explosives on him,) severely beats a kid waiter, and wounds Jason Bourne in the neck by a bullet (ironically, this is the Jackal's trademark and no one has survived it until now). Webb poses as an important member of Medusa (a newer version than the original he was associated with during the Vietnam era) (see Jason Bourne), now a nearly omnipotent economic force that controls the head of NATO, leading figures in the Defense Department, portions of the American and Sicilian mafia, and large NYSE firms. After several assassinations of key Medusa figures he was interrogating, he realizes that Medusa had nothing to do with the Jackal. The people who wanted to kill him were hired by Medusa and not the Jackal. After that, he goes back undercover and finds Jacqueline Lavier, who pretends to help him. She is part of the Jackal's group. She phones the Jackal of the location of Bourne's hotel, but is caught by Bourne. However, Bourne sets a trap for the Jackal, but is foiled by his wife when she sees him. The Jackal realizes it's a trap and runs. Also, John St. Jacques and Bourne's children are relocated to a CIA safe house. However, Mr. Pritchard, a clerk, overhears John St. Jacques and Bourne's phone and tells his uncle, who was bribed by the Jackal for 300 pounds. Then, Alex Conklin, Marie St. Jacques, Jason Bourne, and Mo Panov (Jason's doctor) go to Russia to meet one of Alex's long-time friends. The friend helps them several times. When they first meet, Jackal invades the restaurant they meet at and spray paints on the wall the exact location of Jason's son. Jason immediately calls the CIA and they relocate the children. At the same time, Alex and Jason realize that the Russian contact for the Jackal was high up in the KGB. Their Russian contact searches up a list of 13 people, who he keeps traces on . They catch the traitor when he goes to a church to meet the Jackal, along with Ogilive, an American Medusa traitor. However, Ogilive is set up by the KGB officials and is photographed with the Jackal. Later, the Jackal tells the Russian traitor that he is followed by his own government and shows him proof by killing 2 KGB agents that were following the Russian. The Jackal then kills him. Later, the Jackal meets with a board of Russian traitors. They disavow him and refuse to help him. He goes crazy and kills them all with his Type 56 assault rifle, but leaves a woman barely alive, who identifies the Jackal to the police, who in turn notify Alex Conklin. The Jackal comes to the hotel Webb is at and a furious chase happens, but the Jackal manages to escape to an armory, get weapons, go to Novgorod, and bomb the place. However, Bourne meets him there and they fight. The Jackal runs away, and Bourne throws a grenade, wounding him. One of the officials then closes the gates to the river, and the river rises, drowning the Jackal. Bourne then returns to the Caribbean, where their Russian friend meets them, and the former accepts that Jason Bourne is dead."
2956,Seven Ancient Wonders,thriller," Around 4,500 years ago, the capstone upon the summit of the Great Pyramid of Giza absorbed the energy released by the Tartarus Rotation (a monstrous sunspot that occurs every 4,000-4,500 years), and saved the earth from major flooding and catastrophic weather. This capstone was later divided up by Alexander the Great with one piece in a booby-trapped hidden location within each of the seven wonders of the world, in other than the Pyramid. If and when they are reunited and replaced on the capstone during another solar event, they can bring 1,000 years of peace or power for the nation which possesses them. In 2006, seven days before this sunspot is again due the pieces are still divided and 3 teams are trying to reunite them, 2 for their own gain - one from Europe (representing the Catholic Church) and the other is CIEF, the Commander-in-Chief's In Extremis Force (an American force covertly representing the power of the Freemasons). The third team is an alliance of a group of 'small nations' called the Alliance of Minnows (Canada, Australia, Ireland, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Jamaica, New Zealand, and later Israel), led by Jack West Jr, trying to reunite the capstone for nobler reasons. This team and the European team each also possess a child, one of the only two people who can read the ""Word of Thoth"", a special hieroglyphics system used in the booby-traps (the other person is her twin Alexander, who is being brainwashed by the Vatican). West's team gain and lose a capstone, the head of the Colossus of Rhodes to the CIEF but manage to escape and then reach the hiding place of two more pieces at Hamilcar's Refuge on the coast of Tunisia. There they again lose their gains to the CIEF, and again escape. They then spring Mustapha Zaeed, the world's foremost authority on the Capstone and the Seven Wonders and a known terrorist, from Guantanamo Bay, who leads them to two more pieces. After separating the team, the ""Coalition of the Minnows"" is devastated through kidnap and death. The survivors escape to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Iraq, but are there apprehended by an Israeli strike team. West is forced to lead the Israelis to the piece, but the Americans arrive, execute the Israelis, capture the piece and trap West and his team. Jack is presumed dead. The European contingent escorts their hostages to Cairo with a lone Piece - taken from St. Peter's Basilica - and, in attempting to capture the CIEF's five pieces, lose the St Peter's piece and Epper and Lily to them. The CIEF team then goes to Hatshepsut's Mortuary, and - with the aid of the measurements from the Paris Obelisk - finds the last piece in the tomb of Alexander the Great. Taking the whole Capstone to the Giza pyramid on the day of the rotation, placing Alexander in the chamber beneath it to ensure the ritual works. However, Jack West and his team's plane return to stop them. Judah tries to carry out the ritual, but Alexander crawls out to save himself from death, unwittingly ensuring its failure and del Piero's death, then Lily crawls in willingly and Zaeed carries it out successfully. West, however has ensured a twist to who has world dominion. West's team then wins the battle and he finds that Lily has survived by (unlike Alexander) going into the chamber willingly. The epilogue takes place three weeks later, with Wizard and Zoe accompanying Lily across Central Australia, before reuniting with West."
2957,Beyond the Black Stump,thriller," The story concerns a young American geologist, Stanton Laird, working in the Australian outback in the field of oil exploration. Although he is in a very remote location - beyond the black stump - in a region called ""the Lunatic"" in Western Australia, he is part of a crew that has a well-appointed mobile facility. He is befriended by a local farming family, the Regans, and develops a relationship with their daughter Mollie. The Regans run an enormously profitable station, but their domestic lifestyle is, to say the least, unconventional, with the two Regan brothers at one time having Mollie's mother move from one to the other without bothering to get a divorce. The family is large, and even larger when counting the half-caste children produced by both fathers, and the children are taught by the Judge, an English exile and alcoholic, who gives the children an excellent education and keeps the finances of the station properly accounted for. Over the course of the explorations (which prove unsuccessful), he notes the unique lifestyle on what amounts to the Australian frontier, and falls in love with Mollie. The two wish to wed, but Mollie's mother insists that Mollie first see how the Lairds live in their Oregon town, Hazel, which was once on the frontier, but is no longer, though its citizens take pride in feeling that it still is. The two travel to Hazel. At first, Mollie gets along well in the Laird family home. But then Stanton's one-time love, Ruth, the widow of Stanton's best friend, returns to Hazel with her son. The son bears a tremendous resemblance to Stanton, and Stanton is moved to confess to Mollie both that the son may be his, and that he killed a girl in a drunken accident as a teenager. Mollie is unconcerned about the boy—such things are common where she comes from—but is concerned and judgmental about the accident, and about Stanton's lack of concern for the dead girl. As Stanton expected Mollie to care very much about the boy, and did not expect her to be so concerned about the girl, the two begin to realize they have a very different outlook on life. Eventually, Mollie comes to realize that she will never fit in in Hazel, and does not particularly want to. Her place is on the true frontier, in the Lunatic, not in Hazel. She returns to Australia, where she will likely marry a young neighbor, an emigrant from England, who has long loved her. Stanton is likely to marry Ruth, as Mollie suggests he should. Stanton has a wedding present for Mollie, though—his final report reveals that the neighbor's impoverished lands lie over great quantities of artesian water, which will allow the neighbor—and Mollie—to flourish."
2958,Roses are Red,thriller," Alex Cross returns for the sixth book in the series with a new killer on the loose. A series of meticulously planned bank robberies leave behind a wake of bodies. Alex Cross must not only battle against the sadistic criminal who calls himself The Mastermind, but also the risks that he may be putting his family in. Cross takes a plunge into a case where mind games lead to violence and the slightest mistake will be punished with death."
2959,Hush Little Baby,thriller," Kit is a high school student living with her mother and her stepfather. As she retrieves her sweatshirt from her father's house, she is approached by her disheveled ex-stepmother, Dusty Innes. Kit is stunned when Dusty hands Kit a newborn baby and a diaper bag before driving away, not even bothering to tell Kit his name. To the best of her ability, Kit tries to care for the baby, who she names Sam. After putting Sam down the doorbell rings. She opens the door, only to find a shabby looking man standing before her, looking for Dusty. Kit denies any knowledge of Dusty's baby and claims that she hasn't seen Dusty in a while, since she is no longer her stepmother. Kit shuts the door but suspects that the man is trying to look into the windows. Feeling threatened, she grabs one of her dad's disposable cameras and takes a picture of his license plate. Finding nothing, the man leaves. Kit has decided to bring Sam back to her mother's house when Rowen Mason, Kit's potential boyfriend, arrives in tow with his 9 year old sister, Muffin. Kit then receives a call from a lady called Cynthia, who explains the whole situation. Apparently, Cinda and her husband, Burt, were supposed to adopt Dusty's baby, and that the man who came to Kit's house earlier was, in fact, Dusty's cousin. Kit is reassured by Cinda and promises to deliver Sam to her. Cinda and Burt's house is located in a wooded area, with no neighbors. Burt tries to grab the camera out of Kit's hand when she starts taking pictures. Meanwhile, Muffin has to go to the bathroom really badly. With all the adults so preoccupied with baby Sam, she ventures into the house and is shocked to find the house in a mess, with pizza boxes on the floor and no soap in the bathroom. Muffin accuses Cinda of not knowing how to properly care for a baby. Kit also senses that something isn't right and, taking Sam from Cynthia, she tells them that they should all wait for Dusty to get back before doing anything. Kit, at her father's house, leaves a voice message for her father about Dusty. Dusty and her cousin, Ed, enter the house and agree to spend a night here before sorting things out in the morning. As Kit runs upstairs to grab a flannel blanket, Dusty and her cousin run out with Sam. Rowen and Muffin follow their car. Dusty and her cousin both stop at a house, and Muffin tries to rescue Sam. Ed catches Muffin and instructs Rowen to throw his car keys into the woods. He then takes off with Muffin and Sam. In the meantime, Kit unknowingly opens the door to Burt and Cynthia, who imitated Muffin's high-pitch voice. At home, the answering machine goes off with Kit's father telling her that he called the police. Burt and Cynthia freak out at the mention of the police and Cynthia grabs a kitchen knife. They put Kit in a car, where Cinda tells Kit of her mastermind plan. She, Burt, Dusty, and Ed were part of an ATM scam. They would use fake ATMs to collect the bank card numbers, and then Dusty would redraw money from the bank accounts. Kit is rescued by a policeman, but Cynthia refuses to tell them where Sam is. Rowen, without his car, runs to the nearest truck and tells them everything. Muffin, stuck in the car with Ed, carefully uses Morse code to signal SOS to the other car. In the end, Dusty, Burt, Ed, and Cynthia are all under arrest, and Sam is put under foster care."
2960,The Assassini,thriller," Set in 1982, while the Roman Catholic Church's papal conclave is preparing to elect a new pope as the old one is dying, the book describes the attempts of lawyer Ben Driskill to solve the murder of his sibling, Sister Valentine, a nun who was an outspoken activist and a thorn in the Church's side. Driskill's world-spanning investigation leads him to the discovery of a document from a forgotten monastery in Ireland, which proves the existence of the Assassini, an age-old brotherhood of killers, once hired by princes of the Church to protect it in dangerous times; and the person who now controls them in his Machiavellian bid for power."
2961,The Meaning of Night,thriller," Beginning on a cold October night in 1854 in a dark passageway, the book's narrator tracks an innocent man whom he does not know and stabs him to death. The protagonist/narrator, Edward Glyver, then takes the reader back, recounting as a confession his tale of deceit, love, and revenge. Glyver reveals the torment he has suffered at the hands of his rival, the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, and why in pursuit of revenge Glyver (now masquerading as Edward Glapthorn), a book lover and scholar, has turned to murder. The story moves between the foggy London streets and the enchanting country manor house Evenwood where Daunt spent his formative years, a place with which Glyver finds he has a special connection. The Glass of Time, the follow-up novel to The Meaning of Night, further examines the consequences of Edward Glyver's crime, in a setting twenty years after The Meaning of Night."
2962,A Fine Night for Dying,thriller," Weighted down by chain, the body of gangland boss Harvey Preston is dragged out of the English Channel in a fisherman's net. British Intelligence suspects a connection with a minor cross-channel smuggling ring, and sends dogged undercover agent Paul Chavasse to find answers. Chavasse soon discovers that this is no small-time operation; it reaches throughout the world and leads to the doors of some very ruthless and powerful men. Men who aren't about to let Chavasse interfere with the delivery of their precious cargo..."
2963,Tenderness,thriller," Eric Poole is a convicted teenage serial killer. Lorelei ""Lori"" Cranston is a troubled 15 year old girl. Their lives intersect as they both search for ""tenderness."" The word tenderness itself is disputed as it is never clearly defined but is implied to be the struggle between love, lust, and the need for both, though it later becomes clear the definition of ""tenderness"" is quite different to both Eric and Lori. Lori is described as a beautiful girl with a very mature body at a young age. Consequently she must constantly deal with the wanted, and unwanted, sexual attention she receives from men. Her father was struck by a car when Lori was only two, leaving her and her mother to fend for themselves. They live on the east coast and are constantly moving. Her alcoholic mother has a history of troubled and abusive relationships. Her mother's latest ongoing relationship is to a man named Gary, who also has a sexual interest in Lori. Upon arriving in a new town Lori's mother begins working as a waitress, drinking so much she forgets Lori's birthday. This causes Lori to feel sad, yet remain in denial about her mother's problems, finding excuses and rationalizing her mother's behavior. Lori decides to run away leaving her mother a note in which Lori says she'll be staying with friends for a while. Though Lori admits that the friends mentioned in the note are a lie, she feels that she has successfully tricked her mother into believing they are real simply because her mother never asks about them, though other characters in the book imply that Lori's mom does know she has run away and simply does not care. As a little boy in New England, Eric Poole already exhibited symptoms of a sociopath. In accordance with one of the traits on the MacDonald Triad (used in identifying early characteristics of sociopaths), Eric tortured small animals, namely kittens. He does not feel any remorse and instead feels he is controlling the feline population in his neighborhood. Eventually, he moves from torturing kittens to killing his aunt's canary. Once sparked, his enjoyment in killing soon becomes a fixation, and he seeks to move on to larger prey, namely people. Eric is described as a tall, slender, blond, blue eyed and charming boy of 15 when he commits his first murders, He has no trouble luring in his victims with his innocent smile which he practices in the mirror. Though the book does not clarify whether or not they were murdered first, Eric is tried for murder as a juvenile and convicted for murdering only his mother and stepfather, whom he hates. He explains he murdered his mother in resentment for marrying his stepfather. Because Eric burned his arm with cigarettes and purposefully broke his own arm with a hammer, he managed to convince people he was abused by his parents. Yet he did not manage to fool everyone, especially Jake Proctor, a detective, who keeps a close eye on him throughout the book. There are three more of Eric's victims: all female, slender, with dark-hair and eyes. Eric describes the feeling of murdering girls with these specific characteristics as tenderness — tenderness associated with sexual desire. When Eric meets Lori, he also feels tenderness for her — tenderness to protect her. On his 18th birthday Eric is released from the juvenile criminal facility. His release causes a controversy in the community causing a media circus outside the facility. It is during a broadcast of his release that Lori first sees Eric and her fixation begins. During his stay in the facility, he kept to himself as much as possible and became known as ""the Ice Man."" One day, as he is on the verge of raping and killing another inmate, he changes his mind at the last minute and instead instructs him to stop bothering another inmate known as ""Sweet Lefty."" Sweet Lefty is indebted to Eric and comes into play later in the story, as he helps Eric out in various situations. Also, during Eric's stay in the facility, he meets Maria Valdez, whom he calls the Senorita. She fits the description of his preferred victims and he soon feels the need to have ""tenderness"" with her. Days before his release she gives him her phone number and he begins making plans to meet with her. Once out of the facility he moves in to his aunt's house in Massachusetts where the media circus follows, as well as Lori. One day Eric spots Lori on the front page of a newspaper, where she is known simply as ""Ms. Anonymous."" Lori's face sparks a memory about Eric's fourth and possibly last murder. Soon after receiving his driver's license Eric begins his planned road trip to find the Senorita, Maria Valdez. However, Lori is hiding in the car's back seat. Once he realizes Lori is in the back seat he agrees to drop her off at the next town but instead shows Lori the time of her life before he attempts to kill her at night. After shopping and going to a diner, Lori falls asleep at a motel where Eric tries to kill her, but he finds himself unable to do so. Lori wakes up and realizes what has occurred, and she seems happy. The next day at a carnival Eric meets the Maria. He attempts to murder her but Lori steps in and warns him that it's a set-up. Eric goes to a river nearby with Lori and goes on a boat where Lori falls and drowns. She makes an attempt to take Eric with her. The cops arrive and think Eric killed her, they incarcerate him. The book closes with Jake Proctor feeling guilty that it took the life of an innocent girl to lock Eric up and with Eric crying over his loss."
2964,The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark,thriller," For many nights, Finn has been appearing in Disney parks as a DHI (""Disney Host Interactive"") and a hologram, while he is asleep. Finn realizes that these are no dreams, and are actually happening. While in the empty park one night, he meets Wayne, an elderly cast member and original Imagineer. Wayne tells Finn that he must find the other kid hosts and arrive at the park at the same time or else Disney is in danger. There is a mysterious group called The Overtakers, who plan to take over the parks and maybe the world. Finn doesn't believe Wayne, and Wayne sends Finn back to his real body by pressing a red button on a black fob. The next night he finds himself back in the empty dark park as his DHI. This time, he sees two of the other DHIs Charlene and Philby, and to make matters scarier, a group of pirate Audio-animatronics from Pirates of the Caribbean ride around in cars from Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, and they shoot lasers at Finn. Finn wakes up and sees the laser burns on his real body, his mom asks him what happened so he lies and says that a bully burnt him with a cigarette. During the day Finn and his strange new friend, Amanda track down the other four hosts Willa, Philby, Maybeck and Charlene. Finn tells them they're not alone in appearing to the park at night. He said they must all go to sleep at night at the same time and appear in the park at the same time. Finn and Amanda also decide to do investigating of their own, and head to the Magic Kingdom in the afternoon. Security guards see the real Finn and Finn's DHI so they decide to chase after him. After Finn and Amanda reunite at The Haunted Mansion, the two decide something is wrong in the park. That night, the 5 DHIs unite at the park and meet up with Wayne. Here they discover that the park comes to life after hours, and Wayne explains to them that something is going wrong in the parks- rides closing, costumes disappearing, Audio-animatronics coming to life, and padlocks stolen. Wayne takes them into the Country Bear Jamboree, where he tells them how Magic Kingdom and the world outside its walls are endangered by the Overtakers. After showing the kids a secret passageway through Cinderella's Castle called Escher's Keep that is a secret apartment to escape the DHI world. Wayne explains that the DHI system was created especially for this purpose, as they needed 5 teenagers to unravel an old fable by Walt Disney himself- The Stonecutters Quill. The fable concerns a stonecutter, who wishes to be: the sun, the clouds, the wind, and the mountains. Along with the fable came a quote- ""I have plans to put this place in a different perspective"". Realizing that all four subjects of the matter are in multiple attractions around the park, and must be what Walt meant, the five kids decide to set out to find clues to stop the Overtakers around the park. The plot unfolds as the group searches through the park's attractions for clues as to what can stop the Overtakers. The kids look up information about Walt Disney, the parks, and research DHI technology. In the day time, the kids keep in touch through the online game VMK, and at night they meet up in the park as their DHIs and search. Unfortunately, as they search, they hit some road blocks; they can't find anything in the attractions, no matter how hard they look. Another problem is the Overtakers getting in the way- the kids ride in its a small world, and the animatronic dolls come to life and attack and bite at the kids. The ride ends up broken at the end of the night and closed. Another problem is the suspiciousness around Finn's friend Amanda. She follows Finn around, begging to know whats going on, and appears out of nowhere. Finn notes that when she runs, she seems to float. Another problem following the kids is one of the Overtakers, the evil fairy Maleficent from ""Sleeping Beauty"" (1959 film). Maleficent seems to have powers over cold- she can blast ice, freeze people, and create ice wherever she goes and whatever she touches. The kids seem to get colder than normal when she appears. The kids also (coincidentally) play separate sports at the Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex. At the sports games, Finn meets a girl named Jez-(she says it's short for Jezebel). She seems to take a liking to Finn and follows him around, and she and Amanda seem not to like each other. Meanwhile, Finn deciphers the quote from Walt Disney in the 50s, and realizes by ""different perspective"", he meant things being in 3D, as they were wildly popular in the 50s. Supposing that Walt planned this whole thing out, Finn gets 3D glasses, and the teens go around the attractions across various nights, looking for clues and letters: *Finn and Philby float through the water of Splash Mountain, only to have Maleficent activate the ride. They go over the final drop and almost get killed, but manage to climb into an upcoming log and, using the 3D glasses, find letters on the walls in the cloud reference at the end of the ride. *Charlene and Willa visit the park during the day and ride The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh for the wind reference. Maleficent gets their honey pot car alone in a scene, locks the doors, and sets off the water system, almost drowning and suffocating the girls to the ceiling. The two break the door foundation, and escape, but getting the clues on the ride along the way. *At night, the girls and Maybeck recheck It's a Small World for the sun reference and find the letters. *Finally, Finn and Philby, looking for the mountain reference, climb the tracks of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. However, Maleficent brings the attraction to life, bringing to life a giant skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. While gaining the clues, the two boys outrun the dinosaur on the track and the skeleton breaks apart over the attraction. Another problem in their journey occurs when Maybeck's DHI never returns one night. In real life, Maybeck is trapped asleep, as his DHI is still in the Magic Kingdom. Finn and Philby (as DHIs) realize that the Overtakers must've put Maybeck in a dark place where his screams cannot be heard - Space Mountain. Finn and Philby use a rope from Wayne's apartment over the Main Street Firestation to climb the building and scale the catwalks and tracks until they find him tied up in a closet. Using their DHI powers, Finn becomes light and rescues Maybeck. Maybeck reveals that it was Maleficent and Jez; he had agreed to meet Jez on a date, but she was really Maleficent's evil slave. This scare seems to make the kids stop coming back at night for very long, and the five resume their normal lives. While riding bikes with Amanda days later, Finn catches a glimpse of Maleficent on a motorcycle, going after them. Riding through a skate park to escape, Amanda seems to create some sort of magic to help Finn escape, and leaves him speechless. Eventually, the five kids return to the park at night again to get the rest of the letters on the attractions, which seem to spell out ""MY FIRST PEN"". They soon learn that the secret weapon they need is Walt Disney's first pen, which is kept at the One Man's Dream exhibit at Disney's Hollywood Studios (Disney-MGM). Finn infiltrates the exhibit after closing to get the pen. However, he grabs a whole handful of pens and pencils and tries to escape, when he hears security coming, and realizes he's been ratted out. However, before he escapes, Maleficent steals Walt's original plans and designs for the parks. Finn escapes and discovers that it was Amanda. Finn thinks Amanda is an Overtaker and has been setting him up. Finn leaves her in anger. On an evening school field trip to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, where everyone is in a costume, Finn (who brought the pens and pencils from the One Man's Dream display) meets up with the other four DHIs. While meeting up at the party, Amanda and Charlene suddenly faint at the same time. Finn spies Maleficent and Jez descending into Pirates of the Caribbean. Finn, Maybeck, and Philby follow the two into the corridors and underground passageways of the attraction and discover large jail cells, with brand new padlocks, reported to have been stolen only recently. The three realize that the witches must be planning to lock all the Cast Members in the cells below the ride. The three continue, only to be cornered by Maleficent and Jez, who purposely led the three down below. Using Walt's pen, Finn realizes it has some sort of powers, and stuns the witch and electrifies her with it. Maleficent faints and Jez is forced to revive Amanda and Charlene. Now knowing Maleficents plans and what must be done, the kids and Wayne realize they must catch her and retrieve the stolen plans. However, when the kids and Wayne meet the next morning at the Transportation and Ticket Center, Wayne has brought along Amanda. Wayne has the five kids dress up as costumed cast members found around the park, and sends them into the utilidors for cast members beneath the park. While the two girls (and Amanda) man the park overhead, the three guys head for the coldest room of all in the utilidors- the computer room, seeing how Maleficent is all about cold. Luring her out of the computer room by pretending to give her the pen, Finn electrifies the witch again, grabs the plans, and the 3 boys rush off into the park with the plans and the pen, and Maleficent after them. Philby and Maybeck meet up with Charlene and Willa and escape back to Wayne. In a battle outside Tomorrowland (which is believed to be a show by park guests), Finn becomes his DHI (during the day!) and knocks over the witch and he steps into Jez, nothing but light. She tries to step out of him, but he knows her every move. In an effort to try to rid herself of him, she spins extremely fast, and now they are one: spinning and glowing. While she is spinning she is slowly transforming into a brighter girl, a girl almost identical to Amanda. Finn realizes the two are twins, twin witches, and Jez had been under a spell by Maleficent. Her real name is Jess. The two joyfully reunite and thank Finn, who escapes down a garbage chute with the plans and the pens, and Maleficent giving chase. Finn ends up in a large bin of trash and escapes, while Maleficent lands in a giant net, closed and captured by the Disney Imagineers. Finally, the witch has been caught and peace restores. Hours later, Maleficent is locked up in her own jail cell in the queue of Pirates of the Caribbean, and the kids rejoice in the Cinderella Castle apartment because Amanda and Jess have reunited, the riddle has been solved, Walt's first pen has been found, and everything has been restored to normal around Walt Disney World. Finn touches Walt's first magical pen to the recovered plans of the park, causing the Magic Kingdom to illuminate, and the park becomes more magical as the rides magically become fixed, everything returns to tip-top shape, and the most elaborate fireworks the park had ever seen go off in the night sky. The five kids watch the park light up in the same path as they did on the map, and the plans illuminate as they celebrate a happy end. Wayne then returns to his desk, picks up the black remote and presses the button."
2965,Have Mercy on Us All,thriller," Joss, a middle-aged former Breton sailor, begins to succeed in reviving the old family trade of town crier in modern-day Paris. Business is good, since people gladly pay five francs to hear their rants and nonsensical messages in parks and squares; every so often, ominous cryptic messages announcing the return of the plague will also be part of the day’s requested cries. At the same time, chief inspector Adamsberg is surprised as a distressed woman describes that all her apartment building’s doors, except one, have been marked with a large inverted “4” in black ink with the inscription “CLT.” This graffiti continues to turn up throughout the city, and residents of apartments with unmarked doors are turning up dead, showing signs of rat-flea bites and blackened flesh. Inspector Adamsberg must lead an investigation that takes him through a juxtaposition of 15th-century Europe and modern-day France...or does he? fr:Pars vite et reviens tard (roman) it:Parti in fretta e non tornare"
2966,The Queen's Gambit,thriller," Named after a chess opening favored by the protagonist Beth Harmon, The Queen's Gambit traces Harmon's life from her childhood in an orphanage through her struggles with tranquilizer and alcohol addiction to her triumphant rise through the Grandmaster ranks. Eight-year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable -- until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting."
2967,The Apprentice,thriller, According to the description of the book by St. Martin's Press:
2968,The Enemy,thriller," Reacher and a female assistant named Lieutenant Summer travel to inform Mrs. Kramer of her husband's death. However, when they arrive, it turns out the house has been broken into and Mrs. Kramer has been murdered with a crowbar. Reacher goes to a bar across the street from the motel to find out who the hooker was, and creates some trouble when he gets into a fight with the owner, shattering his knee. Afterwards, the motel receptionist informs Reacher that he heard a military vehicle leaving after Kramer's death, and Reacher concludes that the woman Kramer was with is a female officer. The book introduces General Vassell and Colonel Coomer, and later their errand boy, Major Marshall. It becomes clear that they are hiding something, related to an agenda for a meeting that was in Kramer's briefcase. Two soldiers named Carbone and Brubaker are murdered soon afterward. It turns out that Carbone filed a complaint against Reacher, his first in a sixteen-year career, for assaulting the bar owner. This puts Reacher under a cloud of suspicion. Reacher, in a talk with the Chief of Staff, finds out that with the collapse of Soviet communism that the military at large is worried about its inevitable downsizing, and in particular the different branches are having a power struggle. Reacher realises that Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall killed Carbone, by sneaking Marshall into the base in the car trunk. This is proven when investigation of the car finds Marshall's fingerprints as well as large quantities of blood in the trunk. Reacher arrests Vassell and Coomer for conspiracy to commit homicide. He makes the mistake of traveling alone to a firing range in the Mojave Desert to arrest Marshall. Marshall is hiding out in a bunker, also armed. A firefight ensues, during which Marshall calls his tank squadron, practicing nearby, to fire rounds on their position. Under cover of the incoming tank shells, and realizing that time is short, Reacher sneaks into the bunker and shoots and wounds Marshall. Escaping in his Humvee, he drives the wounded Marshall to a military hospital. Reacher finds the missing agenda. It turns out that it was a plan to ensure that Armored Branch, the military the conspirators worked for, avoided being reduced. The agenda was a plan to assassinate eighteen prominent individuals in the army, one already killed. Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall plead guilty as charged in exchange for life imprisonment, avoiding the death penalty which was threatened. Reacher pleads guilty to the brutality charge that had been brought by Carbone, and is demoted to Captain, but has cleared his conscience."
2969,Ice Station Zebra,thriller," Drift Ice Station Zebra, a British meteorological station built on an ice floe in the Arctic Sea, has suffered a catastrophic oil fire; men have died and shelter and supplies have been destroyed. The survivors are holed up in one hut with little food and heat. If help does not reach them quickly, they will die. The (fictional) American nuclear-powered submarine USS Dolphin is dispatched on a rescue mission. Just before it departs, the mysterious Dr. Carpenter, the narrator, is sent to accompany it. Carpenter claims that he is necessary as an expert in dealing with frostbite and other deep-cold medical conditions. At first, the submarine's Captain Swanson is suspicious of Carpenter, even though he receives an order from Chief of Naval Operations of the U.S. Navy instructing him to obey Carpenter's every command except where crew and submarine safety is at stake. Swanson then calls in his boss Admiral Garvie. Admiral Garvie, Captain Swanson and Dr. Carpenter then meet in confidence in Captain Swanson's small cabin. Admiral Garvie questions Dr. Carpenter at length asking why a civilian and a non US Citizen should be allowed aboard the USS Dolphin and says that he can countermand the CNO's instructions and refuse transport to Dr. Carpenter. Carpenter is thus forced to reveal that this is not simply a rescue mission; the station is actually a highly-equipped listening post, keeping watch for nuclear missile launches from the Soviet Union. Hearing this, Admiral Garvie allows Carpenter to come along. Swanson asks Carpenter to dinner but Carpenter declines saying that he has been traveling for more than 50 hours. Swanson asks and Dr. Carpenter reveals that 50 hours ago he was in the Antarctic. It is very mysterious and Admiral Garvie gives an old fashioned look but he lets it go at that point. Before the Dolphin dives under the Arctic ice pack, it tries to contact Zebra, whose radio signals are becoming weaker by the hour, but in vain. Once under the Arctic ice pack, it approaches the calculated position for Zebra, then searches for a place to surface. Eventually finding a place where the ice is thin enough to break through, the Dolphin establishes tenuous radio contact, and gets a bearing on Zebra's position. But Zebra is too far away to attempt to reach it on foot, so the submarine re-submerges, hoping to get closer. Carpenter confides to the Captain that the commander of the station is his brother. After a tense, desperate search, the Dolphin finds open water and surfaces just five miles from the station. Carpenter, Executive Officer Hansen, and two crewmen make the perilous journey through an Arctic storm on foot, taking with them as many supplies as they can. Zabrinski, one of the crewmen, breaks his ankle on the way. After a harrowing trek they reach Zebra. Devastation awaits them. Three of the eight huts and almost all supplies have been destroyed by a widespread oil fire. Eight men are dead - burnt to a crisp. Eleven men are alive, but barely. While the victims are being tended to, Carpenter does some investigating on his own. Unable to make radio contact, as the radio was damaged in Zabrinski's fall, Carpenter just receives a message from the Dolphin telling them to return at once, as the ice is closing. Carpenter and Hansen leave Zabrinski and the other crewman to attend to the survivors. After nearly getting lost in the terrible storm of blowing ice, Carpenter and Hansen finally return to the Dolphin, bearing news of their findings, as well as the relatively thin ice nearer to Zebra. Dolphin submerges and heads for Zebra. The ice there is still too thick to break with the sub's sail, so Swanson decides to blow a hole in the ice with a torpedo. Unbeknownst to him, someone had tampered with the wiring of the indicators which indicated the open/close status of the outer tube doors. When the crew attempts to load a torpedo into one of the tubes, a torrent of water rushes through the inner door, killing an officer and sending Dolphin into a nearly catastrophic dive. Only by heroic measures is Dolphin able to save herself. After successfully breaking through the ice with a torpedo, fired from an UN-sabotaged tube, Dolphin finally emerges just two hundred feet from Zebra. The sick men are treated, but some of them are still too ill to be carried to the sub. Carpenter does some more investigating. He finds that the fire at Zebra was no accident; it was a cover to hide that three of the dead men, one of whom was his brother, were murdered. Carpenter already knows why; the only question is who. Swanson also has a look around and finds no trace of the sophisticated listening equipment Carpenter had claimed was Zebra's purpose &mdash; Carpenter had lied again. Meanwhile, Swanson found a loaded gun in the petrol tank of a tractor, where the petrol would keep it from freezing, whereas Carpenter found food, batteries and a powerful radio hidden in the hut being used as a morgue. Finally the survivors are all brought aboard, Zebra is abandoned, and Dolphin heads back, but not without several further incidents. The ship's doctor is knocked into a coma. Carpenter himself is severely hurt in another apparent accident. Then a fire breaks out in the engine room and the sub is forced to shut down its nuclear reactor. Without power for air purification or heating, Dolphin looks set to become a frozen tomb trapped under the ice pack. Only the ingenuity of Commander Swanson and the dedication of the crew saves the ship. Carpenter announces that the fire was no accident. He reveals to the Captain that he is an MI6 officer. Carpenter's real mission is to retrieve photographic film from a reconnaissance satellite (see Corona) that has photographed every nuclear weapons installation in the U.S. The film, ejected from the satellite, had landed near Zebra. Carpenter's brother had been meant to retrieve it, but Russian agents killed him. The two Russian agents are amongst the survivors from Zebra. Carpenter finally reveals their motives, methods, and the men. The film is now in American hands, and the agents on their way to the gallows."
2970,The Bancroft Strategy,thriller," Todd Belknap, a field agent for Consular Operations, is cut loose from the agency after a job gone wrong. But when his best friend and fellow agent is abducted abroad and the government refuses to step in, Belknap decides to take matters into his own hands. Meanwhile, Andrea Bancroft learns she’s about to inherit 12 million dollars from a cousin she never met—with one condition: She must sit on the board of the Bancroft family foundation. Having been estranged from her father’s family for most of her life, Andrea is intrigued. But what exactly is the Bancroft’s involvement with “Genesis,” a mysterious person working to destabilize the geopolitical balance at the risk of millions of lives? In a series of devastating coincidences, Andrea and Belknap come together to form an uneasy alliance if they are to uncover the truth behind “Genesis”—before it is too late."
2971,Rash,thriller," The novel is set in the year 2074, in a future U.S., now called the United Safer States of America, that has become obsessed with safety and security. Nearly every potentially unsafe action has been criminalized, including school fights. The main character is Bo Marsden, a 16-year-old at high school. Bo's father and brother are in prison, and Bo tends to see his own rash behavior as genetic. Things get out of control when Bo tries to assault his classmate, Karlohs Mink, and is arrested. As a result, Bo is sentenced to work making pizzas in the Canadian tundra, where he is surrounded by hungry bears and eats only pizzas everyday. Bo finds prison life boring and dangerous, and he is tired of eating pizzas. However, on the strength of his running ability, Bo is soon invited to join the Goldshirts, together with his extremely strong roommate Rhino. The Goldshirts are a specially privileged group at the camp because they play football for the camp warden, Hammer, who bets money on the matches. Training to play the sport, which is now highly illegal, makes Bo stronger and more self-confident. At the same time, Bork, an artificial intelligent being which Bo invents for his science project in the school, mutates and becomes a rogue, spreading across the web. Using its great knowledge of criminal law, Bork arranges the early release of Bo and his family members. Rogue AI programs are illegal, and Bork is eventually discovered and destroyed by Security&Safety. Bo, however, has already gained what he needs: his high school graduation certificate and the skills of running and football. He takes his grandfather's shoes and decides to go to South America to play football, as it is still legal there."
2972,Bloodline,thriller," Roffe and Sons is a family firm, an international empire filled with desperate, cash-hungry family members. At its head was one of the wealthiest men in the world, a man who has just died in a mysterious accident and left his only daughter, Elizabeth, in control of the company. With this, her relatives hoped to be allowed to steal their stocks since the company's bylaws prevent it from becoming public until all shareholders agree to change that and Elizabeth's father."
2973,One Shot,thriller," In a small Indiana city a lone gunman in a parking garage calmly fires into a rush hour crowd in a public plaza, committing a massacre of five random victims with six shots. The shooter leaves a perfect trail behind him for the police to quickly track him down. Evidence from the scene, of a shell case and a quarter bearing the same fingerprints, points clearly to James Barr, a former Army Infantry sniper. He's arrested but will only say two things to the police: ""'They got the wrong guy,"" and ""'Get Jack Reacher for me.'"" Reacher, the former Army Military Police officer is 1500 miles away but he sees the news on CNN and gets on a bus to Indiana. Reacher has no job, no home, no car, and a shrinking savings account from his past military pay. Although Reacher has a nomadic existence, what he does have is a sharp moral clarity in a modern climate of moral ambiguity. Instead of clearing Barr, Reacher wants to assist the prosecution in convicting him. There are good reasons why Reacher is the last person Barr would want to see. When Reacher was an investigating MP years past, Barr had committed a killing spree similar to the Indiana shootout, murdering four people during the Gulf War in Kuwait City, but twisted military politics and a technicality let Barr walk free. Reacher swore he would track the sniper down if he ever tried it again. Reacher believes Barr is guilty but Barr's sister Rosemary is convinced of her brother's innocence and entreats lawyer Helen Rodin to defend her brother. Helen's father is the district attorney that will prosecute the case. When Reacher arrives in Indiana, Barr has been beaten so badly he can't remember anything about the day of the murders, leaving Reacher to form his own conclusions with the available evidence. The local NBC news reporter, Ann Yanni, is also looking for more information and Reacher is more than willing to include her in his investigation, in exchange for a guaranteed public expose on the Barr case. Ann also lets Reacher drive her Mustang convertible car while he is in Indiana. Reacher knows thirty yards, the parking garage distance, is point-blank range for a trained military sniper like Barr. Reacher also knows the shooter missed one shot on purpose, giving Reacher one shot at the truth. Reacher drives to Kentucky to the shooting range where the sniper practiced and learns some interesting facts from Gunny Samuel Cash, the former U.S. Marine who owns the shooting range, which make him doubt the guilty airtight case against Barr. During a long range shooting scene, with a target of 300 yards, Reacher uses his enhanced intelligence with advanced technical and military knowledge, slowing and counting his heartbeat while calculating wind, humidity, trajectory, speed, energy and force. Cash is unwilling to reveal information or his records to Reacher, but grudgingly agrees to talk if Reacher is able to hit the target with one shot. Reacher is a skilled marksman and beside winning the US Army Pistol Championship, served as a pistol instructor. and is the only non-Marine to win the Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational rifle competition, 10 years after Cash scraped third place, which Reacher refrains from mentioning. Reacher makes the shot and tactfully says it was due to Cash's weaponry. Cash responds to Reacher's spoken compliment and unspoken respect and shows Reacher 32 sheets of target paper from three years' worth of Barr's practice shootings at his range, every single sheet with dead-on maximum scores. After the visit to the shooting range, Reacher adds Cash's information to the case evidence and his weaponry knowledge. Helen and Rosemary sift through the clues in a riveting analysis and finally get Reacher to conclude that Barr is innocent, which means someone set up Barr as the sniper. Someone is also trying to get Reacher off the case, which seemed a slam-dunk but is falling apart. Reacher is teamed with Helen, the young defense lawyer working against her D.A. father with a prosecution team that has an explosive secret of its own. Like most of Reacher's life, the case is a complex battlefield, but Reacher is at his best during battles. Reacher gets closer to the unseen enemy pulling the strings, leading him to the real perpetrators, a Russian gang, masquerading as legitimate businessmen. The gang's eighty-year-old capo spent most of his life in the infamous Soviet Gulag and is known only as The Zec. Reacher outwits the mob guards in the Russian gang's fortress, efficiently and brutally dispatching five hoods before confronting the boss and forcing him to come clean on the whole scam and set-up."
2974,Terminal,thriller," The novel centers around the investigation of a medical student named Sean into a mysterious cancer called medulloblastoma and the secret behind the hundred percent remission treatment offered by a medical institute called Forbes Cancer Centre. In his investigation, Sean learns that the institute is responsible for the creation of the cancer. The secret behind their offering of 100% remission of the disease is that the creators had also invented an antibody to the disease. The institute procured Social Security numbers and other identifying details of wealthy people and their dependents, and as opportunities arose from those people undergoing surgeries or being on IV therapy, they were infected with the transformed St. Louis encephalitis virus. Because the virus was encephalotropic, it manifested with early neural symptoms in the infected patients, in the form of seizures and convulsions. The infected people, once they were completely cured of the disease, were usually willing to donate large sums to the Forbes. This book heavily deals with the controversial issues of the time. hu:Haláltusa (regény) nl:Terminaal (boek)"
2975,The Word,thriller," The plot of the novel is based around the discovery within Roman ruins of a new gospel written by Jesus' younger brother, James in the first century. In the gospel, many facts of Jesus' life, including the years not mentioned in the Bible, are revealed not to be as factual as they were once thought to be. Steven Randall, a divorced public relations executive running his own company in New York City, is the man hired by New Testament International, an alliance of American and European Bible publishers, to give publicity to James' Gospel as published by them. The project has been top-secret for six years, and now it is about to be unveiled to a world long in need of Christian revival. However, as Steven gets more involved in the project he runs into several questionable circumstances, as radical clerics centered in Central Europe oppose the publication of the document, since it would give ammunition for the conservative churches to keep the flow of worship from the top to the bottom, instead of bringing the faith to the masses. A struggle for control of the World Council of Churches, the suspicious absence in the project of archeologist Prof. Agusto Monti, the original discoverer &ndash; and whose daughter Angela is a potential love interest for Steve &ndash; , and the potential notion that the newly discovered gospel itself is a forgery made in the 20th century instead of a legitimate historical document, all are guaranteed to make Steve question the worth of the new job he's undertaking, and the newly re-found faith in God he acquired along with it. *New York City, Steve's place of work and regular abode. *Oak City, Wisconsin, Steve's hometown (fictional; may be based on Oak Creek and/or Pleasant Prairie). *London, England, where Steve meets Dr. Bernard Jeffries and Dr. Florian Knight *Amsterdam, Netherlands, headquarters of the New Testament International project, and of Maertin de Vroome's Westerkerk. *Paris, France, home of Henri Aubert's lab at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique *Mainz, Germany home of Karl Hennig's printing press *Simonopetra Monastery, Mount Athos, Greece *Rome, Italy, base of the Monti family, and its former Roman seaport Ostia Antica, place of the discovery of the Gospel According to James *Milan, Italy, where Steve first meets Angela"
2976,Operation Hell Gate,thriller," Jack Bauer has a bit of a problem with a recent mission. Subsequently he must accompany the prisoner, FBI agent Frank Hensley (who was later revealed to be an Iraqi agent) and other government officials. The plane crashes and all chaos breaks loose - Frank Hensley frames Jack Bauer for the murder of two FBI agents, Ryan Chappelle has trouble helping Jack from LA, and a weapon has been stolen that could potentially release a virus deadly to the whole of America. Jack Bauer must use all his skill and recruit the help of some Irish women (Caitlin) in order to break down a highly complicated conspiracy that leads to the government."
2977,The Cabinet of Curiosities,thriller," Dr. Nora Kelly's life as an archeologist at New York City's American Museum of Natural History becomes complicated when Aloysius X. L. Pendergast, a secretive and highly resourceful FBI Special Agent, convinces her to help him uncover the truth behind a string of brutal murders that appears to stretch back 130 years. The adventure starts out with the discovery of a long-buried tunnel at a construction site in Manhattan containing the bodies of 36 young people all with parts of their spine removed, buried in the basement. Kelly's assistance as archeologist is needed by Pendergast. But they are soon frustrated by forces opposing their involvement: *Roger C. Brisbane III: Museum's first Vice Director *Anthony Fairhaven: Wealthy entrepreneur, owner of the development property. Fairhaven is a large contributor to the museum, and to the mayor's election campaign. *The City of New York: The Mayor and the police exert every effort to stop Pendergast and Kelly's investigation. Anthony Fairhaven, owner of the site, wishes to build his glass tower of apartments before bad publicity and archeologists can stop him. He has the bodies quickly taken away and buried, but not before Dr. Nora Kelly and FBI Special Agent Pendegrast take a cursory look. Nora discovers a note written by Mary Greene sewn into the bodice of a discarded dress. Nora has her reservations about continuing the investigation, despite the personal connection she feels to Mary Greene through her painstakingly-written note. Nora has recently been hired by the museum, and is afraid of losing her job, especially since budget cuts and politics make it harder for her to continue her research. In spite of efforts to thwart them, Pendergast and Kelly make some important discoveries at the construction site, especially the gruesome manner in which the victims were killed. Agent Pendergast is determined to discover the name of the murderer for his own reasons. Nora's boyfriend, William Smithback, tries to help Kelly in his way, writing a newspaper article about the investigation. Contrary to Smithback's hopes, his article does not help Nora, and she refuses to have anything further to do with him. After the article is published, a copycat killer begins a new stream of murders. The Police Department, in spite of its desire to curtail Pendergast's activities, must appear as though it's aiding the investigation, and so supplies a liaison officer, Patrick Murphy O'Shaughnessy. To the department's chagrin, O'Shaughnessy is much too helpful and becomes a boon to Pendergast and Kelly. The copycat murders continue, moving ever closer to the museum. A horrific murder is discovered in the museum's basement, and with each clue Pendergast uncovers, he has the sensation that someone is following his trail. Strangely, the evidence points towards the same person who committed the gruesome crimes over a century ago. The investigation reveals a startling secret in the Pendergast family, a successful means of prolonging life, and a murderous obsession to achieve the eradication of mankind's 'disease'. Pendergast's great-grand uncle Antoine Leng Pendergast (a.k.a. Enoch Leng) is revealed as the serial killer who stole his victim's spinal columns in an attempt to produce an elixir enabling him to prolong life. He succeeds, and survives into the late 20th century, until he himself is killed by the copycat killer, revealed to be Anthony Fairhaven, who tracked Enoch Leng to his mansion on Riverside Drive. Leng, now an old man, no longer uses the formula, and is powerless against Fairhaven’s feverish brutality. Leng dies while being tortured by Fairhaven without ever revealing his secret formula. Pendergast arrives to stop him, and after Fairhaven is dead, Pendergast burns the formula that would prolong life. The story introduces the cabinet of curiosity (created by the killer Leng), and hints at something hidden in it, which is featured in the consecutive novels. it:La stanza degli orrori"
2978,Die Trying,thriller," Having run short on cash, Reacher has paused in his travels and is working in Chicago when he stumbles into the kidnapping of FBI agent Holly Johnson and he is also held. The pair are whisked across the United States in the back of a stolen Ford Econoline van, while back in Chicago Holly's colleagues frantically piece together the puzzle of her sudden disappearance. Initially they are detained in a barn in North Dakota but Reacher kills one of their captors and hides the body (this is discovered later). They are moved on again in the van. Arriving in Yorke County (fictional), a remote area of Montana, Reacher and Holly find themselves up against the Montana Militia, a band approximately 100 strong led by Beau Borken, a majestic yet ruthless megalomaniac intent on more than simple secession from the union. Holly is the daughter of a general - the head of the joint chiefs of staff. She's defensive about her family connections, having had to work hard to dispel notions of nepotism, so it's a while before she reveals to Reacher that she's also the President's god-daughter. To add to the complications, there's Brogan, a mole infiltrated into the Chicago FBI team, and an undercover federal agent, Jackson, in the militia group. Before long, one betrays the other and Jackson dies a horrible death by being crucified in the woods. Even as they close in on the Montana camp, the FBI believe that Reacher was part of the kidnap team. Reacher's old commanding officer, General Leon Garber, arrives to convince them otherwise and ends up playing a critical role."
2979,The Icarus Agenda,thriller," A few years before, a tragic ""accident"" left him with 78 fewer friends. The only loved-one left was Emmanuel ""Manny"" Weingrass, a world-renowned architect and a somewhat impossible person. In his first year in Congress, there is an uprising in Masqat - a hostage taking. The events remind him of a man known as The Mahdi whom Weingrass said was the reason for the deaths of his 78 friends. He goes to Oman for revenge and comes back victorious. The Mahdi dead and a tragedy averted. A year later, the inheritors of Inver Brass - the resurrected group of influential people, destroyed in the events of the Chancellor Manuscript, who had been tracking him ever since he went on the Oman operation through a specially gifted ICT specialist, exposes the truth of Kendrick being involved in Masqat and they reveal this to the world to have Kendrick as Vice-President of the USA, because they consider him to be morally incorruptible. After the revealing, lives are lost and friendships broken, Kendrick is desperately looking for the people who are responsible for turning his life upside-down. But unknown to the Inver Brass there is a traitor in their midst... and this might just be the last straw... Codename Icarus is the last hope to a nation and to a world. The organisation was first mentioned in his 1977 novel The Chancellor Manuscript and is also mentioned in his later novel The Bancroft Strategy."
2980,Absolute Power,thriller," An experienced burglar, Luther Whitney, breaks into a billionaire's house with the intent of robbing it. While there, he witnesses the President of the United States and the billionaire's wife having sex; however, their lovemaking turns violent and Secret Service agents burst in and kill the woman. Whitney escapes, but not before the Secret Service learns of his presence; they blame the wife's murder on Whitney. Whitney goes on the run from the President's agents while a detective tries to piece together the crime."
2981,The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,thriller," In December 2002, Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of the Swedish political magazine Millennium, loses a libel case involving allegations about billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. He is sentenced to three months (deferred) in prison, and ordered to pay hefty damages and costs. He is invited to meet Henrik Vanger, the retired CEO of the Vanger Corporation, unaware that Vanger has checked into his personal and professional history; the investigation of Blomkvist's circumstances has been carried out by Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant but deeply troubled young woman who works as a surveillance agent with Milton Security. Vanger promises Blomkvist considerable financial reward and solid evidence against Wennerström, ostensibly for writing the Vanger family history, but really for discovering what happened to Harriet. Vanger believes that his great-niece Harriet, who disappeared 36 years earlier, was murdered by a member of the family. He has been trying to find out what happened to her ever since. Harriet disappeared during a family gathering at the Vanger estate on Hedeby Island, when the island was temporarily cut off from the mainland by a traffic accident. Blomkvist moves to the island and begins his research into the history of the Vanger family and Harriet's disappearance. Lisbeth Salander is under the care of a legal guardian, Holger Palmgren, the only person she trusts. When he suffers a stroke, he is replaced by lawyer Nils Bjurman, who takes advantage of his position to sexually abuse her. After using a hidden camera to record Bjurman raping her, she takes her revenge, torturing him and threatening to ruin him unless he gives her full control of her life and finances. She also brands him with a tattoo identifying him as a rapist to make sure he never harms anyone again. While searching through the evidence, Blomkvist decides that he needs a research assistant, and Vanger's lawyer mentions Salander. When he sees the report she prepared for Vanger, Blomkvist realises that Salander has hacked into his computer. Salander agrees to assist in the investigation, and eventually becomes his lover. Blomkvist and Salander soon realise that they are on the trail of a serial killer who has been preying on women for decades. When looking through old photographs, Blomkvist realises that they contain a clue to the murderer's identity. After an unseen assailant tries to kill him, Blomkvist becomes suspicious of Harriet's brother, Martin, and goes to his house. Martin has expected him, however, and takes him prisoner. Martin reveals that he was initiated as a teenager into rape and murder by his late father, Gottfried, who had also molested him. Martin brags about murdering dozens of women, but denies killing his sister. Martin tries to kill Blomkvist, but Salander arrives just in time and saves Blomkvist's life. Martin flees in his car, pursued by Salander on her motorbike. He collides head-on into a truck and dies. By following a trail of clues, Blomkvist and Salander discover that Harriet is still alive and living in Australia. Blomkvist flies there and meets Harriet, who tells him that her father had repeatedly raped her until she killed him in self-defense; Martin saw her do it, and began sexually abusing her until he was sent away to boarding school. She saw him on the day of the accident on the Hedeby Island bridge, and asked her cousin Anita to smuggle her out of Sweden in order to get away from him. Blomkvist persuades Harriet to return to Sweden, where she reunites with her great-uncle, who makes plans for her to take the position of CEO of the Vanger Corporation. Blomkvist accompanies Salander at the funeral of her mother, who has just died. Salander also tells him that, as a child, she had tried to kill her father by setting him on fire. Henrik Vanger gives Blomkvist the promised evidence against Wennerström, which turns out to be useless. However, Salander has already hacked Wennerström's computer and has discovered that his crimes go far beyond what Blomkvist documented. Using her evidence, Blomkvist prints an exposé and book which ruins Wennerström and catapults Millennium to national prominence. Meanwhile, Salander steals more than 2.4 billion Euros from Wennerström's secret bank account. Blomkvist and Salander spend Christmas together in his holiday retreat, and Salander admits to herself that she is in love. She goes to Blomkvist's house with a present for him, but retreats on seeing Blomkvist with his longtime lover and business partner, Erika Berger. Heartbroken, she throws the gift into a skip and leaves the country. As a postscript, Salander continues to monitor Wennerström, and after six months anonymously informs a lawyer in Miami of his whereabouts. He is found in Marbella, dead, shot three times in the head."
2982,Blink,thriller," Protagonist Seth Border is a college student who has one of the world's highest IQs. One day he begins developing a tremendous skill: the ability to see multiple possible futures. This ability first manifests itself for a few seconds at a time, and gradually exponentiates into an ability to see millions of possibilities that could happen hours and days later. Little does Seth know that when he is thrown together with a Saudi princess, Miriam Al-Asamm, who flees her country to escape oppression, he will soon have the adventure of his life as they explore the truth about Christianity and Seth's gift of precognition while running for their lives."
2983,Terminal Freeze,thriller," The events take place in Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle. Evan Marshall, a paleoecologist, is a team member from Northern Massachusetts University studying the effects of global warming on a receding glacier near the fictional Mount Fear. The expedition discovers a monstrous ancient animal, presumed to be a preserved example of Smilodon populator, frozen in solid ice inside a lava tube made into an ice cave. The expedition's corporate sponsors, sensing huge publicity, decide to have the beast cut from the ice, thawed, and revealed live on television. Meanwhile, local Tunit try to warn the scientists that they do not understand what they have found. Specific warnings are that the animal only exists to kill and that they (the Tunit) do not believe that it is dead. A fanatical documentary producer continues his attempt to capture the events of the discovery, even after the animal exceeds any expectations of its capabilities. (Tunit was the name assigned to the Dorset People in Greenland by the early Thule proto-Inuit. The last Dorset survivors died in 1902 and no Dorset People ever lived in Alaska, being resident in eastern Canada and Greenland.)"
2984,The Rose of Tibet,thriller," Charles Houston makes a perilous and illegal journey from India into the forbidden land of Tibet during the unsettled time 1950/51, in the hope of rescuing his vanished brother. What he does not know is that his coming was prophesied a century earlier, and he is awaited by an impossible love, an enormous treasure, and the invading Red Chinese army."
2985,Going to Ground,thriller," Following the events of Running the Risk, Dax and the other Colas are sent to recover. However, during this time off, Lisa experiences a vision which warns her that Gideon is in deadly peril. She and Dax attempt to rescue him, only to find that he is not actually in any sort of danger - at least not yet. But strange and unexplainable electrical faults are taking place all over the country, and the government seem to think that Gideon's powers are responsible. Now they will stop at nothing to find him and contain the threat they believe he poses. Gideon, Dax, Lisa and Mia, set off across the country, attempting to outwit their pursuers, while also trying to find the real cause of these electrical events to clear Gideon's name."
2986,Bel Canto,thriller," Set in an unnamed country, the story begins at a birthday party thrown at the country's vice presidential home. The party is thrown for Katsumi Hosokawa, the visiting chairman of a large Japanese electronics company called Nansei. Performing is a famous American soprano, Roxane Coss. Near the end of the party, members of a terrorist organization break into the house looking for the President. When it is discovered that the President did not attend the party, the terrorist group decides to take the entire party hostage. After determining they have too many hostages, the terrorists decide to release all of the hostages except those they deem most important and most likely to receive a large ransom. This includes Hosokawa, Roxane, and the translator Gen. Two major romantic relationships develop as the standoff drags on and serve as the backdrop to the rest of the story. The first is between Roxane Coss and Katsumi Hosokawa. Hosokawa is one of Roxane's biggest fans and he attended the party because Roxane was going to be singing. When they are placed in the house together, they develop a deep bond, even though they do not speak each other's language and thus cannot communicate verbally. The second relationship is between Gen Watanabe and the young terrorist Carmen. They must keep their love a secret because Carmen is forbidden to have relationships with a hostage. The two lovers meet in the china closet every night to practice Carmen's reading and eventually to make love. At the end of the novel, the government breaks into the house and kills all the terrorists. All of the hostages are freed except for Mr. Hosokawa, who dies in the struggle. The novel ends some time after the crisis; we learn that Gen and Roxane were married in Italy."
2987,Master of the Game,thriller," The story begins with Kate Blackwell's ninetieth birthday celebrations in 1982 and is told in flashback. The story then moves one hundred years back to the arrival of Scotsman Jamie MacGregor (1865–1894) in Klipdrift, South Africa in 1883 to seek his fortune. He is soon defrauded by a wealthy Dutch storekeeper, Salomon Van Der Merwe, who steals his diamonds and leaves him in the desert to die. Jamie is rescued and taken to Cape Town by van der Merwe's Bantu servant Banda. Jamie plans his revenge, joined by Banda, who seeks vengeance for his younger sister who was raped and killed by Salomon. The two sneak into van der Merwe's heavily guarded diamond mines in the Namib Desert and succeed in stealing a load of diamonds worth a fortune. Jamie, now rugged and unrecognizable, returns to Klipdrift, cons Salomon into believing him to be a rich businessman and violates his daughter Margaret who gradually falls in love with him. However, when Jamie learns that Margaret is pregnant by him, he refuses to marry her and reveals to Salomon his true identity. The violation of Margaret's chastity becomes the talk of the town and Salomon plunges into depression and starts drinking; he soon commits suicide, an unhappy man. Jamie, initially, despises Margaret, but when she gives birth to a son, Jamie develops extreme fondness of his son and consents to marrying Margaret for the sake of their young son, Jamie, Jr. (1886–1893). Jamie creates a company called Kruger Brent (named after two guards who were calling each other in the diamond field) and pours all his attention into the business. At one point, after Kruger-Brent takes over the diamond mines, a young American named David Blackwell attempts to rob the mines in exactly the same way as Jamie and Banda did, but is caught by the guards. Jamie, feeling sympathy for Blackwell, gives him a job in the company. Jamie likes his determination and he works his way through the ranks becoming a Kruger-Brent executive. Banda, meanwhile, reunites with Jamie and informs him that he is using his share of the diamond fortune to discreetly fight against the government for Bantu rights. Over the years, Jamie finally abandons his vendetta, but never really loves Margaret. Instead, he falls for a young prostitute also named Margaret. He comes home one night drunk, and mistakes his wife for his favorite prostitute, and they make love. In 1892, Jamie and Margaret have a daughter Kate. A year later, Jamie, Jr. is mistakenly murdered in a Bantu uprising led by Banda, causing Jamie to have a stroke from which he later dies. Margaret takes over Kruger Brent to secure Kate's future and hires Blackwell to aid her. Kate grows up beautiful, strong-willed and manipulative. Having fallen in love with David Blackwell, who is 22 years older to her, as a teenager she is determined to marry him, and thwarts his engagement by buying the company owned by his fiancee's father. Kate and David later get married, move to NY and then David enlists in the army during World War I and is away for four years. He then returns home safe and later Kate becomes pregnant, but when she is seven months pregnant David is killed in a mine explosion, causing her to go into premature labor and give birth to a son, Anthony ""Tony"" James Blackwell (b. 1924). Like her father before her, Kate pours her life into Kruger Brent with passion, making it a global conglomerate. She naturally expects Tony to take over Kruger Brent, but Tony is more interested in becoming an artist. While he clearly has the potential to become a world-class artist, Kate secretly destroys Tony's career by paying a notable French critic to give negative comments on Tony's work because Kate strongly believes he is wasting his life as an artist and that there were ""tens and thousands of painters in the world and my son was not meant to be one among them"". Kate feels sad about Tony's disappointment and unhappiness but is determined to get him out of it. Kate later manipulates him into marrying Marianne Hoffmann, whose father owns a scientific patent she covets. The marriage is happy, but Marianne is told by a doctor that pregnancy is out of the question as she would be at risk for a stroke. When she tells Kate who is now a good friend of hers this, Kate is in denial about Marianne's condition and tells her that doctors could be wrong and to go ahead with a pregnancy. In 1950, Marianne becomes pregnant, but when she is taken to the hospital to give birth her blood pressure goes out of control and she has a stroke. An emergency Caesarian section is performed and twin girls are delivered, but Marianne dies before the second girl is delivered. Her doctor tells Tony that he had warned Marianne of the dangers but that Kate told her to ignore them. The incident, along with the coincidental revelation that Kate manipulated and ultimately destroyed his entire art career, drives Tony mad and he tries to kill his mother in revenge. She survives the gunshot wound, but Tony is committed to an institution. Kate is heart broken that her son felt this way about her but she is determined to survive. Kate takes in her two identical looking granddaughters, whom she names Eve and Alexandra, to raise. Eve, ruthless and cunning, sees Alexandra as an interloper and repeatedly attempts to kill her starting when they are young children, taking advantage of their identical looks. Alexandra is thought to be clumsy and accident-prone as they grow up and Kate clearly favors Eve as the heir apparent to Kruger Brent, but when Eve tries to implicate Alexandra in a sex scandal Kate realizes the truth about Eve and disinherits her, giving her only a small allowance and pays attention to Alexandra. She also does not tell Alexandra the truth about Eve but tells her that ""Eve chose her own life"". Enraged, Eve plots revenge against both her sister and grandmother. She meets George Mellis, the black sheep of a wealthy Greek family, and seduces him into helping her. Mellis is handsome and cultured, but he is also a violent sadist and homosexual. Eve, knowing this, holds it over his head as she reveals her scheme—to get Alexandra to fall in love with and marry him, after which he will murder her and cause Kate to die of grief. Cued by Eve, Mellis woos Alexandra by being the perfect man who loves all the things she loves, and Alexandra does fall madly in love with him and they marry. Eve continues to taunt Mellis, and one night he snaps and attacks Eve, brutally assaulting her. She eventually recovers thanks to the work of a talented but mousy plastic surgeon Keith Webster and uses the beating to get back into her grandmother's good graces. Kate melts and takes Eve back in and puts her back in the will, making Mellis superfluous. Eve changes tactics, fakes a scar, and begins visiting a psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Templeton pretending to be a depressed, suicidal Alexandra; the plan is that Mellis will take Alexandra out on a yacht where he will throw her overboard and make it appear as if she killed herself. When Mellis gets on the boat with whom he believes to be Alexandra, he instead finds Eve, who stabs him to death. In the course of the investigation Eve's plastic surgeon, Dr. Keith Webster, overhears a remark about the scar on Eve's head. Having fallen in love with her, he goes to her and reminds her that he left no scar and knows that she killed Mellis. When she tries to deny it, he offers her a deal—if they are married, he will not be forced to testify against her. Eve marries him but cheats on him flagrantly with a young actor. When the actor makes a joke about her laugh lines she demands that Webster repair them. Webster deliberately destroys her face and proves to be a master manipulator himself, making Eve completely dependent on him. Alexandra, meanwhile, falls in love with the psychiatrist Peter Templeton; they marry and have a son, Robert. The book closes at Kate's ninetieth birthday party with all her relatives present. Robert, now eight, is turning into a talented pianist. Kate sees him as Kruger Brent's heir but Peter laughs her off and asks her if she never gave up. Alexandra too tells Kate that she is happy doing whatever Peter wants. Looking around at her family, including Tony, who was released from the institution for the occasion, and a masked Eve, Kate still believes that she acted in the best interest of all and that it was she who has been cheated, even though everyone in her family has been negatively affected by her actions. In the last line of the book she tells her great-grandson, Robert that she would introduce him to the great musician Zubin Mehta. At this point the readers are left to interpret the ending - does she sincerely means it and has she really changed, or is she planning a repeat of what she did to her son Tony?"
2988,Ark Angel,thriller," Following events of Scorpia, Alex Rider is in a hospital recovering from an assassination attempt. Four masked men come to the hospital attempting to kidnap Paul Drevin, the son of Russian billionaire Nikolei Drevin, who is financing a revolutionary space hotel named ""Ark Angel"". Alex fights the men, in an attempt to save Paul, he pretends to be Paul. He knocks all four of them out, but then a fifth man comes in to the hospital and overpowers Alex. Still weak, Alex faints and is kidnapped. Alex is taken to a flat in a building site, where he finds out the men belong to Force Three, an eco-terrorist group led by a man named Kaspar. Despite proving he is not Paul Drevin, Force Three lock Alex up and set fire to the apartment, but Alex escapes and Nikolei Drevin invites him to come and stay for two weeks in the lap of luxury for saving his son and see an Ark Angel rocket take off. While at Drevin's home, Alex starts to befriend Paul, but decides to leave him and his father once they arrive in New York in route to Flamingo Bay, mainly due to the fact that Nikolei Drevin nearly killed him in a go-kart race. On route to Flamingo Bay, Alex is taken with Paul and Nikolei Drevin to New York. At the airport, he is held up at customs and taken to the CIA. He is told that Nikolei Drevin could be ""the biggest criminal in the world"", and the CIA recruits him to gain information on Drevin. Upon his arrival at Flamingo Bay, Drevin learns of Alex's CIA connections and decides to have him killed while scuba diving. Alex becomes trapped in a sunken ship named the Mary Belle. With the help of Tamara Knight, an undercover CIA agent and who is Drevin's secretary, Alex escapes. Alex and Tamara hide on the island, but are both captured. Drevin ties Alex up and then tells Alex that his rocket Gabriel 7 contains a bomb that will destroy Ark Angel, causing it to fall to Earth and destroy Washington, D.C. This will eradicate the evidence against him the CIA have accumulated in the Pentagon, as well as letting him reclaim some of his money spent on the (now regretted) Ark Angel project. Alex escapes using a CIA gadget from Tamara, and sails away from the island. Drevin tries to get away in a seaplane, but Alex causes Drevin to crash by tying two canoes to the plane, and Drevin is killed. Drevin's rocket takes off before the CIA can stop it. Alex is then chosen to board a second rocket to move the bomb before it explodes, since he is the only one small enough to fit inside. When Alex arrives, he sees Kaspar and must fight him. Alex gains the upper hand when Kaspar is blinded by the sun's light, and then Kaspar is killed when he falls back on his own knife. Alex moves the bomb into the station's toilet and escapes. His escape capsule splashes down in the sea near Australia. The bomb explodes and the satellite falls harmlessly into the sea."
2989,Echo Burning,thriller," In a Texas bar, Jack Reacher breaks a local police officer's nose and finger after being provoked, so when the officer and three of his colleagues turn up the following day to arrest him, Reacher decides it's time to move on. He manages to hitch a lift with a Californian of Mexican heritage named Carmen Greer, but she reveals to him that the only reason she picked him up is because she has a problem—her tax-evading husband Sloop is coming out of prison soon, and he will beat her up. Carmen needs somebody to kill him, and she thinks Reacher's military background may help her get rid of him. Reacher initially refuses and even gets out of the car into the 110 degree heat, but he eventually agrees to go back to the ranch where Carmen, her husband Sloop and the rest of Sloop's family live, to keep an eye on her. Reacher and Carmen then proceed to pick up the daughter of Carmen and Sloop: Ellie, who gets on well with Reacher. During this time, we also see the introduction of two hired teams: the first team, named ""The Watching Team"" or ""The Watchers"", is composed of two men and a boy and have been watching the ranch where the Greers live. This team is later killed by a second, called ""The Killing Team"", who have also killed Sloop's lawyer Al Eugene. Carmen and Reacher arrive back at the ranch, but Reacher does not receive a warm welcome from Sloop's mother, brother or the two ranchers that work there. Nonetheless, Reacher begins works there. In the days leading up to Sloop's release, Reacher helps teach Carmen how to fire a gun and also beats up both ranchers in a bar fight. Sloop comes home and takes a dislike to Reacher, and eventually gets the State Police to take Reacher away. The State Police do take Reacher away, but the troopers are called back to the Greer Ranch, or the ""Red House"", whilst Reacher is still in the car. Sloop has been shot and killed, and the authorities think it was Carmen. Whilst she is incarcerated, she confesses to the murder and denies legal help from Alice Amanda Aaron, the attorney Reacher hires for her. Reacher and Alice work on trying to prove Carmen's innocence, despite being thrown off the track by the claims of Hack Walker - Pecos County's district attorney and Sloop's oldest friend—that Carmen is a well-known liar, and by the kidnapping of Ellie by ""The Killing Team"". Eventually, however, Reacher draws out and kills two members of ""The Killing Team"". He proves it was Walker who hired the team to kill Al Eugene and Sloop after Sloop threatened to make public information about what the threesome used to do in their youth—kill illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border between America and Mexico. After tracking down the third ""Killing Team"" member and finding Ellie, the kidnapper gives a confession, leaving Carmen to be set free."
2990,The Ninja,thriller," It is initially set in Japan following the end of World War II and follows the story of Lustbader's hero Nicholas Linnear, a man raised by Anglo-Chinese parents. As a youth, Linnear is introduced to the world of aikido, kenjutsu, and iai-jutsu at a local dojo of the Itto Ryu also attended by his cruel and violent older cousin Saigō. Linnear is a natural and soon becomes adept, much to the annoyance of Saigō. During a training exercise Nicholas and Saigō duel and Nicholas defeats him. Saigō is enraged and leaves swearing revenge. When they next meet Saigō is a considerably more skilled martial artist than Linnear and defeats him quickly. Later we learn Saigō has joined a Kuji-kiri ryu in order to learn black ninjutsu and has become a ninja. Linnear himself soon becomes introduced to Aka i ninjutsu, or the red, ostensibly ""good"" side of ninjutsu, through the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu. The ninja are introduced not as magical or almost mythical people, but rather as supreme martial artists who have reached the highest level and seek to progress further. It is suggested that by becoming ninja they strive to advance to an even higher plane, gaining skills such as haragei, or sensing the surrounding world in a different manner. However, we soon learn this is not without a high personal cost. Many years later, Linnear has moved to America and leads a peaceful academic existence. After quitting his job in advertising, he meets a beautiful, if disturbed, woman called Justine with whom he falls in love. This peace is shattered when a prominent local businessman is murdered in an extremely unusual manner (by a poisoned ninja shuriken). The local police are baffled and consult Nicholas as he is known to be an authority on oriental studies. Linnear quickly realises that a ninja is the murderer and the next target is his new girlfriend's father, Raphael Tomkin, whom he begins working for as a bodyguard, although not without persuasion. Linnear also befriends Lew Croaker, a local detective. Linnear's investigations reveal Saigō is the ninja and this puts him on a deadly collision course with his older cousin."
2991,Bad Luck and Trouble,thriller," Reacher is roaming alone with no objectives, no phone, no address, just the clothes he's wearing and his ATM card, when an anonymous deposit is made to his bank account. Reacher automatically analyzes the amount, using his math obsession and investigative skills. Also obsessed with math, Frances Neagley (previously seen in Without Fail) is the sender of $1030.00, which Reacher recognises as their old army code, 10-30, for urgent help needed. He meets up with Neagley in California and they discover the death of Calvin Franz, one of nine members of their elite team of ex–army investigators, who are being hunted down one by one. After getting no reply from anyone else, their suspicions rise and Neagley convinces him to put the old unit back together. Reacher and Neagley find that three of the other five members are missing, while Stan Lowery had a fatal car accident years earlier. They conclude that Franz called the others for help with a major problem but left out the remaining four that resided too far away to get to him quickly, apart from Reacher, who is famously untraceable. Reacher and Neagley discover Franz's office gutted and trashed but decide the perpetrators didn't find what they were looking for. After further investigation they visit Franz's widow and child, Angela and Charlie. Angela notes that when Franz told her all about the team, she had felt like Franz had been married before, to them. Reacher says if people were lucky like the team, they became family, but Franz got even luckier with her and Charlie, with Angela replying, ""...but his luck ran out, didn't it?"", a reference to the book title. More information on the other team members makes Reacher and Neagley realise Franz was unlikely to be the person who called for help. They meet David O'Donnell at their hotel, making three of the team alive. Reacher goes to Tony Swan's workplace, defense contractor New Age, in search of information, but is sent away with basically nothing by the HR manager, Margaret Berenson. Following Reacher and his team is an unmarked car, which they trap to discourage the driver. After roughing him up they find out the driver is an LA County Deputy named Thomas Brant, but outside of his jurisdiction in Orange County, CA. The team decides to ditch their rental car for a new one and run into Karla Dixon. With four of the team now alive, they proceed to source money, cars and weapons. Except for Reacher, all the team members have ""moved onward and upward"" from the military, making Reacher reconsider his drifting. He is happy for the others' successes but feels as if he is ""treading water while the rest are swimming"". Putting aside onflicting reactions at seeing his team again, Reacher focuses on the three missing members, Manuel Orozco, Jorge Sanchez and Tony Swan, and which one was in a situation so bad they couldn't handle it on their own and called for help. The team realizes Franz kept his home life completely separate from his business, leading Franz to mail any dangerous computer data to himself, with triple backup of refreshed computer USB flash drives on rotating days. They find his flash memory sticks in his business post-office box, crack the password, then review a set of bizarre numbers which they conclude to be scores, and an unfamiliar name ""Adrian Mount"" with four aliases. Unsurprised, Reacher is visited by Brant and his boss, Curtis Mauney, an LA County Sheriff. But Reacher is surprised when Mauney tells him that Reacher and his team are bait, for whoever killed Franz and caused Swan, Sanchez and Orozco to be reported missing. Mauney's LA sheriffs and Las Vegas police frequently work together and recent information had linked the dead and the missing with Reacher's team. Neagley gets a response regarding Swan's company New Age from Diana Bond, a staffer for a guy on the House Defense Committee, that Reacher and his team distrust, but they pressure Diana for confidential information on New Age and its military contracts. Mauney later contacts the team with information on Jorge Sanchez's death and Vegas police evidence on Adrian Mount with five aliases, one more than Franz had. Sanchez and Orozco were partners in a Las Vegas casino security firm and the team drives to Las Vegas for clues and answers on Sanchez and the still missing Orozco. Reacher and his team seek out the major casino security directors about the possibility of Sanchez and Orozco being involved in a large scale internal multi-casino thief network and are told about Sanchez's girlfriend, who leads them to Orozco's wife and children. An assassination attempt is made on Reacher and his team but they kill the assassin and take his car, which Reacher recalls from their LA hotel. Reacher uses the cell phone in the car to return-dial the last number on the call list, telling the man who answers that his assassin failed, the team knows he is behind their unit's dead members and they are coming for him. From Las Vegas they are told to meet Mauney at the hospital, leading Reacher to conclude that Sanchez is not dead, just severely injured. O'Donnell and Dixon go to the hospital and Reacher and Neagley go to find Margaret Berenson, after they realise that she has been lying to them. They find that New Age has been producing state of the art air missiles and pretending to destroy the prototypes, whilst sending them to foreign terrorists. Neagley and Reacher leave Berenson's house after finding out Berenson is being blackmailed with harm to her son, and arranging a safe hiding place for them. O'Donnell and Dixon are captured by Mauney's men in the hospital and taken to New Age's Director, Allen Lamaison. Reacher and Neagley track Mauney down, take his suitcase containing the terrorists' payment of $65 million, and kill him. At the second New Age complex, Reacher stows away on the same helicopter as Lamaison, where he finds O'Donnell and Dixon tied up and about to be thrown off and killed the same way that Franz, Orozco, Sanchez and Swan were. Reacher confronts Lamaison just in time, kills his assistant and pushes Lamaison out of the helicopter once it is fully one mile above ground level. After the helicopter lands Reacher asks the pilot if he flew for each of the murders and after confirmation, Reacher kills the pilot also. The one part left is the terrorist weapons buyer, who Reacher concludes does not know how to use them. The team finds the one New Age staff engineer capable of teaching the terrorist how to use the weapons, and who is being threatened with his daughter's torture. Reacher poses as the engineer briefly as the terrorist arrives, then he and Neagley tie the terrorist up, leaving him for the special military police to find him. Later, the four team members agree to split the money obtained from the bad guys after setting up trust funds for the murdered team members' loved ones, with a donation to PETA for Tony Swan's only family, his dog Maisi. Reacher eventually receives a deposit for over $100,000 in his account, automatically analyzes it, and thinks the amount is just a boring plain number. He feels disappointed and let down by Dixon, the money manager of the group. But the detailed report shows multiple deposits, ""101810.18. 10012 ... Military police radio code for mission accomplished, twice over. 10-18, 10-18 ... second deposit was her zip code: 10012. Greenwich Village. Where she lived."""
2992,Messiah,thriller," The novel opens with the discovery of the body of Philip Rhodes, a London caterer, who is found hanging in his underwear from his banister, his tongue cut out and a silver spoon in its place. When the body of the Bishop of Wandsworth, James Cunningham, is found beaten to death, but with his tongue replaced by a silver spoon, DCI Red Metcalfe and his team must discover the pattern behind these killings and save the rest of the men who are destined to be murdered. The novel has many twists and turns and it describes the killings in great detail adding to the intense atmosphere. Starling manages to create a novel which is difficult to put down and which explores the mind of a man who has thoughts of a higher being."
2993,Blasphemy,thriller," Isabella, a powerful particle accelerator has been constructed in Red Mesa in the remote Arizona desert, the most expensive machine ever built by science. A team of scientists under the direction of a charismatic Nobel Laureate, Gregory North Hazelius, experience trouble, and the scientists seem to be covering it up. CIA agent Wyman Ford is tapped to go to Arizona in an undercover role and find out what’s really going on. He discovers the scientists have made a discovery that apparently not only demonstrates the existence of God, but communications with it reveal it to be far grander and deeper than anything found in the conventional religions. When part of the discovery becomes known to a local fundamentalist pastor, he interprets it as a sign of the End Times and by way of viral email recruits thousands of people from across the United States into ""God's Army"". They storm the machine, killing anyone in their way, and destroy the entire facility. They capture the scientists, gunning down two of them, and burn Hazelius at the stake. In the end, it is revealed that Hazelius simulated the communications in an effort to create a new religion, one based on science and particularly the Scientific Method and the search for truth. However, Hazelius himself admits to the simulation performing ""beyond its specs."" Comparisons are made between Hazelius and Hubbard in regards to Scientology."
2994,The Champion Maker,thriller," The Champion Maker is hybrid of suspense and sports fiction. Set primarily in the Washington, D.C. area, it tells the story of an unorthodox track coach and his young protégé's quest for Olympic gold in two disparate events: the 100 meter dash and the 1500 meter run. Along the way, they uncover a dark conspiracy involving genetic engineering."
2995,White Death,thriller," A Novel from the NUMA files, A Kurt Austin Adventure. In this novel, the main character Kurt Austin has to destroy an overpowered fish farm that makes mutant fish before the entire eco-system is changed. it:Morte bianca (romanzo) fi:Kurt Austin"
2996,Venus with Pistol,thriller," Gilbert Kemp is dealer specializing in antique guns in London with a somewhat dubious background. He is approached by the mysterious Carlos MacGregor Garcia, a Nicaraguan and his employer, the very wealthy ex-professional tennis player Doña Margarita Umberto, who are traveling around Europe buying oil paintings to form a private collection which they allege will be donated to the Nicaraguan people. However, as many of the works are to be acquired from private collectors who do not wish the sale to be made public, and as many European governments would block the export of the historically valuable paintings, Kemp's services are needed in order to smuggle the paintings into Switzerland, from where they will be transported to Nicaragua in the diplomatic pouch. It seems like a straightforward matter of art smuggling until Kemp is mugged on arrival in Zürich, and a priceless Cezanne is stolen. On his next commission in Amsterdam, he helps obtain an un-catalogued work of Vincent van Gogh, but the art expert certifying the painting is soon brutally murdered. Things heat up in Venice and culminate in Vienna where Kemp finally unravels the web of treachery and deceit that he has unwittingly stumbled into."
2997,Blackwater,thriller," ""How do you know when you're in too deep? Davey has always lived in the shadow of his older brother, a smiling sociopath who will stop at nothing to protect himself and his family. But when the shadowy figure of Denis Tanter comes into Davey's life, how far will the bond of brotherhood reach?"""
2998,The Rainbow and the Rose,thriller," The story concerns the life of Johnnie Pascoe, a retired commercial and military pilot, who has engaged in a dangerous rescue in a mountainous region of Tasmania. He has crashed his plane and lies injured and unconscious in the house of the child he had been sent to help. Hearing of his plight, Ronnie Clarke, a younger pilot who was taught to fly by Pascoe, offers to try and land a doctor to assist. His efforts do not succeed. Whilst resting at Pascoe's house that night, Clarke dreams of aspects of the life of his former mentor. Pascoe had been a fighter pilot during The Great War and had married an up and coming actress. At war's end, they had become separated and his wife accepted a role in Hollywood—and filed for divorce from there with sole custody of their daughter. A few years later, Pascoe opens a small flying school and is embroiled in an adulterous affair with a local upper-class woman, Brenda Marshall, whose husband is in a mental asylum. Things go awry after the birth of a daughter between her and Pascoe and the woman commits suicide, by deliberately crashing her light aircraft, when she learns that her divorce request from her husband has been refused. In the final part of the story, we learn of Pascoe's later life as a civil pilot—shortly before the story's opening. It seems that he has become enamoured of one of the flight attendants. In a touching scene, Pascoe proposes marriage to this young woman only to learn that she is his daughter by Brenda Marshall. The framing story closes with Ronnie Clarke making a successful attempt at Pascoe's rescue only to learn that Pascoe had died during the night. Like Conrad, Shute often uses a narrator to tell the story; in The Rainbow and the Rose, the narrator periodically shifts from Clarke to Pascoe."
2999,Chiefs,thriller," The First Chief: Will Henry Lee: The novel opens in 1919, when the growing town of Delano, Georgia hires its first police chief. The city council, led by banker and prominent investor Hugh Holmes, chooses farmer Will Henry Lee over Foxy Funderburke, an eccentric, wealthy, dog breeder and gun collector, for the job. Will Henry is unschooled as a policeman but is honest and determined to do the job well. Not long after he assumes his new responsibilities, the dead body of a young man is found naked at the bottom of a cliff. A medical examination concludes that the boy died from a broken neck as a result of his fall but also that he had been tortured—cuffed and beaten with a rubber hose—for some time before his death. The medical examiner tells Will Henry that the crime had a strong sexual component, and that while the boy had not yet been sodomized, the assault on him could have gone further had the boy not evidently escaped. Will Henry conducts a thorough investigation but is frustrated in his attempts to locate the killer, not least because the uncooperative Skeeter Willis, the sheriff of Meriwhether County, of which Delano is a part, insists that the boy was killed by some of the many transients in the area at the time. Will Henry is unconvinced, but eventually runs out of leads. He believes that a second murder, taking place some four years later and just outside of his jurisdiction, is connected to the first but has no real proof and no real authority to pursue the matter. Finally, Will Henry hears from Skeeter Willis about a young runaway who might be passing near Delano and also learns that someone with a Delano PO Box had attempted to purchase a pair of handcuffs from a police supplier. The box belongs to Foxy Funderburke, whom Will had questioned after the two murders, since the bodies were discovered near Foxy's property. Other clues also point in Foxy's direction. Looking around the property, Will Henry notices the outline of what appears to be a freshly dug grave but is observed by Foxy. As he rushes to obtain a search warrant, Foxy follows, intending to kill him, and so is nearby when Will, diverted by a problem involving the Coles, a black family that had once worked for him, is shot and killed by the black father, who is in the grip of a malaria-induced delirium. Will Henry dies as the shooter's teenage son, Willie, is escaping to relatives in another town. The Second Chief: Sonny Butts: The scene shifts to 1946. After World War II, Delano welcomes home its returning veterans, including Billy Lee, the late chief's son, a young lawyer who served as a bomber pilot in Europe, and Sonny Butts, a decorated Army infantryman. Billy has become a protégé of Hugh Holmes and the two men decide to launch Billy into politics by having him run for Holmes's seat in the Georgia State Senate, from which the banker intends to retire. Sonny lands a position on the Delano police force, which now consists of a chief and two officers. He is a quick success as a police officer, but rumors of abuses at the police station are heard. When the chief dies, Sonny is named his replacement. Examining old police files, Sonny comes across Chief Lee's notes on the two murders in the 1920s. He also begins to track the last known sightings of a number of young men, likely runaways, in the years since and notices a geographical pattern in the disappearances: Delano is at their center. Seeing in Will Henry's notes a reference to interviewing Foxy Funderburke, Sonny decides to keep an eye on Foxy as a possible suspect. Sonny is undone by his virulent racism and propensity to violence. After he beats and kills a local black businessman, a grand jury is empaneled for the purpose of indicting him, though perjured testimony lets him off the hook. But Sonny was also observed beating a man at the county fair the evening before, and Hugh Holmes is determined to fire him. Desperate to hang onto his job, Sonny heads to Foxy's property and catches Foxy digging a fresh grave for a recent victim. Momentarily distracted by the chance to save his reputation, Sonny is attacked by Foxy, who shoots him and buries him in the new grave with his police motorcycle. The Third Chief: Tucker Watts: The time frame changes once again, this time to 1963. Billy Lee is now Georgia's lieutenant governor and is planning to run for governor in the next election. Hugh Holmes asks Billy's help in searching for a new Chief, who will now supervise six officers. An integrationist, Billy is alerted to the resume of Major Tucker Watts, a retiring Army MP, who is black. Mindful that Delano has yet to hire a black officer, let alone a chief, Billy decides to forward Watts's resume to Holmes and recommends his hiring. Holmes makes a persuasive case for Watts at the city council hearing and he is hired as Chief, setting off a media frenzy over the first black hired to head a police force in the South. Tucker assumes his duties as Chief welcomed by many residents but scorned by others. He makes a good impression on the overall community, however, and at first seems able to weather the problems he faces. But Tucker harbors a painful secret: he is Willie Cole, whose father killed Chief Lee decades earlier and who, so far as Delano knows, died in an accident not long after fleeing. Tucker is deathly afraid of being discovered and nearly kills a man who recognizes him. After coming to his senses, he relaxes and, like Sonny Butts, begins to organize old police files. He, too, reads Chief Lee's report on the old murders and observes Sonny Butts's notations regarding the pattern of subsequent disappearances. Building on the work of his two predecessors, Tucker also begins to suspect the now-aged Foxy Funderburke and makes inquiries about him. A confluence of events distracts Tucker, including his own arrest on trumped-up charges and Billy Lee's race for governor, in which Tucker's hiring becomes an issue. These problems leave him inclined to do nothing about Foxy for the time being. Then, John Howell, a reporter for The New York Times, convinces Tucker to take his evidence to the FBI and obtain a search warrant through them. The FBI reluctantly agrees to issue the warrant, and Tucker and federal agents search Foxy's property, finding nothing at first. Tucker is fearing that he might have dealt a fatal blow to Billy Lee's campaign when one of the agents trips on what proves to be a motorcycle handlebar protruding from the ground. As Foxy emerges from the house, armed and intending to kill Tucker and the agents, he is distracted by John Howell and is himself shot dead. The ensuing investigation determines that Foxy had tortured, sodomized, murdered, and buried at least forty-three young men over the decades. John Howell discovers Tucker's true identity but decides to keep it a secret. The novel ends as Hugh Holmes, pleased for Billy's success in the election but crushed by the revelations about Foxy and the shame the murders will bring to the city he did so much to build, is suffering a potentially fatal heart attack."
3000,Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,history,"100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.

How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?

Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future."
3001,"Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies",history,"""Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope ... one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years.""

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.

In this ""artful, informative, and delightful"" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal
More book description"
3002,A People's History of the United States,history,"In the book, Zinn presented a different side of history from the more traditional ""fundamental nationalist glorification of country"".
Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”"
3003,"The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America",history,"Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that 'The Devil in the White City' is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor.

Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous ""White City"" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison.

The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims.

Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. - John Moe"
3004,The Diary of a Young Girl,history,"Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.

In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
--back cover
More book description"
3005,1776,history,"In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence - when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King's men, the British commander, William Howe, an his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known.

At the center of the drama, with Washington, are two young American patriots, who, at first, knew no more of war than what they had read in books - Nathaniel Green, a Quaker who was made a general at thirty-three, and Henry Knox, a twenty-five-year-old bookseller who had the preposterous idea of hauling the guns of Fort Ticonderoga overland to Boston in the dead of Winter.

But it is the American commander-in-chief who stands foremost - Washington, who had never before led an army in battle. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough's 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history."
3006,A Short History of Nearly Everything,history,"Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. ""A Short History of Nearly Everything"" is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, revealing the world in a way most of us have never seen it before."
3007,The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany,history,"Hitler boasted that The Third Reich would last a thousand years. It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.
No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.
The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.
This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.
The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading"
3008,1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus,history,"In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew."
3009,SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome,history,"In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome ""with passion and without technical jargon"" and demonstrates how ""a slightly shabby Iron Age village"" rose to become the ""undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean"" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating ""the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life"" (Economist) in a way that makes ""your hair stand on end"" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this ""highly informative, highly readable"" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come."
3010,Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,history,"Winner of the Lincoln Prize

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history."
3011,"Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption",history,"On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will."
3012,Night,history,"Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again."
3013,Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West,history,"Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times called ""Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down.""

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won."
3014,John Adams,history,"The enthralling, often surprising story of John Adams, one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot -- ""the colossus of independence,"" as Thomas Jefferson called him -- who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as ""out of his senses""; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.

Like his masterly, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Truman, David McCullough's John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. It is both a riveting portrait of an abundantly human man and a vivid evocation of his time, much of it drawn from an outstanding collection of Adams family letters and diaries. In particular, the more than one thousand surviving letters between John and Abigail Adams, nearly half of which have never been published, provide extraordinary access to their private lives and make it possible to know John Adams as no other major American of his founding era.

As he has with stunning effect in his previous books, McCullough tells the story from within -- from the point of view of the amazing eighteenth century and of those who, caught up in events, had no sure way of knowing how things would turn out. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, the British spy Edward Bancroft, Madame Lafayette and Jefferson's Paris ""interest"" Maria Cosway, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the scandalmonger James Callender, Sally Hemings, John Marshall, Talleyrand, and Aaron Burr all figure in this panoramic chronicle, as does, importantly, John Quincy Adams, the adored son whom Adams would live to see become President.

Crucial to the story, as it was to history, is the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, born opposites -- one a Massachusetts farmer's son, the other a Virginia aristocrat and slaveholder, one short and stout, the other tall and spare. Adams embraced conflict; Jefferson avoided it. Adams had great humor; Jefferson, very little. But they were alike in their devotion to their country.

At first they were ardent co-revolutionaries, then fellow diplomats and close friends. With the advent of the two political parties, they became archrivals, even enemies, in the intense struggle for the presidency in 1800, perhaps the most vicious election in history. Then, amazingly, they became friends again, and ultimately, incredibly, they died on the same day -- their day of days -- July 4, in the year 1826.

Much about John Adams's life will come as a surprise to many readers. His courageous voyage on the frigate Boston in the winter of 1778 and his later trek over the Pyrenees are exploits that few would have dared and that few readers will ever forget.

It is a life encompassing a huge arc -- Adams lived longer than any president. The story ranges from the Boston Massacre to Philadelphia in 1776 to the Versailles of Louis XVI, from Spain to Amsterdam, from the Court of St. James's, where Adams was the first American to stand before King George III as a representative of the new nation, to the raw, half-finished Capital by the Potomac, where Adams was the first President to occupy the White House.

This is history on a grand scale -- a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, John Adams is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived."
3015,"In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin",history,"The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.
Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror."
3016,The Guns of August,history,"Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

The Proud Tower, the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Guns of August, and The Zimmerman Telegram comprise Barbara W. Tuchman’s classic histories of the First World War era

In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.

Praise for The Guns of August

“A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek

“More dramatic than fiction . . . a magnificent narrative—beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained.”—Chicago Tribune

“A fine demonstration that with sufficient art rather specialized history can be raised to the level of literature.”—The New York Times

“[The Guns of August] has a vitality that transcends its narrative virtues, which are considerable, and its feel for characterizations, which is excellent.”—The Wall Street Journal"
3017,Alexander Hamilton,history,"An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.

In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.”

Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,” Chernow writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.” Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we’ve encountered before—from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton’s famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans."
3018,Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,history,"The name Genghis Khan often conjures the image of a relentless, bloodthirsty barbarian on horseback leading a ruthless band of nomadic warriors in the looting of the civilized world. But the surprising truth is that Genghis Khan was a visionary leader whose conquests joined backward Europe with the flourishing cultures of Asia to trigger a global awakening, an unprecedented explosion of technologies, trade, and ideas. In Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford, the only Western scholar ever to be allowed into the Mongols’ “Great Taboo”—Genghis Khan’s homeland and forbidden burial site—tracks the astonishing story of Genghis Khan and his descendants, and their conquest and transformation of the world.

Fighting his way to power on the remote steppes of Mongolia, Genghis Khan developed revolutionary military strategies and weaponry that emphasized rapid attack and siege warfare, which he then brilliantly used to overwhelm opposing armies in Asia, break the back of the Islamic world, and render the armored knights of Europe obsolete. Under Genghis Khan, the Mongol army never numbered more than 100,000 warriors, yet it subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans conquered in four hundred. With an empire that stretched from Siberia to India, from Vietnam to Hungary, and from Korea to the Balkans, the Mongols dramatically redrew the map of the globe, connecting disparate kingdoms into a new world order.

But contrary to popular wisdom, Weatherford reveals that the Mongols were not just masters of conquest, but possessed a genius for progressive and benevolent rule. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope
of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination. Genghis Khan was an innovative leader, the first ruler in many conquered countries to put the power of law above his own power, encourage religious freedom, create public schools, grant diplomatic immunity, abolish torture, and institute free trade. The trade routes he created became lucrative pathways for commerce, but also for ideas, technologies, and expertise that transformed the way people lived. The Mongols introduced the first international paper currency and postal system and developed and spread revolutionary technologies like printing, the cannon, compass, and abacus. They took local foods and products like lemons, carrots, noodles, tea, rugs, playing cards, and pants and turned them into staples of life around the world. The Mongols were the architects of a new way of life at a pivotal time in history.

In Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford resurrects the true history of Genghis Khan, from the story of his relentless rise through Mongol tribal culture to the waging of his devastatingly successful wars and the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed. This dazzling work of revisionist history doesn’t just paint an unprecedented portrait of a great leader and his legacy, but challenges us to reconsider how the modern world was made.


From the Hardcover edition."
3019,Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania,history,"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic ""Greyhounds"" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war."
3020,The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration,history,"In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. 

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic."
3021,The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,history,"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her enslaved ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia — a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo — to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family — past and present — is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences."
3022,A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century,history,"The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived."
3023,Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong,history,"Unabridged, 9 audiocassettes, 14 hours 45 minutes
_______________
This national best-seller is an entertaining, informative, and sometimes shocking expose of the way history is taught to American students. Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.

James W. Loewen, a sociology professor and distinguished critic of history education, puts 12 popular textbooks under the microscope-and what he discovers will surprise you. In his opinion, every one of these texts fails to make its subject interesting or memorable. Worse still is the proliferation of blind patriotism, mindless optimism and misinformation filling the pages.

From the truth about Christopher Columbus to the harsh reality of the Vietnam War, Loewen picks apart the lies we've been told. This audiobook, narrated by Brian Keeler (The Hurricane, ""All My Children"") will forever change your view of the past."
3024,Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,history,"In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.
A true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history."
3025,"The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary",history,"The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane."
3026,King Leopold's Ghost,history,"In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo--too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West"
3027,The Silk Roads: A New History of the World,history,"The New Silk Roads takes a fresh look at the relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the ancient trade routes today. The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties are being strengthened and mutual cooperation established.

This prescient contemporary history provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of continual shifts in the centre of power – all too often absent from headlines in the west.

The New Silk Roads asks us to re-examine who we are and where we stand in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend.


The Silk Roads, a major reassessment of world history, has sold over 1 million copies worldwide."
3028,The Histories,history,"One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the ""Histories"" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants. With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the ""Histories"" offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.
More book description"
3029,Salt: A World History,history,"In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. "
3030,Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow,history,"Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.
With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future."
3031,Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,history,"Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?

In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?

As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society's apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.

Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?"
3032,"Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest",history,"As good a rifle company as any, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, US Army, kept getting tough assignments--responsible for everything from parachuting into France early DDay morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. In ""Band of Brothers,"" Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze & died, a company that took 150% casualties & considered the Purple Heart a badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers' journals & letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the stories, often in the men's own words, of these American heroes.
Foreword
""We wanted those wings""; Camp Toccoa, 7-12/42
""Stand up & hook up""; Benning, Mackall, Bragg, Shanks, 12/42-9/43
""Duties of the latrine orderly""; Aldbourne, 9/43-3/44
""Look out, Hitler! Here we come!""; Slapton Sands, Uppottery, 4/1-6/5/44
""Follow me""; Normandy, 6/6/44
""Move out!""; Carentan, 6/7-7/12/44
Healing wounds & scrubbed missions; Aldbourne, 7/13-9/16/44
""Hell's highway""; Holland, 9/17-10/1/44
Island; Holland, 10/2-11/25/44
Resting, recovering & refitting: Mourmelon-le-Grand, 11/26-12/18/44
""They got us surrounded-the poor bastards""; Bastogne, 12/19-31/44
Breaking point; Bastogne, 1/1-13/45
Attack; Noville, 1/14-17/45
Patrol: Haguenau, 1/18-2/23/45
""Best feeling in the world"": Mourmelon, 2/25-4/2/45
Getting to know the enemy: Germany, 4/2-30/45
Drinking Hitler's champagne; Berchtesgaden, 5/1-8/45
Soldier's dream life; Austria, 5/8-7/31/45
Postwar careers; 1945-91
Acknowledgments & Sources
Index"
3033,"The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz",history,"On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people ""the art of being fearless."" It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports--some released only recently--Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill's ""Secret Circle,"" to whom he turns in the hardest moments."
3034,Hiroshima,history,"On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic ""that stirs the conscience of humanity"" (The New York Times)."
3035,"Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President",history,"James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.

But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history."
3036,In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,history,"""With its huge, scarred head halfway out of the water and its tail beating the ocean into a white-water wake more than forty feet across, the whale approached the ship at twice its original speed - at least six knots. With a tremendous cracking and splintering of oak, it struck the ship just beneath the anchor secured at the cat-head on the port bow...""

In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex - an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy.

At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history."
3037,The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women,history,"The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger
The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these ""shining girls"" are the luckiest alive—until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the ""wonder"" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives."
3038,The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women,history,"The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger
The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these ""shining girls"" are the luckiest alive—until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the ""wonder"" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives."
3039,The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II,history,"In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded the ancient city of Nanking, systematically raping, torturing, and murdering more than 300,000 Chinese civilians.

This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many."
3040,"The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World",history,"From Steven Johnson, the dynamic thinker routinely compared to James Gleick, Dava Sobel, and Malcolm Gladwell, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action—and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories and inter-connectedness of the spread of disease, contagion theory, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in."
3041,At Home: A Short History of Private Life,history,"“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.
(front flap)"
3042,Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time,history,"Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that ""the longitude problem"" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution.

The scientific establishment of Europe—from Galileo to Sir Issac Newton—had mapped the heavens in both hemispheres in its certain pursuit of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution—a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is a dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clock-making, and opens a new window on our world.

On its 10th anniversary, a gift edition of this classic book, with a forward by one of history's greatest explorers, and eight pages of color illustrations."
3043,Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier,history,"'This was much more than a bunch of guys out on an exploring and collecting expedition. This was a military expedition into hostile territory'. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains and into the Rockies. It was completely uncharted territory; a wild, vast land ruled by the Indians. Charismatic and brave, Lewis was the perfect choice and he experienced the savage North American continent before any other white man. UNDAUNTED COURAGE is the tale of a hero, but it is also a tragedy. Lewis may have received a hero's welcome on his return to Washington in 1806, but his discoveries did not match the president's fantasies of sweeping, fertile plains ripe for the taking. Feeling the expedition had been a failure, Lewis took to drink and piled up debts. Full of colourful characters - Jefferson, the president obsessed with conquering the west; William Clark, the rugged frontiersman; Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition; Drouillard, the French-Indian hunter - this is one of the great adventure stories of all time and it shot to the top of the US bestseller charts. Drama, suspense, danger and diplomacy combine with romance and personal tragedy making UNDAUNTED COURAGE an outstanding work of scholarship and a thrilling adventure."
3044,The Art of War,history,"Twenty-Five Hundred years ago, Sun Tzu wrote this classic book of military strategy based on Chinese warfare and military thought. Since that time, all levels of military have used the teaching on Sun Tzu to warfare and civilization have adapted these teachings for use in politics, business and everyday life. The Art of War is a book which should be used to gain advantage of opponents in the boardroom and battlefield alike."
3045,Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage,history,"The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age."
3046,How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe ,history,"From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne - the ""dark ages"" - learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization - from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works - would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland.

In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known ""hinge"" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the ""island of saints and scholars, "" the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the west's written treasures. With the return of stability in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning. Thus the Irish not only were conservators of civilization, but became shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on western culture.
More book description"
3047,The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics,history,"For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Unbroken, the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Daniel James Brown's robust book tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.
The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.
Drawing on the boys' own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's The Amateurs."
3048,Man's Search for Meaning,history,"Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.
More book description"
3049,Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation,history,"Informs our understanding of American politics--then and now--and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history.

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation--and perhaps any--came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel, and what may have really happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan; Franklin's petition to end the ""peculiar institution"" of slavery--his last public act--and Madison's efforts to quash it; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.

In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas: Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail; Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despised public figures of his time; Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins; Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public; Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation; and the stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America's only truly indispensable figure.

Ellis argues that the checks and balances that permitted the infant American republic to endure were not primarily legal, constitutional, or institutional, but intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of leaders with quite different visions and values. Revisiting the old-fashioned idea that character matters, Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics--then and now--and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history."
3050,Battle Cry of Freedom,history,"Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War.

James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory.

The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This ""new birth of freedom,"" as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict.

This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing ""second American Revolution"" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty."
3051,The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl,history,"The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, ""the stoic, long suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect"" (New York Times).

In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is ""arguably the best nonfiction book yet"" (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of trifling with nature."
3052,History of the Peloponnesian War,history,"Written four hundred years before the birth of Christ, this detailed contemporary account of the long life-and-death struggle between Athens and Sparta stands an excellent chance of fulfilling its author's ambitious claim. Thucydides himself (c.460-400 BC) was an Athenian and achieved the rank of general in the earlier stages of the war. He applied thereafter a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth and romance in compiling this factual record of a disastrous conflict."
3053,Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,history,"The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity."
3054,The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century,history,"Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the 14th century. This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture."
3055,The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,history,"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (sometimes shortened to Fall of the Roman Empire) is a book of history written by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces the trajectory of Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium.

The work covers the history of the Roman Empire, Europe, and the Catholic Church from 98 to 1590 and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire in the East and West. Because of its relative objectivity and heavy use of primary sources, unusual at the time, its methodology became a model for later historians. This led to Gibbon being called the first ""modern historian of ancient Rome""

This version includes working footnotes unobtrusively placed at the back of the book with active links for easy navigation, maps from the original book, modern maps, and links to audiobook of all volumes.
More book description"
3056,Hidden Figures,history,"The #1 New York Times Bestseller. Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers’, calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these ‘coloured computers’ used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets and astronauts, into space. Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War and the women’s rights movement, ‘Hidden Figures’ interweaves a rich history of mankind’s greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five courageous women whose work forever changed the world."
3057,The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,history,"At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. John M. Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggest ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic."
3058,Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman,history,"Pulitzer Prize winner Massie offers the tale of a princess who went to Russia at 14 and became one of the most powerful women in history. Born into minor German nobility, she transformed herself into an empress by sheer determination. Possessing a brilliant, curious mind, she devoured the works of Enlightenment philosophers, and reaching the throne, tried using their principles to rule the vast, backward empire. She knew or corresponded with notable figures of her time: Voltaire, Diderot, Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa of Austria, Marie Antoinette & John Paul Jones. Wanting to be the “benevolent despot” Montesquieu idealized, she contended with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian life, including serfdom. She persevered, and for 34 years the government, foreign policy, cultural development and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, wars & the tides of political change and violence inspired by the French Revolution. Her reputation depended on the perspective of the speaker. She was praised by Voltaire as like the classical philosophers. She was condemned by enemies, mostly foreign, as “the Messalina of the north.” Her family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers and enemies are vividly described. These included her ambitious, scheming mother; her weak, bullying husband, Peter (who left her sexually untouched for nine years after their marriage); her unhappy son & heir, Paul; her beloved grandchildren; and her favorites—the young men from whom she sought companionship and the recapture of youth as well as sex. Here, too, is Gregory Potemkin, her most significant lover & possible husband, with whom she shared a correspondence of love & separation, followed by 17 years of unparalleled mutual achievement. All the qualities that Massie brought to Nicholas & Alexandra and Peter the Great are present: historical accuracy, deep understanding, felicity of style, mastery of detail, ability to shatter myth & a genius for finding and expressing a human drama."
3059,Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland,history,"In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions."
3060,Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic,history,"In 49 B.C., the seven hundred fifth year since the founding of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed a small border river called the Rubicon and plunged Rome into cataclysmic civil war. Tom Holland’s enthralling account tells the story of Caesar’s generation, witness to the twilight of the Republic and its bloody transformation into an empire. From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Augustus, here are some of the most legendary figures in history brought thrillingly to life. Combining verve and freshness with scrupulous scholarship, Rubicon is not only an engrossing history of this pivotal era but a uniquely resonant portrait of a great civilization in all its extremes of self-sacrifice and rivalry, decadence and catastrophe, intrigue, war, and world-shaking ambition."
3061,"Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War",history,"HOW DID AMERICA BEGIN?

This simple question launches acclaimed author Nathaniel Philbrick on an extraordinary journey to understand the truth behind our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying new book, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving; instead, it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic and heroic, and still carries meaning for us today."
3062,"Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History",history,"In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.
S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.
Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun.
The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being.
Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a lovely nine-year-old girl with cornflower-blue eyes who was kidnapped by Comanches from the far Texas frontier in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the ""White Squaw"" who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend.
S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told."
3063,Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster,history,"The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.

April 25, 1986, in Chernobyl, was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.

Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States’ victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles—at the time equivalent to $18 billion—Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies.

The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy."
3064,Cleopatra: A Life,history,"The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.

Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and–after his murder–three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.

Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra’s supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff ‘s is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life."
3065,The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956,history,"Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression—the state within the state that ruled all-powerfully. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims—men, women, and children—we encounter secret police operations, labor camps and prisons; the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the welcome that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Yet we also witness the astounding moral courage of the incorruptible, who, defenseless, endured great brutality and degradation. The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956—a grisly indictment of a regime, fashioned here into a veritable literary miracle—has now been updated with a new introduction that includes the fall of the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn's move back to Russia."
3066,Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,history,"Born a slave circa1818 (slaves weren't told when they were born) on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass taught himself to read and write. In 1845, seven years after escaping to the North, he published Narrative, the first of three autobiographies. This book calmly but dramatically recounts the horrors and the accomplishments of his early years—the daily, casual brutality of the white masters; his painful efforts to educate himself; his decision to find freedom or die; and his harrowing but successful escape.

An astonishing orator and a skillful writer, Douglass became a newspaper editor, a political activist, and an eloquent spokesperson for the civil rights of African Americans. He lived through the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the beginning of segregation. He was celebrated internationally as the leading black intellectual of his day, and his story still resonates in ours.
More book description"
3067,"Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943",history,"The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.

In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has interviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable."
3068,The Prince,history,"Machiavelli needs to be looked at as he really was. Hence: Can Machiavelli, who makes the following observations, be Machiavellian as we understand the disparaging term? 1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people. 2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him. 3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their virtue domi-nated the opportunity, making their homelands noble and happy. Armed prophets win; the disarmed lose. 4. Without faith and religion, man achieves power but not glory. 5. Prominent citizens want to command and oppress; the populace only wants to be free of oppression. 6. A Prince needs a friendly populace; otherwise in diversity there is no hope. 7. A Prince, who rules as a man of valor, avoids disasters, 8. Nations based on mercenary forces will never be solid or secure. 9. Mercenaries are dangerous because of their cowardice 10. There are two ways to fight: one with laws, the other with force. The first is rightly man’s way; the second, the way of beasts.
More book description"
3069,Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,history,"In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti–Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. Stamped from the Beginning uses the lives of five major American intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and anti-racists. From Puritan minister Cotton Mather to Thomas Jefferson, from fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to brilliant scholar W. E. B. Du Bois to legendary anti–prison activist Angela Davis, Kendi shows how and why some of our leading pro-slavery and pro–civil rights thinkers have challenged or helped cement racist ideas in America.

As Kendi illustrates, racist thinking did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Racist ideas were created and popularized in an effort to defend deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and to rationalize the nation’s racial inequities in everything from wealth to health. While racist ideas are easily produced and easily consumed, they can also be discredited. In shedding much–needed light on the murky history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning offers tools to expose them—and in the process, reason to hope."
3070,The Wright Brothers,history,"Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright.

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot.

Who were these men and how was it that they achieved what they did?

David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing. The house they lived in had no electricity or indoor plumbing, but there were books aplenty, supplied mainly by their preacher father, and they never stopped reading.

When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education, little money and no contacts in high places, never stopped them in their mission to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed.

In this thrilling book, master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence to tell the human side of the Wright Brothers' story, including the little-known contributions of their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them."
3071,The Six Wives of Henry VIII,history,"The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this accessible work of brilliant scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time."
3072,On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,history,"A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism.

On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.

Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come."
3073,The Autobiography of Malcolm X,history,"Alternate cover for ISBN 9780345350688

Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself ""the angriest Black man in America"" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind.

An established classic of modern America, ""The Autobiography of Malcolm X"" was hailed by the New York Times as ""Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book."" Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcom X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared."
3074,The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,history,"One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

The copying and translation of this ancient book—the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age—fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson."
3075,The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England,history,"The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world.

We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights.

This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Year’s War. It will appeal as much to readers of Tudor history as to fans of 'Game of Thrones."
3076,Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945,history,"Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award
One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year.

Table of contents

About the author
Copyright page
Dedication
Preface & acknowledgement
Introduction

PART ONE - Post-War: 1945-1953
1. The legacy of war
2. Retribution
3. The rehabilitation of Europe
4. The impossible settlement
5. The coming of the Cold War
6. Into the whirlwind
7. Culture wars
CODA The end of old Europe

PART TWO - Prosperity and its discontents: 1953-1971
8. The politics of stability
9. Lost illusions
10. The age of affluence
POSTSCRIPT: A Tale of two economies
11. The Social Democrat moment
12. The spectre of revolution
13. The end of the affair

PART THREE - Recessional: 1971-1989
14. Diminished expectations
15. Politics in a new key
16. A time of transition
17. The new realism
18. The power of the powerless
19. The end of the old order

PART FOUR - After the Fall: 1989-2005
20. A fissile continent
21. The reckoning
22. The old Europe -and the new
23. The varieties of Europe
24. Europe as a way of life

Photo crdits
Suggestions for further readings"
3077,The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon,history,"A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon.

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve ""the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century"": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for the Lost City of Z?

In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humans. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions round the globe, Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilisation--which he dubbed Z--existed. Then his expedition vanished. Fawcett's fate, & the tantalizing clues he left behind about Z, became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness.

For decades scientists & adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party & the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes or gone mad. As Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, & the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle's green hell. His quest for the truth & discoveries about Fawcett's fate & Z form the heart of this complexly enthralling narrative."
3078,1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created,history,"From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet.

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination"
3079,Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History,history,"The first installment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker).

A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats.

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma."
3080,Washington: A Life,history,"The celebrated Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of America. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life, he carries the reader through Washington's troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian Wars, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention and his magnificent performance as America's first president.

Despite the reverence his name inspires Washington remains a waxwork to many readers, worthy but dull, a laconic man of remarkable self-control. But in this groundbreaking work Chernow revises forever the uninspiring stereotype. He portrays Washington as a strapping, celebrated horseman, elegant dancer and tireless hunter, who guarded his emotional life with intriguing ferocity. Not only did Washington gather around himself the foremost figures of the age, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, he orchestrated their actions to help realise his vision for the new federal government, define the separation of powers, and establish the office of the presidency.

Ron Chernow takes us on a page-turning journey through all the formative events of America's founding. This is a magisterial work from one of America's foremost writers and historians."
3081,Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,history,"From the internationally bestselling author of No god but God comes a fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth.

Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher and miracle worker walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal.

Within decades after his shameful death, his followers would call him God.

Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. This was the age of zealotry—a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews. And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy.

Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction; a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves with swords; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity a secret; and ultimately the seditious “King of the Jews” whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his brief lifetime. Aslan explores the reasons why the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity.

Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion."
3082,"One Summer: America, 1927",history,"In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life.

The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression.
     All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order."
3083,White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America,history,"In her groundbreaking history of the class system in America, extending from colonial times to the present, Nancy Isenberg takes on our comforting myths about equality, uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing––if occasionally entertaining––""poor white trash.""

The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery.

Reconstruction pitted ""poor white trash"" against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, ""white trash"" have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.

We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well."
3084,A Little History of the World,history,"In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.
More book description"
3085,The Lessons of History,history,"In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their four decades of work on the ten monumental volumes of ""The Story of Civilization."" The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, the culture of man. With the completion of their life's work they look back and ask what history has to say about the nature, the conduct and the prospects of man, seeking in the great lives, the great ideas, the great events of the past for the meaning of man's long journey through war, conquest and creation - and for the great themes that can help us to understand our own era.
To the Durants, history is ""not merely a warning reminder of man's follies and crimes, but also an encouraging remembrance of generative souls ... a spacious country of the mind wherein a thousand saints, statesman, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing...""
Designed to accompany the ten-volume set of ""The Story of Civilization, The Lessons of History"" is, in its own right, a profound and original work of history and philosophy."
3086,The Book Thief,history,"Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)"
3087,Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,history,"Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

From Booklist
If there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture. Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land. The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today. Such scope may render Snyder’s project too imposing to casual readers, but it would engage those exposed to the period’s chronology and major interpretive issues, such as the extent to which the Nazi and Soviet systems may be compared. Solid and judicious scholarship for large WWII collections."
3088,Homage to Catalonia,history,In 1936 George Orwell travelled to Spain to report on the Civil War and instead joined the fight against the Fascists. This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.
3089,The Complete Maus,history,"On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its first publication, here is the definitive edition of the book acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker).

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust” (The New York Times).

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us."
3090,"Debt: The First 5,000 Years",history,"Before there was money, there was debt

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy."
3091,The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World,history,"Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do? This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis."
3092,The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,history,"Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

Described by the Chicago Tribune as ""a classic,"" The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president."
3093,"Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History",history,"September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy.

Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature."
3094,Benjamin Franklin: An American Life,history,"Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us. An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours.

He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical—though not most profound—political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He sought practical ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized neighborhood constabularies and international alliances, local lending libraries and national legislatures. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals and two concepts of representation to foster the nation's federal compromise. He was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of America: the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the peace treaty with England, and the Constitution. And he helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and philosophical pragmatism.

But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.

Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow ""leather-aprons"" more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a ""dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people."" Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century."
3095,The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America,history,"In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as ""brilliant"" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.

As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past."
3096,An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States,history,"The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples.

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.

Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative."
3097,Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster,history,"Written by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown—from innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster—and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live. Composed of interviews in monologue form, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucially important work of immense force, unforgettable in its emotional power and honesty."
3098,The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper,history,"Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London - the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that ‘the Ripper’ preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman."
3099,The Library Book,history,"On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.

In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.

Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia” who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves.

Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever."
3100,The Gunslinger,horror,"In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter. (less)"
3101,The Institute,horror,"In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute. (less)"
3102,The Passage,horror,"IT HAPPENED FAST.
THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time an place where she must finish what should never have begun.

With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterly prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction. (less)"
3103,Red Dragon,horror,"A second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened ""The Tooth Fairy."" Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation: Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement. Now, Graham must turn to Lecter for help. (less)"
3104,I Am Legend,horror,"Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood.

By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

How long can one man survive like this?

(less)"
3105,Desperation,horror,"Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 0451188462 (ISBN13: 9780451188465)

There's a place along Interstate 50 that some call the loneliest place on Earth. It's known as Desperation, Nevada.
It's not a very nice place to live. It's an even worse place to die.
Let the battle against evil begin.
Welcome to ... Desperation (less)"
3106,Gerald's Game,horror,"A game. A husband-and-wife game. Gerald's Game.

But this time Jessie didn't want to play. Lying there, spreadeagled and handcuffed to the bedstead while he'd loomed and drooled over her, she'd felt angry and humiliated.

So she'd kicked out hard. Aimed to hit him where it hurt.

And now he was dead - a coronary - on the floor.

Leaving Jessie alone and helpless in a lakeside holiday cabin. Miles from nowhere. No-one to hear her screams.

Alone. Except for the voices in her head that begun to chatter and argue and sneer... (less)"
3107,Insomnia,horror,"Ralph Roberts, a sus setenta años y tras la muerte de su mujer, siente que su vida se acaba. ¿Es acaso posible que su reciente viudez, unida a un persistente insomnio, sea la causa de esa nueva sensibilidad visual que, poco a poco, le permite ver el más allá de las personas? A Ralph le preocupa este hecho, pero no menos que el súbito e inexplicable comportamiento, irracional y violento, de algunos de sus vecinos... (less)"
3108,The Mist,horror,"It's a hot, lazy day, perfect for a cookout, until you see those strange dark clouds. Suddenly a violent storm sweeps across the lake and ends as abruptly and unexpectedly as it had begun. Then comes the mist...creeping slowly, inexorably into town, where it settles and waits, trapping you in the supermarket with dozens of others, cut off from your families and the world. The mist is alive, seething with unearthly sounds and movements. What unleashed this terror? Was it the Arrowhead Project---the top secret government operation that everyone has noticed but no one quite understands? And what happens when the provisions have run out and you're forced to make your escape, edging blindly through the dim light? (less)"
3109,Dreamcatcher,horror,"In Derry, Maine, four young boys once stood together and did a brave thing. Something that changed them in ways they hardly understand.

A quarter of a century later, the boys are men who have gone their separate ways. Though they still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine. But this time is different. This time a man comes stumbling into their camp, lost, disoriented and muttering about lights in the sky.

Before long, these old friends will be plunged into the most remarkable events of their lives as they struggle with a terrible creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past - and in the Dreamcatcher. (less)"
3110,The Green Mile,horror,"At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, along the lonely stretch of cells known as the Green Mile, condemned killers such as 'Billy the Kid' Wharton and the possessed Eduard Delacroix await death strapped in 'Old Sparky'. But good or evil, innocent or guilty, prisoner or guard, none has ever seen the brutal likes of the new prisoner, John Coffey, sentenced to death for raping and murdering two young girls. Is Coffey a devil in human form? Or is he a far, far different kind of being?

There are more wonders in heaven and hell than anyone at Cold Mountain can imagine and one of those wonders might just have stepped in amongst them. (less)"
3111,Carmilla,horror,"In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest – the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion.

But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day… Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance. (less)"
3112,The Final Girl Support Group,horror,"A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires.

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized--someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up. (less)"
3113,The Vampire Lestat,horror,"Lestat. The vampire hero of Anne Rice's enthralling new novel is a creature of the darkest and richest imagination. Once an aristocrat in the heady days of pre-revolutionary France, now a rock star in the demonic, shimmering 1980s, he rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his eternal, terrifying existence. His is a mesmerizing story --- passionate, complex, and thrilling. (less)"
3114,The Strain,horror,"A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Ephraim ""Eph"" Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing.

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city - a city that includes his wife and son - before it is too late. (less)"
3115,American Psycho,horror,"Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and he works on Wall Street, he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to head-on collision with America's greatest dream—and its worst nightmare—American Psycho is bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognise but do not wish to confront. (less)"
3116,The Woman in Black,horror,"What real reader does not yearn, somewhere in the recesses of his or her heart, for a really literate, first-class thriller--one that chills the body, but warms the soul with plot, perception, and language at once astute and vivid? In other words, a ghost story written by Jane Austen?

Alas, we cannot give you Austen, but Susan Hill's remarkable Woman In Black comes as close as our era can provide. Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero Arthur Kipps, an up-and-coming young solicitor who has come north from London to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the deserted nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and most dreadfully--and for Kipps most tragically--The Woman In Black.

The Woman In Black is both a brilliant exercise in atmosphere and controlled horror and a delicious spine-tingler--proof positive that this neglected genre, the ghost story, isn't dead after all. (less)"
3117,I Am Legend and Other Stories,horror,"Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth...but he is not alone. Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood.

By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.

How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?


I am legend --
Buried talents --
The near departed --
Prey --
Witch war --
Dance of the dead --
Dress of white silk --
Mad house --
The funeral --
From shadowed places --
Person to person. (less)"
3118,The Long Walk,horror,"Against the wishes of his mother, sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty is about to compete in the annual grueling match of stamina and wits known as The Long Walk. One hundred boys must keep a steady pace of four miles per hour without ever stopping... with the winner being awarded ""The Prize"" - anything he wants for the rest of his life. But, as part of this national tournament that sweeps through a dystopian America year after year, there are some harsh rules that Garraty and ninety-nine others must adhere to in order to beat out the rest. There is no finish line - the winner is the last man standing. Contestants cannot receive any outside aid whatsoever. Slow down under the speed limit and you're given a warning. Three warnings and you're out of the game - permanently... (less)"
3119,Through the Woods,horror,"'It came from the woods. Most strange things do.'

Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss.

These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll.

Come take a walk in the woods and see what awaits you there... (less)"
3120,Ghost Story,horror,"In life, not every sin goes unpunished.

GHOST STORY

For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder."
3121,Hell House,horror,"Can any soul survive?
Regarded as the Mount Everest of haunted houses, Belasco House has witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity. Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity. Now a new investigation has been mounted - four strangers, each with his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion... (less)"
3122,"Full Dark, No Stars",horror,"""I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger..."" writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up ""1922."" the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In ""Big Driver,"" a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

""Fair Extension,"" the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitely ends a good marriage.

Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.
(front flap)

Contains:
1922
Big Driver
A Fair Extension
A Good Marriage (less)"
3123,The Amityville Horror,horror,"28 Days of Terror in a House Possessed by Evil Spirits

In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their dream home, the same home where Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers and sisters just one year earlier.

The psychic phenomena that followed created the most terrifying experience the Lutz family had ever encountered, forcing them to flee the house in 28 days, convinced that it was possessed by evil spirits.

Their fantastic story, never before disclosed in full detail, makes for an unforgettable book with all the shocks and gripping suspense of The Exorcist, The Omen or Rosemary's Baby, but with one vital difference...the story is true. (less)"
3124,Everything's Eventual,horror,"In this eerie, enchanting compilation, Stephen King takes readers down a road less travelled (for good reason) in the blockbuster e-book ""Riding the Bullet."" Terror becomes deja vu all over again when you get ""That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French."" ""LT's Theory of Pets"" will make you stop and think before giving a dog to a loved one. And there are eleven more stories that will keep you awake until dawn.

Nothing is quite as it seems. Expect the unexpected in this veritable treasure trove of enthralling, witty, dark tales that could only come from the imagination of the greatest storyteller of our time. (less)"
3125,Revival,horror,"In a small New England town, in the early 60s, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister, Charles Jacobs. Soon they forge a deep bond, based on their fascination with simple experiments in electricity.

Decades later, Jamie is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll when he sees Jacobs again. Their meeting has profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil's devising, and Jamie discovers that ""revival"" has many meanings. (less)"
3126,The Terror,horror,"The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.

When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape. (less)"
3127,Different Seasons,horror,"Four spine-chilling stories by the grand master of the supernatural, stories with an interlacing of horror that capture the ever-growing dark corners of our century.

""Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"" - a compulsive and bizarre story of unjust imprisonment and escape.

""Apt Pupil"" - a golden schoolboy and an old man with a hideous past join in a dreadful union.

""The Body"" - four young boys venture into the woods and find life, death... and the end of innocence.

""The Breathing Method"" - a macabre story told in a strange club of a woman determined to give birth - no matter what. (less)"
3128,Four Past Midnight,horror,"At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant of utter stillness when between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world.

""Four Past Midnight"": four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity... (less)"
3129,The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,horror,"On a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. But when she wanders off by herself and then tries to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror.

As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace, she tunes her Walkman to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio's reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her - protecting her from an all-too-real enemy who has left a trail of slaughtered animals and mangled trees in the dense, dark woods... (less)"
3130,The Hellbound Heart,horror,"In a quiet house on a quiet street Frank and Julia are having an affair. Not your ordinary affair. For Frank it began with his own insatiable sexual appetite, a mysterious lacquered box- and then an unhinged voyage through a netherworld of imaginable pleasures and unimaginable horror… Now Frank - or what is left of Frank - waits in an empty room. All he wants is to live as he was before. All Julia can do is bring him her unfulfilled passions… and a little flesh and blood… (less)"
3131,Into the Drowning Deep,horror,"Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.

Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.

Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price. (less)"
3132,The Ruins,horror,"Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine. Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation–sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site . . . and the terrifying presence that lurks there. (less)"
3133,Annihilation,horror,"Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything. (less)"
3134,Anna Dressed in Blood,horror,"Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

Yet she spares Cas's life. (less)"
3135,Welcome to Lovecraft,horror,"Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. Home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all..."
3136,I'm Thinking of Ending Things,horror,"Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, “your dread and unease will mount with every passing page” (Entertainment Weekly) of this edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go. (less)"
3137,The Cabin at the End of the World,horror,"Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, ""None of what’s going to happen is your fault"". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: ""Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."" (less)"
3138,Duma Key,horror,"From the Flap:

NO MORE THAN A DARK PENCIL LINE ON A BLANK PAGE. A HORIZON LINE, MAYBE, BUT ALSO A SLOT FOR BLACKNESS TO POUR THROUGH . . .

A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a ""geographic cure,"" a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else.

""Edgar does anything make you happy?""

""I used to sketch.""

""Take it up again. You need hedges . . .

hedges against the night.""

Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.

The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural--Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying. (less)"
3139,Nightmares and Dreamscapes,horror,"A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. The Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile, the legend of Castle Rock returns... and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? Stephen King is back with a powerful new collection of stories - a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume.

In story after story, the long reach of Stephen King's imagination and the no-holds-barred force of his storytelling will take you to places you've never been before. On a roller-coaster through the macabre and the monstrous, via cutting-edge explorations of good and evil - and onto a heartfelt piece on Little League baseball.

You will lose a good deal of sleep. But Stephen King, writing to beat the devil, will do your dreaming for you... (less)"
3140,Tender is the Flesh,horror,"Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved. (less)"
3141,The Talisman,horror,"Two of the world's bestselling authors have combined their unique talents in an unforgettable epic of fantasy, adventure, odyssey - and spine-tingling terror.

You are about to take a journey... a terrifying trip across America where young Jack Sawyer is searching for the Talisman, the only thing that can save his dying mother. His quest takes him into the menacing Territories where violence, surprise and the titanic struggle between good and evil reach across a mythic landscape... a journey into the dark heart of horror. (less)"
3142,Rose Madder,horror,"Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realisation that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight – with his credit card.

Alone in a strange city, Rosie begins to build a new life: she meets Bill Steiner and she finds an old junk shop painting, ""Rose Madder,"" which strangely seems to want her as much as she wants it.

But it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder. Rose-maddened and on the rampage, Norman is a corrupt cop with a dog’s instinct for tracking people. And he’s getting close. Rosie can feel just how close he is getting…

A brilliant dark-hued fable of gender wars, a haunting love story, and a hold-your-breath triumph of suspense, ""Rose Madder"" is Stephen King at his electrifying best. (less)"
3143,Dolores Claiborne,horror,"Suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, Dolores Claiborne tells police the story of her life, harkening back to her disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of her violent husband, Joe St. George, thirty years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera's physical and mental decline and of her loyalty to an employer who has become emotionally demanding in recent years. (less)"
3144,Home Before Dark,horror,"What was it like? Living in that house.

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls? (less)"
3145,The Queen of the Damned,horror,"Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire . . . in 1985, a wild and voluptous voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat.  In The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice continues her extraordinary ""Vampire Chronicles"" in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Three brilliantly colored narrative threads intertwine as the story unfolds:

- The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco.  Among the audience--pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration--are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a ""greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals,"" fiends themselves who hate Lestat's power and who are determined to destroy him . . .

- The sleep of certain men and women--vampires and mortals scattered around the world--is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: of twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy.  It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other--some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey's end . . .

- Akasha--Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to ""save"" mankind from itself and make ""all myths of the world real"" by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods: ""I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment be the cause"" . . .

These narrative threads wind sinuously across a vast, richly detailed tapestry of the violent, sensual world of vampirism, taking us back 6,000 years to its beginnings.  As the stories of the ""first brood"" of blood drinkers are revealed, we are swept across the ages, from Egypt to South America to the Himalayas to all the shrouded corners of the globe where vampires have left their mark. Vampires are created--mortals succumbing to the sensation of ""being enptied, of being devoured, of being nothing."" Vampires are destroyed.  Dark rituals are performed--the rituals of ancient creatures prowling the modern world.  And, finally, we are brought to a moment in the twentieth century when, in an astonishing climax, the fate of the living dead--and perhaps of the living, all the living--will be decided.


From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
3146,Wilder Girls,horror,"It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true. (less)"
3147,John Dies at the End,horror,"STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I'm sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault. (less)"
3148,The Ballad of Black Tom,horror,"People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break? (less)"
3149,Bunny,horror,"Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ""Bunny,"" and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled ""Smut Salon,"" and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus ""Workshop"" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination. (less)"
3150,The Graveyard Book,horror,"Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean. (less)"
3151,Lovecraft Country,horror,"The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.

Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.

A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of one black family, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today. (less)"
3152,At the Mountains of Madness,horror,"Long acknowledged as a master of nightmarish vision, H.P. Lovecraft established the genuineness and dignity of his own pioneering fiction in 1931 with his quintessential work of supernatural horror, At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition's uncanny discoveries --and their encounter with an untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization--is a milestone of macabre literature.

This Definitive Edition of At the Mountains of Madness (The Modern Library) also includes Lovecraft's long essay ""Supernatural Horror in Literature."" (less)"
3153,Feed,horror,"The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop.

The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives—the dark conspiracy behind the infected.

The truth will get out, even if it kills them. (less)"
3154,Hex,horror,"The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt--a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy. (less)"
3155,The Hollow Places,horror,"A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel.

Pray they are hungry.

Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring the peculiar bunker—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more you fear them, the stronger they become. (less)"
3156,The Twisted Ones,horror,"When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, she finds long-hidden secrets about a strange colony of beings in the woods.

When Mouse’s dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother's house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be?

Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there’s more—Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself.

Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you. And if she doesn’t face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale.

From Hugo Award–winning author Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher. (less)"
3157,My Heart Is a Chainsaw,horror,"In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.

Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges… a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph. (less)"
3158,Sleeping Beauties,horror,"In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze.

If they are awakened, and the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place.

The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease.

Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied, or is she a demon who must be slain? (less)"
3159,The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories,horror,"This collection spans Lovecraft’s literary career, and charts the development of his ‘cosmicist’ philosophy; the belief that behind the veil of our blinkered everyday lives lies another reality, too terrible for the human mind to comprehend. In stories written in the gothic tradition, narrators recount their descent into madness and despair. Through their investigations into the unexplained, they tug at the thin threads that separate our world from another of indescribable horror. ‘“ Great God! I never dreamed of THIS!”’ screams occultist Harley Warren in ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’, as he begs his companion to bury him alive. Another early piece, ‘The Outsider’ – a tragic and emotive evocation of loneliness and desolation – follows a man’s escape from his castle in a desperate search for human contact, but the loathsome truth he discovers destroys his mind.

In later tales, such as the iconic ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ and ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’, Lovecraft reaches into the cosmos, bridging the divide between horror and science fiction. The extra-terrestrial ‘gods’ and cursed histories that would emerge from these stories now form the cornerstones of Lovecraft’s unique mythology: the Cthulhu Mythos. This fictional universe, built in large part by his friend and most ardent supporter August Derleth, has in the years since been reimagined in myriad forms, and continues to act as a haunted playground for countless illustrators, fans and authors.

This edition, based on its sister limited edition, marries Lovecraft’s best-known fiction with two modern masters of the macabre, the acclaimed artist Dan Hillier and author Alan Moore. In his beautifully crafted new preface, Moore finds Lovecraft at once at odds with and integral to the time in which he lived: ‘the improbable embodiment of an estranged world in transition’. Yet, despite his prejudices and parochialisms, he ‘possessed a voice and a perspective both unique in modern literature’.

Hillier’s six mesmerising, portal-like illustrations embrace the alien realities that lurk among the gambrel roofs of Lovecraft’s landscapes. By splicing Victorian portraits and lithographs with cosmic and Lovecraftian symbolism, each piece – like the stories themselves – pulls apart the familiar to reveal what lies beneath.

The edition itself shimmers with Lovecraft’s ‘unknown colours’, bound in purple and greens akin to both the ocean depths and mysteries from outer space. The cover is embossed with a mystical design by Hillier, while a monstrous eye stares blankly from the slipcase.

Content:
1. Dagon
2. The Statement of Randolph Carter
3. Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
4. Celephaïs
5. Nyarlathotep
6. The Picture in the House
7. The Outsider
8. Herbert West -- Reanimator
9. The Hound
10. The Rats in the Walls
11. The Festival
12. He
13. Cool Air
14. The Call of Cthulhu
15. The Colour Out of Space
16. The Whisperer in Darkness
17. The Shadow Over Innsmouth
18. The Haunter of the Dark (less)"
3160,The Last House on Needless Street,horror,"This is the story of a serial killer. A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.

All these things are true. And yet they are all lies...

You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong.

In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it's not what you think... (less)"
3161,The Ocean at the End of the Lane,horror,"Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark. (less)"
3162,Later,horror,"The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.

Later is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King's classic novel It, Later is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears. (less)"
3163,The Drawing of the Three,horror,"While pursuing his quest for the Dark Tower through a world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, Roland, the last gunslinger, encounters three mysterious doorways on the beach. Each one enters into the life of a different person living in contemporary New York.

Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean and the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.

Once again, Stephen King has masterfully interwoven dark, evocative fantasy and icy realism. (less)"
3164,Nothing But Blackened Teeth,horror,"Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends.

But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt. (less)"
3165,If It Bleeds,horror,"If it Bleeds is a collection of four new novellas —Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds— each pulling readers into intriguing and frightening places.

A collection of four uniquely wonderful long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider.

News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.

Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realizes there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins 'If It Bleeds' , a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case.

Dancing alongside are three more long stories - 'Mr Harrigan's Phone', 'The Life of Chuck' and 'Rat' .

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer. (less)"
3166,Cycle of the Werewolf,horror,"The first scream came from the snowbound railwayman who felt the fangs ripping at his throat. The next month there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her snug bedroom.

Now scenes of unbelieving horror come each time the full moon shines on the isolated Maine town of Tarker Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next. But one thing is sure.

When the moon grows fat, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker Mills. For snarls that sound like human words can be heard whining through the wind. And all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated... Cycle of the Werewolf. (less)"
3167,Swan Song,horror,"An ancient evil roams the desolate landscape of an America ravaged by nuclear war.

He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan—and destroy her. But those who would protect the girl are determined to fight for what is left of the world, and their souls.

In a wasteland born of rage, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, the last survivors on earth have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil that will decide the fate of humanity.... (less)"
3168,20th Century Ghosts,horror,"A collection of short stories.

Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945....

Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town....

Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....

John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead....

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past... (less)"
3169,Odd Thomas,horror,"He's Odd. Odd Thomas, to be precise. Genius fry-cook at the Pico Mundo Grill; boyfriend to the gorgeous Stormy Llewellyn - and possibly the only person with a chance of stopping one of the worst crimes in the bloody history of murder...

Something evil has come to the desert town that Odd and Stormy call home. It comes in the form of a mysterious man with a macabre appetite, a filing cabinet full of information on the world's worst killers, and strange, hyena-like shadows following him wherever he goes. Odd is worried. He knows things, sees things - about the living, the dead, and the soon-to-be dead. Things that he has to act on. Now he's terrified for Stormy, himself and Pico Mundo. Because he knows that on Wednesday August 15, a savage, blood-soaked whirlwind of violence and murder will devastate the town...

Today is August 14.
And Odd is far from sure he can stop the coming storm... (less)"
3170,The Fireman,horror,"From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke. (less)"
3171,The Regulators,horror,"There's a place in Wentworth, Ohio, where summer is in full swing. It's called Poplar Street. Up until now it's been a nice place to live. The idling red van around the corner is about to change all that. Let the battle against evil begin. Here come...The Regulators (less)"
3172,Imaginary Friend,horror,"Christopher is seven years old.
Christopher is the new kid in town.
Christopher has an imaginary friend.

We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us.

Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out.

At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.

Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on. (less)"
3173,Watchers,horror,"They escape from a secret government: two mutant creatures, both changed utterly from the animals they once were. And no one who encounters them will ever be the same again:

A lonely widower; a ruthless assassin; a beautiful woman; a government agent.

Drawn together in a deadly hunt, all four are inexorably propelled towards a confrontation with an evil beyond human imagining. (less)"
3174,Psycho,horror,"It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty but clean and the plumbing worked. Norman Bates, the manager, seemed nice, if a little odd."
3175,Lisey's Story,horror,"Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went--a place that both terrified and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons, Lisey's turn to go to Boo'ya Moon. What begins as a widow's efforts to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited. Perhaps King's most personal and powerful novel, Lisey's Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love.
(front flap) (less)"
3176,Mr. Mercedes,horror,"In the predawn hours, in a distressed American city, hundreds of unemployed men and women line up for the opening of a job fair. They are tired and cold and desperate. Emerging from the fog, invisible until it is too late, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.

Months later, an ex-cop named Bill Hodges, still haunted by the unsolved crime, contemplates suicide. When he gets a crazed letter from ""the perk,"" claiming credit for the murders, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, fearing another even more diabolical attack and hell-bent on preventing it.

Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of eccentric and mismatched allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.

Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.
--front flap (less)"
3177,Slade House,horror,"Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents — an odd brother and sister — extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late...

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it. (less)"
3178,Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,horror,"This spooky addition to Alvin Schwartz's popular books on American folklore is filled with tales of eerie horror and dark revenge that will make you jump with fright.

There is a story here for everyone—skeletons with torn and tangled flesh who roam the earth; a ghost who takes revenge on her murderer; and a haunted house where every night a bloody head falls down the chimney.

Stephen Gammell's splendidly creepy drawings perfectly capture the mood of more than two dozen scary stories—and even scary songs—all just right for reading alone or for telling aloud in the dark.

If You Dare! (less)"
3179,Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,horror,"“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, (less)"
3180,The Historian,horror,"To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to ""My dear and unfortunate successor,"" and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of, a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.

The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself--to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages. (less)"
3181,The Bazaar of Bad Dreams,horror,"In this collection, Stephen King once again assembles a generous array of unforgettable, tantalizing tales. There are thrilling connections between these works - themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, and what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. Magnificent, eerie, and utterly compelling, these tales are a fine gift to readers everywhere. (less)"
3182,The Complete Stories and Poems,horror,"This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history. (less)"
3183,The Winter People,horror,"West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.

Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara's farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she's not the only person looking for someone that they've lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself. (less)"
3184,From a Buick 8,horror,"WANT TO GO FOR A RIDE...?

In a secret shed behind the barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, Troop D, there's a cherry Buick Roadmaster no one has touched in years - because there's more power under the hood than anyone can handle... (less)"
3185,The Hunger,horror,"Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere.

Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history.

While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves ""What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"" (less)"
3186,Black House,horror,"Abandoned by his friends as they cycle through the Wisconsin town of French Landing, ten-year-old Ty Marshall spots a crow hopping towards him down the sidewalk. Then it calls his name. Fascinated, Ty gets off his bike for a closer look - and is dragged into the shadows.

Is Ty destined to become the fourth victim of the Fisherman, the serial killer who's stalking this sleepy town? If so, only ex-detective Jack Sawyer may be able to save him. Jack left his old life behind precisely to avoid such madness, but lately he's been visited by strange nightmares and visions. Could the doomed past he thought he'd escaped forever be reaching out for him... from the Black House? (less)"
3187,Uzumaki,horror,"Spirals... this town is contaminated with spirals...

Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral — the hypnotic secret shape of the world. This bizarre masterpiece of horror manga is now available in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror! (less)"
3188,The Waste Lands,horror,"Several months have passed, and Roland’s two new tet-mates have become proficient gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But while battling The Pusher in 1977 New York, Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who—in Roland’s where and when—has already died. Now Roland and Jake exist in different worlds, but they are joined by the same madness: the paradox of double memories. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie must draw Jake into Mid-World then follow the Path of the Beam all the way to the Dark Tower. But nothing is easy in Mid-World. Along the way our tet stumbles into the ruined city of Lud, and are caught between the warring gangs of the Pubes and the Grays. The only way out of Lud is to wake Blaine the Mono, an insane train that has a passion for riddling, and for suicidal journeys. (less)"
3189,The Call of Cthulhu,horror,"One of the feature stories of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft's 'the Call of Cthulhu' is a harrowing tale of the weakness of the human mind when confronted by powers and intelligences from beyond our world. (less)"
3190,The Witching Hour,horror,"From the author of the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles comes a huge, hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries.

Demonstrating, once again, her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches—a family given to poetry and to incest, to murder and to philosophy; a family that, over the ages, is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.

On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking... and The Witching Hour begins.

It begins in our time with a rescue at sea.  Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life.  He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV.  An intricate tale of evil unfolds—an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first ""witch,"" Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher... a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

From the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien—the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers—provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing.  And always—through peril and escape, tension and release—there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death.  With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax. (less)"
3191,Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,horror,"An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the ""ultimate perfume""—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. (less)"
3192,Hannibal,horror,"Years after his escape, posing as scholarly Dr. Fell, curator of a grand family's palazzo, Hannibal lives the good life in Florence, playing lovely tunes by serial killer/composer Henry VIII and killing hardly anyone himself. Clarice is unluckier: in the novel's action-film-like opening scene, she survives an FBI shootout gone wrong, and her nemesis, Paul Krendler, makes her the fall guy. Clarice is suspended, so, unfortunately, the first cop who stumbles on Hannibal is an Italian named Pazzi, who takes after his ancestors, greedy betrayers depicted in Dante's Inferno. Pazzi is on the take from a character as scary as Hannibal: Mason Verger. When Verger was a young man busted for raping children, his vast wealth saved him from jail. All he needed was psychotherapy--with Dr. Lecter. Thanks to the treatment, Verger is now on a respirator, paralyzed except for one crablike hand, watching his enormous, brutal moray eel swim figure eights and devour fish. His obsession is to feed Lecter to some other brutal pets. (less)"
3193,Just After Sunset,horror,"Just after sunset, as darkness grips the imagination, is the time when you feel the unexpected creep into the everyday. As familiar journeys take a different turn, ordinary objects assume extraordinary powers.

A blind intruder visits a dying man - and saves his life, with a kiss.

A woman receives a phone call from her husband. Her LATE husband.

In the emotional aftermath of her baby's sudden death, Emily starts running. And running. Her curiosity leads her right into the hands of a murderer... and soon her legs are her only hope for survival.

Enter a world of masterful suspense, dark comedy and thrilling twists which will keep you riveted from the fist page. (less)"
3194,Joyland,horror,"College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life - and what comes after - that would change his world forever.

A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old - and about those who don't get to do either because death comes for them before their time. It is at once a mystery, a horror story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age novel, one that will leave even the most hard-boiled reader profoundly moved. (less)"
3195,Haunted,horror,"Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter.

The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them.

But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight. (less)"
3196,The Girl Next Door,horror,"Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make. (less)"
3197,Ring,horror,"A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure.

Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic--haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late--for everyone--assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip. (less)"
3198,Days Gone Bye,horror,"The world we knew is gone.

How many hours are in a day when you don't spend half of them watching television? When is the last time any of us really worked to get something we wanted? How long has it been since any of us really needed something that we wanted?

The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living.

In a matter of months society has crumbled: no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, the survivors are forced to finally start living.

Rick Grimes finds himself one of the few survivors in this terrifying future. A couple months ago he was a small town cop who had never fired a shot and only ever saw one dead body. Separated from his family, he must now sort through all the death and confusion to try and find his wife and son.

Edition MSRP: $9⁹⁹ US (ISBN 978-1-58240-672-5)
Printed in USA (less)"
3199,Jaws,horror,"The classic, blockbuster thriller of man-eating terror that inspired the Steven Spielberg movie and made millions of beachgoers afraid to go into the water. Experience the thrill of helpless horror again—or for the first time!"
3200,"Thinking, Fast and Slow",psychology,"In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking."
3201,Man's Search for Meaning,psychology,"Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.
More book description"
3202,Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking,psychology,"The book that started the Quiet Revolution

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society. 

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content."
3203,Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,psychology,"Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you'll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of ""blink"": the election of Warren Harding; ""New Coke""; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of ""thin-slicing"" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables."
3204,Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,psychology,"Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say ""yes""—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book.

You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success."
3205,The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business,psychology,"A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.

Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives."
3206,The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales,psychology,"If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities; who have been dismissed as autistic or retarded, yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human."
3207,Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,psychology,"Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's investigations of ""optimal experience"" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives."
3208,"The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma",psychology,"A pioneering researcher and one of the world’s foremost experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for healing.
 
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Such experiences inevitably leave traces on minds, emotions, and even on biology. Sadly, trauma sufferers frequently pass on their stress to their partners and children.
 
Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neurofeedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score offers proven alternatives to drugs and talk therapy—and a way to reclaim lives."
3209,Outliers: The Story of Success,psychology,"Learn what sets high achievers apart -- from Bill Gates to the Beatles -- in this #1 bestseller from ""a singular talent"" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of ""outliers""--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate."
3210,Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ,psychology,"Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our ""two minds""—the rational and the emotional—and how they together shape our destiny.

Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart.

The best news is that ""emotional literacy"" is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.


From the Trade Paperback edition."
3211,Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,psychology,"A newer edition of this book can be found here.

After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset — those who believe that abilities are fixed — are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset — those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.

In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love — to transform their lives and your own."
3212,How to Win Friends and Influence People,psychology,"You can go after the job you want...and get it! You can take the job you have...and improve it! You can take any situation you're in...and make it work for you!

Since its release in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 15 million copies. Dale Carnegie's first book is a timeless bestseller, packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives.

As relevant as ever before, Dale Carnegie's principles endure, and will help you achieve your maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age.

Learn the six ways to make people like you, the twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, and the nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.
More book description"
3213,The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,psychology,"The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas."
3214,The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry,psychology,"In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges."
3215,The Interpretation of Dreams,psychology,"Freud's discovery that the dream is the means by which the unconscious can be explored is undoubtedly the most revolutionary step forward in the entire history of psychology. Dreams, according to his theory, represent the hidden fulfillment of our unconscious wishes."
3216,12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,psychology,"What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.

Humorous, surprising, and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street.

What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and about success in life? Why did ancient Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant, and vengeful? Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure, and responsibility, distilling the world's wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. 12 Rules for Life shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith, and human nature while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its listeners."
3217,The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life,psychology,"Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062457738

In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be ""positive"" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.

For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. ""F**k positivity,"" Mark Manson says. ""Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it."" In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.

Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—""not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault."" Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.

There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives."
3218,The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,psychology,"An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307377906 can be found here.

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
 
His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation."
3219,Man and His Symbols,psychology,"Man and His Symbols owes its existence to one of Jung's own dreams. The great psychologist dreamed that his work was understood by a wide public, rather than just by psychiatrists, and therefore he agreed to write and edit this fascinating book. Here, Jung examines the full world of the unconscious, whose language he believed to be the symbols constantly revealed in dreams. Convinced that dreams offer practical advice, sent from the unconscious to the conscious self, Jung felt that self-understanding would lead to a full and productive life. Thus, the reader will gain new insights into himself from this thoughtful volume, which also illustrates symbols throughout history. Completed just before his death by Jung and his associates, it is clearly addressed to the general reader.
More book description"
3220,Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones,psychology,"No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
- Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
- Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- Design your environment to make success easier;
- Get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal."
3221,The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,psychology,"Renowned social psychologist and creator of the ""Stanford Prison Experiment,"" Philip Zimbardo explores the mechanisms that make good people do bad things, how moral people can be seduced into acting immorally, and what this says about the line separating good from evil.

The Lucifer Effect explains how—and the myriad reasons why—we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women.

Here, for the first time and in detail, Zimbardo tells the full story of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the landmark study in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week, the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners.

By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”—the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around."
3222,Games People Play,psychology,"We think we’re relating to other people–but actually we’re all playing games.

Forty years ago, Games People Play revolutionized our understanding of what really goes on during our most basic social interactions. More than five million copies later, Dr. Eric Berne’s classic is as astonishing–and revealing–as it was on the day it was first published. This anniversary edition features a new introduction by Dr. James R. Allen, president of the International Transactional Analysis Association, and Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliant Life magazine review from 1965.
We play games all the time–sexual games, marital games, power games with our bosses, and competitive games with our friends. Detailing status contests like “Martini” (I know a better way), to lethal couples combat like “If It Weren’t For You” and “Uproar,” to flirtation favorites like “The Stocking Game” and “Let’s You and Him Fight,” Dr. Berne exposes the secret ploys and unconscious maneuvers that rule our intimate lives.
Explosive when it first appeared, Games People Play is now widely recognized as the most original and influential popular psychology book of our time. It’s as powerful and eye-opening as ever."
3223,Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know,psychology,"Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?

While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you'll hear the voices of people he interviewed--scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There's even a theme song - Janelle Monae's ""Hell You Talmbout.""

Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world."
3224,"Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed",psychology,"From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world -- where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them."
3225,Stumbling on Happiness,psychology,"• Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? • Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? • Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? • Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it? In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become."
3226,Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,psychology,"The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation

Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live."
3227,An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness,psychology,The personal memoir of a manic depressive and an authority on the subject describes the onset of the illness during her teenage years and her determined journey through the realm of available treatments.
3228,The Art of Loving,psychology,"The fiftieth Anniversary Edition of the groundbreaking international bestseller that has shown millions of readers how to achieve rich, productive lives by developing their hidden capacities for love

Most people are unable to love on the only level that truly matters: love that is compounded of maturity, self-knowledge, and courage. As with every art, love demands practice and concentration, as well as genuine insight and understanding.

In his classic work, , renowned psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm explores love in all its aspects—not only romantic love, steeped in false conceptions and lofty expectations, but also brotherly love, erotic love, self-love, the love of God, and the love of parents for their children.
More book description"
3229,"Memories, Dreams, Reflections",psychology,"In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, C. G. Jung undertook the telling of his life story. At regular intervals he had conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, and collaborated with her in the preparation of the text based on these talks. On occasion, he was moved to write entire chapters of the book in his own hand, and he continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961."
3230,The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom,psychology,"In his widely praised book, award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt examines the world’s philosophical wisdom through the lens of psychological science, showing how a deeper understanding of enduring maxims-like Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, or What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger-can enrich and even transform our lives."
3231,"Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead",psychology,"Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” —Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities."
3232,Civilization and Its Discontents,psychology,"It stands as a brilliant summary of the views on culture from a psychoanalytic perspective that he had been developing since the turn of the century. It is both witness and tribute to the late theory of mind—the so-called structural theory, with its stress on aggression, indeed the death drive, as the pitiless adversary of eros.

Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the last of Freud's books, written in the decade before his death and first published in German in 1929. In it he states his views on the broad question of man's place in the world, a place Freud defines in terms of ceaseless conflict between the individual's quest for freedom and society's demand for conformity.


Freud's theme is that what works for civilization doesn't necessarily work for man. Man, by nature aggressive and egotistical, seeks self-satisfaction. But culture inhibits his instinctual drives. The result is a pervasive and familiar guilt.


Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: under the general editorship of James Strachey.


Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from bibliographical and explanatory. Many of the translations were done by Strachey himself; the rest were prepared under his supervision. The result was to place the in a position of unquestioned supremacy over all other existing versions.
More book description"
3233,Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,psychology,"In this must-read book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, educators, students, and business people both seasoned and new that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called grit.

Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.

Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.

Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.

Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference."
3234,"Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness",psychology,"From the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics, Richard H. Thaler, and Cass R. Sunstein: a revelatory look at how we make decisions

New York Times bestseller
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist and the Financial Times

Every day we make choices—about what to buy or eat, about financial investments or our children’s health and education, even about the causes we champion or the planet itself. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. Nudge is about how we make these choices and how we can make better ones. Using dozens of eye-opening examples and drawing on decades of behavioral science research, Nobel Prize winner Richard H. Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein show that no choice is ever presented to us in a neutral way, and that we are all susceptible to biases that can lead us to make bad decisions. But by knowing how people think, we can use sensible “choice architecture” to nudge people toward the best decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society, without restricting our freedom of choice."
3235,The Gifts of Imperfection,psychology,"In this groundbreaking New York Times best seller, Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor and thought leader on vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame, shares ten guideposts on the power of Wholehearted living—a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness."
3236,On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy,psychology,"The late Carl Rogers, founder of the humanistic psychology movement, revolutionized psychotherapy with his concept of ""client-centered therapy."" His influence has spanned decades, but that influence has become so much a part of mainstream psychology that the ingenious nature of his work has almost been forgotten. A new introduction by Peter Kramer sheds light on the significance of Dr. Rogers's work today. New discoveries in the field of psychopharmacology, especially that of the antidepressant Prozac, have spawned a quick-fix drug revolution that has obscured the psychotherapeutic relationship. As the pendulum slowly swings back toward an appreciation of the therapeutic encounter, Dr. Rogers's ""client-centered therapy"" becomes particularly timely and important."
3237,The 48 Laws of Power,psychology,"Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature.

In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.

Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game."
3238,The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature,psychology,"In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: the Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), the Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker injects calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about a rich human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hardheaded analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts.

Pinker shows that an acknowledgement of human nature that is grounded in science and common sense, far from being dangerous, can complement insights about the human condition made by millennia of artists and philosophers. All this is done in the style that earned his previous books many prizes and worldwide acclaim: wit, lucidity, and insight into matters great and small."
3239,The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change,psychology,"When Stephen Covey first released The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the book became an instant rage because people suddenly got up and took notice that their lives were headed off in the wrong direction; and more than that, they realized that there were so many simple things they could do in order to navigate their life correctly. This book was wonderful education for people, education in how to live life effectively and get closer to the ideal of being a ‘success’ in life.

But not everyone understands Stephen Covey’s model fully well, or maybe there are some people who haven’t read it yet. This is definitely true because we still see so much failure all around us. Now, I am not saying that by using Covey’s model, or anyone else’s model for that matter, you can become a sure-shot success, but at least we should have seen many more successes around us already judging by the number of copies the book has sold! So, where is the shortcoming?

There are two main problems here, and we are talking only about the people who have read the book already. The first problem is that most people are too lazy to implement the ideals of Stephen Covey in their lives. They consider his masterpiece of a book as a mere coffee-table book or a book that you use for light reading when you are traveling and then forget all about it. They do not realize that this book contains life-changing information. Or, they take the information and do not make the effort to actually utilize it so that it becomes knowledge for them.

The second problem is that a lot of people have a myopic view of Covey’s ideals. These are people who are impressed by the book already. If you ask them what the seven habits are, they can rattle them off end to end, but then they miss the larger picture. They do not understand that Covey was trying to tell more than he wrote in words. There are hidden implications in this book, yes, and a lot of people have just failed to see through them.

That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to show you how Covey’s book, or rather, his model, was a complete model in itself. There was nothing amiss about it. If you implement it, there should be no aspect of your life that should go untouched. The only thing is that you have to understand these ideals and try to implement them in your life.

But, before we barge into that area, it is extremely important to understand what these ideals are. What was the model that was propounded by Stephen Covey in his mega-famous book? We shall begin by trying to understand his model first, and then interpret it in such a way that it pertains to every aspect of our life"
3240,"How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence",psychology,"Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? One of America's most admired writers takes us on a mind-altering journey to the frontiers of human consciousness

When LSD was first discovered in the 1940s, it seemed to researchers, scientists and doctors as if the world might be on the cusp of psychological revolution. It promised to shed light on the deep mysteries of consciousness, as well as offer relief to addicts and the mentally ill. But in the 1960s, with the vicious backlash against the counter-culture, all further research was banned. In recent years, however, work has quietly begun again on the amazing potential of LSD, psilocybin and DMT. Could these drugs in fact improve the lives of many people? Diving deep into this extraordinary world and putting himself forward as a guinea-pig, Michael Pollan has written a remarkable history of psychedelics and a compelling portrait of the new generation of scientists fascinated by the implications of these drugs. is a report from what could very well be the future of human consciousness.
More book description"
3241,"The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth",psychology,"The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
316 pp. ""Psychotherapy is all things to all people in this mega-selling pop-psychology watershed, which features a new introduction by the author in this 25th anniversary edition. His agenda in this tome, which was first published in 1978 but didn't become a bestseller until 1983, is to reconcile the psychoanalytic tradition with the conflicting cultural currents roiling the 70s. In the spirit of Me-Decade individualism and libertinism, he celebrates self-actualization as life's highest purpose and flirts with the notions of open marriage and therapeutic sex between patient and analyst. But because he is attuned to the nascent conservative backlash against the therapeutic worldview, Peck also cites Gospel passages, recruits psychotherapy to the cause of traditional religion (he even convinces a patient to sign up for divinity school) and insists that problems must be overcome through suffering, discipline and hard work (with a therapist.) Often departing from the cerebral and rationalistic bent of Freudian discourse for a mystical, Jungian tone more compatible with New Age spirituality, Peck writes of psychotherapy as an exercise in ""love"" and ""spiritual growth,"" asserts that ""our unconscious is God"" and affirms his belief in miracles, reincarnation and telepathy. Peck's synthesis of such clashing elements (he even throws in a little thermodynamics) is held together by a warm and lucid discussion of psychiatric principles and moving accounts of his own patients' struggles and breakthroughs. Harmonizing psychoanalysis and spirituality, Christ and Buddha, Calvinist work ethic and interminable talking cures, this book is a touchstone of our contemporary religio-therapeutic culture."" -- Publishers WeeklyKeywords: MIND & BODY PSYCHOLOGY SOCIOLOGY RELIGION"
3242,Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy,psychology,"The collection of ten absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. In recounting his patients' dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist. Not since Freud has an author done so much to clarify what goes on between a psychotherapist and a patient."
3243,Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams,psychology,"Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501144318.

Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night."
3244,Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst,psychology,"Why do we do the things we do?

More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.

Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.

The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right."
3245,"The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It",psychology,"The first book to explain the new science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity.

After years of watching her students struggling with their choices, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., realized that much of what people believe about willpower is actually sabotaging their success. Committed to sharing what the scientific community already knew about self-control, McGonigal created a course called ""The Science of Willpower"" for Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. The course was an instant hit and spawned the hugely successful Psychology Today blog with the same name.

Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, McGonigal's book explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. Readers will learn:

Willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are healthier, happier, have more satisfying relationships, and make more money. Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. Temptation and stress hijack the brain's systems of self-control, and that the brain can be trained for greater willpower.

In the groundbreaking tradition of Getting Things Done, The Willpower Instinct combines life-changing prescriptive advice and complementary exercises to help readers with goals ranging from a healthier life to more patient parenting, from greater productivity at work to finally finishing the basement."
3246,Modern Man in Search of a Soul,psychology,"A provocative and enlightening look at spiritual unease and its contribution to the void in modern civilization

Considered by many to be one of the most important books in the field of psychology, Modern Man in Search of a Soul is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of Carl Gustav Jung. In this book, Jung examines some of the most contested and crucial areas in the field of analytical psychology, including dream analysis, the primitive unconscious, and the relationship between psychology and religion. Additionally, Jung looks at the differences between his theories and those of Sigmund Freud, providing a valuable basis for anyone interested in the fundamentals of psychoanalysis."
3247,The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You,psychology,"Do you have a keen imagination and vivid dreams? Is time alone each day as essential to you as food and water? Are you ""too shy"" or ""too sensitive"" according to others? Do noise and confusion quickly overwhelm you? If your answers are yes, you may be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

Most of us feel overstimulated every once in a while, but for the HSP, it's a way of life. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, workshop leader, and an HSP herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations. Drawing on her many years of research and hundreds of interviews, she shows how you can better understand yourself and your trait to create a fuller, richer life."
3248,The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less,psychology,"In the spirit of Alvin Tofflers' Future Shock, a social critique of our obsession with choice, and how it contributes to anxiety, dissatisfaction and regret. Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401K, everyday decisions have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains why too much of a good thing has proven detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz explains how a culture that thrives on the availability of constantly evolving options can also foster profound dissatisfaction and self-blame in individuals, which can lead to a paralysis in decision making and, in some cases, depression.

With the latest studies on how we make choices in our personal and professional lives, Schwartz offers practical advice on how to focus on the right choices, and how to derive greater satisfaction from choices that we do make."
3249,"David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants",psychology,"In his #1 bestselling books The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell has explored the ways we understand and change our world. Now he looks at the complex and surprising ways the weak can defeat the strong, the small can match up against the giant, and how our goals (often culturally determined) can make a huge difference in our ultimate sense of success. Drawing upon examples from the world of business, sports, culture, cutting-edge psychology, and an array of unforgettable characters around the world, David and Goliath is in many ways the most practical and provocative book Malcolm Gladwell has ever written."
3250,"Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts",psychology,"Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart? Why the parade of public figures unable to own up when they screw up? Why the endless marital quarrels over who is right? Why can we see hypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Are we all liars? Or do we really believe the stories we tell?

Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right -- a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong.

Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception -- how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it."
3251,"You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself",psychology,"An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise.

Whether you’re deciding which smart phone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic, but here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us--but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.

Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them, but often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter--covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency--is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.

Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.
More book description"
3252,The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients,psychology,"Anyone interested in psychotherapy or personal growth will rejoice at the publication of ""The Gift of Therapy, "" a masterwork from one of today's most accomplished psychological thinkers.

From his thirty-five years as a practicing psychiatrist and as an award-winning author, Irvin D. Yalom imparts his unique wisdom in ""The Gift of Therapy."" This remarkable guidebook for successful therapy is, as Yalom remarks, ""an idiosyncratic mElange of ideas and techniques that I have found useful in my work. These ideas are so personal, opinionated, and occasionally original that the reader is unlikely to encounter them elsewhere. I selected the eighty-five categories in this volume randomly guided by my passion for the task rather than any particular order or system.""

At once startlingly profound and irresistibly practical, Yalom's insights will help enrich the therapeutic process for a new generation of patients and counselors."
3253,How the Mind Works,psychology,"In this extraordinary bestseller, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit that prompted Mark Ridley to write in the New York Times Book Review, ""No other science writer makes me laugh so much. . . . [Pinker] deserves the superlatives that are lavished on him.""  The arguments in the book are as bold as its title. Pinker rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas, such as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection, and challenges fashionable ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1997 Featured in Time magazine, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nature, Science, Lingua Franca, and Science Times Front-page reviews in the Washington Post Book World, the Boston Globe Book Section, and the San Diego Union Book Review"
3254,The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts,psychology,"Simple ideas, lasting love
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love—that’s the challenge! How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life?
In the #1 New York Times bestseller The 5 Love Languages, you’ll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today.
The 5 Love Languages is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.
Includes the Couple's Personal Profile assessment so you can discover your love language and that of your loved one."
3255,The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self,psychology,"The bestselling book on childhood trauma and the enduring effects of repressed anger and pain

Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided millions of readers with an answer--and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.

Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents' expectations and win their ""love."" Alice Miller writes, ""When I used the word 'gifted' in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb.... Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived."" But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth."
3256,The Sociopath Next Door,psychology,"Who is the devil you know?

Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband?
Your sadistic high school gym teacher?
Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings?
The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?

In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.

We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.

How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.

The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading The Sociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know—someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for—is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.

It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know."
3257,The Bell Jar,psychology,"The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic."
3258,Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love,psychology,"Is there a science to love?

In this groundbreaking book, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel S. F. Heller reveal how an understanding of attachment theory-the most advanced relationship science in existence today-can help us find and sustain love. Attachment theory forms the basis for many bestselling books on the parent/child relationship, but there has yet to be an accessible guide to what this fascinating science has to tell us about adult romantic relationships-until now.

Attachment theory owes its inception to British psychologist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who in the 1950s examined the tremendous impact that our early relationships with our parents or caregivers has on the people we become. Also central to attachment theory is the discovery that our need to be in a close relationship with one or more individuals is embedded in our genes.

In Attached, Levine and Heller trace how these evolutionary influences continue to shape who we are in our relationships today. According to attachment theory, every person behaves in relationships in one of three distinct ways:

*ANXIOUS people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back.
*AVOIDANT people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.
*SECURE people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving.

Attached guides readers in determining what attachment style they and their mate (or potential mates) follow. It also offers readers a wealth of advice on how to navigate their relationships more wisely given their attachment style and that of their partner. An insightful look at the science behind love, Attached offers readers a road map for building stronger, more fulfilling connections."
3259,The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science,psychology,"An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed - people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential."
3260,"Girl, Interrupted",psychology,"In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele--Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles--as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.

Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a ""parallel universe"" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching documnet that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery."
3261,Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything,psychology,"The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory

An instant bestseller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top ""mental athletes."" He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories."
3262,Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It,psychology,"A former FBI hostage negotiator offers a new, field-tested approach to negotiating – effective in any situation.

After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a kidnapping negotiator brought him face-to-face with bank robbers, gang leaders and terrorists. Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most – when people’s lives were at stake.

Rooted in the real-life experiences of an intelligence professional at the top of his game, Never Split the Difference will give you the competitive edge in any discussion."
3263,Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain,psychology,"If the conscious mind—the part you consider you—accounts for only a tiny fraction of the brain’s function, what is all the rest doing? This is the question that David Eagleman—renowned neuroscientist and acclaimed author of Sum—answers in a book as accessible and entertaining as it is deeply informed by startling, up-to-the-minute research."
3264,The Denial of Death,psychology,"Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the ""why"" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing."
3265,The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds,psychology,"Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics. One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. In The Undoing Project, Lewis shows how their Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality."
3266,Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,psychology,"Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
(front flap)"
3267,What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People,psychology,"He says that's his best offer. Is it?

She says she agrees. Does she?

The interview went great - or did it?

He said he'd never do it again. But he did.

Read this book and send your nonverbal intelligence soaring. Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence officer and a recognized expert on nonverbal behavior, explains how to ""speed-read"" people: decode sentiments and behaviors, avoid hidden pitfalls, and look for deceptive behaviors. You'll also learn how your body language can influence what your boss, family, friends, and strangers think of you. You will discover:


The ancient survival instincts that drive body language
Why the face is the least likely place to gauge a person's true feelings
What thumbs, feet, and eyelids reveal about moods and motives
The most powerful behaviors that reveal our confidence and true sentiments
Simple nonverbals that instantly establish trust
Simple nonverbals that instantly communicate authority
Filled with examples from Navarro's professional experience, this definitive book offers a powerful new way to navigate your world."
3268,The Undiscovered Self,psychology,"One of the world’s greatest psychiatrists reveals how to embrace our own humanity and resist the pressures of an ever-changing world.

In this challenging and provocative work, Dr. Carl Jung—one of history’s greatest minds—argues that civilization’s future depends on our ability as individuals to resist the collective forces of society. Only by gaining an awareness and understanding of one’s unconscious mind and true, inner nature—“the undiscovered self”—can we as individuals acquire the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. But this requires that we face our fear of the duality of the human psyche—the existence of good and the capacity for evil in every individual.

In this seminal book, Jung compellingly argues that only then can we begin to cope with the dangers posed by mass society—“the sum total of individuals”—and resist the potential threats posed by those in power."
3269,Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy,psychology,"The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other ""black holes"" of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life. Now, in this updated edition, Dr. Burns adds an All-New Consumer′s Guide To Anti-depressant Drugs as well as a new introduction to help answer your questions about the many options available for treating depression.

- Recognise what causes your mood swings
- Nip negative feelings in the bud
- Deal with guilt
- Handle hostility and criticism
- Overcome addiction to love and approval
- Build self-esteem
- Feel good everyday"
3270,One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,psychology,"Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness."
3271,Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard,psychology,"Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?

The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind - that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results:

- The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients (see page 242)
- The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping (see page 130)
- The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service (see page 199)

In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline."
3272,Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,psychology,"If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.

In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.

Discover the four types of difficult parents:



The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety

The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone

The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting

The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory
 "
3273,Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,psychology,"With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music. Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable, Musicophilia is Oliver Sacks’ latest masterpiece."
3274,"Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus",psychology,"Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to Earth and amnesia set in: they forgot they were from different planets.
Based on years of successful counseling of couples and individuals, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus has helped millions of couples transform their relationships. Now viewed as a modern classic, this phenomenal book has helped men and women realize how different they really are and how to communicate their needs in such a way that conflict doesn't arise and intimacy is given every chance to grow!!!!"
3275,The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence,psychology,"True fear is a gift.
Unwarranted fear is a curse.
Learn how to tell the difference.

A date won't take ""no"" for an answer. The new nanny gives a mother an uneasy feeling. A stranger in a deserted parking lot offers unsolicited help. The threat of violence surrounds us every day. But we can protect ourselves, by learning to trust—and act on—our gut instincts.

In this empowering book, Gavin de Becker, the man Oprah Winfrey calls the nation's leading expert on violent behavior, shows you how to spot even subtle signs of danger—before it's too late. Shattering the myth that most violent acts are unpredictable, de Becker, whose clients include top Hollywood stars and government agencies, offers specific ways to protect yourself and those you love, including how to act when approached by a stranger, when you should fear someone close to you, what to do if you are being stalked, how to uncover the source of anonymous threats or phone calls, the biggest mistake you can make with a threatening person, and more. Learn to spot the danger signals others miss. It might just save your life."
3276,The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology,psychology,Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics--as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies. Illustrations.
3277,Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions,psychology,"From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, a startling challenge to our thinking about depression and anxiety.

Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking antidepressants when he was a teenager. He was told—like his entire generation—that his problem was caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate this question—and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong.

Across the world, Hari discovered social scientists who were uncovering the real causes—and they are mostly not in our brains, but in the way we live today. Hari’s journey took him from the people living in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin—all showing in vivid and dramatic detail these new insights. They lead to solutions radically different from the ones we have been offered up until now.

Just as Chasing the Scream transformed the global debate about addiction, with over twenty million views for his TED talk and the animation based on it, Lost Connections will lead us to a very different debate about depression and anxiety—one that shows how, together, we can end this epidemic."
3278,The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook,psychology,"What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse, or disaster affect a child's mind--and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence. In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, he tells their stories of trauma and transformation through the lens of science, revealing the brain's astonishing capacity for healing. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what exactly happens to the brain when a child is exposed to extreme stress-and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease a child's pain and help him grow into a healthy adult. Through the stories of children who recover-physically, mentally, and emotionally-from the most devastating circumstances, Perry shows how simple things like surroundings, affection, language, and touch can deeply impact the developing brain, for better or for worse. In this deeply informed and moving book, Bruce Perry dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child."
3279,Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know,psychology,"Think Again is a book about the benefit of doubt, and about how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity, but constantly willing to rethink their stances and that leaders who admit they don't know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams.

New evidence shows us that as a mindset and a skilllset, rethinking can be taught and Grant explains how to develop the necessary qualities to do it. Section 1 explores why we struggle to think again and how we can learn to do it as individuals, arguing that 'grit' alone can actually be counterproductive. Section 2 discusses how we can help others think again through learning about 'argument literacy'. And the final section 3 looks at how schools, businesses and governments fall short in building cultures that encourage rethinking.

In the end, learning to rethink may be the secret skill to give you the edge in a world changing faster than ever."
3280,The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves,psychology,"Het wetenschappelijk bewijs liegt er niet om: zelfs de meest eerlijke mensen nemen meerdere keren per dag een loopje met de waarheid. Hóé (on)eerlijk we zijn blijkt verrassend genoeg afhankelijk van invloeden van buitenaf: Zet een proefpersoon een nepmerk zonnebril op en hij gaat eerder vals spelen. Verplaats bij het belastingaangifte de plek voor de handtekening naar boven aan het formulier en een heel land wordt een klein beetje eerlijker. Maar let op: een hogere straf of een grotere pakkans blijken daarentegen vrijwel geen effect te hebben op onze eerlijkheid.

In Heerlijk oneerlijk geeft Dan Ariely een onweerstaanbaar leuk kijkje achter de schermen van de menselijke komedie. Aan de hand van pakkende anekdotes en tegen-intuïtieve inzichten laat hij de verborgen krachten zien die jou - en anderen - eerlijk of oneerlijk maken.

Ariely's eerdere bestseller Predictably Irrational is inmiddels in 27 talen vertaald. Zijn lezingen over irrationeel gedrag op TED.com zijn wereldwijd meer dan drie miljoen keer bekeken. Dan Ariely is hoogleraar psychologie en gedragseconomie aan Duke University. De afgelopen jaren heeft hij baanbrekend onderzoek gedaan naar de waarheid achter oneerlijkheid. Tenminste, dat beweert hij.
More book description"
3281,The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,psychology,"Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world."
3282,"The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness",psychology,"The Japanese phenomenon that teaches us the simple yet profound lessons required to liberate our real selves and find lasting happiness.

The Courage to Be Disliked shows you how to unlock the power within yourself to become your best and truest self, change your future and find lasting happiness. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of 19th-century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, the authors explain how we are all free to determine our own future free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others. It’s a philosophy that’s profoundly liberating, allowing us to develop the courage to change, and to ignore the limitations that we and those around us can place on ourselves.

The result is a book that is both highly accessible and profound in its importance. Millions have already read and benefited from its wisdom. Now that The Courage to Be Disliked has been published for the first time in English, so can you."
3283,The Hero With a Thousand Faces,psychology,"The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world mythology, the book creates a roadmap for navigating the frustrating path of contemporary life. Examining heroic myths in the light of modern psychology, it considers not only the patterns and stages of mythology but also its relevance to our lives today—and to the life of any person seeking a fully realized existence.

Myth, according to Campbell, is the projection of a culture's dreams onto a large screen; Campbell's book, like Star Wars, the film it helped inspire, is an exploration of the big-picture moments from the stage that is our world. It is a must-have resource for both experienced students of mythology and the explorer just beginning to approach myth as a source of knowledge."
3284,Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind,psychology,"Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. Some of his most notable cases:


A woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial.
A man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be ""wired"" for religious experience?
A woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time.
Dr. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier -- the human mind -- yielding new and provocative insights into the ""big questions"" about consciousness and the self."
3285,The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language,psychology,"The classic book on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind.

In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published."
3286,When Nietzsche Wept,psychology,"In 19th-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era.

Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him. When he agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental ""talking cure"", Breuer never expects that he, too, will find solace in their sessions. Only through facing his own inner demons can the gifted healer begin to help his patient.

In When Nietzsche Wept, Irvin Yalom blends fact and fiction, atmosphere and suspense to unfold an unforgettable story about the redemptive power of friendship."
3287,Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life,psychology,"Do you hunger for skills to improve the quality of your relationships, to deepen your sense of personal empowerment or to simply communicate more effectively? Unfortunately, for centuries our culture has taught us to think and speak in ways that can actually perpetuate conflict, internal pain and even violence. Nonviolent Communication partners practical skills with a powerful consciousness and vocabulary to help you get what you want peacefully.

In this internationally acclaimed text, Marshall Rosenberg offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better. Discover how the language you use can strengthen your relationships, build trust, prevent conflicts and heal pain. Revolutionary, yet simple, NVC offers you the most effective tools to reduce violence and create peace in your life—one interaction at a time.

Over 150,000 copies sold and now available in 20 languages around the world. More than 250,000 people each year from all walks of life are learning these life-changing skills."
3288,The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home,psychology,"Lẽ phải của phi lý trí không phải là một cuốn sách hàn lâm khô khan chỉ toàn lý thuyết, mà nó được sử dụng dữ liệu từ những thí nghiệm thú vị và độc đáo dẫn đến những kết luận hấp dẫn về cách thức – và nguyên nhân tại sao chúng ta hành động như vậy. Từ những thái độ tại nơi làm việc của chúng ta, cho tới những mối quan hệ lãng mạn, tới việc chúng ta luôn tìm kiếm mục đích cuộc đời mình, Ariely lý giải cách thức phá vỡ những khuôn mẫu bi quan trong suy nghĩ và hành vi của chúng ta để đưa ra những quyết định tốt hơn. Cuốn sách kỹ năng này sẽ thay đổi cách thức chúng ta nhận thức bản thân trong công việc và trong gia đình – và soi xét các hành vi phi lý trí của chúng ta dưới một thứ sắc thái ánh sáng hoàn toàn mới mẻ. Đọc Lẽ phải của phi lý trí – một cuốn sách lãnh đạo và quản lý hữu ích, bạn sẽ biết nhiều điều như:

- Tại sao những khoản tiền thưởng lớn lại có thể khiến các CEO làm việc kém hiệu quả hơn?

- Làm cách nào mà những định hướng rối rắm lại hữu ích đối với chúng ta?

- Tại sao việc trả thù lại quan trọng?

- Tại sao có một sự khác biệt rất lớn giữa điều mà chúng ta nghĩ là sẽ khiến chúng ta hạnh phúc và những thứ thực sự khiến chúng ta hạnh phúc?

- Và rất nhiều phát hiện thú vị khác."
3289,The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,psychology,"Bollingen Series XX
Essays which state the fundamentals of Jung's psychological system: ""On the Psychology of the Unconscious"" & ""The Relations Between the Ego & the Unconscious,"" with their original versions in an appendix."
3290,How We Decide,psychology,"The first book to use the unexpected discoveries of neuroscience to help us make the best decisions.

Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we “blink” and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind’s black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they’re discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason—and the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it’s best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we’re picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.

Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of “deciders”—from airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players.

Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions that are of interest to just about anyone, from CEOs to firefighters: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?"
3291,The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment,psychology,"To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of Eckhart Tolle's extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.” Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question-and-answer format to guide us.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better."
3292,Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World,psychology,"One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.

In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four ""rules,"" for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world."
3293,How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain,psychology,"A new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, law enforcement, and our understanding of the human mind.

Emotions feel automatic, like uncontrollable reactions to things we think and experience. Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology—ans this paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for us all.

Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose theory of emotion is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions are housed in different parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning. This new theory means that you play a much greater role in your emotional life than you ever thought. Its repercussions are already shaking the foundations not only of psychology but also of medicine, the legal system, child-rearing, meditation, and even airport security.

Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are Made answers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain. "
3294,The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression,psychology,"With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, award-winning author Andrew Solomon takes the reader on a journey of incomparable range and resonance into the most pervasive of family secrets. His contribution to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition is truly stunning.

The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has had on various demographic populations around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness.

The depth of human experience Solomon chronicles, the range of his intelligence, and his boundless curiosity and compassion will change the reader's view of the world."
3295,Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think,psychology,"Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future."
3296,Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness,psychology,"An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.

When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?

In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen."
3297,Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities,psychology,"Here is the unbelievable yet true story of Sybil Dorsett, a survivor of terrible childhood abuse who as an adult was a victim of sudden and mysterious blackouts. What happened during those blackouts has made Sybil's experience one of the most famous psychological cases in the world."
3298,Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us,psychology,"Most people are both repelled and intrigued by the images of cold-blooded, conscienceless murderers that increasingly populate our movies, television programs, and newspaper headlines. With their flagrant criminal violation of society's rules, serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are among the most dramatic examples of the psychopath. Individuals with this personality disorder are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and know the difference between right and wrong, yet they are terrifyingly self-centered, remorseless, and unable to care about the feelings of others. Perhaps most frightening, they often seem completely normal to unsuspecting targets--and they do not always ply their trade by killing. Presenting a compelling portrait of these dangerous men and women based on 25 years of distinguished scientific research, Dr. Robert D. Hare vividly describes a world of con artists, hustlers, rapists, and other predators who charm, lie, and manipulate their way through life. Are psychopaths mad, or simply bad? How can they be recognized? And how can we protect ourselves? This book provides solid information and surprising insights for anyone seeking to understand this devastating condition."
3299,Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype,psychology,"Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller shows how women's vitality can be restored through what she calls ""psychic archeological digs"" into the ruins of the female unconsious. Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes helps women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.

Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul."
3300,Pride and Prejudice,romance,"Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268

Since its immediate success in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work ""her own darling child"" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, ""as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print."" The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England. (less)"
3301,The Fault in Our Stars,romance,"Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love. (less)"
3302,Twilight,romance,"About three things I was absolutely positive.

First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him—and I didn't know how dominant that part might be—that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight is a love story with bite. (less)"
3303,The Hating Game,romance,"Nemesis (n.)
1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome;
2) A person’s undoing;
3) Joshua Templeman.
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman hate each other. Not dislike. Not begrudgingly tolerate. Hate. And they have no problem displaying their feelings through a series of ritualistic passive aggressive maneuvers as they sit across from each other, executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company. Lucy can’t understand Joshua’s joyless, uptight, meticulous approach to his job. Joshua is clearly baffled by Lucy’s overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and Pollyanna attitude.

Now up for the same promotion, their battle of wills has come to a head and Lucy refuses to back down when their latest game could cost her her dream job…But the tension between Lucy and Joshua has also reached its boiling point, and Lucy is discovering that maybe she doesn’t hate Joshua. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game. (less)"
3304,Beach Read,romance,"A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really. (less)"
3305,The Kiss Quotient,romance,"A heartwarming and refreshing debut novel that proves one thing: there's not enough data in the world to predict what will make your heart tick.

Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice—with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan—from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he's making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic... (less)"
3306,"Red, White & Royal Blue",romance,"Original cover edition of ASIN B07J4LPZRN here.

First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince.

As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you? (less)"
3307,The Love Hypothesis,romance,"As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope. (less)"
3308,It Ends with Us,romance,"Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.

Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up — she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan — her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened. (less)"
3309,The Unhoneymooners,romance,"Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of... lucky.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501128035. (less)"
3310,People We Meet on Vacation,romance,"Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read, a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations. (less)"
3311,Fifty Shades of Grey,romance,"When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms.
 
Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.

Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.

This book is intended for mature audiences. (less)"
3312,Me Before You,romance,"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me.

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart? (less)"
3313,New Moon,romance,"There is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13 9780316160193 here.

I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect - not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place.

I FELT LIKE I WAS TRAPPED IN ONE OF THOSE TERRIFYING NIGHTMARES, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough.... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

FOR BELLA SWAN THERE IS ONE THING more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning....

LEGIONS OF READERS ENTRANCED BY THE New York Times bestseller Twilight are hungry for the continuing story of star-crossed lovers Bell and Edward. In New Moon, Stephanie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural spin. passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality. (less)"
3314,Eleanor & Park,romance,"“Bono met his wife in high school,” Park says.
“So did Jerry Lee Lewis,” Eleanor answers.
“I’m not kidding,” he says.
“You should be,” she says, “we’re 16.”
“What about Romeo and Juliet?”
“Shallow, confused, then dead.”
“I love you,” Park says.
“Wherefore art thou,” Eleanor answers.
“I’m not kidding,” he says.
“You should be.”

Set over one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. (less)"
3315,Outlander,romance,"The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. (less)"
3316,"Take a Hint, Dani Brown",romance,"Talia Hibbert returns with another charming romantic comedy about a young woman who agrees to fake date her friend after a video of him “rescuing” her from their office building goes viral...

Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.

When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and ex-rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Now half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse?

Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf’s secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his... um, thighs.

Suddenly, the easy lay Dani dreamed of is more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint? (less)"
3317,An Offer From a Gentleman,romance,"Will she accept his offer before the clock strikes midnight?

Sophie Beckett never dreamed she'd be able to sneak into Lady Bridgerton's famed masquerade ball—or that ""Prince Charming"" would be waiting there for her! Though the daughter of an earl, Sophie has been relegated to the role of servant by her disdainful stepmother. But now, spinning in the strong arms of the debonair and devastatingly handsome Benedict Bridgerton, she feels like royalty. Alas, she knows all enchantments must end when the clock strikes midnight.

Who was that extraordinary woman? Ever since that magical night, a radiant vision in silver has blinded Benedict to the attractions of any other—except, perhaps this alluring and oddly familiar beauty dressed in housemaid's garb whom he feels compelled to rescue from a most disagreeable situation. He has sworn to find and wed his mystery miss, but this breathtaking maid makes him weak with wanting her. Yet, if he offers his heart, will Benedict sacrifice his only chance for a fairy tale love?

Alternate cover for ISBN 0380815583 / 9780380815586 (less)"
3318,The Night Circus,romance,"The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart. (less)"
3319,"Everything, Everything",romance,"My disease is as rare as it is famous. It’s a form of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, but basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in fifteen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.

But then one day, a moving truck arrives. New next door neighbors. I look out the window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black t-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. I want to learn everything about him, and I do. I learn that he is funny and fierce. I learn that his eyes are Atlantic Ocean-blue and that his vice is stealing silverware. I learn that when I talk to him, my whole world opens up, and I feel myself starting to change—starting to want things. To want out of my bubble. To want everything, everything the world has to offer.

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster. (less)"
3320,Hopeless,romance,"Sometimes discovering the truth can leave you more hopeless than believing the lies…

That’s what seventeen-year-old Sky realizes after she meets Dean Holder. A guy with a reputation that rivals her own and an uncanny ability to invoke feelings in her she’s never had before. He terrifies her and captivates her all in the span of just one encounter, and something about the way he makes her feel sparks buried memories from a past that she wishes could just stay buried.

Sky struggles to keep him at a distance knowing he’s nothing but trouble, but Holder insists on learning everything about her. After finally caving to his unwavering pursuit, Sky soon finds that Holder isn’t at all who he’s been claiming to be. When the secrets he’s been keeping are finally revealed, every single facet of Sky’s life will change forever. (less)"
3321,Bared to You,romance,"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Day comes the provocative masterstroke of abandon and obsession that redefined the meaning of desire and became a global phenomenon...

Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness. He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I'd never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily.

Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other's most private wounds and desires.

The bonds of his love transformed me, even as I prayed that the torment of our pasts didn't tear us apart (less)"
3322,Nov-09,romance,"Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, the day before her scheduled cross-country move. Their untimely attraction leads them to spend Fallon’s last day in L.A. together, and her eventful life becomes the creative inspiration Ben has always sought for his novel. Over time and amidst the various relationships and tribulations of their own separate lives, they continue to meet on the same date every year. Until one day Fallon becomes unsure if Ben has been telling her the truth or fabricating a perfect reality for the sake of the ultimate plot twist.

Can Ben’s relationship with Fallon—and simultaneously his novel—be considered a love story if it ends in heartbreak?

Beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover returns with an unforgettable love story between a writer and his unexpected muse. (less)"
3323,Love and Other Words,romance,"The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You). (less)"
3324,P.S. I Still Love You,romance,"Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter.

They were just pretending. Until they weren’t. And now Lara Jean has to learn what it's like to be in a real relationship and not just a make-believe one.

But when another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him suddenly return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?

In this charming and heartfelt sequel to the New York Times bestseller To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Lara Jean is about to find out that falling in love is the easy part. (less)"
3325,City of Bones,romance,"When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder― much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing―not even a smear of blood―to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know... (less)"
3326,The Wall of Winnipeg and Me,romance,"Vanessa Mazur knows she's doing the right thing. She shouldn't feel bad for quitting. Being an assistant/housekeeper/fairy godmother to the top defensive end in the National Football Organization was always supposed to be temporary. She has plans and none of them include washing extra-large underwear longer than necessary.

But when Aiden Graves shows up at her door wanting her to come back, she's beyond shocked.

For two years, the man known as The Wall of Winnipeg couldn't find it in him to tell her good morning or congratulate her on her birthday. Now? He's asking for the unthinkable.

What do you say to the man who is used to getting everything he wants? (less)"
3327,Romancing Mister Bridgerton,romance,"Everyone knows that Colin Bridgerton is the most charming man in London. Penelope Featherington has secretly adored her best friend's brother for...well, it feels like forever. After half a lifetime of watching Colin Bridgerton from afar, she thinks she knows everything about him, until she stumbles across his deepest secret...and fears she doesn't know him at all.

Colin Bridgerton is tired of being thought nothing but an empty-headed charmer, tired of everyone's preoccupation with the notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, who can't seem to publish an edition without mentioning him in the first paragraph. But when Colin returns to London from a trip abroad he discovers nothing in his life is quite the same - especially Penelope Featherington! The girl haunting his dreams. But when he discovers that Penelope has secrets of her own, this elusive bachelor must decide...is she his biggest threat - or his promise of a happy ending? (less)"
3328,A Court of Wings and Ruin,romance,"The epic third novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas.

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's actions and learn what she can about the invading king threatening to bring her land to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit. One slip could bring doom not only for Feyre, but for everything-and everyone-she holds dear.

As war bears down upon them all, Feyre endeavors to take her place amongst the High Fae of the land, balancing her struggle to master her powers-both magical and political-and her love for her court and family. Amidst these struggles, Feyre and Rhysand must decide whom to trust amongst the cunning and lethal High Lords, and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

In this thrilling third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Sarah J. Maas, the fate of Feyre's world is at stake as armies grapple for power over the one thing that could destroy it. (less)"
3329,The Wedding Date,romance,"A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in a fun and flirty debut novel.

Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.

On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other...

They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century--or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want... (less)"
3330,Divergent,romance,"In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her. (less)"
3331,The Hunger Games,romance,"Could you survive on your own in the wild, with every one out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love. (less)"
3332,Shatter Me,romance,"I have a curse
I have a gift

I am a monster
I'm more than human

My touch is lethal
My touch is power

I am their weapon
I will fight back

Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war—and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior. (less)"
3333,On Dublin Street,romance,"Jocelyn Butler has been hiding from her past for years. But all her secrets are about to be laid bare ...

Four years ago, Jocelyn left her tragic past behind in the States and started over in Scotland, burying her grief, ignoring her demons, and forging ahead without attachments. Her solitary life is working well - until she moves into a new apartment on Dublin Street, where she meets a man who shakes her carefully guarded world to its core.

Braden Carmichael is used to getting what he wants, and he's determined to get Jocelyn into his bed. Knowing how skittish she is about entering a relationship, Braden proposes an arrangement that will satisfy their intense attraction without any strings attached.

But after an intrigued Jocelyn accepts, she realizes that Braden won't be satisfied with just mind-blowing passion. The stubborn Scotsman is intent on truly knowing her . . . down to the very soul. (less)"
3334,Heartstopper: Volume Three,romance,"In this volume we’ll see the Heartstopper gang go on a school trip to Paris! Not only are Nick and Charlie navigating a new city, but also telling more people about their relationship AND learning more about the challenges each other are facing in private…

Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem… rather close…? (less)"
3335,Perfect Chemistry,romance,"A fresh, urban twist on the classic tale of star-crossed lovers.

When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created 'perfect' life is about to unravel before her eyes. She's forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten everything she's worked so hard for: her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend, and the secret that her home life is anything but perfect.

Alex is a bad boy and he knows it. So when he makes a bet with his friends to lure Brittany into his life, he thinks nothing of it. But soon Alex realizes Brittany is a real person with real problems, and suddenly the bet he made in arrogance turns into something much more.

In a passionate story about looking beneath the surface, Simone Elkeles breaks through the stereotypes and barriers that threaten to keep Brittany and Alex apart. (less)"
3336,One Day in December,romance,"Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic... and then her bus drives away.

Certain they're fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn't find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they ""reunite"" at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It's Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.

What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525574682. (less)"
3337,Catching Fire,romance,"Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn. (less)"
3338,Matched,romance,"In the Society, officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one…until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion.

Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic. (less)"
3339,Slammed,romance,"This is an alternate cover edition for ASIN B008TRUDAS.

Following the unexpected death of her father, 18-year-old Layken is forced to be the rock for both her mother and younger brother. Outwardly, she appears resilient and tenacious, but inwardly, she's losing hope.

Enter Will Cooper: The attractive, 21-year-old new neighbor with an intriguing passion for slam poetry and a unique sense of humor. Within days of their introduction, Will and Layken form an intense emotional connection, leaving Layken with a renewed sense of hope.

Not long after an intense, heart-stopping first date, they are slammed to the core when a shocking revelation forces their new relationship to a sudden halt. Daily interactions become impossibly painful as they struggle to find a balance between the feelings that pull them together, and the secret that keeps them apart. (less)"
3340,Fix Her Up,romance,"A brand new romantic comedy from New York Times bestseller Tessa Bailey!

Georgette Castle’s family runs the best home renovation business in town, but she picked balloons instead of blueprints and they haven’t taken her seriously since. Frankly, she’s over it. Georgie loves planning children’s birthday parties and making people laugh, just not at her own expense. She’s determined to fix herself up into a Woman of the World... whatever that means.

Phase one: new framework for her business (a website from this decade, perhaps?)

Phase two: a gut-reno on her wardrobe (fyi, leggings are pants.)

Phase three: updates to her exterior (do people still wax?)

Phase four: put herself on the market (and stop crushing on Travis Ford!)

Living her best life means facing the truth: Georgie hasn’t been on a date since, well, ever. Nobody’s asking the town clown out for a night of hot sex, that’s for sure. Maybe if people think she’s having a steamy love affair, they’ll acknowledge she’s not just the “little sister” who paints faces for a living. And who better to help demolish that image than the resident sports star and tabloid favorite?

Travis Ford was major league baseball’s hottest rookie when an injury ended his career. Now he’s flipping houses to keep busy and trying to forget his glory days. But he can’t even cross the street without someone recapping his greatest hits. Or making a joke about his… bat. And then there's Georgie, his best friend’s sister, who is not a kid anymore. When she proposes a wild scheme—that they pretend to date, to shock her family and help him land a new job—he agrees. What’s the harm? It’s not like it’s real. But the girl Travis used to tease is now a funny, full-of-life woman and there’s nothing fake about how much he wants her... (less)"
3341,Verity,romance,"Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.

Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.

Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her. (less)"
3342,When He Was Wicked,romance,"Everything was so much simpler... when he was wicked.

In every life there is a turning point. A moment so tremendous, so sharp and breathtaking, that one knows one's life will never be the same. For Michael Stirling, London's most infamous rake, that moment came the first time he laid eyes on Francesca Bridgerton.

After a lifetime of chasing women, of smiling slyly as they chased him, of allowing himself to be caught but never permitting his heart to become engaged, he took one look at Francesca Bridgerton and fell so fast and hard into love it was a wonder he managed to remain standing. Unfortunately for Michael, however, Francesca's surname was to remain Bridgerton for only a mere thirty-six hours longer—the occasion of their meeting was, lamentably, a supper celebrating her imminent wedding to his cousin.

But that was then... Now Michael is the earl and Francesca is free, but still she thinks of him as nothing other than her dear friend and confidant. Michael dares not speak to her of his love... until one dangerous night, when she steps innocently into his arms, and passion proves stronger than even the most wicked of secrets... (less)"
3343,The Last Song,romance,"Alternate Cover Edition can be found here

Seventeen-year-old Veronica 'Ronnie' Miller’s life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father . . . until her mother decides it would be in everyone’s best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie’s father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.



The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story about love in its myriad forms - first love, the love between parents and children - that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that deeply felt relationships can break our hearts . . . and heal them. (less)"
3344,"Hush, Hush",romance,"A SACRED OATH
A FALLEN ANGEL
A FORBIDDEN LOVE

Romance was not part of Nora Grey's plan. She's never been particularly attracted to the boys at her school, no matter how hard her best friend, Vee, pushes them at her. Not until Patch comes along. With his easy smile and eyes that seem to see inside her, Patch draws Nora to him against her better judgment.

But after a series of terrifying encounters, Nora's not sure whom to trust. Patch seems to be everywhere she is and seems to know more about her than her closest friends. She can't decide whether she should fall into his arms or run and hide. And when she tries to seek some answers, she finds herself near a truth that is way more unsettling than anything Patch makes her feel.

For she is right in the middle of an ancient battle between the immortal and those that have fallen - and, when it comes to choosing sides, the wrong choice will cost Nora her life. (less)"
3345,All the Bright Places,romance,"The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Elle Fanning!
 
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
 
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
 
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
 
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven. (less)"
3346,Devil in Winter,romance,"A devil's bargain.

Desperate to escape her scheming relatives, Evangeline Jenner has sought the help of the most infamous scoundrel in London. A marriage of convenience is the only solution.

No one would have ever paired the shy, stammering wallflower with the sinfully handsome viscount. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Evie is a woman of hidden strength—and Sebastian desires her more than any woman he's ever known.

Determined to win her husband's elusive heart, Evie dares to strike a bargain with the devil: if Sebastian can stay celibate for three months, she will allow him into her bed. When Evie is threatened by a vengeful enemy from the past, Sebastian vows to do whatever it takes to protect his wife . . . even at the expense of his own life.

Together they will defy their perilous fate, for the sake of all-consuming love. (less)"
3347,Crazy Rich Asians,romance,"Crazy Rich Asians is the outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season.

When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home, long drives to explore the island, and quality time with the man she might one day marry. What she doesn't know is that Nick's family home happens to look like a palace, that she'll ride in more private planes than cars, and that with one of Asia's most eligible bachelors on her arm, Rachel might as well have a target on her back.

Initiated into a world of dynastic splendor beyond imagination, Rachel meets Astrid, the It Girl of Singapore society; Eddie, whose family practically lives in the pages of the Hong Kong socialite magazines; and Eleanor, Nick's formidable mother, a woman who has very strong feelings about who her son should—and should not—marry.

Uproarious, addictive, and filled with jaw-dropping opulence, Crazy Rich Asians is an insider's look at the Asian JetSet; a perfect depiction of the clash between old money and new money; between Overseas Chinese and Mainland Chinese; and a fabulous novel about what it means to be young, in love, and gloriously, crazily rich. (less)"
3348,The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,romance,"Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel. (less)"
3349,Gone Girl,romance,"Who are you?
What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? (less)"
3350,The Girl Who Played with Fire,romance,"The Expose
Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses... (less)"
3351,The Da Vinci Code,romance,"ISBN 9780307277671 moved to this edition.
While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci—clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci—and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle—while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move—the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever. (less)"
3352,The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest,romance,"The stunning third and final novel in Stieg Larsson's internationally best-selling trilogy.

Lisbeth Salander - the heart of Larsson's two previous novels - lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.

~from the jacket (less)"
3353,Angels & Demons,romance,"World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati. In a desperate race to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and deserted cathedrals, and into the depths of the most secretive vault on earth...the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.
(back cover) (less)"
3354,The Shining,romance,"Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old. (less)"
3355,The Silence of the Lambs,romance,"A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname—Buffalo Bill—is stalking women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the Bureau's Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter—Hannibal the Cannibal—who is kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Dr. Lecter is a former psychiatrist with a grisly history, unusual tastes, and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of ""The Silence of the Lambs""—an ingenious, masterfully written book and an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction. (less)"
3356,The Firm,romance,"Adaptation for younger readers.

Mitch McDeere is a young, intelligent and ambitious lawyer. When he gets a job with a top tax law firm in Memphis, he is delighted. But he quickly becomes suspicious after mysterious deaths, obsessive office security, and the Chicago mob figure into its operations. The situation only escalates when Mitch discovers that the firm is listening in on his phone calls and that the FBI want to speak to him. Money and power has a price — and it could be Mitch's life.

Adaptation Notes
This adaptation is a simplified text designed in association with world famous educational publishers, to provide a step-by-step approach to the joys of reading for pleasure. The series include original stories, contemporary titles based on today's best-selling media hits, and easily accessible versions of the literary classics from around the world. Each book has an introduction and extensive activity material. They are published at different levels for readers of all skill levels.

Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter

Book Details:
- Difficulty: Level 5 - Upper Intermediate (2300 words)
- Category: Contemporary
- Dialect: British English (less)"
3357,The Girl on the Train,romance,"Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar. Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train...

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here. (less)"
3358,Misery,romance,"Alternate cover editions here and here.

Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house. (less)"
3359,And Then There Were None,romance,"First, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion:

""Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.""

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion. (less)"
3360,Sharp Objects,romance,"Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556) (less)"
3361,Voyager,romance,"From the author of the breathtaking bestsellers Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber, the extraordinary saga continues.
Their passionate encounter happened long ago by whatever measurement Claire Randall took. Two decades before, she had traveled back in time and into the arms of a gallant eighteenth-century Scot named Jamie Fraser. Then she returned to her own century to bear his child, believing him dead in the tragic battle of Culloden. Yet his memory has never lessened its hold on her... and her body still cries out for him in her dreams.
Then Claire discovers that Jamie survived. Torn between returning to him and staying with their daughter in her own era, Claire must choose her destiny. And as time and space come full circle, she must find the courage to face the passion and pain awaiting her...the deadly intrigues raging in a divided Scotland... and the daring voyage into the dark unknown that can reunite or forever doom her timeless love.
(less)"
3362,The Ex Hex,romance,"New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins, writing as Erin Sterling, casts a spell with a spine-tingling romance full of wishes, witches, and hexes gone wrong.

Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: vodka, weepy music, bubble baths…and a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but with only an “orchard hayride” scented candle on hand, she isn’t worried it will cause him anything more than a bad hair day or two.

That is until Rhys Penhallow, descendent of the town’s ancestors, breaker of hearts, and annoyingly just as gorgeous as he always was, returns to Graves Glen, Georgia. What should be a quick trip to recharge the town’s ley lines and make an appearance at the annual fall festival turns disastrously wrong. With one calamity after another striking Rhys, Vivi realizes her silly little Ex Hex may not have been so harmless after all.

Suddenly, Graves Glen is under attack from murderous wind-up toys, a pissed off ghost, and a talking cat with some interesting things to say. Vivi and Rhys have to ignore their off the charts chemistry to work together to save the town and find a way to break the break-up curse before it’s too late. (less)"
3363,Reflected in You,romance,"Gideon Cross. As beautiful and flawless on the outside as he was damaged and tormented on the inside. He was a bright, scorching flame that singed me with the darkest of pleasures. I couldn't stay away. I didn't want to. He was my addiction... my every desire... mine.

My past was as violent as his, and I was just as broken. We’d never work. It was too hard, too painful... except when it was perfect. Those moments when the driving hunger and desperate love were the most exquisite insanity.

We were bound by our need. And our passion would take us beyond our limits to the sweetest, sharpest edge of obsession... (less)"
3364,99 Percent Mine,romance,"Crush: a strong and often short-lived infatuation, particularly for someone beyond your reach…

Darcy Barrett has undertaken a global survey of men. She’s travelled the world, and can categorically say that no one measures up to Tom Valeska, whose only flaw is that Darcy’s twin brother Jamie saw him first and claimed him forever as his best friend. Despite Darcy’s best efforts, Tom’s off limits and loyal to her brother, 99%. That’s the problem with finding her dream man at age eight and peaking in her photography career at age twenty—ever since, she’s had to learn to settle for good enough.

When Darcy and Jamie inherit a tumble-down cottage from their grandmother, they’re left with strict instructions to bring it back to its former glory and sell the property. Darcy plans to be in an aisle seat halfway across the ocean as soon as the renovations start, but before she can cut and run, she finds a familiar face on her porch: house-flipper extraordinaire Tom’s arrived, he’s bearing power tools, and he’s single for the first time in almost a decade.

Suddenly Darcy’s considering sticking around to make sure her twin doesn’t ruin the cottage’s inherent magic with his penchant for grey and chrome. She’s definitely not staying because of her new business partner’s tight t-shirts, or that perfect face that's inspiring her to pick up her camera again. Soon sparks are flying—and it’s not the faulty wiring. It turns out one percent of Tom’s heart might not be enough for Darcy anymore. This time around, she’s switching things up. She’s going to make Tom Valeska 99 percent hers. (less)"
3365,Kulti,romance,"“Trust me, I’ve wanted to punch you in the face a time or five.”

When the man you worshipped as a kid becomes your coach, it’s supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. Keywords: supposed to.

It didn't take a week for 27-year-old Sal Casillas to wonder what she'd seen in the international soccer icon - why she'd ever had his posters on her wall or ever envisioned marrying him and having super-playing soccer babies.

Sal had long ago gotten over the worst non-break-up in the history of imaginary relationships with a man who hadn't known she'd existed. So she isn't prepared for this version of Reiner Kulti who shows up to her team's season: a quiet, reclusive shadow of the explosive, passionate man he'd once been. (less)"
3366,Heartstopper: Volume Four,romance,"Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. The bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in between: this is the fourth volume of HEARTSTOPPER, for fans of The Art of Being Normal, Holly Bourne and Love, Simon.

Charlie didn't think Nick could ever like him back, but now they're officially boyfriends. Charlie's beginning to feel ready to say those three little words: I love you.

Nick's been feeling the same, but he's got a lot on his mind - not least coming out to his dad, and the fact that Charlie might have an eating disorder.

As summer turns to autumn and a new school year begins, Charlie and Nick are about to learn a lot about what love means.

Heartstopper is about love, friendship, loyalty and mental illness. It encompasses all the small stories of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

This is the fourth volume of Heartstopper, which has now been optioned for television by See-Saw Films. (less)"
3367,Insurgent,romance,"One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth's much-anticipated second book of the dystopian DIVERGENT series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature. (less)"
3368,Can You Keep a Secret?,romance,"Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets: Secrets from her boyfriend: I've always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken. Secrets from her mother: I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur. Secrets she wouldn't share with anyone in the world: I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is. Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.…Until Emma comes face-to-face with Jack Harper, the company's elusive CEO, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her... (less)"
3369,Vampire Academy,romance,"Only a true best friend can protect you from your immortal enemies...

Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess: a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earth's magic. She must be protected at all times from Strigoi; the fiercest vampires—the ones who never die. The powerful blend of human and vampire blood that flows through Rose Hathaway, Lissa's best friend, makes her a dhampir. Rose is dedicated to a dangerous life of protecting Lissa from the Strigoi, who are hell-bent on making Lissa one of them.

After two years of freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimir's Academy, a school for vampire royalty and their guardians-to-be, hidden in the deep forests of Montana. But inside the iron gates, life is even more fraught with danger... and the Strigoi are always close by.

Rose and Lissa must navigate their dangerous world, confront the temptations of forbidden love, and never once let their guard down, lest the evil undead make Lissa one of them forever... (less)"
3370,Birthday Girl,romance,"JORDAN

He took me in when I had nowhere else to go. He doesn’t use me, hurt me, or forget about me. He listens to me, protects me, and sees me. I can feel his eyes on me over the breakfast table, and my heart pumps so hard when I hear him pull in the driveway after work.

I have to stop this. It can’t happen.

My sister once told me there are no good men, and if you find one, he’s probably unavailable. Only Pike Lawson isn’t the unavailable one.
I am.

PIKE

I took her in, because I thought I was helping. As the days go by, though, it’s becoming anything but easy. I have to stop my mind from drifting to her and stop holding my breath every time I bump into her in the house. I can’t touch her, and I shouldn’t want to.

But we’re not free to give into this. She’s nineteen, and I’m thirty-eight.

And her boyfriend’s father.

Unfortunately, they both just moved into my house. (less)"
3371,They Both Die at the End,romance,"Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day.

On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today.

Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day. (less)"
3372,The Roommate,romance,"House Rules:
Do your own dishes.
Knock before entering the bathroom.
Never look up your roommate online.

The Wheatons are infamous among the east coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She’s the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. When Clara’s childhood crush invites her to move cross-country, the offer is too much to resist. Unfortunately, it’s also too good to be true.

After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive—not to mention handsome—for comfort, but there’s a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn’t looked him up on the Internet...

Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheaton’s most scandalous story yet. His professional prowess inspires her to take tackling the stigma against female desire into her own hands. They may not agree on much, but Josh and Clara both believe women deserve better sex. What they decide to do about it will change both of their lives, and if they’re lucky, they’ll help everyone else get lucky too. (less)"
3373,Neon Gods,romance,"He was supposed to be a myth.
But from the moment I crossed the River Styx and fell under his dark spell... he was, quite simply, mine.

Society darling Persephone Dimitriou plans to flee the ultra-modern city of Olympus and start over far from the backstabbing politics of the Thirteen Houses. But all that’s ripped away when her mother ambushes her with an engagement to Zeus, the dangerous power behind their glittering city’s dark facade.

With no options left, Persephone flees to the forbidden undercity and makes a devil’s bargain with a man she once believed a myth... a man who awakens her to a world she never knew existed.

Hades has spent his life in the shadows, and he has no intention of stepping into the light. But when he finds that Persephone can offer a little slice of the revenge he’s spent years craving, it’s all the excuse he needs to help her—for a price. Yet every breathless night spent tangled together has given Hades a taste for Persephone, and he’ll go to war with Olympus itself to keep her close…

A modern retelling of Hades and Persephone that’s as sinful as it is sweet. (less)"
3374,Scarlet,romance,"Cinder returns in the second thrilling installment of the New York Times-bestselling Lunar Chronicles.

She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive. Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger she has lived in her whole life.

When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own. As Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her prisoner. (less)"
3375,A Court of Frost and Starlight,romance,"A tender addition to the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas, bridging the events of A Court of Wings and Ruin and upcoming books.

Feyre, Rhysand, and their friends are still busy rebuilding the Night Court and the vastly altered world beyond, recovering from the war that changed everything. But Winter Solstice is finally approaching, and with it, the joy of a hard-earned reprieve.

Yet even the festive atmosphere can't keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, her concern for those dearest to her deepens. They have more wounds than she anticipated-scars that will have a far-reaching impact on the future of their court.

Bridging the events of A Court of Wings and Ruin with the later books in the series, A Court of Frost and Starlight explores the far-reaching effects of a devastating war and the fierce love between friends. (less)"
3376,The Ex Talk,romance,"Public radio co-hosts navigate mixed signals in Rachel Lynn Solomon's sparkling romantic comedy debut.

Shay Goldstein has been a producer at her Seattle public radio station for nearly a decade, and she can't imagine working anywhere else. But lately it's been a constant clash between her and her newest colleague, Dominic Yun, who's fresh off a journalism master's program and convinced he knows everything about public radio.

When the struggling station needs a new concept, Shay proposes a show that her boss green-lights with excitement. On The Ex Talk, two exes will deliver relationship advice live, on air. Their boss decides Shay and Dominic are the perfect co-hosts, given how much they already despise each other. Neither loves the idea of lying to listeners, but it's this or unemployment. Their audience gets invested fast, and it's not long before The Ex Talk becomes a must-listen in Seattle and climbs podcast charts.

As the show gets bigger, so does their deception, especially when Shay and Dominic start to fall for each other. In an industry that values truth, getting caught could mean the end of more than just their careers. (less)"
3377,Tangled,romance,"Drew Evans is a winner. Handsome and arrogant, he makes multimillion dollar business deals and seduces New York’s most beautiful women with just a smile. He has loyal friends and an indulgent family. So why has he been shuttered in his apartment for seven days, miserable and depressed?

He’ll tell you he has the flu.

But we all know that’s not really true.

Katherine Brooks is brilliant, beautiful and ambitious. She refuses to let anything - or anyone - derail her path to success. When Kate is hired as the new associate at Drew’s father’s investment banking firm, every aspect of the dashing playboy’s life is thrown into a tailspin. The professional competition she brings is unnerving, his attraction to her is distracting, his failure to entice her into his bed is exasperating.

Then, just when Drew is on the cusp of having everything he wants, his overblown confidence threatens to ruin it all. Will he be able untangle his feelings of lust and tenderness, frustration and fulfillment? Will he rise to the most important challenge of his life?

Can Drew Evans win at love?

Tangled is not your mother’s romance novel. It is an outrageous, passionate, witty narrative about a man who knows a lot about women…just not as much as he thinks he knows. As he tells his story, Drew learns the one thing he never wanted in life, is the only thing he can’t live without. (less)"
3378,City of Fallen Angels,romance,"The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most importantly of all—she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.

But nothing comes without a price.

Someone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her—his mother just found out that he’s a vampire, and now he’s homeless. When Jace begins to pull away from her without explaining why, Clary is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: she herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace. (less)"
3379,P.S. I Love You,romance,"A novel about holding on, letting go, and learning to love again.
Now in paperback, the endearing novel that captured readers' hearts and introduced a fresh new voice in women's fiction Cecelia Ahern.
Holly couldn't live without her husband Gerry, until the day she had to. They were the kind of young couple who could finish each other's sentences. When Gerry succumbs to a terminal illness and dies, 30-year-old Holly is set adrift, unable to pick up the pieces. But with the help of a series of letters her husband left her before he died and a little nudging from an eccentric assortment of family and friends, she learns to laugh, overcome her fears, and discover a world she never knew existed.
The kind of enchanting novel with cross-generational appeal that comes along once in a great while, PS, I Love You is a captivating love letter to the world!
(less)"
3380,Serpent & Dove,romance,"Bound as one to love, honor, or burn.

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

Sworn to the Church as a Chasseur, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. His path was never meant to cross with Lou's, but a wicked stunt forces them into an impossible union—holy matrimony.

The war between witches and Church is an ancient one, and Lou's most dangerous enemies bring a fate worse than fire. Unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, a choice must be made.

And love makes fools of us all.

This is a previously published edition of ISBN 9780062878021. An alternate cover edition can be found here. (less)"
3381,After You,romance,"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars, discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me.

“You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. But I hope you feel a bit exhilarated too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don’t settle. Just live well. Just live. Love, Will.”

How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await. (less)"
3382,The Crown,romance,"When Eadlyn became the first princess of Illéa to hold her own Selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. She spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. But as events at the palace force Eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.

Eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. But sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon Eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. (less)"
3383,Rebecca,romance,"""Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...""

Ancient, beautiful Manderley, between the rose garden and the sea, is the county's showpiece. Rebecca made it so - even a year after her death, Rebecca's influence still rules there. How can Maxim de Winter's shy new bride ever fill her place or escape her vital shadow?

A shadow that grows longer and darker as the brief summer fades, until, in a moment of climatic revelations, it threatens to eclipse Manderley and its inhabitants completely... (less)"
3384,Regretting You,romance,"Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Clara, would like nothing more than to be nothing alike.

Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.

With warring personalities and conflicting goals, Morgan and Clara find it increasingly difficult to coexist. The only person who can bring peace to the household is Chris—Morgan’s husband, Clara’s father, and the family anchor. But that peace is shattered when Chris is involved in a tragic and questionable accident. The heartbreaking and long-lasting consequences will reach far beyond just Morgan and Clara.

While struggling to rebuild everything that crashed around them, Morgan finds comfort in the last person she expects to, and Clara turns to the one boy she’s been forbidden to see. With each passing day, new secrets, resentment, and misunderstandings make mother and daughter fall further apart. So far apart, it might be impossible for them to ever fall back together. (less)"
3385,Walking Disaster,romance,"How much is too much to love? Travis Maddox learned two things from his mother before she died: Love hard. Fight harder.

Finally, the highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Beautiful Disaster.

Can you love someone too much?

Travis Maddox learned two things from his mother before she died: Love hard. Fight harder.

In Walking Disaster, the life of Travis is full of fast women, underground gambling, and violence. But just when he thinks he is invincible, Abby Abernathy brings him to his knees.

Every story has two sides. In Beautiful Disaster, Abby had her say. Now it’s time to see the story through Travis’s eyes. (less)"
3386,One True Loves,romance,"In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure.

On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.

Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.

That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.

Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?

Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying. (less)"
3387,Seven Days in June,romance,"Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York.

When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.

Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered...

With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781538719107. (less)"
3388,Written in the Stars,romance,"With nods to Bridget Jones and Pride and Prejudice, a charming #ownvoices queer rom-com debut about a free-spirited social media astrologer who agrees to fake a relationship with an uptight actuary until New Year’s Eve—with results not even the stars could predict!

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy... a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle's new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because... awkward.

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.

But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars? (less)"
3389,The Duchess War,romance,"Sometimes love is an accident.

This time, it’s a strategy.

Miss Minerva Lane is a quiet, bespectacled wallflower, and she wants to keep it that way. After all, the last time she was the center of attention, it ended badly—so badly that she changed her name to escape her scandalous past. Wallflowers may not be the prettiest of blooms, but at least they don't get trampled. So when a handsome duke comes to town, the last thing she wants is his attention.

But that is precisely what she gets.

Because Robert Blaisdell, the Duke of Clermont, is not fooled. When Minnie figures out what he’s up to, he realizes there is more to her than her spectacles and her quiet ways. And he’s determined to lay her every secret bare before she can discover his. But this time, one shy miss may prove to be more than his match... (less)"
3390,Bet Me,romance,"Minerva Dobbs knows that happily-ever-after is a fairy tale, especially with a man who asked her to dinner to win a bet. Even if he is gorgeous and successful Calvin Morrisey. Cal knows commitment is impossible, especially with a woman as cranky as Min Dobbs. Even if she does wear great shoes and keeps him on his toes. When they say good-bye at the end of their evening, they cut their losses and agree never to see each other again.

But Fate has other plans, and it's not long before Min and Cal meet again. Soon, they're dealing with a jealous ex-boyfriend, Krispy Kreme donuts, a determined psychologist, chaos theory, a freakishly intelligent cat, Chicken Marsala, and more risky propositions than either of them ever dreamed of. Including the biggest gamble of all—true love. (less)"
3391,You Had Me at Hola,romance,"RITA® Award Winning author Alexis Daria brings readers an unforgettable, hilarious rom-com set in the drama-filled world of telenovelas—perfect for fans of Jane the Virgin and The Kiss Quotient.

Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers. 

After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez. 

Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy. 

After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worried his career is dead as well. Joining this new cast as a last-minute addition will give him the chance to show off his acting chops to American audiences and ping the radar of Hollywood casting agents. To make it work, he’ll need to generate smoking-hot on-screen chemistry with Jasmine. Easier said than done, especially when a disastrous first impression smothers the embers of whatever sexual heat they might have had. 

Leading Ladies do not rebound with their new costars. 

With their careers on the line, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. But rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.

  (less)"
3392,Memoirs of a Geisha,romance,"A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.

In ""Memoirs of a Geisha,"" we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable. (less)"
3393,Drums of Autumn,romance,"In this breathtaking novel, rich in history and adventure, #1 New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon continues the story of Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser that started with the now-classic novel Outlander and continued in Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager. Once again spanning continents and centuries, Gabaldon has created a work of sheer brilliance.

What if you knew someone you loved was going to die? What if you thought you could save them? How much would you risk to try?

Claire Randall has gone to find Jamie Fraser, the man she loved more than life, and has left half her heart behind with their daughter, Brianna. Claire gave up Jamie to save Brianna, and now Bree has sent her mother back to the Scottish warrior who was willing to give his life to save them both. But a chilling discovery in the pages of history suggests that Jamie and Claire's story doesn't have a happy ending.

Brianna dares a terrifying leap into the unknown in search of her mother and the father she has never met, risking her own future to try to change history . . . and to save their lives. But as Brianna plunges into an uncharted wilderness, a heartbreaking encounter may strand her forever in the past . . . or root her in the place she should be, where her heart and soul belong. (less)"
3394,Beautiful Creatures,romance,"Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything. (less)"
3395,I've Got Your Number,romance,"I’ve lost it. :( The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. And now the very same day his parents are coming, I’ve lost it. The very same day! Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive :) !!
 
Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!
 
Well, perfect except that the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree. He wants his phone back and doesn’t appreciate Poppy reading his messages and wading into his personal life.
 
What ensues is a hilarious and unpredictable turn of events as Poppy and Sam increasingly upend each other’s lives through emails and text messages. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, mysterious phone calls, and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents . . . she soon realizes that she is in for the biggest surprise of her life. (less)"
3396,Isla and the Happily Ever After,romance,"Love ignites in the City That Never Sleeps, but can it last?

Hopeless romantic Isla has had a crush on introspective cartoonist Josh since their first year at the School of America in Paris. And after a chance encounter in Manhattan over the summer, romance might be closer than Isla imagined. But as they begin their senior year back in France, Isla and Josh are forced to confront the challenges every young couple must face, including family drama, uncertainty about their college futures, and the very real possibility of being apart.

Featuring cameos from fan-favorites Anna, Étienne, Lola, and Cricket, this sweet and sexy story of true love—set against the stunning backdrops of New York City, Paris, and Barcelona—is a swoonworthy conclusion to Stephanie Perkins’s beloved series. (less)"
3397,Addicted to You,romance,"Fans of Gossip Girl, Friends, and Euphoria will devour this edgy new adult romance set in a world of lust, fame, swoon-worthy men, and friendships that run deeper than blood.

She’s addicted to sex. He’s addicted to booze…the only way out is rock bottom.

No one would suspect shy Lily Calloway’s biggest secret. While everyone is dancing at college bars, Lily stays in the bathroom. To get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands, steamy hookups and events she shamefully regrets. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own.

Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. Lily comes at a close second. For three years, they’ve pretended to be in a real relationship, hiding their addictions from their families. They’ve mastered the art of concealing flasks and random guys that filter in and out of their apartment.

But as they sink beneath the weight of their addictions, they cling harder to their destructive relationship and wonder if a life together, for real, is better than a lie. Strangers and family begin to infiltrate their guarded lives, and with new challenges, they realize they may not just be addicted to alcohol and sex.

Their real vice may be each other.

New Adult Romance recommended for readers 18+ for mature content (less)"
3398,The Goal,romance,"Alternate cover edition for 9781533344342

She’s good at achieving her goals…

College senior Sabrina James has her whole future planned out: graduate from college, kick butt in law school, and land a high-paying job at a cutthroat firm. Her path to escaping her shameful past certainly doesn’t include a gorgeous hockey player who believes in love at first sight. One night of sizzling heat and surprising tenderness is all she’s willing to give John Tucker, but sometimes, one night is all it takes for your entire life to change.

But the game just got a whole lot more complicated

Tucker believes being a team player is as important as being the star. On the ice, he’s fine staying out of the spotlight, but when it comes to becoming a daddy at the age of twenty-two, he refuses to be a bench warmer. It doesn’t hurt that the soon-to-be mother of his child is beautiful, whip-smart, and keeps him on his toes. The problem is, Sabrina’s heart is locked up tight, and the fiery brunette is too stubborn to accept his help. If he wants a life with the woman of his dreams, he’ll have to convince her that some goals can only be made with an assist. (less)"
3399,Playing for Keeps,romance,"Done with being the world's biggest pushover, Haley decides that things are going to change starting with the aggravating neighbor who has too much charm and not enough restraint. What she didn't expect was to be sucked into his world, but Haley has a game plan and she won't let herself forget just what the bad boy next door is capable of.

The last thing Jason expected was for his little shy neighbor to go Rambo on him over some ruined flowers. After he decides to take her under his wing he can't help but that notice that she fits very nicely in his life. Now the only thing left is to convince her that this is anything but a game.



©2011 R.L. Mathewson (less)"
3400,Roomies,romance,"From subway to Broadway to happily ever after. Modern love in all its thrill, hilarity, and uncertainty has never been so compulsively readable as in New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren’s romantic novel.

Marriages of convenience are so...inconvenient.

For months Holland Bakker has invented excuses to descend into the subway station near her apartment, drawn to the captivating music performed by her street musician crush. Lacking the nerve to actually talk to the gorgeous stranger, fate steps in one night in the form of a drunken attacker. Calvin Mcloughlin rescues her, but quickly disappears when the police start asking questions.

Using the only resource she has to pay the brilliant musician back, Holland gets Calvin an audition with her uncle, Broadway’s hottest musical director. When the tryout goes better than even Holland could have imagined, Calvin is set for a great entry into Broadway—until his reason for disappearing earlier becomes clear: he’s in the country illegally, his student visa having expired years ago.

Seeing that her uncle needs Calvin as much as Calvin needs him, a wild idea takes hold of her. Impulsively, she marries the Irishman, her infatuation a secret only to him. As their relationship evolves and Calvin becomes the darling of Broadway—in the middle of the theatrics and the acting-not-acting—will Holland and Calvin to realize that they both stopped pretending a long time ago? (less)"
3401,Entwined with You,romance,"From the moment I first met Gideon Cross, I recognized something in him that I needed. Something I couldn't resist. I saw the dangerous and damaged soul inside--so much like my own. I was drawn to it. I needed him as surely as I needed my heart to beat.

No one knows how much he risked for me. How much I'd been threatened, or just how dark and desperate the shadow of our pasts would become.

Entwined by our secrets, we tried to defy the odds. We made our own rules and surrendered completely to the exquisite power of possession... (less)"
3402,The Chase,romance,"Everyone says opposites attract. And they must be right, because there’s no logical reason why I’m so drawn to Colin Fitzgerald. I don’t usually go for tattoo-covered, video-gaming, hockey-playing nerd-jocks who think I’m flighty and superficial. His narrow view of me is the first strike against him. It doesn’t help that he’s buddy-buddy with my brother.

And that his best friend has a crush on me.

And that I just moved in with them.

Oh, did I not mention we’re roommates?

I suppose it doesn’t matter. Fitzy has made it clear he’s not interested in me, even though the sparks between us are liable to burn our house down. I’m not the kind of girl who chases after a man, though, and I’m not about to start. I’ve got my hands full dealing with a new school, a sleazy professor, and an uncertain future. So if my sexy brooding roomie wises up and realizes what he’s missing?

He knows where to find me. (less)"
3403,My Life Next Door,romance,"A gorgeous debut about family, friendship, first romance, and how to be true to one person you love without betraying another

“One thing my mother never knew, and would disapprove of most of all, was that I watched the Garretts. All the time.”

The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, seventeen-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them . . . until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase's family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?

A dreamy summer read, full of characters who stay with you long after the story is over. (less)"
3404,Neanderthal Seeks Human,romance,"There are three things you need to know about Janie Morris:
1) She is incapable of engaging in a conversation without volunteering TMTI (Too Much Trivial Information), especially when she is unnerved,
2) No one unnerves her more than Quinn Sullivan, and
3) She doesn't know how to knit.

After losing her boyfriend, apartment, and job in the same day, Janie Morris can't help wondering what new torment fate has in store.

To her utter mortification, Quinn Sullivan—aka Sir McHotpants—witnesses it all then keeps turning up like a pair of shoes you lust after but can't afford. The last thing she expects is for Quinn to make her an offer she can't refuse.

Neanderthal Seeks Human is book #1 in the Knitting in the City series. Each book is a standalone, full length, contemporary romantic comedy novel, and follows the misadventures and exploits of seven friends in Chicago, all members of the same knitting group. (less)"
3405,If I Never Met You,romance,"If faking love is this easy... how do you know when it’s real?

When her partner of over a decade suddenly ends things, Laurie is left reeling—not only because they work at the same law firm and she has to see him every day. Her once perfect life is in shambles and the thought of dating again in the age of Tinder is nothing short of horrifying. When news of her ex’s pregnant girlfriend hits the office grapevine, taking the humiliation lying down is not an option. Then a chance encounter in a broken-down elevator with the office playboy opens up a new possibility.

Jamie Carter doesn’t believe in love, but he needs a respectable, steady girlfriend to impress their bosses. Laurie wants a hot new man to give the rumor mill something else to talk about. It’s the perfect proposition: a fauxmance played out on social media, with strategically staged photographs and a specific end date in mind. With the plan hatched, Laurie and Jamie begin to flaunt their new couple status, to the astonishment—and jealousy—of their friends and colleagues. But there’s a fine line between pretending to be in love and actually falling for your charming, handsome fake boyfriend... (less)"
3406,City of Lost Souls,romance,"The New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments continues—and so do the thrills and danger for Jace, Clary, and Simon.

What price is too high to pay, even for love? When Jace and Clary meet again, Clary is horrified to discover that the demon Lilith’s magic has bound her beloved Jace together with her evil brother Sebastian, and that Jace has become a servant of evil. The Clave is out to destroy Sebastian, but there is no way to harm one boy without destroying the other. As Alec, Magnus, Simon, and Isabelle wheedle and bargain with Seelies, demons, and the merciless Iron Sisters to try to save Jace, Clary plays a dangerous game of her own. The price of losing is not just her own life, but Jace’s soul. She’s willing to do anything for Jace, but can she still trust him? Or is he truly lost?

Love. Blood. Betrayal. Revenge. Darkness threatens to claim the Shadowhunters in the harrowing fifth book of the Mortal Instruments series. (less)"
3407,The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue,romance,"Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men.

But as Monty embarks on his Grand Tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.

Still it isn’t in Monty’s nature to give up. Even with his younger sister, Felicity, in tow, he vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt that spans across Europe, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores. (less)"
3408,Tweet Cute,romance,"Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.

Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built.

As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate ― people on the internet are shipping them?? ― their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.

A fresh, irresistible rom-com from debut author Emma Lord about the chances we take, the paths life can lead us on, and how love can be found in the opposite place you expected. (less)"
3409,Fallen Too Far,romance,"To want what you’re not supposed to have…

She is only nineteen.

She is his new stepfather’s daughter.

She is still naïve and innocent due to spending the last three years taking care of her sick mother.

But for twenty-four year old Rush Finlay, she is the only thing that has ever been off limits. His famous father’s guilt money, his mother’s desperation to win his love, and his charm are the three reasons he has never been told no.

Blaire Wynn left her small farmhouse in Alabama, after her mother passed away, to move in with her father and his new wife in their sprawling beach house along the Florida gulf coast. She isn’t prepared for the lifestyle change and she knows she’ll never fit into this world. Then there is her sexy stepbrother who her father leaves her with for the summer while he runs off to Paris with his wife. Rush is as spoiled as he is gorgeous. He is also getting under her skin. She knows he is anything but good for her and that he’ll never be faithful to anyone. He is jaded and has secrets Blaire knows she may never uncover but even knowing all of that…

Blaire just may have fallen too far. (less)"
3410,When Dimple Met Rishi,romance,"Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family—and from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?

Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.

The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitating toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?

Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways. (less)"
3411,A Brief History of Time,science,"In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. That edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these observations, as well as his own recent research, Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on wormholes and time travel, and updated the chapters throughout."
3412,A Short History of Nearly Everything,science,"Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. ""A Short History of Nearly Everything"" is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, revealing the world in a way most of us have never seen it before."
3413,The Selfish Gene,science,"""The Selfish Gene"" caused a wave of excitement among biologists and the general public when it was first published in 1976. Its vivid rendering of a gene's eye view of life, in lucid prose, gathered together the strands of thought about the nature of natural selection into a conceptual framework with far-reaching implications for our understanding of evolution. Time has confirmed its significance. Intellectually rigorous, yet written in non-technical language, ""The Selfish Gene"" is widely regarded as a masterpiece of science writing, and its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published."
3414,Astrophysics for People in a Hurry,science,"What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day."
3415,Cosmos,science,"Cosmos has 13 heavily illustrated chapters, corresponding to the 13 episodes of the Cosmos television series. In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying premises of science by providing biographical anecdotes about many prominent scientists throughout history, placing their contributions into the broader context of the development of modern science.

The book covers a broad range of topics, comprising Sagan's reflections on anthropological, cosmological, biological, historical, and astronomical matters from antiquity to contemporary times. Sagan reiterates his position on extraterrestrial life—that the magnitude of the universe permits the existence of thousands of alien civilizations, but no credible evidence exists to demonstrate that such life has ever visited earth."
3416,Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,science,"100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.

How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?

Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future."
3417,The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,science,"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her enslaved ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia — a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo — to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family — past and present — is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences."
3418,What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions,science,"Randall Munroe left NASA in 2005 to start up his hugely popular site XKCD 'a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math and language' which offers a witty take on the world of science and geeks. It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. Every now and then, Munroe would get emails asking him to arbitrate a science debate. 'My friend and I were arguing about what would happen if a bullet got struck by lightning, and we agreed that you should resolve it . . . ' He liked these questions so much that he started up What If.

If your cells suddenly lost the power to divide, how long would you survive?

How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm?

If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce?

What if everyone only had one soulmate?

When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire?

How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?

What would happen if the moon went away?

In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read."
3419,The Origin of Species,science,"Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task.

Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and—by implication—within the human world.

Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.
More book description"
3420,"The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory",science,"Brian Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away the layers of mystery surrounding string theory to reveal a universe that consists of eleven dimensions, where the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all matter, from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas, is generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny loops of energy.

Today, physicists and mathematicians throughout the world are feverishly working on one of the most ambitious theories ever proposed: superstring theory. String theory, as it is often called, is the key to the Unified Field Theory that eluded Einstein for more than thirty years. Finally, the century-old antagonism between the large and the small--General Relativity and Quantum Theory--is resolved. String theory proclaims that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe, from the frantic dancing of subatomic quarks to the majestic swirling of heavenly galaxies, are reflections of one grand physical principle and manifestations of one single entity: microscopically tiny vibrating loops of energy, a billionth of a billionth the size of an atom. In this brilliantly articulated and refreshingly clear book, Greene relates the scientific story and the human struggle behind twentieth-century physics' search for a theory of everything.

Through the masterful use of metaphor and analogy, The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated viscerally accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to understanding how the universe works."
3421,The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,science,"How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.

Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms."
3422,Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,science,"Okay, you're thinking: ""This must be some kind of a joke. A humorous book about cadavers?""

Yup — and it works.

Mary Roach takes the age-old question, ""What happens to us after we die?"" quite literally. And in Stiff, she explores the ""lives"" of human cadavers from the time of the ancient Egyptians all the way up to current campaigns for human composting. Along the way, she recounts with morbidly infectious glee how dead bodies are used for research ranging from car safety and plastic surgery (you'll cancel your next collagen injection after reading this!), to the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin.

Impossible (and irreverent) as it may sound, Roach has written a book about corpses that's both lively and fresh. She traveled around the globe to conduct her forensic investigations, and her findings are wryly intelligent. While the myriad uses for cadavers recounted are often graphic, Roach imbues her subject with a sense of dignity, choosing to emphasize the oddly noble purposes corpses serve, from organ donation to lifesaving medical research.

Readers will come away convinced of the enormous debt that we, the living, owe to the study of the remains of the dead. And while it may not offer the answer to the ancient mystery we were hoping for, Stiff offers a strange sort of comfort in the knowledge that, in a sense, death isn't necessarily the end."
3423,"""Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"": Adventures of a Curious Character",science,"A New York Times bestseller—the outrageous exploits of one of this century's greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original.

Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah."
3424,The Gene: An Intimate History,science,"Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function.

The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856 where a monk stumbles on the idea of a ‘unit of heredity’. It intersects with Darwin’s theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms post-war biology. It reorganizes our understanding of sexuality, temperament, choice and free will. This is a story driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds – from Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin, and the thousands of scientists still working to understand the code of codes.

This is an epic, moving history of a scientific idea coming to life, by the author of The Emperor of All Maladies. But woven through The Gene, like a red line, is also an intimate history – the story of Mukherjee’s own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness, reminding us that genetics is vitally relevant to everyday lives. These concerns reverberate even more urgently today as we learn to “read” and “write” the human genome – unleashing the potential to change the fates and identities of our children.

Majestic in its ambition, and unflinching in its honesty, The Gene gives us a definitive account of the fundamental unit of heredity – and a vision of both humanity’s past and future."
3425,The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History,science,"Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.

In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, The New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human."
3426,The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,science,"An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years.

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.”

The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer."
3427,The Grand Design,science,"THE FIRST MAJOR WORK IN NEARLY A DECADE BY ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT THINKERS—A MARVELOUSLY CONCISE BOOK WITH NEW ANSWERS TO THE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF LIFE

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the nature of reality? Why are the laws of nature so finely tuned as to allow for the existence of beings like ourselves? And, finally, is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation?

The most fundamental questions about the origins of the universe and of life itself, once the province of philosophy, now occupy the territory where scientists, philosophers, and theologians meet—if only to disagree. In their new book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by both brilliance and simplicity.

In The Grand Design they explain that according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. When applied to the universe as a whole, this idea calls into question the very notion of cause and effect. But the “top-down” approach to cosmology that Hawking and

Mlodinow describe would say that the fact that the past takes no definite form means that we create history by observing it, rather than that history creates us. The authors further explain that we ourselves are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe, and show how quantum theory predicts the “multiverse”—the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature.

Along the way Hawking and Mlodinow question the conventional concept of reality, posing a “model-dependent” theory of reality as the best we can hope to find. And they conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, an explanation of the laws governing us and our universe that is currently the only viable candidate for a complete “theory of everything.” If confirmed, they write, it will be the unified theory that Einstein was looking for, and the ultimate triumph of human reason.

A succinct, startling, and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform—and provoke—like no other.'"
3428,"The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements",science,"Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters?*

The periodic table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. ""The Disappearing Spoon"" masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, discovery, and alchemy, from the big bang through the end of time.


* Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear."
3429,"Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies",science,"""Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope ... one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years.""

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.

In this ""artful, informative, and delightful"" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal
More book description"
3430,Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams,science,"Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501144318.

Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night."
3431,The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution,science,"Charles Darwin, whose 1859 masterpiece ""On the Origin of Species"" shook society to its core, would surely have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy over evolution still raging 150 years later.

""The Greatest Show on Earth"" is a stunning counter-attack on creationists, followers of ""Intelligent Design"" and all those who still question evolution as scientific fact. In this brilliant tour de force, Richard Dawkins pulls together the incontrovertible evidence that underpins it: from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics.

""The Greatest Show on Earth"" comes at a critical time as systematic opposition to the fact of evolution flourishes as never before in many schools worldwide. Dawkins wields a devastating argument against this ignorance whilst sharing with us his palpable love of science and the natural world. Written with elegance, wit and passion, it is hard-hitting, absorbing and totally convincing."
3432,The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales,science,"If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities; who have been dismissed as autistic or retarded, yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales illuminate what it means to be human."
3433,"The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality",science,"From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists and author the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world."
3434,The God Delusion,science,"A preeminent scientist - and the world's most prominent atheist - asserts the irrationality of belief in God, and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.

With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament, to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.

The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster."
3435,Seven Brief Lessons on Physics,science,"All the beauty of modern physics in fewer than a hundred pages.

This is a book about the joy of discovery. A playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics, it's already a major bestseller in Italy and the United Kingdom. Carlo Rovelli offers surprising—and surprisingly easy to grasp—explanations of general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: to the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, back to the origins of the cosmos, and into the workings of our minds. “Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world,” Rovelli writes. “And it’s breathtaking.”"
3436,"Thinking, Fast and Slow",science,"In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking."
3437,Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow,science,"Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.
With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future."
3438,Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void,science,"The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. From the Space Shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule, Mary Roach takes us on the surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth."
3439,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,science,"A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach.

With The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age.

This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context.  Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science."
3440,Chaos: Making a New Science,science,"A work of popular science in the tradition of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, this 20th-anniversary edition of James Gleick’s groundbreaking bestseller Chaos introduces a whole new readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time. From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science. In Chaos, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe."
3441,The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design,science,"***30th Anniversary Edition***

Cover note: Each copy of the anniversary edition of The Blind Watchmaker features a unique biomorph. No two covers are exactly alike.

Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?"
3442,The Universe in a Nutshell,science,"Stephen Hawking’s phenomenal, multimillion-copy bestseller, A Brief History of Time, introduced the ideas of this brilliant theoretical physicist to readers all over the world.

Now, in a major publishing event, Hawking returns with a lavishly illustrated sequel that unravels the mysteries of the major breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since the release of his acclaimed first book."
3443,Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,science,"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Sagan traces our exploration of space and suggests that our very survival may depend on the wise use of other worlds. This stirring book reveals how scientific discovery has altered our perception of who we are and where we stand, and challenges us to weigh what we will do with that knowledge. Photos, many in color."
3444,Brief Answers to the Big Questions,science,"Stephen Hawking was recognized as one of the greatest minds of our time and a figure of inspiration after defying his ALS diagnosis at age twenty-one. He is known for both his breakthroughs in theoretical physics as well as his ability to make complex concepts accessible for all, and was beloved for his mischievous sense of humor. At the time of his death, Hawking was working on a final project: a book compiling his answers to the ""big"" questions that he was so often posed--questions that ranged beyond his academic field.

Within these pages, he provides his personal views on our biggest challenges as a human race, and where we, as a planet, are heading next. Each section will be introduced by a leading thinker offering his or her own insight into Professor Hawking's contribution to our understanding."
3445,"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid",science,"Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more."
3446,I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life,science,"Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners, and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery.

Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are. The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. Those in cows and termites digest the plants they eat. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squids with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people.

I Contain Multitudes is the story of these extraordinary partnerships, between the creatures we are familiar with and those we are not. It reveals how we humans are disrupting these partnerships and how we might manipulate them for our own good. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it."
3447,Physics of the Impossible,science,"A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.

One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science fiction that are deemed equally impossible today might well become commonplace in the future.

From teleportation to telekinesis, Kaku uses the world of science fiction to explore the fundamentals—and the limits—of the laws of physics as we know them today. He ranks the impossible technologies by categories—Class I, II, and III, depending on when they might be achieved, within the next century, millennia, or perhaps never. In a compelling and thought-provoking narrative, he explains:
· How the science of optics and electromagnetism may one day enable us to bend light around an object, like a stream flowing around a boulder, making the object invisible to observers “downstream”
· How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to the nearby stars
· How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be possible using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology
· Why a time machine is apparently consistent with the known laws of quantum physics, although it would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one
Kaku uses his discussion of each technology as a jumping-off point to explain the science behind it. An extraordinary scientific adventure, Physics of the Impossible takes readers on an unforgettable, mesmerizing journey into the world of science that both enlightens and entertains."
3448,The Body: A Guide for Occupants,science,"In the bestselling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe.

Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.

A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again."
3449,Bad Science,science,"How do we know if a treatment works, or if something causes cancer? Can the claims of homeopaths ever be as true - or as interesting - as the improbable research into the placebo effect? Who created the MMR hoax? Do journalists understand science? Why do we seek scientific explanations for social, personal and political problems? Are alternative therapists and the pharmaceutical companies really so different, or do they just use the same old tricks to sell different types of pill?

We are obsessed with our health. And yet - from the media's ""world-expert microbiologist"" with a mail-order Ph.D. in his garden shed laboratory, via multiple health scares and miracle cures, to the million-pound trial that Durham Council now denies ever existed - we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and sometimes even misleading information. Until now.

Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the dodgy science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases and missed opportunities of our time, but he also goes further: out of the bullshit, he shows us the fascinating story of how we know what we know, and gives us the tools to uncover bad science for ourselves."
3450,Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries,science,"A vibrant collection of essays on the cosmos from the nation's best-known astrophysicist. ""One of today's best popularizers of science."" —Kirkus Reviews.

Loyal readers of the monthly ""Universe"" essays in Natural History magazine have long recognized Neil deGrasse Tyson's talent for guiding them through the mysteries of the cosmos with stunning clarity and almost childlike enthusiasm. Here, Tyson compiles his favorite essays across a myriad of cosmic topics.

The title essay introduces readers to the physics of black holes by explaining the gory details of what would happen to your body if you fell into one. ""Holy Wars"" examines the needless friction between science and religion in the context of historical conflicts. ""The Search for Life in the Universe"" explores astral life from the frontiers of astrobiology. And ""Hollywood Nights"" assails the movie industry's feeble efforts to get its night skies right.

Known for his ability to blend content, accessibility, and humor, Tyson is a natural teacher who simplifies some of the most complex concepts in astrophysics while simultaneously sharing his infectious excitement about our universe."
3451,Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex,science,"In Bonk, the best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and insight on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Why doesn't Viagra help women-or, for that matter, pandas? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Mary Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm-two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth-can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to make the bedroom a more satisfying place."
3452,Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters,science,"""Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the reductionist danger in equating inheritability with inevitability."" -- The New Yorker

The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Matt Ridley's Genome is the book that explains it all: what it is, how it works, and what it portends for the future

Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life.

Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind."
3453,A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing,science,"Bestselling author and acclaimed physicist Lawrence Krauss offers a paradigm-shifting view of how everything that exists came to be in the first place.

“Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing?”

One of the few prominent scientists today to have crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss describes the staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending new theories that demonstrate not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing. With a new preface about the significance of the discovery of the Higgs particle, A Universe from Nothing uses Krauss’s characteristic wry humor and wonderfully clear explanations to take us back to the beginning of the beginning, presenting the most recent evidence for how our universe evolved—and the implications for how it’s going to end.

Provocative, challenging, and delightfully readable, this is a game-changing look at the most basic underpinning of existence and a powerful antidote to outmoded philosophical, religious, and scientific thinking."
3454,The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus,science,"A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic ""hot"" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their ""crashes"" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction."
3455,"The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World",science,"The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World.

In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group.

Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.
More book description"
3456,Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics By Its Most Brilliant Teacher,science,"Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher is a publishing first. This set couples a book containing the six easiest chapters from Richard P. Feynman's landmark work, Lectures on Physics—specifically designed for the general, non-scientist reader—with the actual recordings of the late, great physicist delivering the lectures on which the chapters are based. Nobel Laureate Feynman gave these lectures just once, to a group of Caltech undergraduates in 1961 and 1962, and these newly released recordings allow you to experience one of the Twentieth Century's greatest minds—as if you were right there in the classroom."
3457,Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body,science,"Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik-the ""missing link"" that made headlines around the world in April 2006-tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.

Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest-enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm."
3458,Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time,science,"Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that ""the longitude problem"" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution.

The scientific establishment of Europe—from Galileo to Sir Issac Newton—had mapped the heavens in both hemispheres in its certain pursuit of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution—a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is a dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clock-making, and opens a new window on our world.

On its 10th anniversary, a gift edition of this classic book, with a forward by one of history's greatest explorers, and eight pages of color illustrations."
3459,Lab Girl,science,"Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more.

Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.

Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home."
3460,The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World,science,"The dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.

In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.

Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”

Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.

An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come."
3461,The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution,science,"The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work yet: a comprehensive look at evolution, ranging from the latest developments in the field to his own provocative views. Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's Tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty ""rendezvous points"" where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism.

Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more. The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world."
3462,Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst,science,"Why do we do the things we do?

More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.

Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.

The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right."
3463,Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,science,"“America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.
Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies."
3464,Relativity: The Special and the General Theory,science,"An accesible version of Einstein's masterpiece of theory, written by the genius himself

According to Einstein himself, this book is intended ""to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics."" When he wrote the book in 1916, Einstein's name was scarcely known outside the physics institutes. Having just completed his masterpiece, The General Theory of Relativity—which provided a brand-new theory of gravity and promised a new perspective on the cosmos as a whole—he set out at once to share his excitement with as wide a public as possible in this popular and accessible book.

Here published for the first time as a Penguin Classic, this edition of features a new introduction by bestselling science author Nigel Calder.
More book description"
3465,The Order of Time,science,"Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at different speeds in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.

With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery, inviting us to imagine a world where time is in us and we are not in time."
3466,A Briefer History of Time,science,"Stephen Hawking's worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time, has been a landmark volume in scientific writing. Its author's engaging voice is one reason, and the compelling subjects he addresses is another; the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, the history and future of the universe. But it is also true that in the years since its publication, readers have repeatedly told Professor Hawking of their great difficulty in understanding some of the book's most important concepts.

This is the origin of and the reason for A Briefer History of Time: its author's wish to make its content more accessible to readers - as well as to bring it up-to-date with the latest scientific observations and findings.

Although this book is literally somewhat ""briefer"", it actually expands on the great subjects of the original. Purely technical concepts, such as the mathematics of chaotic boundary conditions, are gone. Conversely, subjects of wide interest that were difficult to follow because they were interspersed throughout the book have now been given entire chapters of their own, including relativity, curved space, and quantum theory.

This reorganization has allowed the authors to expand areas of special interest and recent progress, from the latest developments in string theory to exciting developments in the search for a complete unified theory of all the forces of physics. Like prior editions of the book - but even more so - A Briefer History of Time will guide nonscientists everywhere in the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space.

Thirty-seven full-color illustrations enhance the text and make A Briefer History of Time an exhilarating addition in its own right to the literature of science."
3467,Silent Spring,science,"Silent Spring is an environmental science book. The book documents the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.

The book appeared in September 1962 and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson’s book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.
More book description"
3468,The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True,science,"Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back—earthquakes occurred each time it flipped its tail. These are magical, extraordinary tales. But there is another kind of magic, and it lies in the exhilaration of discovering the real answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality—science.

Packed with clever thought experiments, dazzling illustrations and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena. What is stuff made of? How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? This is a page-turning, graphic detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well.

Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist and one of science education’s most passionate advocates, has spent his career elucidating the wonders of science for adult readers. But now, in a dramatic departure, he has teamed up with acclaimed artist Dave McKean and used his unrivaled explanatory powers to share the magic of science with readers of all ages. This is a treasure trove for anyone who has ever wondered how the world works. Dawkins and McKean have created an illustrated guide to the secrets of our world—and the universe beyond—that will entertain and inform for years to come."
3469,The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos,science,"From the best-selling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos comes his most expansive and accessible book to date—a book that takes on the grandest question: Is ours the only universe?

There was a time when “universe” meant all there is. Everything. Yet, in recent years discoveries in physics and cosmology have led a number of scientists to conclude that our universe may be one among many. With crystal-clear prose and inspired use of analogy, Brian Greene shows how a range of different “multiverse” proposals emerges from theories developed to explain the most refined observations of both subatomic particles and the dark depths of space: a multiverse in which you have an infinite number of doppelgängers, each reading this sentence in a distant universe; a multiverse comprising a vast ocean of bubble universes, of which ours is but one; a multiverse that endlessly cycles through time, or one that might be hovering millimeters away yet remains invisible; another in which every possibility allowed by quantum physics is brought to life. Or, perhaps strangest of all, a multiverse made purely of math.

Greene, one of our foremost physicists and science writers, takes us on a captivating exploration of these parallel worlds and reveals how much of reality’s true nature may be deeply hidden within them. And, with his unrivaled ability to make the most challenging of material accessible and entertaining, Greene tackles the core question: How can fundamental science progress if great swaths of reality lie beyond our reach?

Sparked by Greene’s trademark wit and precision, The Hidden Reality is at once a far-reaching survey of cutting-edge physics and a remarkable journey to the very edge of reality—a journey grounded firmly in science and limited only by our imagination."
3470,"How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence",science,"Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? One of America's most admired writers takes us on a mind-altering journey to the frontiers of human consciousness

When LSD was first discovered in the 1940s, it seemed to researchers, scientists and doctors as if the world might be on the cusp of psychological revolution. It promised to shed light on the deep mysteries of consciousness, as well as offer relief to addicts and the mentally ill. But in the 1960s, with the vicious backlash against the counter-culture, all further research was banned. In recent years, however, work has quietly begun again on the amazing potential of LSD, psilocybin and DMT. Could these drugs in fact improve the lives of many people? Diving deep into this extraordinary world and putting himself forward as a guinea-pig, Michael Pollan has written a remarkable history of psychedelics and a compelling portrait of the new generation of scientists fascinated by the implications of these drugs. is a report from what could very well be the future of human consciousness.
More book description"
3471,Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,science,"In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified."
3472,"Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos",science,"In this thrilling journey into the mysteries of our cosmos, bestselling author Michio Kaku takes us on a dizzying ride to explore black holes and time machines, multidimensional space and, most tantalizing of all, the possibility that parallel universes may lay alongside our own. Kaku skillfully guides us through the latest innovations in string theory and its latest iteration, M-theory, which posits that our universe may be just one in an endless multiverse, a singular bubble floating in a sea of infinite bubble universes. If M-theory is proven correct, we may perhaps finally find answer to the question, “What happened before the big bang?” This is an exciting and unforgettable introduction into the new cutting-edge theories of physics and cosmology from one of the pre-eminent voices in the field."
3473,Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence,science,"Com os DRAGÕES DO ÉDEN, Prémio Pulitzer, para muitos a mais bela obra do autor, os leitores de ""Ciência Aberta"" irão participar numa grande aventura... Num Éden perdido onde os dragões reinavam encontram-se as fundações da nossa inteligência e das nossas paixões... Sagan conduz-nos, numa visita guiada, até esse mundo perdido...

Harmonizando informação científica e os grandes mitos do passado, utilizando a sua incomparável capacidade de relacionamento e de diálogo com as diversas áreas do conhecimento científico, com a filosofia e com a história, Sagan faz o ponto de grandes espaços do saber humano, propondo hipóteses por vezes arrojadas, mas sempre motivadoras - Carl Sagan é o professor que todos gostaríamos de ter, ou ter tido, e os DRAGÕES DO ÉDEN são uma obra-prima de instrutivo prazer.

""Carl Sagan tem o toque de Midas. Transforma em ouro tudo aquilo em que toca. Assim acontece com OS DRAGÕES DO ÉDEN. Nunca li nada tão apaixonante sobre os temas.""

Isaac Asimov"
3474,Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World,science,"An adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science. Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paper clip bend? Why does any material look and behave the way it does? These are the sorts of questions that Mark Miodownik a globally-renowned materials scientist has spent his life exploring In this book he examines the materials he encounters in a typical morning, from the steel in his razor and the graphite in his pencil to the foam in his sneakers and the concrete in a nearby skyscraper."
3475,The World Without Us,science,"A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us. In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dalai Lama, and paleontologists—who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths—Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.

From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth's tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman's narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has."
3476,Why Evolution Is True,science,"Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact.

In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant ""intelligent design,"" there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned—the ""evidence,"" the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection. Even Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, while extolling the beauty of evolution and examining case studies, have not focused on the evidence itself. Yet the proof is vast, varied, and magnificent, drawn from many different fields of science. Scientists are observing species splitting into two and are finding more and more fossils capturing change in the past—dinosaurs that have sprouted feathers, fish that have grown limbs.

Why Evolution Is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, paleontology, geology, molecular biology, and anatomy that demonstrate the ""indelible stamp"" of the processes first proposed by Darwin. In crisp, lucid prose accessible to a wide audience, Why Evolution Is True dispels common misunderstandings and fears about evolution and clearly confirms that this amazing process of change has been firmly established as a scientific truth."
3477,Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife,science,"""What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?"" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die."
3478,Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,science,"Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
(front flap)"
3479,Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think,science,"Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future."
3480,"Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension",science,"Are there other dimensions beyond those of our everyday experience? Are there gateways to parallel universes? What happened before the first day of Creation? These types of questions are at the center of current scientific activity. Indeed, many physicists today believe that there are other dimensions beyond the four of our space-time, and that a unified vision of the various forces of nature can be achieved, if we consider that everything we see around us, from the trees to the stars are nothing but vibrations in hyperspace. Hyperspace theory - and its more recent derivation, superstring theory - is the eye of this revolution. In this book, Michio Kaku shows us a fascinating panorama, which completely changes our view of the cosmos, and takes us on a dazzling journey through new dimensions: wormholes connecting parallel universes, time machines, ""baby universes"" and more. Similar wonders are emerging in some pages in which everything is explained with elegant simplicity and where the mathematical formulation is replaced by imaginative illustrations that allow the problems to be visualized. The result is a very entertaining and surprising book, which even leaves behind the greatest fantasies of the old science fiction authors."
3481,The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World,science,"Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?"
3482,"Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness",science,"Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own."
3483,"The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World",science,"From Steven Johnson, the dynamic thinker routinely compared to James Gleick, Dava Sobel, and Malcolm Gladwell, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action—and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories and inter-connectedness of the spread of disease, contagion theory, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in."
3484,Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100,science,"Imagine, if you can, the world in the year 2100.

In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku—the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible—gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world's top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of the revolutionary developments taking place in medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy production, and astronautics.

In all likelihood, by 2100 we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and, like magicians, move objects around with the power of our minds. Artificial intelligence will be dispersed throughout the environment, and Internet-enabled contact lenses will allow us to access the world's information base or conjure up any image we desire in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, cars will drive themselves using GPS, and if room-temperature superconductors are discovered, vehicles will effortlessly fly on a cushion of air, coasting on powerful magnetic fields and ushering in the age of magnetism.

Using molecular medicine, scientists will be able to grow almost every organ of the body and cure genetic diseases. Millions of tiny DNA sensors and nanoparticles patrolling our blood cells will silently scan our bodies for the first sign of illness, while rapid advances in genetic research will enable us to slow down or maybe even reverse the aging process, allowing human life spans to increase dramatically.

In space, radically new ships—needle-sized vessels using laser propulsion—could replace the expensive chemical rockets of today and perhaps visit nearby stars. Advances in nanotechnology may lead to the fabled space elevator, which would propel humans hundreds of miles above the earth's atmosphere at the push of a button.

But these astonishing revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. Kaku also discusses emotional robots, antimatter rockets, X-ray vision, and the ability to create new life-forms, and he considers the development of the world economy. He addresses the key questions: Who are the winner and losers of the future? Who will have jobs, and which nations will prosper?

All the while, Kaku illuminates the rigorous scientific principles, examining the rate at which certain technologies are likely to mature, how far they can advance, and what their ultimate limitations and hazards are. Synthesizing a vast amount of information to construct an exciting look at the years leading up to 2100, Physics of the Future is a thrilling, wondrous ride through the next 100 years of breathtaking scientific revolution. (From the Hardcover Edition)

(Duration: 15:39:15)"
3485,The Double Helix,science,"By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry & won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only 24, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions & bitter rivalries. With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his & Crick's desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences, the identification of the basic building block of life. Never has a scientist been so truthful in capturing in words the flavor of his work."
3486,QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter,science,"Famous the world over for the creative brilliance of his insights into the physical world, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the nonscientist. QED--the edited version of four lectures on quantum electrodynamics that Feynman gave to the general public at UCLA as part of the Alix G. Mautner Memorial Lecture series--is perhaps the best example of his ability to communicate both the substance and the spirit of science to the layperson.

The focus, as the title suggests, is quantum electrodynamics (QED), the part of the quantum theory of fields that describes the interactions of the quanta of the electromagnetic field-light, X rays, gamma rays--with matter and those of charged particles with one another. By extending the formalism developed by Dirac in 1933, which related quantum and classical descriptions of the motion of particles, Feynman revolutionized the quantum mechanical understanding of the nature of particles and waves. And, by incorporating his own readily visualizable formulation of quantum mechanics, Feynman created a diagrammatic version of QED that made calculations much simpler and also provided visual insights into the mechanisms of quantum electrodynamic processes.

In this book, using everyday language, spatial concepts, visualizations, and his renowned ""Feynman diagrams"" instead of advanced mathematics, Feynman successfully provides a definitive introduction to QED for a lay readership without any distortion of the basic science. Characterized by Feynman's famously original clarity and humor, this popular book on QED has not been equaled since its publication."
3487,"Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures",science,"There is a lifeform so strange and wondrous that it forces us to rethink how life works…

Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.

In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence’, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them."
3488,Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,science,"Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you'll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of ""blink"": the election of Warren Harding; ""New Coke""; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of ""thin-slicing"" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables."
3489,Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything,science,"The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory

An instant bestseller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top ""mental athletes."" He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories."
3490,"The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself",science,"Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on Higgs bosons and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions.  Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void? Does human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific worldview?

In short chapters filled with intriguing historical anecdotes, personal asides, and rigorous exposition, readers learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level--and then how each connects to the other.  Carroll's presentation of the principles that have guided the scientific revolution from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe is dazzlingly unique.

Carroll shows how an avalanche of discoveries in the past few hundred years has changed our world and what really matters to us. Our lives are dwarfed like never before by the immensity of space and time, but they are redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning.

The Big Picture is an unprecedented scientific worldview, a tour de force that will sit on shelves alongside the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and E. O. Wilson for years to come."
3491,Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution,science,"Our true origins are not just human, or even terrestrial, but in fact cosmic. Drawing on recent scientific breakthroughs and the current cross-pollination among geology, biology, astrophysics, and cosmology, Origins explains the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the cosmos. From the first image of a galaxy birth to Spirit Rover's exploration of Mars, to the discovery of water on one of Jupiter's moons, coauthors Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith conduct a galvanizing tour of the cosmos with clarity and exuberance."
3492,The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,science,"What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.

In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.

The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same."
3493,"The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind",science,"The New York Times best-selling author of Physics of the Impossible, Physics of the Future and Hyperspace tackles the most fascinating and complex object in the known universe: the human brain.

For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist.

The Future of the Mind gives us an authoritative and compelling look at the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics. One day we might have a ""smart pill"" that can enhance our cognition; be able to upload our brain to a computer, neuron for neuron; send thoughts and emotions around the world on a ""brain-net""; control computers and robots with our mind; push the very limits of immortality; and perhaps even send our consciousness across the universe.

Dr. Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, giving us not only a solid sense of how the brain functions but also how these technologies will change our daily lives. He even presents a radically new way to think about ""consciousness"" and applies it to provide fresh insight into mental illness, artificial intelligence and alien consciousness.

With Dr. Kaku's deep understanding of modern science and keen eye for future developments, The Future of the Mind is a scientific tour de force--an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration of the frontiers of neuroscience."
3494,The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness,science,"In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food.

Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds."
3495,The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography,science,"In his first book since the bestselling Fermat’s Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.

Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world’s most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it. It will also make you wonder how private that e-mail you just sent really is."
3496,The Martian,science,"Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?"
3497,The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal,science,"At some point during the last 100,000 years, humans began exhibiting traits and behavior that distinguished us from other animals, eventually creating language, art, religion, bicycles, spacecraft, and nuclear weapons—all within a heartbeat of evolutionary time. Now, faced with the threat of nuclear weapons and the effects of climate change, it seems our innate tendencies for violence and invention have led us to a crucial fork in our road. Where did these traits come from? Are they part of our species immutable destiny? Or is there hope for our species’ future if we change?

With fascinating facts and his unparalleled readability, Diamond intended his book to improve the world that today’s young people will inherit. Triangle Square’s The Third Chimpanzee for Young People is a book for future generation and the future they’ll help build."
3498,Einstein: His Life and Universe,science,"Einstein was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days, and these character traits drove both his life and his science. In this narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered."
3499,"Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants",science,"As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return."
3500,The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science,science,"An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed - people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential."
3501,Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,science,"With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music. Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable, Musicophilia is Oliver Sacks’ latest masterpiece."
3502,The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women,science,"The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger
The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these ""shining girls"" are the luckiest alive—until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the ""wonder"" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives."
3503,In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality,science,"It is so shocking that Einstein could not bring himself to accept it. It is so important that it provides the fundamental underpinning of all modern sciences. Without it, we'd have no nuclear power or nuclear bombs, no lasers, no TV, no computers, no science of molecular biology, no understanding of DNA, no genetic engineering—at all.

John Gribbin tells the complete story of quantum mechanics, a truth far stranger than any fiction. He takes us step-by-step into an ever more bizarre and fascinating place—requiring only that we approach it with an open mind. He introduces the scientists who developed quantum theory. He investigates the atom, radiation, time travel, the birth of the universe, superconductors and life itself. And in a world full of its own delights, mysteries and surprises, he searches for Schrödinger's Cat—a search for quantum reality—as he brings every reader to a clear understanding of the most important area of scientific study today—quantum physics."
3504,Hidden Figures,science,"The #1 New York Times Bestseller. Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers’, calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these ‘coloured computers’ used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets and astronauts, into space. Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War and the women’s rights movement, ‘Hidden Figures’ interweaves a rich history of mankind’s greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five courageous women whose work forever changed the world."
3505,Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium,science,"In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century? Here, too, is a rare, private glimpse of Sagan's thoughts about love, death, and God as he struggled with fatal disease. Ever forward-looking and vibrant with the sparkle of his unquenchable curiosity, Billions & Billions is a testament to one of the great scientific minds of our day."
3506,Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?,science,"Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition―in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos―to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal―and human―intelligence."
3507,Fermat's Enigma,science,"xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution

""I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.""

With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations.  What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years.  In Fermat's Enigma--based on the author's award-winning documentary film, which aired on PBS's ""Nova""--Simon Singh tells the astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of that grail, and the lives that were devoted to, sacrificed for, and saved by it.  Here is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery that will forever change your feelings about mathematics."
3508,Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic,science,"Ebola, SARS, Hendra, AIDS, and countless other deadly viruses all have one thing in common: the bugs that transmit these diseases all originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. In this gripping account, David Quammen takes the reader along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these diseases emerge and asks the terrifying question: What might the next big one be?"
3509,The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York,science,"Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook—chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler—investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed ""America's Lucretia Borgia"" to continue her nefarious work.

From the vantage of Norris and Gettler's laboratory in the infamous Bellevue Hospital it becomes clear that killers aren't the only toxic threat to New Yorkers. Modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner. Automobiles choke the city streets with carbon monoxide; potent compounds, such as morphine, can be found on store shelves in products ranging from pesticides to cosmetics. Prohibition incites a chemist's war between bootleggers and government chemists while in Gotham's crowded speakeasies each round of cocktails becomes a game of Russian roulette. Norris and Gettler triumph over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice during a remarkably deadly time. A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York."
3510,The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language,science,"The classic book on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind.

In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published."
3511,Dune,science,"Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for...

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

***

Original, first edition from 1965 can be found here. (less)"
3512,Ender's Game,science,"Andrew ""Ender"" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast.

But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails. (less)"
3513,The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,science,"Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out of work actor.

Together this dynamic pair begin their journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitch Hiker's Guide ""A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have"" and a galaxy-full of fellow travellers: Zaphod Beeblebrox - the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out to lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ball-point pens he has bought over the years. (less)"
3514,1984,science,"Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written. (less)"
3515,Fahrenheit 451,science,"Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. (less)"
3516,Foundation,science,"For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire -- both scientists and scholars -- and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun -- or fight them and be destroyed. (less)"
3517,Brave New World,science,"Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. (less)"
3518,Hyperion,science,"On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. (less)"
3519,Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,science,"It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill.
Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment--find them and then...""retire"" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found! (less)"
3520,"I, Robot",science,"Isaac Asimov's I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man and machine , struggle to redefinelife, love, and consciousness—and where the stakes are nothing less than survival. Filled with unforgettable characters, mind-bending speculation, and nonstop action, I, Robot is a powerful reading experience from one of the master storytellers of our time.

I, ROBOT

They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey hitman orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on perhaps its greatest adventure: the invention of the first positronic man. It was a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities—and unforeseen risks. For the scientists who invented the earliest robots weren't content that their creations should ' remain programmed helpers, companions, and semisentient worker-machines. And soon the robots themselves; aware of their own intelligence, power, and humanity, aren't either.

As humans and robots struggle to survive together—and sometimes against each other—on earth and in space, the future of both hangs in the balance. Human men and women confront robots gone mad, telepathic robots, robot politicians, and vast robotic intelligences that may already secretly control the world. And both are asking the same questions: What is human? And is humanity obsolete?

In l, Robot Isaac Asimov changes forever our perception of robots, and human beings and updates the timeless myth of man's dream to play god. with all its rewards—and terrors.
--front flap (less)"
3521,2001: A Space Odyssey,science,"On the Moon, an enigma is uncovered.

So great are the implications of this discovery that for the first time men are sent out deep into our solar system.

But long before their destination is reached, things begin to go horribly, inexplicably wrong...

One of the greatest-selling science fiction novels of our time, this classic book will grip you to the very end."
3522,The Martian,science,"Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

(less)"
3523,Slaughterhouse-Five,science,"Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. (less)"
3524,Stranger in a Strange Land,science,"NAME: Valentine Michael Smith
ANCESTRY: Human
ORIGIN: Mars

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love."
3525,The Foundation Trilogy,science,"A THOUSAND-YEAR EPIC, A GALACTIC STRUGGLE, A MONUMENTAL WORK IN THE ANNALS OF SCIENCE FICTION

FOUNDATION begins a new chapter in the story of man's future. As the Old Empire crumbles into barbarism throughout the million worlds of the galaxy, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists must create a new entity, the Foundation-dedicated to art, science, and technology-as the beginning of a new empire.

FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE describes the mighty struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars in which man stands at the threshold of a new enlightened life which could easily be destroyed by the old forces of barbarism.

SECOND FOUNDATION follows the Seldon Plan after the First Empire's defeat and describes its greatest threat-a dangerous mutant strain gone wild, which produces a mind capable of bending men's wills, directing their thoughts, reshaping their desires, and destroying the universe. (less)"
3526,Ready Player One,science,"Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape. (less)"
3527,The Hunger Games,science,"Could you survive on your own in the wild, with every one out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love. (less)"
3528,Childhood's End,science,"The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city--intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.

But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a malaise settles over the human race. To those who resist, it becomes evident that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. As civilization approaches the crossroads, will the Overlords spell the end for humankind . . . or the beginning? (less)"
3529,Neuromancer,science,"Hotwired to the leading edges of art and technology, Neuromancer is a cyberpunk, science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.

The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus-hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace...

Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.

The winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about our technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations. (less)"
3530,The Martian Chronicles,science,"The strange and wonderful tale of man’s experiences on Mars, filled with intense images and astonishing visions. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection.

The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.

But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them – and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.

Contents:
Rocket Summer
Ylla
The Summer Night
The Earth Men
The Taxpayer
The Third Expedition
-And the Moon Be Still As Bright
The Settlers
The Green Morning
The Locusts
Night Meeting
The Shore
Interim
The Musicians
Way in the Middle of the Air
The Naming of Names
Usher II
The Old Ones
The Martian
The Luggage Store
The Off Season
The Watchers
The Silent Towns
The Long Years
There Will Come Soft Rains
The Million Year Picnic (less)"
3531,Frankenstein: The 1818 Text,science,"This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson. (less)"
3532,The Forever War,science,"The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through military ranks. Pvt. Mandella is willing to do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But ""home"" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries. (less)"
3533,Flowers for Algernon,science,"The story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental procedure takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie? (less)"
3534,The Left Hand of Darkness,science,"A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction. (less)"
3535,The Time Machine,science,"“I’ve had a most amazing time....”

So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth.  There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well.  Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

  (less)"
3536,The Handmaid's Tale,science,"Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now . . .

Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force. (less)"
3537,Jurassic Park,science,"An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price.

Until something goes wrong. . . .

In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller. (less)"
3538,The War of the Worlds,science,"When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in huge three-legged machines, incinerating all in their path with a heat ray and spreading noxious toxic gases, the people of the Earth must come to terms with the prospect of the end of human civilization and the beginning of Martian rule.

Inspiring films, radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, television series and sequels,The War of the Worlds is a prototypical work of science fiction which has influenced every alien story that has come since, and is unsurpassed in its ability to thrill, well over a century since it was first published. (less)"
3539,Rendezvous with Rama,science,"At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at an inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams... and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits — just behind a Raman airlock door. (less)"
3540,Snow Crash,science,"In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you'll recognize it immediately. (less)"
3541,Speaker for the Dead,science,"Now available in mass market, the revised, definitive edition of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic. In this second book in the saga set 3,000 years after the terrible war, Ender Wiggin is reviled by history as the Xenocide--the destroyer of the alien Buggers. Now, Ender tells the true story of the war and seeks to stop history from repeating itself. ...

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.

Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth.

Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card's Ender Quintet, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel. (less)"
3542,A Canticle for Leibowitz,science,"In a nightmarish ruined world slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infant rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of the blessed Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From here the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, satirical eye the relentless progression of a human race damned by its inherent humanness to recelebrate its grand foibles and repeat its grievous mistakes. (less)"
3543,Starship Troopers,science,"The historians can’t seem to settle whether to call this one ""The Third Space War"" (or the fourth), or whether ""The First Interstellar War"" fits it better. We just call it “The Bug War."" Everything up to then and still later were ""incidents,"" ""patrols,"" or ""police actions."" However, you are just as dead if you buy the farm in an ""incident"" as you are if you buy it in a declared war...

In one of Robert A. Heinlein’s most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe—and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind’s most alarming enemy.
(less)"
3544,Old Man's War,science,"John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.

The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.

Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.

John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger. (less)"
3545,The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,science,"It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of a former penal colony on the Moon against its masters on the Earth. It is a tale of a culture whose family structures are based on the presence of two men for every woman, leading to novel forms of marriage and family. It is the story of the disparate people, a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic who become the movement's leaders, and of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to the revolt's inner circle, who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success. (less)"
3546,A Clockwork Orange,science,"A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to ""redeem"" him, the novel asks, ""At what cost?""

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction ""A Clockwork Orange Resucked."" (less)"
3547,Animal Farm,science,"“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh. (less)"
3548,A Wrinkle in Time,science,"It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure—one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

Winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal, A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time Quintet. (less)"
3549,The Dispossessed,science,"Librarian note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780061054884.

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life—Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change. (less)"
3550,Solaris,science,"A classic work of science fiction by renowned Polish novelist and satirist Stanislaw Lem.

When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. The Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, though its purpose in doing so is unknown, forcing the scientists to shift the focus of their quest and wonder if they can truly understand the universe without first understanding what lies within their hearts. (less)"
3551,Ringworld,science,"The artefact is a circular ribbon of matter six hundred million miles long and ninety million miles in radius. Pierson's puppeteers, the aliens who discovered it, are understandably wary of encountering the builders of such an immense structure and have assembled a team of two humans, a mad puppeteer and a kzin, a huge cat-like alien, to explore it. But a crash landing on the vast edifice forces the crew on a desperate and dangerous trek across the Ringworld. (less)"
3552,Foundation and Empire,science,"Foundation and Empire tells the incredible story of a new breed of man who create a new force for galactic government. Thus, the Foundation hurtles into conflict with the decadent, decrepit First Empire. In this struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars, man stands at the threshold of a new, enlightened life which could easily be put aside for the old forces of barbarism. The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov constitute what is very likely the most famed epic in all of science-fiction (less)"
3553,The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,science,"At last in paperback in one complete volume, here are the five novels from Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker series.

""The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy""

Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

""The Restaurant at the End of the Universe""

Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

""Life, the Universe and Everything""

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky- so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

""So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish""

Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.

""Mostly Harmless""

Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

Also includes the short story ""Young Zaphod Plays It Safe"". (less)"
3554,The Stand,science,"Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published.

A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world's population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge - Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious ""Dark Man,"" who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them - and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity. (less)"
3555,The Fall of Hyperion,science,"In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in Hyperion, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing--nothing anywhere in the universe--will ever be the same."
3556,Ubik,science,"Glen Runciter está muerto. ¿O lo están todos los demás? Lo que es seguro es que alguien ha muerto en una explosión organizada por los competidores de Runciter. De hecho, sus empleados asisten a un funeral. Pero durante el duelo comienzan a recibir mensajes descorcentantes, e incluso morbosos, de su jefe. Y el mundo a su alrededor comienza a desmoronarse de un modo que sugiere que a ellos tampoco les queda mucho tiempo.

Esta mordaz comedia metafísica de muerte y salvación (que podrá llevar un cómodo envase) es un tour de force de amenaza paranoica y comedia absurda, en la cual los muertos ofrecen consejos comerciales, compran su siguiente reencarnación y corren el riesgo continuo de volver a morir. (less)"
3557,Contact,science,"Jeune astronome convaincue de l'existence d'une vie extraterrestre intelligente, Ellie Arroway doit faire face au scepticisme de la communauté scientifique à l'égard du projet ""Argus"", un programme d'écoute spatiale installé au Nouveau-Mexique qu'elle et son équipe tentent par tous les moyens de sauver. Jusqu'au jour où leurs ordinateurs captent un message rationnel émis non pas depuis la Terre, mais depuis Véga, une lointaine étoile. Ellie se lance alors à coeur perdu dans son déchiffrage, pour découvrir qu'il s'agit des plans d'un véhicule censé permettre à des humains de voyager dans l'espace afin de rencontrer ceux qui nous les ont adressés. Or ces êtres
semblent à présent impatients d'établir le contact : ils nous surveillent depuis longtemps, et le moment est peut-être venu pour eux de nous juger... (less)"
3558,Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,sports,"Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.
Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe
(less)"
3559,The Deal,sports,"An alternative cover edition can be found here.

She's about to make a deal with the college bad boy...

Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she's carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush's attention, she'll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice... even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date.

...and it's going to be oh so good.

All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him. (less)"
3560,The Wall of Winnipeg and Me,sports,"Vanessa Mazur knows she's doing the right thing. She shouldn't feel bad for quitting. Being an assistant/housekeeper/fairy godmother to the top defensive end in the National Football Organization was always supposed to be temporary. She has plans and none of them include washing extra-large underwear longer than necessary.

But when Aiden Graves shows up at her door wanting her to come back, she's beyond shocked.

For two years, the man known as The Wall of Winnipeg couldn't find it in him to tell her good morning or congratulate her on her birthday. Now? He's asking for the unthinkable.

What do you say to the man who is used to getting everything he wants? (less)"
3561,Kulti,sports,"“Trust me, I’ve wanted to punch you in the face a time or five.”

When the man you worshipped as a kid becomes your coach, it’s supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. Keywords: supposed to.

It didn't take a week for 27-year-old Sal Casillas to wonder what she'd seen in the international soccer icon - why she'd ever had his posters on her wall or ever envisioned marrying him and having super-playing soccer babies.

Sal had long ago gotten over the worst non-break-up in the history of imaginary relationships with a man who hadn't known she'd existed. So she isn't prepared for this version of Reiner Kulti who shows up to her team's season: a quiet, reclusive shadow of the explosive, passionate man he'd once been. (less)"
3562,The Mistake,sports,"He’s a player in more ways than one…

College junior John Logan can get any girl he wants. For this hockey star, life is a parade of parties and hook-ups, but behind his killer grins and easygoing charm, he hides growing despair about the dead-end road he’ll be forced to walk after graduation. A sexy encounter with freshman Grace Ivers is just the distraction he needs, but when a thoughtless mistake pushes her away, Logan plans to spend his final year proving to her that he’s worth a second chance.

Now he’s going to need to up his game…

After a less than stellar freshman year, Grace is back at Briar University, older, wiser, and so over the arrogant hockey player she nearly handed her V-card to. She’s not a charity case, and she’s not the quiet butterfly she was when they first hooked up. If Logan expects her to roll over and beg like all his other puck bunnies, he can think again. He wants her back? He’ll have to work for it. This time around, she’ll be the one in the driver’s seat…and she plans on driving him wild. (less)"
3563,The Score,sports,"He knows how to score, on and off the ice

Allie Hayes is in crisis mode. With graduation looming, she still doesn’t have the first clue about what she’s going to do after college. To make matters worse, she’s nursing a broken heart thanks to the end of her longtime relationship. Wild rebound sex is definitely not the solution to her problems, but gorgeous hockey star Dean Di Laurentis is impossible to resist. Just once, though, because even if her future is uncertain, it sure as heck won’t include the king of one-night stands.

It’ll take more than flashy moves to win her over

Dean always gets what he wants. Girls, grades, girls, recognition, girls…he’s a ladies man, all right, and he’s yet to meet a woman who’s immune to his charms. Until Allie. For one night, the feisty blonde rocked his entire world—and now she wants to be friends? Nope. It’s not over until he says it’s over. Dean is in full-on pursuit, but when life-rocking changes strike, he starts to wonder if maybe it’s time to stop focusing on scoring…and shoot for love. (less)"
3564,"Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen",sports,"Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.

Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder.

With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultrarunners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons. Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run. (less)"
3565,Him,sports,"They don’t play for the same team. Or do they?

Jamie Canning has never been able to figure out how he lost his closest friend. Four years ago, his tattooed, wise-cracking, rule-breaking roommate cut him off without an explanation. So what if things got a little weird on the last night of hockey camp the summer they were eighteen? It was just a little drunken foolishness. Nobody died.

Ryan Wesley’s biggest regret is coaxing his very straight friend into a bet that pushed the boundaries of their relationship. Now, with their college teams set to face off at the national championship, he’ll finally get a chance to apologize. But all it takes is one look at his longtime crush, and the ache is stronger than ever.

Jamie has waited a long time for answers, but walks away with only more questions—can one night of sex ruin a friendship? If not, how about six more weeks of it? When Wesley turns up to coach alongside Jamie for one more hot summer at camp, Jamie has a few things to discover about his old friend... and a big one to learn about himself.

Warning: contains sexual situations, skinnydipping, shenanigans in an SUV and proof that coming out to your family on social media is a dicey proposition. (less)"
3566,Pucked,sports,"With a famous NHL player for a stepbrother, Violet Hall is well acquainted with the playboy reputation of many a hockey star. So of course she isn't interested in legendary team captain Alex Waters or his pretty, beat-up face and rock-hard six-pack abs. But when Alex inadvertently obliterates Violet's misapprehension regarding the inferior intellect of hockey players, he becomes much more than just a hot body with the face to match. Suffering from a complete lapse in judgment, Violet discovers just how good Alex is with the hockey stick in his pants.

Violet believes her night of orgasmic magic with Alex is just that: one night. But Alex starts to call. And text. And email and send extravagant - and quirky - gifts. Suddenly he's too difficult to ignore and nearly impossible not to like. The problem is, the media portrays Alex as a total player, and Violet doesn't want to be part of the game. (less)"
3567,From Lukov with Love,sports,"If someone were to ask Jasmine Santos to describe the last few years of her life with a single word, it would definitely be a four-letter one.

After seventeen years—and countless broken bones and broken promises—she knows her window to compete in figure skating is coming to a close.

But when the offer of a lifetime comes in from an arrogant idiot she’s spent the last decade dreaming about pushing in the way of a moving bus, Jasmine might have to reconsider everything.

Including Ivan Lukov. (less)"
3568,The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics,sports,"For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Unbroken, the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Daniel James Brown's robust book tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.
The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.
Drawing on the boys' own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's The Amateurs.
(less)"
3569,The Blind Side,sports,"When we first meet Michael Oher, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. He takes up football and school after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets. Then two great forces alter Oher: the family's love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game in which the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side. (less)"
3570,"Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream",sports,"Return once again to the enduring account of life in the Mojo lane, to the Permian Panthers of Odessa -- the winningest high school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business.In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, Bissinger chronicles one of the Panthers' dramatic seasons and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires-and sometimes shatters-the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms. Includes Reader's Group Guide inside. Now a major motion picture starring Billy Bob Thorton.
(less)"
3571,The Hook Up,sports,"The rules: no kissing on the mouth, no staying the night, no telling anyone, and above all… No falling in love

Anna Jones just wants to finish college and figure out her life. Falling for star quarterback Drew Baylor is certainly not on her to do list. Confident and charming, he lives in the limelight and is way too gorgeous for his own good. If only she could ignore his heated stares and stop thinking about doing hot and dirty things with him. Easy, right?

Too bad he’s committed to making her break every rule…

Football has been good to Drew. It’s given him recognition, two National Championships, and the Heisman. But what he really craves is sexy yet prickly Anna Jones. Her cutting humor and blatant disregard for his fame turns him on like nothing else. But there’s one problem: she's shut him down. Completely.

That is until a chance encounter leads to the hottest sex of their lives, along with the possibility of something great. Unfortunately, Anna wants it to remain a hook up. Now it’s up to Drew to tempt her with more: more sex, more satisfaction, more time with him. Until she’s truly hooked. It's a good thing Drew knows all about winning.

All’s fair in love and football…Game on (less)"
3572,The Goal,sports,"Alternate cover edition for 9781533344342

She’s good at achieving her goals…

College senior Sabrina James has her whole future planned out: graduate from college, kick butt in law school, and land a high-paying job at a cutthroat firm. Her path to escaping her shameful past certainly doesn’t include a gorgeous hockey player who believes in love at first sight. One night of sizzling heat and surprising tenderness is all she’s willing to give John Tucker, but sometimes, one night is all it takes for your entire life to change.

But the game just got a whole lot more complicated

Tucker believes being a team player is as important as being the star. On the ice, he’s fine staying out of the spotlight, but when it comes to becoming a daddy at the age of twenty-two, he refuses to be a bench warmer. It doesn’t hurt that the soon-to-be mother of his child is beautiful, whip-smart, and keeps him on his toes. The problem is, Sabrina’s heart is locked up tight, and the fiery brunette is too stubborn to accept his help. If he wants a life with the woman of his dreams, he’ll have to convince her that some goals can only be made with an assist. (less)"
3573,The Baller,sports,"From New York Times & USA Today Bestseller, Vi Keeland, comes a sexy new standalone novel.

The first time I met Brody Easton was in the men's locker room.
It was my first interview as a professional sportscaster.
The famed quarterback decided to bare all.
And by all, I don't mean he told me any of his secrets.
No. The arrogant ass decided to drop his towel, just as I asked the first question. On camera.
The Super Bowl MVP quickly adopted a new hobby--screwing with me.
When I pushed back, he shifted from wanting to screw with me, to wanting to screw me.
But I don't date players.
And it's not because I'm one of the few women working in the world of professional football.
I'd date an athlete.
It's the other kind of player I don't date.
You know the type. Good looking, strong, cocky, always looking to get laid.

Brody Easton was the ultimate player.
Every woman wanted to be the one to change him.
But the truth was, all he needed was a girl worth changing for.
Turned out, I was that girl.
Simple right? Let's face it. It never is.
There's a story between once upon a time and happily ever after...
And this one is ours.

Author's note - The Baller is a full-length standalone novel. Due to strong language and sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18. (less)"
3574,Open,sports,"From Andre Agassi, one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court, a beautiful, haunting autobiography.

Agassi’s incredibly rigorous training begins when he is just a child. By the age of thirteen, he is banished to a Florida tennis camp that feels like a prison camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. He dyes his hair, pierces his ears, dresses like a punk rocker. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning-fast return.

And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he loses to the world’s best, his greater confusion as he starts to win. After stumbling in three Grand Slam finals, Agassi shocks the world, and himself, by capturing the 1992 Wimbledon. Overnight he becomes a fan favorite and a media target.

Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match and every relationship. Never before has the inner game of tennis and the outer game of fame been so precisely limned. Alongside vivid portraits of rivals from several generations—Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer—Agassi gives unstinting accounts of his brief time with Barbra Streisand and his doomed marriage to Brooke Shields. He reveals a shattering loss of confidence. And he recounts his spectacular resurrection, a comeback climaxing with his epic run at the 1999 French Open and his march to become the oldest man ever ranked number one.

In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf. Inspired by her quiet strength, he fights through crippling pain from a deteriorating spine to remain a dangerous opponent in the twenty-first and final year of his career. Entering his last tournament in 2006, he’s hailed for completing a stunning metamorphosis, from nonconformist to elder statesman, from dropout to education advocate. And still he’s not done. At a U.S. Open for the ages, he makes a courageous last stand, then delivers one of the most stirring farewells ever heard in a sporting arena.

With its breakneck tempo and raw candor, Open will be read and cherished for years. A treat for ardent fans, it will also captivate readers who know nothing about tennis. Like Agassi’s game, it sets a new standard for grace, style, speed, and power. (less)"
3575,The Crossover,sports,"""With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I'm delivering,"" announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood.

Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story's heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family. (less)"
3576,The Chase,sports,"Everyone says opposites attract. And they must be right, because there’s no logical reason why I’m so drawn to Colin Fitzgerald. I don’t usually go for tattoo-covered, video-gaming, hockey-playing nerd-jocks who think I’m flighty and superficial. His narrow view of me is the first strike against him. It doesn’t help that he’s buddy-buddy with my brother.

And that his best friend has a crush on me.

And that I just moved in with them.

Oh, did I not mention we’re roommates?

I suppose it doesn’t matter. Fitzy has made it clear he’s not interested in me, even though the sparks between us are liable to burn our house down. I’m not the kind of girl who chases after a man, though, and I’m not about to start. I’ve got my hands full dealing with a new school, a sleazy professor, and an uncertain future. So if my sexy brooding roomie wises up and realizes what he’s missing?

He knows where to find me. (less)"
3577,Alex,sports,"Hockey star Alexander Crossman has a reputation as a cold-hearted player on and off the rink. Pushed into the sport by an alcoholic father, Alex isn't afraid to give fans the proverbial middle finger, relishing his role as the MVP they love to hate. Management, however, isn't so amused. Now Alex has a choice: fix his public image through community service or ride the bench. But Alex refuses to be molded into the Carolina Cold Fury poster boy... not even by a tempting redhead with killer curves.

As a social worker, Sutton Price is accustomed to difficult people--like Alex, who's been assigned to help her create a drug-abuse awareness program for at-risk youth as part of the team's effort to clean up his image. What she doesn't expect is the arrogant smirk from his perfect lips to stir her most heated fantasies. But Sutton isn't one to cross professional boundaries--and besides, Alex doesn't do relationships... or does he? The more she sees behind Alex's bad-boy facade, the more Sutton craves the man she uncovers. (less)"
3578,The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy,sports,"There is only one writer on the planet who possesses enough basketball knowledge and passion to write the definitive book on the NBA.* Bill Simmons, the from-the-womb hoops addict known to millions as ESPN.com’s Sports Guy, is that writer. And The Book of Basketball is that book.

Nowhere in the roundball universe will you find another single volume that covers as much in such depth as this wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining look at the past, present, and future of pro basketball.

From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens–and then closes, once and for all–every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind, five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball.

Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.



* More to the point, he’s the only one crazy enough to try to pull it off.
(less)"
3579,Ball Four,sports,"Twentieth-anniversary edition of a baseball classic, with a new epilogue by Jim Bouton.

When first published in 1970, Ball Four stunned the sports world. The commissioner, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and ""social leper."" Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And serious critics called it an important social document. Today, Jim Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimer's Days at Yankee Stadium. But his landmark book is still being read by people who don't ordinarily follow baseball. (less)"
3580,The Friend Zone,sports,"Gray doesn’t make friends with women. He has sex with them. Until Ivy.

The last thing star tight-end Gray Grayson wants to do is drive his agent’s daughter’s bubblegum pink car. But he needs the wheels and she’s studying abroad. Something he explains when she sends him an irate text to let him know exactly how much pain she’ll put him in if he crashes her beloved ride. Before he knows it, Ivy Mackenzie has become his best texting bud. But then Ivy comes home and everything goes haywire. Because the only thing Gray can think of is being with Ivy.

Ivy doesn’t have sex with friends. Especially not with a certain football player. No matter how hot he makes her…

Gray drives Ivy crazy. He’s irreverent, sex on a stick, and completely off limits. Because, Ivy has one golden rule: never get involved with one of her father’s clients. A rule that’s proving harder to keep now that Gray is doing his best to seduce her. Her best friend is fast becoming the most irresistible guy she’s ever met.

Which means Gray is going to have to use all his skills to get himself out of the friend zone and into Ivy’s heart. Game on (less)"
3581,The Perfect Play,sports,"Football pro Mick Riley is an all-star, both on the field and in the bedroom. But a sexy, determinedly single mom just might be the one to throw him off his game...

For years Mick has been taking full advantage of the life available to a pro athlete: fame, fortune, and a different girl in every city. But when he meets and beds confident, beautiful event planner Tara Lincoln, he wants much more than the typical one-night stand. Too bad Tara's not interested in getting to know football's most notorious playboy any better.

As the single mother of a teenage son, the last thing Tara needs is the jet-set lifestyle of Mick Riley; even though their steamy and passionate one-night stand was unforgettable. Tara's life is complicated enough without being thrust into the spotlight as Mick's latest girl du jour. Tara played the game of love once and lost big, and she doesn't intend to put herself out there again, especially with a heartbreaker like Mick.

But when Mick sets his mind to win, nothing will stop him. And he has the perfect play in mind. (less)"
3582,The Risk,sports,"A sexy standalone novel from New York Times and international bestselling author Elle Kennedy. THE RISK takes you back to the world of hot hockey players, feisty heroines, bro banter, and steamy scenes...

Everyone says I’m a bad girl. They’re only partly right—I don’t let fear rule me, and I certainly don’t care what people think. But I draw the line at sleeping with the enemy. As the daughter of Briar’s head hockey coach, I’d be vilified if I hooked up with a player from a rival team.

And that’s who Jake Connelly is. Harvard’s star forward is arrogant, annoying, and too attractive for his own good. But fate is cruel—I require his help to secure a much-coveted internship, and the sexy jerk isn’t making it easy for me.

I need Connelly to be my fake boyfriend.

For every fake date…he wants a real one.

Which means this bad girl is in big trouble. Nothing good can come from sneaking around with Jake Connelly. My father would kill me, my friends will revolt, and my post-college career is on the line. But while it’s getting harder and harder to resist Jake’s oozing sex appeal and cocky grin, I refuse to fall for him.

That’s the one risk I’m not willing to take. (less)"
3583,The Game Plan,sports,"A beard-related dare and one hot-as-hell kiss changes everything.

NFL center Ethan Dexter’s focus has always been on playing football and little else. Except when it comes to one particular woman. The lovely Fiona Mackenzie might not care about his fame, but she’s also never looked at him as anything more than one of her brother-in-law’s best friend. That ends now.

Fi doesn’t know what to make of Dex. The bearded, tattooed, mountain of man-muscle looks more like a biker than a football player. Rumor has it he’s a virgin, but she finds that hard to believe. Because from the moment he decides to turn his quiet intensity on her she’s left weak at the knees and aching to see his famous control fully unleashed.

Dex is looking for a forever girl, but they live vastly different lives in separate cities. Fi ought to guard her heart and walk away. But Dex has upped his game and is using all his considerable charm to convince Fi he's her forever man.

Game On (less)"
3584,Beartown,sports,"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream—and the price required to make it come true.

People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world. (less)"
3585,Us,sports,"Can your favorite hockey players finish their first season together undefeated?

Five months in, NHL forward Ryan Wesley is having a record-breaking rookie season. He’s living his dream of playing pro hockey and coming home every night to the man he loves—Jamie Canning, his longtime best friend turned boyfriend. There’s just one problem: the most important relationship of his life is one he needs to keep hidden, or else face a media storm that will eclipse his success on the ice.

Jamie loves Wes. He really, truly does. But hiding sucks. It’s not the life Jamie envisioned for himself, and the strain of keeping their secret is taking its toll. It doesn’t help that his new job isn’t going as smoothly as he’d hoped, but he knows he can power through it as long as he has Wes. At least apartment 10B is their retreat, where they can always be themselves.

Or can they?

When Wes’s nosiest teammate moves in upstairs, the threads of their carefully woven lie begin to unravel. With the outside world determined to take its best shot at them, can Wes and Jamie develop major-league relationship skills on the fly?

Warning: contains sexual situations, a vibrating chair, long-distance sexytimes and proof that hockey players look hot in any shade of green. (less)"
3586,Ghost,sports,"Running. That's all that Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But never for a track team. Nope, his game has always been ball. But when Ghost impulsively challenges an elite sprinter to a race—and wins—the Olympic medalist track coach sees he has something: crazy natural talent. Thing is, Ghost has something else: a lot of anger, and a past that he is trying to outrun. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed and meld with the team, or will his past finally catch up to him? (less)"
3587,The Art of Fielding,sports,"At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment - to oneself and to others. (less)"
3588,The Foxhole Court,sports,"Neil Josten is the newest addition to the Palmetto State University Exy team. He's short, he's fast, he's got a ton of potential—and he's the runaway son of the murderous crime lord known as The Butcher.

Signing a contract with the PSU Foxes is the last thing a guy like Neil should do. The team is high profile and he doesn't need sports crews broadcasting pictures of his face around the nation. His lies will hold up only so long under this kind of scrutiny and the truth will get him killed.

But Neil's not the only one with secrets on the team. One of Neil's new teammates is a friend from his old life, and Neil can't walk away from him a second time. Neil has survived the last eight years by running. Maybe he's finally found someone and something worth fighting for. (less)"
3589,It Had to Be You,sports,"What if a woman who knows nothing about sports inherits a professional football team? The Windy City definitely isn't ready for Phoebe Somerville, the outrageous York knockout who’s taking over their home town team. And Phoebe is definitely not prepared for the Stars' head coach Dan Calebow, a sexist jock taskmaster with a one-track mind. This is the book that began it all. The Chicago Stars are about to take the field... and they’re not the only ones playing for keeps. (less)"
3590,Seabiscuit: An American Legend,sports,"There's an alternate cover edition here

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:

Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.

Author Laura Hillenbrand brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story, one that proves life is a horse race.


From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
3591,Scoring Wilder,sports,"What started out as a joke— seduce Coach Wilder—soon became a goal she had to score.

With Olympic tryouts on the horizon, the last thing nineteen-year-old Kinsley Bryant needs to add to her plate is Liam Wilder. He's a professional soccer player, America's favorite bad-boy, and has all the qualities of a skilled panty-dropper.

• A face that makes girls weep – check.
• Abs that can shred Parmesan cheese (the expensive kind) – check.
• Enough confidence to shift the earth’s gravitational pull – double check.

Not to mention Liam is strictly off limits . Forbidden. Her coaches have made that perfectly clear. (i.e. “Score with Coach Wilder anywhere other than the field and you’ll be cut from the team faster than you can count his tattoos.”) But that just makes him all the more enticing…Besides, Kinsley's already counted the visible ones, and she is not one to leave a project unfinished.

Kinsley tries to play the game her way as they navigate through forbidden territory, but Liam is determined to teach her a whole new definition for the term “team bonding.”

A fun & sexy New Adult Romance (age 17+) (less)"
3592,Taking Shots,sports,"Elli Fisher has never thought she was good enough, let it be her job, her weight, her love life, nothing. That is until she meets Shea Adler. After doing a promotional shoot for the NHL team, the Assassins, she meets the hunky hockey player who shoots a puck, shattering her world.
Shea Adler was tired of the life he was living outside of the rink. The girls, the money blowing, the drinking, everything had to stop and it all did when he met Eleanor Fisher. He had never met anyone like her. She was feisty, witty, shy, and simply gorgeous. When he laid eyes on her, it was as if he was taking the hardest hit of his life into the boards, and he had to have her. Elli is a little skeptical of Shea, but he knows that they were meant to be together, and he needed her in his life.
Can Elli throw her insecurities out the window and love Shea with everything inside of her, or will she let a past relationship, and her family ruin any chance of her being happy. (less)"
3593,Enemies,sports,"Stone Reeves was my neighbor, and I've hated him since sixth grade.

Gorgeous and charismatic, he became the town's football god, while I became the town's invisible girl.
He went to a Division 1 school for football, while my father was fired by his father.
His team won the National Championship, while my mother died the same day.

He was a first round pick for the NFL ...
... while I made the worst decision of my life.

Now I'm in Texas trying to pick up the pieces of my life.
But, Stone is here.
Stone is everywhere.

It doesn't matter that disaster has struck my life again.
It doesn't matter that he's the one trying to console me.
It doesn't matter that he's the nation's newest football obsession.

Because for me, he always has been and always will be my enemy.

** Enemies is a 100k enemies-to-lovers football romance standalone! (less)"
3594,Good Boy,sports,"Hosting her brother’s wedding for an MVP guest list is the challenge of Jess Canning’s life. Already the family screw-up, she can’t afford to fail. And nobody - absolutely nobody! - can learn of the colossal mistake she made with the best man during a weak moment last spring. It was wrong, and there will not be a repeat. Absolutely not. Even if he is the sexiest thing on two legs.

Blake Riley sees the wedding as fate’s gift to him. Jess is the maid of honor, and he’s the best man? Let the games begin. So what if he’s facing a little (fine, a lot) of resistance? He just needs to convince the stubborn blonde that he’s really a good boy with a bad rap. Luckily, every professional hockey player knows that you’ve got to make an effort if you want to score.

But Jess has more pressing issues to deal with than sexy-times with a giant man-child. Such as: Will the ceremony start on time, even though someone got grandma drunk? Does glitter ever belong at a wedding? And is it wrong to murder the best man?

Caution: May cause accidental aspiration of tea or coffee. Do not read in a public place where loud laughter is inappropriate. Contains hot but hilarious hockey players, puppy cuddling and a snarky pair of underwear. (less)"
3595,Long Shot,sports,"A Standalone FORBIDDEN LOVE SET IN THE EXPLOSIVE WORLD OF THE NBA...

Think you know what it's like being a baller's girl?
You don't.
My fairy tale is upside down.
A happily never after.
I kissed the prince and he turned into a fraud.
I was a fool, and his love - fool's gold.

Now there's a new player in the game, August West.
One of the NBA's brightest stars.
Fine. Forbidden.
He wants me. I want him.
But my past, my fraudulent prince, just won't let me go.

*Contains domestic/sexual abuse not involving the hero. Read reviews for further guidance. (less)"
3596,Sacked,sports,"What he wants he gets...

Knox Masters is a quarterback's worst nightmare. Warrior. Champion. And...virgin. Knox knows what he wants--and he gets it. All American Football player? Check. NFL pros scouting him? Check. Now, he's set his sight on two things. The national title. And Ellie Campbell. Sure, she's the sister of his fellow teammate, but that's not going to stop him. Especially not when he’s convinced Ellie is the one.

...but he's never met her before.

But Ellie isn't as sure. She's trying to start a new life and she's not interested in a relationship...with anyone. Beside it's not just her cardinal rule of never dating her brother's teammates that keeps her away, but Ellie has a dark secret that would jeopardize everything Knox is pursuing.

Knox has no intention of losing. Ellie has no intention of giving in. (less)"
3597,The Hooker and the Hermit,sports,"Book #1 in the USA TODAY BESTSELLING Rugby Series

New York’s Finest
Blogging as *The Socialmedialite*
April 22
LADIES AND GENTS! I have an announcement!

You know that guy I featured on my blog a few months ago? The really, really hot Irish rugby player who plays the position of ‘hooker’ in the RLI (Rugby League International)? The one with the anger management issues, the body of a gladiator and the face of a movie star? The one with the questionable fashion choices leading me to ask whether he was the lovechild of a leprechaun and a hobbit? Ronan Fitzpatrick? Yeah, that guy.

Well, I have a confession to make…

THE HERMIT

Annie Catrel, social media expert extraordinaire at Davidson & Croft Media and clandestine celebrity blogger, can make anyone shine in the court of public opinion. She is the Socialmedialite, anonymous creator of New York’s Finest and the internet’s darling. Virtual reality is Annie’s forte, but actual reality? Not so much.

THE HOOKER

Ronan Fitzpatrick, aka the best hooker the world of rugby has seen in decades, despises the media—social or otherwise. The press has spun a web of lies depicting him as rugby’s wild and reckless bad boy. Suspended from his team, Ronan has come to Manhattan to escape the drama, lay low, fly under the radar. Only, Ronan isn’t easy to overlook, and he can’t escape the notice of the Socialmedialite…

THE PLAN

When Ronan is sent to Davidson & Croft Media to reshape his public image, he never expects to cross paths with shy but beautiful Annie, nor does he expect his fierce attraction to her. He couldn’t be happier when her boss suggests pairing them together.

What lengths will Annie take to keep her virtual identity concealed? And what happens when the hooker discovers who the hermit really is? (less)"
3598,The Year We Fell Down,sports,"Alternate cover for this ASIN can be found here

The sport she loves is out of reach. The boy she loves has someone else. What now?
 
She expected to start Harkness College as a varsity ice hockey player. But a serious accident means that Corey Callahan will start school in a wheelchair instead.
 
Across the hall, in the other handicapped-accessible dorm room, lives the too-delicious-to-be real Adam Hartley, another would-be hockey star with his leg broken in two places. He's way out of Corey's league.
 
Also, he's taken.
 
Nevertheless, an unlikely alliance blooms between Corey and Hartley in McHerrin Hall. Over tequila, perilously balanced dining hall trays, and video games, the two cope with disappointments that nobody else understands.
 
They're just friends, of course, until one night when things fall apart. Or fall together. All Corey knows is that she's falling. Hard.
 
But will Hartley set aside his trophy girl to love someone as broken as Corey? If he won't, she will need to find the courage to make a life for herself at Harkness -- one which does not revolve around the sport she can no longer play, or the brown-eyed boy who's afraid to love her back. (less)"
3599,The Boys of Summer,sports,"This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love. (less)"
3600,Sweet Home,sports,"At age twenty, Molly Shakespeare knows a lot.

She knows Descartes and Kant.

She knows academia and Oxford.

She knows that the people who love you leave you.

She knows how to be alone.

But when Molly leaves England's grey skies behind to start a new life at the University of Alabama, she finds that she has a lot to learn — she didn't know a summer could be so hot, she didn't know students could be so intimidating, and she certainly didn't know just how much the folks of Alabama love their football.

When a chance encounter with notorious star quarterback, Romeo Prince, leaves her unable to think of anything but his chocolate-brown eyes, dirty-blond hair and perfect physique, Molly soon realises that her quiet, solitary life is about to dramatically change forever...

Mature New Adult novel — contains adult content, highly sexual situations and mature topics. Suited for ages 18 and up* (less)"
3601,Real,sports,"A fallen boxer.
A woman with a broken dream.
A competition...

He even makes me forget my name. One night was all it took, and I forgot everything and anything except the sexy fighter in the ring who sets my mind ablaze and my body on fire with wanting...

Remington Tate is the strongest, most confusing man I've ever met in my life.

He’s the star of the dangerous underground fighting circuit, and I’m drawn to him as I've never been drawn to anything in my life. I forget who I am, what I want, with just one look from him. When he’s near, I need to remind myself that I am strong—but he is stronger. And now it’s my job to keep his body working like a perfect machine, his taut muscles primed and ready to break the bones of his next opponents...

But the one he’s most threatening to, now, is me.

I want him. I want him without fear. Without reservations.

If only I knew for sure what it is that he wants from me? (less)"
3602,The Understatement of the Year,sports,"What happened in high school stayed in high school. Until now.

Five years ago, Michael Graham betrayed the only person who ever really knew him. Since then, he’s made an art of hiding his sexuality from everyone. Including himself.

So it’s a shock when his past strolls right into the Harkness College locker room, sporting a bag of hockey gear and the same slow smile that had always rendered Graham defenseless. For Graham, there is only one possible reaction: total, debilitating panic. With one loose word, the team’s new left wing could destroy Graham’s life as he knows it.

John Rikker is stuck being the new guy. Again. And it’s worse than usual, because the media has latched onto the story of the only “out” player in Division One hockey. As the satellite trucks line the sidewalk outside the rink, his new teammates are not amused.

And one player in particular looks sick every time he enters the room.

Rikker didn’t exactly expect a warm welcome from Graham. But the guy won’t even meet his eyes. From the looks of it, his former… best friend / boyfriend / whatever isn’t doing so well. He drinks too much and can’t focus during practice.

Either the two loneliest guys on the team will self destruct from all the new pressures in their lives, or they can navigate the pain to find a way back to one another. To say that it won’t be easy is the Understatement of the Year.

Warning: unlike the other books in this series, this heartbreaking love story is about two guys. Contains sexual situations, dance music, snarky t-shirts and a poker-playing grandmother.

THIS BOOK IS A STANDALONE. NO CLIFFHANGERS. NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. (less)"
3603,"Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey",sports,"Helloooo, Internet Land. Bitty here!

Y’all... I might not be ready for this. I may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur pâtissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It’s nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia! First of all? There’s checking. And then, there is Jack—our very attractive but moody captain.

A collection of the first half of the megapopular webcomic series of the same name, Check, Please!: #Hockey is the first book of a hilarious and stirring two-volume coming-of-age story about hockey, bros, and trying to find yourself during the best four years of your life. (less)"
3604,Catching Jordan,sports,"ONE OF THE BOYS

What girl doesn't want to be surrounded by gorgeous jocks day in and day out? Jordan Woods isn't just surrounded by hot guys, though-she leads them as the captain and quarterback of her high school football team. They all see her as one of the guys and that's just fine. As long as she gets her athletic scholarship to a powerhouse university.

But everything she's ever worked for is threatened when Ty Green moves to her school. Not only is he an amazing QB, but he's also amazingly hot. And for the first time, Jordan's feeling vulnerable. Can she keep her head in the game while her heart's on the line? (less)"
3605,Fever Pitch,sports,"For many people watching football is mere entertainment, to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself.

For Nick Hornby, his devotion to the game has provided one of few constants in a life where the meaningful things - like growing up, leaving home, and forming relationships, both parental and romantic - have rarely been as simple or as uncomplicated as his love for Arsenal.

Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby's award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom — its agony and ecstasy, its community, and its defining role in thousands of young men's coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season. (less)"
3606,Soccernomics,sports,"Why do England lose? Why does Scotland suck? Why doesn’t America dominate the sport internationally... and why do the Germans play with such an efficient but robotic style?

These are questions every soccer aficionado has asked. Soccernomics answers them.

Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, and business to cast a new and entertaining light on how the game works, Soccernomics reveals the often surprisingly counter-intuitive truths about soccer. (less)"
3607,Heated Rivalry,sports,"Nothing interferes with Shane Hollander’s game—definitely not the sexy rival he loves to hate.

Pro hockey star Shane Hollander isn’t just crazy talented, he’s got a spotless reputation. Hockey is his life. Now that he’s captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, he won’t let anything jeopardize that, especially the sexy Russian whose hard body keeps him awake at night.

Boston Bears captain Ilya Rozanov is everything Shane’s not. The self-proclaimed king of the ice, he’s as cocky as he is talented. No one can beat him—except Shane. They’ve made a career on their legendary rivalry, but when the skates come off, the heat between them is undeniable. When Ilya realizes he wants more than a few secret hookups, he knows he must walk away. The risk is too great.

As their attraction intensifies, they struggle to keep their relationship out of the public eye. If the truth comes out, it could ruin them both. But when their need for each other rivals their ambition on the ice, secrecy is no longer an option…


One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

This book is approximately 66,000 words (less)"
3608,A Lie for a Lie,sports,"From the New York Times bestselling author of the Pucked series comes a romantic comedy about instant attraction, second chances, and not-so-little white lies.

Sometimes I need an escape from the demands, the puck bunnies, and the notoriety that come with being an NHL team captain. I just want to be a normal guy for a few weeks. So when I leave Chicago for some peace and quiet, the last thing I expect is for a gorgeous woman to literally fall into my lap on a flight to Alaska. Even better, she has absolutely no idea who I am.

Lainey is the perfect escape from my life. My plan for seclusion becomes a monthlong sex fest punctuated with domestic bliss. But it ends just as abruptly as it began. When I’m called away on a family emergency, I realize too late that I have no way to contact Lainey.

A year later, a chance encounter throws Lainey and me together again. But I still have a lie hanging over my head, and Lainey’s keeping secrets of her own. With more than lust at stake, the truth may be our game changer. (less)"
3609,Rookie Move,sports,"The first novel in a sexy new series featuring the hockey players of the Brooklyn Bruisers and the women who win their hearts—from the USA Today bestselling author of the Ivy Years series.

In high school they were the perfect couple—until the day Georgia left Leo in the cold...

Hockey player Leo Trevi has spent the last six years trying to do two things: get over the girl who broke his heart, and succeed in the NHL. But on the first day he’s called up to the newly franchised Brooklyn Bruisers, Leo gets checked on both sides, first by the team’s coach—who has a long simmering grudge, and then by the Bruisers’ sexy, icy publicist—his former girlfriend Georgia Worthington.

Saying goodbye to Leo was one of the hardest things Georgia ever had to do—and saying hello again isn’t much easier. Georgia is determined to keep their relationship strictly professional, but when a press conference microphone catches Leo declaring his feelings for her, things get really personal, really fast.... (less)"
3610,The Raven King,sports,"The Foxes are a fractured mess, but their latest disaster might be the miracle they've always needed to come together as a team. The one person standing in their way is Andrew, and the only one who can break through his personal barriers is Neil.

Except Andrew doesn't give up anything for free and Neil is terrible at trusting anyone but himself. The two don't have much time to come to terms with their situation before outside forces start tearing them apart. Riko is intent on destroying Neil's fragile new life, and the Foxes have just become collateral damage.

Neil's days are numbered, but he's learning the hard way to go down fighting for what he believes in, and Neil believes in Andrew even if Andrew won't believe in himself. (less)"
3611,The King's Men,sports,"Neil Josten is out of time. He knew when he came to PSU he wouldn't survive the year, but with his death right around the corner he's got more reasons than ever to live.

Befriending the Foxes was inadvisable. Kissing one is unthinkable. Neil should know better than to get involved with anyone this close to the end, but Andrew's never been the easiest person to walk away from. If they both say it doesn't mean anything, maybe Neil won't regret losing it, but the one person Neil can't lie to is himself.

He's got promises to keep and a team to get to championships if he can just outrun Riko a little longer, but Riko's not the only monster in Neil's life. The truth might get them all killed—or be Neil's one shot at getting out of this alive. (less)"
3612,The Play,sports,"A brand-new standalone novel in the New York Times bestselling Briar U series!

What I learned after last year’s distractions cost my hockey team our entire season? No more screwing up. No more screwing, period. As the new team captain, I need a new philosophy: hockey and school now, women later. Which means that I, Hunter Davenport, am officially going celibate…no matter how hard that makes things.

But there’s nothing in the rulebook that says I can’t be friends with a woman. And I won’t lie—my new classmate Demi Davis is one cool chick. Her smart mouth is hot as hell, and so is the rest of her, but the fact that she’s got a boyfriend eliminates the temptation to touch her.

Except three months into our friendship, Demi is single and looking for a rebound.

And she’s making a play for me.

Avoiding her is impossible. We’re paired up on a yearlong school project, but I’m confident I can resist her. We’d never work, anyway. Our backgrounds are too different, our goals aren’t aligned, and her parents hate my guts.

Hooking up is a very bad idea. Now I just have to convince my body—and my heart. (less)"
3613,Hands Down,sports,"Before he was Big Texas, he was Zac the Snack Pack.

Bianca Brannen knows time--mostly--heals all wounds. Including those your once loved ones might have unintentionally given you. (Those just take longer.)

She thinks she’s ready when a call has her walking back into her old friend’s life. Or at least as prepared as possible to see the starting quarterback in the National Football Organization. Before the lights, the fans, and the millions, he’d been a skinny kid with a heart of gold.

Waltzing out of Zac Travis’s life should be easy. Just as easy as he walked out of hers. (less)"
3614,Taking a Shot,sports,"If you want to score, you have to get in the game... The last thing Jenna Riley needs is more sports in her life. While her brothers are off being athletic superstars, she's stuck running the family's sports bar, whether she likes it or not. Then in walks pro hockey stud Tyler Anderson. As much as Jenna would like to go to the boards with him, she's vowed to never fall for a jock-even one as hot as Ty.

Ty, intrigued by the beautiful bar owner, becomes a regular. He senses that Jenna wants to do something more with her life. And as he gains her trust, the passion between them grows, as does Ty's insistence that Jenna should start living for herself. With his encouragement, Jenna starts to believe it, too...

But first, Jenna has to figure out what she wants, what she needs, who she loves, and if she has the passion and pride to take a shot at having it all-including Ty... (less)"
3615,What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,sports,"In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and--even more important--on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo's Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running."" (less)"
3616,Changing the Game,sports,"Sports agent Liz Darnell will do anything to win back her number-one client, baseball pro Gavin Riley. And Gavin's more than ready- especially when Liz is offering herself as part of the bargain. But when love unexpectedly enters the playing field, neither Liz nor Gavin are ready for the biggest game-changer of all.
(less)"
3617,Zack,sports,"Rising star Zack Grantham has been stuck in a downward spiral of grief ever since the car accident that left him a single dad and put his career on hold. Back on the road with the Carolina Cold Fury and still crippled by emotional baggage, he’s in need of some serious help with his son. But while the nerdy new nanny wins his son’s heart, Zack isn’t sure he’s ready for a woman’s touch—even after getting a glimpse of the killer curves she’s hiding under those baggy clothes.

Kate Francis usually keeps men like Zack at a distance. Though his athlete’s body is honed to perfection, he refuses to move on with his life—and besides, he’s her boss. Still, the sparks between them are undeniable, tempting Kate to turn their professional relationship into a personal one. But before she makes a power play for Zack’s wounded heart, Kate will have to open him up again and show him that love is worth the fight. (less)"
3618,Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,sports,"In the exclusive behind the scenes look, sports fans can unlock the fascinating history of the channel that changed the way people watch and interact with their favorite teams.
It began, in 1979, as a mad idea of starting a cable channel to televise local sporting events throughout the state of Connecticut. Today, ESPN is arguably the most successful network in modern television history, spanning eight channels in the Unites States and around the world. But the inside story of its rise has never been fully told-until now.

Drawing upon over 500 interviews with the greatest names in ESPN's history and an All-Star collection of some of the world's finest athletes, bestselling authors James Miller and Tom Shales take us behind the cameras. Now, in their own words, the men and women who made ESPN great reveal the secrets behind its success-as well as the many scandals, rivalries, off-screen battles and triumphs that have accompanied that ascent. From the unknown producers and business visionaries to the most famous faces on television, it's all here. (less)"
3619,Jock Row,sports,"Scarlett is always the sensible one: The sober driver. The planner. The one holding your hair back while you're worshiping the porcelain gods.

Week-after-week, she visits Jock Row with her friends — the university's hottest party scene and breeding ground for student athletes. And if keeping her friends out of trouble, and guys out of their pants, was a sport, she'd be the star athlete.

Being a well known jock-blocker gets her noticed for all the wrong reasons; just like that, she's banned from Jock Row. NO GUY WANTS A GIRL AROUND WHO KEEPS THEIR JOCK FRIENDS FROM GETTING LAID.

""Rowdy"" Wade is the hot shot short-stop for the university's baseball team — and the unlucky bastard who drew the short straw: keep little Miss Goody Two-Shoes out of the Baseball House.

But week-after-week Scarlett returns, determined to get inside. (less)"
3620,The Hot Shot,sports,"First we were friends. Then we were roommates. Now I want more…

What can I say about Chess Copper? The woman is capable of bringing me to my knees. I know this about five minutes after getting naked for her.

No one is more surprised than me. The prickly photographer my team hired to shoot our annual charity calendar isn’t my usual type. She’s defense to my offense, a challenge at every turn. But when I’m with her, all the regrets and darkness goes away. She makes life fun.

I want to know Chess, be close to her. Which is a bad idea.

Chess is looking for a relationship. I’ve never given a woman more than one night. But when fate leaves Chess without a home, I step up and offer her mine. We’re roommates now. Friends without benefits. But it’s getting harder to keep our hands off each other. And the longer we live together the more I realize she’s becoming my everything.

Trick is… Now that I’ve made her believe I’m a bad bet, how do I convince her to give this player a true shot at forever? (less)"
3621,Garrett,sports,"Carolina Cold Fury star Garrett Samuelson never wants to miss out on a single minute of fun. Whether he’s playing hockey, hanging out with friends, or walking the red carpet with a new date on his arm, he lives every day to the fullest. When he meets Olivia Case, he sees someone who’s exactly his type—confident, sexy, smart . . . his next fling. But the more he pursues her, the more Garrett shares a side of himself that other women don’t normally get to see.

Olivia has been keeping a secret. While Garrett lives for the next thrill, Olivia’s not sure she’ll live to see the next day. She’s undergoing treatment for some serious medical issues, and she doesn’t have time for a relationship with no guarantees—especially one with a hot-as-sin womanizer who won’t take no for an answer. But as she gets to know the real Garrett, Olivia can’t help falling for him . . . hard. To reveal the truth would mean risking everything—but you can’t score without taking the tough shots. (less)"
3622,Puck Me Secretly,sports,"I’ve never been in love.
I’ve never had an orgasm, but I’ve faked plenty.
I want to experience love.  Real, passionate love.
I don’t want to die.

It’s funny what blurts out of your mouth when the plane you’re on is going down, and I didn’t hold back with my seat mate when my plane decided to crash.
My hysterical confessions didn’t faze the muscular stranger that sat beside me.  In fact, he promised if we survived, he’d give me my first orgasm.  

We survived.
I came.
And then he left without telling me who he was.

On the first day of my job, I stood in front of the Vancouver Wolves hockey team and called out a number.  #33.
Imagine my shock when he skated forward.

Max is an incredible hockey player, whose wild, out-of-control antics have almost derailed his career.  So many secrets shroud his past and continue to threaten his future.  
Now he’s my secret.  And that secret could ruin everything.  

Puck Me SECRETLY.  Some secrets are too big to keep.

Intended for adult audiences only. (less)"
3623,Summer of '49,sports,"With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize–winningauthor David Halberstam returns us to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat.

The year was 1949, and a war-weary nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball's American League, and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash, headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions—one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season. (less)"
3624,A Lie for a Lie,sports,"From the New York Times bestselling author of the Pucked series comes a romantic comedy about instant attraction, second chances, and not-so-little white lies.

Sometimes I need an escape from the demands, the puck bunnies, and the notoriety that come with being an NHL team captain. I just want to be a normal guy for a few weeks. So when I leave Chicago for some peace and quiet, the last thing I expect is for a gorgeous woman to literally fall into my lap on a flight to Alaska. Even better, she has absolutely no idea who I am.

Lainey is the perfect escape from my life. My plan for seclusion becomes a monthlong sex fest punctuated with domestic bliss. But it ends just as abruptly as it began. When I’m called away on a family emergency, I realize too late that I have no way to contact Lainey.

A year later, a chance encounter throws Lainey and me together again. But I still have a lie hanging over my head, and Lainey’s keeping secrets of her own. With more than lust at stake, the truth may be our game changer. (less)"
3625,Rookie Move,sports,"The first novel in a sexy new series featuring the hockey players of the Brooklyn Bruisers and the women who win their hearts—from the USA Today bestselling author of the Ivy Years series.

In high school they were the perfect couple—until the day Georgia left Leo in the cold...

Hockey player Leo Trevi has spent the last six years trying to do two things: get over the girl who broke his heart, and succeed in the NHL. But on the first day he’s called up to the newly franchised Brooklyn Bruisers, Leo gets checked on both sides, first by the team’s coach—who has a long simmering grudge, and then by the Bruisers’ sexy, icy publicist—his former girlfriend Georgia Worthington.

Saying goodbye to Leo was one of the hardest things Georgia ever had to do—and saying hello again isn’t much easier. Georgia is determined to keep their relationship strictly professional, but when a press conference microphone catches Leo declaring his feelings for her, things get really personal, really fast.... (less)"
3626,The Raven King,sports,"The Foxes are a fractured mess, but their latest disaster might be the miracle they've always needed to come together as a team. The one person standing in their way is Andrew, and the only one who can break through his personal barriers is Neil.

Except Andrew doesn't give up anything for free and Neil is terrible at trusting anyone but himself. The two don't have much time to come to terms with their situation before outside forces start tearing them apart. Riko is intent on destroying Neil's fragile new life, and the Foxes have just become collateral damage.

Neil's days are numbered, but he's learning the hard way to go down fighting for what he believes in, and Neil believes in Andrew even if Andrew won't believe in himself. (less)"
3627,The King's Men,sports,"Neil Josten is out of time. He knew when he came to PSU he wouldn't survive the year, but with his death right around the corner he's got more reasons than ever to live.

Befriending the Foxes was inadvisable. Kissing one is unthinkable. Neil should know better than to get involved with anyone this close to the end, but Andrew's never been the easiest person to walk away from. If they both say it doesn't mean anything, maybe Neil won't regret losing it, but the one person Neil can't lie to is himself.

He's got promises to keep and a team to get to championships if he can just outrun Riko a little longer, but Riko's not the only monster in Neil's life. The truth might get them all killed—or be Neil's one shot at getting out of this alive. (less)"
3628,The Play,sports,"A brand-new standalone novel in the New York Times bestselling Briar U series!

What I learned after last year’s distractions cost my hockey team our entire season? No more screwing up. No more screwing, period. As the new team captain, I need a new philosophy: hockey and school now, women later. Which means that I, Hunter Davenport, am officially going celibate…no matter how hard that makes things.

But there’s nothing in the rulebook that says I can’t be friends with a woman. And I won’t lie—my new classmate Demi Davis is one cool chick. Her smart mouth is hot as hell, and so is the rest of her, but the fact that she’s got a boyfriend eliminates the temptation to touch her.

Except three months into our friendship, Demi is single and looking for a rebound.

And she’s making a play for me.

Avoiding her is impossible. We’re paired up on a yearlong school project, but I’m confident I can resist her. We’d never work, anyway. Our backgrounds are too different, our goals aren’t aligned, and her parents hate my guts.

Hooking up is a very bad idea. Now I just have to convince my body—and my heart. (less)"
3629,Hands Down,sports,"Before he was Big Texas, he was Zac the Snack Pack.

Bianca Brannen knows time--mostly--heals all wounds. Including those your once loved ones might have unintentionally given you. (Those just take longer.)

She thinks she’s ready when a call has her walking back into her old friend’s life. Or at least as prepared as possible to see the starting quarterback in the National Football Organization. Before the lights, the fans, and the millions, he’d been a skinny kid with a heart of gold.

Waltzing out of Zac Travis’s life should be easy. Just as easy as he walked out of hers. (less)"
3630,Taking a Shot,sports,"If you want to score, you have to get in the game... The last thing Jenna Riley needs is more sports in her life. While her brothers are off being athletic superstars, she's stuck running the family's sports bar, whether she likes it or not. Then in walks pro hockey stud Tyler Anderson. As much as Jenna would like to go to the boards with him, she's vowed to never fall for a jock-even one as hot as Ty.

Ty, intrigued by the beautiful bar owner, becomes a regular. He senses that Jenna wants to do something more with her life. And as he gains her trust, the passion between them grows, as does Ty's insistence that Jenna should start living for herself. With his encouragement, Jenna starts to believe it, too...

But first, Jenna has to figure out what she wants, what she needs, who she loves, and if she has the passion and pride to take a shot at having it all-including Ty... (less)"
3631,What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,sports,"In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and--even more important--on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo's Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running."" (less)"
3632,Changing the Game,sports,"Sports agent Liz Darnell will do anything to win back her number-one client, baseball pro Gavin Riley. And Gavin's more than ready- especially when Liz is offering herself as part of the bargain. But when love unexpectedly enters the playing field, neither Liz nor Gavin are ready for the biggest game-changer of all.
(less)"
3633,Zack,sports,"Rising star Zack Grantham has been stuck in a downward spiral of grief ever since the car accident that left him a single dad and put his career on hold. Back on the road with the Carolina Cold Fury and still crippled by emotional baggage, he’s in need of some serious help with his son. But while the nerdy new nanny wins his son’s heart, Zack isn’t sure he’s ready for a woman’s touch—even after getting a glimpse of the killer curves she’s hiding under those baggy clothes.

Kate Francis usually keeps men like Zack at a distance. Though his athlete’s body is honed to perfection, he refuses to move on with his life—and besides, he’s her boss. Still, the sparks between them are undeniable, tempting Kate to turn their professional relationship into a personal one. But before she makes a power play for Zack’s wounded heart, Kate will have to open him up again and show him that love is worth the fight. (less)"
3634,Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,sports,"In the exclusive behind the scenes look, sports fans can unlock the fascinating history of the channel that changed the way people watch and interact with their favorite teams.
It began, in 1979, as a mad idea of starting a cable channel to televise local sporting events throughout the state of Connecticut. Today, ESPN is arguably the most successful network in modern television history, spanning eight channels in the Unites States and around the world. But the inside story of its rise has never been fully told-until now.

Drawing upon over 500 interviews with the greatest names in ESPN's history and an All-Star collection of some of the world's finest athletes, bestselling authors James Miller and Tom Shales take us behind the cameras. Now, in their own words, the men and women who made ESPN great reveal the secrets behind its success-as well as the many scandals, rivalries, off-screen battles and triumphs that have accompanied that ascent. From the unknown producers and business visionaries to the most famous faces on television, it's all here. (less)"
3635,Jock Row,sports,"Scarlett is always the sensible one: The sober driver. The planner. The one holding your hair back while you're worshiping the porcelain gods.

Week-after-week, she visits Jock Row with her friends — the university's hottest party scene and breeding ground for student athletes. And if keeping her friends out of trouble, and guys out of their pants, was a sport, she'd be the star athlete.

Being a well known jock-blocker gets her noticed for all the wrong reasons; just like that, she's banned from Jock Row. NO GUY WANTS A GIRL AROUND WHO KEEPS THEIR JOCK FRIENDS FROM GETTING LAID.

""Rowdy"" Wade is the hot shot short-stop for the university's baseball team — and the unlucky bastard who drew the short straw: keep little Miss Goody Two-Shoes out of the Baseball House.

But week-after-week Scarlett returns, determined to get inside. (less)"
3636,The Hot Shot,sports,"First we were friends. Then we were roommates. Now I want more…

What can I say about Chess Copper? The woman is capable of bringing me to my knees. I know this about five minutes after getting naked for her.

No one is more surprised than me. The prickly photographer my team hired to shoot our annual charity calendar isn’t my usual type. She’s defense to my offense, a challenge at every turn. But when I’m with her, all the regrets and darkness goes away. She makes life fun.

I want to know Chess, be close to her. Which is a bad idea.

Chess is looking for a relationship. I’ve never given a woman more than one night. But when fate leaves Chess without a home, I step up and offer her mine. We’re roommates now. Friends without benefits. But it’s getting harder to keep our hands off each other. And the longer we live together the more I realize she’s becoming my everything.

Trick is… Now that I’ve made her believe I’m a bad bet, how do I convince her to give this player a true shot at forever? (less)"
3637,Garrett,sports,"Carolina Cold Fury star Garrett Samuelson never wants to miss out on a single minute of fun. Whether he’s playing hockey, hanging out with friends, or walking the red carpet with a new date on his arm, he lives every day to the fullest. When he meets Olivia Case, he sees someone who’s exactly his type—confident, sexy, smart . . . his next fling. But the more he pursues her, the more Garrett shares a side of himself that other women don’t normally get to see.

Olivia has been keeping a secret. While Garrett lives for the next thrill, Olivia’s not sure she’ll live to see the next day. She’s undergoing treatment for some serious medical issues, and she doesn’t have time for a relationship with no guarantees—especially one with a hot-as-sin womanizer who won’t take no for an answer. But as she gets to know the real Garrett, Olivia can’t help falling for him . . . hard. To reveal the truth would mean risking everything—but you can’t score without taking the tough shots. (less)"
3638,Puck Me Secretly,sports,"I’ve never been in love.
I’ve never had an orgasm, but I’ve faked plenty.
I want to experience love.  Real, passionate love.
I don’t want to die.

It’s funny what blurts out of your mouth when the plane you’re on is going down, and I didn’t hold back with my seat mate when my plane decided to crash.
My hysterical confessions didn’t faze the muscular stranger that sat beside me.  In fact, he promised if we survived, he’d give me my first orgasm.  

We survived.
I came.
And then he left without telling me who he was.

On the first day of my job, I stood in front of the Vancouver Wolves hockey team and called out a number.  #33.
Imagine my shock when he skated forward.

Max is an incredible hockey player, whose wild, out-of-control antics have almost derailed his career.  So many secrets shroud his past and continue to threaten his future.  
Now he’s my secret.  And that secret could ruin everything.  

Puck Me SECRETLY.  Some secrets are too big to keep.

Intended for adult audiences only. (less)"
3639,Summer of '49,sports,"With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize–winningauthor David Halberstam returns us to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat.

The year was 1949, and a war-weary nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball's American League, and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash, headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions—one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season. (less)"
3640,The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance,sports,"Now a New York Times Bestseller! With a new chapter added to the paperback. 

In high school, I wondered whether the Jamaican Americans who made our track team so successful might carry some special speed gene from their tiny island. In college, I ran against Kenyans, and wondered whether endurance genes might have traveled with them from East Africa. At the same time, I began to notice that a training group on my team could consist of five men who run next to one another, stride for stride, day after day, and nonetheless turn out five entirely different runners. How could this be?

We all knew a star athlete in high school. The one who made it look so easy. He was the starting quarterback and shortstop; she was the all-state point guard and high-jumper. Naturals. Or were they?

The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?
The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture. In the decade since the sequencing of the human genome, researchers have slowly begun to uncover how the relationship between biological endowments and a competitor’s training environment affects athleticism. Sports scientists have gradually entered the era of modern genetic research.

In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle. He investigates the so-called 10,000-hour rule to uncover whether rigorous and consistent practice from a young age is the only route to athletic excellence.

Along the way, Epstein dispels many of our perceptions about why top athletes excel. He shows why some skills that we assume are innate, like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball or cricket batter, are not, and why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like an athlete’s will to train, might in fact have important genetic components.

This subject necessarily involves digging deep into sensitive topics like race and gender. Epstein explores controversial questions such as:
Are black athletes genetically predetermined to dominate both sprinting and distance running, and are their abilities influenced by Africa’s geography?
Are there genetic reasons to separate male and female athletes in competition?
Should we test the genes of young children to determine if they are destined for stardom?
Can genetic testing determine who is at risk of injury, brain damage, or even death on the field?
Through on-the-ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism.
  (less)"
3641,Nobody's Baby But Mine,sports,"Librarian Note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.

Genius physics professor Dr. Jane Darlington desperately wants a baby. But finding a father won’t be easy. Jane’s super-intelligence made her feel like a freak when she was growing up, and she’s determined to spare her own child that suffering. Which means she must find someone very special to father her child. Someone who’s more comfortable working out his muscles than exercising his brain.

Cal Bonner, the Chicago Stars’ legendary quarterback, seems like the perfect choice. But his champion good looks and down-home ways are deceiving. Dr. Jane is about to learn a little too late that this good ol’ boy is a lot smarter than he lets on—and he’s not about to be used and abandoned by a brainy, baby-mad schemer. (less)"
3642,The Hardest Fall,sports,"The first time you meet someone, you make eye contact. You smile, say hello. Should be simple, if you’re anyone but me. The first time I met Dylan Reed, I found myself making eye contact with a different part of his body. You see, I’m very good at being shy, not to mention extremely well-versed in rambling nonsense and, unfortunately, rather highly skilled at making a fool of myself in front of a guy I’m attracted to.

At the time, I knew nothing about him and thought none of what I said would matter since I’d never speak to him again. Turns out, I was very wrong. He was the star wide receiver of the football team, one of the few players expected to make it into the NFL, and I ended up seeing him all over campus.
I might have also propositioned him, run away from him, attacked him with a cooking utensil…and…uh, maybe I shouldn’t tell you all of it. It’s pretty normal stuff, things you’d expect…from me. Eventually, the time came when I couldn’t hide anymore—not that he’d have let me even if I tried.
Before now, he never knew I was secretly watching him. Now that we see each other every day, he knows when I have a hard time looking away. It doesn’t help that I’m not the most subtle person in the world either.

He smiles at me and tells me he finds me fascinating because of my quirks. I can’t even tell him that I think my heart beats differently whenever he’s around.

He thinks we’re going to be best friends. I think I have a big thing for him, and the more I get to know him, the more I don’t care that I’m not allowed to be his friend, let alone fall for him.
The thing is, that’s exactly what I’m doing—what we’re doing, I think.

Falling.
Hard. (less)"
3643,Booked,sports,"National Book Award Long List
New York Times Bestseller 

Like lightning/you strike/fast and free/legs zoom/down field/eyes fixed/on the checkered ball/on the goal/ten yards to go/can’t nobody stop you/
can’t nobody cop you…
In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel THE CROSSOVER,  soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.  
This electric and heartfelt novel-in-verse by poet Kwame Alexander bends and breaks as it captures all the thrills and setbacks, action and emotion of a World Cup match! (less)"
3644,Wrecking Ball,sports,"An older version of this ASIN can be found here


Cam DeSantis’ life is a mess. How else would you describe losing your husband, your job, and your money all at once? Desperate times call for desperate measures. So when salvation comes in the form of one intolerable jerk, she has no choice but to accept his offer as a nanny for his eight year old nephew. Now all she has to do is find a way to ignore him for the next three months. Which is easier said than done.


NFL quarterback Calvin Shaw has zero interest in women. It’s not that he doesn’t like women. In fact, he loves women. He just doesn’t want anything to do with them. What he needs to do is focus on winning another Super Bowl before he retires. Problem is, the woman living in his house is a major distraction. And he doesn’t know what’s worse, that he promised to be civil, or that he’s attracted to her.

Best laid plans are going to get wrecked when a reclusive football star is forced to live with a reluctant nanny. (less)"
3645,"Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever",sports,"They were the Beatles of basketball, the Mercury Seven in sneakers.
 
In Dream Team, acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men’s Basketball Team that captivated the world, kindled the hoop dreams of countless children around the planet, and remade the NBA into a global sensation.
 
As a senior staff writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona. For the duration of the Olympics, he lived with, golfed with, and—most important—drank with some of the greatest players of the NBA’s Golden Age: Magic Johnson, the ebullient showman who shrugged off his recent diagnosis of HIV to become the team’s unquestioned captain and leader; Michael Jordan, the transcendent talent at the height of his powers as a player—and a marketing juggernaut; and Charles Barkley, the outspoken iconoclast whose utterances on and off the court threatened to ignite an international incident. Presiding over the entire traveling circus was the Dream Team’s beloved coach, Chuck Daly, whose laissez-faire approach proved instrumental in getting the most out of such disparate personalities and superstars such as Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, and Scottie Pippen.
 
Drawing on fresh interviews with the players, McCallum provides the definitive account of the Dream Team phenomenon. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial selection process. He takes us inside the team’s Olympic suites for late-night card games and bull sessions where the players debate both the finer points of basketball and their respective places in the NBA pantheon. And he narrates a riveting possession-by-possession account of the legendary July 1992 intrasquad scrimmage that pitted the Dream Teamers against one another in what may have been the greatest pickup game—and the greatest exhibition of trash talk—in history.
 
In the twenty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world’s attention, its mystique has only grown—and so has its influence. The NBA is now flush with international stars, many of them inspired by the exuberant spirit of ’92. Dream Team vividly re-creates the moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together, outperformed the hype, and changed the future of sports—one perfectly executed fast break at a time.
 
The Dream Team was . . .
 
Michael Jordan, Guard, Chicago Bulls
Magic Johnson, Guard, Los Angeles Lakers
Larry Bird, Forward, Boston Celtics
Charles Barkley, Forward, Phoenix Suns
Chris Mullin, Forward, Golden State Warriors
Scottie Pippen, Forward, Chicago Bulls
John Stockton, Guard, Utah Jazz
Karl Malone, Forward, Utah Jazz
David Robinson, Center, San Antonio Spurs
Patrick Ewing, Center, New York Knicks
Christian Laettner, Forward, Duke University
Clyde Drexler, Guard, Portland Trailblazers (less)"
3646,I Dare You,sports,"Wall Street Journal bestselling author Ilsa Madden-Mills kicks off a brand-new, sexy, heartfelt contemporary romance series with I DARE YOU!

Badass Athlete: I dare you to…
Delaney Shaw: Who is this?

The late night text is random, but ""Badass Athlete"" sure seems to know who she is…

Delaney Shaw.
Good girl.
Lover of fluffy kitties and Star Wars.
Curious.

His dare? Spend one night in his bed—a night he promises will be unforgettable—and she can solve the mystery of who he is.

She knows she shouldn't, but what else is she going to do with her boring Valentine's Day?

One sexy hook-up later, her mind is blown and the secret's out.

Maverick Monroe.
Bad boy.
The most talented football player in the country.
Just ask him.

Too bad for him Delaney's sworn off dating athletes forever after her last heartbreak.

But Maverick wants more than one night and refuses to give up on winning Delaney’s heart. She isn’t one to be fazed by a set of broad shoulders.

Will the bad boy land the nerd girl or will the secrets they keep from each other separate them forever? (less)"
3647,The Player and the Pixie,sports,"Now a USA TODAY BESTSELLER

How can someone so smokin’ hot be so bad in bed? I mean, Sean Cassidy is absolute rubbish. RUBBISH. He is the epitome of walking, talking false advertising and I want a refund! Plus he’s an arsehole. So… what is wrong with me that I can’t stop thinking about him?

THE PIXIE
Lucy Fitzpatrick doesn’t like rugby.
As the little sister of Ireland’s most infamous rugby player, Lucy can’t seem to escape the championship-sized shadow cast by her big brother, or her mother’s frequent attempts to micromanage her future. Her rainbow hair is as free-spirited as her quest for inner peace, yet overbearing expectations keep bringing her down. And when she’s down, her compulsive little problem lands her in seriously big trouble.

THE PLAYER
Sean Cassidy is a cold-hearted brute… or so he’s been told. Frequently. By everyone.
His blonde locks, baby blues, and rock hard bod make ladies the world over drool with desire. As the rugby world’s second most infamous player, he should be basking in his success. But Sean has never been content settling for second place, and his frequent confrontations with Lucy’s big brother leave him cold. And when he’s cold, his compulsive little problem lands him in the lap of Lucy Fitzpatrick.

THE PLAN
Sean has a problem only Lucy can solve. Lucy has a problem only Sean can fix. The solution seems obvious: you scratch my back, and I’ll bail you out of jail. But when their business arrangement unexpectedly leaves Sean scorching hot and Lucy on the precipice of inner peace, can they convince the world—and Lucy’s big brother in particular—that this is the real deal?

Either way, both the Player and the Pixie are about to teach each other some pretty monumental lessons about family, life, but most importantly, love. (less)"
3648,Pucked Up,sports,"Miller “Buck” Butterson has been banging his way through life ever since a puck to the face fixed his messed up front teeth, and he was drafted into the NHL during his first year of college. After five years of deflecting goals on the ice and scoring them with puck bunnies across the Continental US and parts of Canada, Miller is ready for a girlfriend. A real girlfriend of the non-bunny variety. One he takes on dates and doesn’t jump into bed with after five seconds of conversation.

Miller thinks he’s found that woman in his teammate’s sister. Except, unlike Alex Waters, center, team captain and all round nice guy—who happens to be dating his step-sister—Miller’s manwhore reputation is well earned, and not blown out of proportion by the media. Beyond that minor detail, Miller doesn’t know the first thing about having a girlfriend. But he’s determined to make it happen.

What he doesn’t take into account is the amount of time and effort relationships require, or that constantly letting bunnies take selfies with him to post all over social media isn’t going to win him any points in the boyfriend department. Miller learns—not so quickly—that if he wants to make Sunshine “Sunny” Waters fall for him, he going to have to do a whole lot more than show her his stick skills in the bedroom.

Length: 11 hours and 18 minutes (less)"
3649,Stay,sports,"Can you fall in love with someone you've never even met?

Hailey Taylor Emery has a hunch that her favorite client at Fetch—an anonymous virtual assistant service—is actually hockey star Matt Eriksson.

Although it's against the rules for her to check his file, she's 95% sure she spends at least part of each day texting with her lifelong crush and catering to his every need. Still nursing a wounded heart thanks to her recent breakup, Hailey is perfectly content with some harmless online flirting... until she has to meet her client. Face to face. Cue: utter panic.

Matt Eriksson is no stranger to heartbreak. He's still not over the destruction of his marriage, and it sucks to be the only guy on the team who knows the truth—that hockey and long-term relationships are a toxic mix. He barely sees his kids, and dealing with his ex makes him feel insane. The only person in his life who seems to understand is someone who won't show her pretty face.

But it's nothing that a pair of fourth row hockey seats can't fix. Hailey can't resist the offer. Matt can't resist Hailey. Good thing he doesn't have to. Fire up the kiss cam!

Warning: Contains rabid hockey fans, misunderstood dick pics, hockey players at the opera and exploding ovaries. (less)"
3650,When the Game Was Ours,sports,"From the moment these two players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most compelling rivalry in the NBA. These were the basketball epics of the 1980s--Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West, physical vs finesse, Old School vs Showtime, even white vs black. Each pushed the other to greatness--together Bird and Johnson collected 8 NBA Championships, and 6 MVP awards and helped save the floundering NBA at its most critical time. When it started they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends.


With intimate, fly-on-the-wall detail, When the Game Was Ours transports readers to this electric era of basketball and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting one another. From the heady days of trading championships to the darker days of injury and illness, we come to understand Larry's obsessive devotion to winning and how his demons drove him on the court. We hear him talk with candor about playing through chronic pain and its truly exacting toll. In Magic we see a young, invincible star struggle with the sting of defeat, not just as a player but as a team leader. We are there the moment he learns he's contracted HIV and hear in his own words how that devastating news impacted his relationships in basketball and beyond. But always, in both cases, we see them prevail.


A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketball's most inimitable duo, When the Game Was Ours is a reevaluation of three decades in counterpoint. It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketball's best times. (less)"
3651,Shoeless Joe,sports,"“If you build it, he will come.”

These mysterious words inspire Ray Kinsella to create a cornfield baseball diamond in honor of his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson. What follows is a rich, nostalgic look at one of our most cherished national pastimes and a remarkable story about fathers and sons, love and family, and the inimitable joy of finding your way home."
3652,The Breaks of the Game,sports,"""Among the best books ever written on professional basketball."" The Philadelphia Inquirer

David Halberstam, best-selling author of THE FIFTIES and THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST, turns his keen reporter's eye on the sport of basketball -- the players and the coaches, the long road trips, what happens on court, in front of television cameras, and off-court, where no eyes have followed -- until now. (less)"
3653,Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series,sports,"The headlines proclaimed the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up as ""the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America!"" First published in 1963, Eight Men Out has become a timeless classic. Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties. (less)"
3654,Calico Joe,sports,"A surprising and moving novel of fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption, set in the world of Major League Baseball.

Whatever happened to Calico Joe?

When he arrived in Philadelphia, a cab delivered him to Veterans Stadium, where he was quickly fixed for a uniform, given Number 42, and hustled onto the field. The Cubs were already taking batting practice. Understandably, he was nervous, thrilled, almost bewildered, and when the manager, Whitey Lockman, said, ""Get loose. You're starting at first and hitting seventh,"" Joe Castle had trouble gripping his brand-new bat. In his first round of major-league batting practice, he swung at the first two pitches and missed.

He would not miss again for a long time.

In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzled Cub fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records.

Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever.

In John Grisham’s new novel the baseball is thrilling, but it’s what happens off the field that makes Calico Joe a classic. (less)"
3655,Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike,sports,"In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.

But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.

Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything. (less)"
3656,Ryker,sports,"The rugged men of the Carolina Cold Fury hockey team are winning hearts once again in another scorching novel from New York Times bestselling author Sawyer Bennett.

The stakes have never been higher for Carolina Cold Fury goalie Ryker Evans. With his contract running out, he’s got a year left to prove he’s still at the top of his game. And since his wife left him, Ryker has been balancing life as a pro-hockey star and a single parent to two daughters. Management is waiting for him to screw up. The fans are ready to pounce. Everybody’s taking dirty shots—except for the fiery redhead whose faith in Ryker gives him a fresh start.

As the league’s only female general manager, Gray Brannon has learned not to mix business with pleasure. And yet even this tough, talented career woman can’t help breaking her own rules as she gives Ryker everything she’s got. She hopes their hot streak will last forever, but with Ryker’s conniving ex plotting to reclaim her man, the pressure’s on Gray to step up and save a tender new love before it’s too late. (less)"
3657,Brooklynaire,sports,"A sexy new standalone from USA Today bestseller Sarina Bowen.

You’d think a billion dollars, a professional hockey team and a six-bedroom mansion on the Promenade would satisfy a guy. You’d be wrong.

For seven years Rebecca has brightened my office with her wit and her smile. She manages both my hockey team and my sanity. I don’t know when I started waking in the night, craving her. All I know is that one whiff of her perfume ruins my concentration. And her laugh makes me hard.

When Rebecca gets hurt, I step in to help. It’s what friends do. But what friends don’t do is rip off each others’ clothes for a single, wild night together.

Now she’s avoiding me. She says we’re too different, and it can never happen again. So why can’t we keep our hands off each other? (less)"
3658,Gone Girl,thriller,"Who are you?
What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? (less)"
3659,The Girl on the Train,thriller,"Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar. Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train...

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here. (less)"
3660,The Da Vinci Code,thriller,"ISBN 9780307277671 moved to this edition.
While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci—clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci—and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle—while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move—the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever. (less)"
3661,The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,thriller,"Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel. (less)"
3662,Angels & Demons,thriller,"World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati. In a desperate race to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and deserted cathedrals, and into the depths of the most secretive vault on earth...the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.
(back cover) (less)"
3663,The Silent Patient,thriller,"Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. (less)"
3664,Sharp Objects,thriller,"Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556) (less)"
3665,The Girl Who Played with Fire,thriller,"The Expose
Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses... (less)"
3666,Verity,thriller,"Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.

Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.

Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her. (less)"
3667,The Woman in the Window,thriller,"Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.

Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems. (less)"
3668,The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest,thriller,"The stunning third and final novel in Stieg Larsson's internationally best-selling trilogy.

Lisbeth Salander - the heart of Larsson's two previous novels - lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.

~from the jacket (less)"
3669,The Lost Symbol,thriller,"WHAT IS LOST...
WILL BE FOUND

In this stunning follow-up to the global phenomenon The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown demonstrates once again why he is the world's most popular thriller writer. The Lost Symbol is a masterstroke of storytelling - a deadly race through a real-world labyrinth of codes, secrets, and unseen truths...all under the watchful eye of Brown's most terrifying villain to date. Set within the hidden chambers, tunnels, and temples of Washington, DC., The Lost Symbol accelerates through a startling landscape toward an unthinkable finale.

As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object - artfully encoded with five symbols - is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation...one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon's beloved mentor, Peter Solomon - a prominent Mason and philanthropist - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations - all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

As the world discovered in The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, Dan Brown's novels are brilliant tapestries of veiled histories, arcane symbols, and enigmatic codes. In this new novel, he again challenges readers with an intelligent, lightning-paced story that offers surprises at every turn. The Lost Symbol is exactly what Brown's fans have been waiting for...his most thrilling novel yet.
(jacket) (less)"
3670,Dark Places,thriller,"Libby Day was just seven years old when her evidence put her fifteen-year-old brother behind bars.

Since then, she has been drifting. But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared to before. Was the voice she heard her brother's? Ben was a misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm or is Libby deluding herself because she wants her brother back?

She begins to realise that everyone in her family had something to hide that day... especially Ben. Now, twenty-four years later, the truth is going to be even harder to find.

Who did massacre the Day family? (less)"
3671,The Guest List,thriller,"Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062868930

The bride ‧ The plus one ‧ The best man ‧ The wedding planner ‧ The bridesmaid ‧ The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why? (less)"
3672,Inferno,thriller,"Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disoriented and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings. With a relentless female assassin trailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee. Embarking on a harrowing journey, they must unravel a series of codes, which are the work of a brilliant scientist whose obsession with the end of the world is matched only by his passion for one of the most influential masterpieces ever written, Dante Alighieri's The Inferno.

Dan Brown has raised the bar yet again, combining classical Italian art, history, and literature with cutting-edge science in this sumptuously entertaining thriller. (less)"
3673,Deception Point,thriller,"A shocking scientific discovery.
A conspiracy of staggering brilliance.
A thriller unlike any you've ever read....

When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory—a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election. To verify the authenticity of the find, the White House calls upon the skills of intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic scholar Michael Tolland, Rachel travels to the Arctic and uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery—a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy. But before she can warn the President, Rachel and Michael are ambushed by a deadly team of assassins. Fleeing for their lives across a desolate and lethal landscape, their only hope for survival is to discover who is behind this masterful plot. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all. (less)"
3674,Digital Fortress,thriller,"When the National Security Agency's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage... not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

(back cover) (less)"
3675,The Woman in Cabin 10,thriller,"Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo's stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo's desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong. (less)"
3676,Behind Closed Doors,thriller,"The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie?

Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance. He’s a dedicated attorney who has never lost a case; she is a flawless homemaker, a masterful gardener and cook, and dotes on her disabled younger sister. Though they are still newlyweds, they seem to have it all. You might not want to like them, but you do. You’re hopelessly charmed by the ease and comfort of their home, by the graciousness of the dinner parties they throw. You’d like to get to know Grace better.

But it’s difficult, because you realize Jack and Grace are inseparable.

Some might call this true love. Others might wonder why Grace never answers the phone. Or why she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn’t work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. Or why she never seems to take anything with her when she leaves the house, not even a pen. Or why there are such high-security metal shutters on all the downstairs windows.

Some might wonder what’s really going on once the dinner party is over, and the front door has closed.

From bestselling author B. A. Paris comes the gripping thriller and international phenomenon Behind Closed Doors. (less)"
3677,And Then There Were None,thriller,"First, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. A famous nursery rhyme is framed and hung in every room of the mansion:

""Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.""

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion. (less)"
3678,The Silence of the Lambs,thriller,"A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname—Buffalo Bill—is stalking women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the Bureau's Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter—Hannibal the Cannibal—who is kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Dr. Lecter is a former psychiatrist with a grisly history, unusual tastes, and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of ""The Silence of the Lambs""—an ingenious, masterfully written book and an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction. (less)"
3679,You,thriller,"When a beautiful aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.

There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.

A terrifying exploration of how vulnerable we all are to stalking and manipulation, debut author Caroline Kepnes delivers a razor-sharp novel for our hyper-connected digital age. (less)"
3680,Before I Go to Sleep,thriller,"Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is forty-seven years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.

Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more unbelievable it seems. (less)"
3681,Lock Every Door,thriller,"No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.

As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.

Searching for the truth about Ingrid's disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew's dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building's hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent. (less)"
3682,Pretty Girls,thriller,"Twenty years ago Claire Scott's eldest sister, Julia, went missing. No one knew where she went - no note, no body. It was a mystery that was never solved and it tore her family apart.

Now another girl has disappeared, with chilling echoes of the past. And it seems that she might not be the only one.

Claire is convinced Julia's disappearance is linked.

But when she begins to learn the truth about her sister, she is confronted with a shocking discovery, and nothing will ever be the same... (less)"
3683,Jurassic Park,thriller,"An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price.

Until something goes wrong. . . .

In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller. (less)"
3684,The Shining,thriller,"Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old. (less)"
3685,Final Girls,thriller,"Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.
 
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
 
That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished. (less)"
3686,Killing Floor,thriller,"Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He's just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he's arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Jack knows is that he didn't kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn't stand a chance of convincing anyone. not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell. (less)"
3687,The Turn of the Key,thriller,"When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, The Turn of the Key is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time. (less)"
3688,The Couple Next Door,thriller,"It all started at a dinner party. . .

A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors--a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all--a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.

Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family--a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist. (less)"
3689,Red Dragon,thriller,"A second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened ""The Tooth Fairy."" Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation: Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement. Now, Graham must turn to Lecter for help. (less)"
3690,The Bourne Identity,thriller,"Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Who is Jason Bourne? Is he an assassin, a terrorist, a thief? Why has he got four million dollars in a Swiss bank account? Why has someone tried to murder him?...

Jason Bourne does not know the answer to any of these questions. Suffering from amnesia, he does not even know that he is Jason Bourne. What manner of man is he? What are his secrets? Who has he killed? (less)"
3691,One of Us Is Lying,thriller,"Pay close attention and you might solve this.
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose?

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them. (less)"
3692,Into the Water,thriller,"The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon The Girl on the Train returns with Into the Water, her addictive new novel of psychological suspense.

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return.

With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.

Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath. (less)"
3693,Then She Was Gone,thriller,"THEN
She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.

NOW
It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.

And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.

Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.

Poppy is precocious and pretty - and meeting her completely takes Laurel's breath away.

Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.

What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?

Who still has secrets to hide? (less)"
3694,Misery,thriller,"Alternate cover editions here and here.

Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house. (less)"
3695,Origin,thriller,"Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend a major announcement—the unveiling of a discovery that “will change the face of science forever.” The evening’s host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire and futurist whose dazzling high-tech inventions and audacious predictions have made him a renowned global figure. Kirsch, who was one of Langdon’s first students at Harvard two decades earlier, is about to reveal an astonishing breakthrough . . . one that will answer two of the fundamental questions of human existence. As the event begins, Langdon and several hundred guests find themselves captivated by an utterly original presentation, which Langdon realizes will be far more controversial than he ever imagined. But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch’s precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Reeling and facing an imminent threat, Langdon is forced into a desperate bid to escape Bilbao. With him is Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch to stage the provocative event. Together they flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch’s secret. Navigating the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion, Langdon and Vidal must evade a tormented enemy whose all-knowing power seems to emanate from Spain’s Royal Palace itself . . . and who will stop at nothing to silence Edmond Kirsch. On a trail marked by modern art and enigmatic symbols, Langdon and Vidal uncover clues that ultimately bring them face-to-face with Kirsch’s shocking discovery . . . and the breathtaking truth that has long eluded us. Origin is Dan Brown’s most brilliant and entertaining novel to date. (less)"
3696,A Good Girl's Guide to Murder,thriller,"The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.

But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn't so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth? (less)"
3697,Mr. Mercedes,thriller,"In the predawn hours, in a distressed American city, hundreds of unemployed men and women line up for the opening of a job fair. They are tired and cold and desperate. Emerging from the fog, invisible until it is too late, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.

Months later, an ex-cop named Bill Hodges, still haunted by the unsolved crime, contemplates suicide. When he gets a crazed letter from ""the perk,"" claiming credit for the murders, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, fearing another even more diabolical attack and hell-bent on preventing it.

Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of eccentric and mismatched allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.

Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.
--front flap (less)"
3698,"In a Dark, Dark Wood",thriller,"By rozprawić się z przeszłością, czasem musisz do niej wrócić po swych krwawych śladach.

Nora i Clare były kiedyś ze sobą mocno zżyte. To jednak wspomnienia. Młode kobiety nie widziały się od dekady, kiedy to Nora bez słowa zniknęła z życia przyjaciółki.

Niespodziewanie w jej skrzynce mailowej pojawiało się zaproszenie na wieczór panieński Clare. Perspektywa weekendu w domku na odludziu wydawała się idealną okazją do pojednania i zostawienia przeszłości za sobą.

Jednak sprawy przybrały zły obrót. Bardzo zły.

Gdy sekrety i kłamstwa po kolei wyłaniały się z ciemnego, mrocznego lasu, głęboko pogrzebana przeszłość zaczęła doganiać Norę.

Zaczyna się mordercza wyliczanka. Na kogo wypadnie, na tego… śmierć. (less)"
3699,The Wife Between Us,thriller,"When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.

Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage - and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.

Read between the lies. (less)"
3700,The Maidens,thriller,"Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike—particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.

Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?

When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything—including her own life. (less)"
3701,The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle,thriller,"""Pop your favorite Agatha Christie whodunnit into a blender with a scoop of Downton Abbey, a dash of Quantum Leap, and a liberal sprinkling of Groundhog Day and you'll get this unique murder mystery."" ―Harper's Bazaar

Aiden Bishop knows the rules. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until he can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest at Blackheath Manor. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others. With a locked-room mystery that Agatha Christie would envy, Stuart Turton unfurls a breakneck novel of intrigue and suspense.

International bestselling author Stuart Turton delivers inventive twists in a thriller of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page. (less)"
3702,The Whisper Man,thriller,"In this dark, suspenseful thriller, Alex North weaves a multi-generational tale of a father and son caught in the crosshairs of an investigation to catch a serial killer preying on a small town.

After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes a fresh start will help him and his young son Jake heal. A new beginning, a new house, a new town: Featherbank.

But Featherbank has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed ""The Whisper Man,"" for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.

Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Frank Carter's crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late, even if that means Pete has to revisit his great foe in prison: The Whisper Man. And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window. (less)"
3703,"My Sister, the Serial Killer",thriller,"When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...

My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water... (less)"
3704,Home Before Dark,thriller,"What was it like? Living in that house.

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls? (less)"
3705,The Family Upstairs,thriller,"An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.

Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

The can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets. (less)"
3706,The Kind Worth Killing,thriller,"A devious tale of psychological suspense involving sex, deception, and an accidental encounter that leads to murder. Fans of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train will love this modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train from the author of the acclaimed The Girl with a Clock for a Heart—which the Washington Post said “should be a contender for crime fiction’s best first novel of 2014.”

On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.

But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . . .

Back in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda's demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth.

Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail. (less)"
3707,The Last Time I Lied,thriller,"Fifteen years ago, summer camper Emma Davis watched sleepily as her three cabin mates snuck out of their cabin in the dead of night. The last she--and anyone--saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.

Now a rising star in the NYC art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings.. They catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of the very same Camp Nightingale--and when Francesca implores Emma to return to the camp as a painting counselor, Emma sees an opportunity to find closure and move on.

Yet, it is immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by surfacing memories, Emma is suddenly plagued by a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca, and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian apparently left behind about the camp's twisted origins. And as history begins to repeat itself and three girls go missing again, Emma must face threats from both man and nature in order to uncover all the buried secrets--including what really happened all those years ago. (less)"
3708,No Exit,thriller,"A thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath

A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do?

On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.

Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.

Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?

There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?

Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.

But who can she trust? (less)"
3709,Shutter Island,thriller,"The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades—with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels. (less)"
3710,In the Woods,thriller,"As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children. He is gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspense. (less)"
3711,The Hunt for Red October,thriller,"Here is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy's phenomenal career. A military thriller so gripping in its action and so convincing in its accuracy that the author was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House. Its theme: the greatest espionage coup in history. Its story: the chase for a top secret Russian missile sub. Lauded by the Washington Post as ""breathlessly exciting."" The Hunt for Red October remains a masterpiece of military fiction by one of the world's most popular authors, a man whose shockingly realistic scenarios continue to hold us in thrall.
Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. And the most incredible chase in history is on...
(less)"
3712,Behind Her Eyes,thriller,"Why is everyone talking about the ending of Sarah Pinborough's Behind Her Eyes?

Louise is a single mom, a secretary, stuck in a modern-day rut. On a rare night out, she meets a man in a bar and sparks fly. Though he leaves after they kiss, she’s thrilled she finally connected with someone.

When Louise arrives at work on Monday, she meets her new boss, David. The man from the bar. The very married man from the bar…who says the kiss was a terrible mistake but who still can’t keep his eyes off Louise.

And then Louise bumps into Adele, who’s new to town and in need of a friend, but she also just happens to be married to David. David and Adele look like the picture-perfect husband and wife, but then why is David so controlling, and why is Adele so scared of him?

As Louise is drawn into David and Adele’s orbit, she uncovers more puzzling questions than answers. The only thing that is crystal clear is that something in this marriage is very, very wrong, but Louise can’t guess how wrong―and how far a person might go to protect their marriage’s secrets. (less)"
3713,My Lovely Wife,thriller,"A couple's fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting...

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.

We look like a normal couple. We're your neighbors, the parents of your kid's friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.

We all have secrets to keeping a marriage alive.

Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780451491725 (less)"
3714,Sometimes I Lie,thriller,"My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me:
1. I’m in a coma.
2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie.

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth? (less)"
3715,The Push,thriller,"An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family–and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for–and everything she feared.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.

But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter–she doesn’t behave like most children do.

Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.

Then their son Sam is born–and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed. (less)"
3716,The Good Daughter,thriller,"Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind.

Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father—Pikeville's notorious defense attorney—devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.

Twenty-eight years later, Charlotte has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself—the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again, and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized, Charlotte is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a case that unleashes the terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress--because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever. Packed with twists and turns, brimming with emotion and heart, The Good Daughter is fiction at its most thrilling. (less)"
3717,Rock Paper Scissors,thriller,"Think you know the person you married? Think again…

Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.

Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.

Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.

Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney. (less)"
3718,An Anonymous Girl,thriller,"Looking to earn some easy cash, Jessica Farris agrees to be a test subject in a psychological study about ethics and morality. But as the study moves from the exam room to the real world, the line between what is real and what is one of Dr. Shields’s experiments blurs.

Dr. Shields seems to know what Jess is thinking… and what she’s hiding.

Jessica’s behavior will not only be monitored, but manipulated.

Caught in a web of attraction, deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.

From the authors of the blockbuster bestseller The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl will keep you riveted through the last shocking twist. (less)"
3719,The Last Thing He Told Me,thriller,"Alternate cover editions of ISBN 9781501171345 can be found here and here.

The instant #1 New York Times bestselling mystery and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick that’s captivated more than a million readers about a woman searching for the truth about her husband’s disappearance…at any cost.

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated. (less)"
3720,The Hunting Party,thriller,"Everyone's invited...everyone's a suspect...

For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge . . . and murder and mayhem ensue.

All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.

During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.

Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close? (less)"
3721,A Time to Kill,thriller,"An alternate cover edition for the ISBN 9780385338608 can be found here.

Before ""The Firm"" and ""The Pelican Brief"" made him a superstar, John Grisham wrote this riveting story of retribution and justice. In this searing courtroom drama, best-selling author John Grisham probes the savage depths of racial violence, as he delivers a compelling tale of uncertain justice in a small southern town, Clanton, Mississippi.

The life of a ten-year-old girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. That is, until her black father acquires an assault rifle and takes matters into his hands.

For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life, and then his own. (less)"
3722,Recursion,thriller,"Memory makes reality.

That's what NYC cop Barry Sutton is learning, as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.

That's what neuroscientist Helena Smith believes. It's why she's dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious memories. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent.

As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face to face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds, but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.

But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?

At once a relentless pageturner and an intricate science-fiction puzzlebox about time, identity, and memory, Recursion is a thriller as only Blake Crouch could imagine it—and his most ambitious, mind-boggling, irresistible work to date. (less)"
3723,When No One Is Watching,thriller,"The gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning…

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.

But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.

When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear? (less)"
3724,It,thriller,"Welcome to Derry, Maine ...

It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name. (less)"
3725,The Butterfly Garden,thriller,"Near an isolated mansion lies a beautiful garden.

In this garden grow luscious flowers, shady trees…and a collection of precious “butterflies”—young women who have been kidnapped and intricately tattooed to resemble their namesakes. Overseeing it all is the Gardener, a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his lovely specimens.

When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers. But the girl, known only as Maya, proves to be a puzzle herself.

As her story twists and turns, slowly shedding light on life in the Butterfly Garden, Maya reveals old grudges, new saviors, and horrific tales of a man who’d go to any length to hold beauty captive. But the more she shares, the more the agents have to wonder what she’s still hiding... (less)"
3726,The One,thriller,"How far would you go to find The One?

A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab and soon you’ll be matched with your perfect partner the one you are genetically made for.

That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love.

Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.” They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after” isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking than others…

A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences. (less)"
3727,Bird Box,thriller,"Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.

Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?

Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page. (less)"
3728,The Institute,thriller,"In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute. (less)"
3729,If We Were Villains,thriller,"Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail - for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.

As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless. (less)"
3730,The Chalk Man,thriller,"In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago. (less)"
3731,Stillhouse Lake,thriller,"Gina Royal is the definition of average—a shy Midwestern housewife with a happy marriage and two adorable children. But when a car accident reveals her husband’s secret life as a serial killer, she must remake herself as Gwen Proctor—the ultimate warrior mom.

With her ex now in prison, Gwen has finally found refuge in a new home on remote Stillhouse Lake. Though still the target of stalkers and Internet trolls who think she had something to do with her husband’s crimes, Gwen dares to think her kids can finally grow up in peace.

But just when she’s starting to feel at ease in her new identity, a body turns up in the lake—and threatening letters start arriving from an all-too-familiar address. Gwen Proctor must keep friends close and enemies at bay to avoid being exposed—or watch her kids fall victim to a killer who takes pleasure in tormenting her. One thing is certain: she’s learned how to fight evil. And she’ll never stop. (less)"
3732,The Sun Down Motel,thriller,"The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn't right at the Sun Down, and before long she's determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden… (less)"
3733,The Outsider,thriller,"An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can. (less)"
3734,I'm Thinking of Ending Things,thriller,"Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, “your dread and unease will mount with every passing page” (Entertainment Weekly) of this edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go. (less)"
3735,One by One,thriller,"Getting snowed in at a beautiful, rustic mountain chalet doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world, especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a cozy fire, and company to keep you warm. But what happens when that company is eight of your coworkers…and you can’t trust any of them?

When an off-site company retreat meant to promote mindfulness and collaboration goes utterly wrong when an avalanche hits, the corporate food chain becomes irrelevant and survival trumps togetherness. Come Monday morning, how many members short will the team be?

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Turn of the Key and In a Dark Dark Wood returns with another suspenseful thriller set on a snow-covered mountain. (less)"
3736,The Death of Mrs. Westaway,thriller,"On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person—but also that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money.

Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased…where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the centre of it. (less)"
3737,Along Came a Spider,thriller,"What have we got? A missing little girl named Maggie Rose . . . a family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C. . . . the thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher . . . a psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him - even after he's been captured.

Gary Soneji wants to commit the crime of the century. Alex Cross is the brilliant homicide detective pitted against him. Jezzie Flanagan is the first female supervisor of the Secret Service. They complete one of the most unusual suspense triangles in any thriller you have ever read.

Alex and Jezzie are about to have a forbidden love affair—at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji is playing at the top of his game. The latest of the unspeakable crimes happens in Alex Cross's precinct and it happens under the nose of Jezzie and her men.

Alex faces the ultimate test: how do you outmaneuver a brilliant psychopath? (less)"
3738,The Wife Upstairs,thriller,"Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates—a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.

But her luck changes when she meets Eddie­ Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie—not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for.

Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past—or his—catches up to her? (less)"
3739,Die Trying,thriller,"Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan. Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman's abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasoline. . . and a burning match. The FBI is desperate to rescue the woman, a Special Agent from the Chicago office, because the FBI always - always - takes care of its own, and because this woman is not just another agent. Reacher and the woman join forces, against seemingly hopeless odds, to outwit their captors and escape. But the FBI thinks Jack is one of the kidnappers - and when they close in, the Bureau snipers will be shooting to kill. (less)"
3740,The Secret History,thriller,"Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil. (less)"
3741,Carrie,thriller,"A modern classic, Carrie introduced a distinctive new voice in American fiction -- Stephen King. The story of misunderstood high school girl Carrie White, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge, remains one of the most barrier-breaking and shocking novels of all time.

Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is...Carrie
--back cover (less)"
3742,I Am Pilgrim,thriller,"A breakneck race against time...and an implacable enemy. An anonymous young woman murdered in a run-down hotel, all identifying characteristics dissolved by acid. A father publicly beheaded in the blistering heat of a Saudi Arabian public square. A notorious Syrian biotech expert found eyeless in a Damascus junkyard. Smoldering human remains on a remote mountainside in Afghanistan. A flawless plot to commit an appalling crime against humanity. One path links them all, and only one man can make the journey. Pilgrim.' (less)"
3743,The Pelican Brief,thriller,"In suburban Georgetown a killer's Reeboks whisper on the front floor of a posh home... In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly garroted to death... The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief... To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder -- a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds there is only one person she can trust -- an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate -- to help her piece together the deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of  Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For someone has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime. (less)"
3744,61 Hours,thriller,"Jack Reacher is back.
The countdown has begun. Get ready for the most exciting 61 hours of your life. #1 ""New York Times"" bestselling author Lee Child's latest thriller is a ticking time bomb of suspense that builds electric tension on every page.
Sixty-one hours. Not a minute to spare.
A tour bus crashes in a savage snowstorm and lands Jack Reacher in the middle of a deadly confrontation. In nearby Bolton, South Dakota, one brave woman is standing up for justice in a small town threatened by sinister forces. If she's going to live long enough to testify, she'll need help. Because a killer is coming to Bolton, a coldly proficient assassin who never misses.
Reacher's original plan was to keep on moving. But the next 61 hours will change everything. The secrets are deadlier and his enemies are stronger than he could have guessed--but so is the woman whose life he'll risk his own to save.
In 61 Hours, Lee Child has written a showdown thriller with an explosive ending that readers will talk about for a long time to come. (less)"
3745,Eye of the Needle,thriller,"One enemy spy knows the secret to the Allies' greatest deception, a brilliant aristocrat and ruthless assassin -- code name: ""The Needle"" -- who holds the key to ultimate Nazi victory.
Only one person stands in his way: a lonely Englishwoman on an isolated island, who is beginning to love the killer who has mysteriously entered her life.
All will come to a terrifying conclusion in Ken Follett's unsurpassed and unforgettable masterwork of suspense, intrigue, and the dangerous machinations of the human heart.
(less)"
3746,The Chestnut Man,thriller,"The heart-pounding debut from the creator of the hit Scandinavian television show The Killing.

If you find one, he’s already found you.

A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen.

His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene. Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago.

A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted?

To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues.

Because it’s clear that the madman is on a mission that is far from over.

And no one is safe. (less)"
3747,The Night Swim,thriller,"After the first season of her true crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall is now a household name―and the last hope for thousands of people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town’s golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating―but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insists she was murdered―and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody seems to want to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny? (less)"
3748,Sphere,thriller,"In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel is discovered resting on the ocean floor. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old."
3749,The Broken Girls,thriller,"A suspense novel from the award-winning author of The Haunting of Maddy Clare...

Vermont, 1950. There's a place for the girls whom no one wants--the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town where it's located, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their budding friendship blossoming--until one of them mysteriously disappears. . . .

Vermont, 2014. As much as she's tried, journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death. Twenty years ago, her body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And though her sister's boyfriend was tried and convicted of murder, Fiona can't shake the suspicion that something was never right about the case.

When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during the renovations will link the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past--and a voice that won't be silenced. . . . (less)"
3750,"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy",thriller,"A modern classic in which John le Carré expertly creates a total vision of a secret world, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins George Smiley's chess match of wills and wits with Karla, his Soviet counterpart.

It is now beyond a doubt that a mole, implanted decades ago by Moscow Centre, has burrowed his way into the highest echelons of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of its most vital operations and its best networks. It is clear that the double agent is one of its own kind. But which one? George Smiley is assigned to identify him. And once identified, the traitor must be destroyed. (less)"
3751,They Never Learn,thriller,"Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.

Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan… until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.

Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay... and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality. (less)"
3752,End of Watch,thriller,"The spectacular finale to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with Mr. Mercedes (winner of the Edgar Award) and Finders Keepers—In End of Watch, the diabolical “Mercedes Killer” drives his enemies to suicide, and if Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney don’t figure out a way to stop him, they’ll be victims themselves.

In Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, something has awakened. Something evil. Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, where eight people were killed and many more were badly injured, has been in the clinic for five years, in a vegetative state. According to his doctors, anything approaching a complete recovery is unlikely. But behind the drool and stare, Brady is awake, and in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.

Retired police detective Bill Hodges, the unlikely hero of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, now runs an investigation agency with his partner, Holly Gibney—the woman who delivered the blow to Hartsfield’s head that put him on the brain injury ward. When Bill and Holly are called to a suicide scene with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put their lives at risk, as well as those of Bill’s heroic young friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.

In End of Watch, Stephen King brings the Hodges trilogy to a sublimely terrifying conclusion, combining the detective fiction of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers with the heart-pounding, supernatural suspense that has been his bestselling trademark. The result is an unnerving look at human vulnerability and chilling suspense. No one does it better than King. (less)"
3753,Doctor Sleep,thriller,"Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special 12-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky 12-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the ""steam"" that children with the ""shining"" produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant ""shining"" power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes ""Doctor Sleep.""

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted fans of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon. (less)"
3754,The Alienist,thriller,"The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or ""alienist."" On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels.

The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology-- amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before--and will kill again before the hunt is over.

Fast-paced and gripping, infused with a historian's exactitude, The Alienist conjures up the Gilded Age and its untarnished underside: verminous tenements and opulent mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. Here is a New York during an age when questioning society's belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and mortal consequences. (less)"
3755,Blindsighted,thriller,"A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it's only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer's twisted work becomes clear. Sara's ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation -- a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later. But he's got more than a sadistic serial killer on his hands, for the county's sole female detective, Lena Adams -- the first victim's sister -- wants to serve her own justice. But it is Sara who holds the key to finding the killer. A secret from her past could unmask the brilliantly malevolent psychopath .. or mean her death. (less)"
3756,Without Fail,thriller,"Skilled, cautious, and anonymous, Jack Reacher is perfect for the job: to assassinate the vice president of the United States. Theoretically, of course. A female Secret Service agent wants Reacher to find the holes in her system, and fast - because a covert group already has the vice president in their sights. They've planned well. There's just one thing they didn't plan on: Reacher. (less)"
3757,Two Can Keep a Secret,thriller,"Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery's never been there, but she's heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.

The town is picture-perfect, but it's hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone's declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.

Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she's in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous--and most people aren't good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it's safest to keep your secrets to yourself. (less)"
3758,Clear and Present Danger,thriller,"Colombian drug lords, bored with Uncle Sam's hectoring, assassinate the head of the FBI. The message is clear: Bug off!
At what point do these druggies threaten national security? When can a nation act against its enemies? These are questions Jack Ryan must answer because someone has quietly stepped over the line.
Does anyone know who the real enemy is? How much action is too much? Which lines have been crossed? Ryan and his ""dark side"", a shadowy field officer known only as Mr. Clark, are charged with finding out. They expect danger from without... but the danger from within may be the greatest of all. (less)"
3759,Persuader,thriller,"Jack Reacher.

The ultimate loner.

An elite ex-military cop who left the service years ago, he's moved from place to place...without family...without possessions...without commitments.

And without fear. Which is good, because trouble--big, violent, complicated trouble--finds Reacher wherever he goes. And when trouble finds him, Reacher does not quit, not once...not ever.

But some unfinished business has now found Reacher. And Reacher is a man who hates unfinished business.

Ten years ago, a key investigation went sour and someone got away with murder. Now a chance encounter brings it all back. Now Reacher sees his one last shot. Some would call it vengeance. Some would call it redemption. Reacher would call it...justice. (less)"
3760,Under the Dome,thriller,"Under the Dome is the story of the small town of Chester's Mill, Maine which is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. No one can get in and no one can get out.

When food, electricity and water run short, the normal rules of society are changed. A new and more sinister social order develops, Dale Barbara, a young Iraq veteran, teams up with a handful of intrepid citizens to fight against the corruption that is sweeping through the town and to try to discover the source of the Dome before it is too late... (less)"
3761,Echo Burning,thriller,"Hitching rides is an unreliable mode of transport. In temperatures of over a hundred degrees, you’re lucky if a driver will open the door of his air-conditioned car long enough to let you slide in. That’s Jack Reacher’s conclusion. He’s adrift in the fearsome heat of a Texas summer, and he needs to keep moving through the wide open vastness, like a shark in the water. The last thing he’s worried about is exactly who picks him up.

He never expected it to be somebody like Carmen. She’s alone, driving a Cadillac. She’s beautiful, young and rich. She has a little girl who is being watched by unseen observers. And a husband who is in jail. Who will beat her senseless when he comes out. If he doesn’t kill her first.

Reacher is no stranger to trouble. And at Carmen’s remote ranch in Echo County there is plenty of it: lies and prejudice, hatred and murder. Reacher can never resist a lady in distress. Her family is hostile. The cops can’t be trusted. The lawyers won’t help. If Reacher can’t set things straight, who can? (less)"
3762,Gone Tomorrow,thriller,"Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers.

There are twelve things to look for: No one who has worked in law enforcement will ever forget them.

New York City. The subway, two o'clock in the morning. Jack Reacher studies his fellow passengers. Four are OK. The fifth isn't.

The train brakes for Grand Central Station. Will Reacher intervene, and save lives? Or is he wrong? Will his intervention cost lives - including his own? (less)"
3763,Truly Devious,thriller,"Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder. 

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson weaves a delicate tale of murder and mystery in the first book of a striking new series, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and E. Lockhart. (less)"
3764,Before the Fall,thriller,"From the Emmy, PEN, Peabody, Critics' Choice, and Golden Globe Award-winning creator of the TV show Fargo comes the thriller of the year.

On a foggy summer night, 11 people - 10 privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter - depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later the unthinkable happens: The plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs - the painter - and a four-year-old boy who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family.

With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members - including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot - the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers' intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.

Amid pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us together. (less)"
3765,The Plot,thriller,"Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what's left of his self-respect; he hasn't written--let alone published--anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then... he hears the plot.

Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker's first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that--a story that absolutely needs to be told.

In a few short years, all of Evan Parker's predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.

As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his ""sure thing"" of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom? (less)"
3766,State of Fear,thriller,"In Paris, a physicist dies after performing a laboratory experiment for a beautiful visitor. In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology, built to his specifications. In Vancouver, a small research submarine is leased for use in the waters off New Guinea. And in Tokyo, an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means. Thus begins Michael Crichton's exciting and provocative technothriller, State of Fear. Only Michael Crichton's unique ability to blend science fact and pulse-pounding fiction could bring such disparate elements to a heart-stopping conclusion. This is Michael Crichton's most wide-ranging thriller. State of Fear takes the reader from the glaciers of Iceland to the volcanoes of Antarctica, from the Arizona desert to the deadly jungles of the Solomon Islands, from the streets of Paris to the beaches of Los Angeles. The novel races forward, taking the reader on a rollercoaster thrill ride, all the while keeping the brain in high gear. Gripping and thought-provoking, State of Fear is Michael Crichton at his very best. (less)"
3767,The Innocent,thriller,"America has enemies - ruthless people that the police, the FBI, even the military can't stop. That's when the U.S. government calls on Will Robie, a stone cold hitman who never questions orders and always nails his target. But Will Robie may have just made the first - and last - mistake of his career...
It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn't seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable. He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people.
Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn't an ordinary runaway -- her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. Against all of his professional habits, Robie rescues her and finds he can't walk away. He needs to help her.
Even worse, the more Robie learns about the girl, the more he's convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up, one that may explain her parents' deaths and stretch to unimaginable levels of power.
Now, Robie may have to step out of the shadows in order to save this girl's life... and perhaps his own.
(less)"
3768,The Affair,thriller,"March 1997. A woman has her throat cut behind a bar in Carter Crossing, Mississippi. Just down the road is a big army base. Is the murderer a local guy - or is he a soldier?

Jack Reacher, still a major in the military police, is sent in undercover. The county sheriff is a former US Marine - and a stunningly beautiful woman. Her investigation is going nowhere. Is the Pentagon stonewalling her? Or doesn't she really want to find the killer?

The adrenaline-pumping, high-voltage action in The Affair is set just six months before the opening of Killing Floor, and it marks a turning point in Reacher's career. If he does what the army wants, will he be able to live with himself? And if he doesn't, will the army be able to live with him?

Is this his last case in uniform? (less)"
3769,Triptych,thriller,"In the city of Atlanta, women are dying—at the hands of a killer who signs his work with a single, chilling act of mutilation. Leaving behind enough evidence to fuel a frenzied police hunt, this cunning madman is bringing together dozens of lives, crossing the boundaries of wealth and race. And the people who are chasing him must cross those boundaries too. Among them is Michael Ormewood, a veteran detective whose marriage is hanging by a thread—and whose arrogance and explosive temper are threatening his career. And Angie Polaski, a beautiful vice cop who was once Michael's lover before she became his enemy.

But another player has entered the game: a loser ex-con who has stumbled upon the killer's trail in the most coincidental of ways—someone who may be the key to breaking the case wide open... (less)"
3770,Pieces of Her,thriller,"What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?

Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?

But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . . . (less)"
3771,1st to Die,thriller,"Four crime-solving friends face off against a killer in San Francisco in the Women's Murder Club novel that started James Patterson's thrilling series.

Each one holds a piece of the puzzle: Lindsay Boxer is a homicide inspector in the San Francisco Police Department, Claire Washburn is a medical examiner, Jill Bernhardt is an assistant D.A., and Cindy Thomas just started working the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle.

But the usual procedures aren't bringing them any closer to stopping the killings. So these women form a Women's Murder Club to collaborate outside the box and pursue the case by sidestepping their bosses and giving each other a hand. The four women develop intense bonds as they pursue a killer whose crimes have stunned an entire city. Working together, they track down the most terrifying and unexpected killer they have ever encountered--before a shocking conclusion in which everything they knew turns out to be devastatingly wrong.

Full of the breathtaking drama and unforgettable emotions for which James Patterson is famous, 1st to Die is the start of the #1 New York Times bestselling series of crime thrillers. (less)"
3772,Without Remorse,thriller,"John Kelly, former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran, is still getting over the accidental death of his wife six months before, when he befriends a young woman with a decidedly checkered past. When that past reaches out for her in a particularly horrifying fashion, he vows revenge and, assembling all of his old skills, sets out to track down the men responsible, before it can happen again.
At the same time, the Pentagon is readying an operation to rescue a key group of prisoners in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. One man, they find, knows the terrain around the camp better than anyone else they have: a certain former Navy SEAL named John Kelly.
Kelly has his own mission. The Pentagon wants him for theirs. Attempting to juggle the two, Kelly (now code-named Mr. Clark) finds himself confronted by a vast array of enemies, both at home and abroad - men so skillful that the slightest misstep means death. And the fate of dozens of people, including Kelly himself, rests on his making sure that misstep never happens.
Men aren't born dangerous. They grow dangerous. And the most dangerous of all, Kelly learns, are the ones you least expect...
As Clancy takes us through the twists and turns of Without Remorse, he blends the exceptional realism and authenticity that are his hallmarks with intricate plotting, knife-edge suspense and a remarkable cast of characters.
(less)"
3773,The Cabinet of Curiosities,thriller,"In downtown Manhattan, a gruesome discovery has just been made-an underground charnel house containing the bones of dozens of murder victims. Research reveals that a serial killer was at work in New York's notorious Five Points neighborhood in the 1880s, bent on prolonging his lifespan by any means. When a newspaper story on the old murders appears to ignite a new series of horrifyingly similar killings, panic overtakes New York City. Now, FBI agent Pendergast, journalist Bill Smithback, and archaeologist Nora Kelly join forces to protect themselves from a vicious killer...before they become the next victims. (less)"
3774,Worth Dying For,thriller,"There’s deadly trouble in the corn county of Nebraska . . . and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved, decades-old case of a missing child that Reacher can’t let go.
 
The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to put some distance between himself and the hard-core trouble that’s bearing down on him. For Reacher, that was also impossible. (less)"
3775,The Likeness,thriller,"Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O’Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her double. What’s more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison – the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. With no leads, no suspects and no clues to Lexie’s real identity, Cassie’s old boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: send Cassie undercover in her place, to tempt the killer out of hiding to finish the job. (less)"
3776,Jar of Hearts,thriller,"This is the story of three best friends: one who was murdered, one who went to prison, and one who's been searching for the truth all these years . . .

When she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong—one of the most popular girls in school—disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.

But fourteen years later, Angela Wong's remains are discovered in the woods near Geo's childhood home. And Kaiser—now a detective with Seattle PD—finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.

To the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he's something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo's first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela's death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.

While everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.

How far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it? (less)"
3777,The Dead Zone,thriller,"Johnny, the small boy who skated at breakneck speed into an accident that for one horrifying moment plunged him into The Dead Zone.

Johnny Smith, the small-town schoolteacher who spun the wheel of fortune and won a four-and-a-half-year trip into The Dead Zone.

John Smith, who awakened from an interminable coma with an accursed power—the power to see the future and the terrible fate awaiting mankind in The Dead Zone.

~ (less)"
3778,The Bourne Ultimatum,thriller,"The world's two deadliest spies in the ultimate showdown.

At a small-town carnival two men, each mysteriously summoned by telegram, witness a bizarre killing. The telegrams are signed Jason Bourne. Only they know Bourne's true identity and understand the telegram is really a message from Bourne's mortal enemy, Carlos, known also as the Jackal, the world's deadliest and most elusive terrorist. And furthermore, they know that the Jackal wants: a final confrontation with Bourne.

Now David Webb, professor of Oriental studies, husband, and father, must do what he hoped he would never have to do again: assume the terrible identity of Jason Bourne. His plan is simple: to infiltrate the politically and economically Medusan group and use himself as bait to lure the cunning Jackal into a deadly trap, a trap from which only one of them will escape. (less)"
3779,The President Is Missing,thriller,"President Bill Clinton and bestselling novelist James Patterson have written a spellbinding thriller, The President is Missing.

As the novel opens, a threat looms. Enemies are planning an attack of unprecedented scale on America. Uncertainty and fear grip Washington. There are whispers of cyberterror and espionage and a traitor in the cabinet. The President himself becomes a suspect, and then goes missing...

Set in real time, over the course of three days, The President Is Missing is one of the most dramatic thrillers in decades. And it could all really happen. The President Is Missing is Bill Clinton and James Patterson's totally authentic and spellbinding thriller. (less)"
3780,The Chemist,thriller,"In this gripping page-turner, an ex-agent on the run from her former employers must take one more case to clear her name and save her life.

She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn't even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning.

Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They've killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon.

When her former handler offers her a way out, she realizes it's her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires only makes her situation more dangerous.

Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of.

In this tautly plotted novel, Meyer creates a fierce and fascinating new heroine with a very specialized skill set. And she shows once again why she's one of the world's bestselling authors. (less)"
3781,You Are Not Alone,thriller,"Shay Miller wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is increasingly lonely.

Until Shay meets the Moore sisters. Cassandra and Jane live a life of glamorous perfection, and always get what they desire. When they invite Shay into their circle, everything seems to get better. Shay would die for them to like her. She may have to. (less)"
3782,For Your Own Good,thriller,"Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the esteemed Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest.

He says his wife couldn't be more proud—though no one has seen her in a while.

Teddy really can’t be bothered with the death of a school parent that’s looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is on pushing these kids to their full academic potential.

All he wants is for his colleagues—and the endlessly meddlesome parents—to stay out of his way.

It's really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.

USA Today bestselling author Samantha Downing is back with her latest sneaky thriller set at a prestigious private school—complete with interfering parents, overeager students, and one teacher who just wants to teach them all a lesson… (less)"
3783,The Shadows,thriller,"You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile--always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it’s attracted that strange kind of infamy that only exists on the darkest corners of the internet--and inspired more than one copycat.

Paul Adams remembers the case all too well: Crabtree--and his victim--were Paul’s friends. Paul has slowly put his life back together. But now his mother, old and senile, has taken a turn for the worse. Though every inch of him resists, it is time to come home.

It's not long before things start to go wrong. Reading the news, Paul learns another copycat has struck. His mother is distressed, insistent that there's something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago.

It wasn't just the murder.

It was the fact that afterward, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again... (less)"
3784,Red Sparrow,thriller,"In the grand spy-tale tradition of John le Carré comes this shocking thriller written with insider detail known only to a veteran CIA officer.

In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.

Spies have long relied on the “honey trap,” whereby vulnerable men and women are intimately compromised. Dominika learns these techniques of “sexpionage” in Russia’s secret “Sparrow School,” hidden outside of Moscow. As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and—inevitably—forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC.

Page by page, veteran CIA officer Jason Matthews’s Red Sparrow delights and terrifies and fascinates, all while delivering an unforgettable cast, from a sadistic Spetsnaz “mechanic” who carries out Putin’s murderous schemes to the weary CIA Station Chief who resists Washington “cake-eaters” to MARBLE, the priceless Russian mole. Packed with insider detail and written with brio, this tour-de-force novel brims with Matthews’s life experience, including his knowledge of espionage, counterintelligence, surveillance tradecraft, spy recruitment, cyber-warfare, the Russian use of “spy dust,” and covert communications. Brilliantly composed and elegantly constructed, Red Sparrow is a masterful spy tale lifted from the dossiers of intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Authentic, tense, and entertaining, this novel introduces Jason Matthews as a major new American talent. (less)"
3785,Intensity,thriller,"Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend's family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed ""homicidal adventurer,"" Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with ""intensity."" Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.

Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first, her sole aim is to get out alive - until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl... as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies. (less)"
3786,Before She Knew Him,thriller,"Hen and her husband Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in a new house outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an illustrator and works out of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to control her bipolar disorder. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.

But when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either... (less)"
3787,Razorblade Tears,thriller,"A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.

The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss.

Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250252708 (less)"
3788,The Cardinal of the Kremlin,thriller,"In a rolling sea off the coast of South America, a target disappears in a puff of green light. In the Soviet hills of Dushanbe near the Afghanistan border, an otherworldly array of pillars and domes rises into the night. To the two greatest nations on earth, no contest is more urgent than the race to build the first Star Wars missile defense system, and no one knows that more than the two men charged with assessing the Soviets' capabilities: Colonel Mikhail Filitov of the Soviet Union, an old-line warrior distrusted by the army's new inner circle of technocrats, and CIA analyst Jack Ryan, hero of the Red October affair.
Each must use all his craft to arrive at the truth, but Filitov gets there first -- and that's when all hell breaks loose. Because Filitov, code-named Cardinal, is America's highest agent in the Kremlin, and he is about to be betrayed to the KGB. His rescue could spell the difference between peace and war, and it is up to Jack Ryan to accomplish it -- if he can -- as, in a breathtaking sequence of hunter and hunted, Filitov's life, and Ryan's and that of the world itself literally hang in the balance.
(less)"
3789,The Passengers,thriller,"Eight self-drive cars set on a collision course. Who lives, who dies? You decide.

When someone hacks into the systems of eight self-drive cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course.

The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife - and parents of two - who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man. Now the public have to judge who should survive but are the passengers all that they first seem? (less)"
3790,The Camel Club,thriller,"The exciting beginning of a talked-about series.

Existing at the fringes of Washington D.C., the Club consists of four eccentric members. Led by a mysterious man known as ""Oliver Stone,"" they study conspiracy theories, current events, and the machinations of government to attempt to discover the ""truth"" behind the country's actions.

Their efforts bear little fruit --- until the group witnesses a shocking murder, and becomes embroiled in an astounding, far-reaching conspiracy. Now the Club must join forces with a Secret Service agent to confront one of the most chilling spectacles ever to take place on American soil --- an event that may trigger the ultimate war between two different worlds. All that stands in the way of this apocalypse is five unexpected heroes.

Librarian's note: this is one of five volumes in the author's Camel Club series. The five are: 1. The Camel Club (2005), 2. The Collectors (2006), 3. Stone Cold (2007), Divine Justice (2008), and 5. Hell's Corner (2010). (less)"
3791,Red Russia,thriller,"Among the many things Peter doesn’t know, he doesn’t know he’s an archetype, the Prince of Coins incarnate. He doesn’t know his fiancé is a fortune teller either. He doesn’t know Russian culture, politics, or language, but he does know American business. And he knows his fiancé speaks Russian. He thinks she can make him the new Tsar of the timber industry, but first they must survive a weekend with the Russian mob.

Red Russia is the story of an American businessman and his interpreter in Russia, of business, lies, and deception, of fortunes bought and told.
(less)"
3792,Firekeeper's Daughter,thriller,"As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in—both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. When her family is struck by tragedy, Daunis puts her dreams on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother’s hockey team.

After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. How far will she go to protect her community if it means tearing apart the only world she’s ever known? (less)"
3793,'Salem's Lot,thriller,"Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town. (less)"
3794,La Vérité sur l'Affaire Harry Quebert,thriller,"À New York, au printemps 2008, alors que l’Amérique bruisse des prémices de l’élection présidentielle, Marcus Goldman, jeune écrivain à succès, est dans la tourmente : il est incapable d’écrire le nouveau roman qu’il doit remettre à son éditeur d’ici quelques mois. Le délai est près d’expirer quand soudain tout bascule pour lui : son ami et ancien professeur d’université, Harry Quebert, l’un des écrivains les plus respectés du pays, est rattrapé par son passé et se retrouve accusé d’avoir assassiné, en 1975, Nola Kellergan, une jeune fille de 15 ans, avec qui il aurait eu une liaison. Convaincu de l’innocence de Harry, Marcus abandonne tout pour se rendre dans le New Hampshire et mener son enquête. Il est rapidement dépassé par les événements : l’enquête s’enfonce et il fait l’objet de menaces. Pour innocenter Harry et sauver sa carrière d’écrivain, il doit absolument répondre à trois questions : Qui a tué Nola Kellergan? Que s’est-il passé dans le New Hampshire à l’été 1975? Et comment écrit-on un roman à succès? (less)"
3795,The Other Black Girl,thriller,"Get Out meets The Stepford Wives in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.

Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.

It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.

A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist. (less)"
3796,The Talented Mr. Ripley,thriller,"Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers. In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a ""sissy"" by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal but grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante. A dark reworking of Henry James's The Ambassadors, The Talented Mr. Ripley—is up to his tricks in a 90s film and also Rene Clement's 60s film, ""Purple Noon."" (less)"
3797,Watchers,thriller,"They escape from a secret government: two mutant creatures, both changed utterly from the animals they once were. And no one who encounters them will ever be the same again:

A lonely widower; a ruthless assassin; a beautiful woman; a government agent.

Drawn together in a deadly hunt, all four are inexorably propelled towards a confrontation with an evil beyond human imagining. (less)"
3798,The Perfect Nanny,thriller,"This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780143132172.

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. (less)"
3799,Mystic River,thriller,"When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever.

Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood.

A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves. (less)"
3800,Leave the World Behind,thriller,"A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older black couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.

Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another? 

Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.  (less)"
3801,Not a Happy Family,thriller,"In this family, everyone is keeping secrets--especially the dead. Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don't come much richer than Fred and Sheila Merton. But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered the night after an Easter Dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated.

Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their capricious father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of them is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did one of them snap after that dreadful evening? Or was it someone else that night who crept in with the worst of intentions? It must be. After all, if one of your siblings was a psychopath, you'd know.

Wouldn't you? (less)"
3802,The Keeper of Lost Causes,thriller,"Carl Mørck used to be one of Copenhagen’s best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl—who didn’t draw his weapon—blames himself. So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl’s got only a stack of Copenhagen’s coldest cases for company. His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at him: a liberal politician vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead.

But she isn’t dead … yet.

Darkly humorous, propulsive, and atmospheric, The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces American readers to the mega-bestselling series fast becoming an international sensation. (less)"
3803,Joyland,thriller,"College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life - and what comes after - that would change his world forever.

A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old - and about those who don't get to do either because death comes for them before their time. It is at once a mystery, a horror story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age novel, one that will leave even the most hard-boiled reader profoundly moved. (less)"
3804,Personal,thriller,"You can leave the army, but the army doesn’t leave you. Not always. Not completely, notes Jack Reacher—and sure enough, the retired military cop is soon pulled back into service. This time, for the State Department and the CIA.
Someone has taken a shot at the president of France in the City of Light. The bullet was American. The distance between the gunman and the target was exceptional. How many snipers can shoot from three-quarters of a mile with total confidence? Very few, but John Kott—an American marksman gone bad—is one of them. And after fifteen years in prison, he’s out, unaccounted for, and likely drawing a bead on a G8 summit packed with enough world leaders to tempt any assassin.
If anyone can stop Kott, it’s the man who beat him before: Reacher. And though he’d rather work alone, Reacher is teamed with Casey Nice, a rookie analyst who keeps her cool with Zoloft. But they’re facing a rough road, full of ruthless mobsters, Serbian thugs, close calls, double-crosses—and no backup if they’re caught. All the while Reacher can’t stop thinking about the woman he once failed to save. But he won’t let that happen again. Not this time. Not Nice.
Reacher never gets too close. But now a killer is making it personal.
(less)"
3805,NOS4A2,thriller,"NOS4A2 is a spine-tingling novel of supernatural suspense from master of horror Joe Hill, the New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns.

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.

Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”

Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son. (less)"
3806,Map of Bones,thriller,"The bones lead to ancient mysteries and present-day terror . . . To follow them means death.


During a crowded service at a cathedral in Germany, armed intruders in monks' robes unleash a nightmare of blood and destruction. But the killers have not come for gold; they seek a more valuable prize: the bones of the Magi who once paid homage to a newborn savior . . . a treasure that could reshape the world.


With the Vatican in turmoil, Sigma Force under the command of Grayson Pierce leaps into action, pursuing a deadly mystery that weaves through sites of the Seven Wonders of the World and ends at the doorstep of an ancient, mystical, and terrifying secret order. For there are those with dark plans for the stolen sacred remains that will alter the future of humankind . . . when science and religion unite to unleash a horror not seen since the beginning of time.

14 hours, 2 minutes (less)"
3807,Still Missing,thriller,"On the day she was abducted, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old realtor, had three goals - sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever-patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she's about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all.

Still Missing interweaves the year Annie spent as the captive of a psychopath in a remote mountain cabin, which unfold through sessions with her psychiatrist, with a second narrative following the events after her escape—her struggle to piece her shattered life back together and the ongoing police investigation into the identity of her captor.

Still Missing is a shocking, visceral, brutal and beautifully crafted novel. (less)"
3808,Baby Teeth,thriller,"Meet Hanna.

She’s the sweet-but-silent angel in the adoring eyes of her Daddy. He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Ideally for good.

Meet Suzette.

She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette's husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all. (less)"
3809,The Golden Couple,thriller,"The next electrifying novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author duo behind The Wife Between Us.

Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all—until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and a lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.

Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn’t stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.

When they glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger. (less)"
3810,Every Last Fear,thriller,"“They found the bodies on a Tuesday.”

So begins this twisty and breathtaking novel that traces the fate of the Pine family, a thriller that will both leave you on the edge of your seat and move you to tears.

After a late night of partying, NYU student Matt Pine returns to his dorm room to devastating news: nearly his entire family—his mom, his dad, his little brother and sister—have been found dead from an apparent gas leak while vacationing in Mexico. The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain—and they won’t tell Matt why.

The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Charlotte—was the subject of a viral true crime documentary suggesting that Danny was wrongfully convicted. Though the country has rallied behind Danny, Matt holds a secret about his brother that he’s never told anyone: the night Charlotte was killed Matt saw something that makes him believe his brother is guilty of the crime.

When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he’s faced with a hostile community that was villainized by the documentary, a frenzied media, and memories he’d hoped to leave behind forever. Now, as the deaths in Mexico appear increasingly suspicious and connected to Danny’s case, Matt must unearth the truth behind the crime that sent his brother to prison—putting his own life in peril—and forcing him to confront his every last fear.

Told through multiple points-of-view and alternating between past and present, Alex Finlay's Every Last Fear is not only a page-turning thriller, it’s also a poignant story about a family managing heartbreak and tragedy, and living through a fame they never wanted. (less)"
3811,Someone We Know,thriller,"Maybe you don't know your neighbors as well as you thought you did . . .

""This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out.""

In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too.

Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets?

In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . .

You never really know what people are capable of. (less)"
3812,The Hypnotist,thriller,"Prepare for The Hypnotist to cast its spell

In the frigid clime of Tumba, Sweden, a gruesome triple homicide attracts the interest of Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate the murders. The killer is still at large, and there’s only one surviving witness—the boy whose family was killed before his eyes. Whoever committed the crimes wanted this boy to die: he’s suffered more than one hundred knife wounds and lapsed into a state of shock. Desperate for information, Linna sees only one option: hypnotism. He enlists Dr. Erik Maria Bark to mesmerize the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes.

It’s the sort of work that Bark has sworn he would never do again—ethically dubious and psychically scarring. When he breaks his promise and hypnotizes the victim, a long and terrifying chain of events begins to unfurl.

An international sensation, The Hypnotist is set to appear in thirty-seven countries, and it has landed at the top of bestseller lists wherever it’s been published—in France, Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark. Now it’s America’s turn. Combining the addictive power of the Stieg Larsson trilogy with the storytelling drive of The Silence of the Lambs, this adrenaline-drenched thriller is spellbinding from its very first page. (less)"
3813,Reckless Girls,thriller,"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wife Upstairs comes a deliciously wicked gothic suspense, set on an isolated Pacific island with a dark history, for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.

When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail two women to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii, and longing to travel the world after a family tragedy, Lux is eager to climb on board The Susannah and set out on an adventure. She’s also quick to bond with their passengers, college best friends Brittany and Amma. The two women say they want to travel off the beaten path. But like Lux, they may have other reasons to be seeking an escape.

Shimmering on the horizon after days at sea, Meroe Island is every bit the paradise the foursome expects, despite a mysterious history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and even rumors of murder. But what they don’t expect is to discover another boat already anchored off Meroe’s sandy beaches. The owners of the Azure Sky, Jake and Eliza, are a true golden couple: gorgeous, laidback, and if their sleek catamaran and well-stocked bar are any indication, rich. Now a party of six, the new friends settle in to experience life on an exotic island, and the serenity of being completely off the grid. Lux hasn’t felt like she truly belonged anywhere in years, yet here on Meroe, with these fellow free spirits, she finally has a sense of peace.

But with the arrival of a skeevy stranger sailing alone in pursuit of a darker kind of good time, the balance of the group is disrupted. Soon, cracks begin to emerge: it seems that Brittany and Amma haven’t been completely honest with Lux about their pasts––and perhaps not even with each other. And though Jake and Eliza seem like the perfect pair, the rocky history of their relationship begins to resurface, and their reasons for sailing to Meroe might not be as innocent as they first appeared.

When it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilization than they initially thought, it starts to feel like the island itself is closing in on them. And when one person goes missing, and another turns up dead, Lux begins to wonder if any of them are going to make it off the island alive. (less)"
3814,The Night Shift,thriller,"It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.

Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive.

Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words... “Goodnight, pretty girl.”

In the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.

Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Alex Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers. (less)"
3815,Long Bright River,thriller,"Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then, one of them goes missing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate. (less)"
3816,Luckiest Girl Alive,thriller,"HER PERFECT LIFE IS A PERFECT LIE.

As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve.

But Ani has a secret.

There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.

With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to “have it all” and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that's bigger than it first appears.

The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free? (less)"
3817,I Hunt Killers,thriller,"What if the world's worst serial killer...was your dad?

Jasper ""Jazz"" Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.

But he's also the son of the world's most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could—from the criminal's point of view.

And now bodies are piling up in Lobo's Nod.

In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret—could he be more like his father than anyone knows? (less)"
3818,The Woods,thriller,"Twenty years ago, four teenagers disappeared in the woods at summer camp. Two decades later, everything changes...

Paul Copeland's sister was one of the missing teenagers. Now raising a daughter alone after the death of his wife, he balances family life with a career as a prosecutor. But when a body is found, the well-buried secrets of the past threaten everything.

Could the victim be one of the missing teenagers? Could his sister be alive? Copeland has to confront so much he left behind that summer twenty years ago: his first love, Lucy; his mother, who abandoned the family; and the secrets that his parents have been hiding ... (less)"
3819,The Passage,thriller,"IT HAPPENED FAST.
THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time an place where she must finish what should never have begun.

With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterly prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction. (less)"
3820,Make Me,thriller,"A Jack Reacher Novel

“Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?” That’s all Reacher wants to know. But no one will tell him. It’s a tiny place hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields, with a railroad stop, and sullen and watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes him for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation she thinks must have started small and then turned lethal.

Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, and there’s something about Chang . . . so he teams up with her and starts to ask around. He thinks: How bad can this thing be? But before long he’s plunged into a desperate race through LA, Chicago, Phoenix, and San Francisco, and through the hidden parts of the internet, up against thugs and assassins every step of the way—right back to where he started, in Mother’s Rest, where he must confront the worst nightmare he could imagine.

Walking away would have been easier. But as always, Reacher’s rule is: If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to make me. (less)"
3821,The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires,thriller,"Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia's life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she--and her book club--are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community. (less)"
3822,Memory Man,thriller,"Amos Decker's life changed forever--twice.

The first time was on the gridiron. A big, towering athlete, he was the only person from his hometown of Burlington ever to go pro. But his career ended before it had a chance to begin. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect--he can never forget anything.

The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare--his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered.

His family destroyed, their killer's identity as mysterious as the motive behind the crime, and unable to forget a single detail from that horrible night, Decker finds his world collapsing around him. He leaves the police force, loses his home, and winds up on the street, taking piecemeal jobs as a private investigator when he can.

But over a year later, a man turns himself in to the police and confesses to the murders. At the same time a horrific event nearly brings Burlington to its knees, and Decker is called back in to help with this investigation. Decker also seizes his chance to learn what really happened to his family that night. To uncover the stunning truth, he must use his remarkable gifts and confront the burdens that go along with them. He must endure the memories he would much rather forget. And he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Memory Man will stay with you long after the turn of the final page. (less)"
3823,Battle Royale,thriller,"Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan - where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller - Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the English language. (less)"
3824,The Escape Room,thriller,"Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.

In the lucrative world of finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are at the top of their game. They’ve mastered the art of the deal and celebrate their success in style―but a life of extreme luxury always comes at a cost.

Invited to participate in an escape room challenge as a team-building exercise, the ferociously competitive co-workers crowd into the elevator of a high-rise building, eager to prove themselves. But when the lights go off and the doors stay shut, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary competition: they’re caught in a dangerous game of survival.

Trapped in the dark, the colleagues must put aside their bitter rivalries and work together to solve cryptic clues to break free. But as the game begins to reveal the team’s darkest secrets, they realize there’s a price to be paid for the terrible deeds they committed in their ruthless climb up the corporate ladder. As tempers fray, and the clues turn deadly, they must solve one final chilling puzzle: which one of them will kill in order to survive? (less)"
3825,The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,thriller,"On a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. But when she wanders off by herself and then tries to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror.

As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace, she tunes her Walkman to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio's reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her - protecting her from an all-too-real enemy who has left a trail of slaughtered animals and mangled trees in the dense, dark woods... (less)"
3826,Run Away,thriller,"You've lost your daughter.

She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found.

Then, quite by chance, you see her busking in New York's Central Park.

But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is wasted, frightened and clearly in trouble.

You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home.

She runs.

And you follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never knew existed. Where criminal gangs rule, where drugs are the main currency, and murder is commonplace.

Now it's your life on the line. And nowhere and no one is safe. (less)"
3827,The Burning Girls,thriller,"An unconventional vicar moves to a remote corner of the English countryside, only to discover a community haunted by death and disappearances both past and present--and intent on keeping its dark secrets--in this explosive, unsettling thriller from acclaimed author C. J. Tudor.

Welcome to Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself.

Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping to make a fresh start and find some peace. Instead, Jack finds a town mired in secrecy and a strange welcome package: an old exorcism kit and a note quoting scripture. ""But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known.""

The more Jack and her daughter Flo get acquainted with the town and its strange denizens, the deeper they are drawn into their rifts, mysteries, and suspicions. And when Flo is troubled by strange sightings in the old chapel, it becomes apparent that there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.

But uncovering the truth can be deadly in a village where everyone has something to protect, everyone has links with the village's bloody past, and no one trusts an outsider. (less)"
3828,Absolute Power,thriller,"A grizzled professional cat burglar gets trapped inside the bedroom closet of one of the world's richest men, only to witness, through a one-way mirror, two Secret Service agents kill the billionaire's trampy young wife as she tries to fight off the drunken sexual advances of the nation's chief executive. Running for his life, but not before he picks up a bloodstained letter opener that puts the president at the scene of the crime, the burglar becomes the target of a clandestine manhunt orchestrated by leading members of the executive branch.

Meanwhile, Jack Graham, once a public defender and now a high-powered corporate attorney, gets drawn into the case because the on-the-lam burglar just happens to be the father of his former financee, a crusading Virginia prosecutor.

Embroidering the narrative through assorted plot whorls are the hero's broken romance; his conflict over selling out for financial success; the prosecutor's confused love-hate for her burglar father; the relentless investigation by a northern Virginia career cop; the dilemma of government agents trapped in a moral catch-22; the amoral ambitions of a sexy White House Chief of Staff; and the old burglar's determination to bring down the ruthless president.

Meanwhile, lurking at the novel's center like a venomous spider is the sociopathic president. (less)"
3829,The Cousins,thriller,"Milly, Aubrey, and Jonah Story are cousins, but they barely know each other, and they've never even met their grandmother. Rich and reclusive, she disinherited their parents before they were born. So when they each receive a letter inviting them to work at her island resort for the summer, they're surprised... and curious.

Their parents are all clear on one point—not going is not an option. This could be the opportunity to get back into Grandmother's good graces. But when the cousins arrive on the island, it's immediately clear that she has different plans for them. And the longer they stay, the more they realize how mysterious—and dark—their family's past is.

The entire Story family has secrets. Whatever pulled them apart years ago isn't over—and this summer, the cousins will learn everything. (less)"
3830,Rainbow Six,thriller,"Over the course of nine novels, Tom Clancy’s “genius for big, compelling plots” and his “natural narrative gift” (The New York Times Magazine) have mesmerized hundreds of millions of readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Rainbow Six, however, goes beyond anything he has done before.
At its heart is John Clark, the ex-Navy SEAL of Without Remorse, well known from several of Clancy's novels as a master of secret operational missions. Whether hunting warlords in Japan, druglords in Colombia, or nuclear terrorists in the United States, Clark is efficient and deadly, but even he has ghosts in his past, demons that must be exorcised. And nothing is more demonic than the peril he must face in Rainbow Six.
Newly named the head of an international task force dedicated to combating terrorism, Clark is looking forward to getting his teeth into a new mission, but the opportunities start coming thicker and faster than anyone could have expected: an incident at a Swiss bank, the kidnapping of an international trader in Germany, a terrible raid on an amusement park in Spain.
Each episode seems separate, discrete, yet the timing disturbs Clark. Is there a connection? Is he being tested? With the help of his close associates, executive officer Alistair Stanley and strike team leaders Domingo Chavez and Peter Covington, Clark tries to figure out where all this activity is heading, but there is no way to predict the real threat: a group of terrorists like none the world has ever encountered, a band of men and women so extreme that their success could literally mean the end of life on Earth as we know it.
(less)"
3831,Fool Me Once,thriller,"Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband, Joe—who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to? To find the answer, Maya must finally come to terms with deep secrets and deceit in her own past before she can face the unbelievable truth about her husband—and herself. (less)"
3832,Zero Day,thriller,"War hero John Puller is known to be the top investigator in the US Army’s CID. So when a family with military connections is brutally murdered in a remote area of West Virginia, Puller is called to investigate, and soon suspects the case has wider implications.

As the body count rises he teams up with local homicide detective Samantha Cole. As the web of deceit is revealed, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s much more to this case than they had first thought. It is an investigation where nothing is as it seems, and nothing can be taken at face value. (less)"
3833,The Long Walk,thriller,"Against the wishes of his mother, sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty is about to compete in the annual grueling match of stamina and wits known as The Long Walk. One hundred boys must keep a steady pace of four miles per hour without ever stopping... with the winner being awarded ""The Prize"" - anything he wants for the rest of his life. But, as part of this national tournament that sweeps through a dystopian America year after year, there are some harsh rules that Garraty and ninety-nine others must adhere to in order to beat out the rest. There is no finish line - the winner is the last man standing. Contestants cannot receive any outside aid whatsoever. Slow down under the speed limit and you're given a warning. Three warnings and you're out of the game - permanently... (less)"
3834,Still Life With Crows,thriller,"A small Kansas town has turned into a killing ground.
Is it a serial killer, a man with the need to destroy?
Or is it a darker force, a curse upon the land?
Amid golden cornfields, FBI Special Agent Pendergast discovers evil in the blood of America's heartland.
No one is safe. (less)"
3835,The Kill Artist,thriller,"Gabriel Allon had a simple but brutal job: he tracked down and eliminated Israel's terrorist enemies. But when his wife and son fell victim to the danger that accompanied him everywhere, Gabriel quit and devoted himself to the work of art restoration, an occupation that had previously been a cover for his secret assignments. Now Ari Shamron, the head of Israeli intelligence, needs Gabriel's particular kind of experience to thwart a Palestinian plot to destroy the peace negotiations in the Middle East. The architect of this plot, a Palestinian zealot named Tariq, is a lethal part of Gabriel's past, so as the two begin an intercontinental game of hide-and-seek, with life and death as the prizes, the motives are as personal as they are political.
The story features a vivid and fascinating supporting cast, including the magus-like Ari Shamron, a beautiful French Jewish model who is seeking retribution for her family's death in the Holocaust, and a marvelously comic down-at-the-heels London art dealer. Set these colorful and varied characters against a brilliant background of political intrigue and vengeance at the highest levels and a manhunt that covers three continents, and the result is a smart and electrically exciting global thriller.
(less)"
3836,Th1rt3en,thriller,"The serial killer isn't on trial.

He's on the jury...

They were Hollywood's hottest power couple. They had the world at their feet. Now one of them is dead and Hollywood star Robert Solomon is charged with the brutal murder of his beautiful wife.

This is the celebrity murder trial of the century and the defence want one man on their team: con artist turned lawyer Eddie Flynn.

All the evidence points to Robert's guilt, but as the trial begins a series of sinister incidents in the court room start to raise doubts in Eddie's mind.

What if there's more than one actor in the courtroom?

What if the killer isn't on trial? What if the killer is on the jury? (less)"
3837,Force of Nature,thriller,"Five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking along a muddy track.

Only four come out on the other side.

The hike through the rugged Giralang Ranges is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and encourage teamwork and resilience. At least, that's what the corporate retreat website advertises.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker, Alice Russell. Because Alice knew secrets, about the company she worked for and the people she worked with.

The four returning women tell Falk a tale of fear, violence and fractured trust during their days in the remote Australian bushland. And as Falk delves into the disappearance of Alice, he begins to suspect some dangers ran far deeper than anyone knew. (less)"
3838,Out,thriller,"Natsuo Kirino's novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her deadbeat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.

The ringleader of this cover-up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of Out and as one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako's own search for a way out of the straitjacket of a dead-end life leads her, too, to take drastic action.

The complex yet riveting narrative seamlessly combines a convincing glimpse into the grimy world of Japan's yakuza with a brilliant portrayal of the psychology of a violent crime and the ensuing game of cat-and-mouse between seasoned detectives and a group of determined but inexperienced criminals. Kirino has mastered a Thelma and Louise kind of graveyard humor that illuminates her stunning evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds and the friendship that bolsters them in the aftermath. (less)"
3839,Cujo,thriller,"Durante toda su vida Cujo fue un buen perro, un San Bernardo grandote, pacífico, juguetón y amante de los niños. Realmente se trataba de un perro bueno y feliz. Feliz hasta que le sucedió algo, y el cerebro de perro de Cujo se cubrió de una de esas oscuridades que se alimentan de sangre. Ahora, se ha convertido en un perro asesino; doblemente cruel por cuanto la gente no conoce su mutación y aún le ve en su anterior bondad. Heraldo de un pequeño Apocalipsis, Cujo desencadenará sobre un pueblo modélico un huracán de pánico y de muerte.

Uno de los grandes clásicos de Stephen King, el gran maestro actual de la literatura de terror. (less)"
3840,The Haunting of Hill House,thriller,"It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a ""haunting""; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own. (less)"
3841,We Need to Talk About Kevin,thriller,"The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
(less)"
3842,Hannibal Rising,thriller,"HE IS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTING CHARACTERS
IN ALL OF LITERATURE.

AT LAST THE EVOLUTION OF HIS EVIL
IS REVEALED.

Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck.

He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him.

Hannibal’s uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle and his uncle’s beautiful and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki.

Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal. With her help he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France.

But Hannibal’s demons visit him and torment him. When he is old enough, he visits them in turn.

He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death’s prodigy. (less)"
3843,The Stranger,thriller,"The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. His identity is unknown. His motives are unclear. His information is undeniable. Then he whispers a few words in your ear and disappears, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world.

Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life.

Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne’s deception, and realizes that if he doesn’t make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them. (less)"
3844,The Templar Legacy,thriller,"The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power over kings and popes . . . until the Inquisition, when they were wiped from the face of the earth, their hidden riches lost. But now two forces vying for the treasure have learned that it is not at all what they thought it was–and its true nature could change the modern world.

Cotton Malone, one-time top operative for the U.S. Justice Department, is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen when an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger instincts–and plunges him back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he’d left behind.

It begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton’s former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who’s far from home on a mission that has nothing to do with national security. Armed with vital clues to a series of centuries-old puzzles scattered across Europe, she means to crack a mystery that has tantalized scholars and fortune-hunters through the ages by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to have been lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar was exterminated in the fourteenth century. But she’s not alone. Competing for the historic prize–and desperate for the crucial information Stephanie possesses–is Raymond de Roquefort, a shadowy zealot with an army of assassins at his command.

Welcome or not, Cotton seeks to even the odds in the perilous race. But the more he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Knights Templar, the more he realizes that even more than lives are at stake. At the end of a lethal game of conquest, rife with intrigue, treachery, and craven lust for power, lies a shattering discovery that could rock the civilized world–and, in the wrong hands, bring it to its knees. (less)"
3845,Debt of Honor,thriller,"Razio Yamata is one of Japan's most influential industrialists, and part of a relatively small group of authority who wield tremendous authority in the Pacific Rim's economic powerhouse.
He has devised a plan to cripple the American greatness, humble the US military, and elevate Japan to a position of dominance on the world stage.
Yamata's motivation lies in his desire to pay off aDebt of Honor to his parents and to the country he feels is responsible for their deaths—America. All he needs is a catalyst to set his plan in motion.
When the faulty gas tank on one Tennessee family's car leads to their fiery death, an opportunistic U. S. congressman uses the occasion to rush a new trade law through the system. The law is designed to squeeze Japan economically. Instead, it provides Yamata with the leverage he needs to put his plan into action.
As Yamata's plan begins to unfold, it becomes clear to the world that someone is launching a fully-integrated operation against the United States. There's only one man to find out who the culprit is—Jack Ryan, the new President's National Security Advisor.
(less)"
3846,The Other People,thriller,"A gripping new thriller about a man's quest for the daughter no one else believes is still alive, from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man and The Hiding Place.

Driving home one night, stuck behind a rusty old car, Gabe sees a little girl's face appear in the rear window. She mouths one word: 'Daddy.' It's his five-year-old daughter, Izzy.

He never sees her again.

Three years later, Gabe spends his days and nights travelling up and down the motorway, searching for the car that took his daughter, refusing to give up hope, even though most people believe that Izzy is dead.

Fran and her daughter, Alice, also put in a lot of miles on the motorway. Not searching. But running. Trying to keep one step ahead of the people who want to hurt them. Because Fran knows the truth. She knows what really happened to Gabe's daughter.

Then, the car that Gabe saw driving away that night is found, in a lake, with a body inside and Gabe is forced to confront events, not just from the night his daughter disappeared, but from far deeper in his past.

His search leads him to a group called The Other People.

If you have lost a loved one, The Other People want to help. Because they know what loss is like. They know what pain is like. They know what death is like.

There's just one problem . . . they want other people to know it too. (less)"
3847,The Girls I've Been,thriller,"A slick, twisty YA page-turner about the daughter of a con artist who is taken hostage in a bank heist.

Nora O’Malley’s been a lot of girls. As the daughter of a con-artist who targets criminal men, she grew up as her mother’s protégé. But when mom fell for the mark instead of conning him, Nora pulled the ultimate con: escape.

For five years Nora’s been playing at normal. But she needs to dust off the skills she ditched because she has three problems:

#1: Her ex walked in on her with her girlfriend. Even though they’re all friends, Wes didn’t know about her and Iris.

#2: The morning after Wes finds them kissing, they all have to meet to deposit the fundraiser money they raised at the bank. It’s a nightmare that goes from awkward to deadly, because:

#3: Right after they enter bank, two guys start robbing it.

The bank robbers may be trouble, but Nora’s something else entirely. They have no idea who they’re really holding hostage… (less)"
3848,In Cold Blood,thriller,"On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence. (less)"
3849,Rising Sun,thriller,"In a novel set within the arena of volatile Japanese-American relations, business moguls compete for control of the international electronics industry."
3850,Executive Orders,thriller,"The President is dead—and the weight, literally, of the world falls on Jack Ryan's shoulders, in Tom Clancy's newest and most extraordinary novel. I don't know what to do. Where's the manual, the training course, for this job? Whom do I ask? Where do I go? Debt of Honor ended with Tom Clancy's most shocking conclusion ever; a joint session of Congress destroyed, the President dead, most of the Cabinet and the Congress dead, the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs likewise. Dazed and confused, the man who only minutes before had been confirmed as the new Vice-President of the United States is told that he is now President. President John Patrick Ryan. And that is where Executive Orders begins. Ryan had agreed to accept the vice-presidency only as a caretaker for a year, and now, suddenly an incalculable weight has fallen on his shoulders. How do you run a government without a government? Where do you even begin? With stunning force, Ryan's responsibilities crush on him. He must calm an anxious and grieving nation, allay the skepticism of the world's leaders, conduct a swift investigation of the tragedy, and arrange a massive state funeral—all while attempting to reconstitute a Cabinet and a Congress with the greatest possible speed. But that is not all. Many eyes are on him now, and many of them are unfriendly. In Beijing, Tehran, and other world capitals, including Washington D.C., there are those eager to take advantage where they may, some of whom bear a deep animus toward the United States—some of whom, from Ryan's past, harbor intense animosity toward the new President himself. Soon they will begin to move on their opportunities; soon they will present Jack Ryan with a crisis so big even he cannot imagine it. Tom Clancy has written remarkable novels before, but nothing comparable to the timeliness and drama of Executive Orders. Filled with the exceptional realism and intricate plotting that are his hallmarks, it attests to the words of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: This man can tell a story. (less)"
3851,The Partner,thriller,"A man will do almost anything for ninety million dollars. So will its rightful owners. They found him in a small town in Brazil. He had a new name, Danilo Silva, and his appearance had been changed by plastic surgery. The search had taken four years. They'd chased him around the world, always just missing him. It had cost their clients $3.5 million. But so far none of them had complained.

The man they were about to kidnap had not always been called Danilo Silva. Before he had had another life, a life which ended in a car crash in February 1992. His gravestone lay in a cemetery in Biloxi, Mississippi. His name before his death was Patrick S. Lanigan. He had been a partner at an up-and-coming law firm. He had a pretty wife, a young daughter, and a bright future. Six weeks after his death, $90 million disappeared from the law firm.

It was then that his partners knew he was still alive. And the chase was on (less)"
3852,Gerald's Game,thriller,"A game. A husband-and-wife game. Gerald's Game.

But this time Jessie didn't want to play. Lying there, spreadeagled and handcuffed to the bedstead while he'd loomed and drooled over her, she'd felt angry and humiliated.

So she'd kicked out hard. Aimed to hit him where it hurt.

And now he was dead - a coronary - on the floor.

Leaving Jessie alone and helpless in a lakeside holiday cabin. Miles from nowhere. No-one to hear her screams.

Alone. Except for the voices in her head that begun to chatter and argue and sneer... (less)"
3853,The Fourth Monkey,thriller,"For over five years, the Four Monkey Killer has terrorized the residents of Chicago. When his body is found, the police quickly realize he was on his way to deliver one final message, one which proves he has taken another victim who may still be alive.

As the lead investigator on the 4MK task force, Detective Sam Porter knows even in death, the killer is far from finished. When he discovers a personal diary in the jacket pocket of the body, Porter finds himself caught up in the mind of a psychopath, unraveling a twisted history in hopes of finding one last girl, all while struggling with personal demons of his own.

With only a handful of clues, the elusive killer’s identity remains a mystery. Time is running out and the Four Monkey Killer taunts from beyond the grave in this masterfully written fast-paced thriller. (less)"
3854,The Cabin at the End of the World,thriller,"Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, ""None of what’s going to happen is your fault"". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: ""Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."" (less)"
3855,Dangerous Girls,thriller,"It's Spring Break of senior year. Anna, her boyfriend Tate, her best friend Elise, and a few other close friends are off on a debaucherous trip to Aruba that promises to be the time of their lives. But when Elise is found brutally murdered, Anna finds herself trapped in a country not her own, fighting against vile and contemptuous accusations.

As Anna sets out to find her friend's killer, she discovers hard truths about her friendships, the slippery nature of truth, and the ache of young love.

As she awaits the judge's decree, it becomes clear that everyone around her thinks she is not just guilty, but dangerous. When the truth comes out, it is more shocking than one could ever imagine... (less)"
3856,The Shadow of the Wind,thriller,"Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.
--back cover (less)"
3857,Déjà Dead,thriller,"Her life is devoted to justice; for those she never even knew. In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Temperance detects an alarming pattern and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her, her best friend and her own daughter, in mortal danger... (less)"
3858,The Girl in the Ice,thriller,"Her eyes are wide open. Her lips parted as if to speak. Her dead body frozen in the ice…She is not the only one.

When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.

The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.

What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?

As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.

The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong… resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?

A #1 international bestseller, The Girl in the Ice is a page-turning thriller packed with suspense. If you like Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Karin Slaughter, discover Rob Bryndza’s series today. (less)"
3859,Dolores Claiborne,thriller,"Suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, Dolores Claiborne tells police the story of her life, harkening back to her disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of her violent husband, Joe St. George, thirty years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera's physical and mental decline and of her loyalty to an employer who has become emotionally demanding in recent years. (less)"
3860,Brimstone,thriller,"Art critic Jeremy Grove is found dead, his face frozen in a mask of terror. His body temperature is grotesquely high; he is discovered in a room barricaded from the inside; the smell of brimstone is everywhere... and the unmistakable imprint of a claw is burned into the wall. As more bodies are discovered - their only connection the bizarre but identical manner of death - the world begins to wonder if the Devil has, in fact, come to collect his due.

Teaming with Police Officer Vincent D'Agosta (The Relic), Agent Pendergast is determined to solve this case that appears to defy everything except supernatural logic.

©2004 Douglas Preston (P)2011 Hachette (less)"
3861,The Maid,thriller,"Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.

Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life's complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly's orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late?

A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593356159. (less)"
3862,Killman Creek,thriller,"Every time Gwen closed her eyes, she saw him in her nightmares. Now her eyes are open, and he’s not going away.

Gwen Proctor won the battle to save her kids from her ex-husband, serial killer Melvin Royal, and his league of psychotic accomplices. But the war isn’t over. Not since Melvin broke out of prison. Not since she received a chilling text…

You’re not safe anywhere now.

Her refuge at Stillhouse Lake has become a trap. Gwen leaves her children in the protective custody of a fortified, well-armed neighbor. Now, with the help of Sam Cade, brother of one of Melvin’s victims, Gwen is going hunting. She’s learned how from one of the sickest killers alive.

But what she’s up against is beyond anything she feared—a sophisticated and savage mind game calculated to destroy her. As trust beyond her small circle of friends begins to vanish, Gwen has only fury and vengeance to believe in as she closes in on her prey. And sure as the night, one of them will die. (less)"
3863,Miracle Creek,thriller,"How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies?

In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident.

A showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe? (less)"
3864,Stalking Jack the Ripper,thriller,"Presented by James Patterson's new children's imprint, this deliciously creepy horror novel has a storyline inspired by the Ripper murders and an unexpected, blood-chilling conclusion...

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.

Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

The story's shocking twists and turns, augmented with real, sinister period photos, will make this dazzling, #1 New York Times bestselling debut from author Kerri Maniscalco impossible to forget. (less)"
3865,Dracula,thriller,"You can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here and here.

A rich selection of background and source materials is provided in three areas: Contexts includes probable inspirations for Dracula in the earlier works of James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard. Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and ""Dracula's Guest,"" the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. ""Dramatic and Film Variations"" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included.

Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer.

A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included. (less)"
3866,As Good As Dead,thriller,"THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES
The highly-anticipated finale to the A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series, the instant bestsellers that read like your favorite true crime podcast or show. By the end of this mystery series, you'll never think of good girls the same way again...

Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

Soon the threats escalate and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars.

Police refuse to act, so Pip has only one choice: find the suspect herself—or be the next victim. As the deadly game plays out, Pip discovers that everything in her small town is coming full circle . . .and if she doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears. . . (less)"
3867,House of Leaves,thriller,"Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams. (less)"
3868,The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye,thriller,"The girl with the dragon tattoo does not forgive.

Salander is confined to the secure unit of a women's prison, with violence all around her, but for a hacker of her skills, there are no boundaries.

She gives Mikael Blomkvist a lead that could give him an important exposé for Millennium magazine, an investigation into a sinister experiment that may also unlock the mystery of her harrowing childhood.

The dragon inked into Salander's back is a constant reminder of her pledge to fight the injustice she finds on every side, and she will discover the truth, whatever the cost. (less)"
3869,Next,thriller,"Welcome to our genetic world.
Fast, furious, and out of control.
This is not the world of the future --- it's the world right now.
Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why an adult human being resembles a chimp fetus? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction --- is it worse than the disease?
We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps; a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars; test our spouses for genetic maladies and even frame someone for a genetic crime.
We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes ...
Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions, and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.
The future is closer than you think. Get used to it.
(less)"
3870,The Chamber,thriller,"In the corridors of Chicago's top law firm: Twenty -six-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case.

Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State Prison: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances -- except for one: the young, liberal Chicago lawyer who just happens to be his grandson.

While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather and the TV cameras wait, Adam has only days, hours, minutes to save his client. For between the two men is a chasm of shame, family lies, and secrets -- including the one secret that could save Sam Cayhall's life... or cost Adam his.
--back cover (less)"
3871,Night School,thriller,"It’s 1996, and Reacher is still in the army. In the morning they give him a medal, and in the afternoon they send him back to school. That night he’s off the grid. Out of sight, out of mind.

Two other men are in the classroom—an FBI agent and a CIA analyst. Each is a first-rate operator, each is fresh off a big win, and each is wondering what the hell they are doing there.

Then they find out: A Jihadist sleeper cell in Hamburg, Germany, has received an unexpected visitor—a Saudi courier, seeking safe haven while waiting to rendezvous with persons unknown. A CIA asset, undercover inside the cell, has overheard the courier whisper a chilling message: “The American wants a hundred million dollars.”

For what? And who from? Reacher and his two new friends are told to find the American. Reacher recruits the best soldier he has ever worked with: Sergeant Frances Neagley. Their mission heats up in more ways than one, while always keeping their eyes on the prize: If they don’t get their man, the world will suffer an epic act of terrorism.

From Langley to Hamburg, Jalalabad to Kiev, Night School moves like a bullet through a treacherous landscape of double crosses, faked identities, and new and terrible enemies, as Reacher maneuvers inside the game and outside the law.

Listening Length: 13 hours and 7 minutes (less)"
3872,The Girl in 6E,thriller,"Deanna Madden, aka Jessica Reilly, hasn't touched another person in three years.

She hasn't left her apartment.

She makes money from performing to webcams on a sex site, where her clients pay $6.99 a minute for her time.

She's doing alright. The dollars are piling up in the bank. She's the number 3 model on cams.com.

And she hasn't killed anyone for years.

But when Deanna sees on the news that a little girl called Annie has gone missing, the story rattles her carefully ordered world. It's uncomfortably similar to the dark fantasy of one of her most disturbing online clients. She's convinced he's responsible for the girl's abduction - but no one will listen to her.

So, after three years, Deanna finally leaves the apartment.

And this is what happens... (less)"
3873,We Were Never Here,thriller,"An annual backpacking trip has deadly consequences in a chilling new novel from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd.

Emily is having the time of her life--she's in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of their trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she'd been flirting with attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year's trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can't believe it's happened again--can lightning really strike twice?

Back home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma, diving head-first into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her friend's motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their coverups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can she outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom--even her life?

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781984820464. (less)"
3874,Eeny Meeny,thriller,"The ""dark, twisted, thought-provoking"" (#1 New York Times bestseller Tami Hoag) international bestseller—first in the new series featuring Detective Helen Grace.

Two people are abducted, imprisoned, and left with a gun. As hunger and thirst set in, only one walks away alive.

It’s a game more twisted than any Detective Helen Grace has ever seen. If she hadn’t spoken with the shattered survivors herself, she almost wouldn’t believe them.

Helen is familiar with the dark sides of human nature, including her own, but this case—with its seemingly random victims—has her baffled. But as more people go missing, nothing will be more terrifying than when it all starts making sense.... (less)"
3875,The Hit,thriller,"Will Robie is a master of killing.
A highly skilled assassin, Robie is the man the U.S. government calls on to eliminate the worst of the worst-enemies of the state, monsters committed to harming untold numbers of innocent victims.
No one else can match Robie's talents as a hitman...no one, except Jessica Reel. A fellow assassin, equally professional and dangerous, Reel is every bit as lethal as Robie. And now, she's gone rogue, turning her gun sights on other members of their agency.
To stop one of their own, the government looks again to Will Robie. His mission: bring in Reel, dead or alive. Only a killer can catch another killer, they tell him.
But as Robie pursues Reel, he quickly finds that there is more to her betrayal than meets the eye. Her attacks on the agency conceal a larger threat, a threat that could send shockwaves through the U.S. government and around the world.
(less)"
3876,The Other Woman,thriller,"A deliciously disturbing, compulsively readable debut domestic suspense—prepare to meet The Other Woman: there’s nothing she won’t do to keep you away from her son...

Emily thinks Adam's perfect; the man she thought she'd never meet. But lurking in the shadows is a rival; a woman who shares a deep bond with the man she loves.

Emily chose Adam, but she didn’t choose his mother Pammie. There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her son, and now Emily is about to find out just how far Pammie will go to get what she wants: Emily gone forever.

The Other Woman is an addictive, fast-paced psychological thriller about the destructive relationship between Emily, her boyfriend Adam, and his manipulative mother Pammie. (less)"
3877,Transfer of Power,thriller,"On a busy Washington morning, amid the shuffle of tourists and the brisk rush of government officials, the stately calm of the White House is shattered in a hail of gunfire. A group of terrorists has descended on the Executive Mansion, and gained access by means of a violent massacre that has left dozens of innocent bystanders murdered. Through the quick actions of the Secret Service, the president is evacuated to his underground bunker, but not before almost one hundred hostages are taken.

While the politicians and the military leaders argue over how to negotiate with the terrorists, one man is sent in to break through the barrage of panicked responses and political agendas surrounding the chaotic crisis. Mitch Rapp, the CIA's top counterterrorism operative, makes his way into the White House and soon discovers that the president is not as safe as Washington's power elite had thought. Moving stealthily among the corridors and secret passageways of the White House, stepping terrifyingly close to the enemy, Rapp scrambles to save the hostages before the terrorists can extract the president from the safety of his bunker. In a race against time, Rapp makes a chilling discovery that could rock Washington to its core: someone within his own government is maneuvering in hopes that his rescue attempt will fail. (less)"
3878,Different Seasons,thriller,"Four spine-chilling stories by the grand master of the supernatural, stories with an interlacing of horror that capture the ever-growing dark corners of our century.

""Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"" - a compulsive and bizarre story of unjust imprisonment and escape.

""Apt Pupil"" - a golden schoolboy and an old man with a hideous past join in a dreadful union.

""The Body"" - four young boys venture into the woods and find life, death... and the end of innocence.

""The Breathing Method"" - a macabre story told in a strange club of a woman determined to give birth - no matter what. (less)"
3879,The Apprentice,thriller,"The bestselling author of The Surgeon returns, and so does that chilling novel's diabolical villain. Though held behind bars, Warren Hoyt still haunts a helpless city, seeming to bequeath his evil legacy to a student all-too-diligent . . . and all-too-deadly.

THE APPRENTICE

It is a boiling hot Boston summer. Adding to the city's woes is a series of shocking crimes, in which wealthy men are made to watch while their wives are brutalized. A sadistic demand that ends in abduction and death.

The pattern suggests one man: serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently removed from the city's streets. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires. At least that's what Detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her - literally and figuratively - she is determined to finally end Hoyt's awful influence . . . even if it means receiving more resistance from her all-male homicide squad.

But Rizzoli isn't counting on the U.S. government's sudden interest. Or on meeting Special Agent Gabriel Dean, who knows more than he will tell. Most of all, she isn't counting on becoming a target herself, once Hoyt is suddenly free, joining his mysterious blood brother in a vicious vendetta. . . .

Filled with superbly created characters and the medical and police procedural details that are her trademark,The Apprentice is Tess Gerritsen at her brilliant best. Set in a stunning world where evil is easy to learn and hard to end, this is a thriller by a master who could teach other authors a thing or two.


From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
3880,I Found You,thriller,"'How long have you been sitting out here?'
'I got here yesterday.'
'Where did you come from?'
'I have no idea.'

East Yorkshire: Single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement she invites him in to her home.

Surrey: Twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed.

Two women, twenty years of secrets and a man who can't remember lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell's brilliant new novel. (less)"
3881,Heartsick,thriller,"Damaged Portland detective Archie Sheridan spent ten years tracking Gretchen Lowell, a beautiful serial killer, but in the end she was the one who caught him. Two years ago, Gretchen kidnapped Archie and tortured him for ten days, but instead of killing him, she mysteriously decided to let him go. She turned herself in, and now Gretchen has been locked away for the rest of her life, while Archie is in a prison of another kind---addicted to pain pills, unable to return to his old life, powerless to get those ten horrific days off his mind. Archie's a different person, his estranged wife says, and he knows she's right. He continues to visit Gretchen in prison once a week, saying that only he can get her to confess as to the whereabouts of more of her victims, but even he knows the truth---he can't stay away.

When another killer begins snatching teenage girls off the streets of Portland, Archie has to pull himself together enough to lead the new task force investigating the murders. A hungry young newspaper reporter, Susan Ward, begins profiling Archie and the investigation, which sparks a deadly game between Archie, Susan, the new killer, and even Gretchen. They need to catch a killer, and maybe somehow then Archie can free himself from Gretchen, once and for all. Either way, Heartsick makes for one of the most extraordinary suspense debuts in recent memory.
(less)"
3882,Emma in the Night,thriller,"From the bestselling author of All Is Not Forgotten comes a thriller about two missing sisters, a twisted family, and what happens when one girl comes back...

One night three years ago, the Tanner sisters disappeared: fifteen-year-old Cass and seventeen-year-old Emma. Three years later, Cass returns, without her sister Emma. Her story is one of kidnapping and betrayal, of a mysterious island where the two were held. But to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Abby Winter, something doesn't add up. Looking deep within this dysfunctional family Dr. Winter uncovers a life where boundaries were violated and a narcissistic parent held sway. And where one sister's return might just be the beginning of the crime. (less)"
3883,The Book of the Dead,thriller,"Az egyiptomi piramisok mélyén megbúvó ősi sírkamrák, a kincsek és a múmiák mellett, sok talányt is őriznek – olykor még a fáraók átkát is. Ez még akkor is igaznak tűnhet, ha a hajdani sírboltot teljes egészében átköltöztették egy amerikai múzeum alagsorába…
A neves bestseller-írópáros, Douglas Preston és Lincoln Child hátborzongató regényének már a kezdetén rejtélyek halmozódnak egymásra: miért az egyik legjobb FBI-ügynököt, Pendergastot tartóztatják le gyilkosság vádjával? Miért zárták be annak idején gyanús hirtelenséggel az egyiptomi sírkamra bemutatótermét, amelyet most viszont nagy csinnadrattával meg akarnak nyitni a látogatók előtt? Igazak-e a múzeum alkalmazottai között terjengő, hátborzongató pletykák a halálosztó sírboltról? A vezetőség a gyanús körülményekkel dacolva készül a megnyitóra, amelyet lenyűgöző lézershow vezetne be. A fiatal, tehetséges régésznő, Nora Kelly lelkesen dolgozik a kiállítás előkészítésén, de a munka során rejtélyes módon egymás után hullanak el mellőle a munkatársak. Hamarosan elszabadul a pokol, s a következményeket még Pendergast ügynök sem sejti. A szörnyű játék végül halálos hajszába torkollik, melynek során a sátánian kegyetlen bajkeverő saját áldozata elől kénytelen menekülni a fél világon át egészen egy életveszélyes szicíliai vulkán szédítő sziklapereméig… (less)"
3884,The Winter People,thriller,"West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.

Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara's farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she's not the only person looking for someone that they've lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself. (less)"
3885,Never Saw Me Coming,thriller,"Meet Chloe Sevre. She’s a freshman honor student, a leggings-wearing hot girl next door, who also happens to be a psychopath. Her hobbies include yogalates, frat parties, and plotting to kill Will Bachman, a childhood friend who grievously wronged her.

Chloe is one of seven students at her DC-based college who are part of an unusual clinical study for psychopaths—students like herself who lack empathy and can’t comprehend emotions like fear or guilt. The study, led by a renowned psychologist, requires them to wear smart watches that track their moods and movements.

When one of the students in the study is found murdered in the psychology building, a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins, and Chloe goes from hunter to prey. As she races to identify the killer and put her own plan into action, she’ll be forced to decide if she can trust any of her fellow psychopaths—and everybody knows you should never trust a psychopath.

Never Saw Me Coming is a compulsive, voice-driven thriller by an exciting new voice in fiction, that will keep you pinned to the page and rooting for a would-be killer. (less)"
3886,The Silent Wife,thriller,"A chilling psychological thriller portraying the disintegration of a relationship down to the deadliest point when murdering your husband suddenly makes perfect sense.

Todd Gilbert and Jodie Brett are in a bad place in their relationship. They've been together for twenty-eight years, and with no children to worry about there has been little to disrupt their affluent Chicago lifestyle. But there has also been little to hold it together, and beneath the surface lie ever-widening cracks. HE is a committed cheater. SHE lives and breathes denial. HE exists in dual worlds. SHE likes to settle scores. HE decides to play for keeps. SHE has nothing left to lose. When it becomes clear that their precarious world could disintegrate at any moment, Jodie knows she stands to lose everything. It's only now she will discover just how much she's truly capable of... (less)"
3887,Six Years,thriller,"Six years have passed since Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd.

But six years haven’t come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd’s obituary, he can’t keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd’s wife he’s hoping for…but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she’s been married to Todd for almost two decades, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life—a time he has never gotten over—is turned completely inside out.

As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can’t be found, or don’t remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake’s search for the woman who broke his heart, who lied to him, soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on a carefully constructed fiction. (less)"
3888,Lethal White,thriller,"When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike's office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed, and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic.

Trying to get to the bottom of Billy's story, Strike and Robin Ellacott — once his assistant, now a partner in the agency — set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside.

And during this labyrinthine investigation, Strike's own life is far from straightforward: his newfound fame as a private eye means he can no longer operate behind the scenes as he once did. Plus, his relationship with his former assistant is more fraught than it ever has been — Robin is now invaluable to Strike in the business, but their personal relationship is much, much trickier than that.

The most epic Robert Galbraith novel yet, Lethal White is both a gripping mystery and a page-turning next instalment in the ongoing story of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. (less)"
3889,Pretty Little Wife,thriller,"Debut author Darby Kane thrills with this twisty domestic suspense novel that asks one central question: shouldn’t a dead husband stay dead?

Lila Ridgefield lives in an idyllic college town, but not everything is what it seems. Lila isn’t what she seems. A student vanished months ago. Now, Lila’s husband, Aaron, is also missing. At first these cases are treated as horrible coincidences until it’s discovered the student is really the third of three unexplained disappearances over the last few years. The police are desperate to find the connection, if there even is one. Little do they know they might be stumbling over only part of the truth….

With the small town in an uproar, everyone is worried about the whereabouts of their beloved high school teacher. Everyone except Lila, his wife. She’s definitely confused about her missing husband but only because she was the last person to see his body, and now it’s gone. (less)"
3890,The Redbreast,thriller,"The Redbreast is a fabulous introduction to Nesbø’s tough-as-nails series protagonist, Oslo police detective Harry Hole. A brilliant and epic novel, breathtaking in its scope and design—winner of The Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel and selected as the best Norwegian crime novel ever written by members of Norway’s book clubs—The Redbreast is a chilling tale of murder and betrayal that ranges from the battlefields of World War Two to the streets of modern-day Oslo. Follow Hole as he races to stop a killer and disarm a ticking time-bomb from his nation’s shadowy past. Vogue magazine says that “nobody can delve into the dark, twisted mind of a murderer better than a Scandinavian thriller writer”…and nobody does it better than Jo Nesbø! James Patterson fans should also take note.
(less)"
3891,The Boy from the Woods,thriller,"Thirty years ago, Wilde was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. Now an adult, he still doesn't know where he comes from, and another child has gone missing.

No one seems to take Naomi Pine's disappearance seriously, not even her father-with one exception. Hester Crimstein, a television criminal attorney, knows through her grandson that Naomi was relentlessly bullied at school. Hester asks Wilde-with whom she shares a tragic connection-to use his unique skills to help find Naomi.

Wilde can't ignore an outcast in trouble, but in order to find Naomi he must venture back into the community where he has never fit in, a place where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions . . . secrets that Wilde must uncover before it's too late. (less)"
3892,False Witness,thriller,"AN ORDINARY LIFE

Leigh Coulton has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defence attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilised - her life is just as unremarkable as she'd always hoped it would be.

HIDES A DEVASTATING PAST

But Leigh's ordinary life masks a childhood which was far from average... a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and finally torn apart by a devastating act of violence.

BUT NOW THE PAST IS CATCHING UP

Then a case lands on her desk - defending a wealthy man accused of rape. It's the highest profile case she's ever been given - a case which could transform her career, if she wins. But when she meets the accused, she realises that it's no coincidence that he's chosen her as his attorney. She knows him. And he knows her. More to the point, he knows what happened twenty years ago, and why Leigh has spent two decades running.

AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT

If she can't get him acquitted, she'll lose much more than the case. The only person who can help her is her younger, estranged sister Calli, the last person Leigh would ever want to ask for help. But suddenly she has no choice... (less)"
3893,The Lost Man,thriller,"Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland. They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects…

Dark, suspenseful, and deeply atmospheric, The Lost Man is the highly anticipated next book from the bestselling and award-winning Jane Harper, author of The Dry and Force of Nature. (less)"
3894,Reconstructing Amelia,thriller,"In Reconstructing Amelia, the stunning debut novel from Kimberly McCreight, Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter’s exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter—now. But Kate’s stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. By then it’s already too late for Amelia. And for Kate.

An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. At least that’s the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn’t jump.

Reconstructing Amelia is about secret first loves, old friendships, and an all-girls club steeped in tradition. But, most of all, it’s the story of how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn’t save.

Fans of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl will find Reconstructing Amelia just as gripping and surprising. (less)"
3895,The Testament,thriller,"In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions, a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives.

Because Troy Phelan's new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil.

Enter the lawyers. Nate O'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan's family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate is crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman - pursued by enemies and friends alike - holds a stunning surprise of her own. (less)"
3896,Die Therapie,thriller,"Keine Zeugen, keine Spuren, keine Leiche. Josy, die zwölfjährige Tochter des bekannten Psychiaters Viktor Larenz, verschwindet unter mysteriösen Umständen. Ihr Schicksal bleibt ungeklärt.
Vier Jahre später: Der trauernde Viktor hat sich in ein abgelegenes Ferienhaus zurückgezogen. Doch eine schöne Unbekannte spürt ihn dort auf. Sie wird von Wahnvorstellungen gequält. Darin erscheint ihr immer wieder ein kleines Mädchen, das ebenso spurlos verschwindet wie einst Josy. Viktor beginnt mit der Therapie, die mehr und mehr zum dramatischen Verhör wird... (less)"
3897,There's Someone Inside Your House,thriller,"Love hurts...

Makani Young thought she'd left her dark past behind her in Hawaii, settling in with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska. She's found new friends and has even started to fall for mysterious outsider Ollie Larsson. But her past isn't far behind.

Then, one by one, the students of Osborne Hugh begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasingly grotesque flair. As the terror grows closer and her feelings for Ollie intensify, Makani is forced to confront her own dark secrets. (less)"
3898,The Broker,thriller,"In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world's most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.

Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive, there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?


From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
3899,We Have Always Lived in the Castle,thriller,"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead... (less)"
3900,56 Days,thriller,"No one knew they'd moved in together. Now one of them is dead. Could this be the perfect murder?

56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin the same week Covid-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests that Ciara move in with him. She sees a unique opportunity for a new relationship to flourish without the pressure of scrutiny of family and friends. He sees it as an opportunity to hide who - and what - he really is.

TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.

Will they be able to determine what really happened, or has lockdown provided someone with the opportunity to commit the perfect crime? (less)"
3901,The Project,thriller,"Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died in a tragic car accident, her sister Bea joined the elusive community called The Unity Project, leaving Lo to fend for herself. Desperate not to lose the only family she has left, Lo has spent the last six years trying to reconnect with Bea, only to be met with radio silence.

When Lo’s given the perfect opportunity to gain access to Bea’s reclusive life, she thinks they’re finally going to be reunited. But it’s difficult to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, and as Lo delves deeper into The Project and its charismatic leader, she begins to realize that there’s more at risk than just her relationship with Bea: her very life might be in danger.

As she uncovers more questions than answers at each turn, everything Lo thought she knew about herself, her sister, and the world is upended. One thing doesn’t change, though, and that’s what keeps her going: Bea needs her, and Lo will do anything to save her.

From Courtney Summers, the New York Times bestselling author of the 2019 Edgar Award Winner and breakout hit Sadie, comes her electrifying follow-up—a suspenseful, pulls-no-punches story about an aspiring young journalist determined to save her sister no matter the cost. (less)"
3902,Dearly Devoted Dexter,thriller,"See alternate cover edition: here

He's a charming monster... A macabre hero... A serial killler who only kills bad people.

Dexter Morgan has been under considerable pressure. It's just not easy being an ethical serial killer - especially while trying to avoid the unshakable suspicions of the dangerous Sergeant Doakes (who believes Dexter is a homicidal maniac...which, of course, he is). In an attempt to throw Doakes off his trail, Dexter has had to slip deep into his foolproof disguise. While not working as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, he now spends nearly all his time with his cheerful girlfriend, Rita, and her two children, sipping light beer and slowly becoming the world's first serial couch potato. But how long can Dexter play Kick the Can instead of Slice the Slasher? How long before his Dark Passenger forces him to drop the charade and let his inner monster run free?

In trying times, opportunity knocks. A particularly nasty psychopath is cutting a trail through Miami - a man whose twisted technique leaves even Dexter speechless. As Dexter's dark appetite is revived, his sister, Deborah (a newly minted, tough-as-nails Miami detective), is drawn headlong into the case. It quickly becomes clear that it will take a monster to catch a monster - but it isn't until his archnemesis is abducted that Dex can finally throw himself into the search for a new plaything. Unless, of course, his plaything finds him first...

With the incredible wit and freshness that drew widespread acclaim to Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Jeff Lindsay now takes Dexter Morgan to a new level of macabre appeal and gives us one of the most original, colorful narrators in years. (less)"
3903,Wayward,thriller,"Welcome to Wayward Pines, population 461. Nestled amidst picture-perfect mountains, the idyllic town is a modern-day Eden...except for the electrified fence and razor wire, snipers scoping everything 24/7, and the relentless surveillance tracking each word and gesture.
None of the residents know how they got here. They are told where to work, how to live, and who to marry. Some believe they are dead. Others think they’re trapped in an unfathomable experiment. Everyone secretly dreams of leaving, but those who dare face a terrifying surprise.

Ethan Burke has seen the world beyond. He’s sheriff, and one of the few who knows the truth—Wayward Pines isn’t just a town. And what lies on the other side of the fence is a nightmare beyond anyone’s imagining. (less)"
3904,The Ice Twins,thriller,"A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcraft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives.

But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity—that she, in fact, is Lydia—their world comes crashing down once again.

As winter encroaches, Angus is forced to travel away from the island for work, Sarah is feeling isolated, and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) is growing more disturbed. When a violent storm leaves Sarah and her daughter stranded, Sarah finds herself tortured by the past—what really happened on that fateful day one of her daughters died? (less)"
3905,The Midnight Line,thriller,"Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. A tough year to graduate: Iraq, then Afghanistan. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. Why not?
So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness.
The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes. Turns out the ring was just a small link in a far darker chain. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Some lines should never be crossed. But then, neither should Reacher.
(less)"
3906,Darling Rose Gold,thriller,"For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.

Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.

After serving five years in prison, Patty begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. And Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...

And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home. (less)"
3907,Split Second,thriller,"Michelle Maxwell has just wrecked her promising career at the Secret Service. Against her instincts, she let a presidential candidate out of her sight for the briefest moment and the man whose safety was her responsibility vanished into thin air. Sean King knows how the younger agent feels. Eight years earlier, the hard-charging Secret Service agent allowed his attention to be diverted for a split second. And the candidate he was protecting was gunned down before his eyes. Now Michelle and Sean are about to see their destinies converge.

Drawn into a maze of lies, secrets, and deadly coincidences, the two discredited agents uncover a shocking truth: that the separate acts of violence that shattered their lives were really a long time in the making – and are a long way from over…. (less)"
3908,Jane Doe,thriller,"A double life with a single purpose: revenge.

Jane’s days at a Midwest insurance company are perfectly ordinary. She blends in well, unremarkably pretty in her floral-print dresses and extra efficient at her low-level job. She’s just the kind of woman middle manager Steven Hepsworth likes—meek, insecure, and willing to defer to a man. No one has any idea who Jane really is. Least of all Steven.

But plain Jane is hiding something. And Steven’s bringing out the worst in her.

Nothing can distract Jane from going straight for his heart: allowing herself to be seduced into Steven’s bed, to insinuate herself into his career and his family, and to expose all his dirty secrets. It’s time for Jane to dig out everything that matters to Steven. So she can take it all away.

Just as he did to her. (less)"
3909,Velocity,thriller,"Dean Koontz's unique talent for writing terrifying thrillers with a heart and soul is nowhere more evident than in this latest suspense masterpiece that pits one man against the ultimate deadline. If there were speed limits for the sheer pulse-racing excitement allowed in one novel, ""Velocity"" would break them all. Get ready for the ride of your life.

Bill Wiles is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. But that is about to change. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bartending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car.

""If you don't take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice is yours.""


It seems like a sick joke, and Bill's friend on the police force, Lanny Olson, thinks so too. His advice to Bill is to go home and forget about it. Besides, what could they do even if they took the note seriously? No crime has actually been committed. But less than twenty-four hours later, a young blond schoolteacher is found murdered, and it's Bill's fault: he didn't convince the police to get involved. Now he's got another note, another deadline, another ultimatum...and two new lives hanging in the balance.

Suddenly Bill's average, seemingly innocuous life takes on the dimensions and speed of an accelerating nightmare. Because the notes are coming faster, the deadlines growing tighter, and the killer becoming bolder and crueler with every communication--until Bill is isolated with the terrifying knowledge that he alone has the power of life and death over a psychopath's innocent victims. Until the struggle between good and evil is intensely personal. Until the most chilling words of all are: ""The choice is yours."" (less)"
3910,The Last House Guest,thriller,"The summer after a wealthy young summer guest dies under suspicious circumstances, her best friend lives under a cloud of grief and suspicion.
Littleport, Maine, has always felt like two separate towns: an ideal vacation enclave for the wealthy, whose summer homes line the coastline; and a simple harbor community for the year-round residents whose livelihoods rely on service to the visitors.

Typically, fierce friendships never develop between a local and a summer girl—but that’s just what happens with visitor Sadie Loman and Littleport resident Avery Greer. Each summer for almost a decade, the girls are inseparable—until Sadie is found dead. While the police rule the death a suicide, Avery can’t help but feel there are those in the community, including a local detective and Sadie’s brother, Parker, who blame her. Someone knows more than they’re saying, and Avery is intent on clearing her name, before the facts get twisted against her.
The Last House Guest is a smart, twisty read that brilliantly explores the elusive nature of memory and the complexities of female friendships. (less)"
3911,A Good Marriage,thriller,"Lizzie Kitsakis is working late when she gets the call. Grueling hours are standard at elite law firms like Young & Crane, but they’d be easier to swallow if Lizzie was there voluntarily. Until recently, she’d been a happily underpaid federal prosecutor. That job and her brilliant, devoted husband Sam—she had everything she’d ever wanted. And then, suddenly, it all fell apart. 

No. That’s a lie. It wasn’t sudden, was it? Long ago the cracks in Lizzie’s marriage had started to show. She was just good at averting her eyes. 

The last thing Lizzie needs right now is a call from an inmate at Rikers asking for help—even if Zach Grayson is an old friend. But Zach is desperate: his wife, Amanda, has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their Brooklyn brownstone. And Zach’s the primary suspect. 

As Lizzie is drawn into the dark heart of idyllic Park Slope, she learns that Zach and Amanda weren’t what they seemed—and that their friends, a close-knit group of fellow parents at the exclusive Brooklyn Country Day school, might be protecting troubling secrets of their own. In the end, she’s left wondering not only whether her own marriage can be saved, but what it means to have a good marriage in the first place.

Big Little Lies meets Presumed Innocent in this riveting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, in which a woman’s brutal murder reveals the perilous compromises some couples make—and the secrets they keep—in order to stay together. (less)"
3912,Every Vow You Break,thriller,"A bride’s dream honeymoon becomes a nightmare when a man with whom she’s had a regrettable one-night stand shows up in this psychological thriller from the author of Eight Perfect Murders.

Abigail Baskin never thought she’d fall in love with a millionaire. Then she met Bruce Lamb. But right before the wedding, Abigail has a drunken one-night stand on her bachelorette weekend. She puts the incident—and the sexy guy who wouldn’t give her his real name—out of her mind, and now believes she wants to be with Bruce for the rest of her life.

Then the mysterious stranger suddenly appears—and Abigail’s future life and happiness are turned upside down. He insists that their passionate night was the beginning of something special and he’s tracked her down to prove it.

Does she tell Bruce and ruin their idyllic honeymoon—and possibly their marriage? Or should she handle this psychopathic stalker on her own? To make the situation worse, strange things begin to happen. She sees a terrified woman in the night shadows, and no one at the resort seems to believe anything is amiss… including her perfect new husband. (less)"
3913,Black Order,thriller,"Librarian's note: This is an Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN10: 0752876457 ISBN13: 9780752876450.

A sinister fire in a Copenhagen bookstore ignites a relentless hunt across four continents. Arson and murder reveal an insidious plot to steal a Bible that once belonged to Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory. And Commander Gray Pierce dives headlong into a mystery that dates back to Nazi Germany . . . and to horrific experiments performed in a now-abandoned laboratory buried in a hollowed-out mountain in Poland.
A continent away, madness ravages a remote monastery high in Nepal, as Buddhist monks turn to cannibalism and torture. Lisa Cummings, a young American doctor investigating the atrocity, is suddenly a target of a brutal assassin working for clandestine forces that want the affair buried at any cost. Lisa's only ally is a hidden pilgrim, Painter Crowe -- director of SIGMA Force, an elite command of American scientists and Special Forces operatives -- who is already showing signs of the baffling malady that destroyed the minds of the monks.
Now it is up to Gray Pierce to save both Painter and Lisa -- and a world in jeopardy -- as SIGMA Force races to expose a century-old plot that threatens to destroy the current world order . . . and alter the destiny of humankind forever.
Combining the historic scope of The Da Vinci Code with the relentless thrills of today's best action novels, James Rollins's Black Order is a classic adventure -- an ingenious and breathtaking tour de force that explodes with revelations . . . while offering a startling new view of our place in the grand scheme of existence.
(less)"
3914,Fractured,thriller,"When Atlanta housewife Abigail Campano comes home unexpectedly one afternoon, she walks into a nightmare. A broken window, a bloody footprint on the stairs and, most devastating of all, the horrifying sight of her teenage daughter lying dead on the landing, a man standing over her with a bloody knife. The struggle which follows changes Abigail's life forever.

When the local police make a misjudgement which not only threatens the investigation but places a young girl's life in danger, the case is handed over to Special Agent Will Trent of the Criminal Apprehension Team - paired with detective Faith Mitchell, a woman who resents him from their first meeting.

But in the relentless heat of a Georgia summer, Will and Faith realise that they must work together to find the brutal killer who has targeted one of Atlanta's wealthiest, most privileged communities - before it's too late... (less)"
3915,The Perfect Mother,thriller,"An addictive psychological thriller about a group of women whose lives become unexpectedly connected when one of their newborns goes missing.

They call themselves the May Mothers—a collection of new moms who gave birth in the same month. Twice a week, with strollers in tow, they get together in Prospect Park, seeking refuge from the isolation of new motherhood; sharing the fears, joys, and anxieties of their new child-centered lives.

When the group’s members agree to meet for drinks at a hip local bar, they have in mind a casual evening of fun, a brief break from their daily routine. But on this sultry Fourth of July night during the hottest summer in Brooklyn’s history, something goes terrifyingly wrong: one of the babies is abducted from his crib. Winnie, a single mom, was reluctant to leave six-week-old Midas with a babysitter, but the May Mothers insisted that everything would be fine. Now Midas is missing, the police are asking disturbing questions, and Winnie’s very private life has become fodder for a ravenous media.

Though none of the other members in the group are close to the reserved Winnie, three of them will go to increasingly risky lengths to help her find her son. And as the police bungle the investigation and the media begin to scrutinize the mothers in the days that follow, damaging secrets are exposed, marriages are tested, and friendships are formed and fractured. (less)"
3916,The Street Lawyer,thriller,"Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience.

But a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived; his assailant did not. Who was this man? Michael did some digging, and learned that he was a mentally ill veteran who'd been in and out of shelters for many years. Then Michael dug a little deeper, and found a dirty secret, and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney.

The fast track derailed; the ladder collapsed. Michael bolted the firm and took a top-secret file with him. He landed in the streets, an advocate for the homeless, a street lawyer.

And a thief. (less)"
3917,The Echo Wife,thriller,"I’m embarrassed, still, by how long it took me to notice. Everything was right there in the open, right there in front of me, but it still took me so long to see the person I had married.

It took me so long to hate him.

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be.

And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.

Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up.

Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty. (less)"
3918,Christine,thriller,"Christine est belle, racée, séduisante.

Elle aime les sensations fortes, les virées nocturnes et le rock n'roll des années héroïques. Depuis qu'elle connaît Arnie, elle est amoureuse. Signe particulier : Christine est une Plymouth « Fury », sortie en 1958 des ateliers automobiles de Detroit.

Une seule rivale en travers de sa route : Leigh, la petite amie d'Arnie…
Ce roman légendaire de Stephen King, rythmé par la musique de Chuck Berry et de Janis Joplin, a déjà pris place parmi les classiques de l'épouvante. (less)"
3919,The Other Mrs.,thriller,"Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor, Morgan Baines, is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie, who is terrified by the thought of a killer in her very own backyard.

But it’s not just Morgan’s death that has Sadie on edge. It’s their eerie old home, with its decrepit decor and creepy attic, which they inherited from Will’s sister after she died unexpectedly. It’s Will’s disturbed teenage niece Imogen, with her dark and threatening presence. And it’s the troubling past that continues to wear at the seams of their family.

As the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of Morgan’s death. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light. (less)"
3920,The Ice Princess,thriller,"Returning to her hometown of Fjallbacka after the funeral of her parents, writer Erica Falck finds a community on the brink of tragedy. The death of her childhood friend, Alex, is just the beginning. Her wrists slashed, her body frozen in an ice-cold bath, it seems that she has taken her own life.

Erica conceives a book about the beautiful but remote Alex, one that will answer questions about their own shared past. While her interest grows into an obsession, local detective Patrik Hedstrom is following his own suspicions about the case. But it is only when they start working together that the truth begins to emerge about a small town with a deeply disturbing past. (less)"
3921,The Running Man,thriller,"In the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives...

Ben Richards is out of work and out of luck. His eighteen-month-old daughter is sick, and neither Ben nor his wife can afford to take her to a doctor. For a man from the poor side of town with no cash and no hope, there's only one thing to do: become a contestant on one of the Network's Games, shows where you can win more money than you've ever dreamed of - or die trying. Now Ben's going prime-time on the Network's highest-rated viewer participation show. And he's about to become a prey for the masses... (less)"
3922,Disclosure,thriller,"Thomas Sanders' world collapses in just 24 hours - he is passed over for promotion, his new woman boss comes on to him during a drink after work, then, the next morning, he learns that she has accused him of sexually harassing her. She demands his transfer, thereby threatening to cut him off from the millions he would have made when his high-tech company was floated on the stock market.

What follow next made Disclosure the most talked about novel of the decade. (less)"
3923,Dance of Death,thriller,"Two brothers on opposite sides of the law battle it out on the streets of New York in this chill-inducing thriller, a follow-up to BRIMSTONE. — As the previous installment came to a close, vicious dogs and armed men surrounded FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast and his demise seemed certain. Nevertheless, he did leave behind a legacy: a letter for his friend, NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta. Its contents ask D'Agosta to assume the responsibility of pursuing Pendergast's younger brother Diogenes, an insane and vengeful genius who has sworn to commit the perfect crime on January 28 -- which is now only one week away. (less)"
3924,The Overnight Guest,thriller,"A woman receives an unexpected visitor during a deadly snowstorm in this chilling thriller from New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf

She thought she was alone…

True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn’t mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence. It would be perfect, if not for the fact that decades earlier, at this very house, two people were murdered in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace.

As the storm worsens, Wylie finds herself trapped inside the house, haunted by the secrets contained within its walls—haunted by secrets of her own. Then she discovers a small child in the snow just outside. After bringing the child inside for warmth and safety, she begins to search for answers. But soon it becomes clear that the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought, and someone is willing to do anything to find them. (less)"
3925,Reamde,thriller,"Four decades ago, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family, fled to a wild and lonely mountainous corner of British Columbia to avoid the draft. Smuggling backpack loads of high-grade marijuana across the border into Northern Idaho, he quickly amassed an enormous and illegal fortune. With plenty of time and money to burn, he became addicted to an online fantasy game in which opposing factions battle for power and treasure in a vast cyber realm. Like many serious gamers, he began routinely purchasing virtual gold pieces and other desirables from Chinese gold farmers—young professional players in Asia who accumulated virtual weapons and armor to sell to busy American and European buyers.

For Richard, the game was the perfect opportunity to launder his aging hundred dollar bills and begin his own high-tech start up—a venture that has morphed into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Corporation 9592, with its own super successful online role-playing game, T’Rain. But the line between fantasy and reality becomes dangerously blurred when a young gold farmer accidently triggers a virtual war for dominance—and Richard is caught at the center.

In this edgy, 21st century tale, Neal Stephenson, one of the most ambitious and prophetic writers of our time, returns to the terrain of his cyberpunk masterpieces Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, leading readers through the looking glass and into the dark heart of imagination. (less)"
3926,The Poet,thriller,"Denver crime-beat reporter Jack McEvoy specializes in violent death. So when his homicide detective brother kills himself, McEvoy copes in the only way he knows how--he decides to write the story. But his research leads him to suspect a serial killer is at work--a devious murderer who's killing cops and leaving a trail of poetic clues. It's the news story of a lifetime, if he can get the story without losing his life. (less)"
3927,The Collector,thriller,"Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time."
3928,Heart-Shaped Box,thriller,"An aging death-metal rock god, Judas Coyne, is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals... a used hangman's noose... a snuff film. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as an item he learns is for sale on the Internet. For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by the deceased's restless spirit. Judas has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts - of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed - so what's one more?

But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, it's the real thing. And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere - behind the bedroom door... seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang... staring out from his widescreen TV - dangling a gleaming razor blade on a chain from one hand... (less)"
3929,I Am Watching You,thriller,"Traukinyje Ela Longfild stebi dvi paaugles, flirtuojančias su įtartinais vyrukais, kurie, pasirodo, ką tik išėjo iš kalėjimo. Iš pradžių ketinusi įsikišti ir neleisti merginoms veltis į pavojingą nuotykį, vėliau apsigalvoja.

Kitą dieną išgirsta kraupią žinią: viena iš traukiniu važiavusių merginų – gražioji Ana Belard – dingo. Susikrimtusi Ela kreipiasi į policiją, bet, žinoma, jau per vėlu.

Prabėga metai: mergina vis dar dingusi, du įtartini vyrukai – taip pat. Į Elos pašto dėžutę keliauja keisti gąsdinantys laiškai, o nutylėti faktai sunkiai slegia ir Anos tėvą, ir drauge traukiniu važiavusią Sarą.

Psichologinių trilerių autorė Teresa Driscoll, beveik dvidešimt metų dirbusi televizijos žurnaliste ir rengusi kriminalinių įvykių reportažus, tikroviškai pasakoja merginos dingimo dramą. Meistriškai išdėliotos užuominos verčia vis greičiau bėgti knygos puslapiais ir vis giliau panirti į daugiasluoksnių veikėjų paslaptis. (less)"
3930,Ninth House,thriller,"Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. (less)"
3931,The Witch Elm,thriller,"Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life: he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.

The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, when we no longer know who we are. (less)"
3932,Her Every Fear,thriller,"Growing up, Kate Priddy was always a bit neurotic, experiencing momentary bouts of anxiety that exploded into full-blown panic attacks after an ex-boyfriend kidnapped her and nearly ended her life. When Corbin Dell, a distant cousin in Boston, suggests the two temporarily swap apartments, Kate, an art student in London, agrees, hoping that time away in a new place will help her overcome the recent wreckage of her life.

Soon after her arrival at Corbin’s grand apartment on Beacon Hill, Kate makes a shocking discovery: his next-door neighbor, a young woman named Audrey Marshall, has been murdered. When the police question her about Corbin, a shaken Kate has few answers, and many questions of her own—curiosity that intensifies when she meets Alan Cherney, a handsome, quiet tenant who lives across the courtyard, in the apartment facing Audrey’s. Alan saw Corbin surreptitiously come and go from Audrey’s place, yet he’s denied knowing her. Then, Kate runs into a tearful man claiming to be the dead woman’s old boyfriend, who insists Corbin did the deed the night that he left for London.

When she reaches out to her cousin, he proclaims his innocence and calms her nerves--until she comes across disturbing objects hidden in the apartment and accidentally learns that Corbin is not where he says he is. Could Corbin be a killer? What about Alan? Kate finds herself drawn to this appealing man who seems so sincere, yet she isn’t sure. Jet-lagged and emotionally unstable, her imagination full of dark images caused by the terror of her past, Kate can barely trust herself, so how could she take the chance on a stranger she’s just met? (less)"
3933,Five Total Strangers,thriller,"A hitched ride home in a snow storm turns sinister when one of the passengers is plotting for the ride to end in disaster.

When Mira flies home to spend Christmas with her mother in Pittsburgh, a record-breaking blizzard results in a cancelled layover. Desperate to get to her grief-ridden mother in the wake of a family death, Mira hitches a ride with a group of friendly college kids who were on her initial flight.

As the drive progresses and weather conditions become more treacherous, Mira realizes that the four other passengers she's stuck in the car with don't actually know one another.

Soon, they're not just dealing with heavy snowfall and ice-slick roads, but the fact that somebody will stop at nothing to ensure their trip ends in a deadly disaster. (less)"
3934,The Brethren,thriller,"They call themselves the Brethren: three disgraced former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison. One was sent up for tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. The third for a career-ending drunken joyride.

Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can reminisce about old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where their lives went wrong. Or they can use their time in prison to get very rich—very fast. ... (less)"
3935,What Lies Between Us,thriller,"They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not buried in the past.

Every other night, Maggie and Nina have dinner together. When they are finished, Nina helps Maggie back to her room in the attic, and into the heavy chain that keeps her there. Because Maggie has done things to Nina that can’t ever be forgiven, and now she is paying the price.

But there are many things about the past that Nina doesn’t know, and Maggie is going to keep it that way—even if it kills her.

Because in this house, the truth is more dangerous than lies. (less)"
3936,Caught,thriller,"17 year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate—and nationally televised—sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined. (less)"
3937,The Hound of the Baskervilles,thriller,"Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have been caused by the gigantic ghostly hound that is said to have haunted his family for generations? Arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes characteristically dismisses the theory as nonsense. And immersed in another case, he sends Watson to Devon to protect the Baskerville heir and observe the suspects close at hand. With its atmospheric setting on the ancient, wild moorland and its savage apparition, The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the greatest crime novels ever written. Rationalism is pitted against the supernatural, good against evil, as Sherlock Holmes seeks to defeat a foe almost his equal. (less)"
3938,The Chemistry of Death,thriller,"Three years ago, David Hunter moved to rural Norfolk to escape his life in London, his gritty work in forensics, and a tragedy that nearly destroyed him. Working as a simple country doctor, seeing his lost wife and daughter only in his dreams, David struggles to remain uninvolved when the corpse of a woman is found in the woods, a macabre sign from her killer decorating her body. In one horrifying instant, the quiet summer countryside that had been David’s refuge has turned malevolent—and suddenly there is no place to hide.

The village of Manham is tight-knit, far from the beaten path. As a newcomer, Dr. Hunter is immediately a suspect. Once an expert in analyzing human remains, he reluctantly joins the police investigation—and when another woman disappears, it soon becomes personal. Because this time she is someone David knows, someone who has managed to penetrate the icy barrier around his heart. With a killer’s bizarre and twisted methods screaming out to him, with a brooding countryside beset with suspicion, David can feel the darkness gathering around him. For as the clock ticks down on a young woman’s life, David must follow a macabre trail of clues—all the way to its final, horrifying conclusion. (less)"
3939,Later,thriller,"The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.

Later is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King's classic novel It, Later is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears. (less)"
3940,The Cheerleaders,thriller,"There are no more cheerleaders in the town of Sunnybrook.

First there was the car accident—two girls gone after hitting a tree on a rainy night. Not long after, the murders happened. Those two girls were killed by the man next door. The police shot him, so no one will ever know why he did it. Monica’s sister was the last cheerleader to die. After her suicide, Sunnybrook High disbanded the cheer squad. No one wanted to be reminded of the girls they lost.

That was five years ago. Now the faculty and students at Sunnybrook High want to remember the lost cheerleaders. But for Monica, it’s not that easy. She just wants to forget. Only, Monica’s world is starting to unravel. There are the letters in her stepdad’s desk, an unearthed, years-old cell phone, a strange new friend at school. . . . Whatever happened five years ago isn’t over. Some people in town know more than they’re saying. And somehow Monica is at the center of it all.

There are no more cheerleaders in Sunnybrook, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is safe. (less)"
3941,The Wheel of Darkness,thriller,"At a remote monastery in Tibet, a rare and dangerous artifact mysteriously disappears. Aloysius Pendergast agrees to take up the search that leads him and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Britannia--and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror."
3942,Past Tense,thriller,"Jack Reacher plans to follow the autumn sun on an epic road trip across America, from Maine to California. He doesn't get far. On a country road deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been - the town where his father was born. He thinks, what's one extra day? He takes the detour.

At the very same moment, close by, a car breaks down. Two young Canadians are trying to get to New York City to sell a treasure. They are stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. It's a strange place ... but it's all there is.

The next morning in the city clerk's office, Reacher asks about the old family home. He's told no one named Reacher ever lived in that town. He knows his father never went back. Now he wonders, was he ever there in the first place?

So begins another nail-biting, adrenaline-fuelled adventure for Reacher. The present can be tense, but the past can be worse. That's for damn sure. (less)"
3943,The Lions of Lucerne,thriller,"On the snowy Utah slopes, thirty Secret Service agents are viciously executed and the vacationing president of the United States kidnapped, seemingly by the Fatah, a lethal terrorist organization in the Middle East. But Scot Harvath, surviving agent and ex-Navy SEAL, doesn't believe the Fatah is responsible.

A shadowy coalition comprises some of the highest-ranking officials in government and business – men who operate above the law, realize the threat Scot poses to their hidden agenda, and will do anything to stop him. Framed for murder and on the run, Scot takes to the towering mountains of Switzerland with beautiful Claudia Mueller of the Swiss Federal Attorney's Office. They brave subzero temperatures and sheer heights of treacherous Mount Pilatus, and the den of notorious professional killers. (less)"
3944,I Am Not a Serial Killer,thriller,"John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.

He's spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.

He's obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn't want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he's written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.

Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don't demand or expect the empathy he's unable to offer. Perhaps that's what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there's something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat---and to appreciate what that difference means.

Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can't control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.

Dan Wells' debut novel is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.
(less)"
3945,The Odessa File,thriller,"The suicide of an elderly German Jew explodes into revelation after revelation: a Mafia-like organization called Odessa, a real-life fugitive known at the ""Butcher of Riga"", a young German journalist turned obsessed avenger...and ultimately, of a brilliant, ruthless plot to reestablish the worldwide power of SS mass murders and to carry out Hitler's chilling ""Final Solution."" (less)"
3946,The Mother-in-Law,thriller,"A twisty, compelling novel about one woman's complicated relationship with her mother-in-law that ends in murder...

From the moment Lucy met her husband's mother, Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite, and properly friendly, but Lucy knew that she was not what Diana envisioned. But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice who helped female refugees assimilate to their new country. Diana was happily married to Tom, and lived in wedded bliss for decades. Lucy wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.

That was five years ago.

Now, Diana has been found dead, a suicide note near her body. Diana claims that she no longer wanted to live because of a battle with cancer.

But the autopsy finds no cancer.
The autopsy does find traces of poison and suffocation.
Who could possibly want Diana dead?
Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both of her adult children and their spouses?

With Lucy's secrets getting deeper and her relationship with her mother-in-law growing more complex as the pages turn, this new novel from Sally Hepworth is sure to add to her growing legion of fans. (less)"
3947,Undone,thriller,"When a tortured young woman enters the trauma center of an Atlanta hospital, Dr. Sara Linton is thrust into a desperate police investigation with Special Agent Will Trent and his partner, Faith Mitchell. Though guarding their own wounds and their own secrets, Sara, Will, and Faith find that they are all that stand between a madman and his next victim."
3948,Jack & Jill,thriller,"In the middle of the night, a controversial U.S. Senator is found murdered in bed in his Georgetown pied-a-terre. The police turn up only one clue: a mysterious rhyme signed 'Jack and Jill' promising that this is just the beginning. The two are out to get the rich and famous. They will stop at nothing until their fiendish plan is carried out.

Meanwhile, Washington, D. C., homicide detective Alex Cross is called to a murder scene only blocks from his house. Far from the corridors of power where he spends his days. The victim: a beautiful little girl, savagely beaten--and deposited in front of the elementary school Cross's son, Damon, attends.

Could there be a connection between the murders? As Cross tries to put the pieces together, the killer - or killers - strike again. And again. No one in Washington is safe - not children, not politicians, not even the President of the United States. Only Cross has the skills and the courage to crack the case, but will he discover the truth in time?

A relentless roller coaster of heart-pounding suspense and jolting plot twists, 'Jack and Jill' proves that no one can write a more compelling thriller than James Patterson--the master of the nonstop nightmare. (less)"
3949,Kisscut,thriller,"Saturday night dates at the skating rink have been a tradition in the small southern town of Heartsdale for as long as anyone can remember, but when a teenage quarrel explodes into a deadly shoot-out, Sara Linton--the town's pediatrician and medical examiner--finds herself entangled in a terrible tragedy.

What seemed at first to be a horrific but individual catastrophe proves to have wider implications. The autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse, of ritualistic self -mutilation, but when Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, they are frustrated at every turn.

The children surrounding the victim close ranks. The families turn their backs. Then a young girl is abducted, and it becomes clear that the first death is linked to an even more brutal crime, one far more shocking than anyone could have imagined. Meanwhile, detective Lena Adams, still recovering from her sister's death and her own brutal attack, finds herself drawn to a young man who might hold the answers. But unless Lena, Sara, and Jeffrey can uncover the deadly secrets the children hide, it's going to happen again . . . (less)"
3950,Needful Things,thriller,"Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little ""deed,"" usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population's increasingly violent behavior. (less)"
3951,The Survivors,thriller,"Coming home dredges up deeply buried secrets...

Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences.

The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home.

Kieran's parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.

When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away... (less)"
3952,The Thursday Murder Club,thriller,"In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late? (less)"
3953,The Flight Attendant,thriller,"Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them, and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, already counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets. Afraid to call the police—she's a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home—Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it's too late to come clean—or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did? (less)"
3954,Naked in Death,thriller,"Here is the novel that started it all- the first book in J.D. Robb's number-one New York Times-bestselling In Death series, featuring New York homicide detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas and Roarke.

It is the year 2058, and technology now completely rules the world. But New York City Detective Eve Dallas knows that the irresistible impulses of the human heart are still ruled by just one thing: passion.

When a senator's daughter is killed, the secret life of prostitution she'd been leading is revealed. The high-profile case takes Lieutenant Eve Dallas into the rarefied circles of Washington politics and society. Further complicating matters is Eve's growing attraction to Roarke, who is one of the wealthiest and most influential men on the planet, devilishly handsome... and the leading suspect in the investigation. (less)"
3955,Live and Let Die,thriller,"How this for an evocative passage from the second Bond novel?

""Her hair was black and fell to her shoulders. She had high cheekbones and a sensual mouth, and wore a dress of white silk. Her eyes were blue, alight and disdainful, but, as they gazed into his with a touch of humour, Bond realized that they contained a message. Solitaire watched his eyes on her and nonchalantly drew her forearms together so that the valley between her breasts deepened. The message was unmistakable.""

The beautiful, fortune-telling Solitaire is the prisoner (and criminal tool) of Mr Big - master of fear, artist in crime, and Voodoo Baron of Death. James Bond has no time for superstition, he knows that this criminal heavy hitter is also a top SMERSH operative and a real threat to international security. More than that, after tracking him through the jazz joints of Harlem to the everglades in Florida, and on to the Caribbean, 007 realizes that Big is one of the most dangerous men that he has ever faced. And no-one, not even the mysterious Solitaire, can be sure how their battle of wills is going to end… (less)"
3956,Confessions on the 7:45,thriller,"From master of suspense Lisa Unger comes a riveting thriller about a chance encounter that unravels a stunning web of lies.

Selena Murphy is commuting home on the train when she strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat. The woman introduces herself as Martha and soon confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again.

Then the nanny disappears.

As Selena is pulled into the mystery of what happened, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, she begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she is hardly prepared for what she’ll discover… (less)"
3957,You Will Know Me,thriller,"Katie and Eric Knox have dedicated their lives to their fifteen-year-old daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful. But when a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community just weeks before an all-important competition, everything the Knoxes have worked so hard for feels suddenly at risk. As rumors swirl among the other parents, revealing hidden plots and allegiances, Katie tries frantically to hold her family together while also finding herself drawn, irresistibly, to the crime itself, and the dark corners it threatens to illuminate. From a writer with ""exceptional gifts for making nerves jangle and skin crawl,"" (Janet Maslin) You Will Know Me is a breathless rollercoaster of a novel about the desperate limits of desire, jealousy, and ambition. (less)"
3958,My Sister's Grave,thriller,"Tracy Crosswhite has spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House — a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder — is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.

When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past — and open the door to deadly danger. (less)"
3959,Psycho,thriller,"It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty but clean and the plumbing worked. Norman Bates, the manager, seemed nice, if a little odd."
3960,The Sinner,thriller,"Not even the icy temperatures of a typical New England winter can match the bone-chilling scene of carnage discovered at the chapel of Our Lady of Divine Light. Within the cloistered convent lie two nuns–one dead, one critically injured–victims of an unspeakably savage attacker. The brutal crime appears to be without motive, but medical examiner Maura Isles’s autopsy of the dead woman yields a shocking surprise: Twenty-year-old Sister Camille gave birth before she was murdered. Then another body is found, mutilated beyond recognition. Together, Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli uncover an ancient horror that connects these terrible slaughters. As long-buried secrets come to light, Maura Isles finds herself drawn inexorably toward the heart of an investigation that strikes close to home–and toward a dawning revelation about the killer’s identity too shattering to consider. (less)"
3961,What She Knew,thriller,"Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry—until Ben vanishes.

Police are called, search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce, feels herself coming undone. As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question, from Rachel’s newly married ex-husband to her mother-of-the-year sister. Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel too, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion. 

As she desperately pieces together the threadbare clues, Rachel realizes that the greatest dangers may lie not in the anonymous strangers of every parent’s nightmares, but behind the familiar smiles of those she trusts the most.

Where is Ben? The clock is ticking... (less)"
3962,Daemon,thriller,"A high-tech thriller for the wireless age that explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running without human control—a daemon—designed to dismantle society and bring about a new world order

Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can't always be said for the people who design them.

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer—the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company's stock price. But Sobol's fans aren't the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol's secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it's up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy—or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control. . . .

Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson. (less)"
3963,My Dark Vanessa,thriller,"Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself. (less)"
3964,Dear Child,thriller,"Gone Girl meets Room in this page-turning thriller from one of Germany's hottest new talents

In a windowless shack in the woods, Lena's life and that of her two children follows the rules set by their captor, the father: Meals, bathroom visits, study time are strictly scheduled and meticulously observed. He protects his family from the dangers lurking in the outside world and makes sure that his children will always have a mother to look after them.

One day Lena manages to flee--but the nightmare continues. It seems as if her tormentor wants to get back what belongs to him. And then there is the question whether she really is the woman called ""Lena,"" who disappeared without a trace 14 years ago. The police and Lena's family are all desperately trying to piece together a puzzle which doesn't quite seem to fit. (less)"
3965,Never Have I Ever,thriller,"In this game, even winning can be deadly...

Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it—teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte. But Amy’s sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night.

Sultry and magnetic, Roux beguiles the group with her feral charm. She keeps the wine flowing and lures them into a game of spilling secrets. Everyone thinks it’s naughty, harmless fun. Only Amy knows better. Something wicked has come her way—a she-devil in a pricey red sports car who seems to know the terrible truth about who she is and what she once did.

When they’re alone, Roux tells her that if she doesn’t give her what she asks for, what she deserves, she’s going to make Amy pay for her sins. One way or another.

To protect herself and her family and save the life she’s built, Amy must beat the devil at her own clever game, matching wits with Roux in an escalating war of hidden pasts and unearthed secrets. Amy knows the consequences if she can’t beat Roux. What terrifies her is everything she could lose if she wins.

A diabolically entertaining tale of betrayal, deception, temptation, and love filled with dark twists leavened by Joshilyn Jackson’s trademark humor, Never Have I Ever explores what happens when the transgressions of our past come back with a vengeance. (less)"
3966,The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,thriller,"Considered to be one of Agatha Christie's greatest, and also most controversial mysteries, 'The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd' breaks the rules of traditional mystery.

The peaceful English village of King’s Abbot is stunned. The widow Ferrars dies from an overdose of Veronal. Not twenty-four hours later, Roger Ackroyd—the man she had planned to marry—is murdered. It is a baffling case involving blackmail and death that taxes Hercule Poirot’s “little grey cells” before he reaches one of the most startling conclusions of his career.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on Goodreads. (less)"
3967,Fatherland,thriller,"April 1964.

The naked body of an old man floats in a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. In one week it will be Adolf Hitler’s 75th birthday. A terrible conspiracy is starting to unravel…

What if Hitler had won?"
3968,The 39 Steps,thriller,"Adventurer Richard Hannay, just returned from South Africa, is thoroughly bored with London life—until he is accosted by a mysterious American, who warns him of an assassination plot that could completely destabalise the fragile political balance of Europe. Initially sceptical, Hannay nonetheless harbours the man—but one day returns home to find him murdered... An obvious suspect, Hannay flees to his native Scotland, pursued by both the police and a cunning, ruthless enemy. His life and the security of Britain are in grave peril, and everything rests on the solution to a baffling enigma: what are the 'thirty nine steps?' (less)"
3969,The Hiding Place,thriller,"From the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man comes an unputdownable psychological thriller about a man who returns home to settle old scores—and uncovers a secret darker than he could have imagined.

Joe never wanted to come back to Arnhill. After the way things ended with his old gang—the betrayal, the suicide—and what happened when his sister went missing, the last thing he wanted to do was return to his hometown. But Joe doesn’t have a choice, not after a chilling email surfaces in his inbox: I know what happened to your sister. It’s happening again . . .

Lying his way into a teaching job at his former high school is the easy part. Facing off with onetime friends who aren’t too happy to have him back in town—while avoiding the enemies he’s made in the years since—is tougher. But the hardest part of all will be returning to the abandoned mine where his life changed forever, and finally confronting the horrifying truth about Arnhill, his sister, and himself. Because for Joe, the worst moment of his life wasn’t the day his sister went missing.

It was the day she came back. (less)"
3970,No Time for Goodbye,thriller,"Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge woke one morning to discover that her entire family, mother, father, brother had vanished. No note, no trace, no return. Ever. Now, twenty-five years later, she'll learn the devastating truth

Sometimes better not to know. . .

Cynthia is happily married with a young daughter, a new family. But the story of her old family isn't over. A strange car in the neighborhood, untraceable phone calls, ominous gifts, someone has returned to her hometown to finish what was started twenty-five years ago. And no one's innocence is guaranteed, not even her own. By the time Cynthia discovers her killer's shocking identity, it will again be too late . . . even for goodbye. (less)"
3971,Every Last Secret,thriller,"Welcome to the neighborhood. Watch your husband, watch your friends, and watch your back.

Cat Winthorpe has worked hard to get what she has: a gorgeous home; social standing; and William, her successful, handsome husband. Then a friendly new couple moves into the estate next door. While cautious, a good neighbor like Cat greets them with open arms and warm hospitality.

Neena Ryder isn’t a fellow lady of leisure. A life coach with off-the-rack dresses, personal issues, and a husband who hasn’t delivered, she’s anxious to move up in the world. This beautiful new town is a step in the right direction. It’s also making Neena aware of what she doesn’t have. Namely, William. When Neena’s infatuation escalates into obsession, it’s just a matter of eliminating a few obstacles to get the life she wants. The life next door.

As Neena’s secret fixation grows, so does her friendship with Cat. But beneath their cordial interactions is a wealth of temptations, secrets, and toxic jealousy. For both women, the desire for a perfect life can turn perfectly dangerous. (less)"
3972,The Historian,thriller,"To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to ""My dear and unfortunate successor,"" and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of, a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.

The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself--to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages. (less)"
3973,The Therapist,thriller,"A gripping psychological suspense and a powerful tale of a house that holds a shocking secret.

When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive…

As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.

Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem… (less)"
3974,Black-Eyed Susans,thriller,"For fans of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn comes an electrifying novel of stunning psychological suspense.

I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories.
I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans.
The lucky one.
 
As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.
 
Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans—a summertime bloom—just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications—that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large—Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories—and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue.
 
What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a  fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night.
 
Shocking, intense, and utterly original, Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller, seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowers—as a killer makes a chilling return to his garden. (less)"
3975,Body Double,thriller,"Boston medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles literally meets her match–and must face a savage serial killer and shattering personal revelations–in the brilliant new novel of suspense by the New York Times bestselling author of The Surgeon and The Sinner.

Dr. Maura Isles makes her living dealing with death. As a pathologist in a major metropolitan city, she has seen more than her share of corpses every day–many of them victims of violent murder. But never before has her blood run cold, and never has the grim expression “dead ringer” rung so terrifyingly true. Because never before has the lifeless body on the medical examiner’s table been her own.

Yet there can be no denying the mind-reeling evidence before her shocked eyes and those of her colleagues, including Detective Jane Rizzoli: the woman found shot to death outside Maura’s home is the mirror image of Maura, down to the most intimate physical nuances. Even more chilling is the discovery that they share the same birth date and blood type. For the stunned Maura, an only child, there can be just one explanation. And when a DNA test confirms that Maura’s mysterious doppelgänger is in fact her twin sister, an already bizarre murder investigation becomes a disturbing and dangerous excursion into a past full of dark secrets.

Searching for answers, Maura is drawn to a seaside town in Maine where other horrifying surprises await. But perhaps more frightening, an unknown murderer is at large on a cross-country killing spree. To stop the massacre and uncover the twisted truth about her own roots, Maura must probe her first living subject: the mother that she never knew . . . an icy and cunning woman who could be responsible for giving Maura life–and who just may have a plan to take it away. (less)"
3976,The Judas Strain,thriller,"New York Times bestselling author James Rollins returns with a terrifying story of an ancient menace reborn to plague the modern world . . . and of an impossible hope that lies hidden in the most shocking place imaginable: within the language of angels.
ju·das strain, n. A scientific term for an organism that drives an entire species to extinction.
From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind--a disease that's unknown, unstoppable . . . and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis--operatives of SIGMA Force--search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions. In a savage and sudden coup, terrorists hijack the vessel, turning a mercy ship into a floating bio-weapons lab.
A world away, SIGMA's Commander Gray Pierce thwarts the murderous schemes of a beautiful would-be killer who holds the first clue to the discovery of a possible cure. Pierce joins forces with the woman who wanted him dead, and together they embark upon an astonishing quest following the trail of the most fabled explorer in history: Marco Polo. But time is an enemy as a worldwide pandemic grows rapidly out of control. As a relentless madman dogs their every step, Gray and his unlikely ally are being pulled into an astonishing mystery buried deep in antiquity and in humanity's genetic code. And as the seconds tick closer to doomsday, Gray Pierce will realize he can truly trust no one, for any one of them could be . . . a Judas.
(less)"
3977,Fever Dream,thriller,"Yesterday, Special Agent Pendergast still mourned the loss of his beloved wife, Helen, who died in a tragic accident in Africa twelve years ago. Today, he discovers she was murdered. Tomorrow, he will learn her most guarded secrets, leaving him to wonder: Who was the woman I married? Why was she murdered? And, above all . . . Who murdered her? FEVER DREAM Revenge is not sweet: It is essential. (less)"
3978,Red Rabbit,thriller,"Long before he was President or head of the CIA, before he fought terrorist attacks on the Super Bowl or the White House, even before a submarine named Red October made its perilous way across the Atlantic, Jack Ryan was an historian, teacher, and recent ex-Marine temporarily living in England while researching a book. A series of deadly encounters with an IRA splinter group had brought him to the attention of the CIA's Deputy Director, Vice Admiral James Greer—as well as his counterpart with the British SIS, Sir Basil Charleston—and when Greer asked him if he wanted to come aboard as a freelance analyst, Jack was quick to accept. The opportunity was irresistible, and he was sure he could fit it in with the rest of his work.
And then Jack forgot all about the rest of his work, because one of his first assignments was to help debrief a high-level Soviet defector, and the defector told an amazing tale: Top Soviet officials, including Yuri Andropov, were planning to assassinate the Pope, John Paul II.
Could it be true? As the days and weeks go by, Ryan must battle, first to try to confirm the plot, and then to prevent it, but this is a brave new world, and nothing he has done up to now has prepared him for the lethal game of cat-and-mouse that is the Soviet Union versus the United States. In the end, it will be not just the Pope's life but the stability of the Western world that is at stake. . . and it may already be too late for a novice CIA analyst to do anything about it.
(less)"
3979,Finlay Donovan Is Killing It,thriller,"""Getting the job done"" for one single mom takes on a whole new meaning in Finlay Donovan is Killing It.

Finlay Donovan is killing it...except, she’s really not. A stressed-out single mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos: The new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written; her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her; and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors.

When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet. She soon discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.

Fast-paced, deliciously witty, and wholeheartedly authentic in depicting the frustrations and triumphs of motherhood in all its messiness, hilarity, and heartfelt moments, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a brilliant new series from award-winning Elle Cosimano. (less)"
3980,The Devotion of Suspect X,thriller,"Yasuko lives a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop, a good mother to her only child. But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one day, her comfortable world is shattered.

When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that day, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated. Nothing quite makes sense, and it will take a genius to understand the genius behind this particular crime... (less)"
3981,Nine Perfect Strangers,thriller,"Could ten days at a health resort really change you forever?

These nine perfect strangers are about to find out...

Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.

Frances Welty, the formerly best-selling romantic novelist, arrives at Tranquillum House nursing a bad back, a broken heart, and an exquisitely painful paper cut. She’s immediately intrigued by her fellow guests. Most of them don’t look to be in need of a health resort at all. But the person that intrigues her most is the strange and charismatic owner/director of Tranquillum House. Could this person really have the answers Frances didn’t even know she was seeking? Should Frances put aside her doubts and immerse herself in everything Tranquillum House has to offer—or should she run while she still can?

It’s not long before every guest at Tranquillum House is asking exactly the same question.

Combining all of the hallmarks that have made Liane Moriarty's writing a go-to for anyone looking for wickedly smart, page-turning fiction that will make you laugh and gasp, Nine Perfect Strangers once again shows why she is a master of her craft. (less)"
3982,The Only Good Indians,thriller,"The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way. (less)"
3983,Kill Shot,thriller,"#1 New York Times bestselling author of American Assassin—now a major motion picture

Vince Flynn’s intensely suspenseful #1 New York Times bestseller puts the young, hungry, and lethal superagent of American Assassin in the crosshairs even as he kills with impunity.

In the year since the CIA trained and then unleashed him, Mitch Rapp has dismantled, kill by untraceable kill, the network of monsters behind the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack. The hunt leads to Paris, where a deadly trap is sprung as the bullet leaves Rapp’s silenced pistol—followed by the discovery of nine bodies, including Libya’s oil minister, in one of the city’s finest hotels. Washington wants no part of the international crisis, and Rapp is deemed a liability by Stan Hurley, one of his handlers. But as he slips outside their control to operate on his own, it will soon become clear that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded and cornered Mitch Rapp. (less)"
3984,Every Dead Thing,thriller,"Tortured and brilliant private detective Charlie Parker stars in this thriller by New York Times bestselling author John Connolly.

Former NYPD detective Charlie ""Bird"" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge. When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining: a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family—a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing.

Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on earth: the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man.

In the tradition of classic American detective fiction, Every Dead Thing is a tense, richly plotted thriller, filled with memorable characters and gripping action. It is also a profoundly moving novel, concerned with the nature of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. Lyrical and terrifying, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realized. (less)"
3985,A Simple Favor,thriller,"She’s your best friend.
She knows all your secrets.
That’s why she’s so dangerous.
A single mother's life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.

It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son Nicky after school, she happily says yes. Nicky and her son, Miles, are classmates and best friends, and the five-year-olds love being together—just like she and Emily. A widow and stay-at-home mommy blogger living in woodsy suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a sophisticated PR executive whose job in Manhattan demands so much of her time.

But Emily doesn’t come back. She doesn’t answer calls or return texts. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong—Emily would never leave Nicky, no matter what the police say. Terrified, she reaches out to her blog readers for help. She also reaches out to Emily’s husband, the handsome, reticent Sean, offering emotional support. It’s the least she can do for her best friend. Then, she and Sean receive shocking news. Emily is dead. The nightmare of her disappearance is over.

Or is it? Because soon, Stephanie will begin to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems.

A Simple Favor is a remarkable tale of psychological suspense—a clever and twisting free-fall of a ride filled with betrayals and reversals, twists and turns, secrets and revelations, love and loyalty, murder and revenge. Darcey Bell masterfully ratchets up the tension in a taut, unsettling, and completely absorbing story that holds you in its grip until the final page. (less)"
3986,Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,thriller,"Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece of the duality of good and evil in man's nature sprang from the darkest recesses of his own unconscious—during a nightmare from which his wife awakened him, alerted by his screams. More than a hundred years later, this tale of the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and the drug that unleashes his evil, inner persona—the loathsome, twisted Mr. Hyde—has lost none of its ability to shock. Its realistic police-style narrative chillingly relates Jekyll's desperation as Hyde gains control of his soul—and gives voice to our own fears of the violence and evil within us. Written before Freud's naming of the ego and the id, Stevenson's enduring classic demonstrates a remarkable understanding of the personality's inner conflicts—and remains the irresistibly terrifying stuff of our worst nightmares. (less)"
3987,Pretty Things,thriller,"Two wildly different women--one a grifter, the other an heiress--are brought together by the scam of a lifetime in a page-turner from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear.

Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.

Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer--traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family's sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: A mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa's past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.

Nina, Vanessa, and Lachlan's paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.

This dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play. (less)"
3988,The Last Juror,thriller,"In 1970, one of Mississippi s more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23-year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.

The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed courthouse in Clanton, Mississippi. The trial came to a startling and dramatic end when the defendant threatened revenge against the jurors if they convicted him. Nevertheless, they found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

But in Mississippi in 1970, life didn't necessarily mean life, and nine years later Danny Padgitt managed to get himself paroled. He returned to Ford County, and the retribution began. (less)"
3989,The Girl from Widow Hills,thriller,"Everyone knows the story of “the girl from Widow Hills.”

Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Strangers and friends, neighbors and rescue workers, set up search parties and held vigils, praying for her safe return. Against all odds, she was found, alive, clinging to a storm drain. The girl from Widow Hills was a living miracle. Arden’s mother wrote a book. Fame followed. Fans and fan letters, creeps, and stalkers. And every year, the anniversary. It all became too much. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and disappeared from the public eye.

Now a young woman living hundreds of miles away, Arden goes by Olivia. She’s managed to stay off the radar for the last few years. But with the twentieth anniversary of her rescue approaching, the media will inevitably renew its interest in Arden. Where is she now? Soon Olivia feels like she’s being watched and begins sleepwalking again, like she did long ago, even waking outside her home. Until late one night she jolts awake in her yard. At her feet is the corpse of a man she knows—from her previous life, as Arden Maynor.

And now, the girl from Widow Hills is about to become the center of the story, once again, in this propulsive page-turner from suspense master Megan Miranda. (less)"
3990,The Last Town,thriller,"Welcome to Wayward Pines, the last town.

Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, three weeks ago. In this town, people are told who to marry, where to live, where to work. Their children are taught that David Pilcher, the town’s creator, is god. No one is allowed to leave; even asking questions can get you killed.

But Ethan has discovered the astonishing secret of what lies beyond the electrified fence that surrounds Wayward Pines and protects it from the terrifying world beyond. It is a secret that has the entire population completely under the control of a madman and his army of followers, a secret that is about to come storming through the fence to wipe out this last, fragile remnant of humanity. (less)"
3991,The Gunslinger,thriller,"In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter. (less)"
3992,Amazonia,thriller,"The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has stumbled out of the world’s most inhospitable rainforest: a former Special Forces soldier – scarred, mutilated, terrified, and mere hours from death – who went in with one arm missing…and came out with both intact.

Unable to comprehend this inexplicable event, the government sends Nathan Rand into this impenetrable secret world of undreamed – of perils to follow the trail of his vanished father…toward mysteries that must be solved at any cost. But the nightmare that is awaiting Nate and his team of scientists and seasoned U.S. Army Rangers dwarfs any danger they anticipated…an ancient, unspoken terror – a power beyond human imagining-that can forever alter the world beyond the dark, lethal confines of the Amazon rainforest for better… and for worse. (less)"
3993,Coma,thriller,"The blockbuster bestseller that kickstarted a new genre--the medical thriller--is now available in trade paperback for the first time.

They called it ""minor surgery,"" but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman and a dozen others--all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures--were victims of the same inexplicable, hideous tragedy on the operating table. They never woke up.


Susan Wheeler is a third-year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital. Two patients during her residency mysteriously go into comas immediately after their operations due to complications from anesthesia. Susan begins to investigate the causes behind both of these alarming comas and discovers the oxygen line in Operating Room 8 has been tampered with to induce carbon monoxide poisoning.


Then Susan discovers the evil nature of the Jefferson Institute, an intensive care facility where patients are suspended from the ceiling and kept alive until they can be harvested for healthy organs. Is she a participant in--or a victim of--a large-scale black market dealing in human organs? (less)"
3994,A Head Full of Ghosts,thriller,"The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil. (less)"
3995,Vanish,thriller,"A blessed event becomes a nightmare for pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli when she finds herself on the wrong side of a hostage crisis in this timely and relentless thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Body Double.

A nameless, beautiful woman appears to be just another corpse in the morgue. An apparent suicide, she lies on a gurney, awaiting the dissecting scalpel of medical examiner Maura Isles. But when Maura unzips the body bag and looks down at the body, she gets the fright of her life. The corpse opens its eyes.

Very much alive, the woman is rushed to the hospital, where with shockingly cool precision, she murders a security guard and seizes hostages . . . one of them a pregnant patient, Jane Rizzoli.

Who is this violent, desperate soul, and what does she want? As the tense hours tick by, Maura joins forces with Jane's husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, to track down the mysterious killer's identity. When federal agents suddenly appear on the scene, Maura and Gabriel realize that they are dealing with a case that goes far deeper than just an ordinary hostage crisis.

Only Jane, trapped with the armed madwoman, holds the key to the mystery. And only she can solve it if she survives the night. From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
3996,Such a Quiet Place,thriller,"Welcome to Hollow’s Edge, where you can find secrets, scandal, and a suspected killer—all on one street.

Hollow’s Edge use to be a quiet place. A private and idyllic neighborhood where neighbors dropped in on neighbors, celebrated graduation and holiday parties together, and looked out for one another. But then came the murder of Brandon and Fiona Truett. A year and a half later, Hollow’s Edge is simmering. The residents are trapped, unable to sell their homes, confronted daily by the empty Truett house, and suffocated by their trial testimonies that implicated one of their own. Ruby Fletcher. And now, Ruby’s back.

With her conviction overturned, Ruby waltzes right back to Hollow’s Edge, and into the home she shared with Harper Nash. Harper, five years older, has always treated Ruby like a wayward younger sister. But now she’s terrified. What possible good could come of Ruby returning to the scene of the crime? And how can she possibly turn her away, when she knows Ruby has nowhere to go?

Within days, suspicion spreads like a virus across Hollow’s Edge. It’s increasingly clear that not everyone told the truth about the night of the Truetts’ murders. And when Harper begins receiving threatening notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else becomes the killer’s next victim.
(less)"
3997,Ice Station,thriller,"Antarctica is the last unconquered continent, a murderous expanse of howling winds, blinding whiteouts and deadly crevasses. On one edge of Antarctica is Wilkes Station. Beneath Wilkes Station is the gate to hell itself...

A team of U.S. divers, exploring three thousand feet beneath the ice shelf has vanished. Sending out an SOS, Wilkes draws a rapid deployment team of Marines-and someone else...

First comes a horrific firefight. Then comes a plunge into a drowning pool filled with killer whales. Next comes the hard part, as a handful of survivors begin an electrifying, red-hot, non-stop battle of survival across the continent and against wave after wave of elite military assassins-who've all come for one thing: a secret buried deep beneath the ice...
(less)"
3998,The Forgotten,thriller,"In Paradise, nothing is what it seems...
Army Special Agent John Puller is the best there is. A combat veteran, Puller is the man the U.S. Army relies on to investigate the toughest crimes facing the nation. Now he has a new case-but this time, the crime is personal: His aunt has been found dead in Paradise, Florida.
A picture-perfect town on Florida's Gulf Coast, Paradise thrives on the wealthy tourists and retirees drawn to its gorgeous weather and beaches. The local police have ruled his aunt's death an unfortunate, tragic accident. But just before she died, she mailed a letter to Puller's father, telling him that beneath its beautiful veneer, Paradise is not all it seems to be.
What Puller finds convinces him that his aunt's death was no accident . . . and that the palm trees and sandy beaches of Paradise may hide a conspiracy so shocking that some will go to unthinkable lengths to make sure the truth is never revealed.
(less)"
3999,Cell,thriller,"Where were you on October 1st at 3:03 pm?

Graphic artist Clay Riddell was in the heart of Boston on that brilliant autumn afternoon when hell was unleashed before his eyes. Without warning, carnage and chaos reigned. Ordinary people fell victim to the basest, most animalistic destruction.

And the apocalypse began with the ring of a cell phone..."
4000,Gone for Good,thriller,"As a boy, Will Klein had a hero: his older brother, Ken. Then, on a warm suburban night in the Kleins' affluent New Jersey neighborhood, a young woman--a girl Will had once loved--was found brutally murdered in her family's basement. The prime suspect: Ken Klein. With the evidence against him overwhelming, Ken simply vanished. And when his shattered family never heard from Ken again, they were sure he was gone for good.
Now eleven years have passed. Will has found proof that Ken is alive. And this is just the first in a series of stunning revelations as Will is forced to confront startling truths about his brother, and even himself. As a violent mystery unwinds around him, Will knows he must press his search all the way to the end. Because the most powerful surprises are yet to come. (less)"
4001,The Dinner,thriller,"Alternate cover edition can be found here

An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives - all over the course of one meal.

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy. (less)"
4002,The Gray Man,thriller,"Courtland Gentry is a good man. But he’s a great assassin.

To those who lurk in the shadows, he’s known as the Gray Man. He is a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible and then fading away. And he always hits his target. Always.

But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. Forces like money. And power. And there are men who hold these as the only currency worth fighting for. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness.

But Court Gentry is going to prove that, for him, there’s no gray area between killing for a living and killing to stay alive… (less)"
4003,State of Terror,thriller,"From the #1 bestselling authors Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny comes a novel of unsurpassed thrills and incomparable insider expertise—State of Terror.

State of Terror follows a novice Secretary of State who has joined the administration of her rival, a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage. A series of terrorist attacks throws the global order into disarray, and the secretary is tasked with assembling a team to unravel the deadly conspiracy, a scheme carefully designed to take advantage of an American government dangerously out of touch and out of power in the places where it counts the most.

This high-stakes thriller of international intrigue features behind-the-scenes global drama informed by details only an insider could know. (less)"
4004,He Started It,thriller,"Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven't all been together in years. And for very good reasons—we'll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and—more importantly—secure their inheritance.

But time with your family can be tough. It is for everyone.

It's even harder when you're all keeping secrets and trying to forget a memory—a missing person, an act of revenge, the man in the black truck who won't stop following your car—and especially when at least one of you is a killer and there's a body in the trunk. Just to name a few reasons.

But money is a powerful motivator. It is for everyone. (less)"
4005,"Good Me, Bad Me",thriller,"Good Me Bad Me is dark, compelling, voice-driven psychological suspense by debut author Ali Land.

How far does the apple really fall from the tree?

Milly's mother is a serial killer. Though Milly loves her mother, the only way to make her stop is to turn her in to the police. Milly is given a fresh start: a new identity, a home with an affluent foster family, and a spot at an exclusive private school.

But Milly has secrets, and life at her new home becomes complicated. As her mother's trial looms, with Milly as the star witness, Milly starts to wonder how much of her is nature, how much of her is nurture, and whether she is doomed to turn out like her mother after all.

When tensions rise and Milly feels trapped by her shiny new life, she has to decide: Will she be good? Or is she bad? She is, after all, her mother's daughter. (less)"
4006,Horns,thriller,"Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples.

At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.

Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more—he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.

But Merrin's death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . . (less)"
4007,From Russia With Love,thriller,"Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel.

James Bond is marked for death by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH in Ian Fleming’s masterful spy thriller. It's the novel that President John F. Kennedy named as one of his favourite books of all time.

SMERSH stands for ‘Death to Spies’ and there’s no secret agent they’d like to disgrace and destroy more than 007, James Bond. But ensnaring the British Secret Service’s most lethal operative will require a lure so tempting even he can’t resist. Enter Tatiana Romanova, a ravishing Russian spy whose ‘defection’ springs a trap designed with clockwork precision.

Her mission: seduce Bond, then flee to the West on the Orient Express. Waiting in the shadows are two of Ian Fleming’s most vividly drawn villains: Red Grant, SMERSH’s deadliest assassin, and the sinister operations chief Rosa Klebb - five feet four inches of pure killing power.

Bursting with action and intrigue, ""From Russia with Love"" is one of the best-loved books in the Bond canon, an instant classic that set the standard for sophisticated literary spycraft for decades to come. (less)"
4008,Cat & Mouse,thriller,"Alex Cross is back-and so is a raging and suicidal Gary Soneji. Out of prison and dying from the AIDS virus he contracted there, he will get revenge on Cross before he dies. In addition, we are introduced to a new pair of rivals whose paths cross that of Alex and Soneji. Thomas Augustine Pierce has been chasing his demon, Mr. Smith, since the savage murder of his fiancee. Mr. Smith is a unique monster, with actions toward his victims so insane-so unimaginable-that he is thought of as ""not of the earth."" Pierce, known in the business as St. Augustine because of his track record for catching killers and his invaluable status to the FBI and Interpol, may even be better than Cross.When things heat up and Alex is in a near-death coma following an attack in his own home, Pierce goes to Washington to help with the investigation. But just as he begins to piece together the mystery of how Gary Soneji could have mortally wounded Cross after he was believed to be dead, he is summoned to Paris with a postcard from Mr. Smith inviting him to a very special killing.The body count is high, the tension the highest, and the two killers on the loose are watching every move their pursuers make. Who is the cat, and who is the mouse? What and where is the final trap? And who survives? (less)"
4009,Friend Request,thriller,"Maria Weston wants to be friends. But Maria Weston is dead. Isn't she?

1989. When Louise first notices the new girl who has mysteriously transferred late into their senior year, Maria seems to be everything the girls Louise hangs out with aren't. Authentic. Funny. Brash. Within just a few days, Maria and Louise are on their way to becoming fast friends.

2016. Louise receives a heart-stopping email: Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook. Long-buried memories quickly rise to the surface: those first days of their budding friendship; cruel decisions made and dark secrets kept; the night that would change all their lives forever.

Louise has always known that if the truth ever came out, she could stand to lose everything. Her job. Her son. Her freedom. Maria's sudden reappearance threatens it all, and forces Louise to reconnect with everyone she'd severed ties with to escape the past. But as she tries to piece together exactly what happened that night, Louise discovers there's more to the story than she ever knew. To keep her secret, Louise must first uncover the whole truth, before what's known to Maria - or whoever's pretending to be her - is known to all. (less)"
4010,Project Hail Mary,thriller,"Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.

Part scientific mystery, part dazzling interstellar journey, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going. (less)"
4011,Lexicon,thriller,"At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren't taught history, geography, or mathematics--at least not in the usual ways. Instead, they are taught to persuade. Here the art of coercion has been raised to a science. Students harness the hidden power of language to manipulate the mind and learn to break down individuals by psychographic markers in order to take control of their thoughts. The very best will graduate as ""poets"", adept wielders of language who belong to a nameless organization that is as influential as it is secretive.

Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff is making a living running a three-card Monte game on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization's recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school's strange and rigorous entrance exams, where, once admitted, she will be taught the fundamentals of persuasion by Bronte, Eliot, and Lowell--who have adopted the names of famous poets to conceal their true identities. For in the organization, nothing is more dangerous than revealing who you are: Poets must never expose their feelings lest they be manipulated. Emily becomes the school's most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. Although he has no recollection of anything they claim he's done, it turns out Wil is the key to a secret war between rival factions of poets and is quickly caught in their increasingly deadly crossfire. Pursued relentlessly by people with powers he can barely comprehend and protected by the very man who first attacked him, Wil discovers that everything he thought he knew about his past was fiction. In order to survive, must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, to discover who he is and why an entire town was blown off the map.

As the two narratives converge, the shocking work of the poets is fully revealed, the body count rises, and the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel event which would leave all language meaningless. A brilliant thriller that connects very modern questions of privacy, identity, and the rising obsession of data collection to centuries-old ideas about the power of language and coercion, Lexicon is Max Barry's most ambitious and spellbinding novel yet. (less)"
4012,Forever Odd,thriller,"I see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it.

Odd Thomas never asked for his special ability. He's just an ordinary guy trying to live a quiet life in the small desert town of Pico Mundo. Yet he feels an obligation to do right by his otherworldly confidants, and that's why he's won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death. But when a childhood friend disappears, Odd discovers something worse than a dead body and embarks on a heart-stopping battle of will and wits with an enemy of exceptional cunning. In the hours to come there can be no innocent bystanders, and every sacrifice can tip the balance between despair and hope.

You're invited on an unforgettable journey through a world of terror and transcendence to wonders beyond imagining. And you can have no better guide than Odd Thomas. (less)"
4013,Whiteout,thriller,"A Family Reunited
As a blizzard descends from the north on Christmas Eve, several people converge on a remote family estate in Scotland. Stanley Oxenford, director of a pharmaceutical research company, has everything riding on a drug he is developing to fight a lethal virus.
A Brewing Storm
Several others are interested in his success too: his children, at home for Christmas with their offspring, have their eyes on the money he will make; Toni Gallo, forced to resign from the police department in disgrace, is betting her career on keeping the drug safe; and a local television reporter, determined to move up, has sniffed the story, even if he has to bend the facts to tell it.
A House Under Siege
A sinister gang spots an opportunity to use one of Stanley’s children against him and steal the virus. As everyone takes shelter, it becomes apparent that being inside the house may be more dangerous than the storm outside, especially when a lethal virus might be on the loose . . . (less)"
4014,The Marsh King's Daughter,thriller,"The mesmerizing tale of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her past and threatens to steal her future: her father.

Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too…until she learned precisely how savage he could be.

More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King–because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter. (less)"
4015,The Passenger,thriller,"In case you were wondering, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with Frank’s death. I don’t have an alibi, so you’ll have to take my word for it...

Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time.

She meets Blue, a female bartender who recognizes the hunted look in a fugitive’s eyes and offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts. An uneasy―and dangerous―alliance is born.

It’s almost impossible to live off the grid today, but Amelia-now-Debra and Blue have the courage, the ingenuity, and the desperation, to try. Hopscotching from city to city, Debra especially is chased by a very dark secret…can she outrun her past? (less)"
4016,Presumed Innocent,thriller,"Hailed as the most suspenseful and compelling novel in decades. Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes. It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial—including his own life. It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you ... long after you have reached its shattering conclusion. (less)"
4017,Thunderhead,thriller,"Nora Kelly, a young archaeologist in Santa Fe, receives a letter written sixteen years ago, yet mysteriously mailed only recently. In it her father, long believed dead, hints at a fantastic discovery that will make him famous and rich---the lost city of an ancient civilization that suddenly vanished a thousand years ago. Now Nora is leading an expedition into a harsh, remote corner of Utah's canyon country. Searching for her father and his glory, Nora begins to unravel the greatest riddle of American archeology. but what she unearths will be the newest of horrors... (less)"
4018,The Last Templar,thriller,"""It has served us well, this myth of Christ.""
Pope Leo X, 16th Century

In a hail of fire and flashing sword, as the burning city of Acre falls from the hands of the West in 1291, The Last Templar opens with a young Templar knight, his mentor, and a handful of others escaping to the sea carrying a mysterious chest entrusted to them by the Order's dying Grand Master. The ship vanishes without a trace.

In present day Manhattan, four masked horsemen dressed as Templar Knights emerge from Central Park and ride up the Fifth Avenue steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the blacktie opening of a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit. Storming through the crowds, the horsemen brutally attack anyone standing between them and their prize. Attending the gala, archaeologist Tess Chaykin watches in silent terror as the leader of the horsemen hones in on one piece in particular, a strange geared device. He utters a few cryptic Latin words as he takes hold of it with reverence before leading the horsemen out and disappearing into the night.

In the aftermath, an FBI investigation is led by anti-terrorist specialist Sean Reilly. Soon, he and Tess are drawn into the dark, hidden history of the crusading Knights, plunging them into a deadly game of cat and mouse with ruthless killers as they race across three continents to recover the lost secret of the Templars. (less)"
4019,Sworn to Silence,thriller,"Some secrets are too terrible to reveal . . .Some crimes are too unspeakable to solve . . . In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and ""English"" residents have lived side by side for two centuries. But sixteen years ago, a series of brutal murders shattered the peaceful farming community. In the aftermath of the violence, the town was left with a sense of fragility, a loss of innocence. Kate Burkholder, a young Amish girl, survived the terror of the Slaughterhouse Killer but came away from its brutality with the realization that she no longer belonged with the Amish. Now, a wealth of experience later, Kate has been asked to return to Painters Mill as Chief of Police. Her Amish roots and big city law enforcement background make her the perfect candidate. She's certain she's come to terms with her past--until the first body is discovered in a snowy field. Kate vows to stop the killer before he strikes again. But to do so, she must betray both her family and her Amish past--and expose a dark secret that could destroy her. (less)"
4020,The Naturals,thriller,"Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.

What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides—especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head—and under her skin. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length.

Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive. (less)"
4021,A Faint Cold Fear,thriller,"The third pulse-pounding novel in the Grant County series from New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter.
Sara Linton, medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is called out to an apparent suicide on the local college campus. The mutilated body provides little in the way of clues -- and the college authorities are eager to avoid a scandal -- but for Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, things don't add up.
Two more suspicious suicides follow, and a young woman is brutally attacked. For Sara, the violence strikes far too close to home. And as Jeffrey pursues the sadistic killer, he discovers that ex-police detective Lena Adams, now a security guard on campus, may be in possession of crucial information. But, bruised and angered by her expulsion from the force, Lena seems to be barely capable of protecting herself, let alone saving the next victim...
(less)"
4022,The Husband's Secret,thriller,"At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died...

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and, ultimately, ourselves. (less)"
4023,Don't Look for Me,thriller,"One night, Molly Clarke walked away from her life. The car abandoned miles from home. The note found at a nearby hotel. The shattered family that couldn't be put back together. It happens all the time. Women disappear, desperate to leave their lives behind and start over. She doesn't want to be found. Or at least, that's the story. But is that what really happened to Molly Clarke?

The night Molly disappeared began with a storm, running out of gas, and a man in a truck offering her a ride to town. With him is a little girl who reminds her of the daughter she lost years ago. It feels like a sign. And Molly is overcome with the desire to be home, with her family—no matter how broken it is. She accepts the ride. But when the doors are locked shut, Molly begins to suspect she has made a terrible mistake.

When a new lead comes in after the search has ended, Molly's daughter, Nicole, begins to wonder. Nothing about her mother's disappearance makes sense.

Nicole returns to the small, desolate town where her mother was last seen to find the truth. The locals are kind and eager to help. The innkeeper. The bartender. Even the police. Until secrets begin to reveal themselves and she comes closer to the truth about that night—and the danger surrounding her. (less)"
4024,Cemetery Dance,thriller,"Pendergast-the world's most enigmatic FBI Special Agent-returns to New York City to investigate a murderous cult.

William Smithback Jr., a prominent New York Times reporter, was killed in a brutal attack in his Upper West Side apartment. His wife, Nora Kelly, an archeologist at the Museum of Natural History, was injured as well. Multiple eyewitness identified the assailant as a neighbor n the building, Colin Fearing: a man who, by all reports, dead and buried ten days ago.

While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of Manhattan they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and voodoo which no outsiders have ever survived. (less)"
4025,Rules of Prey,thriller,"Welcome. You are about to meet Lucas Davenport, the police detective in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who does it his way.

The ""maddog"" murderer who is terrorizing the Twin Cities is two things: insane and extremely intelligent. He kills for the pleasure of it and thoroughly enjoys placing elaborate obstacles to keep the police befuddled. Each clever move he makes is another point of pride. But when the brilliant Lieutenant Davenport--a dedicated cop and a serial killer's worst nightmare--is brought in to take up the investigation, maddog suddenly has an adversary worthy of his genius.

Librarian's note: the first five books in the Lucas Davenport series are #1, Rules of Prey, 1989; #2, Shadow Prey, 1990; #3, Eyes of Prey, 1991; #4, Silent Prey, 1992; and #5, Winter Prey, 1993. (less)"
4026,The Target,thriller,"The President knows it's a perilous, high-risk assignment. If he gives the order, he has the opportunity to take down a global menace, once and for all. If the mission fails, he would face certain impeachment, and the threats against the nation would multiply. So the president turns to the one team that can pull off the impossible: Will Robie and his partner, Jessica Reel.
Together, Robie and Reel's talents as assassins are unmatched. But there are some in power who don't trust the pair. They doubt their willingness to follow orders. And they will do anything to see that the two assassins succeed, but that they do not survive.
As they prepare for their mission, Reel faces a personal crisis that could well lead old enemies right to her doorstep, resurrecting the ghosts of her earlier life and bringing stark danger to all those close to her. And all the while, Robie and Reel are stalked by a new adversary: an unknown and unlikely assassin, a woman who has trained her entire life to kill, and who has her own list of targets--a list that includes Will Robie and Jessica Reel.
(less)"
4027,Strangers on a Train,thriller,"Just in time for the centennial celebration of groundbreaking noir fiction writer Patricia Highsmith comes a reissue of her propulsive, engrossing debut, Strangers on a Train, with a new introduction by best-selling author Paula Hawkins. Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno are passengers on the same train. Haines is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno a mysterious smooth-talker with a sadistic proposal: he’ll murder Haines’s wife if Haines will murder Bruno’s father. As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy finds himself trapped in Highsmith’s perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary crimes. The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith’s prolific career, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday life. (less)"
4028,Bag of Bones,thriller,"Four years after the sudden death of his wife, forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write, and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs, Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway. There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie and Kyra's struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here — and what do they want of Mike Noonan? (less)"
4029,The Silent Corner,thriller,"Meet Jane Hawk—a remarkable new heroine certain to become an icon of suspense, propelled by the singular narrative genius of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.

“I very much need to be dead.”

These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for—but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what.

People of talent and accomplishment, people admired and happy and sound of mind, have been committing suicide in surprising numbers. When Jane seeks to learn why, she becomes the most-wanted fugitive in America. Her powerful enemies are protecting a secret so important—so terrifying—that they will exterminate anyone in their way.

But all their power and viciousness may not be enough to stop a woman as clever as they are cold-blooded, as relentless as they are ruthless—and who is driven by a righteous rage they can never comprehend. Because it is born of love. (less)"
4030,The Third Option,thriller,"Mitch Rapp, CIA's top counterterrorism operative, is sent on his final mission. His target, a German Industrialist who has been selling sensitive equipment to the worlds most notorious sponsors of terrorism. (less)"
4031,The Hunting Wives,thriller,"The Hunting Wives share more than target practice, martinis, and bad behavior in this novel of obsession, seduction, and murder.

Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realizes that life is now too quiet, and she’s feeling bored and restless.

Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. As Sophie’s curiosity gives way to full-blown obsession, she slips farther away from the safety of her family and deeper into this nest of vipers.

When the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation and her life spiraling out of control. (less)"
4032,Rosemary's Baby,thriller,"Suppose you were an up-to-date young wife who moved into an old and elegant New York apartment house with a rather strange past.

Suppose that only after you became pregnant did you begin to suspect the building harbored a diabolically evil group of devil worshippers who had mastered the arts of black magic and witchcraft.

Suppose that this satanic conspiracy set out to claim not only your husband but your baby.

Well, that's what happened to Rosemary... Or did it...? (less)"
4033,Death on the Nile,thriller,"Agatha Christie's most daring travel mystery.

The tranquility of a lovely cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything – until she lost her life.

Who is also on board? Christie's great detective Hercule Poirot is on holiday. He recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’ Despite the exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seems… (less)"
4034,Goodnight Beautiful,thriller,"Newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter are head over heels, and excited to say good-bye to New York and start a life together in Sam's sleepy hometown in upstate New York. Or, it turns out, a life where Annie spends most of her time alone while Sam, her therapist husband, works long hours in his downstairs office, tending to the egos of his (mostly female) clientele.

Little does Sam know that through a vent in his ceiling, every word of his sessions can be heard from the room upstairs. The pharmacist's wife, contemplating a divorce. The well-known painter whose boyfriend doesn’t satisfy her in bed. Who could resist listening? Everything is fine until the French girl in the green mini Cooper shows up, and Sam decides to go to work and not come home, throwing a wrench into Sam and Annie's happily ever after. (less)"
4035,Wilder Girls,thriller,"It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true. (less)"
4036,The Collectors,thriller,"In Washington, D.C, where power is everything and too few have too much of it, four highly eccentric men with mysterious pasts call themselves the Camel Club. Their mission: find out what's really going on behind the closed doors of America's leaders. The assassination of the U.S. Speaker of the House has shaken the nation. And the outrageous iconoclasts of the Camel Club have found a chilling connection with another death: the demise of the director of the Library of Congress's rare books room.

A man who calls himself Oliver Stone is the group's unofficial leader. Staying one step ahead of his violent past and headquartered in a caretaker's cottage in Mt. Zion Cemetery, Stone draws on his vast experience and acute deductive powers to discover that someone is selling America to its enemies one classified secret at a time. When Annabelle Conroy, the greatest con artist of her generation, struts onto the scene in high-heeled boots, the Camel Club gets a sexy new edge.

David Baldacci weaves a brilliant, white-knuckle tale of suspense in which every collector is searching for one missing prize: the one to die for.

Librarian's note: this is one of five volumes in the author's Camel Club series: 1. The Camel Club (2005), 2. The Collectors (2006), 3. Stone Cold (2007), Divine Justice (2008), and 5. Hell's Corner (2010). (less)"
4037,The King of Torts,thriller,"The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.

As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life--that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession's newest king of torts...

'From the Hardcover edition' (less)"
4038,2nd Chance,thriller,"The Women's Murder Club returns for another thrilling crime investigation. Will their skills be enough to take down a brutal madman?

A brutal madman sprays bullets into a crowd of children leaving a San Francisco church. Miraculously-or was it intentionally?-only one person dies. Then an elderly black woman is hung. Police homicide inspector Lindsay Boxer senses a connection and together with medical examiner Claire, assistant D. A. Jill, and Chronicle reporter Cindy, finds a link that sends a chill through the entire nation. This killer's motives are unspeakable.

In this ""inventive"" installment of the Women's Murder Club, James Patterson proves once again why he is the #1 master of the murder mystery (Sunday Times). (less)"
4039,Fierce Kingdom,thriller,"The zoo is nearly empty as Joan and her four-year-old son soak up the last few moments of playtime. They are happy, and the day has been close to perfect. But what Joan sees as she hustles her son toward the exit gate minutes before closing time sends her sprinting back into the zoo, her child in her arms. And for the next three hours—the entire scope of the novel—she keeps on running.

Joan’s intimate knowledge of her son and of the zoo itself—the hidden pathways and under-renovation exhibits, the best spots on the carousel and overstocked snack machines—is all that keeps them a step ahead of danger.

A masterful thrill ride and an exploration of motherhood itself—from its tender moments of grace to its savage power—Fierce Kingdom asks where the boundary is between our animal instinct to survive and our human duty to protect one another. For whom should a mother risk her life? (less)"
4040,Genuine Fraud,thriller,"From the author of the unforgettable New York Times bestseller We Were Liars comes a masterful new psychological suspense novel--the story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life. But how many times can someone reinvent themselves? You be the judge.

Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.
Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete.
An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two.
A bad romance, or maybe three.
Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.
A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.
A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.

Praise for E. Lockhart's We Were Liars

""Haunting, sophisticated. . . . Twisty and well-told."" --The Wall Street Journal

""[It] will leave you dying to talk about the book with a pal or ten."" --Parade.com

""You're going to want to remember the title. Liars details the summers of a girl who harbors a dark secret, and delivers a satisfying but shocking twist ending."" --Entertainment Weekly

""An ambitious novel with an engaging voice, a clever plot and some terrific writing."" --The New York Times Book Review

""Thrilling, beautiful, and blisteringly smart, We Were Liars is utterly unforgettable."" --John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars (less)"
4041,Sleeping Beauties,thriller,"In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze.

If they are awakened, and the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place.

The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease.

Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied, or is she a demon who must be slain? (less)"
4042,Deep Storm,thriller,"Twelve-thousand feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean . . .
scientists are excavating the most extraordinary undersea discovery ever made. But is it the greatest archaeological find in history—or the most terrifying?

Former naval doctor Peter Crane is urgently summoned to a remote oil platform in the North Atlantic to help diagnose a bizarre medical condition spreading through the rig. But when he arrives, Crane learns that the real trouble lies far below—on “Deep Storm,” a stunningly advanced science research facility built two miles beneath the surface on the ocean floor. The top secret structure has been designed for one purpose: to excavate a recently discovered undersea site that may hold the answers to a mystery steeped in centuries of myth and speculation.

Sworn to secrecy, Dr. Crane descends to Deep Storm. A year earlier, he is told, routine drilling uncovered the remains of mankind’s most sophisticated ancient civilization: the legendary Atlantis. But now that the site is being excavated, a series of disturbing illnesses has begun to affect the operation. Scientists and technicians are experiencing a bizarre array of symptoms—from simple fatigue to violent psychotic episodes. As Crane is indoctrinated into the strange world of Deep Storm and commences his investigation, he begins to suspect that the covert facility conceals something more complicated than a medical mystery.The discovery of Atlantis might, in fact, be a cover for something far more sinister . . . and deadly.

Like Lincoln Child’s spectacular bestsellers coauthored with Douglas Preston (The Book of the Dead, Relic), Deep Storm melds scientific detail and gripping adventure in a superbly imagined, chillingly real journey into unknown territory. Child is a master of suspense, and Deep Storm is his most ambitious novel to date. (less)"
4043,Things We Do in the Dark,thriller,"When Paris Peralta is arrested in her own bathroom—covered in blood, holding a straight razor, her celebrity husband dead in the bathtub behind her—she knows she'll be charged with murder. But as bad as this looks, it's not what worries her the most. With the unwanted media attention now surrounding her, it's only a matter of time before someone from her long hidden past recognizes her and destroys the new life she's worked so hard to build, along with any chance of a future.

Twenty-five years earlier, Ruby Reyes, known as the Ice Queen, was convicted of a similar murder in a trial that riveted Canada in the early nineties. Reyes knows who Paris really is, and when she's unexpectedly released from prison, she threatens to expose all of Paris's secrets. Left with no other choice, Paris must finally confront the dark past she escaped, once and for all.

Because the only thing worse than a murder charge are two murder charges.

Things We Do in the Dark is a brilliant new thriller from Jennifer Hillier, the award-winning author of the breakout novels Little Secrets and Jar of Hearts. Paris Peralta is suspected of killing her celebrity husband, and her long-hidden past now threatens to destroy her future. (less)"
4044,The Nowhere Man,thriller,"He was once called Orphan X.

As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children's home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so deep that virtually no one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves.

One day, though, Evan's luck ran out . . .

Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what's happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help.

With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he's never encountered to have any chance of escape. He's got to save himself to protect those whose lives depend on him. Or die trying . . . (less)"
4045,El psicoanalista,thriller,"-Feliz 53 cumpleaños, doctor. Bienvenido al primer día de su muerte. Pertenezco a algún momento de su pasado. Usted arruinó mi vida. Quizá no sepa cómo por qué o cuándo, pero lo hizo. Llenó todos mis instantes de desastre y tristeza. Arruinó mi "
4046,The Leopard,thriller,"In the depths of winter, a killer stalks the city streets. His victims are two young women, both found with twenty-four inexplicable puncture wounds, both drowned in their own blood. The crime scenes offer no clues, the media is reaching fever pitch, and the police are running out of options. There is only one man who can help them, and he doesn't want to be found. Deeply traumatised by The Snowman investigation, which threatened the lives of those he holds most dear, Inspector Harry Hole has lost himself in the squalor of Hong Kong's opium dens. But with his father seriously ill in hospital, Harry reluctantly agrees to return to Oslo. He has no intention of working on the case, but his instinct takes over when a third victim is found brutally murdered in a city park.

The victims appear completely unconnected to one another, but it's not long before Harry makes a discovery: the women all spent the night in an isolated mountain hostel. And someone is picking off the guests one by one. A heart-stopping thriller from the bestselling author of the The Snowman, The Leopard is an international phenomenon that will grip you until the final page. (less)"
4047,The Coffin Dancer,thriller,"SOON TO BE A MAJOR TELEVISION EVENT FROM NBC, STARRING RUSSELL HORNSBY, ARIELLE KEBBEL, AND MICHAEL IMPERIOLI.

“Lincoln Rhyme is more relentless than ever” (People) and Jeffery Deaver delivers “supercharged tension” (USA TODAY) in this New York Times bestselling suspense masterwork.

NYPD criminalist Lincoln Rhyme joins his beautiful protégée Amelia Sachs, in the hunt for the Coffin Dancer—an ingenious killer who changes his appearance even faster than he adds to his trail of victims. They have only one clue: the madman has a tattoo of the Grim Reaper waltzing with a woman in front of a coffin. Rhyme must rely on his wits and intuition to track the elusive murderer through New York City—knowing they have only forty-eight hours before the Coffin Dancer strikes again.

This is a “heart-stopping” (Booklist) thriller from #1 international bestselling author Jeffery Deaver’s “simply outstanding” (San Jose Mercury News) Lincoln Rhyme series! (less)"
4048,Revival,thriller,"In a small New England town, in the early 60s, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister, Charles Jacobs. Soon they forge a deep bond, based on their fascination with simple experiments in electricity.

Decades later, Jamie is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll when he sees Jacobs again. Their meeting has profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil's devising, and Jamie discovers that ""revival"" has many meanings. (less)"
4049,Faithful Place,thriller,"Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and his girl, Rosie Daly, were all set to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd given him the brush-off--probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done. (less)"
4050,Broken,thriller,"When Special Agent Will Trent arrives in Grant County, he finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner's death. He doesn't understand why Officer Lena Adams is hiding secrets from him. He doesn't understand her role in the death of Grant County's popular police chief. He doesn't understand why that man's widow, Dr. Sara Linton, needs him now more than ever to help her crack this case.
While the police force investigates the murder of a young woman pulled from a frigid lake, Trent investigates the police force, putting pressure on Adams just when she's already about to crack. Caught between two complicated and determined women, trying to understand Linton's passionate distrust of Adams, the facts surrounding Chief Tolliver's death, and the complexities of this insular town, Trent will unleash a case filled with explosive secrets--and encounter a thin blue line that could be murderous if crossed. (less)"
4051,The Mephisto Club,thriller,"In Gerritsens latest New York Times bestseller, medical examiner Maura Isles and detective Jane Rizzoli take on a society of scholars that studies the history of evil--and the grisly killer it has spawned."
4052,The Doomsday Key,thriller,"James Rollins, the ""New York Times"" bestselling master of nail-biting suspense and historical mystery, combines cutting-edge biotechnology with a centuries-old secret in an apocalyptic story that reveals where humankind is truly headed

""The Doomsday Key""

At Princeton University, a famed geneticist dies inside a biohazard lab. In Rome, a Vatican archaeologist is found dead in St. Peter's Basilica. In Africa, a U.S. senator's son is slain outside a Red Cross camp. The three murders on three continents bear a horrifying connection: all the victims are marked by a Druidic pagan cross burned into their flesh.

The bizarre murders thrust Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force into a race against time to solve a riddle going back centuries, to a ghastly crime against humanity hidden within a cryptic medieval codex. The first clue is discovered inside a mummified corpse buried in an English peat bog -- a gruesome secret that threatens America and the world.

Aided by two women from his past -- one his exlover, the other his new partner -- Gray must piece together the horrifying truth. But the revelations come at a high cost, and to save the future, Gray will have to sacrifice one of the women at his side. That alone might not be enough, as the true path to salvation is revealed in a dark prophecy of doom.

Sigma Force confronts humankind's greatest threat in an adventure that races from the Roman Coliseum to the icy peaks of Norway, from the ruins of medieval abbeys to the lost tombs of Celtic kings. The ultimate nightmare is locked within a talisman buried by a dead saint -- an ancient artifact known as the Doomsday Key. (less)"
4053,The Bear and the Dragon,thriller,"Time and again, Tom Clancy's novels have been praised not only for their big-scale drama and propulsive narrative drive but for their cutting-edge prescience in predicting future events.
In The Bear and the Dragon, the future is very near at hand indeed.
Newly elected in his own right, Jack Ryan has found that being President has gotten no easier: domestic pitfalls await him at every turn; there's a revolution in Liberia; the Asian economy is going down the tubes; and now, in Moscow, someone may have tried to take out the chairman of the SVR--the former KGB--with a rocket-propelled grenade. Things are unstable enough in Russia without high-level assassination, but even more disturbing may be the identities of the potential assassins. Were they political enemies, the Russian Mafia, or disaffected former KGB? Or, Ryan wonders, is something far more dangerous at work here?
Ryan is right. For even while he dispatches his most trusted eyes and ears, including black ops specialist John Clark, to find out the truth of the matter, forces in China are moving ahead with a plan of truly audacious proportions. If they succeed, the world as we know it will never look the same. If they fail...the consequences will be unspeakable.
Blending the exceptional realism and authenticity that are his hallmarks with intricate plotting, razor-sharp suspense, and a remarkable cast of characters, this is Clancy at his best--and there is none better.
(less)"
4054,The Troop,thriller,"Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip; a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder -- shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry -- stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected ... and one another. (less)"
4055,Girl A,thriller,"Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared. (less)"
4056,The Lost Village,thriller,"The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.

But there will be no turning back.

Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:

They are not alone.

They’re looking for the truth…
But what if it finds them first? (less)"
4057,The Female of the Species,thriller,"A contemporary YA novel that examines rape culture through alternating perspectives.

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it.

Three years ago, when her older sister, Anna, was murdered and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best—the language of violence. While her own crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people. Not with Jack, the star athlete who wants to really know her but still feels guilty over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered. And not with Peekay, the preacher’s kid with a defiant streak who befriends Alex while they volunteer at an animal shelter. Not anyone.

As their senior year unfolds, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting these three teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever. (less)"
4058,Fallen,thriller,"There's no police training stronger than a cop's instinct. Faith Mitchell's mother isn't answering her phone. Her front door is open. There's a bloodstain above the knob. Her infant daughter is hidden in a shed behind the house. All that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations taught Faith Mitchell goes out the window when she charges into her mother's house, gun drawn. She sees a man dead in the laundry room. She sees a hostage situation in the bedroom. What she doesn't see is her mother. . . .


""""You know what we're here for. Hand it over, and we'll let her go.""""


When the hostage situation turns deadly, Faith is left with too many questions, not enough answers. To find her mother, she'll need the help of her partner, Will Trent, and they'll both need the help of trauma doctor Sara Linton. But Faith isn't just a cop anymore--she's a witness. She's also a suspect.


The thin blue line hides police corruption, bribery, even murder. Faith will have to go up against the people she respects the most in order to find her mother and bring the truth to light--or bury it forever.


Karin Slaughter's most exhilarating novel yet is a thrilling journey through the heart and soul, where the personal and the criminal collide, and conflicted loyalties threaten to destroy reputations and ruin lives. It is the work of a master of the thriller at the top of her game, and a whirlwind of unrelenting suspense. (less)"
4059,The Woman in the Library,thriller,"In every person's story, there is something to hide...

The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.

Award-winning author Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all. (less)"
4060,Moonraker,thriller,"‘For several minutes he stood speechless, his eyes dazzled by the terrible beauty of the greatest weapon on earth’

He’s a self-made millionaire, head of the Moonraker rocket programme and loved by the press. So why is Sir Hugo Drax cheating at cards? Bond has just five days to uncover the sinister truth behind a national hero, in Ian Fleming’s third 007 adventure."
4061,Playing Nice,thriller,"What if you found out that your family isn't yours at all? How far would you go to protect them? A gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Girl Before. . . .

Pete Riley answers the door one morning and lets in a parent's worst nightmare. On his doorstep is Miles Lambert, a stranger who breaks the devastating news that Pete's son, Theo, isn't actually his son--he is the Lamberts', switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they've been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again.

The two families, reeling from the shock, take comfort in shared good intentions, eagerly entwining their very different lives in the hope of becoming one unconventional modern family. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about the night their children were switched. How much can they trust the other parents--or even each other? What secrets are hidden behind the Lamberts' glossy front door? Stretched to the breaking point, Pete and Maddie discover they will each stop at nothing to keep their family safe.

They are done playing nice. (less)"
4062,Bunny,thriller,"Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ""Bunny,"" and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled ""Smut Salon,"" and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus ""Workshop"" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination. (less)"
4063,Never Let You Go,thriller,"Eleven years ago, Lindsey Nash escaped into the night with her young daughter and left an abusive relationship. Her ex-husband, Andrew, was sent to jail and Lindsey started over with a new life.

Now, Lindsey is older and wiser, with her own business and a teenage daughter who needs her more than ever. When Andrew is finally released from prison, Lindsey believes she has cut all ties and left the past behind her. But she gets the sense that someone is watching her, tracking her every move. Her new boyfriend is threatened. Her home is invaded, and her daughter is shadowed. Lindsey is convinced it's her ex-husband, even though he claims he's a different person. But has he really changed? Is the one who wants her dead closer to home than she thought? (less)"
4064,The Maze Runner,thriller,"There are alternate cover editions for this ASIN here and here.

If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.

Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.

Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.

Everything is going to change.

Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.

Remember. Survive. Run. (less)"
4065,All Your Twisted Secrets,thriller,"This thrilling debut, reminiscent of new fan favorites like One of Us Is Lying and the beloved classics by Agatha Christie, will leave readers guessing until the explosive ending.

Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.

What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.

Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die? (less)"
4066,The Husband,thriller,"What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill?

""So, we have your wife. You can get her back for 2 million cash.""

Landscape gardener Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of a joke. He was busy planting flower beds for one of his clients when his phone rang. Now he’s standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare.

Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. ""See that guy across the street?"" Rifle fire shatters the stillness as the man goes down, shot in the head. ""An object lesson.""

The caller doesn’t care that Mitch has no way of raising such a vast sum. He’s confident that Mitch will find a way. If he loves his wife enough.

Mitch does love her enough. He’s got sixty hours to prove it. He’ll pay anything. He’ll pay a lot more. than two million dollars.

From the master storyteller comes a story of love, tenacity and courage with the pace of a runaway train, ""The Husband"" is a thriller that holds the reader in its relentless grip from its tense opening to its shattering climax. (less)"
4067,Hostage,thriller,"You can save hundreds of lives. Or the one that matters most.

A claustrophobic thriller set over twenty hours on one airplane flight, with the heart-stopping tension of The Last Flight and the wrenching emotional intensity of Room, Hostage takes us on board the inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney.

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems of her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination. Someone who needs Mina's assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply.

It's twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours. (less)"
4068,The Devil and the Dark Water,thriller,"A murder on the high seas. A detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.

It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.

But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered.

And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.

Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.

The breathtaking new novel from Stuart Turton, author of the The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, winner of the Costa Best First Novel Award. (less)"
4069,Plum Island,thriller,"The hair-raising suspense of The General's Daughter... the wry wit of The Gold Coast...this is vintage Nelson DeMille at the peak of his originality and the height of his powers.
Wounded in the line of duty, NYPD homicide cop John Corey is convalescing in rural eastern Long Island when an attractive young couple he knows is found shot to death on the family patio. The victims were biologists at Plum Island, a research site rumored to be an incubator for germ warfare.Suddenly, a local double murder takes on shattering global implications -- and thrusts Corey and two extraordinary women into a dangerous search for the secret of PLUM ISLAND.... (less)"
4070,Dexter in the Dark,thriller,"In his work as a Miami crime scene investigator, Dexter Morgan is accustomed to seeing evil deeds...particulary because, on occasion, he rather enjoys committing them himself. Guided by his dark Passenger - the voice inside him that helps stalk his prey - he lives his outwardly normal life adhering to one simple rule: he only kills very bad people.

Dexter slides through life undetected, working as a blood splatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, helping his fiancee raise her two adorable (if somewhat...unique) children, and always planning his next jaunt as Dexter the Dark Avenger under the light of the full moon.

But everthing changes when Dexter is called to a gruesome double homicide. Dex realizes he's dealing with someone a whole lot more sinister than he is and it sends the Dark Passenger into hiding. And when something scares your friendly neighborhood serial killer, you know it's serious...

More used to inspiring fear then experiencing it, Dex must investigate, while simultaneously coping with his demanding family. If he's to save himself, and those around him, Dexter must pose questions he's never dared ask - where does evil come from, and does it hide inside everyone...? (less)"
4071,Cold Vengeance,thriller,"Devastated by the discovery that his wife, Helen, was murdered, Special Agent Pendergast must have retribution. But revenge is not simple. As he stalks his wife's betrayers-- a chase that takes him from the wild moors of Scotland to the bustling streets of New York and the darkest bayous of Louisiana-- he is also forced to dig further into Helen's past. And he is stunned to learn that Helen may have been a collaborator in her own murder.

Peeling back the layers of deception, Pendergast realizes that the conspiracy is deeper, goes back generations, and is more monstrous than he could have ever imagined-- and everything he's believed, everything he's trusted, everything he's understood . . . may be a horrific lie. (less)"
4072,Blue Moon,thriller,"“This is a random universe,” Reacher says. “Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.”

This isn’t one of those times.

Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. But you know what they say about good deeds. Now Reacher wants to make it right.

An elderly couple have made a few well-meaning mistakes, and now they owe big money to some very bad people. One brazen move leads to another, and suddenly Reacher finds himself a wanted man in the middle of a brutal turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs.

Reacher has to stay one step ahead of the loan sharks, the thugs, and the assassins. He teams up with a fed-up waitress who knows a little more than she’s letting on, and sets out to take down the powerful and make the greedy pay. It’s a long shot. The odds are against him. But Reacher believes in a certain kind of justice . . . the kind that comes along once in a blue moon. (less)"
4073,Sister,thriller,"Nothing can break the bond between sisters ...When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister's disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life - and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face.The police, Beatrice's fiance and even their mother accept they have lost Tess but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost. (less)"
4074,Little Monsters,thriller,"Kacey is the new girl in Broken Falls. When she moved in with her father, she stepped into a brand-new life. A life with a stepbrother, a stepmother, and strangest of all, an adoring younger half sister.

Kacey’s new life is eerily charming compared with the wild highs and lows of the old one she lived with her volatile mother. And everyone is so nice in Broken Falls—she’s even been welcomed into a tight new circle of friends. Bailey and Jade invite her to do everything with them.

Which is why it’s so odd when they start acting distant. And when they don’t invite her to the biggest party of the year, it doesn’t exactly feel like an accident.

But Kacey will never be able to ask, because Bailey never makes it home from that party. Suddenly, Broken Falls doesn’t seem so welcoming after all—especially once everyone starts looking to the new girl for answers.

Kacey is about to learn some very important lessons: Sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes when you’re the new girl, you shouldn’t trust anyone. (less)"
4075,A History of Wild Places,thriller,"Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend.

Called ""Pastoral,"" this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it… he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.

Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.

Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind. (less)"
4076,Layla,thriller,"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love.

When Leeds meets Layla, he’s convinced he’ll spend the rest of his life with her—until an unexpected attack leaves Layla fighting for her life. After weeks in the hospital, Layla recovers physically, but the emotional and mental scarring has altered the woman Leeds fell in love with. In order to put their relationship back on track, Leeds whisks Layla away to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. Once they arrive, Layla’s behavior takes a bizarre turn. And that’s just one of many inexplicable occurrences.

Feeling distant from Layla, Leeds soon finds solace in Willow—another guest of the B&B with whom he forms a connection through their shared concerns. As his curiosity for Willow grows, his decision to help her find answers puts him in direct conflict with Layla’s well-being. Leeds soon realizes he has to make a choice because he can’t help both of them. But if he makes the wrong choice, it could be detrimental for all of them.
(less)"
4077,Lightning,thriller,"The first time the lightning strikes Laura Shane is born...

The second time it strikes the terror starts... though eight-year-old Laura is saved by a mysterious stranger from the perverted and deadly intentions of a drug-crazed robber. Throughout her childhood she is plagued by ever more terrifying troubles, and with increasing courage she finds the strength to prevail - even without the intervention of her strange guardian. But, despite her success as a novelist and her happy family life, Laura cannot shake the certainty that powerful and malignant forces are controlling her destiny.

Then the lightning strikes once more and shatters her world. The adventure - and the terror - have only just begun... (less)"
4078,The Alexandria Link,thriller,"BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Steve Berry’s The Emperor’s Tomb and a Cotton Malone dossier.

Cotton Malone retired from the high-risk world of elite operatives for the U.S. Justice Department to lead the low-key life of a rare-book dealer. But his quiet existence is shattered when he receives an anonymous e-mail: “You have something I want. You’ re the only person on earth who knows where to find it. Go get it. You have 72 hours. If I don’t hear from you, you will be childless.” His horrified ex-wife confirms that the threat is real: Their teenage son has been kidnapped. When Malone’s Copenhagen bookshop is burned to the ground, it becomes brutally clear that those responsible will stop at nothing to get what they want. And what they want is nothing less than the lost Library of Alexandria.

A cradle of ideas–historical, philosophical, literary, scientific, and religious–the Library of Alexandria was unparalleled in the world. But fifteen hundred years ago, it vanished into the mists of myth and legend–its vast bounty of wisdom coveted ever since by scholars, fortune hunters, and those who believe its untold secrets hold the key to ultimate power.

Now a cartel of wealthy international moguls, bent on altering the course of history, is desperate to breach the library’s hallowed halls–and only Malone possesses the information they need to succeed. At stake is an explosive ancient document with the potential not only to change the destiny of the Middle East but to shake the world’s three major religions to their very foundations.

Pursued by a lethal mercenary, Malone crosses the globe in search of answers. His quest will lead him to England and Portugal, even to the highest levels of American government–and the shattering outcome, deep in the Sinai desert, will have worldwide repercussions. (less)"
4079,Blacktop Wasteland,thriller,"Beauregard ""Bug"" Montage: husband, father, honest car mechanic. But he was once known - from North Carolina to the beaches of Florida - as the best getaway driver on the East Coast. Just like his father, who disappeared many years ago.

After a series of financial calamities (worsened by the racial prejudices of the small town he lives in) Bug reluctantly takes part in a daring diamond heist to solve his money troubles - and to go straight once and for all. However, when it goes horrifically wrong, he's sucked into a grimy underworld which threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear . . . (less)"
4080,"Full Dark, No Stars",thriller,"""I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger..."" writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up ""1922."" the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In ""Big Driver,"" a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

""Fair Extension,"" the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitely ends a good marriage.

Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.
(front flap)

Contains:
1922
Big Driver
A Fair Extension
A Good Marriage (less)"
4081,The Crucifix Killer,thriller,"When the body of a young woman is discovered in a derelict cottage in the middle of Los Angeles National Forest, Homicide Detective Robert Hunter finds himself entering a horrific and recurring nightmare. Naked, strung from two parallel wooden posts, the victim was sadistically tortured before meeting an excruciatingly painful death.

All the skin has been ripped from her face - while she was still alive. On the nape of her neck has been carved a strange double-cross: the signature of a psychopath known as the Crucifix Killer. But that's impossible. Because two years ago, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed. Could this therefore be a copycat killer? Or could the unthinkable be true?

Is the real killer still out there, ready to embark once again on a vicious and violent killing spree, selecting his victims seemingly at random, taunting Robert Hunter with his inability to catch him? Hunter and his rookie partner are about to enter a nightmare beyond imagining. (less)"
4082,Body of Evidence,thriller,"After months of menacing phone calls and feeling that her every move is being watched, successful writer Beryl Madison flees Key West when a terrifying message is scratched on her car. But the very night she returns to Richmond, she deactivates her burglar alarm and opens her door to someone who nearly decapitates her. Why did she let him in, wonders Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta? And, why is Beryl's latest manuscript missing? Persuing the answers involves Scarpetta in the murder of another writer - Beryl's jealous mentor. While she copes with a variety of personal and professional problems, Scarpetta's high-tech forensic skills enable her to collect a body of evidence - clues that would mean little without her intelligence, compassion, and imagination - that leads her directly into a nightmare all her own. (less)"
4083,The End of Her,thriller,"It starts with a shocking accusation...

Stephanie and Patrick are recently married, with new-born twins. While Stephanie struggles with the disorienting effects of sleep deprivation, there’s one thing she knows for certain – she has everything she ever wanted.

Then a woman from his past arrives and makes a shocking accusation about his first wife. He always claimed her death was an accident – but she says it was murder.

He insists he’s innocent, that this is nothing but a blackmail attempt. But is Patrick telling the truth? Or has Stephanie made a terrible mistake?

How will it end? (less)"
4084,Magpie Murders,thriller,"Alan Conway is a bestselling crime writer. His editor, Susan Ryeland, has worked with him for years, and she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. Alan's traditional formula pays homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. It's proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.

When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pünd investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she’s realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript—one of ambition, jealousy, and greed—and that soon it will lead to murder.

Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage crime fiction. (less)"
4085,The Devil's Star,thriller,"A young woman is murdered in her Oslo flat. One finger has been severed from her left hand, and behind her eyelid is secreted a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star - a pentagram, the devil's star.

Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with his long-time adversary Tom Waaler and initially wants no part in it. But Harry is already on notice to quit the force and is left with little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor and get to work.

A wave of similar murders is on the horizon. An emerging pattern suggests that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands, and the five-pointed devil's star is key to solving the riddle. (less)"
4086,Gorky Park,thriller,"A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it. (less)"
4087,Ice Cold,thriller,"In Wyoming for a medical conference, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles joins a group of friends on a spur-of-the-moment ski trip. But when their SUV stalls on a snow-choked mountain road, they're stranded with no help in sight.
As night falls, the group seeks refuge from the blizzard in the remote village of Kingdom Come, where twelve eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Something terrible has happened in Kingdom Come: Meals sit untouched on tables, cars are still parked in garages. The town's previous residents seem to have vanished into thin air, but footprints in the snow betray the presence of someone who still lurks in the cold darkness--someone who is watching Maura and her friends.
Days later, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli receives the grim news that Maura's charred body has been found in a mountain ravine. Shocked and grieving, Jane is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow. As horrifying revelations come to light, Jane closes in on an enemy both powerful and merciless--and the chilling truth about Maura's fate.

Published in the UK as THE KILLING PLACE. (less)"
4088,The Escape,thriller,"It's a prison unlike any other. Military discipline rules. Its security systems are unmatched. None of its prisoners dream of escaping. They know it's impossible.
Until now.
John Puller's older brother, Robert, was convicted of treason and national security crimes. His inexplicable escape from prison makes him the most wanted criminal in the country. Some in the government believe that John Puller represents their best chance at capturing Robert alive, and so Puller takes on the burden of bringing his brother in to face justice.
But Puller quickly discovers that there are others pursuing his brother, who only see Robert as a traitor and are unconcerned if he survives. Puller is in turn pushed into an uneasy, fraught partnership with another agent, who may have an agenda of her own.

They dig more deeply into the case together, and Puller finds that not only are her allegiances unclear, but that there are troubling details about his brother's conviction....and that someone is out there who doesn't want the truth to ever come to light. As the nation-wide manhunt for Robert grows more urgent, Puller's masterful skills as an investigator and strength as a fighter may not be enough to save his brother-or himself.
(less)"
4089,Frankenstein: The 1818 Text,thriller,"This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson. (less)"
4090,Separation of Power,thriller,"CIA superagent Mitch Rapp is back in action in Vince Flynn's high-velocity New York Times bestseller.
Newly appointed CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy is the target of an inside plot to destroy her and prematurely end the American President's term. To make matters worse, Saddam Hussein is close to entering the nuclear arms race -- something Israel has vowed to stop. With the haunting specter of World War III looming, the President calls on his secret weapon: top counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp. But with only two weeks to take out the nukes, Rapp is up against a ticking clock -- and impossible odds. (less)"
4091,Rose Madder,thriller,"Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realisation that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight – with his credit card.

Alone in a strange city, Rosie begins to build a new life: she meets Bill Steiner and she finds an old junk shop painting, ""Rose Madder,"" which strangely seems to want her as much as she wants it.

But it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder. Rose-maddened and on the rampage, Norman is a corrupt cop with a dog’s instinct for tracking people. And he’s getting close. Rosie can feel just how close he is getting…

A brilliant dark-hued fable of gender wars, a haunting love story, and a hold-your-breath triumph of suspense, ""Rose Madder"" is Stephen King at his electrifying best. (less)"
4092,The Elephant Tree,thriller,"Mark Fallon is an overworked detective investigating a spate of attacks at a string of high profile city centre nightclubs. Scott is a dejected 24 year old struggling to make ends meet working for his brother and supplementing his income with a small-scale drug dealing operation. Angela is an attractive 23 year old, raised by her father, a career criminal and small time drug dealer who supplies Scott with cannabis. This is a chilling tale spanning a few months in the lives of Scott and Angela, where realizations about the present combine with shocking revelations from the past leading to an apocalyptic climax where they no longer know whom they can trust. (less)"
4093,Passagier 23,thriller,"Jedes Jahr verschwinden durchschnittlich 23 Passagiere spurlos auf Kreuzfahrtschiffen.
Noch nie ist jemand zurückgekommen .... bis jetzt!
Passagier 23
Eine Transatlantikpassage wird zum Albtraum.
Packender Psychothrill auf hoher See - ein Ort, wie geschaffen für das perfekte Verbrechen - ohne Polizei und ohne Entkommen."
4094,The Wrong Family,thriller,"Have you ever been wrong about someone?

Juno was wrong about Winnie Crouch.

Before moving in with the Crouch family, Juno thought Winnie and her husband, Nigel, had the perfect marriage, the perfect son—the perfect life. Only now that she’s living in their beautiful house, she sees the cracks in the crumbling facade are too deep to ignore.

Still, she isn’t one to judge. After her grim diagnosis, the retired therapist simply wants a place to live out the rest of her days in peace. But that peace is shattered the day Juno overhears a chilling conversation between Winnie and Nigel…

She shouldn’t get involved.

She really shouldn’t.

But this could be her chance to make a few things right.

Because if you thought Juno didn’t have a secret of her own, then you were wrong about her, too. (less)"
4095,Thinner,thriller,"Billy Halleck, good husband and loving father, is both beneficiary and victim of the American good life: He has an expensive home, a nice family, and a rewarding career as a lawyer...but he is also fifty pounds overweight and edging into heart attack country."
4096,The Last Mile,thriller,"Convicted murderer Melvin Mars is counting down the last hours before his execution--for the violent killing of his parents twenty years earlier--when he's granted an unexpected reprieve. Another man has confessed to the crime.

Amos Decker, newly hired on an FBI special task force, takes an interest in Mars's case after discovering the striking similarities to his own life: Both men were talented football players with promising careers cut short by tragedy. Both men's families were brutally murdered. And in both cases, another suspect came forward, years after the killing, to confess to the crime. A suspect who may or may not have been telling the truth.

The confession has the potential to make Melvin Mars--guilty or not--a free man. Who wants Mars out of prison? And why now?

But when a member of Decker's team disappears, it becomes clear that something much larger--and more sinister--than just one convicted criminal's life hangs in the balance. Decker will need all of his extraordinary brainpower to stop an innocent man from being executed. (less)"
4097,Dear Wife,thriller,"From the bestselling author of The Marriage Lie and Three Days Missing comes a riveting new novel of suspense about a woman who, in a fight for survival, must decide just how far she'll go to escape the person she once loved

Beth Murphy is on the run...

For nearly a year, Beth has been planning for this day. A day some people might call any other Wednesday, but Beth prefers to see it as her new beginning--one with a new look, new name and new city. Beth has given her plan significant thought, because one small slip and her violent husband will find her.

Sabine Hardison is missing...

A couple hundred miles away, Jeffrey returns home from a work trip to find his wife, Sabine, is missing. Wherever she is, she's taken almost nothing with her. Her abandoned car is the only evidence the police have, and all signs point to foul play.

As the police search for leads, the case becomes more and more convoluted. Sabine's carefully laid plans for her future indicate trouble at home, and a husband who would be better off with her gone. The detective on the case will stop at nothing to find out what happened and bring this missing woman home. Where is Sabine? And who is Beth? The only thing that's certain is that someone is lying and the truth won't stay buried for long. (less)"
4098,The Summons,thriller,"Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep.
And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.
With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.
Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.
And perhaps someone else. (less)"
4099,Pop Goes the Weasel,thriller,"Detective Alex Cross is back-and he's in love. But his happiness is threatened by a series of chilling murders in Washington, D.C., murders with a pattern so twisted they leave investigators reeling. Cross's pursuit of the killer produces a suspect, a British diplomat named Geoffrey Shafer. But proving he's the murderer becomes a potentially deadly task. As Shafer engages in a brilliant series of surprising counter moves, Alex and his fiancee become hopelessly entangled with the most memorable nemesis Cross has ever faced. (less)"
4100,Let Me Lie,thriller,"The police say it was suicide.
Anna says it was murder.
They're both wrong.

One year ago, Caroline Johnson chose to end her life brutally: a shocking suicide planned to match that of her husband just months before. Their daughter, Anna, has struggled to come to terms with their loss ever since.

Now with a young baby of her own, Anna misses her mother more than ever and starts to question her parents’ deaths. But by digging up their past, she’ll put her future in danger. Sometimes it’s safer to let things lie…

The stunning, twisty new psychological thriller from number one bestseller Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go and I See You. (less)"
4101,The Kept Woman,thriller,"Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. The past and the future.

Secrets bind them. And secrets can destroy them.

The author of Pretty Girls returns with an electrifying, emotionally complex thriller that plunges its fascinating protagonist into the darkest depths of a mystery that just might destroy him.

With the discovery of a murder at an abandoned construction site, Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is brought in on a case that becomes much more dangerous when the dead man is identified as an ex-cop.

Studying the body, Sara Linton—the GBI’s newest medical examiner and Will’s lover—realizes that the extensive blood loss didn't belong to the corpse. Sure enough, bloody footprints leading away from the scene indicate there is another victim—a woman—who has vanished . . . and who will die soon if she isn’t found.

Will is already compromised, because the site belongs to the city’s most popular citizen: a wealthy, powerful, and politically connected athlete protected by the world’s most expensive lawyers—a man who’s already gotten away with rape, despite Will’s exhaustive efforts to put him away.

But the worst is yet to come. Evidence soon links Will’s troubled past to the case . . . and the consequences will tear through his life with the force of a tornado, wreaking havoc for Will and everyone around him, including his colleagues, family, friends—and even the suspects he pursues.

Relentlessly suspenseful and furiously paced, peopled with conflicted, fallible characters who leap from the page, The Kept Woman is a seamless blend of twisty police procedural and ingenious psychological thriller -- a searing, unforgettable novel of love, loss, and redemption. 

  (less)"
4102,Apples Never Fall,thriller,"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty comes a novel that looks at marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest

The Delaney family love one another dearly—it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other . . .

If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father?

This is the dilemma facing the four grown Delaney siblings.

The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killers on the tennis court, and off it their chemistry is palpable. But after fifty years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable?

The four Delaney children—Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke—were tennis stars in their own right, yet as their father will tell you, none of them had what it took to go all the way. But that’s okay, now that they’re all successful grown-ups and there is the wonderful possibility of grandchildren on the horizon.

One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that was all she wanted.

Later, when Joy goes missing, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide. Two of the Delaney children think their father is innocent, two are not so sure—but as the two sides square off against each other in perhaps their biggest match ever, all of the Delaneys will start to reexamine their shared family history in a very new light. (less)"
4103,The Cellar,thriller,"Nothing ever happens in the town of Long Thorpe – that is, until sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson disappears without a trace. No family or police investigation can track her down. Spending months inside the cellar of her kidnapper with several other girls, Summer learns of Colin’s abusive past, and his thoughts of his victims being his family…his perfect, pure flowers. But flowers can’t survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out…. (less)"
4104,Missing You,thriller,"It's a profile, like all the others on the online dating site. But as NYPD Detective Kat Donovan focuses on the accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode, as emotions she’s ignored for decades come crashing down on her. Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who shattered her heart—and who she hasn’t seen in 18 years.

Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light, in which monsters prey upon the most vulnerable. 

As the body count mounts and Kat's hope for a second chance with Jeff grows more and more elusive, she is consumed by an investigation that challenges her feelings about everyone she ever loved—her former fiancé, her mother, and even her father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained. With lives on the line, including her own, Kat must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before, and discover if she has the strength to survive what she finds there. (less)"
4105,The Last Oracle,thriller,"In Washington, D.C., a homeless man dies in Commander Gray Pierce's arms, shot by an assassin's bullet. But the death leaves behind a greater mystery: a bloody coin found clutched in the dead man's hand, an ancient relic that can be traced back to the Greek Oracle of Delphi. As ruthless hunters search for the stolen artifact, Gray Pierce discovers that the coin is the key to unlocking a plot that dates back to the Cold War and threatens the very foundation of humanity.

An international think tank of scientists known as the Jasons has discovered a way to bioengineer autistic children who show savant talents—mathematical geniuses, statistical masterminds, brilliant conceptual artists—into something far greater and far more ""frightening,"" in hopes of creating a world prophet for the new millennium, one to be manipulated to create a new era of global peace... a peace on their own terms.

Halfway around the world, a man wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of who he is, knowing only that he's a prisoner in a subterranean research facility. With the help of three unusual children, he makes his escape across a mountainous and radioactive countryside, pursued by savage hunters bred in the same laboratory. But his goal is not escape, nor even survival. In order to thwart a plot to wipe out a quarter of the world's population, he must sacrifice all, even the children who rescued him.

From ancient Greek temples to glittering mausoleums, from the slums of India to the toxic ruins of Russia, two men must race against time to solve a mystery that dates back to the first famous oracle of history—the Greek Oracle of Delphi.

But one question remains: ""Will the past be enough to save the future?"" (less)"
4106,The Secrets She Keeps,thriller,"In the bestselling tradition of The Girl on the Train and In a Dark, Dark Wood, from the internationally bestselling author whom Stephen King called “an absolute master” of the psychological thriller, comes a riveting suspense novel about the unlikely friendship between two pregnant women that asks: how far would you go to create the perfect family?

Agatha is pregnant and works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. Meghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog—posts that Agatha reads with devotion each night as she waits for her absent boyfriend, the father of her baby, to maybe return her calls.

When Agatha learns that Meghan is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she finally musters up the courage to speak to her, thrilled that they now have the ordeal of childbearing in common. Little does Meghan know that the mundane exchange she has with a grocery store employee during a hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life forever…

With its brilliant rendering of the secrets some women hold close and a shocking act that cannot be undone, The Secrets She Keeps delivers a dark and twisted page-turner that is absolutely impossible to put down. (less)"
4107,The Perfect Stranger,thriller,"Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later.

Determined to find Emmy, Leah cooperates with Kyle Donovan, a handsome young police officer on the case. As they investigate her friend’s life for clues, Leah begins to wonder: did she ever really know Emmy at all? With no friends, family, or a digital footprint, the police begin to suspect that there is no Emmy Grey. Soon Leah’s credibility is at stake, and she is forced to revisit her past: the article that ruined her career. To save herself, Leah must uncover the truth about Emmy Grey—and along the way, confront her old demons, find out who she can really trust, and clear her own name.

Everyone in this rural Pennsylvanian town has something to hide—including Leah herself. How do you uncover the truth when you are busy hiding your own? (less)"
4108,The Son,thriller,"The author of the internationally best-selling Harry Hole series now gives us an electrifying stand-alone novel set amid Oslo's hierarchy of corruption, from which one very unusual young man is about to propel himself into a mission of brutal revenge. 

Sonny Lofthus, in his early thirties, has been in prison for the last dozen years: serving time for crimes he didn't commit. In exchange, he gets an uninterrupted supply of heroin—and the unexpected stream of fellow prisoners seeking out his uncanny abilities to soothe and absolve. His addiction started when his father committed suicide rather than be exposed as a corrupt cop, and now Sonny is the center of a vortex of corruption: prison staff, police, lawyers, a desperate priest—all of them focused on keeping him stoned and jailed, and all of them under the thumb of Oslo's crime overlord, the Twin. When Sonny learns some long-hidden truths about his father he makes a brilliant escape, and begins hunting down the people responsible for the hideous crimes he's paid for. But he's also being hunted, by the Twin, the cops, and the only person who knows the ultimate truth that Sonny is seeking. The question is, what will he do when they've cornered him?  (less)"
4109,The Roanoke Girls,thriller,"Lane Roanoke is fifteen when she comes to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin at the Roanoke family's rural estate following the suicide of her mother. Over one long, hot summer, Lane experiences the benefits of being one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls.

But what she doesn't know is being a Roanoke girl carries a terrible legacy: either the girls run, or they die. For there is darkness at the heart of Roanoke, and when Lane discovers its insidious pull, she must make her choice... (less)"
4110,The Perfect Child,thriller,"A page-turning debut of suspense about a young couple desperate to have a child of their own—and the unsettling consequences of getting what they always wanted.
Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.
But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie’s true nature.
Hannah knows that Janie is manipulating Christopher and isolating him from her, despite Hannah’s attempts to bring them all together. But as Janie’s behavior threatens to tear Christopher and Hannah apart, the truth behind Janie’s past may be enough to push them all over the edge.
(less)"
4111,The Child Finder,thriller,"A haunting, atmospheric, and deeply suspenseful novel from the acclaimed author of The Enchanted about an investigator who must use her unique insights to find a missing little girl.

""Where are you, Madison Culver? Flying with the angels, a silver speck on a wing? Are you dreaming, buried under snow? Or—is it possible—you are still alive?""

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon’s Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now—if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as ""the Child Finder,"" Naomi is their last hope.

Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.

As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?

Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive. (less)"
4112,The Mysterious Affair at Styles,thriller,"Agatha Christie's debut novel was also the first to feature Hercule Poirot, her famously eccentric Belgian detective.

A refugee of the Great War, Poirot has settled in England near Styles Court, the country estate of his wealthy benefactor, the elderly Emily Inglethorp. When Emily is poisoned and the authorities are baffled, Poirot puts his prodigious sleuthing skills to work. Suspects are plentiful, including the victim’s much younger husband, her resentful stepsons, her longtime hired companion, a young family friend working as a nurse, and a London specialist on poisons who just happens to be visiting the nearby village.

All of them have secrets they are desperate to keep, but none can outwit Poirot as he navigates the ingenious red herrings and plot twists that contribute to Agatha Christie's well-deserved reputation as the queen of mystery.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on Goodreads. (less)"
4113,Stone Cold,thriller,"The #1 bestselling author of ""The Camel Club"" and ""The Collectors"" returns with STONE COLD, number 3 in the series. It's an unforgettable novel of revenge, conspiracy, and murder that brings the band of unlikely heroes face-to-face with their greatest threat.

Oliver Stone, the leader of the mysterious group that calls itself the Camel Club, is both feared and respected. Keeping a vigilant watch over our leaders in Washington D.C., the club has won some allies, but it has also earned formidable enemies - including some who will do anything to prevent the Club from uncovering the secret work of the government.

Annabelle Conroy, an honorary member of the Camel Club, is also the greatest con artist of her generation. She has swindled more than forty million dollars from casino king Jerry Bagger. Now he's hot on her trail. Then a new opponent, who makes Bagger's menace pale by comparison, suddenly arises. One by one, men from Stone's shadowy past are turning up dead. Behind this slaughter stands one man: Harry Finn. A doting father or an unstoppable killer with his lethal bull's-eye on Oliver Stone? STONE COLD is Baldacci at his breathtaking best.

Librarian's note: this is one of five volumes in the author's Camel Club series: 1. The Camel Club (2005), 2. The Collectors (2006), 3. Stone Cold (2007), Divine Justice (2008), and 5. Hell's Corner (2010). (less)"
4114,The Body Farm,thriller,"The Body Farm - a research institute that tests the decomposition of corpses. Black Mountain, North Carolina: a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they're unlucky, and where people are still getting used to the idea of locking their doors at night. But violent death is no respecter of venue, and the discovery of the corpse of an 11-year-old girl sends shock waves through the community. Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief medical Examiner on a similar case in Virginia, is called in to apply her forensic skills to this latest atrocity, but the apparent simplicity of the case proves something of a poisoned chalice - until Scarpetta finds enlightenment through the curious pathologists' playground known as the Body Farm.

From Author’s Website (less)"
4115,Lying in Wait,thriller,"My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.

On the surface, Lydia Fitzsimons has the perfect life—wife of a respected, successful judge, mother to a beloved son, mistress of a beautiful house in Dublin. That beautiful house, however, holds a secret. And when Lydia’s son, Laurence, discovers its secret, wheels are set in motion that lead to an increasingly claustrophobic and devastatingly dark climax.

From the international bestselling author of Unraveling Oliver, an “unputdownable psychological thriller with an ending that lingers long after turning the final page” (The Irish Times) about a Dublin family whose dark secrets and twisted relationships are suddenly revealed. (less)"
4116,Consent to Kill,thriller,"For years, Mitch Rapp's bold actions have saved the lives of countless Americans. He has killed with impunity, tortured to avert disaster, and shown he will do whatever it takes to prevent terrorists from fulfilling their bloody wishes. His battles for peace and freedom have made him a hero to many, and an enemy to countless more. In the tangled, duplicitous world of espionage, there are those, even among America's allies, who want to see Mitch Rapp eliminated. They have decided the time has come.Now, the powerful father of a dead terrorist demands vengeance in its simplest form -- an eye for an eye, and Rapp instantly becomes the target of an international conspiracy. This time, he must use all of his vigilance and determination to save himself before he can turn his fury on those who have dared to betray him. (less)"
4117,Memorial Day,thriller,"Fighting terrorism on foreign ground, CIA superagent Mitch Rapp does whatever it takes to protect American freedom.
CIA intelligence has pointed to a major terrorist attack on the United States, just as the nation's capital prepares for a grand Memorial Day tribute to the veterans of World War II. Racing to Afghanistan, Mitch Rapp leads a commando raid on an al Queda stronghold in a remote border village—and defuses plans for a nuclear strike on Washington. The crisis averted, the special ops work is done. But Rapp knows, in the face of a new kind of enemy, nothing is as it seems—and it's up to him alone to avert a disaster of unimaginable proportions. (less)"
4118,Act of Treason,thriller,"CIA operative Mitch Rapp follows a trail of contract killers leading directly to the heart of our nation's capital in New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn's eighth explosive thriller.
It's a gorgeous autumn day in Georgetown. The Democratic candidates for president and vice president of the United States are dutifully glad-handing voters and the media outside a grand estate where a national security conference has just been held, bringing together the world's greatest minds to discuss the issues that are threatening the country. It's American politicking at its best. That's when all hell breaks loose.
When presidential candidate Josh Alexander's motorcade is ambushed by a group of terrorists, the nation is thrown into turmoil. Two weeks following the attack, Alexander is carried to victory by a sympathy vote, but his assailants have not been found. On the surface it appears to be the work of al-Qaeda, despite the tremendous job that the U.S. and her allies have done eliminating terrorist cells within the heart of America. While the FBI and the rest of the government begin scouring the world for jihadists, CIA director Irene Kennedy and Special Agent Skip McMahon are presented with classified information so toxic that they consider destroying it altogether, as it contains intelligence pointing to some of the most powerful players in Washington.
Enter Mitch Rapp, the one man reckless enough to follow the evidence to its explosive conclusion. His journey takes him through the shadowy world of contract killers, into the darkest corners of the globe, and eventually back to Washington, where the fragile pillars of power are shaken to their core.
(less)"
4119,Birdman,thriller,"Greenwich, south-east London. The Met's crack murder squad, AMIP, is called out by nervous CID detectives to a grim discovery. Five bodies, all young women, all ritualistically murdered and dumped on wasteland near the Dome. As each post-mortem reveals a singular, horrific signature linking the victims, officers realize that they are on the trail of that most dangerous offender: a sexual serial killer.

Detective Inspector Jack Caffery - young, driven, unshockable - finds himself facing both hostility within the force and echoes of his past in this, his first case with AMIP. Haunted by the memory of a death long ago, he employs every weapon forensic science can offer for he knows it is only a matter of time before this chaotic, sadistic killer strikes again. (less)"
4120,The Whisperer,thriller,"A gripping literary thriller and smash bestseller that has taken Italy, France, Germany and the UK by storm.

Six severed arms are discovered, arranged in a mysterious circle and buried in a clearing in the woods. Five of them appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. The sixth is yet to be identified. Worse still, the girls' bodies, alive or dead, are nowhere to be found.

Lead investigators Mila Vasquez, a celebrated profiler, and Goran Gavila, an eerily prescient criminologist, dive into the case. They're confident they've got the right suspect in their sights until they discover no link between him and any of the kidnappings except the first. The evidence in the case of the second missing child points in a vastly different direction, creating more questions than it answers.

Vasquez and Gavila begin to wonder if they've been brought in to take the fall in a near-hopeless case. Is it all coincidence? Or is a copycat criminal at work? Obsessed with a case that becomes more tangled and intense as they unravel the layers of evil, Gavila and Vasquez find that their lives are increasingly in each other's hands.

THE WHISPERER, as sensational a bestseller in Europe as the Stieg Larsson novels, is that rare creation: a thought-provoking, intelligent thriller that is also utterly unputdownable. (less)"
4121,The English Assassin,thriller,"The Unlikely Spy, Daniel Silva's extraordinary debut novel, was applauded by critics as it rocketed onto national bestseller lists. Now Silva has outdone himself, with a taut, lightning-paced thriller rooted assuredly in fact: Switzerland's shameful WWII record of profiteering and collaboration with Nazi Germany.

When art restorer and occasional Israeli agent Gabriel Allon is sent to Zurich, Switzerland, to restore the painting of a reclusive millionaire banker, he arrives to find his would-be employer murdered at the foot of his Raphael. A secret collection of priceless, illicitly gained Impressionist masterpieces is missing. Gabriel's handlers step out of the shadows to admit the truth-the collector had been silenced-and Gabriel is put back in the high-stakes spy game, battling wits with the rogue assassin he helped to train.

Tense, taut, expertly crafted, and brimming with unexpected reversals, The English Assassin is Daniel Silva at his storytelling best (less)"
4122,Executive Power,thriller,"CIA superagent Mitch Rapp battles global terrorism in a high-octane follow-up to The New York Times bestselling Separation of Power -- another chillingly authentic adventure from the master of the political thriller. Mitch Rapp's cover has been blown. After leading a team of commandos deep into Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from joining the nuclear arms race, he was publicly hailed by the president as the single most important person in the fight against terrorism. But after years of working covertly behind the scenes, Rapp now lives in the glare of the public spotlight, lauded by the nation and an easy target for virtually every terrorist from Jakarta to London.

As special advisor on counterterrorism to CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy, Rapp is ready to fight the war on terrorism from CIA headquarters rather than the front line. That is, until a platoon of Navy SEALs, sent to the Philippines to save an American family kidnapped by radical Islamic terrorists, is caught in a deadly ambush. The mission had been top secret -- so who told the enemy? All evidence points to the State Department and the Philippine embassy. But a greater threat still lurks. An unknown assassin working closely with the highest powers in the Middle East is bent on igniting war. Now, with the world watching his every move, will Rapp be able to overcome this anonymous foe and once again keep the flames of war from raging?

Transporting us into an intriguing geopolitical puzzle full of deadly motives, covert operatives, and all the true-to-life insider detail we've come to expect from Vince Flynn, ""Executive Power"" is a high-flying story that delivers shattering suspense with the velocity of a 9mmbullet. (less)"
4123,Cockroaches,thriller,"When the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help hush up the case.

But once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more than one random murder. There is something else, something more pervasive, scrabbling around behind the scenes. Or, put another way, for every cockroach you see in your hotel room, there are hundreds behind the walls. Surrounded by round-the-clock traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok lined with go-go bars, temples, opium dens, and tourist traps, trying to piece together the story of the ambassador’s death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to—not even Harry himself. (less)"
4124,Broken Harbor,thriller,"Mick “Scorcher"" Kennedy is the star of the Dublin Murder Squad. He plays by the books and plays hard, and thatʼs how the biggest case of the year ends up in his hands.

On one of the half-abandoned ""luxury"" developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children have been murdered. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care. At first, Scorcher thinks itʼs going to be an easy solve, but too many small things canʼt be explained: the half-dozen baby monitors pointed at holes smashed in the Spainsʼ walls, the files erased from the familyʼs computer, the story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder slipping past the houseʼs locks. And this neighborhood—once called Broken Harbor—holds memories for Scorcher and his troubled sister, Dina: childhood memories that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control. (less)"
4125,The Absent One,thriller,"In ""The Keeper of Lost Causes,"" Jussi Adler-Olsen introduced Detective Carl Mørck, a deeply flawed but brilliant detective newly assigned to run Department Q, the home of Copenhagen’s coldest cases.

The result wasn’t what Mørck—or readers—expected, but by the opening of Adler-Olsen’s shocking, fast-paced follow-up, Mørck is satisfied with the notion of picking up long-cold leads. So he’s naturally intrigued when a closed case lands on his desk: A brother and sister were brutally murdered two decades earlier, and one of the suspects—part of a group of privileged boarding-school students—confessed and was convicted.

But once Mørck reopens the files, it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Looking into the supposedly solved case leads him to Kimmie, a woman living on the streets, stealing to survive. Kimmie has mastered evading the police, but now they aren’t the only ones looking for her. Because Kimmie has secrets that certain influential individuals would kill to keep buried . . . as well as one of her own that could turn everything on its head. (less)"
4126,White Fire,thriller,"Special Agent Pendergast arrives at an exclusive Colorado ski resort to rescue his protégée, Corrie Swanson, from serious trouble with the law. His sudden appearance coincides with the first attack of a murderous arsonist who--with brutal precision--begins burning down multimillion-dollar mansions with the families locked inside. After springing Corrie from jail, Pendergast learns she made a discovery while examining the bones of several miners who were killed 150 years earlier by a rogue grizzly bear. Her finding is so astonishing that it, even more than the arsonist, threatens the resort's very existence.

Drawn deeper into the investigation, Pendergast uncovers a mysterious connection between the dead miners and a fabled, long-lost Sherlock Holmes story--one that might just offer the key to the modern day killings as well.

Now, with the ski resort snowed in and under savage attack--and Corrie's life suddenly in grave danger--Pendergast must solve the enigma of the past before the town of the present goes up in flames. (less)"
4127,Hold Tight,thriller,"Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they'd become the type of overprotective parents who spy on their kids. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately, and after the suicide of his classmate Spencer Hill - the latest in a string of issues at school - they can't help but worry. They install a sophisticated spy program on Adam's computer, and within days they are jolted by a message from an unknown correspondent addressed to their son - 'Just stay quiet and all safe.'

Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for Spencer put together by his classmates, Betsy Hill is struck by a photo that appears to have been taken on the night of her son's death and he wasn't alone. She thinks it is Adam Baye standing just outside the camera's range; but when Adam goes missing, it soon becomes clear that something deep and sinister has infected their community. For Tia and Mike Baye, the question they must answer is this: when it comes to your kids, is it possible to know too much? (less)"
4128,The Associate,thriller,"If you thought Mitch McDeere was in trouble in The Firm, wait until you meet Kyle McAvoy.
Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father's small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.

But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn't want, even if it's a job most law students can only dream about.

Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.

With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains, from drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist Baxter Tate to quiet former math teacher Dale who shares Kyle's cubicle at the law firm, The Associate is vintage Grisham. (less)"
4129,The Rule of Four,thriller,"An ivy league murder, a mysterious coded manuscript, and the secrets of a Renaissance prince collide memorably in The Rule of Four -- a brilliant work of fiction that weaves together suspense and scholarship, high art and unimaginable treachery.

It's Easter at Princeton. Seniors are scrambling to finish their theses. And two students, Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris, are a hair's breadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili--a renowned text attributed to an Italian nobleman, a work that has baffled scholars since its publication in 1499. For Tom, their research has been a link to his family's past -- and an obstacle to the woman he loves. For Paul, it has become an obsession, the very reason for living. But as their deadline looms, research has stalled -- until a long-lost diary surfaces with a vital clue. And when a fellow researcher is murdered just hours later, Tom and Paul realize that they are not the first to glimpse the Hypnerotomachia 's secrets.

Suddenly the stakes are raised, and as the two friends sift through the codes and riddles at the heart of the text, they are beginnning to see the manuscript in a new light--not simply as a story of faith, eroticism and pedantry, but as a bizarre, coded mathematical maze. And as they come closer and closer to deciphering the final puzzle of a book that has shattered careers, friendships and families, they know that their own lives are in mortal danger. Because at least one person has been killed for knowing too much. And they know even more.

From the streets of fifteenth-century Rome to the rarified realm of Princeton, from a shocking 500 year-old murder scene to the drama of a young man's coming of age, The Rule of Four takes us on an entertaining, illuminating tour of history--as it builds to a pinnacle of nearly unbearable suspense. (less)"
4130,Brother Odd,thriller,"""Loop me in, odd one.""

The words, spoken in the deep of night by a sleeping child, chill the young man watching over her. For this was a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn, his lost love, and Stormy is dead, gone forever from this world. In the haunted halls of the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas is stalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature... (less)"
4131,Winter Counts,thriller,"A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx. 

Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.

They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost. (less)"
4132,A Nearly Normal Family,thriller,"""...A compulsively readable tour de force."" --The Wall Street Journal

New York Times Book Review recommends M.T. Edvardsson's A Nearly Normal Family and lauds it as a ""page-turner"" that forces the reader to confront ""the compromises we make with ourselves to be the people we believe our beloveds expect."" (NYTimes Book Review Summer Reading Issue)

When the teenage daughter of responsible, upstanding parents is accused of murder, a family realizes that it isn't love that will keep them together: it's lies.

Eighteen-year-old Stella Sandell stands accused of the brutal murder of a man almost fifteen years her senior. She is an ordinary teenager from a respectable local family. What reason could she have to know a shady businessman, let alone to kill him?

Told in an unusual three-part structure, this gripping, domestic drama pushes a family to its limits. The father, a pastor, believes his daughter can only be innocent, despite mounting evidence. The mother, a defense attorney, believes no one is telling the truth. And the daughter, desperate for her dreams of the future, believes no one understands how far she is willing to go.

In this complex, multi-layered novel, every character's loyalty and morality is tested. Are we duty-bound to defend our family, even with the evidence against them? Is anyone who they seem on the surface? And what are we willing to compromise to keep our lives, as we know them, intact? (less)"
4133,The Eight,thriller,"Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger, and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years...In the South of France in 1790 two convent girls hide valuable pieces of a chess set all over the world, because the game that can be played with them is too powerful.... (less)"
4134,Hour Game,thriller,"He's copying famous serial killers.
And the HOUR GAME has just begun...

A woman is found murdered in the woods. It seems like a simple case but it soon escalates into a terrible nightmare. Someone is replicating the killing styles of the most infamous murderers of all time. No one knows this criminal's motives...or who will die next.

Two ex-Secret Service agents, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, have been hired to defend a man's innocence in a burglary involving an aristocratic family. Then a series of secrets leads the partners right into the frantic hunt that is confounding even the FBI. Now King and Maxwell are playing the Hour Game, uncovering one horrifying revelation after another and putting their lives in danger. For the closer they get to the truth, the closer they get to the most shocking surprise of all. (less)"
4135,Who Is Maud Dixon?,thriller,"Florence Darrow is a small-town striver who believes that she's destined to become a celebrated writer. When she stumbles into the opportunity to become the assistant to ""Maud Dixon,"" a celebrated-but anonymous-novelist (think: Elena Ferrante), she believes that the universe is finally providing her big chance. The arrangement feels idyllic; Helen can be prickly, but she is full of pointed wisdom on both writing and living. She even invites Florence along on a research trip to Morocco, where her new novel is set. Florence has never been out of the country before; maybe, she imagines, she'll finally have something exciting to write about herself.

But when Florence wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car crash, and Helen is dead, she begins to imagine what it might be like to 'upgrade' into not only Helen's life, but also that of Helen's bestselling pseudonym, Maud Dixon... (less)"
4136,Imaginary Friend,thriller,"Christopher is seven years old.
Christopher is the new kid in town.
Christopher has an imaginary friend.

We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us.

Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out.

At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.

Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on. (less)"
4137,Annihilation,thriller,"Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything. (less)"
4138,Don't You Cry,thriller,"In downtown Chicago, Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to My Dearest is found among her possessions, leaving her roommate Quinn Collins to question how well she really knew her friend. Meanwhile, in a small town an hour outside Chicago, a mysterious woman appears in the quiet coffee shop where eighteen-year-old Alex Gallo works as a dishwasher. He is immediately drawn to her, but what starts as an innocent crush quickly spirals into something far more sinister.

As Quinn searches for answers about Esther, and Alex is drawn further under the stranger's spell, master of suspense Mary Kubica takes readers on a taut and twisted thrill ride that builds to a stunning conclusion and shows that no matter how fast and far we run, the past always catches up with us. (less)"
4139,The Zombie Room,thriller,"An unlikely bond is forged between three men from very different backgrounds when they serve time together in prison. A series of wrong turns and disastrous life choices has led to their incarceration. Following their release, Mangle, Decker and Tazeem stick together as they return to a life of crime, embarking on a lucrative scam. But when they stumble upon a sophisticated sex-trafficking operation, they soon realise that they are in mortal danger. The disappearance of a family member and the murder of a dear friend lead the three to delve deeper into a world of violence and deception. In their quest for retribution and justice, they put their lives on the line. Their paths cross with that of Tatiana, who has left her home country for a better life in the West—or so she thinks. She soon realises she is in the hands of ruthless, violent people, who run an operation supplying girls to meet the most deviant desires of rich and powerful men. Will she survive the horrors of The Zombie Room? Are Mangle, Decker and Tazeem brave enough to follow her there, in an attempt to set her free? (less)"
4140,The Devil Colony,thriller,"Deep in the Rocky Mountains, a gruesome discovery — hundreds of mummified bodies — stir international attention and fervent controversy. Despite doubts to the bodies’ origins, the local Native American Heritage Commission lays claim to the prehistoric remains, along with the strange artifacts found in the same cavern: gold plates inscribed with an unfathomable script.
During a riot at the dig site, an anthropologist dies horribly: burned to ash in a fiery explosion in plain view of television cameras. All evidence points to a radical group of Native Americans, including one agitator, a teenage firebrand who escapes with a vital clue to the murder and calls on the one person who might help: her uncle, Painter Crowe, director of Sigma Force.
To protect his niece and uncover the truth, Painter will ignite a war across the nation’s most powerful intelligence agencies. Yet, an even greater threat looms as events in the Rocky Mountains have set in motion a frightening chain reaction, a geological meltdown that threatens the entire western half of the U.S.
From the volcanic peaks of Iceland to the blistering deserts of the American Southwest, from the gold vaults of Fort Knox to the bubbling geysers of Yellowstone, Painter Crowe joins forces with Commander Gray Pierce to penetrate the shadowy heart of a dark cabal, one that has been manipulating American history since the founding of the thirteen colonies.
But can he discover the truth — one that could topple governments — before it destroys all he holds dear?
(less)"
4141,Nemesis,thriller,"Detective Harry Hole must use his maverick methods once again as he investigates a slew of brutal bank robberies and the suspicious suicide of a female artist in this clever and harrowing installment in the Harry Hole series from the author of The Snowman—soon to be a major motion picture, starring Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, and J. K. Simmons.

Captured on closed-circuit television: A man walks into an Oslo bank, puts a gun to a cashier's head, and tells her to count to twenty-five. When he doesn't get his money fast enough, he pulls the trigger. The young woman dies—and two million Norwegian kroner disappear without a trace.

After a drunken evening with former girlfriend Anna Bethsen, Police Detective Harry Hole wakes up at home with a headache, no cell phone, and no memory of the past twelve hours. The same day, Anna is found shot dead in her bedroom, making Hole a prime suspect in the investigation led by his hated adversary, Tom Waaler. Meanwhile, the bank robberies continue with unparalleled savagery, sending rogue detective Hole from the streets of Oslo to steaming Brazil in a race to close two cases and clear his name. But Waaler isn't finished with his longtime nemesis quite yet. (less)"
4142,The Girl in the Mirror,thriller,"Written with the chilling, twisty suspense of The Wife Between Us and Something in the Water, a seductive debut thriller about greed, lust, secrets, and deadly lies involving identical twin sisters.

Twin sisters Iris and Summer are startlingly alike, but beyond what the eye can see lies a darkness that sets them apart. Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of Summer’s seemingly never-ending good fortune, including her perfect husband Adam.

Called to Thailand to help her sister sail the family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris nurtures her own secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But when she unexpectedly finds herself alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes. When she makes it to land, Iris allows herself to be swept up by Adam, who assumes that she is Summer.

Iris recklessly goes along with his mistake. Not only does she finally have the golden life she’s always envied, with her sister gone, she’s one step closer to the hundred-million-dollar inheritance left by her manipulative father. All Iris has to do is be the first of his seven children to produce an heir.

Iris’s “new” life lurches between glamorous dream and paranoid nightmare. On the edge of being exposed, how far will she go to ensure no one discovers the truth?

And just what did happen to Summer on the yacht?

Only Iris knows . . . (less)"
4143,When the Stars Go Dark,thriller,"Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna's childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever.

As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in.

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives--and our faith in one another.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife comes a novel of intertwined destinies and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal? (less)"
4144,Need to Know,thriller,"In pursuit of a Russian sleeper cell on American soil, a CIA analyst uncovers a dangerous secret that will test her loyalty to the agency—and to her family.

What do you do when everything you trust might be a lie?

Vivian Miller is a dedicated CIA counterintelligence analyst assigned to uncover the leaders of Russian sleeper cells in the United States. On track for a much-needed promotion, she’s developed a system for identifying Russian agents, seemingly normal people living in plain sight.

After accessing the computer of a potential Russian operative, Vivian stumbles on a secret dossier of deep-cover agents within America’s borders. A few clicks later, everything that matters to her—her job, her husband, even her four children—are threatened.

Vivian has vowed to defend her country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But now she’s facing impossible choices. Torn between loyalty and betrayal, allegiance and treason, love and suspicion, who can she trust? (less)"
4145,The Winner,thriller,"The Dream

She is twenty, beautiful, dirt-poor, and hoping for a better life for her infant daughter when LuAnn Tyler is offered the gift of a lifetime, a $100 million lottery jackpot. All she has to do is change her identity and leave the U.S. forever.

The Killer

It's an offer she dares to refuse...until violence forces her hand and thrusts her into a harrowing game of high-stakes, big-money subterfuge. It's a price she won't fully pay...until she does the unthinkable and breaks the promise that made her rich.

The Winner

For if LuAnn Tyler comes home, she will be pitted against the deadliest contestant of all: the chameleonlike financial mastermind who changed her life. And who can take it away at will... (less)"
4146,Alone,thriller,"Alone . . . Massachusetts State Trooper Bobby Dodge watches a tense hostage standoff unfold through the scope of his sniper rifle. Just across the street, in wealthy Back Bay, Boston, an armed man has barricaded himself with his wife and child. The man’s finger tightens on the trigger and Dodge has only a split second to react . . . and forever pay the consequences.

Alone . . . that’s where the nightmare began for cool, beautiful, and dangerously sexy Catherine Rose Gagnon. Twenty-five years ago, she was buried underground during a month-long nightmare of abduction and abuse. Now her husband has just been killed. Her father-in-law, the powerful Judge Gagnon, blames Catherine for his son’s death . . . and for the series of unexplained illnesses that have sent her own young son repeatedly to the hospital.

Alone . . . a madman survived solitary confinement in a maximum security prison where he’d done hard time for the most sadistic of crimes. Now he walks the streets a free man, invisible, anonymous . . . and filled with an unquenchable rage for vengeance. What brings them together is a moment of violence—but what connects them is a passion far deeper and much more dangerous. For a killer is loose who’s woven such an intricate web of evil that no one is above suspicion, no one is beyond harm, and no one will see death coming until it has them cornered, helpless, and alone. (less)"
4147,Extreme Measures,thriller,"The latest pulse-pounding thriller by #1 ""New York Times"" bestselling phenomenon Vince Flynn explodes onto the scene with a deadly and charismatic hero fans will cheer for all the way to the last riveting page.Vince Flynn's thrillers, featuring counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp, have dominated the imagination of readers everywhere. Time and again, Flynn has captured the secretive world of the fearless men and women, who, bound by duty, risk their lives in a covert war they must hide from even their own political leaders.

Now, with Rapp away on assignment in Pakistan, CIA Director Irene Kennedy turns to his protegee Mike Nash. Nash has served his government honorably for sixteen years -- first as an officer in the Marine Corps and then as an operative in an elite counterterrorism team run by none other than Mitch Rapp. He has met violence with extreme violence and has never wavered in his fight against the jihads and their culture of death.

Nash has fought the war on terrorism in secret without accolades or acknowledgement of his personal sacrifice. He has been forced to lie to virtually every single person he cares about, including his wife and children, but he has soldiered on with the knowledge that his hard work and lethal tactics has saved thousands of lives. But the one thing he never saw coming was that his own government was about to turn on him.

In ""Extreme Measures,"" Flynn introduces a modern-day patriot -- a hero who loves his country, even when it betrays itself. Using his insider knowledge of intelligence agencies and the military, Flynn once again delivers an all-too-real portrayal of a war that is that is waged every day by a handful of brave, devoted souls.Smart, fast-paced, and jaw-droppingly realistic, ""Extreme Measures"" is ""the"" political thriller of our time. (less)"
4148,Roses Are Red,thriller,"In this heart-pounding but touchingly romantic thriller, Detective Alex Cross pursues the most complex and brilliant killer he's ever confronted - mysterious criminal who calls himself the Mastermind.
In a series of crimes that has stunned Washington, D.C., bank robbers have been laying out precise demands when they enter the building - and then killing the bank employees and their families if those instructions are not followed to the letter.
Detective Alex Cross takes on the case, certain that this is no ordinary bank robber at work - the pathological need for control and perfection is too great. Cross is in the midst of a personal crisis at home, but the case becomes all-consuming as he learns that the Mastermind is plotting one huge, last, perfect crime.
(less)"
4149,The Keepsake,thriller,"New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen knows how to expertly dissect a brilliantly suspenseful story, all the while keeping fascinated readers riveted to her side. By turns darkly enthralling and relentlessly surprising, The Keepsake showcases an author at the peak of her storytelling powers.

For untold years, the perfectly preserved mummy had lain forgotten in the dusty basement of Boston’s Crispin Museum. Now its sudden rediscovery by museum staff is both a major coup and an attention-grabbing mystery. Dubbed “Madam X,” the mummy–to all appearances, an ancient Egyptian artifact– seems a ghoulish godsend for the financially struggling institution. But medical examiner Maura Isles soon discovers a macabre message hidden within the corpse–horrifying proof that this “centuries-old” relic is instead a modern-day murder victim.

To Maura and Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, the forensic evidence is unmistakable, its implications terrifying. And when the grisly remains of yet another woman are found in the hidden recesses of the museum, it becomes chillingly clear that a maniac is at large–and is now taunting them.
Archaeologist Josephine Pulcillo’s blood runs cold when the killer’s cryptic missives are discovered, and her darkest dread becomes real when the carefully preserved corpse of yet a third victim is left in her car like a gruesome offering–or perhaps a ghastly promise of what’s to come.

The twisted killer’s familiarity with post-mortem rituals suggests to Maura and Jane that he may have scientific expertise in common with Josephine. Only Josephine knows that her stalker shares a knowledge even more personally terrifying: details of a dark secret she had thought forever buried.

Now Maura must summon her own dusty knowledge of ancient death traditions to unravel his twisted endgame. And when Josephine vanishes, Maura and Jane have precious little time to derail the Archaeology Killer before he adds another chilling piece to his monstrous collection. (less)"
4150,The Perfect Marriage,thriller,"Would you defend your husband if he was accused of killing his mistress?

Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. At 33 years old, she is a named partner at her firm and life is going exactly how she planned.

The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He is a struggling writer who has had little success in his career. He begins to tire of his and Sarah’s relationship as she is constantly working.

Out in the secluded woods, at Adam and Sarah’s second home, Adam engages in a passionate affair with Kelly Summers.

Then, one morning everything changes. Adam is arrested for Kelly’s murder. She had been found stabbed to death in Adam and Sarah’s second home.

Sarah soon finds herself playing the defender for her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress.

But is Adam guilty or is he innocent? (less)"
4151,Think of a Number,thriller,"An extraordinary fiction debut, Think of a Number is an exquisitely plotted novel of suspense that grows relentlessly darker and more frightening as its pace accelerates, forcing its deeply troubled characters to moments of startling self-revelation.

Arriving in the mail over a period of weeks are taunting letters that end with a simple declaration, “Think of any number…picture it…now see how well I know your secrets.” Amazingly, those who comply find that the letter writer has predicted their random choice exactly. For Dave Gurney, just retired as the NYPD’s top homicide investigator and forging a new life with his wife, Madeleine, in upstate New York, the letters are oddities that begin as a diverting puzzle but quickly ignite a massive serial murder investigation.

What police are confronted with is a completely baffling killer, one who is fond of rhymes filled with threats and warnings, whose attention to detail is unprecedented, and who has an uncanny knack for disappearing into thin air. Even more disturbing, the scale of his ambition seems to widen as events unfold.

Brought in as an investigative consultant, Dave Gurney soon accomplishes deductive breakthroughs that leave local police in awe. Yet, even as he matches wits with his seemingly clairvoyant opponent, Gurney’s tragedy-marred past rises up to haunt him, his marriage approaches a dangerous precipice, and finally, a dark, cold fear builds that he’s met an adversary who can’t be stopped.

In the end, fighting to keep his bearings amid a whirlwind of menace and destruction, Gurney sees the truth of what he’s become – what we all become when guilty memories fester – and how his wife Madeleine’s clear-eyed advice may be the only answer that makes sense.

A work that defies easy labels -- at once a propulsive masterpiece of suspense and an absorbing immersion in the lives of characters so real we seem to hear their heartbeats – Think of a Number is a novel you’ll not soon forget. (less)"
4152,Seven Deadly Wonders,thriller,"AN ANCIENT SECRET . . .
A TEAM OF HEROES . . .
THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME

A legend of the ancient world decrees that every 4,500 years, a terrible solar event will wreak worldwide destruction . . .
But whoever sets the Golden Capstone atop the Great Pyramid at Giza will avert disaster and gain the ultimate prize: a millennium of world dominance.

Now the Sun is turning once again and nation will battle nation to retrieve the missing Capstone . . .
But a group of small nations, led by super-soldier Jack West Jr., bands together to prevent any one country from attaining this frightening power.

Thus the greatest treasure hunt of all time begins -- an adrenaline fueled race on a global battlefield.

From the Colossus of Rhodes to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Great Egyptian Pyramid itself, unlock the thrills of Seven Deadly Wonders. (less)"
4153,Bloodline,thriller,"James Rollins takes you to the edge of modern medicine, genetics, and technology, revealing the next evolutionary leap forward: Immortality — a future conceived through the monstrous ingenuity of man...

Galilee, 1025. A cunning Templar knight uncovers a holy treasure: the Bachal Isu — the staff of Jesus Christ — a priceless icon that holds a mysterious and terrifying power that will forever change humanity if unleashed.
A millennium later, Somali pirates hijack a yacht off the coast off the Horn of Africa, kidnapping a young pregnant American woman and brutally killing her husband. Painter Crowe and his SIGMA team are enlisted for the top secret rescue mission. The kidnapped woman is Amanda Gant-Bennett, the daughter of U.S. president James Gant. Crowe is more than a little suspicious that the kidnapping masks a far more nefarious plot.
In the field, Commander Gray Pierce leads his small team of operatives into the treacherous African jungle to find the missing woman. But what should be a straightforward rescue turns into a fiery ambush and a deadly act of betrayal. As Commander Pierce and his team discover, the hostage is a pawn in a shattering act of terrorism with dark and shocking repercussions. And the danger is only beginning...
(less)"
4154,Don't Look Back,thriller,"Samantha is a stranger in her own life. Until the night she disappeared with her best friend, Cassie, everyone said Sam had it all - popularity, wealth, and a dream boyfriend.

Sam has resurfaced, but she has no recollection of who she was or what happened to her that night. As she tries to piece together her life from before, she realizes it's one she no longer wants any part of. The old Sam took ""mean girl"" to a whole new level, and it's clear she and Cassie were more like best enemies. Sam is pretty sure that losing her memories is like winning the lottery. She's getting a second chance at being a better daughter, sister, and friend, and she's falling hard for Carson Ortiz, a boy who has always looked out for her-even if the old Sam treated him like trash.

But Cassie is still missing, and the truth about what happened to her that night isn't just buried deep inside of Sam's memory - someone else knows, someone who wants to make sure Sam stays quiet. All Sam wants is the truth, and if she can unlock her clouded memories of that fateful night, she can finally move on. But what if not remembering is the only thing keeping Sam alive? (less)"
4155,You'll Be the Death of Me,thriller,"Ivy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day.

Type A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out--he's been working two jobs since his family's business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up.... again.

So when Cal pulls into campus late for class and runs into Ivy and Mateo, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn a bad day around. They'll ditch and go into the city. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they've barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say...

Until they spot another Carlton High student skipping school--and follow him to the scene of his own murder. In one chance move, their day turns from dull to deadly. And it's about to get worse.

It turns out Ivy, Mateo, and Cal still have some things in common. They all have a connection to the dead kid. And they're all hiding something.

Now they're all wondering--could it be that their chance reconnection wasn't by chance after all?

From the author of One of Us Is Lying comes a brand-new pulse-pounding thriller. It's Ferris Bueller's Day Off with murder when three old friends relive an epic ditch day, and it goes horribly--and fatally--wrong. (less)"
4156,The Searcher,thriller,"Retired detective Cal Hooper moves to a remote village in rural Ireland. His plans are to fix up the dilapidated cottage he's bought, to walk the mountains, to put his old police instincts to bed forever.

Then a local boy appeals to him for help. His brother is missing, and no one in the village, least of all the police, seems to care. And once again, Cal feels that restless itch.

Something is wrong in this community, and he must find out what, even if it brings trouble to his door. (less)"
4157,Headhunters,thriller,"Roger Brown is a corporate headhunter, and he’s a master of his profession. But one career simply can’t support his luxurious lifestyle and his wife’s fledgling art gallery. At an art opening one night he meets Clas Greve, who is not only the perfect candidate for a major CEO job, but also, perhaps, the answer to his financial woes: Greve just so happens to mention that he owns a priceless Peter Paul Rubens painting that’s been lost since World War II—and Roger Brown just so happens to dabble in art theft. But when he breaks into Greve’s apartment, he finds more than just the painting. And Clas Greve may turn out to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to Roger Brown. (less)"
4158,Faithless,thriller,"The victim was buried alive in the Georgia woods–then killed in a horrifying fashion. When Sara Linton and Jeffrey Tolliver stumble upon the body, both become consumed with finding out who killed the pretty young woman. For them, a harrowing journey begins, one that will test their own turbulent relationship and draw dozens of life into the case.

For as Jeffrey and Sara move further down a trail of shocking surprises and hidden passions, neither is prepared for the most stunning discovery of all: the identity of a killer who is more evil and dangerous than anyone could have guessed. (less)"
4159,The River,thriller,"The story of two college friends on a wilderness canoe trip—of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence

Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing.

When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey.

When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? (less)"
4160,The Good Guy,thriller,"One man. One choice. Someone must die.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz comes this pulse-pounding thriller that starts with a terrifying decision we all might face one day: Help—or run. Timothy Carrier is an ordinary guy. He enjoys a beer after work at his friend’s tavern, the eccentric customers and amusing conversations. But tonight is no ordinary night. The jittery man sitting beside him has mistaken Tim for someone else—and passes him an envelope stuffed with cash and the photo of a pretty woman. “Ten thousand now. You get the rest when she’s gone.”

Tim Carrier always thought he knew the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. But tonight everything he thought he knew—even about himself—will be challenged. For Tim Carrier is at the center of a mystery of extraordinary proportions, the one man who can save an innocent life and stop a killer as relentless as evil incarnate. But first he must discover resources within himself of which he never dreamed, capacities that will transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be . . .
(less)"
4161,The Last Widow,thriller,"New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter brings back Will Trent and Sara Linton in this superb and timely thriller full of devious twists, disturbing secrets, and shocking surprises you won’t see coming

A mysterious kidnapping

On a hot summer night, a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control is grabbed by unknown assailants in a shopping center parking lot. Vanished into thin air, the authorities are desperate to save the doctor.

A devastating explosion

One month later, the serenity of a sunny Sunday afternoon is shattered by the boom of a ground-shaking blast—followed by another seconds later. One of Atlanta’s busiest and most important neighborhood’s has been bombed—the location of Emory University, two major hospitals, the FBI headquarters, and the CDC.

A diabolical enemy

Medical examiner Sara Linton and her partner Will Trent, an investigator with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, rush to the scene—and into the heart of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to destroy thousands of innocent lives. When the assailants abduct Sara, Will goes undercover to save her and prevent a massacre—putting his own life on the line for the woman and the country he loves. (less)"
4162,Criminal,thriller,"Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda’s motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before, when his father was imprisoned for murder, this was Will’s home. It appears that the case that launched Amanda’s career forty years ago has suddenly come back to life—and it involves the long-held mystery of Will’s birth and parentage. Now these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed.
(less)"
4163,Daisy Darker,thriller,"The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists returns…with a family reunion that leads to murder.

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…

Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling. (less)"
4164,The Good Son,thriller,"'The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Bad Seed in this breathless, chilling psychological thriller by the bestselling novelist known as ""Korea's Stephen King"" Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself?

Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home - he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?

Thus begins Yu-jin's frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family. A shocking and addictive psychological thriller, The Good Son explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son, with incredible urgency. (less)"
4165,Pretty Baby,thriller,"A chance encounter sparks an unrelenting web of lies in this stunning new psychological thriller from national bestselling author Mary Kubica

She sees the teenage girl on the train platform, standing in the pouring rain, clutching an infant in her arms. She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head...

Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal—or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.

Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated. (less)"
4166,Zoo,thriller,"Once in a lifetime, a writer puts it all together. This is James Patterson's best book ever.

Total
For 36 years, James Patterson has written unputdownable, pulse-racing novels. Now, he has written a book that surpasses all of them. ZOO is the thriller he was born to write.

World
All over the world, brutal attacks are crippling entire cities. Jackson Oz, a young biologist, watches the escalating events with an increasing sense of dread. When he witnesses a coordinated lion ambush in Africa, the enormity of the violence to come becomes terrifyingly clear.

Destruction
With the help of ecologist Chloe Tousignant, Oz races to warn world leaders before it's too late. The attacks are growing in ferocity, cunning, and planning, and soon there will be no place left for humans to hide. (less)"
4167,Doctor No,thriller,"The sixth James Bond thriller from Ian Fleming’s typewriter.

Dispatched by M to investigate the mysterious disappearance of MI6’s Jamaica station chief, Bond was expecting a holiday in the sun. But when he discovers a deadly centipede placed in his hotel room, the vacation is over.

On this island, all suspicious activity leads inexorably to Dr Julius No, a reclusive megalomaniac with steel pincers for hands. To find out what the good doctor is hiding, 007 must enlist the aid of local fisherman Quarrel and alluring beachcomber Honeychile Rider.

Together they will combat a local legend the natives call ‘the Dragon,’ before Bond alone must face the most punishing test of all: an obstacle course-designed by the sadistic Dr No himself-that measures the limits of the human body’s capacity for agony. (less)"
4168,Our House,thriller,"On a bright January morning in the London suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought in Trinity Avenue.

Nothing strange about that. Except it is your house. And you didn’t sell it.

When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she's sure there's been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird's nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.

Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona's children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram's not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses. (less)"
4169,Broken Monsters,thriller,"Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies, but this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams? If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe--and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.

If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again. (less)"
4170,Vicious,thriller,"A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn't automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question. (less)"
4171,Upgrade,thriller,"The mind-blowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion

“You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential. (less)"
4172,The Collective,thriller,"The USA Today bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Never Look Back and If I Die Tonight plumbs the dark side of justice and the depths of diabolical revenge in this propulsive novel of psychological suspense that melds the driving narrative of Then She Was Gone with the breathtaking twists of The Chain and the violent fury of Kill Bill.

Just how far will a grieving mother go to right a tragic wrong?

Camille Gardner is a grieving—and angry—mother who, five years after her daughter’s death, is still obsessed with the privileged young man she believes to be responsible.

When her rash actions attract the attention of a secret group of women—the collective—Camille is drawn into a dark web where these mothers share their wildly different stories of loss as well as their desire for justice in a world where privilege denies accountability and perpetrators emerge unscathed. Fueled by mutual rage, these women orchestrate their own brand of justice through precise, anonymous, complexly plotted and perfectly executed revenge killings, with individual members completing a specific and integral task in each plan.

As Camille struggles to comprehend whether this is a role-playing exercise or terrifying reality, she must decide if these women are truly avenging angels or monsters. Becoming more deeply enmeshed in the group, Camille learns truths about the collective—and about herself—that she may not be able to survive.
(less)"
4173,Unspeakable Things,thriller,"Inspired by a terrifying true story from the author’s hometown, a heart-pounding novel of suspense about a small Minnesota community where nothing is as quiet—or as safe—as it seems.

Cassie McDowell’s life in 1980s Minnesota seems perfectly wholesome. She lives on a farm, loves school, and has a crush on the nicest boy in class. Yes, there are her parents’ strange parties and their parade of deviant guests, but she’s grown accustomed to them.

All that changes when someone comes hunting in Lilydale.

One by one, local boys go missing. One by one, they return changed—violent, moody, and withdrawn. What happened to them becomes the stuff of shocking rumors. The accusations of who’s responsible grow just as wild, and dangerous town secrets start to surface. Then Cassie’s own sister undergoes the dark change. If she is to survive, Cassie must find her way in an adult world where every sin is justified, and only the truth is unforgivable. (less)"
4174,Let the Right One In,thriller,"It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night.... (less)"
4175,The Black Ice,thriller,"Narcotics office Cal Moore's orders were to look into the city's latest drug killing. Instead, he ends up in a motel room with a fatal bullet wound to the head and a suicide note stuffed in his back pocket.
Working the case, LAPD detective Harry Bosch is reminded of the primal police rule he learned long ago: don't look for the facts, but the glue that holds them together.
Soon Harry's making some very dangerous connections, starting with a dead cop and leading to a bloody string of murders that wind from Hollywood Boulevard to the back alleys south of the border. Now this battle-scarred veteran will find himself in the centre of a complex and deadly game - one in which he may be the next and likeliest victim.
(less)"
4176,3rd Degree,thriller,"The Women's Murder Club returns in a shockingly suspenseful thriller. Plunging into a burning town house, Detective Lindsay Boxer discovers three dead bodies...and a mysterious message at the scene. When more corpses turn up, Lindsay asks her friends Claire Washburn of the medical examiner's office, Assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt, and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Cindy Thomas to help her find a murderer who vows to kill every three days. Even more terrifying, he has targeted one of the four friends. Which one will it be? (less)"
4177,I Know Who You Are,thriller,"From Alice Feeney, the author of Sometimes I Lie, comes I Know Who You Are, a thrilling novel about a little girl who runs away from home and an actress whose husband has gone missing.

Meet Aimee Sinclair: the actress everyone thinks they know but can’t remember where from.

Except one person.

Someone who knows Aimee very well—and what she’s done. . .

When Aimee comes home and discovers her husband is missing, she doesn’t seem to know what to do or how to act. The police think she’s hiding something and they’re right, she is—but perhaps not what they thought. Aimee has a secret she’s never shared, and yet, she suspects that someone knows. As she struggles to keep her career and sanity intact, her past comes back to haunt her in ways more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. (less)"
4178,First Family,thriller,"Following the instant #1 New York Times bestsellers Split Second, Hour Game, and Simple Genius, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell return in David Baldacci's most heart-pounding thriller to date . . .

FIRST FAMILY

A daring kidnapping turns a children's birthday party at Camp David, the presidential retreat, into a national security nightmare.

Former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell don't want to get involved. But years ago Sean King saved the First Lady's husband, then a senator, from political disaster. Now the president's wife presses Sean and Michelle into a desperate search to rescue a kidnapped child. With Michelle still battling her own demons, the two are pushed to the limit, with forces aligned on all sides against them--and the line between friend and foe impossible to define . . . or defend. (less)"
4179,Stormbreaker,thriller,"They told him his uncle died in an accident. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt, they said. But when fourteen-year-old Alex finds his uncle's windshield riddled with bullet holes, he knows it was no accident. What he doesn't know yet is that his uncle was killed while on a top-secret mission. But he is about to, and once he does, there is no turning back. Finding himself in the middle of terrorists, Alex must outsmart the people who want him dead. The government has given him the technology, but only he can provide the courage. Should he fail, every child in England will be murdered in cold blood. (less)"
4180,The Amber Room,thriller,"The Amber Room is one of the greatest treasures ever made by man: an entire room forged of exquisite amber, from its four massive walls to its finely crafted furniture. But it is also the subject of one of history's most intriguing mysteries. Originally commissioned in 1701 by Frederick I of Prussia, the Room was later perfected Tsarskoe Selo, the Russian imperial city. In 1941, German troops invaded the Soviet Union, looting everything in their wake and seizing the Amber Room. When the Allies began the bombing of Germany in August 1944, the Room was hidden. And despite the best efforts of treasure hunters and art collectors from around the world, it has never been seen again.""
Now, two powerful men have set their best operatives loose in pursuit, and the hunt has begun once more. . . .
Life is good for Atlanta judge Rachel Cutler. She loves her job, loves her kids, and remains civil to her ex-husband, Paul. But everything changes when her father, a man who survived the horrors of World War II, dies under strange circumstances--and leaves behind clues to a secret he kept his entire life . . . a secret about something called the Amber Room.
Desperate to know the truth about her father's suspicious dealings, Rachel takes off for Germany, with Paul close behind. Shortly after arriving, they find themselves involved with a cast of shadowy characters who all claim to share their quest. But as they learn more about the history of the treasure they seek, Rachel and Paul realize they're in way over their heads. Locked in a treacherous game with ruthless professional killers and embroiled in a treasure hunt of epic proportions, Rachel and Paul suddenly find themselves on a collisioncourse with the forces of power, evil, and history itself.
A brilliant adventure and a scintillating tale of intrigue, deception, art, and murder, ""The Amber Room"" is a classic tale of suspense--and the debut of a strong new voice in the world of the international thriller. ""From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
4181,A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail,travel,"The Appalachian Trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America—majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaining guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way—and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).
More book description"
4182,In a Sunburned Country,travel,"It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents, and still Australia teems with life - a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.

Ignoring such dangers - and yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extroverted, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this..."
4183,Notes from a Small Island,travel,"""Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it.""

After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson - bestselling author of The Mother Tongue and Made in America-decided to return to the United States. (""I had recently read,"" Bryson writes, ""that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me."") But before departing, he set out on a grand farewell tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home.

Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes from a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey. The result is an uproarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain, from the satiric pen of an unapologetic Anglophile."
4184,"Eat, Pray, Love",travel,"A celebrated writer's irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life.

Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change."
4185,Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe,travel,"Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before.

Whether braving the homicidal motorist of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein."
4186,Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,travel,"An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone.
Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her."
4187,The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America,travel,"'I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to'

And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set.

Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states - united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity - he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land.

The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature - hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache - and the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation."
4188,Into the Wild,travel,"Librarian's Note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

In April, 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, a party of moose hunters found his decomposed body. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw away the maps. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild."
4189,Travels with Charley: In Search of America,travel,"A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California’s Monterey Peninsula

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers."
4190,Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel,travel,"Vagabonding is about taking time off from your normal life--from six weeks to four months to two years--to discover and experience the world on your own terms. Veteran shoestring traveler Rolf Potts shows how anyone with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel.

Visit the vagabonding community's hub at www dot vagabonding dot net."
4191,I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away,travel,"After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, ""it was clear my people needed me""). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away."
4192,A Year in Provence,travel,"In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days."
4193,Under the Tuscan Sun,travel,"An enchanting and lyrical look at the life, the traditions, and the cuisine of Tuscany, in the spirit of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence.

Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table."
4194,On the Road,travel,"A quintessential novel of America & the Beat Generation On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the N. American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, ""a sideburned hero of the snowy West."" As ""Sal Paradise"" & ""Dean Moriarty,"" the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge & experience. Kerouac's love of America, compassion for humanity & sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. This classic novel of freedom & longing defined what it meant to be ""Beat"" & has inspired every generation since its initial publication."
4195,The Great Railway Bazaar,travel,"First published in 1975, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains -- the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express -- are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry keen observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler."
4196,The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain,travel,"The hilarious and loving sequel to a hilarious and loving classic of travel writing: Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson’s valentine to his adopted country of England

In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is uproarious and endlessly endearing, one of the most acute and affectionate portrayals of England in all its glorious eccentricity ever written. Two decades later, he set out again to rediscover that country, and the result is The Road to Little Dribbling. Nothing is funnier than Bill Bryson on the road—prepare for the total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter."
4197,"1,000 Places to See Before You Die",travel,"Around the World, continent by continent, here is the best the world has to offer: 1,000 places guaranteed to give travelers the shivers. Sacred ruins, grand hotels, wildlife preserves, hilltop villages, snack shacks, castles, festivals, reefs, restaurants, cathedrals, hidden islands, opera houses, museums, and more. Each entry tells exactly why it's essential to visit. Then come the nuts and bolts: addresses, websites, phone and fax numbers, best times to visit. Stop dreaming and get going.

This hefty volume reminds vacationers that hot tourist spots are small percentage of what's worth seeing out there. A quick sampling: Venice's Cipriani Hotel; California's Monterey Peninsula; the Lewis and Clark Trail in Oregon; the Great Wall of China; Robert Louis Stevenson's home in Western Samoa; and the Alhambra in Andalusia, Spain. Veteran travel guide writer Schultz divides the book geographically, presenting a little less than a page on each location. Each entry lists exactly where to find the spot (e.g. Moorea is located ""12 miles/19 km northwest of Tahiti; 10 minutes by air, 1 hour by boat"") and when to go (e.g., if you want to check out The Complete Fly Fisher hotel in Montana, ""May and Sept.-Oct. offer productive angling in a solitary setting""). This is an excellent resource for the intrepid traveler.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc."
4198,The Art of Travel,travel,"Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.

Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it."
4199,The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World,travel,"Weiner spent a decade as a foreign correspondent reporting from such discontented locales as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. Unhappy people living in profoundly unstable states, he notes, inspire pathos and make for good copy, but not for good karma. So Weiner, admitted grump and self-help book aficionado, undertook a year's research to travel the globe, looking for the ""unheralded happy places."" The result is this book, equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and philosophical, a journey into both the definition of and the destination for true contentment.

Apparently, the happiest places on earth include, somewhat unexpectedly, Iceland, Bhutan, and India. Weiner also visits the country deemed most malcontent, Moldova, and finds real merit in the claim.

But the question remains: What makes people happy? Is it the freedom of the West or the myriad restrictions of Singapore? The simple ashrams of India or the glittering shopping malls of Qatar?
From the youthful drunkenness of Iceland to the despond of Slough, a sad but resilient town in Heathrow's flight path, Weiner offers wry yet profound observations about the way people relate to circumstance and fate.

Both revealing and inspirational, perhaps the best thing about this hilarious trip across four continents is that for the reader, the ""geography of bliss"" is wherever they happen to find themselves while reading it."
4200,Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster,travel,"When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, in 70-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning, he learned that six of his fellow climbers hadn't made it back to their camp and were desperately struggling for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of them would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that his right hand would have to be amputated.

Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the bestseller Into the Wild. On assignment for Outside Magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas as a client of Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. A rangy, thirty-five-year-old New Zealander, Hall had summited Everest four times between 1990 and 1995 and had led thirty-nine climbers to the top. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall's team was a guided expedition led by Scott Fischer, a forty-year-old American with legendary strength and drive who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. But neither Hall nor Fischer survived the rogue storm that struck in May 1996.

Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people -- including himself -- to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement."
4201,In Patagonia,travel,"An exhilarating look at a place that still retains the exotic mystery of a far-off, unseen land, Bruce Chatwin’s exquisite account of his journey through Patagonia teems with evocative descriptions, remarkable bits of history, and unforgettable anecdotes. Fueled by an unmistakable lust for life and adventure and a singular gift for storytelling, Chatwin treks through “the uttermost part of the earth”— that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome—in search of almost forgotten legends, the descendants of Welsh immigrants, and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. An instant classic upon its publication in 1977, In Patagonia is a masterpiece that has cast a long shadow upon the literary world."
4202,Blue Highways,travel,"Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads.
William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about ""those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi.""
His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience."
4203,Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town,travel,"In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.

Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful mediation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people.

In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe."
4204,A Time of Gifts,travel,"In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot - from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary. It is a book of compelling glimpses - not only of the events which were curdling Europe at that time, but also of its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers, the sun on the Bavarian snow, the storks and frogs, the hospitable burgomasters who welcomed him, and that world's grandeurs and courtesies. His powers of recollection have astonishing sweep and verve, and the scope is majestic. First published to enormous acclaim, it confirmed Fermor's reputation as the greatest living travel writer, and has, together with its sequel Between the Woods and the Water (the third volume is famously yet to be published), been a perennial seller for 25 years."
4205,The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific,travel,"At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the Earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better. The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of.

Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish, and worst of all, no television or coffee. And that's just the first day. Sunburned, emaciated, and stinging with sea lice, Troost spends the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options. He contends with a cast of bizarre local characters, including ""Half-Dead Fred"" and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who's never written a poem in his life), and eventually settles into the ebb and flow of island life, just before his return to the culture shock of civilization.

With the rollicking wit of Bill Bryson, the brilliant travel exposition of Paul Theroux, and a hipster edge that is entirely Troost's own, The Sex Lives of Cannibals is the ultimate vicarious adventure. Readers may never long to set foot on Tarawa, but they'll want to travel with Troost time and time again."
4206,Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time,travel,"What happens when an adventure travel expert-who's never actually done anything adventurous-tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu?

July 24, 1911, was a day for the history books. For on that rainy morning, the young Yale professor Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and encountered an ancient city in the clouds: the now famous citadel of Machu Picchu. Nearly a century later, news reports have recast the hero explorer as a villain who smuggled out priceless artifacts and stole credit for finding one of the world's greatest archaeological sites.

Mark Adams has spent his career editing adventure and travel magazines, so his plan to investigate the allegations against Bingham by retracing the explorer's perilous path to Machu Picchu isn't completely far- fetched, even if it does require him to sleep in a tent for the first time. With a crusty, antisocial Australian survivalist and several Quechua-speaking, coca-chewing mule tenders as his guides, Adams takes readers through some of the most gorgeous and historic landscapes in Peru, from the ancient Inca capital of Cusco to the enigmatic ruins of Vitcos and Vilcabamba.

Along the way he finds a still-undiscovered country populated with brilliant and eccentric characters, as well as an answer to the question that has nagged scientists since Hiram Bingham's time: Just what was Machu Picchu?"
4207,Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman,travel,"""In many ways, I was an independent woman,"" writes Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Alice Steinbach. “For years I’d made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.” But somehow she had become dependent in quite another way. “I had fallen into the habit of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me.” But who was she away from the people and things that defined her? In this exquisite book, Steinbach searches for the answer to this question in some of the most beautiful and exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soul mate; Oxford, where she takes a course on the English village; and Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married.

Beautifully illustrated with postcards from Steinbach’s journeys, this revealing and witty book transports you into a fascinating inner and outer journey, an unforgettable voyage of discovery."
4208,Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World,travel,"“I move throughout the world without a plan, guided by instinct, connecting through trust, and constantly watching for serendipitous opportunities.” —From the Preface

Tales of a Female Nomad is the story of Rita Golden Gelman, an ordinary woman who is living an extraordinary existence. At the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of connecting with people in cultures all over the world. In 1986 she sold her possessions and became a nomad, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico, sleeping with sea lions on the Galapagos Islands, and residing everywhere from thatched huts to regal palaces. She has observed orangutans in the rain forest of Borneo, visited trance healers and dens of black magic, and cooked with women on fires all over the world. Rita’s example encourages us all to dust off our dreams and rediscover the joy, the exuberance, and the hidden spirit that so many of us bury when we become adults."
4209,Round Ireland with a Fridge,travel,"Have you ever made a drunken bet? Worse still, have you ever tried to win one? In attempting to hitchhike round Ireland with a fridge, Tony Hawks did both, and his foolhardiness led him to one of the best experiences of his life. Joined by his trusty traveling companion-cum-domestic appliance, he made his way from Dublin to Donegal, from Sligo through Mayo, Galway, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Wexford, Wicklow--and back again to Dublin. In their month of madness, Tony and his fridge met a real prince, a bogus king, and the fridge got christened. They surfed together, entered a bachelor festival, and one of them had sex without the other knowing. And unexpectedly, the fridge itself became a momentary focus for the people of Ireland.

An international bestseller, Round Ireland with a Fridge is a classic travel adventure in the tradition of Bill Bryson with a dash of Dave Barry."
4210,The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon,travel,"A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon.

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve ""the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century"": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for the Lost City of Z?

In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humans. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions round the globe, Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilisation--which he dubbed Z--existed. Then his expedition vanished. Fawcett's fate, & the tantalizing clues he left behind about Z, became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness.

For decades scientists & adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party & the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes or gone mad. As Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, & the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle's green hell. His quest for the truth & discoveries about Fawcett's fate & Z form the heart of this complexly enthralling narrative."
4211,Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders,travel,"Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 600 of the strangest and most curious places in the world.

Here are natural wonders—the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa that’s so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan’s 45-year hole of fire called the Door of Hell, coffins hanging off a side of a cliff in the Philippines, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England.

revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden, and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book you can open anywhere.
More book description"
4212,The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas,travel,"A witty sharply observed journey down the length of North and South America.

Beginning his journey in Boston, where he boarded the subway commuter train, and catching trains of all kinds on the way, Paul Theroux tells of his voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts and Illinois to the arid plateau of Argentina's most southerly tip. Sweating and shivering by turns as the temperature and altitude shoot up and down, thrown in with the appalling Mr Thornberry in Limón and reading nightly to the blind writer, Borges, in Buenos Aires, Theroux vividly evokes the contrasts of a journey 'to the end of the line'."
4213,Seven Years in Tibet,travel,"Recounts how the author, an Austrian, escaped from an English internment camp in India in 1943 and spent the next seven years in Tibet, observing its social practices, religion, politics, and people."
4214,The Snow Leopard,travel,"Enjoy this special edition hardback of one of the greatest pieces of travel and nature writing ever written. Go with Peter Matthiessen all the way to Dolpo, a Tibetan plateau in the high Himalayas.

This is the account of a journey to the dazzling Tibetan plateau of Dolpo in the high Himalayas. In 1973 Matthiessen made the 250-mile trek to Dolpo, as part of an expedition to study wild blue sheep. It was an arduous, sometimes dangerous, physical endeavour: exertion, blisters, blizzards, endless negotiations with sherpas, quaking cold. But it was also a 'journey of the heart' - among the beauty and indifference of the mountains Matthiessen was searching for solace. He was also searching for a glimpse of a snow leopard, a creature so rarely spotted as to be almost mythical.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD MABEY

'A beautiful book, and worthy of the mountains he is among' Paul Theroux


'A delight' i Paper"
4215,The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World,travel,"This book is the definitive pictorial dedicated to travel and the world, capturing every country on the planet with photographs and atmospheric text. Inspirational, inviting, and beautiful, it combines stunning images with entertaining and informative text that captures the essence of being there."
4216,The Places in Between,travel,"In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan-surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion-a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan's first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following. Through these encounters--by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny--Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between."
4217,A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines,travel,"From the star of No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain's New York Times-bestselling chronicle of travelling the world in search the globe's greatest cuilnary adventures

The only thing ""gonzo gastronome"" and internationally bestselling author Anthony Bourdain loves as much as cooking is traveling. Inspired by the question, ""What would be the perfect meal?,"" Tony sets out on a quest for his culinary holy grail, and in the process turns the notion of ""perfection"" inside out. From California to Cambodia, A Cooks' Tour chronicles the unpredictable adventures of America's boldest and bravest chef.

Fans of Bourdain will find much to love in revisting this classic culinary and travel memoir."
4218,Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu,travel,"With The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost established himself as one of the most engaging and original travel writers around. Getting Stoned with Savages again reveals his wry wit and infectious joy of discovery in a side-splittingly funny account of life in the farthest reaches of the world. After two grueling years on the island of Tarawa, battling feral dogs, machete-wielding neighbors, and a lack of beer on a daily basis, Maarten Troost was in no hurry to return to the South Pacific. But as time went on, he realized he felt remarkably out of place among the trappings of twenty-first-century America. When he found himself holding down a job—one that might possibly lead to a career—he knew it was time for him and his wife, Sylvia, to repack their bags and set off for parts unknown.

Getting Stoned with Savages tells the hilarious story of Troost’s time on Vanuatu—a rugged cluster of islands where the natives gorge themselves on kava and are still known to “eat the man.” Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles against typhoons, earthquakes, and giant centipedes and soon finds himself swept up in the laid-back, clothing-optional lifestyle of the islanders. When Sylvia gets pregnant, they decamp for slightly-more-civilized Fiji, a fallen paradise where the local chiefs can be found watching rugby in the house next door. And as they contend with new parenthood in a country rife with prostitutes and government coups, their son begins to take quite naturally to island living—in complete contrast to his dad."
4219,The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey,travel,"The young Che Guevara’s lively and highly entertaining travel diary, now a popular movie and a New York Times bestseller.

This new, expanded edition features exclusive, unpublished photos taken by the 23-year-old Ernesto on his journey across a continent, and a tender preface by Aleida Guevara, offering an insightful perspective on the man and the icon.

Features of this edition include:

A preface by Che Guevara’s daughter Aleida
Introduction by Cintio Vintier, well-known Latin American poet
Photos & maps from the original journey
Postcript: Che’s personal reflections on his formative years: “A child of my environment.”  

Published in association with the Che Guevara Studies Center, Havana

 "
4220,"Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid",travel,"The bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals returns with a sharply observed, hilarious account of his adventures in China—a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained.

Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh-out-loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific. When the travel bug hit again, he decided to go big-time, taking on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation. In Troost escorts readers on a rollicking journey through the new beating heart of the modern world, from the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai to the Gobi Desert and the hinterlands of Tibet.

finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China’s most revered mountain. But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think. As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world—indeed, a planet--unto itself.

Maarten Troostbrings China to life as you’ve never seen it before, and his insightful, rip-roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining and insightful armchair travel companions around.
More book description"
4221,Ghost Train to the Eastern Star,travel,"National Bestseller

In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux recreates an epic journey he took thirty years ago, a giant loop by train (mostly) through Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia. In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and so much more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot.

His odyssey takes him from Eastern Europe, still hungover from Communism, through tense but thriving Turkey, into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbour Azerbaijan revels in oil-driven capitalism. As he penetrates deeper into Asia’s heart, his encounters take on an otherworldly cast. The two chapters that follow show us Turkmenistan, a profoundly isolated society at the mercy of an almost comically egotistical dictator, and Uzbekistan, a ruthless authoritarian state. From there, he retraces his steps through India, Mayanmar, China, and Japan, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone.

Brilliant, caustic, and totally addictive, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Theroux at his very best."
4222,Riding the Iron Rooster,travel,"Paul Theroux invites you to join him on the journey of a lifetime, in the grand romantic tradition, by train across Europe, through the vast underbelly of Asia and in the heart of Russia, and then up to China. Here is China by rail, as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of one of the most intrepid and insightful travel writers of our time."
4223,The Innocents Abroad,travel,"The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his ""Great Pleasure Excursion"" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City (formerly USS Quaker City) through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867. It was the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime, as well as one of the best-selling travel books of all time."
4224,A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush,travel,"When Eric Newby, fashion industry worker and inexperienced hill walker, decided after 10 years in haute couture he needed a change he took 4 days training in Wales then walked the Hindu Kush. This is his account of an entertaining time in the hills!"
4225,Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback,travel,"NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

Robyn Davidson's opens the memoir of her perilous journey across 1,700 miles of hostile Australian desert to the sea with only four camels and a dog for company with the following words: “I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back.""

Enduring sweltering heat, fending off poisonous snakes and lecherous men, chasing her camels when they get skittish and nursing them when they are injured, Davidson emerges as an extraordinarily courageous heroine driven by a love of Australia's landscape, an empathy for its indigenous people, and a willingness to cast away the trappings of her former identity. Tracks is the compelling, candid story of her odyssey of discovery and transformation. 

“An unforgettably powerful book.”—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

Now with a new postscript by Robyn Davidson."
4226,Bill Bryson's African Diary,travel,"In the early fall of 2002, famed travel Writer Bill Bryson journeyed to Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, the charity dedicated to working with local communities to eradicate poverty around the world. He arrived with a set of mental images of Africa gleaned from television broadcasts of low-budget Jungle Jim movies in his Iowa childhood and a single viewing of the film version of Out of Africa. (Also with some worries about tropical diseases, insects and large predators.) But the vibrant reality of Kenya and its people took over the second he deplaned in Nairobi, and this diary records Bill Bryson's impresssions of his trip with his inimitable trademark style of wry observation and curious insight. From the wrenching poverty of the Kibera slum in Nairobi to the meticulously manicured grounds of the Karen Blixen house and the human fossil riches of the National Museum, Bryson registers the striking contrasts of a postcolonial society in transition. He visits the astoundingly vast Great Rift Valley; undergoes the rigors of a teeth-rattling train journey to Mombasa and a hair-whitening flight through a vicious storm; and visits the refugee camps and the agricultural and economic projects where dedicated CARE professionals wage noble and dogged war against poverty, dislocation and corruption."
4227,Kon-Tiki,travel,"Kon-Tiki is the record of an astonishing adventure - a journey of 4,300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean by raft. Intrigued by Polynesian folklore, biologist Thor Heyerdahl suspected that the South Sea Islands had been settled by an ancient race from thousands of miles to the east, led by a mythical hero, Kon-Tiki. He decided to prove his theory by duplicating the legendary voyage.

On April 28, 1947, Heyerdahl and five other adventurers sailed from Peru on a balsa log raft. After three months on the open sea, encountering raging storms, whales, and sharks, they sighted land - the Polynesian island of Puka Puka.

Translated into over sixty languages, Kon-Tiki is a classic, inspiring tale of daring and courage - a magnificent saga of men against the sea."
4228,Around the World in Eighty Days,travel,"One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand—whether train or elephant—overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock."
4229,The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot,travel,"Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape.

Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations."
4230,Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure,travel,"In her twenties, journalist Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a lasting impression of heat, pollution and poverty. So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to India—and for love—she screamed, “Never!” and gave the country, and him, the finger.

But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarah’s life is posted to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For Sarah this seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally. Just settled, she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia, an experience that compels her to face some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void. “I must find peace in the only place possible in India,” she concludes. “Within.” Thus begins her journey of discovery through India in search of the meaning of life and death.

Holy Cow is Macdonald’s often hilarious chronicle of her adventures in a land of chaos and contradiction, of encounters with Hinduism, Islam and Jainism, Sufis, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians and a kaleidoscope of yogis, swamis and Bollywood stars. From spiritual retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New Delhi nightclubs, it is a journey that only a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life—and her sanity—can survive."
4231,The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World.,travel,"Three friends, each on the brink of a quarter-life crisis, make a pact to quit their high pressure New York City media jobs and leave behind their friends, boyfriends, and everything familiar to embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world in The Lost Girls."
4232,A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller,travel,"A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF UNDER MAGNOLIA

A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes—a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. With her beloved Tuscany as a home base, Mayes travels to Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, and to the Mediterranean world of Turkey, Greece, the South of Italy, and North Africa. Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape, and social and culinary traditions, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to readers. An illuminating and passionate book that will be savored by all who loved Under the Tuscan Sun, A Year in the World is travel writing at its peak."
4233,The Songlines,travel,"In this extraordinary book, Bruce Chatwin has adapted a literary form common until the eighteenth century though rare in ours; a story of ideas in which two companions, traveling and talking together, explore the hopes and dreams that animate both them and the people they encounter. Set in almost uninhabitable regions of Central Australia, The Songlines asks and tries to answer these questions: Why is man the most restless, dissatisfied of animals? Why do wandering people conceive the world as perfect whereas sedentary ones always try to change it? Why have the great teachers—Christ or the Buddha—recommended the Road as the way. to salvation? Do we agree with Pascal that all man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room?

We do not often ask these questions today for we commonly assume that living in a house is normal and that the wandering life is aberrant. But for more than twenty years Chatwin has mulled over the possibility that the reverse might be the case.

Pre-colonial Australia was the last landmass on earth peopled not by herdsmen, farmers, or city dwellers, but by hunter-gatherers. Their labyrinths of invisible pathways across the continent are known to us as Songlines or Dreaming Tracks, but to the Aboriginals as the tracks of their ancestors—the Way of the Law. Along these ""roads"" they travel in order to perform all those activities that are distinctively human—song, dance, marriage, exchange of ideas, and arrangements of territorial boundaries by agreement rather than force.

In Chatwin's search for the Songlines, Arkady is an ideal friend and guide: Australian by birth, the son of a Cossack exile, with all the strength and warmth of his inheritance. Whether hunting kangaroo from a Land Cruiser, talking to the diminutive Rolf in his book-crammed trailer, buying drinks for a bigoted policeman (and would-be writer), cheering as Arkady's true love declares herself (part of The Songlines is a romantic comedy), Chatwin turns this almost implausible picaresque adventure into something approaching the scale of a Greek tragedy.

The life of the Aboriginals stands in vivid contrast, of course, to the prevailing cultures of our time. And The Songlines presents unforgettable details about the kinds of disputes we know all too well from less traumatic confrontations: over sacred lands invaded by railroads, mines, and construction sites, over the laws and rights of a poor people versus a wealthy invasive one. To Chatwin these are but recent, local examples of an eternal basic distinction between settlers and wanderers. His book, devoted to the latter, is a brilliant evocation of this profound optimism: that man is by nature not a bellicose aggressor but a pacific, song-creating, adaptive species whose destiny is to quest for the truth."
4234,Shantaram,travel,"""It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.""

So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay's hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it is by any measure the debut of an extraordinary voice in literature."
4235,The Beach,travel,"After discovering a seemingly Edenic paradise on an island in a Thai national park, Richard soon finds that since civilized behavior tends to dissolve without external restraints, the utopia is hard to maintain. (Nancy Pearl)"
4236,The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country,travel,"Denmark is officially the happiest nation on Earth. When Helen Russell is forced to move to rural Jutland, can she discover the secrets of their happiness? Or will the long, dark winters and pickled herring take their toll?

A Year of Living Danishly looks at where the Danes get it right, where they get it wrong, and how we might just benefit from living a little more Danishly ourselves."
4237,The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific,travel,"Renowned travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux has been many places in his life and tried almost everything. But this trip in and around the lands of the Pacific may be his boldest, most fascinating yet. From New Zealand's rain forests, to crocodile-infested New Guinea, over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors, daring weather and coastlines, he travels by Kayak wherever the winds take him--and what he discovers is the world to explore and try to understand."
4238,Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time,travel,"The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit."
4239,Toujours Provence,travel,"Taking up where his beloved A Year in Provence leaves off, Peter Mayle offers us another funny, beautifully (and deliciously) evocative book about life in Provence. With tales only one who lives there could know—of finding gold coins while digging in the garden, of indulging in sumptuous feasts at truck stops—and with characters introduced with great affection and wit—the gendarme fallen from grace, the summer visitors ever trying the patience of even the most genial Provençaux, the straightforward dog ""Boy""—Toujours Provence is a heart-warming portrait of a place where, if you can't quite ""get away from it all,"" you can surely have a very good time trying."
4240,What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding,travel,"Kristin Newman spent much of her twenties and thirties buying dresses to wear to her friends' weddings and baby showers. Not ready to settle down and in need of an escape from her fast-paced job as a sitcom writer, Kristin instead traveled the world, often alone, for several weeks each year. In addition to falling madly in love with the planet, Kristin fell for many attractive locals, men who could provide the emotional connection she wanted without costing her the freedom she desperately needed.
Kristin introduces readers to the Israeli bartenders, Finnish poker players, sexy Bedouins, and Argentinean priests who helped her transform into ""Kristin-Adjacent"" on the road–a slower, softer, and, yes, sluttier version of herself at home."
4241,Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values,travel,"Robert M. Pirsig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an examination of how we live, a meditation on how to live better set around the narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father & his young son."
4242,Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before,travel,"Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone BeforeTwo centuries after James Cook's epic voyages of discovery, Tony Horwitz takes readers on a wild ride across hemispheres and centuries to recapture the Captain's adventures and explore his embattled legacy in today's Pacific. Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Confederates in the Attic, works as a sailor aboard a replica of Cook's ship, meets island kings and beauty queens, and carouses the South Seas with a hilarious and disgraceful travel companion, an Aussie named Roger. He also creates a brilliant portrait of Cook: an impoverished farmboy who became the greatest navigator in British history and forever changed the lands he touched. Poignant, probing, antic, and exhilarating, Blue Latitudes brings to life a man who helped create the global village we inhabit today."
4243,McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland,travel,"Despite the many exotic places Pete McCarthy has visited, he finds that nowhere else can match the particular magic of Ireland, his mother's homeland. In McCarthy's Bar, his journey begins in Cork and continues along the west coast to Donegal in the north. Traveling through spectacular landscapes, but at all times obeying the rule, ""never pass a bar that has your name on it,"" he encounters McCarthy's bars up and down the land, meeting fascinating people before pleading to be let out at four o'clock in the morning.

Written by someone who is at once an insider and an outside, McCarthy's Bar is a wonderfully funny and affectionate portrait of a rapidly changing country."
4244,A Moveable Feast,travel,"Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate, and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him - James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - he recalls the time when, poor, happy, and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway's life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city."
4245,Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucía,travel,"No sooner had Chris Stewart set eyes on El Valero than he handed over a check. Now all he had to do was explain to Ana, his wife, that they were the proud owners of an isolated sheep farm in the Alpujarra Mountains in Southern Spain. That was the easy part.

Lush with olive, lemon, and almond groves, the farm lacks a few essentials—running water, electricity, an access road. And then there's the problem of rapacious Pedro Romero, the previous owner who refuses to leave. A perpetual optimist, whose skill as a sheepshearer provides an ideal entrée into his new community, Stewart also possesses an unflappable spirit that, we soon learn, nothing can diminish. Wholly enchanted by the rugged terrain of the hillside and the people they meet along the way—among them farmers, including the ever-resourceful Domingo, other expatriates and artists—Chris and Ana Stewart build an enviable life, complete with a child and dogs, in a country far from home."
4246,Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World,travel,"It started as a daydream. Poring over a map of the world at home one quiet Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor - actor and self-confessed bike nut - noticed that it was possible to ride all the way round the world, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. It was a revelation he couldn't get out of his head. So he picked up the phone and called Charley Boorman, his best friend, fellow actor and bike enthusiast. 'Charley, ' he said. 'I think you ought to come over for dinner...'From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls' testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads.

And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride over 20,000 miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process. As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. ""Long Way Round"" is the result of their adventures - a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realising their dream.
More book description"
4247,City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi,travel,"Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an extraordinary array of characters along the way-from eunuchs to descendants of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-minded curiosity, William Dalrymple explores the seven ""dead"" cities of Delhi as well as the eighth city-today's Delhi. Underlying his quest is the legend of the djinns, fire-formed spirits that are said to assure the city's Phoenix-like regeneration no matter how many times it is destroyed. Entertaining, fascinating, and informative, City of Djinns is an irresistible blend of research and adventure."
4248,Assassination Vacation,travel,"Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other—a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.

From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue—it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and—the author's favorite— historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult."
4249,Travels in Siberia,travel,"In his astonishing new work, Ian Frazier, one of our greatest and most entertaining storytellers, trains his perceptive, generous eye on Siberia, the storied expanse of Asiatic Russia whose grim renown is but one explanation among hundreds for the region's fascinating, enduring appeal. In Travels in Siberia, Frazier reveals Siberia's role in history--its science, economics, and politics--with great passion and enthusiasm, ensuring that we'll never think about it in the same way again.
With great empathy and epic sweep, Frazier tells the stories of Siberia's most famous exiles, from the well-known--Dostoyevsky, Lenin (twice), Stalin (numerous times)--to the lesser known (like Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the empress for copying her dresses) to those who experienced unimaginable suffering in Siberian camps under the Soviet regime, forever immortalized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago.
Travels in Siberia is also a unique chronicle of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, a personal account of adventures among Russian friends and acquaintances, and, above all, a unique, captivating, totally Frazierian take on what he calls the ""amazingness"" of Russia--a country that, for all its tragic history, somehow still manages to be funny. Travels in Siberia will undoubtedly take its place as one of the twenty-first century's indispensable contributions to the travel-writing genre."
4250,Paris to the Moon,travel,"With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century.

Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.

In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive.

So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning ""Paris Journals"" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a ""culinary crisis.""

As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. ""We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation - I did anyway - even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."""
4251,Arabian Sands,travel,"""Arabian Sands"" is Wilfred Thesiger's record of his extraordinary journey through the parched ""Empty Quarter"" of Arabia. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Thesiger was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life-""the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets."" In the spirit of T. E. Lawrence, he set out to explore the deserts of Arabia, traveling among peoples who had never seen a European and considered it their duty to kill Christian infidels. His now-classic account is invaluable to understanding the modern Middle East."
4252,Between the Woods and the Water,travel,"Continuing the epic foot journey across Europe begun in A Time of Gifts

The journey that Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on in 1933—to cross Europe on foot with an emergency allowance of one pound a day—proved so rich in experiences that when much later he sat down to describe them, they overflowed into more than one volume. Undertaken as the storms of war gathered, and providing a background for the events that were beginning to unfold in Central Europe, Leigh Fermor’s still-unfinished account of his journey has established itself as a modern classic. Between the Woods and the Water, the second volume of a projected three, has garnered as many prizes as its celebrated predecessor, A Time of Gifts.

The opening of the book finds Leigh Fermor crossing the Danube—at the very moment where his first volume left off. A detour to the luminous splendors of Prague is followed by a trip downriver to Budapest, passage on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain, and a crossing of the Romanian border into Transylvania. Remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies, and a variety of sects are all savored in the approach to the Iron Gates, the division between the Carpathian mountains and the Balkans, where, for now, the story ends."
4253,"The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure",travel,"Rachel Friedman has always been the consummate good girl who does well in school and plays it safe, so the college grad surprises no one more than herself when, on a whim (and in an effort to escape impending life decisions), she buys a ticket to Ireland, a place she has never visited. There she forms an unlikely bond with a free-spirited Australian girl, a born adventurer who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong odyssey that takes her to three continents, fills her life with newfound friends, and gives birth to a previously unrealized passion for adventure. 

As her journey takes her to Australia and South America, Rachel discovers and embraces her love of travel and unlocks more truths about herself than she ever realized she was seeking. Along the way, the erstwhile good girl finally learns to do something she’s never done before: simply live for the moment."
4254,The Shadow of the Sun,travel,"In 1957, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa to witness the beginning of the end of colonial rule as the first African correspondent of Poland's state newspaper. From the early days of independence in Ghana to the ongoing ethnic genocide in Rwanda, Kapuscinski has crisscrossed vast distances pursuing the swift, and often violent, events that followed liberation. Kapuscinski hitchhikes with caravans, wanders the Sahara with nomads, and lives in the poverty-stricken slums of Nigeria. He wrestles a king cobra to the death and suffers through a bout of malaria. What emerges is an extraordinary depiction of Africa--not as a group of nations or geographic locations--but as a vibrant and frequently joyous montage of peoples, cultures, and encounters. Kapuscinski's trenchant observations, wry analysis and overwhelming humanity paint a remarkable portrait of the continent and its people. His unorthodox approach and profound respect for the people he meets challenge conventional understandings of the modern problems faced by Africa at the dawn of the twenty-first century."
4255,The Road to Oxiana,travel,"In 1933 the delightfully eccentric Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana -the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. His arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, although a wonder in itself, it not nearly so amazing as the thoroughly captivating, at times zany, record of his adventures.

In addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers. When Paul Fussell ""rediscovered"" The Road to Oxiana in his recent book Abroad, he whetted the appetite of a whole new generation of readers. In his new introduction, written especially for this volume, Fussell writes: ""Reading the book is like stumbling into a modern museum of literary kinds presided over by a benign if eccentric curator. Here armchair travellers will find newspaper clippings, public signs and notices, official forms, letters, diary entries, essays on current politics, lyric passages, historical and archaeological dissertations, brief travel narratives (usually of comic-awful delays and disasters), and--the triumph of the book--at least twenty superb comic dialogues, some of them virtually playlets, complete with stage directions and musical scoring."""
4256,Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart,travel,"A compulsively readable account of a journey to the Congo — a country virtually inaccessible to the outside world — vividly told by a daring and adventurous journalist.

Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomized the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition — but travelling alone.

Despite warnings Butcher spent years poring over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and venturing to the Congo’s eastern border. He passed through once thriving cities of this country and saw the marks left behind by years of abuse and misrule. Almost, 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the Atlantic Ocean, a thinner and a wiser man.

Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, vividly told in Blood River, is more remarkable still.


From the Hardcover edition."
4257,Shadow of the Silk Road,travel,"Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch—in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel.

The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval.

One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment."
4258,The Alchemist,travel,"Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams."
4259,Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan,travel,"It had never been done before. Not in 4000 years of Japanese recorded history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from one end of the country to the other. Nor had anyone hitchhiked the length of Japan. But, heady on sakura and sake, Will Ferguson bet he could do both. The resulting travelogue is one of the funniest and most illuminating books ever written about Japan. And, as Ferguson learns, it illustrates that to travel is better than to arrive."
4260,The Kingdom by the Sea,travel,"It was 1982, the summer of the Falkland Islands War, and the birth of the royal heir, Prince William - and the ideal time, Theroux found, to surprise the British into talking about themselves. The result is a candid, funny, perceptive, and opinionated travelogue of his journey and his findings."
4261,Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads,travel,"One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked

Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America — the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation’s worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It’s these parts of the South, so often ignored, that have caught Theroux’s keen traveler’s eye.  On road trips spanning four seasons, wending along rural highways, Theroux visits gun shows and small-town churches, laborers in Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi where they still call the farm up the road “the plantation.” He talks to mayors and social workers, writers and reverends, the working poor and farming families — the unsung heroes of the south, the people who, despite it all, never left, and also those who returned home to rebuild a place they could never live without.  From the writer whose “great mission has always been to transport us beyond that reading chair, to challenge himself — and thus, to challenge us” (Boston Globe), Deep South is an ode to a region, vivid and haunting, full of life and loss alike."
4262,River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze,travel,"In the heart of China's Sichuan province lies the small city of Fuling. Surrounded by the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, Fuling has long been a place of continuity, far from the bustling political centers of Beijing and Shanghai. But now Fuling is heading down a new path, and gradually, along with scores of other towns in this vast and ever-evolving country, it is becoming a place of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth. As the people of Fuling hold on to the China they know, they are also opening up and struggling to adapt to a world in which their fate is uncertain.
Fuling's position at the crossroads came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. He found himself teaching English and American literature at the local college, discovering how Shakespeare and other classics look when seen through the eyes of students who have been raised in the Sichuan countryside and educated in Communist Party doctrine. His students, though, are the ones who taught him about the ways of Fuling — and about the complex process of understanding that takes place when one is immersed in a radically different society.
As he learns the language and comes to know the people, Hessler begins to see that it is indeed a unique moment for Fuling. In its past is Communist China's troubled history — the struggles of land reform, the decades of misguided economic policies, and the unthinkable damage of the Cultural Revolution — and in the future is the Three Gorges Dam, which upon completion will partly flood thecity and force the resettlement of more than a million people. Making his way in the city and traveling by boat and train throughout Sichuan province and beyond, Hessler offers vivid descriptions of the people he meets, from priests to prostitutes and peasants to professors, and gives voice to their views. This is both an intimate personal story of his life in Fuling and a colorful, beautifully written account of the surrounding landscape and its history. Imaginative, poignant, funny, and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that, much like China itself, is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be."
4263,Travel as a Political Act,travel,"Travel connects people with people. It helps us fit more comfortably and compatibly into a shrinking world. And it inspires creative new solutions to persistent problems facing our nation. We can’t understand our world without experiencing it. Traveling as a Political Act helps us take that first step. There’s more to travel than good-value hotels, great art, and tasty cuisine. Americans who “travel as a political act” can have the time of their lives and come home smarter?with a better understanding of the interconnectedness of today’s world and just how our nation fits in. In his new book, acclaimed travel writer Rick Steves explains how to travel more thoughtfully?to any destination. He shares a series of field reports from Europe, Central America, Asia, and the Middle East to show how his travels have shaped his politics and broadened his perspective. www.ricksteves.com"
4264,Down and Out in Paris and London,travel,"This unusual fictional memoir - in good part autobiographical - narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-outs of two great cities. The Parisian episode is fascinating for its expose of the kitchens of posh French restaurants, where the narrator works at the bottom of the culinary echelon as dishwasher, or plongeur. In London, while waiting for a job, he experiences the world of tramps, street people, and free lodging houses. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and of society."
4265,Bella Tuscany,travel,"Frances Mayes invites us back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food there and throughout Italy.

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites us back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food there and throughout Italy.

Happiness? The color of it must be spring green, impossible to describe until I see a just-hatched lizard sunning on a stone. That color, the glowing green lizard skin, repeats in every new leaf. The regenerative power of nature explodes in every weed, stalk, branch. Working in the mild sun, I feel the green fuse of my body, too. Surges of energy, kaleidoscopic sunlight through the leaves, the soft breeze that makes me want to say the word ""zephyr""--this mindless simplicity can be called happiness.

Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed her to return to Cortona--and her beloved house, Bramasole--just as the first green appeared on the rocky hillsides.

Bella Tuscany, a companion volume to Under the Tuscan Sun, is her passionate and lyrical account of her continuing love affair with Italy. Now truly at home there, Mayes writes of her deepening connection to the land, her flourishing friendships with local people, the joys of art, food, and wine, and the rewards and occasional heartbreaks of her villa's ongoing restoration. It is also a memoir of a season of change, and of renewed possibility. As spring becomes summer she revives Bramasole's lush gardens, meets the challenges of learning a new language, tours regions from Sicily to the Veneto, and faces transitions in her family life.

Filled with recipes from her Tuscan kitchen and written in the sensuous and evocative prose that has become her hallmark, Bella Tuscany is a celebration of the sweet life in Italy."
4266,The Lost City of the Monkey God,travel,"A five-hundred-year-old legend. An ancient curse. A stunning medical mystery. And a pioneering journey into the unknown heart of the world's densest jungle.

Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location.

Three quarters of a century later, author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.

Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease."
4267,Travels with Herodotus,travel,"From the master of literary reportage whose acclaimed books include Shah of Shahs, The Emperor, and The Shadow of the Sun, an intimate account of his first youthful forays beyond the Iron Curtain.

Just out of university in 1955, Kapuscinski told his editor that he’d like to go abroad. Dreaming no farther than Czechoslovakia, the young reporter found himself sent to India. Wide-eyed and captivated, he would discover in those days his life’s work—to understand and describe the world in its remotest reaches, in all its multiplicity. From the rituals of sunrise at Persepolis to the incongruity of Louis Armstrong performing before a stone-faced crowd in Khartoum, Kapuscinski gives us the non-Western world as he first saw it, through still-virginal Western eyes.

The companion on his travels: a volume of Herodotus, a gift from his first boss. Whether in China, Poland, Iran, or the Congo, it was the “father of history”—and, as Kapuscinski would realize, of globalism—who helped the young correspondent to make sense of events, to find the story where it did not obviously exist. It is this great forerunner’s spirit—both supremely worldly and innately Occidental—that would continue to whet Kapuscinski’s ravenous appetite for discovering the broader world and that has made him our own indispensable companion on any leg of that perpetual journey.
More book description"
4268,The Pillars of Hercules,travel,"At the gateway to the Mediterranean lie the two Pillars of Hercules: Gibraltar and Ceuta, in Morocco. Paul Theroux decided to travel from one to the other – but taking the long way round.

His grand tour of the Mediterranean begins in Gibraltar and takes him through Spain, the French Riviera, Italy, Greece, Istanbul and beyond. He travels by any means necessary - including dilapidated taxi, smoke-filled bus, bicycle and even a cruise-liner. And he encounters bullfights, bazaars and British tourists, discovers pockets of humanity in war-torn Slovenia and Croatia, is astounded by the urban developments on the Costa del Sol and marvels at the ancient wonders of Delphi.

Told with Theroux's inimitable wit and style, this lively and eventful tour evokes the essence of Mediterranean life."
4269,The Travels,travel,"Marco Polo (1254-1329) has achieved an almost archetypal status as a traveller, and his Travels is one of the first great travel books of Western literature, outside the ancient world. The Travels recounts Polo's journey to the eastern court of Kublai Khan, the chieftain of the Mongol empire which covered the Asian continent, but which was almost unknown to Polo's contemporaries. Encompassing a twenty-four year period from 1271, Polo's account details his travels in the service of the empire, from Beijing to northern India and ends with the remarkable story of Polo's return voyage from the Chinese port of Amoy to the Persian Gulf. Alternately factual and fantastic, Polo's prose at once reveals the medieval imagination's limits, and captures the wonder of subsequent travel writers when faced with the unfamiliar, the exotic or the unknown.
More book description"
4270,Last Chance to See,travel,"Join author Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine as they take off around the world in search of exotic, endangered creatures."
4271,Black Lamb and Grey Falcon,travel,"Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West's classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans, and the uneasy relationships amongst its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country's history as well as its daily life."
4272,Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage,travel,"The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age."
4273,Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road,travel,"""Every day on a bike trip is like the one before--but it is also completely different, or perhaps you are different, woken up in new ways by the mile.""

As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and philosopher--had gone extinct. From her small-town home in Ontario, it seemed as if Marco Polo, Magellan and their like had long ago mapped the whole earth. So she vowed to become a scientist and go to Mars.
To pass the time before she could launch into outer space, Kate set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule, then settled down to study at Oxford and MIT. Eventually the truth dawned on her: an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. And Harris had soared most fully out of bounds right here on Earth, travelling a bygone trading route on her bicycle. So she quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Mel, this time determined to bike it from the beginning to end.
Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer before her, Kate Harris offers a travel narrative at once exuberant and meditative, wry and rapturous. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of a world that, like the self and like the stars, can never be fully mapped."
4274,The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca,travel,"In the tradition of A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, acclaimed English travel writer Tahir Shah shares a highly entertaining account of making an exotic dream come true. By turns hilarious and harrowing, here is the story of his family’s move from the gray skies of London to the sun-drenched city of Casablanca, where Islamic tradition and African folklore converge–and nothing is as easy as it seems….

Inspired by the Moroccan vacations of his childhood, Tahir Shah dreamed of making a home in that astonishing country. At age thirty-six he got his chance. Investing what money he and his wife, Rachana, had, Tahir packed up his growing family and bought Dar Khalifa, a crumbling ruin of a mansion by the sea in Casablanca that once belonged to the city’s caliph, or spiritual leader.

With its lush grounds, cool, secluded courtyards, and relaxed pace, life at Dar Khalifa seems sure to fulfill Tahir’s fantasy–until he discovers that in many ways he is farther from home than he imagined. For in Morocco an empty house is thought to attract jinns, invisible spirits unique to the Islamic world. The ardent belief in their presence greatly hampers sleep and renovation plans, but that is just the beginning. From elaborate exorcism rituals involving sacrificial goats to dealing with gangster neighbors intent on stealing their property, the Shahs must cope with a new culture and all that comes with it.

Endlessly enthralling, The Caliph’s House charts a year in the life of one family who takes a tremendous gamble. As we follow Tahir on his travels throughout the kingdom, from Tangier to Marrakech to the Sahara, we discover a world of fierce contrasts that any true adventurer would be thrilled to call home.


From the Hardcover edition.

See for an interview: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/vide..."
4275,"Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide",travel,"A hilarious, highly original collection of essays based on the Botswana truism: “only food runs!”

In the tradition of Bill Bryson, a new writer brings us the lively adventures and biting wit of an African safari guide. Peter Allison gives us the guide’s-eye view of living in the bush, confronting the world’s fiercest terrain of wild animals and, most challenging of all, managing herds of gaping tourists. Passionate for the animals of the Kalahari, Allison works as a top safari guide in the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta. As he serves the whims of his wealthy clients, he often has to stop the impulse to run as far away from them as he can, as these tourists are sometimes more dangerous than a pride of lions.

No one could make up these outrageous-but-true tales: the young woman who rejected the recommended safari-friendly khaki to wear a more “fashionable” hot pink ensemble; the lost tourist who happened to be drunk, half-naked, and a member of the British royal family; establishing a real friendship with the continent’s most vicious animal; the Japanese tourist who requested a repeat performance of Allison’s being charged by a lion so he could videotape it; and spending a crazy night in the wild after blowing a tire on a tour bus, revealing that Allison has as much good-natured scorn for himself.

The author’s humor is exceeded only by his love and respect for the animals, and his goal is to limit any negative exposure to humans by planning trips that are minimally invasive—unfortunately it doesn’t always work out that way!

Peter Allison is originally from Sydney, Australia. His safaris have been featured in National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler, and on television programs such as Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures. He travels frequently to speaking appearances, and splits most of his time between Botswana, Sydney, and San Francisco."
4276,World Travel: An Irreverent Guide,travel,"A guide to some of the world’s most fascinating places, as seen and experienced by writer, television host, and relentlessly curious traveler Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from the hidden pockets of his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris, and Shanghai to Tanzania’s utter beauty and the stunning desert solitude of Oman’s Empty Quarter—and many places beyond.

In World Travel, a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives readers an introduction to some of his favorite places—in his own words. Featuring essential advice on how to get there, what to eat, where to stay and, in some cases, what to avoid, World Travel provides essential context that will help readers further appreciate the reasons why Bourdain found a place enchanting and memorable.

Supplementing Bourdain’s words are a handful of essays by friends, colleagues, and family that tell even deeper stories about a place, including sardonic accounts of traveling with Bourdain by his brother, Chris; a guide to Chicago’s best cheap eats by legendary music producer Steve Albini, and more. Additionally, each chapter includes illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook.

For veteran travelers, armchair enthusiasts, and those in between, World Travel offers a chance to experience the world like Anthony Bourdain."
4277,"Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World",travel,"From the award-winning author of The Shell Collector and About Grace comes an evocative memoir of the timeless beauty of Rome and the day-to-day wonderment of living, writing, and raising twin boys in a foreign city."
4278,Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door,travel,"You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling through Europe, including how to:

- Plan your itinerary and maximize your time
- Pack light-and right
- Find good-value hotels and restaurants
- Travel smoothly by train, bus, car, and plane
- Avoid crowds and tourist scams
- Hurdle the language barrier
- Understand cultural differences and connect with locals
- Save money while enjoying the trip of a lifetime

After 30 years of exploring Europe, Rick considers this travel skills handbook his life's work. He shares his favorite off-the-beaten-path towns, trails, and natural wonders. With this guidebook, you'll experience the culture like a local, spend less money, and have more fun."
4279,The Salt Path,travel,"Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home and livelihood is taken away. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.

They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.

The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways."
4280,A Walk Across America,travel,"Twenty-five years ago, a disillusioned young man set out on a walk across America. This is the book he wrote about that journey -- a classic account of the reawakening of his faith in himself and his country.

""I started out searching for myself and my country,"" Peter Jenkins writes, ""and found both."" In this timeless classic, Jenkins describes how disillusionment with society in the 1970s drove him out onto the road on a walk across America. His experiences remain as sharp and telling today as they were twenty-five years ago -- from the timeless secrets of life, learned from a mountain-dwelling hermit, to the stir he caused by staying with a black family in North Carolina, to his hours of intense labor in Southern mills. Many, many miles later, he learned lessons about his country and himself that resonate to this day -- and will inspire a new generation to get out, hit the road and explore."
4281,Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,fantasy,"Harry Potter's life is miserable. His parents are dead and he's stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he's a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

After a lifetime of bottling up his magical powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry.

Though Harry's first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and Harry believes it's his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.

Full of sympathetic characters, wildly imaginative situations, and countless exciting details, the first installment in the series assembles an unforgettable magical world and sets the stage for many high-stakes adventures to come. (less)"
4282,Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,fantasy,"Ever since Harry Potter had come home for the summer, the Dursleys had been so mean and hideous that all Harry wanted was to get back to the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he’s packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange impish creature who says that if Harry returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike.

And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls’ bathroom. But then the real trouble begins – someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects… Harry Potter himself! (less)"
4283,Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,fantasy,"During his third year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter must confront the devious and dangerous wizard responsible for his parents' deaths. (less)"
4284,The Hobbit,fantasy,"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001). (less)"
4285,Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,fantasy,"Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup with Hermione, Ron, and the Weasleys. He wants to dream about Cho Chang, his crush (and maybe do more than dream). He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for hundreds of years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards.

And in his case, different can be deadly. (less)"
4286,Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,fantasy,"There is a door at the end of a silent corridor. And it’s haunting Harry Potter’s dreams. Why else would he be waking in the middle of the night, screaming in terror?

Harry has a lot on his mind for this, his fifth year at Hogwarts: a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with a personality like poisoned honey; a big surprise on the Gryffindor Quidditch team; and the looming terror of the Ordinary Wizarding Level exams. But all these things pale next to the growing threat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named - a threat that neither the magical government nor the authorities at Hogwarts can stop.

As the grasp of darkness tightens, Harry must discover the true depth and strength of his friends, the importance of boundless loyalty, and the shocking price of unbearable sacrifice.

His fate depends on them all. (less)"
4287,Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,fantasy,"The war against Voldemort is not going well; even Muggle governments are noticing. Ron scans the obituary pages of the Daily Prophet, looking for familiar names. Dumbledore is absent from Hogwarts for long stretches of time, and the Order of the Phoenix has already suffered losses.

And yet . . .

As in all wars, life goes on. The Weasley twins expand their business. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate - and lose a few eyebrows in the process. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Classes are never straightforward, through Harry receives some extraordinary help from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince.

So it's the home front that takes center stage in the multilayered sixth installment of the story of Harry Potter. Here at Hogwarts, Harry will search for the full and complete story of the boy who became Lord Voldemort - and thereby find what may be his only vulnerability. (less)"
4288,A Game of Thrones,fantasy,"Here is the first volume in George R. R. Martin’s magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R. R. Martin’s stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.

A GAME OF THRONES

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

source: georgerrmartin.com (less)"
4289,The Fellowship of the Ring,fantasy,"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkeness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit.

In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose. (less)"
4290,A Clash of Kings,fantasy,"A comet the color of blood and flame cuts across the sky. Two great leaders—Lord Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon—who hold sway over an age of enforced peace are dead, victims of royal treachery. Now, from the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns. Six factions struggle for control of a divided land and the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, preparing to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war.

It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.

Here is the second volume in George R.R. Martin magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R.R. Martin stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction. (less)"
4291,The Name of the Wind,fantasy,"Told in Kvothe's own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.

The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard. (less)"
4292,The Two Towers,fantasy,"Begin your journey into Middle-earth.

The inspiration for the upcoming original series on Prime Video, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The Two Towers is the second part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic adventure The Lord of the Rings.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They have lost the wizard, Gandalf, in a battle in the Mines of Moria. And Boromir, seduced by the power of the Ring, tried to seize it by force. While Frodo and Sam made their escape, the rest of the company was attacked by Orcs. Now they continue the journey alone down the great River Anduin—alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go. (less)"
4293,The Return of the King,fantasy,"Begin your journey into Middle-earth.

The inspiration for the upcoming original series on Prime Video, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The Return of the King is the third part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic adventure The Lord of the Rings.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The Dark Lord has risen, and as he unleashes hordes of Orcs to conquer all Middle-earth, Frodo and Sam struggle deep into his realm in Mordor.

To defeat Sauron, the One Ring must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. But the way is impossibly hard, and Frodo is weakening. The Ring corrupts all who bear it and Frodo’s time is running out.

Will Sam and Frodo succeed, or will the Dark Lord rule Middle-earth once more? (less)"
4294,"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe",fantasy,"Narnia… the land beyond the wardrobe door, a secret place frozen in eternal winter, a magical country waiting to be set free.

Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor's mysterious old house. At first her brothers and sister don't believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Lion Aslan, they realize they've been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch's sinister spell. (less)"
4295,A Storm of Swords,fantasy,"an alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Here is the third volume in George R.R. Martin's magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. Together, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.

Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, victim of the sorceress who holds him in her thrall. Young Robb still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world. And as opposing forces manoeuver for the final showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost limits of civilization, accompanied by a horde of mythical Others—a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords... (less)"
4296,The Final Empire,fantasy,"What if the whole world were a dead, blasted wasteland?

Mistborn
For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the ""Sliver of Infinity,"" reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier ""snapped"" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Then Kelsier reveals his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets. She will have to learn trust if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale-spinner and author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the prophesied hero failed to defeat the Dark Lord? The answer will be found in the Misborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises that begins with the book in your hands. Fantasy will never be the same again. (less)"
4297,A Feast for Crows,fantasy,"Crows will fight over a dead man's flesh, and kill each other for his eyes.

Bloodthirsty, treacherous and cunning, the Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne in the name of the boy-king Tommen. The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermath new conflicts spark to life.

The Martells of Dorne and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Euron Crow's Eye, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles. From the icy north, where Others threaten the Wall, apprentice Maester Samwell Tarly brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel.

Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory will go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel and the coldest hearts. (less)"
4298,The Lightning Thief,fantasy,"Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse - Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy's mom finds out, she knows it's time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he'll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends—one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena - Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods. (less)"
4299,Six of Crows,fantasy,"Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone. . . .

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first. (less)"
4300,The Golden Compass,fantasy,"Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal--including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world.

Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want--but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other. (less)"
4301,Eragon,fantasy,"An alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780375826696 can be found here.

One boy...
One dragon...
A world of adventure.

When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon soon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself.

Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds.

Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the Empire may rest in his hands. (less)"
4302,A Court of Thorns and Roses,fantasy,"When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.

At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read. (less)"
4303,Shadow and Bone,fantasy,"▶ Alternative Cover Edition #1

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart. (less)"
4304,A Dance with Dragons,fantasy,"Alternate cover edition of ASIN B004XISI4A

In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance—beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies, and many have set out to find her. As they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind.

Fleeing from Westeros with a price on his head, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his way to Daenerys. But his newest allies in this quest are not the rag-tag band they seem, and at their heart lies one who could undo Daenerys’s claim to Westeros forever.

Meanwhile, to the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone—a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice.

From all corners, bitter conflicts reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all. (less)"
4305,American Gods,fantasy,"Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there... (less)"
4306,City of Bones,fantasy,"When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder― much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing―not even a smear of blood―to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know... (less)"
4307,The Night Circus,fantasy,"The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart. (less)"
4308,Twilight,fantasy,"About three things I was absolutely positive.

First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him—and I didn't know how dominant that part might be—that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight is a love story with bite. (less)"
4309,"Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch",fantasy,"According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . . (less)"
4310,A Darker Shade of Magic,fantasy,"Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive. (less)"
4311,The Cruel Prince,fantasy,"This is a previously published cover edition of ISBN 9780316310277. An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself. (less)"
4312,Stardust,fantasy,"Alternate cover edition can be found here

Young Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria—even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. Beyond that old stone wall, Tristran learns, lies Faerie—where nothing not even a fallen star, is what he imagined. (less)"
4313,The Way of Kings,fantasy,"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, book one of The Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths:

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again. (less)"
4314,Neverwhere,fantasy,"Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet.

""Neverwhere"" is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train.

Now a single act of kindness has catapulted young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his safe and predictable life - and into the realms of ""Neverwhere."" Richard is about to find out more than he ever wanted to know about this other London. Which is a pity. Because Richard just wants to go home... (less)"
4315,A Court of Mist and Fury,fantasy,"The seductive and stunning #1 New York Times bestselling sequel to Sarah J. Maas’s spellbinding A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she’s now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people.

As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre’s hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different people: one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court, and one who lives out her life in the Spring Court with Tamlin. While Feyre navigates a dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms. She might just be the key to stopping it, but only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future—and the future of a world in turmoil.

Bestselling author Sarah J. Maas’s masterful storytelling brings this second book in her dazzling, sexy, action-packed series to new heights. (less)"
4316,The Wise Man's Fear,fantasy,"“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

My name is Kvothe.
I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.
You may have heard of me.

So begins the tale of a hero told from his own point of view — a story unequaled in fantasy literature. Now in The Wise Man's Fear, an escalating rivalry with a powerful member of the nobility forces Kvothe to leave the University and seek his fortune abroad. Adrift, penniless, and alone, he travels to Vintas, where he quickly becomes entangled in the politics of courtly society. While attempting to curry favor with a powerful noble, Kvothe uncovers an assassination attempt, comes into conflict with a rival arcanist, and leads a group of mercenaries into the wild, in an attempt to solve the mystery of who (or what) is waylaying travelers on the King's Road.

All the while, Kvothe searches for answers, attempting to uncover the truth about the mysterious Amyr, the Chandrian, and the death of his parents. Along the way, Kvothe is put on trial by the legendary Adem mercenaries, is forced to reclaim the honor of the Edema Ruh, and travels into the Fae realm. There he meets Felurian, the faerie woman no man can resist, and who no man has ever survived ... until Kvothe.

In The Wise Man's Fear, Kvothe takes his first steps on the path of the hero and learns how difficult life can be when a man becomes a legend in his own time.

(less)"
4317,The Sea of Monsters,fantasy,"The heroic son of Poseidon makes an action-packed comeback in the second must-read installment of Rick Riordan's amazing young readers series. Starring Percy Jackson, a ""half blood"" whose mother is human and whose father is the God of the Sea, Riordan's series combines cliffhanger adventure and Greek mythology lessons that results in true page-turners that get better with each installment.

In this episode, The Sea of Monsters, Percy sets out to retrieve the Golden Fleece before his summer camp is destroyed, surpassing the first book's drama and setting the stage for more thrills to come. (less)"
4318,Crooked Kingdom,fantasy,"Welcome to the world of the Grisha.

Kaz Brekker and his crew of deadly outcasts have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives.

Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties.

A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world. (less)"
4319,The Lies of Locke Lamora,fantasy,"An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game—or die trying. (less)"
4320,Assassin's Apprentice,fantasy,"In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma.

Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.

So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin. (less)"
4321,The Well of Ascension,fantasy,"The impossible has been accomplished. The Lord Ruler—the man who claimed to be god incarnate and brutally ruled the world for a thousand years—has been vanquished. But Kelsier, the hero who masterminded that triumph, is dead too, and now the awesome task of building a new world has been left to his young protégé, Vin, the former street urchin who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and to the idealistic young nobleman she loves.

As Kelsier's protégé and slayer of the Lord Ruler she is now venerated by a budding new religion, a distinction that makes her intensely uncomfortable. Even more worrying, the mists have begun behaving strangely since the Lord Ruler died, and seem to harbor a strange vaporous entity that haunts her.

Stopping assassins may keep Vin's Mistborn skills sharp, but it's the least of her problems. Luthadel, the largest city of the former empire, doesn't run itself, and Vin and the other members of Kelsier's crew, who lead the revolution, must learn a whole new set of practical and political skills to help. It certainly won't get easier with three armies - one of them composed of ferocious giants - now vying to conquer the city, and no sign of the Lord Ruler's hidden cache of atium, the rarest and most powerful allomantic metal.

As the siege of Luthadel tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows. (less)"
4322,Crown of Midnight,fantasy,"""A line that should never be crossed is about to be breached.

It puts this entire castle in jeopardy—and the life of your friend.""

From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul as black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil.

Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart.

Then one terrible night, the secrets they have all been keeping lead to an unspeakable tragedy. As Celaena's world shatters, she will be forced to give up the very thing most precious to her and decide once and for all where her true loyalties lie... and whom she is ultimately willing to fight for. (less)"
4323,A Wizard of Earthsea,fantasy,"Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth.

Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance. (less)"
4324,The Hero of Ages,fantasy,"Who is the Hero of Ages?

To end the Final Empire and restore freedom, Vin killed the Lord Ruler. But as a result, the Deepness—the lethal form of the ubiquitous mists—is back, along with increasingly heavy ashfalls and ever more powerful earthquakes. Humanity appears to be doomed.

Having escaped death at the climax of The Well of Ascension only by becoming a Mistborn himself, Emperor Elend Venture hopes to find clues left behind by the Lord Ruler that will allow him to save the world. Vin is consumed with guilt at having been tricked into releasing the mystic force known as Ruin from the Well. Ruin wants to end the world, and its near omniscience and ability to warp reality make stopping it seem impossible. Vin can't even discuss it with Elend lest Ruin learn their plans! (less)"
4325,Red Queen,fantasy,"This is a world divided by blood—red or silver. The Reds are commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts, it seems like nothing will ever change. That is until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the balance of power. Fearful of Mare's potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime. But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous dance—Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own heart. (less)"
4326,The Battle of the Labyrinth,fantasy,"Percy Jackson isn't expecting freshman orientation to be any fun. But when a mysterious mortal acquaintance appears at his potential new school, followed by demon cheerleaders, things quickly move from bad to worse.

In this fourth installment of the blockbuster series, time is running out as war between the Olympians and the evil Titan lord Kronos draws near. Even the safe haven of Camp Half-Blood grows more vulnerable by the minute as Kronos's army prepares to invade its once impenetrable borders. To stop the invasion, Percy and his demigod friends must set out on a quest through the Labyrinth - a sprawling underground world with stunning surprises at every turn. (less)"
4327,A Court of Wings and Ruin,fantasy,"The epic third novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas.

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's actions and learn what she can about the invading king threatening to bring her land to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit. One slip could bring doom not only for Feyre, but for everything-and everyone-she holds dear.

As war bears down upon them all, Feyre endeavors to take her place amongst the High Fae of the land, balancing her struggle to master her powers-both magical and political-and her love for her court and family. Amidst these struggles, Feyre and Rhysand must decide whom to trust amongst the cunning and lethal High Lords, and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

In this thrilling third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Sarah J. Maas, the fate of Feyre's world is at stake as armies grapple for power over the one thing that could destroy it. (less)"
4328,The Hunger Games,fantasy,"Could you survive on your own in the wild, with every one out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love. (less)"
4329,Howl’s Moving Castle,fantasy,"An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl's castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there's far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye. (less)"
4330,The Magician's Nephew,fantasy,"The secret passage to the house next door leads to a fascinating adventure

NARNIA...where the woods are thick and cold, where Talking Beasts are called to life...a new world where the adventure begins.

Digory and Polly meet and become friends one cold, wet summer in London. Their lives burst into adventure when Digory's Uncle Andrew, who thinks he is a magician, sends them hurtling to...somewhere else. They find their way to Narnia, newborn from the Lion's song, and encounter the evil sorceress Jadis before they finally return home. (less)"
4331,The Silmarillion,fantasy,"The Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien’s world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of them such as Elrond and Galadriel took part. The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-Earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. (less)"
4332,The Last Olympian,fantasy,"All year the half-bloods have been preparing for battle against the Titans, knowing the odds of victory are grim. Kronos's army is stronger than ever, and with every god and half-blood he recruits, the evil Titan's power only grows.

While the Olympians struggle to contain the rampaging monster Typhon, Kronos begins his advance on New York City, where Mount Olympus stands virtually unguarded. Now it's up to Percy Jackson and an army of young demigods to stop the Lord of Time.

In this momentous final book in the New York Times best-selling series, the long-awaited prophecy surrounding Percy's sixteenth birthday unfolds. And as the battle for Western civilization rages on the streets of Manhattan, Percy faces a terrifying suspicion that he may be fighting against his own fate. (less)"
4333,The Last Wish,fantasy,"Geralt the Witcher—revered and hated—is a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent.

But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0010SIPT4 (less)"
4334,New Moon,fantasy,"There is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13 9780316160193 here.

I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect - not healed, but as if there had never been a wound in the first place.

I FELT LIKE I WAS TRAPPED IN ONE OF THOSE TERRIFYING NIGHTMARES, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough.... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

FOR BELLA SWAN THERE IS ONE THING more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning....

LEGIONS OF READERS ENTRANCED BY THE New York Times bestseller Twilight are hungry for the continuing story of star-crossed lovers Bell and Edward. In New Moon, Stephanie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural spin. passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality. (less)"
4335,The Fifth Season,fantasy,"This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.


original cover of ISBN 0316229296/9780316229296 (less)"
4336,Eldest,fantasy,"Darkness falls…despair abounds…evil reigns…Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in the skills of the Dragon Rider. Ages 12+.

Darkness falls…despair abounds…evil reigns…

Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in the skills of the Dragon Rider: magic and swordsmanship. Soon he is on the journey of a lifetime, his eyes open to awe-inspring new places and people, his days filled with fresh adventure. But chaos and betrayal plague him at every turn, and nothing is what it seems. Before long, Eragon doesn't know whom he can trust.

Meanwhile, his cousin Roran must fight a new battle–one that might put Eragon in even graver danger.

Will the king's dark hand strangle all resistance? Eragon may not escape with even his life. . . . (less)"
4337,City of Ashes,fantasy,"Also see: Alternate Cover Editions for this ISBN [ACE]
ACE #1

Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what's normal when you're a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who's becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go — especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary's only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil — and also her father.

To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings — and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?

In this breathtaking sequel to City of Bones, Cassandra Clare lures her readers back into the dark grip of New York City's Downworld, where love is never safe and power becomes the deadliest temptation. (less)"
4338,Ruin and Rising,fantasy,"▶ Alternative Cover Edition #1

The capital has fallen.

The Darkling rules Ravka from his shadow throne.

Now the nation's fate rests with a broken Sun Summoner, a disgraced tracker, and the shattered remnants of a once-great magical army.

Deep in an ancient network of tunnels and caverns, a weakened Alina must submit to the dubious protection of the Apparat and the zealots who worship her as a Saint. Yet her plans lie elsewhere, with the hunt for the elusive firebird and the hope that an outlaw prince still survives.

Alina will have to forge new alliances and put aside old rivalries as she and Mal race to find the last of Morozova's amplifiers. But as she begins to unravel the Darkling's secrets, she reveals a past that will forever alter her understanding of the bond they share and the power she wields. The firebird is the one thing that stands between Ravka and destruction—and claiming it could cost Alina the very future she’s fighting for. (less)"
4339,The Amber Spyglass,fantasy,"Will is the bearer of the knife. Now, accompanied by angels, his task is to deliver that powerful, dangerous weapon to Lord Asriel - by the command of his dying father.

But how can he go looking for Lord Asriel when Lyra is gone? Only with her help can he fathom the myriad plots and intrigues that beset him.

The two great powers of the many worlds are lining up for war, and Will must find Lyra, for together they are on their way to battle, an inevitable journey that will even take them to the world of the dead... (less)"
4340,Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children,fantasy,"Alternate Cover edition for ISBN 9781594744761

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows. (less)"
4341,Heir of Fire,fantasy,"Celaena has survived deadly contests and shattering heartbreak-but at an unspeakable cost. Now, she must travel to a new land to confront her darkest truth . . . a truth about her heritage that could change her life-and her future-forever. Meanwhile, brutal and monstrous forces are gathering on the horizon, intent on enslaving her world. Will Celaena find the strength to not only fight her inner demons, but to take on the evil that is about to be unleashed? (less)"
4342,The Graveyard Book,fantasy,"Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean. (less)"
4343,Breaking Dawn,fantasy,"""Don't be afraid,"" I murmured. ""We belong together.""
I was abruptly overwhelmed by the truth of my own words.
This moment was so perfect, so right, there was no way to doubt it.
His arms wrapped around me,
holding me against him....
It felt like every nerve ending in my body was a live wire.
""Forever,"" he agreed.

WHEN YOU LOVED THE ONE WHO WAS KILLING YOU, IT LEFT YOU NO OPTIONS. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?

TO BE IRREVOCABLY IN LOVE WITH A VAMPIRE is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs.

NOW THAT BELLA HAS MADE HER DECISION, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life - first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse - seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed... forever?

THE ASTONISHING, BREATHLESSLY anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions. (less)"
4344,Circe,fantasy,"In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--neither powerful like her father nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power: the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love. (less)"
4345,Prince Caspian,fantasy,"The four Pevensies help Caspian battle Miraz and ascend his rightful throne

NARNIA... the land between the lamp-post and the castle of Cair Paravel, where animals talk, where magical things happen... and where the adventure begins.

Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are returning to boarding school when they are summoned from the dreary train station (by Susan's own magic horn) to return to the land of Narnia—the land where they had ruled as kings and queens and where their help is desperately needed. (less)"
4346,City of Glass,fantasy,"Also see: Alternate Cover Editions for this ISBN [ACE]
ACE #1

To save her mother's life, Clary must travel to the City of Glass, the ancestral home of the Shadowhunters - never mind that entering the city without permission is against the Law, and breaking the Law could mean death. To make things worse, she learns that Jace does not want her there, and Simon has been thrown in prison by the Shadowhunters, who are deeply suspicious of a vampire who can withstand sunlight.

As Clary uncovers more about her family's past, she finds an ally in mysterious Shadowhunter Sebastian. With Valentine mustering the full force of his power to destroy all Shadowhunters forever, their only chance to defeat him is to fight alongside their eternal enemies. But can Downworlders and Shadowhunters put aside their hatred to work together? While Jace realizes exactly how much he's willing to risk for Clary, can she harness her newfound powers to help save the Glass City - whatever the cost?

Love is a mortal sin and the secrets of the past prove deadly as Clary and Jace face down Valentine in the third installment of the New York Times bestselling series The Mortal Instruments. (less)"
4347,An Ember in the Ashes,fantasy,"▶ Alternative Cover Edition #1

Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.
 
Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
 
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
 
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
 
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
4348,The Great Hunt,fantasy,"The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time."
4349,Elantris,fantasy,"Elantris was the capital of Arelon: gigantic, beautiful, literally radiant, filled with benevolent beings who used their powerful magical abilities for the benefit of all. Yet each of these demigods was once an ordinary person until touched by the mysterious transforming power of the Shaod. Ten years ago, without warning, the magic failed. Elantrians became wizened, leper-like, powerless creatures, and Elantris itself dark, filthy, and crumbling.

Arelon's new capital, Kae, crouches in the shadow of Elantris. Princess Sarene of Teod arrives for a marriage of state with Crown Prince Raoden, hoping—based on their correspondence—to also find love. She finds instead that Raoden has died and she is considered his widow. Both Teod and Arelon are under threat as the last remaining holdouts against the imperial ambitions of the ruthless religious fanatics of Fjordell. So Sarene decides to use her new status to counter the machinations of Hrathen, a Fjordell high priest who has come to Kae to convert Arelon and claim it for his emperor and his god.

But neither Sarene nor Hrathen suspect the truth about Prince Raoden. Stricken by the same curse that ruined Elantris, Raoden was secretly exiled by his father to the dark city. His struggle to help the wretches trapped there begins a series of events that will bring hope to Arelon, and perhaps reveal the secret of Elantris itself.

A rare epic fantasy that doesn't recycle the classics and that is a complete and satisfying story in one volume, Elantris is fleet and fun, full of surprises and characters to care about. It's also the wonderful debut of a welcome new star in the constellation of fantasy. (less)"
4350,The Lost Hero,fantasy,"JASON HAS A PROBLEM. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up in a bus full of kids on a field trip. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper, and his best friend is a guy named Leo. They’re all students at the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids,"" as Leo puts it. What did Jason do to end up here? And where is here, exactly? Jason doesn't know anything—except that everything seems very wrong.

PIPER HAS A SECRET. Her father has been missing for three days, ever since she had that terrifying nightmare about his being in trouble. Piper doesn’t understand her dream, or why her boyfriend suddenly doesn’t recognize her. When a freak storm hits during the school trip, unleashing strange creatures and whisking her, Jason, and Leo away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood, she has a feeling she’s going to find out, whether she wants to or not.

LEO HAS A WAY WITH TOOLS. When he sees his cabin at Camp Half-Blood, filled with power tools and machine parts, he feels right at home. But there’s weird stuff, too—like the curse everyone keeps talking about, and some camper who's gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist that each of them—including Leo—is related to a god. Does this have anything to do with Jason's amnesia, or the fact that Leo keeps seeing ghosts?

Join new and old friends from Camp Half-Blood in this thrilling first book in The Heroes of Olympus series. Best-selling author Rick Riordan has pumped up the action, humor, suspense, and mystery in an epic adventure that will leave readers panting for the next installment. (less)"
4351,Sabriel,fantasy,"Sent to a boarding school in Ancelstierre as a young child, Sabriel has had little experience with the random power of Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead in the Old Kingdom. But during her final semester, her father, the Abhorsen, goes missing, and Sabriel knows she must enter the Old Kingdom to find him.

With Sabriel, the first installment in the Abhorsen series, Garth Nix exploded onto the fantasy scene as a rising star, in a novel that takes readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn't always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether. (less)"
4352,Words of Radiance,fantasy,"Words of Radiance, Book Two of the Stormlight Archive, continues the immersive fantasy epic that The Way of Kings began.

Expected by his enemies to die the miserable death of a military slave, Kaladin survived to be given command of the royal bodyguards, a controversial first for a low-status ""darkeyes."" Now he must protect the king and Dalinar from every common peril as well as the distinctly uncommon threat of the Assassin, all while secretly struggling to master remarkable new powers that are somehow linked to his honorspren, Syl.

The Assassin, Szeth, is active again, murdering rulers all over the world of Roshar, using his baffling powers to thwart every bodyguard and elude all pursuers. Among his prime targets is Highprince Dalinar, widely considered the power behind the Alethi throne. His leading role in the war would seem reason enough, but the Assassin's master has much deeper motives.

Brilliant but troubled Shallan strives along a parallel path. Despite being broken in ways she refuses to acknowledge, she bears a terrible burden: to somehow prevent the return of the legendary Voidbringers and the civilization-ending Desolation that will follow. The secrets she needs can be found at the Shattered Plains, but just arriving there proves more difficult than she could have imagined.

Meanwhile, at the heart of the Shattered Plains, the Parshendi are making an epochal decision. Hard pressed by years of Alethi attacks, their numbers ever shrinking, they are convinced by their war leader, Eshonai, to risk everything on a desperate gamble with the very supernatural forces they once fled. The possible consequences for Parshendi and humans alike, indeed, for Roshar itself, are as dangerous as they are incalculable. (less)"
4353,The Silver Chair,fantasy,"Jill and Eustace must rescue the Prince from the evil Witch.

NARNIA...where owls are wise, where some of the giants like to snack on humans, where a prince is put under an evil spell...and where the adventure begins.

Eustace and Jill escape from the bullies at school through a strange door in the wall, which, for once, is unlocked. It leads to the open moor...or does it? Once again Aslan has a task for the children, and Narnia needs them. Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, they pursue the quest that brings them face to face with the evil Witch. She must be defeated if Prince Rillian is to be saved. (less)"
4354,The Magicians,fantasy,"A thrilling and original coming-of-age novel for adults about a young man practicing magic in the real world.

Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price. (less)"
4355,The Queen of Nothing,fantasy,"He will be destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.

Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.

Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.

And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black, comes the highly anticipated and jaw-dropping finale to The Folk of the Air trilogy. (less)"
4356,Children of Blood and Bone,fantasy,"They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.

Now we rise.

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy. (less)"
4357,A Discovery of Witches,fantasy,"A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together.

Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos. This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the Twilight series-with an extra serving of historical realism. (less)"
4358,Mockingjay,fantasy,"My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost. (less)"
4359,Caraval,fantasy,"A legendary competition.
A mesmerizing romance.
An unbreakable bond
between two sisters.

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . beware of getting swept too far away. (less)"
4360,The Last Battle,fantasy,"This edition of Lewis's classic fantasy fiction is packaged specifically for adults. Complementing the look of the author's non-fiction books, and anticipating the forthcoming Narnia feature films, this edition contains an exclusive P.S. section about the history of the book, plus a round-up of the first six titles. (less)"
4361,The Priory of the Orange Tree,fantasy,"A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep. (less)"
4362,The Shadow Rising,fantasy,"The seals of Shayol Ghul are weak now, and the Dark One reaches out. The Shadow is rising to cover humankind.

In Tar Valon, Min sees portents of hideous doom. Will the White Tower itself be broken?

In the Two Rivers, the Whitecloaks ride in pursuit of a man with golden eyes, and in pursuit of the Dragon Reborn.

In Cantorin, among the Sea Folk, High Lady Suroth plans the return of the Seanchan armies to the mainland.

In the Stone of Tear, the Lord Dragon considers his next move. It will be something no one expects, not the Black Ajah, not Tairen nobles, not Aes Sedai, not Egwene or Elayne or Nynaeve.

Against the Shadow rising stands the Dragon Reborn..... (less)"
4363,City of Fallen Angels,fantasy,"The Mortal War is over, and sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is back home in New York, excited about all the possibilities before her. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And—most importantly of all—she can finally call Jace her boyfriend.

But nothing comes without a price.

Someone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her—his mother just found out that he’s a vampire, and now he’s homeless. When Jace begins to pull away from her without explaining why, Clary is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: she herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace. (less)"
4364,Artemis Fowl,fantasy,"Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is a millionaire, a genius, and above all, a criminal mastermind. But even Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories—they're dangerous! Full of unexpected twists and turns, Artemis Fowl is a riveting, magical adventure. (less)"
4365,Mort,fantasy,"Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestseller in England, where they have catapulted him into the highest echelons of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.

In this Discworld installment, Death comes to Mort with an offer he can't refuse -- especially since being, well, dead isn't compulsory. As Death's apprentice, he'll have free board and lodging, use of the company horse, and he won't need time off for family funerals. The position is everything Mort thought he'd ever wanted, until he discovers that this perfect job can be a killer on his love life. (less)"
4366,Empire of Storms,fantasy,"This is a previously published edition of ISBN 9781619636071. An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Kingdoms will collide.

The long path to the throne has only just begun for Aelin Galathynius as war looms on the horizon. Loyalties have been broken and bought, friends have been lost and gained, and those who possess magic find themselves at odds with those who don't.

With her heart sworn to the warrior-prince by her side, and her fealty pledged to the people she is determined to save, Aelin will delve into the depths of her power to protect those she loves. But as monsters emerge from the horrors of the past, and dark forces become poised to claim her world, the only chance for salvation will lie in a desperate quest that may mark the end of everything Aelin holds dear.

In this breathtaking fifth installment of the New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series, Aelin will have to choose what—and who—to sacrifice if she's to keep the world of Erilea from breaking apart. (less)"
4367,Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,fantasy,"When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

An astonishingly rich re-creation of the land of Oz, this book retells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who wasn't so wicked after all. Taking readers past the yellow brick road and into a phantasmagoric world rich with imagination and allegory, Gregory Maguire just might change the reputation of one of the most sinister characters in literature. (less)"
4368,Poison Study,fantasy,"Choose: A quick death… or slow poison...

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.

And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear... (less)"
4369,House of Earth and Blood,fantasy,"Bound by blood.
Tempted by desire.
Unleashed by destiny.

Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life—working hard all day and partying all night—until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She’ll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.

Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose—to assassinate his boss’s enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he’s offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.

As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City’s underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion—one that could set them both free, if they’d only let it.

With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom—and the power of love. (less)"
4370,Wizard's First Rule,fantasy,"In the aftermath of the brutal murder of his father, a mysterious woman, Kahlan Amnell, appears in Richard Cypher's forest sanctuary seeking help . . . and more.

His world, his very beliefs, are shattered when ancient debts come due with thundering violence. In a dark age it takes courage to live, and more than mere courage to challenge those who hold dominion, Richard and Kahlan must take up that challenge or become the next victims. Beyond awaits a bewitching land where even the best of their hearts could betray them. Yet, Richard fears nothing so much as what secrets his sword might reveal about his own soul. Falling in love would destroy them—for reasons Richard can't imagine and Kahlan dare not say.

In their darkest hour, hunted relentlessly, tormented by treachery and loss, Kahlan calls upon Richard to reach beyond his sword—to invoke within himself something more noble. Neither knows that the rules of battle have just changed . . . or that their time has run out.

This is the beginning. One book. One Rule. Witness the birth of a legend. (less)"
4371,Royal Assassin,fantasy,"Fitz has survived his first hazardous mission as king’s assassin, but is left little more than a cripple. Battered and bitter, he vows to abandon his oath to King Shrewd, remaining in the distant mountains. But love and events of terrible urgency draw him back to the court at Buckkeep, and into the deadly intrigues of the royal family.

Renewing their vicious attacks on the coast, the Red-Ship Raiders leave burned-out villages and demented victims in their wake. The kingdom is also under assault from within, as treachery threatens the throne of the ailing king. In this time of great danger, the fate of the kingdom may rest in Fitz’s hands—and his role in its salvation may require the ultimate sacrifice. (less)"
4372,Spinning Silver,fantasy,"Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father's inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk--grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh--Miryem's fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again. (less)"
4373,Warbreaker,fantasy,"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn't like his job, and the immortal who's still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren's capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker. (less)"
4374,A Gathering of Shadows,fantasy,"It has been four months since a mysterious obsidian stone fell into Kell's possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Prince Rhy was wounded, and since the nefarious Dane twins of White London fell, and four months since the stone was cast with Holland's dying body through the rift--back into Black London.

Now, restless after having given up his smuggling habit, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks as she always meant to do. As Red London finalizes preparations for the Element Games--an extravagant international competition of magic meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighboring countries--a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port.

And while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Games, another London is coming back to life. After all, a shadow that was gone in the night will reappear in the morning. But the balance of magic is ever perilous, and for one city to flourish, another London must fall. (less)"
4375,Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,fantasy,"A copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them resides on almost every wizarding household in the country. Now, for a limited period only, Muggles too have the chance to discover where the Quintaped lives, what the Puffskein eats, and why it is best not to leave milk out for a Knarl.
Proceeds from the sale of this book will go to improving and saving the lives of children around the world, which means that the dollars and Galleons you exchange for it will do magic beyond the powers of any wizard. If you feel that this is insufficient reason to part with your money, I can only hope most sincerel that passing wizards feel more charitable if they ever see you being attacked by a Manticore.
-Albus Dumbledore
(less)"
4376,From Blood and Ash,fantasy,"A Maiden…

Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.

A Duty…

The entire kingdom’s future rests on Poppy’s shoulders, something she’s not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden.

A Kingdom…

Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel. (less)"
4377,Blood of Elves,fantasy,"The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher.
For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf.

Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. This child has the power to change the world - for good, or for evil.

As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is hunted for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt's responsibility to protect them all - and the Witcher never accepts defeat.

The Witcher returns in this sequel to The Last Wish, as the inhabitants of his world become embroiled in a state of total war. (less)"
4378,The Mists of Avalon,fantasy,"Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come...."
4379,Clockwork Prince,fantasy,"In the magical underworld of Victorian London, Tessa Gray has at last found safety with the Shadowhunters. But that safety proves fleeting when rogue forces in the Clave plot to see her protector, Charlotte, replaced as head of the Institute. If Charlotte loses her position, Tessa will be out on the street—and easy prey for the mysterious Magister, who wants to use Tessa’s powers for his own dark ends.

With the help of the handsome, self-destructive Will and the fiercely devoted Jem, Tessa discovers that the Magister’s war on the Shadowhunters is deeply personal. He blames them for a long-ago tragedy that shattered his life. To unravel the secrets of the past, the trio journeys from mist-shrouded Yorkshire to a manor house that holds untold horrors, from the slums of London to an enchanted ballroom where Tessa discovers that the truth of her parentage is more sinister than she had imagined. When they encounter a clockwork demon bearing a warning for Will, they realize that the Magister himself knows their every move—and that one of their own has betrayed them.

Tessa finds her heart drawn more and more to Jem, but her longing for Will, despite his dark moods, continues to unsettle her. But something is changing in Will—the wall he has built around himself is crumbling. Could finding the Magister free Will from his secrets and give Tessa the answers about who she is and what she was born to do?

As their dangerous search for the Magister and the truth leads the friends into peril, Tessa learns that when love and lies are mixed, they can corrupt even the purest heart. (less)"
4380,Carry On,fantasy,"Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen.

That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right.

Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here — it's their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up.

Carry On - The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow is a ghost story, a love story and a mystery. It has just as much kissing and talking as you'd expect from a Rainbow Rowell story - but far, far more monsters. (less)"
4381,Strange the Dreamer,fantasy,"The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?

The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

Welcome to Weep. (less)"
4382,The Son of Neptune,fantasy,"PERCY IS CONFUSED. When he awoke from his long sleep, he didn't know much more than his name. His brain fuzz is lingering, even after the wolf Lupa told him he is a demigod and trained him to fight with the pen/sword in his pocket. Somehow Percy manages to make it to a camp for half-bloods, despite the fact that he has to keep killing monsters along the way. But the camp doesn't ring any bells with him. The only thing he can recall from his past is another name: Annabeth.

HAZEL IS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD. When she lived before, she didn't do a very good job of it. Sure, she was an obedient daughter, even when her mother was possessed by greed. But that was the problem—when the Voice took over her mother and commanded Hazel to use her ""gift"" for an evil purpose, Hazel couldn't say no. Now because of her mistake, the future of the world is at risk. Hazel wishes she could ride away from it all on the stallion that appears in her dreams.

FRANK IS A KLUTZ. His grandmother says he is descended from heroes and can be anything he wants to be, but he doesn't see it. He doesn't even know who his father is. He keeps hoping Apollo will claim him, because the only thing he is good at is archery—although not good enough to win camp war games. His bulky physique makes him feel like an ox, especially in front of Hazel, his closest friend at camp. He trusts her completely—enough to share the secret he holds close to his heart.

Beginning at the ""other"" camp for half-bloods and extending as far as the land beyond the gods, this breathtaking second installment of the Heroes of Olympus series introduces new demigods, revives fearsome monsters, and features other remarkable creatures, all destined to play a part in the Prophesy of Seven. (less)"
4383,City of Lost Souls,fantasy,"The New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments continues—and so do the thrills and danger for Jace, Clary, and Simon.

What price is too high to pay, even for love? When Jace and Clary meet again, Clary is horrified to discover that the demon Lilith’s magic has bound her beloved Jace together with her evil brother Sebastian, and that Jace has become a servant of evil. The Clave is out to destroy Sebastian, but there is no way to harm one boy without destroying the other. As Alec, Magnus, Simon, and Isabelle wheedle and bargain with Seelies, demons, and the merciless Iron Sisters to try to save Jace, Clary plays a dangerous game of her own. The price of losing is not just her own life, but Jace’s soul. She’s willing to do anything for Jace, but can she still trust him? Or is he truly lost?

Love. Blood. Betrayal. Revenge. Darkness threatens to claim the Shadowhunters in the harrowing fifth book of the Mortal Instruments series. (less)"
4384,The Alloy of Law,fantasy,"Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is now on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds.

Kelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history—or religion. Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy continue to play a role in this reborn world. Out in the frontier lands known as the Roughs, they are crucial tools for the brave men and women attempting to establish order and justice.

One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will.

After twenty years in the Roughs, Wax has been forced by family tragedy to return to the metropolis of Elendel. Now he must reluctantly put away his guns and assume the duties and dignity incumbent upon the head of a noble house. Or so he thinks, until he learns the hard way that the mansions and elegant tree-lined streets of the city can be even more dangerous than the dusty plains of the Roughs. (less)"
4385,Equal Rites,fantasy,"On Discworld, a dying wizard tries to pass on his powers to an eighth son of an eighth son, who is just at that moment being born. The fact that the son is actually a daughter is discovered just a little too late. The town witch insists on turning the baby into a perfectly normal witch, thus mending the magical damage of the wizard's mistake. But now the young girl will be forced to penetrate the inner sanctum of the Unseen University--and attempt to save the world with one well-placed kick in some enchanted shins! Reissue. (less)"
4386,Lord of Chaos,fantasy,"In this sequel to the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Fires of Heaven, we plunge again into Robert Jordan's extraordinarily rich, totally unforgettable world:

On the slopes of Shayol Ghul, the Myrddraal swords are forged, and the sky is not the sky of this world ...

In Salidar the White Tower in exile prepares an embassy to Caemlyn, where Rand Al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, holds the throne -- and where an unexpected visitor may change the world ...

In Emond's Field, Perrin Goldeneyes, Lord of the Two Rivers, feels the pull of ta'veren to ta'veren and prepares to march ...

Morgase of Caemlyn finds a most unexpected, and quite unwelcome, ally ...

And south lies Illian, where Sammael holds sway ... (less)"
4387,The Starless Sea,fantasy,"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life. (less)"
4388,The City of Brass,fantasy,"Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles.

But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for... (less)"
4389,Guards! Guards!,fantasy,"This is where the dragons went. They lie ... not dead, not asleep, but ... dormant. And although the space they occupy isn't like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly. And presumably, somewhere, there's a key...

GUARDS! GUARDS! is the eighth Discworld novel - and after this, dragons will never be the same again! (less)"
4390,The Light Fantastic,fantasy,"In The Light Fantastic only one individual can save the world from a disastrous collision. Unfortunately, the hero happens to be the singularly inept wizard Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world..."
4391,Assassin's Quest,fantasy,"Fitz is about to discover the truth about the Fool's prophecy.
Having been resurected from his fatal tortures in Regal's dungeons, Fitz has once more foiled the Prince's attempts to be rid of him.

Now, restored to his own body, Fitz begins the painful, slow process of learning to be a man again. He must learn to cast off the wild ways of the wolf and return to the human world: a world beset ever more by the relentless Red Ships Raiders who are now free to plunder any coastal town they please. But more immediately, a world in which Fitz finds he is utterly alone.

Regal has stripped the kingdom of its riches and retired to the inland city of Tradeford. Of Verity, on his quest to find the legendary Elderlings, there has been no word; Molly, Kettricken and the Fool have all vanished.
Unless Fitz can find Verity and help him in his quest, the Six Duchies will perish and there will be no safe place to live. (less)"
4392,Ninth House,fantasy,"Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. (less)"
4393,Anansi Boys,fantasy,"God is dead. Meet the kids.

Fat Charlie Nancy's normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn't know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother.

Now brother Spider's on his doorstep -- about to make Fat Charlie's life more interesting... and a lot more dangerous. (less)"
4394,Gardens of the Moon,fantasy,"The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.

For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out. It is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze.

However, it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound forces are gathering as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand...

Conceived and written on a panoramic scale, Gardens of the Moon is epic fantasy of the highest order--an enthralling adventure by an outstanding new voice.



At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. (less)"
4395,Clockwork Princess,fantasy,"Danger and betrayal, love and loss, secrets and enchantment are woven together in the breathtaking finale to the #1 New York Times bestselling Infernal Devices Trilogy, prequel to the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series.

THE INFERNAL DEVICES WILL NEVER STOP COMING

A net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Mortmain plans to use his Infernal Devices, an army of pitiless automatons, to destroy the Shadowhunters. He needs only one last item to complete his plan: he needs Tessa Gray.

Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, is desperate to find Mortmain before he strikes. But when Mortmain abducts Tessa, the boys who lay equal claim to her heart, Jem and Will, will do anything to save her. For though Tessa and Jem are now engaged, Will is as much in love with her as ever.

As those who love Tessa rally to rescue her from Mortmain’s clutches, Tessa realizes that the only person who can save her is herself. But can a single girl, even one who can command the power of angels, face down an entire army?

Danger and betrayal, secrets and enchantment, and the tangled threads of love and loss intertwine as the Shadowhunters are pushed to the very brink of destruction in the breathtaking conclusion to the Infernal Devices trilogy. (less)"
4396,Every Heart a Doorway,fantasy,"Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost. (less)"
4397,A Crown of Swords,fantasy,"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and go. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time."
4398,The Mark of Athena,fantasy,"Annabeth is terrified. Just when she's about to be reunited with Percy—after six months of being apart, thanks to Hera—it looks like Camp Jupiter is preparing for war. As Annabeth and her friends Jason, Piper, and Leo fly in on the Argo II, she can't blame the Roman demigods for thinking the ship is a Greek weapon. With its steaming bronze dragon figurehead, Leo's fantastical creation doesn't appear friendly. Annabeth hopes that the sight of their praetor Jason on deck will reassure the Romans that the visitors from Camp Half-Blood are coming in peace.

And that's only one of her worries. In her pocket, Annabeth carries a gift from her mother that came with an unnerving command: Follow the Mark of Athena. Avenge me. Annabeth already feels weighed down by the prophecy that will send seven demigods on a quest to find—and close—the Doors of Death. What more does Athena want from her?

Annabeth's biggest fear, though, is that Percy might have changed. What if he's now attached to Roman ways? Does he still need his old friends? As the daughter of the goddess of war and wisdom, Annabeth knows she was born to be a leader—but never again does she want to be without Seaweed Brain by her side

Narrated by four different demigods, The Mark of Athena is an unforgettable journey across land and sea to Rome, where important discoveries, surprising sacrifices, and unspeakable horrors await. Climb aboard the Argo II, if you dare. . . . (less)"
4399,The Wrath and the Dawn,fantasy,"One Life to One Dawn.

In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad's dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph's reign of terror once and for all.

Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she'd imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It's an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid's life as retribution for the many lives he's stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets? (less)"
4400,A Court of Silver Flames,fantasy,"Nesta Archeron has always been prickly-proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she's struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can't seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it.

The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior whose position in Rhysand and Feyre's Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta's orbit. But her temper isn't the only thing Cassian ignites. The fire between them is undeniable, and only burns hotter as they are forced into close quarters with each other.

Meanwhile, the treacherous human queens who returned to the Continent during the last war have forged a dangerous new alliance, threatening the fragile peace that has settled over the realms. And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts.

Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within and without as they search for acceptance-and healing-in each other's arms. (less)"
4401,His Majesty's Dragon,fantasy,"Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire. (less)"
4402,Serpent & Dove,fantasy,"Bound as one to love, honor, or burn.

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

Sworn to the Church as a Chasseur, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. His path was never meant to cross with Lou's, but a wicked stunt forces them into an impossible union—holy matrimony.

The war between witches and Church is an ancient one, and Lou's most dangerous enemies bring a fate worse than fire. Unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, a choice must be made.

And love makes fools of us all.

This is a previously published edition of ISBN 9780062878021. An alternate cover edition can be found here. (less)"
4403,Piranesi,fantasy,"Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. (less)"
4404,Fire,fantasy,"It is not a peaceful time in the Dells. The young King Nash clings to his throne while rebel lords in the north and south build armies to unseat him. The mountains and forests are filled with spies and thieves and lawless men.

This is where Fire lives. With a wild, irresistible appearance and hair the color of flame, Fire is the last remaining human monster. Equally hated and adored, she had the unique ability to control minds, but she guards her power, unwilling to steal the secrets of innocent people. Especially when she has so many of her own.

Then Prince Brigan comes to bring her to King City, The royal family needs her help to uncover the plot against the king. Far away from home, Fire begins to realize there's more to her power than she ever dreamed. Her power could save the kingdom.

If only she weren't afraid of becoming the monster her father was. (less)"
4405,Ella Enchanted,fantasy,"At birth, Ella is inadvertently cursed by an imprudent young fairy named Lucinda, who bestows on her the ""gift"" of obedience. Anything anyone tells her to do, Ella must obey. Another girl might have been cowed by this affliction, but not feisty Ella: ""Instead of making me docile, Lucinda's curse made a rebel of me. Or perhaps I was that way naturally."" When her beloved mother dies, leaving her in the care of a mostly absent and avaricious father, and later, a loathsome stepmother and two treacherous stepsisters, Ella's life and well-being seem to be in grave peril. But her intelligence and saucy nature keep her in good stead as she sets out on a quest for freedom and self-discovery as she tries to track down Lucinda to undo the curse, fending off ogres, befriending elves, and falling in love with a prince along the way. Yes, there is a pumpkin coach, a glass slipper, and a happily ever after, but this is the most remarkable, delightful, and profound version of Cinderella you'll ever read.

Gail Carson Levine's examination of traditional female roles in fairy tales takes some satisfying twists and deviations from the original. Ella is bound by obedience against her will, and takes matters in her own hands with ambition and verve. Her relationship with the prince is balanced and based on humor and mutual respect; in fact, it is she who ultimately rescues him. Ella Enchanted has won many well-deserved awards, including a Newbery Honor. (less)"
4406,The Song of Achilles,fantasy,"Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, ""the best of all the Greeks,"" son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice. (less)"
4407,A Court of Frost and Starlight,fantasy,"A tender addition to the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas, bridging the events of A Court of Wings and Ruin and upcoming books.

Feyre, Rhysand, and their friends are still busy rebuilding the Night Court and the vastly altered world beyond, recovering from the war that changed everything. But Winter Solstice is finally approaching, and with it, the joy of a hard-earned reprieve.

Yet even the festive atmosphere can't keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, her concern for those dearest to her deepens. They have more wounds than she anticipated-scars that will have a far-reaching impact on the future of their court.

Bridging the events of A Court of Wings and Ruin with the later books in the series, A Court of Frost and Starlight explores the far-reaching effects of a devastating war and the fierce love between friends. (less)"
4408,King of Scars,fantasy,"Face your demons... or feed them.

The dashing young king, Nikolai Lantsov, has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country's bloody civil war--and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, Nikolai must find a way to refill Ravka's coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.

Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha general, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried--and some wounds aren't meant to heal. (less)"
4409,Vicious,fantasy,"A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn't automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question. (less)"
4410,Kingdom of Ash,fantasy,"Aelin Galathynius has vowed to save her people ― but at a tremendous cost. Locked within an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, Aelin must draw upon her fiery will as she endures months of torture. The knowledge that yielding to Maeve will doom those she loves keeps her from breaking, but her resolve is unraveling with each passing day…

With Aelin captured, friends and allies are scattered to different fates. Some bonds will grow even deeper, while others will be severed forever. As destinies weave together at last, all must fight if Erilea is to have any hope of salvation.

Years in the making, Sarah J. Maas's New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series draws to an explosive conclusion as Aelin fights to save herself―and the promise of a better world. (less)"
4411,The Path of Daggers,fantasy,"The Seanchan invasion force is in possession of Ebou Dar. Nynaeve, Elayne, and Aviendha head for Caemlyn and Elayne's rightful throne, but on the way they discover an enemy much worse than the Seanchan.

In Illian, Rand vows to throw the Seanchan back as he did once before. But signs of madness are appearing among the Asha'man.

In Ghealdan, Perrin faces the intrigues of Whitecloaks, Seanchan invaders, the scattered Shaido Aiel, and the Prophet himself. Perrin's beloved wife, Faile, may pay with her life, and Perrin himself may have to destroy his soul to save her.

Meanwhile the rebel Aes Sedai under their young Amyrlin, Egwene al'Vere, face an army that intends to keep them away from the White Tower. But Egwene is determined to unseat the usurper Elaida and reunite the Aes Sedai. She does not yet understand the price that others—and she herself—will pay. (less)"
4412,The Way of Shadows,fantasy,"From New York Times Bestselling author Brent Weeks...
For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art-and he is the city's most accomplished artist.

For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he's grown up in the slums, and learned to judge people quickly - and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint.

But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins' world of dangerous politics and strange magics - and cultivate a flair for death. (less)"
4413,Oathbringer,fantasy,"In Oathbringer, the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.

Dalinar Kholin's Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified.

Nestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realizes that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar's blood-soaked past and stand together--and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past--even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilization. (less)"
4414,A Conjuring of Light,fantasy,"Witness the fate of beloved heroes - and enemies.

THE BALANCE OF POWER HAS FINALLY TIPPED...
The precarious equilibrium among four Londons has reached its breaking point. Once brimming with the red vivacity of magic, darkness casts a shadow over the Maresh Empire, leaving a space for another London to rise.

WHO WILL CRUMBLE?
Kell - once assumed to be the last surviving Antari - begins to waver under the pressure of competing loyalties. And in the wake of tragedy, can Arnes survive?

WHO WILL RISE?
Lila Bard, once a commonplace - but never common - thief, has survived and flourished through a series of magical trials. But now she must learn to control the magic, before it bleeds her dry. Meanwhile, the disgraced Captain Alucard Emery of the Night Spire collects his crew, attempting a race against time to acquire the impossible.

WHO WILL TAKE CONTROL?
And an ancient enemy returns to claim a crown while a fallen hero tries to save a world in decay. (less)"
4415,City of Heavenly Fire,fantasy,"In this dazzling and long-awaited conclusion to the acclaimed Mortal Instruments series, Clary and her friends fight the greatest evil they have ever faced: Clary's own brother.

Sebastian Morgenstern is on the move, systematically turning Shadowhunter against Shadowhunter. Bearing the Infernal Cup, he transforms Shadowhunters into creatures out of nightmare, tearing apart families and lovers as the ranks of his Endarkened army swell.

The embattled Shadowhunters withdraw to Idris - but not even the famed demon towers of Alicante can keep Sebastian at bay. And with the Nephilim trapped in Idris, who will guard the world against demons?

When one of the greatest betrayals the Nephilim have ever known is revealed, Clary, Jace, Isabelle, Simon, and Alec must flee - even if their journey takes them deep into the demon realms, where no Shadowhunter has set foot before, and from which no human being has ever returned...

Love will be sacrificed and lives lost in the terrible battle for the fate of the word in the thrilling final installment of the classic urban fantasy series The Mortal Instruments! (less)"
4416,Sword of Destiny,fantasy,"Geralt is a witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless assassin. Yet he is no ordinary murderer: his targets are the multifarious monsters and vile fiends that ravage the land and attack the innocent.

This is a collection of short stories, following the adventures of the hit collection THE LAST WISH. Join Geralt as he battles monsters, demons and prejudices alike... (less)"
4417,Tower of Dawn,fantasy,"Chaol Westfall and Nesryn Faliq have arrived in the shining city of Antica to forge an alliance with the Khagan of the Southern Continent, whose vast armies are Erilea's last hope. But they have also come to Antica for another purpose: to seek healing at the famed Torre Cesme for the wounds Chaol received in Rifthold.

After enduring unspeakable horrors as a child, Yrene Towers has no desire to help the young lord from Adarlan, let alone heal him. Yet she has sworn an oath to assist those in need—and will honor it. But Lord Westfall carries shadows from his own past, and Yrene soon comes to realize they could engulf them both.

In this sweeping parallel novel to the New York Times bestselling Empire of Storms, Chaol, Nesryn, and Yrene will have to draw on every scrap of their resilience if they wish to save their friends. But while they become entangled in the political webs of the khaganate, deep in the shadows of mighty mountains where warriors soar on legendary ruks, long-awaited answers slumber. Answers that might offer their world a chance at survival—or doom them all . . . (less)"
4418,The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms,fantasy,"Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle."
4419,Outlander,fantasy,"The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. (less)"
4420,Scarlet,fantasy,"Cinder returns in the second thrilling installment of the New York Times-bestselling Lunar Chronicles.

She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive. Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger she has lived in her whole life.

When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own. As Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her prisoner. (less)"
4421,Red Seas Under Red Skies,fantasy,"Librarian note: An older cover for this edition can be found here: 31-Jul-2007.

After a brutal battle with the underworld that nearly destroyed him, Locke Lamora and his trusted sidekick, Jean, fled the island city of their birth and landed on the exotic shores of Tal Verrar to nurse their wounds. But even at this westernmost edge of civilization, they can't rest for long---and they are soon back doing what they do best: stealing from the undeserving rich and pocketing the proceeds for themselves.

This time, however, they have targeted the grandest prize of all: the Sinspire, the most exclusive and heavily guarded gambling house in the world. Its nine floors attract the wealthiest clientele - and to rise to the top, one must impress with good credit, amusing behavior...and excruciatingly impeccable play. For there is one cardinal rule, enforced by Requin, the house's cold-blooded master: it is death to cheat at any game at the Sinspire.Brazenly undeterred, Locke and Jean have orchestrated an elaborate plan to lie, trick, and swindle their way up the nine floors...straight to Requin's teeming vault. Under the cloak of false identities, they meticulously make their climb - until they are closer to the spoils than ever.

But someone in Tal Verrar has uncovered the duo's secret. Someone from their past who has every intention of making the impudent criminals pay for their sins. Now it will take every ounce of cunning to save their mercenary souls. And even that may not be enough. (less)"
4422,The Assassin's Blade,fantasy,"Contains all five novellas.

Celaena Sardothien is Adarlan's most feared assassin. As part of the Assassin's Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. In these action-packed novellas - together in one edition for the first time - Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous. But she is acting against Arobynn's orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery. Will Celaena ever be truly free? Explore the dark underworld of this kick-ass heroine to find out. (less)"
4423,Winter's Heart,fantasy,"Rand is on the run with Min, and in Cairhein, Cadsuane is trying to figure out where he is headed. Rand's destination is, in fact, one she has never considered.

Mazrim Taim, leader of the Black Tower, is revealed to be a liar. But what is he up to?

Faile, with the Aiel Maidens, Bain and Chiad, and her companions, Queen Alliandre and Morgase, is prisoner of Savanna's sept.

Perrin is desperately searching for Faile. With Elyas Machera, Berelain, the Prophet and a very mixed ""army"" of disparate forces, he is moving through country rife with bandits and roving Seanchan. The Forsaken are ever more present, and united, and the man called Slayer stalks Tel'aran'rhiod and the wolfdream.

In Ebou Dar, the Seanchan princess known as Daughter of the Nine Moons arrives--and Mat, who had been recuperating in the Tarasin Palace, is introduced to her. Will the marriage that has been foretold come about?

There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it is a beginning.... (less)"
4424,Divergent,fantasy,"In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her. (less)"
4425,Before They Are Hanged,fantasy,"Superior Glokta has a problem. How do you defend a city surrounded by enemies and riddled with traitors, when your allies can by no means be trusted, and your predecessor vanished without a trace? It’s enough to make a torturer want to run – if he could even walk without a stick.

Northmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country. Crown Prince Ladisla is poised to drive them back and win undying glory. There is only one problem – he commands the worst-armed, worst-trained, worst-led army in the world.

And Bayaz, the First of the Magi, is leading a party of bold adventurers on a perilous mission through the ruins of the past. The most hated woman in the South, the most feared man in the North, and the most selfish boy in the Union make a strange alliance, but a deadly one. They might even stand a chance of saving mankind from the Eaters. If they didn’t hate each other quite so much.

Ancient secrets will be uncovered. Bloody battles will be won and lost. Bitter enemies will be forgiven – but not before they are hanged.

(less)"
4426,The House of Hades,fantasy,"Hazel stands at a crossroads. She and the remaining crew of the Argo II could return home with the Athena Parthenos statue and try to stop Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter from going to war. Or they could continue their quest to find the House of Hades, where they might be able to open the Doors of Death, rescue their friends Percy and Annabeth from Tartarus, and prevent monsters from being reincarnated in the mortal world. Whichever road they decide to take, they have to hurry, because time is running out. Gaea, the bloodthirsty Earth Mother, has set the date of August 1 for her rise to power.

Annabeth and Percy are overwhelmed. How will the two of them make it through Tartarus? Starving, thirsty, and in pain, they are barely able to stumble on in the dark and poisonous landscape that holds new horrors at every turn. They have no way of locating the Doors of Death. Even if they did, a legion of Gaea's strongest monsters guards the Doors on the Tartarus side. Annabeth and Percy can't exactly launch a frontal assault.

Despite the terrible odds, Hazel, Annabeth, Percy, and the other demigods of the prophecy know that there is only one choice: to attempt the impossible. Not just for themselves, but for everyone they love. Even though love can be the riskiest choice of all.

Join the demigods as they face their biggest challenges yet in The House of Hades, the hair-raising penultimate book in the best-selling Heroes of Olympus series. (less)"
4427,Alanna: The First Adventure,fantasy,"From now on I'm Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I'll be a knight.

And so young Alanna of Trebond begins the journey to knighthood. Though a girl, Alanna has always craved the adventure and daring allowed only for boys; her twin brother, Thom, yearns to learn the art of magic. So one day they decide to switch places: Thom heads for the convent to learn magic; Alanna, pretending to be a boy, is on her way to the castle of King Roald to begin her training as a page.
But the road to knighthood is not an easy one. As Alanna masters the skills necessary for battle, she must also learn to control her heart and to discern her enemies from her allies.

Filled with swords and sorcery, adventure and intrigue, good and evil, Alanna's first adventure begins - one that will lead to the fulfillment of her dreams and the magical destiny that will make her a legend in her land.
(less)"
4428,Seraphina,fantasy,"Librarian Note: Alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780375866562.

In her New York Times bestselling and Morris Award-winning debut, Rachel Hartman introduces mathematical dragons in an alternative-medieval world to fantasy and science-fiction readers of all ages.

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high.

Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered—in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life. (less)"
4429,Days of Blood & Starlight,fantasy,"Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.

Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream? (less)"
4430,The Obelisk Gate,fantasy,"THE SEASON OF ENDINGS GROWS DARKER AS CIVILIZATION FADES INTO THE LONG, COLD NIGHT.

Essun has found shelter, but not her missing daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request that would seal the fate of the Stillness forever."
4431,The Tombs of Atuan,fantasy,"Librarian's Note: For an alternate cover edition of the same ISBN, click here.

When young Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away - home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan.

While she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain. (less)"
4432,The Warded Man,fantasy,"As darkness falls after sunset, the corelings rise—demons who possess supernatural powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards—symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile. It was not always this way. Once, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms, but those days are gone. Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault. Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past. Together, they will stand against the night. (less)"
4433,Last Argument of Kings,fantasy,"The end is coming. Logen Ninefingers might only have one more fight in him but it's going to be a big one. Battle rages across the North, the King of the Northmen still stands firm, and there's only one man who can stop him. His oldest friend, and his oldest enemy. It's past time for the Bloody-Nine to come home.

With too many masters and too little time, Superior Glokta is fighting a different kind of war. A secret struggle in which no one is safe, and no one can be trusted. His days with a sword are far behind him. It's a good thing blackmail, threats and torture still work well enough.

Jezal dan Luthar has decided that winning glory is far too painful, and turned his back on soldiering for a simple life with the woman he loves. But love can be painful too, and glory has a nasty habit of creeping up on a man when he least expects it.

While the King of the Union lies on his deathbead, the peasants revolt and the nobles scramble to steal his crown. No one believes that the shadow of war is falling across the very heart of the Union. The First of the Magi has a plan to save the world, as he always does. But there are risks. There is no risk more terrible, after all, than to break the First Law...

(less)"
4434,Glass Sword,fantasy,"If there’s one thing Mare Barrow knows, it’s that she’s different.

Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the color of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control.

The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.

Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors.

But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.

Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?

The electrifying next installment in the Red Queen series escalates the struggle between the growing rebel army and the blood-segregated world they’ve always known—and pits Mare against the darkness that has grown in her soul. (less)"
4435,The Gathering Storm,fantasy,"The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Tarmon Gai'don, the Last Battle, looms. And mankind is not ready.

The final volume of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light, was partially written by Robert Jordan before his untimely passing in 2007. Brandon Sanderson, New York Times bestselling author of the Mistborn books, and now Stormlight Archive, among others, was chosen by Jordan's editor--his wife, Harriet McDougal--to complete the final volume, later expanded to three books.

In this epic novel, Robert Jordan's international bestselling series begins its dramatic conclusion. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, struggles to unite a fractured network of kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle. As he attempts to halt the Seanchan encroachment northward--wishing he could form at least a temporary truce with the invaders--his allies watch in terror the shadow that seems to be growing within the heart of the Dragon Reborn himself.

Egwene al'Vere, the Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, is a captive of the White Tower and subject to the whims of their tyrannical leader. As days tick toward the Seanchan attack she knows is imminent, Egwene works to hold together the disparate factions of Aes Sedai while providing leadership in the face of increasing uncertainty and despair. Her fight will prove the mettle of the Aes Sedai, and her conflict will decide the future of the White Tower--and possibly the world itself. (less)"
4436,Heartless,fantasy,"Long before she was the terror of Wonderland—the infamous Queen of Hearts—she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love.

Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland, and a favorite of the unmarried King of Hearts, but her interests lie elsewhere. A talented baker, all she wants is to open a shop with her best friend. But according to her mother, such a goal is unthinkable for the young woman who could be the next queen.

Then Cath meets Jest, the handsome and mysterious court joker. For the first time, she feels the pull of true attraction. At the risk of offending the king and infuriating her parents, she and Jest enter into an intense, secret courtship. Cath is determined to define her own destiny and fall in love on her terms. But in a land thriving with magic, madness, and monsters, fate has other plans.

In her first stand-alone teen novel, the New York Times-bestselling author dazzles us with a prequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (less)"
4437,The Last Unicorn,fantasy,"She was magical, beautiful beyond belief—and completely alone...

The unicorn had lived since before memory in a forest where death could touch nothing. Maidens who caught a glimpse of her glory were blessed by enchantment they would never forget. But outside her wondrous realm, dark whispers and rumours carried a message she could not ignore: ""Unicorns are gone from the world.""

Aided by a bumbling magician and an indomitable spinster, she set out to learn the truth. but she feared even her immortal wisdom meant nothing in a world where a mad king's curse and terror incarnate lived only to stalk the last unicorn to her doom... (less)"
4438,Knife of Dreams,fantasy,"The dead are walking, men die impossible deaths, and it seems as though reality itself has become unstable: All are signs of the imminence of Tarmon Gai'don, the Last Battle, when Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, must confront the Dark One as humanity's only hope. But Rand dares not fight until he possesses all the surviving seals on the Dark One's prison and has dealt with the Seanchan, who threaten to overrun all nations this side of the Aryth Ocean and increasingly seem too entrenched to be fought off. But his attempt to make a truce with the Seanchan is shadowed by treachery that may cost him everything. Whatever the price, though, he must have that truce. And he faces other dangers.

The winds of time have become a storm, and things that everyone believes are fixed in place forever are changing before their eyes. Even the White Tower itself is no longer a place of safety. Now Rand, Perrin and Mat, Egwene and Elayne, Nynaeve and Lan, and even Loial, must ride those storm winds, or the Dark One will triumph. (less)"
4439,Cress,fantasy,"In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they're plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.

Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she's just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a higher price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has. (less)"
4440,Gideon the Ninth,fantasy,"The Emperor needs necromancers.

The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead. (less)"
4441,The Slow Regard of Silent Things,fantasy,"Deep below the University, there is a dark place. Few people know of it: a broken web of ancient passageways and abandoned rooms. A young woman lives there, tucked among the sprawling tunnels of the Underthing, snug in the heart of this forgotten place.

Her name is Auri, and she is full of mysteries.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a brief, bittersweet glimpse of Auri’s life, a small adventure all her own. At once joyous and haunting, this story offers a chance to see the world through Auri’s eyes. And it gives the reader a chance to learn things that only Auri knows...

In this book, Patrick Rothfuss brings us into the world of one of The Kingkiller Chronicle’s most enigmatic characters. Full of secrets and mysteries, The Slow Regard of Silent Things is the story of a broken girl trying to live in a broken world.


AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

You might not want to buy this book.

I know, that’s not the sort of thing an author is supposed to say. The marketing people aren’t going to like this. My editor is going to have a fit. But I’d rather be honest with you right out of the gate.

First, if you haven’t read my other books, you don’t want to start here.

My first two books are The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear. If you’re curious to try my writing, start there. They’re the best introduction to my world. This book deals with Auri, one of the characters from that series. Without the context of those books, you’re probably going to feel pretty lost.

Second, even if you have read my other books, I think it’s only fair to warn you that this is a bit of a strange story. I don’t go in for spoilers, but suffice to say that this one is ... different. It doesn’t do a lot of the things a classic story is supposed to do. And if you’re looking for a continuation of Kvothe’s storyline, you’re not going to find it here.

On the other hand, if you’d like to learn more about Auri, this story has a lot to offer. If you love words and mysteries and secrets. If you’re curious about the Underthing and alchemy. If you want to know more about the hidden turnings of my world...

Well, then this book might be for you.

(less)"
4442,Nevernight,fantasy,"In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.

Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.

Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.

Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge? (less)"
4443,Dune,fantasy,"Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for...

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

***

Original, first edition from 1965 can be found here. (less)"
4444,The Queen of the Tearling,fantasy,"Magic, adventure, mystery, and romance combine in this epic debut in which a young princess must reclaim her dead mother’s throne, learn to be a ruler—and defeat the Red Queen, a powerful and malevolent sorceress determined to destroy her.

On her nineteenth birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa. But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense magical power; and accompanying her is the Queen’s Guard, a cadre of brave knights led by the enigmatic and dedicated Lazarus. Kelsea will need them all to survive a cabal of enemies who will use every weapon—from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic—to prevent her from wearing the crown.

Despite her royal blood, Kelsea feels like nothing so much as an insecure girl, a child called upon to lead a people and a kingdom about which she knows almost nothing. But what she discovers in the capital will change everything, confronting her with horrors she never imagined. An act of singular daring will throw Kelsea’s kingdom into tumult, unleashing the vengeance of the tyrannical ruler of neighboring Mortmesne: the Red Queen, a sorceress possessed of the darkest magic. Now Kelsea will begin to discover whom among the servants, aristocracy, and her own guard she can trust.

But the quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun—a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend . . . if she can survive.

This book will be a beautifully designed package with illustrated endpapers, a map of the Tearling, and a ribbon marker. (less)"
4445,A Curse So Dark and Lonely,fantasy,"An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Fall in love, break the curse.

Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year, Prince Rhen, the heir of Emberfall, thought he could be saved easily if a girl fell for him. But that was before he turned into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. Before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.

Nothing has ever been easy for Harper. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, Harper learned to be tough enough to survive. When she tries to save a stranger on the streets of Washington, DC, she's pulled into a magical world.

Break the curse, save the kingdom.

Harper doesn't know where she is or what to believe. A prince? A curse? A monster? As she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what's at stake. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall . . . and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin. (less)"
4446,The Amulet of Samarkand,fantasy,"Nathaniel is a boy magician-in-training, sold to the government by his birth parents at the age of five and sent to live as an apprentice to a master. Powerful magicians rule Britain, and its empire, and Nathaniel is told his is the ""ultimate sacrifice"" for a ""noble destiny.""

If leaving his parents and erasing his past life isn't tough enough, Nathaniel's master, Arthur Underwood, is a cold, condescending, and cruel middle-ranking magician in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The boy's only saving grace is the master's wife, Martha Underwood, who shows him genuine affection that he rewards with fierce devotion. Nathaniel gets along tolerably well over the years in the Underwood household until the summer before his eleventh birthday. Everything changes when he is publicly humiliated by the ruthless magician Simon Lovelace and betrayed by his cowardly master who does not defend him.

Nathaniel vows revenge. In a Faustian fever, he devours magical texts and hones his magic skills, all the while trying to appear subservient to his master. When he musters the strength to summon the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus to avenge Lovelace by stealing the powerful Amulet of Samarkand, the boy magician plunges into a situation more dangerous and deadly than anything he could ever imagine. (less)"
4447,A Torch Against the Night,fantasy,"Elias and Laia are running for their lives. After the events of the Fourth Trial, Martial soldiers hunt the two fugitives as they flee the city of Serra and undertake a perilous journey through the heart of the Empire.

Laia is determined to break into Kauf—the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison—to save her brother, who is the key to the Scholars’ survival. And Elias is determined to help Laia succeed, even if it means giving up his last chance at freedom.

But dark forces, human and otherworldly, work against Laia and Elias. The pair must fight every step of the way to outsmart their enemies: the bloodthirsty Emperor Marcus, the merciless Commandant, the sadistic Warden of Kauf, and, most heartbreaking of all, Helene—Elias’s former friend and the Empire’s newest Blood Shrike.

Bound to Marcus’s will, Helene faces a torturous mission of her own—one that might destroy her: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape…and kill them both. (less)"
4448,Dragonflight,fantasy,"HOW CAN ONE GIRL SAVE AN ENTIRE WORLD?

To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but a ragged kitchen girl. For most of her life she has survived by serving those who betrayed her father and took over his lands. Now the time has come for Lessa to shed her disguise—and take back her stolen birthright.

But everything changes when she meets a queen dragon. The bond they share will be deep and last forever. It will protect them when, for the first time in centuries, Lessa’s world is threatened by Thread, an evil substance that falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful world. . . . (less)"
4449,The Blood of Olympus,fantasy,"Nico had warned them. Going through the House of Hades would stir the demigods' worst memories. Their ghosts would become restless. Nico may actually become a ghost if he has to shadow-travel with Reyna and Coach Hedge one more time. But that might be better than the alternative: allowing someone else to die, as Hades foretold.

Jason's ghost is his mother, who abandoned him when he was little. He may not know how he is going to prove himself as a leader, but he does know that he will not break promises like she did. He will complete his line of the prophecy: To storm or fire the world must fall.

Reyna fears the ghosts of her ancestors, who radiate anger. But she can't allow them to distract her from getting the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood before war breaks out between the Romans and Greeks. Will she have enough strength to succeed, especially with a deadly hunter on her trail?

Leo fears that his plan won't work, that his friends might interfere. But there is no other way. All of them know that one of the Seven has to die in order to defeat Gaea, the Earth Mother.

Piper must learn to give herself over to fear. Only then will she be able to do her part at the end: utter a single word.

Heroes, gods, and monsters all have a role to play in the climactic fulfillment of the prophecy in The Blood of Olympus, the electrifying finale of the best-selling Heroes of Olympus series. (less)"
4450,Furies of Calderon,fantasy,"In this extraordinary fantasy epic, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dresden Files leads readers into a world where the fate of the realm rests on the shoulders of a boy with no power to call his own ...

For a thousand years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive and threatening races that inhabit the world, using their unique bonds with the furies - elementals of earth, air, fire, water, wood, and metal. But in the remote Calderon Valley, the boy Tavi struggles with his lack of furycrafting. At fifteen, he has no wind fury to help him fly, no fire fury to light the lamps. Yet as the Alerans' most savage enemy - the Marat horde - returns to the Valley, Tavi's courage and resourcefulness will be a power greater than any fury, one that could turn the tides of war ...

(less)"
4451,Quidditch Through the Ages,fantasy,"The most checked-out book in the Hogwarts Library, and a volume no Quidditch player or Harry Potter fan should be without!

If you have ever asked yourself where the Golden Snitch came from, how the Bludgers came into existence, or why the Wigtown Wanderers have pictures of meat cleavers on their robes, you need QUIDDITCH THROUGH THE AGES. This invaluable volume is consulted by young Quidditch fans on an almost daily basis.

Proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Comic Relief, who will use your money to continue improving and changing lives -- work that is even more important and astonishing than the three-and-a-half-second capture of the Golden Snitch by Roderick Plumpton in 1921. (less)"
4452,Towers of Midnight,fantasy,"The end draws near....

The Last Battle has started. The seals on the Dark One’s prison are crumbling. The Pattern itself is unraveling, and the armies of the Shadow have begun to boil out of the Blight.

The sun has begun to set upon the Third Age.

Perrin Aybara is now hunted by specters from his past: Whitecloaks, a slayer of wolves, and the responsibilities of leadership. All the while, an unseen foe is slowly pulling a noose tight around his neck. To prevail, he must seek answers in Tel’aran’rhiod and find a way--at long last--to master the wolf within him or lose himself to it forever

Meanwhile, Matrim Cauthon prepares for the most difficult challenge of his life. The creatures beyond the stone gateways--the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn--have confused him, taunted him, and left him hanged, his memory stuffed with bits and pieces of other men’s lives. He had hoped that his last confrontation with them would be the end of it, but the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The time is coming when he will again have to dance with the Snakes and the Foxes, playing a game that cannot be won. The Tower of Ghenjei awaits, and its secrets will reveal the fate of a friend long lost.

This penultimate novel of Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling series--the second of three based on materials he left behind when he died in 2007--brings dramatic and compelling developments to many threads in the Pattern. The end draws near.

Dovie’andi se tovya sagain. It’s time to toss the dice. (less)"
4453,Ship of Magic,fantasy,"Wizardwood, a sentient wood.
The most precious commodity in the world.
Like many other legendary wares, it comes only from the Rain River Wilds.

But how can one trade with the Rain Wilders, when only a liveship fashioned from wizardwood can negotiate the perilous waters of the Rain River? Rare and valuable a liveship will quicken only when three members, from successive generations, have died on board. The liveship Vivacia is about to undergo her quickening as Althea Vestrit’s father is carried on deck in his death-throes. Althea waits for the ship that she loves more than anything else in the world to awaken. Only to discover that the Vivacia has been signed away in her father’s will to her brutal brother-in-law, Kyle Haven...

Others plot to win or steal a liveship. The Paragon, known by many as the Pariah, went mad, turned turtle, and drowned his crew. Now he lies blind, lonely, and broken on a deserted beach. But greedy men have designs to restore him, to sail the waters of the Rain Wild River once more.

Cover illustration by John Howe

(less)"
4454,The Little Prince,fantasy,"A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see, standing before him, the most extraordinary little fellow. ""Please,"" asks the stranger, ""draw me a sheep."" And the pilot realizes that when life's events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to succumb to their mysteries. He pulls out pencil and paper... And thus begins this wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of what is really important in life, has changed forever the world for its readers.

Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages. (less)"
4455,The Iron King,fantasy,"Meghan Chase has a secret destiny; one she could never have imagined.

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth - that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil, no faery creature dare face; and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart. (less)"
4456,Small Gods,fantasy,"Just because you can't explain it, doesn't mean it's a miracle.' Religion is a controversial business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion, and indeed their own gods. Who come in all shapes and sizes. In such a competitive environment, there is a pressing need to make one's presence felt. And it's certainly not remotely helpful to be reduced to be appearing in the form of a tortoise, a manifestation far below god-like status in anyone's book. In such instances, you need an acolyte, and fast. Preferably one who won't ask too many questions... (less)"
4457,Vampire Academy,fantasy,"Only a true best friend can protect you from your immortal enemies...

Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess: a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earth's magic. She must be protected at all times from Strigoi; the fiercest vampires—the ones who never die. The powerful blend of human and vampire blood that flows through Rose Hathaway, Lissa's best friend, makes her a dhampir. Rose is dedicated to a dangerous life of protecting Lissa from the Strigoi, who are hell-bent on making Lissa one of them.

After two years of freedom, Rose and Lissa are caught and dragged back to St. Vladimir's Academy, a school for vampire royalty and their guardians-to-be, hidden in the deep forests of Montana. But inside the iron gates, life is even more fraught with danger... and the Strigoi are always close by.

Rose and Lissa must navigate their dangerous world, confront the temptations of forbidden love, and never once let their guard down, lest the evil undead make Lissa one of them forever... (less)"
4458,The Kiss of Deception,fantasy,"In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.

On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.

The Kiss of Deception is the first audiobook in Mary E. Pearson's Remnant Chronicles (less)"
4459,The Ten Thousand Doors of January,fantasy,"In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own. (less)"
4460,Shadows of Self,fantasy,"Shadows of Self shows Mistborn’s society evolving as technology and magic mix, the economy grows, democracy contends with corruption, and religion becomes a growing cultural force, with four faiths competing for converts.

This bustling, optimistic, but still shaky society now faces its first instance of terrorism, crimes intended to stir up labor strife and religious conflict. Wax and Wayne, assisted by the lovely, brilliant Marasi, must unravel the conspiracy before civil strife stops Scadrial’s progress in its tracks.

Shadows of Self will give fans of The Alloy of Law everything they’ve been hoping for and, this being a Brandon Sanderson book, more, much more. (less)"
4461,"Blue Lily, Lily Blue",fantasy,"The third installment in the all-new series from the #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater!

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel. (less)"
4462,Kushiel's Dart,fantasy,"The land of Terre d'Ange is a place of unsurpassing beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good... and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

Phèdre nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye. Sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with very a special mission... and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel's Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

Phèdre is trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Almost as talented a spy as she is courtesan, Phèdre stumbles upon a plot that threatens the very foundations of her homeland. Treachery sets her on her path; love and honor goad her further. And in the doing, it will take her to the edge of despair... and beyond. Hateful friend, loving enemy, beloved assassin; they can all wear the same glittering mask in this world, and Phèdre will get but one chance to save all that she holds dear.

Set in a world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess, this is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. Not since Dune has there been an epic on the scale of Kushiel's Dart-a massive tale about the violent death of an old age, and the birth of a new. (less)"
4463,Sourcery,fantasy,"When last seen, the singularly inept wizard Rincewind had fallen off the edge of the world. Now magically, he's turned up again, and this time he's brought the Luggage.

But that's not all....

Once upon a time, there was an eighth son of an eighth son who was, of course, a wizard. As if that wasn't complicated enough, said wizard then had seven sons. And then he had an eighth son -- a wizard squared (that's all the math, really). Who of course, was a source of magic -- a sourcerer. (less)"
4464,Winter,fantasy,"Princess Winter is admired for her grace, kindness and beauty, despite the scars on her face. She's said to be even more breath-taking than her stepmother, Queen Levana...

When Winter develops feelings for the handsome palace guard, Jacin, she fears the evil Queen will crush their romance before it has a chance to begin.

But there are stirrings against the Queen across the land. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even find the power to launch a revolution and win a war that's been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter claim their happily ever afters by defeating Levana once and for all? (less)"
4465,Reaper Man,fantasy,"'Death has to happen. That's what bein' alive is all about. You're alive, and then you're dead. It can't just stop happening.'

But it can. And it has. So what happens after death is now less of a philosophical question than a question of actual reality. On the Disc, as here, they need Death. If Death doesn't come for you, then what are you supposed to do in the meantime? You can't have the undead wandering about like lost souls. There's no telling what might happen, particularly when they discover that life really is only for the living... (less)"
4466,Lirael,fantasy,"Lirael has never felt like a true daughter of the Clayr. Now, two years past the time when she should have received the Sight that is the Clayr's birthright, she feels alone, abandoned, unsure of who she is. Nevertheless, the fate of the Old Kingdom lies in her hands. With only her faithful companion, the Disreputable Dog, Lirael must undertake a desperate mission under the growing shadow of an ancient evil.

In this sequel to Sabriel, winner of the Aurealis Award for Excellence in Australian Science Fiction, New York Times best-selling author Garth Nix weaves a spellbinding tale of discovery, destiny, and danger. (less)"
4467,The Time of Contempt,fantasy,"The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher
Geralt is a witcher: guardian of the innocent; protector of those in need; a defender, in dark times, against some of the most frightening creatures of myth and legend. His task, now, is to protect Ciri. A child of prophecy, she will have the power to change the world for good or for ill -- but only if she lives to use it.

A coup threatens the Wizard's Guild.
War breaks out across the lands.
A serious injury leaves Geralt fighting for his life...
... and Ciri, in whose hands the world's fate rests, has vanished...

The Witcher returns in this sequel to Blood of Elves.


The Witcher series
The Last Wish
The Sword of Destiny
Blood of Elves
The Time of Contempt
Baptism of Fire

The Malady and Other Stories: An Andrzej Sapkowski Sampler (e-only) (less)"
4468,Bitterblue,fantasy,"Eight years have passed since the young Princess Bitterblue, and her country, were saved from the vicious King Leck. Now Bitterblue is the queen of Monsea, and her land is at peace.

But the influence of her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities, lives on. Her advisers, who have run the country on her behalf since Leck's death, believe in a forward-thinking plan: to pardon all of those who committed terrible acts during Leck's reign; and to forget every dark event that ever happened. Monsea's past has become shrouded in mystery, and it's only when Bitterblue begins sneaking out of her castle - curious, disguised and alone - to walk the streets of her own city, that she begins to realise the truth. Her kingdom has been under the thirty-five-year long spell of a madman, and now their only chance to move forward is to revisit the past.

Whatever that past holds.

Two thieves, who have sworn only to steal what has already been stolen, change her life forever. They hold a key to the truth of Leck's reign. And one of them, who possesses an unidentified Grace, may also hold a key to her heart . . . (less)"
4469,The Young Elites,fantasy,"I am tired of being used, hurt, and cast aside.

Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel father believes she is a malfetto, an abomination, ruining their family’s good name and standing in the way of their fortune. But some of the fever’s survivors are rumored to possess more than just scars—they are believed to have mysterious and powerful gifts, and though their identities remain secret, they have come to be called the Young Elites.

Teren Santoro works for the king. As Leader of the Inquisition Axis, it is his job to seek out the Young Elites, to destroy them before they destroy the nation. He believes the Young Elites to be dangerous and vengeful, but it’s Teren who may possess the darkest secret of all.

Enzo Valenciano is a member of the Dagger Society. This secret sect of Young Elites seeks out others like them before the Inquisition Axis can. But when the Daggers find Adelina, they discover someone with powers like they’ve never seen.

Adelina wants to believe Enzo is on her side, and that Teren is the true enemy. But the lives of these three will collide in unexpected ways, as each fights a very different and personal battle. But of one thing they are all certain: Adelina has abilities that shouldn’t belong in this world. A vengeful blackness in her heart. And a desire to destroy all who dare to cross her.

It is my turn to use. My turn to hurt. (less)"
4470,Interview with the Vampire,fantasy,"This is the story of Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows through the streets of New Orleans, defining crucial moments such as his discovery of the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her with the last breaths of humanity he has inside. Yet, he makes Claudia a vampire, trapping her womanly passion, will, and intelligence inside the body of a small child. Louis and Claudia form a seemingly unbreakable alliance and even ""settle down"" for a while in the opulent French Quarter. Louis remembers Claudia's struggle to understand herself and the hatred they both have for Lestat that sends them halfway across the world to seek others of their kind. Louis and Claudia are desperate to find somewhere they belong, to find others who understand, and someone who knows what and why they are.

Louis and Claudia travel Europe, eventually coming to Paris and the ragingly successful Theatre des Vampires--a theatre of vampires pretending to be mortals pretending to be vampires. Here they meet the magnetic and ethereal Armand, who brings them into a whole society of vampires. But Louis and Claudia find that finding others like themselves provides no easy answers and in fact presents dangers they scarcely imagined.

Originally begun as a short story, the book took off as Anne wrote it, spinning the tragic and triumphant life experiences of a soul. As well as the struggles of its characters, Interview captures the political and social changes of two continents. The novel also introduces Lestat, Anne's most enduring character, a heady mixture of attraction and revulsion. The book, full of lush description, centers on the themes of immortality, change, loss, sexuality, and power.
source: annerice.com (less)"
4471,Grave Peril,fantasy,"An alternative cover edition with a different page count exists here.

Harry Dresden - Wizard
Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment.

Harry Dresden has faced some pretty terrifying foes during his career. Giant scorpions. Oversexed vampires. Psychotic werewolves. It comes with the territory when you're the only professional wizard in the Chicago-area phone book.

But in all Harry's years of supernatural sleuthing, he's never faced anything like this: The spirit world has gone postal. All over Chicago, ghosts are causing trouble - and not just of the door-slamming, boo-shouting variety. These ghosts are tormented, violent, and deadly. Someone - or something - is purposely stirring them up to wreak unearthly havoc. But why? And why do so many of the victims have ties to Harry? If Harry doesn't figure it out soon, he could wind up a ghost himself.... (less)"
4472,Lady Midnight,fantasy,"The Shadowhunters of Los Angeles star in the first novel in Cassandra Clare’s newest series, The Dark Artifices, a sequel to the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series. Lady Midnight is a Shadowhunters novel.

It’s been five years since the events of City of Heavenly Fire that brought the Shadowhunters to the brink of oblivion. Emma Carstairs is no longer a child in mourning, but a young woman bent on discovering what killed her parents and avenging her losses.

Together with her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches across Los Angeles, from the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica. If only her heart didn’t lead her in treacherous directions…

Making things even more complicated, Julian’s brother Mark—who was captured by the faeries five years ago—has been returned as a bargaining chip. The faeries are desperate to find out who is murdering their kind—and they need the Shadowhunters’ help to do it. But time works differently in faerie, so Mark has barely aged and doesn’t recognize his family. Can he ever truly return to them? Will the faeries really allow it?

Glitz, glamours, and Shadowhunters abound in this heartrending opening to Cassandra Clare’s Dark Artifices series. (less)"
4473,Going Postal,fantasy,"Arch-swindler Moist Van Lipwig never believed his confidence crimes were hanging offenses - until he found himself with a noose tightly around his neck, dropping through a trapdoor, and falling into...a government job?

By all rights, Moist should have met his maker. Instead, it's Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, who promptly offers him a job as Postmaster. Since his only other option is a nonliving one, Moist accepts the position - and the hulking golem watchdog who comes along with it, just in case Moist was considering abandoning his responsibilities prematurely.

Getting the moribund Postal Service up and running again, however, may be a near-impossible task, what with literally mountains of decades-old undelivered mail clogging every nook and cranny of the broken-down post office building; and with only a few creaky old postmen and one rather unstable, pin-obsessed youth available to deliver it. Worse still, Moist could swear the mail is talking to him. Worst of all, it means taking on the gargantuan, money-hungry Grand Trunk clacks communication monopoly and its bloodthirsty piratical head, Mr. Reacher Gilt.
But it says on the building Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Glom of Nit...Inspiring words (admittedly, some of the bronze letters have been stolen), and for once in his wretched life Moist is going to fight. And if the bold and impossible are what's called for, he'll do it - in order to move the mail, continue breathing, get the girl, and specially deliver that invaluable commodity that every human being (not to mention troll, dwarf, and, yes, even golem) requires: hope. (less)"
4474,The Wee Free Men,fantasy,"Librarian's Note: For an alternate cover edition of the same ISBN, click here.

""Another world is colliding with this one,"" said the toad. ""All the monsters are coming back.""

""Why?"" said Tiffany.

""There's no one to stop them.""

There was silence for a moment.

Then Tiffany said, ""There's me.""

Armed only with a frying pan and her common sense, Tiffany Aching, a young witch-to-be, is all that stands between the monsters of Fairyland and the warm, green Chalk country that is her home. Forced into Fairyland to seek her kidnapped brother, Tiffany allies herself with the Chalk's local Nac Mac Feegle - aka the Wee Free Men - a clan of sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men who are as fierce as they are funny. Together they battle through an eerie and ever-shifting landscape, fighting brutal flying fairies, dream-spinning dromes, and grimhounds - black dogs with eyes of fire and teeth of razors - before ultimately confronting the Queen of the Elves, absolute ruler of a world in which reality intertwines with nightmare. And in the final showdown, Tiffany must face her cruel power alone...

In a riveting narrative that is equal parts suspense and humor, Carnegie Medalist Terry Pratchett returns to his internationally popular Discworld with a breathtaking tale certain to leave fans, new and old, enthralled. (less)"
4475,The Waste Lands,fantasy,"Several months have passed, and Roland’s two new tet-mates have become proficient gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But while battling The Pusher in 1977 New York, Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who—in Roland’s where and when—has already died. Now Roland and Jake exist in different worlds, but they are joined by the same madness: the paradox of double memories. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie must draw Jake into Mid-World then follow the Path of the Beam all the way to the Dark Tower. But nothing is easy in Mid-World. Along the way our tet stumbles into the ruined city of Lud, and are caught between the warring gangs of the Pubes and the Grays. The only way out of Lud is to wake Blaine the Mono, an insane train that has a passion for riddling, and for suicidal journeys. (less)"
4476,Daughter of the Forest,fantasy,"Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives: they are determined that she know only contentment.

But Sorcha's joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift—by staying silent. If she speaks before she completes the quest set to her by the Fair Folk and their queen, the Lady of the Forest, she will lose her brothers forever.

When Sorcha is kidnapped by the enemies of Sevenwaters and taken to a foreign land, she is torn between the desire to save her beloved brothers, and a love that comes only once. Sorcha despairs at ever being able to complete her task, but the magic of the Fair Folk knows no boundaries, and love is the strongest magic of them all... (less)"
4477,A Memory of Light,fantasy,"The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

When Robert Jordan died in 2007, all feared that these concluding scenes would never be written. But working from notes and partials left by Jordan, established fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson stepped in to complete the masterwork. With The Gathering Storm (Book 12) and Towers of Midnight (Book 13) behind him, Sanderson now re-creates the vision that Robert Jordan left behind.

Edited by Jordan's widow, who edited all of Jordan's books, A Memory of Light will delight, enthrall, and deeply satisfy all of Jordan's legions of readers.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass.
What was, what will be, and what is,
may yet fall under the Shadow.
Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time. (less)"
4478,Three Dark Crowns,fantasy,"When kingdom come, there will be one.

In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born—three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.

But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins.

The last queen standing gets the crown.  (less)"
4479,The Children of Húrin,fantasy,"This tale of Middle-earth's First Age, which appeared in incomplete forms in the posthumously published The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales , also edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher, only hinted at the depth and power of the tragic story of Túrin and Niënor, the children of Húrin, the lord of Dor-lómin, who achieved renown for having confronted Morgoth, who was the master of Sauron, the manifestation of evil in the Lord of the Rings.

Six thousand years before the One Ring is destroyed, Middle-earth lies under the shadow of the Dark Lord Morgoth. The greatest warriors among elves and men have perished, and all is in darkness and despair. But a deadly new leader rises, Túrin, son of Húrin, and with his grim band of outlaws begins to turn the tide in the war for Middle-earth -- awaiting the day he confronts his destiny and the deadly curse laid upon him. (less)"
4480,The Republic of Thieves,fantasy,"With what should have been the greatest heist of their career gone spectacularly sour, Locke and his trusted partner, Jean, have barely escaped with their lives. Or at least Jean has. But Locke is slowly succumbing to a deadly poison that no alchemist or physiker can cure. Yet just as the end is near, a mysterious Bondsmage offers Locke an opportunity that will either save him or finish him off once and for all.

Magi political elections are imminent, and the factions are in need of a pawn. If Locke agrees to play the role, sorcery will be used to purge the venom from his body - though the process will be so excruciating he may well wish for death. Locke is opposed, but two factors cause his will to crumble: Jean's imploring - and the Bondsmage's mention of a woman from Locke's past: Sabetha. She is the love of his life, his equal in skill and wit, and now, his greatest rival.

Locke was smitten with Sabetha from his first glimpse of her as a young fellow orphan and thief-in-training. But after a tumultuous courtship, Sabetha broke away. Now they will reunite in yet another clash of wills. For faced with his one and only match in both love and trickery, Locke must choose whether to fight Sabetha - or to woo her. It is a decision on which both their lives may depend.

(less)"
4481,Hogfather,fantasy,"Susan had never hung up a stocking . She'd never put a tooth under her pillow in the serious expectation that a dentally inclined fairy would turn up. It wasn't that her parents didn't believe in such things. They didn't need to believe in them. They know they existed. They just wished they didn't.

There are those who believe and those who don't. Through the ages, superstition has had its uses. Nowhere more so than in the Discworld where it's helped to maintain the status quo. Anything that undermines superstition has to be viewed with some caution. There may be consequences, particularly on the last night of the year when the time is turning. When those consequences turn out to be the end of the world, you need to be prepared. You might even want more standing between you and oblivion than a mere slip of a girl - even if she has looked Death in the face on numerous occasions... (less)"
4482,Beautiful Creatures,fantasy,"Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything. (less)"
4483,The Stone Sky,fantasy,"This is the way the world ends... for the last time.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

The remarkable conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed trilogy that began with the multi-award-nominated The Fifth Season. (less)"
4484,The Farthest Shore,fantasy,"Book Three of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea CycleDarkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. Despite being wearied with age, Ged Sparrowhawk -- Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord -- embarks on a daring, treacherous journey, accompanied by Enlad's young Prince Arren, to discover the reasons behind this devastating pattern of loss. Together they will sail to the farthest reaches of their world -- even beyond the realm of death -- as they seek to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.With millions of copies sold worldwide, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle has earned a treasured place on the shelves of fantasy lovers everywhere, alongside the works of such beloved authors as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. (less)"
4485,Shiver,fantasy,"For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf—her wolf—is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without.

Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human… until the cold makes him shift back again.

Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human—or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever. (less)"
4486,The Raven King,fantasy,"The fourth and final installment in the spellbinding series from the irrepressible, #1 New York Times bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater.

All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love's death. She doesn't believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore. (less)"
4487,Dead Until Dark,fantasy,"Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out....

Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea. (less)"
4488,Men at Arms,fantasy,"'What's so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work's already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place.'

The City Watch needs MEN! But what it's got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman... most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving).

And they need all the help they can get, because someone in Ankh-Morpork has been getting dangerous ideas - about crowns and legendary swords, and destiny. And the problem with destiny is, of course, that she is not always careful where she points her finger. One minute you might be minding your own business on a normal if not spectacular career path, the next you might be in the frame for the big job, like saving the world... (less)"
4489,Kingdom of the Wicked,fantasy,"Two sisters.
One brutal murder.
A quest for vengeance that will unleash Hell itself...
And an intoxicating romance.

Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe - witches who live secretly among humans, avoiding notice and persecution. One night, Vittoria misses dinner service at the family's renowned Sicilian restaurant. Emilia soon finds the body of her beloved twin...desecrated beyond belief. Devastated, Emilia sets out to find her sister's killer and to seek vengeance at any cost—even if it means using dark magic that's been long forbidden.

Then Emilia meets Wrath, one of the Wicked—princes of Hell she has been warned against in tales since she was a child. Wrath claims to be on Emilia's side, tasked by his master with solving the series of women's murders on the island. But when it comes to the Wicked, nothing is as it seems... (less)"
4490,A Great and Terrible Beauty,fantasy,"In this debut gothic novel mysterious visions, dark family secrets and a long-lost diary thrust Gemma and her classmates back into the horrors that followed her from India. (Ages 12+)

It's 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls—and their foray into the spiritual world—lead to? (less)"
4491,Fool's Errand,fantasy,"alternate cover for ISBN 9780006486015

Fifteen years have passed since the end of the Red Ship War with the terrifying Outislanders. Since then, Fitz has wandered the world accompanied only by his wolf and Wit-partner, Nighteyes, finally settling in a tiny cottage as remote from Buckkeep and the Farseers as possible.

But lately the world has come crashing in again. The Witted are being persecuted because of their magical bonds with animals; and young Prince Dutiful has gone missing just before his crucial diplomatic wedding to an Outislander princess. Fitz’s assignment to fetch Dutiful back in time for the ceremony seems very much like a fool’s errand, but the dangers ahead could signal the end of the Farseer reign.

Cover illustration by John Howe

(less)"
4492,Abhorsen,fantasy,"The Ninth was strong and fought with might
But lone Orannis was put out of the light
Broken in two and buried under hill
Forever to lie there, wishing us ill.

So says the song. But Orannis, the Destroyer, is no longer buried under hill. It has been freed from its subterranean prison and now seeks to escape the silver hemispheres, the final barrier to the unleashing of its terrible powers.

Only Lirael, newly come into her inheritance as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, has any chance of stopping the Destroyer. She and her companions -- Sam, the Disreputable Dog, and Mogget -- have to take that chance. For the Destroyer is the enemy of all Life, and it must be stopped, though Lirael does not know how.

To make matters worse, Sam's best friend, Nick, is helping the Destroyer, as are the necromancer Hedge and the Greater Dead Chlorr, and there has been no word from the Abhorsen Sabriel or King Touchstone.

Everything depends upon Lirael. A heavy, perhaps even impossible burden for a young woman who just days ago was merely a Second Assistant Librarian. With only a vision from the Clayr to guide her, and the rather mixed help of her companions, Lirael must search in both Life and Death for some means to defeat the Destroyer.

Before it is too late. . . . (less)"
4493,Rivers of London,fantasy,"Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic. (less)"
4494,The Girl in the Tower,fantasy,"The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden’s enchanting first novel, introduced readers to an irresistible heroine. Vasilisa has grown up at the edge of a Russian wilderness, where snowdrifts reach the eaves of her family’s wooden house and there is truth in the fairy tales told around the fire. Vasilisa’s gift for seeing what others do not won her the attention of Morozko—Frost, the winter demon from the stories—and together they saved her people from destruction. But Frost’s aid comes at a cost, and her people have condemned her as a witch.

In The Girl in the Tower, Vasilisa faces an impossible choice. Driven from her home by frightened villagers, she has only two options left: marriage or the convent. She cannot bring herself to accept either fate and instead chooses adventure, dressing herself as a boy and setting off astride her magnificent stallion Solovey.

But after she prevails in a skirmish with bandits, everything changes. The Grand Prince of Moscow anoints her a hero for her exploits, and she is reunited with her beloved sister and brother, who are now part of the Grand Prince’s inner circle. She dares not reveal to the court that she is a girl, for if her deception were discovered it would have terrible consequences for herself and her family. Before she can untangle herself from Moscow’s intrigues—and as Frost provides counsel that may or may not be trustworthy—she will also confront an even graver threat lying in wait for all of Moscow itself. (less)"
4495,The Magicians' Guild,fantasy,"""We should expect this young woman to be more powerful than our average novice, possibly even more powerful than the average magician.""

This year, like every other, the magicians of Imardin gather to purge the city of undesirables. Cloaked in the protection of their sorcery, they move with no fear of the vagrants and miscreants who despise them and their work-—until one enraged girl, barely more than a child, hurls a stone at the hated invaders...and effortlessly penetrates their magical shield.

What the Magicians' Guild has long dreaded has finally come to pass. There is someone outside their ranks who possesses a raw power beyond imagining, an untrained mage who must be found and schooled before she destroys herself and her city with a force she cannot yet control. (less)"
4496,Peter Pan,fantasy,"Peter Pan, the mischievous boy who refuses to grow up, lands in the Darling's proper middle-class home to look for his shadow. He befriends Wendy, John and Michael and teaches them to fly (with a little help from fairy dust). He and Tinker Bell whisk them off to Never-land where they encounter the Red Indians, the Little Lost Boys, pirates and the dastardly Captain Hook. (less)"
4497,The Winner's Curse,fantasy,"Winning what you want may cost you everything you love... 

As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions.

One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him—with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin.

But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined.

Set in a richly imagined new world, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski is a story of deadly games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart. (less)"
4498,The Once and Future King,fantasy,"T.H White′s masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. Here all five volumes that make up the story are published in one volume, as White himself always wished. Exquisite comedy offsets the tragedy of Arthur′s personal doom as White brings to life the major British epic of all time with brilliance, grandeur, warmth and charm."
4499,Stone of Tears,fantasy,"In Wizard's First Rule, Richard Cypher's world was turned upside down. Once a simple woods guide, Richard was forced to become the Seeker of Truth, to save the world from the vile dominance of Darken Rahl, the most viciously savage and powerful wizard the world had ever seen. He was joined on this epic quest by his beloved Kahlan, the only survivor among the Confessors, who brought a powerful but benevolent justice to the land before Rahl's evil scourge. Aided by Zedd, the last of the wizards who opposed Rahl, they were able to cast him into the underworld, saving the world from the living hell of life under Rahl.

But the veil to the underworld has been torn, and Rahl, from beyond the veil, begins to summon a sinister power more dreadful than any he has wielded before. Horrifying creatures escape through the torn veil, wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting world above.

If Rahl isn't stopped, he will free the Keeper itself, an evil entity whose power is so vast and foul that once freed, it can never again be contained.

Richard and Kahlan must face Rahl and the Keeper's terrible minions. But first, Richard must endure the ministrations of the Sisters of the Light, or die from the pain of magic that is his birthright and his curse. While Richard undertakes the arduous journey to the forbidden city of the Sisters, Kahlan must embark upon a long and dangerous mission to Aydindril, citadel of the old wizards, where she hopes to find Zedd and the help only he can lend to their desperate cause.

War, suffering, torture, and deceit lie in their paths, and nothing will save them from a destiny of violent death, unless their courage and faith are joined with luck and they find the elusive...Stone of Tears. (less)"
4500,"Hush, Hush",fantasy,"A SACRED OATH
A FALLEN ANGEL
A FORBIDDEN LOVE

Romance was not part of Nora Grey's plan. She's never been particularly attracted to the boys at her school, no matter how hard her best friend, Vee, pushes them at her. Not until Patch comes along. With his easy smile and eyes that seem to see inside her, Patch draws Nora to him against her better judgment.

But after a series of terrifying encounters, Nora's not sure whom to trust. Patch seems to be everywhere she is and seems to know more about her than her closest friends. She can't decide whether she should fall into his arms or run and hide. And when she tries to seek some answers, she finds herself near a truth that is way more unsettling than anything Patch makes her feel.

For she is right in the middle of an ancient battle between the immortal and those that have fallen - and, when it comes to choosing sides, the wrong choice will cost Nora her life. (less)"
4501,Dreams of Gods & Monsters,fantasy,"What power can bruise the sky?

Two worlds are poised on the brink of a vicious war. By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera's rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her.

When the brutal angel emperor brings his army to the human world, Karou and Akiva are finally reunited—not in love, but in a tentative alliance against their common enemy. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves.

But with even bigger threats on the horizon, are Karou and Akiva strong enough to stand among the gods and monsters?

The New York Times bestselling Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy comes to a stunning conclusion as—from the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond—humans, chimaera, and seraphim strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy. (less)"
4502,Pyramids,fantasy,"It's bad enough being new on the job, but Teppic hasn't a clue as to what a pharaoh is supposed to do. After all, he's been trained at Ankh-Morpork's famed assassins' school, across the sea from the Kingdom of the Sun. First, there's the monumental task of building a suitable resting place for Dad -- a pyramid to end all pyramids. Then there are the myriad administrative duties, such as dealing with mad priests, sacred crocodiles, and marching mummies. And to top it all off, the adolescent pharaoh discovers deceit, betrayal - not to mention a headstrong handmaiden - at the heart of his realm. (less)"
4503,Dracula,fantasy,"You can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here and here.

A rich selection of background and source materials is provided in three areas: Contexts includes probable inspirations for Dracula in the earlier works of James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard. Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and ""Dracula's Guest,"" the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. ""Dramatic and Film Variations"" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included.

Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer.

A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included. (less)"
4504,The Goblin Emperor,fantasy,"The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an ""accident,"" he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.

Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.

Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend... and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne – or his life. (less)"
4505,Wizard and Glass,fantasy,"Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Jake’s pet bumbler survive Blaine the Mono’s final crash, only to find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, one that has been ravaged by the superflu virus. While following the deserted I-70 toward a distant glass palace, they hear the atonal squalling of a thinny, a place where the fabric of existence has almost entirely worn away. While camping near the edge of the thinny, Roland tells his ka-tet a story about another thinny, one that he encountered when he was little more than a boy. Over the course of one long magical night, Roland transports us to the Mid-World of long-ago and a seaside town called Hambry, where Roland fell in love with a girl named Susan Delgado, and where he and his old tet-mates Alain and Cuthbert battled the forces of John Farson, the harrier who—with a little help from a seeing sphere called Maerlyn’s Grapefruit—ignited Mid-World’s final war. (less)"
4506,The Dragonbone Chair,fantasy,"A war fueled by the powers of dark sorcery is about to engulf the peaceful land of Osten Ard—for Prester John, the High King, lies dying. And with his death, the Storm King, the undead ruler of the elf-like Sithi, seizes the chance to regain his lost realm through a pact with the newly ascended king. Knowing the consequences of this bargain, the king’s younger brother joins with a small, scattered group of scholars, the League of the Scroll, to confront the true danger threatening Osten Ard.

Simon, a kitchen boy from the royal castle unknowingly apprenticed to a member of this League, will be sent on a quest that offers the only hope of salvation, a deadly riddle concerning long-lost swords of power. Compelled by fate and perilous magics, he must leave the only home he’s ever known and face enemies more terrifying than Osten Ard has ever seen, even as the land itself begins to die.

After the landmark Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, the epic saga of Osten Ard continues with the brand-new novel, The Heart of What Was Lost. Then don’t miss the upcoming trilogy, The Last King of Osten Ard, beginning with The Witchwood Crown! (less)"
4507,Jade City,fantasy,"JADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.

The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.

The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion--but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.

When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself. (less)"
4508,A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire,fantasy,"A Betrayal…

Everything Poppy has ever believed in is a lie, including the man she was falling in love with. Thrust among those who see her as a symbol of a monstrous kingdom, she barely knows who she is without the veil of the Maiden. But what she does know is that nothing is as dangerous to her as him. The Dark One. The Prince of Atlantia. He wants her to fight him, and that’s one order she’s more than happy to obey. He may have taken her, but he will never have her.

A Choice...

Casteel Da’Neer is known by many names and many faces. His lies are as seductive as his touch. His truths as sensual as his bite. Poppy knows better than to trust him. He needs her alive, healthy, and whole to achieve his goals. But he’s the only way for her to get what she wants—to find her brother Ian and see for herself if he has become a soulless Ascended. Working with Casteel instead of against him presents its own risks. He still tempts her with every breath, offering up all she’s ever wanted. Casteel has plans for her. Ones that could expose her to unimaginable pleasure and unfathomable pain. Plans that will force her to look beyond everything she thought she knew about herself—about him. Plans that could bind their lives together in unexpected ways that neither kingdom is prepared for. And she’s far too reckless, too hungry, to resist the temptation.

A Secret…

But unrest has grown in Atlantia as they await the return of their Prince. Whispers of war have become stronger, and Poppy is at the very heart of it all. The King wants to use her to send a message. The Descenters want her dead. The wolven are growing more unpredictable. And as her abilities to feel pain and emotion begin to grow and strengthen, the Atlantians start to fear her. Dark secrets are at play, ones steeped in the blood-drenched sins of two kingdoms that would do anything to keep the truth hidden. But when the earth begins to shake, and the skies start to bleed, it may already be too late. (less)"
4509,Queen of Sorcery,fantasy,"The Trail of Prophecy...

Legends told of how the evil God Torak had coveted the power of the Orb of Aldur, until defeated in a final battle. But prophecy spoke of a time when he would awake and again seek dominance over the world. Now the Orb has been stolen by a priest of Torak, and that time was at hand.

The master Sorcerer Belgarath and his daughter Polgara the arch-Sorceress were on the trail of the Orb, seeking to regain it before the final disaster. And with them went Garion, a simple farm boy only months before, but now the focus of the struggle. He has never believed in sorcery and wanted no part of it. Yet with every league they traveled, the power grew in him, forcing him to acts of wizardry he could not accept.

This continues the magnificent epic of The Belgariad, began in Pawn of Prophecy, set among strange lands against a background of a war of men, Kings, and Gods that had spanned seven thousand years - a novel of strange fate and a prophecy that must come true! (less)"
4510,In the Hand of the Goddess,fantasy,"Disguised as a boy, Alanna of Trebond becomes a squire, to none other than the prince of the realm. But Prince Jonathan is much more to Alanna; he is her ally, her best friend, and one of the few who knows that she's really a girl. Now it will take all of Alanna's awesome skill, strength, and growing magical powers to protect him from the mysterious evil sorcerer who is bent on his destruction, and hers!

Here continues the story of Alanna, a young woman bound for glory who is willing to fight against enormous odds for what she believes in. (less)"
4511,Cruel Beauty,fantasy,"Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.

With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her.

As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love. (less)"
4512,Blood Song,fantasy,"“The Sixth Order wields the sword of justice and smites the enemies of the Faith and the Realm.”

Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of ten when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order. The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.

Vaelin’s father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin’s rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world. (less)"
4513,Tigana,fantasy,"A masterful epic of magic, politics, war, and the power of love and hate — from the renowned author of The Fionavar Tapestry and Children of Earth and Sky.

Tigana is the magical story of a beleaguered land struggling to be free. It is the tale of a people so cursed by the black sorcery of a cruel despotic king that even the name of their once-beautiful homeland cannot be spoken or remembered...

But years after the devastation, a handful of courageous men and women embark upon a dangerous crusade to overthrow their conquerors and bring back to the dark world the brilliance of a long-lost name...Tigana.

Against the magnificently rendered background of a world both sensuous and barbaric, this sweeping epic of a passionate people pursuing their dream is breathtaking in its vision, changing forever the boundaries of fantasy fiction. (less)"
4514,Redwall,fantasy,"A quest to recover a legendary lost weapon by bumbling young apprentice monk, mouse Matthias.

Redwall Abbey, tranquil home to a community of peace-loving mice, is threatened by Cluny the Scourge savage bilge rat warlord and his battle-hardened horde. But the Redwall mice and their loyal woodland friends combine their courage and strength."
4515,Daughter of the Pirate King,fantasy,"There will be plenty of time for me to beat him soundly once I’ve gotten what I came for.

Sent on a mission to retrieve an ancient hidden map—the key to a legendary treasure trove—seventeen-year-old pirate captain Alosa deliberately allows herself to be captured by her enemies, giving her the perfect opportunity to search their ship.

More than a match for the ruthless pirate crew, Alosa has only one thing standing between her and the map: her captor, the unexpectedly clever and unfairly attractive first mate, Riden. But not to worry, for Alosa has a few tricks up her sleeve, and no lone pirate can stop the Daughter of the Pirate King. (less)"
4516,The Atlas Six,fantasy,"The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few...

- Libby Rhodes and Nicolás Ferrer de Varona: inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds.
- Reina Mori: a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself.
- Parisa Kamali: a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched.
- Tristan Caine: the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe.
- Callum Nova: an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them. (less)"
4517,The Book of Three,fantasy,"Taran wanted to be a hero, and looking after a pig wasn't exactly heroic, even though Hen Wen was an oracular pig. But the day that Hen Wen vanished, Taran was led into an enchanting and perilous world. With his band of followers, he confronted the Horned King and his terrible Cauldron-Born. These were the forces of evil, and only Hen Wen knew the secret of keeping the kingdom of Prydain safe from them. But who would find her first? (less)"
4518,The Girl of Fire and Thorns,fantasy,"Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness.
Elisa is the chosen one.

But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can't see how she ever will.

Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.

And he's not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people's savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.

Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.

Most of the chosen do. (less)"
4519,Baptism of Fire,fantasy,"The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher

The Wizards Guild has been shattered by a coup and, in the uproar, Geralt was seriously injured. The Witcher is supposed to be a guardian of the innocent, a protector of those in need, a defender against powerful and dangerous monsters that prey on men in dark times.

But now that dark times have fallen upon the world, Geralt is helpless until he has recovered from his injuries.

While war rages across all of the lands, the future of magic is under threat and those sorcerers who survive are determined to protect it. It's an impossible situation in which to find one girl - Ciri, the heiress to the throne of Cintra, has vanished - until a rumor places her in the Niflgaard court, preparing to marry the Emperor.

Injured or not, Geralt has a rescue mission on his hands.

The Witcher returns in this action-packed sequel to The Time of Contempt. (less)"
4520,Magic Study,fantasy,"You know your life is complicated when you miss your days as a poison taster...

With her greatest enemy dead, and on her way to be united with the family she'd been stolen from long ago, Yelena should be pleased. But although she has gained her freedom, she once again finds herself alone - separated from her lover Valek and suspected as a spy for her reluctance to conform to Sitian ways.

Despite the turmoil, she's eager to start her magic training - especially as she's been given one year to harness her power or be put to death. But her plans take a radical turn when she becomes embroiled in a plot to reclaim Ixia's throne for a lost prince - and gets entangled in powerful rivalries with her fellow magicians.

If that wasn't bad enough, it appears her brother would love to see her dead. Luckily, Yelena has some old friends to help her with her new enemies. (less)"
4521,Feet of Clay,fantasy,"There's a werewolf with pre-lunar tension in Ankh-Morpork, and a dwarf with an attitude and a golem who's begun to think for itself.

But for Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, that's only the start...

There's treason in the air.
A crime has happened.

He's not only got to find out whodunit, but howdunit too. He's not even sure what they dun. But as soon as he knows what the questions are, he's going to want some answers. (less)"
4522,Theft of Swords,fantasy,"Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater, make a profitable living carrying out dangerous assignments for conspiring nobles-until they are hired to pilfer a famed sword. What appears to be just a simple job finds them framed for the murder of the king and trapped in a conspiracy that uncovers a plot far greater than the mere overthrow of a tiny kingdom.

Can a self-serving thief and an idealistic swordsman survive long enough to unravel the first part of an ancient mystery that has toppled kings and destroyed empires?

And so begins the first tale of treachery and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.

When author Michael J. Sullivan self-published the first books of his Riyria Revelations, they rapidly became ebook bestsellers. Now, Orbit is pleased to present the complete series for the first time in bookstores everywhere. (less)"
4523,Steelheart,fantasy,"Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his will.

Nobody fights the Epics...nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.

And David wants in. He wants Steelheart — the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father. For years, like the Reckoners, David's been studying, and planning — and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.

He's seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge. (less)"
4524,Angelfall,fantasy,"It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels' stronghold in San Francisco where she'll risk everything to rescue her sister and he'll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again. (less)"
4525,The Demon King,fantasy,"Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch. Reformed thief Han Alister will do almost anything to eke out a living for his family. The only thing of value he has is something he can't sell—the thick silver cuffs he's worn since birth. They're clearly magicked—as he grows, they grow, and he's never been able to get them off.

One day, Han and his clan friend, Dancer, confront three young wizards setting fire to the sacred mountain of Hanalea. Han takes an amulet from Micah Bayar, son of the High Wizard, to keep him from using it against them. Soon Han learns that the amulet has an evil history—it once belonged to the Demon King, the wizard who nearly destroyed the world a millennium ago. With a magical piece that powerful at stake, Han knows that the Bayars will stop at nothing to get it back.

Meanwhile, Raisa ana'Marianna, princess heir of the Fells, has her own battles to fight. She's just returned to court after three years of freedom in the mountains—riding, hunting, and working the famous clan markets. Raisa wants to be more than an ornament in a glittering cage. She aspires to be like Hanalea—the legendary warrior queen who killed the Demon King and saved the world. But her mother has other plans for her...

The Seven Realms tremble when the lives of Hans and Raisa collide, fanning the flames of the smoldering war between clans and wizards. (less)"
4526,Enchanters' End Game,fantasy,"THE DRIVE OF PROPHECY

The quest was over. The Orb of Aldur was restored. And once again, with the crowning of Garion, there was a descendant of Riva Iron-grip to rule as Overlord of the West.

But the Prophecy was unfulfilled. In the east, the evil God Torak was about to awaken and seek dominion. Somehow, Garion had to face the God, to kill or be killed. On the outcome of that dread duel rested the destiny of the world. Now, accompanied by his grandfather, the ancient sorcerer Belgarath, Garion headed toward the City of Endless Night, where Torak awaited him.

To the south, his fiancée, the princess Ce'Nedra, led the armies of the West in a desperate effort to divert the forces of Torak's followers from the man she loved.

The Prophecy drove Garion on. But it gave no answer to the question that haunted him: How does a man kill an immortal God? (less)"
4527,Truthwitch,fantasy,"Librarian note: Older cover of B00Z5Z5NNO.

In a continent on the edge of war, two witches hold its fate in their hands.

Young witches Safiya and Iseult have a habit of finding trouble. After clashing with a powerful Guildmaster and his ruthless Bloodwitch bodyguard, the friends are forced to flee their home.

Safi must avoid capture at all costs as she's a rare Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lies. Many would kill for her magic, so Safi must keep it hidden - lest she be used in the struggle between empires. And Iseult's true powers are hidden even from herself.

In a chance encounter at Court, Safi meets Prince Merik and makes him a reluctant ally. However, his help may not slow down the Bloodwitch now hot on the girls' heels. All Safi and Iseult want is their freedom, but danger lies ahead. With war coming, treaties breaking and a magical contagion sweeping the land, the friends will have to fight emperors and mercenaries alike. For some will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch. (less)"
4528,New Spring,fantasy,"The prequel novel to the globally bestselling Wheel of Time series - a fantasy phenomenon

The city of Canluum lies close to the scarred and desolate wastes of the Blight, a walled haven from the dangers away to the north, and a refuge from the ill works of those who serve the Dark One. Or so it is said. The city that greets Al'Lan Mandragoran, exiled king of Malkier and the finest swordsman of his generation, is instead one that is rife with rumour and the whisperings of Shadowspawn. Proof, should he have required it, that the Dark One grows powerful once more and that his minions are at work throughout the lands.

And yet it is within Canluum's walls that Lan will meet a woman who will shape his destiny. Moiraine is a young and powerful Aes Sedai who has journeyed to the city in search of a bondsman. She requires aid in a desperate quest to prove the truth of a vague and largely discredited prophecy - one that speaks of a means to turn back the shadow, and of a child who may be the dragon reborn. (less)"
4529,Castle of Wizardry,fantasy,"A magnificent epic set against a history of seven thousand years of the struggles of Gods and Kings and men - of strange lands and events - of fate and a prophecy that must be fulfilled!

THE BELGARIAD

It had all begun with the theft of the Orb that had so long protected the West from the evil God Torak. Before that, Garion had been a simple farm boy. Afterward, he discovered that his aunt was really the Sorceress Polgara and his grandfather was Belgarath, the Eternal Man. Then, on the long quest to recover the Orb, Garion found to his dismay that he, too, was a sorcerer.

Now, at last, the Orb was regained and the quest was nearing its end. Of course, the questors still had to escape from this crumbling enemy fortress and flee across a desert filled with Murgo soldiers searching for them, while Grolim Hierarchs strove to destroy them with dark magic. Then, somehow, they must manage to be in Riva with the Orb by Erastide.

After that, however, Garion was sure that his part in these great events would be finished.

But the Prophecy still held future surprises for Garion - and for the little Princess Ce'Nedra!

THUS CONTINUES BOOK FOUR OF THE BELGARIAD (less)"
4530,Inkspell,fantasy,"The captivating sequel to INKHEART, the critically acclaimed, international bestseller by Cornelia Funke, an author who is emerging as a truly modern classic writer for children.

Although a year has passed, not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of INKHEART, the book whose characters became real. But for Dustfinger, the fire-eater brought into being from words, the need to return to the tale has become desperate. When he finds a crooked storyteller with the ability to read him back, Dustfinger leaves behind his young apprentice Farid and plunges into the medieval world of his past. Distraught, Farid goes in search of Meggie, and before long, both are caught inside the book, too. But the story is threatening to evolve in ways neither of them could ever have imagined. (less)"
4531,Preludes & Nocturnes,fantasy,"Librarian Note: If you're looking for the Audible adaptation of the first three volumes it is here.

New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman's transcendent series SANDMAN is often hailed as the definitive Vertigo title and one of the finest achievements in graphic storytelling. Gaiman created an unforgettable tale of the forces that exist beyond life and death by weaving ancient mythology, folklore and fairy tales with his own distinct narrative vision.

In PRELUDES & NOCTURNES, an occultist attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. After his 70 year imprisonment and eventual escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power. On his arduous journey, Morpheus encounters Lucifer, John Constantine, and an all-powerful madman.

This book also includes the story ""The Sound of Her Wings,"" which introduces us to the pragmatic and perky goth girl Death.

Includes issues 1-8 of the original series. (less)"
4532,The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,fantasy,"Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out of work actor.

Together this dynamic pair begin their journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitch Hiker's Guide ""A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have"" and a galaxy-full of fellow travellers: Zaphod Beeblebrox - the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out to lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ball-point pens he has bought over the years. (less)"
4533,Homeland,fantasy,"Drow ranger Drizzt Do'Urden, first introduced in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, quickly became one of the fantasy genre's standout characters. But Homeland first reveals the startling tale of how this one lone drow walked out of the shadowy depths of the Underdark, leaving behind a society of evil and a family who want him dead. It is here that the story of this amazing dark elf truly began. (less)"
4534,Soul Music,fantasy,"Other children get given xylophones. Susan just had to ask her grandfather to take his vest off.

Yes. There's a Death in the family.

It's hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe – especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy.

And especially when you have to face the new and addictive music that has entered Discworld.

It's lawless. It changes people.

It's called ""Music With Rocks In.""

It's got a beat and you can dance to it, but...

It's ALIVE.

And it won't fade away. (less)"
4535,Shatter Me,fantasy,"I have a curse
I have a gift

I am a monster
I'm more than human

My touch is lethal
My touch is power

I am their weapon
I will fight back

Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war—and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior. (less)"
4536,The Ruins of Gorlan,fantasy,"They have always scared him in the past — the Rangers, with their dark cloaks and shadowy ways. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now 15-year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger's apprentice. What he doesn't yet realize is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of battle and surveillance, they fight the battles before the battles reach the people. And as Will is about to learn, there is a large battle brewing. The exiled Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, is gathering his forces for an attack on the kingdom. This time, he will not be denied.... (less)"
4537,The Alchemyst,fantasy,"An alternate cover edition exists here.

Nicholas Flamel was born in Paris on 28 September 1330. Nearly seven hundred years later, he is acknowledged as the greatest Alchemyst of his day. It is said that he discovered the secret of eternal life. The records show that he died in 1418. But his tomb is empty and Nicholas Flamel lives. The secret of eternal life is hidden within the book he protects—the Book of Abraham the Mage. It's the most powerful book that has ever existed. In the wrong hands, it will destroy the world. And that's exactly what Dr. John Dee plans to do when he steals it. Humankind won't know what's happening until it's too late. And if the prophecy is right, Sophie and Josh Newman are the only ones with the power to save the world as we know it. Sometimes legends are true. And Sophie and Josh Newman are about to find themselves in the middle of the greatest legend of all time. (less)"
4538,The Arctic Incident,fantasy,"Artemis Fowl wants to find his father, held hostage in Russia; Holly Short wants to find who’s supplying the goblins with human technology; Foaly wants to find out who’s disabled all the LEP Technology and pointed the finger at him. Artemis has received a ransom demand for his father but is captured by the LEP who suspect him of supplying the goblins with dangerous Human technology (batteries). He convinces them he’s innocent and agrees to help them if they help him free his father. Meanwhile, down in the underground world, chaos has arisen. An unknown traitor has stolen forbidden weapons and armed a horde of trolls, setting them loose to wreak havoc on the citizens. Clues lead Captain Holly Short straight to Artemis, and she exacts a small bit of revenge by kidnapping him, just as he once kidnapped her. But soon she learns that Artemis isn’t behind the chaos, and if she’s to have any hope of stopping it, she will need his help. As a result, these onetime adversaries must now join forces—a mix that proves to be both charming and volatile.

The world that Colfer creates is as vivid and fantastical as any shire, gotham, or galaxy far, far away in recent memory. Grade: A-. (less)"
4539,King's Cage,fantasy,"In this breathless third installment to Victoria Aveyard’s bestselling Red Queen series, allegiances are tested on every side. And when the Lightning Girl's spark is gone, who will light the way for the rebellion?

Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother's web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.

As Mare bears the weight of Silent Stone in the palace, her once-ragtag band of newbloods and Reds continue organizing, training, and expanding. They prepare for war, no longer able to linger in the shadows. And Cal, the exiled prince with his own claim on Mare's heart, will stop at nothing to bring her back.

When blood turns on blood, and ability on ability, there may be no one left to put out the fire—leaving Norta as Mare knows it to burn all the way down. (less)"
4540,Grave Mercy,fantasy,"Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart? (less)"
4541,The Scorpio Races,fantasy,"It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die.

At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.

Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition — the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen. (less)"
4542,Death Masks,fantasy,"Harry Dresden, Chicago's only practicing professional wizard, should be happy that business is pretty good for a change. But now he's getting more than he bargained for:

A duel with the Red Court of Vampires' champion, who must kill Harry to end the war between vampires and wizards...

Professional hit men using Harry for target practice...

The missing Shroud of Turin...

A handless and headless corpse the Chicago police need identified...

Not to mention the return of Harry's ex-girlfriend Susan, who's still struggling with her semi-vampiric nature. And who seems to have a new man in her life.

Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. No matter how much you're charging. (less)"
4543,Half a King,fantasy,"Alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780007550227
For all editions see here

Betrayed by his family and left for dead, prince Yarvi, reluctant heir to a divided kingdom, has vowed to reclaim a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains and the bitter waters of the shattered sea itself - all with only one good hand. Born a weakling in the eyes of a hard, cold world, he cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so has sharpened his mind to a deadly edge. Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast, he finds they can help him more than any noble could. Even so, Yarvi's path may end as it began - in twists, traps and tragedy. (less)"
4544,Fallen,fantasy,"There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce—and goes out of his way to make that very clear—she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret… even if it kills her. (less)"
4545,Moving Pictures,fantasy,"Cameras roll - which means the imps inside have to paint really fast - on the fantastic Discworld when the alchemists discover the magic of the silver screen.

But what is the dark secret of Holy Wood Hill?

As the alien clichés of Tinsel Town pour into the world, it's up to the Disc's first film stars to find out...

THRILL as Victor Tugelbend (""Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little"") and Theda Withel (""I come from a little town you've probably never even heard of"") battle the forces of evil and cinema advertising...

SCREAM as Gaspode the Wonder Dog nearly saves the day...

EAT POPCORN as you watch the filming of ""Blown Away,"" the oddest Civil War picture ever made...

A Passionate Saga Set Against the background of a World Gone Mad!

This Will Amaze You!

With a Thousand Elephants!

(""And afterwards, why not dine at Harga's House of Ribs, for the best in international cuisine; only two minutes from this book..."") (less)"
4546,Wolves of the Calla,fantasy,"Roland and his tet have just returned to the path of the Beam when they discover that they are being followed by a group of inexperienced trackers. The trackers are from the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, and they desperately need the help of gunslingers. Once every generation, a band of masked riders known as the Wolves gallop out of the dark land of Thunderclap to steal one half of all the twins born in the Callas. When the children are returned, they are roont, or mentally and physically ruined. In less than a month, the Wolves will raid again. In exchange for Roland’s aid, Father Callahan—a priest originally from our world—offers to give Roland a powerful but evil seeing sphere, a sinister globe called Black Thirteen which he has hidden below the floorboards of his church. Not only must Roland and his tet discover a way to defeat the invincible Wolves, but they must also return to New York so that they can save our world’s incarnation of the Dark Tower from the machinations of the evil Sombra Corporation. (less)"
4547,Golden Fool,fantasy,"The acclaimed Farseer and Liveship Traders trilogies established Robin Hobb as one of the most splendidly imaginative practitioners of world-class fantasy.

Now, in Book 2 of her most stunning trilogy yet, Hobb continues the soul-shattering tale of FitzChivalry Farseer. With rich characters, breathtaking magic, and sweeping action, Golden Fool brings the reluctant adventurer further into the fray in an epic of sacrifice, salvation, and untold treachery.

Golden Fool

Prince Dutiful has been rescued from his Piebald kidnappers and the court has resumed its normal rhythms. But for FitzChivalry Farseer, a return to isolation is impossible. Though gutted by the loss of his wolf bondmate, Nighteyes, Fitz must take up residence at Buckkeep and resume his tasks as Chade’s apprentice assassin. Posing as Tom Badgerlock, bodyguard to Lord Golden, FitzChivalry becomes the eyes and ears behind the walls. And with his old mentor failing visibly, Fitz is forced to take on more burdens as he attempts to guide a kingdom straying closer to civil strife each day.

The problems are legion. Prince Dutiful’s betrothal to the Narcheska Elliania of the Out Islands is fraught with tension, and the Narcheska herself appears to be hiding an array of secrets. Then, amid Piebald threats and the increasing persecution of the Witted, FitzChivalry must ensure that no one betrays the Prince’s secret—a secret that could topple the Farseer throne: that he, like Fitz, possesses the dread “beast magic.”

Meanwhile, FitzChivalry must impart to the Prince his limited knowledge of the Skill: the hereditary and addictive magic of the Farseers. In the process, they discover within Buckkeep one who has a wild and powerful talent for it, and whose enmity for Fitz may have disastrous consequences for all.

Only Fitz’s enduring friendship with the Fool brings him any solace. But even that is shattered when unexpected visitors from Bingtown reveal devastating secrets from the Fool’s past. Now, bereft of support and adrift in intrigue, Fitz’s biggest challenge may be simply to survive the inescapable and violent path that fate has laid out for him.


From the Hardcover edition. (less)"
4548,These Violent Delights,fantasy,"The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.

A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.

But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.

Perfect for fans of The Last Magician and Descendant of the Crane, this heart-stopping debut is an imaginative Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai, with rival gangs and a monster in the depths of the Huangpu River. (less)"
4549,Nimona,fantasy,"The graphic novel debut from rising star ND Stevenson, based on his beloved and critically acclaimed web comic, which Slate awarded its Cartoonist Studio Prize, calling it ""a deadpan epic.""

Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from Noelle Stevenson. Featuring an exclusive epilogue not seen in the web comic, along with bonus conceptual sketches and revised pages throughout, this gorgeous full-color graphic novel is perfect for the legions of fans of the web comic and is sure to win Noelle many new ones.

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit. (less)"
4550,Wild Magic,fantasy,"Young Daine's knack with horses gets her a job helping the royal horsemistress drive a herd of ponies to Tortall. Soon it becomes clear that Daine's talent, as much as she struggles to hide it, is downright magical. Horses and other animals not only obey, but listen to her words. Daine, though, will have to learn to trust humans before she can come to terms with her powers, her past, and herself. (less)"
4551,The Diviners,fantasy,"SOMETHING DARK AND EVIL HAS AWAKENED… Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult. Evie worries her uncle will discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer. As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho is hiding a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened… (less)"
4552,Eric,fantasy,"Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it.

All he wants is his three wishes granted. Nothing fancy - to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him, the usual stuff.

But instead of a tractable demon, he calls up Rincewind, probably the most incompetent wizard in the universe, and the extremely intractable and hostile form of travel accessory known as the Luggage.

With them on his side, Eric's in for a ride through space and time that is bound to make him wish (quite fervently) again - this time that he's never been born. (less)"
4553,Rule of Wolves,fantasy,"The Grishaverse will be coming to Netflix soon with Shadow and Bone, an original series!

The wolves are circling and a young king will face his greatest challenge in the explosive finale of the instant #1 New York Times-bestselling King of Scars Duology.

The Demon King. As Fjerda's massive army prepares to invade, Nikolai Lantsov will summon every bit of his ingenuity and charm—and even the monster within—to win this fight. But a dark threat looms that cannot be defeated by a young king's gift for the impossible.

The Stormwitch. Zoya Nazyalensky has lost too much to war. She saw her mentor die and her worst enemy resurrected, and she refuses to bury another friend. Now duty demands she embrace her powers to become the weapon her country needs. No matter the cost.

The Queen of Mourning. Deep undercover, Nina Zenik risks discovery and death as she wages war on Fjerda from inside its capital. But her desire for revenge may cost her country its chance at freedom and Nina the chance to heal her grieving heart.

King. General. Spy. Together they must find a way to forge a future in the darkness. Or watch a nation fall. (less)"
4554,Lords and Ladies,fantasy,"The fairies are back - but this time they don't just want your teeth...

Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven are up against real elves.

It's Midsummer Night.

No time for dreaming...

With full supporting cast of dwarfs, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers and one orang-utan. And lots of hey-nonny-nonny and blood all over the place. (less)"
4555,The Hazel Wood,fantasy,"Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away-by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong. (less)"
4556,The Woman Who Rides Like a Man,fantasy,"""Let her prove herself worthy as a man.""
Newly knighted, Alanna of Trebond seeks adventure in the vast desert of Tortall. Captured by fierce desert dwellers, she is forced to prove herself in a duel to the death -- either she will be killed or she will be inducted into the tribe. Although she triumphs, dire challenges lie ahead. As her mythic fate would have it, Alanna soon becomes the tribe's first female shaman -- despite the desert dwellers' grave fear of the foreign woman warrior. Alanna must fight to change the ancient tribal customs of the desert tribes -- for their sake and for the sake of all Tortall.
Alanna's journey continues...
(less)"
4557,Falling Kingdoms,fantasy,"In the three kingdoms of Mytica, magic has long been forgotten. And while hard-won peace has reigned for centuries, a deadly unrest now simmers below the surface.

As the rulers of each kingdom grapple for power, the lives of their subjects are brutally transformed... and four key players, royals and rebels alike, find their fates forever intertwined. Cleo, Jonas, Lucia, and Magnus are caught in a dizzying world of treacherous betrayals, shocking murders, secret alliances, and even unforeseen love.

The only outcome that's certain is that kingdoms will fall. Who will emerge triumphant when all they know has collapsed?

It's the eve of war.... Choose your side.

Princess: Raised in pampered luxury, Cleo must now embark on a rough and treacherous journey into enemy territory in search of magic long thought extinct.

Rebel: Jonas, enraged at injustice, lashes out against the forces of oppression that have kept his country cruelly impoverished. To his shock, he finds himself the leader of a people's revolution centuries in the making.

Sorceress: Lucia, adopted at birth into the royal family, discovers the truth about her past—and the supernatural legacy she is destined to wield.

Heir: Bred for aggression and trained to conquer, firstborn son Magnus begins to realize that the heart can be more lethal than the sword.... (less)"
4558,His Dark Materials,fantasy,"The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass are available together in one volume perfect for any fan or newcomer to this modern fantasy classic series.

These thrilling adventures tell the story of Lyra and Will—two ordinary children on a perilous journey through shimmering haunted otherworlds. They will meet witches and armored bears, fallen angels and soul-eating specters. And in the end, the fate of both the living—and the dead—will rely on them.

Phillip Pullman’s spellbinding His Dark Materials trilogy has captivated readers for over twenty years and won acclaim at every turn. It will have you questioning everything you know about your world and wondering what really lies just out of reach. (less)"
4559,The Blue Sword,fantasy,"This is the story of Corlath, golden-eyed king of the Free Hillfolk, son of the sons of the Lady Aerin.

And this is the story of Harry Crewe, the Homelander orphan girl who became Harimad-sol, King's Rider, and heir to the Blue Sword, Gonturan, that no woman had wielded since the Lady Aerin herself bore it into battle.

And this is the song of the kelar of the Hillfolk, the magic of the blood, the weaver of destinies... (less)"
4560,Insurgent,fantasy,"One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth's much-anticipated second book of the dystopian DIVERGENT series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature. (less)"
4561,Soulless,fantasy,"Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations.

First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire--and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart? (less)"
4562,The Magician King,fantasy,"Return to Fillory in the riveting sequel to The New York Times bestseller and literary phenomenon of 2009--The Magicians.

The Magicians was praised as a triumph by readers and critics of both mainstream and fantasy literature. Now Grossman takes us back to Fillory, where the Brakebills graduates have fled the sorrows of the mundane world, only to face terrifying new challenges.

Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his parent's house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

The Magician King is a grand voyage into the dark, glittering heart of magic, an epic quest for the Harry Potter generation. It also introduces a powerful new voice, that of Julia, whose angry genius is thrilling. Once again Grossman proves that he is the cutting edge of literary fantasy. (less)"
4563,Fablehaven,fantasy,"For centuries mystical creatures of all description were gathered into a hidden refuge called Fablehaven to prevent their extinction. The sanctuary survives today as one of the last strongholds of true magic. Enchanting? Absolutely. Exciting? You bet. Safe? Well, actually, quite the opposite.

Kendra and her brother, Seth, have no idea that their grandfather is the current caretaker of Fablehaven. Inside the gated woods, ancient laws keep relative order among greedy trolls, mischievous satyrs, plotting witches, spiteful imps, and jealous fairies. However, when the rules get broken -- Seth is a bit too curious and reckless for his own good -- powerful forces of evil are unleashed, and Kendra and her brother face the greatest challenge of their lives. To save their family, Fablehaven, and perhaps even the world, Kendra and Seth must find the courage to do what they fear most. (less)"
4564,The Eyre Affair,fantasy,"Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing situation for the police. Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! But that's just a prelude . . .

Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids . . .

Suspenseful and outlandish, absorbing and fun, The Eyre Affair is a caper unlike any other and an introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer and his singular fictional universe. (less)"
4565,City of Stairs,fantasy,"The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions — until its divine protectors were killed. Now, Bulikov’s history has been censored and erased, its citizens subjugated. But the surreal landscape of the city itself, forever altered by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it, stands as a haunting reminder of its former supremacy.

Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched — along with her terrifying “secretary”, Sigrud — to solve a murder.

But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem, and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over.

A tale of vast conspiracies, dead gods, and buried histories, City of Stairs is at once a gripping spy novel and a stunningly original work of fantasy.

(less)"
4566,Lioness Rampant,fantasy,"From Tamora Pierce, the final book in the Song of the Lioness Quartet, honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award.

Having achieved her dream of becoming the first female knight errant, Alanna of Trebond is not sure what to do next. She has triumphed in countless bloody battles, and her adventures are already legendary. Perhaps being a knight errant is not all that Alanna needs…but Alanna must push her uncertainty aside when she is challenged with the impossible. She must recover the Dominion Jewel, a legendary gem with enormous power for good—but only in the right hands. And she must work fast. Tortall is in terrible danger from all directions, with enemies great and small plotting to destroy everyone and everything Alanna loves. (less)"
4567,The Invisible Library,fantasy,"Irene must be at the top of her game or she'll be off the case - permanently...

Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission - to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions seem prepared to fight to the very death to find her book.

Adding to the jeopardy, this world is chaos-infested - the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic. Irene's new assistant is also hiding secrets of his own.

Soon, she's up to her eyebrows in a heady mix of danger, clues and secret societies. Yet failure is not an option - the nature of reality itself is at stake. (less)"
4568,The Hidden Oracle,fantasy,"How do you punish an immortal?

By making him human.

After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favour.

But Apollo has many enemies—gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go... an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood. (less)"
4569,Shadow's Edge,fantasy,"The second novel in the Night Angel trilogy, the breakneck epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Brent Weeks.

Kylar Stern has rejected the assassin's life. The Godking's successful coup has left Kylar's master, Durzo, and his best friend, Logan, dead. He is starting over: new city, new friends, and new profession.

But when he learns that Logan might actually be alive and in hiding, Kylar is faced with an agonizing choice: will he give up the way of shadows forever and live in peace with his new family, or will he risk everything by taking on the ultimate hit?

Devour this blockbuster tale of assassination and magic by Brent Weeks, which has delighted readers all over the world--with over one million copies in print! (less)"
4570,Foundryside,fantasy,"Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle.

But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic--the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience--have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined. (less)"
4571,The Mad Ship,fantasy,"The Farseer trilogy continues the dramatic tale of piracy, serpents, love and magic. The Vestrit family's liveship, Vivacia, has been taken by the pirate king, Kennit. Held captive on board, Wintrow Vestrit finds himself competing with Kennit for Vivacia's love as the ship slowly acquires her own bloodlust. Leagues away, Althea Vestrit has found a new home aboard the liveship Ophelia, but she lives only to reclaim the Vivacia and with her friend, Brashen, she plans a dangerous rescue. Meanwhile in Bingtown, the fading fortunes of the Vestrit family lead Malta deeper into the magical secrets of the Rain Wild Traders. And just outside Bingtown, Amber dreams of relaunching Paragon, the mad liveship ...

Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here (less)"
4572,The Girl Who Drank the Moon,fantasy,"Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey. 

One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule--but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her--even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known. (less)"
4573,La Belle Sauvage,fantasy,"Malcolm Polstead is the kind of boy who notices everything but is not much noticed himself. And so perhaps it was inevitable that he would become a spy...

Malcolm's father runs an inn called the Trout, on the banks of the river Thames, and all of Oxford passes through its doors. Malcolm and his dæmon, Asta, routinely overhear news and gossip, and the occasional scandal, but during a winter of unceasing rain, Malcolm catches wind of something new: intrigue.

He finds a secret message inquiring about a dangerous substance called Dust--and the spy it was intended for finds him.

When she asks Malcolm to keep his eyes open, Malcolm sees suspicious characters everywhere; Lord Asriel, clearly on the run; enforcement agents from the Magisterium; an Egyptian named Coram with warnings just for Malcolm; and a beautiful woman with an evil monkey for a dæmon. All are asking about the same thing: a girl--just a baby--named Lyra.

Lyra is the kind of person who draws people in like magnets. And Malcolm will brave any danger, and make shocking sacrifices, to bring her safely through the storm. (less)"
4574,Thief of Time,fantasy,"Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed.

And on the Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater - how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time.

But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone's problems.

""Thief of Time"" comes complete with a full supporting cast of heroes, villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous). (less)"
4575,Rebel of the Sands,fantasy,"Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mythical beasts still roam the wild and remote areas, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinn still perform their magic.  For humans, it’s an unforgiving place, especially if you’re poor, orphaned, or female.

Amani Al’Hiza is all three. She’s a gifted gunslinger with perfect aim, but she can’t shoot her way out of Dustwalk, the back-country town where she’s destined to wind up wed or dead.

Then she meets Jin, a rakish foreigner, in a shooting contest, and sees him as the perfect escape route. But though she’s spent years dreaming of leaving Dustwalk, she never imagined she’d gallop away on mythical horse—or that it would take a foreign fugitive to show her the heart of the desert she thought she knew.

Rebel of the Sands reveals what happens when a dream deferred explodes—in the fires of rebellion, of romantic passion, and the all-consuming inferno of a girl finally, at long last, embracing her power. (less)"
4576,Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,fantasy,"Chris Riddell's brilliant new full-colour illustrated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in a sumptuous hardback and jacketed edition. A perfect gift for families, children and all fans of this much-loved favourite classic.

First published by Macmillan more than 150 years ago, Lewis Carroll’s iconic story has been loved and enjoyed by generations of children.

This edition presents Lewis Carroll's complete text, with new illustrations from Costa Award- and Kate Greenaway Medal-winner Chris Riddell. Published 200 years after the birth of Alice’s first illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, also the political cartoonist of his time, Chris Riddell's illustrations set a new bar in terms of excellence with his unique, rich and evocative interpretation of Carroll's world.

With the curious, quick-witted Alice at its heart, readers will not only rediscover characters such as the charming White Rabbit, the formidable Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter and the grinning Cheshire Cat but will find fresh and wonderful creations of these characters by a true master of his art,; images that will live in our hearts and minds for generations to come. (less)"
4577,The Fifth Elephant,fantasy,"Sam Vimes is a man on the run.

Yesterday he was a duke, a chief of police and the ambassador to the mysterious, fat-rich country of Uberworld.

Now he was nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don't ask). It's snowing. It's freezing. And if he can't make it through the forest to civilisation there's going to be a terrible war.

But there are monsters on his trail. They're bright. They're fast. They're werewolves - and they're catching up. Sam Vimes is out of time, out of luck and already out of breath... (less)"
4578,Promise of Blood,fantasy,"The Age of Kings is dead . . . and I have killed it.

It's a bloody business overthrowing a king...
Field Marshal Tamas' coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas's supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces.

Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail.

But when gods are involved...
Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing. But they should...

In a rich, distinctive world that mixes magic with technology, who could stand against mages that control gunpowder and bullets? (less)"
4579,The Host,fantasy,"Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of human hosts while leaving their bodies intact. Wanderer, the invading ""soul"" who has been given Melanie's body, didn't expect to find its former tenant refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

As Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she's never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.

Also see: Alternate Cover Editions for this ISBN [ACE]
ACE #1 - ACE #2 (less)"
4580,Thud!,fantasy,"Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was very far away. It was a long time ago.

But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Command Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office.

With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him.

Oh... and at six o'clock every day, without fail, with no excuses, he must go home to read ""Where's My Cow?,"" with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy.

There are some things you HAVE to do! (less)"
4581,Gods of Jade and Shadow,fantasy,"The Mayan god of death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this one-of-a-kind fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore.

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.

Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525620754 (less)"
4582,Rhythm of War,fantasy,"The eagerly awaited sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Oathbringer, from epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson

After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar's crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move.

Now, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin's scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength.

At the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead the coalition’s envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure. (less)"
4583,Song of Susannah,fantasy,"The Wolves have been defeated, but our tet faces yet another catastrophe. Susannah Dean’s body has been usurped by a demon named Mia who wants to use Susannah’s mortal form to bear a demon child. Stealing Black Thirteen, Mia has traveled through the Unfound Door to 1999 New York where she plans to give birth to her chap, a child born of two mothers and two fathers who will grow up to be Roland’s nemesis. With the help of the time-traveling Manni, Roland and Eddie plan to follow Susannah while Father Callahan and Jake will find Calvin Tower, owner of the vacant lot where a magical rose grows: a rose that must be saved at all costs. But despite our ka-tet’s intentions, ka has its own plans. Jake, Callahan, and Jake’s bumbler companion are transported to New York to follow Susannah, while Eddie and Roland are tumbled into East Stoneham, Maine, where they are greeted by Eddie’s old enemy, the gangster Balazar. But it isn’t just bullets that Roland and Eddie must brave. Soon they will meet their maker, in the form of a young author named Stephen King. (less)"
4584,The Gilded Wolves,fantasy,"From New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi comes a novel set in Paris during a time of extraordinary change--one that is full of mystery, decadence, and dangerous desires...

It's 1889. The city is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. Here, no one keeps tabs on dark truths better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. When the elite, ever-powerful Order of Babel coerces him to help them on a mission, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To hunt down the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin calls upon a band of unlikely experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian banished from his home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in arms if not blood.

Together, they will join Séverin as he explores the dark, glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the course of history--but only if they can stay alive. (less)"
4585,Ship of Destiny,fantasy,"As Bingtown slides toward disaster, clan matriarch Ronica Vestrit, branded a traitor, searches for a way to bring the city's inhabitants together against a momentous threat. Meanwhile, Althea Vestrit, unaware of what has befallen Bingtown and her family, continues her perilous quest to track down and recover her liveship, the ""Vivacia, ""from the ruthless pirate Kennit.
Bold though it is, Althea's scheme may be in vain. For her beloved ""Vivacia ""will face the most terrible confrontation of all as the secret of the liveships is revealed. It is a truth so shattering, it may destroy the ""Vivacia ""and all who love her, including Althea's nephew, whose life already hangs in the balance. (less)"
4586,The Curse of Chalion,fantasy,"A man broken in body and spirit, Cazaril, has returned to the noble household he once served as page, and is named, to his great surprise, as the secretary-tutor to the beautiful, strong-willed sister of the impetuous boy who is next in line to rule.

It is an assignment Cazaril dreads, for it will ultimately lead him to the place he fears most, the royal court of Cardegoss, where the powerful enemies, who once placed him in chains, now occupy lofty positions. In addition to the traitorous intrigues of villains, Cazaril and the Royesse Iselle, are faced with a sinister curse that hangs like a sword over the entire blighted House of Chalion and all who stand in their circle. Only by employing the darkest, most forbidden of magics, can Cazaril hope to protect his royal charge—an act that will mark the loyal, damaged servant as a tool of the miraculous, and trap him, flesh and soul, in a maze of demonic paradox, damnation, and death. (less)"
4587,Blood Rites,fantasy,"For Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, there have been worse assignments than going undercover on the set of an adult film. Dodging flaming monkey poo, for instance. Or going toe-to-leaf with a walking plant monster. Still, there is something more troubling than usual about his newest case. The film's producer believes he's the target of a sinister entropy curse, but it's the women around him who are dying, in increasingly spectacular ways.

Harry is doubly frustrated because he got involved with this bizarre mystery only as a favor to Thomas, his flirtatious, self-absorbed vampire acquaintance of dubious integrity. Thomas has a personal stake in the case Harry can't quite figure out, until his investigation leads him straight to Thomas' oversexed vampire family. Harry is about to discover that Thomas' family tree has been hiding a shocking secret; a revelation that will change Harry's life forever.


Cover Art Lee MacLeod (less)"
4588,The Tower of the Swallow,fantasy,"The world has fallen into war. Ciri, the child of prophecy, has vanished. Hunted by friends and foes alike, she has taken on the guise of a petty bandit and lives free for the first time in her life. But the net around her is closing. Geralt, the Witcher, has assembled a group of allies determined to rescue her. Both sides of the war have sent brutal mercenaries to hunt her down. Her crimes have made her famous.

There is only one place left to run. The tower of the swallow is waiting... (less)"
4589,A Natural History of Dragons,fantasy,"You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart—no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon's presence, even for the briefest of moments—even at the risk of one's life—is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten. . . .

All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world's preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science. But before she became the illustrious figure we know today, there was a bookish young woman whose passion for learning, natural history, and, yes, dragons defied the stifling conventions of her day.

Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever. (less)"
4590,Monstrous Regiment,fantasy,"Polly Perks joins the Discworld army to find her brother Paul. ""Ozzer"" cuts off her blonde braids, dons male garb, belches, scratches, and masters macho habits - aided by well-placed pair of socks. The legendary and seemingly ageless Sergeant Jackrum accepts her plus a vampire, troll, zombie, religious fanatic, and two close ""friends"". The best man for the job may be a woman. (less)"
4591,The Winter of the Witch,fantasy,"Following their adventures in The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower, Vasya and Morozko return in this stunning conclusion to the bestselling Winternight Trilogy, battling enemies mortal and magical to save both Russias, the seen and the unseen.


Now Moscow has been struck by disaster. Its people are searching for answers—and for someone to blame. Vasya finds herself alone, beset on all sides. The Grand Prince is in a rage, choosing allies that will lead him on a path to war and ruin. A wicked demon returns, stronger than ever and determined to spread chaos. Caught at the center of the conflict is Vasya, who finds the fate of two worlds resting on her shoulders. Her destiny uncertain, Vasya will uncover surprising truths about herself and her history as she desperately tries to save Russia, Morozko, and the magical world she treasures. But she may not be able to save them all.

Advance praise for The Winter of the Witch

“Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy isn’t just good—it’s hug-to-your-chest, straight-to-the-favorites-shelf, reread-immediately good, and each book just gets better. The Winter of the Witch plunges us back to fourteenth-century Moscow, where old gods and new vie for the soul of Russia and fate rests on a witch girl’s slender shoulders. Prepare to have your heart ripped out, loaned back to you full of snow and magic, and ripped out some more.”—Laini Taylor (less)"
4592,The Giver,fantasy,"The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. This movie tie-in edition features cover art from the movie and exclusive Q&A with members of the cast, including Taylor Swift, Brenton Thwaites and Cameron Monaghan. (less)"
4593,Jingo,fantasy,"A weathercock has risen from the sea of Discworld, and suddenly you can tell which way the wind is blowing.

A new land has surfaced, and so have old feuds.

And as two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch has got just a few hours to deal with a crime so big that there's no law against it. It's called ""war.""

He's facing unpleasant foes who are out to get him... that's just the people on his side. The enemy might even be worse. And his pocket Dis-organiser says he's got to DIE under ""Things To Do Today.""

But he'd better not, because the world's cleverest inventor and its most devious politician are on their way to the battlefield with a little package that's guaranteed to stop a battle...

Discworld goes to war, with armies of sardines, warriors, fishermen, squid, and at least one very camp follower. (less)"
4594,Black Sun,fantasy,"The first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain. (less)"
4595,The Throne of Fire,fantasy,"Ever since the gods of Ancient Egypt were unleashed in the modern world, Carter Kane and his sister Sadie have been in trouble. As descendants of the House of Life, the Kanes have some powers at their command, but the devious gods haven't given them much time to master their skills at Brooklyn House, which has become a training ground for young magicians.

And now their most threatening enemy yet - the chaos snake Apophis - is rising. If they don't prevent him from breaking free in a few days' time, the world will come to an end. In other words, it's a typical week for the Kane family.

To have any chance of battling the Forces of Chaos, the Kanes must revive the sun god Ra. But that would be a feat more powerful than any magician has ever accomplished.

First they have to search the world for the three sections of the Book of Ra, then they have to learn how to chant its spells. Oh, and did we mention that no one knows where Ra is exactly?

Narrated in two different wisecracking voices, featuring a large cast of new and unforgettable characters, and with adventures spanning the globe, this second installment in the Kane Chronicles is nothing short of a thrill ride. (less)"
4596,The Elfstones of Shannara,fantasy,"Ancient Evil threatens the Elves: The ancient tree created by long-lost Elven magic, is dying. When Wil Ohmsford is summoned to guard the Amberle on a perilous quest to gather a new seed for a new tree, he is faced with the Reaper, the most fearsome of all Demons. And Wil is without power to control them....

Read by Scott Brick.
15 audiocassettes (90 min. each) : analog, Dolby processed. (less)"
4597,The Dark Tower,fantasy,"The seventh and final installment of Stephen King's The Dark Tower saga is perhaps the most anticipated book in the author's long career. King began this epic tale about the last gunslinger in the world more than 20 years ago; now he draws its suspenseful story to a close, snapping together the last pieces of his action puzzle and drawing Roland Deschain ever closer to his ultimate goal.

Alternate cover edition for ISBN-10: 1416524525; ISBN-13: 9781416524526 (less)"
4598,The Alchemist,fantasy,"Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams. (less)"
4599,Best Served Cold,fantasy,"Springtime in Styria. And that means war. Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die.

Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...

Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

(less)"
4600,Dance of Thieves,fantasy,"When the patriarch of the Ballenger empire dies, his son, Jase, becomes its new leader. Even nearby kingdoms bow to the strength of this outlaw family, who have always governed by their own rules. But a new era looms on the horizon, set in motion by a young queen, which makes her the target of the dynasty's resentment and anger.

At the same time, Kazi, a legendary former street thief, is sent by the queen to investigate transgressions against the new settlements. When Kazi arrives in the forbidding land of the Ballengers, she learns that there is more to Jase than she thought. As unexpected events spiral out of their control, bringing them intimately together, they continue to play a cat and mouse game of false moves and motives in order to fulfill their own secret missions.

Mary E. Pearson's Dance of Thieves is a new YA novel in the New York Times bestselling Remnant Chronicles universe, in which a reformed thief and the young leader of an outlaw dynasty lock wits in a battle that may cost them their lives—and their hearts. (less)"
4601,The Rithmatist,fantasy,"More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity’s only defense against the Wild Chalklings. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles.

As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students learn the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing—kidnapped from their rooms at night, leaving trails of blood. Assigned to help the professor who is investigating the crimes, Joel and his friend Melody find themselves on the trail of an unexpected discovery—one that will change Rithmatics—and their world—forever. (less)"
4602,Scythe,fantasy,"Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own. (less)"
4603,The Book of Life,fantasy,"The #1 New York Times bestselling series finale and sequel to A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

Bringing the magic and suspense of the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In The Book of Life, Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present—facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency. (less)"
4604,The Goose Girl,fantasy,"She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste.

Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt’s stories and learning the language of the birds, especially the swans. And when she was older, she watched as a colt was born, and she heard the first word on his tongue, his name, Falada.

From the Grimm’s fairy tale of the princess who became a goose girl before she could become queen, Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original, and magical tale of a girl who must find her own unusual talents before she can lead the people she has made her own. (less)"
4605,Snow Like Ashes,fantasy,"A heartbroken girl. A fierce warrior. A hero in the making.

Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. Now, the Winterians’ only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been waiting for the opportunity to steal back Winter’s magic and rebuild the kingdom ever since.

Orphaned as an infant during Winter’s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee, raised by the Winterians’ general, Sir. Training to be a warrior—and desperately in love with her best friend, and future king, Mather — she would do anything to help her kingdom rise to power again.

So when scouts discover the location of the ancient locket that can restore Winter’s magic, Meira decides to go after it herself. Finally, she’s scaling towers, fighting enemy soldiers, just as she’s always dreamed she would. But the mission doesn’t go as planned, and Meira soon finds herself thrust into a world of evil magic and dangerous politics – and ultimately comes to realize that her destiny is not, never has been, her own. (less)"
4606,Finnikin of the Rock,fantasy,"Finnikin of the Rock and his guardian, Sir Topher, have not been home to their beloved Lumatere for ten years. Not since the dark days when the royal family was murdered and the kingdom put under a terrible curse. But then Finnikin is summoned to meet Evanjalin, a young woman with an incredible claim: the heir to the throne of Lumatere, Prince Balthazar, is alive.

Evanjalin is determined to return home and she is the only one who can lead them to the heir. As they journey together, Finnikin is affected by her arrogance . . . and her hope. He begins to believe he will see his childhood friend, Prince Balthazar, again. And that their cursed people will be able to enter Lumatere and be reunited with those trapped inside. He even believes he will find his imprisoned father.

But Evanjalin is not what she seems. And the truth will test not only Finnikin's faith in her . . . but in himself. (less)"
4607,Legendary,fantasy,"A heart to protect. A debt to repay. A game to win.

After being swept up in the magical world of Caraval, Donatella Dragna has finally escaped her father and saved her sister, Scarlett, from a disastrous arranged marriage. The girls should be celebrating, but Tella isn’t yet free. She made a desperate bargain with a mysterious criminal, and what Tella owes him no one has ever been able to deliver: Caraval Master Legend’s true name.

The only chance of uncovering Legend’s identity is to win Caraval, so Tella throws herself into the legendary competition once more—and into the path of the murderous heir to the throne, a doomed love story, and a web of secrets…including her sister's. Caraval has always demanded bravery, cunning, and sacrifice, but now the game is asking for more. If Tella can’t fulfill her bargain and deliver Legend’s name, she’ll lose everything she cares about—maybe even her life. But if she wins, Legend and Caraval will be destroyed forever...

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . the games have only just begun. (less)"
4608,Magyk,fantasy,"The first part of an enthralling new series leads readers on a fantastic journey filled with quirky characters, clever charms, potions and spells. Ages 9+.

The 7th son of the 7th son, aptly named Septimus Heap, is stolen the night he is born by a midwife who pronounces him dead. That same night, the baby's father, Silas Heap, comes across a bundle in the snow containing a newborn girl with violet eyes. The Heaps take this helpless newborn into their home, name her Jenna, and raise her as their own. But who is this mysterious baby girl, and what really happened to their beloved son, Septimus?

The first part of this enthralling new series leads readers on a fantastic journey filled with quirky characters, clever charms, potions and spells, and a yearning to uncover the mystery at the heart of this story...who is Septimus Heap?

Angie Sage writes in the tradition of great British storytellers. Her inventive fantasy is filled with humor and heart: Magyk will have readers laughing and begging for more. (less)"
4609,A Hat Full of Sky,fantasy,"WE SEE YOU. NOW WE ARE YOU.

No real witch would casually step out of their body, leaving it empty.

Tiffany Aching does. And there’s something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible, which can’t die.

To deal with it, Tiffany has to go to the very heart of what makes her a witch . . ."
4610,Darkfever,fantasy,"""My name is MacKayla, Mac for short. I'm a sidhe-seer, one who sees the Fae, a fact I accepted only recently and very reluctantly.

My philosophy is pretty simple - any day nobody's trying to kill me is a good day in my book. I haven't had many good days lately. Not since the walls between Man and Fae came down. But then, there's not a sidhe-seer alive who's had a good day since then.""

When MacKayla's sister was murdered, she left a single clue to her death, a cryptic message on Mac's cell phone. Journeying to Ireland in search of answers, Mac is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to master a power she had no idea she possessed - a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae.

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister's death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho...while at the same time, the ruthless V'lane - an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women - closes in on her. As the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac's true mission becomes clear: to find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book - because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control both worlds in their hands. (less)"
4611,Girls of Paper and Fire,fantasy,"Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honor they could hope for...and the most demeaning. This year, there's a ninth. And instead of paper, she's made of fire.

In this richly developed fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it's Lei they're after -- the girl with the golden eyes whose rumored beauty has piqued the king's interest.

Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king's consort. There, she does the unthinkable -- she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world's entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge. (less)"
4612,Dead Beat,fantasy,"Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago's first (and only) Wizard P.I. Turns out the 'everyday' world is full of strange and magical things - and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in.

Luckily, however, he's not alone. Although most people don't believe in magic, the Chicago P.D. has a Special Investigations department, headed by his good friend Karrin Murphy. They deal with the . . . stranger cases. It's down to Karrin that Harry sneaks into Graceland Cemetery to meet a vampire named Mavra. Mavra has evidence that would destroy Karrin's career, and her demands are simple. She wants the Word of Kemmler - and all the power that comes with it. But first, Harry's keen to know what he'd be handing over. Before long he's racing against time, and six necromancers, to get the Word. And to prevent a Halloween that would truly wake the dead.

Magic - it can get a guy killed. (less)"
4613,Maskerade,fantasy,"The Opera House, Ankh-Morpork...

... a huge, rambling building, where masked figures and hooded shadows do wicked deeds in the wings...
... where dying the death on stage is a little bit more than just a metaphor...
... where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by an evil mastermind in a hideously deformed evening dress..

Where...

... there's a couple of old ladies in pointy hats eating peanuts in the gods and looking up at the big chandelier and saying things like: ""There's an accident waiting to happen if I ever saw one.""

Yes... Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, the Discworld's greatest witches, are back for an innocent night out at the opera.

So there's going to be trouble (but nevertheless a good evening's entertainment with murders you can really hum...) (less)"
4614,The Eternity Code,fantasy,"Thirteen-year-old criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl has constructed a supercomputer from stolen fairy technology. In the wrong hands it could be fatal for humans and fairies alike. But no need to worry, Artemis has a brilliant plan. He's not going to use the computer; he's just going to show it to a ruthless American businessman with Mafia connections. His bodyguard, Butler, will be with him. What could possibly go wrong...? (less)"
4615,The Dragon Republic,fantasy,"The searing follow-up to 2018’s most celebrated fantasy debut – THE POPPY WAR.

In the aftermath of the Third Poppy War, shaman and warrior Rin is on the run: haunted by the atrocity she committed to end the war, addicted to opium, and hiding from the murderous commands of her vengeful god, the fiery Phoenix. Her only reason for living is to get revenge on the traitorous Empress who sold out Nikan to their enemies.

With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.

But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance.

The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect. (less)"
4616,The Phantom Tollbooth,fantasy,"Librarian's Note: For an alternate cover edition of the same ISBN, click here.

This beloved story -first published more than fifty years ago- introduces readers to Milo and his adventures in the Lands Beyond.

For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason! Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams. . . . (less)"
4617,Beyond the Shadows,fantasy,"A new queen has usurped the throne and is leading Cenaria into disaster. The country has become a broken realm with a threadbare army, little food and no hope. So Kylar Stern plans to reinstate his closest friend Logan as King, but can he really get away with murder?

In the north, the Godking's death has thrown Khalidor into civil war. To gain the upper hand, one faction attempts to raise the goddess Khali herself. But they are playing with volatile powers, and trigger conflict on a vast scale. Seven armies will converge to save - or destroy - an entire continent.

Kylar has finally learnt the bitter cost of immortality, and is faced with a task only he can complete. To save his friends, and perhaps his enemies, he must assassinate a goddess. Failure will doom the south. Success will cost him everything he's ever loved. (less)"
4618,Kings of the Wyld,fantasy,"Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best -- the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld.

Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.

It's time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld. (less)"
4619,The Darkest Part of the Forest,fantasy,"Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.

Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.

At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.

Until one day, he does…

As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough? (less)"
4620,A Winter's Promise,fantasy,"Long ago, following a cataclysm called “The Rupture,” the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands. Known now as Arks, each has developed in distinct ways; each seems to possess its own unique relationship to time, such that nowadays vastly different worlds exist, together but apart. And over all of the Arks the spirit of an omnipotent ancestor abides.

Ophelia lives on Anima, an ark where objects have souls. Beneath her worn scarf and thick glasses, the young girl hides the ability to read and communicate with the souls of objects, and the power to travel through mirrors. Her peaceful existence on the Ark of Anima is disrupted when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, from the powerful Dragon clan. Ophelia must leave her family and follow her fiancée to the floating capital on the distant Ark of the Pole. Why has she been chosen? Why must she hide her true identity? Though she doesn’t know it yet, she has become a pawn in a deadly plot. (less)"
4621,Making Money,fantasy,"It's an offer you can't refuse.

Who would not to wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and the bank next door?

It's a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, the life is not necessarily for long.

The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There's something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. A 300 year old wizard is after his girlfriend, he's about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins Guild might get him first. In fact lot of people want him dead

Oh. And every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies.

Everywhere he looks he's making enemies.

What he should be doing is . . . Making Money! (less)"
4622,Temple of the Winds,fantasy,"Book Four of The Sword of Truth returns listeners to the world of Richard Cypher, a simple woods guide who never dreamed he would be named the Seeker of Truth and become caught up in magic, war, and dangers so extraordinary that the fate of his entire world would hang on his actions and decisions.

The dangerous, fanatical Imperial Order, under the leadership of the power-mad Emperor Jagang and his multitude of demonic underlings, unleashes a deadly plague. To find a cure Richard Cypher and his beloved Kahlan Amnell must seek out the legendary Temple of the Winds, a fortress of evil sealed away for three thousand years. But the path of the Seeker of Truth is never an easy one—even if he can reach the Temple at all, there is no guarantee he'll ever return. (less)"
4623,"Saga, Volume 1",fantasy,"From New York Times bestselling writer BRIAN K.VAUGHAN (Y: THE LAST MAN, EX MACHINA) and critically acclaimed artist FIONA STAPLES (MYSTERY SOCIETY, NORTH 40), SAGA is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in a sexy, subversive drama for adults. This specially priced volume collects the first arc of the smash hit series The Onion A.V. Club calls ""the emotional epic Hollywood wishes it could make.""

Collects: Saga #1-6. (less)"
4624,Magic Bites,fantasy,"Ilona Andrews invites you to experience the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series featuring the intriguing fantasy world of mercenary Kate Daniels…

When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose, leaving all kinds of paranormal problems in its wake.

Kate Daniels is a down-on-her-luck mercenary who makes her living cleaning up these magical problems. But when Kate’s guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta’s magic circles.

The Masters of the Dead, necromancers who can control vampires, and the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, blame each other for a series of bizarre killings—and the death of Kate’s guardian may be part of the same mystery. Pressured by both sides to find the killer, Kate realizes she’s way out of her league—but she wouldn’t have it any other way… (less)"
4625,Moon Called,fantasy,"Mercedes Thompson, aka Mercy, is a talented Volkswagen mechanic living in the Tri-Cities area of Washington. She also happens to be a walker, a magical being with the power to shift into a coyote at will. Mercy's next-door neighbor is a werewolf. Her former boss is a gremlin. And she's fixing a bus for a vampire. This is the world of Mercy Thompson, one that looks a lot like ours but is populated by those things that go bump in the night. And Mercy's connection to those things is about to get her into some serious hot water... (less)"
4626,Throne of Jade,fantasy,"When Britain intercepted a French ship and its precious cargo–an unhatched dragon’s egg–Capt. Will Laurence of HMS Reliant unexpectedly became master and commander of the noble dragon he named Temeraire. As new recruits in Britain’s Aerial Corps, man and dragon soon proved their mettle in daring combat against Bonaparte’s invading forces.

Now China has discovered that its rare gift, intended for Napoleon, has fallen into British hands–and an angry Chinese delegation vows to reclaim the remarkable beast. But Laurence refuses to cooperate. Facing the gallows for his defiance, Laurence has no choice but to accompany Temeraire back to the Far East–a long voyage fraught with peril, intrigue, and the untold terrors of the deep. Yet once the pair reaches the court of the Chinese emperor, even more shocking discoveries and darker dangers await. (less)"
4627,Carpe Jugulum,fantasy,"Mightily Oats has not picked a good time to be a priest. He thought he'd come to the mountain kingdom of Lancre for a simple little religious ceremony. Now he's caught up in a war between vampires and witches, and he's not sure there is a right side.

There're the witches - young Agnes, who is really in two minds about everything; Magrat, who is trying to combine witchcraft and nappies, Nanny Ogg, who is far too knowing,.. and Granny Weatherwax, who is big trouble.

And the vampires are intelligent - not easily got rid of with a garlic enema or by going to the window, grasping the curtains and saying, ""I don't know about you, but isn't it a bit stuffy in here?"" They've got style and fancy waistcoats. They're out of the casket and want a bite of the future.

Mightily Oats knows he has a prayer, but he wishes he had an axe. (less)"
4628,The Selection,fantasy,"For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon.

But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn't want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she's made for herself—and realizes that the life she's always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined. (less)"
4629,The Eyes of the Dragon,fantasy,"A kingdom is in turmoil as the old king dies, murdered by a strange and horrible poison. While the land of Delain mourns, the evil wizard Flagg, hatches an unscrupulous plot, which sees the King's eldest son Peter imprisoned for his father's murder, and the youngest son inherit the throne. Only Peter knows the truth about his own innocence and the evil that is Flagg. Only Peter can save Delain from the horror that Flagg has in store. But first, he must escape from the high tower. (less)"
4630,The Rose & the Dagger,fantasy,"The darker the sky, the brighter the stars.

In a land on the brink of war, Shahrzad is forced from the arms of her beloved husband, the Caliph of Khorasan. She once thought Khalid a monster—a merciless killer of wives, responsible for immeasurable heartache and pain—but as she unraveled his secrets, she found instead an extraordinary man and a love she could not deny. Still, a curse threatens to keep Shazi and Khalid apart forever.

Now she’s reunited with her family, who have found refuge in the desert, where a deadly force is gathering against Khalid—a force set on destroying his empire and commanded by Shazi’s spurned childhood sweetheart. Trapped between loyalties to those she loves, the only thing Shazi can do is act. Using the burgeoning magic within her as a guide, she strikes out on her own to end both this terrible curse and the brewing war once and for all. But to do it, she must evade enemies of her own to stay alive.

The saga that began with The Wrath and the Dawn takes its final turn as Shahrzad risks everything to find her way back to her one true love again. (less)"
4631,Down Among the Sticks and Bones,fantasy,"Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices. (less)"
4632,She Who Became the Sun,fantasy,"Mulan meets The Song of Achilles; an accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China.

“I refuse to be nothing…”

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. (less)"
4633,The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic,fantasy,"Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.

Travel to a world of dark bargains struck by moonlight, of haunted towns and hungry woods, of talking beasts and gingerbread golems, where a young mermaid's voice can summon deadly storms and where a river might do a lovestruck boy's bidding but only for a terrible price.

Inspired by myth, fairy tale, and folklore, #1 New York Times—bestselling author Leigh Bardugo has crafted a deliciously atmospheric collection of short stories filled with betrayals, revenge, sacrifice, and love.

Perfect for new readers and dedicated fans, these tales will transport you to lands both familiar and strange—to a fully realized world of dangerous magic that millions have visited through the novels of the Grishaverse.

This collection of six stories includes three brand-new tales, all of them lavishly illustrated with art that changes with each turn of the page, culminating in six stunning full-spread illustrations as rich in detail as the stories themselves.

Zemeni Ayama and the Thorn Wood --
Ravkan The too-clever fox --
The witch of Duva --
Little knife --
Kerch The soldier prince --
Fjerdan When water sang fire (less)"
4634,The Book of Lost Things,fantasy,"High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own -- populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.

Taking readers on a vivid journey through the loss of innocence into adulthood and beyond, New York Times bestselling author John Connolly tells a dark and compelling tale that reminds us of the enduring power of stories in our lives. (less)"
4635,Spin the Dawn,fantasy,"Project Runway meets Mulan in this sweeping YA fantasy about a young girl who poses as a boy to compete for the role of imperial tailor and embarks on an impossible journey to sew three magic dresses, from the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. When a royal messenger summons her ailing father, once a tailor of renown, to court, Maia poses as a boy and takes his place. She knows her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she'll take that risk to achieve her dream and save her family from ruin. There's just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job.

Backstabbing and lies run rampant as the tailors compete in challenges to prove their artistry and skill. Maia's task is further complicated when she draws the attention of the court magician, Edan, whose piercing eyes seem to see straight through her disguise.

And nothing could have prepared her for the final challenge: to sew three magic gowns for the emperor's reluctant bride-to-be, from the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. With this impossible task before her, she embarks on a journey to the far reaches of the kingdom, seeking the sun, the moon, and the stars, and finding more than she ever could have imagined.

Steeped in Chinese culture, sizzling with forbidden romance, and shimmering with magic, this young adult fantasy is pitch-perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas or Renée Ahdieh. (less)"
4636,The Bone Season,fantasy,"The year is 2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of Scion, she commits treason simply by breathing.

It is raining the day her life changes for ever. Attacked, drugged and kidnapped, Paige is transported to Oxford – a city kept secret for two hundred years, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. Paige is assigned to Warden, a Rephaite with mysterious motives. He is her master. Her trainer. Her natural enemy. But if Paige wants to regain her freedom she must allow herself to be nurtured in this prison where she is meant to die.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine and also introduces an extraordinary young writer, with huge ambition and a teeming imagination. Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut. (less)"
4637,Proven Guilty,fantasy,"There's no love lost between Harry Dresden, the only wizard in the Chicago phone book, and the White Council of Wizards, who find him brash and undisciplined. But war with the vampires has thinned their ranks, so the Council has drafted Harry as a Warden and assigned him to look into rumors of black magic in the Windy City.

As Harry adjusts to his new role, another problem arrives in the form of the tattooed and pierced daughter of an old friend, all grown-up and already in trouble. Her boyfriend is the only suspect in what looks like a supernatural assault straight out of a horror film. Malevolent entities that feed on fear are loose in Chicago, but it's all in a day's work for a wizard, his faithful dog, and a talking skull named Bob.... (less)"
4638,Perdido Street Station,fantasy,"Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies the city of New Crobuzon, where the unsavory deal is stranger to no one--not even to Isaac, a gifted and eccentric scientist who has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before encountered. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger. Soon an eerie metamorphosis will occur that will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon--and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it evokes. (less)"
4639,House of Salt and Sorrows,fantasy,"In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed.

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Her sisters have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with?

When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next. (less)"
4640,Muse of Nightmares,fantasy,"Sarai has lived and breathed nightmares since she was six years old.

She believed she knew every horror and was beyond surprise.

She was wrong.

In the wake of tragedy, neither Lazlo nor Sarai are who they were before. One a god, the other a ghost, they struggle to grasp the new boundaries of their selves as dark-minded Minya holds them hostage, intent on vengeance against Weep.

Lazlo faces an unthinkable choice—save the woman he loves, or everyone else?—while Sarai feels more helpless than ever. But is she? Sometimes, only the direst need can teach us our own depths, and Sarai, the Muse of Nightmares, has not yet discovered what she's capable of.

As humans and godspawn reel in the aftermath of the citadel's near fall, a new foe shatters their fragile hopes, and the mysteries of the Mesarthim are resurrected: Where did the gods come from, and why? What was done with thousands of children born in the citadel nursery? And most important of all, as forgotten doors are opened and new worlds revealed: Must heroes always slay monsters, or is it possible to save them instead?

Love and hate, revenge and redemption, destruction and salvation all clash in this astonishing and heart-stopping sequel to the New York Times bestseller, Strange the Dreamer. (less)"
4641,The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making,fantasy,"Twelve-year-old September lives in Omaha, and used to have an ordinary life, until her father went to war and her mother went to work. One day, September is met at her kitchen window by a Green Wind (taking the form of a gentleman in a green jacket), who invites her on an adventure, implying that her help is needed in Fairyland. The new Marquess is unpredictable and fickle, and also not much older than September. Only September can retrieve a talisman the Marquess wants from the enchanted woods, and if she doesn’t . . . then the Marquess will make life impossible for the inhabitants of Fairyland. September is already making new friends, including a book-loving Wyvern and a mysterious boy named Saturday.
 With exquisite illustrations by acclaimed artist Ana Juan, Fairyland lives up to the sensation it created when the author first posted it online. For readers of all ages who love the charm of Alice in Wonderland and the soul of The Golden Compass, here is a reading experience unto itself: unforgettable, and so very beautiful.
(less)"
4642,Rubinrot,fantasy,"Manchmal ist es ein echtes Kreuz, in einer Familie zu leben, die jede Menge Geheimnisse hat. Der Überzeugung ist zumindest die 16-jährige Gwendolyn.

Bis sie sich eines Tages aus heiterem Himmel im London um die letzte Jahrhundertwende wiederfindet. Und ihr klar wird, dass ausgerechnet sie das allergrößte Geheimnis ihrer Familie ist. Was ihr dagegen nicht klar ist: Dass man sich zwischen den Zeiten möglichst nicht verlieben sollte. Denn das macht die Sache erst recht kompliziert! (less)"
4643,Fire Study,fantasy,"The apprenticeship is over—now the real test has begun.

When word that Yelena is a Soulfinder—able to capture and release souls—spreads like wildfire, people grow uneasy. Already Yelena's unusual abilities and past have set her apart. As the Council debates Yelena's fate, she receives a disturbing message: a plot is rising against her homeland, led by a murderous sorcerer she has defeated before...

Honor sets Yelena on a path that will test the limits of her skills, and the hope of reuniting with her beloved spurs her onward. Her journey is fraught with allies, enemies, lovers and would-be assassins, each of questionable loyalty. Yelena will have but one chance to prove herself—and save the land she holds dear. (less)"
4644,A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,fantasy,"A century before A GAME OF THRONES, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros…
A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS compiles the first three official prequel novellas to George R.R. Martin’s ongoing masterwork, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE.
Before Tyrion Lannister and Podrick Payne there was Dunk and Egg.
A young, naïve but courageous hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall towers above his rivals – in stature if not experience. Tagging along with him is his diminutive squire, a boy called Egg – whose true identity must be hidden from all he and Dunk encounter: for in reality he is Aegon Targaryen, and one day he will be king. Improbable heroes though they be, great destinies lie ahead for Dunk and Egg; as do powerful foes, royal intrigue, and outrageous exploits.
A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS brings together for the first time the first three official prequel novellas to George R.R. Martin’s ongoing masterwork, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory.
Featuring more than 160 illustrations by Gary Gianni, one of the finest fantasy artists of our time, this beautiful volume will transport readers to the world of the Seven Kingdoms in an age of bygone chivalry.
(less)"
4645,A Reaper at the Gates,fantasy,"Beyond the Martial Empire and within it, the threat of war looms ever larger.

Helene Aquilla, the Blood Shrike, is desperate to protect her sister's life and the lives of everyone in the Empire. Yet danger lurks on all sides. Emperor Marcus, haunted by his past, grows increasingly unstable and violent, while Keris Veturia, the ruthless Commandant, capitalizes on the Emperor's volatility to grow her own power—regardless of the carnage she leaves in her path.

Far to the east, Laia of Serra knows that the fate of the world lies not in the machinations of the Martial court, but in stopping the Nightbringer. During the hunt to bring him down, Laia faces unexpected threats from those she hoped would help her, and is drawn into a battle she never thought she'd have to fight.

And in the land between the living and the dead, Elias Veturius has given up his freedom to serve as Soul Catcher. However, in doing so, he has vowed himself to an ancient power that demands his complete surrender—even if that means abandoning the woman he loves. (less)"
4646,Eon: Dragoneye Reborn,fantasy,"Also Known As: Two Pearls of Wisdom, Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye, and Eon (All the same book just published with different publishers)

Swordplay, dragon magic--and a hero with a desperate secret

Twelve-year-old Eon has been in training for years. His intensive study of Dragon Magic, based on East Asian astrology, involves two kinds of skills: sword-work and magical aptitude. He and his master hope that he will be chosen as a Dragoneye--an apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune.

But Eon has a dangerous secret. He is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl who has been masquerading as a boy for the chance to become a Dragoneye. Females are forbidden to use Dragon Magic; if anyone discovers she has been hiding in plain sight, her death is assured.

When Eon's secret threatens to come to light, she and her allies are plunged into grave danger and a deadly struggle for the Imperial throne. Eon must find the strength and inner power to battle those who want to take her magic...and her life. (less)"
4647,How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories,fantasy,"An irresistible return to the captivating world of Elfhame.

Once upon a time, there was a boy with a wicked tongue.

Before he was a cruel prince or a wicked king, he was a faerie child with a heart of stone . Revealing a deeper look into the dramatic life of Elfhame’s enigmatic high king, Cardan, his tale includes delicious details of life before The Cruel Prince, an adventure beyond The Queen of Nothing, and familiar moments from The Folk of the Air trilogy, told wholly from Cardan’s perspective.

This new installment in the Folk of the Air series is a return to the heart-racing romance, danger, humor, and drama that enchanted readers everywhere. Each chapter is paired with lavish and luminous full-color art, making this the perfect collector’s item to be enjoyed by both new audiences and old. (less)"
4648,The Time Traveler's Wife,fantasy,"This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry, who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry was thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare's struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable. (less)"
4649,Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast,fantasy,"A strange imprisonment...

Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in looks, she can perhaps make up for in courage.

When her father comes home with the tale of an enchanted castle in the forest and the terrible promise he had to make to the Beast who lives there, Beauty knows she must go to the castle, a prisoner of her own free will. Her father protests that he will not let her go, but she answers, ""Cannot a Beast be tamed?""

Robin McKinley's beloved telling illuminates the unusual love story of a most unlikely couple, Beauty and the Beast. (less)"
4650,Wintersmith,fantasy,"Tiffany Aching is a trainee witch — now working for the seriously scary Miss Treason. But when Tiffany witnesses the Dark Dance — the crossover from summer to winter — she does what no one has ever done before and leaps into the dance. Into the oldest story there ever is. And draws the attention of the Wintersmith himself.

As Tiffany-shaped snowflakes hammer down on the land, can Tiffany deal with the consequences of her actions? Even with the help of Granny Weatherwax and the Nac Mac Feegle — the fightin’, thievin’ pictsies who are prepared to lay down their lives for their “big wee hag.”

Wintersmith is the third title in an exuberant series crackling with energy and humour. It follows The Wee Free Men and Hat Full of Sky.


(less)"
4651,Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay,fantasy,"J.K. Rowling's screenwriting debut is captured in this exciting hardcover edition of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them screenplay.

When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt's fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone…

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them marks the screenwriting debut of J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved and internationally bestselling Harry Potter books. Featuring a cast of remarkable characters, this is epic, adventure-packed storytelling at its very best.

Whether an existing fan or new to the wizarding world, this is a perfect addition to any reader's bookshelf. (less)"
4652,Hounded,fantasy,"Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, lives peacefully in Arizona, running an occult bookshop and shape-shifting in his spare time to hunt with his Irish wolfhound. His neighbors and customers think that this handsome, tattooed Irish dude is about twenty-one years old—when in actuality, he’s twenty-one centuries old. Not to mention: He draws his power from the earth, possesses a sharp wit, and wields an even sharper magical sword known as Fragarach, the Answerer.

Unfortunately, a very angry Celtic god wants that sword, and he’s hounded Atticus for centuries. Now the determined deity has tracked him down, and Atticus will need all his power—plus the help of a seductive goddess of death, his vampire and werewolf team of attorneys, a bartender possessed by a Hindu witch, and some good old-fashioned luck of the Irish—to kick some Celtic arse and deliver himself from evil. (less)"
4653,Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,fantasy,"Charlie Bucket's wonderful adventure begins when he finds one of Mr. Willy Wonka's precious Golden Tickets and wins a whole day inside the mysterious chocolate factory. Little does he know the surprises that are in store for him!
(back cover) (less)"
4654,Red Rising,fantasy,"""I live for the dream that my children will be born free,"" she says. ""That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.""

""I live for you,"" I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. ""Then you must live for more.""

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. (less)"
4655,Frostbite,fantasy,"Rose loves Dimitri, Dimitri might love Tasha, and Mason would die to be with Rose…

It’s winter break at St. Vladimir’s, but Rose is feeling anything but festive. A massive Strigoi attack has put the school on high alert, and now the Academy’s crawling with Guardians—including Rose’s hard-hitting mother, Janine Hathaway. And if hand-to-hand combat with her mom wasn’t bad enough, Rose’s tutor Dimitri has his eye on someone else, her friend Mason’s got a huge crush on her, and Rose keeps getting stuck in Lissa’s head while she’s making out with her boyfriend, Christian! The Strigoi are closing in, and the Academy’s not taking any risks.... This year, St. Vlad’s annual holiday ski trip is mandatory.

But the glittering winter landscape and the posh Idaho resort only create the illusion of safety. When three friends run away in an offensive move against the deadly Strigoi, Rose must join forces with Christian to rescue them. But heroism rarely comes without a price… (less)"
4656,Radiance,fantasy,"The Prince of no value
Brishen Khaskem, prince of the Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne secured many times over. A trade and political alliance between the human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Always a dutiful son, Brishen agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined.

The noblewoman of no importance
Ildiko, niece of the Gauri king, has always known her only worth to the royal family lay in a strategic marriage. Resigned to her fate, she is horrified to learn that her intended groom isn’t just a foreign aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor human. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she’s known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by light.

Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart. (less)"